McMartin: Hearing Is Believing

See previous post for sources not cited here.

The purpose of a preliminary hearing is to determine whether sufficient evidence exists to bring a defendant to trial. Usually, you’d expect these to take a few hours, maybe a day. The prelim of the O.J. Simpson murder case, dubbed by the press ‘The Crime of the Century,‘ took about a week.

By contrast, the preliminary hearing of the McMartin case began on 17 August 1984, and concluded on 9 January 1986.

True, the case had some complexities in that there were seven defendants, each with their own attorneys, three different prosecutors, and a parade of forensic and eyewitnesses. Still, you’d have to think that the prosecution had enough evidence to go to trial. They had the videotaped interviews with Kee MacFarlane’s 394 victims. Five of the children would also take the stand. In addition to MacFarlane’s expert testimony, there was also Dr. Astrid Heger’s examinations.

Moreover, the prosecution had received assistance from a highly respected psychiatrist, Dr. Roland Summit, an associate professor of medicine at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA). He coined the term Child Abuse Accommodation Syndrome (CAAS) in a 1983 paper for the scholarly journal Child Abuse and Neglect. CAAS, simply put, was a five-stage process in which victims of childhood sex abuse come to deny their encounters with adults: (1) secrecy; (2) helplessness; (3) entrapment and accommodation; (4) delayed, unconvincing disclosure; and (5) retraction. In essence, he argued that the victims of sex abuse have every reason to keep it secret and to publicly deny it. (This would play a role later on when MacFarlane explained her interviewing technique with defense attorneys.)

The examinations and cross-examinations took quite some time, simply because of the volume of the evidence. There was also another matter: the decision on whether or not to allow sixteen additional child witnesses to testify on closed-circuit television.

Most important, the defense would not passively stipulate the evidence, but challenged it at every turn. In effect, the preliminary hearing took on more the tone of an actual trial, as defense attorneys began to sense that the prosecution’s evidence was nowhere as strong as first believed. They immediately noted critical methodological flaws in the examinations by MacFarlane and Dr. Heger. They also pointed out the lack of key evidence. First of all, no one could produce a single photograph or movie clip of a naked game, despite the fact that by the prosecution’s own account thousands of them were taken. And with all of the activity supposedly happening either in or via these secret underground tunnels, no one has shown that they even existed.

The tunnels became a big issue as the hearing progressed. Sometime in the last week of February 1985, CII therapist Martha Cockriel told the LA Sheriff’s office that there was a secret room in the tunnel. One kid described the room as “totally dark but could be lit with red lights….Everyone, students and teachers alike, went there.” Another former student said that he or she “…didn’t like Ray’s secret room because it was dirty….No good things happened there.” One more kid told deputies, “…devil stuff went on. They also took naked pictures and molested kids in that room.”

Determined to prove the existence of the tunnels, parents began digging around the McMartin site on March 4. A police check on license plates indicated the presence of Bob Currie (his wife’s car was parked nearby). Two weeks later, Currie led an expedition of forty-plus parents at the site. One person, digging near Ray Buckey’s room, found a tortoise shell buried two feet under the ground. (The kids said that turtles were among the animals frequently tortured and killed).

Despite the parents’ belief that the tortoise shell proved the existence of a satanic ring at McMartin, DA Ira Reiner realized that their amateur search could render real evidence meaningless. On March 20, prosecutors arranged for Scientific Resource Surveys (SRS), a reputable archeological firm, to do a proper dig. SRS found no evidence of tunnels and tortured animals. Instead, they found massive evidence of trash pits which included butchered animal bones and bottles dating from 1890-1940.

Despite the improbability of the tunnels‘ existence, and highly problematic prosecution evidence, Judge Aviva Bobb nevertheless bound all seven defendants for trial. But Reiner, who worried about the weakness of the evidence against five of the defendants, dropped the charges against all except for Peggy and Ray Buckey.

Click here to read later posts in this series.

Update 12/31/10:  Check out the New Year's Eve cyberbash over at Boxer's Place.  Party ends at 3:00am EST 1/1/11.

McMartin: Out of Control*

Obviously, 200 parents aren’t going to shut up when receiving a letter saying, in effect, “A pervert might have raped your kid.” Never mind the explanatory and cautionary statements in that missive. The allegation rang the loudest.

From that point, the McMartin case simply flew out of anyone’s control. As the longest and most expensive legal proceeding in Los Angeles history (it dwarfs the Tate-LaBianca prosecutions), this case was marred by relentless and bizarre excess.

To start with, word of mouth prompted Manhattan Beach parents to request (some say “pressure”) the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office to investigate. Dep. DA Jean Matusinka, then in charge of investigating complaints of child abuse, referred five possible victims to the Children’s Institute International (CII), where psychiatric social worker (MSW) Kathleen (Kee) MacFarlane examined them. It’s clear that at first Matusinka simply wanted to determine whether or not these charges had merit. But the number of interview subjects mushroomed after authorities got into the habit of referring parents fearing the worse to CII. In all, MacFarlane examined over 400 children during October 1983, ultimately determining that 384 were sexually abused. The following month, medical examinations by Dr. Astrid Heppenstall Heger on 150 of these children found forensic evidence of sexual abuse in 80% (about 120) of them.

Through the participation of CII, the case grew in scope from a specific charge of molestation against one child to the rampant, indiscriminate rape of almost 400 children. The sheer number of alleged victims, combined with the fact that some of the kids were claiming sexual abuse at the school before Ray Buckey, the accused, even worked there, indicated to parents and prosecutors that the abuse went far beyond the work of a single individual. Thus, police and prosecutors began investigating others, which ultimately led to the arrests of Ray’s mom, Peggy, his sister, Peggy Ann, his grandmother, Virginia McMartin, and three teachers: Mary Ann Jackson, Babette Spitler and Bette Raidor. Between March and May 1984, prosecutors won indictments on all seven defendants on a total of 208 charges. Prosecutor Lael Rubin later told the press that the McMartin defendants were actually guilty of 397 charges, with thirty more pending the findings of ongoing investigations.

In addition to inflating the number of charges, victims and perpetrators, other aspects began to increase the heinousness of the offenses to the point of sensationalism. Early in the investigation, one of the McMartin parents, Jackie McGauley, met with Dr. Lawrence Pazder, a psychiatrist originally from Canada. With his mistress (later his wife), Dr. Pazder co-wrote Michelle Remembers, an autobiographical account of the second Mrs. Pazder’s life as a victim of Satanic Ritual Abuse (SRA). At this point, the McMartin parents began to fear that an organized group of wealthy and powerful Satanists had indoctrinated their kids and others the world over into a life down the left-hand path.

Rumors of satanic practices led to increasingly exotic descriptions of the actual crimes committed. Judy Johnson, for example, came to believe that Buckey sodomized her son while cramming the kid’s head in a toilet. Other stories began to emerge. Some said that the children made pornography. Adults forced them to play in the nude, while camera’s happily recorded the action (according to some of the kids, they even sang a special song for the occasion: “What you see is what you are./You’re a naked movie star”). The games subject to filming supposedly included numerous instances of anal and vaginal penetration. The perpetrators also allegedly forced them to witness the torture and murder of small animals (tortoises, in particular, but also chickens dogs, and whatnot). On occasion, they would sacrifice humans (in one story they tortured and finally beheaded an infant).

The settings of these atrocities varied from churches to private houses. If you’re wondering how they managed to sneak a bunch of kids out of the preschool in broad daylight, eleven kids mentioned something about a tunnel that ran beneath the school, and opened up inside another house. Inside the tunnel system was a special room, where these activities also occurred.

Bob Currie, another parent dissatisfied with the official investigation, took it upon himself to find smoking gun evidence that Buckey was involved with a satanic child molestation ring. He began by getting the address of suspected molestation sites from CII, and confirming them with his son. He then copied the license plate numbers of vehicles at these locations, and followed their drivers. His investigative technique led to even wilder charges. For starters, he claimed that some kids were flown to other cities during the day from a local airport--in air-freight cartons, no less--to sexually service wealthy industrialists, movie stars and the California Angels. Moreover, he averred that some of the McMartin parents were themselves part of the pedophile ring.

