Guy Banister

William Guy Banister (March 7, 1901 – June 6, 1964) was an employee of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), an assistant superintendent of the New Orleans Police Department, and a private investigator.

After his death, New Orleans district attorney Jim Garrison alleged that he had been involved in the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

He was an avid anti-communist, alleged member of the Minutemen, the John Birch Society, Louisiana Committee on Un-American Activities, and alleged publisher of the Louisiana Intelligence Digest.

He also supported anti-Castro groups in the New Orleans area: "Cuban Democratic Revolutionary Front"; "Anti-Communist League of the Caribbean"; "Friends of Democratic Cuba".

According to the New Orleans States-Item newspaper, Banister "participated in every anti-Communist South and Central American revolution that came along, acting as a key liaison man for the U.S. government-sponsored anti-Communist activities in Latin America."

Banister was born in Monroe, Louisiana, the oldest of seven children.

After studying at the Louisiana State University, he joined the Monroe Police Department.

In 1934, Banister joined the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

He was present at the killing of John Dillinger.

Originally based in Indianapolis, he later moved to New York City where he was involved in the investigation of the American Communist Party.

FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover was impressed by Banister's work and, in 1938, he was promoted to run the FBI unit in Butte, Montana.

In December 1944, Banister was charged with investigating a fatal Fu-Go balloon bomb near Kalispell, Montana.

During the 1947 flying disc craze, Banister investigated a hoaxed saucer in Twin Falls.

He also served in Oklahoma City, Minneapolis and Chicago.

In Chicago, he was the Special Agent in Charge for the FBI.

He retired from the FBI in 1954.

Banister moved to Louisiana and, in January 1955, became Assistant Superintendent of the New Orleans Police Department, where he was given the task of investigating organized crime and corruption within the police force.

It later emerged that he was also involved in looking at the role that left-wing political activists were playing in the struggle for civil rights in New Orleans.

On the campuses of Tulane University and Louisiana State University, he ran a network of informants collecting information on "communist" activities.

He submitted reports on his findings to the FBI through contacts.

In December 1955, Banister publicly revealed 91 members of the police who were involved in graft, after a list was found at the home of an illegal lottery operator.

In March 1957, NOPD Superintendent Provosty Dayries suspended Banister after witnesses reported he had drawn his revolver while threatening a bartender at the Old Absinthe House on Bourbon Street in the French Quarter.

Banister denied the allegations, and the bartender described the incident as an "unprovoked attack".

Later in March, Banister appeared before the state's Joint Legislative Segregation Committee where he told investigators that he had "documentary proof of clear and specific communist directions to promote friction between the races"; He also told of investigating the first Japanese fire balloon to land in the US.

Banister's suspension ended in June of that year; however, Dayries dismissed Banister from the force for "open defiance" after he refused to be reassigned as the department's chief of planning.

In supporting Dayries' decision, New Orleans' mayor Chep Morrison said that there was "no other course that one could sensibly follow".

After leaving the New Orleans Police Department, Banister established his own private detective agency, Guy Banister Associates, Inc. at 434 Balter Building.

In June 1960, Banister moved his office to 531 Lafayette Street on the ground floor of the Newman Building.

Around the corner but located in the same building, with a different entrance, was the address 544 Camp Street, which would later be found stamped on Fair Play for Cuba Committee leaflets distributed by Lee Harvey Oswald, the assassin of President John F. Kennedy.

The Newman Building housed militant anti-Castro groups, including the Cuban Revolutionary Council (October 1961 to February 1962), as well as Sergio Arcacha Smith's Crusade to Free Cuba Committee.

Banister was implicated in a 1961 raid on a munitions depot in Houma, Louisiana, in which "various weapons, grenades and ammunition were stolen ... which were reportedly seen stacked in Banister's back room by several witnesses."

The New Orleans States-Item newspaper reported an allegation that Banister served as a munitions supplier for the 1961 Bay of Pigs Invasion and continued to deal weapons from his office until 1963.

In 1962, Banister allegedly dispatched an associate, Maurice Brooks Gatlin — legal counsel of Banister's "Anti-Communist League of the Caribbean" — to Paris to deliver a suitcase containing $200,000 for the French OAS.

In early 1962, Banister assisted David Ferrie in a dispute with Eastern Airlines regarding charges brought against Ferrie by the airline and New Orleans police of "crimes against nature and extortion."

During this period, Ferrie was frequently seen at Banister's office.

In 1963, Banister and anti-Castro activist David Ferrie began working for a lawyer named G. Wray Gill and his client, New Orleans Mafia boss Carlos Marcello.

This involved attempts to block Marcello's deportation to Guatemala.

Banister served as a character witness for Ferrie at his airline pilot's grievance board hearing in the summer of 1963.

On the afternoon of November 22, 1963, the day that President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, Banister and one of his investigators, Jack Martin, were drinking together at the Katzenjammer Bar, located next door to 544 Camp Street in New Orleans.

On their return to Banister's office, the two men got into a dispute.