Clay Shaw

[Bernice Moore]

1968: The Clay Shaw trial on JFK conspiracy charges | NOLA.com


http://www.nola.com/175years/index.ssf/2011/12/1968_the_clay_shaw_trial_in_jf.html

[Albert Doyle]

What kills me is how some people can still have the nerve to describe Clay Shaw as a victim of Garrison's reckless ambition when he was, in fact, dripping in CIA complicity and background.



It's time to pull the f***ing gloves off on this kind of bs propagandistic article. The NOLA.com site is favoring a spin that makes Clay Shaw look like a victim and Garrison look guilty of violating Shaw. This is exactly where the new democratic Disinformation Act laws are needed. The NOLA.com site needs to sued and sued hard to make them pay for not offering the easily-accessed true background to this story. For instance, Clay Shaw was a WWII veteran all right (which the article uses to make him look like a persecuted hero), but it's very important to list what branch he served in. He served in the OSS - which was the direct predecessor to the CIA. The intelligently and truthfully presented background of Shaw's WWII service was shown by Piper in his book 'Final Judgment'. In it he showed that Shaw was mingling with all the prime intelligence players of the Assassination, especially Angleton, in his infancy in the intelligence service.

It's disgusting to the point of just plain evil to see the same lying right-wing powers that were in place during Shaw's time are still up to their sleazy business. To make Shaw a martyr is to justify and take the side of Kennedy's killers. That is an act of evil treason that deserves the treatment it has coming. It's time to finally apply that treatment or watch our democracy be taken over by the dark, false democracy, forces Shaw represented and their journalistic sponsors.

[Magda Hassan]

