False Witness (47 page)

This is a story that speaks to the principal malaise of our times—the extraordinary decline in the trust Americans feel toward their government. Spanning three decades, the Garrison phenomenon both mirrored and influenced that downward spiral, which began at Dealey Plaza and accelerated after the publication of the Warren Report and the response it triggered from critics. While Garrison and his investigation were providing a base around which those forces for awhile coalesced, the country was awash in the escalating Vietnam war, the anti-war movement, the flower children rebellion, and a bitter, growing division in the land. In 1968 the back-to-back assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy further traumatized the nation and generated a new round of conspiracy theories. When it seemed nothing worse could happen, the Watergate debacle produced the first presidential resignation in America's history. Later, we learned that the CIA created revolutions and sometimes instigated murder; that the government funded radiation experiments on unsuspecting citizens; and more recently, the unanswered questions about the FBI shootout with the Weaver family in Idaho and the Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas.

At the bottom of that downward spiral stands the bombed-out shell of the Federal Building in Oklahoma City where 168 lives ended, some before they began. This mad act has spotlighted the rise of militias across the land, citizens armed to the teeth and convinced that Washington is Enemy Number One, that Armageddon is just around the corner, and
that they are democracy's last best hope.
*
The anti-government sentiment espoused by the militia leaders has an oddly familiar ring. Their with-us or against-us stance, their apocalyptic scenarios, and their insistence that the government is the root of all evil sound amazingly like the rhetoric of Jim Garrison. Were he delivering his anti-Washington proclamations today, he would be virtually indistinguishable from them. And he too would have a following. It would be larger and more mainstream than the others. For, thanks to Oliver Stone, many believe (more or less) as Garrison did about the assassination. But those who do can no longer build their case, as Stone did, on Garrison's evidence. He had none.

What he
did
have was a good deal more in common with Branch Davidian cult leader David Koresh than anyone wants to admit. They were both magnetic personalities with a mesmerizing oratorical gift and a psychological kink, and both left innocent victims in their wake. David Ferrie died from a stroke likely precipitated by the pressure Garrison deliberately applied to his daily life. Edgar Eugene Bradley spent thirteen years fighting lawsuits to clear his name, which left him broke and at one point he almost lost his home.
^†
Dean Andrews did not deserve what Garrison did to him. Nor did the others he charged: Walter Sheridan, David Chandler, Richard Townley, William Gurvich, Kerry Thornley, Layton Martens, John Cancler, Sergio Arcacha Smith, Morris Brownlee, and Gordon Novel. Clay Shaw endured a humiliating arrest, followed by a hellish four-year battle that ruined him financially and socially and sent him to an early grave. Yet he died having triumphed over Garrison. He also won a victory on the spiritual plane, though its nature is unknowable.

Garrison took a toll on the city of New Orleans that is less tangible, ongoing, and impossible to assess. Speaking to those affected by him, I repeatedly encountered the repressed anger still simmering there after all this time. They have never had closure in that city. After Shaw was acquitted in 1969, Garrison became irrelevant to the rest of the world
for the next twenty-two years, but not in New Orleans. Even after Judge Christenberry's ruling, Garrison continued to beat his own drum in his city, where the audience was captive. He also left behind a contingent of well-placed, powerful guardians of the Garrison flame, who continue to protect him and themselves by their silence, which is another way to bear false witness. Some of them seem to regard loyalty as a virtue superior even to truth and justice. Others don't want to go out on a limb in a city where Garrison still has influential friends. One former assistant district attorney who participated in the investigation at first agreed to speak to me, then changed his mind, remarking that he wanted “to see how this thing shakes down.” Another declined, saying he never gave interviews on the subject as “a matter of principle.” A former city official who played a brief but significant role spoke at length and with unconcealed fury about various Garrison outrages, but insisted the information was for background only. James Alcock was the exception, and he had very little to say. Of those who helped destroy Clay Shaw's life, the only one ever to express any remorse was Perry Russo.

One former Garrison aide who did agree to speak for the first time publicly was Leonard Gurvich, owner of the largest security guard service in New Orleans and the Gurvich Detective Agency.
²
In addition to being a dollar-a-year investigator for Garrison, Gurvich was also one of Garrison's drinking buddies, and they would sometimes go to the Playboy Club and play pool. He was one of the first to leave Garrison's investigation, quite awhile before his brother, William Gurvich. Yet few even noticed he was gone, Gurvich said, because of the way he did it. He went to First Asst. D.A. Charles Ward, a lifelong friend, and told him he was departing. That was it. Unlike his brother, who was trying to bring Garrison down, Leonard Gurvich made no public statements. “I would have preferred to just let the case and the public and history bring him down,” Gurvich said. “Garrison was my friend, and you don't give up on your friends.” In retrospect, though, he believes his brother was correct. “If right has to be served,” Gurvich said, obviously moved by what he was saying, “then whatever way Billy decided to help it in the interest of justice, then Billy has to be right. I have to be wrong.”

Even before the Russo polygraph fiasco,
*
Gurvich had heard from
Charles Ward that the case “was b.s. from the beginning.” He also knew it from interviewing some of the witnesses involved. “There was no infallibility in any of us,” he said, “but it was obvious after asking some simple questions that these people were crazy.” As to how the crucial testimony of Perry Russo came about, Gurvich stated, “I know this—what Moo Moo [Sciambra] said wasn't true. You don't set out to solve the crime of the century, write that long memo and leave out the crime. That means that as an afterthought Russo comes in and now you begin to ask him other things and you begin to manufacture a case. I hate to say it but what else can you say?”

