False Witness (39 page)

*
In 1997, after unsuccessful efforts under the Freedom of Information Act, I appealed to the head of the Justice Department's Criminal Division (the agency withholding the document at the National Archives) and finally obtained a copy of this transcript.

*
Shaw's name and a number appear in a CIA document, along with the name and number of J. Monroe Sullivan, former Executive Director of the San Francisco World Trade Center, who had been granted “a covert security approval” for Project QK/E
NCHANT
(Raymond G. Rocca, CIA memorandum, April 26, 1967, “Enclosure 21,” item 11, p. 4). Sullivan recently denied ever working for the CIA or having any knowledge of any such project (telephone conversation with author, Oct. 12, 1997). See also handwritten notes by HSCA staffer reviewing [Shaw] CIA documents, describing Sullivan's “covert security approval” as for “unwitting” use (National Archives record number 180-10143-10220).

*
Garrison wrote a two-part memorandum dated February 10 and April 7, 1967, entitled, “Time and Propinquity: Factors In Phase One.” This, Tom Bethell wrote, was “predicated on the supposition that if people live anywhere near one another, they are therefore to be suspected of being associated in some way.” “I need hardly say,” Bethell remarked, “that nobody in the office takes the ‘propinquity factor' seriously except for Garrison himself.” Bethell also quoted Garrison as saying, while he thumbed through the city directory: “ ‘Sooner or later, because people are lazy, you catch them out on propinquity' ” (Bethell Diary, p. 23).

*
In a 1967 Foreword to Harold Weisberg's
Oswald in New Orleans
, Garrison wrote that “those in control of the government machinery sometimes find it necessary to re-write history. . . . The truth becomes not what occurred but what they announce has occurred.” That is an accurate description of his own memoir.

*
A subsidiary of the Institute for Media Analysis, a small, old-fashioned leftist organization best known for the regularity of its attacks on the
New York Times
.

†
The hardback edition was barely reviewed but the Warner Books soft cover (published after the film was released) was thirteen weeks on the
New York Times
Paperback Best Sellers list.

*
Also present were Bob Daly, Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer, and Bill Gerber, a production executive.

Shortly before Oliver Stone began shooting his movie, Jim Garrison told a local reporter he couldn't talk about the film because his contract with Stone prohibited it. Garrison did have something to say about the choice of Kevin Costner to portray him—“a first-class selection.” About the script—“a beautiful job.” And about Stone—“it's like having a Eugene O'Neill write it.” Stone himself would soon be drawing parallels between his efforts and Shakespeare's. Though, as he put it, he wasn't saying he was “as good as Shakespeare.”
²

Born in New York City to wealth and privilege, Oliver Stone was sixteen, in a prestigious boarding school on the Ivy League track when his parents divorced, a seismic event in his life. The following summer, Stone took a trip alone to New Orleans. It was 1963, and later he would remark on the coincidence of the timing. He was walking the streets of The City That Care Forgot when Lee Harvey Oswald was there, only a few months before the assassination. Two other family traumas marked Stone's teenage years. His father lost all his money on the stock market and Stone broke with his parents. He left Yale (after one year) and headed off on his own. After a stint in Vietnam teaching English, and a period in the merchant marine, he returned home, lived awhile in Mexico, then
returned briefly to Yale. In 1966 he completed a long, autobiographical novel that was rejected by publishers.
*
Stone reacted by joining the Army, which returned him to Vietnam, where he later said he expected to die and welcomed the idea. Stone spent fifteen months (in 1967 and 1968) there. He did acid and smoked pot. Injured twice in combat, he was awarded a Purple Heart and Bronze Star. He returned home altered by his experiences, filled with rage, ready, he said, to grab a gun and go after President Nixon. He was back from the war only ten days when he was arrested for marijuana possession. That same year, using the G.I. Bill, he entered film school at New York University, where he studied under Martin Scorsese. Ten years later, after a move to Hollywood, he wrote the screenplay for
Midnight Express
and won his first Academy Award. But it was the enormous financial success of
Platoon
(it cost
5 million and grossed
250 million) in 1986 that transformed Stone into a major force on the Hollywood scene. The film also made him an icon for those (including this writer) who had opposed the Vietnam war. Two years later, he encountered Ellen Ray in that elevator, read Garrison's book, and had the epiphany that started him down the path that led to
JFK
.
³

Stone would make a film that dealt with large historical issues, but it was a deeply personal expression. He once said about his cinematic technique that he believed in “unleashing the pure wash of emotion across the mind to let you see the inner myth, the spirit of the thing.” Asked later where reason came in, he said “reason counts for something” but could become “negative energy” and that “the deeper truths” come from one's “gut.”
^†
In that same interview, Stone defended Leni Riefenstahl, the brilliant German filmmaker who glorified the Third Reich, on the grounds that “she was a believer in Hitler” at the time. Riefenstahl “followed her emotions” as an artist. “This,” Stone said, “is what I do.”
⁴

