© Society of Former Special Agents of the FBI, Inc. 2006
Interview of Former Special Agent, Federal Bureau of
Investigation Donald J. Cesare (1963-1985)
Brian R. Hollstein, Interviewer
October 16, 2006
Edited for spelling, repetitions, etc. by Sandra Robinette on January 3, 2007. Edited for Mr.
Cesare’s corrections by Sandra Robinette on March 4, 2007.
Don Cesare (C):
Hello.
Brian R. Hollstein
(H): Hello, Don, Brian Hollstein, trying to be right on time. Let me put some
formalities here on the front of the tape so, to identify it.
C:
Oh sure.
H:
My name is Brian Hollstein. I’m talking to Don Cesare.
Today’s date is October 16th, 2006. Don is at his home in Colorado Springs,
Colorado and this conversation is being tape recorded for the Society of Former
Agents of the FBI Oral History Heritage Program.
Don did you get my note with the copyright form?
C:
No, I never did.
H:
Okay, it’s probably in the mail somewhere then. I will have to check back on that.
Just a little bit up front concerning the program itself. After we have complete
this interview it will go to a transcriber who is a former Bureau transcriber, steno,
and then it will come back to you in draft to take a look at and check spelling and
make any corrections or what have you that need to be made.
C:
Okay.
H:
Then it will then go to the Bureau once it has been corrected for review, strictly
for classified information. They don’t review these things for anything other than
that. So we do that as a courtesy to the Bureau and I think our people being
interviewed like to have that, you know, know that it has checked. After that then
the, we’ll send you a copy all bound, of your transcript along with a disc so that in
the future if you want to reproduce it for some reason you can
C:
That’s good.
Donald J. Cesare
October 16, 2006
Page 2
H:
And then we’ll be placing the material we have, well over one hundred and ten
interviews now, with a major university library and it’ll be used for research by
people who are interested in the people of the FBI.
Good. Three little ground rules, no names of informants please. Now in this
particular case because the major portion of the interview has to do with your
developing a key informant.
C:
Yeah. I don’t have to give his name. For your information, he’s deceased.
H:
Right, but he was surfaced, right?
C:
Yeah. He was called right out at the MIBURN trial.
H:
Okay, good. So no problem with that, but any other informants that you might
have handled we’ll just give them some sort of a name for the interview purposes.
Please, no classified information that you have knowledge of and we don’t want
to use the names of companies, cover companies, that had helped us in the past
with providing a cover, you know, jobs and things of that type.
So, starting things off, tell me a little bit about your early years, where were you
born and grew up, where did you go to school?
C:
Okay, well, let’s see I just started by saying I served in the Bureau from 19631985. I was a former Captain in the United States Marine Corps. During the
Korean conflict, I was recruited and served with CIA as a para-military and a
security officer approximately for six years. I then resigned and I resigned
because the Agency wanted to send me back to Southeast Asia again which I did
not want. I desired to be assigned to East Africa. But the Agency insisted on my
returning to the Far East. I declined and resigned.
To make a long story short my father was a former chief of police back in Old
Forge, Pennsylvania. He always wanted me to go with the Bureau so finally, I
made application with the Bureau and was appointed in the Bureau as a Special
Agent after an inordinate amount of time waiting. A waiting period extended
because initially, if you remember, there were very few people going from CIA
into the FBI.
H:
Right.
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Donald J. Cesare
October 16, 2006
Page 3
C:
I was initially interviewed by not one but two Assistant Directors, numerous
counselors and instructors too, I guess to establish my bona fides; that my loyalty
was to the Bureau or something. They could see that I wasn’t going to be a mole
of some kind.
Well, Brian, I became a police instructor, and I was a SWAT member in Denver,
and I was a bomb expert, and then finally I became an Instructor with the ICITAP
Program down in Central and South America.
H:
Oh, you had quite a career then.
C:
Yeah, several very active, well let me put it this way, I participated in several very
active events during my career with the Bureau. The two most important cases
handled by the Bureau, in which I actively participated, were of course the
assassination of President Kennedy and the murder of the three Civil Rights
workers in Neshoba County, Mississippi.
H:
What offices were you assigned to? Just quickly.
C:
Dallas and then I was assigned to Jackson (Mississippi) afterwards, after the
Kennedy assassination.
But briefly during the Kennedy assassination I was initially assigned to the
surveillance of Marina Oswald and this was immediately after the assassination
when the Bureau was trying to determine whether or not a conspiracy existed.
The investigation of course showed that no conspiracy existed. In addition I
followed up with many, many leads in the assassination case, involving a lot
Texas leads, I should say.
And after an extended period of time, and when the “Special” was called off, I
was transferred to Jackson, Mississippi which was a new office then, if you
remember correctly.
H:
Right, yeah they had just installed it.
Let’s talk a little bit more about the JFK assassination. How long had you been in
Dallas when, this was your first office?
C:
Yeah, it was my first office and I was in Amarillo, Texas, and I immediately got
word to go back to Dallas, Texas, to participate in this, in the assassination. In this
Special, I should say.
H:
Right, it was a Special right. Who was running the Special, do you remember?
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Donald J. Cesare
October 16, 2006
Page 4
C:
Gordon Shanklin was the SAC in charge.
H:
Was he down from the Bureau?
C:
No, oh no, no. Gordon Shanklin was the SAC in Dallas.
H:
Dallas.
C:
He ran it. Oh God I can’t remember the paper man was ….
H:
Gemberling?
C:
Bob Gemberling, yeah.
H:
Okay, I had some time with him recently.
C:
Oh you did?
