Fatal Vision

by Joe McGinniss

  "So when I talked to him afterwards about it, he said it was important that he do it, so people who didn't know could hear it from his side. They could hear from his point of view that he was okay, he was a person, he wasn't a monster. He felt this was a way to get rid of this leprosy he was walking around with— people not knowing whether to shake his hand or to walk away."

  "Do you remember him saying anything about conducting an investigation on his own?"

  "I wanted to get private investigators, and he said we'd get milked dry. He said the FBI were the best investigators in the world. Why should we hire some rinky-dink private eye when the FBI had all the information."

  "Did he tell you about how he and some of his friends were conducting their own investigation of the bars and hippie hangouts in Fayetteville?"

  "I just remember—now I wasn't, like, recording things in a very systematic way. There was something about a girl that had a candle and went into a bar in downtown Fayetteville with three guys and said, 'Acid is groovy, kill the pigs.' But I—I've never—I just felt it would be kind of crass on my part, you know, to ask him about things like that."

  "And he never told you he had found one of the intruders?"

  "We haven't discussed anything since that period."

  Jeffrey MacDonald's sister was then asked if there was any additional information she had that she thought might be helpful to the grand jury.

  "The only thing I have," she said, "is an opinion. And my opinion is that he's not capable of that type of violence. He's a healer. He chose to heal, and he is very aware of pain and the fact that people do live in pain. His intention in living is to help, to heal. And I don't think he lets his ego get in the way too often.

  "I think when his ego, say, would get in the way it would be like in sports or something. To me anything competitive is a form of violence. So if you want me to say there's violence— maybe competition. But as far as being a striker or a person who had to go out and punch the world, you know, have this hatred—I really can't see it. —

  "I just think there are a lot of victims involved here. There were three lovely people who were victims, and I feel that my brother, my mother, and Mildred and Freddy Kassab are victims.

  And then there are peripheral victims like Jay and myself, people who really can't get about living until this thing is worked out.

  "I think the thing—you know, everyone wants it solved. And maybe we can't accept the fact that we can't solve it. I think my brother has been like a puppet on a chain, at the whim of, you know, a new investigation.

  "I think Freddy Kassab is a very nice, feeling human being. I just think he has dedicated his life to a bad dream. People who dwell on an incident that happened four years ago, and devote their lives to it, that is bizarre to me.

  "And I get angry because I wonder are other avenues being explored. You know, I don't know what the overall thing is. I think my brother's sane. I think he's normal. And I think these acts were performed by people who were not normal.

  "I think he and Colette had a very healthy relationship. I think that he was a very sensitive and gentle man, and I think that one of the reasons this case has gone on so long is because he is so gentle and so reasonable. I think if he had had more unreasonable reactions at the time, it would have pleased people who like carnivals.

  "At the time this happened, the chaplain came down the hall and we were laughing. We were telling jokes—absurd, horrendous jokes. And the chaplain said, 'Well, you people don't need any help. You're obviously taken care of. You're obviously okay.' And then he'd go in and talk to the Kassabs who were sobbing, you know, and in dark glasses and stuff.

  "Well, I mean, there are lots of ways of handling something that nobody can handle. And, unfortunately we all have the attitude that we're not going to cave in. We're not going to say, you know, 'help.' Because we knew there was nobody who could help. The only thing we wanted was to see my brother live.

  "I wish—I wish he had been more selfish. Because I think a lot of his pain would have been avoided if he'd just let himself be a burden, say, to my mother, to the Kassabs, and asked for help. Unfortunately, there are people who need those types of displays to believe in something.

  "So I really wish my brother was a bullshit artist. If he was a bullshit artist, he would put on this big carnival affair of suffering and being a person who is completely wiped out.

  "You see, everybody else imagines that they would be wiped out, and I am sure he probably is inside. He just doesn't go into an orgy in front of a lot of people about it. He feels that he has to go on and he has to live. And nobody can seem to accept the fact that a human being can go on and can struggle and keep on living.

  "If people had a few carnival tears or a few carnival breakdowns, they might believe him. I really wish he was a bullshit artist/'

  The Army clinical psychologist who in August of 1970 had made his own analysis of the tests given to Jeffrey MacDonald in Philadelphia in April was called to testify.

  He spoke first of the opinions he'd formed from his review of MacDonald's responses to the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory, a test consisting of 566 true-false questions ranging from "I like mechanics magazines" to "My father was a good man" and "At times I see things that other people do not see." The test is designed to provide a general profile of an individual's overall personality adjustment.

  "I think the first impression I had that was remarkable," the psychologist said, "was that there was no indication from this particular test that there was any significant pathology existing.

  "By that I mean I was asked to evaluate whether there was any indication that the gentleman who filled out the exams was either psychotic or psychopathic. In going over this particular test, I found no indication to support either one of these diagnoses.

