False Witness

by Patricia Lambert

  Clay Shaw:

  The man who lives a successful life is the man who develops his potentials to their fullest . . . and who makes it a policy to try not to harm anybody else.1

  —Press Conference, March 2, 1967

  AFTERWORD

  A GRAND JURY TRANSCRIPT SURFACES

  On August 4, 1995, I received anonymously through the mail a six-page grand jury transcript.* It is a brief but dramatic interrogation of Perry Russo by Jim Garrison. The exchange on Garrison’s part was hostile. He was angry because Russo had visited the office of Shaw’s attorney, Edward F. Wegmann.† Moo Moo Sciambra, Russo’s “babysitter,” had seen him enter. Garrison was keeping a close watch on his star witness and was alarmed and threatened by Russo’s hobnobbing with the enemy. Garrison reacted as he always did when he felt at risk. He attacked.

  He hauled Russo in front of this body and made certain he didn’t jump ship. He threatened Russo outright with a perjury charge if he changed his story and dropped a veiled threat of an “accessory” charge as well. Garrison also snapped his whip at his grand jurors that day. The secretary recording these minutes freeze-framed Garrison in his most revealing mode. We see him bullying—“I want that cooperation or I’ll go to Judge Bagert and quietly shut this whole investigation down.” We see him brainwashing—“I told you I knew who the real assassins were and would haul them to justice.” It was Russo, though, who made this transcript invaluable by what he said that day. The others present made it so by what they knew and when they knew it.

  Russo unwittingly exposed how he was manipulated: “Mr. Garrison told me he had four strong witnesses [a former Dallas police officer, a CIA guy and some others] that could place Ferrie, Clay Shaw and Oswald together after I heard them planning it,” Russo said. (Garrison, of course, had no one.) Russo said Mark Lane told him “that he uncovered information three days after the assassination that put Shaw and Ferrie in the midst of it.” (Lane had nothing.) But Russo turned this session into a smoking gun when he revised his own testimony.

  Two weeks earlier he testified under oath at the preliminary hearing that he saw Clay Shaw a total of three times, including one occasion at David Ferrie’s home when the plotting occurred. Here, also under oath, he told the grand jury he saw Shaw at Ferrie’s house “at least five . . . maybe six times.”* Russo was either lying now or he was lying at the preliminary hearing. Prior to that hearing, Russo confessed to his first polygraph technician that his story was fiction from the outset. He also admitted it to his second polygraph operator and to Shaw’s defense team. He lied at the preliminary hearing. He lied at his first grand jury appearance. He lied at this one. He lied at Shaw’s trial. Today, thirty years later, we know that. But, if this transcript is legitimate (as I believe), it shows that way back then everyone in that grand jury room knew almost two years before the trial began that Perry Russo had lied at least once. Moreover, those who believed what he said this day knew he lied later at the trial when he repeated his preliminary hearing testimony. These grand jurors, Garrison, and his two key assistants—who handled that trial and were later appointed to the bench—all knew Garrison’s pivotal witness was a perjurer.

  The transcript I received in the mail is reproduced on the following pages.

  ORLEANS PARISH GRAND JURY

  PROCEEDINGS OF

  MARCH 29, 1967

  PRESENT:

  MESSRS. ALVIN V. OSER AND JAMES ALCOCK, Assistant District Attorneys

  JIM GARRISON

  Orleans Parish District Attorney

  MEMBERS OF THE ORLEANS PARISH GRAND JURY

  WITNESS:

  PERRY RAYMOND RUSSO

  Reported By:

  Maureen B. Thiel,

  Secretary

  Orleans Parish Grand Jury

  PERRY RAYMOND RUSSO, being sworn in by the Foreman of the Orleans Parish Grand Jury, was questioned and answered as follows:

  BY MR. JIM GARRISON:

  Q.

  You are the same Perry Raymond Russo who testified before this grand jury last week, are you not?

  A.

  Yes sir.

  Q.

  I believe you testified about seeing Clay Bertrand, whom we now have identified as Clay Shaw, several times at Dave Ferrie’s house. Can you tell us again, how many times did you see him there?

  A.

  At least five . . . maybe six times, counting the times when they finally talked about it, the assassination, you know.

