False Witness (42 page)

†
In a print of the original picture, Brannon's “eyebrows” were “not quite as prominent” as they were in the published version (report on “Citizens' Council Newspaper The [Councilor],” regarding investigation conducted May 18, 19, and 23, 1967, on behalf of Shaw's attorneys). This suggests that the picture was touched up to make the Ferrie resemblance more pronounced.

*
Among others, ABC television newscaster Sam Donaldson challenged Stone on this. “I made a dozen calls during that time from the Capitol to the White House and elsewhere in Washington,” he said. “The telephone system wasn't out.” “I'll have to look into that,” Stone replied (Sam Donaldson, interview with Oliver Stone, “Prime Time,” Jan. 1992).

†
Innocent people often benefit from crimes they didn't commit. If one follows Stone's paradigm, Aristotle Onassis would be a legitimate suspect.

‡
As writer Edward Epstein pointed out, while Prouty had worked in the Pentagon's Office of Special Operations (which supplied hardware for covert actions), unlike his fictional counterpart, Prouty did not provide security, additional or otherwise, for the president (Epstein, “The Second Coming of Jim Garrison,”
The Atlantic Monthly
, March 1993).

*
Apparently still unaware it was a hoax, Stone later described the “fabled” Iron Mountain report as “based on a study commissioned by Defense Secretary Robert McNamara in August 1963 to justify the big, planned changes in defense spending contemplated by Kennedy” (Oliver Stone, “Introduction,” to Prouty's
JFK: The CIA, Vietnam and the Plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedy
, pp. x, xi).

*
This is the fingerprint card episode, involving Officer Habighorst, described in chapter 11.

*
The real Garrison wasn't in the courtroom when the verdict came down and wasn't seen publicly in the building afterward.

*
Most researchers have their theories but they also have their doubts. This case is too thick with contradictions and ambiguity for any honest truth seeker to be without them. And the majority of Americans who reject the Warren Report reflect that. There is neither consensus nor certainty among them either, except perhaps for the true believers created by Stone's film.

Oliver Stone has stamped his vision of Jim Garrison indelibly on the collective consciousness of the moviegoing world. For the millions who have seen the film
JFK
, and all those in the future who will, Jim Garrison is as Kevin Costner portrayed him: an ordinary, decent and caring, mild-mannered family man and truth-seeking district attorney. Using logic, dogged determination, and customary investigatory techniques, with a small band of loyal aides, he battled the federal government, the biased media, and a variety of sinister forces that conspired to prevent him from bringing the killers of President Kennedy to justice. He had but a single flaw. He neglected his wife and children, an unfortunate but understandable consequence of his all-consuming commitment to the Kennedy investigation. Garrison is also infused with the qualities and general star glow of Kevin Costner's past performances. The quiet courage and incorruptibility of Eliot Ness, the spiritual true-heartedness of Dances with Wolves, the
selflessness of Robin Hood. Garrison now embodies all that, too. Reinvented by Hollywood, he shines like a new penny.

In what follows, I have tried to suggest the chasm that separates the real man from Stone's invention.

The real-life Garrison didn't behave like a reasonable person's idea of a district attorney. He wasn't sensible, responsible and just. He didn't exercise care in his public statements or actions, and his thinking was decidedly odd. In strikingly similar language, several observers have remarked on Garrison's peculiar attitude toward evidence. Former First Asst. D.A. Charles Ward described it best. “Most of the time you marshal the facts, then deduce your theories,” said Ward, in a 1983 interview. “But Garrison deduced a theory, then he marshaled his facts. And if the facts didn't fit he'd say they had been altered by the CIA.”
³
Years later, Garrison's old friend and former chief investigator, Pershing Gervais, made an almost identical comment. “Garrison inverted the criminal investigatory process,” wrote Gervais in a letter to the
Times-Picayune
. “You should begin by assembling the facts and from the facts you may deduce a theory of the crime. Pure deductive reasoning. Garrison did the opposite. He started with a theory and then assembled some facts to support it. Those facts that fit the theory, he accepted. Those that did not, he either ignored or rejected as CIA misinformation.”

