In January 1968, police officer Aloysius Habighorst made the following statement to Garrison's investigators: Towards the end of July, 1968, for some reason, Mr. Habighorst went on television in New Orleans and told his story about Clay Shaw admitting to being Clay Bertrand. It was immediately denied by Shaw's attorney, Edward Wegmann. New Orleans Times-Picayune, July 27, 1968 The revelation caused quite a stir and a police investigation was launched. New Orleans Times-Picayune, July 28, 1968 Garrison's office then released fingerprint cards and the booking sheet of Clay Shaw to the press. Clay Shaw had signed the fingerprint cards, but the booking sheet was only signed by a sergeant and a doorman. New Orleans States-Item, July 30, 1968 Here is the booking sheet: Here are the documents as printed in the July 30, 1968 edition of the New Orleans Times-Picayune. The police investigation found no wrongdoing on the part of Habighorst. New Orleans Times-Picayune, August 6, 1968 What is amazing here is that Habighorst's appearance on TV was authorized by the District Attorney's office. Now why would Garrison do that? Was he trying to prejudice the public against Clay Shaw? We now fast forward to the start of the Clay Shaw trial, One of Shaw's defense lawyers, Sal Panzeca, interviewed police officer Jonas Butzman, who was present when Shaw was fingerprinted: On February 19, 1969, the issue of the fingerprint card came up in court. James Alcock, second in command to Garrison, asked that the jury be removed while Judge Haggerty heard oral arguments on admissibility. The first witness was Louis Ivon, Garrison's chief investigator. He had driven with Clay Shaw and his attorneys to Central Lockup where Shaw was fingerprinted. He was asked on three occasions if any of Shaw's lawyers were present during fingerprinting: "B of I" is the Bureau of Identification. Then police officer Aloysius Habighorst took the stand. Two other officers were also in the B of I room: Habighorst said that Clay Shaw signed the fingerprint card, and even reviewed it: It's hard enough to believe that Clay Shaw would tell them he was Clay Bertrand, and even harder to believe that he would review the card and not say anything. Habighorst was then asked if Shaw's lawyer was in the room: Habighorst was then asked if Wegmann was excluded: The questioning continued: And, the regulations state that lawyers are not permitted in the B of I room: Habighorst was asked if Wegmann was present when Shaw supposedly gave his alias: At this point, Judge Haggerty stepped in and asked how far away Edward Wegmann was from where Shaw was being fingerprinted. It was 30 feet. It's questionable whether Wegmann was able to hear Habighorst. Usually, the officer fingerprinting the suspect does not ask him questions. He fills out the fingerprint card with information from the arrest record. And that is why you don't need lawyers there. The next witness was Captain Louis Curole, Platoon Commander at the Central Lockup: He was asked if Edward Wegmann was in the B of I Room: Captain Curole was asked about the field arrest report: And this form is usually brought to the B of I room: Further to the point: Even Judge Haggerty understood the implication: And further: Habighorst had told the court he did not have that information and that is why he questioned Shaw. Now, the court realized that they would have to rule on Habighorst's credibility. And so Curole was asked the penultimate question: And so the information regarding aliases should have been obtained by Habighorst from the arrest record. Sergeant Jonas Butzman, whose job was to guard Clay Shaw while he was in central lockup, was then called to the stand: And, he never heard the name Bertrand: On redirect, Butzman confirmed that he was close enough to hear whatever was said by Clay Shaw: Police officer John Perkins was the next witness. While he was not in the B of I room on March 1st, he was called to stand to testify about standard procedures: And so, the standard procedure is to get the suspect to sign the fingerprint card, and then fingerprint them. And standard procedures is to send copies of the arrest record to the officer who is doing the fingerprinting. And, in his four months of service, Perkins had not seen it done differently: The next witness was Clay Shaw's attorney, Edward Wegmann: Shaw's copy of the Arrest Register Report did not include Clay Bertrand as the alias. Wegmann then testified that he was not in the B of I room: The next witness was Sal Panzeca, a lawyer who worked for Edward Wegmann. He told Garrison's men that they were not to ask questions of Shaw: And then Clay Shaw was called to the stand. Remember, the jury is still out: Shaw said he was separated from his lawyer upon entering the B of I room: Shaw was asked about the fingerprint card: Did Clay Shaw tell them he had an alias? And was Shaw asked questions when he was fingerprinted? It was finally time for Judge Haggerty to rule. More about the Escobedo case here. Alcock tried to interject but was stopped: Alcock was not happy: Alcock then moved for a mistrial, which was instantly denied. Alcock indicated he would file a bill of exception. And now I have to turn to James Kirkwood's American Grotesque for some color about the ruling: (page 359) "Alcock was completely stunned. The entire courtroom