Those who are most critical about Judyth Vary Baker appear to be those who know the least about her. It is therefore fortunate indeed that the author of DR. MARY'S MONKEY, Edward Haslam, has spend some 1,000 hours questioning her and establishing the core authenticity of her story. His book, which appeared in 2007, and my interview with him on "The Real Deal" provide a context for understanding how she came into contact with Lee Harvey Oswald in the first place. It is therefore my great pleasure to present a chapter from Ed's book, which is indispensable for understanding what was going on in the city at the time, which had more to do with an extraordinary cancer-research project than it did with a personal relationship.
The late Jim Garrison, former DA of New Orleans, describes his investigation of the Kennedy assassination and his subsequent arrest of Clay Shaw. Some of Garrison's assistant DAs contribute to this story.
Judyth has much more to tell us regarding some of the murkiest aspects of assassination research, events which were taking place in New Orleans during 1963. As Ed Haslam has explained in his book and during the interview, Judyth and Lee were collaborating with David Ferrie and Dr. Mary Sherman in a project that evolved from the necesssity to develop an anti-cancer-virus cure that became crucial when it was discovered that the polio vaccine being use to inoculate around 100,000,000 children and young adults was contaminated with the SV-40 virus, derived from the incubation of batches for study in the kidneys of Rhesus monkeys, into the development of a bioweapon to take out officially designated targets. It is a fascinating and remarkable story, which I am only now beginning to piece together.
I myself have been slow to appreciate what was going on and that their relationship appears to have been arranged in order for Lee to assist Judyth with the practical aspects of life in relation to the threats and promises of the New Orleans environment, where many dark secrets and covert activities linked Guy Banister, Clay Shaw, Carlos Marcello, and Lee Oswald together in anti-Castro activities. Meanwhile, David Ferrie, Mary Sherman, and Alton Ochsner had been atempting to fix a cure for polio that was more dangerous than the disease, but by the time Judyth was on the scene, attention had sifted to bioweapon development. After all, as Judyth has observed, what doctor would assume that a cancer developing in a person was anything but natural? Containimated vaccines continued to be used until the 1990s.
Judyth has added that research on a cure for the contaminated vaccine had largely subsided by the time she became actively involved and that emphasis was focused at that time on the development of radidly-developing cancers for use a bioweapons to eliminate enemies of the state, initially including Fidel Castro but probably employed on Jack Ruby as well, because he "knew too much" about activities the government preferred not to share with the public. You will be as stunned as I to learn how much more was involved in the relationship between Lee and Judyth than has been presented on this very thread, where the personal has overshadowed the scientific. Research on an unexpected problem in the "cure for polio" and the development of a bioweapon are the crucial elements that we have been missing.
DR. MARY'S MONKEY - Ed Haslam interviewed on "The Real Deal" with Jim Fetzer (6 April 2010):
[NOTE: Here is an extract from Ed Haslam's first book on these matters.]
MARY, FARRIE, & THE MONKEY VIRUS
The Witness / Chapter 17
By Edward Haslam
In 1995, on the eve of publication of the 1st edition of this book, a fellow writer cautioned me “You have everything except a witness.”
Five years later, the phone rang. It was 60 Minutes, the CBS News TV show. They were investigating a woman who said that she had been in the laboratory I wrote about in my book. In the laboratory in David Ferrie’s apartment. Did I want to talk to them?
Frankly, it was not a good time to ask me that question. In 2000 I was extremely busy doing other things in my professional life and was not anxious to get drawn back into the story that had dominated so many years of my life.
On the other hand, I respected the power of the 60M microphone. Whatever they said, whether right or wrong, critical or favorable, would be heard by millions of people and would shape the public’s understanding of events which I cared about. I reluctantly decided to participate enough to keep an eye on the situation. We agreed to meet for an off-camera interview. They sent me background materials to review, and one of their investigators came to see me – a lawyer. Ironically, it was 60M that brought me the witness that I had been missing.
After reviewing the materials which they sent me (which did not include any of the photos of the woman nor the evidence that I will be showing you shortly), they asked me to comment. My opening remark was: “Well, she needs to be written up. Either in the history books or the medical books. At the moment, I am not sure which one.” Neither were they.
60M’s interest in this woman was fueled by the sensational aspects of her story – that she had met Lee Harvey Oswald in New Orleans in the summer of 1963, that they had fallen in love and had an affair, despite the fact that both were married to other people at the time. Any TV executive could see the blockbuster potential for a sizzling story built around the vortex of love, sex, politics and the accused assassin of JFK set in America’s most exotic city. They eagerly flew their investigators to New Orleans and interviewed Oswald’s girlfriend for hours.[1]
60M asked Oswald’s girl friend all the logical questions: “Where are you from? Why were you in New Orleans? Where did you work? Where did you live? How did you meet Lee? What did you do together? Did you ever hear the subject of killing JFK discussed?” And Oswald’s girlfriend kept answering them. Before long 60M realized that their sizzling little romance between a beautiful young woman and a soon-to-be-accused assassin had morphed into an 800 pound gorilla with “serious politics” written all over it. The adulteress sitting in front of them stated that she and Lee Harvey Oswald stood side-by-side in an underground medical laboratory located in David Ferrie’s apartment on Louisiana Avenue Parkway in New Orleans and that she was the laboratory technician that handled the cancer-causing monkey viruses which were being used to develop a biological weapon for the purpose of killing Fidel Castro. To put the icing on the cake, the entire project was secretly directed by the famous Dr. Alton Ochsner (former President of the American Cancer Society) and supervised by a prestigious cancer researcher named Dr. Mary Sherman who worked for Dr. Ochsner at his hospital. Further, after successfully killing numerous monkeys with their new biological weapon, this group had tested it on a human subject in a mental hospital, killing the human. Lethal human experiments! Leaders of American medicine and the accused assassin of the American President involved together in developing a biological weapon! Can you hear 60M’s signature sound effect ticking in the background?
