False Witness (50 page)

24.
p. 115
(133)—Garrison implies that
7,000—which James Alcock found David Ferrie had deposited in his bank account in 1963—was connected to the assassination plot. But the amount is hardly in keeping with the significance of the crime. What's more, Alcock indicated to Tom Bethell that he didn't believe Ferrie was involved in the assassination. In 1963, Ferrie's severance from Eastern Airlines was settled, and he received “a substantial sum of money” (Brener,
The Garrison Case
, p. 50).

25.
pp. 119, 319 (138, 377)—Despite Garrison's claim that the “notes” of David Logan's statement were “stolen,” the Logan transcript was among the material turned over to the National Archives by Garrison's family after his death. Garrison had at least two reasons to withhold this document: (1) it contradicts Garrison's claim that David Ferrie “introduced” Logan to Clay Shaw; and (2) its content rendered Logan noncredible.

26.
p. 137
(159)—Contrary to Garrison's claim, the newspaper story on February 17, 1967, breaking the news of his Kennedy investigation, was neither “stunning” to Garrison, nor a “premature revelation.” Garrison was shown the text of the article before it ran, and notified by the newspaper's publisher that it was going to appear. If he had wanted to, Garrison could have stopped it. (See
chapter 5
.)

27.
p. 138
(161)—The media did not
sniff out
the information that David Ferrie was being targeted by Garrison's probe. Ferrie, himself, called reporter David Snyder at the
New Orleans States-Item
, offered to be interviewed, and identified himself as Garrison's chief suspect. Snyder's piece on Ferrie ran February 18, 1967. Until it appeared, no one in the media (or anywhere else outside Garrison's circle) had any idea that Ferrie was a suspect. Since Ferrie deliberately put himself on the front page of the newspaper, the media neither can be credited with, nor accused of
sniffing
him out. (See
chapter 5
.)

28.
p. 142
(166)—Garrison's claim that Ferrie had no low metabolism problem, and, therefore, no reason to take the medication Proloid, isn't true. As a young man Ferrie had been diagnosed with a thyroid deficiency that was believed to be the cause of his alopecia (hair loss). (See three letters dated January 29, 1944, February 2, 1944, and February 4, 1944, from James Ferrie—David's father—to the administration at St. Charles Seminary, which David was attending.)

29.
pp. 144
–
145
(168)—Garrison asserts that Shaw was interviewed
twice
before his interrogation and arrest on March 1, 1967, and that for the second interview Shaw was subpoenaed. During this second interview, in which Shaw was questioned “at great length,” Garrison concluded Shaw was lying (about what Garrison doesn't say), and, consequently, Garrison decided to arrest Shaw “in the very near future.”

This is entirely untrue. Prior to March 1, 1967, Shaw was questioned about the assassination only once, on December 24, 1966, and no subpoena was involved—only a telephone call to Shaw from a detective in Garrison's office. Shaw repeatedly and publicly described that first and only pre-arrest interview on Christmas Eve, and neither Garrison nor his aides ever challenged Shaw's statements, either with the media or at Shaw's trial. (Shaw Journal, pp. 1–5; Shaw NBC interview, pp. 1–10; Kirkwood,
American Grotesque
, pp. 19–20; Phelan–Shaw Interview.)

The first mention of this “second” interview surfaced four years after Shaw's arrest, at the Christenberry hearing, during Garrison's stunningly inaccurate testimony from the witness stand. Since he tied it to the Christmas season—as Shaw left the office, Garrison stated, Shaw said, “Merry Christmas”—it's clear that Garrison was referring to Shaw's 1966 Christmas Eve, non-subpoenaed, first and only pre-arrest interview. (As described earlier in this book, at the time, Garrison found that session exculpatory.) Garrison provided no evidence to support his claim of an incriminating, subpoenaed, second interview, none of his aides corroborated it, and when Shaw testified unequivocally under oath from the witness stand that he was interviewed “only once” prior to his arrest, none of Garrison's men disputed him. Moreover, grand jury testimony of William Gurvich, and concurrent statements by James Alcock, confirm that Perry Russo was the basis of Shaw's arrest—not any “second interview” with Shaw. It appears that Garrison invented this additional “incriminating” interview in an effort to obscure the fact that the sole basis for his arrest of Clay Shaw was Russo's unsubstantiated testimony. (Christenberry transcript, pp. 219
[Garrison], 456 [Shaw];
chapter 4
, note 28; Gurvich, grand jury transcripts, June 28, 1967, pp. 18–20, and July 12, 1967, p. 62.)

