Dave Emory
Dave Emory is an arch-conspiracy theorist from the San Francisco Bay Area. He
has been associated with other conspiracy theorists like John Judge, most
recently of COPA, and the late Mae Brussell.
Emory had a long-running radio program on KFJC-FM, Foothill College Radio, in
Los Altos Hills, CA, that dealt with all sorts of
conspiratorial topics from the hard-line perspective. That program, formerly
three hours per week, has now been discontinued. In its place, Emory will
prepare one hour of material per week, which will be distributed to various
stations, including KFJC.
According to the material supplied for his program, Emory is
an antifascist researcher and broadcaster whose programs focus on the historical
involvement of the U.S. military and the intelligence community with
"international fascism." Subjects for the programs include domestic
and foreign political assassinations and "governmental complicity with
organized crime and drug smuggling syndicates."
Emory began his research during the Watergate era, when he
noted numerous connections between that scandal and the assassination of JFK.
While working on the assassination, he discovered "Nazi General Reinhard
Gehlen's Eastern front spy apparatus, and its incorporation into the CIA after
World War II." This led him into studying the origins of fascism and its
influence on the contemporary world.
Concerning the JFK assassination, Emory believe that one of
the major planners was Elizabeth Forsling Harris, now publisher of Ms.
Magazine.
( http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/8425/ST-CIA2.htm
)
Emory has a B.A. in psychology from Amherst College.
The following article is a
complaint against Emory, submitted to the FCC by Alex Constantine. It is
reproduced here by permission of the author. We offer it not so much to deal
with Dave Emory himself, but more to offer a window into the world of conspiracy
theory and its practitioners, for many JFK conspiracy theorists also belong to
these more-general ranks.
****************
Dave Emory's Politics of Acrimony
By Alex Constantine
Every Thursday morning at midnight, the Superman theme song rises and ebbs
behind the euphonic voice of "Something's Happening" host Roy
Tuckman. The program airs over Pacifica's KPFK-FM in Los Angeles, an
alternative, Tuckman boasts, to the claustrophobic conservatism of
corporate-sponsored talk radio. "Something's Happening" attempts to
expose secret corruptions of government, and Tuckman is a passionate political
voice. But his attempt to provide an alternative is marred by his choice of
programming: Dave Emory, originating from KFJC-FM at Foothill College in Los
Altos Hills, has bullied and slandered his way to late-night radio talk show
prominence, splintering the reputations of his fellow political researchers and
reporters to advance his own.
More serious are the allegations of C. (name withheld upon request,
co-host of a political affairs radio program in the Santa Clara area), that
Emory, in a late-night telephone call, filled her ears with graphic descriptions
of sexual violence. She had been for several years his friend and an outspoken
supporter. They were both students and allies of late political researcher Mae
Brussell. C. was severely rattled by Emory's threats of sexual mutilation.
Emory, in response to a direct confrontation with her, did not deny that he
phoned her, but did claim he had no recollection of the episode. If so, perhaps
he also has no recollection that he later phoned one of C.'s radio station
co-workers to ask if she had repeated anything Emory told her. The co-worker
slammed down the phone.
I informed Tuckman of the incident in a letter on June 6, 1991, and
suggested that he call C. for confirmation.
Tuckman ignored the letter.
Martin Cannon, author of The Controllers, a study of the classified
federal mind control initiative and its masquerade as alien abduction phenomena,
also informed Tuckman of the harassing phone call. He told Tuckman that Emory
had said "monstrous and violent things" to her. Cannon's letter was
also snubbed.
Barbara Honneger, a political investigator living in Monterey, stated in
a letter to Emory: "No radio station should keep you on the air if this
continues, and no radio station should keep its license which keeps you on the
air if this continues."
I share Honegger's revulsion.
