JFK Revisited and Homophobia

[Ron Bulman]

3 hours ago, W. Tracy Parnell said:

Wrong. Again, if you will just read the article I linked you will see that he suggested that McDonald's people could have misread the document and saw the words "domestic contact" and turned that into "contract agent." It makes no sense that Shaw would be a "highly paid" agent during the time he was working for the International Trade Mart. He wouldn't have had the time to do enough work to be "highly paid." In any case, if someone will just produce the document McDonald referenced, I'll gladly admit that Shaw was a paid agent. But I still won't believe he killed JFK.

McDonald's? "could have misread."  Can I get a Big Mac, with no pickles?

 

Edited February 5, 2022 by Ron Bulman

[Bob Ness]

4 hours ago, W. Tracy Parnell said:

Wrong. Again, if you will just read the article I linked you will see that he suggested that McDonald's people could have misread the document and saw the words "domestic contact" and turned that into "contract agent." It makes no sense that Shaw would be a "highly paid" agent during the time he was working for the International Trade Mart. He wouldn't have had the time to do enough work to be "highly paid." In any case, if someone will just produce the document McDonald referenced, I'll gladly admit that Shaw was a paid agent. But I still won't believe he killed JFK.

The problem is Tracy, as you've pointed out, he did have a relationship with the CIA and denied it. Why would he deny such a relationship when the extent of it was to get tourist snaps with warships in the background to hand over? I know well what the contact program was. In fact you'd think the CIA would be slobbering over LHO and Marina too but that's another story.

The contact program was pushed as a debriefing gag publicly but it was also used for more nefarious purposes, many of which are commonplace in intelligence circles. A person of Shaw's inclinations could be used in a variety of ways to pursue targets of interest aside from reporting on East German mining quotas or whatever.

When it comes to the circus surrounding Shaw's prosecution the cliche' "Thow doth protesteth too much" fits like a glove. The CIA wedged itself into the case of a man you're claiming to be a lilly white rose with nothing to hide. They're trying to protect an irrelevant, washed up source? In a domestic operation? I know you're aware that's beyond the scope of what they're legally chartered to do.

If I apply common sense to the issue, regardless of any disputable points, it just doesn't add up. The CIA doesn't run around doing that because they're virtuous, particularly under Dulles, Helms, Angleton, Harvey and so on. They do that out of a sense of survival. No more or less.

[Pat Speer]

2 hours ago, Micah Mileto said:

Has Max Holland ever responded to Pat Speer? Seems to me like Speer pretty much proved that Holland is a loser for life.

The sad thing is that I've met Max, and told him that I was greatly looking forward to his book on the Warren Commission. I told him that although I might disagree with some of his conclusions, that I appreciated his research and always learned something from him. We even talked about getting together sometime when he was in L.A. And then I re-watched The Lost Bullet, and saw how awful it was. And I wrote my chapter exposing it as deceptionville. 

And then his book never came out. Sadly, I suspect that Max, not unlike a number of those on the conspiracy side, is so enamored with his pet theory (which, in his case, is one holding that the first shot was fired before Zapruder started filming) that he can't move on until he gets people to agree with him. Or maybe, like Howard Willens, he's scared some of what he's uncovered will be used against the Warren Commission, and he'd rather not share something unless he can control what people make of it. (As you probably know, Willens had a trove of documents on his website from which I pulled a few gems, including one in which Warren talked to the Archives and asked them to withhold docs from researchers like Mark Lane until the Commission had sufficient time to sell the public on their version of events, which I wrote about on Jeff Morley's website...only to have Willens yank the documents from his site when he realized what I was doing.) 

[Greg Doudna]

12 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

Since solving the JFK case was never a part of the planning of JFK Revisited , I never had a discussion like that with Oliver.

But from what I could tell, he thought that Shaw was an entry point for Garrison.  That Shaw had called Andrews, that he was part of the setting up of Oswald that summer,  that the Trade Mart was a staged event, that Shaw was with Ferrie and Oswald in Clinton (we did a nice interview with McGehee up there that was cut from the fllm).

