Services Administration has a blue correction of the word "unknown." The "un" is hand lettered above the single space between "was" and "known." Is it possible that in the original this report actually said that Junior O'Rourke knew Clay Bertrand?

Then a "Clay Gould" turned up less than four blocks from Shaw's home.

Betty Parent, whose address is 936 Dauphine Street, told Kennedy on November 30 what shook him so he wrote a report more confused than usual. His first paragraph, containing her address, name and qualifications, ends by saying she "advised that she has been unable to determine any information that would identify an individual by the name of CLAY BERTRAND." No other name is mentioned.

But the second brief paragraph reads,

She advised that the only individual she could associate with either an individual as named CLAY GOULD who associates with the sex deviates in the New Orleans French Quarter. She advised that she had no reason to believe CLAY GOULD is identical to CLAY BERTRAND other than the similarity of the first name.

There are but a dozen lines in this report. There is no reference to any name other than "Bertrand" or "Gould." Yet there it is, in FBI black and white, "either name." What, then, is the other name Kennedy asked her to identify?

Could it have been "Clay Shaw"? If so, why is it not in the Report? Whatever the other name, why is it not in the report of Regis Kennedy, the agent who so hounded and harassed Dean Andrews that the badgered lawyer told him to put anything he wanted in the report? And had he no picture of the Clay Shaw they investigated to show her? Or she a description of the Clay Gould she knew for him?

The Attorney General, like the President, is but a human being. There is a limit to what he can keep

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under personal control, what he can know of his personal knowledge. What he said to reporters on leaving the Senate committee room, without doubt, is what he had been briefed on by his subordinates. All those feet he put in his mouth were not his own.

His plight was made no easier by his statement of the day before. Robert E. Thompson of the New York World Journal Tribune wrote a story that appeared under the headline, "A JFK Plot Doubtful, Says Clark." Altogether, it was an inauspicious beginning for the new Attorney General's term of office and an unfortunate series of comments he gave Thompson:

Washington, March 1 - -The nation's newly nominated Attorney General, Ramsey Clark, is extremely skeptical about the evidence and ethics involved in a New Orleans investigation of President Kennedy's assassination.

*	*	*	*	*	*	*	*	*	*	*

Shortly after Johnson sent his nomination to the Senate, Ramsey Clark, 39, told reporters that he is "very doubtful" that New Orleans district attorney Jim Garrison has uncovered any new evidence about the assassination.

He said: "It is very difficult for me to see how a law enforcement officer in a state or local government -- if he really had any evidence -- would fail as his first act to turn it over to the Secret Service or the FBI.

*	*	*	*	*	*	*	*	*	*	*

If Garrison has any information that might shed additional light on the assassination, Clark said, he has a duty to turn it over to federal authorities.

While Clark did not disclose the source of his skeptical attitude, it has been learned that the FBI has scrutinized all aspects of Garrison's probe very carefully. so far, federal authorities appear to place little credence in Garrison's sensational suggestion that Lee Harvey Oswald acted in concert with a pro-Castro plot to kill the president.

Federal officials have privately expressed a cynical attitude . . .

Clark's timing could not have been worse, his cracks about "evidence" and "ethics" less opportune. He resorted to the old and much abused propaganda device about "new evidence" as though there had been anything wrong with the "old" evidence ignored, misrepresented or destroyed and, as the next day was to prove, suppressed only the wedding of the most conservative elements of the country to the official account and to J.

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Edgar Hoover prevented an outcry over Clark's abuse of "States' rights." Here was the Attorney General of the United States, who had no jurisdiction over the commission of a local crime and who had nothing to take to court, insulting a District Attorney who was in a legal action and saying that "if he really had any evidence" his "first act" should be "to turn it over" to the federal government. Further, Garrison had not said pro-Castro and he had said he had no evidence Oswald had killed anyone.

Garrison, wisely, made no response. He might have asked, For what purpose? To gather dust or again be suppressed?

