And, that's if we believe Fruge who has his own credibility issues. For instance, Fruge, along with his investigative partner Anne Dischler, was involved in an expenses scandal:

Opelousas Daily World, April 30, 1968

Did anybody at the Hospital in Jackson hear Rose Cherami predict the JFK assassination? Earlier this week, we included the statement of Mr. A. H. Magruder who told Garrison investigators that Dr. Victor Weiss had told him Cherami said that "the President and other Texas officials were going to be killed on their visit to Dallas."

But, in another Garrison memo, Weiss was not sure if he talked to Cherami before or after the assassination:

This is the only Garrison memo that reports on a conversation with Dr. Victor Weiss. He says he cannot remember if he spoke to Cherami before or after the assassination. Surely, had he talked to her before the assassination, he would not only remember it, but there would be some record of the discussion. No nurse or other personnel at the hospital has ever come forward a statement about what Cherami said before the assassination.

What I find striking is that Dr. Weiss and Mr. Magruder both decided not to inform the FBI or the Warren Commission about Rose Cherami. That suggests to me that whatever she did say did not bother them too much. - probably because whatever she said was after the assassination.

Dr. Victor Weiss was interviewed by the HSCA. He told them that he was asked by Dr. Bowers to see Rose Cherami on November 25, 2963 - after the assassination. He spoke to Cherami and she said she had worked for Jack Ruby. However, she did not have any specific details on an assassination plot and she said that "word in the underworld" was that Kennedy would be killed.

The HSCA did not talk to Dr. Bowers. But Dr. Bowers did speak to researcher Robert Dorff. Here is a letter from Dr. Bowers:

Dear Bob,

This letter is intended to set the record straight regarding my alleged statements concerning Rose Cherami in conjunction with her November 1963 stay at East Louisiana State Hospital in Jackson, Louisiana. You and I discussed this quite extensively during a series of telephone calls in early 2002. At that time you read a section on page 200 and 201 of Appendix 10 to the House Select Committee on Assassinations, which stated, quote:

"The commission [sic] interviewed one of the doctors on staff at the East Louisiana State Hospital who had seen Cheramie during her stay there at the time of the Kennedy assassination. The doctor corroborated aspects of [the Cheramie allegations]. Dr. Victor Weiss verified that he was employed as a resident physician at the hospital in 1963. He recalled that on Monday, November 25, 1963, he was asked by another physician, Dr. Bowers, to see a patient who had been committed November 20 or 21. Dr. Bowers allegedly told Weiss that the patient, Rose Cheramie, had stated before the assassination that President Kennedy was going to be killed."

Dr. Weiss’s statement is untrue. I was not at the hospital on Monday, November the 25th. I spent that day working at my regular job at the Baptist Hospital in New Orleans, Louisiana. My regular tenure at East Louisiana State Hospital ended in July, 1963, when I moved to New Orleans and commenced work at the Baptist Hospital in that city. I worked weekdays Monday through Friday. On weekends I would drive to Jackson to earn extra money working in the medical division at the East Louisiana State Hospital.

I never saw Rose Cherami and only found out about her allegations on Sunday, November the 24th, 1963, during a dove hunting engagement with Dr. Weiss. It was he who told me what she allegedly told Weiss and possibly others. I was never contacted by anyone from the House Select Committee on Assassinations.

When I began getting telephone calls from assassination researchers informing me about the statements attributed to me, as memorialized [in Weiss's HSCA testimony], I called Dr. Weiss and asked him why he had said these things. Weiss rebuffed my inquiry and flatly refused to discuss it. I found that very odd as I had known and respected him for many years. I still cannot understand why he made those statements.

On mature reflection I recalled that, during our dove hunting foray on Sunday, November the 24th, Dr. Weiss told me about Cherami’s allegations. That was the first time I heard any of this. I remember that incident because, while driving back to New Orleans that day, I heard on the radio that Oswald had been shot in the basement of the Dallas Police Department. Years later I personally reviewed Rose Cherami’s hospital records at the East Louisiana State Hospital and was unable to find any reference to her alleged remarks about an impending assassination of President Kennedy.

I’m sorry I was unable to attend the JFK Lancers [sic] forum in Dallas and hope this letter makes clear that I had no contact with Rose Cherami.

Sincerely,

Donn E. Bowers, MD

Dr. Bowers contradicts Dr. Weiss, but there is still no evidence that either of them spoke to Rose Cherami before the assassination.

Francis Fruge went back to the hospital in Jackson to speak to the nurses. There are no statements from any of the nurses amongst the Garrison papers - and no nurses have ever come forward with a statement about Cherami. We do know from the HSCA that hospital records "gave no reference as to alleged statements made by Cheramie."

The whole Cherami story doesn't make much sense. The conspirators, driving from Florida to Dallas, stop in Eunice, Lousiana. With them is a drug-addled prostitute. They then throw her out of the car, despite her foreknowledge of the assassination plot, and not only continue to Dallas to kill JFK, but then go on to Houston for a drug deal. That's a busy week, no?

According to Fruge, she said "We're going to kill President Kennedy when he comes to Dallas in a few days." That was the extent of their conversation.

He elaborated further in his deposition to the HSCA: (courtesy of the Larry Hancock website)

This hardly sounds like a plot, no?

Fruge's next interview with Cherami was on November 25, 1963, and here is what she said:

Hardly more details. Fruge then called his supervisor:

How did they follow up on this information? They called up customs. And they end up taking Cherami to Houston to work a narcotics deal. The guys who were going to kill Kennedy on Friday, then had to complete a narcotics deal in Houston. She did not want to talk to the FBI:

To be honest, I am not sure if Fruge was asking her about sharing her information on the JFK assassination or the narcotics deal. At one point, they called up Captain Fritz of the Dallas police and he wasn't interested - but did they tell him about Cherami's foreknowledge of the assassination or just the dope deal?

Nonetheless, Fruge did not call the FBI, nor did he ever contact the Warren Commission. But the narcotics case was important to him - he flew her to Houston to work with customs to complete the deal. And this makes me think he didn't take her seriously about the JFK assassination. He did take her seriously about narcotics.

After the dope deal fell through, "The Agent in charge of Customs in Houston called the Agents, probably F.B.I., and asked them if they wanted to talk to Cherami." Probably the FBI? Again, it appears that they called about the dope deal and not the assassination.

If any of this is confusing, well, Jonathan Blackmer could have done a much better job of deposing Fruge. He doesn't appear to be that interested in the story, to be honest, and the HSCA never contacted Fruge's supervisors.

And so, Fruge's April 4, 1967 report to Jim Garrison starts to make more sense. He didn't mention the JFK assassination in the memo because he was never convinced it was important. Garrison might have thought it was important, but not Fruge.

As you can see, he mentions the Ruby - Oswald connection, but nothing about the JFK assassination. And everything that Cherami said about Ruby and Oswald was said after the assassination, and after Ruby shot Oswald.

I love the last line, "Other statements made by subject, relative to your inquiry, are hear-say [sic], but are available, upon your request."

Here is an article about Francis Fruge from the Eunice News, July 18, 1967:

Note the last line - "He thinks she could have had direct knowledge of the assassination plot." This is far from definitive, no? He says he picked her up four days before the assassination, but he actually picked her up on November 20, 1963. Has the event already become hazy in his mind?

Also, note that, once again, Fruge spends more time talking about dope smuggling than the JFK assassination.

And in an upcoming post, you will see that not everything she said about the shipment of heroin checked out.

"On Friday, November 22nd, at twenty minutes before noon, Rose was watching television in the hospital recreation area. Scenes in Dallas flashed on the screen. President Kennedy was on his way.

"Somebody's got to do something!" Rose shouted. "They're going to kill the president!" No one paid any attention. The motorcade pulled into view. "Watch!" Rose cried out. "This is when it's going to happen! They're going to get him! They're going to get him at the underpass!"

"POW!" Rose yelled as the shots rang out.

Pretty creative, dialogue, no? Of course, the motorcade was not televised.

Joan Mellen got this from the following memo:

This is all so silly. Didn't Fruge already investigate? He picked up Rose Cherami from the hospital on November 27, 1963. Did no one say anything to him? Did he not ask anybody if Rose said anything after he brought her there? Did anybody in Garrison's office really believe she could have watched the motorcade on television?

Joan Mellen wasn't the only conspiracy theorist to believe this nonsense. In the July - August, 1999 issue of Probe Magazine, James DiEugenio wrote:

"At the hospital, Cheramie again predicted the assassination. On November 22nd, several nurses were watching television with Cheramie. According to these witnesses, "... during the telecast moments before Kennedy was shot Rose Cheramie stated to them, 'This is when it is going to happen' and at that moment Kennedy was assassinated. The nurses, in turn, told others of Cheramie's prognostication." (Memo of Frank Meloche to Louis Ivon, 5/22/67.) Although the Dallas motorcade was not broadcast live on the major networks, the nurses were likely referring to the spot reports that circulated through local channels in the vicinity of the trip."

DiEugenio actually believes this memo corroborates her supposed foreknowledge.

None of those nurses ever came forward with any information regarding Cherami. Her hospital records contain no indication she said anything about the JFK assassination.

Is that Rose Cherami behind Jack Ruby? (Just a joke, people!)

James DiEugenio, in Destiny Betrayed, writes: (page 79)

"On November 26, Fruge flew Cheramie from Louisiana to Houston. In the back of the small Sesna [sic] 180, a newspaper was lying between them. One of the headlines read that the investigators had found no connection between Ruby and Oswald. When Cheramie read this, she started to giggle. She said that Ruby and Oswald did know each other. She understood this from working for Ruby."

and: (page 182)

"She told the doctor that the president and other Texas officials were going to be killed on Kennedy's upcoming visit to Dallas. Weiss told Magruder that, like Fruge, he did not pay very much attention to these meanderings by the patient. But after Kennedy was killed, he went back to her. She now said, after Ruby had shot Oswald, that Oswald knew Ruby since she had seen them together at Ruby's club."

His source is a memo from 2/23/1967 from Detective Frank Meloche and Sergeant Sedgebeer to Jim Garrison. Here is that memo:

There are two Garrison notations. The first, on the left side, reads:

"Indicates that she did say this before the assassination."

And, at the bottom, he wrote:

"Note: This version has the FBI coming to pick her up! If this were the case, how did she get to Houston with Fruge?"

