Transcription of Dialogue: Assassination Broadcast of November 24, 1971 Time length: 60 min. ANNOUNCER: This is Dialogue. Dialogue, a presentation of the Public Affairs and Special Events Department of KLRB News.
GLORIA BARON: This is Dialogue: Assassination, with research specialist Mae Brussell. For KLRB I'm Gloria Baron.
Well, Mae, this is sort of the anniversary show. Not of the show per se, but eight years ago today — and I'll remind the listening audience that we are recording this on Tuesday — eight years ago today you started your research on the assassination of John Kennedy, right?
MAE BRUSSELL: That's right; it's been eight years, Gloria. And a lot of things come to mind. You know, I read the paper yesterday about the celebration of various religious services and dedication services in memory of John Kennedy, and I got up and I looked at my study, my library, and I looked around the walls, and books and closets and the documents. It was a time of contemplation, like, "What is this all about?" You know, to work on something for so long with so much dedication and....
GLORIA: Eight years now, right?
MAE: It's eight years, yes. I brought in the names of the people who also began their work that same day. And none of us knew each other. It may be of interest to people who are listening, because on November 24, 1963, when Jack Ruby walked in and shot Lee Harvey Oswald, I became very concerned. I called my family on the telephone and I said, "What do you think has happened to America? Did Ruby do this to silence Oswald? Was there a conspiracy? Who is controlling the country? Will the evidence show that Oswald did it alone?" And I was very concerned about him being killed in the police department.
On that same day there were other persons. I'll mention their names: Maggie Fields in Beverly Hills, California; Penn Jones in Midlothian, Texas; Mark Lane in New York; David Lifton in Los Angeles; Sylvia Meagher in New York; Raymond Marcus in L.A.; Shirley Martin in Oklahoma; Leo Sauvage in New York; Joe Joestin in Germany; Hal Verb in El Cerrito, California; Harold Weisberg in Maryland; and Mae Brussell in West Los Angeles began to save articles on the assassination and became curious about what happened. They refer to us in the literature as the buffs, the assassination buffs, the original buffs.
There was an article in Ramparts that I helped write on the John Kennedy murder. It was done many years ago, around 1966, and the insert in there was by Penn Jones on the deaths that occurred to people who were involved with the assassination, or close to the assassination scene. David Welch came down to my house — he worked for Ramparts — and I helped him write the article. I kept my name out of the article; he listed the other buffs. At that time I wanted privacy (at least for a few years) and did not want to be in the public eye at all because I was very curious about Lee Harvey Oswald the person. All the other people working on the assassination were concerned with the ballistics, the bullet trajectory, the autopsy, and the shooting of Officer Tippit. My interest was in Lee Harvey Oswald and Jack Ruby; who they knew, where they met and associated, and what contacts they had; Were they set up to be killed?; To act as a decoy?; I was interested in them as human beings and how you use ordinary citizens from your community to effect changes in history. I spent many years charting the course by documenting the banks they went to and the associations they had in common. Jack Ruby didn't know Oswald, but there was a link of common people that worked together and I want to show some of those links.
Through the years these assassination buffs got to know each other; we correspond. I think it started when Mark Lane began to tour a few areas like Berkeley, and he spoke at Beverly Hills High School. And Maggie Fields had heard about him — he had been to Dallas — and she contacted him to speak. I knew Maggie, or met her, through this work. Then we got the addresses to other people and we began long distance telephone calls and exchanging letters.
Some of them have published books, and some are still coming. Penn Jones has four books out; Maggie Fields has a book documented that has never been published; Sylvia Meagher did Accessories After The Fact and The Index to the Warren Report; David Lifton has a book that will be out soon. He has spent seven years working on it; Joe Joestin has written seven books on the subject; Harold Weisberg has written four books. He has a new one called Frame Up, on James Earl Ray; Leo Savauge did one book; Raymond Marcus has done many articles; Shirley Martin has never written a book but she continues to feed information to other researchers. And we all got to know each other, and we stayed with the subject.
I have a poem I saved that I'd like to read. It's appropriate to this anniversary, Gloria; It's a poem appropriate to the whole situation, written by Carl Sandburg. It was written to Archibald MacLeish after the last war. He gave up the work on his Massachusetts farm to help work for freedom, against the Nazis. And this is the way the poem reads:
Thomas Jefferson had red hair and a violin
and he loved life and people and music
and books and writing and quiet thoughts —
a lover of peace, decency, good order,
summer corn ripening for the bins of winter,
cows in green pastures, colts sucking at mares,
apple trees waiting to laugh with pippins —
Jefferson loved peace like a good farmer.
And yet–for eight years he fought in a war —
writing with his own hand the war announcement
named The Declaration of Independence
making The Fourth of July a sacred calendar date.
And there was his friend and comrade
Ben Franklin, the printer, bookman, diplomat:
all Franklin asked was they let him alone
so he could do his work as lover of peace and work —
Franklin too made war for eight years —
the same Franklin who said two nations
would better throw dice than go to war —
he threw in with fighters for freedom —
for eight years he threw in all he had:
the books, the printshop, fun with electricity,
searches and researches in science pure and applied —
these had to wait while he joined himself
to eight long years of war for freedom, independence.Now, of course, these two odd fellows
stand as only two among many:
the list runs long of these fellows,
lovers of peace, decency, good order,
who throw in with all they've got
for the abstractions "freedom," "independence."
