(From Carmel, California's The Carmel Pine Cone, September 29, 1972)
CARMEL CLOSEUP: Mae Brussell
'There is a linear connection between (John) Kennedy's assassination and Bobby Kennedy's and the incident at Chappaquidick and Martin Luther King and Wallace.'
By JUDITH A. EISNER
ONE AFTERNOON a week, a plain-looking,
middle-aged Carmel Valley housewife climbs into her car and heads west on Carmel
Valley Road on what might well be just another trip to the supermarket. But for
Mae Brussell, mother of four (her fifth daughter, Bonnie, was killed in an auto
accident over a year ago), this trip is special. Her destination is the studio
of Carmel FM station KLRB, where she will record the next installment of an
hour-long program she calls Dialogue: Conspiracy.
For almost nine years now, Mae has been an
"assassination buff" -- one of a handful of Americans who felt there
was something "fishy" about explanations of the murder of President
John F. Kennedy in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963.
Mae, like just about everyone else, spent those
post-assassination hours of 1963 "glued to the TV set" as well as
devouring newspaper accounts of the Dallas tragedy. At the time, she was still
living in Los Angeles and fancied herself "just a housewife, interested in
tennis courts and dancing lessons and orthodonture for my children."
The single incident that got Mae started on her new
career was the televised shooting of Lee Harvey Oswald by Jack Ruby.
"Oswald had said he was just a patsy and that he
didn't kill anybody," she recalls. "And there were conflicting
accounts of the gun found in the book depository building. First it was a
British rifle, then a German Mauser, and finally the Italian rifle." But
what really motivated Mae to do some private sleuthing was Jack Ruby.
"Why did they let Ruby in (to the jail) when
everyone (the police, etc.) knew who he was and that he had recently been
charged with possession of illegal weapons?" she asks. "Had he been
hired to kill Oswald?"
Mae says that her "instincts" told her that
something in Dallas "should be cleared," and that she began to worry
about "what kind of world" her children would inherit.
"I began with a curiosity; I never dreamt it would
grow into his," she admits. The "this" she refers to is not only
the years of practically full-time research and the hundreds of carefully
cross-referenced notebooks on assassination material and bulging file drawers,
but to a theory of conspiracy and espionage that shakes the very roots of
American democracy.
Mae was born in Los Angeles, a fourth generation
Californian whose grandfather founded the I. Magnin Company. She attended
Stanford as a philosophy major, but left school to marry a few weeks short of
graduation. Eight years ago, the family moved to Carmel Valley mainly to
"get the kids out of the city into a rural atmosphere."
About her research, Mae says modestly, "People, if
they care, can accumulate information and facts without going anywhere."
She used to take four daily newspapers, but is now reading eight, including the
New York Times and two Washington papers in her ceaseless search for more facts
and clues about the assassination conspiracy.
MOTIVATED by various discrepancies in
newspaper accounts of the assassination, Mae studied and clipped articles until
in September, 1964, the Warren Commission report appeared in print.
Her main interest had been Lee Harvey Oswald -- his
personality, background and history. "I turned immediately to accounts in
the Warren Commission report of Oswald's finances and friends -- accounts that
traced his career from the Marine Corps to Russia and back -- his
mobility."
She was interested to note that Oswald's wife, Marina,
was "immediately accepted by a wealthy group in the Southwest," and
that various "friends" helped the Oswalds financially and socially.
"These were oil people, engineers and security agents," she says.
"It made me wonder," she says, so in December,
1964, she spent $86 on a "Christmas present" of the 26-volume report
of the Warren Commission hearings issued by the Government Printing Office.
Mae spent two years studying this mass of material and
describes the contents as "the first 15 volumes are 552 witnesses the
Warren Commission carefully selected to testify, and volumes 16-26 consist of
hard core facts -- mostly accumulated before the assassination." These
"facts" include Oswald's personnel papers from the Marine Corps, State
Department and FBI.
"I found that witness testimony given under oath
didn't match the evidence in the last 10 volumes and that the Warren Commission
quoted as factual witness testimony that they never heard because Commission
members didn't attend the hearings and didn't cross-examine witnesses. No two
men ever heard the same thing," she says.
Mae's interest in Oswald as a person and whether he was
an agent of the U.S. government focused her eight years of research on the
volumes containing testimony about Oswald.
Urging Mae on was the belief that the bullet found on
the stretcher in Dallas, introduced as Exhibit 399 at the Warren Commission
hearings "couldn't do it. I figured there had to be more than one
gunman." She says, adding "now I don't believe he (Oswald) ever owned
a rifle. He was in the book depository, but he was used as a decoy."
