GARRISON CASE SABOTAGED BY FEDS TO PREVENT EXPOSURE OF KILLERS OF PRES. JOHN KENNEDY

Destiny Betrayed: JFK, Cuba, and the Garrison Case (2^nd ed.)

(New York: Skyhorse Publishing, 1992, 2012)

By James DiEugenio…

Rev. by Hugh Murray

            The JFK assassination has been of interest to me since I first heard the news while teaching 5^th grade in my native New Orleans.  (When I informed my class that the President had been shot in Dallas, one pupil burst into tears, all the others into cheers.)  But my fascination with the case has been intermittent.  I read, even write about it; and then I burn out.  I am delighted that DiEugenio’s (hereafter, JDE) book has updated me about so much.

            Absent from all I have read, including this fine book, is an example of the role of the media in US-Cuban relations.  During the Bay of Pigs (BoP) invasion, the local CBS affiliate, WWL, the 50,000 watt, clear-channel station owned by the Jesuit university, Loyola U. of the South, reported the news as it was happening – the massive uprising on the island, reports that the anti-Castro rebels had killed Fidel’s brother Raul, the popularity of the rebel insurgency against Castro, etc.  Soon after, with the failure of the invasion, we learned that all the reported news was a lie.  The CIA-sponsored invasion induced the most reliable radio source in New Orleans to simply lie to its listeners.  I am unsure just when it began, but sometime after the BoP defeat, WWL suspended its regular programming at 9pm each night and instead broadcast in Spanish beaming its powerful signal toward Cuba.  All too transparent were the connections between the government, the CIA, and the best news networks and the major radio station in the largest city of the South (at least, until publication of the 1960 census, New Orleans was as it had been since before the Civil War, the largest city of the South, larger than Houston, Dallas, Miami, Atlanta, Memphis).

            Much of JDE’s book centers on New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison and his investigation of a conspiracy to kill President Kennedy – one which included David Ferrie and Clay Shaw.  What makes this book so valuable is that JDE includes newly declassified material demonstrating the collusion between the attorneys defending Shaw and the Federal Government – the FBI, the CIA, and their assets in the media.  At the time, one knew that Garrison had his critics in the local press, but not until I read this did I discover that the Feds pressured a local newspaper (both were owned by the Newhouse chain) into reassigning two reporters whose stories reinforced the Garrison position; thereafter, they were required to cover other events.

            JDE documents the role of NBC and its local affiliate, WDSU, in using “assets” and CIA friendly reporters to defend Shaw and smear Garrison.  Of course, it was on WDSU’s call-in program that the left-wing, pro-Castro, Lee Oswald appeared as a guest.  He was “ambushed” by the anti-Communist Ed Butler, who informed the listening audience that Oswald was not merely pro-Castro, but that he had resided in the USSR, in effect conflating pro-Castroism with Communism.  Do not misunderstand me: - in a radio debate, each side ought to use whatever arguments that can best make their case, so long as they are truthful.  The vehemently anti-Communist had every right to make the best case against his pro-Castro opponent.  The question is not so much about Butler the anti-Communist; but how much of a leftist was Oswald?  Or was he a guest on WDSU to establish the impression that he was a left-winger and Marxist?

            While I heartily recommend this book, I do wish to add some background that may shed light on why some in New Orleans may have been skeptical of Garrison’s investigation into Pres. Kennedy’s murder.

