Dr. Mary’s Monkey

by Edward T Haslam

  Lee’s role in the kill-Castro portion of the project was to transport the bio-weapon into Cuba. The radio debates and film clips of Oswald’s leafleting were arranged by Ochsner (at Oswald’s request) to make Oswald appear to be an authentic defector, so he could get into Cuba more easily.

  Judyth heard the subject of assassinating JFK discussed at various times by various people, including Ferrie, Sherman and Oswald. Part of the logic that was explained to Judyth was that they had to hurry up and kill Castro with their bio-weapon before Ochsner’s friends ran out of patience, and decided to kill Kennedy instead.

  After testing their bio-weapon on dozens of monkeys, they arranged to test it on a human “volunteer,” a convict brought from Angola State Penitentiary to the Jackson State Mental Hospital in rural Louisiana for that purpose. The weapon was successful. The man died, after 28 days.

  Judyth wrote a letter to Dr. Ochsner protesting the use of an unwitting human in their bio-weapon test, and delivered it to his secretary.12 Upon seeing the letter, Ochsner exploded in anger, and threatened both Judyth and Lee. Everything fell apart for Judyth as a result. Ochsner reneged on his offer to place Judyth in Tulane Medical School. Lee was ordered to Dallas. Judyth went back to Florida with her husband.

  For the next few months, Judyth and Lee stayed in contact by telephone, thanks to access to the Mafia’s “secret” Miami-to-Las Vegas sports-betting lines, courtesy of David Ferrie. While the phone company and the U.S. Government might not have been able to listen to their conversations, the Mafia could.

  On Wednesday, November 20, 1963, Lee told Judyth that there would be a real attempt to kill President Kennedy when he visited Dallas on Friday That is the last time they talked.

  HOWEVER, WE ARE NOT HERE to figure out who killed JFK. We are trying to understand who was using radiation to mutate monkey viruses, and why. Judyth's testimony is an important piece of the puzzle for us to have. Judyth’s account means that a witness who participated in “the project” (as they called it) has confessed that both she and Lee Oswald were operational members of the Ferrie-Sherman underground medical laboratory, and that they knew that they were developing a biological weapon. This is a major point.

  Think about how difficult it would have been to investigate and prosecute Lee Oswald in a court of law for killing Kennedy without exposing that laboratory, its sponsors, the cancer-causing viruses that had contaminated the polio vaccine, and all of the ethical and medical questions arising from their irradiation of a flotilla of dangerous monkey viruses. Can you imagine the publicity? The political fallout? With one side of Lee’s life connected to anti-Communists like Ochsner, Reily, and Banister (and perhaps the FBI and the CIA), and the other side connected to Carlos Marcello and almost everyone around him, Oswald’s trial would have exposed everything. Whether Oswald had anything to do with killing Kennedy or not, the exposure of a trial would have created obvious problems for the sponsors of the lab.

  Like the cover-up which dumped Mary Sherman’s burned and mangled corpse at her apartment, Lee’s murder was deemed a “necessity” to protect the underground medical laboratory and its sponsors. Thus was silenced the man who could have explained what really happened (or perhaps what did not happen) in Dallas on November 22, 1963.13 This may have been part of their plan all along.

  TODAY, JUDYTH’S GOAL IS TO EXONERATE LEE OSWALD. She will never stop her crusade to clear his name. I consider the bulk of what she has said to be as accurate as she can be held accountable for. She is explaining what happened in her life to the best of her ability. I have seen people whom I knew to be in the same room at the same time disagree over what had happened there. Disagreement is not the acid-test of truth. Events are always colored by perception.

  Judyth remembers what she heard and knows what she believes, much of which is what she was led to believe by others. Yes, Judyth loved Lee. Judyth believed Lee. Judyth trusted Lee. She also trusted Dr. Alton Ochsner, Dr. Mary Sherman and David Ferrie. She was really there with Lee Oswald in New Orleans. She was young, impressionable, naive and gullible. Somewhere along the line, both she and Lee were betrayed.

  But there is a limit to what she knows. Judyth was not in Dallas on November 22, 1963.14 We all need to distinguish between what she personally saw or heard and what she understands or believes to be the case. Both her critics and her supporters need to make these distinctions. So does she. So do I.

