From: pfranklin@igc.org (Paul Franklin)
Subject: Re: Definitive JFK article
Date: 27 Dec 91 03:14:00 GMT



                        Heritage of Stone

Reprinted with permission from "High Times" magazine, September 1991,
with help from Mark Zepezauer at the Santa Cruz Comic News.

                         by Steven Hager


Although John F. Kennedy was neither a saint nor a great intellectual,
he was the youngest president ever elected, which may explain why he
was so well attuned to the changing mood of America in the '60s.
Americans had grown weary of Cold War hysteria. They wanted to relax
and have fun. Like the majority of people across the planet, they
wanted peace.

The President's primary obstacle in this quest was a massive,
power-hungry bureaucracy that had emerged after WWII - a Frankenstein
monster created by anti-Communist paranoia and inflated defense
budgets. By 1960, the Pentagon was easily the world's largest
corporation, with assets of over $60 billion. No one understood this
monster better than President Dwight D. Eisenhower. On January 17,
1961, in his farewell address to the nation, Eisenhower spoke to the
country, and to his successor, John Kennedy.

"The conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms
industry is new in the American experience," said Eisenhower. "We must
guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought
or unsought, by the military-industrial complex."

At the beginning of his administration, Kennedy seems to have followed
the advice of his military and intelligence officers. What else could
such an inexperienced President have done? Signs of a serious rift,
however, first appeared after the Bay of Pigs, a CIA- planned and
executed invasion of Cuba that took place three months after Kennedy
took office. The invasion was so transparent that Kennedy refused
massive air support and immediately afterward fired CIA Director Allen
Dulles, Deputy Director General Charles Cabell and Deputy Director of
Planning Richard Bissell.

Kennedy's next major crisis occurred on October 16, 1962, when he was
shown aerial photos of missile bases in Cuba. The Joint Chiefs of
Staff pressed for an immediate attack. Instead, Attorney General
Robert Kennedy was sent to meet with Soviet Ambassador Anatoly
Dobrynin. In his memoirs, Premier Nikita Krushchev quotes the younger
Kennedy as saying: "The President is in a grave situation...We are
under pressure from our military to use force against Cuba...If the
situation continues much longer, the President is not sure that the
military will not overthrow him and seize power."

Military hopes for an invasion of Cuba evaporated as Krushchev and
Kennedy worked out a nonviolent solution to the crisis. In return,
Kennedy promised not to invade Cuba. Angered over the Bay of Pigs
fiasco, the CIA refused to bend to Kennedy's will and continued their
destabilization campaign against Castro, which included sabotage raids
conducted by a secret army, as well as plots against Castro's life,
which were undertaken with the help of such well-known Mafia figures
as Johnny Roselli, Sam Giancana, and Santos Trafficante. A bitter
internal struggle developed around Kennedy's attempts to disband the
CIA's paramilitary bases in Florida and Louisiana.

On August 5, 1963, the US, Great Britain and the Soviet Union signed a
limited nuclear-test-ban treaty. Engineered by President Kennedy and
long in negotiations, the treaty was a severe blow to the Cold
Warriors in the Pentagon and the CIA. On September 20, 1963, Kennedy
spoke hopefully of peace to the UN General Assembly. "Today we may
have reached a pause in the Cold War," he said. "If both sides can now
gain new confidence and experience in concrete collaborations of
peace, then surely, this first small step can be the start of a long,
fruitful journey."

"Years later, paging through its formerly classified records, talking
to the National Security Council staff, it is difficult to avoid the
impression that the President was learning the responsibility of
power," writes John Prados, in his recent book Keepers of the Keys, an
analysis of the National Security Council. "Here was a smoother,
calmer Kennedy, secretly working for rapprochement with Fidel Castro
and a withdrawal from Vietnam."

Although Kennedy's Vietnam policy has not received widespread
publicity, he turned resolutely against the war in June of 1963, when
he ordered Defense Secretary Robert McNamara and Chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff General Maxwell Taylor to announce from the White
House steps that all American forces would be withdrawn by 1965. At
the time, 15,500 US "advisors" were stationed in South Vietnam, and
total casualties suffered remained a relatively low 100.

On November 14, Kennedy signed an order to begin the withdrawal by
removing 1,000 troops. In private, Kennedy let it be known the
military was not going to railroad him into continuing the war. Many
of the hard-line anti-Communists - including FBI Director J. Edgar
Hoover - would have to be purged. Bobby Kennedy would be put in charge
of dismantling the CIA. President Kennedy told Senator Mike Mansfield
of his plans to tear the CIA "into a thousand pieces and scatter it to
the wind." But these plans had to wait for Kennedy's reelection in
1964. And in order to win that election, he had to secure the South.
Which is why Kennedy went to Texas later that month.

Could John Kennedy have stopped the war in Vietnam, as was his obvious
intention? America will never know. His command to begin the Vietnam
withdrawal was his last formal executive order. Just after noon on
November 22, President Kennedy was murdered while driving through
downtown Dallas, in full view of dozens of ardent supporters, and
while surrounded by police and personal bodyguards. Twenty-eight years
later, grave doubts still linger about who pulled the trigger(s), who
ordered the assassination, and why our government has done so little
to bring justice forth.

