On The Trail Of Delusion

[Rick Plant]

Here's some more on Shaw.

Clay Shaw Is Dead at 60; Freed in Kennedy ‘Plot’

August 16, 1974

Clay L. Shaw, the businessman who was acquitted of plotting to assassinate President Kennedy after one of the nation's more sensational trials, died yesterday of cancer in his New Orleans home. He was 60 years old.

A tall, imposing, silverhaired bachelor who made a hobby of restoring homes in the New Orleans French Quarter, Mr. Shaw was arrested in March, 1967, on charges brought by, District Attorney Jim Garrison that he helped plan the killing of President Kennedy with alleged accomplices in New Orleans.

The trial, which began in 1969, took five weeks. The main evidence against Mr. Shaw came from a 25‐year‐old Baton Rouge insurance salesman, whose memory had to be jogged three times by hypnosis before he could take the stand, and a 29‐year‐old heroin addict who had begun using drugs at the age of 13.

One man appeared to testify dressed in a toga and solemnly told the court, that he Was a reincarnation of Julius Caesar.

A “mystery witness” from New York who said he overheard Mr. Shaw plotting at party turned out to be a man who once fingerprinted his own daughter before allowing her into the house because his “enemies” had often impersonated his relatives in their efforts to destroy him.

Doubts Are Cited

Mr. Garrison was one of many who expressed concern about the doubts that remained after the Kennedy assassination on Nov. 22, 1963, but Mr. Shaw was the only suspect ever tried for the killing.

Mr. Shaw, who came out of World War II as a decorated Army major, went on to become prominent in New Orleans business circles and retired in 1965 as managing director of the International Trade Mart there.

Every effort was made in the trial to undermine Mr. Shaw's position, but he never showed signs of despondency. He chainsmoked filter cigarettes impassively at the defense table as prosecution witnesses described him as a flamboyant homosexual.

Mr. Garrison had set the stage for such descriptions when, after Mr. Shaw's arrest in 1967, the District Attorney's office released a list of articles, including five leather whips, confiscated at Mr. Shaw's apartment. The whips, Mr. Shaw explained, had been used as props for Mardi Gras costumes.

Mr. Shaw steadfastly denied that he had any part in any conspiracy or that he even knew the two persons he was accused of conspiring with.

Both ‘Plotters’ Dead

Both of the alleged co‐conspirators were dead when Mr. “Shaw was arrested. One was Lee Harvey Oswald, the man the Warren Commission determined acted alone in killing President Kennedy. Oswald was killed by Jack Ruby two days after the assassination. The other man was a pilot named David Ferrie, who had died of a brain hemorrhage.

Despite Mr. Garrison's repeated contentions that he had “solved” the murder of the President, the jury was unconvinced. It took the 12 men only 50 minutes to reach a verdict of not guilty just two months to the day after Mr. Shaw was arrested.

Mr. Garrison kept after Mr. Shaw, trying then to prosecute him on a charge of perjury. But the Federal courts ruled against the District Attorney.

Later Mr. Shaw said his reputation had been tarnished and his personal fortune depleted by the trial. To pay his bills he had to sell his home, which was the first in the French Quarter to have a private swimming pool.

“I often wonder what would have happened to me had been penniless and without friends,” Mr. Shaw said. “Justice can be a costly process.”

He called his trial “one of the seediest and shabbiest episodes in American judicial history.”

Speech to Students

“I was arrested and charged with what must surely be the most shocking crime of the century, of which I had absolutely no knowledge whatsoever,” Mr. Shaw said in a speech to college students two years after his acquittal. “It doesn't matter what happened to me personally, terrible things happen to everybody. But what I'm talking about tonight could happen to anybody within the sound of my voice. You think that's impossible. I assure you it's not.”

There was agreement with Mr, Shaw's assessment of the trial.

The New Orleans StatesItem called for Mr. Garrison's resignation. “He abused the vast powers of his office,” the paper said in a. Page One editorial. “He has perverted the law rather than prosecuted it.”

At his death Mr. Shaw had been pressing a $5‐million lawsuit against Mr. Garrison and several wealthy businessmen who had helped finance the District Attorney's investigation. Hearings on the suit had been scheduled to begin next month in Federal court.

Mr. Garrison was defeated for re‐election last year and is now a candidate for the Louisiana Supreme Court.

Mr. Shaw was born in 1914 in Kentwood La., a community in Tangipahoa Parish (county) about 100 miles north of New Orleans, where his grandfather and namesake had been town marshal around the turn of the century.

https://www.nytimes.com/1974/08/16/archives/clay-shaw-is-dead-at-60-freed-in-kennedy-plot-new-orleans.html


CLAY SHAW DIARY RECALLS HORROR OF TRIAL IN JFK DEATH

September 21, 1997 

The only man ever tried in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy lived a "Kafkaesque horror" before his acquittal in 1969, according to documents released this week.

