JIM GARRISON
(PART 1)


THE EVIDENCE IS ABUNDANTLY CLEAR:
JIM GARRISON WAS DEAD WRONG -- A LONE ASSASSIN NAMED LEE HARVEY OSWALD KILLED PRESIDENT KENNEDY AND POLICE OFFICER J.D. TIPPIT IN 1963


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The more time that passes since the assassination of President John F.
Kennedy in 1963, the more it becomes clear that JFK was shot and killed
by just a single lone-nut assassin named Lee Harvey Oswald; with this
passage of time also unmasking more and more conspiracy theories for
just what they are -- i.e., Unsupported theories that "prove"
absolutely nothing.

New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison's case against an innocent man
named Clay Shaw in the late 1960s was filled with nothing but nonsense
and a crazy hodge-podge of Garrison-invented conspiracy-slanted theories
that have never once been sufficiently tied together nor proven by anybody
(least of all in the eyes of the jury at Clay Shaw's trial, with Shaw's jury
delivering a "Not Guilty" verdict after deliberating for only a matter of mere
minutes).

Being an avid believer in Lee Harvey Oswald's lone guilt in the two
first-degree murders he was charged with carrying out on November 22,
1963, I have a difficult time dredging up any respect at all for the
late District Attorney Garrison, especially after hearing the following
grossly inaccurate and vomit-inducing remarks made by Garrison
concerning Oswald:

"Lee Oswald was totally, unequivocally, completely innocent of the
assassination .... and the fact that history, or in the re-writing of
history, disinformation has made a villain out of this young man who
wanted nothing more than to be a fine Marine .... is in some ways the
greatest injustice of all." -- Jim Garrison; Spoken during an on-camera
interview for the A&E Cable-TV mini-series "The Men Who Killed Kennedy"
(Part 4; "The Patsy").

That Garrison quote above was placed at the very end of that fourth
installment of 1988's "TMWKK", and it came complete with Mr. Garrison's
pathetic attempt to hold back tears as he uttered that sickening
sentiment about the double-murderer he claims was "unequivocally
innocent of the assassination".

For someone to say that Oswald might have been part of a conspiracy is
one thing -- but to elevate this wife-beating, Communist-leaning
double-assassin named Oswald to the stature of a fallen martyr (as
Garrison did in that quote I mentioned above) is just flat-out
ludicrous and reeks with disingenuousness. Such hollow glorification
and unjustifiable praise of Oswald turns my stomach.

There is so much physical and circumstantial evidence that paints Lee
Oswald as a killer of two men in 1963 it's almost incredible (and is
certainly a mountainous batch of evidence that is literally impossible
to simply "ignore", as many conspiracy theorists seem to want to do).

And the very idea (postulated by many CTers) that every bit of the
evidence favoring Oswald's lone guilt in both 11/22/63 Dallas murders
could have possibly all been "faked" and "planted" and what-not by a
band of impossible-to-trip-up conspirators and after-the-fact cover-up
operatives is simply a notion that only a fool could even begin to
believe.

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Anybody who wants to see a good overview of Jim Garrison's case for a
JFK conspiracy should read THIS ARTICLE.

That link features the text of Garrison's entire "Playboy" Magazine
interview that appeared in that publication's October 1967 edition.

Many portions of that lengthy interview are priceless in that they are
so incredibly hilarious....and it's truly funny how a man who was
supposedly "investigating" the murder of a U.S. President could be so
incredibly WRONG (and just plain goofy-sounding) at almost every turn
in the road.

Per Garrison's lunacy, which has been directly or indirectly copied by
many conspiracy theorists ever since the 1960s, it would appear that
absolutely NOTHING was what it seemed to be with respect to the
entire batch of JFK assassination evidence (and the J.D. Tippit evidence
to boot).

