Reclaiming History

by Vincent Bugliosi

  * Watching Shaw walk outside the sheriff’s office in the New Orleans County Criminal Courts Building on March 16, 1967, Bundy told Assistant District Attorney John Volz, “That’s him. I’m sure of it. He had the same limp when I saw him on the Lakefront” (Memorandum from John Volz to Jim Garrison, March 17, 1967).

  * There simply is no space in this book to adequately cover Garrison’s entire investigation of Shaw and Shaw’s complete trial, although much is included in this book. As I have indicated, entire books have been written on this subject alone, and even these books can only highlight the investigation and trial. However, since the heart of Garrison’s case against Shaw was Perry Russo, for those who are interested I have included an in-depth discussion of Perry Russo in an endnote that actually is longer than any discussion of Russo in any book on the case to date.

  †As it was later learned, the jury actually took two ballots. On the first ballot, a high school teacher, impressed with the witnesses from Clinton, Louisiana, who said they saw Oswald and Shaw together in their town (see endnote discussion), voted to convict. On the next ballot, the not-guilty vote was unanimous.

  * Though he was found not guilty, the trial cost Shaw over $200,000, which he said was his life’s savings, and ruined what had been his excellent reputation in New Orleans. Financially and emotionally broken from Garrison’s fraudulent charges, Shaw died of lung cancer on August 14, 1974, before his $5 million civil action against Garrison (filed on February 28, 1970) for malicious prosecution came to trial. Shaw, the man Garrison said had conspired to murder Kennedy, said after the trial, “I was a great admirer of Kennedy. I thought he had given the nation a new turn after the rather drab Eisenhower years…I felt he was vitally concerned about social issues, which concerned me also. I thought he had youth, imagination, style, and élan. All in all, I considered him a splendid president.” (“Clay Shaw,” p.32)

  Despite the overwhelmingly negative publicity, Garrison nonetheless was reelected DA later that same year by an “only in New Orleans” laissez-faire citizenry, but he lost his bid for reelection in 1973. However, he was elected to a ten-year term as an appellate judge on the Louisiana Fourth Circuit Court of Appeal in 1978 and was reelected in 1988. He died on October 21, 1992, at the age of seventy. The death certificate says the cause of death was “congestive heart failure,” though his attending physician, Dr. Frank Minyard, said, “It was [the] Kennedy [case] that killed him.” On his headstone at the cemetery in Metairie are the words “Let Justice Be Done, Though the Heavens Fall.” (Mellen, Farewell to Justice, pp.368–369)

  †At a 1971 hearing, federal judge Herbert Christenberry took notice of the unusual nature of Garrison’s conduct, writing, “No witness who testified before this court, including Garrison, could give another instance in which a defendant who took the stand and was acquitted was subsequently charged by Mr. Garrison with perjury” (Shaw v. Garrison, 328 F. Supp. 390, 400 [1971]).

  * Garrison’s chief investigator at the time, William Gurvich, had a slightly less flattering take on why Garrison continued on after Ferrie’s death. He told Newsweek reporter Hugh Aynesworth that the reason Garrison didn’t walk away from the case was that “he was already pumped up with the adoration of the conspiracy people and all. He was getting calls from all over the country, from Europe, even from Japan and Australia. He couldn’t buy a meal in New Orleans. Or pay for a cab ride. He was exciting the whole town—and boy, was he caught up in it” (Aynesworth with Michaud, JFK: Breaking the News, pp.238–239).

