MAE BRUSSELL WAS your basic, ordinary, everyday heroine next door. Wife, mother, Nazi hunter, baker of cookies, bandager of knees and natural born private detective. Better people never lived. We need two, three, many Mae Brussells. Alas, we have nary a one.
Mae was a housewife in Carmel. She had a BA in philosophy. She came from a privileged family, the Magnins, of department store fame. Later she married a doctor. She had a lot of free time, not one minute of which did she squander. She started her career as the world's greatest conspiracy maven by cross-referencing the relatively rare 27-volume Warren Commission Testimony. She did this by hand, with index cards. She found that it directly contradicted the widely distributed Warren Commission Report. She also found that it had, as her protege Dave Emory so succinctly puts it, "more Nazi connections than the switchboard at Berchtesgaden." As a Jew, Mae was incensed. As an American she was outraged. As a mother she was simply appalled.
Mae was first and foremost a mom. It was her prime motivating factor. She had watched with her kids as Ruby shot Oswald. She felt that in all good conscience she, as a mother, couldn't leave her children a world like that. So she set out on her own to do something to change it. In part, at least, she succeeded. She set out to uncover the truth. She went on to become the premier historian of the event, and a superb investigative broadcast journalist. Both as a historian and as as a journalist she was essentially self taught. She turned her talents on a number of related cases over the years, until she finally reached the last straw and the powers that be put their foot down.
In the face of constant harassment, break-ins, and death threats against herself and her family, Mae persevered on the California central coast airwaves for seventeen years. Many believe she was "protected" by a sympathetic individual placed very high up. Fletcher Prouty is a popular guess. Donald Sutherland played the character based on Prouty in Oliver Stone's movie version of the events of 11.22.63. Mae and Fletcher were friends; this is undeniable. He attended both her funeral (which was a scene) and the wake (which was a real scene, trust me).
Just as we gathered at the grave site a C-130 bristling with antennae flew over at very low altitude. I figure they were just trying to intimidate us. So were the weird guys in sunglasses who mingled at the wake. It didn't work. They weren't any weirder or any the less mysterious than Mae's genuine friends and followers, just not as nice people. Hell, I wore sunglasses myself that day. It seemed fitting, given the occasion. We all thought each other were agents. Most of us were. Mae's agents are still known as the "Brussell Sprouts."
When Mae finally got her show syndicated and acquired a mass audience in LA, her protection must have run out. Or else she out ran the range of her protection. Even Fletcher Prouty can be outranked. He tells a great little story about being outranked by Lansdale just before Kennedy was shot. Somebody did or said something that actually scared Mae, and she went off the air. Not much later she succumbed to the "rapid cancer" she had so many times reported to her listeners as having been the demise of some important witness in some national security scandal or other.
The main thing about hunting Nazis, is any damn fool can hunt deer. Deer don't shoot back.
We packed two moving vans with her library and clip files. She had 34 four-drawer filing cabinets packed, and I mean packed, with clippings, all cross referenced in her head, and most of them also indexed on paper. Our two vans and a car caravan was escorted to the Carmel city line by a marked police car. Presumably we were then passed off to the unmarkeds. For three weeks my partner and I guarded her 8,000 book library and mountainous press clip files while her designated heir, John Judge, moved out here from Baltimore to become curator of the Mae Brussell Research Institute in Santa Cruz.
There was a very thick file on induced cancer. A rocket scientist in Nevada was the first man actually convicted of the crime of murder by induced cancer. He'd used rocket fuel. Her hand scrawled notes of her research into induced cancer as a murder was, needless to say, a totally eerie read in a silent house with an unmarked van sitting across the street. It wasn't always the same unmarked van, but it was always in the same place. The low flying planes that circled overhead got on my nerves some, too. I spent a lot of time staring at the dead bolt and fondling the Winchester.
While my partner covered the front door one night, I took the dog out to make poo-poo in the back yard. I saw a UFO up close, REALLY close, like 75 feet over my head. Poor little Max was totally terrified. She cowered at my feet. It looked like the landing lights of a medium size plane coming to land. Only there was nowhere that close where it was possible to land and it was dead silent, DEAD silent. It transversed the yard slowly, skewering me for a moment in it's klieglike glare. I didn't shoot. Discretion is the better part of why I'm still alive telling these stories. I know when to shut up. Oh, the stories I could tell if I dared.
Whether it was an electrogravetic (Nipher Effect) craft or merely a muffled helicopter I don't know. It doesn't matter. I seriously doubt it was from off-planet, though I suppose anything's possible. I figured that, like the unmarked van and the low flying planes, it was only there to intimidate us. It didn't work. I'm prudent, but not a coward. Like Mae always said, if the "Secret Team" was so powerful, they wouldn't have to hide. Besides, better to die on our feet than to live on our knees. On the other hand, if they're 75 feet over my head looking down, for the moment at least, I'm outclassed and I know it. Position is everything. I went back in the house and fondled the Winchester some more. The UFO never returned.
