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Podcast Episode: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2289560/14393705
In 1992, John Barbour made a film about Jim Garrison's investigation of JFK's murder and an interview that Garrison gave him to discuss the details frankly. There was a part 2 issued several years later that I will talk about in a future episode.
Links:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_People
https://www.wisconsinhistory.org/Records/Image/IM97353
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https://consaracytheories.com/ or my own site at: https://saracausey.com/. Don't forget to check out the blog at: https://consaracytheories.com/blog.
Transcription by Otter.ai. Please forgive any typos!
Welcome to con-sara-cy theories. Are you ready to ask questions you shouldn't and find information you're not supposed to know? Well, you're in the right place. Here is your host, Sara Causey.
Hello, hello, and thanks for tuning in. In tonight's episode, I will be talking about John Barbour's film, the garrison tapes. This episode is only about part one. There is a sequel that he made many years later. Now I'm going to talk about that in today's episode, I'm only going to talk about the first one that came out in 1992 I actually went about it bassackwards, because I found Part Two first on Amazon, because I was busy not knowing that part one ever even existed. Then I found it on YouTube. It was like, Oh, okay. So I'm going to try to review these in chronological order, and I will start off with part one of the garrison tapes in tonight's episode, pour yourself up a beverage of choice, and we will saddle up and take this ride. Jim Garrison was the New Orleans district attorney who attempted to prosecute Clay Shaw for his alleged involvement in planning the JFK Pop. Pop Shaw, of course, was acquitted by a jury. We see this in Oliver Stone's film JFK. Jim Garrison was played by Kevin Costner in that film, and Jim Garrison wrote the book on the trail. That's one of the books that Oliver Stone uses as source material for the film. John Barbour was one of the hosts of a show on NBC in the early 80s called real people. And it's exactly what it sounds like. It was featuring real people from around the country, as opposed to having like celebrities and being a scripted drama. And John barber had gotten an interest in Jim Garrison, and in Jim Garrison's case, his investigations into the pop pop and wanted to have an interview, and this was at a time when Garrison had already been put through the ringer by the media, but he felt that John was going to be honest, was going to try to give him a fair interview, and so Jim Garrison sat down with him, and that is one of the backdrops for this film that John Barbour has made called the garrison tapes. The film opens up with Kennedy's quote about information flow in a free society, and the speech is available. You can go to the JFK Library. I'll drop a link so you can go. You can read the text if you want to you can listen to it in his own voice, which is something that I like to do. I like to hear someone's tone of voice whenever possible. But the quote is the very word secrecy is repugnant in a free and open society, and we are, as a people, inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths and to secret proceedings. I'm going to butt in and say, I do intend to record a further episode about what is JFK getting at when he's talking about secret societies. Because he's not just talking about the press there, He literally says secret societies. We decided long ago that the dangers of excessive and unwarranted concealment of pertinent facts far outweighed the dangers which are cited to justify it. Even today, there is little value in opposing the threat of a closed society by imitating its arbitrary restrictions. Even today, there is little value in ensuring the survival of our nation if our traditions do not survive with it, and there is very grave danger that an announced need for increased security will be seized upon by those anxious to expand its meaning to the very limits of official censorship and concealment that I do not intend to permit to the extent that it is in my control, and no official of my administration, whether his rank is high or low, civilian or military, should interpret my words here tonight as an excuse to censor the news, to stifle dissent, to cover up our mistakes, or to withhold from the press and the public the facts that they deserve to know. End Quote, and we sure don't live in that world anymore, do we? We also, in the opening sequences of this film, learned that on January 31 1992 NBC conducted a phone survey for people who like to get surveys. It was like a phone survey to find out from just john and jane Q public, who they thought killed JFK. So NBC gets 30,000 calls in three hours time, and 51% of callers responded that it was the Charlie India Alpha. I'd be curious to know what it is today in 1967 Jim Garrison really becomes the Pioneer to step out and say, Hey, I think the Charlie India Alpha did this Garrison quickly finds himself in hot water, and he had already shut down some vice operations in New Orleans. So it's sort of like, Man, you're really stacking the deck against yourself. You're shutting down vice. Operations. You're talking about the JFK, pop, pop. You're saying you think the Charlie India Alpha was involved, holy cannolis. Then we also, in this documentary, talk about 1953 there was the Iranian coup. 1954 there was the Guatemalan coup. I think it was David attle Phillips that was in this movie talking about those things. So, I mean, we know it's not without precedent that the Charlie India Alva has been involved in just removing somebody who's a problematic leader. We also learned that the Charlie India Alva had had it in for Fidel Castro. So they had already gotten coups in Iran and in Guatemala, and then they wanted one in Cuba. Kennedy takes the blame publicly for the Bay of Pigs fiasco, and some of the individuals in the agency are angry that JFK didn't send in military support