My head just exploded.

Better make yourself a cup of cocoa and settle in, this is going be a long one. It’s so long, in fact, that I’m going to serialize it.

And it’s weird, too, so you might want to add some bourbon instead of marshmallows.

In 1968, Jim Garrison and the NOLA DA’s office subpoenaed one Fred Lee Crisman of Tacoma, WA to appear before a grand jury in the opening salvo of Garrison’s unsuccessful prosecution of Clay Shaw for complicity in the murder of JFK. Most everyone reading this has seen that movie, Oliver Stone’s attempt, he says, at the creation of a countermythos to the Warren Commission’s report. Our serial will have many of the same characters, and will ultimately have some more – like Fred Lee Crisman – and will continue forward in time. It may seem like we are playing six degrees of conspiracy separation, as INSLAW, Watergate, flying saucers and I don’t yet know what all will make appearances. And, for what it’s worth and unlike Stone’s work, everything in this story will be verified fact . . . as far as it goes.

Jim Garrison

I would like to thank – I think – Professor Bruce Pierini for starting me in this direction, and Professor William Doonan for making me believe I could do it.

Here goes . . .

Crisman had come to Garrison’s attention via a letter, mysterious and anonymous, that landed on his desk some time earlier. The letter alleged that the first call Shaw made after his arrest –even before his lawyer - was to none other than Fred Lee Crisman.

During his testimony, Crisman presented 100% kosher commissions in the Louisiana State Police and the US Merchant Marine. Crisman got these papers, unbidden, he said, from a grifter named Thomas Edward Beckham, aka Mark Evans, of New Orleans. Beckham, an ordained priest in the Old Orthodox Catholic Church of North America, split for Omaha after he was busted for running a numbers racket out of a “Cuban mission” on Rampart Street.  That’s the same church that had enfrocked David Ferrie, the pederast PI who led young Oswald’s Civil Air Patrol unit in the ‘50s. Beckham listed Crisman as an officer in several of his scam businesses and non-profits, including – get this -- a criminal justice correspondence school. 

Beckham had shown up for his own testimony only after a long extradition fight. Once in NOLA he announced to the Times-Picayune that he was going to run for congress in his new home district in Nebraska.  When he arrived at the courthouse he brought an armed posse of former Omaha cops and his own brothers.

One of the questions the grand jury had for Crisman was where he had met Beckham. This is where it starts to get strange, though it won't be clear why until the end. Crisman answered that he had been introduced to Beckham by the owner of a “junk shop” in Tacoma. This shopkeeper’s name was Harold Dahl.
 

The Northwest was the fountainhead of the first UFO flap. Many, if not most, of the major tropes of UFO tales were started within a few weeks in a cluster of Washington and Idaho sitings.

The first case to get real press coverage was Kenneth Arnold’s 24 June 1947 siting of crescent-shaped objects flying across the horizon “like a saucer would if you skipped it across the water.”  The next day the East Oregonian paraphrased Arnold when it ran the story on the wire, and the Flying Saucer was born.

Two days after Arnold’s siting, Captain Emil J. Smith, a United Airlines pilot flying out of the same airport (Boise) as Arnold was asked to comment on the flying saucers for the press. He sarcastically expressed his skepticism for the record. Arnold had just seen a reflection in his instrument panel, Smith said. On the evening of 4 July, Capt. Smith took off at the helm of a Dakota bound for Seattle. As they got underway, the tower bade the crew to “be on the lookout for flying saucers.”

Guess what happened.

Around the time of the Arnold siting, a sample of odd rock was making its way around Chicago. According to an FBI report, it had first gone to the University of Chicago, and was then passed on to Ray Palmer, the colorful editor of Amazing Stories. Another FBI document is more likely to be correct with regard to the progress of the materials. In that one Palmer got the stuff first and sent it on to be analyzed. With the rocks came the following story.

On 21 June – three days before the Arnold siting – a man, his son, his dog and a deckhand were on the Sound just off Maury Island, salvaging loose logs.  They were near both SEATAC airport and Boeing’s airfield. Between four and six – FBI reports vary – donut shaped objects flew over the boat and hovered.  Blue sky could be seen through the holes, and there were portholes lining the insides of the rings. One object was flying lower than the rest, and appeared to be in some distress. Another moved toward the malfunctioning one. Something was then ejected through the portholes of the struggling object, raining down on the boat. The wheelhouse and lights were hit. The skipper’s son was hurt and his dog killed by this molten “slag.” There were also metal ejecta that behaved like leaves of paper, fluttering onto the deck.

The next morning, a guy in a black suit drove up to the skipper’s house in a brand new black Buick. The skipper assumed the man in black was military. The MIB wanted to speak to the skipper, and offered to buy him breakfast at the local diner. Over pancakes and eggs, the MIB recounted details of the siting that the skipper had not had time to release for general consumption. Then the MIB issued not-so-veiled threats against the skipper and his family should the skipper divulge his encounter of the previous day.

The threats didn’t stop the skipper from going to his employer that morning with the news that his boat was pretty well trashed. He showed his employer samples of the rocks that hit the deck and wheelhouse, and presumably some of the foil that fluttered in with them.

The employer sailed out to the island to have a look for himself. While there, he said, he saw an object – craft, as they are usually called, making an assumption not really in evidence – of the same description. He collected more of the “slag” on the beach.

The employer boxed some of the stuff up and sent it on to Chicago.

If you haven’t guessed by now, said employer was none other than the selfsame Fred Lee Crisman who was the first person Clay Shaw allegedly called after he was busted. And the skipper? He was none other than Harold Dahl, the junk shop owner who would introduce Crisman to Thomas Beckham some years on.