those "suicide" notes found in Ferrie's apartment was this phrase, part of a tirade, so like fascist thinking, ". . . an electorate cannot be depended upon to pick the right man."

To the self-anointed "herrenvolk" it is not the citizens of a democratic society who know and select the "right man"; it is the Ferries. They would arrogate to themselves the right, believing they alone have the intelligence to do so.

Twisted in mind and sick in it and body, David Ferrie was a dangerous man, the more so because of his high intelligence and the power he held over people who considered him brilliant, rather than sick. Conceiving himself a Socrates-like figure, above the masses and a leader, the one who was right, the one who knew, with his contempt for the democratic society, by the sheer force of his manic personality he exercised great influence and control over others. His driving ambition, as he saw it, was to "free" Cuba.

That this information, what we quoted earlier, and much more that is appropriate to later chapters, is not in the available government evidence, printed or in the accessible files, cannot be due to the reflection of Ferrie's character or that of others inherent in it or to the desire of the government to protect the innocent against harm. The record on this point is too clear and too one-sided to consider this even a possible reason.

Ferrie is but one of the too many homosexuals and other sex deviates figuring in this story. Testimony in the New Orleans investigation showed he was surrounded by swarms of young men, whom he corrupted. Andrews's testimony before the Warren Commission connects the various kinds of aberrants with each other, Oswald, Bertrand and the Cuban refugees, as does the Ferrie story.

This is not because all homosexuals are of this vicious, dangerous stripe, any more than all heterosexuals are like those who rape and murder. It would be

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wrong to believe that this particular plot was hatched only because these participants and those around them were in so large a percentage other than normal. The plot and its execution were political in motive.

Nor is it only what is generally understood as homosexuality, the kind of departure from sexual norm that contaminates the already sickening story of the murder of the President. The degeneracy and depravity are so loathsome to most men they cannot be delineated in a book of general distribution. They are, in fact, like an extension of the classical works of the study of pathological sex. If the indulgences of these men were not already ample exposition of their illness, some of them blended their lusts with exhibitionism, performing their acts not in privacy but having motion pictures taken and shown. It is nauseating and revolting that all the combinations and permutations of the extravagant and imaginative perversions of these tortured and sick men must be part of the accounting of the assassination.

That Oswald, if it was he who sought legal assistance from Andrews, associated with the "swishes," does not mean that Oswald was himself homosexual or was what Andrews called a "swinger" -- bi-sexual. The nature of the real Oswald's sexual interests seemed to trouble both Liebeler and Jenner in their interrogations of both Voebel and O'Sullivan. These interrogations were ambivalent. At no time did the lawyers make clear their own beliefs or the answers they sought. Each, however, raised an implication of Oswald's homosexuality in the testimony quoted earlier. Each of those who had known Oswald in the Marines from whom testimony was taken or affidavits requested had his opinion sought and expressed the belief Oswald was not homosexual. Each who was in a position to know specified Oswald showed no such tendencies or interests in the presence of opportunity. The one exception was "Beezer," who arranged dates between Oswald and his,

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"Beezer's," sister. "Beezer" was not asked.

FBI Agent John Lester Quigley did not think it important to preserve his notes of the interview Oswald demanded with the FBI when the New Orleans police arrested him August 9, 1963. Quigley did think it important to type eight pages of Martello's conjectures presented as fact, political biases, and immaturities. Where any mature policeman should have been suspicious and understood the opposite, New Orleans police Lieutenant (now Captain) Francis L. Martello fell for an Oswald trick that exploited his political gullibility. Here is part of Martello's work, repeated by and released by the FBI. The deletions are mine, not theirs:

" . . . He was asked specifically at what addresses or locations were the meetings held and stated the meetings were held on Pine Street. He was asked at whose residence the meetings were held and he refused to give any further information. It should be noted at this time during prior investigation conducted, while I was a member of the Intelligence Unit, information was developed that Fair Play for Cuba Committee literature was found in the 1000 block of Pine Street, New Orleans, which was near the residence of Dr. . . . , a professor at Tulane University. This investigation was conducted by me.

