The Simkin Spectacle

[Jim DiEugenio]

Yawn.

Ray Carroll is the symbol there.

The guy who said he taped Mark Lane scampering away in fright from him. But somehow he couldn't come up with the tape for years. To this day. Uh maybe because he didn't do it? But he would complain about this right. Therefore, its OK to libel Mark Lane but its not OK to call Ray Carroll what he is, a BS artist.

But they let him keep on saying it.

Now, he still conveys all that James Phelan BS about Perry Russo. Even though I tracked down Matt Herron, a guy he probably never heard of. So, in other words, with all this newly disengorged stuff about JG, here is Carroll back in Phelan/Aynesworth territory.

I guess this is the new regime there. Carroll and his BS rules. Figures.

Its incredible the people they lost: Greg Parker and Lee Farley especially.

[Jan Klimkowski]

In the event that you're curious about the level of discourse being encouraged at The Swamp, I give you the following:

Curious? No.

Saddened and appalled? Yes.

[Peter Lemkin]

I hope everyone there remembers to keep their pinkie finger raised while typing on the keyboard and knees together, backs straight, lips pursed, head as if on an invisible string, nose freshly blown, mind pure o' thought, virgo intactica, white doily under one's mouse, clean fingernails, fresh underwear, and Emily Post's book of Etiquette next to the computer......ah, such a 'proper' place now.....what a fucking bunch of bull.....I can't stand vP, but what he said, while totally illogical, was IN NO WAY violating any rules, nor was it offensive in the least to anyone. I pity any mod, and most members, there..they should all quit en masse and leave JS, Walker, and Burton to deal with the potty training :loo:and proper forum etiquette:mistress:lessons themselves. :poketongue: :cleanears:

JS, asked me to contact Joan Mellen [my friend] to post on the Forum [which I did] - and she posted several very significant new articles and answers to questions through me, but soon stopped. She oft told me she considered the EF 'the green vomit forum'. She was not far off, except perhaps on the color. JS send me MANY private emails [many, which I have all of, and many soon need posting [sunlight is the best disinfectant!] - about this person and that person; - on and off the Forum. He [JS], in the end, betrayed me in ways I'll NEVER forgive; and are unforgivable! A knife in the back of a supposed friend.

I think the time is soon coming to tell all I know, but have never posted anywhere, nor told anyone about JS......and post his 'confidential emails' to me; however, this forum is not the proper place. [John Simkin - what goes around, comes around!!!!]......your 'number' is soon 'up'. That you still work with Walker is more than disgusting. It was he, not me, you should have banned from the Forum and expunged all of his, not my, posts.....if any were to be censored. Your tolerance of fascists, psyop disinformation pros, and just plain idiots is pathetic....yet you want to have the 'creme de la creme' post on the EF.....a bad joke; a sad joke. Most 'top flight' researchers of note won't touch the EF after a few whiffs; nor will they return under the new 'sanitary' conditions, IMO. Thier over-tolerance or (possible) encouragement of obvious disinfo/agent provocateur agents working for the Deep Political Cabal to post on the Forum was always the seeds of the Forum's undoing...NOT the lack of immoderate behavior/language on the part of some.

I shall never forget, nor forgive. Never.

Rant over......

[Jim DiEugenio]

This is from my book, Destiny Betrayed, Second Edition. It exposes the lying FBI asset James Phelan for the pimp he was. ANd who Carroll still buys into:

