Who Speaks for Clay Shaw?

by Dave Reitzes

Who Speaks for Clay Shaw?

by Dave Reitzes

In March of 1967, Clay Lavergne Shaw of New Orleans, Louisiana was indicted for conspiring to assassinate President John F. Kennedy. It took exactly two years for his case to navigate its way through an arduous marathon of motions, continuances, and appeals. It took a jury less than an hour to acquit.

There are many assassination researchers who believe that any debate, any press conference, and any public presentation of conspiracy theory or evidence -- no matter how groundless, speculative, or opportunistic -- is worthwhile, if only to keep "the cause" alive -- even the prosecution of an innocent man. Thus, the very same people who condemn the Dallas police and the federal government for stripping Lee Oswald of his civil rights decide that the civil rights of others are expendable when a higher purpose is served. Perhaps a group of people once even believed the same thing about John F. Kennedy.

Did Clay Shaw conspire to assassinate President John F. Kennedy? The case against him -- both then and now -- will be examined here in its entirety.

Meet "Clay Bertrand"

It all began with "Clay Bertrand," a name which appeared in the Warren Commission testimony of attorney Dean Adams Andrews, Jr. Andrews was questioned by attorney Wesley J. Liebeler.

Mr. LIEBELER. I am advised by the FBI that you told them that Lee Harvey Oswald came into your office some time during the summer of 1963. Would you tell us in your own words just what happened as far as that is concerned?

Mr. ANDREWS. I don't recall the dates, but briefly, it is this: Oswald came in the office accompanied by some gay kids. They were Mexicanos. He wanted to find out what could be done in connection with a discharge, a yellow paper discharge, so I explained to him he would have to advance the funds to transcribe whatever records they had up in the Adjutant General's office. When he brought the money, I would do the work, and we saw him three or four times subsequent to that, not in the company of the gay kids. He had this Mexicano with him. . . . [T]he second time he came back, we talked about the yellow paper discharge. . . . When he asked the questions -- I don't know which visit it was -- about citizenship of his wife, I asked the birthplace or origin cited for citizenship purposes -- that's what counts -- and he said Russia, so I just assumed [she was] a GI bride, and wanted to go through the routine of naturalization, which is three years after lawful admission into the United States if you are married, and five years if you are not, maintain the status here in the States cumulatively for five years.

Mr. LIEBELER. Did he indicate that he wanted to institute citizenship proceedings for his wife?

Mr. ANDREWS. Yes; I told him to go to Immigration and get the forms. Cost him $10. All he had to do was execute them. He didn't need a lawyer. That was the end of that.

Mr. LIEBELER. How many times did he come into your office?

Mr. ANDREWS. Minimum of three, maximum of five, counting initial visit.

Mr. LIEBELER. And did you talk about different subjects at different times? As I understand it, the first time he came there, he was primarily concerned about his discharge, is that correct'?

Mr. ANDREWS. Well, I may have the subject matter of the visits reversed because with the company he kept and the conversation -- he could talk fairly well -- I figured that this was another one of what we call in my office free alley clients, so we didn't maintain the normalcy with the file that -- might have scratched a few notes on a piece of pad, and 2 days later threw the whole thing away. Didn't pay too much attention to him. Only time I really paid attention to this boy, he was in the front of the Maison Blanche Building giving out these kooky Castro things. . . . I was coming from the NBC building, and I walked past him. You know how you see somebody, recognize him. So I turned around, came back, and asked him what he was doing giving that junk out. He said it was a job. I reminded him of the $25 he owed the office. He said he would come over there, but he never did.

Mr. LIEBELER. . . . Can you tell us what month that was, approximately?

Mr. ANDREWS. Summertime. Before July. I think the last time would be around -- the last could have been, I guess, around the 10th of July.

Mr. LIEBELER. . . . My understanding is, of course, that you are here under subpoena and subpoena duces tecum, asking you to bring with you any records that you might have in your office indicating or reflecting Oswald's visit, and my understanding is that you indicated that you were unable to find any such records.

Mr. ANDREWS. Right. My office was rifled shortly after I got out of the hospital, and I talked with the FBI people. We couldn't find anything prior to it. Whoever was kind enough to mess my office up, going through it, we haven't found anything since.

Mr. LIEBELER. You have caused a thorough search to be made of your office for these records?

Mr. ANDREWS. Yes.

Mr. LIEBELER. You haven't been able to come up with anything?

Mr. ANDREWS. No.

Mr. LIEBELER. Did there come a time after the assassination when you had some further involvement with Oswald, or at least an apparent involvement with Oswald; as I understand it?

Mr. ANDREWS. No; nothing at all with Oswald. I was in Hotel Dieu [Hospital], and the phone rang and a voice I recognized as Clay Bertrand asked me if I would go to Dallas and Houston -- I think -- Dallas, I guess, wherever it was that this boy was being held -- and defend him. I told him I was sick in the hospital. If I couldn't go, I would find somebody that could go.

Mr. LIEBELER. You told him you were sick in the hospital and what?

Mr. ANDREWS. That's where I was when the call came through. It came through the hospital switchboard. I said that I wasn't in shape enough to go to Dallas and defend him and I would see what I could do.

Mr. LIEBELER. Now what can you tell us about this Clay Bertrand? You met him prior to that time?

Mr. ANDREWS. I had seen Clay Bertrand once some time ago, probably a couple of years. He's the one who calls in behalf of gay kids normally, either to obtain bond or parole for them. I would assume that he was the one that originally sent Oswald and the gay kids, these Mexicanos, to the office because I had never seen those people before at all. They were just walk-ins.

Mr. LIEBELER. You say that you think you saw Clay Bertrand some time about 2 years prior to the time you received this telephone call that you have just told us about?

Mr. ANDREWS. Yes; he is mostly a voice on the phone.

Mr. LIEBELER. What day did you receive the telephone call from Clay Bertrand asking you to defend Oswald?

Mr. ANDREWS. I don't remember. It was a Friday or a Saturday.

Mr. LIEBELER. Immediately following the assassination?

Mr. ANDREWS. I don't know about that. I didn't know. Yes; I did. I guess I did because I was -- they told me I was squirrelly in the hospital.

Mr. LIEBELER. You had pneumonia; is that right?

Mr. ANDREWS. Yes.

Mr. LIEBELER. And as I understand it, you were under heavy sedation at that time in connection with your treatment for pneumonia?

Mr. ANDREWS. Yes; this is what happened: After I got the call, I called my secretary at her home and asked her if she had remembered Lee Harvey Oswald's file. Of course, she didn't remember, and I had to tell her about all the kooky kids. She thought we had a file in the office. . . .

Mr. LIEBELER. . . . Do you have a picture in your mind of this Clay Bertrand?

Mr. ANDREWS. . . . Oh, I ran up on that rat about 6 weeks ago and he spooked, ran in the street. I would have beat him with a chain if I had caught him.

Mr. LIEBELER. . . . Let me ask you this: When I was down here in April, before I talked to you about this thing, and I was going to take your deposition at that time, but we didn't make arrangements, in your continuing discussions with the FBI, you finally came to the conclusion that Clay Bertrand was a figment of your imagination?

Mr. ANDREWS. . . . That's what the Feebees put on. I know that the two Feebees are going to put these people on the street looking, and I can't find the guy, and I am not going to tie up all the agents on something that isn't that solid. I told them, "Write what you want, that I am nuts. I don't care." They were running on the time factor, and the hills were shook up plenty to get it, get it, get it. I couldn't give it to them. I have been playing cops and robbers with them. You can tell when the steam is on. They are on you like the plague. They never leave. They are like cancer. Eternal. . . . It was my decision if they were to stay there. If I decide yes, they stay. If I decide no, they go. So I told them, "Close your file and go some place else." That's the real reason why it was done. I don't know what they wrote in the report, but that's the real reason.

Mr. LIEBELER. Now subsequent to that time, however, you actually ran into Clay Bertrand in the street?

Mr. ANDREWS. About 6 weeks ago. I am trying to think of the name of this bar. That's where this rascal bums out. I was trying to get past him so I could get a nickel in the phone and call the Feebees or [Secret Service Agent] John Rice, but he saw me and spooked and ran. I haven't seen him since.

Mr. LIEBELER. . . . What does this guy look like?

Mr. ANDREWS. He is about 5 feet 8 inches. Got sandy hair, blue eyes, ruddy complexion. Must weigh about 165, 170, 175. He really took off, that rascal.

Mr. LIEBELER. He recognized you?

Mr. ANDREWS. He had to because if he would have let me get to that phone and make the call, he would be in custody.

Mr. LIEBELER. You wanted to get hold of this guy and make him available to the FBI for interview, or Mr. Rice of the Secret Service?

Mr. ANDREWS. What I wanted to do and should have done is crack him in the head with a bottle, but I figured I would be a good, law-abiding citizen and call them and let them grab him, but I made the biggest mistake of the century. I should have grabbed him right there. I probably will never find him again. He has been bugging me ever since this happened.

Mr. LIEBELER. Now before you ran into Clay Bertrand in the street on this day, did you have a notion in your mind what he looked like?

Mr. ANDREWS. I had seen him before one time to recognize him.

Mr. LIEBELER. When you saw him that day, he appeared to you as he had before when you recognized him?

Mr. ANDREWS. He hasn't changed any appearance, I don't think. Maybe a little fatter, maybe a little skinnier.

Mr. LIEBELER. Now I have a rather lengthy report of an interview that Mr. Kennedy had with you on December 5, 1963, in which he reports you as stating that you had a mental picture of Clay Bertrand as being approximately 6 feet 1 inch to 6 feet 2 inches in height, brown hair, and well dressed.

Mr. ANDREWS. Yes.

Mr. LIEBELER. Now this description is different, at least in terms of height of the man, than the one you have just given us of Clay Bertrand.

Mr. ANDREWS. But, you know, I don't play Boy Scouts and measure them. I have only seen this fellow twice in my life. I don't think there is that much in the description. There may be some to some artist, but to me, there isn't that much difference. Might be for you all.

Mr. LIEBELER. I think you said he was 5 feet 8 inches before.

Mr. ANDREWS. Well, I can't give you any better because this time I was looking for the fellow, he was sitting down. I am just estimating. You meet a guy 2 years ago, you meet him, period.

Mr. LIEBELER. . . . I am at a loss to understand why you told Agent Kennedy on December 5 that he was 6 feet 1 to 6 feet 2 and now you have told us that he was 5 feet 8 when at no time did you see the man standing up.

Mr. ANDREWS. Because, I guess, the first time -- and I am guessing now --

Mr. LIEBELER. Is this fellow a homosexual, do you say?

Mr. ANDREWS. Bisexual. What they call a swinging cat.

Mr. LIEBELER. And you haven't seen him at any time since that day?

Mr. ANDREWS. I haven't seen him since.

Mr. LIEBELER. . . . Has this fellow Bertrand sent you business in the past?

Mr. ANDREWS. Prior to -- I guess the last time would be February of 1963.

Mr. LIEBELER. And mostly he refers, I think you said, these gay kids, is that right?

Mr. ANDREWS. Right. . . . I wish I could be more specific, that's all. This is my impression, for whatever it is worth, of Clay Bertrand: His connections with Oswald I don't know at all. I think he is a lawyer without a brief case. That's my opinion. He sends the kids different places. Whether this boy is associated with Lee Oswald or not, I don't know, but I would say, when I met him about 6 weeks ago when I ran up on him and he ran away from me, he could be running because he owes me money, or he could be running because they have been squeezing the quarter pretty good looking for him while I was in the hospital, and somebody might have passed the word he was hot and I was looking for him, but I have never been able to figure out the reason why he would call me, and the only other part of this thing that I understand, but apparently I haven't been able to communicate, is I called Monk Zelden on a Sunday at the N.O.A.C. and asked Monk if he would go over -- be interested in a retainer and go over to Dallas and see about that boy. . . . [W]hile I was talking with Monk, he said, "Don't worry about it. Your client just got shot." That was the end of the case. . . . [T]hat's the whole thing, but this boy Bertrand has been bugging me ever since. I will find him sooner or later.

Mr. LIEBELER. Does Bertrand owe you money?

Mr. ANDREWS. Yes; I ain't looking for him for that, I want to find out why he called me on behalf of this boy after the President was assassinated.

Mr. LIEBELER. How come Bertrand owes you money?

Mr. ANDREWS. I have done him some legal work that he has failed to pay the office for.

Mr. LIEBELER. When was that?

Mr. ANDREWS. That's in a period of years that I have -- like you are Bertrand. You call up and ask me to go down and get Mr. X out. If Mr. X doesn't pay on those kinds of calls, Bertrand has a guarantee for the payment of appearance. One or two of these kids had skipped. I had to go pay the penalty, which was a lot of trouble.

Mr. LIEBELER. You were going to hold Bertrand for that?

