WITH LIBERTY AND JUSTICE FOR ALL
JIM GARRISON
New Orleans, Louisiana
September 1, 1967
An identifying characteristic of the super-state
is its readiness to conceal from the people
facts which might make them restless. In order to maintain power its officers must keep the populace believing that it is living in the best of
all possible worlds. Consequently, those
in control of the governmental machinery
sometimes find it necessary to re-write history as fast as it happens. The truth becomes not what occurred
but what they announce has occurred. Reality
becomes just another government-controlled
commodity.
If the official myth to be presented is particularly
unbelievable it may be necessary to have honorable
men study it and announce that they have
found it to be true [In 1939, after having
invaded and conquered western Poland because of alleged
Polish atrocities committed against German individuals,
the German government appointed a committee
to make a careful study to determine the
facts with regard to the claimed Polish misconduct.
The final printed report of the study contained much documentary evidence, including not only photographs,
affidavits and countless medical certificates
but an authenticated quotation from the
year 1598 to the effect that barbarous cruelty
was one of the vices of the Polish people. The report
confirmed that the Poles indeed bad committed
atrocities against Germans and it indicated
that things would have been even worse were
it not for the timely arrival on Polish territory of the
German rescuers. The conclusions of this painstaking
study by a government-appointed committee
meant that Adolf Hitler would not have
to withdraw his armies and apologize to Poland. See: "Polish Acts of Atrocity Against the German Minority
in PoIand," German Library of Information,
New York, 1940.]
This is not really as difficult as it sounds
because there is nothing to which honorable
men joined in an honorable cause will not
stoop in the name of duty. As a general rule of thumb, the
more unbelievable the story the more honorable
should be the men assigned to prove its
veracity.
To date, George Orwell's 1984 provided the
best fictional portrait of the correction
of history to suit current political needs.
In Oceania, that dismal land presided over by Big Brother, the power of the government had become Gargantuan
and the rights of individuals virtually
had vanished. In order to maintain this
balance, the Ministry of Truth continually was engaged
in improving history to make it reflect govemment pronouncements. This was justified on the ground of
'national security,' a reasonably honest
rationale inasmuch as the government could
not have survived without such wholesale concealment
of facts.
If, for example, Big Brother made an error
which was exposed by statistics, the offensive
statistics were destroyed and more satisfactory
statistics were published. If books or newspapers
described facts which were embarrassing to the government,
they were merely re-written so as to conform with official legend. The original troublesome material
was simply fed in the "memory hole,"
a chute leading down to the incinerator.
The government's policy of vaporizing into nothingness
unpleasant facts contributed in great measure to the calm of the populace of Oceania. This was helped by
the fact that individuals who interfered
with the public calm also tended to disappear.
"Who controls the past," said the
official slogan of the super-state, "controls
the future."
It now appears that, twenty years ahead of
Orwell's schedule, the United States has
succeeded in producing the classic model
of re-writing history to conform to official needs.
It is hard to assay this accomplishment when we are still so close to it, but when our contributions to
civilization are added up this well may
rank ahead of our invention of napalm.
When the President of our country was executed
on a public street, one would have thought
that there would have been a general uncomplicated
desire to catch the assassins and to bring them
all to justice. After all there was sufficient information
available concerning the strange movements of
cars behind the grassy knoll immediately
prior to the assination, the fusilade of
rifle fire coming from there and the rapid departure of men
on foot and by car from that sector following
the shooting. Apparently, however, it
was not as simple as an that. It appears that
when a President's heart stops beating considerations of
power and policy take over.
Instead of running down the men who killed
John Kennedy, the U.S. government simply
ratified his execution and moved on to
more important matters. With regard to the men who actually
killed him, because of their displeasure with
his foreign policy, the assassination
has been treated not as an offense but as
a mandate for change.
The young man so promptly nominated by the
Dallas Police Force was duly elected the
lone assassin. He had excellent qualifications,
provided they were not examined too closely. He wore the tag of a Communist defector who had spent
3 years in Russia. He had been murdered,
which assured that there would be none
of the time consuming problems of proof which a live defendant would have presented. And his gun and three
empty cartridges had been placed at the
6th floor of the book depository.