Examples of some of Garrison's quotes from that Playboy article,
regarding some of the conclusions reached by Garrison (and staff)
during his mid-'60s "investigation" of Clay Shaw, et al:

"Whatever his [Oswald's] knowledge of his role as a decoy, he
definitely didn't know about his role as a patsy until after the
assassination. At 12:45 PM on November 22nd, the Dallas police had
broadcast a wanted bulletin for Oswald -- over a half-hour before
Tippit was shot and at a time when there was absolutely no evidence
linking Oswald to the assassination." -- J. Garrison; 1967


Garrison must have been loopy on Conspiracy Gas to say such a
ridiculous thing. What he said above was at the time (and still is
today) nothing but pure nonsense and "CT spin", because no bulletin
"For Oswald" was relayed by the DPD at 12:45 PM on 11/22 and Garrison
must surely have known this. The 12:45 broadcast (APB) given out by the
DPD most certainly did NOT mention the name of "Oswald". The broadcast
merely included a general physical description of the "suspect wanted
in the shooting at Elm & Houston Streets". Nothing was said at that
time about the name "Oswald".

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Another Garrison quote:

"I can't go into all the details on this, but the murder of Tippit,
which I am convinced Oswald didn't commit, was clearly designed to set
the stage for Oswald's liquidation in the Texas Theater after another
anonymous tip-off." -- J. Garrison; 1967


"Anonymous tip-off"?? If Mr. Garrison was still somehow of the opinion,
at the time of that 1967 Playboy quote (years after the assassination),
that the cops were tipped-off about Oswald's whereabouts in the theater
via an "anonymous" informant, he couldn't be more incorrect. Because
that's not the way things happened at all on November 22nd.

Garrison conveniently didn't bother to tell the Playboy readership that
the person who gave the police this "anonymous tip" was fully
identified immediately after the event -- that person being shoe-store
clerk Johnny Brewer. There was nothing sinister in the least about the
"tip" provided to police (by Brewer via theater cashier Julia Postal's
actual phone call to the DPD).

Brewer testified in front of the Warren Commission on April 2, 1964,
and told the Commission the entire story about his encounter with Oswald
and LHO's subsequent arrest within the theater. Garrison, of course,
decided not to mention the Brewer story in his "anonymous" version of
the event.

It sounded more "sinister" to just leave out the Brewer connection,
and pretend that the "tip" came from somebody who STILL, as of 1967,
was unidentified. Garrison obviously wanted people, by way of that
magazine article, to think that something "conspiratorial" was afoot
with regard to the police arriving in mass at the Texas Theater to
arrest Oswald after the nearby Tippit murder.

Oliver Stone continued to perpetuate this so-called "mystery" of the
cops swarming the theater in his movie "JFK". But, in reality, there
was nothing sinister or conspiratorial at all in the entire theater
episode. Brewer watched the "suspicious-acting" man (Oswald) walk into
the theater without paying, and Mr. Brewer "tipped off" the cashier
(Postal), who then called the police. A few minutes later, many patrol
cars surrounded the theater.

It was a perfectly natural sequence of events, considering one of
Dallas' finest (Officer J.D. Tippit) had just been slain on 10th Street
just a half hour before.

Remember, too, the fact that the police don't take too kindly to having
one of their own cut down like a mad dog in the middle of the street.
It peeves them greatly. So it's no big surprise that every officer in the
area of the theater would want to get a crack at apprehending the man
who might have killed their fellow officer.

Garrison's (or anyone else's) attempt to exonerate Oswald for J.D.
Tippit's murder is, in my opinion, even more contemptible than trying
to get LHO off the hook for JFK's killing -- because, given the
impossible-to-overcome wealth of evidence telling the world Oswald's
guilty of murdering Officer Tippit, it's safe to say that the ONLY
person (literally) on the Earth who could possibly have killed J.D.
Tippit was Lee Harvey Oswald.