As the dimensions of the story grew, so did 60M’s demands for hard evidence. 60M was not about to risk their credibility over an unsupported story involving a homemade biological weapon and the accused assassin of the President without hard evidence. This is when they contacted me, because I had already written a book that sounded very similar. Yes, they had my book, but no, they had not read it yet. I insisted that the 60M investigator read it, every-word, cover-to-cover, which she said that she did on her flight back to New York. No, I did not have the hard evidence about Judyth they were looking for. But I never said that I did. From my perspective, I was particularly concerned 60M could discredit her story as a means of discrediting mine. Such were my initial thoughts.
The next problem came when I read her name in the documents they had sent: Judyth Vary Baker. The problem was that I already knew someone named Judyth Vary Baker. And she had said that she was a close friend of Lee Harvey Oswald. My girlfriend Barbara and I went to a party at her house in New Orleans in 1972.[2]
When it became clear that the woman brought to me by 60M was not the same person I met in 1972, I realized that I had met two separate women claiming to be “Judyth Vary Baker” who claimed to have known “Lee Oswald.” Simply said, one had to be an impostor. With the information available to me at that time, I could not tell 60M which one was the impostor. I hoped they would be able to tell me.
At that point, 60M pulled the plug on the Judyth story. The rank-and-file CBS producers and investigators had worked hard on the story. They were extremely disappointed by the decision from their bosses to terminate the story. One insider forwarded me an email written by a senior 60M executive in which he stated that 60M had spend more time and money investigating Judyth’s story than they had on any story in their 20 year history. To refuse to air the story after making that kind of investment was difficult decision for them. It makes one wonder “Who really made 60M’s decision to abort?” and “Why?”
After the 60M debacle, I contacted Judyth Vary Baker directly. I was curious about this unusual woman and wanted to learn more about her. If she could show me that she was the real Judyth Vary Baker, then it meant the other Judyth Vary Baker that I had met in 1972 was the impostor. This raised some very interesting questions: Why would someone have gone to the trouble to impersonate Baker back in 1972? How did they know who she was? How did they know about her connection to Oswald? Why was I invited to her party? Why did they tell me her name?
Yes, the 1972 incident did cause confusion and distrust amongst the 60M team. Their only evidence was my word and my memory. But that was their perspective. I, on the other hand, was the one who was there. I knew what I saw. I knew what I heard. And I remembered the names clearly.[3] The fact that 60M had a real live person who said that her name was Judyth Vary Baker and that she had known Lee Oswald made the 1972 “Judyth Vary Baker” incident even more interesting to me. I decided to learn more about this new “Judyth Vary Baker” to figure out why someone had wanted me to know who she was back in 1972.
In 2001, I happened to live in Bradenton, Florida, the small town on the west coast of Florida where Judyth was raised. When Judyth said that she would be visiting Bradenton soon to see her aging mother, we agreed to meet.
I took the day off from work so that I would not be distracted by business matters. We met in the lobby of the central library and drove to a local restaurant where we could talk. Judyth picked a restaurant where she knew the owner. When we got there, she introduced me to the owner who remembered her fondly, and we were shown a table in the back where we could talk. For the next several hours, Judyth displayed binders of documents she had collected and neatly organized over the years and told me her story, page by page. It was only then that I really began to understand the dimensions of what she was saying. Finally, I looked at her carefully, studying her pensive blue eyes and her coke-bottle thick glasses, and said “You are telling me that you personally stood in David Ferrie’s apartment with Lee Oswald at your side, day after day, and worked with cancer-causing monkey viruses so that you could develop a biological weapon to kill Fidel Castro?”
“Yes,” she said.
I felt that Judyth’s story was an important development. So I called the writer who said that I had “everything except a witness” and told him about Judyth. His book had been on the JFK assassination. He assured me that Judyth was a walking-talking misinformation machine sent by CIA to cause chaos and confusion amongst the JFK assassination research community and that the documents that I had seen were probably forgeries.
“If these documents are fake,” I countered, “They are the best forgeries I have ever seen. I’m talking about 30 year old newspapers and faded ink.”
“Langley does great work,” he quipped.[4]
“You once told me that my only problem was that I didn’t have a witness,” I retorted. “Now my problem seems to be that I have a witness.”
I begin my discussion of Judyth this way to show how skeptical I was of her. It was clear to me that Judyth’s road to acceptance was going to be difficult one. Was she crazy? Was she an impostor? Had she made up her story after reading my book? Would people think Judyth and I were some sort of tag team that were secretly coordinating our stories? These are fair questions for the average person who has heard her story from others and has not seen her evidence presented properly. If you quarter some of these thoughts, know that I did, too. It is reasonable to be suspicious of claims that challenge our understanding of history. But it is unreasonable to ignore evidence because it might change your mind or challenge the positions that you have taken in public. History shows us new information is rarely welcome. And Judyth has new information.