"As I remember, Dr. . . . was reported to be a member of the New Orleans Council of Peaceful Alternatives which is a 'ban the bomb' group recently established . . . Knowing that Dr. . . . was reportedly a member of the New Orleans Council of Peaceful Alternatives I thought there might be a tie between this organization and the Fair Play for Cuba Committee.

"When OSWALD stated that meetings of the Pair Play for Cuba Committee had been held on Pine Street, the name of Dr. . . . came to mind. I asked OSWALD if he knew Dr. . . . or if he held meetings at Dr. . . .house. OSWALD did not give me a direct answer to this question, however I gathered from the expression on his face and what appeared to be an immediate nervous reaction that there was possibly a connection between Dr. . . . and OSWALD; this, however, is purely an assumption on my own part and I have nothing on which to base this. I also asked OSWALD If he knew a Dr. . . . , a professor at Tulane University . . ."

There is more. This is but a sample. There never was any New Orleans "Fair Play for Cuba Committee." There never were any meetings of this non-existent organization, on Pine Street or any other. If Oswald's

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personally manufactured literature was found there, it is indicative of what Oswald was up to, not of the "subversion" of anyone who might have happened to live near where this literature was planted. If "the expression of his face" fooled Martello, Oswald was a better actor than Martello, an officer of the "intelligence" unit, for there is absolutely no evidence of any kind of connection, no matter how tenuous, between Oswald and this professor, now resident elsewhere. Information in other Commission files shows this professor not to be what Martello and the federal police suspected.

Hoover has suppressed 36 of the 40 pages referring to David Ferrie in File 75 alone. What I have just quoted is from File 75 and is not restricted. How much are these innocent professors, who have nothing but their reputations and livelihoods to lose, protected by Hoover's devotion to those "guide rules" revised by his department?

The Secret Service is no better than the FBI. There are page after page of these childish speculations and slanders readily available, some printed by the Commission. The immaturities of the federal police, to most of whom anything this side of John Birch is "left" or subversive, are damagingly spread throughout the record and evidence that is not restricted. On the second of the 24 pages of the Vial-Gerrets-Counts-Rice report of December 3, 1963, which is Exhibit 3119, Martello is again quoted:

He said that an address in the 1000 block of Pine street seemed to be a center of activity in New Orleans for various communistic type front organizations. He said that a Dr. . . . , a professor at Tulane University, lived at the Pine Street address where numerous meetings were held.

Someone in official position who read this report after it was received in Washington underlined the name and the address.

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The Secret Service embellished Martello's recollections and comments, translating his speculations into realities:

He asked him (Oswald) if any meetings were held on Pine St. and Oswald had replied in the affirmative. He said he had asked him if he was acquainted with Dr. . . . and Oswald replied he was.

At this point civil rights meetings become "communistic."

On the third page of the Gerrets-Counts report of December 6, 1963 -- the one most of which was eliminated when it was printed as Exhibit 3104 -- is this paragraph, from which I have removed the name:

Dr. . . . , referred to in report dated 12/3/63 by SA A. G. Vial, is of record in the subversive files of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, New Orleans. ASAC (acting special agent in charge) Joseph Sylvester, FBI, has requested that this office not interview . . . because of their interest in him.

There are not fewer than five exhibits printed by the Commission in which such character destruction of this one man appears, falsely, one-sidedly, without the contrary information contained in the files, and without a word from him in his own defense, if from such nebulous speculations one should need a defense in a country like ours. Now and forever more irresponsible political idiots can defame this man and his family on the basis of this misinformation a one. He is without recourse.

It is exactly the same with those said to be homosexuals. Such men are subject to all sorts of private pressures and punishments, to penalties in employment, to blackmail. An example of how the regulations were followed in this case is File 1203a, the June 4, 1964, report of FBI Agents deBrueys and Callender of their interview with Carlos Bringuier. DeBrueys translated the letter from Spanish. I quote from the seventh, eighth and ninth pages, again making the deletions

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that should be made to protect these men:

