False Witness (22 page)

Garrison admitted to those close to him that he was engaging in “intimidation,” bringing charges “to make” people give him the information he wanted.
⁴⁵
Members of his staff worried about his tactics and he met with frequent resistance from some. One assistant district attorney removed himself from the investigation, telling Edward O'Donnell, “I'm not getting involved in this and anyone who does is crazy.”
⁴⁶
Others wanted out but remained, presumably for financial or professional reasons. (Reportedly, some of Garrison's top aides stayed because he promised them judgeships.) Various sources attest to the opposition within
Garrison's own camp.
*
In the early days of the case, Leonard Gurvich was speaking on the telephone to a senior assistant district attorney who began to cry. “Garrison,” the assistant said, “is ruining the office and everybody in it.”
⁴⁷
Yet none of these men raised a hand to help William Gurvich when he tried to put a stop to what Garrison was doing.

For Garrison to save face and salvage his credibility, he had to overcome the Gurvich threat, but that bestowed little glory. His victory over Andrews, a figure mentioned in the Warren Report, did. It restored some of his luster, tarnished by the NBC show and Gurvich's public condemnation. Ironically, Garrison actually benefited from the media criticism. Many saw him as a besieged and unfairly maligned figure. Garrison also garnered a more concrete bonus. He complained to the Federal Communications Commission about the NBC program, demanded equal time, and was granted thirty minutes in which to respond.

In his nationwide broadcast, Garrison achieved the exposure
Life
and the
Post
had failed to deliver. He exploited that fully over the next six months, accepting speaking engagements, appearing on radio and television programs, addressing forums coast to coast and granting interviews to friendly reporters. (A sampling of his constantly shifting theories on the who, how, and why of the assassination is found on pages 181–182.)
Playboy
, one of the nation's most popular magazines, ran a lengthy, sympathetic profile. Capping off this media blitz, comedian Mort Sahl arranged for Garrison to appear on Johnny Carson's
Tonight Show
. (Clay Shaw's attorneys telegrammed their protest.) Inspired by all the attention, Garrison expanded his conspiracy ideas to a galactic scale. During a speech in Los Angeles, he named LBJ. Sounding like Marc Antony praising Caesar, Garrison denied he was saying President Johnson was involved, but noted that he had profited more than anyone else from Jack Kennedy's death. Then he asked rhetorically, wouldn't it be nice to know Johnson wasn't involved instead of just assuming?
^48
†
On that same trip Garrison identified another “conspirator,” an employee of the International Council of Christian Churches who resided in North
Hollywood, one Edgar Eugene Bradley.

Garrison charged Bradley, like Shaw, with conspiracy to murder the president and claimed that Bradley for years had been working for the U.S. intelligence apparatus. “I shot
who
?” Bradley blurted on hearing the news. The charge against Bradley (which was prompted by a letter from a man in Van Nuys, California, who claimed that Bradley had tried to have JFK killed when he was a senator) was perhaps Garrison's most obviously bogus move.
*
At the time he had no evidence Bradley was ever in New Orleans or Dallas, much less that he conspired to assassinate the president. Nor was Bradley connected to Shaw, Oswald, or Ferrie, and Garrison's charge against Bradley didn't claim that he was.
^†
James Alcock, indignant over the entire affair, told a staff member that he would refuse to prosecute Bradley. “Let's keep our fingers crossed,” he said, in the hope that Bradley wouldn't be extradited.
⁴⁹
Alcock got his wish when California's Governor Reagan rejected the request.

