Jim Garrison
District Attorney
Philosophically, this is a conflict of truth versus power.
Peter Jennings
(Voice Over) Garrison was widely regarded by many who knew him as unethical and even cruel. And obsessed with proving a conspiracy, regardless of the evidence.
Jim Garrison
District Attorney
I certainly wouldn't say with confidence that we would make arrests and have convictions afterwards if I did not know that we had solved the assassination of President Kennedy, beyond any shadow of a doubt.
Milton Brener
New Orleans Assistant Distract Attorney, 1962 - 1963
You see, when a public offiCIAl says something, people assume that he knows what he's talking about. And Garrison would frequently say such things that "it's obvious," or "I'm absolutely convinced," or "I know," and people say, "well, he must know what he's talking about."
Jim Garrison
District Attorney
We are going to obtain many convictions in this investigation, because we have found out what happened.
Peter Jennings
(Voice Over) Garrison promoted himself as the only one brave enough to pursue the truth in the face of a Federal government bent on burying the facts of the assassination. He said he was uncovering a web of conspiracy with many plotters, with complex motives to kill the president.
Jim Garrison
District Attorney
Shots from the front in the Grassy Knoll area, where there's a picket fence, where several of them were. And the stone wall where there were three of them behind the stone wall.
Peter Jennings
(Voice Over) But in the end, Garrison put only one man on trial.
Reporter
Arrested this evening in the District Attorney's office was Clay Shaw, age 54, of 1313 Dauphine Street, New Orleans, Louisiana. Mr. Shaw will be charged with participation in a conspiracy to murder John F. Kennedy.
Robert Goldberg
Author, "Enemies Within"
(Voice Over) Clay Shaw was a prominent civic leader. His arrest stunned New Orleans.
Clay Shaw
Accused Civic Leader
I've always had only the highest and utmost respect and admiration for Mr. Kennedy. The charges filed against me have no foundation in fact or in law. I have not been apprised of the basis of these fantastic charges and assume that in due course I will be furnished with this information and will be afforded an opportunity to prove my innocence.
Peter Jennings
(Voice Over) Garrison never explained to the public why Shaw might have wanted to kill the president. He never explained Shaw's alleged role on November 22nd and rested his entire case on the testimony of a troubled 25 year-old insurance agent from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Perry Raymond Russo.
Perry Raymond Russo
Insurance Agent
No, I can't talk about this now.
Peter Jennings
(Voice Over) Russo was prepared to testify at trial that while he was visiting the apartment of a friend, David Ferrie, He witnessed Lee Oswald, Clay Shaw, and Ferrie plotting to kill the president. When David Ferrie died of natural causes, Russo was left as the only witness to this alleged conspiracy.
Milton Brener
New Orleans Assistant Distract Attorney, 1962 - 1963
Ferrie was dead, Oswald was dead. Whoever else was there was gone. Perry Russo was the only one who could place, supposedly, Clay Shaw in that room when assassination was being discussed.
Peter Jennings
(Voice Over) But Russo's testimony was a lie. And Jim Garrison knew it. A polygraph techniCIAn for the New Orleans police department, Ed O'Donnell, gave Russo a lie detector test.
Ed O'Donnell
Polygraph Technician
I asked him, "Did you ever see Clay Shaw at Dave Ferrie's apartment?" He said, "Mr. O'Donnell, I don't know." I said, "What do you mean, you don't know?" I said, "Perry, Mr. Shaw is a tall, distinguished- looking man. If he was there, you would know it." I said, "Now, was he there or wasn't he? Give me a yes or no answer." He said, "If I have to give you a yes or no answer, it would be, no, he was not there." It really, it just hit me like a sledgehammer. When I told Garrison this, Garrison went into a rage, I mean, just absolute rage, hollering and screaming, that he sold out to something, I walked out. At the end of that, I said no way can Garrison ever take Clay Shaw to trial. No way. His only witness, star witness, was just lying.
Peter Jennings
(Voice Over) But Garrison did put Clay Shaw on trial. And Russo was his star witness. It took 54 minutes for the jury to decide that Russo's testimony and Garrison's case were baseless.
Salvatore Panzeca
Defense Attorney for Clay Shaw
It's very sad what happened here in New Orleans, where an innocent man was prosecuted for a crime he did not commit. What Jim Garrison and his staff did will go on, will go into history, I guess, as one of the great injustices of the legal system in this country.
Peter Jennings
(Voice Over) The entire sorry episode was fading into well-deserved obscurity when Oliver Stone's film resurrected Garrison as an American hero. In Stone's film, Garrison is meant to represent all those who advocate conspiracy.
