Certainly Ferrie was involved with several Cubans - in the 1961-2 period - with
whom he hoped to foment a counterrevolution in Cuba. But Russo's quote does not
chronologically connect Ferrie with the 1963 Mandeville area training camp.

My principal source would be an interview I conducted with Victor Paneque, who
was the MDC trainer at the camp. I will find the tape and transcribe the
relevant portion. My notes indicate that Paneque did all the training, did not
ever see Ferrie at the camp, and ascertained (in 1967) that nobody else there
had seen him.

In NODA interviews, Laureano Batista Falla (2/5/67) said there were no
English-speaking people at the camp except Ricardo Davis and Fernando
Fernandez. Angel Vega (2/5/67) said he never saw Arcacha or "Lindbergh" (NODA
code name for Ferrie) at the camp, that the only other Americans he saw there
were the delaBarres.

Ricardo Davis, who helped organize the MDC camp, gave a joint interview with
Arcacha to Holland McCombs of Time (3/21/67). Both told McCombs that "Arcacha
and Ferrie did not run any training camp, that Ferrie did not run any training
camp..., that Ferrie did not concentrate on any one thing long enough to
operate a training camp."

While Quiroga and Bringuier were not directly involved in the MDC camp, they
both had heard that Ferrie had nothing to do with it. And there are other bits
of evidence to this effect, which I will dig up.

There is a lot of confusion about the date of the heist, even on the NODA
staff. Novel and Ehlinger both related the date as early September 1961 in 2/67
interviews with NODA and the FBI. Arcacha actually contacted the FBI on 9/18/61
and gave them a very redacted account of the recent incident.
The early September date squares nicely with Vernon Gerdes famous observation
of Schlumberger boxes in Banister's office in the September-October 1961 time
frame.

The August 21, 1961 date chosen by Garrison seems quite unlikely, as the
Jefferson Parish deputies who swarmed through Ferrie's home the next morning on
morals charges could hardly have missed the armaments stored there. And the
"pre-Bay of Pigs" date is not supported by any of the principals.

Ferrie was not active with the FRD in July 1960, by his own account becoming
involved five months later. The group was formed in Miami(?) by the leaders of
various anti-Castro groups, at a much higher level than Ferrie.

Ferrie was not a proven weapons provider in August 1961. The morals arrests did
him great harm among the exiles (see accounts by Quiroga and Bringuier), not
because he was gay, but due to the bad publicity that the boys in question were
minors. Homosexuality and pedophilia are two different things. Ferrie's
difficulties also hastened the demise of Arcacha, whose rivals were looking for
an excuse to depose him. And as Garrison himself relates, Ferrie and Arcacha
were deposed by early 1962.

oo
David Blackburst