My friend John McAdams has put the conclusion of my book, On The Trail of Delusion - Jim Garrison: The Great Accuser, up on his website.

James Phelan had a great sense of humor, and it is on display in this letter to Jim Garrison. Completely unrelated to this letter is one that Sylvia Meagher wrote to Garrison about A Heritage of Stone. I have presented, earlier in my blog, two memos that Sylvia Meagher wrote about Garrison's prosecution of Clay Shaw. She never thought much of his knowledge of the 26 volumes of evidence, and she never thought much of Garrison's case against the Warren Report as presented in th

Garrison believed that the CIA was paying the lawyers of several witnesses. In June 1967, Garrison appeared on NBC: Question : We now find three people who are outside Louisiana who are fighting their return to the state in connection with your investigation—Gordon Novel, Sergio Arcacha Smith, and Sandra Moffit. Could you briefly discuss these three people and their role in all this? Garrison : The point that you’re going for is that we are in private difficulty for getting t

Besides being a crusading District Attorney, Jim Garrison was also a cryptologist. No code was too difficult for him to crack. A researcher noticed similar notations in Clay Shaw's notebook and in Lee Harvey Oswald's notebook. Clay Shaw had written P.O. 19106 in his notebook along with the name Lee Odom. Mr. Odom had talked to Shaw about possibility of putting on a bullfight in New Orleans. In Oswald's notebook was a similar notation, but instead of P.O., there were two Cyril

One of the first reporters that Garrison talked to about his case was James Phelan, who had written a laudatory article on him in the June 1963 issue of the Saturday Evening Post. Garrison invited Phelan to Las Vegas and he explained what his investigation had found. He gave Phelan two memos on Perry Russo and Phelan had them photocopied at one of the hotels. He noticed that in a memo written by Andrew Sciambra there was no mention of any party at which there was a discussion

I published the Norman Gallo section of this memo yesterday. Here is the entire memo (from September 1968). Where does one even start with such a memo? To Garrison, everything is connected to intelligence. He finds it suspicious that so many people worked for the aerospace industry. First, David Reitzes has written a good article showing that many people that Oswald worked with at Reily coffee stayed at Reily coffee. Secondly, right under Garrison's nose, thousands of good-pa

Here is a memo dated March 6, 1967 regarding a walk-in lead. You can see that Alcock doesn't quite believe the lead - "this man's appearance was very shabby and in some respects his story was not believable." Well, Limbough did claim that Tippit was Ruby's body-guard-boyfriend! His story also made the newspapers. Here is a story by Washington Post reporter George Lardner from March 12, 1967. Now, Limbough tells the press that "I think's a queer ring." Bill Gurvich, the Garris

On August 16, 1977, JIm Garrison sent a memo to HSCA investigator Jonathan Blackmer about statements of Perry Russo while under hypnosis. Here is the memo: Perry Russo had continually given Garrison and his staff a description of Oswald that did not match reality. Russo kept describing Oswald as having a beard and as being somewhat dirty - when, in fact, Oswald was clean-shaven, and had good personal hygiene. Now, Garrison has a new explanation for why Russo had gotten Oswald

In September 1977, Jim Garrison sent a letter to the HSCA about Clay Shaw - which we published yesterday. Along with the letter, Garrison sent a memo with his best leads about Clay Shaw. Here is the memo along with Garrison's notations.. First, let me fill in a couple of paragraphs that are hard to read (I have a copy of this memo that was typed before Garrison added his notations). J. Statement of Barbara Messina, Monroe, Louisiana, re: Q. One of the meetings was at Shaw's a

After the HSCA began its work, investigators visited Jim Garrison and spent a week interviewing him. He also started writing memos to the HSCA. Here is a list of memos that I have found: - July 15, 1977 letter about Morgan City. - July 18, 1977 regarding Thomas Beckham. - August 16, 1977 letter about the deaths of Guy Banister and Clay Shaw. - August 25, 1977 letter with questions for Thomas Beckham. - September 12, 1977 memo listing a variety of leads. - September 14, 1977 l