It’s time to get to the core questions about Judyth Vary Baker. I consider the three most important questions to be:
1. Is “this Judyth” the real Judyth Vary Baker from Bradenton, Florida? Or is she the impostor?
2. Did Judyth know Lee Harvey Oswald in New Orleans in 1963? If she does not have reasonable proof to support this claim, then there is little point in pondering her story.
3. Was Judyth trained to handle cancer-causing viruses before she went to New Orleans in 1963? If 1 and 2 above are true, then this point would qualify her as a suspect for “the technician” that I wrote about in “The Pandemic” chapter.
If the answers to all three questions are “yes,” then we need to pay attention to what Judyth has to say, even if it conflicts with both the official and the unofficial stories concerning Oswald and his role (whatever it was) in the assassination of JFK. Even if it disagrees with the self-appointed Oswald experts. And even if it disagrees with some of the things I originally said in this book. Let’s tackle these questions right now - one at a time.
1. Is she the real Judyth Vary Baker from Bradenton, Florida?
Judyth had shown me a collection of newspaper articles when we met in 2001. Several had photos of her. Most of the articles were published in The Bradenton Herald, one of the local newspapers in the Bradenton, Florida.
A year later, in February 2002, I started working for The Bradenton Herald. My role was to handle their market research materials, but my position gave me access to their news library and their microfilm collection. This microfilm collection had been copied about 10 years earlier, and the copy had been given to the Bradenton Public Library. The public could see the microfilm collection at the public library, but the original microfilm was kept in the news department’s research library on the upper floor of The Bradenton Herald and was not open to the public. No one could have anticipated that I would start working for The Bradenton Herald and would have access to their original microfilm collection. If I could find Judyth’s newspaper articles there in the off-limits microfilm collection, I could settle the “forgeries” issue once-and-for-all. I got Judyth to send me a list of publication dates for the articles
she had.
Yes, I found all of The Bradenton Herald newspaper articles that Judyth had shown me in the microfilm library of The Bradenton Herald. She had also shown me two other newspaper articles which I will be discussing later in this chapter.
So the answer to our first question is “Yes, she is definitely the real Judyth Vary Baker from Bradenton, Florida.” Her maiden name was Judyth Anne Vary, and she was frequently referred to as Judy in the press of the day. She is easy to recognize in the photos. Bradenton was proud of her. “Judy” was going to find the cure for cancer.[5] She presents copious evidence to support all of this in her book.[6]
2. Did Judyth know Lee Harvey Oswald in New Orleans in 1963?
It might help the reader to know there has never been any dispute over the fact that the person that the press has referred to as Lee Harvey Oswald worked at a coffee company in New Orleans in the summer of 1963. This is reported by the Warren Commission and acknowledged throughout the JFK assassination research community. In fact, I have never heard anyone dispute it. Beyond that, I personally heard Boatner Reily, later the president of that same coffee company, state that they (the Wm. B. Reily Coffee Company) had turned over their employment records of Lee Harvey Oswald to the U.S. Government immediately after the assassination. What is less clear to the casual reader is whether Lee Oswald worked for the Standard Coffee Company or for the Wm. B. Reilly Coffee Company, since the names differ on various documents. Both companies were owned and operated by William B. Reily and his family, so the difference in the names is not important. Lee Oswald worked for Reily. So did Judyth Vary Baker.
Here is her W2 tax form submitted by Wm. B. Reily & Co. to the U.S. Internal Revenue Service which proves that she did.
This document was provided to me directly by Judyth Vary Baker who scanned it from the original. I accept it as authentic.[7] I have blocked out the last four digits of her Social Security number to protect her privacy. I did, however, compare that social security number with a variety of other documents which Judyth provided to me, such as her college transcripts, and I assure the reader that the numbers match.
The name on the document is Judyth Anne Baker. The person we now know as Judyth Vary Baker was known as Judyth Anne Vary until she married Robert Baker and became Judyth Anne Baker in 1963. Back then it was not common for women to incorporate their maiden names into their married names.
W2 forms are mailed out in January of the following year - in this case, in January 1964 for the 1963 tax year. The address on the form shows where the form was mailed, not where the person lived during their employment. Judyth left New Orleans in September 1963 after her employment with Reily ended and returned to Florida. The Ft. Walton address on Judyth’s W2 form was her husband’s family’s residence which he used as his official address while attending the University of Florida in Gainesville.
The amount of money shown on the W2 form is consistent with Judyth’s pay stubs from Reily, which I also have copies of. It should be emphasized that Judyth was referred to Reily by the same employment agency that referred Lee Oswald and that she started work on the same day. Judyth worked directly for Reily’s Vice–President William I. Monaghan, an ex-FBI agent who later testified to the Warren Commission about Oswald. But Monaghan did not mention Judyth to the Warren Commission nor did he mention that another person was hired on the same day that Oswald was hired.
A simple gumshoe investigation a murder suspect would have started with friends and associates, particularly at the place of employment. A gumshoe investigation of Oswald would have checked out Reily Coffee, found Judyth, and realized that she was close to Oswald. They started on the same day and arrived at work together each morning, though they frequently clocked in at different times, due to Lee’s other activities in the neighborhood. We even find Judyth’s initials on Lee’s timecards. Figuring out their connection would not have been difficult. Consider these obvious points. Neither Lee nor Judyth owned a car. Reily Coffee was located on Magazine Street. Both Judyth and Lee lived along the Magazine Street bus route and rode the bus to work. Day after day, Lee would get on the bus at the 4900 block of Magazine. Several blocks later Judyth would get on at the corner of Marengo Street and sit next to Lee. Bus drivers recognize their regular customers. The bus driver could have easily confirmed that Judyth and Lee sat together every morning, read the newspaper, and talked - and that they got off the bus together near the Reily Coffee Company. This would not have been difficult for an investigator to sort out.[8]
Who was this young woman who talked to the accused assassin of the President on a daily basis? What did she know about him? What did she know about the assassination? Did she have prior knowledge? These are good questions, and a competent investigator would have asked them. So why were they not asked?
