Part One
The State of Louisiana had accused Clay Lavergne Shaw of conspiring to assassinate President John F. Kennedy, along with Lee Harvey Oswald and David William Ferrie, both deceased, and unspecified others. It thus became the prosecution's responsibility to prove that Shaw knew the two men, both of whom he adamantly denied ever having met. The four Clinton witnesses were, by all accounts, the most potent evidence put forward that Shaw might indeed have been associated with Ferrie and Oswald.(1)
Ten years later, the House Select Committee on Assassinations released their Final Report, stating that the Committee had interviewed the witnesses and were "inclined to believe" that Oswald had been in Clinton "in the company of David Ferrie, if not Clay Shaw."
Today we have something the Shaw jurors and the HSCA were both denied: statements and notes from the Orleans Parish DA's investigators, documenting the witnesses' stories over the span of the two years preceding the trial. These documents cast serious doubt upon the entire story, and strongly suggest that the witnesses' testimonies were the result of some combination of coaching and collusion. One previously unpublished and unreported document may even be the "smoking gun" that explains why the story was concocted in the first place.
The first witness to testify was Edwin Lea McGehee, a barber from Jackson, Louisiana. He stated that on a day "in the last of August [or] the early part of September . . . along toward the evening," an "old . . . battered" car drove up to his barbershop and Lee Harvey Oswald came inside for a haircut. McGehee recalled, "There was a woman sitting on the front seat [of the car] . . . and in the back seat what I noticed was -- looked like a [baby] bassinet. . . it was an old car, it was battered, it was a dark colored car -- it might have been dark green -- but the make of it I just couldn't remember, it was an old car, real old. . . it resembled a Kaiser or a Frazer or an Old Nash."(2)
McGehee said he conversed with Oswald for approximately fifteen minutes about the prospect of a job at the nearby East Louisiana State Hospital. McGehee said he suggested that Oswald pay a visit to a friend of his, State Representative Reeves Morgan, who himself worked as a guard at the hospital. He also referred Oswald to his friend Henry Earl Palmer, the Registrar of Voters in nearby Clinton.(3)
McGehee specified that the encounter would have occurred in either late August or the first two weeks of September, adding that "I had my door open, the air-conditioning was off and it was rather cool." He noted that he and his customers frequently talked about the weather, and this was one of the reasons he could estimate the date of the incident.(4)
McGehee's statement is consistent with his more detailed account of June 17, 1967. One thing he stated in 1967 and would reaffirm in his 1978 interview with the HSCA is that Oswald kept staring at a picture on the wall, "a big picture of Martin Luther King at a Communist training school."(5)
The next witness was Reeves Morgan, who had been a member of the Louisiana
State Legislature in 1952-56 and 1960-64. He testified that Lee Oswald had visited him at his home outside Jackson for about twenty or twenty-five minutes one evening in either late August or early September 1963.(6)
Morgan said he'd informed Oswald that he couldn't help him get a job at the hospital ahead of his constituents, but advised him to take a Civil Service exam, and added that registering to vote nearby couldn't hurt. He testified that he remembered Oswald's name because he knew a fellow whose first name was Oswald, and he'd wondered if they might not be related.(7)
Morgan said he was estimating late August or early September for the meeting because of the temperature that day: it "wasn't cold weather and it wasn't hot weather, because when Oswald came to my house that evening I was burning the trash out of my fireplace and it didn't feel too bad. . . . It just felt good sitting there by it, and we both sat there and watched it burn."(8)
Morgan's story is consistent with his earlier statement of May 29, 1967, which also states that the visit occurred in the evening, "around dark."(9)
Though she was not called to testify, Morgan's daughter Mary, a student at Louisiana State University in 1967, also remembered Oswald's visit. She told the DA's office that "she did not pay much attention to the incident[,] as it was all very normal for lots of people to drop in her dad's home in order to get some help for employment." She said that "when Oswald was in the house talking with her dad, she happened to walk towards the screen door and went onto the porch and just casually noticed that there was a dark colored car parked under the tree in front of the house." It was dark outside and "she didn't really pay much attention to the car. . . . as best she can remember, it was an old car and the model was somewhere in the Fifties." She remembered "seeing a woman in the car. She did not pay much attention to the whole situation."(10)