Strictly they were gentle men, not hunting trouble.
Strictly they wanted quiet, the good life, freedom.
They would rather have had the horses of instruction
those eight years they gave to the tigers of wrath.
The record runs they were both dreamers
at the same time they refused imitations of the real thing
at the same time they stood up and talked back
at the same time they met the speech of steel and
cunning with their own relentless steel and cunning.Because it's eight years since the assassination, this is an appropriate poem. I read this poem out at MPC (Monterey Peninsula College) and one of the students asked me, "Do you compare yourself to Benjamin Franklin or Thomas Jefferson?" And I reminded him that in the third verse of the poem it said that those two men were only two among many. Of course I compare myself to them, because I have things that I would like to do, like watch the apples ripen on the tree, and I would like to be sewing dresses and cutting fabrics — you know the hobbies that I have, Gloria. And I would like to be baking bread for Thanksgiving. I have a conflict deal: am I going to use a mix and do my research while I use cake mixes? Because I want to make my own things. Do I have the time? Do I do my research? Am I going to buy my holiday presents? Every year I say, "Am I gonna buy, or make the things I wanna make?" I have the talent. I have the interest. I want to put these things together. I want to do my own cooking and creating, and I don't like to buy bought things or packaged things. And then the research pulls me back. All year it pulls me back to the things I really want to do that are important in my life. And I have to put that aside — a lot of them. I try to reach a compromise and a lot of times I can't. I have put aside many, many things for eight years, because you have to speak back with steel. You have to answer steel with steel. And you have to refuse imitation of the real thing. Everybody is taking an imitation of the real thing, and they're giving it all kinds of names like credibility gap, or national security, or top secret.
I could bring to you — the listeners, over the air — all the articles I shared with Gloria this morning when I came in, that were in the news this week, of actual repressions of laws coming down; of the harm that has happened since the assassination. Because people accept the phony for the real. That wasn't a real election in 1964. It's not a real election in 1968 anymore than the election of Thu was in the election of Vietnam. But you accept that. You accept the paper this morning of what Muskie is saying, or Hubert Humphrey is saying. They're just puppets. They're puppets of the system that are propped up. Or you think McCluskey is a liberal. You won't read his voting record — how he really votes on every issue — because you like these pat, comfortable answers. This has been one of the big problems.
Jules Feiffer had a cartoon in Sunday's paper: two gentlemen are talking to each other, and one man is standing with his hands behind his back with ropes, and he says, "My hands are tied, right?" And he then says, "My feet are shackled, right? And my eyes are blindfolded, right? And my movements are urrr...." and he starts to mumble. And the other man looks at him and says, "When do you break free?" And the man who's tied and shackled says, "What do you mean break free? I like it."
That's about where people are today in the community and in the nation at large; they don't mind the position they're in. It's difficult to shake them to the fact of what happened in Dallas in 1963.
I will read part of the new issue of Computers and Automation which came this week to my home — the November 1971 issue. The article is on the assassination of President Kennedy, and the statement above is "The Pattern of Coup d'etat and Public Deception." And it begins with this quotation of the author, Edmund Berkeley:
"We must begin to recognize history as it is happening to us. We can no longer toy with illusions. Our war adventures in Asia are not related to national security in any rational sense. A Coup d'etat took place in the United States on November 22nd, 1963, when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated."
That came eight years after I began my research, Gloria. People talk about never having fascism in this country, or never being overthrown, but they have already been overthrown and they're not aware of it. And this can be documented: how the laws come down. They're not aware of it.
I was invited to the high school this week to speak to one of the classes — a group of seniors — on revolutionary change. I went to the class and we had a one hour discussion which barely gets into the subject of how the government was overthrown and what way you get it back again. You have to have a revolution to get it back; Either an intellectual, spiritual, practical, or a bloody revolution to get the country and the economy and the beauty of this nation back to some national course of sanity.
When I was through, the teacher was somewhat in a state of shock. His mouth was open and he just couldn't believe what I was saying. And he's teaching these children revolutionary change. And I said, "The reason why people are dropping out of school and finding what they're learning in the classes is not meaningful, is that the teachers can't tell what has happened to them. Therefore, they can't instruct them on how to survive, or explain the news of the day. The teachers themselves will not face the fact that the country was overthrown. So how can they teach a class on American History that is meaningful to the people that are going out in today's society?"
GLORIA: When the whole basis of this country is freedom, how could they explain to the kids that there was a coup d'etat?
MAE: That's right. The whole basis of free speech, of free choice, of candidates, and places to meet and congregate, and express your opinion. But you're photographed at every meeting you go to. There's recordings of your voice. You're put into a data system. The threat of losing a job or getting a security clearance hangs over you — your economic independence. You're intimidated down the line, and you feel it. And then what do you do with that kind of intimidation?
You see, the system was set up after the political assassination of John Kennedy to bring in more repression. Then in 1968, after the assassination of Robert Kennedy, national security and wire-tapping and surveillance increased even more. So that in order to effect a change you have to speak about a revolution now. And that's a long way off because people don't yet know that they've been had. They will disagree with everything I say, but they haven't examined the documents — and that's a very pathetic situation to be in.
