False Witness

by Patricia Lambert

  In public Garrison was unwavering during this hiatus, but in private was hoping the government would block the case or that something would happen to Shaw. With great conviction, he assured his staff that the trial would never occur. James Alcock told a colleague that he wanted to believe Garrison was right but doubted that he was.52 Alcock had reason to worry. Garrison had delegated the principal trial function to him. Garrison would deliver opening and closing remarks and he would interview a couple of witnesses, but Alcock would be the one in court every day, ostensibly in charge. Yet it was Garrison’s game plan. He was running the show. He was calling the shots. A win would have been an enormous achievement for Garrison and, by appearing to hand the reins to his assistant, he had someone to blame if anything went wrong.

  Keeping his staff in the dark about the overall picture allowed Garrison to imply he had evidence they didn’t know about that buttressed what they did. Reportedly, as the trial date approached, Alcock went to Garrison and asked to be informed about the rest of his case. “You’ve got it,” Garrison replied to his stunned assistant, “there isn’t anything else.” I asked Alcock if that story was true. “I’m not getting into that,” he replied sharply.53 According to an impeccable source close to the case, the night before the trial began Alcock “broke down” at the home of another assistant district attorney and said he didn’t know what to do. That he was being “forced” to prosecute an innocent man.

  * When Loisel mentioned these tests is unclear; it may have been the previous evening or before the recorder was activated.

  * The U.S. Attorney in New Orleans, the Louisiana State Attorney General, and the Bar Association’s Ethics Committee.

  † Louis Ivon recently said the claim that they laid hands on him is “completely untrue” (telephone conversation with author, June 28, 1996).

  * To avoid a conflict of interest, Hugh Exnicios had told Beaubouef to obtain new counsel.

  † Yet according to writer-attorney Milton Brener, under Louisiana Statutes public bribery need not involve false information, only something of value offered to a potential witness with the intent to influence his conduct as a witness (Brener, The Garrison Case, p. 176).

  * At their last meeting Russo told Phelan he recalled two quite different parties at Ferrie’s apartment. One, where Ferrie was playing the piano, appeared like vivid images on a color television screen; the other, which Russo described in court, was “dull and faint” like a bad black and white picture. Phelan believed the vivid piano-playing party really happened, and the other was a product of Dr. Fatter’s leading questions and Russo’s suggestibility (Phelan Interview).

  * This “could be caused,” O’Donnell wrote, “by general nervous tension or by the fact that the person intended to lie during the test” (Edward O’Donnell, Report to Jim Garrison, regarding Perry Russo Interview, June 20, 1967 [Appendix B in this book]).

  * This break-in story was not an NBC fabrication, as has been charged. It surfaced before NBC’s representatives heard it. William Gurvich learned about it in January from the Garrison aide who had been given the break-in assignment (Los Angeles Times, June 29, 1967; Gurvich Conference, tape #2, pp. 6–7); and John Cancler told his attorney, Milton Brener, about it probably in March (Brener, The Garrison Case, pp. 189–190).

  * Walter Sheridan (who had been a special assistant to Robert Kennedy when he was attorney general) arranged the meeting at Kennedy’s request. Gurvich agreed, he later said, because he feared Kennedy would think “there actually was something in New Orleans and might be overly optimistic and hopeful” about solving his brother’s murder (Gurvich, interview, WWL-TV, June 27, 1967).

  † Gurvich was one of the select six who received copies of the “master file”; he had “a full set of keys” to the district attorney’s office; he used Garrison’s car; “shared” Garrison’s desk; was praised by Garrison at his big February Fontainebleau press conference; and the weekend after the RFK story broke Gurvich was in New York interviewing a witness in the case.

  * Responding to motions filed by Shaw’s attorneys, the foreman denied that he or any of the other grand jurors contributed to Garrison’s fund (New Orleans States-Item, May 18, 1967).

  * But Davis did call Andrews while he was in the hospital. Early in the Garrison probe Davis confirmed that to Asst. D.A. James Alcock. This led Alcock to suggest “that Dean might have just made up the name Bertrand” (Bethell Diary, pp. 1, 2, 10).