  NEXT WE LOOK AT WHAT JUDYTH HAS SAID that disagrees with things I wrote in Mary, Ferrie, & the Monkey Virus.

  First, I remind the reader that I did not feel that I had strong enough evidence in hand to endorse the claimed connection between Mary Sherman and David Ferrie without reservation, and that I challenged any researcher to come forward with real evidence or testimony that they were associated.15

  Judyth clearly states that Mary Sherman knew David Ferrie well. In fact, Judyth had dinner with Sherman and Ferrie at Sherman’s apartment. Judyth is adamant that Mary Sherman was definitely part of the cancer-virus research project that was going on at David Ferrie’s apartment. In fact, part of Judyth’s daily operational cycle was to bring “the extracts” of her cancer-causing virus research from Ferrie’s apartment to Mary Sherman’s apartment.

  She also clearly states that Dr. Alton Ochsner was ultimately in charge of the Ferrie-Sherman lab. And that both she and Lee Oswald were part of the effort to use the cancer-causing monkey viruses to develop a biological weapon. No, David Ferrie had not run off with the mice after the Big Lab was shut down, as I had suggested. Routinely the mice had been delivered to his apartment several times per week for processing in 1963. This has always been what I called the “worst-case scenario” — the confirmed existence of the secret cooperation between talented scientists, dangerous radioactive equipment, monkey viruses and political extremists in an underground medical laboratory.

  BUT DID THEY USE RADIATION to mutate monkey viruses?

  I wrote to Judyth and said that I needed to know specifically if she had been told that the viruses she was working with at David Ferrie’s apartment had been exposed to radiation at another location to change them genetically? I told her I wanted to make sure that no one could find any ambiguity in her statement, or otherwise be able to misconstrue it, so I was going to put a magnifying glass on it. I needed clarification. I needed her to confirm or deny it based on what she knew?

  My exact words: “My question is about your time in New Orleans in the summer of 1963.... Do I understand that you are saying that you were told that the extracts that you prepared at David Ferrie’s apartment and delivered to Mary Sherman’s apartment were being subjected to radiation and then recycled into more mice? Do I have this right?”

  Judyth’s response was clear: Exactly ... we all knew it ... Also, into monkeys. Many were killed, but they ordered thousands of pounds of new monkeys ...

  SIV is the Simian Immunodeficiency Virus, one of several monkey viruses known to have contaminated the polio vaccine. The more carcinogenic SV-40 has received most of the press.

  SIV, a single-strand RNA retrovirus, is considerably smaller than SV-40 (a double-strand DNA virus). The technology of the 1950s was not able to filter SIV from the viral extracts. Further, researchers of the day did not consider retroviruses to be dangerous, so they basically ignored them. AIDS has taught us how dangerous retroviruses can be.

  If “the project” in New Orleans was intentionally exposing SV-40 to radiation, they may have exposed SIV to radiation at the same time. Simply stated, HIV-1 is a mutated form of SIV.

  I continued, “By your term ‘we all knew it’ who are you referring to? Could I ask you to answer ‘Yes’ or ‘no’ to each person on this list separately. The question is, Did you personally discuss exposing your tumor extracts to radiation with this person:”

  Did the mutation which changed SIV into HIV-1 occur when SV-40 was exposed to radiation? Was this the moment of conception of AIDS? Could this artificially-induced mutation explain why HIV-1 is mutating so rapidly?
Why it is behaving so “unnaturally”? If you are a scientist involved in AIDS research, these are the questions I would like you to consider.

  Dr. Sherman — She was the one in charge of doing this.

  Lee Oswald — Yes. He once took one batch over to Crippled Children’s Hospital and met her there because she didn’t have time to get them from her apartment...

  Dr. Ochsner — He was in charge of the project. Dr. Sherman was afraid he was being exploited and didn’t realize the full significance, that others could get their hands on this material. But he kept himself white as snow, though he wasn’t. Dr. Mary didn’t trust him.

  David Ferrie — Yes

  Bill Monaghan — No, he didn’t know anything except they needed me for lab work on company time and he had to do work I was supposed to do, which irritated him.

