an excerpt from MARY, FERRIE & THE MONKEY VIRUS on line.
Here are six pages from the chapter...
DR. O
Who was Dr. Alton Ochsner?
And what was the
"Sensitive Position"
he held for the U.S. government?
(We pick up 1/2 way through the chapter.)
The FBI maintained a file on Dr. Alton Ochsner which we now have
access to through the Freedom of Information Act. It shows his
long relationship with the U.S. military, the FBI and other U.S.
government agencies. These records show that in 1941 Ochsner
received an "excepted appointment" from the Civil Service
Commission, and in 1946 he received a citation from the U.S. War
Department recognizing the medical research he did for the
government. In 1955 he became a consultant to the U.S. Army,
and in 1957 he became a consultant to the U.S. Air Force. Later
in 1957, the FBI cleared Ochsner for a "Sensitive Position" for
the U.S. government, and J. Edgar Hoover personally approved him
as an official contact for the Special Agent in Charge of the
New Orleans FBI office, for whom Ochsner had already been
performing discreet surgery at discounted rates. In October of
1959, after two years of working in a "Sensitive Position,"
presumably with the FBI, the FBI conducted yet another
"Sensitive Position" investigation on Ochsner and forwarded
their findings to an unnamed U.S. government agency. Several
days later, on October 21, 1959, the FBI formally discontinued
Ochsner's relationship with the FBI, freeing him up to accept an
assignment from the other undisclosed agency. So what was
happening in 1957 and 1959? What was this other agency? Why
would they have needed the services of a doctor? And what did
they need from this doctor that they could not get from the
legions of other doctors already working for the U.S. government
in one capacity or another? These are important questions for
which we do not have answers yet.
By the late 1950s Alton Ochsner was at the pinnacle of his
prestige. His clinic had grown enormously and was at its third
location. His portfolio of celebrity patients and his new
hospital made his name a household word. His social status in
New Orleans could not have been higher. He had been King of
Carnival and had won numerous civic awards. In 1956 he
stepped down as Tulane's Chief of Surgery, and then in 1961
Tulane's Board of Directors terminated his teaching position,
citing a conflict of interest with his clinic as the reason. If
nothing else, it helped distance Tulane from Ochsner's
increasingly covert activities. He was sixty-five years old at
the time.
Having achieved considerable financial success during his
career, the Tulane termination meant that Ochsner was now free
to devote himself to his personal passion, politics. Basically,
Ochsner was an arch-conservative with an antebellum anti-welfare
mentality. A quick glimpse of his political philosophy can be
seen in the following quote from a letter he wrote to U.S.
Senator Allen Ellender: "I sincerely hope that the Civil Rights
Bill can also be defeated, because if it were passed, it would
certainly mean virtual dictatorship by the President and the
Attorney General, a thing I am sure they both want."
One of the major news events of 1959 was Castro's revolution in
Cuba. It threatened to spread to all Latin America and to
displace the near-free labor economic system which American
business had profited upon for decades. Trade was New Orleans'
biggest business, and seventy-five percent of it was with Latin
America. The entire New Orleans business community was
threatened by this revolutionary trend. The reactionary
sentiment in New Orleans centered around civic organizations
like International House and the International Trade Mart which
promoted trade with Latin America. Ochsner himself was
President of International House, and he joined International
Trade Mart's Clay Shaw on the Board of Directors of the Foreign
Policy Association of New Orleans which brought CIA Deputy
Director Charles Cabell to New Orleans to discuss the Communist
threat, a small favor for Congressman Hebert's district.
Ochsner saw the situation clearly. With revolutionaries in the
capitals of Latin America, the displaced elite would no longer
be able to jump on jets and fly to New Orleans for medical
treatment. The medical empire he built was threatened. Ochsner
did something about it. He became a fanatical anti-Communist.
In 1961, Ochsner institutionalized his anti-Communist crusade by
founding an organization called INCA, the Information Council of
the Americas. INCA's objective was to prevent Communist
revolutions in Latin America by teaching the sordid truth about
Communism to the Latin American masses. In brief, it was a
right-wing propaganda mill, loosely modeled on Radio Free
Europe. Ochsner served as INCA's President and Chairman.
A typical INCA production interviewed Cuban exiles about the
horrors of losing their sugar plantations or their mattress
factories to Castro's forces. From these interviews, INCA
produced and distributed audio tape recordings called "Truth
Tapes" to 120 radio stations throughout Latin America.
INCA's most ambitious project was a film about Castro called
"Hitler in Havana." The New York Times reviewed the film,
calling it "the crudest form of propaganda" and a "tasteless
affront to minimum journalistic standards."
