Dr. Mary’s Monkey

by Edward T Haslam

So let’s make the question explicit: Who was researching monkey viruses during the late 1950s and early 1960s?

  In fact, there was a small group of medical schools,12 private laboratories,13 and government research facilities14 here in the U.S., and a smaller number in Europe and the U.S.S.R. The majority were among those facilities which specialized in either genetics or cancer research.15

  Once you had the monkey virus, the next thing you would need is a means of mutating it to produce the particular type of genetic change seen between SIV and HIV-1. One possible means of mutation is ionizing radiation. Radiation’s ability to produce genetic mutations was established as early as 1928 by experiments on fruit flies, and has been confirmed in numerous studies since then. In his book on radiation, Dr. Martin Ecker described the ability of ionizing radiation to cause chemical changes at the atomic and molecular level, thereby causing biological genetic mutations. Acknowledging the reckless nature of such efforts, Ecker likened ionizing radiation to “shooting a gun into a computer.” You will change something, but it is difficult to predict what.16

  Supporting the idea that radiation could trigger such a mutation, we will recall that in 1966 British primatologist Richard Fiennes said,

  There is, therefore, a serious danger that viruses from such closely related groups as simian primates could show an altered pathogenesis in man, of which malignancy could be a feature. The dangers of such happening are enhanced by man’s exposure in crowded cities to oncogenic agents and increased radiation hazards.17

  Today, there are other more precise techniques for genetic manipulation, techniques (like genetic recombination) which have their roots in the discoveries of the late 1950s and early 1960s. So, minimally, any potential creator of this monkey virus mutation would have needed access to both the monkey viruses and a means of altering genetic chemistry, such as a powerful radiation machine.

  Once the virus was mutated, the next step would be to put the mutated virus into living animals to find out how it behaved. One would need a laboratory full of animals to test the various batches of mutated viruses in order to find out which mutations did what. To isolate the most effective mutations, you would need thousands of animals, like laboratory mice or hamsters, which are frequently used in blood and cancer research. These animals would need to be kept in cages, so you would need hundreds of cages. Caged animals need food and someone to feed them. The cages need to be cleaned. Records need to be kept. Minimally, it would require a technician and perhaps a maintenance person to handle these tasks.

  In order to design the experiments, to handle the viruses safely, to record data accurately, and to recognize significant results, you would need to have a person with a high level of medical knowledge on the team, particularly knowledge of techniques used in virus research laboratories, i.e. a medical doctor experienced in virus research.

  And labs take money. The animals, the cages, and the food all need to be bought. Space needs to be rented; electricity and water bills need to be paid. So someone on the team has to have money.

  Actually, just about every medical school and government research facility could muster the above requirements if directed to do so. Therefore, the next ingredient is critical, because it is hard to find in combination with the above resources. You must have an environment which is tolerant of “wild card” experiments. So the question is not only who would do such a thing, but also who would allow researchers to play genetic roulette by irradiating monkey viruses in their facility? It would not be surprising if nobody wanted it done in their facility, due to the enormous risks and possible repercussions.

  Thus, if there was a reason compelling enough to warrant such risky experiments, it would not be surprising to find the whole effort being conducted in secret, in an “underground” medical laboratory.

  Moving on to opportunity, any potential creator of HIV would have had to have all of the above capabilities operating within the timeframe established by researchers: before 1969, and most likely in the early 1960s.

  Finally motive. Someone has to have a compelling reason to do a project of this scale, to take the time, to spend the money, to organize the resources, and to do it all in secret. What reason could justify such effort and risks? Would a desperate attempt to find a cure for cancer explain it, if they were using radical techniques which would not have been accepted in a traditional research environment?

  My point: There was such an underground medical laboratory!

  And between the technician and the doctors involved, they had all the capabilities, opportunities and motives discussed above!

  THE FERRIE-SHERMAN UNDERGROUND medical laboratory may have started with the noble and patriotic mission of preventing an epidemic of cancer in America; but once the work started, once the power to move cancer from animal to animal was established, once the ability to change viruses genetically was demonstrated, once the more virulent viral strains were isolated, once the means of transmission was established, once Mary Sherman died, and once Guy Banister died, then the laboratory, the animals, and the viruses were left in the hands of David Ferrie. He could have easily perverted the lab’s resources into a biological weapon if he wished to do so, picking the most virulent strains and delivering them to a target deep in the heart of the Caribbean.

