Destiny Betrayed: JFK, Cuba, & the Garrison Case

by DiEugenio, James

  When Shaw returned from his intelligence duties in World War II, he went to work at the New Orleans branch of International House.4 International House was founded by the Rockefellers and spread worldwide. It was a way of doing both student and cultural exchanges in order to advance the whole globalist, One World doctrine. Both David and William Rockefeller III served as trustees of International House, and David was chairman of the executive committee at one time. The chairman of the board of trustees in New York in the fifties and sixties was John McCloy who was very close to the Rockefeller family and later served on the Warren Commission.5 As Donald Gibson noted, the first managing director in New Orleans was Herman Brock of Guaranty Trust Company of New York. Brock was followed by J. Stanton Robbins, a special assistant to Nelson Rockefeller.6 The New Orleans branch of International House was important because the port of New Orleans served as a gateway into Latin America. Considering the fact that American businesses had many holdings south of the border, International House and the ITM were important envoys into Latin America for the elite families who controlled so much of the energy, stocks and bonds, and banking industry. And this is why Shaw not only figured in their globalist trade design, but as we have seen, as an agent of Freeport Sulphur (later Freeport McMoran) a company which Gibson notes was controlled at that time by the Rockefellers, Whitneys, and Harrimans.7 So just from this, its clear to see that—as David Ferrie said—politically Shaw and Kennedy were opposed to each other.

  His overt work for the globalist designs of the Eastern Establishment was the visible complement to his covert intelligence work. Shaw began his intelligence career in the Army during World War II. As he admitted in his entry in Who’s Who in the Southwest for 1963–64, Shaw served as aide-de-camp to General Charles Thrasher. As discovered in an Army manual by the superb archives researcher Peter Vea, Thrasher’s unit fell under Special Operations Section, or SOS, a branch of military intelligence.8 When he returned to New Orleans after the war, Shaw became a friend of Ted Brent a self-made millionaire and “Queen Bee” of the local homosexual underground.9 It was Brent who became Shaw’s benefactor and aided him in his move up into the business world in New Orleans. That is from International House to Mississippi Shipping Company to the founding of the International Trade Mart. And it was in this phase of his career where Shaw’s association with the CIA began. As Jim Garrison once noted, the CIA used Mississippi Shipping as a conduit for intelligence gathering into Latin America. Once the ITM was established, Shaw began his work as an overseas informant to both Latin America and Eastern Europe. This part of his Agency career lasted—officially at least—from 1948–1956. I use the phrase “officially at least” because the CIA considered Shaw such an important and valued asset that they created a “Y” file for him. William Davy discovered a handwritten note in the CIA declassified files saying that one of those files had been destroyed.10

  Opponents of Garrison, like Robert Blakey and Vincent Bugliosi, reply to this by saying that Shaw was like over 100,000 Americans who were routinely interviewed by the CIA on their return from abroad. There are two serious problems with this line of defense. First, how many of those citizens had a “Y” file? Second, Shaw was not routinely debriefed after he returned from overseas. He was briefed before he left. He then filed written reports on both the political and economic climates in places like Peru. The intricacies of these reports are well beyond the scope of any routine business traveler. In fact, Shaw conferred with very high officials to gain this valuable information. For instance, while in Nicaragua, Shaw spoke to both the Minister of Finance and the President. While in Argentina, he spoke with the Minister of Public Works.11 Few routine businessmen have that kind of access.

  Peter Vea discovered a very important document while at the National Archives in 1994. Attached to a listing of Shaw’s numerous contacts with the Domestic Contact Service, a listing was attached which stated that Shaw had a covert security approval in the Project QKENCHANT.12 This was in 1967 and the present tense was used, meaning that Shaw was an active covert operator for the CIA while Garrison was investigating him. When William Davy took this document to former CIA officer Victor Marchetti, an interesting conversation ensued. As Marchetti looked at the document he said, “That’s interesting … He was … He was doing something there.” He then said that Shaw would not need a covert security clearance for domestic contacts service. He then added, “This was something else. This would imply that he was doing some kind of work for the Clandestine Services.”13 When Davy asked what branch of Clandestine Services would that be, Marchetti replied, “The DOD (Domestic Operations Division). It was one of the most secret divisions within the Clandestine Services. This was Tracey Barnes’s old outfit. They were getting into things … uh.” The former CIA officer stopped to seemingly catch himself. “Uh … exactly what, I don’t know. But they were getting into some pretty risky areas. And this is what E. Howard Hunt was working for at the time.”14 And in fact, Howard Hunt did have such a covert clearance issued to him in 1970 while he was working at the White House.15

