TEN YEARS OF BATTLE

Ten years ago, I decided to speak out concerning my relationship with Lee Harvey Oswald, who has long been accused of murdering President John F. Kennedy. I remember placing about half the evidence I had on the bed and looking at it, wondering if it was enough, and if I could find witnesses to our relationship, for Oswald and I had a love affair in New Orleans, which was known to some others; I had remained in contact with Lee until a day and a half before Kennedy’s assassination. We planned to marry if he was able to escape with his life. To this day, I have never met another man with such courage.
I had written down a highly detailed account for my son, for him to read after I died, but it occurred to me that he might not understand its complexity and importance: Lee Oswald had been demonized in the press, and I had heard many lies about his character and personality, even though I tried hard to remove myself from every possible contact with the past, for I had seen Lee shot to death on television, a shock indescribable. Lee had told me that he was being set up to get trapped and killed: as a “returned defector” he found he could not advance, and was not trusted. Nevertheless, despite the risks to himself, he had penetrated an assassination ring, in hopes of saving Kennedy, by means of his association with David Ferrie and anti-Kennedy former FBI officer Guy Banister, and others. Eventually, he understood that he had no way to extricate himself without endangering me, his wife, and his babies. Besides, he told me that he had become part of an abort team that would try to save Kennedy. He stressed that he would try to act as naturally and normally as possible, despite what he knew, in order to protect us and others who had tried to save the President. Meanwhile, he sent warnings and information to those he hoped would respond, including to the FBI. Recently, we have heard from Abraham Bolden concerning such matters, in James Douglass’ fine book, JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters.
Lee Oswald expected to be shot dead the same day as the President, because he knew too much. Nevertheless, being an intelligent man, he had attempted to craft an escape for himself. He was then betrayed. He had far closer ties to the mafia than was known to most between 1963 and 1999, when I finally revealed the true extent of his ties with the Marcello organization in New Orleans – Carlos Marcello at that time being the country’s most powerful godfather. Marcello was scarcely mentioned in official investigations in 1963.
From childhood on, Lee yearned to become a double agent/spy against communism, ever since viewing “I Led Three Lives” in New York when he was a young teenager. He was NOT an ordinary young man: he became a Marine at the earliest legal age, was trained in covert activities, conquered the difficult Russian language, and entered Russia as a fake defector while still 19 years old. He returned to the United States at the height of the Cold War almost three years later with a Russian wife and child without undue difficulty, because he was one of our own. A true hero and patriot – one of the few who had ever entered the USSR as a defector and returned alive to tell the tale, Oswald would survive all of that only to be shot down while in the custody of the Dallas police.
All his public actions, such as passing out pro-Castro literature, were choreographed by the CIA and FBI, so that he could be sent into Cuba against Castro in a later assignment, whenever asked to do so.
Lee became a successful double agent working secretly against Castro for the CIA, with ties to the FBI, even while posing as pro-Castro. He had successfully worked as a spy for the US inside the Soviet Union, and was soon assigned to prepare himself as a spy inside Cuba, but he also had numerous jobs to do for the CIA and FBI here in the United States – and I was aware of many of them, having at times posed as his wife in New Orleans, and for some time had also served to help cover his activities while he and I worked at a small coffee company in New Orleans. I was from Florida, and was very anti-Castro, beginning with my close friendship in high school with Tony Lopez-Fresquet (the son of Castro’s first finance minister, he was forced to flee Cuba because his mother was an American).
I won’t discuss my training in cancer research here, but I was qualified to work in an anti-Castro cancer research project that began early in 1962 in New Orleans under the auspices of Dr. Alton Ochsner, known for his anti-communist ferocity, and Dr. Mary S. Sherman, along with other doctors, specialists, and trained assistants, including the well-known anti-Castro genius-eccentric, David Ferrie, a friend of Dr. Sherman’s. Ferrie’s role and capabilities have been downplayed as much as possible by all “Oswald-did-it” propagandists. He hid his clandestine activities well from most of his homosexual contacts to reduce the chances of getting blackmailed by them. Ferrie’s former homosexual friends and lovers, therefore, can be poor choices whereby to learn of his clandestine activities.
