Why does Mary Ferrell have such a bad rep?

[Benjamin Cole]

In every circumstance, it is required that the JFKA research community form a circular firing squad, and commence activities. 

[Jonathan Cohen]

8 minutes ago, Joe Bauer said:

Did Ferrell dislike and/or even hate JFK up through 11,22,1963? 

Who cares?

8 minutes ago, Joe Bauer said:

She purposely chose to ignore JFK's motorcade visit through her city? She instead had lunch out somewhere else during it?

Who cares, part 2?

9 minutes ago, Joe Bauer said:

If Joseph McBride's research into Ferrell's background regards all the connections and associations she had with many seriously anti-Kennedy groups and for many years are credibly true, doesn't this validate suspicion as to her supposed conversion to this full time, passionate JFK truth seeking mission matriarch?

Not in the least.

[Joe Bauer]

15 minutes ago, Jonathan Cohen said:

26 minutes ago, Joe Bauer said:

Did Ferrell dislike and/or even hate JFK up through 11,22,1963? 

Who cares?

Who cares?

You are suggesting that Ferrell's personal feelings toward JFK before 11,22,1963 have no meaning or bearing importance in the overall story of her decision to then commit to decades of massive time, work effort and expense undertaking right after 11,22,1963 to helping JFK conspiracy believing researchers to a degree that no one else ever had?

Sorry, but my lifetime experience trusting common sense sees a glaring incongruity there, especially if Ferrell disliked JFK as much as McBride stated she did.

Why would you want to help JFK truth seekers ( most probably admirers of JFK) if you hated the guy yourself?

This is why I asked the question regards the true state of her JFK feelings all of her life until 11,22,1963.

You would need at least "some" positive and empathetic feelings toward JFK to dedicate so much of your older adult life to seeking truth and justice ( to a passionate degree many would say ) regards his murder...imo anyway.

I would think one would had to have probably been an admirer of JFK or in the least ambivalent in their view of him to decide to commit decades of their life after 11,22,1963 in the pursuit of helping researchers who would not be researching if they had believed and accepted the official "Case Closed" deluded lone gunman who just got lucky finding of the Warren Report.

What was Ferrell's take on the Warren Report?

If she accepted their conclusion, why spend decades of incredible commitment hard work looking for more information beyond their  summary?

[Larry Hancock]

Given that I did have some direct interaction with Mary I will share the following observations - first and foremost I would view her as a "critic", she wanted all the information she could get from any source and examined it with a clinical degree of challenge and skepticism.  I have to imagine that was fueled from her legal office experience.  Actually many if not all the serious first generation critics were skeptics...skeptical of government explanations and of the Warren Commission.

In addition it was quite common to find anti-administration political leanings tied to general skepticism about the government in general.... then not everybody automatically jumped to iron clad positions as they do now but skepticism itself was considered healthy.

As to her views on the assassination, I have no idea what they were other than the official story was implausible and needed to be questioned.  I've seen her in a room listening to everyone from David Lifton to John Armstrong and doing no more than asking questions.  Very penetrating questions.

I would also note that it was not necessary for the government to create confusion in the research community.  I know of at least one instance where Penn Jones (who was eager for just about any conspiracy story) was sent on a wild goose chase by another first generation researcher.  My impression is that there was a bit of competition for interviews and leads and everybody did not necessarily play nicely with everybody else.  

 

[Joe Bauer]

Larry, would it be fair to say there was a good amount of "Machiavellian" type scheming, undercutting and competing interest shenanigans going on in those early years of JFK research and writings?

Enough so, that some researchers were purposely sabotaged?

[Pat Speer]

25 minutes ago, Joe Bauer said:

Who cares?

You are suggesting that Ferrell's personal feelings toward JFK before 11,22,1963 have no meaning or bearing importance in the overall story of her decision to then commit to decades of massive time, work effort and expense undertaking right after 11,22,1963 to helping JFK conspiracy believing researchers to a degree that no one else ever had?