"Here are some loose things I have heard mentioned: The police here were looking for a certain 'Clay Bertrand' who is a pervert. They say Ruby also is a pervert. One of these individuals that was distributing handbills with Oswald has a face that appears to me to indicate that he is also a pervert. (If we follow that logic we would also have to think that Raul is the one that is behind all this 'joke.') I advised Secret Service that one of those who was distributing handbills with Oswald was working in Pap's Supermarket located on Mirabeau Avenue and who, last year, had attended Delgado Trade School. He mentioned that his name might possibly be Charles and that he regularly got out of the bus at Paris Avenue and Filmore Street. I am given to understand that this was correct but I have learned nothing more. I have given them other information, for example, that Oswald was, on one occasion after his difficulty with me, in the Habana Bar, which is just two doors from my store. Oswald asked for a lemonade and when they collected for it he said that surely the owner had to be a Cuban capitalist. On that occasion Oswald was accompanied by a Mexican. After that the Mexican returned with another Mexican to the Habana Bar. The FBI was making inquiries for them and left word that if they saw them again, to call 'here. A few days later the brother of the owner of the Habana Bar appeared and asked me to call the FBI because he had seen two Mexicans in an automobile and he had noted the licence number but not the state. I called the FBI on that occasion and gave them the information by telephone. This occurred between August 15 and August 30, 1963 approximately. A certain person surmises (but this Is just a presumption) that the . . . delegate of the Mexican Government here should know something, pointing out that this individual is a Mexican and the one who had been in the Habana Bar was a Mexican; also the delegate travels to Mexico and from there to Havana (the motive is not known) and added to all this the delegate is a pervert. Speculating on these things one learns that the delegate a friend of a Cuban (also a pervert) who is called . . . This . . . is also a friend of another Cuban known as Leonardo . . . This . : . was chief of something in the Zapata Swamp under the orders of Ché (Translator's note -- Ché is undoubtedly Ché Guevara of the Cuban Regime) until after the Bay of Pigs (Invasion). He speaks some Russian and some weeks ago told me he had been thinking about taking a trip to Mexico. As you will note, the majority of these things are suppositions and speculations.

"Well, Jose Antonio give my regards to all and receive an embrace from your friend, Carlos Bringuier, New Orleans"

Mr. BRINGUIER related that he made available contents of the above-translated letter with the provision that sections of the letter referring to individuals that he has suspected as being "perverts" would not be divulged to any public sources and that that section be limited for the use of the Warren Commission and the FBI only. He explained further that he did not want any of his speculative statements to be revealed publicly but had no objection to the contents of the first two paragraphs and the part regarding the person referred to as CHARLES

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being revealed to public sources.

Mr. BRINGUIER was able to describe the Mexican . . . delegate in New Orleans as a white male, In his late 30's . . . BRINGUIER explained he has talked to the Mexican . . . . delegate in New Orleans on various occasions during the past four months or so and states that on one occasion, the Mexican . . . delegate mentioned that he had been to Cuba. He does not know whether the Mexican . . . delegate told him this a month or four months ago nor does he know when the Mexican . . . delegate was in Cuba, that is to say, whether it was recently or quite some time ago.

BRINGUIER did recall that in one of his conversations with the Mexican . . . delegate, the later did say that he could go to Mexico inasmuch as Mexico and Cuba maintain friendly relations, one with the other. BRINGUIER also recalls the Mexican . . . delegate mentioned on one occasion that he could get people out of Cuba. BRINGUIER then recalled there was a rumor that LEONARDO . . . , referred to in the above translated letter, was allegedly planning to go with the Mexican . . . delegate to Mexico some time ago so that the Mexican . . . delegate could go to Cuba to get LEONARDO . . . 's sister out of Cuba. BRINGUIER does not know if there was any truth to the rumor but states he does know that LEONARDO . . . and the Mexican . . . delegate are back in New Orleans from an alleged trip to Mexico and LEONARDO . . . 's sister is still in Cuba.

BRINGUIER remarked that ORLANDO PIEDRA, who vas formerly head of the Federal Police in Cuba under the Regime of FULGENCIO BATISTA, has told BRINGUIER that he feels quite certain that the Mexican . . . delegate is "OK." BRINGUIER states this meant that in ORLANDO PIEDRA s opinion, the Mexican . . . delegate is not pro-CASTRO.

This is how the assassination of President Kennedy was investigated.

