The Garrison Report
Between 1963 and 1966, Lyndon Johnson and J. Edgar Hoover successfully contained public criticism about the Kennedy assassination investigation through the Warren Report. In 1966, after the publication of two major critical attacks by responsible critics, a gallup poll indicated that 66 percent of the American people no longer believed the Warren Report and the Congress began to call for a new investigation. The fraudulent campaign to blame the Kennedy assassination on what Hoover had called the "twisted mind" of Lee Oswald, proved too transparent to stand up to public scrutiny, and the need to divert attention away from the truth reemerged. The collapse of the credibility of the Warren Report created a desperate vacuum which was predictably filled by other absurd, distortions of truth. The Warren Commission had successfully focused attention almost exclusively upon Lee Harvey Oswald, and when it was determined that the assertions it expounded were extremely frivolous, the pressure to develop another cover up to conceal the truth produced bizarre Kennedy assassination publicity. Appropriately, one of the emergent sources of disinformation was Las Vegas gangster, Johnny Roselli. In late January 1967, Roselli's lawyer claimed that he had important information about the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Since two out of three Americans disbelieved the Warren Report, Roselli promptly provided a whole new version of "truth" to sell to the non-believers. Roselli's basic claim was that Fidel Castro was responsible for the assassination of Kennedy. Despite the seriousness of the allegation, the identity of Roselli was not revealed to the public, and the accusation was exposed through a "blind memorandum" prepared by Hoover's FBI and promoted through the press -in other words, it was a public relations ploy sponsored by Lyndon Johnson, J. Edgar Hoover and Mafia envoy, Johnny Roselli. Johnson immediately embraced the rumour that a Cuban conspiracy was responsible for the assassination of Kennedy, and when he was interviewed by television newsman, Howard K. Smith, he dramatically asserted: "I'll tell you something that will rock you. Kennedy was trying to get Castro, but Castro got him first."1 In retrospect, the only genuine conclusion that can be derived from the public relations campaign to blame the Kennedy assassination on Castro is the fact that Hoover, Johnson and the Mafia deliberately promoted disinformation to cover up the truth. Lyndon Johnson was clearly aware of the fact that Castro had absolutely nothing to do with the Kennedy assassination. Indeed, beyond promoting the false rumor, Johnson did absolutely nothing about investigating it's authenticity -he didn't have to. After all, Johnny Roselli, the source of the 'Castro got Kennedy' allegation, was obviously a transparent, motivated liar. Roselli was a Mafia operative who had established Washington contacts through his participation in what was publicly exposed to be the CIA/Mafia plots to assassinate Castro, he was not a reliable source who was prepared to expose the truth about the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Despite his "powerful contacts" however, Johnny Roselli was always getting in trouble with the law, and the covert, anti-Communist operative who expected prosecutorial immunity for colluding with the government, was willing to do anything, including promote a government sponsored fraud, to secure the favor he cultivated. Roselli certainly made his single-minded motivation clear when he said: "Here I am helping the government helping the country, and that little sonofabitch [Robert Kennedy] is breaking my balls. Let the little bastard do what he wants. There isn't anything he can do to me... I got important friends in important places in Washington that'll cut his water off.2 One of Roselli's friends was evidently Jim Garrison, the District Attorney of New Orleans. In 1967, according to the CIA, Roselli and Garrison had a meeting in a Las Vegas hotel room. Garrison dismissed the allegation and claimed that it was simply a part of a CIA disinformation campaign, but that is certainly not supported by any credible evidence. Indeed, the fact that both Jim Garrison and Johnny Roselli concocted stories to fill the vacuum created by the discredited Warren Report strongly suggests that Garrison and Roselli were partners in the crime to cover up the truth about the assassination of John F. Kennedy and secret meetings in Las Vegas hotel rooms provided the opportunity to plan strategy for the ongoing effort to maintain the cover up. Ironically, it was not the CIA, as Garrison always insisted, which