LEE OSWALD, JUDYTH VARY BAKER, AND REV. JAMES

(On the website debunked, there was an article, well researched, on a novelty shop in 1963 on South Rampart Street in New Orleans where, according to Judyth Baker, she and Oswald did part-time work.  The article by Trish and Zach, presented various reason why Baker's story was improbable - the roughness of the neighborhood, the legal obstruction to having whites work in a Black enterprise, etc.  I have in the past been generally sympathetic to Judyth Baker, but this has done much to change my mind.  Hugh Murray)

5 thoughts on ““Judyth, Lee, and the Reverend James Novelty Shop””

1. Hugh Murray

   1) Was the neighborhood on 500 S Rampart so rough? A block away was McDonogh 35 High School, a public high for Blacks. I add from wiki article: "Prior to 1917, during the era of segregated school systems in the Southern US, no public high school existed in New Orleans for African-American pupils. Those interested in pursuing an education beyond the eighth grade had to attend one of the city’s three private secondary schools for blacks: Leland College, New Orleans University, or Straight College.

   "In 1917 a group of citizens met to petition the Orleans Parish School System to convert McDonogh 13 Boys’ School from a white elementary school to a secondary educational facility for black pupils. The petition was granted and in the fall of 1917, McDonogh 35 became recognized as a four-year high school. McDonogh 35 remained the only public four-year high school for African Americans until the L. B. Landry transitioned from an elementary into a High School in 1942. Booker T. Washington also open their doors in 1942 for African Americans.

   "Over the years, McDonogh 35 has changed its location three times. The original building at 655 South Rampart Street was destroyed when Hurricane Betsy struck New Orleans in 1965, and for the next four years the school was temporarily located in the former United States Federal Court House Building at 600 Camp Street."
2. 
   McD 35 had an excellent reputation. If the school were bad and the neighborhood rough, a nearby novelty store would have been looted weekly. Perhaps, at night it was rough, but I suspect it was OK in the day even for a young white gal to walk safely.
   The laws quoted in the article may have been on the books, but sometimes the reality may have been different. I taught at Dillard (a Black univ.) beginning summer 1964. I do not recall any separate rest rooms for whites. And I had sat in a class in the late 1950s – no separate toilets for B and W. This would also be true for the occasions when whites went to Dooky Chase or Whitey’s restaurants (Black eateries of the time). True, the day I was arrested in Woolworths in the first lunch counter sit-in in NO, that night when 3 of us went to finally eat, the waiter at Whiteys refused to serve me, but offered it to the Black and Hispanic with me. If Rev. James hired Judyth, he might not have had to have had a separate B and W ladies’ room.
   But if Rev. James were Black, how could Judyth NOT mention it? The only way I can see that happening is if she did not realize he were Black – even the leader of my sit-in, Ruth Dispenza was so light-skinned few realized she was Black. It seems like that topic would have come up. Also, why call him Rev. Jim?
3. zacharyjendro2014

   Mr. Murray, thank you for that interesting information. Primary source information is not only very useful, but also very valuable. Since you were there at the time, how likely do you think it was that a n African American man would have hired white people? We could find no information concerning such a scenario. Desegregation of public schools in Louisiana did begin in 1960, whereas the employment laws were not necessarily tackled in the same way.

   REPLY

   MARCH 29, 2015 AT 12:53 AM
4. Hugh Murray

   There were whites teaching at Dillard in the 1950s when I sat in a history class a few times each week. There were no separate toilets for Black and Whites, just male and female. I think the assumption that any white who went there, or to a Black restaurant, would use the Black toilets. But for general areas, bus, train, stores, they might have to have 4 sets of toilets, and one reason Blacks found it hard to use bathrooms in many stores. There were no extra toilets for Blacks.
   To me the zinger is that Judyth did not mention Rev. James’ race. I find that difficult to believe. Dillard hired some white professors, but this was unusual. A minister involved in rehab, who knows? But that she did not mention his race at all, that to me is the difficulty. Are you sure Rev. James was Black? If she and Lee worked for him in 1963, then she would have had to recall it and mention it as it was so unusual, so remarkable. Not to remark about it is the dog that did not bark.
   I admire your research on this issue, and do not mean to be dismissive. But the law on race was not enforced at Dillard and other places where no white would object. The street may not have been so rough in the day. But that Judyth does not mention the race of the Rev. James is telling. I have generally sympathized with her story, but am now more skeptical.

   REPLY

   MARCH 29, 2015 AT 7:37 PM
5. 
   

1. To emphasize my main point, - if Rev. James were black, and Judyth Baker worked for him in New Orleans in 1963 and she does not mention this fact, that is like the dog that does not bark in the night.  There is something wrong with her story.----HUGH MURRAY

A FERRIE TALE?

DAVID FERRIE: MAFIA PILOT, PARTICIPANT IN ANTI-CASTRO

BIO-WEAPON PLOT, FRIEND OF LEE HARVEY OSWALD AND

KEY TO THE JFK ASSASSINATION

by Judyth Vary Baker

Foreword by Jesse Ventura

review by Hugh Murray

            Why read a 500-page biography of David Ferrie? Was he involved in a conspiracy to kill President John Kennedy?  He clearly made statements in the early 1960s expressing his hatred of the President who he believed betrayed the anti-Communist cause by failing to provide air and other support to the Bay of Pigs invasion of Castro’s Cuba in spring 1961;  Kennedy betrayed the cause again when he closed the missile crisis of 1962 with compromise rather than crushing Castro; and finally, the Kennedy Administration raided and closed training camps in 1963 where men were preparing for another invasion of the island.  So did Ferrie join a conspiracy?

            The author, Judyth Vary Baker, claims to have been a friend of Ferrie, beginning in spring 1963.  She also claims to have been Lee Oswald’s secret lover beginning in April 1963 when they met in New Orleans.  Moreover, she claims that she, along with Oswald, Ferrie, and Dr. Mary Sherman were all engaged in secret research to hasten the growth of cancer in mice, then in monkeys, and finally in humans – to be used as a bio-weapon that could be used to kill Fidel Castro.  Her view is that Oswald and Ferrie only pretended to be Kennedy haters.  She also maintains they were both pro-integration (in a city where integration was often conflated with communism).  Both Ferrie and Oswald liked JFK, but they had to pretend to despise him to learn about the mechanisms of those who really hated the President.  After all, Oswald had pretended to be a Soviet sympathizer, a “defector,” who had lived in Minsk and married a Soviet woman there.  In New Orleans, Oswald had pretended to be pro-Communist, distributing leaflets on behalf of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee that he created, an organization with no members, and whose office was in that of Guy Banister, who was vehemently anti-Communist and who had greeted George Lincoln Rockwell when he arrived in New Orleans to picket the pro-Israeli film “Exodus” with Rockwell’s Nazi followers.

            Yet, Baker is honest enough to include material in her book that contradicts her position (for example, her exposition of the sightings of David Ferrie at the Winnipeg airport in Canada).  Indeed, there is an air of honesty about this book – she does include a number of disputes between her and more establishment academics, including citations, so one can always refer to their works and websites to assess their arguments.  On a personal note, she quotes me fairly (and I still fume about the way one “historian,” not Joan Mellen, interviewed me for hours by phone about civil rights in New Orleans, but when I indicated I now opposed the politically correct crowd, she deleted all mention of me.)  Judyth Baker provides a breadth of fresh air sometimes needed to stir the dust of accepted academic accretions.

            My view of Baker’s book is influenced by my personal history.  Born in New Orleans, I attended public schools when Oswald was also a pupil.  By high school, I had joined the Unitarian Church and had become an integrationist.  In September 1956 I enrolled at Tulane University on a scholarship; in 1958 I sat-in some classes at Dillard U. (an historically Black university) and befriended some students on the Black campus.  By 1958-59, there were small interracial Bible study groups between Dillard and the Tulane Wesley (Methodist) organizations, which I also attended.  By 1959 the ICIC was formed, the Intercollegiate Conference for Interracial Cooperation, which met at Loyola U. of the South and included members from Xavier U. (the Black Catholic college), Dillard, and Tulane.

            In February 1960 national television news showed the early lunch-counter sit-ins of the modern era in North Carolina.  Television favorably portrayed the movement as it spread to various areas of the South.  In the spring a white Tulanian, Lanny Goldfinch, told me there would be a meeting on Dillard’s campus to organize a sit-in in New Orleans.  This would be important symbolically for New Orleans was still, as it had been for over a century, the largest city in the South (ahead of Houston, Dallas, Atlanta, Miami).  In the student cafeteria of Dillard, a mass meeting was underway when I arrived.  It appeared as if most of the student body was in attendance, and they were excited and determined to act, enthusiastically applauding the speakers who called for action.  Of course, everyone was aware, that to sit-in, to violate the laws of segregation, would probably result in arrest and possible physical harm.  Then the very popular Dean of Chapel, Dean Gandy rose to the rostrum.  All awaited his words.  “We want to act.  We have to act.  We have to do something to oppose segregation.”  Massive applause.  But we don’t want to just imitate others.  Sit-ins have been occurring for weeks, for months now.  They are good, but they are old hat.  We should do something new.  Something that is unique to Dillard.  More applause.  And then he announced that they should have a march for civil rights on campus and on the sidewalks in front of campus that would be seen by all on the major thoroughfare, Gentilly Blvd.  I had gone to the meeting intending to volunteer for a sit-in, but saw no purpose in joining a Dillard U. march on its campus.  I left both disappointed, and relieved, at the same time.