From working on this work all this time, I have formed a few opinions or notes about things that have happened in the past eight years that have effected me. The first thing I had to learn was not to be bitter. I had to adjust my vision of things to how they were, and be tolerant that other people had not yet caught up with what I was seeing; even though they didn't do the data and work, and they would say, "I don't have the time that you have. I don't have the leisure," they still don't want to know what I did with that leisure; to find out my statements. I have backed up everything with documents, even from the words of the Warren Commission themselves. Or the Chief of Police in Dallas. But they don't want that. They still want to go back to another world. So even if I document it, the excuse, "I don't have the time to do your work" is a lie, because they really should say, "I don't have the interest to know." And I had to be very tolerant; I have to be very tolerant of people because I can see events that occur and not be afraid to look at them right as they are, like a diagnosis of a disease. Other people are going to have to wait many years to find out what happened to them. I have to not be bitter with them. That doesn't mean I have to accept them or respect their opinion, but I have to not be bitter with them and just say, "Here's the material. And this is the way you handle your life, and I feel sorry for you. If you want to come I'll show you. But I feel sorry for you."
Another thing I learned that was really a disappointment was that the intellectual class, or the liberal, does not care to know at all. He is not intelligent. And this turns you off to formal education. It teaches you how Nazi Germany came about. The educated class do not care to know either. You could see why people who effected a change in the assassination would keep the truth from coming out. But there's no groundswell of professors of history to my house yet, and I've been on the air for twenty weeks. And there's no intellectual curiosity of members of the Democratic Party, or the Republican Party, or the lawyers in the community, or Fulton Freeman, who worked with John Kennedy. He's the head of Monterey Institute. These intellectual places of learning are headed by people who do not want you to usurp their position by saying that they have some responsibility for making the world any different. They just want to do it; they want their position. And they will turn off the stations. Or they will hang on to one thing you say and say, "That's not true, therefore, nothing else is true." But there are walking liberals around here that are having lunch with campaign people, and they're going to listen to various people who come through here. And I'm telling you that the people they're going to dine and place at certain table arrangements and meet at the airport are puppets. They may as well be Geppetto carrying Pinnochio on a string. They're all a bunch of Geppettos. And they're carrying these monkeys — these candidates around. And if you show them truth, they don't want it. They want to be Geppettos, and they want to carry the little strings of their candidates, and play their little roles, and groom their little children, their candidates — like their own children — in their own image.
GLORIA: They want it the way it was, and it hasn't been that way for many, many years, and....
MAE: That's right.
GLORIA: They just, I guess they won't accept it.
MAE: They will not accept it. And then you wonder, "Well what is all the education process about, outside of the fact that it's to earn a living? What are you really learning? And what are your teachers really teaching the children?"
I am going to extend an invitation to members of the faculty of Carmel High and Monterey Peninsula College, or Pacific Grove High, or other schools around here, to come to my home over Christmas. And maybe the teachers are listening, or the students want to come with their teachers. They can write to KLRB and give me their name and address and I will reach them and they can come to my home: not to be brainwashed or to believe what I am saying, but just to see how raw evidence or material is accumulated.
They'll take the kids out to Smuckers — there's a Smuckers out in Salinas — to see how Jelly is made, and see strawberries put into jars, because that is very safe. But if you say, "I want to show you how your government was overthrown in 1963," that's very dangerous — to put that thought into their heads — because then it requires work like Benjamin Franklin or Thomas Jefferson did. It requires giving up some of the goodies or the luxury of a good night sleep sometimes. They just won't.
I also learned how uninformed people are, because everybody plays the authority on different subjects. You go out to dinner parties Friday, Saturday, Sunday night, and people pass off their knowledge as if they really read a paper. Once you study any particular subject really well — like I've done the political assassinations for eight years — you begin to gauge people's awareness about political events. They will throw out things that are totally untrue. And if they do it on that subject, they'll do it on many, many other things. Instead of saying I have no opinion, or this is what Mark Lane says, or Mae Brussell says, they say, "No, that's not true."
I feel that most people who come to me and talk about world events, and want to share an opinion about Mr. Reihnquist or Hall (now nominated for Justice of the Supreme Court) major decisions about to come up, or opinions on things that are in the news, when they bring up the subject and I say, "Oh yes, I read about it this week." [And it turns out] they didn't read any of the articles at all. I don't know how they get their opinions. But I sit here and read the paper and cut out articles, and I'm willing to have a dialogue about it. I find that most people are totally uninformed. They don't read, or they'll read the top of an article and never get to the bottom, and the bottom is the most interesting of all.
In fact, a propos of the John Kennedy anniversary of his death, here was an article in the [San Francisco] Chronicle this Sunday about the Texas Book Depository building. And this is a perfect example of my friends reading the first few paragraphs, and then when we get to the boom of the article, they haven't read that. The best is often at the very end. If a subject catches your interest, it is good to just sit and read it all the way through. Many articles are of interest all the way through. And I suggest that you try that once if you want to be knowledgeable on a subject.
Now, the article about the Book Depository was interesting. This is the beginning of the article:
"Eight years ago tomorrow a sick, young, self-styled Marxist named Lee Harvey Oswald sneaked up to the six floor of a drab red brick building in downtown Dallas. There he waited until 11:30 a.m., when he fired three rifle shots that rang 'round the world and took the life of President John F. Kennedy.
"In the years since that awful moment, there have been countless controversies about the assassination. Most of them have by now faded away — all that is, all except one."
I'm going to end the quotation there to say, you see, they're hoping the discrepancies have faded away. And I'm quoting articles and magazines that are coming out every day that bring the issue very much to life, that are in the news, but they want you to think it has faded away.