To help him glorify Jim Garrison, Stone hired Garrison's editor, Zachary Sklar, to co-write the screenplay.
^‡
For research, he brought on board a recent Yale graduate, Jane Rusconi. To play the role of Big Jim,
Stone first approached Harrison Ford, but Ford was unavailable. Stone had an unsuccessful luncheon discussion with Mel Gibson, but denies offering Gibson the part. Kevin Costner, Stone claims, was always his preference. (By one account, it was Costner's wife who read Garrison's book and urged Costner to make the film.) Costner lacked Garrison's dominating six-foot-seven-inch physical stature, melodious voice, and impulsive, volatile nature. He seemed to many an odd, even wimpy selection. Yet Costner fit perfectly the Capraesque All American Nice Guy and Defender of Democracy that Garrison had created in his book.

Tommy Lee Jones as Clay Shaw was almost as unlikely, entirely devoid of the modesty and kindness that people who knew Shaw talk about. But, of course, Stone wasn't interested in those qualities. Supposedly, he wanted the sense of
menace
that Jones projects. The role of Lee Harvey Oswald went to an English actor, Gary Oldman, who re-created the look and sound of that most enigmatic of men with amazing accuracy. For several small but important parts, Stone cannily selected a group of old-timers (Jack Lemmon, Walter Matthau, Ed Asner, and Joe Pesci) whose familiar and trusted faces brought to the film all the positive feelings and credibility that had accrued to them over the years. Jim Garrison, himself, in a cameo performance, played Chief Justice Earl Warren. The thankless role of Garrison's nagging wife was believably played by Sissy Spacek. Stone's characterization of her was misleading though. Elizabeth Garrison had a better understanding of the situation than her husband's Hollywood disciple.

Stone made some revealing comments in a series of interviews shortly before filming began: he referred to
JFK
as a “history lesson,” described himself as “a cinematic historian,” and admitted, “I'm trying to reshape the world through movies.” Reflecting on his earlier films, and how he would be remembered, Stone said he hoped his legacy would be “that I was a good historian as well as a good dramatist.”
⁵
Yet he didn't go about his investigation of President Kennedy's assassination like a historian seeking truth but like a director looking for a good story, one that lent itself to a cinematic format and possessed maximum dramatic impact. He listened to some quite improbable people hawking their wares and incorporated some of them into his script.
⁶
While Garrison had been somewhat restrained in his fabrications, Stone knew no bounds. He dramatized “events” that were uncorroborated or unreliably reported, and he invented
people and scenes that directly contradicted the facts. Whatever the story line needed that wasn't available, Stone concocted.

Yet he invested great effort in achieving the
look
of authenticity. In Dallas he paid
50,000 for the right to film on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository, site of the so-called sniper's nest. He had part of the building that had been removed rebuilt. Ordered replicas created of 3,000 book cartons, window frames painted, trees trimmed, and railroad tracks replaced behind the grassy knoll. That authentic look was very important, Stone explained to an interviewer. But outside Stone's circle, many were worried about the distinction between the look and the reality of Jim Garrison. A goodly number of those concerned resided in Garrison's hometown. Stone spoke to some of them, going through the motions of hearing the other side of the story.

One of those he visited in New Orleans was F. Irvin Dymond, an impressive, charismatic man, who later recalled their conversation. It lasted about ten minutes, with Stone asking questions. No, Dymond had said, he did not believe Garrison acted in good faith. Nor had Asst. D.A. James Alcock. Alcock was too smart not to realize that they had no case. Dymond told Stone “his idea of the whole thing was just completely contrary to the actual facts,” which Stone seemed “shocked to hear.” Not that he didn't believe it, Dymond added, but he was shocked that Dymond would say it. When Stone left his office, Dymond recalled, Stone was not a happy man. Stone also visited the current district attorney, Harry Connick, who told him Garrison's prosecution of Clay Shaw “was the grossest miscarriage of justice” Connick knew about.
⁷

To this and the ongoing public criticism of his project, Stone reacted for the most part as though it were coming from some monolithic hostile force. That mirrored Garrison's reaction in the sixties when he accused anyone who spoke against him of working for the federal government. Yet not all the negative signals coming Stone's way were from the opposition. Some came from Garrison's own camp. James Alcock for instance. He met on one occasion with Stone, Costner, and Garrison, but the session did not go well. “Jim was still going on with some of the theories that were totally contrary to what we were trying to prove in the case,” Alcock recalled recently. “I guess they could sense I wasn't going to be part of that.”
⁸
They never got back to him. What Alcock had to say didn't fit with Garrison's
theories (now Stone's) or his revisionist version of his investigation.