Re: Jim Garrison and the SCEF Raids
From: jpshinley@my-dejanews.com
Date: Fri, Dec 4, 1998 15:48 EST
Message-id: <749hro$qua$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com>
In article <19981204051812.23426.00002086@ng98.aol.com>,
dreitzes@aol.com (Dreitzes) wrote:
> Take care,
>
[...]
> Dave
>
Thanks for the kind words. Here is some additional info
about the SCEF.
-
New Orleans Times-Picayune January 31, 1964 S1-P7
Two Attorneys' Blast Charges
Act Unconstitutional, Say Smith, Waltzer
-
[Benjamin Smith's statement on Jim Garrison's indictments:]
-
These are simply indictments, or accusations, of course -
not convictions. But they are particularly sinister accusations
since they constitute a deliberate attempt to destroy the
reutations of two civil rights attorneys and civil rights
organizations. [SCEF and the National Lawyer's Guild]
-
Neither my partner nor I nor SCEF is, or has ever been subversive,
and I cannot believe that our community will swallow so phony
an effort to link integration with communism.
-
The statute under which we have been indicted is obviously
unconstitutional. We are preparing to attack it -- in fact, it
is already being appealed to the United States Supreme Court.
-
When it is finally found unconstitutional, the state's entire
case will collapse. And the state knows it - thus these hasty and
premature indictments. I am ashamed for our entire state that
such things can happen here.
-
[Bruce Waltzer's statement:]
-
I think that this indictment is going to shock the entire legal
community of our country.
-
But perhaps it is good that Louisiana's irresponsible and
unconstitutional so-called "subversion law" will now have to endure
the scrutiny of our nation and its courts.
-
I am confident that this assault on a perfectly respectable bar
association [National Lawyer's Guild] will be struck down by the
courts.
-
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The Martin Luther King, Jr., FBI File
edited by David J. Garrow
Univerity Publications of America, Frederick MD, c1984-c1987.
-
Reel 3, Frame 400
-
Memorandum dated 5/26/64, file 100-106610
F. J. Baumgardner to W. C. Sullivan
-
[A 5/18/64 article in the Jackson, Mississippi Daily News reproduced
a check from the SCEF made out to Martin Luther King. Baumgardner
stated the th 11/19/63 report of the Lousiana Joint Legislative
Committee on Un-American Activities was the probable source of this
information. He goes on to say ...]
-
The above mentioned report sets forth the results of the hearings
of the State of Louisiana Committee and for the most part is
unspecific as to dates of Communist Party membership on the part
of the SCEF director, also contains many conclusions, inferences
and hearsay evidence which nevertheless lead to specific factual
conclusions by the Committee. These hearings resulted in [sic]
a raid on the SCEF on 10/4/63 by Louisiana State Police and New
Orleans Police. As a result of the raids, leaders of the SCEF were
arrested for violation of the Louisiana Subversive Activties and
Communist Control Law, the constitutionality of which is being tested
in the courts. We have stayed out of this entire matter in view of
the considerable legal and political implications involved.
The SCEF is currently under investigation as a Communist Party
front group...
-
-
Congressional Record - Senate Feb 3, 1965 pp 1943-53
-
Statement by Senator James Eastland
-
Communist Forces Behind the Negro Revolution in this Country
-
...
[Senator Eastland was worked up over the Mississippi Freedom
Democratic Party. So he was attacking its supporters. Here is
what he said about Benjamin Smith, of SCEF raid fame.]
-
Along with [Arthur] Kinoy and [William] Kunstler, Benjamin E.
Smith as named as one of the three who guide the legal affairs
of the Freedom Party. Whether or not because of his position as
legal counsel, this Benjamin Smith is indeed a very strong supporter
of the Mississippi Freedom Party and its objectives. He was at one
time, and may still be, one of two men in charge of the activities
of a special task force sent into Mississippi by the National Lawyers
Guild to aid in registration of Negroes to vote.
-
Benjamin E. Smith is a member of the firm of Smith & Waltzer in
New Orleans, La.
-
Smith is a member of the National Lawyers Guild and has served
on its executive board. He is a politically minded man, and was
active in left-wing politics before he could vote. In 1948, at the
age of 21, he was named a presidential elector on the Henry Wallace
ticket.
-
Benjamin Smith had an early association - more than 10 years ago
with Hunter Pitts O'Dell, then a Communist Party District organizer,
who subsequently, and much more recently, became an assistant to
Martin Luther King.
-
In October 1954, Benjamin E. Smith was one of 175 signers of a
letter to President Eisenhower urging him to grant amnesty to
"political prisoners convicted under the Smith Act."
-
In 1956, in sworn testimony before the Internal Security
Subcommittee at a hearing in New Orleans, La., Smith denied that
he had ever been a member of the Communist Party.
[Smith was serving as an attorney for a witness at the hearings.]
-
In Sping of 1958, Benjamin E. Smith was appointed assistant
district attorney of the parish of New Orleans [sic]. This came
about in an interesting way. The newly elected district attorney was
one Richard A. Dowling, who had been identified in the July 1938
issue of _Equal Justice_ as an attorney for the Internation Labor
Defense in New Orleans, who had been a member of the National
Committee of the International Juridical Association in 1942, and
who was listed in 1938 as a member of the Lawyers' Committee on
American Relations with Spain. District Attorney Dowling appointed
one J. David McNeil as his executive assistant. Mr McNeil had been
a member of the International Labor Defense and had been identified
with the National Lawyers' Guild and with the Southern Conference
for Human Welfare. At the same time that he appointed McNeil as
his executive assistant, Dowling named Benjamin E. Smith as assistant
District Attorney.