They go on to tell you about the Texas Book Depository. This was the building that Oswald worked in for six weeks before the motorcade went in front of it. It stands at the corner there where the car passed around the curve into the underpass. After the assassination the top floor of the building was closed off — where Oswald was supposed to have been. Nobody can use that floor; At the time that the researchers wanted to reconstruct the crimes of the trajectory of the bullets, they couldn't use that floor. When NBC News made a four hour television series on reconstructing this murder in order to put down Jim Garrison's case, they went to the fifth floor to duplicate the shots of Oswald. But the trajectory from the sixth floor is higher up and straighter down, which would change the course of the bullet because it was to enter in his back, five inches below the neck and exit up-hill through the adam's apple which is against the laws of physics. But they've never been able to duplicate or try this shot either with Oswald's weapon or from the sixth floor, and nobody has been allowed up there; that's been closed off.
But the Book Depository was open for business until about a year ago, in April 1970, when a man from Nashville, Tennessee by the name of Aubrey Mayhew bought the building. He is known as a Kennedy buff; he researches the murder of John Kennedy. He paid $650,000 for the building, and the city of Dallas was glad to have the building sold. They thought this would end the controversy and that he would tear it down or do something with it.
But now the citizens are worried about the building, because they had hoped it would be torn down and some thought maybe it would be a museum. But it turns out Aubrey Mayhew has a different intention for the building. What he wants to do is put a collection of 20,000 items of Kennedy items — items pertaining to the assassination that he has collected — into this building. The Dallas people are very concerned that it will become a tourist trap. They said they have one memorial to John Kennedy and they don't want people putting another memorial to him right at the corner where he was shot.
Across from the Book Depository is a tourist trap which shows movies of the assassination and a shrilling voice which says, "My God! They're going to kill us all!" I've been in that place across the street, and it's not really a living memorial to John Kennedy. They sell bumper stickers that say, "AMERICA, LOVE IT OR LEAVE IT" and all the American flags, and ash trays with Jacqueline's picture on it. It's hardly a fitting description of a memorial. It is a real tourist trap right across the street from the Book Depository.
But what Mr. Mayhew wants to do is use this building to house microfilms and books and newspapers about the assassination, and provide facilities for what he calls, in quotes: "A continuing study of what happened here that day." In other words, Aubrey Mayhew does not think the case is closed. And if he would house his 22,000 items, like my items in my home (my 28,000 pages of original research just cross-filing the witnesses testimony in the Warren Report, and my 300 books) you can imagine what he has. And if you put [in there] copies of people's research and all the books on the subject, you would begin to understand what happened in Dallas that day.
Now that isn't pleasing the Dallas people because they want to forget that anything happened at that corner, in spite of the fact that three or four thousand people pass every single day and take pictures of the corner.
And one man wanted to buy Mr. Mayhew out, so he offered him a million dollars for the bricks in the building; the bricks alone. And he turned it down.
And the wax museum offered him one million dollars.
You know, money is no problem. You can buy Mr. Mayhew up if he can be had. Because you want to tear down this living symbol of John Kennedy.
And the Tragedy Museum offered him a $100,00 just for the casings from the sixth floor window that Oswald was supposed to have poked his rifle out. But Mr. Mayhew said, "I want a continuing study of what happened here that day."
Now, the people in Dallas is simply furious. And Senator Mike McKool wants funds to be brought up through the State Legislature to buy the building back. He is having a fit. He said, "It has tremendous historical value and it should belong to the people of Texas." And they want to tear down this building. The State Legislature in Texas is coming up with millions of dollars trying to get a law to tear the building down. They say, "The one thing we have to do is to remove this entire building, or keep it for ourselves because the State of Texas can come up with money to make a fitting memorial."
Now Mr. Mayhew isn't asking for money, and he doesn't care about that. He wants it as a living memorial to the memory of what happened.
So then the Legislature came up with another suggestion: they suggested that they leave the front of the building up and tear down the whole back of it, and just leave the front standing up. What they said was it can't be remodeled properly and it is in good condition. In quotes:
"What you have to do basically is gut the thing and keep the exterior as it is. My personal feeling is the site is important, a national landmark."
This is Raymond Nasher, a Dallas developer and cultural leader. Mr. Mayhew has said that over his dead body will he let them do it. He said that he did not want them to take that from him. In quotes:
"They'll take it over my dead body. I will fight it with everything I have and I'll fight it to the Supreme Court."
When he gets to the Supreme Court he's going to have Mr. Powell and Mr. Reihnquest. So that's another subject. Mr. Powell is being supported by Leon Jaworski — we've mentioned this before — who represented the State of Texas for the Warren Commission, who's head of the American Bar Association. And Mr. Powell has a quotation in the paper, in U.S. News this week, defending the opinion of Epstein — who worked defending Oswald's position in the Warren Commission — who wrote a book called Inquest. And he refers to Epstein as an authority on the killers of panthers. Instead of using material that Computers and Automation has used, Mr. Powell is heavily associated with people who would defend the Warren Report. So try and take this case to the Supreme Court.
GLORIA: You are listening to Dialogue: Assassination, with Mae Brussell. This is KLRB, Carmel.
(END OF FIRST HALF)
MAE: When I look at all the accumulation of Kennedy material that I have in my home, I have to say, "What are the advantages of working at years on one subject?" Like you work in a laboratory to cure a disease. What are the advantages of studying with one thing that long, you know? And I think the main hope that I wanted for this nation was that when they saw truth they would recognize it, and be able to function and get the elective system back into the hands of the people.