H:
Yeah I got a couple of hours before he died. I contacted Bob to speak on the
Assassination before the XAgents Convention in Denver, CO in 2003.
C:
He was a wonderful man and a font of knowledge about the Kennedy
assassination.
H:
Oh yeah.
C:
So at any rate I was then transferred to Jackson. And I want to tell you this. I was
very heartbroken because I wanted to go up to Kansas City, and I wanted to work
organized crime up there. And to make a long story short Martin Luther King, Dr.
Martin Luther King yelled and screamed that there weren’t enough Yankee
Agents down in Mississippi, so lo and behold, I find myself down in Mississippi.
H:
In Jackson?
C:
In Jackson. So, I reported to the SAC Roy Moore in Jackson, who really didn’t
give me much of a chance to unpack and arranged for me to go to the Meridian
RA. I was designated to be responsible for Neshoba County, Philadelphia,
Mississippi, which was the hot bed of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan of
the realm in Mississippi.
H:
Oh boy. You were in an RA, how big was the RA?
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Donald J. Cesare
October 16, 2006
Page 5
C:
The RA at that time was, they were running a Special then. In a town of about
40,000, there must have been forty to fifty agents searching all over that place.
And Joe Sullivan was the Inspector in charge of it. Although I reported to Roy
Moore, I reported to Joe Sullivan, who kind of helped me out a little bit. He was
the one actually that assigned me to Neshoba County. Sullivan was the Inspector
in charge of the Special and mentored me.
H:
Did you work with Jim Ingram and Jim Awe?
C:
Well they were over in Jackson, Mississippi. They were headquarters type. I like
to think Brian that I was on the front line in the RA.
H:
Well you were, I’ll tell you that.
C:
Yeah, my, in fact let me say this, that my wife cried all the way from Jackson to
Meridian and said that if she found the area not to her liking I should consider this
as my tour in Vietnam because she was going home because of all these horror
stories.
H:
Oh yeah, yeah. What kind of stories were you hearing at the time?
C:
Well, they were, they were not pretty. What were they doing? They were putting
sand in gas tanks down there, the Agents were being rebuked, the Agents were
being shot and every other fantasy you could think of.
It turned out it not to be completely true because, fortunately, after about several
years in Mississippi, we developed long-standing friends who genuinely liked us
and liked the Bureau. In fact some of them said they were indebted to us because
they felt that we were responsible for re-making Mississippi society too. Which
was something.
H:
Yeah. Did you ever hear a story about rattlesnakes being left in mailboxes
or people’s cars?
C:
Yeah I heard rattlesnakes were put in automobiles, I don’t know about mailboxes.
These were stories that I think were carried in Time Magazine, if memory serves
me right. They were put there to kind of show the invading Yankees, they would
call you, the invading Yankees, coming down to re-work society down there.
H:
I’ve been trying to follow this snake story out. Hoover used it in talking to
Lyndon Johnson and several people have mentioned that there had been reports of
a rattlesnake being left in a car or a mailbox.
C:
I heard about leaving them in a car but I never heard it in a mailbox.
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Donald J. Cesare
October 16, 2006
Page 6
H:
Do you know of any, did you actually hear of this from some person who had
experienced it?
C:
I heard it from John Proctor who was the Senior Agent down there at Meridian,
who is now deceased. Who had told me about that, the fact that he had
experienced some snakes in the back seat of his car.
H:
Oh, okay so you heard this from him?
C:
I heard it from John Proctor.
H:
And that it had happened to him.
C:
Yeah, and I’ll tell you another story. One time I was rendezvousing with my
informant and there was a leaf caught in the heater unit. The leaf was, there was a
leaf that was in the blower unit of the Bureau car that was making a kind of brrr,
you know, a sound like that
H:
Yeah.
C:
I had a rendezvous with my informant one time and, this was, of course, a night
time rendezvous.
H:
Right
C:
To make a long story short, there was a leaf that was stuck down in the blower
unit of the Bureau car, the heating unit, and it was making kind of a brrr sound.
And I said, “Oh God there’s a snake in there.” So I pulled the car over to the side
of the road, cautiously, and I tried to jump out of the car, and I forgot that I had
my seatbelt on. And I nearly killed myself trying to get outta there but it’s just a
funny story to illustrate the fact that the Klan would try anything to discourage
our efforts.
H:
Yeah.
C:
But at any rate I suppose you want to talk about my friend Delmar Dennis, better
known as
.
H:
Yes, I do. And one of the other things I wanted to get into the conversation here
is a little bit more of the background of what life was like in these places for
northerners or just for people who were strangers to the area.
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Donald J. Cesare
October 16, 2006
Page 7
C:
Well we were, we were very, very lucky. My wife and I, we had no children and
we went into what they called the Heritage Apartments, brand new apartments in
Meridian, Mississippi, again a town of 40,000. They were all occupied by
members of the military, usually the students out at the Meridian Naval Air
Station, and more prominent people like ministers and more well-to-do type
people in the community. And we would all congregate out, you know, in the
middle of the complex, which had a swimming pool in it and we would party
there. We would discuss and, you know, they found us to be reasonable people
not, not the kind of like, the Yankees who were trying to re-make society or
something like that. So we got along very well. We were kind of secure in our
housing.
H:
Did you have any, you or your wife have any threats?
C:
Oh yeah, we had, we had a cross burned in front of the Heritage House.
Ironically enough the mayor’s house was located next door to the Heritage House
and we had a cross burning there too. We experienced several; well I should say
two cross burnings while we were down in Mississippi.
H:
So you didn’t have to go far to investigate it at least right?
C:
And of course we had numerous church bombings down there.
