Lee and Me

[Pamela Brown]

My conclusions are based on an unusually deep knowledge of David Ferrie; I began gathering information on Ferrie many years ago for my own knowledge base. This eventually led to obtaining virtually every available document about or related to Ferrie in government collections and from other sources, and to contacts with many people who knew Ferrie.

Mr. Roy: THank you for sharing this. Based on your studies of David Ferrie, have you reached a conclusion on whether he was involved in the assassination of JFK?

Roy will say Ferrie was not involved in the assassination. Why else would it be necessry for Ferrie, in his view, not to have *known* anybody connected with it?

[Barb Junkkarinen]

My conclusions are based on an unusually deep knowledge of David Ferrie; I began gathering information on Ferrie many years ago for my own knowledge base. This eventually led to obtaining virtually every available document about or related to Ferrie in government collections and from other sources, and to contacts with many people who knew Ferrie.

Mr. Roy: THank you for sharing this. Based on your studies of David Ferrie, have you reached a conclusion on whether he was involved in the assassination of JFK?

Roy will say Ferrie was not involved in the assassination. Why else would it be necessry for Ferrie, in his view, not to have *known* anybody connected with it?

Whether or not Judyth knew Ferrie or Oswald or anyone else connected to the assassination, or any plot against Castro, is not a matter of anything being "necessary" .... it is a matter of evidence. And on real, actual ... and verifiable ... evidence, her story has failed at every turn. Not only does she not have evidence of her own, some situations and details she uses as part of her story have been documented to have their genesis in other documented sources.... or to be in conflict with same.

As Brian Duffy, the Washington bureau chief of US News & World Reports, who worked with CBS/60 Minutes on what they all hoped would be the story of the century, stated when the plug was pulled on her story, despite 14 months of investigation,“We don’t have any evidence. We only have

her story.”

And when it comes to our historical truth, and to whether one's story is an aid or an abomination to future research efforts to find that truth ... that's just not good enough.

[Barb Junkkarinen]

Thanks for the source of the information about the laundromat. "Everything" seems to have a source, this one very obscure.

Jack

Here's another scenario, and another rather obscure event. Does this look like one of those building block sources to you?

In Judyth's 2006 book, LEE HARVEY OSWALD, The True Story of the Accused Assassin of President John F. Kennedy By His Lover, Volume 1, pages 72-73, Judyth writes about going with Oswald to the Town & Country Motel at the behest of his Uncle Dutz on April 27th. She and Oswald had just met the previous day. She says they sat at a table and talked quietly, writing about it but not giving much in the way of actual quoted conversation. Oswald was to talk to the manager, no name given. When a waiter came with menus and water, Oswald just shook his head no, he just needed to speak to the manager. Judyth noted the place was, "nearly deserted." Then O saw the manager coming to their table and told J to be very quiet. She writes:

QUOTE

"A middle-aged man who looked Italian or Greek came over to our table and sat down with us. I took Lee's admonition seriously, and kept my eyes cast down. There was no doubt that the man who sat with us was somehow very important, and he knew it. After some small talk that made little sense to me, the manager passed a wad of money under the table to Lee. There was a twenty-dollar bill on top. I could see the exchange because my eyes were cast down. The two men kept talking the entire time with not a word directed to me."

END QUOTE

After the encounter, she writes, "I was surprised when Lee told me we would have to go leave right away. I hadn't had breakfast yet, and I was not sure I could hold out until we met David Ferrie. I was famished."

In her current book, Me & Lee, 2010, pages 134-137, Judyth writes essentially this same overall scenario. Some minor situational differences, but essentially the same, again on April 27th ... except this time, she includes quoted back and forth dialogue between herself and Oswald in addition to just relating some of what they talked about. The manager, whom he needs to speak to, now has a name: "Mr. P." After the encounter, and the manager had walked away, Judyth writes:

QUOTE

"Let's go, " Lee said, not even bothering to look at the money he thrust into his pocket.

"We're not going to eat anything?" I asked anxiously. I was famished and it would be hours before our lunch with Dr. David Ferrie.

"I wouldn't feed my dog here," Lee growled.

END QUOTE

The comments about not eating there, especially stressed in her more recent book, struck me as a bit odd for some reason. so I did a little checking on the Sumner incident.

In July 1999, Howard Platzman was involved in a newsgroup discussion that involved the mafia and posted a chronology he had worked up. This is the entry of interest in that chronology:

QUOTE

Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy.jfk

From: ho...@aol.com (Howpl)

Date: 1999/07/15

Subject: Mafia Chronology Vanishes Again - Repost

[....................]

When he saw Oswald's picture on TV, Gene Sumner called the FBI to report

that in April 1963, he saw Joe Poretto, a Marcello lieutenant, pass a wad of bills to Oswald or a look-alike in the Town and Country restaurant, managed by Tony Marcello and considered his brother's headquarters.

END QUOTE

Howard's chronology says the the manager was Tony Marcello, and no date is given for the incident.

Platzman mafia chronology includes sumner incident mention

AJ Weberman included more information about the Sumner incident on his website:

QUOTE

GENE SUMNER

After the assassination of John F. Kennedy, OSWALD was erroneously reported to have received money directly from the MARCELLO crime family on April 22, 1963. Gene Sumner, (born June 24, 1898; died August 7, 1989), a Darien, Georgia, businessman, told his brother-in-law, Police Lieutenant Johnny Harris of the Midcounty (phonetic) Police Department, that around April 14, 1963, he left Darien, Georgia, and traveled to New Orleans, Louisiana with business acquaintance Ernest Insalmo. In New Orleans, Ernest Insalmo met with some of his associates in the mafia-controlled construction and seafood business (Paul and Salvadore Pizza and Benny Capeana); he then took Gene Sumner to the MARCELLO-owned Town and Country Restaurant, a known hangout for the hoodlum element. Gene Sumner was introduced to the owner of the restaurant, Joseph Albert Poretto, and given a table in the main dining room, where there were only two other couples. Joseph Albert Poretto (born March 21, 1906; died April 1983) was incarcerated in 1951 for refusing to testify before the Kefauver Senate Committee studying organized crime. CARLOS MARCELLO was tried for that same offense. [FBI 62-9-33-411, 73-10184-11, 92-8100-1 1.15.65 - serials 2 and 3 w/h, arrest rec. #1799932] Gene Sumner claimed he then observed a young couple enter the dining room, and sit at a table about two tables away from his. He claimed he observed Joseph Albert Poretto remove a wad of bills from his pocket and pass the money under the table to the man who just entered. A few minutes later, the couple left without ordering any food or drinks. On December 2, 1963, the FBI showed Gene Sumner pictures of OSWALD; he believed OSWALD was the same man he had seen in the Town and Country Restaurant.

END QUOTE

Here, Poretto is the owner ... and Judyth wrote that Oswald was to talk with "Mr. P."

IF it had been Oswald (it was decided it had been a case of mistaken identity) ... could the woman had been Judyth?

Weberman included one more bit of info ... the sentence following the last one I quoted above, after Sumner's comment about the pics of Oswald he was shown, was this:

QUOTE

He [sumner - bj] described the woman who accompanied OSWALD as a blonde, white, female, 22 to 26 years of age, flashy dresser.

