Guerillas in the Swamp

STORY LIZ GENEST SMITH

Guerillas

in the

Swamp

Lacombe’s JFK Conspiracy Connection

So, what do you know about the assassination of John F. Kennedy? If you believe the Warren Commission’s conclusion, on November 22, 1963, Lee Harvey Oswald took it upon himself to climb up to the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository in Dallas, Texas, aim his rifle out the window, and single-handedly kill the 35th president of the United States as his motorcade passed through Dealey Plaza. The. End.

Or is it?

What about all those conspiracy theories involving the mafia, CIA, and Fidel Castro? If you think they’re all baseless fiction and fantasy, you may just change your mind after learning about some extraordinary events that took place a few short months prior to Kennedy’s death, right here on the Northshore of Lake Pontchartrain.

Are you sitting down? Are you feeling open-minded? Because, boy, do I have a bombshell for you: The CIA and some shady characters with ties to organized crime reportedly ran one or more anti-Castro guerrilla training camps in Lacombe, Louisiana during the summer of 1963.

Crazy, right? You have no idea. Inquiries I made to locals resulted in a whole lot of incredulous looks and responses. I talked to librarians, historical societies, receptionists, dentists, coffee house regulars of a certain age, you name it – but the most I ever got was a single vague recollection of “the oldtimers mentioning something about that.”

You can find references to these camps in multiple sources, including Oliver Stone’s 1991 blockbuster film, JFK. I, however, accidentally stumbled across this seemingly nutty concept while reading recently deceased New Orleans mob associate Frenchy Brouillette’s highly entertaining and shockingly candid autobiography, Mr. New Orleans. His salacious accounts of South Louisiana’s organized crime activity, dating back to the 1950s, and claims of local connections to the Kennedy assassination are detailed enough to seem genuine – but one man’s tales don’t equal solid facts, right? I was intrigued enough to begin researching in earnest – and found myself tumbling down one bottomless internet rabbit hole after another because there is no succinct, evidence-based, easily searchable source that pulls everything together.

Researchers with far more intellect and much deeper pockets have spent countless hours, and often decades, analyzing all the facts, documents, theories, and coincidences – not to mention the wild cast of characters – that inevitably turn up when you start digging into anything remotely associated with the Kennedys. My goal was to tune out the broader narrative, and focus solely on these alleged camps. Simple, right?

Yeah, right. Even a trip to Southeastern Louisiana University’s Center for Southeast Louisiana Studies in Hammond, which houses one of the largest Kennedy assassination collections in the country, only yielded confirmation that there’s “overwhelming evidence” that the camps existed. But where’s that evidence? I was determined to dig up something specific – that didn’t involve painstakingly sifting through boxes and boxes of documents.

The Timeline

To truly understand the plausibility of the camps, it’s important to have some perspective on the political climate of that era.

1959 - Fidel Castro overthrows the Cuban government, then headed by U.S.-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista, upsetting three groups: (a) Castro’s political opponents, who flee the turmoil and become exiles in the U.S.; (b) the U.S. government, which fears Castro’s close relationship with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev and the spread of communism so close to our shores; and (c) multiple dubious “businessmen” and infamous mob bosses with heavy investments in Havana’s gambling industry, whose leaders the Castro regime forced out and, in some cases, jailed.

1961 - About 1,400 Cuban exiles, trained and financed by the CIA to overthrow Castro, launch a botched invasion of Cuba’s Bay of Pigs. Kennedy authorized the plan, but wanted to keep U.S. involvement on the down-low. When it all went terribly awry, Kennedy scaled back on the air support, leaving the exiles vulnerable. Some escaped, but 1,200 surrendered, and more than 100 were killed.

1962 - Attorney General Robert Kennedy launches a secret project, code named “Operation Mongoose,” to depose Castro. The plans get out and U.S. tensions with the Soviets increase, bringing the Cold War to the brink of turning nuclear in the infamous Cuban Missile Crisis.