James Phelan Declassified

Journalist James Phelan also appeared on Sheridan's program. In the May 6, 1967, issue of the Saturday Evening Post, Phelan wrote an article entitled "Rush to Judgment in New Orleans." From the title (borrowed from Mark Lane's book on the Warren Commission) on to the last sentence, the article was a one-sided attack on almost every aspect of Garrison's probewritten in a belittling, amused style that revealed the author's supercilious attitude toward the subject. Garrison, about whom Phelan had written a favorable piece in 1963, was pictured as an egocentric megalomaniac whom Phelan called a "one-man Warren Commission."[i]
Phelan's five-page article was filled with snide characterizations, half-truths, and innuendo. But he saved his harshest blast for the end. He wrote that when assistant DA Sciambra first interviewed Perry Russo, his notes made no mention of the party at Ferrie's. Phelan then suggested that all of Russo's testimony at the preliminary hearing had been pumped into him under drugs and hypnosis by Dr. Chetta and Dr. Fatter. It did not matter to Phelan that both Russo and Sciambra denied this to his face before he went to press. Nor that Russo had talked about the fateful party at Ferrie's to the Baton Rouge press and television before Sciambra had ever met with him.[ii] When Phelan appeared on camera for Sheridan, he said essentially the same thing. He went on to say the same to James Kirkwood in his 1970 book on the Shaw trial, American Grotesque. And he repeated the same story in his 1982 book, Scandals, Scamps and Scoundrels: The Casebook of an Investigative Reporter. What is astonishing about this is that not only did the Maisntram media accept Phelan's story readily, but that even those in the Kenendy research community did so. Further, James Phelan never revealed his background as a compromised journalist who had ties to government agencies. The public had to wait for the declassification process of the ARRB to ascertain the facts about Phelan's checkered past.

Now that we know much more about him, there are many paths one can follow in order to understand what Phelan did in the Garrison investigation. A good place to start is his long associaton with Robert Loomis. Loomis was a former top editor at Random House who was known for sanctioning books that specialized in concealing the true facts about the assassinations of the sixties e.g. in 1993 he sponsored Gerald Posner's infamous Case Closed; in 1970 it was Robert Houghton's book on the RFK case, Special Unit Senator; and then again, he helped publish Posner's 1998 book on the King case, Killing the Dream. The reader should note, not only did Loomis help get these spurious books published, he got them out at timely moments in history. The Houghton book was published right after the trial of Sirhan Sirhan. The John F. Kennedy book was out at the 30[SUP]th[/SUP] anniversary, and right after Oliver Stone's influential film JFK. The King book was, again, as the 30th anniversary, and in the midst of a swirling controversy about that case due to legal proceedings instituted by attorney William Pepper in Memphis. Well, Loomis was the editor for Phelan's 1982 book which featured a long and derogatory chapter on the Garrison case.

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[i] Phelan, Rush to Judgment, p. 22.

[ii] Baton Rouge Morning Advocate, February 25, 1967.

[Jim DiEugenio]

Another aspect of Phelan's career that should have provoked some curiosity-but did not-- was Phelan's writing about Howard Hughes. In fact, the first article Phelan ever wrote for Saturday Evening Post was about Hughes. And it was through this writing that Phelan established his long term friendship with CIA agent Robert Maheu. In 1976, upon Hughes' death, Phelan did an instant book on the invisible billionaire called Howard Hughes: The Hidden Years. Loomis was again the editor. The book was a top secret project at Random House. Only Loomis and one other person there knew about it. All dealings between New York and California, where Phelan lived, were done in person or by hand delivery; no mail or phone contact. According to Phelan, two lower level members of Hughes' entourage spilled out the story of the reclusive loner's last years to him at an apartment he rented for them near Long Beach, his home at that time.[i] There are no footnotes or bibliography to the book. Not even an index. Therefore, Phelan was apparently reliant on his two lower level sources. He begins th ebook by decrying the "cult of conspiracy" that ha dgrown up around Hughes and he chides Norman Mailer, who in a recent essay, had noted Hughes' close ties to the CIA. In fact, this was a point that was not really in dispute. For example, Phelan's close friend Maheu, had gone from the CIA to running the Hughes empire. Further, some people beleive that when Maheu was unceremoniously ousted in 1970, this was really a power struggle within the Hughes holdings between two arms of the Agency. Well, in the entire book there are exactly two brief notices of the CIA in relation to Hughes: one deaing with Maheu's role as CEO, and one in which the famous Glomar Explorer episode is described. And that is it. This is the absolute bare minimum that any reporter could do in relating Hughes and the Agency. Phelan did not go an inch beyond the minimum. One could say that Phelan and Loomis were setting a paradigm for those who followed to not stray off the parameters he had outlined. (As we will see, seven years earlier, he had done the same for the coverage of the Shaw trial.)