at the Bay of Pigs, even though he goes out to the public and eats crow for something that's not entirely his fault, like, Hey, I'm the responsible officer. The buck has to stop with me. You have people in the agency that are like, we should have just had a full scale war down there. And we start to see this narrative of the agency emerging as an unaccountable force and garrison. In his interview, paints a picture of these alphabet agencies working together in concert, and we also learn about an ad. I will drop a link to it so that you can read it for yourself. I had to do a little bit of digging to find a legible copy. There are some historical sites that have it up, but it's not clearly it's not clearly visible what the text actually says. So a lot of us know about the welcome or the wanted for treason handbill that went out on November 22 1963 in Dallas, and the picture of Kennedy wanted for treason. But there was also a welcome, Mr Kennedy, a sarcastic Welcome, Mr Kennedy, ad that was placed in the Dallas Morning News. So to put this in some further context of the hostile environment that he was going into, the Welcome Mr Kennedy, not President Kennedy, but the Welcome Mr Kennedy handbill read to Dallas, a city so disgraced by a recent liberal smear attempt that its citizens have just elected two more conservative Americans to public office, a city that is in an economic boom, not because of federal handouts, but through conservative economic and business practices, a city that will continue to grow and prosper despite efforts by you and your administration to penalize it for its nonconformity to new frontierism, A city that rejected your philosophy and policies in 1960 and will do so again in 1964 even more emphatically than before. Mr Kennedy, despite contentions on the part of your administration, the State Department, the mayor of Dallas, the Dallas city council and members of your party, we free thinking and America thinking, citizens of Dallas still have, through a constitution largely ignored by you, the right to address our grievances, to question you, to disagree with you and to criticize you. In asserting this constitutional right, we wish to ask you publicly the following questions, indeed, questions of paramount importance and interest to all free peoples everywhere, which we trust you will answer in public without sophistry. These questions are, why is Latin America turning either anti American or communistic or both, despite increased US foreign aid, State Department policy and your own Ivy tower pronouncements, why do you say we have built a wall of freedom around Cuba when there is no freedom in Cuba today, because of your policy, 1000s of Cubans have been imprisoned, are starving and being persecuted, with 1000s already murdered and 1000s already awaiting execution. And in addition, the entire population of almost 7 million Cubans are living in slavery. Why have you approved the sale of wheat and corn to our enemies when you know the communist soldiers travel on their stomachs, just as ours do. Communist soldiers are daily wounding andor killing American soldiers in South Vietnam. Why do you host salute and entertain Tito Moscow's Trojan horse just a short time after our sworn enemy, Khrushchev, embraced the Yugoslav dictator as a great hero and leader of communism, why have you urged greater aid comfort, recognition and understanding for Yugoslavia, Poland, Hungary and other communist countries, while turning your back on the pleas of Hungarian, East German Cuban and other anti communist freedom fighters? Why did Cambodia kick the US out of its country after we poured nearly $400 million of aid into its ultra leftist government. Why has Gus Hall, head of the US Communist Party, praised almost every one of your policies and announced that the party will endorse and support your reelection in 1964 Why have you banned the showing at US military bases of the film operation abolition the movie by the House Committee on UN American Act? Activities exposing communism in America. Why have you ordered or permitted your brother, Bobby the Attorney General to go soft on communists, fellow travelers and ultra leftists in America, while permitting him to persecute loyal Americans who criticized you, your administration and your leadership? Why are you in favor of the US continuing to give economic aid to Argentina, in spite of the fact that Argentina has just seized almost $400 million of American private property, why has the foreign policy of the United States degenerated to the point that the Charlie India alpha is arranging coups and having staunch anti communist allies of the US bloodily exterminated that point I find particularly rich. Why have you scrapped the Monroe Doctrine in favor of the spirit of Moscow, Mr Kennedy? As citizens of the United States of America, we demand answers to these questions, and we want them now. This is attributed to the American fact finding committee, an unaffiliated and nonpartisan group of citizens who wish truth. Bernard Weissman, Chairman, PO Box, 1792 Dallas, 21 Texas. End quote. So I would say that between the wanted for treason, hand bill and this Welcome Mr Kennedy ad certainly gives us a historical context that not everybody in Dallas was just turning cartwheels and super excited that Kennedy was coming down there that day, a man named Roger Craig, who had been a police officer, said that plainclothes officers on that day were told to observe the motorcade, but that's it. Just observe. Don't get involved in the security detail. Don't try to do anything helpful. Just stand back and observe. Garrison says that on Thursday. So you know the Pop Pop happened on Friday. So the day before Thursday, the newspapers still showed the route as going straight down Maine, there's no dog leg turn, according to garrison. Now this is a point of contention, because you have some people who basically yell at the top of their lungs that the parade route was never changed. Dead Digi King Beery. That never happened. He was always supposed to make this weird ass dogleg turn. That makes no