Here is an article from the New Orleans Times-Picayune from February 19, 1973: Previous Relevant Blog Posts Clay Shaw's Journal His preamble about Jim Garrison Clay Shaw's Journal - His Arrest Jim Garrison asks Clay Shaw to take truth serum or a lie detector test Clay Shaw's Journal - After His Arrest Shaw's friends are shocked at his arrest. Clay Shaw's Journal, March 4 - 7, 1967 The reality of what Clay Shaw is up against starts to kick in. Clay Shaw's Journal, March 8 - 11, 1967 Just taking a car ride can be hazardous - Shaw is not allowed to leave New Orleans Parish without permission from Garrison's office.

The three tramps have been a favorite topic for conspiracy theorists for decades. Jim Garrison was no exception. And in September 1968 in a discussion with a few of his investigators and some buffs, the topics of the tramps came up . Here is a photo that conspiracy buff Richard E. Sprague found interesting: The escorting police officer, on the right, is Marvin Wise. Here is a close-up of his face: What exactly is in his ear? Richard Sprague printed that photograph (Exhibit 2) in an article in the May 1970 edition of Computers and Automation. It was one of four tramp photos and here is his caption : Marvin Wise was interviewed by the HSCA: (courtesy of Dennis Moricet) Wise had an ear infection and he had cotton in his ear. Here is an excerpt from the transcript of the conference Jim Garrison convened in New Orleans conference in September of 1968 : Sprague - Richard E. Sprague, assassination buff and a photography expert Turner - William Turner, ex-FBI agent, writer for Ramparts Magazine, and Garrison investigator Boxley - Bill Boxley, Garrison investigator Fensterwald - Bernard Fensterwald, lawyer who founded the private Committee To Investigate Assassinations Sprague : You said the guy had a hearing aid or a hearing device in his ear. Turner : Either one. He has a plug in his ear; just like the police officer in that picture. Sprague : Did you see my blow-up? Boxley : I think that the blow-up is terrific. That's something Dallas was not using at that time, man-to-man communications. Turner : They'll catch on to that about 1990. Boxley : That's direct control to Dealey Plaza. That's all that could be. Fensterwald : Does anybody have any idea who the 3 bums were? Turner : But we don't know who the police officer is, do we? Sprague : Harkness is the guy in the back. Turner : Yeah but who is this guy? Sprague : Boy, if we knew who he was, we'd have it. You can almost see the name on his badge. Boxley : It would be a phony anyway. Probably some name he's rented. Garrison : Probably it says "unidentified." Boxley : He's got on loafers. Garrison : Loafers? He sure has. How is that possible? Did you see this? I've never seen a police officer with loafers in my life. Boxley : He ain't no police officer. Garrison : What is this thing in his ear. I see something but I can't quite make out the form. Boxley : Here's the shadow that he's casting and it comes out here. Sprague : Got a wire going down his collar. Fensterwald : Has anybody been able to identify the 3 bums? Garrison : No. They only speak of 1 bum and they cloud it by jumping to the group investigator., you see. Every time you encounter 1 bum -- Lony whatever his name is -- if you see it's a way of getting out mentioning these two. Turner : No. David Belin is talking to a police officer Harkness and Harkness said there were 3 of them. Garrison : Bums though. FL : Could one of them be Bradley, or not? Turner : Yeah. I'd swear that's Bradley. Turner : This is a beauty. Boxley : I think two of them anyway are the guns of the operation. Turner : This guy looks like one of those para-military types -- you know a kid who had been in the special service or something like that. Sprague is wrong that the officer in the back is Harkness. The other officer was Billy Bass. They talk of Bradley being one of the tramps. They are referring to Edgar Eugene Bradley, whom Garrison also charged with conspiring to kill JFK. There was no evidence against him, and Ronald Reagan refused his extradition to New Orleans. Years later, Garrison apologized to Bradley and blamed his staff for the conspiracy charges. You can read the whole story in my book, On The Trail of Delusion - Jim Garrison: The Great Accuser . Previous Blog Posts About the Three Tramps The Three Tramps Did Leander D'avy see Oswald with the Three Tramps? Was Fred Crisman one of JFK's Assassins?

The $64 challenge still stands: When Clay Shaw was arrested, what serious evidence did Jim Garrison have that he conspired to kill JFK? Jim Garrison himself could not meet the challenge. A few days I ago I posted an excerpt from Clay Shaw's journal. Before Shaw was arrested, Jim Garrison demanded that Shaw take either a lie detector test or truth serum. Shaw accepted but only if he was given one day to rest and provided his lawyers could "edit the questions to be sure that they were relevant to the inquiry." Garrison turned down his offer and immediately arrested Shaw. Of course to Jim Garrison, "certain areas" of Shaw's "private life" were entirely relevant to the inquiry. After all, he was quickly coming to the conclusion that homosexuality was the key to the conspiracy. You can read more about this here , and in my series on an article in the German magazine Quick . James DiEugenio left this message on Facebook : "His lawyers refused the requests Garrison made about a polygraph and other tests. Which in light of what we now know about Shaw, he surely would have flunked: his Bertrand alias, his friendship with Ferrie, his employment by the CIA. The stuff about his private life is more of Shaw's bunk since JG never went there. Its only there to cover up his real reasons." So here is my question to Mr. DiEugenio. At the moment that Garrison demanded a lie detector test of Clay Shaw, what serious evidence did he have that Shaw had conspired to kill JFK? At the time Shaw was arrested, Garrison had little evidence that he was Clay Bertrand, little evidence that he was friends with David Ferrie, and no evidence that Shaw was employed by the CIA. The only 'evidence' pointing to Clay Shaw came from Perry Russo, and the claim that he witnessed a discussion with Shaw at Ferrie's house about the assassination. However, Perry Russo was hardly a reliable witness. Remember that when first interviewed in Baton Rouge, Russo said nothing about Clay Shaw, Clay Bertrand, Lee Harvey Oswald, or a party where the assassination was discussed . This was confirmed by Matt Herron as recorded in a memo written by Tom Bethell. In Perry Russo's own words, learn about how Garrison's investigators implanted a false memory about conspiracy. The $64 challenge is open to anybody.

