JFK quotes

View Quote Bill Broussard: I'm lost. What are we saying?
Jim Garrison: That when Oswald went to Russia, he was not a real defector. He was an intelligence agent for our government and remained one till he died.
Bill Broussard: So, because Oswald pulled the trigger the intelligence community murdered the President?
Jim Garrison: I'll go you one better. Maybe Oswald didn't pull the trigger. Nitrate tests indicate he hadn't fired a rifle on November 22. And they didn't bother to see if the rifle'd been fired that day.
Bill Broussard: His palm print was on it.
Jim Garrison: It went to the FBI. FBI didn't find a goddamn thing. It comes back a week later and a Dallas policeman suddenly finds a palm print? It could've been taken at the morgue. There's no chain of evidence.
Al Oser: I can't figure out why he orders a traceable weapon to a P.O. box, when he can go into any store in Texas give a phony name and walk out with an untraceable rifle.
Susie Cox: To frame him, obviously!
Jim Garrison: A lot of smoke, but some fire.
Bill Broussard: We're talking about our government!
Jim Garrison: We're talking about a crime. You must think on a different level, like the CIA does. We're through the looking glass. White is black. And black is white. Maybe Oswald is just what he said he was. A patsy.

View Quote Lou Ivon: I guarantee the boss will protect you. He likes you. He likes your mind.
David Ferrie: I just don't know who to trust anymore. I suppose I could use a pot of hot coffee and a few packs of Luckys. So, you got anything new in the investigation?
Jim Garrison: Who are you scared of?
David Ferrie: Everybody. The Agency, mob, Cubans. Follow the Cubans. Check them out. Here. In Miami. Dallas. Check out Eladio del Valle. He used to be my paymaster when I flew missions into Cuba. Somewhere in Miami, you're on the right track. Don't write this down! I ain't cooperating with no one! What's going on here! There's a death warrant for me! Don't you get it? Damn! Wait a minute! You ain't bugged, are you? Son of a bitch, Lou! Are you?
Lou Ivon: Dave, I play it square. No bugs. I'd love you to go on the record, but I'm in no hurry.
David Ferrie: I haven't slept since that shit article come out. Why'd you guys have to go and get me involved in this?
Lou Ivon: Did we involve you? Or did Clay Shaw?
David Ferrie: ****sucking ****. He got me by the balls.
Lou Ivon: What do you mean?
David Ferrie: You know, photographs, compromising stuff. He'll use 'em, too. Agency plays for keeps. I knew Oswald, he was in my Civil Air Patrol unit. I taught him everything. He was a wannabe. Nobody really liked him 'cause they thought he was a snitch. But I treated him good. He talked about his kid he really wanted her to grow up with a chance but
...
David Ferrie: My neck is killing me. I've had cancer for years. Been working with mice trying to find a cure.
Lou Ivon: Did you ever work for the CIA?
David Ferrie: You make it sound like it's some remote ****ing experience in ancient history. Man, you don't leave the Agency. Once you're in, they got you for life.
Jim Garrison: And Shaw?
David Ferrie: Shaw's an untouchable. Highest clearance. Shaw, Oswald, the Cubans, all Agency.
Jim Garrison: What about Ruby?
David Ferrie: Jack was a pimp. A bagman for the Dallas mob. Ran guns to Castro when he was on our side. Castro was almost with us till we tried to whack him. Everybody keeps flipping sides. It's fun and games.
Lou Ivon: How does the mob figure in this?
David Ferrie: They're Agency too. The CIA and the Mafia worked together for years trying to whack out the beard. There's more to this than you could dream! Check out something called "Operation Mongoose." Government, Pentagon stuff. They're in charge. But who the **** pulls whose chain? Who knows? "Oh, what a deadly web we weave when we practice to deceive."
Jim Garrison: Who killed the President?
David Ferrie: Why don't you ****ing stop it? Shit! This is too big for you, you know that? Who did the President? ****! It's a mystery. It's a mystery wrapped in a riddle inside an enigma! The shooters don't even know! Don't you get it? ****, man! I can't keep talking like this! They'll ****ing kill me! I'll ****ing die! Son of a bitch!
Jim Garrison: It's all right.
David Ferrie: I don't know what happened. ****! All I wanted in the world was to be a Catholic priest. Live in a monastery. Pray. Serve God. I had one terrible ****ing weakness. And they defrocked me! Then I started to lose everything.
Jim Garrison: You'll be okay, Dave. You just talk to us on the record. We'll protect you, I guarantee it.
David Ferrie: They'll get to you too. They'll destroy you. They're untouchable. I'm so ****ing exhausted, I can't see straight.