Mae's ring-bindered final version of the Warren Testimony concordance filled shelves covering a wall of the master bedroom in the house we moved them to. The house was going to be opened to the public as the Mae Brussell Research Center, but jealousy, professional and otherwise, between two rival broadcast journalists put the kibosh on that.
In addition to the books and clip files, there was a room packed solid with neat rows of boxed clippings that hadn't been filed and cross-referenced yet. The books alone filled one whole van and then some. A great treasure was lost to historians when John Judge and Dave Emory fell out and the Mae Brussell Research Center ceased to be. Shame on you guys. Shame on both of you.
FWIW, when Mae was in college she and Henry Miller became very close friends. He had fled Paris one step ahead of the Nazis and settled in the central coast area where they met. I don't know if they were ever lovers; none of my business anyway. She was certainly his type though, young, rich and good-looking. Mae's home was covered with dozens of his paintings and drawings. I never even knew Henry Miller was a competent visual artist till I saw his work in Mae's house. Frankly, I think he should have pursued that muse instead of the one that made him famous. The guy could really draw.
Some people think Barbara Honnegger, "ex" Reagan-Bush aide and author of The October Surprise was the one to actually slip Mae the poison. She certainly had the opportunity while she stayed at Mae's house "helping her with her files." She was also sleeping with a "retired" SAVAK agent. But that don't prove she's a murderer, at least not to my satisfaction. Others disagree. Speculation is a close kin to rumor, as "Torbett" said. Some people insist on speculating anyway. Me? I just don't know and, unlike some folks, I'm willing to say so.
Mae herself believed she was given cancer by microwaves broadcast from the house across the street. When the house was first built Mae baked some cookies and went to meet her new neighbors. They didn't let her in. She could see past them the partially open door, though. There was no furniture, but a great deal of electronics of one sort or another sat on the mantelpiece. Years later the house burned to the ground. It happened on the day after Mae died. Coincidence? Perhaps. Like I said, anything's possible.
When Mae died, she was working two cases, neither of which could have failed to attract the attention of Army Intelligence. One was the Fritz Kramer case. Kramer was a Nazi war criminal, once in the dock and Nuremberg, who was working under a semi-assumed identity very high up in the Pentagon. The other was the Michael Aquino case. Aquino is a Lt. Col. in Army Intelligence who runs a Satanist church "on the side," and has demonstrated an uncanny ability to squirm out of trouble. Take for example the kiddie porn bust which had looked pretty cut and dried to us here in San Francisco where it happened.
There were over 24 hours of tape. The very next day he walked away clean as a whistle. Evidence? What evidence? Both cases are still open. Reading Mae's files on these two made my neck hairs stand up straight as stiff little fingers. There is little doubt in my mind that it was Army Intelligence who finally did her in. But I'm speculating, of course, and as we all know, anything is possible. It may even have been natural causes, though all things considered, that's highly unlikely at best.
Mae also did considerable work on the case of fugitive war criminal Otto von Bolschwing, who she happily outlived. Von Bolschwing was US head of the notorious Gehlan Org spy apparatus, a Republican Party activist, a friend of Richard Nixon, and partners in the defence electronics business with to Iran/contra affair notables, one an Iranian Jew. In her files, I found evidence that in addition to his other crimes (which include being Eichmann's immediate superior for a while) von Bolschwing had also swindled Mae's own grandfather as part of what turned out to be the largest single stock fraud in California history. He was named in an indictment but squirmed out of conviction. Squirming out was his forté. Greater out-squirmers seldom have lived. But Mae got the goods on him. Only a timely death saved him from justice. Alas.
I Xeroxed for my own collection about a drawer's worth of assorted clippings and the entire Aquino file which was a half drawer thick all on its own. One of the most interesting files was about Mengele. Mae pursued Mengele relentlessly. Page after page of Freedom of Iformation Act documents about Mengele were partially or completely blanked out. One particularly chilling page showed field titles like height, weight, hair color, and address not blacked out, but the actual field contents themselves blacked out. To me this indicated that the U.S. government knew exactly where Mengele was and what he looked like and wouldn't tell. They were rubbing Mae's nose in it. Ultimately they were rubbing the world's nose in it. Later on, my place, a burglarproof bunker if ever one was, was burglarized by persons unknown. Only the Mengele and Aquino files were taken. My cash, electronics and weapons weren't touched. Thus, I am loathe to blame local junkies. It was a while before I discovered the loss, but when I did it sure made my skin crawl.
What happened to the Mae Brussell Research Center was a great tragedy. Sabotaging the work of resistance groups from within is a well-studied science. COINTELPRO isn't the half of it. Mae herself had drawers full of clippings and shelves full of books on the subject. Sometimes resistance groups sabotage themselves on their own just fine with no help at all from outside. Self-sabotage is a bogus strategy, no matter who thinks it up.
If anyone knew the bogus from the bone fide, it was Mae Brussell. I believe her version of history. You should too, but not because I say so and not because Mae said so, but because it is the simple truth of the matter. If you have any doubts, do what Mae did. Find out for yourself.