Edwin Lea McGehee and Reeves Morgan's testimony placed Lee Harvey Oswald in Jackson, Louisiana, on a cool evening(11) in late August or early September, in an old car with a woman and, according to McGehee, a baby bassinet.(12)
Two more witnesses from Jackson testified. Maxine Kemp, a secretary in the State Hospital's personnel office, testified that one day in September 1964 she found in the personnel files an application filled out by a "Harvey Oswald." In 1967, personnel chief Aline Woodside and her staff conducted an exhaustive but fruitless search for the application, after being paid a visit by investigators Lt. Francis Fruge and Anne Hundley Dischler on behalf of the New Orleans DA's office.(13)
The visit from Dischler and Fruge was the first that Woodside or any member of her staff had
heard of Kemp's claim or anything at all suggesting that the accused assassin of John F. Kennedy
had ever been to the hospital. Following the assassination, neither hospital employee Bobbie
Dedon, who in 1969 claimed to have briefly spoken to Oswald, nor Maxine Kemp mentioned to
any of their co-workers that Oswald had been there in search of a job.(14) This seems especially
odd in view of the fact that a patient brought into the hospital the night before the assassination,
Melba Christine Marcades, alias Rose Cheramie, is alleged to have predicted Kennedy's death.(15)
In interviewing a number of Jackson residents in 1994, author Patricia Lambert found that invariably no one in the small community had ever heard about Oswald's alleged appearance in town until after the Garrison investigation began.(16) Lambert talked to personnel chief Aline Woodside in 1993, and asked her if anyone in personnel "remembered seeing Oswald, giving him an application, or interviewing him." "No," said Woodside succinctly. Referring to Kemp and the alleged application, Woodside said, "We didn't think she saw it."(17).
Interestingly enough, Mrs. Kemp's husband Billy, a pilot, had come forward after the assassination, claiming that on November 20, 1963, a Kent Whatley of Garland, Texas, offered him $25,000 to fly two people to South America on November 22nd, no questions asked. Whether for lack of credibility or lack of interest, the story was never pursued.(18)
The Billy Kemp story seems to have reached the Garrison office via an informant named Tom Williams, who also told an odd story about a Jackson resident named Gladys Fletcher Palmer. According to Williams, Palmer's ex-husband Matt said his ex-wife had been employed by Jack Ruby in Dallas, and that two weeks before the assassination, she had arrived in Jackson, driving a black Lincoln Continental, then checked into the State Hospital for treatment of alcoholism. Two hours before John F. Kennedy was killed, Gladys Palmer was alleged to have stated, "This is the day of the president's assassination." It may be coincidence, but Matthew Palmer had an uncle named Henry Earl Palmer, whom we will hear much more about.(19)
The black Lincoln Continental seems to mirror the black Cadillac we will encounter in another story that arose in this Louisiana community, while the story of Mrs. Palmer seems strangely reminiscent of Rose Cheramie, who is alleged to have spoken of the upcoming assassination while experiencing symptoms of narcotics withdrawal in the hospital.
In retrospect, East Feliciana Parish seems like uncommonly fertile ground for all sorts of curious stories to take root.
Hospital employee Mrs. Bobbie Dedon testified that she'd spoken briefly with Lee Harvey Oswald in 1963 and had directed him to the personnel office in the facility's administration building.(20) She placed this encounter at lunchtime; this might presumably be the day following the evening encounters with McGehee and Morgan.(21)
Dedon's recollections of Oswald were vague at best.
IRVIN DYMOND. Mrs. Dedon, you said you have talked with Lee Harvey Oswald for only a few minutes at your desk?
DEDON. Yes. . . . Long enough to give him directions to go around the building and to the front.
DYMOND . . . Do you recall how he was dressed that day?
DEDON. No, I don't.
DYMOND. Do you recall his general appearance, that is, whether he was neat looking or sloppy looking or generally how he looked?
DEDON. No.
DYMOND. Did he impress you as a neat individual or as a disheveled individual?
DEDON. I didn't really -- I didn't pay that much attention to him.
DYMOND. Did he have a beard on?
DEDON. I don't remember.
DYMOND. You don't remember whether he had a beard?
DEDON. Right.
DYMOND. You don't?
DEDON. No.
DYMOND. That is all.(22)
Dedon's sparse testimony is nevertheless consistent with an earlier statement, in which she picked out a photograph of Oswald and identified him as the man she spoke with in 1963. The report notes, "Mrs. Dedon said that we [sic] can't say why but somehow she relates Oswald with Estes [sic] Morgan whom both she and her husband knew."(23)
Estus Morgan was a hospital employee who died in 1966. From this humble beginning, he will become the thread that unravels the entire Jackson-Clinton story.
