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Behind the Gemstone Files |
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AUTHORSHIP ALPHA-1775 GEMSTONES A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P R S T U V W Y Z |
Who
is Bruce Roberts?
Was Bruce Roberts truly privy to the information he claimed, or was he an insane madman, as others have claimed? There is very little information that be confirmed about Roberts. Much of what is available comes from Stephanie Caruana, who refuses to provide any "documentation" for her claims about his life. Obviously, a Bruce Roberts did exist, but his story is riddled with contradictions and inaccuracies. In the mid-1960s, I met a man who called himself Bruce Roberts and who bore a strong resemblance to the man in the photo. He was thinner, gaunt and always watching over his back "for enemies." At the time I worked for National Features Syndicate on the far north side of Chicago in the 7200 block of North Pulaski. The company published several tabloids, including The Tattler and The National Insider. I worked there under Michael Resnick and Paul G. Niemark, both of whom (I think) went on to become successful science fiction writers. There are those (Caruana namely) who claim there is no way I could have ever met or corresponded with the man. She claims she and Mae Brussell (Kennedy conspirologist) had a virtual lock on his work. The following account is taken from Caruana's latest web site, where she has greatly embellished the original Key with much more details about Roberts. 1937: Roberts was studying journalism and physics at the University of Wisconsin-and dating Dorothy Boettiger, Roosevelt's niece. Sam Giancana, then a young Chicago hood and murderer connected with Al Capone's gang, had the goods on Roosevelt regarding the heroin deal with Onassis. He told Roberts to tell Dorothy; then used the blackmail later to gain control of the Chicago Teamsters' Union Fund. [NOTE (Jim Moore] The only reference to a Dorothy Boettiger that I could find was this, and there is no reference to indicate any relationship to Franklin Roosevelt: Children of RAYMOND ADLER and DOROTHY BOETTIGER are: 3. i. AUDREY9
Ann ADLER, b. October 30, 1942. Bill Adler - 1959 William Michael was known to the family as Billy Mike and was named for his grandfather and great grandfather. Ethel Harris was his godmother and Fritz Adler was his godfather. Bill is a Construction Installer for GTE, the local telephone company in Erie. SOURCE: http://frontpage.erie.net/sdunes/INFO_WILLIAM.htm Roberts' special interest was in crystallography - and the creation of synthetic rubies and diamonds, the original Gemstone experiment. [Hjalmar Schacht, president of Germany's Reichsbank and economic dictator of Hitler's 3rd Reich, launched a massive program of rearmament. Onassis's tanker, the Ariston, the largest oil tanker yet, was nearing completion in Sweden. Onassis signed a year's contract with Jean Paul Getty's Tidewater Oil Company to move oil from California to the Mitsuis Corporation in Yokohama.] 1940: Roberts played baseball for the University of Wisconsin. Henry Wallace, Roosevelt's Secretary of Agriculture and V.P. candidate, visited the campus, met and talked to Roberts, and showed him a copy of the oil cartel memo. 1945: Roberts was in the Army, stationed at Victorville Army Base, in California. No war hero he, apparently; he was assigned for the day to patrol the area in front of HQ with a stick, spiking trash and stuffing it into a sack. [Note: This ignominious and inglorious task sounds like the sort of job assigned to Army dissidents who, perhaps overly-intelligent and overly-independent from the Army's point of view, don't "just follow orders, sir!"] Heroic Bomber Captain George McGovern, back for reassignment from the war in Europe where he had flown many bombing mission, chewed Roberts out for not saluting him, and threatened him with a court martial. (McGovern would be the Democratic presidential candidate in 1972. Roberts implies that McGovern was the role model for a profiteering pilot-one of "Milo Minderbinder's" buddies-who bombed his own air base in Joseph Heller's Catch 22) 1952: Roberts lived in the Los Angeles area. He was described at this time as a "former actor turned jewelry designer". He was still involved in crystallography, was making synthetic gemstones and apparently selling them to the Hollywood crowd. May 1954: Dien Bien Phu fell to the Communists. Roberts' future wife, daughter of the French Consul, was imprisoned with other French nationals in North Vietnam, at a "Hanoi Hilton." She escaped with other French prisoners and hiked north to a U.S. Army base, Kunming, in the Yunnan Province of China. Along the way she saw strange rocks resembling those of the chief Ruby-producing district in Burma. These rocks suggested the presence of rubies, together with a rare mineral or heavy metal, essential for the production of synthetic rubies and also, perhaps, for the production of a super-weapon. She later told Roberts about them. 1959: Antonio Iglesias, CIA/Cuban, was part of the invading "army" at the Bay of Pigs. (His sister Marina was married for a time to Bruce Roberts' brother Dale.) The invasion group trained at Lake Pontchartrain, Louisiana, and No Name Key, Florida. NOTE: Despite an exhaustive search of records of the Bay of Pigs, very little can be found to substantiate this claim. 