Her two years of poring over the testimony led her to
recognize what she calls "a pattern and a rhythm to the questions and a
cut-off point beyond which they (the Commission) didn't go -- a selection of
what they could identify and a manipulation of the witnesses' words."
Mae's cross-filing system led her to conclusions about
Oswald.
"He had a continuous succession of jobs: he was
never unemployed, but he had jobs selected for him," she says. "He
wasn't totally helpless."
"People who worked with Oswald left the Dallas-Ft.
Worth area after the assassination. I call them 'migratory birds.' They are
people who moved into the area just prior to the assassination and by the time
they were called before the Warren Commission, they were out of the area and
working in defense industries or were promoted from the simple jobs they held in
Dallas."
AS SHE continued to cross-file
"patterns," the Kennedy assassination "became a blueprint of
espionage work for any operation," she says. "There is a linear
connection between Kennedy's assassination and Bobby Kennedy's and the incident
at Chappaquidick (involving Senator Ted Kennedy) and Martin Luther King and
Wallace," she continues.
"It wasn't just planned for Dallas; it wasn't just
that they didn't want JFK because of the Bay of Pigs invasion.
"I began to collect a library of books on the state
department and espionage," she says. "My research took me back into
American history, the Cold War and the State Department.
"The assassination became very complex, and I read
every book on the JFK assassination as it came out. There are currently
109," she says. "Each day the work got larger and larger. It started
with a simple thing, like who were Oswald's friends, and when you learn they
came from other countries, it becomes international in scope.
"It isn't love of the Kennedys; it's not 'let's resurrect John Kennedy' that motivates me," she says. It is a fear and a horror of what America has become that keeps her going.
THE CONSPIRACY THEORY that Mae has documented
involves power. She begins with the premise that the industrialized nations of
the world are run by energy and labor -- natural resources and the cheap labor
pools of undeveloped nations.
"Without control of labor and energy you cannot
maintain power over people," she says.
During World War II, according to Mae, what became known
as the aerospace industry wanted control of space as a means of controlling the
agriculture of the oceans, and to develop weapons to control labor and natural
resources. "They wanted the Nazi know-how," she says, "and the
CIA has seen to it that they got it."
In a lengthy article expounding her theories for The
Realist in August, Mae says that between 1945 and 1952 the U.S. brought over
642 German aerospace and weapons experts and their families who are now in key
positions in American universities, factories and aerospace programs. In 1945,
when the Nazi regime collapsed, ex-Nazi General Reinhard Gehlen joined the
American OSS and was placed in charge of wartime intelligence for Foreign Armies
East. Gehlen's organization and the OSS eventually became the CIA in 1947.
According to Mae, the new CIA under Allen Dulles (his
brother, John Foster Dulles, was Secretary of Sate from 1953-1959) secretly
engaged in political action, stirring revolts, overthrowing governments and
attempting to cause political change rather than actually spying on enemy
secrets.
In addition to the German scientists, Mae says that
White Russians with oil interests who wanted their holdings returned were
brought to this country and these people were agents for General Gehlen's spy
outfit under Hitler. They were moved to the Dallas-Ft. Worth area via
"Allen Dulles' CIA."
These people, she says, were part of a large espionage
activity and were also closely related with defense, oil exploration and
warfare. They formed the "Russian Speaking Community" referred to in
the Warren Report who supplied information on Lee Harvey Oswald.
The decision after World War II to end imperialism and
exploitation of underdeveloped nations (sources of oil, minerals and cheap
labor) interfered with the control of power that Mae believes is the motivation
force behind the conspiracy.
"When JFK made peace overtures with Khruschev or
Castro, or talked about banning nuclear weapons," this presented a loss of
cheap labor, of nuclear power over people, and of special interest groups' hope
to regain their lost landholdings (the White Russians). He had to be done away
with.
The CIA, she says, "assassinates heads of states
and rulers of countries wherever people had a chance for liberation -- Greece,
he Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, etc. They supply military assistance, send in
arms and assassinate heir leaders."
According to Mae, there are five special interest groups
that "planned all the assassinations." They include: the Syndicate
(Mafia) which is involved in illegal drug traffic and "dope controls
politics;" The World Council of Churches, including H.L. Hunt; the
aerospace industry; The Solidaris, a group of Nazis and White Russians who want
to get lands and oil fields; the Defense Intelligence Agency, which she says is
"bigger than the CIA," and the Free Cuba Committee.
