False Witness

by Patricia Lambert

  The committee’s senior staff writer was Richard Billings, formerly with Life, who arranged that magazine’s “secret deal” with Garrison. According to David Chandler, Billings continued to support Garrison after management at Life began “to pull the plug.” In 1968 he tried to reestablish a relationship with Garrison. In a letter that said he believed in Garrison’s efforts regarding the assassination, Billings asked Garrison for a meeting. But Garrison, unhappy about some articles Billings had written, harshly rejected him. Nevertheless, in 1969 Billings refused a request from Shaw’s attorney to testify at the trial.36

  The report Billings helped Chief Counsel G. Robert Blakey construct gave a qualified and reluctant nod of approval to Garrison’s wild romp across the nation’s consciousness a decade earlier.* But most of us who were following the case paid scant attention to the committee’s half-hearted embrace of Jim Garrison. We were focused on the bigger picture—the committee’s televised hearings and Blakey’s momentous pronouncement that the assassination was probably the “result of a conspiracy.”† Yet the country gained little practical benefit from all that, for the Justice Department declined to investigate. The media, the government and the nation moved on to other matters.

  In the long run, the committee bequeathed a mixed legacy. Worst of all, it bestowed some credibility on Garrison’s investigation. By endorsing his discredited ideas about Oswald and Ferrie, the committee breathed life into him. No one could have realized that all those years ago or foreseen the consequences. But today, it’s clear that when the committee endorsed the Clinton witnesses, it set the stage for Jim Garrison’s fourth resurrection, the most amazing of all.

  The phoenix was again in motion.

  In more ways than one. For he had turned into an author. Few noticed, however, until 1988, when Sheridan Square Press published what may be the strangest memoir in all of American letters, Garrison’s rendition of his case against Clay Shaw.

  * In the summer of 1963, as the civil rights movement was just beginning to wrench the South, Clinton was targeted by CORE for a voter-registration drive. It was in the midst of that tumult that Oswald allegedly arrived and was observed and remembered by six people. Four of those in warring camps that summer (Manchester and Palmer on one side, Collins and Dunn the other) presented a strangely united front six years later, testifying for Garrison.

  * Garrison’s battles with Washington and his anti-U.S. government pronouncements earned him strong support in these quarters (see note 28). Ironically, blacks, too, were supportive of him because of their devotion to Jack Kennedy and their perception of Garrison as his champion. A political source in Baton Rouge back then told one reporter that Garrison’s JFK investigation was part of a larger political scheme, involving Senator Long, and apparently spawned by the civil-rights struggle. Reportedly, the plan called for Garrison to run for the Vice-Presidency on a ticket with Alabama Governor George Wallace as the Presidential candidate (Fred Powledge, “Is Garrison Faking?” The New Republic, June 17, 1967).

  * Several Clinton residents stated this, among them a doctor at the hospital, former Clinton District Attorney Richard Kilbourne, and former hospital personnel chief Aline Woodside.

  * Almost two years later, I found traces of her in Garrison’s old office files: a folder containing expense receipts, a 1968 newspaper clipping referring to her work for Garrison, and three documents that mention her.

  † Prior to her assignment with Garrison’s office, Dischler had worked for various state agencies, sometimes undercover. She was once temporarily commissioned a deputy sheriff for a narcotics investigation; another assignment involved state corruption. At one time she was the only undercover agent paid by the Louisiana State Department of Revenue. Later she was transferred to the Louisiana State Sovereignty Commission.

  ‡ She left investigative work not long after the Garrison assignment and served twelve years in a prison ministry, working some of the toughest institutions in the country—Angola for one. Married to Donald Dischler since she was in her teens, she has raised seven children and in 1994 had twenty-seven grandchildren. In addition to her ministry, she owns and operates a retail fabric store, is an expert seamstress, bakes her own bread, and can shoot with the best of them.

  * This suggests that the claims that Garrison used manufactured documents and photographs may have been true (Gurvich Conference, p. 16 [quoting Perry Russo]; Posner, Case Closed, p. 435 [quoting Gordon Novel]).

