PARTIAL ENLIGHTENMENT

Confession to Conspiracy to
Assassinate JFK by Kerry Thornley
as told to Sondra London
Sometimes he was like a brilliant chemist, prowling through the exploded
ruins of the laboratory of a colleague who had hovered at the instant of
his unfortunate tragedy upon catalyzing the Holy Grail. This fellow knew
better than to believe in the ecacy of ancient philosopher's stones, but
the possibility of synthesizing one had occurred to him.
Our political scientist took a cold, curious attitude towards others. His
colleague's experiments upon homo sapiens evidenced in the debris did
not disturb him, but only seemed silly in their extravagance. Why cause
millions of people to suer when with a fraction of the number of victims,
tormented conspicuously enough, one could probably perform the
equivalent sociological alchemy? The only misfortune, it seemed to him,
was that the state of the art was that of alchemy, not of nuclear physics.
Whenever Brother-in-law was not boring, he was terrifying -- yet
somehow he seemed, perhaps because of the simple protective eects
of trauma on my part, to be more boring than anything else.
Another psychological phenomenon took place within me in his company
-- a perceptible draining of energy through the bottom of my stomach or
spine.

I have heard this phenomenon can be produced with drugs, particularly

with belladonna. As I recall, Brother-in-law was a host who served a
lukewarm cup of weak instant coee when I first arrived and then
dispensed with hospitality altogether. The cup was made of plastic and

shaped like a tea cup. It seems I was always sitting there, drowsier than I
wanted to admit, though by no means heavily drugged, if drugged at all,
wishing to hell the creep would at least oer me some decent coee.
It is also a distinct possibility that upon other occasions I was placed in a
formal hypnotic trance. Once Brother-in-law discussed the Bridey
Murphy case with great enthusiasm and asked me if I thought further
examples of reincarnational memory uncovered with hypnosis should be
researched -- but adequately, he emphasized, by someone with
resources.
When I objected that I did not believe in reincarnation, he replied with
sympathetic approval, "Neither do I, Kerry, but I think the possibility
should be investigated anyhow, by someone with more money than those
guys who wrote the Bridey Murphy book, someone who could conduct a
very thorough investigation."
He made sure to obtain my agreement. But I do not remember personally
volunteering to be the subject of any such probe.
I do possess a distinct memory of sitting with Slim, late one afternoon,
close to twilight, in a corner bar in some podunk Louisiana town, waiting
for Brother-in-law to return. All I remember is that we were sipping beer in
a place that resembled in structure the Napoleon House, with openings
to the street instead of walls on two sides, but plainer -- with Seven-Up
signs instead of wrought-iron frills. I cannot at this point recall how we got
there or where we went afterwards.
Possibly related to an earlier time is a memory of breakfasting with Slim
one blazing morning in a tiny restaurant on Lake Pontchartrain, with
Brother-in-law inside a houseboat just across the narrow dock from the
front window of the cafe. Again I don't recall how we got there or where
we went afterwards.

More than once I have wondered, though, if I was hypnotized aboard that
houseboat that day, perhaps by means of drugs, and then methodically
programmed. For I have a number of memories which are dreamlike in
quality and seem unrelated to anything else that ever happened to me,
except that they are vaguely associated with Brother-in-law.
Woody Guthrie singing about the "arch and the stones" in one of his
albums reminded me vividly of these disassociated fragments of memory,
pertaining to images of myself as the "first post-revolutionary man" of
uncharacteristically utopian and romantic Marxist rhetoric, and as a lonely
anarchist harmonica player wandering through America.
Also I seem to recall having received instructions regarding a future
mission of saving the U.S. from a Russian invasion. I have a sense of
being told that I would be able to rely on the radio for help, just by
listening to the music.
Such things cause me to speculate that Brother-in-law may have been a
high-level double agent who sold projects to hypnotically program me to
both Russian intelligence and Division Five of the F.B.I. -- without anyone
but Slim knowing what an outrageous practical joke he was playing on us
all.
Swept up in the beauty of an abstraction, I was not paying any attention
whatsoever to what was happening with this man in this room in this
particular here and now -- so I freely granted him permission to
brainwash me.
Zen Masters call that the danger of partial enlightenment!
A scene I recall vividly took place as the three of us were returning from a
trip somewhere, walking across the gravel in front of Gary's house. I had
been discussing the building of a mass movement, a great Objectivist
army of tax protesters marching into Washington, singing songs and

shouting slogans in the manner of a Civil Rights demonstration.

"No," said Brother-in-law as we approached his door, "that isn't what you
want. To overthrow the government takes an organization that is neither
fish nor fowl -- something that cannot be readily categorized, with some
of the aspects of a bureaucracy and others of organized crime. That way,
it will be nearly invisible to the average person."
Lacking the necessary color and flamboyance to interest me, and
sounding rather sinister besides, that idea turned me o. I tucked it away
in the back of my mind as a warning.
Once we talked at length about the time a few years earlier when the U.S.
intervened secretly in Guatemala to overthrow a leftist regime. Brother-inlaw asked me if I didn't think that was a good policy, and of course in
those days I did.
I went on to recite a few facts about the incident I'd read in a national
magazine, something which seemed to gratify him, and thereupon he
spoke knowledgeably about the operation in the manner of someone who
had troubled himself to become quite well informed about it, but I don't
recall his mentioning the C.I.A. in that respect.
We also spoke of the capture of the Soviet spy, Rudolph Abel, and of
what a brilliant victory for U.S. espionage that had been. I do not
remember, however, whether or not we ever discussed the trade of Abel
for our U-2 pilot, Francis Gary Powers, made by the Kennedy
Administration. However, since the U-2 planes took o and landed at
Atsugi when I was overseas in the Marines, in an aura of ocial mystery
until the U-2 incident involving Powers, the subject of the U-2 was of
personal interest to me.