            Soon after, Lanny told me there was a boycott of stores in the Dryades St. area, a neighborhood that had a large Black clientele.  He was going to volunteer as a picketer, and I decided to do so also.  Because our Tulane class schedules differed, we went to picket on different days.  At that time in New Orleans, only two picketers were legally allowed in front of a store, and when my co-picketer, a Black man realized he was to picket with me, he became quite nervous.  He said his shoes hurt, and left me holding 2 picket signs.  I was suddenly harassed by two young whites with a can of black paint and a brush seeking to paint me black.  Then a new, second picketer arrived, a large Black longshoreman, and the kids quickly ran away.  The picketing was organized by the Consumers’ League, a Black organization.  Some of its members would soon be involved in the organization of NO CORE, the Congress of Racial Equality, which hoped to train for and organize many of the new, non-violent protests against segregation, like the sit-ins.  CORE was preparing a 3-week training institute to be held in August 1960 in Miami, and I desperately wanted to go.  I was living with my parents, who were unenthusiastic.  They argued, I would be the only white, or the only white from New Orleans, it would be dangerous, etc.  I argued that it would be a national gathering, people from all over the nation, perhaps thousands, Blacks and whites.  So, who else was going from New Orleans?  Any other whites?  I was so happy when I discovered that a Loyola student, Oliver St. Pe would indeed be going.  I would not be the only white, and used this to finally win approval of my parents.

            I was truly shocked upon our arrival in Miami to find that there were only about 50 participants, eight from New Orleans.  We stayed in a Black Motel, the Prince ?George?, and held training sessions during the day in the motel’s cocktail lounge.  One day, we had a talk by Jackie Robinson, who had been the first Black to integrate major league baseball at the Brooklyn Dodgers.  Another day, our teacher was Martin Luther King, who had led the successful bus boycott movement in Montgomery, Alabama.  Other days, it was learning about Gandhi, non-violence, and acting as protestors or as hostile segregationists.  One day we tested an eatery inside Shell’s City supermarket.  We generally sat in mixed groups at numerous tables.  The police were called and arrested all our attendees who were seated at integrated tables.  Or almost.  I was seated at a table with a young Black woman, Ruth Dispenza; we were not arrested because Ruth was light-skinned, and the officials assumed we were a white couple.  Oliver was among those arrested.

            When we returned to New Orleans, rumors floated that we were planning a sit-in for the Crescent City.  The Dean of Tulane sent some students to speak with me and a few others, warning us of university policy: if arrested we would be expelled from the university until proven not guilty.  Moreover, because we were consciously violating the state’s segregation laws, we would certainly be found guilty on the local and state levels.  So we might not be found innocent until our case had been appealed to the United States Supreme Court, which might take several years, assuming the high court would consider our case and rule in our favor.  Even if it so ruled, we could not expect to re-enroll at Tulane until after years of litigation.

            Ruth Dispenza would be the spokesperson for the sit-in, the first in New Orleans, held at the large Woolworths at the corner of Canal and North Rampart Streets (I stress this because the politically correct often cite the 2^nd sit-in, which occurred a week later at McCrory’s, as the first.)  We arrived in the morning around 9 or 10 am and sat for several hours; the then New Orleans District Attorney, Richard Dowling came into the lunch counter area and literally read us the law on segregation.  When we refused to leave, we were arrested.

            That night we were released on bail, and because we had been shifted between different jails, we had not eaten since before our protest.  We were hungry.  Archie Allen (a Black student at Dillard, and one of the 7 arrested at Woolworth’s), Carlos Zervigon (a fellow Tulane student, member of CORE, whose parents were of Mexican and Cuban heritage) and I went to Whitey’s on near St, Charles Ave. to get a late bite.  Whitey’s was a Black restaurant.  We took seats at a small, round table, and the waiter approached us and announced, “I can serve you (to Archie), but I can’t serve you two.”  For a moment, we sat in disbelief.  Then he revised, “Well, I can serve you two, but not you (to me).”  Archie and I had just been released from jail for trying to integrate the white counter at Woolworths; we had no desire to be arrested twice in the same day, now at a Black restaurant.  I was so stunned; I do not now recall how we finally ate that night.

            I could not return home, as this would endanger my parents.  Even with my absence, my parents had troubles with threats following each telephone ring throughout that night.  My father would soon borrow a pistol and bullets to protect the home.  Meanwhile, I was staying with different friends each night after the arrest.

            Tulane backed down, changing its policy regarding student arrests.  Our sit-in was now judged by the board of the university to be a political rather than a criminal offense, so neither Bill Harrell (a white grad student in sociology) nor I was expelled.  Tulane was then a segregated institution, but the board was beginning its shift away from supporting the laws of segregation.  And not being expelled was of crucial importance to me because now I could retain my part-time job working weekends at the Tulane U. library and thus maintain a small income.

            But where would I live?  Oliver, the Loyola student in CORE, had been arrested in Miami, and so was not a notorious as I was.  He was still living with his parents in a suburb an hour away from Loyola.  We decided to look for an apartment together and found one near Touro Infirmary, where I had been born.  Oliver was two years older than I, but only a senior in sociology at Loyola.  He had a slightly annoying habit when speaking to you – he rarely looked you in the eye, his gaze was off-center.  Only after rooming with him did I discover the cause: Oliver was legally blind.  To read, he would insert the old-fashioned, hard contact lenses and then put on extremely thick eyeglasses (Normally, he wore none, so people were unaware of his disability.).  Even with the props, he probably could not see an entire word.  The government sent him recordings of books, and he would arrange to have people read  his text books to him, for which they were paid.  I suddenly acquired a supplemental job reading sociology texts to him.

            Oliver was a year or two behind because he had dropped out of school when he was younger.  He was on the path to becoming a juvenile delinquent and permanent drop-out.  But his life took a different course when he joined the Civil Air Patrol and was influenced, - for the better - by David Ferrie.  Oliver was Roman Catholic and got on well with Rudy Lombard, the NO CORE Coordinator who studied at Xavier U. in NO (a Black Catholic college).  Oliver supported President Kennedy.  He taught catechism at a nearby Catholic church, and was a staunch heterosexual.  He was skeptical of socialism and was not at all pro-Communist.  A slightly older woman also read to him, and when I met her, I was surprised to hear her stories of the Soviet Union.  She must have worked for the American government, and I think she had met Oliver at the VA Hospital, where he went occasionally.  I was shocked when she told that women who came from the countryside to the big cities of Moscow and Leningrad in the big train stations, were so unfamiliar with modern devises, that when they went to the rest rooms, often did their business on the floor.

            Other than CORE meetings, Oliver and I tended to maintain separate social lives.  I worked in the library from Friday night through late Sunday, we were too poor for luxuries like a telephone, so I met only one or two of his old friends.  He would speak of one, David Ferrie, who had helped change his life.  He also spoke of Father Fichter at Loyola and a few others, but Ferrie seemed to have been the catalyst in changing him.  On several occasions Larry Anderson, a CAP chum came by the flat to pick up Oliver to go somewhere.  I remember after we had roomed together about six months, Oliver spoke of how his old mentor, Ferrie, was going to have a party one weekend.  He looked forward to it, as he had not seen David for awhile.  When I next saw Oliver, I asked, “How was the big party?”  Oliver seemed disappointed, “Oh, David was playing soldier.”  I did not understand, and he added many were dressed in military-type fatigues.  That would have been in spring 1961.  It was not until much later that I realized that this was about the time of the Bay of Pigs invasion.

            At the end of May 1961 our lease on the apartment ended, Oliver graduated from Loyola with his BA, but after a year, I still did not receive my MA from Tulane in history.  Oliver and I now saw each other rarely, and soon he would be working with the International Voluntary Service in Laos, a new country since the French withdrawal from Indo-China following their defeat at Dien Bien Phu.  Oliver must have been in Laos for some time because I recall reading in one of the local newspapers a tiny article in November 1963 reporting that David Ferrie had been arrested or questioned in connection with the assassination of President Kennedy.  How many David Ferries could there be?  It must have been the man who had helped Oliver.  I clipped the item and sent it to Oliver in Laos.  The article was only a few sentences, but must have revealed more than that Ferrie had been questioned, because in the days following the assassination, many New Orleanians were questioned.  Indeed, I too was questioned by the FBI on Tuesday 26 November.

            After rooming with Oliver for the school year 1960-61, I had lost enthusiasm for grad school.  I moved back in with my parents (who very kindly took me back), and got my first full-time job – teaching at a high school.  I must concede my liberal notions of letting the students express themselves proved impractical.  I was teaching outside my field, but my real problem was that I failed to establish and maintain discipline.  It was the only time I failed as a teacher.  Other issues arose too.  I was a pacifist, and one reason I was so drawn to the civil rights movement was its emphasis on non-violent protest and the attempt to change society for the better through non-violence.  But there were already chinks in my non-violent armor.  Beginning with the day of my arrest, 9 September 1960, my parents began to receive threatening telephone calls.  My dad borrowed a weapon and bullets to protect the place.  The threats subsided in November 1960 as court-ordered integration of two schools in New Orleans swerved the spotlight from CORE sit-ins to trying to keep the schools open, protecting the few Black students and the white family that defied the boycott (the white family that broke the boycott soon had to flee to the North).  As the schools took the heat, threats to my parents ceased.  When my dad returned the pistol to his co-worker, the man remarked, “Why did you borrow so many bullets?  Only one would have done the job!”  I was not popular in NO at that time.  Oliver and I were then sharing a flat, and we received no threatening calls because we had no phone.  Oliver brought me his Ruger (like the German Luger), and he wanted me to learn how to use it.  I was a pacifist, but how could I ask a legally blind guy to defend us if we came under attack.  So I let him teach me how to use the Ruger.   Reality was ruining my faith in non-violence.

