Judyth Vary Baker: Living in Exile

[James H. Fetzer]

JIM RESPONDS TO JIM DIEUGENIO COMING FROM OUT OF LEFT FIELD

Well, I embarrassed DiEugenio on another thread and I take it this is his form of retaliation. I suppose he does not mention the dates when this purported "research" was done, because it would reveal the distance in time between the original reports and testimony in relation to the Garrison trial and this (virtually irrelevant) effort expended not long before Reeves Morgan died. There is a natural decay in recollections, which in this case has obviously been exacerbated by deliberate corruption and quite possibly by witness intimidation. Most strikingly, he does not understand that there were two visits and two cars, one of which was a black Cadillac driven by Clay Shaw himself. Judyth, no doubt, will say more. When research is done properly, early testimony when memories are fresher is preferable to later. Just as this guy excoriated Horne for his admiration of David Lifton's work--apparently oblivious that the ARRB had found that there was surgery to the skull and that body alteration had taken place and that there were multiple casket entries, which meant that the key claims of his early work, BEST EVIDENCE, had been vindicated, which Horne was reporting--producing one of the most peculiar reviews I have ever read, where the reviewer apparently wrote the first part of his review completely unaware of the actual findings that would be established during the rest of its pages. This also extends to the issue of Zapruder film alteration, where DiEugnio has declined to take a stand on the ground that the research that would be involved would be too taxing! But that means he has probably not read ASSASSINATION SCiENCE, MURDER IN DEALEY PLAZA, or THE GREAT ZAPRUDER FILM HOAX, which don't leave much room for hope by anti-alterationists. Even more peculiar, he apparently doesn't know what is coming in the appendix to INSIDE THE ARRB, Vol. IV, which I summarized in "US Government Official: JKF Cover-Up, Film Fakery". I would say that his positions about the events in Jackson are on a par with his review of Horne, which was grossly incompetent. File trails are frequently distorted and incomplete, as the very post on which he is commenting convincingly demonstrates. As a friend of mine likes to say, "How dumb is that?" I used to think he was a serious scholar, but I am now persuaded that, his review of Bugliosi notwithstanding, his work should not be taken at face value. I will invite Judyth to comment in greater detail, but the thought that he and his "brain trust" are more competent and reliable than Howard Platzman or Judyth herself, in view of these considerations, is not merely a stretch but quite ridiculous. The earlier testimony of Lea McGehee, Reeves Morgan, and Mary Morgan is obviously the more reliable.

[quote name='Barb Junkkarinen' post='191646' date='May 4 2010, 03:19 AM']
A response from Jim DiEugenio:

The latest claims by the Baker team shows just how little they know about the Clinton/Jackson incident. Specifically, how knowledge about it progressed over time and what Garrison came to ultimately think about it. And also how other people actually went to the area and followed up on Garrison's groundbreaking previous work. Which Bill Davy, Peter Vea, and myself did. In fact, Bill and I were the last people to interview Reeves Morgan before he died. And we also interviewed Van Morgan and Mary Morgan. And Edwin McGehee. Twice.

If you follow the file trail of Garrison's investigation of the incident you will see this girl with a basinet story entered into the inquiry early. As time went on, and investigators brought back more information--including interviews, pictures, and diagrams--Garrison discarded this aspect of Oswald's first sighting there.

Why? Because he learned there was a laundromat located close to the barber shop. And that Ed M. never saw Oswald exit or enter the "basinet car". The car Oswald arrived in was not actually seen by M, but it did drive away as Oswald left. (Davy, Let Justice Be Done, p. 102) The other green colored car did not. Garrison once theorized that the basinet car was owned by Kerry Thornley, and the woman may have been his girlfriend June Hack. And it was maybe Thornley who was with Oswald. This was discarded as 1.) Multiple witness reports came in identifying Shaw and Ferrie as the escorts, and 2.) the green car became irrelevant to Oswald's actual visits. (We shall see why shortly.) Alcock should never have brought this point up at trial. And the fact he did shows how unfortunate it was that Garrison was so sick at the time that he could not conduct the trial himself. (Old back ailment, and Hong Kong flu.) I interviewed McGehee twice in Jackson, he never once mentioned the "basinet car." He said he did not actually see the car Oswald left in.

Concerning the Reeves Morgan visit: When I interviewed Mary Morgan at her home, she never once mentioned this "woman in the car". Probably because she realized she was not the best witness to the car Oswald arrived in or left in. Her brother Van was playing in the front yard when the car arrived and stayed there the whole time while Oswald entered the home to talk to Reeves. Afterward he described the car to his father as a black Cadillac and the driver as a man with a shock of white hair. (ibid, p. 117) The description of this car by Van coincides with what the majority of witnesses would describe during the Clinton voting rally. And of course, the shock of white hair matches Clay Shaw.

Team Baker likes to find loose ends and then fits their girl into that cul de sac, hoping no one will notice the trick. One would think Fetzer would. He is the professor who accents the doctrine of the "totality of the evidence". One would think he would have asked someone who knew that totality and had done a field investigation of Clinton-Jackson--not once but twice--what that sum indicated.

