We take a break from our research to think about John Judge for a moment. Yes, how did the Hidden History Museum get hidden away in the boondocks? An intrepid local reporter finds out. - It was hijacked by an internet date troll. - BK
How a national conspiracy theory museum wound up in
the 'boondocks'
Mike Argento, York Daily Record Published 1:58 p.m.
ET Jan. 16, 2019 | Updated 11:19 a.m. ET Jan. 17, 2019
The Hidden History Research Center is dedicated to educating the public on less-known, hidden and alternative perspectives of history. Cameron Clark, York Daily Record
Marilyn Tenenoff met John Judge four years before
his death, finding him on the internet dating site Plenty of Fish. She had
been married for 30 years and was recently widowed – and she was seeking a new
relationship.
When she first got in touch with Judge, she had no idea
what he did. They corresponded over the internet for a while. She met him in
person when he made the two-hour drive to York to attend one of her poetry
readings at a now-defunct Borders bookstore. Friends asked her whether she
had checked the guy out before meeting him. “Do you know who this guy is?” they
asked.
She
didn't.
She
looked him up on Google, and her first impression wasn’t the best. Judge
might not have been the king of the conspiracy theory community – actually,
he preferred to be called an alternative historian – but he was certainly
among its royal family.
“I
thought he was a conspiracy theorist nut,” said Tenenoff, 72, a poet and
part-time bookkeeper. “Then I met his friends, and they didn’t treat him
like that. They treated him like a revered professor. The more he told
me about why he did what he did, I started to understand.”
Why
did he do what he did?
He
sought the truth, Tenenoff said. He sought to change the world.
Judge
and Tenenoff were together until his death, on April 15, 2015 – Tax Day,
Tenenoff points out – at age 66. His collection of books, papers, videotapes,
audiotapes and assorted materials fell into her possession.
And
she had to find something to do with the mountain of material.
That's
how the Museum of Hidden History and the Hidden History
Center wound up in a nondescript
strip of office suites in the suburbs of York, Pa.
How 'alternative
historian' John Judge got started
This
wasn’t exactly how John Patrick Judge saw his afterlife playing out.
He
had envisioned, at one time, a $40 million museum in the heart of the nation’s
capital, serving to house exhibits that would expose tourists to his vision of
American history. It would contain his voluminous collection of books and
papers, making it available to researchers from around the globe for whom
the truth was out there, somewhere.
He
had amassed an impressive collection of books and papers over the years, his
home in Washington jammed with materials that revealed an alternative vision of
American history.
After
his death, Tenenoff sought a proper repository for the boxes and
boxes of materials, a place where the collection could be inventoried and
cataloged into a library that would serve the needs of like-minded researchers,
something that would truly reflect the mind of the man who made the collection
his life’s work.
After John Judge's death, Marilyn Tenenoff was given her
companion's massive collection of books and papers. She decided to move the
Hidden History Museum and Research Center from Washington D.C. to York,
Pennsylvania. (Photo:
Cameron Clark, York Daily Record)
Initially,
she housed the materials in a storage unit in northern Virginia. It became too
much, driving back and forth from her home in York Haven – a small town in
south-central Pennsylvania, about a two-hour drive away – so she began
looking for a suitable place to keep the collection closer to home.
And
so the museum came
to be housed in Suite 2 of Hayshire Plaza, a one-story strip of office
suites at 2915 N. George St., wedged between a temp service and
an orthodontist's office.
Tenenhoff selected
the location for one simple reason: “I didn’t want to move (to northern
Virginia),” she said. “This is five minutes from my house.”
Some
within what’s generously called the alternative history community – people who
support the museum with their donations – were upset with her for moving
Judge’s repository two hours away from the capital. “They wanted it to stay in
D.C.,” she said. “They said, ‘You moved it to the boondocks.’”
Certainly,
the alt-historians might have other ideas about why the center of their
universe moved to a small office suite in York County, Pa. Maybe
they’ll look into it.
Who is
historian John Judge and what did he believe?
First
off, despite the fact that Judge devoted a great amount of time and
energy into investigating the assassination of the 35th president of the
United States, and the Jonestown massacre, and the CIA's experiments
in mind control, and 9/11, and the assassinations of Martin Luther King,
Malcolm X and Tupac, and the impeachment of the nation’s 42nd president,
and the United States government’s various forays into meddling in the affairs
of countries that practiced a form of self-governing frowned upon by the
moneyed powers that profited greatly from autocratic control, he really
despised being labeled as a “conspiracy theorist.”
