A Farewell to Justice: Jim Garrison, JFK's Assassination, and the Case That Should Have Changed History

by Joan Mellen

Working with thousands of previously unreleased documents and drawing on more than one thousand interviews, with many witnesses speaking out for the first time, Joan Mellen revisits the investigation of New Orleans district attorney Jim Garrison, the only public official to have indicted, in 1969, a suspect in President John F. Kennedy’s murder.Garrison began by exposing the contradictions in the Warren Report, which concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald was an unstable pro-Castro Marxist who acted alone in killing Kennedy. A Farewell to Justice reveals that Oswald, no Marxist, was in fact working with both the FBI and the CIA, as well as with U.S. Customs, and that the attempts to sabotage Garrison’s investigation reached the highest levels of the U.S. government. Garrison interviewed various individuals involved in the assassination, ranging from Clay Shaw and CIA contract employee David Ferrie to a Marine cohort of Oswald named Kerry Thornley, who at the very least was a Defense Intelligence Agency asset. Garrison’s suspects included CIA-sponsored soldiers of fortune enlisted in assassination attempts against Fidel Castro, an anti-Castro Cuban asset, and a young runner for the conspirators, interviewed here for the first time by the author.Building upon Garrison’s effort, Mellen uncovers decisive new evidence and clearly establishes the intelligence agencies’ roles in both a president’s assassination and its cover-up, set in motion well before the actual events of November 22, 1963.

Genres: History, Conspiracy Theories, Crime, Nonfiction, American, Politics, True Crime

468 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 2005

About the author

Joan Mellen is the bestselling author of twenty books, including A Farewell to Justice, her biographical study of Jim Garrison s New Orleans investigation of the Kennedy assassination. She has written for a variety of publications, including the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Philadelphia Inquirer, and Baltimore Sun. Mellen is a professor of English and creative writing at Temple University in Philadelphia.

(from http://www.booksandbooks.com/book/978...)

Reviews

[Pete daPixie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Joan Mellen's 'A Farewell to Justice' (2005) assaults the reader with such machine gun rapidity of names, characters, aliases, spooks, double agents and shadows that may bewray and bewilder. Following in the footsteps of much maligned New Orleans D.A. Jim Garrison on his trail of the assassins, Mellen documents the real history of his investigation that was so loosely portrayed in Stone's 'JFK'.
Approaching the fiftieth anniversary of this coup d'etat, the importance of Garrison's pursuit of truth and justice, with his prosecution of Clay Shaw is still important today. Without Jim Garrison perhaps the links from Shaw to Ferrie to Oswald and on to Langley would be lost. Moreover the author has detailed the tremendous forces and schemes that were set against his investigation by CIA, FBI, media, IRS, Sylvia Meagher and intriguingly Bobby Kennedy himself.
Mellen also provided me with a eureka in this case, regarding the Odio incident and a greater understanding of why the CIA had to prevent Bobby Kennedy's march to the White House in 68.
A farewell to justice indeed, but also a wave goodbye to peace, freedom, social integrity and ideals of democracy. All these were lost in Dealey Plaza and are still missing today.

[Sheik · Rating 5 out of 5]

I knew several of the key players in this mostrous murder to stop JFK from pulling us out of Vietnam by 1965.

I read every book on the killing....and Joan Mellen has filled in ALL the spaces , and it all adds up.

If you want to know what's running our Country, and why we have no voice in it's policies.....this is why.

Big Jim was right, and this book is a tribute to his courage and patriotism.

[Donald · Rating 3 out of 5]

I eagerly awaited the publication of Joan Mellen's "A Farewell To Justice.' As one of Jim Garrison's die-hard defenders, I had high expectations for this book, and after reading it, those expectations were simply not met. I have had exchanges with Joan on a JFK Forum, and we just agree to disagree about Bobby Kennedy. That's my main objection to this book; Joan's very negative portrayal of Bobby, who is one of my all-time heroes. Although Joan thinks Garrison was correct, and gives a decent account of his investigation, it is tarnished in my eyes by a naive reliance on the work of Walter Sheridan, whom many think was more a disinfo agent than a legitimate reporter. Ultimately then, this is a dissatisfying book for those who expected to read an updated defense of the much maligned Jim Garrison and his investigation. Still, there is important material in it and it should be read by all those who seek to know who really killed John F. Kennedy.