However, there is no question of the broad involvement of whatever nature of a number of people who are or are alleged to be perverts. Their involvement, I suggest, is not because of their homosexuality but because of their beliefs or for other reasons. The most intriguing, the most unorthodox of these offbeats and the most important is the "swinger," the mother-hen of his fellow deviates, the bi-sexual Clay Bertrand.

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9. CHECKED OUT AND FOUND CLEAR

Shielded by a high white wall, the house at 1313 Dauphine Street in the heart of the Vieux Carré in New Orleans has a split personality. It is a luxurious showplace, with a small fountain bubbling in its patio on the outside and silk on the walls inside. It combines the best of two eras, the charm and antiquity of the old French Quarter and the convenience of a modern swimming pool. Ornamented with statuary and edged with a brick coping, the pool itself has a dual character. It is a place of beauty and of recreation, with the spirit of the modern world and the splendor of the more leisurely past.

It is a small house, low and narrow, the shingled shed roof steeply sloping opposite to what one would expect, toward the front, which is really the side. The Vieux Carré runs from northeast to southwest. The northeastern boundary is Esplanade Avenue, quiet, dignified, and divided by well kept grassy plot. On the northwest, the quarter is bounded by North Rampart Street. Dauphine is separated from Rampart by Burgundy. The house at 1313 is on the northwest side of Dauphine, one building and a courtyard from Esplanade Avenue. A bus stops between it and the corner. An attractive, antique-style streetlamp has been installed directly opposite the street entrance to 1313, but it sheds no light in the house, for that wall is solid, unbroken by a single window or a door. The brick wall, cemented over and painted sparkling white, rises from the inside edge of the narrow old gray-slab sidewalk. Entrance to the residence is through the courtyard whose old but freshly painted blood-red door, brilliant in the white brick courtyard wall, is a single low step up from the sidewalk. Twenty inches above the top of the door is a row of jagged, white-painted bottles imbedded in concrete, tops broken off. These were

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added after mid-March 1967. They guard the wall, from the house toward Esplanade Avenue, ending in an iron fence on the inside. Its graceful curve is just visible from the other side of Dauphine Street.

On the opposite side, toward Barracks Street, is a taller, gray-painted house whose windows are about four times the height of the two on the far wall of 1313 that are visible from the street. A narrow alley separates the two homes. The graceful, ornate roof and typical French iron-railed balcony are a warm contrast with the cold but privacy-insuring, stark, unbroken plain face of the house at 1313, whose immaculate hardness offers a single untidy eye-catcher: Directly over the door, one of the broken bottles is missing and another leans crazily, as though a determined intruder had defiled its formidability.

This is a cold house and a strange one. Spotlessly painted, the incongruous whiteness broken only by the blood-color of the door and the black trim of the tiny windows, most of it is invisible. The wrong slope of the roof is an additional jarring note, but then, the house itself is a conspicuous departure from norm, from what is normal in house and from what is normal in the French Quarter. There is nothing else quite like it. Further, it is, save for the courtyard, smothered by the three properties surrounding it. They seem to press against it, held off only a little by the dense, dark green bushiness of trees only the impenetrable tops of which are discernible. It is as though the other homes confine this one because it does not fit, because it is an outsider, so prominent a departure from the normal.

One enters the house through the kitchen. Its upper-floor bedroom is said to have unusual appointments.

In its earlier life (for the house, as I said, is of dual character), the dwelling was a carriage house. It is one of a number of such places in the Quarter bought and restored by a man with an eye for beauty and for

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profit. In 1950 he spent $9,500 for a ramshackle place, put $1,500 into it, and sold it for $15,000, having remade it in keeping with the spirit of the past. He then began a campaign of renovation that earned him the local reputation of a one-man restoration society. He has rebuilt fifteen old houses.

With the house at 1313 Dauphine Street, the one that caught his eye and in which in early 1967 he was living, his innovations were regarded as radical by the official Vieux Carré Commission. Traditionalists, they feared that in the history and culture of the French Quarter there was a lack of historical precedent for a swimming pool.

