To his supporters, Jim Garrison of New Orleans was the crusader who uncovered the truth behind the assassination of John Kennedy.

To his critics, he was a self promoter who destroyed the innocent in pursuit of headlines.

Garrison's investigation relied on offbeat witnesses, bizarre tales, and charges of a vast conspiracy.

Garrison was glorified in the Oliver Stone film JFK in nineteen ninety one.

Since then, author Patricia Lambert has combed through court documents and government files.

Our program is based on her book False Witness, a scathing indictment of Jim Garrison and his tactics.

In nineteen sixty three.

Did you ever have occasion to meet or know Lee Harvey aswell?

Did you ever have occasion to meet or no David W.

Ferry, I did not.

You've heard of the name Clay bertrand I have such a person.

I do not.

Can you stay whether or not you are Clay Bergman, I am not God.

Do you have any knowledge of a platte to assassinate president?

And none whatsoever?

Clay L.

Shaw, the only individual ever to stand trial for the assassination of President Kennedy today is best known as the villain of the movie JFK director Oliver Stone's fictional account of the assassination, which he based in part on Jim Garrison's memoir.

In the Minds of Millions, clay Shaw is as Tommy Lee.

Jones portrayed him a sinister homosexual who plotted to kill the president and was unmasked by New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison, played by Kevin Costner.

Garrison is Stone's battling hero who solved the crime of the century and put clay Shaw on trial for it.

But in real life, after a forty day trial in nineteen teen sixty nine, it was clear that Garrison had solved nothing, and the jury took only fifty four minutes to acquit clay Shaw.

Now we will learn why.

The New York Times called Garrison's prosecution of Shaw one of the most disgraceful chapters in the history of American jurisprudence.

In the nineteen sixties, the assassination of President Kennedy was followed by a growing dissatisfaction with the official version of his death, the ongoing struggle for civil rights and the movement against the Vietnam War and the United States.

Was ripped apart.

Americans at that time felt that their country was going to pieces, and they couldn't figure out why there was no identifiable enemy.

It was not as though we were fighting Nazi Germany again.

You see.

And so I think in that atmosphere a sort of a national paranoia developed and people.

Were willing to believe anything.

Late in the sixties, a powerful politician appeared in the midst of that emotional chaos.

His city was New Orleans and it's Marti Gras Honky Tonk.

Anything goes sophistication fit his extravagant style to a team.

He was a music outrageous, unpredictable, sometimes electrifying.

In a town where politicians are expected to be entertaining, he was like a Broadway star.

Did he have a lawyer in with him today?

Yes.

On March first, nineteen sixty seven, Jim Garrison, the District Attorney of New Orleans, grabs the world's spotlight by arresting Clay Shaw, the fifty three year old retired director of the International Trademark, for his alleged involvement in the assassination of President Kennedy.

This stuns the local citizenry, for Shaw is a staunch supporter of President Kennedy and a prominent popular figure in New Orleans.

What none of them understand at the time is the strange series of events that led up to Shaw's arrest.

Twenty six years later, after Oliver Stone's film was released, writer Patricia Lambert, who had followed Garrison's investigation in the sixties, set out to discover the truth about that investigation.

Her effort would span five years, include thousands of pages of documents and interviews with many of the principles involved.

From a batch of nineteen sixty three FBI and Secret Service reports, she discovered how two off beat characters in New Orleans named Jack Martin and Dean Andrews, each left behind a stepping stone that Garrison used three years later to reach Clay Shaw and construct a solution to the crime of the Century, which Garrison thought would catapult him into national office.

It all began the day the President was shot in New Orleans.

On the night of the assassination, Jack Martin, a forty eight year old former mental patient, courthouse hanger on and tipster well known to local law enforcement.

It starts a three day drinking bitch.

It was a kind of a cadaverous, tall, cadaverous, very thin guy with an enormous booming voice.

And he would stand at the end of the bar and exhort people about conspiracies and so forth.

And basically everybody either told him to shut up or just ignoredy.

You know.

So he was he was seen as a what he was, a nut.

Martin is at home watching television news accounts of the assassination when he begins making one telephone call after another, spreading false stories that link accused assassin Lee Harvey Oswald to a New Orleans Airline pilot named David Ferry.

Ferry and Martin once were friends but had a bitter falling out.

Martin blames Ferry for their quarrel and now exacts his revenge by falsely incriminating him in the president's murder.

One of Martin's calls is to the home of an assistant DA and Martin's tales soon reach District Attorney Jim Garrison, who orders Ferry arrested.

The charge is vagrancy pending an investigation of being a fugitive from Texas, though there is no charge against him.

In Texas.

Ferry denies all of Martin's allegations and is investigated, cleared, and quickly released.

But Jim Garrison will not forget Jack Martin and David Ferry that same assassination weekend.

Another New Orleans resident with a lust for the limelight thrusts himself into the history books.

Dean Andrews, a colorful lawyer hospitalized with pneumonia, is also watching television and fantasizing.

Feverish and medicated, Andrews transforms a telephone call from an old friend concerning a minor legal matter into high drama.

He claims the call was from a man asking him to go to Dallas and represent Lee Harvey Oswald.

Andrews names his fictitious caller Clay Bertrand.

Dean Andrews was a very damon, runyonesque character.

He seemed to have a way of talking so as to entertain you.

Well, I don't know what he's up to.

His pickamlike chickens, shochamelk can storm, Milika and etam.

I mean, he ain't put nothing down, but ah.

It was obviously he was trying to entertain and he would make up any set of facts you needed to keep your interest up or to make sure that you enjoge your being around him.

