Thomas Merton’s Death and Fake Opposition

The pitch at the muckraking web site known as Brasscheck looks like a winner at first glance. See if you can spot the joker in the deck:

1968 was the year the U. S. went all-in in the Vietnam War. 16,597 American servicemen were killed that year. This was 50% more than any other year of the war.

Things were particularly bloody at home too.

Specifically, the country’s top three anti-war leaders, each of whom represented a major demographic segment of the country, were murdered:

1. Martin Luther King – the African-American leader of the Civil Rights Movement
2. Robert F. Kennedy – the most likely presidential candidate for the Democrats in ’68
3. Thomas Merton – the most popular priest at the time in the Catholic Church

Thomas Merton?

Many people think that Thomas Merton was electrocuted by a faulty ceiling fan in the bedroom of a retreat center he was staying at in Thailand.

Many people believe in the Easter Bunny too.

Currently, there is NOTHING on YouTube that explains the following five points in a single video:

1. Who Thomas Merton was
2. What he said about the war (and other issues of justice)
3. How respected and influential he was
4. How despised he was by the hierarchy of the Catholic Church
and others who were pro-war in 1968
5. The utter preposterousness of the official “story” of how he died

The 50th anniversary of Merton’s death is coming up this year December.

We at Brasscheck would like to shed some serious rain on the parade of the professional propagandists who are going to commemorate this date with a watered down rehash of the original bogus story.

We note that the “other team” is already getting revved up for the date. A few years ago an Irish “religious writer” of note was hired to float the idea that Merton committed suicide.

This story is even more ludicrous than the one about him getting electrocuted by a ceiling fan.

We’d like to put together a video that explains who Merton was and points out the obvious: he was murdered.

Who murdered him is not known, but why he was murdered certainly is.

He opposed a war that the powers-that-be wanted to continue and escalate and he was high profile and respected enough that his opinions had the potential to cause real trouble for the war mongers.

The murder of authentic American leaders – something I believe is ongoing today – is a fact of American history and present day reality.

There should be at least one video on the Internet that tells this story.

We’re looking for Brasscheck subscribers who want to financially support this effort.

The budget is a modest $2,000 for a video of approximately 10 minutes.

If you’re interested in supporting the putting of this important story into the public record, please click here.

A ceiling fan? Getting electrocuted by a ceiling fan would be pretty preposterous, you must admit. How do you even go about even reaching the part that might shock you? Everyone who knows anything about Thomas Merton knows, or think they know, that the official story is that Merton was shocked to death by a floor fan after emerging wet from a shower, right?

Actually, that is the popular false narrative; it is not even the official story. The only official investigation that was ever done was by the Thai police, and they concluded without benefit of an autopsy, and making no mention of the bleeding wound in the back of Merton’s head, that Merton was already dead from heart failure before coming into contact with that (Hitachi) fan in which the police said a faulty cord “had been installed.” The accidental electrocution story comes to us compliments of the American press, American book writers, and a couple of dodgy individuals at Merton’s home abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky, one of whom invented the shower story almost five years after the event.

It is indeed true that a German nun, who also happened to be a medical doctor, examined Merton before the police arrived and noting the burns on him directly under the fan that lay across his dry, supine body, clad in the bottom half of short pajamas, believed that electrocution must have been the cause of death. But she and the three other witnesses were also very much puzzled. They couldn’t figure out how he got into that position, especially since neither of his hands was close to the fan and there were no apparent electricity burns on either hand. The bleeding wound in the back of Merton’s head ignored by the police report was severe and prominent enough that a number of people commented upon it.

Everyone was expecting that there would be an autopsy to answer the many questions about the scene that they observed. Surely, they felt, it would not confirm the Thai conclusion that there had been an extraordinary coincidence in which Merton had suffered a fatal heart attack and then had fallen into a faulty fan, contact with which, they say, could well have been lethal but for the fact that he happened to be dead already.

Given, though, that that was apparently the set Thai police conclusion, it’s easy to see why they would not have conducted an autopsy. But we must also account for the fact that the body was never even taken to a Thai medical facility or morgue. Instead, the U.S. military rather quickly took possession of the body and transported it to their own hospital in Thailand. They embalmed the body, but they did not conduct an autopsy, either. The final chance to learn anything about the cause of death, particularly how deep that head wound went, was passed up by the abbot of the Gethsemani Abbey, who had Merton buried quickly upon the arrival of his body.

