District Attorney Jim Garrison's Case For A Conspiracy

[Douglas Caddy]

District Attorney Jim Garrison's Case For A Conspiracy

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2e7N_e56Ps4

[James DiEugenio]

That was really good for the summer of 1967.  The only part I disagree with is when he says that the WC was not really a put up job.  Today we know it was a put up job.

The other part is when he says there are hundreds of documents yet to be declassified.  Well, it was actually more like thousands that the ARRB declassified from 1994-98.

At the AARC conference a few years ago, Andrew Kreig played part of this.  Tony Summers, started screaming and did his best James Phelan/Walter Sheridan impersonation denouncing the DA.

Yet he failed to point out one thing that was wrong in this address.  In other words, it was the technique of smearing someone without addressing the facts in evidence.

I should add one other point about this.  At this point in time, Garrison did think the assassination was a plot centered around Cuba with men who had formerly been associated with the CIA.  Later, after a professor from Ohio University wrote him a 25 page handwritten letter explaining how our Vietnam policy was reversed within weeks after Kennedy's death, Garrison changed his mind about this and believed that Vietnam was also a part of the equation. That is amazing since at that time nobody even considered Vietnam as part of the reasons for the plot.  (Summers denies that to this day.) And he later concluded that the conspiracy included active CIA officers, along with Cuban exiles, and the Lansky connected mob.

Finally, one can see that the effectiveness of this speech, with almost no visual supplements, really foreshadowed what NBC was going to do with The  Tonight Show appearance.  In that one they loaded up Carson and had their lawyers pre interview Garrison so that Carson would be led with cue cards all the way. I like to think that this was because Carson was still an employee of the Sarnoffs--who owned NBC-- at that time.  And the Sarnoffs had minutely controlled the Walter Sheridan NBC hit piece down to dealing with Dean Andrews personally to prep his appearance on the one hour hatchet job. So there was no way they were going to let Garrison have a fair shake on The Tonight Show. As I told David Giglio in his interview with me at Our Hidden History, Mort Sahl helped arrange that Carson interview.  After the show Carson was so upset that when he met with Mort backstage, he told him, "You will never be on this program again!"  And he was not.  Not until Jay Leno took the show over.

If anything, Garrison understated how bad the MSM was and would continue to be.  Which we are still  coping with today, a half century after. He really was a prophet in many ways.

 

Edited November 5, 2017 by James DiEugenio

[Ron Bulman]

1 hour ago, James DiEugenio said:

That was really good for the summer of 1967.  The only part I disagree with is when he says that the WC was not really a put up job.  Today we know it was a put up job.

The other part is when he says there are hundreds of documents yet to be declassified.  Well, it was actually more like thousands that the ARRB declassified from 1994-98.

At the AARC conference a few years ago, Andrew Kreig played part of this.  Tony Summers, started screaming and did his best James Phelan/Walter Sheridan impersonation denouncing the DA.

Yet he failed to point out one thing that was wrong in this address.  In other words, it was the technique of smearing someone without addressing the facts in evidence.

I should add one other point about this.  At this point in time, Garrison did think the assassination was a plot centered around Cuba with men who had formerly been associated with the CIA.  Later, after a professor from Ohio University wrote him a 25 page handwritten letter explaining how our Vietnam policy was reversed within weeks after Kennedy's death, Garrison changed his mind about this and believed that Vietnam was also a part of the equation. That is amazing since at that time nobody even considered Vietnam as part of the reasons for the plot.  (Summers denies that to this day.) And he later concluded that the conspiracy included active CIA officers, along with Cuban exiles, and the Lansky connected mob.

Finally, one can see that the effectiveness of this speech, with almost no visual supplements, really foreshadowed what NBC was going to do with The  Tonight Show appearance.  In that one they loaded up Carson and had their lawyers pre interview Garrison so that Carson would be led with cue cards all the way. I like to think that this was because Carson was still an employee of the Sarnoffs--who owned NBC-- at that time.  And the Sarnoffs had minutely controlled the Walter Sheridan NBC hit piece down to dealing with Dean Andrews personally to prep his appearance on the one hour hatchet job. So there was no way they were going to let Garrison have a fair shake on The Tonight Show. As I told David Giglio in his interview with me at Our Hidden History, Mort Sahl helped arrange that Carson interview.  After the show Carson was so upset that when he met with Mort backstage, he told him, "You will never be on this program again!"  And he was not.  Not until Jay Leno took the show over.

