The JFK 100


Who Was Guy Banister?


Ed Asner as New Orleans private eye Guy Banister

 

One of Oliver Stone's key conspirators in JFK is New Orleans private investigator and former FBI agent Guy Banister, portrayed by Ed Asner.

According to Stone:

 

  1. Banister was working for the CIA, manipulating Lee Harvey Oswald for the conspirators,(1) and also had ties to the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI).(2)

  2. Banister participated in "Operation Mongoose," one of the CIA's projects targeting the overthrow and elimination of Fidel Castro.(3)

  3. Banister was running a training camp for Cuban exiles, where Stone also places Oswald and David Ferrie.(4) And . . .

  4. Banister was a gunrunner, whose office was part of a CIA-linked "supply line that ran from Dallas, through New Orleans to Miami, stockpiling arms and explosives."(5)

 

Not a single one of these allegations is true. They are myths created by former New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison. Let's take them one by one.

First of all, as discussed in a separate article, there is no truth to the allegation that Lee Harvey Oswald ever used Guy Banister's office address on his Fair Play for Cuba Committee literature, or the allegation that Oswald worked out of Banister's office. It's doubtful, in fact, that Banister and Oswald ever met.

Was Guy Banister a CIA operative? No, Guy Banister had no connection whatsoever to the Central Intelligence Agency. Jim Garrison simply invented this story, and it was repeated so many times that by the time Garrison wrote his second book on the JFK assassination, he felt secure in declaring, "That Banister was working with the CIA at this time is no longer open to serious dispute."(6) Yet Garrison never produced a shred of evidence for the claim.

Ironically, in August of 1960 the CIA did consider using Banister's detective agency as "a source of foreign intelligence" and as "a cover mechanism" of some kind, presumably due to Banister's FBI background. (One wonders if perhaps Garrison might have picked up a rumor about this from one of Banister's former associates or employees, and misconstrued it as evidence of an actual CIA connection.) However, a background check revealed that Guy Banister Associates was failing financially, and that Banister was personally regarded as unstable and unreliable. The Agency lost interest in him, and a search of CIA files yields no further connection to Banister.(7)

What is Jim Garrison's justification for insisting that Guy Banister was a CIA operative?

In his 1988 memoir, On the Trail of the Assassins, the "evidence" Garrison produces is this: "By the summer of 1963," Big Jim writes, "Banister was deeply involved in anti-Castro activity, ranging from training guerrillas north of Lake Pontchartrain to collecting ammunition for raids on Cuba."(8)

But the anti-Castro activity to which Garrison refers was not a CIA operation, and Guy Banister had no involvement whatsoever with it anyway. Jim Garrison made the whole thing up.

 

Article continues below.

 


Guy Banister

 

Despite Jim Garrison's endless font of allegations and innuendo, Guy Banister had nothing whatsoever to do with any anti-Castro CIA activities.

The closest Banister ever came to such a thing was during his brief involvement (in January 1961) with an organization called the Friends of Democratic Cuba, which was intended to raise funds for the local office of an anti-Castro outfit, the Cuban Revolutionary Council, a group which, at the national level, also received some funds from the CIA. Banister's name was one of many listed on the FDC's charter; because of organizational difficulties, the group disbanded within literally a few weeks of its formation. (Banister presumably became involved with the CRC due to the close proximity of their offices, which were both located at that time in the Balter Building on St. Charles Avenue.)(9)

So then how does Jim Garrison link Guy Banister to all these purported CIA operations? With the use of a single alleged eyewitness: Jack S. Martin.