Oliver Stone
Director
Jim Garrison is a metaphor. He's the protagonist. I tried to put all the researchers from the '60s and '70s and the '80s into Jim's case. I took that liberty, that's dramatic license.
Peter Jennings
(Voice Over) Dramatic license to Mr. Stone, something more sinister to others.
Jack Valenti
Aide to President Johnson, 1963-1966
This was a package of unfathomable lies, packaged together, though, with a cinema artist's great skill. It was a blending and a m'lange of real photographs and fictional scenes, merged together with such skill that you were unable to tell the difference.
Peter Jennings
(Voice Over) The film also takes dramatic license, as Mr. Stone would put it, with several fundamental facts that are beyond dispute.
Actor
Oswald was at best a medium shot. The scope was defective on it, too. I mean, this is the whole essence of the case to me. The guy couldn't do the shooting. Nobody could. And they sold this lemon to the American public.
Peter Jennings
(Voice Over) Fact, the distance from the sniper's nest in the window to the president in the car at the time of the fatal shot was 88 yards. For a former marine sharpshooter, which Oswald was, the shot was well within his capability.
John Lattimer, MD
Author, Kennedy and Lincoln
Well, I have here Oswald's scorebook from the marine corps, where he, when he did his practicing with this, more or else the same kind of rifle that he used against Kennedy. He demonstrated that he was highly competent as a marksman. For example, here is the type of target, which is shaped very much like the head and shoulders of President Kennedy, sticking up above the rear seat of the car. And this is at 200 yards, which is more than twice the distance of Dallas. And it's rapid fire, which certainly was true in Dallas. And he scores 48 out of a possible 50, which I can tell you is excellent. Well, you say that's one day, well, here's another one. Same thing, 200 yards, twice the distance, and rapid fire. And he scores 49 out of a possible 50. So he was not only a very good shot at this long distance, but he was consistent.
Actor
They're telling us that Oswald got off three shots, with world class precision, from a manual, bolt-action rifle, in less than six seconds. And according to his marine buddies, he's got Maggie's drawers. Ya know what that means? He wasn't any good. The average man would be lucky to get two shots off. And I tell ya, the first shot would always be the best. Here, the third shot's perfect.
Peter Jennings
(Voice Over) The Stone film is wrong. The first shot was fired around frame 160 of the Zapruder film, the second at frame 223 and the last shot at frame 312. Three shots in 8.3 seconds, for Oswald, that was plenty of time. Dr. Lattimer has simulated the Kennedy shooting dozens of times. He is 89 years old.
John Lattimer
Author, Kennedy and Lincoln
This is exactly like the gun that Oswald used. Since he got his shots off in 8 1/2seconds, I'll show you that it's possible to come close to that. And here we go. So we'll sight in our telescope and get off one shot and then a second and then a third. Taking a little more time for the last one, as he did.
Kevin Costner
Actor, as Jim Garrison
The magic bullet enters the president's back, headed downward at an angle of 17 degrees. It then moves upwards, in order to leave Kennedy's body from the front of his neck, wound number two, where it waits 1.6 seconds, presumably in midair, where it turns right, then left, right, then left, and continues into Connally's body at the rear of his right armpit, wound number three.
Peter Jennings
(Voice Over) The single bullet that struck President Kennedy and Governor Connally did not hang in midair. It did not zig-zag right and then left. It went straight through the president and into the governor. In the Stone film, diagrams have Governor Connally sitting directly in front of the president, facing forward at the time of the second shot. Not true. The governor was sitting six inches inboard from the president and turned sharply to his right. The Stone film also shows the two men sitting at the same height. Not true. The governor was three inches lower than the president, on a jumpseat. When the men are seen in their correct positions, it becomes clear. There was nothing magic about this bullet at all. This is Warren Commission exhibit 399, the bullet that passed through the president's neck and the governor's chest, that broke the governor's wrist and lodged in his left thigh. It was found on a stretcher at Parkland Hospital. In Stone's film, it is referred to as the pristine bullet. There is no way, the Stone film says, that the bullet could have caused so many wounds and come out at the end virtually unmarked.
Robert Dallek
Author, "An Unfinished Life"
The problem was that people were denying that there was any damage. They were calling it pristine. And it's absolutely, positively not pristine. It's flat.
Peter Jennings
(Voice Over) According to the Stone film, the so-called "pristine" bullet was planted on a hospital stretcher by Jack Ruby as part a conspiracy to frame Oswald, but lead fragments from the bullet were found in Governor Connally's wrist, and the bullet was fired from Oswald's rifle.