Dave Emory's mentor, Mae Brussell, was a courageous investigator of political
assassinations, a tenacious critic of government. She inspired a modest but
devoted audience to probe the American extreme-right and its pernicious
influences. Among the researchers who worked with Brussell and posthumously
expanded upon her foundation of political research were Honegger, John Judge,
Emory's former co-host Nip Tuck, and Will Robinson & Marilyn Colman, hosts
of KAZU's Lighthouse Report. All were staples of Tuckman's program.
Emory's past is seldom discussed. His father, writes Paul Bernardino,
host of a cable television program in San Francisco, committed him to an
institution and narcotics program 20 years ago. Emory has told several people,
including Tom Davis (a northern California book retailer) that he was sexually
abused in a prison in Boston. He has attempted suicide several times via cars
and narcotics. His emotional problems drove him to overdose on narcotics in a
1988 suicide attempt.
This was the year that Mae Brussell fell prey to
cancer. Emory, her self-appointed successor, began a series of vindictive
slander campaigns to purge other researchers from the air.
His first straw man was Nip Tuck (an alias, today a very popular science
fiction writer), Emory's co-host on "Radio Free America" for several
years. Tuck was publicly denounced as an agent of an unnamed arm of government.
This smear was based on the slimmest of ties: Tuck once taught English at a
military base. This alone rendered him suspect in Emory's mind, yet he later
acknowledged to a Christic Institute activist that he'd known of Tuck's
background all along. That Tuck was a lackey of the intelligence sector was
repeated on KPFK, unsubstantiated but delivered as bald fact.
The victim of this smear vigorously denied the allegation in a letter to
KPFK.
The station ignored it.
Tuck found himself groundlessly discredited, humiliated, his written
denial censored - despite the fact that over the years his conspiracy research
had grossed tens of thousands of dollars for publicly-supported KPFK.
Emory's next victim was John Judge, a popular protege of Mae Brussell.
Abuse heaped upon Judge, says Bernardino, was the result of "personal
jealousy," an opinion I share. So does Jonathon Vankin, a former staff
reporter for the San Jose Metro, in Conspiracies, Cover-Ups and Crimes.
Judge had managed to get himself some lecture bookings and onto
radio talk shows. According to Tom Davis, a long-time friend of Brussell's whose
mail-order book service is one of the best sources for political books, Judge
and Emory had been competing for radio kudos since at least 1984.
Moreover, Brussell appointed Judge, not Emory, to the position of
curator/archivist. Excluded from plans for the library bequeathed to Judge,
Emory lashed out.
Personal and professional envy was the foundation of his belief that
Judge was an "intelligence agent" and a "Nazi murderer" with
undefined "ties" to the Manson Family and someone with "more
connections than a switchboard". The charges have never been retracted.
Emory opened his fusillade at Judge in a November, 1989 blast on KFJC. He
announced with an imperious air, "There's a bit of unpleasantness I'm going
to have to take care of...."
The Mae Brussell archives were being catalogued and organized. It was not
ready to open to the public. Emory set out to destroy it and its curator, John
Judge, before the doors could open.
"One of the things I wondered about," Emory declared, "in
the creation of the Mae Brussell Research Center, was how long it would take the
intelligence community to gain effective control of that center." In fact,
the directing board was composed of friends and associates of Mae Brussell.
Nevertheless, he arrived at the conclusion that it had been overrun by the CIA:
"There is an intelligence presence at the Center now that is so massive as
to render the whole thing little more than an intelligence front." He
produced no evidence to support this startling allegation. He remained vague.
"There is a very sinister presence," he charged, "there are
elements affiliated with Aryan Nations." The "sinister elements"
were phantoms: Emory had learned that Judge once delivered a talk at a Santa
Monica debating club owned by a right-wing extremist, a connection too weak to
support such serious allegations. Hammering together a guillotine with a post of
smears and planks of innuendo, Emory claimed that there were "indications
of serious financial impropriety" at the center. What's more, "there
are indications that have yet to be finalized that the whole thing has
disintegrated into nothing more than a great big criminal enterprise." A
devastating revelation—and no
"finalized indications" to back it up.
