By Peter Barry Chowka
The files of the late New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison provide fascinating and important insights into the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Garrison (1921-1992) investigated the 1963 murder of the president, which had been blamed on a supposed lone assassin – Lee Harvey Oswald – who himself was assassinated by Dallas nightclub owner Jack Ruby two days after Oswald allegedly killed Kennedy.
Because there was a complicated New Orleans connection to Kennedy’s killing, Garrison undertook a several year long inquiry into the matter, culminating in the indictment, in 1967, of New Orleans businessman Clay Shaw. After a trial by jury in early 1969, Shaw was acquitted and Garrison’s reputation largely fell into disrepute.
Twenty-one years later, in 1991, Oliver Stone’s three-hour long dramatic film JFK – in which Kevin Costner played Garrison – put the story back on the map.
Way back in 1980, NBC television producer and personality John Barbour interviewed Jim Garrison in New Orleans for segments that were broadcast on the NBC network prime time reality show, Speak Up, America! In 1992, Barbour produced The Garrison Files, the first of two documentaries on the JFK assassination. The Garrison Files video is available free at YouTube here. John Barbour’s other documentary (2017) is The American Media and the Second Assassination of President Kennedy.
Still very active in the search for documentation and solving the murder of JFK – the greatest whodunit of the 20thCentury – Barbour is now releasing to the public, for the first time, batches of Garrison’s original files on the Kennedy assassination.
Earlier this month (March 2019), Barbour posted a video on YouTube describing the second collection of Garrison’s files (Release 2) that he has made available online. The video is available at YouTube here.
The Release 2 files themselves can be accessed and downloaded for free from here.
The first collection of Garrison’s files (Release 1) is here. Barbour’s video at YouTube describing Release 1 is here.
The files are a fascinating read and are well worth downloading and serious study.
Finally, on February 28, 2019, I interviewed John Barbour for an hour – primarily on the topic of the JFK assassination. The video podcast of our conversation is at YouTube here.
John Barbour’s information-packed and link-rich Web site, John Barbour’s World, can be accessed here.
Peter Barry Chowka writes about politics, media, popular culture, and health care for American Thinker and other publications. Peter’s new Web site is http://peter.media. Follow Peter on Twitter at @pchowka.