  Q.

  Did they, at any time, suggest that you do anything? Did they ask you to do anything? After all, you had heard so much of what they contemplated . . .

  A.

  No.

  Q.

  You were asked by one of the grand jury members here about what went through your mind after you heard the plan had been carried out. You said that you were too busy and, I take it, unconcerned, to tell anybody about it in 1963, 1964, 1965 or 1966. Why was that, Perry? I know the answer, but I want the gentlemen here to understand it too.

  A.

  I only saw him about five times in the days after . . . I mean, you know, in 1964. That was Ferrie. And he never brought it up. I wasn’t one to bring it up. What would I have said, “How much did you get for having the President killed?” Anybody who would do a thing like that might kill anybody who asked about it. And I was getting ready for law school and I just wasn’t interested in Ferrie anymore. Call it lack of interest or whatever.

  BY A GRAND JUROR:

  Q.

  Let me see if I understand here. You heard all this and you know JFK was killed a few days later, just the way you heard it planned. Yet, you were too busy to get involved. Is that what you’re saying, Mr. Russo?

  I mean I don’t know how you could have slept at night. Mr. Garrison has explained in great detail that you are now making an almost supreme sacrifice to come forward, to stand tall against some elements in our government who have covered this whole horrible thing up, but why didn’t you say something?

  A.

  It isn’t easy to tell a secret of such great scope. And I didn’t know for sure that they did it. I guess Oswald was there, at least, but Ferrie was somewhere else. Mr. Garrison told me he had four strong witnesses that could place Ferrie, Clay Shaw and Oswald together after I heard them planning it, so maybe what I saw and heard isn’t all that important. I’ve been assured that I was just the first one who got involved with ’em. Mr. Garrison has a former Dallas police officer, a CIA guy and some others. Why don’t you ask them why they didn’t come forward before this too? Mark Lane, you know him, who was once a senator, he told me that he uncovered information three days after the assassination that put Shaw and Ferrie in the midst of it. Why isn’t anybody asking him why he kept it secret for so long?

  BY MR. GARRISON:

  Q.

  I don’t think it’s called for to jump on this witness, the one man who had guts enough to come here and jump into all this mess. He has been hounded by the go-along press, has been followed by private detectives, has been bribed by TIME magazine to change his story and has been ridiculed for the truths he has told us. If you want to cast some blame, I think maybe you’ll have ample opportunity when I get people like Walter Sheridan, Rick Townley, James Phelan, Hue Aynesworth and Gordon Novel up here . . . and I will. All of them will be subpoenaed. And you haven’t seen a criminal until you talk to Regis Kennedy and William Gurvich. I’ve told you all about Carlos Quiroga and Layten Martins. We have evidence tying Quiroga to Dallas, Sheridan and Phelan to taking bribe money from the CIA and a tape recording of TIME trying to bribe this witness. And you jump on him! If that’s the way an honest grand jury is going to handle the most important investigation in U.S. history, I may not want to be a continuing part of this whole show. When we began, I told you I knew who the real assassins were and would haul them to justice. You gave me your assurance you would keep an open mind and work with me. So I want that cooperation or I’ll go to Judge Bagert and quietly shut this whole investigatio
n down. Perry, I have a couple other questions to ask, then if any more jurors want answers, I’ll open it up again, okay?

  A.

  Okay. Shoot.

  Q.

  Did you meet with Edward Wegmann, a lawyer for Clay Shaw, at his office after you visited this grand jury last week? I’ll have to be honest with you. Mr. Sciambra . . . Moo Moo . . . said he saw you on the same floor as Wegmann’s office. I know it’s a free country, but with all the accusations flying around, I’ve got to know what you’ve been doing.

  A.

  The day after I left the grand jury, I got a call from Mr. Wegmann. He was real polite, a gentleman to me. He said he knew that me and C.G. Mitchell, an old friend of mine, had got caught shoplifting at Schwegmann’s and he said since I was in the public eye and all, things might go bad for me when it hit the newspapers. He said he had a copy of the arrest report. He told me I’d better drop by to talk; that I might need a friendly lawyer. I told him I had already talked to Andy and that you had told him it wasn’t nothin’ important, that you would take care of it before it got to a grand jury. In return for what I’ve done for you in this case, you know. The only other thing he seemed interested in was about my truth serum stuff and the hypnosis. I told him I wasn’t really under hypnosis anyway. He asked about Lefty Peterson and Al Landry and then I went home.