According to Garrison, Jack Martin provided all the details about Banister's involvement with exile training camps off Lake Pontchartrain, as well as information on Banister's purported role as a gunrunner:

 

The Banister apparatus, as Martin described it, was part of a supply line that ran along the Dallas-New Orleans-Miami corridor. These supplies consisted of arms and explosives for use against Castro's Cuba."(10)

 

Unfortunately, Big Jim tells us, Jack Martin "would put nothing in writing, nor would he sign his name to anything."(11) "But," Garrison writes, Martin "did tell whatever he could recall about the business at Guy Banister's -- although only to me."(12)

Garrison was lying. Jack Martin put numerous statements in writing, and allowed the NODA to record a number of interviews with him as well. None of these statements or interviews concerns any alleged gunrunning activities of Guy Banister's, nor do any concern the band of exiles that trained near Lake Pontchartrain.(13)

Moreover, Life journalist Richard Billings was working closely with the NODA in the early stages of the JFK probe, and his contemporaneous notes contradict Garrison's 1988 account completely. Garrison told Billings in January 1967 that he had found out about the goings-on near Lake Pontchartrain, not from Jack Martin, as he claims in his memoirs, but from two of the Cubans who had organized and operated the training camp, Ricardo Davis and Angel Vega.(14)

Even if Jack Martin did reveal such things to Garrison -- off the record, of course -- is Jack Martin a reliable witness?

In his 1988 memoirs, Garrison states of Martin, "I had long regarded him as a quick-witted and highly observant, if slightly disorganized, private detective."(15)

This is something of a contrast to remarks Garrison made to Richard Billings in December 1966 -- that Martin was "an undependable drunk,"(16) "a totally unreliable witness,"(17) and "a liar."(18)

More information on Jack Martin's credibility can be found in a separate article of The JFK 100.

The organizers of the exile training camp made it clear that Guy Banister had nothing to do with their organization, and this has been confirmed by investigations of the camp and its organizers.

 

Article continues below.

 


Jack S. Martin

 

There is also no truth to the Oliver Stone/Jim Garrison claim that Guy Banister served in the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) prior to joining the FBI; Banister was never in the ONI. He began his career as a police officer in Monroe, Louisiana, and joined the FBI (then called the Justice Department's Division of Investigation) in 1934. He remained with the FBI for twenty years, before moving back to Louisiana.(19)

So who was Guy Banister?

William Guy Banister was born in Monroe, Louisiana, on March 7, 1901, the oldest of seven children. He attended Louisiana State University and Soule College of New Orleans, then joined the Monroe Police Department, where he advanced to the position of Chief of Detectives.(20)

In 1934, he joined the Justice Department's Division of Investigation, which soon was retitled the Federal Bureau of Investigation. He served briefly in Indianapolis, then was assigned to New York City. He worked over the northern part of the country on special assignment for approximately three years, and received special training in investigating the Communist Party.(21)

In 1938, after a brief stint at the FBI's Newark, New Jersey office, Banister was promoted to Special Agent in Charge, and transferred to Butte, Montana.(23) Researcher A. J. Weberman notes that Banister told an associate that he was sent to Butte because "at one time he had a visit by an FBI agent who told him that Mr. Hoover had asked for an honest appraisal of the Bureau from some of its top agents. Mr. Banister is alleged to have sent up a memo from Chicago that called the Bureau a prostitute that wanted keep her virginity."(24)

Banister was stationed in Butte until October 1941, when he was transferred to Oklahoma City, but returned to Butte in 1943, where he remained until 1952, when he was transferred to Minneapolis, Minnesota. In January 1954 he was transferred to Chicago. He retired from the Bureau at the end of that year.(25)

In an autobiographical sketch, Banister writes, "I have been informed that up to the time of my retirement, I had served longer in the position of SAC [Special Agent in Charge] than any other person, a period of nearly 17 years."(26)

Banister moved home to Louisiana, and in January 1955, New Orleans Mayor DeLesseps "Chip" S. Morrison offered him a position as Assistant Superintendent of the New Orleans Police Department, charged with the specific task of investigating organized crime and corruption within the NOPD. His service with the department was short-lived and controversial; his corruption probe was terminated in June 1956, and Banister was demoted. (27)

Banister was suspended from the force that same month after a public altercation with several police officers. In March 1957 he was suspended again after being accused of public drunkenness and pulling a gun in public in a bar in the French Quarter on March 1, 1957. Days later, he testified before the Joint Legislative Committee on Segregation of the Louisiana State Senate, which was investgating alleged Communist influences behind racial unrest. He was praised by the First District Americanism Committee of the American Legion "for his work against Communism in New Orleans."(28)