Toppled Straw Men

So what’s with this crazy “ceiling fan” business? With such a target rich environment for raising legitimate questions about Merton’s death, why would anyone introduce such a phony absurdity as this? Well, all we can say is that it is nothing new in the ongoing Merton death cover-up for someone to trot out a charge that can be easily shot down. The following section is adapted from Chapter 11, “The Catholic News Service’s Straw Men,” of the recently published book that I co-wrote with Hugh Turley, The Martyrdom of Thomas Merton: An Investigation.

One method to conceal truth is to plant a false story that is easily debunked and then replace it with your own false story. The press often employs this strategy, and a good example is seen in the Merton cover-up. In May of 1980, The Tennessee Register, the diocesan newspaper of Nashville, published a story by Joseph Sweat alleging that the CIA had murdered Merton.

On May 19, 1980, the National Catholic News Service circulated Sweat’s story based on anonymous “friends” of Merton, with obvious errors that could easily be refuted. The story said Merton was in the city of Bangkok, bathing in his hotel room, when an agent knocked an electric fan into Merton’s bathtub. The story said that Bangkok authorities who investigated Merton’s death were unsure whether the fan fell in the tub or Merton touched it while getting out. The Catholic wire service spread this false story to a broader audience, reaching even England and Canada.

The National Catholic News Service acts like the Associated Press, and diocesan newspapers subscribe to the service to publish articles. Why did the National Catholic News Service plant this self-discrediting story about Merton from anonymous sources? One may deduce the answer from how it was used.

The National Catholic News Service had set the table for the false story to be debunked, only to be replaced by another more palatable false narrative. This is one of the Seventeen Techniques for Truth Suppression, popular on the Internet, known as “Knock down straw men.” That is #4 in the techniques, often opening the door for #2, “Wax indignant.”

The Catholic New Times of Toronto published a response to Sweat’s story from John Howard Griffin, the original authorized Merton biographer who died before he could finish his work, which appeared on June 8, 1980. Griffin pointed out the glaring errors in the story, concluding that there were no grounds for the speculation that the CIA had murdered Merton. It ran a photograph of Griffin with the headline “Report on Merton’s Death False.” Griffin said that an electrical short in a Hitachi fan had caused Merton’s death.

On August 3, 1980, a stronger rebuttal to Sweat’s story came in the Sunday edition of the Louisville Courier-Journal in a front-page story by John C. Long, titled “Revival of theory about Monk’s death distresses friend.” Brother Patrick Hart, Merton’s recently appointed secretary at Merton’s home Gethsemani Abbey near Louisville, was featured as the distressed friend of Merton upset by the rumors spread by Sweat, and he called it irresponsible journalism and nonsense.

After condemning Sweat’s article, Brother Patrick and the Courier-Journal “set the record straight” with their own errors. They said that the official reports had concluded that Merton had died of a heart attack caused by an electric shock. This error is the exact opposite of the Thai official reports. The Thai reports said that heart failure caused him to fall into the electrified fan.

Another technique for truth suppression is to baldly and brazenly lie. The Courier Journal introduced the error that water was involved in Merton’s death by saying that the only thing in Sweat’s article that agreed with the eyewitnesses was that Merton had been bathing and was shocked by an electric fan. But, as is explained in The Martyrdom of Thomas Merton, no witness at the scene and none of the Thai official reports said Merton had been bathing.

Brother Patrick quite presumptuously declared that no one at the Abbey of Gethsemani ever thought that the CIA had been involved in any way with Merton’s death. Brother Patrick, a Christian, came to the defense of an organization known for secrecy, torture, and, yes, assassination. Brother Patrick defended the CIA by accusing his friend Merton of accidentally killing himself. He did this in very nearly the same manner as one of Vince Foster’s sisters. In a story different from what she originally told the police, the sister defended the authorities and the press by blaming her brother in his very suspicious death. While it should carry hardly any weight at all, the press, with its implied “How dare you?” cry, makes it carry the greatest weight.