Wayne Satz, a Peabody-Award winning television journalist known for his aggressive style, publicized the accusations locally as a credible child abuse case starting in February 1984. But as the nature of the charges became more and more lurid, the story spread outside of LA. By August of that year, Currie garnered national attention with an appearance on ABC’s 20/20. As the spokesperson of the Parents Against Child Abuse (PACA), an organization of fellow McMartin parents, he became quite visible as a crusader figure.

In some respects, one could see Currie as the ringmaster of a three-ring media circus. By trial‘s end, however, one might be more tempted to see him as a clown.
_________________________________

*In this and the next several posts, I’ll be giving a summary of the legal proceedings as chronicled by Doug Linder’s The McMartin Preschool Trials:1987-1990, John Earl's "The Dark Truth about 'The Dark Tunnels of McMartin'" published in The Journal of the Institute for Psychological Therapies, v. 7(1995), and Alex Constantine’s Virtual Government: CIA Mind Control Operations in America. I would point out that each of these resources has an axe to grind, so to speak. Nevertheless, they mostly agree on the chronology of events.

Assailing the Tender Age: McMartin

On 12 May 1983, forty-year old Judy Johnson had about reached the breaking point. She had just undergone a painful separation from her husband that forced her out of her home and into instant poverty. Yet at the forefront of her mind was her elder son, a thirteen-year old suffering from terminal brain cancer. She’d become sort of a nuisance to local authorities in her efforts to get in-home health care for the teenager. Described as a “community outsider” and bit “eccentric” by Alex Constantine, she didn’t know her neighbors that well, nor they her. Apparently, she didn’t feel as though she could ask them for help in looking after Billy, her two-year old son.* So, at the peak of frustration, she took him to the gates of McMartin Preschool in Manhattan Beach California, and left him there.

The woman who ran the school, Peggy Buckey, took care of the kid, even though she had no clue who he was or why he was there until Johnson returned that afternoon to pick him up. Because of Johnson’s circumstances, Buckey took pity on her, and arranged to take on her kid starting in June.

Later that summer, Matthew suffered from pain in the rectal region, and itched all over. Johnson took him to the doctor several times during June and July, but the pediatrician couldn’t determine what might have caused those symptoms. Johnson worried that it might be vaginitis because she had just undergone a bout with it herself, and the boy had been sleeping with her as of late because of his frequent nightmares.

On 12 August 1983, when shopping for groceries, the two-year-old started crying again. Changing his diaper, she saw blood. At the suggestion of others, instead of taking him to his usual pediatrician, she took him instead to one working at the Children’s Institute International (CII), an organization dedicated to detecting and preventing child abuse. There, a young intern examined Billy and concluded that someone had sodomized him.

Johnson went to Manhattan Beach police six days later asking them to investigate possible sexual abuse against her son. Detective Jane Hoag interviewed Billy, who apparently demonstrated knowledge of sadomasochistic paraphernalia. During a subsequent interview conducted 20 August 1983, when asked about how he knew so much about tawdry things, the lad simply said “Ray.”**

Billy indeed knew someone named Ray: specifically Ray Buckey, the 25-year-old son of Peggy Buckey, and grandson of the school’s owner, Virginia McMartin--despite the fact that the child could not identify him in a photograph lineup. Det. Hoag consequently opened an investigation against Ray. She searched Buckey’s bedroom and found such incriminating items as a rubber duck, a graduation gown, and a few pin-up photos cut from a recent issue of Playboy. Based upon this evidence, and Billy’s statement, Det. Hoag arrested Buckey on September 7. But the Los Angeles District Attorney’s officer told her that she needed more and better evidence before they could prosecute.***

Det. Hoag’s superior, Manhattan Beach Chief of Police Harry Kuhlmeyer, decided to find that evidence at any cost. He mailed the following letter to 200 parents of current and former McMartin students:

September 8, 1983

Dear Parent:

This Department is conducting a criminal investigation involving child molestation (288 P.C.) Ray Buckey, an employee of Virginia McMartin's Pre-School, was arrested September 7, 1983 by this Department.

The following procedure is obviously an unpleasant one, but to protect the rights of your children as well as the rights of the accused, this inquiry is necessary for a complete investigation.

Records indicate that your child has been or is currently a student at the pre-school. We are asking your assistance in this continuing investigation. Please question your child to see if he or she has been a witness to any crime or if he or she has been a victim. Our investigation indicates that possible criminal acts include: oral sex, fondling of genitals, buttock or chest area, and sodomy, possibly committed under the pretense of ‘taking the child's temperature.’ Also photos may have been taken of children without their clothing. Any information from your child regarding having ever observed Ray Buckey to leave a classroom alone with a child during any nap period, or if they have ever observed Ray Buckey tie up a child, is important.

Please complete the enclosed information form and return it to this Department in the enclosed stamped return envelope as soon as possible. We will contact you if circumstances dictate same.

We ask you to please keep this investigation strictly confidential because of the nature of the charges and the highly emotional effect it could have on our community. Please do not discuss this investigation with anyone outside your immediate family. Do not contact or discuss the investigation with Raymond Buckey, any member of the accused defendant's family, or employees connected with the McMartin Pre-School.

THERE IS NO EVIDENCE TO [INDICATE] THAT THE MANAGEMENT OF VIRGINIA MCMARTIN'S PRE-SCHOOL HAD ANY KNOWLEDGE OF THIS SITUATION AND NO DETRIMENTAL INFORMATION CONCERNING THE OPERATION OF THE SCHOOL HAS BEEN DISCOVERED DURING THIS INVESTIGATION. ALSO, NO OTHER EMPLOYEE IN THE SCHOOL IS UNDER INVESTIGATION FOR ANY CRIMINAL ACT.

Your prompt attention to this matter and reply no later than September 16, 1983 will be appreciated.

HARRY L. KUHLMEYER, JR.
Chief of Police

JOHN WEHNER, Captain

You’ll note how Chief Kuhlmeyer and Captain Wehner cautioned parents to keep their investigation “strictly confidential because of the highly emotional effect it could have on our community.”

Gee. If you got that letter, would you keep it a secret?

_________________________
*Douglas Linder, who has written extensively about the case, gives the Johnson boy’s name as Billy. Other sources say Matthew. Perhaps the child’s name is William Matthew or Matthew William, or one or both names are pseudonyms. Whatever the case, I’ll refer to him as Billy, here.

**I have to point out here that what exactly led to the connection between Billy Johnson and Ray Buckey has always been, and remains to this day a subject of controversy. This is the most cited version of this story that I can find. I should point out that some have averred that Judy planted the notion of sexual abuse by Buckey after her son told her that Ray had taken his temperature. In this narrative, Judy assumed that Buckey used a rectal thermometer.

***Manhattan Beach, CA is located in Los Angeles County.

Click here to see later posts in this series.

The Road Ahead

When I started this blog, I had several objectives in mind. The first was to discuss a number of topics I had studied for quite some time--a data dump, if you will. The second was to form a community off of which to bounce ideas, no matter how far-fetched. The most important, however, was to clarify issues of conspiracy.

As presented in mainstream media, the term ‘conspiracy’ almost always precedes the term ‘theory.’ As I have stated before, the term ‘conspiracy theory’ is a misnomer. Very few conspiracy researchers work from a theoretical approach (and those that do tend to be academics). Instead they operate out of a speculative one, attempting to fill in gaps of knowledge that in many cases are deliberately withheld, mostly because of classification and confidentiality reasons. In its strictest sense, theory is not synonymous with hypothesis, but rather its antithesis. Hypotheses attempt to predict or describe a situation not yet in evidence. Theory, on the other hand, connects the dots between known and stipulated phenomena. Sometimes the connections are meaningless; nevertheless, they exist. And this is what a true theorist does.

