Latest Patreon Talk: History of French Fascism–Cartels, La Cagoule, Vichy, Postwar Fascist International

In the lat­est Patre­on talk, record­ed on French Elec­tion Day, 4/24/2022, we explore the his­to­ry of French fas­cism from the transna­tion­al cor­po­rate links of the ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry to the rise of the Front Nation­al. Par­tic­u­lar empha­sis is on the con­ti­nu­ity from the Pre-WWII Cagoule, through the SS-aligned Vichy fas­cist milieu to the oper­a­tions of the post-WWII fas­cist inter­na­tion­al. The talk high­lights some of the French fas­cists in Dal­las, Texas, 11/22/1963. Ukrain­ian tele­vi­sion anchor quotes Adolf Eich­mann ver­ba­tim in this video from UKRAINE 24. WFMU-FM is pod­cast­ing For The Record–You can sub­scribe to the pod­cast HERE. Mr. Emory emphat­i­cal­ly rec­om­mends that listeners/readers get the 32GB flash dri­ve con­tain­ing all of Mr. Emory’s 43 years on the air, plus a library of old anti-fas­cist books on easy-to-down­load PDF files.

FTR#‘S 1222 and 1223: French Fascists and the JFK Assassination, Parts 1 and 2

An impor­tant book about the JFK assas­si­na­tion has been pub­lished. The late Hank Albarel­li, Jr. has authored a lengthy tome, which draws togeth­er var­i­ous, dis­parate ele­ments involved in the Dal­las coup in an impor­tant, time­ly man­ner.

Inte­grat­ing oper­a­tional ele­ments of the domes­tic fas­cist polit­i­cal milieu, active and retired mil­i­tary pro­fes­sion­als, the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty (CIA in par­tic­u­lar), the defense indus­try, the Texas and inter­na­tion­al petro­le­um com­pa­nies, as well as dom­i­nant polit­i­cal orga­ni­za­tions with the forces of inter­na­tion­al fas­cism, Albarel­li and his assis­tants have opened a win­dow onto what Mr. Emory believes are in the forces destroy­ing our civ­i­liza­tion.

Para­mount, here, is the deci­sive role and posi­tion of inter­na­tion­al fas­cism in the events of 11/22/1963.

Fas­cism is gen­er­al­ly rep­re­sent­ed as some­thing of an antiq­ui­ty and an aberration–an out­lier in the devel­op­ment of our civ­i­liza­tion.

Noth­ing could be fur­ther from the truth.

Con­tem­po­rary pre­sen­ta­tions of fas­cism are atten­u­at­ed and super­fi­cial, cov­er­ing nei­ther the evo­lu­tion of fas­cist net­works through the decades, nor those net­works’ inex­tri­ca­ble rela­tion­ships with past and present intel­li­gence agen­cies and dom­i­nant cor­po­rate and allied polit­i­cal inter­ests around the world.

In the first of these pro­grams, we explore the account in the book of the role of French fas­cists in the assas­si­na­tion of JFK. 

In the sec­ond, we chron­i­cle the deep polit­i­cal con­nec­tions of the French steel and iron mak­ers, and their coun­ter­parts in the Ger­man steel and coal com­bines. Unit­ed in their cor­po­ratist strat­e­gy, they saw anti-labor and anti-com­mu­nist ide­ol­o­gy as sur­mount­ing  any nation­al­ist con­sid­er­a­tions.

For many years, we have set forth the pow­er­ful French fas­cist orga­ni­za­tions that attempt­ed to over­throw the French gov­ern­ment of Leon Blum and, final­ly, act­ed in con­cert with like-mind­ed mil­i­tary offi­cers, aris­to­crats and cor­po­rate indi­vid­u­als and insti­tu­tions to sub­vert resis­tance to the Nazi inva­sion.

With the estab­lish­ment of the Vichy col­lab­o­ra­tionist regime, ele­ments such as La Cagoule con­tributed sig­nif­i­cant­ly to the gov­ern­ing and enforc­ing appa­ra­tus of the fas­cist admin­is­tra­tion.

We have cov­ered La Cagoule for many years, includ­ing an in-depth explo­ration of the method­ol­o­gy and his­to­ry of La Cagoule and relat­ed groups in Mis­cel­la­neous Archive Show 61 (record­ed in Sep­tem­ber of 1994.) Rel­e­vant sides of this lengthy pro­gram are: Side “c”; Side “d”; Side “e”. (These seg­ments, in turn, draw on doc­u­men­ta­tion pre­sent­ed in Armies of Spies by Joseph Gol­lomb and Tri­umph of Trea­son by Pierre Cot. For fur­ther dis­cus­sion of these top­ics and books, use the search func­tion on this web­site.)

Fur­ther­more, fig­ures such as Mon­sieurs Fil­li­ol and Pierre Lafitte also served with the Nazis SS, the most promi­nent French ele­ment of which was the Charle­magne Divi­sion.

