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From the May-June 1999 issue (Vol. 6 No. 4)
False Witness: Aptly Titled
By Jim DiEugenio and Bill Davy
Following on the heels of Gus Russos Live By the Sword, another propaganda
tract has been published. False Witness, by Patricia Lambert, is a hit piece
on Jim Garrison and Oliver Stone. Curiously, Lambert formerly went under the
name Patricia Billings. We cant help but wonder if she was related in some
manner to Dick Billings, the Time-LIFE journalist who actively worked to
undermine Garrisons case, and who had strong ties to the CIA.
Patricia Lambert has basically taken a stale track and updated it with
extremely selective sections from new documents to perform the same function
that authors and journalists like Milton Brener, James Kirkwood, James
Phelan, and Hugh Aynesworth have performed in the past. Once again, she
attempts to portray Garrisons investigation as a complete fraud from start
to finish. Her thesis: every person under suspicion by Garrison was either
put upon or persecuted by the deluded DA. This includes David Ferrie and
especially Clay Shaw. Therefore, Stone built his film on a foundation of
quicksand. Consequently the attacks on the movie were justified as the
picture, by necessity, was a false portrait of the JFK case. When one
compares the documentation in the book to the bulk of the record, the books
title takes on new meaning, describing its author instead of its subject.
Lamberts caustic attack on Garrison paints him as a child molester and
compares him to cult leader David Koresh. This last comparison is key to
Lamberts characterization of Garrison. Otherwise how could Garrison control
the likes of Bill Alford, Andrew Sciambra, Numa Bertel, Al Oser, Lou Ivon,
John Volz, Richard Burnes, Dalton Williams, Frank Meloche, Lynn Loisel,
James Alcock, George Eckert, Sal Scalia, Bill Boxley, William Martin, et.
alall of whom assisted Garrison in his investigation and must have come
under his spell. According to Lambert, the answer is simple of course.
Garrison was also a Svengali. Oliver Stone is not spared Lamberts vitriol
either. By quoting an out of context interview, he is likened to Adolf
Hitlers documentarian, Leni Riefenstahl. When an author deals in this kind
of hyperbole, it only serves to detract from the credibility of the writing.
Absent the hyperbolic treatment however, this work is still less than
credible. A recent Baltimore Sun review describes it as having "scant
historical merit."
Patricia Lambert is a longtime friend and colleague of David Lifton who
helped him on his manuscript for Best Evidence. Predictably, Lambert begins
the book by saying that she was a believer in Garrison at the start of his
probe who gradually grew disenchanted with him as his probe expanded and
unraveled and finally ended with the failure of the Clay Shaw trial. This
approach always leaves us a bit suspicious since, as with Sylvia Meagher, it
always leaves out the overpowering attack on Garrison that took pains to
ensure his failure. Lambert, working from a stacked deck, ignores that attack
and its origins and motive. Therefore, the picture drawn is already skewed
and distorted.
Lambert loads the book with sources who have an agenda. She uses people like
Aaron Kohn, David Chandler, Milton Brener, James Phelan, and Shaws lawyers
without hesitation or qualification. And, of course, she sterilizes the
sources by not informing the reader why and how they are compromised. For
example, today there are literally dozens of FBI cables between Kohn in New
Orleans and FBI HQ in Washington. Most of them explicitly discuss ways to
sidetrack or smear Garrison. Lambert uses Kohn, but mentions none of this.
David Chandler lived in an apartment owned by Shaw in New Orleans, so how
neutral would one expect him to be? Chandler also admitted knowing Kerry
Thornley, a character to which we will return at length, as well as to having
met Oswald on several occasions before the assassination. Milton Brener
represented Layton Martens, a Shaw associate and friend of David Ferries, as
well as Walter Sheridan, a man who went to dishonest lengths to attack
Garrison. And of course, Shaws lawyers can hardly be considered an unbiased
source.
The dodging of this new evidence to whitewash Garrisons attackers reaches
almost humorous dimensions in the case of Phelan. Lambert knows she has a
serious problem here since Phelan, with the new file releases, has been
revealed to be a longtime FBI informant who informed to the Bureau about
Garrison and dropped off documents in Washington which he had gotten from the
DA. Further, this is something that Phelan always denied doing, in the
apparent hope that these records would never be declassified. This new record
on Phelan is either ignored or cavalierly
