The Banquet

Researchers have thoroughly documented almost all of Lee Harvey Oswald's movements for the six weeks leading up to the assassination. Almost every hour of his life during this period is accounted for.
Almost. There is one, large block of time for which Oswald's movements and activities remain undiscovered. The entire weekend preceding the assassination remains a mystery to researchers. Where was Oswald during that crucial weekend?
Many assassinologists have come to the conclusion that Oswald spent the weekend at Churchill Farms, Carlos Marcello's country estate, helping to plan the assassination of President Kennedy. That's a perfectly reasonable deduction, worthy of Sherlock Holmes. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote of Sherlock Holmes saying, "Once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains—however improbable—must be the truth." No one knows where else he could have been that weekend, or what he could have been doing; therefore, he must have been at Churchill Farms planning to kill the President.
This author has managed to locate three witnesses to Oswald's activities that weekend. They had even witnessed the final meeting of the conspirators at Churchill Farms. Understandably, they have declined to be quoted "on the record,” out of fear that they may be killed by whoever-it-is who has been going around killing key witnesses to the assassination.
From April 1962 up to the day of the assassination, conspirators telephoned one another or held small, face-to-face meetings or communicated through their couriers, planning each step of the assassination and refining their plans. Saturday, November 16, 1963, began the final meeting of the JFK conspiracy, and it was the largest. At the all-day seminar, the conspirators made sure that each team, indeed, each person knew what he must do the following Friday.
On that day, a large upstairs room which Carlos Marcello used for special occasions became their banquet hall. Four men sat at the rectangular head table. Four or five men sat at each of the ten round tables. Of necessity, they seemed quite a motley bunch. A half-hundred men and women in tuxedos heading for a farm amid the Louisiana swamps would have aroused suspicion among the indigenous population. For that reason, each person wore what he would have been wearing had it been just another day.
As one would expect, those sitting at the head table were the chief conspirators. They were David Ferrie, who had a talent for highly-complex operations. He was the mastermind behind the Kennedy assassination. To his right sat Joseph Civello, the Mafia chief of Dallas. To Ferrie's left sat Sam Giancana, the mob boss of Chicago. He felt that John F. Kennedy owed his 1960 election victory to the Mafia, especially to Giancana himself. Giancana felt betrayed when the new President appointed the Mafia's worst enemy, Robert Kennedy, attorney general. To Civello's left sat Jimmy Hoffa, who had endured a two-year, intensive criminal investigation at the hands of Robert Kennedy. Jack Ruby sat in the center.
The banquet's master of ceremonies, Ed Sullivan, sat at a nearby table with the entertainers. Entertainment for the banquet was provided by the McGuire Sisters.
At another table near the head table sat Vice President Lyndon Johnson, former Vice President Richard Nixon, Dr. Joy Spruthers, and, in a stunning evening dress, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. FBI agent James P. Hosty, Jr., sat at another table with former agents Guy Bannister and Robert Maheu, and with Dallas School Book Depository Superintendant Roy Truly. Clad in beige trenchcoats, fedoras and sunglasses, CIA agents Frank Sturgis, E. Howard Hunt, and Maurice Bishop sat with George de Mohrenschild. Mr. de Mohrenschild, a European-born aristocrat and an important informant for the CIA, wore an expensive-looking Italian-made suit.
Nearby, dressed in jeans and a white T-shirt, Lee Harvey Oswald sat with several anti-Castro operatives. The unshaven operatives, Rogelio (Eugenio) Cisneros, Sergio Arcacha Smith, and Frank Bartes, wore military fatigues, side arms, bandoleers, grenades and small, leafy branches for camouflage. As they ate their meal, they tried to further camouflage themselves with the parsley they'd found on their plates.
At two other tables sat several Mafiosi in expensive silk suits and mirrored sunglasses. At one table sat Eugene Hale Brading (a.k.a. Jim Braden), Lawrence Feinstein, Moses Horowitz, and Joseph di Rita. The latter three were not mobsters; They were just stooges. Richard Cain, John Roselli, Stanley Oliver, Sylvester Corleone, and Chuck Nicoletti sat at the other table reserved for Mafiosi. David Ferrie had placed Jack Ruby in charge of the Dallas assassins. John Roselli acted as a go-between for the Mafia and the CIA. The table reserved mainly for Dallas law enforcement officers was next to the one reserved for Secret Service agents. At the former sat Police Sergeant Patrick Dean and patrolmen Roscoe White and J. D. Tippit, all in their law enforcement uniforms. Marina Oswald's landlady, Ruth Paine, sat with them. At the table next to them sat Dallas Secret Service Chief Forrest Sorrels; Winston Lawson, who was in charge of advance preparations for the Dallas trip; and Bill Greer, who would be driving the Presidential limousine.