No less inept was the revelation that the FBI was preparing to oppose Garrison, that it was investigating him: "The FBI has scrutinized all aspects of Garrison's probe very carefully."

Nor did Garrison make the proper and obvious request, that the Federal government, which had evidence but no jurisdiction, turn its evidence over to the "proper authorities," those in New Orleans.

Echoes of the Francis Gary Powers U-2 flight went unheard in the White House March 2 when the President was asked about these newest developments. The reporting of it by UPI reads:

In Washington yesterday, President Johnson said he saw no reason to change his previous statements accepting the conclusions of the Warren Commission report, which concluded that Oswald acted alone. Attorney General Ramsey Clark said the FBI cleared Mr. Shaw after questioning about the assassination in 1963.

If the President had nothing to say, he should have said nothing. He should not have become a partisan, not have prejudged the coming court proceeding.

Once again the gods were unkind for it was on March 2 that Garrison searched that charming bit of the past at 1313 Dauphine Street, in New Orleans. He

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had a court order, made public the list of what he seized, and found what is not the customary cherished treasures of a quiet, cultured retired gentleman of the Old South, even if he is a "dreamer" and "idealist." Shaw's property inventory comes more from the Marquis de Sade and Krafft-Ebing than the home of a man who said of guns, "I wouldn't have one in the house. If they got rid of all the guns in the world, the world would be a better place in which to live."

But Clark had said his piece, explicitly, and was properly understood. Newspapers of March 4 carried these two AP repetitions of the previous night's story:

U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark said in Washington Thursday that the FBI had investigated Shaw late in 1963 and cleared him of any link with the assassination. The FBI refused to say why Shaw was questioned.

Earlier in the day the new U.S. Attorney General, Ramsey Clark, said the FBI had investigated Shaw late in 1963 and cleared him of any link with the assassination. "On the evidence that the FBI has, there was no connection found," Clark said in Washington.

By the time Clark checked himself or heard the "Whoa!" from an adviser, it was too late. He had said what he had said. It was on record. But it did not, for the moment, hurt Clark or the government. The New York Times found that it "caused a certain amount of bewilderment" but most of the papers ridiculed Garrison and his investigation, and emphasized that the FBI had "cleared" Shaw. This "clearance," a function of the FBI only since the Congressional witch hunts, was widely played by the headline writers. Its public relations yield to the accused Shaw was only a little less conspicuous than a stroll down from Olympus.

Had he been one of the CIA's most important agents, Shaw could hardly have expected as much from the government.

On Sunday, March 12, CBS telecast a taped "Face the Nation" program. On it a number of questions stemming from the "bewilderment" left by his March 2

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statement were directed at Clark. His policy had modified in these ten days. When asked about Shaw, the really embarrassing question, he parried, saying, "in view of the fact that there will be a hearing . . . I think it would be inappropriate for me to comment on the case . . ." When a similar question was repeated, Clark reiterated, "I don't think it would be fair for me to really comment in any way on that in view of the State proceeding."

This is a perfectly proper attitude. The Attorney General of the United States should not comment on a state proceeding. But Clark did. On only the Shaw gaffe was he silent.

He never stopped slurring and deprecating Garrison, all the while explaining the inappropriateness of any comment. He assaulted Garrison because "he has not offered us any of the evidence that he may have" and because that seemed to him to be "the natural thing for any prosecutor to do." Why he did not say and, alas, none of the newsmen thought to ask him. Why this is "natural" is not at all dear, because there was no federal jurisdiction and no pending or contemplated federal action. That, too, Clark made clear. He concluded the answer that answered nothing with a reaffirmation of the official position, hiding behind the formulation of it he attributed to Hoover.

In this appearance, had it been anyone other than the Attorney General, one would be tempted to call him a liar. Because it is the Attorney General, custom and polite usage demand that milder language be employed, such as "he was misinformed" or "he was unaware of the true state of affairs." However it is sliced, it is still delicatessen.