In the process of misstating the nature of conspiracy theory, dominant discourse on controversial subjects tends to confuse a lot of issues. One of the main sources of the confusion is the straw-man argument: a trumped-up (and often scurrilous) debate about a peripheral issue that fails to address the main concerns of conspiracy researchers. You can find a good example of this on our friend Judyth Vary Baker’s blog, Oswald Framed. In a post dated 6 November 2009, Judy discusses a study in which Professor Hany Farid (Computer Science, Dartmouth) disputes the claim that the shadows of the famous Backyard Photo do not match, thus implying that Oswald was the actual subject, and more importantly linking him to the Mannlicher-Carcano rifle cited by the Warren Commission as the murder weapon.

Figure 1. The infamous Backyard Photo

Farid argued that the distinctive shape of Oswald’s nose made it appear that the shadows didn’t match, when in fact they did. Through most of the blog post, Baker thoroughly engages Farid’s claim to reestablish that they do. She rightfully points out that lost in his discussion are the obvious crop marks that are visible without a magnifying glass (and glaringly obvious with one). Moreover, the arm holding the rifle features characteristics that Oswald’s never had, most notably the slight bump near the right wrist.

While we can see Professor Farid’s assertion as the construction of a straw-man argument, on the one hand, we have to also take issue with some arguments undertaken by conspiracy researchers themselves. As The X-Spot has given me an opportunity to correspond with a number of fellow researchers--from the unknowns like myself to the more prominent--I’ve come to realize that more often than not you’ll find that these are people who are doing the best they can to put together a coherent narrative out of disparate and often conflicting facts. At the same time, you can often find an undisciplined approach to gathering data and weighing evidence which further muddles the issues, and leads to inaccuracy. As voiced by the character Janet in the sequel to The Golden Ganesh:

’The problem with conspiracy theory,’ she began, ‘is that it oversimplifies very complex social interactions. It lures people into a false belief that they know how the world works, and gives them an excuse as to why they find their lives in disarray….

Moreover, conspiracy theories tend to lack agency. Nothing’s attributable to specific individuals, but rather a faceless, nameless, ‘they’. And that ‘they’ could be anybody the conspiracy theorist doesn’t like: Jews, whites, blacks, Republicans, Democrats, Communists, Russians, Muslims, Freemasons, Illuminati and so forth.

'And then, there’s the obvious. A lot of conspiracy theory comes from people who sound as though they’re suffering from profound paranoia.’

While it doesn’t always help, the academic theorist is trained to take his or her own personality, feelings, beliefs, experiences and biases into account when examining a subject. Each of these things can act as a filter, through which certain data never register, while some factors weigh more heavily on a conclusion than they should. If you don’t put yourself into the equation, you run the risk of letting prejudice be your guide.

If, on the off chance you can keep your biases in check, then you still have to bear in mind your own emotions. As everyone knows, emotional reasoning (at least in and of itself) often leads to error. That’s the main reason I have written very little about 9/11. I have a lot of memories tied up in the Twin Towers. I used to work there. And I still have very strong emotions about what happened on that day and during the following weeks. My feelings aren’t as virulent or as disruptive as they were on 12 September 2001, of course. So I figure that one day I’ll be in a position to research and write about that particular chapter in history some day--just not right now.

On the other hand, there are two topics on which I have strong emotions that will probably never change. Yet I feel that I must write about them, because they are essential components of conspiracy culture, and I’ve put them off long enough. The first is the inherent racism (in particular the anti-Semitism) in some strains of conspiracy research. But I think I’ll table that for the time being, and instead forge ahead of with the second subject.

A word of warning: this next series of posts will actually exist as a series of series, each exploring a very dark, and very ugly matter. It will certainly inflame your emotions. For many of you, it will be a major turnoff, especially since I will probably spend a good deal of time talking about it. Nevertheless, I welcome your insights, for I know that some of you have explored some facets of this topic on your own and thus have probably developed some rather firm opinions about it. As always, my first goal will be to clarify the conspiracy issues. If things get cloudy, I have every faith that you’ll let me know.

The JFK Assassination Casting Call

JFK, Oliver Stone’s 1991 docudrama, is a decent, although flawed, primer on President John Kennedy’s assassination. While some critics harped on its use of made-up characters, the fictionalization of real people, and the omission of other important witnesses, JFK manages to get a good number of the major players.

Below are fifteen photographs of real persons depicted in JFK. Can you match the people in these photos with both their names and the actors who played them?

Good luck.


Figure 1.

Figure 2.

Figure 3.

Figure 4.

Figure 5.

Figure 6.

Figure 7.

Figure 8.

Figure 9.

Figure 10.

 

Figure 11.

 

Figure 12.

 

Figure 13.

 

Figure 14.

 

Figure 15.

Names
1. Dean Andrews
2. Carlos Bringuier
3. Edwin Collins (most likely Angelo)
4. Bernardo De Torres (most likely Leopoldo)
5. Jim Garrison
6. Jean Hill
7. Lou Ivan
8. Russell B. Long
9. Jack Martin
10. Sylvia Odio
11. Beverly Oliver
12. Ruth Paine (fictionalized as Janet Williams)
13. Delphine Roberts
14. James Tague
15. Earl Warren


Actors
A. Raul Aranas
B. John Candy
C. Kevin Costner
D. Gail Cronauer
E. Lolita Davidovich
F. Jim Garrison
G. Jack Lemmon
H. Walter Matthau
I. Ellen McElduff
J. Tomas Milian
K. Tony Plana
L. Jay O. Sanders
M. Michael Skipper
N. Ann Strub
O. Linda Flores Wade

Scroll down a couple of posts for the answers.  For more stuff on the JFK assassination, click here.

Oliver Stone Didn’t Put Me in His Damn Movie

Here is a brief sketch of three people involved with some aspect of the JFK assassination who aren’t depicted in the Stone docudrama, even in fictionalized form.

Arnold Gordon (1941-1997)

Who the hell is he? An army soldier.

What‘s his story? On leave, Gordon returned to his hometown of Dallas to visit friends and family. Upon hearing of the president’s visit, Gordon took his movie camera with him to the Grassy Knoll.

What’s he got to do with anything? As Arnold stood on the embankment, a man in a light colored suit flashed a Secret Service badge, and shooed him a few feet away. As the President’s motorcade passed, Arnold heard shots ring out directly behind him. Per his combat training, he hit the turf, while his camera continued to roll. Immediately after the shots ended, a man dressed as a Dallas police officer confiscated his camera at gunpoint.


Abraham Bolden (c.1934- )

Who the hell is he? A Secret Service Agent

What’s his story? A former Illinois State trooper, Bolden joined the Secret Service in 1959. He was ordered to secure, of all things, the, um, privy during Kennedy’s visit to the Windy City in 1961. The two met when the call of nature led the President to his station. Kennedy asked him if he had ever been on the presidential detail. When Bolden informed him that no African American had served in that capacity, Kennedy vowed to fix that. Sure enough, Abraham found himself in the Oval Office one month later.

Kennedy probably didn’t arrange Bolden’s transfer because of tokenism, but out of a very pragmatic concern. The President felt animosity from the very agents assigned to protect him, and wanted someone around whom he felt he could trust. Bolden found massive evidence to justify Kennedy’s fears. Among other things, he discovered that a substantial number of agents were ultraconservative (bordering on extremist) southerners who openly expressed their hatred of Kennedy behind the President’s back. There were also alcoholic agents who couldn’t even stay sober on the job. Quite a few agents, drunk or sober, declared in front of Bolden that they wouldn’t risk their own lives to save this President, whom they regarded as either a communist, or a communist sympathizer.

Bolden, per regulations, tried to address these matters through a hostile chain of command, but to no avail. After three months on the Presidential detail, his superiors transferred him back to Chicago, despite Kennedy’s wishes.

What’s he got to do with anything? In addition to exposing the lackadaisical attitudes the Secret Service had toward protecting Kennedy (which became more important when Secret Service personnel were caught at an after-hours joint drinking past three in the morning on the day of the assassination), Bolden, along with everyone else in his field office, saw an FBI teletype warning of a plot to kill Kennedy during the President’s scheduled visit to Chicago during the first week of November 1963. As a result of the warning, Kennedy cancelled his trip to Illinois.

