False Witness (55 page)

6
. Andrew Sciambra, Memorandum to Jim Garrison, Feb. 27, 1967, re Perry Russo Interview on Feb. 25, 1967 (hereinafter Sciambra Memorandum); Layton Martens, WWL-TV interview, June 27, 1967, pp. 10, 11;
New Orleans Times-Picayune
, March 2, 1967; Brener,
The Garrison Case
, pp. 92–93.

7
. Sciambra Memorandum.

8
. Perry Russo, interview with William Gurvich and Leonard Gurvich, partial transcript, Jan. 29, 1971 (hereinafter Russo-Gurvich Interview), pp. 9–12 (from the files of James Phelan).

9
. Andrew Sciambra, trial testimony, Feb. 12, 1969 (session following afternoon break), p. 19; Perry Russo, interview with William Gurvich, F. Irvin Dymond, Edward F. Wegmann, and Salvatore Panzeca, partial transcript, March 1971 (hereinafter Russo-Defense Team Interview), p. 12 (from the files of James Phelan).

10
. Dr. Arthur Cho, Professor of Pharmacology at UCLA, telephone conversation with author, Nov. 21, 1994 (“inhibitions”);
New Orleans Times-Picayune
, March 4, 1967 (Dr. Gallant).

11
. Andrew Sciambra, Memorandum, “Interview with Perry Raymond Russo at Mercy Hospital on Feb. 27, 1967” (hereinafter Russo Hospital Interview). This memorandum, according to Sciambra's testimony at Clay Shaw's trial, was dictated jointly by Sciambra and Al Oser; it is written in the first person singular and bears only Sciambra's signature.

12
. Russo–Defense Team Interview, p. 10. Russo said this conversation took place either on Saturday, during his first meeting with Sciambra in Baton Rouge, or the following Monday in New Orleans. According to Russo, when he couldn't supply Clay Shaw's name, Sciambra said, “Is his name Bertrand?” “I'm not sure,” Russo said, “is that his name?” “That's the name he went as,” Sciambra replied.

13
. Russo Hospital Interview. In another echo of the Bankston article, Russo said “this was not the first time that Ferrie had talked to him about how easy it would be to assassinate a president.” “In September and October of 1963,” Ferrie became “obsessed with the idea that he could pull off a perfect assassination.”

14
. Richard Billings, “Garrison's Star Witness: Heard ‘Plot' Plans,”
Miami Herald
, April 23, 1968, p. 12A. Billings, present at the dinner, also recounted Russo's statement to Edward Epstein (
Counterplot
, p. 58).

15
. Russo–Gurvich Interview, pp. 11–17.

16
. Russo–Defense Team Interview, p. 7.

17
.
Ibid
., p. 8. Garrison discussed this homosexual-thrill-killing theory, which made headlines in one of the tabloids of the period, with members of his staff and various journalists, including Richard Billings, James Phelan and Nicholas Chriss (Gurvich Conference, tape #2, p. 18; Billings Personal Notes, pp. 16, 18, 28; James Phelan,
Scandals, Scamps, and Scoundrels
[New York: Random House, 1982] pp. 150–151; Nicholas Chriss, “New Orleans: Melodrama, but the Plot Is Obscure,”
Los Angeles Times
, Opinion, Section G, March 26, 1967, p. 2).

18
. Russo–Defense Team Interview, p. 8; Perry Russo, preliminary hearing transcript, p. 76; Phelan–Shaw Interview.

19
. Billings Personal Notes, March 3, 1967, p. 18.

20
. Memorandum (untitled, unsigned, five-pages), by Edward F. Wegmann, “Jan. 27, 1971,” describing interview with Perry Russo on Jan. 26, 1971 (hereinafter Wegmann Memorandum), pp. 1, 4. This interview took place in F. Irvin Dymond's office. Present were Perry Russo, F. Irvin Dymond, Edward F. Wegmann, and William J. Wegmann (F. Irvin Dymond, interview with author, Nov. 2, 1995).

21
. James Phelan, memorandum, “Discrepancies and Contradictions in Russo's Story” (undated), item 25, p. 6 (Russo admitted this to Phelan on May 28, 1967).

22
. Brener,
The Garrison Case
, pp. 64–65; Epstein,
Counterplot
, pp. 95–96.