was responsible for the Kennedy assassination cover up, but Jim Garrison himself who monopolized the effort to cover up the truth since the Warren Report was effectively discredited. Lyndon Johnson certainly shared the obsession to cover up rather than to promote a genuine inquiry. Indeed, Lyndon Johnson was so paranoid about allowing the truth to come out that he instructed J.Edgar Hoover to investigate Kennedy assassination critics who had successfully discredited the Warren Report. And so, as David Lifton disclosed in Best Evidence, J. Edgar Hoover promptly supplied background memoranda on Edward Epstein, Sylvan Fox, Joachim Joesten, Penn Jones, Mark Lane, Richard Popkin, Leo Sauvage, and Harold Weisberg. At the same time, Lyndon Johnson embraced the ridiculous, transparently fraudulent rumors that Johnny Roselli promoted, and if that is not "smoking gun" evidence, it is certainly impossible to explain it away. There is no excuse for the fact that Lyndon Johnson advanced the fraudulent rumor that Roselli publicized. Moreover, legitimate Kennedy assassination critics who struggled to determine the truth did not warrant investigation. When Lyndon Johnson embraced transparent cover up artists and intimidated Kennedy assassination critics, he ultimately betrayed his own complicity and obsession to cover up the truth about the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
In 1963, immediately after the Kennedy assassination, a desperate Lyndon Johnson convinced each member of the Warren Commission that their primary duty was to dispel "dangerous rumors". In 1967 however, when the Warren Commission ploy had outlived its usefulness, Johnson himself promoted the very same sort of "dangerous rumors" that he had vigorously opposed when he wanted to convince the world that Oswald had acted alone. J. Edgar Hoover took immediate charge of the fraudulent "Castro got Kennedy" disinformation campaign and appointed the General Investigation Division of the FBI to interview Roselli's lawyer about the allegation. The GID was obviously appointed because Hoover simply wanted to record rather than to investigate the authenticity of the claim that Castro was responsible for the Kennedy assassination. If Hoover was prompted by legitimate intent, he would have obviously appointed the Domestic Intelligence Division of the FBI, the unit which was in fact responsible for investigating possible foreign involvement in the Kennedy assassination. Clearly, Hoover's only intent was to simply record a fraudulent rumor. A former FBI agent and senior official in the Department of Justice reflects the nature of the Castro allegation charade when he says: "There are two kinds of FBI interviews. The first kind is where you simply sit down with a source and come away with nothing. The second kind is where you really dig into him, check everything about him and his friends".3 Hoover's FBI was certainly capable of engaging a competent, thorough investigation that exposed the fraud of the allegation that "Castro got Kennedy". The fact that Hoover simply collected and documented rumor about the Kennedy assassination clearly betrays his single-minded obsession to cover up the truth about the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
FBI Headquarters, the "throne" of J. Edgar Hoover, ultimately controlled disinformation campaigns about the Kennedy assassination. The agents that Hoover appointed to serve as the mouthpieces of Roselli's allegation were interviewed for the Hearings before the Select Coininittee on Assassinations, and they said that "they were briefed at FBI Headquarters prior to the interview, but neither could recall the details of that briefing or who was present." In retrospect, the memory lapse is entirely understandable.
By far, the most sophisticated and the most influential disinformation campaign about the Kennedy assassination was unleashed by New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison. A former FBI agent who like Hoover, embraced the fraudulent claim that organized crime did not exist, Garrison was evidently the most loyal Mafia ally imaginable. Indeed, as he vigorously denied the provable existence of organized crime, the empire of New Orleans Mafia boss Carlos Marcello flourished. The enthusiasm and the fraudulent "arsenal" that Garrison unleashed to cover up the truth about the Kennedy assassination had all the earmarks of his other consistent, Hoover-shared, fraudulent claim -that organized crime did not exist. First and foremost, the most common characteristic of Garrison's rhetoric was the identifiable gap between what he said and the truth he deliberately sought to suppress.
