Question about Mae Brussel and pre-internet CT information exchange

[Peter Lemkin]

I have a historically minded question for any of the forum members of better vintage, or deeper knowledge, than I.

When Mae Brussell was broadcasting in the 1970s and 80s was there any way to listen to her if you weren't in Northern California? Was one able to pick up her shows in LA?

Did people of like mind trade her tapes? Were transcripts passed around?

I know she once spoke at the Elgin Theater in the Lower East Side. Was that because Krassner promoted her? Was she a guest on WBAI?

I know Bob Fass interviewed Mark Lane during the HSCA years and he (Lane) and Brussel had some big feud after that. (When I interviewed Lane in 2010, still rankled, he called her and Sherman Skolnick "both completely nuts.")

Was Mae Brussell the only broadcaster with a wholly conspiracy based show or just the memorable one?

Was there a strictly CT guy/gal on WBAI or elsewhere? What about public access TV?

Lastly, did Long John Nebel interview any serious CT researchers or was it all UFOs, Maury Island and the like.

If anyone knows answers to any of the above I'd be much obliged. I've read John Kelin's masterful book on the 1st generation researchers so I am aware of the letter chain.

Good question. I'm not sure I can answer ever detail you ask just now...but some of them. Her show, as you point out was out of a small station in the Monterrey , CA area where she lived. There was no internet...and wouldn't be for a long time....BUT she sold cassette tapes of her show and they got around! A select few like Fass, Nebel and the like would rebroadcast the tapes. She also had a growing number of students of hers who (usually) interacted with her at her home for various periods of time...learning from her and how she investigated such things. One of these was John Judge, who died not very long ago. In my own case, I learned of Mae by hearing John Judge being interviewed on the telephone rather frequently on yet another radio show - broadcast in the San Francisco area, I believe, but was rebroadcast via tapes on WBAI and the four other Pacifica stations - at the whim of programmers. She never was, and still today, is not well know...nor are many of her 'Brussell sprouts' as they came to be called...but word of her and her work spread among the cognoscenti. Several of her 'sprouts' became very good researchers and speakers in their own right. So, by rebroadcasts sent by tapes, by occasional phone interview shows, by her Sprouts who lived all over the USA, by people with late night talk shows mentioning her work/ideas and telling how to get her articles [later Larry Flint published some of her better ones - which is what got him shot, IMHO] or tapes direct from her - she sent them out herself for a fee - and for free if someone claimed to have not the funds. Remember too that while Mae was not poor - the daughter of the founder of I. Magnin - a large Department Store, she was not rich either. Most of her funding in the later years before she was killed [I believe her death was not natural] came directly from John Lennon...and that was, I believe, one of several reason why he too was targeted for being killed. I believe if you search there is some information on Mae I posted here long ago...I'll see if I can find it. I know Nebel was really into the JFK assassination and my cousin would tell me what they were talking about when I met him...as I was not into staying up all night to hear such things in the New York Area at that time just after the assassination. Krassner also knew Mae and very much promoted her - as did a few progressive magazines of the time. I still have three copies of Flint's issue [about deep politics NOT sex - it was called The Rebel and there were only six issues if I remember, until he was shot and it ended] featuring Mae's classic piece: "The Nazi Connections To The JFK Assassination" (you can find it online and it still holds water well....if anything she only missed a few names...but those she names are good, as are the connections and reasons). If I think of more, I'll return with them.....

...it was very much an underground railroad of information or 'the drum'...it got around the country and even out of it to those who were in tune with such things.....by these means and word of mouth. By the time of her death there was one of her sprouts who had a regular show two Pacifica stations and he often rebroadcast her shows. His name was Dave Emory. I think John Judge probably did the most to let others know of Mae, and Emory and Judge came to be at odds after her death over who was to be in control of her library et al. It is a long and complex story and I wish Kelin would do a book on the second generation of researchers. While Mae started out on JFK and Dallas and never lost interest in that, she soon started expanding into other dark corners of things done by the same Secret Government or Deep Political actors and actions. When she died, the house nearest hers and with a direct view of who came and went from her hours burned down. No one in the area [a close knit suburban area] know who lived there or owned it]. Mae herself believed it was FBI or CIA agents who used the house to watch her and no one really lived there.