They were separated on June 23, 1942, when Garrison was appointed a First Lieutenant and began to pilot observation aircraft, but Garrison stayed in touch by writing Gervais long letters, some of which have survived.3 Garrison liked the military. “It became a surrogate family for me,” he later wrote, and he recalled his wartime experiences with nostalgia. In addition to flying thirty-five combat missions and receiving the European Theater Campaign Medal with two battle stars, he attended American University in England for eight weeks where he studied the history of philosophy, business law and play writing prior to his discharge on March 1, 1946. Less than four months later he tried to reenlist but his “efficiency index” was too low and the Army declined his request. Garrison apparently was trying to rejoin the military about the time of his mother’s marriage to Lyon Gardiner, later described in an FBI report as being “from probably the wealthiest family” in Laurel, Mississippi.4 Rebuffed by the Army, Garrison returned to school, studying law at Tulane University. In 1949, because of his veteran status, he was automatically admitted to the Bar without taking the examination. The following year at the age of thirty, Garrison, who had been a student and a soldier but had never held a job, applied to the FBI.
In filling out the employment application, Garrison omitted his father’s criminal history and took the added precaution of listing him as “deceased.” Believing he was dead, the FBI failed to run the usual background checks on the name and didn’t learn the truth about him for many years.5 Garrison also kept the FBI in the dark about his psychiatrically troubled sibling, Judith, who had been placed in a Mississippi state mental hospital suffering from schizophrenia.6 On his FBI application he indicated that no family member had been treated for mental illness or confined to a mental institution. After brothers and sisters, Garrison wrote “none.” He had now erased two family members.
In his interviews he made a strong impression. He was “of large, athletic physique,” one interviewer wrote. He dressed well and spoke well, they noted, possessed the right credentials, and could write a proper report. He inspired high hopes. They recommended him. The following year he was accepted by the FBI.
After eight weeks of training, Garrison traveled west to a field office assignment in Seattle, Washington. But after less than four months, he abruptly resigned, supposedly because his Army reserve unit had been called to active duty in Korea.* Over the next few months, Garrison behaved in a strangely erratic manner. On July 24, 1951, after completing his first day’s routine back in the Army, he realized he “just couldn’t make it.” He reported to sick call. Twenty-four days later he wrote Hoover, asking to be reinstated with the FBI. Hoover said no. Garrison was transferred to Brooke Army hospital in September and treated for exhaustion. No organic cause was found for his complaints. He was diagnosed as suffering from chronic anxiety with hypochondriasis, functional bowel symptoms and psychogenic allergic manifestations, in addition to exhaustion syndrome. A “marked mother dependency” was diagnosed as well and under “past history” it was noted that “there has always been a close relationship between the patient and his mother. She was oversolicitous and made every effort to monopolize his affections.” The report further stated that Garrison had “a severe and disabling psychoneurosis of long duration” that had “interfered with his social and professional adjustment.” Garrison’s “illness,” the report concluded, “existed long before his call to active duty” and was “of the type that will require long-term psychotherapeutic approach.”7 On the basis of those findings, Garrison was discharged October 31, 1951, for “physical disability.”
Back in New Orleans, Garrison joined the district attorney’s office.* In 1957 he was a losing sacrificial candidate for the office of Assessor. In 1958, when the incumbent D.A. was defeated, Garrison lost his job and was forced to turn to private practice. He was not a success on his own and the years that followed were difficult. Yet, by one account, he maintained his sense of humor, joked about his financial troubles and kept up appearances. In 1959, as a reward for past political assistance, Garrison was appointed assistant city attorney, a part-time job with a minimal salary. In 1960 he mounted a campaign for criminal district judge and suffered his second defeat at the polls. Along the way, he married a lovely blonde from New Orleans, Leah Elizabeth Ziegler, and eventually would father five handsome children.