(In addi­tion to Lafit­te’s Nazi/SS/fascist col­lab­o­ra­tion, this “Man of a Thou­sand Faces” worked for a myr­i­ad of orga­ni­za­tions: intel­li­gence agen­cies, law enforce­ment agen­cies, and crim­i­nal net­works, often over­lap­ping those activ­i­ties. The authors of Coup in Dal­las posit that Lafitte may very well have been the “man­ag­er” for the JFK assas­si­na­tion oper­a­tion in the U.S.)

Net­work­ing with, among oth­ers, Otto Sko­rzeny dur­ing the war, French fas­cists sought and found refuge and con­tin­ued post­war employ­ment in Spain under the fas­cist gov­ern­ment of dic­ta­tor Fran­cis­co Fran­co. Their rela­tion­ship with Sko­rzeny con­tin­ued after the war, and Sko­rzeny may well have been the “exec­u­tive” plan­ner of the assas­si­na­tion under whom Lafitte oper­at­ed.

“. . . . And per­haps equal­ly sig­nif­i­cant is Filliol’s his­to­ry with Nazi SS Sturm­ban­n­fuhrer Otto Sko­rzeny. . . We now know that Sko­rzeny played the cru­cial role of logis­ti­cal mas­ter­mind of the hit in Dealey Plaza. . . .”

(We have detailed Skorzeny’s vital­ly impor­tant role in post­war inter­na­tion­al fas­cism in numer­ous broad­casts, includ­ing AFA#22.)

Albarel­li devel­ops infor­ma­tion about Sko­rzeny and Lafitte as cen­tral to the plan­ning of the JFK assas­si­na­tion, and mas­ter assas­sin Fil­li­ol as being present in Dal­las on 11/22/1963.

Man­i­fest­ing grasp of both the “sweep” of fas­cism and its insti­tu­tion­al con­nec­tions, Albarel­li high­lights the fas­cist gen­e­sis of the French cos­met­ic giant L’O­re­al, employ­er of Jean Fil­li­ol in Spain and his fel­low French fas­cist Jacques Cor­reze in both Spain and the U.S. 

” . . . Once in Spain, Fil­li­ol soon estab­lished con­tact with Nazi Otto Sko­rzeny, who had been ‘reset­tled’ for the ben­e­fit of U.S. intel­li­gence inter­ests in the nation’s capi­tol. . . .

“. . . . There, Fil­li­ol quick­ly land­ed a secure and well-paid exec­u­tive job with the inter­na­tion­al divi­sion of L’Oreal, a cos­met­ic and beau­ty prod­ucts com­pa­ny. Today a very well-known com­pa­ny, L’Oreal was found­ed and oper­at­ed by Eugene Schueller, a pas­sion­ate anti-Semi­te and ultra­right-winger. Schueller, dur­ing the 1930’s and the war years, finan­cial­ly sup­port­ed La Cagoule . . . .”

 “. . . . While in Spain, nat­u­ral­ly, Cor­reze became friends with Otto Sko­rzeny after being intro­duced to his fel­low SS offi­cer by for­mer La Cagoule assas­sin Jean Fil­li­ol, by now the vice pres­i­dent of inter­na­tion­al mar­ket­ing for L’Oreal. . . .”

When the Jus­tice Depart­men­t’s Office of Spe­cial Inves­ti­ga­tions began look­ing into Cor­reze’s fas­cist and Nazi his­to­ry, the probe quick­ly unearthed sub­stan­tive alle­ga­tions about Cor­reze’s rela­tion­ship to Fil­li­ol and his fel­low fas­cist Ger­ard Litt and the lat­ter pair’s pres­ence in Dal­las at the time of the JFK assas­si­na­tion.

“. . . . Accord­ing to two for­mer employ­ees of the department’s Office of Spe­cial inves­ti­ga­tions, both of whom declined to be iden­ti­fied in this book, the exam­i­na­tion of Correze’s past quick­ly unearthed unex­pect­ed details about his links to Jean Fil­li­ol, Ger­ard Litt, and Otto Sko­rzeny, inclu­sive of detailed sus­pi­cions about Filliol’s and Litt’s pres­ence in Dal­las, Texas, at the time of the JFK assas­si­na­tion. . . .”

(We note in pass­ing that John Lof­tus, the hero­ic author of The Belarus Secret, Amer­i­ca’s Nazi Secret, Unholy Trin­i­ty and The Secret War Against the Jews worked for the Office of Spe­cial Inves­ti­ga­tions.)

The broad­er con­text of the Cagoulard ele­ments in Dal­las con­cerns the OAS attempts on the life of Charles De Gaulle, which over­lap the JFK assas­si­na­tion. (We dis­cussed those areas of over­lap in, among oth­er broad­casts, FTR#1162.)