But he's not the kind of person you would rely on.

Fernie hartfacts Andrew's story about the fictitious Clay Bertrand makes it into the Warren Report.

These two stories, Dean Andrews's invention of the name Clay Bertrand and Jack Martin's false accusations about David Ferry, create the two parallel paths that Jim Garrison will follow once he begins his own secret investigation of the assassination that occurs in the fall of nineteen sixty six.

After a conversation with Senator Russell.

Long, he happened to mention some of the doubts that developed in his mind and called my attention for the first time to some of the problems of the sequence of firing.

And eventually I found myself go the twenty six volumes of the Lawn Report, and I then realized that we had some things in this area which justify looking into.

Garrison bases his investigation of the assassination on the fact that Oswald lived in New Orleans the summer before the assassination, which placed him in Garrison's jurisdiction.

Garrison's first move occurs at Broussard's restaurant, where he invites lawyer Dean Andrews to dinner.

Garrison pumps Andrews about his testimony to the Warren Commission.

Unaware of Garrison's investigation, Andrews repeats his story about the fictitious Clay Bertrand.

Garrison accepts Andrews's story and soon tells his staff that the mysterious Clay Bertrand is none other than the retired director of the New Orleans International Trademark, Clay Shaw.

Various sources inside Garrison's office have said that he arrived at this conclusion because Shaw and Bertrand have the same first name, and because Shaw is gay, the same sexual orientation that Dean Andrews invented for his fictitious caller.

Running through this whole tapestry like a golden thread is homosexuality, you see.

Garrison's second move is to interview tipster Jack Martin, who feeds Garrison more stories about David Ferry.

Ferry becomes Garrison's number one suspect, and Garrison places him under twenty four hour surveillance.

Then three local newspaper reporters reveal Garrison's poorly kept secret investigation in a front page story.

That night, David Ferry calls the newspaper.

Ferry said, basically, yeah, it's true that your story is true.

In a Garrison does have an investigation going, and if you come over here, I'll talk to you.

I went over there and we talked for hours, and David Ferry was very scared, but he was also very ill, and he said that Garrison had his house staked out, and he was scared to dead.

I have been pegged as the getaway pilot in an elaborate plot to kill Kennedy.

Fairy said he denied being in Dallas at that time, and he denied knowing Oswald.

Garrison's investigation, Ferry said, is an utter waste of time.

And he understood that the only way he was going to stay out of Garrison's clutches was to get out there, go public and hope that he would be protected by his notoriety.

Ferry's interview appears in the next day's newspaper.

Garrison reacts by holding his first press conference on the investigation.

There's no question about the fact that there there was a plot, and there were a number of individuals involved, and we will make arrests based on that, and we will make charges based on that, and we will obtain convictions based on that, at least of all the people.

With those words, Garrison commits himself publicly to a course of action from which he never withdraws.

Media representatives from around the world pour into New Orleans and wait for Garrison's next revelation about the assassination plot, but he has none, so he attacks the local press for breaking the story, though he saw the article beforehand and told the managing editor to go ahead and publish it.

He also explains that his office was not staffed to handle such a case, and the local crime explosion complicated his investigation by creating a manpower problem.

We solved the problem by creating a small task force made up of a small investigative staff of I think unusually competent police officers, a handful of assistant district attorneys, an extremely competent private detective named William Gervitch, myself, and one or two other individuals outside the office.

Garrison has revealed no new information about the assassination plot.

The media representatives pack their bags and leave, but not for long.

Almost immediately, David Ferry, unfortunately dies of a stroke.

Garrison claims he committed suicide.

There was an autopsy where Aloes, who was present at the autopsy, was natural causes.

The death was natural causes, and that's what we reported the gym.

But death with natural causes.

But Garrison refuses to accept that it was natural causes, and Fairry's death becomes the turning point of his investigation.

That was what made the case for Garrison was when this guy dies.

The death of David Ferry gave Garrison a chance to Had he shut down his circus right then, everything would have been wonderful.

And Eda said, see he had the guy, he would have been a hero forever.

So we went to Jim.

We said, Jim, look, if you want to save face, here's your opportunity to do it.

Your main witness is dead.

David Ferry is dead.

You can't go any further.

And he looked at us and he said, are you crazy?

He said, are you crazy?

He said, we're just really getting onto something.

The international media again flood into the city time in even greater numbers.

Garrison exploits the moment, vowing to use donated money to avoid public scrutiny of his investigation.

A group of wealthy businessmen immediately form a committee to fund Garrison's probe privately.

They call themselves Truth and Consequences, and in time give Garrison some seventy thousand dollars in today's money over three hundred and sixty thousand dollars.

This permits Garrison to conduct his investigation with total freedom, answerable to no one.

And these were the people also who had elected the governors, the mayors, named the people who were run for Congress.

This was like a vigilante group.

A prominent businessman who Garrison had convinced, put up your money, and we're going to go to the root of it.

We're going to find out who killed John Kennedy.

Two days after Ferry dies, Garrison announces he has solved the case.

Later that same day, news of Ferry's death flushes out a former friend of his in Baton Rouge.

A twenty four year old insurance salesman named Perry Raymond Russeau Russo contacts a Baton Rouge newspaper.

He also writes Jim Garrison a letter Garrison sends Assistant District Attorney Andrew Chambra to Baton Rouge to interview Russo on February twenty fifth.

On February twenty seventh, Garrison orders Chambre to get Russou to New Orleans.

Russeau arrives at the District Attorney's office that same day and agrees to take sodium pentathal.