            It was probably late spring or summer of 1961 when I reported to the NO Customs House Building.  The draft was the law, and I was called.  We were given some forms to fill out, and a boxed chicken lunch, which we might eat on the way north to Ft. Chafee, Arkansas.  I had some uneasiness about the forms, for this included a list of subversive organizations, and we had to describe any type of association we might have had with any of the organizations listed.  I thought, should I, or not?  Then I remembered, photos of the event had been taken, and there was a heavy penalty for lying, so I mentioned it.  In 1960 at a Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) training institute in Miami, at which our teachers included baseball legend Jackie Robinson, and Martin Luther King – one weekend a dance was held for our integrated group.  The organization that allowed our mixed crowd to dance in their hall was the Jewish Culture Club (JCC).  The JCC was on the Attorney General’s list of subversive groups.  We had our dance there (where I first did the twist), and JCC members mostly sat at tables and watched us.  Most of the CORE people were in our 20s; the youngest of the JCC crew was about 60.  There was not much contact, though, of course, we were very happy to have a place to dance.  Also, on the form I had to complete, was a question of had we ever been arrested.  I had, and had been convicted of a felony.  I had been arrested in the very first lunch-counter sit-in in New Orleans, charged with criminal mischief, and convicted for this felony.  By this time, I had already learned that with a felony I could not volunteer for the service, but the Navy had told me I could be drafted.  Now, however, when I returned my form to the army officer, he was surprised.  “But you’re not even Jewish!”  He then related that I would have to speak with an agent of the FBI, and that would be a few minutes because he was then interviewing a Black Muslim.  When the FBI man got to me, he did not even mention the dance or the JCC.  But he did state that I could not be drafted because of the felony.  He would speak to the District Attorney, and request that the sit-in charge be dropped, and then I could be inducted.  Meanwhile, he would get back to me.  Richard Dowling, the NO DA who had personally come to our sit-in at Woolworths to literally read us the law and then have us arrested, apparently refused to drop the charges.  But in March 1962 Garrison defeated Dowling in the Democratic primary for district attorney (which then meant election).  Garrison, like Dowling, did NOT drop the felony sit-in charges.  Not until 1963 did the US Supreme Court rule on the New Orleans sit-in cases, and some resolution was made.  My point is that JDE seems to be making Garrison into a civil rights/libertarian on various issues, and I dispute that interpretation.

            JDE notes that when police arrested a book seller for peddling obscene material, James Baldwin’s Another Country, Garrison refused to prosecute.   But I do not recall Garrison as a civil libertarian.  In the French Quarter, outside the strip clubs, there were photos of the women wearing g-stings and pasties.  Suddenly, with Garrison’s anti-vice crusade, the pictures had to be covered.  The French Quarter came up with an ingenious method of doing so.  The pictures would remain, however parts of the women’s bodies would be covered by a curtain of beads, and with a flick of the hand, a passerby could readily ogle the forbidden picture.  Of course, if you walked by the door, the bouncer would open it so you could see the women live as they performed.  Indeed, one stripper would sit on a swing that would go from inside the club through a window to the sidewalk (though I am unsure if that was pre-Garrison or not).

            As I was a graduate student at Tulane in the early 1960s, I was acquainted with many others in various fields of study.  Years later, probably in the 1980s on a visit to my home city, I saw one of these acquaintances, and we chatted in the Tulane cafeteria.  Only then did I learn of why he had come to Tulane.  In 1960 he left San Francisco for New Orleans because he was gay, and he believed at the time that NO was a freer place for gay people that SF.  It seems incredible to hear that today, and yet… I remember one Mardi Gras, of the early 1960s, going to the Quarter with a married couple from North Dakota.  The streets were packed.  On Bourbon, there was a stage, and a beauty contest.  We were watching in the tightly massed crowd.  Then Ramona said to me, “Look at the legs on that one.”  Those were the legs of a football player I thought.  And then I realized, these beauties were not women.  There were no arrests.  Hundreds were watching a beauty contest of transvestites, on a public street.  I do not know, but could that have occurred in 1961 in SF?  Or NY?  Perhaps NO in 1960 was more tolerant to gays than other tolerant cities.

            The grad student from SF told me in the 1980s about his experience with Garrison’s  anti-vice efforts.  This grad student was gay, and he was walking alone in the Quarter, when he said the police arrested him and all other single males they could find.  I cannot attest to how accurate this was – for surely many tourists, and locals, entering the strip clubs might be single, or without their wives.  I doubt if they were arrested.  But perhaps Garrison did try to arrest single men in other parts of the quarter, simply because they were there and single.  And there was the case of the Quorum Club, a place on Esplanade Ave., officially across the street from the Quarter proper.  It was probably in 1963, when Garrison was DA that there was a raid on the club, and the 35 or so arrested had their names and addresses published on page one of the Picayune and States-Item.  The newspaper informed the public that the Quorum was a center of drug use, integration, and homosexuality.  I remember because someone I knew from Tulane as an undergrad was among those listed.  Next weekend, I purposely went to the Quorum Club for my first time.