sense. Meanwhile, if you just look at the diagram Dealey Plaza, it's like, why would you not just go straight down Maine? Makes no sense to make that turn. I mean just, just logically on the face of it, it makes no sense at all. So Garrison says that on Thursday, the newspapers still showed the route as going straight down Maine with no dogleg turn. Earl cabell's administration, according to garrison. Want to be super clear, it's not, according to me, this is, according to what Garrison says in the interview, Earl cabell's administration in Dallas changed the motorcade route. Now, Garrison thinks that you would have to have three teams of pop poppers, two teams that were on or around the grassy knoll and another team out back. And in his mind, this does not include Oswald being on the sixth floor of the Book Depository. The motorcade, according to Garrison, slows down to 11 or 12 miles per hour through Dealey Plaza. And that's slow when you're talking about professional pop poppers with R, i, f, L, E, S, that's that's slow. It's not the same as being completely still and stationary, but it's slow enough to get the job done. And I mean, unfortunately, clearly it was Dr Robert McClelland, who is one of the doctors at Parkland, is also interviewed, and he describes the head wound at the back of Kennedy's skull. This is graphic subject matter, not really much that I can do about that. If you're squeamish, consider this fair warning. I mean, there are some things that will turn your stomach potentially in this so McClelland describes the head wound at the back of Kennedy's skull, how a piece of brain matter fell out when he was there at Parkland, and how Jackie had a portion of his brain in her hand. And then Malcolm Kilduff comes out and tells the press about Kennedy's death. And he points to an area on his temple. It's just a simple matter of a wound to the brain, and he points to his temple. And as Garrison says, We all know that JFK was popped in the front of his head. Like, Well, yeah. I mean, I agree with Garrison on that point. I pretty much feel like we all do know that we're supposed to be gaslighted into thinking we don't know that. But, I mean, I think pretty much we all do. Mark lane is also featured in this film, and there are some clips of his witnesses from rush to judgment. Ed Hoffman, who was the deaf mute. He's also in rush to judgment. No, I take that back. I think that he is in the men who killed Kennedy. I don't I can't remember if Ed Hoffman was in rush to judgment or Not off the top of my head, but I do remember he was interviewed for that Docu series the men who killed Kennedy. In this documentary, he offers his testimony using the help of his daughter to translate. There is the report of a hole in the dashboard as well as a nick. In the windshield of the presidential limo. We're so we're talking Furthermore, about things that don't seem to be plausible if you've only got one pop popper from the sixth floor of the School Book Depository. There's a photograph, allegedly of Jack Ruby in Dealey Plaza. There's a man named Jim Braden who is arrested but released. And then, of course, JD Tippett is killed. Oswald slips into the movie theater without paying. And as Garrison says, You have to start in from the beginning with momentum from the media before reality sets in, before people really have the opportunity to start asking questions. So in his mind, he believes that there had to have been people within the mainstream media that were already on board. They had already been tipped off in some way or maybe just threatened, right? I mean, it could have just been like, you're gonna go along to get along, or we're gonna have a serious problem. Oswald says that the famous backyard photos are fakes, and I just wrote this down. This is not in the movie. This is my own editorial comment, my own thought. If JFK was really in bed with the Soviets, why would an avowed communist pop him? It doesn't even make any sense. If he really was a closet commie, he really was trying to steer America over to the Soviet Union and just make us a limp noodle in the presence of the Soviets, why would an avowed commie be the one to pop him? It doesn't make any sense. The official story. It the minute that you actually look at it. It crumbles apart in your hands. They also interview l Fletcher Prouty. He talks about how he's in New Zealand at the time of the pop pop but yet in the newspaper, they already have a full bio of Lee Harvey Oswald, and this leads Prouty to believe that the story was written before Kennedy was even murdered. They interviewed Jim Mars briefly. Jim Mars says that army intelligence is the one to tip off Dallas police that Lee Harvey Oswald, aka Alex hydell, was the pop popper. Three shells were found in the sniper's nest, and they're all lined up. Oswald's paraffin test shows that he did not even fire an R, i, f, l, e, that day. Garrison says that the boxes in the room there at the Book Depository did not even have Oswald's fingerprints on them. They had fingerprints from the police department and from an unidentified man, but none that even corresponded to Oswald. It's also pointed out in this movie that everyone had heard Oswald's name on the news, so putting him in a lineup was basically a farce, because he had to step forward and say his name. He was the only one in the lineup that was just wearing a t shirt, while the other men in the lineup had on regular collared shirts. So it's like, who sticks out like a sore thumb in this lineup? Oh, it's Oswald. And Garrison says that he believes Oswald would have been acquitted in any court if it had made it that far and the evidence had been presented. He believes that Oswald would have been acquitted. Oswald is interrogated. There are no recordings, no notes. The Dallas Police Department says that interrogation, the interrogation room was too small to let in a stenographer, so you're talking about one of the most prominent murders to ever happen in American history. You believe you have the suspect who did it, but you take no notes and you don't record anything very odd.