  From David Ferrie’s racist perspective, Haiti was a blister in the Caribbean, breeding “niggers,” and shedding them and their primitive paganism into the waters off the coast of America. Its neighbor Cuba was worse, the fortified stronghold of godless Communism poised to spring upon weak neighbors with Russian weapons of war and enslave them in brutal captivity. Worse still, Cuba was the lair of the treacherous Fidel Castro, for whom Ferrie held a personal hatred. If there was ever a case of putting a destructive instrument into the hands of a dangerous man, this was it.

  Given his history of violent political activities and his record of mental instability, the question is disturbing: What would David Ferrie do if he realized he held the power to change history in his hands?

  ~~~~~~~~~~

  1 Christine Gorman, “Invincible,” Time, August 3, 1992, p. 30.

  2 The World Almanac and Book of Facts 2001.

  3 Hancock and Canin, AIDS: The Deadly Epidemic, p. 33. A good factual introduction to the whole subject of AIDS without a lot of political rhetoric.

  4 Shilts, Randy. And the Band Played On: Politics, People and the AIDS epidemic (New York, 1987).

  5 Cowley, “The Future of AIDS,” p. 49; also Cantwell, AIDS: the Mystery & the Solution, p. 120, also R.J. Biggar, “The AIDS problem in Africa,” Lancet, 1986, p. 79-83.

  6 Hancock and Canin, AIDS: The Deadly Epidemic,

  7 Kaposi’s sarcoma is a deadly cancer, usually of the skin, first reported in medical literature in 1872 by Moriz Kaposi, a dermatologist in Austria; see Cantwell, AIDS: The Mystery, p. 20. In the U.S., pre-AIDS appearances of Kaposi’s were most frequently seen in elderly people of Mediterranean or African ancestry. Kaposi’s was a popular target for radiation therapy in the 1950s and 1960s; see R. Lee Clark, Tumors of the Bone and Soft Tissue (Chicago, 1964), p. 10. In Clark’s words: “X-ray therapy in the management of soft tissue tumors is almost limited to Kaposi’s sarcoma.”

  8 Biggar, R.J., “Kaposi’s sarcoma in Zaire is not associated with HTLV-III infection,” New England Journal of Medicine, vol. 311, 1984, p. 1051-52.

  9 Teas, Jane, “Could AIDS agent be a variant on African Swine Fever Virus?,” Lancet, 8330, April 23, 1983, p. 923.

  10 Leibowitch, Jacques, A Strange Virus of Unknown Origin, (New York, 1985), p. 113-114. Quoted by Grmek, The History of AIDS, p. 154.

  11 Cantwell, AIDS: The Mystery & the Solution, p. 188.

  12 Between 1962 and 1964 seven federally-funded primate centers were built around the U.S. to provide monkeys for medical research by selected medical schools; see Eyestone 1966.

  13 In 1962 the National Cancer Institute awarded a contract to Bionetics Laboratories, one of the U.S. Army’s biological warfare s
uppliers, who inoculated over 2,000 monkeys with various oncogenic and immunosuppressant viruses. See Hatch, “Cancer Warfare,” Covert Action, p. 17.

  14 The National Institutes of Health had operated a major primate lab since the 1940s. The Center for Disease Control also had monkeys, as did the U.S. Army’s Biowarfare Center at Ft. Detrick.

  15 Virtually the entire science of genetic recombination was developed studying one monkey virus in extreme detail. The virus was Simian Virus #40 (SV-40), which was naturally found in Asian monkeys. In laboratory tests SV-40 caused cancer in a wide variety of mammals, including primates and humans. While SV-40 is a DNA virus, and is not related to SIV or the AIDS virus, cross-infection between African and Asian monkeys was common in American labs. SIV and SV-40 were frequently found together in the blood of laboratory primates.

  16 Ecker, Martin D., Radiation: All You Need to Know to Stop Worrying, or to Start (New York, 1981).

  17 Fiennes, Richard, Zoonoses of Primates, p. 144.

