Gus Russo

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.

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.)

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.

There was one other thing I should have noted about Russo at that conference. During the proceedings, I saw him with a tall, thin, bespectacled man who I had not encountered before. I would later recognize him as Dale Myers, who I now know as an unrepentant "lone-nut" zealot. If I had known who Myers was in April in Chicago I would not have been so far behind the curve.

Then there was the Myers' parallel. In Dallas, Russo was chummy with people like Todd Vaughn and Mark Zaid. In Chicago, lawyer Zaid had said that Oswald would have been convicted at trial but would have later won an appeal. In Dallas, Zaid was advocating the positions of compromised scientist Luis Alvarez, who was long ago exposed as accepting money from a CIA front group. (His defense was he didn't know it was a CIA front.) On a panel discussing Oswald, Zaid argued, Russo-like, that there was no evidence that Oswald was an intelligence agent. Reportedly, when original witnesses appeared in Dealey Plaza, Zaid distributed literature making arguments against their credibility. Vaughn was in the position of Russo: an anti-critic within the critical community. Vaughn had expressed an interest to me in David Ferrie. But every time I talked to him afterwards, he seemed to get more and more close to an "Oswald did it" position. (Later on, Effle and I did a talk on the Kennedy assassination in Detroit. Vaughn and Myers both showed up and afterward tried to convince us that 1) The single-bullet theory was viable and 2) Oswald would have had no problem getting three shots off in six seconds.)

Cyril Wecht followed me as a speaker, and at the end of his comments made a ringing declaration against inviting "fence-sitters" to any more of these seminars. He specifically mentioned Vaughn who, on the medical panel, had argued for the single-bullet theory.

That last night's panel was one of the most emotional I had ever seen at a JFK convention. John Judge, Wecht, and myself were all interrupted several times by sustained applause and Wecht's powerful peroration against equivocators brought the house down. Outside the hall, this emotional display carried over into two outbursts. Dr. Wecht had passed Russo on the escalator --- Wecht was going up and Russo down --- and scolded him about not including certain critical arguments against the lone-nut thesis of the PBS show. Russo came up to me afterward and expressed his anger at me for singling him out in my speech. I then walked upstairs to the bar at the Hyatt Hotel. As I was proceeding, a middle-aged man who I had never seen before, but will never forget, accosted me in an undeniably emotional state. He explained to me that he knew I did not know him, but what he was going to tell me was important and borne out by experience. He told me that he had been in the leftist students association SDS in the sixties. He added that SDS did not fall from without. It fell from the inside. Its leaders later learned that some of its higher-ups had actually been FBI informants. Relating that experience to this one, he looked me in the eye and said slowly and deliberately, "Mark Zaid and Gus Russo are infiltrators." He commented on Zaid by asking me how many young lawyers I knew who left a relatively small town to join an international law firm in Washington D.C.? (Which Zaid had just done.) About Russo, he added that he had worked for a time in the television business. Programs like Frontline are not designed as they go. They have a slant and a content about them from the beginning that Russo had to know about going in. Since he didn't know me, he said it was difficult to bare such heavy and unkind comments but he felt he had to do it. He then expressed reservations about whether or not I believed him, or if I thought he was demented. I said no, I didn't think he was. Before he walked away, he told me that time would prove that he was right.

I had one last communication with Russo after that fateful convention. I wrote him a letter expressing how absurd it was for him to be outraged at me for mentioning him in my speech when he had put Dennis Effle's name in the credits for his program. I told him that we had gotten several calls and comments about the curious fact of a member of CTKA being credited in such a one-sided program. I also could have added that at least my comments in front of 600 people were accurate; Effle's research was nowhere to be seen in a show watched by hundreds of thousands. Russo got in contact with Effle afterwards to try to straighten out the misunderstanding. Thus ended my direct and indirect contact with Russo.

In retrospect, the timing of this meeting, and the attendees, are quite interesting. Later, Russo's pal, Bob Artwohl also admitted to being there. Artwohl, for a brief time, was Russo's authority on the medical evidence. From Artwohl, CTKA learned that a fifth person at the meeting was writer Joe Goulden, partner with Reed Irvine in that extreme rightwing, unabashedly pro-CIA journalist group Accuracy in Media (AIM). One of the reasons for Goulden's presence was to discuss whether or not the CIA should use one of its friendly media assets to attack COPA. (An attack did come, but not until the next year in Washington's City Paper.) This meeting is endlessly fascinating and literally dozens of questions could be posed about it. For instance: How did it originate and who proposed it? Why on earth did Shackley, notorious for his low profile, decide to talk to Russo? Another important point to press is: Why was Russo there at all? The PBS special was completed. After the 1993 ASK debacle, Russo knew he would not be a prime force at any conventions. He writes in the opening of his book that he never contemplated writing a volume on the case. (We will later see that this is probably disingenuous, but for sake of argument, let it stand.) In other words, Russo was at a crossroads. He was now firmly in the Warren Commission camp, having cut his ties to the critics. He had at least collected a salary for the Frontline show. And now he shows up at a meeting with Colby and Shackley at a time when one of the things they are contemplating is a possible discrediting of COPA.