Late breaking news on Clay Shaw's United
Kingdom contacts
Anthony Edward Weeks
Introduction: Lee Harvey Oswald and New Orleans
Lee Harvey Oswald, like his mother Marguerite Oswald (née Claverie), was born inNew Orleans, on 18th October 1939, and spent his first five years in the Crescent City.
In early 1944 Mrs Oswald moved to Dallas with Lee and his half-brother, John Pic.
She changed addresses frequently and, after periods in Fort Worth and New York,
returned to New Orleans with her children in January 1954. In late 1954, aged 15
Oswald became a member of a Civil Air Patrol unit that was run by one David Ferrie.
Mrs Oswald left New Orleans again in July 1956 and returned to Fort Worth. On
October 24th Oswald enlisted in the Marines.
When Oswald returned from the Soviet Union in June 1962 with Marina, his Soviet
wife, they went to stay with his half-brother in Fort Worth. Oswald obtained a number
of jobs that proved unsatisfactory and, unable to find further employment locally,
Marina suggested he go to New Orleans to look for work. He stayed with his aunt,
Lillian Murret. At the beginning of May he secured employment with the William B.
Reilly Co., coffee grinders and packagers, as a machinery greaser. Marina and their
daughter joined him in a small apartment on Magazine Street. On July 19th Oswald
was dimissed by the Reilly Co. for 'poor working habits'. He then organized the New
Orleans 'chapter' of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee (FPCC), getting 'Hands Off
Cuba' leaflets printed. While engaged in this pro-Castro activity he visited Carlos
Bringuier, a Cuban refugee and prominent anti-Castro activist, told him he was
experienced in guerilla warfare and offered his services in the armed struggle against
Castro.
Oswald's one-man FPCC chapter was based at 544 Camp Street. The room he rented
there was in a three-storey building that had entrances on two bordering streets, and
thus had two addresses: 531 Lafayette Street and 544 Camp Street. The building was
part-rented by William Guy Bannister, a racist, violent anti-communist, and member
of the John Birch Society. Bannister served in the FBI and had risen to be Special
Agent-in-Charge of the Bureau's Chicago office. After retiring from the Feds he had
been appointed assistant superintendent of the New Orleans Police Department, a
position he lost after pulling a gun on a waiter in a local bar. He then formed Guy
Bannister Associates, a private detective agency cum political front that reflected his
own extremist views. One of the first people he employed was David Ferrie.
Bannister had earlier persuaded the owner of the building to let space to the CIAsponsored Cuban Revolutionary Council, headed by Sergio Aracha Smith. Bannister's
secretary, Delphine Roberts, told the writer Henry Hurt that Oswald had often come in
to see Bannister, and this has been confirmed elsewhere. (For example, in Anthony
Summers' Conspiracy.) Further, she said that Bannister was well aware of Oswald
keeping the FPCC placards and leaflets in the room he rented, and that Bannister was
only upset when Oswald brought the stuff into his office. The Bannister-Oswald
connection, the fact that while Oswald claimed some 35 members for his FPCC
chapter he only had one, and, moreover, his chapter had never been chartered by the
national FPCC in New York, suggests that Oswald was running a phoney FPCC
chapter as part of the FBI's Cointelpro operations against the American left.
On 9th August Bringuier saw Oswald giving out 'Hands Off Cuba leaflets on Canal
Street, a rumpus developed and Oswald (along with Bringuier and two other Cubans)
was arrested, held in jail overnight and released ater paying a $10.00 fine. A week
later he was distributing the leaflets again - this time outside the New Orleans
International Trade Mart.
Marina and their daughter returned to Dallas on 23rd September. Two days laterOswald left New Orleans for Mexico City to visit the Cuban and Soviet Embassies. He
re-entered the United States on 3rd October and headed for Dallas. On November 24th
he was shot dead by Jack Ruby.
Clay Shaw, Jim Garrison (and others)
In mid-February 1967, nearly three and a half years after the assassination of John F.
Kennedy, news reports emanating from New Orleans claimed that the local district
attorney, Jim Garrison, was investigating the President's murder. Within a week
Garrison was holding a press conference and claiming that he had 'positively solved
the assassination of John F. Kennedy'. On the day the news of Garrison's investigation
broke in the local New Orleans States-Item newspaper, David Ferrie contacted the
paper claiming he was targeted in Garrison's investigation as the getaway pilot for the
Dealey Plaza assassins - an allegation Ferrie strongly denied.
Ferrie was a bizarre hairless individual who glued red false hair and eyebrows to
himself. A homosexual,he had been dismissed as a commercial pilot by Eastern
Airlines in September 1963 for sodomizing a young boy. Ferrie was also a rabid anticommunist with good connections amongst the exiled anti-Castro Cubans who were
then nearly as numerous in New Orleans as they were in Florida. He had probably
worked for the CIA in some covert capacity, and on 22nd November 1963 had been in
a New Orleans courtroom with Carlos Marcello, the Louisiana mafia boss, for whom
he was working as a private investigator. (It was widely believed that Ferrie had flown
Marcello back from Mexico after Bobby Kennedy had him kidnapped and illegally
deported.) Ferrie had also worked for Guy Bannister, and had earlier run the Civil Air
Patrol unit the teenage Lee Harvey Oswald had joined.
On 22nd February 1967 Ferrie's naked body was discovered in his apartment. The
coroner later ruled that death was from natural causes, a brain haemorrhage. Garrison
would have none of it and claimed he had committed suicide because of the tightening
net of his investigation, pointing to two notes Ferrie had left, one to an ex-lover named
Al, and one that read in its entirety: 'To leave this life is, for me, a sweet prospect. I
find nothing in it that is desireable, and on the other hand everything that is
loathsome.' Whether these unsigned notes had been hanging around the apartment for
a while, were suicide notes (or 'suicide' notes), who knows? Nearly twenty-five years
later the argument is still unresolved as to whether Ferrie's final exit was natural or unnatural.
Meanwhile in Washington the Powers That Be were showing an abiding concern and
interest in the Garrison investigation. President Johnson called Acting Attorney
General Ramsay Clark and spoke to him about Ferrie's death. LBJ was 'very
concerned about this matter' and wanted full details.
On March 1st Ferrie was buried and Garrison announced the arrest of Clay L. Shaw
for 'participation in a conspiracy to murder John F. Kennedy'. Shaw was a prominent
social and business figure in New Orleans, well liked and respected. Nearly two years
earlier he had received New Orleans' highest honour, the medal of the International
Order of Merit. He was also the director of the New Orleans International Trade Mart
which promoted the commercial merits of the city around the world. Garrison would
claim that Shaw was also intimate with Ferrie - politically, sexually andconspiratorially. The keystone of Garrison's case was the contention that Clay Shaw
used the alias of Clay or Clem Bertrand. The DA would prove that Betrand was
involved in the assassination conspiracy and then show that he and Shaw were one and
the same.
Shortly after the arrest Ramsey Clark surprised everyone by announcing in
Washington that immediately after the assassination Shaw had been investigated by
the FBI and come up clean as a whistle. This was news to the Feds - there had been no
investigation. A Justice Department official subsequently tried to clear up the
confusion and limit the Acting Attorney General's damage by saying Clay Bertrand
and Clay Shaw were the same man, but this was what Garrison was saying anyway
and it only succeeded in moving the confusion into fourth gear. (Later the Justice
Department would declare that Clay Bertrand was not a real person and no evidence
had ever been found suggeting that Clay Shaw had used the name.) Garrison had been led to Bertrand through the testimony given to the Warren Commission
by jive-talking New Orleans 'hip pocket' attorney, Dean Andrews, who had claimed that
shortly after the assassination Bertrand had telephoned him requesting that he go to Dallas
and represent Oswald. (On Andrews see below.) Andrews gave conflicting accounts and
descriptions of Bertrand and eventually claimed he was a figment of his imagination. He
would also say that Bertrand was definitely not Shaw, though by this time so much pressure
had been put on him he was only opening his mouth to change feet. He would also say in
front of a grand jury under oath, when asked whether Bertrand and Shaw were the same
person, 'I can't say that he is and I can't say that he ain't.'
Garrison marshalled a group of witnesses to support his case that ran the whole
spectrum from the completely believable to the completely incredible: from the the
credible postman, James Hardiman, who said he delivered mail to 'Clay Bertrand'
addressed to Shaw's house and that it was never returned, through to Charles I. Spiesel
who freely told how malevolent strangers were forever hypnotizing him and that
whenever his daughter returned from college he regularly finger-printed her to ensure
that an imposter had not been substituted. There was also Perry Raymond Russo who
had attended a party at Ferrie's apartment where he had met an older man named
Bertrand and Ferrie's room-mate, Leon (sic) Oswald. Oswald nad Bertrand were
discussing an assassination plot. Bertrand was Shaw, Oswald was Oswald.
If Garrison was putting Shaw on trial he was also putting the Warren Commission on
trial and the broadsides he fired into the Chief Justice's Report hastened its demise in
the eyes of the public. This would be Garrison's great contribution to the JFK mystery.
The Zapruder film was shown ten times during the course of the trial to demonstrate
the 'triangulation of cross-fire' that Garrison claimed killed Kennedy.
On 1st March 1969, two years to the day after his arrest, Clay Shaw was found
innocent of the charges laid against him. Five years later he was dead of cancer at the
age of sixty-one.
Who was Clay Shaw? James Kirkwood, for instance, spent a considerable time with
Shaw throughout the trial and wrote a 600 page account of the action with a
pronounced pro-Shaw bias. Yet reading it is like watching Hamlet without the Prince
of Denmark. We see Shaw as Defendant and nothing else. A curiously onedimensional portrait is given that leaves Shaw the man well alone. Kirkwood
frequently appears to be on the brink of saying something but pulls back at the last
moment.
Harold Weisberg discovered a 1954 FBI report from a New Orleans informant that
said he had 'relations of a homosexual nature with Clay Shaw', and that Shaw was
'given to sadism and masochism in his homosexual activities'. Ferrie seems to have
inhabited a similar gay milieu and it is not far-fetched to believe they may have known
each other in the French Quarter's sexual underworld - they certainly had friends in
common. Was 'Clay Bertrand' Shaw's nom de guerre in gay New Orleans back in the
homophobic early 1960s?
When Garrison arrested Shaw in March 1967 his office had discovered a chain, five
whips, a black hood and cape, and a gown in Shaw's bedroom where hooks had been
screwed into the ceiling. The DA would later say that what appeared to be dried blood
was found on the whips. Shaw's friends at the time said that this paraphernalia was
part of a Mardi Gras costume - an explanation offered to James Kirkwood by Shaw'smother which he duly reported without comment.
I have been told by a woman who knew Shaw very well throughout the 1950s and 60's
that Shaw's homosexuality was no secret in his social circle. But while his friends
might know he was gay New Orleans as a town did not. If I underscore his
homosexuality it is to emphasize the compartmentalisation of his life, a trait that
would be valuable for anyone with connection to intelligence operations.
In 1977 a CIA memo surfaced dated 28th September 1967 and headed 'Garrison
Investigation: Queries from Justice Department'. This said that between 1949 and 1956
the Agency had received 30 reports from Shaw concerning international trade and
political activities in countries ranging from Peru to East Germany, Argentina and
Nicaragua. Henry Hurt has noted that while the contacts apparently ceased in 1956
Shaw continued to enjoy a good relationsip with Langley and it is possible that Shaw's
work became more sensitive and ceased to be recorded in the general files. Futher