            Only about 5 years ago did I meet Kenneth Owen, a librarian at Tulane, one who had retired from the University of NO.  Owen told me he had gone in 1962 or 1963 to a club on Rampart St., one that was the predecessor of the Quorum Club.  There he spoke with Oswald.  From that conversation, he believed Oswald was gay.  Yet, Ruth Ann Kloepfer, who went with her mom and sister to visit the Oswalds at their Magazine St. apartment at the request of fellow Quakeress from Texas, Ruth Paine.  Ruth Ann Kloepfer told me in a phone interview in the 1990s how angry she was with Lee Oswald.  They had gone there to help Marina and children, and while her mother and sister were helping the Russian woman in one room, Ruth Ann was convinced that Lee was coming on to her in the other.  Ruth Ann was a beauty.  Her anger resonated after 30 years.  The point here is that Garrison may not have been the greatest defender of civil liberties.  (Moreover, I have no idea if Oswald was totally hetero or not.  I do  not think it crucial to the assassination.  Michael Snyder, in a fascinating piece analyzing the writings of Clay Shaw, claims that Gove Vidal stated that the young Oswald was hustling as a teen and Shaw had seen him in the bars.  Snyder includes some interesting paragraphs on the subject of Oswald’s sexuality.  Interesting, but speculation none the less.  Some may stress the influence of David Ferrie on Oswald.  Ferrie was clearly queer.  Yet, I had a very hetero room mate who was greatly influenced by David Ferrie.  Ferrie’s homosexuality did not rub off on him.)

            One more incident, but I cannot affirm that this occurred under Garrison or before.  But it was on the first page of either the first of 2^nd sections of the local paper – a detective was so determined to get proof of a man having sex with another, he pushed some device through the man’s apartment keyhole.  Because the bed was located beyond the range of the device’s sightline, the detective was unable to prove the perversion of the apartment’s inhabitants.  That was major reading in the newspaper of that era.

            When Garrison raided the home of Clay Shaw, taking many personal items, and when these items were listed on the pages of the newspapers, Shaw’s whips, his ropes, his veil, etc., some naturally assumed that Garrison was simply indulging in another anti-gay crusade.  Because Garrison had a history of antagonism, even persecution , of gays, his pronouncement of a homosexual plot to kill Pres. Kennedy roused skepticism, and anger and fear, among gays.  And it roused skepticism among open-minded straights who decried gay oppression.  Was Garrison conducting an anti-gay witch hunt?

            As Garrison got his prosecution of Shaw underway, and began to allege Shaw was somehow connected with the CIA, Garrison’s charges seemed even more preposterous.  Everyone knew what Western operatives were like.  007 was a macho man who drank the finest wines and bedded the most beautiful women.  Sean Connery was no limp-wristed queer.  As a friend told me at the time, “Shaw could not possibly be involved in an assassination plot; he’s a homosexual.”  (There were queers who were spies, but those were the spies for the Communists, like the Cambridge crew who served the Soviets).  Those in HM Secret Service or the CIA were men who loved women.  Shaw could not possibly be CIA.  The entire project – government agents involved in a plot to kill the President, a funny looking man like Ferrie involved, plus a “respectable” queer who knew Tennessee Williams and Gore Vidal involved with a 25-year-old defector who had brought his wife back from the USSR – just too bizarre.  And the Federal Government covering up such a crime!  Absurd.

            And yet?...

            Garrison’s interest had begun in November 1963 when he had David Ferrie arrested in connection with the case.  (See “My New Orleans Story” on my blog, esp. part 3 re Ferrie).  After his arrest, Ferrie was handed over to the FBI for questioning, and the FBI then released him.  That seemed to end the matter in 1963.

            Then there were questions about Oswald’s stay in New Orleans after his return from Minsk.  When arrested by NO police during a scuffle where he was distributing Fair Play for Cuba leaflets, Oswald asked to speak with the FBI.  That interview from one to three hours, and though notes were taken, they were later destroyed.  Would a Communist, or a leftist, when arrested, ask to speak to the FBI?  The others who were distributing the leaflets with Oswald were allegedly paid to do so.  Who paid them?  Oswald also said he was paid to hand them out.  Was he lying?  Or was he paid, and by whom?  JDE has various people saying that Oswald was working on this project for Guy Banister.  (Might the others leafleting have been some of the gay “Mexicanos” Dean Andrews said accompanied Oswald when they came to his office?)  Finally, the address on some of the FPCC leaflets was indeed that of the same building that housed Guy Banister Associates and his anti-Castro organization.  JDE writes of several witnesses who saw Oswald working in Banister’s offices.  David Ferrie also did work for Banister.  There is a photo of the young Oswald at a barbeque when he was in Ferrie’s Civil Air Patrol.  And Oswald’s landlady said that after the assassination, Ferrie had come to Oswald’s old apartment looking for his, Ferrie’s, library card.  Ferrie, Oswald, Banister.  And Shaw?

