False Witness (30 page)

From then on, the exchanges were peppered with Christenberry's sometimes stern reproaches for the overheated reactions of Garrison's men. They repeatedly objected to the testimony being heard
*
and Christenberry repeatedly overruled them. Fervor, it seems, was the only weapon at their disposal. Their frustration was genuine. But their emotional displays probably mirrored Garrison's own personal outrage at having the destiny of his case, which seemed so entwined with his own destiny, snatched from his control. He was good at transferring his feelings to others.

Christenberry dealt Garrison's men their first defeat almost immediately when he denied their motion to dismiss. Volz said he “vehemently” objected. “Just object,” Christenberry replied, “You needn't make it vehement.” His vehemence was sparked by Christenberry's blunt preamble to his denial. If Shaw's attorneys proved their allegations, injunctive relief might be justified, Christenberry said. “This may be such an
unusual case, such an extraordinary case that it may be necessary to carve out another exception” to the anti-injunction statute.
⁸
Less than thirty minutes into the hearing, Christenberry had tipped his hand, and what Garrison's men heard distressed them. Their anxiety mounted as one witness after another took the stand. Nothing went their way.

The first ones testified about the formation of Truth and Consequences and
the money
,
99,488.97, which Garrison had spent on his Kennedy investigation. Of that, some
70,000 flowed to him from T & C. Founding member Willard E. Robertson had donated
30,000, which he had borrowed, with the understanding that Garrison would repay it “when the funds were available.”
⁹
All these private contributions were disbursed at Garrison's sole discretion, with virtually no controls. Some was spent on security measures at Garrison's home. More than a year and a half after the T & C account became inactive, Robertson was still owed his
30,000. Garrison had made no accounting to Robertson or his organization. Neither he nor the other two founders, Cecil M. Shilstone and Joseph M. Rault, Jr., could say with any specificity how Garrison had spent the money.
¹⁰

Judge Christenberry questioned the propriety of private citizens furnishing a public official funds to run his office with no accounting required of how he spent it. But these men saw nothing wrong in what they had done. The possibility that without oversight such money could be “misspent,” as the judge expressed it, or used to “coerce or bribe” witnesses, as William Wegmann put it, never occurred to any of them. They trusted Garrison. Like others, they had been seduced by the patriotic frenzy of his rhetoric. The influence flowed both directions. The encouragement and especially the financial aid they provided exerted pressure on Garrison to deliver.

Testimony of other witnesses revealed how far Garrison was prepared to go to do that. William Gurvich described some of Garrison's absurd assignments,
*
and some quite serious. He told of ignoring
Garrison's order to arrest, handcuff, and beat newsmen Walter Sheridan and Richard Townley. And he described Garrison's plan, never carried out, to retrieve tape recordings he believed the FBI had made of his telephone conversations by raiding the local FBI offices using “redpepper guns.” John Volz characterized this as a Garrison “joke.” Judge Christenberry was unconvinced. “It seems strange to me,” Christenberry said, “that a district attorney would joke about raiding an FBI office, and even prescribe the kind of gun that is to be used.” Gurvich said he resigned from the D.A.'s office because he believed what Garrison was doing “was a fraudulent, criminal act.”
¹¹

Attorney Hugh Exnicios described how he secretly recorded Lynn Loisel's offer to Alvin Beaubouef of
3,000 and a job with an airline in return for certain testimony.
*
And New Orleans Police Lt. Edward O'Donnell again told about his conversation with Perry Russo, in which Russo withdrew his identification of Clay Shaw. O'Donnell also described Garrison's reaction when he heard the news.

