False Witness

by Patricia Lambert

  Yet Garrison seemed convinced by what he found, which prompts the question that continually arises. What was wrong with the man? By one account, he was “a frustrated writer” of short stories that were repeatedly rejected by various magazines, which left him feeling “disappointed.”* Apparently, his chosen profession didn’t bring him contentment either. He talked about that one day to his aides and staffer Tom Bethell recorded what he said in his diary. Garrison explained that in law school he learned any case could be argued either way, depending on the precedents one selects. Determining the truth, therefore, had practically no bearing on the law. Once he saw that, Garrison said, the law no longer interested him.8

  This indifference to the law Garrison expressed repeatedly in his actions during his Kennedy investigation. He put Vernon Bundy and Charles Spiesel on the witness stand knowing one was a liar and the other unbalanced. Garrison welcomed whatever might help that came his way. Jack Martin was an alcoholic with a criminal past and psychological problems severe enough to land him in a mental ward at least once. He was well-known for inventing information. One Garrison aide said Martin was “absolutely crazy.” Another referred to him as a “sack of roaches.” Richard Billings didn’t trust him. And Garrison, himself, admitted that Martin often lied.9 Yet, for at least a year, Martin had Garrison’s ear, was part of his team, and Garrison gave him “expense” money—because Martin’s stories were useful.10† Pershing Gervais said that Garrison was never interested in what was right or wrong—he was only interested in what worked.

  Sometimes that meant breaking the law. Garrison’s ordering William Gurvich to arrest and beat up two troublesome newsmen is a minor example. To keep his star witness Perry Russo happy, Garrison had a false criminal charge lodged against one of Russo’s friends so the young man could evade the draft. Later the charge was dropped.11 In one telling moment, Garrison even claimed that Judge Haggerty’s order prohibiting public statements on the case didn’t apply to him. “The district attorney,” Garrison said, “can make any statements he wishes.”12

  If the law didn’t interest Garrison, politics did. He told Pershing Gervais his Kennedy investigation would put him in the White House. To others he spoke of a seat in the U.S. Senate or the governor’s mansion. Though he pretended to be a reluctant celebrity, shortly after his Kennedy investigation became a news story, above the door leading into the district attorney’s office, he had his name installed in three-inch-high gold letters.13 Kevin Costner’s Garrison would never have done that. He wanted only to catch the president’s killers and keep his family together.

  Stone created a Garrison household in which the wife is the heavy. She nags him for neglecting her and the children, criticizes his obsession with the Kennedy assassination, suggesting it’s beyond his jurisdiction. She even has a kind word for Clay Shaw and his contribution to the city. Finally, she threatens to leave. Stone began most of the home scenes at the dining table. At one point, he shows Costner engagingly feeding the family dog food from his own plate off his own spoon. Costner clearly loves and worries about his wife and children, to say nothing of the dog. Stone conjured up a cotton candy Hollywood image that is picture perfect.

  In reality, Garrison’s mistreatment of his wife was no secret. Two public incidents occurred at Brennan’s restaurant. In the better known of these, Garrison grew progressively more drunk and abusive as the evening wore on and eventually threw a glass of wine in her face, then stormed out. As he was leaving, he passed Clay Shaw, seated at an adjacent table, and a witness to the incident.* Reportedly, this was not an isolated episode; Garrison’s mistreatment of her was said to involve bodily injury, and was serious.14 We cannot imagine Costner’s Garrison behaving that way. But in real life, spousal abuse was only part of it.

  When he was at the pinnacle of his popularity and notoriety, Garrison remarked on the forces out to sabotage his investigation. The next charge he expected from them, he said, was that he engaged in “child molesting.”15 Garrison probably was launching a preemptive strike with that remark. He undoubtedly had reason to fear that such a charge might occur. The wall of secrecy that shielded the dark side of Garrison’s personal life cracked in 1969 in the aftermath of just such an act involving a thirteen-year-old boy. The boy’s family wanted to file charges but were warned that Garrison was unpredictable and would be an extremely dangerous adversary. Aaron Kohn urged the family to prosecute. But concern about the boy’s welfare and even his safety outweighed all else, and they took no action. Kohn then gave the information to the grand jury and someone leaked the story to columnist Jack Anderson. The grand jury foreman, William J. Krummel, Sr., confirmed off the record to Anderson that they were looking into it. But, Krummel said, “I’m afraid that if I say so [in public], they’ll want to throw me in jail.”16 Krummel declined to be interviewed for this book; so what occurred in the grand jury’s investigation is unknown. The family wisely decided to protect the boy and the grand jury could have done little without their assistance.

