The best evidence Ferrie and Clay Shaw were close acquaintences

[Fred Litwin]

I think this is all very silly. Both Shaw and Ferrie denied knowing each other. None of their friends said they knew each other.

They were in very different social circles.

The only person to say they knew each other was Perry Russo, and, as we know, he has zero credibility.

fred

[Lance Payette]

Being a Serious JFKA Researcher, I went back through my Kindle edition of Carpenter's book. He does not mention the Habana Bar or Pena, presumably because the book was published in 2014 and Pena's HSCA testimony did not become public until the 2017 document release.

He does mention Ferrie 523 times and I, as a Serious JFKA Researcher, scrolled through all 523 references. Carpenter does not shy away from the various folks who said they had seen Ferrie and Shaw together, or from the several who knew one or both of them very well and said they had never heard one mention the other. Carpenter doesn't state a firm conclusion, but there just doesn't seem to be any solid evidence. Many people apparently believe the confusion is that Ferrie was seen in the company of Bannister - who, like Shaw, was tall and gray-haired.

The book gives you a sense of how very important, respected and even beloved Shaw was. Yes, he was heavily into the gay scene and the book recounts one of his kind-of-clumsy efforts to pick up a young guy, but he certainly didn't "need" Ferrie and would have descended far below his social, economic and intellectual class to have openly associated with him. The Shaw who emerges from the book simply would not have descended to the level of frequenting the Habana Bar with Ferrie.

FWIW, when Ferrie was first asked about Clay Shaw, his response was "Who's Clay Shaw?"

I think I'm going to bump my Amazon review to 4 stars. Carpenter worked 18 years on this book, and it is really quite astonishing.

[Fred Litwin]

I debunk a lot of the Ferrie knew Shaw nonsense in this blog post.

https://www.onthetrailofdelusion.com/post/the-scholarship-of-james-dieugenio

[Tommy Shanks]

Excellent work, Fred. Not sure why Gerry is suddenly clinging to Orest Pena's tall tales.

[Gerry Down]

Excellent work, Fred. Not sure why Gerry is suddenly clinging to Orest Pena's tall tales.

How do you know they're tall tales?

I don't see anything tall about these tales. Pena is just saying he saw two people coming in to a bar together. Seems kinda mundane to me.

[Tommy Shanks]

They're tall tales because they're not supported by any other evidence, as Fred points out in his own blog posting.

[Lance Payette]

How do you know they're tall tales?

I don't see anything tall about these tales. Pena is just saying he saw two people coming in to a bar together. Seems kinda mundane to me.

You are conveniently ignoring that he also said he was an FBI informant, knew Oswald was an FBI informant, saw Oswald with Warren DeBrueys, and saw Oswald 10-12 times in Pedro's restaurant, often in the company of Customs and INS agents. His claims about seeing Ferrie and Shaw are not, on their face, outlandish, although they are at odds with pretty much all the evidence and difficult to believe in the context of Shaw's life. It's Pena's other stuff that would make me put his Ferrie-Shaw stuff in the category of a tall tale. If the same thing had been said by some banker who had no connection of any sort with any JFKA stuff, that would be one thing - but Pena was knee-deep in JFKA stuff and clearly trying to implicate Shaw via innuendo for some purpose known only to him.

[Gerry Down]

You are conveniently ignoring that he also said he was an FBI informant, knew Oswald was an FBI informant, saw Oswald with Warren DeBrueys, and saw Oswald 10-12 times in Pedro's restaurant, often in the company of Customs and INS agents. His claims about seeing Ferrie and Shaw are not, on their face, outlandish, although they are at odds with pretty much all the evidence and difficult to believe in the context of Shaw's life. It's Pena's other stuff that would make me put his Ferrie-Shaw stuff in the category of a tall tale. If the same thing had been said by some banker who had no connection of any sort with any JFKA stuff, that would be one thing - but Pena was knee-deep in JFKA stuff and clearly trying to implicate Shaw via innuendo for some purpose known only to him.

I don't see anything unusual with LHO being in the company of FBI and customs. Oswald was ingratiating  himself with lots of people in that timeframe that he would be ideologically opposed to such as Bringuier and the Walker rally in October.

And it just happens that if LHO was in the company of the FBI that summer, it would explain why he called them when he was in jail.

It should be remembered that the customs building was directly opposite Penas bar so if one was to see LHO with customs, it would most likely have been in the vicinity of Penas bar.