John Judge has died

[Scott Kaiser]

Hinkley & Co.



Hinkley & Co. - Bill Kelly and John Judge


"Minds are malleable, but not self-malleable, a condition politicians and PR men use to sinister advantage." -William S. Burroughs.

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index....topic=5458


After John Hinkley shot President Reagan, he said, "The movie isn't over yet!"

And indeed it isn't. Political assassinations and coup d'etats are the most frequently used methods of changing governments and controlling power, and we shouldn't expect that to change.

Now we hear from Hinkley every few years or so when he exercises his right to seek release from St. Elizabeth's hospital, where he is incarcerated. Hinkley is in a hospital, rather than a prison, because of a quirk in our judicial system that says he is not responsible for his actions. If that is the case, then who is responsible for Hinckley's actions?

After the assassination of President Kennedy the murder of a president was made a Federal, rather than a local crime, so a Federal investigation would take precedence over local police, courts and authorities. Unlike the Hinkley-Reagan affair, the assassination of President Kennedy was successful and the government changed hands, minds and policy, while Hinkley's attempt on Reagan failed and the constitutional powers did not change.

Because we still haven't determined exactly who was responsible for the assassination of President Kennedy, or the attack on Reagan, we certainly haven't seen the last of political assassinations in our society. We haven't heard the last of John Hinckley, Lee Harvey Oswald, Sirhan B. Sirhan or Mark David Chapman, the seemingly unimportant people who unexpectedly rise from the masses to take a monumental action that makes a mark on history and changes the course of our times.

As Hinkley said, the movie isn't over yet. Hinkley failed in his mission, but created an important case study that helps us understand the ongoing implications of assassination in our society.

War dawns slowly as a political hot spot becomes unmanageable and a limited conventional war gets out of hand, though we know the crisis is coming, but assassination, as a political incident, happens suddenly and often unexpectedly, except to those who intend it to happen. Since Hinkley shot Reagan, Sadat of Egypt, Aquillo of the Philippines, Ghandi of Inida, and dozens of other world leaders have become victim of assassins. Of all political avenues, assassination is the most likely, but least expected to happen.

"Well, it seems, you know, that there was this…there was this thing I had to do, the moment I had been heading for all my life, like going through that door, as I say, the door to someplace." Taxi Driver

John Hinkley came crashing through that door on a lazy springtime afternoon in March, 1981, just outside a side door of the Washington Hilton Hotel. It's now nicknamed the Hinkley Hilton since Hinkley jumped out of a crowd of newsmen to shoot President Reagan, his press secretary James Brady, a secret service agent and a security guard.

Hinkley's alleged motive, a psychological, rather than political one, is that he shot the President to impress movie actress Jody Foster. Hinkley had repeatedly seen the movie, "Taxi Driver" in which Foster plays the role of a prostitute protected by a crazed taxi driver who stalks a politician with the intent to kill him, but then kills a pimp and a drug pusher. Rather than being sent to prison, he is declared a hero.

While the facts of Hinkley's life were being investigated and disseminated by the news media shortly after the attack, John Wright of Lansing, Michigan was arrested and charged with threatening the life of then Vice President George Bush. Wright had bragged, "that he could be more famous than Siran Siran or Lee Harvey Oswald."

As news of Hinkley's actions spread through the media, Edward Michael Richardson, Michael Vandewehe and possibly other "copy cat" assassins, as they came to be called, went through the Taxi Driver door on the heels of Hinkley. And like Hinkley and Wright, they found themselves in jail, charged with threatening the life of or attempting to assassinate the President of the United States.

On April 9, 1981, less than two weeks after the shooting at the Hinkley Hilton, Edward Michael Richardson was charged with two counts of threatening the life of the President. The first count stemmed from a letter Richardson wrote and delivered to Jody Foster Yale dormitory, while the second charge related to a letter found in Richardson's hotel room in which he stated that he was going to Washington D.C. "to bring completion to Hinkley's reality." Richardson was arrested in New York City with a loaded pistol while getting on a D.C. bound bus.

From Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania, a Philadelphia suburb, Richardson had spent some time in the military and was once a student of the Reverend Carl MacIntire's Shelton College, a fundamentalist religious school with campuses located in Cape Canaveral, Florida and Cape May, New Jersey.

Within days of Richardson's arrest, the Secret Service charged Michael VandeWehe of Wildwood, New Jersey, with threatening the life of the President. VandeWehe was considered a threat even though he was then incarcerated in the Cape May County jail at the time. The Secret Service said that he wrote and mailed a letter from the jail that made a "direct threat against the life of the President."

Before Reagan was shot, the Secret Service had commissioned a study by a panel of 27 experts to prepare a report on the methods of predicting violent acts. The Secret Service also compiles files on thousands of citizens that are potential threats to the President, and some 400 individuals are considered a serious enough threat to be kept under periodic surveillance. Neither Hinkley, Wright nor VandeWehe were considered to be a threat to the President before March, 1981.

Hinkley's case also made its mark in the legal journals as a precedent to be cited because of Hinkley's insanity plea, and attempts by the victim's attorneys to make Hinkley's psychologists responsible for his actions if he was not.

If Hinkley and the copy-cats were acting on psychological impulses, rather than on political, ideological or mercenary motives, then someone else could be held responsible for their behavior if it can be shown that they were conditioned or acting as an agent of others.

Rather than acting as a deranged lone-nuts on primitive instincts, perhaps one or even some of these assassins were psychologically conditioned or brainwashed by scientists with a more sophisticated motive and fit the archtypical Manchurian Candidate model.

If Hinkley was conditioned by the film "Taxi Driver," it might not have been just be environmental and social circumstances, but rather by design. Using drugs, hypnosis and multimedia programming techniques, individual subjects have been programmed to kill with a high degree of predictable response, so it is a possibility that deserves further investigation.

THE ANCIENT ORDER OF THE ASSASSINS

The U.S. Government, the military in particular, conducted psychological experiments on human subjects years, decades ago, and today, anyone with the knowledge and the tools could be in the business of privately programming and training assassins and terrorists.

We know coup d'etats and political assassinations occur routinely in third world countries and so-called "Bananna Republics," but our own system of government is equally vulnerable and more likely targeted for such manipulation. Until President Reagan, who survived the attempt on his life in the first weeks of his presidency, none of the previous five presidents actually served out their full two terms, eight years of office, since President Kennedy was assassinated.

Men with pistols, rifles, bombs and even samurai swords have been arrested at the White House gates, where guards have been on the lookout for suicide bomb trucks and remote control kamikaze airplanes.

The Secret Service, a branch of the Treasury Department, is responsible for the security of the president and thus keeps the files on thousands of people who are potential threats. Some are violent prone suspects, others religious fanatics, ideological demagogs, professional hit men, espionage agents and trained terrorists. Others are just plain nuts.

Their common name assassins, comes from the Arabic word Hashshishin, which means, "users of hashish," the euphoric drug, but their legend stems from a secret society that began in the 11th century Persia as a religious order. Their leader, it is said, "carries the death of kings in his hand."