In fact, the financial impropriety he spoke of largely amounted to
nothing more than Judge spending money he'd raised himself for the Mae Brussell
Research Center. He spent some of the proceeds from his own fund-raising tour on
meals, though there is some truth to the charge that a portion of the funds were
misspent. According to Robinson, a director of the Center, Judge did nothing
criminal. Yet Emory carried on as though he had information too explosive to air
publicly—"investigative
tributaries," he said—and had no
qualms about divulging the results of his "investigation."
Emory's carving knife sank into the Center's finances. Under no
circumstances would I recommend that people have anything to do with the Mae
Brussell Center, Emory said. He insisted that all supporters demand back their
contributions, repeating there was a strong intelligence presence there. Who?
"You might as well send your name to Langley or to Tom Metzger so he can
put it in the Aryan Nations Liberty Net," he said. The intelligence
"presence" was "specifically Nazi-linked."
A week later, the charges were repeated in a telephone conversation with
Roy Tuckman in North Hollywood. This time, Emory claimed that John Judge was a
"murderer." As always, he didn't trifle with evidence, simply swore
that there were more "investigative leads" that bookish, soft-spoken
John Judge had committed murder. Unfortunately, to this day, only Emory knows
anything about it.
The allegations grew more and more fantastic. On Tuckman's May 10, 1990
program, he charged that Judge and the Mae Brussell Center were an extension of
the ultra-right Western Goals operation, an industrially-sponsored covert
operations group responsible for much havoc in underdeveloped countries as well
as the Ford Foundation. A week earlier the Center had been allied with Aryan
Nations. Now it was Western Goals and the Ford Foundation.
"Beyond that," he told Tuckman, "there are two
evidentiary tributaries leading in the direction of the Manson Family." Now
it was Manson. But what were the "tributaries" that so alarmed Emory
he was moved to denounce Judge and the Brussell archives? The
"evidentiary" links, he said, forced him to ask "very, very
serious questions about the Center." He let on, as though divulging a dark
secret, that Judge had ties to "several murders in the Carmel area."
He has never stooped to explain his meaning. "I'm not accusing any
individual," Emory said, incredibly, "but there are serious questions
implicating individuals—including and
especially John Judge."
He again suggested that supporters of the library sever all contact and
demand a refund. Listeners, believing that Emory's vagaries must have some
foundation, withdrew support for the center. It collapsed. Judge sent a strong
letter of denial to Tuckman.
Like the others, it was ignored.
Judge, once a favorite of the program, was publicly
humiliated and drummed off the air.
In 1992 Judge denied, in a Santa Cruz newspaper, that there
was any substance to the charges. He said that he'd been hounded out of [the Mae
Brussell Research Center] by this kind of nonsense. In the same story, Dave
Ratcliffe, a Center director, laughed at the notion that it had any connection
to the government, extremist groups or satanic cults. He chalked up the
allegations to "Dave Emory loving to spin very detailed, wonderful sounding
scenarios that are of his own invention. Vankin's view was that whatever the
objective reality of the Mae Brussell Center controversy, the version that
navigates Dave Emory's brain is another of his many traumas and raises
suspicions about his true allegiance." Emory's attacks on Paul Bernardino,
a political researcher and AIDS activist in San Francisco, culminated shortly
after the fall of John Judge.
In January, 1989, Bernardino received a call at 2:00 a.m.
from an enraged Dave Emory. "I hope all you faggots drop dead with
AIDS," he snapped.
Like Upton Sinclair with a reeking slaughterhouse in his
sights, Emory went on to blast Sara Diamond, formerly of KPFA-FM in Berkeley and
an Emory critic, for carrying on a hidden life as "a CIA and Mossad
agent" and "a whore who gives cheap blow jobs to Nazi's."
