"What is past is prologue."

I submit to you that what took place on November 22, 1963 was a coup d'etat. Its most direct and tragic result was a reversal of President Kennedy's commitment to withdraw from Vietnam. The war is the biggest business in America worth $80 billion a year. President Kennedy was murdered by a conspiracy that was planned in advance at the highest levels of our government and it was carried out by fanatical and disciplined cold warriors in the Pentagon and CIA's covert-operation apparatus. Among them, Clay Shaw, here before you. It was a public execution and it was covered up by like-minded individuals in the Dallas Police Department, the Secret Service, the FBI, and the White House - all the way up to and including J. Edgar Hoover and Lyndon Johnson, whom I consider accomplices after the fact.

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 much hidden evidence the American public has never seen. You know, going back to when we were children, I think that most of us in this courtroom thought that justice came into being automatically, that virtue was its own reward, that good would triumph over evil. But as we get older we know that this just 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. People like S.M. Holland, Lee Bowers, Jean Hill, Willie O'Keefe. They've all taken that risk. They've all come forward. I have here some $8,000 in these letters sent to my office from all over the country - quarters, dimes, dollar bills from housewives, plumbers, car salesmen, teachers, invalids. These are people who cannot afford to send money but do. These are the ones who drive the cabs, who nurse in the 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 the truth does not endure, if the government murders truth, if we cannot respect the hearts of these people, then this is not the country in which I was born and this is certainly not the country I want to die in.

• Jim Garrison, 1969