In spite of these conveniences there was a
slight problem. The overwhelming weight
of legitimate evidence clearly indicated that
he could not possibly have fired a shot at the President.
There was, to begin with, the fact that the
rifle originally brought down from the
book depository at 1:05 p.m., and briefly
exhibited as the assassins rifle, had, unlike Lee Oswald's rifle, no telescopic sight. There was the
fact that the Marine Corps shooting records
showed that Oswald could not hit the side
of a barn. There was the tense fact that the nitrate
test indicated that Oswald bad not fired a rifle of any
kind. There was the fact that the ancient Italian
rifle, which Oswald was supposed to have
used, could not conceivably have accomplished
the ballistic miracle with which it was credited - particularly causing a single bullet to inflict seven
different wounds, including bone destruction,
in two different men. There was the fact
that the President was hit from several different directions and that his fatal wound quite obviously
was received from his right front, in
the area of the grassy knoll.
To make matters worse, there were probably
more witnesses to President Kennedy's
murder than to any other in history and the
great majority of them were very conscious of the fact that
most of the shots came from in front of the President.
There was also the embarrassing evidence
that Lee Oswald had been an employee of
the Central Intelligence Agency and had acquired the stigma of a Communist defector while in the service
of the United States and as the result
of instructions given him by the United
States government. Most of the embarrassing evidence was
simply buried at the outset in a swift funeral
devoid of ceremony.
The autopsy photographs and X-rays, for example,
which would have revealed that the President
was struck from a number of directions,
[Dr. Robert N. McClelland, at Parkland Hospital,
examined the President and concluded that the cause of
death was a gunshot wound of the left temple.
Similarly, Dr. Mahlon Jenkins recalled,
in his testimony before the Warren Commission,
that there was a wound in the left temple, right in the hair-line. The book depository, although it may
since have been moved, at the time of
the assassination was located to the rear
of the President.]
These autopsy photographs and X-rays were
whisked away and have been kept hidden
ever since. By now there has been time to construct
new autopsy photographs and X-rays which more closely
harmonize with the official myth than did the
original ones. Hundreds of significant
government files and memoranda have been laid
away in vaults where they cannot be seen. Among the hidden
Central Intelligence Agency files alone are
to be found such titles as: "Oswald's
Access to Information about the U-2," "Reproduction
of Central Inteligence Agency Official Dossier on Oswald" and "Information on Jack Ruby and
Associates." Inasmuch as we have
been assured by horrorable men that neither Oswald nor Ruby had any connection with the Central Intelligence
Agency it probably would be unpatriotic
to speculate on what these secret files
contain.
As bad luck would have it, a rash of conflagrations
swept away other vital evidence in the
government's custody. The only notes known
to be taken during the long 12-hour interview of Lee Oswald after the assassination appear to have been
burned. Notes taken by a federal agent
who interviewed Oswald before the assassination
also went up in flames. A secret Central Intelligence
Agency memo concerning Oswald, written prior to the assassination, went up in smoke while being thermofaxed.
This phenomenal instance of spontaneous
combustion occurred in Washington the
day following the asassination. The autopsy notes describing the President's wounds were cremated in
his fireplace by the attending Navy pathologist.
This is not to say that the government has
not shown concern for the people's right to know. For those citizens
who are curious about how and why their
President was killed, the Ministry of
Truth has made available the dental charts of Jack Ruby, photographs of Russian scenery, grammar school
records of Oswald and Ruby, a careful
analysis of Oswald's pubic hairs, irrelevant
letters, irrelevant telegrams, picture postcards showing bullfights, a copy of the proceedings in an
unrelated divorce case, a list of traffic
citations received by Jack Ruby, and an
excellent photograph of an unidentified man.
For those whose curiosity about the assassination
may not have been satisfied with this
frank display of evidence, it has been
announced that even the secret files will be made available. There will, however, be a slight delay
of 75 years before they can be examined.
This farsignted provision not only assures
a long period of national tranquility with regard to the
assassination, but also substantially reduces
the danger of the involved government
officials being lynched.
