Clay LaVergne Shaw (March 17, 1913 – August 15, 1974) was an American businessman, military officer, and part-time contact of the Domestic Contact Service (DCS) of the CIA. Shaw is best known for being the only person brought to trial for involvement in the 1963 assassination of John F. Kennedy, due to an investigation led by Jim Garrison, the District Attorney of New Orleans. The jury ultimately acquitted Shaw after less than an hour's deliberation in 1969, though some conspiracy theorists continue to speculate on his possible involvement.
After graduating from high school in 1928, Shaw was hired by Western Union as manager of a local office in New Orleans. In 1935, Western Union transferred him to New York City where he became a district manager. While in New York, Shaw, who wanted to pursue a career as a writer, attended Columbia University. He later left Western Union to pursue a career in public relations, eventually accepting a position with the Keedick Lecture Bureau.[bettersourceneeded]
After World War II, Shaw helped start the International Trade Mart in New Orleans, which facilitated the sales of both domestic and imported goods. He was known locally for his efforts to preserve buildings in New Orleans' historic French Quarter. Today Shaw's renovation and preservation efforts are commemorated by a plaque in tribute to him located at 724 Governor Nicholls Street in the French Quarter. Shaw was also a published playwright. The best-known of his works, Submerged (1929), was co-written with H. Stuart Cottman when both were still high-school students.
New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison prosecuted Shaw on the charge that he and a group of activists, including David Ferrie and Guy Banister, were involved in a conspiracy with elements of the CIA and the Mafia in the John F. Kennedy assassination. Garrison had Shaw arrested on March 1, 1967. By the time of Shaw's arrest, Banister and Ferrie were both deceased but Garrison believed Shaw was the man named "Clay Bertrand" who was identified in the Warren Commission Report as having asked attorney Dean Andrews, via telephone, to represent accused presidential assassin Lee Harvey Oswald. Garrison also claimed Shaw used the alias of Clay Bertrand in New Orleans's gay society.
During the trial, which took place in January and February 1969, Garrison called insurance salesman Perry Russo as his main witness. Russo testified that he had attended a party at the apartment of anti-Castro activist David Ferrie. At the party, Russo said that Lee Harvey Oswald (who Russo said was introduced to him as "Leon Oswald"), Ferrie, and "Clem Bertrand" (whom Russo identified in the courtroom as Shaw) had discussed assassinating Kennedy. The conversation purportedly included plans for the "triangulation of crossfire" and alibis for the participants.
Critics of Garrison argue that his own records indicate Russo's story evolved substantially over time, undermining Russo's creditability. A key source was the "Sciambra Memo", which recorded Assistant D.A. Andrew Sciambra's first interview with Russo. The memo does not mention an "assassination party" and states that Russo met with Shaw on two occasions, neither of which occurred at the party. On February 25, 1969, Andrews testified during Shaw's trial that the name "'Clay Bertrand' was a figment of [his] imagination.
On March 1, 1969, the 34-day trial concluded when the jury acquitted Shaw after deliberating less than an hour.
Shaw denied any part of a conspiracy and said of the slain President: "I was a great admirer of Kennedy. I thought he had given the nation a new turn after the rather drab Eisenhower years... I felt he was vitally concerned about social issues, which concerned me also. I thought he had youth, imagination, style, and élan. All in all, I considered him a splendid president."
Death
Shaw died at the age of 61 at his home on August 15, 1974. He was a heavy cigarette smoker for most of his life, and the cause of death was listed as metastaticlung cancer. A memorial service eulogy was delivered by his long-time friend, the poet Rod McKuen. He was buried in Woodland Cemetery in Kentwood, Louisiana.
At the time of his death, Shaw was engaged in a $5 million lawsuit against Garrison and members of an organization, Truth and Consequences Inc., that had financed Garrison's investigation. As Shaw, a lifelong bachelor, had no heirs or surviving relatives who might stand to benefit from the lawsuit, the United States Supreme Court dismissed the suit in 1978.
Later disclosures
In 1979, Richard Helms, former Director of the CIA, testified under oath that Shaw had been a part-time contact of the Domestic Contact Service (DCS) of the CIA, where Shaw volunteered information from his travels abroad, mostly to Latin America. He did so from 1948 till at least 1956. Shaw was one of approximately 150,000 Americans (including businessmen and journalists) who had provided such information to the DCS by the mid-1970s "on a nonclandestine basis", and that "such acts of cooperation should not be confused with an actual Agency relationship".
↑Brener, Milton E. (1969). The Garrison Case. New York City: Clarkson N. Potter. pp.62–64. ASINB0006C04I0.
↑Lambert, Patricia (1998). False Witness: The Real Story of Jim Garrison's Investigation and Oliver Stone's Film JFK. New York City: M. Evans and Co. pp.48–49. ISBN978-0871319203.
↑Flammonde, Paris (1969). The Kennedy Conspiracy. New York City: Meredith Press. pp.71–74. ASINB0006BTUQ8.
↑"United States Census, 1930". FamilySearch. shows Herman S. Cottman residing in household of Alfred J. Lewis in New Orleans, Louisiana, being 19 years old as of April 4, 1930.
↑Posner, Gerald (1993). Case Closed: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of JFK. New York: Random House. p.449. ISBN978-0679418252. "At the time Clay Shaw died," says Cynthia Wegmann, an attorney and the daughter of one of those who defended him, "Louisiana had a quirk in its laws. For the suit to survive the death of the plaintiff, he had to have surviving children or parents. Shaw had no children, and his mother died shortly before he did, so his case was dismissed. Louisiana later changed its law so the estate of the deceased person could continue the suit. Almost everybody familiar with the case was convinced that if Shaw's suit had continued, it would have succeeded, thereby stopping Garrison from writing anything else about him."
↑Report of the Select Committee on Assassinations of the U.S. House of Representatives. Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office. 1979. p.218. ...25,000 Americans annually provided information to the CIA's Domestic Contacts Division on a nonclandestine basis" and "such acts of cooperation should not be confused with an actual Agency relationship.
Holland, Max (2001). "The Power of Disinformation: The Lie that Linked CIA to the Kennedy Assassination". Studies in Intelligence. 11 (Fall–Winter).
Kirkwood, James (1992). American Grotesque: An Account of the Clay Shaw–Jim Garrison–Kennedy Assassination Trial in New Orleans. New York: HarperPerennial. ISBN0-06-097523-7.
Lambert, Patricia (2000). False Witness: The Real Story of Jim Garrison's Investigation and Oliver Stone's Film 'JFK'. New York: M. Evans. ISBN0-87131-920-9.
Long, Alecia (2021). Cruising for Conspirators: How a New Orleans DA Prosecuted the Kennedy Assassination as a Sex Crime. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press. ISBN978-1-4696-6273-2.
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