If anything, Garrison understated how bad the MSM was and would continue to be.  Which we are still  coping with today, a half century after. He really was a prophet in many ways.

 

For any who have not read it.  I should re read the second edition.

https://www.amazon.com/Destiny-Betrayed-Cuba-Garrison-Case/dp/1620870568

[James DiEugenio]

Thanks Ron.

And no I did not pay him for that ad.

[Joe Bauer]

On 11/4/2017 at 7:50 PM, James DiEugenio said:

That was really good for the summer of 1967.  The only part I disagree with is when he says that the WC was not really a put up job.  Today we know it was a put up job.

The other part is when he says there are hundreds of documents yet to be declassified.  Well, it was actually more like thousands that the ARRB declassified from 1994-98.

At the AARC conference a few years ago, Andrew Kreig played part of this.  Tony Summers, started screaming and did his best James Phelan/Walter Sheridan impersonation denouncing the DA.

Yet he failed to point out one thing that was wrong in this address.  In other words, it was the technique of smearing someone without addressing the facts in evidence.

I should add one other point about this.  At this point in time, Garrison did think the assassination was a plot centered around Cuba with men who had formerly been associated with the CIA.  Later, after a professor from Ohio University wrote him a 25 page handwritten letter explaining how our Vietnam policy was reversed within weeks after Kennedy's death, Garrison changed his mind about this and believed that Vietnam was also a part of the equation. That is amazing since at that time nobody even considered Vietnam as part of the reasons for the plot.  (Summers denies that to this day.) And he later concluded that the conspiracy included active CIA officers, along with Cuban exiles, and the Lansky connected mob.

Finally, one can see that the effectiveness of this speech, with almost no visual supplements, really foreshadowed what NBC was going to do with The  Tonight Show appearance.  In that one they loaded up Carson and had their lawyers pre interview Garrison so that Carson would be led with cue cards all the way. I like to think that this was because Carson was still an employee of the Sarnoffs--who owned NBC-- at that time.  And the Sarnoffs had minutely controlled the Walter Sheridan NBC hit piece down to dealing with Dean Andrews personally to prep his appearance on the one hour hatchet job. So there was no way they were going to let Garrison have a fair shake on The Tonight Show. As I told David Giglio in his interview with me at Our Hidden History, Mort Sahl helped arrange that Carson interview.  After the show Carson was so upset that when he met with Mort backstage, he told him, "You will never be on this program again!"  And he was not.  Not until Jay Leno took the show over.

If anything, Garrison understated how bad the MSM was and would continue to be.  Which we are still  coping with today, a half century after. He really was a prophet in many ways.

 

Jim, I remember watching this Garrison "Equal Time" presentation when it aired.

I was 15.

To me it was shockingly powerful.

I was always interested in current political doings and affairs and social issues on a national level, even from my days as a 12 year old, reading about such things in our school weekly reader ( JFK's Peace Corps, his "New Frontier" enthusiasm regards science and our space program and his youth physical fitness challenging -the 50 mile hike, etc. ) and in our local newspaper every day,  just before I would wrap 100 of them and deliver them throughout our neighborhood.

JFK, and of course beautiful Jackie Kennedy, drew me in with their dynamic more youthful energy and looks, challenging speeches and programs and seemingly progressive stances ( I was a product of welfare poverty and sensed JFK at least had some feeling for us in the lower classes ) as I am sure they did with millions of other young Americans. I was simply inspired with hope by JFK.

I was quite traumatized with JFK's murder ( when I was 12 ) and equally so seeing Oswald whacked by Jack Ruby in a police department building live on national TV 2 days later.

I sensed darkly right away, that we were being kept from the truth of those two events and saw Jim Garrison as something of a courageous lone Knight standing up to what ever forces were perpetrating this truth hiding.

Yes, my faith in and admiration for Garrison came mostly just from my young gut instinct ( wasn't reading much of the early deep JFK research except what was being published in newspapers, magazines and what I saw on TV )  but my whole life I have trusted and used these inner instincts which almost always have turned out to be the right ones as far as guiding me toward the honest and just truth.