Here are a few examples, all, of course, the proper federal non-intervention in state matters:

"There was a comprehensive investigation by the FBI involving these New Orleans allegations and much, in fact, most of these reports have been made public and they support the conclusion of the FBI that

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Oswald acted alone."

Not "much" and certainly far from "most" of these reports have been made public. Most are suppressed, and in Clark's own name. The case of File 75, already quoted, is overwhelming: 36 of the 40 pages on Ferrie are suppressed. What is not suppressed supports no "conclusion" on Oswald's guilt and does not in any way address it. The only use to which these reports can be put is the opposite.

When George Herman, an excellent newsman with better than average knowledge of the case and one of the few to examine the Archives, pressed the new Attorney General, he got more misinformation. Herman pointed out that within 24 hours of Ruby's death, material previously withheld, dealing with Ruby, "was released in the Archives."

"Now, Mr. Ferrie has been dead several weeks, and the Ferrie material is still classified and I wonder if that is at the order of the FBI and the Department of Justice?"

"No," the Attorney General replied, "those documents are under the general jurisdiction of the General Services Administration at this time."

The first part of the answer is false. It is the FBI that specified which of its files would be suppressed. Nobody else -- the FBI. It is within the FBI's authority to do so. Had the FBI exercised its power properly, I would go further and say it is the FBI's responsibility, for there is, indeed, the possibility of hurting innocent people. Innocents have been hurt.

The second part of the answer is nonresponsive. In these circumstances, a nonresponsive answer is a false one. The question was, is the suppression "at the order of the FBI and the Department of Justice?" To respond by saying the General Services Administration has "general jurisdiction" is to say that it is the General Services Administration that decides what is

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to be seen and what denied. The "general jurisdiction" of the General Services Administration is plainly and simply that of a custodian. It is nothing else. It is the FBI that suppressed these reports.

Herman then asked, "That implies that you believe, then, that the General Services Administration believes that the Ferrie material has no relevance?"

Clark's answer was, "That is true."

His final comment on the New Orleans investigation, the one he said it would be improper to comment on, was, "I find it disturbing and I find it saddening." This line got the headlines the next day, where the papers did not play down the New Orleans part.

Clark's intervention, his throwing of the weight and influence of high office against the local case, keeps cropping up. It was regularly used against Garrison, to destroy public confidence in what he sought, to buttress the untenable conclusions of the Report.

And now the list of silent witnesses, those who will not talk, grows.

This kind of "nonintervention" constitutes federal intrusion into a local court matter. It is the heavy hand of the federal government laid on the scales of justice, again on behalf of Clay Shaw and opposed to public authority. Thus, it is particularly necessary to understand what kind of man Clay Shaw is.

Even more does the combination of federal falsehood, dissembling, evasion and suppression accent the inexplicable circumstance that the name of this man is not mentioned anywhere in the official proceedings or their backstopping. Because he was identified and there was testimony involving him in the case, involving him with the man accused of being the assassin, it is a strange omission that he did not come forth to be heard and was not required to appear. There are affidavits cluttering the testimony and abounding in the exhibits. There is not one in which Clay Shaw says it is not so.

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10. DR. JEKYLL -- OR MR. HYDE -- OR BOTH?

When you have turned 50, are unmarried and own so much property you feel you must resign an excellent income and an important and respected position to look after it, and if you are interested in the arts, what plans do you make and with what do you surround yourself?

Clay Shaw retired from the managership of the International Trade Mart at about the time interest in the assassination and its official "solution" began to awaken, after publication of Whitewash, which for the first time brought the strange career, activities and disappearance of "Clay Bertrand" to public attention, and long after it had been circulated through most of the better-known publishing houses. If it was with Whitewash as it was with Whitewash 11, copies were in federal hands before publication.

When Shaw was in the news in March 1967; the London Daily Mail of March 17 carried a notice saying he had recently been in London, where he planned to move, and had expressed interest in buying the rights to plays he intended to produce there.