In retrospect, the simplicity of the fraud that Hoover and Garrison controlled is astonishing. J. Edgar Hoover investigated Warren Commission critics and Garrison infiltrated their ranks by pretending to be one of them. And so, in the most dramatic fashion imaginable, in 1967 Jim Garrison told the entire world that he had solved the Kennedy assassination case and that he knew exactly who was responsible for murdering the President. Lo and behold, Garrison, the messiah emerged and the starving press and critics flocked to his side craving the blessing, the approval and the knowledge of the only public official who was, according to Garrison himself, in possession of the truth about the Kennedy assassination. Garrison demanded attention and he easily got it through the publicity of bold, dramatic assertions like:
My staff and I solved the assassination weeks ago. I wouldn't say that if we didn't have evidence beyond a shadow of a doubt. We know the key individuals, the cities involved, and how it was done.4On March 1 1967, Jim Garrison pulled out all the stops when he arrested Clay Shaw, a New Orleans businessman and charged him with participating in a conspiracy to murder John F. Kennedy. The indictment gave Jim Garrison the opportunity to lead Warren Commission critics on a wild-goose chase which diverted attention away from their thoughtful analyses and towards an Oswald-style charade. In mid-April for example, Garrison met with Epstein, the author of Inquest, and provided him the opportunity to examine six cardboard boxes which contained the personal belongings of Clay Shaw. But like the biographical, Lee Harvey Oswald reports that dominated the Warren Report, the letters, photographs, manuscripts of plays that Shaw had written, calenders, address books, financial records and other personal belongings of Clay Shaw had nothing to do with the Kennedy assassination. At the same time, Jim Garrison had indicted Clay Shaw with conspiring to kill the President, and that is all he evidently required to create the impression that Jim Garrison was indeed in the process of exposing genuine evidence. And so, like Lyndon Johnson who had successfully preempted independent investigations by creating the Warren Commission, Garrison crippled the opportunity to engage an independent probe through his campaign to monopolize the Kennedy assassination investigation. One by one, Garrison befriended Kennedy assassination critics and steered them in the direction that he wanted to go. To be sure, they did not all comply to the will of Jim Garrison, but they were all clearly manipulated, distracted, confused, and steered away from the truth, after cooperating, listening and talking to Jim Garrison. Moreover, through his zeal to monopolize the evidence by constantly exchanging information with reporters and assassination critics, Jim Garrison cleverly assumed the sort of power that Hoover had commanded through screening every single shred of Warren Report evidence. For example, when Life Magazine began to call for a new inquiry into the Kennedy assassination investigation, Garrison declared his willingness to oversee a "joint investigation." But as Jay Epstein discovered, the "investigation" that Garrison controlled was as fraudulent as Warren Report conclusions. In the words of Jay Epstein who was granted access to the "evidence" that Garrison developed, "the only evidence I saw or heard about that could connect Clay Shaw with the assassination was fraudulent -some devised by Garrison himself and some cynically culled from criminals or the emotionally unstable." Indeed, the only genuine motivation that Garrison ever betrayed was the absolute obsession to cover up the truth.
On the whole, Garrison's Kennedy assassination allegations are essentially meaningless. Indeed, at one time or another, he blamed practically everybody for the assassination of John F. Kennedy and the ultimate effect of haphazard allegations that target the innocent as well as the guilty is that nobody is ever prosecuted. And in the light of the fact that Jim Garrison praised and defended J. Edgar Hoover, there is no question about his committment to fraudulently deny the obvious. In the words of Jim Garrison:
I have nothing but respect for the Bureau and feel that if it weren't for the FBI reports still available in the Commission exhibits, the door would have been closed forever... The FBI has worked assiduously in many different areas and gathered facts that have proved of great value to those interested in uncovering the truth about the assassination.5At the same time, since Kennedy assassination critics had successfully discredited the Warren Commission Garrison wanted to infiltrate their ranks so the garrulous District Attorney said:
It's impossible for anyone possessed of reasonable objectivity and a fair degree of intelligence to read those 26 [Warren Commission] volumes and not reach the conclusion that the Warren Commission was wrong in every one of its major conclusions pertaining to the assassination.6Clearly, when Garrison simultaneously claimed that the Warren Commission investigation was "typically thorough" and that every single conclusion that the Warren Report promoted was wrong, he further betrayed the overriding obsession to cover up the truth about the Kennedy assassination by wearing any hat that the task demanded. In the main, Garrison was a phenomenal intellect who practised the capacity to deceive by blending fiction and fact. In 1967, Jim Garrison said, "in an Orwellian sense, perhaps they [assassination conspirators] come to believe that truth is what contributes to national security and falsehood is anything detrimental to national security".7To be sure, Jim Garrison described the logic that claimed the life of John F. Kennedy, but when he blamed the CIA, he provided the real co-conspirators the opportunity to hide behind the "infallible" Director of the FBI. If the imagery that Garrison evoked struck a chord, it is because he was privy to both the truth and the effort to cover it up. According to Jim Garrison:
... the clever manipulation of the mass media is creating a concentration camp of the mind that promises to be far more effective in keeping the populace in line. We're not going to wake up one morning and find ourselves in grey uniforms goose-stepping off to work. But this isn't the test. The test is: What happens to the individual who dissents? In Nazi Germany, he was physically destroyed; here, the process is more subtle, but the end results can be the same.8Anyone who believes that Garrison's evocation of the Nazi comparison is an exaggeration need only examine the secretive, deceptive manoeuvres that Johnson deployed to Americanize the Vietnam war despite widespread resistance and compare it to the propaganda tactics of Hitler's henchman, Hermann Goering, who said, "naturally the common people don't want war... Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders... All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism".
