Return to Main Page
Garrison's son raps article
Since my father's death in 1992, The Times-Picayune has published several malicious and inaccurate articles about him.
Although I am accustomed to The Times-Picayune's biased reporting, the most recent article, "Garrison paid witnesses in Shaw case, records say," April 10, an editorial in the form of a news story on the front page, warrants the following response.
The basis of this article is a 1967 unsworn statement by William Gurvich. David Snyder's article incorrectly state that Mr. Gurvich worked for Jim Garrison as an investigator. Mr. Gurvich was a private investigator who volunteered to help in the investigation, but he disappeared a short time later. (See Jim Garrison, "On The Trail Of The Assassins, " page 169.)
Mr. Gurvich was never actually employed by the Orleans Parish District Attorney's Office. To the contrary, he evidently aided defense counsel, based on the fact that he was discussing the case with them in 1967. Additionally, an Assassination Records Review Board release, dated April 9, 1996, reveals that Mr. Gurvich gave many of the district attorney's internal office memoranda and statements to the defense team.
Notwithstanding the ethical considerations of Mr. Gurvich's actions during the pending investigation, his statement is so vague and ambiguous that it is meaningless. As cited in The Times-Picayune, Mr. Gurvich's description of an alleged payment by the district attorney is: "I don't know exactly. He doesn't put out much. He only puts, like 10 or 20 on Clyde Johnson when Clyde comes in and I think the minister is worth a lot more than Dago Garner."
This inconclusive statement is of no moment because Clyde Johnson and Mr. Garner were not witnesses. They never testified in front of the grand jury, which returned an indictment, or at the Shaw trial. Further, the suggestion that witnesses could be bought in a case of this magnitude for a mere $10 or $20 is absurd.
Indisputably, Clay Shaw was represented by experienced attorneys. If there was any evidence that Jim Garrison paid potential witnesses, this would have been brought out by the defense attorneys before the trial.
Mr. Snyder wrote that these potential witnesses were coached by Jim Garrison. Mr. Snyder cited the following excerpt from Mr. Gurvich's statement as the basis of this allegation: "Jim probably handled that himself because every time I would see Johnson except the last time, he was always in Garrison's office."
Mr. Gurvich's lack of knowledge regarding the substance of those conversations indicates that his assumption that the district attorney was "coaching" Johnson is nothing more than unsupported conjecture and a boorish effort to impugn my father's character. Without knowing the substance of the alleged conversations, the fact that Jim Garrison spoke to a potential witness at the district attorney's office is, in Mr. Snyder's mind, evidence of coaching.
Finally, and most important, having been well acquainted with my father, I know he was intelligent, honest, and sincere. Frankly, I don't care about David Snyder's opinions. However, when Mr. Snyder's opinions appear on the front page in the form of a news article, I must respond.
In the future, perhaps The Times-Picayune can use better judgement and print its editorials on the editorial page instead of the front page. That way, I can read the news and avoid the newspaper's biased opinions.
Lyon H. Garrison
It may be of interest to you and your readers that my piece "The Belly of the Beast: Oliver Stone's Nixon and the American Nightmare" appears in the current Cineaste.
Christopher Sharrett
If the United States government is telling the truth, then none of its known intelligence services ever had any operational interest in Lee Harvey Oswald. Moreover, if the official account is accepted, no known intelligence service found Oswald's thirty-one-month defection to the Soviet Union of sufficient interest to ask him about it, even though other American citizens --- simple tourists as well as defectors --- were being closely questioned upon their return from the USSR. Contradicting the official account, there is the veritable showcase of positive evidence suggesting a relationship between Oswald and some branch of the U.S. intelligence services.
The question of just what intelligence role Oswald might have played may never be settled with any wide acceptance. Even the possibilities of how he might have been used invite strenuous debate among experts. With this in mind, it is useful to consider some of the more conventional possibilities:
These possibilities are within the realm of theoretical connections with U.S. intelligence services. There is, of course, the scenario that calls for Oswald's recruitment by the KGB while a Marine in Japan and for his continuing his training as a Soviet agent during his defection. (This is given full treatment in Edward J. Epstein's Legend.) While this thesis may be true, Oswald's continuing posture as a pro-Soviet, according to most respected critics as well as a CIA analyst, is certainly a peculiar adornment for a spy of that stripe...
Next, a few general comments from Harold Weisberg. These come from the Introduction (p. 7) to Photographic Whitewash: Suppressed Kennedy Assassination Pictures, published in 1967.
I believe deeply that our society is not safe when a murdered President can be dishonored with a palpably inadequate and entirely unsatisfactory official investigation by the government that succeeded him, by a dubious inquest that is not unfairly designated a "whitewash." No president and the institution of the presidency are ever safe when this can happen, and it did happen. All of the basic institutions of our society are thus in jeopardy.
To write critically of this fake inquest is not an attack on society or what has come to be called "The Establishment." The contrary is true. Our society, our concepts of law and justice, presuppose error. We know that courts and judges will err. The organization of our justice, in acknowledgment, provides a mechanism for correction of error, for justice.
Is a president less in the eyes of the law of "The Establishment" than an outcast, a nobody, an unclaimed derelict, to find whose murderer authority never ceases searching? We assume that no murder may be unsolved --- except this President's. That the government never intended solving. It sought only explanation that it could persuade a world, already subject to monumental public relations persuasion, to accept. It substituted contrived statistics for reality, unwarranted speculation for fact...
What from the very first has been lacking in the aborted accounting of the assassination has been the working of normality. In every other crime the law can work its course. In our country, that requires two separate sides. The government is denied the right or power to pretend it alone protects the accused while prosecuting him. It did this with Oswald, unstintingly doing the opposite while proclaiming his rights were being safeguarded. It never at any time considered the possibility that anyone else may have committed the crime or was in any way involved in it. This, perhaps, is the greatest dishonor, the worst disgrace. When, as often happened, there was indication of proof of his innocence of the charge of murder or sign of his government connections, the investigators went suddenly blind, or walked past the open door to truth. At every turn in the investigation, there was abundant evidence of the innocence of the accused. It was avoided or ignored or, when this was impossible, twisted or misrepresented.
Return to Main Page
* * *