Kerry Thornley - The Dreadlock Recollections

"In November of 1960, the date of the top secret memorandum, Richard Nixon was Vice President of the United States and thus a member of the NSC. If the NSC document is authentic, as Skolnick says it is, then Nixon was one of those who recommended that Kennedy be murdered."

Further insight as to how such a thing is conceivable is provided in The Secret Team (Prentice-Hall, 1973) by Fletcher Prouty, as he explains how the automatic okay process was facilitated: "Once the CIA had become involved in a series of clandestine operations, it then would make a practice of going back to the NSC… and ostentatiously brief the next operation as a series. As they hoped, after awhile the important and very busy members of the NSC or of the NSC subcommittee would plead other duties and designate someone else to act for them at the meetings. This diluted the control mechanism appreciably. Further, the CIA saw to it that men who would always go along with them were the designated alternates." (p. 108)

"And in building our secret society to fight imperialism I think we should follow the policy of not letting the right hand know what the left hand is doing. Is that okay, Kerry?"

"It's okay with me," I said innocently.

"And I think one of the legitimate functions of government ought to be the enforcement of contracts. How about you?"

"Yes, definitely. That's one of the only proper functions of government, according to Ayn Rand."

"And I think any contract made by anyone over the age of twenty-one ought to be binding. Is that okay with you?"

"Yes."

"Yes! And I also think oral contracts ought to be binding. A man's word should be as good as his bond."

"Yes," I replied, wondering to myself why Slim seemed suddenly so excited. As usual, he wasn't contributing to the discussion, but he seemed almost beside himself with glee, grinning in admiration at Brother-in-law, looking at me with a very pleased expression in his eyes.

The National Security Council is empowered by law to direct CIA actions, but was gradually lulled into approving actions initiated within the CIA, instead. After that it was easy for empire builders within the CIA to turn both the upper levels of the agency and the National Security Council into a rubber stamp operation for their policies.

With Nixon and Hunt working together in anti-Castro activities, and in light of allegations that Hunt was in a position during Watergate to blackmail Nixon, it is probable both men were among the perpetrators of such ruses. Once any proposal such as the John Kennedy death warrant, and who knows what else? — was written up, perhaps all that remained necessary was to place it in the "IN" basket on the desk of a bureaucrat who routinely okayed all projects.

Of course it did not occur to me that I had just okayed something without examining it, and had moreover set myself up so that every time I agreed with Brother-in-law thereafter he would possess the power to make it a binding contract. For as far as I was concerned at the time I was only humoring the pipe dreams of a maniac, for fear that if I offended him he would become dangerous to me, or, as with the above, because I happened to agree, but thought my agreement was only academic.

Upon other occasions Slim became incomprehensibly excited when Gary was talking of things that seemed utterly irrelevant, and his silent eagerness was distracting. For example, when Brother-in-law was talking about the roots in mythology for the meanings of the names of the days of the week, Slim was almost bouncing up and down in his seat.

"Kerry, you know among sheep they have a ram with a bell around its neck, to keep the others from straying from the flock. Well in the Chicago stockyard they have a belled ram like that also, and it is trained to go to the area where the sheep are slaughtered. So the other sheep follow the lead ram from the railroad cars to their doom. And that happens over and over again, every time a new batch arrives and is unloaded." A splendid new addition to my trivia collection.

Sometimes he could really seem mundane and pointless. "You know, dog is 'god' spelled backwards."

Then there were his ridiculously low-brow jokes. "You know what they call a man who likes womens' breasts? A chestnut."

"Did you hear about the old maids who had a beer party at the beach and got sand in their Schlitz?" I would reply, drawing from my Marine Corps experience.

"There was a nigger in the hills of Tennessee," he would tell me, "who read Mein Kampf in the late thirties or early forties and thought it was the greatest book ever written. And then — heh, heh, he found out that Hitler regarded Negroes as a subhuman species. More inferior than Jews."

Now and then he would chat with me about the possibility of building a universal language based upon the Jungian notion of the collective unconscious, utilizing associational symbols and unconscious archetypes. I remarked to him that Freud insisted that in the analysis of dreams trains were always symbolic of death, and mentioned that Jessica's psychology professor had said that rubbing one's nose was a negative sign while stroking one's hair was a positive sign.

That such a language would resemble the cryptic chatter of schizophrenics and therefore would be useful under certain circumstances for dismissing those who spoke it as insane was another relevant possibility that did not occur to me.

That several such cant languages have been developed within the intelligence community and conspiracy politics and that at least one of them was in use as far back as the Fifties is something known to those familiar with neo-Nazi Satanism and witchcraft.

Sometimes Brother-in-law spoke as if he had in mind a very definite plan that would come to fruition at a set date and that I would have to recall certain items of information in order to survive.

"Kerry, keep in mind that the Communists will try to make you a martyr for their cause."

I would assure him I maintained no illusions about the Communist doctrine of the ends justifying the means. I had read for myself the words of the Third International.

Then at other times he would say with a smirk: "You know, Kerry, if you walk down the street talking to yourself in public, people are going to think you are crazy."

Obviously. What a strange thing to say! "Of course," I would agree. "I think people who walk the streets talking to themselves are crazy. Who the hell wouldn't?" And then I would begin belaboring my pet peeve: "There are more people in New Orleans who act crazy in precisely that way than anywhere else I've ever been. Then they've got the nerve to call California 'the land of fruits and nuts.'"

Brother-in-law would then look disappointed or annoyed, as if I had missed some kind of point.

Again, the subject would shift for no reason I could discern.

Upon one occasion he said, "Thirteen years from now will be the American Bicentennial. Kerry, I want to give this country a Christmas present!" He sounded angry.

"And I think the Communist Party ought to be legal, just like any other political party."

"Yes, " I staunchly agreed. "J. Edgar Hoover says that outlawing Communism only drives it underground and makes it harder to deal with."

"And I think there ought to be places where sadistic people and psychopaths can go, designated national parks or something, where they can fight one another to the death if they want."

"A place for people like me," he added as Slim laughed, as if the two of them were sharing a secret joke.

Such legalized dueling seemed logical, considering the alternatives these dangerous characters might otherwise have in mind.

In the long run, the most disquieting thing about Brother-in-law was his implacable cheerfulness in the presence of the most heart-rending topics of discussion.