It is not possible to make any sense out of anything that Jim Garrison does or says unless one fully appreciates his tendency to operate on the assumption that the best way to deceive is to control a part of the truth -any part no matter how miniscule, obscure or irrelevant. Moreover, keep in mind that his primary obsession was to cover up the truth, not to expose it, and then it is possible to unravel the nature of his tactics. In June of 1967, when William Gurvich, Garrison's former investigator, told Robert Kennedy that there was no substance to the stories that Garrison promoted, Garrison reacted with the absurd charge that "a tremendous amount of federal power is being brought to bear on anyone connected with our investigation, whether he be witness or investigator, in an effort to conceal the truth about Kennedy's murder".9 And so, while Garrison made absurd and vague accusations against the federal government for covering up the truth, he preached tolerance and respect for genuine Kennedy assassination co-conspirators like Lyndon Johnson. Garrison had in fact made it his imperative to, in his own words:
see that the evidence is released, so we can know that he [Lyndon Johnson] is not involved, rather than assuming... Of course, I assume, that the President of the United States is not involved, but wouldn't it be nice to know it?"10In stark contrast to absolving Hoover and Johnson of all responsibility, Garrison unleashed a hostile, meaningless, anti-federal government tirade through acrimonious rhetoric like:
If these political hacks holding high federal offices think they can stop us from bringing out the entire truth about the assassination, they are going to get the surprise of their lives. As far as I am concerned, there is not enough money in the United States Treasury and there is not enough printers' ink in this country to keep us from developing facts about the murder of President Kennedy.11In November of 1966, having thoroughly digested the rhetoric of independent Kennedy assassination critics, Garrison said:
... the lone assassin theory, which the Warren Commission developed, is a complete fraud. That is why you now have elements of the United States Government, and a large part of the news establishment of the United States doing everything it can, literally desperately, to try and conceal whatever news comes from New Orleans about this because the United States Government has in this case perpetuated a major fraud.12As always, Jim Garrison never failed to hog the attention, to obscure, to confuse and to ultimately cover up the truth. If Oliver Stone made a hero out of Garrison, it is because the rhetoric of some of the faces that Jim Garrison assumed, was indeed heroic. Moreover, the confusion that Jim Garrison generated was even potent enough to baffle historians like Arthur Schlesinger Jr., who viewed Oliver Stone's JFK, and described it in the following terms:
... the premise that Kennedy was preparing to withdraw from Vietnam was quite correct. And the film raised serious and searching questions about the Warren Commission. But the theory that they created out of all this, that because Kennedy was going to get out of Vietnam, the whole government got together and conspired to murder him, is absolutely outrageous and terrible. I'm agnostic about whether there was a conspiracy or not, but one thing I'm absolutely sure of: If there was a conspiracy, it wasn't Oliver Stone's conspiracy.13In retrospect, the tactics that District Attorney Jim Garrison used to develop evidence for the purpose of covering up the truth about the Kennedy assassination are repulsive and repugnant. Miguel Torres, for example, was a prisoner who Garrison's staff mistakenly believed was ripe for manipulation. According to Torres, Garrison's staff tried to bribe him by saying things like:
We'll give you an ounce of heroin and send you to Florida for three months on vacation -just lay back and enjoy yourself. If you don't cooperate Miguel, we'll make you do those nine years you have here plus the other times [three years] you have pending in the federal penitentiary. You know the boss is very powerful... He can make you do all this time or he can cut you lose right at this moment.14Garrison's entire investigation reflects the sort of fraud that Miguel Torres alluded to. In particular, Torres indicated that Garrison began to show him several pictures of Cubans and New Orleans residents and gave him a run down of each man in the photograph in attempt to create a phoney Kennedy assassination eyewitness. Moreover, Torres was asked to submit to hypnosis and to fraudulently claim that he knew Clay Shaw, the alleged Kennedy assassination co-conspirator that Garrison had arrested. The manner in which Garrison and his investigators treated Torres reflects the same sort of behind-the-scenes schemes that produced the fraudulent Warren Report. Clearly, the attempt to frame Shaw through phoney witnesses parallels fraudulent efforts to prove that Lee Harvey Oswald had acted alone. Like Hoover's FBI, Garrison's investigators intimidated uncooperative witnesses and sought to extract evidence to support a manufactured fiction. The bullying tactics of Garrison's investigators certainly drive the message home. Consider the following warning that a Garrison crony deployed in attempt to get Torres to lie:
Yes, you know Mr. Shaw. You frequented his house in Dauphine Street. You went to his sex parties. You better tell me Miguel. You don't want to get the boss mad.15Torres refused to cooperate, but given the zeal to manufacture the appearance of a legitimate prosecution, it was only a matter of time before Garrison's office produced Perry Raymond Russo, a witness who was evidently much easier to bribe, and used him to make a total mockery out of the Kennedy assassination investigation.
On March 15, 1967, Garrison's key witness, Perry Russo, identified Mafia associate David Ferrie, Clay Shaw and Lee Oswald as co-conspirators in the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Russo was a conniving insurance salesman who managed to persuade a judge that Garrison's allegations were substantial enough to bring Clay Shaw to trial. Since the preliminary hearing however, Russo was hounded by a demanding press that essentially exposed the fact that his testimony was not genuine. Under repeated cross-examination Russo basically admitted the fact that he did not know anything about the Kennedy assassination, that he disseminated rehearsed lies and the only thing that he could count on was that Shaw's lawyer was going to "clobber" him because he was lying and Jim Garrison was going to destroy him if he changed his testimony.16Russo had evidently become what Torres refused to be -Jim Garrison's fraudulent Kennedy assassination witness. Indeed, Russo told Walter Sheridan of NBC that his testimony was part truth, part fantasy and part lies. Russo was obviously not performing as expected and Garrison predictably lashed out at anybody who threatened to expose his scam. Having declared open warfare against his critics in general and Walter Sheridan in particular, the tenacious NBC newsman was promptly dragged before a Garrison-controlled Grand Jury, where he had to defend the absurd allegation that he had bribed Russo. Beyond exploiting and perverting legal channels, Garrison exposed his violent nature when he ordered his assistant Bill Gurvich to have Sheridan and reporter Richard Townley arrested and beaten. When Gurvich refused, Garrison advised his assistant to be less "legalistic". 17
Walter Sheridan was a former Justice Department investigator for Robert Kennedy, and when Robert Kennedy defended the integrity of his former co-worker, Garrison lashed out with the absurd tirade: "Kennedy has without any question made a positive effort to stop the investigation and if he denies it here, he is a liar".18 Garrison conveniently ignored the fact that he directed a deliberate fraud rather than an investigation. Moreover, Robert Kennedy and the truth about the assassination of his brother were held hostage by fraud artists like Jim Garrison and by the covert, sinister alliance between Lyndon Johnson and J. Edgar Hoover. Indeed, during the 1964 Democratic convention in Atlantic City, J. Edgar Hoover secretly dispatched a team of FBI agents to spy on Robert Kennedy.19 Technically speaking, Attorney General Robert Kennedy was J. Edgar Hoover's boss, but in fact, he was a despised target. Jim Garrison reflected the grotesque nature of the relationship through meaningless rhetoric like: "Who was the Attorney General of the United States when this great fraud was perpetuated and the people of the United States were told it was a lone assassin?"20 [The fact that demagogues are currently blaming Bill Clinton for covering up the truth about the suicide/murder of Vincent Foster echoes the grotesque nature of Garrison-style charges.] Lyndon Johnson also echoed Garrison-style frivolity when he said: "Led by the Attorney General who wanted no stone unturned, the FBI was working on the case twenty-four hours a day and the Director J. Edgar Hoover was in constant communication with me".21
