Capitol Ideas: Jim Garrison's Great Escape
Bethell, Tom
This is the background image for an unknown creator of an OCR page with image plus hidden text. pictures in the newspaper, placed symmetrically on the front page, both of them smoking pipes!...
...Because when it comes time to leave, and by then it was high time for me, and you have information that can put people in jail, and they have good Mafia connections...well, I don't have to spell out the obvious...
...marshals...
...At election time—all the judges were elected—corrupt candidates usually beat the ones said to be incorrupt...
...The drug and gambling laws create crimes without plaintiffs, enabling defense lawyers, judges, policemen, and prosecutors to help defendants with money...
...According to the 1971 federal indictment, Garrison had in the years 1967-68 received $6o,000 in "bribe monies contributed by defendants," to keep them "free of any substantial lawenforcement interference...
...NBC's well-documented refutation of Garrison's case elicited a flood of friendly mail...
...For a while Garrison seemed unstoppable...
...Sometimes, when I look back on that strange time, I suspect that Garrison's JFK inquiry was an escape from a job that bored him, an attentiongetting diversion from the real business of the courthouse, and not much more than that...
...If the charge involved sale, not just possession, the "escape fee" could go up to $8,500 or more (to be split several ways...
...I'm probably only a cloud on the horizon for [LBJ] at the moment," he told me early in 1968, but that would change if he kept "getting access to national microphones...
...When I mentioned his name the police sergeant said to me: "Stay away from him, Tom...
...The next day, Garrison had not forgotten it, and he did try to have Dulles arrested...
...He would receive night calls from the Police Department describing a drug arrest...
...In our guarded conversations, he usually told me the truth—not, of course, the whole truth...
...and the black voters of Orleans Parish gave him their support...
...For these reasons, I believe, law enforcement officials may usually be relied upon to oppose any relaxation of the drug laws...
...I reported to this man, a police sergeant, and held him in high regard...
...Early the next morning, there was a knock at the door and Garrison was arrested by U.S...
...There are parallels with Bill Clinton— another fluent, mendacious, charming Southern pol who has had to contend with the press, and who can get the people on his side as long as he has access to national microphones...
...Look, he was saying, you can play around with Warren Commission stuff and hobnob with Life editors and meet Mort Sahl and do research in the National Archives and go to the Royal Orleans Hotel wid de boss, and meet his crazy friends, but there are some areas you gotta stay away from...
...In a rash press release, Garrison explained that his former chief investigator, Pershing Gervais, later "turned" by the Feds, had wanted to see him at home one night...
...Democracy immunized him against all criticism, as he saw it...
...We're still with you...
...Garrison stayed on as D.A...
...They loved Big Jim, the Jolly Green Giant, because he amused them and told them that their lives were manipulated by conspiratorial forces, and because he taunted Washington...
...It was unsealed, so I glanced inside," Garrison wrote...
...So I did stay away, and I'm glad that I did...
...Once I was with him in New York on one of his jaunts, this time to Life magazine, the editors rolling their eyes as they realized he was making a day of it...
...Later he was elected to an appeals court judgeship...
...We laughed again, more nervously this time, and forgot about it...
...By then, he had been indicted on federal bribery charges...
...I told him that I had met, socially, a certain French Quarter lawyer...
...But it allowed him to give speeches to the jury, and his speech went like this: "I tried to find out who killed your President, and this is what they did to me...
...I wondered where it came from...
...W hether the Organized Crime Strike Force would have gone after Garrison if he had not attacked federal law enforcement is a good question...
...Others were quietly on the take...
...Garrison made good use of the free air time allotted for his reply, and the Johnny Carson show followed...
...He was acquitted...
...Garrison was elected by a wide margin, and re-elected by a wider one after Shaw's acquittal...
...That would bring Allen Dulles down a peg...
...The former had more money...
...until 1973 , when he ran for a seat on the Louisiana Supreme Court, and lost...
...He adopted the supposedly unwise strategy of defending himself...
...I saw a large number of bills, the smallest denomination of which appeared to be $50...
...Garrison, in short, used his office to turn fantasy into reality...
...He would have to sign the papers himself on these occasions, because his embarrassed lawyers would not cooperate...
...pictures in the newspaper, placed symmetrically on the front page, both of them smoking pipes...
...I seen through it, Jim," people wrote...
...He spoke with an educated accent, used no racial code words...
...Money doesn't mind who spends it," he said, enigmatically...
...I became dimly aware of these things when I had a conversation one day with the chief investigator who had replaced Gervais...
...A majority of the people didn't care whether individual rights were violated...
...Garrison took me to a nearby bar later...
...Their remedy lay in the voting booth...
...But often it did not seem so...
...Saying he was in a rush to catch a plane, he showed up and handed Garrison an envelope, asking him to hold it for a few days...
...Once again, I suppose, the people will tire of the dissembler in their midst...
...He gave no reason, but the next day he repeated it with an edge to his voice...
...And he was thinking of my good—not just his...
...Those with the price of one kind of a "fix" but not the other were apt to end up in jail...
...Later, we learned more...
...Someone needed a lawyer...
...If the people approved, why should the good-government types object...
...He privately knew that the JFK inquiry was a waste of time and money...
...The news media were consistently skeptical of Garrison and did much to check his power...
...In so doing, he was fortified by the election returns...
...But his mother said, "Oh, Jim, I think that would be wonderful...
...I knew he was telling me something important...
...But the press listened more to their peers than to the polls, and eventually the people tired of Garrison and turned elsewhere for entertainment...
...The American Spectator • December 19 9 8...
...I have no doubt that he was taking bribes, however...
...When the check came, he produced a thick roll of $50 bills...
...This lawyer was, shall we say, plugged into the cash economy of the courthouse...
...So the anti-drug laws were a source of tax-free income for participating officials...
...Then came the Playboy interview...
Vol. 31 • December 1998 • No. 12
