Proceeding further into Jeffrey Caufield's new book, General Walker and the Murder of President Kennedy: The Extensive New Evidence of a Radical Right Conspiracy (2015), I would touch on Chapter 9, Oswald in New Orleans and the Jim Garrison Case. Here, Jeff Caufield throws the reader a curve-ball, by citing the little-known Jack Martin Film.
Jason touched on this in an earlier blog post -- so I'd like to tell you what Jeff Caufield said about this film, and how this film influenced his own growing suspicion about Jim Garrison himself.
This home movie belonged to a young member of the Minutemen in Minnesota, who had served under General Walker in Augsburg, Germany sometime during 1960-1961. The amateur film depicts a visit to the Dallas home of General Walker, filming the bullet holes in his house resulting from the famous shooting of April 10, 1963. Then, the film flies us to New Orleans to witness the scuffle between LHO and Carlos Bringuier near Canal Street on August 9, 1963.
Probably this was a home movie made during a summer vacation. If so, then, this home movie was made during the first nine days of August, 1963. Its contents are unique in US History. There is nothing like it in the whole JFK Assassination research literature.
Because Carlos Bringuier had called Kent Courtney for advice regarding his arrest after the scuffle, this raised further suspicions for Jeff Caufield, who exclaims:
The filming defies any reasonable explanation other than that Walker knew about Oswald and his planned fight with Bringuier before the rest of the world, contrary to his Commission testimony. (Caufield, General Walker and the Murder of President Kennedy, 2015, p. 201)
Yes -- that seems to be an obvious conclusion about the Jack Martin Film. So, one rightly wonders how Jim Garrison could have missed the connection between General Walker and Guy Banister in his extensive investigation of the JFK murder 1966-1968. It is plain that Jim Garrison had access to the Jim Martin Film. Yet, Jeff Caufield finds three different versions of Jim Garrison's case:
(1) In the trial of Clay Shaw, which never raised the question of the CIA during the trial, Jeff Caufield exclaims that the crucial relationship between Lee Harvey Oswald and Guy Banister was never raised during the trial!
(2) In his 1967 Playboy interview, Jim Garrison blamed the CIA, FBI, ONI, SS and NASA for the JFK Assassination, on the premise that they had hoped to break away from JFK's Cold War policies. This is obviously so generic that it is impossible to prove; in other words, it is a polemic, and not a serious argument.
In Jim Garrison's 1979 book, On the Trail of the Assassins (which Oliver Stone used as the basis for his 1991 movie, JFK), Garrison narrowed the field and blamed former CIA agents enraged over the Bay of Pigs. (Again, without any proof, this amounted to a mere polemic.)
(3) In his DA investigative files (which most members of the public never see, but Jeff Caufield studied carefully), Jim Garrison made a vastly different case. In those records, Garrison claims that the Radical Right wing in New Orleans worked with Lee HarveY Oswald in cooperation with the KKK, the White Citizens Councils, the Birchers, the National States Rights Party, the American Nazi Party and the Minutemen.
Caufield writes:
Garrison, in spite of his publicly pronounced CIA allegations, fittingly and correctly -- at least early on -- referred to the conspirators as "master-racist authors of the JFK Assassination." Garrison also stated that the assassins were a group of "Fanatical Anti-Communists -- people who could be described as neo-Nazi." (Caufield, General Walker and the Murder of President Kennedy, 2015, p. 201)
This perspective on the Jim Garrison investigation was news to me. Regarding Lee Harvey Oswald himself, notice what Jim Garrison wrote in his early investigative papers, which seems bizarre when compared with the Clay Shaw trial. Caufield writes:
Oswald's professed Marxist sympathies were just a cover for his real activities. Oswald would have been more at home with Mein Kampf than Das Kapital. (Caufield, General Walker and the Murder of President Kennedy, 2015, p. 199)
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