QUOTE (James Richards @ Jul 11 2007, 08:22 AM)

QUOTE (Peter Lemkin @ Jul 8 2007, 06:00 PM)

QUOTE (John Simkin @ Nov 2 2005, 05:28 PM)

I see Dr. Jose Rivera does not have an entry at Namebase. Do any members know of any books that look at Rivera's career?
I'd almost be willing to bet that Rivera knew and was connected to Dr. Ochner, or those working with him. Anyone have anything related to that?
Peter,
When Rivera was at Brookes Army Medical Center at Fort Sam Houston, he worked under William Ampacher who was the director of surgical research. I believe this man had connections to Ochsner.
Rivera worked on a 5 year study concerning antibiotics. Dr. Paul Donaldson is one who may have insights into the chain of command here. I have no idea if he is still alive.
FWIW.
James
Here's some more Brookes Med Center officers I came to in a most bizzare way.
BK
SHRINER'S PARADE IN NEW ORLEANS
SHRINER'S CIRCUS IN NEW ORLEANS "It will happen after the Shriner's circus comes to New Orleans." – Dr./Col. Jose Rivera.
After I began to take Adele Edisen seriously, and closer examine her story, I broke up various aspects of her conversations with Dr. Rivera into SERIALS – to see if they could be checked out. A few of them seemed easy, others more difficult, but hints and clues that latched onto something real that could be verified.
For instance, [SERIAL # 6 ] Edisen quoted Rivera as saying: "We'll have him go to the library and read up on all of the great assassins in history."
The list of books Oswald checked out of the New Orleans Public Library was not classified, and from what I've seen of the list, though I might not have the complete list, there aren't any books on assassination that I could find in a quick perusal. There are however, some interesting authors – Aldus Huxley, Ian Fleming, science fiction and spys, but nothing about assassins.
In the course of reading the Secret Service Exceptional Case Study Project (ECSP) it is interesting to note that in the course of attempting to profile and manage potential assassins that come to their attention, they list Questions to Ask in a Threat Assessment: "Has the subject shown an interest in any of the following? – Assassins or assassination. Weapons (including recent acquisition of a weapon. Militant or radical ideas/groups. Murders, murderers, mass murderers, and workplace violence and stalking incidents."
Now SERIAL # 6, reading up on assassins in history, was the first part of Adele Edisen's story that didn't check out, so far, and it is a peculiar one.
All of the significant SERIALS do check out while one seemingly insignificant one does not.
I thought an even more bizarre quote Edisen attributes to Rivera is: "It will happen after the Shriner's circus comes to New Orleans."
Now I've since learned that the Shriner's Circus does come to New Orleans every November, and it is apparently a big social occasion. I also have a list of the organizations that Dr. Jose Rivera was a member of, which includes the Shriners.
Now the Shriners that I knew, who put on funny costumes and hats and rode small poneys and golf carts on Atlantic City boardwalk parades, and seemed to be a big party fraternity, the kind that got drunk and put lamp shades on their heads.
So it was with some interest that I somehow, quite miraculously came into possession of a pulp paperback book, "Parade To Glory – The Shriners – and their Caravan to Destiny" by Fred Van Deventer ( Pyramid Books, N.Y., 1964);
p. 275:
"It was even possible that Governor Earl Warren (later to become Chief Justice
of the United States) served as prophet when he welcomed the Imperial Council
representatives to California, by declaring that America is a fraternal nation.
'It is,' he said, 'a land of fraternities, and one of the greatest is the Shrine
of North America. Nations across the waters do not understand this phase of or
national life….I wish all the world could absorb this fraternal spirit and put
it to work. It is all that is necessary to solve the most troublesome problems
of our turbulent times…..If the world would adopt the same attitude towards the
poor, the weak and the under-privileged that the Shrine has maintained toward
the crippled children of North America, without regard to race, creed or color,
it would dispel most of the darkness around us. There is no gloom that cannot be
driven out by the sunshine of the Shrine.'"
p.296:
"Thus it was that it became apparent to him [Dr. Clayton F. Andrews] in the
decade of the fifties that while the hospitals had successfully and mercifully
treated thousands of children afflicted with orthopedic deformities, not much
use had ever been made of the wide background and knowledge obtained by the
hospitals and doctors from all of the successes and, of course, a few failures.