A staunch conservative and segregationist, Banister's political activism seems to have been driven by fanatical racism and paranoia. He believed racial integration of the schools to be part of a plan formulated by Stalin and the Communist Party to create "dissension between the races." He testified to the Joint Legislative Committee that all Communists were spies, and that Communists could be responsible for instances of crop contamination in the US and Canada. He later would testify to a Special Committee of the Arkansas State Legislature that the Communists were behind the race riots in Little Rock, Arkansas.(29)

When Banister's suspension ended in June 1954, he was transferred to the NOPD's Planning Department. He refused the position and was fired. He subsequently opened his private detective agency, Guy Banister Associates. His physical and mental health were deteriorating, however, and the agency was unsuccessful.(30)

Banister was evicted from his office in June 1964 after being delinquent in his rent for nearly a year. He was in the process of moving into his mistress's home when he died of coronary thrombosis on June 6, 1964.(31)

"The firing had a great emotional effect on Guy," his sister-in-law told researcher A. J. Weberman. "I think that was sort of the beginning of Guy's end. He started drinking pretty heavy at that time, more so than usual, and he started having family problems. He left his wife, Mary Wortham, and moved out. We didn't see much of him. It was just sort of downhill from there on. Mary had Guy put in the hospital for observation, and some tests, and the doctor called Ross and me down there -- 'cause we were about the only family he had, and showed us a brain wave test that he had done. And the doctor said Guy had had a series of small strokes."(32)

In December 1966, Jim Garrison described Guy Banister to Life editor Richard Billings as a "violent man" and a "heavy drinker,"(33) who was "probably insane before he died,"(34) an assessment borne out by others who knew him.(35) Despite his former standing in the law enforcement community, Garrison noted, Banister "went all the way down before he died."(36)

On November 22, 1963, when Banister's ultraconservative, Kennedy-hating secretary and mistress, Delphine Roberts, "heard the news [about the Kennedy assassination] on the radio,"(37) she "jumped up from her desk, twirled around the office, and said, 'Oh, he's dead, he's dead, he's dead!"(38) She told her boss that "she was glad the President had been shot."(39)

"Don't let anybody hear you talk like that," Banister snapped. "It's a terrible thing that someone could shoot the President."(40) Banister closed his office early that day and kept it closed for several days out of respect.(41)

"He didn't like the President, but he was a loyal FBI man," Roberts says of her former lover and boss.(42)

 

 

Copyright © 2001 by David Reitzes

 

You may wish to see . . .

The JFK 100: Guy Banister Pistol-Whips Jack Martin

The JFK 100: Who Was Jack Martin?

 

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NOTES:

1. Oliver Stone and Zachary Sklar, JFK: The Book of the Film (New York: Applause, 1992), pp. 33-41.

2. Oliver Stone and Zachary Sklar, JFK: The Book of the Film (New York: Applause, 1992), p. 37.

3. Oliver Stone and Zachary Sklar, JFK: The Book of the Film (New York: Applause, 1992), p. 39.

4. Oliver Stone and Zachary Sklar, JFK: The Book of the Film (New York: Applause, 1992), pp. 39-40.

5. Oliver Stone and Zachary Sklar, JFK: The Book of the Film (New York: Applause, 1992), pp. 39. All quotations are from the shooting script and may vary slightly from the finished motion picture.

6. Jim Garrison, On the Trail of the Assassins (New York: Warner Books, 1992), p. 326.

7. CIA Memorandum for Chief, Office of Security/SSD/I&S, Attention Mr. Kunke, August 26, 1960, Subject: Request for Special Inquiry -- Guy W. Banister, 434 Balter Building, New Orleans 12, Louisiana; CIA Memorandum for: Special Agent in Charge, David B. Whiteside, August 30, 1960, Subject: Guy W. Banister Associates Inc. #222918 F-SB/2; CIA Memorandum for Chief, Investigative Division, September 13, 1960, Subject: Guy W. Banister Associates Inc. #222918 F-39/2; A. J. Weberman Web site, accessed 1999. In the numerous CIA internal memoranda from that era now available for inspection under the Freedom of Information Act and JFK Records Act, Agency personnel often speculate about agents and assets Garrison could conceivably involve in his probe; Guy Banister's name is never mentioned. (Weberman's website has changed a bit since I posted this article; click here for the current version.)

