Crossfire

by Jim Marrs

  When asked to provide evidence of Garrison’s bribery attempt, Aynesworth failed to present either a witness or the tape recording he had mentioned. Internal CIA documents later made public showed Aynesworth, then working as a reporter for the Dallas Morning News, offered his services to the agency prior to the assassination and later was considered “a Warren Commission man on the assassination.” As late as 2012, Aynesworth was still being given much space in the Dallas Morning News to attack “conspiracy theorists.”

  During the Shaw trial, the media made much out of a visit to Las Vegas by Garrison, where reportedly he received a $5,000 credit line at the Sands Hotel. In 1979, a report to the House Select Committee on Assassinations even stated that Garrison met with mobster Johnny Roselli less than a month after Ferrie’s death.

  For his part, Garrison wrote to researcher John Judge, retorting, “I have never even seen John Roselli in my life; nor have I ever had a ‘secret meeting’ with any racketeer anywhere.”

  An NBC program stated that one of Garrison’s witnesses had lied under oath, but when requested to present their evidence to a New Orleans grand jury, news executives declined. In that same NBC program, newsman Frank McGee claimed two of Garrison’s star witnesses had failed their polygraph tests. Garrison publicly offered to resign if the network could substantiate this charge. Again, no proof was forthcoming.

  CBS interviewed Garrison, but as he later reported, “When the CBS program was shown across the nation, my half hour had been reduced to approximately 30 seconds. This gave me just about enough time to be a discordant bleep in the network’s massive four-hour tribute to the Warren Commission.”

  Shortly before Clay Shaw’s trial, Garrison believed he may have been the object of a setup to implicate him with a known homosexual and a former client. He escaped arrest and was shocked to learn that one of his “special team” members, a former FBI man, may have been responsible for the bizarre episode. However, before Garrison could question the man, he hurriedly left New Orleans, taking many of the district attorney’s files with him. Garrison also claimed that someone had “bugged” the telephones of his office, his home, and even his staff.

  The anti-Garrison media blitz coupled with the strange incidents surrounding his investigation prompted Garrison to claim that “a tremendous amount of federal power” had been arrayed against him in an effort to block his investigation of Kennedy’s death.

  He voiced his concern over a fair trial when he told interviewer Eric Norden, “I’m beginning to worry about the cumulative effect of this propaganda blitzkrieg on potential jurors for the trial of Clay Shaw. I don’t know how long they can withstand the drumbeat obligato of charges exonerating the defendant and convicting the prosecutor.”

  Garrison claimed this concerted effort to stop his investigation proved two things: “First, that we were correct when we uncovered the involvement of the CIA in the assassination; second, that there is something very wrong today with our government in Washington, D.C., inasmuch as it is willing to use massive economic power to conceal the truth from the people.”

  But Garrison was not without supporters. A group of New Orleans businessmen, going under the name “Truth or Consequences,” gave Garrison both moral and financial backing.

  Surprising solidarity came from Boston’s Cardinal Richard Cushing, father confessor to the Kennedy family, who commented, “I think they [the investigation in New Orleans] should follow it through. . . . I never believed the assassination was the work of one man.”

  Another odd show of support for Garrison came years later from a most unlikely source. Shortly before his disappearance, Teamster boss Jimmy Hoffa stated, “Jim Garrison’s a smart man . . . goddamned smart attorney. . . . Anybody thinks he’s a kook is a kook themselves.”

  There is some evidence that Robert Kennedy also took Garrison’s probe seriously. He indicated to his friend Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. that he believed Garrison might be onto something. But once when his staff began to tell him about Garrison’s findings, he turned away, saying, “Well, I don’t think I want to know.”

  By January 29, 1969, the day the Clay Shaw trial finally got under way, Garrison’s case was already foundering. His chief suspect, Ferrie, was dead and others had fled New Orleans and were safe in other states that refused to honor Garrison’s legal extradition requests.

