The quest for the truth in the JFK assassination

Shreveport and Barksdale Air Force Base were mentioned by various speakers at the first Oswald Conference that attracted people from all over the country in October to share pieces of the puzzle of President John Kennedy’s assassination.

Featured over two-and-a-half days were authors and researchers with a collective knowledge of hundreds of years. Judyth Baker, who worked in a coffee shop with Oswald in New Orleans in 1963 and claimed to be his mistress, spoke several times.

She was a prodigy in cancer research who shortly thereafter worked with Dr. Mary Sherman who was murdered, and a cast of assassination characters with such familiar names as David Ferrie, a central figure in District Attorney Jim Garrison’s investigation of the assassination that brought Clay Shaw to trial.

Organizer Kris Millegan called the assassination a coup d’etat.

“I want my country back,” he said. He said he was there because of his father’s CIA service, for his children and for the country. “This is a huge political act to celebrate [Lee Harvey] Oswald’s birthday,” he said.

“I’m not standing here just for Lee, I’m standing here for Kennedy,” Baker said. She is putting together a declaration of innocence and trying to find a congressman to help. When Baker worked with Oswald, he had conversations with her about operations being conducted against Fidel Castro possibly involving biological weapons. They visited Ferrie’s home where he apparently kept mice.

Speaker Jim Marrs, a journalist and author, said the only certainty is Kennedy was shot in the head Nov. 22, 1963 in Dallas. Marrs said there is fabrication, suppression, alteration and destruction of evidence and intimidation of witnesses.

Shreveport newspaper

Edgar Tatro, professor and author, mentioned a Shreveport newspaper, which published a photo purporting to be Ferrie with Shaw at a party. It was published by Ned Touchstone, editor of the Councilor. Tatro called it a “fanatical right wing newspaper.” The photo is with WDSU personnel from 1949.

While the Mafia, CIA, Russians, Cubans and any number of groups could have killed Kennedy, Tatro said, they could not have gotten Kennedy’s car to drive only 11 mph without a bubbletop through Dealey Plaza. That came from Lyndon Johnson’s inner circle, he said. The press vehicle was not in its normal slot either.

Tatro said notes from Kennedy’s secretary, Eleanor Lincoln, indicated JFK wanted to dump LBJ from the ticket, calling that motive. He said LBJ aide Bill Moyers was sent to smooth over the details of the motorcade.

Another tidbit: Tatro said La. Rep. Hale Boggs, member of the Warren Commission, wasn’t satisfied with the results. Bill Clinton drove Boggs to the airport for the flight to Alaska where his plane disappeared.

Tatro also mentioned Larry King’s involvement. At the behest of Miami financier Louis Wolfson, King arranged a dinner with Garrison that included Wolfson, Miami DA Richard Gerstein and King. Wolfson was interested in Garrison’s investigation and offered to quietly provide $25,000 to underwrite it. King, with Gerstein, agreed to act as an intermediary to deliver the monthly allotments of $5,000 to Garrison. King didn’t hold up his end of the bargain.

Barksdale and Shreveport doctor

Rose Cherami of Eunice is depicted in Oliver Stone’s JFK traveling with two men on Highway 190. She was taken to a hospital after being thrown out of the vehicle that she said was traveling to kill the President, then taken to jail, then to a state hospital, Todd Elliott said.

Elliott mentioned a doctor from Shreveport who also practiced at Charity Hospital in New Orleans who treated a woman who was brought in and asked, “Did they get Ruby, too?” Cherami was a known heroin addict involved with organized crime and was arrested at Barksdale at 19, aiding soldiers in escape, Elliott said.

He said Jack Ruby, who shot Oswald, would stay at a Eunice hotel.

Elliott suggested Rufus Youngblood moved a little too soon to protect LBJ during the shooting and was given a promotion to head of the Secret Service.

Louisianan Barry Seal and Barksdale

Ten days after Watergate, Barry Seal was arrested for sending seven tons of explosives via cargo plane on the way to Mexico to trade for heroin. President Richard Nixon needed hush money from a Mexican connection, said author Daniel Hopsicker.

A movie is being made about Seal, who is rumored to pilot a get-away plane from Dallas. Recently in the news was a story about a lawsuit attempting to stop the movie.

When he was 16, Seal was in a two-week summer camp with the Civil Air Patrol at Barksdale and supposedly came under the command of Ferrie and met cadet Oswald.

One of Seal’s flight instructors said he was “first cousin to a bird.”

The speaker does not believe Seal was murdered by cartel rivals.

He said the CIA moves people in and out of places without being seen through general aviation. He discussed sheepdipped planes (washed through another company). H.L. Hunt’s granddaughter owned some of these planes. Hunt spent money in an anti-Kennedy campaign because Kennedy was interested in revoking the oil depletion allowance, a decision that would have meant steep losses for Texas oilmen.

Dr. Mary’s Monkey

This article can’t begin to go into the complicated Dr. Mary’s Monkey by Edward Haslam.

He said Dr. Alton Ochsner’s hospital was a covert research center which the CIA set up.

Haslam believes Ochsner, who was plugged into the national power structure and was president of the American Cancer Society, recruited Sherman to run an operation that was involved in carrying out secret research into developing a vaccine to prevent an epidemic of soft-tissue cancers caused by polio vaccine contaminated with SV-40. A spinoff project included using a linear particle accelerator in New Orleans.

Panelist Victoria Hawes said she was neighbors to Sherman and Juan Valdes and heard constant toilet flushing, which she later believed to be mice cancer carcasses.

She knew Oswald from junior high school and he knocked on her door once, mistaking it for the apartment of Valdes. She would accept packages for Valdes that had to be refrigerated and he would pay her back for calls he made to Cuba from her phone.

Sherman’s 1964 murder is still unsolved.

More from Marrs

Marrs mentioned no Oswald fingerprints on the rifle, no gunpowder on his face or hands and a live oak tree in the way of the shot. He said Maj. Phil Willis, an eyewitness, said, “If you told the Warren Commission yes, they’d put down no.”

Other tidbits

A random encounters panel said the man who assembled the rifle for packaging to Washington, D.C., said it had a dirty bore, meaning it would not have just been recently shot three times.

Harry Byrd, owner of the Texas School Book Depository, was granted a large defense contract to build fighter planes by Johnson.

It was suggested that he knew Ferrie via the Civil Air Patrol.

The mayor of Dallas was the brother of Charles Cabell, who was deputy director of the CIA until he resigned in the wake of the Bay of Pigs invasion.

Nixon and Joan Crawford were in Dallas at a Pepsi convention the day of the assassination.

–Mary Ann Van Osdell