  Jack Anderson personally spoke to the boy’s father, described in the column Anderson wrote as “a prominent member of the New Orleans ‘establishment.’ ” Anderson also spoke to two other family members, one of whom Anderson said “is one of the most respected men in the South.” Anderson’s column, long the most infamous unexplored landmark in Garrison’s background, gave only a bare-bones account of what occurred. The grand jury was investigating a charge, Anderson reported, that “on a Sunday in June, 1969,” Garrison had “fondled” a thirteen-year-old boy in the New Orleans Athletic Club.17 * But Anderson wrote nothing more about it, and Garrison supporters have long claimed that the story was merely an effort to smear him. Yet some in New Orleans who know the family involved have insisted over the years that the episode occurred. An author of a recent book on the case verified the story with a family member. Until now, however, no one has heard from the victim.

  In September 1993 I contacted one of his relatives and he confirmed the incident. But he discouraged the idea of an interview with either the victim or his older brother who had been present when it happened. Eventually, though, after a pledge of anonymity, both men agreed to be interviewed. I first spoke by telephone to the victim, then a thirty-seven-year-old professional man. Two days later I met with his older brother in his office. Both told the same story from different perspectives.

  “It was a family ritual,” the older brother said, explaining why the two boys and their father were at the New Orleans Athletic Club that day. They were not members but a relative was and he had been inviting them on Sundays since their early childhood. Occasionally, a friend would accompany them, but on this particular Sunday it was only the father and two of his sons. The three were alone in the swimming pool area when Garrison approached them.* The father was lying on a leather-covered bed and the two boys were in the shallow end of the marble pool. “I remember Garrison walking into the pool area and there was no one else there but us,” the older brother recalled. “He proceeded to lie down next to my father.” The younger brother also recalled Garrison and his father, whom he described as “very social,” talking and how “nice and polite” the conversation was.

  Then “after a while,” the older brother said, “my dad came to me and said ‘Jim Garrison has invited us up to the Slumber Room to take a nap.’ I thought that was like torture because I don’t sleep in the day.” His younger brother had a similar reaction. “I don’t want to go up there,” he recalled, “I’m thirteen years old. I don’t want to take a nap, you know, it’s Sunday morning.” But the father said, “No, we ought to go, he’s talking about the Kennedy assassination and we might find out something.”

  So they accompanied Garrison to the Slumber Room. “There was a strict protocol in this club,” the older brother said. “And we were now Garrison’s guests. Garrison was now running the show. He was in control. We had never been privy to this area before. Here’s this big star and now we were going into the secret place in the club.” The room resemb
led a “dormitory bunk room,” he said. It was rectangular with an aisle down the middle and along the wall on either side a row of beds. On each were two sheets. Both men spoke about how dark it was. “You shut the door,” the older brother stated, “and it was black.” The younger brother remembered, “It was very very dark because it has no windows.” He also recalled the air conditioner was on and “it was freezing cold.” Standing at the door, Garrison said, “Everybody get into bed and I’m going to turn off the light.” They all got into a bed. “I don’t know where everyone was,” the older brother said, “except that I was closest to the door and everyone else was deeper into the room.” The younger brother remembered taking “a cot way to the back.” Garrison took the one next to him. The father and older brother were on the other side of the room. The younger brother described what occurred.