Garrison first emerged from obscurity on Sunday night, January 14, 1962, during the Democratic primary for district attorney when he and the other candidates took part in a round-table discussion carried live on all four of the city’s local television stations. The main topic was the “part-time” incumbent district attorney, Richard Dowling, the entrenched Democratic machine politician who had declined to appear on the show. Like many D.A.’s back then, Dowling maintained a civil practice on the side to supplement his modest salary. Most of the guests on the program criticized that custom in general and Dowling in particular, and pledged to work full time in their public post if elected. The lone exception was F. Irvin Dymond, who five years later would help defend Clay Shaw. Once a merchant seaman, Dymond had attended college on a boxing scholarship and fought in World War II, receiving five medals, including the Purple Heart.* One of the most respected criminal lawyers in the state, he was considered Dowling’s major opponent. Of the five, only Dymond had a flourishing practice and would have been relinquishing something of value, but the viewers didn’t know that. He made it clear he wouldn’t consider living on the salary the office paid. “If the voters are looking for a sixteen-thousand-five-hundred-dollar-a-year district attorney,” he said, “I’m not their boy.” Watching the program from his living room was William Wegmann, a friend of Dymond and another attorney who would later assist in Shaw’s defense. “There goes the election,” said Wegmann.8
Candidate Garrison, with nothing to lose, took the politically wiser position. The people, he said, “expect a full-time district attorney, and I believe they deserve one.” He was relaxed and articulate, exhibiting what one local writer called a “beautifully modulated self-assured voice.”9 That television appearance transformed Garrison’s life and rearranged the political landscape of New Orleans for years to come. It was the first step on the road to political power that would culminate in Garrison’s eccentric investigation of the president’s assassination five years later. Garrison’s darkly handsome presence and easy way with words were perfectly suited for television. A mysterious bonding occurred that evening and a political star was born. “New Orleans fell in love with him,” one reporter later wrote. “He looked like Perry Mason and sounded like Eliot Ness.”10
Garrison, an enthusiast of Ayn Rand, the novelist who glorified individual initiative unhampered by government authority, had entered the race running as an independent. He had practically no money and no political backing. But he was supported by the city’s two newspapers, the New Orleans States-Item and the Times-Picayune,11 both owned by the same organization, and his television appearance had made him the talk of the town. He launched his campaign with preemptive strikes at the opposition, what is today called negative campaigning, and he made ample use of the most powerful tool of modern communication. Television was his medium and he understood what it could do for him. He bypassed the old-fashioned rallies, still the mainstay of politics in those days, and carried his message directly to the voters. In the primary held on January 27, Garrison garnered enough votes to force a runoff with Dowling.
Before the second primary, the two debated on television. Garrison did poorly, unable to handle “hard facts” well or the one-on-one exchange. When it was over, he reportedly “looked as though he had been hit with a wet mop.”12 This single setback had no impact on the campaign but Garrison had learned a lesson—he never again engaged in such a confrontation.
Garrison’s oversize stature—six feet seven inches, 240 pounds—and glad hand soon earned him the nickname the Jolly Green Giant. He took the primary in April and went on to defeat the Republican candidate by almost 73,000 votes.13 With no obliga
tion to anyone, he had won a mandate from the citizens of New Orleans. Unencumbered by political ties, he had a free hand to pick his people and run his office as he saw fit. As his chief investigator, Garrison named his old army buddy and former policeman Pershing Gervais, described by one fan as an “investigative genius” with “a scarifying face, enormous physical strength” and unsettling candor. Gervais had been fired from the police department in the late fifties for alleged “infractions” and before joining Garrison’s staff had managed a bar “that had the reputation of being a gathering place for homosexuals.”14 His appointment angered some, particularly in the police department, and would lead to future difficulties.
As district attorney, Garrison’s new headquarters was a sprawling suite of interconnected rooms on the second floor of the massive, gray stone Criminal District Court building. This grim fortresslike structure stretches from one block to the next and everyone in New Orleans calls it by the two streets that intersect at its location: Tulane and Broad. Garrison’s private office, with wood-paneled walls and deep blue carpet, was handsomely appointed, unusually large and remotely situated. Its most unique feature was an elevator concealed inside a closet, enabling the D.A. to come and go in secret. Garrison, who was in the habit of arriving late for work and leaving early, had developed the reputation of being lazy, and many now feared that he would be a do-nothing D.A.
