Final_Judgment

[202] Final Judgment 263
Cuban movement, Banister's operation functioned with the support of the
CIA. Former CIA contract agent Robert Morrow asserts in his book,
Betrayal, that Permindex board member Clay Shaw was, in fact, Banister's
immediate superior in coordinating CIA operations out of New Orleans.
Thus, we have CIA asset Clay Shaw, serving on the board of
Permindex, which is in turn operating in conjunction with Banister's office
in plots against Charles DeGaulle. And in the same period we have Banister
(and Shaw) involved in manipulating the activities of Lee Harvey Oswald in
New Orleans just prior to the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
Among others, Banister was associated with former CIA pilot and anti-
Castro adventurer David Ferrie (one of the key figures in Jim Garrison's case
against Clay Shaw). Ferrie, as we have seen, also had a long-standing
connection with Lee Harvey Oswald and, by all accounts, was associating
regularly with Oswald in New Orleans in the summer of 1963. And we now
know for certain that Ferrie and Shaw were intimately acquainted. The
connections between Ferrie, Shaw, Banister and Oswald do come full circle.
Former CIA man Morrow also reports that during his activities with
the CIA, working in conjunction with David Ferrie, he and Ferrie visited a
warehouse in Europe where vast amounts of arms were stored—arms
intended for the anti-Castro Cuban underground. The warehouse was a
573
Permindex operation.
Banister's secretary, Delphine Roberts, has been quoted as having said
that Oswald was a regular visitor to 544 Camp Street engaged in some sort of
"intelligence" work.
574 In fact, as is now generally acknowledged, it
appears as though Oswald was being set up as a "pro-Castro" patsy.
BANISTER'S ISRAELI CONNECTION
However, interestingly enough, there is yet another Israeli connection
to the New Orleans scenario that set up Lee Harvey Oswald as the fall guy
in the JFK assassination plot. It turns out that one of Banister's
longstanding friends and fellow anti-communists was one A. I. (Bee)
Botnick.
575 Botnick was a key figure in the New Orleans regional office of
the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) of B'nai B'rith, which is now known to
maintain close ties to the Israeli Mossad.
Botnick, who reportedly considered himself "a super communist
hunter," was obsessed with communism and, like Banister, believed
communism to be a major force behind the civil rights movement. 576
(In 1993 it was reported that the ADL had spied extensively on the late
Dr. Martin Luther King and then turned its findings over to J. Edgar
Hoover, Banister's former superior at the FBI.) 577 In Chapter 7 and in
Chapter 10 we noted the close links between the ADL and the Lansky
Crime Syndicate, itself tied in turn to the CIA and to Israeli intelligence,
most notably through the Permindex link discussed in this chapter.)
At the national level, and under Botnick in New Orleans, the ADL had a
history of deploying agents into left-wing groups in order to spy on their
activities. This, of course, fits precisely into the profile of Lee Harvey