On the air, Emory accused Bernardino of taping an
unauthorized tribute to Mae Brussell for his television program. Emory,
Bernardino wrote in a public denial, "was too lazy to simply pick up his
phone to do some checking before impulsively mouthing off." As it happened,
permission for the taping was granted by Brussell's daughter. Bernardino
protested Emory's "slandering, willfully and maliciously maligning my ...
name and character."
Once informed that he'd erred, Emory refused to retract or
apologize. Instead, he claimed that Bernardino was fronting for "the Gay
Mafia." He referred to Bernardino as "a homo from Mexico" and
"a CIA agent." He further charged that Bernardino had far-right
political connections. "Such dangerous, mud-slinging lies," Bernardino
lamented. He voiced an opinion that radio personalities have an obligation to
"keep their personal vendettas, mud-slinging, unfounded hate, spite and
personal attacks off the air."
Emory also has revealed a grandiose vision of himself as the
keeper of the truth who has somehow been denied his true place in the world. He
has spouted off numerous times off the air about how he has to "work the
graveyard shift" because he hasn't "kissed Hymie's ass".
Pat Carey, a volunteer working for Bernardino, supported Bernardino
in a letter to KFJC dated May 22, 1991. Emory, she wrote, "claims quite
falsely that Bernardino had called for a boycott of his program, which is
absolutely not true. He also claims that our cable TV program on Channel 25 in
San Francisco ... started from Aryan Nations, which is an outright lie, a
fabrication." She demanded equal time to refute these "lies." Her
ire was echoed by Brette McCabe, hostess of the television program, who noted
the "purposeful cruelty" in the public condemnation of Paul
Bernardino.
Despite these protests, Emory continued to tell stretchers on
the air about well-intentioned political conspiracy programmers. Pam Burton, a
KPFK programmer substituting for Roy Tuckman one week, refused to play
"Radio Free America" - she thought it laden with self-importance. I
see radios going off all over town, she grumbled off the air. Emory learned that
he'd been pulled and branded her "a CIA agent." (Critics must be
federal intelligence agents out to destroy him.)
His denunciation of any detractor as an "agent" was
taken up by Martin Cannon in his May, 1991 letter to Emory: "Interestingly,
while your practiced eye has gleaned unmistakable evidence of federally-funded
malevolence, this evidence remains invisible to everyone else." Cannon
pondered "why you have never bothered to offer any proof of your
accusations against Tuck, Judge and Bernardino."
Emory's most venomous campaigns were reserved for Barbara
Honegger, author of The October Surprise (a detailed reconstruction of the
Reagan/Bush hostage debacle) and a close friend of Mae Brussell's. When Brussell
died of cancer, Emory accused Honegger of murdering her as well as being "a
Nazi whore". He has never offered any public explanation for his
widely-spread belief that Honegger killed Mae Brussell.
In her June 10, 1991 response, Honegger wrote, "You have
committed the unspeakable offense of stating to numerous parties that I am
somehow responsible for Mae Brussell's death." She explained, "I tried
and tried, as did many others, to get Mae to see medical specialists ... without
success." No one, Honegger emphasized, "tried more than I did to try
to save Mae's life." The murder accusation "both saddens and sickens
me," she wrote.
With "Nazi murderer" John Judge bounced off the
air, Emory turned a jaundiced eye to Honegger. Her reputation was golden in
conspiracy research circles. At first, her book was ridiculed by left and right
alike as a dubious theory. But official leaks concerning the hostage deal caught
the attention of the press. Honegger's primary source of information, Richard
Brenneke, a former CIA pilot, was acquitted in a trial arranged by the Bush
administration to discredit his account of the flight to Paris. All of this lent
credence to Honegger's investigation, and she became a familiar voice on the
radio talk show circuit. In L.A., she was a welcome guest at KFI-AM and
Pacifica. It was on Tuckman's program that Emory proceeded to carve
into her. Drawing upon articles written by Harry Martin of the Napa Valley
Sentinel, Emory contended that self-proclaimed CIA pilot Gunther Russbacher
actually flew George Bush to the October Surprise negotiations with Iranian
officials. Since, Emory and Martin have reached the conclusion that Russbacher
was not the pilot after all, precisely as Honegger insisted in the first gusts
of Emory's defamation storm but only after branding her a "liar" for
doubting the allegations.