Most of Western civilization first learned the tales of the Assassins from Marco Polo, who passed through Persia in 1273 enroute to China. Polo reported that the Shek of the Assassins lived in a fortified valley between two mountains, which is probably the fabled, impenetrable fortress at Alamut. There the Sheik had a beautiful fruit bearing garden "watered with streams of wine, milk and honey." Drugged and taken to the hidden garden, young impressionable recruits were courted by dancers, musicians, magicians and beautiful women. They were inebriated in ecstasy, then drugged again and brought before the Sheik. Having experienced paradise, they became slaves to its pleasures, and the Sheik's whim. "Away they went," Polo said, "and did all that they were commanded. Thus it happened that no man escaped when the Sheik of the mountains desired his death."

The role of the order of the Assassins, while they have passed into mythology, is still relevant, not only linguistically, but in regards to a contemporary understanding of assassination as a political weapon in our own society. In the 1000 years the term assassins has been used, assassins are still programmed and conditioned in ways similar to their ancient counterparts, but by much more sophisticated and predictable ways.

As the victim of an assassin President Lincoln became the last casualty of the Civil War. In 1900 Theodore Roosevelt assumed power when President McKinley was shot and killed by a "glassy-eyed anarchist." Assassins sparked Word War I by killing Archduke Ferdinand as he rode in a motorcade, and the Reichstag fire that herald Hilter's rise to power was allegedly started by a "lone-nut." French Admiral Darlin was assassinated by a British trained assassin in North Africa, while Hitler was the target of a failed assassination-coup attempt in 1944. After the war Leon Trotsky was targeted, stalked and eventually assassinated in Mexico City by Soviet agents.

The assassination of President Kennedy precipitated two decades of political unrest that included the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy and the wounding of Presidential candidate George Wallace, all by assassins who fit the archtypical assassin prototype James Earl Ray, Siran Siran and Arthur Bremmer. Richard Nixon's handpicked successor, Michigan congressman Gerald Ford, served on the Warren Commission inquiry into President Kennedy's assassination before assuming that office himself. As President he dodged bullets from two attacks, one from Sara Jane Moore, and FBI informant, and the other from Squeaky Frome, one of Charles Manson's disciples.

Assassins in the United States have not confined themselves to presidents and presidential contenders, but have also killed Union officials, foreign diplomats, journalists and cultural figures. United Mine Workers union president Tony Boyle was convicted of ordering the murder of his union rival Jock Yablonski, Chilean secret police agent Michael Townley turned states' evidence in admitting his participation with renegade Cubans in the Dupont Circle bombing assassination of former Chilean ambassador Leitter in downtown Washington D.C., and one-time fan, Mark David Chapman shot and killed former Beatle John Lennon.

By March, 1981 America and the world had been numbed by the accustomed ring of the assassin's gun when Hinkley opened fire on the President's entourage. Had he been successful, Hinkley would have made George Bush president of the United States with the flick of his finger and altering the course of history. The possibility that Hinkley was programmed or conditioned to shoot the President may have been privately evaluated, but has not been analyzed in a public forum.

STATE-OF-THE-ART ASSASSINS

The U.S. government has learned much about the psychological makeup of assassins, not by studying the profiles of subjects, but by attempting to create them. The state-of-the-art of conditioning assassins has advanced considerably sincethe days of the Hashshishin and the garden fortress at Alamut.

From 1949 until 1974 the U.S. CIA and the U.S. Department of Defense conducted sophisticated mind and behavior control research, using students, agents, soldiers and prisoners as human guinea pigs in a number of experiments that used drugs, hypnosis, audio[visional and electronic programming techniques.

One such project, called ARTICHOKE, began using drugs for investigating interrogation techniques, which stemmed from attempts to understand brainwashing procedures used on American prisoners of war by the Chinese in North Korea. Eventually the program became directed towards finding "whether a person could be secretly induced to commit an assassination against his will."

One CIA contract agent, Jessica Wilcox (aka Candy Jones), a model and radio personality, was programmed to commit suicide by her CIA psychiatrist (See: "Candy Jones," by Donald Bain, Playboy Press).

Although both the CIA and the military claim that their research ended in 1974, there are indications that the mind control programs merely became "operational" when the "experimental" stage ended, and techniques for programming assassins were secretly blended in with the normal routine of clandestine and military affairs.

The discovery of a CIA handbook in Central America that gave guidelines on developing criminals as agents to eliminate selected government officials is evidence of this, along with the fact that it was used in Vietnam, supports the contention that the U.S. government uses assassination as a tool of foreign policy.

OSLO NATO CONFERENCE & THE NAVY NEUROPSYCHOLOGICAL LAB

In the summer of 1975, a year after the government claimed it halted such research, Dr. Irwin Sarason organized a conference in Oslo, Norway for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which addressed the topic of "The Dimensions of Stress and Anxiety."

Dr. Sarason had produced a film which showed the success of school students who asked questions, and presented the film to a group of juvenile delinquents, who learned how to ask questions and showed marked improvement in their studies.

The U.S. Office of Naval Research offered to fund Sarason's work, provided it was classified, so it could be used by the Navy psychiatric lab in San Diego, California, where "spys were being trained to resist interrogation."

Peter Watson, a former psychologist and a reporter for the London Sunday Times attended the Oslo conference and participated in a seminar conducted by U.S. Navy Lt. Commander Thomas Narut, a psychologist then assigned to the U.S. Navy Regional Medical Center in Naples, Italy.

Lt. Commander Narut gave a talk on "The Use of Symbolic Models and Verbal Intervention in Inducing and Reducing Stress." He claimed his work involved teaching "combat readiness units" to cope with the stress of killing.

After his general discourse, Watson talked privately with Narut, who told the London Times correspondent that he had done his doctoral dissertation on whether certain films provoke anxiety. Narut said that he studied whether forcing men to do irrelevant tasks while watching violent films made them cope better with anxiety associated with violence.

Narut also told Watson that the U.S. Navy programmed assassins on an assembly line basis, and that he personally worked with men whom he referred to as "hit men and assassins," who were involved in commando type operations and placed in U.S. embassies abroad. These men, Narut told Watson, were on call to kill selected victims when necessary. The U.S. Marine Corps, which is in charge of protecting embassies abroad, comes under the Department of Navy, and much of the advanced training for the Marines takes place at its bases in San Diego, California.

Narut said that drugs and hypnosis were no longer necessary, and that such conditioning was accomplished by a standardized behavior modification process called audio-visual desensitation. Subjects were desensitized to mayhem and carnage by viewing films of people being injured and killed in different ways, with mild bloodshed being succeeded by progressively violent scenes. They became acclimated to the brutality and eventually dissociated their feelings from the violence.

Narut was quoted as saying the best killers were classified as having "passive-aggressive" personalities, or men "with strong drives that were usually kept under tight control." These types he said, "were usually calm, but from time to time would exhibit outbursts of temper during which they could literally kill without remorse." Men with these "qualities" could be identified through psychological testing, using the Minnesota Multi-Phasic Personality Inventory test, which is used in schools, businesses and corporations, as well as the military, and can measure hostility, depression and psychopathy.