As I said in an address I did with Oliver in the audience, as Garrison progressed in the inquiry, he began to understand that  he had only one part of the plot in New Orleans.  He came to think that it was really a four sided affair, the other three sides being Mexico City, Washington and Dallas.

The idea that the murder happened in Dallas, and that therefore New Orleans was somehow not important, that is not how a covert action works and that is not how the law of conspiracy works.  As Richard Sprague, the first chief counsel of the HSCA once said, in a conspiracy case the rules of evidence change.

Thank you for the description of development in Garrison's thinking, and Oliver Stone's view of that thinking of Garrison at the time of production of JFK.

But would it be possible to respond to the question asked, which is: do you today (meaning you now today) claim that there exists evidence that Clay Shaw was involved in carrying out the assassination of JFK, and if so what is that evidence? 

I checked on law of conspiracy and from what I can find, to accuse someone of criminal conspiracy to assassinate JFK involves minimally proving the accused had foreknowledge and intent to carry out the criminal act (assassination of JFK), and also at some point there is entrance into an agreement with others to carry out that deed.

Do you hold that evidence exists that Clay Shaw had foreknowledge of the JFK assassination? What is that evidence?

There is no confession of Clay Shaw to that. There is no document, phone wiretap, physical evidence, informant report, credible witness, no witness you are willing to claim, saying that. Clay Shaw was not in Dallas in Oct or Nov 1963, had no contact with Oswald in Oct or Nov 1963, no known suspicious phone calls to Dallas.

Yet you not simply suspect, but claim to know as fact, that Clay Shaw, outwardly a liberal supporter of President Kennedy, no known animus to President Kennedy, no prior record of illegal or criminal or violent or activity, was read wittingly into a plot to murder President Kennedy not later than the summer of 1963, and agreed to that with knowledge and intent to accomplish that horrible deed, and never blew the whistle on it?

If that was true, Clay Shaw must have had some critically necessary, irreplaceable role to play for someone to make the decision to read him into the plot wittingly, would you not think? But what would that role be? Do you know of anyone who has a clue what that role might have been exactly--that required the significant risk of reading someone in New Orleans with no known animus against President Kennedy wittingly into a plot to assassinate a standing president, and trust that person not to blow the whistle?

Such an absolutely horrible thing to claim about someone as a proven fact, if unwilling to produce evidence. 

If you know now, even if it was not clear before, that there is no evidence for this lethal accusation on his reputation, why not say so in the interests of accuracy, relabel it accurately "unsubstantiated suspicion", and get this corrected?

After viewing JFK Revisited I almost wondered if Oliver Stone himself has grown to the point of no longer personally believing today that Clay Shaw was witting to the JFK assassination. I do not know that, I do not follow Oliver Stone closely, and if he has made some recent, on-the-record statement clearly expressing continued personal belief today in Clay Shaw's witting guilt in the assassination I stand corrected.

Most Americans who were alive in the '60s would dearly love to see the JFK assassination solved if such solution could be shown for real. But in the absence of a real solution, if that ever happens, there needs to be great caution in distinguishing between suspicion and claims to certainty concerning people or things in which evidence is not there and there are questions of plausibility as well.

I think Lifton and Parnell are right on that CIA summary document making a typo mistake of "contract agent" for "contact agent", which if so may disappear the perjury allegation on Clay Shaw on that issue. As Paul Hoch is cited as bringing out, that same summary document also claims CIA documents have Gilberto Alvarado (in Mexico City) claiming he witnessed Cubans giving money to Oswald at a party the night before the assassination! (https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=7302&relPageId=9) (Oswald was in Irving with his wife Marina the night before the assassination, not in Mexico City!) That seems to be one screwed-up CIA summary document, sloppily prepared with mistakes, such that "contact agent", which is supported by documents, instead of typo "contract [paid] agent" (which has no supporting documents known in the file which that report purportedly summarizes), becomes a simple explanation, which should be presumed correct explanation in the absence of contrary evidence. 