In 1963, no American wanted to believe that President Kennedy's death
was a coup d'etat, planned by the military establishment and executed
by the CIA. Today, such a claim can no longer be dismissed. Why has
the national media done such an abysmal job of presenting the facts to
the American people? Hopefully, some light will be shed by Oliver
Stone's upcoming film, JFK, a $30-million epic starring Kevin Costner,
scheduled for release December 20. As his focal point for the story,
Stone has chosen former New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison,
the only prosecutor to attempt to bring this case to court, and a man
subjected to one of the most effective smear campaigns ever
orchestrated by the US government. It is a frightening story of
murder, corruption and cover-up. Even today, 24 years after he brought
the case to court, a powerful media disinformation campaign against
Garrison continues.

Born November 20, 1921, in Knoxville, Iowa, Earling Carothers Garrison
- known as "Jim" to friends and family - was raised in New Orleans. At
age 19, one year before Pearl Harbor, he joined the army. In 1942, he
was sent to Europe, where he volunteered to fly spotter planes over
the front lines. Following the war, he attended law school at Tulare,
joined the FBI, and served as a special agent in Seattle and Tacoma.
After growing bored with his agency assignments, he returned to New
Orleans to practice law. He served as an assistant district attorney
from 1954 to 1958.

In 1961, Garrison decided to run for district attorney on a platform
openly hostile to then-New Orleans Mayor Victor Schiro. To the
surprise of many, he was elected without any major political backing.
He was 43 years old and had been district attorney for less than two
years when Kennedy was killed. "I was an old-fashioned patriot," he
writes in On the Trail of the Assassins, (Sheridan Square Press, NY),
"a product of my family, my military experience, and my years in the
legal profession. I could not imagine then that the government would
ever deceive the citizens of this country."

A few hours after the assassination, Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested.
Two days later, while in Dallas police custody, Oswald was murdered by
nightclub-owner Jack Ruby. Garrison learned that Oswald was from New
Orleans, and arranged a Sunday afternoon meeting with his staff. With
such an important case, it was their responsibility to investigate
Oswald's local connections.

Within days, they learned that Oswald had been recently seen in the
company of one David Ferrie, a fervent anti-Communist and freelance
pilot linked to the Bay of Pigs invasion. Evidence placed Ferrie in
Texas on the day of the assassination. Also on that day, a friend of
Ferrie's named Guy Bannister had pistol-whipped Jack Martin during an
argument. Martin confided to friends that Bannister and Ferrie were
somehow involved in the assassination. Garrison had Ferrie picked up
for questioning, and turned him over to the local FBI, who immediately
released him. Within a few months, the Warren Commission released its
report stating that Oswald was a "lone nut" murdered by a misguided
patriot who wanted to spare Jackie Kennedy the ordeal of testifying.
Like most Americans, Garrison accepted this conclusion.

Three years later, in the fall of '66, Garrison was happily married
with three children and content with his job, when a chance
conversation with Senator Russell long changed his views on the Warren
Commission forever.

"Those fellows on the Warren Commission were dead wrong," said Long.
"There's no way in the world that one man could have shot up Jack
Kennedy that way."

Intrigued, Garrison went back to his office and ordered the complete
26-volume report. "The mass of information was disorganized and
confused," writes Garrison. "Worst of all, the conclusions in the
report seemed to be based on an appallingly selective reading of the
evidence, ignoring credible testimony from literally dozens of
witnesses."

Garrison was equally disturbed by the background of the men chosen by
President Johnson to serve on the commission. Why, for instance, was
Allen Dulles, a man fired by Kennedy, on the panel? A master spy
during WWII, Dulles had supervised the penetration of the Abwehr
(Hitler's military intelligence agency) and the subsequent
incorporation of many of its undercover agents into the CIA. He was
powerful, well-connected and had been Director of the CIA for eight
years. Certainly, he was no friend to John Kennedy. Serving with
Dulles were Representative Gerald Ford, a man described by Newsweek as
"the CIA's best friend in Congress," John McCloy, former assistant
secretary of war and Commissioner for Occupied Germany, and Senator
Richard Russell, chairman of the powerful Senate Armed Services
Committee. Russell's home state of Georgia was filled with military
bases and government contracts. The balance of the commission was
clearly in the hands of the military and the CIA. The entire
"investigation" was supervised by J. Edgar Hoover, who openly detested
the Kennedy brothers.

Another interesting link turned up; The mayor of Dallas was Earle
Cabell, brother of the General Charles Cabell JFK had earlier fired
from the CIA. Earle Cabell was in a position to control many important
details involved in the case, including the Dallas police force. 

Based on these general suspicions, Garrison launched a highly- secret
investigation around Lee Harvey Oswald's links to David Ferrie and Guy
Bannister. Unfortunately, Bannister had died nine months after the
assassination. An alcoholic and rabid right- winger, Bannister had
been a star agent for the FBI and a former Naval Intelligence
operative. He was a member of the John Birch Society, the Minutemen,
and publisher of a racist newsletter. His office at 544 Camp street
was a well-known meeting place for anti- Castro Cubans.

