MELODRAMA IN NEW ORLEANS—IV Weaknesses Of Garrison’s Case Examined

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 31907, 7 February 1969, Page 3

MELODRAMA IN NEW ORLEANS—IV Weaknesses Of Garrison’s Case Examined

(By

HUGH AYNESWORTH)

NEW ORLEANS. Millions the world over wonder if Jim Garrison, the huge New Orleans district attorney, really has a case against Clay Shaw—and if so, how it all ties in with the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

Hopefully, Shaw’s trial may answer some of the lingering questions. But the likelihood is that the situation will probably become no clearer than it is now.

Because if Shaw is convicted—and the odds favour it for several reasons—his attorneys will certainly rush into appellate court as fast as they can get the papers drawn up. They have been told, even by New Orleans judges, that there are already more reversible errors in the trial than in any trial in recent years.

But if Shaw is acquitted, there still will be further speculation and doubt. No acquittal is going to change the minds of the millions of people who believe Garrison’s case simply because they disbelieve the Warren Commission report For many of them, a not-guilty verdict will be another “fix,” like the Warren report. Garrison will be as much of a hero as if he had got his conviction. Popular Man For many people, the most powerful reason for believing Garrison’s case—despite what many consider to be his unorthodox bent toward publicity—is that “a district attorney just wouldn’t have gone this far if he didn’t have something. Why would he risk his future like that?” The truth of the matter is that the flamboyant acusations and trial have done nothing but enhance his future in Louisiana. He has become the state’s bestknown politician—even upstaging Governor John McKeithen, Senator Kussell Long and Representative Hale Boggs. Garrison says he could win any major Louisiana election right now, and he is probably right. Garrison knows, too, that the Internal Revenue Service is investigating his 1965 and 1966 income tax returns. He has turned this inquiry partially to his advantage, claiming that the only reason the I.R.S. is after him is his Kennedy assassination investigation.

“Anyway,” he said with his peculiar logic a few months ago, “I don’t know why they’d be interested in my income tax forms for those years. I filled out the short form both times.”

Investigators for the Securities and Exchange Commission, hot on the trail of those responsible for suspected fraudulant operations involving a couple of now-defunct savings and loan associations, have uncovered Garrison’s name in one company’s minutes. Garrison says he had no connection with the firms.

Two Investigations

Nevertheless, the fact that two government agencies are investigating Garrison proves to many critics of the Warren Commission that Big Jim must really have the goods. Most Louisiana voters greatly admire the men who “stand up to” what they call “the Washington bureaucrats” and the “Eastern Establishment." The state voted strongly for George Wallace last November.

Garrison realises all this and plays it to the hilt. Despite the clownishness of his labours to date. Garrison has several things in his favour at the trial. One of these is that he has several ways to jump He knows that the defence has no idea which he will choose.

For instance, Perry Russo and Vernon Bundy, the two witnesses who starred at the March, 1967, preliminary hearing, have been subpoenaed for the trial. Garrison will probably use them, but he does not have to do so. Defence attorneys have found what they consider to be telling holes in the Russo and Bundy testimony—holes that if probed at the trial would cast extreme doubt on the whole Garrison case. Russo testified, for example, that he saw Lee Harvey Oswald at a meeting at the home of David Ferrie, a form-

er airline pilot who died suddenly in February, 1967, while under surveillance by Garrison’s office.

At this meeting, said Russo, a “Clem Bertrand” took part in discussions on a plan to kill President Kennedy. Russo dramatically held his hand over the head of the defendant, Clay Shaw, when he identified him at the preliminary hearing as the “Clem Bertrand” of that plot session. Lakefront Meeting Bundy testified that he saw two men—whom he later identified as Oswald and Shaw—meeting along the New Orleans lakefront, a few feet from where he sat popping heroin. Bundy, then 27 and: an addict for 14 of those, years, said he realised it was; Oswald by a paper that' fell.: out of his back pocket as they ‘ turned to leave—a “Fair Play to Cuba” pamphlet. The trouble is that Russo's

dates for the meeting at Ferrie’s apartment are dates when Oswald was no longer in New Orleans, and the defence can undoubtedly prove it. A girl who was supposed to be at the meeting that night said she didn’t even meet Ferrie until more than a year later. There is also the question of why Russo didn’t come forward for more than three years after the assassination. He has replied that he was “tied up with my school work and baseball and everything. ’ Garrison has said publicly many times that all his witnesses must pass tests involving polygraphs, truth serum and hypnosis. “There’s no margin for error this way,” he explained. Russo, however, totally failed two polygraph tests, given by two different operators. Bundy, likewise, flunked the polygraph, and at least three of Garrison’s closest assistants begged that he not be put on the stand. Other Witnesses Thus, if Russo and Bundy turn out to be the highlights of the prosecution’s case, the defence should be prepared. ' But Garrison can turn to ; several other witnesses from whom he has taken contradic-

tory depositions since the preliminary hearing. One, a sometime preacher, claims Shaw once gave him $6OOO to “speak out” against Kennedy. Another, a town marshall in a small Louisiana town, says he saw Oswald and Shaw sitting together in a black Cadillac along the main street of his town a few weeks before the assassination. A mural painter and his wife told Garrison in mid--1967 that Jack Ruby gave them money in Dallas to go to Alexandria, Lo ’.isiana to meet Shaw and Oswald. A witness to the assassination in Dallas told Garrison he overheard five “swathy” men discussing the plot five days after the assassination in a Dallas bar. He involved Oswald and Shaw. A former mental patient, who claimed he was a C.I.A. man, told Garrison he carried $50,000 from Shaw to Oswald in Mexico in 1962. Another witness claims he saw’ a message being sent to the F. 8.1. headquarters in Washington predicting Kennedy’s assassination five days before it actually happened. “How in the world can anybody be expected to defend himself against this kind of case?” asked the chief defence counsel, Mr Edward F. Wegmann, a few months ago. Garrison’s reply is always the same: “These people didn’t run round with bank presidents, you know.” — Copywright, “Newsweek Feature Service.”