1960: Roberts was married to the daughter of the former French consul in Indochina. In that area, Onassis's involvement in the Golden Triangle dope trade was no secret. While living in Indochina, she had observed strange rocks in the Katha district of Burma, the natural source of Burmese rubies and sapphires. She owned some Burmese rubies. Burma is one of only eleven possible world sources of the mineral ingredients which can be used to create artificial rubies and sapphires-and also, where beautiful natural rubies and sapphires occur. (These are also apparently the mineral ingredients necessary for the "secret weapon" Roberts hints about: the one which fuses your ass to your belly-button in 22 hours. Possibly a rare heavy metal. Hey, don't ask me what this is all about!) When the French retreated from Dien Bien Phu, she was imprisoned in a "Hanoi Hilton." She escaped with a small group of prisoners. They walked north out of Vietnam through the Yunnan Province to Kunming, a U.S. air base in China. On the way she saw similar-looking rocks. She told Roberts about this. He may have been able to smuggle some of this mineral and some rubies and sapphires out of China. Roberts experimented with the creation of artificial rubies-the original "Gemstone experiment." Hughes Aircraft in Los Angeles was experimenting with laser beam technology-using synthetic rubies for their light-refraction qualities. Roberts brought his synthetic rubies to Hughes. Nervously, they stole his rubies - the basis for laser beam research, laser bombs, etc., because of the optical quality of the rubies. Roberts' investigation after the theft of his rubies revealed the Onassis-"Hughes" connection: the kidnap and switch. April 1961: Roberts, living in San Francisco, put more emphasis on San Francisco Mafia operations and what he knew of the international operations of Onassis. But there is little or no real conflict between Roberts's account and those of the Giancanas, and John Davis. It is the same story told from a slightly different point of view. Every big city in America had (and has) its large lucrative crime and monopoly empire, and its "Boss of Bosses," each of whom lived like the king of a small kingdom, and felt as omnipotent as a king. Mafia, CIA, government and big business co-exist easily as long as the "proprieties" of Omerta are observed. Within those rules, local "bosses" control pieces of a vast complicated worldwide network of money-making operations.-sc] Nov. 22, 1963: Roberts wrote that the assassination team included 28 men. This included shooters, timers, back-up men to hide the guns, and people to transport the team members out of town. As at Watergate, one would expect that there would be a command/communication post somewhere nearby. Double Cross mentions an assassination team of "several dozen" people. Both Gemstone and Double Cross state clearly that the CIA and the Mafia had worked together for years, and were in some ways indistinguishable (especially in international gun-running and drug smuggling operations). From this perspective, the JFK assassination was simply one more in a long string of political assassinations, many involving the murders of leaders of foreign countries. Bringing it all home for domestic political murders was nothing special for the CIA/Mafia teams. [NOTE: Anthony Iglesias's sister Marina had been married to Bruce Roberts' brother Dayle. This may have been where Bruce Roberts got this particular information, and his identification of the 4 shooters. Iglesias's participation in the Bay of Pigs invasion is documented on the Internet in the Cuban Information Archives: http://cuban-exiles.com (sic), documents 0035, Cuba Democratica lists of 2506 personnel at Finca Homestead, Navy, UDT units, and general list of B.O.P. participants, and document 0146a. He turned up again later in a huge CIA land swindle in Miami. When last heard from, he had taken the money and run-to a comfy hiding place in South America.-sc] [NOTE: The web address should read http://cuban-exile.com/ - Jim Moore] September 16, 1968: A car smashed into Roberts' car, parked in front of the Soviet consulate in San Francisco. The people in the consulate routinely take pictures of everything that goes on in front of the consulate. Their photos showed the license plate of the car: UKT-264, on a blue Cadillac belonging to Mia Angela Alioto, Joe's daughter, being driven by Tom Alioto, Joe's son, whose driving license had been revoked. His license, and the car's license plate, were both fraudulent. Mayor Joe Alioto was high up in San Francisco's Democratic Mafia hierarchy, second to Lanza, and Joe still had high political aspirations, even though his V.P. hopes were scotched, at least for the present. But Tom Alioto smashing into a parked car using a fraudulent driver's license could be troublesome. So a first-class fix-up was arranged. First, the San Francisco Police towed Roberts' car away. Then, San Francisco MP's from the Presidio staged a few more car smashes on the same corner, all duly filmed by the Russians. When Roberts arrived on the scene and began picking up pieces of the various cars that had been involved, trying to figure out what had happened, Lanza himself was on the scene, and ordered him to "Move on; nothing happened here." To make doubly sure that neither Alioto's son's or daughter's name would ever be connected to Roberts' smashed car, Alioto's "fixers" found Katheryn Hollister, a nurse whose car had a nearly identical license plate number, only off by one digit. She, with a perfect driving record, was "persuaded" to take the rap for the hit-and-run. Details of the hit-and-run and the cover-up were filed under Kathryn Hollister's name, with a cross-reference to another file for Bruce Roberts. In addition, however, some sort of block was put on the files, so that no one was allowed to see them except Bruce Roberts, who couldn't do anything with them. Roberts had been completely apolitical for years, happily busy with his crystallography and scientific experiments. He had, though, through a series of accidents, coincidences, family connections, long nights spent conversing in a wide cross section of bars, a talent for communication that brought him into contact with many different people, and a remarkable memory, learned a great many things about how things are done and what was going on in our country, particularly in San Francisco-without especially trying. He made the mistake of thinking that this smash-up, and the following cover-up, were directed at him personally. With the photos supplied by the Russians, he threatened to spill the whole story at the scheduled Court hearing-with photos-and to relate it to corrupt Mafia election processes and the whole ball of wax. The Judge of the Court Hearing let Roberts know that she intended to dismiss the charge against him. But Roberts planned to plead "Guilty-with an explanation"-and then launch into a FULL explanation-with photographs. When the Court hearing came up, Roberts began to speak, but she cut him off. She dismissed the case immediately. Roberts planned to carry it further. The next evening [I'm not sure of this date.