            So, after I decided not to pursue my MA, probably in the summer of 1961, I volunteered for the navy.  I recall only one test – I was naked and had to walk down a long dark, narrow hall until I could read what was on a screen at the other end.  I must have traversed 2/3s of the hall before I could recognize a large letter E.  I was surprised at how poor my eyesight seemed to be.  Yet, that proved not to be the problem.  The hitch was the sit-in – I had been convicted of a felony, and felons could be drafted but were not allowed to volunteer for service, I was informed.

            After teaching for about half the school year, I received my draft notice, probably in early 1962.  I quit the teaching job and waited to be inducted.  I went to the old Customs House on Canal St. near the Mississippi River, and a large number of us took seats and awaited our fate.  I was nervous, as I suspect was true of most.  There seemed to be no loud chatter, but one person stood and moved about addressing the young Blacks scattered among those seated.  He was urging them not to go in, not to be inducted , that America was racist, and they should follow the example of the Black Muslims and reject the draft.  The officer must have ordered him to stop, but he continued preaching and urging others to join him.  Then the officers ordered all the rest of us to move to an adjacent, large room.  The Black Muslim was barred from entering this room.

            We were handed forms to fill out.  Most completed them quickly.  I stumbled.  I had no trouble checking the box to indicate that I was not now nor had ever been a member of the Communist Part, the KuKluxKlan, etc.  But then there was a list of front groups, and the question was quite broad; had we ever even socialized with these groups.  Oh oh.  At the Miami CORE conclave we did more than hear lectures by Robinson and King.  Half our group had been arrested at the Shell’s City sit-in in August 1960, and we also went to the beach to integrate the sands.  CORE organizers had arranged that the picnic tables beside ours would be occupied by a friendly white group, the Jewish Culture Club in Miami.  There group was about as large as ours, but whereas most in our group were in their 20s, members of the JCC  were in their 60s and 70s.  I spoke to one about the famous 1948 election, in which Harry Truman won to the astonishment of the pollsters, the nation, and especially the Chicago Tribune.  The old gent on the bench told me he had voted for Henry Wallace and the Progressive Party that year.  They were on the Left, and they were for integration.

            The JCC also had a club house, and they allowed us to stage a dance on their premises.  I danced the one-step with Pat and Priscilla Stephens, Black twins who had been active in CORE in Tallahassee.  Also, for the first time I tried the new dance, the twist, with Ruth Dispenza, among others.  Those dancing were almost all young, from our group.  Members of the JCC sat around the periphery of the dance floor at small tables and nibbled, chatted, and generally watched us.  It was relaxing to have a place where we could dance in a large hall.  Pictures were taken of our fun gathering.  That was important.

            Seated at the Customs House I pondered how to fill out the form.  Should I mention the dance at the JCC?  It seemed so inconsequential.  But the penalties for lying were enormous (though I no longer remember the specifics).  Should I lie and not mention this event?  Then I remembered, pictures had been taken, so I mentioned it.

            Another question on the form concerned any previous arrests.  Not only had pictures been taken of the sit-in, we had been shown on national television nightly news programs, though we could not see these because we were still in jail at the time.  I mentioned the previous arrest.

            The officer collected the forms and then called me up.  “JCC?  But you aren’t even Jewish.”  I tried to explain.  Then he mentioned the arrest.  I told him I had been informed that I could not volunteer, but I could be drafted.  He told me I would first have to speak with the FBI agent, but I would have to wait as he was at that moment interviewing the Black Nationalist in the other room.  I returned to my seat.  We were all give a fried chicken lunch in a box like KFC, and told we would be going to Ft. Chafee in Arkansas for basic training.

            The FBI agent got to me and I told him of the arrest at the lunch counter.  He said that conviction was a felony, and he would have to speak with the NO District Attorney to ask if he would drop the charges before I could be drafted.  Meanwhile, I was told to keep the chicken lunch, go home, and await the decision.  I am unsure if the DA at that time was still Richard Dowling, or a newly elected Jim Garrison.  The charges were NOT dropped, but my draft classification remained 1-A.  This made it difficult to get a new job because employers were reluctant to hire someone who could be called up at any moment.  I found a low-pay job at another library to have some money while waiting.

            I could not wait forever.  In September 1962 I returned to Tulane to try to earn my MA.  I now changed my thesis topic – I would write about the Scottsboro rape cases of the 1930s in Alabama and the role of the Communist Party.  Nine young Blacks were accused of raping two white women on a train in Alabama, and defended by Communists.  Nothing controversial there!

            In October the world experienced “The Missile Crisis.”  This is featured in Baker’s book, as Pres. Kennedy’s failure to invade Castro’s Cuba would further incense anti-Castro elements in New Orleans and Miami.  Soon after the crisis, I wrote an article for the Tulane leftist alternative to the official university Hullaballoo.  The alternative was mimeographed and was published sporadically.   My article in The Reed was titled, “The Munich of the 60s,” in which I condemned Khrushchev for yielding to the demands of Kennedy to withdraw the missiles from Cuba.  The analogy was Khrushchev to Chamberlain, and Kennedy to a German leader.  To say that my article was unpopular is an understatement.  I walked into one classroom and copies of the Reed were not simply torn in half, or into quarter, or into…down to the size of a fingernail.  Interestingly, my article would be attacked early the next year in Political Affairs, a journal of the CPUSA.  Herbert Aptheker placed the Reed article along with various Trotskyist and Ultra Left analyses that failed to understand Khrushchev’s wisdom in compromise and in getting Kennedy to pledge not to invade Cuba.

            At that time, I was pro-Castro (not now).  I personally knew several members of the staff of The Reed, most especially my thesis advisor Prof. Robert Reinders, who had studied at Notre Dame and was a liberal Roman Catholic.  I was also acquainted with Bob Hoffman and others.  But I was also working hard to research and write my MA thesis, so I may have been less social than usual.  Vereen Alexander would allege that she had met Oswald at a party at Bob Hoffman’s and other Reed people in 1963.  She later changed her story thinking she was mistaken.  I was so busy, I could not even recall Vereen Alexander.

            Although I had attended Beauregard Jr. High and then Easton Sr. High in New Orleans about the same time as Oswald, I never met him.  And again, although I was pro-Castro in New Orleans in 1963 and indeed picked up one of Oswald’s FPCC leaflets that had been laid on a small table in the foyer of Tulane U. Library, there was no one in the entrance area with whom to inquire about the flyers to discuss the organization.  I took one of the leaflets and brought it to another grad student who had been active in FPCC in another city.  I had assumed he had produced the flyer.  But Harold Alderman knew nothing about it.  We wondered if we should write to the post office box on the leaflet, but we were cautious as it might be a trap (we didn’t write, and it was).  I was unable to complete my thesis for the May graduation, and had to keep working on it during the summer of 1963.  Finally, in August I received my MA.  My thesis, 270 pages, generally defended the Communist approach to defending the Blacks accused of rape, using both top-notch attorneys in court while simultaneously mobilizing mass support for the cause outside the courts.  Several chapters of my thesis were subsequently published in academic journals.  But defending the CP did not make me popular with the establishment historians at Tulane.  I was informed that the chair of the department did not want me to continue for a doctorate.  I now had to find a job.

            A new, private school had opened in NO, and I was offered a post teaching 5^th grade at a higher salary than I had earned in the public schools.  The school opened in a building formerly owned by the Dept. of Agriculture, and was in the process of being renovated.  I think it was k-12, or possibly 1-12.  Three of us taught 5^th grade, another young guy, and an older woman who had taught in public school for many years.  I quite enjoyed the teaching.  I was larger than my pupils, which helps with discipline.  Some were quite smart and around 10 years old; a few had had troubles in school and were up to 14, but they were caught up in the spirit of the younger pupils.  That spirit was most important – when I asked a question, all who knew the answer raised their hands and wanted to be called upon.  Often, when they are a few years older, the dreadful peer spirit warns all not answer, and condemns those who do.  I enjoyed teaching them, and I think they were learning and enjoyed me teach them.  It was fun.

            I could begin to relax after the pressure of Tulane, and occasionally played tennis after school with colleagues or old friends.  I was still residing with my parents after a very “poor” year.  In early October 1963, after school, after tennis, I returned home late one afternoon.  My mother greeted me at the front door, “Hmmph, why are you so late?  I thought they had rounded you up too?”  I had no idea what she was referring to, but rushed to the TV, as the news was about to come on.  The Louisiana Un-American Activities Committee (LUAC) along with DA Jim Garrison had staged raids on local Communists, using axes to break down their doors.  The offices of SCEF (the Southern Conference Education Fund), an integrationist organization were raided and files confiscated.  Its director, who was elderly and crippled, was arrested.  Also, attorneys Ben Smith and Bruce Walzer, who shared a law firm, were arrested in the raid.  Both lawyers defended dissidents.  During the raid of Walzer’s home, as the axes smashed in the front door, his wife hovered in fear with her baby.  She had been born in Germany, half-Jewish, and had survived by being taken in by a Roman Catholic organization.  The axe action terrorized her.  The raid on the home of Ben Smith was probably just as frightening, and his wife filed for divorce soon after.

            The Chair of the LUAC lived a few houses down the street from my parent’s home; his wife was my mother’s Avon lady.  This raid occurred 3 October 1963.  Later, I would wonder why they had not raided the home of a defector to the USSR, a self-professed Marxist who had expounded his radical views on WDSU radio, and a man who had been arrested for distributing FPCC leaflets?  (In Me & Lee, Baker provides information on why there was a delay in raiding the SCEF, Smith and Walzer, but why did the LUAC display no interest in Oswald?   