Mr. ANDREWS. Yes.

Mr. LIEBELER. . . . Did you just indicate that you would like to find Mr. Bertrand and he did run off? Did you see him run off?

Mr. ANDREWS. Yes; I chased him, but I couldn't go.

Mr. LIEBELER. This was when you saw him 6 weeks ago?

Mr. ANDREWS. Yes . . .

Mr. LIEBELER. He took off as soon as he saw you?

Mr. ANDREWS. No; but I was moving to go to the phone. He thought I was moving towards him.

Who was "Clay Bertrand?"

When Orleans Parish DA Jim Garrison opened his investigation into Oswald's New Orleans activities, Dean Andrews' testimony became a focal point, though still secondary to prime suspect David Ferrie. In January 1967, Life's Richard Billings asked Garrison if he knew who the mysterious "Clay Bertrand" was. Garrison told him, "His real name is Clay Shaw, but I don't think he's too important." As Ferrie was occupying Garrison's mind, the DA told his staff to "forget Shaw" (Long Island Press, May 15, 1968). Ferrie died on February 22, 1967, under circumstances some consider mysterious. Shaw was under arrest for conspiracy to assassinate the President just a week later.

Clay Shaw was a prominent New Orleans businessman and civic leader; he was a pioneer in the restoration of historic New Orleans sites, and the founder of the city's International Trade Mart. Garrison's memoir, On the Trail of the Assassins, claims that "everyone" in the French Quarter knew Shaw was "Bertrand." Nevertheless, in the two years between Shaw's arrest and trial, Garrison was unable, even with the power of subpoena, to put so much as a single witness on the stand to confirm "Bertrand's" identity.

When Andrews denied that "Bertrand" was Shaw before the Orleans Parish grand jury, Garrison indicted -- and convicted -- Andrews of perjury, which soon led to Andrews' losing his position as Assistant DA of Jefferson Parish and subsequently being disbarred. Andrews told NBC that he'd used the name "Bertrand" to protect a client, whose real name he revealed was Eugene Clair Davis.

Davis denied being "Clay Bertrand" -- he wasn't; there was no "Clay Bertrand" -- but admitted to Assistant DA James Alcock that he had indeed phoned Andrews in the hospital on November 23, 1963 to discuss the sale of an automobile (Tom Bethell diary). Andrews recalled remarking about the fame that would await the lawyer who represented the President's accused assassin. His imagination, fueled by pneumonia and sedatives, did the rest (Dean Andrews' testimony, Shaw trial).

Andrews told NBC that to his knowledge, Davis had never used the name "Clay Bertrand," but that at an event Andrews characterized as a "fag wedding reception," an acquaintance had introduced Davis to him, apparently not realizing the two were already acquainted. Davis was introduced as "Clay Bertrand." He told the Press Club of New Orleans, "Clay Shaw ain't Clay Bertrand. Years ago I was introduced to a fellow at a gay wedding reception. The boy never used the name Clay Bertrand. I was just introduced to him [sic] as Clay Bertrand" (Ibid., 57). Asked why he had "ducked the Warren Commission" as long as possible, Andrews said that he bluntly told the Commission staff, "Look, man, I don't want to talk. [If called to testify] I'm going to tell you a bunch of lies." "Will you tell them under oath?" he'd been asked. "Be my guest," he'd replied (Ibid., 58).

Edward Jay Epstein writes:

When I interviewed Andrews in June 1967, he told me that he had made up the name "'Clay Bertrand' out of solid air" to protect a friend. He explained that on the night after the assassination he received a phone call from the friend, who vaguely knew Oswald as an infrequent customer in the 'gay bar' that he owned in the French Quarter. It was this friend, Andrews said, who had recommended him to Oswald as an attorney who might help him 'fix' his 'undesirable' discharge from the Marine Corps, and now he thought Andrews 'could pick up some publicity' by appearing in Dallas as Oswald's lawyer. When the FBI became interested, Andrews explained, he invented the name 'Clay Bertrand' to divert their attention from the real person who had phoned him. When I asked why he had told a Warren Commission lawyer that he had recently seen Clay Bertrand, he replied, 'Aw, I was just putting the guy on a little'" (Epstein, The Assassination Chronicles, 196 fn.). Appearing before the grand jury, Andrews was questioned by Assistant DA James Alcock.

ALCOCK. Dean, do you know the real Clay --

ANDREWS. The man, I believe, is Gene Davis, and if you ask him, he'll call me a crocus sack of lies . . .

ALCOCK. What basis do you have [for that belief]?

ANDREWS. Helen Girt [a co-worker of Gene Davis'], back in the '50s, at the fag wedding reception I was telling you all about, introduced me to Davis [sic] as Clay Bertrand.

ALCOCK. . . . Have you talked to this man on the phone recently?

ANDREWS. I have talked to him almost every day. I have known him a long time.

ALCOCK. Your testimony now is that this is the man who sent the clients to your office? Talked to you on behalf of homosexuals?

ANDREWS. This is the man who sent clients to my office; sometimes they were fags, sometimes they weren't.

ALCOCK. Is this the man who called you in the hospital and asked you to represent Lee Harvey Oswald?

ANDREWS. This is the man I believed called me . . . what you all believe is your affair.

A JUROR. In your mind, this is Clay Bertrand? The man who called you down through the years representing homosexuals?

ANDREWS. No, he didn't do it that way. That's the way I said it, put it into the Warren Commission Report -- everybody picks it up from there and goes with it. I never said it other than in the Warren Report. . . .

ASSISTANT DA RICHARD V. BURNES. I asked you if you ever heard from Clay Bertrand after the time you were called about representing Lee Oswald in the assassination, and the answer was, "I ain't seen hide nor hair of him since."

ANDREWS. Not from Clay Bertrand, 'cause I call him Gene Davis. You are right. I told you that, and I ain't since hide nor hair of him nor heard from Clay Bertrand . . . I call him Gene. I was introduced to the man ["Bertrand"] one time (Ibid., 58-59).

"If [Garrison's] case is based on the fact that Clay L. Shaw is Clay Bertrand," he continued, "it's a joke." He added, "I may have said a thousand times one thing, but the one time I say Clay Shaw ain't Clay Bertrand clears me of all the rest. . . . It doesn't make any difference to me if I'm convicted. . . . Clay Shaw is not Clay Bertrand; indict me if you want to" (Ibid., 66-66).

They did, and he was duly convicted of three counts of perjury. Garrison's right-hand man, Assistant DA James Alcock, summed up the state's position when he declared it was "obvious that this man won't tell the world the truth on the matter" (Ibid., 66). Andrews' response was unequivocal: "So I lied. I committed perjury. I don't know what I said. The man is Eugene Davis" (Ibid., 67).

Garrison told New Orleans States-Item reporter David L. Chandler, "Andrews is lying because of his conflicting statements to the Warren Commission and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Why is Andrews lying? Obviously to protect his client. Who are his clients? Homosexuals. Therefore he is lying to protect a prominent homosexual. Who would that be? Clay Bertrand -- Clay Shaw." He added that Shaw had a house in Hammond, Louisiana, which was significant because, he explained, Hammond was the site of a secret military base where Oswald had (allegedly) trained. "Lastly," Garrison concluded, "Clay Shaw speaks Spanish," as did a number of "Clay Bertrand's" clients (Ibid., 61). Lest one think Garrison was joking, it should be noted that the DA cited essentially the same "evidence" of Shaw's dual life as Bertrand (and presumably his involvement in the assassination as well) to Saturday Evening Post reporter James Phelan (see Phelan's Scandals, Scamps & Scalawags).

How had Garrison determined "Clay Bertrand" to be Clay Shaw?

Garrison's memoir, On the Trail of the Assassins, reports that in 1967 his staff "began encountering one person after another in the French Quarter" who confirmed that Shaw was "Clay Bertrand," but "no one would authorize the use of his name or even sign a statement to be kept confidential."

The reader should note that this is the same DA who spent three years raging at federal and state government officials whom he alleged were sabotaging his case against Shaw by refusing to extradite witnesses of dubious relevance from California, Texas, Florida, and elsewhere. He tried to issue an arrest warrant for a woman in Nebraska who refused to return to New Orleans for questioning. (The woman, Sandra Moffett, told reporters she had no information relevant to Garrison's case.) Yet right in Orleans Parish he says his team had found "one person after another in the French Quarter" who affirmed that Shaw and "Bertrand" were the same man, and he would have us believe he refused to subpoena a single one of these alleged witnesses to testify.

Garrison writes: ". . . Finally we located a young man named William Morris who had met Shaw at the Masquerade Bar on St. Louis Street in the French Quarter. He had been introduced to Shaw by Gene Davis [emphasis added], who worked at the Court of Two Sisters. Davis had introduced Shaw to Morris as 'Clay Bertrand.'"

No William Morris testified at the Clay Shaw trial, and Morris' name appears nowhere else in Garrison's memoirs; he seems to simply drop off the face of the earth. There is also no mention in Garrison's book of Andrews' allegation regarding Gene Davis as "Bertrand." Davis' name does not seem to have entered the case until introduced by Dean Adams Andrews, Jr. in June 1968. Andrews testified at his perjury hearing on June 28, 1968, that Davis was "Bertrand."

It turns out that Morris was conveniently interviewed on July 12, 1967, by Bill Boxley and William Martin of Garrison's staff. Garrison advocate Bill Davy believes that Morris was not put on the stand because he was "an unsavory character" (Newsgroup post by Jim Hargrove, January 7, 1999). We will soon encounter some of the witnesses that Garrison believed "savory" enough to testify. They may not help dispel the impression that Morris' alleged story is highly suspect.

A February 25, 1967, memorandum from investigator Lou Ivon to Garrison reports that despite Ivon's best efforts, "I'm almost positive from my contacts that they would have known or heard of a Clay Bertrand. The information I received was negative results."

The memo goes on to report about a February 22, 1967, meeting with a contact named "Bubbie" Pettingill, "whom I had earlier contacted about Clay Bertrand. He stated that Dean Andrews admitted to him that Clay Bertrand never existed."

Researcher Jerry Shinley unearthed a long-forgotten item from a New Orleans Times-Picayune August 13, 1967, article on Dean Andrews' perjury trial: a statement from Dean Andrews' investigator Prentiss Davis, who "volunteered the information that Andrews frequently used the name Bertrand to mask the identity of whomever he might be referring to . . ."

And last but not least, Dean Andrews told researcher Harold Weisberg some years later that "Bertrand" had been Clay Shaw after all. "You understand," Weisberg cautions, "Andrews was the biggest liar that ever lived" (Author's interview with Harold Weisberg, December 3, 1998).

Isn't there anyone who could credibly link the name "Clay Bertrand" to Clay Shaw?

Prosecution witness Mrs. Jessie Parker had been working at the Eastern Airlines VIP Room in New Orleans when she said a man signed the guest register as "Clay Bertrand." That man she identified as Clay Shaw. She offered the relevant page from the register, which was signed "Clay Bertrand" at the very bottom. Shaw's lawyers pointed out that the signature appeared to be added after the fact to the very end of the page. At the trial they offered handwriting analyst Charles Appel, Jr., who displayed blow-ups of Shaw's signature and the "Bertrand" signature to the jury. He testified that the signatures had been written by two different people, pointing out numerous features of the handwriting upon which he based his analysis.

The court also heard testimony from Arthur Q. Davis, the person whose name appears on the VIP Room's guest register just prior to that of "Clay Bertrand." He was questioned by defense attorney Irvin Dymond.

DYMOND. (Exhibiting book to witness) Mr. Davis, I show you a book which has been offered in evidence and marked for identification "State-55." Directing your attention to the bottom of the page covering the dates between December 12 and December 14, 1966, I ask you whether your signature appears therein.

DAVIS. . . . The second signature from the bottom of the page is my signature.

DYMOND. And what is the name that appears directly below your signature, Mr. Davis?

DAVIS. Clay Bertrand.

DYMOND. Now, Mr. Davis, do you recall having been at Moisant Airport on December 14, 1966?

DAVIS. Yes . . .

DYMOND. Are you acquainted with this Defendant Clay Shaw?

DAVIS. Yes.

DYMOND. How long have you known him, sir?

DAVIS. Oh, I would think in excess of ten years.

DYMOND. Did you or did you not see Mr. Shaw in the VIP Room of Eastern Airlines on that date, December 14, 1966?

DAVIS. No, I did not.

On cross-examination, James Alcock asked Davis approximately how long he remained in the VIP Room that day. Davis replied, "Well, that is quite some time ago, but if I had to guess -- I usually get out to the airport a little early and I use that room to make phone calls, there is a private phone -- I would guess anywhere from 20 minutes to a half hour."

"And you don't recall seeing anyone sign the book while you were there, other than yourself? Is that correct?"

Davis confirmed this was correct.