One of the appar­ent areas of over­lap between the OAS attempts to kill De Gaulle (with assis­tance from ele­ments of CIA) and the Dal­las coup is Jean Sou­e­tre, a skilled OAS assas­sin who, like Fil­li­ol and Lafitte, was net­worked with Otto Sko­rzeny.

” . . . . Skorzeny’s aide explained to Her­bert that his supe­ri­or was absent because he had ‘oth­er things going on.’ The arrange­ments that were made for [Army Ranger offi­cer Antho­ny] Her­bert to meet with Sko­rzeny con­firm Capt. Souetre’s com­man­dos were ful­ly aware of the nature of Skorzeny’s train­ing schools, which they also attend­ed. . . .”

Sou­e­tre was in Dal­las on 11/22/1063 and was expelled from the coun­try.

One of the impor­tant strengths of the Albarel­li text is the inte­gra­tion of many of the strate­gic and oper­a­tional ele­ments involved with the JFK hit.

Numer­ous writ­ers have set forth the role in the Dal­las coup of ele­ments of what Tex­ans refer to as “The Ahl Bid­ness.”

In addi­tion to despis­ing JFK for his advo­ca­cy of Alger­ian inde­pen­dence from colo­nial mas­ter France, explorato­ry infor­ma­tion indi­cat­ed to Texas-con­nect­ed petro­le­um inter­ests that Alge­ria con­tained sig­nif­i­cant petro­le­um reserves on its ter­ri­to­ry and beneath its ter­ri­to­r­i­al waters.

Rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the fas­cist con­nec­tions in the JFK assas­si­na­tion high­light­ed in this book is the fact that Robert Schacht–a blood rel­a­tive of Hjal­mar  Horace Gree­ley Schacht, Hitler’s finance min­is­ter who was deeply involved with Clay Shaw and Permindex–was the admis­sions direc­tor for Albert Schweitzer Col­lege, the first des­ti­na­tion of Lee Har­vey Oswald when he “defect­ed” to the Sovi­et Union.

We also include a pas­sage from Jim DiEu­ge­nio’s clas­sic work on the Gar­ri­son investigation–Destiny Betrayed.

This pas­sage places the Schacht fam­i­ly con­nec­tion in greater depth.

Per­min­dex was involved with, among oth­er things, attempts on the life of French pres­i­dent Charles De Gaulle in con­junc­tion with ele­ments of CIA and the OAS. (We will dis­cuss more about this in future pro­grams.

Much of the sec­ond pro­gram dis­cuss­es the actions of the Fifth Col­umn in France pri­or to, and dur­ing, World War II. (For more about this Fifth Col­umn, see Mis­cel­la­neous Archive Show M61.) It is impor­tant to note in this con­text, that Mr. Emory stress­es that the anal­o­gy between the Fifth Col­umn in France and its coun­ter­part in the Unit­ed States is not an exact one. There are sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ences between the sit­u­a­tion in France before World War II and that in the U.S. today. Nonethe­less there are sim­i­lar­i­ties worth exam­in­ing.

One should note that France was gov­erned by a demo­c­ra­t­ic coali­tion gov­ern­ment under Leon Blum (the Social Front or Pop­u­lar Front), which includ­ed the French com­mu­nist par­ty. Under the social pres­sures brought about by the Great Depres­sion and the inabil­i­ty of lib­er­al demo­c­ra­t­ic gov­ern­ments to deal ade­quate­ly with the social fall­out from it, many coun­tries expe­ri­enced pow­er­ful fas­cist move­ments. Such was the case in France. Indus­tri­al­ists, financiers, aris­to­crats and mem­bers of the armed forces were among the fas­cist plot­ters that saw the elim­i­na­tion of the Blum gov­ern­ment as a neces­si­ty. After ini­tial fail­ure in the plot by the fas­cist Cagoulards in 1938, many of the fas­cists acced­ed to pow­er in the Vichy gov­ern­ment after the Ger­man con­quest.

FTR #1043 Interview #12 with Jim DiEugenio About Destiny Betrayed

CIA’s Expert on the JFK Assas­si­na­tion Ray Roc­ca: ” . . . . Gar­ri­son would indeed obtain a con­vic­tion of Shaw for con­spir­ing to assas­si­nate Pres­i­dent Kennedy. . . .”

House Select Com­mit­tee on Assas­si­na­tions Assis­tant Coun­sel Jonathan Black­mer: “. . . . ‘We have rea­son to believe Shaw was heav­i­ly involved in the Anti-Cas­tro efforts in New Orleans in the 1960s and [was] pos­si­bly one of the high lev­el plan­ners or ‘cut out’ to the plan­ners of the assas­si­na­tion.’ . . . .”

