FILM; Does 'J.F.K.' Conspire Against Reason?

More than halfway into "J.F.K.," Oliver Stone's three-hour movie about the assassination of President Kennedy, New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison and his wife, Liz, are seen watching a television documentary about Mr. Garrison's investigation of the events of Nov. 22, 1963, in Dallas.

The documentary's anchorman is heard charging that the District Attorney used improper methods to get witnesses to support his case against the New Orleans businessman Clay Shaw for his part in a supposed conspiracy surrounding the murder of President Kennedy. Kevin Costner, portraying Mr. Garrison, suggests by facial expression and dialogue that the charge is unfair and rigged to destroy his credibility -- thus attacking the credibility of the documentary.

Frequently in "J.F.K.," the District Attorney alleges that the media are engaged in a coverup of a monstrous conspiracy, which Mr. Stone confidently depicts as having resulted in the assassination of a President, the war in Vietnam, the later killing of Robert Kennedy, perhaps even the murder of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

It is a measure of Mr. Stone's heavily weighted storytelling that he gives only a fleeting glimpse of that one-hour documentary, which was broadcast by NBC on June 19, 1967. Its evidence -- the script is available -- establishes without doubt that Mr. Garrison and his aides threatened and bribed witnesses, who then lied in court, and that they concealed the results of a polygraph test that showed one witness, Vernon Bundy, to be lying.

So much for the advertising for the Stone film, which proclaims of Mr. Garrison: "He will risk his life, the lives of his family, everything he holds dear for the one thing he holds sacred -- the truth."

In fact, of all the numerous conspiracy theorists and zealous investigators who for nearly 30 years have been peering at and probing the assassination of John F. Kennedy, Mr. Garrison may be the most thoroughly discredited -- and not just by the NBC documentary. His ballyhooed investigation ended ignominiously when his chosen villain, Clay Shaw, was acquitted; and the whole Garrison affair is now regarded, even by other conspiracy believers, as having been a travesty of legal process.