When Bolden discovered that the Warren Commission didn’t have a copy of the teletype, he tried to give them one. Someone on the committee tersely told him, “Keep your mouth shut.” So he flew to Washington to contact Warren Commission counsel Lee Rankin, whereupon he was immediately arrested, flown back to Chicago, and charged with discussing bribery with alleged counterfeiters. On the word of mobster Sam DeStefano, Bolden was convicted, and served a six-year sentence.

Silvia Duran (1937- )

Who the hell is she? A bureaucrat.

What’s her story? An openly leftist Mexican citizen, Duran took a job at the Cuban Embassy in Mexico City. She immediately aroused the CIA’s suspicion when the Agency discovered her clandestine affair with Cuban Ambassador Carlos Lechuga.

On 27 September 1963, a little over a month after she got the embassy gig, Duran processed paperwork for a man identifying himself as Lee Harvey Oswald, who wanted a visa to travel to Cuba, and then to the Soviet Union. Something about him just didn’t seem right. When she informed him that he needed four photographs to process his information, he came back not just with photographs but with his “Fair Play for Cuba” paraphernalia, a newspaper clipping about his arrest in New Orleans for distributing communist literature, and other stuff to establish his communist bona fides.

To Duran, and her supervisor, Eusebio Azcue, the guy calling himself Oswald had all the earmarks of what spies call a “dangle,” or in other words a false defector trying to penetrate Soviet and Cuban intelligence by posing as a jaded American spy willing to betray the US. She sent the man to the Soviet embassy.  The Russians told him he would have to wait for a few weeks in order to process the paperwork. “Oswald” then went back to the Cuban embassy and told them that the USSR had given him special permission to get the visa right away. When Duran called the Soviets to check, she found that the man had lied to her. This led him to cause a scene, whereupon Azcue told him to vacate the premises.

What’s she got to do with anything? Moments after receiving word of the JFK assassination, Winston Scott, a CIA case officer working in Mexico, ordered local authorities friendly to the Agency to take Duran into custody, over the objections of Assistant Deputy Director of Ops Tom Karamessines in Langley. Luis Echeverría Álvarez, a political party hack who would one day become the President of Mexico, arranged the arrest of Duran, her husband and five others. Echeverria later reported that Duran identified the real Lee Harvey Oswald as the man who walked into her office back in September.

That’s the official story. And the CIA’s sticking to it.

The problem is that Duran supposedly took awhile to make up her mind as to whether or not the man in question was Oswald. Despite the fact that the man caused a scene in her office only a couple of months earlier, and generally made a nuisance of himself, it took her several days to identify Oswald, and she emerged from police custody bearing marks of physical torture. Not stopping there, the CIA attempted to implicate her in the assassination attempt by circulating rumors that Duran and Oswald were lovers. The gossip apparently came from Duran’s in-laws, who probably never liked her after her affair with Ambassador Lechuga. Publicly she has denied the rumor, although “friends” have said she spoke of the affair with them privately.

What’s most important is that Duran has repeatedly stated that the man who visited her office on 27 September 1963 was not Oswald. The CIA had cameras trained at the Cuban embassy to catch American citizens who’d prefer to apply for visas there instead of in the US. Despite the fact that Oswald would have had to pass these cameras at least six times that day, the only pictures the CIA could produce looked nothing like him.

Figure 4. The Fat, Balding, Older Oswald

Shortly before his death, then-CIA Deputy Director of Ops (DDO) Richard Helms admitted that the above pictures were not that of Oswald, although the Agency insisted for years that it was. Yet, the former DCI insisted that Oswald did make the trip to Mexico City. Duran, on the other hand, said that the visitor looked nothing like Oswald, or the guy in the above photo. She and Azcue described the Oswald imposter as being very short (about 5’3”), with blond hair and blue eyes, while Oswald himself had brown hair, brown eyes and stood at 5’9.5”.*

Moreover, a very important witness placed Oswald in Dallas on 25 September 1963, while Oswald was supposedly on the bus ride to Mexico City. Sylvia Odio, a Cuban ex-patriot, received a visit from three men that morning. Two of the men introduced themselves as Leopoldo and Angelo, members of the Junta Revolucionaria, a leftist exile group. They introduced the silent, white man with them as Leon Oswald. The following day, Leopoldo phoned Odio to tell her that Oswald was an expert shot who wanted to kill Kennedy. After the assassination, she recognized Oswald as the man who visited her apartment on that day, as did her sister, Anne.

The Warren Commission was apparently reluctant to brand Odio a liar, and instead simply dismissed her testimony as mistaken. The House Select Committee on Assassinations, however, sincerely believed that Odio was neither lying nor wrong when she said that Oswald visited her when he was supposedly traveling south of the border. Later, researchers identified (per Odio’s description) Leopoldo as Bernardo De Torres, an extremely right-wing anti-Castro Cuban exile who served as an intelligence officer during the CIA’s ill-fated Bay of Pigs invasion. Angelo was identified as Edwin Collins, a US Marine with ties to the KKK, the John Birch Society, and the CIA.

This tale of the two Silvias (or Sylvias) strongly suggests that elements within the CIA had a plan to finger Oswald as early as September 1963, and then link him with the Cuban government. One could thus see Duran’s immediate arrest as Win Scott executing that phase of the plan. Karamessines’ rejection suggests that CIA elements connected to the assassination decided not to push the Cuba connection narrative, opting instead for the lone-nut hypothesis. They subsequently attempted to establish a (false) romantic connection between Duran and Oswald in case it might come in handy in provoking war against Cuba later on.

The JFK Assassination Casting Response

Here are the answers to the JFK casting quiz. In each, the real person is shown on the left, the actor on the right. Feel free to rate how closely the actor resembles his or her real-life counterpart on a scale of one-to-ten.

Figure 1. Sylvia Odio (10) played by Linda Flores Wade (O)

See the story immediately above for more about Odio.


Figure 2. Bernard De Torress, aka Leopoldo (4) played by Tomas Milian (J)

See the story immediately above for more about Leopoldo and his partner Angel.


Figure 3. Edwin Collins, aka Angelo (3) played by Raul Aranas (A)

See the story immediately above for more about Angel, and his partner Leopoldo.

Figure 4. Lou Ivan (7) played by Jay O. Sanders (L)

Ivan worked closely with Orleans Parish DA Jim Garrison on the case.


Figure 5. Beverly Oliver (11), aka The Babushka Lady played by Lolita Davidovich (E)

Oliver saw David Ferrie and Lee Oswald at the Carousel Club where Jack Ruby introduced the latter to her as a friend.


Figure 6. Carlos Bringuier (2) played by Tony Plana (K)

Oswald approached Bringuier to join his anti-Castro group in New Orleans. Later, the two had a very public confrontation when Bringuier saw Oswald handing out pro-Castro leaflets. The confrontation led to Oswald’s arrest, and later, a radio debate with Bringuier.


Figure 7. Dean Andrews (1) played by John Candy (B)

Andrews was a local New Orleans attorney who helped Oswald upgrade his discharge status from the US Marine Corp. He initially claimed to have been Oswald’s attorney for the shooting of President Kennedy and Officer J.D. Tippet, but then recanted saying that he had gotten confused because of a mild overdose of painkillers. Garrison convicted him on a perjury charge for testimony leading up to the Clay Shaw trial.


Figure 8. Earl Warren (15) played by Jim Garrison (F)

One of the quirks one can find in an Oliver Stone movie is the casting of the biographical subject as his real-life nemesis. In The People Vs. Larry Flynt, for example, Stone cast Flynt as a judge hostile to Flynt as played by Woody Harrelson.


Figure 9. Delphine Roberts (13) played by Ann Strub (N)

Roberts was Guy Banister’s secretary and mistress. She and Banister’s partner, PI Jack Martin, stipulated that Oswald frequented their office, along with David Ferrie.

Figure 10. Jack Martin (9) played by Jack Lemmon (G)



Guy Banister used his private detective agency as a front for anti-Castro operations, while Martin handled the legitimate caseload. Along with Delphine Roberts, he stipulated Oswald’s frequent presence in Guy Banister’s office.