John Kennedy, Mae says, feared the "hidden
government" in this country and said publicly he waned "to splinter
the CIA in a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds." In order to
maintain control, the "hidden government" assassinated Kennedy.
When, in 1968, Robert Kennedy became a threat to this
clandestine operation, he was assassinated. "It always involves the
election; it always alters the choice of candidates," Mae says.
She accounts for Martin Luther King assassination as a
ruse to "catapult Spiro Agnew into prominence." Riots and
demonstrations following the King killing allowed Agnew to surface, stressing
"law and order" and thus be named by President Nixon as his running
mate. Governor Wallace was also a threat to this group's control.
"There is a direct connection between the Bay of
Pigs invasion and the Kennedy assassination," she says "and the
government never investigated them (the men taking part in the invasion). Eleven
years later, these same men were again altering the electoral process."
These men, according to Mae, are the "Watergate
Seven" currently under indictment for breaking into the Democratic National
Convention headquarters, as well as four men who escaped arrest. In her Realist
article, as well as on her radio program, Mae offers documentation for her
charges, including CIA contacts.
"IT'S
HARD for people who've pushed aside the idea of even one conspiracy to accept
that they were connected and are still moving," Mae says. "But the
disclosure of the "Pentagon Papers" about the Tet Offensive (in
Vietnam) proves that the government has lied; I don't think the American people
can accept anything without proof."
What constitutes proof? What is it that Mae Brussell is
working for?
I want them to open the National Archives," she
begins. "Why should things about the Kenndy murders be locked up?" She
quotes then Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren as saying "most of you
will never know in your lifetime."
"John Kennedy's coat and the X-rays are locked up
for 75 years. We should be able to se if there are any more holes in it. I
resent that we can't see these things. The material should be available to any
expert in forensic medicine. When you have secrets, you have more deaths."
She continues: "I want a list of the people who
destroyed physical evidence. Kennedy's car was airlifted to Washington and then
to Dearborn, Michigan where the interior was completely ripped out and
destroyed. There was no ballistic examination of the seats or dashboard. How
many bullets were there and from what direction did they come? Who gave the
order to destroy the interior of that car?
"There was a lamppost and a street sign removed
from in front of the school book depository. Governor Connally's clothing was
sent immediately to the dry cleaners and thus destroyed as evidence (for bullet
entry and exit wounds).
"Oswald's State Department papers were burned 'as a
result of Thermofaxing.'
"You can only solve a murder by knowing who's
destroying the evidence.
"I want to find out who destroys it. And who
controls the trials on these men (the assassins)? The conditions are all set;
who sets them? In the Watergate affair, the Justice Department has already
stated it won't go into the source of the money. Why?
"Who ordered that James Earl Ray (Martin Luther
King's assassin) can't have a trial? "Why can private citizens come up with
leads and clues that the FBI won't follow? Private citizens can discover things
the FBI doesn't want to know...
"I don't think it's my obligation to find out who
killed Kennedy. The FBI should do that; it's their job," she concludes.
MAE SAYS she has written to "almost
every member of Congress and they answer evasively and won't touch it."
Nevertheless, she says that "wherever I get exposure, I get acceptance.
People may be stunned, but they know deep down at least part of it is
true."
In addition to her weekly FM program and her recent Realist
article (which runs 20 pages), Mae has appeared on a five-hour radio marathon on
station WBAI in New York and has spoken to various groups, including students at
local colleges and high schools and the World Affairs Council convention at
Asilomar. She has recently video-taped a TV show which she hopes will be aired
in at least 40 states over educational television stations.
She has the outlines for five books, beginning with one
on Oswald, she hopes to write, and Paul Krassner, publisher of The Realist,
will soon begin publishing a "conspiracy newsletter" written by Mae.
In the meantime, her forecasts are gloomy unless the
American public demands action soon. She believes that it is the plan of the
"hidden government" to cancel the national elections in November, by
inducing such widespread rioting that martial law will be invoked. This was
originally planned by member of "Squad 19" for the Republican
Convention in San Diego, and the Watergate arrests interrupted plans for similar
demonstrations in Miami, she says.
"Russia and China will give Nixon Vietnam in
exchange for opening up world trade," she warns, "in return for wheat
for Russia and Boeing airplanes for China. If they (the conspirators) are
desperate enough about America wanting to change administrations, they'll use
nuclear weapons in Vietnam" so that resultant rioting will enable the
invocation of martial law and cancelling of the elections.
In the meantime, Mae hopes someone will wake up.
"I'm trying to be a teacher of the sources of
information and the techniques to understand very simple processes whereby the
American people can control their own destiny. They can't control it until they
recognize it."