He
didn’t market in conspiracy theories, Tenenoff asserts. He preferred
the label "alternative history." As Judge himself was famous for
saying, “You can call me a conspiracy theorist if you call everyone else a
coincidence theorist.”
Tenenoff puts
it this way: “He believed he was shifting the paradigm, that he was asking the
questions that other people didn’t ask – and by doing so could wake people up
to what was really happening.”
The
boxes and boxes of materials stacked along the walls of the office suite
might contain some of the answers to those unasked questions.
John
Judge and the Kennedy assassination
The Hidden History Museum and Research Center is filled
with materials that John Judge dedicated his life to researching, January 12,
2019. (Photo:
Cameron Clark, York Daily Record)
It
began in earnest with the Kennedy assassination.
But it really began before that.
Judge’s
parents worked for the Pentagon, and he grew up playing in the courtyard of the
massive building. His parents would take him along to gatherings of co-workers,
parties in which adult beverages loosened lips and spilled some notions that
the general public knew nothing about.
He
had always been skeptical, Tenenoff said. When he was in elementary
school, she said, he refused to participate in civil defense drills in which
students, in case of nuclear attack, were instructed to cower under their
desks. “That’s not going to save me,” he reasoned.
Then,
on Nov. 22, 1963, President John Fitzgerald Kennedy visited Dallas.
Judge's
life changed that day.
Independent researcher, writer and speaker John Patrick
Judge was the founder of the Museum of Hidden History and Research Center.
After he passed away, he left his life's work to his girlfriend, Marilyn
Tenenoff, of York Haven. (Photo: Cameron Clark, York Daily Record)
Like
a lot of people, he didn’t believe Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. He thought it
wasn’t coincidence that Oswald’s assassin, strip-club impresario Jack
Ruby, had connections to the CIA and organized crime. He thought nothing could
explain the trajectory of Bullet 399, the so-called Magic Bullet. From his
study and analysis, he came to believe that the fatal shot came not from the
sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository, or from the infamous grassy
knoll, as others theorized, but from a storm drain that, as researchers who
worked with him found, led to the Dallas jail.
“He
was more interested in who had control of the shooter, who ordered
it,” Tenenoff said. “His theory was it was the joint chiefs of
staff, that it was a military coup.”
The
reasoning was that Kennedy wasn’t as excited about this country’s involvement
in Vietnam as the generals were and that, according to Tenenoff, “there
was a lot of money to made in that war.”
Every
year, Judge and his Coalition on Political Assassinations would gather on the
grassy knoll on the anniversary of Kennedy’s death. He would speak through a
bullhorn, saying “they killed my president” and sharing his notions about
the assassination and who he believed was behind it. On the
50th anniversary of the assassination, those organizing a traditional
memorial in Dealey Plaza asked him to move to a different location so as to not
interfere with the event. After contentious discussions, he moved to a
nearby parking lot.
Marilyn Tenenoff has an intern from York College to help
her log and organize all of the mounds of materials that John Judge left behind
at the Hidden History Museum and Research Center, January 12, 2019. (Photo: Cameron Clark, York Daily
Record)
He
believed JFK’s assassination was connected to those of Robert Kennedy, and of
Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. They were preaching about hope and
change, she said, and “the powers that be didn’t want that," the same
reasoning that led him to believe that the government ordered the assassination
of John Lennon in 1980.
The
Kennedy assassination, of course, is the wellspring of conspiracy theories. And
as such, the Hidden History Center has, in some of the numerous boxes that line
the walls of the office suite, two complete copies of the Warren
Commission Report.
There
is also a box that is labeled “Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe.”
Did
the actress’ April 1962 death, ascribed to a barbiturate overdose,
have anything to do with JFK being murdered in Dealey Plaza?
Judge
was just asking the question.
What's
in all those boxes at the Hidden History Center?
The
boxes that line the walls of the center contain material about the
country’s worst moments – Watergate, Iran-Contra, the CIA’s meddling in Central
and South America and the Middle East, the Jonestown massacre. Some of the
boxes bear cryptic descriptions. One is labeled "CIA psyops,"
another, "Nazis." Dozens of boxes contain books and papers Judge
acquired from a disgruntled CIA agent named McGehee.