  Governor John Connally, himself a victim in Dallas, refused to extradite Cuban leader Sergio Archaca-Smith, while California governor Ronald Reagan declined to allow extradition for one Edgar Eugene Bradley. Garrison, in a mistake that would cost him further credibility, apparently had mistaken Bradley for Mafia man Eugene Hale Brading, who was arrested in Dealey Plaza shortly after the assassination.

  But Garrison’s major “missing witness” was Gordon Novel, then a young electronics expert who eventually became embroiled in some of this nation’s most controversial cases. Novel first approached Garrison in early 1967 with information about David Ferrie and Cuban exile activities, but soon Garrison came to believe that Novel was a CIA “plant.” Some researchers also identified Novel as the “umbrella man” in Dealey Plaza but his claim to have been in New York City at the time and the fact that he lived until his seventy-fourth year belied that notion.

  After Garrison subpoenaed Novel, he fled to Ohio, where governor James Rhodes, despite a personal call from Louisiana governor John McKeithen, refused to allow extradition. Likewise, the governor of Nebraska declined to honor an extradition order for Sandra Moffett, a former girlfriend of Perry Russo’s who was present at the gathering of Ferrie, Shaw, and Oswald in September 1963.

  A note left behind in his New Orleans apartment, which was later authenticated as being written by Novel, mentioned his work for Double Check Corporation, a CIA “front” located in Miami. The letter stated, “Our connection and activity of that period [with Double Check] involves individuals presently . . . about to be indicted as conspirators in Mr. Garrison’s investigation.”

  In 1974 Novel, who later in life claimed to have worked with the CIA, though never as an employee, met with President Nixon’s special counsel Charles Colson and discussed developing a special degaussing machine that would erase Nixon’s incriminating White House tapes from afar. Novel also cropped up as an electronics expert in the case of automobile magnate John DeLorean and again as an imaging expert in the court trial of Waco’s Branch Davidians. Novel died in October 2012.

  Despite the media attacks and missing witnesses, Garrison gamely moved ahead with his prosecution of Clay Shaw. His goals were twofold: (1) convince the jury that a conspiracy was behind President Kennedy’s death, and (2) prove that Clay Shaw was a part of that conspiracy. Garrison achieved the first goal but failed on the second.

  After a string of witnesses from Dallas—including the Bill Newmans and railroad man James L. Simmons and others not called before the Warren Commission—told of shots to Kennedy’s front and medical experts pointed out the shortcomings of the president’s autopsy, the jury became convinced of Garrison’s charge that a conspiracy had existed. This conviction solidified when the jury viewed the Zapruder film of the assassination—made available for the first time thanks to Garrison’s subpoena power. After the trial, the polled jury agreed that Garrison had convinced them that Kennedy had died as the result of a conspiracy.

  However, the evidence of Shaw’s involvement proved less convincing. Despite several credible people who testified they had seen David Ferrie and Lee Oswald with a man matching Clay Shaw’s description, including several prominent residents of Clinton, Louisiana, many jurors remained skeptical.

  Insurance salesman Perry Russo repeated his 1967 statements that he was present when Shaw and Ferrie talked about assassinating Kennedy. Russo said that Shaw was introduced to him as Clem Bertrand. He said Ferrie and the man he identified as Shaw talked of triangulation of gunfire and the need to have alibis at the time of the assassination.

  Defense attorneys countered that Russo had been given a truth serum d
rug to help his recall and reiterated the charge that Garrison had implanted the entire Ferrie-Shaw story while Russo was under the drug’s influence.

  One particularly compelling witness was Vernon Bundy, who testified he had seen Clay Shaw meet with Lee Harvey Oswald at a seawall on Lake Pontchartrain, near New Orleans, in June 1963. Bundy said he knew the man speaking with Oswald was Shaw because he noticed the man had a slight limp. A puzzled Shaw was asked to walk down the center aisle of the courtroom and everyone, including an amazed Garrison, noticed for the first time a nearly imperceptible limp.

  Another credible witness was postman James Hardiman, who testified that during 1966 he had delivered letters addressed to “Clay Bertrand” to a forwarding address for Clay Shaw. Hardiman said none of the letters were returned.