was astonished. Finally the prosecuting attorney gulped down his amazement and immediately moved for a mistrial. Judge Haggerty, in a superb piece of underplaying, merely said, "Denied." Alcock announced he would immediately file for writs of review with the Louisiana Supreme Court to reverse Judge Haggerty's ruling. Haggerty's attitude was Go ahead, file away, file all the writs you want. With that he announced court was adjourned for the day, saying if no word was received from the Supreme Court by 8:45 the next morning, he would telephone the court in Alcock's presence. If the review would not be granted by 9 A.M., Judge Haggerty declared, court would resume on schedule. Alcock's face was still a deep shade of persimmon as he strode out of the courtroom. The defense lawyers, who could not have been more pleased by this decision in their favor, were nevertheless so completely surprised they were barely able to exhibit their overt pleasure and could be seen merely wagging their heads in astonishment. The press had something to skid down the hall about this afternoon. Although many claimed this was Judge Haggerty's token gift ruling for the defense, whatever it was, he had pulled off the gesture with complete bravado. It seemed to put roses in the judge's cheeks, clear the eyes and, even, steady the hands. The Hanging Ladies, the Rolfes and the members of the District Attorney's staff all looked as if someone had broken the rules of the game." New Orleans Times-Picayune, February 20, 1969 On the next day in court, February 20, 1969, Judge Haggerty received word of the ruling from the Louisiana Supreme Court: Alcock argued with the judge that the jury should decide the issue, but Haggerty was having none of it, and he he issued his final ruling: James Kirkwood noted that about this time a limerick was making the rounds of the press section: (page 360) The judge's attack was quite vicious On an officer name Aloysius He implied that he lied And poor Alcock soon cried, "Goodbye, Al, we're sure gonna miss yez!" John MacKenzie wrote a very good article for the Washington Post about Judge Haggerty on March 16, 1969: While the article lauds Haggerty's decision on Habighorst, it is nonetheless fairly critical of Garrison; the judges in New Orleans in general; and Haggerty in particular. That didn't stop Judge Haggerty from showing off the article. The following is taken from James Kirkwood's interview of Irvin Dymond: Kirkwood: Yes. What about - oh, I know what was interesting which didn't have really anything to with the case except, when they were talking about Clay being fingerprinted and Eddie Wegmann not being in that room. Right? Well, now if he wanted him there, and if Wegmann has wanted to be with him, then that would seem to violate ... but I mean the whole -- when you had a couple of police officers who said "This is the way we do." Well Jesus, shouldn't somebody call them up and say "Hey listen, we're in trouble. The judge is ..." Dymond: (can't hear it) Kirkwood: Because - you know when I saw - when that came out, I saw a lot of people getting out of prison. Dymond: Well I think ... again, that the fingerprinting process is very rarely used in evidence in a criminal case. And it would really be immaterial unless it was an item ... evidence ... (as it was here?) Kirkwood: Because of the alias, or supposed alias. Boy, the judge was talking to me about that yesterday. He still is up in arms about ... Dymond: That son of a bitch. Kirkwood: He said in the first place ... violated the law by taking the card and making it public, and waiting that long and this and that. And he keeps saying, "I don't give a Goddam who knows I said I didn't believe him." But he said, "I don't --" Dymond: Yes, he's really - really (proud?) ... (of having said that?). Kirkwood: Well that was - you know in a way that as his big moment. And that was his token - Dymond: Contribution to the defense? Kirkwood: Contribution to the defense. One of the few. But nevertheless it was kind of a splashy one. And - you know that's funny, Irvin, he - Jack MacKenzie of the Post wrote that up and it wasn't printed until I think March 15 or 16. After the trial. But it was a whole article based on that Ash Wednesday when he said "I don't believe him, I don't care who knows it." Now, in that article, MacKenzie really took Haggerty to task. About the many times he changed, 180 degrees, and the Warren Report, and consistently ruling for the state. He said, in the article, "hard-drinking, nervous" - and this and that. Singing the songs, ruling for the state - it also made references to the fact that Garrison was known to have many judges in his pocket - all of this in the article, and the Judge takes it. Had his minute clerk and the guy who takes the stuff down tearing that office apart because he wanted to show me that. And he gave me a copy of it even. And he said, you know, "Now read this. Now don't you think this is great?" Boy, it's not great. I mean, the point that MacKenzie was making is that once he stood up and did something and just by the fact of doing it surprised everybody so much that that's why it was newsworthy. Not because the judge was doing anything particularly right. But the whole article slammed him. And ... he's got it on a piece of paper, you know, glued up there and the picture, he