Shaw knew about Garrison's investigation not later than December 1966, possibly during November. After his March 1 arrest and release, he held a press conference in the office of his lawyers. The account of it in the Times-Picayune quotes him as saying "that he was questioned by Garrison's office about Christmas time last year when he was asked to answer questions about Oswald distributing leaflets in front of the old International Trade Mart." He declined to say what he had been asked about himself. He did say, when asked if he knew any anti-Castro Cubans, "No, I have not known

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any of them."

Shaw ended his successful career at an early age. He retired in the prime of life, full of vigor and interests. His career meant much to him. He described himself as a "dreamer" and "idealist" because of his yearning to hinder communism and help the needy countries by trade, by making available to them the things they needed that this country can supply, particularly through the port of New Orleans. What happened in a year and a half to change his plans so radically, to impel him abruptly to pull up his stakes, forgetting the beauty and wealth in New Orleans even to leave the country? The timing also is provocative. In addition to the New Orleans investigation, on which the FBI kept an eye from its beginning, and the publicizing of the career of "Clay Bertrand," aroused national interest in the assassination and dissatisfaction with the Report were producing demands for a new investigation.

Any new investigation inevitably meant the first real investigation of "Clay Bertrand." There was no reason for Clay Shaw to anticipate this with pleasure.

The remarkable coincidence of Attorney General Clark's extraordinary clean-bill-of-health statement, made at precisely the moment Shaw was in distress, suggests federal interest in him. The fact is, propriety demanded the Attorney General make no comment; it improper for him to intrude into state affairs.

When a federal official wants to say nothing, he finds it easy to say, "No comment." Presumably, Clark's advisers suggested what he said. But his purpose may well have been the defense of the government's indefensible but still widely credited Report. And, of course, the two are one -- defense of the Report requires defense of Shaw. Success of the Garrison case means the end of the Report, and the national policies and organizations it represents.

So, Garrison has done more than tangle with the powerful federal bureaucracy. He assails the official

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"solution" to the assassination, but he presents greater threats as well. He jeopardizes the entire "invisible government" that has controlled the elected government since World War II.

If, as seems likely, the CIA is tied up in it, no matter if unintendedly, no matter if entirely innocently, Garrison's prosecution means a revolution in government.

It will mean the possible end of the arrogation of power to themselves by these faceless men who confront no electorate, answer to no charges, and in recent years have rendered the President powerless by the simple expedient of confronting him with faits accomplis with emergencies in which they have eliminated in advance his area of maneuver, as in the Powers U-2 flight, which wrecked the Paris summit conference; as in the Southeast Asia problem, beginning with the French withdrawal and with Laos; and, perhaps most in point, in the Bay of Pigs tragedy, where the press became a docile, tractable instrument of government, and the President, made powerless.

This subterranean power is one of the things at stake in New Orleans, in that courtroom at Broad and Tulane Streets, where Jim Garrison is pursuing what was avoided by the federal government in its so-called investigation of the assassination.

In failing to meet the minimum requirements of cheap, pot boiling detective fiction, in making not even a decent pretense of a Ferrie-Bertrand-Cuban exile-Oswald investigation and the inevitable question of CIA involvement, perhaps for a while the government protected the CIA. When the new Attorney General stepped out of the high paneled Senate hearing room into the cold corridors, faced the newspapermen and made his unwise statement, he was in a position similar to President Kennedy's in the Bay of Pigs crisis -- making a decision for which he had not had time to prepare, for which he had not been prepared, and on

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the basis of inadequate advice.

All of this tended to make more credible the testimony of Perry Raymond Russo two weeks later and to make more stunning the nature of the property seized at 1313 Dauphine Street, New Orleans, pursuant to a search warrant issued by the court.

If there was a single editorial in a single major paper on what was seized, I neither saw it nor had it called to my attention. More than a hundred by-line writers swarmed into New Orleans and exercised the license of by-line writing to express personal opinions, usually derogatory, in one way or another ridiculing or demeaning Garrison and his investigation. In any other environment, what was taken from the quiet beauty of Shaw's home in the Vieux Carré would have raised editorial eyebrows, if not hackles.

