Welcome to JFK in The Enduring Secret. I'm your host, Jeff Crudell.

Hello everyone and welcome back to the podcast.

Today's episode is episode 162, and it's a continuation of our series associated with Perry

Russo.

Sorry that we ran out of time in the last episode, but today we are going to review Rousseau's testimony at the preliminary hearing.

It was his first public debut of testimony under oath.

But of course, it would not be his last.

To refresh everyone's memory, given the high-profile nature of this case,

Jim Garrison decided that it was the right thing to do, both politically and legally,

to hold a preliminary hearing.

This is a rather unusual approach to a criminal matter.

That is, for the district attorney to request a preliminary hearing

at all. Normally, the district attorney's office would present information to the grand jury,

a process that is essentially done in secret, and then let the grand jury decide whether an

indictment is in order.

Garrison decided to take the extra and unusual step, holding a preliminary hearing in front

of a three-judge panel, and then still taking the case to the grand jury.

And answer of no from either one of those mechanisms,

either the three-judge panel at the preliminary hearing or the grand jury review would have

put an end to the process. But as we all know, he got a yes from both. Many pundits ask a basic question. How did the garrison trial proceed

beyond the preliminary hearing and the grand jury proceedings? How did he get a yes? How did those two

mechanisms not stop a trial that took a jury less than one hour to return a

...