[Donna · Rating 3 out of 5]

My head is spinning...disappointed in apparent absence of editorial oversight (did the editor even LOOK at the manuscript?) and as one of Joan Mellen's critics put it, "she threw sentences into the air and didn't care how the words landed" or something to that effect. The author is on the faculty of the English Department at Temple U and spent 7 years investigating the investigation. However, the thread of Jim Garrison's story continues ever slowly to unwind amid a mountain of minutiae, the strangest cast of players ever assembled between two covers, including French Quarter sleaze, cloak and dagger (murderously so) types and NODA staffers and the far reaching enigma of the assassination.

My favorite name in the book, one of Jim's investigators: Moo Moo Sciambra.

[Elliott · Rating 3 out of 5]

Jim Garrison had the unenviable distinction of being the first public official to jump head first into three webs: the anti-Castro terrorists lead by the CIA; the Mafia-CIA partnership; and the CIA-press marriage. That Jim Garrison was a competent DA, and a clean politician (if a bit of a philanderer) is probably the only reason he made it out alive albeit maligned as a crank which as it turns out he wasn't.
Garrison's hypothesis was that the Kennedy Assassination was born in the sweaty Gulf States amongst disaffected CIA agents and their far-right Cuban wards who hatched a plan to kill the president, pin it on an ostensible communist, and then use the ensuing public outrage to force an invasion of Cuba. But because Garrison had jumped head first he got his suspects: Ferrie, and Shaw but couldn't find precisely where they fit in.
This is not an easy book to read in part because even with the release of relevant documents their positions although definitely CIA and involved with the assassination are still murky. To add to that Joan Mellon is also not the clearest or best of writers. There are passages that are well written, passages too overly polished, and passages that are so rough they clearly needed another round with an editor. She also doesn't blend her quotes in very well with her own writing. She's also partial to dropping strings of names of people that makes things extremely hard to follow and the general organization of the book while fine I think could have been worked on some more. Also frustrating was that even though all her sources are in the back it would have been better if she had numbered them within the text itself instead of just by page number.
While I'm in full agreement that there was a conspiracy involving the CIA and its Cuban operatives Robert Kennedy was not in the know as Mellon has him. The CIA was running rogue at this point and neither President or Attorney General had any say over their actions and furthermore neither ordered the assassination or attempted assassinations of Castro. Mellon herself acknowledges this point very clearly in Chapter 11, but seemingly glosses over it as she does earlier exculpating Eisenhower even though Ike DID personally order the assassination of Patrice Lumumba.
The afterward to the Second Edition is really in itself a whole new book. It expands the meaning of the assassination of President Kennedy to the present era in the War on Terror and a national security state that has completely absorbed the making of foreign policy. The downside are the critiques of Robert Kennedy and a closing quote from Ron Paul that just grates me. For one Ron Paul is a benefactor of the same military industrial empire that led to Kennedy's death, for another Paul is a John Bircher fanboy who would have confined to the ash heap if Kennedy had lived.

[Mona]

Anxious to read this book that my brother, Roger suggests. Being from New Orleans and hearing the convincing pleads from Jim Garrison regarding the assassination of JFK, and the associations of Clay Shaw, Carlos Marcello, Jack Ruby and Lee Harvey Oswald along with many other "valid" reasons the FBI keeps from the world public - Our tax dollars working against us since 1960's! Roger believes Joan Melon discovered or uncovered volumes and truck loads of information and research by Jim Garrison that the government denies us the truth!

There are a couple of other books that he suggests also: Dr. Mary's Monkeys by Edward T Haslom and Behold A Pale Horse by William Cooper.

[Steven]

Very, very poorly written, almost incomprehensible, and almost impossible to follow if one does not have some knowledge of the players involved. Little, if any, background information. To me, it seems like it was written not for those who want to learn the story but for those who lived through it. Stream of consciousness does not work for me where the story is already convoluted and complex.

I will return to this book and try to piece together the story after learning a bit more about the investigation from other sources.

[AC · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is not, as I've said, a good book. But there is one photograph in it that is worth the price of the book. It is a picture of a young Lee Harvey Oswald, about 16 years-old, with a group of boys at a flying camp run by a still youthful looking David Ferrie. So much for the claim that Ferrie had never met Oswald.

Here is the photo: http://listverse.files.wordpress.com/...