Clay Shaw testified that he was not in the Eastern Airlines VIP Room at this time, did not ever use the Eastern Airlines VIP Room, and had not himself flown with a commercial airline in many years, something the state could not disprove.

The defense raised the question of how exactly Mrs. Parker had become a witness for the prosecution. In On the Trail of the Assassins, Jim Garrison writes, "the lady who had been the hostess at the VIP room for Eastern Airlines called us. She had been on duty when a man . . . signed the register as 'Clay Bertrand'" (p. 99, 1988 paperback ed.). What did Mrs. Parker tell Irvin Dymond at Shaw's trial?

Mrs. PARKER. They contacted me. . . . I was frightened. I didn't know what [they] wanted.

The reason they contacted her was not made clear.

Mrs. Parker testified that she was first contacted during the summer of 1967. In his book, Garrison says Parker was one of the witnesses ready to testify against Shaw before his March 1 arrest (Ibid.). Who is correct? Mrs. Parker testified that she recognized Shaw as "Bertrand" when she saw him on television following his arrest. Like alleged witness William Morris (Ibid.), of whom there seems to be no trace, here is one less witness Garrison had when he arrested Shaw. What did he have then, besides Perry Russo?

Garrison's staff brought Mrs. Parker to court during jury selection for Shaw's trial and asked if she recognized Shaw as "Bertrand."

DYMOND. Is it a fact you refused to identify him that day?

Mrs. PARKER. Yes.

DYMOND. Isn't it a fact when they threatened you with a lie detector test, you then identified him?

Mrs. PARKER. Yes.

("They didn't threaten me," she added, "they asked me.")

The next day the prosecution brought forth one Elizabeth McCarthy, a handwriting analyst with no formal training. She promptly pronounced the "Clay Bertrand" signature to be the handiwork of Clay Shaw, offering vague stylistic criteria which the jury found underwhelming compared to Charles Appel's detailed presentation. Under cross-examination McCarthy hardly bolstered the prosecution's credibility.

DYMOND. Mrs. McCarthy, when were you first retained on this case?

McCARTHY. I believe it was yesterday.

DYMOND. Yesterday?

McCARTHY. Yes.

DYMOND. And when did you arrive here in New Orleans?

McCARTHY. Last night.

DYMOND. And when did you commence your comparative study of these documents?

McCARTHY. Last night. . . . I didn't have the originals, I had photographs at my hotel.

DYMOND. When was the first time that you saw the originals?

McCARTHY. This morning.

DYMOND. Now, did you bring any photographic equipment with you when you came down?

McCARTHY. No. I wouldn't have time to make them. I understood the trial was ending.

As Milton Brener has pointed out: "There was still another expert who examined the guest register, though he was not called to testify. Gilbert Fortier, one of the best-known examiners of questioned documents in this part of the country, had examined the book and known specimens of Shaw's handwriting at Garrison's request. Fortier is the expert most frequently called by the State to give testimony as to handwriting comparisons in cases involving forged or other questioned documents. In addition, he appears in other courts throughout this area undoubtedly more frequently than any other expert in the field. After examining the questioned guest book, Fortier conferred with Garrison. He was not called as a witness" (Milton Brener, The Garrison Case). In the prosecution's closing remarks, Assistant DA James Alcock expressed his doubt that Shaw would sign the name "Clay Bertrand" in his usual handwriting anyway. The jury was not impressed.

Webmaster John McAdams notes the improbability of the notion that Shaw -- if he was "Bertrand" -- would still be using the alias in December 1966 -- two years after it was referenced in the Warren Report.

The prosecution offered a mail carrier, James Hardiman, who claimed to have delivered roughly half a dozen letters to "Clem Bertrand" at the residence of Shaw's friend James Biddison, where Shaw received mail at times. Hardiman said that none of these letters were returned as being wrongly addressed. This allegation is based solely on his memory of the name "Clem Bertrand." Let's see how Hardiman's memory is represented by his testimony at the Clay Shaw trial, as he is cross-examined by attorney Irvin Dymond.

DYMOND. . . . Now, did you say these envelopes were addressed to Clay Bertrand or Clem Bertrand?

HARDIMAN. Clem, C-L-E-M. . . . Mr. Clem Bertrand, 1414 Chartres, New Orleans, Louisiana.

DYMOND. . . . Now . . . have you had other occasions to deliver other mail there which was addressed to people other than Mr. Jeff Biddison?

HARDIMAN. That is right, I have.

DYMOND. . . . Have you ever delivered any mail there addressed to Mr. Fred Tate?

HARDIMAN. I have.

DYMOND. You are sure about that?

HARDIMAN. (The witness nodded affirmatively.)

DYMOND. . . . Have you ever delivered any mail to that address, that is 1414 Chartres Street, addressed to a Mr. Cliff Bordreaux

HARDIMAN. Yes.

DYMOND. Are you sure about that?

HARDIMAN. I have seen that name before.

DYMOND. Not only have you seen that name before but you have delivered mail to 1414 Chartres Street addressed to him, is that correct?

HARDIMAN. Yes.

DYMOND. Could you tell me approximately when that was? I wouldn't expect you to be exact.

HARDIMAN. That hasn't been too long ago.

DYMOND. It hasn't been? About how long ago?

HARDIMAN. Let's see. . . . I don't know if I had any since after the 1st of the year or not, but it is not regular, but I do get mail for that name.

DYMOND. For Mr. Cliff Boudreaux at 1414 Chartres Street? Is that right?

HARDIMAN. Yes.

DYMOND. Now, Mr. Hardiman, if I told you I just made that name up, would your testimony be the same?

HARDIMAN. Well, I wouldn't know. How would I know who made up a name and sent something there?

DYMOND. But still you say you delivered Cliff Boudreaux mail to 1414 Chartres Street?

HARDIMAN. Maybe you have made it up, but I have delivered Boudreaux mail there, too. Now, maybe the "Cliff" might not be correct.

DYMOND. . . . Well, now, what special thing made you remember the name Cliff Bordeaux?

HARDIMAN. Nothing special. I mean I see the name and you refer my memory to it. I mean I wouldn't -- like you said, you could have made it up, maybe you did, but I have delivered mail.

DYMOND. To 1414 Chartres Street to Cliff Boudreaux, right?

(The witness did not respond.)

DYMOND. How about Sherman Shroeder? Have you ever delivered any mail to 1414 Chartres Street addressed to a person by that name?

HARDIMAN. That I can't recall.

DYMOND. I will ask you the same question concerning Lee Begnard.

HARDIMAN. Begnan or Begnard?

DYMOND. Begnard, B-E-G-N-A-R-D.

HARDIMAN. That is another name I can't recall. I have delivered quite a few different names in there, but I can't recall everybody's name. Maybe I haven't. Maybe I didn't handle as many pieces of mail, that is why I don't recall the name.

DYMOND. But you do not recall that name, is that right?

HARDIMAN. I don't recall that name, no.

DYMOND. Have you ever delivered any mail to 1414 Chartres Street addressed to a Mr. Charles Bunker, B-U-N-K-E-R?

HARDIMAN. That is another name I can't recall. . . . you have to push mail in that case pretty fast in the morning, you don't have a chance to be looking at the full names. . . .

DYMOND. . . . Could you tell me approximately the last date on which you delivered a letter addressed to Cliff Boudreaux to 1414 Chartres Street?

HARDIMAN. No, I couldn't say that, give you a date on it, because I --

DYMOND. Has it been within the last six months?

HARDIMAN. If I had mail for Cliff Bordeaux, it would be less than six months.

DYMOND. Less than six months. . . . That is all.

Given this display of Mr. Hardiman's memory, it is unlikely that any mail was delivered to a "Clem Bertrand" (or even a "Clay Bertrand," for that matter) at James Biddison's residence. It is doubtful that any "Clem Bertrand" ever existed outside the imagination of a witness named Perry Raymond Russo, whom we will meet shortly.

Why would Hardiman have come forward with this story, then? Author James Kirkwood points out that he "later learned that Hardiman may have been in touch with the District Attorney's office regarding other matters between the time of the preliminary hearing and this current trial. Hardiman's son, Terry Gerard Hardiman, 20 years old, had been arrested in April of 1968 on a theft charge. As of March 1970, no action on the boy's case appeared to have been taken by the District Attorney's office" (Kirkwood, American Grotesque, 308).

One of the most contentious items of evidence -- at the trial and today -- is the arrest record that Shaw signed the day he was booked. In the space for aliases used, the card reads "Clay Bertrand," which Officer Aloysius Habighorst said Shaw had told him in response to his routine query. Shaw adamantly denied saying this, and in fact insisted under oath that Habighorst had asked him not a single question at the time, and that the card was blank when he signed it. This, he said, he'd been informed he had to do if he wanted to be able to post bail. Shaw also insisted he'd wanted his lawyer present at that time and was bluntly denied this request. When Garrison's team protested that there was no law that a defendant must have counsel present during the booking procedure, the court was unmoved.

James Kirkwood's book American Grotesque has a detailed account of the testimony about Shaw's booking and supposed admission of the use of the "Clay Bertrand" alias.

Judge Haggerty curtly refused to enter the disputed document into evidence. This is cited by Garrison's defenders as an example of the interference the prosecution routinely met with during the investigation and the trial. This view fails to take into account the entire day consumed in taking testimony about the questioned item, including the strikingly pointed questioning of Sgt. Jonas J. Butzman.

DYMOND. Sergeant Butzman, were you a member of the New Orleans Police Department on March 1, 1967?

BUTZMAN. Yes, sir, I was.

DYMOND. Where were you assigned at that time?

BUTZMAN. I was assigned over here by the Central Lockup, sir.

DYMOND. Were you present in the Central Lockup when this Defendant Clay Shaw was delivered to the Central Lockup by Mr. Louis Ivon?

BUTZMAN. Yes, sir, I was.

DYMOND. . . . What were your orders?

BUTZMAN. I was assigned to guard, to watch him.

DYMOND. . . . Now, Sergeant Butzman, did you comply with these orders?

BUTZMAN. Yes, sir, I did.

DYMOND. Approximately how close did you stay to Mr. Shaw during the time that he was in Central Lockup?

BUTZMAN. I stayed about five or ten feet, you know, close around that.

DYMOND. . . . Do you recall having left the B of I [Bureau of Identification] room while he was still in there?

BUTZMAN. No, sir, I don't recall it, no.

DYMOND. . . . Now, during the time that Mr. Shaw was in the B of I room, did you at any time hear him questioned by Officer Habighorst?

BUTZMAN. Yes, sir, I did.

DYMOND. What was the nature of this questioning?

BUTZMAN. I think Officer Habighorst asked him, "Is this the correct spelling of your name?"

DYMOND. . . . Did you ever hear the name Clay Bertrand mentioned?

BUTZMAN. No, sir, I did not.

DYMOND. Did you ever hear this Defendant questioned concerning any aliases?

BUTZMAN. (The witness shook his head negatively.)

The defense quite rightly barred the arrest record from the evidence. The full day's testimony on the document is available as part of LMP's CD-ROM of the Shaw trial transcript. For information, visit:

http://homepages.waymark.net/~lmp

This writer certainly finds it odd that Shaw would have so willingly offered this alleged alias to Officer Habighorst when he had always previously denied using it and would continue to deny doing so after he was booked, all through the trial, and until his dying day. This writer also finds it strange that Shaw would so eagerly divulge this most significant alleged alias while failing to mention the pseudonym under which he was a published playwright: "Allen White." The only name listed as an alias on the arrest record was "Clay Bertrand."

Researcher Jerry Shinley has also pointed out that the arrest record lists Shaw's place of birth as New Orleans, though Shaw was actually born in Kentwood, Louisiana, some 75 miles from the Big Easy. Is Shaw likely to have forgotten where he was born? And if that information was filled in by someone besides Shaw, it strongly suggests that the "Clay Bertrand" alias was too.

Is Shaw likely to have divulged the name even if he were "Clay Bertrand?"

Is there any new evidence to help us identify "Clay Bertrand?"

A February 25, 1967 FBI memorandum reports that informant 1309-C received information the previous day that the individual using the name "Clay Bertrand" is actually Clay Shaw. The informant states he called Louis Ivon at the DA's office with this information. The memo reports that Aaron Kohn, managing director of the Metropolitan Crime Commission, said on February 24, 1967, that he had received information that "Clay Bertrand" and Clay Shaw were one and the same. Kohn advised he picked this information up from one of 89 news sources that contacted him on February 24, 1967. Kohn advised that he also received information that there is a man named Clay Bertrand living in Lafayette, Louisiana, a real estate broker that lived in New Orleans about the time of the assassination of President Kennedy. Kohn was unable to supply additional information. It is not clear from this memo whether Kohn was 1309-C's source, or whether both happened to report the information simultaneously (NARA #124-10050-10395). The identity of informant 1309-C remains classified; Kohn is well known to have condemned Garrison's prosecution of Shaw from the start.

