Joan Mellen Went Full Crackpot

[Benjamin Cole]

After her book on New Orleans District Attorney James Garrison, Farewell to Justice, author Joan Mellen was, at least in left-wing JFKA-canon circles, held in reasonable regard. 

But thereafter Mellen defecated on her own record, and in so doing has raised high suspicions about the credulity of her JFKA-related observations. (Mellen passed away last year).

The backstory: On June 8, 1967, in the tumult of the Israel-Arab Six Day War, Israeli jets and torpedo boats attacked the USS Liberty, a surveillance ship in international waters off the coast of Egypt—a ship that had sailed into a live-fire war zone without properly notifying the Israelis.

In the ghastly friendly-fire episode, 34 American sailors on the USS Liberty were killed and 174 wounded. Within a day, Israel acknowledged responsibility for the error.

In Mellen’s farce-parade, gong-show of a book, Blood in the Water: How the US and Israel Conspired to Ambush the USS Liberty, she contends President LBJ connived with the Israelis, and even the captain of the USS Liberty, to organize the attack on the USS Liberty, with the intention that it be sunk.

The USS Liberty sinking was then was to be blamed on Egypt, and that would justify LBJ sending four fighter planes armed with nuclear warheads to bomb Cairo—an attack that was called off only seven minutes from completion, when heroic USS Liberty sailors defied the odds and saved the ship.

Dead sailors tell no tales, but the USS Liberty crew largely survived, and could identify their tormentors, and so LBJ backed off of his plan to nuke Cairo.

Yes—Mellen contends LBJ recalled the four a-bomb laden jet-fighters only because he knew that the USS Liberty attack could not be pinned on Egypt.

It gets nuttier, and I have just given a slice of Mellen's insanity.

William McGonagle, captain of the USS Liberty, Yellen writes, was an “insecure man and a control freak.”

Mellen claims McGonagle knew in advance about the false-flag scheme, and received a promotion and a new command as a reward for participating in the cover-up.

Which raises an interesting question: If the USS Liberty was supposed to sink with all hands…did not that include McGonagle? In other words, by Mellen’s account, the ship’s captain agreed to visit Davy Jones locker so he could get a promotion? Or was the plan for McGonagle to be the lone survivor? How?

There is much more to the lamentable USS Liberty episode, the many tragic errors made on both sides, including the USS Liberty declining to identify itself when asked by Israeli torpedo boats.

The CIA investigated the USS Liberty attack, under the orders of CIA Director Richard Helms, who was understandably angry and suspicious of the events.

But the CIA, in fact, reviewed intercepted Israeli communications in real time during the attack, and in which Israelis indicated their belief they were striking an Egyptian vessel. Their non-public report cleared the Israelis of intent, if not an unforgivable error.

https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP84B00049R000902350010-7.pdf

That should have been the end of the story, and every official investigation since has cleared the Israelis of intent. But in conspiracy land, no tale ever really dies, no matter how nutty.

The anti-Semitic crackpots have been flailing the USS Liberty tale ever since 1967, despite there being a ton of reasons for Israel to not attack a vessel belong to its biggest ally, and no credible reason for the attack.

Lately, Tehran-stooge social influencers have been chattering again about the USS Liberty, as in Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson. 

Sadly, even JFKA researcher James DiEugenio has seen fit devote a string of heavily slanted, misleading blog posts on the nearly 60-year-old USS Liberty event, one headlined “Israel Attacks America.”

What has the USS Liberty have to do the JFKA?

Well, as floundering JFKA researcher Jefferson Morley dog-whistled to Tucker Carlson, Mossad was close with CIA counterintel chief James Jesus Angleton….and so, you know.

The JFKA research community has always been a motley crew.

And in decline now?

https://honestreporting.com/the-uss-liberty-incident-the-truth-behind-the-tragedy/

[Fred Litwin]

She's always full crackpot.

Her Garrison book was full of nonsense, and she believed Thomas Beckham, who was just a conman. She even believed he was now a Rabbi.

I could go on and on about her Garrison book. How anybody could take her seriously is beyond me. She even believed Raymond Broshears.

https://www.onthetrailofdelusion.com/post/what-do-jfk-conspiracy-books-say-about-raymond-broshears

fred

[Tom Graves]

She's always full crackpot.

Her Garrison book was full of nonsense, and she believed Thomas Beckham, who was just a conman. She even believed he was now a Rabbi.

I could go on and on about her Garrison book. How anybody could take her seriously is beyond me. She even believed Raymond Broshears.

https://www.onthetrailofdelusion.com/post/what-do-jfk-conspiracy-books-say-about-raymond-broshears

fred

Dear Fweddie,

Since you enjoy my posts on probable mole Bruce Leonard Solie so much, here's one about Joan Mellen that I posted at Substack some time ago in which she refers to Solie without actually mentioning him:

Tinfoil-Hat JFKA Conspiracy Theorist Joan Mellen

The following is a partially paraphrased excerpt from an article by tinfoil-hat JFKA conspiracy theorist Joan Mellen, whose former husband, Ralph Schoenman (Bertrand Russell’s secretary in London), according to Mellen, gave New Orleans DA Jim Garrison the L’ Humanite’s version (which Richard Billings refers to in his journal on 16 March 1967) anti-CIA / anti-Clay Shaw article that was published in the Communist-owned Italian newspaper "Paese Sera" three days after Garrison had arrested Shaw on suspicion of having masterminded the "homosexual thrill-kill" assassination of JFK.

My comments are in brackets.

Mellen, slightly paraphrased:

CIA's Security Research Staff of the Office of Security (OS/SRS) shared information with only one other CIA component, James Angleton's Counterintelligence / Special Investigation Group (CI/SIG).

It is instructive to look into how the CIA [i.e., Bruce Solie’s Security Research Staff in the Office of Security] avoided compliance with the Church Committee’s requests bearing on the Kennedy assassination — in particular one handwritten sheet issued from Bruce Solie at OS/SRS. It refers to "sensitive documents which were pulled from Office of Security files prior to their being reviewed by Frank Church’s Senate Select Committee."

There were two figures about whom the CIA [i.e., Bruce Solie’s Security Research Staff] was worried and decided to protect. One was marked the "Oswald File, and contained documents dating from April 1959, prior to Oswald’s departure for the Soviet Union, a period for which the CIA [i.e., Bruce Solie] insisted [to FBI’s liaison to CIA, Sam Papich, on 4 November 1959 — four days after Oswald “defected” to the USSR] that it had no knowledge of him.

My comment:

Former high-level Army Intelligence analyst and NSA officer John M. Newman says in his 2022 book, “Uncovering Popov’s Mole,” that Bruce Solie sent (or duped his confidant, protégé and mole-hunting subordinate, James Angleton, into sending) Oswald to Moscow in 1959 as an ostensible “dangle” in a planned-to-fail hunt for “Popov’s Mole” (Solie) in the wrong part of the CIA.

You can read Mellen’s complete article by googling “Clay Shaw Unmasked: The Garrison Case Corroborated.”

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Your buddy,

-- Tom

[Benjamin Cole]

FL--

Thanks for your reply.

I am still curious why Bruce Solie would become actively involved in the CIA reaction to the whole Garrison investigation and prosecution.

Joan Mellen being a crackpot aside.

[Tom Graves]

FL--

Thanks for your reply.

I am still curious why Bruce Solie would become actively involved in the CIA reaction to the whole Garrison investigation and prosecution.

Joan Mellen's being a crackpot aside.

What did you find out from British researcher Malcolm Blunt?