With the issuance of the ARRB's Final Report, we now know why. We also have a better idea why Jennings didn't explain it and why ABC has not commented on it since. Under questioning by a legally constituted agency with subpoena and deposition power, the Hersh/Russo "bolstering" of Exner collapsed. Underwood "denied that he followed Judith Campbell Exner on a train and that he had no knowledge about her alleged role as a courier." (p. 136) And with the implosion of this story, Exner is now exposed as at least partly a creation of CIA friendly journalists in the media. This is the same Exner who in the January 1997 Vanity Fair, actually talked about the Review Board uncovering documents and tapes that would strengthen her story. There are a couple of questions still left about this new revelation of another Hersh deception. Did Underwood ever actually tell Hersh or Russo the tall-tale that is in the book? Did Underwood also actually deny the story to Jennings or Obenhaus? And if he did, and if this is the reason for Underwood's refusal to appear, did ABC keep this a secret in order to further protect Hersh and their investment? (As I noted in my discussion of ABC's exposure of the previous Monroe hoax, Jennings did a carefully constructed limited hangout to minimize the damage to Hersh in that scandal. See Probe Vol. 5 No. 1.)

But the Review Board's Final Report goes even further in its detailing of the Russo-Underwood association. (The report does not actually name Russo but it labels their source as a researcher working for Hersh, and the 12/7 issue of The Nation wrote that it was Russo who led Hersh and ABC to Underwood.) It appears that Russo went to the Board with a story that Underwood had gone to Mexico City in 1966 or 1967. He was on a mission for LBJ to find out what he could learn about the Kennedy assassination from station chief Win Scott. Russo presented the Board with handwritten notes detailing what Scott told Underwood while on his mission for Johnson. The ARRB writes this summary of the notes:

The notes state that Scott told Underwood that the CIA "blew it" in Dallas in November 1963. On the morning of November 22, the agency knew that a plane had arrived in Mexico City from Havana, and that one passenger got off the plane and boarded another one headed for Dallas. Underwood's notes state that Scott said that CIA identified the passenger as Fabian Escalante. (p. 135)

What an extraordinary story. Escalante was a former officer in Castro's internal security police who was responsible for protecting him against assassination plots. So if the Underwood story is true, it would neatly fit into the pattern of Russo's book i.e. that Castro killed Kennedy as retaliation for the CIA plots against himself.

The ARRB interviewed Underwood about his trip to Mexico. He said he took the trip but it was in his function as an advance man for Johnson, not to look into the Kennedy murder. When the Board asked him about any notes he had taken on the trip, he initially claimed to have no memory of any notes. When the Board showed him the copies of notes that Russo had given them, Underwood replied that he had written those notes especially for the use of Hersh in his book. In other words, they were written in this decade. They were composed on White House stationery because he had a lot of it still laying around from his White House days. But Underwood insisted that Scott had told him what Russo had said about Escalante. The problem was that Underwood could not even recall if he had contemporaneous notes from his talks with Scott. But later, he did forward a set of typewritten notes from his trip to Mexico. They only briefly mentioned his meeting with Win Scott. And there is no mention of the Kennedy assassination in them. Ultimately, the Board asked Underwood to testify about the Scott anecdote under oath. He begged off due to health problems.

Ideologues are dangerous enough, but the books and authors of this time inspired a clique of followers, all with a pathological hatred of the U. S. government. These "conspirati" would make any leap of logic necessary in order to say that Lee Oswald had been an unwitting pawn of the evil government conspirators.

And this is just the beginning of Russo venting his spleen against the critical community. Research seminars are called the "conspiracy convention circuit" (p. 469). The dust jacket places the two words --- Kennedy researchers --- in quotation marks. The "assassination buffs" have misled Marina Oswald (p. 569). The research community is labeled a "cottage industry" (p. 575).

After his opening blast against the critics, Russo then details the episode that convinced him that Oswald did it himself. He says the HSCA convinced him of this. (Russo writes that the HSCA "geared up" in 1978. It actually started in September of 1976.) About the HSCA, he writes, "It was their meticulous photographic, forensic, and ballistic work that convinced me that Oswald alone shot President Kennedy." This is a revealing comment. For as detailed above, when I first encountered Russo in the early nineties, he appeared to be in the high-level conspiracy camp. Revealing also was the fact that he now says that he advised Stone against doing a film based on the Garrison probe. Neither Russo, Rusconi nor anyone connected with the film ever told me this had happened. In the introduction, and throughout the book, he relentlessly pillories Garrison from every angle. Yet, at the 1993 meeting Dennis Effle and I had with him in Santa Monica, Russo actually said words to the effect that Garrison had been very close to solving the case. (Significantly, in his introductory attack on Stone and Garrison, Russo leaves out the fact that he worked for Stone on the accompanying volume to JFK, entitled JFK: The Book of the Film.)

