Let Me Explain...

The New Disease

Natalie Wood’s character in Rebel Without a Cause describes the James Dean character as… “the new disease”.

But that was the 1950s and diseases mutate and spread.

Dean’s rebel was not without a cause… he was just without the means of expressing it. That inability is down to how and why we are educated. We are not educated to learn. We are educated to accept and while it works on a majority, in some it creates cognitive dissonance, and in others, a James Dean/Winston Smith feeling of “otherism”, or of something intangibly wrong.

Bob Dylan put it best

Dean’s inability to interpret his environment and the causes of his existential crisis is now the real pandemic. And modern technology is the vector, used to spread false dilemmas and false solutions, while pointing fingers everywhere. Hate and paranoia, not any monarchy, reign over us.

Your governments and institutions lie to you. History is full of examples of propagandists taking advantages of the distrust that creates by offering alternative truths that bend sections of the populace towards cult-like obedience and easy fleecing. Choose your poison.

Either way, it is the ideas and the mindset that trickle down, not economic or spiritual benefits. Technology allows scale of operations and a plethora of scams because there are always far more seeking than there are offering.

The Deep State

Peter Dale Scott said in a recent interview that he regrets popularizing the term “deep state” because it sounds like an actual “thing” or entity, when the fact is that we live in, to quote Scott from that interview “a kind of Hobbesian condition of chaos, a new Gilded Age, with greater and greater accumulations of private power.” And of course, wealth.

Chaos is the perfect state for grifters, fantasists, narcissists, and charlatans to take advantage of “the new disease”.

And apart from politics, few corners of society can give better examples than those inside the conspiracy theory bubble.

I should know. I have spent 20 years inside the self-proclaimed JFK assassination research community. Taking on the grifters and narcissists comes at a cost, physically and mentally.

The JFK Conspiracy Community

Let me give the recent example of Linda O’Hara, who turned up in this “community”, commenting at Jeff Morley’s JFKFacts site around the time of the 50th anniversary of the assassination in 2013 using the name “Leslie Sharp”. She was not previously known by either name by anyone in the community, or at least not widely - and keeps the two entities separate on Social Media, having Facebook pages under both names. So as far as anyone knew, Leslie Sharp was who she was.

I joined JFKFacts as a commenter sometime in 2016. I won’t get into the full gamut of what transpired in the wake of my joining, but in answering a question by Morley as to what the best new evidence in the case was (Oswald’s alibi and the image of an unknown male on the steps), all hell broke loose, and the post was removed as being “off topic” by Morley’s “moderator, one Tom Scully - a person who had been removed as a moderator from the JFK Education forum for bias, and banned from ROKC for trolling. For reasons I cannot fathom, he was desperate to become a moderator again somewhere… anywhere.

As a gentle jab at Tom for his past indiscretions (he had made several attempts at rejoining ROKC under aliases, accompanied by bizarre message), I joined JFKFacts under an old nickname, George. I made no attempt however to conceal who I was, using an email address with my correct name embedded in it. And JFKFacts, like ROKC, allowed the use of aliases. The issue with Scully’s attempts with aliases were the bizarre accompanying messages.

Two of the main antagonists regarding my posts at Morley’s were Ms. Sharp and a fellow by the name of Willy Whitten.

To give some insight into Ms. Sharp, she complained at one stage of those discussions that I had addressed her as “Les”. It’s an Aussie thing to shorten names. You would have thought the world had caved in.

Her response

George, if I intended to be addressed as “Les” my account would not read “Leslie”; if this is indicative of how you process detail, I’m more skeptical than I was initially. It appears more and more to me that you have assigned facts to a series of refrigerator magnets, tossed them on the door, and then rearranged them at will to support your hypothesis. Where is the context, the linear approach to the facts let alone your thinking?

Hilarious in hindsight, knowing now that “Leslie Sharp” was not her real name.

She herself has recently raised those discussions at the JFK Education Forum (where she also posts under the name “Leslie Sharp” despite an alleged hard and fast rule requiring real names). Among her comments there:

And the hubris of Aussies claiming to be experts in interpreting the local vernacular was especially offensive to this Texan who spent fifteen years inside the beast that was Dallas in 1963.

Say again??? She spent 15 years in Dallas in 1963??? Must have been those New Mexican mushrooms.