Did the Warren Commission send in a gumshoe to investigate Oswald at Reily? No, they asked the “ex-FBI” agent that hired Oswald about him.[9] And that ex-FBI agent did not mention that his own secretary, whom he also hired, started on the same day and arrived at his front door with Oswald every morning. How convenient! This raises the question: Did Monaghan knowingly withhold information from the Warren Commission? If he did, was he instructed to do so? And by whom? Was Judyth being protected in order to protect the bio-weapon project and the people behind it?
Several years after the Warren Commission “investigation,” the investigators working for New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison tracked down another young woman named Anna Lewis, a waitress who worked at Thompson’s Restaurant - a favorite gathering spot for the anti-Castro crowd around Lafayette Square in downtown New Orleans. At the time, Anna was married to David Lewis, who had worked for another “ex-FBI” agent Guy Banister. Today we have video testimony from Anna Lewis recorded in 2003 and made available on the internet by Dutch JFK
researcher Wim Dankbaar. In this interview, Anna clearly states that she knew Lee Oswald and that Oswald was a regular customer at Thompson’s in 1963. Further, she states that she and her husband socialized with Lee and Judyth together on a number of occasions. More importantly Anna Lewis admits that she lied to District Attorney Garrison and his investigators when they asked her about Oswald. Had Anna Lewis told Garrison the truth, Garrison could have easily tracked down Judyth. Garrison was already suspicious of Ochsner and his role in the media exposure of Oswald. If Garrison had had access to Judyth, and if Judyth told Garrison what she now tells us - that she and Lee were working on a biological weapon project under the direction of Dr. Alton Ochsner, Garrison’s investigation (and his whole life) might have turned out very differently. But she didn’t. Anna Lewis lied to Garrison because she was afraid. Meanwhile, Judyth hid silently because she was afraid. Two critical pieces of evidence were unavailable to the American people and their elected representatives (like Garrison) at the time they were pondering who killed their President. Now that we know differently, is it time to reconsider our history?
3. Was Judyth trained to handle cancer viruses before going to New Orleans?
The short answer is “yes,” and the evidence to support this is abundant. Here is a photo taken by the Herald-Tribune (a newspaper in the Bradenton area) showing Judyth in her cancer lab with her mice during high school. The numerous newspaper articles published in The Bradenton Herald tell a similar tale. Judyth was a star science student who wanted to find a cure for cancer. They wanted her to succeed. After creating lung cancer in her mice faster than anyone known to medical science, Judyth was given introductions, financing, opportunities, chemicals, tuition, and training. Her training was world-class.
I also know a man in Bradenton who remembers Judyth from high school. He was in an independent-study science class with Judyth and saw her on a regular basis during their senior year in high school. His comments to me are worth noting. He said “If you’re telling me that Judyth wound up in some secret lab doing some heavy duty experiments, it wouldn’t surprise me in the least. She was always very intense and took herself very seriously.”
The next newspaper article that I would like to discuss was published in upstate New York in The Buffalo Courier-Express, which reported on the cancer research training program that Judyth attended at the Roswell Park Cancer Center.
There is a detail in the text of this article that I think is equally important. It’s a quote from Dr. Edwin Mirand who ran the program Judyth attended.
Dr. Mirand was half of the “Grace and Mirand” medical research team that wrote “Human Susceptibility to a Simian Tumor Virus,” an article published in the Annals of the New York Academy of Science in 1963.
I referred to this same article in every edition of my book since 1995. It has been listed in the bibliography the entire time.
In other words, this is proof that in 1961, Judyth personally knew and studied under the nation’s leading experts in cancer-causing monkey viruses which I wrote about.
And she did so 34 years before I published my book.
This article contradicts that notion that Judyth read my book and wrote herself into it. She did not. The evidence indicates that she was trained to handle cancer-causing viruses, lived in New Orleans, and knew Lee Oswald decades earlier.
This may be intoxicating news for those concerned about Judyth’s credibility and what she can tell us about Lee Oswald, but it is sobering to those of us worried about the fate of the biological weapon. This means that Judyth Vary Baker really did have the technical skills to handle the cancer-causing monkey viruses that might be used to create a biological weapon. Yes, Judyth Vary Baker had the technical qualifications to be “the technician” that did “the bench work” in the Ferrie-Sherman medical laboratory. Hearing Judyth admit that as a 19-year old she assisted Lee Harvey Oswald, David Ferrie, Dr. Mary Sherman, and Dr. Alton Ochsner in their efforts to develop a biological weapon is… a brain-buster! I guess I have my witness.
We are at the end of our three qualifying questions about Judyth Vary Baker. The answers were “yes, yes, yes.” Our next step is to ask what else did she say?
Here is a brief summary of the parts of Judyth’s story that are relevant to the our inquiry. A more in depth account is the appendix entitled “Judyth’s Story.”
1. Judyth went to New Orleans in the 1963 at the invitation of Dr. Alton Ochsner.
2. Ochsner had known Judyth for several years and had previously arranged for her to be trained at the famous cancer research center discussed above.