  WAS JUDYTH THE TECHNICIAN in David Ferrie’s underground medical laboratory? She admits that she was, despite the obvious legal, ethical and security consequences of doing so. Were they irradiating cancer-causing viruses to develop a biological weapon? Judyth participated in that operation, and has said that their use of radiation was both deliberate and central to the design of the project. Was the operation in David Ferrie’s apartment connected to an operation at the U.S. Public Health Service Hospital? Judyth says it was.

  The consequences of these statements are terrifying!

  QUESTIONS that neither Judyth Q Vary Baker nor I can answer:

  Which monkey viruses did the project’s radiation genetically alter? Was SIV one of them?16

  What happened to their collection of mutated monkey viruses after Judyth left?

  Did any of these mutated monkey viruses “escape” into the human population?

  Will Judyth’s price for attempting to clear Lee Oswald’s name be the sacrifice of her own?

  Fortunately we can still ask questions like these. One has to wonder what will happen if we ever stop.

  Frankly, I would have preferred to have been wrong. It appears that I was not. These were very dark deeds indeed. They may have been dark deeds whose price the population of the planet still pays today. Yet I doubt this connection will ever be proved to the satisfaction of the critics.

  But they do not control us, nor do they control the truth!

  At least I can finally understand why my father was so upset, when he learned what was going down at the U.S. Public Health Service Hospital.

  ~~~~~~~~~~

  1 CBS’s legendary anchorman Dan Rather was part of the 60M management team at the time. Rather was a staunch supporter of the Oswald-did-it-alone theory, and is infamous for his comment about the Zapruder film, stating that it showed that President Kennedy’s head had been thrown violently “forward” by the fatal head shot from the rear. Since the public had not yet been allowed to see the film, there was no one to dispute the accuracy of Rather’s comment. Now that the film has been viewed by millions, everyone knows Kennedy’s head was thrown “backwards.” How could Rather have been so wrong? Was 60M the best place to take Judyth’s story?

  2 I should add that until I saw the 60M documents, that I did not know that her middle named was spelled “Vary.” But with my Jesuit education, I remembered wondering, (wrongly) when I first heard her name back in 1972, if her middle name was “Veri” (like veritas, meaning truth) or “Vari” (as in various or variable, indicating multiple or changing).

  3 Langley is the small town in Virginia where the headquarters of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency is located.

  4 Judyth’s knowledge of and personal involvement with the subject of cancer research is remarkable to this day. Upon seeing a 2006 news article about a breakthrough in cancer research involving a mouse whose immune system was extremely good at resisting cancer, Judyth sent me an email which included the following: “We could have cured cancer ... decades ago ... and here you see that macrophages in mice do it --- and yes, just as I have claimed they could.... This can be turned into an efficient and cheap way to combat cancer. Oh, if only I could have convinced somebody to just give me a chance to direct a lab!... And also because they are still just using murine [mouse] macrophages, a first step that I knew would work way back in 1961. Oh, I feel as if my whole life has been wasted! Have to admit I just sat down after reading this and wept tears of anger and frustration for the millions who have suffered and died from cancer, especially children, and I knew the key, but my mouth had been stopped up with clay. I cannot stop weeping... This is awful, to feel such anger and helplessness. Yet happy that at last they should be able to see what to do...”

  5 Baker, Judyth Vary. Lee Harvey Oswald: The True Story of the Accused Assassin of President John F. Kennedy by his Lover, Trafford, Victoria, BC, Canada, 2006.

  6 The same document was shown on the History Channel in 2003, The Men Who Killed Kennedy, “The Love Affair,” November 1963, produced by Nigel Turner in association with British Independent Television.

  7 On their return trips from Reily, Judyth and Lee exhibited more caution. Though they rode the same bus, they did not sit together. They would ride the bus past their apartments, past the U.S. Public Health Service Hospital, and get off at Audubon Park, where they could speak and socialize freely. Then they would ride the Magazine bus back in the opposite direction to their respective apartments. In an interesting aside, Judyth mentioned to me that she and Lee even rolled down “Monkey Hill” during one of their visits to Audubon Park. Monkey Hill is a 25-foot pile of dirt which is covered with grass. Rolling down Monkey Hill was a great tradition for kids in New Orleans; I did it many times as a child while playing a game called “King on the Mountain.” New Orleans is so fat that the City built this artificial hill in Audubon Park so that the local children would know what a hill was. The sight of dozens of school-age children rolling down the hill provided the name: Monkey Hill, because we all looked like a bunch of monkeys.