The information in the memorandum remains unconfirmed; there is no indication that Garrison's office attempted to induce or subpoena the unnamed informant into testifying at Shaw's trial, and despite the differing accounts of how the DA's office identified "Bertrand" as Shaw, none of the versions refers to Lou Ivon receiving a tip by telephone. Whatever the origin of this report, Lou Ivon wrote a memorandum the very next day informing Garrison he could find no trace of a "Clay Bertrand" in New Orleans.

Shaw later told Penthouse magazine that "if there was anyone in New Orleans who would have difficulty using an alias, it would be me. . . . For about 17 or 18 years I had been managing director of the International Trade Mart here and in that capacity I was in the public eye a great deal. I was on television quite often and my picture had been in the local papers. I attended many civic affairs, luncheons, meetings. In addition, I'm a highly recognizable fellow. I'm rather outsized -- 6 ft 4 inches tall -- and I have a shock of prematurely grey hair that is almost white. In a town of this size, where I had made perhaps 500 speeches and knew literally thousands of people, the idea that I would go around here trying to use an alias is utterly fantastic."

Whether or not Clay Shaw was "Clay Bertrand," and whether or not "Bertrand" even existed as the "lawyer without a briefcase" who referred business to Andrews, the most incriminating act ever ascribed to him by Dean Adams Andrews was a phone call to obtain legal counsel for Lee Harvey Oswald. Thus, the most one might infer about "Bertrand" is an association between "Bertrand" and Oswald, but even this is only hearsay.

Nevertheless, this was the keystone upon which the entire Shaw prosecution was erected: an inferred relationship between a person who may or may not exist -- who IF he exists may or may not be Clay Shaw -- and the accused assassin of JFK, a man there is no firm evidence Clay Shaw ever met.

Clay Shaw: Assassin or Fall Guy?

There were two witnesses who testified that they overheard Shaw discussing a plan to kill the President with David Ferrie, an early suspect in the Garrison probe, at two separate times and places. Perry Raymond Russo was a friend of Ferrie's who came forward following Ferrie's February 22, 1967, death. According to Assistant DA Andrew Sciambra's memorandum of his initial February 25, 1967, interview with Russo at Russo's Baton Rouge home, Russo claimed that Ferrie had often spoken of killing the President, whom he allegedly loathed for his policies regarding Cuba, particularly vis-a-vis JFK's failure to support the invasion at the Bay of Pigs.

When shown a photograph of Clay Shaw by Sciambra, Russo said that he'd seen "this man twice. The first time was when he pulled into Ferrie's service station to get his car fixed. Shaw was the person who was sitting in the compact car talking with Ferrie. He remembers seeing him again at the Nashville Street Wharf when he went to see JFK speak. He said he particularly remembers this guy because he was apparently a queer. It seems that instead of looking at JFK speak, Shaw kept turning around and looking at all the young boys in the crowd."

It would later be determined, at Shaw's trial, that Shaw was not the individual in question at the Nashville Street Wharf, and it would also be pointed out that Ferrie did not own a service station until 1964, prompting the question as to whether two assassination conspirators would be seen together in public following the assassination.

Russo described a roommate of Ferrie's, whose name he didn't know, as having "sort of dirty blond hair and a husky beard which appeared to be a little darker than his hair. . . . a typical beatnik, extremely dirty, with his hair all messed up, his beard unkept [sic], a dirty T-shirt on, and either blue jeans or khaki pants on. He . . . wore white tennis shoes which were cruddy and had on no socks."

Sciambra showed Russo a photo of Lee Harvey Oswald, and Russo "began shaking his head and said that he doesn't know if he should say what he's thinking. . . . He then said that the picture of Lee Harvey Oswald was the person that Ferrie had introduced to him as his roommate. He said the only thing that doesn't make him stand up and say that he is sure beyond the shadow of any doubt is the fact that the roommate was always so cruddy and had a bushy beard. He then drew a beard on the picture of Oswald and said this was Ferrie's roommate."

Lee Harvey Oswald was always clean-shaven, his family, wife, friends, and acquaintances agree. There is not a single photograph in existence of Oswald with a beard. The closest thing to it is his New Orleans mug shot of August 9, 1963, which shows a barely perceptible bit of stubble on his chin and a wispy hint of a mustache.

Sciambra reported, "Russo said the more we talk the more comes back to me and he said that the name Leon really rings a bell." Russo suggested that Sciambra draw a beard on the photo of Oswald, and show it to Ferrie friends such as Kenny Carter, Tim Kershenstine, Niles Peterson and Al Landry, whom he believed could confirm that Oswald had been Ferrie's roommate. Needless to say, none of them could. In all likelihood, Russo was thinking of Ferrie's onetime roommate, James Lewallen, as even Russo once admitted was possible.

A few weeks later, Russo affirmed to journalist James Phelan and photographer Matt Herron that Sciambra's memorandum of this February 25 interview was an accurate reflection of what had been said in Baton Rouge: that Russo had said he'd seen Clay Shaw twice, that he had heard Ferrie threaten JFK, and that he suspected that Lee Harvey Oswald -- a physically "cruddy" individual with a "bushy beard" -- might have been introduced to him as Ferrie's roommate.

Later, Russo and Sciambra would testify under oath that much more was said at this interview, but omitted from the memorandum. They also would claim that the memo should have noted three occasions that Russo saw Shaw, not two. The full text of the memorandum of the February 25, 1967, interview is posted at:

http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/russo2.txt

Two days later, after being questioned extensively about Lee Harvey Oswald, Clay Shaw, and a mysterious white-haired gentleman named "Clay Bertrand," Perry Raymond Russo underwent the first of several procedures that Jim Garrison claimed had been utilized to "objectify" Russo's testimony. In the emergency room operating ward of Mercy Hospital, coroner Nicholas Chetta administered to Russo a dose of sodium Pentothal -- so-called "truth serum."

[Russo] recalled lying on a table, the needle inserted into his right arm, as a "clear substance" was administered, which he thought took about ten minutes, and he felt nothing out of the ordinary. Then the Pentothal bottle was attached and Russo reacted instantly. "My head started spinning round and round -- things started closing in on me and tightening up and I started getting violent and upset." "I knew I was upset," he said. "I recall being bothered -- I didn't want to be bothered, didn't want anybody to touch me and I didn't want anybody close to me." At first "the doctors were holding me down." Then "I felt like I was kicking at them." He became violent and had to be physically restrained. "It seemed like they strapped my whole body, they strapped the right arm down and they held the left arm . . . and they strapped me around the waist and around the legs." "I just kept swinging and twisting and squirming away" and "the needle came out once, at least, maybe more." "That's when they strapped me down." "[Alvin] Oser . . . was holding me down right at the waist. He's big!" "He just physically got on top of me and I kept saying, I remember saying, 'Get away you mother fuckers, get away,' and I kicked at them and I was swinging at them" (Patricia Lambert, False Witness, 72-3). It seems miraculous that the interrogation was completed at all, but indeed it was. It was, in fact, the turning point of Garrison's "case" against Clay Shaw. Up until this time, Russo's story had centered on only David Ferrie. It should be noted that the veracity of even that story remains severely in doubt, as Russo is the only acquaintance of Ferrie's who ever accused him of threatening the life of John F. Kennedy. Either way, however, Ferrie was dead; Russo's story would have to undergo a radical change in order to be useful to the DA. By this time Russo had been shown Clay Shaw's photograph and had heard enough about him and his alleged alias to begin to make the connections his interrogators needed. He told James Phelan that the DA's staff "asked me a lot of questions and I'm a pretty perceptive guy. I was able to figure out what they wanted to know from the questions they asked" (Phelan to James Kirkwood, American Grotesque, 168). And, as would be revealed at the Shaw trial, a financial incentive had been floated for young Mr. Russo as well.

With Assistant DA Andrew Sciambra conducting the questioning, Russo again described Ferrie's roommate, "Leon," as a "very dirty" "beatnik-type guy" with a "bushy beard" and hair "all messed up." Russo reiterated that "Leon" was "extremely dirty." He recalled seeing "Leon" at Ferrie's place around September 20-25, 1963. At this session, Russo for the first time referred to Ferrie's roommate as "Oswald."

Russo denied knowing Clay Shaw, but when asked if he knew "Clay Bertrand," Russo said -- very possibly for the very first time -- that he did indeed know a "Bertrand," a man he said he had met at Ferrie's apartment. He described "Bertrand" as a "queer," and "a tall man with white kinky hair, sort of slender," and now said that "Bertrand" was the man he'd seen once at Ferrie's service station and at the Nashville Street Wharf.

Sciambra asked him "if he could remember any of the details about Clay Bertrand being up in Ferrie's apartment," and Russo described being in Ferrie's apartment with "Bertrand" and "Leon Oswald." Ferrie had told him, he said, "We are going to kill John F. Kennedy" and "it won't be long." Sciambra asked whom Ferrie had meant when he said "we," and Russo said, "I guess he was referring to the people in the room."

The full text of Sciambra's memorandum of the February 27, 1967, session is available at:

http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/russo3.txt

When the sodium Pentothal wore off, Russo forgot much of what he had said to Sciambra. That evening at dinner with Jim Garrison and journalist Richard Billings, Russo seemed puzzled when the name "Bertrand" came up. To Billings' surprise, Russo denied knowing anyone by that name. Garrison shrugged it off as a side effect of the drug (Lambert, 79-80).

The following day, Russo was brought to Clay Shaw's house by a member of the DA's staff, as Russo wanted to see Shaw in person before identifying him as the "Bertrand" he claimed had been at Ferrie's apartment. He knocked on Shaw's door, posing as a door-to-door insurance salesman. After a brief exchange with Shaw, Russo took his leave, and informed the DA's office that Shaw indeed was "Bertrand."

The following day, the same day Shaw was arrested, Russo was interrogated under the influence of hypnosis by Dr. Esmond Fatter and Andrew Sciambra ("First Hypnotic Session, Exhibit F"). Excerpts from this first transcript can be found at Lisa Pease's Real History site at a link marked, "Text culled from the transcript of Russo's second hypnosis session" [emphasis added]:

http://www.webcom.com/~lpease/collections/assassinations/jfk/russo2.htm

The reason for this discrepancy is explained below.

During this March 1 interview, under the influence of hypnosis, Russo now described -- for the first time -- a full-blown "assassination plot," involving Dave Ferrie, Ferrie's roommate "Leon," and the white-haired "Bertrand." Ferrie was still doing most of the talking, however. That would not do, not with Clay Shaw in the defendant's chair.

Russo was again hypnotized and interrogated on March 9, 1967. No transcript or report of this session is known to exist. Perry Russo told Patricia Lambert in 1994 that he may have been hypnotized as many as five times, though only the March 1 and March 12 transcripts have ever surfaced.

Russo was interrogated again under the influence of hypnosis on March 12, 1967 ("2nd Hypnotic Session, Exhibit G"). Lisa Pease's Real History site has excerpts from this second transcript at a link marked, "Text culled from the transcript of Russo's first hypnosis session" [emphasis added]:

http://www.webcom.com/~lpease/collections/assassinations/jfk/russo1.htm

Again, the reason for this discrepancy will be explained shortly.

This session was the first time Russo stated for the record that "Clem Bertrand" had been an active participant in the "assassination plot" he claimed to have overheard. By now, Russo was naturally claiming he had seen Clay Shaw on three occasions, not two.

In his 1988 memoirs, On the Trail of the Assassins, Jim Garrison claims that Russo had already told the full story of the "assassination plot" with "Clem Bertrand" and "Leon Oswald" to a reporter for the Baton Rouge State-Times: "in an interview the morning of Friday, February 24, [1967, Russo] told him about a meeting he had attended at Ferrie's apartment at which the assassination of President Kennedy had been discussed. The story appeared in the State-Times that afternoon." (Garrison, 1991 ed., 176). There is no mention whatsoever of a meeting at Ferrie's apartment, a "Leon Oswald," a "Clem Bertrand," Clay Shaw or an assassination plot. Rather, Russo's statements are consistent with Andrew Sciambra's memorandum of their initial Baton Rouge interview, discussing only David Ferrie and his alleged threatening remarks.

The entire text of reporter Bill Bankston's February 24, 1967, State-Times article can be found at:

http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/russo1.txt

Russo had also been interviewed by the Baton Rouge Morning Advocate at that time, which ran an article on February 25, the full text of which is also available at the above URL. It reports that Russo had heard David Ferrie threatening the President's life, and that, following Ferrie's death, Russo had written Jim Garrison about his recollections of Ferrie. Once again, there is no mention of a meeting at Ferrie's apartment, a "Clem Bertrand," Clay Shaw, a "Leon Oswald," Lee Harvey Oswald, or an assassination plot.