Early in his first term though, Garrison grabbed the city’s attention and its headlines and never let go of either, as he publicly attacked virtually everyone in sight: the police department, the mayor, the state legislature and bail bondsmen. Described by one close friend as “exhilarated by conflict,”15 he also developed a slash-and-burn, take-no-prisoners approach to his opponents that continued throughout his tenure as D.A. His counterattacking technique was brute-force simple. He crushed anyone who resisted him. Nor was he shy about using the power of his office. When Pershing Gervais came under investigation during a police probe of gambling payoffs, Garrison ordered nine policemen arrested and charged with brutality.16 The charges were quickly dropped and, eventually, so was the police investigation of Gervais.*
Soon after taking office, Garrison targeted French Quarter homosexuals, arresting “gay kids on the streets” and raiding “gay bars.” After one such sweep, a curious reporter discovered that the formal charge lodged against them was “being a homosexual in an establishment with a liquor license.” In time Garrison’s drive against the gay community died down.
Another of Garrison’s early targets was Bourbon Street, the French Quarter’s “sin strip,” which has been described as “one peel parlor after another.” Garrison instigated a series of padlocking raids against establishments where prostitution, gambling and B-drinking (hiring women on a commission to solicit drinks from customers) were rampant. Garrison kicked up a ruckus with this assault on Bourbon Street, a major tourist attraction. New Orleans relies heavily on the tourist trade, and many felt Garrison was hurting business and giving the entire Quarter a bad name.
In a region with a high tolerance for outlandish, even felonious behavior by public officials, an attitude best described by the resident who said “somehow our outrage gland got stunted,” what happened next was extraordinary even by New Orleans standards. In an effort to curtail Garrison’s attack on Bourbon Street, the city’s eight criminal court judges eliminated the source of the funds he was using to finance his undercover activities. Garrison retaliated by claiming that justice was being impeded by the number of holidays the judges were taking. He also suggested they might have been affected by “racketeer influences.” The judges charged Garrison with criminal defamation of character. Garrison, exercising his power as district attorney, dismissed the charges against himself. State Attorney General Jack Gremillion reinstituted them. Then he traveled to New Orleans and personally tried the case and won a conviction. Garrison (fined 1,000 or four months in jail) appealed, and his conviction was overturned in a landmark decision by the U.S. Supreme Court that upheld the right to criticize “public figures.”
Garrison had won a major victory that greatly enhanced his political leverage. He also managed to replace two of the judges who had opposed him with two candidates he supported, and after that “the rest of the bench [fell] into line.”17 The importance of this triumph in future events cannot be overemphasized. Garrison had flexed his muscles against the judiciary and won in the most chilling way possible. The rest of the judges in New Orleans and the other officeholders beholden to the election process for their bread and butter understood the message: opposing Garrison meant risking their jobs. Adding to Garrison’s prestige was the record of his office. His assistants had not lost a single murder case. These successes and his popularity made Garrison seem invincible and he may have felt that he was. Even the governor would one day remark on the folly of challenging him. One of Garrison’s opponents ordered a survey seeking his political weak spot and discovered Garrison had none; he was strong across the board.18 No one seemed to mind that his initial charges against the judges were never proved. Or that the crackdown on Bourbon Street put a few B-girls out of work but was of no lasting value.
Garrison, who studied, admired, and emulated Huey P. Long, Louisiana’s late demagogic governor and U.S. senator, seemed made to order for the Mardi Gras spirit of New Orleans. Whether he was issuing his dictums from his second-floor suite at Tulane and Broad or enjoying nightlife at the Playboy Club, he kept most of the citizenry startled, entertained, and satisfied. In the next governor’s contest, he went against the local tide, campaigning for John J. McKeithen over Ambassador de Lesseps Morrison. McKeithen’s victory gave Garrison a powerful connection in Baton Rouge and made him a major state political force.
