While going through Jim Garrison's papers at NARA in Maryland, I found this letter that was sent to him, along with a newspaper clipping. I thought this was all meaningless pap, and I ignored it. I had no reason to believe that Jim Garrison took any of this seriously. I recently purchased 150 pages of Jim Garrison's manuscript, A Farewell to Justice, from 1985. Here is his summary of Chapter 12: So, Garrison actually believed this nonsense! He was intrigued by the city of Omaha, which is where Thomas Beckham used to hang out. Beckham was a con man and an associate of Fred Crisman. Prentice Hall decided to go ahead with Garrison's book. They paid him a $10,000 advance but they hired Sylvia Meagher to be the referee. She wrote a 26-page critique, and she noticed the 'Delilah' anagram. Here is part of her report to Prentice Hall: In fact, Sylvia Meagher had a bit of fun with the Jekyll-Hyde association. John Kelin, in a blog post, noted that: In a published review of The Two Assassins, Sylvia Meagher noted that the letters in the name "Renatus Hartogs" could themselves be re-arranged to these phrases: "Trash outrages," and "Strange Authors." Meagher dreamed up a third anagram, "Thor's Great Anus." Her editor deleted it.

One of the crazier stories to come out of the so-called Garrison investigation was that of Slidin' Clyde Johnson. He was a fringe candidate running to be Governor of Louisiana. He claimed that he met Clay Shaw, who was using the pseudonym of Alton Bernard, in a hotel room in Baton Rouge. There were two other men in the room - Jack Ruby and Lee Harvey Oswald, and 'Alton Bernard' gave envelopes of cash to Oswald, Ruby and Johnson. It was part of a ridiculous scheme to lure Kennedy to the south. Sound far-fetched? I tell this story in Chapter 13 of my book, On The Trail of Delusion - Jim Garrison: The Great Accuser. Jim Garrison believed the story and actually listed Clyde Johnson's meeting with Ruby, Shaw and Oswald in a list of overt acts during the jury selection of the Shaw trial. Mysteriously, the overt act vanished, when the trial actually started. The meeting was supposedly on September 3, 1963 and so the Shaw defense team needed to determine the whereabouts of Jack Ruby. Here is a letter that Hugh Aynesworth, a reporter for Newsweek, sent to Shaw's attorney. Note the comments on Abraham Zapruder. And so Clay Shaw's defense team got in touch with Eva Grant - they were interested in more information on Jack Ruby and in the possibility she would testify for Shaw. Here is her reply: Edward Wegman wrote back: Here is her reply: Since Garrison dropped the overt act of the supposed meeting of Shaw, Oswald and Ruby, there was no need for Grant to testify or to prove that Ruby was not in Baton Rouge on September 3rd. Interestingly, many conspiracy theorists still believe the story of Clyde Johnson, although he is not mentioned in Garrison's book On The Trail of The Assassins.

Well, here is yet another ridiculous Garrison investigative memo. Christopher Blake was the same "type" as Clay Shaw? What on earth does that mean? The lady doctor in question was Dr. Mary Sherman who was murdered in 1964. Here's another memo that tries to tie Clay Shaw with another 'homosexual' crime. Perry Russo was interviewed by Shaw's lawyers on January 26, 1971, "Russo said also that the D.A.'s office was making every effort to pin two murder charges on Shaw. Those being the killing of a 14 or 15-year-old boy by the name of Jimmy Rupp and the killing of Dr. [Mary] Sherman on St. Charles Avenue. He said that both of these people belonged to a sex club, and said that at one point the question was asked by someone in the D.A.'s office 'Do we have enough evidence to convict Shaw on these cases?'"

About two weeks after Garrison received the second anonymous letter (see my earlier post with the two anonymous letters), a shadowy figure from Seattle, Bob Lavender contacted Garrison's office and investigator Bill Boxley was sent to San Francisco to interview him. A picture of Bob Lavender released by the HSCA. Lavender revealed the secret of the JFK assassination. Here is Boxley's memo: Let me clarify the beginning of the last paragraph. It reads "Lavender who is approximately 27 or 28 years of age, stand about 6'2" of 3" and weighs approximately 190 pounds, bears a remarkable facial...." Let me clarify the bottom of the second to last paragraph. It reads, "....to New Orleans and Dallas, that he made a number of trips with Beckham to the Roosevelt Hotel in New Orleans for meetings. He states that Crisman has described himself...." Quite the story! Boxley wasn't fooled. He had "the distinct feeling that Lavender was on stage reiterating a story which he had been encouraged to tell us." At some point, Garrison wrote on one version of this memo that "this is Boxley speaking here. The discreditation line is SOP [standard operating procedure] for him." Boxley wrote it should all "be taken with a generous portion of salt" because no one would leave large amounts of money to someone like Beckham. Beckham was a notorious con man, and I will be postings lots more on him. Garrison disagreed with Boxley's comment, saying his remark was a "gratuitous observation" and complained that the original Crisman file "departed with Boxley." If you read my book, On The Trail of Delusion - Jim Garrison: The Great Accuser, you will se that Garrison's staff convinced him that Boxley was a CIA plant. By the way, Fred Crisman testified before the New Orleans grand jury in November 1968. He was asked about Bob Lavender: There's a whole lot more to this story. But, Lavender convinced Garrison that Fred Crisman and Thomas Beckham were suspects of the highest order.