"During the decade, Dr. Guy A. Caldwell, professor of surgery at
Tulane University in New Orleans, had become chief of the advisory board of
orthopedic surgeons, and as Dr. Andrews moved up the line became friendly with
him. And so it was that at the mid-winter meeting of the Board of Trustees of
the hospitals at the Astor Hotel in New York in January of 1958, Dr. Andrews
presented Dr. Caldwell to make a long and detailed speech on the value that
could be obtained from all of the hospital records if the board would approve a
program of clinical research."
p. 298:
"Dr. Andrews conceded in the discussion that his program of clinical
research would not need all of the funds the hospital corporation had available
for research, and [Imperial Sir Marshall M.] Porter replied that side by side
with the program of clinical research, the Shriners should explore some other
field that bears some relation to the overall picture of the Shriners Hosptial
for Crippled Children. But what field? No one knew."
"In Atlantic City that July of 1959, Dr. Andrews became the Imperial
Potentate. Together with the manifold duties of his office, he continued to
watch over his research project. Seminars for surgeons were conducted. Experts
devised the punch-card IBM program, and in Washington, Chief Counsel Bob Smith
picked up the telephone in his office and put through a call to the United
States Army Medical Research Command."
"At some unrecorded date in the spring of 1958, Smith had discussed
with some of the top medical brass of the Army, Navy and Airforce what the
Shrine might do in the field of medical research to help humanity in general,
and children in particular. And Army records reveal that a number of projects
were suggested, but Colonel Frederick Timmerman, deputy to Brigadier General
Joseph McNinch in command of the Army medical research, recalls that he had
become convinced, and told Smith, that the greatest single medical need in North
America was some facility for the treatment of major burns and research and
teaching projects connected with them."
"While Smith had all of the suggestions in hand when he went to
Atlantic City, there is no recorded evidence that he offered them to the
trustees, but it is likely that he talked about them behind closed doors, for
after that session was concluded he immediately asked the Army's medical
research command if they would stage a seminar on burns for the Shrine's
leadership. They would and did on August 24 and 25….The Army doctors did a bang
up job of showing them the need for burn research. They went into every phase of
their own research programs. Colonel Edward H. Vogel, Jr., the commanding
officer of the Army medical research unit at Brooke Army Medical Center at San
Antonio, Texas, who was in charge of the only burn research center in the United
States, was particularly impressive with a movie and slide presentation of the
work his unit was doing."
"But all of the military men said there was so much more to be done,
particularly among civilians; and among civilians, particularly children, for
burns were one of the great scourges of childhood."
"In January of 1960, at the mid-winter meeting of the Board of
Trustees in New Orleans, there was no doubt of the enthusiasm that had been
generated…., but Caldwell cautioned that so far it was just something for the
board to think about, and that the entire matter for the time being should be
held confidential among themselves."
"But the spark had begun to ignite into flame, and by the time the
trustees met prior to the Denver Convention, it had grown into a bright blaze,
and they unanimously approved a resolution that Chairman Calhoun should appoint
a burns committee that would make extensive investigations into a burns
treatment and research program for children and report to the mid-winter meeting
in Las Vegas, Nevada, the following January…"
"The committee wasted no time. They quickly called into consultation
the doctors, the lawyers and the builders. The doctors and the committee visited
at the Brooke Army Medical Center. So did the Shrine's architects so that they
might report on just what would be involved structurally if a burns program was
finally approved. The lawyers investigated the legal feasibility of the COLORADO
CORPORATION entering into such a program, and they quickly discovered from a
search of the records that Shriners Hospitals for Crippled Children had been
treating burns cases of children for years because burns created orthopedic
problems. The Surgical Advisory Board was unanimous in its opinion that while
burns created problems other than orthopedic, certainly burn cases were
orthopedic in character because bone and muscle contractures."