Harry Martin has since become a key source of information,
providing Emory with material for his radio program, as Brussell once did. Harry
Martin is a former Republican activist. The corporate press ignored his series
on Russbacher, but it has been featured in the Liberty Lobby's Spotlight. The
Village Voice couldn't reconcile the many glaring contradictions in Russbacher's
story. John Whalen, a journalist Emory respects, wrote in the San Jose Mercury
on July 11, 1990:
Depending on whom he is talking to, Russbacher has claimed to have flown Ronald Reagan, George Bush, William Casey or just himself to or from the Paris meetings, frequently changing his tale when confronted with contradictions. When a reporter at a major daily reminded Russbacher that SR-71 pilots and passengers require hours of pre-flight medical preparation and special flight suits making it unlikely that Bush would go to the trouble when a conventional jet would get him from Paris to America without all the fuss Russbacher abruptly revised his plot line, claiming that, actually, he hadn't flown Bush home.
Emory had linked Tuck, Judge, Bernardino, Diamond, Burton and now
Honegger to covert branches of government. The allegations have tarnished their
reputations in southern California.
Yet Harry Martin, one of Emory's primary sources, is the former publisher
of Defense Systems Review, a DoD mouthpiece staffed by past CIA Director Eugene
Tighe, former CIA Deputy Director Bobby Ray Inman, and Paul Cutter, alleged by
the FBI to have sold arms to Iran on behalf of the Reagan NSC. Emory publicly
excoriates Honegger for boarding Reagan's 1980 election campaign and briefly
serving in his administration, denounces her as an agent and ignores
Martin's known links to the loftiest levels of CIA covert operations without a
flinch.
In July, 1988, months before Emory's tirades began, Mae
Brussell received this letter from a Napa Valley resident concerning Harry
Martin:
Dear Mae Brussel:
I understand you're quite knowledgable on the CIA's activities. We have a person
Harry Martin in my hometown, Napa, who has been publishing a small weekly
newspaper, The Napa Sentinel, for the past 2 1/2 years, a newspaper that
purports to be a champion for the little people, but actually has covert ties to
Napa's development interests. What really bothers me, however, is Martin's past
ownership of Defense Systems Review and Military Communications, an
international publication that went to congress, the president, the U.S.
military, the defense industry and foreign governments. It's quality was the
equal of Newsweek, and it had ads from major defense companies. Although listing
Napa as its publishing address, I doubt, considering its sophisticated layout,
that it could have been printed in Napa (it was mailed from Los Angeles). The
magazine, besides promoting weapons, supported Reagan's Central American policy.
By his own admission, Martin had contacts with the intelligence agencies of
Western Europe and Israel.... Some of the deceptive practices he is using in his
newspaper have aroused my suspicions he might be involved with the CIA.
There is a further possible link, a Sentinel columnist
named Mike Savage. Savage was a talk show host (a program ironically called
"Doubletalk") on our local radio station, KVON, for several years
until he resigned in 1987 (supposedly after the acceptance of a book he was
writing [for] Doubleday), and became a columnist for the Sentinel. Savage ran
for the Napa City Council in 1986, listing a BA in political science and an MA
in psychology from the University of Denver in his campaign ads. Savage was not
elected, but ran again in 1988. However, this time a reporter for Napa's daily
newspaper, The Napa Register, did some checking and revealed that Savage had no
degrees from the University of Denver. Savage said it was all a
misunderstanding. I've been told by an avid radio listener that while a talk
show host, Savage had more than one CIA agent as guests. He even arranged for an
agent to talk to a local group. On the radio, whenever he could, Savage
ridiculed citizens who protested against Reagan's Central American policy. In
recent years, Savage has traveled to South Africa, South America and Europe....