This is the twelfth of a planned long series of inter­views with Jim DiEu­ge­nio about his tri­umphal analy­sis of Pres­i­dent Kennedy’s assas­si­na­tion and New Orleans Dis­trict Attor­ney Jim Gar­rison’s hero­ic inves­ti­ga­tion of the killing.

In this pro­gram, we con­tin­ue with analy­sis of Clay Shaw’s intel­li­gence con­nec­tion, begin­ning with review of his work for the Domes­tic Oper­a­tions Divi­sion.

A fas­ci­nat­ing intel­li­gence involve­ment of Shaw’s is his work with Per­min­dex.

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse Pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; pp. 385–386.

. . . . The next step in the CIA lad­der after his high-lev­el over­seas infor­mant ser­vice was his work with the strange com­pa­ny called Per­min­dex. When the announce­ment for Per­min­dex was first made in Switzer­land in late 1956, its prin­ci­pal back­ing was to come from a local banker named Hans Selig­man. But as more inves­ti­ga­tion by the local papers was done, it became clear that the real backer was J. Hen­ry Schroder Cor­po­ra­tion. This infor­ma­tion was quite reveal­ing. Schroder’s had been close­ly asso­ci­at­ed with Allen Dulles and the CIA for years. Allen Dulles’s con­nec­tions to the Schroder bank­ing fam­i­ly went back to the thir­ties when his law firm, Sul­li­van and Cromwell, first began rep­re­sent­ing them through him. Lat­er, Dulles was the bank’s Gen­er­al Coun­sel. In fact, when Dulles became CIA direc­tor, Schroder’s was a repos­i­to­ry for a fifty mil­lion dol­lar con­tin­gency fund that Dulles per­son­al­ly con­trolled. Schroder’s was a wel­come con­duit because the bank ben­e­fit­ed from pre­vi­ous CIA over­throws in Guatemala and Iran. Anoth­er rea­son that there began to be a furor over Per­min­dex in Switzer­land was the fact that the bank’s founder, Baron Kurt von Schroder, was asso­ci­at­ed with the Third Reich, specif­i­cal­ly Hein­rich Himm­ler. The project now became stalled in Switzer­land. It now moved to Rome. In a Sep­tem­ber 1069 inter­view Shaw did for Pent­house Mag­a­zine, he told James Phe­lan that he only grew inter­est­ed in the project when it moved to Italy. Which was in Octo­ber 1958. Yet a State Depart­ment cable dat­ed April 9 of that year says that Shaw showed great inter­est in Per­min­dex from the out­set.

One can see why. The board of direc­tors as made up of bankers who had been tied up with fas­cist gov­ern­ments, peo­ple who worked the Jew­ish refugee rack­et dur­ing World War II, a for­mer mem­ber of Mus­solin­i’s cab­i­net, and the son-in-law of Hjal­mar Schacht, the eco­nom­ic wiz­ard behind the Third Reich, who was a friend of Shaw’s. These peo­ple would all appeal to the con­ser­v­a­tive Shaw. There were at least four inter­na­tion­al news­pa­pers that exposed the bizarre activ­i­ties of Per­min­dex when it was in Rome. One prob­lem was the mys­te­ri­ous source of fund­ing: no one knew where it was com­ing from. Anoth­er was that its activ­i­ties report­ed­ly includ­ed assas­si­na­tion attempts on French Pre­mier Charles De Gaulle. Which would make sense since the found­ing mem­ber of Per­min­dex, Fer­enc Nagy, was a close friend of Jacques Soustelle. Soustelle was a leader of the OAS, a group of for­mer French offi­cers who broke with De Gaulle over his Alger­ian pol­i­cy. They lat­er made sev­er­al attempts on De Gaulle’s life, which the CIA was privy to. Again, this mys­te­ri­ous source of fund­ing, plus the rightwing, neo-Fas­cist direc­tors cre­at­ed anoth­er wave of con­tro­ver­sy. One news­pa­per wrote that the orga­ni­za­tion may have been “a crea­ture of the CIA . . . set up as a cove for the trans­fer of CIA . . . funds in Italy for legal polit­i­cal-espi­onage activ­i­ties.” The Schroder con­nec­tion would cer­tain­ly sug­gest that. . . .

His involve­ment with Per­min­dex places him in the transna­tion­al cor­po­rate milieu that spawned fas­cism and Nazism. Key obser­va­tions about Per­min­dex and Shaw’s par­tic­i­pa­tion in it:

1.–Shaw was part of the deep polit­i­cal orbit of the Dulles broth­ers and Sul­li­van & Cromwell.
2.–The Per­min­dex oper­a­tional link to the Schroder Bank places it in the same milieu as the Himm­ler Kreis, the indus­tri­al­ists and financiers who financed the work­ings of the SS through an account in the Schroder Bank.
3.–Shaw was a friend of Hjal­mar Horace Gree­ley Schacht, who became the finance min­is­ter of the Third Reich and was very close to the Dulles broth­ers.
4.–Permindex was appar­ent­ly involved with the OAS efforts to assas­si­nate De Gaulle. This places Shaw in a net­work includ­ing: Ban­is­ter inves­ti­ga­tor Mau­rice Brooks Gatlin, who boast­ed of hav­ing trans­ferred mon­ey to the OAS from the CIA; Rene Souetre–an OAS oper­a­tive who was expelled from Dallas/Ft. Worth the day of the assas­si­na­tion of JFK.
5.–As dis­cussed in FTR #‘s 1031 and 1032, JFK was an ear­ly crit­ic of the French pol­i­cy in Alge­ria, crit­i­ciz­ing it on the floor of the Sen­ate in 1957.