Louis Ivon, Garrison's chief investigator, filed the affidavit asking for the search warrant almost as Clark spoke. In it he stipulated the evidence sought and the essence of the charges against Shaw. In part, it reads:

For the purpose of seizing the following described property: which has been used as a means of committing an offense or which may constitute evidence tending to prove the commission of an offense, to wit: photographs, letters, political propaganda, leaflets, address book, newspapers, telegrams, canceled checks, maps, diagrams, blueprints, time schedules, telephone bills, copies of manuals and manuscript recordings ledgers, canceled airplane tickets, telephone vouchers, tools and implements, guns, rifles, ammunition, telescopic sights, gun cases, miscellaneous gun parts, gun cleaning kits.

The reasons and facts for the request of this search warrant are: affiant has evidence that meetings were held in the apartment of David W. Ferrie at 3330 Louisiana Avenue Parkway and the people present were David W. Ferrie, Clay Shaw (alias Clay Bertrand), and Lee Harvey Oswald and an informant and other persons. These meetings were held in September, 1963, and the above named individuals, namely David W. Ferrie, Lee Harvey Oswald and Clay Shaw (alias Clay Bertrand) were discussing how they would kill John F. Kennedy President of the United States. At these meetings there was an agreement and combination among Clay Shaw (alias Clay Bertrand), Lee Harvey Oswald and David W. Ferrie and others to Kill [sic] John F. Kennedy. At these meetings there was discussion and agreement to carry out this conspiracy. One of the sources of information of the affiant is a confidential informant who was present at the meetings and

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saw the conspirators and heard the plans. This confidential informant saw David W. Ferrie and Clay Shaw, (alias Clay Bertrand) and Lee Harvey Oswald and others and this confidential informant heard these subjects agree to kill John F. Kennedy, and heard these subjects discuss the means and manner of carrying out this agreement.

That the said confidential informant after giving this statement to the affiant voluntarily submitted to sodium pentothal commonly called truth serum, which was administered under the care and control and supervision of the coroner for the Parish of Orleans, a medical doctor. That the confidential informant while under the sodium pentothal verified, corroborated and reaffirmed his earlier statements.

The list of what was found in Shaw's home, grotesque cohabitants with objects of art, beauty and culture of the Marquis de Sade, or of a perverted version of "Men Without women" embarrassed some papers to specify them, particularly those papers looking out for the interests of the Attorney General and the federal government at the editors conceived the interests.

The Washington Star of March 2 printed an Associated Press story under a headline favorable to Clark: "FBI Probed 'Plot' Suspect, Clark Reports." The paragraph on the seizure of Shaw's property is restrained:

Shaw's luxurious French Quarter home was searched for nearly three hours by Garrison's agents. The dozen men who made the search carried away five cardboard bores filled with various items, including books and a rifle or shotgun in a canvas case.

The UPI March 3 story, printed in the Washington Daily News revealed more. There was no comment on the strange haul:

Mr. Garrison's agents entered Mr. Shaw's apartment yesterday and carried out five boxes of items, including a shotgun and an Army cartridge belt, whips, a hood, journals and a boos entitled A Holiday for Murder.

The UPI list can be amplified. There were three pieces of rope, a chain, pieces of chain, five whips, pieces of leather and the cartridge belt.

There were other items right from novels: a black hood and cape, a black net-type hat, and a black gown.

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Andrews described Bertrand as a "swinger." From this assortment of whips, chains, disguises and other exotica, Shaw would seem to be a swinging "swinger." All of this provokes interest in the three manuscripts that were taken at the same time.