-sc] Brading and Fratianno showed up in the Black Magic Bar. Brading was wearing his big X-marked hat from Dallas to see whether Roberts recognized it, and them, and how much he knew. Brading and Fratianno took the bar stools on each side of Roberts, while another killer stood behind him. Brading handed Roberts the hat, and asked him what he thought about it. Roberts took the hat and studied it. "It's a good hat; that's all I can say for it. But if you wore a beanie, you'd look just like Pope Montini," he said. Brading laughed. "Better not let my Rabbi-Rabbi Magnin-hear you say that." [Note: Rabbi Cyril Magnin was a prominent, wealthy, and politically well-connected (to the Mob) San Francisco Rabbi-and Mae Magnin Brussell's uncle. er own father was Rabbi Edward Magnin. One was a Democrat; the other, a Republican. Her grandfather was the founder of I. Magnin's, and the family was quite wealthy. I have asked myself whether what begins to look like Mae's resolute suppression of the contents of the Gemstone File for many years was due to her family connections; and perhaps whether she got away with her research, writing and radio programs as long as she did because of her family's protection. Of course there were other possible reasons as well. See 1977: Mae Brussell's Dialogue Conspiracy programs on Gemstone, and my comments on them.-sc] An MP from the Presidio posted at the end of the bar piped up, "I heard they let everyone with an X-marked hatband through the police lines at Dallas". Roberts didn't say a word. He was not in a position to say anything. He had seen the hat before-in a photo of Brading, taken at Dallas, stuffing a rifle under his coat, in the pergola on the south side of Elm Street, just after his shot at JFK. The photo was taken by Antonio Iglesias, CIA-whose sister, Marina, had been married to Roberts' brother, Dayle. Cover up support for Alioto in the hit-and-run was complete. Senator Everett Dirksen, who ran State Farm Insurance in Peoria, Illinois, insurers of Roberts' car, covered up the insurance end of the hit-and-run. Humphrey had planned to come to San Francisco for a final pre-election rally, sparked by Alioto. Roberts, angered by the auto insurance company's plan not to pay off on his wrecked car, threatened to blow the hit-and-run story plus its Mafia ramifications wide open if Humphrey came to San Francisco as planned. Humphrey didn't come; Humphrey lost perhaps 100,000 votes in San Francisco. This happened to be the margin by which he lost the state of California, and the election. That is the basis for Roberts' claim that "he elected Nixon to the Presidency." As a result, Humphrey lost the State of California, and the election. And Richard Nixon became President. Well...maybe. But obviously, many factors determine the outcome of an event such as an election. September 1968: Beginning at about this time, Roberts' "gemstones"-synthetic rubies, sapphires and diamonds, with accompanying "histories"-which he called "gemstone papers"-were sold or given away to private individuals, and foreign consular officials, over a period of years, in return for more information. A worldwide information network was gradually developed-a trade of the intelligence activities of many countries. This intelligence network is the source for much of the information in the Gemstone File. - Roberts implies that it was at this time that he began writing and circulating his "Gemstone" letters: synthetic rubies and sapphires with accompanying "histories." He said later on that he had been mistaken in his evaluation of the hit-run incident as a personal attack on him; apparently, it had been strictly an accident in every sense. Roberts had been apolitical and quite indifferent to politics for years; he hadn't even voted. But his father was a Republican, who had worked on Nixon's campaign, and had many friends in the Republican camp. At this time, Roberts appeared to feel that the immediate problem with the election process was in the Democratic camp. So his first "Gemstone" offers were to Nixon and Mitchell in 1968. Roberts sent a letter to Nixon (and John Mitchell) that he claims elected Nixon to the Presidency. This letter is not in the section of the file that I now have, which only goes back to 1970. But he does describe what he says are the reactions of Nixon to this letter. Over the ensuing years, "Gemstones" and accompanying histories, or letters, were sold or given to many people, and to various consular offices-sometimes in return for information. A world-wide information network was gradually developed-a trade of the intelligence activities of many countries. This intelligence network is the source for much of the information in the Gemstone File 1969: February: Roberts gave information to Nixon, via local Republicans, about his mineralogical information: certain heavy stones or minerals of strategic importance that might be found in China, which he says changed Nixon's policies. [See letter dated May 24, 1971]. September 1969: "Gemstones", with histories, had been released around the globe for several years. In 1969, Roberts gave a Gemstone with history to Mack, head of California CREEP, for Nixon, with a proposition: the Presidency in return for wiping out the Mafia. The "history" included Teddy's phone calls to and from the Lawrence Cottage on Chappaquiddick, billed to Teddy's home phone in Hyannisport. Nixon, being Mafia himself, wasn't interested; but kept the information to use on