  * This opposition was chronicled in the Gurvich tapes and, more extensively, in the Bethell Diary.

  † “They think him a liberal,” Shaw wrote, when the Los Angeles Free Press devoted five pages to Garrison’s speech. “He is the very face of fascism” (Shaw Notes, Dec. 19, 1967, p. 22).

  * William Turner, the Ramparts [magazine] staff writer and Garrison volunteer who unearthed the letter in Garrison’s files and sparked the Bradley investigation, reportedly admitted to Tom Bethell that Garrison didn’t believe Bradley was guilty and that charging him was a ploy in the publicity war Garrison was waging (Bethell Diary, pp. 19 and 29).

  † Soon, however, two incriminating statements suddenly appeared in Garrison’s Bradley file. One placed Bradley at Dealey Plaza on November 22, 1963, and was signed by former Dallas Deputy Sheriff Roger Craig; the other linked Bradley to David Ferrie, and was signed by Perry Russo (Bethell Diary, p. 28).

  CHAPTER TEN

  THE TRIAL, PART ONE: CLAY SHAW

  Criminal conspiracy is the agreement or combination of two or more persons for the specific purpose of committing any crime; provided that . . . one or more of such parties does an act in furtherance of the object of the agreement. . . .

  —Criminal Code of Louisiana

  Listen, kid, all of that bullshit doesn’t mean a thing. Who’s right or who’s wrong—this is New Orleans!1

  —Pershing Gervais (to James Kirkwood), 1969

  For a city that looks to its politics for entertainment, Clay Shaw’s trial was the equivalent of Armstrong stepping onto the moon. After two years of anticipation, jury selection was scheduled to begin January 21, 1969. But on the seventeenth, James Alcock requested an indefinite continuance, citing a report just released by Attorney General Ramsey Clark regarding President Kennedy’s autopsy. The report, Alcock said, was prejudicial to the state’s case.2 Some believed Garrison had been looking for a way out and on battle eve had found it. That Friday it suddenly looked as though Clay Shaw would never stand trial. Over the weekend, however, Garrison either reconsidered or was grandstanding to begin with because on Monday Alcock withdrew the motion. The state, he said, was “ready to go to trial tomorrow.”

  The Big Event was going to happen after all. Even the upcoming Mardi Gras celebration paled by comparison. The wife of a former assistant district attorney, herself a law student at the time, said recently that the trial was more exciting than any movie could convey. The international press corps had already swamped the city and the world’s attention was once more riveted on Tulane and Broad, this time the second-floor courtroom of Judge Edward A. Haggerty, Jr., a silver-haired, craggy-faced Irishman, known to have a drinking problem. All the security measures at the preliminary hearing were again in place, plus two closed circuit television cameras.

  At the prosecution’s table that first day were Asst. D.A.s Andrew Sciambra, Alvin Oser, William Alford, Numa Bertel, and the diminutive, thirty-six-year-old team leader, James Alcock, somber and smart, with thick black hair and square black-rimmed glasses. Representing Clay Shaw were the same four men who had handled his case from the outset: veteran trial lawyer F. Irvin Dymond,* Edward F. Wegmann, William J. Wegmann,† and Salvatore Panzeca. Incredibly, the first prospective juror called was named John Kennedy; he was immediately excused after admitting he already had formed a fixed opinion.

  Fourteen plodding days later, from the 1,200 prospects who appeared, the two sides finally settled on an all-male panel with two alternates. Nine of the twelve and both alternates were white, three black, five under thirty an
d three in their fifties. The lineup was solidly working class and its breadth of interest and intellectual reach failed to impress the media representatives who witnessed the process. If the reporters felt well-disposed toward any of them, it was a black thirty-one-year-old high school teacher. Clay Shaw and his attorneys concurred, believing he might be pro-defense and a leader in the jury room. That was ironic in light of what occurred during deliberations.