One rumor that has made it into numerous books on the assassination, often presented as fact, is that Guy Banister and an organization with which he was reputedly involved, the Anti-Communist League of the Caribbean, played a role in the 1954 CIA-backed overthrow of the Arbenz government in Guatemala. However, the CIA overthrow of Arbenz was launched on June 16, 1954, and completed within five days, while attorney Maurice Gatlin did not found the Anti-Communist League until September of that year. At that time, Guy Banister was still the Special Agent in Charge of the Chicago FBI. He did not leave the FBI or Chicago until late December of that year. (Banister reportedly joined the Anti-Communist League when he subsequently became a client of Gatlin's in New Orleans.)

8. Jim Garrison, On the Trail of the Assassins (New York: Warner Books, 1992), p. 326.

9. See for example Jerry Shinley, "Sergio Arcacha Smith and the FRD."

10. Garrison, p. 44.

11. Garrison, p. 43.

12. Garrison, p. 43.

13. See for example NODA interview with Jack Martin, December 13, 1966; NODA interview with Jack Martin, December 14, 1966; NODA statement of Jack Martin, December 26, 1966; "General Statement & Affidavit Regarding Garrison Probe," April 7, 1967; Undated statement of Jack Martin, Fontainbleau Motel (Connick collection, Box 1); Interview of Jack Martin by Jim Garrison (Connick collection, Box 1); Jack Martin, Tape #1 (Connick collection, Box 1); Conversation between Jack Martin and Louis Ivon (Connick collection, Box 2); Affidavit of Jack Martin and David Lewis, February 20, 1968; "JFK Assassination Investigation Report," Jack Martin and David Lewis, March 1, 1968; Undated handwritten statement from Jack Martin to "Jim [Garrison] and Lou [Ivon]"; and nineteen telephone transcripts, recorded with Martin's knowledge, dated from May 25, 1967, to November 22, 1967. Martin also spoke at length with the House Select Committee on Assassinations a decade later.

The Banister-as-gunrunner theory was first prominently advanced in "The Garrison Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy," a January 1968 Ramparts article written by unofficial Garrison investigator William W. Turner. Turner references an article in the New Orleans States-Item of April 25, 1967, reporting "that a reliable source close to Banister said he had seen 50 to 100 boxes marked 'Schlumberger' in Banister's office-storeroom early in 1961 before the Bay of Pigs. The boxes contained rifle grenades, land mines and unique 'little missiles.' Banister explained that 'the stuff would just be there overnight . . . a bunch of fellows connected with the Cuban deal asked to leave it there overnight.'" Of course, this refers to the infamous "Houma heist": arms stolen from the Schlumberger Well corporation by Banister associates David Ferrie, Sergio Arcacha Smith, and others, but not Banister himself.

14. Richard Billings, "Dick Billings's personal notes on consultations and interviews with Garrison," January 25, 1966 (pp. 7-8).

15. Garrison, p. 32.

16. Richard Billings, "Dick Billings's personal notes on consultations and interviews with Garrison," undated entry from December 1966 (p. 2).

17. Richard Billings, "Dick Billings's personal notes on consultations and interviews with Garrison," undated entry from December 1966 (p. 2).

18. Richard Billings, "Dick Billings's personal notes on consultations and interviews with Garrison," undated entry from December 1966 (p. 2). The only further "evidence" advanced by the former DA (Garrison, pp. 44-45) that Guy Banister was a gunrunner -- CIA-connected or otherwise -- is a burglary of arms with which Banister himself had no involvement: the incident known as the Houma raid. Some of the items from this burglary were stored overnight in Banister's office, presumably as a favor to one or more of the robbery's participants.

19. HSCA: Material received from files of New Orleans district attorney's office pertaining to investigation and trial of Clay Shaw, 1967-69, attachment D, section 5, regarding Guy Banister, "Biographical Sketch" (JFK Document 007271). Weberman's website has changed a bit since I posted this article; click here for the current version.