Garrison says that he believes Oswald was watching the parade and not sitting in the sniper's nest. And there is a photo that has been produced of a man that could be Oswald. Supposedly it's another man named Billy Lovelady. But there are people within the conspiracy world that think it's actually Oswald standing there watching he's nowhere near the sixth floor. There was a video taken by a man named Charles T Bronson, but he is told by the Foxtrot Bravo India that the video doesn't show any sufficient evidence, even though it shows the Texas School Book Depository. Apparently the bureau doesn't want it. Zapruder gets a similar treatment, and that's one of the reasons why he opts to sell his video Robert Groden, who's a photographic analyst, also very well known within the JFK, pop, pop research community, Robert Groden calls out Dan Rather, for lying on the air and saying that Kennedy is thrown forward violently. Of course, when you watch the Zapruder film, you immediately see that he has not thrown forward violently. But of course, the public didn't have access to it at that point in time, Jack Ruby is shown in a room full of reporters talking about how Oswald was involved with fair play for Cuba like yet again, why is Jack Ruby all over the place in this thing? Garrison points out. A witness named Julia Ann Mercer fingered Ruby as the man who unloaded another man with a boom stick at the grassy knoll the day of the Pop Pop Garrison believes that the Foxtrot Bravo India and the Charlie India Alpha worked in concert with each other as it relates to the Pop Pop Ruby gets to stay loose until he has eliminated Oswald, aka the Patsy Gordon Shanklin reports that someone threatened to kill Oswald if given the chance, but they still didn't make any changes to their plans. And then there you go. Oswald is there for Ruby to murder. Some type of CPR is supposedly performed on Oswald, even though he was shot in the stomach. Which makes us ask the question, why? Well, presumably, to guarantee that he dies, because otherwise, why? Why would you do CPR on somebody's been shot in the stomach? They're breathing, they're coherent, they're moaning. What would be the need to do CPR on somebody like that. And then the you know, the statement is made that when Kennedy died, so did his foreign policy. Garrison says that LBJ changed foreign policy within 72 hours of JFK death. He's quoting LBJ as saying, we're going to back them in Vietnam all the way everything has changed now. Mark Lane says that J Edgar Hoover says that the public must be satisfied that Oswald was the lone pop popper. So notice the verbiage there. It's not that the government has to prove it. It has to be proven beyond any reasonable doubt that Oswald is the lone pop popper. It's just that the public has to be satisfied that Oswald was the guy. Ella Fletcher Prouty says that Hoover and LBJ were buddy buddy in DC, even borrowing, I think each other's lawnmowers, something like that. But Prouty doesn't think that Johnson himself was involved in planning the Pop Pop. There are most definitely people within the research community around the JFK, pop, pop, who would disagree with that. Some would agree with it. Some think that Johnson benefited from it, but wasn't involved. Decide for yourself what you think on that issue. There are photos of Oswald. And I put Oswald here in giant quotes of Oswald, wink, wink. In Mexico City, these are actually the same photos that you will find in Hugh McDonald's book of a man that he called Saul. I plan to record an episode about Hugh McDonald's book and this interview with a pop popper named Saul who claims that he was the one that killed Kennedy. That's a whole other story for a whole other time, and Warren is goaded into serving on the commission, possibly because he's scared of World War Three breaking out with the Soviet Union. Oswald, in this documentary, is alleged to be a Stewie for the Bureau, and Oswald even had Foxtrot Bravo, India, Agent hostess contact information, which is odd. Why would somebody just randomly have an agent's contact information in their address book if they're not involved with that agency? Hoover claims that Oswald was never an informant for the Bureau Humes, who was involved in the autopsy of JFK burns his autopsy notes at home. Now he's later to make the excuse that he did so because they were covered in Kennedy's blood, and he just did not want them to