(Otherwise, this book is hopelessly misconceived and executed)

[Fox · Rating 5 out of 5]

did a lot of research on the case.fascinated by jim garrison&this book is enlightening in so many ways.
great writing&unlike any other book i've read on this subject
i wouldn't start with this book.best2read a few b4or 2c some documentaries-the men who killed kennedy.a british documentary from the late80's is a good one,4example

[Paul Addy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting read. Garrison was no saint but what is clear is that he wasn't in it for the money. An erudite man, he was also naive, too trusting and often stubborn. His prosecution of alleged conspirators had legs but sustained efforts from Government agencies and the tame press chiselled away at his character and investigation until the judge sealed its fate with a ruling that has since been legally shown to be incorrect.
Sometimes Mellen is not as clear as she could be, an example being 'he stated he knew Tippit from his gun running days' which left me asking if it meant Tippit's gun running days or the speaker's which isn't helped by a later throwaway remark from a female involved in gun running stating 'the first contact she made in Dallas was Tippit'.
The names come thick and fast and it may be difficult for some. Having a good knowledge of the subject, I bypassed the 'names of players' at the beginning and forgot it was there so often found myself flicking back page after page to refresh my memory of who exactly the current subject was and often having to give up and soldier on. It would have been useful had I remembered it was there.
The Sylvia Odio episode has always intrigued me as to who the two cubans were who visited her, well, now I know and the revelation underlined Garrison's ability to be serially naive at times.
Not a book for beginners to the JFK assassination story, I'd start with Mark Lane's 'Rush to Judgement' which details why the Warren Commission findings are fatally flawed and not to be trusted. Garrisons 'On the Trail of the Assassins' would be next then probably this one. For me, this book was an enjoyable experience.

[Zachary · Rating 3 out of 5]

JFK's assassination has always been of incredible interest to me, notably for the violent responses across the nation in terms of belief about who did it and why. As such, I was incredibly interested in digging a bit more into the history of Jim Garrison's case and trial against the government, even as I don't necessarily ascribe to any of the conspiracy theories out there. That this book provided ample detail and history is a categorically true statement--many times the amount of detail, connection, and questioning was actually a bit too much and could be overwhelming. In addition, some aspects of the whole tale seem to stretch the boundaries of my suspension of disbelief. It almost seems like there were hardly any Americans NOT working for the CIA in the 60s, if you believe the number of operatives mentioned in these pages.

Don't get me wrong: this is an engaging, fascinating look into one of the most dubious times and events in history. But the passion with which certain large claims are advanced cannot hope to match the available evidence against them (at least some of them, anyways), and so at times the whole work smacks of an overblown kind of strange fan-fiction that somehow went too far. The amount of ancillary storylines and elements that get brought in are kind of mind-boggling sometimes, and the book could use some real focus. I enjoyed my time with it, and enjoyed learning more about a time and culture that I knew nothing about, but the actual facts of the case are a little lacking, in my opinion.

[Daniel Z. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Four stars for the information contained, 2.5 stars fir the writing. Its often hard to follow who is in which scene, and Mellon tends to jump around. It feels in many spots like a data dump as well as seeming to be both undersourced an oversourced. The footnotes go line by line through the text, too many to follow while reading, while interesting facts go unsourced. Also her stylistic choices in writing are often odd and even baffling. Some really bad sentences in this book.
TBF, I suspect she may have rushed at the chance to publish and at least get the information contained in the book - a lot of it very interesting and suggesting leads - into the public discourse.

[Tom Wallace · Rating 1 out of 5]

I stuck it out for about 100 pages, but the author's style was just too much. Jim Garrison was meeting with someone and I thought I would learn something about the meeting, but then he was meeting with someone else. Then somebody knew somebody else who knew...who knows what. And apparently they all were connected with the FBI or the CIA, and all knew what really happened in Dallas.

[Irene · Rating 2 out of 5]

Extremely difficult to follow because her sentences are convoluted and very poorly written. She would name three or four or five men in a sentence and then refer to "he" or "him" or "his" in the next sentence. I was totally confused.

[David Elkin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Way too out in left field. Charges made but not proved. I did like the portrayal of Garrison. I ended up not finishing the book

[David Prior · Rating 4 out of 5]

Brilliant but very heavy going.

[Davy Bennett · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jim Garrison was a great American.
He was railroaded. He was not perfect.

Check out You Tube Audio of him destroying Johnny Carson in a debate on the Tonight Show.
Brave fellow.

