6 That Kennedy Killing

li's no, tieliel that soltietune hies summer of 1975 lie tiattas-Washineton eir.er-up instituted by that the ,1* I lie murder of Lek Kennedy will cul- odd anialptil uf pi ,liessional liars loort as the lapse. We may nut told Out who inuidleie$,Inui,•but Wai nth C.urninission we will leala tir the series of uvclt acts which were Anil if this dues cute it./ pass as I preelkt It will. taken to eral,..e.1 the truth loam us. Evi.n now, late the Assassination Cot ispir.ley Theorists and their ifl the Spfltq; as I With. kith, WA:W1 a roomntinil acivueateS be respunsiLle fur rain rye verhch must ruhlinal: in Ih exposure of Few rrtl issoe alive Thevrnost rake the rrefl t CLAY SHAW, TkE (MAN NETW011 6 THAT KENNEDY KILLING /3 SutIMER 175 *FAG O" R PA(Wray?) THE GAY VERSION OF THE WARREN REPORT AND ITS CRITACS "The quean network reaches everywhere, my attacks. Yet the presence of closet quean be- dear." havior, gay lifestyles, and overt homophobia all "1 rue, but mostly into the more interesting play a part in the Kennedy Assassination miasma places, don't you think?" of the last decade, and they provide us with a John Mine!. with response I good thumbhold for getting a grasp on the whole from Toni Dawson, in conversation incredible series of events. (That no one prior to this has taken the occasion to probe this angle is also revealing as to the cowering lad unimag- by John Mitzet, inative nature of the American press ailarge.) So let's pry this open a bit and get a look back- As an active follower of Kennediana since 1959, stage where the politer and/or more "respectable" a supporter of attacks on the findings in the War- press daren't look tat now. ren Report for the last decade, and a writer interested in all the fallout of the Kennedy Assassi- nation, I have come'to the realization that amongst all the millions of words written about these mat- ters (literally cartons of books inked about the aetsteination, the cover-ups, and the conspiracies high and low) not more than an occasional and elliptical mention is made of the panoramic sub- theme of homosexuality and homophobia through all this: in the Kennedy Administration Waif (Bobby K-'s famous attack on Gore Vidal at a White Houae gala dinner when he instructed guards to "get that damn fag out of here!"), among conspiracy theorists, in the role of lucked-up &met queens who work for intelligence agencies, and most dramatically in the use to which "alleg- ations of homoseXualityr were put and the nefar- ious result garnered through an imaginary assump- tion of how the Queen Network operates in the New Orleans trial of Clay Shaw in 1969. The fact of homosexual activity among the principles in all these, when it existed, was re- legated to footnotes at best, if even there; pre- "Clay Shaw: America didn't kill him but we didn't help sence of homosexual behavior was used for keep bon alive," ran the obituary no- tice last August in Variety ad hominem attacks on a specific character paid or by Rod MeKuen and the without the accuser exploring the significance staff of Sianyan Records (lilk:Kuen's re- cording company). of his attack and the hocagshobia behind such 1•01.11141,01%,,,,,,,,1441,1011,1 MG...1mM • Clay Shaw was indicted in March of 1967 by Ay! And there's the rub! I think most honto. New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison for phobes, since they're incapable of understanding conspiring to assassinate President Kennedy. Gar- the gay sub-culture, assume that all fags know rison instantly became a hero to many determined all other fags, and that consequently Shaw must Assassination Conspiracy Theorists who believed have known David Ferrie and through hun must in some conspiracy—on whatever level— and who have had a hand ut killing Kennedy —that is, were willing to gung-ho support Big Jim Garrison when he wasn't otherwise preoccupied eating in his wild attack on Shaw as long as it permitted babies. • • them their attack on the Warren Report. Mark Lane and Mort Sahl were foremost among those A wall of hypocrisy and homophobia rises who were activist Garrison-backers. to obscure the truth and prevents even the well- Garrison had originally targeted a strange New motivated investigators Crum pursuing into Orleans right-wing character named David Ferrie areas they're ill-equipped to handle and/or cul- as his victim, but Ferrie dropped dead before G. turally predisposed against exploring fairly. could arrest him. The story that Garrison had Their ignorance of the homosexual sub-culture "solved" the assassination had broken by then. The world press were