Fine rhetoric, but the Warren Report cannot be credibly defended. Moreover, the hoax that Garrison promoted was sanctioned by J. Edgar Hoover, not Robert Kennedy. On March 2nd, shortly after Garrison arrested Shaw, Attorney General Ramsey Clark indicated that Shaw had been investigated and cleared of any connection to the assassination. But on June 2nd, the Justice Department, obviously on the prodding of J. Edgar Hoover, indicated that Clay Shaw had never been investigated.22 In other words, despite the Warren Commission investigation, Justice Department Czar J. Edgar Hoover was giving Jim Garrison the official green light to "investigate" the Kennedy assassination. The hoax that was consequently unleashed was so overwhelming and grotesque that even the Congress stopped asking for a new probe and reporters, after being inundated by more fraudulent stories than one could possibly digest, ultimately abandoned the hunt for the truth.
J. Edgar Hoover and Jim Garrison were ideal "bosom buddies". Both men were extremely powerful, unaccountable law enforcement officials who simply practised the capacity to target and destroy anyone who opposed them. The law had absolutely no bearing upon the behavior of either man. When-Louisiana State Judges refused to approve Garrison's request for investigative funds because the D.A. office should be "primarily prosecutive rather than investigative", Garrison characteristically levied absurd charges like the unsubstantiated claim that the judges took 206 holidays a year and that their decision raised "interesting questions about the racketeer influences of our eight vacationing judges."23Garrison was appropriately convicted for defamation of character, but managed to reverse the decision on appeal to the Federal Courts. At any rate, conscientious judges like Bernard Locke did not deserve to have their reputations tarnished by the unfounded nonsense that Garrison promoted through commentary like: "They [the judges] are comparable to the sacred cows of India." 24
The intimidating power and influence that Jim Garrison commanded exceeded legal limits. In 1966, he interceded directly with the Governor of Louisiana and won a pardon for Linda Brigette, a stripper who in effect, was granted a license to perform the sort of lewd dancing that the law forbade. Instead of refusing to fulfil Garrison's peculiar concerns, Governor McKeithen was actually relieved to accommodate them because, according to the Governor of Louisiana:
I have learned that most of Jim Garrison's enemies are buried -politically speaking -and I don't propose to join the list of the deceased.25At every turn, the only common element of Jim Garrison's law enforcement career was evidently his capacity to enforce his own will. The law was certainly never a force that motivated Garrison. Not surprisingly, his enemies were not ruthless murderers like New Orleans Mafia boss Carlos Marcello, but honest officials like Joseph Giarrusso, a dedicated, competent policeman who had reached the position of Superintendent of the New Orleans Police Department and was distinguished for his integrity.26 According to Garrison however, Giarrusso sided with the underworld. Joseph Giarrusso had raided strip joints that featured Linda Brigette, and that was evidently the only "crime" that Garrison was not willing to tolerate. The Bourbon Street stripper was a feature attraction of organized crime elements, and Jim Garrison, who was in the habit of playing protectorate to his secret, mafia allies, challenged his "enemies" rather than the criminal impropriety that legitimate law enforcement officials opposed.