  "Secondly, the data from this test was remarkable in what was not there, rather than what was. I found an absence of anxiety, an absence of depression, an absence of agitation, and I expected there to be some there. I expected there to be a high level of anxiety indicated and what I found was low.

  "Now, as part of this test there are what we refer to as validity keys, We rely on them to give us an overall impression of the attitude with which a person took the examination that allows us, roughly, to say, yes, this is a valid test and we can use this data; or, we should be cautious in using it because it may be invalid.

  "I went ahead on the assumption that the material in this test was essentially valid. That was at that time. My experience in the intervening years would lead me to question mat now. I now look at this test data on the MMPI, and I have a question in my mind as to its validity.

  "My reservation is that the person who completed the questionnaire seems to have answered the questions in such a way as to present himself in the best light possible. That does not necessarily mean that he lied, but it at least indicates a certain awareness of the implications of some of the questions he was asked, and at least some attempt to present himself in the best light possible. That's why, today, I would want further examination.

  "Typically, a person who has some awareness of himself— good points, bad points, or accepted and non-accepted characteristics in our society—and who wanted to present himself in the best light possible would try to increase certain scores by answering questions in a positive way that would make him appear to be a very even-tempered, easy-going person without any particular things bothering him.

  "Now the data, as we get it to analyze it, is presented in graph form. And on the graph there are three lines. The middle line is considered to be average, or normal. Anything below the lower line would be considered pathological and anything above the upper line would be considered pathological.

  "So, a person without significant disturbances or conflicts, his scores would range between the upper and lower lines. But a person, also, who is trying to present himself in a good light— and not everybody is able to—would also range his scores within these areas. And this is
the pattern we have in this case.

  "But the reason I have some question about it is that the degree of guardedness or caution that is shown in the validity keys that I mentioned before is significant enough to make me question it—to say, well, all right, is this valid? Should we take it just as we have it, or should we pursue it further?

  "Without pursuing it further, there is no significant pathological condition indicated. However, on one scale here—it happens to be the scale which tends to be most sensitive to picking up feelings of anger and anxiety—it's almost not plottable on the graph, according to this individual's responses.

  "That means there is almost a total absence of any score. That means he did not describe himself in any way as having any anger or agitation, and I find that remarkable. It may, in fact, be true, but I find it rather unusual. In fact, in my experience, this was the first time I had ever seen it.

  "In the report I wrote back in 1970,1 said, 'The only explanation for this that I can offer is that the subject is able to muster massive denial or repression so that the impact of recent events in his life has been blunted.'

  "At that time I had just been out of school a short time. I had academic training that was good and, I think, quite substantial. But since then I've had a few years' time where I've had to start dealing with people, and that's different from what you learn in school. Your view changes. You start to see things that maybe you didn't see. And in this case—it jiggles my mind a little bit.

  It makes me a little cynical about accepting that particular test form just as it is."

  The second test about which the psychologist spoke was the Thematic Apperception Test, in which the subject views a series of nineteen pictures and one blank card and makes up a story about each.

  As described by its developer, Dr. Henry A. Murray of the Harvard Psychological Clinic, who devised the test in the early 1940s, "The TAT is a method of revealing to the trained interpreter some of the dominant drives, emotions, sentiments, complexes, and conflicts of a personality. Special value resides in its power to expose the underlying, inhibited tendencies which the subject is not willing to admit, or cannot admit because he is unconscious of them.

  "If the pictures are presented as a test of imagination, the subject's interest, together with his need for approval, can be so involved in the task that he forgets his sensitive self and the necessity of defending it against the probings of the examiner, and before he knows it, he has said things about an invented character that apply to himself, things which he would have been reluctant to confess in response to a direct question. As a rule, the subject leaves the test happily unaware that he has presented the psychologist with what amounts to an X ray picture of his inner self."

  In analyzing MacDonald's TAT responses, the Walter Reed psychologist found evidence of several areas of inner conflict.

  "One was dependence and independence," he said. "Others were sexuality, or lust, and intimacy; affection and strength; hostility and love. It seemed to me that in all of these conflicts there was a unifying theme. And that theme seemed to be power relationships—who's in control, who will control, who will be controlled, who has the influence, who has the clout.

  "The other thing that seemed to be of significance was that the subject's view of life was one in which events are thrust upon people and they have to react to them. From these stories that he created to go with the pictures, it didn't seem to be that an individual is one who goes out and so much creates his own way and makes life what he wants it to be. Rather, it seemed to be that events are happening and you have to deal with them. You have to overcome them or surmount them.

