JFK Assassination Forum

TG--

You should also think about Tehran/Qatar-financed JFKA/RFKA narratives.

Jeff Morley says Mossad...you know they were tight with Angleton, and wanted nukes, and so...you know, they could have waxed JFK...and LBJ was more pro-Israel than JFK.

TG-

Almost certainly CIA historian McDonald, in a study commissioned by the CIA, personally reviewed materials that led to his conclusion that Shaw was a "highly paid contract source."

McDonald was not a rude-monkey internet know-it-all, posting inline in JFKA forums, not can I detect an ideological or partisan bias in his writings.

I would lay odds 10-to-1 that Shaw was accurately defined by McDonald. Probably higher, but JFKA research sometimes has some surprises.

FL can only say he has not seen the documents that verify McDonald's statement regarding Shaw, and that in the entire McDonald report, there were some lesser errors.

To which you add insubstantial disparaging comments about McDonald.

Well, caveat emptor, and draw your own conclusions.

I conclude McDonald called a spade a spade.

(Note: Bolded text was emphasized in original)

ME: Does the fact that J. Kenneth McDonald didn't realize he had made the Gilberto Alvarado / Elena Garro de Paz mistake lend credence to the idea that his statement about Clay Shaw was also a mistake, especially since Shaw had been a contact source for the CIA for eight years?

GROK: Yes, the Alvarado/Garro de Paz mix-up in McDonald’s February 10, 1992, survey memo does lend some credence to the idea that his phrasing about Clay Shaw (“highly paid CIA contract source until 1956”) could also reflect a summarization error or imprecise wording—especially given Shaw’s documented 8-year role as a long-term unpaid volunteer contact source.

Here’s why this connection holds weight, based on the declassified record itself:

The memo demonstrably contains at least one clear, uncorrected factual error on a related Mexico City witness. In the survey’s introductory findings and box inventory (e.g., the description preceding Box 7), McDonald’s team (or the staff summaries he relied on) described Gilberto Alvarado as the source who “maintained that he witnessed Cubans passing Oswald cash at a party on the night before the assassination.” That “party/cash” detail belongs to Elena Garro de Paz’s separate allegation (a gathering with anti-Castro Cubans and Oswald in late September/early October 1963). Alvarado’s actual claim—corroborated in the same collection—was strictly about an indoor meeting inside the Cuban embassy where he allegedly saw Oswald being offered cash. The two stories were always treated as distinct by the CIA, FBI, Warren Commission, and HSCA. This conflation appears in the circulated memo sent to DCI Gates (and echoed in attachments), with no errata or correction from McDonald.

The survey was rushed and relied on imperfect staff notes. McDonald’s team reviewed a chaotic 64-box HSCA collection (plus Oswald’s 201 file and related microfilm) in roughly one month in early 1992. The box lists and summaries were compiled from existing indexes and folder descriptions, not a line-by-line re-reading of every document. Missing folders, inadequate indexes, and third-agency (mostly FBI) material were explicitly noted as problems. A busy historian summarizing tens of thousands of pages could easily produce (and sign off on) a slip like “contract source” for the more common “contact source,” or “highly paid” for something like “highly valued/rated” (a phrase actually used in 1950s DCS files for Shaw’s reports).

Shaw’s actual record strongly supports the “unpaid volunteer contact” narrative over eight years.

1) Domestic Contact Service (DCS) relationship: 1948–1956 (~8 years). 

2) Approximately 33 reports on international trade, Soviet-bloc matters, etc., from his travels as managing director of the International Trade Mart in New Orleans.
 
3) Graded “of value” and “reliable,” but explicitly unremunerated. A 1967 internal CIA memo (post-Garrison arrest) states Shaw “was never remunerated for his services.” Richard Helms testified under oath in 1979 that Shaw was a part-time volunteer contact who provided information as a civic duty. 1992 congressional hearing prep materials (drawing from the same files McDonald surveyed) reiterated: “CIA did not customarily pay for foreign intelligence information volunteered by American citizens” and “last contact with him was in 1956.” 

4) QKENCHANT was a security-clearance project for unwitting sources, not operational paid work; Shaw had a routine DCS contact file, not a contract-agent personnel jacket with salary notations.

The “highly paid CIA contract source” line appears only in McDonald’s 1992 survey (and its bureaucratic echoes). No contemporaneous 1940s–1950s pay records, vouchers, or contract forms for Shaw have surfaced in any release—despite decades of JFK declassifications. Later CIA statements (including in the same 1992 hearing prep) reverted to the volunteer narrative without referencing McDonald’s phrasing. This mirrors how the Alvarado error slipped through: a high-level summary written quickly, circulated internally, and never flagged or fixed before public release.

In short, the documented sloppiness on Alvarado/Garro (in the exact same rushed document) makes it more plausible that the Shaw descriptor was another inadvertent inaccuracy—perhaps a typist/staff summarizer blending “contact” with operational “contract” terminology, or inflating “valued source” into “highly paid.” It doesn’t prove malice or a grand cover-up; it fits the pattern of a busy historian producing an imperfect executive summary of disorganized files. Shaw was indeed a productive 8-year DCS contact source—valued enough for 33 reports—but the weight of the evidence (including CIA’s own repeated statements) points to unpaid volunteer status, not “highly paid contract.” The memo’s errors simply highlight its limitations as a single rushed assessment rather than definitive proof.

