David William Ferrie was an American pilot who was alleged by New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison to have been involved in a conspiracy to assassinate President John F. Kennedy. Garrison also alleged that Ferrie knew Lee Harvey Oswald. Ferrie denied any involvement in a conspiracy and said he never knew Oswald. Decades later, photos emerged establishing that Ferrie had been in the same Civil Air Patrol unit as Oswald in the 1950s, but critics have argued this does not prove that either Ferrie or Oswald was involved in an assassination plot.

James Carothers Garrison was the District Attorney of Orleans Parish, Louisiana, from 1962 to 1973 and later a state appellate court judge. A member of the Democratic Party, he is best known for his investigations into the assassination of John F. Kennedy and the prosecution of New Orleans businessman Clay Shaw to that effect in 1969, which ended in Shaw's acquittal. He wrote three published books, one of which became a prime source for Oliver Stone's film JFK in 1991, in which Garrison was portrayed by actor Kevin Costner, while Garrison himself also made a cameo appearance as Earl Warren.