Episode 174 The Alleged Attempted Bribery of Al Beauboeuf

Episode 174  is the story of the alleged attempted bribe of Al Beauboeuf by the Garrison investigators.  Beauboeuf was a close friend of David Ferrie who lived at Ferrie's apartment for a time and also  accompanied Ferrie on the night of the assassination on the famous trip to the Wonderland Skating Rink in Houston. Garrison was convinced that Ferrie was not telling them the  truth, and that he was part of the assassination plot. Garrison's team also believed that Beauboeuf's relationship with Ferrie was highly likely to have made him privy to critical facts about the conspiracy plot.  So their interest in getting Beauboeuf to  reveal the truth was quite high in the days following Ferrie's death.  They would offer Beauboeuf $3,000 and the prospect of a job with an airline in exchange for his testimony  only to have the offer secretly taped by  Beauboeuf's defense attorney.  The tape was circulated to various law enforcement authorities and Beauboeuf's attorney attempted to sell the tape to the media outlets, but had no success in do so.   Of course,  the tactics deployed by Garrison's team beg  the  core question of whether  they committed a crime that was not prosecuted when they offered Beauboeuf money and the prospects of a job in exchange for his testimony should it "fill in the holes".  It also begged the question of  whether Beaubouf and his attorneys injected their own dirty tricks into this process in order to entangle Garrison and his team. Of course, if  the allegations against Garrison's team were true and it was a bribe, then in a bigger sense, the logical question to follow was whether or not these investigative tactics or approach  were used on more than one witness. Used in attempts to obtain the desired testimony that was necessary to convict  Clay Shaw. Testimony that may have been falsely teased out if the allegations were true, and testimony that would have shown a pattern of  misconduct by Garrison's investigator's when combined with  what was alleged  to have occurred  with other highly publicized witnesses such as Perry Russo. The New Orleans Police Department examined the tape and performed an investigation, and concluded that a bribe had not been offered under the then existing code of conduct. 

Times were different than…it wasn’t a crime to offer financial or other assistance to witnesses….the legal issue is where the line gets drawn….drawn in the times in which it occurred…and whether they crossed over that line…as investigators…will be up to you once you listen to more details.  We remind the audience that whether we believe it was right or wrong ( based on today's rules and today's environment) to offer financial assistance to a witness is a completely different question…  is to ask a completely different  question and one  that was somewhat irrelevant  to a juror in 1967 given the laws in operation at that time.  So we have to be careful about avoiding the tendency to use the wrong historical yardstick when evaluating what Garrison and his team were doing at the time to get at the truth and bring justice...even though such tactics have long been outlawed in today's environment. 

Aside from the legal aspect of the story, the real question is whether Garrison's team did it to get at the real truth…or whether they did it to  simply get at the needed answer. The answer that was necessary to bury Clay Shaw at trial. As a member of the audience and a juror on the case, you get to decide all of that for yourself. 

Even as early as 1964, rumors and serious concerns over  the lone gunman theory and the evidence that might contravene it,  were becoming a major concern for the government and the commission. Conspiracy theories were contrary to the government's stated narrative from the very begi