False Witness : The Real Story of Jim Garrison's Investigation and Oliver Stone's Film, "JFK"

This absorbing book tells, for the first time in its entirety, the story of the arrest and trial of Clay Shaw, charged with conspiracy in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The trial and the events leading up to it were headline news internationally for almost three years in the late 1960s. Those who dismissed the Warren Report as government cover-up now saw the conspiracy that they had always suspected slowly being unraveled before their eyes.

Lambert, a JFK conspiracy buff and writer, believes that the assassination has yet to be solved. In this engrossing report, she argues that New Orleans district attorney Jim Garrison's 1969 prosecution of local businessman Clay Shaw for conspiracy to murder KennedyAthe source for Oliver Stone's interpretation in his filmAwas reckless, fraudulent and nothing more than a red herring. A jury agreed, acquitting Shaw in 54 minutes. Lambert also makes a case that Stone used the trial to launch his attack on the Warren Report rather than to find the truth. Lambert contends that a key witness, Perry Russo, who was left out of the movie altogether, made his allegations under hypnosis and while drugged with a notoriously unreliable "truth serum," and that Garrison, through an assistant, tried to bribe at least one witness to supply false testimony. But the main points of divergence between Lambert and Stone come in their assessments of the characters: Stone portrays Garrison (who died in 1992) as a caring family man, a heroic truth-seeker battling sinister forces. Lambert, by contrast, presents the former DA as a mentally unhinged, fame-seeking demagogue who, she alleges, was also a wife-abuser and a pedophile. Stone's Shaw is, according to Lambert, "an arrogant, elitist sybarite, a butch homosexual with a taste for... conspiracy," while Lambert's Shaw is a restorer of French Quarter buildings, a lifelong registered Democrat and a civic leader. While emotions clearly play a role in which version (if any) readers will believe, Lambert must be commended for having done an impressive job of tracking evidence and putting together a compelling narrative of events. Photos.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Revisionist history confronts revisionist history as the author debunks the conspiracy theory surrounding the assassination of John Kennedy that persists to this day. In March of 1967, Clay Shaw was arrested by flamboyant Now Orleans district attorney Jim Garrison and charged with conspiring to murder the president. Behind the arrest lay months and years of investigation. Shaw was linked to another conspirator, David Ferrie, and to Lee Harvey Oswald himself. (Ferrie's library card was found in Oswald's pocket on the day he shot Kennedy.) Eyewitnesses saw the three together, mysteriously appearing in the small town of Clinton, La. Another witness described their open talk of killing the president. Links were found to anti-Castro Cubans, the Mafia, the CIA. Shaw was shown to be a sadistic homosexual who wished to kill the president for the kinky thrill of it. Oliver Stone made a successful film of the story. The only trouble is, according to Lambert, it's all a pack of lies, based on deception, innuendo, hatred, ambition, and stupidity. The whole thing started when two down-and-outers on the New Orleans scene made up a couple stories, and Garrison, always ambitious, chose to believe and pursue them, though the men later recanted. Lambert does an amazing job of meticulously revealing the truth behind the lies. Through exhaustive research, countless interviews, endless reviews of Garrison's investigations and findings, she convincingly destroys virtually all the elements of the conspiracy theory Garrison so carefully wove. Here Garrison is no admirable Kevin Costner, but rather a hateful homophobic egomaniac willfully destroying an innocent man. Shaw was, after all, acquitted. Here Stone is no daring filmmaker, but a foolish, gullible man willing to believe anything. And in an America ever mistrustful of its government, both are all to readily believed. While flawed (Lambert pursues her own character assassinations at times), this is investigative reporting at its finest. It should put to rest at least some of the conspiracy notions surrounding JFK's death. But it probably won't. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

The national trauma that was the Kennedy assassination spawned a continuing legacy of government mistrust. Lambert presents an exciting, well-documented account of an early example of this bleak inheritanceADistrict Attorney Jim Garrison's prosecution of Clay Shaw, a well-respected, secretly gay member of the New Orleans business community, for allegedly heading a CIA plot to murder the President. After four years of Garrison's legal machinations, Shaw was found innocent, and Garrison was condemned by the New York Times for perpetrating "one of the most disgraceful chapters...of American jurisprudence." Remarkably, the trial became the primary source of information for the 1979 House Committee on the Kennedy Assassination Report, and Garrison's self-promoting memoir inspired Oliver Stone's conspiracy-happy film JFK. Lambert does not attempt to discredit any assassination theory, but she succeeds admirably in her stated goal of chronicling Shaw's innocence. Recommended for all public libraries.AKarl Helicher, Upper Merion Twp. Lib., King of Prussia, PA
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.