Town Marshal John Manchester was the first Clinton witness to testify at the Shaw trial.
ANDREW SCIAMBRA. In connection with your duties as Town Marshal, I call your attention to late August or early September, 1963, and ask you if anything unusual was happening in Clinton at that time?
MANCHESTER. Yes, sir. We had a voter registration drive going on there at that time [sponsored by the] Congress of Racial Equality. . . . CORE.
SCIAMBRA. . . . In connection with the voter registration drive going on, what were your duties around Clinton at that time?
MANCHESTER. Just to maintain law and order and to try to keep out the outside agitation that was attempting to infiltrate.
SCIAMBRA. Were there many people in town for this voter registration drive?
MANCHESTER. They had quite a few outsiders coming in, yes, sir.
SCIAMBRA. Were you the only law enforcement agent on duty at the time?
MANCHESTER. No, sir, we had other law enforcement but it was -- I was the primary law enforcement officer to take care of this special operation.
SCIAMBRA. Besides local law enforcement agents, were there any other law enforcement agents in town?
MANCHESTER. Yes, sir, the FBI was there.
SCIAMBRA. What was the purpose of the FBI?
MANCHESTER. Well, I don't really know their purpose there other than just observing.(24)
Any conspirators out to "sheep-dip" a patsy for an upcoming presidential assassination were fortunate indeed to arrive on a day when the FBI was not around to take note of their subterfuge.
SCIAMBRA. Were you assigned to any particular location during this drive?
MANCHESTER. Yes, sir, I was assigned to the immediate vicinity of the Registrar of Voters' office to keep down any disturbances that might result from this voter registration drive going on.(25)
Although Manchester presumably did not remember seeing Oswald, he recalled a fairly new black Cadillac with two men inside. Concerning the appearance of one of them, however, he drew a blank.(26)
SCIAMBRA. Can you describe the individual on the passenger side?
MANCHESTER. No, sir, I can't. Mister, I didn't talk to him. . . . I talked to the driver.
SCIAMBRA. . . . Can you describe the man behind the wheel of the automobile that you talked to?
MANCHESTER. Yes, sir. He was a big man, gray-haired, ruddy complexion, a real easy-talking man.
SCIAMBRA. Do you see the man in the courtroom today that you talked to?
MANCHESTER. Yes, sir.
SCIAMBRA. Would you point him out to us. [The witness indicated Clay Shaw.]
SCIAMBRA. . . . When you asked this individual where he was from, did he say anything?
MANCHESTER. He said he was a representative of the International Trade Mart in New Orleans.(27)
Shaw, of course, was the managing director of the Trade Mart in 1963. (28)
The next witness to testify was Henry Earl Palmer, Registrar of Voters of Clinton, Louisiana. He testified that at 10:30 AM on a day sometime around the first of August, 1963, he left his office to get a cup of coffee across the street, and noticed two white men standing in line to register with a number of black Clinton residents.(29)
SCIAMBRA. Were there many white people in line?
PALMER. No others that I remember of, these were the only two that were conspicuous. . . . Very close together.
SCIAMBRA. When you say "very close together," do you mean spacewise or acquainted together?
PALMER. There was two or three people between them.
SCIAMBRA. So, in other words, you had no idea --
PALMER. No idea.
SCIAMBRA. -- whether they were with each other?
PALMER. That is right.(30)
Palmer said he also noticed an unfamiliar black Cadillac parked near his office, with two men inside.
SCIAMBRA. Can you describe the individual on the passenger side?
PALMER. Well, the man on the passenger side, all I can tell you about him, he appeared -- his eyebrows were heavy and his hair needed combing. He had messed-up hair, I noticed that. That is all I could see of him.
SCIAMBRA. . . . (Exhibiting photograph to witness) I show you what the State has marked "S-3" for purposes of identification, and I ask you if you recognize the individual in this picture?
PALMER. I can't recognize the individual, but the hair and the eyebrows are similar.
SCIAMBRA. . . . Do you know who this person is?
PALMER. From the picture I know, now.
SCIAMBRA. Who is it?
PALMER. That is Mr. Ferrie.(31)
This is as close as Palmer came to placing David Ferrie in Clinton. He was more certain about the defendant, Clay Shaw.
