Jim Garrison's Instructions to his Son

In Oliver Stone’s JFK, New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison (played by Kevin Costner) delivers a monologue about evidence being concealed by the federal government:

“Let’s ask….your President –  to release 51 CIA documents pertaining to Lee Oswald and Jack Ruby, or the secret CIA memo on Oswald’s activities in Russia that was ‘destroyed’ while being photocopied. All these documents are yours – the people’s property – you pay for it, because the government considers you children who might be too disturbed to face this reality, because you might lynch those involved, you cannot see these documents for another 75 years. I’m in my 40s, so I’ll have shuffled off this moral coil by then. (I’m) telling my 8-year old son to keep himself physically fit so that one glorious morning in (October 2021) he can walk into the National Archives and find out what the CIA and FBI knew. They may even push it back then. It may become a generational affair with questions passed down from father to son, mother to daughter, in the manner of the ancient runic bards. Someday, somewhere, someone might find out the damned Truth. Or we might just build ourselves a new Government like the Declaration of Independence says we should do when the old one ain’t working…..” (1)

(1) Oliver Stone and Zachary Sklar, JFK: The Book of the Film (New York, Applause, 1992), p. 178.

Of course the 75 years the Warren Commission records were sealed has been overtaken by the JFK Act of 1992, which stipulates that they be released in late September 2017 – or withheld by a presidential order, so Garrison’s son doesn’t have to wait as long as Garrison thought.

But they are still making us wait - pushing it back so it is generational affair with questions being passed down from father to son.