In June 2019 I went to Hood College in Frederick, MD to go through the Sylvia Meagher Archives. The are housed in the same room as the Harold Weisberg Archives, and so it gave me a chance to go through both. I should add that the papers of Raymond Marcus and Hal Verb are also there. Most, if not all, of the Weisberg material is also online, and I encourage everybody to explore this tremendous website. Harold Weisberg was an inveterate letter-writer and his letters provide us with an insight into his character, as well as providing us with some very interesting stories. Weisberg was prickly, egotistical, angry, and was also a notoriously bad writer. He wasn't a great typist either - although his wife was often called to retype and clean up his prose. Weisberg made the trek to New Orleans to help out Jim Garrison. Over time, Weisberg's opinion of Garrison changed. When Oliver Stone came on the scene to make his film JFK, Weisberg was very upset that he licensed Garrison's On The Trail of The Assassins and Jim Marrs' Crossfire. And, so he wrote Stone with his concerns. Here is Weisberg's February 8. 1991 letter to Oliver Stone. I don't know if Oliver Stone wrote or phoned Weisberg. I doubt it. Here is Weisberg's next letter to Oliver Stone:

Fletcher Prouty had a history of crackpot relationships: he consulted for the cult-like Lyndon LaRouche organization, he advised the lawyers working for the Church of Scientology, and he was a speaker at the 1990 Convention of the Liberty Lobby, a far-right organization whose founder, Willis Carto, believed that the Jews were “public enemy number one.” Prouty not only appeared on their radio program Radio Free America ten times, he was also an advisory board member of their Populist Action Committee, which had been formed to support a variety of bigoted candidates for public office. The Institute for Historical Review, a Carto organization that denied the Holocaust, republished Prouty’s 1973 book, The Secret Team: The CIA and Its Allies in Control of the United States and the World in 1991. According to Edward Jay Epstein, a long-time JFK researcher, “When the Liberty Lobby held its annual Board of Policy convention in 1991, he [Prouty] presented a special seminar, ‘Who is the Enemy?’ which blamed the high price of oil on a systematic plot of a cabal to shut down oil pipelines deliberately in the Middle East. ‘Why?’ he asked and explained to the seminar: ‘Because of the Israelis. That is their business on behalf of the oil companies. That’s why they get $3 billion a year from the U.S. taxpayer.’” In a private letter, Prouty elaborated and said that “major pipelines from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq and others are dry because of Israeli threats and unrest.” Here is a report sent to Oliver Stone about Carto and his organizations. Stone was also sent this article from The Guardian: None of this mattered to Oliver Stone. Robert San Anson wrote a history of the making of the film JFK in Esquire magazine, and he recounts that when Prouty was asked about Carto’s belief that the Holocaust never happened, he replied that “I’m no authority in that area.” He quotes a Stone assistant saying, “If this gets out, Oliver is going to look like the biggest dope of all time.” In July 1991, Jane Rusconi, Stone’s research assistant, wrote him a memo that said, “Basically, there’s no way Fletcher could be unaware of the unsavory aspects of the Liberty Lobby. The Anti-Defamation Leagues keeps a close watch on the Liberty Lobby and are very aware of Fletcher’s involvement. It could come back to haunt us if we don’t find a way to deal with this.” Stone repeatedly excused Prouty, noting in one forum that “he never made any single one anti-semitic comment” and that “he joined the Liberty Lobby late in life.” So, was Prouty antisemitic? Well, you'll have to check my book, On The Trail of Delusion, for some very interesting evidence.

James Phelan was one of the first journalists that Jim Garrison talked to about his investigation. They both flew to Las Vegas and Garrison spelled out his story. He gave Phelan two memos regarding Perry Russo, his star witness against Clay Shaw. Phelan noticed that the memo written by Assistant District Attorney Andrew Sciambra, based upon his initial interviews in Baton Rouge, did not contain the story of the party at David Ferrie's where the discussion of the assassination took place. Phelan photocopied the memos and confronted Garrison back in New Orleans. Garrison called over Sciambra who explained that he 'forgot' to put in the party. Here is a memo written by James Phelan on the discrepancies and contradictions in Perry Russo's story. There you have it. Perry Russo was Garrison's star witness - and it was on the basis of his recovered memory that Clay Shaw was arrested on March 1, 1967.