It
is a mountain of books, magazine and newspaper articles, transcripts of
hearings, cassette tapes of radio shows, VHS tapes of television
appearances and speeches, correspondence with like-minded researchers and
journalists and more. Organizing it is a huge task, one in
which Tenenoff is assisted by an intern from York College, a young
woman who, on a recent Saturday, was tasked with cataloging a box of cassette
tapes of radio shows by a theorist named Mae Brussell.
Tenenoff uses
the back room of the office suite as her office. Inside, the shelves on a
bookcase contain some of Judge’s favorite things – a clown doll, a duck, rubber
fish, figurines of a marching band, a Winnie the Pooh collection. He loved
Winnie the Pooh and often sought solace in the gentle world inhabited by the
honey-loving bear, a respite from the dark corners of human existence that he
often probed. The boxes lining the walls contain his personal library, the
books he kept shelved in his bedroom. Among them is a box of vintage Golden
Books.
“He
never threw anything out,” Tenenoff said.
John
Judge tried to impeach Bush
This office houses John Judge's personal collection of
books, magazines and other materials that he held dear to him, January 12,
2019. (Photo:
Cameron Clark, York Daily Record)
Judge’s
life's work was his research. But he did hold some day jobs, most notably as an
aide to former U.S. Rep. Cynthia McKinney, a Georgia Democrat best remembered
for striking a Capitol Police officer when she was asked for
identification once. (In 2008, she ran for president on the Green Party ticket
and received 0.12 percent of the vote.)
It
was a perfect match. McKinney was a 9/11 truther and had called for new
investigations into the assassination of Martin Luther King and the murder of
Tupac Shakur. Like Judge, she was anti-war. (Judge, during the Vietnam War,
worked for an organization that assisted draftees in
obtaining conscientious objector status and was a life-long peace
activist.)
As
part of his job, Judge drafted articles of impeachment, introduced by
McKinney in the House, against President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick
Cheney and then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
The
legislation went nowhere.
John
Judge and Rep. Dennis Kucinich
Former
Ohio congressman and failed Democratic presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich
was a friend of Judge’s and spoke at his funeral. In Judge’s obituary in the
Washington Post, Kucinich was quoted as describing Judge as “brilliant”
and “an original, independent thinker and someone who immersed himself in
hidden history.”
He
added, “I may not have agreed with him on everything.”
John
Judge: 9/11 was not an inside job
The Hidden History Research Center and Library is
dedicated to educating the public on less-known, hidden and alternative
perspectives of local, national and international history. (Photo: Cameron Clark, York Daily
Record)
Judge
wasn’t a 9/11 truther, though. Tenenoff said, “He thought those
people were fanatics."
He
formed a 9/11 Citizens Watch to counter the 9/11 Commission, asking the
questions that weren’t asked. He didn’t believe, as some truthers do, that the
twin towers were brought down by a controlled demolition. He thought that was
preposterous, Tenenoff said. How would they get the explosives in the
buildings? Were the explosives built into the buildings’ steel frames? He
didn’t buy that. Nor did he buy the notion that the Pentagon attack was staged
and that a plane did not crash into it. He lived close enough that he felt
it.
No,
all of that was distraction, he believed. He did have some questions. Were the
suspected terrorists identified as being on the planes really on them? Did
George W. Bush know about the attacks and let them happen to give him a pretext
to invade Iraq?
He
was more interested in the aftermath, Tenenoff said, the loss of
civil liberties, the constant state of war, the amount of power shifted to the
government.
“He
just wanted to know what really happened,” she said.
The
truth, it seems, is out there, contained somewhere in the 270 boxes and 8,000
books and hundreds of audio and video tapes housed in a small,
nondescript office suite in the middle of nowhere, Pennsylvania.
Photos:
York's Hidden History Center has much more than just conspiracies20 Photos
To
visit the Hidden History Museum
The
Hidden History Museum and Research Center is at 2915 N. George St. in
Manchester Township and is open by appointment only. For more information or to
make an appointment, call executive director Marilyn Tenenoff
at 717-379-0597 or visit hiddenhistorycenter.org.
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