Garrison's nationally broadcast rebuttal to NBC was simply mind blowing to most Americans I was sure. Here they were seeing and hearing a man of intellectual and accomplished career standing stature, a vet, former FBI man and the head legal authority of a well known American city,  eloquently telling them that their own government on the highest levels might very possibly be lying to them about the murder of their own president!

I think many Americans hearing Jim Garrison that night were numb with shock and even somewhat shaken, after being presented with such a new and different paradigm of perception ( using the fairy tale analogy  ) that the reality around them in so many important ways, might not be real.

Like tearing down the big show curtain in the Wizard Of Oz...to reveal the great and powerful OZ as just a man - a little man at that.  Someone who has been manipulating them with scary pyrotechnics and fake booming voice authority.

Garrison was better spoken than any other national figure at the time. He really effected people who saw and heard him speak and truly effected the national public consciousness.

I believe that the majority of Americans who heard Jim Garrison speak began to trust him more than anyone else in our highest level government and media. Like me, they sensed this honesty and true patriotic concern sincerity about him.

I think the polls showing a majority of Americans disbelieving the Warren Report for decades were a direct result of Garrison's public efforts ( and of course many top JFK researchers and writers as well.) 

 

Edited November 6, 2017 by Joe Bauer

[James DiEugenio]

I would not doubt that a lot of people really did not know how to take what he was telling them that night.  Because, as you say, it was a pretty much a whole new design of thinking about the subject.

Although a lot of people had read things like Inquest and Rush to Judgment,  the size of a network audience back then was really colossal,  for the simple reason that back then they had no competition with things like cable, and the internet.  So you are talking about an audience of over I would say 15 million, easy.

But I do think that Garrison could have used a couple of more visuals on that.  Although he had CE 399 on the wall, he did not really point it out.  I would have done so, after doing the whole Single Bullet Fantasy demonstration.  Then I would have walked over to CE 399 and brought on say someone like John Nichols or Wecht to comment on how absurd it was that the bullet was still almost intact.

BTW, later on that year, Garrison's Playboy interview came out--which was also arranged by Mort Sahl. Garrison got even more radical after that.  He started calling Kennedy's murder a coup d'etat. Which means an overthrow of the government designed for a rapid, violent change in leadership to impact policy. I think this came about because of that 25 page letter he got from that professor.  Which turned out to be accurate about Indochina.  Recall, this is 23 years before John Newman's book JFK and Vietnam, which itself was perceived as revolutionary.  So that really put the DA out there.

It  turned out he was correct on that also,  But it was not just Vietnam.  It was not until a whole set of newer books came out that we saw how Kennedy had changed policy in several different places in addition to Vietnam e.g. Congo, Indonesia etc.  And then, after he was killed, it reverted back to what it had been--except in some instances even worse, like Dominican Republic.  So, in retrospect, he was correct in calling it a coup.  He was just too far out in front of the wave. But today many critics call it a coup.

And the thing is, before the JFK case, Garrison was not at all an edgy political thinker.  He was really a moderate, who sometimes criticized the ACLU for being too liberal.  But coming at the case from his standpoint, that is a criminal lawyer, it just did not add up.  And that transformed his political thinking in a wider way.  And when he started being savagely attacked, that altered his view of the MSM.

 

Edited November 6, 2017 by James DiEugenio

[James DiEugenio]

BTW, does everyone know that NARA released a ten page CIA document on Garrison with seven pages fully whited out?

 

They are getting really good at this. Now it looks like they just put a blank page in the copier instead of actually lining stuff out.

Did the MSM mention that?

(Sound of crickets in the night)

[Michael Clark]

I get the feeling that history is actively and frantically being destroyed forever.

[James DiEugenio]

Yep, that is a distinct possibility.

And at eighty cents a page, who is going to want to copy a lot of files at NARA.

I mean I thought it was an outrage when they charged a quarter per page.

[Ron Bulman]

1 hour ago, James DiEugenio said:

BTW, does everyone know that NARA released a ten page CIA document on Garrison with seven pages fully whited out?

 

They are getting really good at this. Now it looks like they just put a blank page in the copier instead of actually lining stuff out.