  "It's a reaction kind of orientation rather than an initiating kind of orientation. That in itself is not to be considered pathological, but that type of person might tend to see life as a series of problems which have to be overcome by himself, and therefore might be resentful and bitter. If it went to an extreme, this person would tend to see himself as victimized, perhaps, or perhaps somewhat of a martyr.

  "This would put someone in a rather angry stance toward life, and, again, that's why I was surprised to see so little anger reflected in other areas.

  "I mentioned also, in my 1970 report, that 'The subject appears to be quite concerned with the issue of the definition of manliness and the related topics of appropriate behaviors for men and women.' "

  His analysis of MacDonald's Rorschach tests, the psychologist said, did not indicate "either schizophrenic or psychopathic thought processes operating." Rather, "the approach to situations that I picked up here was a mixture of both hysteroid and obsessive-compulsive features.

  "By hysteroid I mean the tendency to exaggerate the emotional component. For example, what a person who is not hysterical might feel as sorrow, a hysteroid person would experience as grief. And what a non-hysterical person would experience as an agitation in life, a hysterical, or hy steroid-type, person would experience as a major trauma, a major problem to be dealt with.

  "As to obsessive-compulsive features, I mean that the person is usually very, very careful to include in his thinking and in his planning all possible angles and all possible details of that particular situation, program, issue that he is dealing with.

  "This type of person does not feel at ease saying, well, let's not worry about that. Everything needs to be worried about and everything needs to be accounted for. And this type of person gets ill at ease when all things are not accounted for.

  "Now it's uncommon to have both of these characteristics presented by the same person, because, typically, we think of them as being opposing views. The hysterical type of person says, oh, what the heck, let's not worry about it at all, and the obsessive-compulsive type says, we've got to worry about every single detail.

  "It is possible to have them both together, but when you do, usually the situation is that the person is under a great deal of stress, and his usual ways of handling situations are coming apart."

  "Well," asked Victor Woerheide, "does that tend to indicate a pre-psychotic condition? An underlying paranoid condition?"

  "Yes, the status when this is present is usually pre-psychotic. Specifically, a paranoid psychosis would most likely develop quickly if the stressful situation were not alleviated in some way."

  "What is a paranoid-type psychosis?" Worheide asked.

  "The paranoid-type psychosis takes one of two forms. In either case, the individual becomes convinced that his particular view of reality is absolutely the only correct view, and that anybody that disagrees with it is completely out of synch.

  "The two forms it usually takes are either persecution or grandiosity. In the classical forms, the persecution type is where the person feels that everybody is out to get them, or kill them, or do them in. The grandiose type that you hear about most often is the person who believes he's Napoleon or Jesus Christ. These are the most dramatic forms, the extremes. There are all kinds of gradations in between.

  "My feeling was with Captain MacDonald, if he were to become psychotic, it would probably be more of the grandiose type."

  "Let me ask you this question," Victor Woerheide said. "Under a very stressful situation that might occur suddenly, could you have a psychotic phase of short duration and then, let's say, a return to the pre-psychotic condition?"

  "I believe so. Yes."

  "And let's say, with a paranoid phase of brief duration, would a person with a tendency toward the grandiose type of psychosis, a paranoid condition, be liable to commit an irrational act of violence?"

  "Well, that is possible. You used the term liable." "I should have said possible."

  "It is possible, yes. Being of that state of mind does not preclude violence. It makes it possible. But, if I may comment on that, I don't think it's necessary to say that the person who committed these murders must have been either psychotic or psychopathic. I feel that's narrowing things too much."

  "Please explain that."

  "Well, it's possible for a person who normally lives a
very well-contained and controlled life to reach a breaking point where he has an explosion—an explosion of rage. Now, you expect some types of people to be prone to that more than others. The data that I was able to look at in this particular case lends itself to that possibility.

  "I refer back now to what I said about hysteroid features and obsessive-compulsive features. The hysteroid features—if a person had those, first of all, he tends to overreact, or dramatize situations.

  "The obsessive-compulsive feature has one thing of particular interest to me, and that is that this type of person does not easily express anger. To my way of thinking, that's the main issue. This type of person would not usually exhibit anger by pounding his fist or something like that. He would not be threatening people, but he would still be angry.

  "Now this hypothetical type of person would be likely to do a long, slow burn. But at some particular point that anger may just come out."

  "Something triggers an explosion?"

  "Yes. And you might then—with this type of person—you might then think about rage—if you could distinguish rage from anger—you might expect this person to be full of rage at some point."

  "All right," Woerheide said, "now with respect to this person to whom these documents relate, can you think of some incident, occurrence, event, statement—some challenge that might trigger this explosion?"

  "Well, it seems likely to me that one of the main themes or values in this person's life could be called manliness. It might be referred to as sexuality, but I think sexuality is a little too narrow. I would call it manliness, which would include sexual behavior, but would include more things, too, like status, power, influence, rank, prestige.