Important Disclosure about William King Harvey in Recently Released Document

[Tom Graves]

I beg to differ.

I only eat low-fructose beans!

The frequency of your emissions argues otherwise.

[Benjamin Cole]

Given our lack of geographic propinquity, perhaps the flatulence that so completely envelops you has a more proximate origin.

[Tom Graves]

Given our lack of geographic propinquity, perhaps the flatulence that so completely envelops you has a more proximate origin.

People in your neck of the woods have told me otherwise.

[Steve M. Galbraith]

Carpenter does have this interesting account, one that shows Shaw as much more of an active participant - taking orders/directives from the CIA - and not a passive one - simply reporting on what he saw.

[Tom Graves]

Carpenter does have this interesting account, one that shows Shaw as much more of an active participant - taking orders/directives from the CIA - and not a passive one - simply reporting on what he saw.

That dirty rotten son of a gun!!!

[Lance Payette]

I couldn't locate the Kirkpatrick memo via Google, and Carpenter's citation is just a generic "CIA Miscellaneous Files, JFK Assassination Collection, National Archives." It was right after this, in March of 1949, that Shaw received a "five agency clearance" that is referred to with dark and sinister implications (but nothing more in terms of explanation) all over the internet.

As we said, Shaw's position with the Trade Mart and his extensive international travel would have made him just about a dream candidate as a CIA citizen "contact." When one reads through the efforts that the CIA undertook to document its specific contacts with Shaw - which would hardly rise to the level of him being a "highly paid" anything - one is forced to conclude that he was either (1) simply a patriotic American with a distinguished military career who was in almost the perfect position to be of assistance to the CIA in its information-gathering efforts in the post-War years, or, as the CTers posit, (2) one of The Most Interesting Men In the World with an incredible web of CIA and other sinister connections so dark and deep that they were hidden within the bowels of the Agency and undiscoverable even by those who were trying to document them.

I just don't find #2 plausible at all. I am starting to like the idea that perhaps McDonald saw some dollar figures for travel reimbursement and thought this equated to "highly paid," because otherwise I can't imagine what he could have been talking about.

Surely it is significant that the McDonald memo has Shaw being a "highly paid contract source" through 1956, which "just happens" to be the last year that everything else identifies him as being active with the Domestic Contact program. Moreover, the McDonald memo does not purport to be a "history" of anything. It purports only to be a survey of the specific 64 boxes of records that the CIA had collected for the HSCA, with the Shaw materials seemingly in just a couple of boxes. I believe these were all transferred to the National Archives.

Did the HSCA or ARRB or anyone else ever discover any document on which McDonald or his team could have relied in concluding that Shaw was a "highly paid contract source" - or was this, as I suspect, just a "Domestic Contact source" being garbled in translation?

[Lance Payette]

Just to refresh peoples' memories, Clay Shaw's testimony at the Garrison trial runs 80 pages. This is the total of what he was asked about the CIA:

Q: Mr. Shaw, have you ever worked for the Central Intelligence Agency?

A: No, I have not.

This was on direct examination by Shaw's own attorney. There was zero follow-up on cross.

It was not Shaw's obligation to ask "What do you mean by 'worked for'?" Nor was it Shaw's obligation to volunteer "Well, I did serve as a domestic contact for a few years." It was up to the prosecution on cross to ask "Have you ever had any relationship or association with the CIA?"