I think there were CIA and other operatives disrupting Garrison's investigations, as you and others have reported, that those are not all made up. I don't like the CIA and what it was doing at all in the 1960s, though I don't mean to overly tarnish everyone involved with CIA who was not involved in the nefarious and deceptive and murderous end of things. But that doesn't mean Garrison was right about Clay Shaw. The dirty tricks thrown Garrison's way from CIA seem better explained in that Garrison was a loose cannon, a bull in a china shop so to speak, (maybe similar to how today's CIA regards Trump), feared because of what he might come across by accident and/or because of institutional self-preservation. Garrison comes across as a "lone-nut" prosecutor of the JFK case (i.e. acting on his own, not acting on behalf of anyone else), with the "nut" part of the "lone nut" characterization providing the best explanation for why the Kennedy family and Jacqueline, who I believe privately knew the assassination was not as it was being presented, kept their distance from Garrison.

This is what it looks like to me. JFK Revisited seems to focus on the forensics of the case without invoking Garrison and Clay Shaw et al much, apart from glancing historical mention in passing. 

[W. Tracy Parnell]

6 hours ago, Bob Ness said:

The problem is Tracy, as you've pointed out, he did have a relationship with the CIA and denied it.

As I mentioned, he was asked if he "worked" for the CIA. That implies being paid and I see nothing beyond the McDonald summary that indicates that. The documents are now available, so certainly someone will be able to find the source document that shows Shaw was paid if it exists. But so far nothing.

If you read Fred's article, (I won't bother to repeat these here) he outlines some other problems with McDonald's work which support the idea that he (or staff) could have just made a mistake. 

Why did Shaw not mention his DCS work under oath? He may have simply thought so little of it that it wasn't worth talking about.

EDIT: Or Shaw knew that if he talked about it that Garrison would try to make more of it than there was.

Edited February 5, 2022 by W. Tracy Parnell

[Denny Zartman]

That the critics of JFK Revisited have to make such a stretch shows how little they have to fault the documentary on the basic facts.

[James DiEugenio]

Greg, you and I have been through this before.  I will not do it again.  I explained my position on this at length with you previously.  Its like arguing Ruth Paine with you.

It is also predictable that you fell for the BS about McDonald.  (David Lifton does not count in any discussion of Garrison. What he did to trash Garrison and save his good buddy, the lying disinformation artist Kerry Thornley, is simply unconscionable today. The facts speak for themselves. And  again, if you wish to ignore all that data,  its predictable https://www.kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/kerry-thornley-a-new-look-part-1) 

The paradigm shift on Shaw began with the work of Peter Vea back in the nineties. It was revealed first that he had a covert security approval.  From VIctor Marchetti, its ridiculous to say that was part of DCS. But the giveaway with Shaw is that the CIA went to work on his 201 file at an early date.  As Peter discovered, his Y file was destroyed.  But from the brief descriptions we have, again this is different from DCS.   Shaw was being briefed in advance and given specific missions to accomplish abroad.  This was later confirmed as Manny Legaspi of the ARRB, the CIA specialist, wrote that the Agency had also destroyed Shaw's 201 file. Legaspi said this included references to another project, code named ZR CLIFF. When I read that memo, it reminded me of something I disregarded previously.  Gordon Novel had written a letter in the seventies saying that the CIA had actually done this i.e. rifled Shaw's file. And they had done it through the Office of Security as early as 1964.  How could Gordon have known in the seventies what Legaspi did not discover until the nineties? The connection is his many communications with Allen Dulles after Dulles planted him as an infiltrator in Garrison's office.  Recall, in Gordon's deposition he said that he and Dulles talked a lot at that time. How close were they?  When the opposing attorney gave Dulles' current address, Gordon corrected him and said that is not where he is right now.

So here is my question:  Why would the Office of Security be massaging Shaw's file in 1964?  Does not that note what is called "consciousness of guilt". (Especially when one understands the Office of Security's functions.)