M.S. Arnoni was the editor of The Minority of One , a small, independent left-wing journal that was published monthly in the 1960s. The JFK assassination was an important topic in the journal and Sylvia Meagher was a regular contributor. Both Arnoni and Meagher took a dim view of Jim Garrison, and here is an unsigned article from the October 1967 issue that was written by Arnoni: Jim Garrison sent a reply to Arnoni: Garrison refers to the Ruby code - here is a blog post about Jim Garrison, the Cryptologist. Sylvia Meagher wrote Arnoni a letter in response: There were several letters to the editor regarding Arnoni's article: Sylvia Meagher sent this letter to Arnoni regarding the letters to the editor: Arnoni sent a copy of his article to Irvin Dymond, the trial lawyer for Clay Shaw: Irvin Dymond replied: Dymond made some important points about the issues facing Clay Shaw's defense team. Here is another blog post with a memo written by Irvin Dymond on the difficulties of defending Clay Shaw. There was no discovery in the Louisiana courts in the 1960s and Clay Shaw had to spend a lot of money on detectives to run down every lead they would find out about. Previous Posts about Sylvia Meagher Sylvia Meagher and Jim Garrison, Part One Meagher's letter to Clay Shaw and his reply. Sylvia Meagher and Jim Garrison, Part Two An unpublished Sylvia Meagher memo on the Shaw trial. Sylvia Meagher and Jim Garrison, Part Three Another unpublished Sylvia Meagher memo on Garrison and the Warren Commission Critics. Sylvia Meagher's Reaction to the Verdict in the Clay Shaw Trial Two letters from Sylvia Meagher to Harold Weisberg and Meagher's review of Paris Flammonde's The Kennedy Conspiracy . Sylvia Meagher Congratulates Clay Shaw on His Acquittal A letter from Sylvia Meagher to Clay Shaw. Kerry Thornley Writes Sylvia Meagher A Thornley letter to Meagher and her reply. Two Letters to Jim Garrison about A Heritage of Stone Sylvia Meagher and Jim Phelan write letters to Garrison. Garrison's Playboy Interview - What Couldn't Be Printed This blog post includes Sylvia Meagher's letter to Playboy Magazine about their interview with Jim Garrison.

David Chandler was a stringer for Life Magazine, and knew Garrison quite well. In fact, Garrison was the best man at his wedding. Chandler was in Garrison's office quite often in the early part of his investigation. That all changed after he reported on organized crime in New Orleans. He testified at the perjury trial of Dean Andrews : New Orleans States-Item, August 9, 1967 David Chandler was also interviewed by James Kirkwood for his book American Grotesque. Here is an excerpt from that unpublished interview: Kirkwood : Were you around him at all in the early part of this thing? Chandler : I was around from the -- best I've been able to pin down is -- any sort of terminal date for starting this thing -- was November 25 of '66. I think that's the date. Whatever the date is, I think it's the 25th, it's the date on which he issued the instructions to his staff. For my purposes I count that as the beginning. So from that evening through December the 22, I was in almost daily contact with him on the case ... They broke off at that point because (Trish and I) ... going down to Guatemala. And shortly after we came back is when I got involved in -- with asking these questions about bribery in his office. I didn't have any contact with him after that. Kirkwood : What was he like then, at the early part? Chandler : Seemed mad. He was -- well, it's in this early part he first comes up with the Ferrie business. Kirkwood : From the original '63 arrest. Chandler : Yes, And the mug shot, and physically -- deterioration, there seemed to be deterioration from when I'd just seen him last, which was about three or four months prior, September of '66. And he'd put on more weight, his nails were black -- which in his situation was rather striking. Because he used to be fairly well groomed ... drinking -- I've never seen that before, he put in the refrigerator in his office ... Sego -- S E G O, it's a Metrecal, sort of, ... and ... physical differences at the time. ... Kirkwood : Well now, how did -- he first got wind of Clay Shaw through -- in the meantime then someone must have pointed up the Dean Andrews -- Chandler : No, I subsequently learned from Dean Andrews that Garrison had been talking with him casually on the subject, as early as October. And intensively in the middle part of November. And that's where he got onto the Clay Bertrand theory, and those other names. That Andrews said he made up. And it is in the course of Garrison's cataloguing Oswald's connection in New Orleans -- that he came onto Clay Shaw's name and ... the connection, all that business. At the time he was also interested -- no, he became interested ... coffee company in January. Shaw almost immediately he figured was part of it, because Oswald had demonstrated in front of the building and he had this syllogistic reasoning about Bertrand = Shaw. Kirkwood : Did anybody ask him early on about --- if someone wanted to use an alias ... why anyone would use their first name? Which was unusual. I mean Clay is not a usual first name like Joe or Fred. Chandler : I don't think so, because my instructions from Billings at the time were to just let Garrison go along and at least I didn't nor Billings nor anyone else in my presence ever subjected him to any sort of critical questions. At that period. So when he came up with the Shaw business, I just laughed. It was embarrassing, it was so idiotic. I wasn't quite sure that he was serious. Jim Garrison had no good reason to suspect Clay Shaw was Clay Bertrand. But that didn't stop him. Garrison also had no serious evidence that Clay Shaw was a conspirator in the JFK assassination before he was arrested. Take the $64 challenge : Anybody up for the challenge? Please feel free to email me your answer - what serious evidence did Garrison have, at the time Shaw was arrested, that he had conspired with anybody to kill JFK?

