Newspaper Article: a Reporter at Large

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the right judges, but the conviction was
reversed by the U.$. Supreme Court,
in a decision that held that individualt
have the right to criticire public oili-
. rials even tlioogh the charges may turn
mtt to be unfounded. (iarrison is popu-
larly referred to in New ()__rh-ans as
the jolly Green Giant--an image eon-
_jured up by his imposing physical
stature (sir: feet six inches) and his
.political glad hand. \\'ht-n l met him,
in__r_1t_iyl1\p_r_il_, his welcorne Was gra-
Citrus, if ‘slightly fulsomc; he told
me, almost solemnly, that it was his
reading Jmy book that first set him
thinlting about launching anrinvestigr
_
tioit of-his own. (Later. l learned
that this was a standard greeting, ex-
_
tended to almost all critics or the
1 ll/arrcn Comniixsioo.) Over a leisure-
‘
ly dinner at llmussar_d's, Garrison be-
,
gan to tcll me about the conspiracy hei
had uncovered. lt was .1 diffuse nar-
rative, in which it appeared that Os-
waldbad only beeitifeig-ning the role
lie went tn considerable lengths to es-
'
tablish for himself as a pro-Castroitc
antl had in fact been part of an anti‘-
Castro assassination tearn trained by
David Ferric. Ferrie, in turn, was in
some important way-——Ga'rrison never
explained exactly how_-personally in-
volved with Clay Shaw. \Vhen a plan
shoot Castro was aborted becauseI
to
E i Oswald could not obtain it visa to Cuba,
the asmssinatitin team turned its atten-
mission. .
~
'
conspimcy? “It's exactly like a chess
problem," he explaincd."'The \Var-
ten Commission moved the same pieces
back and forth and got nowhere. l
made a new move and solvtid the
iprohlcm." The movehe meant was the
iarrest of Clay Shaw. He pointed out
that after Shaw wasarresterl men from
the District Attorney's otlice searched
Shaw’: home, in-the French Quarter,
_and found in it zt cache of new evi-
E
dencc, which he suggested that l should
see, becattsc it would give me "it new
perspective on the case." _
Early the‘ next morning, l_ wettt to
the District /\ttorney's oflice, which is
housed, next to the Parish Prison, in
‘
‘
the Criminal District Court Building,
"
a massive structure at Tulane Avenue
5
and South Broad. Garrison had not yet
arrived, but one of his assistants, James
C. Aleock, told me that- Garrison had
; left word that l should “start going
1 through the evidence." I did so with
-
joncs Harris, .1 'Nc.w Yorker of inde-
pendent means whohas devoted the
better part of the last three years to a
private investigation of the assa_sina-
tiorl.
-t
t
.3-
SK cardboard c.tt"tou.x were
‘brought out containing t\etsti|\;tl be-
‘I
fl
mgitigs of Clay Shaw: letters, photo-
raplu, financial rccordt, hlucprittt.\ for
renovating houses in the French
Quarter, the tn.1rtttscript_e of pl:t_\'_s he
h ad written years ago, calemlars,
_checltbooltn, atldrt-as boolts. ln one box
were a hlaclt cmtume, a ttct mask, and
MIIIIQ
S
l
sud
had
plastic .\lippers—all of which
had claimed were part of his
hlardi Gran costume. Alcoclt
that the District -'\ttor'nc_v's statt
yet to examine all this material,
haw!
