New Book by Fred Litwin on Garrison

[Jonathan Cohen]

41 minutes ago, Jim Harwood said:

And the B'nai B'rith was long ago implicated in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln...

You're joking, right? I hope you're really not posting such a sentence with a straight face...

[Jim Harwood]

No i am not joking Mr. Cohen,. Didnt you read the article?

[W. Tracy Parnell]

3 hours ago, Jim Harwood said:

Is this Fred Litwin the book writer? 

No.

[Jim Harwood]

13 minutes ago, W. Tracy Parnell said:

No.

Thanks Tracy. Two Fred Litwins in Toronto is too much.

[Micah Mileto]

Are we allowed to say the fact that Fred Litwin actively campaigns against gender minorities? 

Edited October 9, 2020 by Micah Mileto

[James DiEugenio]

What are you talking about Micah?

[John Kowalski]

7 hours ago, Micah Mileto said:

Are we allowed to say the fact that Fred Litwin actively campaigns against gender minorities? 

Michah:

Fred Litwin is gay.

 

[Micah Mileto]

6 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

What are you talking about Micah?

Litwin has a blog promoting trans-exclusionary-radical-femenism.

[John Kowalski]

2 minutes ago, Micah Mileto said:

Litwin has a blog promoting trans-exclusionary-radical-femenism.

Can you provide the link for his blog.

[Micah Mileto]

11 minutes ago, John Kowalski said:

Can you provide the link for his blog.

http://www.c2cjournal.ca/2016/12/not-my-rights-movement/

[Greg Doudna]

On 10/7/2020 at 7:49 PM, James DiEugenio said:

Greg keeps on prancing around the main point of my presentation. 

If all of this was innocent, as Mr Doudna clearly implies that it is, then why did Shaw lie about it all?

Above, I said he lied six times on material points. 

In other words, Shaw risked going to prison for 30 years because, according to Greg, he simply was a victim of innocent circumstance.  

He simply knew Ferrie and lied about it.

He simply knew Oswald and lied about it.

He just used the alias of Bertrand, and lied about it.

He simply worked for the CIA and lied about it.

He happened to drive up to Jackson, 100 miles north of New Orleans, where he was seen by several people, and he lied about it. 

He just happened to call Andrews and lied about it. (How ya doing Deano!  Heard you were under the weather.)

Greg completely dismisses the point I made through attorney Allard Lowenstein. From his experience, people with nothing to hide, do not hide things.

And these are not disputed today.  As I said, the ARRB did a good job in this field. Shaw did work of a covert nature with the CIA. He had a covert security clearance. Shaw was in Clinton/Jackson with Ferrie and Oswald. He did call Andrews to go to Dallas and defend Oswald. Shaw used the alias of Bertrand. <...>

I made no claim or attempt to represent your case against Clay Shaw; I only quoted your slide presentation to establish an answer to a question I asked concerning whether you personally continue, now and today, to believe in Clay Shaw's guilt, which you did not answer me (not that you had any obligation to do so). (Maybe it came across as a stupid question.)

But to address this which you bring up, on the six lies (listed above), as you are aware all of the ones except for the CIA one are disputed. The HSCA investigators judged that Ferrie and Oswald were in Clinton but that Clay Shaw was not. At least in HSCA investigators' judgment it is not obvious that Clay Shaw perjured himself there, and Clay Shaw seems to have a fairly good alibi putting him elsewhere during the time in Clinton at issue. So that is one of the six.