  Then came Charles Spiesel, a New York accountant who had suddenly shown up in New Orleans to tell Garrison that he had met David Ferrie on a visit and that they had been joined by Clay Shaw. Appearing to be a credible witness, he had been belatedly added to Garrison’s witness list.

  Once Spiesel was on the stand, Garrison cringed at the man’s cross-examination. The man rambled on about how he had been hypnotized on several occasions by various unidentified people and how he regularly fingerprinted his daughter upon her return from Louisiana State University to make sure she was really his daughter.

  Garrison’s case also was not helped by several statements Spiesel made prior to the Shaw trial, including the claims that Shaw had met with Ruby and Oswald in the Jack Tar Capital House in Baton Rouge on September 3, 1963, and handed them money, and that the man who killed President Kennedy had fired a .45-caliber pistol, then fled through the Dallas drainage system to another part of town. None of these claims were substantiated.

  More harm came in the testimony of attorney Dean Andrews, who, while under a perjury charge by Garrison, changed his story of being called by a man named Clay Bertrand and asked to defend Oswald just after the assassination. On the stand, Andrews said the name “Clay Bertrand” was simply a “figment of [his] imagination” and that he had never known Clay Shaw. Andrews’s statements strongly affected the jury, although later Garrison convicted Andrews of perjury based on this testimony.

  And when assistant district attorney James L. Alcock tried to discredit Andrews’s testimony, it appeared he was impeaching the core of Garrison’s allegation that Shaw and Bertrand were one and the same.

  So the crux of the case came down to whether Clay Shaw, the respected director of the International Trade Mart, and Clay (or Clem) Bertrand, the man overheard plotting against Kennedy, were the same man.

  Garrison’s strongest piece of evidence was Shaw’s jail card, which showed he used the alias Clay Bertrand. Yet Criminal District Court judge Edward Aloysius Haggerty refused to allow the jail card to be introduced as evidence, arguing that Shaw had not been allowed to have a lawyer with him during the booking procedure.

  Garrison’s hole card became New Orleans policeman Aloysius J. Habighorst, the jailer who filled out Shaw’s admission form, and who was expected to testify that Shaw had told him his alias was Clay Bertrand. However, before Habighorst could take the stand, Judge Haggerty ordered the jury removed from the courtroom. He told stunned prosecutors that he was not allowing Habighorst’s testimony to be admitted because again no attorney had been present and his alias story appeared to violate Shaw’s rights.

  Judge Haggerty then said, “Even if [Shaw] did [admit the alias], it is not admissible. If Officer Habighorst is telling the truth—and I seriously doubt it . . .” This remark brought Assistant District Attorney Alcock to his feet, saying, “Are you passing on the credibility of a state witness in front of the press and the whole world?” To this Judge Haggerty responded, “It’s outside the presence of the jury. I do not care. The whole world can hear that I do not believe Officer Habighorst. I do not believe Officer Habighorst.”

  Alcock moved to have a mistrial declared, but Judge Haggerty denied this, ordering the trial to proceed without the crucial testimony of Officer Habighorst.

  With the judge’s statements, Garrison’s case, already severely weakened by dead, incredible, and unobtainable witnesses, collapsed.

  Clay Shaw took the stand in his own defense, claiming that he never knew Ferrie, Oswald, or Ruby and that he had not participated in a plot to kill Kennedy. Garrison’s team was unable to provide any motivation for Shaw’s involvement in such a scheme.

  Just past midnight on March 1, 1969—two years to the day that Shaw had first been arrested—the jury filed into Judge Haggerty’s courtroom to announce Clay Shaw’s acquittal after less than an hour of deliberation.

  Two days later, on March 3, Garrison filed perjury charges against Shaw for maintaining that he never met David Ferrie. Garrison later wrote:

  We had more witnesses to prove this flagrant case of perjury than I had ever encountered as district attorney. . . . Given my personal choice, I would much rather have let the matter rest once and for all. . . . However, the choice was not mine. My decision had been made automatically when—contrary to the numerous statements in our files—Shaw had taken the witness stand and, in his grand and courtly manner, made a mockery of the law against lying under oath.