likes the picture very much and he wants to have that reproduced, and he called up the UPI while I was there, and he said, you know ... MacKenzie, you know, and this thing - March 15 or 16 - and I want that picture that looks serious and "That's when I took my stand," he said. "That's when I took my stand." Tickled the hell out of me. You know? That man - I don't know what he knows about law or not - he's not a bright man. Because he doesn't have what we call the governor - an eye on himself. He doesn't know the picture he presents of himself, and did to the press, and does to me. I don't think he has any idea. Dymond: No. I don't think he does either. Jim, you can't drink that much whiskey and not have it affect you. Now, how do the conspiracy books treat the Habighorst incident? Jim Garrison in On The Trail of The Assassins says that the Judge ordered the jury removed form the court (page 242) "We instructed the court attaché to call Officer Habighorst. But before Habighorst could take the stand, Judge Haggerty suddenly ordered the jury removed from the court." Of course it was James Alcock who asked the judge to remove the jury. He knew this was very sensitive evidence. James DiEugenio, in Destiny Betrayed, thinks that Haggerty made a legal error: (page 308) "As for Escobedo, New Orleans police procedure has always required that a suspect's counsel be nearby when routine booking was taking place, which was in fact the case at Shaw's booking." But, of course, the issue is not the booking, but the fingerprinting. There is no mention of Jonas Butzman's testimony in DiEugenio's book. Joan Mellen, in her book, A Farewell to Justice, writes that: (page 309) "The ruling was so capricious that some wondered whether Haggerty was affected by dislike of Habighorst's brother Norbert, a bad cop, who had held back information and was serving ten years for killing the brother of police superintendent Joseph Scheuring." Mellen might have something there - but not the way she thinks. Don Carpenter, in his book Man of a Million Fragments, writes: (page 80) "Shaw dealt not only directly with Mayor Chep Morrison; he also worked with various assistants of Morrison. One of those was W. Ray Scheuring, Executive Assistant to the mayor. In a bizarre chain of events, Scheuring was killed in early 1961 during an altercation with an off-duty policeman on the Greater New Orleans Bridge leading to the West Bank of the Mississippi River. The man was the brother of New Orleans police officer Aloysius Habighorst. Habighorst's brother was represented at trial by Irvin Dymond, who later served as Shaw's lead attorney during his criminal trials. Officer Habighorst was the booking officer when Shaw was arrested, and later testified that Shaw had freely admitted that he used the name "Clay Bertrand" as an alias, an important factor in the case against Shaw. The story emerged about a year after Shaw's arrest, and approximately a year before his trial; some have speculated that the story originated out of Officer Habighorst's hard feelings toward Irvin Dymond, who Habighorst felt did not do an adequate job defending his brother against the charges of killing Schuering." Of course, Oliver Stone couldn't help but include a scene, in his film JFK, with Habighorst and Clay Shaw. And, in the courtroom, he has Judge Haggerty instructing the jury to leave the room (like Garrison's book) and he ignored the fact that it was James Alcock who requested that the jury be removed. Garrison wasn't even in the courtroom at the time.

A good article from Nicholas Chriss from the Los Angeles Times of June 30, 1970:

There are some people who love to tell stories, and there are some people who love to believe stories. A conspiracy theorist was anxious for a good story, and Joseph Newbrough, an investigator for Guy Banister in the early 1960s, obliged. You can buy this 1979 picture of Joseph Newbrough here. Note the wig. We start with a tantalizing excerpt from James DiEugenio's book, Destiny Betrayed: (page 209) "Another witness who clearly connected Shaw and Banister was Joe Newbrough. Newbrough was one of the men in the office who Banister would use to do any of the private eye work that popped in. He told author William Davy that he recalled an instance with Ferrie being in Banister's office. Banister then called out to Newbrough and asked him to get Clay Shaw on the phone for him. So he called the Trade Mart and got through to Shaw. When he did, Banister told him to give the phone to Ferrie." Davy interviewed Newbrough in 1995. Might Newbrough have been weaving a story for Davy? He never mentioned this story before - and Newbrough was interviewed by Garrison's investigators, by the HSCA, and by PBS Frontline for their documentary on Lee Harvey Oswald. Newbrough only told that story to Davy. Here is Newbrough's December 1966 statement to Jim Garrison: Garrison writes on the top of page one that Newbrough should be interviewed again for more information. Here is his notation on the top right: His notation reads: "Get more info re automotive heavy equipment Newbrough was photographing for shipment to Cuba .... When? (confirmed by Oster).. - Any Cubans at all around." Some comments about this memo: It was written in the very early part of Garrison's investigation. There is no mention of Clay Shaw. I'm not even