Sorry, but my lifetime experience trusting common sense sees a glaring incongruity there, especially if Ferrell disliked JFK as much as McBride stated she did.

Why would you want to help JFK truth seekers ( most probably admirers of JFK) if you hated the guy yourself?

This is why I asked the question regards the true state of her JFK feelings all of her life until 11,22,1963.

You would need at least "some" positive and empathetic feelings toward JFK to dedicate so much of your older adult life to seeking truth and justice ( to a passionate degree many would say ) regards his murder...imo anyway.

I would think one would had to have probably been an admirer of JFK or in the least ambivalent in their view of him to decide to commit decades of their life after 11,22,1963 in the pursuit of helping researchers who would not be researching if they had believed and accepted the official "Case Closed" deluded lone gunman who just got lucky finding of the Warren Report.

What was Ferrell's take on the Warren Report?

If she accepted their conclusion, why spend decades of incredible commitment hard work looking for more information beyond their  summary?

I think what you're missing is this... Dallas was Ferrell's hometown. I live in Simi Valley, site of the Reagan Library. If Reagan had been killed here, as opposed to being buried here, I would take an inordinate amount of interest in his death, even though I wasn't a fan. If this interest led me to questions, I might then become obsessed with discovering the truth of the situation. This obsession might even come to dominate my life. 

So, no, one doesn't have to have had a fond regard for Kennedy.to develop a serious interest in his murder. 

[Larry Hancock]

As far as I can tell a lot of the competition was about access - primarily to witnesses, but also to leads and for that matter conspiracy oriented rumors.  Motivation to come up with leads or people that had not been truly investigated, to interview them (and one researcher did not necessarily trust another interview skills, as I have been told). 

Those willing to go to Dallas and dig deeply were to some extent competing with each other,  for leads, for interviews and to get the stories that appeared to have been suppressed. 

As to planting false leads, from what I can tell there were locals who were not in sympathy with the researchers,  who thought they were making something out of nothing and who were willing to mess with them on occasion, some who were just natural "jokers" who liked to pull chains.  Individuals like Penn who were highly visible and writing on the assassination a lot were easy targets.  But even in later years we have had bogus documents planted on us, documents circulated but never with any provenance, coming from unknown parties who do know something about the assassination and even about document formats.

Some people just have a strange sense of humor...

And in case I did not make it clear before,  Mary Ferrell definitely did not trust the Warren Commission report and was quite a skeptic of it and the FBI's work...which drove her to become one of the first document collectors and geeks, looking for things that had been left out of the official story.

[Kirk Gallaway]

This is a good thread! It's interesting hearing the thoughts of some who knew her.

There are elements of both the left and right who want open government and want to hold government accountable. To both, their is a concern about corruption. To the Right, it's through just a general skepticism about government. To the Left, it's about making government work better.

[Joe Bauer]

1 hour ago, Larry Hancock said:

And in case I did not make it clear before,  Mary Ferrell definitely did not trust the Warren Commission report and was quite a skeptic of it and the FBI's work...which drove her to become one of the first document collectors and geeks, looking for things that had been left out of the official story.

So, Ferrell did not trust the Warren Commission nor the FBI as well?

And it was this that mostly motivated her donating decades of her time, energies and funds to finding out an alternate truth? An effort of  epic proportions?

Which logically suggest she was more believing of a conspiracy?

Did Mary Ferrell ever express any mistrust of our government and the FBI before the JFK event?

If not, the JFK event made her do a 180 degree turn around in this area of thought?

Did Mary Ferrell ever say flat out she believed there was a conspiracy in the JFK case?

All that monumental time, work and study must have had some impression on her final take beliefs, no?

Pat S.

You say if Ronald Reagan had been killed in your hometown of Simi Valley, this fact alone would have inspired you to invest an inordinate amount of time and interest on your part to study and know more about the case, especially if there was a lot of debated takes and charges being bandied about?

I can see "some" logic in your "hometown" angle analogy, but not enough to justify the decades of unprecedented time and effort Ferrell put into her life legacy project.