Savage explained that his globe-trotting was financed by
Doubleday in lieu of a book contract. Another local reporter checked on the
story. Doubleday denied that Savage had been signed. Yet Martin's Sentinel sided
with Savage, claiming the book contract was with another publisher, one he
neglected to name, though he had flatly stated so a year before.
Jonathon Whalen concluded that Martin's work on the October
Surprise required "generous leaps of faith," and was riddled with
"egregious factual errors, unsupported claims and misleading
attributions." Martin has himself since admitted that Gunther Russbacher's
claims are "unsubstantiated."
Russbacher, who hails from a Nazi gene pool, was hardly a
reliable source. He was, at the time, serving a 21-month sentence for
impersonating a U.S. attorney. During the trial, FBI agent Richard Robely of St.
Louis testified that Russbacher was an FBI informant. Under cross-examination,
Robely admitted that the self-proclaimed CIA pilot was an "infiltrator for
an unnamed interagency group. Rae Russbacher, his wife, is the daughter of a
Naval intelligence and FBI undercover agent. Her first husband was dean of
science and engineering at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey.
Martin's version of the October Surprise was embraced almost
exclusively by Dave Emory and the Holocaust-denying Liberty Lobby, a spin-off of
the World Anti-Communist League.
Most researchers, including Honegger and the press at large,
have poked numerous holes in his story. Yet Honegger's attempts to demonstrate
that Russbacher was a liar were interpreted by Emory as an attack on his own
credibility.
On June 6, 1991, on Tuckman's program, Emory repeated the
accusation made only by the Russbachers that Honegger was an FBI informant and
also had "ties to the ADL". No charge could be more damaging to her
career. On June 10, Honegger wrote a letter of denial to Emory:
I have learned last week, as a guest on KPFK in southern
California, you stated on the air that I was or am an "FBI informant."
That is both false and absurd. No FBI informant goes on the radio three to five
times a week as I do criticizing the current administration which pays the
salaries of FBI informants.... Again, you owe me a written and aired retraction
and apology for this statement.
Emory ignored her denial, and gullible listeners of KPFK
still believe Russbacher's fabricated charge - joyously echoed by Tuckman and
Emory—that Honegger was a snitch for the
FBI. The irony, of course, is that Russbacher was informing and infiltrating for
the Bureau.
"Gunther maintains that he was the October Surprise
pilot," Emory told Tuckman in the June 6, 1991 interview. "That is to
say, he flew Bush to Paris and flew him back. Gunther's background checks
out." In fact, Gunther Russbacher did NOT check out.
Emory's animosity toward Honegger blinded him. He was willing
to cling to anybody in his dismantling of Honegger's reputation. Emory went on
to concede that there were glaring contradictions between Harry Martin's
interviews and a prior taped discussion between Russbacher and Honegger. He
explained these away, noting that Honegger's interview of Russbacher was
conducted at 2:30 in the morning. "By his own account, [he] was drunk on
his tail feather. Gunther is not the first person to misspeak himself under the
influence of alcohol."
Tuckman put Honegger's conversation with a besotted Gunther
over the air (an FCC violation). Drunkenness is a lame excuse for giving two
diametrically-opposed accounts to reporters about a historical episode as
significant as the October Surprise.
Honegger challenged Russbacher's account on KAZU-FM in
Monterey. Emory and Tuckman interpreted her reservations concerning Russbacher
as direct assaults on their own credibility. Emory spoke of Honegger's
"vendetta" against him, a peculiar form of blindness to his own
smears. "There are a number of baldface lies that Barbara Honegger
told," Emory announced on July 11, 1991 on KPFK. After accusing her of mere
thievery and "murder," he maintained she'd insulted him during the
Monterey broadcast with "a fire-storm of invective, innuendo and outright
lies." In fact, Honegger had said little about Emory. She had simply
identified holes in Russbacher's story, explained why he could not possibly have
flown Bush to Paris.