When his brother went public, it was difficult for the entire family because of the notoriety, Gurvich said. Some people “stayed away” from them, though no real friendships were lost and none of their clients left. “We became controversial,” Gurvich said, and there was skepticism in some quarters until after Shaw's trial. “Billy was regarded by some in law enforcement, the ignorant, shall we say, as having ratted out. Billy hurt the gravy train. Billy broke the code of silence.” Yet, as Gurvich pointed out at the time to “anybody who would listen,” what his brother was speaking up about was not “a policeman who lost his temper and kicked some junkie.” His brother blew the whistle because of the magnitude of the crime. First they “fabricated” the case against Shaw and then Garrison was giving “press releases to Russian newsmen and communist journalists around the world stating that our government knows who killed our president. You can't keep quiet about that,” Gurvich said, his voice charged with indignation. “What happened to Shaw was the goddamnest thing I have ever seen in what we call the system of justice. They took a completely innocent man and set him up to save Garrison's own ass. That's it. Pure and simple. Garrison was not
that
stupid. He was not
that
crazy.” Those on Garrison's staff who stuck with the case did it “for the reward,” Gurvich said, and some of those who remained surprised him by staying. He believes the ones at the top who knew the score should have done what he did, maintain the code but
disappear
. “It's time,” Gurvich said, “for all of them to tell the truth.”

Oliver Stone eliminated that likelihood when he turned them all into Hollywood heroes. In the process, of course, he robbed Clay Shaw of his
hard-won victory in the minds of millions. He also diminished whatever prospects remain for finding legitimate answers to the questions that remain in this case. For no one discovers truth by building on a lie. The immorality aside, it doesn't work in a practical sense: those moved to action are likely to follow the lie. To a large extent that is what they have done in this instance. The unwary will continue to emulate Jim Garrison and pursue his “leads” as long as he is perceived as a hero.

Genuine heroes saved the day in New Orleans, but their story Hollywood has yet to tell. They were the four men who defended Clay Shaw: F. Irvin Dymond, Edward F. Wegmann, William J. Wegmann, and Salvatore Panzeca.
*
When the most popular and powerful political figure in Louisiana set his sights on Clay Shaw, they were all that stood between him and twenty years behind bars. Unlike Shaw, whose fate was chosen for him, they stepped into the fray of their own volition, with nothing to gain and a great deal to lose. Charismatic, witty, and above all principled, they devoted four years to the struggle. For all their time and effort, they earned about
8,500 apiece.
^†

Clearly, they weren't driven by money. They saw a wrong about to happen and felt compelled to stop it. It is no coincidence that the newsmen who covered the trial tagged them “The Boy Scouts” for their dogged belief that justice would prevail because it
should
. William Wegmann recently remarked that the worst thing that happened to Garrison was Shaw's hiring them to defend him “because Garrison knew we could not be bought.” Nor could they be intimidated. Had Shaw turned to others less talented, ethical or determined, his fate could have been quite different. Twice they came to his rescue. That is the
real
New Orleans story. It is an old-fashioned morality tale. The good guys versus the bad. Four Davids challenging Goliath, Big Jim, the Jolly Green Giant, and winning big, not once but
twice
.

Edward Wegmann died November 20, 1989, of cancer, at the age of seventy-two. Cynthia Wegmann believes the prolonged burden of defending Clay Shaw shortened her father's life. “He was a great father, a great lawyer, and a good man,” she wrote recently, “who had the quiet courage to do what was right.” Irvin Dymond's distinguished career as a defense trial attorney ended January 17, 1998, when he succumbed to cancer. He was eighty-three. William Wegmann, who had resigned as an assistant district attorney in 1950, abandoned the criminal arena entirely after the Shaw case. Today, his firm is one of the most prestigious civil practices in the region. Salvatore Panzeca, a partner in the firm of Panzeca & D'Angelo, still practices general law and acts (as he has for the past sixteen years) as Judge Pro Tempore of the Orleans Parish Juvenile Court. William Gurvich died of a heart attack on February 7, 1991, at the age of sixty-five. After his courageous public battle with Garrison, Gurvich assisted Shaw's attorneys, and returned to the family business. He was still working as a private investigator at the time of his death. Edward O'Donnell continued to advance in the police department. When he retired in 1974, he was chief of homicide. Judge Herbert Christenberry's illustrious tenure on the federal bench came to a close, after almost three decades, on October 5, 1975, when he died of a heart attack. He was seventy-eight.

These are the men of New Orleans who deserve to be remembered and celebrated for what they did in the service of justice for Clay Shaw.

What Garrison did was far worse than anything I imagined over the years. Far worse than most can imagine, I suspect. A prosecutor in Oregon recently spent two years prying out of jail two people he put there. When he discovered someone else committed the crime, he didn't rest until they were freed. Most Americans still think their judicial system is like that. Flawed, yes, but in the hands of sensible men and women of good will, honest and responsible. Garrison behaved in a way that seems too alien to be true. And while it's almost too amazing and frightening to believe, as Milton Brener pointed out, all of it came from Garrison's “imagination”; he invented it all.
³

So many were taken in by Garrison's evocative play on the anguish of Dealey Plaza. Certainly those who gave him money and moral support, the volunteers who flocked to his side from around the country, and
those grand jurors who did his bidding were all mesmerized by the Kennedy standard he held aloft, the promise that he and he alone cared enough to go after the “destroyers of Camelot.” Yet the twelve notably ordinary men who heard his evidence and sat in judgment on Clay Shaw were not taken in by him. The system worked. It worked in Garrison's hometown, in his backyard at Tulane and Broad, in a courtroom only a few marbled corridor feet from those tall double doors topped off by his name in three-inch high gold letters. Twelve men of good will, honest and responsible saw through his rhetoric and set Clay Shaw free. That is the glory of the real story. The demagogue didn't fool the man on the street. Oliver Stone did that.