            One possible link was the “jive-talking” attorney dean Andrews, who had defended the gay Latins when Oswald came with them.  The man who often paid for these cases was Clem Bertrand.  JDE stresses and incident that the judge would not permit to go before the jury of the Shaw trial.  When being booked, Shaw was asked if he had used any alias, and, according to the policeman booking him, he declared he used Clem Bertrand.  He also signed a card to that effect.  Moreover others, like the receptionist at the airport VIP lounge asserted that Shaw signed in as Bertrand.  JDE relates that even more have also maintained that Shaw was Bertrand.

            Andrews had stated and given testimony for the Warren Commission that he had received a telephone call in November 1963 asking him to defend the newly arrested Oswald in Dallas.  The person calling was Clem Bertrand.  But as time went on, Andrews backtracked, and became ever more evasive.  About the time Garrison was placing him on the stand under oath, Andrews was interviewed by local TV.  The reporters kept pressing him.  Finally, I recall this over the decades, Andrews replied, “If they can kill the President, they can squash me like a roach.”

            Even in the 1960s there were some strange news items about the Garrison case.  Shortly after Garrison included Clay Shaw among his conspirators, Pres. Lyndon Johnson’s Attorney General Ramsey Clark in March 1967 interceded in the process.  Clark announced on television that the government had investigated Shaw in 1963 and there had been nothing to connect him to the events in Dallas.  This comment by the highest law enforcer in the US led to other questions – just WHY was the Federal Government investigating Shaw at all in 1963 concerning the Kennedy killing?

            What JDE adds in this edition of his book is proof from newly released documents of how the Federal Government actively engaged in the defense of Shaw and obstructed the Garrison prosecution.  JDE shows how Shaw’s attorneys asked for and received help in their defense from the FBI (p. 265).  He details how the CIA obstructed the Garrisons case, infiltrating the prosecution team, gaining access to the prosecutions list of possible witnesses, their names and addresses, so that the pro-Fed, pro-Shaw attorneys or “journalists” might reach them first and suggest the “proper” story line. Or threaten them if they did not recant.  Sometimes the Fed infiltrators might spy, sometimes simply steal files accumulated by Garrison’s team.  JDE shows how, as everyone at the time could see, important witnesses might be encouraged to flee Louisiana, and in other states, governors, like Ronald Reagan refused to extradite the material witnesses.

            What is news to me is how JDE discovered that the Feds put pressure on the editors of the local newspapers in New Orleans.  From the first, the local papers ran some stories supportive of Garrison; others critical. Such even-handed reporting was not what the Feds desired.  The CIA pressured the States-Item, and suddenly two pro-Garrison reporters were reassigned.(p. 278)  They were to write no more about the Garrison case.

            Finally, the national media would be used to smear and mock Garrison’s efforts.  This time NBC and its local affiliate WDSU would be the main defenders of Shaw and the Warren Report’s official line.  They maintained that Garrison was persecuting Shaw.  Along with journalists who had ties to the CIA, and one who had attempted to join the CIA, Hugh Aynesworth, James Phelan, and others were able to place hostile stories about Garrison in prominent national magazines, and NBC devoted a whole hour of prime time to Garrison bashing.

            I disagree when JDE describes the trial of Clay Shaw as anti-climatic.  This trial afforded most Americans their first opportunity to view the Zapruder film.  Whereas CBS reporter Dan Rather, who viewed it in November 1963, reported how the film showed Kennedy being thrust forward by the bullet coming from behind, the film shows Kennedy being knocked backward by the force of the bullet.  The short film was shown many times at the trial, so many could see that the killing shot may well have come from the front, which would have meant more than one assassin, which would have meant conspiracy.

            I was teaching at a university and tried to attend as much of the trial as possible.  I recall listening to a New Yorker describe listening to plotters planning to kill the President.  He met David Ferrie in a bar, and accompanied him to what was probably Shaw’s home, and Shaw and Ferrie then discussed the assassination of Kennedy.  The prosecution’s witness, Mr. Spiesel, was articulate and to the point.  Then he was cross examined by Shaw’s defense.  Spiesel spoke of how he might walk into a room, and someone across the room might look at him, almost immediately hypnotize him, and make him impotent.  He admitted that when his daughter returned from LSU to her home in New York, he had her fingerprinted to insure that she was truly his daughter!  The more he spoke, the harder it was for me and most spectators in the courtroom to stifle our laughter.  Garrison’s prosecution suffered a heavy blow by placing what seemed to by a lunatic on the stand.

