month after you have testified that this tape was destroyed, the FBI listened to that tape and concluded that it was not the voice of Lee Harvey Oswald?'
You had to give him credit. He didn't blink. 'I'm not aware of that,' he said.
'So the tapes were in fact not destroyed.'
'They were destroyed.'
'Not according to J. Edgar Hoover,' said Karp, brandishing a photocopy of the FBI memo. It was entered into evidence and David was given a chance to study it.
'So,' Karp continued, 'if the tapes were routinely destroyed as you claim, Mr. David, how do you explain the FBI listening to them a month afterward?'
'I can't explain it,' said David.
'Does the CIA have a copy of this tape still in its possession?'
'Not to my knowledge.'
'Then who, if you know, ordered this evidence destroyed, after Lee Harvey Oswald became a suspect in the murder of President Kennedy?'
'I can't answer that,' said David.
'What does that mean?' asked Karp sharply. 'You haven't the knowledge or you refuse to share it with the committee?'
Then occurred the oddest thing that had ever happened to Karp in the course of questioning witnesses. David said, 'I don't care to answer any more questions.' Then he rose, turned, and walked out of the room.
Karp gaped, his brain frozen. He thought inanely of calling out to David to stop, and checked himself, thus avoiding seeming even more of a fool than he now felt himself to be. Flushing pink, he looked frantically up at the dais. There was no help there. Flores was conferring with Representative Morgan. The other members seemed bemused, including Dobbs, who was staring vacantly at the door closing behind David.
'Mr. Chairman,' said Karp at last, 'I think we have cause for a contempt citation here.'
A frown and a significant pause. 'The subcommittee will take this under advisement. Call the next witness.'
Who was an official of the FBI; as it turned out, he didn't know where the tape was either.
When the hearings at last adjourned, Karp returned to the Fourth Street building in a foul mood, bit the heads off two junior staff who approached him with minor problems, and retired to his office, seething. Crane was not in. Sondergard was closeted with a trio of suits from the comptroller general. V.T. was with the photo analysts.
Karp tried to get interested in a report about nuclear magnetic resonance as a technique for comparing bullet fragments and found himself reading the same paragraph for the third time.
He was not, it appeared, interested in nuclear magnetic resonance. What he was interested in was Paul Ashton David. The man's face swam into his mind's eye, its calm assurance irritating even in memory. And something else about it, something he couldn't pin down. A face from the past?
He shook these maunderings away and refocused on how to nail David's slick CIA ass to the wall. On this too he was drawing a blank. The problem was secrecy. If the CIA was allowed to be the sole judge of what could be revealed and what could remain hidden for reasons of national security, then the committee might as well hang it up. Karp was willing to bring it to the test of a subpoena, and he thought that Crane would back him on it. The CIA people might claim that their oath of secrecy took precedence over the obligations under a testamentary oath. Fine-they would jail David on contempt charges, and then get the next guy in line and jail him, and so on. Obviously it would be subject to judicial clarification, maybe even a Supreme Court case. Karp started to feel better. He got out a pad and began making notes for a succulent piece of legal research.
The phone interrupted him.
'Butch? Clay here. I'm at National, just got in. Where do you want me to bring Veroa?'
'He's with you? How is he?'
'He's fine. Doesn't say much. Didn't give me any trouble about coming up either. Kind of a mild chubby little guy, an accountant. Doesn't strike me as much of a terrorist leader. You sure we got the right guy?'
'What did you expect, a slouch hat, flaming eyes, a beard, and one of those round bombs with a smoking fuse? Believe me, he's no sweetheart. I tell you what-stick him in the TraveLodge down the street-no, why don't you bring him over to the office. I want him to watch our movie.'
They arrived forty minutes later. Veroa did indeed look like an accountant: tall for a Cuban, about five-nine, mustached, with thick black-rimmed glasses and a soft-looking pear-shaped body. Karp went into the file room, and from a locked file in a drawer labeled Administration Forms withdrew the spool of film. He called Charlie Ziller in to run the machine. Fulton, Karp, and Veroa grouped themselves in front of the screen while Ziller cranked the film up to the point marked by the little paper slip. The screen lit up on the road through the swamp.
'This is you, right, Mr. Veroa?' asked Karp when the right frames came by. 'Freeze it right here, Charlie.'
Veroa peered at the dim scene of the men around the jeep. 'Yes, that is me. Younger, of course.'
'Could you identify the other men for us?'
'Some, I think.' He placed his finger on a squat, pop-eyed man standing near the jeep. 'This is Angelo Guel. And here is Gary Becker.' He rattled off some more Cuban names. He had forgotten who the driver was. Fulton wrote down the names in a notebook, also marking down the frames they appeared in.
'Who's the tall guy with his face moving away from the camera?' Karp asked. 'Near the front wheel.'
'That is Maurice Bishop.'
'It is, huh? Are you sure?'
'Oh, yes. He was in charge of the whole operation. I knew him quite well.'
'Good, okay roll it slow until I tell you to stop. A little more, more, stop! Do you recognize this man?' Karp pointed.
'It looks like Lee Oswald, but it is dark. I can't be sure.'
'You never met him at these exercises?'
Veroa shrugged. 'No, but there were many hundred men, and many exercises. He was not active, if he was there at all. I did actually meet him once, though.'
'You did? When?'
'In September of sixty-three. I went to meet with Bishop at a hotel in Dallas, and Oswald was with him.'
There was silence in the little room while they all digested that. 'Let's, uh, move on, Charlie. Okay, Mr. Veroa, here's a scene in broad daylight. Let's see what you make of this.'
The man in the black shirt and ball cap appeared.
'Oswald again, right?' Karp asked.
Veroa shook his head. 'No, I know who that is. That is Bill Caballo.'
'A Cuban?'
'No, not Cuban. But he spoke Spanish, I think with a Central American accent. An American. Bishop gave him to us, for weapons training. He was an expert with small arms, and an armorer.' They were all staring at him. Veroa glanced back at the screen. 'He resembles Oswald, certainly, especially in the shape of the face and the coloring. But Caballo was thinner. He had many… what? Pecas-freckles on his arms and his hands. Also, he was shorter than me, and Oswald was perhaps a little taller than me.'
'But it might have been possible to confuse one with the other, huh? If you had never seen both of them together?'
A slight nod. 'Yes, in that case, perhaps. I knew Caballo more than I knew Oswald. I met Oswald only that one time, with Bishop. Really, I didn't even remember that he was on this exercise, on this film. So I would not have confused them.'
They watched the film a few times more, with Veroa filling in as many details as he remembered on the recognizable people shown in it. Then they grilled him for some additional hours about his long association with the man he knew as Maurice Bishop: the initial contact while Veroa was still in Cuba, the conversion of an unassuming but patriotic Cuban accountant into an underground agent, the failed assassination attempt against Castro, the escape from Cuba, the foundation of Brigada 61, the raids, the additional attempt on Castro's life in Chile, in 1971. Bishop had been closely involved as a planner and financier throughout his clandestine career, purportedly as the representative of 'anticommunist businessmen.' The CIA had never been mentioned.
'And are you still in contact with Bishop?' Karp asked. Veroa confirmed that this, at least, was too much to hope for.