As he told me himself, “If anybody ever asks you if I am involved with the CIA, THE ANSWER IS ALWAYS ‘NO.’ “ He stressed how he kept “the boys” “out of the loop” in such matters. Therefore, those who base their assessment of Ferrie’s activities on what Ferrie’s “friends” have to say can be greatly misguided. The man who was flying Carlos Marcello’s planes and who sat with Marcello himself, advising the godfather during court proceedings in New Orleans, wasn’t there for his good looks. He was there because of what he knew, and who he knew.
. Through a series of events, I was brought inadvertently into what we called The Project: I was originally supposed to be involved only peripherally, in Dr. Sherman’s bone cancer laboratory. How this occurred is told in detail in several books, as well as on DVD’s, and in documentaries. Visit http://www.judythvarybaker.com for additional information. Lee Oswald –a quick learner-- was involved first as a courier and additionally as a lab tech in the project. My recent, but unhappy marriage, the absence of my husband (and his being unavailable to help me during a severe crisis), and Lee Oswald’s interventions and help in my times of need (a person even more unhappy in his own marriage) created a camaraderie between us that developed into a romance. I know Lee loved me with all his heart. And I loved him, the same.
We endured much to get The Product (a deadly cancer-causing virus and associated cancer cells that were potentially lethal if injected into a depressed immune system) developed, tested, and ready to send into Cuba. At the time, we believed that Castro’s death could prevent nuclear war between the two great Super Powers. In addition, Castro’s death would have turned assassination plans against Kennedy aside in a quest to dominate Cuba. Killing Castro could save Kennedy. We were young and patriotic.
In the end, Lee did everything he could to protect me after those efforts ultimately failed, especially after I had a falling-out with Dr. Ochsner over using one or more ‘volunteers’ to test the cancer. By then, Lee was already deeply involved in penetrating a JFK assassination ring that existed in New Orleans that later lured him into its arm in Texas. Believing he could obtain information that might be used to save Kennedy, Lee, fully aware of the dangers, cooperated with the assassination ring’s leaders.
Lee’s attempts in Mexico City to get the cancer product into Cuba to use against Castro proved fruitless, because the project was called off. The excuse was the approach of Hurricane Flora, and the scattering of Castro’s medical teams throughout Cuba: the shelf life of the product was limited, and wouldn’t survive any neglect.
I was warned to keep quiet after Lee was arrested and pointed out immediately as the ‘sole assassin,’ then shot and killed on November 24. I was now to become a ‘vanilla girl’ – I was to do no more cancer research, though it had been my great dream, and I had been exceptionally good at it. I would eventually get a B.S. in anthropology and spend much time teaching, counseling, and writing. Lee had begged me to have babies, and to go on with my life, so I finally did. I ended up with five children, but waited until the last one left home before looking into the current state of affairs regarding the JFK/RFK/MLK murders. I knew enough about what happened to Lee to suspect that all three murders were agency-arranged. I took out the film JFK, by Oliver Stone, to watch – a film I could not bear to see when the kids brought it home some seven years earlier --- they remember my unexplainable walk-out, leaving them alone in the house to watch it --- but now, by myself, I saw enough to understand what a mess had been made of the truth, and I felt my soul shrink with shame when Stone noted that to remain silent was cowardly!
I had heard that Dr. Sherman and Dave Ferrie had both been murdered. Now I saw more murders of witnesses on that film. Though it had been 38 years since JFK had died, I feared who might still be alive to do harm to me or my loved ones. I had written down the entire truth for my son in a series of letters, but I realized I could not simply publish them. I could be harmed in many ways by the powerful people still alive, including those in the Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon and George Bush dynasties who were beneficiaries of the Coup D’Etat. I remember trembling all over, with pure fear, at the thought of speaing out.
For I would have to tell the world that Lee Oswald was innocent, nor guilty. Had I said he was guilty, I’d be quite rich. Instead, I’ve had to flee for my life and have lost the love of several of my children..
