Jim Fetzer interviews Judyth Vary Baker

Jim Fetzer interviewed me for his YouTube channel JamesFetzerNews on 26 February and 1 March.

And this is a transcript of our first interview, where our connection was not very good and some of what I had to say was garbled. I would like to thank Michael L. Sparks for translating the interview. Mike is a 1988 graduate of Liberty University, with a Bachelor of Science degree in history education. He leads a non-profit, think-tank, 1st Tactical Studies Group (Airborne), originally based out of Fort Bragg, North Carolina.

JF = James Fetzer Ph.D.
JVB = Judyth Vary Baker

JF: "This is Jim Fetzer with ‘JamesFetzerNews’ and I have the extraordinary opportunity to have as my guest Judyth Vary Baker, who has been living in exile harassed by virtue of her associations, which many challenge, with Lee Oswald in New Orleans. Judyth, it's a pleasure to have you on the show."

JVB: "Thank you, Jim."

JF: "For the sake of those who want to learn more, I have done a blog about Judyth at jamesfetzer.blogspot. Check it out. You'll learn more about her. Judyth … one of the most convincing aspects of your life story in relation to with your association with Lee Oswald is the massive harassment to which you have been subjected. It’s been a veritable horror story."

JVB: "Yeah, it's been real fun."

JF: "’It’s been real fun!’ [laughing]. In fact, you've had to live in one country after another. Weird accidents and attempts have been made on your life. And I must tell you [that] to me, it was astonishing that, when I put up your blog, I received the first death threat I have ever received in about 20 years of doing research on JFK. It wasn't directly mentioning you but, I take it …"

JVB: "No, they wouldn't want to do that."

JF: "That would be too obvious, huh?"

JVB: "Yeah."

JF: "Tell us just a little bit about your association with Lee in New Orleans."

JVB: "He's not like he's been presented. … In fact, a lot of the photos that are shown of Lee that you see will show him smirking and things like that. But you don’t see that in any of the TV” [missing words: … in any of the TV shots of him … where the photos can’t be retouched or selected for the ugliest of them,] Lee Oswald looked miserable … disgusted … tired … he was not ‘smirking.’

JF: "Jud …"

JVB: [But he had a sense of humor and laughed easily and things like that] … He sounded like you in a way—happy … laughing!”

JF: "I’ve heard various … you know, different reports about him, and I'm very interested in your characterization of his personality and character."

JVB: "He's been demonized. You ought to see what they say about me. I'm not really ‘a big fat whore’—honest!”

JF: laughs

JVB: “I’ve lost about 50 pounds since those photos were taken. I had just got out of the hospital when Nigel Turner … saw me on tape with steroids and everything for inflammation and went back and had it [filmed a little later when I felt better, but I was still in pain and not feeling well] ….”

The Love Affair (The Men Who Killed Kennedy)

JF: "Well, Judyth, I'll tell you, a few of us have added a few pounds over the years. I must confess to be in that category myself. Tell us: There was this unusual incident where he was accosted by some pro-Castro Cubans that he associated with because he was handing out Fair Play for Cuba pamphlets."

JVB: laughs

JF: "Tell me about that incident and what he told you about it."

JVB: "Well, uh, he showed me an article, umm … I remember at [1032—my apartment] that he showed me an article from the May 4th 1963 edition of The Times-Picayune. And there it says ‘23-year old young man accosted’—he was really pretending to be a drug dealer and he was undercover agent—and this young man was at one point beaten by 3 men. But he did all of this because he was undercover, and he finally exposed the ring. And he said, ‘This is what I’m going to do’. He said, ‘These guys are going to pretend to get mad at me and beat me up’. And I said, 'I'm so worried!' And he said, 'Don't worry. They'll just punch me in the nose or something. They won’t really hurt me ….' So I have a lot of stuff like that. I can show you his motivation and plans that were behind them and why he’d do it. [I was] with Lee at total of--face-to-face--155 days … 130 days, I mean. Excuse me. We weren’t face-to-face … [it was] 155 days of direct contact. And … altogether … a total of 203 days." [Added by JVB: By direct contact, I meant at least we spoke on the phone … face-to-face approximately 130 days]

JF: "Judyth, I know that he, when he was a child, enjoyed this program with Herb Philbrick ,'I Led Three Lives'. Did he ever mention that to you?"

JVB: "Oh, absolutely! In fact there is a photograph of me in one of the Buffalo newspapers—as I was in that part of the world because of my cancer research at that time—[Added by JVB: Lee was looking at my newspaper articles and photos and things …]

JF: "Judyth … Judyth, we’re having an interruption in our recording, but continue. We, we’ll use it anyway. Go ahead".

