Garrison's Case Finally Coming Together

by Martin Shackelford
Fair Play No. 25

In 1969, government secrecy severely hampered the investigation by New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison into the assassination of President Kennedy. Today, with the documents released under the JFK Records Act, some of that secrecy has crumbled, and elements of Garrison's case look stronger today than in 1969.

Perry Raymond Russo, the key witness who described conspiratorial conversations including the defendant Clay Shaw and the deceased David Ferrie, maintained the veracity of his testimony until his death in 1995.

The case was sabotaged, however, by Garrison's inability to establish supporting claims that David Ferrie had long known Lee Harvey Oswald, and that Clay Shaw was connected to the CIA. There is no longer any doubt that both of these claims are true.



As late as 1993, with the publication of Gerald Posner's book Case Closed, Garrison's critics were denying that David Ferrie was in the Civil Air Patrol in New Orleans at the same time at Oswald (the mid-1950s), despite contrary witness testimony. Shortly after the publication of Posner's book, however, the PBS news program "Frontline" located two photographs showing Ferrie and Oswald together at a CAP barbecue; one, shown on the program "Who Was Lee Harvey Oswald?," has since been widely published. In addition, former Deputy Counsel Robert Tanenbaum of the House Select Committee on Assassinations has stated that his staff located a film showing Oswald and Ferrie at an anti-Castro training camp near New Orleans in the summer of 1963.

Clay Shaw's connections to the Central Intelligence Agency are now thoroughly documented. Though he told reporters he was in the Medical Corps during World War Two, documents show that he worked for an Army Counterintelligence group called the Special Operations Section. His military record remains classified. In Europe, he became involved with a Rome-based CIA front organization, the Centro Mondiale Commerciale. Between 1948 and 1956, he filed reports with the CIA's Domestic Contact Division, and provided documents to the Foreign Documents Division.

SNIP...

A September 1977 memo written by HSCA staff counsel Jonathan Blackmer concluded: "We have reason to believe Shaw was heavily involved in the anti-Castro efforts in New Orleans in the 1960s and possibly one of the high-level planners or 'cut out' to the planners of the assassination."

SOURCE:

http://spot.acorn.net/jfkplace/09/fp.back_issues/25th_Issue/shaw.html