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More Garrison quotes regarding the murder of Officer J.D. Tippit (and
my responses):

"The evidence we've uncovered leads us to suspect that two men, neither
of whom was Oswald, were the real murderers of Tippit; we believe we
have one of them identified. The critics of the Warren Report have
pointed out that a number of the witnesses could not identify Oswald as
the slayer, that several said the murderer was short and squat --
Oswald was thin and medium height -- and another said that two men were
involved." -- J. Garrison; 1967


Another brilliant piece of pre-November 22 planning by these
crackerjack conspirators, huh? They need Oswald blamed for this second
(Tippit) murder too, so what do they do? They decide, for some
needlessly-complicated reason, to have TWO people kill Tippit in front
of several witnesses (who all SHOULD have certainly seen TWO different
killers at the scene of the crime...but, amazingly, not one of the
witnesses who saw the actual shooting saw more than one killer, and
virtually all of the witnesses fingered Oswald as the murderer or IDed
LHO as the lone man who fled on foot afterward).

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"The Warren Commission's own chronology of Oswald's movements also
fails to allow him sufficient time to reach the scene of Tippit's
murder from the Book Depository Building." -- J. Garrison; 1967


100% wrong, Mr. Garrison. The Warren Commission's chronology does
no such thing. The WC concluded (via multiple "re-enactments" of
Oswald's probable movements) that Lee Harvey Oswald could most
definitely have arrived at the Tippit murder scene on 10th Street in
Oak Cliff in ample time to have encountered Officer Tippit there
(WR: pages 157-165; and pages 648-650). Mr. Garrison just flat-out
didn't want to believe the Warren Commission concerning the timing
of Oswald's movements.

An even more-detailed chronology of Oswald's 11/22 movements can be
found in Dale K. Myers' exquisitely-researched 1998 book "With Malice:
Lee Harvey Oswald And The Murder Of Officer J.D. Tippit"
. In that
excellent volume, Mr. Myers leaves no doubt at all as to the real
identity of Tippit's slayer (which was Oswald of course).

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"The clincher, as far as I'm concerned, is that four cartridges were
found at the scene of the [Tippit] slaying. Now, revolvers do not eject
cartridges, so when someone is shot, you don't later find gratuitous
cartridges strewn over the sidewalk -- unless the murderer deliberately
takes the trouble to eject them. We suspect that cartridges had been
previously obtained from Oswald's .38 revolver and left at the murder
site by the real killers as part of the setup to incriminate Oswald."
-- J. Garrison; 1967


Absolutely incredible! Garrison obviously could not read. Because
Oswald DID, based on observations of witnesses, "take the trouble
to eject" the empty cartridges from his revolver, and the Warren
Commission said this plain as day on Page 168 of the Warren Report.

For some reason, Garrison totally ignored the unimpeachable evidence
of multiple witnesses concerning the fact that the killer (later positively
identified as Lee Oswald) was "unloading the gun" [quoting both
Virginia Davis and Barbara Davis] as he fled the Tippit murder scene
on foot.

Mr. Garrison's built-in pro-conspiracy bias vividly shines through via
his remark about the Tippit bullet shells. For, he had to have known
(or should have known) that there were witnesses at the Tippit murder
scene who watched the killer shaking shells out of his revolver,
rendering Garrison's above remarks completely worthless.

But Jim obviously liked his own version of events better than that of
the official WC rendition of what happened. Shouldn't this blatant
distortion of the official record of the Tippit murder cloud just about
everything else Mr. Garrison has to say with respect to the JFK case?
In my view, yes, it should.

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"The Warren Commission concluded with a straight face that the bullets
[taken from Tippit's body] were fired not only from Oswald's gun but
"to the exclusion of all other weapons". They simply chose to ignore
the fact that revolvers don't eject cartridges and that the cartridges
left so conveniently on the street didn't match the bullets in Tippit's
body." -- J. Garrison; 1967


I wonder how Garrison could keep a "straight face" while speaking such
laughable garbage. .... The WC didn't "ignore" the fact that revolvers
don't eject cartridges. The WC knew full well the bullet shells weren't
automatically "ejected" from Oswald's gun. The shells were PHYSICALLY
DUMPED (by Oswald's own hands) from the weapon in the front yard of
Barbara and Virginia Davis, who saw Oswald dump the shells out of the
gun.