END QUOTE

The Sumner incident also happened on April 22 ... not April 27. Neither Oswald nor Judyth were in New Orleans yet. But please note, I have not seen the actual FBI report.

weberman site includes SUMNER incident

Bests,

Barb :-)

Here are links to documents regarding this incident. Please note the time frame per the witness was sometime between February 15 and March 15 .... note that the man the witness saw was wearing a dark blue suit ... and note that the time this incident occurred was 10 p.m. .... and again, the woman he saw with this well dressed man he thought might have been Oswald, was a blond "flashy dresser." Also noteworthy, perhaps, is that it was not out of the ordinary for Marcello's people to be passing wads of cash. :-)

In the documents, Sumner is referred to as SV T-1. SV is Savannah, the FBI office that dealt with this witness. He is referred to as T-1 because, as one of the documents notes, he was a successful businessman and asked that his name be kept out of it.

Author John Davis noted the identity of "T-1" who was a successful seafood businessman and the mayor of his Georgia town (note that one "Sumner" was missed for redaction in the teletype document below, and the mayor of a town would not be difficult to identify anyway). Davis published the full account of the Sumner incident, and published the text of the following document for, he says, the first time, in MAFIA KINGFISH ... published in 1989.

Savannah FBI teletype notifying NO office of Sumner incident

The Savannah FBI office report on the incident became CD 22:

CD 22, FBI report of Sumner incident

Sumner interviewed a second time, and shown pics of Oswald:

Savannah FBI report, Sumner, second interview and shown pics of Oswald

Makes for an interesting comparison to the incident dark haired Judyth relates and says she was part of in the afternoon on April 27, 1963 ... in my opinion.

Bests,

Barb :-)

[Dixie Dea]

Stephen.....I am a bit late in posting this, but please add me as one more of your David Ferrie Research supporters. I have been reading your posts as it relates to Judyth, through the years, both on this forum, as well as elsewhere. I also finished reading Judyth's latest book...and of course read her first book, as well as both of Ed Haslems books.

Dixie

[Stephen Roy]

Stephen,

Nevertheless, it would be interesting if you would care to elaborate just a little bit on your reasons...

Glenn V.

Where to begin? Baker has written so much, in several books, in various video appearances, in various Internet writings, that it would take almost another book to respond to it. In the broad sense, I've been unable to find any trace of her among the many documents I've seen, or among the many proven acquaintances of Ferrie I've communicated with. Moreover, I've been unable to find any trace of a Ferrie relationship with Dr. Mary Sherman, or of a medical lab at his apartment at 3330 Louisiana Avenue Parkway. It is hard for me to believe that the level of activity she describes could have been completely hidden from people who spent a great deal of time with Ferrie. And the notion that they're all lying is ridiculous.

Keeping to "Me and Lee," there are many problems. She has Ferrie as an open, almost flamboyant homosexual, but all other indications are that he was discreetly in the closet, even denying homosexuality, so that even many friends still don't believe he was homosexual. She has him driving all over the New Orleans area at a time when he had no car registered, in between the March 1963 repossession of his 1960 Ford and the November 1963 purchase of his 1961 Mercury. She has him wearing an airline pilot's jacket and hat, at precisely the time that such a thing would imperil his burning desire to be reinstated as an airline pilot. She has him being called "Dr. Ferrie" by Sherman and others, when that appellation merely represented a contested correspondence degree in psychology, contested at that moment by the airline with whom he sought reinstatement. She has Ferrie telling her that he was going to visit his brother in Illinois at a time when he lived in Allison Park, PA, at least two years before he moved to Illiois. She prints a picture of Ferrie at a seminary but misidentifies the seminary he was attending at the time. She has all this medical lab business going on at a time when Ferrie knew his apartment was being surveilled by a detective agency hired by the airline. And on and on. This is from a quick pass through the book, and does not address the many people she claims Ferrie was associating with at the time.

BTW, thanks to Dixie, too!

[Glenn Viklund]

Stephen,

Nevertheless, it would be interesting if you would care to elaborate just a little bit on your reasons...

Glenn V.

Where to begin? Baker has written so much, in several books, in various video appearances, in various Internet writings, that it would take almost another book to respond to it. In the broad sense, I've been unable to find any trace of her among the many documents I've seen, or among the many proven acquaintances of Ferrie I've communicated with. Moreover, I've been unable to find any trace of a Ferrie relationship with Dr. Mary Sherman, or of a medical lab at his apartment at 3330 Louisiana Avenue Parkway. It is hard for me to believe that the level of activity she describes could have been completely hidden from people who spent a great deal of time with Ferrie. And the notion that they're all lying is ridiculous.

Keeping to "Me and Lee," there are many problems. She has Ferrie as an open, almost flamboyant homosexual, but all other indications are that he was discreetly in the closet, even denying homosexuality, so that even many friends still don't believe he was homosexual. She has him driving all over the New Orleans area at a time when he had no car registered, in between the March 1963 repossession of his 1960 Ford and the November 1963 purchase of his 1961 Mercury. She has him wearing an airline pilot's jacket and hat, at precisely the time that such a thing would imperil his burning desire to be reinstated as an airline pilot. She has him being called "Dr. Ferrie" by Sherman and others, when that appellation merely represented a contested correspondence degree in psychology, contested at that moment by the airline with whom he sought reinstatement. She has Ferrie telling her that he was going to visit his brother in Illinois at a time when he lived in Allison Park, PA, at least two years before he moved to Illiois. She prints a picture of Ferrie at a seminary but misidentifies the seminary he was attending at the time. She has all this medical lab business going on at a time when Ferrie knew his apartment was being surveilled by a detective agency hired by the airline. And on and on. This is from a quick pass through the book, and does not address the many people she claims Ferrie was associating with at the time.

BTW, thanks to Dixie, too!

Stephen,

That's the problem when trying to pull something like that off; no matter if you get 95% of it correct, what you don't get correct will inevitably be very telling.

That's an impressive list of yours.

Thank you very much.

[Michael Hogan]

Many of us who have no axe to grind, such as Jim Marrs, Wim Dankbaar, Dean Hartwell, Nigel Turner and "60 Minutes" have become convinced, based on our own research, that she is "the real deal".

Ask yourself why Jim claims "60 Minutes," based on their own research, believed Judyth was the "real deal" and yet refused to run her story.

If Michael doesn't know by now that "60 Minutes" wanted to run the program but was stopped by the highest level executives at CBS, then he hasn't done his homework. Howard Platzman was there and has dealt with this question in the past.

That is what executives do, make executive decisions. The record makes it clear that there were solid, non-sinister reasons for

the final decision, regardless of at what level(s) the decision was made.

Even Jim himself admits: "At the time of the Sixty Minutes’ investigation, Baker did not know what evidence was important."

Neither Howard Platzman, Ed Haslam nor Judyth Baker make the claim that "60 Minutes" believed Judyth Baker was the "real deal."

Jim's claim is unsupported by the evidence. Ed Haslam, who was directly involved, writes that it was 60 Minutes that made the decision

not to air her story. From the Prologue of Dr. Mary's Monkey:

"By the time

60 Minutes

interviewed me in November 2000, they had already interviewed their witness for hours. They got

additional input from other researchers and journalists. Finally, they decided not to air her story."

