[104-10305-10005.pdf — page 56]
# 13-00000Continued from page 8rison's case, Epstein evidently failed to check the police records prepared upon Shaw's arrest. Thoroughly shaken by the arrest. Shaw blurted out, according to Patrolman Aloysius Habighorst, that he had used the alias "Clay Bertrand." The alias was duly entered on the fingerprint card and booking sheet.One of the most fascinating characters in the conspiracy drama is Richard Case Nagell, a former U.S. Intelligence agent who claims he encountered Oswald in Mexico City in 1963, and had been instructed by his spy superiors to determine if the rumors of an assassination attempt had any foundation. Nagell says he learned that the first attempt against Kennedy was scheduled for September 26 in Washington, D.C., and that Oswald (who crossed the border into Mexico the day before) was to be set up as the "patsy" and shot in front of the Cuban Embassy in Mexico City. When the anti-Castro paramilitary team could not penetrate the Presidential security in Washington, Oswald got a reprieve. But Nagell, who says he was sure the attempt would come off but failed to get the FBI to listen, faked a bank robbery in El Paso on September 20 so that he would be arrested and in federal custody when the assassination occurred.Epstein dismisses Nagell as being mentally unbalanced, noting that "court records indicated that Nagell had suffered brain damage in an airplane crash in 1957" and that, following the bank episode, he was "an inmate of a federal institution for the criminally insane in Springfield, Missouri." As he does so frequently throughout the article, Epstein delivers a version which if developed fully would throw a different light on the matter. Nagell was in a plane crash, but he was given Intelligence training after his recovery, indicating that he had no permanent brain injury. Moreover, the fact that he stood trial implies that he was legally sane. Recently, he was released from Leavenworth Penitentiary-he had been at Springfield only temporarily.The publication of the Epstein article came at an opportune time for Clay Shaw. Obtaining advance copies, his attorneys entered it as evidence before a three-judge federal panel which was hearing arguments that the DA was "conducting aren of terror" and "persecuting" the defendant. Apparently the panel was unimpressed, for it unanimously rejected the defense's argument and ordered the case to trial.If Garrison does get his day in court--a day Epstein has struggled to deny him -chances are his case will hold up better than The New Yorker's brief for the defense.-WILLIAM TURNER## "HERE COME DE JUDGE"CONSIDER THE REVOLT ON THE LEFT if the following occured:The President, on the eve of his abdication, arranged to accept the resignation of the chief justice of the United States Supreme Court in order to replace him with the President's former lawyer, then an associate justice;As a parlay, the President submitted to the Senate the name of his oldest hand-holding crony to fill the vacancy created by the promotion of his former lawyer:The chief justice, who had written a famous report designed to satisfy the people that the assassination of the President's predecessor was sans conspiracy and the sole act of a demented mind, conditioned his resignation on the Senate's approval of the appointments;The President's ex-lawyer, when called to testify before a Senate committee, conceded that during his three years on the high court he had continued to act as the President's advisor;That pursuant to this role, he had sat in on numerous cabinet-level meetings, but that he had merely "summarized" the views of others for the benefit of the President;That as a justice he had dressed down a prominent businessman who had criticized war spending, though whether his call was made at the President's request he could not say and remain faithful to the Separation of Powers;That the businessman had retracted his statement, though in the end it proved to be accurate;That the justice could not answer questions concerning his judicial opinions since the Constitution specifies that members of Congress may not be questioned about their acts in any place other than in Congress;That despite this asserted Constitutional bar, the justice pointed to his dissenting vote against extending the one-man-one-vote principle to local government as proof of his devotion to State's rights;That although he had been at the President's disposal as advisor-summarizer, he had never been involved in discussions that could conceivably reach the Court;That the issues under discussion at the top-level meetings had ranged from the Vietnam War to riots in the cities;That the justice had voted to jail draft card burners and had voted against taking up for consideration the legality of the war;That he voted to give the police sweeping rights to stop-and-frisk suspects on suspicion alone;That within two months of his proposed elevation he had authored a booklet, "Concerning Dissent and Disobedience," which limited the moral right to disobey laws to those "basically offensive to fundamental values of life or the Constitution" and held that even in such cases no legal defense could be urged, but jailing must be willingly accepted;That shortly after that book was published, the justice denounced, in a rare interview from Washington, the activities of some of the Columbia University protestors as "totally inexcusable, from the point of even primitive morality";That during his first term on the Court, he cast the deciding vote upholding the conviction and five-year sentence of Ralph Ginzburg for "pandering" a non-obscene magazine;That during each of his three terms he nearly always voted for business interests and against efforts to cut down the trusts:That throughout his years on the Court he was widely rumored to have been one of the President's most hawkish advisors on the Vietnam War.Consider the revolt on the left if anything like this happened in 1968.-SIDNEY E. ZION## [Law]