Teddy whenever it seemed advantageous. April 18, 1971: News of Hughes's death, and the take-over of "Hughes" and of the United States Government by Onassis, and the facts surrounding the murders of JFK, RFK, Martin Luther King, Mary Jo Kopechne, and many more, and the subsequent cover-ups (involving still more murders) have circulated around the globe since late 1968, the date of the Alioto smash-up of Bruce Roberts' car in San Francisco, in the form of the original Gemstone letters. Any country with this information had the wherewithal to blackmail the U.S Mafia government, which has had no choice but to pay up. The alternative would be for those involved to be exposed as a bunch of treasonous murderers. December, 1971: Roberts applied for a "Gemstone" visa from the Russian Consulate—on a tapped phone. Phone was tapped by Hal Lipset, San Francisco private investigator, who worked for Katherine Meyer Graham and others, and routinely monitored Consulate phone calls. January, 1972: The Watergate team showed up at the San Francisco Drift Inn, a CIA-FBI safe-house hangout bar, where Roberts conducted a nightly Gemstone rap for the benefit of any CIA or FBI or anyone who wandered in for a beer. James McCord, Martinez, Bernard Barker, Garcia and Frank Sturgis showed up - along with a San Francisco dentist named Fuller. James McCord remarked: "Sand and Arab oil with hydrogen heat makes glass brick,"— a threat of war to the Arab nations. The event, like all the other nightly raps, was taped by the Drift Inn bartender, Al Strom, who was paid to do so by his old friend, Katherine Meyer Graham. But "Al was fair;" he also told his other friend, Roberts, about it. The bar was also wired for sound by Arabs, Russians and Chinese. February, 1972: Liddy and Hunt traveled around a lot, using "Hughes Tool Co." calling cards, and aliases from Hunt's spy novels. Liddy, Hunt and other Watergaters dropped by for a beer at the Drift Inn, where they were photographed on bar stools for Katherine Graham. These "bar stool" photos were later used in the Washington Post after Liddy, Hunt and the others were arrested at Watergate, because CIA men like Liddy and Hunt aren't usually photographed. Roberts quoted to Liddy "the Chinese stock market in ears:
"Four bodies twisting in the breeze". Roberts: "Quoting prices to Liddy at the Drift Inn made their deaths a mortal cinch. Liddy's like that, and that's why the murdering slob was picked by the Mafia." "Gemstones" rolling around the Drift Inn in February inspired Liddy's "Gemstone Plan" that became Watergate. February, 1972: Francis I. Dale, head of CREEP and ITT Board of Directors member, pushed Magruder to push Liddy into Watergate. In a Mafia-style effort to shut Roberts up, his father was murdered by "plumbers" team members Liz Dale (Francis I. Dale's ex-wife), Martinez, Gonzalez, Barker; in Hahnemann's hospital, San Francisco where Mr. Roberts had been take after swallowing a sodium morphate "pill" slipped into his medicine bottle at home by Watergate locksmith (from Miami's "Missing Link" locksmith shop) Gonzales. The pill didn't kill him. He had a weak digestion, and vomited enough of the sodium morphate up (it burned his lips and tongue on the way out)—but he had emphysema and went to the hospital. In the hospital, Liz Dale, disguised as a nurse, and Martinez, disguised as a doctor, assisted him to sniff a quadruple-strength can of aerosol medicine—enough to kill him the next day. "27 Gemstones, with histories, to 27 countries brought Red China into the U.N. and threw Taiwan out. " June 21, 1972: THE 18-1/2 MINUTES OF ACCIDENTALLY-ERASED WHITE HOUSE TAPE: Nixon, furious over the Watergate Plumbers arrests, couldn't figure out who had done it to him: who had taped the door at Watergate that led to the arrests? Hal Lipset, whose primary employer at the time was Katherine Graham, couldn't tell him. Nixon figured that it had to do somehow with Robert's running around in Vancouver tracing the "Hughes" Mormon Mafia nursemaid's (Eckersley) Mafia swindle of the Canadian stock exchange; and Trudeau. The 18-1/2 minutes was of Nixon, raving about Canada's "ass-hole Trudeau," "ass-hole Roberts," Onassis, "Hughes" and Francis I. Dale. It simply couldn't be released. January, 1973: Tisserant was dead—but as the Church rushed to destroy every copy of his papers, Roberts received one—and wrote a few of his own, released over New Years: 1. "The Cover-up of the Murder of Christ"; March 18, 1973: Roberts called Hal Lipset, discussing all these matters publicly over a tapped phone. Lipset reported to Dean, who had hired him away from Katherine Graham, after they figured out who had taped the door at Watergate. (John Mitchell said: Katie Graham's liable to get her tit caught in a wringer"). July 9, 1973: Roberts had used Al Strom's Drift Inn bar as an "open lecture forum" for any and all—and Al Strom taped it, for his boss, Katherine Graham. But "Al was fair", and told Roberts he was doing it—for which he was murdered on this date. August 6, 1974: Nixon and Ford signed a paper at the White House. It was an agreement: Ford could be President. Nixon got to burn his tapes and files and murder anyone he needed to, to cover it all up. August 7, 1974: Roberts passed information to Pavlov at the Russian Consulate in San Francisco which led directly to Nixon's resignation: the "More" Journalism Review's story about Denny Walsh's "Reopening of the Alioto Mafia Web story" for the New York Times, killed in a panic, plus a long taped discussion of who and what the Mafia is. Hal Lipset listened to the conversation in the bugged Russian Consulate room, from his listening post in the building next door. He had phone lines open to Rockefeller and Kissinger, who listened too. Rockefeller sent Kissinger running to the White House with Nixon's marching orders: "Resign—right now!" Nixon and Julie cried. But there was still some hope, if Nixon resigned immediately, of drawing the line somewhere—before it got to the King of the Mountain himself—Onassis. Nixon, on