Art Kevin on Dean Andrews' Testimony in the Clay Shaw Trial

Dean Andrews outside the New Orleans Courthouse. His lawyer Monk Zelden is to his left.

Art Kevin reported on the Garrison case for the L. A. Free Press.

Art Kevin Looks Back at the Garrison Investigation

An article from 1997 on the trial.

Here are his immediate impressions of the case and the verdict, with some important observations about Dean Andrews:

Money Quote:

Now, back to the courtroom, and Dean Andrews is on the witness stand, under oath and under cross-examination by Alcock. After telling the court that Shaw was not Bertrand, Andrews refused to answer most questions put to him by Alcock, claiming self-incrimination or lawyer-client privilege. Ultimately, Judge Haggerty had to decide that Andrews had to answer Alcock, that he could not show "only one side of the coin", as he put it. And then Dean Andrews cracked. This peculiar little man bared his soul to a hushed courtroom. Andrews testified that he'd lied to the Warren Commission about a man calling him up and wanting to defend Oswald. He said he'd plucked the name Clay Bertrand from a party joke. Andrews said he was just a little man who always wanted to be a big man and wanted to be remembered -- but not as a perjurer. On Dean Andrews testimony, the entire Garrison case fell apart. Garrison himself had often said that it was Andrews' testimony before the Warren Commission that first put him onto the mysterious Clay Bertrand, who he would eventually claim was Clay Shaw. If there was no Clay Bertrand, then how could there be a case? The jury answered that question when they declared Shaw innocent. And it should be noted here that Andrews even blew the case for Garrison's chief prosecutor, James Alcock. At day's end, Alcock sat down with me on a bench and asked me haltingly if I believed Andrews. His head hung low as we spoke. Eventually, he got up and walked away saying, "I wish to God that Garrison had never read the Andrews' testimony."

You can read Dean Andrews' testimony here.

The search for Clay Bertrand in 1963 - 1964 reached into Garrison's office. The FBI and the Secret Service could not find him and everybody felt it was a figment of Dean Andrew's imagination. I believe that when Jim Garrison read Harold Weisberg's Whitewash in the fall of 1966, he was shocked to learn that Andrews repeated the story to the Warren Commission. That's why he immediately called Andrews for lunch -- to find out just who Clay Bertrand was.

Previous Relevant Blog Posts

The Search for Clay Bertrand

A detailed look at the search for Clay Bertrand.

Was Jim Garrison Searching for Clay Bertrand in 1963?

Even more details on the initial search for Bertrand.

Did Dean Andrews admit that Clay Shaw was Clay Bertrand?

Conspiracy authors read too much into Weisberg's reporting of something Andrews told him.