If the Bradley charge was Garrison's most transparent act, his attack on Robert Kennedy was the sorriest. Kennedy incurred Garrison's wrath by releasing a statement defending his friend Walter Sheridan. Garrison retaliated, claiming Kennedy was impeding his investigation. Kennedy didn't want the “real assassins” caught, Garrison said, because it “would interfere with his political career.”
⁵⁰

Though most of the media were already disillusioned with Garrison, much of the public was undecided and a large segment, still convinced “he must have something,” was waiting for that
something
to be revealed at Clay Shaw's trial. Back in March, Shaw had expected that trial to take place within three to six months, which he considered “a long time to live under the conditions in which [he] was living.” By October, Shaw was referring to those conditions as a “maelstrom.” He feared that Garrison's ongoing public statements had created an inflammatory
atmosphere that jeopardized the prospects for a fair trial. As long as Garrison continued to “[shoot] off his big fat mouth,” as Shaw put it, he wanted his attorneys to delay the trial. His attorneys were more concerned about laying the groundwork for an appeal in the event Shaw was convicted; they accomplished that by filing various motions on a variety of issues. They also had no choice but to investigate all of Garrison's new “leads” in the case. As Shaw's financial reserves hemorrhaged, three to six months stretched into two years. He spent the time studying the Warren Report and the writings of its critics, tracking developments and Garrison's every word, and searching for a way “to take the offensive.”
⁵¹

In public Garrison was unwavering during this hiatus, but in private was hoping the government would block the case or that something would happen to Shaw. With great conviction, he assured his staff that the trial would never occur. James Alcock told a colleague that he wanted to believe Garrison was right but doubted that he was.
⁵²
Alcock had reason to worry. Garrison had delegated the principal trial function to him. Garrison would deliver opening and closing remarks and he would interview a couple of witnesses, but Alcock would be the one in court every day, ostensibly in charge. Yet it was Garrison's game plan. He was running the show. He was calling the shots. A win would have been an enormous achievement for Garrison and, by appearing to hand the reins to his assistant, he had someone to blame if anything went wrong.

Keeping his staff in the dark about the overall picture allowed Garrison to imply he had evidence they didn't know about that buttressed what they did. Reportedly, as the trial date approached, Alcock went to Garrison and asked to be informed about the rest of his case. “You've got it,” Garrison replied to his stunned assistant, “there isn't anything else.” I asked Alcock if that story was true. “I'm not getting into that,” he replied sharply.
⁵³
According to an impeccable source close to the case, the night before the trial began Alcock “broke down” at the home of another assistant district attorney and said he didn't know what to do. That he was being “forced” to prosecute an innocent man.

*
When
Loisel mentioned these tests is unclear; it may have been the previous evening or before the recorder was activated.

*
The U.S. Attorney in New Orleans, the Louisiana State Attorney General, and the Bar Association's Ethics Committee.

†
Louis Ivon recently said the claim that they laid hands on him is “completely untrue” (telephone conversation with author, June 28, 1996).

*
To avoid a conflict of interest, Hugh Exnicios had told Beaubouef to obtain new counsel.

†
Yet according to writer-attorney Milton Brener, under Louisiana Statutes public bribery need not involve false information, only something of value offered to a potential witness with the intent to influence his conduct as a witness (Brener,
The Garrison Case
, p. 176).

*
At their last meeting Russo told Phelan he recalled
two
quite different parties at Ferrie's apartment. One, where Ferrie was playing the piano, appeared like vivid images on a color television screen; the other, which Russo described in court, was “dull and faint” like a bad black and white picture. Phelan believed the vivid piano-playing party really happened, and the other was a product of Dr. Fatter's leading questions and Russo's suggestibility (Phelan Interview).

*
This “could be caused,” O'Donnell wrote, “by general nervous tension or by the fact that the person intended to lie during the test” (Edward O'Donnell, Report to Jim Garrison, regarding Perry Russo Interview, June 20, 1967 [Appendix B in this book]).

*
This break-in story was not an NBC fabrication, as has been charged. It surfaced
before
NBC's representatives heard it. William Gurvich learned about it in January from the Garrison aide who had been given the break-in assignment (
Los Angeles Times
, June 29, 1967; Gurvich Conference, tape #2, pp. 6–7); and John Cancler told his attorney, Milton Brener, about it probably in March (Brener,
The Garrison Case
, pp. 189–190).