trial, would blurt out those names to save himself: Onassis, Dale, "Hughes". Even "JFK". September 7, 1974: Roberts had made an agreement with a friend, Harp, of Kish Realty, over a bugged phone. Harp was to buy a Gemstone—with history—for $500, the price of a trip to Canada for Roberts to check into the "Hughes" Mormon Mafia Canadian stock market swindle and other matters. But Harp was sodium-morphate poisoned before the deal could go through—on this date. March 15, 1975: Roberts got the "Brezhnev flu," and spent two weeks at the University of California Hospital, in San Francisco. Doctors there, without the Russian Kirlian photography diagnostic technique, assumed the softball-sized lump over his heart was cancer, and treated it with cobalt radiation. March 16, 1975: Onassis died, of myasthenia gravis. The Mafia Organization began to regroup. Prince Faisal watched his uncle, King Faisal, silently watch Jungers, head of Aramco, pick up the Mafia oil trade ball. Prince Faisal had followed Roberts's Grommet Bar raps, via a series of Arabs with tape records, and kept Uncle Faisal informed. The Shah of Iran's intelligence service, the Savak, had assigned two Arabs to Prince Faisal, to report back, and to win Prince Faisal's confidence, and guide and influence him in interpreting "what Roberts really meant." Prince Faisal knew Roberts was in the hospital. March 18, 1975: Roberts got the "Brezhnev Flu" and spent 2 weeks at U.C. Hospital. Doctors there, without the Kirlian photography diagnostic technique, assumed the softball-sized lump over his heart was cancer. It wasn't. June 6, 1975: Roberts gave information about the fraud involved in General Dynamics' fighter-plane contract to the French and Belgian Consulates in San Francisco. Two hours later, General Stehlin, a French Government official who was surreptitiously on Northrop's payroll, and a potential witness to the fraud, was hit by a bus in Paris and killed. July 30, 1976: Bruce Roberts died, of lung cancer, in San Francisco. Bruce Roberts - An Opposing Viewpoint "Bruce Roberts - whoever the hell he may have been - certainly gave good shiver," wrote Martin Cannon in 2001 in his article "Exposed at Last: The REAL Gemstone File. Bruce Porter Roberts really existed, although we have few independently verifiable facts about him. He was born in New York (circa 1917) and died in San Francisco, on July 30, 1975, reportedly of a brain tumor. A daughter survived him. Author Gerald Carroll discovered a photograph of him affixing costume jewelry to entertainer Carmen Miranda, which goes some ways toward substantiating his claimed interest in synthetic gems. An experiment in his garage caused an explosion which singed off his eyebrows. He spent the years 1969-75 writing lengthy handwritten missives addressed to various newsworthy individuals. On the side, he occasionally worked as a roofer. "[After a first article on the Patty Hearst kidnapping] Playgirl’s editor suggested that the [Mae Brussell-Stephanie Caruana] team should next try an article on Howard Hughes. While researching this project at Mae Brussell’s home, Caruana happened upon a cache of letters from the enigmatic Bruce Roberts. A regular Brussell listener, he had, since 1972, been sending the broadcaster his conspiracy-oriented monographs. Brussell had even met with Roberts in San Francisco, later describing him as a “Casper Milquetoast” type. She didn’t encourage her protégé to take the letters too seriously. She eventually broke with Brussell, and visited Roberts. He struck Caruana as a real-life James Bond, living in a world of spies, assassinations and tapped phones - hardly a “Milquetoast” type. Roberts convinced her that he had indeed invented a synthetic ruby used in laser research, and that he often sold artificial gemstones to foreign governments in exchange for secret data. “It was,” Caruana averred, “a worldwide information network on the highest level.” In short: Caruana became a convert. The Skeleton Key - her concise rendition of the world according to Roberts - was her protestation of faith. All previous attempts to analyze the Gemstone “thesis” (as proponents grandly call it) have presumed that said thesis originated with a credible individual privy to information unavailable to the average person. If Bruce Robert really were a paranoid schizophrenic (as Caruana first suspected), or if he possessed no informants within the intelligence community, what value would anyone place on the claims made in either the Skeleton Key or the sequestered letters which begat it? His would be the story of just another lonely buff who spent his days clipping newspapers and speculating about the tales behind the headlines. Such a buff is entitled to his opinions, of course. But, as the low-yet-apt axiom reminds us, opinions are like assholes: Everybody has one. Roberts, we are told, had something more, something nobody else possessed - secret sources of explosive information. Did he really? At the time Roberts wrote, mystery still surrounded Onassis, who had offended many when he took the martyred President’s widow as an apparent trophy wife. The CIA’s planted stories perfumed his reputation; many believed him capable of anything. Nowadays, those who receive their history from scholars, and not from samizdat, can put his career in perspective. Bruce Roberts’ suggestion - that the industrialist’s handwriting was mimicked by a computer - is simply inane. Such a job cannot be done by today’s computers, and certainly not by those available during Hughes’ lifetime. Watergate. Could the Skeleton Key be correct when it suggests G. Gordon Liddy decided to use the term “Gemstone” after his team heard Roberts hold court at a San Francisco bar in February of 1972? The chronology works against this idea. Liddy formally presented his “Gemstone” plan to Nixon’s Attorney General in January, 1972; the Plumbers’ chief dirty trickster had formulated the plan roughly a month earlier. No book on the Watergate scandal makes any mention of