I have only myself intensively studied one of these, the claim that Clay Shaw called Dean Andrews to request legal assistance for Oswald, and it is plainly clear that, though someone surely did call Dean Andrews with that request, it was not Clay Shaw. One strong piece of evidence of this is that Dean Andrews said it was not Clay Shaw. Dean Andrews perjured himself but the perjury was not in the denial that it was Clay Shaw, but in the claim that he could not remember or had imagined the phone call. Perjury from Dean Andrews, yes, but not on the matter you say. The true identity of the caller to Dean Andrews for the call which DID HAPPEN, was almost certainly Clem Sehrt, a senior Mob-connected lawyer but that is not why he made the call to Dean Andrews, it was because he was a childhood friend of Marguerite Oswald and had helped her out, because of that, over the years. There is independently derived corroborating testimony both that Marguerite told of calling Clem Sehrt after her son's arrest appealing for help in getting Lee a lawyer, and from Clem Sehrt's end of it a partner of Sehrt said Clem Sehrt told of being called by someone asking for legal representation for Oswald. Clem Sehrt had helped Marguerite with Lee's enlistment in the Marines (though he falsely denied it under oath), and is the most likely identity of the LAWYER (which Clay Shaw was not) who Dean Andrews claimed had referred Oswald to him for legal help in the summer of 1963 concerning Oswald's Marine discharge appeal issue. Clem Sehrt gets a pleading phone call from longtime friend Marguerite for help for son Lee; Sehrt does what he can--phones Dean Andrews and asks him to go to Dallas to assist Lee, asking Dean Andrews (very firmly) for absolute confidentiality in this request (just as Clem Sehrt wanted nothing to do with talking about his earlier assistance in an underage Lee enlisting in the Marines, that Marguerite told of). Dean Andrews, as he privately told one or more people, knew the identity of the caller but would not say because he feared for his life if he did so. The fear was not from Clay Shaw but from the Mob with whom Clem Sehrt was associated, from the people around Marcello. Dean Andrews considered a risk or and even a conviction for perjury to be preferable to outing the identity of the caller--Clem Sehrt--because these were dangerous people. The reason why neither Sehrt nor the Mob would want Sehrt's identity disclosed as Dean Andrew's caller is because that would put all sorts of focus on Marcello as possibly involved in the JFK assassination. In fact whether or not Marcello actually was is beside the issue, that was not the reason for Clem Sehrt's call which was instead the childhood family friend and relationship with Marguerite. In any case, Dean Andrews would not under any circumstances reveal Sehrt's identity, under a realistic fear of dire consequences if he did so, and at the same time Dean Andrews was not willing to see an innocent man (innocent of having called Dean Andrews I mean here) falsely accused and implicated on the basis of false testimony. Dean Andrews said at one point, no matter the consequences, no matter what other sins I have committed, I am doing a good and right thing, I am not going to falsely name Clay Shaw. 

How did the name "Clay Bertrand" come from Dean Andrews? I don't know for sure, but it is curious that the first name of the true caller, Clem Sehrt, sounds so similar. There was also a very early attempt by Dean Andrews to cover up or deny the reality of the phone call altogether but his secretary knew of the call so that could not be done successfully, and it is possible the secretary is the actual original source of the name "Clay Bertrand" in some misunderstanding of what Andrews had told her, and Andrews stuck with that as a fictitious name (because, under no circumstances, is Andrews going to disclose to the world the true name). There are also stories--all unconfirmed but here and there in the documents--that supposedly a nurse at the hospital where Dean Andrews was at the time had a last name "Bertrand" and some speculated that was what was handy in an invention of a fictitious name. 

Finally, not to be underestimated is the mention made by Micah that there WAS A REAL CLAY BERTRAND, by that name, in Louisiana, who may have been in New Orleans at the time. According to a 1967 FBI document (https://www.maryferrell.org/archive/docs/217/217855/images/img_217855_167_300.png😞

Aaron Kohn, managing director, Metropolitan Crime Commission, advised February 24, he had received information that Clay Bertrand and Clay Shaw were one and the same. Kohn advised he picked this information up from one of 89 news sources that contacted him on February 24, 1967.

Kohn advised that he also received information that there is a man named Clay Bertrand living in Lafayette, Louisiana, a real estate broker that lived in New Orleans about the time of the assassination of President Kennedy.

Was the real Clay Bertrand ever questioned or asked or any inquiry made by Garrison investigators, FBI, or anyone else, concerning the Dean Andrews phone call, or any of the other alleged "Clay Bertrand" name mentions? No. Perhaps Garrison did not know of the existence of this Clay Bertrand, but that does not change the relevance that in all the debates over "who was Clay Bertrand", NOBODY EVER THOUGHT TO CONSIDER OR QUESTION CLAY BERTRAND!