H:
Yeah, well things were coming apart at the seams during that particular time
frame. What type of work were you doing?
C:
What type of work was I doing?
H:
Yeah, right.
C:
Actually at that time, immediately, we did some investigations regarding
violations of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. That was the main thing, Civil Rights
violations. We would get these greenies in from the Bureau and, God they were,
you know, you had to turn them around in a period of no time at all. The funny
part …
H:
Tell us what a greenie is, please?
C:
Well, the greenie was a green airtel that came in from the Bureau saying that so
and so was denied service at such and such a facility or so and so’s Civil Rights
were violated. They claimed that they were mistreated, they were given this that
and the other, they were given hot pepper in their hamburgers when they came up
for a hamburger at a public type display or public type restaurant. There were all
sorts of infractions involved with the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
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Donald J. Cesare
October 16, 2006
Page 8
H:
Okay we have one more piece of jargon to square away here - airtel.
C:
Oh, the airtel was an expeditious form of Bureau communication. The Green
airtel emanates, originates from the Bureau putting this complaint, sending this
complaint forth, setting it out. And then I would investigate people regarding this
complaint and round it out and send it in to the Bureau, the Civil Rights Division,
for adjudication.
H:
Now airtels had to be responded to quickly.
C:
Right.
H:
But not immediately, if you got a teletype you had to do that within a certain
number of hours.
C:
You gotta move out real fast.
H:
Yeah.
C:
Airtels you had I don’t know, maybe, God, Brian you’re taxing my knowledge,
but usually specified in the airtel when a response was due, i.e., BUDED.
H:
Yeah I’m going back thirty years myself. I had my share of airtels come in,
almost on a daily basis.
C:
Yeah, I mean I was inundated with these things too because I was covering
Neshoba County. Not only Neshoba County but I was covering the only
reservation on the east side of the Mississippi River, the Choctaw Reservation.
The blacks, the Choctaws and the Klan in Neshoba County and you know I had
my hands full. A funny point of it all is we had these inspectors come in all the
time and had to be shown the area.
This is a funny story too, you’ll enjoy this. I have not talked about
apologize really.
H:
No, we’ll get back to it.
C:
We’ll get to it, okay?
H:
Sure.
and I
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Donald J. Cesare
October 16, 2006
Page 9
C:
I had an inspector come in one time, and you know these inspectors would come
in and they’d say show me where the Civil Rights people were killed, show me
this that and the other. I would take them up to Philadelphia and all that and we’d
talk and then I’d take them back and they’d say really, really thank you, I
appreciate your efforts.
C:
They’d say what you ought to do is you ought to try and get, here I am dealing
with “the” informant in the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan of the Realm of
Mississippi and they, these people, have the nerve to tell me I ought to develop
more informants up in Philadelphia. I said, up in Philadelphia, I can’t even get
anybody to even talk to me, what are you talking about?
H:
That was always the way.
C:
Yeah
H:
They just always seemed to be out of the loop out of reality. So you, not only did
you have your Civil Rights stuff, the work that you were doing, but you also
would have crime on a Government reservation?
C:
And then the Indian reservations.
H:
And then the Indian reservations too. So there’d be a full portfolio of things when
it got a little bit slow in Civil Rights. You’d have bank robberies and car thefts
and …
C:
I was always yellin’ for help you know, I needed help. My partner was a fella by
the name of Dan Bodine. Dan and I, he covered a county called Kemper County
and I covered Neshoba County so we would kinda team up and kinda help each
other whenever we could.
H:
So was it was just a two-man RA?
C:
No, no. The RA finally evolved into an eight man RA and Bodine and I were the
two Yankee Agents.
H:
Okay.
C:
So, you know, and I’m ashamed to tell you this but some of the southerners would
say well you know, I’m an Agent but I don’t handle Civil Rights. I handle only
criminal matters you know and that got to be irritating.
H:
Oh really?
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Donald J. Cesare
October 16, 2006
Page 10
C:
Yeah.
H:
So those were the old timers.
C:
Yeah, those were the old timers that were coming down there to kind of
homestead, you know. That was it and I told Moore about it. Moore said well
you know, he took care of it. He got on these people. So, Roy Moore was a great
guy to work for you know, Brian. I’m not kidding.
H:
Yeah, he’s still alive.
C:
Yes, he’s living in some sort of a home down in Louisiana.
H:
Yeah, and unfortunately, we can’t interview him.
C:
Not doing too well.
H:
No, no but it would have been really nice to be able to get a hold of him. We did
get a brief interview with Joe Sullivan.
C:
Before he died?
H:
Yeah.
C:
Oh, good.
H:
And we got a lot of time Jim Awe, Jay Cochran, Jim Ingram, those guys. Then
we have some people like Joe Rucci who was up at Tupelo County just a first
office agent just like you. He’s given us some interesting material also on the
MIBURN investigation and just life in general for people in the Bureau during the
Civil Rights era.
So let’s get into the core of this thing.
C:
Yeah let’s get into
H:
How did you find this guy and what brought this on?
C:
Before I begin, let me say that Reverend Delmar Dennis, a.k.a.,
He was the informant in the Mississippi Klan. He was the informant
who took the stand in Judge Harold Cox’ courtroom. If you remember during the
MIBURN trial, [he] related fascinating and accurate account … look, I should say
into Klandom and its secret ways. The entire Klan in Mississippi was stunned and
irrevocably shattered by his testimony.
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Donald J. Cesare
October 16, 2006
Page 11
C:
Now in particular he spelled out the order which called for the murder of the three
Civil Rights workers which originated from Sam Bowers, who was the Imperial
Wizard of the Klan in Mississippi, to the Neshoba Klavern, at that time, headed
by Edgar Ray Killen. You remember Edgar Ray Killen; he’s been recently in the
news.
