False Witness

by Patricia Lambert

  Garrison’s psychiatric state became an issue publicly as early as 1965 during the campaign for district attorney, when Garrison’s opponent, Judge Malcolm O’Hara, released Garrison’s 1951 military medical records to the press.† O’Hara tied Garrison’s “anxiety reaction” (described in those records) to “the ugly force in him that drives him to destroy everyone who fails to bow to his will.” It used to be called “a Napoleonic complex,” O’Hara told reporters. Later, Clay Shaw made some interesting observations—he thought Garrison was “quite ill, mentally.” He knew Garrison had seen several analysts, Shaw said, and that he was getting “worse all the time.” Shaw believed there was “a division” in Garrison’s mind. That with one half of it, he was “able to go out and fabricate evidence, and then by some osmosis, he [was] able to convince the other half that the fabrication is the truth. And then,” Shaw said, “I think, he believes it implicitly.”23

  Aaron Kohn, who referred to Garrison’s “tyrannical conduct,” and the “fear” he instilled in people, believed he was “emotionally disturbed,” and “compelled to act deceptively in order to preserve his own fundamental ego.” William Wegmann, Pershing Gervais, William Gurvich, David Chandler, James Phelan, Edward O’Donnell, Rosemary James, and others unwilling to go on the record, expressed the belief that there was something seriously amiss with Garrison psychologically. In his book on this case, Milton Brener suggested that Garrison was “stark, raving mad.”24

  In my conversations with mental health professionals, two of them suggested that Garrison might have been a psychopath, not the homicidal variety, obviously, but the other end of the spectrum—the charming con artist. One referred me to some books on the subject, which I read with fascination, especially the work of Canadian psychiatrist Robert Hare. He studied the psychopathic personality for eighteen years and developed a detailed profile, along with a “psychopathy checklist” (widely used today as a diagnostic tool). In reading Dr. Hare’s 1993 book, Without Conscience, I experienced an aha moment, a sense that I had found one of the answers I had been seeking. But I speak here with neither certainty nor the authority of a professional in this field, and with an awareness that the mind of man is truly a far country. Efforts to explain it are imperfect abstractions at best. I suggest only that anyone struggling, as I have been, to understand Garrison’s inexplicable behavior should consider this a possibility. For Garrison seems to me to fit in almost every particular Dr. Hare’s model of what he calls the white-collar subcriminal psychopath, also known as “successful psychopaths.”

  These are the ones who don’t end up in prison. Instead, they “function reasonably well” as professionals of every possible stripe. They don’t generally stray beyond the boundaries of the law. Or if they do, they usually aren’t discovered. While just as destructive as the criminal variety, they manage to avoid exposure primarily because they are intelligent, socially adept, and often protected by their family background. They appear to be living a normal life, and go about obtaining their goals indifferent to the damage they do and without being held to account for it.25

  What sets them apart is their lack of a conscience. That inner policeman for them doesn’t exist. They abide by only those rules that suit their purposes. Their single motivation in life is to fulfill their own personal needs, whatever they happen to be, and at any cost to those around them. Yet because these individuals are appealing, sometimes even magnetic, most people are unable to recognize their real nature as masters of the con with a remarkable talent to deceive and manipulate. Often impulsive, they are usually quite verbal, witty, charming, likeable, and fun to be around.26 New Orleans reporter Iris Kelso captured that side of Garrison in the obituary she wrote. She recalled his arrival one day in 1969 at an office where she and Rosemary James were waiting to interview him. Spotting them, Garrison “launched into a song,” Kelso wrote. “ ‘Everyday is ladies’ day with me,’ he sang in his big deep voice. He finished with a soft shoe routine, his head bowed and his arms spread at our feet.”27