evidence of Shaw's involvement wth the CIA came in 1975 from Victor Marchetti
who had resigned from the Agency in 1969. At the time of the Garrison investigation
he was Executive Assistant to the CIA Deputy Director, and it was then, so Marchetti
says, that the case was discussed at the highest levels in terms of what help Shaw
could be given.
In 1979 Richard Helms, who in 1963 had been the Agency's Deputy Director for Plans
(i.e. covert operations), admitted under oath in a trial that he knew of Shaw. He said,
'The only recollection I have of Clay Shaw and the Agency is that I believe that at one
time as a businessman he was one of the part-time contacts of the Domestic Contact
Division, the people that talked to businessmen, professors and so forth, and who
travelled in and out of the country.' Helms had earlier denied that there was any
connection. Was he now telling the truth? Allen W. Dulles astonished fellow members
of the Warren Commission by telling them in a secret session that members of the
intelligence community would lie, if need be, under oath, that the truth in some
regards would never be known. Helms may have been telling the truth in 1979 but the
sin may be that of omission rather than commission. In the phrase much loved by
English lawyers, we need 'further and better particulars'. As of now we are stumbling
about in a badly lit room unsure if we are seeing shadow or substance. Shaw was
probably not involved in the assassination of Kennedy, though he may well have
known individuals who were. Could this quiet American have been another 'cold war
warrior'? What we do we know about him? What could we find out.
The Address Book
When Clay Shaw was arrested on 1st March 1967 his house in the French Quarter was
searched and among the items taken away by the DA was a personal address book. A
photocopy was subsequently deposited with the Committee to Investigate
Assassinations, in Washington D.C., and it was from a copy of this that I worked. The
photocopy shows the book to be a spring-backed ring-binder, rather like a Filofax,
with 175mm by 98mm pages. The index tabs are in twos, A and B, C and D, which
frequently results in alphabetical displacement. In all there are some 56 pages of
names and addresses. Most of the entries are typewritten but corrections and additions
have been done in Shaw's hand. The book is almost wholly composed of home
addresses and phone numbers and it is only very occasionally that a company address
or phone is given. It was obviously Shaw's social and private address book, as opposed
to any 'work' address book. There are 216 names in the book, many with more than one address and with earlier
addresses crossed out. Shaw used it for a number of years and it may well date back to
the late 1950s. The vast majority of the addresses are in North America (that is the
USA, Canada and Mexico), and aside from the United Kingdom entries dealt with
here, the other overseas entries break down as follows: Belgium 3, Colombia 1, France
6, Germany 1, Holland 2, Italy 4, Norway 1, and Spain 4.
In his 1988 On the Trail of the Assassins Garrison describes the address book as
'probably the most interesting single item seized in the course of Shaw's arrest', and
goes on to discuss it, pp.146-7. He says it 'offered some insights into his proclivity for
developing casual relationships at lofty levels of European aristocracy', which is
certainly true, and he lists several titled individuals who appear in its pages. He then
rather sours his point by claiming that the CIA has a 'romantic infatuation with the
fading regimes', which seems to suggest he thinks Langley is preparing for the
comeback of the ancien regime.
One very intriguing entry among the addresses that Garrison alighted upon back in
1967 is:
Lee Odom
PO Box 19106
Dallas, Tex
(On p. 146 of On the Trail Garrison transcribes it incorrectly - which makes one
wonder when he last looked at the address book himself.)
In Lee Harvey Oswald's address book there appears the citation '* * 19106' (the
asterisks here represent two Cyrillic characters not available on this keyboard).
Garrison claims that they say PO, but either way there is an odd coincidence here.
Who and what was this? Shaw's attorney at the time of the trial produced a Lee Odom
who said that he had a PO Box number in Irving, a Dallas suburb, and that PO Box
19106 in Dallas had been used for a while in some barbecue company he was
associated with (though it had never been in his name), and that he had met Shaw once
to discuss promoting bloodless bull-fights in New Orleans! At the very least this was a
suspicious coincidence and one that has yet to be explained. Oswald had written the
notation in his address book no later than 1963, and yet the Dallas Post Office in that
year had not yet acquired a Box with such a high number. In his book Garrison fails to
mention that it was bloodless bullfights that Odom claimed to be promoting, and also
neglects to say that the two characters preceding the number in Oswald's address book
were in Cyrillic. Such omissions point to a highly selective (or sloppy) presentation of
facts. What else is he not telling us?
The UK names are addresses are here presented in alphabetical order. The bracket [T]
and [H] mean typewritten or handwritten entries. Proper names rendered in caps in
these notes indicate that an entry exists for them also.
Perhaps a few words on address book methodology (sic). On the table in front of me
as I write this is my own address book, a fat red-leather bound Filofax which has been
with me for fifteen years or so and which, at a guess contains a thousand or so names
with addresses and telephone numbers. It contains the names of quite a few people
who know quite a bit about me, but the vast majoirty know little or nothing. There are
people I have met once many years ago and even people I have never met orcommunicated with in any way, whose entries I would be hard put to explain. I've
taken the names and address of people at parties and never seen them again - and so
on. Clay Shaw by all acounts was a witty, charming and courteous individual. He met
hundreds of people. He had many legitimate business interests... and naturally people
would end up in his address book. Their presence may mean nothing.
The United Kingdom Contacts
Before continuing let me tip my cap to two fellow English JFK buffs who have each
made a foray into this neck of the woods. Michael Eddowes told me years ago that in
the early 1970s he went through Shaw's UK contacts: 'there was nothing much of
interest - a couple of old ladies in Mayfair and so on.' This is a reference to Lady
D'Arcy and Lady Hulse who are noted below. Of much greater significance to
Eddowes was a discovery he made in Toronto when he knocked on the door of an
apartment owned by one of Shaw's boyfriends: it was opened by a fellow named
Robin Drury. Drury, a homosexual, had been the 'agent' of Christine Keeler during the
time of the British sex scandal known as the Profumo Affair in 1963. Like Eddowes I
had often wondered whether Shaw knew Stephen Ward, the osteopath at the centre of
the affair. This discovery inches the contention forward.
Stephen Dorril is the other pioneer of UK Shaw studies (and co-author, with Anthony
Summers of the best book on the Profumo Affair Honeytrap:the Secret Worlds of
Stephen Ward, London, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1987). He had spoken to Olwen
Janson (see below) several times in the mid-1970s after reading about the interview
she gave to the London Daily Mail in Joesten's book on Garrison. The interview is
mentioned under Sir Michael DUFF below and details of Joesten's book will be found
in the Further Reading section at the end.
The first thing that struck me when I looked through the addresses was that Shaw's
London contacts all lived in the best and most expensive areas: Belgravia, Mayfair,
Kensington, St. John's Wood and Whitehall. Whoever Shaw was he did not seem to
know anyone in the low rent zones....
Frith Banbury
4 St. James Terrace
Prince Albert Road,
London NW 8
[T]
(Frederick Harold) Frith Banbury was born on 4th May 1912, the son of Rear-Admiral
Frith Banbury. He was educated at Stowe School and Hertford College, Oxford, and
later studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. Throughout the 1930s and 1940s
he was an actor and appeared in many West End productions and several films,
including Michael Powell's The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943). Since 1947
he has been a successful theatrical producer and director - his two most recent
productions in London were The Corn is Greener at the Old Vic in 1987 and The
Admirable Crighton at the Haymarket in 1988.
4 St. James Terrace was demolished quite recently along with a couple of its
neighbours and on the site of these houses was built a very fine modern apartment
block that goes under the name of Park St. James, commanding fine views acrossRegents Park. Banbury now lives in the block.
Banbury told me that he had met Shaw while visiting New Orleans in 1952. He was
introduced by a mutual friend, an actress. It was during Mardi Gras and Banbury was
staying in a hotel running up a high bill. Shaw suggested he stay with him at his house
for a few days and Banbury accepted. He said Shaw was a generous and attentive host.
In the late 1950s or early 1960s Shaw telephoned Banbury while in London and they
had lunch together. This was the last time they met. When Banbury read about the
Garrison investigation he sent Shaw a letter of support. Frith Banbury could not
believe that Shaw was in any way involved with the JFK assassination, yet, like Olwen
JANSON below, he could well imagine him involved with the CIA as an agent.
Lady Margaret D'Arcy
109 Earls Court Road,
London W8
[T]
Lady Margaret Florence Grace D'Arcy was born on 2nd October 1907, the youngest
daughter of the (13th) Earl of Kinnoull (1855-1916). In 1929 she married a Norman
D'Arcy and had several children. While raising her family she wrote four novels, all
published by John Murray in London: Down the Sky (1935), Sir Monckton Requests
(1936), Malignant Star (1939) and Racket (1940).
She was divorced from D'Arcy in 1942. Lady Margaret's daughter, Philippa, who now
lives in Monaco, told me that her mother was a great traveller and also very active on
the lecture tour circuit in the United States through an organization she believed was
called British American Associates. (See John William HUGHES) Both Philippa and
her mother knew Sir Steven RUNCIMAN and Lord MONTAGU: 'but then my mother
was always very active and knew hundreds of people.'
Lady Margaret was a devout Christian. Her last published work was A Book of
Modern Prayers (Aldington, Kent; Hand and Flower Press, 1951). 109 Earl's Court
Road and its neighbour, 107, part of a terrace of modest Victorian stucco villas, were
demolished in the late 1960s and replaced by a pleasing block of flats. Lady Margaret
then went to live in Mayfair with Lady HULSE who had sometimes accompanied her
on trips to the United States as unpaid secretary and companion. There was a rift
between the two titled ladies around 1974 and Lady Margaret moved out. She died in
1976 aged 68.
Alan Davis
23 Ennismore Gardens
London SW7
[T]
Ennismore Gardens is one of the most attractive squares in London and is situated
behind the Victoria and Albert Museum, roughly mid-way between Kensington to the
west and Knightsbridge to the east. Clay Shaw mis-spelt Davis' Christian name - it is
Allan Davis, under which the following entry appears in the 1973-74 British Film and
Television Year Book (London, Cinema TV Today, 1974), p.104: DAVIS, ALLAN. Director (films, TV and plays). Born 30th August, 1913, London.
Entered films in 1951 after several years as a director on the stage. Went to Hollywood
under contract to MGM and directed Rogue's March (MGM) in 1953 etc. Back in
Britain he has directed many TV films in the following series: Rendezvous, Dick and
the Duchess, O.S.S. etc. 1960, directed feature films Clue of the Twisted Candle, Clue
of the New Pin. 1961-2, directed Square Mile Murder, Wings of Death, The Fourth
Square, etc. Since 1962: Directing on West End and Broadway stage. 1971-73: No Sex
Please - We're British. (stage)
Address: 23 Ennismore Gardens, London SW7.
Davis told me that in 1960 he was touring the United States lecturing on theatre and
drama at various Universities through the Rockefeller Foundation. He spent a few
days in New Orleans while at Tulane University and met Shaw a couple of times
through people he knew on the faculty. He said Shaw was very interested in the theatre
and very good company. Davis gave Shaw his address and said he must look him up if
he ever came to London: they never met or communicated again. In 1967 David was
startled to read about Shaw's arrest in Time magazine and could not believe that Shaw