                Back to work.  One day around lunchtime, Mrs. Flagg, the older 5^th grade teacher whose class was directly across the hall from mine, came to my door, and asked me to come to her class for a few minutes.  Telling my class I would be right back, I left them for hers.  Because of the many renovations, we still had no cafeteria, so kids ate lunch in the class rooms, and her class was having free time during their lunch, so there was much talk, an occasional shout, etc.  Mrs. Flagg led me to the seat of a pupil who had brought a rather new invention to class, a small, transistor radio.  He was listening as Mrs. Flagg and I craned our necks over the youngster, trying to hear the news above the din of the class at play.  After a few minutes, I heard the main point, and had to return to my unattended class.

            I entered and closed the door behind me, and they quickly quieted down.  “I just heard on the radio that Pres. Kennedy was shot in Dallas.”  They cheered and applauded!  I was shocked by their response.  Then I noticed that one girl had placed her head on her table and was silently crying.  The others were elated.  Suddenly, the normal lessons seemed trite.  These kids, whom I normally liked, had angered me.  I began with an impromptu history lesson.  “You think that if Kennedy dies, that will mean the end of integration, that segregation will be saved.  Well, others had similar views.  At the end of the Civil War, some believed that the South would be restored, that slavery would continue, if only Lincoln could be eliminated.  John Wilkes Booth did kill Lincoln.  But that did not bring about the restoration of the Confederacy.  Nor did it bring back slavery.  Instead, it made the North even more determined to destroy slavery and the power of the South.  And if Kennedy dies, it will make the North of today even more determined to destroy segregation, more determined to force integration upon the South.”  I may have elaborated here or there, but the point of my lecture was clear, even to 10-year-olds.  Of course, all of us assumed that Kennedy had been shot by a segregationist.  The school dismissed classes early that Friday.

            I was  home when I received a phone call from Shelly Zervigon, wife of Carlos my old buddy in CORE.  “Did you hear the news?” she asked.  “Of course, Kennedy is dead.”  “Did you hear the guy who did it was a Communist, from New Orleans?”  I could hardly believe her words.  A shock wave followed by one of fear.  If they were rounding up Communists in New Orleans in October for being integrationists, what will they do now?  I knew the history of what had happened in Paris in 1938, when a young Jew entered the German Embassy there and shot and killed the Ambassador.  In retaliation, a few days later in Germany, many synagogues were burnt, many Jewish shop windows broken (so it was called Kristall Nacht because of the broken glass), thousands of Jews were rounded up, some sent to camps, and Jewish funds in banks confiscated.  It was the beginning of the end for Jews in Germany.  And that was for the murder of an ambassador.  What would happen with the murder of a President?  When would there be the next round-up of “Communists in New Orleans?  How much time would I have?  I decided to go out that Friday night and get drunk, as it might be my last chance to do so.

            I went out to the Blue Note, a bar on Rampart St., and perhaps some others.  I ran into a few liberals and asked the same question, who the hell is Lee Oswald?  No one seemed to have known him.

            Back to work.  At the end of November 1963 the school gave us checks as usual, but this time many bounced.  After some negotiations with the school administrators, by mid-month many teachers, myself included, filed a law-suit against the school, which made the newspapers.  Soon other creditors were also filing suits.  Some pupils suddenly dropped out, most teachers decided not to continue teaching until paid for past work, and the school was in a downward spiral.  To protect the school from the Commie agitator teachers, the school hired someone responsible to protect the institution, Guy Banister.  I was told by a teacher who remained that Banister would roam the halls with his pistol in his belt.  By the end of January 1964, that school had closed.

            I was suddenly unemployed, again.  About this time, my uncle was visiting my parents when I was there.  Uncle Jim liked to tease me.  Politically, we were opposites.  After he found out I had been arrested in the first sit-in, he had sent a small sum to George Lincoln Rockwell and the American Nazi Party to restore honor to the family.  I did not see him often, but his usual greeting to me was, “How are the burr heads doing?”  This would rile me up and a few minutes later I would leave to visit friends.  When Pres. and Mrs. Kennedy lost a baby while they were in the White House, Uncle Jim explained to me what had happened, “They killed it because it was Black.”  I would roll my eyes and leave.  Sometimes he would say, “Oh, that Bobby.  They gonna get that Bobby!”  Attorney General Robert Kennedy was often sending representatives of the Justice Dept. to the South to try to promote integration.  “Oh, that Bobby,” he said many times in the early 1960s.  It was probably in January 1964 when I next saw Uncle Jim.  “What did I tell you, huh?  What did I tell you?  Didn’t I tell you they were gonna get him?”  It took me a few moments to figure out what he was referring to.  Then I realized in a horrified flash.  This time I responded – “But you said they were going to get Bobby.”  “Well, they got the other one instead.”  After a year of listening to him talking about getting Bobby, I finally asked him, “Who is this ‘they’ you keep talking about?”  He quickly responded, “The mob out in the Parish.”  To translate: “Out in the Parish” meant in Jefferson Parish, the county adjacent to New Orleans, and the leading mob official would be Carlos Marcello.  No one was talking about Marcello in connection with the Kennedy assassination in January 1964.  I rolled my eyes and chalked another one up to my crazy uncle, like the Kennedy’s killing their child because it was Black.  Furthermore, what would my uncle know?  He had not finished elementary school, and I had an MA from Tulane.  I was too arrogant to understand.  Now I regret that I did not listen to him more and question him further.  I might have learned a lot from him.

             According to researchers Alan Rogers and Larry Haapanen, Oswald said that if he and Marina had a boy, they would name him David.  Oliver and his wife had two boys, and according to researcher Bruce Baird, Oliver’s widow revealed that one son was indeed named David for David Ferrie.  And that would have been in the 1960s, after some of the scandals regarding Ferrie.  If David Ferrie could so influence the boys and young men of his CAP that they would consider naming their sons after him, even following the scandals, then Ferrie was an extremely impressive man.  Baker writes. Ferrie was “a man who taught countless people how to fly, who influenced dozens to become priests or to serve their country in the Armed Services, and whose acts of charity, patriotism and courage were overshadowed by his sexual misbehavior, is buried in near isolation.”(p432)  Did his sexual misbehavior “overshadow” all the rest?  Here I disagree with Baker.  But that is subordinate to the big questions – did Ferrie encourage Lee Harvey Oswald to join the marines when he was an underage teen?  Might his stories, along with TV programs like Herb Philbrick’s “I Led Three Lives,” have encouraged the young marine to explore less travelled paths, like defecting to the USSR?

            When Oswald returned to the US with American Embassy help, was he on the payroll of the FBI or other agencies?  Baker claims she was working with Ferrie, Oswald, and Dr. Mary Sherman on a bio-weapon to hasten growth of cancer so enemies like Fidel could be killed and their deaths attributed to natural causes.  Leading this project was the internationally famous Dr. Alton Ochsner, whose hospital moved to Jefferson Parish not far from the Beverly Country Club (Marcello’s gambling outlet).  Even if one totally rejects Baker’s contention that she was Oswald’s lover, and her assertions about the bio-weapon, are there still reasons to connect David Ferrie, Oswald, and alleged conspirators to kill Castro and or Kennedy?

            There were experiments that today we might deem unwarranted, inhumane, and worse.  Baker mentions a contract with the US Govt. and prominent Tulane U. Professor Robert Heath.(75)  Baker also writes that at times Ferrie was listed on the faculty of Tulane for a 2-hour credit course workshop in 1960.(102)  She has Ferrie looking for volunteers for some of the Tulane experiments among his CAP group, and on the other side, Ferrie rescuing some teens who had been victims of experiments at some of the Louisiana mental facilities trying to make the teens into heterosexuals.

            But there are more areas where the reader may not rely on Baker’s personal testimony.  Ferrie did work for attorney G. Wray Gill, a major lawyer for Marcello.  According to Marcello’s granddaughter Tricia, Ferrie had flown Marcello to Florida from his exile in Central America.(117)  Ferrie was also involved in the anti-Castro movement in New Orleans and was probably training some of the CIA sponsored elements for another invasion of Cuba.  Also involved in these activities was former FBI agent, former Acting Superintendent of the New Orleans Police, Guy Banister.  Banister also had an anti-Castro organization listed in his offices.  He was known to hire young people to infiltrate the Left on NO campuses.  Oswald distributed pro-Castro FPCC leaflets in NO in the summer of 1963, some of which had the address of the same building as Banister’s offices.  There was no FPCC located there, but if anyone had replied by mail to the flyer’s address, that letter would have wound up in the hands of Banister.  Furthermore, several witnesses asserted they had seen Oswald in Banister’s offices.

            After spending such time and effort to build his FPCC, Oswald suddenly dropped it.  Baker writes: “Until I spoke up in 1999, nobody had a logical explanation for Lee’s suddenly ‘giving up’ on the FPCC.  As soon as the prisoner died – …[a human guinea pig in the cancer research to create a bio-weapon] – Lee would have to travel immediately.  It was important that a sudden departure would not be noticed by the media.”(294)

            Baker also presents an explanation for Ferrie’s concern about the allegation that Oswald had Ferrie’s library card when arrested in Dallas.  Ferrie was disturbed enough by the charge that he went searching for that card in the apartment formerly rented to the Oswalds in NO.  Baker asserts, it was not a card from the public library that Ferrie was worried about, but a card from the Tulane Medical School that was used when they were engaged in cancer research for the bio-weapon.  When Ferrie telephoned Baker in Florida shortly after the assassination, Baker assured him that she had the card.  Ferrie told her to destroy it immediately.  Once assured that this possible connection of Oswald to Ferrie was removed, Ferrie then denied even knowing Oswald when interviewed by the FBI on 27 November 1963.(363-71)

            Baker’s books (this and her earlier Me & Lee) also provide an explanation for the events in Clinton, Louisiana and other towns north of New Orleans.  Various witnesses identified Oswald waiting in a long line to register to vote in summer 1963, a lone white amid a CORE voter registration drive.  Having emerged from a large, black auto, it occupants also aroused attention, and various people from opposite sides of the political spectrum identified Oswald, Ferrie, and Clay Shaw.  The role of the Louisiana mental hospitals in Mandeville and Jackson to provide patients for human experimentation also played a role, according to Baker.(290)  Baker may not provide the only possible explanation to these strange sightings, but hers seems to be the best explanation so far.