Did the MSM mention that?

(Sound of crickets in the night)

Somewhere in that seven pages it might have had Bush's name.  And he's still alive, thus Tump "can't".

[Rob Couteau]

A quote from the Garrison broadcast: "President Kennedy was assassinated by men who sought to obtain a radical change in our foreign policy." "If the day has come when it is possible to shoot our president down because some men disagree with his foreign policy … then the day has come when we have ceased to be a democracy.” This takes on special import in the context of Jim DiEugenio's masterful work, and in particular his "Destiny Betrayed." Kudos, Jim.

Edited November 6, 2017 by Rob Couteau

[James DiEugenio]

Thanks so much Rob.

Even at that, there have been more updates on that subject since that second edition came out.

This is probably the most important one since  https://kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/hammarskjold-and-kennedy-vs-the-power-elite

I am always struck by Kennedy calling Hammarksjold the greatest statesman of the  20th century.   And then going to the UN to pay tribute to him in order to keep the Congo mission going so the country would stay free and independent of European imperialism. Because a.) we know that LBJ, Nixon and Ike would not have called Dag that, and b.) We also know what Johnson and the CIA did in Congo after:  united with the Belgians, called the leftist elements inspired by China, and sent in jet aircraft flown by Cuban exiles stationed in the American embassy.  That tells you all you need to know about the subject if you ask me.

Again, if anything, Garrison was using understatement.  But he was so far ahead of the pack, that it did not matter.  In the second edition of  Destiny Betrayed,  I tried to show this by pointing out how Thompson criticized Garrison in late 1967 for calling the assassination a coup. But alas, these guys were still trying to prove LHO did not do it, while Garrison had moved on from that.

Edited November 6, 2017 by James DiEugenio

[Rob Couteau]

Jim, Thanks for providing this - it's a great piece. Your web site is a treasure trove, and I've been relying upon it for several years now. What an intriguing Truman quote: "Dag Hammarksjold was on the point of getting something done when they killed him." He may have harbored a similar thought about JFK upon hearing of his death. (Which brings to mind the article Truman published after the assassination, which so angered the devil himself, Dulles.) Is there any info out there about Hammarksjold's autopsy being faked? (I believe they claimed not to have found a bullet hole.) As Richard Case Nagell says of Desmond FitzGerald, "Now there is a corpse that should be exhumed and examined by a qualified pathologist." The way that the MSM is spinning the recently released files and even using them to attack JFK - blaming him for the CIA's shenanigans and ignoring his actual foreign policy - is just further proof of this continual, ongoing conspiracy and CIA control of the media. The articles I'm seeing in places like the Washington Post truly go out of their way to sidestep, distort, conceal, and twist things completely out of proportion. This has to be intentional because it is so artfully done. They are also using the files as the latest form of JFK character assassination. On another but related note: It's interesting that RFK Junior in his recent speech about ISIS not only spoke out against Dulles (hard to imagine contemporary Establishment figures ever even alluding to this) but said, "Beginning during the Eisenhower Administration, Arab sovereignty and the Middle East nations’ Cold War neutrality were perceived as threats to American access to oil." That line really jumped out at me because it is so reminiscent of what you say about how JFK's willingness to work with non-aligned Third-World nations got him into so much trouble and even led to his death.

[James DiEugenio]

IMO, I think JFK told Truman about what he was doing with Dag Hammarskjold.  And I think that is why Truman said what he did, which was really a daring comment.

And I agree, the parallel is Dulles coming to see him to get him to retract his Washington Post editorial.  

I don't know about a faked autopsy in Dag's death, but there were several questionable things about it.  The Susan Williams book is pretty good if you care to read it.

 

Totally agree about how awful the MSM is on the released documents.  Just a joke.  I was on Jesse Ventura's show this morning for a taping and we got more truth out in 15 minutes than these guys did in three weeks. I actuality talked about the documents.

Bobby Kennedy JR's comments show that he is really doing his homework on the subject.  JFK's Mideast policy was a reversal of Dulles/Eisenhower there.  As Robert Rakove shows in his bookend also Philip Muelenhbeck.  And no one knew about it for decades after.

 

[Paul Brancato]

What show does Jesse Ventura do?