Ferrie's background was even more bizarre. A former senior pilot for
Eastern Airlines, Ferrie had been the head of the New Orleans Civil
Air Patrol, an organization Oswald had joined as a teenager. Ferrie
suffered from alopecia, an ailment that left him hairless. He wore
bright red wigs and painted eyebrows. Ferrie had founded his own
religion, and kept hundreds of experimental rats in his house. He
reportedly had flown dozens of solo missions for the CIA in Cuba and
Latin America, and had links to Carlos Marcello, head of the Mob in
Louisiana. Like Bannister, he was extremely right wing. "I want to
train killers," Ferrie had written to the commander of the US 1st Air
Force. "There is nothing I would enjoy better than blowing the hell
out of every damn Russian, Communist, Red or what-have-you."

On the day of the assassination, Dean Andrews, a New Orleans attorney,
had been asked to fly to Dallas to represent Oswald. When asked by the
Warren Commission who had hired him, Andrews had replied Clay
Bertrand. Bertrand, Garrison discovered, was a pseudonym used by Clay
Shaw, director of the International Trade Mart. Shaw, a darling of New
Orleans high society, was also well- connected in international
high-finance circles. He was also an associate of Bannister and
Ferrie. Like many others connected with the assassination, Shaw was a
former Army Intelligence operative. The case against Shaw was
circumstantial, but Garrison did have an eyewitness willing to testify
that Shaw had met with Lee Harvey Oswald just prior to the
assassination.

Just as Garrison was marshalling his case, some strange events took
place. On February 17, 1967, the New Orleans States-Item published a
story on Garrison's secret probe, indicating that he had already spent
over $8,000 of taxpayer's money investigating the Kennedy
assassination. Soon thereafter, Garrison received an unusually strong
letter of support from a Denver oil businessman named John Miller,
hinting that Miller wanted to offer financial support to the
investigation. When Miller arrived in New Orleans, he met with
Garrison and one of his assistants. "You're too big for this job,"
said Miller. "I suggest you accept an appointment to the bench in
federal district court, and move into a job worthy of your talents."

"And what would I have to do to get this judgeship?" asked Garrison.

"Stop your investigation," replied Miller calmly.

Garrison asked Miller to leave his office.

"Well, they offered you the carrot and you turned it down," said his
assistant. "You know what's coming next, don't you?"

Suddenly, reporters from all over the country descended on New
Orleans, including the Washington Post's George Lardner, Jr. At
midnight on February 22, 1967, Lardner claims to have conducted a
four-hour interview with Ferrie. The following morning, Ferrie was
found dead. Two unsigned, typewritten suicide notes were found. The
letter made reference to a "messianic district attorney."

Three days later the coroner announced that Ferrie had died of natural
causes and placed the time of death well before the end of Lardner's
supposed marathon interview. Lardner's complicity in the affair would
never be called into question, while his highly- influential articles
in the Washington Post branded Garrison's investigation a "fraud." It
was just the beginning of a long series of disruptive attacks in the
media, and the first in a long series of bodies connected with the
case that would mysteriously turn up dead.

With Ferrie gone, Garrison had only one suspect left. He rushed his
case to court, arresting Clay Shaw. 

Ellen Ray, a documentary filmmaker from New York, came to New Orleans
to film the story. "People were getting killed left and right," she
recalls. "Garrison would subpoena a witness and two days later the
witness would be killed by a parked car. I thought Garrison was a
great American patriot. But things got a little too heavy when I
started getting strange phone calls from men with Cuban accents."
After several death threats, Ray became so terrified that instead of
making a documentary on the trial, she fled the country.

Attorney General Ramsey Clark, a close friend of President Lyndon
Johnson, announced from Washington that the federal government had
already investigated and exonerated Clay Shaw. "Needless to say,"
writes Garrison, "this did not exactly make me look like District
Attorney of the Year."

Meanwhile, all sorts of backpedalling was going on at the Justice
Department. If Shaw had been investigated, why wasn't his name in the
Warren Commission Report? "The attorney general has since determined
that this was erroneous," said a spokesman for Clark. "Nothing arose
indicating a need to investigate Mr. Shaw."

Realizing he was in a political minefield, Garrison presented his case
as cautiously as possible. A grand jury was convened that included Jay
C. Albarado. "On March 14, three criminal-court judges heard
Garrison's case in a preliminary hearing to determine if there was
enough evidence against Shaw to hold him for trial," Albarado wrote
recently in a letter to the New Orleans Times- Picayune. "What did
they conclude? That there was sufficient evidence. Garrison then
presented his evidence to a 12-member grand jury. We ruled there was
sufficient evidence to bring Shaw to trial. Were we duped by Garrison?
I think not."

Thanks to all the unwanted publicity, Garrison's staff had swollen
with volunteers eager to work on the case. The 6'6" Garrison, now
dubbed the "Jolly Green Giant," had already become a hero to the many
citizens and researchers who had serious doubts about the Warren
Commission. Unfortunately, a few of these eager volunteers were later
exposed as government informers. Shortly before the case went to
trial, one of the infiltrators Xeroxed all of Garrison's files and
turned them over to Shaw's defense team. 