The con­clu­sion of the broad­cast focus­es large­ly on the CIA’s intense inter­est in the Gar­ri­son inves­ti­ga­tion. This inter­est was man­i­fest­ed through an agency con­clave infor­mal­ly named “The Gar­ri­son Group.”

“Des­tiny Betrayed” by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse Pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; p. 270.

. . . . Helms want­ed the group to “con­sid­er the pos­si­ble impli­ca­tions for the Agency” of what Gar­ri­son was doing in “New Orleans before, dur­ing, and after the tri­al of Clay Shaw. It is cru­cial to keep in mind the phrase: before, dur­ing, and after. As we will see, the effec­tive admin­is­tra­tor Helms was think­ing not just of some short term fix, but of for­mu­lat­ing a strat­e­gy for the long haul. Accord­ing to the very sketchy memo about this meet­ing, [CIA Gen­er­al Coun­sel Lawrence] Hous­ton dis­cussed his deal­ings with the Jus­tice Depart­ment and the desire of Shaw’s defense to meet with the CIA direct­ly. [Ray] Roc­ca then said some­thing quite omi­nous. He said that he felt “that Gar­ri­son would indeed obtain a con­vic­tion of Shaw for con­spir­ing to assas­si­nate Pres­i­dent Kennedy.” This must have had some impact on the meet­ing. Since every­one must have known that Roc­ca had devel­oped, by bar, the largest data­base on Gar­rison’s inquiry at CIA. . . .

We note that House Select Com­mit­tee on Assas­si­na­tions assis­tant coun­sel Jonathan Black­mer wrote the fol­low­ing:

“Des­tiny Betrayed” by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse Pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; p. 332.

. . . . “We have rea­son to believe Shaw was heav­i­ly involved in the Anti-Cas­tro efforts in New Orleans in the 1960s and [was] pos­si­bly one of the high lev­el plan­ners or ‘cut out’ to the plan­ners of the assas­si­na­tion.” . . . .

The pro­gram con­cludes with analy­sis of Clay Shaw’s close rela­tion­ship to the Stern fam­i­ly of WDSU. In addi­tion to car­ry­ing staged inter­views between Oswald and Car­los Bringuier, the broad­cast out­let pil­lo­ried Jim Gar­ri­son and his tri­al of Clay Shaw.

FTR #1042 Interview #11 with Jim DiEugenio about “Destiny Betrayed”

This is the eleventh of a planned long series of inter­views with Jim DiEu­ge­nio about his tri­umphal analy­sis of Pres­i­dent Kennedy’s assas­si­na­tion and New Orleans Dis­trict Attor­ney Jim Gar­rison’s hero­ic inves­ti­ga­tion of the killing.

In this broad­cast, we explore the asso­ci­a­tion of David Fer­rie and Clay Shaw in the con­text of the plan­ning of assas­si­na­tion plots against JFK, as well as Shaw’s involve­ment with the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty.

NB: In our pre­vi­ous inter­view, Mr. Emory mis­tak­en­ly linked “The Bomb” to Clay Shaw and to a plot to assas­si­nate JFK. Shaw was, accord­ing to cred­i­ble tes­ti­mo­ny involved with Fer­rie in anoth­er, prob­a­bly con­nect­ed, asso­ci­a­tion to dis­cuss killing Kennedy.

David Fer­rie had a desk in the  office of C. Wray Gill, a lawyer for Car­los Mar­cel­lo. When anoth­er of Gill’s clients–a woman named Clara Gay–was in the office, she wit­nessed anoth­er Fer­rie assas­si­na­tion schemat­ic on Novem­ber 26, 1963:

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; p. 217.

. . . . Clara looked  over at Fer­rie’s desk and she saw what looked like a dia­gram of Dealey Plaza: it was a draw­ing of a car from the per­spec­tive of an angle from above, the car was sur­round­ed by high build­ings, rem­i­nis­cent of Dealey Plaza. After the sec­re­tary threw it out, Clara  retrieved it. She said it should be giv­en to the FBI or Secret Ser­vice. The sec­re­tary took it back and a pulling con­test ensued. The sec­re­tary even­tu­al­ly won, but not before Clara saw the words “Elm Street” on the dia­gram. She lat­er recon­struct­ed this expe­ri­ence for Gar­ri­son. She said she came for­ward because she con­sid­ered her­self a good cit­i­zen, and Fer­rie must  have been  some­thing evil . . . .

