False Witness (34 page)

Greystone Photographers

Edward F. Wegmann—
“A compelling national interest is at stake in these proceedings.”

Greystone Photographers

William J. Wegmann—
“You have to understand that district attorneys in this area for years controlled the political system at Tulane and Broad.”

Courtesy Salvatore Panzeca

Salvatore Panzeca—
“I recognized Mr. Shaw's name when he identified himself. And I simply took the position—well, I'll be down there and we'll straighten it out.”

Courtesy Herbert W. Christenberry, Jr.

Judge Herbert W. Christenberry, Garrison's nemesis—
“Garrison makes several references to the Dreyfus case. When we consider Garrison's actions toward Shaw it is small wonder that in writing his book that classic example of injustice came to his mind.”

Courtesy George Morgan

Estus Morgan, mystery man—
Unwitting “participant” in the Clinton scenario.

National Archives

Shaw (standing, back to wall) and Ferrie look-alike Robert Brannon (in overcoat). This is the picture Stone claimed Garrison discovered after the 1969 trial, which proved Shaw and Ferrie knew each other. But Garrison had the picture in 1967 and he knew then that the man in the overcoat wasn't Ferrie.

Courtesy the author

Oliver Stone, the filmmaker—
“Thomas Jefferson urged on us the notion that when truth can compete in a free marketplace of ideas, it will prevail.”

Matt Herron/Black Star

Clay Shaw—
“My moments of absolute black despair are increasingly rare. I am trying to take the whole matter stoically . . .”

Three years before Jim Garrison died, a documentary filmmaker interviewed him about his Clinton witnesses. Explaining why his investigators went to that area in the first place, Garrison spoke vaguely about his office
getting wind
of Lee Harvey Oswald being there.
⁴
It was a typically obscure answer. From the beginning, Garrison cloaked his Clinton investigation in secrecy. Only his closest aides knew about it and its origins have never been revealed. At the trial, none of the witnesses could say why Garrison's men contacted them and Garrison himself avoided a direct answer. “We picked up a lead,” he wrote in his memoir, one he called “slim,” and “a whisper in the air,” as though it wafted down from the hill country on a gentle breeze. That was not the case but that was Garrison's story and he stuck to it. Today, those eight witnesses from that rural hamlet (located about 30 miles north of Baton Rouge and 120 miles north of New Orleans) represent what remains of Garrison's credibility.

On the witness stand, each of them provided information that complemented the testimony that preceded it, their story progressing like a well-made
play. Oswald arrived at Edwin Lea McGehee's barber shop near Clinton one day in late August or early September with a woman in an old beat-up car.
⁵
Seeking a job at nearby East Louisiana State Hospital, Oswald was sent by McGehee to the home of State Representative Reeves Morgan. Encouraged by Morgan to register to vote, Oswald next turned up in Clinton with Clay Shaw and David Ferrie in a black Cadillac. Town Marshall John Manchester, Registrar of Voters Henry Earl Palmer, and two black men working for the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE)—William Dunn and Corrie Collins—saw the car. All remembered Shaw, two remembered Ferrie and three remembered Oswald. After waiting in line more than five hours, Oswald finally spoke to Palmer who told him he didn't need to register to vote to work at the hospital. Oswald politely left. He then appeared at the hospital asking for directions to the personnel department. Later, a clerk in that department noticed his job application in the files.

Garrison launched his case with that seamless narrative because he believed it would deliver a knockout punch for the prosecution. “Just wait til the first day, it's gonna be all over the first day,” Andrew Sciambra boasted to Perry Russo before the trial. Sciambra was talking about “the Clinton people,” Russo explained. Sciambra also told Russo that afterwards “you won't be all that important.”
⁶
Garrison was confident about these witnesses because of the remarkable cohesion of their stories and the seemingly rock-solid respectability of those holding public office. The three in positions of public trust strengthened the perceived integrity of them all, as did the group's racial mix.
*
But a recently released FBI report reveals that Town Marshal Manchester and Registrar of Voters Palmer were members of the Ku Klux Klan. In 1964 Palmer was the “Exalted Cyclops.”
⁷

These two Klansmen furnished the pivotal Clinton testimony: Manchester heard Shaw say he worked for the International Trade Mart and Palmer saw Oswald's military identification. So they provided the “unimpeachable” identification of both men. But as Klansmen, Manchester and Palmer have lost their unassailable credibility along
with their mantle of civic rectitude. Instead, they interject into the Clinton story an influential and violence-prone organization with a secret membership and private agenda. From the beginning, many suspected that the black witnesses were coerced. While that may or may not be the case, the specter of the Klan supports the idea. The full meaning of this Klan connection is unclear and may never be known. But anyone looking for a pool of witnesses to draw upon, and secrecy, would have found both in the Klan's membership rolls and its many friends.
*

Skeptics of the Clinton testimony abounded from the outset. “Manchester was completely unreliable,” former Clinton District Attorney Richard H. Kilbourne said recently. “You could easily plant something in his mind and he would say it as a fact.” As for Reeves Morgan, “He would say anything,” Kilbourne remarked. “I said from the time I first heard about it that I didn't think there was a thing on earth to it and I still feel that way. I never took it seriously. All these people were impressionable and they got to talking and pretty soon they talked themselves into it. Get a rumor started and the next thing someone is telling it as a fact. When you get to the bottom of it you find out there is nothing to it.”
⁸
That was the benign explanation. Others thought something more calculated had occurred.

Some noticed the conspicuous repetition of phrasing, which called to mind actors reciting lines in a play. McGehee and Morgan both recalled the time of year as
the latter part of August or the first part of September
, which Sciambra repeated as he interviewed the others. Asked how they identified men they observed only a few brief minutes six years earlier, Manchester stated, “I don't forget faces.” “I don't hardly forget [a] face,” said William Dunn.
⁹
Those describing Ferrie referred only to his “hair” and “eyebrows,” as though he consisted of nothing more. Four of them recalled Shaw's “grey” hair and his build, and two of them said he had a “ruddy complexion.”
¹⁰
Explaining why they didn't notify the Warren Commission or any other
authorities about Oswald being in Clinton, Manchester and Collins offered the same peculiar reason. “I figured if they wanted it they could come and get it,” said Manchester. “I felt like if they wanted to know they would ask me,” said Collins.
¹¹
(Neither was able to say how the Commissioners could have asked when they weren't informed about it in the first place.)