My first encounter with the plight of John Ford occurred around July 12, 1996 .
I was driving from Alabama to Florida to join my wife for a weekend vacation and a little celebration of our impending 23rd wedding anniversary (Hey! I remind the reader I'm a normal guy even artistically interested with what's outside the box! It defines the box after all, eh?
The drive is a pleasant one on good roads, and I was really enjoying the momentarily careless and carefree trip! Ahead of me looms two days of good beer, fun in the sun, and a cessation of college for the summer. I digress, but I'd returned to college after retiring from the military to get a teaching credential; this is a whole -other- sordid story we'll have to save for another digression...
In '96 I enjoyed a golden-age Pre 9/11, had more of my teeth, and was in my pre-stroke bliss. Out of the military, the pressure was off... I was doing well at school... I was content. ...Breathin' was easy as they say.
While I drove I listened distractedly to some car radio. I wasn't really hearing the news or the announcer as I drove and was, in fact, just about to tune to a *hairier* spot on the radio dial... when, abruptly... the announcer used the expression "UFO."
That stopped my hand at the channel knob, eh? I settled back into the car seat to listen. I have an interest in UFOs as does any rational person... [g].
Anyway... the reporter shared (and I paraphrase) that some loopy UFO whack-job from Suffolk county, New York had been arrested and charged with conspiracy to commit murder... Murder in a new, new-age and completely inexplicable way!
It seems this "crazy" person *purloined* a quantity of radium from some facility somewhere (Brookhaven is conjectured), and his *astonishing* plan was to break into the victim's house... put powdered radium into the victim's toothpaste... and murder him as a result of radiation poisoning! WTF!?
...Let's pause for a moment to let all that sink in...
I remember thinking at the time that this incredibly hapless fellow must be one mondo-bionic dim-bulb of a ruminating snot-bubbler... (!) ...to try a stunt like that! How could that, remotely, work?
Besides, wouldn't it take -years- to dispatch someone in that manner (if it worked at all!), and what about the logistics of the act itself? Radium is hot stuff, easily detectable!
I'd think when the victim turned his lights off to retire for the night and wife or family noted that Dad's mouth glowed in the dark? Why... it might have meant something to someone!
Frankly, I found the whole episode too puzzling, too unlikely, and just plain dumb.
...Something about it just wasn't right, though, and curiosity's fuse was lit. I thought about it off and on all weekend, and I decided that when I returned to Enterprise after the vacation... I had to have more details in its regard. It was just too bleedin' stupid to believe!
It's many years later, and I am saddened in the extreme regarding what I found out, almost from the beginning, that there is much, much more than meets the eye... ...with regard to the John Ford Affair... like it is, I suppose, with pretty much anything else... well, like it is with pretty much everything else... but I digress again.
Right off the bat there were surprises...
Consider... someone *unsettled* enough to put radium in someone else's toothpaste... must have some kind of *history* of aberrant behavior, wouldn't you think? I mean, a guy like this just doesn't spring fully formed from the head of Zeus! There must be some kind of record or audit trail of deviancy... wouldn't that be fair?
But no—there is no such record! In fact, the absolute and exact opposite is the case! John Ford was a model citizen, a court officer, and a holder of a college Master's degree. He was good to his mother, and though he has yet to marry, he'd dated and gotten close a couple of times; he's a normal guy!
He was a registered Republican (which he can be forgiven for... I suppose), but he's active in local politics (the point?), and he's even known to weep at the suffering of small animals. He'd regularly rescue stray dogs from the pound. He volunteered selflessly during civic emergencies...
The guy was a proverbial PILLAR! Also proverbially, anyone who's known him has said that it is *impossible* that he could be involved in a conspiracy to murder anyone much less and especially someone as high profile as the intended victim, John Powell... the biggest wheel in the Suffolk County, New York political machine—the biggest such machine in the country!
...Think, for a moment, about the *influence* of a political machine such as the one just described... think what it could impose, ...and throughout a slew of conflicted government departments and hip-shooting private agencies!
...Let that sink in a moment!
John Ford was something else, too. He was stubborn. For cause? He could get so far up your nose you could feel his boney knees on your septum, and he was prone to explore every inch of his constitutional *rights*—to every corner of the ethical envelope, too!
He was a retired court officer and had observed how a litigious Suffolk county worked. He wasn't a bone-head, he wasn't a dupe, and he wasn't a fool, but he—was—a *Boy Scout*, reader, and he thought the Constitution of the United States was a—living—document that actually—meant—something... silly John, eh?
John was an honorable man then, as now, I'm betting, but if you disrespected him or discounted him you'd quickly hear about it. He knew how to make the system work... or so he thought! That system would turn on him like Sigourney Weaver's *Alien*... and cocoon him in fact!
John Ford was something else, still. He was EASY to discount. He was EASY to marginalize. He was easy to discredit!
Subsequent smirking writers of obvious and uninformed bias... would later portray him as a pathetic and ineffectual mook with failed political aspirations... a loser, a loser who lived with his Mom.
Prone to be portly, he looked a little like Elmer Fudd and that distinctive appearance was unfortunately accessorized (it's been said) with the voice of Daffy Duck. I've heard him speak... I don't hear that. I hear focus, determination, and legitimate outrage at the whim of criminals.
The poor guy was roundly painted for the fringe is the point. Hardwired for discredit wholly unearned. Still, he had crust—he was tenacious, contentious, and certainly tendentious... he took no crap!
John Ford may have been one more thing. He may have been crazy. But if he was, good listener... he was benignly and efficaciously so! Take craziness out of the equation!
Moreover... and note —this—! He was interested in what the truth was; he was knowledgeable and talented with regard to *ferreting* that truth out, and he knew how to organize the troops to chase a bear through the freakin' buckwheat! He was active in local government, remember; he understood about grassroots activism!