96$
and he soggestetl that llarris and l
look through Shaw's addres boolts and
V financial records in hopes of discover-
_- ing some information that might inter-
est Garrison. \Ve were lcit alone with
y
t
l
4
hatl
I SI
he evidence.
fhough none of these materials, as .
far as l could sec after e.\att\ining them,G
aiiything directly to do with the
sxtssination, the odd way in which
Garrison treated them did give tne,
when l thought about it later, “.1 new
perspective on the case.” l recallctl that
a judge's order had forbidden discus-
sion or disclosure of any evidence in
the case. The very fact that llarris and
I were allowed to examine objct't.\
seized from Shaw's home and desig-
nated "evidence" scctnetl to be a direct
.
violation of that order. \\'hy, l wort-
dererl, should the District Attorney
risk having his case thrown out of
ill
~ llowi had Garrison discovered this th
;
I
tion to President Kennedy, and, on} court on a technicality by letting
November Z2, I963, carried out its outsidi.-rs go freely" through the evi-
<-nce? Moreover, it scented curious
:tt Clay Shaw's papers had not al-
t-ady beenirigorously set-utini/.etl by
Garrison or his .stafl', especially .~utce
=_Garrison had told several people, in-
‘
c hiding rue, that one of the main rt'a-
sons for arresting Clay Shaw on i\l;o'ch
lst was to prevent hint frotn tlc_\lttl_\‘-
.ing his personal papers. Six weclts had
P
:1
assed», and yet from what l ,sa\v tt
ppeared that no real investigation of
,Clay Shaw was going on at :tll but
C
I
[only a search for peripheral cl|:tr:tctt'rs
onnected with David l*err"e. lf Gar-
‘
rison believed that $ha\v
had-openly conspired to kill
the President, why was the
inquiry- into his activities
beittgtreated with such ap-
parent nonchalance?
A discovery thatijoncs
Harris made while we were
going through the papers
provided considerable in-
sight into the nature of
Garrison‘: investigation.
\Vhat_ Harrb found was a
five-digit number that was
common to both Shaw's
: and Oswald's ‘address
booltsi The entry in $lt.-t\v's
M ‘lmolt was "Lee ()tluttt, l'()
llox l9l(l(r, l);tll.n, 'l.e.\."
ln ().\walrl'_\ book, the
number l9lfI6 was pre-
ceded by tltc Cyrillic
l-rim‘ ll ;t (which, mt-
other Rttssinn letters on
the page, the \\'arrcn Com-
mistion had zmunted were
made during ()swa'|d's two-
and~a-half-year stay
in the soviet Union),
Tlimiglt the coinci-
dence of numbers
proved nothing in it-
self. it was striking, and
(.i.trriso|t decided that
further investigatiott
was merited. Shortly
thereafter, Garrison
announced to the press
that he had found the
cntrr "l'() l9lll6" in
both ()swalrl's and
Slt.t\v's .'ttltlt't‘:~$ books,
and that the num-
her was a “tttittt'.\i$tt‘tlt
or fictional mnnht-r,"
which removed “the
possibility of coinci-
dence." Moreover,
Garrison mid that
“l'() l9lfl6" was a
code that, when deci-
phert-tl, produced jack
R|th_i,"s unlisted tele-
phone number, \\"ll
l-$60!, ano “no oth-
-
er tuiniher on earth."
The method by which Garrison “deci-
phered" the.eodc is worth following.
Starting with the "scrambled" number
l9lfl6, Garrison “unscr.-tmliled" it (by
choosing the nearest digit, then the
farthest, thed tltenext nearest, etc.)
to produce the number l6')Ol. Ruby's
number was l560l, so by unscram-
bling thedigits Garrison managed to
match the last two digits in the two
numbers. The next step was to subtract
Llllll from l69(l-l, and—prestr+-—
l56(ll. Finally, Garrison (onvcrtctl rli¢
Pl’K‘fi-Y .“l'0" to “\\'ll" by .1 systetu
that, according to the proniinent cryp-
tographer lrwin Mann, yieltlsat lmst
six different prefixes; Garrison cltosc
Ruby's. _
'
A few days after Carrison_,1n-
nnunced that he had deciphcred the
code, it became known that the num-
ber l9lO6 in S_h:iw’s address book was
by no means “nonexistent or fiction-Tl."
PO Box l9lO6 had been, as Shaw's
addres book indicated, the address in
Dallas of a man named Lee Odom,
Qdom stated that he had been intro-
duced to Shaw in_ I966 by the nttnagrer