was in any way involved. David moved out of Ennismore Gardens some years ago and
now lives in Belgravia.
Sir Michael Duff
Vaynol,
Bangor.
Wales
[T: handwritten underneath '82 Cadogan Place']
Sir Charles Michael Robert Vivian Duff was born on 3rd May 1907. Apart from a
brief spell in the RAF during the last war, he seems to have spent the greater part of
his life in socializing and not much else. Sir Michael was a well-known bisexual who,
according to one source, liked to dress up in drag as the late Queen Mary. Cecil
Beaton, the photographer, latched on to Sir Michael in the 1920s and it seems they had
a long affair. They certainly remained friends throughout their lives and Sir Michael
features in Hugo Vickers' Cecil Beaton: The Authorized Biography (London,
Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1985) He married the eldest daughter of the Marquess of
Anglesey in 1949. His death on 3rd March 1980 from cancer was what the Victorians
would have called a merciful release: he had suffered greatly.
Sir Michael is chiefly remembered today as the god-father of Tony Armstrong-Jones,
the photographer who married (and later divorced) the Queen's sister, Princess
Margaret, and who now sails under the title of the Earl of Snowden.
Olwen JANSON told me that Shaw always spoke fondly of Sir Michael. They had met
during the war when Shaw was stationed in London. I also learned from another
source that they had been lovers and, indeed, that Sir Michael may have been one of
the two greatest loves of Shaw's life (the other being William Formyduval with whom
he lived). Sir Michael introduced Shaw to London society, to Churchill, and may even
have introduced him to Peter MONTGOMERY, Anthony Blunt's lover.
As to Sir Michael's two addresses, Vaynol was his country estate near the town of
Bangor on the north coast of Wales, some 250 miles north-east of London, while
Cadogan Place was his London address in Belgravia, only a couple of doors awayfrom G.R. SPENCER (and Mike Leach). Bangor is situated on the Menai Straits
which separate Wales from the Isle of Anglesey and there, no more than ten miles
away, lived John William HUGHES. A relative of Hughes told me that she thought it
very unlikely he knew Sir Michael. However Sir Steven RUNCIMAN did know Sir
Michael, though he was unaware that Shaw did as well. In the interview that Olwen
JANSON gave with Charles Greville, the society columnist of the London Daily Mail,
on 17th March 1967, she said that one of Shaw's friends was a Member of Parliament.
The MP was not identified in the piece but Mrs Janson tells me she was referring to
Sir Michael. In fact he was never an MP.
Andrew Gillan
6 Bryce Avenue
Edinburgh 7
Scotland
U.K.
[H]
Shaw mis-spelt this name - it should be Gillon.
Andrew Gillon is now in his early fifties and is a successful businessman running his
own computer company in Edinburgh. At the time he met Shaw he was working for
IBM who had flown him to London for training. Gillion told me he met Clay Shaw
'once and once only - on a bus going out from the Cromwell Road airline terminal
[London] to Heathrow. It was either 1964 or 1965. I was returning to Edinburgh and
Shaw was flying to Dublin. He told me he was a retired businessman, but he had
something to do with exhibitions. We were going to meet the following week when I
was back in London but I came down with flu and did not return to London for a
while. I never saw or spoke to him again. Then, a couple of years later, I was listening
to the radio over breakfast and I heard that he had been arrested by the New Orleans
district attorney. I could not believe what I was hearing. It came as a great shock
meeting someone then hearing that they had been arrested on such a charge.'
John William Hughes
Marianglas
Isel of Anglesey
Wales G.B.
Moelfre - 392
[H]
The Isle of Anglesey is the island off the coast off North Wales that is separated from
the mainland by the Menai Straits. Marian-glas (sic) is a small village on the northeast coast. Moelfre is the telephone exchange that takes its name from a nearby town.
I eventually tracked down a relative of Hughes', Ellen Roger-Jones, who lives on the
island. She is the sister of the actor Hugh Griffiths. She told me that Hughes was born
on Anglesey just before the first world war and grew up there. He was a great traveller
and widely respected in his time as a journalist. He fought as a volunteer in the
Spanish Civil War but she could not recall on whose side. He was a very powerful
public speaker and orator and had once stood as a Liberal candidate in a generalelection. The name Clay Shaw meant nothing to her.
Hughes was very active in the English Speaking Union and frequently went on lecture
tours in the United States for an organization called something like American-English
Associates (this may well have been the same outfit Lady Margaret D'ARCY was
involved with). In about 1970 he married a woman from New York who had
'aristocartic' connections, a widow with children, whose aunt was very famous in New
York theatrical circles. Hughes returned with his wife to Anglesey. The woman did
not like provincial Welsh life and returned home with a year. Hughes died of cancer in
Bangor Hospital circa 1970. Bangor was the home of Sir Michael DUFF. Roger-Jones
does not believe that Hughes knew him.
Lady Hulse
7 Culross St.,
London W1
[T]
Lady Hulse still lives in Culros Street, Mayfair, in a very fine mews house,
immediately behind the American Embassy. She could not recall every meeting Clay
Shaw or hearing the name, and neither could her house-keeper/companion who has
been with her for fifty years. As Lady Hulse worked as an unpaid secretary to Lady
Margaret D'ARCY on her American lecture tours it seems entirely likely that Shaw
may have met her through Lady Margaret, perhaps just once, and would have no
particular reason to remember it. Certainly Shaw never visited Culross Street. Lady
Dorthy Hulse was formerly married to Sir Westrow Hulse, the barrister.
Mr and Mrs Hugh Janson
26 Laxford House
Cundy Street,
London
The Boat House, Queens Rd.
Cowes, Isle of Wight
Cowes 3849
[T]
Cundy Street is in the SW1 postal district of London on the edge of Belgravia, not far
away from Victoria Station. Laxford House is one of four apartment blocks built
around a quadrant and dating from, I would guess, the early 1930s. When the Jansons
sold their apartment in the late 1960s it was purchased by Sir Alec Douglas-Home, the
former Conservative Prime Minister. The Jansons also sold their house in Cowes and
they now live in the west of England. Olwen Janson told me the following.
The niece of Lord Oranmore and Browne, she was born in England in 1928. In the
early 1950s she married Wayne Harriess in New York. He was the son of an exPresident of the New York Stock Exchange whose vast wealth came from oil, real
estate and other business holdings. The Harriess were also close to the Kennedys at
this time. In 1953 Olwen was travelling through New Orleans with her husband when they
discovered a house for sale at 613 Dumaine Street. The promptly bought it from the
owner, the novelist William March (author of The Bad Seed). Olwen discovered a very
fine local antique shop run by a Carol Lewis (not in the address book), a homosexual
Veteran who had served as a sergeant in the US Army in France under Clay Shaw. It
was through him that Olwen met Shaw, 'one of the most charming and engaging men I
have ever met.' They became close friends and confidants almost immediately and
they remained so throughout the three years Olwen lived in New Orleans. When
Wayne Harriess died in 1956 Shaw gave Olwen considerable help and she believes
that without him she would never have survived. After she left New Orleans in 1956
and returned to London, they remained in regular contact right up until Shaw's death in
1974. They corresponded regularly and Olwen was always the first person Shaw
looked up when he arrived in London.
There was no secrecy in New Orleans about Shaw's homosexuality - he openly lived
with a life-long lover, William Formyduval.
Shaw was always talking about London and he said that after New Orleans it was his
favourite city. He had first visited London during the war when he was in the Army
and he would spend lengthy periods there up until 1945. It was at this time he met Sir
Michael DUFF of whom he always spoke fondly. They became lovers. Sir Michael
introduced Shaw to London society and the two of them frequently had dinner with
Winston Churchill. It may have been Sir Michael who had introduced Shaw to Peter
MONTGOMERY.
During the invasion of France, Shaw was shot in the left and the resulting wound
caused a permanent limp. He was awarded the Croix de Guerre by the French but
Olwen does not know why. She believed he rose to be a colonel (Harold Weisberg
thinks a major).
Shaw was passionately interested in the theatre and wrote a number of plays himself.
One of them, about life in a submarine (did he see service underwater?) was made into
a film but Olwen cannot remember the details. Tennessee Williams was a very close
friend of Shaw's but, curiously, he is absent from the address book.
Olwen still thinks very fondly of Shaw. His death was a sad blow to her. She cannot
believe he had anything to do with the assassination of Kennedy, yet she can believe
that he may have played footsie with the CIA. She loaned me a copy of the 13th July
1968 New Yorker that contained a lengthy piece by Edward Jay Epstein on the
Garrison investigation. Clay had sent it to her at the time and on the front cover, at the
bottom he had written:
Olwyn (sic) darling -- See page 35 for the incredible tale of the century.
Thanks for your letter. I'll answer soon!
Much love to you and Hugh
Clay
(Hugh is Hugh Janson who Olwen married after returning to London.) Larry Lawrence
Yewtree Cottage
Benhams Lane
Fawley Green
Hensley-on-Thames (sic)
Hensley should be Henley, some forty miles west of London an the home of the
famous annual boating regatta, an important date in the social calendar of the English
ruling elites. Fawley Green is an extended hamlet of a place, high in the hills above
Henley, that still seems remote and arcadian. The houses here are hidden in a wellwooded landscape that tumbles down to the Thames. The present occupants of
Yewtree Cottage only recently purchased the property and told me that it had passed
through many hands in the 1970s and 80's. The cottage seems originally to have been a
remote early nineteenth century laborer's house but additions and modifications have
turned it into a picturesque exercise in gentrification.
An informant who had lived in the village for many years told me: 'Larry Lawrence
worked as a chef in Henley and London . He was very handsome, and also sweet and
polite. He lived in the cottage with his boyfriend who was an officer in the United
States Air Force at High Wycombe. The boyfriend was quite senior - he may have
been a major. Larry moved out in the late 1960s and I don't know where you would
find him now.'
A boyfriend in the USAF? I wondered if this was originally Shaw's friend and that
through him Shaw met Lawrence? I checked through the address book and found only
one entry with USAF connections, an individual shown at various bases - Lowry
(Colarado) AFB, Amarillo (Texas) AFB, George (California) AFB, and one near
Tuscon (Arizona), the name of which I cannot decipher. He is also shown at one time
as being in Brussels. I don't know if this person is Lawrence's friend and it would be
improper to print his name.
From 1951 to 1965 High Wycombe was the USAF's Strategic Air Command nerve
centre and Seventh Air Division's HQ.
Lord Edward Montagu
15 Mount St.
London W1
[T]
This is Edward John Barrington Douglas-Scott-Montagu, 3rd Baron of Beaulieu,
popularly known as Lord Montagu. Born 20th October 1926, educated at Eton and
Oxford, he served in the Grenadier Guards.
Lord Montagu's large country estate, Beaulieu in Hampshire, some seventy miles
south-west of London, houses the National Motor Museum which he founded in 1952.
It is probably the largest collection of vintage cars in Britain and attracts a
considerable number of visitors each year. His Lordship is active in many committees
and organizations relating to museums, transport history, tourism etc. Lord Montagu
has been married twice. In 1954 occurred what has come to be known as the Montagu Case. With Peter
Wildeblood, the diplomatic correspondent of the London Daily Mail and Michael PittRivers, Lord Montagu was arrested and charged with specific acts of indecency
(homosexuality) involving two serving members of the Royal Air Force, Edward
McNally and John Reynolds, both in their early twenties. The defendants were also
charged with conspiracy to commit the acts - the double-whammy to ensure that noone got off. At this time in Britain homosexuality was a criminal offence. The police