3. Ochsner promised Judyth early-admission to Tulane Medical School in return for her services in Dr. Mary Sherman’s cancer lab at Ochsner Clinic. Ochsner also provided her with cancer research papers on the state-of-the-art techniques such as cancer-causing viruses.
4. Judyth wound up working under Sherman’s direction in the underground medical laboratory in David Ferrie’s apartment instead of in her cancer lab at the Ochsner clinic.
5. Judyth met Lee Oswald at the Post Office in what she thought was a chance encounter. In hind-sight, she realized that this had to be intentional, since Lee was already working with David Ferrie, Dr. Mary Sherman and Dr. Alton Ochsner on the bio-weapon at the time. Lee introduced her to “Dr. David Ferrie” the following day and helped Judyth find an apartment.
6. When Judyth went to meet Dr. Ochsner in a room within the bowels of Charity Hospital, Lee Oswald accompanied her to the appointment and went in first to meet with Dr. Ochsner alone.
7. Lee was working with ex-FBI agent Guy Banister as has been reported by many sources. Lee took Judyth to meet Banister in his office to satisfy her concerns that the bio-weapons project is really a secret government operation. Banister confirmed that Lee was working with them on a get-Castro project.[10]
8. When Judyth went to Dr. Sherman’s apartment for a private dinner with her, David Ferrie was the only other guest. Sherman and Ferrie discussed the nature of their project with Judyth. They deemed the idea of using cancer-causing viruses to kill Castro as morally ethical since is might prevent World War III. Lee phoned Judyth that same night at Sherman’s apartment. Dr. Mary Sherman was the operational director of “the project.” Ferrie and Oswald were participants.
9. Lee escorted and transported Judyth all over town, including to Dr. Sherman’s apartment where Judyth dropped off “the product” and related reports forSherman’s review. Lee was “the runner.”
10. Judyth and Lee were provided cover-jobs at Reily Coffee Company where they were allowed to slip out several afternoons a week to work in the underground medical laboratory in David Ferrie’s apartment.[11]
11. Lee Oswald’s connections to the Mafia in New Orleans are much stronger than have ever been reported publicly.[12] Judyth and Lee ate-for-free at restaurants owned by Carlos Marcello and went to his headquarters (500 Club and Town & Country Motel).
12. Lee’s role in the kill-Castro portion of the project was to transport the bio-weapon into Cuba. The radio debates and film clips of Oswald’s leafleting were arranged by Ochsner (at Oswald’s request) to make Oswald appear to be an authentic defector so he could get into Cuba more easily.
13. Judyth heard the subject of assassinating JFK was discussed at various times by various people, including Ferrie, Sherman and Oswald. Part of the logic that was explained to Judyth was that they had to hurry up and kill Castro with their bio-weapon before Ochsner’s friend ran out of patience and decided to kill Kennedy instead.
14. After testing their bio-weapon on dozens of monkeys, they arranged to test it on a human “volunteer,” a convict brought from Angola State Penitentiary to the Jackson State Mental Hospital in rural Louisiana for that purpose. The weapon was successful. The man died in 28 days as a result.
15. Judyth wrote a letter to Dr. Ochsner protesting the use of an unwitting human in their bio-weapon test and delivered it to his secretary.[13] Upon seeing the letter, Ochsner exploded in anger and threatened both Judyth and Lee. Everything fell apart for Judyth as a result. Ochsner reneged on his offer to place Judyth in Tulane Medical School. Lee was ordered to Dallas. Judyth went back to Florida with her husband.
16. For the next few months, Judyth and Lee stayed in contact by telephone, thanks to access to the Mafia’s “secret” Miami-to-Las Vegas sports betting lines courtesy of David Ferrie. While the phone company and the U.S. Government might not have been able to listen to their conversations, the Mafia would have been able to!
17. On Wednesday, November 20, 1963, Lee told Judyth that there would be a real attempt to kill President Kennedy when he visits Dallas on Friday. It is the last time they talked.
But we are not here to figure out who killed JFK. We are trying to understand who was using radiation to mutate monkey viruses and why. Judyth’s testimony is an important piece of the puzzle for us to have. Judyth’s account means that a witness who participated in “the project” (as they called it) has confessed that both she and Lee Oswald were operational members of the Ferrie-Sherman underground medical laboratory and that they knew that they were developing a biological weapon. This is a major point. Think about how difficult it would have been to investigate and prosecute Lee Oswald in a court of law for killing Kennedy without exposing that laboratory, its sponsors, the cancer-causing viruses that contaminated the polio vaccine, and all of the ethical and medical questions arising from their irradiation of a flotilla of dangerous monkey viruses. Can you imagine the publicity? The political fall-out? With one side of Lee’s life connected to anti-Communists like Ochsner, Reily, and Banister (and perhaps the FBI and the CIA) and the other side connected to Carlos Marcello and almost everyone around him, Oswald’s trial would have exposed everything. Whether Oswald had anything to do with killing Kennedy or not, the exposure of a trial would have created obvious problems for the sponsors of the lab.
Like the cover-up which dumped Mary Sherman’s burned and mangled corpse into her apartment, Lee’s murder was deemed “a necessity” to protect the underground medical laboratory and its sponsors. In doing so, they silenced the man who could have explained what really happened (or perhaps what did not happen) in Dallas on November 22, 1963.[14] Perhaps this was part of their plan all along.