n mid-1967 Clay Shaw's legal team felt he was up against a "stacked deck." In August 1967, they learned that one of their investigators was leaking information back to Garrison. And facing them was a juggernaut: Garrison had private money for his investigation, full control of the New Orleans legal system, and the resources of local and state police on call, all with little oversight. On top of this, Shaw's spiraling costs for private investigators were eating into his nest egg, and his friends and family were scared. Who else might Garrison charge with conspiracy? His lawyers went to Washington. Nothing much happened. They then decided to send a lengthy civil rights complaint to John Doar, assistant attorney general in the DOJ's Civil Rights Division. Here is their complaint: They didn't hear back and sent the following letter: The Department of Justice never took action on Shaw's civil rights complaint, and Shaw's attorneys then turned to the courts. They were bitterly disappointed that nobody came to help them. You can read more about this in my book On The Trail of Delusion in the Conclusion.

If you manage to get to the National Archives in Maryland, you can actually go through the papers of Clay Shaw. There are 23 boxes of material, and you can click here to see the complete listing. I was quite excited when I found an entire file of Permindex material. A lot of it has faded over time - and so, I have tried to do my best to make it more readable. Here is the actual flyer from Permindex, which was a business venture created to start a world trade center in Basle, Switzerland. They had trouble raising enough capital in Basle and moved the venture to Rome. Ultimately, the organization could not find enough tenants and they closed in 1962. Here is a timeline of Shaw's activities regarding Permindex. Here is Clay Shaw's appointment to the board. Here is that letter from the Chairman of the Board. Here is a telegram from Clay Shaw accepting membership in the Board of Directors. Shaw asked the Italian Trade Commissioner to report back on the CMC. Here is that report. Here is a letter from a friend of Clay Shaw about working for Permindex. Clay Shaw's reply. The CMC was hoping that Shaw would help in finding prospective tenants. Another letter hoping that Shaw would help find tenants. Some people wrote Clay Shaw about the CMC. And, here is Clay Shaw's reply. As you can see from the above letters, Shaw did not know much about the day-to-day activities of the CMC. He never attended a Board meeting and he never went to Rome to visit the operations. All in all a pretty boring story. For the complete story of Permindex/CMC, please read my book, On The Trail of Delusion - Jim Garrison: The Great Accuser.