SCIAMBRA. Can you describe the man who was behind the wheel of the automobile?
PALMER. . . . He appeared to be a tall man, he had broad shoulders and quite gray hair, and . . . kind of ruddy complexion.
SCIAMBRA. Now do you see anyone in this courtroom today who fits the same general description of the man that you saw in the automobile in Clinton?
PALMER. I would say that man right there [indicating Shaw] has the same kind of hair . . . .(32)
Palmer noticed the two white men were still in line when he went for lunch at 1 PM, and the two men in the Cadillac were still parked there. It was after Palmer's 3:30 PM coffee break that the white men reached the front of the line.(33)
PALMER. Soon after I got back, the first white man came in the office. I asked him for his identification, and he gave me a driver's license from Livingston Parish. His name was Estes [sic] Morgan, and he didn't have enough identification to register because he couldn't prove that he was in the Parish long enough so I sent him out.
SCIAMBRA. When did the next white boy come in?
PALMER. Probably one or two others came between him, and then he came. I asked him for his identification, and he pulled out a US Navy ID card.
SCIAMBRA. (Exhibiting photograph to witness) Now I show you a picture that the State has marked "S-1" for purposes of identification, and I ask you if you recognize the individual in this picture?
PALMER. Yes, sir, I do.
SCIAMBRA. Is this the individual who came into your office that day?
PALMER. It is.
SCIAMBRA. Do you know who is the individual in that picture?
PALMER. Lee H. Oswald. . . . He . . . wanted a job at the hospital in Jackson. . . . He couldn't give me any proof that he was living in the Parish long enough [to register, i.e., six months], but I told him he did not have to be a registered voter to get a job at the Jackson Hospital. He thanked me and left.(34)
The third Clinton witness was Corrie Collins, who had been an employee of the East Louisiana State Hospital in Jackson in 1963, as well as Chairman of the local CORE chapter. He testified that he was outside the Registrar of Voter's office at about 9:30 or 10 AM one morning in late August or early September, when an unfamiliar black Cadillac drove up and parked. One white man, whom he identified as Lee Harvey Oswald, got out of the car and stood in line.(35)
Assistant DA Andrew Sciambra questioned Collins about the men in the car.
SCIAMBRA. Can you describe the man behind the wheel?
COLLINS. Yes, heavy built, gray hair. I would say he was between 40 and 50, somewhere in that area, and he had on a light color hat.
SCIAMBRA. Do you see the man behind the wheel in this courtroom today?
COLLINS. Yes. . . . [Indicating Shaw.] Right here.
SCIAMBRA. Did you get a chance to see the person on the passenger side of the car?
COLLINS. Yes. . . . I would say he was medium built, but the most outstanding thing about him was his eyebrows and his hair. They didn't seem real, in other words, they were unnatural, didn't seem as if they were real hair.(36)
Collins identified this man as David Ferrie. He was the only one of the four to positively identify all three men.
Last came William E. Dunn, Sr., a CORE volunteer. He remembered the shiny black Cadillac at the voter registration drive.
DUNN. I knows one man was setting behind the wheel, and maybe another one but I am not sure.
SCIAMBRA. In the front seat maybe another one?
DUNN. On the front seat.
SCIAMBRA. But you are not sure about the other one?
DUNN. I am not sure about the other one.
SCIAMBRA. . . . Can you describe the man behind the wheel?
DUNN. I can. He was -- big shoulders, big man, and gray hair.
SCIAMBRA. Do you see that man in this courtroom today?
DUNN. I do.
SCIAMBRA. Would you point him out, please?
DUNN. [Indicating Shaw.] Right here.(37)
Dunn identified a photograph of Lee Harvey Oswald as one of several white men he saw in line waiting to register.(38)
As far as the Shaw prosecution goes, it must be said the Clinton witnesses accomplished little. Some of the jurors were inclined to believe that Clay Shaw may have indeed been acquainted with David Ferrie and/or Lee Oswald, but without a prima facie case of conspiracy to present, the mere possibility of an association between the men was worthless.(39)
In the long run, however, the Clinton witnesses became the surest evidence to conspiracy theorists that Clay Shaw had perjured himself when he testified that he had never met either man, something he adamantly maintained until the day he died. The HSCA's endorsement of the witnesses' credibility seemed to further validate Garrison's case against Shaw in the eyes of many.(40)
Only now, thanks to newly released documents from the DA office files and Jim Garrison's personal papers, as well as an unexpected breakthrough by author Patricia Lambert, the truth about the Clinton affair is finally within our reach.