1963 - In late July/early August, an enormous cache of explosives is seized from a house in Lacombe, Louisiana, and a nearby farm suspected of hosting a secret military training camp is raided by the feds. In November, President Kennedy is assassinated. Lee Harvey Oswald is arrested, but is murdered two days later on live TV by nightclub owner Jack Ruby.

Intriguing situation, no? There are so many questionable factors to contemplate when assessing the veracity of the alleged associations between government agencies, exiles and the mafia, which are said to have resulted in the formation of the training camps. Conclusive proof is very hard to come by, but that’s where well-sourced facts come in handy.

Do we know for sure that JFK was in on the plans to depose Castro?

According to JFKLibrary.org, the official website of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, “before his inauguration, John F. Kennedy was briefed on a plan by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) developed during the Eisenhower administration to train Cuban exiles for an invasion of their homeland… The ultimate goal was the overthrow of Castro and the establishment of a non-communist government friendly to the United States.”

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Do we know for sure that the mob and CIA were working together?

According to pbs.org, “Though the details are murky and RFK’s involvement has never been proven, it went something like this. CIA operatives, aware that the Mob was eager to renew the profitable gambling business it enjoyed under the Batista regime, hired Mafia hitman Johnny Rosselli to kill Castro. If this wasn’t sordid enough, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover learned of the plot from FBI surveillance of Mob boss Sam Giancana, who just happened to share a mistress with John Kennedy. These machinations have provided much of the fuel behind various conspiracy theories of John Kennedy’s assassination in Dallas in 1963.”

Was Lee Harvey Oswald involved with the camps?

The volume of proof that Oswald had connections to anti- Castro groups and the mob in New Orleans, as well as covert government agencies, is quite overwhelming. Plus, witnesses and reports place Oswald busily traveling around the region – from Clinton to Baton Rouge to St. Tammany – during the summer of 1963. There is allegedly an 8mm film somewhere in the Georgetown University archives (prominent government officials claim to have seen it) that shows Oswald in a covert military training camp, and there are even witnesses who claim they saw him and a group of Cuban men in black combat gear conducting military training maneuvers in Madisonville’s Bedico Creek, lending a little support to the theory that there may have been multiple camps.

Some pretty strong evidence comes from the testimony of attorney Robert K. Tanenbaum, a former mayor of Beverly Hills, who served as Deputy Chief Counsel for the House Select Committee on Assassinations from 1976-77. He wound up removing himself from the investigation after becoming frustrated by what he viewed as systemic obstruction, but years later he revealed that “...during that time, the focus of our investigation that was most fruitful had to deal with the anti-Castro, Cuban, CIA connection to the assassination. And that is to say briefly, we tried to deal with documentary evidence… we had information from unimpeachable sources that Lee Harvey Oswald was a contract employee of the CIA and the FBI. We had information of Oswald being in Clinton, Louisiana with [David] Ferrie and other anti-Castro individuals and various soldiers of fortune types who were contracted employees of the CIA. We came across a film of anti-Castro Cubans… and these soldier of fortune types with the contract employees of the CIA.... Again, it was somewhat shocking to me because I learned when I was in public school, that there was the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines and Coast Guard. I didn’t know about any secret armies that were existing in America.”

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How do we know there was covert activity specifically in Lacombe?

A Times-Picayune article, dated August 2, 1963, reports that the FBI had raided a property the day before, and that “FBI agents discovered a large cache of bomb-making material, including more than a ton of dynamite. The couple [identified in another part of the article as Mr. & Mrs. William J. McLaney] who maintained the residence reportedly loaned it to a Cuban friend. Mrs. McLaney said the friend had been extolled by friends of theirs in Cuba, where they had lived in the pre-Castro era.”

William J. McLaney, incidentally, is the brother of Mike McLaney, who had mob connections and was part-owner of Havana’s Hotel Nacional de Cuba before Castro took power, and was briefly jailed by Castro. The article goes on to list other items seized in the raid, including 20 empty 100-pound bombs and various bomb making materials, such as a 50-pound container of Nuodex, used to make napalm. All of it was seized and there were multiple arrests, but no convictions.

