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Oswald in New Orleans

Oswald in New Orleans: Case for Conspiracy with the CIA

by Harold Weisberg


Publisher: Mary Ferrell Foundation Press

Order this book online or see its Selected Book page for comments and reviews.

The Mary Ferrell Foundation is republishing Oswald in New Orleans and other books by Harold Weisberg, including Whitewash, Whitewash II, and Photographic Whitewash (see sidebar). This page presents additional resources related to the book.


1. Documentary Appendix and "Live" Index

The MFF edition of this book includes an Index which was omitted from the Canyon Books edition published in 1967. Not present in either edition is a 308-page documentary appendix Weisberg prepared. The vastly detailed index includes entries for both the book and the documentary appendix.

The Oswald in New Orleans documentary appendix is only available online.

The Index is printed in the book, but is also available online. In the online edition, every reference to a page in the documentary appendix is a direct link to that document page.

=> Browse the Oswald in New Orleans "Live" Index


2. Highlights from the Documentary Appendix

These documents are contained in the 308-page Oswald in New Orleans Documentary Appendix.


Dean Andrews. Lawyer Andrews told the FBI that he had been called on the day after the assassination by a "Clay Bertrand," who told him to go to Dallas to represent Oswald.


Clay Shaw and Ramsey Clark. Attorney General Ramsey Clark told the press on 2 Mar 1967 that Shaw, who had been arrested in New Orleans the previous day, had been investigated in 1963 and was "checked out and found clear." This statement was later disavowed.


Carlos Bringuier. Carlos Bringuier was an anti-Castro activist who was approached by Oswald and later had a public scuffle with him. Bringuier's Cuban Student Directorate went public with Oswald's purported Castro connections on the afternoon of the assassination.


Bolton Ford Dealership. Oscar DeSlatte told the FBI three days after the JFK assassination that he had been approached in 1961 by members of Friends of Democratic Cuba about buying trucks, and had created a bid form in the name given to him: Oswald. Lee Harvey Oswald was in the Soviet Union at this time.


Sylvia Odio. Sylvia Odio is the woman who told the Warren Commission of three visitors in late September 1963, one of whom was a "Leon Oswald," at a time when the Commission put Oswald on a bus to Mexico. Odio said that one of the other men called her the next day to say that Oswald said JFK should have been assassinated after the Bay of Pigs. The files contain some new twists on this story:

  • FBI interview of Mrs. C.L. Connell, 29 Nov 1963. Mrs. Connell told the FBI that Ms. Odio had phoned her the previous day and stated that Oswald had "made some talks to small groups of Cuban refugees in Dallas," that she "personally considered Oswald brilliant and clever," and that New Orleans-based Cuban associates considered Oswald to be a "double agent."
  • FBI interview of Sylvia Odio, 19 Dec 1963. Ms. Odio told the FBI her story being visited by three men in late September.
  • Secret Service report of 5 May 1964. Miami inquiries regarding several people associated with the Odio story, including Father Walter Machann, turned up blank. Weisberg notes that Machann had been in New Orleans and interviewed by the Secret Service during this period.
  • Secret Service memo to Commission of 5 May 1964. This memo is a report on the interview of Father Machann, who provided information about Sylvia Odio and various other Cubans in Dallas.
  • Portion of CD 1546. Starting on page 212 of Commission Document 1546, the FBI reported on the late effort to find the men who visited Ms. Odio. The letter from the Commission asking for the investigation was dated 28 Aug 1964, less than a month before the Warren Report was issued..
  • Memo from FBI to Commission of 9 Nov 1964. This memo, Commission Document 1553, wrapped up the FBI's Odio investigation, more than a month after the delivery of the Warren Report.

Loran Hall, Lawrence Howard, and William Seymour. The FBI, based on Hall's statement, told the Warren Commission that these three men were Sylvia Odio's visitors. This occurred right before the Warren Report was issued. Subsequently Howard and Seymour disputed the story and Hall retracted. The Warren Commission by then was no longer in existence.


The False Oswald. Weisberg points out some of the appearances of what he terms "the false Oswald."


Francis Martello. When Oswald was arrested in the summer of 1963 in New Orleans during the scuffle with Carlos Bringuier, he was interviewed by Police Lieutenant Francis Martello.


David Ferrie. David Ferrie was a prime witness/suspect for Jim Garrison until his mysterious death early in the Garrison investigation. Ferrie was a pilot who had been under investigation in the days immediately after the assassination. He had also been a leader in the Civil Air Patrol in New Orleans - in the early 1990s a photo would finally surface featuring both Ferrie and a teenage Oswald in it.