turn into fodder for curiosity seekers, for people that are morbid, to wind up at auction. He just didn't want to take the chance of that happening. Of course, one prevailing theory is that the notes were actually burned because all of JFK wounds had to come from the back. There couldn't be anything in the official autopsy that would contradict the idea that it was one pop popper acting alone from behind the motorcade. Nothing from the front, nothing from the sides, no conspiracy. It was one guy, one lone nut, crazy from behind the motorcade. Meanwhile, Ruby wants to go to DC to testify, but he has refused. He talks about ulterior motives and people in high places. Mark Lane becomes an early skeptic of this official narrative that it was Oswald by himself. Lane is repeatedly told by the mainstream media to leave the Kennedy murder alone. Now he does find one vehicle to get an article published, and Lee Harvey Oswald's mother reads this article, and she asks Mark lane to represent Oswald. Lane agreed, but he warns her that if he comes to the conclusion that Oswald was guilty based on the evidence, he will say so Oswald's Mother agrees to this, but then mark lane gets called as a witness, and he concludes that the Warren Commission wanted to ferret out what Lane already knew. So by calling him as a witness, it curbs his ability to really serve as counsel for Oswald. Well. Did Jack Ruby drop the magic pristine bullet on the stretcher at Parkland? This is one of the questions that's asked in John Barbour's film. Was it Ruby who mysteriously puts this magic pristine bullet on the stretcher at just the right time? Was Ruby in Dealey Plaza? There's a photo that looks like Ruby. They show the diagram from the Warren report and how the bullet zigzag through the car as well as through JFK and through comely, it then somehow falls out intact on a stretcher. Life magazine had already concluded what the Warren Commission did several months later, so ahead of the Warren Commission Report, Life magazine concludes that it was Oswald acting by himself. So one narrative here is, why don't they just save the taxpayers money by saying Life magazine solved the mystery? We're also told that Bill Paley of CBS was said to be OSS, which was the precursor to the Charlie India Alpha. We're also told that CBS was already working on a two hour special to uphold the Warren report before it was ever published. Orville nixes granddaughter tells the story of Nix being bullied by the media to change his eyewitness testimony. You may remember that Orville Nix had another video of the pop pop, and he is one of the witnesses that Mark Lane interviews and rush to judgment. Oswald goes on TV to talk about how he's a Marxist, so we see this alleged sheep dipping that occurs with Oswald. He's in with anti Cuban or, I mean, anti Castro Cubans, but then he's also in with pro Castro Cubans, and he's a pro Castro, and he says he's a Marxist, but he's not a communist. It's like, Well, do you have a headache yet? Because I do. Oswald works out of guy Bannister's office, even though Oswald is supposed to be a Castro supporter. So it's like, why would guy banister, who's notoriously right wing anti communist? Why would he have Oswald working out of his office? If Oswald really was a caster supporter, things that make you go, hmm. David ferry told a bizarre story of going hunting, then he said that he was going to go ice skating instead. So the day of the pop pop, he takes off in the car, saying that he was going to go hunting, but then he said that he changed his mind and wanted to go ice skating instead. Right? Russell Long has a conversation with Jim Garrison, saying that to call it a cover up would be a mild way of putting it. You may remember this depicted in Oliver Stone's film JFK, where Kevin Costner, playing Jim Garrison, is on an airplane and he's talking to Walter Matthau playing Russell Long sort of like, yeah, you could say it was a cover up, all right, then be putting it mildly. And this sparks Jim Garrison's interest in like, Well, wait a minute, don't we have a right to know the truth? Why was it covered up? The Warren report goes into bizarre details. This includes talking about Jack Ruby's mother's teeth, which, why is that relevant to anything? As Jim Garrison notes, even if Jack Ruby's intent had been to bite Oswald to death, his mother's dental records wouldn't have been relevant to anything.
