The shots in Dealey Plaza didn't just kill a president. They shattered a certain kind of American innocence that we’ve never really managed to glue back together. You’ve likely seen Oliver Stone's JFK, that whirlwind of a movie with Kevin Costner giving a big, stirring speech in a courtroom. That film didn’t just pop out of thin air. It was based, almost entirely, on a book by a guy named Jim Garrison called On the Trail of the Assassins.
Garrison was the District Attorney of New Orleans. He was a tall, imposing figure with a deep voice and an even deeper sense of suspicion. He looked at the Warren Commission's findings—the official government story that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone—and basically decided it was a pile of garbage.
The New Orleans Connection
Most people think of Dallas when they think of JFK. Garrison looked south. He started noticing that Oswald had spent time in New Orleans during the summer of 1963. He wasn't just there eating po-boys; he was handing out "Fair Play for Cuba" pamphlets. But Garrison found it weird. Oswald was a supposed Marxist, yet he was hanging around with people who were intensely, even violently, anti-Communist.
It didn't add up.
On the Trail of the Assassins details Garrison’s hunt for a man named David Ferrie. Ferrie was a pilot with no eyebrows—literally, he had alopecia and wore a rug and fake eyebrows—who supposedly knew Oswald. Then there was Clay Shaw. Shaw was a pillar of New Orleans society, a businessman, and, according to Garrison, a CIA asset involved in a plot to kill Kennedy.
What Most People Get Wrong About the Investigation
Look, Garrison’s case wasn’t perfect. Far from it. When he actually took Clay Shaw to trial in 1969, the jury acquitted Shaw in less than an hour. If you read the transcripts, it’s kinda messy. The prosecution’s star witness, Perry Russo, had his testimony questioned because Garrison’s team used hypnosis and "truth serum" (sodium pentothal) to help him "remember" a party where the assassination was discussed.
That’s the part the movie glosses over.
But here’s the thing: Garrison was the only person to ever bring anyone to trial for the murder of John F. Kennedy. Even if he missed the target with Shaw, he hit on something much bigger. He was the first to loudly argue that the intelligence community—the CIA and the FBI—knew way more than they were letting on.
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The Garrison Theory in a Nutshell
In On the Trail of the Assassins, Garrison outlines a "coup d'état." He didn't think it was just a crazy guy with a rifle. He believed JFK was being killed because he wanted to pull out of Vietnam and bridge the gap with the Soviet Union. To the "military-industrial complex," Kennedy was a traitor.
The book argues that Oswald was a "patsy," a term Oswald himself used before Jack Ruby silenced him. Garrison paints a picture of multiple shooters, triangulated fire, and a massive cover-up by the very people supposed to protect the President.
Why the Book Still Bites
Honestly, you can't talk about JFK conspiracy theories without starting here. Garrison might have been wrong about Clay Shaw being a mastermind, but years later, when the JFK Records Act released more files, we found out Shaw actually was a contact for the CIA's Domestic Contact Service. He wasn't just a random businessman.
The book reads like a noir thriller. Garrison isn't writing like a dry lawyer; he’s writing like a man who thinks the world is ending. He uses short, punchy sentences. He describes the humidity of New Orleans and the smell of old law offices.
It’s personal.
He lost his reputation over this. The media at the time, especially Life magazine and NBC, absolutely tore him apart. They called him a charlatan. They said he was chasing ghosts. But if you read the book today, you see a man grappling with the fact that his government lied to him. That’s a feeling a lot of people recognize now, regardless of their politics.
The Technical Stuff Garrison Pointed Out
Garrison was obsessed with the Zapruder film. He was the one who famously showed it to the public for the first time on television. He pointed at frame 313—the moment Kennedy’s head goes "back and to the left."
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Physics.
He argued that if a bullet hits you from behind, your head shouldn't snap backward. The Warren Commission had the "Single Bullet Theory," often called the Magic Bullet. It’s the idea that one bullet hit Kennedy in the back, exited his neck, waited in mid-air, turned right, hit Governor Connally in the back, exited his chest, hit his wrist, and ended up in his thigh. All while remaining in nearly pristine condition.
Garrison hated that theory. He thought it was an insult to human intelligence.
The Fallout and the Legacy
Jim Garrison died in 1992, shortly after the movie came out. He lived long enough to see his work go from "fringe insanity" to "national conversation."
Critics like Max Holland have spent years debunking Garrison. They point to his reliance on unreliable witnesses and his tendency to see a CIA agent behind every corner. And they’ve got a point. Garrison’s investigation was plagued by leaks and infighting. Some of his staff quit because they thought he was losing his mind.
But even the critics have to admit that On the Trail of the Assassins forced the government's hand. Because of the public outcry following the book and the movie, the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB) was created. Millions of pages of documents were declassified.
We didn't find a "smoking gun" memo that said "Let's kill JFK," but we did find out that the FBI and CIA were actively sabotaging the investigation from day one. They were hiding their own failures and their connections to Oswald.
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A Quick Reality Check
- Clay Shaw: Acquitted. Never proven to be a "conspirator," but definitely lied about his CIA ties.
- David Ferrie: Died of a brain aneurysm just as the investigation was heating up. Garrison called it a suicide, the coroner disagreed.
- The Zapruder Film: Garrison’s use of it changed how the public viewed the event forever.
How to Navigate the JFK Rabbit Hole Today
If you’re going to dive into this, don't just take Garrison’s word for it. He’s a biased narrator. He’s the hero of his own story.
You have to balance it out. Read the Warren Report, then read Garrison, then read someone like Gerald Posner (Case Closed), and then read James Douglass (JFK and the Unspeakable).
The truth is likely somewhere in the middle. It’s messy. It’s uncomfortable. It’s quintessentially American.
Garrison’s book isn't just about a murder. It’s about the loss of trust. It’s about the moment we realized the people in charge might not be the good guys. Whether you believe in the "grassy knoll" or not, On the Trail of the Assassins is the map of how we got to where we are now—a world where nobody knows what to believe.
Actionable Steps for the Curious
If you want to actually understand the weight of what Garrison was digging for, you need to look at the source material.
- Read the actual ARRB findings. Don't just watch YouTube videos. Look at the declassified documents regarding the "Medical Evidence" and how the autopsy was handled. It’s way weirder than the shooting itself.
- Compare the Zapruder film frames. Look at the 1967 version vs. the high-definition scans available now.
- Trace Oswald’s New Orleans timeline. Look at 544 Camp Street. It’s a real address where both Oswald and anti-Castro groups were operating. That’s not a conspiracy theory; that’s a geographical fact.
- Listen to the Garrison tapes. There are surviving recordings of Garrison’s interviews. You can hear the intensity in his voice. It helps to separate the man from the Kevin Costner version.
- Examine the "Two Oswalds" theory. Garrison touched on this—the idea that someone was using Oswald’s identity in the months leading up to Dallas to create a trail of breadcrumbs.
The JFK case isn't "solved" just because a guy wrote a book or a jury gave a verdict. It’s a living part of the American psyche. Garrison’s work ensures that even if we never get a confession, we never stop asking the questions that keep the powerful awake at night.