While drugged.

Russo is interrogated by Andrew Chambra and claims to remember a party at David Ferry's house where he overheard Ferry, Lee, Harvey Oswald known to Russo as Leon Oswald, and Clay Bertrand plotting to assassinate the president.

This drug induced recollection becomes the crux of Garrison's case against Shaw.

Through news accounts concerning David Ferry and information provided by Garrison's aides Perry, Russo has learned of and accepted the stories of Jack Martin and Dean Andrews and combined them into a single tale.

The next day, as Clay Shaw is standing in the doorway of his home, Russo identifies him as Bertrand, a man who never existed, a man invented by Dean Andrews.

Garrison now has his rationale for arresting Shaw.

The following morning, March first, nineteen sixty seven, Garrison issues a subpoena ordering Clay Shaw to appear at the District Attorney's office for questioning scheduled at one pm.

Shaw arrives at twelve forty, thinking it concerns a neighbor who is being interviewed by the district attorney.

But I was interrogated by two of the assistant district attorneys and told them I knew nothing about any conspiracy any restaurant, And finally one of them said to me, now, look, we're going to ask you to take a line of text for test, and if you don't do it, we're going to charge you with conspiracy to murder the President of the United States.

Dumbfounded, Shaw demands to see his attorney, Edward Wegman, but Wegman is out of town, so Shaw calls the law office of Edward Wegman's brother, William.

It is an associate of his, Salvatore Panzica, who races to Shaw's side, arriving about four o'clock.

When I first met mister Shaw, and before I went in to speak to Garrison, I I interviewed him in the men's room because I was afraid that the Garrison office, in the investigators, etc.

Would be bugging any room that I would be allowed to interview my client.

Both Shaw and Panzica think this is all a mistake that can be cleared up.

Their immediate concern is Garrison's demand that Shaw take a lie detector test.

Shaw is afraid of questions about his private life.

Panzica devices a counter proposal.

Then he asks to speak with Garrison.

I said, let's have a a day in which he can rest.

I was really looking for time to talk to Ed Wegman and Bill Wegman, so I said, let's wait a day.

I said, then furnish us his attorneys with a copy of the proposed questions so that we could monitor them.

And they said, that's ridiculousson.

So that's that's silly.

We're not going to do that.

I'll arrested.

Well, I'll tell you when he said that, I said, what charge?

And then he said, conspiracy to kill President Kennedy?

And you could have you know, you could have knocked me over with a feather at that point.

At five point thirty that afternoon, a stunned Clay Shaw is placed under arrest his alleged co conspirators are Lee Harvey Oswald and David Ferry.

Mister Chaw will be charged with participation in a conspiracy to murder John F.

Kennedy.

It should be pointed out, however, that the nature of this case is not conducive to an immediate succession of arrests at this time.

However, other arrests will be made at a later date.

He'll be brought down the Central lock Up from here in a few minutes, positively from the beginning.

Did he have a lawyer in with him today?

Yes.

What the press doesn't know is that Garrison has arrested Shaw on the basis of one man's unsubstantiated testimony induced by sodium pentathal.

At eight point thirty that night.

Handcuffed and accompanied now by Attorney Edward Wegman, Clay Shaw is paraded in front of the press to the elevator in the hall from the basement garage.

He is driven around the building to Central lock Up.

There, he empties his pockets, removes his tie and belt, and is booked for conspiring to murder John F.

Kennedy.

In the adjacent room, he is fingerprinted and photographed.

At nine twenty, Shaw is released on ten thousand dollars bail.

Meanwhile, Garrison's men search Shaw's home.

They leave with four boxes of Shaw's personal belongings, but find nothing incriminating.

At first, we were stunned, and then it didn't take long before everybody realized.

People who were not in Garrison's pocket and were interested in things like the truth, realized that this was a croc.

It was like a dream almost, I mean, just difficult to believe that.

First of all, he had arrested someone and put him in jail on such a short notice.

And we were all alarmed and scared and terrified of what.

Was this going to mean for him.

Garrison conceals the source of information for the search warrant, calling him a confidential informant, setting off a frenzied effort by the media to identify him.

That night, Perry Russo, questioned while under hypnosis by doctor Esmond Fatter, again describes the plotting session at David Ferry's party, but inexplicably, Russeau now refers to Clay Bertrand also as Clem Bertrand.

In addition, Russo significantly expands the plotting session in this interview, which is the first of three conducted while Russeau is hypnotized.

Anyone knows that a person under hypnosis is highly suggestible.

And you can tell a man that he's.

A Chiwawa dog and he'll bark for you.

He is very pliable.

I think he was putty in Jim Garrison's hands, and after a point, I think Russo would say anything that Jim Garrison wanted him to say.

And then as time progressed, Perry Russo realized he had put himself in a big mess and he wanted out.

But if he didn't go along with what Garrison wanted him to say, he knew he was going to be charged.

He got on TV, he got on the radio, he got his picture taken, he was in a paper.

He got to eat, he got to eat well.

And I'm not too sure that Garrison of someone didn't give him money.

A k Russo alive financially for a year.

He let his buddies come down and they had they drink in the hotel and they'd play around, and I saw him pass money to Russo.

Russell State didn't have him money.

Garrison gave him two one hundred dollar bills and I was having to be there.

That was when I was in good graces with Garrison.

The next day, Shaw holds a press conference and issues are categorical denial.

That same day, in a surprise move, Garrison requests a preliminary hearing.

It is scheduled for March fourteenth, two weeks off.