At Clay Shaw's 1969 trial, Andrew Sciambra went to great lengths to try to explain his memorandum of that February 25, 1967, interview with Russo -- specifically, why it contained no meeting, no "assassination plot," no Oswald, no "Bertrand," and no Clay Shaw. Under oath, both Sciambra and Russo said that of course they had discussed the "assassination plot" with Oswald and "Bertrand" at that time. Sciambra explained that he'd had no need to include this information in his memorandum, as by the time he got around to typing it up, he'd already discussed "Bertrand" and the "assassination plot" in a memorandum reporting Russo's February 27 sodium Pentothal session. James Phelan, on the other hand, testified that Russo had admitted to him in March 1967 that the February 25 memorandum was accurate.

Defense attorney William Wegmann questioned Andrew Sciambra about the one item of evidence that could prove that Russo had indeed mentioned "Bertrand" and an assassination plot in his original interview.

WEGMANN. Now, Mr. Sciambra, you took notes, is that correct? SCIAMBRA. I did.

WEGMANN. Where are those notes today?

SCIAMBRA. Those notes were burned.

WEGMANN. When did you burn those notes?

SCIAMBRA. Sometime after I completed the memorandum.

WEGMANN. How long after?

SCIAMBRA. Very shortly, shortly and may I explain why I burned my notes?

THE COURT. You have a perfect right to explain.

SCIAMBRA. Ever since this case began we have had tremendous problems in the District Attorney's Office trying to keep information from flowing out of the district attorney's office to others. . . . We have been trying very unsuccessfully to prevent this . . .

WEGMANN. Isn't it a fact that James Phelan subsequently, after the memorandum was submitted to Mr. Garrison, came to you and asked you for those notes?

SCIAMBRA. That is exactly right and I went to look for them and couldn't find them there.

WEGMANN. There weren't any leaks in the district attorney's office that time?

SCIAMBRA. We always had leaks in the District Attorney's office.

WEGMANN. From the very inception?

SCIAMBRA. From the inception.

WEGMANN. If you knew you had burned them why did you go look for them?

SCIAMBRA. I wanted to see if -- the main reason is I wanted to see that I had done it.

During his cross-examination, Sciambra called Phelan a "prostitute" for what he termed Phelan's misrepresentation of the facts. (He also accused Phelan of trying to bribe Russo to change his story, as well as possibly acting on behalf of the defense.) The following exchange brought Sciambra's testimony to an end. WEGMANN. You said that Phelan was a prostitute and for not having objectively reported [the facts of the case in his Saturday Evening Post article]? SCIAMBRA. That was obvious.

WEGMANN. And do you feel you objectively reported what Russo told you on February 25 in Baton Rouge?

SCIAMBRA. I reported it to the best of my ability. That would make me a sloppy memorandum writer but it doesn't make me a prostitute.

WEGMANN. What?

SCIAMBRA. Some twenty-six inaccuracies, twenty-six inconsistencies, differences between my interpretation and Perry's words.

WEGMANN. How many omissions?

SCIAMBRA. It had some omissions but the obvious omission was the fact I did not report in that memorandum that Perry had told me about meeting in Ferrie's apartment between Shaw, Ferrie and Oswald and that was the big omission and that I pointed out.

Sciambra had somehow "omitted" the prosecution's entire case. Russo initially named two witnesses who could corroborate his story. He said he'd attended the party where this "assassination plot" was hatched with his girlfriend, Sandra Moffett, and his friend, Niles "Lefty" Peterson. Peterson confirmed that he and Russo had indeed been to a party at Ferrie's home in the summer of 1963, but could recall no one resembling Clay Shaw or Lee Harvey Oswald in attendance. Moffett denied attending the party, stating in a sworn affidavit that she had never even met David Ferrie until 1965.

Nevertheless, Russo testified that Clay Shaw had conspired with David Ferrie and Lee Harvey ("Leon") Oswald to assassinate President Kennedy.

Garrison would later claim that the Shaw jury voted to acquit because "they could not find any motivation for Shaw to have participated in a conspiracy to kill Kennedy, whom he always public professed to admire. This did not surprise me. I had known from the outset that we would be unable to make Shaw's motivation clear" (Garrison, On the Trail of the Assassins, 1991 ed., 294).

Garrison was lying. Motive had never been a factor, and the prosecution had no obligation to demonstrate motive in a conspiracy case. Jury foreman Sidney Hebert summed up the jurors' actual views when he told journalist James Kirkwood, "Actually the whole case rested on the testimony of Perry Russo. And his testimony didn't prove a thing to me" (Kirkwood, American Grotesque, 508). Juror Oliver Schultz also scoffed at the idea that anyone would plot an assassination with Perry Russo lurking about: "we all had the same opinion, that it wasn't enough to convict him. As far as -- you know you had to have -- beyond a reasonable doubt. Well, to me, I still had plenty of doubts. . . . beginning with Perry Russo" (Ibid., 512).

Two years following the trial, Russo recanted his entire story in a series of tape-recorded interviews with Clay Shaw's lawyers (Lambert, 173). Two decades after that, he revived his trial testimony for Oliver Stone, who hired Russo as a consultant for his revisionist Garrison whitewash, JFK. But Russo would continue to confide to interviewers that he believed Shaw had been innocent, and had he himself been on the Shaw jury, he would have voted to acquit (Lambert, 173-4; Gerald Posner, Case Closed, 451 fn.).

An interesting sidenote to this affair concerns "a transcript of a statement Perry Russo made under hypnosis. Garrison turned this document over the House Select Committee in 1977 with a notation. Explaining why the pages were numbered oddly (one to seventeen and one to thirteen), Garrison wrote that the session was in parts because Dr. Fatter had apparently 'interposed' a 'break' or 'rest period' for Russo's benefit. He did not. Garrison's 'document' is actually two documents, the transcript of the first hypnosis session and another, which took place eleven days later. Garrison combined them, reversing their chronology, and labeled them 'A' and 'B'" (Lambert, 254-5).

The HSCA thus was led to believe that the March 12, 1967, session occurred before the March 1, 1967, session. That is why, as of this writing, Lisa Pease's Real History site has the two hypnosis sessions in the wrong order. Ms. Pease has not responded to newsgroup posts detailing Garrison's deception. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- When Perry Russo was confronted with a polygraph test, he freaked out, and admitted that he didn't know whether the man he saw at the "assassination party" was Clay Shaw.

Was there a single witness who could corroborate Russo's story? Yes and no.

Charles I. Spiesel was a last-minute addition to the prosecution's roster. He told a story suspiciously similar to Russo's, but set at a different party at a different place at different time, and minus Oswald. As Spiesel didn't know the address where the party in question had been held but swore he could locate it, it was suggested that the court follow him to this location. He led the judge, the jury, the defendant, the attorneys, and various onlookers to a location on Esplanade Avenue, where he pinpointed the location to one particular building. The prosecution took it as something of a triumph when it was revealed that Clay Shaw had once owned a similar-looking building directly next door to this one; the jury was less impressed when it was pointed out that Shaw had sold the property sixteen years earlier.

While Spiesel's testimony was questionable from the start, his credibility was utterly demolished when he was asked by the defense to discuss his $16 million lawsuit against the state of New York. Spiesel spoke at length about the suit he'd filed, alleging that the state conspired against him and harassed him, hypnotizing him repeatedly and sabotaging his income tax preparation business by placing spies in his office in the form of employee "plants" and phony customers. By his reckoning he'd been hypnotized against his will about "50 or 60" times by agents of the state. Spiesel also accused the government of using look-alikes of his relatives to infiltrate his household, and freely admitted that he fingerprinted his daughter upon her return from college to be certain of her identity.

Garrison defenders don't like to talk about Charles Spiesel; some refuse to talk about him at all, mumbling that he may have been planted by the defense or the CIA to sabotage the prosecution's case. Such an attitude might be understandable had the prosecution immediately disassociated itself from Spiesel's testimony. Instead, Assistant DA James Alcock made a point in his closing arguments to tell the jury the following:

"Gentlemen, again the State apologizes for none of its witnesses in this case, and I don't apologize at all for Mr. Charles Spiesel. Mr. Spiesel took this witness stand under oath and testified that one night he was in [a Lafayette, Louisiana bar] and he saw a man whom he thought he served in the military of the United States with. He asked this man about the ferry service, and perhaps there was a breakdown in communications, because he thought the man said something about ferry, but what he was saying was his name, 'Ferrie' -- F-e-r-r-i-e rather than f-e-r-r-y. He went back to the bar, gentlemen. Subsequent to this, this man, David Ferrie, whom he positively identified, a young male and two women asked him to go to a party in the French Quarter. He testified that David Ferrie's eyebrows were not as thick or as heavy as they appeared in the picture [in evidence]. You heard Perry Russo testify that oftentimes David Ferrie's eyebrows were not as thick as they appeared in that picture.

"You heard him also testify that there were occasions when David Ferrie's hair was not as mussed up or as unsightly looking as it was on some occasions. They went to an apartment, gentlemen, as he recalled it at the intersection of Dauphine and Esplanade Avenue in the City of New Orleans. They walked up, as he recalled it, two flights of stairs and went inside. There was a man who appeared to be the apparent host, and Mr. Spiesel positively identified that man as the Defendant before the Bar.

"And he said here something else very interesting: It was not the Defendant's apartment but rather two people he knew, I think he said teachers, I am not sure, from North Carolina. The Defendant took the stand and said that he knew many, many people in North Carolina. What are the odds, gentlemen, of Mr. Spiesel going to this party and having the host tell him that the apartment really belonged to two people from North Carolina? Fifty-to-one, since there are fifty states. During the course of the evening when the two girls left with the young man that was with David Ferrie when they first approached Mr. Spiesel in the bar, the conversation turned to President John F. Kennedy, and the sentiment was hostile and certainly anti-Kennedy. The suggestion was made that he ought to be killed. Was it made in jest? We don't know. At first, frankly, Mr. Spiesel did not take this conversation seriously. However, he did later on become somewhat alarmed. The consensus of those at the table was that the President should be shot with a high-powered rifle from some distance away. He posed the possibility of the man doing the shooting getting captured or killed before he could escape from the scene of the shooting. It is at this point apparently that the Defendant injected himself into the conversation, although I assume he must have been part of the consensus spoken about by Mr. Spiesel earlier, and he inquired of David Ferrie of the possibility of flying this man to safety after the shooting of the President.

"And again, that is something that is curious and significant, because, if you will recall the testimony of Perry Russo, the principal portion of the conversation entered into by the Defendant was that which concerned exit or availability of escape, and this is the same portion of the conversation at this party in which he injected himself at that time.

"Why does he remember the Defendant Clay Shaw and David W. Ferrie and no one else at the party? First of all, I submit, gentlemen, you have been here a long time, but if you had only been in here one day, one hour, or for ten minutes, and seen the Defendant before the Bar, he is not the type of person that you would readily forget. Because of physical stature, because of his hair and his general appearance and demeanor, Clay Shaw, gentlemen, is not easily forgotten once you had see him, and he was not forgotten by the witnesses who positively put him in the presence of Ferrie and Oswald. And there is another reason why Charles Spiesel remembered the Defendant before the Bar. You will recall he was looking for some work in the City of New Orleans. You will recall that David Ferrie volunteered to help him in this regard, volunteered to speak to this man who had a lot of pull, power or ability to help someone seeking a job, and that man was Clay Shaw, the Defendant before the Bar. You will recall that he attempted to contact the Defendant before the Bar, Clay Shaw, by telephone, but was unsuccessful.

"Although he never saw the Defendant again after he left the party until he came into this courtroom, he did, however, see David Ferrie. There were the reasons that Mr. Spiesel remembered the Defendant, his friends from North Carolina, and he remembered David W. Ferrie at that party. We went with Mr. Spiesel, gentlemen, down to the French Quarter of this city in an attempt to locate that apartment. Gentlemen, the probabilities are almost astronomical that this man could pick out an apartment house, not living in the City of New Orleans that was -- that the apartment house next to it was identical. He picked out Esplanade as one of the possible apartment houses. The very next apartment, Esplanade, which is identical in appearance on the outside, was owned at that time [sic], by the testimony of the Defendant, by the Defendant Clay Shaw. The probabilities, gentlemen, of that ever happening again are almost incalculable.

". . . Gentlemen, we are dealing here with truth, and this man was never convicted of anything in his life. This man holds a responsible job in the City of New York. This man's employer knew of the suit he had filed against the City of New York and other defendants. This man's employer knew he was coming to the City of New Orleans to testify in this case. This man permitted Charles Spiesel to leave his work and to plead his case in the Federal Court. Charles Spiesel prepares corporate and personal income tax returns. Charles Spiesel has a very responsible job. Charles Spiesel has dealt in the formulation of spin-off corporations, and this is exceedingly complex work. He told you how down here in New Orleans he formed a system for certain jukebox companies while he was down here. He told you how he was in the military service of the United States and graduated with an honorable discharge, and of his college background. And most importantly, gentlemen, he told you he had never been convicted of anything.