  But again Garrison had not counted on the federal government.

  According to federal law at the time, “A court of the United States may not grant an injunction to stay proceedings in a State Court except as expressly authorized by an Act of Congress, or where necessary in aid of its jurisdiction, or to protect or effectuate its judgments.”

  Garrison wrote:

  Fortunately for Shaw, the federal judicial system shut its eyes to that federal law. The United States District Court DID [sic] enjoined me from prosecuting Shaw for committing perjury, and the federal appellate structure firmly backed up the District Court’s ruling all the way. When the assassination of a dead president has been ratified by a live national government, details such as the law very quickly become irrelevant.

  Clay Shaw, his finances depleted after years of defending himself and despondent over the revelations of his homosexual connections, retired to his New Orleans home, where he died on August 14, 1974.

  Even Shaw’s death did not pass without question. Neighbors saw some men carrying what appeared to be a body completely covered by a sheet on a stretcher into a carriage house belonging to Shaw. They called the coroner’s office, which dispatched investigators. The coroner’s investigators found Shaw’s home empty and, after a day of searching, learned that Shaw had just been buried in his hometown of Kentwood. A death certificate signed by a Dr. Hugh Betson stated death was caused by lung cancer.

  New Orleans coroner Dr. Frank Minyard, concerned over the circumstances of Shaw’s death and the rapidity of burial, initially said he would seek a court order to exhume Shaw’s body. However, word reached the news media, which immediately editorialized against such a move, hinting that the exhumation was just another attack by Garrison, and Minyard dropped the whole matter.

  Despite his courtroom loss and the tidal wave of negative publicity—the New York Times called the case “one of the most disgraceful chapters in the history of American jurisprudence” while the New Orleans States-Item demanded Garrison’s resignation—the scrappy district attorney nevertheless handily won reelection later that year.

  But his troubles with the federal government were not over. On June 30, 1971, Garrison was arrested at his home by Internal Revenue Service agents who charged him with accepting illegal payoffs from pinball-machine operators. After two years of more bad publicity, he was finally brought to trial. Several pinball-machine operators told of making payoffs, but none of them could directly implicate Garrison.

  Finally, a former Garrison investigator and Army buddy, Pershing Gervais, took the stand and told how Garrison had accepted $150,000 in payoffs. He even produced a tape recording reportedly made of the district attorney discussing the matter. But on cross-examination, Gervais admitted that he had t
old a television reporter that the Justice Department had forced him to lie and incriminate Garrison. Gervais had admitted the case against Garrison was “a total, complete political frame-up, absolutely.” Furthermore, a speech expert testified that the incriminating tape had been created by splicing together several innocuous comments Garrison had made.

  Garrison and two codefendants were quickly found not guilty, but enough damage had been done. Busy defending himself in court, Garrison failed to mount an effective campaign in 1973 and was defeated for district attorney by 2,000 votes.

  Furthermore, the federal government came at him again, this time alleging income tax evasion in connection with the discredited pinball payoffs. Again Garrison was found not guilty, but by this time the national audience had largely turned its back on the “controversial” lawman in New Orleans.

  Even today many assassination researchers believe Garrison was far afield of truth about Kennedy’s death. Many agree with House Select Committee on Assassinations chief counsel Robert Blakey, who bluntly wrote, “In short, the Garrison case was a fraud.”

  Blakey, who claims organized crime killed Kennedy, apparently fails to see any suspicious connection in that David Ferrie was with New Orleans mob boss Carlos Marcello in court on the morning of the assassination; that Ferrie was the Civil Air Patrol leader of Lee Harvey Oswald; and that Ferrie and Clay Shaw both worked for the CIA and were connected to anti-Castro Cubans.

  It should also be pointed out that critics of Blakey’s work on the House committee noted a cozy relationship between Blakey and government agencies, such as the FBI and CIA.

  Buried at the end of the “Principal Sources” section in his book, The Plot to Kill the President, Blakey gives evidence of pre-censorship as well as his relationship with certain government agencies by writing: