Oliver Stone and Judyth Baker

[Cory Santos]

My question is if she was a prodigy, after 1963 what did she do for all those years?  Why was she not used on another project?  With Bob Lazar at least he has a record over the last 30 years.  If there is more to the story feel free to explain what she was doing.  The people I interviewed about New Orleans and Garrison had no knowledge of her.

[Andrej Stancak]

The case of Judyth Baker and her story appears to be a combination of two threads: her love affair with Lee Oswald and her role in the development of a biological weapon aimed to assassinate Fidel Castro and thereby save John Kennedy as Kennedy's death would not be necessary if Castro had died. The love story is supported by the fact that both Judyth Baker and Lee Oswald worked at Reily Coffe Company in New Orleans. There appears to be no other factual evidence that would prove this part of story but also no clear evidence that would refute it. It is possible that the two people knew each other but it is not known whether Judyth and Lee were a couple. The other thread refers to the effort of a group of people around Dr Ochsner to develop a biological weapon based on the idea that live cancer cells, obtained from rapidly developing tumors grown in mice would be injected into a human to induce cancer and kill him or her. This line of Mrs. Baker's story is completely unsubstantiated and impossible in the light of biological science. Cancer is not a contagious disease, it is not spread by body contacts or by planting live cells into someone else's body. We can come into contact with cancer patients without any fear of cancer being biologically transmitted onto us. The principle is that our immune system can recognise a foreign cell, e.g., a bacterium, by comparing that cells protein marker called major histocompatibility complex with our marker. The MHC marks every cell which is foreign to our body, and presents on its surface molecules which bind to the immune system cells' receptors. Thus, injecting live cancer cells into a human body would activate that person's immune system and the cancer cells would be rapidly eliminated. Actually, one of the early studies leading to the discovery of MHC was a study in which researchers attempted to transplant cancer cells from one animal into another animal and failed. 

In the book, the rejection of injected cancer cells by the immune system was solved by having the prospective victim to voluntarily take repeated X rays to suppress the immune system first. Thus, it was a two-stage "treatment", one to suppress the immune system and another to allow cancer cells to live and multiply in the host's body. In Castro's case, this young and strong man would have to take a number of repeated X rays at doses dramatically exceeding a standard diagnostic X-ray investigation. The patient whose immune system would be continuously ruined by repeated mega X-rays would develop a number of health issues such as bleeding from internal organs, ulcers, and would likely die from common infections. How likely would it be that Castro's doctors and Castro himself would just decide to wipe out Castro's immune system? Were Castro's doctors murderers? Was Castro an idiot to agree to such "treatment"? 

In the meantime, the live cancer cells, frantically grown up in David Ferrie's kitchen within several weeks and tested on two Angola prisoners at the psychiatric institution in Jackson, would be transported in a thermos from New Orleans to Mexico City. Live cells need a proper environment to survive and can survive only for a brief period of time if conditions are less than optimal. High ambient temperature (such as in Mexico City, or on board of a hot bus) would continuously rise the temperature in the thermos and at some point the cells would degrade. The fluids in thermos would need to have several parameters spot on to survive, such as osmolality, temperature and acidity. Once some cells would start perishing, it would instigate a vicious cycle of more and more cells dying at a fast rate. Lee Oswald was supposed to "feed" the cells from time to time by opening the lid of the thermos and adding a solid substance (powder?) which is described as being similar to glucose. Opening the lid would, of course, allow a number of bacteria to invade the thermos and join the fray. How much of "glucose" would be added? Glucose would increase the osmolality of the fluid in the thermos and an increased osmolality would suck the water from the cells. The shrunk cells would suffer rupturing their membranes and emptying their content into the fluids thereby increasing the osmolality. The fluid in the thermos would be continuously shaken during walking or while on a bus. However, even small cells have a mass and therefore bump onto the inner surface of the thermos and many get smashed. To make this bleak outlook of cancer cells short, Lee Oswald would bring to Mexico City a stinking soup rather than live cancer cells. That soup would likely kill anyone by causing sepsis. But then, would it not be easier to kill Castro by injecting him with a soup he had for his lunch a day or two ago than to bring a CIA-own soup from New Orleans?

If one removes the bio-weapon part from Judyth Baker's story, there is not much left. She and Lee Oswald may have known each other and, who knows, may even have ridden a bus together. But this would be a different story, a story which maybe could be closer to the truth but a story which would be hardly too relevant.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited November 28, 2019 by Andrej Stancak

[David Andrews]

BTW: When you dump JVB you dump Haslam too. They are in the same boat. 

Karl - That's fine with me.

Haslam has had years to research and establish the identity and find the photograph of the Tulane visiting professor who inveigled her way into his life under the name "Judyth Vary Baker," and he has not.

I've worked at universities and attended a few, and I know very well that schools go out of their way to photograph their visiting faculty and use their CVs as publicity to attract students and funding, and even future faculty job candidates.  It's not stretching the truth to say that publicity is what visiting faculty are all about, including their role in working with other faculty . 

Even if this femme fatale of Haslam's largely escaped the ritual because she was some deep cover job trolling for impressionable students, there has to be some institutional record of her to trace at Tulane.  Nobody's doing that, including Haslam.

Any takers for this research task in the NOLA area?

Edited November 29, 2019 by David Andrews

[Andrej Stancak]

There is one more interesting aspect to Mrs Baker's story. Her profile is not that dissimilar from the roles and actions of so called psychic detectives who claim to be able to use their spiritual abilities to contact people who died in a crime to identify their killer or to identify the location of a missing person. First, psychic detectives always claim to have respectable history, such as working with the FBI or some university or a research centre. These affiliations increase their credibility in the eyes of the public. (Those credentials are usually highly inflated or even false). Mrs Baker also offers her credentials as a scientist and a cancer expert which ticks the box.

Second, psychic detectives tap on people who desperately seek a resolution, such as where is my beloved child or who killed my partner. A much suffering person will not be able to grieve until the essential question of where or who is resolved. The sufferers are able to pay high amounts of money to psychic detectives just to come to some resolution. Is our JFK research community not similar to the people who desperately seek a resolution? Don't we buy books, travel distances or spend time on reading and researching in hope to somehow bring the case to its logical end which is: who and why killed President Kennedy and what was Lee Oswald's role? Thus, a good psychic detective a has large pool of sufficiently prepared subjects to lure in the JFK community. Mrs Baker offers answers to all unanswered questions pertaining the case and some of those desperately seeking a resolution and grateful.

Third, a psychic detective wants to be paid for his/her services. The money issue is always floating around. Does it tick the box?

Fourth, psychic detectives want media attention. Media is the vehicle how psychic detectives spread their nets. If a journal article with a catchy heading "Psychic detective found missing girl in the lake" appears in the news, more and more people start to believe them. The larger is the number of believers the better. Does it tick the box?

Besides this intriguing similarity between psychic detectives and the author's profile, there is one more peculiar detail which contributes to the acceptance of Mrs Baker's story and which is hardwired in how we people perceive the probability of something to be true. Our mind does not interpret objective probabilities of events (ranging from 0.0 to 1.0) in a linear and proportional manner. Our mind cannot appreciate very low and very high probabilities. For that reason people buy lottery tickets because while objective probability of winning is mathematically close to zero, our mind perceives it as something having a low probability but still much higher than zero. Similarly, if an event has a very high probability of happening  ( e.g., 0.9) we think it will surely happen and ignore the 0.1 portion which says that the phenomenon is still uncertain. Subjectively, we are not able to discern that A is more likely to happen than B if A has a chance of 0.95 and B a chance of 0.90. To translate this fooling of probabilities by our mind to the Me&Lee story, the story has basically close to zero probability of being true and yet people would say it is probable because of the diminished sensitivity to extremely low probabilities.

 

Edited November 29, 2019 by Andrej Stancak

[David Andrews]

Andrej -- as either direct analog or as metaphor, I believe your "psychic detective" trope covers a number of personalities we're familiar with in assassination and 9/11 studies.

[Ron Bulman]

Clearing my at hand shelves I boxed up Dr. Mary's Monkey.  Probably should have thrown it out to keep from confusing anyone in the future.  But it does illustrate the futility of following judy's story.  With what Larry, Pam, Jim and others have said I hope others don't waste their time on this. 

