False Witness

by Patricia Lambert

5. Hugh Exnicios, Lynn Loisel, and Al Beaubouef, “Conference,” twenty-nine-page transcript, March 10, 1967; Brener, The Garrison Case, pp. 165–171.

  6. Dymond et al. Interview.

  7. FBI Special Agent in Charge, New Orleans, airtel, to Director, May 5, 1967, “Letterhead Memorandum,” attached, quotes Aaron Kohn about Langridge (Jim Garrison, FBIHQ Main File 46-55913).

  8. Trosclair Report, p. 11.

  9. Ibid.

  10. Mutual Protective Association, Inc., Polygraph Examination Report, regarding Alvin R. Beaubouef, to “Mr. Fred Freid,” May 10, 1967.

  11. Among the Garrison material recently unearthed in his old office files in New Orleans are five lengthy transcriptions of several of the entirely innocuous Phelan-Russo conversations. Garrison never made them public because Phelan never said anything inappropriate (“First Interview Between Phelan and Russo,” May 24, 1967 [transcript dated June 16, 1967]; “Second Interview Between Perry Russo and James Phelan,” May 25, 1967; “Interview Between James Phelan and Perry Russo,” May 27, 1967; “Fourth Interview Between Perry Russo and James Phelan,” undated; “Interview with Perry Russo and James Phelan,” May 28, 1967).

  12. Phelan, memorandum, “Discrepancies and Contradictions In Russo’s Story; Kirkwood, American Grotesque, p. 168–169; Phelan Interview.

  13. Phelan Interview.

  14. Phelan, memorandum, “Discrepancies and Contradictions in Russo’s Story”; Kirkwood, American Grotesque, pp. 169–173.

  15. Phelan, memorandum, “Discrepancies and Contradictions in Russo’s Story”; Kirkwood, American Grotesque, pp. 169–173; Phelan Interview.

  16. Billings Personal Notes, pp. 85, 86.

  17. Sgt. Edward O’Donnell, report to Jim Garrison, regarding Perry Russo Interview, June 20, 1967 (Appendix B in this book). Perry Russo told Edward O’Donnell that “if he had to give a yes or no answer” as to whether Shaw was at the assassination party, “he would have to say no”; at the preliminary hearing he had intended to testify that he didn’t know whether or not Shaw was there but changed his mind because Dymond’s question about God had “turned him on”; the conversation at the party didn’t sound like a real “plot” but “a bull session”; he would like to meet Clay Shaw to see if he was the sort of person that would be involved in such a plot; and he would like to know Garrison’s “complete case against Shaw” in order to “help him come to a decision.”

  18. Edward O’Donnell, telephone interviews with author, July 28, 1993, Sept. 7, 1993, Nov. 14, 1993, March 18, 1996 (hereinafter O’Donnell Interviews). O’Donnell’s account of the meeting in Garrison’s office later was substantiated by Russo who said O’Donnell was “completely honest”; Russo, himself, referred to the “terrible scene” with Garrison and his aides over O’Donnell’s report (Wegmann Memorandum; Russo interview with author, Dec. 4, 1993).

  19. Gurvich Conference, p. 15. (The Alcock–Garrison conversation about arresting Sheridan is also mentioned in the Bethell diary.) On July 10, 1967, William Gurvich took a polygraph test administered by John E. Reid whose report stated that Gurvich “was telling the truth” about the fifteen questions he was asked. One of those questions was, “Did Garrison order the arrest, handcuffing and physical beating of Sheridan and Townley? Answer: Yes” (John E. Reid and Associates, Chicago, Illinois, Laboratory Report, July 10, 1967).

  20. Posner, Case Closed, p. 441.

  21. Niles Peterson and Sandra Moffett, the two friends Russo claimed were with him at Ferrie’s party where the conspiracy was hatched, both appeared on the broadcast and, as they had in the past, denied it. Peterson remembered a party but saw neither Oswald nor Shaw there nor anyone resembling them. Sandra Moffett repeated what she had said initially: that she didn’t meet David Ferrie until 1965.

  22. Since Miguel Torres and John Cancler were both in jail at the time, they had nothing to gain and ran a considerable risk by telling their story and challenging Jim Garrison.

  23. “Statement of 2 on ‘Plot’ Doubted,” New York Times, June 21, 1967; “NBC Tactics on Garrison Inquiry Hit,” Los Angeles Times, June 21, 1967.

  24. “Statement of 2 on ‘Plot’ Doubted,” New York Times, June 21, 1967; “NBC Tactics on Garrison Inquiry Hit,” Los Angeles Times, June 21, 1967; Brener, The Garrison Case, p. 147. For his protection, the identity of the “real” Bertrand (Gene Davis) wasn’t announced, but narrator McGee described him as a well known New Orleans businessman and homosexual whose name had been turned over to the Justice Department.

