WHEN WE ARRESTED SHAW, the United States government awakened like an angry lion. Whoever in my office was the government’s contact had been caught napping by our unheralded apprehension of the man. There followed roars of outrage from Washington, D.C., and shrill echoes from the news media.
From Ramsey Clark, the attorney general of the United States, there came the pronouncement that the federal government already had exonerated Shaw from any involvement in President Kennedy’s assassination. This high-level revelation, and the attorney general’s subsequent friendly colloquy with Washington reporters, seemed to leave no doubt that the Federal Bureau of Investigation had investigated Clay Shaw and given him a clean bill of health. One newsman asked Clark directly if Shaw was “checked out and found clear?” “Yes, that’s right,” replied the attorney general. Needless to say, this tableau did not exactly make me look like District Attorney of the Year.
However, the statement that Shaw, whose name appears nowhere in the 26 volumes of the Warren Commission, had been investigated by the federal government was intriguing. If Shaw had no connection to the assassination, I wondered, why had he been investigated? The implications of Clark’s statement apparently raised similar questions in Washington, and Clark soon beat a strategic retreat. “The attorney general,” a Justice Department spokesman announced, “has since determined that this was erroneous. Nothing arose indicating a need to investigate Mr. Shaw.”
Shortly after Clark’s pronouncement, however, an unnamed Justice Department official announced that the department had been well aware that Clay Shaw and Clay Bertrand were one and the same individual and that the F.B.I. had indeed investigated Clay Bertrand. This confirmed the facts as we had found them. Nonetheless, despite the backpedaling by the Justice Department, the attorney general’s initial pronouncement was the one that got all the headlines. It had struck a serious blow at the integrity of our investigation.
Meanwhile, in New Orleans things were moving fast. In major cases where we were seeking an indictment, I customarily made the presentation to the Grand Jury. This case, however, was different. From the outset, the news media had personalized the investigation, presenting me as a ruthless politician driven by swollen ambition, eager to ride this case to the governor’s office or the U.S. Senate or even, as The New York Times speculated, the vice-presidency. These stories upset me not so much because of their absurd portrayals of me but because they trivialized a serious legal case concerning the assassination of the President of the United States. The attitude of the media caused me to lean over backwards to establish some personal detachment from the proceedings. Thus, as we sought an indictment of Shaw, I decided not even to enter the Grand Jury room. I left this to the assistant district attorneys on the special team. They presented the evidence we had uncovered, and the Grand Jury returned a true bill. Clay Shaw was indicted for participating in a conspiracy to murder John F. Kennedy.[47]
Next, I took a step in the defendant’s behalf: I made a motion for a preliminary hearing. Customarily in major cases it is the defense attorneys who request a preliminary hearing. The object is to force the district attorney to demonstrate that there is a sound basis for bringing the defendant to trial. This procedure was developed to prevent a prosecutor from holding a frivolous charge over a defendant’s head for a long period before trying the case on the merits.
In this case I made the motion out of fairness to Shaw because of the extraordinary seriousness of the charge. My application requested that a panel of three judges be appointed to hear evidence concerning Shaw and that they then determine whether the charges should be dismissed or Shaw held over for trial. This was the first time in the history of Louisiana that such a motion ever was filed by the prosecutor on behalf of the defendant.
Shaw’s four-day preliminary hearing began on the morning of March 14, 1967. The large courtroom was filled to overflowing. Reporters and spectators were crowding in everywhere. Although I would be presenting some of the evidence myself, I had determined that I was not going to let the media personalize this hearing. Thus I had delegated the initial questioning of our first important witness to two of my assistants—Charles Ward, the new chief assistant D.A., and Alvin Oser. I would be coming into the courtroom briefly on occasion. Still later I would be bringing in Jim Alcock. But I wanted everyone to know that this was a team effort, not some individual grandstanding by me.
At a preliminary hearing the prosecutor reveals only enough evidence to show that he has a plausible case. At Shaw’s hearing we called only two major witnesses. The first was Perry Russo, a 25-year-old Equitable insurance agent from Baton Rouge, who long had been an acquaintance of David Ferrie’s. When he heard about our investigation, Russo wrote us a letter, but we never received it. Later he met a reporter from the Baton Rouge State-Times and in an interview the morning of Friday, February 24, he told him about a meeting he had attended at Ferrie’s apartment at which the assassination of President Kennedy had been discussed. The story appeared in the State-Times that afternoon. By late afternoon, the paper was on the stands in New Orleans, and Andrew Sciambra showed it to me. Although it said Russo intended to travel to New Orleans, I told Sciambra to drive up to Baton Rouge immediately.