There is something else that surprised me while reading this brief but (for some of us) pithy introduction. It now appears that the whole PBS Frontline documentary was Russo's idea in the first place! It seems that Russo had pitched the idea to PBS in the eighties. Then when Stone's film was in production, he pitched the idea to them again. This time, with the 30th anniversary approaching and Stone's film sure to create a sensation, they bit.

Russo also presents another quite paradoxical point in his introduction when he writes: "I never intended to write a book on this case." He explains this further by adding: "I never thought anyone could write a book on this subject because all the secrets were well beyond the grasp of anyone without subpoena power." He says that the main thing that changed his mind was the year he spent going through the release of new JFK files made possible by the Board. The Board did not start any serious release of files until 1995. And the files that Russo is interested in, the Cuba policy files, were not released until two years after that. Yet, when I visited his home in Baltimore at the end of 1992, Russo told me about the six figure contract he had already signed with a major publishing house with the help of New York agent Sterling Lord. He was then teamed with another writer and Russo actually explained some of the details of the contract to me. When Russo's partner dropped out of the project, that contract was apparently canceled. But he was certainly doing a book at that earlier time.

In spite of all this, Russo moves on and clinches the case against Oswald with Dale Myers' computer recreation of the assassination. This rather embarrassing computer model of the events in Dealey Plaza was published in the magazine Video Toaster in late 1994. As we have mentioned before, Dr. David Mantik ripped this pseudo-scientific demonstration to bits in Probe (Vol. 2 No. 3). Myers actually wrote that, by removing the Stemmons Freeway sign from his computer screen, he could see both Kennedy and Gov. John Connally jump in reaction to the Warren Commission's single bullet piercing them both at frame Z-223. As Mantik wrote, this "is both astonishing and perplexing.... If it does not appear in the original Z film (that would appear to be impossible since both men were hidden behind the sign), then where did Myers find it? This startling assertion is not addressed in his paper." Mantik exposed the rest of Myers' methodology and candor to be equally faulty as his "two men jumping in unison" scenario. I would be shocked if Russo is not aware of this skewering inflicted on his friend Myers. Why? Because Myers sent CTKA a check for that particular issue once he heard Mantik had left him without a leg to stand on.

With such a weak performance, one would think that Russo would at least qualify his judgment in this section. He doesn't. In one of the most appalling statements in an appalling book, the judicious Russo can write:

When first proposed by the Warren Commission, it was known as "The Single Bullet Theory." With its verification by current, high-powered computer reconstructions, it should be called "The Single Bullet Fact." (p. 477)

This ludicrous statement and the foundation of quicksand on which it is supported expose the book as the propaganda tract it is.

When one indulges in this kind of total psychological warfare, the reader knows that something monumental is at stake. And I mean total. For the singularity of Russo's book is that it does not just attack the critical community, or just JFK, or just Bobby Kennedy, or only Oswald. It does all this and at the same time it attempts to make fascist zealots like David Ferrie and Guy Banister into warm, cuddly persons. Extremists, but understandably so. Kennedy would have actually liked them. (I won't go into how he does this; but it is as torturous and dishonest as the stunts he pulls with the single bullet theory.) It has often been said that the solution to the Kennedy murder, if the conspiracy is ever really exposed, will unlock the doors to the national security state. The flights of fantasy that this book reaches for in order to whitewash that state and to turn the crime inward on Oswald and the Kennedys, is a prime exhibit for the efficacy of that argument.

What is one to make of Russo's journey from Delk Simpson to Robert Morrow to the single-bullet fact (Russo's italics)? Could he really have believed the likes of Blakey and the HSCA, which I have taken the last two issues to expose in depth and at length? That is, is he really just not that bright? If so, in his forays into the critical community, was he at least partly dissembling to hide what he really believed? Or does he know better and is dissembling now to curry favor with the establishment? Or did he just never have any real convictions and decided to go with the flow? Consequently, when Stone was at high tide, he pursued a military intelligence lead. When the reaction against Stone set in, he adjusted to the lone-nut scenario. How, in just one year, does someone go from following a grand conspiracy lead (Simpson), to a low-level plot (Morrow), to a straight Oswald did it thesis, which is the road Russo traveled from 1992 to 1993? I don't pretend to know the answer. To echo the closing words on Russo's PBS special about Oswald: only one man knows the truth about that mystery. But I will relate the newest riddle circulating around the research community in the wake of Russo's phony pastiche. It goes as follows: What happens when you throw Gerald Posner, ice cream, Priscilla McMillan, nuts, Sy Hersh, strawberries, and Thomas Powers in a Waring blender? You get the Gus Russo Special i.e. Live By the Sword.