GLORIA: Have you found that in talking to people, Mae, that they do recognize truth?
MAE: No, that is a sad situation. People do not yet accept the fact of what happened in Dallas. They write about every subject that's wrong with the nation and they have not yet accepted these facts and the information of the various researchers. Each person is off on his own trip. And he's not ready yet for the truth of what happened: that killed John Kennedy, or Robert Kennedy, or Martin Luther King. That's a pitiful situation, and I don't know the remedy. I just keep working and say, "Well, the facts are here if you want them. Anyone who wants to see them can come to my home. And I'm listed in the phone directory. If you don't want [to call me], call through KLRB and leave your name." A lot of people are afraid to leave their names because of their jobs or their situation; someone would know who's showing an interest — that's how afraid people are. But I'm not afraid of you calling me. I will welcome people into my home to see the research; It's there if they want to know what happened. But by and large most people don't want to know.
But at my own personal level I feel that I have been keeping up with the times that I live in. Today's news is a part of me. I cut out twenty articles this morning from two papers. I understand many things as they are happening. I'm knowledgeable of the sixties and seventies. It has eliminated a generation gap in our family because the children have never been lied to and they see things in the paper, and they see evidence or documents in my home. We're not afraid to look at them. And I didn't make them up. It's a guideline for them on how not to be fooled by people on the outside world.
I think of something that happened this week, where my daughter was with a gentleman who teaches at the high school. He had a group of young people at his home this Sunday night. He's respected among the young people in the community; he's "Mr. Cool". He teaches at this school and he helps them with their problems. He has sort of this seminar group at his home. He sort of took my daughter aside and said, "Now you don't really believe this stuff that your mother says, do you? And you can't believe all this conspiracy thing? How can you live with it? And you don't believe it." She was really shocked. She said, "Well, you don't think that Oswald killed John Kennedy, do you?" And this particular teacher said, "Oh come now, of course he did. Or if he didn't what difference does it make?" And their reaction...
GLORIA: I get that a lot. (laughter)
MAE: Yeah. She came home really sick in the belly, like, "I like this man." And she begged him and his wife to come over to our home and meet with me. And she likes him, but she can see what he's doing: he's trying to help young people. He's helping them just on an individual level, and he thinks that's where it's at.
She sees laws and repressions coming down so heavily that we will know when it's time to leave the United States. We're ready to go, because other people can't see it. It's not that we don't like it here, but things are coming down everyday. And we point them out. This kind of person makes it necessary for us to leave, because he can't accept what is happening.
So he mentioned to her — talking about Robert Kennedy — "And you don't believe that story either, do you?" And she says, "Well, don't you know that Sirhan didn't kill Robert Kennedy?" And she mentioned the fact that there's ten bullets in the Ambassador Hotel. And even if he shot his gun all eight times, there's still ten bullets in the police department in L.A. And this man just didn't understand that, and she was trying to stick with certain facts that she knew. And she came home really very crushed, almost ready to cry, like, "Mom, why don't you have them over? Because they don't know what's going on, and they're trying to help us, and they're trying to help other people in their world."
And all they're doing is helping people adjust and become human, or humanistic, into a mechanical age, where the laws are coming down to keep track of everybody, photograph everybody, make information on everybody, intimidate them. How can you be human in this kind of world?
I got a call 11:30 about two nights ago from a boy who listens to the program. And he was going down Carmel Valley Road from Ford Road out to Pacific Grove, and he was photographed twice — he was on his Honda. And he said, "How do you handle this? What do you do?" And I said, "Well, why did they photograph you? Are you political? Were you with somebody? What were you doing?" And he said, "I don't know why, but I got a ticket when I got to Pacific Grove, and I'm going to take it to the court and object to it. And while I stood there they took my picture again."
And I put together what he was saying, but it was a real fear. He called me because he heard the programs and he thought maybe I could ease him of some of his fears about what's happening in our society.
Now if you go out in Carmel or down Carmel Valley Road, or into Pebble Beach, or Monterey, you see every fifth or sixth car is a police car. I don't know what's going to happen on the peninsula or what's going to come down, but there is something very big happening in this area and around the country. In certain areas in Los Angeles they're about ready for a certain bloody turmoil that I got information that's going to take place. And something is going to happen here. These police cars are everywhere.
I don't know why, but this boy called me. He's not going to call that teacher who's helping the other people in the area with problems, because they don't have the answers. He knows that I'm coming close to it, and he called for some advice.
GLORIA: It's unnerving. I walked out of my front door one day and there was somebody photographing the front door...movies.
MAE: Yeah.
GLORIA: Of me standing at my front door.
MAE: Well, when I left you, Gloria, about three weeks ago, I went to Pacific Grove to leave a cassette that we made to have typed up, and I pulled off a side street. Some friends of mine and my daughters were pulling into the main street that I went turning off and they honked and we waved at each other. And then they were just shocked because there was a blue truck in back and [they saw] a microphone and somebody talking on the microphone. They called to tell me. And when I came in here last week there was a sheriff's car at the corner of my street talking on his microphone, and then pulling up to the corner.