The question then becomes: Why did he trust Platzman, Martin S. etc., over the people who had actually done the spade work in that field?

(All as received from Jim Di Eugenio and posted at his request. - Barb)

[quote name='James H. Fetzer' post='191621' date='May 3 2010, 09:05 PM']
THE DISAPPEARING WITNESS: THE WOMAN IN THE CAR (WAS JUDYTH VARY BAKER)

NOTE: This is a nice example of the process of making a person who should be of enormous
interest "disappear" from official records, but where diligent research can uncover the history
of the sequence, as occurs here, beginning with the Clay Shaw trial and ending with the HSCA.
This is a nice illustration why depending on “official records” is unlikely to reveal the whole story.

THE MISSING WITNESS

During the trial of Clay Shaw, a man named Edwin Lea McGehee testified that a man resembling
Lee Harvey Oswald came into his barbershop in late August 1963 for a haircut, that he was able
to remember him because he had few strangers as patrons, and that a woman was driving him
in "a battered old car". The state acknowledged that it could not identify here and make it clear
that, in particular, it was not alleging that this woman was Marina Oswald (now Marina Oswald
Porter). The state wished it could have identified her.


Here's an extract from the trial transcript:



McGehee also testified, "The car might have been dark-green--but the make of it I just couldn't
remember, it was an old car, real old." It "resembled a Kaiser or Frasier or an old Nash." "There
was a woman sitting on the front seat", he recalled, "and in the back seat" he also noticed what
"looked like a [baby] bassinet". He suggested that Oswald [who was looking for a job] pay a visit
to State Representative Reeves Morgan, who worked as a guard at the East Louisiana State Mental
Hospital, who testified that Oswald visited him at his home outside of Jackson for 20 or 25 minutes,
and told him of his expertise as an electrician. It was late August or early September. Not called
was Morgan's daughter, Mary, a student at LSU in 1967, who told the New Orleans District Attorney
that "when Oswald was in the house talking with dad, she happened to walk towards the screen door
and sat on the porch and just casually noticed that there was a dark colored car parked under the tree
in front of the house." It was "an old car and the model was somewhere in the Fifties." She remembered
"seeing a woman in the car". Her and her father's testimony both appears to have been taken in 1967.



THE HSCA PUTS THE WOMAN BEHIND THE WHEEL

On 19 January 1978, Mr. McGehee was interviewed by Bob Buras and Patricia Orr of the House Select
Committee on Assassinations at his home in Jackson about the testimony that he had presented on 6
February 1969. He reiterated that Oswald had come in for a haircut in late August 1963 and that "a
woman in a battered old car had driven up at about the same time that Oswald had arrived. He did
not see Oswald get out of or into the car. McGehee was unable to remember the type of car that the
woman had been driving. A big black car pulled away shortly after Oswald left. He did not know if
Oswald got into it." Because of his "clean cut appearance", after Oswald explained to him that he
"really needed a job", McGehee referred him to his friend, Morgan Reeves, who worked at the East
Louisiana State Hospital, which might be looking for someone to work in its electrical department:



THE HSCA MAKES MARY MORGAN’S “WOMAN IN THE CAR” VANISH

The same staff members had also interviewed Morgan Reeves just a few hours earlier on the same
day. "He verified that his statements made at the Clay Shaw trial, which [they] went over with him,
were accurate and truthful" and that "Sometime in 'probably the latter part of August' Oswald came
to Morgan's home to talk with him about getting a job at East Louisiana State Hospital. He "believes
Oswald drove up to his home or had been driven to his home by somebody, because he had heard the
car come up the driveway just before Oswald came to the door. Unfortunately, [either] Mr. Morgan or
his daughter, who was present at the time, did not see the car or the possible driver."



STATEMENT BY JUDYTH VARY BAKER:

Multiple reports that LHO could drive were rejected by the Warren Commission, for Ruth Paine and Marina Oswald--who was under duress--consistently stated that LHO could not drive. But other reports from the Irving, Texas-based barber (Mr. Sasheen), the barber in Jackson, LA (Lea McGehee), and Mary Morgan, the daughter of Texas State Representative Reeves Morgan, among others, suggested that Oswald in fact could drive.

The HSCA was deeply concerned about these inconsistencies. There was no doubt that at least some witnesses had seen Marina and Lee Oswald together, with Lee driving. Judyth Vary Baker was also seen by two people -- Lea McGehee and Mary Morgan -- during the course of the second trip LHO made to the East Louisiana State [Mental] Hospital. That trip concerned the testing of a bioweapon for use against Fidel Castro. She was with him in the car when he had his hair cut by Lea McGehee and when Mary Morgan saw her.

In 1969 testimony, a woman closely associated with Oswald and who was also with him the trip to the hospital was with him. Lee drove the car. By 1978, however, that woman was now described as driving the car herself and was no longer closely associated with Oswald in one report and in the other, she had disappeared entirely from the record. The woman whom Garrison wanted identified became an inconvenient, disappearing woman by the time the HSCA investigators re-examined the witnesses. That woman was me.[/quote]
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