Still, Oliver Stone’s movie had awakened my conscience. What kind of love had I held for Lee, if I didn’t try to set the record straight, best I could? I couldn’t betray him by continued silence. I just couldn’t. But I decided to protect myself. I began writing The Oswald Connection, a mishmash of memories thrown together without regard to my painfully written and highly accurate letters. If any publisher showed interest in this incomplete “teaser” story, which omitted numerous key names and activities, I’d then bring out the full 600 pages I’d written, and ask for protection from lawsuits.
Satisfied that I had enough evidence to back my testimony, and certain I’d find witnesses that Lee and I had been lovers (Some of them had to still be alive!), I sent a fax to Twenty-Twenty, a TV program that had investigated Benny Hinn and other controversial figures quite well. They felt the story was too big for them, and contacted Sixty Minutes, who soon after contacted me. A few weeks later, after Sixty Minutes began interviewing me, I found a European-based literary agent, after a US agent backed out due to fear. This agent took my hastily-written book, interviewed me by phone and email, and then boldly edited the book, including adding details that I would later be criticized about.
“It doesn’t matter,” he told me. “Once it’s with a publisher, fix it up as you please.” That agent was a go-getter, but he created a fake story about my hiding out in Europe, and other lies, and also tried to get a producer friend of his to do the film-work with Sixty Minutes. When the agent insisted that Sixty Minutes sign a contract with financial demands in it, and they refused to handle the story. I had already personally turned down all financial offers and only learned of these demands later.
After I fired the agent, and told Sixty Minutes he was gone, for the next year and a half, Mike Wallace, Don Hewitt, Phil Scheffler and a team of researchers investigated me. They sent me to New Orleans, to Washington, to New York, and I was vetted mercilessly. I learned, too, how such investigations can get infiltrated: in New Orleans, one such investigator, who turned out to have written a huge, glowing review of Posner’s Case Closed (an “Oswald-did-it” now known to be filled with errors and prejudice) said it was “too hot” to go with me to important sites. The expensive (for Sixty Minutes) trip was spent watching this man drink cocktails as he sweated in his fancy suit. Later, he questioned me in an air-conditioned conference room in his hotel there without meeting a single local witness. He then told Sixty Minutes that I had no evidence. Howard Liebengood (an HSCA specialist) knew better: three times, dates were set to film. Three times, filming was called off, the final one from high up in CBS. Hewitt, the founder of Sixty Minutes, apologized to me by phone and by email. “We did not walk away from this,” he wrote to me. He was forced to abort the filming, telling C-Span, “the door was slammed in our face.”
Time has passed. I have learned who the bad guys are. Who the good guys are. Who has a pet theory, a pet book, a pet agenda, that must not be set aside to tarnish a reputation. Sadly, the people are being taught that conspiracy theorists are just that –theorists. That conspiracies are no-no’s about which one must not speak, unless one is to be labeled some kind of “buff” or fanatic. Or even unpatriotic. We are to march as did those who followed Hitler. We are to believe everything we’re old by the government. We must stop Wiki-Leaks. Kennedy told us that secrecy is a dirty word in a democracy. Never forget that.
I have much more supporting evidence now, and now have living witnesses on tape and film as well, but years earlier, a third party threatened one of my witnesses (Anna Lewis) to the extent that she refused to be re-filmed for Sixty Minutes. Another witness worried that I was an imposter (he has since realized that another person was posing as me!). He has since written a book (Dr. Mary’s Monkey, by Edward T. Haslam) using me as a primary witness. Sixty Minutes didn’t learn about his new information in time, nor did they want to use the poor quality original film where Anna Lewis states how she and her husband, and Lee Oswald and I, double-dated together in New Orleans. Her husband was David Lewis, who had worked with Guy Banister, as had Lee.
Howard Liebengood, who had had access to HSCA/CIA files, supported me, but there was also difficulty trying to get this story told in just 18 minutes – the longest time segment allowed in the format of the program. In the end, CBS sent me two checks for lost wages (CBS told me they had never done that before for anyone investigated by Sixty Minutes).
Meanwhile, one researcher had leaked information to a vicious newsgroup, which over the years issued over 250,000 hostile posts. Most of these have since been erased, but the thrust was that I sought money, fame and attention. When that didn’t stick, mental illness and character assassination ploys came next – then a combination, mixing facts with fiction. The big websites that attacked me were handled by people who never met me. Amazing.
