Reply #158: PLEASE READ - This memo supplies missing link: Guy Banister

[HamdenRice]

I'm not sure that anyone else in this thread has fully explained what is perhpaps the most important revelation in this memo if it is authentic -- the connection between Oswald and Guy Banister.

One of the most important "debunking" "facts" in the anti-conspiracy view of the JFK assassination is notion that Oswald did not know Guy Banister and that Guy Banister was not involved in CIA activities by 1963.

I hope this does not get too arcane, but this is absolutely crucial. (If you saw the movie JFK, Guy Banister was played by Ed Asner.) According to the conspiracy theory, he was "running" the Cuban anti-Castro gun running and guerilla training operations out of New Orleans. According to the theory, he and Oswald had offices in the same building, perhaps the same office. Banister, in other words, links Oswald to the CIA and anti-Castro movement.

The anti-conspiracy theory people "prove" that although Banister was an FBI agent from the 1930s to the 1950s, he had retired, then worked for the New Orleans Police Department (NOPD), and after personal/drinking/political problems was fired from NOPD and was working in a failing private detective agency. It is crucial to the orthodox, anti-conspiracy story that Banister and Oswald never met and that Banister, in any event, was not a spook by 1960s.

This memo clearly states:

"After his return to the U.S., Oswald worked in New Orleans through the Anti-Communist League of the Caribbean and Friends of Democratic Cuba; his case officer was SAIC Guy Bannister, from the Chicago FBI office. He was transferred from his assignments there after he was arrested and fined for an incident stemming from his distribution of pamphlets fo the Fair Play for Cuba Committee."


So what is important about this memo is not that Oswald worked for the CIA in Russia, but that Banister was still with the FBI (as SAIC -- presumably something "agent in charge") running anti-Castro operations and that he was Oswald's case officer.