Dean Andrews, you may remember, he's portrayed by John Candy in JFK by Oliver Stone. Dean Andrews allegedly gets a call from a clay Bertrand about defending Oswald. We also learned that Bertrand had paid legal bills for Oswald in the past. Witnesses claim that clay Bertrand is in fact, Clay Shaw of the trademark and Garrison then makes this connection between David Ferrie, Clay Shaw and Lee Harvey Oswald, a man named Perry Russo, becomes an important witness. Russo says that ferry Oswald, Shaw and a few Cubans were together at a party talking about murdering Kennedy. Russo also says that Shaw had been introduced to him as Clay Bertrand. Russo claims that ferry Shaw, Oswald and banister were all in the Charlie India Alpha according to ferry himself. Ferry dies, allegedly by suicide, with two typed up suicide notes, which, again, that's odd. Who does that? I mean, it's not even handwritten, it's typed. That's a little odd, especially for for that time. I mean, now I guess maybe somebody would type it on a computer and print it out. But two, why would you have two notes? In case the first one didn't convince you this was a suicide I want to make sure and leave a second one. That's weird. The investigators said that none of Shaw's predilections were used against him. I think that's important, because they did find, well, this is not a G rated broadcast. I always put explicit labels on this. They found accoutred. Mon of sexual practices, whips, chains, things like palm prints, where somebody had been tied up, and things of a sexual nature were done, as well as phalluses, etc, because that's a that's a criticism that we get in modern times to sort of cast Clay Shaw as this victim of homophobia, that this was a witch hunt. They were after Clay Shaw because he was gay. So the investigators are clear to say that none of Shaw's predilections were used against him, and that Garrison actually took care to make sure that nobody got into personal details. It wasn't anything personal about clay Shaw's intimate life, Shaw had an address that also corresponded to one that was in Oswald's address book. So it's like for somebody that was, we're supposed to believe that Oswald was just his puny little nobody. He sure seems to have friends in high places, doesn't he? Shaw allegedly admits to an officer, a police officer, that he used the alias clay Bertrand, a grand jury hears the evidence and moves to indict Clay Shaw. Now, according to one of clay Shaw's attorneys, diamond Garrison had the grand jury in his pocket. So Clay Shaw's defense team believes that the only reason that Clay Shaw was indicted was because Garrison had sway over this grand jury, Clay Shaw's defense wanted to introduce the Warren report as evidence, and the judges said, No, it's only hearsay. Can you believe that? No, it's only hearsay. You can't put an official government report about the murder of a president into evidence because it's only hearsay. And Shaw's lawyer, diamond admits that that story is true. Nobody's making that up. His Shaw's own defense team admits that the story is true. If we were writing this as fiction, you know, I say that all the time about the economy and the job market and the bullshit that we get spoon fed about that, but my God, if we were writing this as a satire, nobody would publish it. Clay Shaw had been cleared already, yet his name was not even in the Warren report. So we get this story in this documentary about how Ramsey Clark, who was then a US Attorney, said that there's no reason to go after Clay Shaw, because Clay Shaw had already been cleared by the Warren Commission, but clay Shaw's name is not in the Warren report. So garrison is like, Well, how did that happen? Then an aide for Ramsey Clark walks the comment back and apologizes and says, Oh, shit, never mind. We were in error again. We were writing this as a fictional novel. The editor would be like, Dude, this is too unbelievable. Garrison alleges that Shaw was Charlie India Alpha ever since he was with the Mississippi River shipping company, Jack Anderson claimed that he thought Garrison had a real case against Clay Shaw. So you have some people in the government, you have reporters as well as people in the government, starting to get nervous about what Garrison knows and that Garrison might really have a case against Shaw. In this documentary, Garrison's kids are interviewed, and they talk about being under police protection and being followed by the Foxtrot Bravo India. I made the note that in 1979 Richard Helms admitted under oath that Shaw had been a part time contact of the Charlie India Alpha. You can look that up on Wikipedia. So even though we're told in this trial that he wasn't, he's just being persecuted for no reason, Garrison had it out for him. Maybe garrison was a homophobe. In 1979 Richard Helms admitted under oath that Shaw had been a part time contact of the Charlie India Alpha. Which makes me wonder, what more than that. Roger Craig, the police officer, describes being the victim of a car bombing, and later on, he was reported to have killed himself. This guy actually survived several different death death threat attempts, and then finally he was killed, although we're told he committed suicide. There was a leaker in Garrison's office. This man had a large briefcase, and it turns out that he was duplicating documents. It's alleged that he was given he was giving documents to Shaw's legal team as well as to the government. Now, Garrison says something very important in this interview that I mean, absolutely it bears repeating. I think it's still true today. As Garrison says, if you are in the way of these agencies of the state, whoever who the power broker, shall we say, you either get discredited, removed or killed, and that's it. If they can't do if they can't murder you, they'll just discredit you as a kook. If you just simply need to be removed from an office. They'll get you out of the way, but one way or the other, they're going to make sure that you're