View Quote Jim Garrison: The things you said will be attacked by many people.
Willie O'Keefe: Bring them on. Bring their college degrees in here, I got nothing to hide. No one can buy me. I don't even need this parole.
Jim Garrison: What parole?
Willie O'Keefe: You're liberal, you don't know shit 'cause you never been ****ed in the ass. This ain't about justice! No, this is about order! Who rules? Fascism is coming back.
Jim Garrison: Nobody wants to buy you. No one's promising you parole. What I need to know is why are you telling us this.
Willie O'Keefe: 'Cause that mother****er Kennedy stole that mother****ing election, that's why. Nixon was going to be a great President until Kennedy wrecked this country. ****s wanting rights! Why do you think we have all this crime. He promised those mother****ers too much! Revolution's coming, bullshit! Fascism's coming back! The day that Communist son of a bitch died was a great day! A great day for this country. I hate to think they blame it on silly, ****ing Oswald. Didn't know shit, anyway. People got to know. People got to know why he was killed. Because he was a Communist. You go ahead, put me on the stand, I'll tell the same goddamned story! Don't matter to me!

View Quote Is a government worth preserving when it lies to the people? It's become a dangerous country when you cannot trust anyone. When you cannot tell the truth. I say "let justice be done, though the heavens fall"! See Fiat justitia ruat caelum. In the German dub of the film, this was translated to the German equivalent Fiat justitia et pereat mundus, "Let justice be done, though the world perish", the motto of Ferdinand I, Holy Roman Emperor (1558-1564)

View Quote These are people who cannot afford to send money but do. People who drive cabs who nurse in hospitals who see their kids go to Vietnam. Why? Because they care. Because they want to know the truth. Because they want their country back. Because it still belongs to us as long as the people have the guts to fight for what they believe in. The truth is the most important value we have because if it doesn't endure if the government murders truth if we cannot respect these people then this is not the country I was born in, or the country I want to die in. Tennyson wrote: "Authority forgets a dying king." This was never more true than for John F. Kennedy whose murder was probably one of the most terrible moments in the history of our country. We, the people, the jury system sitting in judgment on Clay Shaw represent the hope of humanity against government power. In discharging your duty to bring a first conviction in this house of cards against Clay Shaw "ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country." Do not forget your dying king. Show this world this is still a government "of the people, for the people and by the people." Nothing as long as you live will ever be more important.

View Quote Senator Long: ****ing out of control. All of these hippies running around on drugs. You can't tell a boy from a girl anymore. I saw a girl the other day. Pregnant. You could see her whole belly. You know what she had painted on it? "Love Child." It's a mess down there, Jim. We've bitten off more Vietnam than we can chew. It figures with that polecat Lyndon in the White House.
Jim Garrison: I sometimes think things have gone downhill since Kennedy died.
Senator Long: Don't get me started on that. Those Warren Commission fellows were picking gnat shit out of pepper. Nobody's going to tell me that kid shot like he did from that bookstore.
Jim Garrison: But the FBI test-fired the rifle to see if it could be done.
Senator Long: Three experts and not one of them could do it. They say that Oswald got off three shots with world-class precision from a manual bolt-action rifle in less than six seconds. According to his Marine buddies, he got Maggie's drawers. That means he wasn't any good. Average man would be lucky to shoot twice. And the first would be the best. Here the third shot's perfect. And they got that bullet zigzagging all over the place hitting Kennedy and Connally seven times. One pristine bullet? That dog don't hunt.
Jim Garrison: Something's always bothered me about that from day one. Think other men were involved?
Senator Long: If I was investigating the case, I'd round up 100 of the world's best riflemen and find out which ones were in Dallas that day. You been duck hunting. Oswald's an old-fashioned decoy. What did he say? "I'm just a patsy!" Believe it.

