Kerry Thornley's Crazy Interview
- Fred Litwin
- 7 hours ago
- 6 min read
Steamshovel Press was a conspiracy magazine that started in 1992.
Thornley reiterates that he did not meet Lee Harvey Oswald in New Orleans, and that they were only in New Orleans at the same time for a few weeks. "District Attorney Jim Garrison has always been convinced that Oswald and I met with one another in New Orleans but that a hypothesis very wide of the actual facts."
Thornley only became suspicious about Oswald's defection after he began reading Warren Report critics.
Thornley didn't become a critic of the Warren Report until 1965. He now says "I think he [Oswald] was probably a CIA agent spying on the FBI for Kennedy by the time of the assassination."
Over time, Kerry Thornley started to become paranoid and began to believe all sorts of crazy stuff. Here he writes that "when I was in the service with him [Oswald] at the same time I began to experience audio hallucinations in the borderline area between sleeping and waking as I was going to sleep at night. And I'm absolutely certain that it was mind control. There's no doubt in my mind that it was mind control, that they had planed an electrode in the base of my skull and were mind-controlling me."
And then Thornley states that it was "very probable" they were also doing it with Oswald.
Thornley talks about the second Oswald theory. "Whoever it was, in my opinion, was planting proof of conspiracy because after Oswald became famous, these impersonations made it obvious there was a conspiracy."
Of course, Thornley denies being the second Oswald. He also discusses Barbara Reid's claim that she saw him at the Bourbon House with Oswald. "And Barbara Reed [sic], this woman, was sitting at the bar and she overheard that snatch of the conversation when Oswald appeared on television and they were talking about how he was from Texas and all that. She had decided that that had been Oswald that I'd been sitting with."
And then Thornley met with Oliver Stone:
And I think that Stone's going off on a tangent myself. He was very skeptical about what I had to say about not seeing Oswald in 1963. His mind is very much up the same tree as Garrison's, in my opinion. John Stockwell was there also, former CIA, renegade CIA agent. He believed me. He understood. When I got to all the weird stuff, and there are such weird things going on in the intelligence community that most people wouldn't believe them and I wouldn't blame them. The mind control is just one example. Somebody who is an intelligence community professional realizes that stuff like that goes on. But Stone himself was very skeptical and I felt that I couldn't get through to him.
Thornley talks about his "implant":
The reason I think that there was an implant is that I developed a boil on the back of my neck, right at the center of my neck, right at the base of my skull. And I spent a lot of time in New Orleans talking to a guy who I realize in retrospect was connected to the intelligence community who I believe was probably involved in the assassination. It wasn't Oswald, however. It was another guy, I think he may have been Howard Hunt. Whoever he was he had a bald head and he looked like Hunt. That guy mentioned the business about the implants in the base of the skull.
Then Thornley talks about a ridiculous story about talking to someone in New Orleans about assassinating Kennedy, who also wondered who he could frame with the assassination. Thornley tells him, "why don't you frame some Communist." And the mane "smirked."
Then Thornley really gets crazy: "He left trails of evidence that he might be somebody else, two or three mutually exclusive trails of evidence One of them that he might be a mad scientist who had been one of Hitler's scientists. And another one that he might be Mortimer Bloomfield of the Permindex Corporation. I don't think he was any of the above. I think he probably was Howard Hunt."
Thornley is then asked about the theory, as propounded in Jonathan Vankin's book, Conspiracies, Cover-Ups, and Crimes, that he and Oswald might have been part of a Nazi breeding experiment:
Yeah, that's my theory. That's the theory I came up with in the last few years. I thought it all started when I knew Oswald in the Marine and the more I investigated it, the more I tried to piece it together, the more I realized that it had to have started earlier than that. And there are numerous reasons why I think I'm the product of a breeding experiment. My mother's family name is Switzer and that's name that goes clear back to the Crusades, as does the name Oswald. And I figure that we were both, they week people out of the breeding experiments. They pick two of them and they kill one of them. They pick two of them and they observe them for a number of years and then they get rid of one of them. And that's what I think they were doing with me and Oswald.
Well, that makes sense, no?
Thornley now believes that mind control can be made "less profitable" but that it cannot be eradicated. Had Thornley not been a mind-control subject, he would have become an elder in the Mormon Church.
As you can see, Thornley was unhinged.
Here is an excerpt from my book, On the Trail of Delusion: (pages 224 - 225 of the Kindle edition)
The Idle Warriors was finally published in 1991, with an introduction by David Lifton, which was highly critical of Garrison. But by this time, Thornley was having his doubts about a conspiracy and wrote in his preface that the case against him nevertheless brought up some “disturbing questions worthy of respect.” He had once met Shaw, and he had once met David Ferrie, and his paranoid mind was now questioning what this all meant.
Jonathan Vankin, the author of Conspiracy, Cover-Ups, and Crimes, spoke to Thornley in 1989, who told him he believed that
he and Lee Harvey Oswald were both products of genetic tests carried out by a secret proto-Nazi sect of eugenicists, the Vril Society. He claimed that a bugging device was implanted in his body at birth, and that both he and Oswald were secretly watched and manipulated from childhood by shadowy, powerful Vril overlords. He believes the experiment somehow expanded to include the JFK assassination. He believes the Vril may be monitoring him today.
Paul Hoch wrote that “‘Garrison could charm the birds down from the trees,’ a staffer once said, and I suppose he would not be the first prosecutor to lead an innocent man to believe his own guilt.”
Vankin gets Banister all wrong, including spelling his name incorrectly. His detective agency was around the corner from 544 Camp Street at 531 Lafayette. Banister had no formal ties with the CIA.
You can see the downward spiral of Thornley's thinking here. How much of the Kirstein story is true is hard to tell.
Here is Thornley's article, "Did the Plumbers Plug JFK Too" from The Great Speckled Bird of August 27, 1973:
Previous Relevant Blog Posts on Kerry Thornley
On the Trail of Delusion, Episode 23, with Adam Gorightly
Gorightly wrote two books on Thornley.
Bolton was a good friend of Thornley's in New Orleans in 1963 and Thornley never mentioned bumping into Oswald.
Lifton circulated a memo he wrote on Garrison and Thornley in 1968. Here is his memo along with some exhibits.
My obituary for David Lifton includes a letter that he wrote to Mark Lane about Kerry Thornley.
A link to a tape recording of a phone call between Kerry Thornley and Andrew Sciambra.
James DiEugenio includes a clearly false story about Thornley in his book.
Garrison was obsessed about Oswald's height.
Garrison tells the HSCA all sorts of stories about Kerry Thornley.
Garrison tells the HSCA that Kerry Thornley might be the body in the backyard photographs.
Why was Kerry Thornley arrested in 1962?
The first writings from Thornley on November 27, 1963, about Oswald.
Jim Garrison was convinced that Thornley was the only Marine to describe Oswald's left-wing politics.
Sylvia Meagher was a big supporter of Kerry Thornley and here is some of their correspondence.
Garrison writes a memo to the HSCA alleging that Thornley was the second Oswald.
An interview with another prisoner is more evidence to Jim Garrison that Thornley is the second Oswald.
Was Kerry Thornley gay?