It is also suggested that I should be arrested if I’m telling the truth, all the while ignoring numerous statements from living and dead witnesses who have long proven that Lee and I were lovers, as well as much new evidence, and leads that I’ve given researchers which has unearthed new information concerning Oswald and the assassination, such as that Oswald worked with Customs agents, and that CIA handler David Atlee Phillips was in Dallas on Nov. 22nd, the day JFK was shot there.
Of course, I also hear “So what? He probably lied to her, too!” Ten years after speaking out for the first time, I have fought to get my health and strength back. I had been reduced to a shadow of my former healthy and strong self, plagued with chronic pain and double vision. Why? I’d been struck twice by vehicles in Dallas, had been assaulted, stalked, threatened and found my teaching jobs vanishing, again and again. My phones were tapped in Europe, I was followed openly in England and in Sweden, the brake line on my car was cut in the US, and vandals repeatedly broke into my homes and destroyed my property. But that’s just the start.
I do not want pity: I wish you to understand my situation. It could happen to any whistleblower. My reputation was destroyed on the Internet. While teaching in Hungary, in 2007, I was suddenly told I had to quit: Hungarian agents warned me to leave the country, but not to return to America. The date: Sept. 8 – the same day Edward T. Haslam’s book, Dr. Mary’s Monkey, was reviewed by a popular blogger in Budapest, Hungary. I ended up fleeing to Scandinavia, where I sought political asylum. It was a delicate political situation – after all, I came from America! – but they did not deport me, as at first I was told was 100% inevitable, and would happen immediately.
Instead, after reviewing my case, I received protection under appeal, remaining sheltered in Sweden for over ten months. I finally obtained safe havens in the Middle East and in Europe, through the actions of friends and my two children who love me, just before I would have been forced to go back to America. Instead, I am free to go anywhere I choose, and do so, but I am a woman without a country, without a home, unable to see my grandchildren and children, for I do not want bad things to happen to them because of my presence.
I am grateful for those who handled my case in Sweden, who despite political difficulties granted me time to find safe haven (actually, two safe havens!). I do feel safe now, and have had an opportunity to write my book the way it was meant to be written. Thanks to everyone’s help, especially those researchers who have taken the time and effort to actually meet me and to personally investigate my story and interrogate me, t.hat book will soon be published. Originally 480 pages, more than 100 additional pages have been added, delaying the book’s publication for months. Even so, some evidence simply couldn’t be included. Through this blog and others, I intend to present much more evidence to prove that Lee Oswald was framed. Furthermore, to this very day America is being run by a shadow government that took over when Kennedy was murdered. They select and groom their candidates and their power brokers. They do not care about America. Look what has happened to America under their “careful” hands!
But I miss my country. I miss my people. My children and grandchildren. I do hope someday to be able to safely live and travel in my own country. Wouldn’t you?
It has been difficult getting out the truth to the world.
Twice, books I attempted to write, with much more information, and with those important names and events added, that I so long feared to mention, have been published without my permission, for both books needed much more work. The present book, Me & Lee: How I Came to Know, Love and Lpose Lee Harvey Oswald is the only authorized book. It also adds new information. Donations allow me to travel between my two residences (I can only stay 89 days at a time at each residence, and it’s expensive to move four times a year, but I currently have no choice, if I am to live in safety.
After The History Channel aired TMWKK -- THE LOVE AFFAIR—JUDYTH VARY BAKER-- I received many threats and was hospitalized a total of five times from injuries associated with my situation. Before that, I hadn’t been inside a hospital for some two decades.
In 2003, British film producer Nigel Turner, famed for the once-popular (and now banned) History Channel series, The Men Who Killed Kennedy, which had previously been popular on The History Channel for two decades, offered three final segments to the world about the Kennedy assassination: The Smoking Guns, The Love Affair, and The Guilty Men. The Love Affair (in 5 sections on You Tube, JFKMurdersolved.com, Edward Haslam’s websites, judythvarybaker.com, etc.) was Turner’s only documentary featuring just one witness story – mine.
