Mark Shaw Marches On: Abuse of Power
What is there to say about Mark Shaw at this point? If readers will recall, I reviewed his previous books: The Reporter Who Knew Too Much, Fighting for Justice, and Denial of Justice; Don McGovern reviewed Collateral Damage (in two parts); and Don and I reviewed his appearance at the library in Allen, Texas. This reviewer has written five books in 32 years on the four major assassinations of the sixties. Shaw has written that many in less than one-third of that time, nine years. It is very doubtful that he would have been anywhere near this prolific if it had not been for Sara Jordan.
Jordan was the writer of a landmark article first published in Midwest Today. It was about the life and death of Dorothy Kilgallen. (Click here https://www.midtod.com/dorothys.pdf) It went way beyond what Lee Israel had written in her biography of Kilgallen. In fact, it picked up where Israel had left off and described certain matters Israel had left out about Kilgallen’s death. That article appeared in 2007 when Jordan was only 17. It was then reprinted in a splashier, color version in 2015. Jordan was aided in her research by Kathryn Fauble. When Shaw first began his series of books on Kilgallen, he credited Jordan and Fauble. It could not be just a coincidence that his first book on the topic, The Reporter Who Knew Too Much, appeared just one year after the second version of Jordan/Fauble.
In fact, in her book on the subject, Jordan referred to Shaw’s reliance on her work and the interview he requested of her after he saw her article. She said that she was
…dismayed to see Dorothy’s story turn into a cottage industry for one author in particular, whose book, in my opinion, contains reams of repetition, wild theories, and self-aggrandizement. Much of his original information came from my article, after he contacted me several years ago requesting an interview. Not all of this is appropriately credited. (The Incredible Life and Mysterious Death of Dorothy Kilgallen, p. 1)
Having read all five of Shaw’s books since he read Jordan, I can safely say that what she writes above is, if anything, understated. We see all of these characteristics illustrated in his latest opus, Abuse of Power. And in this instance, I could find no mention of either Jordan or Fauble anywhere amid the 400 pages. Not even in the Acknowledgements.
II
Which brings us to a serious problem with Shaw, actually two of them. The first is his lack of scholarly procedure. As I said, this book is 400 pages long. Yet it has less than four pages of endnotes. There are entire chapters—about a third of them-- that contain no annotations at all. And no single chapter has more than a few.
This relates to another problem that Shaw has always had: his lack of analytical detail. And that is a major failure for someone who likes to call himself a historian. For instance, Shaw is one of the shrinking number of Warren Commission critics who are still in the camp that the Mob killed President Kennedy; specifically, he is in the school that Carlos Marcello was the culprit. (Shaw, p. 346) He uses two dubious pieces of evidence in this regard. The first is the alleged quote by writer Ed Becker about Marcello saying that JFK was the dog and RFK was the tail, and if you cut off the tail, the dog keeps biting you, so you kill the dog etc. (Shaw, p. 155) An acquaintance of Black Op Radio host Len Osanic has done some research on this quote, and also Mr. Becker. That research has brought the whole confluence of the conversation into question. At last word, he was writing a book about it.
The other piece of evidence is also problematic. These are the so- called CAMTEX documents. I have written about them ever since Lamar Waldron brought them up in one of his books, Legacy of Secrecy. He labeled them that because they originated from Marcello’s prison days in Texas. These papers have been analyzed by researcher Peter Vea, myself and the late attorney Vincent Bugliosi. They consist of Marcello’s talks with a fellow inmate. They are suspect on at least three grounds. First, most people around Marcello--including the prison guards-- understood that he was falling victim to dementia at around this time frame. He was talking to himself and hitting his head against the wall. He would later succumb to Alzheimer’s. But it was not just that; Marcello’s general health was failing due to a series of strokes. Third, Marcello himself dismissed his ramblings as “crazy talk.” (Bugliosi End Notes file for Reclaiming History, pp 658-59) To show the reader how old these papers are, ace archives researcher Peter Vea first sent them to me in 1997. He entitled the papers and his accompanying detailed notes, “The Crazy Last Days of Carlos Marcello.”