View Quote The organizing principle of any society, Mr. Garrison, is for war. The authority of the state over its people resides in its war powers. Kennedy wanted to end the Cold War in his second term. He wanted to call off the moon race in favor of cooperation with the Soviets. He signed a treaty to ban nuclear testing. He refused to invade Cuba in 1962. He set out to withdraw from Vietnam. But all that ended on the 22nd of November, 1963. Since 1961, they knew Kennedy was not going to war in Southeast Asia. Like Caesar, he is surrounded by enemies. Something's underway, but it has no face. Yet, everybody in the loop knows.

View Quote Don't underestimate the budget cuts that Kennedy called for in March of 1963. Nearly 52 military installations in 25 states. Twenty-one overseas bases. Big money. You know how many helicopters have been lost in Vietnam? Nearly 3,000 so far. Who makes them? Bell Helicopter. Who owns Bell? Bell was nearly bankrupt when First National Bank of Boston asked the CIA to use the helicopter in Indochina. How about the F-111 fighter? General Dynamics of Fort Worth, Texas. Who owns that? Find out the defense budget since the war began. $75 going on $100 billion. Nearly $200 billion will be spent before it's over. In 1949, it was $10 billion. No war...no money.

View Quote Bill Broussard: This is Louisiana, chief! I mean, how do you know who your daddy is? Because your mama told you so? You're way out there, boss, taking a crap in the wind, and I for one am not going along on this ride!

View Quote To prove there was a conspiracy involving Clay Shaw we must prove there was more than one man involved in the assassination. To do that we must look at the Zapruder film which my office subpoenaed. The American public has not seen the film. It's been locked in a vault the last five years in the Time-Life Building in New York. There's a reason for that. Watch. The picture speaks 1,000 words. The Warren Commission thought they had an open-and-shut case. Three bullets, one assassin. But two unpredictable things happened that day to make it virtually impossible. One, the film shot by Abraham Zapruder while standing near the grassy knoll. Two, the third wounded man, James Teague, nicked by a fragment while standing near the triple underpass. The time frame, 5.6 seconds, established by the Zapruder film left no possibility of a fourth shot. So the shot of fragment that left a superficial wound on Teague's cheek came from one of the three bullets fired from the Depository's sixth floor. That leaves just two bullets. We know one was the fatal head shot that killed Kennedy. So a single bullet remains. A single bullet must account for the seven wounds in Kennedy and Connally. Rather than admit to a conspiracy or investigate further the Warren Commission endorsed the theory put forth by an ambitious attorney, Arlen Spector. One of the grossest lies ever forced on the American people. It's known as the "magic bullet" theory...Some bullet. Any combat vet can tell you, never in the history of gunfire has there been a bullet this ridiculous. The government says it can prove it with some fancy physics in a nuclear lab. Of course they can. Theoretical physics can prove an elephant can hang from a cliff with his tail tied to a daisy. But use your eyes, your common sense. The Army wound ballistics experts fired some comparison bullets. Not one of them looked anything like this. Take a look at CE-856. An identical bullet fired through the wrist of a human cadaver just one of the bones smashed by the magic bullet. Seven wounds, gentlemen. Tough skin dense bones. This single-bullet explanation is the foundation of the Warren Commission's claim of one assassin. And once you conclude the magic bullet couldn't create all seven wounds you must conclude there was a fourth shot and a second rifleman. And if there was a second rifleman then by definition there had to be a conspiracy.

View Quote Jim Garrison: Mr. Shaw, have you ever been a contract agent with the Central Intelligence Agency?
Clay Shaw: And if I was, Mr. Garrison... do you think I would be here today... talking to somebody like you?
Jim Garrison: People like you don't have to.
Clay Shaw: May I go?
Jim Garrison: People like you walk between the raindrops.
Clay Shaw: May I go?
Jim Garrison: Yes.
Clay Shaw: Regardless of what you may think of me, I am a patriot first and foremost. I've spent half my life in the military defending my country.
Jim Garrison: You're the first person I've met who considers it an act of patriotism to kill his own President.

