Talk:Clay Shaw

message: Once again, it seems that many articles relating to Clay Shaw and the Garrison trial are being inundated with information which provides undue weight in support of Garrison.  Particularly in this article, we have a memo, which never made it into the final HSCA report, being used to imply that Shaw was a CIA agent.  As was discussed in previous arbitration, this is not an appropriate use of sources.  Adding the claims made in a memo to the article as indisputable fact is original research.   I simply ask editors to remember that Wikipedia prefers the use of reliable secondary sources to verify information.  Thank you. Ramsquire (throw me a line) 00:05, 31 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Sources

message: There was some heavily cited content here, but now i can see it has been removed.
As explained in the section //shaw was not an informer// on this talk page with citations, Shaw was CIA. But this peice of information has been deleted. I think it should be mentioned on the page.
"Shaw himself was a contact of the Domestic Contact Service's New Orleans office from 1948 to 1956 and introduced General Cabell, then Deputy Director of Central Intelligence, when he addressed the New Orleans Foreign Policy Association in May 1961”. LAWRENCE R. HOUSTON - General Counsel.
Source: http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/shawcia.htm
Also, the "five Agency clearance" is also missing from the page.
Both of these missing things are present of the page of "trial of Clay Shaw". What is going on here?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Usernamekiran (talk • contribs) 03:13, 27 August 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Content Removed? 

message: Does anyone know what a "five Agency" clearance, such as the one Shaw received, did encompass in 1949? -- Enemenemu (talk) 20:03, 11 June 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Maybe an old short-hand for what became Top Secret?  TS requires reinvestigation every 5 years.  -Reticuli 2605:A000:C3C0:5500:ADF0:821C:7B00:924D (talk) 09:06, 24 November 2014 (UTC)
replies: text:   I dont think it was short hand, or synonym for top secret. This has been on my mind for last two years, couldnt find anything yet. —usernamekiran (talk) 03:51, 12 March 2017 (UTC)

text: The clearance (which has been noted as "initial" in one document) was in relation to Project QKENCHANT. And what the clearance was for was likely giving Shaw the same clearance with other Federal agencies (i.e. the FBI, etc.) that he had with the CIA. (Whatever that was.) QKENCHANT itself was a project to "provide security approvals on non-Agency personnel and facilities". Which would tend to back the notion Shaw's relationship to the agency was not as an employee but as a informant. Just about everyone who is aware of the Domestic Contact Service (which is nonclandestine) has said that (given Shaw's travels) it would have been odd if the DCS had not contacted him. All this (of course) is pretty much irrelevant to his trial (which was (in my estimation) a travesty). Probably one of the most telling aspects of that trial (with regards to the CIA) is the fact that Garrison's team didn't cross examine Shaw on the CIA issue once. This is in spite of the fact Shaw's own lawyer opened the door by asking him if he had ever worked for the CIA. (Which gave them foundation to ask.)Rja13ww33 (talk) 19:34, 1 March 2018 (UTC)
thread_title: "five Agency" clearance 

message: I removed the following text on 11/3/10 (citation formatting has been removed so that citations appear as inline text), which appeared verbatim (ie, in the following two paragraph block) at the end of the "Aftermath" section:
:According to John McAdams, "The Clinton witnesses have been believed by otherwise skeptical investigators like the House Select Committee on Assassinations. During and since the Clay Shaw trial, they have told a consistent and apparently sincere story of Lee Oswald, Clay Shaw, and David Ferrie visiting Clinton, Louisiana. But what if you look at the Clinton witnesses' early statements, before they were influenced by repeated questioning and repeated exposure to pictures of Oswald, Shaw, and Ferrie?"[cite web|url=http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/garrison.htm |title=New Orleans/Garrison JFK Assassination Investigation |publisher=Mcadams.posc.mu.edu |date= |accessdate=2010-09-17]
  