This would be bad enough. But for Shaw, there is still more dubious material. He is still tossing around the mythology about the Kennedys, through the Mob, stealing the West Virginia primary and the Illinois general election in 1960. (Shaw, p. 13) Again, in both instances, I have shown these claims to be false. Dan Fleming wrote a good book on the West Virginia primary: Kennedy vs Humphrey, West Virginia 1960. There, he notes that no subsequent investigation could find anything illegal about the race. And there were three such inquisitors, none of them fans of JFK. There was one by the FBI, one by the state Attorney General and one by Barry Goldwater who hired an FBI agent. (Fleming, pp. 107-12)
As per the general election in Chicago, the actual results in the mob-controlled wards were the opposite of what one would expect if there was any such illicit deal. The turnout on the Democratic side was actually lower than in previous years. (John Binder, February 2007, Public Choice) In fact, there is evidence that the word was out not to support Kennedy. (Binder, p. 5) After a lengthy study, Professor Binder concluded that these claims “appear to have no basis in fact.” (Binder, p. 18)
III
Then there is Shaw’s aggrandizement of Dorothy Kilgallen. What Shaw does here is something kind of odd. He assumes to know first, what Kilgallen was investigating, and secondly, what was in the papers she left behind--which disappeared.
He also says that Kilgallen had a close friendship with President Kennedy. (Shaw, pp. 78-79) There were four books written about Kennedy by insiders in the wake of his death. These were by Arthur Schlesinger, Ted Sorenson, Pierre Salinger, and the fourth was by Ken O’Donnell and Dave Powers. They all worked at the White House and knew JFK’s daily schedule, his appointments, his focus and his friends. The books they wrote come to about 2500 pages in total length. I could find no mention of Kilgallen in any of them. The single mention I am aware of about the meeting is by Kilgallen. She wrote about a brief meeting with the president to introduce her son to him at the White House. (Shaw, p. 80) This is a close friendship? This reminds me of Shaw’s claim that Marilyn Monroe and Kilgallen were also close friends. As Don McGovern showed in his review of Shaw’s Collateral Damage, and another Monroe expert, Gary Vitacco Robles, agreed with, such was not the case.
Then there is this one: Kilgallen “became the most credible source we have to the truth about who killed the president and why.” (Shaw, p. 82) Even for Shaw, this is really kind of incomprehensible. For a very simple reason. As noted above, no one knows what was in Kilgallen’s papers on the JFK case. So just what is Shaw talking about when he makes an assertion like that? Shaw says that somehow, because Kilgallen made a trip to New Orleans--which Jordan wrote about in her Midwest Today article--that this means Kilgallen suspected Marcello. But what is the data that backs that up? Because--as Jordan also wrote--no one knows what she did while she was in the Big Easy. If no one knows that, and if her papers disappeared, then how does Shaw know what she did there, or that she was such a credible source on the JFK case?
Then there is this:
Without question, no one in history has ever exposed more credible evidence about the assassination of the 35th president of the United States than Kilgallen. None then and none now. Not even close. (Shaw, p. 94)
Can the man be real? What about the late Philip Melanson on the riddle of Oswald in his milestone book Spy Saga? How about Jim Garrison in his 1967 Playboy interview, which opened up a whole new vista of possibilities as to how and why Kennedy was killed? What about David Talbot’s The Devil’s Chessboard on the probable role of Allen Dulles? What about Sylvia Meagher’s 1967 full-dress exposure of the Warren Commission, Accessories After the Fact? Let us go back even further, to December 19, 1963, and Mark Lane’s 10,000-word polemic in The National Guardian. That essay argued against almost every piece of evidence that the Dallas Police were using through the media to convict Oswald. (Plausible Denial, pp. 335-60) I am all for assigning credit to those past due. I am not for this kind of bombast.