About 8:00 p.m. Sciambra arrived at Russo’s house; Russo had just returned from WBRZ-TV studios, where he had been interviewed for the evening news (and kept away from reporters from the competing local TV station). Sciambra spent several hours with Russo, and showed him dozens of photographs. Russo recognized several Cubans, and then, when Sciambra produced a picture of Clay Shaw, Russo exclaimed, “I know him. I met him at Ferrie’s.” Of course, he had known him only as Bertrand, but his identification was positive.
Russo was significant because he was the first eyewitness to have overheard Shaw and Ferrie engaging in a discussion of the prospective murder of John Kennedy. In my judgment, even without Russo we had sufficient evidence to support a charge against Shaw of participating in the conspiracy to murder the President. But that evidence was circumstantial. As an experienced trial attorney, I knew that laymen are particularly responsive to eyewitness testimony, and Russo provided that in full measure. Consequently, upon first learning how strong the conversation between Shaw and Ferrie was, I decided to take the additional precaution of confirming the veracity of Russo’s recollection. The lawyers on the special team and I considered using a “lie detector” test, but since such tests are highly imperfect and inadmissible in court we rejected the idea. Instead, we chose to use hypnosis and Sodium Pentothal.® Both treatments were administered to Russo under close medical supervision. And both revealed that Russo was indeed telling the truth.
So when we called Perry Russo to the witness stand at Shaw’s preliminary hearing we were confident. After the usual preliminary questions, bringing out his background and allowing him to relax in the courtroom surroundings, assistant D.A.’s Ward and Oser asked Russo about a gathering at David Ferrie’s apartment.
Russo responded that when he dropped in at Ferrie’s place, “somewhere around the middle of September 1963,” an informal gathering—which he described as “some sort of party”—was just breaking up. Some of Ferrie’s usual bevy of youngsters were there but soon left. Russo said a former girlfriend of his, Sandra Moffett, was also there for a while. After she departed, there remained, according to Russo, a scattering of anti-Castro Cubans—a group which occasionally came by to visit Ferrie. A few of them stayed on for a little while.
Also there was a tall, distinguished-looking man who had what Russo described as “white hair.” Even as he said this, he involuntarily glanced over at Shaw who was continuing to gaze imperturbably at the paneled courtroom wall in front of him. Ferrie introduced the man to Russo as “Clem Bertrand.”
Russo remembered having seen the tall, white-haired man once before, when President Kennedy was in New Orleans for the dedication of the Nashville Street Wharf. Russo had noticed the man because he was the only one not looking at Kennedy. The man had kept studying the crowd, and Russo had concluded that he was a Secret Service agent.
At the gathering at the apartment, Russo recalled, Ferrie introduced him to a young man who was called “Leon Oswald.” But Russo could not firmly identify this man as the same man he later saw on television as the suspect in the assassination, Lee Harvey Oswald.
After the others departed, only “Oswald,” Bertrand, Ferrie, Russo, and several of the Cubans remained. The talk turned to the possibility of assassinating Fidel Castro. This conversation was speculative and strongly anti-Kennedy. No one present—including Perry Russo—had any use for Castro or President Kennedy. Moreover, the conversation was particularly heated because in August the Kennedy administration had established an embargo to stop the flow of arms to South Africa. Some of those present felt a comparable limitation of arms to countries or even guerrilla forces opposed to Fidel Castro might soon follow.
Despite the enthusiasm of Ferrie, Russo, and the Cubans for the elimination of Castro, Russo’s testimony continued, the man called Bertrand, who was also basically in favor of the idea, cautiously demurred. “There would be a real problem,” he said, “of actually getting at him.”
Ferrie immediately produced a map of Cuba and spread it out on a table. He pointed out one potential beach landing area after another, speaking expertly about accessibility, tides and timetables, and routes to Havana.
In this conversation Russo was as much a protagonist as a listener. A tough-minded young man with a high degree of curiosity, Russo was not one of Ferrie’s typical playmates. Ferrie, virtually ostracized by most of the adult world, found in Russo an intellectual companion who stimulated him, and so they became close. Russo estimated that Ferrie had been to his house at least a dozen times and that he had been to the pilot’s apartment 30 to 40 times. This appeared to be why the man introduced to Russo as Clem Bertrand accepted his presence when the topic later became the removal of John Kennedy.
Russo, his testimony continued, remained after the Cubans had left, assuming that he would get a ride home from Ferrie. There were just the four of them now—Ferrie, Russo, the man called Bertrand, and “Leon Oswald.”
