Final_Judgment

318 They Dare Not Speak Out [257]
One "volunteer" helper was a chap whom Garrison describes as "a
young Englishman." 704 This young Englishman, in fact, was one Tom
Bethell, who later "broke" with Garrison—if he had ever really been
working on the same side as Garrison to begin with—and became a source
for Garrison's critics. Perhaps we now know what Bethell's reward was,
now that time has passed.
Former CIA man William F. Buckley, Jr. later hired on young Bethell
as an editor for his National Review magazine, touting him as one of the
great young conservative writers of the era. Thanks to Buckley's patronage,
Bethell's career as a journalist moved along quite nicely.
(In Chapter 9, of course, we reviewed the extensive and repeated
connections of Buckley and his family to a wide variety of key players in
the JFK assassination conspiracy—in particular to E. Howard Hunt whose
own role we discussed in further detail in Chapter 17.)
MORE CIA INTERVENTION?
There is other evidence of apparent CIA meddling in the Garrison
investigation. When, in 1968, Garrison critic, author James Kirkwood,
published his book American Grotesque, he inadvertently let the cat out of
the bag regarding an intelligence community-linked effort to sandbag
Garrison's prosecution of Clay Shaw.
Describing how journalist James Phelan had provided him (Kirkwood)
with his own account of how he (Phelan) was trying to disprove Garrison's
case against Shaw, Kirkwood published a transcript of a taped interview he
conducted with Phelan.
Phelan described how he had arranged to meet with Garrison in Las
Vegas (during a vacation interlude by the tired and worn district attorney). At
this point Garrison was unaware that Phelan was hostile. Phelan told
Kirkwood how Garrison provided him a number of key documents, in
confidence, which he was supposed to return the next morning.
According to Kirkwood's transcription, here is what Phelan said: "When
[Garrison] gave them [the documents] to me he did not put any restrictions
on them. He knew I was writing a piece. He said, 'You'll now understand
my case when you read them." So I got up early and made a call to Bob
Mayhew at the Desert Inn and told him I needed a Xerox and needed it fast. I
had to have two documents Xeroxed and I did not want anyone else reading
them or knowing they were being copied. They Xeroxed the copies for me
and I returned the originals to Garrison and made no comment about the
thing. I wanted to wait for the trial." 705
What is significant, particularly in the context of the time in which
Kirkwood first published this interview (1968) is this: it was not until
some years later that it first came to light that it was former FBI manturned-CIA
contract agent Robert Maheu who was the primary intermediary
between the CIA and organized crime in the joint plotting against Fidel
Castro. When Kirkwood first revealed the Phelan-Maheu machinations,
Maheu's behind-the-scenes activities were still a deep, dark secret.