Clay Shaw took the stand and one final time denied knowing Lee Harvey Oswald and David Ferrie. He said in another trial he would again waive his right to immunity and so testify. He recounted the nightmare he had endured for almost four years.
^†
He had received death threats in the mail. Almost all his money had been drained. He had been unable to find a job. And he had experienced devastating humiliation. Once the recipient of endless invitations to speak at various affairs, he had become a social pariah. Shaw recalled the last city function he had been invited to attend, two months after the preliminary hearing. When a photographer tried to snap a picture of Shaw with the mayor, the horrified man ducked down behind his wife. It sounded amusing, Shaw said, “but it was not amusing to me.” The period since his arrest had been “very agonizing.” “When you are charged with having committed the most heinous crime I suppose that you could be charged with, your life habits suddenly
become a lot more restricted, you find yourself being, I guess you would say, hated, shunned, avoided, and just generally your life becomes a great deal more miserable as you try to live with something like that.”
¹²

The man responsible for Shaw's plight, Perry Russo, a potentially devastating witness against Garrison, was among those subpoenaed by Shaw's attorneys. He made a brief, dramatic appearance. But he told no tales, at least not on the witness stand. In a move that surprised everyone but the defense team, Russo pleaded the fifth. He did it to save himself from a perjury charge. More than once, Garrison had warned Russo he would be charged if he changed his story, and Russo had done precisely that. The day before he took the stand, finding himself seated in court next to a family member of one of Shaw's attorneys, Russo asked if Shaw's team would like to talk to him. I'm sure they would, was the reply. Russo said he was willing, and arrangements were made.
¹³

He arrived at Irvin Dymond's office at seven that evening, took a seat, and categorically recanted his story. The man in Ferrie's apartment was “absolutely not” Clay Shaw, Russo said, and he blamed Andrew Sciambra for persuading him to make the identification in the first place. Over the next three months, in three additional lengthy sessions with Shaw's team (which were tape recorded), Russo expanded on this. He corroborated Edward O'Donnell's testimony about the lie-detector test. He denied ever hearing the name “Clay Bertrand” until Sciambra mentioned it to him. Described how a photograph he knew to be Oswald was converted into a
sketch
of Ferrie's roommate, “Leon.” Recalled his horrific reaction to the sodium-Pentothal interview. Detailed how Sciambra had brainwashed him, and how he was coached like an actor in a play for his appearance at the preliminary hearing. Recounted favors extended by Garrison and his staff, at least one of them significantly illegal.
*
He told of money Garrison gave him and promises of more. He also recalled being warned that if he backed away from his story, “the courthouse [would be] planted on top of me.” That threat guaranteed he would never tell the truth from the witness stand.
¹⁴

More recently, during two interviews with me, Russo stated unequivocally that “[Shaw] was in fact innocent”; that “he did not conspire to kill the president”; that “there was no conspiracy.” Russo
remarked, too, that he agreed with Dymond that Garrison didn't have enough information to convict Shaw of anything, and, he added, “in retrospect I don't think they should have prosecuted him.” “I always thought that what happened was a tragedy just immeasurable against Shaw's psyche,” Russo said, “and whatever happened to me was minuscule in comparison to what happened to him . . . and as I look back I say Garrison never should have done it.”
¹⁵

While none of this was heard in Christenberry's courtroom, Russo taking the fifth was statement enough.
*
Garrison's key witness, who provided the sole legal basis for the conspiracy charge against Clay Shaw, had removed himself from the case.

At the conclusion of the hearing, Judge Christenberry issued a preliminary injunction, temporarily halting Garrison's prosecution of Shaw on the perjury charges. Though it would be four months before he handed down his final decision, Christenberry had said enough to make it clear that he found Shaw's case persuasive. Nevertheless, when he issued his opinion on May 27, it was a stunning victory for Shaw. Christenberry criticized Garrison in the most unrestrained language possible. He called attention to the genesis issue, the fact that Garrison had provided no evidentiary basis to explain Shaw's initial December 1966 interrogation. Christenberry concluded there had never been any “factual basis for questioning Shaw about the assassination” in the first place.
^†
But he leveled his harshest remarks at Garrison's reliance on the testimony of Perry Russo. Garrison “resorted to the use of drugs and hypnosis on Russo,” Christenberry wrote, “purportedly to ‘corroborate' but more likely to concoct his story.”