Right after this, Shaw does something rather surprising, even for him. He shows a picture of one of the three tramps walking through Dealey Plaza. In the background, there is a woman with her hand over her face and what looks like a paper pad in her hand. In the caption, Shaw says that this is Kilgallen. (Shaw, p. 96) But yet, a few pages later, he admits Kilgallen was in New York at her townhouse on the day Kennedy was killed. (p. 106)
IV
Shaw is apparently desperate to come up with something connecting Oswald with the Mob. Which is what the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) could not convincingly do in over a year’s worth of trying. So he resorts to a man who passed on years ago, Kent Brouillette. Brouillette died in a case of self-defense by a musician named William Bonham. (The Advocate, 7/12/18, story by Matt Sledge) Bonham found out that his roommate was stealing his instruments. When he threatened to call the police, he was attacked by Brouillette, who was in a drunken stupor. Shaw leaves this out.
But he wants the accused thief to do what the HSCA could not. So he quotes Kent Brouillette as saying, “Like many New Orleans gangsters, I came to know Oswald. He was something of an underworld curiosity that summer and fall.” (Shaw, p. 99) Somehow, that is not enough for either Brouillette or, apparently, Shaw. Because this follows:
My first Oswald sighting came in Carlos’ office at the Pelican Tomato Company, small vegetable-wholesaling company run by the Mafia confidant, Joe “Baby” Matassa…I was unprepared for the shock I felt when I found Carlos sitting there with Lee Harvey Oswald. After that meeting at the Pelican Tomato Company, it seemed like I couldn’t go anywhere without running into goddamn Lee Harvey Oswald. (ibid)
In other words, what Chief Counsel of the HSCA Robert Blakey could not do with all the money and staff he had at his disposal for over a year, Shaw has done just by reading up on Brouillette. I mean, there Oswald was, sitting right in Marcello’s office. And every underworld guy in the Big Easy was running into him left and right. Oh, really, Mark?
In addition to how Brouillette died in a rather low-rent area of New Orleans, apparently heisting musical instruments, let us hear from someone who actually investigated the man professionally. This is from a New Orleans vice investigator:
“I found that most of the time, he was just one of those wannabe guys”, Jeff Zapata said. “He always led people to believe that he was connected, and he would always claim it was Marcello who got him out of jail. But he was really a two-bit pimp. If you were really an associate of Marcello you never did that. That was just a respect thing.” (Ramon Vargas, NOLA.com, 10/5/18)
Shaw is still heralding an alleged CIA document that was proven years ago to be quite questionable. (Shaw, pp. 65-66) And it was shown to be so by no less than a document expert and former military intelligence officer, John Newman. This reviewer actually called Newman about the document--which concerned, among other matters, space aliens, plots to kill Castro, and Marilyn Monroe-- back in the late 1990’s. But he told me he had already seen it since the PBS network had asked him about it. He said the giveaway was the fact that there were things that should have been redacted in it that were not. In other words, the probable fabricators wanted you to see this stuff. While there were things that were redacted, which one could gain from context, that should not have been.
But in his current book, while Shaw half-heartedly acknowledges this doubt, he doubles down by saying that there was a second document attached to the original. I never saw this when I had the first document, and Newman never alluded to it. And the way Shaw introduces it is odd. It is difficult to see the date, origin, or who wrote it. (p. 67)
But the document is ridiculous on its face. It says that RFK had a romance and sexual affair with Monroe and even promised to divorce his wife and marry the film star. There are no sources given in the document. And with his usual lack of annotation, there is no footnote given at the end of the book.
But besides that, Don McGovern in his fine book Murder Orthodoxies proves that Robert Kennedy was in the presence of Marilyn Monroe four times. And they were all in public. (McGovern, p. 183) This is easy to cross-check today because of the AG’s datebooks and two day-by-day books for Monroe, one by journalism professor Carl Rollyson and one by blogger April VeVea. This is what I mean by Shaw’s lack of scholarship and analytical review. Elements that are utterly necessary in the writing of history.