With the exception of Oswald, of whom it may or may not in part be true, all the clients Bertrand sent to Andrews were "swishers." Some of these "gay kids" wore women's clothing. When the police "scooped" them up, they needed help. The "pokey" was filled most Friday nights. This, said Andrews, effectively reduced the rioting and mugging in New Orleans. The volume of legal business for which he was indebted to Bertrand was not inconsiderable. One week in the middle of July there were six cases. Andrews said the weekly number varied. It "depends on how bad the police are rousing them. They shoo them in. My best customers are the police. They shoo them into the office. God bless the police."

Andrews thus established that his "swinging cat" Bertrand, whom he described as bisexual, had extensive associations in the Latin homosexual community in New Orleans, and that those young men were prone to violence. In rounding them up Fridays, the police reduced weekend muggings and riots.

It is particularly interesting that these "queens," these "gay kids" among Andrews's Bertrand-delivered clients, are Latins, and that when they did not pay, Andrews expected Bertrand to -- and Bertrand did. If Andrews had any idea why Bertrand mother-henned these "gay kids," Liebeler did not ask for it. But is it a usual arrangement in a homosexual community that one, clearly from a higher level of society, assumes responsibility for those socially and economically in the lower ranks? Or did Bertrand have motive other than sympathy in looking out for these young men with such great problems? And did it give him some kind of hold over them?

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Affinities for dresses and for chains and whips are not exactly alike, but they have this in common: both are frowned upon by organized society, both are opposed by law and custom. Does this provide a link between the upper-class Bertrand and the lower-class Cubanos and Mexicanos?

Conjecture will not carry us very far. We might wish that the Commission, particularly Liebeler, had carried this forward, sought an explanation for this uncommon relationship between these needy homosexual Latins and the man who looked out for them. But he did not, and for the moment there is not too much that can be done to overcome this deficiency. Then there is the relationship between the non-Latin homosexuals who seem to have had fewer difficulties with the police, and the Latins. This is an unusual other world. For the time being, we must leave it in status quo.

Shaw was released on Thursday, March 2, under $10,000 bond. The first act of the defense was to call a 2:00 P.M. press conference in the office of Recivitch, Johnson, Wegmann and Mouledoux. Harve Recivitch and Edward Wegmann, who handled most of the courtroom work, flanked Shaw. Like so many, its purpose was not to satisfy the interest and curiosity of the press and its audience but to say what Shaw and his lawyers wanted and nothing else. Shaw did not answer questions, he made statements.

In his blanket denial of the charges, which he labeled "fantastic," Shaw professed "shock" and "dismay" at them. Of the murdered President he asserted, "I have always had only the highest and utmost respect and admiration," falling a little short of Ferrie's "worship." And he said, "I do not know Harvey Lee Oswald (sic) nor, to the best of my knowledge, do I know anyone who knew him." Although Shaw was reading from a prepared statement, it may be assumed that he was not evading by a switch in the name or by

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reference in the present tense to a dead man.

"I have received messages of support from persons in this country and abroad who are dismayed and shocked at the accusations that are being made against me. These people know me well and know I am incapable of being involved in a plot of this kind."

Shaw said that, although he had not been aware of the FBI investigation of him, he was "pleased and delighted" with the Attorney General's announcement that he had been given a clean bill of health He had no idea why he was investigated but suggested it was "possibly because of the distribution of pro-Castro leaflets outside the International Trade Mart," an "explanation" also "fantastic" in view of the charges against him.

Shaw denied he knew Oswald and Ferrie, both of whom were dead, or any anti-Castro Cubans, none of whom was about to come forward and confess involvement in the assassination. Press accounts make no reference to his denial of knowing Andrews, who was not dead and was then being questioned by the District Attorney's office.

In defending himself, Shaw refuted the claim of the Attorney General that the FBI had made a thorough investigation before "clearing" him. It is not possible to make such an investigation and keep it secret. Ferrie disclosed this truism in reporting that friends and acquaintances immediately informed him of the Garrison investigation. Only a friendless and unimportant man can be investigated without, sooner or later, learning of it. Shaw is not unimportant. He is one of the 35 most prominent men in New Orleans. His friends, from his own description, are so stalwart and courageous that they wrote, phoned and cabled him from all over the world after the seriousness of the accusations against him was made public, when standing by him presented some hazard and associated them with a sordid, terrible thing. It is not conceivable that

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such staunch friends would have remained silent -- not every single one of them -- if the FBI had made any serious investigation of Shaw.