Even if it were impossible to get at Castro, Russo recalled Ferrie as saying, it did not mean they could not get at Kennedy. This sudden shift of the objectives, Russo indicated, was inevitable now that the group had grown smaller. In recent months, Ferrie had become obsessed with the subject of Kennedy. He had begun carrying news clippings with him, stories of such actions by the Kennedy administration as an F.B.I. raid on the Schlumberger blimp base at Houma and the August embargo against the shipment of arms to South Africa. At the slightest provocation he would pull clippings from his pocket and denounce the actions bitterly.
Ferrie, Russo said, was pacing back and forth, saying they could get rid of Kennedy and blame it on Castro. That then could be an excuse to invade Cuba. Ferrie was drinking from his constant cup of coffee as he talked. All they had to do, he added, was get Kennedy out in the open.
Ferrie was excited now. Hyperthyroid, he became excited easily and when he became excited, he became loquacious. When he became loquacious, he became magnetic. All eyes were on him as he continued to describe how easily the job could be done.
Ferrie emphasized that “triangulation of crossfire” was the way to do it. Shooting at Kennedy from three directions, one of the shots would have to get him.[48] Russo recalled the importance Ferrie put on this.
Russo described Ferrie’s electric tension when he talked about the assassination of Kennedy, and the contrast of Bertrand, whom he recalled as sitting back, poised and relaxed, smoking his cigarettes. In spite of Ferrie’s excitement and his volubility, Russo went on, Bertrand remained the central presence in the group. Now, Russo said, Bertrand spoke up.
Bertrand said it was important for each of them to be in the public eye when it happened. Ferrie responded that he had already decided that he was going to be at the university at Hammond (Southeastern Louisiana University). Bertrand commented that he probably would be traveling, on his way to the west coast.[49]
Now, Russo testified, for the first time it struck him that these men were talking about where they were going to be when President Kennedy was killed. There no longer was speculation here, as in the discussion of Castro’s possible assassination.
He testified that Ferrie once again got back on the subject of triangulation (crossfire)—once he got his teeth into a subject, he did not let it go easily—but by that time Russo was tired and his memory of details was hazy. He remembered that Dave Ferrie gave him a ride home.
Some months later, Russo went on to testify, approximately in March 1964, he happened to drive into David Ferrie’s new service station. As he arrived there, he saw Ferrie in conversation with a familiar-looking individual. It was the tall, white-haired man who had been at Ferrie’s place, the man who then had been introduced to him as Bertrand. At the conclusion of his testimony, Russo was asked to identify the man. Unhesitatingly, Russo indicated the defendant, Clay Shaw.
On cross-examination Shaw’s lawyers spent hours trying to discredit Russo and his testimony. They focused particularly on the hypnosis and Sodium Pentothal treatments, implying that we had somehow drugged Russo and brainwashed him into telling this wild story. Their efforts failed, though. We called Dr. Esmond Fatter, a distinguished physician and hypnotist, and Dr. Nicholas Chetta, the coroner of the city of New Orleans, to explain the treatments they had administered to Russo. Both were evaluated by the three-judge panel as qualified experts on truth verification by Sodium Pentothal and hypnosis. And both testified strongly and clearly under oath that Perry Russo was telling the truth when he recalled hearing Clay Shaw and David Ferrie discussing the details of assassinating President Kennedy.
More than two decades later, Russo’s candor about his testimony is startling. “Some people try to thank me,” he says, “for helping Kennedy by testifying about the assassination. I didn’t do that to help the man. The truth is I hated him for what he did to the Cubans who wanted to fight Castro. Why did I testify for the D.A.’s office against Clay Shaw?” he asks in 1988. “That’s easy. They learned that I was at that meeting with David Ferrie and him and, when they questioned me, I just wasn’t going to lie about it.”
The other key witness we called at the preliminary hearing was Vernon Bundy, a black inmate of the New Orleans Parish prison. In his late twenties, Bundy was a narcotics offender who had been in jail because of a parole violation. He had told a prison guard that he had information concerning Lee Oswald. Prison officials with whom we were on good terms passed this on to us, and we interviewed Bundy extensively until we were satisfied that he was telling the truth. During the interviews it had become apparent that Bundy was at ease with me, so I decided to handle his questioning in court.
That day, because of all the publicity, the atmosphere in front of the building was like a circus. A man with colored balloons shaped like rabbits was making brisk sales. At the courtroom door a flock of news reporters descended on me, but I brushed by without comment.
I was on friendly terms with all the judges, but to emphasize my detachment in this case I did not go into their chambers for the customary pre-hearing chat with them and the opposing attorneys.