And, Garrison is correct - she was not picked up by the FBI, she was picked up by Fruge. So Garrison should have realized that there was something not quite right with the statement. Also, there is the claim that Cherami worked as a "dope runner" for Jack Ruby. But, is there any evidence that Ruby was involved with dope in the 1960s?

Of course, all of this is second-hand - it's just what Mr. Magruder remembers three years after the fact. He never even considered whether he should contact the FBI or the Warren Commission about the story. [By the way, Dr. Weiss told the HSCA that he talked to Cherami after the assassination.]

We've previously posted Francis Fruge's memo to Jim Garrison from April 4, 1967 about Rose Cherami. Here is an excerpt from that memo:

Fruge writes that "it was verified" that she once worked for Jack Ruby as a stripper. But there is not one piece of evidence to support that.

Now look at what Fruge told the HSCA:

Now, "he thinks that this might have been checked later." That sure doesn't sound like "verified," does it? Further, Cherami did not strip at the Carousel, but that was the only strip club Ruby owned. He did not own a club called the "Pink Door," or the "Red Door."

Here's how James DiEugenio reports this in Probe Magazine: (July-August, 1999)

"In fact, Fruge later confirmed the fact that she had worked as a stripper for Jack Ruby."

But his source was just the Fruge memo shown above.

Fruge's memory improved during his deposition, just ten days later: (courtesy of the Larry Hancock website)

Now, it was definitely the Pink Door. And, now Cherami told Fruge that Ruby and Oswald had "been shacking up for years." Blackmer never asked Fruge about his earlier claim that he had "verified" that Cherami worked for Ruby.

No one has come up with any evidence that Rose Cherami ever worked for Jack Ruby.

Her FBI rap sheet provides another clue - when on earth could she have worked for Ruby? Jack Ruby opened the Carousel in 1960 - that was the only strip club he ever owned - so if she was a stripper, it would have been there.

Here is her FBI rap sheet from the 1960s:

As you can see, Cherami moved around quite a bit, and it doesn't appear that she was in Dallas all that much. She was arrested in Dallas on 5/15/63, but less than two weeks later, she was arrested in Norman, Oklahoma. So, when could she have worked for Jack Ruby?

Keep in mind that she was repeatedly using narcotics, and you can see what she looked like in 1964.

She doesn't look like a stripper to me.

It's not impossible that she worked, for a very brief time, for Ruby - but, in the absence of any evidence, I'd say that she didn't.

You can read the entire HSCA staff report on Cherami here.

James DiEugenio in his book Destiny Betrayed claims that Dr. Wayne Owen [sic] was one of the people who heard Rose Cherami talk about the assassination: (page 206)

"The fact that she predicted the assassination in advance spread through the hospital. Dr. Wayne Owen, who had been interning from LSU at the time, later told the Madison Capital Times that he and other interns were told of the plot in advance of the assassination. Owen told the same newspaper that Cheramie [sic] had also revealed the name of one Jack Rubinstein in advance. Owen did not understand the significance of this until he learned that Rubinstein was Jack Ruby's real name. When Owen learned that Ruby was Rubinstein, he grew quite concerned. "We were all assured that something would be done about it by the FBI or someone. Yet we never heard anything."

DiEugenio's source for this paragraph is the Madison Capital Times of February 11, 1968. This is an error since the Capital Times did not publish on Sundays, but the Madison Capital Times issues of February 1 - 3, 1968 did have articles about Dr. Owens. Here is the first article from February 1, 1968:

This is clearly the article DiEugenio was sourcing - it has the quote from Dr. Owens that he references on the second page.

The article also claims:

1. Ten other students heard the allegation.
2. Two of the former medical students have been called to testify by Jim Garrison.
3. On Tuesday, November 19, 1963, the eleven interns came upon a room in which three men had been brought after an automobile accident. One man had a bullet wound and he died. One of the other men said that he knew of "a plot to kill President Kennedy." One of the men in the plot was Jack Rubinstein.
4. The two men were released from the hospital.
5. Several interns informed authorities in New Orleans about what happened.

Now. does this sound like the Rose Cherami story? First, there is no Rose Cherami. Second, it was one of the two men who talked about the plot. Third, eleven witnesses who directly heard the allegation about the conspiracy - well, where are those witnesses? Nothing about this report sounds right. How come James DiEugenio doesn't say a word about what is really in this article?

The reporter from the Capital Times called Jim Garrison's office. Here is the memo:

Here is the article from February 2, 1968 of the Madison Capital Times:

Some comments:

1. The reporter called Andrew Sciambra who claimed the information from Dr. Owens "corroborates information we have already been working on - it fits in exactly."
2. The Wisconsin State Journal said that Dr. Owen was "shaken by the inaccurate statements of The Capital Times."
3. Dr. Owen said he heard this from a professor of psychology who "had been treating a woman patient in the hospital." She told him about the plot four days before the assassination.
4. The Capital Times learned of the story from an anonymous caller.

Here is the article from Wisconsin State Journal from February 2, 1968:

Some comments:

1. The Wisconsin State Journal says his name is Owens, not Owen.
2. Owens attended a psychology discussion in New Orleans on the Monday preceding the assassination (November 18, 1963).
3. The presiding professor of psychology talked about an experience treating a female patient at Jackson Memorial Hospital.
4. She mentioned "Jack Rubinstein" or "Jack Ruby" and "suggested possible danger to the President."
5. After the assassination, she said that Ruby was the assassin, not Oswald.
6. The State Journal called James Alcock in Garrison's office and he said that the woman "was allegedly one of Ruby's strippers."

So, Dr. Owens' story is second-hand, or third-hand, or might it have been fourth-hand - even then, It's not exactly the Rose Cherami story we know and love. The date is wrong - she was brought in on November 20, not November 18, and this is the first report I have seen that she said that Ruby was the assassin. Clearly, something is off about this report.

There was another memo in the Garrison office:

The next day, the last article in the series appeared in the Madison Capital Times:

What's interesting is that Andrew Sciambra "read the Rose Cherami file" to the reporter from The Capital Times. Here is what he says Cherami told Lt. Francis Fruge about Jack Ruby:

"Why, Jack knew Oswald well. They were very good friends. Oswald often visited Jack at the Carousel and I saw them talking to each other often."

Now that is not exactly what was in Lt. Francis Fruge's April 4, 1967 report:

There is nothing in Fruge's report about the assassination. He reports that Oswald and Ruby were "bed partners." Sciambra might have been reading from another report -- a Dr. Weiss supposedly heard Cherami talking about Ruby and Oswald being friends..

Note Fruge's last sentence: "Other statements made by subject, relative to your inquiry, are hear-say, but are available, upon your request."

There was one more memo regarding Dr. Owens:

So, the story originates with Dr. Gonzales. If he really did talk to Cherami, it seems like it was after the assassination, Did he hear it directly from Cherami? Why are there no memos about Dr. Gonzales? In fact, there is not a word that comes directly from Dr. Gonzales.

James DiEugenio misled his readers by only telling a small part of the story. Had he done a modicum of research, he would have realized that Dr. Owens did not corroborate the Cherami story in any way, shape, form, or manner.

More blog posts to come on Rose Cherami. Stay tuned.

Mug shot of Rose Cherami. She had been arrested on 10/19/64 for being drunk, resisting arrest and disturbing the peace.

You can read more about Rose Cherami here.

Here is the article that Steve found. It's from the Tucson Daily Citizen from May 25, 1957.

The article demonstrates her history of making false stories.

Here is another Rose Cherami story from the New Orleans Times-Picayune from December 20, 1960:

It's Rose Cherami week on my blog. Every day this week, we'll be debunking another Rose Cherami allegation by conspiracy theorists.

Stay tuned!

Update:

The Doan case still gets a lot of interest.

There is even a Facebook page.

Milton Brener, in his superb book The Garrison Case, wrote:

"By virtue of his office, the District Attorney is potentially the most powerful of the public officials domiciled at Tulane and Broad ... However, until 1962, the full extent of his strength had been convincingly impressed neither upon the community in general, nor upon the politicians themselves. It lay largely unused in the statute books. Not until the advent of Jim Garrison was the realization driven home of the large extent to which the DA's power had remained untapped."

Here are a few pages from his book on the grand jury: (pages 10-12)

One of Garrison's favorite maneuvers was to subpoena a person to appear before the grand jury, have them testify, and then charge them with perjury. They would then be unable to leave the jurisdiction; they would have to hire a lawyer, and they would have difficulty getting mortgages, a bank loan, or finding a job. Then right before the trial, he would drop the charges. Layton Martens and Kerry Thornley are two such examples. After Martens was indicted, he was not allowed to travel to New York to accept a position in an orchestra as a cellist. Sometimes the threat of just appearing before the grand jury was enough to get witnesses to cooperate - it's no wonder that witnesses were afraid of going before the grand jury.

An example of a grand jury subpoena.

Headline indicative of the feeling of grand jury power

r.

New Orleans Times-Picayune, January 25, 1968

One judge even went public with his concerns about the grand jury system:

New Orleans Times-Picayune, December 3, 1967

Indeed, one of Garrison's investigators, Lou Ivon, told staffer Tom Bethell that:

"It's a lot of power he's got. If all the DAs in the country were like Garrison, things would be in chaos."

In my book, On The Trail of Delusion, I wrote: (page 6)

"Last, Garrison used the grand jury system as his personal court by packing it with friends and colleagues, many of them from the New Orleans Athletic Club."

Conspiracy theorist James DiEugenio took exception to that:

Again, for the record, urban grand juries in Louisiana are chosen similarly to the way trial juries are chosen. They are picked randomly from voting rolls. (Louisiana Law Review, vol. 17, no. 4, p. 682) Further, Garrison did not choose or run the grand juries. He assigned that function to his deputies who ran them on a rotating basis. (1994 interview with ADA William Alford)

Let's see if this is completely true. Here is an excerpt of an interview of Irvin Dymond by author James Kirkwood, in which they are talking about the Albert LaBiche grand jury which took office on March 1, 1967:

Kirkwood: Oh, tell me something about the Labiche Grand Jury. That's really wild. Bill Gurvich was talking to me the other day, about the makeup of that.

Dymond: I can't really speak with any degree of accuracy on it, but as I recall it, there were several members of that Grand Jury who were really buddy-buddy from the New Orleans Athletic Club. Real close ...