On September 4, 1967, Chief Justice Earl Warren announced that
Garrison's case was worthless. The New York Times characterized the
investigation as a "morbid frolic." Newsweek reported that the
conspiracy was "a plot of Garrison's own making." Life magazine
published the first of many reports linking Garrison with the Mafia.
(Richard Billings, an editor at Life, had been one of the first
journalists to gain access to Garrison's inner circle, under the guise
of "wanting to help" the investigation.) Walter Sheridan, a former
Naval Intelligence operative and NBC investigator, appeared in New
Orleans with a film crew. Their purpose? An expose- titled The Case of
Jim Garrison, which was broadcast in June '67. "It required only a few
minutes to see that NBC had classified the case as criminal and had
appointed itself as the prosecutor," writes Garrison.

Puzzled by the intensity of NBC's attack, Garrison went to the library
and did some research on the company. He learned the network was a
subsidiary of RCA, a bulwark of the military- industrial complex whose
defense contracts had increased by more than a billion dollars from
1960 to 1967. Its chairman, retired General David Sarnoff, was a
well-known proponent of the Cold War.

"Some long-cherished illusions about the great free press in our
country underwent a painful reappraisal during this period," writes
Garrison.

Clay Shaw was brought to trial on January 29, 1969. It took less than
one month for Garrison to present his case. 

Demonstrating the cover-up was the easy part. Although the
overwhelming majority of eyewitnesses in Dealy Plaza testified that
the fatal shot came not from the Texas School Book Depository - where
Oswald worked - but from a grassy knoll overlooking the plaza, the FBI
had encouraged many witnesses to alter their testimony to fit the
-lone nut' theory. Those that didn't were simply ignored by the
commission. The ballistic evidence was flawed and obviously tampered
with. Even though the FBI had received several warnings of the
assassination, they had ignored them. Security for the President was
strangely lax. Although Oswald's killer, Jack Ruby, had ties to the
CIA and the Mafia, this evidence had been suppressed. Ruby was never
allowed to testify before the commission, and when interviewed in a
Texas jail by Chief Justice Warren and Gerald Ford, he told them: "I
would like to request that I go to Washington...I want to tell the
truth, and I can't tell it here...Gentlemen, my life is in danger."
Ruby never made it to Washington. He remained in jail and died
mysteriously before Garrison could call him as a witness.

Even more disturbing was the treatment given the deceased President's
corpse. Under Texas law, an autopsy should have been performed by a
civilian pathologist in Dallas. Instead, the body was removed at
gunpoint by the Secret Service and flown to a naval hospital in
Maryland, where an incomplete autopsy was performed under the
supervision of unnamed admirals and generals. The notes >from this
"autopsy" were quickly burned. Bullet holes were never tracked, the
brain was not dissected, and organs were not removed. The autopsy was
a botched, tainted affair, performed under military supervision. (The
medical aspects of the case were so weird, they would later form the
basis for a best-selling book on the assassination, Best Evidence by
David Lifton [Macmillan, New York].)

The most important and lasting piece of evidence unveiled by Garrison
was an 8mm film of the assassination taken by Abraham Zapruder, a film
that only three members of the Warren Commission had seen, probably
because it cast a long shadow of doubt across their conclusions. A
good analysis of the film can be found in Cover-Up by J. Gary Shaw
with Larry Harris (PO Box 722, Cleburne, TX 76031):

Had the Zapruder film of the JFK assassination been shown on national
television Friday evening, November 22, 1963, the Oswald/lone assassin
fabrication would have been unacceptable to a majority of
Americans...The car proceeds down Elm and briefly disappears behind a
sign. When it emerges the President has obviously been shot...Governor
Connally turns completely to the right, looking into the back seat; he
begins to turn back when his body stiffens on impact of a bullet. Very
shortly after Connally is hit, the President's head explodes in a
shower of blood and brain matter - he is driven violently backward at
a speed estimated at 80-100 feet per second.

Although Time, Inc. could have made a small fortune distributing this
film around the world, they instead secured the rights from Zapruder
for $225,000, then held a few private screenings before locking the
film in a vault. It was shown to one newsman, Dan Rather, who then
described it on national television. Rather asserted that Kennedy's
head went "forward with considerable force" after the fatal head shot
(a statement that would have supported a hit from behind, from the
direction of the School Book Depository). Several months later, Rather
was promoted to White House Correspondent by CBS. As if to buttress
this fabrication, the FBI reversed the order of the frames when
printing them in the Warren Report. When researchers later drew this
reversal to the FBI's attention, Hoover attributed the switch to a
"printing error."

Although Garrison proved his conspiracy, the jury was not convinced of
Clay Shaw's role in it. He was released after only two hours of
deliberation.

The end of the Clay Shaw trial was just the beginning of a long
nightmare for Garrison. On June 30, 1971, he was arrested by federal
agents on corruption charges. Two years later, the case came to trial
at the height of Garrison's reelection campaign. Although he won the
case, he lost the election by 2,000 votes. However, the Jolly Green
Giant remains widely respected in his home state, and has recently
been elected to his second term on the second highest court in
Louisiana.

In 1967, the machinations of the CIA were unknown to most Americans.
Today, thankfully, many brave men have left their comfortable careers
in the agency and spoken out against CIA- sponsored terror around the
world. One of these is Victor Marchetti, who was executive assistant
to Director Richard Helms, and then coauthored The CIA and the Cult of
Intelligence with John D. Marks. In 1975 Marchetti confirmed that Clay
Shaw and David Ferrie had been CIA operatives, and that the agency had
secretly worked for Shaw's defense.