Garrison's relentless assault upon anyone who challenged the interests of organized crime was legendary. When Aaron Kohn, the Managing Director of the Metropolitan Crime Commission brought organized crime to the attention of the public, Jim Garrison subpoenaed Kohn before a Grand Jury where he branded him a liar and challenged him to prove the existence of organized crime. Remarkably, Jim Garrison used a Grand Jury to "prove" that provable organized crime did not exist. Read it again, it's difficult to believe. Clearly, the truth, in the world that Garrison developed, was anything that he wanted it to be. Indeed, after using the powers of his office to "prove" that organized crime did not exist, Garrison threateningly declared:
I now want to invite anyone else who thinks that they see organized crime flourishing in this city to come tell us about it. Persons without evidence should not apply. I asked the Director of the Metropolitan Crime Commission to put up or shut up about organized crime flourishing in New Orleans. He appeared before the Grand Jury for four hours. The Grand Jury took no action and made no indictments... The Metropolitan Crime Commission should turn its attention to raising camellias.27In the meantime, the criminal empire of New Orleans Mafia boss Carlos Marcello flourished and Jim Garrison used the power of his office to protect Marcello's interests. It is difficult to believe that one can use a Grand Jury to "prove" a fraudulent declaration, but it is important to acknowledge that every court proceeding is as reliable and as genuine as the people behind it. Moreover, a corrupt District Attorney can easily manipulate a Grand Jury because:
Except in rare instances, the Jury will hear only those witnesses the District Attorney wishes them to hear. They are preconditioned by what the District Attorney has told them of the matter under investigation. There is no judge to strike any of his remarks as prejudicial. The representative of the defendant or prospective defendant is present; none of his witnesses will be heard, except as the Jury might wish to hear them. In this, as in all other matters, most Grand Jurors will be guided by the advice of the District Attorney.28The hoax that Garrison perpetuated involved a two-pronged attack -he created phoney witnesses to throw the public off and he harassed genuine witnesses to prevent them from exposing the truth. The twin preoccupation reflected a single motivation. In other words, allowing the truth to come out would have defeated the entire purpose of creating phoney stories, and phoney cover stories made it more difficulty for the truth to emerge. At the same time, Garrison made it appear as though he was advancing the course of justice. When, for example, Garrison issued Grand Jury subpoenas to anyone who knew people like Guy Banister, David Ferrie and Lee Harvey Oswald, he created the impression that he was digging for the truth. The appearance was misleading because Garrison routinely used the Grand Jury to cover up rather than to expose the truth. Indeed, when potential witnesses like Kerry Thomley, John R. Heindel, alias "Hidel", who served with Oswald in the Marine Corps in 1959, were dragged before a Grand Jury and prosecuted for perjury, their testimony was effectively censored, because, as Jay Epstein exposed in Counterplot, a convicted perjurer cannot testify in court in Louisiana. Absolutely consistent in his campaign to muzzle or to "put the screws" on witnesses who were in a position to provide genuine evidence, Garrison effectively perverted justice.
Well researched books that describe the unbelievable charade that Garrison perpetuated have appropriate titles like American Grotesque and The Garrison Case: A Study in the Abuse of Power. True to his consistent temptation to court irony, one of Garrison's witnesses wore a toga and claimed to be Julius Caesar -there certainly is no dispute about who was responsible for the assassination of Caesar. Perhaps the most honest evidence of the entire Garrison charade was provided by psychiatric patients who offered hypnotically induced testimony -at least they didn't know any better.
In the final analysis, regardless of the style, both the Garrison charade and the Warren Report are equally grotesque because they were both produced through the promotion of manufactured evidence and through the relentless intimidation of anyone who was in a position to expose the truth. In 1970, when Garrison was arrested on bribery and tax evasion charges, he claimed that the American government had framed him because it did not want him to continue to investigate the assassination of John F. Kennedy. That, is what you call a conspiracy theory.
Under different circumstances, under a less corrupt setting, men like Jim Garrison, the all-American, born in Iowa patriot, would have lived and died an uncomplicated life. In 1940, Garrison joined the U.S. army and fought the black and white war against Hitler as a lieutenant in the field artillery. After volunteering for flight training, he flew dangerous, low-level spot missions. Beyond the flight heroics, Garrison survived combat in France and Germany. After the war, he settled in New Orleans where he earned a law degree and joined the FBI. Corruption and Cold War hysteria buried Jim Garrison, the decent all-American patriot, and produced the "Black is White" con artist, who faithfully protected the interests of his criminal allies until October 21st, 1992, when Jim Garrison finally died.