the Plumbers team travelling en masse to San Francisco at that busy time; their schedules would seem to rule out a cross-country drinking spree. And why would Liddy, who has gleefully admitted criminality, keep secret any bar-room encounters with Roberts? At the risk of getting ahead of the story, I should note that the original Roberts letters from this period do not make notable use of the word “gemstone;” he fixated on that term later, after newspapers revealed Liddy’s plan. Many have suggested that the Watergate break-in concerned the financial links between Nixon and Hughes, which were well-known at the time. The idea hardly began with Bruce Roberts. And if video cameras captured the Watergate break-in, why on earth would anyone keep this visual record secret? JFK. The Skeleton Key’s version of the JFK murder is a fantasia on themes familiar from the assassination literature available at the time Roberts wrote. The enigmatic Eugene Hale Brading, fingered by Roberts as one of the shooters, cropped up in many news stories in 1967, when New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison tried to extradite him; a 1973 book by Peter Noyes, Legacy of Doubt, deals with Brading at length. Roberts claims that Mafia capo Johnny Roselli shot Kennedy from the famous grassy knoll, and then disappeared “down a manhole behind the fence.” No such manhole ever existed. Roselli’s involvement with the CIA’s anti-Castro assassination plots was revealed in a March 3, 1967 column by the renown Drew Pearson and Jack Anderson, a column which also makes a garbled argument that Mafia/CIA joint efforts led to Kennedy’s assassination. That famous article could easily have inspired Roberts. The idea of a chieftain like Roselli performing the hit personally seems ludicrous; one can as easily visualize the CEO of Sears making a house call to fix a washing machine. The Patty Hearst kidnapping and the Zebra Murders. On these two subjects, Roberts reflects the broadcast views of Mae Brussell. Since he was a Brussell listener, we need look no further for the source of his information. Naïve conspiracy buffs tend to believe that a claim has been “verified” when multiple parties (in this case, Brussell and Roberts) say the same thing. But one should never confuse repetition with confirmation. The claimants must be independent. Sodium Morphate. Roberts makes these four statements about the putative super-poison: 1. It smells like apples. 2. It has been used since the Middle Ages. 3. It does not show up during autopsy. 4. It is a common ingredient in rat poison. He insisted on this last point to Caruana in a face-to-face interview. In fact, no package of rat poison has ever listed this substance, which remains unmentioned in any book on toxins. To dispatch rats, one generally uses arsenic, strychnine, or warfarin, none of which smells like apples. The term “morphate” implies a morphine derivative, but morphine was impossible to synthesize in medieval times - and it, too, does not smell like apples. Morphine can indeed kill (as Caruana has pointed out), but one would need very large amounts to use it as she and Roberts suggest, since ingestion (as opposed to injection) decimates the drug’s potency. An autopsy would quickly reveal morphine’s presence. While opiates can provide an excellent means of dispatching a known intravenous drug user, anyone “seasoning” an enemy’s supper has a choice of far more efficient toxic substances. Many readers mistakenly refer to Caruana’s Skeleton Key as “The Gemstone File,” despite the fact that Caruana clearly explains, in the first few paragraphs of her work, that she has boiled down the content of roughly 400 handwritten pages, housed within one of Mae Brussell’s file cabinets. Even that number was but part of the whole: According to Caruana, Roberts compiled at least 1000 manuscript pages, outlining his view of the Grand Conspiracy. No-one knows what happened to the other 600-odd pages; someone probably trashed them after the author’s death, although Caruana reportedly holds a tiny sampling. (She has not shared them.) The surviving letters are the 351 pages - the actual number, as it turns out - sent to “Conspiracy Queen” Mae Brussell. These pages constitute the actual Gemstone file. As I flipped through page after page of Roberts’ quirky (but mostly legible) handwriting, certain facts became clear: 1. His alleged sources of “inside” information would remain as nameless as ever. In all likelihood, they never existed. (In one letter, Roberts claims that he sold a synthetic ruby to a foreign country in exchange for the diary of Aristotle Onassis. He never describes this diary, never quotes from it, never reveals its location, never names the country that held it, and never hints at a knowledge of Greek.) 2. Many of the allegations mentioned in the Skeleton Key have no echo in the original letters. The precis presents a more complete conspiracy theory than does the original text! 3. Most importantly, the letters confirm the suspicions of the Skeleton Key’s more level-headed commentators: Bruce Roberts was severely mentally ill. He was not merely neurotic, foolish, wrong-headed, eccentric, fanatical, odd, single-minded, silly, mistaken, paranoid or any of the other adjectives commonly used to describe conspiracy buffs. He was insane. Not even a whisper of proof backs his many grand claims about himself. There is no evidence that he personally determined the course of elections, that his writings paved the way for Chinese entry into the U.N., and that the Hughes corporation stole his method of creating synthetic rubies. Anyone familiar with the writings produced by schizophrenics will immediately recognize Bruce Roberts’ repetitive, shapeless “brain-dump” literary style. (Excerpts from his letters, below, demonstrate his delusional state.) In the end, one can only laugh at the absurdity of it all, the way Walter Houston laughed at the close of Treasure of the Sierra Madre. The Gemstone “thesis” had circled the globe. For many