I don't know what's happening. I know what's happening, but the thing is, that if you take the information or the data or the facts on the political assassinations, then work down to the local area, and you're knowledgeable, you're not taken by surprise by things later. And I feel that I can handle whatever comes along and try to absorb it. I might not have all the answers, but I'm not in for the shock that a lot of people are going to have about a year from now, or two years from now.
Another advantage to working with this material for so long is you develop certain traits: you develop a persistence or a curiosity. And hopefully you can make it useful to somebody. But you believe in something and you stay with it and you develop a certain strength. And the information fits together. You'd be better if it didn't fit together, you know? It would be better if a long time ago the inconsistencies became the answer and the question became answered. But you have a certain feeling of honesty within yourself that is hard to define. If you have that quality you know what it is, and you have [it] in your actions or your faith. And if you don't have it, you also show those same anxieties.
Now there was a picture in the paper of Ted Kennedy standing over the grave of his brother.
GLORIA: That says an awful lot.
MAE: Yes. He went at seven in the morning, and he's standing there with his arms crossed. And you get the feeling like he's asking, "What should I do? Do I take this one more leap? Three boys are dead, and there's one living. Am I going to answer this particular call and show them that they can't intimidate me, or cow me, or dump that girl into the river and do the things that they've done? Do you take that chance? Or, do you stand by all of the children of the family that were left behind as the living male? Do you serve your nation? Or what do you do?"
I'm not saying I agree with much of what Ted Kennedy does. Or, I don't know what's in his head all of the time. We don't know anybody's minds, really. But it's more of a human being that comes through in this picture than the one that was down at Miami talking to the labor this week. Mr. [George] Meeny spoke of Mr. Nixon in a way that was frightening, where he actually used the word 'hatred' for the President.
Even in Dallas when John Kennedy was killed, and certain people in that community were responsible for that murder, they never said they hated him. They accused him of different things. But in the paper this week the President was accused by George Meeny of being a weak and dangerous man. And he said, in quotes:
"He was shaking like this," and he moved his hands trembling. "This is a weak man, and a weak man is a dangerous man. And he's weak because he's scared."
And he insists that there have been deliberate deceptions by the Nixon administration, and he was lashing out at Richard Nixon for the position he has taken.
George Meeny feels strongly that the country is in danger by the President because it was one thing for a strong President to practice summatry, but when he is weak it is something else.
And he is very much afraid of the actions of Richard Nixon.
Now, I do not approve of the method of release that people use today of the comedy; the funny movie that's out: Milhouse. Or the movie on Trisha's wedding. Or the book by Phillip Roth, or the Gang. I've mentioned these before. Hitler was very funny in the same way, and I don't think these things are funny. The only funny thing are you people who laugh. There's something very sick about the silly grin of listening to funny stories or records about Richard Nixon. I have a sense of humor and I laugh at my work sometimes. And I have a button collection, such as, "Sterilize LBJ - No More Ugly Children" and so forth. But LBJ wasn't funny either; there was nothing funny about LBJ or anything he did. And there's nothing funny about Richard Nixon.
Now, in case you didn't catch the news this week, on the anniversary of John Kennedy's death, John Connally was asked his opinions of that particular day. And he said, in quotes:
"I didn't realize today was November the 22nd, and therefore if I don't respond I have no comments further." He looked startled when he was asked about the question and said his energies were on President Nixon's economic program.
John Connally was in the car when John Kennedy was murdered.
GLORIA: That would be a hard day to forget. I can't forget it.
MAE: Nobody in the nation can forget it. And I think when you work with these pathological liars — and that's what they have to be — John Connally could never forget that day. Nobody standing on the corner forgot it. Certainly sitting in the car nobody forgot it. Or Mr. Kellerman, the Secret Service man who was sitting in the front seat who said, "A flurry of bullets came at us." And the Commission said, "You mean two or three." He said, "Gentlemen, I've been in this too long. It was a flurry of bullets." And Mr. Greer who drove the car never forgot it, because he said if he had ever seen the sight he never would have taken that route. They slowed down to 10 or 12 miles an hour and went under a bridge that was unguarded, in front of a building that was unguarded. He didn't forget it. He almost went insane, and had to retire. He didn't forget that day.
John Connally is Secretary of Treasury because of that day. And his mind adjusts to the fact that it never happened. People don't refer to him as being associated with the Dallas trip, but it was John Connally, Lyndon Johnson, and Clifton Carter who were in El Paso in the early summer spring with John Kennedy and said, "You are coming to Dallas in the fall to bridge the gap in the Democratic Party. He was one of the men responsible for the trip, and went to Washington — John Kennedy didn't want to be in that motorcade or be in Dallas — and John Connally was one of the last men who went to Washington to persuade him to come. It is a very nice fact that our brain accommodates to these particular instances. So if he is protecting his gray matter, well and good, but don't you forget that a man who has the power that he has to tie up your taxes and your economy, and decisions on wages and prices and rentals, if you can raise your rent, or get a raise in salary, John Connally is in that position because of Dallas in 1963.
And I will make a prediction to you, listening audience, that he will be President of the United States someday. I could give you many predictions that I have made in the past that came true. I brought a list of them in, Gloria. I predict that John Connally will be President of the United States. And that Richard Nixon will become a past thing, probably. I think that Ronald Reagan, Spiral Agnew and John Connally will rule America. And that is a prediction. Take it for what it's worth; sit on it for three or four years. Get in touch with me in a few years.