  ~~~~~~~~~~

  CHAPTER 13

  The Witness

  IN 1995, ON THE EVE OF PUBLICATION of Mary, Ferrie & the Monkey Virus, a fellow writer cautioned me: “You have everything except a witness.”

  Five years later, the phone rang. It was 60 Minutes, the CBS News TV show. CBS News was investigating a woman who said that she had been in the laboratory I had written about in my book. In the laboratory in David Ferrie’s apartment. Did I want to talk to them about what I knew?

  Frankly it was not a good time to ask me that question. In 2000 I was extremely busy doing other things in my profession, and I was not anxious to get drawn back into the story that had dominated so many years of my life.

  On the other hand, I respected the power of the 60M microphone. Whatever they said, whether right or wrong, critical or favorable, would be heard by millions of people and would shape the public’s understanding of events which I cared about. I reluctantly decided to participate enough to keep an eye on the situation. We agreed to meet for an off-camera interview. They sent me background materials to review, and one of their investigators came to see me — a lawyer. Ironically, it was 60M that brought me the witness that I had been missing.1

  After I had reviewed the materials which they sent me (which did not include any of the photos of the woman nor the other evidence that I will be showing you shortly), they asked me to comment. My opening remark: “Well, she needs to be written up. Either in the history books or the medical books. At the moment, I am not sure which one.” Neither were they.

  60M’s interest in this woman was fueled by the sensational aspects of her story — that she had met Lee Harvey Oswald in New Orleans in the summer of 1963, that they had fallen in love and had an affair, despite the fact that both were married at the time. Any TV executive could see the blockbuster potential for a sizzling story built around the vortex of love, sex, politics and the accused assassin of JFK set in America’s most exotic city. They eagerly few their investigators to New Orleans and interviewed Oswald’s girlfriend for hours.

  60M asked Oswald’s girlfriend all the logical questions: “Where are you from? Why were you in New Orleans? Where did you work? Where did you live? How did you meet Lee? What did you do together? Did you ever hear the subject of killing JFK discussed?” And Oswald’s girlfriend kept answering them. Before long 60M realized that their sizzling little romance between a beautiful young woman and a soon-to-be-accused assassin had morphed into an 800-pound gorilla with “serious politics” written all over it.

  The adulteress sitting in front of them stated that she and Lee Harvey Oswald stood side by side in an underground medical laboratory located in David Ferrie’s apartment on Louisiana Avenue Parkway in New Orleans, and that she was the laboratory technician that handled the cancer-causing monkey viruses which were being used to develop a biological weapon for the purpose of killing Fidel Castro. To put the icing on the cake, the entire project was secretly directed by the famous Dr. Alton Ochsner (former President of the American Cancer Society) and supervised by a prestigious cancer researcher named Dr. Mary Sherman, who worked for Dr. Ochsner at his hospital.

  Further, she said, after successfully killing numerous monkeys with their new biological weapon, this group had tested it on a human subject in a mental hospital, killing the human. Lethal human experiments! Leaders of American medicine and the accused assassin of the American President involved together in developing a biological weapon! Can you hear 60M’s signature sound-effect ticking in the background?

  As the dimensions of the story grew, so did 60M’s demands for hard evidence. 60M was not about to risk its credibility over an unsupported story involving a homemade biological weapon and the accused assassin of the President without hard evidence. This is when they contacted me, because I had already written a book that sounded on-point.

  Yes, they had my book, but no, they had not read it yet. I insisted that the 60M investigator read it, every word cover-to-cover, which she later said that she did on her fight back to New York.

  No, I did not have the hard evidence about this woman that they were looking for. But I never said that I did. From my perspective, I was particularly concerned that 60M could easily discredit her story as a means of discrediting my story. Such were my initial thoughts.

  THE NEXT PROBLEM CAME WHEN I READ the name in the documents they had sent: Judyth Vary Baker. The problem was that I already thought I knew someone named Judyth Vary Baker. And she had said that she had been a close friend of Lee Harvey Oswald!