Over the years, many high-ranking officials have come forward to
support Garrison's theory. "The big story in the Kennedy assassination
is the cover-up," says retired Colonel L. Fletcher Prouty, Chief of
Special Operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff until 1964. Prouty
was on assignment in New Zealand on the day of the assassination.
After carrying a New Zealand newspaper article back to Washington, he
checked the time of Oswald's arrest against the hour the paper had
been printed and, with great horror, realized Oswald's biography had
gone out on the international newswire before Oswald had been arrested
by the Dallas police. Prouty has since become one of the most
persuasive and persistent critics of the Warren Commission. His book,
The Secret Team: The CIA and its Allies in Control of the United
States and the World, is a frightening portrayal of the hidden rulers
of America.

On March 6, 1975, the Zapruder film made its national- television
debut on ABC's Goodnight America. As a result of this long-delayed
national screening, enough public pressure was put on Congress to
reopen the case. Unfortunately, this investigation became as
carefully-manipulated as the Warren Commission, eventually falling
under the control of G. Robert Blakey, a man with close ties to the
CIA. As could be expected, Blakey led the investigation away from the
CIA and towards the Mob. Blakey's conclusion was that President
Kennedy was killed as the result of a conspiracy, and that organized
crime had the means, method and motive. "The Garrison investigation
was a fraud," said Blakey. Richard Billings, the former Life editor,
was a prominent member of Blakey's staff.

Recently, however, a number of highly-detailed books on the
assassination have appeared, most of which support Garrison's thesis
rather than Blakey's. The best of these include Conspiracy by Anthony
Summers (Paragon House, New York), Crossfire by Jim Marrs (Carroll &
Graf, Inc., New York) and High Treason by Robert Groden and Harrison
Livingstone (Berkeley, New York).

"Could the Mafia have whisked Kennedy's body past the Texas
authorities and got it aboard Air Force One?" writes Garrison. "Could
the Mafia have placed in charge of the President's autopsy an army
general who was not a physician? Could the Mafia have arranged for
President Kennedy's brain to disappear from the National Archives?"

Today, we know that the CIA frequently hired Mafia assassins to carry
out contracts. Undoubtedly some of these men were involved in the
assassination and the cover-up. Shortly before his disappearance,
Teamster boss Jimmy Hoffa said, "Jim Garrison's a smart man. Anyone
who thinks he's a kook is a kook himself." Was Hoffa silenced because
he knew too much about the plot? Just before their scheduled
appearances before the House investigation, Johnny Roselli and Sam
Giancana were brutally murdered in gangland fashion. Was this a
message to other Mob figures who had fragmentary information on the
case?

In July 1988, The Nation published an FBI memorandum from Hoover dated
November 29, 1963. Obtained through the Freedom of Information Act,
the memo implicated "George Bush of the CIA" in the Kennedy
assassination cover-up. Although President Bush denies any contact
with the CIA prior to his being named director in 1976, it is
reasonable to assume that Zapata, the oil company Bush founded in
1960, was a CIA front. 

Former President Richard Nixon is also implicated in the cover- up.
Nixon was in Dallas the day before the assassination, and his greatest
fear during the early days of Watergate was that the "Bay of Pigs
thing" would be uncovered. According to H.R. Haldeman in The Ends of
Power, "Bay of Pigs" was Nixon's code phrase for the Kennedy
assassination.

As liaison between the CIA and the Pentagon during the Bay of Pigs,
Fletcher Prouty was put in charge of ordering supplies for the
invasion. "The CIA had code-named the invasion -Zapata,'" recalls
Prouty. "Two boats landed on the shores of Cuba. One was named
Houston, the other Barbara. They were Navy ships that had been
repainted with new names. I have no idea where the new names came
from."

At the time Bush was living in Houston. His oil company was called
Zapata, and his wife's name was Barbara.

If Garrison's investigation was not a fraud, it's reasonable to assume
that high-placed individuals in the conspiracy would either be dead or
would have obtained considerable power in the last 28 years. According
to an article in the March 4 issue of U.S. News and World Report,
Nixon and Bush have remained close associates. "Nixon is in contact
with Bush or his senior staff every month," writes Kenneth Walsh.
"Nixon also speaks regularly on the phone with [National Security
Adviser] Brent Scowcroft...and Chief of Staff John Sununu."

Earlier this year Len Colodny and Robert Gettlin published Silent
Coup, a well-documented analysis of the real forces behind the
Watergate scandal. According to the authors, Nixon fell prey to a
military coup after refusing to work with the Pentagon. They claim the
famous Deep Throat was, in fact, General Alexander Haig.


In the meantime, a well-orchestrated disinformation campaign against
Oliver Stone's movie has predictably appeared, long before Stone could
even begin editing his film. Longtime Kennedy researchers were not
surprised to find the charge led by George Lardner, Jr., of the
Washington Post, the last man to see David Ferrie alive.

"Oliver Stone is chasing fiction," wrote Lardner in the May 19 edition
of the Post. "Garrison's investigation was a fraud." Later in the
article, he adds: "There was no abrupt change in Vietnam policy after
JFK's death."