The article reported that Brother Patrick was troubled by Sweat’s use of anonymous sources and his many errors, resulting from his failure to check out the facts. According to Brother Patrick, the facts could be found in The Asian Journal of Thomas Merton, published in 1973, which contained a letter from six people who were at the scene and a well-researched narrative by Brother Patrick, himself.

Brother Patrick complained about anonymous sources and then recommended his own account that does not name any of the witnesses. Sweat had the basic facts wrong, but the facts in Brother Patrick’s postscript to The Asian Journal of Thomas Merton could hardly be more wrong, themselves, and they were wrong in a fundamentally pernicious way. The story of Merton being wet from a shower when he came into contact with a suddenly faulty floor fan, made up from whole cloth almost five years after the event, became the icing on the accidental-electrocution cake.

Standing Straw Men

So far, Brasscheck’s ceiling-fan straw man has not been knocked down. Readers might be surprised to learn that there is another self-discrediting story out there about Merton’s death, which, although it has not been knocked down like Joseph Sweat’s story, still serves to discredit the notion that Merton might have been assassinated instead of dying from an accident.

“Merton was found electrocuted by a handheld hair dryer that had fallen into his bathwater.  This was especially suspicious since Merton was bald and would have had no reason to use a hair dryer.  He was found dead in the bathtub.”

One can find that statement in Andrew Young’s 2008 book, An Easy Burden: The Civil Rights Movement and the Transformation of America. Where could this notion have come from? Why would Young make up something so absurd, which really hardly even resembles anything that anyone has reported about the death?

The most likely answer, I believe, is very revealing. Young was probably not his book’s primary author. The main author or authors would likely have been Deep State scribes, and in that capacity, used the opportunity to sprinkle in pointed disinformation. Should anyone decide to try to pick up this story and run with it, he could be shot down in the same way that Sweat was shot down, and the false narrative could be further reinforced.

Brasscheck seems to put out a lot of good stuff, but it is very difficult to believe that their ceiling fan blunder is just an honest mistake. They state it twice, after all. It looks very much like they are intentionally muddying the water. It also looks like a desperate attempt to patch up the cover-up wall around Thomas Merton’s death that had held up for almost half a century by once again putting out fake-opposition information. If this opening foray is any indication, one can expect that follow-up video to be full of it. But it’s really too late for that. As we conclude in the foreword to The Martyrdom of Thomas Merton, we have broken down that cover-up wall for good, and there’s no rebuilding it.

David Martin

July 18, 2018

Addendum

On July 23, Michael W. Higgins takes a page from the National Catholic News Service playbook in an article published in Toronto’s Globe and Mail, Canada’s influential version of The New York Times. He begins his article this way:

The year 1968 was momentous on several fronts: historical, political and moral. France was roiled with student rebellion, Prague’s spark of freedom was doused and the United States was traumatized by the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy.

The Catholic world, too, had its upheavals: Its principal spiritual writer and most popular monk, Thomas Merton, died by accidental electrocution (although the hoary charge that he was assassinated surfaces hydra-like on a periodic basis)…(emphasis added)

With his “hoary charge” wording he is hearkening back to the fake opposition episodes we have described, and with his use of the present tense he is making a veiled reference to our book, demonstrating that he knows all about it. He might also be playing off the widely distributed Brasscheck video. It won’t work this time. At least in our case, he is not dealing with fake opposition, and he has nothing to counter us (We’re not talking about lethal ceiling fans or hair dryers falling into bathtubs.), so he can only resort to a wave of the hand dismissal.

Also, President Trump’s electoral success in the face of implacable press opposition has demonstrated that the information playing field has changed forever. A quick search of the Internet will quickly tell a curious reader that Higgins is just blowing smoke with his hoary claim—based upon virtually no evidence—that Thomas Merton accidentally electrocuted himself.

Readers should also be aware that this is the same Michael Higgins who wrote in his 1999 book, Heretic Blood: The Spiritual Geography of Thomas Merton, that Merton cried out when he became stuck to the fan after emerging wet from a shower. Not a word of what he wrote is true. We talk about Higgins and his erroneous statements on page 188 of our book.

David Martin

July 26, 2018

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