  25. New York Times, June 20, 1967.

  26. Recently, in an effort to minimize William Gurvich’s role, the charge has been made that he was not Garrison’s “chief” investigator. But he was repeatedly referred to as such by the press at the time; treated as such by Garrison; and so identified in the earliest book on the case, Plot or Politics? by Rosemary James and Jack Wardlaw, at p. 149.

  27. Newsday, June 23, 1967.

  28. Los Angeles Times, June 24, 1967. The article also said Gurvich “strenuously denied” telling Kennedy that Garrison’s case was “a hoax,” a story that was circulating. The source of the “hoax” quote was an FBI informant at Newsday (FBI New York Field Office teletype to Director, June 21, 1967). Gurvich later told James Kirkwood that his exact words to Robert Kennedy were “Senator, Mr. Garrison will never shed any light on your brother’s death” (Kirkwood, American Grotesque, p. 541).

  29. Los Angeles Times, June 24, 26, and 27, 1967; Los Angeles Herald Examiner, June 26, 1967.

  30. Newsday, June 23, 1967.

  31. Los Angeles Herald-Examiner, June 26, 1967.

  32. Gurvich also told a reporter at the Los Angeles Times that he decided to quit after Garrison pulled the name of his latest suspect from a letter written by a Texas woman. She wanted Garrison to help her locate her wandering husband who had a scar over his left eye. “Garrison has always thought that a man with a scar over his left eye was a companion of Lee Harvey Oswald,” Gurvich said. “So now this man became his suspect. It was so absurd I figured Garrison had gone completely nuts” (Los Angeles Times, June 29, 1967).

  33. Los Angeles Times, June 26, 27, and 29, 1967.

  34. Judge Haggerty, quoted by James Kirkwood, American Grotesque, pp. 645–646; Gurvich Conference, Tape #3, p. 6.

  35. Grand jury transcript, March 29, 1967 (Perry Russo).

  36. Those testifying before the grand jury who preceded William Gurvich included: Aaron Kohn; former FBI agent and writer for Ramparts magazine, William Turner; NBC affiliate WDSU-TV news director Ed Planer; New Orleans States-Item reporter Ross Yockey; Eugene Davis; and Dean Andrews.

  37. On July 12, 1967, Gurvich appeared again before the grand jury. He said he probably never would have made any public statements if, on the day he returned from New York, Garrison had seen him. Gurvich handed out copies of the lie-detector test administered to him by the well-known Chicago firm (described in note 19) which indicated his earlier statements to the jurors were true. Gurvich told the jurors of Garrison’s plans to raid the local offices of the FBI, and about Vernon Bundy’s polygraph. Garrison accused Gurvich of being paid and Gurvich called Garrison “a damn liar.” Gurvich also detailed the pressure put on burglar John the Baptist (John Cancler) to break into Shaw’s home (Grand Jury transcript, July 12, 1967, pp. 7–11, 22, 24, 65).

  38. New Orleans States-Item, June 29, 1967.

  39. At the same time Andrews fired off a shot of his own: a 100,000 damage suit against Garrison claiming he deprived Andrews of his civil rights. Andrews charged that Garrison, using Andrews’s sworn testimony to the Warren Commission, had “compelled” him to answer questions before the grand jury “designed to trap him, full knowing that [Andrews] had no knowledge of any conspiracy or any facts material to a conspiracy to murder John F. Kennedy.” In the pleading, Andrews stated that he had told Garrison “that there was no connection between Clay Shaw and Clay Bertrand.” Andrews called Garrison’s belief that Shaw and Bertrand were the same person, arbitrary, capricious and not
founded on any fact (New Orleans Times-Picayune, April 19, 1967). This suit was later dropped.

  40. Epstein, Counterplot, p. 34.

  41. New Orleans States-Item, July 6, 1967.

  42. New Orleans States-Item, Aug. 12, 1967.

  43. Los Angeles Times, June 29, 1967; New Orleans States-Item, June 29, 1967; Brener, The Garrison Case, p. 148. Two entries in the Billings Personal Notes track the Andrews-Garrison struggle and support Andrews’s version. One says that Andrews told Garrison Clay Bertrand didn’t exist (Feb. 23, 1967, p. 13). The other, two days later, says that Garrison had spoken to Andrews but he wouldn’t change his story (Feb. 25, 1967, p. 14). That same entry also says that Garrison had decided to pursue Shaw.

  44. New Orleans States-Item, Aug. 17, 1967.

  45. As Richard Billings wrote in his Personal Notes (May, 24, 1967, p. 85), Garrison would employ any method to obtain statements from key witnesses.