Figure 11. Ruth Paine (12), fictionalized as Janet Williams, played by Gail Cronauer (D)

Paine introduced Lee and Marina Oswald to the White Russian community of Dallas, and generally managed them (presumably looking out for them). Paine dropped a trail of breadcrumbs designed to implicate Oswald in the assassination.


Figure 12. Jean Hill (6) played by Ellen McElduff (I)

As stated in last year’s post, Hill was the closest civilian witness to the JFK assassination not participating in the motorcade.

Figure 13. Jim Garrison (5) played by Kevin Costner (C)

Often vilified, often ridiculed, Garrison saw Oliver Stone’s movie, and the public reaction to it, as sweet vindication.


Figure 14. Senator Russell B. Long (8) played by Walter Matthau (H)

As stated in last year’s post, Garrison publicly said that Sen. Long inspired him to reopen the case. But the person who actually inspired him was US Rep. Hale Boggs, a dissenting member of the Warren Commission. Garrison feared that the inside information given to him by Boggs might lead someone to assassinate the congressman, so he attributed the inspiration to a source with no inside knowledge of the assassination, namely Sen. Long.


Figure 15. James Tague (14) played by Michael Skipper (M)

Tague was the third shooting victim (along with President Kennedy and Gov. Connally) of the gunfire erupting at Dealy Plaza. The used-car salesman was walking under the triple-overpass when a bullet grazed the side of his face. He heard another bullet hit the sidewalk next him.

Hiatus

When Ray first suggested I do a series on frauds and fakes, I thought it a good idea, because I had already thought about doing it earlier. I was planning to get to an example of The Big Lie (specifically, McCarthyism) before election time. But meatspace issues took center stage.

So I’m putting this series on the shelf, for a moment. We will get back to it at a later date.

Meanwhile, I've spent considerable time trying to develp a new feature for the blog itself, so stay tuned for it. 

I hope you’re all well and doing fine.

Legends, Hoaxes and the Big Lie: Fallout Interwoven with Speculation

Abduction writer Budd Hopkins studied Mr. Ed [Walters], and determined that (you guessed it) the Florida contractor had been abducted by little aliens, who needed to learn about human emotions. Media reaction ranged from skepticism to outright laughter. Some veteran ufologists resigned from MUFON, and went back into the ranks of what Dr. Hynek had once called The Invisible College. Skeptics like Philip Klass, who had a field day with these absurd claims, were elated when it was revealed that the ‘pillar of the community,’ Mr. Ed., had several brushes with the law in years past.-

--Jacques Vallee, Revelations

The Gulf Breeze sightings received a lot of publicity in their day, and many die-hard I-wanna-believe ufologists jumped on the story thinking that everything was as it seemed: a solid citizen who only reluctantly came forward out of concern for his community gained solid evidence of not only alien visitation but of abduction as well. This validated the experiences of other Gulf Breeze residents, for they too had seen UFOs. It also seemed to validate the mission of MUFON and other ufology groups, who for years cried to scoffing ears “SOMETHING’S OUT THERE!” Many joined the Ed Walters bandwagon early on, perhaps because of naivete, perhaps because their will to believe superceded their obligation to think.

The subsequent intrigue of the Gulf Breeze Six gives us reason to suspect that the Gulf Breeze incident represented something larger, something more sinister. In many respects, Walters’ photographs, the sightings and the curious behavior of the Army with respect to the GB6 all seem consistent with a military PSYOP designed to achieve several objectives: (1) the obfuscation of actual UFO activity; (2) the discrediting of MUFON and other UFO groups; (3) the dismantling of MUFON; and (4) establish an occult (or religiously themed) narrative for future propaganda.

Hundreds of people in Gulf Breeze, Florida really did see cigar and disc-shaped craft (which they affectionately dubbed ‘Bubba’) during this time, and continue to do so to the present day. I believe that Ed and Frances Walters saw these as well. Moreover, I’m inclined to think that some of their photographs were genuine, unfaked and unstaged, specifically the ones taken with the sealed Nimslo 3D camera given to them by Robert Reid. After all, those photographs were not spectacular, unambiguous shots of a flying saucer similar to Ed’s model, but rather the same fuzzy vague shapes that everybody else photographs. Also, after waiting several weeks, they took those in a park where many people had seen unusual aerial phenomena. That’s odd. Before they got the sealed camera, the ETs were showing up like clockwork on the Walters' porch. This leads me to believe that although he felt adept enough to double expose a photograph with any camera, Ed didn’t think that he could tamper with a sealed camera and get away with it. So he went to a place where people saw UFOs and waited until he could finally get authentic, though unspectacular, pics.

When massive and substantial evidence in the form of witness statements, photographic analysis, and such artifacts as the “smoking model” (as Charles put it) thoroughly and convincingly proved that Waters perpetrated a hoax, everything else produced by Walters appeared similarly fraudulent. Likewise, the whole rash of UFO sightings seemed bogus.

Looking back, people reported the U2 and the Stealth bombers, two weird looking aircraft, as UFOs, which alerted even the dumbest foreign agent that the US had some new war toy it wanted to play with. Thus, if the USAF wanted to run some test flights of weird-looking experimental aircraft that it knew the public would report as UFOs, then discrediting all the sightings as the hoax of a single individual would send up one helluva smokescreen.

Walt Andrus and Dr. Maccabee (who’s still defending Walters) of MUFON obviously lost a lot of credibility over the Gulf Breeze hoax, as did the organization itself, not to mention other UFO research groups. But what arguably hurt more is that the Gulf Breeze incident divided ufology. The Center for UFO Research (CUFOS) broke ranks with MUFON’s enthusiasm in a paper titled “Gulf Breeze: The Other Side of the Coin,” which indicated probable fraud. Within MUFON, Alabama investigator, Bob Boyd, disputed the veracity of the Walters photos in another paper titled “Failure of Science,” in which he expressed concern that MUFON officers were losing their objectivity. Andrus saw the article as heresy, and asked Boyd to resign, which he did. Another top MUFON investigator, Dr. Willy Smith, wrote “The Gulf Breeze Saga,” which criticized the investigation. He wound up resigning too.

Tim Printy and others who have written about this case have pointed out how MUFON really showed its behind in its dismissive treatment of Rex and Carol Salisberry. The Salisberrys did an impressive job of reviewing the model, the witness statements, the paid-for polygraph evaluation, and other evidence. They were the ones who affirmed the integrity of Nick Mock, the teenager who said he watched Walters double expose a Polaroid, and then proved it by providing the picture. It was they who found the president of the Florida Polygraph Association, Billy Rakes, who concluded the lie-detector test Walters had passed was virtually useless.

On 9 September 1990, the Salisberrys alerted Andrus that the Walters case was probably fraudulent. When the MUFON head gave them the cold shoulder, they decided to speak directly to the press. Andrus responded by issuing a press statement of his own, saying, “They [Mr. And Mrs. Salisberry] do not have grounds to arrive at that conclusion until it is submitted to us,” as if MUFON actually spoke with some kind of civic or academic authority.

For Marge Christensen, MUFON’s director of public relations, the putdown of the Salisberrys was the last straw. She resigned, stating:

In my opinion, it is bad enough that trained investigators, including a respected optical physicist and photoanalysis expert, and a former USAF Col. were totally deceived by a con-man such as Ed Walters. However, it is worse yet that these same trained investigators rushed to judgement and made such rash claims not only publicly, but in print. Moreover, these statements were made by these persons not merely as individuals, but as MUFON officers and investigators. Is this serious, scientific investigative methodology? Hardly. Furthermore, making these statements as MUFON representatives is a direct violation of the MUFON public information policy guidelines.

In short, the party's over and it's time for the charade to end. Let's face the facts. MUFON is not a serious, scientific research organization. Rather it has become nothing but a pop club for people with the mutual interest in reading good stories about UFO cases. In my opinion, it will not be possible for MUFON to be in reality a serious, scientific research organization unless there is new leadership of the organization. Since that appears to be extremely unlikely, I see no alternative but to resign from the MUFON Board of Directors and to resign the post of Director of Public Education at this time.