During the hiatus, everyone is asking the same question, who is Garrison's confidential informant?

None are more interested in the answer than clay Shaw and his attorneys.

Garrison unveils his confidential informant on day one of the preliminary hearing when he calls Perry Raymond Russo to the stand.

Russou testifies that clay Shaw is the plotter he knows as Clem Bertrand.

At Garrison's instruction, Russou identifies Shaw by walking behind his chair and placing his hand over Shaw's head.

Three days later, Garrison springs another surprise when he calls Vernon Bundy, a drug addict serving time in the Orleans Parish Prison.

Bundy claims that one day, when he was at the Lake Pontchatrain Sea Wall shooting up on heroin, he saw clay Shaw give Lee Harvey Osword a wad of money like Russo Bundy identifies Shaw by placing his hand over Shaw's head.

Vernon Bundy would say anything Garrison wanted him to say to get out in jail.

When you wake up in a morning and you're addicted to a drug like heroin, you're going to want to do up use the drug immediately.

You're not going to get in the car, go out to the lake, which is patrolled by the levee Board police park, and stick a needle in your home.

On the fourth day, the three judge panel rules that the district Attorney has presented sufficient evidence and that Clay Shaw should stand trial.

Yet the underlying record now available reveals the flimsy, often corrupt nature of the evidence Garrison used to prosecute Shaw, as revealed in part by the media in nineteen sixty seven and at Shaw's trial in nineteen sixty nine, and more fully disclosed in Edward O'Donnell's report to Jim Garrison.

Perry Russo took two lie detector tests.

His readings were so erratic that both examiners stopped the tests.

Russo then admitted to each that his story was not true.

Examiner Roy Jacob conducted the first test the week before Shaw's preliminary hearing three months later, Edward O'Donnell conducted the second one.

He said, I don't know if clay Shaw was at day Fairy's apartment or not.

I said what.

I said, Perry clay Show's a man at the six foot six, very distinguished looking.

If you were to see him, you'd have to remember.

I said, was he there or wasn't he?

He said, mister O'Donnell, if I have to give you yes or no answer, why as it would be no, he was not there.

Shortly before Garrison put Vernon Bundy on the witness stand, polygraph examiner James Cruby told Garrison that Bundy was lying, and two of Garrison's own men argued against using Bundy as a witness.

Edward O'Donnell was there.

Charlie Ward said, well, we're not going to use him as a witness stand, and Jim Garrison jumped up and had a discussion with Charlie Ward about whether they're going to use him or not.

And Jim Garrison's statement, I don't care if he's.

Lying or not.

We're going to use him.

I'll never forget those words.

Dean Andrews recanted the Clay Bertrand story to the FBI.

He told Garrison that Bertrand didn't exist before Garrison arrested Shaw, and despite being charged with perjury and jailed, Andrews refuses to say what Garrison want wants him to say, insisting that Clay Shaw is not Clay Bertrand.

Later on the witness stand, Andrews will state publicly that Bertrand is a figment of his imagination.

At great personal cost to himself, Andrews did everything he could to set the record straight and save Clay Shaw from a prosecution that Andrews himself unwittingly had set in motion.

David Ferry repeatedly denied any involvement in the assassination.

To prove he was telling the truth, he agreed to be polygraphed and volunteered to take sodium pentathal, but Garrison never did either.

Jack Martin was an alcoholic who once sued Garrison and was known by Garrison to invent stories.

Martin admitted to the Secret Service and the FBI in nineteen sixty three that he made up his stories about day.

David Ferry, William Gervich, and James Alcock, two of Garrison's top eighths at first tried to stop Garrison from arresting Shaw.

Al Kock came to see me at the Frontain Blue with the other triple threat idiot Ivon, and Alcock wept asking me if I could not talk to Garrison to abandon this idea, that trying this, and I mean that, he literally wept.

Jimmy al Kock is a real professional.

Jimmy.

Jimmy was a soldier.

Okay, Jimmy was a soldier.

If Jim Garrison had said go jump off the bridge, jim would have gone and done it.

There.

He's planned strategy for his investigators.

The media report the growing dissension in Garrison's office.

Garrison's investigation as seemed to concentrate on homosexuals.

That, of course, is.

An old police trick, and almost actuals have been a particular target of Garrisons over the years.

Even members of his staff have been privately critical of the emphasis on men whose deviation makes them vulnerable.

Then a disillusioned William Gervich goes public, leaving the investigation and taking with him his copy of Garrison's master file.

Is there anything in that file that would in any way indicate to you that there was in fact a conspiracy born in New Orleans to kill the President of the United States.

None whatsoever.

Is there anything in that file that would in any way indicate to you that clay Shaw is in any way guilty of the charge against him.

None what so ever.

Is there anything that he can do at this point to effectively undo what he already has done.

No.

Because he's made these strong allegations.

It's caused the defendant an awful lot of money, I would assume, and the man is disgraced.

And if Garrison is as wrong as I think he is, I think he should be made to answer for his crimes by he says, clay Shaw should be made to answer for what he has accused him of doings.

When Gerbuge was convinced that Garrison had nothing, and when he arrested clay Shaw, he wanted once again an individual who saw Kshaw as being persecuted rather than prosecuted and being a man of principal, Gerbridge resigned.

Gervich is well known and respected, and his defection is a blow to Garrison.

Another blow occurred earlier, behind the scenes.

Since December nineteen sixty six, Life Magazine personnel headquartered at the Richelieu Hotel, have been working secretly with Garrison, but after he arrests clay Shaw, management at Life pulls the Garrison covers story planned for the April issue.