  46. O’Donnell Interviews.

  47. Leonard Gurvich, telephone interview with author, April 2, 1996; Gurvich Conference, Tape #2, p. 14.

  48. “Playboy Interview: Jim Garrison,” Oct. 1967; The Tonight Show, NBC, Jan. 31, 1968; “Garrison Says, ‘Now Our Government Is Lying!’ ” Los Angeles Free Press, Nov. 17, 1967 (transcript of Garrison’s Nov. 14, 1967, address to the Radio and Television News Association of Southern California); Clay Shaw, notes (hereinafter Shaw Notes) Jan. 31, 1968, p. 24.

  49. Bethell Diary, pp. 27–30. According to Bethell, the letter-writer from Van Nuys who fingered Edgar Eugene Bradley was a man residing in the home of a woman involved in a lawsuit with Bradley. This woman reportedly identified a photograph of one of the so-called tramps arrested in the railroad yards at Dealey Plaza on November 22, 1963, as Bradley. But another picture taken from a different angle clearly established the tramp wasn’t Bradley.

  50. United Press International, interview with Jim Garrison, Nov. 1, 1967.

  51. Shaw Journal, p. 69; Shaw Notes, Oct. 9, 1967, October 11, 1967, October 6, 1967.

  52. Bethell Diary, p. 25.

  53. Alcock Interview.

  CHAPTER TEN

  1. Kirkwood, American Grotesque, p. 301.

  2. The report described the findings of four medical experts who examined the president’s clothing, X-rays and photographs and confirmed the Warren Commission findings that he was shot from behind. Garrison’s office had been trying to obtain the same material since May 1968 but had indicated it wasn’t essential to the state’s case. Now Alcock said it was and the prosecution could not go to trial without it.

  3. New Orleans States-Item, Feb. 6, 1969; Jim Garrison, opening statement, trial transcript, Feb. 6, 1969, pp. 3, 7, 35. Earlier, Judge Haggerty granted a defense motion requesting production of the Beaubouef bribery tape (but it was never produced); and denied a defense motion (opposed by the state) to obtain the testimony of Perry Russo’s former girl friend, Sandra Moffett (Kirkwood, American Grotesque, p. 199).

  4. F. Irvin Dymond, opening statement, trial transcript, Feb. 6, 1969, pp. 4, 5, 7, 20.

  5. The trial testimony of twelve witnesses (among them Vernon Bundy, Charles Spiesel and Eugene Davis) was never transcribed. Why is unclear. The answer may lie in Judge Haggerty’s “special” arrangement whereby court reporting firm owner Helen R. Dietrich (now deceased) was granted “all publication rights” in return for her firm transcribing the entire trial. (One stenographer “would not agree” to this and refused to sell Dietrich his notes, though he did participate in the transcription of some testimony.) Dietrich’s son-in-law, William Griffin, suggests that because Dietrich received few orders for the full transcript, and perhaps received no specific orders for the testimony of some witnesses, she may have chosen to leave the latter untranscribed for financial reasons. Fortunately, the two local newspapers provided detailed daily descriptions of the proceedings, and the New Orleans States-Item, in many instances, published verbatim accounts of the testimony. Also, writer James Kirkwood (American Grotesque) sometimes used quotations directly from the proceedings. (Jonathan Blackmer, HSC memorandum to Robert Tanenbaum, “The Mysterious Clay Shaw Trial,” Dec. 12, 1976; telephone conversations with William Griffin, June 16 and July 7, 1998, and Dave Snyder, June 16, 1998.)

  6. New Orleans Times-Picayune, Feb. 8, 1969; New York Times, Feb. 8, 1969; Kirkwood, American Grotesque, pp. 231–233.

  7. Dymond et al. Interview.

  8. Los Angeles Times, Feb. 8, 1969; Dymond et al. Interview. Because Tom Bethell leaked the prosecution witness list to the defense shortly after the trial began, it has long been assumed by Bethell and others that the list enabled Shaw’s attorneys to obtain the information they used to demolish Charles Spiesel. But the list actually was of little help to the defense.

  9. Charles Spiesel led the jurors into a building at 1323 Dauphine which was next door to Shaw’s home at 1313, but with no success; then Spiesel led the parade around the corner into a place on Esplanade where they visited three more apartments, including two that Shaw once owned. “I don’t think he found anything,” Irvin Dymond commented to the trailing newsmen, “but we saw a couple of pretty girls” (Los Angeles Times, Feb. 9, 1969).

  10. Alcock Interview.

  11. Tom Bethell, “Conspiracy to End Conspiracies,” National Review, Dec. 16, 1991. James Alcock recently acknowledged that he was the one who “conducted the initial interview with Spiesel in New York.” He also claimed that “everyone was taken by surprise by Spiesel” at the trial (Alcock Interview).