  I found Jim Garrison striding across the pages of Dr. Hare’s book, and never more so than when Hare writes about the ease with which such people lie. They lie as easily as they breathe. They do it even when they know the person they are lying to knows the truth.28 Incapable of empathy, they feel no guilt or pain for those they injure. Rather, they paint themselves as the victim. Dr. Hare seems particularly on target when he discusses how psychopaths enjoy controlling others and the difficulty they experience when people express ideas that conflict with their own. Yet the charisma of the psychopath is often undeniable. Some people, Dr. Hare points out, even find them “electrifying.”29 This brings to mind Tom Bethell’s reaction to a speech Garrison delivered in his office which held his aides transfixed. Bethell couldn’t remember the words Garrison spoke, but after the first sentence, Bethell recalled, he and the others were simply mesmerized.30

  Fortunately, such people have a tendency to shoot themselves in the foot, Dr. Hare tells us, which is what Garrison did when he arrested Clay Shaw with nothing up his evidentiary sleeve but Perry Russo. Rosemary James said Garrison “ruined his own career with a rather frivolous prosecution,” that “he would have made a brilliant national politician but he cut off his own legs.” Until the jury acquitted Clay Shaw, Garrison’s political star definitely was ascending and Washington was within his reach. So if there is any solace in the wrenching injustice of this story, it is the possibility that the misery endured by Clay Shaw spared the country something worse.

  Whatever it was that made Garrison tick, the spectacular ups and downs that he experienced in his public life must have taken a toll on him. So did Dealey Plaza. Psychologically, he never escaped the shadow of what occurred there. Perry Russo, who saw Garrison from time to time over the years, said he continued to talk about the assassination obsessively, often speaking of some new “lead” he was investigating, or wanted to investigate. Garrison’s private life was unsettled as well. He and his wife finally divorced. A brief second marriage also ended in divorce. After that, he reportedly lived alone for a number of years, surrounded by his dogs and quietly fulfilling his judicial duties. Eventually, he remarried his first wife and, when he retired in November 1991, she nursed him during his final illness. After almost two decades of relative obscurity, his last few years must have felt triumphant. With his Hollywood-style resurrection and the simultaneous success of the paperback edition of his memoir, he once more basked in the spotlight. He also made a great deal of money. On October 21, 1992, Garrison died at the age of seventy of undisclosed “natural causes.”*

  Garrison’s story is important for reasons beyond what occurred in New Orleans. The type of person he represents poses a perhaps universal quandary. For no one knows how to guard against people like him, and many (perhaps most) of us are susceptible to them. That unsettling reality may be the abiding lesson of this story. The belief most Americans share that what happened in Nazi Germany could never happen here seems to me less certain in light of Garrison. “The importance of Garrison’s case is not that he failed,” Milton Brener wrote, “but that he could have succeeded.”31

  Even after he was stopped and the truth exposed in a federal courtroom, Garrison managed to reinvent himself through the awesome power of the arts. He crafted an engaging All-American Hero in his book that Oliver Stone enlarged and Kevin Costner enhanced, but it bore no resemblance to the real man or what actually happened. Yet it is that fictional phoenix that today soars in Hollywood’s international sky.

  It is a flight that has had its consequences. Unlike books that politicians leave behind, movies possess the power to set thousands marching, which is what Stone’s did. For years, critics and others had been calling for the government to release its records on the assassination but Stone and his film made it happen. Adopting the suggestion of former House Select Committee staffer Kevin Walsh,32 Stone added a written message about it at the end of the movie. Then he channeled the considerable passions the movie stirred to
organize a Congressional lobbying effort to free the files, a message emblazoned on buttons and T-shirts.

  This campaign was Stone’s finest hour. It was also a shield he used to deflect criticism directed at him and his film. He donned that shield in Washington the morning of January 15, 1992, for one of his biggest moments, his speech (carried live on C-Span) to the National Press Club, with many of his critics in attendance. Stone used this singular moment to reproach the media for failing to investigate the assassination and to promote his own ideas about the case. He justified the film’s broad conspiracy theory and defended Jim Garrison’s prosecution of Clay Shaw.* In his concluding remarks Stone recited a list of government officials who were supporting his lobbying effort. Before the month was out, the sole surviving member of the Warren Commission, former President Gerald R. Ford, and thirteen former counsel and staff members had joined the ranks of those calling for the files to be released.* The momentum was just beginning and soon was irresistible.