According to JVB, Howard Platzman was being paid by 60 Minutes to help them investigate her story. One can take this into account

when assessing his objectivity. This is what Howard Platzman posted on this Forum 6 years ago:

I co-wrote a book with Judyth, and also spent 14 months going back and forth with 60M on their intention, stated quite emphatically on the last go-round, to do a segment favorable to her. As Don Hewitt later said on C-SPAN, "the door was slammed in our face." Now what do you think he meant by that. The forces arrayed against Don Hewitt - the godfather of investigative journalism (on TV at least) were that powerful. Both he and (Mike) Wallace believe her story, but as the diligent Nigel Turner segment proved, you really do have to hear the WHOLE story and see the evidence in context. It was nice, and I am thankful for the courage he showed, but viewers should not have had to rely on the talking head alone.

Unfortunately, so-called "researchers" in the JFK community, who spent little time interrogating her and viewing her evidence, have -- to protect their own books -- fought hard and fought dirty to sabotage both the book and the 60M show.

Extraordinary claims by Platzman about "researchers" in the JFK community, their motives and tactics, and "how they fought hard and fought dirty to sabotage both the book and the show."

Notice that Platzman only takes a snippet from Hewitt's interview and asks, "what do you think he meant by that?" Ed Haslam and Judyth Baker did the same thing in their books.

The purpose was to give the reader a mistaken impression of what Hewitt was saying in terms of JVB's story and the decision not to air it.

Listening to the entire Hewitt interview makes it clear that Hewitt did not think anything sinister had taken place.

Earlier in this thread, Barb Junkkarinen posted an excerpt of Hewitt's interview:

60 Minutes spent about 14 months investigating Judyth's claims, and, in the end, chose not to do the story. Don Hewitt, a 60 Minutes producer, was one who was quite hot to do it. In Don Hewitt's oral history, done at the Sixth Floor Museum in 2002, and broadcast on C-Span, there was this exchange:

"Interviewer: Why has the media not gone after this story…?

Hewitt: Because ... I did. I brought this woman to New York. We had Gloria Borger of ...

Interviewer: CBS?

Hewitt: No, she also worked for U.S. News. Gloria and I were convinced that we

were about to break the biggest story of our times and a guy who is a

lawyer for that senator I quoted, who was a member of the Warren Report,

was a counsel there in the Report, was all for us. He kept saying 'Let’s

go ahead. You’re onto something. Let’s do this' All of a sudden we came

to the conclusion. The door was slammed in our face. Actually, Brian Duffy, who was

the Washington bureau chief of the U.S. News and was doing this with us,

and Brian called one day and said, 'We don’t have any evidence. We only have

her story.' "

At some point in time, 60 Minutes had flown Judyth to New York. CBS had brought in a psychiatrist to evaluate her.

In an e-mail to her supporters on 11-8-00 she herself said of the experience with the psychiatrist:

"He obviously thought I was just a story teller and that hurt my feelings."

That he had labeled her a "story teller" has been a topic of much discussion in assorted newsgroups, on and off, for years, being restated

by Judyth herself as well as her main supporters.

CBS also brought in a medical student to assess Judyth's knowledge and abilities with medical terminology. He was less than impressed, even

according to then Judyth insiders, who eventually made comments on the net. Though her supporters were asked several times for copies of the

actual reports the psychiatrist and medical student made, none were ever forthcoming.

CBC/60 Minutes eventually pulled the plug on doing any Judyth story.

Earlier in that same interview, Hewitt said this:

(Bolds mine)

We had, 60 minutes had in New York with us a woman who

claimed

to have been Lee Harvey Oswald's mistress.

Whether she was or she wasn't

...... but she knew an awful lot about him and she had pictures of herself lotsa years ago.

She was a dead ringer for Marina Oswald.

She looked like her twin sister

. Of

all the things she told

us about Oswald,

the

one thing that sticks

in my mind -- Jack Ruby was not a stranger to Lee Harvey Oswald.

Jack Ruby was not a guy who went crazy when he found out his President had been killed and walked in the police station here

and decided to kill him. Lee Harvey Oswald's uncle was an associate of Jack Ruby's in some shady business somewhere.

They were both gangsters. And according to her, what she said she learned from Oswald, Lee Harvey Oswald's uncle asked Ruby

be sure and take care of my nephew Lee in case anything ever happens to me. I believe that Jack Ruby was hired to go there to

make sure that Oswald never talked. She also - that part of the story I have no doubt about.

She also told us an awful lot about Oswald and a CIA group of -- in the Everglades -- of renegades. This part I've heard from Howard Hunt.

Hewitt interview: http://www.c-span.org/apa/jfk.asp

Just as Howard Platzman did, Ed Haslam and Judyth Baker opted to quote Hewitt out of context, insinuating that perhaps something sinister had taken place

with respect to 60 Minutes' decision not to air JVB's story.

On page 555 of Me & Lee, Judyth Baker writes:

When C-Span asked (Actually it was The Sixth Floor Museum interviewer that asked) Don Hewitt about their decision a year later, he said,

"[We] were convinced that we were about to break the biggest story of our times....but the door was slammed in our face."

Baker makes it sound as if it was 60 Minutes that was convinced that they were about to break the biggest story of their times,

when in reality it was only Hewitt and Borger. And the timing is important. Hewitt and Borger thought this before Judyth Baker

was investigated to completion. If one listens to the part of Hewitt's interview that deals with JVB in its entirety, it is clear that

Hewitt assigns no sinister motive to CBS executives for the failure to run the story. It is also clear that Hewitt personally knew

very little about Judyth Baker. He did not remember her name and he was not sure whether or not her story was true.

In September 2007, Gloria Borger joined CNN. If she believed there was a sinister reason Judyth Baker's story

was quashed by high level executives at CBS, she has never said so.

Judyth Baker also wrote this about the 60 Minutes episode:

(All bolds mine)

Satisfied that I had enough evidence to back my testimony,

and certain I'd find witnesses that Lee and I had been lovers--some of them

had to still be alive!

--I sent a fax to "20/20", a TV program that had investigated Benny Hinn and other controversial figures quite well. They felt

the story was too big for them, and contacted "60 Minutes", who soon after contacted me. At the same time, I found a European-based literary agent,

after a US agent backed out due to fear. This agent took my hastily-written book, interviewed me by phone and email, and edited the book, unfortunately

adding details such as 'Cancun' that I would later be criticized about. "It doesn't matter," he told me. "Once it's with a publisher, fix it up as you please."

That agent was a go-getter, but he created a fake story about my hiding out in Europe, and other lies, and also tried to get a producer friend

of his to film my story for "60 Minutes".

The final blow was too much: the agent insisted that "60 Minutes" sign a contract with financial

demands in it, and they refused to handle the story.

I personally turned down all financial offers.

After I fired the agent, and told "60 Minutes" he was gone, for the next year and a half, Mike Wallace, Don Hewitt, Phil Scheffler and others

investigated me, and everything I said and showed them. They sent me to New Orleans, to Washington, to New York, and I was vetted mercilessly.

I have much more supporting evidence now

, and now have my living witnesses on tape and film as well, but at the time, a third party

threatened one of my witnesses (Anna Lewis), and

she refused to be re-filmed for "60 Minutes

". Another witness worried that I was an imposter

(he has since realized that another person was posing as me!). He has since written a book (Dr. Mary's Monkey, by Edward T. Haslam) using me as a primary witness.