  †After the Second World War, Garrison joined the army reserve. In 1951 his reserve unit was called to active duty for the Korean War, which had started the previous year. Garrison, after being hospitalized at the U.S. Army Hospital in Fort Sill, Oklahoma, and Brooke Army Hospital at Fort Sam in Houston, Texas, from August to October 1951, was discharged from active duty with the rank of captain on October 31, 1951, effective January 9, 1952, “by reason of physical disability.” Doctors at Brooke Army Hospital in Texas found that he was suffering from a chronic moderate “anxiety reaction,” manifested by chronic hypochondriasis (the psychiatric term for hypochondria, the abnormal condition characterized by a depressed emotional state and imaginary ill health), exhaustion syndrome, and gastrointestinal discomfort, and that he had a “severe and disabling psychoneurosis of long duration. It has interfered with his social and professional adjustment to a marked degree. He is considered totally disabled from the standpoint of military duty and moderately incapacitated in civilian adaptability. His illness existed long before his call to active duty, July 24, 1951, and is of the type that will require a long-term psychotherapeutic approach, which is not feasible in a military hospital.” (New York Times, December 30, 1967, p.28; Flammonde, Kennedy Conspiracy, pp.11–12; Rogers, “Persecution of Clay Shaw,” p.54; Lambert, False Witness, pp.13–14)

  The story of Garrison’s psychiatric history first broke in a December 29, 1967, copyrighted article in the Chicago Tribune. Garrison fired back that same day through his chief assistant, Charles Ward, who said that army doctors had diagnosed his boss as having an “anxiety reaction during the Korean War. They subsequently concluded that if it was there, it’s gone now. The Army would not allow a man who had a psychiatric illness to hold the rank of lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserve” (New York Times, December 30, 1967, p.28).

  * Garrison’s constant charge was that the CIA (or rogue elements thereof) was behind the assassination. Yet, with Shaw on the witness stand and the golden opportunity to cross-examine him, Alcock never asked Shaw one single question dealing with his alleged association with the CIA or any other federal agency of U.S. intelligence.

  * Garrison, the man who conducted one of the most fraudulent prosecutions in the annals of crime, did tell the jury, however, that “the government’s handling of the investigation of John Kennedy’s murder was a fraud. It was the greatest fraud in the history of our country. It probably was the greatest fraud ever perpetrated in the history of humankind.”

  †One additional benefit to Garrison of only charging Shaw with conspiracy is that under Louisiana law, instead of the normal requirement that all twelve jurors must concur in order to convict, when conspiracy alone is alleged, only nine out of twelve jurors must concur to render a guilty verdict (La. Stat. Ann., Code of Criminal Procedure, Art. 782). So Garrison only needed nine jurors to convict Shaw. He couldn’t even get one.

  ‡ Since we know Garrison’s conduct was inexcusable and he brought severe discredit to the prosecutorial profession, what does that say about his assistants who did not leave the office—as some of their colleagues did, out of disgust—but instead soldiered on to do Garrison’s bidding for him? It would seem they were either remarkably simple-minded, or equally complicit with Garrison, or too weak of character to stand up to him. On October 11, 2000, I wrote the following letter to two of Garrison’s principal assistants and spear-carriers against Shaw—lead trial prosecutor James Alcock, now a lawyer in private practice in Houma, Louisiana, and Andrew Sciambra, the assistant of Garrison’s who was most responsible for the testimony of Garrison’s principal witness against Shaw, Perry Russo. Sciambra is presently a magistrate judge of the Criminal District Court in New Orleans:

  Dear Mr. Alcock (Mr. Sciambra),

  I am a lawyer and author from Los Angeles who is presently in the process of writing a book about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Although the focus of my book will not be the Garrison investigation and prosecution of Clay Shaw, I will be writing a certain amount about it. As a former prosecutor, I can tell you in all candor that I’m finding it very difficult to come up with anything good to say about the handling of the case by the New Orleans DA’s office. Since you were an integral part of that investigation and prosecution, I’d like to interview you about your involvement in the case. It seems to me that if there was any legal or moral justification for the conduct of your office in this case, you would be one of the few people who would be in possession of this informat
ion, and I would be very interested, of course, in hearing it, and incorporating your account into my book. If you are inclined to grant me an interview, please write me at [my address] and I will then work with your secretary in setting up a time that will be convenient for you.