and prosecution showed much prejudice and malice at the trial, frightening McNally
and Reynolds into turning Queen's Evidence. They got off, Wildeblood and Pitt-Rivers
were gaoled for eighteen months, Montagu for a year.
Wildeblood wrote a good first-hand account of the case, Against the Law (London,
Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1955) which details the unscrupulousness and severity with
which the prosecution pursued the case. He also offers some explanation on pp. 45-6.
On 25th October 1953 the Sydney Morning Telegraph published a cable from its
London correspondent, Donald Horne, about a police and Home Office plan to 'smash
homosexuality in London'. The details presented to the Australian readers were rather
fuller than those presented to the British public who had merely heard from Home
Secretary Sir David Maxwell-Fyffe, that a 'new drive against male vice' was needed.
Horne wrote:
The plan originated under strong United States advice to Britain to weed out
homosexuals - as hopeless security risks - from important Government jobs. One of
the Yard's top-rankers, Commander E.A. Cole, recently spent three months in America
consulting FBI officials in putting finishing touches to the plan....The Special Branch
began compiling a 'Black Book' of known perverts in influential government jobs after
the disappearance of the diplomats Donald Maclean and Guy Burgess, who were
known to have pervert associates . Now comes the difficult task of side-tracking these
men into less important jobs - or putting them behind bars.
This article certainly explains why Special Branch were involved with the
investigation of the case, though at the time the specter of espionage was never raised.
It may be argued that the Special Branch came in as a matter of routine because two of
those involved were in the RAF but as they were both in the lowest ranks, their
security clearances were insigificant.
A cursory examination of this case does seem to suggest that these three unfortunate
defendants were victims of some Cold War politicking by the British Government
intent on showing the United States that they could and would Do Something About It.
I wondered if any any gay historian had examined the way Cold War had impinged on
homosexuality in Britain during the 1950s and I was told the book to read was Jeffrey
Weeks' Coming Out: Homosexual Politics in Britain from the Nineteenth Century to
the Present (London, Quartet, 1977). But Weeks merely repeats Wildeblood and adds
nothing new.
Lord Montagu's very busy schedule has prevented me from talking to him so far.
Peter Montgomery
Blessingbourne
Fivemiletown, NI IrelandPhone Fivemiletown 221
[T]
Captain Peter Stephen Montgomery of Blessingbourne, to use the styling favoured by
the subject, was born on 13th August 1909. He was educated at Wellington College
School and Trinity College, Cambridge. Montgomery was the son of Major-General
Hugh Maude de Fellenberg Montgomery. His uncle became Chief of the Imperial
General Staff, and his second cousin was Bernard Montgomery, that is Field Marshall
Montogmery of Alamein, the commander of the Eighth Army during the Second
World War. From 1931 to 1947 he was employed by the BBC in Northern Ireland in
various capacities, including Assistant Musical Director and Conductor of the BBC
Northern Ireland Symphony Orchestra (1933-38). From 1952-71 he was a member of
the BBC Northern Ireland Advisory Council, and from 1963-71 on the BBC General
Advisory Council. He was the Honourary ADC to the Governor of Northern Ireland,
Lord Wakehurst, from 1954-64, and later Vice-Lieutenant of County Tyrone in Ulster
where the family estate, Blessingbourne, was situated.
These bare biographical facts on Montgomery do not betray the keen interest he has
for students of 20th century intelligence and espionage. While a student at Trinity
College, Cambridge, he became the lover of Anthony Blunt, the Soviet spy, aka 'The
Fourth Man'. In the words of Barrie Penrose and Simon Freeman, 'Most of their
mutual gay friends assumed that they had begun as lovers and then, in the parlance of
the homosexual world, become sisters.' (Conspiracy of Silence, London, Grafton, 1986
p. 48). At the end of 1940 the lease that Lord Rothschild had on a three- story
maisonette in Bentinck Street in London expired: Blunt moved in with Tessa Mayor
(then Lord Rothschild's secretary in MI5, later his wife), Patrician Rawdon-Smith
(who later married a friend of Blunt's) and Guy Burgess. They were soon joined by
Jack Hewitt, a sailor boyfriend of Burgess, who very quickly switched his allegiance
to Blunt. Hewitt told John Costello that during the time at the flat Blunt had only one
visitor come to stay with him: Peter Montgomery. (See Costello's Mask of Treachery
New York, William Morrow, 1988, p.391) This was a kindness that was reciprocated
in 1942 when, after exhausting intelligence duties in London and Germany, Blunt
went to recuperate at Montgomery's estate at Blessingbourne. Robert Harbinson, who
knew Montgomery and Blunt well after the war, has said that 'Anthony had an
uncanny hold over Peter. They were in love, at least for a time.' (Penrose and Freeman,
op cit p.48) The secret of Montgomery's relationship with Blunt never came out during
their lifetime. Had it done so Montgomery would have been ruined in Northern Ireland
where many of his friends and relatives were in the Protestant Orange Order. Ulster
would not have been as tolerant as Cambridge or London.
At the beginning of the war Montgomery joined the Intelligence Corps and rose to the rank
of Captain. After 1945 he remained in the army and later went to to become ADC to the
Viceroy of India, Lord Wavell.
Blunt was insistent that Mongomery knew nothing of his espionage activities and he went to
great lengths right up until the end of his life to protect his friend. Until his death Blunt had
a bedroom reserved for Montgomery in his London apartment. In 1980 the London Sunday
Times interviewed Montgomery in connection with the un-masking of Blunt and he said that
'I knew Anthony had been interrogated in 1964 by the Security Service and I feared that my
name would come up. There were other occasions when I thought it would come out and I
would get the chop.' Montgomery died in February 1988.
Clay Shaw, in other words, had one-stop access to Blunt, Philby, Burgess and their
milieu. Though there is no information that he met any of them, we know from Olwen
JANSON and others that he spent a considerable time in London during the war .
(According to her 'he made all his major contacts during those years'.) Montgomery is
the one parapolitically significant name in the address book worthy of more research.
A final intriguing footnote. Sir Stephen RUNCIMAN told me that he was an old friend
of Montgomery's. When I told him that Montgomery was in Shaw's address book he
was startled and said he did not know that they knew each other. Shortly after this he
abruptly ended the conversation.
Robert Roper
208 Great Portland St.,
London
[T; following, handwritten, on a separate sheet)
Robert Roper
Hamilton House
7 Royal Terrace
Southend Essex
4 Tilney Street
Park Lane W-1
GRO 623 [?] 8
Robert St. John Roper was a noted theatrical costume and dress designer who was born
in 1913 in Southend-on-Sea where his father was a cobbler. (Southend can be regarded
as London's Coney Island - brash, vulgar and very popular). Roper worked for the
Markova-Dolin Ballet in the early 1940s and later designed for many important West
End stage productions. He was at the London Palladium for some seventeen years and
also signed for shows like the Black and White Minstrels. Amongst the films we
worked on were Tony Richardson's Charge of the Light Brigade (1968). He was also a
close friend of the late Sir Norman Hartnell, dressmaker by apointment to the Queen
and the Queen Mother.
Roper lived in Great Portland Street in the West End of London in the 1950s. Around
1960 he moved to Tilney Street in Mayfair, a house now demolished, and then bought
Hamilton House in Southend in 1966, one of the houses in a very beautiful Royal
Terrace which dates back to the 1790s. Roper lovingly restored the house to its period
grandeur and the present owner, Mrs Powell, has preserved it exactly as he left it.
One Saturday evening in May 1977 Roper told Mrs Powell, who was then living next
door, that he was going to buy cigarettes. He never returned. The following day his
body was discovered in the public toilets at the end of Royal Terrace. He had died of a
heart attack, aged 64. One informant told me that Roper was beaten up by an American
sailor and this brought on the heart attack, but as the source was not present it is hard to
guage the story's reliability. Certainly no suggestion of this appeared in the local papers.
Roper's obituary appeared in the London Daily Telegraph in the following week. Bill Barrell lived with Roper for the last thirteen years of his life and can only
remember him mentioning Clay Shaw's name once, at the time of Garrison's
investigation. Roper might have said something like 'I have met him', but that was all.
There is no reason to doubt Barrell's word, but it is odd that from the evidence of the
address book Shaw appeared to have known Roper for at least fifteen years. Another
curious point is that Roper was always known as St. John Roper, never Robert as Shaw
had it. Barrell did not recognize any of the other names in the address book.
Sir Stephen Runciman
18 Elmtree Road
St. John's Wood
London W8
Phone - Cunningham 0010
[Following, after another name]
Sir Steven Runciman
Elshieshields,
Lockerbie,
Dumfriesshire
Scotland
Tel: Lochmaben 280
66 Whitehall Court
London SW1
WHITEHALL 3160 EXT 68
[T]
Shaw, as can be seen, spells the first name two ways. The correct form is Steven. The
Honourable Sir Steven Runciman was born on 7th July 1903, the second son of
Viscount Runciman of Doxford. He was educated at Eton (at the same time as George
Orwell whom he knew) and Trinity College, Cambridge. From 1927-38 he was a
Fellow of Trinity College, and from 1942-45 he was Professor of Byzantine Art and
History at the University of Istanbul.
Sir Steven is a very distinguished academic specializing in the history of the Middle
East and Byzantium and has been awarded honorary doctorates by nearly every major
university in England and America. The author of many books since 1929, he is chiefly
known for his three volume A History of the Crusades (1951-54). His most recent book,
Mistra, was published in 1980.
Here is a description of him at Trinity in the 1930s when Anthony Blunt was a student:
The elegant Steven Runciman, however, remained as Trinity College's
resident asethete, cutting elegant poses with a parakeet perched on his
heavily ringed fingers and his hair cropped in an Italianate fringe.
This is John Costello in his Mask of Treachery p 121, quoting Cecil Beaton's The
Wandering Years (1961). Beaton, it will be remembered, was very close to Sir Michael
DUFF.
The three addresses listed represent Sir Steven's homes over a period of fifteen years.The St. John's wood house was leased from the MCC (Middlesex Cricket Club - Lord's
is nearby) throughout the 1950s, then he moved for a couple of years to Whitehall
Court, a block of service apartments near the Houses of Parliament, finally going to
Lockerbie in the early 1960s where he still lives.
The first time I spoke to Sir Steven he told me that he had met Clay Shaw a couple of
times in New Orleans, the last occasion being about 1965, and knew little if nothing
about him except that 'he enjoyed teasing the authorities.' I asked him how often he met
Shaw in Britain and Sir Steven said he was not aware that Shaw had ever visited
Britain. I pointed out to Sir Steven that there were three addresses for him covering
some 15 years and asked if he could be mistaken in his recollections? At that point he
cut short the conversation and I did not have the opportunity to ask him to explain what
he had meant by Shaw liking to tease the authorities.
The second time I spoke to him I asked whether he knew Peter MONTGOMERY. At
that stage this was a shot in the dark. Sir Steven said he knew him well. I then asked
him if he knew that Montgomery was in Shaw's address book? Sir Steven seemed
shocked by this this, there was a lengthy silence and he then said in a measured manner,
' I did not know he knew him.' Sir Steven told me that he knew Sir Michael DUFF and
was equally surprised that Duff too was in the address book. Sir Steven then abruptly
ended the conversation. Lady D'Arcy, above, knew both Sir Steven and Lord Montagu.
G. R. Spencer
Mike Leach
86 Cadogan Pl
London SW1
[H]
86 Cadogan Place is a very fine double-fronted eighteenth-century house on the edge of
Belgravia just to the north of Sloane Square which has been recently converted into