In a perceptive article about INCA, archivist Arthur Carpenter
described anti-Communism as an ideology of convenience which
offered the ruling elite "a respectable way to discredit
challenges to its power." But Ochsner's conviction was deeper
than that. Once I had the opportunity to ask someone who knew
him personally about his political views. The answer was, "He
was like a fundamentalist preacher in the sense that the fight
against Communism was the only subject that he would talk about,
or even allow you to talk about, in his presence."
Financing for INCA is said to have come from Ochsner personally
and from other doctors and business people in the New Orleans
area. Ochsner and INCA Executive Director Ed Butler enlisted
as many New Orleans business and political leaders as possible
in their cause. Sear's heirs Edgar/Edith Stern (WDSU) were members
of INCA. Eustis Reily of the Reily Coffee Company personally
donated thousands of dollars to INCA. Of all the names on the
INCA letterhead, the most interesting one is INCA's "Chief of
Security," Robert R. Rainold who was described as the "Past
President of the National Society of Former Special Agents of
the FBI." (One might wonder if Mr. Rainold was aware that the
former head of the FBI's Chicago office lived in New Orleans or
that the Reily Coffee Company was managed by an ex-FBI man.)
In the spring of 1963 Ochsner was quoted in the newspaper as
saying, "As a surgeon, I know that in an emergency, sometimes
you are forced to do things quickly or the patient will die...
We must spread the warning of the creeping sickness of Communism
faster to Latin Americans, and to our own people, or Central and
South America will be exposed to the same sickness as Cuba."
Later that summer INCA members descended upon Lee Harvey Oswald,
filming his pro-Castro leafleting for television and ambushing
him during a live-radio broadcast with a newspaper clipping
about his "defection" to the Soviet Union. The records of the
Mexican consulate office in New Orleans show that when Oswald
obtained his visa for his trip to Mexico, he was followed by
William Gaudet, who is known to have worked for the CIA and who
edited an anti-Communist newsletter which Ochsner financed.
There is no doubt that INCA produced anti-Communist propoganda
for Latin America, but one has to wonder what other activities
they were involved in?
Mary Sherman's murder happened the following summer, in July
1964. There is no mention of her in Ochsner's biography, nor of
the grief or shock Ochsner must have personally felt over her
tragic death. On July 22, 1964, however, the day after Mary
Sherman's murder, Ochsner wrote a letter to his largest
financial contributor saying "our Government, our schools, our
press, and our churches have become infiltrated with
Communism." It appears the communists must have forgotten to
infiltrate "our hospitals."
Ochsner's own biographers cautioned that once Ochsner got out of
his field of medical expertise, he exhibited an amazing naivete
and even said things that could be termed as "ridiculous."
The problem seemed to be that he saw the rest of the world with
the same clarity that he saw medicine. For example, he cited
the lack of anti-war demonstrations on college campuses during
the 1970-71 school year to be the result of INCA's influence.
But none of this hindered Ochsner's ability to rub elbows in
increasingly powerful and wealthy circles. During one visit to
Central America as a guest of the Guatemalan government, he
became friends with National Airline's Chairman Dudley Swim of
Carmel, California. Swim offered Ochsner a seat on National's
Board of Directors. There he became friends with National's
largest stockholder, washing-machine baron Bud Maytag. Ochsner
also sat on the Board of Directors of National Banks of Florida,
courtesy of Edward W. Ball who managed the Alfred duPont Fund.
It was in these circles that Ochsner met William Frawley, an
arch-conservative California industrialist who headed Schick
Electric and Technicolor. Frawley became INCA's largest
financial contributor and put Ochsner on his Board of Directors.
Among Frawley's political friends was Richard Nixon whom
Frawley had helped in his early political career.
In the 1960s, ex-Vice-President Richard Nixon called on Ochsner
in New Orleans, supposedly to discuss his future political
plans. Nixon joined Ochsner and newspaper editor George Healy
for a private luncheon at the exclusive Boston Club across the
street from Ochsner's INCA. While Nixon and Ochsner shared
many political sentiments, they also shared some important
medical experiences. The ill-fated polio vaccine which NIH
released during Nixon's Vice Presidency (1953-61) killed one of
Ochsner's grandsons and temporarily crippled his granddaughter.
The publicity about the bad vaccine outraged the public and
caused a political debacle, toppling the Secretary of Health,
Education and Welfare and routing the leadership of NIH. As
President (1969-72), Nixon promptly declared "War on Cancer,"
quadrupled the NCI budget, converted the Army's biological
warfare center to an cancer research laboratory, and financed
NIH's "Viral Cancer Program." Were these events somehow
connected? Did Nixon discuss any of his plans for his War on
Cancer with Ochsner, the former president of the American Cancer Society?