"60 Minutes" didn't learn about that new book in time

* nor did they want to use the poor quality original film where Anna Lewis states how she and her husband,

and Lee Oswald and I, double-dated together in New Orleans. Her husband was David Lewis, who had worked with Guy Banister, as had Lee.

Howard Liebengood, who had had access to HSCA/CIA files, supported me, but there was also difficulty trying to get this story told in just 18

minutes - the longest time segment allowed in the format of the program. In the end, as Don Hewitt told the world on C-Span, "the door was

slammed in our faces." Despite promises that filming would proceed--three times--in the end, I got email apologies, and two checks for lost wages

(CBS told me they had never done that before for anyone investigated by "60 Minutes").

http://judythbaker.blogspot.com/p/biography.html

*Haslam did not write DMM until seven years later!

Here is more of what Haslam wrote in Dr. Mary's Monkey:

(All bolds mine)

Five years later, the phone rang. It was 60 Minutes, the CBS News TV show. They were investigating a woman who said that

she had been in the laboratory I wrote about in my book. In the laboratory in David Ferrie’s apartment. Did I want to talk to them?

Frankly, it was not a good time to ask me that question. In 2000 I was extremely busy doing other things in my professional life and

was not anxious to get drawn back into the story that had dominated so many years of my life.

On the other hand, I respected the power of the 60M microphone. Whatever they said, whether right or wrong, critical or favorable,

would be heard by millions of people and would shape the public’s understanding of events which I cared about. I reluctantly decided

to participate enough to keep an eye on the situation. We agreed to meet for an off-camera interview. They sent me background materials

to review, and one of their investigators came to see me – a lawyer. Ironically, it was 60M that brought me the witness that I had been missing.

After reviewing the materials which they sent me (which did not include any of the photos of the woman nor the evidence that I will be showing

you shortly), they asked me to comment. My opening remark was: “Well, she needs to be written up. Either in the history books or the medical books.

At the moment, I am not sure which one.” Neither were they.

60M’s interest in this woman was fueled by the sensational aspects of her story – that she had met Lee Harvey Oswald in New Orleans in the

summer of 1963, that they had fallen in love and had an affair, despite the fact that both were married to other people at the time.

Any TV

executive could see the blockbuster potential for a sizzling story built around the vortex of love, sex, politics and the accused assassin

of JFK set in America’s most exotic city. They eagerly flew their investigators to New Orleans and interviewed Oswald’s girlfriend for hours.

60M asked Oswald’s girl friend all the logical questions: “Where are you from? Why were you in New Orleans? Where did you work? Where did you live?

How did you meet Lee? What did you do together? Did you ever hear the subject of killing JFK discussed?” And Oswald’s girlfriend kept answering them.

Before long 60M realized that their sizzling little romance between a beautiful young woman and a soon-to-be-accused assassin had morphed into an

800 pound gorilla with “serious politics” written all over it. The adulteress sitting in front of them stated that she and Lee Harvey Oswald stood side-by-side

in an underground medical laboratory located in David Ferrie’s apartment on Louisiana Avenue Parkway in New Orleans and that she was the laboratory

technician that handled the cancer-causing monkey viruses which were being used to develop a biological weapon for the purpose of killing

Fidel Castro. To put the icing on the cake, the entire project was secretly directed by the famous Dr. Alton Ochsner (former President of the American

Cancer Society) and supervised by a prestigious cancer researcher named Dr. Mary Sherman who worked for Dr. Ochsner at his hospital.

Further, after successfully killing numerous monkeys with their new biological weapon, this group had tested it on a human subject in a mental hospital, killing the human.

Lethal human experiments! Leaders of American medicine and the accused assassin of the American President involved together in developing a

biological weapon! Can you hear 60M’s signature sound effect ticking in the background?

As the dimensions of the story grew, so did 60M’s demands for hard evidence. 60M was not about to risk their credibility over an unsupported

story involving a homemade biological weapon and the accused assassin of the President without hard evidence.

This is when they contacted me,

because I had already written a book that sounded very similar. Yes, they had my book, but no, they had not read it yet. I insisted that the 60M investigator

read it, every-word, cover-to-cover, which she said that she did on her flight back to New York.

No, I did not have the hard evidence about Judyth

they were looking for.

But I never said that I did. From my perspective, I was particularly concerned 60M could discredit her story as a means of

discrediting mine. Such were my initial thoughts.

The next problem came when I read her name in the documents they had sent: Judyth Vary Baker. The problem was that I already knew someone named

Judyth Vary Baker. And she had said that she was a close friend of Lee Harvey Oswald. My girlfriend Barbara and I went to a party at her house

in New Orleans in 1972.

When it became clear that the woman brought to me by 60M was not the same person I met in 1972, I realized that I had met two separate women

claiming to be “Judyth Vary Baker” who claimed to have known “Lee Oswald.” Simply said, one had to be an impostor.

With the information available

to me at that time, I could not tell 60M which one was the impostor.

I hoped they would be able to tell me.

At that point, 60M pulled the plug on the Judyth story. The rank-and-file CBS producers and investigators had worked hard on the story. They were

extremely disappointed by the decision from their bosses to terminate the story. One insider forwarded me an email written by a senior 60M executive

in which he stated that 60M had spend more time and money investigating Judyth’s story than they had on any story in their 20 year history. To refuse

to air the story after making that kind of investment was difficult decision for them.

It makes one wonder “Who really made 60M’s decision to abort?”

and “Why?”

After the 60M debacle, I contacted Judyth Vary Baker directly. I was curious about this unusual woman and wanted to learn more about her. If she could

show me that she was the real Judyth Vary Baker, then it meant the other Judyth Vary Baker that I had met in 1972 was the impostor. This raised some

very interesting questions: Why would someone have gone to the trouble to impersonate Baker back in 1972? How did they know who she was? How did they

know about her connection to Oswald? Why was I invited to her party? Why did they tell me her name?

Yes, the 1972 incident did cause confusion and distrust amongst the 60M team. Their only evidence was my word and my memory.

But that was

their perspective. I, on the other hand, was the one who was there. I knew what I saw. I knew what I heard. And I remembered the names clearly.

The fact that 60M had a real live person who said that her name was Judyth Vary Baker and that she had known Lee Oswald made the 1972

“Judyth Vary Baker” incident even more interesting to me. I decided to learn more about this new “Judyth Vary Baker” to figure out why someone had

wanted me to know who she was back in 1972.

Jim Fetzer writes this:

CBS’s Sixty Minutes investigated Baker’s testimony and story for eighteen months and nearly filmed it three times. They called it their

“longest and most expensive investigation” in their entire history. But an insider told Baker that (now disgraced, for lying about Bush)

higher-up Dan Rather closed the investigation. “The door was slammed shut in our faces,” according to Sixty Minutes’ founder, Don Hewitt,

explaining the problem to C-Span. “I brought that woman in to New York!” he stated. Hewitt called the story the most important story in

Sixty Minutes’ history. Emails from Sixty Minutes producer Phil Sheffler state “we did not walk away from this story.”

a] When the investigation closed, Sixty Minutes had not yet interviewed Baker’s living witnesses!*

b] Sixty Minutes was advised by Brian Duffy of US News & World Report to drop the investigation because there was ‘not enough evidence.’ Duffy

was later found to have written a large article for USN&WR supporting Gerald Posner’s ‘Case Closed’ (Oswald-did-it) book–-a big embarrassment

to Duffy if Baker’s story became known to the general public. Duffy had just been re-hired by USN&WR and would later become a chief editor there.

c] Sixty Minutes’ chief source to check Baker’s reliability, Howard Liebengood, had been privy to all CIA and MKULTRA documents gathered by the HSCA,

and was a renowned and trusted specialist in the Kennedy assassination. Liebengood confirmed Baker’s knowledge

in general, and also her knowledge, specifically, of secret MKULTRA documents they had both seen, in front of CBS producers, Dr. Howard Platzman,

and Baker. He urged CBS to film Baker.

d] Liebengood died of a sudden and unexpected heart attack just a few days after retiring, and just before his promise to help Baker’s story get filmed

by Sixty Minutes.