H:
Absolutely.
C:
Okay. Well Delmar was, before I forget I want to describe Delmar to you.
Through the words of John Doar, who was the Assistant Attorney General at the
time. John Doar described Delmar as a man of courage, because who among us
would doubt that his life was not in constant danger? He was a man of conviction,
both about state’s rights, law enforcement, and he was fiercely patriotic.
Now my encounter with Delmar came about because we were initially and
continuously prevailed upon to develop informants. This became of a priority
nature down there because law enforcement was, let’s see, the state and local law
enforcement were all reputed to be members of the Klan or Klan sympathizers.
The interviewing process, of course, like anything else consisted of approaching
anybody or any individual identified or suspected of being a Klan member. The
result my lasting, and let’s say, my very productive association with Delmar
Dennis came to be. He was a local member of the Lauderdale County Klavern in
Mississippi. He was serving as a klagoro, or a religious leader in his local
Klavern. In reality he was the minister in the local Methodist church. He was a
young, vibrant and charismatic type of guy. He agreed to assist the Bureau and
shortly, he became
.
H:
Now tell me something. Now how long had he been a member of the Klan?
C:
How long had he been a member of the Klan?
H:
Just roughly?
C:
Roughly I would say probably at least one or two years prior to my association
with him. As a matter of fact, Edgar Ray Killen swore him into the Lauderdale
Klavern of the Klan.
H:
So as a religious man, he didn’t have any problems with the Klan’s activities,
particularly? Or was he just waiting for somebody to come and talk to him.
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Donald J. Cesare
October 16, 2006
Page 12
C:
After, after he saw the murder of the three Civil Rights workers take place and the
violence that ensued, what they were doing, and especially when they were
bombing a couple of the churches in the area. Not his, of course. He was a
Methodist minister, but some of the churches which catered to the blacks, and
some of the churches which catered to the Mennonite people, located up in
Philadelphia, Mississippi.
H:
I didn’t know they had them up there.
C:
Yeah, they did. And they worked very, very closely with the Choctaw people up
there in Philadelphia, Mississippi.
H:
So when he originally joined the Klan, Delmar Dennis, he was in sync with them?
C:
That was the first encounter I had with him but he originally came out of Walnut
Grove, Mississippi. So he may have joined the Klan over there and he had joined
the Klan before he became a pastor, a minister. I can’t answer that, Brian.
H:
Okay, but what turned him around though was the violence and the murder of the
Civil Rights people and bombings of churches and what have you. Did he, the
first time you talked to him, did he roll over or how did that work?
C:
Well, actually he was, he was developed by two guys, Tom Van Riper and John
Martin and they turned him over to me. They said that this guy had a lot of
potential and John and Tom went elsewhere. They were transferred out and I
took him over immediately and gained his confidence and that was it. I waved the
flag numerous times and he liked the Agent who was from Pennsylvania. We got
along real well and I completed the processing of Delmar as an established
informant..
H:
Okay. How did you go about meeting him once you had him, you got him
already, he’d been registered by that time.
C:
I met him over in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. He wanted to get out of the Mississippi
area. So we rendezvoused over oh, where the university is located, right over the
state line. Anyway, …
H:
You met him well away from where he was …
C:
Where he was working.
H:
Where he was active. Did you pay him any?
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Donald J. Cesare
October 16, 2006
Page 13
C:
Oh, well I did. I paid him. I don’t know whether or not the Bureau would want me
to remember to remind you of this, but I paid him well over, during the period of
time that I had him, I paid him close to a quarter of a million dollars.
H:
Okay. What, how did, what kind of a person was he that when you were dealing
with him? You mentioned that he was intelligent.
C:
Oh yeah, yeah he was a young vibrant and, you know, kind of a charismatic guy.
And he, let’s see, he had kind of a photographic memory really. He would
remember anything and everything from any of the Klan rallies. He would
remember license plates, he would remember phone numbers, he would
remember names.
H:
Oh boy. That’s manna from heaven.
C:
Oh he was something. The best part of it all is that, Brian, he was highly
respected in Klandom because of this charismatic, what would you call it, like
personality, very efficient. He had a high energy level. He was a young man (27
at the time) impeccably neat and could charm anyone. As I said before he started
out as a klagoro, klavern type, klagoro kind of a religious leaders. He evolved
into a state, a state, a grand klagoro, which was sitting at the right hand of Sam
Bowers, the Imperial Wizard from Laurel, Mississippi.
H:
Can’t do much better than that. Well they must have liked him.
C:
Let me tell you a story here.
H:
Sure.
C:
And I think I told you this. Before Delmar testified in the MIBURN trial, before
he took the stand, Sam Bowers was overheard in the corridor outside of the
courtroom. He said to some of his Klan friends that there is only one man in the
State of Mississippi that he trusts and that’s Delmar Dennis. You could imagine
the chagrin and disappointment when this guy took the stand. All the Klansmen
were stunned!
H:
Wow.
C:
And it was something, I mean really something. His testimony was shattering to
the Klan, and, for the first time, openly identified all the law enforcement in
Neshoba County as Klansmen.
H:
Yeah, they must have liked him too. They were, generally speaking, the Klan
people were low level and rather uneducated people.
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Donald J. Cesare
October 16, 2006
Page 14
C:
That’s right. But a person like Delmar charmed the heck out of them.
H:
And here’s a guy with an education and a way about him that’s good, clean-cut
corn fed guy.
C:
He looked and acted as a convincing witness while on the stand.