After dis­cus­sion of the Fer­rie Dealey Plaza assas­si­na­tion schemat­ic, the dis­cus­sion turns to a con­ver­sa­tion wit­nessed by Per­ry Rus­so, one of Gar­rison’s most impor­tant wit­ness­es.

Key points of infor­ma­tion about what Rus­so wit­nessed:

1.–Present at the meet­ing where the dis­cus­sion took place were: Clay Shaw, David Fer­rie, Lee Har­vey Oswald and sev­er­al Cubans.
2.–Shaw was using one of his most com­mon aliases–“Clay Bertrand.”
3.–Ferrie became increas­ing­ly agi­tat­ed and high­light­ed “tri­an­gu­la­tion of cross­fire” as nec­es­sary to assure a kill shot on Kennedy.
4.–Ferrie and Shaw dis­cussed the neces­si­ty of being some­where else, to give them­selves “cov­er.” This led Rus­so to con­clude that the plans were con­crete not the­o­ret­i­cal.
5.–Ferrie said he would be in Ham­mond, LA., on the cam­pus of South­east­ern Louisiana. He was, in fact, there on the day of the assas­si­na­tion.
6.–Shaw said that he would be on the West Coast. He was, in fact, at the San Fran­cis­co Trade Mart, where he was to give a talk. When news of of the assas­si­na­tion reached Shaw and his host, Shaw seemed remark­ably detached. When asked if he thought the talk should go for­ward in light of the news, Shaw said yes. This struck those around him at that time  as  curi­ous.

The issue of Shaw’s alias­es is an impor­tant one. The day after the assas­si­na­tion of JFK, New Orleans attor­ney Dean Andrews got a call from “Clay Bertrand,” request­ing that he rep­re­sent Lee Har­vey Oswald in Dal­las. Andrews had pre­vi­ous­ly encoun­tered Shaw using the same alias when seek­ing legal rep­re­sen­ta­tion for some gay Lati­nos.

Key aspects of Andrews’ con­tact with Shaw/Bertrand:

1.–Andrews feared for his life if this came to light. He claimed to have been told, after call­ing Wash­ing­ton D.C., that he might get a bul­let in the head if he talked.
2.–After Andrews changed his tes­ti­mo­ny, Gar­ri­son charged him with per­jury, even­tu­al­ly gain­ing a con­vic­tion.
3.–Andrews’ state­ments about Shaw/Bertrand were bol­stered by some­one at the VIP lounge at the East­ern Air­lines ter­mi­nal at New Orleans air­port, who knew Shaw to sign in under that alias.
4.–Numerous peo­ple in bars and bistros–particularly in the French Quarter–knew that Shaw used that alias. Because of Gar­rison’s crack­down on orga­nized crime-relat­ed oper­a­tions in New Orleans, his poten­tial infor­mants remained silent.

When being booked, Shaw actu­al­ly stat­ed that he used the alias “Clay Bertrand.”

Shaw was booked by a New Orleans police offi­cer named Aloy­sius Habighorst–who had an excel­lent record. When being booked, Shaw stat­ed that he used the alias “Clay Shaw.” Before tes­ti­fy­ing at Shaw’s tri­al, Habighorst’s car was rammed by a yel­low truck, and he was injured.

At Shaw’s tri­al, Judge Hag­ger­ty refused to admit Shaw’s admit­ted alias as evi­dence.

The con­clud­ing por­tion of the broad­cast deals with Clay Shaw’s intel­li­gence con­nec­tions. Key points of infor­ma­tion in that regard:

1.–Shaw’s intel­li­gence con­nec­tions date to World War II, when he worked as a aide-de-camp to Gen­er­al Charles Thrash­er. This placed him in the Spe­cial Oper­a­tions Sec­tion, a branch of mil­i­tary intel­li­gence and one which was involved with recruit­ing some of the Paper­clip per­son­nel to work for the U.S.
2.–After the war, he became involved with Inter­na­tion­al House, a Rock­e­feller-linked oper­a­tion deeply involved with the transna­tion­al cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ty.
3.–His work for the Inter­na­tion­al Trade Mart fol­lowed log­i­cal­ly on the heels of his work for Inter­na­tion­al House.
4.–Shaw also worked with the  Mis­sis­sip­pi Ship­ping Com­pa­ny, which did a lot of work with the CIA.
5.–His “Y” file indi­cat­ed that Shaw’s work for CIA involved con­fer­ring with the agency before trav­el­ing to Latin Amer­i­ca, not after he returned as was the case for most infor­mants.
6.–At least one of Shaw’s files with the CIA was destroyed.