And the "to the exclusion" conclusion was arrived at by the WC as a
result of mainly the bullet SHELLS being traced to Oswald's revolver
"to the exclusion", not the actual bullets taken from Officer Tippit.
The bullets themselves were consistent with having come from the Oswald
gun, but not "to the exclusion"; however, one firearms expert, Joseph
D. Nicol, disagreed with the FBI findings in this regard, claiming that
one of the four Tippit bullets could be declared as having been fired
from Oswald's revolver "to the exclusion of all other weapons". See
Page 172 of the Official Warren Report for this info.

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Here now are two of Mr. Garrison's "Summing Up" quotes from that '67
magazine interview:

"To sum up -- Oswald was involved in the conspiracy; shots were fired
at Kennedy from the Depository but also from the grassy knoll and
apparently from the Dal-Tex Building as well -- but not one of them was
fired by Lee Harvey Oswald, and not one of them from his
Mannlicher-Carcano." -- J. Garrison; 1967

-- And: --

"In summation -- There were at least five or six shots fired at the
President from front and rear by at least four gunmen, assisted by
several accomplices, two of whom probably picked up the cartridges and
one of whom created a diversion to draw people's eyes away from the
grassy knoll. At this stage of events, Lee Harvey Oswald was no more
than a spectator to the assassination -- perhaps in a very literal
sense. The [James] Altgens photograph indicates the very real
possibility that at the moment Oswald was supposed to have been
crouching in the sixth-floor window of the Depository shooting Kennedy,
he may actually have been standing outside the front door watching the
Presidential motorcade. ... Somehow or other, the Warren Commission
concluded that this man was actually Billy Lovelady, who looked very
little like Oswald." -- J. Garrison; 1967


Boy! That was some great "Frame The Patsy" plot huh? -- Per Garrison,
several gunmen (not one of them Oswald however) were firing at JFK from
a variety of locations (front and rear), while Oswald (the plotters'
ONE AND ONLY PATSY) stood watching the killers' handiwork from the
front steps of his workplace!

So not only don't the "creators" of this "Patsy Plot" keep Oswald on the
sixth floor at the precise time of the shooting (as they should have) --
but these dumbbell plotters don't even give a damn if Oswald is INSIDE
THE BUILDING or not when JFK is killed!

And: These Patsy-framing plotters also don't seem to realize (or care)
that by letting their Patsy roam around loose at 12:30, he will
probably be creating for himself a perfect alibi for his whereabouts at
the crucial time in question. Plus, these Homer Simpson-like
conspirators don't seem to care if Oswald gets himself PHOTOGRAPHED
during the assassination, providing additional exculpatory evidence ON
FILM proving that the Patsy is innocent!

Of course, in reality, Garrison's claim of Oswald possibly being in the
doorway of the Depository is totally bogus; and he had to have known
it was a bogus claim when he uttered that quote in '67, which was
three years after the "doorway man" was positively identified as TSBD
employee Billy N. Lovelady on April 7, 1964, by way of Lovelady's own
Warren Commission testimony [at 6 H 338], with Lovelady HIMSELF
drawing an arrow to himself in the Altgens photograph during his WC
session [see Commission Exhibit 369].

So, for Garrison to say "somehow or other, the Warren Commission
concluded that this man was actually Lovelady" is for Jim to also admit
one of two things -- he either didn't read any of Lovelady's testimony
verifying it was Billy standing in the doorway ... or ... he was deliberately
skewing the evidence re. this matter for the purpose of promoting an
unfounded conspiracy theory. (I'll vote for the latter option.)