23
. James Kirkwood, “Surviving,”
Esquire
, Dec. 1968.

24
. Russo–Gurvich Interview, pp. 30-33; Wegmann Memorandum, p. 1.

25
.
New Orleans Times-Picayune
, March 3, 1967; James and Wardlaw,
Plot or Politics?
p. 53; Brener,
The Garrison Case
, p. 113; Gurvich Conference, tape #2, pp. 12–13.

26
. Milton Brener, telephone conversation with author, Feb. 7, 1994. Brener's information was obtained from William Gurvich. The date and time of the
hypnosis session is found in the preliminary hearing testimony of Dr. Fatter (transcript, p. 385).

27
. Charles B. Clayman, ed.,
Encyclopedia of Medicine
(Chicago: American Medical Association, 1989) p. 559.

28
. Kirkwood,
American Grotesque
, p. 152 (citing an affidavit obtained from Dr. Spiegel by Clay Shaw's defense team). In 1967 Dr. Spiegel was Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry and Director of courses in Hypnosis at Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons, and Assistant Attending Psychiatrist, Presbyterian Hospital in New York.

29
. For Dr. Fatter's technique, see “First Hypnotic Session,” transcript labeled “Exhibit F,” March 1, 1967. Courts in some states, California for one, do not allow testimony that has been influenced by hypnosis. Guidelines necessary to assure that posthypnotic testimony would be “taken seriously” were well known in 1967 and stipulated in a 1981 New Jersey criminal case, State
v
. Hurd (
The New Yorker
, Oct. 5, 1991, p. 116). Far from working “independently of either side,” Dr. Fatter was working solely for District Attorney Jim Garrison; whatever information Fatter received beforehand was not recorded; Russo did not give Fatter “the facts” as he remembered them “before the hypnosis”; and, instead of “only the hypnotist and the witness” being present,
five
others were in attendance. Andrew Sciambra actually took over the questioning at one point (transcript, p. 10).

30
.
The New Yorker
, Oct. 5, 1991, p. 116.

31
. James Phelan, memorandum, “Discrepancies and Contradictions in Russo's Story,” undated, item 20.

32
. Russo–Gurvich Interview, pp. 42–43, 46; Wegmann Memorandum, p. 2; Russo, interview with author, Feb. 7, 1994; Russo–Wegmann et al. Interview, p. 2.

33
. Wegmann Memorandum, pp. 1–3; Russo-Wegmann et al. Interview, p. 2. Russo said the arrangement between
Life
and Garrison was in the form of “written contracts”; he also claimed that as of 1971 Garrison owed him about
3,000 in per diems which had never been paid.

34
. Perry Russo, interview with author, Feb. 7, 1994.

35
. Don Jordan, television interview, undated transcript, p. 12.

36
. New Orleans Police Department, Report, re pre-employment screening of Perry Russo, Aug. 10, 1970.

37
. Don Jordan, television interview, undated transcript. At the Clay Shaw trial, Russo denied he had cut his wrists. Another Russo friend stated that he had told her about the “split personality” diagnosis (Sandra Moffett, television interview, undated transcript).

38
. Russo–Gurvich Interview, p. 50; Wegmann Memorandum, p. 2.

39
.
New Orleans Times-Picayune
, March 3, 1967; “Justice Admits Error in Shaw-Bertrand Tie,”
Washington Post
, June 3, 1967.

40
. Director, FBI, communiqué to The Attorney General, regarding Clay Shaw's attorney, Edward F. Wegmann, and the alleged FBI investigation of Clay Shaw, March 10, 1967. At the bottom of this document is the following internal Bureau “NOTE”: “On March 2, 1967, Attorney General Clark made remarks to the press which the press had interpreted as stating that the FBI had investigated
Clay Shaw in New Orleans in Nov. and Dec., 1963. This of course is not true. We did not investigate Clay Shaw in connection with our investigation of the assassination. . . . The Attorney General contacted Mr. DeLoach 3/3/67 . . . [and] stated he had been misquoted by reporters.” Clark was not misquoted, however, as the transcript of his press conference establishes (“CBS Interview with Ramsey Clark after his nomination hearing, March 2, 1967”).

