False Witness

by Patricia Lambert

  Alcock then nailed it down. “Are you now telling this Court,” Alcock said, “under oath that no one called you on behalf of the representation of Lee Harvey Oswald in Dallas?” “Per se,” Andrews replied, “my answer is yes, no one called me to say that.” Why then did he call Monk Zelden? “Don’t forget I am in the hospital sick, I might have believed it myself or thought after a while I was retained there, so I called Monk. I would like to be famous, too, other than as a perjurer.” This brought laughter in the courtroom but, as one writer noted, Clay Shaw didn’t join in. “Nobody,” Andrews said, meaning the FBI and Secret Service, would tell him what he had said in the beginning, which is why his later statements were so contradictory. “I elected in my judgment not to involve a person who has absolutely nothing to do with Kennedy, in no way, shape or form, and I got hooked with it. I elected to stick with it, and here I sit.”23

  Judge Haggerty, the implications of this testimony taking hold, asked Andrews where he got the name Clay Bertrand. Andrews described searching for something to use as a cover for Gene Davis and remembering the “fag” reception and the introduction. “I got there in the middle of the thing and Big Jo says, ‘Meet Clay Bertrand.’ ” Everybody, Andrews said, “burst out laughing” because it was Gene Davis. “I have been introduced as Algonquin J. Calhoun but people know me as Dean Andrews, know it is not my name.” Alcock had little success probing Andrews for answers. Yes, he made conflicting statements, he said, but “Clay Bertrand is a figment of my imagination.” Andrews said he had told “the DA’s office” that Shaw wasn’t Bertrand. He had told the grand jury. Nobody believed him. “If I had my life to live over again,” he declared, “I would say his name was John Jones.”24

  Toward the end of Andrews’s testimony, Judge Haggerty requested a five-minute conference in his chambers with the attorneys for both sides. Officially what transpired there is unknown but writer James Kirkwood was told that Judge Haggerty, “shaken” by Andrews’s revelations, raised the possibility that the state might want “to make a reassessment of their position in this case.” Reportedly, the prosecution said it lacked the “authority” to do that.25

  It had been over two years since Garrison first revealed his mad notion to Andrews that “Bertrand” was Clay Shaw. Nothing Andrews had been able to say had moved Garrison from that position. As Bertrand was his invention, Andrews bore some responsibility for Shaw’s plight. Guilt ridden, as any person with a conscience would have been, and at no small risk to himself, that day Andrews had done everything he could to rectify that wrong.

  Another witness worried about a miscarriage of justice occurring was Charles A. Appel, Jr., a graphologist in charge of FBI handwriting analysis for twenty-four years and nationally known for breaking the Lindbergh kidnaping case. He waived his fee when told the defendant couldn’t afford it. Appel had studied Clay Shaw’s handwriting and the “Clay Bertrand” signature in the airport VIP lounge book. “Shaw did not write the entry in the book,” Appel testified. The entry in the book “was made by some other writer entirely.”26

  Clay Shaw’s friend of twenty-three years, Jeff Biddison, described by one writer as “a good-looking man in his forties,” testified that in all that time he had never seen Shaw dressed in tight pants or wearing a hat. While Shaw was in Europe, Biddison had received Shaw’s mail at his office, not his home, and had never received any mail addressed to “Clay Bertrand” nor to “Clifford Boudreaux,” one of the names Dymond made up, which the mailman claimed to recognize.

  James Phelan took the stand worried that the hearsay rule might prevent him from telling everything that needed to be told. His concern was unnecessary. Led by Dymond through his experiences with Jim Garrison, Andrew Sciambra, and Perry Russo, Phelan managed to tell the jury absolutely all of it.

  He wasn’t the only volunteer witness for the defense. For two years the police technician who administered Russo’s second polygraph test, Lt. Edward Mark O’Donnell (Homicide Division’s new Assistant Commanding Officer), had believed the case would never go to trial. Realizing he was wrong, about two weeks before it began, he called Irvin Dymond. “I couldn’t sit idly by,” he told this writer, “and see an innocent man persecuted.”* Described by one reporter as “tall, handsome, and poised,” O’Donnell was allowed to testify only in a limited way about his encounter with Perry Russo but managed to put into the record that Russo had said Shaw wasn’t present at the plotting session. He also described writing his report and the confrontation it ignited in Garrison’s office.27

