Dean Andrews’ testimony to the Warren Commission The strangest thing about Jim Garrison’s recent book on his investigation of the assassination is the fact that he never mentions Clay Shaw’s homosexuality. This is about par for the course, for the number of gay men in and around the assassination — Shaw, David Ferrie, J. Edgar Hoover — is rarely commented on. To this list I would add Jack Ruby, who never married, lived with young men, owned a strip club yet never apparently showed any interest in the young women he employed, and appeared to be smitten with men in police uniforms. On the basis of this anecdotal evidence alone the rumours that Ruby was gay, that he hung out at the gym in the YMCA in Dallas, that he met Oswald when Oswald was living there, are of some interest.
It is in this context that the testimony to the Warren Commission of New Orleans lawyer Dean Andrews is so interesting. When I skimmed through the Warren Commission’s twenty plus volumes of evidence and testimony twelve years ago Andrew’s contribution practically leapt off the page, not just because of what he said, but because of the way he talked. The testimony of the other witnesses is extraordinarily dull and dry for the most part, hundreds of pages of (mostly white) Americans, trying their best to politely answer the questions of this team of big-wigs from Washington D.C.: yes sir, no sir, three bags full if you say so, sir. Then Andrews appears, bringing with him New Orleans’ ethnic, cultural and sexual subcultures, talking of ‘blowing weed’, ‘freaky’, ‘cloud nine’ etc., and the lifeless dialogue crackles into life. (See below for some brief extracts, about 5%, from Andrews’ testimony.)
Andrews doesn’t state that Oswald was gay, but certainly it is (just) suggested by Oswald’s connections to the ‘gay kids’ and ‘Clay Bertrand’. As Tony Frewin reminded me, Priscilla Johnson McMillan’s dreadful book Marina and Lee contains considerable prurient detail on Oswald’s violent and incompetent sexual relationship with Marina. Certainly there is nothing in that which would contradict the hypothesis that Oswald was a gay man struggling to resist his sexual identity in button-down, homophobic, white America.
All of which means? Nothing, perhaps: at best we have more layers to the onion, central figures in the drama with lives already draped in concealment, to whom we might properly attribute another layer of deception. Gay gangster, gay businessman, gay FBI boss, gay anti- Castro activist and, perhaps, emerging gay patsy. As Dean Andrews might have said, ‘How d’you like them apples?’
Mr Liebeler. I am advised by the FBI that you told them that Lee Harvey Oswald came into your office some time during the summer of 1963. Would you tell us in your own words just what happened as far as that us concerned?
Mr Andrews. I don’t recall the dates, but briefly, it is this: Oswald came in the office accompanied by some gay kids. They were Mexicanos. He wanted to find out what could be done in connection with a discharge, a yellow paper discharge, so I explained to him he would have to advance the funds to transcribe whatever records they had up in the Adjuntant General’s office. When he brought the money, I would do the work, and we saw him three or four times subsequent to that, not in the company of gay kids. He had this Mexicano with him. I assume he is a Mex because the Latins do not wear a butch haircut.
Mr Liebeler. The first time he came in he was with these Mexicans, and there were also some gay kids. By that, of course, you mean people that appeared to you to be homosexuals.
Mr Andrews. Well, they swish. What they are I don’t know. We call them gay kids.
Mr Liebeler. How many times did he come into your office?
Mr Andrews. Minimum of three, maximum of five, counting intial visit.
Mr Liebeler.And did you talk about different subjects at different times? As I understand it, the first time he came there, he was primarily concerned abut his discharge, is that correct?
Mr Andrews. Well, I may have kept the subject matter of the visits reversed because with the company he kept and the conversation — he could talk fairly well — I figured that this was another one of what we call in my office free alley clients, so we didn’t maintain the normalcy with the file that — might have scratched a few notes on a piece of pad, and 2 days later three the whole thing away. Didn’t pay too much attention to him. Only time I really paid attention to this boy, he was in the front of the Maison Blanche Building giving out these kooky Castro things.
Mr Liebeler. When was this, approximately?
Mr Andrews. I don’t remember. I was coming from the NBC building, and I walked past him. You know how you see someone, recognize him. So I turned around, came back, and asked him what he was doing giving that junk out. He said it was a job. I reminded him of the $25 he owed the office. He said he would come over there, but he never did.
Mr Liebeler. Did he tell you that he was getting paid to hand out this literature?
Mr Andrews. Yes.
Mr Liebeler. Did he tell you how much?
Mr Andrews. No.
Mr Liebeler. Do you remember telling the FBI that he told you that he was being paid $25 a day for handing out these leaflets?
Mr Andrews. I could have told them that. I know I reminded him of the $25. I may have it confused, the $25. What I do recall, he said it was a job. I guess I asked him how much he was making. They were little square chits a little bit smaller than the picture you have of him over there [indicating].
Mr Liebeler. He was handing out these leaflets?
Mr Andrews. They were black-and-white pamphlets extolling the virtues of Castro, which around here doesn’t do too good. They have a lot of guys, Mexicanos and Cubanos, that will tear your head off if they see you fooling with these things.
Mr Liebeler. My understanding is, or course, that you are here under subpena and subpena duces tecum, asking you to bring with you any records that you might have in your offices indicating or reflecting Oswald’s visit, and my understanding is that you indicated that you were unable to find any such records.
Mr Andrews. Right. My office was rifled shortly after I got out of the hospital, and I talked with the FBI people. We couldn’t find anything prior to it. Whoever was kind enough to mess my office up, going through it, we haven’t found anything since.
Mr Andrews. No; nothing at all with Oswald. I was in Hotel Dieu, and the phone rang and a voice I recognized as Clay Bertrand asked me if I would go to Dallas and Houston — I think — Dallas, I guess, whereever it was that this boy was being held – and defend him. I told him I was sick in the hospital. If I couldn’t go, I would find somebody that could go….