"And I submit, gentlemen, that Charles Spiesel told you the truth in this courtroom. The coincidence of North Carolina, the coincidence of picking out the same exterior appearance of an apartment next door to an apartment owned by the defendant [sic], are too much to overcome."

Clyde Johnson appears on the lists of "mysterious deaths." His death was in fact not at all mysterious.

One alleged witness who didn't make it to the trial was the Reverend Clyde Johnson, a Bible-thumping old-school traveling preacher who told Garrison's investigators he'd seen Clay Shaw at a Louisiana hotel. Shaw, he said, used the name "Elton Bernard," and disbursed bulging envelopes of cash to Lee Harvey Oswald, Jack Ruby, and an unidentified man of Mexican or Cuban nationality. Johnson shortly took flight along with his story.

Spiesel and Russo are the only witnesses to link Shaw with a conspiracy to assassinate the President, and even Russo admitted -- under oath -- that the event he recalled was more in the manner of a "bull session" than a conspiratorial meeting. He specifically testified that he did not believe he overheard a conspiracy in the works.

A reading of the trial transcript is necessary to appreciate the prosecution's strategy, which only one writer, James Kirkwood, seems to have noted, and which he emphasizes in his book about the trial, American Grotesque. Not only were Perry Russo and Charles Spiesel the state's only relevant witnesses to the crime for which Shaw had been charged, but the prosecution explicitly focused the jury's attention on a facet of Louisiana law that allowed a charge of criminal conspiracy to apply even to conspiracies that had not actually been committed. The DA's team stressed that the law only required that one overt act be agreed upon and committed -- for example, the defendant allegedly being overheard discussing the arrangement of an alibi on the West Coast the day of the assassination and then allegedly fulfilling this part of the agreement, even if the alleged assassination was never carried out.

Garrison apologists often claim that the case against Shaw was sabotaged by a massive federal conspiracy directed at the DA's office. This argument overlooks the fact that Garrison presented at trial precisely the evidence with which he'd indicted Shaw two years earlier. The case wasn't sabotaged; there had never been a case to begin with.

Has any new evidence come to light to support Shaw's alleged complicity in the Kennedy assassination?

In the current issue of Fair Play, Martin Shackelford writes, "In February 1967, New Orleans CIA office Chief Lloyd Ray wrote to the Director of the CIA's Domestic Contact Service: 'We believe that there is some truth in the allegation of the Garrison investigation and the matter is under a discreet and sensitive investigation by the FBI.'"

The memo does not refer explicitly to Clay Shaw. Jim Garrison made many wide-ranging allegations over the three-year span of his assassination probe. Some aspects of his investigation, such as his look into the Houma, Louisiana, munitions "burglary" (actually a successful CIA transfer of arms and munitions) involving David Ferrie, Sergio Arcacha Smith, Gordon Novel and others, may well have borne fruit had it been investigated independently of the Kennedy assassination, to which it bore no demonstrable relation. Certainly the FBI was aware of this incident. Regardless of whatever else might have been investigated by the FBI, the Bureau certainly did not develop any evidence against Clay Shaw. Ray's statement is nothing but hearsay, as emphasized by the phrase "we believe" which modifies the charge.

Shackelford also writes, "A September 1977 memo written by HSCA staff counsel Jonathan Blackmer concluded: 'We have reason to believe Shaw was heavily involved in the anti-Castro efforts in New Orleans in the 1960s and possibly one of the high-level planners or "cut out" to the planners of the assassination.'" The September 1, 1977, memo reports on an interview with none other than Jim Garrison, and the statement most likely reflects Garrison's words, as does much of the memo. For example: "Shaw was a former high ranking CIA operative in Italy, and according to Garrison, a contract employee in the New Orleans area from the late 1950's until his death in the early 1970's." Notice that Blackmer does not distinguish between the accuracy of these two statements, though he only credits the second explicitly to Garrison. Another example is, "Shaw was the "queen bee" of the homosexual element of the New Orleans operation, using the alias of "Clay or Clem Bertrand." This again would seem to represent Garrison's opinion, not Blackmer's.

Even if such views were Blackmer's, this is only hearsay from a source assumed to be authoritative. The HSCA never developed any evidence to support the assertion that Shaw was either a planner or cut-out in the assassination plot. The above quotation represents one staff member's unsupported opinion, and the reader should again note the modifiers used: "We have reason to believe" that Shaw was "possibly" one of the plotters.

In his books Betrayal and First Hand Knowledge, self-proclaimed former CIA operative Robert Morrow alleges that Shaw, aka "Alton Bernard," aka "Clyde Bertrum," plotted the assassination. His source is CIA officer Tracy Barnes, who was dead before Morrow went public with these statements. As far as can be gleaned from Morrow's writing, Barnes' allegations are again only hearsay, assuming Morrow didn't fabricate the story outright, which is hardly certain.

As of this writing, there remains no evidence that Clay Shaw and/or "Clay Bertrand" conspired to assassinate President Kennedy. If the accusation is true, the prosecution utterly failed to prove it, and no supporting evidence has surfaced in the three decades since. Conspiracy theorists associate Shaw with the assassination for one reason and one reason only -- because Jim Garrison named him as a suspect.

A Question of Perjury

When the case against Clay Shaw is questioned, a common fallback position among Garrison apologists is that Shaw perjured himself on the witness stand, and was therefore, apparently, deserving of persecution regardless of the paucity of evidence against him. But is even the allegation of perjury true?

Did Clay Shaw perjure himself when he denied knowing Lee Harvey Oswald? No; there is no evidence that Shaw knew Oswald.

Several individuals claimed to have seen Shaw and Oswald together. One was Perry Russo, whose story about Clay Shaw and "Leon Oswald" at Ferrie's apartment is taken seriously by very few.

Another was Vernon Bundy, a heroin addict who testified that he saw Shaw and Oswald together in a New Orleans park while preparing to shoot up. According to Bundy, Shaw handed Oswald what appeared to be a wad of money, a few words were exchanged, and the two men departed. Bundy testified that Oswald had dropped several yellow leaflets concerning Cuba, and that the man he saw had a slight limp, as did Shaw -- the result of a World War II back injury.

Upon inspection, Bundy's story makes no sense. He testified that he continued his preparations to shoot up despite the fact that he was concerned that the man he identified as Shaw was a police officer, because of the manner in which he was dressed. Two convicts who had shared a cell with Bundy -- John Cancler and Miguel Torres -- came forward separately to say Bundy had spoken of testifying falsely against Shaw as part of a deal with the DA's office to have his jail term shortened. On the stand Bundy denied that he'd spoken to either of the convicts, but their statements withstand scrutiny far better than Bundy's. Torres later told writer James Kirkwood that Garrison's team had attempted to bribe him into making false statements about Shaw (Kirkwood, American Grotesque, 174-5).

Recently released documents from Jim Garrison's files prove that Bundy did not make the claims about Oswald and Shaw until he'd been thoroughly coached; the original statement described individuals very unlike Shaw and Oswald, and no mention of the Cuba-related fliers later alleged to have been left at the scene of the meeting.

According to Jim Garrison, a photograph identified as being from a 1949 radio station benefit party shows Clay Shaw with David Ferrie and Lee Harvey Oswald. The facial features of the purported "Oswald" figure are overexposed and largely washed out. In first-generation copies of the photograph, "Oswald" turns out to be Winn Pierce, the host of the benefit party. (In 1949, by the way, Lee Harvey Oswald was ten years old.)

The only arguably credible witnesses to a personal relationship between Clay Shaw and Lee Harvey Oswald are four residents of Clinton, Louisiana: Corrie Collins, John Manchester, Henry Palmer and William E. Dunn, Sr. All four recalled Oswald in connection with a black Cadillac that had appeared at a CORE voter registration drive in the summer of 1963. All four identified Shaw as the driver of the car. Manchester testified that he even spoke to Shaw.

SCIAMBRA. When you asked this individual where he was from, did he say anything?

MANCHESTER. He said he was a representative of the International Trade Mart in New Orleans.

Author Patricia Lambert has unexpectedly found that the Clinton witnesses are not credible after all.

It turns out that the original informant for the Clinton story was a high-ranking member of the local Ku Klux Klan, "Exalted Cyclops" Henry Earl Palmer, who came forward to Garrison with a story that no one in Clinton, La., had ever heard before -- that Lee Harvey Oswald had applied for a job in nearby Jackson, La., had been advised to register to vote for some unfathomable reason, and had proceeded on to Clinton, where he stood in line to register at the Congress of Racial Equality voter registration drive, in the company of a local man, Estus Morgan; they were the only white men in line. Palmer would testify that he interviewed Oswald and turned him away because he was not a Clinton resident. That's not what he said in 1967, however.

Henry Earl Palmer told Dischler that "Oswald actually registered to vote and signed the register. Palmer showed them where Oswald signed his name and the signature had been erased and another name written over it. But when they turned up the next day to get a copy, Palmer told them the page was 'missing.' He showed them the book, which Dischler believes was bound in some way, and said, 'You see this is all that's left.' He couldn't or wouldn't tell them who he thought had erased the name in the first place, Dischler said, nor who he thought had removed the page" (Lambert, False Witness, 192-3).

Lambert continues, "Startled by the dramatic conflict here with Palmer's courtroom testimony (and the implications), I pressed Dischler about this. 'It looked like where Oswald had signed his name,' she stated firmly. 'You could make out the "O" and, while I was looking at the signature, Henry Earl Palmer was saying to me that "this is where Oswald signed."' I told her that Palmer didn't testify to any of that in court. (He said Oswald couldn't meet the registration requirements.) 'Someone else told me that too, she replied' (Lambert, 193).

"Apparently, someone had second thoughts about the Oswald-signed-the-register story. Henry Earl Palmer is deceased and the register has not survived -- the current registrar of voters, barber Edwin Lea McGehee, recently stated that his files contain no such book" (Lambert, 193).

Perhaps coincidentally, perhaps not, McGehee himself had testified at the Shaw trial that Lee Harvey Oswald came into his Jackson, La., barber shop one day in 1963, and that it was he who first suggested that Oswald register to vote in nearby Clinton. Today it seems almost certain that Oswald was never in Jackson or Clinton.

Henry Palmer had one person who corroborated his story about Oswald appearing at the CORE drive: fellow Klansman John Manchester, who also recalled Oswald arriving with Estus Morgan (Lambert, 194-5).

Could anyone else verify the story? Garrison's office was steered towards CORE worker Corrie Collins. Collins recalled a local man named Estus Morgan arriving at the CORE drive in a black car with another local whose name he didn't know. The two men got out and stood in line to register; they were the only white men at the drive. A CORE worker named Andrew Dunn also remembered a black car pulling up with two white men: Estus Morgan, whom Dunn knew personally, and another man. Andrew Dunn was not called to testify (Lambert 196, 323 fn.).

Corrie Collins' statement was given to Garrison investigator Anne Hundley Dischler in 1967. Mrs. Dischler was able to identify the man with Morgan without much difficulty; he was a Jackson, La., resident named Winslow Foster. Dischler was about to interview Mr. Foster and close the Clinton case when Garrison suddenly took her off the Kennedy investigation and brought in one of his right-hand men, Assistant DA Andrew "Moo Moo" Sciambra (Lambert, 194-7).

Sciambra was good with witnesses. For example, he was responsible for helping to "develop" Perry Russo's story, and he was later responsible for sinking it when the Shaw jury found him unconvincing as he tried to explain how he had written up a summary of his initial Baton Rouge interview with Russo and somehow "omitted" the alleged main subject of that interview -- the "assassination plot" between Ferrie, one "Clem Bertrand" and one "Leon Oswald" at Ferrie's apartment. He also erred in saying that Russo believed he'd seen Shaw twice in his life when he'd "meant" to say three times -- once allegedly at a JFK speech, once allegedly speaking with David Ferrie at a filling station and once allegedly plotting to assassinate President John F. Kennedy. Sciambra's memorandum says Russo reported two Shaw sightings -- at the JFK speech and the filling station (both discredited at the Shaw trial).

So Sciambra was clearly the man to "develop" the Clinton story, and develop it he did. First he had to gather some corroboration. This he had trouble doing. He showed photos of Oswald, Ferrie, Shaw and even Guy Banister to approximately two hundred locals; no one seemed to remember the trio or quartet. But he was making progress with Collins, who by January 1968 was now convinced that it was Lee Harvey Oswald who had arrived in a black car and stood in line to register (Lambert 191-2, 197).

