The New Orleans Plots

Nearly a decade has passed since John Kennedy was slain in Dallas, but the specter of assassination still haunts the presidency, and above all those charged with its protection. Though most of the 300 threats received by President Nixon each year are from cranks, all are regarded as serious until investigated and proved otherwise. Just how serious was demonstrated last week in New Orleans when, because of two alleged plots, President Nixon's planned open-car motorcade down bustling Canal Street was abruptly canceled on the recommendation of the Secret Service. One cause for suspicion focused on a group of Black Panthers who had allegedly met and discussed the President's assassination. The other concerned an eccentric 29-year-old ex-policeman, Edwin M. Gaudet.

Eager to step into his news conference later in the week with as much public support behind him as possible, Nixon had been anticipating a good reception from the noontime New Orleans crowd. Only reluctantly did he agree to the Secret Service's demand that the parade be canceled. Yet a string of unusual events in the hours before his visit suggested that prudence was indeed in order.

The first incident concerned several white men, all said to be armed, who were reportedly moving into the Parkchester Apartments, a low-rent black housing complex in northern New Orleans. Armed with rifles and shotguns, the police raided the apartments, only to find that their suspects had fled. Police later theorized that the men had been common burglars and holdup men, not would-be assassins. Then at 10:30 p.m. on the eve of the President's visit, a police uniform, badge and nameplate were mysteriously stolen from a parked car. Three and a half hours later, the official car of Police Superintendent Clarence Giarrusso was itself stolen. Though both the thefts were eventually believed to be minor and unrelated crimes, they seemed at the time to confirm the wisdom of the Secret Service's caution, which had been inspired by the two quite disparate, earlier supposed threats:

THE PANTHER PLOT. Earlier this month, New Orleans police received tips from the predominantly black central city area concerning possible trouble during the Nixon visit. Despite attempts to verify the rumors, law officers could come up with no substantial evidence. Then three weeks ago a paid informant reported a meeting of six Black Panther militants. The informant had not been present, but had been told that assassination plans were discussed and a gun "changed hands." Police Superintendent Giarrusso informed both the FBI and the Secret Service of his information and turned over to both bureaus the names of the six men.

The federal agents requested that Giarrusso put the suspected six "in the freeze" until the President's visit was over. Giarrusso, explaining that his informant had not even witnessed the meeting and that his evidence was hearsay at best, refused. "If you want them arrested," Giarrusso told the Secret Service, "then you arrest them. We have no grounds." Instead he agreed to keep close watch on all six suspects, and the Secret Service obtained arrest authorizations for the six from a U.S. magistrate, making pickups possible at the slightest hint of trouble. But the six suspects made no moves to carry out any action against Nixon, and there was doubt that they had ever intended any.

THE GAUDET CONNECTION. The strange tale of Edwin Gaudet, a bearded former New Orleans policeman, began with a report to police by a woman informant. Gaudet, she alleged, had come into a Canal Street all-night drugstore on Aug. 15 and declared that "somebody ought to kill President Nixon. If no one has the guts, I'll do it." Gaudet's bizarre background lent special credence to his boast.

A former prizefighter and the son of a New Orleans hotel manager, Gaudet had quit the force in 1967 after an off-duty brawl in a French Quarter bar. He had been arrested in August 1970 for burning an American flag on the steps of city hall. He was arrested almost three months later for throwing a burning American flag across the hood of Nixon's limousine on an earlier presidential visit to New Orleans. Though his arrest again just last month for possession of marijuana was his third criminal charge, Gaudet received only a suspended sentence. Subsequently sent to the psychiatric ward of a Louisiana state hospital, he was released by his doctor and assigned to outpatient treatment.

On the informant's tip a search was mounted for Gaudet, but by the eve of President Nixon's visit he still had not been found. Finally, acting on advice from Gaudet's father, Secret Service agents in New Mexico located their man at a nearly abandoned commune north of Taos. When plainclothesmen attempted to serve the arrest warrant, Gaudet panicked and fled for the hills, taking with him a 30-06 hunting rifle, food and extra clothes. For two days the fugitive eluded capture in the densely wooded Sangre de Cristo Mountains, at one point exchanging gunfire with approaching agents.

Secret Service Agent John Paul Jones, who was directing local and state police and federal agents in the manhunt, persuaded Gaudet's wife and his cousin to drive into the foothills and try to talk the fugitive into surrender. After the two had made three trips into the hills and spent some 20 hours in discussion with Gaudet, he finally agreed to give himself up. Looking tired and apprehensive, and sandwiched between his wife and cousin in a battered pickup truck, Gaudet came down from the hills and was arrested.

Despite his surrender, Gaudet, his wife, and friends maintained that he was a victim of mistaken identity, that he had not even been in New Orleans on Aug. 15. Two days after his arrest, the original charges against Gaudet were dropped when the witness to his alleged threat was unable to identify him under oath as the man she heard in the drugstore. Immediately after his dismissal from federal court custody, Gaudet was arrested by state police and charged with three counts of aggravated assault on a police officer with intent to commit a violent felony. The charges stem from the exchange of gunfire with the police in the hills, and Gaudet stoutly maintains that he fired only once to frighten an agent, "not to kill him, but to warn him, to make him fall back." Nevertheless, if brought to trial and convicted, Gaudet could face sentences adding up to 165 years in prison.

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