Tuckman mentioned that Honegger threatened to sue him.
Yeah, well, she threatened to sue me too, Emory said. I
basically told her to piss up a rope, and she hasn't done a thing about
it." Having declared falsely that "Russbacher's credentials check
out," on this evening Emory offered his expert opinion that "Gunther's
situation may be b.s. On the other hand, maybe not." But Honegger, he
charged, had "muddied the waters with her personal bitterness."
The grim irony of all this was not lost on me. At this time,
I had my own political program, "The Constantine Report, which aired on
KAZU in Monterey (and, briefly, two years before on KPFK in L.A.). I had
collected taped broadcasts by both Honegger and Emory, and concluded that Emory
was attempting to bump her off the airwaves as he had others by undermining her
credibility with bizarre accusations.
I began writing a series of letters to Tuckman, calling
attention to the lameness of the charges against Honegger. I pointed out obvious
errors in Emory's wild accusations, asked him if he really believed Judge and
Honegger were guilty of murder.
For my trouble, Tuckman sent the letters to Emory, who
accused me of being a "CIA agent."
The charge was made in a private phone call to Will Robinson,
host of The Lighthouse Report, Monterey's answer to Tuckman's program.
"This Constantine guy is no fucking good," Emory spat in a fit of
professional jealousy. "You're going to have to learn friend from foe. The
problem is you don't listen to advice. You can just take a humble attitude,
listen to what I say and follow orders." Emory gave Robinson an ultimatum:
either strike The Constantine Report from the playlist, or Emory would not
permit his own tapes to be played on KAZU. Robinson chose to keep my program.
Emory was no longer on the KAZU roster. In his taped conversation with Robinson,
Emory took credit for purging me from Tuckman's program in L.A.: "I put the
kibosh on Constantine," he crowed.
A crowning irony of his attacks on myself is that he
considers one of his "most important works" to be a reading of William
Pepper's book on the Martin Luther King assassination - a point-of-view I
covered comprehensively two years earlier, when James Earl Ray filed for a
retrial, drawing upon developments from news sources in Mississippi and the UK.
The stories aired over KAZU for several weeks. In other words, I've already done
Emory's "most important" research.
Emory was profiled in Jonathan Vankin's Conspiracies,
Cover-Ups and Crimes, described by Robert Anton Wilson as "the most
exciting book on conspiracy theory I've read in this decade." The San
Francisco Chronicle called it "a lively and provocative book." In it,
Vankin relives Emory's rebuttal to the unflattering coverage. Emory's
obsession with the book, and with me personally it would seem, culminated
(although not concluded) with two consecutive five-and-a-half hour broadcasts,
eleven solid hours of otherwise valuable airtime—devoted
to lambasting me. Feigning the high road, Emory pretended that my alleged
"hit piece" didn't bother him. "He did feel moved, however, to
describe me as a "front-running yuppie pantywaist," whatever that
means.
Emory accused Vankin of plotting with the Moonies to ruin
him. Vankin described the eleven-hour tirade as "a personal vendetta for an
imagined slight," and related how Emory lumped him in with "Moonies,
right-wing tax protesters, the anti-Semitic "Identity Christianity"
movement, John Judge, and most amusingly, the alternative newsweekly where I
work, Metro (a "masturbation vehicle for yuppies"). Emory, who is
prone to thinking himself a bit of a martyr, said the likely result of Vankin's
book was "a possibility of physical violence and mind control."
He also diagnosed Tom Davis, the book merchant, as senile
without the benefit of a physician's consultation. This was the week that
65-year-old Davis, then keeper of the voluminous Brussell archives, conferred
all 33 filing cabinets and a mountain of political books and tapes on researcher
Virginia McCullough. Emory had already announced on the air that he was working
on procuring the files from Davis. Losing them to McCullough, another researcher
with whom he'd had a falling out, must have been a bitter loss.