Today is the 57th anniversary of the JFK assassination. There will be articles, TV shows, blog posts (like this one) and tweets about his life, and his death. There will be arguments about conspiracy theories and whether Oswald was the lone gunman. And, there will be people bemoaning the fact that there are more JFK assassination documents to be released. There are two things we should do today. First, take some time to remember JFK, his life and his Presidency. JFK brought hope to many people within the United States and to many people around the world. It was a time for optimism. Boy, have times changed. Debates about the assassination have also changed. There was a time when it was all about the evidence - in particular the 26 volumes of exhibits and testimony of the Warren Commission. But, since the advent of postmodernism in the 1980s, there, are now claims that every piece of evidence has been altered, faked, or planted. How on earth can we even have a discussion under these circumstances? I wrote about this in 1994 with my essay, "A Conspiracy Too Big: Intellectual Dishonesty in the JFK Assassination." I wrote: The HSCA addressed many of the issues raised by the critics in the sixties. Since then, the literature has taken on a disturbing tone -- one that rejects any piece of evidence contrary to findings of conspiracy.[4] If the autopsy X-rays and photos show evidence of a single head- shot from the rear, well, they must be fakes. [5] If the wounds on Kennedy's body are consistent with a single-gunman, well, the body must have been altered. [6] If the neutron activation analysis shows the single- bullet theory to be correct, well, the evidence has been tampered with. [7] And, if you do not like the conclusions of a professional panel, well, they must have ties to the government. [8] One could go on and on. This is extremely dangerous. "This development is exactly opposite to the legitimate process of theory-building and testing. In the clash between evidence and theories, theories have to be discarded. It's true that evidence is often weak and open to multiple interpretations, but to argue that evidence is fraudulent is to undermine the possibility that any theory might turn out to be "true". . . To argue in such a style is to cause the collapse of the entire empirical edifice of assassinology. However weak, evidence could at least refute theories; now the evidence can't even do that."[9] We can thank Jim Garrison for some of this. He manufactured evidence when he couldn't find it. And, most Warren Commission critics went along with him. There were notable exceptions like Sylvia Meagher, David Lifton, and Paul Hoch. Harold Weisberg eventually saw the light, and Anthony Summers became increasingly skeptical of Garrison. I've published some of Meagher's memos which indicated she was most concerned about how the public would look at her fellow critics after Garrison. And, Jim Garrison went way beyond manufacturing evidence. He intimidated and bribed witnesses. His reckless behavior ruined lives and harmed reputations. Putting a conspiracy theorist into power proved to be toxic. So, perhaps we can also take some time to remember the people who were bowled over by the Garrison steamroller. As we all know, one of the greatest miscarriages of American jurisprudence occurred on March 1, 1967 when a gay man in New Orleans, Clay Shaw, was charged with conspiracy to assassinate JFK. Garrison had no evidence to support the charge other than the recollections of a witness who had been interviewed after being injected with sodium pentothal, a so-called truth serum, and then questioned three times under hypnosis. His recovered memory – that he had been at a party where participants had loosely discussed JFK’s murder – was enough to ruin Shaw’s life. Shaw was acquitted two years later, but Garrison then charged him with perjury, and it took another two years for that charge to be quashed. Shortly afterward, Shaw died of cancer, ruthlessly deprived of not only the best years of retirement but most of his savings too. Garrison did not stop at Clay Shaw. Ten months after he charged Shaw, he indicted a Christian radio promoter, Edgar Eugene Bradley, with conspiracy without any indication of how or if the two conspiracies were linked. Garrison staffer Tom Bethell asked, “Had two entirely separate gangs opened fire simultaneously in Dealey Plaza?” Garrison tried to have him extradited from California to face charges, but when he couldn’t produce any evidence tying him to a conspiracy, Governor Ronald Reagan refused the request. The damage had been done – Bradley was all over the news as a co-conspirator, and his life was never the same. He also targeted three anti-Castro activists in New Orleans. Sergio Arcacha Smith, who had moved to Dallas, was hounded by Garrison’s men and he feared for the safety of his children. He lost his job when his story hit the newspapers. Carlos Bringuier stood up to Garrison and even took a lie detector test. But his wife was so worried about his possible arrest that she suffered a miscarriage. Carlos Quiroga was threatened with arrest unless he took a lie detector test. Then he was intimidated with threats of incarceration if he did not change his story. A major Garrison witness, in a drunken stupor, threatened his life. Kerry Thornley, a Marine buddy of Lee Harvey Oswald, was indicted for perjury and a warrant was issued for his arrest. He faced a felony charge and he was put in jail until he posted a $3,000 bond. It took him years to get the charges dropped. And, there was one forgotten victim, Louis Bloomfield, a corporate lawyer from Canada. A communist-controlled Italian newspaper, Paese Sera, charged he was the leading shareholder of a company in Rome, CMC, that was really a CIA front organization funding right-wing extremists.. Clay Shaw was on the board of the CMC, although he never attended any board meetings. The articles traveled through the communist press and ultimately found their way into western newspapers and magazines. There was no truth to the charges - and this was proven by his papers which are housed in Ottawa. In 1967, Bloomfield wrote the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) because he feared for his physical safety after accusations that he ran an assassination bureau surfaced in a Lyndon LaRouche publication. To this day, his biography is still polluted by accusations of conspiracy. Here is a picture from a Lyndon LaRouche publication. Even in death, Shaw was still hounded. Oliver Stone’s film JFK made him the heart of a conspiracy. Stone hired heartthrob Kevin Costner to play a heroic Jim Garrison and Tommy Lee Jones a villainous Clay Shaw. The film also made a huge deal out of Shaw’s homosexuality - a gay rights group said JFK was “as homophobic as films get.” And, then there is the story of Larry Crafard, a young man who helped managed Jack Ruby's strip club. Journalist Ron Rosenbaum interviewed Garrison in the early 1970s and asked him if he would name the gunmen. Garrison said there were four gunmen, and he actually gave Rosenbaum a name - Larry Crafard. Rosenbaum did not include his name in his article because might have still been alive. In the 1980s, Crafard was mentioned in book about the mob and the assassination. His wife then became paranoid, their marriage broke up, and he lost his job. He died in 2011. So, on this anniversary of JFK’s assassination, let’s commemorate his life. And, please, my advice to everybody - please don’t bring your conspiracy theories to the office.

How on earth could Oliver Stone fall for this story? Tucked into the back of the book, The Oliver Stone Experience by Matt Zoller Seitz, is this little gem: This all sounds like an hallucination, no? Not to Oliver Stone, who thought it "makes a lot of sense." Stone marveled that "his memory of it was so technical, filled with military jargon, details with radio communications right after the shots." The clincher for Stone? The man was a Buddhist and "he thought I was an honest man."

The story of Louis Bloomfield is one that few people know anything about. He was a great man, and unfortunately his biography has been marred by conspiracy nonsense. Here is my article for the Toronto Sun. Here is a picture of Bloomfield from a Lyndon LaRouche publication which accused him of being part of an assassination bureau. In reality, Bloomfield raised a lot of money for Montreal hospitals, started the World Wildlife Fund of Canada, and was deeply involved in saving lives via St. John's Ambulance.