:"Dave Reitzes has written the definitive debunking of the Clinton episode. He shows how what started out as (in Garrison's words) "a whisper in the air" was developed into an impressively consistent facade of Shaw trial testimony."[cite web|url=http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/clinton1.htm |title=The Clinton Witnesses Linking Clay Shaw to Oswald and Ferrie - I |publisher=Mcadams.posc.mu.edu |date= |accessdate=2010-09-17]
These quotes are references to a very extensive JFK assassination website run by John C. McAdams, professor of political science at Marquette University. While the website may be a good survey and critique of JFK assassination conspiracy theories and facts, it does not seem to meet the qualifications of an encyclopedic reference. Furthermore, both of the above quotes (which were not part of more readable paragraphs) are concerned not with presenting a historical account of Clay Shaw's life after his JFK assassination trial, but rather with analyzing (and debunking) his supposed involvement in the conspiracy, which is irrelevent to the "Aftermath" section of an encyclopedic article on Clay Shaw, if not to the entire article itself. Perhaps if the quoted information above is found to be important to include on Wikipedia, it can be referenced from McAdams' forthcoming book (to be published 2011), or from other sources.  Bosterson (talk) 11:16, 3 November 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Orphaned quotes in "Aftermath" section 

message: 17:38, 23 October 2013‎ Gamaliel (talk | contribs)‎ . . (14,143 bytes) (-300)‎ . . (Undid revision 578382128 by Ruidoso (talk) WP:PRIMARY) (undo | thank)
(cur | prev) 17:37, 23 October 2013‎ Gamaliel (talk | contribs)‎ . . (14,443 bytes) (-1,166)‎ . . (→‎Further reading: rm unrelated or low quality sources) (undo | thank)
(cur | prev) 17:36, 23 October 2013‎ Gamaliel (talk | contribs)‎ . . (15,609 bytes) (-394)‎ . . (→‎External links: rm dubious links) (undo | thank)
I edited the Aftermath section because in a 1992 CIA document released in 1998, "in 1992, J. Kenneth McDonald, a CIA historian, wrote a memo based on his review of CIA records, released in 1998, stating Shaw had been a “highly paid CIA contract source.” Administrator Gamaliel promptly relegated this contraty opinion of Shaw's volunteer status to the basement and actually added this comment to his "undid revision" of my edit. "(→‎Further reading: rm unrelated or low quality sources)" Gamaliel, author of John C. McAdams took action to maintain this ".Americans (businessmen, journalists, etc.) had provided such information to the DCS. (as volunteers)" in lieu of a determination made and written in 1992 by a CIA historian privy to review of classified information in CIA records, in a CIA document kept classified until 1998, available at a link I had edited in.
Will the information and supporting cites Gamaliel and John C. McAdams agree with be displayed prominently while equally or better sourced information is displayed less prominenlty in wikipedia articles, or not at all? Ruidoso (talk) 02:19, 25 October 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Is this Revert misleading? Aftermath: ......Americans (businessmen, journalists, etc.) had provided such information to the DCS.  

message: Come now, Communism is NOT right wing, we can all agree on that. It is left wing.
Changing it. 
98.224.182.131 (talk) 08:40, 28 October 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Clay Shaw was (without question) liberal. In speaking of Kennedy (in a 1969 Penthouse interview) he said: "What made Garrison's charge so outrageous to me was that I was a great admirer of Kennedy. I thought he had given the nation a new turn after the rather drab Eisenhower years, and that he was in the tradition of Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt--in the stream of liberal Presidents. I felt he was vitally concerned about social issues, which concerned me also. I though he had youth, imagination, style, and élan. All in all, I considered him a splendid President." IIRC, Shaw actually assisted the Kennedy campaign in New Orleans. The only "sources" that claim he was in "league with a bunch of right-wingers in a JFK assassination plot" are people with no credibility.Rja13ww33 (talk) 17:50, 4 April 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: There's no need to put scare quotes around the word "sources." On the Trail of the Assassins may be filled with misleading and/or downright incorrect information, but it is nonetheless a "reliable" source by Wikipedia standards insofar as it pertains to claims made by JFK conspiracy theorists. My 2014 message was because looking up Shaw's politics online seemed to result in websites that either portray him as an ardent supporter of JFK or as collaborating with right-wing activists against him, and the article as it stood didn't throw any light on what his political views actually were outside of Jim Garrison's accusations, so anyone reading it would be forgiven if they came away with the impression he was to the right of Goldwater. Returning to the article years later, it at least cites the 1969 interview you mention. Bugliosi pointed out in his book that Shaw's associates likewise attested to his liberal politics. --Ismail (talk) 23:47, 10 March 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Right Wing? 

