Quotes from the Movie JFK

They created Oswald from day one. Like a dummy corporation in the Bahamas. Just move him around a board.

Jim Garison

Ferrie was the only one to express any kind of remorse about the whole thing. I think it got him killed.

Jim Garison

At least my reputation is still fine with people watching "Laugh In".

Jim Garison

One may smile and smile and be a villain.

Jim Garison

Is a government worth preserving when it lies to the people? It's become a dangerous country when you cannot trust anyone. When you cannot tell the truth. I say "let justice be done, though the heavens fall"!

Jim Garison

Telling the truth can be a scary thing sometimes. It scared President Kennedy, and he was a brave man. But if you let yourself be too scared then you let the bad guys take over the country. Then everybody gets scared.

Jim Garison

Could the Mob change the parade route, Bill, or eliminate the protection for the President? Could the Mob send Oswald to Russia and get him back? Could the Mob get the FBI the CIA, and the Dallas Police to make a mess of the investigation? Could the Mob appoint the Warren Commission to cover it up? could the Mob wreck the autopsy? Could the Mob influence the national media to go to sleep? And since when has the Mob used anything but .38's for hits, up close. The Mob wouldn't have the guts or the power for something of this magnitude. Assassins need payrolls, orders, times, schedules. This was a military-style ambush from start to finish... a coup d'etat with Lyndon Johnson waiting in the wings.

Jim Garison

To prove there was a conspiracy involving Clay Shaw we must prove there was more than one man involved in the assassination. To do that we must look at the Zapruder film which my office subpoenaed. The American public has not seen the film. It's been locked in a vault the last five years in the Time-Life Building in New York. There's a reason for that. Watch. The picture speaks 1,000 words. The Warren Commission thought they had an open-and-shut case. Three bullets, one assassin. But two unpredictable things happened that day to make it virtually impossible. One, the film shot by Abraham Zapruder while standing near the grassy knoll. Two, the third wounded man, James Teague, nicked by a fragment while standing near the triple underpass. The time frame, 5.6 seconds, established by the Zapruder film left no possibility of a fourth shot. So the shot of fragment that left a superficial wound on Teague's cheek came from one of the three bullets fired from the Depository's sixth floor. That leaves just two bullets. We know one was the fatal head shot that killed Kennedy. So a single bullet remains. A single bullet must account for the seven wounds in Kennedy and Connally. Rather than admit to a conspiracy or investigate further the Warren Commission endorsed the theory put forth by an ambitious attorney, Arlen Spector. One of the grossest lies ever forced on the American people. It's known as the "magic bullet" theory...Some bullet. Any combat vet can tell you, never in the history of gunfire has there been a bullet this ridiculous. The government says it can prove it with some fancy physics in a nuclear lab. Of course they can. Theoretical physics can prove an elephant can hang from a cliff with his tail tied to a daisy. But use your eyes, your common sense. The Army wound ballistics experts fired some comparison bullets. Not one of them looked anything like this. Take a look at CE-856. An identical bullet fired through the wrist of a human cadaver just one of the bones smashed by the magic bullet. Seven wounds, gentlemen. Tough skin dense bones. This single-bullet explanation is the foundation of the Warren Commission's claim of one assassin. And once you conclude the magic bullet couldn't create all seven wounds you must conclude there was a fourth shot and a second rifleman. And if there was a second rifleman then by definition there had to be a conspiracy.

Jim Garison

So, what really happened that day? Let's just for a moment speculate, shall we? We have the epileptic seizure distracting the police and allowing the shooters to get into place. The epileptic later vanished, never checking into the hospital. The A-team goes to the sixth floor of the Depository. They were refurbishing the floors of the Depository that week allowing unknown workmen in the building. They move quickly into position, minutes before the shooting. The second spotter, talking by radio to the other teams, has the best overall view. The God spot. B-team, one rifleman and one spotter with access to the building moves into a low floor of the Dal-Tex building. The third team, C-team, moves in behind the fence above the grassy knoll where the shooter and the spotter are first seen by the late Lee Bowers. They have the best position of all. Kennedy is close and on a flat, low trajectory. Part of this team is a coordinator who flashed security credentials at people, chasing them from the area. Probably two to three more men are in the crowd on Elm. Ten to twelve men. Three teams. Three shooters. The triangulation of fire Clay Shaw and David Ferrie discussed two months before. They've walked the plaza. They know every inch. They've calibrated their sights. Practiced on moving targets. They're ready. Kennedy's motorcade makes a turn from Main onto Houston. It's going to be a turkey shoot. They don't shoot him on Houston, the easiest shot for a single shooter in the Depository. They wait till he gets to the killing zone between three rifles.