Garrison himself cast some light on his method of investigating in a July 18, 1977, letter he wrote to a Select Committee staffer. In the letter, Garrison explained that the typical investigatory methods employed by law enforcement were a waste of time when applied to the mysteries of the assassination. Conventional techniques wouldn't work there, he said, because ordinary evidence (he mentions confessions, footprints, and fingerprints) was unavailable due to the hidden nature of the crime. A different tactic was required, and Garrison had devised one. His alternative was something he called “the application of models.”
⁴

Basically, this meant Garrison matched his suspects against a batch of categories he found suspicious: unconventional religions, military service, aerospace work, post office boxes, to name a few. Garrison tried on evidence the way he tried on clothes, and somewhere he was bound to find something that fit. He said just that in another memo that spoke of applying one model after another until the one that fit was located.
⁵
To find a guilty party, Garrison only needed to select a suspect; he was sure to hit upon the incriminating evidentiary pattern eventually. Assuming that no real evidence existed, Garrison had invented a system to generate presumed evidence to serve in its stead.

Using a variation of it, Garrison deciphered certain numbers that he claimed were encoded. He did this by finding through trial and error a mathematical sequence that would convert the number into another. An example is the entry he found in Shaw's address book: “Lee Odom, P.O. Box 19106, Dallas, Texas.” The number 19106 coincided with one found in Lee Harvey Oswald's notebook, but Oswald's was preceded by two Russian letters. Garrison insisted the entries were identical and were actually a coded form of Jack Ruby's unlisted telephone number, though his brother said Ruby's telephone number had never been unlisted. Nevertheless, Garrison converted the post office box number, 19106, into the allegedly unlisted telephone number, WH-1-5601, through the following entirely arbitrary steps. First, he rearranged the numbers (anything is allowed in this procedure), subtracted 1300, matched the two letters (PO) to numbers on the telephone dial, added those two numbers together and fudged a bit.
⁶
Unimpressed, Shaw's attorneys noted the obvious, that this system—in which the beginning number and the ending number are both known and the only mystery is how to move numerically from one to the other—could be used to convert any number into any other number. Garrison found that beside the point. If he could do it, it meant something.

Lee Odom, the man to whom the post office box belonged, was quickly located and interviewed. He described his one-and-only business meeting with Clay Shaw in 1966, when Odom was attempting to promote a bull fight in New Orleans. Neither Odom nor his mailing address had any connection to Ruby, Ruby's telephone number, or to Oswald. The similarity to his notebook entry was a coincidence. But, of course, in Garrison's world, unlike the real one, coincidences didn't exist.

Garrison arrived at many of his empty ideas through his application of models. To Garrison's way of thinking, the very absence of “traditional evidence” supported his suspicions.

Understandably, many found the nebulousness of Garrison's “facts” a cause for concern. One writer referred to them as “a mélange of coincidences
and circumstances which have some kind of wispy relationship.” Max Lerner called them “unlikely details” woven into “a hair-raising pattern of concern.” Journalist James Phelan was more blunt about it. “I realized Garrison was a fraud, an ignoramus, or a crazy man,” he said, describing his reaction after Garrison laid out his case in Las Vegas. “The legal charge for the things he had dug up on Ferrie,” Phelan quipped, “is moping and gawking with intent to maneuver.”
⁷

Yet Garrison seemed convinced by what he found, which prompts the question that continually arises. What was wrong with the man? By one account, he was “a frustrated writer” of short stories that were repeatedly rejected by various magazines, which left him feeling “disappointed.”
*
Apparently, his chosen profession didn't bring him contentment either. He talked about that one day to his aides and staffer Tom Bethell recorded what he said in his diary. Garrison explained that in law school he learned any case could be argued either way, depending on the precedents one selects. Determining the truth, therefore, had practically no bearing on the law. Once he saw that, Garrison said, the law no longer interested him.
⁸