One of the things that I spoke to the students about at school is the fact that they are too young to remember anything about John Kennedy. So that when you talk about the contrasts between the present administration and Lyndon Johnson and John Kennedy, it's hard to visualize just what the differences were between these men. I recommended to the students that they borrow records and listen to speeches to see what the world was going to be like or what the hope was, or the promise, and see how far we've gone in these years.
This morning's paper had a review of a play that opened up in New York called "JFK". A man comes out in two acts, in two different suits, and you see the back of his head, and he reads the speeches of John Kennedy. And the review says, in quotes:
"This is not a cozy evening of homey memories. Kennedy style is on the stage and you are generally alone with the man and his public utterances. Starting with his Presidential press conferences where the reporters ask him questions. And there's a background of unstereotype pictures that go on a screen, and you wonder 'where on earth did they get them?' And a contemporary soundtrack, and a clock ticking away that is very effective. There are no references to his wife or family, but the evening cliffs off with the final pistol shot. It's done very tastefully. The play is called JFK. The review says it is not a drama, nor is it a show, but to see and hear it with tightening throat is to face what we have and what we lost, and perhaps what we all were."
In the newspaper, Sunday, was an article called, "An Expert's Warning: Beware of the Experts." It's by a man who worked in the Pentagon, in the CIA, in the State Department, in Research Analysis Corporation. He worked on arms control on disarmaments study. He worked at Cal Tech, the University of California, for years for our government. His name is Sydney Slomich, and this is what he tells you:
"Take your society, your laws, integrity and your country back from the experts. I have been an expert and I tell you the experts have gone wild. And they have grown like cancer. And nothing is more expert than cancer and nothing is a better example of power without purpose. And cancer is ignorant, but it works and it grows. I have left all of the government experts behind,"
he said. And he wants something that is real. He worked with the social scientists, and he's watched what they have done to our society. He said,
"One of the leading social scientists has said that the chief accomplishment of this age is to change so many political problems into technical ones. We see a Vietnam as Auschwitz; the result of technical solutions to political problems. I spent a number of years as an officer in the CIA,"
he said. And he gives his background in the various jobs.
"For fifteen, sixteen years I worked exclusively within the established foreign policy and the government. And only in the late sixties did I come to understand that the government and the business, and what is currently called the Establishment, were inert. And they were committed to the shape of things as they have been to inaugurate human policies that for change the people must take the government back to themselves. Only when people are awaken from the grasping power from these mindless mega institutions are you going to effect changes."
Now he goes into the fact that for fifteen years at home and abroad the United States Government is not concerned with human life or it's purposes, but only with ignorant power and control and with death. He said:
"This government is the greatest polluter on the earth...is an agent of potentially total repression, and it is the greatest threat to continued human life that the world has ever faced. I do not say these things lightly,"
he said.
"The entire system of expertise and secrecy ..."
and he means the secrecy in our government,
"...is designed to prevent people in this country from determining their own destinies, and it's basically fake. Over the last twenty years I've had continuous top secret clearances from: the United States Army, State Department, CIA, Defense. I never learned one thing of value in this secret system. Everything valuable I have learned with known and perceived in writing, from an open and scholarly unclassified source, or from newspapers, journals, or from my own observation. There is no silent majority. Man is a speaking animal. There is only a silenced majority, repressed, plant down, frightened. And you have been silenced."
And he said,
"Look in your war rooms at the walnut massive files, contracts for millions of dollars worth of death, and death research, fancy desks and chairs, paraphernalia of power, and they are all yours, and they belong to you. Take them back and make human use of them, and make this your society as it is your life. Everything you do — everything you can do to please yourself to build your life is more beautiful and more real than the fakery, abstraction, obsession, and desire for death that rules this country today. That's the only secret worth knowing. Once you know it, you can take back this nation with difficulty and end the American Nightmare. Make it the American Dream."
End quote. Now the reason I read the article is to get back to the fact that the information on the death of John Kennedy that would prove who killed that man eight years ago is locked up in the National Archives under the designation of National Security Top Secret. If Oswald did it alone we could all examine the evidence. If there was a conspiracy, it's gone eight years. We are on a road of death. Everybody working inside the department is going to speak up who has a moral fiber in him. Mr. Slomac is writing a book. People are going to have to talk about this system. The book is called "The American Nightmare."
Computer and Automation — I'll go back to that again — every month has one article on the coup d'etat that overthrew the country. I can't emphasize this enough, and I want to say, one more time, that anybody who does not believe me, and wants to get together and examine a little bit of the documentary evidence, I will share it with you. I'm not here to scare you. You've been in my home, Gloria. You've seen the amount of research.
GLORIA: Oh yes. Right.
MAE: We're not here to scare people.
GLORIA: No, just to wake them up.
MAE: Yeah. I mean what is this all about? You know, somebody listened to the show and said, "Well, she's making a lot of rumors about the Kennedys and Marilyn Monroe. What kind of research does she have?" Or, "She's talking about drug problems." Or, "She's talking about drugs, she can't be knowledgeable about....
GLORIA: They'll pick up on one thing — and possibly with the intention of discrediting you — and then the stock phrase is, "If she's wrong on this point then I question the rest of her points." And then you have to go back and say, "You know, everything that she says is documented."
I had a talk just yesterday with a young man who's also a teacher, and these same points came up. It's almost like I could make a recording. When I meet people and they ask me what I do at the station, and then I'm hesitant to say that I do the Dialogue: Assassination because many people just, "Oh, forget it." You know?.