As best I can recall, her complaint was in regard to Oswald telling his interrogators that he was stopped by a policeman in the vestibule.

Mr. BELIN. By the way, where did this policeman stop him when he was coming down the stairs at the Book Depository on the day of the shooting?

Mr. HOLMES. He said it was in the vestibule.

Mr. BELIN. He said he was in the vestibule?

Mr. HOLMES. Or approaching the door to the vestibule. He was just coming, apparently, and I have never been in there myself. Apparently there is two sets of doors, and he had come out to this front part.

Mr. BELIN. Did he state it was on what floor?

Mr. HOLMES. First floor. The front entrance to the first floor.

First floor (or ground floor, depending on where you live). Any definition of the word will show this is where a vestibule is traditionally located. But Ms. Sharp and Mr. Whitten were having none of it.

Why? Nowhere in the 26 volumes was that space referred to as a vestibule except by Oswald. Instead, Mr. Truly, the building manager, kept referring to a space outside the 2nd floor lunchroom as a “vestibule”, and it was duly referred to as such on a plat made for the commissioners.

Ms. Sharp even found some examples in Europe and one in Florida where vestibules were shown on the second floor.

Alas, she came up with zero examples in Dallas. Unlike the Warren Commission, which inadvertently did give examples - of them on the FIRST floor in other buildings around town.

This included police headquarters, the municipal auditorium, and the apartment block where Sylvia Odio resided

When I pointed out the above examples from the volumes, Linda/Lesley advised me confidently that I was wrong because Odio did not live in an apartment block, but a condominium. That is true. From early October 1963. At the time of the alleged Oswald visit, she did indeed live in an apartment building with a vestibule on the first/ground floor.

Mr. LIEBELER. What was the address of the apartment in which you lived before you moved to Oak Cliff?

Mrs. ODIO. Over in, it was, I am almost sure of the number--1024 Magellan Circle. It is the Crestwood Apartments. I am not sure of the number; I think it is. Mr. LIEBELER. In any event, you were living at the Crestwood Apartments at the time these men came to your apartment?

Mrs. ODIO. That's right. The Crestwood Apartments are full of Cubans.

Mr. LIEBELER. You left the Crestwood Apartments as of the first of October and moved to Oak Cliff?

Mrs. ODIO. That's right exactly.

It is now hard to fathom where I allegedly presented myself as an expert in Dallas vernacular in all of that. Quite obviously, Dallas architects, like most of the rest of the world, placed vestibules in their traditional place - at the front entrance to buildings.

The fact is that the authorities could not have an alleged police encounter at the front door because it makes it impossible for Oswald to have been the shooter. The upshot - the encounter was shifted a floor up and the space outside the lunchroom was substituted as the “vestibule” where the encounter occurred.

Unknown to me at the time was that Ms. Sharp’s vehement resistance to this evidence was predicated on a book she was working on with Hank Albarelli in which Oswald was indeed involved up to his eyeballs.

Ms. Sharp added this to the above comment at the JFK Education Forum:

Following a threat to my physical well-being (which prompted consideration of a call to local FBI), I concluded that these fellows are unstable and unhinged. (caveat: Greg's research in a number of other areas appears solid.)

This leaves the impression that I, or someone close to me, physically threatened “Leslie” and that I (as well as those I associate with), am “unhinged”. Yet in a private message to me in 2022 when she first informed me of the alleged threat “made years earlier”, “Leslie” identified it as coming from a member of my forum and admitted that making threats was not my style. I am no more responsible for what other people do privately, than any other owner of a forum, Nor am I in any position to evaluate her claim as true, or false.

In light of her only recently being outed for using a pen-name, the question is begged; how was was this alleged threat made years ago, ever going to be carried out? There was and is no “Leslie Sharp”. Her claim therefore that she considered contacting the FBI is just nonsense.

How would that conversation go?

LS: Hello? I want to report a threat made to me on Facebook.

FBI Agent Grunt: Your name? Linda O’Hara, but the threat was made to my Leslie Sharp account.

Agent Grunt: So you have an account under an alias?

LS: Yes. Doesn’t everyone? It is the only way to stay safe.

Agent Grunt: But this person knows you are really Linda O’Hara, right?

LS: Heaven’s no! What would be the point of the alias?

Agent Grunt:… I see… and the person’s name?

LS: I’ve forgotten.

Agent Grunt: —-click—-!