sure they asked. He never met Lee Harvey Oswald and he didn't believe that Ferrie had either. So, clearly he never saw Oswald in Banister's office. He says he has no faith in anything Jack Martin says. You gotta love his stories on how David Ferrie lost his hair (he suffered from alopecia). I don't know if Garrison's investigators spoke to Joseph Newbrough again, but, if they did, I doubt he had much to say. Had he told them about any phone call between Shaw and Ferrie, it would have been mentioned in a memo somewhere, and they certainly would have wanted Newbrough to testify at Shaw's trial. But, he disappears from the investigation. He's not even mentioned in Garrison's book, On The Trail of The Assassins. The House Select Committee also talked to Joseph Newbrough. Here is their outside contact report from March, 1978: Some comments: He couldn't remember the name of the bank where he had put "photographs and some negatives" in a safety deposit box. He wasn't even sure what city the bank was in. He said he "believed 'Oswald' was an agent for C.I.A. and was acting under orders." This is just his belief. He said that Jim Garrison was an "egotistical maniac." Newbrough was next interviewed in April. 1978: Some comments: Once again, Newbrough said he never saw Oswald. He believed that Banister had a file on Oswald, but he never saw it. He corroborates the police report that Banister pistol-whipped Jack Martin over phone calls. Please check this blog post for more on that incident. He says he doesn't know how Jack Martin knew about Ferrie being in Texas on the day of the assassination; but Ferrie left for Texas on the evening of November 22, 1963. Martin found out about the trip from Hardy Davis who had heard it from G. Wray Gill. In September 1978, Newbrough called the HSCA with some additional information: Joseph Newbrough was interviewed for the PBS Frontline documentary on Lee Harvey Oswald: Now this is interesting because Newbrough confirmed that the entrance to 544 Camp Street did not lead to Guy Banister's office at 531 Lafayette. One last thing about Joseph Newbrough. It comes from an FBI report discussing information from informant 1309-C, Joseph Oster, who also worked in Guy Banister's office. Mr. Oster regarded Joseph Newbrough as a "mental case." And yet, a story from Newbrough, that he told to no one else, was good enough for DiEugenio and Davy. But wait, there's more! Joan Mellen, author of A Farewell to Justice, writes that Joseph Newbrough was a CIA agent (see pages xxiii, 35, and 68). Her source is an HSCA outside contact report with Jack Martin. Here is that contact report in full: There you have it - on page six - Jack Martin says that Joseph Newbrough, and others, were CIA agents. And that is enough proof for Joan Mellen. Here is a video of Joseph Newbrough: By the way, James DiEugenio and Joan Mellen do not mention in their respective books that Joseph Newbrough was always clear that he never saw Lee Harvey Oswald in Banister's office.

James DiEugenio, in his book Destiny Betrayed, writes: (page 212) "Another very interesting record which indicates a Ruby-Oswald connection happened to be lost. On a job application form, Oswald listed the name Jack Ruby as one of three references." His source is just listed as "FBI Memorandum of 3/5/67." He certainly could have provided more information to make it easier to find the memo. Here is that memo, as provided by Malcolm Blunt; redacted copies are online: Informant 1213-S was Nestor Rodriguez, who ran a language school in New Orleans. He heard this rumor about an application form from a cameraman for WVUE-TV, Erby (not Orvie) Aucoin, We are not sure where Aucoin heard this from. We have already written about "Aura Lee." DiEugenio continues about this document: (page 212) "We know this because the information was given to an FBI agent by a mutual acquaintance who Garrison had shown this document to. This document does not exist today. And the author would be willing to wager that once the FBI found out about it, they alerted one of their plants in Garrison's office, through the likes of an intelligence asset like Hugh Aynesworth, to steal it." Yet another piece of evidence that does not exist. Monk Zelden, who was also Dean Andrews' attorney, never said a word about this s0-called application form. It's not surprising that it never materialized. Sound familiar? I recently blogged about other pieces of missing evidence cited by DiEugenio. Another FBI document sheds some light on this supposed piece of evidence: We have already blogged about the FBI and Clay Bertrand. This time the same information came from informant 1309-C, which we have already identified as Joseph Oster, who had worked for Guy Banister. Note that he received the information from "a person that is a friend of a friend of Bill Reed." The memo goes on to note that "This fourth-hand information is that Sam "Monk" Zelden, prominent New Orleans attorney, has in his possession an application, not otherwise identified, in which Oswald used as a reference Jack Ruby. NO 1309-C does not know what kind of an application or if this is even true." It's quite possible that Bill Reed told Erby Aucoin, or vice-versa. In any case, the information was either third-hand or fourth-hand. I guess fourth-hand information is good enough for James DiEugenio.