Mr Liebeler. You told him you were sick in the hospital and what?
Mr Andrews. That’s where I was when the call came through. It came through the hospital switchboard. I said I wasn’t in shape enough to go to Dallas and defend him and I would see what I could do.
Mr Liebeler. Now what can you tell us about this Clay Bertrand? You met him prior to to that time?
Mr Andrews. I had seen Clay Bertrand once some time ago, probably a couple of years. He’s the one who calls in behalf of gay kids normally, either to obtain bonds or parole for them. I would assume that he was the one that originally sent Oswald and the gay kids, these Mexicanos, to the office because I had never seen these people before at all. They were just walk-ins.
Mr Liebeler. Is this fellow a homosexual, do you say?
Mr Andrews. Bisexual. What they call a swinging cat.
Mr Liebeler. And you haven’t seen him at any time since that day?
Mr Andrews. I haven’t seen him since.
Mr Liebeler. Now have you had your office searched for any records related to Clay Bertrand?
Mr Andrews. Yes.
Mr Andrews. I wish I could be more specific, that’s all. This is my impression, for whatever it’s worth of Clay Bertrand: His connection with Oswald I don’t know at all. I think he is a lawyer without a brief case. That’s my opinion. He send the kids different places. Whether this boy is associated with Lee Oswald or not, I don’t know, but I would say, when I met him about 6 weeks ago when I run up on him and he run away from me, he could be running because he owes me money, or he could be running because they have been squeezing the quarter pretty good looking for him while I was in the hospital, and someone might have passed the word he was hot and I was looking for him, but I have never been able to figure out the reason why he would call me, and the only other part of this thing that I understand, but apparently I haven’t been able to communicate, is I called Monk Zelden on a Sunday at N.O.A.C and asked Monk if he would go over — be interested in a retainer and go over to Dallas and see about that boy. I thought I called Monk once. Monk says we talked twice. I don’t remember the second. It’s all one conversation with me. Only thing I remember about it, while I was talking with Monk, he said, “Don’t worry about it. Your client just got shot”. That was the end of the case. Even if he was a bona fide client, I never did get to him; somebody else got to him before I did. Other than that, that’s the whole thing, but this boy Bertrand has been bugging me ever since. I will find him sooner or later.
Mr Liebeler. Does Bertrand owe you money?
Mr Andrews. Yes; I ain’t looking for him for that, I want to find out why he called me on behalf of this boy after the President was assassinated.
Mr Liebeler. How come Bertrand owes you money?
Mr Andrews. I have done him some legal work that he has failed to pay the office for.
Mr Liebeler. When was that?
Mr Andrews.That’s in a period of years that I have — like you are Bertand. You call up and ask me to go down and get Mr. X out. If Mr X doesn’t pay on those kinds of calls, Bertrand has a guarantee for the payment of appearance. One or two of these kids had skipped. I had to go pay the penalty, which was a lot of trouble.
Mr Liebeler. You were going to hold Bertrand for that?
Mr Andrews. Yes.
Mr Liebeler. Did Oswald appear to you to be gay?
Mr Andrews. You can’t tell. I couldn’t say. He swang with the kids. He didn’t swish, but birds of a feather flock together. I don’t know any squares that run with them. They may go down to look.
The who shot John?
Suddenly we’ve got Kennedy assassins all over the place. In August, the former Dallas policeman Roscoe White was identified as the shooter on the grassy knoll by his son, after an alleged death-bed confession in 1973. Reports from the buff community in the United States are mixed. Attracting less attention, on May 11th the JFK researcher Gary Shaw held a press conference in Texas and announced that from an (unnamed) mafia source he had learned that a series of attempted assassinations had been planned in November 1963, organised by the mafia. The successful attempt allegedly involved Sam Giancana, Charles Nicoletti, John Rosselli and Jack Ruby, all now dead, with Nicoletti firing the fatal shot. The unnamed source originally contacted Anthony Summers. This was reported in Conflict no 4. (Conflict has since ceased publication. A note in issue 5 reported a ‘a lack of interest on the part of an overwhelming majority of those who have received many free issues and have elected not to subscribe.’)
In the late 1970s Nicolleti featured heavily on Mae Brussel’s radio programme for a while, though I have now forgotten in which context. We recently received a note about the Mae Brussel Research Center announcing that it had closed, apparently through lack of financial support. Brussel’s library and files are now in storage. Interested parties could try contacting what is left of the organisation on 415 658 1855.
A third allegation is included in The Squad: the US Government’s secret alliance with organized crime, Michael Milan, (Prion/Multimedia, London 1989) ‘Michael Milan’ is the pseudonym of someone who claims to have been a former OSS member and minor criminal recruited just after the war by J. Edgar Hoover into a covert FBI assassination squad. Just after the assassination ‘Milan’ claims he was sent by Hoover to Dallas to murder a taxi driver. Before dying the taxi driver confessed that he had been part of a (failed) Jack Ruby-sponsored assassination attempt aimed, not at Kennedy, but at governor John Connally! Although this section is rather garbled, ‘Milan’ appears to be telling us that the taxi driver’s version of the shooting in Dallas was not a million miles from that described in the first volume of the Shea/Wilson fantasy The Illuminatus Trilogy, with teams of would-be assassins bumping into each other in the bushes behind the grassy knoll. If true, ‘Milan’s’ book is a sensation. As nothing at all seems to have appeared in the UK media on it, I assume it to be deemed a fantasy. Information on Mr ‘Milan’ most welcome. As for the successful assassination in Dallas, ‘Milan’ quotes Hoover as telling him ‘I’ll just say: Johnson. No doubt. We stand away.’ (pp. 209/210)