Clay Shaw

This is an article about the New Orleans businessman. See E. Clay Shaw, Jr. for an article about the politician from Florida.

Clay Laverne Shaw (March 17, 1913 – August 14, 1974) was a successful businessman in the U.S. city of New Orleans, Louisiana. He is notable as the only person to ever be tried for conspiracy in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, for which he was acquitted.

Shaw was discharged from the army with an honorable discharge as a major in 1946, having served as a secretary to the General Staff and having been decorated by three nations: by the United States with the Legion of Merit and Bronze Star, by France with the Croix de Guerre and named Chevalier de l'Ordre du Merite and by Belgium named Chevalier of the Order of the Crown of Belgium.

After World War II, Shaw helped to start the International Trade Mart which facilitated the sales of both domestic and imported goods. He was also known locally for his efforts to preserve buildings in New Orleans' historic French Quarter.

From December 1948 to May 1956, Shaw relayed information on 33 separate occasions to the CIA as one of about 150,000 American businessmen, journalists, and travelers who reported information from overseas to the CIA's Domestic Contact Service. [1] His reports about devaluation in Peru, a proposed new highway in Nicaragua, and the desire of Western European countries to trade with the Soviet block were graded by the CIA "of value" and "reliable." For many years, the CIA denied any relationship with Shaw.

District Attorney Jim Garrison arrested Shaw in 1967. He believed that Clay Shaw was the man named as 'Clay Bertrand' in the Warren Commission Report. A lawyer named Dean Adam Andrews, Jr. testified that Bertrand had asked him to defend Lee Harvey Oswald in court. Investigators working for Garrison began searching for Bertrand and claimed it was an alias which Shaw commonly used. Andrews had described Bertrand as a bisexual man who had previously brought gay clients to him. Shaw was a gay man, and indeed this is one of the reasons Garrison later cited as evidence of the two Clays being one and the same. Andrews had given different descriptions of Bertrand to investigators, at first saying that he was over six feet tall, (Shaw stood 6'4") then later saying that he was 5'8". Andrews also said flat out to the Orleans Parish Grand Jury and on an NBC news report that Bertrand was not Shaw, but in fact a client of his named Eugene Davis. Davis denied being Bertrand, but Andrews never claimed Davis used Bertrand as an alias, only that he had ascribed the name to Davis without Davis' knowledge.

Police officer Aloysius J. Habighorst, who fingerprinted Shaw following his arrest, claimed that Shaw admitted when asked that he used the alias Clay Bertrand, and this alias appears on the fingerprint card along with Shaw's signature. Shaw, however, contended that he had never admitted the alias to Habighorst, and claimed that he had signed the fingerprint card while it was still blank. Officer Habighorst's testimony and the fingerprint card were deemed inadmissible as evidence as the judge concluded any such questioning during the booking constituted violation of both Miranda v. Arizona and Escobedo v. Illinois. The judge went on to say that he believed Habighorst's testimony was a fabrication and doubted the incident even took place, stating in court "I do not believe Officer Habighorst." [2]

During the trial, which took place in 1969, Garrison called Perry Russo, an insurance salesman, as his main witness. Russo testified that he had seen Shaw with both Oswald and David Ferrie and had heard them plot to kill the president. Russo's testimony remains controversial to this day. Critics of Garrison argue that primary sources from the New Orleans District Attorney's office show Russo's story evolved over time. Garrison's defenders attribute the discrepancy to sloppy writing on the part of Assistant D.A. Andrew Sciambra, the author of the memos in question. They also point to Garrison aide Lou Ivon's search warrant request which cites Russo's story he told it at trial. That request was written before the controversial Sciambra memo.

Shaw's attorneys were successful in raising questions as to the validity of Russo's story. Other Garrison witnesses such as Charles Spiesel, a paranoid accountant who admitted under cross examination to regularly fingerprinting his daughter to make sure she had not been replaced by a double, destroyed the prosecution's credibility. Shaw was found not guilty less than an hour after the case went to the jury.

Garrison wrote a book on his investigation, On the Trail of the Assassins. When director Oliver Stone later adapted Garrison's book into the film JFK, Shaw was played by Tommy Lee Jones, who received a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination.

Shaw died in 1974 at age 61 of lung cancer.

Further reading

• Joe Biles, In History's Shadow: Lee Harvey Oswald, Kerry Thornley & the Garrison Investigation. ISBN 0595224555
• Milton Brener, The Garrison Case: A Study in the Abuse of Power. ASIN B0006C04I0
• William Davy, Let Justice Be Done: New Light on the Jim Garrison Investigation. ISBN 0966971604
• James Kirkwood, American Grotesque: An Account of the Clay Shaw-Jim Garrison-Kennedy Assassination Trial in New Orleans. ISBN 0060975237
• Patricia Lambert, False Witness: The Real Story of Jim Garrison's Investigation and Oliver Stone's Film JFK. ISBN 0871319209
• Joan Mellen, A Farewell to Justice: Jim Garrison, JFK's Assassination, and the Case That Should Have Changed History. ISBN 1574889737

External links

• Louisiana v. Clay Shaw (1969) trial transcript
• Orleans Parish Grand Jury transcripts
• Esquire December 1968 interview
• Penthouse interview
• The JFK 100: One Hundred Errors of Fact and Judgment in Oliver Stone's JFK: Who was Clay Shaw?
• "The Power of Disinformation: The Lie that Linked CIA to the Kennedy Assassination", Max Holland, Studies in Intelligence, Fall-Winter 2001, No. 11