Kirkwood: I think Gurvich said that he thought seven of them were.

Dymond: I think Gurvich has looked into that aspect of it more than I have.

Kirkwood: How is the Grand Jury picked here?

Dymond: The Grand Jury is picked very much the same as petit juries are picked. The basic names are picked out of the jury (wheel?) by the jury commission. Then the judge who is in charge of the Grand Jury for the particular session involved interviews prospective grand jurors and chooses the ones --

Kirkwood: And HE chooses?

Dymond: Correct.

Kirkwood: That's wild. Now --

Dymond. Now that is not necessarily the judge who is going to try the case. It is the judge who has charge of the grand jury for that session.

Kirkwood: I understand it was Haggerty, though.

Dymond: I believe it was . . . check on it.

Kirkwood: Now when a judge is in charge of a grand jury, how does that work with his relationship with the grand jury? Like if there's -- if there are points of law or something that they want to check, they go to him?

Dymond: That's correct. And they also report their findings. In other words, if they return an indictment, they come into that judge's court and return the indictment to him. Or if they want to return a no-true bill, they would do it in that judge's court.

Kirkwood: Somebody - oh, I talked to - well, like Gurvich told me when he went before the grand jury, they had two witnesses in there to disprove him before he went in.

Dymond: You know, that reminds me of something in which you'll be deeply interested. You should interview Burt Klein, in regard to his experience when he went before the grand jury in connection with the Beauboeuf ... Do you want me to call Burt now and arrange that?

Kirkwood: Yes, I'd love to have you ...

BREAK IN TAPING

Kirkwood: . . .that's wild, because then you've got a perjury thing set up for you, if you take witnesses - like two witnesses, to tell the story, and then you bring the main guy who's being called. And then, it's so tilted by the time he comes in. He's working against something.

Towards the end of his book, American Grotesque, James Kirkwood sits down for an interview with Judge Haggerty, and the topic of the grand jury came up: (page 645-646)

Haggerty: [On the subject of the LaBiche grand jury]: That was Judge Bagert's grand jury ... it was the LaBiche grand jury where Al LaBiche was foreman. Now that has been attacked in my court and in many other courts by the claim that Judge Bagert picked his crones [sic] from the New Orleans Athletic Club and the American Legion.

Kirkwood: That's what I heard.

Haggerty: I belong to the club for over eighteen years - up till two years ago. All my buddies have left there, they don't go there. They got mostly Jew people - that play cards and gin rummy and it has no attraction for me. I still belong to the American Legion, pay my dues. But you can't belong to the post unless you belong to the club. I'm going to get back into the club. It's just a political help to belong to it ... Bagert, he had about seven or eight friends of his from the New Orleans Athletic Club and the American Legion, and a lot of people were suspect that of all the people in this city, why suddenly - Well, it did look bad!

William Gurvich was quoted by James Kirkwood: (page 177)

"There were twelve members of the LaBiche grand jury, hand-picked by Judge Bagert. Ten were white and two were colored. Of the ten whites, seven were members of the same athletic club. The same athletic club that Jim Garrison used as a second office. All of them were Legionnaires. The two colored were not eligible to belong to either the Legion or the club. In the judge's chambers, behind his desk, is a large framed photograph, black and white, taken in the White House. In the center is John F. Kennedy, President. On one side is Judge Bagert in his Legion uniform. On the other side is Albert LaBiche, the foreman of the grand jury, in his Legion uniform. So he selected his Legion buddy as foreman."

So, it's easy to see how a grand jury can be stacked - the judge in charge interviews and picks the jurors. In normal situations, that might be ok, but Garrison waged a battle against the judges in the early 1960s. They took him to court and he eventually won. Then, he started to actively campaign for certain people to win judgeships. In 1963, he campaigned for Frank Shea for an open judgeship and he won. As Milton Brener noted, "This was the first public test of Garrison's popularity. The significance was not lost on the judges, as was soon to be demonstrated." In the summer of 1964, Rudolph Becker ran for a judgeship, and Garrison actively campaigned for him. He became Garrison's second judge. In 1966, judge George Platt retired and Governor McKeithen filled the seat with Matthew Braniff, a friend of Garrison's. He became Garrison's third judge.

And so, a buddy-buddy system was created, and Garrison got grand juries that were extremely amenable to his powers of persuasion.

There was a definite lack of diversity in the grand jury. Walter Sheridan addressed this in two sections of one of his legal filings:

And the lack of women:

Aaron Kohn, head of the Metropolitan Crime Commission of New Orleans, wrote this in a memo dated May 31, 1967 about a conversation with Brigadier General Raymond Hufft and formerly the Louisiana Adjutant General of the National Guard:

There are many examples of Garrison controlling the grand jury. Here is a sampling of stories from the diaries of Richard Billings and Tom Bethell:

Tom Bethell entry for September 26, 1967:

"Lane then made an made an indiscreet remark about Aaron Kohn's grand jury statement -- revealing that he knew what Kohn said before the grand jury, which he is not supposed to know -- and also mentioned Billings, Garrison and he having dinner together. I'm afraid Lane sees things purely in terms of public relations, TV appearances, etc."

Tom Bethell, entry for February 8, 1968:

"1969: P.S. I never saw a transcript of Marina Oswald's testimony. Of course, Grand Jury testimony is technically secret, but the fact that Garrison largely conducted his investigation in the secrecy of the Grand Jury raises some questions about the validity of his criticisms of the Warren Commission. This would be analogous to the Warren Commission having heard testimony in closed session. It seems that Marina's testimony before the Warren Commission will go down to posterity -- albeit under a great deal of criticism -- but her testimony before the "Garrison Commission" will not even see the light of day. It will be analogous to one of the Commission's classified documents, which Garrison got so much mileage out of. As far as I know, nobody has ever raised this criticism of Garrison. When is he going to publish his 26 volumes?"

Tom Bethell diary, February 20, 1968:

"Papers being drawn up on Kerry Thornley, which both [Assistant D.A.] Alcock and [Assistant D.A.] Burnes refuse to sign. There is no doubt in my mind that Thornley is completely innocent of perjury and everything else."

Richard Billings Journal, March 3, 1967:

Giant admits Russo is his only link now . . . But there's the girl . . . And Peterson and Carter have also made [identified] Oswald . . . He plans to arrest Andrews as an accessory . . . Then again, he may charge Dean with perjury . . . Can use Grand Jury . . . "We'll give the Grand Jury a picture, and we'll communicate to them we know about Bertrand . . . They can then ask Andrews if he knows Bertrand . . . Any statement Andrews makes to the Grand Jury that conflicts with what he told the Warren Commission is automatic perjury . . ."

Richard Billings Journal, April 25, 1967:

Garrison says that his present Grand Jury is very aggressive, and not above issu[ing] subpoenas to Earl Warren or Ramsey Clark, or anyone else, for that matter. He takes great confidence from this, and is educating the Grand Jury by bringing before them members of the cult of critics, like Ray Marcus or Harold Weisberg or Mark Lane, and he even suggests the possibility of sending a subpoena to the US Attorney General, for the purpose of getting documentary evidence of the US Government's investigation of Clay Shaw, and to further determine what a government spokesman meant when he said, as reported in the New York Times, that the Department of Justice had information that Bertrand and Shaw were the same person.

Jim Garrison did not like any independence from grand jury members. Here is one example (from Patricia Lambert's book, False Witness, page 271 - 272) - Garrison gets upset when a grand juror asks Perry Russo a tough question:

Grand Juror: 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?

Russo: 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 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, has told me 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?

Garrison: I don't think it's called for to jump on this witness, the one man who had guts 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 truth 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, James Phelan, Hugh 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 Martens. 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 his 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 investigation down. Perry, I have a couple of other questions to ask, then if any more jurors want answers, I'll open it up again, okay?

DiEugenio also mentioned his 1994 interview with William Alford, who worked for Garrison. Yet, Alford resigned from the D. A.'s office in 1971, and one of his issues related to the grand jury:

The article notes that "He said that about "one month" following the grand jury probe, he was removed as advisor to that body ... When he resigned, Alford said he learned recently that Garrison was the person who removed him (Alford) as advisor to the grand jury when it was investigating pinball gambling about one year ago."

The proof of the pudding is in the eating. There are many examples of Jim Garrison's misuse of the grand jury system. Here is an excerpt from a legal filing by Walter Sheridan regarding the grand jury:

I'll close this post with another excerpt from James Kirkwood's American Grotesque: (page 177)

"Jim Phelan and I spoke of the LaBiche grand jury and of the dangerous homogeneity of the group. The imagination can easily picture the results of such a body, composed as it was, and activated at the same time Garrison's investigation into the death of the President was launched. James Alcock, defending charges of extreme bias against the LaBiche grand jury, said, "Whenever this jury or any grand jury is deliberating on whether or not to return an indictment, the assistant D.A.'s leave the room." This would seem to be a pure technicality, in view of the highly publicized series of long and expensive lunches provided for the LaBiche grand jury, with drinks served, and often attended by Garrison or other members of his staff. Add to this the personal friendship of many of the jurors with both the District Attorney and Judge Bernard Bagert, who presided over the preliminary hearing, and the situation was perilously cozy. As another lawyer said, "So they leave the room for five minutes - big deal!" (It is interesting that at the end of the LaBiche grand jury's six months, Garrison investigated every possibility in hopes of extending their term. This was too obvious a move even for New Orleans and he was advised to leave well enough alone.)

No one knows how many indictments, if any, the LaBiche grand jury refused to hand down in connection with Garrison's investigation but the indictments they and other grand juries under Garrison's direction did bring in are legion and they netted many who failed to cooperate with the District Attorney's office or who criticized him in any way."

Alecia Long is a Professor of History at Louisiana State University. I am very fortunate that Alecia gave me a manuscript to read, and I can assure you that this book belongs in your library.

Here is my short review (a longer one will be posted in September):

"Alecia Long breaks new ground in her important book, Cruising for Conspirators, by demonstrating the role of sexuality in understanding the assassination of JFK. Long dissects Jim Garrison's prosecution of an innocent gay man, Clay Shaw, with steady hands and shows how the entire affair needs to have its own place in LGBT history. This incredibly well-written book deserves to be in every major library in the country, and academics would be well-advised to use it in their classrooms."

You can order the book here from the publisher.

Here is the Amazon link.