Larry Sturdivan
Ballistics Expert, House Select Committee
In fact, the microscopic scratches that were made as this bullet spun down the rifle barrel, exactly matched that of the test bullet that was fired from Oswald's rifle. This proves conclusively that the stretcher bullet was fired from this same rifle, the Oswald rifle, that was found on the sixth floor of the depository.
Kevin Costner
Actor, as Jim Garrison
This is the key shot. The president going back and to his left, shot from the front and right, totally inconsistent with the shot from the depository. Again, back and to the left, back and to the left, back and to the left, back and to the left.
Peter Jennings
(Voice Over) "Back and to the left." For some conspiracy theorists, this is proof that the president was shot in the head by a second gunman who was ahead of the president's car on the Grassy Knoll. But "back and to the left" in no way indicates where a bullet came from. Bodies struck by bullets sometimes go forward and sometimes backward.
Evan Thomas
Author, "Robert Kennedy"
The evidence that's definitive in determining whether it was a shot from the front or a shot from the back is the entry wound, the cratered entry wound on the back of Kennedy's skull, which proves that that shot was from the back, not from the front.
Peter Jennings
(Voice Over) This is the president's position at the moment before he was hit the second time. His autopsy x-rays and photographs show the precise location where the fatal bullet entered the back of his head. Shooting from the Grassy Knoll, it would have been impossible to hit the president in the back of the head. From the sixth floor window of the Book Depository, Lee Harvey Oswald had a direct shot.
Salvatore Panzeca
Defense Attorney for Clay Shaw
I think the young people of this country, bright and intelligent people believe everything that was said in the movie. And that's sad.
Michael Beschloss
Author "The Crisis Years"
The problem that I and most historians would have with Oliver Stone is not his talent, he's a wonderful filmmaker, but that he's used this to put certain myths into the American bloodstream that abide to this day.
Kevin Costner
Actor, as Jim Garrison
Do not forget your dying king. Show this world that this is still a government of the people, for the people and by the people. Nothing, as long as you live, will ever be more important. It's up to you.
Peter Jennings
(Voice Over) The real Jim Garrison never made this speech.
COMMERCIAL BREAK
Peter Jennings
(Voice Over) In the wake of Oliver Stone's "JFK," there was much greater pressure on the government to release all the records it had about the Kennedy assassination. In 1992, Congress established the assassination records' review board, with the power to unseal and declassify thousands of documents from the CIA and the FBI, the Warren Commission, the files from the House Select Committee. Millions of pages were made public for the first time. At the National Archives, people pore over these documents, looking for that one piece of evidence that will answer the question for them, "Who was behind the assassination?"
Robert Goldberg
Author, "Enemies Within"
Every effort was made to turn out the material that existed. Did that end the conspiracy thinking? The answer is absolutely not, because what the conspiracy theorists said is, "Well, we see all this information. But what are they still hiding? What are they still hiding? Because they're still hiding the truth."
Peter Jennings
(Voice Over) In all these years, there has not been a single piece of credible evidence to prove a conspiracy.
Hugh Aynesworth
Reporter, the Dallas Morning News, 1960-1966
Have to admit to you, at the beginning, I did think it was a conspiracy. But when you honestly take a look at it, you honestly pursue every avenue, at some point, you have to be honest with yourself. I don't care how much you want it, believe it, feel it, whatever else. At some point, you have to say, there is no evidence.
Robert Dallek
Author, "An Unfinished Life"
I know that millions and millions of people in this country believe there was a conspiracy. People want to believe that the world is not that random, that things are not that chaotic. That something larger, bigger, was at stake here. Because I think it's very difficult for them to accept the idea that someone as inconsequential as Oswald could have killed someone as consequential as Kennedy.
COMMERCIAL BREAK
Peter Jennings
Those of us who have worked on this project know that millions of people, all these years later, still have a hard time accepting that it was Oswald alone. William Manchester, who wrote "Death of a President," identified this yearning for a better answer. "If," he says, "to use an odd metaphor, you put six million murdered Jews on one side of the scale and the Nazi regime on the other, you have a rough balance, greatest crime, greatest criminals. But if you put the murdered president on one side of the scale and that wretched waif, Oswald," as Manchester calls him, "on the other, it doesn't balance. You want to add some weight to Oswald. It would invest the president's death with meaning. Kennedy would have died for something." Manchester says, "A conspiracy would do the job nicely." I'm Peter Jennings. Good night.
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