A PUBLIC APPEAL TO WALT BROWN: Release Jay Harrison's Archive

[Peter Lemkin]

I met Jay in 1994 and over the years utilized his files and his talent on three occasions. He was paid money each time and we had a decent and friendly relationship. I have also known Walt Brown for the same time period and we sold his books and his newsletter in the Conspiracy Museum. I doubt most of you realize that Jay used a genealogy based computer system to store his information. I have done considerable genealogy work and understand the problems this creates. In addition, Jay was using an outdated package without software support. I have a paper printout of his files on Malcolm Wallace, Lyndon Johnson and Billie Sol Estes. 95% of the information on a single page is of little value. In addition, most of the information is repeated on each individual listed on say Malcolm's sheet. If you multiply the number of persons jay had information on you come to a horrendous number of paper sheets. Jay himself told me that no one could really run his computer system other than him. Jay used the genealogy system to make notes and there is value in the notes. So Walt has all these sheets of paper. To fulfill an information request, it is not a simple matter of picking up a file and making copies. I am not defending Walt. I am just saying accessing a name is not easy. I sincerely doubt Baylor for instance would even be interested in it because of this problem. I also sincerely doubt any of you would want to spend time searching the files once you understood the task.

Thanks for that. It sounds logical until one realizes that Joan Mellen was quite able to find very important new information within what was there. She repeated this to me on several occasions, at several points in her work with these files/materials. Yes, she also said they were not easy to use. It seems counter-intuitive to use a genealogy system - but this can not be changed. I'm aware of many side stories and side aspects of J's research which I have been asked not to be made public - so I can not. But from what I know and what Joan reported [and others I can't name] there still resides much important information - even if in a very difficult format.