  Clay Shaw finally took the stand in his own defense that same morning. His direct examination was a chorus of denials. He had never met Lee Harvey Oswald, David Ferrie, or, until this case began, Perry Raymond Russo. He had never been to Ferrie’s apartment. Never visited Clinton. Did not own a black Cadillac (nor did the Trade Mart).* He had never worn a hat. Had never seen Vernon Bundy prior to the preliminary hearing. Never met with anyone at the lakefront seawall. Nor given Oswald money. He had never seen Charles Spiesel. He had never been in the Eastern Airlines VIP room at the airport (and had been unaware the room existed). The signature in the guest book was not his. The only “alias” he had ever used was “Allen White” (his grandmothers’ maiden names) on a play he wrote. He was never known as “Clay Bertrand” or “Clem Bertrand.” He was present when Kennedy spoke at the Nashville Street wharf. In fact, he was part of the city’s Reception Committee but he was wearing a conservative business suit. He had never worn tight pants.28

  The summer of 1963 was one of the busiest times in his career due to the proposed construction of the thirty-three-story International Trade Mart building.† “I have never worked harder in my life,” he said. During that period, he was absent from work only one day, in late September, to visit his father in Hammond, and while he was there his secretary called him about a business matter. His trip to the West Coast was initiated in September by a telephone call from a representative of a world development conference in Portland, Oregon, inviting him to speak there on November 26 and offering to pay his expenses. “Was this trip a cover up for any assassination plot?” asked Dymond. “No, certainly not,” Shaw replied. Garrison had blasted the CIA for two years, but neither he nor any of his assistants mentioned that agency in the course of the trial. It was Dymond who asked, “have you ever worked for the Central Intelligence Agency?”‡ “No, I have not,” Shaw said. He denied even jokingly or casually talking about killing a president of the United States. When asked if he had conspired with David Ferrie and Lee Harvey Oswald to murder John Kennedy, Shaw replied, “No I did not!” In his final question, Dymond inquired if Shaw at any time had wanted “President Kennedy to die?” “Certainly not,” Shaw said.29

  On cross Alcock didn’t lay a glove on Shaw. He didn’t seem to try.* He elicited more details about Shaw’s trip to the Coast and his presence, the day of the assassination, in San Francisco where Shaw was scheduled to address a luncheon at the World Trade Center. Alcock introduced a letter showing that the Director of International Relations for the city of New Orleans, Mario Bermúdez, had solicited the speaking engagement on Shaw’s behalf. It was Shaw’s recollection that the Executive Director of San Francisco’s World Trade Center, Monroe Sullivan, had invited him in early November. Bermúdez might have made the overture, Shaw said, but he had neither knowledge nor memory of it.30

  Shaw acknowledged that in his March 2, 1967, press conference, he made the mistake of referring to Lee Harvey Oswald as Harvey Lee Oswald (which corresponded with the name “Harvey Oswald” supposedly on the job application at the hospital near Clinton).† Shaw said he had never met any of the Clinton witnesses. Nor Dean Andrews. Alcock established that Shaw and David Ferrie had one mutual friend, Layton Martens. After a final inconsequential question referring to a drawing made by Charles Spiesel, Alcock was finished. So was Dymond. “At this time,” he said, “the defense rests.”31

  Alcock’s soft cross-examination surprised Shaw supporters, as well as Shaw himself. To one wr
iter who spoke to him immediately afterwards, Shaw appeared somewhat stunned that it had gone so well and that there had been no surprises. Alcock had asked some seemingly trivial questions and never challenged Shaw on the two big ones: the CIA and the crime with which he was charged. Shaw would have held his ground on both, but it seems strange that the prosecution didn’t force him to do so. Though considering the reports of Alcock’s dismay at prosecuting Shaw, perhaps it isn’t strange at all.

  After lunch the prosecution led off its rebuttal with Oswald’s foreman in the summer of 1963, and established that he had fired Oswald more than a month before Marina Oswald knew about it.

  Bar and grill operator Eugene Davis took the stand and denied calling Dean Andrews in the hospital shortly after the assassination.* He denied being introduced as Clay Bertrand and he denied being Clay Bertrand. On cross by Dymond, Davis acknowledged sending Andrews clients and was forced to admit that the Rendezvous Room had been “predominantly frequented by homosexuals.” When Dymond inquired if perhaps Big Jo had made the Clay Bertrand introduction without Davis hearing or being aware of it, Davis replied, “I would say I wouldn’t hear a word she said without she asked me for a drink.”32

  The defense was on a roll, but not for long.

