Talk Show Hostess Continues Merton Death Cover-Up

Ideology can be very crippling to one’s critical faculties. We were recently treated to a very stark example of the phenomenon. It began with an email that I received on March 24, 2018:

Hello!

My name is Maria Johnson. I host and produce "Reasonably Catholic: Keeping the Faith," a progressive-minded radio show which airs and streams from Wesleyan University's radio station and which is also distributed via the Pacifica Network's AudioPort.

For some years, I've been interested in whether Thomas Merton was murdered, and today, poking around online, I happened on a reference to your new book! I'm writing to ask if you and/or Mr. Turley would be willing to prerecord an interview about it.

If so, could you send a copy of the book to: Maria Johnson, WESU-FM, 45 Broad St., Middletown, CT 06457?

You can get a sense of the program at www.reasonablycatholic.com.

Thanks for considering my request and letting me know your thoughts.

Best,

Maria

I responded that we would be glad to be interviewed, but since Kevin Barrett had already interviewed me, I figured that it was Hugh Turley’s turn and I volunteered him for the assignment. From that point on, all the interaction was between Turley and Johnson. He sent her a copy of our book, The Martyrdom of Thomas Merton: An Investigation, and waited for her to arrange the interview about it. After the passage of some time, Johnson emailed that she had received the book and that she would be setting a date for the interview. Some more time passed, and Turley finally received a date and a time of May 10 at 10 am.

Before we get into what transpired, we need to look back at Ms. Johnson’s initial email to detect trouble on the horizon. The key words are “progressive-minded.” That is to say that Ms. Johnson is likely to be a mainstream tribal leftist of the Dianne Rehm stripe, and the public radio station of WESU, broadcasting out of Wesleyan University, might be regarded as the Connecticut equivalent of Rehm’s home station of WAMU, headquartered in Washington, DC’s American University. The name of her program further suggests that she is hardly from the conservative wing of the Catholic Church.

Turley and I, by contrast, are pure empiricists who follow the evidence where it leads us. In our book we are not bashful about the fact that it was the Vince Foster death case early in the Bill Clinton administration that brought us together. We talk about it right off the bat in our foreword. We both live and work in the Washington, DC, area. I was immediately drawn to the case because Foster and I graduated from Davidson College only two years apart and because the propagandistic media coverage reminded me so much of the media coverage of the John F. Kennedy assassination. Turley sort of fell into the Foster case when, returning from one of his professional magic performances, he decided, out of curiosity, to check out Fort Marcy Park in Virginia where Foster’s body had been found, and he encountered Reed Irvine there, who was the head of the conservative organization, Accuracy in Media, and a Foster-case skeptic.

The Catholics who are attracted to Thomas Merton tend to be drawn, for the most part, from those on the left end of the political spectrum, on account of his anti-war writings and his willingness to explore other religions for spiritual guidance. That fact would explain Ms. Johnson’s interest in our book, but, as we shall see, she seems to have choked upon our freewheeling empiricism. Turley’s memorandum for the record says it all. The interview, he tells me, lasted a bit less than ten minutes:

Maria called me at 10:00 on May 10^th, as we had agreed, to interview me about the book I co-authored with David Martin, The Martyrdom or Thomas Merton: An Investigation.

She began our conversation by introducing me and mentioning my co-author and the title of our book.

She told me that for a long time she had been suspicious about the death of Thomas Merton and was excited when she heard about our book. I asked her how she had heard of the book. She said that she could not recall, but thought it must have been something she had read on the Internet. She told me that she had lots of questions, so many that she thought that her interview of me might last more than one hour and perhaps take two hours. I told her that I could answer any question.

Then there was a pause in her voice, and she said she noticed that we mentioned Vincent Foster, who had been in the Clinton Administration, in our book. She asked me what I thought when I heard the term “conspiracy theorist.” I told her that the term is often used to end discussion, and that people seem to have been programmed to hurl it at someone when the topic is in an area that they do not really know and have not examined. I said that I thought the term may have originated with the CIA, and that it is used to end any meaningful discussion. I said that the term does not bother me; it can be a common reaction from people. I told her that we had a poem about the term on the back of the book.

She said, “Yes, it is by your co-author. Can you recite it?” I recited the poem:

Idling Intellect

Whenever “conspiracy theory” I hear,

I know that a brain has gone out of gear.

The common phenomenon again I behold

Of a person determined to believe what he’s told

By the press and the political powers that be

Who have long had no credibility.

It’s a sad thing to witness the widespread condition

Of critical faculties out of commission.

And a once-proud people cowed into submission.

Then Maria asked me what I thought about 9/11. I told her that I was not an expert on 9/11. I told her I did not think that the full story had been told. She asked if I thought it was an inside job by the government. Again I told her that I was not an expert on this subject, but that I did not think that the official story was the full truth.

She then said that she was getting uncomfortable and that she needed to ask me a question as a litmus test before proceeding further: “What do you think about Sandy Hook?” she asked. I was at a loss for a moment. Sandy Hook? I knew I had heard of it. What was it again? I was trying to recall. I seemed to remember it was a school shooting somewhere in New England, but was it Connecticut or Massachusetts? I wasn’t sure. I could not remember the shooter’s name or any details about it, other than that it was an elementary school.

I told her that I did not know enough about Sandy Hook to have an opinion of the event. I told her that I knew there were skeptics, but I never researched Sandy Hook, so I don’t know what really happened. *

She then told me she thought this interview would have to end.