In this house lives a man who, according to New Orleans' Town and Country Magazine of March 1967, was one of the 35 "most important men in New Orleans." Another, in one of the odd juxtapositions of this story, was District Attorney Jim Garrison. The renovator who transplanted himself into that house is an authentic hero, a man of culture, a successful business and civic leader, wealthy, and a dramatist. In the peace and quiet of the home whose charm he had recaptured, he pursued his varied interests, supervised his investments and seemed to enjoy an active retirement that began in late September 1965, when he was but 52 years old.

From time to time throughout his life, which had begun in tempestuous Kentwood, near the Mississippi border, in Tangipahoa Parish (known as "Bloody Tangipahoa" for its violence), where the paternal grandfather for whom he was named was then sheriff, this man achieved prominence in a number of fields. During World War II, as a major on the staff of the invasion army for Northern France and Belgium, he was in charge of communications and supply. He rose to become his unit's deputy chief of staff. When he left the army in January 1946 he was a "Chevalier of the Order of the Crown of Belgium'' and a "Chevalier de

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L'Ordre du Mérite Commercial" of France. In addition, he had the United States Bronze Star.

It is as it should have been that his decorations were not for killing, for he is a man with the reputation of detesting violence. He once said he would not have a gun in his house.

"If they got rid of all the guns in the world, the world would be a better place in which to live" is the way he put it.

This man with this professed hatred for violence is fluent in four languages. In addition to his own creative writing, he was, in the late winter of 1966-7, translating a Spanish drama into English. One of his own five plays is still performed by little theater groups. It was made into a movie under the appropriate title, "Men Without Women." He lives alone, without women, for he is a bachelor. His interest in drama is high. Despite his attachment to his house and the Vieux Carré, he was planning to move to England. There he is well known in London society. He had once dined with Winston Churchill. On a recent trip to London he had considered buying the rights to plays he might produce there.

This dark-complexioned, six-foot-plus, 200 pound muscular man, with tightly curled gray hair and a military bearing, is a self-described "dreamer and idealist." He envisions a close-knit world, without tariffs and with the lot of those hungry millions in the underdeveloped lands improved by commercial relations with the United States. This, he said he hoped, would turn them from communism.

With these views it is appropriate that on March 8, 1946, his appointment to the staff of the International Trade Mart was announced. Having had experience in advertising and public relations in New York, it is also appropriate that he was named promotional director. In the ensuing 18 years, he became managing director, traveled extensively on its business throughout the

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country and the world, and stayed with the organization from its relatively humble beginnings on Camp Street until the time of the dedication of the new skyscraper that now houses its diversified interests at the head of Canal Street. His retirement in late September 1965, a surprise to most associates, was accompanied by the awarding of additional honors for his civic dedication, including the Order of Merit of the City of New Orleans.

His seemingly premature retirement came a month and a half after first publication of Whitewash: The Report on the Warren Report, an event with which there may be no connection. He is one of the important figures in my first book.

Then, on the first of March 1967 this man emerged at the center of the New Orleans investigation.

Almost too late for the major evening television news casts on the east coast, the bells on teletype machines announcing major news events changed imperiously. On the Associated Press ticker, the automated keys at 6:45 P.M. eastern standard time clicked out:

BULLETIN. New Orleans, March 1 (AP) -- Dist. Atty. Jim Garrison's chief investigator today arrested Clay Shaw, a former managing director of the International Trade Mart, for "participation in a conspiracy to assassinate President John F. Kennedy." Shaw, 54, was taken into custody after several hours of questioning.

In that special staccato of the teletype machine, the rest of the story rapidly followed the 5:45 P.M. New Orleans time announcement, interrupted from time to time, as it was being written, by accounts of the other events of the day.

Clay Shaw, the name by which he is known internationally, Garrison charged, is Clay Bertrand.

Clay Shaw, the dignified, cultured, respected and honored civic and business leader, the man with the eye for beauty, the restorer of the ancient culture of his city, the world-traveler, playwright, "dreamer and ideal-

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ist," according to (Garrison, is the Dr. Jekyll whose Mr. Hyde is the "swinger" Clay Bertrand, associate of the Latin "swishers," the man who sought Andrews's legal assistance for the then-accused Presidential assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald.

