CIA, SHRINKS, TORTURE - IN CONTEXT - & JFK KILLING

A SECRET ORDER: Investigating the High Strangeness and Synchronicity in the

 JFK Assassination, v. 1 (Walterville, OR.: Trine Day, 2013) – by H. P. ALBARELLI, JR.

Rev. by Hugh Murray

            After reading this book, I can only rephrase Gurtrude Stein, “Is there a there there?”  After concluding the book, I am still wondering, what did I read?  I can understand why the author declined to write a concluding chapter – there is nothing to conclude.

            I was angry after reading one chapter on “the bizarre diary of Eric Ritzek.”  The diary, found 9 months following the Kennedy killing in Dallas, was left at Trailways bus ticket office in Los Angeles.  The diary describes the hypnotic abilities of two college students, Erik and his roommate Charles.  These two master craftsmen use their powers of mind control to hypnotize Oswald to kill Pres. Kennedy, and then do the same to Jack Ruby so he can murder Oswald.  At one point, Erik implies that his superiors are from another planet. (p. 336)  So, the people behind the assassination in Dallas are from another planet!  Seems I read that decades ago in headlines of the National Enquirer, or was it the Globe?  That chapter was a total waste of my time.

            In later chapters the author describes something, and then he repeats the same story as it was told to Congressional investigators, or the FBI, or other officials.(as on 336)  This redundancy both lengthens and dullens the book.  While Albarelli pads this volume to over 400 pages, he promises to detail certain items in the next volume.  Had Alb removed the repetition and fluff, and added what might be interesting from the proposed volume 2, then he might have written one worthy book.

            Despite my criticisms, the book is not worthless.  On a very personal note, Albarelli answered one lingering question for me.  I recall a pretty girl in my high school named Rose Cheramie.  I have always wondered if she were the same person that warned of the impending assassination of Kennedy when deserted by two men on a road in rural Louisiana a few days before the killing in Dallas.  As I attended the same high school (and junior high) as Lee Oswald, I have always wondered if he might have known the gal in school who years later predicted the assassination of the President.  Well, Albarelli cleared it up.  The Rose Cherami who was in the Louisiana State Hospital was some 15 years older than my high-schoolers.  Moreover, she had been born Melba Youngblood in Houston.  The older Rose also asserted that she knew Oswald, but more through Jack Ruby, whom she claimed was a lover of Oswald.(97)  She was not the same Rose Cheramie from Easton High.  Or, to echo Stein again, a rose is a rose is a rose, but in this case, they are two distinct roses.

            Many years ago I attended as many sessions of the Clay Shaw trial as my schedule permitted – I was then teaching at university and could occasionally arrange time to see the trial.  For a few sessions, I met a friend there, and we sat as spectators.  After I left New Orleans, I maintained an annual contact with that friend, and usually asked, if there were new leads on the Kennedy case.    Decades ago he told me about a woman, quite respectable, a scientist, who had a story of conspiracy.  But she had no physical proof of her story.  I was pleased to read that the experience of Adele Edisen is now a chapter in print in Albarelli’s book.

            Albarelli, who had previously written about CIA experiments on innocent Americans, one such that resulted in the death of a CIA agent, here elaborates on such experiments.   Indeed, the chapter on Adele Edisen might be nothing more than a famous doctor, Dr. Jose Rivera, spiking her drink with LSD.  But it might have been that, and considerably more, as asking her to telephone Oswald in New Orleans and giving him an order to kill the boss.

            Albarelli  is good at showing that government agencies were involved in medical experiments on Americans, in juvenile detention centers in New York, in Louisiana in this hospital and that.  Perhaps, I have become more cynical concerning medicine, doctors, and their opportunism.  Albarelli shows that some of David Ferrie’s gay teen “friends” were treated with LSD in the hope of curing them of homosexuality.  This was in the same Louisiana hospital in which Oswald later filed a job application, and in which Rose Cherami was treated in November 1963.  It is also where doctors connected to the CIA conducted experiments.  Albarelli spends many pages connecting doctors who were engaged in CIA medical inquiries.  Perhaps, Albarelli should have gone the other way in his writing – asking, if the CIA requested them, were there any hospitals or facilities that would refuse unwarranted experiments upon patients?