  The next step in the CIA ladder after his high-level overseas informant service was his work with the strange company called Permindex. When the announcement for Permindex was first made in Switzerland in late 1956, its principal backing was to come from a local banker named Hans Seligman. But as more investigation by the local papers was done, it became clear that the real backer was J. Henry Schroder Banking Corporation.16 This information was quite revealing. Schroder’s had been closely associated with Allen Dulles and the CIA for years. Allen Dulles’s connections to the Schroder banking family went back to the thirties when his law firm, Sullivan and Cromwell, first began representing them through him.17 Later, Dulles was the bank’s General Counsel. In fact, when Dulles became CIA Director, Schroder’s was a repository for a fifty million dollar contingency fund that Dulles personally controlled.18 Schroder’s was a welcome conduit because the bank benefited from previous CIA overthrows in Guatemala and Iran.19 Another reason that there began to be a furor over Permindex in Switzerland was the fact that the bank’s founder, Baron Kurt von Schroeder, was associated with the Third Reich, specifically Heinrich Himmler.20 The project now became stalled in Switzerland. It now moved to Rome. In a September 1969 interview, Shaw did for Penthouse Magazine, he told James Phelan that he only grew interested in the project when it moved to Italy.21 Which was in October of 1958. Yet a State Department cable dated April 9 of that year says that Shaw showed great interest in Permindex from the outset.

  One can see why. The Board of Directors was made up of bankers who had been tied up with fascist governments, people who worked the Jewish refugee racket during World War II, a former member of Mussolini’s cabinet, and the son-in-law of Hjalmar Schact, the economic wizard behind the Third Reich, who was a friend of Shaw’s.22 These people would all appeal to the conservative Shaw. There were at least four international newspapers that exposed the bizarre activities of Permindex when it was in Rome. One problem was the mysterious source of funding: no one knew where it was coming from or going to.23 Another was that its activities reportedly included assassination attempts on French Premier Charles de Gaulle. Which would make sense since the founding member of Permindex, Ferenc Nagy, was a close friend of Jacques Soustelle. Soustelle was a leader of the OAS, a group of former French officers who broke with de Gaulle over his Algerian policy. They later made several attempts on de Gaulle’s life, which the CIA was privy to.24 Again, this mysterious source of funding, plus the rightwing, neo-Fascist directors created another wave of controversy. One newspaper wrote that the organization may have been “a creature of the CIA … set up as a cover for the transfer of CIA … funds in Italy for illegal political-espionage activities.”25 The Schroder connection would certainly suggest that.

  To even more clearly characterize Shaw’s association with Permindex, let me note a witness who would know, since it was his job to ascertain such things. Let’s use a very credible observer with his guard
down: New Orleans FBI agent Regis Kennedy, the man who, officially at least, could not find Clay Bertrand. Shaw’s active association with the Permindex organization lasted about five years. In 1967, after Permindex had moved to South Africa, a Garrison informant reported that Regis Kennedy had confirmed that “Shaw was a CIA agent who had done work, of an unspecified nature, over a five-year span in Italy.”26 This is an almost perfect match all the way around: in time, in location, and in Shaw’s true association.

  About three weeks before the assassination Clay Shaw called J. Monroe Sullivan, director of the San Francisco World Trade Center. Sullivan had never met Shaw before this phone call. Shaw asked him to put on a luncheon for November 22. He had a program to obtain tenants for the International House in New Orleans, the sister organization to the Trade Mart. Shaw said he would send out invitations and pay the costs of everything involved. Shaw then arrived at the San Francisco World Trade Center at around 9:00 A.M. on the twenty-second. As the two men were talking, a bulletin came on that Kennedy had been shot in Dallas. Sullivan was emotionally shocked. Yet, according to Sullivan, Shaw exhibited no reaction at all to the news. A few minutes later, news arrived that Kennedy was dead. Sullivan turned to Shaw and asked him if he still wanted to go through with his luncheon. Shaw replied that he did. So they proceeded to do so. Sullivan called for a moment of silence for the dead president. He then introduced Shaw, who made his pitch for International House. Sullivan was struck by Shaw’s apparent lack of empathy for Kennedy’s death.27