As I glanced over the scene, the three judges began taking their seats on the bench. Judges Bernard Bagert, Matthew Braniff, and Malcolm O’Hara were among the most competent on the court. Shaw was at the defendant’s seat with his attorneys, Irvin Dymond, Edward Wegmann, and William Wegmann. At the bench there was a brief flurry of movement. Judge Braniff, who had a temper like Vesuvius in eruption, had spotted among the spectators a woman with three children, all with rabbit balloons. Judge Bagert grabbed him just in time and signaled to the bailiff to get the lady and her menagerie out of the court.
When things calmed down, I called Vernon Bundy to the stand and led him through his preliminary questioning. The concern of the defense attorneys became evident when they realized that I was about to have him identify Shaw as meeting with Lee Oswald. And they exploded into genuine outrage when Bundy admitted that he was a heroin addict and had gone out to the seawall at Lake Pontchartrain “to get a fix.” They were on their feet shouting objections. One of them, for reasons still obscure to me, was calling for a mistrial.
I saw that this was upsetting Bundy and caught his eye. I grinned at him, and he sat back and relaxed. All the defense objections fell of their own weight, and finally I was able to turn Bundy loose to testify in his own narrative style.
He said he had been on the concrete seawall of Lake Pontchartrain on a July morning in 1963, preparing a heroin injection for himself. He was almost out of view because he was sitting a few steps down towards the water.
“I was looking all ‘round ‘cause I’m skeptical,” Bundy testified. At this moment, he said, a black four-door sedan approached and parked.
“A fellow then gets out of the automobile and walks toward me. I am skeptical. I don’t know whether he is police or what.”
“The guy passed in back of me … and he tells me it’s a hot day.”
Bundy said the man, whom he described as tall and white-haired, walked about 15 or 20 feet away from him and “after five or seven minutes, a young man approached.” He said the two talked for about 15 minutes. “The older fellow gave the young guy what I’m not sure, but it looked like a roll of money. The young guy stuck it in his back pocket.”
From photographs he identified the young man as Lee Oswald and the man who exited the automobile as Clay Shaw. The two identifications—requiring that he select their photographs from among others—initially had been made without hesitation for us. Now, once again, he unhesitantly picked out the pictures of Lee Oswald and Clay Shaw, identifying them for the judges as the two men he had seen meeting by the seawall.
After overhearing their conversation and after their departure, he testified, he went over to where they had been standing and picked up several yellow leaflets. (It will be recalled that Oswald had been distributing yellow pro-Castro handouts from his 544 Camp Street address.) Bundy used one of the yellow pieces of paper to wrap up his heroin after he “shot the dope.”
When I asked Bundy to point out the man who had met with Oswald, he directed an unwavering finger straight at the defendant. During this long moment, the courtroom, which had resembled a noisy carnival before the proceedings began, now was as quiet as an abandoned cemetery at midnight. The defense attorneys occupied themselves with appearing ineffably bored with such timewasting proceedings, a certain sign they were unhappy. As for the three judges and the spectators, they hung onto every word uttered by young Bundy.
When I felt that I had made my point, I asked Bundy to step down from the witness chair and put his hand over the man whom he had seen meeting on the lakefront with Lee Harvey Oswald. Bundy stepped down, walked across the silent courtroom, and put his hand over the gray-white hair of Clay Shaw.
That moment, everyone in the courtroom seemed frozen in shock. Then, apparently receiving a nod from Judge Bagert, the minute clerk announced, “This court will take a recess.” It was as the judges were stepping down from their seats behind the bench that the crowd burst into a sustained uproar. I glanced over at the defense table and saw, for the first time, the slightest signs of frowns on the foreheads of the defense attorneys. On the other hand, seemingly above it all—appearing for all the world to be an elegant Gulliver set upon and strapped into his chair by Lilliputians—Shaw continued to savor his cigarette, his eyes above the crowd as he glanced across the courtroom.
On cross-examination, of course, the defense lawyers came at Vernon Bundy like rabid wolves. Disconcerted at first, he appeared to relax and soon was recounting his story steadily and patiently. I knew all the questions they would be asking a hundred times over. It was a long-held custom of mine in trials seldom to object when a witness is standing up firm against the opposing lawyers. I waited a long time for Shaw’s attorneys to wear themselves out against Bundy, but in the end they did.
At the conclusion of the preliminary hearing on March 17, the three-judge panel ruled that the prosecution had presented sufficient evidence and ordered Clay Shaw to be held for jury trial.