Indeed, it is now also difficult to verify very much at all from the JFKFacts website regarding these complaints because numerous of her posts there are MIA.

Coup In Dallas

So how did Leslie Sharp come to be outed as Linda O’Hara? Simple. The book had to be copyrighted in her legal name.

The volume is based on an alleged datebook kept by chef and informant, Pierre Lafitte who it is alleged was the “project manager” of the coup.

Before a parting of the ways, Albarelli had been working with a guy called Major Ganis who had purchased papers allegedly belonging to Otto Skorzeny, the poster-boy of Neo- Nazism - and a caricature even in his own lifetime. The papers were purchased from Alexander Historical Auctions - an auction house well-known for selling fake Nazi memorabilia and documents. Ganis already had form. He was pilloried by descendants of the James family for his fraudulent work on Jesse. Meanwhile the parting with Albarelli left Ganis to write a book on Skorzeny’s alleged role in the assassination, based on what are no doubt, fraudulent documents, and for Albarelli to work on a book based on Lafitte’s alleged datebook which is supposedly littered with both direct and cryptic entries regarding the coup. Just to add to the mix, Lesley’s interpretations of the entries, and explanations as to why the datebook has never been authenticated by experts, are stultifyingly mind-bending. Despite this, or maybe because of this, she does have support and encouragement from a section of the membership. The same people who are and have always been, the marks of the con artist. The same people who, like Dylan’s Mr. Jones, have no idea what is going on…. and I say that with no malice or disrespect intended to them.

Albarelli passed away before the publication of the book. It was left to his two co-writers to complete the work and get it out. The coauthors were Linda O’Hara under her pen-name Leslie Sharp, and a guy named Alan Kent.

The book seems to be the main reason, if not the sole reason for Ms. O’Hara (“Leslie Sharp”) joining the JFK Education Forum. Indeed, the forum was originally designed to be a place where authors could go to help sell their wares and field soft-ball questions from lesser mortals.

Why the alias?

Out of curiosity, I contacted and asked. She referred me to an answer she gave at the Education Forum.

Over dinner in our home, Scott Armstrong was adamant Veciana was telling the truth. In fact, my husband had to put the meal on the back burner while we waited for Scott because he was sitting in their SUV outside our casita talking to Marie Fonzi who had just agreed to turn Gaeton's archives over to MFF. Jeff Morley, once Scott's protégé at WaPo, was involved in the transaction. As we know, Marie is confident Veciana was highly credible.

Once we settled around the table, I boldly asserted I thought Veciana's story was sketchy. It wasn't a cavalier comment. I had reason to question detail about the encounter in Dallas. Following a lovable (but patronizing nonetheless) metaphorical pat on the head from Scott, I recognized that challenging the status quo as determined by the inner-sanctum would be, well, challenging.

Scott's wife, my dear friend, dropped off Jeff's book the following day. I flipped to the index and noted he failed to pursue Win Scott's close ties to Al Ulmer. Russ Baker had stayed with us (another story!). I knew Jeff had missed a significant opportunity, so after twenty years of research I decided to join the public online fray at jfkfacts.

I didn't want to be intimidated by the possibility my good friend Scott -- who I care for and admire deeply -- might be hovering at jfkfacts, so, Leslie Sharp took form. When I finally fessed up, his wife laughed and whispered, I understand completely.

Hank Albarelli followed jfkfacts around that time; four years later, he found Leslie Sharp on FB and the rest is history. . . .

So on the off-chance that a “good friend” might see her make a comment online that he disagrees with - a different opinion which he already knew she holds, she decides she needs to post under a different name. Thin gruel for the use of an alias, in my opinion. How petty does she believe Scott to be?

Her pre-JFKFacts history may hold a different reason for the use of the alias.

Circa 2002: Renowned fraudster and prison escapee (twice appearing on America’s Most Wanted), Michael Souter, was released from prison and used investment money conned out of a prison guard to kickstart an Art Market in his new home town of Santa Fe. One of his early hires for this venture was James O’Hara, husband of Linda.

The market was set up using money from investors who had no idea who they were dealing with. Market stalls were indeed rented out to artists. But the proposed restaurant was never built and money disappeared without trace.

One of the alleged victims was James O’Hara’s brother in New York, to the tune of over $32,000. James and Linda spent years chasing a bit over $5000 allegedly owed James in wages.

