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Writer's pictureFred Litwin

Jim Garrison Tries to Pull a Fast One On the HSCA

Updated: Oct 9, 2021

On August 16, 1977, JIm Garrison sent a memo to HSCA investigator Jonathan Blackmer about statements of Perry Russo while under hypnosis. Here is the memo:

Perry Russo had continually given Garrison and his staff a description of Oswald that did not match reality. Russo kept describing Oswald as having a beard and as being somewhat dirty - when, in fact, Oswald was clean-shaven, and had good personal hygiene.


Now, Garrison has a new explanation for why Russo had gotten Oswald's physical characteristics so wrong. This must have been "someone other than the real Oswald, who was patently the patsy of the whole affair." He wrote that "it looks like we are dealing with an alternate Oswald" and that we might have "a slightly erroneous game card in our hand."


Rereading the transcripts, Garrison felt that Clay Shaw was not a "mere" coconspirator but someone "bringing down 'the word,' as it were, to men of lesser rank and status in the affair - bringing it down somewhat reluctantly because it forces him to associate too long and too openly with characters who are too common and noisy for him to associate with comfortably." In fact, he was of the opinion that this was only "a segment of the conspiracy" in which Shaw was just the "emissary of elements functioning at a higher level in the operation."


Was Garrison on drugs?


Garrison also tried to pull a fast one on the Committee. He claimed that the two transcripts were from one long hypnosis session with a break between the two. So he reversed the chronology by putting the second session first, lessening the appearance of Russo being led by the hypnotist, Dr. Fatter.


Here's the last part of his memo:

Here is first page of the first hypnosis session. Garrison marks this as B, and he marked the first page of the second session as A.

But there are internal markers in the two transcripts that prove they came from two different sessions and provide clues as to their dates. You can read more about this here.


In the first session, it was the hypnotist who first mentions assassination:


Garrison wanted the HSCA to think the leading question above came later, after Russo had talked about Kennedy being killed.

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