The JFK 100

This is completely untrue. Following the assassination, not a single person claimed to have seen Oswald and Ferrie together that summer in New Orleans.⁽²⁾

Rather, it was the drunken ravings of Jack S. Martin -- "a liar who hates Ferrie," as Jim Garrison once called him⁽³⁾ -- that were responsible for the official interest in David Ferrie as a suspect. It was Martin who began spreading rumors about Ferrie the day after the assassination, none of which were true and all of which Martin recanted when questioned by authorities.⁽⁴⁾

Suspicions about Ferrie were not the result of factual eyewitness reports; they originated in the personal vendetta of one man: Jack Martin.

NOTES:

1. Oliver Stone and Zachary Sklar, JFK: The Book of the Film (New York: Applause, 1992), p. 18. All quotations are from the shooting script and may vary slightly from the finished motion picture.

2. It has been established that Ferrie was active with the Louisiana Civil Air Patrol during the brief period in 1955 that Lee Oswald attended a small number of CAP meetings. Several former cadets recalled Oswald and Ferrie being in the same unit, and a photograph in the possession of onetime cadet John Cirovalo shows both Ferrie and Oswald in attendance at a CAP bivouac. There is no evidence that Ferrie and Oswald had any significant personal relationship at that time, and no credible evidence places them together in 1963. "I'm in the picture," Ciravolo told author Patricia Lambert, "and I'm sure David Ferrie wouldn't remember me either." (Patricia Lambert, False Witness [New York: M. Evans and Co., 1998], p. 61 fn.)

3. Richard Billings, "Dick Billings's personal notes on consultations and interviews with Garrison," December 29, 1966 (p. 4).

4. Following Ferrie's death, several individuals did come forward to place Oswald and Ferrie together, such as the witnesses from Clinton, Louisiana. None of these claims holds up under scrutiny.