Here is the description of the book:

New Orleans district attorney Jim Garrison’s decision to arrest Clay Shaw on March 1, 1967, set off a chain of events that culminated in the only prosecution undertaken in the assassination of John F. Kennedy. In the decades since Garrison captured headlines with this high-profile legal spectacle, historians, conspiracy advocates, and Hollywood directors alike have fixated on how a New Orleans–based assassination conspiracy might have worked. Cruising for Conspirators settles the debate for good, conclusively showing that the Shaw prosecution was not based in fact but was a product of the criminal justice system’s long-standing preoccupation with homosexuality.

Tapping into the public’s willingness to take seriously conspiratorial explanations of the Kennedy assassination, Garrison drew on the copious files the New Orleans police had accumulated as they surveilled, harassed, and arrested increasingly large numbers of gay men in the early 1960s. He blended unfounded accusations with homophobia to produce a salacious story of a New Orleans-based scheme to assassinate JFK that would become a national phenomenon.

At once a dramatic courtroom narrative and a deeper meditation on the enduring power of homophobia, Cruising for Conspirators shows how the same dynamics that promoted Garrison’s unjust prosecution continue to inform conspiratorial thinking to this day.

Here are some of the blurbs:

“This shocking narrative uncovers how decades of police surveillance in New Orleans created a vast paper trail that set the stage for a corrupt district attorney to frame the only man to face prosecution for John F. Kennedy’s assassination, creating a lasting homophobic conspiracy theory in the process. With keen historical sensitivity, Alecia Long reveals the longer patterns and plots that frame this must-read story.” — Jim Downs, author of Stand by Me: The Forgotten History of Gay Liberation

"Exposing the corrupt world of New Orleans policing and the complex gay subculture that thrived in the city’s shadow, Long’s book features an intriguing cast of characters, including ambitious prosecutor Jim Garrison and closeted businessman Clay Shaw. More importantly, it uncovers how cultural notions of gay men as criminal sexual psychopaths came to permeate JFK conspiracy theories and American culture more generally." — David K. Johnson, author of The Lavender Scare: The Cold War Persecution of Gays and Lesbians in the Federal Government

In Cruising for Conspirators Alecia Long offers us a fresh new perspective on an endlessly enthralling subject—the alleged conspiracy behind the assassination of John F. Kennedy—revealing how a pervasive cultural and institutional homophobia shaped the prosecution of the only person ever tried in the affair. This is an engrossing and important book, meticulously researched and profoundly relevant to our country’s ongoing attempts to grapple with the deep-rooted inequities of its past.” —Gary Krist, author of The Mirage Factory and Empire of Sin

Do me a favor - buy one copy for yourself and one for a friend.

In early 1967, journalist Hugh Aynesworth visited Garrison to discuss the case. Garrison, he said, would rush off periodically and shout a chess move into the handset of the phone. Aynesworth asked him what was happening and Garrison replied, "That's the code. The Feebees [FBI} will never break it." He then told Aynesworth that he had to take out the kids to play before noon because, as he put it, "There's a torpedo from Miami after me. Everybody knows they sleep till noon." Garrison's aides told the Times-Picayune that "he often answers the telephone, F--- you, J. Edgar Hoover."

In an interview with Edward Wegmann, William Gurvich remembers the code:

Wegmann: Are phones tapped?

Gurvich: I heard that they tapped phones but I honestly don't know of any phone that was tapped. Garrison thought his and everybody else's were tapped, you know, and we devised a code to use on the phone so the FBI wouldn't know what we were talking about, but Garrison couldn't work the code, so that was rather ineffective.

Garrison then came up with a plan to raid FBI offices. Here is an excerpt of an interview with William Gurvich on WDSU-TV on June 27, 1967:

Gurvich repeated the same story, under oath, at the Christenberry hearings on January 26, 1971:

In fact, Garrison's offices were bugged - by Garrison himself. There are many tape recordings of meetings in Garrison's office in the National Archives. Garrison put in a bug in Perry Russo's house, and you can read the transcript of his discussions with James Phelan. Pershing Gervais was wired when he interviewed Jack Martin at the Fontainebleau Motel.

Here's a short excerpt from a Perry Russo interview with William Gurvich from January 29, 1971:

Note that George Eckert was an investigator in Jim Garrison's office.

Here is an excerpt from a transcript of a discussion between Edward Wegmann and William Gurvich from September 16. 1967:

Wegmann: Any tapes on the interrogation of Shaw on March 1st?

Gurvich: I have never seen any or heard of any. They couldn't have because their system was very poor up here. They only had two rooms equipped for bugging - that was Ward's and Garrison's, and then later, they tried to do it on our lines but they were very inept. They tried to bug Ivon's telephone in his own office and they couldn't, with all of that very expensive equipment.

Wegmann: Are phones tapped?

Gurvich: I heard that they tapped phones but I honestly don't know of any phone that was tapped. Garrison thought his and everyone else's were tapped, you know, and we devised a code to use on the phone so the FBI wouldn't know what we were talking about, but Garrison couldn't work the code, so that was rather ineffective. Witnesses like Carlos Quiroga had their interviews taped.

Harry Connick donated many audio tapes from the Garrison Investigation. Here is a partial listing:

There are 135 audiocassettes at NARA from the Garrison investigation. Some of the conversations come from bugs or taps - here are just a few:

• Kerry Thornley and A.Sciambra phone conversation
• 1st Interview between P. Russo and J. Phelan
• Statement of J. Martin (Fountainbleau)
• Jack Martin Phone Conversations Tape # 2
• Phone call from Cliff Hall to R. Burns re: Kelly Thornley knowing Oswald

Now, let's get to the supposed bugging of Garrison's offices by the FBI. The allegation is contained in Destiny Betrayed, and in Probe Magazine (Volume 4, #5, page 16). DiEugenio reproduces this Garrison memo from 1973:

Here is how DiEugenio describes this memo in Destiny Betrayed: (page 264)

"In 1973, former FBI employee William Walter called Garrison's chief investigator Lou Ivon and told him about some of the subterfuges regarding the Kennedy case and Garrison... Walter first said that he did not like Garrison personally, but he thought he was sincere since he knew what went on in the New Orleans FBI office concerning the JFK case. He said messages were sent to the office that FBI reports were to be altered so that there would be no questions about the conclusions of the Warren Report. He also stated that there "were complete statements from various individuals which were eliminated by the agents." He then said that the Bureau had assigned ten to fifteen agents to follow Garrison's investigators to see what leads they were checking out."

Now, I don't happen to find any of this persuasive. FBI reports form the backbone of criticism of the Warren Report. Just read Sylvia Meagher's Accessories After The Fact. The FBI more likely wanted agents to get things right before reports get sent to the Warren Commission.

Interestingly, some of Garrison's staffers developed an appreciation for the FBI. Here is an excerpt from Tom Bethell's diary (entry of March 15, 1968):

Also, Alcock, Ivon and Sciambra have all attested at different times to the efficiency of the FBI's investigation. It is hard to think of anyone of any relevance who was not interviewed by them within a week or two of the assassination. (In fact, most were interviewed within a few days.) This has been, I am sure, a source of great disappointment to the DA's office, although Garrison himself has never admitted as much. When all the books and articles came out criticizing the Commission, I think many people in the office thought they were exploring virgin territory when they looked into Oswald's background, because these books had tended to over-emphasize the short-comings of the FBI. They gave no indication of how extensive their investigation had been. Far from finding virgin territory, they found that the FBI had been there ahead of them every time -- three years ahead of them. I don't think anyone was expecting this. I know I wasn't; it was clear that many of the people working on the investigation, such as Louis Ivon, acquired a certain sneaking respect for the FBI, as I did too.

To be honest, the FBI did not have a need to have "ten to fifteen agents to follow Garrison's investigators." New Orleans, as I have mentioned several times, was a cauldron of rumor, innuendo and gossip. Informants from Garrison's office were regularly going to the FBI, and so they had a very good idea of what was going on. Many informants were reporting information to both Garrison and the FBI - people like Joseph Oster and Betty Parrott come to mind.

According to DiEugenio, Garrison was thinking of suing the U. S. government for illegal surveillance in 1977. Garrison interviewed William Walter who told him further details about what the FBI was up to:

In this interview, Walter reaffirmed that Garrison's office was wired. Walter named several of the former FBI agents and one undercover agent who had been transferred to the phone company's security office, "...from which vantage point, under a longstanding arrangement between the Bureau and the phone company, he can patch anybody's phone lines into the Bureau's local cable for self-activating recordings."

Walter told Garrison that the tapes were transcribed every day. "How was he so sure about this part of the operation? Because he later married the Bureau secretary who typed up the transcript."

Garrison wrote a memo about the interview. DiEugenio does not publish the memo, but just a few short excerpts. Here's one:

"However, Walter makes clear that this was just a thin cover to protect the Bureau and "explain" its entry into the operation. Besides the Bureau clerk typing the transcripts of my conversations in the Bureau office, recordings of my conversations were monitored in the Bureau's Technical Surveillance room and a full file was maintained in the office on my phone calls."

This is the entirety of the evidence that the FBI wiretapped Garrison's phones. There are no transcripts, no memos about the wiretapping, no corroboration from other FBI employees, no nothing.

So just how credible is William Walter?

Well, William Walter contacted Mark Lane in 1968 after a speech. Walter told Lane that he had worked at the FBI and that he knew of a teletype received in the New Orleans office warning about an assassination attempt on November 22, 1963. It should be noted that William Walter was just 21 when Kennedy was assassinated and he had a very junior position in the FBI.

Here is a good short summary of the Walter allegations.

Walter was not ready to go public and Lane put a note under his doorstep:

Lane then wrote out an affidavit:

The next day, January 31, 1968, Garrison appeared on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson and he read the affidavit on the air. This led to a massive internal FBI investigation.

This a document that William Walter typed up at Tulane University - from his notes - of the teletype he said he saw. He destroyed his notes.

Here is an FBI memo from June 1968 regarding the Walter allegations:

Here is more detail on Walter's probation with the FBI:

I am sure that the conspiracy theorists will say that Walter was punished for what he knew. And the FBI back then, under J. Edgar Hoover, was ridiculously rule-bound and punitive. Just check the punishments given to agents who had anything to do with Oswald pre-assassination - like James Hosty.

