Trials: More than a Man in the Dock

For two headline-filled years, New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison has made it clear that his assassination-conspiracy case against Businessman Clay Shaw involves another, unnamed defendant: the Warren Commission. To prove his contention that Shaw and others had been part of a plot to shoot President Kennedy, Garrison needed to disprove the commission's findings that Lee Harvey Oswald had acted "alone and unassisted" on November 22, 1963. He also hinted often that elements of the Federal Government itself—particularly the CIA—were somehow involved in the...