  The next day, Shaw/Bertrand then called his lawyer friend Dean Andrews to go to Dallas to defend Oswald. There is no doubt that the FBI and Secret Service wanted this call to go away. The FBI interviewed Andrews about it six times and the Secret Service three times.28 Andrews was deathly afraid of what would happen to him if he revealed the true identity of Clay Bertrand. As Jim Garrison said in his Playboy interview, when Mark Lane tried to interview Andrews in 1964, he found him visibly scared. He told Lane, “I’ll take you to dinner, but I can’t talk about the case. I called Washington and they told me that if I said anything, I might get a bullet in the head.” In that same interview, Garrison said Andrews felt he was being tailed at the time of his investigation. These were good reasons not to talk.

  As we have seen, there were several witnesses that certified that Shaw was Bertrand. For example, William Morris, Ricky Planche, Barbara Bennett, and Aloysius Habighorst, and Edgar Tatro received the comment from a local that it was common knowledge that Shaw used that name. In addition, we have also seen that the Justice Department told the New York Times that Shaw and Bertrand were the same man. But Garrison’s investigation found several more witnesses in this regard. William Turner talked to a man named Thomas Breitner who said that, on Shaw’s trip to San Francisco, he visited the University of California and he introduced himself as Clay Bertram.29 Virginia Johnson had been Shaw’s maid for several years, until 1965. A man who stayed with Shaw on several occasions told her that Shaw had used the name of Bertrand.30 Dr. Jacob Hety knew a gay man named Greg Donnelly. Donnelly had known Shaw for many years, and he had referred to him as Clay Bertrand.31 In an utterly fascinating interview, a man named Leander D’avy told Garrison’s investigators that he had once worked at a restaurant called The Court of the Two Sisters. One night, a man he identified as Lee Oswald walked into the place. He asked for Clay Bertrand. Gene Davis came out and talked to him. After Oswald left, Davis told Leander, “that kid had been behind the Iron Curtain.” D’avy remembered that both Dean Andrews and Clay Shaw both frequented the establishment.32 Then there was Mrs. Jessie Parker who was the hostess of the Eastern Air Lines VIP Room at Moisant Airport. This was a lounge where customers of the airline could have drinks and watch television while waiting for a flight. There was a guestbook which Parker tried to get customers to sign. On December 14, 1966, a man signed the guest book as Clay Bertrand. Parker identified Shaw as the man who signed the book with that name.33 After HSCA investigator Lawrence Delsa investigated this issue he too agreed that Shaw’s use of the Bertrand alias was an open secret.34

  But beyond this, there are other sources that also reveal the same thing. In an FBI report about Shaw, it is revealed that as of February 24, 1967, the Bureau “received information from two sources that Clay Shaw reportedly is identical with an individual by the name of Clay Bertrand.”35 (This is likely where Ed Guthman, formerly of the Justice Department, got his confirmation that Shaw was Bertrand.) In another FBI report from 1967, it is revealed that informant Lawrence Schiller knew three homosexual sources in New Orleans and two in San Francisco who indicated that Shaw was known by other names, including that of Clay Bertrand.36

  And finally there is Andrews himself. What he told Harold Weisberg makes all the above sleuthing a bit irrelevant. While working for Jim Garrison, Weisberg talked to Andrews several times and developed a friendly relationship with him. In an unpublished book written much later, Weisberg revealed that Andrews told him that Shaw was Bertrand.37 So today, in the face of all this, there can be no doubt that Shaw called Andrews on November 23 to go to Dallas to defend Oswald. And this is why Ramsey Clark stumbled over the truth when he told the press on March 2, 1967 that Shaw had been investigated back in 1963. Clark’s statement, of course, caused consternation at FBI HQ. Hoover had done all he could to snap the cover up on immediately. But Clark’s slip up revealed that Shaw’s name had come up back in November and December of 1963. In response to Clark’s faux pas, Cartha DeLoach wrote to Hoover’s deputy Clyde Tolson that Shaw’s name had surfaced in December of 1963 as part of the original FBI inquiry. He then added that “several parties” had furnished “information concerning Shaw.”38 One has to ask: 1.) Why was Shaw being investigated in 1963? 2.) Did the FBI ever turn over this information to the Warren Commission? They sure as heck never admitted it to Jim Garrison.