  Sincerely, Vincent Bugliosi

  If you know that Garrison’s and your investigation and prosecution of Clay Shaw are going to be critically examined in a major book, and if you know there is a good defense for your conduct, I would think you’d make sure that your defense would be presented in the book. But neither Mr. Alcock nor Mr. Sciambra responded to my letters.

  * Although the New Orleans DA’s office, and later, the HSCA, spelled her name “Cheramie,” it’s clear from her FBI rap sheet that when using this alias at the time of her many arrests, she invariably spelled her name without the “e” at the end (FBI Record 2 347 922).

  * In uncharacteristically sloppy scholarship, the HSCA wrote that Cherami reportedly told the police that she and the two men she was with were “transporting a quantity of heroin from Florida to Houston at [Jack] Ruby’s insistence” (10 HSCA 199). But there is no record of her having ever said this, and the HSCA listed, as its only source for this, an article in the March 1977 edition of Argosy magazine. The article’s author, without citing any source for his statement, wrote that “Rose Cherami and a companion were driving back from Florida with a shipment of dope that was bound for…Jack Ruby.” (Martindale, “Bizarre Deaths following JFK’s Murder,” p.52) Author Gerald Posner took the erroneous HSCA statement and made it worse by writing that Cherami had said “that she had been thrown out of the car by Ruby” (Posner, Case Closed, p.446).

  * Officer Andrews closed the case as an “accidental death,” though he felt it was curious that Cherami, if she was hitchhiking, would be on Highway 155 as opposed to “one of the U.S. Highways.” But Andrews, probably not familiar with Cherami’s background of narcotic stupors, would not have known that the disoriented Cherami may not have even known where she was.

  * Not only was Oswald a committed Marxist to the day he died (“I’m a Marxist,” he told Captain Fritz on the morning he was killed by Ruby [Kelley Exhibit A, 20 H 443; CE 2064, 24 H 490]), but even though he was disillusioned with Russia, not believing the Russians were truly following the Marxist dream and blueprint, he remained much closer to Russia than to the United States. Ruth Paine told me, “He did not encourage Marina to learn English,” but because “she wanted to, she tried to read the labels on cans or read grocery ads where there were pictures to help her. He spoke to her only in Russian, and wouldn’t help her with English.” Indeed, she said, “If I started to talk to him in English he’d answer in Russian.” (July 13, 1986, typewritten response to author by Paine to questions 18 and 19(a), among 123 questions submitted by author to her)

  * As far as Oswald’s palm print being found on the rifle, Stone shows a federal agent (presumably FBI) putting Oswald’s palm print on the rifle when Oswald’s body was at the morgue (see long endnote discussion).

  †However, as Stone’s Garrison tells the audience, even if it was Oswald who killed Tippit, it was only because he realized he was being set up as a patsy. And therefore, in the audience’s mind, the killing was more in the nature of self-defense, and hence would not connect him to the assassination of Kennedy.

  * I have no idea why sophisticated conspirators like the CIA, military-industrial complex, et cetera, would want so many killers and accomplices (ten to twelve) at the assassination scene, which would mean that not just one, but all ten or twelve would have to escape, thereby immeasurably increasing the likelihood of detection and apprehension.

  * As we know, the Warren Commission and the HSCA, as well as all the many forensic pathologists who either conducted the autopsy on the president or studied the autopsy photos and X-rays of his wounds, concluded that only two shots hit the president, and both struck him from the rear. Stone, of course, doesn’t tell his audience any of this.

  †The famous photo of Witt sitting on the edge of the grass on the north side of Elm, his feet on the sidewalk and a black man to his right, was taken shortly after the shooting in Dealey Plaza (4 HSCA 432–435, 441).

  ‡ Portions of the opened, black umbrella can be seen fairly clearly to the right of the Stemmons Freeway sign in the lower left part of Zapruder frames 223–228.