If JFK's death happened in my hometown, it would have made the event more powerful, intriguing and personal, but not enough to have inspired me to donate the rest of my life to it over anything else, and especially if I hated the guy and I was connected to many people and groups that felt the same way before hand.

 Maybe this whole study effort of the JFK assassination became an obsession for Ferrell? An addiction? 

Did she make any money at all in this effort?

One of main reasons I became invested in the JFK/Oswald murder cases was because I admired JFK. I was inspired by him. His murder was a great loss to me personally.

Also, because I knew that too many highest power groups and individuals in this country not only hated JFK (to murderous degrees) but benefitted by his death.

If I hadn't liked JFK, or even disliked or hated him, I guarantee you this would have effected my interest in the case to a less motivated degree.

Just my take.

 

 

 

 

Edited August 1, 2022 by Joe Bauer

[Pat Speer]

36 minutes ago, Joe Bauer said:

So, Ferrell did not trust the Warren Commission nor the FBI as well?

And it was this that mostly motivated her donating decades of her time, energies and funds to finding out an alternate truth? An effort of  epic proportions?

Which logically suggest she was more believing of a conspiracy?

Did Mary Ferrell ever express any mistrust of our government and the FBI before the JFK event?

If not, the JFK event made her do a 180 degree turn around in this area of thought?

Did Mary Ferrell ever say flat out she believed there was a conspiracy in the JFK case?

All that monumental time, work and study must have had some impression on her final take beliefs, no?

Pat S.

You say if Ronald Reagan had been killed in your hometown of Simi Valley, this fact alone would have inspired you to invest an inordinate amount of time and interest on your part to study and know more about the case, especially if there was a lot of debated takes and charges being bandied about?

I can see "some" logic in your "hometown" angle analogy, but not enough to justify the decades of unprecedented time and effort Ferrell put into her life legacy project.

If JFK's death happened in my hometown, it would have made the event more powerful, intriguing and personal, but not enough to have inspired me to donate the rest of my life to it over anything else, and especially if I hated the guy and I was connected to many people and groups that felt the same way before hand.

 Maybe this whole study effort of the JFK assassination became an obsession for Ferrell? An addiction? 

Did she make any money at all in this effort?

One of main reasons I became invested in the JFK/Oswald murder cases was because I admired JFK. I was inspired by him. His murder was a great loss to me personally.

Also, because I knew that too many highest power groups and individuals in this country not only hated JFK (to murderous degrees) but benefitted by his death.

If I hadn't liked JFK, or even disliked or hated him, I guarantee you this would have effected my interest in the case to a less motivated degree.

Just my take.

 

 

 

 

Here's some more guesswork as to Ferrell's motivation. Ferrell was in her 40's when JFK was killed. Her children had either moved out or were on the verge of moving out. She  worked as a legal secretary. What may have started out as a personal obsession--witness the numerous chronologies she made that are now available on the MFF website--soon became the center of her social life. Researcher after researcher--many of them quite interesting people--came to visit her, and access her archives. She became a den mother to the research community. Whatever personal feelings she had about JFK prior to the assassination were by then beside the point. She had a new family, and being a part of this family gave her purpose. 

It's not remotely surprising to me, and am shocked so many find it so surprising. 

There's also this. Anyone who ever attended a Lancer conference--for which Ferrell provided the inspiration--heard statement after statement regarding JFK's greatness as president and as man. They poured it on a little thick, IMO. But the point is that these conferences served to deify Kennedy, and build up a desire within those attending to find the truth about who killed him. 

If this was all part of some plot to make the case go away, it was the dumbest plot ever. 

[Allen Lowe]

If you ask me, Ferrrll’s conservative leanings and general non-activism politically prove even more how much integrity she had. It’s like Liz Cheney who, despite having some political beliefs I find highly resistible, is to be respected, I think, for her personal honesty.