And, as the first memo says:

"Walter's file does show that he was censured on two occasion ... It is felt such information would be responsive to Mr. Vinson's request whether Walter is or has been subject to mental aberration or stress."

The William Walter file was put to bed, but he resurfaced in 1975 when there was a renewed interest in the JFK assassination. Hugh Aynesworth investigated the story and filed this story:

The HSCA also investigated Walter's allegations, including the allegation that Oswald was an FBI informant.

Here is the HSCA folder on William Walter

Here is a link to Walter's testimony before the HSCA.

Here are the HSCA conclusions about William Walter:

What is interesting is the paragraph above about William Walter's wife.

"Walter advised the committee that he did not know of anyone who could definitely substantiate his teletype allegation, although he suggested that his former wife Sharon Covert, who also worked for the FBI in New Orleans, might be able to do so. Sharon Covert, however, advised the committee that she could not support any of Walter's allegations against the FBI and that Walter had never mentioned his allegations to her during their marriage."

Now, back to the allegation of the FBI wiretapping Garrison. To quote DiEugenio: (Probe Magazine, op. cit.)

"How was he so sure about this part of the operation? Because he later married the Bureau secretary who typed up the transcripts."

Was this the same wife? Sounds like it. The time-frame works. Was it a second wife? It hardly matters since Walter provided no hard evidence, and his credibility has been found wanting.

Might there be another indicator of William Walter's credibility? Well, how about this:

I can’t be absolutely sure that was the same William Walter, but Walter was born on March 9, 1942 which would make him 45 years at the time of this article - and it describes him as being in his mid-40s.

Not surprisingly, guess who thought there was enough credibility in Walter's story to put it into a film? Yes, you guessed it, Oliver Stone in JFK. Here is the scene (Oser is an Assistant DA):

Garrison: ... There again Quigley destroyed the notes of the meeting. I think we can raise the possibility that Oswald was not only an informant but that he may have well been the original source for the telex we have dated November 17 warning of the Kennedy assassination in Dallas on November 22.

Holds up the telex. We see a close-up: URGENT TO ALL SACS FROM DIRECTOR."

Garrison: William Walter, the night clerk on duty here in the FBI office, gave me a copy of this. It went all over the country. Nothing was done, and the motorcade went ahead on schedule - and this wasn't even mentioned in the Warren Report! Read it, Al.

Oser: (voice-over) "Threat to assassinate President Kennedy in Dallas, Texas, November 22 - 23. Information received by the Bureau has determined that a militant revolutionary group may attempt to assassinate President Kennedy on his proposed trip to Dallas, Texas, etc, etc ..."

FLASHBACK TO New Orleans office in 1963. Walter the night clerk, receives the teletype, reads it, and runs it.

Garrison: (voice-over) ... shortly after the assassination, Walter says, the telex was removed from all the files in all cities, as an obvious embarrassment to the Bureau. I believe Oswald was sending information through Hosty ...

This cartoon was from the December 26, 1967 issue:

You can read more about Paul Conrad here.

F = Bernard Fensterwald

G = Jim Garrison

T = William Turner

Box = Bill Boxley

S = Richard E. Sprague

Even amongst themselves, they seem to have a hard time explaining their theories. At one point, Bernard Fensterwald says, "Wait a minute, You all are losing me somewhere here now."

There's the tall Oswald, and the short Oswald. Which one went to the Soviet Union? These are the questions that flummoxed Garrison and his investigators!

Here's an excerpt from a Garrison interview in which he mentions the second Oswald.

The author of The Second Oswald was Richard Popkin.

Other Posts About the Second Oswald

Here is a wacky memo written to Jim Garrison about the Heights of the Oswalds.

Was Kerry Thornley the Second Oswald?

Did Harvey Wade see the Second Oswald?

Was Kerry Thornley the Second Oswald? Yes, Again

Did Valentine Ashworth Meet the Second Oswald?

He devotes one chapter, "Give Us This Day Our Daily Paranoia," to the conspiracy theorists of the JFK assassination. His book is worth buying just for that chapter. Here is an excerpt about Jim Garrison:

My last communication with Garrison was on November 5, 1968. It was not untypical. I was interrupted in mid-explanation to an unhappy investor (Keating's stormy departure had not helped the money-raising situation). The investor was turning a tinge yellow at my suggestion that the only way to insure the return of the $20,000 he had previously loaned Ramparts was to cover his bet with an additional $50,000. The interruption was an emergency long-distance telephone call from New Orleans.

The caller was in no mood to inquire about the weather. "This is urgent," Jim Garrison said. "Can you take this in your mailroom? They'd never think to tap the mailroom extension."

I excused myself to go to the mailroom for a moment on a matter of high priority and left the investor, sputtering like a referee without a whistle, alone with the latest negative balance sheets. In the mailroom, two bearded Berkeleyite mail boys were running the postage machine under the influence of marijuana. I told them to take a walk around the block and get high on company time, and locked the door behind them.

Garrison began talking when I picked up the mailroom extension: "This is risky, but I have little choice. It is imperative that I get this information to you now. Important new evidence has surfaced. Those Texas oilmen do not appear to be involved in President Kennedy's murder in the way we first thought. It was the Military-Industrial Complex that put up the money for the assassination -- but as far as we can tell, the conspiracy was limited to the aerospace wing. I've got the names of three companies and their employees who were involved in setting up the President's murder. Do you have a pencil?"

I wrote down the names of the three defense contractors -- Garrison identified them as Lockheed, Boeing, and General Dynamics -- and the names of those executives in their employ whom the District Attorney said had been instrumental in the murder of Jack Kennedy. I also logged a good deal of information about a mysterious minister who was supposed to have crossed the border into Mexico with Lee Harvey Oswald shortly before the assassination; the man wasn't a minister at all, Garrison said, but an executive with a major defense supplier, in clerical disguise. I knew little about ministers crossing the Rio Grande with Oswald -- but after several years of fielding the dizzying details of the Kennedy assassination, I had learned to leave closed Pandora's boxes lie; I didn't ask.

I said that I had everything down, and Garrison said a hurried goodbye: "It's poor security procedure to use the phone, but the situation warrants the risk. Get this information to Bill Turner. He'll know what to do about the minister. I wanted you to have this, in case something happens . . . ."

I unlocked the mailroom door, and returned to my office. The investor was gone.

I typed up a brief memorandum of the facts as Garrison had relayed them and burned my notes in an oversized ashtray I used for such purposes. I Xeroxed one copy of the memo, which I mailed to myself in care of a post office box in the name of Walter Snelling, a friendly, non-political bartender in the far-removed country town of Cotati, California, where I routinely sent copies of all supersecret Ramparts documents. That night I hand delivered the original to Bill Turner, the former FBI agent in charge of the magazine's investigation of the Warren Commission. Turner had drilled me in a little G-Man security lingo. According to our code, I called him at home and said something about a new vacuum cleaner. He replied that he would be right over, and said he would meet me at Trader Vic's, which meant I was to actually meet him at Blanco's, a dimly lit Filipino bar on the fringe of Chinatown, where we often held secret meetings.

That was the way we did things in those days.

"Those days" encompassed several years of sniffing, as Sam Goldwyn might say, along the greenhorn trail of red herrings in the 26 volumes of the Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy. We began asking rude questions in 1965, and by 1968, with paranoia in full bloom, we had divided almost everyone, by some sort of conspiracy litmus test, into "them" and "us." Even "us" was subdivided into good guys, no-so-good-guys, dangerous fanatics and fiffth columnists. We ended up seeing "them" lurking behind every potted plant rented by the CIA; and occasionally, we found a real spook in the shadows.

Garrison really went overboard about the aerospace industry. Fred Crisman, one of his favorite suspects, worked briefly for Boeing and Edgar Eugene Bradley, who he actually charged with conspiracy to assassinate JFK, once worked for Lockheed.

We have blogged about this once before.

You can see more of this thinking in the conference he held in New Orleans in September 1968 with some of his staff and a few Warren Commission Critics. Here's one excerpt where they start talking about Nancy Perrin Rich - she testified before the Warren Commission that Ruby was involved in smuggling arms to Cuba. But her testimony was extremely fuzzy on the details, and she had a history of telling stories. Her husband committed suicide in 1962 and Jim Garrison suspected that had been faked and that he was a grassy knoll gunman. I tell the entire story in Chapter 16, "Arsenic and Old Perrin," of my book, On The Trail of Delusion - Jim Garrison: The Great Accuser.

You can read the testimony of Nancy Perrin Rich here.

The discussion quickly turns from Perrin to the aerospace industry: (page 129)

Turner: I don't understand Nancy Rich's antagonism towards your office if she told all the to the Warren Commission. She told Mark Lane the thing...

Garrison: Aren't you glad, though. She told us more than she told the Warren Commission, in a way.

Boxley: She's afraid we'll ask her how it is that J. D. Tippit sent for her to come to Dallas.

Garrison: Let's see. That's another thing. We've been going through her testimony again and it's become apparent that what happened - here's what happened and here's what -- Crisman knows Tippit. When - her husband leaves her (Bob Perrin); and she can't find him so she things he may be in Dallas so she calls the Police Dept. and she calls Tippit. Why does she call Tippit? It's not spelled out but I think the possibility is because Tippit is a friend of her husband. Her husband is previously at an ONI base. Tippit used to work with Ling Temco. Fred Lee Crisman knows Tippit. Fred Lee Crisman is with Boeing. You see the whole structure is ...

In another excerpt, they talk about Warren Reynolds, a witness who saw Oswald running away after killing police officer J. D. Tippit: (page 168)

Fensterwald: What about Warren Reynolds?

Garrison: Warren Reynolds in my judgment was part of a convoy. At least one of the men who shot Tippit merely ran around the block and back into the church and car 223 covers him. That's kind of involved to get into but that's one area we dug into a lot. As a matter of fact, the jacket which he dropped - he dropped just before he went into the church - and he's probably protected by Captain Westbrook there. Wasn't a patrol car there? He's convoyed all the way around. He's safe. But the jacket he dropped, leads straight to Los Angeles. Which is where Lockheed is and they never really checked out the jacket.

Turner: The jacket leads to Lockheed?

Garrison: Yeah. It's in Los Angeles.

Turner: What? Laundry mark?

Boxley: No. It was manufactured in Los Angeles, plus it's got a laundry mark on it that's identical to one from Toro Marine Base.

Turner: Well, we think. We don't know. This guy sent in the letter but nobody's checked that though.