H:
Yeah.
C:
Now when any bombings or burnings took place anywhere in the state, he was
tasked to identify the perpetrators, and whenever any notable Civil Rights leaders,
you know, visited the state, the Bureau knew immediately of the Klan’s plans and
oftentimes obstructed the plan and their efforts, due to Delmar’s efforts.
Typically we had a bunch of people coming in, continually up to Philadelphia,
Mississippi and we had to make sure that they, you know, nothing happened to
them. Like Martin Luther King, Ralph Abernathy, Julian Bond and the whole
hierarchy of the Civil Rights Movement.
H:
Sure.
C:
So we worked pretty close together, you know, to get them into, into Philadelphia,
and then back into Jackson, Mississippi, where they usually exited the state.
H:
You’d have to be careful though that by your actions that you didn’t tip off the
Klan that was, I imagine that was a problem.
C:
Well security was always of paramount importance to these people, with myself
and
. We always set up rendezvous areas out in rural areas. To begin with I
did a lot of my de-briefing at the Meridian Naval Air Station. I would kind of put
him in the backseat of the Bureau car and put him down and rendezvous with him
at night and then bring him into gate and use the Naval Intelligence services
offices to de-brief him after hours. I had a key and NIS was real good to me down
there and very cooperative.
H:
So that would give you a chance and you could relax a little bit and once you’re
in.
C:
Take your shoes off and most of these interviews were, they weren’t done with a
tape recorder. I had to record all this.
H:
Oh, you had to write all down?
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Donald J. Cesare
October 16, 2006
Page 15
C:
Write it all down. Then I put it back in the 302s and contact memos, later on. You
know?
H:
Sure.
C:
At any rate I can remember one time that even my boss, Roy Moore, after the
Wharlist Jackson bombing. It was in Hattiesburg. It was right after that bombing
took place I get in touch with Delmar and I said we’re going to meet at such and
such a time. No sooner than I get out of the apartment, the phone rings again and
it’s Roy Moore calling me to set up a meet with Delmar because they want to
know the identities of the bombers. He says because I want to specifically know
who these people were, you know and I said I’m on my way now. So we
identified pretty much all the bomb throwers down there in Hattiesburg.
H:
So many of these prosecutions were not particularly successful were they?
C:
No, no, no.
H:
How did you feel about that?
C:
Well, like anyone else I mean we were kind of frustrated. Nevertheless the real
break through really was the MIBURN investigation. The MIBURN
investigation didn’t get all the people that were involved in it but nevertheless got
some of them. We got some iron time out you know, against some of these
people. But it wasn’t for murder. I don’t think murder was a federal offense then.
H:
Right.
C:
And so at any rate we had, we had, we prosecuted them for violation of Civil
Rights, really.
H:
Yeah which was certainly not particularly satisfactory at all.
C:
No, not all.
H:
Although I remember the search for the bodies did include the Choctaw
Reservation, didn’t it?
C:
No, no it didn’t it was, the bodies …
H:
I mean the car.
C:
Yeah, they searched the reservation, but the bodies were discovered in Olen
Burrage’s dam site.
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Donald J. Cesare
October 16, 2006
Page 16
H:
Right, but where was the car discovered? The car itself, you know that they had
been driving?
C:
The car was discovered in the Bogue_Chitto Swamp, the swampland. It was
submerged.
H:
Oh okay, so that wasn’t part of the reservation?
C:
Well, I don’t know and I don’t think so. But numerous personnel from the
Meridian Naval Air Station participated in the Bogue_Chitto search.
H:
Yeah, well they would have used it, I’m sure, yeah.
C:
But we recovered the car, yeah.
H:
Yeah. Okay, let’s talk some then about MIBURN and Delmar Dennis’ activities
during that time; the kind of information he gave you and what were you doing
during that period?
C:
Well, I have something written here and I want to collect my thoughts.
H:
Oh okay. Am I throwing you off?
C:
Yeah. Delmar was so trusted in the Klan that he served not only the Bureau but
he, you know, he also served the Klan. Not only as a courier of Klan information
but he was a distributor of Klan funds too. Both of which served the Bureau well!
The most damaging testimony that Delmar did against the Klan was revealing a
letter that he received from Sam Bowers, who was the Imperial Wizard, in which
Bowers, using a kind of a logging operation code, you know, logging was very,
very prominent down in that area of Mississippi. So Bowers reverted to this
logging operation as a code and clearly tied himself to the Civil Rights murders,
the murder conspiracy. Of course, Delmar identified several of the Klan
participants. Let’s face it, his testimony signaled the demise of the Klan in
Mississippi.
H:
Sure.
C:
That’s what John Doar says anyway. And I told you the story about this before,
before he testified, that Bowers made the comment that …
H:
That he trusted him.
C:
He trusted him.
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Donald J. Cesare
October 16, 2006
Page 17
H:
Yeah.
C:
Now let me talk about a little of that security and I’ve written something here
about this. The city in Meridian, Mississippi was about 40,000 people at the time.
It presented many security problems to Delmar and myself. We often
rendezvoused for debriefings in several of the outlying rural areas but it got too
dark and it was difficult to debrief in a Bucar. So we began to permanently use
the US Naval Air Station, located outside of Meridian, after hours as a durable,
kind of a safe debriefing area.
Thanks to the NIS People, Naval Intelligence people, who always provided me
with a key after hours, never asked any questions, never, never ever even bothered
to ask any questions or be concerned with it. They just wanted to help me out.
H:
Sure.