41
. “Justice Admits Error in Shaw-Bertrand Tie,”
Washington Post
, June 3, 1967. All the fault does not appear to lie with Ramsey Clark. The record suggests that the FBI's communications with Clark on March 2, 1967, contributed to his confusion and may have been the principal source of it. That day in an early morning telephone conversation, FBI Deputy Director C. D. DeLoach, responded to Clark's inquiries about Garrison's arrest of Clay Shaw the previous day by telling Clark that Shaw's name “had come up” in the FBI's 1963 investigation, a reference to the Bureau's search for “Clay Bertrand,” which was specifically mentioned in the conversation. DeLoach also told Clark that “it had been alleged that this was an alias used by Shaw.” This may have sounded to Clark as though that allegation was made in 1963 but the comprehensive memorandum sent to Clark that same morning by J. Edgar Hoover clearly stated that the allegation about Shaw using the alias was received by the FBI on February 24, 1967, from two sources. If it had come from fifty sources, it would be just as meaningless. For the allegation originated in Jim Garrison's office. Garrison had been saying it for at least two months, since December 1966 when he proclaimed it to David Chandler. (The rumor was so widespread that, as noted earlier, Shaw himself heard it on February 26, 1967.) As for Shaw's name having “come up” during the 1963 search for “Bertrand,” Hoover's March 2, 1967, memorandum makes no mention of it. But Hoover's memorandum, in describing the Bureau's knowledge (dating from 1954) of Shaw's homosexuality, provides an explanation for why Shaw's name might have surfaced in the Bureau's 1963 search for Clay Bertrand—the Bureau knew Shaw's sexual orientation fit Bertrand's alleged profile (and the first name was the same). Those, of course, were two of the factors that had led Garrison to jump to the conclusion that Shaw
was
Bertrand. (C.D. DeLoach, Memorandum, to Mr. Tolson, March 2, 1967; J. Edgar Hoover, memoranda, concerning Garrison-Shaw matter, March 2, 1967 and March 3, 1967 [attachments to letter from Hoover to Dir., Bureau of Intelligence and Research, State Department, dated March 9, 1967].)

42
. Two erroneous ideas are being promulgated by pro-Garrison writers: (1) that the FBI actually
was
investigating Clay Shaw in 1963; and (2) that the FBI was investigating “Clay Bertrand”
prior
to Dean Andrews's telephone call to the Bureau. Neither of these claims is supported by any evidence. Even if Clay Shaw's name
came up
in 1963 that does not mean he was being investigated. The notion of a pre-Andrews Bertrand inquiry is based on a gross misreading of the trial testimony of FBI Agent Regis Kennedy. If Kennedy
had
acknowledged investigating Bertrand earlier, as one monograph being circulated indicates, the prosecution would have made a major issue of it at the time.

43
. Chandler Interview; Shaw Journal, pp. 32–33.

44
. In Sept. 1967
Life
published a series of three articles “detailing activities of
organized crime in Louisiana and the New Orleans area” (
New Orleans States-Item
, Nov. 8, 1967). These articles marked the final rupture of Jim Garrison's relationship with
Life
magazine (Chandler Interview).

45
. Chandler Interview. How Jim Garrison first heard that
Life
was backing off is unknown. He apparently had supporters at the Miami dinner and one of them may have telephoned him; Garrison probably heard the news before Richard Billings did. Whatever the source of Garrison's information, David Chandler insisted that Garrison was informed prior to his contacting Phelan on March 3, insisted that Garrison contacted Phelan
because
of it.

1
. Kirkwood,
American Grotesque
, p. 76.

2
. Phelan Interview; Phelan,
Scandals
, p. 138.

3
. Phelan Interview.

4
.
New Orleans Times-Picayune
, March 3, 1967; Phelan Interview.

5
.
New Orleans Times-Picayune
, March 3, 1967. This statement was made by Guy Johnson, who assisted in the early stages of Shaw's defense.

6
.
New Orleans Times-Picayune
, March 9, 1967.

7
. James Phelan, “Rush to Judgment in New Orleans,”
The Saturday Evening Post
, May 6, 1967; Phelan Interview. Phelan left New Orleans on Friday, March 3, and checked into the Dunes in Las Vegas after midnight on the fourth. His hotel bill, which was entered into evidence when he testified at Shaw's trial, indicated he departed March 7. Jim Garrison had been planning the trip prior to Clay Shaw's arrest (Billings Personal Notes, Feb. 25, 1967, p. 14), and didn't alter his plans because of it.