Clay Shaw, the New Orleans businessman accused of conspiracy to murder Kennedy, in his personal papers describes the "nightmarish experience" of being charged "with the most heinous crime of the century."

Shaw, who died in 1974, was charged as part of the Kennedy assassination investigation conducted by the late New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison.

The papers were kept by a friend of Shaw until earlier this year when he donated the materials to the Assassination Records Review Board, an independent federal agency overseeing the identification and release of records related to the Nov. 22, 1963, shooting of Kennedy in Dallas.

The collection includes Shaw's diary chronicling life after being arrested for conspiring to kill the president, records from his criminal case, correspondence, business documents and photographs.

The diary opens March 1, 1967, with the words: "And so it begins . . . this journal which is to be a record of the most horrifying, unbelievable, nightmarish experience through which I have ever lived.

"For it was on March 1 that I was arrested 'for conspiring with others to murder the president, John F. Kennedy.'

"Even as I look at the words now it seems absolutely unbelievable that such a thing could come about," Shaw wrote. "But it has, and it is important that I try to set down for myself and possibly others, the Kafkaesque horror which began on this date."

He said he had never met Lee Harvey Oswald, Kennedy's accused assassin and one of the men with whom Shaw allegedly conspired. Oswald was shot and killed two days after Kennedy's assassination by Dallas nightclub owner Jack Ruby.

Shaw's diary describes his amazement as a three-judge panel bound him over for trial after "incredible" testimony about an overheard conversation he allegedly had with Oswald at a party he never attended and the "extreme improbability" of another witness' story about a clandestine lakefront meeting at which he was supposed to have given Oswald a roll of money before departing in a big black limousine.

Shaw was finally acquitted on March 1, 1969. Ruined financially, Shaw filed a civil lawsuit charging Garrison with violating his civil rights, but he died of lung cancer in 1974 while it was awaiting trial.

https://buffalonews.com/news/clay-shaw-diary-recalls-horror-of-trial-in-jfk-death/article_4e86c083-964d-5e34-a424-6e288a421dac.html

[Martin Weidmann]

Wow...such anger and hostility in your post. You are out of line with your comments.

I've made nothing up and you're falsely attacking me for no reason. Go read the thread.   

I never derailed anything. Richard Smith made an absolute statement about Oswald and his personality. I simply asked him a question and he refused to answer it. All I get back is long winded replies and insults.

The only person derailing the thread is you by attacking me  Martin called you out on that as well.   

Wow...such anger and hostility in your post.

Well, that's Grumpy for you. He can be really friendly when he wants to be but it never takes long until he becomes vicious.

[Jerry Organ]

    "A “mystery witness” from New York who said he overheard Mr. Shaw plotting
     at party turned out to be a man who once fingerprinted his own daughter before
     allowing her into the house because his “enemies” had often impersonated his
     relatives in their efforts to destroy him."

Is this cultural paranoia something uniquely American?

Sure, the "Old World" had their Inquisitions, palace intrigue, spycraft, pogroms, continental/religious wars, etc. And that lingered on in the form of Hitler and the current favor of Neo-fascism in Europe.

But this American stuff -- Cold War insecurities, backyard bomb shelters, mocking the Warren Report, fingerprinting relatives, Fox News, prepping, China-hating, fear of blacks, excessive military to fight a two-front global war -- seems to be the equivalent of the "Old World" paranoia. A tribal fear that comes in various forms shared by humankind all over the world.

[Jon Banks]

It's not rocket science.

People who are spies or working with spies typically don't admit it when asked about it.

And that goes for any country's intelligence service, not just the CIA.

I've heard but don't know if it's true that undercover CIA operatives can even lie under oath about their relationship with the CIA. But I don't know for certain that it's true.

[Jon Banks]

"It is, in short, the most un-American of activities, and the average American has a most ambivalent attitude toward it. Of course, everyone knows and admits, that as long as the other great powers, particularly Russia, maintain intelligence systems, we must do the same. And yet, most of us consider the CIA with abhorence [sic], and a man who works for it, is considered not a patriot serving his country but as a kind of E. Phillips Oppenheim villain ... a somewhat sinister James Bond."

That's an interesting quote and it makes me think of Israel, which celebrates Mossad agents (and even CIA officer, James Angleton who played a major role in helping Israel get nukes, is popular in Israel) more openly and broadly than what we do in the USA. I can't imagine anywhere in the US where James Angleton would be celebrated or viewed as a national hero.

https://....weiss.net/2017/11/golem-angleton-israel/

My opinion on that is, while the Mossad successfully portrays itself as heroically defending Israel, it's far more difficult for ordinary Americans to connect the things the CIA does abroad to the defense of the US. Some of that changed post-9/11 as the CIA turned its focus to international terrorism. But as the Islamic terrorism threat recedes, it seems the public is returning to the Cold War view of the CIA. Which is, the agency is viewed as doing nothing more than destabilizing other countries and assassinating people.