  Of all the things that the ARRB declassified about the Garrison investigation, one of the most fascinating aspects has been the solicitation and cooperation of Shaw’s lawyers with the national security state. And, just as interesting, their attempts to cover up that symbiotic relationship. As the author has noted, Shaw’s lawyers began accepting help from the likes of Walter Sheridan, Hugh Aynesworth, and James Phelan almost as soon as Shaw was indicted. They then worked with agents in Garrison’s camp like Bill Gurvich. The associations with government asset Aynesworth and undercover agent Gurvich went on for years. But even that was not enough. They then solicited even more help from the Justice Department, FBI, and the CIA. In this incontinent quest for aid, they then visited Washington and wrote letters to people like Allen Dulles.39 As we have seen, eventually the help came from all three agencies. To give this covert aid time to set in and work at undermining Garrison, Shaw’s lawyers used every device at their disposal to postpone the trial.

  In addition to this, through their own inquiries, and what the agents infiltrated into Garrison’s office pilfered, the Wegmanns had in their hands some very interesting information. Much of which was compromising to their client. In a stolen December 14, 1966, Garrison memorandum, Jack Martin revealed that David Ferrie had introduced him to Oswald in Banister’s office. With Ferrie at the time was Sergio Arcacha Smith.40 They also had a memo from the previous day in which Martin revealed that Oswald had an office at 544 Camp Street. In a memo from their own detective agency, they discovered the same information from a different source inside Banister’s office. Namely that Oswald had been seen with Ferrie and Banister.41 In another report from their own detectives, a photo of Shaw with Ferrie is alluded to.42 From this and more, it is obvious that Shaw’s lawyers, at the very least, knew about the association between Oswald and Banister, and Shaw and Ferrie. And in fact, when Irvin Dymond put Shaw on the stand, he apparently knew he would commit perjury. For many years later, this author saw an e-mail from the late David Chandler’s son. Chandler had been the best man at Garrison’s wedding, but had turned on him over the Shaw case. It turns out that the journalist had revealed a secret
to his offspring. Chandler had told him that Shaw admitted he had known Ferrie. But he lied about it to avoid “tossing Garrison too big a bone.”43 Since Chandler was working closely with Shaw’s lawyers, how can one believe he would know this but they would not?44

  As seen in these pages, and noted by other authors, Clay Shaw told numerous lies under oath at the Shaw trial. But what is not noted by many is the fact that his lawyers continuously lied about the secret help they were getting. We have seen how Irvin Dymond lied about not knowing about a CIA cleared attorneys panel in New Orleans. But also, when the author asked him if he was curious about all the help he was getting, Dymond replied, “It’s the Kennedy assassination.”45 As revealed here, this was a deception. Apparently, like Phelan, Dymond never counted on the release of so many documents revealing his incessant quest for more and more help from the CIA and FBI. We have seen how Sal Panzeca was less than truthful about how and when the defense found out about Charles Spiesel. Let us recall something else that Panzeca told the author. Namely that even though Guy Johnson was an excellent lawyer, he left the defense team over a personality conflict with the Wegmanns. This is an odd statement. Because many years before Shaw was indicted, Johnson was a law partner of Bill Wegmann in the firm of Racivitch, Johnson, Wegmann and Moledeaux.46 Are we to believe that in 1967 the two didn’t know they had this personality clash extending back to the fifties? Further, Panzeca himself joined this law firm when he graduated from law school in 1959.47 He didn’t notice the problem prior to 1967 either? Guy Johnson left the team for a different reason. Because he was too close to Guy Banister. So close that the two worked together as part of the intelligence apparatus of New Orleans. Banister sent prospective undercover agents to Johnson for approval to penetrate the National Students Association, which was part of a CIA sanctioned project.48 And this happened when Johnson was at this law firm with Bill Wegmann. At that firm, Johnson and Banister exchanged letters on certain prospects. There is even evidence that Johnson was in receipt of some of Banister’s files after he died.49 Therefore, the record indicates that Johnson had to have been aware of the reality of what was going on at Banister’s in the summer of 1963. But further, it would seem that the Wegmanns did also. For in an ARRB declassified CIA document it is revealed that the articles of incorporation for Banister’s so-called detective agency were notarized on January 21, 1958 by none other than William Wegmann.50 This is when both he and Johnson were at Racivitch, Johnson, Wegmann and Moledeaux. Why would Johnson trust Wegmann to do such a thing if Wegmann was not aware of what Banister and Johnson were up to?