  The next two witnesses, a husband and wife who had contacted the prosecution that morning, were a blow to Shaw and his supporters. Nicholas M. Tadin took the stand first, followed by his wife Matilda, who repeated the basics of her husband’s story. She said on the witness stand she only came forward because her husband told her she had a duty to do so and, later, in his summation, Dymond noted that she appeared “scared to death.” The Tadins claimed that, in the summer of 1964, they saw David Ferrie at the airport emerge from a hangar door with Shaw a few feet behind him. Shaw walked to his car, while Ferrie approached Tadin who said, “Dave, what you got, a new student here?” and Ferrie responded, “No, [he] is a friend of mine, Mr. Clay Shaw. He is in charge of the International Trade Mart.” Dymond would say about the Tadins in his closing argument that they were either lying or mistaken. On cross he confronted Tadin with his two-year delay in coming forward. Tadin said he “didn’t want to get involved.” When asked why he was willing to get involved this morning but not at the preliminary hearing, Tadin claimed he was prompted by hearing on television that Shaw said he didn’t know Ferrie. The defense was deeply disturbed by this testimony and its timing—coming near the end of the trial. Like the Clinton story at the beginning, if believed, it reflected on Shaw’s credibility.33

  The last day of testimony, Friday, February 28, began with Dr. Nichols again taking the stand for the prosecution. This time he was there to counter the testimony of Dr. Finck and FBI ballistics expert, Robert Frazier. For the bullet that struck the president in the back to have passed through his body without hitting bone, as Finck said it did, the angle of fire had to be from the side, Nichols testified, specifically a lateral angle of “twenty-eight degrees.” Otherwise “the cervical vertebra” would have been “fractured.” Moreover, for a bullet fired at that angle to go on to strike Gov. Connally, Nichols stated, the governor had to be seated approximately eighteen inches to the president’s left. (Connally was sitting almost directly in front of the president.) Nichols was not allowed to state whether the twenty-eight-degree angle was possible from the alleged sniper’s nest in the Texas School Book Depository, but presumably it wasn’t.34

  A photographer for the Orleans Parish Coroner’s office, Peter Schuster, described enlarging and analyzing a photograph which captured the grassy knoll area as the shots were being fired. Schuster submitted blow-ups of the picture’s “right top corner” where he claimed to see “a man” who appeared “to be holding something.” An incredulous Irvin Dymond ridiculed this claim and forced Schuster to admit he couldn’t say the something was a gun.

  The trial’s final witness was described by one writer as “a fading blond beauty in her sixties.” Elizabeth McCarthy was Garrison’s rebuttal to the defense’s FBI handwriting expert, Charles Appel. Garrison had retained her “yesterday.” The credentials she described and her experience were embarrassingly modest.* In her “opinion,” she said, it was “highly probable” that Clay Shaw signed the name “Clay Bertrand” in the airport VIP lounge book. Dymond concluded his cross by asking if she was “being paid to testify.” “Well, I hope so,” she replied. “It is my business.”35

  After lunch Dymond filed a second motion for a directed verdict, adding to the previous arguments “the unrefuted testimony of Dean Andrews,” which showed “that the name ‘Clay Bertrand’ had a completely fictitious origin, consequently rendering the case itself a fictitious one.” To the surprise of no one, Judge Haggerty denied it.

  The proceedings were galloping to a conclusion. In the next eight and a half hours, including a dinner recess, Alcock and Oser delivered arguments for the state. Dymond presented the closing statement for the defense. Oser, then Alcock rebutted it. And Jim Garrison delivered the state’s concluding statement, the trial’s final speech. Alcock began about three o’clock that afternoon. He said the defense promise to show that Shaw didn’t know David Ferrie or Lee Harvey Oswald “lay shattered, broken, and forever irretrievable in the dust of Clinton, Louisiana.” He predicted Dymond would say “that the state’s case rises or falls upon the testimony of Perry Russo.” Alcock agreed with that. What Russo heard planned, Alcock said, was corroborated by later events—David Ferrie’s journey to Houston, Clay Shaw’s trip to the West Coast, and Oswald’s presence at Dealey Plaza the day the president was shot.