In 1982, Jim Garrison sent the first five chapters of his new book on the JFK assassination, The Execution , to McGraw-Hill. He wanted to launch it in November 1983 to commemorate the twentieth anniversary of the assassination. The book was rejected a few weeks later in October 1982. Garrison then rewrote the book, renamed A Farewell to Justice , and it was also met with rejection by a variety of publishers. When Garrison told conspiracy radio host Ted Gandolfo about his book, he started getting letters from would-be purchasers. He sent back form letters, claiming that the book companies were "fearful of the consequences from the federal government of publishing the full truth" about the assassination. He complained that "CIA disinformation machinery" was at work blaming organized crime and Castro for JFK's murder and that there were "many 'authors' who serve as willing prostitutes for the Agency's disinformation operation." You can see the outline for Garrison's book here. Here is the letter that Garrison sent to researcher Louis Sproesser: Paul Hoch noticed all of this and wrote about Garrison's letter in his Echoes of Conspiracy newsletter (Volume 8, #1) : In October 1985, Garrison told Ted Gandolfo that he was working on a new book, entitled "A Farewell to Justice." He said that "there is no question in my mind that it is the absolute and ultimate truth down to the last detail about the Kennedy assassination," but that he can not get a publisher "because they are controlled by the CIA." (This is from the first issue of Gandolfo's newsletter, "Assassination U.S.A." Write him at 1214 First Ave., NYC 10021, or ask me for information.) Garrison sent a long letter to Louis Sproesser, a buff who inquired about this book. [#9, 30 Dec 85, 3 pp.] The book is "completed" and being considered by a publisher. Garrison has been working on it for four years. Garrison's rhetoric has not softened over the years, and I'll be very surprised if his critical attention to the facts has improved. Judge Garrison asserts (on Court of Appeal stationery) that "Anyone who wishes to understand the assassination, must appreciate at the outset that the deep involvement of the Agency in the President's assassination requires that it give the maximum reinforcement to the two major false sponsors which it has created: Organized Crime and Fidel Castro.... If the author [of a book] so much as infers that Organized Crime or Castro were behind what so plainly was an Agency project ... then one has in his hand the typical product of one of the Agency's stable of hungry scribes." Garrison also disputes allegations that Organized Crime is behind him. "While I lay no pretense to being the epitome of virtue, with regard to connections with organized crime I think that you can safely place me as having approximately the same such connections as Mother Theresa and Pope Paul." Obviously the CIA's disinformation machinery is at work, he says. (Is Garrison dropping a hint about various popes? And this "Mother Theresa," usually known as "Teresa" -- is she related to Vinnie Teresa?) In particular, Garrison complains that a recent book "by a dashing Englishman (one of the Agency's more accommodating prostitutes) refers to `a secret meeting'" between Garrison and John Rosselli. "The `author's' complicity in this attempted discreditation is underscored by his having had the book published without ever troubling to learn that I have never even seen John Rosselli in my life..." The reference is to p. 498 of "Conspiracy," by Tony Summers (who is, indeed, sort of dashing), which accurately asserts that the CIA found such a meeting "particularly disturbing." Summers quotes (but does not cite) an HSCA staff report by Mark Flanagan, which in turn refers to an unpublished page of the CIA Inspector General's Report. The allegation of a Garrison-Rosselli meeting also appears on page 118 of the IG Report, which is published. (See 10 HSCA 190-1 (note 55), 4 HSCA 146-7.) As usual, there is a trace of validity in Garrison's complaint. The IG Report is obviously not an unimpeachable source, even if endorsed by an HSCA staffer. But Garrison's overall certitude doesn't seem to need much anchoring to reality. Hurt's book includes a rather good discussion of the Garrison affair, and of the subtleties of the interactions between Garrison, the real New Orleans evidence about Oswald, and the vulnerability of Clay Shaw due to his apparently irrelevant CIA links and homosexuality. If any of you want to spring to Garrison's defense, here is my $64 question: at the time he arrested Clay Shaw, what serious evidence did he have that he had in fact conspired with anyone to kill JFK? Ted Gandolfo sent a copy of the Hoch's newsletter to Jim Garrison, who then angrily replied. Note the feigned indignation, which matches the way Garrison responded to the Jerrold Footlick article . Paul Hoch wrote about the exchange of letters in his next issue of Echoes of Conspiracy : (Volume 8, #2) Ted Gandolfo sent Jim Garrison part of 8 EOC 1, and sent me a copy of Garrison's reply. (Letter of 14 Apr 86 to Gandolfo, #1986.63; quoted almost in full here.) The Judge had "nothing to say concerning [Hoch's] comments about me. Frankly, I found them to be incoherent." "I cannot guess as to the origin of his emotional hang up [sic] about me. In any case, I will not attempt to reply to him in a similar vein...." Some of my earlier research on the assassination was "quite competent. Moreover -- in view of the solid front presented by the federal government in its cover-up of the assassination -- it seems to me childlike for one assassination critic to attempt to dis-credit another publicly." (I suppose calling Tony Summers "one of the [CIA's] more accommodating prostitutes" doesn't count.) "One statement of Hoch's, however, does concern me enough to require a comment. He refers to the 'vulnerability of Clay Shaw due to his apparently irrelevant C.I.A. links and homosexuality.' Mr. Hoch should go straight to the bathroom and wash his mouth with soap." "Throughout our trial, in everything I have ever written and in every public statement I have ever made -- I never once have made any reference to Clay Shaw's alleged homosexuality. What sort of human being is Mr. Hoch that he is impelled to so gratuitously make such a reference in a newsletter which he widely distributes to the public? For all his faults or virtues, Shaw is dead and unable to defend himself from that kind of off the wall canard. No matter how virtuously Hoch might couch it, a smear is still a smear." I will let you decide if my reference (or Hurt's) was gratuitous. Out here, referring to someone's homosexuality stopped being a canard years ago; at least, it's not as serious as charging someone with conspiring to kill JFK. Does Garrison now think Shaw was involved in the conspiracy which led to JFK's death? If so, the reference to "all his faults or virtues" is remarkably mild. In 1969, J. Edgar Hoover himself called me "a smear artist", for suggesting that there may have been an undisclosed relationship between Oswald and the FBI. [#64, 2 pp.] So Garrison is in good company. As for my question in 8 EOC 1 about Garrison's case, asking what evidence he had when he arrested Shaw: The most enthusiastic answer came from Gandolfo, who said, "Didn't you know that Shaw was connected with Permindex, which just happens to be one of the most efficient assassination organizations around?? Didn't you know that Shaw was CIA?" Also, Shaw's friend Ferrie was CIA and there is Russo's testimony. That is, of course, exactly the sort of evidence which I did know about but which does not relate to my question. Gandolfo also promised to expose me as "just a CIA coverup bastard" in his newsletter, to which I do not subscribe. Does anyone out there want to send me a copy? The best semi-serious answer came from Robert Ranftel and Jim Lesar, who sent me an FBI letterhead memo dated March 2, 1967, the day after Shaw's arrest. (#65, 2 pp.) The memo, discussed in Hurt's book (p. 281), notes that one of Shaw's alleged homosexual contacts said on March 19, 1964, that Shaw was into S&M. On February 24, 1967, two sources reported that they thought Shaw had "homosexual tendencies," and two sources (possibly the same ones) indicated that Shaw was Clay Bertrand, who allegedly contacted Dean Andrews on Oswald's behalf. Unnamed FBI sources are not necessarily reliable, but in any case none of this evidence even suggests that Shaw conspired with anyone to kill JFK. Sorry, but the prize for my $64 question remains unawarded. A previous blog post published the FBI memo that Robert Ranftel and Jim Lesar sent to Paul Hoch . The two sources that Clay Shaw was Clay Bertrand was Aaron Kohn and Joseph Oster. Both did not have any specific knowledge - Kohn and Oster were just reporting what they had heard from news sources. And, I will extend Paul Hoch's $64 challenge: I regret that you found most of the comments about you in my newsletter "incoherent." Among other things, I offered my $64 question about you: at