{Note that I am standing on the shoulders of giants - David Reitzes wrote a terrific article on Lawrence Meyers years ago, and Stephen Roy also did some great work on on this story.] Lawrence Meyers is one of the few people who testified before both the Warren Commission and the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA). He had been a salesperson for a sporting goods company - and had never engaged in any criminal activities and he never had a criminal record. Nor was he ever the subject of any investigations - until the assassination of JFK. And yet, many conspiracy theorists believe he is the link between Jack Ruby and David Ferrie. He also might be the connection that proves Ruby's ties to organized crime. In the early 1960s, Meyers would make frequent business trips to Dallas and he met Jack Ruby at The Carousel. They hit it off largely because they were both from Chicago and they were both Jewish. Every time Meyers was in Dallas he would look up Ruby at the club. Meyers arrived in Dallas on November 20, 1963 with Jean West (aka Jean Aase), whom he had just met a week or two earlier in Chicago. He described her as a "semi-professional hooker," (HSCA IX, page 906) and as a "rather dumb, but accommodating broad" (Warren Commission Exhibit 2267, Volume XXV) and they stayed at the Dallas Cabana Motor Hotel. On November 21, 1963, Meyers took West to The Carousel. They met Ruby there, and later on, at about midnight, Ruby went to the Cabana Hotel to have drinks with them. Meyers' brother Edward, in town for a Pepsi-Cola convention, joined them. When Ruby heard that he worked for Pepsi, he immediately wondered if they might be interested in the exercise board he was trying to push. Ruby stayed a few minutes and went back to the club. Meyers claimed he had dinner with Ruby on November 23, 1963. On Sunday, Meyers played golf and heard the news that Ruby had shot Oswald. He never contacted Ruby again, and after he flew back to Chicago, he never saw West again either. You can read his testimony before the Warren Commission here. Little did Lawrence Meyers know that he would get a second 15-minutes of fame. In January 1967, Jim Garrison received the phone records of G. Wray Gill, the lawyer for Carlos Marcello, who was also the employer of David Ferrie. Here is an excerpt from the diary of Richard Billings for January 1967: "Giant has from Gill 1962 and 1963 phone bills and thinks he knows l. d. [long distance] calls made by Ferrie . . . Some interesting calls to Texas, but most interesting is fact that bill for November 1963 is missing." Gill's secretary, Alice Guidroz, had marked off the calls made by Gill, supposedly leaving the phone calls made by David Ferrie. An aside here - Stephen Roy founds records for many of the November 1963 calls. Here is what Garrison found: Garrison's notation reads: (9/24 is date L.O. {Lee Harvey Oswald] ostensibly left N.O. for Mexico). This is the call made to Lawrence Meyers' contact in the twin marinas in Chicago (with whom Meyers left for Dallas on Nov. 20th) (See W/C documents where same number is called from Eros [sic] MFG Co - Meyers' Co - prior to trip to Dallas where Meyers meets with Ruby nightly). Note, further, that the same day our man makes call to Washington. Here is an excerpt from Warren Commission Exhibit 2350, which detailed the phone calls of Ero Manufacturing: You can see a phone call to WH 4-4970. However, it was a person to person call (as opposed to station to station), and the phone records specify that the call went to Jean Aase (misspelled Asie). A researcher going through Ferrie's phone calls wrote this memo (I am not sure who wrote this): So, you have both Lawrence Meyers and David Ferrie calling the same number in Chicago. Was this the link between David Ferrie and Jack Ruby? Garrison included Meyers in his November 1967 memo about leads: On December 24, 1967 Garrison wrote a memo titled "Organized Crime Aspects of the Assassination." He included one segment on Meyers: It doesn't appear that anybody followed up the so-called lead. But Garrison still thought this was all very suspicious. He writes in A Heritage of Stone: (page 124-125) "Here we have Ferrie, Oswald's mentor and associate in New Orleans, calling a telephone number which has a factual correlation with the patriotic nightclub owner who killed Oswald in Dallas. There is a time correlation as well. Ferrie placed the call to Chicago on the exact day Oswald left New Orleans. The owner of the Chicago telephone went to Dallas the day before the assassination with a man who then met Jack Ruby. There are millions upon millions of telephones in America. The arm of coincidence is not so long that it can be plausibly regarding as responsible for the interconnecting relationship of one Chicago telephone to David Ferrie in New Orleans and Jack Ruby in Dallas before the assassination." Garrison speculated further in On The Trail of The Assassins: (page 110) "Was Ferrie calling, perhaps, to report to some intermediary that the sheepdipping job had been completed or that "the kid is leaving New Orleans" or something of the sort?" Sheepdipping is a favorite term of Garrison's. It appears nine times in On The Trail of Assassins. It is "a term for this kind of manipulated behavior designed to create a desired image." (pages 61 - 62) It's time for a closer look at these phone calls. It's not at all clear that David Ferrie made that phone call, and it's not clear that the phone call was to Jean Aase. Stephen Roy, the biographer of David Ferrie, wrote on a newsgroup that many people in the Gill office had access to the phone. "Among those working in the office in 