This was the JFK Assassination episode that I was waiting for titled, “WHO WAS CLAY SHAW: INNOCENT NEW ORLEANS BUSINESSMAN OR JFK CONSPIRATOR?”
Posted Wednesday, June 22, 2022
Groubert does a nice job of listing the sources for his presentation in this episode. He is doing great work breaking down these texts for people.
1. On the Trail of the Assassins: My Investigation and Prosecution of the Murder of President Kennedy, Jim Garrison, 1988.
2. Let Justice Be Done, William Davy, 1999
3. Farewell to Justice, Joan Mellen, 2005.
4. Dr. Mary’s Monkey: How the Unsolved Murder of a Doctor, a Secret Laboratory in New Orleans, . . . , Edward T. Haslam, 2007
5. Destiny Betrayed: JFK, Cuba, and the Garrison Case, Jim DiEugenio, 1992.
6. Heritage of Stone, Jim Garrison, 1970.
7. Oswald Talked: The New Evidence in the JFK Assassination, Ray and Mary LaFontaine, 1996.
8. Submerged: The Gateway Series of Tested Plays, H. Stuart Cottman and Le Vergne Shaw, 1929.
Clay Shaw claimed that he was an octoroon, 1/8 African American, not uncommon in New Orleans. “He’s also gay and into a lot of weird stuff, which we’re going to get into.” He’s the managing director of the International Trade Mart in New Orleans. And that’s going to play an important role, because the Int’l Trade Mart in New Orleans, like its sister mart in Italy, Centro Mundial Commercial were launching pads for CIA and Intelligence operations overseas. In our case, the one in New Orleans was the launching pad for Shaw to go to Italy, the other one, but also to Central and South America. the world we’re talking about is New Orleans, 1960-1963, and it’s kind of like Casablanca in 1942 or, as Oliver pointed out, like Saigon in 1965. This was an open city where laws were violated, there was spying, there was sex, there was debauchery, like Mexico City in 1958 through 1965, a lot of stuff was going on in New Orleans, and the District Attorney, DA, was this guy Jim Garrison, who . . . now Jim Garrison is going to have his own episode, so I don’t want to get into the Clay Shaw trial. In the Garrison episode, we’re going to go more deeply into Clay Shaw’s trial where he’s acquitted.
Shaw, 1913-1974, was from Louisiana. His grandfather was a sheriff of a parish, 6′ 6″, and killed a bunch of people, and was promoted from that bloody parish to that of a Federal Marshal. So he got some legitimate bona fides by killing whoever he was supposed to kill. There was a place where the mob dumped their bodies from what I understand. It was Tangipahoa Parish. He grew up in an upper-middle-class of the middle class, and he wanted to become a playwright, he was gay, he was a kid who went to the same high school as Oswald, even though Shaw was older, but he goes to Officer Cadet School in WWII. During training at the Cadet School, he falls from a rope swing exercise and breaks his leg. Instead of telling anyone, because he wants to be an officer . . . bottles it up, and that’s why he walked with a limp the rest of his life. As a Major, Shaw becomes the Aide-de-Camp, a military officer acting as a confidential assistant to a senior officer, to General Charles O. Thrasher in Belgium at the end of the war. And Thrasher is a kind of sadist and in charge of transferring. Operating out of Belgium, never in combat but somehow wins a Bronze Star, the Legion Merit, Croix de Guerre, and the Knight of the Order of the Crown of Belgium. You can get a Bronze star without combat, BTW. He starts to operate in the intelligence divisions within this unit with General Charles O. Thrasher. Thrasher is called on the carpet for abusing the German prisoners and starving them to death, which is not a good look, as he’s turning them back over during repatriation to the French. At the same time, Garrison is at Dachau throwing up, he’s there as a soldier, he’s with that group that liberates the prisoners at Dachau. Garrison said once that he has more in common with Clay Shaw than he does with men in his own office: both were experts with Shakespeare, both were highly educated, and both were well-read. He has a lot more in common with men in his officer, ex-cops who were his assistant DAs, or Mort Sahl (the comedian who worked with him) or Mark Lane. 16:40 At one point, Garrison came down with the Hong Kong Flu. They call him the Jolly Green Giant, not because he was 6′ 6″, but because he put nuts and fruits in a can. Ha, ha. Shaw begins to do intelligence work while in Europe at the end of the War. When he returns, he’s hooked into this Mississippi Trading Company out of New Orleans, which is a CIA front. They start the New Orleans International Trade Mart. The guy who is over him is also a gay guy, who is also CIA. He gets cleared for Project QK ENCHANT, a weird CIA project. He lies repeatedly during the trial and is charged with 13 counts of perjury by Garrison after the trial. As they’re about to go to trial on the perjury charges, the federal government comes in and puts the kibosh on the entire trial. 19:00 Shaw had an attorney named Dean Andrews, played by John Candy in Oliver Stone’s movie, JFK. Dean Andrews had a retainer from Clay Shaw, and the retainer was to get gay kids out of trouble if they were arrested, to bail them out, and take care of all of the problems and expenses that gay kids got into in New Orleans from 1960 to 1963. Dean Andrews was asked over the phone by Clay Shaw, as Clay Bertran, to go to New Orleans after Oswald was arrested and represent him as an attorney.
San Gabriel Tutor 