The year 1990 would prove eventful for the Gulf Breeze story. Not only were its primary investigators finding it a hoax (amid national publicity that MUFON brass eagerly welcomed); not only did Walters and Dr. Maccabee have a new book out on the sightings; not only did MUFON stage its annual convention in the town; but six AWOL soldiers from military intelligence converged on the scene. Dr. Vallee, for one, did not see the conflux of these events as necessarily meaningless synchronicity, especially when you recall that the UFO hysteria began with Walters’ hoax:

Is it plausible that six smart soldiers (they may have been deluded, but they clearly demonstrated that they were not stupid) would have taken such a radical step as desertion purely on the basis of telepathic impressions? Is it not more likely that the messages about Armageddon and the salvation by UFOs came to them through the same secure channel they were using in their work, a channel which, by definition, would be above suspicion of tampering? Should we conclude that US military communications channels may have been compromised by one or more cults with extreme beliefs, and with the willingness to exploit the naiveté of the ufologists to further their own goals?

If you’re wondering to which goals Dr. Vallee’s referring, he offered a few potential ones. He saw a similarity between Gulf Breeze and:

...other attempts to create and manage high-demand groups based on the belief in alien abduction. If the reader follows my line of reasoning to this point, then he is led to a final question: who could have the bizarre motivation and the highly compartmented knowledge to access an encrypted network, and to target these six soldiers to send them on such an absurd mission? Was it an exercise of the same genre as...Bentwaters, a project that played games with the gullibility of believers in order to test the feasibility of deception within a vital element of the armed forces? And is the American public the target of that deception?

Here, one can easily speculate a complete narrative that began with the US Air Force testing of experimental aircraft, and ended with The Gulf Breeze Prophecies, a book published by Spec. Vance Davis and Sean D. Morton. Vallee doesn’t exactly tell us what Walters’ “brushes with the law” were, and I have yet to find them, but let’s suppose what might have happened if Ed committed a serious infraction. In exchange for his continued freedom and prosperity, he cooperates with the USAF officials, who persuade Police Chief Brown to let Ed go on unspecified National Security grounds.

The USAF has had a problem with local citizenry buzzing about UFOs when they’re flying their new planes, which in itself is a national security risk should enemies of the US correctly interpret the sightings as a technological upgrade.  So they enlist Walters to put on a good, but ultimately disprovable hoax.

Some, like Chief Brown, knew right away something was up because they knew Walters and didn’t trust him. A number of teenagers in Gulf Breeze already knew him as a prankster, who had already performed shenanigans in front of them. These personal connections, in conjunction with the discovery of a model and the eventual proof of photographic fakery, would ultimately provide enough information to discredit Walters.

Through the Pentagon, the Air Force might have persuaded allies in the Navy and CIA, not so much to dictate a course of action to Dr. Maccabee, but rather encourage his belief in the veracity of the Walters photos, despite evidence to the contrary. This fostered a schism within MUFON, with other UFO research organizations distancing themselves from it. Were the ufology community sufficiently splintered, then it would have a tougher time in its mission to unravel the UFO mystery, especially if that mystery had a covert military genesis.

Somewhere along the way, maybe someone thought that the Gulf Breeze okidoke (as Dave Emory likes to call it) might be useful in forming the basis for psychological operations. As I have noted earlier in this series in the Nayirah story, US intelligence already knew of Saddam Hussein’s impending strike on Kuwait by July 1990, the month that the Gulf Breeze Six vanished. So GB6's prophecy might not have come from God, Saphire or an Ouija board, but rather from the same intelligence channels that reported to Ambassador Glaspie.

Some of the other predictions are rather lame. I don’t have to be a psychic, for example, to predict earthquakes in areas prone to them.

Although most of the predictions made by the Gulf Breeze Prophecies never came to pass, it’s interesting to note the types off things they entail: riots in Los Angeles, CA in 1992; the destruction of New York by 1998; the enactment of martial law in major US cities because of epidemic race riots; an increase in terrorist activity beginning in 1995, and so on.* These are events that would have come about due to human agency. Moreover, such events would foster public support for a suspension of constitutional rights in deference to a martial police state. As we saw, in the wake of 9/11, the public, repeatedly told that it had to choose between civil liberties and security (in the form of an increased police/intelligence/military presence, direction and surveillance in their lives), often chose the latter.

Kinda makes you wonder if someone might have planned to put on one or more of these events in order to increase public anxiety and xenophobic paranoia. If so, the Gulf Breeze Prophecies, themselves created by the disappearance of the Gulf Breeze Six, could bolster support among the conservative fundamentalist Christian factions the GB6 claimed to be a part of. After all, these organizations have certainly made their presence known over the past three decades. One can neither doubt nor dismiss their political actions during that time, just as many couldn’t doubt the kind of influence they could wield over such admittedly like-minded politicians as George W. Bush. Supporting the validity of these prophecies even more was the Army’s handling of the Gulf Breeze Six case. Their dismissal of the charges, and the honors given to the Six gave the distinct impression that they acted under orders. To more reactionary segments of US society, the dismissals suggest that they actually did find and kill the anti-Christ. Why else would the Army let them go? Why else would Sen. Dole get involved?

Of course, all of that is not only speculation, but speculation off the deep end. I don’t expect the reader to believe it, for I don’t buy it either. But here’s one thing I can say about it: I would bet a couple of bucks that it’s closer to the true story of Gulf Breeze UFOs than the ones we’ve been given.


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*One could construe only two of those prophecies to have come true: the 1992 Rodney King riots, and the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.

Legends, Hoaxes and the Big Lie: Libéérez les six!

The six young Army spies who deserted their post at the 701st Military Intelligence Brigade so that they could chase after the Anti-Christ were in heap big trouble. While many felt sure that they wouldn’t receive the death penalty for desertion, there was little doubt that they, in fact, deserted with no plans of coming back. Moreover, a court-martial would find them guilty, and at the very least give them many years of hard-time at Leavenworth. So, as a result of their quest to find demonic evil, they were destined for hell on Earth.

At least they would have, had a guardian angel not intervened.

On, or about 22 July 1990, someone sent a teletype directly to the Army. For good measure, they CC’ed the message to AP, UPI, ABC, NBC, and CBS. The press did not report the teletype’s existence to the public for about three weeks, but local affiliates, especially in Florida, shared its contents with other media, as WEAR’s (Pensacola) Mark Curtis did with the Gulf Breeze Sentinel. The message read:

U.S. ARMY:

FREE THE GULF BREEZE SIX. WE HAVE THE MISSING PLANS, THE BOX OF 500+ PHOTOS AND THE PLANS YOU WANT BACK. HERE IS PROOF WITH CLOSE-UPS CUT OUT. NEXT WE SEND THE CLOSEUPS AND THEN EVERYTHING UNLESS THEY ARE RELEASED.

ANSWER CODE AUGSBB3CM [caps original]

The proof, referred to in the teletype, consisted of a couple of standard UFO pics, which the stations additionally received. Shortly after the receipt of the terse missive, US Senator Robert Dole (R-KS) decided to take up the Gulf Breeze Six’ cause publicly. Ostensibly, as a result of his intervention, the Army dropped the case against the GB6, and released them immediately on 25 July 1990, three days after the mystery transmission. As reported on 26 July 1990 in the Northwest Florida Daily News, Army spokesperson Maj. Ron Mazzia suggested that they could receive “non-judicial” punishments instead, which could have meant anything from a reduction in rank to a docking of wages. But instead of punishments of the judicial or non-judicial type, the Army decided to discharge them with full military honors three days later.

You read that right. Unfortunately, for the GB6, Gen. Colin Powell objected to the leniency, so the Army reconsidered, and lowered their discharge status. Nonetheless, the Pentagon declined to discipline them in any other way.