View Quote The official legend is created and the media takes it from there. The glitter of official lies and the epic splendor of JFK's funeral confuse the eye and confound the understanding. Hitler said: "The bigger the lie, the more people will believe it." Lee Harvey Oswald, a crazed, lonely man who wanted attention and got it by killing a President was only the first in a long line of patsies. In later years, Bobby Kennedy, Martin Luther King, men whose commitment to change and peace made them dangerous to men committed to war, would follow also killed by such lonely crazed men. Men who remove all guilt by making murder a meaningless act of a loner. We've all become Hamlets in our country, children of a slain father-leader whose killers still possess the throne. The ghost of John F. Kennedy confronts us with the secret murder at the heart of the American Dream. He forces on us the appalling questions: Of what is our Constitution made? What are our lives worth? What is the future of a democracy where a President can be assassinated under suspicious cir****stances while the machinery of legal action scarcely trembles? How many more political murders disguised as heart attacks, suicides, cancers, drug overdoses? How many plane and car crashes will occur before they are exposed for what they are? "Treason doth never prosper," wrote an English poet, "What's the reason? For if it prosper, none dare call it treason."

View Quote Lou Ivon: The Zapruder film establishes three shots in 5.6 seconds. I'm Oswald. Time me.
Bill Broussard: Go.
[Ivon fakes three shots]
Jim Garrison: Time?
Bill Broussard: Between six and seven seconds.
Lou Ivon: Without really aiming. The second and third shots came almost right on top of each other. It takes a minimum of 2.3 seconds to recycle this thing. The other problem is, there was a tree blocking the first two shots when fired in the Zapruder film.
Jim Garrison: Didn't Hoover say something about leaves falling in November?
Lou Ivon: It was Texas live oak, Chief. It sheds its leaves in early March. Take this Carcano, world's worst shoulder weapon and try to hit a moving target at 88 yards through heavy foliage. No way. FBI tried two sets of tests. Not one sharpshooter could match Oswald's performance. Not one. Oswald was at best a medium shot. The scope was defective on it too. This is the whole essence of the case to me. The guy couldn't do the shooting. Nobody could. And they sold this lemon to the American public.
Jim Garrison: The Zapruder film was the proof they didn't count on. We got to get our hands on it.
Bill Broussard: It means we'll have to subpoena Time-Life.
Jim Garrison: Let me ask you something. Why not just shoot Kennedy on Houston? Plenty of time. He's out in the open.
Lou Ivon: I keep asking myself the same thing.
Jim Garrison: Frontal shot. Even if you miss him once, if he accelerates, you get a second shot.
Lou Ivon: The only reason to get him on Elm is you got him in a triangulated crossfire. You put a team there down at the fence. Frontal shot. Flat, low trajectory. Put a third team down in this building on a low floor. When Kennedy gets in the kill zone, it's a turkey shoot.
Jim Garrison: How many men?
Lou Ivon: One shooter. One spotter on a radio. Maybe three teams. These are professional riflemen. Serious people. Hunters. Patient. It takes skill to kill with a rifle. That's why no chief executive's been executed with one in 200 years.

View Quote Jim Garrison: I don't, I can't... I can't believe they killed him because he wanted to change things. In our time. In our country.
X: Well they've been doing it all through history. Kings are killed, Mr. Garrison, politics is power, nothing more! Oh, don't take my word for it, don't believe me. Do your own work, your own thinking.
Jim Garrison: I can't. The size of this is... beyond me. Testify?
X: Me?
Jim Garrison: Testify.
X: Ha ha. No chance in hell. No, I'd be arrested and gagged, maybe sent to an institution, maybe worse, you too. No, I can give you the background, but you have to find the foreground, the little things. Keep digging. Remember, you're the only person to bring a trial in the murder of John Kennedy. That's important, it's historic.
Jim Garrison: I haven't yet. I don't have much of a case.
X: You don't have a choice anymore. You've become a significant threat to the national security structure. They would have killed you already but you got a lot of light on you. Instead they're trying to destroy your credibility. They already have in many circles in this town. Be honest, your only chance is to come up with a case. Something, anything. Make arrests, stir the shit storm, hope to reach a point of critical mass that'll start a chain reaction of people coming forward, then the government will crack. Remember, fundamentally, people are suckers for the truth - and the truth is on your side, Bubba. I just hope you get a break.

View Quote An American naturalist wrote: "A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against its government." I'd hate to be in your shoes today. You have a lot to think about. You've seen evidence the public hasn't seen. Going back to when we were children I think most of us in this courtroom thought justice came automatically. That virtue was its own reward. That good triumphs over evil. But as we get older we know this isn't true. Individual human beings have to create justice, and this is not easy because the truth often poses a threat to power and one often has to fight power at great risk to themselves.