Dallas's power elite sat at the next two tables. General Charles Cabell, General Edwin Walker (both generals in full dress uniform), billionaire Nelson Bunker Hunt, and R. L. Thornton, Chairman of the Mercantile National Bank, sat at one table. President Kennedy had fired General Cabell after the botched Bay of Pigs invasion. At the other power elite table sat Citizens Council Chairman J. Eric
Jonsson, Chamber of Commerce President Robert Cullum, Dallas Morning News publisher Ted Dealy, Dallas Times Herald publisher Albert Jackson, and Dallas Mayor Earle Cabell. Mayor Cabell was the brother of General Cabell. Newspaper publishers Dealy and Jackson each wore a green eyeshade, sleeve protectors and had a blue pencil behind his ear.
Before the seminar officially began, Sam Giancana turned to David Ferrie and asked, "What's dis about somebody openin' a umbrella as a signal to da assassins? Evahybody's usin' walkie talkies! Why do we need a signal like a umbrella?"
"Actually," Ferrie replied, "we don't. The umbrella man is my sister's husband Stanley. My sister has been after me to get him a job that he's not likely to foul up. None of the shooters will be paying attention to him, so there's no way to foul it up. At the same time, it'll give him a feeling of accomplishment. He's a no-talent bum who can't keep a steady job, but he's still family. I have to do something to help him."
"Ah, dat's da most bootiful t'ing I evah hoid. Y'know, it's t'ings like fam'ly values dat makes me proud to be a parta dis outfit." Giancana pulled out a handkerchief and brushed away a tear.
Ed Sullivan came to the microphone and began speaking to the crowd of conspirators. "Tonight," he said, "we're going to have a
really big shew"---drawing out the word shew, which was his
pronunciation of the word show—really big." He introduced the
McGuire Sisters and each of the men at the head table. After each
introduction, the conspirators applauded and roared their approval.
Sullivan turned the microphone over to David Ferrie.
David Ferrie smiled at his audience and said, "History is will justify our actions next Friday. When Cassius and Brutus slew Caesar, the masses praised them. In the end, the assassins stood condemned only because Marc Anthony had the last word. We will not make the same mistake they made. We will have the last word."
Most of the crowd looked incredulously at one another, asking, "What in the world is he talking about?"
Sam Giancana stood up and said to Ferrie, "Ain' nobody gonna blame us for croakin' Caesar. He wuz just some made-up movie guy played by Edward G. Robinson. Now, quit talkin' crap! We got us a President to kill."
Ferrie resumed speaking, "Without further ado---"
"An' none a' that sissy French talk, neither!"
Giancana cut in once more. Ferrie tried again, "We're going to go over each person's part in the assassination. It may be useful for each of us to have a general idea of what the others will be doing, but it is vital to make sure each person knows his own role in the assassination and cover-up. I'm sure you all know our resident Macbeth, also known as Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson." Vice President Johnson stood up, and the crowd applauded. “Mr. Vice President, what have you to report?”
“Governor Connally, met with Dallas’s power elite at the Adolphus Hotel," the vice president said. "Some of them are here today. We had wanted President Kennedy to come to Dallas sometime during the summer, but we couldn't arrange it. Still, I wasn't about to give up on the idea.”—emphasizing the word about—“It just gave us more time to prepare.”
"Excuse me," Civello interrupted. "Is Governor Connally part of this little enterprise?"
"He doesn't know he's part of this effort," Johnson smiled, "but he's a conduit for information. Among other things, the task of the Citizens Council was to decide the best place to put the snipers and to suggest a motorcade route as close to the spot as possible. Before and after their meeting with Governor Connally, I discussed the motorcade route and sniper positions with the Citizens Council. In cases like this, it's standard for the Secret Service to meet with the city movers and shakers just before a Presidential visit. That meeting will take place Monday."
Dallas area Secret Service Chief Forrest Sorrels said that he and Winston Lawson would meet with the Citizens Council on Monday, November 18, and go over the motorcade route with Dallas Police Chief Jesse Curry. That would be their final opportunity to make sure everything was still on track. Vice President Johnson will arrive in Dallas on November 19 to deliver a speech to the American Bottlers of Carbonated Beverages. The Secret Service will then meet with Johnson to make certain their arrangements were in keeping with the plans the vice president had made in Washington.
Ferrie asked, "Mr. Sorrels, or Mr. Lawson, I have a question to ask. Considering that only a few Secret Service agents are in on the conspiracy, how can we be sure that our plans are not upset by agents loyal to Kennedy?"
Bill Greer replied, "Secret Service efficiency is considerably outmoded. In the absence of running boards on the motorcade vehicles, the President's key means of defense against a sniper is the driver—that’s me," he smirked. "In the event of an emergency, I'm supposed to sharply cut the steering wheel and give 'er the gas in order to limit the gunman to just one shot. Since I've never been drilled on that procedure, I'll have the perfect excuse for slowing down instead of speeding up. I'll just say I felt I had to see what was going on."
"As for the others," Sorrels added, "Secret Service agents live such busy lives that an agent gets old in a hurry. Most of us put in as much as eighty hours of overtime in a month. That tends to slow down their reflexes. We're supposed to have our reflexes tested regularly. We haven't had reflex tests in so long, some agents, such as Clint Hill, have never even heard of the test. Just the same, I'm going to give the key assignments to the oldest agents and put all the younger ones in an advance assignment or in the follow-up car."
"Who are the oldest?" Civello asked.
"Bill Greer, age 58. Roy Kellerman, sitting beside Greer, is 48; and Clint Hill, age 45, will be the only other agent close enough to react."
Jack Ruby spoke up. "I'll do what I can to further slow their reflexes," he said. "They're invited to an all-night party, at my expense. I'll be providing booze and strippers from the Carousel Club."
Dallas Police Sergeant Patrick Dean pointed out that Frank Wilson, the Secret Service chief under President Franklin D. Roosevelt, had rated the efficiency of the Dallas Police Department as the worst in the nation. Dean gloated, "It hasn't improved."
"Hey, I got a question!" Sylvester Corleone shouted. "This bum here says he's supposed to signal the others by opening an umbrella when Kennedy gets close enough to be shot from the school book depository!"
"Yes, that's right," Ferrie replied, trying to overlook the insult to his brother-in-law.
"Well, if we all have walkie talkies," Corleone continued, "why do we need this bum? Even if we did need an umbrella man, why him? He's so fouled up, he can't even keep a job!" Stanley Oliver, the umbrella man, began to cry. Chuck Nicoletti, standing nearby, shot a questioning glance at Ferrie, who nodded his head. Nicoletti brandished a baseball bat from under his coat. "And another
thing—“ Corleone said, but he didn't get to finish.
Everyone except Sam Giancana flinched at the sickening sight and sound that followed Corleone's last words. Giancana took out his handkerchief and said to David Ferrie, "Wow, da way ya stood up f' ya bruddah-in-law!" Weeping into his handkerchief, Giancana said, "David, I gotta hand it to ya. Ya're all heart." He watched with teary-eyed sentimentality, as a couple of goons dragged Corleone's
body out of the room.
Gesturing toward Oswald, Ed Sullivan said, "And now, the man of the hour: Alex Hidell." Lee Harvey Oswald stood up, and the crowd applauded. It was the proudest moment of his life.
After acknowledging his hosts and other pleasantries, Oswald took the opportunity to thank, once again, his benefactors for paying off his mountain of debts the previous January.
* * *
At a nearby table, Richard Nixon, Lyndon Johnson, J. Edgar Hoover and Dr. Joy Spruthers sat talking. "All this must be costing a fortune!" Dr. Spruthers excitedly whispered.
"I'd estimate about six million dollars," the vice president offered. "Where can they expect to get all that money?" she asked.
"We could raise the money," Nixon said. Lowering his voice, he added, "but it would be wrong."
"Are you having second thoughts?" Dr. Spruthers asked Nixon.
"I'm just trying to look at all sides of this, that's all. When Kennedy won the 1960 election by stealing votes in Chicago, Texas, West Virginia, and South Carolina, and by wiretapping my campaign offices—well, I don't know if I should have him killed for it, or if it would be more mature of me to just follow his example."
"Dick," Dr. Spruthers said, leaning forward a little, "your choice of words tells me you're doing all you can to keep from admitting, even to yourself, that you're confused and angry. It's all right to recognize that you have feelings. When you, for example, slip little notes under your daughter Trish's door telling her you love her, it may seem sweet on the surface; but it shows that you're afraid of your feelings. People who haven't really learned to care for others, or for worthy causes, or for themselves, sometimes use sentimentality or dramatic gestures of commitment as substitutes for love or concern. It was not inconsistent, then, that Hitler cried over the death of his pet goldfish. When genuine love or concern is present, these gestures help to make it more meaningful. Without it, it's only a sign of alienation. Killing the President won't correct your problem. You don't master your feelings by denying them; you can master them only by understanding them."
"Are you saying," asked Hoover, "that he shouldn't help us out in this assassination or the subsequent cover-up?"
"I'm not saying he should, or that he shouldn't. That's a value judgment, and I shouldn't impose my values on any one of you. All I'm saying is, whichever decision you make, it should be for the right reasons."
