Joseph McBride

I knew Marilyn's press agent Rupert Allan, a highly sympathetic and sophisticated man who also spent years as the press agent for Princess Grace. I asked Rupert what he thought caused Monroe's death. He said she had little bottles of Champagne all around her bedroom and would frequently drink them, often without thinking. He thought she popped too many pills on the night of her death while guzzling Champagne and lost track of the effect until she fell into a fatal unconsciousness. He said she was extremely upset at the time because Peter Lawford had invited her to a party at his Santa Monica beach house at which some call girls would be present; Marilyn was deeply wounded that Lawford and company thought of her in that category, Rupert said. He also reported to me that she had seriously considered suicide while in the hospital in New York in 1959 for a gynecological operation. She told Rupert that she went to the window of her eighth-floor suite to jump but when she looked down and saw a woman in a green coat waiting at a bus stop, realized she might kill the woman by jumping, so she desisted.

I interviewed Terrence Malick in the 1970s before he became a recluse. He quoted Ben Hecht on how the worst danger facing Hollywood screenwriters is the impulse to self-censorship. It is often subconscious and sometimes conscious but brought on by the pressures of the system and must be resisted.

Rory Kennedy has an op-ed in the NYT today demanding Sirhan be kept in prison. Governor Newsom, facing a recall election, hedged in an interview about what he would do, saying he will wait for the parole board report, but went out of his way to say what a great admirer of RFK he is. One of the RFK children said when she met Newsom, he recited five RFK speeches verbatim. People confuse their understandable admiration for RFK with unthinking acceptance of the untenable lone-nut theory that Sirhan shot him. It does not look promising for Sirhan with all this pressure from the ignorant and/or in denial children of RFK vs. their two siblings who understand the case and spoke out for parole. A further tragic situation for Sirhan.

An FBI report of June 15, 1964, has this to say about Mentzel's use of a public telephone: "Officer MENTZEL stated at approximately 12:30 P.M. he stopped for lunch at Luby's Cafeteria, 430 West Jefferson, Oak Ciff. He advised he tried on several occasions to call the station by telephone, but did not get through to the operator until about 1:00 P.M., at which time he was told the President had just been shot. He stated he left the remainder of his lunch and went into service by car radio . . ." Of course, the idea of a Dallas police officer hanging around a public cafeteria for half an hour while the news of the president being shot would have been circulating there is a transparently absurd cover story.

Watch how quickly the guy wraps up the interview once Stone tries to discuss 9/11: STONE; But if you go back and you look at the reasons for -- you have to think about the possibility that something like, for example, the Kennedy assassination was not the work of one man. And this, I firmly believe, that it was definitely -- there were reasons and motivations to get rid of that president. He was dangerous. So, I`m divided about that. You have to think, but, at the same time, you have to question. MELBER: Yes. Well, that`s part of why I wanted to ask you. And I love interviewing you. STONE: And 9/11. And 9/11. MELBER: Well, and you know what? I will tell you this. Let`s do it again in person sometime and even longer. Sometimes, we do -- with THE BEAT, we do digital interviews where we go an hour. We could get into all of it. STONE: Yes. MELBER: Because, as anyone could obviously tell, I`m a fan of your films, even if you and I might debate or disagree on certain things. That`s a healthy process. So, Mr. Stone, I appreciate your first time on THE BEAT. I hope you will come back. [18:50:01] STONE: Yes.

Tippit and Mentzel were using telephones that day besides the DPD radio. Oswald was an FBI informant and had spoken with the FBI at least two or three times in November 1963 before the assassination, probably keeping them informed about the plot he had infiltrated without knowing he was being set up as the patsy. The DPD also was aware of Oswald and his whereabouts, and, as you know, a police car showed up outside his Oak Cliff rooming house about 1 p.m. and honked its horn. Marie Tippit told Edgar Lee Tippit what Mentzel told her about the hunt for Oswald he and J. D. were ordered by the DPD to make shortly after the assassination, by at least 12:45 (Oswald was not officially identified until about 2:10 p.m. at the downtown police station). I recommend you read my 2013 book INTO THE NIGHTMARE, which goes into all of this in detail.

I searched again and found stories that Kathleen Kennedy Townsend supported a reinvestigation of the case in 2018 but that she did not speak out before the parole hearing. I could not find the story that I read saying she did speak out recently about it.

As I write at length in my book INTO THE NIGHTMARE, Oswald did not shoot Tippit. I'm not sure why you think I make that claim, because I don't. I remain baffled as to why you think the order of Tippit (and Mentzel) into Oak Cliff was innocent on the part of the DPD rather than conspiratorial.

I interviewed Johnnie Maxie Witherspoon for my book INTO THE NIGHTMARE. She gave me a quite candid interview about their relationship. Mentzel served as an honor guard at the funeral home and cemetery for Tippit and then received some other important guarding assignments with the DPD. He died in 2002. As a Navy veteran of Korea, he is buried in the Dallas Fort Worth National Cemetery managed by the VA.

Gil, I generally admire your work, but this statement is just absurd and caused me to have to re-read it more than once to realize you actually wrote it: "Having spent some time as a police officer myself, I understand how it all works. I find nothing suspicious or sinister about the Dallas Police dispatching J.D. Tippit to Oak Cliff. They just wanted coverage in a high crime area while the officer assigned to that area was at lunch." The officer who allegedly went to lunch was William Mentzel, but in fact he and Tippit were dispatched by the DPD before 12:45 p.m. to hunt down Oswald. Mentzel's story about lunch is ridiculous on its face and obviously a cover story. Mentzel became involved in an auto accident nearby and said he regretted Tippit got hit instead. Nothing suspicious or sinister in any of this? The time frame and the order to hunt down Oswald in Oak Cliff well before the DPD officially knew who he was (they actually had been surveilling him for quite some time, and he was an FBI informant) show that Tippit and Mentzel and the DPD itself were involved in the conspiracy to pin the JFK assassination on Oswald (if not more).

Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, the former lieutenant governor of Maryland, joined her brothers Robert Jr. and Douglas in supporting Sirhan's parole. Anyway, we don't determine justice by taking a vote of the children of the victim but by studying the facts of the case. The fact is abundantly clear that Sirhan did not shoot Senator Robert Kennedy.

Lee's book on the Malcolm X murder was more explicit as well as stronger in some ways than the film's version. There is more freedom writing books than making films. He had a hell of a time raising money for that film. Re the censored episode, I wonder if some of the reviewers who had the link downloaded it. This is similar to the controversy over THE GUILTY MEN, copies of which circulate despite its banning.

I spent a long time in the film and TV industry, and I am sure HBO must have played a role in forcing Lee to cut this episode. But the handwriting was on the wall when the fool interviewing him for the New York Times raised alarm about the episode at the end of their interview. You can bet he had some urgent messages as soon as the paper came out.

I posted this on Facebook yesterday: It has not been reported whether it was HBO, or some other entity, that compelled Spike Lee to remove the discussion about the destruction of the World Trade Center Twin Towers from his new documentary. But the fact that he had to do so, shortly after the New York Times sharply questioned him for putting that discussion in his documentary, is disturbing and deplorable. This censorship shows again that twenty years after the fact, 9/11 remains the most dangerous third rail in American journalism. Even a discussion of a scientific question -- Can airplane fuel, which is mostly kerosene, raise enough heat necessary to melt steel beams and collapse a skyscraper, which had not happened before and has not happened since? -- is not allowed in a TV documentary. Scientific questions ergo cannot be debated on the media when they relate to 9/11. The official dogma cannot be questioned. That's where we still are in this supposedly "free" country. The best dissident writer on 9/11 is David Ray Griffin. He discusses this particular question in careful scientific detail in his book THE NEW PEARL HARBOR, which your CIA thoughtfully includes in toto on its website. As Lee said, he wanted viewers to listen to the discussion of two differing points of view and make up their own minds. This was not allowed on TV, athough perhaps his banned show will leak out, but you can still make up your own mind by reading books: [link to copy of Griffin book].

Hoping for a good recovery, Pat. Keep the faith and keep up your spirits despite this trial you have been undergoing. All best to you.

Remember how Weisberg tried to sabotage Oliver Stone's JFK while it was still shooting. You wonder what his actual allegiances were.

Rather amazing, isn't it? But it doesn't go into the opium, which is "news that's not fit to print." Readers would have to turn to Alfred McCoy and Peter Dale Scott for that context.

We were in Afghanistan not for the bullshit reasons we were given but for the minerals and the opium. Briefly the truth came out in this remarkable 2010 article in the New York Times, which is a shopping list for the military-industrial complex: https://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/14/world/asia/14minerals.html I realized the end was finally near when Trump complained to his cabinet that we weren't getting the minerals out of Afghanistan because the Chinese were doing it instead. We can't get anything done anymore.

The "brother officer" concern automatically brought many policemen to Oak Cliff, as planned, but the DPD basically abandoned Tippit's case when Oswald was shot and didn't bother properly investigating let alone solving the crime. Oswald had the Tippit killing pinned on him, though he did not do it, because they didn't have a case on him for killing Kennedy. And the police themselves were involved in killing Tippit and covering that up. Tippit was involved in the overall plot at least in regard to being assigned with Officer William Mentzel to capture or eliminate the patsy before Oswald's identity was officially known to the DPD (though they knew very well who he was). So the "brother officer" tradition in this case is a bitter joke.

Why not? Because (1) Oswald didn't shoot Tippit; and (2) the revolver entered into evidence as the alleged murder weapon was not owned by Oswald.

Imagine my surprise when I watched a trailer for Francis Coppola's 1963 Irish-made horror movie for Roger Corman, DEMENTIA 13, on Trailers from Hell (https://trailersfromhell.com/dementia-13/) introduced by the CIA’s MK-ULTRA Dr. William J. Bryan Jr. Bryan allegedly hypnotized Sirhan Sirhan to fire shots in the Ambassador Hotel during the RFK assassination, although Sirhan was a patsy/decoy who shot people other than RFK (another gunman, probably "security guard" Thane Eugene [Gene] Cesar, shot the senator from behind). Bryan was the model for the hypnotist/brainwashing character Orson Welles was going to play in the excellent script he wrote with Donald Freed, SIRHAN, aka THE SAFE HOUSE, with Sal Mineo (later murdered) playing Sirhan. Welles at one point was going to direct the film as well. Bryan is credited as technical adviser on DEMENTIA 13 and on Corman's 1962 TALES OF TERROR (for hypnotism).

Detective Jim Leavelle and DA Henry Wade made it clear in my interviews with them that they and Captain Will Fritz realized they had no real case against Oswald for killing Kennedy, so at the direction of Fritz they went after Oswald for the Tippit killing instead. The backward illogic (which much of the public bought, though not the majority) was that if he shot the officer, he shot the president. It's a little-known fact that Oswald was never arraigned for the killing of Kennedy, only for the killing of Tippit. I asked Leavelle why they thought they had a better case in the Tippit shooting, and he said, "We had witnesses." That is a tacit admission that they discounted Brennan. And as we know, the array of "witnesses" or witnesses in the Tippit shooting is highly problematical.

These are complicated issues I discuss at length in INTO THE NIGHTMARE, so I refer the reader there for the accounts. Marie Tippit's account of the supposed lunch changed a lot in various interviews, so it is dubious. I interviewed a neighbor who claimed to have seen J. D. there, but with my questions I was able to disprove her story as mistaken. The Tippit home was quite a distance from downtown. The Gloco station near the viaduct was a relatively short trip from downtown, about a five-minute trip without heavy traffic. Tippit was out of his district when he was killed. Tippit's father told me what Officer Mentzel (the officer assigned to that district) told Marie about how they were hunting down Oswald from shortly after the assassination, which means they were in on the plot at least as accessories after the fact. The DPD claimed it did not know Oswald's identity until he was taken to the police station shortly after 2 p.m., but they knew it when they ordered Tippit and Mentzel to track him down, i.e., by 12:45 p.m. The DPD had been keeping tabs on Oswald for some time before the assassination, and he was an FBI informant on the plot against Kennedy, not realizing until too late that he was being set up as its patsy. What J. D. allegedly said to his son Allan that morning cannot be verified; Allan later denied the story.

What a terrible title. It buys the lie about Ruby's motive, the lie his lawyer told him to use. And it's one of those titles that puts its conclusion in the title itself, so why then does one have to read the book? People today want to know what a book or film contains before they read or see it, because they are neophobic and worried about spending, etc. Hence movie trailers that give away the whole plot except for the ending (and then people who don't object to this complain about "spoilers" in reviews).

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