  The following day, Jim Garrison, looking “fresh and fit” in front of a stand-up microphone, read his fifteen-page opening statement, which he called “a blueprint of what the State intends to prove.” Any doubt that he planned to put the Warren Report on trial was resolved when he finished forty-two minutes later. Evidence about the events at Dealey Plaza was necessary, Garrison said, “because it confirms the existence of a conspiracy and because it confirms the significance and relevance of the planning which occurred in New Orleans.” The state would present the Zapruder film of the shooting and testimony “corroborating” what it showed, “that the president’s fatal shot was received from the front.” Garrison named five overt acts the state would prove: the plotting session in Ferrie’s apartment; the discussion of rifles, escape routes and alibis; the trip to the West Coast by Shaw the day of the assassination; the trip to Houston by Ferrie that same day; and Oswald’s carrying a rifle into the Texas School Book Depository. Garrison delivered two surprises. He referred to another party that he said took place in June 1963 “in an apartment in the French Quarter,” where Shaw and Ferrie discussed their assassination plans. And he unveiled a new group of witnesses from Clinton and Jackson, Louisiana, the hill country north of Baton Rouge. They would testify, he said, that in the latter part of August or the early part of September 1963, Oswald had visited that region with Clay Shaw and David Ferrie. (These eight witnesses—six men and two women—would have a long and prominent “shelf life.”)3

  Defense attorney Dymond in his opening remarks pinpointed the “core of the State’s case”—the “alleged conspiratorial meeting” at Ferrie’s apartment. He said the defense would prove that Shaw never “laid eyes on either” Ferrie or Oswald and that Perry Russo was “a notoriety-seeking liar.” He cautioned against “the pageantry” of the Dealey Plaza evidence obscuring “the actual issues in this case.” “We are not here to defend the findings of the Warren Commission,” he declared. “We are not trying the Warren Report in this courtroom.”4 But that’s what happened. The defense was forced to ignore the evidence challenging the Warren Report or try to refute it. They finally decided to do the latter.

  The state’s lead-off witness,5 Edwin Lea McGehee, a soft-spoken, bespectacled barber, was the first of the so-called Clinton witnesses. On a “cool” afternoon when the air conditioner was off and the door was open, he saw a dark-colored, battered car resembling “a Kaiser or a Frazer or an old Nash” drive up and park in front of his one-chair barber shop. Then a man he later realized was Lee Harvey Oswald entered. Oswald was there about fifteen minutes while McGehee cut his hair and as they talked McGehee noticed a women in the front seat of the car and in the back “a bassinet.” Oswald wanted to know how to go about obtaining a job at nearby East Louisiana State Hospital. McGehee suggested that the local State Representative, Reeves Morgan, might be able to help and gave Oswald instructions to Morgan’s home about three miles out of town. Morgan took the stand next and said Oswald arrived on an evening when he was burning trash in his fireplace and that “it felt good sitting there by it.” Morgan told Oswald, who was there about twenty-five minutes, that he couldn’t help him get a job at the hospital but suggested that “it wouldn’t hurt if he was a registered voter.” Morgan claimed that after the assassination he told the FBI about Oswald’s visit but “they already knew it.” (The FBI has no record of a call from Morgan.)

  Town Marshal John Manchester, lean and cowboy-handsome, was one of four witnesses who picked up the story from there. They said they saw Oswald, Ferrie, and Shaw in a black ’61 or ’62 Cadillac parked outside the registrar of voters office in the town of Clinton (population then—1,569). Not all of them saw Ferrie and Oswald. But all four saw the car and the driver and, from the witness stand, pointed to Clay Shaw as the man behind the wheel. Manchester claimed he spoke to the driver, who said he was “a representative of the International Trade Mart in New Orleans.” Manchester described him as “big” with gray hair and a ruddy complexion. The other three witnesses also referred to his size and “gray hair.” One said he was wearing a light-colored hat.