*Had not yet interviewed Baker's living witnesses!? According to JVB, Anna Lewis refused to be interviewed (re-filmed, as she called it).

What other living witnesses had they yet to interview? Why hadn't they done so before the investigation closed?

Again, Jim quotes Hewitt out of context. And Hewitt didn't call it the "most important story in Sixty Minutes’ history." What he actually said was that

"Gloria and I were convinced that we were about to break the biggest story of our times."

That is until a purported fourteen months of investigation failed to find a single living witness that could verify Judyth Baker's claim that she

was Lee Oswald's lover in 1963 or a single living witness that could verify Haslam's claim of a JVB he met in 1972.

After scouring the National Archives, they could find no evidence that would confirm JVB's story about her and Oswald.

Ten years after the 60 Minute episode, despite two books by Judyth Baker, Ed Haslam's book and all of the internet information, it seems safe

to say that most people remain unconvinced. With much, much less to go on, 60 Minutes simply did not have enough evidence to run such a

potentially explosive and unverified story. The lack of any witnesses, living or otherwise was a killer.

Jim Fetzer includes 60 Minutes with Jim Marrs, Wim Dankbaar, Dean Hartwell, Nigel Turner as "convinced, based on our own research,

that she is "the real deal".

That statement suffers from incomplete, faulty logic. It demonstrates questionable critical thinking. One doesn't have to be a professor to see that.

Jim's statement "that that '60 Minutes' wanted to run the program but was stopped by the highest level executives at CBS" is equally misleading.

It may be true that certain reporters wanted to run the story. Their reasons might have been self-serving. That is a far different cry than the

claim that "60 Minutes" wanted to run the program or believed JVB was the "real deal."

And despite the claims of how much time and money 60 Minutes spent on investigating Judyth Baker, where has anything been written or said about any

new ground they were able to break? It seems that their efforts were spent trying to substantiate Baker's claims and were, in the final analysis,

unable to do so. What did they spend all that time and money on? Was Howard Platzman well-paid?

Ed Haslam may have said it best:

"As the dimensions of the story grew, so did 60M’s demands for hard evidence. 60M was not about to risk their credibility over an unsupported

story involving a homemade biological weapon and the accused assassin of the President without hard evidence."

and:

Yes, the 1972 incident did cause confusion and distrust amongst the 60M team. Their only evidence was my word and my memory.

Sixty Minutes' investigation had apparently been in high gear when they encountered Ed Haslam's unverifiable story of meeting another, different

woman with the same exact name at a party in 1972. Haslam could only offer rather unconvincing excuses why he refused to meet privately with

a woman that had claimed to be a "good buddy" of Lee Harvey Oswald when he was given the opportunity. They could no longer run a story on Judyth

Baker without including this, and Haslam told them they would have to take his word for it.

One wonders why 60 Minutes could not have found Haslam's ex-girfriend or any of her graduate student classmates that attended the impostor JVB's party

to verify his story. I intend to discuss Haslam's explanation for that in a future post.

At any rate, maybe this remarkable, almost unbelievable encounter by a relatively unknown New Orleans researcher was a deciding factor in not running

the JVB story. Sixty Minutes couldn't afford the laughs that story would get.

It would be most ironic if it were Haslam's story that helped play a major role in 60 Minutes' decision.

Edited November 14, 2010 by Michael Hogan

[Stephen Roy]

http://www.ochsnerjournal.org/doi/full/10.1043/1524-5012(2007)7[140:OIL]2.0.CO;2

An article on Ochsner in Literature by Dr. Frank A. Riddick Jr. of the Ochsner Journal, excerpt dealing with Haslam thesis:

QUOTE ON:

18. Mary, Ferrie & the Monkey Virus: The Story of an Underground Medical Laboratory. Edward T. Haslam. Albuquerque, NM: Wordsworth Communications, 1997.

19. Dr. Mary's Monkey: How the Unsolved Murder of a Doctor, a Secret Laboratory in New Orleans, and Cancer-Causing Monkey Viruses are Linked to Lee Harvey Oswald, the JFK Assassination, and Emerging Global Epidemics. Edward T. Haslam. Walterville, OR: TrineDay, 2007.

Edward T. Haslam grew up in New Orleans, the son of an orthopedic surgeon on the faculty of Tulane Medical School.

The Mary in the title of both books is Mary S. Sherman, MD, an orthopedic surgeon and distinguished bone pathologist on the staff of Ochsner Clinic. A native of Chicago, born in 1913, she was recruited to Ochsner Clinic by Guy Caldwell in 1952. She was deeply involved in Ochsner's residency program in orthopedics, and founded what is now named the Mary S. Sherman, MD, Bone Pathology Laboratory. She chaired the Committee on Pathology of the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons. In April 1964, she was brutally murdered, and her body and apartment on St. Charles Avenue were set afire. Her murder remains unsolved.

The frontispiece of Mary, Ferrie & the Monkey Virus proclaims it a nonfiction work; however, some readers may find “fable” to be a more accurate description. Haslam has taken myriad events—the leftovers of former New Orleans district attorney Jim Garrison's probe into the Kennedy assassination; the presence of Lee Harvey Oswald in New Orleans; Mary Sherman's murder; anti-Castro sentiment in New Orleans Cuban community; the Bay of Pigs fiasco; John F. Kennedy's assassination; Alton Ochsner's leadership role in the Information Council of America (INCA), an anti-Communist group; a statement from someone that David Ferrie, a Garrison suspect, once kept white mice in his apartment; the fact that Tulane University had a primate research center in St. Tammany Parish; and the appearance of the AIDS virus in the early 1980s—and has created a single unitary conspiracy/cover-up theory tying all these together.

The subtitle of Dr. Mary's Monkey is the capsule version of Haslam's theory, which runs somewhat like this: Alton Ochsner, fierce anti-Communist and cancer expert, is enlisted by the CIA to create a virus that causes cancer, so that this can be given surreptitiously to Fidel Castro to rid the Western hemisphere of the Communist menace. Ochsner directs David Ferrie, an ex-airline pilot and a non-scientist, and Dr. Mary Sherman, a cancer researcher who works for him (at Tulane, perhaps at the primate center) each to start working on altering viruses (borrowed from Tulane, or, alternatively, diverted from Alton Ochsner Medical Foundation's animal lab in the 1963 move from Prytania Street to Jefferson Highway) to cause cancer. At some time, the two labs are consolidated at a secret site, determined by Haslam to be the U.S Public Health Service Hospital (then called the Marine Hospital) on State Street at Tchoupitoulas, where a high-powered gadget (presumably a linear accelerator) was located. A laboratory accident there creates an explosion which claims the life of Dr. Sherman. Those in charge of security transport Dr. Sherman's body to her apartment and attempt to cover up the nature of her injuries by stabbing the body and setting it afire. The explosion causes further mutation of the virus and disseminates it beyond the laboratory into the community, from which it appears a decade later as the HIV virus, initiating the AIDS pandemic. The scope of this article does not allow for detailed refutation of what this author finds to be the preposterous claims, underlying misinformation, skewed presentation, and flawed conclusions in this scenario.