"That is one of the most preposterous things I've ever heard," says
Zachary Sklar, editor of On The Trail of the Assassins, and
coscreenwriter with Stone on JFK. "Kennedy was trying to get out of
Vietnam, and Johnson led us into a war in which 58,000 Americans died.
Lardner's article is a travesty."

"I wouldn't give Lardner the time of day," adds Gary Shaw. "I think
he's bought and paid for."

Mark Lane, author of Rush to Judgment, one of the first books critical
of the Warren Commission, agrees. "The CIA is bringing out the spooks
who pose as journalists," says Lane. "The amazing thing about the
Lardner piece is he's reviewing the film months before it's even
completed."

Time magazine also slammed the film long before its release. "Garrison
is considered somewhere near the far-out fringe of conspiracy
theories," writes Richard Zoglin, a film critic who admits to knowing
"very little" about the assassination. (For the 25th anniversary of
the assassination back in '88, Time ran a cover story titled "Who Was
the Real Target?" Inside was an excerpt from The Great Expectations of
John Connally, a curious book that argued that Oswald really meant to
kill Connally and only hit JFK by mistake. Someday this book may be
viewed as a textbook example of CIA-sponsored disinformation.) 

Time, Inc., it will be remembered, is the same company that hid the
Zapruder film for five years. When High Times requested slides >from
the film to accompany this article, the current copyright holder sent
them a three-page contract to sign. It included a prohibition against
"any reference...that the Zapruder film was ever owned by Time,
Inc...."

High Times decided not to run the photos rather than assist Time, Inc.
in their continuing cover-up of the real facts behind John F.
Kennedy's assassination.

In the next few months, the American people will be bombarded with
information about the Kennedy assassination. Most of it will be
critical of Stone and Garrison. It's important to understand that much
of this criticism will be written by intelligence assets working for
the CIA. Although the Cold War is supposed to be over, the CIA budget
is at an all-time high; $30 billion of taxpayer's money buys a lot of
propaganda.

How extensive is the CIA's infiltration of the national media? I
called former agent Ralph McGeehee, author of Deadly Deceits, who has
compiled a database on everything published about the agency. "In
1977, Carl Bernstein wrote an article in Rolling Stone that named over
400 journalists uncovered by the Church Committee who were working for
the CIA," says McGeehee. If anything, their numbers have only
increased in the last 12 years.

When will the subversion of the national media end? When the American
people demand it. Unfortunately, the public has not flexed any muscle
in this country since they ended the war in Vietnam. If you want to
help bring justice in this case, there's plenty you can do: 1) Assist
the Assassinations Archives in Washington in their quest to obtain the
documentation on the Kennedy case that remains sealed to the public.
For more information call Jim LeSar at (202) 393-1917. 2) Subscribe to
Covert Action Information Bulletin, a national newsletter on covert
CIA activities. For more information call (202) 331-9763. If you want
more detailed information on the CIA, McGehee's database can be
purchased for $99. For more information call him at (707) 437-8487. 3)
Write your representatives in Congress. Tell them you want a law
passed prohibiting journalists from working for the CIA. Although such
a bill has been proposed many times, it never makes its way out of
committee.

Finally, stop accepting everything you hear on TV and read in the
newspapers. Buy books on the assassination and cover-up and educate
yourself. Only in this way can we keep hope alive that one day America
will be the sweet land of liberty her founders intended.

______________________________________________________________________

                 WITH LIBERTY AND JUSTICE FOR ALL

An identifying characteristic of the super-state is its readiness to
conceal from the people facts which might make them restless. In order
to maintain power its officers must keep the populace beleiving that
it is living in the best of all possible worlds. Consequently, those
in control of the governmental machinery sometimes find it necessary
to re-write history as fast as it happens. The truth becomes not what
occurred but what they announce has occurred. Reality becomes just
another government-controlled commodity.

If the official myth to be presented is particularly unbelievable it
may be necessary to have honorable men study it and announce that they
have found it to be true [In 1939, after having invaded and conquered
western Poland because of alleged Polish atrocities committed against
German individuals, the German government appointed a committee to
make a careful study to determine the facts with regard to the claimed
Polish misconduct. The final printed report of the study contained
much documentary evidence, including not only photographs, affidavits
and countless medical certificates but an authenticated quotation from
the year 1598 to the effect that barbarous cruelty was one of the
vices of the Polish people. The report confirmed that the Poles indeed
bad committed atrocities against Germans and it indicated that things
would have been even worse were it not for the timely arrival on
Polish territory of the German rescuers. The conclusions of this
painstaking study by a government-appointed committee meant that Adolf
Hitler would not have to withdraw his armies and apologize to Poland.
See: "Polish Acts of Atrocity Against the German Minority in PoIand,"
German Library of Information, New York, 1940.]

This is not really as difficult as it sounds because there is nothing
to which honorable men joined in an honorable cause will not stoop in
the name of duty. As a general rule of thumb, the more unbelievable
the story the more honorable should be the men assigned to prove its
veracity.