Let me add a word about ersatz official papers and just plain false documents in the subject field. Author Randy Taraborrelli once said about the FBI files on Monroe:
I have to tell you, the FBI files on Marilyn Monroe are so fascinating because they’re just so untrue. They would never hold up to today’s journalism scrutiny, and you know, on looking at those files I realized that J. Edgar Hoovver…has such a vengeance against the Kennedys that I think he allowed a lot of information to be put into those files that just was not true. (McGovern, p. 351)
About the Monroe case, Shaw repeats one of the most bizarre third-hand stories that I have ever read. (Shaw, pp. 72-73) That somehow both Bobby Kennedy and Peter Lawford were at Monroe’s home the day she passed and, along with two thugs, took part in her death. Again, this is what I mean about Shaw’s lack of analytical review: he is so predisposed to demean the Kennedys that if someone, anyone, tells him a third (or fourth) hand tale, he runs with it. What Shaw leaves out are the pictures in Susan Bernard’s 2011 book Marilyn: Intimate Exposures. These place Robert Kennedy at the Bates Ranch, about 350 miles north of Los Angeles, all day on the day that Monroe died. (pp. 184-88) And there are about six witnesses who place Lawford at his home for a dinner party that day. (Gary Vitacco Robles, Icon Pt 1, pp. 394-403)
Shaw also tries to bring into question the LAPD and LADA investigations of Monroe’s death. He says that somehow, since Bobby Kennedy knew police chief William H. Parker, this somehow colored the inquiry.
Gary Vitacco Robles wrote a two-volume set dealing with the subject of Monroe’s death. In penning it, he requested and received over 600 pages of raw data from both the original inquiry and the 1982 review by Ron Carroll—conducted after Parker was dead—of the DA’s office. There was no sign Gary could find of any such interference. Shaw also leaves out the fact that pathologists Boyd Stephens (for Carroll) and Cyril Wecht (for Vitacco Robles) both agreed with the findings of the original autopsy by Thomas Noguchi: that Monroe, through either a deliberate or accidental overdose, took her own life.
V
Shaw is so obsessed with demeaning Robert Kennedy that he even takes the side of Carlos Marcello’s attorneys in saying that the deportation of Marcello by RFK was a kidnapping. (Shaw, p. 9) He bases this largely on the word of Marcello’s attorneys.
But if one goes to the blog of the University of Houston Law Center, one will see that the efforts to deport Marcello began in 1952. These were done because of the evidence of his criminal record, and also that he was not a legal citizen. His lawyers appealed all the way to the Supreme Court. Which agreed with the lower court: he was deportable. The reason he was not deported was that no country he preferred wanted to take him, e.g., France or Italy. During these rejections, his lawyer, Jack Wasserman, filed more actions. Finally, Marcello obtained a false Guatemalan birth certificate. This gave newly minted AG Robert Kennedy a destination country to deport him to, which he did in April of 1961. (Article by Katy Stein Badeaux)
This one-sidedness afflicts the entire book. For example, the things that Shaw writes about Robert Kennedy Jr are simply beyond the pale. (See pgs. 231-36) Apparently, Shaw does not know that Kennedy Jr. was temporarily banned from Instagram in 2021, and his organization, Children’s Health Defense, was banned in 2022 from Facebook and Instagram. And when Bobby Jr says that his father’s first instinct was that the CIA was behind JFK’s murder, unlike what Shaw writes, that is true. And it is proven by authors like David Talbot. (Brothers, p. 6; author Richard Mahoney said the same to Oliver Stone during the filming of JFK Revisited.) Bobby Kennedy’s ideas about his brother’s death seem to have evolved over time. The best estimate, as gathered by Talbot, seems to be that he came to suspect a conspiracy between the CIA, Cuban exiles and organized crime. If that is accurate, then it shows how acute he was. Since that is the concept many researchers hold today, including this author.
I don’t even want to talk about what Shaw tries to bring up as new evidence in the RFK case. I will just say that Sirhan had not been formally associated with a race-track since November of 1966. But he would go to the track to bet on horses, including Hollywood Park. (Shane O’Sullivan, Who Killed Bobby? p. 91, p. 214) So this alleged sighting of him with two men in suits is, in all probability, irrelevant. But what Shaw does with it is so far out that it actually becomes absurd. So much so that I will not even describe it. (See page 359) In sum, there are lots of men who wear suits to the track. As per the money Sirhan had on him the night of the RFK murder, this was explained about five decades ago in the William Turner/Jonn Christian book The Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy.