            But I was also in court when the Garrison staff placed one of the doctors from the Kennedy autopsy in Bethesda, Maryland on the stand.  Dr. Pierre Finck also began matter-of-factly about examining Pres. Kennedy’s body.  One area of dispute between the upholders of the official Warren Report story and its critics centers around the wound in the President’s neck.  Those who saw it as an entry wound, inevitably must conclude that a shot came from the front, which means conspiracy.  To avoid that, the official line is that the shot by Oswald from the 6^th floor of the School depository Building entered the upper back/neck area and exited the front of the neck, and then went on to wound Texas Gov. Connelly in several areas.  Finck was asked under oath if he had probed the path of the throat wound to make sure that it was the same path as the bullet that entered the back/neck.  No, Dr. Finck did not probe it.  Why not?  He was ordered not to do so.  Who ordered him not to do so?  Well, there were many generals and admirals in the room, and they all outranked him.  So he did not probe the wound.  With this testimony, Finck was admitting that the doctors were not in charge of the autopsy – the military was calling the shots.  JDE speculates that the man in charge was Curtis Le May, who in 1968 would run for VP on the American Independent Party ticket headed by Gov. George Wallace of Alabama.  I do not know which officer or officers were in charge.  What Garrison revealed in this trial was this – the doctors were NOT in charge of the autopsy of Pres. Kennedy.  And consequently, Kennedy did not receive a proper examination.

            I was also in the courtroom for the summary by Jim Garrison himself.  He spoke of the CIA and an Alice-Through-The-Looking-Glass government.  I concluded years later that Kevin Costner did a much better job at summarizing the case in the film “JFK” than did Garrison in the New Orleans courtroom.

            I did not attend all of the trial, but had I been on the jury, I would have voted Shaw not guilty because I believe insufficient evidence had been presented by the prosecution to demonstrate that Shaw was a conspirator.  The jury also voted not guilty.  When interviewed by TV reporters after the verdict, most believed there was a conspiracy to kill Kennedy, but Garrison failed to prove his case against Shaw.  JDE reports that two alternate jurors left their votes.  Both of them voted Shaw guilty, but their votes did not count.

            I have written several articles about the New Orleans scene, contrasting it with that portrayed by the Warren Commission volumes (see the Third Decade and the Fourth Decade).  I also posted “My New Orleans Story” on my blog, and that includes additional material related to Guy Banister and David Ferrie, which I shall not repeat here.

            Reading JDE’s book, I found some chapters, like the one on Mexico, muddled and not well integrated into the rest of the work.  On the other hand, I found the author’s use of declassified material convincing in demonstrating that the Federal government exerted major pressure to silence witnesses, prevent extradition, sabotage the Garrison prosecution, and bolster the defense of accused Clay Shaw.  I may have suspected some of this when it was happening, but the extent of it is new to me.  To read how “journalists” would interview witnesses with the purpose of turning them against Garrison, sometimes even threatening them.  And JDE provides even more witnesses who linked Shaw, Banister, Ferrie, and Oswald.

            The other major contribution by the author is his discussion of foreign policy.  True, most other books on the assassination discuss Cuba; some discuss Vietnam, but JDE places great emphasis on conversations the young John Kennedy had in 1951 in Vietnam with American diplomat, Edmund Gullion.  Gullion insisted that there were differences between popular national and anti-colonial uprisings, and Communist revolutions.  He urged that the US should not oppose all such uprisings.  He told this to Kennedy while the French were in the midst of their war against Ho Chi Minh and the Viet Minh.  In 1954, the French lost.

