16-07-2014, 02:17 PM
I have no dog in this fight and haven't followed the issue close enough other than to know that various DPF members have been unhappy enough about the situation to begin and continue the current thread. That said, did folks here read Walt's response to Charles Drago (who is obviously ex-DPF) in Walt's autobio? I recall there is another reference to the controversy in his book too, but the following was the one I returned to and found at short notice. This is from somewhere within the final quarter of WALT'S JOURNEY - Appendix IV of his big Chronology. There are several other pages elsewhere in that volume that go into Joan Mellen's dealings with Walt and his with her.
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Quote:"In late February, 2012, when I was recovering on one hand from semi-serious surgery but making breakthroughs as noted above, I received forwarded e mails from two collegial researchers regarding some things that were being said about me.
But not TO me.
Someone named Charles Drago, whoever the hell he is, put a lengthy post on a DiEugenioPease website calling for a "people's archive," whose first two collections of JFK material should include Jay Harrison's Archive and the Mary Ferrell Collection, purchased some years back to "Ollie Curme," a corporate mogul.
Curme laid out $1.6 million to acquire everything of Mary Ferrell'sliterally every scrap of paper in her home, including her children's report cards and Boy Scout awards, according to her son Jim, who told me the story over dinner in Dallas.
I do not know where this "people's archive" is, except perhaps in the mind of Charles Drago, and if that is the case, it's clearly too small for either Jay's documents or Mary Ferrell's.
Personally, I find it in extremely bad taste to speak about someoneme, for instancein this manner without the courtesy of speaking TO me about it.
Beyond that, I'd be curious to know if he has any awareness whatsoever that this project was begun with the underpinning of Jay's archives, and that work on this project will continue for a year and a half after his website posting.
I'd also be curious to know if he has any awareness of how much it cost me to ship Jay's materials to New Jersey, and then keep them out of harm's way from June, 2005 until April 25, 2011, when I rented a U-Haul truck to move the materials to higher ground because I'd paid almost $13,000 for that storage locker.
And I would really be curious to know what he has been smoking to make him think that Ollie Curme, whom I've also never met and have no desire to, will just willingly donate, to the "people's archive," that which he paid $1.6 million for.
The prevailing story is that the Mary Ferrell Archive was purchased to be digitized and made available to everyonecertainly a laudable ideabut considering that the Ferrell collection was purchased when Mary was very much alive but that she's been dead for more than eight years (d. February 20, 2004), it strains the imagination to wonder how long it will take Rex Bradford, a diligent researcher, to do this work, because only a small fraction is now available.
An allegation was made that I have never made Jay's materials available to anyone, and that is extremely wide of the truth. In fact, nobody who has ever called and visited was ever turned away from those materials, so I don't know where Drago gets his information.
But it's wrong to the point of being accusatory. In my brief marriage to someone of Russian extraction, I returned from the post-ceremony trip on September 28 to find a call from Joan Mellen, who has written widely on the Garrison events.
She made me aware that she was going to do a book about "famous Texans," and asked if I had anything that would be of use. As it happened, Jay Harrison had a lot of material on Texans who seemingly had no connection with events of 1963, as they'd been born in 1851 and died in 1907, or something similar to that, and I had brought home a few large boxes of such files.
I had planned to skim through them and if of no use, toss them out. But Joan's cry for help was answered, and the following day, September 29, 2008, she drove up from her residence near Princeton, New Jersey, and after we caught up on each other's work, I filledby myself, as she was unableher SUV to the ceiling with the "Texans" materials that I had handy, and several additional boxes of Jay's materials that I was temporarily at least, done with.
I also made sure she had all of Jay's back-up hard drives, which also filled a box, so, in essence, she had everything. She told me it would take her some time to go through what was there, and I understood that, as it had taken me a great deal of time.
In early 2011, I contacted Joan as I needed the non-Texan material back, and although she was in pain from either a recent injury or recent surgery, she understood my urgency and paid a couple of presumably her college students to box up all the stuff and send it back to me.
So much for not ever letting anyone see the materials.
Drago made the further statement that I had been an FBI agent, a charge repeatedly made by Ms. Pease, who seems to believe that I continued to work for the FBI for the 26 years while I was teaching elementary school (19742000).
I was never an FBI agent. I worked, as book jackets have stated, as a special agent for the Department of Justice. I carried a badge, a commission bookletone of those neat little engraved folders that will open every doorand a gun.
But I did not work for the FBI and I was only in the FBI headquartersthe old buildingin liaison capacities from where I was employed.
Years after I leftJuly 11,1970, sine die, the Bureau that I worked for was subsumed by the FBI, but I was long gone, except in the mind of those who believe I was keeping an eye on the lunches of fourth graders, lest the Soviets slip micro-film inside the peanut butter.
The final bit of ugliness that was contained in this tirade was truly the product of nothing less than a truly sick imagination, and frankly, I don't think Drago came up with it all by himself.
The accusation was made that Jay Harrison's Archive was takenvery clever use of the passive voice, as it avoids naming who took itbut Jay Harrison's Archive was taken to Washington after it came into my possession, in order to be reviewed, in its totality, by someone characterized as a 1960s era politician, whose duty was to sanitize it, with my permission and understanding.
Nowhere is it explained what I did during the months, if not years that would have been necessary for anyone, particularly an older fellow who had been a 60s era politician, to review the matter.
Was I sitting outside some safe house with the motor running on a U-Haul for eighteen months?
Drago, you need some serious therapy if you think 1) that I would dishonor the memory of Jay Harrison in that way; 2) that I have the kind of time to do such a thing; and 3) that I would allow government censorship of anything I do.
Accordingly, I will, when my temper comes under control, be sending an electronic message to Mr. Drago, since I have no idea what specific rock he lives under, cordially inviting him to Hillsdale, New Jersey, to prepare the Jay Harrison Archive for "the people's archive."
My suggestion will be that he rent a motel room nearby, but rent a copying machine here at my address, so I can keep an eye on him, because someone who goes behind my back with that kind of nonsense has certainly not earned trust.
I will make Drago aware that if he is conscientious, and can make 1,500 copies each day (and at $.10 per copy, that will cost $150 daily, plus the cost of the machine), he will have to stay at it, 365 days a year, for a little over seven-and-one-half YEARS.
Ah, but won't the "people's archive," wherever that is, be a thing of sheer beauty as well as a researcher's paradise. And we'll have Charles Drago to thank.
And I'll personally put in a word for Drago to receive a lifetime achievement award from COPA, because at $150 a day, this work will cost him $416,100.
Still cheap by Ollie Curme's costs, right?
Until that day arrives, however, my suggestion to Mr. Drano will be that he make every attempt to have a self-inflicted sexual experience.
God knows, he's deserving…."