VI
Before closing, I wish to mention two plus aspects amid the 400 pages of mostly drivel. Shaw includes the written disagreement that Senator Richard Russell made to the Warren Commission about the Magic Bullet in an appendix. This was based on the testimony of John Connally and viewings of the Zapruder film. (pp. 395-99) Secondly, the book contains some interesting information about the doubts that Senator John Sherman Cooper had about the Commission’s verdict. And also about a possible informational relationship between the senator and the reporter. Although, like many other things, I wish this had been more carefully annotated. (See Chapter Ten)
I will end this review with Shaw’s treatment of the Luna Committee. This is the House panel trying to get the very last documents on the JFK case declassified, and also to begin work on the RFK and MLK cases. It is named after its chairperson, Representative Anna Luna of Florida. He first goes after Jeff Morley, who was the leadoff witness at their first public hearing. He writes that Morley’s testimony was composed of “shocking statements.” (p. 253). I was at the hearing, alongside Oliver Stone and a fourth person, John Davisson. I don’t recall anything shocking being said by Jeff or anyone else. In fact, the hearing was a milestone in congressional and broadcast history in its candor on the JFK case.
Morley stated, and backed up, his previous writings showing the CIA lied about its rather extensive knowledge of Oswald before the assassination. They also lied about their involvement with Oswald in New Orleans in the summer of 1963. On the former, the witness produced 192 pages of documents that he gave to the committee, which proved the first point. Concerning their involvement with Oswald in New Orleans, Morley stated that CIA officer George Joannides was running the Cuban exiles who were closely involved with Oswald that summer. This is a fact which he has proven. (New York Magazine, story by Nia Prater, 7/14/25) And HSCA Chief Counsel Robert Blakey has stated in public that Joannides lied about this involvement in order to gain employment by the HSCA. (2014 AARC Conference In Washington) Much of this is in the transcript accompanying the broadcast by CSPAN.
What Shaw writes about Oliver Stone is bewildering. He says Stone testified that Oswald was not present in the Book Depository at the time of the shooting. (Shaw, p. 254) I was sitting next to Stone at that time. What he was talking about was the evidence of witnesses Victoria Adams, Sandy Styles and Dorothy Garner, which indicated Oswald was not on the stairs after the shots rang out. (Click here https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x9hc8ee) Stone stated that Oswald was seen by motorcycle officer Marrion Baker on the second floor after the shooting. Again, one can read this in the transcript.
Shaw is apparently disappointed that he was not called to appear by Luna. (See Chapter 41) He wrote her a letter and sent her his last four books. He did not get a reply. So he sent her a second letter. This time, he got a short phone call. Shaw suggested to Luna that he testify at the second JFK hearing.
As he reveals, he was not so invited. But he does not list who was there. The roster included Dan Hardway of the HSCA, John Tunheim and Doug Horne of the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB). Dan testified about Joannides and his interference with the HSCA inquiry. Horne testified about the missing evidence in the medical record. Tunheim made a startling statement. He said that the new documents that were being declassified by Luna had not been seen by him before. This is quite notable. Because the ARRB was supposed to have seen everything on the JFK case during its tenure from 1994-98. Again, this is in the transcript.
This will be the last book by Mark Shaw that I read or review. For me, Shaw has nothing of value to say about the career and presidency of John Kennedy. Nor about the career of Robert Kennedy. In reality, JFK kept us out of two wars, one in Cuba and one in Vietnam. Robert Kennedy, along with Edward Levi and Elliot Richardson, is considered one of the three best Attorney Generals in post-war American history. Combined, those two men did more for civil rights in three years than Roosevelt, Truman and Eisenhower did in three decades. It’s quite a negative achievement to avoid those facts.
Shaw also has nothing of value to tell me about Lee Oswald or Jack Ruby. And with 2 million pages declassified by the ARRB, there is much to say on all of those topics. He is also able to avoid the fact that the whole Monroe hoax was started by a right-wing RFK hater, Frank Capell, a man who was once convicted of conspiracy to commit libel. Or that the hoax was continued by a proven literary fraudster, Robert Slatzer. He also finds people like the late authors John Davis and David Heymann (another proven fraudster), and journalist Sy Hersh, to be valid sources.
All of this is what makes his work extremely solipsistic. Therefore, his books tell us more about Mark Shaw than the subjects at hand.
