Mae Brussell - The Essential Mae Brussell: Investigations of Fascism in America

THE ESSENTIAL MAE BRUSSELL:

INVESTIGATIONS OF FASCISM IN AMERICA

2014 BY ALEX CONSTANTINE

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

A FERAL HOUSE BOOK

ISBN: 978-1-627310-06-2

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

FERAL HOUSE

1240 W SIMS WAY

SUITE 124

PORT TOWNSEND WA 98368

WWW.FERALHOUSE.COM

DESIGNED BY GREGORY FLORES

CONTENTS

The Lance deHaven-Smith book Conspiracy Theory in America (published by the University of Texas) reveals that the phrase conspiracy theory was invented by the CIA to discredit doubters of the Warren Commission, which claims that John F. Kennedys assassination was carried out alone by a single lone gunman.

Distraught by the murder of President Kennedy, a Beverly Hills housewife named Mae Brussell took it upon herself to buy all 26 printed volumes issued by the Warren Commission report, and attempt to make sense of the thing by cross-indexing the entire work. Mae was disturbed by the contradictory information and unreported realities she discovered in those volumes. As a result, she started subscribing to many major newspapers and magazines, whose stories she filed and organized, uncovering disquieting connections and patterns behind government and corporate malfeasance.

An impressed John Lennon donated money to Paul Krassners hip counterculture magazine, The Realist, so he could afford to print Mae Brussells work. Throughout the 70s and 80s Mae reported, in radio programs primarily, about the horrors infecting American culture. Maes work was followed by a number of devoted listeners who were known as Brussell Sprouts, who often expanded upon the conspiracy theories with their research.

The current administrations legal Czar who goes by the name Cass Sunstein was recently appointed to serve on the NSA Oversight Panel despite the fact that two words NSA and oversight rarely if ever fit together. He also wrote a book called Conspiracy Theories and Other Dangerous Ideas to make sure that the academics and the American public dismiss so-called conspiracy theories about the JFK assassination and other American events of a largely fascist nature. Cass Sunstein claims that this sort of reportage only leads to discontented Americans who turn violent with their distrust.

If Mae Brussell hadnt died in October 1988, she would have no doubt investigated Cass Sunsteins background and printed material to fill us in on why Cass Sunstein is encouraging American academics and intelligence and police agencies to move against those who write and publish conspiracy theories. Now that Mae has passed, its a job for one or more of Maes Brussell Sprouts.

We hope you enjoy this collection of this influential womans work.

Adam Parfrey, Feral House

IS THE QUEEN OF CONSPIRACY GOING TO BREAK THE JFK CASE WIDE OPEN, OR IS SHE JUST A PARANOID HOUSEWIFE WHO LIKES TO CLIP NEWSPAPERS?

BY PAUL KRASSNER

(FROM OUI MAGAZINE, MAY 1978)

Nothing just happens in politics. If something happens you can be sure it was planned that way.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

There she is, the Bionic Researcher. Every day she feeds herself ten newspapers from around the country. This diet is supplemented with items sent to her by a network of conspiracy students (she called them Brussell SproutsAlex Constantine was one of them). She also consumes magazines, underground papers, unpublished manuscripts, court affidavits, documents from the National Archives, FBI and CIA materials obtained through the Freedom of Information Act and hundreds of books on espionage and assassination. About 80 percent of all CIA intelligence information comes from printed news, she says, so I am doing what they are doing but Im using all the material. Each Sunday, she sorts out the weeks clippings into various categories as though she were conducting a symphony of horror. Yet she is cheerful. She almost sways in counterpoint to the rhythms of hypocrisy. For, while there are those who try to discredit her by saying shes crazy, Mae Brussell remains high on her responsibility.

Mae has been our nations number-one, self-appointed conspiracy freak since the day Jack Ruby shot Lee Harvey Oswald. She has written hundreds of articles detailing the unpleasant connections between what most people consider diverse chapters in American historylike Oswald and Francis Gary Powers, the Kennedy murders and Watergate. For the past seven years, the house-wife-turned-crusader has shocked and dismayed listeners of her syndicated radio program, Dialogue: Conspiracy (KLRB-FM, Carmel, California), uncovering choice tidbits about everything from Chappaquiddick to Chowchilla. She unabashedly calls herself the countrys best researcher.

It would be difficult to question that she knows as much as anyone about people involved in The Assassinations. The Queen of Conspiracy is currently writing five separate books on what happened that day in Dallas, all of which, she claims, contain entirely new material. Collectively, these books will finally answer the question: Who killed JFK?

At 54, she is plump and energetic; she wears long peasant dresses patch-worked with philosophical tidbits, and her favorite adjective is cute. Occasionally, she slurs her wordsinformation overloadbut her eyes seem to reveal the deep sense of compassion permeating every fact she shares. One senses a touch of appropriate incongruity about this white, upper-middle-class, twice-divorced mother of a talented brood, who is knitting a sleeve while calmly describing the architecture of a police state in progress.

I first met Mae Brussell when she provided me with leads for a story I did on Charles Manson. Then, a few months after the break-in at Democratic Party headquarters in the Watergate Hotel, Mae rang me up. She recognized names and methods of operation from her assassination research. For example, she knew that Watergate burglar James McCord had crossed paths with Lee Harvey Oswald when both had been working for CIA intelligence, and that Frank Sturgis had been interrogated by the FBI in Miami the day after JFK was assassinated. She also had a possible tie between McCord and a secret army of police who allegedly had planned to disrupt the 1972 Republican Convention with riots and possible assassination attempts on Nixon, which would then be blamed on leftist radicals and hopefully result in a further shift to the rightpossibly under the figurehead leadership of Spiro T. Agnew.

And then there was L. Patrick Gray, who as acting director of the FBI would later burn evidence from the files of E. Howard Hunt and deep-six numerous documents. Mae recalled the murder of a Los Angeles reporter, Ruben Salazar, at the first Chicano-sponsored antiwar protest. U. S. Attorney Robert Meyer was later pressured by Gray into halting his investigation and resigning from his post. Mae called Meyer, asking if he would help with her research. She wanted to find out why the Justice Department in Washington was stopping an attorney in Los Angeles from investigating the simple killing of a reporter. A month or so later, ex-U. S. Attorney Meyer was found dead of an apparent heart attack in a parking lot in Pasadena.

Three weeks after the Watergate break-in, while the establishment press was calling it a caper and a third-rate burglary, Mae Brussell completed a manuscript titled Why Was Martha Mitchell Kidnapped? She named namesJohn Mitchell, L. Patrick Gray, Richard Nixon, the FBI, the CIAand I published her first by-lined article in