Here is another section of that conference: (page 34)

Sprague: There's a guy from Lockheed who showed up in Paris with a story - he contacted Jeff Paley's office over there.

Turner: Why don't you take over Dick? We've been offering you your opportunity and then we keep monopolizing the ...

Garrison: I wanted to just underline that point. That that is the common denominator that I have found, at least in the JFK killing, of virtually anybody who has any role of significance. If they did not work for - it's not just a defense operation but it is one of the elements of the defense operations which got the major bite of the billions. I think we'll find ultimately that the reason for that is because they're are almost one with the CIA and vice-versa.

Garrison: I think we'll find that Allen Dulles constructed the CIA in as close coordination with certain corporations which were essential in the defense operations. And that's why these people keep showing up.

Garrison: I don't want to get into it now but every potential witness associated with Oswald at the Reily Coffee Company - almost everybody - now works for Aerospace, NASA - I made a list of them on the theory that while the structure itself may have been invisible on the 22nd of November that if you go back far enough with individuals or come later far enough you can see a structure. And you do. The structure is Aerospace.

Not that the Sprague mentioned above is Richard E. Sprague, the photographic expert who was a Warren Commission critic, not the Richard A. Sprague who was the first Chief Counsel of the HSCA.

There is a simple explanation why many people at Reily Coffee went to work in the Aerospace Industry.

Here is a map from the Garrison files:

We will end this blog post with one additional quote from Warren Hinckle's book:

"Much of the beating Garrison took from the media was his own fault. When his investigation became bogged down in the intelligence swamp which was the real milieu of the assassination, Garrison adopted the practice, inadvisable for a swamp guide, of grabbing some slimy green thing out of the water and holding it up for the press to see, as if that showed how the ecology of the swamp worked. The denouement of the Garrison story belongs to the tradition of Waiting for Godot, except that we are still waiting. The more viperous among the sleuths now maintain that the CIA "got" to the DA, but I think not. The truth is considerably more commonplace. The blue meanies got to Jim. Angered by his Faustian sparring matches with the press, distraught from defections within his own staff of investigators, frustrated by the refusal of other states to extradite his suspects, physically run down from a recurrent bad back, yet propelled forward by the high octane of paranoia, Garrison eschewed the probably hopeless alternative of amassing sufficient evidence of the government's cover-up of its intelligence agencies' involvement to get Washington to reopen formally the assassination investigation."

You can read more about Warren Hinckle here.

Once again, James DiEugenio finds another piece of non-existent evidence that he finds persuasive: (page 79)

"The story could possibly have been even more explosive than Fruge thought. For on November 28, 1963, a Margaret Kay Kauffman of Martinsburg, Pennsylvania, told the FBI that her mother had recovered a piece of paper in the leaves beneath her porch. It was a trailer advertisement. In handwriting scrawled across the top left was the name of a club called the Silver Slipper or Silver Bell. In the top middle of the page was the name Lee Oswald. On the top right was the name Rubinstein [sic]. In the middle was the name Jack Ruby and at the bottom was the name Dallas, Texas. A Cuban doctor named Julio Fernandez often burned trash in their backyard, under her balcony. The paper with the names on it was found about 20 feet from his last burn. Fernandez's brother had been the captain of police under Fulgencio Batista."

The story mentioned in the first sentence refers to Rose Cherami who supposedly had foreknowledge of the JFK assassination. You can read more about Rose Cherami here. We'll come back to that shortly.

DiEugenio's source is Probe Magazine and an FBI memo written by SA Edward Kern on 12/2/61. This is a typo and here is the report by SA Edward Kern from 12/2/63 (this report and others are part of Warren Commission Exhibit 3067):

The above two pages contain the allegation cited by DiEugenio. But he leaves out the rest of the Warren Commission Exhibit. The FBI then talked to Mrs. Margaret Kathryn Hoover:

So, Mrs. Hoover could not locate the advertisement. The FBI then spoke to Mrs. Hoover's daughter:

Note that Mrs. Hoover first felt the materials were related to her husband's "amorous activities," and then later attributed the papers to Dr. Fernandez. Her daughter did not "place any particular significance on this discovery and did not recall it again until her mother called her..."

The FBI then spoke to Gerald Kauffman:

He says that his wife "was so confused by the matter that she could hardly corroborate information furnished by her mother and in fact, was probably confirming the information only to pacify her mother."

The FBI then went back to Mrs. Kauffman:

She was now having some doubt about the so-called advertisement. The FBI then discussed the possibility of charging Mrs. Hoover and Mrs. Kauffman with a crime.

Besides the basic allegation, James DiEugenio tells his readers nothing about the emotional stability of Mrs. Hoover, or the thoughts of her son-in-law. Lisa Pease does discuss the incident further in Probe Magazine. (Volume 2, No. 6)

Of course, she sees this all as FBI intimidation:

"Following the perpetual pattern, it seems the FBI scared (or perhaps threatened would be the better term) away a potentially important witness."

Of course, there is not one iota of evidence of any intimidation or any threat. How could she be an important witness? She couldn't produce any actual evidence!

Lisa Pease then discusses Dr. Fernandez. But before we get to that, here is the FBI report of their interview with him:

Dr. Fernandez was now teaching English and he sounds like a very interesting man. He opposed Batista and initially supported Castro. He only left Cuba when the oppression became unbearable.

For some reason Lisa Pease decided that she had to make an accusation against Dr. Fernandez:

"Not an ordinary Cuban by a longshot. And the chances of his being in contact with the CIA? According to an article in the San Francisco Chronicle of 12/27/77, "One of the CIA's ventures in the United States involved the subsidization of several publications whose editors and publishers had fled Havana to Miami after the Castro government came to power in 1958. The subsidies - in some cases they amounted to several million dollars - were passed to the publication through a CIA front in New York called Foreign Publications, Inc."

Of course, Dr. Fernandez was teaching English - he was not an editor or a publisher in the United States. Pease continues:

"Could the Cuban Dr. Julio Fernandez have known of both Ruby and Oswald before the assassination through some CIA connection? We don't know. That lead was dropped as quickly as it had been discovered."

With absolutely no evidence, Pease accuses Dr. Fernandez of being involved with Ruby and Oswald. I am gratified the good Dr. Fernandez was spared the kind of interrogation that Ms. Pease would have happily taken part in.

Ok, back to the story of Mrs. Hoover. Gary Schoener, a JFK researcher, who at the time was a clinical psychology graduate student in Minneapolis, did a lot of work trying to find her. He wrote three memos on the incident and he actually found and interviewed her. What follows are his three memos and the transcript of his interview. Here is his first memo from March 14, 1968.

It's interesting that "Mrs. Hoover stated that she decided to keep an eye on the Fernandezes and that from time to time she picked papers out of their trash and kept them. When she had quite a pile of them (including names, addresses, etc.), she sent them to Senator Scott of Pa. from whom she got a nice thank you letter which she showed us."

After reading this memo, I got the distinct impression that Mrs. Hoover had issues with the Fernandez family. She found them suspicious, and some of the neighbors also felt the same way. For instance, Schoener wrote that "One evening, however, one of the neighbors looked in a window and saw them throwing darts at it [a picture of Kennedy]."

Here is Schoener's second memo from 7/7/68:

Schoener says that "she mentioned that many of the people in Martinsburg had suspected the Fernandezes of involvement in the assassination."

Here is Schoener's third memo from 12/13/68:

A large part of this memo is about Dr. Fernandez and his family. Mr. Leon Kentsinger, the high school principal, said that "the people of Martinsburg generally did not like them because they were Cubans, but primarily because they weren't clean and weren't good housekeepers." However, we do learn that the family left within two weeks of August 10, 1964 - because Mr. Fernandez got a better job near New York - and he had wanted to be near New York because of its arts and theater. I certainly wonder whether he decided to look for a new job because of the suspicions of his neighbors.

Schoener finally interviewed Mrs. Hoover, and here is the transcript of their conversation:

Please have a look at note #5 on page three. She identified a picture of Lee Harvey Oswald with a beard as being one of the people outside in a parked car.

Back then, there were many stories circulating around the country about the assassination. Here is Warren Commission Document #76 that outlined some of the stories:

Page 12 of the report mentions the incident under discussion:

But wait, there's more!

In July - August 1999, Lisa Pease of Probe Magazine once again looked at this incident and found an even more nefarious context:

"Given that Sergio Arcacha Smith and Emilio Santana were seen in the company of Rose Cheramie at a club called the Silver Slipper, this note takes on new significance. The only possible explanation for this kind of specificity would be that Dr. Julio Fernandez or someone in his household somehow knew of the plot to kill Kennedy in advance."

There is so much to say about this paragraph. Pease takes as the gospel truth that Mrs. Hoover really possessed an advertisement with the names Lee Oswald, Jack Ruby, and Dallas, TX written on it. The fact that it never turned up is no impediment to her.

Even if we assume it existed, the fact is that Mrs. Hoover did not initially remember the name of the club. Her daughter remembered it as either the Silver Slipper or the Silver Bell. Perhaps her daughter heard on the radio a reference to Jack Ruby's one time club, The Silver Spur.

On the Education Forum, James DiEugenio mentioned that Gary Schoener had done a lot of work on this case. Had Lisa Pease called him to discuss things? Check out an excerpt from the 3/14/68 memo above written by Schoener:

Tying this incident to Rose Cherami via the Silver Slipper Club in Eunice, Louisiana is ridiculous. Mrs. Hoover was referring to the Silver Slipper Club in Las Vegas. Not only does Lisa Pease connect Dr. Fernandez with the Cherami story, the "only explanation" she can find, for all of this, is that he had foreknowledge of the plot to kill JFK. What does that say about her imagination, and what does that about her research skills? Her editor, James DiEugenio, who knows Gary Schoener, also linked the story to Rose Cherami in his book, Destiny Betrayed.

There never was anything to this story. The well-intentioned Gary Schoener, like many other young people, got caught up in the assassination, and he went out and investigated. But there was nothing there. I certainly understand his enthusiasm to get out into the field.

What's hard to believe is that conspiracy theorists like Lisa Pease and James DiEugenio, who you would think would know better, use this story to peddle suspicion of an innocent man, and to cite the story as some sort of corroboration for the Rose Cherami fable.

