Lyndon Johnson and Mac Wallace - Joan Mellen

[Peter Lemkin]

Mellen needs to get the Darby file from IAI, and name her source. Her claims as to the contents of the files are unverifiable, without the identity of the source and/or the contents of the file; and, as we have seen, the IAI refuses to release, at least upon my written request, information from the Darby file. Mellen has been cautious in the past to document and footnote her published work, (and indeed complains about other author's failure to do so in this very article); why has she not done so here, at the very centerpiece of her work?

She needs to put up the proof. If she won't, we should consign her new work to the same place she consigns Stone, McClellan, Bowden, Nelson, Sardie, Pegues, Darby, and J Harrison.

PS: Feel free to copy this to a forum that Mellen reads.

Joan visits NO forums on JFK and related. I believe she will give the information and footnotes you decry as missing in her book - this was just a public lecture, albeit to a JFK-assassination interested audience. Her book is in the hands of the publisher and is awaiting printing and distribution soon. I myself wonder if some intelligence agency might not have slipped that note in the Darby file after he did the work for J. I don't know, and don't think it would be easy to know. While Mellen's research seems intensive, from what I've been privately told, she did possibly get one thing very wrong about Hofmeister. Dawn knew Darby personally and I know takes great offense at some of Joan's positions on this matter. I'm trying to be neutral about personalities and look for the truth. Joan seems [in her lecture] to not consider the possibility of someone setting LBJ up rather than he [LBJ] being someone behind the assassination, per se.

EXACTLY Peter. His file was tampered with AFTER he made the match. J took the affidavit to the cops in Dallas, and THEY forwarded it onto the FBI, that most trustworthy institution who "investigated" the assassination. I wrote a longer reply to this yesterday and tried to post it but then the site crashed. She gets a lot "wrong". And leaves out what is inconvenient. I am just done with all of this. Darby did not commit perjury. I do not think I have ever known a more honest man than Nathan Darby who was a dear friend from 1998 until his stroke in 2005, that took his life in 2006. His son told me he kept up his credentials. Joan is naïve at best. J Harrison was a meticulous researcher and was very close to Peagues who he believed was murdered. I just have to let this go. She has defamed two dear friends and used me for over a year to assist. By lying about her intent. So I will not ever have anything to do with her again. I could add a lot that I learned about Mac Wallace and his very interesting probate matter, but to what end? Joan never met a coincidence she felt fishy I guess.

Drew: GREAT response above!!!!

Dawn

Well, when you have caught your breath again, I do hope you will tell that 'longer version' - in fact, all you feel you can tell here on this matter. All researchers and students of Dallas have some ideas that become somewhat fixed and hard to alter without lots of evidence - where a lesser amount would alter the view of many others. The truth, as you know it, really should be told. You never know, she might even change her position. In any case, you should tell what you feel are the cold facts you know about...and let history and others decide. To some extent we are all the persons in the darkened room describing the shape of the elephant - from the one part we can grasp and describe. It is very difficult to get the whole picture - but not impossible. Don't give up on your version. IMHO