[Sample B: Approval/Signature Sheet] - George Mason University

guidance of Ferrie and Bannister to appear to be an extreme leftist. Garrison believed
Oswald was a secret agent and that “some part of the intelligence community had been
guiding him” from his days in the Marine Corps to his defection to the Soviet Union and
then back in the United States. 581 Garrison also accepted the idea of a double Oswald –
that someone had been impersonating him to create even more incriminating evidence.
Garrison thought that Shaw was a CIA agent but he failed to build a convincing
case tying the New Orleans businessman and civic leader to the assassination. He
presented one witness at the trial, Charles Spiesel, who testified he heard Ferrie and Shaw
discuss the possible assassination of Kennedy. Under cross examination, Spiesel
admitted that he believed “the New York City police had hypnotized him, tortured him
mentally, and forced him to give up his practice as an accountant.” 582 He also said he
fingerprinted his daughter to make sure that she was the same person he had sent to
college at LSU. Vernon Bundy, another witness, said he said Oswald and Shaw together
on a wharf while he gave himself a heroin injection. Overall, this was obviously not very
believable testimony.
In his book, Garrison revealed a sense of persecution, accusing the authorities and
the media of being unfair to him. He was arrested in 1971 for allegedly taking bribes to
protect organized crime pinball gambling. At his trial a tape was played in which he
seemed to discuss the payoffs, but Garrison claimed the tape had been edited to make him
look guilty. He was found not guilty, but lost his next bid for re-election as district
581 Garrison, 70.
582 Garrison, 277.
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