Today, Judyth’s goal is to exonerate Lee Oswald. She will never stop her crusade to clear his name. I consider the bulk of what she has said to be as accurate as she can be held accountable for. She is explaining what happened in her life to the best of her ability. I have seen people that I knew were in the same room with each other at the same time disagree on what happened. Disagreement is not the acid test of truth. Events are always colored by perception. Judyth knows what she heard and knows what she believes, much of which is what she was led to believe by others. Yes, Judyth loved Lee. Judyth believed Lee. Judyth trusted Lee. She also trusted Dr. Alton Ochsner, Dr. Mary Sherman and David Ferrie. She was really there with Lee Oswald in New Orleans. She was young, impressionable, naïve and gullible. Somewhere along the line both she and Lee were betrayed. But there is a limit to what she knows. Judyth was not in Dallas on November 22, 1963.[15] We all need to distinguish between what she personally saw and heard versus what she understands or believes to be the case. Both her critics and her supporters need to make these distinctions. So does she. So do I.
Next we look at what Judyth said that disagrees with things I wrote in earlier editions of this book.
First, I remind the reader that I did not feel that I had strong enough evidence in hand to endorse the claimed connection between Mary Sherman and David Ferrie without reservation and that I challenged any researcher to come foreword with real evidence or testimony that they were associated. They did.[16] Judyth clearly states Mary Sherman knew David Ferrie well. In fact, Judyth had dinner with Sherman and Ferrie at Sherman’s apartment. Judyth is adamant that Mary Sherman was definitely part of the cancer-virus research project that was going on at David Ferrie’s apartment. In fact, part of Judyth’s daily operational cycle was to bring “the extracts” of her cancer-causing virus research from Ferrie’s apartment to Mary Sherman’s apartment. She also clearly states that Dr. Alton Ochsner was ultimately in charge of the Ferrie-Sherman lab. And that both she and Lee Oswald were part of the effort to use the cancer-causing monkey viruses to develop a biological weapon. No, David Ferrie had not run off with the mice after the Big Lab was shut down as I had suggested. The mice were delivered to his apartment several times per week for processing as part of the operation. To my mind, this has always been what I called “the worst case scenario” - the confirmed existence of the secret cooperation between talented scientists, dangerous radioactive equipment, monkey viruses and political extremists in an underground medical laboratory.
But did they use radiation to mutate the monkey viruses?
I wrote to Judyth and said that I needed to know specifically if she had been told that the viruses she was working with at David Ferrie’s apartment had been exposed to radiation at another location to change them genetically? I told her I wanted to make sure that no one can find any ambiguity in her statement or be able to misinterpret it, so I was going to put a magnifying glass on it. I needed clarification. I needed her to confirm or deny it based on what she knew? My exact words were:
“My question is about your time in New Orleans in the summer of 1963… Do I understand that you are saying that you were told that the extracts that you prepared at David Ferrie's apartment and delivered to Mary Sherman's apartment were being subjected to radiation and then recycled into more mice? Do I have this right?”
Judyth’s response:
==EXACTLY...ALSO, INTO MONKEYS. MANY WERE KILLED, BUT THEY ORDERED THOUSANDS OF POUNDS OF NEW MONKEYS…==
I continued:
“By your term ‘we all knew it’ who are you referring to? Could I ask you to answer ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ to each person on this list separately. The question is: Did you personally discussed exposing your tumor extracts to radiation with this person:”
Judyth’s response:
Mary Sherman-- SHE WAS THE ONE IN CHARGE OF DOING THIS
Lee Oswald-- YES. HE ONCE TOOK ONE BATCH OVER TO CRIPPLED CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL AND MET HER THERE BECAUSE SHE DIDN'T HAVE TIME TO GET THEM FROM HER APARTMENT...
Alton Ochsner --- HE WAS IN CHARGE OF THE PROJECT. DR. SHERMAN WAS AFRAID HE WAS BEING EXPLOITED AND DIDN'T REALIZE THE FULL SIGNIFICANCE, THAT OTHERS COULD GET THEIR HANDS ON THIS MATERIAL. BUT HE KEPT HIMSELF WHITE AS SNOW, THOUGH HE WASN'T. DR. MARY DIDN'T TRUST HIM.
David Ferrie --YES
Bill Monahan -- THAT IS MONAGHAN.... NO, HE DIDN'T KNOW ANYTHING EXCEPT THEY NEEDED ME FOR LAB WORK ON COMPANY TIME AND HE HAD TO DO WORK I WAS SUPPOSED TO DO, WHICH IRRITATED
HIM.
They used radiation to mutate their monkey viruses!
Was Judyth the technician in David Ferrie’s underground medical laboratory? She admits that she was, despite the obvious legal, ethical and security consequences of doing so. Were they irradiating cancer-causing viruses to develop a biological weapon? Judyth participated in that operation and said that their use of radiation was both deliberate and central to the design of the project. Was the operation in David Ferrie’s apartment connected to operation at the U.S. Public Health Service Hospital? Judyth says it was.
The consequences of these statements are terrifying!
Frankly, I would have preferred to have been wrong. It appears that I was not. These were very dark deeds indeed. They may have been “the dark deed” whose price the population of the planet still pays today. I doubt this connection will ever be proven to the satisfaction of the critics. But they do not control us nor the truth!
At least I understand why my father was so upset about, when he learned what was going on down at the U.S. Public Health Service Hospital.