Before Phelan ever got to New Orleans and Shaw's preliminary hearing, he had already done work for government agencies. In Garrison's files adduced for the ARRB, there is a report of a private investigator who went to visit Phelan unannounced. His pretext was that he wanted to ask him about an interview he had done for Penthouse Magazine with Clay Shaw. The investigator asked Phelan if he was familiar with reporters being used by the CIA in planting stories. Phelan said he knew of the process but that his personal ethics as a reporter would not allow him to compromise a story, or a source for a story. Further, he would never reveal the contents of any story prior to publication to anyone; especially to someone connected to a government agency. The PI now showed Phelan declassified documents revealing two reporters, one working for the Saturday Evening Post who were being used by the FBI in counterintellgience programs against the Klan. Phelan now began to grow a bit uneasy and nervously started stroking his arm.
Now the investigator showed Phelan a photocopy of an article that appeared in the Saturday Evening Post in March of 1964. It was by Phelan about L. Ron Hubbard. Phelan immediately started talking about what a kook Hubbard was. He then explained how he had gotten Hubbard to open up with him during the first part of their interview by posing only softball types of questions to him. The investigator then asked who the man at Saturday Evening Post was who assigned him the article about Hubbard. Phelan said he could not recall who it was. Phelan was then asked if he was ever assigned to write an article by the FBI, CIA, or the FDA. Phelan said this had never occurred. Phelan was then shown a copy of a letter from an editor at the Post consenting for the magazine to be used by the FDA for an attack on Hubbard. Phelan read the letter slowly and again got nervous. Phelan was then asked if he had ever been asked by an agency of government to furnish either his notes for a story or his interview notes to them before his article was published. Phelan again denied this had ever happened. Again, Phelan was now shown declassified documents revealing that this was precisely what he had done in relation to his Hubbard story. In his report, the PI writes, "As Phelan read the three documents he started breathing very heavily and started making some types of moaning sounds. He then grabbed one arm and stroked it."[ii]
The reader should especially note here that not only was Phelan a willing counduit for a government agency, but he then bragged about what a good job he had done setting up Hubbard. But then when asked if he was on a covert assignment, he continually lied about this aspect of his professional life. When, in fact, to anyone who carefully examined his career, it would at the very least suggest itself. Needless to day, when the ARRB began to decalssify documents on the Garrison investigation it was revealed that Phelan again did what he had denied he had done. He had gone to the FBI and turned over documents he had attained as a result of his interview with Garrison in Las Vegas in early 1967. In an April 3, 1967 FBI memo it is revealed that R. E. Wick wrote to Cartha DeLoach that he had agreed to see Phelan reluctantly. Phelan was trying to pump Garrison for details about his investigation but was disappointed that the DA would return to criticism of the Warren Report.[iii] Having had conversations with Phelan prior to the declassification of these FBI documents, I can inform the reader that I asked him these very questions about his dealings with Garrison. That is, had he informed to any governemt agency about the DA, and had he turned over any documents from his work product. He denied doing either. He may have felt protected since in these FBi documents he requested that the FBI not reveal his name. Therefore he could maintain a false veneer of independence and deceive everyone about it. But after the ARRB review, Phelan was now exposed as lying about this crucial matter a second time. Needless to say, if the public had been informed about this past history, they would not have taken his writings about the DA at face value.

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[i] Probe, Vol. 3 No. 2, p. 24

[ii] Probe, Vol. 6 No. 4, p. 5 and p. 32. A much longer version of this report was in this issue.

[iii] Probe, Vol. 3 No. 3, p. 24.