  * McGehee (who took office in 1979—long after the federal Voting Rights Act of 1965 drastically altered registration procedures) said that nowadays a registrant signs only an application and he believed the same was true in 1963. But three lifelong residents of the area, who registered before 1965, recently recalled signing such a book. One of them, Mildred Matthews, a retired black school teacher, even remembered Palmer saying to her, “You passed [the test], you can sign the book. I’ll send your voting [authorization] card later.” Palmer apparently used the register as a mailing list. (McGehee, interview with author, Dec. 6, 1993, and telephone conversation, June 21, 1996; Woodrow Wilson and Mrs. Wilson, and Mildred Matthews, telephone conversations with author, June 27, 1996.)

  * Shaw’s long-time friend Jeff Biddison owned a late-model black Cadillac, which Shaw, on one occasion in 1966, had borrowed to visit his father, who lived near Clinton.

  † Andrew Sciambra would later report that Collins said he remembered the black car because it was “the only black strange car” he saw in Clinton that summer (Sciambra, Memorandum to Jim Garrison, Jan. 31, 1968, regarding Clinton, Louisiana).

  ‡ “Zip” Morgan (who was fortyish, short, with graying wavy hair and a full face) didn’t resemble Oswald either.

  § Palmer testified that Morgan and Oswald were in the same registration line but were not together. Yet in his earliest (May 29, 1967) signed statement, Palmer said that Morgan and Oswald were together. Other early reports confirm that: An undated summary of the Clinton testimony, found in Garrison’s old files, states that Oswald was in line “in company of white man Estus Morgan”; and on May 23, 1967, Richard Billings wrote in his notes that two men exited from the car, joined the line, and tried to register. One of them appeared to be Oswald; the other man was identified as Estus Morgan. That was the original pretrial story, and the reason Frugé and Dischler were showing people a picture of Estus Morgan.

  * Morgan was successful in being rehired at the hospital and was working there when he was killed in 1966 (Eleanore Morgan, interview with Andrew Sciambra, Jan. 3, 1968; regarding Morgan’s death, see Hammond Daily Star, Sept. 19, 1966, and the Ponchatoula Enterprise, Sept. 23, 1966).

  † Collins told Fruge and Dischler that the driver was a large man wearing a hat and tie (Dischler Notes, Oct. 3, 1967).

  ‡ Efforts to locate and interview Collins for this book were unsuccessful.

  * In his first interview, William Dunn identified one of the men sitting in the front seat of the Cadillac as “Thomas Edward Beckham,” a David Ferrie associate who does not appear in Dunn’s trial testimony, or anyone else’s (Frank Ruiz and Kent Simms, Memorandum to Louis Ivon, dated Jan. 31, 1968, re Interview of William Dunn, Jan. 17, 1968).

  † Oswald’s alleged appearance at East Louisiana State Hospital is equally suspect (see note 30).

  * Select Committee Report, p. 145 (emphasis added).

  † For additional discussion of Oswald and Camp Street, see Appendix A, item 10.

  * Garrison himself had helped his cause along by turning over material to the committee, granting interviews, and winning converts among its staff.

  * Of course, the committee’s focus on organized crime differed drastically from Garrison’s position—the Mafia being the only group he ever specifically absolved of involvement in the assassination. As Rosemary James wrote, “Garrison always refused to investigate any leads that pointed in [the direction of the Mafia]. Reporters who made such suggestions were threatened personally with grand jury inquisition and indictment. It makes you
wonder what Garrison and his acolytes then and now really are about. Creating smoke screens, perhaps?” (James, “Letters,” the New Orleans Times Picayune, June 20, 1991.)

  † The Committee endorsed the Warren Commission’s single-bullet theory and concluded that Oswald fired three shots: the first missed, the second passed through the president’s throat and went on to wound Governor Connally, and the third struck the president in the head. But based on acoustical evidence indicating a missed shot was fired from the front, the committee also concluded that a second gun was involved.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  ON THE TRAIL OF THE ASSASSINS

  Every word she writes is a lie, including “a” and “the.”