I should add that James DiEugenio loves to cite non-existent evidence: a non-existent map of the Dallas sewer system in the possession of Sergio Arcacha Smith; a non-existent tape recording of conspirators in the possession of Richard Case Nagell; and non-existent photographs of Dealey Plaza taken by Bernardo de Torres.

Then there is the non-existent map of Dealey Plaza found on David Ferrie's desk.

And, the non-existent CIA memo about the harassment of Garrison's witnesses.

UPDATE

I sent a link to this blog post to Gary Schoener and he sent this message to be added:

"I was fascinated to see all of these materials assembled so many decades after I originally compiled them. During most of that time I was not involved beyond sharing the information with the congressional investigation. I did not know Lisa Pease and do not know that she knew me or my work from so many years earlier. I still consider the questions it raised as unanswered and wish that the FBI had done its job of fully investigating. Sadly, although I went beyond the FBI, and we don't know what it was that Mrs. Hoover sent to them via Senator Scott (who confirmed this) which is not part of the commission's files, or what explanations Mr. Fernandez might have had for what the FBI had learned and the additional information I obtained. As for the Commission's summary of rumors, etc., I would note for the record that two of the largest documents in the archives were CD 1179 I and II -- plots against the president. Among crackpot stories were some serious ones such as the not too well disguised Miami plot which was tape recorded by an FBI informant. The FBI version does not make it clear that they had actual knowledge, and that the same group commented about how well it went as well as indicating that a key player was also the man who bombed the 16th Street Baptist church and killed those three little girls (a crime at the time still "unsolved")."

Here is the link to Perry Russo Talks - in Baton Rouge, Part Two

On March 26, 1971, Perry Russo was interviewed by Edward Wegmann, William Gurvich and Sal Panzeca. Wegmann and Panzeca were part of Clay Shaw's legal team; Gurvich had once worked for Garrison but left the investigation in June 1967 when he realized the whole thing was ridiculous.

It's a long transcript - some 95 pages covering a variety of topics. It was the second interview they conducted with Russo; the first being on January 29, 1971 and that transcript is 60 pages. A third interview was in April.

To give this all context, note that Judge Christenberry held three days of hearings, regarding the perjury charges against Clay Shaw, from January 25th to January 27th, 1971. Ultimately, he granted a permanent injunction against further prosecution of Clay Shaw.

I don't know if anybody has published these transcripts - but this excerpt is explosive - and it shows you how Sciambra started to implant a false memory into Russo.

Here is part of the transcript:

It's an incredible story. Russo could only really remember seeing Shaw once - at the Nashville Wharf when Kennedy came to speak in 1962. His identification of Shaw at David Ferrie's service station is questionable, to say the least.

Russo is very clear that he "could have figured out the plot" just from the questions that were asked by Sciambra. He told Russo that it was very important to link Ferrie and Shaw: "It was important that these two be linked together." And, Sciambra was the one who talked about a plot: "If you would be around Sciambra long enough you could find out exactly who murdered who and where and how and all that."

Wegmann also says that Matt Herron confirmed to him that Russo had not talked about an assassination meeting in Baton Rouge, when he accompanied James Phelan - remember we published a Tom Bethell memo yesterday saying that Herron confirmed that in 1967.

The journalist James Phelan wrote a very interesting memo about the discrepancies and contradictions in Perry Russo's stories. I blogged this memo once before, but I want to put it up once again. This blog post relates to point 10 - the conversation with Perry Russo and James Phelan that took place in Baton Rouge in March of 1967.

Russo told Phelan that he first mentioned an assassination plot in New Orleans, and not in Baton Rouge when initially interviewed by the press and by Andrew Sciambra.

Note that Matt Herron accompanied James Phelan in Baton Rouge. Let's look at what James DiEugenio says about this in Destiny Betrayed: (page 246)

"So the author looked up Mr. Herron and talked to him on two occasions. On both occasions, Herron said that Russo had told them that he mentioned Bertrand in Baton Rouge. And further, that Russo's statements on this were very strong in 1967. Because of this, Herron was surprised when he read Russo's testimony at the Shaw trial. He felt that, for whatever reason, it was now diluted. If you are counting, this is now three lies to three different people that Phelan told. Actually four lies, since he not only lied about Russo, but about what Herron would say about him."

Fortunately, we have a memo from 1967 written by Tom Bethell about this incident, and guess what? Herron corroborates Phelan:

This memo is very clear - it corroborates what Phelan reported, namely that Russo admitted that he did not discuss an assassination plot until he got to New Orleans. This contemporaneous memo trumps anything claimed, years later, by James DiEugenio.

Tomorrow: Perry Russ Talks - in Baton Rouge, Part Three

Let's hear from Perry Russo and what he told Shaw's attorneys in 1971.

First, he gave an interview to WAFB on February 24, 1967:

Some comments on this interview:

1. David Ferrie talked in a joking way "that it could be done." And that was the entire conversation during the summer.
2. No conversation with David Ferrie about Lee Harvey Oswald, and Russo had never heard of Oswald until the assassination.
3. No mention of Clay Shaw or Clay Bertrand.
4. He said Ferrie talked about how Castro was getting a bad deal, and that Castro was a good thing in Cuba.
5. Ferrie had a roommate who was "sterile" as regards to politics.
6. Russo "forgot" about his conversations with Ferrie after the Warren Report came out.

The Baton Rouge State-Times Advocate also ran an article about Perry Russo on February 24, 1967:

Russo said Ferrie talked about the "ease with which a President could be assassinated" but that it was just a "general conversation" No party, no meeting and nobody else was there.

The Baton Rouge Advocate ran an article on February 25, 1967:

Some comments:

1. Russo did not take Ferrie's comments "seriously" until he saw Ferrie's picture in the newspapers upon his death. Even after JFK was assassinated, Russo did not think of this conversation with David Ferrie.

One of Russo's friends also made the Baton Rouge State-Times Advocate on February 25, 1967.:

So, how do conspiracy theorists treat the story told by Perry Russo in Baton Rouge?

Here's Jim Garrison from On The Trail of The Assassins: (page 151)

"When he [Russo] heard about our investigation, Russo wrote us a letter, but we never received it. Later he met a reporter from the Baton Rouge State-Times and in an interview the morning of Friday, February 24, he told him about a meeting he had attended at Ferrie's apartment at which the assassination of President Kennedy had been discussed."

Garrison doesn't just ignore Russo's Baton Rouge story - he just changes it.

James DiEugenio makes it seem like Russo had the same story from day one. Here is an excerpt from his book, Destiny Betrayed: (page 217)

"In February of 1967, Perry Russo was a young insurance salesman living in Baton Rouge. He had also been a former friend of David Ferrie. Russo had written to Garrison when he became aware of his investigation, but the letter was never delivered. Russo then gave interviews to both a local TV station and a reporter from the Baton Rouge State-Times. When the interviews appeared, Garrison immediately sent Andrew Sciambra, a young assistant DA, to take a deposition from Russo in Baton Rouge. Russo said he had known Ferrie fairly well and had attended a gathering at Ferrie's apartment in mid-September of 1963. He revealed that, late in the evening, after most had left, he, Ferrie, two of Ferrie's friends, and several Cuban exiles remained. Russo had brought two friends to Ferrie's that night, Sandra Moffett and Niles Peterson. Both left early, but Peterson later remembered a man named Leon Oswald. By the time the discussion took place, both of Russo's friends were gone. Almost everyone else had left except Ferrie, Leon Oswald, and a tall, distinguished, white-haired man named Clem Bertrand."

DiEugenio continues for several paragraphs and repeats the Russo story told in New Orleans after the hypnosis and sodium pentothal. He makes it all sound seamless - that Russo told one consistent story from the start.

When first edition of Destiny Betrayed came out, James Phelan sent a letter, on October 9, 1992, to Ellen Ray, co-owner of Sheridan Square Press, publisher of Destiny Betrayed and On The Trail of the Assassins:

"DiEugenio uses a different tactic. He falsified what Russo said when initially interviewed. See pages 143-145 in his book. He takes what Russo said under hypnosis in New Orleans, and moves it back a week to Baton Rouge. He thus falsely transforms Russo to a consistent witness who told only one story. This requires him to censor extensive passages of the trial record and eliminate the cause of Garrison's court disaster."

I don't know if Ellen Ray sent a copy of the letter to James DiEugenio. What I do know is that DiEugenio did not change his text from the first edition of Destiny Betrayed to the second.

Tomorrow: Another look at Perry Russo and his interview with James Phelan in Baton Rouge.

Towards the end of July, 1968, for some reason, Mr. Habighorst went on television in New Orleans and told his story about Clay Shaw admitting to being Clay Bertrand. It was immediately denied by Shaw's attorney, Edward Wegmann.

New Orleans Times-Picayune, July 27, 1968

The revelation caused quite a stir and a police investigation was launched.

New Orleans Times-Picayune, July 28, 1968

Garrison's office then released fingerprint cards and the booking sheet of Clay Shaw to the press. Clay Shaw had signed the fingerprint cards, but the booking sheet was only signed by a sergeant and a doorman.

New Orleans States-Item, July 30, 1968

Here is the booking sheet:

Here are the documents as printed in the July 30, 1968 edition of the New Orleans Times-Picayune.

The police investigation found no wrongdoing on the part of Habighorst.

New Orleans Times-Picayune, August 6, 1968

What is amazing here is that Habighorst's appearance on TV was authorized by the District Attorney's office. Now why would Garrison do that? Was he trying to prejudice the public against Clay Shaw?

We now fast forward to the start of the Clay Shaw trial, One of Shaw's defense lawyers, Sal Panzeca, interviewed police officer Jonas Butzman, who was present when Shaw was fingerprinted:

On February 19, 1969, the issue of the fingerprint card came up in court. James Alcock, second in command to Garrison, asked that the jury be removed while Judge Haggerty heard oral arguments on admissibility. The first witness was Louis Ivon, Garrison's chief investigator. He had driven with Clay Shaw and his attorneys to Central Lockup where Shaw was fingerprinted. He was asked on three occasions if any of Shaw's lawyers were present during fingerprinting:

"B of I" is the Bureau of Identification.