Problem was, Garrison wasn't trying Oswald; he was trying Shaw. But Collins looked at the photos of Shaw and Ferrie yet again on January 31, 1968, and he could only say that he'd seen Ferrie somewhere before in town, while Shaw didn't look especially familiar, but maybe he'd seen him around somewhere. Collins was a young black man who lived in Clinton alongside folks like "Exalted Cyclops" Palmer and his fellow Klansman, Town Marshal John Manchester. Collins was slowly getting the picture, as would fellow CORE worker William E. Dunn, Sr. (We wouldn't want any harmful "acts of God" befalling little William E. Dunn, Jr., now would we? Lord knows the Klan of 1968 would never stoop to such things in the deep south.) Collins also coincidentally worked at the nearby hospital where Oswald supposedly applied for a job -- despite only being remembered later by one worker, plus one other who said she'd seen his application, which had gone missing by 1964. Other hospital workers were shocked in 1967 to hear that JFK's accused assassin had applied for a job at the hospital; they'd never heard that before, nor did the administrators remember seeing Oswald's application (Lambert, 187-97).

Palmer and Manchester didn't remember anyone like Ferrie or Shaw originally, but that changed soon enough. Without Shaw in their story, after all, it was of no use to Garrison. By the 1969 trial, Collins, Dunn, Palmer and Manchester all miraculously agreed: Only one white man got out of the black car; his name was not Estus Morgan or Winslow Foster but Lee Harvey Oswald; also in the car was a distinctive man who indisputably resembled the photo of Dave Ferrie they were shown; and driving the car was a man who they each identified as the defendant, Clay Shaw. Manchester even had a new tidbit that hadn't come up before: He said he'd spoken with the car's driver, who cheerfully informed him that he was with the International Trade Mart in New Orleans. (That's what "sheep-dipping" CIA spooks do when they're setting up a patsy -- they identify themselves as clearly as possible.) A decade later, this anecdote would morph into the claims that Manchester had seen Shaw's driver's license at that time (a detail never noted in Manchester's 1967-69 statements or testimony), and taken down the black car's license plate number and traced it to the Trade Mart (Ibid.).

The Clinton story was, simply put, a fabrication from start to finish.

Did Clay Shaw perjure himself when he denied knowing David Ferrie? No; there is no evidence that Shaw knew Ferrie. Perry Russo and Charles Spiesel's stories of Shaw and Ferrie together are credited by few researchers. Clinton witness Corrie Collins placed Shaw and Ferrie together, but doubt has been cast upon his story, as related above.

Dr. and Mrs. Nicholas Tadin testified at the Shaw trial that they had seen Shaw and Ferrie together at the New Orleans Airport on one occasion. The jury found them credible witnesses, but their testimony's potency was somewhat reduced by the fact that they had been unknown to the prosecution until only the previous day.

Onetime Ferrie roommate Raymond Broshears says he met Shaw through David Ferrie (Garrison, 139). Broshears' credibility is an open question. Broshears told researcher Dick Russell that he had briefly known Lee Harvey Oswald and Russo's "Leon Oswald" -- and that he himself had sex with lookalike "Leon" on the occasion of their sole meeting (Russell, The Man Who Knew Too Much, 576).

Two 1949 photographs taken at a WDSU radio benefit party are alleged to depict Shaw and Ferrie side by side. "Ferrie" has been positively identified as a WDSU employee named Robert Brannon, who died in 1962. He does indeed bear a striking resemblance to Ferrie, but not the Ferrie of 1949, who did not yet visibly suffer from alopecia -- the disease that later caused the loss of all his facial and body hair.

Copies of the photographs stored in the files of both Shaw's defense team and the prosecution have recently come to light, with Brannon's name written on the photos. After Shaw's death, Garrison often expressed regret that he didn't have these photographs for the trial. But Garrison did have them; in fact, he'd been questioning people about these photographs as early as March 1967 (Lambert, 328 fn.).

The DA's office had two reports of Shaw and Ferrie together on business for a corporation called Freeport Sulphur. A memo originating in the files of Guy Banister reports that Clay Shaw and Freeport executive Dick Wight were flown to Cuba in a company plane piloted by David Ferrie (Probe, Vol. 3, No. 3). An informant named Ken Elliot told Garrison's office that Ferrie flew Clay Shaw and two partners to Canada on business related to the Freeport Sulphur operation (Memo from Sal Scalia to Garrison, June 27, 1967; Ibid.). Garrison's office doesn't seem to have followed up on this information for some reason.

A March 5, 1967, FBI teletype states that informant 1213-S advised that Aura Lee (last name unknown), Clay Shaw's former secretary at International Trade Mart, New Orleans, then employed by the Heart Fund at Ochsner Clinic, told several witnesses that she had seen David Ferrie enter Clay Shaw's office at the International Trade Mart building on a number of occasions, and she believed Ferrie had privileged entry into Shaw's office (NARA #124-10101-10017).

Is this true? Mrs. Goldie Naomi Moore testified at the Shaw trial:

DYMOND. For the record, Mrs. Moore, what is your name?

MOORE. Miss Goldie Naomie Moore.

DYMOND. . . . Where are you employed?

MOORE. I am employed as the Executive Secretary of the Plimsell Club and International Trade Mart.

DYMOND. . . . How long have you been connected with the International Trade Mart, Miss Moore?

MOORE. Since February 6, 1946.

DYMOND. Are you acquainted with this Defendant, Mr. Clay L. Shaw?

MOORE. Yes, I am.

DYMOND. Did you ever know him to be employed by International Trade Mart?

MOORE. Yes, he was our Managing Director.

DYMOND. Who was there first, you or Mr. Shaw?

MOORE. Mr. Shaw, perhaps a few days after I came.

DYMOND. Now when Mr. Shaw was Managing Director of International Trade Mart, what was your position?

MOORE. I was his secretary.

DYMOND. And for how long were you his secretary?

MOORE. Oh, for 19 years, from the time I started until Mr. Shaw left the Trade Mart.

DYMOND. So when he left the Trade Mart, left his employment there, you were still his secretary, is that correct?

MOORE. That is correct.

DYMOND. So then, were you his secretary during the entire year 1963, Mrs. Moore?

MOORE. Yes, I was.

DYMOND. . . . Now I show you a photograph marked for identification State-10, being a photograph of the late David W. Ferrie and I ask you whether you have ever seen that man with Mr. Clay Shaw or have you ever seen him anyplace else?

MOORE. I have never seen him with Mr. Clay Shaw or any other place.

Goldie Naomi Moore also testified that she had never seen Lee Harvey Oswald -- with or without a beard -- and that in nineteen years, she had never known Clay Shaw to use any name but his own. She had never heard the names "Clay" or "Clem Bertrand" until the Garrison investigation publicized them.

Carroll S. Thomas, owner of Thomas Funeral Homes, Inc. in Hammond, Louisiana, was being interviewed in connection with another matter on March 15, 1967, when he volunteered that he was a close personal friend of Clay Shaw, and that he'd met David Ferrie through Shaw. Thomas' claim remains unsubstantiated; it is not known whether he actually was friendly with Clay Shaw or not (FBI NO 89-69-1781).

A Ku Klux Klansman named Jules Ricco Kimble told the DA's office October 10, 1967 that he'd met Clay Shaw through David Ferrie, and that the three of them had flown to Montreal and back on one occasion. Garrison reports Kimble's story in his 1988 memoirs but didn't see fit to call Kimble as a witness in 1969. Could it have something to do with the fact that when Paris Flammonde was first apprised of Kimble's story, it involved David Ferrie and a flight to Canada, but no Clay Shaw? (Flammonde, The Kennedy Conspiracy, 206-7)

There's seems to be no limit to the audacity of Garrison's claims. A newly unearthed statement from the DA's files reads:

Statement of Mrs. June A. Rolfe in the Office of the District Attorney on Thursday, March, 1969, released by the JFK act Feb 7, 1992: In the early 60's, I will have to check some rent receipts for the dates on this, I saw Clay Shaw in a light-colored Thunderbird with the top down in the French Quarter in New Orleans. There were two young men in the front seat, Shaw was in the middle and had an arm around each of them. A man that looked exactly like David Ferrie sat in the back seat. The reason I remember his is because of his kooky hair color. It looked almost like it had been powdered in color -- looked like a make-up job.

Signed: Mrs. June A. Rolfe

By an extraordinary coincidence, while journalist James Kirkwood was in town covering the Shaw trial, he spent a fair amount of time with a woman named June Rolfe, along with her husband Dick. This must be a different June Rolfe, however, than the one listed 24 times in the index of Kirkwood's American Grotesque. Kirkwood's Mrs. Rolfe made no bones about her strong pro-Garrison feelings, and took the opportunity to point out to Kirkwood the importance of witnesses like the Clinton folks and the Tadins, who purportedly link Shaw to Ferrie. But she certainly never mentioned that she herself had seen Shaw and Ferrie together, not even on the occasions she saw Kirkwood following Shaw's acquittal.

Did Clay Shaw perjure himself when he said he never worked for the CIA? No; the claim that Shaw perjured himself is based on the ill-informed belief that anyone who performs a service for the CIA is an agent or employee. Shaw served as a contact for the Domestic Contact Services division of the CIA between 1948 and 1956; there is no evidence that he was ever employed by the CIA as a contract agent or in any other capacity. Just as FBI Paid Criminal Informant Jack Ruby can in no manner be designated an agent or employee of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, CIA domestic contacts -- paid or unpaid -- are not agents or employees of the Central Intelligence Agency.

Hundreds if not thousands of businessmen who travel and trade abroad serve as domestic contacts for the CIA, providing a legitimate source of intelligence. "Contact" status in no way relates to the notorious exploits of the CIA's Covert Action arm, and cannot be reasonably related to the Kennedy assassination in any manner.

Meanwhile, documents released in the mid-'90s under the JFK Records Act have fueled speculation that Shaw was indeed a contract agent. But what do these documents actually say?

In Fair Play, Martin Shackelford writes, "The CIA paid for one of Shaw's trips in 1955, and the following year he actively solicited information for them. Although a CIA internal report described him as a valuable informant, his formal connection with the Agency suddenly ended in 1956. His CIA activities, though, continued. The House Select Committee on Assassinations learned, but didn't report, that Shaw was heavily involved in anti-Castro activities; he allowed one group rent-free space in his International Trade Mart. He had a working relationship with former FBI agent Guy Banister, many of whose former employees now confirm that Banister employed Oswald in the summer of 1963."

As Shackelford omits source citations in his article, the basis of the allegation that the CIA paid for a trip in 1955 is unknown, although this writer does not contest the fact. CIA contacts are often reimbursed for services performed. Shackelford likewise omits any citation or description of the manner in which Shaw "actively solicited information" for the CIA, or a description of the type of information he allegedly sought. There is nothing to indicate that Shaw was acting as anything more than the informant the CIA long ago revealed him to have been.

A reporter for New Orleans Magazine recently found that Clay Shaw is still admired and respected by his former neighbors in New Orleans' French Quarter.

The statement about Shaw's so-called "CIA activities" continuing after 1956 is misleading. For one thing, Shaw had never been involved in any "CIA activities" in an operational sense. There also is no firm evidence that Shaw's agency ties extended past 1956, as will be examined shortly.

Shackelford refers to a relationship between Shaw and William George Gaudet, something worthy of investigation. Gaudet published the Latin American Newsletter out of the rent-free office at the Trade Mart. Gaudet himself had been a CIA domestic contact until 1961, and told journalist Anthony Summers in 1978 that the Newsletter was a CIA front operation. This is not a charge that can be dismissed outright: Although the Newsletter's official sponsor was Standard Fruit, a company which did a tremendous amount of business in Latin America, a great deal of its funding came from New Orleans doctor Alton Ochsner, founder of the Ochsner Clinic, who had a long-standing relationship with the CIA that has not been adequately explained with regard to his anti-Communist activities in New Orleans over the years.

Gaudet himself plays a murky role in the story of Oswald's 1963 summer in New Orleans. He happened to be next in line to Oswald when Oswald applied for his Mexican tourist visa. Though the registry list was published by the Warren Commission, Gaudet's name was withheld from the public until it accidentally leaked out in 1975. Gaudet insisted he did not see Oswald that day and called the event a coincidence. He did say, however, that he'd seen Oswald around the Trade Mart and, most interestingly, he said he had witnessed Oswald conversing at length with New Orleans ultra right-wing extremist Guy Banister on several occasions.

Gaudet, who is now deceased, remains something of a mystery, though his relationship to the International Trade Mart may not prove especially noteworthy, since -- according to Garrison advocate Jim DiEugenio's Destiny Betrayed (p. 220) -- it was ITM employee Ted Brent, not Clay Shaw, who allowed Gaudet the use of ITM office space. As an institution prominently involved in facilitating trade with Latin America, the ITM could have had legitimate reasons for providing an office for the Latin American Newsletter. And if the Newsletter was indeed a front for a CIA operation, as Gaudet has stated, there are any number of explanations that don't require implicating anyone in high crimes or assassinations.

