The Origins of PERMINDEX

After [Clay] Shaw's arrest, Jim Garrison received from Ralph Schoenman, philosopher Bertrand Russell's secretary in London, copies of a series of articles published in an Italian newspaper of the independent left called Paesa Sera. The articles had been assigned six months earlier to expose the CIA's pernicious attempt to influence European electoral politics and to thwart the democratic process in more than one country. They focused on 'Centro Mondiale Commerciale,' the world trade center in Rome, as a CIA front, one modeled, according to a 1958 State Department document, on the original CIA-created International Trade Mart in New Orleans. Paese Sera, of course, did not possess this document. Its evidence came first hand.

Contro Mondiale Commerciale was, by the US government's own admission, a CIA front, channeling money not only into legal political parties, but also into right-wing movements. Among them was the virulent paramilitary OAS (Organisation Armée Secrète) in France, which employed terrorism to oppose the independence of Algeria, and was among the 'most notorious fascist organizations in French history.' In New Orleans, Guy Banister and L.P. Davis had been OAS supporters.-Continue