30.
p. 145
(168–169)—Garrison claims that he
selected
March 1 as arrest day. That he met with key members of his staff in his office at 5:30
P.M
. and when everything was in order he obtained the necessary warrants from a judge who was expecting him. Then, he sent Louis Ivon out to arrest Shaw and also search his home; and Ivon and the others went out and brought Shaw back to the office.

None of this is true. As described in
chapter 1
, the subpoena for Shaw was issued in the morning. Hearing of it, Shaw voluntarily appeared at the D.A.'s office around noon and stayed there until his arrest several hours later. There is nothing to support the claim that Shaw's arrest was planned beforehand either. The evidence indicates it was a spur-of-the-moment decision, prompted by Shaw's refusal to submit to the testing Garrison requested. In addition to Shaw's unrefuted trial testimony and his testimony at the Christenberry hearing, Garrison's version of
arrest day
is also contradicted in part by Louis Ivon's testimony at both proceedings, and by the following: William Gurvich's statements to the defense team; Salvatore Panzeca and William Wegmann in interviews with the author; and by the local newspaper accounts describing the sequence of events that day at Tulane and Broad. (Shaw, trial transcript, Feb. 20, 1969, pp. 153, 154, Christenberry transcript, pp. 456–462; Ivon, trial transcript, Feb. 19, 1969, pp. 6–8, 13–15, Christenberry transcript, pp. 369–371; Gurvich Conference, p. 15; Dymond et al. Interview;
New Orleans States-Item
, March 1, 1967;
New Orleans Times-Picayune
, March 2, 1967.)

31.
p. 145
(169)—Garrison's men did not telephone Salvatore Panzeca. Shaw himself placed the call. After he was told he would be arrested if he didn't take a lie-detector test, Shaw demanded that Garrison's men allow him to speak to his attorney. Shaw first tried to reach Edward F. Wegmann, then his brother William J. Wegmann, and finally he spoke to Salvatore Panzeca.

32.
p. 162
(188–189)—Garrison's claim that he told James Phelan what Russo said before Russo was subjected to sodium Pentothal and hypnosis is contradicted by, among other things, the chronology of events. The sodium Pentothal was administered before Phelan even arrived in New Orleans. His plane landed the evening of February 27, 1967, and the Pentothal interview occurred earlier that day. The first hypnosis session took place on March 1 and Phelan's first meeting with Garrison was on March 3. Moreover, Garrison didn't “tell” Phelan anything about Russo initially—he
gave
Phelan the transcripts of Russo's interviews to read. That was in Las Vegas on March 5, six days
after
the “verification” process on Russo had begun. (See chapters 6 and 7.)

33.
p. 162
(189)—The documentary record is equally clear about Garrison's false claim that Sciambra had obtained all relevant information from Russo before either the sodium Pentothal session or the first hypnosis took place.
Russo's
plot that killed the president
story was elicited in two basic steps: the sodium Pentothal interview on February 27, 1967, and the hypnosis sessions on March 1 and March 12. Prior to these “medical treatments” the assassination plot story did not exist.

34.
pp. 162
–
163
(188–189)—The narrative on these pages implies that James Phelan was in the picture before management at
Life
withdrew its support. That is not the case. Garrison turned to Phelan only
after
he had begun to lose his support at
Life
, which followed the arrest of Clay Shaw. (See
chapter 6
.)

