Fix the Bus

Why was the federal government so upset about the Jim Garrison trial?

If there was nothing there, why not just let it play out?

Did Jim Garrison inadvertently stumble onto something important without getting it precisely right?

Was the federal government worried about the can of worms that would be opened?

Were they afraid that someone would connect Lee Oswald with intelligence services?

Was Clay Shaw just an innocent man who got caught up in this?

If he was, it would be an amazing coincidence.

Was there something about Clay Shaw that bothered the federal government?

Was Clay Shaw instrumental in anything Oswald was doing in New Orleans?

If Clay Shaw didn’t exist, would  the federal government still be upset?

Was Clay Shaw instrumental in handling Oswald in New Orleans?

If so, what could that possibly be?

Would Clay Shaw have the time to babysit Oswald?

Was Clay Shaw taking on the caretaker role a la George De Mohrenschildt?

It makes sense that if this operation to kill JFK was performed off the books, you wouldn’t involve George Joannides or regular CIA guys.

You would want guys who you could trust, but who would not be formally associated with the CIA. 

Let’s begin.

Clay Shaw was not an ordinary man.

He was a highly intelligent, cultivated man who could mix easily with both the elites and the common man.

He would have been successful in any endeavor he undertook.

He rose to excellence as a playwright, as an agent in the Lee Keedick Agency in NYC, as an aide de camp to General Charles Thrasher in France, and as the leader of the Trade Mart in NOLA.

He wasn’t just a gay guy from the Vieux Carre.

He had connections all over the world. He traveled all over the world.  

He knew important people, and they knew him.

What were his politics?

Most likely very conservative.

You become your job.

Your job transforms you.

Clay Shaw was a free trader – a neo-conservative.

It would be difficult to believe that Clay Shaw would be pro-Castro while living in New Orleans, not when he is frequentiy associating with conservative people like William Boatner Reily and Alton Ochsner.

We tend to think of gay people in this era as liberal tree huggers, but it would be a mistake to think that all gay people are uniformly members of the liberal persuasion.

Then and now gay people are just as likely to be conservative as they are liberal.

Much depends upon your upbringing, experiences, and who you hang out with.

Your job becomes you.

Your job transforms you.

Clay Shaw belonged to an elite community of free-trade trade representatives.  

There are only about 100 to 150 major trade zones in the United States, and each trade zone has a predominant leader, or representative of that trade zone.

Clay Shaw was the representative of the New Orleans trade zone.

And New Orleans, as a port city, is and was an important trade zone in United States.

Don’t be fooled by the fact that New Orleans is a smaller city.

New Orleans is a major port into the Caribbean basin.

That’s why the William B Reily coffee company and its sister company, Standard Coffee, Oswald’s employer, were there.

That’s why Domino Sugar was there.

New Orleans was also a major manufacturer of ships.

New Orleans was important to our defense industry.

Andrew Jackson Higgins, the Pablo Picasso of boat makers, a man who was responsible for helping our military win World War II through his innovative design of boats, had set up huge boat-making shipyards in New Orleans.

The successor to Higgins Industries in New Orleans was Boeing.

Boeing and NASA  had created a joint venture in New Orleans by the early 1960s.

Earlier in his career before he was a trade ambassador, Clay Shaw worked for Louisiana Shipyards.

That is how Clay Shaw became known to the ruling elite in New Orleans.

Although born in Louisiana near New Orleans, Clay Shaw lived in New York city prior to World War II.

His initial goal was to be an actor and a playwright.

Struggling somewhat at achieving his goal, he worked for the Lee Keedick agency in New York. This was a speakers bureau. While there Shaw met many important people.  

He also became adept at skillfully managing important people who can be tempestuous and temperamental at times. In other words, Shaw learned how to be diplomatic.

During World War II, he learned vital organizational skills under Charles Thrasher. He began as a lieutenant and worked his way up to a major.

A bright guy like Clay Shaw could only be successful in his career.  It was only a matter of time for him to be noticed.

Bright cultivated men like Clay Shaw don’t stay on the bottom.

They rise to the top.  And quickly.

He wasn’t just some gay guy from the French Quarter.

He had an elite circle of friends. And these people knew people.

His friend Muriel Bultman Harris, who he had known for decades, was a public relations representative for Yehudi Menuhin and Rise Stevens among others.

Both these artists were heavy hitters.

Yehudi Menuhin was the top violinist in the world. If he were alive today, he would still be the top violinist.

Rise Stevens was a top performer at the Met.

Do you get my drift?

That’s the caliber of individual we are dealing with in Clay Shaw.

Clay Shaw  worked with the ruling elite in New Orleans – people like William Reily,  Chep Morrison, Hale Boggs, Alton Ochsner, the Sterns  who owned WDSU where Oswald participated in his now famous radio debate – and he knew members of the ruling elite in the other cities of the US and the world.

Of course, he met and knew the  people at Permindex.  Permindex was a trade mart.  Permindex was performing the same function as Clay Shaw’s Trade Mart.

Another connection intrigues me.  It is that of Egil Krogh, Jr. (here afterward known as Bud)  of Watergate fame.

Well after I had suspected Seymour Bolten as planning the assassination, I read in the book on Shaw by Carpenter that Shaw had met Bud’s father in 1955. Bud’s father was a representative of the Washington State International Trade Fair. They met in either Houston or Dallas.

This intrigued me because Bolten worked with Bud Crowe in 1972 on a drug task force headquartered in the White House.

