Clay Shaw
Clay Laverne Shaw was born on March 17, 1913, in Kentwood, Louisiana, and later moved to New Orleans, where he graduated from Warren Easton High School. An aspiring writer, he initially worked for Western Union before transitioning to a public relations role. Shaw served in the U.S. Army during World War II, where he rose to the rank of major and received commendations from multiple nations. After the war, he became a prominent businessman and was appointed managing director of the International Trade Mart in New Orleans.
Shaw gained notoriety in connection with the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963. In 1967, he was arrested by District Attorney Jim Garrison, who charged him with conspiracy in the assassination, a claim fueled by speculation and testimonies linking Shaw to Lee Harvey Oswald. Despite the controversies surrounding the trial, Shaw was acquitted. He passed away from lung cancer in 1974, and five years later, former CIA Director Richard Helms testified that Shaw had been a contract agent for the CIA. Shaw's case continues to provoke discussion and speculation about the circumstances and conspiracies surrounding Kennedy's assassination, reflecting the enduring intrigue and unresolved questions that persist in American history.
On this Page
Subject Terms
Clay Shaw
New Orleans businessman
- Born: March 17, 1913
- Birthplace: Kentwood, Louisiana
- Died: August 14, 1974
- Place of death: New Orleans, Louisiana
Cause of notoriety: Shaw was the only man to be tried for conspiracy in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Found innocent, he was acquitted of these charges and was later revealed to be a CIA operative.
Active: 1963-1967
Locale: New Orleans, Louisiana, and Dallas, Texas
Early Life
Clay Laverne Shaw (shah) was born in Kentwood, Louisiana, on March 17, 1913. When he was five years old, Shaw, an only child, moved with his parents, Glaris and Alice, to New Orleans. Shaw was a student in the New Orleans public school system and graduated from Warren Easton High School in 1928. Shaw’s first love was writing, and during or just after high school he wrote or coauthored several plays. However, with the need for an income, Shaw went to work for the Western Union telegraph company after high school. In 1935, he was transferred to the company’s were chosen offices. While in New York, Shaw took courses at Columbia University and was eventually promoted to district manager, overseeing around forty city branch offices. Soon, however, he returned to his passion, writing. He left Western Union and accepted a position as a public relations and advertising writer for the Lee-Keedick Lecture Bureau.
In 1942, like many of his generation, Shaw enlisted in the U.S. Army to serve in World War II. He was assigned as a private in the Medical Corps and trained in the officers’ candidate school in Abilene, Kansas. He received his commission as a second lieutenant and left for England and the war. After his arrival in England, Shaw rose quickly through the ranks and soon became deputy chief to General Charles Thrasher, the commanding officer of U.S. forces in the southern half of England. Shaw continued to serve with General Thrasher in France and then in Belgium. In 1946, the time of Shaw’s honorable discharge, he had attained the rank of major and received decorations from three nations: Belgium, France, and the United States.
Role in the Kennedy Assassination
Upon his return from World War II, Shaw was something of a local hero and celebrity in his New Orleans home. This fact, coupled with the organizational and management skills he had learned stockpiling supplies in the Army, led a group of prominent businessmen to tap Shaw to assist in creating a center for international trade in New Orleans. Shaw would become managing director of the International Trade Mart.
By the time of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination in November, 1963, Shaw was a wealthy and respected businessman in Louisiana. In fact, he had attained such a level of social status that he was afforded the opportunity to meet President Kennedy: Shaw had been invited by a friend, De Lesseps “Chep” Morrison, to Kennedy’s swearing-in ceremony in Washington, D.C.; he later recalled Shaw referring to Kennedy as “a splendid president.” Not three years later, on November 22, 1963, on a sunny afternoon in Dallas, Kennedy was assassinated while traveling in his motorcade through Dealey Plaza.
Warren Commission Hearings
In 1967, in a surprise to the New Orleans community, District Attorney Jim Garrison arrested Shaw and charged him with being part of a conspiracy to assassinate Kennedy. Through the Warren Commission hearings, the name Clay Bertrand repeatedly arose. An attorney named Dean Adams Andrews, Jr., testified that Bertrand had asked him to defend Lee Harvey Oswald, who had been arraigned for the assassination before he was shot dead by Jack Ruby on November 24, 1963. Andrews further described Bertrand as a bisexual man who had brought gay clients to him in the past. Garrison believed Shaw and Bertrand to be the same person. It had long been rumored that Shaw was homosexual and that he was an operative for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Shaw’s regular international travel with the International Trade Mart did not help to dispel such rumors.
During the trial, a man named Perry Russo testified that he had seen Shaw with both Oswald and David Ferrie, the latter a CIA operative and also a prominent figure in the Warren Commission Report. Russo also testified that he had heard Smith and Ferrie discussing Kennedy’s assassination and noting that it would be blamed on Cuban dictator Fidel Castro. Russo’s testimony received criticism when it was discovered that he had been given Pentothal (thiopental, a barbiturate used as a truth serum) before he was interviewed by the prosecution. Shaw was found not guilty in the conspiracy to assassinate Kennedy.
Shaw died in 1974 at the age of sixty-one from lung cancer. Five years later, in 1979, Richard Helms, former director of the CIA, testified under oath that Shaw had, in fact, been a contract agent for the CIA.
Impact
Perhaps no event has had as much impact on the American public as the assassination of President Kennedy. The question of who killed the president is passed from generation to generation and is one that, it seems, may never be answered with absolute certainty to the public’s satisfaction. Garrison’s trial of Clay Shaw, along with Helms’s later admission that Shaw had worked for the CIA, served to further the belief held by many Americans that President Kennedy was the victim of an assassination conspiracy. The U.S. Congress Select Committee on Assassinations also found that “President John F. Kennedy was probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy.” Several decades later, a 1991 feature film directed by Oliver Stone, JFK, and based on Garrison’s 1988 book, fanned the flames of conspiracy theorists.
Bibliography
Benson, Michael. Who’s Who in the JFK Assassination: An A-to-Z Encyclopedia. New York: Kensington, 1992. An enclyclopedic account of more than fourteen hundred individuals linked to Kennedy’s assassination and the investigation that followed. The book also explores the differing theories on the assassination.
Garrison, Jim. On the Trail of the Assassins. New York: Sheridan Square Press, 1988 This is Garrison’s account of his investigation into the assassination of Kennedy. His book traces his growing distrust of the Warren Commission’s findings, his individual investigation into the possible connections in the New Orleans area, and his eventual conclusion that the assassination was a conspiracy involving, among others, Shaw.
Posner, G. L. Case Closed: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of JFK. New York: Anchor Books, 2003. Posner writes one of the few books that supports the notion that Oswald was the lone assassin of Kennedy and that there was no conspiracy involved in the killing. In doing so, the author discusses and attempts to dismiss most of the predominant conspiracy theories on the subject.