message: I created the aftermath section a few months ago. I think it should be renamed to "Later CIA Declassificiation" or to something similar in meaning, like "Later CIA Revelations".
usernamekiran (talk) 20:09, 8 January 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Renaming "Aftermath" section? 

message: Another editor has tried to introduce something that claims Shaw was "a highly paid CIA contract source until 1956" a direct quote from his source. 
However the cited source ('Trials of the Century') says no such thing.....it just says the Helms testified to the HSCA that Shaw worked as a "contract agent" for the CIA (i.e. the info he provided to the Domestic Contact service). This is mischaracterizing what Helms said. As is made clear in the article (via RS), this does not make him a "agent". The HSCA made clear that "such acts of cooperation should not be confused with an actual Agency relationship".Rja13ww33 (talk) 17:53, 15 October 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: Another editor is citing something from https://jfkfacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Shaw-as-informant.pdf as proof. First of all, the source is most likely not RS. And secondly, the source itself characterized Shaw as a "contract source". This of course could very well refer to his work with the DCS.Rja13ww33 (talk) 18:13, 15 October 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: In any case, if we do find a RS for the 1992 memo, this most likely should be added to the "Later disclosures" section. It seems inappropriate for the LEAD section (as a stand alone statement), as his actual agency relationship cannot be summarized by this one statement. The situation is more complex than that and would probably best be handled by hashing it out in the article.Rja13ww33 (talk) 18:35, 15 October 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: The problem here is the CIA records are classified and there is no way of looking into the details of this specific contract, such as the amount of pay or the type of information provided. The important fact here is that the source does say that Helms testified to the HSCA that Shaw did work as a contract agent for the CIA. This has to be in the article. Maybe not in the lead, but the problem needs to be hashed out in detail in the article. warshy (¥¥) 19:01, 15 October 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: Here is what Helms said in this deposition: "one time, as a businessman, [Shaw] was one of the part-time contacts of the Domestic Contact Division". That is not a agent. That is more of a informant type relationship. As I said, a RS for the 1992 memo has not been cited yet. However, I am preparing a edit that I think/hope will satisfy all (and it will include the '92 memo.Rja13ww33 (talk) 19:10, 15 October 2020 (UTC)

text: Since Gamaliel is an admin, I will defer to his/her edits. Refreshing my memory on the subject....the internal CIA documents are contradictory on this point. There is that 1992 memo that says Shaw was "highly paid". But a 1967 internal report says "we have never remunerated [Shaw]". The specific forms of compensation seems to have involved reimbursement for trips and so on. (Within the scope of what you would expect for a DCS contact.) So if there is ever a consensus to include....we can sort it out then.Rja13ww33 (talk) 23:50, 15 October 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Shaw's agency relationship 

message: Was Clay Shaw gay?  The article states, "Garrison said that Shaw used the alias Clay Bertrand in New Orleans' gay society."  For Garrison to even say that means that it implies or it was accepted that Clay Shaw was gay, but there is no Personal section for Clay Shaw - only a mention that he had nobody to inherit anything from him, i.e. no wife, or children.  Was he gay?  Sort of sounds like it.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.6.127.73 (talk) 20:15, 5 February 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: I think there are enough reliable sources to state that Shaw was gay (e.g. ) but I am unsure of how or where to introduce this to the article. Should it be briefly mentioned in the lede or in the Background section, or a Personal life section? I will bring this up at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject LGBT studies/Task forces/Person to see if I can get a few other editors involved. - Location (talk) 17:36, 24 November 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: It's unquestionable he was gay. Garrison (incredibly) even speculated at one point that the assassination was a "homosexual thrill killing". (Since he thought Oswald & Ruby were both bi-sexual/gay.) I suppose the fact Shaw was gay may be worth a mention so that the Bertrand alias makes sense.Rja13ww33 (talk) 18:33, 25 November 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Was Clay Shaw gay?