Perhaps there is nothing there, but what are the odds that the man I suspect of planning the assassination would work with the son of a man who knew Clay Shaw, who was a key figure in the Kennedy assassination saga?

Is it just an accident or can we think of many other examples of where something like this might happen?  Maybe I am stretching here.

What could the connection possibly be?  Is it just the fact that we live in a small world after all?

It’s possible.

But what if Bud was not some innocent, idealistic 33 year old lawyer who accidentally found his way into the White House?

People have long suspected a connection between the Kennedy assassination and what transpired at Watergate.

My feeling is that Watergate was just another coup d’état against a sitting president conducted by the CIA.

Was Bud working in the family business?

Was Bud Deep Throat?

I suspect strongly that he was part of Deep Throat understanding of course that Deep Throat  is  probably a composite figure.

I’m going to digress.

Bud betrayed John Erlichman, a man who took him under his wing after his father died. Bud has stated that he came to see that his approval of the office break-in of Louis Fielding, Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist, was an immoral action inconsistent  with the Constitution of the United States.

Perhaps he did have that crisis of conscience, and perhaps he was too naïve to understand that you have to fight fire with fire in the field of politics.

Politics is unequivocally a contact sport, and perhaps Bud was too young to appreciate this.

Or, was he not too young to appreciate this at all?

Was Bud secretly working with the Central intelligence Agency?

Perhaps he was following in his dad’s business.

Not much is known about Bud’s father  other than at one time he worked  for Marshall Field and was transferred to Seattle. I cannot find out why he was transferred to Seattle. Were there  any Marshall Field stores in Seattle? Perhaps he switched jobs.

At any rate, we find him coming in contact with Clay  Shaw in 1955.

Were Bud’s father and  Clay Shaw members of an elite fraternity – those trade representatives who have agreed to work with the CIA and report back everything that they have noticed behind the Iron Curtain?

Was Bud’s father a member of the CIA  or at minimum a fellow traveler of the CIA?

We know that either Bud’s father or Bud’s uncle was a close friend of John Ehrlichman. They probably met in the Christian Science church.

Did Bud’s father teach his son nothing about the reality of politics?  

Surely he must have.

If John Ehrlichman was such a close family friend of Bud’s family, surely politics must’ve been discussed openly. That would make young Bud a very savvy person – a Tiger Woods of politics.

What would make young Bud betray John Erlichman? Was there really a crisis in his mind? Daniel Ellsberg beyond releasing classified information to the New York Times was suspected of releasing these same Pentagon Papers to the Soviets.  

In other words, there was every reason to believe that Daniel Ellsberg was working for the enemy, an enemy that was funding the North Vietnamese who were killing our soldiers.

That’s potentially a treasonous act.

And then there is this:  Nixon learns that Morton Helperin and Leslie Gelb are about to dump some documents into the National Archives.   Morton Halperin is a close friend of Daniel Ellsberg.

Was Bud too naïve to understand that you can’t play by the Marquis of Queensberry rules when the other player is wearing brass knuckles?

That doesn’t seem likely to me.

As I stated before, politics is a contact sport.

Therefore, it seems logical to me that Bud was working for the CIA and was one of the individuals, if not the only individual, who was reporting information to Bob Woodward.

Both Woodward and Bud had something in common. They were both young, and they both were Navy men.  

For these reasons, I do not find the connection between Bolten, Bud, Shaw strange at all.

They were possibly all members of the CIA-ONI club.

I opine that Bolten selected Shaw to handle Oswald in New Orleans, because Shaw could be trusted. He was a member of the club.

Did Bolten know Bud’s father?  Maybe not.  But Poppy might have known him. And Bolten knew Poppy.

Poppy also knew of the Reily family, and it wouldn’t take too much asking around to come up with the name Clay Shaw.

More likely though is that Bolten was looking for a man in New Orleans who was a trusted fellow traveler of the CIA.  

Maybe his old POW buddy, Amon Carter, Jr. knew Clay Shaw and recommended him.  It isn’t like  Shaw would’ve been unknown to Amon Carter, Jr.

Amon Carter, Jr.  like  his dad was a businessman.

Or maybe Charles Cabell, recommended Clay Shaw.

Shaw’s coworker at the Trade Mart, Jesse Core, had significant connections with the Dallas power structure.

He knew Charles, and he knew his brother Earl who was the Mayor of Dallas.

Jesse himself may have done some CIA work in the past; he worked for US AID at one point in his life.

Let’s not forget about David Baldwin, another guy who worked at the Trade Mart.  He was a former CIA guy.

I suppose it’s a small world after all.

Given all those connections, is it a surprise at all that Clay Shaw was involved in Oswald‘s life?

Not to me because all roads lead to Shaw.

He stands at the center of Oswald’s universe.

He knows the Reilys where Oswald worked.  He knows the people at Boeing-Michoud where Oswald desired to work.  He knows the Sterns who own WDSU where Oswald performed his television debate.  He knows the gay community which includes David Ferrie, another Oswald crony. He knows the Cuban community through Layton Martens.  He knows the free trade community at the Trade Mart which includes William Gaudet who stands directly behind Oswald when applying for a visa into Mexico.   And he knows right wing nut jobs like Alton Ochsner who was just nutty enough to possibly dream up the idea of a cancer cocktail that could be given to Fidel.  

As Jack Lipnick said to Barton Fink in the movie Barton Fink when Barton asks him how to write the movie:  It’s a wrestling movie; what do you need?  A roadmap?

Copyright 2023 Archer Crosley All Rights Reserved