  8 Technically Oswald’s employment interview was conducted by a Mr. Prechter, who was head of Personnel. However, as Reily’s Vice President in charge of Finance and Security, it was Monaghan (the ex-FBI agent) that had to made the final decision on whom to hire. Monaghan apparently did not think that hiring “a defector” who had lived in Russia and held an “undesirable discharge” from the Marines would be a security problem for the virulently anti-Communist company.

  9 While meeting Banister satisfied Judyth, it does not convince me of official sanction for “the project,” since Banister was also working with Mafia-boss Marcello. The larger question: “Was Marcello working with the government?” And the ultimate question: “Who is the government?”

  10 I emphasize that I do not know of any document, testimony or evidence which suggests that William Reily personally (nor his company as an entity) knew about Ochsner’s secret medical project nor that his employees were being used to develop a biological weapon while they were on the company clock. Nothing herein should be interpreted as implying such. What is known is that Reily was fiercely anti-Communist, a member of INCA, and that he provided financial support to some of Ochsner’s political activities, but this can easily be explained by the financial interest of the local business community and the political events of the day. William Reily should be considered as innocent as Oswald, since neither have had a day in court.

  11 Lee Oswald’s family had been Mafia-connected since he was a child. Lee attended parties at Marcello’s house, and was remembered from those days by people that Judyth met. Lee also worked as an errand boy, running between Marcello’s clubs and restaurants. Lee personally met with Mafia boss Carlos Marcello on several occasions in 1963. Judyth saw Lee collect fists full of cash from the manager of Marcello’s Town & Country Motel and deliver it to his uncle, who was involved in Marcello’s gambling operations.

  12 The secretary was a temp. Ochsner’s regular secretary (a nurse) was on vacation at the time.

  13 Jack Ruby visited David Ferrie’s apartment one day when Judyth and Lee were there. Ferrie introduced him to Judyth as Sparky Rubenstei
n. Judyth was surprised that Ferrie briefed Ruby on their bio-weapon project. (Why not? They all worked for Marcello.) Ruby recognized Lee, and said that he used to see him at parties when he was a boy. This means that Jack Ruby knew about Oswald’s connection to the underground medical laboratory when he shot him, and he knew about the cancer cocktail that could be used to silence him as he awaited trial for Oswald’s murder. It is no wonder he wanted to get out of Dallas. And it is no wonder that the Warren Commission did not accept his offer to talk in exchange for safer accommodations. Jack Ruby told Al Maddox (his Dallas Police guard) that he had been injected with cancer cells. Maddox has said that the doctor that gave Ruby injections came from Chicago. Maddox was present at Parkland Hospital when Ruby died of an embolism caused by galloping lung cancer.

  14 Publicly, I have always taken the position that Oswald’s guilt or innocence is ultimately irrelevant to whether an underground medical laboratory in New Orleans was using mutated monkey viruses to develop a biological weapon, and whether that project is responsible for epidemics we see today. My neutrality on Oswald is a position that has become increasingly difficult for me to maintain. To my eyes, Lee was the perfect patsy — one that could not be investigated without getting into his connections to the Mafia, to the CIA, to Ochsner, to the particle accelerator, to the biological weapon and (most importantly) to his ultimate sponsor . Who was the person who had helped the “defector” return to the United States from the Soviet Union with his wife and child at the height of the Cold War? Who was Oswald’s ultimate sponsor? Is the need to hide this key piece of information the reason why Lee Harvey Oswald’s tax returns have never been made public? Was it Marcello using his influence on the Louisiana politicians that he was so famous for bribing? Or was it Bobby Kennedy himself — who was U.S. Attorney General at the time Oswald returned and had the power to declare that he was still a citizen and allow him to return. Either of these sponsors could have arranged for the State Department to lend him the money to pay for his family’s transportation back to the U.S. These are the type of penetrating questions that the “lone nut” theory was constructed to suppress. They are the questions we still need to ask today.