On The Trial Of The Assassins

this book provided basic inspiration to Stone for "JFK"


    When They Murder Our President.  Factual Conspiracy--It Did Happen Here
    by dave ratcliffe
      ___________________________________

      ON THE TRIAL OF THE ASSASSINS;  My Investigation and Prosecution
      of the Murder of President Kennedy
      by Jim Garrison


         As singularly important an event as the assassination of
      President Kennedy was in the context of post-WWII American
      history, the paramount tragedy that remains with us more than 25
      years later is that collectively, as a nation, we still have been
      so misinformed about what actually occurred.  Not only about the
      bursts of gunfire which, in six seconds, ended the administration
      of the 35th President of the United States, but integral events
      both before and after the murder itself, that successfully hid the
      real facts from the public during the initial days and weeks after
      that awful Friday, when the different news and government agencies
      were getting their story line "straightened out".
         Consider these facts:

         * Lee Oswald was given a nitrate test, which reveals deposits
           of nitrate on a person's cheek when she or he has recently
           fired a rifle, on the evening of the assassination.  The
           nitrate test results indicated that Oswald had not fired a
           rifle on November 22, 1963.  This fact was kept secret for
           ten months, only to be revealed in the Warren Commission
           Report.

         * Oswald was questioned on Friday night while in the custody
           of Captain Will Fritz, head of the Dallas Police Homocide
           Division.  Recording of such questioning is routine even in
           minor felony cases.  Yet, according to the Warren Commission 
	   hearings, the alleged murderer of the President of the 
	   United States was questioned for a total of 12 hours without 
	   any taping or shorthand notes by a stenographer.  Nor was an 
	   attorney present.

         * Although at least twelve individuals were taken into custody 
	   by Dallas Police on November 22, there are no records of any 
	   arrests made that day within the confines of the Dallas 
	   Police Department.

         * The Dallas parade route, published on the right five-sixths
           of the front page of "The Dallas Morning News" for Friday,
           November 22, 1963, showed the motorcade running down Main
           Street straight through and beyond Dealey Plaza.  As the
           chief city administrator, the Mayor of Dallas--who in 1963
           was a Mr. Earle Cabell--would have to know and officially
           approve any such eleventh hour change.  Earle Cabell had a
           brother named General Charles Cabell who had been the deputy 
	   director of the CIA--the number two man--under Allen Dulles 
	   for nine years, until he was fired by President Kennedy 
	   after the Bay of Pigs fiasco of which General Cabell had 
	   been the Agency's man in charge.  General Cabell's subsequent 
	   hatred of John Kennedy became an open secret in Washington. 
	   However he was never even called as a witness before the 
	   Warren Commission.

         * Julia Ann Mercer, while stopped in traffic on Elm Street 
	   about an hour before the assassination, saw a young man get
           out of a pickup truck on her right, carrying a not very well 
	   concealed rifle, and then walk up the grassy hill which forms 
	   part of the overpass.  At the local FBI office, on Saturday, 
	   November 23, she identified the driver of the pickup truck 
	   whos face she got a good look at, from a number of mug shots, 
	   as that of Jack Ruby.

         * For more than five years, the Zapruder film of the
           assassination was concealed from the public and locked in a
           vault by Life magazine.  This moving picture showed Kennedy
           being slammed violently backwards--clear evidence of his
           being struck by a rifle shot from the front.

         The above are just a few of the striking assemblage of facts
      laid out in this new book by Jim Garrison, ex-District Attorney
      and now a Judge of the Court of Appeal in New Orleans.  Not only
      is it an immensely engrossing story written by an eloquent man, it
      is also essential reading for all of us both who remember living
      through that seminal time, as well as a whole new generation of
      people who were not alive then, and for who the assassination
      remains a murky, unmeasured abyss.
         Jim Garrison describes what he believes happened at Dealey
      Plaza in Dallas as a coup d'etat.  He defines a coup d'etat as "a
      sudden action by which an individual or group, usually employing
      limited violence, captures positions of governmental authority
      without conforming to the formal requirements for changing
      officeholders, as prescribed by the laws of constitution".  He
      goes on to ennumerate the necessary elements for a successful
      coup:  "extensive planning and preparation by the sponsors;  the
      collaboration of the Praetorian Guard (officials whose job is to
      protect the government); a diversionary cover-up afterwards;  the
      ratification of the assassination by the new government inheriting
      power;  and the the dissemination of disinformation by major
      elements of the news media."
         Garrison believes the sponsors had instigated and planned this
      coup long in advance and that this group consisted of "fanatical
      anticommunists in the United States intelligence community; that
      it was carried out, most likely without official approval, by
      individuals in the C.I.A.'s covert operations apparatus and other
      extra-governmental collaborators, and covered up by like-minded
      individuals in the F.B.I., the Secret Service, and Dallas police
      department, and the military;  and that its purpose was to stop
      Kennedy from seeking detente with the Soviet Union and Cuba and
      ending the Cold War."
         At one point, reflecting on the media's absolutely static
      rejection of even the idea of conspiracy, Garrison writes: "Then,
      perhaps for the first time, I realized what it was that petrified
      these people... To acknowledge that an organized conspiracy had
      occurred was to recognize that it had been done for a purpose--to
      change government policy.  Having told the world for so many years
      how wonderful we all were, here in the greatest country in the
      world, the media people were not willing to admit that our
      national leader could be removed in such a brutal fashion in order
      to change government policy.  That would put the lie to American
      democracy.  That just could not be.  Therefore, in their minds,
      the assassination had to be a random event, the work of a deranged
      loner."
         The final paragraph of the book, after suggesting that it may
      be too late for an honest investigation, states:

         However, it is not too late for us to learn the lessons of
        history, to understand where we are now and who runs this
        country.  If my book can help illuminate this for a younger
        generation who never knew John Kennedy, then it will have 
	served its purpose.

--
                                             daveus rattus   

                                   yer friendly neighborhood ratman

                               KOYAANISQATSI

   ko.yan.nis.qatsi (from the Hopi Language)  n.  1. crazy life.  2. life
       in turmoil.  3. life out of balance.  4. life disintegrating.  
         5. a state of life that calls for another way of living.