He had to ask for the extra segment, as only two had originally been planned. But that’s before he met Gerry Hemming, who told him about me. Turner’s personal business card gave me the impetus to tell him everything, despite the consequences—it showed a knight in shining armor on a charging warhorse!
Supposed to be shown for nine years running, until 2013 (the 50th anniversary of the JFK Coup), the series nailed down the role played by President Lyndon Johnson in helping to assure Kennedy’s assassination – with a terrible outcry from two former Presidents, Lady Bird Johnson, Jack Valenti, Bill Moyers, and others. The documentaries were secretly purchased from The History Channel, then banned. They were seen only five times in America.
They were also shown in Europe and Australia.
Other documentary attempts were made by Jim Marrs, Wim Dankbaar, and Dutch investigator Peter deVries, who runs a Sixty-Minute style investigative news program in Europe – all of these persons spent significant time investigating me, my witnesses, the new evidence, and how it tied to the old. Finally, Edward Haslam’s book, Dr. Mary’s Monkey, explains in detail, and quite accurately, just what happened in New Orleans in 1963, and the roles Lee and I played there in our attempt to help kill Fidel Castro and to try to save JFK. But only in the book Me & Lee will you learn of the greatness, patriotism, courage and decency of Lee Harvey Oswald. Nobody is a saint—he and his wife had a very unhappy time of it, but you will see how Oswald grew in character as he promised never to mistreat his wife again. And he did not.
Today, several of my children are very unhappy with my having spoken out. I have lost friends; many relatives are also upset with me, though others pray every day for my safety. My great concern is that I have lost my reputation in the world as a good, kind, truthful person who cares deeply about others and who was once known as an excellent mental health counselor and teacher.
For some time, after I endured pain and crippling from an (unrelated) assault (but would I have taken that hazardous teaching job if I had not lost so many other job opportunities?) I was in a wheelchair, and got badly overweight, almost overcome with neck and back pain. I have since lost considerable weight and am now healthy again. Maybe I won’t be harmed again, and can keep my health. I am so grateful for the donations that have helped pay off my medical bills!
I am treated with respect overseas, but it seems that all my efforts have had little impact in the United States. .Even my home town area newspaper allowed a reporter to publish a damaging article about me in 2008, using quotes from two former classmates I scarcely knew, plus additional nasty comments from the hostile news-groupees who never met me. The article also implied that I was apparently too callous to attend my mother’s funeral --not mentioning that I was being protected in the political asylum system in Sweden, due to death threats—making it seem I didn’t care about my beloved mother. She fully supported me in life: she knew I would have come to her side, had it had been possible.
While there have been some defeats, then, there have also been victories. Today, people do not look startled when I tell them that Lee Oswald tried to save Kennedy. New evidence has now come forth supporting that. I hope to live to see Lee Harvey Oswald fully exonerated. Every year, on November 24, the date Lee died, we hold THE LEE HARVEY OSWALD MEMEORIAL EVENING. We expect it to be held in 15 countries in 2010.
My closest friends and allies know what I’ve been through – depending on when and where they’ve been; they generally realize, now, that pressure has been put upon me to give up, to shut up. To a great extent, attempts to close my mouth succeeded, because I must keep my locations secret, if I am to have peace. But I will never give up efforts to exonerate Lee Harvey Oswald. Do not go gentle into that dark night of lies. Fight to stop the dying of the light! Copy this blog’s messages and send them to others. We need to get our country back.
When my voice goes silent at last, who then will speak for Lee Oswald?
For the truth?
Those who killed Kennedy went on to push not one, but two wars, onto the American people. Look to Texas. Look to New Orleans. Some were finally exposed in their lies, deceptions, and cruelty. Some of them believe torture is okay – they believe it is okay to intercept your emails, to listen to your phone calls. They use fear to control you, and money. It started with Kennedy’s murder. Jim Marrs said, “It may be too late for justice, but it is never too late for the truth.” Watch the banned documentaries. Copy them. Buy the books. Tell your friends. Teach your children. Never forget!
Judyth Vary Baker: ten years later.