            That Dr. A knew Dr. B who knew Dr. C who was involved in CIA experiments with Dr. D is more reminiscent of the 6 degrees of separation from Kevin Bacon than proof that all were engaged in misconduct.  Reading page after page, I am thinking, what does this prove?  And to take a totally contrarian view, it was not that long ago historically, when doctors had to rely on grave robbers to gain access to a corpse upon which to perform medical teaching techniques and discoveries.  And one might glance at my article on Nazi medicine to appreciate more the methods of Western medicine.  Though one may readily criticize the arrogance of the American doctors working for federal agencies, I suspect they were quite minor when compared to the practices to end deviancy (especially the political varieties) as practiced contemporaneously under Communism in the Soviet Union.

            In his first chapter Albarelli exposes the opportunism of a psychiatrist who had examined Lee Oswald for half an hour when the youth was truant, apprehended, and processed by NY Social Services.  When Oswald was arrested and murdered years later in Dallas, the New York psychiatrist seized the moment to gain fame, prestige, and probably more money, by lying – pretending that he had predicted many of the problems Oswald was to encounter because of his distorted personality.  So what if the doctor exaggerated, lied?  He was simply stepping on the grave of one of the most hated men in America.  The doctor was squeezing that half hour interview into 15 minutes of his own fame.  Is such opportunism – a very human characteristic – a crime?  Unfortunately, Albarelli devotes nearly 90 pages of a chapter to this psychiatrist.

            There were a few facts I learned in this chapter.  I was surprised to read that Guy Banister put up the bail for Nazi leader George Lincoln Rockwell when he was arrested in New Orleans for picketing the film “Exodus.” (81)  There were rumors in New Orleans at the time that the powerful political leader of Plaquemines Parish, Judge Leander Perez, had sponsored the trip to New Orleans of Rockwell’s “hate bus.”  This was meant to counter the Freedom Rides of the Congress of Racial Equality that were also making headlines in the spring of 1961.  (Strangely, the NOPD was not very sympathetic to the Rockwell group.  Recall, in the 1950s Banister had been active Superintendent of the NOPD.  Yet, not only were the Nazis arrested for merely picketing a movie, but they were required to cover the main sign on their hate bus – gas (or kill, I forget which) Jews, Queers, Commies, and perhaps, a 4^th group to be terminated.  We arrived too late to see the uniformed Nazis arrested, but did see police arrest picketers in civies.))  Perhaps, more pertinent to the events in Dallas, spring 1961 also witnessed the defeat of the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba.

            Much of Albarelli’s work centers around US agencies and their efforts to use medical experiments to modify, control, interrogate, torture, etc.  I shall now go off-topic in order to return to the topic of the book later.  On 29 Sept. 2013 CBS TV’s “60 Minutes” opened its new season with a segment on how the closing of mental institutions in the late 60s-early 70s has resulted in many insane people being warehoused in jails and prisons.  Worse, because it is now much more difficult to commit someone to a hospital for treatment, many of the insane are on the streets.  Some of them are quite dangerous.  In a similar vein, Ann Coulter, in her column of 18 Sept. 2013 noted that with the closing of the old asylums, and the difficulty of having someone committed, America has seen the rise of the homeless, AND the shootings by crazies of large numbers of innocents in movie theaters, in schools, in universities, even in a naval facility.  Before the reforms of the 1960s, both Coulter and “60 Minutes” asserted, one did not have the mass shootings by crazies that have occurred since.  Now, it is even difficult for relatives to commit a son or daughter, unless the child is willing to be committed.  They note the result is often disastrous.

