False Witness (2 page)

JFK
, a three-hour-and-seven-minute marathon, premiered in Los Angeles on December 17, 1991, at Mann's Village Theater in Westwood and opened nationwide on Friday, five days before Christmas.
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Audience reaction was intense. A writer for the
Los Angeles Times
reported “gasps” and “tears” during the Abraham Zapruder film sequence showing the moment the president died. “Nobody left to get popcorn,” he wrote. What made the movie such a powerful experience was its apparent authenticity.

Actual film footage, some of it quite moving (Walter Cronkite fighting for composure after announcing President Kennedy's death and the wrenching images captured on Zapruder's home movie), was woven together so seamlessly with recreations that it is difficult at times to separate the two. Stone's blurring of that line intensified the movie's documentary-like quality, the sense that this is
the real thing
. But the chief reason for that impression is its real-life protagonist. Stone tried to deflect criticism about his choice there by claiming the man on the screen was “a fictional Jim Garrison who is dealing with facts. And, sometimes, speculation.”
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But audiences experienced the screen version as an accurate portrayal, or a close facsimile. The movie wouldn't have worked otherwise. The American people didn't want some screenwriter's fantasy about the assassination. They wanted
the truth
. Stone understood that, for it was what he, too, wanted. He couldn't deliver it but whether or not he realized that initially, or if he ever did, is unclear. What is clear is that he knew how to make a film that
appeared
to deliver it.

Those who had not spoken up beforehand weighed in now.

“Stone went too far,” said former Texas Governor John Connally, who was wounded in the Dallas shooting. “This was a national tragedy. [Stone] mixed fact and fiction in such a way that he's going to convince practically every young person that the federal government, their own government, conspired to kill an American president. And I think that's evil, frankly.” Connally ridiculed the sheer size of Stone's conspiracy, which he called “ludicrous.” President George Bush, on tour in Australia, responded to a question by saying he had seen “no evidence” that the Warren Report was wrong but didn't think Stone should be censured for putting his own spin on the assassination.
Newsweek
published an eight-page cover story that labeled the film “propaganda.” Two former aides to President Lyndon Johnson joined the fray. Joseph A. Califano, Jr., writing in the
Wall Street Journal
, said that
JFK
was “a disgraceful concoction of lies and distortions.” Jack Valenti, now president and chief executive of the Motion Picture Association of America, waited until after the Academy Awards balloting
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to denounce the film as a “smear” and “a hoax” on the order of Leni Riefenstahl's Nazi propaganda film
Triumph of the Will
.

The most serious objection was voiced by Brent Staples in the
New York Times
who pointed out that “historical lies are nearly impossible to correct once movies and television have given them credibility.” Echoing Governor Connally, Staples predicted that “the children of the video age will swallow JFK whole.” He noted that policing art “for inaccuracies” was an impossible task and the best that society could do was to “denounce” such history as “bogus.”
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The harshest words came from Washington columnist George Will. Stone, he said, was “an intellectual sociopath, indifferent to truth” who combined “moral arrogance with historical ignorance.” The film he called “execrable history and contemptible citizenship.”
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As debate on the subject inundated the country, talk radio and television commentators jumped into the fray; university symposiums and town hall meetings were held to discuss the controversy, and it quickly escalated into the most extraordinary war of words ever exchanged over a movie. What was missing in that great debate was
Clay Shaw
. Except for a few muffled voices in New Orleans, virtually no one spoke
in his defense. No national figure uttered his name. Everyone was focused on the grand conspiracy. No one seemed to care about Shaw's reputation, his fate, or how it came to pass. No one was more indifferent than Oliver Stone. He felt “[no] responsibility to Clay Shaw because he was [acquitted],” Stone told one interviewer.

Forty-four at the time, Stone is a brawny man with a round boyish face, a gap between his front teeth, thinning black hair and an energy level said to verge on the demonic. He admitted he had “made Garrison better” than he was and proudly referred to himself and others like him as “sons of Jim Garrison.” At the National Press Club, Stone staunchly defended his mentor. He had heard “all the horror stories” about Garrison, he said, but none of them held up on investigation, and he challenged Garrison's detractors to show him their evidence.

This book does that.