To date, George Orwell's 1984 provided the best fictional portrait of
the correction of history to suit current political needs. In Oceania,
that dismal land presided over by Big Brother, the power of the
government had become Gargantuan and the rights of individuals
virtually had vanished. In order to maintain this balance, the
Ministry of Truth continually was engaged in improving history to make
it reflect govemment pronouncements. This was justified on the ground
of 'national security,' a reasonably honest rationale inasmuch as the
government could not have survived without such wholesale concealment
of facts.

If, for example, Big Brother made an error which was exposed by
statistics, the offensive statistics were destroyed and more
satisfactory statistics were published. If books or newspapers
described facts which were embarrassing to the government, they were
merely re-written so as to conform with official legend. The original
troublesome material was simply fed in the "memory hole," a chute
leading down to the incinerator. The government's policy of vaporizing
into nothingness unpleasant facts contributed in great measure to the
calm of the populace of Oceania. This was helped by the fact that
individuals who interfered with the public calm also tended to
disappear.

"Who controls the past," said the official slogan of the super-state,
"controls the future."

It now appears that, twenty years ahead of Orwell's schedule, the
United States has succeeded in producing the classic model of
re-writing history to conform to official needs. It is hard to assay
this accomplishment when we are still so close to it, but when our
contributions to civilization are added up this well may rank ahead of
our invention of napalm.

When the President of our country was executed on a public street, one
would have thought that there would have been a general uncomplicated
desire to catch the assassins and to bring them all to justice. After
all there was sufficient information available concerning the strange
movements of cars behind the grassy knoll immediately prior to the
assination, the fusilade of rifle fire coming from there and the rapid
departure of men on foot and by car from that sector following the
shooting. Apparently, however, it was not as simple as an that. It
appears that when a President's heart stops beating considerations of
power and policy take over.

Instead of running down the men who killed John Kennedy, the U.S.
government simply ratified his execution and moved on to more
important matters. With regard to the men who actually killed him,
because of their displeasure with his foreign policy, the
assassination has been treated not as an offense but as a mandate for
change.

The young man so promptly nominated by the Dallas Police Force was
duly elected the lone assassin. He had excellent qualifications,
provided they were not examined too closely. He wore the tag of a
Communist defector who had spent 3 years in Russia. He had been
murdered, which assured that there would be none of the time consuming
problems of proof which a live defendant would have presented. And his
gun and three empty cartridges had been placed at the 6th floor of the
book depository.

In spite of these conveniences there was a slight problem. The
overwhelming weight of legitimate evidence clearly indicated that he
could not possibly have fired a shot at the President.

There was, to begin with, the fact that the rifle originally brought
down from the book depository at 1:05 p.m., and briefly exhibited as
the assassins rifle, had, unlike Lee Oswald's rifle, no telescopic
sight. There was the fact that the Marine Corps shooting records
showed that Oswald could not hit the side of a barn. There was the
tense fact that the nitrate test indicated that Oswald bad not fired a
rifle of any kind. There was the fact that the ancient Italian rifle,
which Oswald was supposed to have used, could not conceivably have
accomplished the ballistic miracle with which it was credited -
particularly causing a single bullet to inflict seven different
wounds, including bone destruction, in two different men. There was
the fact that the President was hit from several different directions
and that his fatal wound quite obviously was received >from his right
front, in the area of the grassy knoll.

To make matters worse, there were probably more witnesses to President
Kennedy's murder than to any other in history and the great majority
of them were very conscious of the fact that most of the shots came
from in front of the President. There was also the embarrassing
evidence that Lee Oswald had been an employee of the Central
Intelligence Agency and had acquired the stigma of a Communist
defector while in the service of the United States and as the result
of instructions given him by the United States government. Most of the
embarrassing evidence was simply buried at the outset in a swift
funeral devoid of ceremony.

 The autopsy photographs and X-rays, for example, which would have
revealed that the President was struck from a number of directions,
[Dr. Robert N. McClelland, at Parkland Hospital, examined the
President and concluded that the cause of death was a gunshot wound of
the left temple. Similarly, Dr. Mahlon Jenkins recalled, in his
testimony before the Warren Commission, that there was a wound in the
left temple, right in the hair-line. The book depository, although it
may since have been moved, at the time of the assassination was
located to the rear of the President.]

These autopsy photographs and X-rays were whisked away and have been
kept hidden ever since. By now there has been time to construct new
autopsy photographs and X-rays which more closely harmonize with the
official myth than did the original ones. Hundreds of significant
government files and memoranda have been laid away in vaults where
they cannot be seen. Among the hidden Central Intelligence Agency
files alone are to be found such titles as: "Oswald's Access to
Information about the U-2," "Reproduction of Central Inteligence
Agency Official Dossier on Oswald" and "Information on Jack Ruby and
Associates." Inasmuch as we have been assured by horrorable men that
neither Oswald nor Ruby had any connection with the Central
Intelligence Agency it probably would be unpatriotic to speculate on
what these secret files contain.

As bad luck would have it, a rash of conflagrations swept away other
vital evidence in the government's custody. The only notes known to be
taken during the long 12-hour interview of Lee Oswald after the
assassination appear to have been burned. Notes taken by a federal
agent who interviewed Oswald before the assassination also went up in
flames. A secret Central Intelligence Agency memo concerning Oswald,
written prior to the assassination, went up in smoke while being
thermofaxed. This phenomenal instance of spontaneous combustion
occurred in Washington the day following the asassination. The autopsy
notes describing the President's wounds were cremated in his fireplace
by the attending Navy pathologist.