1963, by their own accounts, were G. Wray Gill Sr., Gilbert Bernstein, Gerard H. Schreiber, George W. Gill, Jr., Alice Guidroz, Regina Francovich, David W. Ferrie, Morris L. Brownlee, plus one other secretary and two investigators." Any one of those people could have made the phone call, and none of them were asked about it. In addition, we are relying on the memory of Alice Guidroz, three years after the fact, to determine which phone calls Gill made or didn't make. In addition, the phone call made from Gill's office was to an apartment hotel - the call went to the reception desk. There were 146 apartments in the building, and as well as several employees. There is absolutely no evidence the phone call went to Jean Aase. Of course, at the time of the phone call, Jean Aase had not yet met Lawrence Meyers. And, in 1998, researcher Peter Whitmey, who had interviewed Jean Aase, wrote on a newsgroup that that "Ms. Aase did not know David Ferrie, did not recall receiving a 15-minute phone call originating in New Orleans from Ferrie on Sept. 24, 1963, and did not know Jack Ruby before meeting him with Lawrence Meyers shortly before the assassination." Lawrence Meyers also testified before the House Select Committee on Assassinations. There is no mention of Meyers in their final report. Despite the lack of evidence that ties Ruby to Ferrie, Jim Garrison went further off the deep end in his book, On The Trail of The Assassins. He was even suspicious about Jean West's changing of her name: "...the constant changing of her name, which would confuse anyone who wanted to know more about her, confirmed for me that something about her - or her phone number - was suspicious." (page 112) Garrison realized that he "had stumbled across the use of a "message center" - a customary intelligence community device to throw off the would-be pursuer of a phone-call listing. And in this instance the message center apparently had resulted in a communication with Jack Ruby." (ibid) He got his team together to brainstorm and they figured out what was really going on. Here is the dialog of their meeting, shorn of Garrison's dramatic narrative flourishes: (page 113-114) D'alton Williams: Your message center idea looks like a probability to me. But I think the picture could be made clearer. Ruby was from Chicago, wasn't he? Garrison: Sure, and so were Jean West and Lawrence Meyers. Some of these people must have known each other. That's what makes the message center fit so well. Williams: But there's one problem. What if we're dealing with a C.I.A. message center here? David Ferrie obviously didn't have enough status to be deciding what message was going to be sent and where. Remember we're assuming this communication went right on through to Jack Ruby. Lou Ivon: Ruby wasn't that much. Frank Klein: That's not D'alton's point. He's saying that someone - like the original instigator of the message - knew what was on the schedule for Ruby. Williams: Right. So why don't we start asking ourselves who Dave Ferrie's boss was. Didn't Guy Banister used to be the head of the Chicago office of the F.B.I.? Ivon: I'll be damned. Chicago to Chicago all the way through to Chicago. Williams: Do I get a gold star for figuring out that Guy Banister probably knew Jack Ruby? Garrison: No, because Ruby left Chicago for the Air Force in the late 1940s and there's nothing to indicate that Banister knew Ruby that early. But you get a silver star. The probability is that, with their Chicago connections, they knew of some of the same people there. James Alcock: But how do we get to know for sure that our message center up there is the real thing? Garrison: I don't know. For now, all we have is a model of a message center. We'll just have to work with that. This is how Garrison's District Attorney's office worked. Or should I say, this is how the District Attorney's mind worked.

I was one of the signatories urging the release of the remaining JFK assassination documents:

A whole article of Garrison craziness from the New Orleans Times-Picayune of September 22, 1967: Here is a previous blog post about Dallas policeman Gerald Hill.

Some conspiracy theorists dispute my claim that I once believed in conspiracy. James DiEugenio writes: "The very title of Litwin’s book, I Was a Teenage JFK Conspiracy Freak, strikes this reviewer as being deliberately provocative, but at least a bit ersatz. The implication of that title would be that, at one time, the author really believed that a conspiracy killed President Kennedy. Litwin says this was so, yet somehow, he does not produce any evidence to demonstrate it was in his entire book. He notes articles and talks he gave which support the Warren Commission and ridicule the critics. (Litwin, p. 143)" I am not sure why this is so important to him, nor why he does not believe what I have written. My first article on the JFK assassination was for the November 11, 1975 issue of The Georgian, the student newspaper of the Sir George Williams Campus of Concordia University in Montreal. I was excited to learn that student programming was bringing in Rusty Rhodes to speak on the JFK assassination and I wrote this article to promote his talk. I was nineteen at the time. Please note that I did not write the headline - otherwise, I would have written killers. As you can see from the article, I was greatly influenced by Dr. Cyril Wecht. My next article on the JFK assassination was for January 9, 1976 edition of The Georgian, I was appalled by the Rusty Rhodes lecture. He showed the Zapruder film several times - in an attempt to prove the fatal head shot came from the front. But not once did he mention that the