After subjects with the right psychological qualities were selected and recruited they were sent either to the Naples Medical Center or the Navy Neuropsychological Lab in San Diego, California, where according to Narut, they were audio-visually desensitized by being strapped into a chair with their head clamped in such a way that they couldn't look away from the screen and their eyelids prevented from closing.

After Watson's story about the conversation with Narut was published in the London Sunday Times, Narut called a press conference to say that he had been talking only in "theoretical" and not "practical" terms.

HINKLEY'S MOVIE

"You see, I had this plan to make myself somebody at last, a celebrity. To go down in history. Had this plan I was working on, though, in the meantime, I needed to stay as real with myself as I could. Because when you think of all those other guys, Oswald, Booth and Arty Bremer, the lot, if it's one thing about them marks them out as real losers is they got a little unreal sometimes…" Taxi Driver

There has been much discussion on the effects the media has on people and whether it can instigate action, but the question shouldn't be whether or not the film "Taxi Driver" had a mental impact on John Hinkley, but whether the conditioning was coincidental or deliberate. Are Hinkley, Richardson and VandeWehe really "lone-nuts" acting on their own perverted psychological motives, or were they deliberately programmed by the government, military, the CIA or some sinister psychologists who specializes in such behavior modification?

John Hinkley's father was a wealthy oil man from Dallas, Texas, where Hinkley grew up and went to school. Hinkley bought his gun at a shop on Elm Street, not far from the Dealey Plaza intersection where President Kennedy was ambushed.

Hinkley's family moved to Evergreen, Colorado, where they were living in March, 1981. John W. Hinkley Sr. owned Vanderbilt Oil Company, and was active in a number of religious and charitable organizations, although he has more recently been devoting his time to promoting a foundation for mental health research.

Although Hinkley's main problem seemed to simplyl be finding direction in his life, his parents recognized some mental disturbance in him, and Hinkley saw no less than three doctors about his mental condition in the year before the shooting. In Lubock, Texas, Hinkley saw a Dr. Rosen, who prescribed an anti-depressant called Serentil, and valium, a tranquilizer.

Hinkley also saw Dr. John Hooper, who gave him biofeedback treatments. His father is also quoted as saying, "I made arrangements with a psychologist by the name of Durrell Benjamin, our company psychologist, to see John."

This doctor told Hinkley's father that, "John was immature and that we needed to work out a long-range plan to make John self sufficient." Hinkley wanted to attend a writer's school at Yale, and Benjamin recommended that he do so. Yale is where Jody Foster was attending school at the time.

They had Hinkley draw up a written agreement contract that read: "I will receive the sum of $3,000 in checks, taken from my stock,…to last from September 17 to February 1st…and I do pledge to try to make the coming weeks and months as productive as possible. It is now or never. Thanks for the money and one more chance. John Hinkley, Jr." The next day he left for New Haven, Connecticut and Yale, but he never enrolled in the writer's school.

"I worked so hard for it. Swallowed pill after pill, wrote all night long,…making calculations and learned to make myself comfortable to the feel of these guns." Taxi Driver

Hinkley had seen a number of films with Jody Foster in them, some repeatedly, and in the month of August that year, he saw some on television. According to one report, "It was his feeling that the movies had been put no TV to excite him into action."

Returning to his parent's home in Colorado briefly, Hinkley went back to Lubbock, Texas where he purchased some weapons, the same caliber pistols bought by "Travis," the hero of "Taxi Driver," who he emulated. From Texas Hinkley went to Washington, D.C., Columbus, Ohio, and then to Dayton, Ohio, where he stalked then President Carter, who was making a campaign stop. Hinkley then went back to New Haven to see Jody Foster, then went to New York city where he sought out young prostitutes.

Traveling to Lincoln, Nebraska, Hinkley contacted one of the leading activists in the American Nazi party, and fraternized with rightwing military types, before going to Nashville, Tenn., where Carter was campaigning. Picked up at the Nashville airport where his guns had registered on a metal detector, Hinkley was arrested with unregistered weapons in a city where the President was visiting, yet he was never considered a threat to the President and placed on the "watch" list, as thousands of other Americans routinely are "red flagged."

After paying a fine Hinkley went back to New Haven where he checked into the Colony Inn Hotel before moving to the Sheraton Park Plaza, never in need of money. Returing to Texas, Hinkley purchased two more handguns and then traveled to New Haven, Washington and Colorado, where he saw Evergreen psychologist Dr. John Hooper.

In an effort to make Hinkley relax, Hooper prescribed a series of biofeedback treatments. According to an account in Rolling Stone Magazine, "He was given earphones similar to those he wore in the nearby pistol range when he was practicing shooting at human silhouettes. An electrode was attached to his forehead. But while he was supposed to be relaxing, he was actually fantasizing about assassination and Jody Foster." Dr. Hooper however, said at the time he had never even heard of Jody Foster.

Towards the end of 1980 Hinkley went to Washington D.C. where he was on December 8, when Mark David Chapman shot and killed John Lennon. Hinkley then began stalking Ronald Reagan, and posed for pictures in front of the Ford Theater, where Lincoln was assassinated.

After seeing Dr. Hooper again in January, 1981, Hinkley went to New Hampshire in February, then to D.C. where he got a room at the Capitol Hill Quality Inn and visited the offices of Sen. Edward Kennedy, but Kennedy wasn't in. He then visited the White House before going to New York where he planned to commit suicide at the Dakota, where Lennon was killed.

Returning to Colorado once again, on February 19th he left his parents a note saying, "Dear Mom and Dad; Your prodigal son has left again to exorcise some more demons."

In New Haven, Conn. Hinkley stalked Jody Foster, delivered her a note, and then traveled to New York, from where he called home at 4:30 a.m. on March 6th. Hinkley's father contacted Dr. Hooper, who advised him to give his son $100 and say goodbye. A friend of Hinkley's father gave him the money to fly home, and on Saturday, March 7, Hinkley's father picked him up at the Denver airport.

Staying at the Golden Hours Motel in Lakewood for a week, Hinkley moved to the Motel 6 in Lakewood rather than stay at home. He registered under the name of "Travis," like his "Taxi Driver" hero. On March 25th his mother drove him to the airport and put him on a plane to Hollywood, California, where he stayed for less than a day. After four days on a bus, Hinkley arrived in New Haven, via D.C., then went back to D.C. and got a room at the Park Central Hotel, less than two blocks from the White House. There he watched TV, ate fast foods and read a Washington Star newspaper that contained the President's itinerary.
After writing a letter Hinkley picked up a John Lennon button, which he put into his left coat pocket, then put his .22 in his right pocket and proceeded to the Hilton Hotel where the President was making an appearance.

As Hinkley was shooting the president, quite by coincidence, his brother Scott Hinkley was at the White House with his good friend, the son of Vice President George Bush. Bush's daughter reportedly arranged dates for Scott Hinkley, and Ms. Maureen Bush, a niece of George Bush, is said to have been photographed at a Nazi rally with John Hinkley. The ironies were compounded however, when Michael Richardson was arrested in New York.

In the two weeks after Hinkley's attack on Reagan, the Secret Service investigated over 300 threats against the life of the President, and Richardson was the most interesting of the copy-cat assassins.

MICHAEL RICHARDSON

From Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania, Richardson was arrested on April 7, 1981 at the New York City bus terminal with a loaded .32 cal. Pistonl. He had been in New Haven, where he left a note in his hotel room saying he was leaving for Washington "to bring completion to Hinkley's reality."

"Our duel realities merged into a single vision," wrote Richardson, and indeed their trails had previously crossed. Unlike Hinkley, Richardson had briefly served in the military. He was trained at Lackland Air Force Base, Texas, from January 4 to March 31, 1977, and received an early honorable discharge after three months of basic training, but the reasons for his discharge were not disclosed. At his arrangement in New York however, U.S. Attorney John Martin said Richardson stabbed someone during his brief military stint.

After attending Delaware Community College in Pennsylvania in 1979, Richardson started school at the Rev. Carl MacIntire's fundamentalist bible school, Shelton College, near Coca Beach, Florida. He also reportedly went to Cape May, New Jersey, where he spent the summer at MacIntire's school there, earning extra money by helping to paint Macintire's Christian Admiral Hotel on the beach. After two semesters, Richardson left Shelton and moved to Lakewood, Colorado, where he move in with his two sisters in December1980.

Hinkley's parents lived in Evergreen, Colorado, near Lakewood, and Hinkley had stayed at the Golden Hours motel in Lakewood in March 1981.

Richardson left Colorado in mid-March, Hinkley on March 25. In a letter mailed from Grand Junction, Colorado on March 25, and received by the Evangelist Magazine the day Reagan was shot, someone warned, or mysteriously predicted that Reagan would be shot and the country "turned to the left."
Richardson's family attorney, Joseph F. Moore, Jr. said that the connections were only "cosmic," and not evidence of conspiracy. No one however, inquired as to whether Richardson underwent any psychiatric treatment while in Colorado, or looked into whether or not Hinkley's doctors, particularly Dr. Hooper, also treated Richardson.

Besides their joint fixation with Jody Foster and guns, and their "cosmic" Lakewood, Colorado connections, Hinkley and Richardson were both affiliated with evangelical ministries. Richardson, a student of the Rev. Carl MacIntire, pastor of the Bible Presbyterian Church in Collingswood, N.J. and Cape May, and president of Shelton College, was the founder of the International Council of Christian Churches (ICCC).

MacIntire was also a close, personal friend of J. Edgar Hover, who shared MacIntire's fanatic anti-communist fervor. MacIntire has frequently condemned the competing World Council of Christian Churches (WCCC), which includes parishes from Communist countries. MacIntire's radio show, the 20th Century Reformation Hour, was broadcast behind the Iron Curtain and called for a Christian crusade against communism.

John Hinkley's father, who sponsored a philanthropic foundation that ran a Denver soup kitchen for the poor and homeless, and where his son sometimes dined, was also on the board of directors of World Vision, and ran the World Vision center in Denver.

Both MacIntire's ICCC and Hinkley's World Vision are members of the ecumenical federation called the Evangelical Foreign Missions Assocation (EFMA) of Evanston, Illinois. One of the main functions of both ICCC and World Vision, which has its headquarters in Redwood Valley, California, is to operate refugee camps, especially refugee camps that attend to those who have fled communist countries.

According to John Judge, in the June-July issue of The Continuing Inquiry magazine, "World Vision is an evangelical, anti-communist missionary operation that works around the globe…and administers refugee camps in Ghana (where the Jonestown massacre occurred), and at Sabra and Shatilla camps in Lebanon where the Isralie massacre occurred." Judge says that World Vision also operated along the Honduran border where CIA mercenaries fought Nicaraguan Sandinistas and El Salvadorian revolutionaries and that Alpha 66 and Omega 7 anti-Castro Cubans terrorists were hired to run some of the camps. One such camp also employed Lennon's killer Mark David Chapman, who worked at the Haitian refugee camp at Ft. Chaffee, Arkansas.

The CIA first began interviewing refugees from communist countries in East Europe in the late 1940s and early 1950s as part of Reinhard Gehlen's Operation Wriger, and the practice continued through the International Rescue Committee (IRC) and religious organizations like the ICCC and World Vision. Providing food and shelter in exchange for intelligence information is only the basis for the cooperation, and CIA evaluation of the refugee intelligence indicated that children were the most reliable of sources. Some of the foreign missionaries not only accepted money and assistance in exchange for intelligence information, but provided access to select refugees so they could be recruited and trained as assets, operatives and agents.
It is purely speculative whether or not Chapman, Hinkley or Richardson were targeted, recruited, trained or conditioned because of their association with these ministries, but the possibility is there.

Besides these associations, there is Hinkley's bizarre association with the Islamic Guerilla Army (IGA). On December 16, 1981, Jack Anderson reported, "…Hinkley is widely believed to have acted out a crazy desire to impress actress Jody Foster. It's an explanation that has gained credence by its very absurdity…But there is a possibility that Hinkley became associated with some Iranian terrorists who call themselves the Islamic Guerrilla Army (IGA)…In January 1981 an informant told the FBI and Secret Service that the IGA planned to assassinate Reagan sometime between Mid-March and early April, and that one of the assassination teams had the code name of Hicks' a student who had been arrested in Nashville in October for illegal possession of firearms…Another informant, a government undercover agent, identified Hinkley as theman he saw at the Denver airport in 1979 with leaders of the Earth Liberation Movement (ELM), a communist backed group with ties to the IGA."

John Hinkley's father said that, "(Conspiracy) is one of the first things we looked at. The government looked into it and didn't find anything. There's absolutely no truth, no substance to conspiracy. John is very ill; he is a sick person. He did this for a vary pathetic reason."

MICHALE VANDEWEHE

Like Richardson, Michael VandeWehe also served in the military, where something strange happened to him. VandeWehe was charged with threatening the life of the president after Hinkley's attack on Reagan even though he was already incarcerated in the Cape May County jail at Cape May Court House, New Jersey.

Born in Cooperstown, New York, VandeWehe grew up in the Chelsea section of Atlantic City. His brother Richard died in a motorcycle accident in 1975 while stationed in Okinawa as a Marine. Michael joined the Marines in 1978. His father noted, "He felt he had to take his brother's place."

After basic training Michael was transferred to Iceland, where he was stationed for two years. But something happened there that forced him to be sent to Bethesda Naval Hospital in Washington, where he was treated in the psychiatric wing in May, 1980.

As for his stay in Iceland, his father said, "Something happened there, but we're not sure what." Released from the hospital in June of 1980, VandeWehe was discharged from the Service and returned to his parents home in Wildwood, New Jersey. Not permitted to move in with his parents, who stayed at the Sandman Towers senior citizen complex, named after former Congressman Charles Sandman, Michael got a room at a local boarding house.

When he missed a rent payment, he was locked out of his room and his belongings confiscated by his landlord. Arrested for burglary, theft and criminal mischief for taking merchandise from a burnt out Wildwood bar, VandeWehe was released and then rearrested and charged with aggravated assault for striking his landlord, who attempted to prevent him from removing his clothes from his room.

"You can't take a young boy like this right from the hospital and put him out on the street," his father said at the time. A week after Hinkley shot Reagan, VandeWehe wrote a letter from the Crest Haven jail that the Secret Service said, "made a direct threat against the life of the President."

Although VandeWehe's home inWildwood is only a few miles from the Rev. Carl MacIntire's Christian Admiral Hotel and Shelton College in Cape May, there does not appear to be any known association between VandeWehe and MacIntire or Richardson and their proximity seems only a coincidence. Much like the Lakewood, Colorado proximity between Hinkley and Richardson.

What is interesting however, is the last chapter of the book "The Parallax View," a novel about a reporter who investigates and penetrates a private network of programmed assassins for hire. Although the screenplay of the movie based on the book, which stars Warren Beaty, was altered to provide for a different ending, the suspense novel ends on the two mile long coastal road that runs between VandeWehe's Wildwood and Cape May, where MacInire and Richardson were at the Christian Admiral.

Also unlike the movie, in which a commission concludes there was no conspiracy in a political assassination, the book ends with a suspicious local policeman investigating an automobile accident, and concluding it is a murder.

"The movie isn't over yet" John Hinkley, Jr.

"Chilean secret police agent Michael Townley turned states' evidence"

He's no longer on the witness protection program, last word was he may now be living in California, or he may all ready be dead. But, there are a few little birds looking for him. I know if they find him, I wouldn't want to be Mike.

So many great researchers here, in this publication Mr. Kelly and Mr. Judge discuses Omega7, I wonder if they or any other researcher including Hopsicker ever knew that in the photo circa 1960's on the book "Barry and the Boys" sitting around the table way in the back on the left hand side is in fact Eduardo Arocena? How many knew?

[Peter Lemkin]

Statement Regarding the Immediate Future of COPA

April 30, 2014
By Joe Green, COPA
All of us are still dealing with the impact of John Judge's passing. He affected so many lives for the better, not just in the research community, but for everyone working to facilitate a world better off than he found it.
It is far too early to think about the organization as a whole in my view. However, it has become clear that we do need to address some immediate concerns about COPA.
I would like to start by saying that in all probability, last year's COPA conference was going to be the last large-scale event run by John under this banner. We spoke after the conference about the difficulties or coordinating this thing every year. His suggestion at that time was that there should be a separate entity created to continue the conferences, if I wanted to do so, but that COPA would be retained as his project. We were still in the process of talking about what that would mean when he unfortunately had his stroke.
My main concern, as is the concern of everyone involved in the decision, is that in the past COPA has been used by some to assist or endorse projects that John did not believe in. We want to make sure that COPA doesn't morph into something alien to the ideals he maintained.
When John died, there were only three names on the registered charter: John, T Carter, and myself. Neither T nor I wanted to proceed with COPA without John at the front. His partner, Marilyn, also felt that dissolving COPA would be what John would have wanted. Owing to this, T and I both agreed to effectively dissolve the organization as a continuing entity. It exists right now in a legal sense and may continue to do so until some paperwork and other business matters are resolved.
I appreciate everyone who has sent emails and made phone calls in support of keeping the flame going. T Carter and several others have already voiced their support in going on.
We are starting to think about what a new organization would look like. My feeling is that we will be getting together in November to work out the details, and will use the intervening time to do the preliminary work in maintaining a research organization with an emphasis on social justice as well as continuing COPA's trailblazing efforts to secure the release of documents.
At least for now, it makes sense to retain the COPA website as a vehicle for putting up articles about John and for news about, for example, the upcoming planned celebration. In my conversation with Marilyn recently, she suggested that we maintain the website until it was time to change over, and then redirect it to that new site. In the meantime, a celebration is being planned in D.C. for John on May 31st, with details to come.
Please continue to send donations to Marilyn either to COPA at the COPA address or to the gofundme site. This will help her handle some of the associated costs. The generosity shown has truly been amazing.
Thanks,
Joe Green

[Bill Kelly]

Thanks to Peter and others for reposting some of John's articles and my recollections, and for all the positive comments.

As for Joe Green, he is referring to his name on the COPA 5013c IRA form, which John Judge told me that I was also listed a year ago.

I guess John was director and T. Carter and Green were listed as treasure and secretary, and while I know that they were volunteer workers who helped organize the Dallas and Memphis conferences, the 5013c IRA form is not the charter of COPA, and only the founding attorneys and board members will decide the fate of COPA, not those who don't want the organization to continue without John Judge.

John was not the only founding member of COPA, as I was also there at the beginning, as was John Newman, Bill Turner, Cyril Wecht, Peter Dale Scott, Peter and a dozen others, all of whom will be polled as to what they think COPA should do in the post-John Judge era.

While Joe Green is correct, and COPA will not be organizing any more conferences in Dallas or Memphis, we will be assisting in the conferences planned for DC this September, and will be at the JFK Monument at American University on June 10.

The founding and board members of COPA will be polled as to what direction we will be going, but it appears that John was such a dominant figure as COPA director for the past few years, we will dissolve the official charter of COPA and reorganize under a different name - either Committee on Political Assassinations or Consortium on Political Assassinations - keeping the COPA moniker.

We will also change direction in regards to major activities - moving more towards a legal action organization than one that organizes conferences.

Donations to COPA are not tax-deductible, as are donations to the Hidden History Museum - because COPA can sue the government, as we have done to obtain the release of the DOD Army After Action Reports from Memphis when MLK was killed. Rather than have individual researchers file FOIA suits, we do so under the COPA banner for safety, security in numbers and for support. That's an important aspect of COPA that few people recognized, and will become a more significant factor as we move towards the release of the JFK Act records in 2017.

While those who have advocated abandoning COPA have claimed that John said that he would rather see COPA dissolved than see it turn into a LANCER or have agent provocateurs like Karl Golven hijack its purpose and logos, the idea is to keep it from becoming a Lancer or allowing Gloven to hijack our purpose and goals and not stop doing what we are doing - primarily researching political assassinations in the USA.

COPA was bigger than John Judge and those who want to continue the work we did alone and together will continue to do so, and those who want to drop out can go their own way.

I am continuing my research and writing and will continue to do so, and those who want to work under the COPA banner are welcome to help finish the difficult tasks John Judge began.

According to his last will, John left his archives and library to the Hidden History Museum, which is a non-profit organization that is seeking a permanent location in the Washington D.C. area. A number of locations have been scouted out, and those responsible will decide where it will go, but those records, books and archives should not be locked away in storage, and I hope those who John entrusted them will see that his vision of a Hidden History Museum and Assassination Research Center is realized.

Bill Kelly

[Magda Hassan]

Thanks for keeping us updated Bill. I also want to express to you my deep condolences for the loss of your dear friend and long time comrade. I hope that together his friends and family can realise his wishes and continue his good work. No one will ever replace him but the work to expose the truth continues. John Judge Presente!

[Peter Lemkin]

Hey Bill! I'm still reeling from the great loss we suffered. ['We' being not only those associated with COPA or with the JFK Assassination, but all those denizens of Earth who seek Peace, Justice, Truth and a way Forward out of the abyss we have long been in.] John, like Mae Brussell before, was a shining light and almost force of nature in his tireless pursuit of so many important issues and the Truth of our history, and how that Truth can be used to positively change the future. An almost irreplaceable loss!

What happened with the proposed memorial 'at the end of May'? I see the COPA page seems to have gone somewhat 'static'.

I look forward to any further reminisces you have on John Judge. Yes, I was at the founding meeting of COPA and I regret that I was not able to play a more active role over the years due primarily to my soon after being first 'attacked' and sidelined in the USA and then moving to Europe. As noted somewhere above, I did keep in email contact with John from time to time. I would be saddened should 'COPA' related persons no longer sponsor conferences, thus leaving all that to Lancer and others. I do understand how with John no longer the mighty engine driving that, it may not be possible...but it could be become periodic, but regular, conferences held by the Hidden History Museum, for example. I would sincerely like to see John's goal of that Museum coming into existence - and soon!

[Peter Lemkin]

JFK Monument American U. June 10, 2014

Please Join Us at the JFK Monument at American University at 12 noon on June 10, 2014





John Judge at the JFK Memoral at American Univeristy


Marilyn Tenenoff writes:


On June 10, John Judge will make an appearance by audio at American University in Washington, DC. Supporters of COPA and the Museum of Hidden History will gather on that day, at noon, to commemorate the 51st anniversary of a groundbreaking speech made by President John F. Kennedy, and also to honor the life and work of John Judge. The event will feature an audio recording of John reading a portion of President Kennedy's speech.





JFK Gives "Peace Speech" at Graduation Commencement at American University
June 10, 1963




The American University speech, titled A Strategy of Peace, was a commencement address delivered by President John F. Kennedy at the American University in Washington, D.C., on June 10, 1963.
In the speech, Kennedy announced his agreement to negotiations "toward early agreement on a comprehensive test ban treaty" (which resulted in the Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty) and also announced, for the purpose of showing "good faith and solemn convictions," his decision to unilaterally suspend all US atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons as long as all other nations would do the same. The speech was unusual in its peaceful outreach to the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War, and is remembered as one of Kennedy's finest and most important speeches. (excerpt from Wikipedia)


The first appendix of Marty Schotz's History Will Not Absolve Us is the text of the address. Dave Ratcliffe took that text and made it reflect the words actually spoken by President Kennedy along with a film box and audio player at the top of the file. A server redirect is at http://ratical.org/JFK061063.html.


There is a plaque at American University which commemorates President Kennedy's speech. It is at the southern end of Reeves Field, which you can see on the left edge of this map of the campus.


Please join Randy Benson and others in front of the plaque at noon on June 10 for this annual event.


For Directions please see:

http://www.american.edu/aumaps/upload/campus_map.pdf





Bill Kelly

[Peter Lemkin]

MEMORIAL FOR CIVIC ACTIVIST JOHN JUDGE SUSTAINS HIS LEGACY

Written byAndrew KreigPublished onJune 1, 2014

















Two hundred friends and admirers of the late civic activist and historical researcher John P. Judge fostered his legacy during a memorial service May 31 at the National Press Club in Washington, DC.
Former Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D), a next door neighbor and close friend, described Judge as an extraordinary truth-seeker in the spirit of the ancient Diogenes. Kucinich continued, "What better place for it than Washington, DC -- the capital of smoke and mirrors?"
Kucinich, 67, was a longtime member of the House until 2013 who said he often benefited from Judge's insights about why American democracy and the economy have deteriorated in recent decades. Kucinich said he intends to keep hundreds of emails from Judge on current and historic events. "One day, they'll be put to good use."
Other eloquent tributes followed. Judge died April 15 at age 66 following a stroke two months previously.
Speakers portrayed, sometimes using music or photos, how the Washington-reared only son of two doting Department of Defense employees embarked on a lifelong quest to explore the nation's "hidden history." The search began during his days as a student at University of Dayton beginning in 1965, just as the Vietnam War was ratcheting up.
Judge's late mother had been a Pentagon specialist in planning to fulfill the nation's personnel needs via the draft. One of Judge's disclosures was that his mother, Mary Cooley Judge, was instructed just three days after Kennedy assassination to revise upward the Pentagon's personnel needs for the Vietnam War-era draft under incoming President Lyndon Johnson.
In a 1992 speech at American University cable cast on C-SPAN's "JFK: Cinema as History," Judge recalled, "They [the Joint Chiefs of Staff] told her on Nov. 25, 1963 that the war in Vietnam would last for 10 years and that 57,000 Americans would die, and to figure that in."
Judge's major effort of recent years was leading the Coalition on Political Assassinations(COPA), which showcased serious alternatives to official accounts of the JFK assassination and such other notable deaths during the 1960s as those of Robert Kennedy, Malcolm X and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
Judge presided at COPA's 20th annual conference last November in Dallas, which I attended for three days along with 300 other researchers. The focus was on the 50th anniversary of President Kennedy's assassination. The program's title was "50 Years is Enough! Free the Files, Find the Truth."

The conference featured medical, security, investigative and other experts challenging various aspects of the 1964 Warren Commission Report. In its 1964 report that closely tracked immediate announcements after the death, the commissioners blamed the killing on Lee Harvey Oswald. The report claimed that Oswald acted alone and fired all shots from the sixth floor of the Texas Book Depository Building.
The book building is the one at left of my photo of Dealey Plaza, shot during the conference. The Warren Commission stated that Oswald was in the square window at the building's far right, second from the top. The light-colored car in the middle lane is in the approximate location of the JFK limo when the president was fatally hit.
Other experts and witnesses believe shots were fired from at least one other location, and perhaps several others that include the locale from behind a picket fence at the top of the grassy knoll in the photo at left.
The fence is still in place, as indicated in the other photo. As indicated, an unknown person or persons has repeatedly and surreptitiously painted a cross on the street to mark the limo's locale when the fatal bullet struck. In the spirit of the "Out damned spot" scene inMacBeth, Dallas authorities have kept obliterating the mark.
Judge's best estimate, he has told interviewers, was the Joint Chiefs of Staff played a role in organizing the JFK killing and a cover-up. "I don't think this is an insoluble parlor mystery," he once told the Dallas Morning News.
Speakers at the memorial included David Ratcliffe, who authored a book on special operations during the Vietnam War. It drew on the insights of retired Air Force Col. L. Fletcher Prouty, Defense Department Chief of Special Operations and liaison to the CIA during the Kennedy administration.
Before his death in 2001, Prouty provided his views in two books, The Secret Team (1973) and JFK: The CIA, Vietnam and the Plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedy (1996). In the latter, Prouty provided many specifics in arguing that the CIA was instrumental in planning the JFK assassination and a cover-up on behalf of elite figures who benefited from $6 trillion in war spending between 1945 and the subsequent half century. Prouty wrote that Kennedy had intended to withdraw U.S. troops from Vietnam, smash the CIA "into a thousand pieces" in actions that the military-industrial complex would not tolerate. Prouty argued that Oswald was a "patsy" framed in advance to avoid investigation of the real killers, and that all presidents after JFK have learned, just like the Warren Commission and the media, to go along with the agenda's of what Prouty called the nation's elite, also known as a "High Cabal" or "Secret Team."
As described by Ratcliffe, Judge's work ranged across many cutting-edge issues. In 1985, he co-founded CHOICES, a group countering military recruitment in DC-area high schools. He and his colleagues counseled students on their options in the military and elsewhere.
As an aide to Georgia Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, he helped her prepare articles of impeachment against President George W. Bush for, among other things, initiating war against Iraq under the false claim that Iraq had been developing weapons of mass destruction. She introduced the articles in December 2006.
"A conversation with John," his friend Joseph Green recalled, "was like talking to the best and most entertaining professor you ever had." Others described Judge as optimistic and joyful even in seeking to illuminate dark deeds with slender finances because "he rarely sought or received" compensation for his public interest work.
At the time of his death, John Judge was working to create a Hidden History Library and Research Center. He intended to preserve his collection of thousands of books and documents and to educate a new generation. According to his bio, "He hoped to support the work of investigative researchers looking into the National Security State, the rise of secrecy, threats to civil liberties, government plans for extra-Constitutional jurisdiction during emergencies, and the ever-increasing power of the military industrial complex."
His companion and other friends are currently sorting through their best options to achieve those results.
The spirit of the memorial was captured by Judge's friend Patrick Elder, a longtime colleague in the peace movement.
"We've lost John Judge!" Elder said he heard last April.
In reflecting on a powerful life's work and an inspirational memorial, Elder told the audience a better view is, "We haven't lost him. We're just finding him. Have you ever felt John more alive?!"

[Peter Lemkin]

Dear Friend Of John ~



Would you like to see John Judge's vision of a Hidden History Library and Research Center become a reality? Will you help?



Here are the summary points of what we need. More details follow. Please respond if you can volunteer to help in any of these areas:



¨ Packing and Collections Preservation

¨ Short-Term Relocation

¨ Longer-Term Location Search

¨ Publicity and Fundraising

¨ Website Development

¨ Program Development

¨ Plan B Alternatives



As you probably know, I inherited John's collection of books and papers when he died in April. I need to decide what is best to do with his life's work. I am willing to explore any suggestion that would accomplish what he wanted: (1) to keep his collection in Washington , DC; (2) to keep his complete collection together; and (3) to make the ideas and information it contains accessible to as many people as possible.



To date, no one has come up with a concrete option that meets all three of these criteria. The only solution seems to be to create our own Library and Research Center in DC. I know that significant challenges exist. Even so, I am willing to take on this project. However, this endeavor can only succeed with sufficient help, support, and contributions of time, energy, and financing from people like you.



This facility would be a project of the Museum of Hidden History, an already-existing 501©(3) non profit. It would probably be formally named the "Hidden History Library and Research Center," but more commonly called the "Hidden History Center." I am an educator by training, so I am especially focused on the third of John's goals: the widest possible dissemination and distribution of Hidden History ideas and information. I would be willing to allow John's collection to be housed in the Hidden History Center, along with other collections the Center might acquire ~ but I need the Center to be more than merely a static library, occasionally visited by scholars. While the Hidden History Center would have a secure area to protect the collections, the Center I envision would also:



¨ have a dynamic, interactive, engaging and intriguing website about Hidden History subjects

¨ conduct outreach offsite, by sponsoring and organizing special functions, and by presenting information at community events

¨ provide opportunities for interns to gain experience working with, organizing, and digitizing the collections

¨ produce and provide activities at the Center that educate the public about Hidden History subjects, such as classes, plays, book discussion groups, and speaker and documentary film presentations

¨ develop traveling exhibits on Hidden History subjects, to be loaned to already-existing museums



I think John would be thrilled with this concept. So now I am turning to you ~ the folks who loved and admired John ~ for your help. Do you want me to simply give his collection away someplace safe, even if that means splitting it up or moving it out of DC? Or do you want to join with me to make his vision a reality? I loved John with all my heart, and I am willing to dedicate as much of my life as I can to this effort. Several other people have stepped forward to back my play. The Board of the Museum of Hidden History is ready to support this project. But our dedication alone is not sufficient. We need your skills and resources.

Here are the details of my seven-point list:



Packing and Collections Preservation

We need people who have experience with the software John has been using to inventory his books. It is called Zotero. We also need people to help inventory and pack John's books during the summer, preferably at least two people every Saturday and Sunday, between 11 AM and 5 PM. These are the dates.

[.....]
Please let me know if you have worked with Zotero. Or, if you can help pack, please tell me which dates you can work.



Short-Term Relocation

Once we get the books packed in boxes, we need
1) someone to comparison-shop, to find the best rate for climate-controlled storage within 10-15 miles of DC.
2) people who have trucks, or someone to find/arrange/manage rental truck(s) for "moving day."
3) moving day volunteers for the physical "heavy lifting" work of carrying all the boxes down the multitude of steps in Johns' house, loading them into the truck(s,) and then unloading them on the destination end.
Please let me know if you can help with any/all of these relocation tasks.



Longer-Term Location Search

We need people ~ perhaps a committee ~ to research where we could locate the Hidden History Center, without paying commercial office space rental rates. This location needs to be approximately 600-1,000 square feet. It could be at a university or church, or within an already-existing non-profit's building, or it could be a donated space. Ideally, we need someone who has a working sense of the DC real estate market and/or someone who is a real estate agent or can interface with local agents who might know of bargain opportunities available through developers, tax sales or enterprise zones.
Please let me know if you have any local DC real estate expertise or can do research in this area.



Publicity and Fundraising

We need people with experience writing grant proposals and researching the best donors to approach. We need people who can identify and seek out ways to publicize the Hidden History Center and seek donations ~ people who have or can obtain e-mail lists that we could tap ~ people willing to table at local DC events ~ someone who can set up a new "gofundme" campaign for the Hidden History Center ~ someone willing to work on a membership campaign, so that folks can become members of the Hidden History Center. We need people with imaginative fundraising ideas and people who know folks with "deep pockets" that we can approach for help.
Please contact me if you want to help publicize and fund raise.



