James Ellroy

[Stephanie Goldberg]

13 minutes ago, Ron Bulman said:

Stephanie, you do know PJM volunteered her services to the CIA well before she met Lee in Russia?  Somewhere there's a memo about their confidence in her to write what ever they wanted.

I remember reading in some book (darn, drawing a blank on the title right this second) that PJM was associated with the CIA while she was in Russia and interviewing LHO.  I don't know much about her life outside of that.

[Ron Bulman]

3 minutes ago, Stephanie Goldberg said:

I remember reading in some book (darn, drawing a blank on the title right this second) that PJM was associated with the CIA while she was in Russia and interviewing LHO.  I don't know much about her life outside of that.

That's pretty much enough.  If I remember right even Marina doesn't put much stock in Marina and Lee.

[David Andrews]

17 hours ago, Ron Bulman said:

Stephanie, you do know PJM volunteered her services to the CIA well before she met Lee in Russia?  Somewhere there's a memo about their confidence in her to write what ever they wanted.

She tried to join but they found her too wacky.  They made her a Mockingbird instead.  It's in the back threads.

EDIT:

John Newman, Oswald and the CIA: (p. 61) “Screwball,” said a CIA employee who had known Priscilla Johnson at Harvard. “Goofy,” and “mixed up,” said an April 1958 CIA message characterizing Johnson at the time she had applied for CIA employment in 1952.

You can kind of see this whenever PJM is trotted out to be interviewed on Oswald or Marina.

Edited June 11, 2019 by David Andrews

[Joseph McBride]

The highly sanitized July 1964 propaganda piece that did a lot to present Ruth Paine to

the American public as supposedly just a charitable Quaker

lady, a selfless religious do-gooder who acted

out of kindness for the Oswald family by taking

in Marina and getting Lee a job in the Texas School Book Depository (etc.), was a profile entitled "Prelude to Tragedy: The woman who sheltered Lee Oswald's family tells her story."

It was written by Jessamyn West for Redbook. Jessamyn

West was the Quaker author of THE FRIENDLY PERSUASION and a second cousin of fellow Quaker Richard Nixon. Redbook

was owned at the time by the McCall Corporation, whose president was

Marvin Pierce. He was the father of Barbara Pierce Bush, the wife of the

already CIA-connected George H. W. Bush.

Edited June 11, 2019 by Joseph McBride

[Paul Brancato]

The connection to Marvin Pierce is very interesting indeed. 

[David Andrews]

UK reviewer claims The Storm, Ellroy's new "alternative history of the US rewards the attentive":

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/jun/16/this-storm-james-ellroy-review

Inspirational verse:

[I posted a passage quoted in the review, and seconds later felt so bad that I had to take it down.]

Edited June 16, 2019 by David Andrews