10-10-2015, 04:36 PM
Thanks Tom.
I was not aware of the Ralph Yates campaign on Amazon and how it all started.
You know what really bugs me about this?
I had researched the MM case many years ago for Probe Magazine.
This was way back in the nineties. And it was part of my long essay, "The Posthumous Assassination of John F. Kennedy." Way back then, I was aware of some of the serious problems with the case, e.g. Tim Leary's 20 year delayed reaction to MM coming into his office; Jim Truitt's agenda; the whole rigamarole about the diary, and the influence on the case of Ron Rosenbaum.
So when Janney's book came out, I was not a babe in the woods on it. Like many others were. I had sifted through a lot of this material before. I will never forget my experience at a big university library one afternoon. I tried to find the library that had almost all of Leary's books. I then spent about 30 minutes going up and down stairs and escalators collecting every one I could find from 1964-84. I had them all collected on a big table. I then went through all of the indexes, and if the book was not indexed, I went through the indicated time period to look for MM's name. I spent about an hour and a half, maybe two hours searching. I could not find any trace of Leary writing about the incident in any of his previous books. This really made me think about the quality control aspect of our vaunted research community. You mean people swallowed this without checking it? And that, coupled with what I learned about Leary from Acid Dreams, that began to make me rethink the whole MM story.
The problem is, no one else had done that. So when Janney's book came out, Janney got all these people he knew--Horne, Mantik etc--to go ahead and write these reviews on Amazon. When, in fact, very few, if any of them, had done any of the necessary cross checking on the issue. So they did not know the land mines that were hidden around the episode. And just how serious some of the problems were with the witnesses, like Leary and Truitt. My God, Janney made it worse with "Gregory Douglass". When I got the whole story on Douglass, and then saw that Janney used him--I mean, puhlease. Three strikes and you are out.
But I give Janney credit. He knew how to court certain people in advance. So he would be able to make a bit of headway in some circles. And he apparently paid for a PR guy to get him on some shows. And thanks to my warning shot I guess, he cut out some of the more ridiculous stuff in his outline dealing with JFK, MM and UFOs and David Heymann.
And he has finally given up on that poor Mitchell guy. Drats, I kind of liked the fast acting skin changing ointment. I will never forget reading that part of the book. I thought to myself, "WTF! Did he just write that?" But that just shows you how poor the editing is today at publishing houses.
I was not aware of the Ralph Yates campaign on Amazon and how it all started.
You know what really bugs me about this?
I had researched the MM case many years ago for Probe Magazine.
This was way back in the nineties. And it was part of my long essay, "The Posthumous Assassination of John F. Kennedy." Way back then, I was aware of some of the serious problems with the case, e.g. Tim Leary's 20 year delayed reaction to MM coming into his office; Jim Truitt's agenda; the whole rigamarole about the diary, and the influence on the case of Ron Rosenbaum.
So when Janney's book came out, I was not a babe in the woods on it. Like many others were. I had sifted through a lot of this material before. I will never forget my experience at a big university library one afternoon. I tried to find the library that had almost all of Leary's books. I then spent about 30 minutes going up and down stairs and escalators collecting every one I could find from 1964-84. I had them all collected on a big table. I then went through all of the indexes, and if the book was not indexed, I went through the indicated time period to look for MM's name. I spent about an hour and a half, maybe two hours searching. I could not find any trace of Leary writing about the incident in any of his previous books. This really made me think about the quality control aspect of our vaunted research community. You mean people swallowed this without checking it? And that, coupled with what I learned about Leary from Acid Dreams, that began to make me rethink the whole MM story.
The problem is, no one else had done that. So when Janney's book came out, Janney got all these people he knew--Horne, Mantik etc--to go ahead and write these reviews on Amazon. When, in fact, very few, if any of them, had done any of the necessary cross checking on the issue. So they did not know the land mines that were hidden around the episode. And just how serious some of the problems were with the witnesses, like Leary and Truitt. My God, Janney made it worse with "Gregory Douglass". When I got the whole story on Douglass, and then saw that Janney used him--I mean, puhlease. Three strikes and you are out.
But I give Janney credit. He knew how to court certain people in advance. So he would be able to make a bit of headway in some circles. And he apparently paid for a PR guy to get him on some shows. And thanks to my warning shot I guess, he cut out some of the more ridiculous stuff in his outline dealing with JFK, MM and UFOs and David Heymann.
And he has finally given up on that poor Mitchell guy. Drats, I kind of liked the fast acting skin changing ointment. I will never forget reading that part of the book. I thought to myself, "WTF! Did he just write that?" But that just shows you how poor the editing is today at publishing houses.