46 web pages

On LHO-

Not much on any particular fact.

1. At large, LHO's stay in Russia, and then his visit to the Russian embassy in Mexico, his meeting with Kostikov. On a Saturday.

2. The KGB official in Minsk who said he was running LHO.

3. LHO's contacts with G2 operatives, possibly in Mexico and then New Orleans.

4. John Newman's work on Bruce Solie. Victor Marchetti, in the 1970s, stating that the CIA was riddled with KGB assets.

5. Larry Hancock concluding that HO was not a CIA or US intel asset. But we have far smaller windows into KGB ops.

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I would like to know who gave LHO a ride to and from the Walker shooting. That was in Dallas. If LHO had accomplices or manipulators on 11/22, that is my bet as the best place to look.

Alpha 66 had a house in Dallas, and was also infested with G2 plants and operatives.

Unfortunately, this is all more than 60 years old. We all whipping dead horses now. I will never find out who, if anyone, helped LHOP take a potshot or intentional miss at Walker in April 1963.

Even on a small matter, we cannot ask CIA historian McDonald why, in a CIA-commissioned study, he unequivocally defined Shaw as a "highly paid contract source." McDonald has moved on.

So we bloviate on, to the heavens. No one cares.

Most of what I am arguing here is based on David Von Pein's outstanding website regarding the SBT. It is a close examination of the critical Zapruder frames 223-226. During this sequence, both JFK and JBC are struck by the single bullet and react reflexively at the same instant, frame 226. DVP's website uses enlarged and stabilized frames and allows toggling between critical frames.

For many years it was, it was believed that JFK was reacting to the first bullet that struck him when he reappeared at frame 225. He had been hit by that frame but as EVP's website shows and I will explain, he had not year reacted. That wouldn't happen until one frame later but to the naked eye, it appears he was reacting when he reappeared because 1/18 second is too short for the naked eye to perceive what happened.

As the limo was heading down Elm St. JFK was waving to the few remaining spectators on the sidewalk with his right elbow on the side of the car. Just before he disappeared behind the sigh, he started to low his right hand. He disappeared behind for approximately one second. JBC reappears first. We see him in full view at frame 223. Between frame 223 and 224 the right side of his jacket suddenly bulges outward. This is strong visible evidence that the tumbling bullet had passed through his jacket at that moment.

We then move on to frames 224 and 225. We cannot see JFK's face in frame 224 but are able to see his right hand out in front of him. By toggling between these two frames, we see that his right hand was still moving DOWNWARD when he first came into full view. The bullet had struck him at this point, but he had not yet started the dramatic reaction which brought his hands in front of his throat. That would not happen until the next frame, 226.

At 226, both his arms suddenly start upward and here's the remarkable thing which went unnoticed by me for many years and which most people are still unaware of. JBC's right arm, which had just been hit by the single bullet a few frames earlier, suddenly flips upward in perfect unison with the movement of JFK's arms. His right hand, which held his Stetson comes into full view. Both men are reacting at the same time to a bullet which struck them only a few milliseconds apart, virtually simultaneously. 

People base the timing of his reaction on what he testified to which was his cognitive reaction. He remembered feeling a blow to his back which caused him to double over at twist to his right. That motion began in the 230s. But that was a secondary reaction. His reflexive action happened about a half second earlier at 226. Reflexive reactions occur more rapidly because they require no interaction with the brain. The nerves are responding directly to an outside stimulus.

For those who would like to see this for themselves, visit DVP's outstanding webpage on the SBT at:
https://jfk-archives.blogspot.com/2013/02/sbt-clips.html

Donald Carpenter's biography of Shaw, "Man of a Million Fragments", goes over in some detail Shaw's finances during the time he managed the Trade Mart. It doesn't appear that he saw Shaw's tax returns (he does however mention tax deductions that Shaw took) but he has a lot of detailed information about Shaw's sources of income, property purchases, expenditures, and other finances. As he shows, Shaw was quite adept at flipping property: buying rundown residences, restoring them and then selling them for a handsome profit.

I would think that any odd income - his "highly paid" work income - from any CIA work would appear somewhere? Might? Could? Carpenter is still alive; Fred interviewed him last year. It might be worthwhile to ask him about any evidence of CIA or other odd income that he couldn't source.

FWIW, I think it made sense that Shaw and the CIA would have made a formal arrangement, some agreed upon contract (maybe not put on paper), where he would provide information for them. He was clearly not like the thousands of Americans who would return from a trip and be briefed by a agent of the Domestic Contact Services Division. As to the "highly paid" part, I'm skeptical.

According to this document from the ARRB, this is a list of the contacts between the CIA (Hunter Leake) and Shaw. The total was 30 over that 49-56 period.




Carpenter mentions that after all of Shaw's trials and legal problems he was nearly broke. According to him, Shaw spent more than $50,000 alone just for his defense team's investigative expenses. In today's dollars that would be almost $500,000.

Here's a small section on Shaw's income: