Important Disclosure about William King Harvey in Recently Released Document

[Tom Graves]

Shaw had a position in an international trade mart that would allow him to use that facility to move goods or documents, and have eyes and ears in a lot of places.

It may be the CIA did not spend its money wisely---after all, they are not a private-sector company, and thus had to get a measurable return on its investment.

In the military and intel worlds, a lot of people are paid to "stand and wait." In case they are some day needed. Some people are reimbursed based on their status and potential value, and perhaps not actual worth.

If a CIA historian in a prepared report---not a memo, or causal conversation---referred to anyone as a "highly paid contract source," and never retracted the statement, I would consider that to be a true statement.

The fact that the CIA historian's statement was made regarding an individual who had, very publicly, been prosecuted for the JFKA makes its doubly unlikely that the "highly paid contract source" description of Shaw is in error.

The probable truth that Shaw was in fact a "highly paid contract source" hardly proves the JFKA was perped by the CIA, or even that there was a JFKAC. My take is Shaw had nothing to do with the JFKA.

Perhaps Shaw was asked to figure out who was LHO, someone who would be reasonably regarded as a suspect character. Maybe Shaw never even met LHO---but Shaw was still a highly paid contract source.

CT'ers and LN'ers both tend to regard evidence they do not like as "faked" or in error. Usually CT'ers, but it can go both ways.

You're full of high-fructose beans.

Pardon my collegiality.

[Benjamin Cole]

I beg to differ.

I only eat low-fructose beans!

[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?