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From the January-February 1999 issue (Vol. 6 No. 2) |
In late 1991, when Oliver Stone released JFK, Mark Lane decided to write his third book about the Kennedy assassination. Anyone who has read Plausible Denial, knows the significance of Marita Lorenz to that book. When the book became a bestseller, the media was eager to attack it. So in Newsweek, a man was quoted deriding Lorenz in quite strong terms as telling wild and bizarre stories and being generally unreliable. The source was, at that time, a little known Kennedy researcher. He was so obscure that Lane replied to the reporter, "So who is Gus Russo? Has he ever written a book? Has he ever written an article?" At that time, to my knowledge, he had done neither. But now Russo has written a book. It is so dreadful in every aspect that Lane’s question carries more weight now than then. In retrospect, it seems quite prescient.
I can speak about this rather bracing phenomenon from firsthand experience. To my everlasting embarrassment, Gus Russo is listed in the acknowledgments to my book, Destiny Betrayed. In my defense, I can only argue that my association with Russo at that time was from a distance. We had communicated over the phone a few times because I had heard he was interested in the New Orleans scene and had done some work on Permindex, the murky rightwing front group that Clay Shaw had worked for in Italy in the late fifties and early sixties. Later, after my book came out in the summer of 1992, he called me and asked me for some supporting documents that I had used in writing it. My first impressions of Russo were that he was amiable, interested, and that, since he lived in Baltimore, he was quite familiar with what was available for viewing at the National Archives and at the Assassination Archives and Research Center in Washington D. C.
I encountered Russo in person a couple of times at the end of 1992 and the beginning of 1993. I attended the ‘92 ASK Conference in Dallas where I exchanged some materials with him and at which he did an ad hoc talk with John Newman. I did not actually attend that dual presentation but I heard that Russo’s part centered on some aspects of military intelligence dealing with the assassination. Specifically it concerned Air Force Colonel Delk Simpson, an acquaintance of both LBJ military aide Howard Burris and CIA officer David Atlee Phillips, about whom some significant questions had been raised. And since he was coupled with Newman, I assumed that Russo was investigating the possibility of some form of foreknowledge of the assassination in some high military circles. My other encounter with Russo in this time period was even more direct. Toward the end of 1992, I had reason to visit Washington to see a research associate and examine a new CIA database of documents that was probably the best index of assassination-related materials available at the time. We decided to call up Russo and we arranged to spend a Saturday night at his home.
When we got there, Russo was his usual amiable self and his surroundings revealed that he was indeed immersed in the Kennedy assassination. There were photos of a man who was a dead ringer for Oswald in combat fatigues in Florida, where Oswald was never supposed to have been. Russo had obtained letters showing that George de Mohrenschildt had been in contact with George Bush at a much earlier date than anyone had ever suspected. Russo had a library of books on the Kennedy assassination that was abundant and expansive. He had secured a letter written by Jim Garrison to Jonathan Blackmer of the House Select Committee on Assassinations that examined the significance of two seemingly obscure suspects in his investigation, Fred Lee Crisman and Thomas Beckham. Russo had a letter from Beckham to a major magazine that was extraordinarily interesting. It discussed the young man’s relationship with Jack Martin, the CIA, the Bay of Pigs, a man who fit the description of Guy Banister, and a personal acquaintance of his, "this double agent, Lee Harvey Oswald." (Significantly, none of the above material appears in Russo’s book.)
It was 1993 that proved an important year for Russo. It was the 30th anniversary of the murder and there were plenty of books, articles, and even television shows being prepared in anticipation of that event. Russo somehow had heard of a new author on the scene, a man named Gerald Posner. To some people he was actually praising the man and touting some of the new "revelations" to be unsheathed in his upcoming book. Russo had just come off of working for Oliver Stone on JFK: The Book of the Film, which had turned out fairly well. Jane Rusconi, Stone’s chief research assistant at the time, seemed to like him. Russo had also secured another plum assignment right after this: he was serving as one of the lead reporters on the PBS Frontline special "Who Was Lee Harvey Oswald?" In fact, early in 1993, Dennis Effle and myself had met with Russo in the penthouse bar of a Santa Monica hotel where he was staying as he investigated a reported sighting of Oswald in the Los Angeles area.
Later in 1993, three things happened that permanently altered my view of and relationship with Gus Russo. In order, they were his comments at the 1993 Midwest Symposium; the showing of his PBS special; and his helming of a panel at the 1993 ASK conference. In light of those three events, there seemed to be things I should have paid more attention to before that time. For instance, Russo argued against any change in the motorcade route on some weird grounds. First, he said that the HSCA had investigated that and found no basis for it. With what we know about Robert Blakey and the HSCA today, this is sort of like asking someone to trust the Warren Commission. Second, he commented that even if the motorcade route had gone down Main Street, a professional sniper could have still hit Kennedy. (At the time, I thought that Russo was at least arguing for a conspiracy, albeit a low-level one, although I am not so sure of that today.) Russo also seemed impressed with Jack Ruby’s deathbed confession in which he seemed to dispel any notion of a conspiracy. I frowned on this because it had been made to longtime FBI asset and diehard Warren Commission advocate Larry Schiller. Also, Ruby’s comments had been erratic while in jail: some of them clearly implied a larger conspiracy that seemed to go high up into the government. Related to this, the fact that a notorious CIA doctor had treated Ruby with drugs could explain the erratic behavior. Finally, there was another point that I should have considered more seriously. Before I talked to Russo at his home, he had related to me a rather intriguing fact. I had asked him if he had ever heard of the so-called "Fenton Report". This is the culmination of work—not really a report— done by the HSCA in both Miami and New Orleans. It is called the Fenton Report because HSCA Chief Investigator Cliff Fenton supervised the work. When I popped that question, Russo’s response surprised me. He said, "I’ve heard it." He went on to explain that he had gotten access to the then classified taped interviews of the House Select Committee at the National Archives. This had been accomplished through some error by the staff there. The error had persisted for some time since Russo had heard many of the tapes.
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The rest of this article can be found in The Assassinations, edited by Jim DiEugenio and Lisa Pease.
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