luxury apartments for sale. I could not trace either Spencer of Leach and none of Shaw's
friends know anything about them except for Olwen JANSON who just remembers that
Shaw invariably stayed with them when he was in London.
Peter Watling
Roland Gardens
London SE7 FRE 0305
[T; a wavy line through this entry - Shaw's? A deletion?]
Off the Old Brompton Road, Roland House is a hideous pre-war brick apartment block.
I could not trace Watling and none of the other English friends of Shaw knew his name.
Curiously, in his book on the Lord MONTAGU case, Against the Law (1955), Peter
Wildeblood wrote (p. 37): 'At this time I was living in small flat in Roland Gardens,
South Kensington.'
Marcus Wickam [-] Boynton
4 Green St W1,London GR 8451
(Vincent Arroyo)
[T]
Green Street is in the heart of Mayfair near the American Embassy. No 4 is situated in
an elegant Victorian apartment block on the north side. Marcus is one of the two sons of
Captain Thomas Wickham-Boynton (1869-1942), a wealthy Yorkshire landowner.
Wickham-Boynton inherited much of his father's wealth and lived a leisured existence,
chiefly indulging his twin interests of travel and horse racing. He died in his late forties
on 19 December 1989.
I spoke to Vincent Arroyo who had lived with him in Green Street. The two of them
were travelling on an extended holiday through the United States in the early 1960s and
stayed for five days in New Orleans where they met Clay Shaw. He was a very
hospitable host, inviting them to a number of parties and showing them round New
Orleans. He took them to the races in the company of a tobacco heiress who was a close
friend. Arroyo cannot recall her name. The only other time they met Shaw was a couple
of years later when he was in London. Later, when they read of his arrest by Jim
Garrison, they sent him a telegram offering their support and sympathy - they could not
believe he was guilty.
Wickham-Boynton and Arroyo were friends of Lord MONTAGU.
Angus Wilson
(Tony Garrett)
Felsham Woodside
Bradfield St. George
Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk
Tel Rattlesden 200
[T]
This is Sir Angus Wilson, the distinguished novelist, who was born on 11th August
1913. He was educated at Westminster School and Merton College, Oxford, and worked
in the Foreign Office from 1942 until 1946. He then worked in the British Museum
library until 1955, after which he wrote and lectured full-time. His principal works are
The Wrong Set (1949), Hemlock and After (1952), Anglo-Saxon Attitudes (1956) and
The Old Men at the Zoo (1961).
Bradfield St. George is a small village in Suffolk about sixty miles north- west of
London. Sir Angus went to live there in the mid-1950s wth Tony Garrett, a
schoolmaster who was sacked when the nature of his relationship with Sir Angus was
discovered by the school's governors. With Sir Angus, Garrett co-edited East Anglia in
Verse (1982).
Sometime in the 1970s the house at Bradfield St. George was sold and Sir Angust and
Garrett moved to St. Remy Cedex in France. Alas, after some years Sir Angus
developed Alzheimer's Disease and Garret was forced to return him to England where
he was placed in a nursing home thanks to the beneficience of the novelist P.D. James. IN CONCLUSION
This enquiry had produced at least one significant name that merits further research and
attention and which may help us to understand more fully the political and intelligence
face of Clay Shaw: Peter Montgomery.
When I spoke to Harold Weisberg recently I thought he would be able to put me in
touch with somebody playing Seth Kantor to Shaw's Jack Ruby. Weisberg told me there
is no-one he knew of. I was disappointed to find that I was the only person driving
down this highway, and doubly disappointed because I was just about to hit the offramp. I hope this piece prompts some other researchers to hit the road.
Further reading
Researching this article prompted my first major reading of the Warren Report in about
15 years, and it was quite startling to find what is included, even if none of the
parapolitically significant stuff is ever followed up. It was even more startling to find
what is excluded but that is another story. Appendix X111, 'Biography of Lee Harvey
Oswald', is very useful for dates and non-controversial facts. The edition I used was that
'prepared' by Doubleday and Company, New York, 1964. This is the gentleman's
edition, in hardcover, with 'An Analysis and Commentary by Louis Nizer' and 'A
Historical Afterword by Bruce Catton.' And with extra illustrations, yet! I do not know
whether Nizer is still enriching the Republic with his sage reflections but this from his
opening essay should make him wince:
'The Commission has taken note of rumors in books, newspaper columns,
radio or television programs, and lectures. It has set forth the facts and
permitted the hobgoblins to vanish in their presence. Certain it is that those
who have preened themselves on imaginative 'revelations',and even made a
career of spreading them, will no longer be in business. A fact colliding with
a theory, may produce tragedy. The report will be a tragedy for gossips and
irresponsible experts.'
I am not quoting this to ridicule, but...no, come to think of it I am quoting this to
ridicule Nizer. We may all have been young and innocent in those days but not that
naive. The first book ringing a warning bell about the official investigation was written
before Warren's Report was published and was based on the Washington 'line' that was
being leached out of trusty establishment-oriented newspapers. This was Thomas G.
Buchanan's Who Killed Kennedy? (New York, Putnam, 1964), which is still worth
reading and is the only JFK book I know that demonstrates in a discussion of earlier US
presidential assassinations that the 'lone mad assassin' was a tried and trusted formula
for preventing light being shed on what was really happening.
In the opening section I rely heavily upon Henry Hurt's Reasonable Doubt: An
Investigation into the Assassination of John F. Kennedy (New York, Holt, Rinehart and
Winston, 1985) which on pp. 261-89 contains one of the best and most balanced
accounts of the Garrison-Shaw episode. Hurt is also very good on Oswald and the New
Orleans milieu generally. Highly recommended. Also useful was Edward Jay Epstein's
lengthy 'Garrison' that took up nearly the whole of the 13th July 1968 issue of The New
Yorker under the 'Reporter at Large' department. I understand this piece was the basis
for Epstein's Counterplot (New York, Viking Press, 1969) but I have not seen this. James Kirkwood's American Grotesque: An Account of the Clay Shaw-Jim Garrison
Affair in the City of New Orleans (New York, Simon and Schuster, 1970) is the best
day-to-day account of the trial and events down in New Orleans. Kirkwood is
unashamedly pro-Shaw but reports Garrison's case and the countroom events with
something approaching dispassion and presents his own views as that and nothing else.
I have a few other reservations about Kirkwood but no student of Garrison can afford to
be without this account. Kirkwood met Clay Shaw at a dinner party given by the author
James Leo Herlihy. Herlihy was an old friend of Kirkwood's, but where did the novelist
meet Shaw? According to a recent issue of The New York Times Book Review Kirkwood
died in 1989.
Garrison's own two books A Heritage of Stone (New York, G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1970)
and On the Trail of the Assassins: My Investigation and Prosecution of the Murder of
President Kennedy (New York, Sheridan Square Press, 1988) tell us more about the
district attorney than they do about Shaw. The latter is the more relevant of the two.
Harold Weisberg admits that his Oswald in New Orleans: Case of Conspiracy with the
C.I.A. (New York, Canyon Books, 1967) was hurriedly written and needs some surgery,
but nonetheless it remains a valuable, comprehensive work that can still hold its head
high. Garrison contributes a foreword.
Joachim Joesten's The Garrison Enquiry: Truth and Consequences (London, Peter
Dawney in association with Tandem Books, 1967) is a breathless scissors-and-paste job
by the veteran German journalist. (Was it the CIA who leaked a Gestapo [yes,Gestapo ]
memo to the Warren Commission dated something like 1938 that said Joesten was an
active Communist?)
For a full bibliography on Garrison-Shaw books and articles up to 1979 see pp. 188-97
of DeLoyd J. Guth and David R. Wrone's The Assassination of John F. Kennedy: A
Comprehensive Historical and Legal Bibliography 1963- 1979 (Westport, Connecticut,
Greenwood Press, 1980): a volume worth its weight in gold and one that badly needs
updating. Guth and Wrone also detail every relevant article in The New York Times
relating to the Garrison inquiry.
For more up-to-date accounts of Oswald and New Orleans see Anthony Summers'
Conspiracy (New York, McGraw-Hill, 1981) and John F. Davis' Mafia Kingfish:
Carlos Marcello and the Assassination of John F. Kennedy (New York, McGraw-Hill,
1989). Davis makes a valiant attempt to stick the assassination on Marcello but his
argument relies too heavily on selective evidence and special pleading. Nevertheless a
provocative and useful book.
Acknowledgements
Aside from those people mentioned or alluded to in the foregoing, I would also like to
thank the following for their help: Timothy D'Arch-Smith, Allen Daviau, Stephen
Dorril, Nick Frewin, Mysha Frost, Robert Harbinson, Jim Hougan, Marthe Kurtyanek,
Angie Liegh, Michael Mordaunt-Smith, Charles Peltz, Robin Ramsay and Chris
Rushman. L'Envoi
After finishing this I was fanning through the pages of Kirkwood's American Grotesque
when a name caught my eye, an intriguing name. It occurs on p. 282 when Shaw's
attorney, Irvin Dymond, is cross-examining Perry Russo in an attempt to find out
whether he, Russo, had ever discussed the case with a Layton Martens who was then
under indictment for perjury for refusing to cooperate with Garrison's investigation.
Layton Martens - the name rang a bell. I checked through Shaw's address book and
found the following:
Layton Martens
Box 544
U.S.L.
Lafayette, La.
Then I remembered a cross-examination much later in the book. It come on p. 407 when
James Alcock, an Assistant District Attorney, has Clay Shaw on the witness stand:
Alcock: Did you know a Mr Layton Martens?
Shaw: Yes, sir, I did.
Alcock: Did you know he was [David] Ferrie's roommate?
Shaw: No sir, I did not.
Alcock: Do you know a James Lewallen?
Shaw: Yes.
Alcock: Did you know he knew David Ferrie?
Shaw: I did not.
Lewallen is not in the address book. But then who else is not who should be....?
Dean Andrews' testimony to the Warren
Commission
The strangest thing about Jim Garrison's recent book on his investigation of the
assassination is the fact that he never mentions Clay Shaw's homosexuality. This is
about par for the course, for the number of gay men in and around the assassination --
Shaw, David Ferrie, J. Edgar Hoover -- is rarely commented on. To this list I would
add Jack Ruby, who never married, lived with young men, owned a strip club yet
never apparently showed any interest in the young women he employed, and appeared
to be smitten with men in police uniforms. On the basis of this anecdotal evidence
alone the rumours that Ruby was gay, that he hung out at the gym in the YMCA in
Dallas, that he met Oswald when Oswald was living there, are of some interest.
It is in this context that the testimony to the Warren Commission of New Orleans
lawyer Dean Andrews is so interesting. When I skimmed through the Warren
Commission's twenty plus volumes of evidence and testimony twelve years ago
Andrew's contribution practically leapt off the page, not just because of what he said,
but because of the way he talked. The testimony of the other witnesses is
extraordinarily dull and dry for the most part, hundreds of pages of (mostly white)
Americans, trying their best to politely answer the questions of this team of big-wigs
from Washington D.C.: yes sir, no sir, three bags full if you say so, sir. Then Andrews
appears, bringing with him New Orleans' ethnic, cultural and sexual subcultures,talking of 'blowing weed', 'freaky', 'cloud nine' etc., and the lifeless dialogue crackles
into life. (See below for some brief extracts, about 5%, from Andrews' testimony.)
Andrews doesn't state that Oswald was gay, but certainly it is (just) suggested by
Oswald's connections to the 'gay kids' and 'Clay Bertrand'. As Tony Frewin reminded
me, Priscilla Johnson McMillan's dreadful book Marina and Lee contains considerable
prurient detail on Oswald's violent and incompetent sexual relationship with Marina.
Certainly there is nothing in that which would contradict the hypothesis that Oswald
was a gay man struggling to resist his sexual identity in button-down, homophobic,
white America.
All of which m...