Website Development

We need people with knowledge of Hidden History subjects to provide content for the Museum of Hidden History Website, and possibly set up a special section (or even a new website) just for the Hidden History Center. We need someone who can develop interactive capabilities on our website and can make it dynamic and engaging. I know so little about website design, that I don't even know the correct terminology for what we need, but if you are out there, you know exactly what I mean.
Please be in touch if you can contribute website content and/or implement expanding site interactivity and functionality.



Program Development

It is never too early to begin planning, so we need people to begin brainstorming about what programs the Hidden History Center could implement. What authors or re-enactors could we invite? What classes could we teach? What books could we discuss? What films or plays could we present? What events could we sponsor? Many of you know the Hidden History subject matter much better than I do.
Please send me your list of proposals and ideas for programs you would like to see. If you belong to a group whose history has been hidden, and you would like to give a presentation about it, let me know.



Plan B Alternatives

And finally, in case all our best efforts are not sufficient, we need some prudent, cautious people to explore other options for John's collection. Some say the most practical and sensible thing to do is to find an already-existing facility and donate his collection to be preserved there. This would regrettably deprive us of a valuable chance to educate the general public, but perhaps it is the only financially feasible alternative. If this is your opinion, then we need you to seek out those options. Is there anywhere in DC where John's collection could be donated and still be kept together? Or perhaps his collection needs to be split into parts by subject matter and donated to three or four different places. Maybe it would make sense to either store or dispose of most of his books, but preserve his papers by digitizing them. This would allow us to operate in a much smaller space. What are our Plan B alternatives?
If you have Plan B ideas or would like to look for some, please write to me.



Obviously, with enough money, we can buy all of the services I've listed. So, if you have no time to help, you can always donate. Please either make a donation through PayPal at the Museum's website or send a check to the Museum of Hidden History at P.O. Box 772, Washington, DC, 20044.

If you are a person of substantial means ~ and I know there are some of you on this list ~ please consider making a major contribution to jump-start this very essential project. The education of a new generation may depend on what we do here and now with this unique opportunity.



I hope my inbox will very shortly be inundated with offers of help. Please respond ASAP and let me know what you can do. I hope to have a huge spreadsheet full of names. I have lots of dedication and enthusiasm, but I am not a miracle worker. The Hidden History Center will only happen if you help.


Thanks for being there ~ Marilyn Tenenoff


[My note: contact me by PM if you need Marilyn's email address - P.L.]




The Museum of Hidden History website is at



Museum of Hidden History | a museum about the history you never knew.


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[Peter Lemkin]

[Peter Lemkin]

Dear Friends ~


I have at long last received John's final autopsy report. The summary page lists the Manner of Death as "NATURAL" and the Cause of Death as "HYPERTENSIVE AND ATHEROSCLEROTIC CARDIOVASCULAR DISEASE."


I forwarded the entire autopsy report to Dr. Cyril Wecht as soon as I received it, for his review and comment. You should also know that Dr. Wecht spoke several times with Dr. Pestaner, the forensic pathologist from the DC Medical Examiner's Office who actually did John's autopsy. Dr. Wecht asked questions and gathered information, to assure himself that the autopsy was thorough and complete, and no stone was left unturned.


According to Dr. Wecht, the cause of John's death, in layman's terms, was that his heart was greatly enlarged (about twice the size of a normal heart), and the arteries around his heart were significantly narrowed. Three of his coronary arteries were 40-60% blocked, and his right coronary artery was 90% blocked. Dr. Wecht told me that John's heart was a "ticking time bomb," and that ~ even if John had not had a stroke in March ~ he could have died at any moment from that level of heart disease.


We all know that John's obesity worked against him, and that many of his health problems stemmed from the fact that he spent his days in a chair working at his computer, didn't get much exercise and didn't eat well. Some of the responsibility for John's death lies with him.


Dr. Wecht says he sees nothing suspicious in the cause of John's death. He also says, given the condition of John's heart and arteries, there is no reasonable cause of action against either George Washington University Hospital or Washington Center for Aging Services for any negligence in John's death. Not being a medical expert, I certainly defer to Dr. Wecht's expert opinion. I, like many of you, have the utmost respect for his integrity, ability and judgment. I am deeply grateful for his help in this heartbreaking situation.


This autopsy report, however, leaves me deeply troubled. I don't mean that I suspect anything nefarious ~ though some will still believe this is a possibility, and even Dr. Wecht's impeccable credentials will not be able to dissuade them from this belief.


What I think happened to John is even more insidious than foul play, and it happens to many people in this country every day. I think John died because he was obese and sedentary, but also because he was impoverished. Many of you already know that John did most of his work without compensation and that he had almost no money. John was on Medicare. He could not afford a Medicare supplement policy, so he was on DC Medicaid. I work in the health care industry, and I deal with health insurance all the time. I see that Medicare/Medicaid recipients receive lesser quality care than those who can pay out-of-pocket or have excellent health care insurance.


Many of you have asked me: Why didn't anyone know the severity of John's heart disease in time to treat it? I believe John received less aggressive, less thorough medical care than he would have received if he carried a top-notch insurance like Blue Cross. There are treatments for narrowed arteries, such as balloon angioplasty, stents and bypass surgery. John had balloon angioplasty on two earlier occasions. After he went on Medicare/Medicaid, he continued to see his cardiologist on a regular basis and to faithfully take all of his heart medications. But for some reason (probably the expense of tests and procedures), he was not given the tests that would have revealed that he was in danger, and he was not given the treatments that could have extended his life.


Then, once John had a stroke and landed in the rehab unit of GWU hospital, no one there discovered that his heart was a "ticking time bomb." Why not? Could it be that the low level of payment provided by Medicare/Medicaid did not encourage any testing? I don't think anyone at GWU Hospital even contacted John's cardiologist, who is himself a GWU physician! At the end of John's stay in the GWU rehab, hospital personnel essentially pressured me to find a sub-acute rehab setting for John. They were concerned that Medicare would no longer pay for John to have a bed in the GWU rehab, and they wanted him out of there. Even when I questioned John's readiness to be moved, the hospital still insisted it would be fine to move him. Was John moved before he was ready for financial reasons? Did the shock and stress of the move put a final last strain on his heart?


These questions continue to haunt me. I'm sure Dr. Wecht is correct when he says that no one doctor or facility can be held legally liable for what happened to John. It is also true that John's poor eating habits, excessive weight and lack of exercise strongly contributed to his death. Even so, I can't help wondering if John would have gotten better medical care, and lived longer, if he had been wealthy or had had better insurance.


Perhaps those of you who are interested in health care reform can honor John by working for better health care for everyone. Perhaps the rest of us can honor him by preserving his collection and by advocating for his ideas.


Stay tuned to this channel for exciting news about the Hidden History Center. We are still packing up John's books and papers, and we are searching for a space to house his collection! We'll be paying rent on a space for the Center soon, so we can still use your help on that project, if you can afford to make a donation. Please send tax-deductible donations to Museum of Hidden History, P.O. Box 772, Washington, DC, 20044.


Thanks so much for all your love and support. I'm so sorry John is gone. I miss him every day, and I'm sure you do, too.



Much love ~ Marilyn