[18] The FBI also interviewed about twenty other persons in connection with the allegations, said that it was unable to develop a substantial case against Ferrie, and released him with an apology.

"[22] As Garrison continued his investigation he became convinced that a group of right-wing activists, which he believed included Ferrie, Banister, and Shaw (director of the International Trade Mart in New Orleans), were involved in a conspiracy with elements of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to kill President Kennedy.

[6][24] On February 22, 1967, less than a week after the newspaper broke the story of Garrison's investigation, David Ferrie, then his chief suspect, was found dead in his apartment from a brain aneurysm.

[25] According to Garrison, the day news of the investigation broke, Ferrie had called his aide Lou Ivon and warned that "I'm a dead man".

[27] New Orleans attorney Dean Andrews testified to the Warren Commission that while he was hospitalized for pneumonia, he received a call from "Clay Bertrand" the day after the assassination, asking him to fly to Dallas to represent Oswald.

According to Garrison, the bartender felt it was no big secret and "my men began encountering one person after another in the French Quarter who confirmed that it was common knowledge that 'Clay Bertrand' was the name Clay Shaw went by.

[32] In December 1967, Garrison appeared on a Dallas television program and claimed that a photograph taken in Dealy Plaza immediately after the assassination depicted a federal agent in plain clothes picking up and walking away with a .45 caliber bullet.

In the Warren Commission Report, New Orleans attorney Dean Andrews claimed that he was contacted the day after the assassination by a "Clay Bertrand" who requested that he go to Dallas to represent Oswald.

In regard to this, Judge Edward Haggerty, after dismissing the jury, conducted a day-long hearing, in which he ruled the fingerprint card inadmissible.

Judge Haggerty also announced that Officer Habighorst had violated Miranda v. Arizona and Escobedo v. Illinois by not informing Clay Shaw that he had the right to remain silent.

"[37] On February 14, Roger Craig, a Dallas deputy sheriff, testified that during the assassination he was standing on the far side of Dealey Plaza across from the Texas School Book Depository.

[39] Russo's version of events has been questioned by some historians and researchers, such as Patricia Lambert, once it became known that some of his testimony was induced by hypnotism and by the drug sodium pentothal, sometimes called "truth serum.

"[40][41] Moreover, a memo detailing a pre-hypnosis interview with Russo in Baton Rouge, along with two hypnosis session transcripts, had been given to Saturday Evening Post reporter James Phelan by Garrison.

James Phelan testified that Russo admitted to him in March 1967 that a February 25 memorandum of the interview, which contained no recollection of an "assassination party," was accurate.

[44][45] In addition to the issue of Russo's credibility, Garrison's case also included other questionable witnesses, such as Vernon Bundy (a heroin addict), and Charles Spiesel, who testified that he had been repeatedly hypnotized by government agencies.

[clarification needed][53] The testimony of witnesses who placed Clay Shaw, David Ferrie and Oswald together in Clinton, Louisiana the summer before the assassination has also been deemed not credible by some researchers, including Gerald Posner and Patricia Lambert.

[56][57] Author and playwright James Kirkwood, who was a personal friend of Clay Shaw, said that he spoke to several jury members who denied ever speaking to Lane.

[59] In his book American Grotesque, Kirkwood said that jury foreman Sidney Hebert told him: "I didn't think too much of the Warren Report either until the trial.

[62][63] In 1979, the House Select Committee on Assassinations stated that available records "lent substantial credence to the possibility that Oswald and David Ferrie had been involved in the same Civil Air Patrol (CAP) unit during the same period of time.

[65] In 1979, the House Select Committee on Assassinations stated in its Final Report that the Committee was "inclined to believe that Oswald was in Clinton, Louisiana in late August, [or] early September 1963, and that he was in the company of David Ferrie, if not Clay Shaw,"[66] and that witnesses in Clinton, Louisiana "established an association of an undetermined nature between Ferrie, Shaw and Oswald less than three months before the assassination".

[67] In 1993, the PBS television program Frontline obtained a group photograph, taken eight years before the assassination, that showed Oswald and Ferrie at a cookout with other Civil Air Patrol cadets.

[72] [nb 1] In February 2003, the CIA released documents pertaining to an earlier inquiry from the Assassination Records Review Board about QKENCHANT, a CIA "project used to provide security approvals on non-Agency personnel", that indicated "Clay Shaw received an initial 'five agency' clearance on 23 March 1949", and that "Shaw in all probability was not cleared by the QKENCHANT program.