  Q.

  You didn’t relate what you discussed before the grand jury, did you?

  A.

  No, not a bit. Mostly about the shoplifting. Andy told me that was taken care of, so I didn’t see anything wrong with talking about it. He said they’d never been able to find that arrest record . . . that it was the least the D.A.’s office could do for the risks I’m taking. We was innocent anyway.

  Q.

  Do you know the danger in talking to the defense lawyers? They’re just out to destroy you and make this grand jury and me look like fools. Nobody can stop you from going where you want to or talking to whoever you want to, but the help my office has given you will certainly have to stop if we see a reoccurence of this type behavior. Do you understand me, Perry?

  A.

  Yes sir. Completely. I didn’t mean . . .

  Q.

  One panel member asked last week if you might have some risk of being charged as an accessory after the fact. Mr. Alcock tried to explain the law to the questioner . . . and I hope we’ve straightened that out. There will be no such charges emanating from the Orleans Parish district attorney’s office, so you don’t have to be afraid -- if you don’t change your story. In that case, the charge would not be accessory it would be perjury.

  A.

  I understand. I only know what I saw and heard . . . and I won’t change that.

  Q.

  Since the grand jury has specifically asked that Dean Andrews be brought back this afternoon, I’m going to excuse you now, Perry. Thank you and keep your chin up.

  A.

  Okay. So long.

  * In 1995 a former investigator in the New Orleans D.A.’s office leaked forty-four Garrison-era grand jury transcripts to the press. The transcript I received in the mail is not one of those.

  † Many years later Perry Russo mentioned his visit to Wegmann’s office to writer Hugh Aynesworth.

  * Why Russo increased the number of these phantom sightings may never be known with certainty. Most likely he was responding to pressure from Garrison to repair his story, badly damaged ten days earlier by the bomb James Phelan exploded in Garrison’s den. Garrison knew this jury would soon be reading Phelan’s article and Russo’s “new” recollections probably were meant to nullify its impact. Russo was certainly trying to bolster his credibility in the eyes of these jurors who, to their credit, were skeptical even without Phelan’s information.

  APPENDIX A

  ON THE TRAIL OF THE ASSASSINS:

  MORE ANOMALIES

  This appendix is not all-inclusive but an additional sampling only, a supplement to chapter 14, specifically, and the whole of False Witness, generally. The first page numbers refer to the Sheridan Square Press edition of Garrison’s book, On the Trail of the Assassins: My Investigation and Prosecution of the Murder of President Kennedy; those in parentheses refer to the Warner Books paperback edition.

  1. p. xi (xi)—Garrison’s statement that prior to the trial he publicly linked Shaw to the CIA is probably true. But that admission is a stark contrast to Garrison’s oft-repeated claim that he never made any negative public statements about Shaw before the trial (Kirkwood, American Grotesque, pp. 489, 574–575).

  2. p. xii (xii)—Clay Shaw wasn’t acquitted, as Garrison claims, because the jurors found no motivation, but because, as several jurors said at the time, Garrison had presented no evidence to support his case. (See chapter 11.)

  3. p. 5 (3)—Guy Banister’s pistol whipping of Jack Martin did not lead to Clay Shaw’s prosecution. Perry Russo’s assassination plot-party story did.

  4. pp. 4–5 (3)—Garrison characterizes Guy Banister as an “occasional” drinker, a “highly composed individual” unlikely to engage in violence and excessive drinking, and describes his November 22, 1963, attack on Jack Martin as “unusual and explosive.” But Banister was forced to retire from the New Orleans Police Department following an episode in which he reportedly “threatened a waiter with a pistol.” Author Anthony Summers described Banister as “choleric” and “a heavy drinker.” G. Robert Blakey and Richard Billings also described Banister as “a heavy drinker.” According to them Banister had “a violent temper,” and they referred to “reports that he shot a man during Mardi Gras festivities.” (Anthony Summers, Conspiracy [New York: Paragon House, 1989], pp. 290–291; G. Robert Blakey and Richard N. Billings, The Plot to Kill the President, [New York: Times Books, 1981], pp. 165–166.)