*
Walter Sheridan (who had been a special assistant to Robert Kennedy when he was attorney general) arranged the meeting at Kennedy's request. Gurvich agreed, he later said, because he feared Kennedy would think “there actually was something in New Orleans and might be overly optimistic and hopeful” about solving his brother's murder (Gurvich, interview, WWL-TV, June 27, 1967).

†
Gurvich was one of the select six who received copies of the “master file”; he had “a full set of keys” to the district attorney's office; he used Garrison's car; “shared” Garrison's desk; was praised by Garrison at his big February Fontainebleau press conference; and the weekend after the RFK story broke Gurvich was in New York interviewing a witness in the case.

*
Responding to motions filed by Shaw's attorneys, the foreman denied that he or any of the other grand jurors contributed to Garrison's fund (
New Orleans States-Item
, May 18, 1967).

*
But Davis did call Andrews while he was in the hospital. Early in the Garrison probe Davis confirmed that to Asst. D.A. James Alcock. This led Alcock to suggest “that Dean might have just made up the name Bertrand” (Bethell Diary, pp. 1, 2, 10).

*
This opposition was chronicled in the Gurvich tapes and, more extensively, in the Bethell Diary.

†
“They think him a liberal,” Shaw wrote, when the
Los Angeles Free Press
devoted five pages to Garrison's speech. “He is the very face of fascism” (Shaw Notes, Dec. 19, 1967, p. 22).

*
William Turner, the
Ramparts
[magazine] staff writer and Garrison volunteer who unearthed the letter in Garrison's files and sparked the Bradley investigation, reportedly admitted to Tom Bethell that Garrison didn't believe Bradley was guilty and that charging him was a ploy in the publicity war Garrison was waging (Bethell Diary, pp. 19 and 29).

†
Soon, however, two incriminating statements suddenly appeared in Garrison's Bradley file. One placed Bradley at Dealey Plaza on November 22, 1963, and was signed by former Dallas Deputy Sheriff Roger Craig; the other linked Bradley to David Ferrie, and was signed by Perry Russo (Bethell Diary, p. 28).

For a city that looks to its politics for entertainment, Clay Shaw's trial was the equivalent of Armstrong stepping onto the moon. After two years of anticipation, jury selection was scheduled to begin January 21, 1969. But on the seventeenth, James Alcock requested an indefinite continuance, citing a report just released by Attorney General Ramsey Clark regarding President Kennedy's autopsy. The report, Alcock said, was prejudicial to the state's case.
²
Some believed Garrison had been looking for a way out and on battle eve had found it. That Friday it suddenly looked as though Clay Shaw would never stand trial. Over the weekend, however, Garrison either reconsidered or was grandstanding to begin with because on Monday Alcock withdrew the motion. The state, he said, was “ready to go to trial tomorrow.”

The Big Event was going to happen after all. Even the upcoming
Mardi Gras celebration paled by comparison. The wife of a former assistant district attorney, herself a law student at the time, said recently that the trial was more exciting than any movie could convey. The international press corps had already swamped the city and the world's attention was once more riveted on Tulane and Broad, this time the second-floor courtroom of Judge Edward A. Haggerty, Jr., a silver-haired, craggy-faced Irishman, known to have a drinking problem. All the security measures at the preliminary hearing were again in place, plus two closed circuit television cameras.

At the prosecution's table that first day were Asst. D.A.s Andrew Sciambra, Alvin Oser, William Alford, Numa Bertel, and the diminutive, thirty-six-year-old team leader, James Alcock, somber and smart, with thick black hair and square black-rimmed glasses. Representing Clay Shaw were the same four men who had handled his case from the outset: veteran trial lawyer F. Irvin Dymond,
*
Edward F. Wegmann, William J. Wegmann,
^†
and Salvatore Panzeca. Incredibly, the first prospective juror called was named John Kennedy; he was immediately excused after admitting he already had formed a fixed opinion.