The touted "thoroughness" of this non-existent investigation is amply revealed in Shaw's allegation that he was never questioned. How could the FBI really investigate Shaw without asking him a single question?

The next defense move was to demand the return of the seized property. There was no reference to the exotica, the chains, whips, pieces of rope and leather, or to the cape and hood -- none of the suggestive objects of far-out literature. Shaw's counsel sought to imply that he was bankrupted by the seizure, that the taking of $30,000 in "homestead" bonds might interfere with his defense. Their efforts failed when, on March 13, these pleas were denied by the court.

The next day the preliminary hearing began.

Garrison confused his unfriendly claque, including those in Washington, those in Dallas, those among Ruby's former counsel, and those in editorial offices. He took the unusual step of demanding a preliminary hearing This measure is normally taken by the defense. Its purpose was to obtain a judicial determination of whether there were grounds for bringing Shaw to trial.

In New Orleans, Garrison has the reputation of attempting and doing the impossible. He has picked fights with and won over the mayor and the judges. It was his campaign against a previous mayor that gave him the issue and the platform that made him district attorney. His battle with the judges, lost on the local level, was a Supreme Court victory for him when he carried the case to it on appeal. Whether it was Garrison's reputation or the dimension and weight of the issues involved, when the preliminary hearing case came to Criminal District Court Judge Bernard J.

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Bagert , he appointed Judges Malcolm V. O'Hara and Matthew S. Braniff to serve with him. All three would sit on the case. Decisions would be by majority vote. They overruled the appeal of the defense that this was constitutional.

Presiding Judge Bagert announced rules for the press. On March 9 he invoked the Canons of Judicial Ethics adopted by the Louisiana Supreme Court and laid down proscriptions so strong that there was an immediate howl from the reporters. After modification, the regulations prevented a repetition of the Roman carnival atmosphere that prevailed in Dallas after Oswald's arrest. There were to be no picture-taking in court, no statements by witnesses outside the courtroom. Only accredited representatives were admitted to the courtroom. Those entering the courtroom were searched, to ferret out FBI agents, according to some reporters. This may or may not have been true. But the disgrace of Dallas was not repeated.

Through it all, from the moment the New Orleans States-Item revealed publicly what was known only to those involved and few others, like the FBI, a limited number of the press and several of us writing and researching the subject, Garrison maintained that he had already established his case. The publicity, he said, would delay and interfere with his prosecution, not prevent it. He had his case.

An unpredictable coincidence, the kind of a "break" he could not anticipate, helped Garrison. A new witness surfaced, one of whom he had had no knowledge, one not part of the case he had already established. Garrison gambled on using him alone, reserving his major evidence to keep his real case secret from the defense and its federal and press allies, knowing that if, in the hearing, his witness was weak, he could always draw upon his legal reserves. In the middle of the preparations for the hearing and only five days before he ultimately testified, a second volunteer and

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hitherto unknown witness came forward. These were the reverse of the problem created by the publicity. While an immediate advantage to the prosecution, it remains to be determined whether it is enough to offset the loss in witnesses who fled, feared for their lives, or remained mute.

David Ferrie's untimely death in New Orleans caused the timely appearance of Perry Raymond Russo in Baton Rouge. On February 22 he saw Ferrie's picture and wrote Garrison. In his native New Orleans, Russo had been a friend of David Ferrie.

Russo also made himself known to the local news media. His interviews were not entirely consistent with what he subsequently testified to.

Russo is a dark, neat, intense and very young political man. He lives in a white frame duplex near the Louisiana State University at Baton Rouge. He began college at Tulane, transferring when he moved to Baton Rouge. He has a bachelor's degree in political science. This year his major study is insurance underwriting. Mrs. Eleanor Durand lives in the other half of the building. He is a "nice young kid" to her.