autopsy X-rays and photographs only support a shot from behind - and he never told the audience that Dr. Cyril Wecht, a leading forensic pathologist and Warren Report critic, wrote just two years earlier in Forensic Science that: "The available evidence, assuming it to be valid, gives no support to theories which postulate gunmen to the front or right-front of the Presidential car. The wound in the President's head, as evidenced in the autopsy photographs and X-rays, can only have been fired from somewhere to the rear of the President." I thought that that was intellectually dishonest and here is my article: Look, the writing is not very good and I admit that up front. It's not easy to look at your old writing. While I believed there was a conspiracy, I didn't believe it was necessary to mislead people. My next article came about five months later in a publication called People and the PURSUIT of Truth. I put the front cover of the magazine in my book I Was a Teenage JFK Conspiracy Freak, I had just turned twenty when this was published. The entire issue can be seen here. I argue that the back/throat wound of JFK was a through-and-through wound. At the time, I was in contact with Dr. Cyril Wecht, and his belief was that the bullet that traversed Kennedy's neck exited over the left side of the limousine. Robert Forman had written an article in support of that thesis, and I was trying to rebut Robert Cutler, who had disputed that. That's a typo on the second page in note 2. I know that conspiracy theorists will look at this and say I didn't even know when the head shot occurred in the Zapruder film. Yes, this is not a grand conspiracy article. But, that was my thinking at the time - I rejected the single-bullet theory, and that reflected my interest back then in the medical evidence. I found the Prouty arguments, of a massive and grand conspiracy, silly and ridiculous. My next conspiracy article was again in The Georgian in November 1977: The article was written before the acoustics evidence. There was an interim report from the HSCA which mentioned that there was testimony, I believe from one of the nurses at Parkland, that too many fragments were removed from Connally's wrist. Of course, the HSCA ended up endorsing the single-bullet theory. And that was the last thing I wrote on the Kennedy assassination until the early 1990s when I wrote my paper, "A Conspiracy Too Big." In 1978, I went to MBA school in Kingston, Ontario and I had no time for the JFK assassination. In 1983, I took a year off to go traveling and I gave away all my JFK books (I only saved Sylvia Meagher's Accessories After the Fact, and The Assassinations, an anthology co-edited by Paul Hoch) and I tossed all my correspondence with people like Cyril Wecht and Harold Weisberg. You can see a letter I wrote to Harold Weisberg and his reply here. Of course, conspiracy theorists will say this is not enough. That I wasn't enough of a conspiracy theorist to satisfy them. But then, nothing I do will satisfy them.

You gotta love this one. New Orleans States-Item from October 11, 1967:

You can read more about Michael Lesser here. Paragraph relevant to the Jim Garrison investigation: "While at Syracuse he helped form a local chapter of the Congress on Racial Equality (CORE) and actively fought housing segregation in the school dorms and surrounding community. In 1963, just before taking his oral exams for his PhD, he dropped out and went to work for CORE in Louisiana. Michael stayed with CORE for four years, eventually becoming the Mid-West Regional Field Secretary. He was jailed 11 times, the last time for three weeks under a charge of criminal anarchy, a capital offense. He left CORE when the white staff were asked to leave and moved to San Francisco during the summer of love." Lesser was arrested in Clinton, Louisiana in early August 1963: An August 14, 1963 FBI teletype has an interesting paragraph: The treatment meted out to Lesser was far different than the treatment that Oswald supposedly received in Clinton. And when we think about what really happened in Clinton, we must always remember that the essence of the story was civil rights, the right to vote, and the influence of the KKK. Here is a description of Clinton, Louisiana by Adam Fairclough from his book, Race & Democracy: The Civil Rights Struggle in Louisiana, 1915-1972: (page 301-302) Here is an FBI report about the Clinton witnesses at the Clay Shaw trial. Note that Henry Palmer was an Exalted Cyclops in the KKK and John Manchester was also in the KKK. Here is an excerpt from Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America By Ari Berman, describing the situation in 1965: (pages 44-45) For a little more flavor about what was going on, here is an excerpt from a letter that Hugh Aynesworth sent to James Kirkwood about Clinton. Aynesworth had been to Clinton right before the Clay Shaw trial: October 9, 1969 Gurvich and I drove to Clinton in his car, following a visit with a top Louisiana State Police official in Baton Rouge. We learned enough from the state police official to let us know that the whole thing was a hoax, but we decided to visit several of the witnesses anyway - in the belief that if we could talk with them, and tape record the conversation we would probably find flaws in their stories. "It's for sure they'll never be able to tell the same wacky story twice," said Gurvich. This turned out to be true. John Manchester, the town marshall, was the first witness we encountered. He was shocked that we knew what he was to testify. Manchester, a foul-talking, dirty and scruffy man who looked like the only way he could whip a man was to kick