Ochsner's second wife, whom he met at a party at Frawley's
house, was even closer to Nixon than Ochsner was. Her first
husband, an attorney from Los Angeles, was one of the people who
helped launch Nixon's political career. When problems with
her passport threatened to interfere with Mrs. Ochsner's
honeymoon to Greece, she called the White House and asked to
speak to "Dick" Nixon. Her problems with the State Department
were promptly solved.
This is the level of political support that Alton Ochsner was
armed with when District Attorney Jim Garrison began his
investigation into the murder of JFK. And when Garrison started
looking into the activities of Lee Harvey Oswald, he discovered
that INCA and Ochsner were close to those events. Garrison's
original intention was to arrest "the whole gang down at INCA"
and squeeze them until they talked. His staff, however, felt
the strategy was too risky and might back-fire. Garrison
compromised and arrested only Clay Shaw in the hope that Shaw's
association with Oswald would be more tangible and could be
proved more easily in a court of law. One has to wonder if
Garrison was aware that Ochsner had been working in a "Sensitive
Position" for the U.S. government.
In May 1967, as Garrison turned up the heat in his JFK
investigation in New Orleans, Ochsner feared his own arrest.
In response, INCA's corporate records were air expressed to
California where Butler put them "under lock and key." Butler
was in California working for one of Frawley's companies.
Frawley had financially contributed significant amounts of money
to the early political efforts of Ronald Reagan who, as
California governor, refused all of Garrison's extradition
requests.
Needless to say, Ochsner did not take Garrison's investigation
lying down. He fought back in his own inimitable manner.
First, he was very vocal about his opinion that Garrison's probe
was unpatriotic because it eroded public confidence and
threatened the stability of the American government. (How could
arresting the President's assassins threaten the stability of
the American government?) Secondly, Ochsner promoted the idea
that Garrison was crazy. He even managed to get a copy of
Garrison's military medical records. These showed that
Garrison, a front-line pilot who flew behind enemy lines during
the World War II invasion of Europe, had suffered from battle
fatigue and was grounded temporarily due to mental exhaustion
and received psychological counseling. As tenuous as it was,
this could be used to show that Garrison had some form of
psychological problem at some point in his life. It was all
part of the "he-must-be-crazy" tactic. Ochsner sent the file to
a friend who was the publisher of the Nashville Banner.
But that was mild compared to what came next. Garrison was
being assisted by New York attorney Mark Lane who wrote Rush to
Judgement, the first book to question the conclusions of the
Warren Commission. To discredit Garrison, Ochsner attacked Mark
Lane, branding him an unscrupulous communist and "a professional
propagandist of the lunatic left" who was trying to create
distrust and cause the U.S. to "crumble from within."
Further, Ochsner instructed Congressman F. Edward Hebert
(Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee) to tell
Congressman Willis (Chairman of the House Committee on
Un-American Activities) to dig up "whatever information you can"
on Mark Lane. Hebert sent Ochsner a report on Lane extracted
from the confidential government files which cited various
"communist fronts" with which Lane had been associated.
Ochsner secured a questionable second report on Lane from an
unknown source. The unsigned cover memo said its information
was from "the files of the New York City Police, the FBI, and
other security agencies" and claimed that Lane was "a sadist and
masochist, charged on numerous occasions with sodomy." Armed
with these materials and a photo of a man (supposed to be Lane)
engaged in a sadomasochistic act with a prostitute, Ochsner
personally campaigned against Lane and the District Attorney.
Could these actions possibly explain why Dr. Alton Ochsner was
occasionally referred to as a "right-wing crackpot?"
Here we have seen some of the many sides of Dr. Alton Ochsner
(1896-1981), an influential doctor who helped shape the American
medical system we have today, a highly-respected citizen of New
Orleans who participated in civic institutions and who=7F
frequented elite social events, a businessman who promoted an
enormously successful clinic and who sat on the boards of
several large corporations, a crusader committed to fighting
communism in Latin America, a behind-the-scene sponsor of
Louisiana political figures, a patriot with a thirty-year
history of classified assignments for the U.S. government, and,
of course, Mary Sherman's boss.
What was the "Sensitive Position" Dr. Alton Ochsner held for the
U.S. government? And did it have anything to do with cancer
research Dr. Mary Sherman was conducting?
- END OF CHAPTER -
Ed Haslam