And so on one of the alleged six major lies of which Clay Shaw is accused in your list, the phone call to Dean Andrews, I am certain that at least that one is just wrong. Clay Shaw did not lie, Dean Andrews did, but Dean Andrews' lie was covering up a Clem Sehrt identity of the caller, and Dean Andrews told the truth that it was not Clay Shaw.

On the others, these again are all, except for the CIA connection, disputed and contested, so it matters very much how reasonable researchers or informed citizens on a criminal jury would assess each of these, case by case, in deciding whether, in fact, Clay Shaw was lying in major ways suggesting he had "something to hide" material to the charge against him. Though I have not studied in detail the others, I will outline a working hypothesis of interpretation of all of these six claims, in the order you give:

(1) knew Ferrie, said he did not--uncertain; ambiguous but possible perjury. Both Clay Shaw and Ferrie, from most reports, were promiscuous and active in New Orleans' gay underworld subculture, and Clay Shaw was not publicly outed. Clay Shaw could have known Ferrie, if he did, most likely in this context (nothing to do with the assassination). If so, Clay Shaw would have strong motive to deny, if he could get away with it, knowing Ferrie at all. Admission that he knew Ferrie would raise the question, "why?", and to establish it was not related to the assassination Clay Shaw would have had to claim some form of gay sex as the (actually truthful) alibi. If there was perjury here, there is a motive for it that has nothing to do with implicating Clay Shaw in the assassination. 

(2) knew Oswald, said he did not--reject this one, unproven (reject testimony of dicey witnesses here; hearsay attributed to Clay Shaw has issues of interpretation of that hearsay). Oswald was neither gay nor bi, and there is no obvious reason why Clay Shaw would have met or known Oswald personally, other than casual knowledge of the arrest incident outside his building in the news.

(3) used alias of Bertrand, said he did not--reject this one (reject testimony of dicey witnesses). 

(4) worked for CIA, and lied about it--on this one, documents subsequently have established unequivocally that Clay Shaw did have a relationship with CIA, minimally in the 1950s involving lengthy debriefings from his travels overseas, uncertain degree above that level or further chronological timeframe. Whether with the help of a good lawyer Clay Shaw could have beaten a perjury charge on this one based on technical definition of the wording of the question and words ("employee", "working for", etc.) I would not know. This one therefore, though not disputing a CIA relationship itself for Clay Shaw, my first assumption would be "uncertain" concerning legal perjury. Whether or not it was legally perjury it is clear Clay Shaw did not wish to voluntarily disclose it. However, there are motives for nondisclosure of that that have nothing to do with involvement in the assassination of JFK, or a framing of Oswald, etc. Therefore the certain secrecy, and the more ambiguous but possible legal perjury, if so, in this case does not in any obvious sense give weight toward implicating Clay Shaw in an assassination conspiracy.  

(5) drove to Jackson, and lied about it--unlikely, reject, in keeping with HSCA investigators. Whether or not Oswald and Ferrie were there irrelevant here.

(6) called Dean Andrews, and lied about it--no, reject (for reasons given earlier).

This analysis would add up to four non-perjuries, two possible perjuries, and zero certain (legal) perjuries. Of the two possible perjuries, each have obvious possible alternative motivations that have nothing to do with covering up involvement or complicity in the assassination of President Kennedy.

[John Kowalski]

Micah:

C2C Journal is not Litwin's blog. It is an online magazine that has articles about a variety of subjects. He is only a contributor to this magazine.

[James DiEugenio]

Thanks Micah, I would have never found it.

That is really weird. 

Litwin is a gay corporate board member who is the Canadian J K Rowling of the trans movement.

[John Kowalski]

1 hour ago, James DiEugenio said:

Litwin is a gay corporate board member who is the Canadian J K Rowling of the trans movement.

Jim:

The corporate link is dated 2006. That may be him but Fred told me that he is retired, I think from the computer business. The company named in the article is in Toronto and he lives in Ottawa.

He may be involved in private business activities but don't believe that he is a corporate board member of that company.

 

Edited October 9, 2020 by John Kowalski

[James DiEugenio]

John, 

How many Fred Litwin, businessmen, are there in Canada?

Are there two?  Because I see another Fred Litwin who was on three boards.