[Dawn Meredith]

Meanwhile, although the article is generally very good, the psycho-sexual, S&M interpretation below of Garrison feels strained.

So both Shaw and Garrison were on one level hoping for the guilty verdict, with Shaw subconsciously desiring to be that sacrificial "Spring lamb," a masochistic martyr like his character Shaw. On the other hand Garrison was consciously hoping for a guilty ruling to further debunk the Warren Report's conclusion that Oswald was a "lone-nut" assassin. But on another level they both wanted the "not guilty" ruling that was handed downShaw, consciously, for obvious reasons and Garrison, perhaps only subconsciously, due to his lack of unequivocal evidence that would clarify the extent of Shaw's involvement in the conspiracy. With the unavailability of slam-dunk evidence in Garrison's case and doubts about Perry Russo's and oddball Charles Spiesel's testimony, Garrison probably knew that it was unlikely that Shaw would be found guilty, yet he needed to expose the Warren Report and screen, for the first time, the Zapruder film in a public forum. Certainly a guilty verdict would strengthen the public's belief in conspiracy. Both Garrison and Shaw realized that a guilty verdict, though unlikely, was possible, adding to the high-stakes S/M thrill of the case, that could actually lead to the M's eventual death if things got out of hand. Shaw was found not guilty, but according to Shaw his finances were depleted by legal costs and he had to go back to work (restoring and selling houses in the French Quarter) rather than pursue his desire to renew his writing.