Garrison tried hard to convince Playboy he was the real deal. And, so he wrote them a memo. I found this in the papers of Elmer Gertz, Gordon Novel's lawyer, and it appears that Garrison didn't have time to finish the memo. Once again, you can see that Garrison was well aware of the Paese Sera articles about Clay Shaw and Permindex/CMC. He references the Italian, French and Canadian stories - but all of those stories emanated from Paese Sera, a communist-controlled newspaper

The October 1967 issue of Playboy Magazine contained the longest interview in their history - 20,000 words from Jim Garrison. About 5 million copies were printed and Playboy organized a press tour for Garrison. You can read the whole interview here. Here is Playboy's press release for their interview: Warren Commission critic Sylvia Meagher did not much like the Garrison interview and she wrote Playboy a 3-page letter. For the first time ever, here is her letter: As you can s

In 1983, Garrison sent his manuscript, then titled The Execution , to McGraw-Hill which had published his novel. They rejected it. He then renamed it A Farewell to Justice but had trouble selling it. He hit pay dirt with Prentice Hall in 1986 for his newly titled book, Coup D'Etat , and they paid him a $10,000 advance. Sylvia Meagher served as the referee and she submitted a 26-page analysis, which noted several problems. She was not happy with the discussion of Shaw,, Fer

Here's a good example of Garrison's theory of propinquity at play. Clay Shaw lived on Burgundy Street in 1960, so Garrison looked at phone directories to see who else lived there. Mr. Todd, because he lived on Burgundy Street, needed to be investigated. The last sentence is important – Garrison had this belief that one of the gunmen on the grassy knoll had a scar on his face. Investigating Mr. Todd led to Mr. Bertram. He was now a suspect because he lived across the street fr

As promised, here is Garrison's second memo on Propinquity. Does it get any crazier than this? The connections in section one between Oswald and Ferrie belies belief. The reporter Jim Phelan told Patricia Lambert that when he went to Las Vegas to hear Garrison's story, Garrison couldn't stop talking about propinquity. Phelan told him, "I can't write that!" Garrison then gave Phelan the documents about Perry Russo (the so-called Sciambra memorandum), and he was off with a big

Jim Garrison had a very important investigative technique to get at the truth - his unique theory of propinquity. What a great word! But, not so great a concept. Here's how staffer Tom Bethell described it: "If two people lived near one another, say within two or three blocks, it's suspicious. If any closer - they are 'linked.' If, on the other hand, they live at opposite ends of the city, get a list of friends of each (from their address books). Two such friends are very lik

Here is an earlier Meagher article in which she exhibits her disgust at Warren Commission critics who ran down to New Orleans to support Jim Garrison. She refused to go. "I have not made the pilgrimage to New Orleans nor do I intend to make the journey. Testimonials notwithstanding, Mr. Garrison strikes me not as a hero but a master of improvisation." Of course, initially Meagher welcomed his investigation. She even wrote him a letter of support and offered her services. "My

In March 1969, Sylvia Meagher wrote an article, about the Clay Shaw trial which, to my knowledge, was never published. It was titled, "Not With a Roar But a Whimper: The Shaw Trial, the Garrison Wreck." She said that the "prosecution case had been humiliatingly rejected." She did not believe the Clinton witnesses, found that Vernon Bundy had no credibility, and that Perry Russo delivered the "coup de grace" to Garrison "by recanting those parts of his earlier testimony which

Sylvia Meagher was one of the most important critics of the Warren Report. In 1967, she wrote "Accessories After the Fact," probably the best critiques published. When I first got into the JFK assassination in 1975, her book was out of print. I went to every used book store I could get to, but no luck. But, in 1976, her book was reissued - and I remember when I went into W.H. Smith Books in Montreal and I was stunned to see it on the shelf. I bought it immediately and I devou

In Chapter 2 of my book, A Beautiful Mind?, I discuss the several "recurring themes that colored Garrison's investigation: his mental illness, his bizarre investigative 'techniques,' his attraction to conspiracy theories, his irrational leftist politics, and his endless paranoia. I quoted from Garrison's psychiatric report from 1951. I did not include the actual report in my book because I didn't think it would reproduce properly. And so, here is that report. Garrison's recor