QKENCHANT In 1952, Shaw had been cleared for project QKENCHANT, along with E. Howard Hunt and Monroe Sullivan, his San Francisco host during the weekend of the assassination. QKENCHANT authorized trusted CIA personnel for clearance to recruit or enlist "civilians," people not officially with the Agency, to discuss "projects, activities and possible relationships." It supported "an array of CIA activities.: An author named Hugh Chisholm McDonald was cleared under QKENCHANT to be "used for intelligence procurement."
From A Farewell To Justice, by Joan Mellen, p.132, quoting from CIA documents:
QKENCHANT clearance meant you were a safe contact, and could be utilized as a "cutout" with the CIA giving you only a certain amount of information. You might be told to contact someoneyou didn't know. You might not know the planner of an operation or its ultimate sponsors. You might know something about who is running an operation, but not everything. But QKENCHANT, in CIA's own words, was an "operational project."
Shaw, then, could recruit other agents, granting them security approvals. His QKENCHANT records resided not with Domestic Contact, but in the Agency's "operational files." Shaw used his QKENCHANT clearance "to plan or coordinate CIA activities", as well as to "initiate relationships with ...non-Agency persons or institutions." Shaw was part of the Agency's clandestine services with Covert Security Approval, working under cover.
Among those who Shaw recruited under his QKENCHANT clearance was Guy Banister. The date was August 1960. A recently uncovered "Secret" CIA document reveals that Guy Banister Associates, Inc., was of interest to the Agency "for QKENCHANT purposes."
