Here is a transcript from Jim Garrison's first media interview after the acquittal of Clay Shaw. The highlight of the interview is Garrison inability to explain how he first suspected Clay Shaw conspired to kill JFK: (page 7 of the interview).
Money Quote:
We were disappointed because such hard work had failed to communicate a point to an awful lot of people. On the other hand, I, as a prosecutor, one of my short-comings, I suppose, is I tend to put myself in the position of the defendant perhaps too often, and I was conscious of being able to put myself in Shaw's place and feeling how relieved I would be were I Clay Shaw.
What point had he failed to communicate? I love how Garrison plays the martyr and just how much he cares for defendants like Clay Shaw. This interview was just about ten days after Garrison had indicted Shaw for perjury.
Money Quote:
Well, my answer is that if Mr. Shaw's attorneys are honest, it seems to me that they would have to admit that this was an eminently fair prosecution from the outset. For two years I refused to mention his name except to say that he has to be presumed innocent until he is proven guilty, and I say the same thing about the perjury charge. He has to be presumed innocent. I have said it again and again. We leaned over backwards to have the fairest trial possible.
The fairest trial possible?
And there is no credible evidence that Clay Shaw ever knew Lee Harvey Oswald. When Garrison listed the "new" witnesses he would present at Clay Shaw's perjury trial, the only witnesses who connected Shaw to Oswald were the people from Clinton, Louisiana.
Did Clay Shaw Know Lee Harvey Oswald?
Fred Leemans came up with an unbelievable story but then his conscience hit him.
James DiEugenio not only believes Fred Leemans, he also believes that the CIA assisted in the provision of legal services to various witnesses in the case. The evidence does not back him up.
Vernon Bundy claimed to see Clay Shaw with Lee Harvey Oswald on the shore of Lake Pontchartrain. One problem - his lie detector test showed he was lying. Despite problems with his testimony, Garrison insisted he testify against Clay Shaw. James DiEugenio does not mention Bundy's polygraph.
Money Quote:
Well, we lost the case for two reasons -- should have been one. We lost it because of some bad, in retrospect, some bad technical decisions which I made, and we lost it because of the tremendous difficulty of presenting what was essentially a domestic espionage operation in an Anglo-Saxon courtroom.
A domestic espionage operation?
The problem with an Anglo-Saxon courtroom is that evidence is required.
At the end of page four, Garrison brings up his supposed decision that " ... none of our witnesses who had ever been in trouble before would be used. In retrospect, I would say that this was unfortunate decision because some of these witnesses connected up the plans for the assassination in a rather substantial way and what I did was cut off a piece of our case ..."
This was a theme that Garrison continued with one of his memos to the HSCA. Here is an excerpt from my book, On the Trail of Delusion: (page 279 in the Kindle edition)
Garrison wrote to the HSCA and said he regretted that he had “aristocratically” dismissed a number of credible sources of information because they were too “raffish,” because they were drifters, or because they had criminal records. Now, he felt, they were “giving us the best damned leads we had.” An intelligence agent might well “employ as his extension for leg work someone who, while reasonably competent, has accumulated a ‘record’ suggesting that he is an outright bum.” And so, “a record of arrests—bad checks, vagrancy, theft, et cetera—is made particularly attractive by a short spell at a mental institution.” Garrison’s view was that the agency “taught its operatives how to select competent characters with incompetence written in their records.” His advice for the HSCA: “Don’t let the bad records here and there stampede you.”
Amongst the many leads that Garrison submitted to the HSCA were several people still in prison.
Things did not change immediately after the assassination. Johnson released NSAM 273 on November 26, 1963 and it was only slightly changed from what Kennedy had agreed to.
Here is an excerpt from my book, Oliver Stone's Film-Flam: The Demagogue of Dealey Plaza: (pages 592 - 593 of the Kindle edition)
JFK: Destiny Betrayed [Oliver Stone's so-called documentary series] makes the claim that NSAM 273, drafted two days before Kennedy was killed but released after the assassination, made a big change in American foreign policy. However, it was virtually identical to NSAM 263 and had the same commitment to the one-thousand-troop withdrawal. The only change was in article 7 pertaining to military action against North Vietnam. Fredrick Logevall called the differences “insignificant” as the United States was already directing covert military action against the North. Stanley Karnow, one of the foremost historians of the Vietnam war, said that NSAM 273 “perpetuated the Kennedy policy.”
Even Robert McNamara agreed and wrote in his book In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam that NSAM 273 “made clear that Johnson’s policy remained the same as Kennedy’s: ‘To assist the people and Government of South Vietnam to win their contest against the externally directed and supported Communist conspiracy’ through training support and without the application of overt U.S. military force.”
This is the most important part of the interview. Gifford asks Garrison "what started you after Clay Shaw in the first place?" And Garrison just goes off tangent discussing David Ferrie.
And, of course, Ferrie's trip to Houston and Galveston was not really suspicious at all.
David Ferrie, Al Beauboeuf, and Mel Coffey went to Texas to go ice-skating and for Ferrie to conduct some business.
Garrison connects their trip with Breck Wall, a Las Vegas entertainer.
Garrison gets it all wrong about their trip.
Al Beauboeuf was an avid hunter and he had previously gone duck hunting with David Ferrie. They didn't take guns with them on this trip because they thought they could borrow some from Beauboeuf's family who they were going to visit. In the end, they didn't visit his family and they didn't go duck hunting.
Aaron Kohn, managing director of the Metropolitan Crime Commission of New Orleans, offered his own commentary on this interview:
Money Quote:
It is also noteworthy that although Alec Gifford repeatedly tried to pin him down to identifying Clay Shaw with his claim of an assassination conspiracy, that even at this late date Garrison reached out to blame the CIA and ex-President Lyndon B. Johnson. Garrison seemed to have no ability to realize that his absorption in the concept of Federal conspiracy was not in any way being connected with the man whom he criminally charged.