winging their way to New Orleans waiting for this authoritative D.A. to and their active homophobia and love of per- arrest someone in "The Crime of the Century." secution allowed them to support Garrison in With Ferne's death Garrison was left with the his starkly corrupt pursuit and destruction of press on his baek, leaks promising forthcoming Clay Shaw (be they the right-wing courtroom arrests and no patsy to nab. (I remember clearly "Hanging Ladies" or scribes of the trendy watching Huntley & Brinkley at the time when lefty press). Lacking a respect for legality the news came across that David Ferric, "a ho- themselves, folks like Lane and Sahl indulged mosexual," was hinted to be involved in Kennedy's Garrison his illegalities to get at what they murder; I was 19 then and I thought: oh boy, wanted. Garrison's filthy means were OK by it's witchhunt time. I wasn't far off the mark.) them if they got to their end of debunking the conclusions of the Warren Report. This atti- Anyway, immediately after Ferrie's death in tude not only set a bad tone for Assassination Feb 67, a young man named Perry Raymond Russo Theorists (since Lane and Sahl were quite happy stepped front and center in Baton Rouge and said in their roles of Super-Stars of the Theorists— he knew Ferrie and his gay friends and had over- Lane especially has made a full-time, money- heard Ferrie and others talking of assassination. making job of it). but it was a short-sighted Barn! Garrison plucks this lad from obscurity, tactic and ultimately a grave disservice to the Russo becomes the works him over, and voilLt many thousands who have worked in whatever main witness in the state's case against Clay Shaw. ways to expose government lies in the Warren Russo originally never put Shaw at Ferrie's "assas- Report. sinanon conspiracy party"—that was an idea ger- minated in the D.A.'s office—but after being I won't be going into many specifics of the drugged, hypnotized and given suggestions, Russo Shaw-Garrison trial; For those facts I encourage came around to a position where he would testify those who're interested to read Jim Kirkwood's that Shaw was there. Hence the indictment, al- fine book, American Grotesquefrom which I lowing New Orleans "justice" to wend its weird quoted above, as well as The Garrison Case: and wary way. A Study In The Abuse Of Power by Milton Brener. Ido want to point out in this article the systemic Garrison's line was: Ferrie was a fairy, Russo homophobia which allows such a thing as the was a homo, and Shaw was a fag. In Big Jim's bent mind it was a natural they should be hanging out together planning miscreant deeds. Or to quote the judge at Clay Shaw's trial, a Garrison lackie and notorious homophobe, Judge James Haggerty, a blustery, pugnacious, booze-swilling Irish-face who'd bamboozled his way into the New Orleans political scene through the usual corrupt methods: "The jury didn't get too much on the queer angle. They (the prosecution) didn't make the cause cigbre of it that I would have. I would have if I'd been the prosecution...I am personally convinced that— from people I've spoken to and what I've heard over two years—I am convinced that Shaw knew Ferrie. I am convinced...queers know queers! In New Orleans particularly...they've got a clique !niter man the CIA." persecution tit Shaw to happen in the first place. Life's um \hurl hi hike un all injustice: consequent. ly, l'ut nut terribly concerned with the murder of any particular President They conic and go, and they're only differentiated by the quality of their lies. What does actively concern me is the organized corruption and hypocrisy of our homo- phobic culture which allows ambitious men, in their brutal pursuit of power, to continue to se- lect homosexuals as theii victims when needed. And the Garrison-Shaw trial is a fine example of how a basically progressive cause (at tacks on a government's cover-ups) can trip up on its own hypocrisies and assume some of the very corrupt characteristics of the men in power it's accusing. Clay Shaw was an innocent man whose life, reputation and career were disrupted and destroyed becuase and only because he happened to be actively homosexual in his tastes and because the society he lived in made him available for attacks on account of this. a • Queers know queers! Well, of course they do, as Greeks know Greeks, Jews Jews etc. (In fact there's even a paper for Jew- ish youth called The Network.) But to infer (turn this casual fact of human association that there's something sinister when conPenient.

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