And... (and it's a big "and") it was not a preponderance of the persons around him, by any means, who thought he was remotely crazy... ...to begin with! Moreover, those less than intrepid and shallowly discerning persons thinking him a... pork-chop short of a mixed grill...?...assumed he must be crazy because he "believed in UFOs". Hey! FLAG DOWN!!! So does Stanton Friedman! So does Edgar Mitchell, and, very likely... so do YOU, reader!
The question's begged when the listener's turn comes! I digress...
What was John Ford doing, really, when a couple of platoons of SWAT team showed up at his residence to arrest him for conspiracy to commit murder? Well, he was doing what he did best!
He was organizing the locals for a lawful exercise of their of their natural right to be INFORMED about what they are paying for (!!!)... and he was doing some expert detective-work to facilitate that end! He was also, and note this... feverishly investigating John Powell and Powell's complicity... ...regarding the strange behavior of the police, firemen, Parks & Sanitation and other government officials of Suffolk county, New York! ...Behavior peculiar in the extreme!
Ford was hot on the trails of the duplicitous and the criminal!
What was John Ford's root concern in all of this?
Well—John Ford, no dummy remember, was sure that Suffolk County officials, and the titular head of those officials, John Powell, were all hip-deep in a *conspiracy*... to cover up the crash of an alien space craft near Moriches Bay on September 28 in 1989...
Now—for any of you listeners out there smotherin' a giggle... remember that dozens of credible witness saw something highly strange transpire in and around the bay on that night, so those foundationless giggles (the listener might be muffling?)... can be retired with some shame!
Verily, and since 1982, the New York counties of Orange Rockland Westchester ... were swamp-gassed with some 5,000 reports of large, boomerang-shaped... unidentified flying objects in the skies overhead... giggle if you still can... We'll wait and look down in embarrassment for you.
Anyway...
In a completely lawful manner, with a minimum of "actionable eccentricity", and with some intelligent intensity and single-minded passion, John Ford investigated John Powell. Well within the law, and with some vigor, the little guy tried to get the gotcha *goods* on the big guy. One can certainly begin to predict the eventual outcome of this David and Goliath story...
...Time warp...
When I was a child living in west Connecticut I used to hear my Dad tell his friends these stories, myths, and legends about the cess-pool of corruption that was Suffolk County , NY NOW ... or in the 1989 to 1996 time-frame, specifically? ...Do you think it got any better, friends and fellow motes?
Let me just cut to the curly short-hair chase, ladies and gentlemen!
John Powell was dirty as hell!
In 1999, and out of political favors apparently, he would be charged with—and plead no contest to—Racketeering, Grand Theft, ... Extortion even! And that's just what they charged him on, folks ...you can bet it was the tip of Powell's iceberg! In the year 2000 he would be given the *minimum* sentence of twenty-three months in a *minimum* security country-club! With good behavior, you know like not being caught raping a fellow inmate... he would be out in 18 months...
John Ford, on the other hand has not drawn a free breath or seen the light of day since 1996...
Is anyone else seeing the connected dots in this picture? Let me help!
The truly intrepid John Ford was investigating a man, one John Powell, who could bear no investigation of any type! John Ford likely scared the wild, blueberry HORSE-MUFFINS out of John Powell... and what kind of mamma' s-boy-loser can John Ford be... if he can make a BIG fish in a BIG pond like John Powell sweat the hook!
Is it a stretch to suppose that John Powell could have exercised a few tainted *muscles* of his vast political machine of graft and conspiracy... to... TORPEDO John Ford? Given the senseless facts of the case, John Ford's history, education and references... does the listener think it *remotely* possible that this is so?
Oh, it's so... it's just another iteration of the same old story we become more and more accustomed to in increasingly terrorized and tyrannical world... Goliath, friends and fellow motes, only loses in the Bible!
...And forget all about John Ford's assertions with regard to UFOs, which may or may not be dead on the money. If wrong in FACT , he is most assuredly abundantly correct in SPIRIT!
Yes, John Ford's even justified ufological assertions may have been all wet! They REMAIN; however, beside the point ...only significant in that Ford's "belief" in them proved the case of his... trumped UP... "instability"... So he could be more handily cocooned and effectively silenced later on!
What's IMPORTANT remains to be that Ford was busily investigating a man, a criminal man with long ties to organized crime... ...and so a man who could bear no such investigation!
John ford is innocent, and he rots in prison today for the convenience of an ongoing conspiracy and a criminal elite! Plain and simple!
Truly, Suffolk County ALL of that time!
Ford's very suspect initial attorney, one John Rouse (deceased), had given every indication that the case against Ford is specious at best... and wholly contrived at worst! The "witnesses" were as suspect ...perhaps planted, or sold Ford out for reduced sentences committed in other crimes—I mean nobody knows went on in the belly of the machine; the clinical evaluation determining that he was *insane* was almost certainly flawed, canted, or ignorantly uninformed, and the "B" movie circumstances surrounding Ford's ongoing torment... are too suspicious to be minimally credible... and are without DOUBT scurrilously fabricated! Even guilty of the accused crime he would have been out a decade ago.
John Ford deserves a re-look, a change of venue, or a hearing of some type to try to get some real justice done. The loss of Ford's freedom for the convenience of a craven convicted criminal is the symbolic loss of all our freedoms, a repudiation of everything that America is supposed to be, and a crime in its own right.
John Ford's civil rights and right to personal liberty have been violated in the most fundamental sense, folks, and we VALIDATE the arbitrary rule of *privileged* autocrats... to let John Ford's ongoing treatment continue...
This cannot be allowed to stand! Restore John Ford to his previous life, Suffolk County
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