the time you arrested Clay Shaw, what serious evidence did you have that he had in fact conspired with anyone to kill JFK? None of your many supporters in the critical community have yet provided me with a good answer. Perhaps you would like to give it a try. Let me clarify: The question is about evidence known to you when you decided to arrest and charge Shaw, not evidence which was developed later. I am not asking about evidence that Shaw knew Ferrie, that he had been involved with the CIA, that he used an alias, or even that he had met Oswald. Nor am I asking about evidence that there was a conspiracy to kill Kennedy, or that Oswald, Ferrie, and/or the CIA were involved. I am well aware of the evidence relating to those questions. My question is not even about any anti-Kennedy opinions or fantasies expressed by Shaw, but about his participation in a criminal conspiracy. Anybody up for the challenge? Please feel free to email me your answer - what serious evidence did Garrison have, at the time Shaw was arrested, that he had conspired with anybody to kill JFK? Winner will receive $64, and a signed copy of On The Trail of Delusion . Tomorrow's Blog Post Did Lawrence Schiller Write the QUICK article? Previous Posts on the QUICK Article Did a Homosexual Conspiracy Kill JFK? Was the QUICK article about a homosexual conspiracy written by Jim Garrison? (Part One) Was the QUICK article about a homosexual conspiracy written by Jim Garrison? (Part Two) Was the QUICK article about a homosexual conspiracy written by Jim Garrison? (Part Three) Garrison Disavows the QUICK article Jim Garrison Does it Again - Claims Ruby and Oswald Were Homosexuals

The Girl on the Stairs blog has an interesting interview of Harold Weisberg by author Barry Ernest from 1999 : What about Garrison. What happened to him? I don’t know. I don’t know if he became crazy or just irresponsible. I think that as a district attorney he was a good district attorney. He was insensitive to what reflected on him personally. I can tell you stories about that. He got his start with what I wrote in Whitewash . He said it was Senator [Russell] Long who gave him the idea about the assassination. But Long was interviewed by George Lardner of the [ Washington ] Post and said the first time he [Long] heard about it, it was over the radio. So why does a man do this? He [Garrison] would tell a lot of people rubbish in telephone interviews and on talk shows. And he would do this while I was sitting there. I said, “Jim, why are you going through all that crazy stuff?” He said, “I’m fighting fire with fire. They’re giving me trouble, I’m giving them trouble.” I believed it too long. Great tragedy. Great tragedy. Was Clay Shaw involved? Was he Clay Bertrand? I don’t know. But from what Dean Andrews told me and without using those words, he was. But one thing you’ve got to remember: he [Andrews] is one of the most accomplished liars. But don’t underestimate him. I’ll tell you a story about Dean Andrews. I was in his office on a Saturday afternoon when the telephone rings. It was from one of his homosexual clients calling and saying that he was coming up from Texas to kill him. I won’t try to imitate his [Andrew’s] accent—nobody could—but he says to me, “When he comes to New Orleans he’ll be on my turf.” This was on a Saturday. In the papers on Monday or Tuesday, the evening paper, had a banner headline across the whole top of the page that this guy was captured in New Orleans. A remarkable coincidence that Dean knew what he was talking about. That’s impressive. ..... What was [Bill] Boxley’s role in all of this? That’s a strange story. He was recommended to Garrison and Garrison hired him as an investigator rather than as a semi-employee on the Garrison payroll that these people were contributing to. Because he had been in the CIA. And because he was bright. And he was a dedicated man; he was really dedicated to Garrison. He would have never come up with some of those memos, never even thought of it if they weren’t in support of Garrison. And he made them up. He was always very secretive about everything. I caught him lying once. And he apologized and said it was just a simple mistake. Was Garrison legitimate? He may have believed he was. I don’t know how sick he was. But he was a great disappointment. A great disappointment. Because he impressed me very much to begin with. And even when he was lying, he was very impressive. And I told you what his explanation was when I pointed out these things to him that were not true. He was a plagiarizer, I’ll tell you. There is an unknown story about Garrison. One day when Garrison was in town, I got a call that woke me up and said, “The boss wants you to come out to the house and talk with you for a while. Can you do it?” And I said, “Oh sure.” So I drove down there and he was preparing a speech. To be delivered to the press association in Los Angeles. And he wanted my opinion of it and he read something to me. The one thing he plagiarized from was the introduction to, the forward to Photographic Whitewash [1967]. And I looked at him and said, “Jim. Do you have Photographic Whitewash ?” “Wouldn’t be without it,” he said. He turned around and there it was on the wall behind him. He gives it to me. And, he plagiarized it from page 9. He said, “I knew I read it someplace.” And I said, “Well, Jim, I don’t mind your using it. I’d like you to use it. It’s a good line.” I can remember approximately what he was talking about: people thinking Johnson was behind the assassination. I said, “Jim, you’ll never have proof on that. Write it down and use it. You’re going to fluff it again.” And that’s exactly what he did. [The line Weisberg is referring to is: “No matter how pure his motive, no matter how humble his gathering of fagots (if it is humble he is), they stoke a witch’s cauldron and he is thought MacBeth.”] So, he not only plagiarized what I wrote in Whitewash on [Dean] Andrews, he plagiarized the concept of Oswald. He’d just take on things and improvise on them, and sometimes they couldn’t be recognized by the time he got finished improvising. But he made wild statements though, didn’t he? Wild as hell. Unbelievable. That did more damage than it did good? It did. It damaged everybody’s credibility. It damaged any lingering media interest in the assassination, and there wasn’t very much, but there was by some individual reporters. Didn’t he know that that was damaging? If he did, he didn’t care. He must have figured he’d get a conviction. He had no case at all. When it came to the hard evidence, he let other people worry about that. What about Clinton, Louisiana? They [witnesses in Clinton] were impressive. I met them. I spent part of the day with them. But it could not have been Shaw [supposedly identified as driving the car containing Ferrie and Oswald]. I was up in Clinton, and Oswald did in fact apply for a job there. But they have no record of it. At least they told me they had no record of it. But, it doesn’t make sense. If Shaw wanted to get him [Oswald] a job anywhere, including New Orleans, all he had to do was pick up the phone. Why would Oswald have wanted a job in Clinton, Louisiana? The story is that Clay Shaw was getting him a job. He would not have wanted one in Clinton. He would have been lost there. It’s a small town. The streets weren’t even paved when I was there. It doesn’t make sense. They’re making up a story that’s not going to be questioned; they knew that to begin with. So, they don’t worry about it. Other Blog Posts about Harold Weisberg Harold Weisberg Writes Oliver Stone The Outline for a George Lardner/Harold Weisberg Book on Jim Garrison/Oliver Stone

Here is the cover of Westward , a magazine that was published with the November 21, 1982 edition of the Dallas Times-Herald. I'll feature the complete article by Hugh Aynesworth in a future blog post. And Jim Garrison did have a portrait of Napoleon in his office: Sylvia Meagher had a different impression about Jim Garrison. Here is a letter she wrote to Kerry Thornley - note the last line:

The New Orleans States-Item endorsed Harry Connick for District Attorney in the Democratic Primary in 1969. They ran a series of front page editorials - and here is their first from October 30, 1969: Here is one of the reasons why they ran that editorial (from the same newspaper): Here is the next one from November 4, 1969: And, November 5, 1969: And, November 6, 1969: Here is a news story about the race from November 6, 1969 with some interesting information on crime in New Orleans: Garrison wouldn't debate his opponents (see above) and so he bought television spots. This is also from November 6, 1969: Garrison won the election: New Orleans States-Item, November 10, 1969 Update Here is a letter to the editor from the November 4, 1969 issue of the New Orleans States-Item about Jim Garrison: Previous Posts An Inside View of Jim Garrison's Office A transcription of a talk given by Charles Ward while running against Garrison for District Attorney. A unique inside view of the D. A.'s office.