You falling for Shaw's identification of himself as a WIlson-Roosevelt-Kennedy liberal is , I mean whew.  Especially after Shaw lied about everything else e. g. knowing Ferrie, Oswald, having no association with the CIA, not using the alias of Bertrand, I mean I listed 12 sources on that one. Some liberal: Ferrie said that Shaw hated Kennedy, so did Clyde Johnson. Jesse Core, Shaw's righthand man at the ITM, picked up a leaflet that Oswald dropped on Canal Street. He sent it to the FBI office telling them to take notice of that address. In other words he knew where Banister was and knew the FBI would cover for him. And Shaw's lawyers, the Wegmanns, were Banister's lawyers. Does Banister strike you as liking Kennedy? Tommy Baumler, who worked for Banister said Shaw and his boss were close. In fact, Bill Davy interviewed a Banister employee who said Guy would call Shaw on the phone. Baumler also said that Shaw, Banister and Guy Johnson were the intel apparatus of New Orleans. Guy Johnson was also one of Shaw's lawyers. This is a liberal?

But let us dig deeper into what Shaw's assistant and the Cuban exiles did. Right after the Canal Street incident Carlos Quiroga, Bringuier's righthand man--as Core was Shaw's aide de camp--visited Oswald at his apartment.  Bringuier said that Quiroga was trying to infiltrate Oswald's operation and brought a couple of leaflets. Pretty far fetched since Oswald was the only member of the "operation". But the problem is that Bringuier lied about this and so did Quiroga. They tried to say this visit occurred after the Trade mart leafleting incident. It didn't.  Second, Oswald's landlady saw Quiroga when he arrived at Oswald's place. He did not have one or two "Hands off Cuba" leaflets. He had a stack of them, 5-6 inches thick. Quiroga flunked his polygraph on this question. Again, this lying betrays consciousness of guilt. During  the ITM incident, cameras were rushed to the scene to record Oswald.  They had been summoned by Core.  This is one example of the films and pictures that would be unleashed in the media in the days following the assassination. Thus painting Oswald as a communist when in fact Core (and Shaw) knew this was a cover.

I won't even go into the Clinton-Jackson incident which to me is so incriminating as to be off the charts. But this is the way a covert action works. Its why Shaw called Andrews-again consciousness of guilt. And its why Alberto Fowler said that Shaw felt safe since he now knew high level people were involved and they would have to protect him, or the whole thing could blow.

IMO, today, there are few people who one can make a better case against than Shaw.  In the face of all this evidence and more--I did not even mention Permindex and who Shaw associated with there-- for you to find two axe grinders like Lifton and Parnell credible, well with that I will now put you on ignore with them.

 

 

 

Edited February 5, 2022 by James DiEugenio

[Greg Doudna]

Does anyone else know of any evidence that is claimed to show Clay Shaw had a witting role in killing President Kennedy? Proof of intent, proof of foreknowledge, proof of entering into agreement to kill a president?

Just to be clear, I asked. Did not answer the question. I asked again. Again did not answer the question, said the question had already been answered, long ago, and was not about to answer again now, get lost ("on ignore").

There was no answer to that question long ago any more than there was an answer this time. Instead a lot of other things got cited none of which have anything to do with evidence of participation in a plot to kill Kennedy. All over the map. Clay Shaw did this. Clay Shaw did that. Lied over here. Did that over there. All these other things in New Orlean. Stitch that man up! Show he knew Oswald two months before Oswald didn't shoot Kennedy in a different city!

None of that is evidence that Clay Shaw plotted to kill Kennedy. Can't people here see that? Clay Shaw even, it is alleged, did legal voter registration of blacks in Clinton with Oswald and Ferrie!!!!! And if legally registering blacks to vote in a deep southern state is not the most incriminating, sinister evidence that Clay Shaw was plotting to kill President Kennedy, what else is there to say? Is this the Twilight Zone? 

Clay Shaw is alleged to have sought to arrange legal counsel for Oswald at a time when Oswald was badly in need of legal counsel in Dallas. Ruth Paine has been condemned for not taking responsibility for Oswald getting a lawyer. Clay Shaw is condemned on the allegation that that is what he did do. When getting someone a legal defense, or attempting to cover up that one did so, is not evidence that one is guilty of the crime the defendant is charged with. That is not logical. That is medieval witchhunt logic. And Lifton's articles blow even the allegations to pieces on the level of fact. 