Jim Garison

The first shot rings out. Sounding like a backfire, it misses the car completely. Frame 161, Kennedy stops waving as he hears something. Connally's head turns slightly to the right. Frame 193, the second shot hits Kennedy in the throat from the front. Frame 225, Kennedy emerges from behind the road sign, you can see he's obviously been hit, raising his arms to his throat. The third shot, frame 232, hits Kennedy in the back, pulling him downward and forward. Connally, you will notice, shows no sign of being hit. He is visiby holding his Stetson, which is impossible if his wrist is shattered. Connally is turning now. Frame 238. The fourth shot. It misses Kennedy and takes Connally in the back. This is the shot that proves there were two rifles. Connally yells, "My God! They're going to kill us all!" Around this time, another shot that misses the car completely striking James Teague by the underpass. The car brakes. The sixth and fatal shot, Frame 313, takes Kennedy in the head from the front. This is the key shot. The President going back and to his left, shot from the front and right. Totally inconsistent with the shot from the Depository. Again. Back, and to the left. Back, and to the left. Back, and to the left.

Jim Garison

The Commission would have us believe that after firing three bolt-action shots in 5.6 seconds, Oswald then leaves three cartridges neatly side-by-side in the firing nest, wipes fingerprints off the rifle, stashes it on the other side of the loft, sprints down five flights of stairs past witnesses Victoria Adams and Sandra Styles, who never see him, then shows up, cool and calm, on the second floor in front of Patrolman Baker. All this within a maximum of 90 seconds of the shooting.

Jim Garison

Of course, when he had realized that something had gone wrong, and that the President had been killed, he knew there was a problem. He may have even known he was the Patsy. An intuition, maybe. The President killed in spite of his warning. The phone call that never came. Perhaps fear now came to Oswald for the very first time.

Jim Garison

They have their man. It's already been decided in Washington. When he is brought from the theater a crowd is waiting to scream at him. Lee Oswald must have felt like Joseph K. in Kafka's The Trial. He's never given reasons for his arrest. He doesn't know the unseen forces ranging against him. At police headquarters, he was booked for murdering Tippet. No legal counsel was provided. No record made of the questioning. When the sun rises the next morning he is booked for murdering the President. The whole country, fueled by the media, assumes he is guilty.Under the guise of a patriotic club-owner out to spare Jackie Kennedy from having to testify at trial, Jack Ruby is shown his way into the underground parking garage by one of his inside men on the Dallas Police Force, and when he is ready Lee Harvey Oswald is brought out, like a sacrificial lamb, and nicely disposed of as an enemy of the people. Who grieves for Lee Harvey Oswald? Buried in a cheap grave under the name "Oswald"? Nobody.

Jim Garison

The official legend is created and the media takes it from there. The glitter of official lies and the epic splendor of JFK's funeral confuse the eye and confound the understanding. Hitler said: "The bigger the lie, the more people will believe it." Lee Harvey Oswald, a crazed, lonely man who wanted attention and got it by killing a President was only the first in a long line of patsies. In later years, Bobby Kennedy, Martin Luther King, men whose commitment to change and peace made them dangerous to men committed to war, would follow also killed by such lonely crazed men. Men who remove all guilt by making murder a meaningless act of a loner. We've all become Hamlets in our country, children of a slain father-leader whose killers still possess the throne. The ghost of John F. Kennedy confronts us with the secret murder at the heart of the American Dream. He forces on us the appalling questions: Of what is our Constitution made? What are our lives worth? What is the future of a democracy where a President can be assassinated under suspicious circumstances while the machinery of legal action scarcely trembles? How many more political murders disguised as heart attacks, suicides, cancers, drug overdoses? How many plane and car crashes will occur before they are exposed for what they are? "Treason doth never prosper," wrote an English poet, "What's the reason? For if it prosper, none dare call it treason."

Jim Garison

The American public has yet to see the Zapruder film. Why? The American public has yet to see the real X-rays and autopsy photographs. Why? Hundreds of documents could help prove this conspiracy. Why are they being withheld or burned by the government? When my office or you, the people, asked those questions, demanded evidence the answer from on high has always been: national security. What kind of national security do we have when we're robbed of our leaders? What national security permits the removal of fundamental power from the people and validates the ascendancy of an invisible government in the US? That kind of national security is when it smells like it, feels like it, and looks like it you call it what it is: Fascism! I submit to you that what took place on November 22, 1963 was a coup d'Ètat. Its most direct and tragic result was the reversal of Kennedy's decision to withdraw from Vietnam. The war is the biggest business in America worth $80 billion a year. President Kennedy was murdered by a conspiracy planned at the highest levels of our government carried out by fanatical and disciplined cold warriors in the Pentagon and CIA's covert-operation apparatus.

Jim Garison