neutralized. I completely believe that to be true, and I'll make an editorial comment here. I mean, this really could be fodder for a whole other episode all its own. Yeah, but I think that from my perspective, you have two state sponsored narratives, maybe not state sponsored, well, state sponsored, probably, but approved by the state, condoned by the state. That's probably how I should put it, two condoned by the state, narratives about Kennedy. On the one hand, you can be a Kennedy worshiper. You can fashion him as an idol. You can make him Jesus, a prince of peace. You can make him the most incredible person that ever walked the earth. You're allowed to do that, and I believe you're allowed to do that because you're easy to discredit. You're easy to paint as a kook. Well, that person's just a Kennedy worshiper. That's just one of those liberals or neoliberals that wants to fashion Kennedy into a saint. They're not going to hear anything about his philandering. They're not going to hear anything that might be critical to their bias. They've just decided that Kennedy should have been canonized for the sainthood, and that's that the other narrative that's acceptable is on the opposite side of the spectrum, that Kennedy was a flat out Pardon my language. This is a nighttime broadcast. I'm trying to drive the point home. That is a narrative that's acceptable. He was awful. He was all the time cheating. 24/7 penis, that's all he did. The man never held any meetings. He never played with his kids. He never ate a sandwich, he never read a book, he never took a bath. 24/7 penis all the time, and that's it. He was awful. He was not going to change foreign policy. He was not going to keep America out of Vietnam. He wasn't trying to support the national efforts of these countries that had been under the specter of colonialism. Nope. That's all fake. It's all lies. Both of these extremes, I think, are condoned by the state. And I think, as I said, the sainthood idea, it's condoned because it's easy to discredit that he was just a lousy, sack of Narrative, I believe, is allowed because I think it's leading down the road to somebody saying, Yeah, we did it, but it was for the better. He was awful. He was a communist in disguise. He was secretly KGB. He was screwing anything that moved. He was just a bad guy, and he got what was coming to him. I can completely see that happening, maybe not in my lifetime, but God, you give it another 100 years, you could totally have some faction of an agency, or maybe even some agency full stop, coming out and saying, Yes, we did it, but the guy was a sack of so it really wasn't bad that we did it.
I hope I'm wrong on that. I really do, but as as Garrison says, you either get discredited, removed or killed. I think that's still the playbook today. NBC does a hit piece on Jim Garrison. I think I've dropped links to it before, and it makes Garrison look like a liar or a buffoon. This is even mentioned in Oliver Stone's film JFK, as he sort of jokes Kevin Costner jokes in the movie. Well, at least the people that are watching laughing tonight won't hate my guts. It is one hell of a hit piece. I have watched it, and it does make Garrison sound awful. If you don't know anything else about the story and you watch that hit piece, you're like, Damn, that guy must have been a complete clown. Perry Russo gets told that he'll go down with Garrison unless he disavows his testimony. Garrison has him wired for sound, and so he knows what Russo is being offered. And this is allegedly Walt Walter Sheridan that is making this offer to Russo. You can either disavow your testimony and turn on Garrison, or you can go down with the ship they wanted to destroy garrison. Meanwhile, the FCC grants Garrison half an hour to respond to the NBC hit piece. That's not really something that we see happening anymore in modern times. Hey, you were the victim of a merciless smear campaign. We're going to give you at least 30 minutes to defend yourself and try to salvage your reputation on national TV, the comedian Mort Saul helps to get Garrison a place on Johnny Carson Show Mark lane and Mort Saul helped Garrison to prepare because they didn't want him to use profanity. They knew that if Johnny Carson came at him like, man, some people think you're a buffoon. Some people think You're a kook. They didn't want Garrison to be like, that they wanted him to be able to keep his language, G rated on the air. We learned that Oswald tried to get a job in Clinton, Louisiana at a mental hospital. This is also something that Judith vary Baker has talked about in her tales of complete nightmare fuel about cancer research, multiple witnesses in Clinton saw Shaw and. Altogether. They stood out. They were in a big, fancy, black car, and it was quite noticeable. Garrison tried to subpoena Dulles and helms for questioning. Federal officials declined to serve those subpoenas United be able to subpoena people in the Charlie Indian alpha I mean, good try for Garrison, but that was not going to freaking happen. However, Garrison does manage to get a copy of the zabrutar film, and it shows Kennedy going back and to the left. Remember that famous part in Oliver Stone's film, back and to the left, back and to the left. It makes clear that Kennedy must have been shot from the front. Okay, so at this trial, of Clay Shaw, a man named Charles spiesel, or spiesel, say it how you want to Charles spiesel, an accountant from New York City Garrison, thinks that he's going to be a witness for the prosecution. He claims that he saw Shaw and Oswald in a park together. Spiesel tells a wacky story about fingerprinting his own daughter to be sure that she wasn't replaced by the government as a body double. Naturally, at this point, the jury detaches, and they just think this guy's insane. Oh sure, you saw Shaw and Oswald in a part together. You fingerprinted your own daughter. You are a complete wing nut. And in the interview, one of Garrison staff laments that this guy may