The JFK 100

As Oliver Stone tells it, David William Ferrie was one of John F. Kennedy's murderers, even though no evidence was ever produced linking Ferrie to the assassination. Stone even has him confessing to the crime, although no such confession ever occurred in reality.

Stone suggests that Ferrie was murdered because of his involvement in the assassination, when there is absolutely no evidence that Ferrie died an unnatural death.

Stone has Ferrie engaged in sinister CIA and gunrunning activities with New Orleans private detective Guy Banister, when such activities on Banister's part are nothing but a myth propagated by Stone's hero, Jim Garrison.

Stone depicts Ferrie training Cuban exiles and even Lee Harvey Oswald in guerrilla warfare for the CIA's militant "Operation Mongoose" plan to eliminate Fidel Castro, when:

1. Ferrie's involvement with the Cubans was brief and insignificant, beginning in mid-1961 and declining in August of that year, following Ferrie's arrest on morals charges.⁽²⁾

2. No evidence whatsoever links Ferrie to "Operation Mongoose," which was launched in late 1961, or any other government action against Castro.

3. No credible evidence links Ferrie to Lee Harvey Oswald in 1963; it was Jack S. Martin ("a liar who hates Ferrie," as Jim Garrison once called him)⁽³⁾ who invented the story that Ferrie and Oswald were assassination conspirators.⁽⁴⁾

4. And, as even Oliver Stone admits,⁽⁵⁾ there is absolutely no evidence Oswald was involved in any such training exercises.

So who was David Ferrie?

During World War II he left the seminary, earning a pilot's license in 1944, then accepted a position teaching aeronautics at Cleveland's Benedictine High School. In the early 1950s, Ferrie moved to New Orleans, qualified for commercial accreditation, and became a pilot for Eastern Air Lines.⁽⁷⁾ Throughout the Fifties, Ferrie was active as an instructor for the Civil Air Patrol in Ohio, then Louisiana.⁽⁸⁾

Ferrie worked for Eastern for a decade before being fired in the wake of an August 11, 1961, arrest on morals charges. (The charges were eventually dropped and Ferrie sued Eastern for firing him; in 1963, a cash settlement was reached.) In later years he often gave private flying lessons at New Orleans's Lakefront Airport, and supplemented his income with work as a private investigator.⁽⁹⁾

As an outspoken critic of Fidel Castro, Ferrie briefly became involved with New Orleans's community of Cuban exiles in 1961, but this association was short-lived, due to the exiles' concern over Ferrie's personal life.⁽¹⁰⁾

While there is no doubt that David Ferrie was, as Oliver Stone's JFK puts it, "a strange character," one who was indeed once in trouble with the law for his alleged moral infractions,⁽¹¹⁾ there is a great deal more to the story than this.

In an e-mail to this author, one of Ferrie's former flight students writes:

 

I was in Vietnam when the Garrison investigation broke out, and it hurt me almost as deeply as the movie, JFK. You should know that Dave was a very intelligent and dedicated teacher, who certainly was always ready to "conspire" on almost any subject, at great length and with usually hilarious as well as insightful results. His approach to flying has at least partially been instilled in my own students. . . .

In New Orleans, there are any number of people who would agree with this. Former student Layton Martens described Ferrie to researcher A. J. Weberman as "just your basic, good American." In 1963, Martens told the FBI that he knew David Ferrie to be "a great admirer of President Kennedy."⁽¹²⁾

The devoutly Catholic Ferrie voted for John F. Kennedy in 1960, and friend Nick Caridas recalls Ferrie being "elated" at Kennedy's victory. "Things are going to turn for the better now that a Catholic has been elected," Caridas remembers him saying.⁽¹³⁾

"After all, he was an Irish Catholic too," Layton Martens told author Gus Russo in 1994. "He was an enthusiastic supporter [of Kennedy]. . . . To him, the idea of a Catholic president was mind-boggling. He thought Kennedy was fabulous."⁽¹⁴⁾

Yet this is the man Oliver Stone and Jim Garrison would have us believe conspired to assassinate President Kennedy.

Onetime Cuban exile leader Sergio Arcacha Smith says, "David was a wonderful man, who truly wanted to help our cause. He was a gentleman. He loved to play with my children. He was a good Catholic who only wanted to help." "Dave saw himself as a healer, a soother -- truly trying to help out," recalls Ferrie's godson, Morris Brownlee. "He was anything but a killer of presidents." ⁽¹⁵⁾

David Ferrie "wasn't a perfect person," journalist David Snyder sums up, "but he was doing okay until Garrison went after him."⁽¹⁶⁾

NOTES:

1. Patricia Lambert, False Witness (New York: M. Evans & Co., 1998), p. 216.

2. Ferrie's association with the Cubans probably ended when his closest friend among the exiles, Sergio Arcacha Smith, was deposed from his position of leadership in January 1962 and subsequently left Louisiana. See David Blackburst's articles on Ferrie and the exiles.

2. Oliver Stone and Zachary Sklar, JFK: The Book of the Film (New York: Applause, 1992), p. 40.

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

4. After Ferrie had died and could no longer defend himself, the tale that Ferrie associated with Oswald in 1963 was picked up by such discredited witnesses as Perry Raymond Russo and the individuals from Clinton, Louisiana. Such witnesses would later convince the House Select Committee studying the assassination (HSCA) that Oswald and Ferrie may have been associates. In retrospect, it seems clear that this was due to the desire of Mob-thirsty Committee Chief Counsel G. Robert Blakey to link Oswald to the ostensibly Mob-connected Ferrie. (In reality, Ferrie only worked as an investigator for Mob boss Carlos Marcello's attorney, G. Wray Gill.) While there is no doubt that Oswald and Ferrie briefly encountered one another in 1955, the HSCA's prime piece of evidence linking the two men in 1963 is a tale concocted by Jack S. Martin.

5. Oliver Stone and Zachary Sklar, JFK: The Book of the Film (New York: Applause, 1992), p. 40.

6. Paris Flammonde, The Kennedy Conspiracy (New York: Meredith, 1969), pp. 18-19.

7. Paris Flammonde, The Kennedy Conspiracy (New York: Meredith, 1969), p. 19.

8. See Ferrie expert David Blackburst's discussion of Ferrie's Civil Air Patrol career.

9. See David Blackburst's articles on Ferrie and the exiles.

10. See David Blackburst's articles on Ferrie and the exiles.

11. Oliver Stone and Zachary Sklar, JFK: The Book of the Film (New York: Applause, 1992), p. 18.

12. A. J. Weberman Web site. Weberman's website has changed a bit since I posted this article; click here for the current version.

13. Gus Russo, Live by the Sword (Baltimore: Bancroft Press, 1998), p. 144.

14. Gus Russo, Live by the Sword (Baltimore: Bancroft Press, 1998), p. 144.

15. Gus Russo, Live by the Sword (Baltimore: Bancroft Press, 1998), p. 144.

16. Patricia Lambert, False Witness (New York: M. Evans & Co., 1998), p. 176.