people, it had become an article of faith. The hidden oeuvre of Bruce Roberts provided that faith with its foundation. And his logos now stood revealed as the howling of a lunatic. Mae Brussell publicly expressed antipathy for the Skeleton Key, yet she never described for her audience the unmistakable odor of psychosis scenting Roberts’ letters. Why didn’t she? Perhaps out of embarrassment: For a brief period, she took a few of his ideas at least semi-seriously. She also considered selling the letters; insulting the wares didn’t serve her interest. But the deeper answer probably concerns her own reputation as the “Conspiracy Queen.” Anyone who seriously considers notions outside the political consensus inevitably has his or her sanity questioned, often quite unfairly. One can easily understand why Mae hesitated to label another theorist crazy, even one who clearly deserved the charge. I don’t think Mae Brussell was a nut, but she wasn’t always wise. She disallowed copying or distributing the letters in her possession because she had formed a poor opinion of Roberts and hoped to discourage interest in his work. This strategy backfired. The legend of the hidden cache only made the Gemstone mythos more intriguing. This situation brings to mind an amusing - and instructive - scene in Monty Python’s Life of Brian. The title character, fleeing pursuers in old Jerusalem, poses as a street preacher. He tries to speak his mind rationally and clearly, only to have the audience heckle him. The pursuers vanish. Brian, now safe, suddenly breaks off in mid-sentence and walks away. Instantly, the crowd becomes fascinated: What the hell was he going to say? They follow him, desperate for more words, trying to piece together his message from the few clues available. Brian discourages further questioning; naturally, his silence only transforms his followers into fanatics. Thus is born a myth: Mystery, not knowledge, creates faith. Can the Gemstone myth survive the end of the mystery? Probably not. Then again, one should never underestimate the human capacity for rationalization. Bruce Roberts vs. MMORDIS If the excerpts below seem tediously extensive, I apologize - but many people have waited decades to see the true Gemstone File, and they deserve some satisfaction. Despite the length of these extracts, certain die-hard conspiracists will no doubt accuse me of quoting selectively in order to make Roberts look bad. The only way to silence those claims is to make the entire file available -- as it soon shall be. While Roberts manages to write semi-reasonably (albeit vaguely) for the first twenty-or-so pages of the Gemstone File, the veneer of rationality soon flakes away - with results that you can judge for yourself. The quotes below are representative. Our first example comes from a letter written to Ralph Nader. (If a copy of this missive ever reached its intended recipient, Nader surely trashed it long ago.) Throughout his one-way correspondence with the famed consumer advocate, Bruce Roberts alternates between asking Nader for help and accusing him of being part of the Mafia. Since this is an early letter, the wording is fairly comprehensible - at first:
There follows a paragraph in which Roberts discusses his ancestry: “I was born Welsh, Scottish and Irish, apparently in equal thirds.” Then he gets back on the Mafia trail:
A short while later:
A few comments on the foregoing: 1. Many books discuss the three secrets of Fatima, which have nothing to do with the claims made above. 2. Judging from references in other letters, Roberts’ father suffered from cancer. Bruce Roberts himself died in 1976 of a tumor. These facts explain why he fixates on the word “cancer.” If, as Caruana reports, his tumor was in the brain, much else is explained as well. 3. Throughout the file, the writer frequently claims that the election of Richard Nixon resulted from certain actions Roberts took following a 1968 hit-and-run accident in San Francisco. This same accident, we are told, also led to the tragic death of Mary Jo Kopechne at Chappaquiddick. Alas, the writer fails to clarify exactly how these events link together. Neither does he help us comprehend why Nixon supposedly complained about “that asshole Roberts” during the infamous 18 ½ minute gap in a key Watergate tape. Nor does Roberts ever explain his claims of personal responsibility for Watergate, the Nixon resignation, and General Motors’ settlement offer to Ralph Nader (which ended the consumer advocate’s famed class action lawsuit). In various letters, Roberts asserts that his ruby-making abilities give him an unlimited source of wealth. He recounts one instance when he offered one such jewel to a buyer representing a Third World government. The buyer allegedly responded: “You ask for $1,000 for your stone. We feel its true value is $3,500 American dollars. How would you like payment?” Roberts later claims that he sold this same country “a piece of gravel that I picked up in front of Alioto’s City Hall for $2,500. I shipped it wrapped in a few sheets of whys.” (The term “whys” apparently refers to Roberts’ rambling screeds, which he believed foreign governments desperately wanted to read. For some reason, his mad mind always linked the concepts of selling his letters and selling physical gemstones.) And yet, despite these enviable international transactions, and despite his alchemical abilities, we read the following:
In a subsequent letter, Roberts (then in his 50s) dickers with Mom over the electric bill. You may have thought that a man who could make his own rubies would live in higher style. Now you know better. The selections presented so far show Roberts on his best behavior. Eventually, he reaches fever pitch. This passage, chosen at random, comes from a letter to his mother:
Page 187 constitutes the masterpiece of the Gemstone File. Words cannot adequately describe its unsettling aura of psychopathology. Much of the page features a photocopied portrait shot of Joan Kennedy (at the time, Senator Edward Kennedy’s wife), as originally printed in Good Housekeeping. Above it, Roberts reproduces the magazine’s masthead, then pens in the following indicia: “PUBLISHED BY HEARST CORP. WE SQUAT ON BUSTED NOSE MARY JO’S U.S. GRAVE.” A crudely-drawn word balloon makes Mrs. Kennedy announce, in massive letters: “WE ATE MARY JO’S LIVER!” This announcement is followed by smaller lettering: “Teddy and me and the U.S. of Mafia.” Roberts surrounds his memorable graphic with a great deal of tiny handwritten marginalia. The words scroll across the page both vertically and horizontally. Anyone who has ever studied the unusual messages printed on bottles of Dr. Bronner’s soap will experience déjà vu upon seeing this page of the File. But even Dr. Bronner’s essays sound more rational than the following aria - which, apparently, is meant to represent the thoughts of Joan Kennedy:
From this point forward, Roberts - whether speaking as “Joan” or in his own voice - seizes upon the “liver-eating” leitmotif with all the zeal of Dr. Lecter:
And you thought that scene in Monty Python’s Meaning of Life was just a joke! Later, in the same corpulent paragraph, we find this:
Later still, the undying paragraph offers this noteworthy sentence:
No doubt he did so with fava beans and a nice Chianti. Believe it or not, the above-quoted paragraph goes on for another two pages. History does not record Ralph Nader’s reaction. When the mighty screed finally ends, Roberts takes us on an even stranger interlude:
Next, the Gemstone File gives us a Roberts-eye view of familiar assassination lore. We are told that Sirhan was hypnotized, as was Arthur Bremer, the man who attempted to kill George Wallace. These passages will probably spur some conspiracy buffs to argue that Roberts must have had inside information about MKULTRA, the CIA mind control program, which was not revealed publicly until after his death. In fact, he could have lifted the notion of a hypnotized assassin from any number of sources, such as Richard Condon’s famous novel The Manchurian Candidate; there was also much talk of hypnosis during Sirhan’s trial. As for JFK: According to the File (but not the Skeleton Key!) Robert Maheu - the CIA veteran who, as we have already noted, became Howard Hughes’ major domo - fired the fatal shot from the overpass, apparently unseen by the many others who stood there. Perhaps those witnesses found themselves on the menu. According to Roberts: “Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren ate the livers - for Onassis - of all those who were murdered over Dallas...” Oddly, the Skeleton Key does not name Maheu as the shooter. In Caruana’s text, the triggermen are mob boss Johnny Roselli, Jimmy “the weasel” Fratianno, mysterious con-artist Eugene Hale Brading - and Lee Harvey Oswald, who aimed at Texas Governor John Connally. Perhaps Stephanie Caruana can explain this discrepancy between the original letters and her summary. I doubt that she or anyone else could explain why a capo like Roselli would do his own “wet work.” Eventually, the Moose returns for further commentary:
Exit the Moose, disguised as a penguin. Sadly, he makes no further appearances on the Gemstone stage. (Although I’m told he has a cameo appearance during the opening credits of Monty Python and the Holy Grail. There is something eerie about the way Roberts anticipates so many of their best-loved routines...) Bruce Roberts was not afraid to name names, especially the name of the “cancerous” organization he fought. Usually, he referred to it as “The Mafia” - although that word apparently meant something different to him than it did to, say, Mario Puzo. Schizophrenics often communicate in cryptic metaphors and symbolic language; thus, Roberts uses “Mafia” as a generic term for “the bad guys,” while “liver-eating” presumably means “murder.” However, he does occasionally employ a more specific label for The Enemy. He begins one of the earlier letters (dated Feb. 4, 1972) by announcing proof of a conspiracy to destroy the United States “by the group known as Mmordis.” Deeper in the File, there are further references to this organization. Roberts makes clear that this name is not just his own slang term for his opponents; “MMORDIS” is what the conspirators call themselves. From page 156:
Finally, on page 196, we learn what the acronym MMORDIS stands for:
I have yet to determine whether MMORDIS, like the Trilateral Comission, has a street address and a receptionist. (“Hello, this is Mouldering Mass Of Rotten Dribbling Infectious Shit. How may I direct your call?”) As of this writing, they don’t have a web page. To round out our survey, here are a couple of excerpts. The first, chosen entirely at random, comes from page 300:
The following is from one of the last pages in the Gemstone File:
There may be some highly illuminated conspiracy aficionados who will find the above passages perfectly comprehensible. They are the lucky ones. Her “Skeleton Key” stands revealed as a hoax, since it never mentions Mmordis, mooseheads, nonstop liver luncheons, Bruce Robert’s claims of personal responsibility for Chappaquiddick and Nixon’s election, and a myriad cognate inanities. In short, Caruana deliberately and disingenuously covered up much of the madness at the heart of the File. Throughout the past quarter-century, she has refused to publish the few pages of Roberts’ writings still in her possession. Now we know why: Like other schizophrenics, he wrote in an impenetrable stream-of-consciousness style best described as “word salad.” The actual words of Bruce Roberts - an alcoholic with a brain tumor and hallucinations of importance - should now cause all Gemstone aficionados a great deal of embarrassment. But I doubt that Stephanie Caruana is capable of feeling embarrassed. True zealots rarely are.
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Bruce
Roberts, shown with Hollywood celebrity Carmen Miranda in the
only known photo to exist of him, published in Project Seek
by Gerald Carroll.
Bill
& Alice Adler