  —Mary McCarthy (concerning

  Lillian Hellman)

  Having lived through The Jim Garrison Era, I felt no urge to read On the Trail of the Assassins: My Investigation and Prosecution of the Murder of President Kennedy, his book about it,* until I began researching the case in 1993. When I finally sat down with it, I was expecting a biased account, but was unprepared for what I found. Wherever reality failed to suit his needs, Garrison simply changed it.

  He handled Perry Russo’s lie-detector tests in a typical fashion. Early in his investigation, Garrison twice ordered Perry Russo to undergo polygraph examinations, which he failed to pass. One was administered by Jefferson Parish Deputy Sheriff Roy Jacob, the other by New Orleans Police Department polygraph technician Edward O’Donnell.1 Both set off fireworks in Garrison’s office. So it was surprising to find Garrison saying in his memoir that he had considered using a lie-detector test on Russo but “rejected the idea.”2 Twenty-one years earlier, in Playboy magazine, Garrison said Russo passed his polygraph.3 Perhaps Garrison thought denying the tests occurred might discourage researchers from probing the subject. Experts might debate the meaning of Russo’s two unsuccessful lie-detector tests. But the record is unequivocal that they took place.†

  Garrison was just as misleading about Vernon Bundy, the drug addict who failed his test an hour or so before he testified at the preliminary hearing. In that same Playboy article, Garrison said Bundy, too, had passed his polygraph.4 In his book, however, Garrison didn’t mention the test. He claimed that Bundy was interrogated until they were convinced of his truthfulness.5 Actually, Garrison barely had time to hear Bundy’s story and have him tested before he took the witness stand, and no one thought he was telling the truth, including Garrison. Quite the contrary. But in his memoir, he told a different story.

  Erasing history is not that easy though. James Kruebbe still remembers the polygraph and the discussion afterwards between Garrison and his assistants, and described both to me. Kruebbe’s two-page Work Report about the incident still exists. Edward O’Donnell, who also was present during the quarrel in Garrison’s office, testified at the Christenberry hearing and put into the record his personal recollection of Garrison’s statement: “I don’t care if [Bundy] is lying or not. We are not telling him to lie. We are going to use him.” When Garrison took the witness stand in that same courtroom and was asked under oath if he had said that, he didn’t deny it. He refused to answer.6

  Garrison also dissembled in his book about the Beaubouef bribery tape. This was the secretly recorded conversation in which a Garrison investigator, with Garrison’s authorization, offered Alvin Beaubouef 3,000 and a job with an airline in return for incriminating testimony against David Ferrie. Beaubouef, his attorneys, Garrison’s aides, a member of the New Orleans Police Department, and others created a vast paper trail that tracked this episode. The court reporter who typed a transcript of the recording* verified it in federal court. Garrison’s two investigators admitted to a deputy superintendent of police that they offered Beaubouef the money. And that same deputy superintendent listened to the recording and mentioned that in his official report.7

  Yet Garrison said in his book that Beaubouef admitted the bribe was never offered, and Garrison declared flatly that the recording never existed. As Garrison well knew, both occurred, and he also knew the Police Department’s investigation confirmed that. The conversation did take place, the offer was made, and it was recorded. Again, the evidence is unequivocal.8

  The evidence is also unequivocal about the events of February 18, 1967. That was the day the Times-Picayune printed David Ferrie’s candid interview on its front page and an unflattering editorial about Garrison in the back. Writing about that Saturday in his book, Garrison described himself in the presence of two aides reading the editorial. Though outraged by it, he spoke not a word. Instead, he vented his anger by bending a pen from his desk set “into a perfect ‘U.’ ” Then, he wrote, he told his secretary to send the clamoring press away. He would not be seeing them today. He was going home to work. After stuffing his briefcase with books, he exited by way of his private elevator, thus avoiding the reporters entirely.9

