John Judge, independent investigator of historic
events, dies at 66
- “I
tell people you can call me a conspiracy theorist if you call everyone else a
coincidence theorist,” Mr. Judge, who died at 66, once remarked. Photo: Bob Gray
By Emily
Langer, Published: April 24 E-mail
the writer
John P.
Judge, an independent researcher who tirelessly amassed and disseminated
evidence supporting alternative explanations — some called them conspiracy
theories — for President John F. Kennedy’s assassination, the 9/11 terrorist
attacks and other historic events, died April 15 at a nursing facility in the
District. He was 66.
Through
years of investigation and activism, Mr. Judge developed a devoted following in
the community of skeptics who question official or commonly accepted narratives
of the past. He co-founded and directed the Coalition on Political
Assassinations, an organization whose activities include investigating the
deaths in the 1960s of John Kennedy, his brother Robert F. Kennedy, civil
rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. and black nationalist leader Malcolm X.
News outlets, with some frequency,
featured Mr. Judge and his work.
He
turned his Washington home into a repository of thousands of volumes and
documents on political assassinations and other matters, supporting himself
over the decades through odd jobs and fundraising work. He was once described
as a “professional conspiracist,” but he considered himself an “alternate
historian,” according to his Web site,judgeforyourself.org.
“I tell
people you can call me a conspiracy theorist if you call everyone else a
coincidence theorist,” Mr. Judge quipped to the publication National Journal.
His most
noted work involved President Kennedy’s death
in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963. Like legions of others doubters labeled
conspiracy theorists, Mr. Judge rejected the Warren Commission’s finding that
Lee Harvey Oswald had been the lone gunman.
Mr.
Judge’s working theory, he told interviewers, was that the assassination had
been organized by the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “I don’t think this is an
insoluble parlor mystery,” he once told the Dallas Morning News. “I don’t think
we are just flailing in the dark.”
Mr.
Judge helped organize in Dallas annual commemorations of Kennedy’s death. He
and others gathered on the grassy knoll, the spot where another gunman,
according to some theories, was stationed. Those memorials became the subject
of controversy last year, when Dallas marked the 50th anniversary of Kennedy’s
death.
After
contentious discussions with event organizers, the Coalition on Political
Assassinations agreed to hold its ceremony in a parking lot several blocks away
from the usual spot, which was restricted to ticket-holding participants.
“We’ll
be here,” Mr. Judge had said. “We may have to crawl through the sewer system
and pop our heads up where the assassin was, but we’ll be here.”
In his
work regarding more recent history, Mr. Judge cofounded the 9/11 Citizens Watch
to monitor the operations of the official 9/11 Commission, the independent and
bipartisan body created by congressional legislation to prepare a full account
of the attacks.
He
briefly worked as an assistant to then-U.S. Rep. Cynthia McKinney (D-Ga.), who
was widely rebuked when she suggested that President George W. Bush’s
administration might have had advance notice of the terrorist strike.
Former
congressman Dennis J. Kucinich (D-Ohio), who met Mr. Judge during his Capitol
Hill employment, described him as “brilliant” and said he had been “very impressed”
by Mr. Judge’s research abilities.
“I may
not have agreed with him on everything,” Kucinich said of Mr. Judge in an
interview, but he was “an original, independent thinker and someone who
immersed himself in hidden history.”
At the
time of his death, Mr. Judge was working toward the establishment in Washington
of the Museum of Hidden History, which would include an archive and library.
Among other missions, according to its Web site, it would
“inform and educate the public about little-known aspects of local, national
and international history.”
“It
erodes the rational approach when you talk of conspiracies involving a small
cabal in a board room controlling world history,” Mr. Judge once told the
Boston Globe. “But it’s a common human trait to want an explanation for all the
unexplained things that are happening — some kind of grand unified theory.”
John
Patrick Judge was born Dec. 14, 1947, in the District, and he grew up in Falls
Church, Va. Both his parents worked at the Pentagon.
Mr.
Judge graduated in 1970 from the University of Dayton in Ohio, where he studied
theology and where he recalled being obliged to participate in the Reserve
Officers’ Training Corps. He later joined the American Friends Service
Committee as a draft counselor during the Vietnam War.
In the
District, Mr. Judge became what the Washington City Paper described as “the
voice of military dissent in D.C. public schools.” He sought to counter military
recruiting efforts by attending career days and informing students of what he
alleged were discrimination and deprivation of rights within the military.
Mr.
Judge’s survivors include his companion of four years, Marilyn Tenenoff of York
Haven, Pa. She said that Mr. Judge had a stroke in March but that the cause of
death had not been determined. The D.C. medical examiner’s office had not ruled
on the case, according to a spokesman.
Tenenoff
said she plans to request an outside review of the autopsy report, when it is
available, to assuage the concerns of anyone who may doubt its accuracy.
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