  On October 26, 1992, President George Bush signed the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act directing the National Archives to establish and make available to the public a collection of all assassination-related government records, requiring all government offices to transfer such records to the Archives, and establishing an independent review board to locate, declassify, and ensure disclosure of records being withheld. Stone had achieved what no one else had been able to do. Virtually single-handed, he had wrenched open the vaults of the nation’s capital. In the process, he became the titular head of the reconstituted “movement” of researchers and writers on the case now dominated by pro-Garrison forces empowered by Stone and his film.

  * In a 1952 letter returning some of Garrison’s stories, a New York literary agent (A. L. Fierst) encouraged him to revise two of them, one of which concerned an assassin who murdered a politician (Garrison Papers, Box 6).

  † Garrison just ignored Martin’s more absurd charges. For instance, Martin claimed that Ferrie had done away with his own mother because she knew about his intimate relationship with Oswald. Martin also said that he had met Oswald in Ferrie’s apartment (Martin Fontainebleau Interview).

  * Clay Shaw told friends he thought his having seen this might have influenced Garrison in his later prosecution of him.

  * Anderson remarked on the irony, noting that Garrison had emphasized Clay Shaw’s “alleged homosexuality,” leaving him marked with “the sexual stigma.”

  * They were swimming nude, which the club required to reduce contamination from bathing suits because the salt water in the marble pool could not be chlorinated.

  * One noted that since the abuse was relatively minor a court fight might have been more damaging than the incident itself.

  * In Garrison’s time, homosexuality was viewed as a sexual perversion, a threat to national security, “grounds for disbarment from federal employment,” and political poison. (For a brief discussion of the forces at work on this issue in that period see Sidney Blumenthal, “The Cold War and the Closet,” The New Yorker, May 17, 1997, p. 116.)

  † Garrison’s military medical diagnosis is discussed in chapter 2.

  * A spokesman for the coroner, who conducted an autopsy, stated that the “cause [of death] is confidential” and could not be released without the family’s consent (telephone conversation with John Gagliano, Feb. 18, 1998).

  * Stone again repeated the false story about the bogus party picture of Shaw and “Ferrie.” He noted that three judges and the grand jury “said go to trial,” though the judges were afraid of Garrison and the grand jury was in his pocket. He referred to “three witnesses” (Oswald, Banister, and Ferrie) dying before Garrison went to trial, as though that were a handicap—it was Garrison’s great enabler. Alive they could have defended themselves and given their lives an authentic shape. (Stone, speech at the National Press Club, Jan. 15, 1992, C-Span Transcript, pp. 12–13.)

  * Stone and Warner Bros. Chairman Robert A. Daly both expressed extravagant expectations about what these files would disclose. Stone hoped they would bring to the country “the full truth of the assassination.” Daly said he was sure the files would confirm the film’s statement that more than one assassin was involved. (Stone, speech at the National Press Club, Jan. 15, 1992, C-Span transcript, p. 7; Bernard Weinraub, “Valenti Calls J.F.K. ‘Hoax’ and ‘Smear,’ ” New York Times, April 2, 1992.)

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  THE MOVEMENT AND THE FILES

  The fact that many critics of the Warren Report have remained passionate advocates of the Garrison investigation . . . is a matter of regret and disappointment. Nothing less than strict factual accuracy and absolute moral integrity must be deemed permissible, if justice is, indeed, to be served.*

  —Sylvia Meagher, June 1967

  On a trip to Los Angeles in October 1967, Jim Garrison met with David S. Lifton, an early critic of the Warren Report. The purpose of their meeting was to discuss one Kerry Thornley, then a Los Angeles resident. He had known Lee Harvey Oswald in the Marines and was now an acquaintance of Lifton. Through information Lifton innocently supplied, Garrison would shortly indict Thornley for perjury (much to Lifton’s horror), though that was not Garrison’s original intention. Originally, Garrison was planning to use Thornley’s testimony to indict another former Oswald Marine friend, John Rene Heindel.† When that didn’t work out, Garrison simply converted Thornley, who at Lifton’s urging had traveled to New Orleans to help Garrison, from a friendly witness into a suspect and indicted him instead.