20. HSCA: Material received from files of New Orleans district attorney's office pertaining to investigation and trial of Clay Shaw, 1967-69, attachment D, section 5, regarding Guy Banister, "Biographical Sketch" (JFK Document 007271).

21. HSCA: Material received from files of New Orleans district attorney's office pertaining to investigation and trial of Clay Shaw, 1967-69, attachment D, section 5, regarding Guy Banister, "Biographical Sketch" (JFK Document 007271).

22. A. J. Weberman Web site, accessed 1999, citing a House Select Committee interview with Joseph Oster, January 27, 1978.

23. HSCA: Material received from files of New Orleans district attorney's office pertaining to investigation and trial of Clay Shaw, 1967-69, attachment D, section 5, regarding Guy Banister, "Biographical Sketch" (JFK Document 007271).

24. HSCA: Material received from files of New Orleans district attorney's office pertaining to investigation and trial of Clay Shaw, 1967-69, attachment D, section 5, regarding Guy Banister, "Biographical Sketch" (JFK Document 007271).

25. A. J. Weberman Web site, accessed 1999.

26. A. J. Weberman Web site, accessed 1999.

27. A. J. Weberman Web site, accessed 1999.

28. A. J. Weberman Web site, accessed 1999.

29. A. J. Weberman Web site, accessed 1999.

30. A. J. Weberman Web site, accessed 1999.

31. A. J. Weberman Web site, accessed 1999.

32. A. J. Weberman Web site, accessed 1999.

33. Richard Billings, "Dick Billings's personal notes on consultations and interviews with Garrison," December 29, 1966. Guy Banister's behavior was noted to be violent and erratic on numerous occasions during the late 1950s and early 1960s. In fact, in 1957 he lost his job as Assistant Superintendent of the New Orleans Police Department when, while drinking, he pulled a gun on a waiter in a French Quarter bar; and on March 31, 1964, he was arrested on a charge of aggravated assault after allegedly brandishing a pistol at three youths on a city bus.

34. Richard Billings, "Dick Billings's personal notes on consultations and interviews with Garrison," December 29, 1966.

35. Cf. House Select Committee Deposition of Aaron Kohn, November 7, 1978, p. 75: "What I didn't know until after his death when I was told this by his widow, was when Guy Banister retired from the FBI and came to New Orleans to accept his job in the police department that it was already known that he had brain damage, that he had undergone some surgery in Chicago and that apparently he was working out the remainder of the time necessary for his pension, a relatively short period of time, but that his wife, Mary, had been told by the doctors to expect his pattern of conduct to change dramatically because of brain damage, and incidentally it was after his death she told me this, that things about Guy Bannister's [sic] conduct for the first time made sense, including this very erratic conduct of his when he was in the police department when he would have moments that I would observe in which he did very irrational things and very hostile things." (Thanks to Jerry P. Shinley.)

36. Richard Billings, "Dick Billings's personal notes on consultations and interviews with Garrison," December 29, 1966.

37. Gus Russo, Live by the Sword (Baltimore: Bancroft, 1988), p. 140, citing his personal interview with Delphine Roberts, February 8, 1994. Banister secretary Mary Brengel confirms both Roberts's reaction and Banister's response, adding that "although I was not a follower of President Kennedy, I respected his office, and I think most conservatives did. We wouldn't get out and want him assassinated." (Russo, 541 p. fn. 26, citing his personal interview with Mary Brengel, June 6, 1993.)

38. Russo, p. 541 fn. 26, citing his personal interview with Mary Brengel, June 6, 1993.

39. Russo, p. 140, citing his personal interview with Delphine Roberts, February 8, 1994.

40. Russo, p. 140, citing his personal interview with Delphine Roberts, February 8, 1994.

41. Russo, p. 140, citing his personal interview with Delphine Roberts, February 8, 1994.

42. Russo, p. 140, citing his personal interview with Delphine Roberts, February 8, 1994.

 

You may wish to see . . .

The JFK 100: Guy Banister Pistol-Whips Jack Martin

The JFK 100: Who Was Jack Martin?

 

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Back to The JFK 100

Back to Oliver Stone's JFK

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