This is not to say that the government has not shown concern for the
people's right to know. For those citizens who are curious about how
and why their President was killed, the Ministry of Truth has made
available the dental charts of Jack Ruby, photographs of Russian
scenery, grammar school records of Oswald and Ruby, a careful analysis
of Oswald's pubic hairs, irrelevant letters, irrelevant telegrams,
picture postcards showing bullfights, a copy of the proceedings in an
unrelated divorce case, a list of traffic citations received by Jack
Ruby, and an excellent photograph of an unidentified man.

For those whose curiosity about the assassination may not have been
satisfied with this frank display of evidence, it has been announced
that even the secret files will be made available. There will,
however, be a slight delay of 75 years before they can be examined.
This farsignted provision not only assures a long

period of national tranquility with regard to the assassination, but
also substantially reduces the danger of the involved government
officials being lynched.

Of course, there is no real guarantee that, even if you are very
patient, you will actually get to examine these files in 75 years. New
concerns by the government with regard to national security may
require an additional 75 years delay, and it even might come to Pass
that one day it will be announced from Washington that actually no
assassination ever occured. In time, it can be explained that John
Kennedy really never existed at all and that Dwight Eisenhower was
followed by Grover Cleveland or Calvin Coolidge, all depending on
which words best suit the government's Purpose at the time. Any of
these announcements would be every bit as accurate as the official
myth that Lee Harvey Oswald, the lone assassin killed President
Kennedy

In the super-state, it really does not matter at all what actually
happened. Truth is what the government chooses to tell you. Justice is
what it wants to happen.

In Dealey Plaza reality destroyed illusion, the illusion that we were
fiving in the best of all possible worlds. The fairy tale of the lone
assassin represents an effort to resurrect the illusion, to legitimize
it by proclamation and to impose it by muscle.

In the interest of tranquility the decision has been made somewhere
that it is better for you not to know what really happened. It is
better for you not to know that at midday on November 22nd there were
many men who, in many places, were glancing at their watches. It is
better for you to believe that the successive murders of the President
of the United States, Officer Tippit and Lee Oswald were simply three
meaningless incidents which happened to occur one weekend in Dallas.

Above all, it has been decided that you are not to know of Lee
Oswald's relationship with the Central Intelligence Agency. Nor are
you to know that a number of the men actually involved in the
assassination had been employees of the Central Intelligence Agency.
You are not to know about those matters because of something called
"national security."

When national security is used as the excuse for concealing essential
facts surrounding a disaster, it usually refers to the security of the
men who allowed the disaster to occur. Actually, the greater threat to
national security is the cynical concealment of such facts from the
people.

Behind the facade of earnest inquiry into the assassination is a
thought control project in the best traditions of 1984. Because of
their role in the Establishment and their failure to conduct any
effective inquiry, major news agencies have a vested interest in
maintaining public ignorance. They look away from the widespread
evidence that something is wrong, just as the members of the Warren
Commission looked away from the autopsy photographs and X-rays of the
murdered President. [To a man the members of the Warren
Commissionrefused to examine the autopsy photographs and X-rays. This
evidence could have clarified once and for all the number of times the
President was shot and the various directions from whcih he was shot.
the Commission, however loyally refused to play Russian Roulette with
the "lone assassin" theory. The unviewed autopsy evidence was locked
away behind concrete walls and the Dallas Police Department scenario
duly was adopted as the official national myth.]      Tranquility, the
time-honored message reads, is better than knowledge.

In the authoritarian state, it is regarded as a selfevident truth that
the control of history is an inalienable right of government. All
words are created free and equal.

If it is proclaimed in Washington tomorrow that the moon is made of
Limburger cheese, a horde of honorable men can be produced to attest
to that fact. If it is proclaimed that an elephant can hang from a
cliff with its tail tied to a daisy, a phalanx of experts will appear
to confirm it. Anyone rash enough to question these official verities
can expect to be exposed as a villain or a fool. The name of the game
is not truth it is power.

The Ministry of Truth has announced that the assassination of John
Kennedy was investigated exhaustively, that no evidence of a
conspiracy was found and that the matter should be considered closed.

The greatest lies are told in the name of truth. The greatest crimes
are committed in the name of justice.

The American people have suffered two tragedies. In addition to the
assassination of the President by dishonorable men our national
integrity is now being assassinated by honorable men. It does not
matter what the rationale is - whether to calm the public or to
protect our image - the fact remains that the truth is being
concealed.

The United States Constitution, assuming that it has not accidentally
been burned to a crisp, does not give anyone the power to re-write
history. The fact that this has happened should be evidence enough
that it is far later than any of us have dream.

The question now is whether we have the courage to come face to face
with ourselves and admit that something is wrong, whether we have the
will to insist on an end to deception and consealment with regard to
the execution of John Kennedy-or whether we win let the official fairy
tale be told and re-told until the truth itself fades into a vagrant
rumor and finally dies forever.

If we will not fight for the truth now - when our President has been
shot down in the streets and his murders remain untouched by justice -
it is not likely that we will ever have another chance.

JIM GARRISON
New Orleans, Louisiana
September 1, 1967