JVB: "OK. At any rate, the newspaper article—when you're looking at it—in Buffalo New York—when you turn it over you saw a newspaper [section of] TV programs that were listed. And there it was, right on the back of my newspaper article, which I still have to this day, is 'I Led 3 Lives', which shows that it was being shown. He said he liked it. He'd seen it while visiting in New York--not in fact as Robert Oswald says. And it was first broadcast in New York. He saw two things: one, he saw Herbert Philbrick kissing his wife with such passion that it brought tears to his eyes—when she finally found out who he really was. And the other umm …. the other incident is when he got on his knees and began to weep; then he says, 'I want to serve my country'."

JF: "Judyth, tell me, you've undoubtedly seen over and over the video after his arrest in Dallas. Was that the same man that was in the video tapes that you knew in New Orleans?"

JVB: "Oh, oh, yes, yes! He had lost weight but he was the same person. It was absolutely the same person. However, he told me that he knew he was being impersonated and that was fine with him. He stopped using 'Harvey' as his middle name in approximately 1959, because people, like the [Marine] secretaries, kept thinking he was writing 'Henry' instead of 'Harvey'. He just started using an "H" after that. I suspect whenever you see the name 'Lee Harvey Oswald' written out …

JF: "Yes."

JVB: "… after 1959, well, that’s not really his handwriting, like with doing a document to visit Castro, but is false, fake.”"

JF: "After 1959?"

JVB: "That's right. So we're talking about that Mexico City trip to Mexico …."

JF: "Yes, yes"

JVB: “It [the letter to Hunt] was false, fake.”

JF: "Do you think he was ever in Mexico City, or was the whole thing fabricated?"

JVB: "Well, he was never at … from what he told me at least he was never at that hotel that they say he stayed at. He stayed at a Quaker establishment. Scared the devil out of them! And he kept pretending to be a drug dealer … And he did that because he had a lot of Quaker connections, [remember Ruth Paine,] had them, too. He had learned passive resistance techniques and the Quaker teacher was a CIA guy over there while in Japan. There are a lot of things I know that people never ask me. If you ask me, I'll give you the details."

JF: "Did he ever claim to have gone to the Cuban Embassy?"

JVB: "He never told me that he went in. He told me he went there with someone and I also speculated that they couldn't show the [real] picture [of Oswald], because they couldn't take that person [who was with him] out of the picture."

JF: "Well, there are photographs there that look nothing like Lee."

JVB: "That's not him. Of course not."

JF: "They had audio tapes. They were also not like Lee."

JVB: "No, there were things going on. I also suspected they had to get him down to Mexico somehow so they could later blame him. So they could have had anybody actually courier the material we were working, on go down there and hand it off, but they chose him now I feel that was to implicate him in a—you know— …"

JF: "J. Edgar Hoover even issued a directive to his Agents-in-Charge that someone in Mexico City was impersonating Lee Harvey Oswald. Then he later had them all retracted. I think only copy survived. Are you aware of that?"

JVB: "No, I didn't know of any of this stuff. I only heard what they told me because, after he was shot, I went in shock … I didn't know Jack Ruby and Jack Rubenstein were the same people. You know, I only heard the back [ground noise] … I turned it all off. I cannot tell you what it feels like seeing someone you love shot in front of you. I can’t tell you. I can’t”.

JF: "Yes, yes. I can appreciate that."

JF: "Let me ask you this. There has been recent controversy because a Dartmouth computer scientist has claimed that the back yard photographs of Lee are authentic. He only actually studied one photograph and one aspect of the photograph—the nose shadow. Do you have an opinion about this?"

JVB: "Well, I think my opinion is easily understood. First of all, I never saw Lee with that rifle. By the way, I did see him with a .38 caliber Smith & Wesson long-nose—not snub-nose. Nothing like the junk [they show now] … Lee knew a lot about guns and he wouldn't have had junk like that carbine, that Italian carbine. He never would have purchased anything by mail order. The mail order itself, Jim, has a lot that shows it’s not from him. But you probably know all that already, so I won’t go into that, I won’t go on with that. He never [posed] for that."

JF: "Judyth, I'm so grateful to have you on with me and I hope that we will be able to do many other of these interviews. Meanwhile, I want to mention, if anyone wishes to learn more about Judyth Vary Baker, just enter the name ‘Judyth Vary Baker: Living in Exile’ and it will carry you to the blog. Judyth, I want to say, I believe in you and I wish you well and I look forward to our next conversation."

JVB: "Well, God bless you, Jim. All I can say is, that if we were to meet face to face and not just through the internet, I think that they and you would understand why I continue to speak for Lee for new generations."

JF: "Thanks!"