  * We can thank Oliver Stone for some small favors. At least he didn’t put on screen the accusation by conspiracy theorist Robert B. Cutler in his 1975 self-published book, The Umbrella Man, that Witt’s umbrella actually had a sophisticated, battery-powered, rocket-launcher attachment that fired a fléchette (a small, steel dart) containing a paralyzing chemical into the president’s throat at Zapruder frame 183 (in a 1976 copyrighted diagram, Cutler changed the frame to 188) to neutralize him so that his head would be a stationary target during the shooting sequence by multiple assassins almost immediately thereafter. (4 HSCA 437; Benson, Who’s Who in the JFK Assassination, p.97) This is too much even for conspiracy author David Wrone, who writes, “How does one aim a miniature fléchette hidden in an umbrella and at right angles to the target without a sight?” (Wrone, Zapruder Film, p.100)

  †Quite apart from the fact that there was no credible evidence that Shaw used the alias Clay Bertrand, as Shaw would later say, “For about 17 or 18 years I had been managing director of the International Trade Mart here [in New Orleans], 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.” (“Clay Shaw,” p.31)

  * At the Shaw trial, Eugene Davis testified that he had met Andrews at a gay bar in the Quarter around 1956 or 1957, and had known Andrews through the years. He testified he was never introduced to anyone as Clay Bertrand and had never used that name. Further, that he did not call nor have telephone contact with Andrews on the day of the assassination or any of the days immediately following the assassination. (FBI Record 124-10067-10035, FBI report of Eugene Davis’s testimony at Clay Shaw trial on February 27, 1969, gathered from the New Orleans Times-Picayune, February 28, 1969, p.2) At the grand jury proceedings in the Shaw case, Davis testified that Andrews had represented him on two legal matters, that he, Davis, had never had or used an alias, had never known or met Lee Harvey Oswald, had no idea who Clay Bertrand was, if there was such a person, and had “never, never” attended any gay wedding. Davis said he had two sons and a daughter with a wife who had “run off with somebody else.” At the end of his testimony, lamenting the fact that he had been dragged into the case with all the unfavorable publicity in the media, Davis said, “Whoever is using me as a black sheep, or whatever the thing is here, I sure would appreciate it, Mr. Garrison, if you would get to the bottom of this.” (Transcript of testimony of Eugene Davis before Orleans Parish grand jury, June 28, 1967, pp.1, 4–6, 9, 14, 19–20, 24–25)

  * Indeed, Andrews told the grand jury that he had told Garrison personally that Shaw was not Bertrand. “I told the Jolly Green Giant [Garrison’s nickname] in Brennan’s [Broussard’s?] restaurant he wasn’t that.” Question: “You told Garrison that?” Answer: “Right. I told him that Clay Shaw was not Bertrand.” (Transcript of testimony of Dean Andrews before the Orleans Parish grand jury, June 28, 1967, p.12)

  †Banister had been the special agent in charge of the Chicago office of the FBI in the late 1940s and early 1950s. After his retirement from the bureau in 1954 he moved to New Orleans and in the mid-1950s became the assistant superintendent of police with the New Orleans Police Department. In 1957, New Orleans mayor De Lesseps “Chep” Morrison fired Banister after he allegedly threatened a waiter at a New Orlea
ns restaurant with his revolver. Shortly thereafter, he set up his own private detective agency in New Orleans, where he remained until his death from a heart attack in 1964. Although by all accounts he was sympathetic to right-wing causes, and stridently anti-Communist, Jim Garrison’s description of him as a “rigid exponent of law and order” probably defined who he was even better. That’s why he had index cards in his office not only on 27,000 Communists in the United States but also on members of the Nazi Party and Ku Klux Klan. (Garrison, On the Trail of the Assassins, p.2; HSCA Record 180-10072-10214, Interview of Joseph Newbrough Jr. by HSCA on April 10, 1978, p.1; 10 HSCA 126)