Attempts to Hinder New Orleans Kennedy Investigation

from a U.S. reader Mr, Jim Garrison, the New Orleans District Attorney who is conducting his own investigations into the Kennedy Assassination, has quickly rebuffed suggestions that he should hand over to the Federal Government all his information on the case, To Representative Gerald Ford, who was a member of the Warren Commission and who made this suggestion, Mr, Garrison replied "I'm running this investigation, not the President, nor the Attorney-General eevee If they want to help me, I'll welcome their help, but I'm not reporte ing to anybody." Mr. Garrison's claims to proof of a conspiracy must shake still further any public faith still remaining in the widely discredited Warren Commission Report, The American lawyer, Mark Lane, whose own book "Rush to Judgement" did much to focus attention on the contradictions and inconsistencies of the Commission's procedures and findings, has said of this new development: "It is extremely important ... .». It is possible that it will break the entire case wide open." He referred to the clues mentioned by Mr, Garrison as having appeared, without a follow-up, in the Warren Commission Report, "The F,B.1I,. had it and they did not do anything about it", he added, The theme of Mr, Garrison's charges is that the assassination was the culmination of a conspiracy emanating from New Orleans where Oswald is reported to have been in contact with two Cubans a few months before the President's visit to Dallas. According to Mr, Lane, Oswald, together with the two Cubans, went to Dallas in September 1963, when they met the anti- Castro leader, Sylvia Odio. Oswald was quoted as saying that Kennedy should have been assassinated after the abortive Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba and that it would have been easy. It is ccrsistent with the pressure on witnesses which has always. surrounded the F.B.I. investigation that these new developments are already running into difficulties. Mr, Jim Garrison has had to freeze the account from which his investigation is being paid, and it is reported that cheques ~~~ drawn in favour of the investigators have been stopped. These actions were the direct result of the New Orleans newspaper disclosure, last Friday, that. enquiries were in progress, Said Mr. Garrison at a subsequent press conf- . erence, "Arrests are now almost certainly months away, although they were probably just a few weeks away until the disclosures by local newspapers," He admitted that the investigation was now in financial trouble, but said that he might consider private financing, ;