[Douglas Caddy]

Pete Hymans wrote on Facebook on Nov. 23:

Today, Oliver Stone visited our conference and spoke on several occasions with the Chairperson, Judyth Vary Baker. I was everywhere with my camera except the 3-hour behind-closed doors meeting Stone held with 4-leading researchers. Here Mr. Stone is talking with Judyth outside the doors of our conference. More photos follow.

[Ron Bulman]

44 minutes ago, Douglas Caddy said:

Pete Hymans wrote on Facebook on Nov. 23:

Today, Oliver Stone visited our conference and spoke on several occasions with the Chairperson, Judyth Vary Baker. I was everywhere with my camera except the 3-hour behind-closed doors meeting Stone held with 4-leading researchers. Here Mr. Stone is talking with Judyth outside the doors of our conference. More photos follow.

He doesn't look that convinced by what she's saying,  maybe a little distracted in thought at the moment?

[Andrej Stancak]

My advice to Mr Oliver Stone would be to ask  in private some of the medical doctors in the research community, such as Dr Wecht or Dr Mantik, if it is possible to induce a rapidly growing cancer in a human by injecting him/her with tumor cells grown in mice. 

[Cory Santos]

To be clear, Jack Ruby was not "injected" with "cancer cells".   This myth merely sounds interesting and looks good repeated in books.  Again where was JB all these years?  1963-1999 specifically?  Assets generally continue serving as assets or, in the case of Lazar, do something else noteworthy.

Edited November 29, 2019 by Cory Santos

[Joe Bauer]

6 hours ago, Andrej Stancak said:

My advice to Mr Oliver Stone would be to ask  in private some of the medical doctors in the research community, such as Dr Wecht or Dr Mantik, if it is possible to induce a rapidly growing cancer in a human by injecting him/her with tumor cells grown in mice. 

However, is it possible to inject or feed someone something "that would lower their immune system" to very low degrees that would make them much more vulnerable to viruses ( cancer being one ) and or infections like pneumonia and fighting them off?

Just curious.

How do scientist infect rats with harmful and damaging agents?

 

 

 

[Andrej Stancak]

I am not an immunology expert, however, it is well known that there are immunosuppressant drugs which are used for therapeutic purposes, e.g. in people receiving a transplant organ. While there may be past studies investigating how to decrease immune system to the extent that the organism falls victim to an infectious disease, this is not the type of science which can receive support from medical institutions as the ethics aspect of such research is very questionable.  

In the context of the this thread, Mrs Baker and her collaborators were not planning to inject any viruses into Castro's body, and cancer cells are not viruses (but some viruses and bacteria can cause specific types of cancer). Cancer cells are malignant cells originating in patient's own tissues (therefore, they are not attacked by patient's immune system) and having altered genetic code which enables them to proliferate without any control until they kill the host. 

Edited November 29, 2019 by Andrej Stancak

[Guest]

13 hours ago, Ron Bulman said:

He doesn't look that convinced by what she's saying,  maybe a little distracted in thought at the moment?

Geez Ron, let me join in the speculating.

Stone is not convinced as she explains how long it was.

Edited November 29, 2019 by Bart Kamp

[Stu Wexler]

I think any documentary with Stone's name behind it that promotes Judyth's story will set the research community back leaps and bounds. It does not matter if it presents any new and worthwhile material. To the contrary:  many people will throw the baby out with the bathwater.  Or, conversely and counter-intuitively, leave viewers of a documentary that presumably is supposed to be pro-Garrison with the impression that Garrison completely missed a huge story right under his nose, fundamentally misidentifying who was involved in an actual JFK plot.  

 

[David Andrews]

11 minutes ago, Stu Wexler said:

I think any documentary with Stone's name behind it that promotes Judyth's story will set the research community back leaps and bounds. It does not matter if it presents any new and worthwhile material. To the contrary:  many people will throw the baby out with the bathwater.  Or, conversely and counter-intuitively, leave viewers of a documentary that presumably is supposed to be pro-Garrison with the impression that Garrison completely missed a huge story right under his nose, fundamentally misidentifying who was involved in an actual JFK plot.  

 

+1