Is it Alice in Wonderland logic, when legal registration of blacks to vote in Clinton is considered criminal conduct and obvious evidence of plotting to assassinate a president? 

"I won't even go into the Clinton-Jackson incident which to me is so incriminating as to be off the charts. But this is the way a covert action works. Its why Shaw called Andrews-again consciousness of guilt."

Unbelievable.

Three persons legally registering blacks to vote, with not even an allegation of any criminal activity done that day by those three, "is so incriminating as to be off the charts". Twilight Zone. Incriminating of what?

Is it Alice in Wonderland logic, when asking for the footnote, the evidence, undergirding a central claim is considered improper, verboten? Where there is an Index of written information forbidden to the faithful to read? Where reference to a point of data or argument in some source on the Index is responded not to the substance and content of the point, but in scorched-earth ad hominem and discrediting of the author, the publisher, of that point? 

Let it be plain: the reason no claim of evidence is disclosed purporting to show Clay Shaw was a witting participant in planning to carry out the assassination of Kennedy, is because there isn't any. It is like belief in the Trinity--for those who understand no explanation is necessary. For those who don't no explanation is possible. For those who know Clay Shaw, one of New Orleans' leading citizens, attempted to assassinate the president he voted for and supported, no naming of evidence is necessary. For those who don't know what that evidence is, no explanation is possible.

It is character assassination to accuse someone of assassinating JFK --such a horrible, lethal accusation!--without disclosure that there is just zero evidence or plausibility of that when it comes to Clay Shaw of New Orleans, who did so much for that city and for whom no criminal act in any other way was ever proven in court either. What is done to Clay Shaw, and to Ruth Paine by assassination conspiracy researchers, has been utterly shameful. Neither of them had the slightest thing to do with intent or planning or participation in the horrible crime of the assassination of President Kennedy. Medieval village witchhunt logic, burning of scapegoats at the stake logic... They didn't do it. The real assassins of President Kennedy were not them.  

Now I've said my piece and will get out of this thread and return to work in my own niches. 

"[Clay Shaw] was in fact innocent ... he did not conspire to kill the president ... in retrospect I don't think they should have prosecuted him ... Garrison never should have done it"

--Perry Russo

(Lambert, False Witness [2000], 173-4)

"I believe that Shaw is innocent. I do not disagree with the jury. I agree with it. The bottom line is that history must recall that Shaw is innocent. If I was on the jury, I would have come to the same conclusion"

--Perry Russo

(Posner, Case Closed [2013], 451n)

(For any who do not know, Perry Russo was Garrison's only witness purporting to claim Clay Shaw was involved in plotting and planning to assassinate President Kennedy, based on some things Russo heard at a party.)

(For any who do not know, the tall man Perry Russo remembered at the party where Perry heard talk that Kennedy ought to be whacked in common with talk at a hundred other parties on any given Saturday night in the Deep South, was not remembered to be named Clay Shaw but rather Clem or Clay Bertrand.)

(For any who do not know, there was a real live Clay Bertrand, of that name, living in New Orleans at that time, who was never investigated or excluded by the Garrison investigation as to whether he may have been the identity of Clay Bertrand.)

(For any who do not know, Perry Russo identified a young man with a mustache at that party as Oswald, an identification universally considered in error today.)

(This is why the testimony of Perry Russo is not claimed by anyone today as evidence that Clay Show entered into concrete agreement to plan and carry out the murderous criminal act of killing President Kennedy. And why with testimony claim of Perry Russo gone, who had credibility issues from the beginning, no one who claims Clay Shaw is guilty of active participation in planning to assassinate JFK is willing to even claim any specific evidence supports that claim, for there is none now even to claim.)

[Bob Ness]

On 2/5/2022 at 6:54 AM, W. Tracy Parnell said:

As I mentioned, he was asked if he "worked" for the CIA. That implies being paid and I see nothing beyond the McDonald summary that indicates that. The documents are now available, so certainly someone will be able to find the source document that shows Shaw was paid if it exists. But so far nothing.