Garrison immediately turns to Saturday Evening Post writer James Phalen.

After lunch at the New Orleans Athletic Club, Garrison invites Phelan to accompany him on a vacation to Las Vegas and promises to tell him the whole incredible story.

In Las Vegas, Garrison startles Phelan by claiming that the President's murder was a homosexual thrill killing.

I said, well, why homosexual?

And he said, well, he says, first he said, there was Kennedy, popular, virile, highly practicing heterosexual, and there's this guy, Perry homosexual.

Shaw homosexual.

And he says, you can see the envy you You can just imagine the thrill that they got of killing this popular heterosexual.

Then Garrison gives Phalen two memorandums concerning Perry Russo, which Garrison describes as my case against Shaw.

That night, Phelan reads the documents and is astonished to discover the all important conspiratorial plotting session at David Ferry's apartment is missing from Russo's first interview.

Phelan has found the gaping hole in Garrison's case against Shaw.

Nothing about a conspiracy to kill Candy, nothing about Shaw having met Faerry or Shaw having met Oswald, or any kind of a party at Fairey's apartment, and it's sunny.

Phelan concludes that Russou's story was developed through leading questions under drugs and hypnosis.

They had him hypnotized by a family doctor there by the name of Esben Fatter, and he hypnotized Russo and Fatter had been briefed by the District Attorney's office about their ideas about the thing, and he plainly prompted Russo, and he made references that the white haired man is there, and Russo didn't respond to that, and then he went on, you're in Ferry's apartment and there's an alpha there and the white haired man.

They're talking about it fascinating somebody.

Phelan reveals what he learned in Las Vegas in the article.

He writes it is the first comprehensive critique of Garrison's case.

Garrison never comments on it publicly, but his assistant Andrew Chambra, in a televised response, denounces the article as incomplete and distorted, and invites Phelan to repeat his charges to the local grand jury.

Garrison, privately enraged at Phelan, dismisses his revelations as technical points and proceeds with his case against Clay's Shaw for Despite the seemingly obvious setbacks, the results of the preliminary hearing still stand.

While Shaw's attorneys file various pleadings, laying the groundwork for an appeal if needed, Garrison tours the country, making one charge after another.

Earlier he accused anti Castro Cubans, homosexuals, some white Russians, an element of the Dallas Police Department, and oil rich Texas millionaires of involvement in the assassination.

Now he reaches higher.

Persident Johnson is the man who is in control of the federal agencies which have participated in concealing and destroying evidence.

And the day will.

Come on everybody else in the world will know cia ko John.

Genner Shaw records in his diary Garrison's escalating charges.

As a veteran of World War II, Shaw has experienced conflict before in Europe, when he served as deputy chief of staff to Brigadier General Charles O.

Thrasher.

As Thrasher's right hand man, Shaw helped coordinate everything from toothpaste to tanks flowing to three armies fighting Nazi Germany.

Shaw was decorated by his own country and by France as well, and he rose from the rank of private to major.

Two decades later, Shaw is fighting another war.

His adversary this time is the duly elected District Attorney of New Orleans, Jim Garrison, and his battlefield is the court room.

The battle is joined on January twenty first, nineteen sixty one, when the gavel sounds in the courtroom of Judge Edward A.

Haggerty Junior, Jim Garrison promised the solution to the crime of the century.

The world now awaits that solution.

The prosecution's first eight witnesses are from the Clinton Jackson Hill country, north of Baton Rouge.

Their story is that the summer before the assassination, Lee Harvey Oswald attempted to register to vote in Clinton in order to obtain a job at a nearby hospital.

Oswald supposedly arrived at the registrar's office in a black Cadillac with David Ferry in the front seat and Clay Shaw behind the wheel.

On cross examination, Shaw's attorney, Irvin Diamond, ridicules these six year old recollections.

But despite that, some in the courtroom find these witnesses believable because they seem so ordinary.

We were concerned about them because once again they were everyday ordinary citizens, but they were also from an area that was very it was Klucock's plan country.

But the testimony of these witnesses, though it bears on credibility, is not legally relevant to the conspiracy charge.

For even if true, Shaw, Oswald and Ferry being together wouldn't make them conspirators.

A surprise prosecution witness, an accountant named Charles Spizel, describes another party where assassinating the president was discussed.

He claims that Clay Shaw and David Ferry were present at this one too.

Spiezel sounds convincing until his cross examination, when Salvator Panzica receives a telephone call.

I was sitting at the defense table and I kept getting messages from a next door neighbor telling me that I had talked to me.

It was very.

Important, and I called Bill starmer next door name, and he told me that.

He said, I know this guy who's on the stand.

I just heard about it on the radio.

He says.

The guys a nut.

He had his daughter fingerprinted because he didn't want to make sure that the same girl came back in the same body that he sent to college.

I was speechless.

I could not believe it.

It was all I could do to break out, to keep from breaking out laughing.

In the middle of this trial, here is this man.

He's been questioned, and he starts coming apart under questioning and starts telling the jury and the audience at the trial that the Pinkertons were following him with the purpose of destroying his sex life.

Spiezel's unraveling on the witness stand is followed by a circus like bus trip to the French quarter by jury, defendant, prosecution and defense teams in an unsuccessful search for the apartment where Spiezel's alleged party occurred.

He couldn't have found the right room because it never existed, and it was a complete disaster.

The jury ended up laughing.

Perry Russo testifies next.

He is on the witness stand two full days, though he sticks to his basic story, Russo makes a number of damaging statements on cross examination.