I told her that I am qualified to talk about the death of Thomas Merton. I wrote a book about it. I also co-authored the final 20 pages of the official report on the death of Vincent Foster that Ken Starr was ordered to include as part of the final report on Foster’s death. I told her that could talk about the death of Thomas Merton or Vincent Foster because those are subjects that I am an expert on.

I said that if you were interviewing a biologist, you shouldn’t expect them to answer questions about chemistry. I am not qualified to talk about Amelia Earhart or moon landings; those are not my subject areas, either. I am well qualified to talk about the book about Thomas Merton that I co-authored.

She told me, “Reasonable people all agree that the official story about Sandy Hook is the truth, and I am going to have to end this interview.” And then she hung up.

Patrick Knowlton, John Clarke, and I did scores of talk radio interviews about the death of Vincent Foster. Some interviewers were open to what we said and some interviewers were skeptical and tried to challenge us. I never before had to pass a test on a subject that I did not know anything about in order to be interviewed about a subject that I know.

The Foster case is something that the molders of public opinion have told us that only extreme right-wing conservatives are supposed to care about. Donald Trump played to that audience when he declared during the presidential campaign that there was something “fishy” about it, but then he let it drop. No one anywhere near the reins of power would ever direct anyone to fbicover-up.com or to my writings on the subject.

The aforementioned Patrick Knowlton is the key witness in the Foster case who stopped in at Fort Marcy Park for an emergency urination at the time that Foster was lying dead in the back of the park. He observed two cars parked there, one unoccupied Honda with Arkansas license plates that was an older model and of a very different color from Foster’s Honda. The other car was occupied by a sinister-looking, swarthy man of apparent Hispanic or Middle Eastern ethnicity who eyed him suspiciously as Knowlton found a nearby tree for privacy purposes as he answered the call of nature. The FBI would later falsely report—as would government “critic” Christopher Ruddy—that the car Knowlton saw was Foster’s and that Knowlton had said that he would not be able to identify the person in the car who had put the evil eye on him. Knowlton was harassed on the streets of Washington by a number of men after he received a grand jury subpoena by Kenneth Starr’s investigative team. Turley would later assist Knowlton and his lawyer, Clarke (both of whom, like the present writer, were lifelong Democratic voters before becoming involved in the Foster case) prepare a submission to the District of Columbia Court of Appeals that completely destroys Starr’s conclusion that Foster committed suicide. The three-judge panel that appointed Starr ordered him to include that submission in his official final report over Starr’s strenuous objections. As it turned out, Starr didn’t really have to worry about the submission being included in the report because the American press duly blacked out the news of its existence.

These are facts that we give a quick synopsis of in the foreword to our book, not only explaining how Turley and I came to work together, but also establishing Turley’s credentials as a first-rate investigator who follows leads wherever they take him. Turley also has a number of qualities that are similar to Merton’s. He is a devout Catholic whose spiritual life is important to him. He also manages, without taking refuge in a monastery, to remain relatively unspoiled by the din of “news” and popular culture around us. Like Merton, though, the things that Turley knows, he knows very well, and like Merton he would be among the last people to let others do his thinking for him concerning a matter he feels to be important and has decided to investigate. With hardly anyone could Maria Johnson’s “litmus test” have been more unfair and inappropriate than with Turley, as he revealed with his follow-up “guilt-trip” email to her:

Dear Maria,

I was disappointed that you cut off your interview of me this morning. I was looking forward to hearing your questions about the death of Thomas Merton.

When you asked me what I thought about Sandy Hook I was at a loss. For a moment I was trying to remember what was “Sandy Hook.” I knew I’d heard of it. Then I remembered that it was a school shooting in New England somewhere, but it is really not something I am in any way qualified to talk about or have an opinion about. If I’d known that my knowledge of Sandy Hook was the qualification to be a guest, I would not have set aside the time to talk with you.

You should know that my wife is severely disabled and needs constant care. In order to speak with you today, I hired a caregiver to be with my wife as I expected to be a guest on your program for one hour. I feel that you took advantage of me by getting me to buy you a book and send it to you and then pay a caregiver to come to my home.

I am an expert on the subjects that I know and I am not qualified to discuss topics that I do not know.

It may amuse you to know that I spent an hour with Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie in their hotel in Washington, D.C. and I had no idea who they were. I am a professional children’s entertainer and I was booked to entertain a family and their children. I did my act and they had a great time. It was not until later when I described the family to a friend who asked me about the wealthy people who reserved the entire floor of an expensive Washington hotel that I learned my customers were famous movie stars.

I am an expert on entertaining families. I am not an expert on movie stars. If you only want people who share your view about Sandy Hook to appear on your program then you should let that be known up front.

If you change your mind and would like to talk about Merton’s death on or off the air, I can answer any questions.

Sincerely,

Hugh Turley

Ms. Johnson did not respond, and therein lies a tale. From the beginning of her interview of Turley, she leaves the impression that she has examined our investigation of Thomas Merton’s death, and, like Pontius Pilate interrogating Jesus Christ, she finds no fault in it. But also as with Pilate, other considerations seem to have taken precedence, and she has decided to wash her hands of the matter. It really would have been better for her had she chosen like so many others simply to look away. Now she has shown that she thoroughly merits the title that we have given to this article and has become a conscious participant in the continuing cover-up of Thomas Merton’s assassination.

* Sandy Hook is apparently such a political hot potato that Nobody Died at Sandy Hook, the 2015 book edited by Jim Fetzer and Mike Palecek, was banned by Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble well before the books that I wrote about in my previous article.

David Martin

May 15, 2018

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