  • FBI interview of David Ferrie, 27 Nov 1963. Ferrie was questioned about anti-Kennedy statements and about whether his library card had ever been loaned to Oswald.
  • FBI report on activities of David Ferrie, 28 Nov 1963. This report and those on successive pages focus on the "goose hunting" trip to Texas Ferrie and three companions made in a rainstorm late in the evening after the JFK assassination. They spent a few hours on Nov 23 at an ice-skating rink in Houston, where Ferrie made several phone calls.
  • FBI interview of David Magyar, 27 Nov 1963. Magyar was an acquaintance of Ferrie and knew of Ferrie's involvement the Civil Air Patrol. He named George Piazza as one of Ferrie's "best friends"; Weisberg points out that Piazza was killed in a plane crash early in the Garrison investigation.
  • Statement of David Ferrie, 10 Dec 1963. Ferrie with some equivocation denied knowing Oswald: ".....I have no records, or recollection, to my knowledge, to show that Lee Harvey Oswald was, or was not, a member of this particular unit of the Civil Air Patrol. To my best knowledge and belief I do not know Lee Harvey Oswald, and have no personal recollection of ever having met him. If I did ever meet him it was very casual and to my best recollection have definitely not seen him in recent years."

Ruth Paine. Ruth Paine was housing Marina and her child at the time of the assassination, and it was in her garage that Oswald's rifle had allegedly been stored prior to the assassination.

  • FBI interview of Mrs. Louis Rico, 23 Nov 1963. Mrs. Rico lived in an apartment in the same building in New Orleans with the Oswalds. She told the FBI of a "woman who drove a station wagon" helping the Oswalds move in September 1963.
  • FBI interview of Alexander Eames, 23 Nov 1963. Another neighbor, Alexander Eames, recalled the woman with the station wagon. Like Mrs. Rico, Eames remembered the woman "loading luggage and other articles into the station wagon." Weisberg points out that this raises doubt about the idea that Oswald had secretly put the rifle into the car.
  • FBI interview of Mrs. Gladys Rodgers, 25 Nov 1963. Mrs. Rodgers told the FBI of Oswald's afternoon outings after he lost his job at the Reilly Coffee Company, and also how several days before Oswald moved away a man with "dark complexion...probably Spanish" came looking for him.
  • FBI interview of Mrs. Jesse Garner, 26 Nov 1963. Mrs. Garner gave the FBI details of Ruth Paine's appearance to move Marina to Dallas, and Lee Oswald's actions after they left.

Hands Off Cuba. Oswald distributed handbills marked "Hands Off Cuba!" in front of the International Trade Mart on 16 Aug 1963; this was televised locally. Clay Shaw, the man arrested by New Orleans DA Jim Garrison for the murder of Kennedy, was managing director of the Trade Mart.

  • FBI summary report. This report states that Oswald ordered 1,000 "Hands Off Cuba FPCC handbills from the Jones Printing Company on 29 May 1963.
  • FBI interview of Douglas Jones, 3 Dec 1963. Douglas Jones of Jones Printing Company told the FBI he did not believe it was Oswald who had ordered the handbills.
  • FBI interview of Myra Silver, 4 Dec 1963. Ms. Silver supplied additional details about the handbill order placed by "Osborne." She was shown a photo of Oswald and "stated she could not recognize the person represented in the picture as the person who placed the order for the handbills."
  • Handbill. Photocopy of a "Hands Off Cuba" handbill.

3. General Resources

See these other resources:

About the Book

Oswald in New Orleans was written in the early days of the Garrison investigation, and the book exudes hope that, a few years after the Warren Report, the verdict of that body would be reversed. That was not to be. But Harold Weisberg has written an invaluable guide to the chararacters, events, and echoes of cover-up that inhabit the New Orleans branch of the Kennedy assassination saga.


Other Books by Harold Weisberg

    Whitewash: The Report on the Warren Report
Harold Weisberg
Skyhorse Publishing, 2013
 
    Whitewash II
Harold Weisberg
Skyhorse Publishing, 2013
 
    Photographic Whitewash: Suppressed Kennedy Assassination Pictures
Harold Weisberg
Skyhorse Publishing, 2013
 
    Whitewash IV: Top Secret JFK Assassination Transcript
Harold Weisberg and Jim Lesar
Skyhorse Publishing, 2013
 
    Frame-Up
Harold Weisberg
Skyhorse Publishing, 2013
 
    Post Mortem
Harold Weisberg
Skyhorse Publishing, 2013
 
    Case Open: The Unanswered JFK Assassination Questions
Harold Weisberg
Carroll & Graf, 1994
 
    Never Again!
Harold Weisberg
Skyhorse Publishing, 1995

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