I have really been getting into the whole JFK Assasination quite a bit recently. Currently I am a couple of chapters into Jim Garrisons book on his case against the “men who killed Kennedy.” After researching Mr. Garrison on the web for a bit I discovered that most people believe he was a loon out to get attention for himself. Is this true, or could he be right and the government is painting him this way to discredit his findings (if you believe some of the things he says the government did/has done). Anyway, I am no expert on Mr. Garrison’s life or the Kennedy Assasination, but I do believe Mr. Garrison was on the right track to finding out the truth, but he was caught up along the way; possibly by the government, and possibly by his own motives.
Garrison was a child molester who was thrown out of the service for insanity, and among other crimes like vehemently defending the Mafia and constantly taking bribes, mindlessly destroyed the reputations and lives of a considerable number of people due to his utterly crackpot pseudo-investigation of the Kennedy assassination.
Take one example from the top of my head: To determine if someone was in on the alleged “conspiracy” to kill Kennedy, Garrison sometimes merely checked their home addresss. If they had a certain number, they were guilty in his eyes.
You owe it to yourself to read the two books which will best open your eyes to the Garrison “investigation” as well as the Kennedy assassination in general:
False Witness: The Real Story of Jim Garrison’s Investigation and Oliver Stone’s Film JFK, by Patricia Lambert (who is herself a conspiracy believer, but knew better than to believe Garrison), and
Case Closed, by Gerald Posner, the best book ever written on the Kennedy case.
I wish Oliver Stone had the nads to show Garrison’s famed appearance on “Tonight” with Johnny Carson. If he had, no one would doubt that Garrison was a bozo!
Of course, Stone probably would have decided that Johnny Carson was a fascist who was in on the JFK conspiracy, too.
It’s hard to hold a debate in a vacuum. What, specfically, do you contend that Garrison was “on the right track to finding out the truth” about?
In addition to ambushed’s recommendation of False Witness, you may also want to check out John McAdams’ page on Jim Garrison.
Why are the two mutually exclusive? From what I’ve read, he was probably a deranged DA who thought, in his own mind, he was being patriotic.
I was going to post the identical thought to what Eve did - he was probably motivated by patriotic reasons, but he was surely deranged.
The whole JFK assassination was a tragedy to several people, but in my view, the character assassination of Clay Shaw by Garrison was one of the saddest, next to that of Kennedy himself. Read as much as you can about Shaw (the link to the McAdams site is a good place), and then you’ll see the true Jim Garrison.
All I know is that Harry Connick Jr’s father, Harry Sr, succeeded Garrison as District Attorney. And Garrison had a screw loose.
Everything I’ve read about Jim Garrison tells me that he was seriously deranged. His indictment of Clay Shaw is a classic example…there was NO evidence linking Shaw to ANY conspiracy to kill Kennedy. Its really funny that in a city as corrupt as New Orleans, Garrison found so much time to persue chimeras like the assassination conspiracy-on his watch the NOPD became one of the most corrupt in the nation!
And (the thing I found interesting) Carlos Marcello was the Mob boss of New Orleans. There is some (admiddedly slight) evidence connecting him and Jack Ruby…but Garrison never followed that link!
Really, something is really wrong with a system that allows a nut like Garrison to destroy innocent people’s lives! 
James Phelan was a investigative reporter for forty years. He wrote his memoirs, Scandals, Scamps, and Scoundrels: The Casebook of an Investigative Reporter, in 1982. One of the stories he covered was Garrison’s supposed conspiracy investigation and it’s a chapter in his book.
Phelan started out as a supporter of Garrison. He had written a previous favorable story about Garrison when he took office as DA and Garrison welcomed his presense when he was announcing his “findings”.
Phelan initially assumed that Garrison must have unimpeachable evidence to be making the pronouncments he was. Garrison granted him exclusive interviews for his story. But when Phelan started asking him questions about the evidence Garrsion had, he was amazed at how thin it was and how much Garrison was making up connections. The more Phelan investigated the weaker he found the evidence. Phelan doesn’t speculate on Garrison’s motives, but he makes it clear there was never a case to be made.
The problem with that line of thought, though, Eve, is that it suggests that Garrison also thought he was being patriotic when he defended the Mafia, took bribes as a judge, and molested children. I think he was a deranged, self-aggrandizing crook pretty much from start to finish.
Hey, I’m with you on the whole bozo thing. But Stone wanted to make a good movie, and including anything anti-conspiracy would have damaged the film he was making. IIRC, Stone never claimed that what he presented was the truth.
In addition to everything else, it should be noted that Garrison probably would have never become DA without the help he got from the White Citizens’ Council and Leander Perez.
That’s a little disengenous, Stone certainly held out the movie as fact or at least a plausible alternative. He certainly didn’t show Garrison to the be the deranged man he appears to have been.