Perhaps in return for their freedom, the Gulf Breeze Six took to the airwaves, granting interviews in which they said that the whole apocalyptic, anti-Christ thing was all a big misunderstanding. There was no End of the World cult, in Augsburg or anywhere else. They simply ditched their top-secret detail, at the risk of death and the certainly of a long prison sentence, to hang out with a friend of theirs. As Vallee said, “Of course, if you are ready to believe that Mr. Ed [Walters] was actually abducted by little gray aliens, then you might as well believe that six intelligence specialists will go AWOL just to see a friend across the ocean.”

The Army explained that it dropped the charges because they found no evidence that the Six had engaged in espionage against the United States. While that’s probably true, the charge was not espionage, but rather desertion, which in itself is quite serious (just ask Pvt. Slovik’s family). Given the public heat from Senator Dole, and the confidential, cryptic pressure from this anonymous teletype, the Army doesn’t appear to have dropped the charges as much as they backed off of them.

If we attribute the cryptic teletype as a contributing factor in the release of the Gulf Breeze Six, then it would constitute, in spy parlance,‘graymail’: i.e., the threat of releasing classified information unless certain actions take place. This used to happen in court cases, where spies would get caught for an unrelated, but serious, offense, and try to pressure the CIA, DIA or some other acronym to bail them out by threatening to spill the beans. This practice ended in 1980 when Congress passed the Classified Information Procedures Act (CIPA), which denied a spy’s attorneys classified information for use in mounting a defense.

The type of graymail likely practiced here, however, would have been a direct threat from someone who had the wherewithal to carry it out. Jacques Vallee, in his assessment of the Gulf Breeze UFO Saga, hypothesized that the mysterious character string, “AUGSBB3CM,” at the end of the teletype might have actually been an encoded message to the Army that the sender somehow outranked the military, who had better play ball or else:

The existence of the strange message raises an interesting possibility. Could it be that the deserters did not simply hold top-secret clearances, but were also cleared for CRYPTO, giving them access to critical encoded security material? Was the alphanumeric code in the signature a hint of an actual cipher demonstrating the identity or the level of the access of the sender?

One could speculate that Senator Dole’s clout alone helped save the day for the Gulf Breeze Six. But that, in itself is odd. After all, as a young military officer during World War II, Dole became permanently disabled when a German machine gun ripped his arm to shreds. One has to wonder, given his ordeal, why the Senator would have bothered to gain the release of six slackers who couldn’t even hack a peacetime army. Let’s face it, there had been tons of army deserters between WWII and 1990. One would have difficulty explaining why Sen. Dole would have specifically taken an interest in these six, unless he genuinely believed that they were acting in accordance with their mission.

One could also posit that The End of the World members left behind in Augsberg were the ones responsible for sending the threatening telex. After all, they could have had CRYPTO clearance, and they could have very well have classified information coming out of their pores, enough to have threatened graymail. Moreover, they could have conceivably had access to any scary codes that could make the Army turn tail and run. But what flies into the teeth of such a proposition is the likelihood that such a ruse wouldn’t work. After all, the military doesn’t run by the same rules as general society. If police know that a crime could have been committed by someone on, say, a specific street, they can’t round up everyone on the street, guilty and innocent alike, and then sort out the culprits from the victims. Yet, the Army could have confined every single person in the 701st to the brig or quarters either immediately, or after the release of the Gulf Breeze Six, identified the guilty party, and prosecuted them at some other time. In other words, graymail of that type would have backfired, for Uncle Sam would hardly have taken such a threat lying down.

It’s more likely that the NSA, the spy network for which the Gulf Breeze Six worked, might have sent the teletype. They would have the necessary knowledge, access and muscle to get the Army to change its mind. Furthermore, they would hardly fear reprisal. If that were true, that could only mean that the defection of the Gulf Breeze Six didn’t happen because of some whippy-dippy spiritual belief in UFOs and anti-Christs, but because they were doing the job someone ordered them to do. So that makes one wonder what they were really doing there.

Legends, Hoaxes and the Big Lie: Anti-Christ Season

On 9 July 1990, six soldiers of the 701st Military Intelligence Brigade, a unit that works in conjunction with the National Security Agency, suddenly vanished from their station in Augsburg, Germany. Because Privates Michael Hueckstaedt, Kris Perlock, William Setterberg, Specialists Kenneth Beason, Vance Davis, and Sergeant Annette Eccleston all required top-secret clearance for their work with the NSA, one could easily see why this was a major problem. If Soviet (note the year) intelligence captured them, and compelled them to talk under mind control, US national security could have suffered considerable damage. Any one of these people could have given substantial information about the status and methodology of American signals intelligence (SIGINT), so you’d reckon Uncle Sam would spare no effort and expense in retrieving them, alive if possible.

Five days after their disappearance, the Army finally learned of the soldiers’ whereabouts. Were they captured by the Soviets, and held for ransom? Were they liberated in a daring rescue mission deep inside the USSR? Did the Army finally round them up after a five-day drinking binge in some German beer hall?

As it turns out, a Gulf Breeze, Florida policeman, Don Stevens, hauled in Pvt. Hueckstaedt after stopping him for driving with a busted tail light. Despite Hueckstaedt’s insistence that a computer check on him would result in his death, Officer Stevens ran his license anyway, and found him listed as AWOL from the Army. Ed Walters’ nemesis, Police Chief Jerry Brown, alerted the Pentagon, who told him not to question anyone in the group. Special Agents and case officers from the local FBI and CIA field offices needed only a day to track down and round up the remaining five. Four of them were staying in the house of a local woman named Anna Foster. They found Sgt. Eccleston camping out at a site in nearby Ft. Pickens. After taking them into custody, the Bureau turned them over to Army intelligence, who then held them in custody at Ft. Benning, home of the infamous School of the Americas, before shipping them off to Ft. Knox (KY). At this point, Pvt. Hueckstaedt’s fears became justified.  These soldiers could conceivably get the death penalty for their near-week in the States, because the Army decided not to charge them with the lesser crime of being Absent Without Leave (AWOL).  Instead, the soldiers faced the far more serious charge of desertion.

Local Florida papers covering the event unfolded a story that explained the motive behind the soldiers’ disappearance. To paraphrase the Blues Brothers, they were on a mission from Gad.

The Gulf Breeze Six, as the press dubbed them, apparently belonged to a cult called The End of the World. They believed that the Apocalypse, as described in the New Testament, would begin any day with a war in the Middle East.* That meant that they had to prepare for it. Among other things, they would first have to kill the Antichrist, who supposedly lived in the Sunshine State. Most important, they believed that Christ would return in a spaceship. The End of the World seemed to have made serious inroads into US Intel, especially at the 701st MIB. The 20 July 1990 edition of the Northwest Florida Daily News reported:

...‘Stars and Stripes’ quoted [another] soldier from the Augsburg unit as saying that the cult has additional members in the area.

There are others who are upset because they didn't get invited, 'to go along on the search for the AntiChrist,' the newspaper quoted the soldier as saying.

Spec. Beason aided this perception in a sworn statement made to 713th Intelligence Headquarters, writing:

Since an early age, about 5 years old, I have had a belief in the paranormal and psychic phenomenon [sic]....I have also had various dreams about armageddon [sic] since about age 9. These dreams have depicted the end of the world in various ways. Earlier in my life, I tried to dismiss the dreams as not having any significance. However, I know now that my dreams were sent to me as visions by God....My friend, and co-worker, Vance Davis, and I decided to take out [my] Ouija board to disprove that it would work....One particular spirit named Saphire [sic] established a bond with me and asked why I stopped believing in my dreams....My recurring messages from the spirits and disciples included [sic] that the world would end soon, and that I needed to leave Germany to flee to the wilderness and learn to survive on the land.

Figure 1.  Spec. Beason's statement 

The sincerity exhibited by group members, in particular by Spec. Beason, seemed to make this an open-and-shut case of religious nuts getting out of hand. After all, if you’re looking for spaceships, you might as well go to UFO central, which in 1990 was Gulf Breeze, Florida. MUFON itself descended on the town to hold its convention a few days earlier (the weekend of July 6). But here’s something else: all six were, at one time or another, assigned to an installation located in nearby Pensacola. So they knew about the Gulf Breeze UFO sightings all too well. Moreover, they had already become acquainted with Ms. Foster, a medium with whom Beason had consulted earlier.