So we are left with questions. Questions that Judyth Vary Baker cannot answer. Questions I cannot answer. Questions that deserve better answers. Questions like:
* Which monkey viruses did their radiation genetically alter? Was SIV one?[17]
* What happened to their collection of mutated monkey viruses after Judyth left?
* Did any of these mutated monkey viruses “escape” into the human population?
* Will Judyth’s price for clearing Lee Oswald’s name be the sacrifice of her own?
Fortunately we can still ask questions like these. One has to wonder what will happen if we ever stop?
[1] CBS’s legendary anchorman Dan Rather was part of 60M management team at the time. Rather was a staunch supporter of the Oswald-did-it-alone theory and is infamous for his comment about the Zapruder film which stated President Kennedy’s head had been thrown violently “forward” by the fatal head shot from the rear. Since the public had not yet been allowed to see the film, there was no one to dispute the accuracy of Rather’s comment. Now that the film has been viewed by millions, everyone knows Kennedy’s head was thrown “backwards.” How could Rather have been so wrong? Was 60M the best place to take Judyth’s story?
[2] A woman was introduced to me (and Barbara) as “Judyth Vary Baker” at a party near Tulane’s campus in uptown New Orleans in October 1972. The exact location was on Pitt St. near the corner of Dufoucher St. behind the Ladder Library on St. Charles Avenue. It is important to point out that our invitation to this party was the result of an argument I had several days earlier concerning the David Ferrie’s underground medical laboratory and whether viruses could actually cause cancer in humans. My opponent was with a graduate student (a young man from Latin America) who had previously made comments to Barbara about Dr. Ochsner’s connections to Nazi scientists in South America. (See the “College Daze” chapter concerning this earlier event.) At Barbara’s suggestion, we went as a group to a cafeteria on Tulane’s campus for coffee. Several other graduate students joined us there. What began as a polite discussion about local lore and Jim Garrison’s investigation into the JFK assassination descended into an argument about the scientific accuracy of my comments about cancer-causing viruses. The fact that I said that it was his hero, Dr. Ochsner, who had said that “sex could cause cancer” was a particularly volatile point. Several days later Barbara complained to me that since that conversation in the cafeteria, none of her fellow graduate students had spoken to her. She said to me: “You have to make up your mind whether you are going to be an expert on the Garrison Investigation or whether you want to be my boyfriend.” I assured her that I was more interested in being with her than in discussing the JFK assassination and agreed not to discuss it around her friends. Several days after that water-shed conversation, Barbara announced that my “performance in the cafeteria” had gotten us invited to a party. Barbara was anxious to attend the party in hopes of regaining her social standing amongst her graduate school colleagues. She invited me to accompany her to the party on the condition that I could “control myself.” Therefore, when the hostess of this party told Barbara that she had been a friend of Lee Harvey Oswald when he lived in New Orleans and invited me to discuss the Garrison Investigation with her, I asked Barbara if we could leave. Barbara agreed, and we immediately left the party. Two weeks later, this “Judyth Vary Baker” contacted Barbara and invited us (as a couple) to dinner at her house (without any other guests). I reminded Barbara that this woman had said that she was a friend of Lee Harvey Oswald and said that I did not want to go to dinner at her house. Barbara declined the invitation. When 60M said they were investigating “Judy Vary Baker,” I thought it was the same person. It was not. Was I being set up to discredit the real Judy Vary Baker should she ever emerge from hiding? Or was I given her name so that I would recognize it when she did? I don’t know. For a more detailed account of this incident, see my video interview by Jim Marrs posted on www.JFKmurdersolved.com.
[3] I should add that until I saw the 60M documents, that I did not know that her middle named was spelled “Vary.” But I remembered wondering when I first heard her name back in 1972 if her middle name was “Veri” (like veritas, meaning truth) or “Vari” (like various or variable, meaning multiple or changing.)
[4] Langley is the small town in Virginia where the headquarters of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency is located.
[5] Judyth’s knowledge of and personal involvement with the subject of cancer research is remarkable to this day. Upon seeing a 2006 news article about a break-through in cancer research involving a mouse whose immune system was extremely good at resisting cancer, Judyth sent me an email which said: “We could have cured cancer…decades ago... and here you see that macrophages in mice do it --- and yes, just as I have claimed they could...This can be turned into an efficient and cheap way to combat cancer. Oh, if only I could have convinced somebody to just give me a chance to direct a lab! …And also because they are still just using murine (mouse) macrophages, a first step that I knew would work way back in 1961. Oh, I feel as if my whole life has been wasted! Have to admit I just sat down after reading this and wept tears of anger and frustration for the millions who have suffered and died from cancer, especially children, and I knew the key, but my mouth had been stopped up with clay. I cannot stop weeping... This is awful, to feel such anger and helplessness. Yet happy that at last they should be able to see what to do...”
[6] Baker, Judyth Vary. Lee Harvey Oswald: The True Story of the Accused Assassin of President John F. Kennedy by his Lover, Trafford, Victoria, BC, Canada, 2006.
[7] The same document was shown on The History Channel in 2003, The Men Who Killed Kennedy, “The Love Affair,” November 1963, produced by Nigel Turner in association with British Independent Television.