Then police officer Aloysius Habighorst took the stand. Two other officers were also in the B of I room:

Habighorst said that Clay Shaw signed the fingerprint card, and even reviewed it:

It's hard enough to believe that Clay Shaw would tell them he was Clay Bertrand, and even harder to believe that he would review the card and not say anything. Habighorst was then asked if Shaw's lawyer was in the room:

Habighorst was then asked if Wegmann was excluded:

The questioning continued:

And, the regulations state that lawyers are not permitted in the B of I room:

Habighorst was asked if Wegmann was present when Shaw supposedly gave his alias:

At this point, Judge Haggerty stepped in and asked how far away Edward Wegmann was from where Shaw was being fingerprinted. It was 30 feet. It's questionable whether Wegmann was able to hear Habighorst.

Usually, the officer fingerprinting the suspect does not ask him questions. He fills out the fingerprint card with information from the arrest record. And that is why you don't need lawyers there.

The next witness was Captain Louis Curole, Platoon Commander at the Central Lockup:

He was asked if Edward Wegmann was in the B of I Room:

Captain Curole was asked about the field arrest report:

And this form is usually brought to the B of I room:

Further to the point:

Even Judge Haggerty understood the implication:

And further:

Habighorst had told the court he did not have that information and that is why he questioned Shaw. Now, the court realized that they would have to rule on Habighorst's credibility. And so Curole was asked the penultimate question:

And so the information regarding aliases should have been obtained by Habighorst from the arrest record. Sergeant Jonas Butzman, whose job was to guard Clay Shaw while he was in central lockup, was then called to the stand:

And, he never heard the name Bertrand:

On redirect, Butzman confirmed that he was close enough to hear whatever was said by Clay Shaw:

Police officer John Perkins was the next witness. While he was not in the B of I room on March 1st, he was called to stand to testify about standard procedures:

And so, the standard procedure is to get the suspect to sign the fingerprint card, and then fingerprint them. And standard procedures is to send copies of the arrest record to the officer who is doing the fingerprinting.

And, in his four months of service, Perkins had not seen it done differently:

The next witness was Clay Shaw's attorney, Edward Wegmann:

Shaw's copy of the Arrest Register Report did not include Clay Bertrand as the alias.

Wegmann then testified that he was not in the B of I room:

The next witness was Sal Panzeca, a lawyer who worked for Edward Wegmann. He told Garrison's men that they were not to ask questions of Shaw:

And then Clay Shaw was called to the stand. Remember, the jury is still out:

Shaw said he was separated from his lawyer upon entering the B of I room:

Shaw was asked about the fingerprint card:

Did Clay Shaw tell them he had an alias?

And was Shaw asked questions when he was fingerprinted?

It was finally time for Judge Haggerty to rule.

More about the Escobedo case here.

Alcock tried to interject but was stopped:

Alcock was not happy:

Alcock then moved for a mistrial, which was instantly denied.

Alcock indicated he would file a bill of exception.

And now I have to turn to James Kirkwood's American Grotesque for some color about the ruling: (page 359)

"Alcock was completely stunned. The entire courtroom was astonished. Finally the prosecuting attorney gulped down his amazement and immediately moved for a mistrial. Judge Haggerty, in a superb piece of underplaying, merely said, "Denied." Alcock announced he would immediately file for writs of review with the Louisiana Supreme Court to reverse Judge Haggerty's ruling. Haggerty's attitude was Go ahead, file away, file all the writs you want. With that he announced court was adjourned for the day, saying if no word was received from the Supreme Court by 8:45 the next morning, he would telephone the court in Alcock's presence. If the review would not be granted by 9 A.M., Judge Haggerty declared, court would resume on schedule.

Alcock's face was still a deep shade of persimmon as he strode out of the courtroom. The defense lawyers, who could not have been more pleased by this decision in their favor, were nevertheless so completely surprised they were barely able to exhibit their overt pleasure and could be seen merely wagging their heads in astonishment.

The press had something to skid down the hall about this afternoon. Although many claimed this was Judge Haggerty's token gift ruling for the defense, whatever it was, he had pulled off the gesture with complete bravado. It seemed to put roses in the judge's cheeks, clear the eyes and, even, steady the hands.

The Hanging Ladies, the Rolfes and the members of the District Attorney's staff all looked as if someone had broken the rules of the game."

New Orleans Times-Picayune, February 20, 1969

On the next day in court, February 20, 1969, Judge Haggerty received word of the ruling from the Louisiana Supreme Court:

Alcock argued with the judge that the jury should decide the issue, but Haggerty was having none of it, and he he issued his final ruling:

James Kirkwood noted that about this time a limerick was making the rounds of the press section: (page 360)

The judge's attack was quite vicious

On an officer name Aloysius

He implied that he lied

And poor Alcock soon cried,

"Goodbye, Al, we're sure gonna miss yez!"

John MacKenzie wrote a very good article for the Washington Post about Judge Haggerty on March 16, 1969:

While the article lauds Haggerty's decision on Habighorst, it is nonetheless fairly critical of Garrison; the judges in New Orleans in general; and Haggerty in particular. That didn't stop Judge Haggerty from showing off the article. The following is taken from James Kirkwood's interview of Irvin Dymond:

Kirkwood: Yes. What about - oh, I know what was interesting which didn't have really anything to with the case except, when they were talking about Clay being fingerprinted and Eddie Wegmann not being in that room. Right? Well, now if he wanted him there, and if Wegmann has wanted to be with him, then that would seem to violate ... but I mean the whole -- when you had a couple of police officers who said "This is the way we do." Well Jesus, shouldn't somebody call them up and say "Hey listen, we're in trouble. The judge is ..."

Dymond: (can't hear it)

Kirkwood: Because - you know when I saw - when that came out, I saw a lot of people getting out of prison.

Dymond: Well I think ... again, that the fingerprinting process is very rarely used in evidence in a criminal case. And it would really be immaterial unless it was an item ... evidence ... (as it was here?)

Kirkwood: Because of the alias, or supposed alias. Boy, the judge was talking to me about that yesterday. He still is up in arms about ...

Dymond: That son of a bitch.

Kirkwood: He said in the first place ... violated the law by taking the card and making it public, and waiting that long and this and that. And he keeps saying, "I don't give a Goddam who knows I said I didn't believe him." But he said, "I don't --"

Dymond: Yes, he's really - really (proud?) ... (of having said that?).

Kirkwood: Well that was - you know in a way that as his big moment. And that was his token -

Dymond: Contribution to the defense?

Kirkwood: Contribution to the defense. One of the few. But nevertheless it was kind of a splashy one. And - you know that's funny, Irvin, he - Jack MacKenzie of the Post wrote that up and it wasn't printed until I think March 15 or 16. After the trial. But it was a whole article based on that Ash Wednesday when he said "I don't believe him, I don't care who knows it." Now, in that article, MacKenzie really took Haggerty to task. About the many times he changed, 180 degrees, and the Warren Report, and consistently ruling for the state. He said, in the article, "hard-drinking, nervous" - and this and that. Singing the songs, ruling for the state - it also made references to the fact that Garrison was known to have many judges in his pocket - all of this in the article, and the Judge takes it. Had his minute clerk and the guy who takes the stuff down tearing that office apart because he wanted to show me that. And he gave me a copy of it even. And he said, you know, "Now read this. Now don't you think this is great?" Boy, it's not great. I mean, the point that MacKenzie was making is that once he stood up and did something and just by the fact of doing it surprised everybody so much that that's why it was newsworthy. Not because the judge was doing anything particularly right. But the whole article slammed him. And ... he's got it on a piece of paper, you know, glued up there and the picture, he likes the picture very much and he wants to have that reproduced, and he called up the UPI while I was there, and he said, you know ... MacKenzie, you know, and this thing - March 15 or 16 - and I want that picture that looks serious and "That's when I took my stand," he said. "That's when I took my stand." Tickled the hell out of me. You know? That man - I don't know what he knows about law or not - he's not a bright man. Because he doesn't have what we call the governor - an eye on himself. He doesn't know the picture he presents of himself, and did to the press, and does to me. I don't think he has any idea.

Dymond: No. I don't think he does either. Jim, you can't drink that much whiskey and not have it affect you.

Now, how do the conspiracy books treat the Habighorst incident?

Jim Garrison in On The Trail of The Assassins says that the Judge ordered the jury removed form the court (page 242)

"We instructed the court attaché to call Officer Habighorst. But before Habighorst could take the stand, Judge Haggerty suddenly ordered the jury removed from the court."

Of course it was James Alcock who asked the judge to remove the jury. He knew this was very sensitive evidence.

James DiEugenio, in Destiny Betrayed, thinks that Haggerty made a legal error: (page 308)

"As for Escobedo, New Orleans police procedure has always required that a suspect's counsel be nearby when routine booking was taking place, which was in fact the case at Shaw's booking."

But, of course, the issue is not the booking, but the fingerprinting. There is no mention of Jonas Butzman's testimony in DiEugenio's book.

Joan Mellen, in her book, A Farewell to Justice, writes that: (page 309)

"The ruling was so capricious that some wondered whether Haggerty was affected by dislike of Habighorst's brother Norbert, a bad cop, who had held back information and was serving ten years for killing the brother of police superintendent Joseph Scheuring."

Mellen might have something there - but not the way she thinks. Don Carpenter, in his book Man of a Million Fragments, writes: (page 80)

"Shaw dealt not only directly with Mayor Chep Morrison; he also worked with various assistants of Morrison. One of those was W. Ray Scheuring, Executive Assistant to the mayor. In a bizarre chain of events, Scheuring was killed in early 1961 during an altercation with an off-duty policeman on the Greater New Orleans Bridge leading to the West Bank of the Mississippi River. The man was the brother of New Orleans police officer Aloysius Habighorst. Habighorst's brother was represented at trial by Irvin Dymond, who later served as Shaw's lead attorney during his criminal trials. Officer Habighorst was the booking officer when Shaw was arrested, and later testified that Shaw had freely admitted that he used the name "Clay Bertrand" as an alias, an important factor in the case against Shaw. The story emerged about a year after Shaw's arrest, and approximately a year before his trial; some have speculated that the story originated out of Officer Habighorst's hard feelings toward Irvin Dymond, who Habighorst felt did not do an adequate job defending his brother against the charges of killing Schuering."

Of course, Oliver Stone couldn't help but include a scene, in his film JFK, with Habighorst and Clay Shaw. And, in the courtroom, he has Judge Haggerty instructing the jury to leave the room (like Garrison's book) and he ignored the fact that it was James Alcock who requested that the jury be removed. Garrison wasn't even in the courtroom at the time.