Beason somehow managed to convince five fellow soldiers to help him fight the anti-Christ. He went on to say that they flew directly from Augsberg to Atlanta (with he and Hueckstaedt making an additional trip to Knoxville, TN to visit his sister). A couple of days later, they reunited with their comrades at Gulf Breeze, where they could have furthered their plans to save the world had the meddling Officer Stevens not pulled over Pvt. Hueckstaedt.

Yup, the desertion of six military spies to save the planet from its most evil inhabitant and help the world prepare for its end sounds really crazy, all right. But if you think that’s bizarre, then what followed would prove that you don’t know what bizarre is.

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*In case you’re wondering, Saddam Hussein precipitated the Gulf War by invading Kuwait on 2 August 1990, less than a month after the defection of the GB6.

Legends, Hoaxes and the Big Lie: Company Hearsay, Ufological Heresy

The term “hearsay” denotes the practice of telling someone that somebody else said something. One can easily imagine that one engaging in hearsay might not have heard the first person’s words correctly, or comprehensively. Thus there could be some distortion in the retelling, like there is in the party game of telephone where one person passes along a message to another, who then tells another, and so on. Consequently, the message you start off with often bears little resemblance in meaning to the original message.

Most important, hearsay allows people to put words in the mouths of others. Sometimes, as in political ads, people do this in order to discredit someone.

Whether steeped in good intentions, or deliberately used to defame someone, hearsay provides very weak evidence, even if the retelling of a story is accurate. Thus, courts of law, with a few exceptions, dismiss hearsay evidence.

Weak or not, hearsay is still evidence. Although we have to take it sometimes with a truckload full of salt, we still have to deal with it, especially if it comes into conjunction with other evidence. It is in this light that we have to deal with a rather thorny subject brought up by other UFO researchers in conjunction to Dr. Bruce Maccabee’s handling of the Gulf Breeze incident and Ed Walters’ photographs.

In July 1993, UFO magazine received a report from a collection of researchers calling themselves The Associated Investigators Group (AIG).  The report cast aspersions on the nature of Dr. Maccabee’s involvement with the UFO community, stating quite baldly:

One of the nation's leading sponsors of UFO research and investigation, the Fund for UFO Research [FUFOR], has had a long-standing secret relationship with the CIA and the U.S. Intelligence community. Dr. Bruce Maccabee, an optics and laser specialist with the Naval Surface Weapons Laboratory near Washington, D.C., one of the Fund's founders and member of the group's Executive Committee, has been secretly meeting with CIA officials since 1979, briefing them about various UFO matters and investigators.

W. Tod Zechel, one of the co-founders of Citizens Against UFO Secrecy (CAUS), and the only admitted author of the AIG report, explained that he received word of Dr. Maccabee’s connection to the CIA from none other than Dr. Maccabee himself. Zechel said that when he directly asked Maccabee if he worked for the CIA, the optical physicist replied “You might say that.” This naturally set off alarms within ufology:

One of the concerns we had with all this was that Maccabee felt more loyalty to the CIA than he did to his friends at the Fund. [FUFOR] ...One of the inferences that you can draw from the situation is that before 1979 Bruce was quite cautious, seemingly afraid that he might lose his government classified research job, and after 1979, when he began meeting with the CIA, he seemed to abandon all these cautions and got involved with a lot of things that *seemingly* (were) going up against the government.

The report said that Dr. Maccabee began his cooperation with the CIA in 1979, and has since worked under a number of handlers, among them Dr. Christopher Green (called ‘Kit’ by friends), and Dr. Ron Pandolfi. Further implications are obvious. In such cases as the Gulf Breeze incident, this revelation would paint Dr. Maccabee with the stigma of UFO disinformation specialist, and thus explain more fully his actions in championing Ed Walters’ hoax, which was obvious to anyone who looked carefully at it.

The extent and scope of Dr. Maccabee’s connection to the CIA is, in many respects, a matter of hearsay. The most damning evidence exists of statements purportedly made by Maccabee to Zechel and other ufologists. So in this case, it’s not the actions themselves, but rather the implications that they raise that constitute the weakness of the evidence against Dr. Maccabee as a CIA UFO disinformation specialist. After all, a responsible researcher goes to the horse’s mouth when he or she has the opportunity. If Dr. Maccabee had a chance to ask questions of importance to the CIA from someone within the CIA, then that seems like a fairly reasonable thing to do.  In a written response to the AIG report, he purportedly gave a more mundane and innocent explanation of his connection the Agency:*

I never contacted any companies. What I did was tell Jack Acuff, Director of NICAP at the time, that I would like to speak to experts in the field of radar. He, in turn, put me in contact with a scientist, Dr. Gordon MacDonald, at the MITRE corporation. I was invited to discuss the NZ sightings with him and several other scientists at MITRE in McLean, Va. and I did (and they generally agreed with my conclusions). Then, a week or so later, I learned that MacDonald had contacted a man at the CIA who contacted me and offered to provide technical consultation if I would provide a briefing to some CIA employees. At first I was leery of doing anything with the CIA, but I knew they had radar experts, so I stipulated that if they would give me some feedback I'd tell them what I know. So I briefed them and I received some helpful comments... 

After I discussed the NZ case one employee, Dr. Christopher "Kit" Green (KG), invited me to visit the CIA again a week or so later to have a general UFO discussion with him and a couple of other employees...

After that last meeting with KG in the spring of 1979 I didn't see him again and had no contact with the agency until June, 1984 when I was contacted by Dr. Ronald Pandolfi regarding my Navy work. He had been tracking developments by the "other side" in that field of research and wanted to know what the US state of the art was.

As to whether or not Dr. Maccabee actually wrote the above passage (see footnote), I cannot determine. Yet, I would guess that he actually wrote it. After all, in this account Drs. Green and Pandolfi are hardly handlers, but simply two, unconnected CIA connected people. The first gave him rather sensitive information in exchange for information about the UFO community, a quid-pro-quo deal. The second simply asked him an offhand question, which he answered off-the-cuff. While ufologists might understandably be somewhat leery in his divulging information regarding its members to someone who has the ear of Langley, one could certainly see this exchange in a non-conspiratorial light. So while the rumors that the CIA (wittingly or unwittingly) compromised Dr. Maccabee are intriguing, they’re highly speculative and could very well be untrue.

While Dr. Maccabee’s actual connection to the CIA, not to mention the scope of his involvement with the Agency, is questionable, one thing is not: Dr. Maccabee spent his professional career with the United States Navy as an optical physics researcher. In this light, we can see him as another person employed by the United States’ military and/or intelligence services who has disseminated information about unidentified flying objects. Like the military officers–Sgt. Richard Doty, Captain Robert Collins, Cols. William Coleman and George Weinbrenner, Gen. Robert Scott and Glenn Miller, and so on-- responsible for perpetuating the MJ-12 story, Dr. Maccabee’s work on the Gulf Breeze case and elsewhere upholds a certain orthodoxy regarding UFOS: (1) the craft are real; (2) of intelligent extraterrestrial origins; and (3) are known to, or perhaps working with, officials in US Intelligence.

Most important, the Gulf Breeze encounter would have serious repercussions within ufology. Furthermore, had the ruse remained intact, someone might have used the Gulf Breeze sightings to set the table for something larger, something even more sinister.  As Jacques Vallee wrote in his 1992 book Revelations:  Alien Contact and Human Deception:

But the most curious chapter in the sleazy chronicles of Gulf Breeze was still to be written. It exploded suddenly in a very unexpected form. This time, the US intelligence community was right at the center of the controversy.

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*If you note I qualified this statement by saying that Dr. Maccabee “purportedly” wrote the statement in question. I saw this statement, or references to it, in a number of different webpages that documented it with this link to Dr. Maccabee’s official website. If you click on it yourself, you’ll arrive at a page discussing CIA involvement in ufology, but nothing close to what’s quoted here. So, either this is another example of false attribution due to hearsay, or Dr. Maccabee later edited the page’s content to omit the statement.