Among others, Russo admits telling polygraph examiner Edward O'Donnell that he didn't know whether or not Shaw was present at the plotting session, and if he had to give a yes or no, he would have to say no.

Of the seventy three witnesses who take the stand, fifty two are called by Garrison's team, Yet only Russo is legal significant, because only he claims he heard the alleged conspirator's plotting, The case against Clay Shaw rises or falls on Perry Raymond Russou.

Both the prosecution and the defense tell the jury that and of the twenty one witnesses called by the defense, none are more devastating to Garrison's case than the two who directly address Russeau's testimony, writer James Phelon and polygraph examiner Edward O'Donnell.

Clayshaw testifies that day too.

He again categorically denies all the charges.

He never attended a conspiratorial party, he never knew Perry Russo, David Ferry, or Lee Harvey Oswald, and he never conspired to kill the president.

But Shaw's name is barely mentioned after the judge sides with the prosecution to allow the Dallas evidence to be introduced.

This decision sets the stage for Garrison's attack on the Warren report, and he banks heavily on the shock value of the first public viewing of the Zapruder film, which shows the President being shot.

Those in the courtroom still remember.

And they kept playing the Zapruda film.

They must have played a ten or twelve times.

And if you've never seen a Zapruda film, you can't appreciate how violent it is.

It was very disturbing film.

And you could hear the ouches or the ooze or the oh man, that's terrible.

Just you could hear that murmur in the entire courtroom.

This was the most dramatic thing I think of the hold the whole trial.

It was something real, something you can put your hands on, something you could see.

I'm sorry, but I can't help but become emotional every time I think about the Zapprouved film and garrison juice of it.

The vicious use of that film to attempt to inflame the jury is one of the worst things I have ever seen as a reporter.

Garrison tells one reporter that showing the film might cause a revolution, but Garrison's men never manage to connect the film or the events in Dallas to Clay Shaw.

To see the Sapruta film and tying in with clay Shaw.

I I never could get a communication between the two.

In closing, Irvin Diamond tells the jury that the trial is a forum for an attack by Garrison on the Warren Report, and Shaw is a patsy picked to make it possible.

In his final statement, Garrison refers five times to the Zapruder film and quotes President Kennedy's most famous line, ask not what your country can do for you, Garrison tells the jurors, but what you can do for your country.

The jury retires to deliberate at ten minutes after midnight.

The building is locked.

The atmosphere is tense.

Despite the evidence, most expect Garrison's charisma to win.

The day.

After a forty day trial, the jury is out only fifty four minutes their verdict not guilty.

The courtroom erupts with shouts of joy, relief, euphoria, and for some dismay.

Every morning you go to the courthouse, you're figurable today is the day the shoe's going to drop.

This guy's gonna come him with something that we don't know about, the credible and it never happened.

Everybody felt the same way that there was just not enough proof to prove anything.

And thank god the system works because in forty five minutes people found out that mister Garrison was not the truth.

When the verdict was read, that was probably the happiest moment of my life.

The man was innocent, He was falsely accused, he was falsely arrested.

The whole case was built on lives and deception.

Astonishingly, forty eight hours after the acquittal, Garrison re arrests Shaw.

The charge is perjury, two counts for saying under oath that he did not know David Ferry or Lee Harvey Oswald.

If convicted, the penalty is the same as the conspiracy charge.

Twenty years in jail, Shaw again faces the press.

I do indeed, on March second, nineteen sixty seven, I said I did.

Not know not I ever known either Oswald or Ferry.

I repeat that I told it too, was on the stand and one of the only questions five diff agents to choose to bring this charge now.

The possibility that Shaw will be convicted is greater this time because of the seeming credibility of the witnesses from the small community of Clinton, Louisiana.

But in nineteen ninety four, writer Patricia Lambert located a Garrison investigator who took part in the earliest Clinton interviews, remembered the experience vividly, and still retained the original Field notes that investigator's description of the initial interview with key Clinton witness Registrar of Voters Henry Earl Palmer, indicates that Palmer first told a story that was different from what he later testified to in court.

Had Shaw's attorneys known that at the trial, they could have challenged Palmer's credibility.

Long after the trial, Irvin Diamond said that Clinton had to be a complete fix, But what exactly happened in Clinton is unclear.

What is clear is that Garrison removed his first two investigators from the case, and after they were gone, Garrison turned the Clinton area over to one of his own assistants, and that's when much of the testimony that was given in the courtroom developed.

But it was twenty five years before that came to light.

In nineteen sixty nine, when Garrison charges Shaw with perjury, Shaw faces a serious risk of being convicted.

Shaw now turns to the federal courts for protection from Garrison's charges.

Well and so far as further, I'm asked the federal government to protect me from continuing how continuous, to protect my right to a fair and impartial trial of there should be no prejurd evidence.

Those are the rights I expects them too tact for me.

For two more years, as his attorneys file one pleading after another in federal court, Shaw quietly endures what he refers to in his journal as supporting the insupportable, tolerating the intolerable, and bearing the unbearable.

He struggles with depression, seeks relief in alcohol, and lives the careful, secluded existence of a permanently stigmatized man fighting for his life.

Then, after repeated rejections, Edward Wegman's impassioned complaint seeking an injunction against Jim Garrison wins a hearing before United States District Court Judge Herbert W.

Christenberry.

This time Garrison is the defendant.

The hearing on the civil action entitled Clay L.

Shaw Versus.

Jim Garrison lasts three days, Garrison takes the witness stand.

