I recently met Jesse Ventura in Chicago and was astonished at the size of this man in every way-- his strong body, his morality, his self-control, his blunt honesty, his vast reservoir of knowledge, and his intelligence. Jesse Ventura is trusted by millions for good reason. He's a man's man, with a gentle side that has compassion for the people. He could run for President, he's so well liked, but let's hope he doesn't, because I doubt he'd be allowed to serve out a full term.
Examples about Jesse's character:
A fine dinner at the Drake Hotel, Chicago: Jesse and I sat across from each other and noticed that we were the only ones who did not order an alcoholic beverage. Who knew that Ventura didn't drink?
At MANCOW, Chicago's popular TV and radio icon Eric Mancow Muller tore off his shirt, donned a mask and challenged Jesse to a wrestling match, hopping around him and trying to work him up. Jesse stared straight ahead and refused to interact. Mancow eventually became serious: Jesse reminded him about how he'd challenged him to try waterboarding out, since Mancow didn't think it was torture. "It's torture," Ventura said. "We had it done to us as Navy Seals." Mancow decided to try it out on himself--and lasted just six seconds (his arms weren't tied down, and he wasn't being waterboarded by hostile forces). After the experiment, Mancow honestly expressed his opinion: see Mancow's experience here:
Things getting more serious now,we were able to talk about Mancow's father's death from cancer (Mancow lamented that his father was able to be cured of cancer, they told him, until the funds ran out. Then they told him his father was incurable.) because Jesse wouldn't respond to the gibes, Mancow became serious and began asking good questions. He leafed through the book, surprised at all the photos and documents in it. Between breaks, he became intensely interested in my testimony, and I discovered he well understood how Lee Oswald was framed and blamed. Now he had, standing before him, a living witness to lee's innocence. By the end of the program, Mancow was standing there with Jesse recommending the book. Jesse and I were able to get serious information about ME & LEE to a host of listeners because of Jesse's self-control.
Jesse rode a train all the way from Minnesota to Chicago to meet me. He did not come to get publicity or to help me get publicity, and I never asked him to do that. In fact, in an email, months earlier, I had told Jesse that I would never ask him to film me, or to endorse ME & LEE to the public -- that I just wanted to meet him! Why? Because this was a good man, who had praised the book in an interview a year earlier. Learning that I would be in Chicago for three days, was pleased and thrilled to learn that Jesse intended to come and meet me. But after we spent a number of hours talking together, that first day, Jesse suddenly announced to my publisher (Trine Day Books--Kris Millegan) that he would like to stand with me and give his public endorsement of ME & LEE to the press and to TV and radio media. He was as good as his word, shocking reporters. Snide comments that I had somehow reeled Jesse in, to make money on the book, fell aside as Jesse explained he had only come to Chicago to personally meet me -- that was all.
But he changed his mind.
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| Mancow, Judyth Vary Baker, Jesse Ventura -- endorsing the book -- Me & Lee-- that exonerates Lee Harvey Oswald, falsely and deliberately accused as Kennedy's assassin |
During the show, where my initial invitation was for half an hour and got extended to much longer, Alex Jones called in. He explained that he, too, endorsed the book and my testimony and that he was going to air the story in just a few days.
Alex didn't do the interview-- Darrin McBreen did it. "Twas a long interview, which can be seen on YouTube:
Later, Jesse mentioned that he could not afford to run for a second term for Governor of Minnesota, because he couldn't live on the salary the job gave him. "The lady in charge of my household staff got ~$50,000 a year, but my wife got nothing," he noted. "I wanted to know why the First Lady of the State of Minnesota wasn't given a salary, too, since she spent so much time running state dinners, going to functions, and so on, while her chief of staff got $50,000." Jesse said the state forced him to use an expensive auto with security features rather than his own cheap vehicle, but then billed him thousands of dollars for the car's use. "There were so many expenses that came up," he said.
"It seems that your refusal to accept bribes meant that you couldn't afford a second term?" I asked. Jesse had already made it clear that he never accepted a bribe, and now didn't have to answer my pointed question, but he did say, "I had to pay for so much out of my own pocket that I would have gone bankrupt if I'd stayed for a second term."
I found Ventura to have accurate knowledge of the Kennedy assassination: his questions revealed the depth of his knowledge and his sincere interest. he asked me about the true identity of the three tramps, for example, and he knew about Victoria Adams, the "girl on the stairs" who never saw Lee Oswald go down the stairs from the 6th floor, though she was descending them at the same time Lee was supposed to be descending them. The Warren Commission and the FBI did not like young Victoria's testimony, which they recorded, then ignored -- they insisted that Lee Oswald descended the stairs and had time to reach the 2nd floor room (in which he was seen just 90 seconds later) after firing the final shot. To do so, Lee would have had to pass Adams and her girlfriend on the stairs, though the girls reported that nobody passed them. Adams was threatened into silence, but finally, many years later, just as I did, she finally spoke out.
As a whistleblower, it has been my duty to expose the framing of Lee Oswald, in hope that real justice for John F. Kennedy and Lee Oswald will be forthcoming. Knowing that our country was taken over from within, and recognizing the agenda of war-and-profit that ensued, destroying the American Dream, will help the great people of America today to get the knowledge and courage they need to regain their moral compass and identity as a compassionate, honest and free people seeking a full Bill of Rights and of our Constitution. To achieve that goal, we must clean up our government from the bottom up, not from the top down.
It was a pleasure and an honor to get to know Jesse the three days we were in contact. He has paid the price for having been a professional wrestler: he has an artificial hip with so much metal in it that he can't get through metal detectors at airports. Though they know exactly who he is, Ventura found himself getting special (unwanted) treatment by airport authorities who knew from the get-go that Ventura, a former Navy Seal, was not a terrorist. Ventura sued, but his lawsuit was thrown out. "People need to know," Jesse told me, "that their civil rights do not exist in an airport." He now refuses to fly.
I met Jesse's son in California and found out something bizarre: though I'd written to Jesse twice, inviting him to meet me when i came to the US, I'd never received a reply.
It turned out that Jesse HAD sent a reply. Twice.
In California, where people at long last learned about ME & LEE, Jesse's son met me. Jesse, he said, respected me and wanted to meet me. Why hadn't I responded to his emails? I looked up at that tall, handsome young man in his black Stetson and told him, "I'm responding now!"
And so, we met.
