Kriti Mehrotra
As a five-episode miniseries living up to its title in every way conceivable, Showtime’s ‘Waco: The Aftermath‘ can only be described as equal parts bewildering, intriguing, as well as haunting. That’s because it delves deep into the absolute reality of the events to have transpired following the catastrophic 51-day siege by the ATF against the Texan Branch Davidian sect in early 1993. Amongst those to thus be an essential part of this narrative was controversial private investigator Gordon Novel — so now, if you simply wish to learn more about him, we’ve got you covered.
Who Was Gordon Novel?
Although born on February 7, 1938, in New Orleans, Louisiana, as an only child to a single mother, Gordon’s early years were honestly quite colorful and challenging owing to his circumstances. Yet the truth is he still managed to graduate high school in 1956 by working hard, just to then enroll at California’s Northrop Aeronautical Institute of Technology to try his hand at engineering. We say “try” because the youngster soon dipped his toes into the intense world of filmmaking at Pasadena Playhouse as well, after which he proudly attended Louisiana State University (LSU).
However, according to political activist-writer Alan J. Weberman, the most significant fact about Gordon during this period was that he belonged to a far-right, neo-Nazi, white supremacist group. He had reportedly even been arrested for once bombing a local public theater that admitted colored individuals, all the while actively engaging in other criminal acts like thievery of weapons. Nevertheless, in the early 1960s, he was able to not just land the role of Director of Operations for the New York World Fair’s Bourbon Street Pavilion but also launch his own electronics firm.
Gordon’s business actually specialized in a few different kinds of equipment used for bugging, inadvertently resulting in claims he was once a renowned Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) agent. Though if we’re being candid, he was arguably most notable for his long-lasting conflict with District Attorney Jim Garrison, stemming from both the aforecited assertions and his legal troubles. The fact his name then got negatively attached (in terms of criminal conspiracy) to the JFK assassination, the New Orleans firebombing, as well as Watergate didn’t help matters for him either.
Yet everything changed within a few years of Gordon moving out of Louisiana for good, especially since he gradually withdrew from his alleged lawlessness to evolve into a private investigator. In fact, whether it be the 80s conspiracy case against DeLorean Motor’s chairman John DeLorean or the 90s Waco siege leading to the Oklahoma City bombing, he was an official PI for it all. Moreover, as per records, a massive part of his profession in the ensuing years was to provide strategic advice to various celebrities, including the likes of Michael Jackson and Jean-Claude Van Damme.
Gordon Novel Likely Died of Natural Causes
It was on Wednesday, October 3, 2012, when prominently proud private investigator Gordon Novel sadly passed away in his sleep in Los Angeles, California, where he’d been residing for a while. Therefore, even though an official reason behind the 74-year-old’s death has never been made public, we believe it was owing to nothing but natural causes — his age could’ve been a factor too.
Ultimately, we need to clarify that Gordon himself had rejected all claims of him being a former CIA agent during an interview in 2006, per ‘3 Killers at Dallas’ by Chief Phil Doherty. He’d said, “I’m not a CIA agent. I’m affiliated, I work with, and we have a mutual admiration society based upon my relationship with the individuals I work with… The CIA has multiple sides, but it’s been my experience over the years that they’re basically the only good guys in the entire United States government. They’re really patriots. Most of ’em are patriots like I’ve never known.”
Gordon continued, “I personally have never known [the CIA] to do anything criminal, ever. And they didn’t kill John Kennedy, and they didn’t kill a lot of people that they’ve been accused of causing the death of, but I don’t know that to be true. So I can tell you that my experience with ’em has been like dealing with Eagle Scouts.”
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