On the second day, Shaw's attorney, William Wegman, fires one question after another at Garrison, forcing him to defend his actions in prosecuting Clay Shaw.

Garrison makes false statements, and he is evasive.

And Garrison would not answer the questions he did the equivalent of taking a fifth.

Judge Christenberry is displeased and lets Garrison know it.

When Garrison finally steps down, he has seen the handwriting on the wall.

James Alcock admits on the witness stand that Shaw was arrested solely on the basis of Perry Russo's testimony.

At the end of the second day, Perry Russo, who has been subpoenaed by Shaw's team, privately asks to speak to Irvin Diamond.

A meeting is arranged that night.

Brusso sits down with Shaw's attorneys and repudiates his testimony against Clay Shaw.

He states that Shaw was absolutely not in Ferry's apartment and claims that he was brainwashed by members of Garrison's staff to identify Shaw.

The following morning, Russo takes the stand and pleads the fifth Amendment and.

Of course, the reason he took.

The fifth amend was that if he gotten on a witness stand and recanted his story under oath, he would have been charged by Garrison with perjury.

Judge Christenberry suggests that Garrison's men grant Russou immunity in state court, which would mean Garrison couldn't charge him with perjury.

We can't do that, replies one of Garrison's attorneys.

So Russo is dismissed and never tells the truth on the witness stand.

Clay Shaw testifies and for the final time, denies all of Garrison's charges.

At the end of the third day, Judge Kristenberry issues a restraining order temporarily preventing Garrison from taking further legal action against clay Shaw.

Four years after his first arrest, Shaw is almost a free man.

Four months later, in his final ruling, Judge Kristenberry orders a permanent injunction against Garrison and publishes a scathing indictment of him and his tactics.

Christenberry accuses Garrison of using drugs and hypnosis to concoct Russo's testimony and abusing the power of his office.

The Christenberry opinion vindicates clay Shaw on November twentieth, nineteen seventy two, the United States Supreme Court denies garhat Garrison's appeal.

Shaw is free at last.

One of his first moves is to file a lawsuit against Garrison and others, but he has little time left to pursue it.

Two years later, Clay Shaw dies of lung cancer.

While he found solace in religion, Shaw died financially, ruined and a broken man.

It literally destroyed the man.

I mean, after that trial, he was never the same.

He deteriorated rapidly.

I think one has to ask the question, is Jim Garrison unique?

And I don't think he is.

I can recall McCarthy doing much the same to innocent people.

No, there's no saying people who commit an injustice are bad.

The people who said highly buying watch that injustice occur, they're just as bad, if not.

First, whether there was a conspiracy or not, I'm not able to say, but I can say that if there were a conspiracy, Jim Garrison knew nothing of it.

What then drove Jim Garrison to pursue Clay Shaw so relentlessly, so heartlessly?

Once he mouthed off about this conspiracy, and once he arrested this man and charged him with a conspiracy.

To back down after that would have been to admit that he was foolish, and Garrison wasn't about to do that.

Jim Garrison was a man who wanted to get what he wanted to get, and if anybody got in his way, he could just run them over.

I think he had his eyes set on Washington, DC.

And you are, how do you say your aspirations are to be a senator in Washington, d C.

Then you just might sell you so.

And as far as I'm concerned, that's what Jim Garrison did.

I think that I am largely My value is largely symbolic that I was used on.

I think that Garrison feels that the end justifies.

The means, and he felt that if.

He could bring to the American people what he considered the truth about the devil of their president, any means whatsoever was to be used, it doesn't matter much who got hurt in the process.

Jim Garrison, who will live another eighteen years, is free to write his version of the history of his JFK investigation.

In nineteen sixty nine, Jim Garrison is re elected District Attorney In nineteen seventy three, he has tried and acquitted of federal bribery charges.

Three months later, he loses his bid for a fourth term as district Attorney.

He runs unsuccessfully for the State Supreme Court, but in nineteen seventy eight is elected to a seat on the Louisiana Fourth Circuit Court of Appeal.

Garrison also has become a writer, and in nineteen eighty eight he publishes his rendition of his JFK Probe on the Trail of the Assassins, My Investigation and Prosecution of the Murder of President Kennedy.

The most far fetched claim in Garrison's memoir is also the most enduring, the charge that Clay Shaw was a high level CIA employee in Rome working to restore fascism to Italy through a trade organization Centro Mondiale Comerciale World Trade Center and its parent company Permande.

These companies, Garrison claims, were fronts for the CIA.

Garrison admits that this story, which first appeared three days after Shaw's arrest, originated in a series of articles in the Italian newspaper piece Sera, But paiese Sera was a publication that the U S State department considered crypto communist, in other words, of dubious reliability.

Over the years, this story has been accepted by many at face value, though the source was unreliable.

According to writer Max Holland, in the sixties, when Paece Sera published the story, Paese Sera was an outlet for Soviet KGB disinformation.

Among Holland's evidence for this is a document published in nineteen ninety nine from the metrocan Archive, Notes smuggled out of Russia by a former KGB archivist.

The KGB during the existence of the Soviet Union specialized in an active measure they called disinformation, which was wrapping a lie with a lot of truth around it.

The lie at the center of the piece Sarah's story was the charge that Central Mondale Commerciali and perm Index or CIA fronts.

After Pizi Sarah's Disinformation was republished in Pravda, the CIA went through its files looking for any connection whatsoever to either the CMC, Central Moundial Commerciale or perm Index.

There were no traces, meaning that the CIA had no contact with either.

Of these business organizations.

They had never exploited them, they had never targeted them, they never used them for any purpose whatsoever.