MAE: They don't want to hear about it.
GLORIA: And, I said, "Well, you really should know about it, because the time is very short." And usually that makes their ears perk up. But then I have to go through the whole thing again, you know, about your whole eight years of research, and document you, when I shouldn't have to.
MAE: Well, these same people that will take one sentence I say on an entire program and say, "Well, if this is what she said, then nothing else is accurate." Those same people, if I met them six years ago and told them that our government financed a war in Laos — it's been going on for six years— or that there's a systematic plan to kill off all the Panthers, or if I were to say that our CIA killed Diem for a particular reason, they would have judged me totally insane then. I was saying things about the funding of money and foundations, and the connections of foreign policy to the State Department and the CIA, that people would have said, "That's not true."
And if I quote an article by Evelyn Knight, you know, who came out last year — she's the head of the whole State Department, and she's a very right-winger, if you can put her in that classification. Her husband is a millionaire. She's very much establishment. And she works hand in glove with J. Edgar Hoover. She's in charge of the passport department. She had an article in Time Magazine, which is an establishment magazine, saying the State Department is riddled with deaths and political assassinations and stinks to high heaven — her quotation was to that effect. If I say it, people say, "Well where do you get the documents?" I'm sure that Evelyn Knight has documents of these political assassinations. She doesn't just take it out of thin air.
But if you don't want to believe it's happening, you don't have to believe it.
I was speaking to a teacher out at MPC on the telephone this weekend. Somebody didn't think that we could get along, or that he didn't like what I said out there because of his political stand. And I said, "Look. Whatever you think politically, I probably agree with you more than I do the people you think I'm lined up with." Because Richard Russell, a member of the Warren Commission, had a news conference in January 1970, where he said, "I never believed Oswald did it alone."
And I brought in a book — we just briefly have time — it's written by Jessie Curry, Chief of Police in Dallas. And he wrote a book about two years ago, and it's called "The Retired Dallas Police Chief: Jessie Curry Reveals His Personal JFK File". Now everybody accuses the Dallas Police of a conspiracy. And I say not all members were involved. Well, on page eighty-one Jessie Curry goes into the story of the assassination and he says, "The assassination evidence: How does the puzzle fit?" And this is what he says in quotes:
"Within twelve hours after the assassination of John Kennedy, investigators were overwhelmed by the vast amount of evidence that linked Oswald to the president's death. And in the years that followed, many theories and counter-theories were presented. The evidence gathered during the assassination weekend was dispersed in many directions. The FBI had already begun to seize evidence at the scene. Secret Service agents seized the President's body before the required autopsy was performed. Although most of the evidence gathered by the police department did not remain in our hands very long, early Friday evening, November 22nd, FBI agents were anxious to have all the physical evidence of the murder released to them."
Dallas police officials couldn't go into it. He said:
"Much of what was released to the FBI, I took careful note of the evidence, and kept a detailed personal file. Some of the evidence has been completely misrepresented in stories told about the assassination. And bits of seemingly important evidence have remained almost completely ignored. Theoretical reconstruction of what might have happened should not be allowed to dominate the actual eyewitness accounts and evidence. Many questions remain as to how the evidence fits together. Every man must decide for himself and act as his own jury."
Now that's Jesse Curry of the Dallas Police who feels these things should be available.
In his book on page eighty-five he has a picture of Oswald's weapon. And he tells you that the fingerprints were such poor quality they weren't able to identify any of Oswald's fingerprints on it.
On page eighty-seven of his book he says that a paraffin test was taken of Oswald's face that did not reveal nitrates from having fired a rifle, thus offering no proof that Oswald had fired a rifle.
On page eighty-seven the Chief of Police of Dallas said that there were retouched versions of pictures of Oswald with the weapon used in magazines and newspapers. Why were they retouched?
On page eighty-nine of his book he goes into a list of pieces of evidence that were picked up by the FBI for tests and he knows that none of them really fit the case: A paper bag was picked up from the book depository that he was supposed to have brought the gun in with. And then he shows that there was no evidence that Oswald had the gun in there: there were no fibers from the blanket; He says no fibers were found associated with the blanket from his shirt on the paper bag, or on the shirt. And he goes into the evidence of Oswald's fingerprints that weren't on the gun, the nitrate test that wasn't there, and a lot of discrepancies that later were to come out. He said no latent fingerprints of any value were on Oswald's revolver. That's the one that shot Officer Tippit.
Now this is what I keep trying to say on these shows, Gloria: I'm not talking about Birchers' bullets or communists' bullets, or Republican or Democrat, or Peace and Freedom. These are not political issues.
This is the Chief of Police of Dallas who has written a book telling you that the nitrate test showed he didn't shoot anybody. There were no fingerprints on his revolver and none on the rifle. The pictures of him were doctored. How many more of the actual facts do people need to get involved in what really happened?
It's just shocking to me to accumulate this amount of material and to have people walk up and say, "Well, if you think there's drugs on campus, then your research isn't accurate." We can handle that, but I feel sorry for these people because the documents are here if they will listen every week as we roll on and on with more facts and evidence and keep their minds open. I think they will gain a lot by not being afraid to listen.
And I thank you for the opportunity to share with them.
GLORIA: Oh, we thank you, Mae.
MAE: You have the courage.
ANNOUNCER: You've been listening to Dialogue. Dialogue is a presentation of the Public Affairs and Special Events Department of KLRB News.
(END)
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