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Griffin Daily News
An In Depth Report
Did New Orleans Figure
In Plot To Kill JFK?
In one of the most Pic- .
turesque and historic of
American cities a bizarre
chapter in the story of
assination of President Kennedy
is boiling up more than three
years after the fact. Dist. Aity.
Jim Garrison, a flambouyant
and sometimes sensational fi
gure in New Orleans politics,
has s l arted a new investigation
of what he calls “the conspira
cy” which preceded the actual
assassination. UPI assigned a
five-man reporting team to put
together a comprehensive as
sessment of Garrison’s probe.
This is their report.
By WILLIAM E. CLAYTON, Jr.
United Press International
NEW ORLEANS (UPI) —On
Nov. 25, 1966, a man named
Louis Ivon took a trip to San
Francisco which cost the
taxpayers of New Orleans $933.
That trip, three years and three
days after the assassination of
President John F. Kennedy in
Dallas, helped bring to light one
of the strangest sequels to the
assassination ever graced by
official sanction.
Louis Ivon was on the
business of Dist. Atty. Jim
Garrison, a combative prosecu
tor given to conservative dress
and gaudy style.
Garrison was embarked on an
Investigation of what he later
came to call “the conspiracy”
—an alleged plot against
Kennedy’s life in New Orleans
in the months before the actual
assassination, an alleged plot
somehow overlooked by the
Warren Commission.
“I accepted the Warren
Commission Report until last
November, when out of curiosi
ty I began reading and studying
the case,” he said.
Later he talked It over with
U.S. Sen. Russell B. Long, D
La., the Senate Democratic
whip. Long told him he had his
own doubts about the Warren
Report, notably the “sequence
of firing” of the shots that
killed Kennedy Nov. 22, 1963, In
Dallas.
The Warren Commission had
concluded that Lee Harvey
Oswald, whom It said the
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7
Friday, February 1967
evidence indicated was the sole
assassin, fired three shots from
his bolt-action mail-order rifle
in a time period which could
have been as short as 4,8
seconds.
Working with his own staff
and 10 police officers per
manently assigned to him,
Garrison started his probe in
silence.
Silence was an unfamiliar
position for the New Orleans
district attorney. Garrison has
made a loud noise throughout
his career, first as a crusader
against vice in 1962, then as a
combatant with three judges of
the New Orleans Criminal
District Court, who were so
irritated by his criticism that
they secured a defamation
conviction against him.
Garrison took the case to the
Supreme Court and won a
decision that has become a
landmark in the modern deve
lopment of laws prohibiting
freedom of speech and criticism
of public officials.
Investigation Revealed
The conspiracy investigation
proceeded in secrecy for about
three months. But Louis Ivon’s
trip was a matter of public
record, and the records of such
trips began piling up. Reporters
started digging into them, and
asking questions about what
they meant. On Feb. 17—a
week ago today—the New
States-Item broke the
story.
Then a strange and pathetic
popped up—David W.
49, once dismissed from
an Ohio seminary as unfit to be
priest and fired from his job
as an Eastern Air Lines pilot.
hair and eyebrows once
burned off by an explosion
he wore a red toupee and
eyebrows.
He was mentioned many
in the Warren Report but
cleared of any complicity in the
assassination after it was
revealed he was in New Orleans
when Kennedy was killed in
and his airplane ap
parently would not even fly.
Ferrie shed some more light
on Garrison's probe.
“Supposedly I have been
pegged as the getaway pilot in
an elaborate plot to kill
he said.
Garrison said nothing when
the first disclosure of the
investigation was made. Then
began to talk. He held
several news conferences in
rapid succession. Each state-
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ment was more positive,
specific and finally, more
sensational, than the last.
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“It’s very possible that such
an investigation is being con
ducted,” the district attorney
said Friday.
By Monday, he was talking
about a conspiracy, and two
days later he would be calling it
that.
“All we want to do is find the
men Involved in the assassina
tion of President John F.
Kennedy and we are going to,”
he said.
“There will also be, again in
my judgment, convictions of
individuals for being accessories
after the fact, for having
substantial knowledge of the
conspiracy and withholding it
and in other ways abetting it.”
On Wednesday the strange
figure with the red wig and
false eyebrows, David W.
Ferrie, was found dead in his
apartment in a two-story frame
house with peeling paint in an
upper-middle class neighbor
hood of New Orleans.
Garrison called it apparent
suicide. The coroner said Ferrie
suffered a cerebral hemorrhage
caused when a congenitally
weak blood vessel ruptured at
the base of the brain. But
whether this was triggered by
something else—possibly drugs
—would not be known for a
week.
Claims Ferrie Involved
At any rate, it put the seal to
what Garrison was now saying
publicly. of
“The apparent suicide
David Ferrie ends the life of a
man who, in my Judgment, was
one of hstory’s most important
individuals,” Garrison said.
“Evidence developed by our
office had long since confirmed
that he was involved in events
culminating in the assassination
of President Kennedy.”
Then he said:
“I have no reason to believe
at this time that Lee Harvey
Oswald killed anybody in Dallas
on Nov. 22.” He offered no
elaboration on that startling
statement.
Sen. Long added some fuel to
the interest in the Garrison
investigation.
“He (Garrison) may have
some statements by persons
saying they talked about killing
Kennedy with Lee Harvey
Oswald before the assassina
tion,” Long said.
“If he turns up evidence of a
conspiracy, it could lead to all
sorts of possibilities, including
the one that Oswald was the fall
guy and the real killer is still
free.”
Long’s Louisiana counterpart
in the House, Rep. Hale Boggs,
D-La., a member of the Warren
Commission, said Garrison
should turn over anything he
has to federal authorities.
Garrison declined, saying that
would he to convert it “into a
colossal fact-gathering enter
prise in which revelant leads
become lost among truckloads
of trivia.”
Deny Plot
In Washington, the Justice.
Department and the FBI would
make no comment. But Wash
ington sources said that Ferrie
and his possible complicity in a
plot were thoroughly investigat
ed by the Warren Commission
and disproved.
What has Garrison got?
In the opinion of many, little
or nothing.
Speculation about what Garri
son has also includes a tale
about a plot by Cuban exiles to
assassinate Fidel Castro, plans
that were converted to assassin
ating President Kennedy in the
hope that his successor would
look more favorably on a
subsequent invasion of Cuba.
The story, and others circulat
ing in New Orleans, are
unsubstantiated.
Whatever Garrison has or
dees not have, it has made him
the most talked-about district
attorney in the country. And it
has not hurt what some
observers consider a possibility
that he is maneuvering to run
for lieutenant governor in 1968.
He had suffered a political
setback of sorts when despite
his image as a crusader against
vice, he helped arrange a parole
for Linda Brigitte, one of the
French Quarter’s most beau
teous strippers, who had been
convicted in 1966 of giving a
lewd performance. Orleans
The fact that New
was Lee Harvey Oswald’s home
town has had some impact on
public interest.
Whatever the outcome of the
current pronouncements from
New Orleans emanating like the
brassy blare of Bourbon Street,
only Jim Garrison at this point
seems in control of what will
happen next.
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LIVERPOOL, England (UPI)
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They used to wear skirts
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and Bedford.
"The shorter skirt is very
popular with the younger
sisters,” said a spokesman. , ___
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