JFK Assassination: District Attorney Jim Garrison’s Trial Conspiracy Theory – Investigation (2006)

Earling Carothers “Jim” Garrison (November 20, 1921 — October 21, 1992) — who changed his first name to Jim in the early 1960s — was the District Attorney of Orleans Parish, Louisiana from 1962 to 1973. A member of the Democratic Party, he is best known for his investigations into the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. He was played by Kevin Costner in Oliver Stone’s JFK.

Garrison remains a controversial figure. Opinions differ as to whether he uncovered a conspiracy behind the John F. Kennedy assassination, but was blocked from successful prosecution by a federal government cover-up, whether he bungled his chance to uncover a conspiracy, or whether the entire case was an unproductive waste of resources.

As New Orleans D.A., Garrison began an investigation into the assassination of President Kennedy in late 1966, after receiving several tips from Jack Martin that a man named David Ferrie may have been involved in the assassination. The end result of Garrison’s investigation was the arrest and trial of New Orleans businessman Clay Shaw in 1969, with Shaw being unanimously acquitted less than one hour after the case went to the jury.

Garrison was able to subpoena the Zapruder film from Life magazine and show it to the public for the first time. Until the trial, the film had rarely been seen, and bootleg copies made by assassination investigators working with Garrison led to the film’s wider distribution.

Garrison’s key witness against Clay Shaw was Perry Russo, a 25-year-old insurance salesman from Baton Rouge, Louisiana. At the trial, Russo testified that he had attended a party at anti-Castro activist David Ferrie’s apartment. At the party, Russo said that Lee Harvey Oswald (who Russo said was introduced to him as “Leon Oswald”), David Ferrie, and “Clem Bertrand” (who Russo identified in the courtroom as Clay Shaw) had discussed killing President Kennedy. The conversation included plans for the “triangulation of crossfire” and alibis for the participants.

Russo’s version of events has been questioned by some historians and researchers, such as Patricia Lambert, once it became known that part of his testimony was induced by hypnotism, and by the drug sodium pentothal (sometimes called “truth serum”). An early version of Russo’s testimony (as told in Assistant D.A. Andrew Sciambra’s memo, before Russo was subjected to sodium pentothal and hypnosis) fails to mention an “assassination party” and says that Russo met Clay Shaw on two occasions, neither of which occurred at the party. However, in his book On the Trail of the Assassins, Garrison says that Russo had already discussed the party at Ferrie’s apartment before any “truth serum” was admitted. Moreover, in several public interviews, such as one shown in the video The JFK Assassination: The Jim Garrison Tapes, Russo reiterates the same account of a party at Ferrie’s apartment that he gave at the trial.

Jim Garrison defended his conduct regarding witness testimony, stating:
Before we introduced the testimony of our witnesses, we made them undergo independent verifying tests, including polygraph examination, truth serum and hypnosis. We thought this would be hailed as an unprecedented step in jurisprudence; instead, the press turned around and hinted that we had drugged our witnesses or given them posthypnotic suggestions to testify falsely.

US talk radio host David Mendelsohn conducted a comprehensive interview with Jim Garrison which was broadcast in 1988 by KPFA in Berkley California. Alongside Garrison the voices of Lee Harvey Oswald, JFK filmmaker Oliver Stone. Garrison explains that cover stories were circulated in an attempt to blame the killing on the Cubans and the Mafia but he blames the conspiracy to kill the president firmly on the CIA who wanted to continue the cold war, whereas Alan Dulles and the CIA did not.

After the Shaw trial, Garrison wrote three books on the Kennedy assassination, A Heritage of Stone (1970), The Star Spangled Contract (1976, fiction, but based on the JFK assassination), and the best-seller, On The Trail of The Assassins (1988). His investigation again received widespread attention through Oliver Stone’s 1991 film, JFK, which was largely based on Garrison’s book On the Trail of the Assassins as well as Jim Marrs’ Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy. Kevin Costner played a fictionalized version of Garrison in the movie. Garrison himself had a small on-screen role in the film, playing United States Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren.

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