  I don’t know if Garrison set it up that way or not. Because all he had to do was sit on the edge of his bed, reach across, which he did you know, and lift the blanket. When Garrison first did it—my eyes were not adjusted to the dark and I saw, I could just make out the image of somebody. And it was . . . when somebody just lifts up a blanket and sticks their hand under there—and he didn’t really grab. He just fondled a bit and then he sat back down and I jumped up and I went over to my brother and said, “[name deleted], are you playing a joke on me?” You know—a brother. I mean, I didn’t know what was going on. I was oblivious anyway. And [his brother] said, “[name deleted], go back to bed. Daddy’s going to be really mad at you if you cause any trouble in here.” So I went back. He thought I was just being a little kid, you know. So then when [Garrison] did it again and I could tell who it was . . . then I went back to my brother and told him and he said, “Get the hell out of here.”

  The older brother went to his father and told him that they had “to leave right now.” His father, unaware of anything out of the ordinary, objected at first but when his son again urged him to leave he realized something was wrong. The older brother then left the room and got dressed, which the younger brother had done already. A few minutes later, their father came out. “I told him what happened,” the older brother recalled, “and he was visibly shaken.” The father’s clothes were in a different location and he left to get dressed. While the father was gone, Garrison came out. The older brother described his reaction.

  I walked up to him and I said, “You son of a bitch, you pervert, you queer.” I was livid. I couldn’t believe this guy tried to molest my little brother. I was really into Garrison’s face. I was really threatening him. I was enraged. I may have put my hands on him. I know I scared him because he said, “You’re assaulting me and I’m going to have to defend myself.” And he went back toward his locker and I remember I could see in his locker there was a gun hanging in there—like a 38 snub nose revolver—hanging in a shoulder holster on a hook in his locker. At that point I became very concerned that Garrison was going to shoot me and I remember seeing, to my surprise, that there was another man who witnessed this. A man in his sixties, by the lavatories. I remember thinking, oh good, there’s a witness to this, but he left the area because he didn’t want to get involved. By this time my father had gotten dressed and sort of caught me at the tail end of this altercation. He was five-feet-ten-inches and I vividly remember him walking up to Garrison and he took his finger and he started poking him in the stomach and he said, “You fooled with the wrong people this time. You’re not going to get away with this.” Garrison said, “You’re crazy. I don’t know what you’re talking about.” And he said something to the effect that “I’m going to have your son arrested for assaulting me.” At that time we left. We went home.

  The phone began “ringing off the hook” as soon as they arrived home. The word already had spread. “It was a Sunday and Sundays were a festive time in our home,” the older brother said. “My mother cooked dinner and we had friends over and we’d all go to church. I remember this electrical atmosphere in the house that Sunday because of this stuff going on.” The first caller was Aaron Kohn, who had heard about what had happened. “You have to pursue this,” Kohn said. “Your son must testify. This man has got to be stopped.”The father called a relative, a local attorney, who advised against taking any action. He thought “terrible harm” would come to the boy and that the family “would never prove anything.” A great deal of discussion ensued. The family was “warned” about the boy’s safety. And the possibility of his being “kidnapped from school.” Everyone, the brothers were told, “had to keep an eye on him until this thing calmed down.”

  As I sat in the pleasant suburban office listening to this twenty-seven-year-old story, the barely concealed outrage of this obviously compassionate and successful man was apparent. But it wasn’t until he described what they next heard that I glimpsed the depth of the fear this family had suffered. “They are going to bury the ax, and they are going to bury it last, someone had warned them, and it is going to be in [my brother’s] back. I remember my father telling us this,” the older brother said, “and that is why we would have to be very careful.” The younger brother remembers the precautions that were taken. He had to be “at a certain spot” at the end of the school day, where he was picked up. “They thought something was going to happen to me,” he said. “I went to see the Kevin Costner movie—which made me sick, to glorify him like that. I saw Stone in the Napoleon House [cafe] one day—I wanted to tell him about this. But it’s so awkward.”18