Its focus is not Dallas and Washington but New Orleans and Hollywood, not the death of the president but the destruction of an ordinary citizen, who could have been anyone. That is what makes what happened in New Orleans more threatening in one sense than what happened in Dallas. The man who went gunning for Shaw didn't do it from a hidden position. Garrison struck Shaw down publicly with assistance from many, using bureaucratic procedures. Writer Nicholas Lemann noted that Stone often referred to Kafka and Orwell but that the essence of their vision was that no government could do anything worse than “turn its powers against an innocent individual in order to advance a larger cause.” Garrison did exactly that. His was a wholly
societal act
that involved some of our most important institutions: the district attorney's office, the local judiciary, the grand jury, the business community, one of the largest news organizations of its time and, later, the publishing world and entertainment industry all played a role in it. Stone and the others who dismiss “the Shaw business” as inconsequential necessarily ignore its implications and monstrousness.

The labyrinthine story that follows is not about the president's assassination. It is about what really happened in New Orleans. What Jim Garrison was really like. How he got away with it in the first place, and how he managed on four separate occasions to rise phoenixlike from his own ashes.
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It also, understandably, infuriated Oliver Stone, who reportedly considered filing a lawsuit.

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In that holiday “sweeps” weekend the big winner was
Hook
, followed by
Father of the Bride
. Early reports placed
JFK
third, but (though the numbers were close) it trailed
The Last Boy Scout
and
Star Trek VI
.

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The film, nominated in eight categories, including Best Picture and Best Director, won for editing and cinematography.

It happened on a Wednesday. A television announcer broadcast the first news of it. The New Orleans district attorney's office had issued a subpoena for Clay Shaw to appear for questioning. Shaw, the fifty-three-year-old retired director of the International Trade Mart, was visiting the office of a friend that morning. He learned of the subpoena from someone who had heard about it on television. Shaw wondered what it was all about. Why didn't District Attorney Jim Garrison just telephone and say he wanted to speak to him? Shaw had given Garrison all the information he had when he was interviewed back in December and had thought no more about the matter. Now this. Shaw recalled hearing on television last night that Garrison's office had asked a former neighbor of his, James Lewallen, to come in for questioning. Perhaps they wanted to ask him something about Lewallen.

Shaw immediately called the district attorney's office. He asked to speak to Garrison, but he wasn't there. So he spoke to one of Garrison's investigators, Louis Ivon. Yes, Ivon said, a subpoena had been issued. That was “entirely unnecessary,” Shaw said. He “would be glad” to come in and talk to them—when did they want him? Since he hadn't had lunch, they agreed on one o'clock. But when Shaw, on his way to a restaurant
with a friend, stopped by his house to pick up his mail, he found three deputy sheriffs and a detective waiting on his patio, subpoena in hand. Because it was almost noon, Shaw accepted the detective's offer to drive him to the D.A.'s office. They arrived around 12:15. Garrison wasn't there and didn't show up until 4:00 that afternoon.
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They kept him waiting about two hours, Shaw later said, while they moved him from one room to another and he listened to the detective's life story. “What is the holdup?” he asked. No one seemed to know. At one point they shifted him to Garrison's office, which Shaw noted was “quite large and impressive” with a “beautiful desk, comfortable chairs,” a “handsome chess board” in one corner, and the complete works of Shakespeare “in small red leather-bound volumes” on the desk. By now Shaw was irritated and hungry, having missed lunch, and he let the detective know it. Soon afterwards, they took him into a different type of room, plain and utilitarian, where Asst. D.A. Andrew Sciambra and Ivon were waiting. They gave him a sandwich and a Coke and waited until he finished eating. Then, with Sciambra sitting directly across from Shaw, and Ivon sitting on the edge of the desk, they began to question him. To Shaw's surprise, his neighbor wasn't the topic. They showed him several pictures of boys, none of whom Shaw knew, and they reeled off a list of names, none of which he recognized. Sciambra soon turned to the real subject at hand. What did Shaw know about a man named David Ferrie? Had he ever been to Ferrie's apartment on Louisiana Parkway? Had he visited a service station Ferrie owned on Veterans Highway? Did he know Lee Harvey Oswald? Shaw told them he had never in his life seen Ferrie, had never been to his apartment, or his service station, and he didn't know Oswald. “What would you say,” Sciambra said, “if we told you we have three witnesses who could positively identify you as having been in Ferrie's apartment and in Ferrie's gas station?” Their witnesses, Shaw replied, “were either mistaken or they were lying.”
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Sciambra asked him to take a truth-serum test to prove he didn't know Ferrie. “Why on earth should I take a truth-serum test?” Shaw said. “If you don't,” Sciambra replied, “we're going to charge you with conspiring to murder the president of the United States.” Describing that moment later, Shaw conveyed his astonishment by flinging his arms outward. “You've got to be kidding,” he said, “you've
got
to be kidding!”
Sciambra assured him they weren't. “In that case I want a lawyer and I want one now,” Shaw said. They agreed, and he began trying to reach his attorney. Shaw quickly discovered that Edward F. Wegmann, the civil attorney who had represented him since 1949, was out of town. Shaw tried his brother, William J. Wegmann, but he, too, was unavailable. He finally reached thirty-three-year-old Salvatore Panzeca, an associate working in William Wegmann's law office, who said he would be there in about thirty minutes. Sciambra and Ivon then left the room, locking the door behind them. Shaw sat alone, a “storm [raging] inside” him, awaiting the arrival of Salvatore Panzeca.
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He had never seen “a more welcome sight” than Panzeca's “stocky little form coming through the door.”