Haslam presents a long chapter on Alton Ochsner, the factual components cited from Wilds and Harkey with embellishments from the author. There is a fairly full entry on Dr. Sherman, largely from a 1993 Gambit Weekly article written by Don Lee Keith.

Mary Sherman was a valued colleague and a superb physician. She was not a virologist at all, nor a basic scientist in cancer research. In this author's opinion, none of Haslam's speculations concerning Dr. Sherman have validity or credibility. As Dr. Sherman's colleague, it is my belief that she deserves better treatment than she receives in these two books.

The treatment of Ochsner and its physicians in nonfictional literature ranges from the historical to the personal to the paranoid.

QUOTE OFF

[Stephen Roy]

Letter to the Editor published July 31, 2007 in the New Orleans area publication Gambit, by John Ochsner, MD:

QUOTE ON:

Mistreatment

I was disheartened to see that Gambit Weekly has seen fit to print statements by Edward T. Haslam ("Missing Links," July 17) in which he implies my father, Dr. Alton Ochsner, was involved in creating a cancer-causing virus, which was to be given stealthily to Fidel Castro. This preposterous assertion alleges my father guided Mary Sherman and David Ferrie in the production of a cancer virus produced in monkeys. His book, Dr. Mary's Monkey, is ludicrous, and I am shocked that Gambit Weekly would print such false statements without proper journalistic scrutiny, particularly when there are so many medical professionals within this community from whom you could have sought advice as to the truth of the story.

The article also contained numerous erroneous statements. To mention a few, Mary Sherman never performed experimental work with monkeys or any other animals. She was an orthopedic surgeon at the Ochsner Clinic and a pathologist, not at Tulane as the book suggested. Her laboratory prepared slides from bones and their pathology, from which doctors could study. Dr. Gordon McFarland, who works at the Ochsner Clinic, was Dr. Sherman's associate and close friend. He took over her laboratory after her death and assures me that there was no animal experimentation -- ever -- in the laboratory.

The article also claims a laboratory accident with use of a linear particle accelerator at the U.S. Public Health Hospital caused the death of Dr. Sherman. The U.S. Public Health Hospital in New Orleans never had a linear particle accelerator. This can be easily documented. The author is so uninformed that he states that terms such as "carcinogenic" and "cancer causing chemicals" were not a part of the American vocabulary at that time, which is ridiculous.

During the period of time in the 1960s when the story allegedly took place, I saw my father every day. I can assure you he did no experimental work during that time. He was a man who devoted his life to helping people rid themselves of cancer by surgical means. My father wrote three books on the prevention of cancer and the hazards of smoking. And, for decades, he stood alone in the medical profession teaching this theory, which is universally adopted today.

Haslam admits in the article that he is only "one man with a word processor." It is a shame how such reckless and needless damage can be caused by someone who admits he is no investigator, and yet he takes liberties to condemn innocent people like my father.

It saddens me to think Gambit Weekly would publish unauthoritative material and deprecate the name of a man who had done so much for this city, country and the world. The fact that you knew my father, his devotion and kindness to mankind is even more disappointing.

John Ochsner, M.D.

QUOTE OFF

http://www.bestofneworleans.com/gambit/letters-to-the-editor/Content?oid=1248155

[Barb Junkkarinen]

Mike, your post #128, November 13 ... was outstanding. There have long been many debates, many excuses given for why 60 Minutes did not go forward with a segment on Judyth's story. But, as you note, executives made the decision, and according to Hewitt, who was one who was really enthralled by the story, he quoted Duffy as noting they had no evidence, all they had was her story. He did not appear to disagree with that assessment. And that has been the bottom line with her story overall. I do want to address of a few things in your post.

Mike wrote:

That is what executives do, make executive decisions. The record makes it clear that there were solid, non-sinister reasons for

the final decision, regardless of at what level(s) the decision was made.

Even Jim himself admits: "At the time of the Sixty Minutes’ investigation, Baker did not know what evidence was important."

Neither Howard Platzman, Ed Haslam nor Judyth Baker make the claim that "60 Minutes" believed Judyth Baker was the "real deal."

Jim's claim is unsupported by the evidence. Ed Haslam, who was directly involved, writes that it was 60 Minutes that made the decision

not to air her story. From the Prologue of Dr. Mary's Monkey:

"By the time

60 Minutes

interviewed me in November 2000, they had already interviewed their witness for hours. They got

additional input from other researchers and journalists. Finally, they decided not to air her story."

According to Judyth's staunch supporter and helper, Martin Shackelford, 60 Minutes had ALL of Judyth's evidence. He made that claim emphatically when the subject of Judyth having the Pocket Aristotle book,that she claims has Oswald's writing in the margins, was being discussed. There were calls to have the handwriting examined by an expert ... and the question was asked why 60 Minutes did not have it examined. Or had they ... and what were the results? No answer. Oswald's handwriting in that book would be a major step forward for Judyth having known Oswald. If 60 Minutes had that evidence, it is difficult to believe that they would not have had an expert on it immediately. It is also difficult to believe that "team Judyth" never sought to have it examined by a professional either.

Doug Weldon asked someone in a post just a week or so ago about the alleged Oswald writing in that book, and it was a big issue brought up in the Exile thread a few months ago. As I recall, Fetzer said he would ask Judyth about having it done. That went nowhere. It is notable that the claim of the Oswald writing was made for years, including in her first book, complete with a photo of pages from the book with some writing in the margin. But in Me & Lee, while the Pocket Aristotle is mentioned, it is given shorter shrift, Judyth does not even state she still has the book, let alone include the photo of the pages from it.

Baker makes it sound as if it was 60 Minutes that was convinced that they were about to break the biggest story of their times,

when in reality it was only Hewitt and Borger. And the timing is important. Hewitt and Borger thought this before Judyth Baker

was investigated to completion. If one listens to the part of Hewitt's interview that deals with JVB in its entirety, it is clear that

Hewitt assigns no sinister motive to CBS executives for the failure to run the story. It is also clear that Hewitt personally knew

very little about Judyth Baker. He did not remember her name and he was not sure whether or not her story was true.

In September 2007, Gloria Borger joined CNN. If she believed there was a sinister reason Judyth Baker's story

was quashed by high level executives at CBS, she has never said so.

Precisely on Hewitt, and excellent point on Borger. Is anyone really expected to believe journalists or producers would take "no" for an answer if they had the evidence and knew they could break the story of the century? They could have gone forward on their own, through a different venue. These were not people without contacts and/or resources.

Judyth Baker also wrote this about the 60 Minutes episode:

(All bolds mine)

Satisfied that I had enough evidence to back my testimony,

and certain I'd find witnesses that Lee and I had been lovers--some of them

had to still be alive!

--I sent a fax to "20/20", a TV program that had investigated Benny Hinn and other controversial figures quite well. They felt

the story was too big for them, and contacted "60 Minutes", who soon after contacted me. .....