What did Jim Garrison say or write on Rose Cherami? Here is an excerpt from his Playboy Magazine interview of October 1967: Garrison mangles the story. He claims a hospital attendant took notes of Cherami's remarks, but that is not true. There was nothing in Cherami's files about any comments on the assassination. Cherami didn't check out of the hospital - she was taken out by Lt. Francis Fruge of the Louisiana State Police. He took her to Houston to help investigate her tip on narcotics - not her supposed foreknowledge of the JFK assassination. There is no mention of Rose Cherami in A Heritage of Stone , or in On The Trail of The Assassins . I guess he reconsidered the story and felt it was not important. Or untrue. Serious researchers are also abandoning the Rose Cherami story. Anthony Summers sent an email to several researchers in March 2017: "I had not until now seen Dave's [David Reitzes] take on the Cherami matter, and am very impressed by it. As I wrote a couple of days ago [in another email], my misgivings on the subject were sufficient to drop it from the 2013 edition of my book on the case -- it had previously been only a footnote. My continuing interest in the episode had been sustained especially by Dr. Weiss' comment as to what Dr. Bowers had told him. Absent any interview with Bowers -- that I knew of - what Weiss said seemed to sustain the possibility that there was something to the overall story. Now that we have Bowers' account, that possibility seems to evaporate. I now lean towards the likelihood that - though Francis Frugé appeared forthright during his conversations with me -- he too may have fabricated or at least garbled. I think the Cherami episode should now be consigned to the junk pile - as a red herring that one could well do without." And Larry Hancock posted the following on the Education Forum: "As it turns out given the information available it seems very unlikely that Rose actually heard any more than some general gossip that was running through certain networks out of Miami. Its unlikely the two men with her had anything to do with the conspiracy and very unlikely that they were Arcacha Smith or Santana." Anthony Summers is right - it's time to put the Cherami story in the junk pile.

Few people realize just how much power Jim Garrison utilized in his position as District Attorney of the Parish of New Orleans. Milton Brener, in his superb book The Garrison Case , wrote: "By virtue of his office, the District Attorney is potentially the most powerful of the public officials domiciled at Tulane and Broad ... However, until 1962, the full extent of his strength had been convincingly impressed neither upon the community in general, nor upon the politicians themselves. It lay largely unused in the statute books. Not until the advent of Jim Garrison was the realization driven home of the large extent to which the DA's power had remained untapped." Here are a few pages from his book on the grand jury: (pages 10-12) One of Garrison's favorite maneuvers was to subpoena a person to appear before the grand jury, have them testify, and then charge them with perjury. They would then be unable to leave the jurisdiction; they would have to hire a lawyer, and they would have difficulty getting mortgages, a bank loan, or finding a job. Then right before the trial, he would drop the charges. Layton Martens and Kerry Thornley are two such examples. After Martens was indicted, he was not allowed to travel to New York to accept a position in an orchestra as a cellist. Sometimes the threat of just appearing before the grand jury was enough to get witnesses to cooperate - it's no wonder that witnesses were afraid of going before the grand jury. An example of a grand jury subpoena. Headline indicative of the feeling of grand jury power r. New Orleans Times-Picayune, January 25, 1968 One judge even went public with his concerns about the grand jury system: New Orleans Times-Picayune, December 3, 1967 Indeed, one of Garrison's investigators, Lou Ivon, told staffer Tom Bethell that : "It's a lot of power he's got. If all the DAs in the country were like Garrison, things would be in chaos." In my book, On The Trail of Delusion , I wrote: (page 6) "Last, Garrison used the grand jury system as his personal court by packing it with friends and colleagues, many of them from the New Orleans Athletic Club." Conspiracy theorist James DiEugenio took exception to that: Again, for the record, urban grand juries in Louisiana are chosen similarly to the way trial juries are chosen. They are picked randomly from voting rolls. (Louisiana Law Review, vol. 17, no. 4, p. 682) Further, Garrison did not choose or run the grand juries. He assigned that function to his deputies who ran them on a rotating basis. (1994 interview with ADA William Alford) Let's see if this is completely true. Here is an excerpt of an interview of Irvin Dymond by author James Kirkwood, in which they are talking about the Albert LaBiche grand jury which took office on March 1, 1967: Kirkwood: Oh, tell me something about the Labiche Grand Jury. That's really wild. Bill Gurvich was talking to me the other day, about the makeup of that. Dymond: I can't really speak with any degree of accuracy on it, but as I recall it, there were several members of that Grand Jury who were really buddy-buddy from the New Orleans Athletic Club. Real close ... Kirkwood: I think Gurvich said that he thought seven of them were. Dymond: I think Gurvich has looked into that aspect of it more than I have. Kirkwood: How is the Grand Jury picked here? Dymond: The Grand Jury is picked very much the same as petit juries are picked. The basic names are picked out of the jury (wheel?) by the jury commission. Then the judge who is in charge of the Grand Jury for the particular session involved interviews prospective grand jurors and chooses the ones -- Kirkwood: And HE chooses? Dymond: Correct. Kirkwood: That's wild. Now -- Dymond. Now that is not necessarily the judge who is going to try the case. It is the judge who has charge of the grand jury for that session. Kirkwood: I understand it was Haggerty, though. Dymond: I believe it was . . . check on it. Kirkwood: Now when a judge is in charge of a grand jury, how does that work with his relationship with the grand jury? Like if there's -- if there are points of law or something that they want to check, they go to him? Dymond: That's correct. And they also report their findings. In other words, if they return an indictment, they come into that judge's court and return the indictment to him. Or if they want to return a no-true bill, they would do it in that judge's court. Kirkwood: Somebody - oh, I talked to - well, like Gurvich told me when he went before the grand jury, they had two witnesses in there to disprove him before he went in. Dymond: You know, that reminds me of something in which you'll be deeply interested. You should interview Burt Klein, in regard to his experience when he went before the grand jury in connection with the Beauboeuf ... Do you want me to call Burt now and arrange that? Kirkwood: Yes, I'd love to have you ... BREAK IN TAPING Kirkwood: . . .that's wild, because then you've got a perjury thing set up for you, if you take witnesses - like two witnesses, to tell the story, and then you bring the main guy who's being called. And then, it's so tilted by the time he comes in. He's working against something. Towards the end of his book, American Grotesque , James Kirkwood sits down for an interview with Judge Haggerty, and the topic of the grand jury came up: (page 645-646) Haggerty: [On the subject of the LaBiche grand jury]: That was Judge Bagert's grand jury ... it was the LaBiche grand jury where Al LaBiche was foreman. Now that has been attacked in my court and in many other courts by the claim that Judge Bagert picked his crones [sic] from the New Orleans Athletic Club and the American Legion. Kirkwood: That's what I heard. Haggerty: I belong