            Even where she was not a participant in events with Oswald, Baker provides provocative analysis, as in the case of journalist George Lardner, the last man to interview David Ferrie before his death.  Indeed, Ferrie’s time of death was revised to conform to Lardner’s claims of visiting Ferrie’s apartment that late night.  Baker provides reasons to question Lardner’s account.(430, 477)

            Baker portrays Oswald and Ferrie as pro-integration, pro-civil rights, pro-Kennedy, anti-Communists.  She believes that Oswald and Ferrie were working to assassinate Castro, but dealing with vehement Right-wingers who by 1963 had turned against the ‘pro-Communist’ Kennedy, and they were joined by others who hated the President like Mafia Carlos Marcello.  While Oswald and Ferrie pretended to be opponents of Kennedy, their objective was to infiltrate and halt any operation against the President.  She finds it significant that a plot to kill Kennedy in Chicago in autumn 1963 was foiled after the plot was disclosed to authorities by a “Lee.”(263, 319)  She thinks Oswald was in Dallas to spike another plot.  She implies that the note Oswald left with the FBI office on 12 November 1963 in Dallas was meant to expose and prevent such a new plot.  That note, of course, was destroyed upon orders of J. Edgar Hoover.  Its contents, as revealed by FBI Agent Hostie concerned Oswald threatening the FBI if it did not lay off of his wife Marina.(320)  Baker rejects Hostie’s version of the note that he himself destroyed.

            Baker includes material showing how the NO Dist. Atty. Garrison crew was willing to bribe a witness to join the anti-Clay Shaw team,(382, 430) but she concedes that both sides were using bribes during the Garrison investigation, which led to the later publicity about Ferrie and the trial of Clay Shaw.

            On the other side, perhaps Ferrie was not so innocent.  Instead of telling Baker the truth about how he was seeking to save Kennedy while lying to others when he announced that “Kennedy should be shot,” perhaps Ferrie’s speech about killing the President enunciated his real views, and instead he was lying to Baker.  In this book, Baker is honest enough to include reports of a witness at a Winnipeg airport who overheard Ferried complaining about using that ‘moron’ Oswald, and how clearly, Ferrie was involved in the murderous plot.(374, 445, 447, 450)  She also includes a supposed confession by Ferrie to a bishop of one of the tiny, splinter Catholic churches.(440)

            Not all of Ferrie’s life may be interesting to Kennedy assassination researchers.  But Ferrie was a man who influenced many, and probably saved many lives from cruel experimentation in mental institutions.  Yet, according to Baker herself, he too was willing to indulge in human experimentation to hasten a cancer causing bio-weapon.  Ferrie was a whiz of o pilot who flew to help overthrow Castro and aid rebels.

            There were problems with the execution of this book, such as repetition of text and footnotes.(45, 91, 478 & 184, 282, 283 #8 #11)  There were footnote errors (118, 129)(279, 281, #28, #20)  On the other hand, as one with poor eyesight, it was easier to read footnotes that were not shrunken to the conventional small size.

            Yet, referring to the book’s cover, Baker does show that David Ferrie was a Maria pilot, that he participated in Anti-Castro activities, that he knew Lee Oswald, and was deemed by many to be a key to the John Kennedy assassination.  She maintains that she, Oswald, and Ferrie were involved with Dr. Mary Sherman in research on a bio-weapon, under the direction of world-famous and anti-Communist Dr. Alton Ochsner.  There is little doubt that the weird looking Ferrie, who was a top-notch pilot, knew various languages, experimented with mice, hypnosis, taught military training, and debated theology, was a man who greatly influenced teens in his Civil Air Patrol units.  How much and in what manner did he influence Oswald?

            Baker provides conflicting evidence that Ferrie was pro-Kennedy and anti-Kennedy.  He was known and worked indirectly for Mafia leader Marcello and former NO police chief Guy Banister.  Some, in addition to Baker, saw him with Clay Shaw.  Did all this result in a plot that culminated in Dallas on November 22, 1963?

LEE HARVEY OSWALD – STUD?!? (updated 28 Nov 2013)

By Hugh Murray

            I am bewildered by some of the items I have read about Oswald.  Clearly, he was married to Marina and fathered two children with her.

            Yet, when the question of the influence on David Ferrie on Oswald became an issue with the Garrison investigation of the mid-1960s, there was a subtext of homosexuality.  Was Oswald’s mentor gay?  Was Ferrie the man who urged Oswald’s mother to sign the underage teen into the Marine Corps?  Ferrie was gay.  The question was how much and in what ways did he influence Oswald?  One researcher, Al Rodgers, informed me that had Oswald had a boy with Marina, he would have named him David.

            I had read in at least one book that when Oswald was stationed in Japan at Atsugi base, he frequented a gay bar.*  In the 1980s I even published a short article in a New York gay newspaper beginning with the question, was Oswald gay.

            By the 1990s, without studying the particular topic, I had assumed that the troubles Oswald was having in his marriage with Marina were probably due to his own homosexual tendencies.  In the 90s I was researching for an article on the New Orleans Council for Peaceful Alternatives.  The group is mentioned in the Warren Commission material, and some thought the government’s version was inadequate.  One researcher even sent me an old copy of the Councilor, the publication of the White Citizens’ Council.  That paper had several photos of a march along St. Charles Ave. in New Orleans sponsored by the NOCPA.  I was asked if I could identify Oswald among those partaking.  I could not, but I did identify Tulane students Mel Jones and Ruth Ann Kloepfer, among others.  They were an attractive couple, and Ruth Ann was a real beauty.  I telephoned Ruth Ann – my first discussion with her since the 1960s - and asked about some other things too.  One of the most important, I asked about her meeting with Lee Oswald.

            In the summer of 1963 Ruth Paine, a Quakeress in Texas, had called the clerk of the tiny New Orleans Quaker group to ask if they knew anyone who spoke Russian, and who might help a Russian woman with a small child and who was expecting another.  The clerk of the NO Quakers was Ruth Kloepfer, mother of Karol and Ruth Ann, her two college-age daughters.  In September, the trio drove to the Magazine Street home of the Oswalds.

            For the first time, in the 1990s, I asked Ruth Ann about that meeting.  Anger filled her voice.  She related that while the pregnant Marina, her small child, Ruth Ann’s mother and sister were in one room, Lee was coming on to her in another.  She was furious.  She and her family had not come to visit him; they had come to help the pregnant woman in need.  And she was in the next room!  What kind of man would try to come on to someone when his wife and her mother and sister are so near?  What kind of, well she was still angry at him over three decades later.  With this conversation, I began to revise my thinking about Oswald’s sexual orientation.

            I even began to revise my thoughts about Oswald and Ferrie.  I had roomed with a white civil rights activist in New Orleans during the university year 1960-61.  Oliver told me that as a youth, he had been on the wrong path, sliding into juvenile delinquency.  He was saved as a teen when he joined the Civil Air Patrol headed by David Ferrie.  Though Oliver was by then a senior at Loyola University, and was no longer close, he still maintained contact with Ferrie.  Indeed, I recall, he looked forward to a party Ferrie was giving at his apartment in the spring of 1961.  I had never met Ferrie, was not invited, and did not attend that party.  When I next saw Oliver, I asked him about it.  He was not enthusiastic, “Oh, David was playing soldier.”  At the time, I thought nothing of it.  But that party was about the time of the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba.  David may have been doing more than “playing” soldier.

            Oliver was greatly influenced by David Ferrie.  Ferrie was clearly gay.  Yet, Oliver was straight.  He was a staunch Roman Catholic and made it very clear, in words and deeds, that he was not gay.  If straight Oliver could have been so influenced by gay Ferrie, without becoming gay, so it is surely possible that Oswald may have been influenced by Ferrie without becoming gay.

            In the summer of 2009 (I think) in the Special Collections section of the Tulane University Library, I chatted with an older librarian, Kenneth Owen.  He remarked that he had encountered Oswald in a beatnik-hippie place on Rampart St. in 1962 or 63, a place that preceded the Quorum Club.  The Quorum was raided by the police in 1963 and the names of over 30 customers were printed on page 1 of the local newspapers.  The club was raided because in was an alleged center of drugs, homosexuals, and integrationists.  I assume the club that had opened and closed prior to the Quorum must have been somewhat similar.  In the conversation between Owen and Oswald, the librarian became convinced Oswald was gay.

            In 2013 I became aware of the book, Me & Lee, by Judyth Vary Baker in which she alleges that in the summer o 1963 in New Orleans, while Oswald was married to Marina, and she was newly married to Robert Baker, she and Oswald conducted a secret affair.  Indeed, she maintains that Oswald was going to divorce Marina and she and Oswald would soon be together, probably in Mexico.  Because they were both married, theirs was a most secret affair.

            In her book, and The Secret Order by H. P. Albarelli, there is discussion of Oswald having a short affair with Silvia Duran, who worked in the Cuban Embassy in Mexico City.  On the other side, also in Albarelli’s volume, he claims that Rose Cherami accused Jack Ruby and Oswald of screwing each other.

