delegate until 1962 was Sergio Arcacha Smith. He was replaced by Luis Rabel who, in turn, was succeeded by Frank Bartes. The committee interviewed or deposed all three CRC New Orleans delegates. Arcacha said he never encountered Oswald and that he left New Orleans when he was relieved of his CRC position in early 1962. Rabel said he held the post from January to October 1962, but that he likewise never knew or saw Oswald and that the only time he went to the Newman Building was to remove some office materials that Arcacha had left there. Bartes said the only time he was in contact with Oswald was in their courtroom confrontation, that he ran the CRC chapter from an office in his home and that he never visited an office at either 544 Camp Street or 531 Lafayette Street.
The committee, on the other hand, developed information that, in 1961, Banister, Ferrie, and Arcacha were working together in the anti-Castro cause. Banister, a fervent anti-Communist, was helping to establish Friends of Democratic Cuba as an adjunct to the New Orleans CRC chapter run by Arcacha in an office in the Newman Building. Banister was also conducting background investigations of CRC members for Arcacha. Ferrie, also strongly anti-Communist and anti-Castro, was associated with Arcacha (and probably Banister) in anti-Castro activism.
On 22 November 1963 Ferrie had been in a Federal courtroom in New Orleans in connection with legal proceedings against Carlos Marcello. That night he drove, with two young friends, to Houston, Tex. then to Galveston on Saturday 23 November and back to New Orleans on Sunday. Before reaching New Orleans, he learned from a telephone conversation with G. Wray Gill that Martin had implicated him in the assassination. Gill also told Ferrie about the rumors that he and Oswald had served together in the CAP and that Oswald supposedly had Ferrie’s library card in his possession when he was arrested in Dallas. When he got to his residence, Ferrie did not go in, but sent in his place one of his companions on the trip, Alvin Beauboeuf. Beauboeuf and Ferrie’s roommate, Layton Martens, were detained by officers from the district attorney’s office. Ferrie drove to Hammond, La., and spent the night with a friend.
On Monday 25 November Ferrie turned himself in to the district attorney’s office where he was arrested on suspicion of being involved in the assassination. In subsequent interviews with New Orleans authorities, the FBI and the Secret Service, Ferrie denied ever having known Oswald or having ever been involved in the assassination. He stated that in the days preceding 22 November he had been working intensively for Gill on the Marcello case. Ferrie said he was in New Orleans on the morning of 22 November, at which time Marcello was acquitted in Federal court of citizenship falsification. He stated that he took the weekend trip to Texas for relaxation. Ferrie acknowledged knowing Jack Martin, stating that Martin resented him for forcibly removing him from Gill’s office earlier that year.
The FBI and Secret Service investigation into the possibility that Ferrie and Oswald had been associated ended a few days later. A Secret Service report concluded that the information provided by Jack Martin that Ferrie had been associated with Oswald and had trained him to fire a rifle was “without foundation.” The Secret Service report went on to state that on 26 November 1963 the FBI had informed the Secret Service that Martin had admitted that his information was a “figment of his imagination.” The investigation of Ferrie was subsequently closed for lack of evidence against him.
As noted, the committee believed the Clinton witnesses to be telling the truth as they knew it. It was, therefore, inclined to believe that Oswald was in Clinton, La., in late August, early September 1963, and that he was in the company of David Ferrie, if not Clay Shaw. The committee was puzzled by Oswald’s apparent association with Ferrie, a person whose anti-Castro sentiments were so distant from those of Oswald, the Fair Play for Cuba Committee campaigner. But the relationship with Ferrie may have been significant for more than its anti-Castro aspect, in light of Ferrie’s connection with G. Wray Gill and Carlos Marcello.
The committee also found that there was at least possibility that Oswald and Guy Banister were acquainted. The following facts were considered:
• The 544 Camp Street address stamped on Oswald’s FPCC handouts was that of the building where Banister had his office;
• Ross Banister told the committee that his brother had seen Oswald handing out FPCC literature during the summer of 1963; and
• Banister’s secretary, Delphine Roberts, told the committee she saw Oswald in Banister’s office on several occasions, the first being when he was interviewed for a job during the summer of 1963.
The committee learned that Banister left extensive files when he died in 1964. Later that year, they were purchased by the Louisiana State Police from Banister’s widow. According to Joseph Cambre of the State police, Oswald’s name was not the subject of any file, but it was included in a file for the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. Cambre said the FPCC file contained newspaper clippings and a transcript, of a radio program on which Oswald had appeared. The committee was not able to review Banister’s files, since they had been destroyed pursuant to an order of the superintendent of Louisiana State Police that all files not part of the public record or pertinent to ongoing criminal investigations be burned.
Additional evidence that Oswald may have been associated or acquainted with Ferrie and Banister was provided by the testimony of Adrian Alba, proprietor of the Crescent City Garage which was next door to the Reily Coffee Co., where Oswald had worked for a couple of months in 1963. (The garage and the coffee company were both located less than a block from 544 Camp Street.) Although Alba’s testimony on some points was questionable, he undoubtedly did know Oswald, who frequently visited his garage, and the committee found no reason to question his statement that he had often seen Oswald in Mancuso’s Restaurant on the first floor of 544 Camp. Ferrie and Banister also were frequent customers at Mancuso’s.
The committee also thought it significant that it received no information from the Cuban Government that would implicate anti-Castroites. The Cubans had dependable information sources in the exile communities in Miami, New Orleans, Dallas and other US cities, so there is high probability that Cuban intelligence would have been aware of any group involvement by the exiles. Following the assassination, the Cuban Government would have had the highest incentive to report participation by anti-Castroites, had it existed to its knowledge, since it would have dispelled suspicions of pro-Castro Cuban involvement.
The committee was impressed with the cooperation it received from the Cuban Government, and while it acknowledged this cooperation might not have been forthcoming in 1964, it concluded that, had such information existed in 1978, it would have been supplied by Cuban officials.
On the other hand, the committee noted that it was unable to preclude from its investigation the possibility that individuals with anti-Castro leanings might have been involved in the assassination. The committee candidly acknowledged, for example, that it could not explain Oswald’s associations—nor at this late date fully determine their extent—with anti-Castro Cubans. The committee remained convinced that since Oswald consistently demonstrated a left-wing Marxist ideology, he would not have supported the anti-Castro movement. At the same time, the committee noted that Oswald’s possible association with Ferrie might be distinguishable, since it could not be simply termed an anti-Castro association. Ferrie and Oswald may have had a personal friendship unrelated