  An article Lifton wrote about his experience with Garrison contains a number of interesting threads. Garrison’s paranoia and his “evidence” parallel James Phelan’s experience in Las Vegas seven months earlier. “If a man walked by with a briefcase,” Lifton wrote, “Garrison would point to him and whisper, ‘That’s an FBI agent.’ ” Garrison revealed to Lifton a telephone number that Garrison said was absolute proof of a link between Lee Harvey Oswald and Jack Ruby because it appeared in both Oswald’s address book and on Ruby’s telephone bill. Lifton hurried home, checked out Oswald’s telephone book in the Warren Report’s twenty-six volumes and discovered that the number (PE-8-1951) indeed was there. But it was a Fort Worth television station (KTVT, Channel 11). Oswald and Ruby were no more linked by this than they would have been by the gas company’s telephone number. Anyone might have such a number in his address book; anyone might have called it and therefore have it appear on his telephone bill.

  When Lifton pointed that out to Garrison the next day, he became “annoyed” and told Lifton to “stop arguing the defense.” But Lifton persisted. He inquired what Garrison thought it meant. “Is there someone at the TV station who you can prove knew both men?” “It means,” Garrison replied, “whatever the jury decides it means.” “But what do you think, Jim?” Lifton demanded, “What is the truth of the matter?” At that, Garrison responded with a remark that fairly stunned Lifton: “After the fact,” Garrison said, “there is no truth, there is only what the jury decides.” (That is, there is only what works.) That admission explained “much of what has happened,” Lifton wrote. “It is a convenient and accurate synopsis of Jim Garrison’s approach to fact-finding, truth-finding, and justice.”1

  After his fifteen hours with the Jolly Green Giant and Kerry Thornley’s indictment, Lifton was convinced that Garrison was “a reckless, irrational, even paranoid demagogue,” as Lifton wrote, who, before he was finished, might “seriously hurt innocent people.” Lifton was an early naysaying voice raised against Garrison from the ranks of the critics. Another was Sylvia Meagher, who excoriated her colleagues for failing to carry out a “disinterested evaluation of Garrison’s evidence.”* But most of the early critics jumped on Garrison’s bandwagon and a number of them turned up in New Orleans volunteering their theories and some of them their time. These Dealey Plaza Irregulars, as they were tagged, included Mark Lane, William Turner, Mary Ferrell, Harold Weisberg, Ray Marcus, Mort Sahl, and others. Garrison�
�s thinking was deeply influenced by many of them, Lane and Weisberg in particular. But then, Garrison never encountered a conspiracy idea he didn’t like. His constantly shifting public statements reflect that. Weisberg, who claimed he convinced Garrison of the Cubans’ involvement and the CIA’s, became disillusioned in time, as did others. The anti-Garrison camp grew after he revealed his evidence at Shaw’s trial. Paul Hoch and many more joined it at that point. Today, Meagher is deceased and Lifton and Hoch are among the few visible members of the new movement willing to speak out against Garrison.

  Oliver Stone and his organized effort to free the files created this new movement. Nothing like it existed before. The previous group of loose-knit researchers and writers, noted for their curious personalities and occasional stunning hostilities, squabbled among themselves, formed shifting alliances, and journeyed down decidedly independent paths. They agreed on little and rarely engaged in any unified action. Today’s new movement nurtures consensus and organization, steered by Garrison-Stone disciples and their “Governing Boards,” “Advisory Boards,” “Executive Boards,” and “Boards of Directors.” They sponsor events, plan actions, publish newsletters, and rally the forces.