C:
I’ve also remembered that Delmar and I concocted a counter-intelligence plan in
an effort to influence the waning interest in the Klan. A lot of these people after,
after a while had, after the murder of the three Civil Rights workers, and prior to
the MIBURN trial, there was kinda like a cooling off on Klandom activities.
Although the sympathy and allegiance was still there, the voluminous amount of
anti-klan information distributed through the media, the aggressive efforts of the
Bureau, and the long awaited MIBURN trial soon to ensue, all had a dampening
effect on the Mississippi Klan.
So I submitted a plan to Roy Moore, the SAC, who turned it down. He said that
no, what we’re gonna do is we’re gonna divide and conquer. That’s the tactic we
are going to take.
My plan consisted, my plan and Delmar’s, consisted of forming a group known as
the Patrick Henry Society, which was to collect any of these dissidents into a
group. Moore didn’t approve of it, of course. I thought it was a pretty good plan,
because we could collect these ex-klansmen in one group, give them a new
identity and Delmar would retain control.
But anyway Moore kiddingly commented afterwards he said, well Cesare’s just
trying to play with CIA tactics. Moore was a Marine like I was. He was a frontal
charge, divide and conquer type.
H:
Right. Get in there and kick ‘em in the ass.
C:
And we did. We did after awhile.
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Donald J. Cesare
October 16, 2006
Page 18
H:
So were there many, so you weren’t aware of any particular plans, other plans of
that type?
C:
Of this kind?
H:
Yeah, like your Patrick Henry plan?
C:
No, no I don’t know of any. Of course now, Brian, you gotta remember I’m not a
headquarters, I wasn’t headquarters type. I was operating out in the field.
H:
Sure.
C:
And this, I sent this memo in and I don’t know how it was received there but I do
know that Moore called me up personally and said what are you doing? He
kiddingly said, “Are you trying to play with CIA tactics by setting up a counter
unit!” But that’s about it really. I thought it was a good idea. Moore did not.
H:
Well, I just was curious as to whether you know, there had been much coming,
say coming out of the Bureau, now there were some other things that were done.
I remember postcards being sent with pictures of Klansmen and various little
harassing things of that type.
C:
No, no. Well, I remember like a couple of times we would maybe, we would pick
out a Klansman down there, somebody a little antagonistic, and we would park
the Bureau car in front of his house overnight. It was obvious that you know, we
were trying to intimidate him. And I’ve done that. We’ve done that. And
oftentimes, this worked.
H:
Did you ever have any incidence of strong arm tactics against you, a couple of
people have talked about being threatened by Klansmen with shotguns and one
guy was chased by Doberman Pinchers, and another guy got chased by a pig in
fact.
C:
Somehow they’d get my home telephone number and they’d say, “Is this Mrs.
Cesare? Your husband is not coming home tonight.” Or something like that. I
was the recipient of a couple of those phone calls and they just didn’t, they didn’t
like me or my partner, Dan Bodine, because we were the more active agents
against them down there.
Oh, so, I can’t speak for Dan, he’s gone now, but oh, they accused me one time of
harassing somebody. It was a girlfriend of one of the Klansmen down there and I
had nothing to do with it. Nevertheless I was described as a guy with a hat on, a
porkpie hat on, I never wore a porkpie hat any way.
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Donald J. Cesare
October 16, 2006
Page 19
C:
I also recall an incident which occurred in the COFO (Council of Federated
Organizations) Building in Philadelphia, Mississippi, while I was taking a
statement from James Leatherer and Ralph Featerstone, Both COFO activists.
While taking the statement, we heard several gunshots and ricocheting rounds.
Both the interviewer and interviewees hit the deck. After several minutes, we all
ran outside. But saw no one. We determined it was a drive-by shooting. I
wondered whether the shooters were shooting at me or the COFO building. My
Bucar was parked in front of the building. There were no “outside” witnesses to
the incident.
But at any rate, I was always writing affidavits to Roy Moore and that was about
it really.
H:
Well if you were active and out there doing it, writing up and having complaints
and having to write affidavits was a common, common event. How did all this
come about with the three Civil Rights workers? What exactly type of information
did you get?
C:
Of the three Civil Rights workers? Well, Edgar Ray Killen was the, was the
leading motivator. This is what I got from Delmar that Price was responsible for
arresting them and putting them in the jail and keeping them in the jail, that Price
in turn called the Lauderdale Klavern. The Lauderdale Klavern, when I say
Lauderdale Klavern, I mean the Meridian group. He told them what he was
gonna do, he was gonna release them and so on and so forth and that they would,
it was up to them to intercept them on this certain highway. He would, he would
follow them down and point them out to the group, which he did. And the
Meridian group pulled them into apparently - this is what Delmar told me - they
pulled them into a dirt road up there and then shot the three of them there.
H:
Okay, so he had that type of information?
C:
Well this was general knowledge then.
H:
Oh so this was, this was?
C:
This was after the fact.
H:
Well okay, but the Klan crowd, this is what was the rumors and bragging, I guess
it was passed around there?
C:
Yeah.
H:
Yeah, did he have any knowledge of where they were buried at all?
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Donald J. Cesare
October 16, 2006
Page 20
C:
No, he, he didn’t have that information. He was not operational during the search
for the three Civil Rights workers. Okay.
The location of the bodies. Let me, let me set the record straight here: You know
Joe Sullivan never, never told anyone, how he got the information, but this is
hours of intense speculation on the Agents’ part. The Agents would always
speculate and I speculated on it too. My information was that Joe was very
friendly with Maynard King, who was a Mississippi State Highway Patrol
Captain. And I think, I think that Maynard King was, had taken an oath in the
Klan and maybe King got the information and gave it to Sullivan.