him in the groin, wouldn't comment on his testimony at first, but he kept saying', "Ain't no way that son-of-a-bitch (Oswald) coulda fired all them shots. Ain't no way." We visited with Manchester - in the Clinton Jail - for a couple of hours, until he was called away by somebody. Then we sat talking with a deputy and some of his gin buddies. From them we got the rundown on practically all the witnesses in town and in nearby Jackson. One was a hard drinker, another "couldn't find the truth, it was writ on the front of his head." Still another, was dead, having committed suicide in the Clinton jail a few months before. Mrs. Maxine Kemp lived in a nicely arranged trailer with her teenaged son. She seemed pleased to have someone to talk with. Then she told her story - not noticing the tape recorder Gurvich placed on the floor in his case. Has she really seen an application file for LHO at the Jackson State Hospital? No, she related to the tape and to us, all she knew was that she and a co-worker, Mrs. Aline Woodside, had located a folder with the name "Harvey Oswald" on it. She went on to say that applications were not kept for several years (this would have been 3 1/2 years) and that the folder she described was not in a place where applications would have been or where past records would have been filed. We never found Corrie [Collins], but it was simple to see how he had to testify to what Manchester and the other scrub-nuts wanted him. His father was simply terrified by three white men [Aynesworth, Gurvich and Kent Biffle] barging into his house after dark. In short, being a Negro in Clinton - a hot bed of red-neck and the Klan, is not much fun. First, I think John Manchester, and a State policeman Lt. Francis Fruge, put it all together. Fruge, fired by the state police, turned in bills for 75 head lights inside of a year. You can see more of Aynesworth's account in Kirkwood's book, American Grotesque, pages 220-222. And, here is an article from the Shreveport Journal of July 5, 1965: Interesting that nothing was mentioned about Oswald being in Clinton, Louisiana. John Rarick and Ned Touchstone (Editor of The Councilor) were at the rally, and they had connections to Clinton. Note their interest in tying Oswald to 'assistants' in Louisiana - and the fact that they asked that there be a reward for information. And, here is an excerpt from The Councilor, a racist newspaper out of Shreveport (and house organ of the segregationist Louisiana Citizens' Council) dated July 1975. The column on the far right reads: "Time after time, Ned Touchstone and The Councilor named Ferrie as a prime suspect in the JFK murder, We goaded him,. We challenged him to sue us or to take public issue with the accusation. He never did. Then we noted something else very strange. Ferrie was known to be involved in interstate transportation of young boys for..." The Councilor never reported that Lee Harvey Oswald or David Ferrie were ever in Clinton. We don't know the full story on Clinton. The Garrison story of the friendly treatment given to Oswald, Ferrie & Shaw in Clinton - when you consider that they were outsiders - and we know how they treated outsiders who weren't wanted - just doesn't make sense. Something else was going on. Prior Blog Posts on Clinton Was Jim Garrison Interesting in the Truth About Clinton? Was Thomas Beckham in Clinton with Shaw and Oswald? Was Jack Ruby in Clinton with Clay Shaw and David Ferrie? Why Didn't Garrison's Witnesses Come Forward Before 1967?

The C2C Journal, a Canadian publication, has just published a nice review of my book, On The Trail of Delusion - Jim Garrison: The Great Accuser. The article covers a variety of conspiracy theories and included this terrific paragraph: "For all the sense one could make of his over-the-top methods and resulting charges, and his own psychosis, Garrison’s convoluted theories could just as easily have consisted of magical incantations from the witches in Shakespeare’s Macbeth: “Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn, and cauldron bubble”. Unfortunately, the combination was applied in framing innocent men." Mark Milke also has some very nice things to say about my book: "About the only angle from Posner and similar books left to examine in even more detail was Garrison’ insidious role. Which brings us back to Litwin’s book on the New Orleans prosecutor. Litwin has done a yeoman’s work of sourcing original documents, in-person interviewing, working the ground in Dallas, Washington, D.C. and New Orleans, while adding telling details such as that Garrison once even slurred a prominent Jewish-Canadian businessman in Montreal. The 445-page book is nearly one-fourth composed of source listings, attesting to Litwin’s exhaustive work to investigate Garrison and illuminate the man’s particular combination of determination and derangement and why that matters to the JFK conspiracy industry"

Journalist Haynes Johnson spoke to Jack Martin and David Lewis in early March 1967 and this article shows the craziness of these two so-called witnesses. Here is his article from the Evening Star (Washington D.C.) of March 3, 1967: This is a new low for Martin - claiming that Ferrie mentioned Shaw. Interesting that Martin was "not sure" if Oswald had been in Banister's office. Good decision on the Evening Star not to retain Jack Martin. Johnson also mistakes Clay Shaw for Dean Andrews. Here is an earlier Haynes Johnson story from The Evening Star of February 26, 1967: I like the comment at the end, "I'll tell you about how this investigation is conducted. It's the craziest damn thing in the world." The quote was probably from Carlos Quiroga.