But Garrison didn’t rely solely on the free flow of news to convey his image as “an incorruptible crusader for justice.” He cultivated newsmen. A former assistant district attorney remarked recently that Garrison always had some reporter under his sway, that Garrison was good at that. A local journalist admitted that some of the reporters were much too close to Garrison and mentioned David Chandler, who was one of Garrison’s best friends for awhile.19 Recently described by a colleague as “lively and nice looking, about five-nine, with a full head of brown hair, a round face and a pleasant aspect about him that women liked,” Chandler would be the first to openly break with Garrison later. But at first this twenty-seven-year-old Pulitzer Prize–winning newsman was a strong Garrison advocate and Garrison was best man at his wedding. Chandler was so taken with the Garrison charisma and his slugfest with the judges that he suggested an article about the battling D.A. to The Saturday Evening Post. The editor liked the idea and sent one of his staff writers to New Orleans.
James Phelan spent ten days there, much of it in Garrison’s company, and concluded that Garrison was quite a guy. “The Vice Man Cometh” was published in June 1963, and Garrison couldn’t have asked for anything better.20 Phelan penned a valentine of sorts. He tagged Garrison “Sir Galahad” and depicted him as a reformer and a frustrated writer, with a knack for colorful speech and literary allusions. “Not since Hamlet tried to decide whether or not to stab the king of Denmark,” Garrison said about the mayor’s waffling on an issue, “has there been so agonizing a political decision.” Phelan was the first to quote Garrison referring to Lewis Carroll’s famous classic (a favorite later in his celebrity period). “When I was elected I fell down the rabbit hole and landed smack in the middle of Wonderland,” Garrison said. “Nothing I’ve seen since has surprised me.” As for the skepticism about his reform effort, Garrison insisted that he was “going to end the rackets here and the only way anyone can stop me is to kill me.” His motive was simple, Garrison claimed. “I just want to run the best D.A.’s office New Orleans ever had.”
Phelan captured Garrison’s appeal—his eloquence, his belief in the individual, his maverick streak, magnetism, and his political promise. But Phelan also sensed Garrison’s other side, his tendency toward excess and his eni
gmatic core. “Garrison himself remains something of a puzzle,” Phelan wrote. The existence of that puzzle would become more apparent in the years to come and Phelan would be one of those pondering it up close. The suggestion was barely noticeable though in this light-hearted tribute, which was Garrison’s first significant national publicity and started a trend. Soon readers of Pageant, Time, Newsweek, and the New York Times were seeing items about the battling New Orleans D.A.
Later on, a New Orleans writer, attorney Milton Brener, who had worked for Garrison in the D.A.’s office, observed that there was “a quality about Garrison incapable of definition that renders an abiding dislike of the man virtually impossible upon personal contact.” Brener said the quality was something close to “charm,” though that word didn’t quite convey it. Brener called Garrison’s sense of humor “delicious” and said it permeated all of Garrison’s conversations, both private and public; Garrison’s general attitude Brener described as “casual and unhurried.” But Brener also noted that Garrison tended “to make snap judgments on insufficient facts” and to “oversimplify.” His ego was “abundant” and “in his humor there could at times be detected traces of cruelty.” Yet overall, these flaws seemed relatively minor.21
Brener, Phelan, Chandler, and earlier the FBI interviewers found in Garrison the same attractive qualities that would soon draw to him an extraordinary array of supporters once he became involved in the Kennedy assassination.
That began on November 22, 1963.
About 12:30 that day, Garrison was sitting at his desk when First Asst. D.A. Frank Klein ran into the office. “The president has been shot!” Klein shouted. Stunned, like the rest of the world, the two men left the building and headed for Tortorich’s, a restaurant in the French Quarter with a television set in the dining room. On the way there they listened to the bulletins on the car radio.
False Witness Page 3