            Whereas I had always viewed Jack Kennedy as a staunch anti-Communist, a Cold Warrior, a Catholic whose dad, while serving as US Ambassador to the UK, rejected FDR’s interventionist policies prior to WWII.  And as Senator, John Kennedy not vote to censure Sen. Joseph McCarthy, and his brother, Robert, worked for the McCarthy’s Senate committee.  JDE assembles items which challenge my earlier impression.  Thus, though the new Pres. Kennedy went along with the BoP invasion of Cuba, he refused to order air strikes or additional support, thereby dooming the anti-Castro raiders.  This decision alone made him powerful enemies.  Later in 1961 Kennedy fired Allen Dulles when he learned more about how the CIA had misled and lied to him.  The Cuban exiles had wanted Kennedy to invade and overthrow Castro with the BoP.  They were sorely disappointed.  Then during the Missile Crisis of 1962, many Kennedy advisors wanted to go beyond “quarantine” (blockade).  They wanted air strikes and possible military invasion.  Again, Kennedy disappointed them.  Kennedy used diplomacy, normal channels and secret, back-door maneuvers to avoid escalation.  According to JDE, Kennedy sought to protect Patrice Lumumba in the newly independent Congo, and he tried to foil the Belgian and British attempts to establish the break-away province of Katanga.  Kennedy pushed for the Peace Corps to spread American values to 3^rd world nations in a non-violent manner.  He and Khrushchev installed the red phones in their offices to prevent an accidental nuclear war.  And in his American U. speech of June 10, 1963 Kennedy pressed for a nuclear test ban treaty and suspended American atmospheric nuclear testing.  The address was titled, “A Strategy for Peace,”  enunciating a new era in American policy.  No longer the Cold War, but rapprochement with the Soviets, people to people bridges with the 3^rd world through the Peace Corps, and, and here is where JDE adds new material, through the use of back-door diplomacy, the possibility of again recognizing Fidel Castro’s Cuba.  Such a change in direction would have been anathema not only to the Cuban exiles, but to Dulles, and to many others who saw this not merely as weakness, but treason.

            The author also maintains that Kennedy had decided that 15,000 American military advisors would be the maximum in Vietnam, and that they were all to be removed by 1965.  I had read this “only if” scenario before.  Kennedy was just about to withdraw from Vietnam, when he was killed, and so we had the tragedy of Vietnam.  I have never accepted this.

            It was probably in 1962 when I visited New York City for the first time.  All my New York friends at Tulane had bragged about the wonderful newspaper, the New York Times.  Now, I could buy it at a news-stand.  In NY I also went to a lecture by an historian, and Communist, Herbert Aptheker.  His topic: he was going to analyze that day’s Bible of journalism, the New York Times.  I do not recall all of the hour’s talk, but I do remember when he pointed to a small item toward the bottom of page 1.  He read the headline of the story, but declared that that was not the real news of the story.  Indeed, he was dismissive of the headline and most of the story.  Aptheker said the real news in the article was that the number of American advisors in Vietnam was revealed to be 11,000.  He then stated that the previous acknowledged number of Americans involved was a mere 9,500.  He stressed that the real story was American escalation of the war in Vietnam.  The real story was hidden by the New York Times in the New York Times.  (I cannot attest to the specific numbers, Aptheker presented, but I certainly remembered his point, that Kennedy was escalating the war.)  But in this book JDE presents material that Kennedy was preparing to withdraw from Vietnam.  JDE presents declassified material that Kennedy was seeking better relations with Castro.  JDE makes a persuasive case.

            Yet, by omitting a major incident, he weakens that case.  On November 2, 1963, Ngo Dinh Diem was assassinated.  Why?  To promote a peace agreement with North Vietnam?  Or  to insure there would be no peace with the North.  Leaders of the coup had talks with the CIA prior to their putsch, to ask what the reaction of the US might be.  How does that assassination in Saigon relate to the one a few weeks later in Dallas?  Or is there no connection?  JDE should have discussed this as it clearly is relevant to his contention about the upcoming withdrawal of troops by Kennedy.

            It is evident from this book that the US government sought to suppress the truth about events in Dallas.  DA Garrison on New Orleans pressed to find answers.  The Feds applied the power of the national government to smear Garrison, infiltrate his team, intimidate witnesses, help others flee to different states, use national magazines, NBC, major “journalists,” to discredit Garrison.  The Feds won with the acquittal of Clay Shaw.  They won again when Garrison was defeated for re-election by Harry Connick, Sr.  Yet, Garrison showed great strength and courage.  His crusade led to further exposure of the weaknesses of the official story created in the Warren Report.  Garrison won in that he pulled more evidence from a government accustomed to projecting lies propped by power.  And the American people won also; we learned more about the Kennedy assassination; we learned more about government cover-ups; and we learned that there are heroes in America.  Some heroes can take on, not only City Hall, but they can take on the entire Washington Establishment when it lies to the American people.           

          So even before Obama shoved the US toward an oppressive totalitarian state, there were other examples of repression in the US.  Garrison fought for freedom and truth against the Establishment then.  One hopes we can do the same in the struggle against Obamoppression today.