What do the experts think?

I cannot speak for Garrison but no DA takes a case to trial either consciously or subconsciously wanting a not guilty verdict. Garrison got screwed by the people who would not honor his extradition orders, the CIA spies in his office and the FBI tapping his phones. Witnesses suddenly dying. The judge not allowing the testimony to show that Shaw had used the alias Bertrand, thereby impeaching Shaw who lied about this. In short Garrison got screwed all around but the jury still found for conspiracy while aquitting Shaw. He is still after forty seven long years the only DA with the balls to at least try to obtain justice for JFK and the country.

Dawn - I agree.

The interpretations of the author of the original article which I've highlighted in bold in the extract above, strike me as a massive leap and unwarranted.

Apart from this, as all have commented, the piece is welcome.

I totally agree. And I do not think Garrison ever called his investigation "a thrill kill", sexually or otherwise. Like all legal cases you take your witness as you find them. Clay Shaw lead a double life and used his alter ego name to separate the gay S/M aspect of his life from the "respected businessman" (flase) image. Garrison did not choose these people. I think it is fair to examine the New Orleans evidence in a manner that delves into the deep dark antics that defines the gay S/M subculture. But do we learn anything from going there? Anything to further the goal of exposing the killers, or the why the assassination ? Very little.

As an aside I found the sex talk and agenda in Joan Mellen's book on Garrison in total bad taste and gretly detracted from what was to be the definitive book on Garrison and his investigation. Both examples are without merit and unwarranted.

The only person I can imagine who would disagree is sex-obsessed Robert Morrow.

Dawn

[Albert Doyle]

Surprising that Mr Weeks doesn't bother to reference Piper who showed that Clay Shaw was the only OSS member in Italy to be allowed in to British Intelligence headquarters. Shaw worked with Angleton during this period too. It's why Shaw was involved with Permindex and the New Orleans cabal.


Edit: I see Weeks' article is dated.

[Dawn Meredith]

Wow, thanks for posting that Maggie. So many areas of research still ripe for further investigation.
This case needs a flow chart, and even that would be overlapping in all the twists and turns that
is the case for conspiracy in the assassination of John F Kennedy.

Dawn

[Adele Edisen]

Jose Rivera told me on April 23, 1963, that "the Director of the Trade Mart is involved in this," referring to the plot to kill JFK. Clay Shaw was the Director of the New Orleans International Trade Mart at that time.

Adele

[Albert Doyle]

Jose Rivera told me on April 23, 1963, that "the Director of the Trade Mart is involved in this," referring to the plot to kill JFK. Clay Shaw was the Director of the New Orleans International Trade Mart at that time.

Adele

If you went to Garrison with that you might have ended-up on the Assassination unusual death list.


Rivera gives me the creeps because he appears to be a link between the MK-ULTRA Technical Services Division and the facilitator machinery.


Garrison had a key player in Shaw more than he probably knew. Shaw's Trade Mart office was close to Marcello's lawyer's office where Ferrie acted as a go-between. Shaw was a keystone between international CIA interests associated with Permindex and the more local political apparatus of the mob and Cuban exiles in New Orleans.

[Adele Edisen]

Jose Rivera told me on April 23, 1963, that "the Director of the Trade Mart is involved in this," referring to the plot to kill JFK. Clay Shaw was the Director of the New Orleans International Trade Mart at that time.

Adele

If you went to Garrison with that you might have ended-up on the Assassination unusual death list.

Rivera gives me the creeps because he appears to be a link between the MK-ULTRA Technical Services Division and the facilitator machinery.

Garrison had a key player in Shaw more than he probably knew. Shaw's Trade Mart office was close to Marcello's lawyer's office where Ferrie acted as a go-between. Shaw was a keystone between international CIA interests associated with Permindex and the more local political apparatus of the mob and Cuban exiles in New Orleans.

Al, those are good observations about Shaw's role. He was CIA, which we know from Victor Marchetti's statements about how the higher ups at Langley reacted when they learned of Shaw's legal troubles in New Orleans. They felt they had to do something to help him, and they did.

Adele

[Dean Bernard]

Bernice, the Clem and Frank Bertrand you found was a simple misspelling of my Grandfather's (Clemmons) and my father's name (Frank). It is actually Bernard. My grandfather died in 1961, the year I was born. My father ran the office supply business until the property was acquired to build the Federal District Court Building, which is now across the street from 544 Camp St. Another side note. It seems that my father was given LHO's old New Orleans PO Box number at some point in the early 1960's. My father did not disclose receiving anything addressed to LHO and I am sure he would have mentioned it even years after the fact as he did not believe the LN story as soon as Ruby killed LHO.