  What Garrison did in the Slumber Room that day may have been the tip of the iceberg. David Chandler, speaking from what he twice described as “firsthand knowledge,” said Garrison was “basically a pedophile.” That didn’t necessarily mean he avoided older partners but, according to Chandler, Garrison preferred very young ones. His “overt preference,” was adolescent girls, “around sixteen and younger,” Chandler said. While he had no firsthand knowledge of “the boys,” Chandler stated that he believed Garrison was “indifferent” to gender, that he didn’t care “whether it was a boy or a girl.” He wanted them “inexperienced and compliant” so he could be “the teacher.” Garrison, Chandler said, had to be “in control.”19 Why Garrison would make such a move with other family members present in the same room is an unresolved question. Chandler thought Garrison might have been drunk when he did it. Nothing indicates that, however, and the victim rejected the idea. “I don’t think it was alcohol,” he said. “I think it was more like pills. That’s just my opinion. I mean I was just a little bitty kid but [after they left the Slumber Room] he looked like somebody who was on drugs not alcohol.20 He had that glazed kind of look on his eyes. I mean, he looked like a real lunatic.”

  A psychologist I spoke with (one of several mental health professionals consulted) suggested that the risk involved may have been part of the attraction. Or maybe Garrison simply felt safe in the dark. He was on extremely familiar turf at the New Orleans Athletic Club. He had made it his second office. He relaxed there. He held meetings there. He worked there. He ate there. He may have felt he could do anything he wished there. He was, after all, the district attorney, and Garrison clearly felt he was above the law. A well-known psychiatrist attributed it to that—Garrison’s sense of his own power. He was accustomed to having his way and to being protected. If he had gotten away with something like this in the Slumber Room in the past and expected to get away with it again, he was right.

  The older brother said that he is “still angry about what happened.” Another family member, who wasn’t at the Club that day but experienced the tumult that followed, as everyone in this family did, spoke with intensity about Garrison, calling him “a psychotic Darth Vader.” Whether or not the boy actually was in physical danger, as the family believed he was, is a question no one can answer. But if the family had taken action, Garrison certainly would have gone on the offensive. Most likely he would have issued some outrageous countercharge. This family was in a no-win situation and the psychologists and psychiatrists I spoke to agreed that the family ch
ose the correct course.* But the family members paid a price for permitting it to be swept under the rug. They seem a proud, close clan with considerable standing in the community. Yet they were forced to accept in silence this indignity. At the very least, that left behind feelings of powerlessness, especially for the men. By speaking out today, they are correcting in some small measure the wrong that was done to them. In setting that record straight, they also have exposed long-rumored and telling facets of Garrison’s make-up.

  For the Slumber Room episode means that Garrison had a homosexual side, as the psychiatrist mentioned earlier pointed out. Additional support for this comes from the State Attorney General’s chief investigator, Frank W. Manning, who conducted a secret investigation of Garrison’s office during his first term. Manning later told the FBI, in the words of the agent he spoke to, “[that] Garrison himself might be a sex deviate or at least he is a participant in some deviate activities with other homosexuals.” Manning also said that Garrison and a couple of others had been “shaking down” the homosexual community. Hundreds were arrested, Manning said, and then released after making payoffs to have their cases cleared up.21 These actions by Garrison against gays, the psychiatrist said, would have been part of his cover. That also applies to Garrison’s description in his book of the odd incident that supposedly occurred in the men’s room at LAX.

  More important is what all this suggests about Garrison’s underlying, perhaps unconscious, motivation—the possibility that he was driven to pursue Clay Shaw by his discomfort with his own sexuality. Perhaps the strangest example of Garrison’s homophobia appeared in a 1986 letter he wrote reacting to Warren Report critic Paul Hoch’s reference, in his newsletter, to Clay Shaw’s sexual orientation. (Hoch’s reference was part of a critical comment about Garrison, which Garrison ignored.) He recommended that Hoch immediately use soap to clean his mouth. He, himself, Garrison declared, had never publicly commented on the allegation that Shaw was homosexual, and, amazingly, Garrison dismissed that charge as a false rumor directed toward a dead man who could no longer speak for himself.22 The pretense and denial there are glaring, since Garrison did everything in his power to exploit Shaw’s homosexuality to the media, talking it up privately whenever he felt like it. Garrison’s transparent pose in that letter suggests the depth of his fear of this subject: labeling Shaw a homosexual was for Garrison worse than accusing him of treason.*