            Michael Snyder, in his fascinating analysis of the plays and writings of Clay Shaw, writes that Gore Vidal asserted that the young Oswald in New Orleans knew Clay Shaw because the youth was hustling in the gay community.
            Was Oswald a stud?  A president killer, or a lady killer, or both.  One should also consider this paragraph from a new book.The following is part of a page from Charles E. Hurlburt’s It’s Time for the Truth: The JFK Cover-up: The Real Crime of the Century (2012), p. 115.

            “Although Oswald espoused a fondness for the Russian language and political system [while in the Marines] so openly that he was given the name ‘Oswaldskovich’ by his fellow Marines, he was assigned duties that allowed him access to ‘top secret’ areas and data.  Atsugi [US base in Japan] was not far from Tokyo, and Oswald often went into town, like most of the American servicemen, to visit the many nightclubs and meet girls.  One such club, named the Queen Bee, was too expensive for low-paid enlisted men like Oswald (one date there could exceed what Oswald was netting per month).  Nevertheless, he was seen there on several occasions in the company of one of the hostesses who, according to another Marine buddy, was questioning Oswald about his work at Atsugi.  Some researchers hypothesize that Oswald was being funded by his superiors to frequent this over-his-head establishment and feed false information to this ‘KGB spy.’  Fueling suspicion that Oswald was more than he appeared tp be was a Marine medical report showing that he was treated for a venereal disease that he contracted ‘in the line of duty, not to his own misconduct.’  His dates with the ‘KGB spy’ may be the explanation for his being treated for gonorrhea contracted ‘in the line of duty.”

            Was the US government subsidizing Oswald’s amorous encounter for his role as a spy.  Was Oswald a stud, a cold-war Chippendaler?  Was he a President killer?  Or a lady killer?  Or both?  Was he a lone nut?  Or someone who spread such cheer, that the government paid for his romances?

            I am not the expert.  I have written this short essay because I find the material so contradictory.  If others are interested, they might research further – although proving who is bedding whom is not so easy a task.  But, for the moment, viewing all these claims, it appears that Lee Harvey Oswald was some stud.

            *(My own excuses - I am poor, reside in an efficiency flat, and have had to move a number of times.  I have had to dump my libraries from time to time, painful as that has been.  I know I had read of Oswald going to a gay bar while he was stationed at Atsugi, but cannot recall in which book.  Most of my older, underlined, JFK books are gone, and about to turn 75, I do not want to re-read all those volumes.  So, here I am relying on memory.  If some complain that I am posting unfinished material on the blog, my excuse is that I feel I have to post unfinished material before I am finished.  I have a dead line!)

(A few of his marine buddies thought Oswald was gay, but they were basing their conclusion on rumor and his aloof personality.  Their assertions may have been nothing more than a manner of indicating that they did not like him.  Posner had Oswald frequenting an expensive bar where he associated with a Japanese woman while he was in Japan, and others also thought he was having an affair with a Japanese gal.  Bottom line - others, if inclined, may search further on this topic.)(The phrase lady killer does not mean a man who murders women; it means a man whom women find sexually attractive and whom they would like to bed.)

Email from Judyth Vary Baker

Subject: Re: LHO study
Date: Sun, 6 Oct 2013 09:37:31 +0200

In Me & Lee I also mention that Lee told me he fell in love with a Japanese girl and that she was beaten when she tried to refuse any more prositution (high class style, she was an expensive girl at the Queen bee). Lee told me he thought he would return for her, but time slipped away.

I am sorry you are in impoverished circumstances. I,too, have often suffered. Even though you write the word 'claim' instead of 'assert' regarding my relationship with Lee Oswald, nevertheless, I'd like to send you the second volume of David Ferrie (there will be two, I had so much to say and to provide evidence for). It will be a year from now and hope you will be well and stay well.

Judyth

My reply:

Hey Judyth,

   I was trying to use synonyms for allege, claim, and so forth.  Until I wrote this piece, I did not realize how many encounters Oswald may have had, or tried to have.  The sentences in the Snyder work imply that he was hustling quite a lot as a teen, yet I am most skeptical of that claim.  But as you have discovered, proving or disproving sexual hook ups is extremely difficult.  I just wanted to place on the net what seems to be a growing list of claims about his sexual activities, and surely one that does not fit the lone nut image of Oswald.

   I normally do not complain about my lot.  I made my choices, and have paid for them.  I have not had a teaching post in the US since 1969, so I have no office or place to keep books, or access to a univ. library, etc. [except when I visit New Orleans].   But I suspect you have had to pay a price too.

   Also I am now old.  One reason I place reviews on amazon rather than submit them to journals is that I want to be alive when my review is posted/published.  For academic journals, even if they accept, it may take 2 years.

   My memory is still good.  I met the librarian at Tulane on one of my annual summer week in NO.  It may have been 09 or 2010 or so.  I was less interested in getting the year right than describing what he said.  The basic point of what he said is there.

   Hope your session in NO goes well.

    Take care,--------Hugh 

I should have added in my letter that I am poor but not impoverished.  I have no luxuries, like an automobile.  But I have enough for most of my needs.  I fume when I feel my writing is limited because I lack access.  But I enjoy all the basics, heat, good food, vitamins, etc.  And I do get to travel.  This article would have been stronger had I access to some of the pieces I have written previously, like the newspaper article from the 1980s.  I simply do not have copies of most of my own writing, much less than the ability to retain the volumes by others.  I do not have the room.

The point of this article, unfinished, incomplete, as it is, is this, --- the image of Oswald as a lone nut may have to be revised.  ----   Hugh Murray

         

LEE HARVEY OSWALD, GUILTY - OF ADULTERY!

ME & LEE: HOW I CAME TO KNOW, LOVE AND LOSE

LEE HARVEY OSWALD (Walterville, OR.: TrineDay, 2010).  By Judyth Vary Baker

Rev. by Hugh Murray

     In the late 1990s Judyth Vary Baker began to publicly assert that she had been Lee Oswald’s lover during the summer of 1963 when both resided in New Orleans.  In the library of articles and books about Kennedy and Oswald no writer had ever mentioned Judyth Baker in over 30 years of research.  She suddenly appears to announce that she was Oswald’s secret lover as they worked on a secret Project in 1963, one to expedite the growth of cancer so it could be used as a bio-weapon.  Oswald was then 24-years old while Judyth had just turned 20.  What?  Oswald – one of the men most studied in all American history, from the picture of his pubic hair in the Warren material to having his body exhumed years after his burial for even further study!  And in all these studies, no one had ever mentioned Judyth Vary Baker.  Is this book by Judyth a joke? 

     Some greeted her claims with skepticism.  Prof. John McAdams of Marquette U., who generally supports the Warren Report conclusions, analyzed her assertions under the google title, “Judyth Vary Baker hoax.”  One of her own sons stopped talking to her and requested that Judyth publish her volume as “historical fiction.”(559)  Moreover, Judyth had studied Creative Writing at a university: was Me & Lee a product of her course?  In the book’s Afterword, researcher Jim Marrs writes of Judyth’s effort, “The basic question,…,is whether or not her story is true or untrue.  It is either one or the other.”(566)  I disagree.

            In an effort to answer this “basic question,” I quote a few paragraphs though this may be tedious for the reader:  “By the end of the week [of 14 June 1963, Oswald’s wife, Marina]…had two visitors.  Ruth Paine [with whom Marina had stayed in Texas] wrote to Mrs. Ruth Kloepfer, a fellow Quaker who lived in New Orleans, ostensibly asking her to check on Marina and June [daughter of Marina and LHO].  Mrs. Kloepfer just happened to be married to a Tulane professor, Dr. Henry Warner Kloepfer, and they would just happen to move from Pine Street to Louisiana Avenue Parkway – close to David Ferrie – not long afterwards.  The first visit to 4905 Magazine involved only Mrs. Kloepfer and her daughters.  Marina was unaware that Dr. Kloepfer was a geneticist with Tulane Medical School, who was involved in the [bio-weapon] Project.  Dr. Kloepfer’s name, address and phone numbers were later found in Lee’s address book.”(339)

            Then “Friday, September 20, 1963… When Ruth Paine did not arrive on the morning of the 20^th, as planned, Lee’s anxiety soared.  …  Would he have to leave [the very expectant] Marina and Junie alone in New Orleans the next morning?  What if she went into labor while he was gone?  Worried about these issues, Lee contacted Dr. Warner Kloepfer to help, should he need to leave before Ruth Paine arrived.  Dr. Kloepfer was on the faculty of Tulane Medical School so he had access to doctors in town.  Both he and his wife spoke Russian, and they had already visited Marina and June twice, ostensibly because of their Quaker connections with Ruth Paine.

            “Later that evening, Ruth [Paine] arrived with her small children…”(492)

            Judyth Baker also writes about 20 Sept. 1963, “Once Lee dropped off the bioweapon…in Mexico, he would have money to disappear and would send for me to join him.”[492]  Then Judyth and Lee might live happily ever after in Mexico.  Indeed, the underlying theme of the book is the romance of two young people, each ensnared in unfulfilling marriages.  They meet, work together, fall in love, and prepare to break with their marriage partners to begin a new life.

            On 22 August 2013 I telephoned Karol Kloepfer, one of the daughters of Dr. and Mrs. Kloepfer, to ask her impression of those paragraphs concerning her family.  Her short response was simple: “Lies, lies, lies.”  I had already emailed her copies of the paragraphs with which I opened this essay.  Karol elaborated that neither parent spoke Russian.  Her sister Ruth Ann (hereafter Ruanne) had studied Russian during her freshman year at Tulane, but it was mainly grammar, and her spoken ability was quite limited.  Karol had been on a tour of Europe, visiting many places including Moscow, but she too was not conversant in Russian.