  A lengthy recess followed. All the props originally used with the Dealey Plaza witnesses were again set up. Then Alvin Oser delivered his refutation of the Warren Report, by one account a bit theatrically. He managed to run the crucial Zapruder frames one last time. Jim Garrison entered the courtroom while Oser was speaking. But Garrison didn’t return from the dinner break that followed. That’s when Irvin Dymond made his final appeal to the jury—beginning about 7:40 P.M.

  In a low-key, conversational tone, Dymond asked the jurors to set Clay Shaw free and told them why they should. Clay Shaw, Dymond said, was on trial for one reason only, “to create a forum for the presentation of this attack upon the Warren Commission.” Dymond rejected the state’s suggestion that the Warren Commission and U.S. government were guilty of “one giant fraud.” He emphasized, however, that “a verdict of acquittal” did not “constitute your stamp of approval” on the Warren Report. The validity of the Commission’s conclusions was an issue separate and distinct from the charge against Clay Shaw. What happened in Dallas did not bear on what had occurred in New Orleans. “It doesn’t matter whether there was one man” at Dealey Plaza “or ten,” Dymond said, “no case of conspiracy has been made out against this Defendant.”

  Most of Dymond’s statement was devoted to the New Orleans scenario and Perry Russo. Alcock was “dead right,” Dymond said, the case “stands or falls” on Russo’s testimony. He reviewed the “seven facets” of the state’s case: the Clinton witnesses, coming forward more than five years after the alleged sightings; Vernon Bundy, leaving the safety of his home to shoot up on drugs in public. Spiesel, “this poor little paranoid bookkeeper,” who thought he was being followed and hypnotized against his will. Hardiman, the mailman who remembered delivering mail to Dymond’s fictitious “Cliff Boudreaux.” Shaw’s trip to the West Coast—why would a man in New Orleans travel to the West Coast to establish “an alibi for a crime that is being committed in Dallas?” The VIP lounge book signature, disproved by one of the “foremost” handwriting experts in the country, as well as common sense. And the plot party in Ferrie’s apartment, testified to by Russo, “a liar.” Even if all “seven facets” were true, Dymond said, they were not sufficient to “make this Defendant guilty of conspiracy.”

  “I hate to beat a dead dog,” Dymond said, referring to Sciambra’s memorandum and its missing plot party, which drew some chuckles. “This,” he said, “is like a man goin
g lion hunting and killing a lion and a rabbit, coming back and writing a story about the trip and forgetting to mention the lion.” He reminded the jurors of the testimony of Jim Phelan, “labeled by Mr. Sciambra a ‘journalistic prostitute’ ” but “back-stopped” by one of their own, Lt. O’Donnell. For Russo to become so angry at being asked if he believed in God that he lied under oath, was not a normal reaction, Dymond said. And “Perry Raymond Russo is not a normal individual.”

  In closing, Dymond returned to the source. “It all came from the mind of Dean Andrews.” Dymond admitted Andrews had “lied before” but now, risking further charges, with nothing to gain, took the stand “and shamelessly belittled himself” in order to tell the truth. Dymond told the jurors the “entire world was waiting to find out” if they would “convict a man on this Alice-in-Wonderland situation.” He repeated his charge that the trial was a forum for an attack on the Warren Report and that Shaw was a patsy “picked” to provide that forum. Again he asked the jurors to separate the two. “Don’t let the horror of this awful deed that was committed in Dallas cause you to convict an innocent man just to try to balance the scales.” His final statement was, “I ask you to vote your conscience, follow the law, and don’t make a mistake.”

  After another recess, a brief rebuttal by Alvin Oser, and a longer one by James Alcock, shortly before 11:00 P.M., an impeccably dressed Jim Garrison strode into the courtroom and was soon addressing the jury with his harmonious voice and quiet assurance. He spoke only twenty-five minutes and referred five times to the Zapruder film, waving the “Dallas flag,” as Dymond had warned he would. He mentioned only those who testified about the assassination: Dr. Finck, FBI Agent Frazier, and four Dealey Plaza witnesses.* Reaching for the gold ring that evening, Garrison said not one word about Perry Russo, Vernon Bundy, Charles Spiesel, the mailman, the VIP room hostess, or any of the others.