Disbelief was headlined and sneering1y written into the news stories. Shaw was a man of wealth and position, respected and secure in society; Oswald was a misfit, unknown save for his strange political adventures, a man who never earned a living wage, from an entirely different world.

Embattled, Shaw immediately surrounded himself with a firm of New Orleans attorneys to face a series of legal struggles.

His arrest was still a sensation the next day, March 2, when Acting U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee for confirmation. Clark was besieged by reporters as he left the hearings. He also was possessed by the same lemming-like compulsion that characterized all the work of the Commission. Without so intending, perhaps not realizing it -- indeed, while making clear he desired the opposite -- he became Jim Garrison's strongest endorsement. The Attorney General of the United States confirmed Garrison's charge that Clay Shaw is "Clay Bertrand." Neither Clark nor the questioning reporters seem to have realized what he had said and done.

The Associated Press account appeared in the Washington Star under the headline, "FBI Probed 'Plot' Suspect, Clark Reports; Arrest Is First Made By Garrison In His Investigation." It reads:

Atty. Gen. designate Ramsey Clark said today the Federal Bureau of Investigation already has investigated and cleared Clay L. Shaw -- a businessman arrested in New Orleans -- of any part in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

Clark made the statement to reporters moments after the Senate Judiciary Committee approved his nomination to become Attorney General.

Shaw, wealthy retired director of the International Trade Mart, at

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New Orleans has been booked on a charge of "conspiracy to commit murder." In the Kennedy assassination investigation being run by New Orleans Dist. Atty Jim Garrison

In a brief corridor interview Clark said the Justice Department knows what Garrison's case involves and does not consider it valid.

However, the former chief counsel to the Warren Commission J. Lee Rankin, said earlier that as far as I know, we've never heard of this person (Shaw).

The Warren Commission's Report did not mention Shaw.

Clark said Shaw "was included in an investigation in November and December of 1963."

"We have the evidence and we can assume what their conclusions are," Clark said.

On the evidence that the FBI has, there was no connection found "between Shaw and the assassination of the President in Dallas on Nov 22, 1963, Clark said.

"He was checked out and found clear?" Clark was asked.

"That's right," Clark replied.

Little change was made in the dispatch for the morning papers, summarized by the headline, "Shaw Cleared, Says Clark." But the one change that was made was deletion of the quote from J. Lee Rankin. The press was already closing ranks behind the government.

George Lardner understood the gaffe. His Washington Post story on March 3 contains this paragraph, which quotes an additional semi-official acknowledgment:

The Attorney General's remarks consequently amounted to an acceptance of Garrison's charge that Clay Shaw and "Clay Bertrand" are one and the same. "It's the same guy," said one source in the Justice Department.

The touted "thoroughness" of the official investigation of the assassination is disclosed by the quotation from Rankin, "As far as I know, we've never heard of this person (Shaw)."

From the official record, Rankin is correct. This makes him a terribly wrong man who ran an immensely wrong "investigation." Like the name "Bertrand," "Shaw" does not appear in the Report. Nor does he appear a single time in all fifteen large volumes of

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testimony or the eleven of exhibits. The Commission never investigated Shaw. His name does not appear in the 300-cubic-foot bulk of its files. This was confirmed to me by the men who are its custodians, immediately and on several subsequent occasions.

But if the FBI could not find "Bertrand" for the Commission and if the Attorney General implies Bertrand is Shaw, how could the FBI have investigated and "cleared" Shaw and not have been able to produce "Bertrand"?

Here is the petard on which all officials are hoist. The Attorney General disclosed that the FBI had investigated and "cleared" Shaw. The chief of the Commission staff "never heard of" Shaw. So evidently the FBI never told the Commission of its "investigation" for the Commission and its "clearance" of Shaw? Why, then, should it have investigated Shaw to begin with? Only because he as Bertrand. Did they never tell the Commission that? Far from exonerating the Commission, this indicts it.