One of the most impor­tant ele­ments of Shaw’s intel­li­gence career was uncov­ered by researcher Peter Vea, whose dis­clo­sures were sup­ple­ment­ed by some inter­est­ing com­men­tary by Vic­tor Mar­che­t­ti.

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; p. 385.

. . . . Peter Vea dis­cov­ered a very impor­tant doc­u­ment while at the Nation­al Archives in 1994. Attached to a list­ing of Shaw’s numer­ous con­tacts with the Domes­tic Con­tact ser­vice, a list­ing was attached which stat­ed that Shaw had a covert secu­ri­ty approval in the Project QKENCHANT. This was in 1967 and the present tense was used, mean­ing that Shaw  was an active covert oper­a­tor for the CIA while Gar­ri­son was inves­ti­gat­ing him. When William Davy took this doc­u­ment to for­mer CIA offi­cer Vic­tor Mar­che­t­ti, an inter­est­ing con­ver­sa­tion ensued. As Mar­che­t­ti looked at the doc­u­ment, he said, “That’s inter­est­ing . . . . He was . . . He was doing some­thing there.” He then said that Shaw would not need a covert secu­ri­ty clear­ance for domes­tic con­tacts ser­vice. He then added, “This was some­thing else. This would imply that he was doing some kind of work for the  Clan­des­tine Ser­vices.” When Davy asked what branch of Clan­des­tine Ser­vices would that be, Mar­che­t­ti replied, “The DOD (Domes­tic Oper­a­tions Divi­sion). It was one of the most secret divi­sions with­in the Clan­des­tine Ser­vices. This was Tracey Bar­nes’s old out­fit. They were get­ting into things . . . Uh . . . exact­ly what, I don’t know. But they were get­ting into some pret­ty risky areas. And this is what E. Howard Hunt was work­ing for at the time.” And in fact, Howard Hunt did have such a covert clear­ance issued to him in 1970 while he was work­ing at the White House. . . .

FTR #1041 Interview #10 with Jim DiEugenio about “Destiny Betrayed”

The tenth of a planned long series of inter­views with Jim DiEu­ge­nio about his tri­umphal analy­sis of Pres­i­dent Kennedy’s assas­si­na­tion and New Orleans Dis­trict Attor­ney Jim Gar­rison’s hero­ic inves­ti­ga­tion of the killing.

In this broad­cast, we delve into oper­a­tional links between U.S. intel­li­gence agent David Ferrie–the first tar­get of Gar­rison’s investigation–and Clay Shaw, who was tried by Gar­ri­son.

One of the oper­a­tions in which Fer­rie and Shaw par­tic­i­pat­ed was an effort to bol­ster Freeport Sul­phur.

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; pp. 208–209.

. . . . In Chap­ter 1, the author intro­duced Freeport Sul­phur and its sub­sidiaries Moa Bay Min­ing and Nicaro Nick­el. These com­pa­nies all had large invest­ments in Cuba pri­or to Castro’s rev­o­lu­tion. And this end­ed up being one of the ways that Gar­ri­son con­nect­ed Clay Shaw and David Fer­rie. This came about for two rea­sons. First, with Cas­tro tak­ing over their oper­a­tions in Cuba, Freeport was attempt­ing to inves­ti­gate bring­ing in nick­el ore from Cuba, through Cana­da, which still had trade rela­tions with Cuba. The ore would then be refined in Louisiana, either at a plant already in New Orleans or at anoth­er plant in Braith­waite. Shaw, an impres­sario of inter­na­tion­al trade, was on this explorato­ry team for Freeport. And he and two oth­er men had been flown to Cana­da by Fer­rie as part of this effort. More evi­dence of this con­nec­tion through Freeport was found dur­ing their inves­ti­ga­tion of Guy Ban­is­ter. Ban­is­ter appar­ent­ly knew about anoth­er flight tak­en by Shaw with an offi­cial of Freeport, like­ly Charles Wight, to Cuba. Again the pilot was David Fer­rie. Anoth­er rea­son this Freeport con­nec­tion was impor­tant to Gar­ri­son is that he found a wit­ness named James Plaine in Hous­ton who said that Mr. Wight of Freeport Sul­phur had con­tact­ed him in regards to an assas­si­na­tion plot against Cas­tro. Con­sid­er­ing the amount of mon­ey Freeport was about to lose in Cuba, plus the num­ber of East­ern Estab­lish­ment lumi­nar­ies asso­ci­at­ed with the company–such as Jock Whit­ney, Jean Mauze and God­frey Rockefeller–it is not sur­pris­ing that such a thing was con­tem­plat­ed with­in their ranks. . . .