to the club for over eighteen years - up till two years ago. All my buddies have left there, they don't go there. They got mostly Jew people - that play cards and gin rummy and it has no attraction for me. I still belong to the American Legion, pay my dues. But you can't belong to the post unless you belong to the club. I'm going to get back into the club. It's just a political help to belong to it ... Bagert, he had about seven or eight friends of his from the New Orleans Athletic Club and the American Legion, and a lot of people were suspect that of all the people in this city, why suddenly - Well, it did look bad! William Gurvich was quoted by James Kirkwood: (page 177) "There were twelve members of the LaBiche grand jury, hand-picked by Judge Bagert. Ten were white and two were colored. Of the ten whites, seven were members of the same athletic club. The same athletic club that Jim Garrison used as a second office. All of them were Legionnaires. The two colored were not eligible to belong to either the Legion or the club. In the judge's chambers, behind his desk, is a large framed photograph, black and white, taken in the White House. In the center is John F. Kennedy, President. On one side is Judge Bagert in his Legion uniform. On the other side is Albert LaBiche, the foreman of the grand jury, in his Legion uniform. So he selected his Legion buddy as foreman." So, it's easy to see how a grand jury can be stacked - the judge in charge interviews and picks the jurors. In normal situations, that might be ok, but Garrison waged a battle against the judges in the early 1960s. They took him to court and he eventually won. Then, he started to actively campaign for certain people to win judgeships. In 1963, he campaigned for Frank Shea for an open judgeship and he won. As Milton Brener noted, "This was the first public test of Garrison's popularity. The significance was not lost on the judges, as was soon to be demonstrated." In the summer of 1964, Rudolph Becker ran for a judgeship, and Garrison actively campaigned for him. He became Garrison's second judge. In 1966, judge George Platt retired and Governor McKeithen filled the seat with Matthew Braniff, a friend of Garrison's. He became Garrison's third judge. And so, a buddy-buddy system was created, and Garrison got grand juries that were extremely amenable to his powers of persuasion. There was a definite lack of diversity in the grand jury. Walter Sheridan addressed this in two sections of one of his legal filings: And the lack of women: Aaron Kohn, head of the Metropolitan Crime Commission of New Orleans, wrote this in a memo dated May 31, 1967 about a conversation with Brigadier General Raymond Hufft and formerly the Louisiana Adjutant General of the National Guard: There are many examples of Garrison controlling the grand jury. Here is a sampling of stories from the diaries of Richard Billings and Tom Bethell: Tom Bethell entry for September 26, 1967 : "Lane then made an made an indiscreet remark about Aaron Kohn's grand jury statement -- revealing that he knew what Kohn said before the grand jury, which he is not supposed to know -- and also mentioned Billings, Garrison and he having dinner together. I'm afraid Lane sees things purely in terms of public relations, TV appearances, etc." Tom Bethell, entry for February 8, 1968 : "1969: P.S. I never saw a transcript of Marina Oswald's testimony. Of course, Grand Jury testimony is technically secret, but the fact that Garrison largely conducted his investigation in the secrecy of the Grand Jury raises some questions about the validity of his criticisms of the Warren Commission. This would be analogous to the Warren Commission having heard testimony in closed session. It seems that Marina's testimony before the Warren Commission will go down to posterity -- albeit under a great deal of criticism -- but her testimony before the "Garrison Commission" will not even see the light of day. It will be analogous to one of the Commission's classified documents, which Garrison got so much mileage out of. As far as I know, nobody has ever raised this criticism of Garrison. When is he going to publish his 26 volumes?" Tom Bethell diary, February 20, 1968 : "Papers being drawn up on Kerry Thornley, which both [Assistant D.A.] Alcock and [Assistant D.A.] Burnes refuse to sign. There is no doubt in my mind that Thornley is completely innocent of perjury and everything else." Richard Billings Journal, March 3, 1967 : Giant admits Russo is his only link now . . . But there's the girl . . . And Peterson and Carter have also made [identified] Oswald . . . He plans to arrest Andrews as an accessory . . . Then again, he may charge Dean with perjury . . . Can use Grand Jury . . . "We'll give the Grand Jury a picture, and we'll communicate to them we know about Bertrand . . . They can then ask Andrews if he knows Bertrand . . . Any statement Andrews makes to the Grand Jury that conflicts with what he told the Warren Commission is automatic perjury . . ." Richard Billings Journal, April 25, 1967 : Garrison says that his present Grand Jury is very aggressive, and not above issu[ing] subpoenas to Earl Warren or Ramsey Clark, or anyone else, for that matter. He takes great confidence from this, and is educating the Grand Jury by bringing before them members of the cult of critics, like Ray Marcus or Harold Weisberg or Mark Lane, and he even suggests the possibility of sending a subpoena to the US Attorney General, for the purpose of getting documentary evidence of the US Government's investigation of Clay Shaw, and to further determine what a government spokesman meant when he said, as reported in the New York Times, that the Department of Justice had information that Bertrand and Shaw were the same person. Jim Garrison did not like any independence from grand jury members. Here is one example (from Patricia Lambert's book, False Witness , page 271 - 272) - Garrison gets upset when a grand juror asks Perry Russo a tough question: Grand Juror : Let me see if I understand here. You heard all this and you know JFK was killed a few days later, just the way you heard it planned. Yet, you were too busy to get involved. Is that what you're saying, Mr. Russo? I mean I don't know how you could have slept at night. Mr. Garrison has explained in great detail that you are now making an almost supreme sacrifice to come forward, to stand tall against some elements in our government who have covered this whole horrible thing up, but why didn't you say something? Russo : It isn't easy to tell a secret of such great scope. And I didn't know for sure that they did it. I guess Oswald was there, at least, but Ferrie was somewhere else. Mr. Garrison told me he had four strong witnesses that could place Ferrie, Clay Shaw and Oswald together, after I heard them planning it, so maybe what I saw and heard isn't that important. I've been assured that I was just the first one who got involved with 'em. Mr. Garrison has a former Dallas police officer, a CIA guy and some others. Why don't you ask them why they didn't come forward before this too? Mark Lane, you know him, who was once a senator, has told me he uncovered information three days after the assassination that put Shaw and Ferrie in the midst of it. Why isn't anybody asking him why he kept it secret for so long? Garrison : I don't think it's called for to jump on this witness, the one man who had guts to come here and jump into all this mess. He has been hounded by the go-along press, has been followed by private detectives, has been bribed by TIME magazine to change his story and has been ridiculed for the truth he has told us. If you want to cast some blame, I think maybe you'll have ample opportunity when I get people like Walter Sheridan, James Phelan, Hugh Aynesworth and Gordon Novel up here ... and I will. All of them will be subpoenaed. And you haven't seen a criminal until you talk to Regis Kennedy and William Gurvich. I've told you all