[Victor · Rating 5 out of 5]

The best book, so far, that I have read on the JFK assassination.

[Speesh · Rating 5 out of 5]

To put it simply; this must surely be the mother and father, sister, brother, aunt, uncle and next-door neighbour of all books about the Kennedy assassination cover up. No doubts about it. If there’s a stone still remaining unturned, bush un-peeked behind, a shopping list uncategorised, it surely ain’t worth peering into or under. If you have even the remotest interest in the killing and the (obvious) cover-up afterwards (and you have a few weeks to set aside to reading this) you need to read this book. I have read many, many books about the assassination of JFK, but I have never read one as thorough as this.

Before you start though, if you’re looking for a description of what happened on the day, you won’t find it here. You might, deep inside, come across a name - or two - for who did the actual trigger-pulling and the killing, but what you will actually find, laid unarguably bare, is the conspiracy behind the events of the day, before and afterwards.

If you’ve seen the film ‘JFK’ with Kevin Costner as Garrison, Joe Pesci as David Ferrie and Tommy Lee Jones as Clay Shaw, you’ll be pretty familiar with the bones of the book. She says she began writing it as a biography of Jim Garrison, but found she needed to go deeper into his thwarted investigate. There is still a life of Jim Garrison, of sorts, but of course, that life, once he launched the investigation, was totally consumed by it. He does go on, once his case had failed, but he could never escape it.

There can’t be many who don’t think there was a before and after conspiracy. It could well be *laughs* that you believe the Warren Commission. If you believe the Warren Commission, you're a bigger fool than you're trying to make me out to be. A commission is an admission of failure, or unwillingness, to get the case to court. It was a way to sweep the whole thing under the carpet. The Warren Commission was set up so the true crime would never get investigated. It beggars belief that the only court case in, for the USA at least, the biggest crime of the twentieth century, was left to a relatively obscure local attorney. And then forced to fail. Then...nothing. How fishy does that sound? No wonder there are conspiracy theorists. Only, once you’ve read this book, they’re not theories - they’re facts.

She proves successfully (for me) that there was a conspiracy. And who, which ‘organisation,’ was behind it. Then how it was covered up. From, amongst others, at least one very surprising source. However, if there is a problem with the book, it is that there are so many names, so many connections, so many FBI agents, CIA agents, ex-CIA agents, CIA agents pretending to be ex-CIA agents, pro-Castro, anti Castro groups, pro-Cuba groups that were actually anti-Cuba groups, anti- Cuba groups that were…well, you get the picture - that they do actually become a little meaningless. Added into that people who seemingly changed sides like they changed their socks, then it’s hard to keep up, make sense of, or form anything other than a general impression of what was going on. You just have to trust that she has control of what she’s trying to do with it all. I can understand why she wants to prove in every way shape and form that she’s on the money (to head off the ‘yeah, but…’ cottage industry of conspiracists), but the hundreds of names, their links and interrelations do tend to lead to a little confusion at best. Not being a Kennedy scholar by profession myself, or about to write a thesis on it, so unable to devote the man-hours and bits of paper with diagrams and lines on them necessary to take all this in - it becomes difficult to continue to take in after a point.

But, after reading such a thorough, unbelievably thorough, account of the evidence, it’s hard to see how anyone could come up with any other kind of scenario, or a name not mentioned and/or discussed here. I've got two more JFK assassination books sat on the shelf waiting to be read - I'm wondering now if it's worth bothering.

[John Thomas · Rating 2 out of 5]

A comic masterpiece! Thousands of people in the know; all but a few tied to the CIA; all silent until now! Hundreds of main players, some with the same name, but different; some with different names but the same! Sex of all kinds, zanies everywhere!

[Lawrence A · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the best-written books on the JFK assassination, and the investigation in New Orleans by then-District Attorney Jim Garrison.

[Stevie Widner · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting read for those looking into the non-fiction category

[Steve Dyer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not the greatest book on the JFK controversy I've read, but OK?

[Richard Gipson · Rating 1 out of 5]

Poorly written and documented. The author throws around names with such abandon that this book quickly takes on the complexity and obfuscation of a bad Russian novel.

[David Meritt · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read it a long time ago and should read it again, but it seemed to draw a lot of conclusions based purely on speculation.

[Kathi Jackson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really admired Garrison and think he knew what was true in the JFK assassination. It's sad that he lost his good reputation when this happened.