After I fired the agent, and told "60 Minutes" he was gone, for the next year and a half, Mike Wallace, Don Hewitt, Phil Scheffler and others investigated me, and everything I said and showed them. They sent me to New Orleans, to Washington, to New York, and I was vetted mercilessly.

Yet they did not bother to have the writing in the margins of the Pocket Aristotle, that Judyth claimed was Oswald's, analyzed? Or did she not give them the book ... or make that claim to them ... or did they have it analyzed and we just don't know it?

Jim Fetzer includes 60 Minutes with Jim Marrs, Wim Dankbaar, Dean Hartwell, Nigel Turner as "convinced, based on our own research,

that she is "the real deal".

I have to wonder exactly what actual research any of them did on any of Judyth's claims that can be researched. When I decided to do some fact checking of my own in early 2008, it was easy to establish that there was already an evening Russian class at Manatee Junior College before the spring term of 1960 when she claims one was created expressly for her (the claim about the timing of that has changed in the new book), it was easy to contact the American Cancer Society, the National Science Foundation, the National Cancer Institute, St. Francis College, Reily Coffee (about any green glass promotion in 1963) and other places to check on claims Judyth makes. The **one** thing I came up with that supported a claim of Judyth's was that she had presented a paper on melanogenesis ... at that, she had given an incorrect name for the organization, and still gives incorrect descriptions of the organization, the event and where the meeting she presented it was held. But present she did ... along with a co-presenter. I was able to come up with the abstract of that paper and made sure that she got a copy; she includes a copy of it in her new book. There is much more, and just a week or so ago, her claim of being with Oswald at the Town & Country Motel restaurant in New Orleans was laid bare ... and documents that show what appear to be the clear and obvious genesis of that claim were posted. Cries that she is "the real deal" ring pretty hollow when nothing is served up to support that contention, nor are issues raised by actual research into her claims ever actually addressed by her believers.

Ed Haslam may have said it best:

"As the dimensions of the story grew, so did 60M’s demands for hard evidence. 60M was not about to risk their credibility over an unsupported

story involving a homemade biological weapon and the accused assassin of the President without hard evidence."

and:

Yes, the 1972 incident did cause confusion and distrust amongst the 60M team. Their only evidence was my word and my memory.

Sixty Minutes' investigation had apparently been in high gear when they encountered Ed Haslam's unverifiable story of meeting another, different

woman with the same exact name at a party in 1972. Haslam could only offer rather unconvincing excuses why he refused to meet privately with

a woman that had claimed to be a "good buddy" of Lee Harvey Oswald when he was given the opportunity. They could no longer run a story on Judyth

Baker without including this, and Haslam told them they would have to take his word for it.

One wonders why 60 Minutes could not have found Haslam's ex-girfriend or any of her graduate student classmates that attended the impostor JVB's party

to verify his story. I intend to discuss Haslam's explanation for that in a future post.

At any rate, maybe this remarkable, almost unbelievable encounter by a relatively unknown New Orleans researcher was a deciding factor in not running

the JVB story. Sixty Minutes couldn't afford the laughs that story would get.

It would be most ironic if it were Haslam's story that helped play a major role in 60 Minutes' decision.

Very ironic, indeed! And, as you point out ... it just may have. And, basically, the same is true within the mainstream research community. Haslam has little to back up his own claims about a secret linear accelerator, Sherman's research and death ... and that is even before he gets involved with Judyth and her story ... and both their stories take on new life. The whole picture has caused some of that "confusion and distrust" in the mainstream research community,and with little to nothing to back up either of their story's except their say so, it's not a wonder why, imo.

Why 60 Minutes did not contact Haslam's former girlfriend or any classmates about the party is a good question. I question why Haslam, who had never mentioned any such party, let alone a girl named Judy, prior to becoming aware of Judyth Vary Baker ... has never taken it upon himself to track down his former girlfriend or anyone he knew at the time who was aware of this party and what he says happened there.

He needs a witness to that as much, or more, as to anything else at this point.

Again, Mike ... excellent post.

Bests,

Barb :-)

[Michael Hogan]

Letter to the Editor published July 31, 2007 in the New Orleans area publication Gambit, by John Ochsner, MD:

http://www.bestofneworleans.com/gambit/letters-to-the-editor/Content?oid=1248155

This is the Gambit article that resulted in Dr. Ochsner's response: http://www.bestofneworleans.com/gambit/missing-links/Content?oid=1248089

Excerpt:

Links between Ferrie, Garrison and monkey viruses were not new to Haslam. He remembers an afternoon in one of his classes at Jesuit High School in March 1969 when his friend Nicky Chetta, son of the Orleans Parish coroner at the time, told the class Garrison had received a "raw deal" in his investigation of the assassination and that the district attorney had discovered a cancer lab in David Ferrie's apartment. He also said Bobby Kennedy had called his father the day of Ferrie's death to discuss what killed him. (Ferrie died after a blood vessel in his head hemorrhaged.) Haslam wrote:

Nicky started talking about Ferrie's apartment, which his father had seen the day Ferrie died. Ferrie lived alone. But in his closets they had found both women's clothing and priest's robes. They also found a small medical laboratory with a dozen mice in cages which he used for medical experiments. His medical equipment included microscopes, syringes, surgical tools and a medical library. When they talked to Ferrie's other landlords they were told of a full-scale laboratory in his apartment with thousands of mice in cages. It seemed clear he was inducing cancer in the mice! Ferrie claimed he was looking for a cure for cancer, but Garrison's investigators thought he was trying to figure out a way to use cancer as an assassination weapon, presumably against Castro and his followers. Nicky added, almost as an aside, that Garrison's investigative team thought that this may have been how Jack Ruby died, murdered by induced cancer to silence him. (Note: Ruby died of cancer shortly after he won a new trial for the slaying of Oswald and was working to get his trial moved outside Dallas.)

By this point, you could have heard a pin drop in the room. Back in 1969, we (and presumably the public) were taught that cancer was "a spontaneous disease," meaning it could not be created, transferred, caught or induced. Words like "carcinogenic" and "cancer-causing chemicals" were not yet part of the popular American vocabulary. Viral cancers were not discussed. The idea of "inducing cancer" was very strange indeed, and, scientifically, we (the students) considered it somewhere between "questionable" and "impossible."

A student asked, "How could they induce cancer?" The question was sincere, but doubting. I remember hoping, for both Nicky's sake and Garrison's, that the answer made some kind of common sense. Garrison's case already looked like Mardi Gras to the rest of the country. É Nicky sensed the doubt. You could see he felt it. He remained calm. Slowly and cautiously, he said that they had been "injecting mice with monkey viruses."

Monkey viruses! The room groaned. I rolled my eyes and dropped my forehead into my hand. Why did it have to be monkey viruses? Garrison was already misunderstood because his plot was stranger than jazz — too complex, too subtle, and too bizarre for the American TV audience. Why couldn't it have been something simpler, like injecting rats with radiation. Cancer from plutonium! The public might follow that. But cancer from monkey viruses? The rest of the country would never buy it. The very words conjured up a dark collage of alienating images — diseases imported from tropical jungles in the bellies of insects and mixed with monkey heads boiled in voodoo rituals on the edge of the Louisiana swamp at midnight. It was all "so New Orleans." ...