One of the most impor­tant, com­pelling links between Fer­rie and Shaw was their appear­ance with Lee Har­vey Oswald in Clin­ton, Louisiana. Key points of infor­ma­tion about this event:

1.–The three men–Ferrie, Shaw and Oswald–were in Clin­ton to reg­is­ter Oswald to vote.
2.–In the event, their arrival placed them in the mid­dle of a large vot­er-reg­is­tra­tion dri­ve for local African-Amer­i­cans, part of the civ­il rights move­ment of the ear­ly ’60’s.
3.–The three men were very con­spic­u­ous at this event, not only because of their race, but because the large, black Cadil­lac dri­ven by Shaw attract­ed con­sid­er­able atten­tion.
4.–Many of those in atten­dance at the vot­er reg­is­tra­tion dri­ve, as well as the local sher­iff, iden­ti­fied the three men.
5.–Ferrie, in par­tic­u­lar, man­i­fest­ed a strik­ing appear­ance. He was afflict­ed with an ail­ment that caused all of the hair on his body that to fall out. To cov­er up his afflic­tion, Fer­rie wore a gar­ish red wig and match­ing, pen­ciled-on eye­brows.
6.–Oswald was appar­ent­ly at the vot­er reg­is­tra­tion event to reg­is­ter to vote in that area, in order to gain employ­ment at the near­by East Louisiana State Hos­pi­tal, an insti­tu­tion with strong links to Tulane Med­ical Cen­ter and Alton Ochsner, as well as to the MK Ultra exper­i­ments going on at that time.
7.–Two peo­ple Oswald appar­ent­ly cit­ed as ref­er­ences were Mal­colm Pier­son and Frank Sil­va. Not only did both men work at the hos­pi­tal, but they both had inter­est­ing CV’s.

Of the back grounds of Pier­son and Sil­va, Jim writes:

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; p. 93.

. . . . The obvi­ous ques­tion then becomes: How did Oswald know the names of these men? Or if he did not, how did Shaw or Fer­rie know them? One pos­si­bil­i­ty is this: Accord­ing to Cuban intel­li­gence, Sil­va was active in the anti-Cas­tro cause in the New Orleans area. Sil­va was Cuban-born and from an upper-class fam­i­ly. He was actu­al­ly asso­ci­at­ed with Tulane Med­ical Cen­ter at the time. Tulane was locat­ed in New Orleans. Dr. Alton Ochsner, who was on the board of, and Chief of Surgery at, Tulane Med­ical School, was a friend of both Shaw and Ban­is­ter. In fact, at the New Orleans Pub­lic Library, there is a pho­to of Shaw sit­ting at a small table with Ochsner.

Anoth­er way that Oswald could have known these names was through a mutu­al acquain­tance of Shaw and Fer­rie, Ser­gio Arcacha Smith. Both Cuban intel­li­gence and Garrison’s inves­ti­ga­tors dis­cov­ered that there was a con­nec­tion between the two Cuban refugees. Dr. Robert Heath, Chair­man of Tulane Uni­ver­si­ty Med­ical School’s Depart­ment of Neu­rol­o­gy and Psy­chi­a­try, became infa­mous for using LSD and elec­trode implan­ta­tion in his research. Many of the peo­ple he worked on came from East Louisiana State Hos­pi­tal, where an entire ward was ded­i­cat­ed to his work. East doc­tor Alfred But­ter­worth (whom this author inter­viewed short­ly before his death) told the author that he had seen both Ochsner and Sil­va while he was there. But­ter­worth also revealed that Tulane Uni­ver­si­ty had a spe­cial psy­chi­atric unit at the hos­pi­tal, where they secret­ly admin­is­tered LSD. This is impor­tant back­ground to the fol­low­ing infor­ma­tion. Dur­ing his inquiry, Jim Gar­ri­son came across a wit­ness who had attend­ed a gath­er­ing at Dr. Heath’s home. Thee, the fol­low­ing event occurred: Dr. Sil­va intro­duced the man to the for­mer local rep­re­sen­ta­tive of Howard Hunt’s CRC, Ser­gio Arcacha Smith. Pier­son was a for­mer nar­cotics offend­er, who, accord­ing to HSCA sub­poe­naed records, list­ed Sil­va as a ref­er­ence in his job appli­ca­tion. It is hard to believe that, left to his own devices, Oswald would have known that either of these men worked at the hos­pi­tal. If either of these more log­i­cal options is accu­rate, it gives the inci­dent even more scope and depth. . . .

The pro­gram con­cludes with dis­cus­sion of what a Gar­ri­son inves­ti­ga­tor called “The Bomb”–an appar­ent plan, with detailed schemat­ics, to assas­si­nate JFK. NB: Mr. Emory mis­tak­en­ly links Clay Shaw to “The Bomb.” Shaw was, accord­ing to cred­i­ble tes­ti­mo­ny involved with Fer­rie in anoth­er, prob­a­bly con­nect­ed, asso­ci­a­tion to dis­cuss killing Kennedy.

“The Bomb” will be ana­lyzed at the begin­ning of our next inter­view.