[Jim DiEugenio]

An important part of Phlelan's rendition about his encounter with Russo in Baton Rouge was his asking him when he first mentioned the name of Clem Bertrand. For instance, Phelan told James Kirkwood that in Baton Rouge, Russo did not say anything about Clay Shaw as Bertrand, nor did he mention the gathering at Ferrie's home.[i] As the reader can see from the citation above, Russo did mention the gathering in a Baton Rouge newspaper. But further, there was a third party with Phelan when he went to see Russo for the first time after Garrison let him read Andrew Sciambra's memorandum about his Baton Rouge interview with Russo. The man's name was Matt Herron. Herron was a photographer for various large circulation magazines, including the Post. Like the con artist he was, Phelan always clearly insinuated that it was no use talking to Herron, since Herron would back up his version of the encounter. That is, Herron also heard Russo say that the first time he had mentioned Bertrand at the gathering was in New Orleans.[ii] In fact, in a phone conversation with me, Phelan actually said that Herron had lost faith in Garrison after this.[iii] Therefore, no one thought it was worth the trouble to find Herron. Even though he would be the deciding vote in the matter. Because Sciambra and Russo disagreed with what Phelan had written about this.[iv] In fact, Phelan actually told Kirkwood that after they left Russo's house, he told Herron to recall what Russo had just said since "…someday you're going to be in court on this and I'm going to have to tell this story and you're my witness."[URL="https://deeppoliticsforum.com/forums/#_edn5"][v]
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Many years later, after all these documents impeaching Phelan's credibility had now been exposed to the light of day, I decided that if Phelan was willing to lie about such important matters as cooperating with the FBI and FDA, and turning over documents to them in advance of an article, then would it not be consistent that he would also lie about Matt Herron? That is, to camouflage his own story by discouraging anyone from communicating with the man. After all, contrary to what Phelan told Kirkwood, Herron was not called as a witness for the defense at Shaw's trial to bolster Phelan's version of his encounter with Russo. So I decided to look up Mr. Herron. I talked to him on two occasions. On both occasions, he told me that Russo had told them that he mentioned Bertrand in Baton Rouge. And further, that Russo's statements on this were very strong in 1967. Because of this, Herron was surprised when he read Russo's testimony at the Shaw trial. He felt that, for whatever reason, it was now diluted.[vi] If you are counting, this is now three lies to three different people that Phelan told.

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[i] Kirkwood, pgs. 161-73.

[ii] Ibid.

[iii] Author's 1993 phone interview with James Phelan.

[iv] Davy, pgs.121-22.

[v] Op cit., Kirkwood.

[vi] E mail message from Matt Herron in 2009.

[Jim DiEugenio]

It is necessary now to explain why Phelan found it necessary to lie about Matt Herron. Because the strategy utilized by Phelan and Sheridan was to state that Russo had all these memories drugged into him by Nicolas Chetta and Dr. Esmond Fatter. Chetta applied the sodium pentothalcommonly called truth serumand Fatter conducted the hypnosis and then questioned Russo. When one reads these sessions in the correct order, one can see that there was no leading of the witness by Fatter. The author was fortunate enough to attain these transcripts directly from Garrison's files, even before the ARRB got hold of them.[i] When the two sessions are arranged in the correct order, as Garrison marked them, it is manifest that "…Russo quite clearly and unequivocally describes Bertrand all by himself."[ii] James Phelan and Shaw's lawyers quoted them out of sequence to make it seem that Russo had to be prompted to name Bertrand. But when one reads them in the proper order, its clear that Fatter is referring Russo to a previous identification that he has already made.

As both Bill Davy and Joe Biles accurately note, what Phelan always referred to as the "first memorandum" is actually the second memorandum. What happened is that when Sciambra went up to visit Russo, the witness orally sketched out the gathering at Ferrie's and named who was there. He also chose some photographs of the participants. But Sciambra thought it better for recall and also for truthfulness that Russo be put under sodium penothal and hypnosis for his actual description of the discussion. Therefore, he interviewed Russo about all the other things that ended up in the actual second memorandum, e.g. Russo's relationship with Ferrie, Ferrie's obsession with Kennedy, and the other times he saw Shaw/Bertrand etc. As Biles points out, this is easy enough to discern by just looking at the signature block of the memo about the gathering at Ferrie's where an assassination was discussed. That date is February 28, 1967. The second memorandum, about the lesser details, was done about a week after Shaw's arrest, around March 6[SUP]th[/SUP].[iii] Further, it was this first memo, misrepresented by Phelan, that served as the basis for Lou Ivon's search warrant. In that warrant, Ivon writes about what Russo had said under truth serum and he adds the following: "That the said confidential informant while under the sodium pentothal verified, corroborated and reaffirmed his earlier statements."[iv] (Italics added) Since Sciambra had still not finished his memorandum about the other things Russo had said to him, then clearly he had already related to Ivon what Russo had said in Baton Rouge about the gathering at Ferrie's apartment. That is why Ivon used the word "reaffirmed". And finally, as Biles points out: If all the things Russo had to say were really not that important, then why would Garrison OK the request by Sciambra to put him under hypnosis and truth serum?