  5. p. 5 (3)—Contrary to Garrison’s exciting narrative, the beating did not convert Jack Martin “into a bloody, battered mess,” and he was not “carted off to Charity hospital” in a police car. Martin’s wounds were relatively minor (“three small lacerations on the forehead and one laceration on the rear of the head”). And he went to Charity Hospital under his own steam. After he was treated he was well enough to take himself home. From his apartment he called the police, reported the incident, and a patrol car picked him up and took him to Baptist Hospital where he was examined and photographed. (New Orleans Police Department Report K-12634-63, Nov. 22, 1963, signed by Lt. Francis Martello.)

  6. p. 5 (3)—Jack Martin did not share his ideas about David Ferrie with only one friend, as Garrison indicates. Martin passed on his fantasies to a good portion of the population of New Orleans. (See chapter 3.)

  7. p. 6 (4)—Garrison claims that the weekend of the assassination his men discovered Oswald had been seen with Ferrie. That is not true. Neither his men, the New Orleans Police Department, the FBI, nor the Secret Service found any such evidence. That weekend the only information Garrison or anyone else had of an Oswald-Ferrie relationship came from Jack Martin’s telephone rampage. (See chapter 3.)

  8. p. 7 (5)—According to Garrison, Jack Martin’s “thoroughly reliable” friend contacted Asst. D.A. Herman Kohlman and reported what Martin had told him, triggering Garrison’s pursuit of Ferrie the weekend of the assassination. But Kohlman and the records of the Secret Service say otherwise. It was Martin, himself, who telephoned Kohlman at home (Secret Service Report, Nov. 24–29, 1963; Herman Kohlman, telephone conversation with author, July 29, 1996). By interjecting a supposedly “thoroughly reliable” friend into the picture (and also claiming, as described in the preceding item, that the D.A.’s office knew of other witnesses who saw Ferrie with Oswald), Garrison is trying to distance his initial “case” against Ferrie from its thoroughly unreliable instigator—Jack Martin. (Since several people who received telephone calls from Martin reported his claims to the Secret Service, it is entirely possible that someone also called the D.A.’s office about them. But, if so, the originating source, Martin, remained the same; and the record is unequivocal t
hat Martin himself spoke to Kohlman directly.)

  9. p. 7 (6)—David Ferrie did not leave New Orleans one hour after the assassination, as Garrison writes, but almost six hours afterwards. Proof of that is the telephone call (confirmed by the FBI) Ferrie placed, just before leaving, from Melvin Coffey’s home to the Winterland Skating Rink in Houston. (See chapter 3.)

  10. p. 24 (27)—There is no evidence that Banister or anyone else “stopped” Oswald from using the 544 Camp Street address on his literature. Reportedly, Oswald used the Camp Street address only on one occasion, Aug. 9, 1963, the day he deliberately caused a confrontation with the anti-Castro Cubans, which resulted in his arrest and a good deal of publicity. The publicity seems to have been what Oswald had in mind. Anticipating media scrutiny that day, it seems likely that he used the bogus office building address (instead of his home address) on his literature because it lent his Fair Play For Cuba “organization” (he was its only member) an air of legitimacy.

  11. p. 39 (43)—Jack Martin’s anonymity is one of the myths Garrison invented for his memoir. Garrison asserts that Martin demanded absolute secrecy, and refused to sign anything. In real life, Martin signed several documents. For instance: On Dec. 26, 1966, Martin signed a “Statement” in the district attorney’s office, given to “Jim Garrison in the presence of Louis Ivon,” which Ivon typed, and in which Martin claimed he saw David Ferrie in Guy Banister’s office in the company of “three or four young men,” one of them Oswald. On April 7, 1967, Martin signed a six-page version of his involvement in the case entitled, “General Statement & Affidavit Regarding Garrison Probe.” On March 1, 1968, Martin (along with David Lewis) signed yet another, lengthier version of events, in two parts, this one entitled, “J.F.K. Assassination Investigation Report.” These documents are today in the National Archives.