            Three films of the earlier era are related to this topic: 1) “The Snake Pit” (1948) depicting in a shocking and frightening way what may occur in the mental institutions, 2) “Street Car Named Desire,” (1951) in which Blanche DuBois (Vivien Leigh) is committed to the insane asylum after being raped by her brother-in-law (Marlon Brando), and 3) “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” (1975) in which inmate Jack Nicholson contends that those inside are just as sane as those on the outside (indeed, the inmates may be ever more sane).  The latter film (and the book that preceded it) may well have persuaded public opinion to close down most of the older mental institutions and accept the newer notions making it very difficult to have someone committed against their will.

            I was quite active in the civil rights movement in my native Louisiana.  A friend in New Orleans CORE was a white college gal from Birmingham, Alabama.  When she returned home, her parents were quite upset.  Connie had to flee hidden in the floor of a car to get to the airport so she could fly out of town.  Her parents had planned to have her committed to a mental institution and then lobotomized.  One wonders, how many suffering from civilrightsophrenia might have suffered similar fates?  (Blacks might have been diagnosed with uppityitis; gays with upthea__iatis, and so on., but whatever the scientific terminology, it was all determined to prevent deviance from the dominant society.)  Albarelli mentions LSD (90) and electric shock (128)  to cure homosexuality; and what about lobotomy for this disease too?  The parents would have their children committed for their own good, of course.  Unlike the Muslims, there was little need for “honor killings” when the state provided mental institutions and “cures.”.

            And so the promiscuous teenage girl might be committed.  And what of the wealthy widower who was suddenly enamored of a pretty young stripper?  Surely, his family might want to inherit the wealth and not see it squandered by the horny old man who must now be certified as mad?  He should be committed.   Or the poor man married to a rich woman; but he now wants to be with a poor beauty?  His wife must now be certified as insane.  If he knows the right lawyer, the right doctor, he may well have her committed.  And the reverse – the poor wife with a rich husband.  And so on.  Indeed, some of the women’s films of the era were explorations of this very theme - the husband seeking to drive the wife insane, such as “Gaslignt”(1944) with Ingrid Bergman and Charles Boyer.  To put it bluntly, family values were often imposed by brute force using the state via its mental institutions.  It was probably allowed AND EXPECTED, that the family would prevent deviancy through these measures.  Clearly, there were many abuses in these institutions that had nothing to do with the CIA.

            Perhaps the most amazing example of what might happen in a family dispute occurred in Louisiana in 1959.  Democratic Governor Earl Long, was brother of the more famous Huey Long who was assassinated in Baton Rouge in 1935 by a Dr. Carl Weiss.  (Dr. Victor Weiss examined Rose Cherami in the Louisiana hospital in November 1963, but I have no idea if Weiss of one assassination was related to the Weiss of the other.)

              Earl Long was Governor.  He and his wife, Blanche, had a falling out, possibly about his friendship with stripper Blaze Starr.  (A 1989 film starring Paul Newman, “Blaze” was a fictionalized version of their relationship.)  Blanche then had her husband, the governor of the state, committed to the insane asylum.  Earl Long, inside the hospital, was still governor.  Earl then fired the state’s head of the institution and appointed another doctor as chief administrator.  The new health chief then determined that Earl was sane, and had him released.  When Earl ran in the next election, he asserted that he was the only candidate who had been certified as sane.  On one level, it is a funny, true story.  But on another level, when even a governor could be committed against his will, for perhaps displeasing his wife, or perhaps for only on a political disagreement, one can see how reform was necessary.  Yet today, many like Ann Coulter, “60 Minutes” and myself believe that the pendulum of reform has swung too far one way, and now America must make it easier to commit the crazies.

            My purpose here is NOT to defend the CIA and its use of medicine to enhance torture or captivate minds.  But actions by CIA doctors should be placed in the context of the times.  This context is not simply the Cold War against Communism, in which case the Soviets and their allies were probably doing worse things.  But the context of those times must include the  “normal” cures and procedures inflicted by families and doctors upon patients.