            The reason Ruth Paine of Texas had made contact with Karol’s mother, Ruth Kloepfer, was because Mrs. Kloepfer was the clerk of the small NO Quaker organization which met at the Tulane U. Baptist Student Union center for Sunday services.  The Quaker clerkship rotated among its members.  Though Mrs. K had received the request from Texas earlier in the summer, because she did not speak Russian, she decided to wait until Karol had returned to NO from travelling abroad to try to meet the Russian woman.  In those days university semesters began in September, and it was not until late August that Karol arrived back in the US.

            In 1951 when the Kloepfers first arrived at Tulane U., Dr. K. was quite poor and had 4 children.  They lived in the barracks on campus beside the NROTC cannon on Freret Street.  (Just across the street was the TU history department, also located in a barrack, which I frequented to attend classes as a history major in the 1950s and early 60s).  When Dr. Kloepfer had saved enough, he moved his family to a 4-bed-room house on Pine Street which they rented.  After his wife returned to work, they saved more, and were finally able to purchase a home on Louisiana Ave. Parkway, into which they moved in September 1964, nearly a year after the Kennedy assassination.  They never knew David Ferrie.

            Dr. K was a geneticist.  He was also a Quaker and a pacifist.  He had been a conscientious objector during the draft.  He was a leader of the NO Council for Peaceful Alternatives.  Karol adamantly denies that her father would be involved in any Project to inject a speed-growing cancer into humans, - Fidel, John Kennedy, ANY human.

            After I had finished reading Me & Lee in August 2013, I tried to telephone Ruanne Kloepfer, Karol’s younger sister.  However I had spoken to her about some of these events in 1992 or 1993.

In the 1990s I was researching for an article on the Kennedy assassination.  Someone had sent me an issue of the Councilor, the publication of the segregationist White Citizens’ Council.  Featured in that issue were photos taken in the spring of 1963 of a peace march along St. Charles Ave. sponsored by the New Orleans Council for Peaceful Alternatives, a ban-the-bomb group.  Perusing the pictures, I recognized several marchers, including Ruanne Kloepfer and her boyfriend at that time, Mel Jones.  I was unable to detect anyone who resembled Oswald in the photos.

            I had telephoned Ruanne in 1992 or 93 to ask about any connections with Oswald.  She told me in the 1990s more about the meeting on Magazine St. of September 1963.  Anger in her voice resonated over the decades when discussing Lee Oswald.  The only time she saw him was the time that she, her mother Ruth and her sister Karol had driven to Oswald’s apartment at the request of fellow Quaker, Ruth Paine.  This was on 22 September 1963, according to the testimony presented by her mother to the Warren Commission.

            While the very pregnant Marina, Mrs. Kloepfer, and Karol were in the living room with June in her crib, in another room, Lee and Ruanne chatted.  Ruanne was a 19-year old, and a strikingly attractive dark blond.  Ruanne suddenly became convinced Lee was coming on to her.  She was furious.  She had not come to visit Lee Oswald!  Her mother, her sister, and his pregnant wife and daughter were in the very next room.  And he is trying to make it with her.  The nerve of this Oswald!  When I spoke with her about this, Ruanne was then residing in California, but the outrage stirred even her Quaker soul.  I thought I might reconfirm my conversation with her when I completed reading Me & Lee in August 2013.  Too late.  Ruth Ann Kloepfer Peters had died in July 2013.

            Karol’s version of the meeting was different.  Here I shall try to reconcile the two versions.  This is what I surmise happened during the visit by the Kloepfers to the Oswald residence on 22 September 1963.  Mrs. K, Karol, and Ruanne arrive around midday.  Lee opened the door and let them in.  They all congregated in the living room.  “Lee was sitting next to Marina on the sofa, and had his arm around her.  He was very polite and kind to her.  It looked to me like he loved her …I saw no sign that they were not a happily married couple.”[email from Karol K., August 2013]  September in New Orleans can still be quite hot, and Lee offered to get coffee or Coke or water for the group.  Because Marina was pregnant, Ruanne went to help Lee.  That is when Lee came on to Ruanne.  That is when she became furious.  They return to the living room.  In her email, Karol denies that that occurred.  She asserts that they were all in the living room for the full hour of the visit.  Yet, Karol maintains, “Ruanne was so mean to Lee that I cannot imagine that he would ever try anything, even if he had been alone with her…Ruanne is just not the kind of teenager who would attract men.”  In late August 2013 I called another of Ruanne’s former boy friends, Robert Bullard.  He too certainly found her attractive, and certainly the kind of young woman who would attract men.

            I suspect that when Ruanne and Lee returned to the living room with the drinks, then Ruanne turned on him.  She was mean, but did not want to raise the issue of why she was mean.  Instead, according to Karol, she continually berated Lee for preparing to leave his pregnant wife and child.  She could then express her fury without raising the sensitive issue of what had just occurred in the other room.  By contrast, Karol simply saw Lee and Marina as a happy couple.

            After an hour-long visit, the Kloepfers left the apartment.  As they were planning to alight into their auto, the station-wagon of Ruth Paine pulled up.  This was in the afternoon, not in the evening.  The Kloepfers met and said hello to the Quaker from Texas.  Then the Kloepfers drove off from the Oswalds.

            Neither Dr. Kloepfer in testimony decades ago, not Karol in August 2013 could explain why Oswald had written Dr. K’s information in his address book.  Judyth actually presents a plausible reason – Lee was worried about the pregnant Marina.  What if Ruth Paine had not arrived?  Dr. K was on the faculty of Tulane Medical School, and might find an appropriate doctor for her.  (Although if Lee is working for Dr. Ochsner so closely, why not ask Dr. O?)  

            If Karol and Ruanne are correct, Baker’s paragraphs are lies, lies, lies.  I emailed Mrs. Baker and asked for the sources she used for those paragraphs.  She told me, Lee and David Ferrie.

            In the Baker book, by September 1963, Lee and Judyth are in love, about to divorce their mates, and embark on a fantasy adventure in Mexico.  Yet, on 22 Sept.  63 Lee is coming on to the attractive Ruanne K.  Did Lee tell that to Judyth?  Did JFK tell Jackie about his flings?  Did Bill tell Hillary?  If Lee, and David, would lie to Judyth about the Kloepfer visit, what about Kloepfer’s role in the Project?  Or even the justification for K’s move to La. Ave. Pkwy.?

            Baker has the K’s visiting the Oswalds in June 1963.  Both K girls stated there was only one visit, that of 22 September.  I suspect this may simply be a memory lapse by Judyth over the decades.  I now stress that Judyth never saw the Kloepfer’s on any occasion so all her information about this is second hand, hear-say.

            Should then one dismiss the book because of the “lies, lies, lies”?  I think not.  A few paragraphs based upon hear-say from Lee and David may make one more skeptical of the assertions of those two men as told to Judyth.  But what of the personal account by Judyth?  What about her own personal experiences revealed in this book?  Is it credible that a 20-year old was involved in cancer research to develop a bio-weapon?  Would the US government have been involved in such research?  Improbable, but both are surely possible.  A 20-year old performing cancer research?  Might as well believe the National Inquirer!  Wait!  On the Kennedy assassination, sometimes the National Inquirer has been more reliable than the NY Times.  Judyth makes a strong case that she was precocious, and she drops names like Dr. Harold Urey of the Manhattan Project as well as Dr. Alton Ochsner who were interested in her experiments.

            I have always been bewildered by the witnesses who placed Oswald in line to register to vote in Clinton, Louisiana, and in other towns north of NO.  Baker presents most interesting explanations for these previously inexplicable activities.  Indeed, she states that she accompanied Lee on one mission to the state mental hospital in Jackson, La.

            Judyth errs when in a footnote she declares that Congressman Wilbur Mills represented Florida.(100)  Wrong.  He represented a district in Arkansas.  I thought she was wrong again when she discussed the Sandinistas.(394, 416).  Why is she writing about Reagan-era groups and placing them in 1963?  Then I laughed.  In the 1970s after passage of the FoI law, I sent for my FBI file.  I remember being amazed when I read some 5 pages in the file devoted to a meeting I attended.  A friend at Tulane did not want to go to a meeting alone, asked me, so I tagged along.  It was some group of Nicaraguans trying to oust Somoza.  I really had no interest in Nicaragua and was simply at that one meeting because of a friend.  Indeed, I had forgotten all about it until I read my FBI file.  The young man who asked me to go, was in the Tulane Air ROTC, and later I was told would join the intelligence unit.  Perhaps, he was on an early training mission.  The meeting had meant nothing to me; I had literally forgotten all about it until I read the file.  But, whether called Sandistas or not, there were people in NO seeking to overthrow Somoza in the late 50s early 60s.  Judyth is correct.

            Baker portrays Oswald and Ferrie as strong anti-Castro operatives, yet she maintains that both were hearty supporters of JFK.  She even asserts that Lee may have warned of plots to kill Kennedy in Dallas in early November 1963.  However, was Ferrie really pro-Kennedy?  I recall reading that in 63 Ferrie addressed a group on the Gulf Coast in which his comments were so incendiary toward Pres. Kennedy that the leaders of the group interrupted his speech and concluded the meeting.  They deemed it too hateful toward the President.  Perhaps, Ferrie merely pretended to be pro-Kennedy around Judyth.  Surely Banister was no Kennedy fan.  Nor was Marcello.  Where did Oswald really fit in?

