Jim Garrison

I would like to hear about your opinions on Garrison? What is is your take on him and his investigation?

Vinny wrote:I would like to hear about your opinions on Garrison? What is is your take on him and his investigation?

Never had the resources or cooperation needed.

The one person he had of value was Ferrie (there were others who could have been of value but he could not extradite them from interstate). I think if he had charged Ferrie and then worked out that Ferrie was the "recruitment" officer who was waiting with Lee for Marguerite to get home... he could have unraveled a lot more of that ball of yarn. But he failed to do either of those things and then suddenly it was too late.

The Shaw trial was never a good idea.

Thanks Greg.

Garrison was undoubtedly a flawed individual. Ebullient, expansive, hopelessly romantic with an idealised vision of the American Republic.
A flamboyant showman with an outsized ego to match his larger than life persona.
His case was equally flawed. His decision to prosecute Shaw after Ferries incredibly convenient death was arguably a mistake.
But Shaw was all he had left .his one link to the conspiracy.
As Greg rightly said he never had the resources. And for such a worldly , politically savvy individual he was almost unbelievably naive 
Far too trusting, to the point of incredulity almost.
He had no idea of the forces arrayed against him. 
His story is a morality tale for the post modernist age. In fact he appeared almost like a figure from another age .His outmoded believe in justice( or should that be Justice) and the American Way collided headfirst with the reality of the age of Hydrogen bombs, MAD, and superpower politics.
Everyone here has accepted the truth about the Cold War( and its ideological successor the War on Terror. Everything really does come in circles. What is old becomes new again and vice versa as the Great Wheel spins its way inexorably through the millennia..t the War on Terror reminds me of the father of history: Herodotus of Halicarnassus who told of a king who declared war on the wind...or Caligula who marched his legions against the ocean, stopping on the shore to collect seashells as war booty).. it was nothing more than a facade.
A refinement of the age old control mechanism that permits the few to govern the many.
Like JFK Garrison confronted  the monster, albeit on a far smaller scale, JFK paying with his life, whereas Garrison only paid with his reputation.
But I think he lost something deeper too. If you stare into the abyss too long eventually itt will stare back into you.
But whatever Garrison lost he gained something far more precious; an insight into the raw mechanics of power. 
He sounded the beast, it may only have been a flesh wound but nevertheless it proved thr beast wasn't invulnerable.
As the Zapruder film played; the gaudy colour frames casting a sickly echo across that hushed New Orleans courtroom ( like a stone flung into a lake ripples of that silence reverberate still .To this day. A silence impossible to replace with mere sound) it was the first cut .a of a blunt dull blade perhaps but the beast felt the sting...for the first time since the new America emerged triumphant back in 1945, wrapped in the skin of the old America, the America that stared out from Staten Island across the cold grey ocean, the beast realised it could be wounded.
Like the immortality of youth giving way to the first pangs of age it's a terrible feeling.
For all his flaws, his missteps and errors of judgement I think Garrison was on the right track.
He didn't really know what he was looking for; he didn't really know what he had found.
Dave Ferrie, 544 Camp Street, FPCC...he stumbled across loose ends.
Jim Garrison was flawed,yes, but to me his greatest triumph was that he emerged with his humanity intact.
He was/ still is human enough to be called a hero.

Thanks Alex. Do you feel that Shaw was involved in the assassination?

The honest answer Vinny is; i don't know.
Possibly. Perhaps he was involved in babysitting/ handling Oswald in New Orleans.
The Clinton/ Jackson incident seems pretty convincing prima facie evidence that he was involved at some level.
But as I said Vinny my honest answer is I just don't know.

alex wilson wrote:Garrison was undoubtedly a flawed individual. Ebullient, expansive, hopelessly romantic with an idealised vision of the American Republic.
A flamboyant showman with an outsized ego to match his larger than life persona.
His case was equally flawed. His decision to prosecute Shaw after Ferries incredibly convenient death was arguably a mistake.
But Shaw was all he had left .his one link to the conspiracy.
As Greg rightly said he never had the resources. And for such a worldly , politically savvy individual he was almost unbelievably naive 
Far too trusting, to the point of incredulity almost.
He had no idea of the forces arrayed against him. 
His story is a morality tale for the post modernist age. In fact he appeared almost like a figure from another age .His outmoded believe in justice( or should that be Justice) and the American Way collided headfirst with the reality of the age of Hydrogen bombs, MAD, and superpower politics.
Everyone here has accepted the truth about the Cold War( and its ideological successor the War on Terror. Everything really does come in circles. What is old becomes new again and vice versa as the Great Wheel spins its way inexorably through the millennia..t the War on Terror reminds me of the father of history: Herodotus of Halicarnassus who told of a king who declared war on the wind...or Caligula who marched his legions against the ocean, stopping on the shore to collect seashells as war booty).. it was nothing more than a facade.
A refinement of the age old control mechanism that permits the few to govern the many.
Like JFK Garrison confronted  the monster, albeit on a far smaller scale, JFK paying with his life, whereas Garrison only paid with his reputation.
But I think he lost something deeper too. If you stare into the abyss too long eventually itt will stare back into you.
But whatever Garrison lost he gained something far more precious; an insight into the raw mechanics of power. 
He sounded the beast, it may only have been a flesh wound but nevertheless it proved thr beast wasn't invulnerable.
As the Zapruder film played; the gaudy colour frames casting a sickly echo across that hushed New Orleans courtroom ( like a stone flung into a lake ripples of that silence reverberate still .To this day. A silence impossible to replace with mere sound) it was the first cut .a of a blunt dull blade perhaps but the beast felt the sting...for the first time since the new America emerged triumphant back in 1945, wrapped in the skin of the old America, the America that stared out from Staten Island across the cold grey ocean, the beast realised it could be wounded.
Like the immortality of youth giving way to the first pangs of age it's a terrible feeling.
For all his flaws, his missteps and errors of judgement I think Garrison was on the right track.
He didn't really know what he was looking for; he didn't really know what he had found.
Dave Ferrie, 544 Camp Street, FPCC...he stumbled across loose ends.
Jim Garrison was flawed,yes, but to me his greatest triumph was that he emerged with his humanity intact.
He was/ still is human enough to be called a hero.

Alex, thank-you!

You have a way with words which I could never come close to. Here you've written exactly the way I feel about Garrison. 

Your assessment seems to be supported by an associate of Garrison from around 1967-68 who worked along side him while the trial discoveries were being conducted and investigated. That associate has conveyed to me that Garrison was completely straight up, and above all else honest to the letter. That associate also insists even today that Garrison was very aware that he was onto some heavy stuff. It sounds to me that they might have known more than they ever let on but could not nail it down tight enough. 

Cheers mate.

Thanks Mick.
Garrison has always struck me as a flawed but fundamentally honest individual who genuinely wanted to find the truth.
He could have played the game,, ended up as Senior Senator for Louisiana, or Governor .
I don't think it was until years later he really started to understand the full magnitude of the plot.