Next: The earliest Clinton testimony.
1. Cf. James Kirkwood, American Grotesque, 213-23.
2. Transcript, State of Louisiana v. Clay L. Shaw, February 6, 1969, hereafter Shaw, 9-12, 31-3.
3. Shaw, February 6, 1969, 9-12.
4. Shaw, February 6, 1969, 31-5.
5. Ibid. McGehee's original statement reports that "Oswald told McGee [sic] that he needed a job right away and he said that he didn't know any politicians is New Orleans that could help him" (Andrew J. Sciambra, June 17, 1967, Memorandum to Jim Garrison.). This seems quite out of character for Oswald, who was more likely to express disgust at "fat stinking politicians" (Warren Commission Hearings, Vol. X, 56.).
6. Shaw, February 6, 1969, 40-5.
7. Shaw, February 6, 1969, 43-4.
8. Shaw, February 6, 1969, 47.
9. Andrew J. Sciambra, June 1, 1967, Memorandum to Jim Garrison. Morgan's testimony is, for the most part, consistent with his more detailed original statement to the DA's office. Some unusual details of the 1967 statement include Morgan's recollection that Oswald didn't know what the word "constituent" means and Morgan's recollection of Oswald "bragging very much about his ability as an electrician." Morgan also told Sciambra that personnel director Aline Woodside spoke of seeing Oswald's application, but as Patricia Lambert found out, Woodside did not see any such application and suspected that there never had been one (Lambert, 188).
10. Andrew J. Sciambra, June 3, 1967, Memorandum to Jim Garrison.
11. In fact, the only problem the defense could point out with McGehee and Morgan's testimony was the estimated date(s) of these incidents. Both McGehee and Morgan estimated that they met Oswald in late August or early September, due to their recollections of the weather. Rex L. Kommer, a meteorologist with the US Weather Bureau, was called by the defense. He testified and presented documentation showing that the average high temperature in Clinton for August 1963 was "93.3 degrees, and the low was an average minimum temperature of 69.3 degrees"; for the first fifteen days of September 1963 the average high was 93.1 degrees and the average low was an estimated 68.1 degrees. The readings were made at 5:00 PM daily (Shaw, February 21, 1969, 68-72). The defense would later point out that the incidents in Jackson and Clinton could not have occurred later than September 25, 1963, when Lee Harvey Oswald left New Orleans, bound for Mexico City, then Dallas, Texas; his whereabouts following his departure from the Big Easy are almost invariably accounted for (Warren Report, 301, 737-40).
12. Lee Harvey Oswald, of course, did not drive a car, and neither did his wife, Marina. They did not own a car or a baby bassinet. Neither Marina nor his infant daughter June ever accompanied him to Jackson, Louisiana, or anywhere else by car.
13. Patricia Lambert, False Witness, 188. Kemp testified that it was normal for applications to be thrown out after a year or so if the applicant was not hired (Shaw, February 7, 1969, 41-4.).
14. Lambert, 188.
15. HSCA, Vol. X, 197-205. It was Lt. Francis Fruge who brought Cheramie, who died in a hit-and-run car accident in 1965, to the hospital. Seriously impeaching the Cheramie story is the fact that no one seems to have mentioned it to any outsiders until the time that Fruge joined the Garrison investigation in 1967.
16. Lambert, 189. Researcher Jerry Shinley notes that Oswald never reported job-hunting in Jackson to the unemployment bureau, though he did provide them with phony information about places he didn't look for work.
17. Lambert, 188.
18. Claude B. Slaton, "The Tragic Career of William H. 'Joe' Cooper," The Truth Is Redacted Website (http://www.redacted.com).
19. Claude B. Slaton, "Further Feliciana Research," The Truth Is Redacted Website (http://www.redacted.com), Clyde Slaton, E-mail to author, June 7, 1999.
20. Shaw, February 7, 1969, 35-7.
21. Every additional day this scenario occupies is one more strike against its credibility, since Marina Oswald has said repeatedly that in late August and September, Oswald tended to hang around the house reading and he was always home at night. There were few gaps in his whereabouts for which Marina could not account, and Jackson was 120 country miles from New Orleans, roughly a two-and-a-half-hour drive each way.