The other objections to Russo's testimony are that in a TV interview he did before he was administered truth serum he was asked about Oswald and Ferrie. He said he did not recall Oswald being associated with Ferrie.[v] But the point is that the man Russo identified was Leon Oswald, not Lee Harvey Oswald. And in fact, the evidence today is pretty much decisive that there was a Leon Oswald in New Orleans around this time. For instance, Sylvia Odio, one of the best and most important witnesses in this case, said that two Cubans came to her house in late September of 1963 with a Caucasian man they called Leon Oswald.[vi] Richard Case Nagell also said he knew a Leon Oswald in that summer of 1963. Nagell said that this Leon Oswald was meant as a Secodn Oswald and was working with the anti-Castro Cubans, he was not at all pro-Castro.[vii] Raymond Broshears, a friend of Ferrie's, also spoke about a Leon Oswald. He described him as resembling Oswald but not actually Lee Harevey Oswald.[viii] Michael Kurtz interviewed rightwing witnesses in Baton Rouge who recalled meeting an Oswald who was introduced to them as Leon Oswald in July and August of 1963. This happened more than once, and on his last visit to the area, Leon Oswald was accompanied by two Latins.[ix] David F. Lewis, who once worked for Banister said that he was introduced to a man named Leon Oswald by Sergio Arcacha Smith's right hand man Carlos Quiroga. This was at Mancuso's Restaurant in late 1962. It is highly doubtful this was the real Lee Harvey Oswald since he was still living in the Dallas-Fort Worth area at the time. All of this testimony strongly suggests that there actually was a Leon Oswald who resembled Oswald. Niles Peterson, who was a friend of Russo's and briefly attended the gathering, told William Davy and Peter Vea that there was a Leon Oswald there.[x] This author believes that it was this mannot Lee Harvey Oswald-- who was at Ferrie's the night of the gathering described by Russo.

In the light of all this new evidence, it is startling that some serious and intelligent people still take James Phelan seriously. Clearly, Phelan was on a mission. And like the intelligence assets they were, he and Sheridan were out to politicize, polarize, and propagandize Garrison's case any which way they could. What is surprising is that they were so successful for so long.

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[i] Lyon Garrison let the author copy these and many other exhibits in 1994.

[ii] Probe, Vol. 6 No. 5, p. 26. At a meeting in San Francisco, I showed these Garrison-marked transcripts to a gathering of Kennedy researchers. They all agreed that Russo was not being prompted and were surprised that Phelan would present it as otherwise.

[iii] Biles, p. 44.

[iv] Ibid. Biles brief but incisive discussion of this issue is one of the best in the literature.

[v] See the You Tube series, "The JFK Conspiracy: The Case of Jim Garrison".

[vi] WC Vol. 11, pgs. 370-71.

[vii] Russell, pgs. 288-89.

[viii] Ibid., p. 367.

[ix] Kurtz, "Lee Harvey Oswald in New Orleans: A Reappraisal", p. 17.

[x] Interview by Peter Vea and William Davy in 1994 of Niles Peterson in New Orleans. Michael Kurtz in his book The JFK Assassination Debates, notes that a Cuban he encountered, Santos Miguel Gonzalez, recalled the gathering at Ferrie's. He also said that Shaw, Ferrie and Oswald were there. But he denied there was any discussion of assassinating Kennedy that night. Which is not necessarily inconsistent with Russo's recall since he said this discussion occurred when almost everyone was gone. (Kurtz, p. 164)

[Jim DiEugenio]

In other words, the gathering that Russo described did take place and it is corroborated by more than one witness. Recall, Sandra Moffet, was one of the witnesses who could have also corroborated the gathering. She was shipped out of the state and Garrison could not extradite her back. As I show in my book, with declassified files, many of these failed extraditions were done with the help of CIA associated lawyers and judges. And by the way, Russo always told me it was a mistake to refer to it as a party. It really was not a social gathering since there were hardly any females there.