The story here. More here, showing the O’Hara’s in a political ad concerning the case. It also shows that neither James nor his brother were ever listed as victims of Souter. See following quotes.

Following Martinez’s first Casanova Con Man ad last week, the prosecutor who handled the hearing, David Pederson, called a news conference at the Albuquerque office of the attorney general. Pederson said only the victims named in the indictment got restitution.

In an interview Thursday, James O’Hara verified that he and his brother were not named as victims in Soutar’s indictment.

It beggars belief that somehow James and Linda had no idea who Souter was. He was big news as the Casanova Con Man. Though in fairness, even if they did know who he was, that fact alone does not implicate them in the initial fraud. But still, the questions about various aspects and relationships continue. In all of the stories, they are represented as a couple going back to at least 2000. However, James’ Facebook page lists him as single as of 2010. Neither of Linda’s pages (the one in her real name and the one in her pen-name) show any marital status. There is no law about misrepresenting your marital status on Facebook. But in light of their history, it is just another possible red flag.

I mentioned upstream that “Leslie” had support at JFKfacts from a chap named Willy Whitten. Turns out Willy is an artist. I wonder if he ever sold through art market stalls? Among his works - a bust of Robert E Lee. But mainly it seems, works depicting native Americans - art of that kind is displayed on “Leslie’s” Facebook page. Small world.

Coup in Dallas

Since arrival at the JFK Education Forum, Linda/Leslie has pretty much divided the members on the value of the book she co-wrote and promotes and more importantly, the authenticity of the datebook upon which it is based. Some blindly accept the whole package at face value. That is a major tendency of uber-conspiracy believers. Others have openly questioned the authenticity of the datebook. There is good reason to do so. Such books and diaries have been the subject of fraud for a very long time. The diary of James Maybrick, and the Hitler diaries are well known examples. In this case, the book has been published as a commercial enterprise without expert authentication of the handwriting, ink, or paper.

Getting Linda/Leslie to explain the barriers to getting this done, has been an excruciating process to watch. Her style when explaining this morass, instils a blanket of enervation over her readers. The best we can draw from it all is that somehow, getting authentication is stillborn in an entanglement of Non Disclosure Agreements (NDA’s) copyright, and agreements/promises made to the family of the alleged author of the datebook in contention. The best we get is a qualified thumbs up from fellow author, Dick Russell - a man who still believes deep in his heart that this book was written by a legit historian and was based on a real memo.

Added to those issues, researcher Greg Doudna shows that some entries in the Lafitte datebook match incorrect information in a previous Albarelli book, indicating that the datebook was written after the publication of said book.

There are so many red flags around Ms. Ohara. Albarelli and Coup in Dallas, you could mistake the territory covered for a Marxist jamboree. Some, many, or all of those flags may well have innocent explanations, but even if so, at best, it shows that Ms. O’Hara tells many small and unnecessary lies that have simply caught up with her in circumstances that do not look good.

Bottom line…

Pressed by another member regarding her comment implicating me in an alleged threat to her, she simply responded by suggesting that the inquirer ask me if I recall the incident, once again leaving it open to interpretation that I was a party to it. She was given the opportunity to be straightforward and honest by saying I had nothing to do with it, and failed to take that opportunity.

...Lesley also writes: Is Leslie seriously suggesting that Greg Parker, or anyone connected to him, was behind such threats? She would need to produce some pretty strong evidence to justify that claim. I hope she will either produce that evidence or make it very clear indeed that she isn't accusing anyone ("Aussies ... these fellows ... Greg") of such behaviour.

You can ask Greg if he recalls the incident. 

Bottom line: the world we inhabit is filling up with rebels, not so much without a cause but without a clue. That is the real “new disease”. And it is spread by self-appointed PT Barmums.

You can follow the Barnums. Just leave me the Baileys while I watch the circuses roll in and back out again.

Addendum/Errata

Linda has copied and pasted this article to the Ed Forum, pointing to what she says are errors, and interspersing her displeasure. It is just a running complaint, buttressed with threats of sending a cesspit (I am assuming that is the correct collective noun) of “internet lawyers” after me. I actually had to google the term to make sure it wasn’t made up.. But yep - “internet lawyers” is a thing. I will further assume she has been “goggling”. I point that out because “goggling” is an accusation she levels at me. How else do you find out about “internet lawyers”? And is “goggle” a new a player in the search engine stakes? More questions. I don’t google or goggle. FWIW, I use Qwant.