22. Shaw, February 7, 1969, 38-9.
23. Andrew J. Sciambra, January 29, 1968, Memorandum to Jim Garrison.
24. Shaw, February 6, 1969, 53-5.
25. Shaw, February 6, 1969, 55.
26. In his earliest known statement, John Manchester would throw in one detail that clashed with the two major Jackson witnesses. Unlike Edwin Lea McGehee and Reeves Morgan, who recalled the weather being cool, Manchester remembered the "hot sun" the day he saw the black Cadillac. This would not have been the same day Oswald visited McGehee and Reeves Morgan, but it presumably followed shortly after the stops in Jackson (Andrew J. Sciambra, Undated 1967, affidavit.).
27. Shaw, February 6, 1969, 59-60.
28. Manchester was also shown a photograph of the late New Orleans ultra right-winger and former FBI Special Agent in Charge Guy Banister (who Garrison believed had been involved in some manner with the assassination), and denied that Banister was the driver of the Cadillac (Shaw, February 6, 1969, 68.).
29. Shaw, February 6, 1969, 78-9.
30. Shaw, February 6, 1969, 79-80.
31. Shaw, February 6, 1969, 83-5.
32. Shaw, February 6, 1969, 85. There has been some speculation that the man Palmer claimed to have seen may have been, not Shaw, but an associate of Dave Ferrie's, William Guy Banister. That possibility was done away with at the trial.
SCIAMBRA. (Exhibiting photograph to witness) Mr. Palmer, I show you a picture that the Defense has marked "D-2" for purposes of identification, and I ask you if you recognize the individual in that picture.
PALMER. Yes, sir, I do.
SCIAMBRA. Do you know who the individual in that picture is?
PALMER. Yes, I do.
SCIAMBRA. Who is it?
PALMER. Mr. Banister.
SCIAMBRA. Where do you know Mr. Banister from?
PALMER. I knew Mr. Banister in the Service in World War II.
SCIAMBRA. Is there any possibility that Mr. Banister could have been the person in that automobile?
PALMER. I am sure I would have known Mr. Banister if I had seen him.
SCIAMBRA. Thank you.
THE COURT. That is Mr. Guy Banister?
PALMER. Yes, sir (Shaw, February 6, 1969, 99-100.).
33. Shaw, February 6, 1969, 86-90.
34. Shaw, February 6, 1969, 90-3.
35. Shaw, February 6, 1969, 104-7.
36. Shaw, February 6, 1969, 110-1.
37. Shaw, February 7, 1969, 6-11.
38. Shaw, February 7, 1969, 12.
39. Cf. Kirkwood, 507-12.
40. Old myths die hard. Jim DiEugenio and Bill Davy write, "Even New Orleans-based reporter and Life magazine stringer David Chandler knew [that Shaw knew Ferrie]. Recently, his son told us through the Internet that Shaw had told his father that he did know Ferrie through the homosexual underground, but that Shaw could not admit this since it would be tossing Garrison too big a bone."
Of course, Chandler never said any such thing in public, and he adamantly condemned Garrison's persecution of Shaw. Contrary to the "big bone" theory, had Shaw known Ferrie, it would have saved him endless headaches to simply admit it right up front, since otherwise he would be risking the possibility of credible witnesses coming forward to prove him a perjurer.
"In addition, there are at least eight other affidavits in Garrison's files which attest to this fact" [that Shaw knew Ferrie].
But most of these have been debunked outright by this author on alt.conspiracy.jfk, the exceptions being a few people whom there is no evidence Shaw ever knew in the first place.
"Ferrie himself admitted he knew Shaw to his pal Raymond Broshears."
That's what Broshears says. But Broshears also claims that he once had sex with an Oswald look-alike named "Leon Oswald," and he says that several conspirators died in a plane crash while fleeing the country, a plane crash that no newspaper or wire service ever reported.
"Ferrie also admitted this to Garrison investigator Lou Ivon."
Again, that's what Ivon says, but Ivon's contemporaneous notes of the interview session do not contain any such thing. More convincing is the report of Andrew Sciambra's first interview with Ferrie concerning Shaw, in which Ferrie not only denies knowing Shaw, but also very credibly appears to have not the slightest clue who Shaw is. (DiEugenio and Davy, "False Witness: Aptly Titled," PROBE, Vol. 6, No. 4, May-June 1999, [http://www.ctka.net/pr599-lambert.html].)
For more on the issue of Shaw and Ferrie, see part four of Reitzes, "Who Speaks for Clay Shaw?"