  12. Perry Russo, trial transcript, February 10, 1969, pp. 30, 67–68, 129–120.

  13. Ibid., pp. 154, 198; February 11, 1969, pp. 315, 257.

  14. Ibid., March 11, 1969, pp. 382, 417–420, 447–450.

  15. Ibid., pp. 502–503.

  16. New Orleans States-Item, Feb. 12, 1969; Kirkwood, American Grotesque, p. 298. Later efforts by the prosecution to enter testimony about Russo’s hypnosis sessions into the court record failed when Judge Haggerty sided with the defense and refused to allow Dr. Fatter to testify about them. When Haggerty ruled that the hypnosis transcripts, like the sodium Pentothal memorandum, were inadmissible as well, the defense abandoned its plan to present expert testimony regarding the inappropriately suggestive questions posed during the hypnosis interviews.

  17. Andrew Sciambra, trial transcript, February 12, 1969, pp. 59, 26–27.

  18. Ibid., pp. 20, 17, 42–44.

  19. According to James Phelan, Garrison believed the 1963 FBI investigation of David Ferrie uncovered some inculpatory information that the bureau withheld, but Ferrie’s FBI file is now available and Garrison was wrong.

  20. James Hardiman, trial transcript, Feb. 12, 1969, p. 6, Feb. 13, 1969, p. 25; Kirkwood, American Grotesque, p. 308.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  1. Garrison, interview, Playboy magazine, Oct. 1967.

  2. Abraham Zapruder, trial transcript, Feb. 13, 1969, pp. 80–82; Kirkwood, American Grotesque, 311–314.

  3. Once in Jim Garrison’s office the film was permanently “liberated.” In Los Angeles a man using the name “Hervé Lamarr” appeared with a print in his possession, copies were struck, and soon the large body of interested parties in the area were viewing it, often under makeshift conditions—a sheet hung on a living room wall in the absence of a screen, for instance. (The illegality of possessing the film was a concern; those obtaining it were told to say, if asked, though no one ever did, that it arrived from parts unknown in their mailbox inside a plain manila envelope with no return address.) These bootlegged copies quickly proliferated and over time the quality deteriorated dramatically as copies were struck from copies. This led to some significant misinterpretations of the film.

  4. New Orleans States-Item, Feb. 14, 1969.

  5. Kirkwood, American Grotesque, p. 311.

  6. Buell Wesley Frazier, and Lyndel Shaneyfelt, trial transcript, Feb. 14, 1969, pp. 11 (Frazier), 82, 78 (Shaneyfelt); New Orleans States-Item, Feb. 14, 1969.

  7. Trial transcript, James Simmons, Feb. 15
, 1969, pp. 8, 10; William Eugene Newman, Jr., Feb. 17, 1969, p. 11; Billy Joe Martin, Feb. 14, 1969, pp. 51–54; Roger Craig, Feb. 14, 1969, pp. 75–81; Richard E. Carr, Feb. 19, 1969, pp. 17–18, 20; Mrs. Elizabeth Carolyn Walton, Feb. 14, 1969, pp. 94–95.

  8. Dr. John Marshall Nichols, trial transcript, Feb. 17 and 19, 1969, pp. 33–35, 40, 43–44, 45, 50–57.

  9. New Orleans Times-Picayune, Feb. 20, 1969 (Mrs. Jessie Parker); Kirkwood, American Grotesque, pp. 348–350.

  10. Garrison claimed a local television reporter was at fault for the publicity surrounding the fingerprint card. Garrison supposedly locked up the records after Shaw’s arrest and the matter of the alias on the card was forgotten until July of 1968 when Habighorst told his story on television and released a copy he had kept of the card. But an internal investigation by the Police Superintendent revealed the truth: Habighorst’s televised interview was cleared by Garrison’s office (New Orleans States-Item, Feb. 20, 1969). Why did Garrison do it? Perhaps he realized the judge would disallow the card as evidence under any circumstances, and that even if admitted, Habighorst’s story would be discredited. By putting Habighorst on television, Garrison insured that his constituents—the potential jury pool—knew about Habighorst’s story and heard only his version of it.

  11. Trial transcript, Feb. 19, 1969, pp. 53, 69 (Aloysius J. Habighorst), 79, 82–84, 99–101 (Louis J. Curole), 109–111, 121 (Jonas J. Butzman), 124–125, 128–129 (John N. Perkins, Jr.), 132–135, 144 (Edward F. Wegmann), 147, 148 (Salvatore Panzeca), 155–157, 167–169 (Clay Shaw); Kirkwood, American Grotesque, pp. 353–359.

  12. Judge Edward A. Haggerty, Jr., trial transcript, Feb. 19, 1969, pp. 179–180; Los Angeles Times, Feb. 20, 1969.

  13. New Orleans States-Item, Feb. 21, 1969.

  14. The testimony regarding the consistent ninety-degree temperature in the Clinton area has been challenged and probably rightly so. Gerald Posner in Case Closed, for instance, cited records of the U.S. Weather Bureau indicating that the daily temperature occasionally dropped into the eighties.