The Commission concluded Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone and unassisted assassin. Its major effort was Oswald's biography. It checked into almost every breath he drew. Liebeler, when it seemed expedient to disassociate himself from the then more controversial aspects of the Report, said this history of the accused assassin was his function. Recall that the government traced and chased all over the world those who traveled on the bus to Mexico City with Oswald, allegedly to collect every particle of information, no matter how minute, how seemingly inconsequential. It is this staggering biographical quest that the Commission uses as the non sequitur dismissal of the entire matter of The False Oswald, saying it knew all about the real Oswald.

There can be no evasion of the Commission's responsibility for the most exhaustive checking out of Dean Andrews's testimony that he had been asked by Clay

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Bertrand to defend Oswald from the assassination charge. This is the same Dean Andrews to whom the same Clay Bertrand had sent the (presumably) same Lee Harvey Oswald for counsel during the summer of 1963. Each of these approaches to Andrews, by and on behalf of Oswald, from the Commission's own doctrine of Oswald's solitary guilt and its own practice of learning everything about him, demanded the most diligent investigation. Either the Commission investigated thoroughly or its investigation meant nothing.

That it did not is clear from the Report, where the airy dismissal that is both an evasion and an acknowledgment of no investigation appears in a single paragraph on page 325. In it there is no reference to or indication of any investigation that can be so designated by honorable men. This paragraph is worth repeating:

The Commission has also noted the testimony of Dean Andrews, an attorney in New Orleans. Andrews stated that Oswald came to his office several times in the summer of 1963 to seek advice on a less than honorable discharge from the Armed Forces, the citizenship status of his wife and his own citizenship status. Andrews, who believed that he was contacted on November 23 to represent Oswald, testified that Oswald was always accompanied by a Mexican and was at times accompanied by apparent homosexuals. Andrews was able to locate no records of any of Oswald's alleged visits, and investigation has failed to locate the person who supposedly called Andrews on November 23, at a time when Andrews was under heavy sedation. While one of Andrews' employees felt that Oswald might have been at his once, his secretary has no recollection of Oswald being there. (R325)

Forgetting the shady formulations, like "Andrews . . . believed," inferring that it was not so, the rest of this sentence says, "investigation has failed to locate the person who supposedly (another propaganda word) called Andrews . . ." Here there is a footnote, number 757 of that chapter. That reference is to a single page of Andrews's testimony (11H331) and two exhibits, 3094 and 2899. Interestingly and incriminatingly enough, this testimony is not in reference to the

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"heavy sedation" to which the Report here refers in a most prejudicial way. It is to Andrews's inability "to locate any records of any of Oswald's alleged visits."

In the cited exchange, Liebeler expressed "my understanding" that "you were unable to find any such record." Andrews's response of only three lines twice refers to what the author of this section of the Report suppressed from it and the FBI's knowledge of it, that his office was robbed and the files in which this one might have been included were taken. He testified, in response to Liebeler's question abbreviated above, "Right. My office was rifled shortly after I got out of the hospital, and I talked with the FBI people. We couldn't find anything prior to it. Whoever was kind enough to mess my office up, going through it, we haven't found anything since."

Readers of detective fiction, plain, ordinary people, not learned counsel, law school professors, would have found themselves intrigued by this burglarizing of an office in which only minor files of inconsequential clients were taken. Why would anyone risk imprisonment to steal a few unimportant papers? Because to him or to whomever he served they were important. The robbery of Andrews's office appears, from all I have read in the Commission's 26 volumes of evidence and its immense files, was the subject of no interest or investigation. Had it been -- had the briefest reference been made to Andrews's reporting of the theft, by merely the inclusion of another part of a page among those thousands in the eleven enormous ones of documents -- Liebeler or whoever wrote this snide and dishonest chapter of the Report could never have gotten away with it.

The suppression from the Report of this detective-story-like but quite meaningful fact, especially because all but the single word "right" of the 43 words of Andrews's response deal with the robbery and are the cited justification for the language of the Report, is

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trickery and deception. No better can be said for the lack of reference to Sam Monk Zelden's confirmation of Andrews, quoted earlier. It, too, is suppressed from the "evidence" but it, too, was in the Commission's files.