"Progress was being made by the committee, but it was slow work for
there were so few people to advise. They had talked, of course, with Colonel
Vogel in San Antonio and with Dr. Truman Blocker, another former Army burn
specialist, and now a professor of surgery at the University of Texas Medical
School in Galveston. Dr. Blocker and Dr. Vogel also recommended that they talk
with Dr. Curtis P. Artz, associate professor of surgery at the University of
Mississippi, who as an Army colonel had originally set up the Brooke burns
program."
"At the Imperial session in Miami in July, 1961, the burns committee
was able to make an interim report, but they were not quite ready to formalize a
program. There was still much work to do. Dr. Caldwell needed to talk with the
deans of important medical schools, so that when a program would be formally
introduced there would be no doubt of its final passage. The delay in Miami was
brought on largely through the death of [Council] Bob Smith in Boston on May 12,
1961 of a heart attack. He was visiting Robert Gardner Wilson in connection with
his activities on behalf of the proposed burns institutes..."
"Galloway Calhoun, who had lived most of his life at the center of drama, died
the same way as he addressed the 90th annual conclave of the Knights Templar of
Arkansas on the evening of April 16, 1962….Past Imperial Potentate [ Thomas C.]
Law died three weeks later on May 4, 1962, in a private hospital in Atlanta, and
thus three men who had had so much to do with the Shrine's hoped-for new
philanthropy were not present when the Shriners began to arrive in Toronto on
June 30."
"Dr. Caldwell returned to tell the Shriners that as projected, the burns
institutes would provide three things – 1. immediate treatment for burned
children, treatment within 48 hours, which would require in many cases air
travel for the patient; 2. total burn research in laboratories in each
institute, which would be located on or adjacent to campuses of outstanding
medical universities where vast facilities for treatments associated with burns
would be available; and 3. the creation of programs for the teaching of teams of
burn doctors and technicians, which could then take to all America training
programs for other teams to be created."
p. 309:
"In the end, the committee chose the Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts
General Hospital; the University of Texas Medical School Branch at Galveston,
Texas; and the University of Cincinnati Medical School and University Hospital.
The first institute to begin actual construction was that at Galveston, Texas,
where Imperial Potentate Howard C. Close broke ground on June 23, 1964.
THE PARADE
p.310:
"'Accompanied by 50 brass bands, some 500 horses, and at least two camels, the
Shriners swarmed into Manhattan 150,000 strong, occupied 85 hotels and motor
inns, added to the traffic jams, monopolized sidewalks, held seven-hour-long
parades and displayed a keen group sense of humor in a thousand hilarious ways,
including occasionally entangling innocent natives in loops of invisible thread.
They wore red fezzes, red and green floppy harem trousers, and red-embroidered
jackets and looked like wandering extras from 'The Forty Days of Musa Dagh,'
They were the respectable and respected members of the Ancient Arabic Order
Nobles of the Mystic Shrine. As representatives of an organization forthrightly
dedicated to whoopee in a good cause, the Shriners are pranksters by
profession….'"
p.311-312:
"Equally important, among his [O.Carlyle Brock's] first messages to
temples was that he wanted Shrine units to make every public appearance possible
so that the general public might know that Shriners, playing at Moslems and
Infidels, are dedicated Masons, actively working at and contributing to the
welfare of those less fortunate. Moreover, he wanted the public to know that in
their antics and demonstrations, they still lived within the code, as William B.
Melish put it in 1892:
'Pleasure without intemperance, hospitality without rudeness and jollity without
coarseness.'"
Dr. Guy A. Caldwell - Tulane
Galloway Calhoun - Arkansas
Thomas C. Law - RIP May 4, 1962
Robert Bob Smith - DC RIP Boston - May 12, 1961 USA Med Research Command
Dr. Clayton F. Andrews
Robert Gardner Wilson
Marshal M. Porter
Col. Frederick Timmerman
Brig. Gen. Joseph McNinch
Col. Ed H. Vogel, Jr.
Dr. Truman Blocker
Dr. Curtis P. Artz
If anybody has or can get a make on any of these guys I'd appreciate any additional information on them.
- By Bill Kelly