Her complaints about all this “goggling” of course are meant to insinuate that nothing on the internet is trustworthy - and therefore nothing in my article is trustworthy. It is an old tactic of desperados in online debates, and attempts to portray everything on the web as being as credible as a wingnut’s blog on macramé. Yes, there is much mis and disinformation on the web. But her blanket statement assumes all users have zero critical thinking skills, and moreover that everything from Encyclopedia Britannica to The US Archives, and from innumerable treasure troves of academic papers to vast quantities of raw historical documentation, are all worthless - simply be being made available on the web. These are the lengths some will go to, to kill the messenger.

Having just gone back to the Ed Forum to retrieve some of her text to respond to here, I note that the post has been deleted. I wonder why?

In any case, there are only three items that she complained of that I am willing to update.

• She denies having a Facebook page in her real name of Linda O’Hara. So, despite the profile I found, having the same name, being the right age, and looking like a slightly older version of the woman photographed for news stories a few years back in Santa Fe, and despite this Linda holding exactly the same political views and mentioning JFK on her page, I will take Linda’s word that she does not a have a profile in her real name and have amended the article accordingly.

• I suggested in the body of the article that Ms. O’Hara’s resistance to Oswald having a valid alibi was predicated upon her working on Albarelli’s book and that the alibi was in conflict with what the book would allege. She states however that she did not start working on that book with Albarelli until the year following our JFKfacts exchanges. I accept her word on this, but will add it makes little difference since she was most certainly involved in her own research, and Albarelli taking her on board indicates that she and Albarelli held similar beliefs regarding Oswald prior to joining forces.

• I had the impression from her ramblings that the alleged threat had occurred on her Facebook page. Apparently not. Apparently it was at JFKFacts. Which makes it even more unlikely. JFKFacts comments were moderated, It is difficult to believe that the moderator, who was looking for any excuse to come after me or any of my forum members, would have let it through. She continues to insist however that it did happen, that it was a member of my forum whose name she does not recall, and she continues to try and smear me by association with this unknown person. I have been unable to find any trace of such a threat on the site. What I did find was a lot of deleted comments made by Ms, O’Hara under her alias. I have to wonder how her guilt by association angle would fly if a member of the JFK Education Forum threatened her on another platform and she decided to blame one of the JFK Education owners or moderators?

What I will not be amending yet is that James O’Hara has a Facebook page which indicates he was single in 2010. The page has been dormant for some time, so it is possible that Linda has forgotten about it, or because it is dormant, she feels justified in the denial that he has such a page.

I will also add a new piece of information. Chasing alleged unpaid wages seems to be a recurring pattern for James.

Santa Fe man files lawsuit over sale of hotel for affordable housing

Sean P. Thomas, The Santa Fe New Mexican

August 24, 2022·2 min read

Aug. 23—A man who says he helped a couple of business partners negotiate a multimillion-dollar deal to sell Santa Fe Suites has filed a lawsuit against the pair, alleging they didn't pay him for his work.

Santa Fe resident James O'Hara filed the complaint last week in state District Court against Ranbir Bajwa, Anil Dharna and their business, Santa Fe Holdings LLC, accusing them of making a profit from the hotel's sale in 2020 through +++a plan he designed+++ to help create affordable housing in Santa Fe with investments from the city, state and federal governments and nonprofits that serve the homeless community.

James O’Hara is one unlucky dude. And I am not just talking about his choice of marriage partners.

I wonder if the affordable housing ever got built?

I would have addressed more of her comical screed if I had copied it prior to its removal. It had such classics as claiming that she would not be worn down in her efforts to track the real assassins of JFK… and then complaining one or two paragraphs later that responding to me was “exhausting”.

I suggest she hop onto “goggle” and find a remedy for her lethargy. There is an answer for all that ails ye in this circus sideshow. Ask Ralph Cinque.

So desperate to denigrate the messenger was she in her exhausted screed, she even attempted to claim this passage from the article shows I am going after “communists” like General Edwin Walker once did!

“There are so many red flags around Ms. Ohara. Albarelli and Coup in Dallas, you could mistake the territory covered for a Marxist jamboree.”

In the immortal words of Bugs Bunny… “What a maroon!