“I am Sal Panzeca,” he said, “you are now my client, I must advise you this room is probably ‘bugged,' that the mirror on the wall is a two-way mirror, and therefore, from this moment on you communicate with no one, absolutely no one, except me.” This “aggressive, bantamcock attitude” Shaw found “strengthening.” Panzeca, whose size and manner call to mind actor Danny DeVito, recently recalled that tense situation. Since he was certain the room was bugged, the two at first communicated by writing notes. Finally, Panzeca asked Sciambra for an office to use, but Sciambra claimed they were all occupied. So Panzeca told Sciambra that he was going to talk to his client in the men's room.
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Panzeca led Shaw into a tiny bathroom off the hallway leading into the district attorney's office. Even there, Panzeca didn't feel safe. It, too, might be bugged. As a precaution, they would forgo English. He asked Shaw if he spoke Spanish. Shaw said he did and made some additional comment in Spanish. Something about his inflection or the use of his hands triggered an intuitive insight on Panzeca's part. “Esta maricón?” (“Are you queer?”) he asked. “Si,” Shaw replied. Until that moment, Panzeca had been unaware of Shaw's sexual orientation. For the defense, this was the first note sounded of that sexual theme that would run throughout the prosecution of this case.
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Panzeca spoke to Shaw at length and was “totally convinced” he was innocent. The question was, what to do about the truth-serum test. Shaw had no objection to the test per se, but he was afraid that personal questions might be asked that would expose his private life. Panzeca eventually
worked out a counterproposal. Then he asked to speak to Jim Garrison. Ushered into Garrison's office, Panzeca found himself in the midst of an ongoing meeting. Confronting him was a phalanx of assistants and investigators (among them Warren Report critic Mark Lane). Panzeca recounted his conversation with Garrison: “ ‘Well, Sal,' Garrison said, and he starts giving me [a] litany about how important all this was. Then he said, ‘Will Clay Shaw take a truth-serum test?' And I thought about it and I said, ‘No, I don't think that is something I could recommend to my client.' ” Then Panzeca made his counteroffer. “ ‘Maybe I could talk to Ed Wegmann tomorrow and have Clay Shaw take a polygraph,' I said. But there were certain conditions. One would be that Shaw have a night's rest to get over all this trauma. Two, that we wanted to see the questions before they were asked, even though we wouldn't review them with our client. And I said it was all predicated upon the approval of Mr. Ed Wegmann, Shaw's lawyer.” Garrison exploded. “ ‘That's bull shit,' he said, ‘We're not going to do that. I'll charge him.' I said, ‘With what?' And he said, ‘Conspiracy to kill Kennedy.' Well, I almost fell off the chair. I asked Garrison what the bond would be and he said, ‘Oh, it'll be hundreds of thousands of dollars.' I said, ‘Is that it?' He said, ‘Yes, we're going to charge him.' ”
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