Editing Fred Crisman (section)

==Role in the Clay Shaw trial==
On  March 1, 1967,  New Orleans businessman [[Clay Shaw]] was arrested for conspiring to assassinate John Kennedy.  According to controversial district attorney [[Jim Garrison]], the first person Shaw called after being charged was Fred Crisman.<ref>Mellen, 2005, pg. 239</ref><ref>https://history-matters.com/archive/jfk/garr/grandjury/pdf/Beckham.pdf {{Bare URL PDF|date=August 2024}}</ref>
On October 31, 1968,  a grand jury in New Orleans issued a subpoena for Fred Lee Crisman in connection with the investigation into the [[John F. Kennedy assassination]].  District attorney Jim Garrison issued a press release, writing:
<blockquote>Mr. Crisman has been engaged in undercover activity for a part of the industrial warfare complex for years. His cover is that of a "preacher" and a person "engaged in work to help gypsies."

Our information indicates that since the early 1960s he has made many trips to the New Orleans and Dallas areas in connection with his undercover work for that part of the warfare industry engaged in the manufacture of what is termed, in military language, a "hardware"—meaning those weapons sold to the U.S. government which are uniquely large and expensive.
Mr. Crisman is a "former" employee of the Boeing Aircraft Company in the sense that one defendant in the case is a "former" employee of Lockheed Aircraft Company in Los Angeles. In intelligence terminology this ordinarily means that the connection still exists but that the "former employee" has moved into an underground operation.  More often than not a "bad record" or evidence indicating that he has been "fired" is prepared for the parent company to increase the disassociation between the two.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://jfk.hood.edu/Collection/Weisberg%20Subject%20Index%20Files/C%20Disk/Crisman%20Fred%20Lee/Item%2001.pdf|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210507121934/http://jfk.hood.edu/Collection/Weisberg%20Subject%20Index%20Files/C%20Disk/Crisman%20Fred%20Lee/Item%2001.pdf|url-status=dead|title=JFK Collection|archive-date=May 7, 2021}}</ref><ref>The World (Coos Bay, Oregon) 01 Nov 1968, p. 20</ref></blockquote>
That same day, Crisman was arrested by Tacoma police for reckless driving.<ref name="newspapers1"/>

On November 21, 1968, Crisman was deposed in the case against [[Clay Shaw]].<ref name="Gulyas"/><ref>[https://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/garr/grandjury/pdf/Crisman.pdf Special Investigation. Orleans Parish Grand Jury] November 21, 1968. Retrieved December 29, 2022</ref>  
By January 9, 1969, Kennedy assassination conspiracy theorist [[Richard E. Sprague]] was privately accusing Crisman of being one of the [[three tramps]].<ref>Sprague letter to Fred Newcomb, Jan 6 1969 [https://www.onthetrailofdelusion.com/post/was-fred-crisman-one-of-jfk-s-assassins archived here]</ref>