This indifference to the law Garrison expressed repeatedly in his actions during his Kennedy investigation. He put Vernon Bundy and Charles Spiesel on the witness stand knowing one was a liar and the other unbalanced. Garrison welcomed whatever
might help
that came his way. Jack Martin was an alcoholic with a criminal past and psychological problems severe enough to land him in a mental ward at least once. He was well-known for inventing information. One Garrison aide said Martin was “absolutely crazy.” Another referred to him as a “sack of roaches.” Richard Billings didn't trust him. And Garrison, himself, admitted that Martin often lied.
⁹
Yet, for at least a year, Martin had Garrison's ear, was part of his team, and Garrison gave him “expense” money—because Martin's stories were
useful
.
^10
†
Pershing Gervais said that Garrison was never interested
in what was right or wrong—he was only interested in what
worked
.

Sometimes that meant breaking the law. Garrison's ordering William Gurvich to arrest and beat up two troublesome newsmen is a minor example. To keep his star witness Perry Russo happy, Garrison had a false criminal charge lodged against one of Russo's friends so the young man could evade the draft. Later the charge was dropped.
¹¹
In one telling moment, Garrison even claimed that Judge Haggerty's order prohibiting public statements on the case didn't apply to him. “The district attorney,” Garrison said, “can make any statements he wishes.”
¹²

If the law didn't interest Garrison, politics did. He told Pershing Gervais his Kennedy investigation would put him in the White House. To others he spoke of a seat in the U.S. Senate or the governor's mansion. Though he pretended to be a reluctant celebrity, shortly after his Kennedy investigation became a news story, above the door leading into the district attorney's office, he had his name installed in three-inch-high gold letters.
¹³
Kevin Costner's Garrison would never have done that. He wanted only to catch the president's killers and keep his family together.

Stone created a Garrison household in which the wife is the heavy. She nags him for neglecting her and the children, criticizes his obsession with the Kennedy assassination, suggesting it's beyond his jurisdiction. She even has a kind word for Clay Shaw and his contribution to the city. Finally, she threatens to leave. Stone began most of the home scenes at the dining table. At one point, he shows Costner engagingly feeding the family dog food from his own plate off his own spoon. Costner clearly loves and worries about his wife and children, to say nothing of the dog. Stone conjured up a cotton candy Hollywood image that is picture perfect.

In reality, Garrison's mistreatment of his wife was no secret. Two public incidents occurred at Brennan's restaurant. In the better known of these, Garrison grew progressively more drunk and abusive as the evening wore on and eventually threw a glass of wine in her face, then stormed out. As he was leaving, he passed Clay Shaw, seated at an adjacent table, and a witness to the incident.
*
Reportedly, this was not an isolated episode; Garrison's mistreatment of her was said to involve bodily injury, and was serious.
¹⁴
We cannot imagine Costner's Garrison
behaving that way. But in real life, spousal abuse was only part of it.

When he was at the pinnacle of his popularity and notoriety, Garrison remarked on the forces out to sabotage his investigation. The next charge he expected from them, he said, was that he engaged in “child molesting.”
¹⁵
Garrison probably was launching a preemptive strike with that remark. He undoubtedly had reason to fear that such a charge might occur. The wall of secrecy that shielded the dark side of Garrison's personal life cracked in 1969 in the aftermath of just such an act involving a thirteen-year-old boy. The boy's family wanted to file charges but were warned that Garrison was unpredictable and would be an extremely dangerous adversary. Aaron Kohn urged the family to prosecute. But concern about the boy's welfare and even his safety outweighed all else, and they took no action. Kohn then gave the information to the grand jury and someone leaked the story to columnist Jack Anderson. The grand jury foreman, William J. Krummel, Sr., confirmed off the record to Anderson that they were looking into it. But, Krummel said, “I'm afraid that if I say so [in public], they'll want to throw me in jail.”
¹⁶
Krummel declined to be interviewed for this book; so what occurred in the grand jury's investigation is unknown. The family wisely decided to protect the boy and the grand jury could have done little without their assistance.