This section of Zion's book appeared in an opinion piece in the New York Times right after the acquittal of Clay. Shaw.
Money Quote:
This is not to suggest that the plot theorists will close up shop, for they are missionaries with all that the word implies in terms of resiliency. It is not too much to expect that the world will soon be treated to a revisionist treatise or two on the Clay Shaw trial if not Mr. Garrison himself. Indeed, one young man was heard to surmise yesterday that it was "conceivable" that Jim Garrison was actually a C.I.A. agent since why else would he have put on such a shoddy case.
And of course, we ended up with Oliver Stone's polemic JFK, the ultimate in revisionist history.
And then we got several revisionist histories of the Garrison debacle including Destiny Betrayed by James DiEugenio and A Farewell to Justice by Joan Mellen.
Here is another relevant blog post:
Garrison was actually a defense attorney for Gordon Novel, a man he accused of working for the CIA.
Money Quote:
Going in, I was hip that Mr. Garrison was a spellbinder. Everybody who had been down to talk with him -- and just about every major columnist and reporter had -- came away mesmerized. Max Lerner said that it took him weeks to shake off the spell.
But even knowing that, I practically had to be hosed down after three hours with the amazing District Attorney of New Orleans parish. Wow! As my man cousin Joe, the great Vieux Carré blues singer would say, he had an "Elgin movement would make a rabbit hug a hound."
Previous Relevant Blog Posts
Lerner discusses Edward Jay Epstein's book on Garrison.
An important Max Lerner opinion piece.
Zion then goes into the origins of the Vietnam War:
Money Quote:
And give us a break that the money men had him whacked because they needed the war to fill their pockets. Those guys, said to be the "permanent government," are either in jail today or in bankruptcy court. The Soviet Union is dead, but Karl Marx lives in Oliver Stone.
One thing that the "JFK Cult" misses is that whatever JFK's feelings were about peace and detente, it takes two to tango. The Soviet Union was intent on fostering revolution, and the North Vietnamese were intent on taking all of Vietnam. Their visions of the world were diametrically opposed to that of JFK.
Here is a short excerpt from my book, Oliver Stone's Film-Flam: The Demagogue of Dealey Plaza: (pages 596 - 597 in the Kindle edition)
[Fredrik] Logevall notes that “the Vietnam problem that he [JFK] left behind that day was much larger than the one he inherited.”
Professors Lawrence Bassett and Stephen Pelz elaborate on the problems awaiting Lyndon Johnson:
In any case, by late 1963 Kennedy had radically expanded the American commitment to Vietnam. By putting advisors in harm’s way and allowing the press to chronicle their tribulations and casualties, he helped to engage American patriotism in a war against the Vietnamese people. By arguing that Vietnam was a test of American credibility in the Cold War, he raised the costs of withdrawal for his successor. By launching a strategic hamlet program, he further disrupted peasant society. By allowing Harkins and the ARVN to bomb, shell, search, and destroy, he made so many recruits for the NLF that he encouraged North Vietnam and the NLF to move the war into its final military phase. By participating in Diem’s removal, he brought warlords politics to Saigon. By downplaying publicly the American role in Vietnam, he discouraged a constitutional debate about the commitment of American advisors to battle. By publicly and privately committing the United States to the survival of an anti-Communist state in South Vietnam, he made it much more difficult for his successors to blame the South Vietnamese government for its own failures and to withdraw. And by insisting that military victory was the only acceptable outcome, he ignored the possibility that negotiations might lead to an acceptable process of retreat. Kennedy bequeathed to Lyndon B. Johnson a failing counterinsurgency program and a deepened commitment to the war in South Vietnam.
JFK was facing quite the mess in Vietnam when he was assassinated. The truth is that we don’t know what he would have done had he not been killed.
Sidney Zion referenced a portrait of Hitler on the wall of Perry Russo's apartment. I found this excerpt from James Kirkwood's book, American Grotesque: (page 625)
(page 630)