Among the facts woven around the story was clay Shaw's legitimate association with Centro Mondiale Commerciali.

In nineteen fifty eight, he was invited to join the board of directors, and he did.

He thought it would be a good idea to take a junket once a year to Rome, but as it turned out, he never had the time.

He never went to a board meeting, he never met the other members of the board, and by the time he had the time to go to such board meetings, the Central munial Commerciale had failed.

But from Garrison's memoir and the material he left behind, we know he embraced the pie Sa Sarah's story as gospel.

After these stories appeared, he felt that when he had arrested clay Shaw that he had arrested a high ranking important operative of the CIA.

Yet Garrison was silent about his knowledge of the Piece Sarah story for twenty one years until he wrote his memoir.

In it, Garrison claims he first learned about the Piase Sarah articles after Shaw's trial, was over two years after the articles were published.

If true, this would explain why Garrison didn't use the information against Shaw at his trial.

But the evidence doesn't support that explanation.

In point of fact, Garrison's own papers and the papers of people who are around him, Most importantly, Richard Billings, a life editor who kept a diary during the early stages of an investigation, proved that Jim Garrison heard about the Italian newspaper articles within about twelve days after the publication, and within about two weeks after the publication actually had copies in his possession.

Why then, didn't Garrison use the information at Shaw's trial.

He didn't because it was inadmissible hearsay, and no court would have allowed it.

He couldn't say to the jurors that I have a newspaper clipping from an Italian paper that says Clayshar is a high ranking CIA operative, and here's another clipping from Pravda that says the same thing.

He would have been laughed out of court.

But during the two year period prior to the trial and afterwards and later in his memoir, Garrison publicly proclaims that the president's assassination was the work of the CIA.

So the story which fueled the now widely held belief that elements within the Central Intelligence Agency killed President Kennedy may have originated with the KGB with the number one target for disinformation was the CIA.

Clayshaw did have a connection to that agency.

Like some one hundred and fifty thousand other Americans during those Cold War years, Shaw provided routine information to the Domestic Contact Service.

He voluntarily shared information with the CIA, and this information had nothing to do with covert operations.

It was a kind of information you could glean from the Wall Street journal.

Chaw did what thousands of ordinary tourist, business executives, academics, journalists did.

They simply gave the CIA assessments of conditions in other countries.

Nothing covert, nothing secret.

Yet Shaw is depicted as a CIA operative in Garrison's memoir.

Oliver Stone purchases the movie rights to Garrison's book and uses it as the basis for the storyline of his film JFK.

JFK opens nationwide on December twentieth, nineteen ninety one.

Audience response is intense, for the movie conveys a powerful sense of reality, which Stone achieved by weaving together actual film footage and recreations.

But mostly Stone created that sense of reality by using a real life protagonist.

New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison.

As my students in the persuasion class are watching the film JFK, they think that they are seeing something that's pretty much documentary about it, and they're used to the idea that true to life stories are all true to life, and that people have checked out the history of it.

They know that these are facts, but that's not what Oliver Stone did.

None of Stone's portrayals inspire more reaction than those of Jim Garrison and Clay Shaw, But then many of the characters in the film have little in common with their real life counterparts.

I knew most of the characters involved in the film because I had covered.

All of this for years.

None of the characters had any resemblance to the real people.

Jack Martin, a canive troublemaker, is unrecognizable in the sympathetic alcoholic played by Jack Lemmon.

John Candy resembles Dean Andrew's physically, but his sinister portrayal is nothing like the real man, who was fun loving and ultimately self sacrificing.

The real David Ferry was less garish, less bizarre than Joe Peshi's version, and he wasn't killed by intruders in the night.

That scene is fiction.

Garrison's on lead prosecutor said of it, that just didn't happen.

Perry Russo is missing from the movie, reduced to a fictitious composite.

The meeting between man X and Jim Garrison, which ties the New Orleans plot to Washington, d C, did not occur in real life.

Another scene that never occurred is the one in which Garrison confronts Shaw with an Italian newspaper article and cites the accusations first published in Payse Serra twenty four years earlier.

The movie reaches an international audience, and its impact is felt in Washington, DC.

On October twenty sixth, nineteen ninety two, in response to Congressional reaction to the film, President Bush signs the John F.

Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act, opening government files relating to the assassination.

The act establishes the JFK Collection at the National Archives to house the material, and a five member citizen review board with unprecedented power to release classified documents.

Anna Nelson was a member of that board.

I think the Congress was ready to do something about the olar Stone movie JFK because they were affronted with his conspiracy theory that the government had caused it.

Of the four point five million pages now housed in the unique JFK collection, a substantial number concerned Jim Garrison's investigation, most of them from government agencies, but others, including Garrison's grand jury transcripts, were obtained by the review board directly from New Orleans.

The impact of the film on the young is a concern for Anna Nelson.

Students, after all these years, see Oliver Stone's movie JFK and believe everything unless they are told otherwise.

The film is available today in an inexpensive video and is playing to a whole new audience, most of whom were born after the events that occurred in New Orleans.

It was a terrible tragedy, but it's also a tremendous lesson.

If people will remember, you know, take note and remember.

The Clay Shaw that most Americans remember is the villainous one played by Tommy Lee Jones in the movie JFK.

However, in New Orleans, just off Bourbon Street, there's a plaque dedicated to Clay Shaw, mentioning his contributions to the city, and in Shaw's diary there is this sympathetic reference to Jim Garrison, I should hate him, Shaw wrote, but I can only feel that this poor SLB needs help far worse than I do.