  Following Manchester was the Registrar of Voters, Henry Earl Palmer. He testified that the black Cadillac, with the two men inside, was parked near his office from 10:30 in the morning to 3:30 that afternoon and he saw it a total of six times as he went in and out.The passenger had “heavy” eyebrows and “messed-up hair,” Palmer said, like that in the picture he was shown of David Ferrie. On Dymond’s cross-examination, Palmer admitted that his identification of the men in the car was based on seeing only the back of the driver’s head and shoulders and only “one” of the passenger’s “bushy eyebrows.” Palmer first saw Lee Harvey Oswald that morning, standing in the slow-moving line, mostly blacks, waiting to register. It was mid-afternoon before Oswald finally entered his office. He showed Palmer his Navy I.D. card, bearing “a New Orleans address,” and said he wanted “a job at the hospital in Jackson.” Palmer told him “he did not have to be a registered voter” to get a job there. Oswald (who didn’t meet registration requirements anyway) thanked him and left.

  The other two who testified about this incident were both black men. Corrie Collins, head of the local chapter of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), was assisting in the voter registration drive that day. He said he saw the black Cadillac, with three men—two in front, one in back—drive up and park near the registrar’s office about ten that morning. Only Collins claimed he saw all three inside the car. The one in the rear Collins identified as Oswald. Collins saw him exit the car and enter the registrar’s office. Collins said the passenger was David Ferrie and he, too, remarked on Ferrie’s hair and eyebrows, saying they “didn’t seem real.” William Dunn was another CORE worker. Dunn was unsure about any passengers in the car, but he identified a picture of Oswald as the “young white boy” he saw standing in line waiting to register.

  Rounding out this scenario were two women. A receptionist at East Louisiana State Hospital, Bobbie Dedon, said she remembered directing Oswald to the personnel office. A clerk in that department, Maxine Kemp, said she saw an application in the files with the name, “Oswald, Harvey.”

  There was little the defense could do with these witnesses. Dymond, arguing hearsay, did prevent most of Oswald’s alleged statements from being repeated, which stripped the testimony of some of its impact. He also effectively ridiculed the identifications of Shaw and Ferrie made five years after the fact and based only on fleeting glimpses of the two men. But Manchester and Palmer did more than that. They provided powerful evidence—Shaw had named his place of business to Manchester, and Oswald had produced a military identification card for Palmer. The defense believed all these people were lying but had no way to prove it.

  Though these witnesses had no direct bearing on the conspiracy charge, they made Perry Russo’s story seem more likely. They also cast a cloud over Shaw’s credibility since he said he never met either Oswald or Ferrie, and Dymond had just repeated that in his opening statement. This was no small matter in light of the legal dictum voiced by the judge during jury selection that if the jurors believed a witness “lied in one instance” about a “material fact,” they had “the right to disregard” the witness’s “entire testimony.”

  The racially mixed Clinton witnesses, with their nicely interlaced stories and folksy civic leaders, were a strong opening for the state. It would be twenty-five years before the truth about their testimony was discovered by this writer (as described in chapter 13).

  On the trial’s second day, the black heroin addict, Vernon Bundy, took the s
tand and repeated what he said at the preliminary hearing. To illustrate why he was certain it was Shaw he saw passing money to Oswald that day at the lakefront, Bundy staged a “demonstration.” At his direction, Shaw went to the back of the courtroom and with Bundy watching, walked forward. As he passed, Bundy looked down at Shaw’s feet. Bundy asked Shaw to repeat this exercise, which he did. “I watched his foot the way it twisted,” Bundy testified, after resuming the witness stand. He was referring to the slightly splayed way Shaw sometimes walked because of his bad back. “The twisting of his foot had frightened me that day on the seawall when I was about to cook my drugs.” He said he saw it again at the preliminary hearing when Shaw entered the courtroom.*

  Bundy’s demonstration was devastatingly effective and reminiscent of the touch at the preliminary hearing when Garrison had Russo and Bundy walk to Shaw’s chair and place their hands over Shaw’s head. Garrison had devised a new choreography. Dymond did what he could to recoup, pointing out the absurdity of an addict leaving the safety of his home to shoot drugs in a public place. That did not, however, erase the impact of Bundy’s performance.