According to several sources, these weapons and explosives were bound for Havana, where they would wreak havoc on oil refineries, thus sending a message to and helping to destabilize the Castro regime.

Why Lacombe?

Sleepy Lacombe seems like such a quiet, unassuming little hamlet. So why would it wind up being the locale of such international subterfuge?

Two factors could explain that. In addition to easy access to the anti-Castro McLaney family’s property, its remote location and swampy terrain were ideal for preparing to invade the Bay of Pigs, a similarly swampy area on the southern coast of Cuba.

Where were the explosives found?

Curiously, the Times-Picayune article doesn’t provide the specific address of the cottage, but they do give some precise details about its location, including the fact that it’s “the second house on a street” that runs “perpendicular to U.S. Hwy 190, east of the city of Mandeville and west of the city of Lacombe… one block to the west of Pontchartrain Street.”

It doesn’t take a detective to locate the house, but it would take x-ray vision – or a personal invitation – to see it. The current residents might be private by nature, or perhaps they’ve been harassed by other looky-loos, because the property is now locked up like a fortress: it’s surrounded by heavy vegetation, an opaque fence, and an imposing gate.

Where was the training camp, and how do we know it existed?

A lot of evidence comes courtesy of New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison, who launched his own investigation into the Kennedy assassination, resulting in a trial, a book (On the Trail of Assassins), as well as him being portrayed by Kevin Costner as the hero in Oliver Stone’s JFK.

In a memo dated March 1967, Garrison’s Assistant District Attorney, Al Oser, describes being taken to the site of a camp by Angel Vega, who was said to have been a trainee in 1963. “This location is exactly one mile from the intersection of U.S. 190 and La. Highway 434. The house is three-tenths of a mile to the left of La. 434 on a small dirt road. The house cannot be seen from La. 434.”

This appears to refer to Big 7 Road, which is still a very innocuous, low profile little rural lane. Multiple sources provide images of a house that still exists today, with an enormous spring-fed pool and close proximity to the bayou, which are said to have made this an ideal training site. (Full disclosure: I planned to personally visit the actual house, but after (a) getting a glimpse at the foreboding one-lane dirt road that blindly leads into a dense forest, and (b) reading unsubstantiated accounts of other nosy conspiracy chasers having to rapidly reverse all the way to Highway 434 after being run off the property, my active imagination and I decided against it.)

Even more confirmation comes from a November 21, 2013 Time-Picayune article on New Orleans’ Cuban exiles tied to JFK assassination theories: “North of Lake Pontchartrain, the FBI had broken up a training camp, where men were preparing for another invasion of Cuba. And an eccentric associate of [New Orleans mob boss] Carlos Marcello, who

had been caught hustling guns for a raid on Cuba, was being investigated by Garrison. His name was David Ferrie, and he would become a main player in Garrison’s theory of the assassination.”

Garrison, and many others, surmised that when Kennedy screwed up the Cuba campaign, and Robert Kennedy took on organized crime, they angered all involved parties, causing the camp’s organizers to redirect their target, resulting in the assassination. Allegedly!

Researching this subject was both fascinating and maddening. I would need an issue to myself if I were to share all of the pertinent information I unearthed. It all adds up to a ton of incredibly compelling, but mostly – exasperatingly – circumstantial evidence. Most experts agree that we’ll never get definite proof of exactly what happened, but I suppose it makes the subject all the more provocative.

If you’re similarly intrigued, I invite you to clear your schedule for a week or three, and delve into the insanely complex web of people and information that links New Orleans and the Northshore to Kennedy’s Cuba connections and assassination. There’s a JFK Conspiracy Tour in New Orleans that includes stops at places like Felix’s Oyster Bar and Broussard’s Restaurant. If you take it, mention this article, and maybe they’ll add Lacombe.