Then another student blurted out that there was a "kid" down at Tulane Medical School who was dying from the total collapse of his immune system. They couldn't figure out what was causing it. They gave him every antibiotic they had and nothing worked. He would get better for a while, and then he would get worse. While this comment was interesting, it sounded "off the wall." Two thoughts raced through my head. First, what did the uncontrollable collapse of an immune system have to do with our discussion about monkey viruses? And I also said to myself, I'm obviously not the only student at Jesuit that has a family member working at Tulane Medical School. I was certain this was "insider information." It was the first time I had ever heard it. (But not the last!)

Then another student jumped into the exchange: "That means they were developing a biological weapon! What happens if it escapes into the human population?"

The room fell to a new level of silence. ... Then the bell rang.

As I gathered my books together, I turned to the student next to me and made that nervous remark: "Well, the good news is if there's a bizarre global epidemic involving cancer and a monkey virus thirty years from now, at least we'll know where it came from."

Ed Haslam relates this blockbuster story of Nicky Chetta Jr. telling their school class in 1969 that Robert Kennedy called his father on the day of David Ferrie's death

to discuss the cause of death. Chetta went on to relate the other startling things he learned from his father, including Ferrie's alleged laboratory.

Nicky Chetta Jr. is alive today. The natural question is why didn't Ed Haslam interview him for Dr. Mary's Monkey? Instead, Haslam relied on his memory of

an event that took place long ago in high school. The failure to include a contemporary interview with such an important witness speaks to Haslam's

methodology. It speaks to why careful readers have serious reservations about so many of the things Haslam wrote about.

[Barb Junkkarinen]

My post #89, page 6, of this thread was a response showing examples of inconsistencies in Judyth's story over the years. I cited and e-mail Judyth had written to her supporters in 2000, and a file she had attached to it ... the file being part of her manuscript she had just worked on. She called it the "END OF LINE.doc" .... and it can be seen it its entirety here:

Judyth attachment 2000

One part of that same file that I did not quote at the time, was this, Judyth wrote:

Indeed, when the kids brought home the movie JFK to see, i did not see it with them. I

couldn’t bear it, and i was afraid i’d give way to my emotions.

Only in 1998, on the 35th anniversary of the event, did i finally watch the movie,

which had a

lot of errors, of course. Still,

I was much moved by the challenge Oliver Stone made. He said that

to remain silent was to be a coward.

That hit home.

When Lee said goodbye to me, it was the last time i ever heard his voice,

In her recent book, Me & Lee,2010,page 552, Judyth writes:

In

December 1998, my youngest daughter married and went on her honeymoon. Finally, I was alone. The next day I rented

JFK

and sat down to watch it in earnest........

But what struck me most deeply that day was the inscription at the beginning of the film. The words were seared into my brain:

"To lie by silence when we should protest makes cowards of men."

I knew that I had been "lying by silence." If I did not speak up, then I was a coward.

Bests,

Barb :-)

[Doug Weldon]

My post #89, page 6, of this thread was a response showing examples of inconsistencies in Judyth's story over the years. I cited and e-mail Judyth had written to her supporters in 2000, and a file she had attached to it ... the file being part of her manuscript she had just worked on. She called it the "END OF LINE.doc" .... and it can be seen it its entirety here:

Judyth attachment 2000

One part of that same file that I did not quote at the time, was this, Judyth wrote:

Indeed, when the kids brought home the movie JFK to see, i did not see it with them. I

couldn’t bear it, and i was afraid i’d give way to my emotions.

Only in 1998, on the 35th anniversary of the event, did i finally watch the movie,

which had a

lot of errors, of course. Still,

I was much moved by the challenge Oliver Stone made. He said that

to remain silent was to be a coward.

That hit home.

When Lee said goodbye to me, it was the last time i ever heard his voice,

In her recent book, Me & Lee,2010,page 552, Judyth writes:

In

December 1998, my youngest daughter married and went on her honeymoon. Finally, I was alone. The next day I rented

JFK

and sat down to watch it in earnest........

But what struck me most deeply that day was the inscription at the beginning of the film. The words were seared into my brain:

"To lie by silence when we should protest makes cowards of men."

I knew that I had been "lying by silence." If I did not speak up, then I was a coward.

Bests,

Barb :-)

Barb:

Excellent post.This is very interesting. How does JVB get around the fact that SHE sent this to her supporters or change her story about the circumstances she watched JFK, the movie? How can she blame "Cancun" or many other things here on unapproved editing? Thanks.

Doug Weldon

[Barb Junkkarinen]

My post #89, page 6, of this thread was a response showing examples of inconsistencies in Judyth's story over the years. I cited and e-mail Judyth had written to her supporters in 2000, and a file she had attached to it ... the file being part of her manuscript she had just worked on. She called it the "END OF LINE.doc" .... and it can be seen it its entirety here:

Judyth attachment 2000

One part of that same file that I did not quote at the time, was this, Judyth wrote:

Indeed, when the kids brought home the movie JFK to see, i did not see it with them. I

couldn’t bear it, and i was afraid i’d give way to my emotions.

Only in 1998, on the 35th anniversary of the event, did i finally watch the movie,

which had a

lot of errors, of course. Still,

I was much moved by the challenge Oliver Stone made. He said that

to remain silent was to be a coward.

That hit home.

When Lee said goodbye to me, it was the last time i ever heard his voice,

In her recent book, Me & Lee,2010,page 552, Judyth writes:

In

December 1998, my youngest daughter married and went on her honeymoon. Finally, I was alone. The next day I rented

JFK

and sat down to watch it in earnest........

But what struck me most deeply that day was the inscription at the beginning of the film. The words were seared into my brain:

"To lie by silence when we should protest makes cowards of men."

I knew that I had been "lying by silence." If I did not speak up, then I was a coward.

Bests,

Barb :-)

Barb:

Excellent post.This is very interesting. How does JVB get around the fact that SHE sent this to her supporters or change her story about the circumstances she watched JFK, the movie? How can she blame "Cancun" or many other things here on unapproved editing? Thanks.

Doug Weldon

She seems to get around things like this quite easily ... and often.

Here is what was a momentous occasion in her life. She had avoided all things about the assassination for years, and finally decides to see the movie JFK.

I couldn't tell you if I saw the movie on any particular date, because it was not any special date in my life.

The anniversary of the assassination *is* a markedly noteworthy date, especially for Judyth.

The date her daughter got married is a noteworthy date to her.

One happened in November. One happened in December. Yet she tells two different stories about the same momentous event, tying the date, each time, to something noteworthy in her life.

How does that get by her supporters/believers ... and why does this,and other incidents like it, not bother them in the least? In fact,often, they make excuses *for* her ... or they just ignore it completely.

And, thanks, Doug.

Bests,

Barb :-)

[John Dolva]

Barb : ''why'' :

Objective detachnent does not come naturally to humans. I think it does 'bother' people but the sensation of 'being bothered' is simply not desirable.

Doing away wiith that which is bothersome, by rationalising it, or ignoring it, is a natural reaction.

Facing it ultimately means facing self and facing that which is of discomfort means overcoming something within self and that is contrary to habit.

Likewise, clinging to that which is desirable and lamenting its loss is a usual reaction. The lamenting being yet another 'bothersome' sensation makes the whole process a self imposed self perpetuating* bondage that is not easy to break free from.

edit typos, clarification*

Edited November 22, 2010 by John Dolva