On the Trail of the Assassins

On the Trail of the Assassins is a 1988 book by former New Orleans District Attorney (DA) Jim Garrison. Written a few years before his death, he looks back on his office's investigation of the November 1963 assassination of John F. Kennedy in Dallas. Garrison became involved in the case because the accused assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, had spent the summer of 1963 in New Orleans. In the book, Garrison charts his own transformation from accepting the official account of what occurred in Dallas, to believing that members of the U.S. intelligence community "were responsible for the assassination and had carried it out in order to stop President Kennedy's efforts to break with Cold War foreign policy."

The book details how his DA office assembled what they felt was compelling evidence of a plot to kill JFK, and were preparing in early 1967 to bring charges against two alleged co-conspirators based in New Orleans: David Ferrie and Clay Shaw. When Ferrie died suddenly before he could be indicted, Garrison narrowed his prosecution to Shaw. Garrison goes on to describe what he regards as systematic government obstruction, including placement of undercover agents on his DA team, to sabotage his case. In what would be the only criminal trial for John Kennedy's murder, Shaw was acquitted in March 1969.

Upon its publication in late 1988, On the Trail of the Assassins sold moderately well. It then received a huge sales boost in 1991 when Oliver Stone's film JFK credited Garrison's book as one of its primary sources.