  That’s what Garrison should have done. But it isn’t what he did. Late that day he held a press conference and issued the first of his public declarations about his Kennedy investigation. (Described in chapter 5.) In that first encounter with the press, Garrison forged his future course. Afterwards, there was no way he could retreat, no way he could withdraw what he had said. But more than two decades later in this memoir, he rid himself of those impulsive statements by deleting the troublesome press conference from his story. In its place he created the office scene and a more fitting self-portrait: the beleaguered D.A. victimized by an irresponsible press, a stoic bender-of-pens who withdrew to the sanctuary of his home with his books to work. Unfortunately for Garrison, the reporters present that Saturday wrote about the press conference in the stories they filed.10

  As in life, Clay Shaw bears the brunt of this revisionist history. Garrison never had a substantive case against Shaw supported by legitimate evidence. That’s why the jury acquitted him in fifty-four minutes. Shaw himself described the case well when he referred to it as “strange and obscure” and “Jerry built.” Garrison camouflaged all that in his book by invoking the CIA like a mantra. He portrayed Shaw as a major player in high-level CIA circles, but never acknowledged the disreputable nature of the source of his information for that claim. It came from an Italian Communist Party newspaper well-known for its anti-American, pro-Soviet bloc articles that were often entirely false. In this instance, the writers apparently were prompted by the publicity attending Clay Shaw’s arrest and the opportunity it afforded. A later article in the same newspaper claimed Shaw was responsible for organizing President Kennedy’s trip to Texas. That was too outrageous even for Garrison to embrace.11

  Clay Shaw at one time did provide routine information to the CIA’s Domestic Contact Service, as did thousands of Americans traveling abroad in those Cold War years.12 One of Garrison’s own financial backers and a founding member of Truth and Consequences, Cecil Maxwell Shilstone, was named in a CIA report as possibly being such a contact.13 If the CIA had not approached Shaw for help, it would have been unusual, given his position with the International Trade Mart. That did not make him, as Garrison claimed, “an employee” of that agency, big time or otherwise, nor did it make him a conspirator, any more than it did the thousands of other loyal Americans who aided it. But even if Shaw were a CIA employee, he would have assisted that agency out of the same patriotic feelings most Americans share. Garrison never allowed for that possibility.

  Shaw could have cleared this matter up at his trial and it is regrettable that he didn’t. When his attorney asked if he had ever worked for the CIA, if Shaw had simply replied, “No, but I have provided that agency with information from time to time,” the subject would today be a dead issue. But reportedly, the decision-makers at the CIA wanted Shaw’s association with it kept secret, fearing Garrison would misinterpret it. A late-sixties CIA report states flatly, “We have never renumerated [Shaw].”14

  Still, the full extent of his association with the agency is for now unclear. Clouding the issue is a CIA project from the 1960s known as QK/ENCHANT. The CI
A apparently approved Shaw (perhaps without his knowledge) for this project,* which, by one unofficial account, was nothing more than a program for routine debriefing of individuals involved in international trade. At this point, what QK/ENCHANT actually was, whether or not it ever came to fruition, and what, if anything, Shaw knew about it, also remain unknown. But Shaw’s work for the CIA, whatever it was, is irrelevant. Since Garrison never connected him to the assassination, linking him to the CIA meant nothing thirty years ago, and it means nothing today.

  Shaw isn’t the only one Garrison maligned in his book. Based solely on memory, he reported dialogue, more than two decades old, which supposedly laid the bedrock for his investigation. In the most important of these reconstructed conversations, Garrison described Dean Andrews implicitly admitting to him that Shaw was Bertrand.15 Yet if Andrews had, Garrison would have used that against him at the time with the press, the grand jury, and in the courtroom. He would not have waited twenty-one years to reveal Andrews’s confession in his book. Garrison waited because until Andrews’s death in 1981 he couldn’t put those words into Andrews’s mouth without being publicly contradicted by him.