Exhibit 2899 (26H356-6) is a careful, prejudicial and somewhat less than honest selection of the brief documents we quoted earlier. The first is the very short FBI report quoting Andrews's doctor as saying the lawyer was "under heavy sedation" and quite erroneously offering the opinion, already known to the Commission staff to be false, that the doctor "did not believe Mr. ANDREWS was capable of using the telephone." As indicated previously, Andrews did, in fact, use it -- repeatedly. Its selection rather than Andrews's own sworn testimony that he was under sedation served to attract attention to this invalid opinion. It is not accidental. It is an unfortunately accurate measure of the integrity of the investigation of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

The second of these short FBI reports is the one that says Andrews got "nose drops and cough medicine" and "phenobarbital," hardly the represented "heavy sedation." The third is the FBI report that says there is no record of Clay Bertrand in the phone book (which the FBI used selectively -- not when it needed to and such important witnesses as the mysterious colonel, for example) or in the files of the police or credit bureau.

The best that can be said for referring to Exhibit 3094 (26H704-5) is that reference was avoided to the corrupted version of it that also exists in the "evidence" as Exhibit 3104 (26H732-3). From 3104 most of the original report was just cut off. But it is presented as though it were genuine. Reference to Exhibit 3094 is footnote flackery, for it is redundant. It also serves to highlight Secret Service dishonesty, for in these three single-spaced tightly typed pages of a

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pretended report of what Andrews said there is no reference to the theft of these files from his office.

So we are back at the question of the integrity of the Report and the staff. There was no investigation of this part of the crucial testimony Andrews gave, that Oswald had come to him for legal assistance and that a man known to Andrews as "Bertrand" (not "Bertrand" but "the person" in the Report) had asked him to defend the arrested Oswald. There can be no excuse for not investigating this. The Commission did not, its own evidence shows it did not, and it could not have without having the name "Shaw," which does not appear in its Report, its evidence, is files, or the mind of its chief of staff.

Because these are grown, mature, respected and competently professional men who staffed the Commission and the FBI, it is difficult at this point to avoid asking whether any of them engaged in a conspiracy to cover up. They knew about Andrews's testimony, knew it was essential, pretended to address it only to dismiss it in the Report, to lie about it; conducted no investigation of it, did not order the FBI to investigate it; and the FBI did make an investigation and was silent about it and its results.

If any on the staff of the Commission knew about the FBI investigation that showed Shaw and Bertrand to be identical, how could the Report not mention it? How could it not be in the evidence? How could it not be in the files?

Yet from the Attorney General's own statement, the FBI investigation was completed before the Commission was organized and functioning. How, then, could the FBI, from director down, have failed to communicate this knowledge to the Commission that was charged by the President of the United States with gathering, evaluating and reporting upon "all the facts and circumstances surrounding" the assassination (R471)? Especially when the very first charge imposed

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in Executive Order 11130 on November 30, 1963, was this:

The purposes of the Commission are to examine the evidence developed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. . . .

Hoover told the Commission (Whitewash: Il p. 223) that he ordered his FBI to "get all the details," that "I have read all the requests that have come to the Bureau from this Commission, and I have read and signed all the replies that have come [i.e. from the FBI] to the Commission. In addition, I have read many of the reports that our agents have made . . . But I think it is essential that the FBI investigate the allegations . . . so it can't be said we have ignored them . . . I myself go over these [the reports] to see that we haven't missed anything or haven't any gap in the investigation . . ."

With the fabled FBI making the investigation, with its director, the man who knows the business better than anyone else because he invented it, personally in charge and supervising everything, seeing to it "that we haven't missed anything," is it conceivable that the FBI did investigate "Clay Bertrand," prove he is Clay Shaw, and not in any way involved, and not tell the Commission for which it conducted its investigation?

There may be further complications. In its game of investigative musical chairs there is this solemn reporting by Agent Regis Kennedy on November 27 that "JUNIOR O'ROURKE, United Taxi Cab driver, who operates on the corner of Bourbon and Conti Streets . . . has extensive contacts in the New Orleans French Quarter, particularly among the homosexual element, advised that CLAY BERTRAND was unknown to him and that inquiry among sources known to be familiar with the French Quarter had been negative to identify this person."

Perhaps of no consequence, the black-and-white Xeroxed copy of this report provided me by the General

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