It is now theorized that Shaw may well have had a working relationship with rabid anti-Communist, ex-FBI Bureau Chief Guy Banister; many New Orleans civic leaders did. However, even for those who theorize that Lee Harvey Oswald was somehow involved in Banister's operation, this hardly implies a link between Shaw and Oswald. In short, Shackelford generates a lot of smoke with no evidence of fire.

Shackelford continues, "As late as 1967, Shaw had a 'covert security' classification for a top secret program called QK/ENCHANT. The program remains so highly classified that we are still unable to learn anything about its nature, but Shaw's classification was approved by the CIA's then covert operations chief, Richard Helms, and we know that clearances were being granted in December 1962.

"Former CIA official Victor Marchetti said that QK/ENCHANT was most likely run out of the Domestic Operations Division of the Clandestine Services, run by Tracy Barnes. Support for this comes from recently released documents identifying Barnes' then-deputy, E. Howard Hunt, as another individual involved with QK/ENCHANT. We also know that a pilot was considered for clearance for the program. One of the few others known to have been cleared for QK/ENCHANT was Monroe Sullivan, director of the San Francisco Trade Mart, and Shaw's alibi witness for November 22, 1963. At the time of the House Select Committee investigation in 1976, inquiries to the CIA about Clay Shaw were coordinated by J. Walton Moore, the former Dallas CIA contact for Oswald's friend George De Mohrenschildt."

Webmaster John McAdams notes that a document from the HSCA, CIA Segregated Collection, puts a different light on this. . . . a series of handwritten notes, presumably by an HSCA staffer, dated June 28, 1978 and regarding a "possible CIA connection" to "Clay Shaw." Referring to a CIA memo of September 18, 1968, it notes that Shaw was "granted covert security approval for use under Project [REDACTED] on an unwitting basis 10 Dec. 62" (NARA 180-10143-10220, Agency File Number 29-04-01). McAdams also cites a CIA memorandum dated 26 April 1967, which reports that "J. Monroe Sullivan, #280207, was granted a covert security approval on 10 December 1962 so that he could be used in Project [REDACTED]. SHAW has #402897-A."

These are the documents that the Assassination Records Review Board has now confirmed are in reference to QK/ENCHANT. McAdams notes that Shaw's "approval," not "clearance," was for use on an unwitting basis.

Shackelford's conclusions would seem to be unfounded. The Agency was either using Shaw as an unsuspecting source of intelligence of an unknown nature or they were actually spying on him for some reason.

Victor Marchetti is quoted frequently by conspiracy theorists despite the questionable nature of his information. It should be kept in mind that Marchetti incorrectly informed researcher A. J. Weberman in the '70s that the existence of a CIA 201 file in Oswald's name was proof that Oswald had been a CIA contract agent. 201 files actually have nothing to do with contract employment or operational use of a subject.

The references to Tracy Barnes, Howard Hunt, and George De Mohrenschildt are window dressing: Shaw himself had no idea that any CIA operation was going on around him, and there is no reason to believe he ever had any relationship with Howard Hunt or any of the other figures named.

We also know that J. Monroe Sullivan, onetime director of the San Francisco World Trade Center had been granted a "covert security approval" for QK/ENCHANT. Sullivan told Patricia Lambert in 1997 that he'd never heard of any such thing and that he'd never worked for the CIA. That's a reasonable enough claim: Like Shaw, Sullivan was approved for unwitting use.

Now, you ask, what exactly was QK/ENCHANT? We don't know; the CIA isn't talking. If two men involved in international trade were unwittingly involved, one might guess that QK/ENCHANT had something to do with business-related intelligence. Why don't we ask the authority on Shaw's purported CIA connections, Mr. Bill Davy. From "Through the Looking Glass," p. 54 fn. 16:

CIA Information and Privacy coordinator, John Wright, has written to the author that information on QK/ENCHANT is still classified. Yet, an admitted ex-CIA employee has broadcast on a popular computer Bulletin Board System, that QK/ENCHANT involved routine debriefing of people in the trade industry. Either this person has violated his/her secrecy agreement by revealing classified information or is deliberately spreading false information. Time will tell. Shackelford continues, "Another recently released document connects Shaw to the top secret project ZR/CLIFF, which was run out of William Harvey's super-secret Staff D along with the ZR/RIFLE assassination program."

This information has turned out to be false.

Bill Davy writes that freelance pilot Leslie Norman Bradley was once considered for a CIA operation called ZR/CLIFF, "but for unknown reasons the offer of employment was withdrawn" (Davy, Let Justice Be Done, 88). A Houston man named Sam Kouffroth told the FBI that he'd asked Bradley "how he had been making a living since being released from the Cuban prison and he replied that it was pretty rough but that Clay Shaw of the International House was 'helping us'" (Davy, 88-9).

The latest allegation regarding Shaw, the CIA, and assassination plots involves Freeport Sulphur, which, according to researcher Lisa Pease, is "a company that connects the CIA, the Rockefellers, Clay Shaw and [CIA officer] David Phillips. The company had serious clashes with Castro over an expensive project, and with the Kennedy administration over matters of great monetary significance to Freeport. Allegations of a Canadian connection with New Orleans, and Cuban nickel mining and processing operations fit neatly into Shaw's reported activities. And this is a company which had at least one director reportedly talking about killing Castro." Pease's case can be examined at:

http://www.realhistoryarchives.com/collections/hidden/freeport-cuba.htm

What about this Centro Mondiale Commerciale? Clay Shaw sat on the board of directors of Centro Mondiale Commerciale, an alleged CIA front, and its subsidiary, Permindex, which has been linked by some to assassination plots directed against foreign leaders. These allegations were the subject of a 1967 article in an Italian newspaper, Paese Sera. CMC had been ejected from both Italy and Switzerland and relocated to Johannesburg, South Africa, due to perceived subversive activities, including alleged assassination plots against Charles de Gaulle and others. The Italian authorities accused CMC of money laundering and of being a CIA front company, and its officers' refusal to divulge information about the source of some of its funds contributed towards its hasty ejection from the country.

The Permindex/CMC charges are placed in historical context by Steve Dorril's article "Permindex: The International Trade in Disinformation", that appeared in the British journal Lobster.

A State Department memo released by the Assassination Records Review Board confirms the long-alleged identities of Shaw's fellow board members, an astonishing bunch consisting largely of former officials of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy.

Shaw told Penthouse magazine, "Back in 1959 or 1960, a young Italian came to see me in New Orleans and told me about a world trade center that was being planned in Rome. The idea was to have one place where buyers coming into the Common Market area would find all the Common Market countries represented in one center. He wanted my advice and asked me to serve on the board of directors. I had no objection if it was a legitimate project. I investigated it and found that the head of it was a man named Imre Nagy, who had been the last non-Communist premier of Hungary. Some of the other people involved were Italian senators, journalists, lawyers, and other responsible people. It was agreed that we would have an exhibit at their center, and they would have one at the mart here in New Orleans, and we would exchange information and so on. I didn't mind being on their board, although there was no money involved, but I would have to go to Rome annually to the board meetings and my way would be paid, so why not? Then they ran into difficulties, but they finally got the center opened. It turned out to be either badly planned or badly organized and it closed very shortly, and that was the last I ever heard of it. I never heard that it was a CIA operation and I don't know that it was. I'll say this -- it was a highly unsuccessful operation which is not customary with the CIA. Other than what I've told you, I know nothing more about the Centro Mondiale Commerciale. I have never had any connection with the CIA."

If Permindex was somehow sinister, it's extremely odd that Clay Shaw, rather than trying to conceal his connection with the organization, listed it in Who's Who in the Southeast. Here is the page on which Shaw's entry appeared, and this is a blow-up of the entry.

The Paese Sara charges were never especially well documented. Inevitably, what little we know about CMC/Permindex comes from sources of questionable reliability.

Alleged former CIA agent Robert Morrow describes flying to Greece with David Ferrie to transport a cache of arms from a Permindex warehouse to Houma, Louisiana. Morrow's alleged source is CIA officer Tracy Barnes, who, of course, is not alive to substantiate the author's story.

Ulric Shannon researched Morrow's claims for a review of Morrow's First Hand Knowledge. Shannon's article demonstrates that Morrow's story lacks even a semblance of credibility.

The pseudonymous "William Torbitt," believed to be Texas attorney David Copeland, in a 1970 manuscript entitled Nomenclature of an Assassination Cabal, and published recently as Nazis, NASA & JFK, accused Permindex of complicity in the JFK assassination. "Torbitt's" sole cited source is the Paese Sera article.

Didn't the CIA try to destroy Garrison's investigation? Former CIA agent-turned-author Victor Marchetti testified to the HSCA that he heard Richard Helms and various CIA officers discuss the Shaw trial on numerous occasions, and quotes Helms as asking of one agent, "Are we doing everything we can [for Shaw]?"

While Marchetti's credibility remains questionable, Robert Tanenbaum, onetime Deputy Counsel for the House Select Committee on Assassinations, stated in an interview with Jim DiEugenio that he'd seen documents proving the CIA interfered with the Garrison investigation, and both he and HSCA investigator Gaeton Fonzi have alleged that the DA's office was infiltrated and disrupted by CIA agents. Such allegations remain unsubstantiated.

When researcher Vince Salandria worked with Garrison, they and other members of Garrison's team believed that the CIA was actively plotting against them. Salandria admits now that a lot of this was simple paranoia: "I would see anybody trying to destroy Garrison as a CIA agent" (JFK: The Book of the Film, 195).

Wasn't there a massive government conspiracy against Jim Garrison? That's what Garrison said. But is there any truth to that assertion?

If there was a government conspiracy against Jim Garrison's office . . .

Why did the Supreme Court (under Earl Warren) refuse to intervene and dismiss the Shaw case when they had the chance? (New York Times, December 20, 1968)

Why did Ohio Governor James Rhodes agree to extradite Garrison witness Gordon Novel? ("Novel Will Be Returned -- Ohio," New Orleans Time-Picayune, May 10, 1967; cited in Epstein, Counterplot)

Why did Judge William T. Gillie dismiss the extradition case against Gordon Novel only after repeatedly asking Garrison's office to complete the necessary paperwork within the required sixty-day period? ("Ohio Frees 'Witness' Sought by Garrison," New York Times, July 4, 1967; cited in Epstein)

Why did California Governor Ronald Reagan refuse to extradite Garrison suspect Edgar Eugene Bradley only after Garrison's office refused to present even the slightest evidence of Bradley's complicity in the assassination? (New York Times, November 9, 1968; cited in Epstein)

Why did Nebraska and then Iowa authorities refuse to extradite witness Sandra Moffett, when the Shaw trial transcript proves it was the defense -- not the prosecution -- that wanted Moffett's testimony? (Shaw trial transcript, opening day arguments)

Why did Texas authorities agree to allow Garrison's office to depose Sergio Arcacha Smith -- an offer that Garrison turned down? (cf. Paris Flammonde, The Kennedy Conspiracy, 117-21)

Why was Judge Charles W. Halleck, Jr., about to hear Harold Weisberg and Bud Fensterwald's arguments for releasing the JFK autopsy materials to the New Orleans DA when Charles Ward at Garrison's office phoned Weisberg and Fensterwald at the courthouse and ordered them to drop the entire suit? (Weisberg, Post Mortem, 135-6; Livingstone, Killing the Truth, 376) Why did the courts enforce Garrison's subpoena to LIFE magazine for the Zapruder film?

Why did Judge Herbert J. Christenberry dismiss Garrison's perjury charges against Clay Shaw only after a lengthy 1971 hearing in which, among other curious incidents, Garrison refused to state how many witnesses he had against Clay Shaw at the time of Shaw's arrest, refused to answer questions about the veracity of witness Vernon Bundy's testimony, refused to elaborate on his claim that more had come out of his investigation than merely the Shaw prosecution, and -- perhaps most curious of all -- Garrison's star witness, Perry Raymond Russo, pleaded the Fifth Amendment when he was called to testify on Garrison's behalf? (Christenberry transcript; Patricia Lambert, False Witness, 165-79) Why -- in thirty years -- has not a shred of evidence emerged indicating that elements of the US government obstructed Jim Garrison's case or interfered with his investigation?

As Jim Garrison himself pointed out in his oft-quoted Playboy interview, "The very repetition of a charge lends it a certain credibility, since people have a tendency to believe that where there's smoke, there's fire . . ."

One thing is certain: If there exists even a single shred of evidence implicating Clay L. Shaw in a conspiracy to assassinate President John F. Kennedy, Jim Garrison failed to unearth it for Shaw's 1969 trial, and his advocates have failed to turn it up in the three decades since.

It was not merely a farce: It was justice assassinated. And Clay Shaw was the patsy.