Clay Shaw
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- This is an article about the New Orleans businessman. See E. Clay Shaw, Jr. for an article about the politician from Florida.
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Clay Laverne Shaw (March 17, 1913 - August 14, 1974) was a successful businessman in New Orleans, Louisiana. He is the only person to ever be tried in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
After World War II, Shaw helped to start the International Trade Mart which facilitated the sales of both domestic and imported goods. He was also known locally for his efforts to preserve buildings in New Orleans' historic French Quarter.
District Attorney Jim Garrison arrested Shaw in 1967. He believed that Clay Shaw was the same person as a mysterious man named "Clay Bertrand" who is referred to in the report of the Warren Commission. A lawyer named Dean Adam Andrews, Jr. testified that Bertrand had asked for him to defend Lee Harvey Oswald in court. Andrews described Bertrand as a bisexual man who had previously brought gay clients to him. Shaw was a gay man, and indeed this is one of the reasons Garrison later cited as evidence of the two Clays being one in the same.
There were definitely problems with this conclusion. For example, Andrews had given different descriptions of Bertrand to investigators, at first saying that he was over six feet tall, then saying that he was 5'8". When Garrison's investigation team asked years later, Andrews said flat out that Bertrand was not Shaw but in fact a client of his named Eugene Davis. During the trial, Garrison called a man named Perry Russo as a witness. He testified that he had seen Shaw with both Oswald and David Ferrie and had heard them plot to kill the president. Shaw was found not guilty.
Garrison wrote a book on his investigation called On the Trail of the Assassins. When director Oliver Stone later adapted Garrison's book into the film JFK, Shaw's character was played by Tommy Lee Jones.
Shaw died in 1974 at age 61 of lung cancer.
Richard Helms, former director of the CIA, testified, under oath, in 1979 that Clay Shaw had in fact been a part-time contact (contract agent)of the Domestic Contact Division of the CIA. It is unknown now whether this information would have influenced the outcome of the Shaw trial in New Orleans.
Further reading
- Patricia Lambert, False Witness: The Real Story of Jim Garrison's Investigation and Oliver Stone's Film JFK. ISBN 0871319209
External links
- Esquire December 1968 interview (http://www.jfk-online.com/hangon.html)
- Penthouse interview (http://www.jfk-online.com/penthouse.html)
- The JFK 100: One Hundred Errors of Fact and Judgment in Oliver Stone's JFK: Who was Clay Shaw? (http://www.jfk-online.com/jfk100whoshaw.html)