* * *
Oswald was just wrapping up his presentation. "As soon as I've squeezed off the final shot," he said, "I'll hand the rifle to Richard Cain." Sitting at one of the tables, Cain stood, waved at the others and sat down. "That," Oswald continued, will give me a few extra seconds to get out of there. Walking at a brisk pace, it takes only 40 seconds to go from the sixth floor to the second floor lunchroom. Under normal circumstances, a person slows his steps just a little at the bottom of each flight of stairs in order to turn and go down the next flight. By grabbing the banister rail at the end of each flight, in a kind of slingshot action, I can avoid having to slow down. By doing this, I can cut my time to 30 seconds. That leaves me plenty of time to get to the lunch room and act like I don't know what's going on. About five minutes after the shooting, I'll calmly walk out the front door and get the heck out of Dodge. Chuck, what will you do while I'm doing all that?"
Chuck Nicoletti stood up and said, "I'll quickly disassemble the rifle and return it to its wrapper. Then Richard Cain and I—“ Cain stood, waved and sat down—“hurry down the stairs and leave the same way we came in: the rear exit."
"There's one thing that's been bothering me all this time," said General Edwin Walker.
"Yes, sir, what's that?" Oswald responded.
"No matter how carefully we plan this, even with the assistance of the CIA and the FBI, the American people won't give up until they're satisfied that everyone involved in the assassination is caught. How are you going to prevent that from happening?"
"By seeing to it that the American people are satisfied that everyone involved has been caught," David Ferrie smiled.
"How's that again?"
"We're going to set up some nut to take all the blame, the way they do in Sicily."
Oswald, smirking, looked around the room, wondering which of the degenerate low-lifes sitting before him would be the "nut" Ferrie had in mind.
"What if one of us is caught?" Walker asked.
Jack Ruby replied, "Don't worry about that. Everybody on the Dallas Police force knows me, and they're all my friends. I have a few tricks up my sleeve. I'll see to it that the case never even goes to trial." His audience, including Oswald, applauded.
Oswald had more than the usual reasons for being confident of success. If any clues to the assassination happened to be uncovered, none of them, Oswald thought, would point toward an acknowledged communist. The conspiracy had worked hard to help him build his credentials as a communist, apparently to throw suspicion away from Oswald. He was especially proud of the way he had shot the window frame just in front of General Walker's armchair. The public meekly accepted Walker's word that the general had been sitting in the chair at the time of the shooting.
In September 1963, Roy Truly had turned down Oswald's application for a job at the School Book Depository. He made an abrupt U-turn the same day the Secret Service and the Citizen's Council had decided on the motorcade route. Roy Truly, who'd said he resented President Kennedy's foreign policy and his policy of "race mixing" at home, gave Oswald the job.
These guys, Oswald smirked to himself, really knew their stuff.
Closing Oswald's presentation, David Ferrie said to him, "Screw your courage to the sticking place, and we will not fail."
"Hey-hey! Watch ya language!" Sam Giancana exclaimed. "Dere's ladies present."
Ed Sullivan introduced Vice President Lyndon Johnson, who came to the head table to speak.
Vice President Johnson explained how the President's body would be hustled past officials at Parkland Hospital, secretly removed from its coffin aboard the Air Force One and speeded to a morgue in Washington to remove any indications of bullets coming from any place other than the Dallas School Book Depository. Then it would be secretly returned to its original coffin for an autopsy in Washington.
"With all that moving around," Hoover asked, "wouldn't that look suspicious to people who are not involved?"
"No," Johnson replied. "In times of emergency, people tend not to associate anomalies with the overall picture. They may think that this or that detail they may have witnessed was incorrectly reported, but they won't infer from that that the entire event was incorrectly reported. As for the surgeon performing the autopsy,
I'll see to it that the autopsy will be performed by someone who has never had any experience with gunshot wounds. Even if he's competent enough to sense that something is wrong, his many years of experience will make him vulnerable to pressure. He won't want to jeopardize his career or all the years he's invested toward his retirement. If he doesn't have a lot of years invested toward retirement, he'll be inexperienced enough not to trust his own judgment against pressure from the White House. Either way, we'll get the autopsy we need." The audience applauded. Johnson bowed and returned to his seat.
David Ferrie remarked that, when a President dies, he becomes a part of history; when a popular President, such as the Roosevelts, dies, he becomes geography as well; when a great President, such as Lincoln or Washington, dies, he also becomes literature. Ferrie wondered aloud what Kennedy would become. Sam Giancana told him to "act like ya got some sense."
Many other details were handled that day.
As the seminar was breaking up, Jimmy Hoffa turned to Joseph Civello and said, "Y'know, I sometimes get weary of all this and want to go legit."
"So, what do you propose to do about it?" Civello asked.
"I plan to become an entrepreneur someday---a businessman."
"What kind of business?"
"Construction. Maybe not soon, but someday."
"You're going to build houses?"
"No, maybe I'll provide the materials. When the real estate market really picks up, as economists expect it to do, that's when I plan to make my move." "You plan to be in lumber?"
"No, cement. Can you picture that?"
"Yeah! That sounds right for you. I think you'll be even more famous in cement than you are today."