I personally would like to see our intelligence agencies focus on observing and reporting foreign intelligence while stepping away from proactively trying to change things in other countries. Often times, America's covert interventions lead to even worse outcomes (ie Guatemala, Cuba, or Syria).

[Dan O'meara]

Wow...such anger and hostility in your post. You are out of line with your comments.

I've made nothing up and you're falsely attacking me for no reason. Go read the thread.   

I never derailed anything. Richard Smith made an absolute statement about Oswald and his personality. I simply asked him a question and he refused to answer it. All I get back is long winded replies and insults.

The only person derailing the thread is you by attacking me  Martin called you out on that as well.   

You are the one who is out of line.
Richard said "Oswald had no apparent sense of humor".
This is not an absolute statement, it is an opinion.
In a move that was really out of line you started claiming he had said "He (Oswald) never had a sense of humor".
This is a falsehood and one that, instead of acknowledging and correcting it, you continue to perpetuate it.

Pointing out your falsehoods is not an "attack".

"I've made nothing up"

Really? Your falsehoods are documented here:

In Reply #116 Richard made this statement - "Oswald had no apparent sense of humor."
In Reply #129 you asked - "How do you know Oswald had no "apparent sense of humor"? Did you know the man personally to know that?"
By Reply # you are accusing Richard of making an "absolute statement" about Oswald, but the fact is by using the word "apparent" Richard is not making an absolute statement.
You then do something very deceptive.
In Reply #156 you ask - "Have you hung out with Lee Harvey Oswald to know that he didn't have a sense of humor?"
But Richard never said Oswald didn't have a sense of humour, that is an absolute statement. He said Oswald had no apparent sense of humour, which is not an absolute statement as it means Oswald's sense of humour is not apparent to Richard. It's an opinion. Not an absolute statement as you keep insisting.
You then do something truly deceptive. You actually change what Richard said. In Reply #168 you post - "That's why Richard Smith's claim that Oswald was "never humorous" is absolutely ridiculous..."
By putting "never humorous" in quotation marks you are implying this is what Richard actually said but it is something you have completely made up.
Then you go even further. In Reply #189 you make this outrageous claim - "You made an absolute statement about Lee Harvey Oswald regarding his personality stating "he never had a sense of humor" but you never met the man to know if he never had a sense of humor as you claimed."
So you have twisted "Oswald had no apparent sense of humor" into Oswald was "never humorous" and then into "he never had a sense of humor".

[Martin Weidmann]

You are the one who is out of line.
Richard said "Oswald had no apparent sense of humor".
This is not an absolute statement, it is an opinion.
In a move that was really out of line you started claiming he had said "He (Oswald) never had a sense of humor".
This is a falsehood and one that, instead of acknowledging and correcting it, you continue to perpetuate it.

Pointing out your falsehoods is not an "attack".

"I've made nothing up"

Really? Your falsehoods are documented here:

Richard said "Oswald had no apparent sense of humor".
This is not an absolute statement, it is an opinion.

It seems you haven't figured out yet how a LN operates. They will hardly ever make a direct claim. Instead they phrase their words in a way that their meaning is obvious without actually saying what they really mean.

And as far as it only being an opinion goes; Rick has asked the question several times. If Richard intended to be a mere opinion, he had every opportunity to say so, and that would have been the end of it. But he never did. Instead he doubled down. Now, why do you think he did that?

When Richard said "Oswald had no apparent sense of humor" it was of course an opinion, like everything expressed on this forum, but it was an opinion presented as a statement of fact. That's classic LN crap and it fooled you completely!

[Dan O'meara]

Any demented Nutter is entitled to a defence but I doubt Richard gives a sh!t about Dan's effort.

BTW, if anyone should have forgotten, right after his statement about Oswald's apparent lack of humor he cranked out two more BS claims right on top of each other,

Oswald had no apparent qualms at hiding these pictures.

His intent was that they memorialize him in a classic revolutionary pose.

It isn't about defending Richard who is someone I have come to blows with elsewhere on this forum and whose LN stance I do not share.
It's about calling Rick out on his underhand bullsh%t tactics.
In his last post Martin wrote:

"When Richard said "Oswald had no apparent sense of humor" it was of course an opinion,"
It's Martin's opinion that this was presented as a fact and that's just an opinion.
But Rick was calling it out as an "absolute statement", which it is not. So he did something which I find unacceptable - he actually changed what Richard had posted in order to make it an absolute statement and then kept derailing the discussion by constantly challenging Richard to answer for an absolute statement he had never made and it got on my tits because I thought it was quite an interesting thread and debate was being quashed by Rick's 

So I called him out on it.
Provided the quotes to back up what I was saying.
And that should have been the end of that.