H:
Now that’s the story I’ve gotten from other folks too.
C:
Yeah. That is people in the Philadelphia area who would recoil at the mention of
King’s name.
H:
You know I didn’t know the name of the highway patrolman but there was
somebody from the highway patrol.
C:
Maynard King, a MHP Captain.
H:
Yeah had an informant.
C:
You’re gonna hear a lot of stories but I had heard that $30,000 was involved in
obtaining the location of the site where the three Civil Rights workers were
buried.
H:
So, Delmar Dennis provided you the names of the people who did, who did the
job? Price?
C:
Who did the job afterwards.
H:
After, right, after.
C:
Much later.
H:
Okay, so that came out through, how did that come out, from conversations with?
C:
As you can imagine, many conversations ensued once Delmar became
operational. We would usually meet once a week. But if Klan rallies, bombings,
or murders took place anywhere in the state, he was immediately contacted,
tasked, and subsequently debriefed regarding any Klan info on the episode. Also
any Klan info he possessed prior to becoming operational was recorded in his file,
which was voluminous.
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Donald J. Cesare
October 16, 2006
Page 21
C:
Specifically, he often related the intimate and sad details of the murder of
Schwerner, Goodman and Chaney. As I said earlier, Delmar was party to that
group that took the three Civil Rights workers out. He was the Klagoro or
chaplain to the Meridian Klan who murdered the three civil rights workers. He
did not participate in the murders but was aware of the Klan plans.
There are 302s covering this, also contact memos.
H:
Well you know it’s interesting that much of that is available now through
Freedom of Information Act.
C:
Yeah, you know well, the trigger man was a guy by the name of Roberts, wasn’t
it? It was Roberts who was the, let’s see, he was the brother of one of the
patrolmen in Meridian, Mississippi, if my memory serves me right. He was the
trigger man and Wayne Roberts that was it - Wayne Roberts. He was the one that
confronted Schwerner and said. “Hey you’re that nigger lovin’ s.o.b.” or
something like that. Schwerner’s last words were, “I know how you feel, sir.”
And he pulled the gun out and shot him.
H:
Wow.
C:
The other two guys Goodman and Chaney. Goodman was also shot by Roberts.
But Chaney was shot by James Jordan who yelled, “Save one for me,” just before
he shot Chaney, who was trying to climb up an embankment.
H:
Yeah. The aftermath of this, and how long did you keep this informant?
C:
Oh, I kept him until the MIBURN trial was well over. I’d like to tell you what
kind of happened to him, but before I do, I’d like to mention that of the three Klan
informants who testified for the government in the MIBURN trial, two of the
three were my informants. In addition to Delmar Dennis, I developed and
operated Willie Dennis. He was Delmar’s older brother. Willis was also a
minister and the only Klan member from Neshoba County to testify for the
government.
Now back to your question. After the MIBURN case, I relocated, with the
Bureau’s permission, of course, and relocated Delmar to Santa Fe, New Mexico.
And he became very dissatisfied with this area and set out for Los Angeles,
California where he was interviewed several times. By, I don’t know whether or
not you would remember this guy, but his name was Joe Pine or Pyne, remember
he was a talk show person, in the area.
H:
Oh yeah, yeah.
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Donald J. Cesare
October 16, 2006
Page 22
C:
In the LA area, kind of, I think, he was spokesman for the John Birch Society.
Delmar came into, under the influence of the John Birch Society. He published a
book entitled, “Klandestine” which is on the market. And after, I’ll be honest
with you, after several letters and maybe a couple of Christmas cards, I learned
that he became a resident of, I think, it’s Jackson, Tennessee. He’s dead now. If I
can say in conclusion, can I say this?
H:
Sure.
C:
In conclusion, let me say that Dennis Delmar was a very effective, intelligent, and
productive informant who was not, he was not only motivated by money, but he
was a patriotic, sincere citizen who had the courage and the integrity to do what
was right, and that was to help the Bureau.
H:
I’m sure that was at great cost to him also. Over the long run because being a
Klansman after awhile was not too good a thing.
C:
Yes, let me tell you this, too, I didn’t mention it. He originally had a parish, or I
should say a church in Meridian, Mississippi; a very nice church, a Methodist
church. He lost it, after he became an informant you know, and there was, after
he became known, he lost his church, he lost his wife, he lost his two children,
and that was it.
H:
Oh boy.
C:
Everything that he had – his family and church - they left him.
H:
He soldiered on.
C:
He went on. Yes.
H:
That in itself is a great testimony and you know that the sadness that would be
brought by losing your career, losing your family, and everything else is just
terrible and to be doing the right thing is important too though.
You had said that you had written down some things, have we covered most of it?
C:
I think we have. Let me see here. I think we have.
H:
This was your second office right?
C:
This was my second office, if you can believe that.
H:
What happened afterwards?
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Donald J. Cesare
October 16, 2006
Page 23
C:
I gotta tell you this. My wife cried all the way from, I said Jackson to Meridian
and, when we left Meridian, she cried all the way up to Denver, when I was
transferred up to Denver. She cried all the way because she had left so many
friends down there in Mississippi. We really had a grand time in Mississippi,
chaotic at times, but, boy, I’ll tell you, they were exciting.
I remember specifically, my wife telling me that if she didn’t like Meridian and
the anticipated violence, that I should consider this as my tour in Vietnam –
unaccompanied – because she was going home to Colorado.
H:
What were the dates that you were there in Mississippi then, just roughly, 1964 or
so?
C:
Sixty-five to early 1970.
H:
Okay. So you were there during every bit of action practically?