[Karl Hilliard]

20 hours ago, Vince Palamara said:

  Harry Livingstone AND his book KILLING THE TRUTH

I thought it was some kind of take on Bill O'Reilly's-- 'Killing Kennedy'.... Killing the Truth throws Robert Groden all 10 wheels under the bus. I thought [still do] that Groden helped get the ball rolling in the first place by getting the Zapruder film out to the public.  

[Jonathan Cohen]

1 hour ago, Karl Hilliard said:

I thought [still do] that Groden helped get the ball rolling in the first place by getting the Zapruder film out to the public.  

He did, but in recent years he appears to have made up interviews for his latest book and also passed off an obviously fake photo as one that was taken during JFK’s autopsy, to say nothing of the allegations leveled at him by David Lifton involving possible chicanery with original assassination films and photos…

[Anthony Thorne]

11 hours ago, Pat Speer said:

 

So enough with this stuff about Ferrell being a spy out to contain or destroy the research community. 

 

Your choice of words, not mine. If she'd been asked to just keep track of it, did she do a good job of that or not?

I didn't know her, you did, but I find it odd that it's ludicrous to suggest she kept track of - or kept tabs on it - because of her being personally warm and helpful to others. So I'll ask again, since you avoided answering the question last time.

If an intelligence group did want someone to just keep tabs on the community for decades - not destroy it, not wreck it, just keep tabs on it - would they get someone personally warm and helpful to do that? Or would they get someone cold and unfriendly and unhelpful to do that?

I'm assuming it would have been a useful thing to have someone, warm and friendly, helping out in the community for years. And you're saying it's ludicrous to suggest this, because Mary was warm and friendly, and helping out in the community for years. 

The intelligence agencies have sponsored propaganda books on the case for five decades. Did they ever want to know what the researchers were doing in advance, or did they just decide to wait until each researcher's volume was in the shops before deciding on a response? The former would suggest in interest in the matter, the latter a lack of interest. So were they interested in what researchers were up to, or not?

If it helps, I'm sure Mary was a nice lady, and I never met her, so my query just goes as far as it goes. And the Mary Ferrell Foundation website is a great site. But Joe isn't the first writer to question her motives first hand, and when I read the responses, there's a lot of "But Mary was so nice and helpful for years!" as the main point of rebuttal, and I'm waiting for the rest of the argument to be offered. Beats me. Joe has more details about her background in his piece than some others here. Did Mary ever contribute an article to a book talking about her interest in the case, or did she just hang out with researchers all the time?

I also don't think that people who help out the CIA from time to time - if they do - are necessarily the devil. So again, this query isn't intended as a personal slight against Mary Ferrell. I'm sure she was nice to have a coffee with, while she was encouraging every researcher out there to bring their papers and discoveries just to her.

I note in passing that Mary seemed to have an easier time of things overall than Mae Brussell.

Edited August 1, 2022 by Anthony Thorne

[Vince Palamara]

5 hours ago, Pat Speer said:

Here's some more guesswork as to Ferrell's motivation. Ferrell was in her 40's when JFK was killed. Her children had either moved out or were on the verge of moving out. She  worked as a legal secretary. What may have started out as a personal obsession--witness the numerous chronologies she made that are now available on the MFF website--soon became the center of her social life. Researcher after researcher--many of them quite interesting people--came to visit her, and access her archives. She became a den mother to the research community. Whatever personal feelings she had about JFK prior to the assassination were by then beside the point. She had a new family, and being a part of this family gave her purpose. 

It's not remotely surprising to me, and am shocked so many find it so surprising. 

There's also this. Anyone who ever attended a Lancer conference--for which Ferrell provided the inspiration--heard statement after statement regarding JFK's greatness as president and as man. They poured it on a little thick, IMO. But the point is that these conferences served to deify Kennedy, and build up a desire within those attending to find the truth about who killed him. 

If this was all part of some plot to make the case go away, it was the dumbest plot ever. 

Excellent, Pat! I was at Lancer in 1997 (including on 11/22/97 as a speaker) and I agree with your assessment. Also, Mary was very nice to me.