about Carlos Quiroga and Layten Martens. We have evidence tying Quiroga to Dallas, Sheridan and Phelan to taking bribe money from the CIA and a tape recording of TIME trying to bribe his witness. And you jump on him! If that's the way an honest grand jury is going to handle the most important investigation in U. S. history, I may not want to be a continuing part of this whole show. When we began, I told you I knew who the real assassins were and would haul them to justice. You gave me your assurance you would keep an open mind and work with me. So I want that cooperation or I'll go to Judge Bagert and quietly shut this whole investigation down. Perry, I have a couple of other questions to ask, then if any more jurors want answers, I'll open it up again, okay? DiEugenio also mentioned his 1994 interview with William Alford, who worked for Garrison. Yet, Alford resigned from the D. A.'s office in 1971, and one of his issues related to the grand jury: The article notes that "He said that about "one month" following the grand jury probe, he was removed as advisor to that body ... When he resigned, Alford said he learned recently that Garrison was the person who removed him (Alford) as advisor to the grand jury when it was investigating pinball gambling about one year ago." The proof of the pudding is in the eating. There are many examples of Jim Garrison's misuse of the grand jury system. Here is an excerpt from a legal filing by Walter Sheridan regarding the grand jury: I'll close this post with another excerpt from James Kirkwood's American Grotesque : (page 177) "Jim Phelan and I spoke of the LaBiche grand jury and of the dangerous homogeneity of the group. The imagination can easily picture the results of such a body, composed as it was, and activated at the same time Garrison's investigation into the death of the President was launched. James Alcock, defending charges of extreme bias against the LaBiche grand jury, said, "Whenever this jury or any grand jury is deliberating on whether or not to return an indictment, the assistant D.A.'s leave the room." This would seem to be a pure technicality, in view of the highly publicized series of long and expensive lunches provided for the LaBiche grand jury, with drinks served, and often attended by Garrison or other members of his staff. Add to this the personal friendship of many of the jurors with both the District Attorney and Judge Bernard Bagert, who presided over the preliminary hearing, and the situation was perilously cozy. As another lawyer said, "So they leave the room for five minutes - big deal!" (It is interesting that at the end of the LaBiche grand jury's six months, Garrison investigated every possibility in hopes of extending their term. This was too obvious a move even for New Orleans and he was advised to leave well enough alone.) No one knows how many indictments, if any, the LaBiche grand jury refused to hand down in connection with Garrison's investigation but the indictments they and other grand juries under Garrison's direction did bring in are legion and they netted many who failed to cooperate with the District Attorney's office or who criticized him in any way."

James DiEugenio, in his book Destiny Betrayed and in Probe Magazine (July-August, 1977), has made the claim that Jim Garrison's offices were wiretapped by the FBI. Before we get to dealing with the allegation, it is worth pointing out that Garrison long believed the FBI was listening in on his conversations. In early 1967, journalist Hugh Aynesworth visited Garrison to discuss the case . Garrison, he said, would rush off periodically and shout a chess move into the handset of the phone. Aynesworth asked him what was happening and Garrison replied, "That's the code. The Feebees [FBI} will never break it." He then told Aynesworth that he had to take out the kids to play before noon because, as he put it, "There's a torpedo from Miami after me. Everybody knows they sleep till noon." Garrison's aides told the Times-Picayune that "he often answers the telephone, F--- you, J. Edgar Hoover." In an interview with Edward Wegmann, William Gurvich remembers the code: Wegmann : Are phones tapped? Gurvich : I heard that they tapped phones but I honestly don't know of any phone that was tapped. Garrison thought his and everybody else's were tapped, you know, and we devised a code to use on the phone so the FBI wouldn't know what we were talking about, but Garrison couldn't work the code, so that was rather ineffective. Garrison then came up with a plan to raid FBI offices. Here is an excerpt of an interview with William Gurvich on WDSU-TV on June 27, 1967: Gurvich repeated the same story, under oath, at the Christenberry hearings on January 26, 1971: In fact, Garrison's offices were bugged - by Garrison himself. There are many tape recordings of meetings in Garrison's office in the National Archives. Garrison put in a bug in Perry Russo's house, and you can read the transcript of his discussions with James Phelan. Pershing Gervais was wired when he interviewed Jack Martin at the Fontainebleau Motel . Here's a short excerpt from a Perry Russo interview with William Gurvich from January 29, 1971: Note that George Eckert was an investigator in Jim Garrison's office. Here is an excerpt from a transcript of a discussion between Edward Wegmann and William Gurvich from September 16. 1967: Wegmann : Any tapes on the interrogation of Shaw on March 1st? Gurvich : I have never seen any or heard of any. They couldn't have because their system was very poor up here. They only had two rooms equipped for bugging - that was Ward's and Garrison's, and then later, they tried to do it on our lines but they were very inept. They tried to bug Ivon's telephone in his own office and they couldn't, with all of that very expensive equipment. Wegmann : Are phones tapped? Gurvich : I heard that they tapped phones but I honestly don't know of any phone that was tapped. Garrison thought his and everyone else's were tapped, you know, and we devised a code to use on the phone so the FBI wouldn't know what we were talking about, but Garrison couldn't work the code, so that was rather ineffective. Witnesses like Carlos Quiroga had their interviews taped. Harry Connick donated many audio tapes from the Garrison Investigation. Here is a partial listing: There are 135 audiocassettes at NARA from the Garrison investigation. Some of the conversations come from bugs or taps - here are just a few: Kerry Thornley and A.Sciambra phone conversation 1st Interview between P. Russo and J. Phelan Statement of J. Martin (Fountainbleau) Jack Martin Phone Conversations Tape # 2 Phone call from Cliff Hall to R. Burns re: Kelly Thornley knowing Oswald Now, let's get to the supposed bugging of Garrison's offices by the FBI. The allegation is contained in Destiny Betrayed , and in Probe Magazine (Volume 4, #5, page 16). DiEugenio reproduces this Garrison memo from 1973: Here is how DiEugenio describes this memo in Destiny Betrayed : (page 264) "In 1973, former FBI employee William Walter called Garrison's chief investigator Lou Ivon and told him about some of the subterfuges regarding the Kennedy case and Garrison... Walter first said that he did not like Garrison personally, but he thought he was sincere since he knew what went on in the New Orleans FBI office concerning the JFK case. He said messages were sent to the office that FBI reports were to be altered so that there would be no questions about the conclusions of the Warren Report. He also stated that there "were complete statements from various individuals which were eliminated by the agents." He then said that the Bureau had assigned ten to fifteen agents to follow Garrison's investigators to see what leads they were checking out." Now, I don't happen to find any of this persuasive. FBI reports form the backbone of criticism of the Warren Report. Just read Sylvia Meagher's Accessories After The Fact . The FBI more likely wanted