[8] On their return trips from Reily, Judyth and Lee exhibited more caution. Though they rode the same bus, they did not sit together. They would ride the bus past their apartments, past the U.S. Public Health Service Hospital, and get off at Audubon Park where they could speak and socialize freely. Then they would ride the Magazine bus back (the opposite direction) to their respective apartments. In an interesting aside, Judyth mentioned to me that she and Lee even rolled down “Monkey Hill” during one of their visits to Audubon Park. Monkey Hill is a 25 foot pile of dirt which is covered with grass. Rolling down Monkey Hill was a great tradition for kids in New Orleans. I did it many times as a child while playing a game called “King on the Mountain.” New Orleans is so flat that the City built this artificial hill in Audubon Park so that the local children would know what a hill was. The sight of dozens of school-aged children rolling down the hill is why they named it Monkey Hill, because we all looked like a bunch of monkeys.
[9] Technically Oswald’s employment interview was conducted by Mr. Prechter who was head of Personnel. However, as Reily’s Vice-President in charge of Finance and Security, it was Monaghan (the ex-FBI agent) that had to made the final decision concerning who to hire. Monaghan apparently did not think that hiring “a defector” who had lived in Russia and held an “undesirable discharge” from the Marines would be a security problem for the virulently anti-Communist company.
[10] While meeting Banister satisfied Judyth, it does not convince me, since Banister was also working with Marcello. The larger question is “Was Marcello working with the government?” And the ultimate question becomes “Who is the government?”
[11] I emphasize that I do not know of any document, testimony or evidence which suggests that William Reily personally (nor his company as an entity) knew about Ochsner’s secret medical project nor that his employees were being used to develop a biological weapon while they were on the company clock. Nothing herein should be interpreted as implying such. What is known that Reily was fiercely anti-Communist, a member of INCA, and that he provided financial support to some of Ochsner’s political activities, but this can easily be explained by the financial interest of the local business community and the political events of the day. William Reily should be consider as innocent as Oswald, since neither have had a day in court.
[12] Lee Oswald’s family had been Mafia connected since he was a child. Lee attended parties at Marcello’s house and was remembered from those days by people that Judyth met. Lee also worked as an errand boy running between Marcello’s clubs and restaurants. Lee personally met with Mafia boss Carlos Marcello on several occasions in 1963. Judyth saw Lee collect fists-full of cash from the manager of Marcello’s Town & County Motel and deliver it to his uncle who was involved in Marcello’s gambling operations.
[13] The secretary was a temp. Ochsner’s regular secretary (a nurse) was on vacation at the time.
[14] Jack Ruby visited David Ferrie’s apartment one day when Judyth and Lee were there. Ferrie introduced him to Judyth as Sparky Rubenstein. Judyth was surprised that Ferrie briefed Ruby on their bio-weapon project. (Why not? They all work for Marcello.) Ruby recognized Lee and said that he used to see him a parties when he was a boy. This means that Jack Ruby knew about Oswald’s connection to the underground medical laboratory when he shot him, and he knew about the cancer cocktail that could be used to silence him as he awaited trial for Oswald’s murder. It is no wonder he wanted to get out of Dallas. And it is no wonder that the Warren Commission did not accept his offer to talk in exchange for safer accommodations. Jack Ruby told Al Maddox (his Dallas Police guard) that he had been injected with cancer cells. Maddox has said that the doctor that gave Ruby injections came from Chicago. Maddox was present at Parkland Hospital when Ruby died of an embolism caused by galloping lung cancer.
[15] Publicly, I have always taken the position that Oswald’s guilt or innocence is ultimately irrelevant to whether an underground medical laboratory in New Orleans was using mutated monkey viruses to develop a biological weapon and whether that biological weapon is responsible for epidemics we see today. My neutrality on Oswald is a position that has become increasingly difficult for me to maintain. To my eyes, Lee was the perfect patsy - one that could not be investigated without getting into his connections to the Mafia, to the CIA, to Ochsner, to the particle accelerator, to the biological weapon and (most importantly) to his ultimate sponsor - the person who helped “the defector” return to the United States from the Soviet Union with his wife and child at the height of the Cold War? Who was Oswald’s ultimate sponsor? Is the need to hide this key piece of information the reason why Lee Harvey Oswald’s tax returns have never been made public? Was it Marcello using his influence on the Louisiana politicians that he was so famous for bribing? Or was it Bobby Kennedy himself - who was U.S. Attorney General at the time Oswald returned and had the power to declare that he was still a citizen and allow him to return. Both of these sponsors could have arranged for the State Department to lend him the money to pay for his family’s transportation back to the U.S. These are the type of penetrating questions that “lone nut” was constructed to suppress.. They are the questions we need to ask.
[16] It was Dr. Howard Platzman who took Judyth Vary Baker to 60 Minutes and later to me. He deserves credit.
[17] SIV is the Simian Immunodeficiency Virus which was one of several monkey viruses known to have contaminated the polio vaccine. The more carcinogenic SV-40 has gotten most of the press. SIV (a single strand RNA retro virus) is considerably smaller than SV-40 (a double stranded DNA virus). The technology of the day was not able to filter SIV out from the viral extracts. Further, researchers of the day did not consider retro-viruses dangerous so they basically ignored them. AIDS has taught us how dangerous retro-viruses can be. If “the project” in New Orleans was intentionally exposing a SV-40 to radiation, they may have unintentionally exposed SIV to radiation at the same time. Simply stated, HIV-1 is a mutated form of SIV. Did the mutation which changed SIV into HIV-1 occur when they exposed SV-40 to radiation? Was this the moment of conception of AIDS? Would this artificially induced mutation explain why HIV-1 is mutating so rapidly? Why it is behaving so “unnaturally?” If you are a scientist involved in AIDS research, these are the questions I would like you to consider.
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