            I would conclude that it is possible Judyth did do scientific research in New Orleans to discover a way to expedite the growth of cancer, - to develop a bio-weapon.  She was quite precocious.  She surely knew New Orleans.  She may well have had an affair with Lee Oswald.  But, as he did not inform her of trying to pick up Ruanne Kloepfer, what else did he not tell her?  And what did he tell her that might not have been true?  Note how Baker dismisses Lee’s affair with Sylvia Duran, who worked at the Cuban Embassy in Mexico City around 27 September 1963.  “Lee told me that he slept with Duran to get her cooperation, hoping for vital information and help from her.  He didn’t have to tell me about her, but by now, we never hid things of that nature from each other.”(501)  Poor Lee!  How many did he have to bed?  The things he had to do for his country!  Of course, Lee did not tell Judyth of his attempt to seduce Ruanne K in late September 1963.

            In addition to her description of the Kloepfers, wherein I find her totally inaccurate, there is Judyth’s analysis of subversion in New Orleans.  In her footnote #10 on page 445, she writes:  “Lee originally wanted to hold this [FPCC leafleting] demonstration a week later, but Banister told him the staged ‘fight’ had to be scheduled while District Attorney Jim Garrison was out of town, apparently doing his duty with the National Guard.  Banister insisted that Lee’s activity, if Garrison were in town, would have incited the D. A. to use the new and untested Communism Control Act against Lee to gain more popularity against a ‘Communist.’  But that could uncover the whole ploy.  Instead, Banister – the committed racist – wanted Garrison to test the new law against the Southern Conference Educational Fund (SCEF) which openly supported local desegregation and Martin Luther King.  Banister got his way: the new law was used as an excuse to raid and ruin the SCEF office in early October, with three arrests, and Garrison right on top of it.”

            I recall the incident quite well.  I had been teaching, and instead of coming directly home that afternoon, I played some tennis.  Upon arriving home late, my mother sneered.  “Huh!  I thought they had rounded you up too!”  I had no idea what she was referring to, but quickly ran to the radio and TV.  The raid on SCEF and two attorneys did occur, but it was not under the auspices of DA Garrison.  This was a project of the Louisiana un-American Activities Committee (LUAC) whose chair was Democrat state representative Jim Pfister.  He lived a few doors down the block from us, and his wife was my mother’s Avon lady.  The case eventually was appealed to the US Supreme Court, and when SCEF sought to retrieve its records, I think they were located in the offices of Mississippi Democratic Senator Eastland, who was on another anti-subversion committee in the national Senate.  As I recall, the raiders used a hatchet on the door to the home of attorney Ben Smith.  Banister was one of the investigators involved with LUAC.  Garrison was not the lead character in the roundup.

Baker is good at pointing out the proximity of the office of La. Congressman Willis, who then headed the national HUAC, to the Reily Coffee business where both Judyth and Lee Oswald worked.(275-76, ftnote #4)  But Garrison was not the chief “on top” who led the anti-red raids of 3 October 1963 on SCEF in New Orleans.  That was a project of LUAC.  I do not know why Baker seeks to place the onus of the SCEF raid upon Garrison, when Banister was probably more involved.  But once again, Judyth would not have known this – it would have been hear-say, from Lee, or David, or both.

            Quibbles.  In addition to the Kloepfer and SCEF paragraphs, I have a series of minor quibbles with the authoress.  For April 30, 1963 she has Ferrie explaining that after JFK there would be VP Lyndon Johnson, and next Richard Nixon.  The FBI’s J. Edgar could not stop the plotters because the Mafia knew he was Madame Hoover to Clyde Tolson.  I suspect this is simply Monday morning quarterbacking written to make it appear that it is a prediction.  In November 1962 Nixon decisively lost the governor’s race in California to Democrat Pat Brown.  In April 63, most would have presumed Nixon’s his prospects as a national politician were dead.  Few were referring to Hoover as Madame (though Ferrie, because of his gay and Mafia contacts, just might have).  Still, these assertions seem out of place and time.(184)  More likely criticism of that era, was that Hoover was insufficiently anti-communist.  I recall in my neighborhood on Sunday’s after church all the car windshields would have flyers warning of the communist menace emanating from Moscow, New York, and Washington, and that included Hoover.  The flyers were distributed by the NSRP, the National States’ Rights Party.  The NSRP gained national attention beating Freedom Riders in Alabama in 1961, and one of its leaders was convicted of bombing a Black church in Birmingham.  Though most of the whites in the neighborhood were Roman Catholic, the church with the neon Bible was nearby, and apparently some of its members were sympathetic to the NSRP.

            I was surprised to see the letter of Hale Boggs positing that he and Dr. Alton Ochsner were working for the success of President Kennedy’s visit to NO in the spring of 1963.(577)  Ochsner was on the Right.  Hale Boggs, father of Cokie Roberts, was often attacked as a Left-winger.  There was a photo of him in the 1930s with a raised arm and the clenched fist of the Popular Front salute.  This was used by his political opponents as proof that Boggs was pro-Communist.

            I nearly laughed when I read Judyth’s report of David Ferrie discussing Communists on the docks in NO.  NO was the #2 port in the US at that time.  Ferrie said the NO docks were OK because they were controlled by the mob.  Baker does not mention it, but in the 1950s there had been a powerful film, “On The Waterfront,” with Marlon Brando, about corruption in the New York waterfront unions.  The NO dockers were affiliated with the ILA, the same as NY and the East Coast.  NO was not controlled by Harry Bridges  and the left-wing ILWU.  The impression I had at the time was the NO docks were not nearly as corrupt as those portrayed in the Brando film.  Like other AFL unions of that era, in NO there were separate white and Black ILA unions.  When integration issues surfaced in NO, many in the white union also joined the White Citizens’ Council.  By contrast, some in the Black union were supporting integration efforts.

            Baker has Lee defying segregationist mores by sitting at the back of busses.  Yet, for someone like Banister, with whom he worked, integration was Communism.  Was Lee pretending to be an integrationist?  He was surely pretending to be pro-Castro.

            Judyth has Lee telling her that donuts from the French Quarter were called beignets (benyays).(308)  I had thought that was the word for tourists.  Natives knew if you got donuts at the Café du Monde or the Morning Call, they would not be the round ones served at Walgreen’s or K & B drug stores.  Admittedly, not all natives would call them donuts, so this is not an error, just an anomaly.

            There is a strange contradiction in Judyth’s conscience that is all too human.  After working all summer on The Project  - how to accelerate the growth of cancer in mice, then in simians, she finally realizes they are going to use human guinea pigs to insure that the procedure works on (kills) people.  She begins to compare the Project to gassing prisoners at Auschwitz.  She suddenly finds The Project morally repugnant, contrary to the Hippocratic Oath, and on 30 August 63, she writes a note to her boss, and the likely director of The Project, Dr. Alton Ochsner informing him of her ethical conclusions, (in effect comparing him to Dr. Mengele).  Dr. Ochsner was not pleased.  David Ferrie soon informed Judyth that Ochsner was now her “enemy.”  Despite earlier promises that if she did the summer work on the Project, he would help her enter Tulane Medical School, Ochsner now would not now help her in any way.

            Even after her self-righteous rebuke of her chief, even after she compares The Project to experiments in concentration camps, on Saturday 31 August Judyth accompanies Lee Oswald on a trip to the mental hospital in Jackson, Louisiana, so she can complete blood tests on a Project “volunteer” who had been injected with cancer!(476-81)

            The role of Lee and Judyth in the Project was nearing an end anyway.  Her employment would have terminated after the Jackson tests in early September even without her blast against her boss.  Lee would still have to transport the cancer bio-weapon to Mexico, and he, or someone else, would then try to get the material into Cuba so it could be used on Fidel.

            Yet, by insulting Dr. Ochsner, she lost all the promised benefits that were to reward her hard work all summer on the secret Project.  She would receive no recommendation from the world-famous doctor.  And because everything had been secret, there would be no publications, not even a paper trail to prove that she had conducted this research.  Yet, two days prior to the end of her employment in the Project, she blasts her boss in an act of conscience.  And then, the very next day, she goes to Jackson to finish testing a human “volunteer” in the deadly experiment.  Overnight, she changes from Catholic moralist to pragmatic scientist.  OR - perhaps, she simply wanted to travel to Jackson with Lee.

            Weird.  Contradictory.  But all of us do act in such weird and contradictory ways on occasion.    

            After reading the entire book, I found only a few errors that I could identify.  In addition to her description of the Kloepfers, wherein I find her totally inaccurate, there is her interpretation of Garrison in the SCEF raid in New Orleans.  I question her portrayal of the political ideas of David Ferrie toward Pres. Kennedy.  I am unsure about her depiction of Oswald’s view of the President.  Nevertheless, Judyth Baker could have been Oswald’s co-worker and secret lover during the summer of 1963.  She could have accompanied him to Jackson, Louisiana.  Indeed, her explanation of his activities in Clinton and Jackson might be the best at ending the mystery of these otherwise inexplicable events.

            Jim Marr’s Afterword continued: “Even if [Me & Lee] is only partially true, it speaks volumes about the activities of Lee Oswald and many others in New Orleans during the summer of 1963.”(566)  I read this book with wary eyes, looking for something that would tip my view one way or the other.  Other than the sections on the Kloepfers, I found nothing where I could say, ah ha, this is all lies.  A few unsubstantiated paragraphs in a 600-page book, is insufficient for me to brand it as fiction.  If one dismisses her descriptions of the politics of Ferrie and Lee, there may be left a core that could be true.  A core that may help explain the events north of Lake Pontchartrain in Clinton and Jackson.  At worst, even if it were entirely historical fiction, it is the kind that provokes thought and research.  Nevertheless, it may be the true love story of a couple struggling amid the weird conflicts to so many of us recognize as life.  (If you want to read a view directly contrary to Prof. McAdams, see James Fetzer’s blogspot, 14 reasons to believe Judyth Vary Baker.)