Of course, there is no real guarantee that,
even if you are very patient, you will
actually get to examine these files in 75years. New concerns
by the government with regard to national security
may require an additional 75 years delay, and it evenmight come
to Pass that one day it will be announced from Washington
that actually no assassination ever occured. In time, it can be explained that John Kennedy really
never existed at all and that Dwight Eisenhower
was followed by Grover Cleveland or Calvin
Coolidge, all depending on which words best suit
the government's Purpose at the time. Any of these announcements would be every bit as accurate as the
official myth that Lee Harvey Oswald,
the lone assassin killed President Kennedy
In the super-state, it really does not matter
at all what actually happened. Truth is
what the government chooses to tell you.
Justice is what it wants to happen.
In Dealey Plaza reality destroyed illusion,
the illusion that we were fiving in the
best of all possible worlds. The fairy
tale of the lone assassin represents an effort to resurrect the illusion, to legitimize it by proclamation
and to impose it by muscle.
In the interest of tranquility the decision
has been made somewhere that it is better
for you not to know what really happened.
It is better for you not to know that at midday on November 22nd there were many men who, in many places,
were glancing at their watches. It is
better for you to believe that the successive
murders of the President of the United States, Officer
Tippit and Lee Oswald were simply three meaningless incidents which happened to occur one weekend in Dallas.
Above all, it has been decided that you are
not to know of Lee Oswald's relationship
with the Central Intelligence Agency.Nor are you to know that
a number of the men actually involved in
the assassination had been employees of the Central Intelligence Agency. You are not to know about those
matters because of something called "national
security."
When national security is used as the excuse
for concealing essential facts surrounding
a disaster, it usually refers to the security
of the men who allowed the disaster to occur. Actually,
the greater threat to national security is the cynical
concealment of such facts from the people.
Behind the facade of earnest inquiry into
the assassination is a thought control
project in the best traditions of 1984. Because
of their role in the Establishment and their failure to
conduct any effective inquiry, major news agencies
have a vested interest in maintaining
public ignorance. They look away from the
widespread evidence that something is wrong, just as the
members of the Warren Commission looked away
from the autopsy photographs and X-rays
of the murdered President. [To a man the members
of the Warren Commission refused to examine the autopsy
photographs and X-rays. This evidence could have
clarified once and for all the number
of times the President was shot and the various
directions from whcih he was shot. the Commission, however loyally refused to play Russian Roulette with
the "lone assassin" theory.
The unviewed autopsy evidence was locked away behind
concrete walls and the Dallas Police Department scenario
duly was adopted as the official national myth.]
Tranquility, the time-honored message reads,
is better than knowledge.
In the authoritarian state, it is regarded
as a selfevident truth that the control
of history is an inalienable right of government.
All words are created free and equal.
If it is proclaimed in Washington tomorrow
that the moon is made of Limburger cheese,
a horde of honorable men can be produced
to attest to that fact. If it is proclaimed that an elephant can hang from a cliff with its tail tied
to a daisy, a phalanx of experts will
appear to confirm it. Anyone rash enough
to question these official verities can expect to be exposed as a villain or a fool. The name of the game
is not truth it is power.
The Ministry of Truth has announced that the
assassination of John Kennedy was investigated
exhaustively, that no evidence of a conspiracy
was found and that the matter should be considered
closed.
The greatest lies are told in the name of
truth. The greatest crimes are committed
in the name of justice.
The American people have suffered two tragedies.
In addition to the assassination of the
President by dishonorable men our national
integrity is now being assassinated by honorable
men. It does not matter what the rationale is - whether to calm the public or to protect our image
- the fact remains that the truth is being
concealed.
The United States Constitution, assuming that
it has not accidentally been burned to
a crisp, does not give anyone the power
to re-write history. The fact that this has happened should be evidence enough that it is far later than
any of us have dream.
The question now is whether we have the courage
to come face to face with ourselves and
admit that something is wrong, whether
we have the will to insist on an end to deception and
consealment with regard to the execution of John
Kennedy-or whether we win let the official
fairy tale be told and re-told until the
truth itself fades into a vagrant rumor and finally dies forever.
If we will not fight for the truth now - when
our President has been shot down in the
streets and his murders remain untouched
by justice - it is not likely that we will ever have
another chance.