"He's a real fine guy, a hard worker and an intellectual," a man who organizes and plans his work methodically and well, according to Taylor Bernard, his superior at the Equitable Life Assurance Society, for which he sells insurance while going to college.

Pete Barrouquere, Jr., sportswriter for the New Orleans Times Picayune, knows Russo as the manager of baseball teams. Russo organized one for the Young Republicans in 1963. His opinion of Russo appeared in the Times Picayune for March 16: " . . . a keen political student but a radical in politics." Russo worked for Goldwater, not what would indicate another of Barrouquere's recollections: "When I visited his bungalow he had 'Fair Play for Cuba' pamphlets strewn among his law books. He never said whether he was a member of the pro-Castro group though . . ."

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There was no New Orleans chapter of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. This provokes wonder. Could Russo have had some of Oswald's literature? If so, how did he get it? From the Oswald? Possession of this literature is not consistent with support of Barry Gold water. What was Russo, friend of Ferrie, doing with this kind of literature, after Oswald moved from New Orleans and before the assassination?

As the time of the hearing approached, interest in and speculation about what Garrison would do and reveal intensified. In granting the motion for a preliminary hearing, the judges indicated they might insist upon the production of the "confidential informant" who had heard the threats against the President's life and had "voluntarily submitted to sodium pentathol, commonly called truth serum, which was administered under the care and control and supervision of the coroner." While it was happening, the New York Post of March 14 asked in a five column headline, "Will Garrison Unveil Witness?"

It is with this buildup, with the eyes of the world and all of the press that could be squeezed into the courtroom on him, that Perry Russo began his testimony. This was the most dramatic moment in all of the assassination events since the issuance of the Report. Garrison, who so jeopardized that Report, then made another expert showman's gesture. Usually he has assistants handle the court work. His own court room appearances are few. With all this attention focused on Tulane and Broad streets, Garrison conducted the Russo examination and then assigned his assistants to cope with the cross examination.

We have already seen how Russo had met Ferrie through the Civil Air Patrol, in which the dead psychopath had the dual interest of a flyer and a recruiter of young men for his homosexual love life. We know the story of Russo's apparently successful effort to come between Ferrie and Al Landry, as beseeched by

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Landry's alienated parents whose home Landry had left; and of Ferrie's threat, "I'll get you," that Russo then interpreted as a threat of murder. And we know the unfortunate coincidence of Landry's first name and that of the man to whom one of Ferrie's "suicide" notes was addressed (Alvin Beauboeuf) with its plaints, complaints and a dead man's last curse, "as you sow, so shall you reap." These are peripheral to the crux of Russo's testimony, that he was an inadvertent observer when he heard the murder of President Kennedy calmly discussed, for all the world like the plans for a goose hunt.

There were two such occasions. The first was when Ferrie explained to Russo how easily the two of them could murder the President. The second, following which Russo left New Orleans, was after he and Ferrie had established a close relationship. He describes this as one in which they had an "open book" policy toward each other. Either could at any time, unannounced, visit the home of the other. Russo estimated he had been to Ferrie's "30 or 40" times.

In mid-September 1963, Russo went to Ferrie's and found eight or ten men having a party. The lone woman present was "Sandra Moffett" (also spelled "Moffitt"), an Alabama girl who was Russo's date. Naturally enough, she became the object of a search and sensational headlines like that in the New York World Journal-Tribune of March 16, "Hunt Mystery Girl in Plot," on the front page and, with the embellishment of disbelief, on the continuation, "Hunt Mystery Girl in JFK 'Plot."'

According to Russo, had Miss Moffett not been escorted home by another and had Russo not waited for his transportation, which never returned, he would not have been a witness to what he testified about. Russo identified another man at the party with him as "Lefty Peterson."

A week before this headline was written, Garrison's

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