  A woman had been introduced to me (and my girlfriend Barbara) as “Judyth Vary Baker” at a party near Tulane’s campus in uptown New Orleans in October 1972. The exact location was on Pitt St. near the corner of Dufossat St., behind the Ladder Library on St. Charles Avenue. It is important to point out that our invitation to this party was the result of an argument that I had had several days earlier concerning David Ferrie’s underground medical laboratory, and whether viruses could actually cause cancer in humans. My opponent was the Latin American graduate student, mentioned in Chapter 4, who had previously made comments to Barbara about Dr. Ochsner’s connections to Nazi scientists in South America.

  At Barbara’s suggestion, we had gone as a group to a cafeteria on Tulane’s campus for coffee. Several other graduate students joined us there. What began as a polite discussion about local lore and Jim Garrison’s investigation into the JFK assassination descended into an argument about the scientific accuracy of my comments about cancer-causing viruses. A particularly volatile point was the fact that I said that this fellow’s hero, Dr. Ochsner, had said that “sex could cause cancer.” Several days later Barbara complained to me that since that conversation in the cafeteria, none of her fellow graduate students had spoken to her: “You have to make up your mind whether you are going to be the recognized expert on the Garrison investigation, or whether you want to be my boyfriend.”

  I assured her that I was more interested in being with her than in discussing the JFK assassination, and agreed not to discuss it around her friends. Several days after that watershed conversation, Barbara announced that my “performance in the cafeteria” had gotten us invited to a party. Barbara was anxious to attend the party in hopes of regaining her social standing among her graduate school colleagues. She invited me to accompany her to the party, on the condition that I could “control myself.” Therefore, when the hostess of this party told Barbara that she had been a friend of Lee Harvey Oswald when he lived in New Orleans and invited me to discuss the Garrison investigation with her, I asked Barbara if we could leave. Barbara agreed, and we immediately left the party.

  Two weeks later, this “Judyth Vary Baker” contacted Barbara, and invited us (as a couple) to dinner at her home (without any other guests). I reminded Barbara that this woman had said that she had been a friend of Lee Harvey Oswald, and I said that I did not want to go to any dinner with her. Barbara declined the invitation.

  When 60M said they were investigating “J
udy Vary Baker,” I thought this was the same person. She was not. Was I being set up to discredit the real Judy Vary Baker should she ever emerge from hiding? Or was I given her name so that I would recognize it when she did? I don’t know. For a more detailed account of this incident, see my video interview by Jim Marrs posted on www.DrMarysMonkey.com.

  When it became clear that the woman introduced to me by 60M was not the same person I had met in 1972, I realized that I now had two separate women claiming to be “Judyth Vary Baker,” who both claimed to have known “Lee Oswald.” Simply stated, one had to be an impostor. With the information available to me at that time, I could not tell 60M which one was the impostor. I hoped that they would be able to tell me.

  At that point, 60M pulled the plug on the Judyth Vary Baker story. The rank-and-file CBS producers and investigators had worked hard on the story. They were extremely disappointed by the decision of their bosses to terminate it. One insider forwarded me an email written by a senior 60M executive, in which he stated that 60M had spend more time and money investigating Judyth’s story than they had on any story in their 20-year history. To refuse to air the story after making that kind of investment was a difficult decision for them. It makes one wonder: Who really made 60M’s decision to abort? And: Why?

  After the 60M debacle, I contacted Judyth Vary Baker directly. I was curious about this unusual woman, and wanted to learn more about her. If she could show me that she was the real Judyth Vary Baker, then it meant the other Judyth Vary Baker whom I had met in 1972 was the impostor. This raised some very interesting questions: Why would someone have gone to the trouble to impersonate Baker back in 1972? How did she know who Baker was? How did she know about Baker’s connection to Oswald? Why was I invited to the party?

  Yes, the 1972 incident did cause confusion and distrust among the 60M team. Their only evidence was my word and my memory. But that was their perspective. I, on the other hand, was the one who was there. I knew what I saw. I knew what I heard. And I remembered the names clearly.2 The fact that 60M had a real live person who said that her name was Judyth Vary Baker, and that she had known Lee Oswald, made the 1972 “Judyth Vary Baker” incident even more interesting to me. I decided to learn more about this new “Judyth Vary Baker” to try to sort out the facts.