C:
Well I got there, well you know to be honest with you, I think I got there about
three months after they discovered the bodies in Olen Burrage’s Dam. I got there
about three months after that, but the Agents didn’t what was going on. That’s
when I got there and I thought whoa. It was like a freight train going through that
little town of Meridian. Agents were everywhere and anybody who was
suspected as a Klan member was talked to not once, but numerous times.
H:
Oh yeah, yeah.
C:
The Agents, I mean, I don’t know if we had forty, maybe I’m exaggerating, but
I’ll tell you there were, you could bump into them in the downtown area and,
while the Special was on, we worked 7/24 (1/2 days on Sunday).
H:
Yeah, well talking about it, talking to Jay Cochran, during the active investigation
before they were found, …
C:
Yes – but after the Special, I remained as a permanent member of the RA, which
stabilized at seven Agents.
H:
There were at least fifty Agents that had been brought in on the Special, you know
under Sullivan.
C:
Plus, the personnel from the Naval Air Station, who also participated in the
searches.
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Donald J. Cesare
October 16, 2006
Page 24
H:
Oh yeah, yeah. Well, the people who were doing the searching right, the sailors
that were searching and, it was a big gang and as you say in a small town you’d
be tripping over each other. It wouldn’t be at all unusual.
So you went up to Denver. You decompressed a little bit in Denver?
C:
Yeah, the funny part is I get up to Denver and I work for an SAC by the name of
Scott Werner. You probably heard of him.
H:
I think so. Yeah.
C:
Yeah he had, probably the only SAC that wore a mustache and had facial hair.
Okay? But at any rate I get up here and I’m working the general squad, the
criminal squad. Somebody said, well, we got a Civil Rights complaint here, give
it to Cesare, he’s been handling all these things down in Mississippi.
Werner makes the comment, he said, “No, Cesare doesn’t have enough time in the
Bureau for that.” I thought that was hilarious but I didn’t say anything since I was
kind of sick and tired of Civil Rights investigations.
In fact, oh God I’ll tell ya, you know. Anyway this thought occurred even in
Mississippi, I said what I oughta do I oughta tell them that my father was a Chief
of Police and that’ll get me out of any Civil Rights nonsense. You know at that
time anyone previously connected with law enforcement was exempted from
handling Civil Rights investigations.
H:
Yeah, yeah.
C:
But it didn’t work.
H:
So in Denver, general criminal, tech stuff, and how long were you there?
C:
I was in Denver for one year and then was sent to Colorado Springs Resident
Agency at my request, where I served as SRA and retired in 1985.
However, during my time with the Denver division, I served as a General Police
Instructor, firearms Instructor, and bomb expert. I became a bomb expert, they
finally sent me to school after retrieving all that dynamite down in Mississippi.
After I went to bomb expert school and then I wound up retiring and went into
that ICITAP program.
H:
And then you were teaching where, you said in Central America?
C:
Central and South America.
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Donald J. Cesare
October 16, 2006
Page 25
H:
So you speak Spanish?
C:
A little bit. My Italian – I’m half-Italian, half-Irish - it would always be
misconstrued. They’d said, “Mr. Cesare you sound like an Argentinean.” So I
went to Buenos Aries and I found that most of the Argentineans down there are of
Italian descent and their Spanish is pronounced with an Italian accent.
H:
Oh yeah and they sound very Italian.
C:
I think they speak with kind of a pronounced accent I guess.
H:
Oh yeah you can always tell an Argentine. I worked for Xerox and I had the
Latin American security operations. I traveled all around Latin America and
Central America.
C:
Well you’re familiar. My dealings were always with the, you know, the federal
and local police department and that’s about it.
And the unfortunate part of it all is I would teach them the investigative
techniques of kidnapping and extortion and all that and the next thing you know
Buenos Aries is the kidnapping capital of the world.
H:
Yeah.
C:
I don’t know.
H:
You worry about whether you taught them some new tricks, but I don’t think they
needed any training along those lines particularly
C:
No, no.
H:
They knew what to do.
You mentioned bombs in Mississippi, did you actually deal, did you have to do
any investigations of bombings?
C:
Yes, numerous church bombings in the Philadelphia-Meridian area. Also may
bombings of churches and private residences throughout the state. We also
recovered a lot of dynamite that was identified by informants and, in particular
Delmar, and we surreptitiously removed it from its hiding place, you know, many
times.
H:
Okay.
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Donald J. Cesare
October 16, 2006
Page 26
C:
I got chewed out by Roy Moore one time for temporarily putting dynamite in the
Bureau car and it was, you know, I didn’t know any other way to get it out
actually and move it. Moore never furnished any solution so I got rid of it by my
own means.
H:
Yeah.
C:
So he raised heck with me, but he was a good guy and I would follow him
anywhere. And he knew this. He was an Agents SAC.
H:
Well that was, I guess, they would get some information that there was dynamite
hidden and they’d go out and pick it up and get rid of it. At least help to keep
some of it off the streets anyway.
C:
I don’t think this would be approved by the Bureau but there were a couple of
times we did some black bag jobs down in Philadelphia, to get it and more
importantly remove it from Klan usage.
H:
Okay, have we missed anything? Have I missed anything?
C:
No, no, no. I’ll probably think about a thousand things that I should have told you
later on.
H:
Well there’s always a telephone again.
C:
That’s very kind. I appreciate that.
H:
I think this is a great interview. I think we’ve got some really interesting stuff.
C:
Really, or are you just blowing smoke?
H:
Nobody knows anything about, you know, from the outside, knows anything
about how this relationship was managed with your informant and what it was
like to be living there and having to deal with a hostile community all around you.
It’s very, very interesting stuff.
26