-
Benjamin E. Smith went to Cuba near the end of December, 1960,
and stayed about 2 weeks, reportedly as a guest of the Mational
Lawyers' College of Cuba, to attend events commemorating the
second anniversary of the Cuban Revolution. Smith reportedly
has claimed that Fidel Castro has done a great deal to help the
Cuban people and that the American press has given a distorted
picture of the Castro Regime.
[Who "reported" this to Eastland? Guy Banister?]
-
In October of 1961 or prior thereto, Smith was employed by the
Republic of Cuba; and in 1964 both Benjamin E. Smith and his
partner, Bruce C. Waltzer, were registered under the Foreign
Agents Registration Act as agents of the Republic of Cuba.
-
Smith was elected a vice president of the National Lawyers
Guild at its national convention in Detroit, Mich., in February
of last year [1964].
-
[End of Eastland's rant.]
-
Since Eastland mentioned O'Dell and the 1956 N. O. SISS hearings,
I might as well throw in the following:
-
Warren Commission Document 794 deals with certain
statements made by a "citizen of American origin who is
presently a member of the Communist Party [CP]." This person
expressed concern about "press references to [Lee Harvey]
OSWALD's activities in New Orleans, Louisiana, before he went to
Russia" which would link Oswald to the Communist Party. The
FBI's investigation focused on the brief time Oswald was in New
Orleans in September of 1959, before sailing for
Europe. However, I suspect it would have been more logical to
examine the time between January, 1954, and July, 1956, when the
teenaged Oswald and his mother lived in New Orleans. (Warren
Commission Report, GPO Edition, pp 679-681)
-
One New Orleans acquaintance of Oswald's, Palmer McBride,
reported that "Oswald praised Khrushchev and suggested that he
and McBride join the Communist Party 'to take advantage of their
social functions.'" (WCR, p. 384) Viewed out of context,
Oswald's interest in joining the CP may seem a juvenile fantasy,
but, in the light of the intense public interest in Communist
activity in New Orleans during the early part of 1956, Oswald's
desire to contact the CP could have been realized through a
number of avenues.
-
The New Orleans Times-Picayune (NOTP) for January 11,
1956, featured a front-page story from Baton Rouge reporting that
Baton Rouge District Attorney J. St. Clair Favrot and the FBI
were "checking on Communist literature mailed here [Baton Rouge]
attacking segregation in the South." The article included the
address of the Southern Regional Committee of the Communist
Party, "P. O. Box 464, St. Louis, Mo." A similar mailing in
March, a leaflet urging support for the Montgomery bus
boycott and signed by the Louisiana Communist party, was also
reported. (NOTP, March 28, 1956, p. 2)
-
The next incident to draw attention to alleged Communist
activities in New Orleans occurred in March of 1956. The Senate
Internal Security Subcommittee (SISS), chaired by Mississippi
Senator James Eastland, questioned Herman Liveright, the program
director of New Orleans television station, WDSU, in Washington,
D. C. Liveright, without invoking the fifth amendment, refused
to answer a number of question dealing with his alleged
involvement with the CP in New York and New Orleans. (NOTP,
March 20, 1956, p. 1) WDSU promptly fired Liveright. (NOTP,
March 21, 1956, p. 1)
-
The Liveright incident spurred New Orleans Mayor deLesseps
Story "Chep" Morrison to order a probe of "subversive activities
in New Orleans." Morrsion stated that he had contacted SISS
chairman Eastland and asked for any information the subcommittee
had. Morrison selected Assistant Police Superintendent Guy
Banister to head the investigation. (NOTP, March 21, 1956, p. 1)
Banister later was a figure of interest in the Garrison probe
and has been alleged to have been personally acquainted with
Oswald.
-
Morrison and Banister traveled to Greenwood, Mississippi,
to confer personally with Senator Eastland for more than three
hours. "Describing the conference as completely 'satisfactory,'
Morrsion said, 'Mr. Banister has complete liason with the
committee's staff which was the main object of our trip.'"
(NOTP, March 23, 1956, p. 1) Less than a week later, plans to
hold SISS hearings in New Orleans were announced. (NOTP, March
28, 1956, p. 1) The subcommittee issued subpenas for ten
witnesses. Efforts to locate one witness, Hunter Pitts O'Dell,
resulted in the seizure of books and documents from a rented
room which O'Dell had vacated. Banister termed the library "the
finest collection of Communist literature in the South that I
have ever seen or heard of." (NOTP, March 23, 1956, p. 1; March
31, 1956, p. 1) Hunter Pitts O'Dell is a figure of some
importance because of his later association with Martin Luther
King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. O'Dell's
alleged Communist ties were used to discredit Dr. King. (Garrow,
David J. The FBI and Martin Luther King, Jr. New York: Penguin
Books, 1981) Interestingly, Louisiana political boss and
notorious segregationist Leander Perez publicly linked King and
O'Dell in March of 1960. (NOTP, March 12, 1960, section 3, p. 2)
-
The SISS held public hearings on April 5 and 6. The NOTP
devoted extensive space to coverage of the hearings, including
detailed summaries of the testimony of each of the witnessess.
(NOTP, April 6, 1956; April 7, 1956). At follow-up hearings in
Washington, three additional witnesses, including O'Dell were
heard. (NOTP, April 12, 1956, p.1; April 13, 1956, p. 1) The
Orleans Parish District Attorney's office announced it was
considering prosecuting O'Dell and other SISS witnesses under
Louisiana anti-subversion laws. Charges were finally filed in
1957. (NOTP, May 9, 1956, p. 1; March 26, 1957, p. 1; April 4,
1957, p. 8)
-
Jerry Shinley
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