Clay Shaw
On March 1, 1967, New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison arrested and charged New Orleans businessman Clay Shaw with conspiring to assassinate President Kennedy, with the help of Lee Harvey Oswald, David Ferrie, and others. On January 29, 1969, Clay Shaw was brought to trial on these charges. At the trial, witnesses testified that they saw Oswald with Clay Shaw and David Ferrie, in Clinton, Louisiana, just two months before the JFK assassination. Vernon Bundy testified that he saw Lee Oswald and Clay Shaw together on the seawall along Lake Pontchartrain, in New Orleans during July of 1963. He said Shaw spoke with Oswald and gave him some money. Also, Perry Russo testified that Oswald, David Ferrie, and Clay Shaw were present at a party at Ferrie's New Orleans apartment, in Sept. of 1963, at which they discussed the JFK assassination, including the use of a crossfire and having an alibi for that day. Shaw had been good friends with David Ferrie. Some of the news media falsely labeled Perry Russo as being a drug addict in order to discredit his testimony. Despite all this, on March 1, 1969, Clay Shaw was acquitted. The jurors felt there was a conspiracy to assassinate JFK, but they didn't think there was enough proof presented by Jim Garrison to convict him.
On March 17, 1913, Clay Lavergne Shaw was born in Kentwood, Louisiana. In 1935, he was working as a district manager for Western Union in New York City, where he also attended Columbia University.
From 1941-46, he served in the U.S. Army. He had been an aide to Gen. Charles Thrasher in Europe. In 1946, he retired from the Army with the rank of Maj. Gen. Staff Corps. In 1946-1965, Clay Shaw was the manager and director of the International Trade Mart in downtown New Orleans, which he established in the city in 1962.
In 1962 and 1963, he was a member of the International House in New Orleans and the World Trade Development Committee. In 1958-63, he was a member of the board of directors of Permindex. In 1963, he was living in the French Quarter, New Orleans. On August 14, 1974, Clay Shaw died of lung cancer in New Orleans(buried quickly).
*Permindex was a Swiss corporation primarily involved in setting up industrial expositions and international trade for American manufacturers. Permindex was an offshoot of the World Trade Center, which Clay Shaw was a director of. The Centro Mondiale Commerciale (World Trade Center) was created in Montreal, Canada, then moved to Rome in 1961.
In 1962, the Italian government expelled the World Trade Center and "Permindex from Italy for subversive intelligence activity." They had refused to disclose the origins of large amounts of money, and there was no record of real commercial transactions. After both companies were kicked out of Italy and Switzerland in 1962, they set up shop in Johannesburg, South Africa. Permindex was connected to suspects in the JFK assassination. *Sources: the book "On The Trail of The Assassins" by Jim Garrison and the 1962, 1963-64 editions of Who's Who in the South and Southwest. Garrison is also the author of two other books, "A Heritage of Stone" and "The Star-Spangled Contract." From 1962-2009, there were World Trade Center buildings in New Orleans and Dallas.