Second, if one actually has the original transcripts as marked by Garrison, there was no inducement by Garrison or anyone else to produce the name of Bertrand.Russo came up with it on his own. And any objective person, as I noted in my End Notes, is surprised by this once they see the original documents. Because Phelan and Sheridan and Aynesworth pounded th black propaganda home so incessantly.

Third, Russo did ID Shaw/Bertrand in Baton Rouge and he did mention the gathering there.Phelan was so eager to lie about this, he not only lied about himself and Russo, he lied about Herron. Thinking that no one would ever find the guy. It wasn't easy to do, but I did many years later.

Fourth, I always had a problem with the sketch of Oswald rendered upon Russo's description. After reading what Nagell said about this point, I think its clear that Russo was referring to Leon Oswald, who did exist and was one of the lookalikes for Oswald. This one in New Orleans.

So after all these years and all this new information, Ray Carroll is still back in the days of James Kirkwood and his hatchet job American Grotesque. A book commissioned by Clay Shaw!

Finally, Russo was not supposed to be the main witness to a conspiracy. A point I will take up with momentarily.

[Jim DiEugenio]

"It is necessary to add one more important aspect to what happened at the trial. Before and during the trial, Garrison's witnesses were being surveilled, harassed and physically attacked. For instance, Richard Case Nagell had a grenade thrown at him from a speeding car in New York. Nagell brought the remains of the grenade to Garrison and told him he did not think it wise for him to testify at Shaw's trial.[i] Even though Garrison had spirited Clyde Johnson out of town, and very few people knew where he was, he was brutally beaten on the eve of the trial and hospitalized.[ii] As we shall see, Aloysius Habighorst, the man who booked Shaw, was rammed by a truck the day before he testified. After he testified, Edwin McGehee found a prowler on his front lawn. He called the marshall, and the man was arrested. At the station, the man asked to make one phone call. The call he made was to the International Trade Mart.[iii] After he testified, Reeves Morgan had the windows shot out of his truck.[iv] What makes all this violent witness intimidation more startling is what Robert Tanenbaum stated to the author is an interview for Probe Magazine. He said that he had seen a set of documents which originated in the office of Richard Helms. They revealed that the CIA was monitoring and harassing Garrison's witnesses. As Tanenbaum stated it, he had a negative view of Garrison up until the time he became Deputy Counsel of the House Select Committee on Assassinations. Then he read "all this material that had come out of Helms' office, that in fact what Garrison had said was true. They were harassing his witnesses, they were intimidating his witnesses. The documents exist. Where they are now, God only knows"[v]"

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[i] Russell, p. 436.

[ii] Davy, p. 310; Mellen, A Farewell to Justice, p. 301.

[iii] Author's 1994 interview with McGehee in Jackson.

[iv] Davy, p. 301.

[v] Probe, Vol. 3 No. 5, p. 25.

[Jim DiEugenio]

This is a point that Garrison's detractors always either discount or ignore. If Garrison's case was so anemic, why did the CIA go to such measures to counter him all the way up to and during the trial? To the point of physically assaulting his witnesses. Even when Garrison had spirited them away outside of New Orleans! If his case was so anemic, then they would have just let him fall on his face.

They did not. Not by any stretch of even a Carrollian imagination. (Raymond, not Lewis, but they are interchangeable in terms of factual basis.)

The CIA interference started almost at the beginning. It went on all the way through the trial and beyond. As Helms' original instructions to the Garrison Group said, he wanted proposals extending all the way beyond Shaw's trial. Why?

Because at their first meeting, Ray Rocca, in charge of Angleton's database on Garrison said words to the effect: If Garrison is allowed to proceed unimpeded, Shaw will be convicted.

From the horse's mouth.

With Carroll, its from the other end.