Nobody with a brain could possibly believe a "Frame The Patsy"
assassination plot would have been pre-planned and pre-organized in
such a ludicrous and haphazard "Oh Well, Whatever Happens, Happens!"
manner -- a crazy plot which features multiple gunmen (NONE of whom has
the real Oswald rifle in his hands, assuring the plot's immediate
collapse right there, by the fact that none of the ballistics from ANY
of the killers' guns is going to implicate Oswald and his own weapon).

And then, added to that obvious ballistics flaw in the plan, the
Henchmen/Real Assassins just don't care at all where Patsy Oswald is
located during the actual assassination (per the Jim Garrison/Oliver
Stone theory anyway)!

Gomer Pyle and his cousin Goober could have mapped out a "Patsy Plot"
more skillfully than these bozos did on November 22, 1963 (per
Garrison's and Stone's, et al, version).

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Let me just add one more bizarre quote by Mr. Garrison (probably his
most absurd one yet), which has Jimbo boldly declaring:

"If there's one thing the Warren Commission and its 26 volumes of
supportive evidence demonstrate conclusively, it's that Lee Harvey
Oswald did not shoot John Kennedy on November 22, 1963." -- J.
Garrison; 1967


Now, after having lifted my jaw up off the floor due to being stunned
by the sheer ridiculousness of the quoted passage above -- I am truly
curious to know what Warren Report Mr. Garrison was reading, because my
copy proves exactly the opposite. About all I can add to that
breathtakingly-preposterous remark by JG is -- Huh??!!

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I think it's also interesting to note that even many people who are
firmly entrenched in the "Conspiracy Camp" themselves think that Jim
Garrison's case against Clay Shaw was intolerable nonsense. One such
CTer (who possesses his own unique and strange theories when it comes
to the JFK assassination) is author David Lifton, who said the
following about Mr. Garrison:

"Jim Garrison was one of the biggest frauds that ever came down the
pike. ... His resurrection by Oliver Stone's 'JFK' has the quality of
'Nightmare On Elm Street'. And the only good that has come out of that
is the JFK Records Act. (Well, sometimes good things happen because of
bad people.)" -- David S. Lifton; August 6, 1995

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It's undeniable that virtually every scrap of hard, physical evidence
in the JFK and J.D. Tippit murder cases shows one man, Lee Oswald, to
be responsible for the two murders he was charged with in '63. This
evidence runs the gamut from the guns used in the crimes ... to the
whole bullet from Oswald's rifle found at Parkland ... to multiple
bullet fragments from Oswald's rifle found in JFK's limo ... to the
bullet shells from Oswald's weapons found at both the Kennedy and
Tippit murder sites ... to fingerprints of Oswald's all over the place
where a gunman was seen in the Depository ... to the paper bag found in
the Sniper's Perch ... to clothing fibers linked to Oswald ... and also
extending, of course, to the multiple eyewitnesses who watched Oswald
pulling the triggers of his guns during both 11/22 Dallas murders.

And if "all of the above" was somehow "faked" and/or "planted" in order
to make a totally-innocent person named Oswald look guilty, then I'm a
monkey's uncle.

Doubting the authenticity of virtually every speck of
Oswald-incriminating physical evidence in the JFK and Tippit murder
cases (as many conspiracists do, indeed, doubt) is to play Jim
Garrison's and Oliver Stone's game -- a game highlighted by mystery
killers firing from the Grassy Knoll, unexplainable disappearing
bullets, and a series of bullet holes (made by THREE different gunmen)
in TWO different victims that mirror a SINGLE-BULLET EVENT so closely
as to be deemed "perfect" for the adoption of the "Single-Bullet
Theory" by an official U.S. Government commission assigned to
investigate the assassination.

And I ask with the utmost sincerity -- Who in their right mind would
have any desire to play that conspiracy-filled game of
impossible-to-pull-off hocus-pocus? I sure don't intend to play it,
that's for certain.

David Von Pein
April 2006
June 2010

LINK TO ORIGINAL POST (APRIL 6, 2006)

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JIM GARRISON (PART 2)

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