have just been a plant all along the officer, the police officer who heard Shaw admit to being clay Bertrand was not allowed to testify, and then garrison was not allowed to prosecute Shaw for perjury, even though it was clear that he perjured himself. So again, to reiterate, a jury acquits Clay Shaw of being involved in any kind of conspiracy to pop, pop JFK. Garrison wants to go after him for perjuring himself on the stand, but he's not going to be able to do that. Essentially, a federal court ruled that Garrison has to just leave Shaw alone. So Garrison wanted to get a conviction on perjury, but this is not going to happen. A photograph later surfaces that Barber, the filmmaker John barber claims is David Ferrie Oswald and Shaw together at a party, I would encourage you with anything you know, always look at this information for yourself, the photographs, the handbills, the books, the documentaries, the movies, anything. Go and check it out for yourself. The photo that he shows in this documentary is so hazy, it's difficult for me to tell who it is in the photograph, Barbara claims that it's fairy Oswald and Shaw and a party. I honestly can't tell. Sometimes people come up with these photos and like, I'm convinced this is Ruby, I'm convinced this is Poppy, I'm convinced this is whoever to me. Unless I feel like that person is just an absolute ringer, I'm gonna be cautious. I can't sit here in good conscience and tell you that I'm convinced it is a photograph of the three of them together. I can't tell you it's not to me. The only thing I can say is it's blurry. It's not clear. Garrison says that he was hounded and harassed. Garrison is also prosecuted. He's accused of bribery and then income tax evasion regarding the bribery, but Garrison wins both of those cases. Jim and his wife divorce from the stress the children, Garrison's children said that their mom just wanted to have a normal family life that wasn't going to happen being in Jim Garrison's circle anymore, so they split up. Garrison lost his bid for another term, but he did get elected to a court of appeals. The HSCA, the House Select Committee on pop, pops concluded that conspiracy happened with the death of JFK. They don't make any ruling on who did it, just that it was a conspiracy. I don't think a lot of people know that. I think those of us with an interest that read a lot about the Pop Pop know it. But in terms of John and J Q Public, I don't think the general public is really aware of that, that there was a government committee years later that said, yeah, it was a conspiracy. Probably was Yeah, yeah, probably was. Now we don't know who did it, but we think it was probably a conspiracy. Garrison's son says that he hopes Oliver Stone's movie will show people that something is wrong with the Warren Commission report, and Garrison himself says that he's not sure he'd do it all again because of the emotional toll it took on him. I know that at points in time after clay Shaw's trial, he did say that he would do it all over again in the pursuit of truth. But, you know, I think it's very telling that later on in his life, he says that he's not sure he'd do it all again because of the emotional toll that it took on him. I think it takes a lot of courage to just admit that watch this film for yourself. I will, in another episode, talk about the second part of this documentary. It's interesting. It has some new revelations that come out. I think it's worth. Your time. I'll drop a link where you can check it out free of charge on YouTube if you want to. What do you think about all this? I mean, I remember, after I watched JFK for the first time, I immediately went and bought Jim Mars's book Crossfire and Jim Garrison's book on the trail, and because of the smear campaigns against Garrison, I expected on the trail to sound like a crazy mess, like a manifesto written in crayon or marker by a complete lunatic. And it doesn't. It's incredibly coherent. It makes a lot of sense for my money. I mean, I've read a lot of books, and I continue to read and thus far, I feel like Garrison has if he didn't hit the nail on the head, Damn, he got close. I feel like his explanations make the most sense. That's scary for some people. They don't want to go there. They would rather decide that garrison is a kook, a weirdo, a goofball, than to think that his theories about who done it and why are true, because that has ramifications even today. I've told the story before about how on the 60th anniversary of the pop pop, one of the local news channels was going to have on a reporter who was there in Dallas that day, and two of the younger guys that were on that broadcast were kind of like, Oh yeah, okay, how interesting. You could tell they didn't give two You know is, it's hard to explain to people. This is still relevant if we did, in fact, if, okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna head to my language here. If we did have a coup d'etat that day, we're still living with the ramifications of it. And I think when you look at the evidence that we've just had one Warhawk after another after another, we've just had one sleaze that's in bed with big business. They all suck off Wall Street and the cronies and the billionaires. Nothing changes. It doesn't matter. Red, Blue, donkey, elephant, six and one, half a dozen to the other. If we did have a coup that day, we're still living with the aftermath of that, like Jim Garrison's speech there, portrayed by Kevin Costner in his closing remarks during the trial and in the movie JFK, a figurehead a business agent, somebody who represents the military industrial complex and gets told what to do, and they just Have to go out and sell it to the American public. They're just a figurehead. You know, for my money, that sounds pretty effing accurate. It just does. Watch this film for yourself. Come to your own conclusions, stay a little bit crazy, and I will see you in the next episode.
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