 

Right. There will pay stubs notated "CIA Assassin - Kennedy Job" in a file somewhere. Where do you get the ridiculous idea that somehow a person has to show pay stubs to answer that question in an affirmative way? Do prosecutors show canceled checks from racqueteers and drug dealers? Maybe the IRS has it on file. If not, well that's that!

The McDonald summary didn't hit the shredder with everything else I suspect and with the CIA that assumption prevails until THEY prove otherwise. In fact, I believe Helms said as much. You believe him, don't you?

Please quit trying to hang your hat on the idea that a domestic contact isn't actually "working" for the CIA. They have a relationship, and they often were directed to do certain things at certain times - the definition of "working for someone".

[James DiEugenio]

Again, I have the denier Parnell on ignore.  But when someone quotes him I have to read his rubbish.

The idea of being a contract agent is to dodge being on the payroll.

Secondly, in a 1973 interview, Marchetti is quoted as saying that Deputy Director Rufus Taylor said that Shaw had been a paid agent.

This is why the OS altered his file beyond recognition.

 

 

 

[W. Tracy Parnell]

36 minutes ago, Bob Ness said:

Right. There will pay stubs notated "CIA Assassin - Kennedy Job" in a file somewhere. Where do you get the ridiculous idea that somehow a person has to show pay stubs to answer that question in an affirmative way? Do prosecutors show canceled checks from racqueteers and drug dealers? Maybe the IRS has it on file. If not, well that's that!

The McDonald summary didn't hit the shredder with everything else I suspect and with the CIA that assumption prevails until THEY prove otherwise. In fact, I believe Helms said as much. You believe him, don't you?

Please quit trying to hang your hat on the idea that a domestic contact isn't actually "working" for the CIA. They have a relationship, and they often were directed to do certain things at certain times - the definition of "working for someone".

I don't remember Helms saying anything other than Shaw was a domestic contact. Perhaps you can post a link if you have that info. The bottom line for me is that McDonald based his statement on the HSCA Sequestered CIA collection. That collection is now available, so if the document(s) supporting his statement are there, they will be brought out by someone.

[Bob Ness]

24 minutes ago, James DiEugenio said:

Again, I have the denier Parnell on ignore.  But when someone quotes him I have to read his rubbish.

The idea of being a contract agent is to dodge being on the payroll.

Secondly, in a 1973 interview, Marchetti is quoted as saying that Deputy Director Rufus Taylor said that Shaw had been a paid agent.

This is why the OS altered his file beyond recognition.

The angle on that is that it was a typo I believe.

[W. Tracy Parnell]

26 minutes ago, James DiEugenio said:

Again, I have the denier Parnell on ignore.  But when someone quotes him I have to read his rubbish.

The idea of being a contract agent is to dodge being on the payroll.

Secondly, in a 1973 interview, Marchetti is quoted as saying that Deputy Director Rufus Taylor said that Shaw had been a paid agent.

This is why the OS altered his file beyond recognition.

I see nothing nefarious if Shaw was a paid agent. Everyone that worked for the CIA wasn't in on a plot to kill JFK. I just believe that the evidence tends toward the theory that Fred has put forward.

[James DiEugenio]

Its Fred Litwin's neocon cover up angle. From the new millenium. In Ottawa.

Sorry, I will take McDonald's with the file in front of him, knowing the difference.

I will also take Rufus Taylor's, as Deputy Director.

I will also take code names like ZRCLIFF and QKENCHANT. Shaw did a lot of work for them.

 

Edited February 6, 2022 by James DiEugenio

[Bob Ness]

10 hours ago, W. Tracy Parnell said:

I see nothing nefarious if Shaw was a paid agent. Everyone that worked for the CIA wasn't in on a plot to kill JFK. I just believe that the evidence tends toward the theory that Fred has put forward.

That in itself isn't Tracy. Why are you kicking and screaming about it? He lied about it and that's what has people curious about why he should do so. Was he Bertrand? Lots of people think so and at some point, you have to ask, "How many Frenchmen can't be wrong?" (I believe the answer is all of them hahaha).

Edited February 7, 2022 by Bob Ness