35.
p. 170
(198)—Garrison dismisses the testimony of John Cancler and Miguel Torres on the grounds that they took the fifth before the grand jury. But Cancler and Torres were familiar with Garrison's MO: they took the fifth because they knew Garrison would charge them with perjury if they answered truthfully.

36.
pp. 233
–
234
(272–273)—None of Shaw's attorneys ever heard of Richard Matthews, the man Garrison describes as part of Shaw's defense team, who supposedly engaged in whispered conversations with Shaw during the entire trial, and who Garrison speculates was Shaw's CIA liaison. William Wegmann, in a letter to the author, dated Dec. 18, 1995, responded to Garrison's charge as follows: “I have no idea who Richard Matthews may have been. . . . The scenario that is set forth is highly unlikely to ever have taken place for any number of reasons. Ed Haggerty ran a good courtroom. The deputy sheriffs assigned to his court would not have permitted the type of activity described because of the disruption it would have had on the trial.”

But for Garrison, Matthews served an important literary function in this memoir by providing the otherwise missing link between Clay Shaw and the CIA. If Garrison had written his story as a screenplay, Matthews would be called a “plot point”—an indispensable factor.

37.
pp. 236
–
237
(277)—Since Garrison was told beforehand by one of his assistant district attorneys that Charles Spiesel was “crazy” and Garrison chose to put Spiesel on the stand anyway, it is at best disingenuous of Garrison to accuse the opposing counsel of skulduggery for exposing Spiesel's madness.

38.
p. 238
(278)—James Phelan's career was neither brief, nor was it based on Garrison or his key witness, Perry Russo. As a staff writer for
The Saturday Evening Post
, Phelan's career was flourishing before and after his encounter with Garrison. Nor did Phelan claim that Russo had identified Clay Shaw
by mistake
; Phelan wrote that Russo's initial interview by Andrew Sciambra didn't contain Russo's conspiracy story, which it did not.

39.
p. 243
(284)—Garrison's description of Dean Andrews's testimony gives the impression that Andrews said he actually received a call requesting that he represent Oswald. But Andrews testified that he invented the entire story, that
no one
asked him to go to Dallas, that it was his own idea. (See
chapter 11
.)

40.
note,
p. 243
(284)—Garrison claims that out of concern for Dean Andrews's health, he saved Andrews from his jail sentence first by seeing to it that he was granted a new trial and then dismissing the case when it was returned to his office. But it was Judge Shea who dismissed the charges against Andrews (
New Orleans Times-Picayune
, Aug. 15, 1974). Garrison wasn't even in office at the time. (Harry Connick assumed the office on April 1, 1974).

41.
pp. 249
–
250
(292)—No one was surprised when Clay Shaw testified at his own trial, least of all Garrison, despite what he writes in his memoir. There was never any question that Shaw would take the witness stand. He had been waiting two years to refute Garrison's charges and everyone knew it. Garrison's muddled notion that Shaw should have stayed off the witness stand in order to avoid being questioned about his alleged “relationship with David Ferrie” is nonsense. Shaw based his actions on what he knew to be the truth. If he
had
known Ferrie, Shaw would have been smart enough to admit it at the outset knowing that the D.A.'s office might find witnesses who would expose the relationship. The D.A.'s office never found any credible witnesses to such a relationship because it never existed. Moreover, the damaging cross-examination that Garrison speaks of didn't materialize. Quite the contrary. (See
chapter 11
.) Garrison here is trying to rewrite what occurred at the trial in order to justify the perjury charges he brought afterwards.

42.
p. 250
(293)—The notion that Garrison felt no animosity toward Shaw, after his acquittal, because in plotting to murder President Kennedy Shaw was simply
doing his job
, and in bringing him to trial Garrison was simply
doing his
, is either silly or chilling, depending on whether or not Garrison actually believed what he wrote. Any normal person who believed Shaw was guilty of participating in the conspiracy that killed the president would have been outraged by his acquittal.