agents to get things right before reports get sent to the Warren Commission. Interestingly, some of Garrison's staffers developed an appreciation for the FBI. Here is an excerpt from Tom Bethell's diary (entry of March 15, 1968): Also, Alcock, Ivon and Sciambra have all attested at different times to the efficiency of the FBI's investigation. It is hard to think of anyone of any relevance who was not interviewed by them within a week or two of the assassination. (In fact, most were interviewed within a few days.) This has been, I am sure, a source of great disappointment to the DA's office, although Garrison himself has never admitted as much. When all the books and articles came out criticizing the Commission, I think many people in the office thought they were exploring virgin territory when they looked into Oswald's background, because these books had tended to over-emphasize the short-comings of the FBI. They gave no indication of how extensive their investigation had been. Far from finding virgin territory, they found that the FBI had been there ahead of them every time -- three years ahead of them. I don't think anyone was expecting this. I know I wasn't; it was clear that many of the people working on the investigation, such as Louis Ivon, acquired a certain sneaking respect for the FBI, as I did too. To be honest, the FBI did not have a need to have "ten to fifteen agents to follow Garrison's investigators." New Orleans, as I have mentioned several times, was a cauldron of rumor, innuendo and gossip. Informants from Garrison's office were regularly going to the FBI, and so they had a very good idea of what was going on. Many informants were reporting information to both Garrison and the FBI - people like Joseph Oster and Betty Parrott come to mind. According to DiEugenio, Garrison was thinking of suing the U. S. government for illegal surveillance in 1977. Garrison interviewed William Walter who told him further details about what the FBI was up to: In this interview, Walter reaffirmed that Garrison's office was wired. Walter named several of the former FBI agents and one undercover agent who had been transferred to the phone company's security office, "...from which vantage point, under a longstanding arrangement between the Bureau and the phone company, he can patch anybody's phone lines into the Bureau's local cable for self-activating recordings." Walter told Garrison that the tapes were transcribed every day. "How was he so sure about this part of the operation? Because he later married the Bureau secretary who typed up the transcript." Garrison wrote a memo about the interview. DiEugenio does not publish the memo, but just a few short excerpts. Here's one: "However, Walter makes clear that this was just a thin cover to protect the Bureau and "explain" its entry into the operation. Besides the Bureau clerk typing the transcripts of my conversations in the Bureau office, recordings of my conversations were monitored in the Bureau's Technical Surveillance room and a full file was maintained in the office on my phone calls." This is the entirety of the evidence that the FBI wiretapped Garrison's phones. There are no transcripts, no memos about the wiretapping, no corroboration from other FBI employees, no nothing. So just how credible is William Walter? Well, William Walter contacted Mark Lane in 1968 after a speech. Walter told Lane that he had worked at the FBI and that he knew of a teletype received in the New Orleans office warning about an assassination attempt on November 22, 1963. It should be noted that William Walter was just 21 when Kennedy was assassinated and he had a very junior position in the FBI. Here is a good short summary of the Walter allegations. Walter was not ready to go public and Lane put a note under his doorstep: Lane then wrote out an affidavit: The next day, January 31, 1968, Garrison appeared on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson and he read the affidavit on the air. This led to a massive internal FBI investigation . This a document that William Walter typed up at Tulane University - from his notes - of the teletype he said he saw. He destroyed his notes. Here is an FBI memo from June 1968 regarding the Walter allegations: Here is more detail on Walter's probation with the FBI : I am sure that the conspiracy theorists will say that Walter was punished for what he knew. And the FBI back then, under J. Edgar Hoover, was ridiculously rule-bound and punitive. Just check the punishments given to agents who had anything to do with Oswald pre-assassination - like James Hosty. And, as the first memo says: "Walter's file does show that he was censured on two occasion ... It is felt such information would be responsive to Mr. Vinson's request whether Walter is or has been subject to mental aberration or stress." The William Walter file was put to bed, but he resurfaced in 1975 when there was a renewed interest in the JFK assassination. Hugh Aynesworth investigated the story and filed this story: The HSCA also investigated Walter's allegations, including the allegation that Oswald was an FBI informant. Here is the HSCA folder on William Walter Here is a link to Walter's testimony before the HSCA. Here are the HSCA conclusions about William Walter : What is interesting is the paragraph above about William Walter's wife. "Walter advised the committee that he did not know of anyone who could definitely substantiate his teletype allegation, although he suggested that his former wife Sharon Covert, who also worked for the FBI in New Orleans, might be able to do so. Sharon Covert, however, advised the committee that she could not support any of Walter's allegations against the FBI and that Walter had never mentioned his allegations to her during their marriage." Here is that document: Now, back to the allegation of the FBI wiretapping Garrison. To quote DiEugenio: ( Probe Magazine, op. cit.) "How was he so sure about this part of the operation? Because he later married the Bureau secretary who typed up the transcripts." Was this the same wife? Sounds like it. The time-frame works. Was it a second wife? It hardly matters since Walter provided no hard evidence, and his credibility has been found wanting. Might there be another indicator of William Walter's credibility? Well, how about this: I can’t be absolutely sure that was the same William Walter, but Walter was born on March 9, 1942 which would make him 45 years at the time of this article - and it describes him as being in his mid-40s. Not surprisingly, guess who thought there was enough credibility in Walter's story to put it into a film? Yes, you guessed it, Oliver Stone in JFK . Here is the scene (Oser is an Assistant DA): Garrison : ... There again Quigley destroyed the notes of the meeting. I think we can raise the possibility that Oswald was not only an informant but that he may have well been the original source for the telex we have dated November 17 warning of the Kennedy assassination in Dallas on November 22. Holds up the telex. We see a close-up: URGENT TO ALL SACS FROM DIRECTOR." Garrison : William Walter, the night clerk on duty here in the FBI office, gave me a copy of this. It went all over the country. Nothing was done, and the motorcade went ahead on schedule - and this wasn't even mentioned in the Warren Report! Read it, Al. Oser : (voice-over) "Threat to assassinate President Kennedy in Dallas, Texas, November 22 - 23. Information received by the Bureau has determined that a militant revolutionary group may attempt to assassinate President Kennedy on his proposed trip to Dallas, Texas, etc, etc ..." FLASHBACK TO New Orleans office in 1963. Walter the night clerk, receives the teletype, reads it, and runs it. Garrison : ( voice-over ) ... shortly after the assassination, Walter says, the telex was removed from all the files in all cities, as an obvious embarrassment to the Bureau. I believe Oswald was sending information through Hosty ...