John Judge, 1947-2014, !Presente! (UPDATE 1)
(APN) ATLANTA — John Patrick Judge, an activist and historian who studied covert government operations and political assassination theories, and who worked as an aide for U.S. Rep. Cynthia McKinney (D-GA) and later on her 2008 campaign as the Green Party nominee for President of the U.S., died at the age of 66.
Judge died on April 15, 2014, from what appears to be complications from a stroke suffered in early March, according to the website of the Coalition on Political Assassinations (COPA), which Judge co-founded: http://www.politicalassassinations.com
Judge was born December 14, 1947, in Washington, D.C., and he grew up in Falls Church, Virginia, according to the Washington Post newspaper. Both his parents worked at the Pentagon, according to the Post.
Mr. Judge graduated in 1970 from the University of Dayton in Ohio, where he studied theology; he later joined the American Friends Service Committee as a draft counselor during the U.S. Invasion of Viet Nam, according to the Post.
Judge was also a co-founder of CHOICES, an organization engaged since 1985 in countering military recruitment in D.C.-area high schools and educating young people about their options with regard to the military, according to the COPA website.
Beginning with the war in Viet Nam, Judge was a lifelong anti-war activist and supporter of active-duty soldiers and veterans, COPA states.
Judge was an internationally acclaimed researcher, writer, and speaker; as well as a lifelong anti-militarist and anti-racist activist, and community organizer.
Judge co-founded COPA and organized COPA’s annual conference in Dallas, Texas. He was also in the process of co-founding a Museum of Hidden History, which is intended to store documents related to covert and questionable U.S. government operations.
Judge’s primary areas of research were the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, Malcolm X, and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. He also conducted field work about the massacre in Jonestown, Guyana, according to the COPA website.
The 2013 COPA conference drew more than three hundred researchers and activists to Dallas, Texas, on the 50th anniversary of John Kennedy’s death. Amidst the national furor when the feature film “JFK” came out in 1992, Judge was one of the key public proponents behind the creation of the Assassination Records Review Board, according to COPA.
One of his last efforts was to press for release of some of the thousands of Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. assassination records still kept classified by the CIA and the FBI.
“John was one of the best informed people I knew on U.S. politics, history, militarism, and activism. And he was one of the most consistently cheerful, energetic, and ready to put his knowledge to good use,” David Swanson, an activist and blogger, told Atlanta Progressive News.
“That made him an ideal member of the movement for peace and justice, as well as a good friend, and a heck of a great guy. Of course no one can replace him, but it’s hard even to imagine anyone filling anything like the place he held in the kind of activism I work on. We’ll be missing him for a long time,” Swanson said.
McKinney expressed sadness over the death of her friend on her Facebook page, but did not respond to a message seeking comment.
“Ya’ll say that I’m strong, but my strength is being tested right now. Even the strong need to lean on the people around them sometimes. Now is that time for me. It is with even great sadness that I report to you the loss of my dear, dear, dear, dear friend John Judge of the 9/11 Truth Community. If ever there was a loyal friend to me, it was John Judge,” McKinney wrote.
As co-founder of 9/11 Citizens Watch, Judge also did investigative research on the background and details of the attacks of September 11, 2001. He worked with family members of the victims to push for a federal investigation and closely monitored the work of the 9/11 Commission, according to the COPA website.
“John’s mother worked in an administrative role for the Joint Chiefs at the Pentagon. Immediately after the ’63 coup, she would later share with him, she was instructed to rewrite the force estimates for Vietnam,” Hugh Esco, former Georgia Green Party Secretary, told APN.
“This annual report was prepared for each conflict in which the U.S. military was engaged. It was used to determine the numbers subject to the draft, to account for the turnover expected from anticipated casualties. He retold that story regularly as if it instigated his work against war, for justice for those targeted with political assassination and to protect young people from the abusive practices of military recruiters,” Esco said.
From 2005 to 2007, Judge served as Special Projects Assistant to Representative Cynthia McKinney of Georgia. APN corresponded with Judge several times both in connection with McKinney’s Congressional office, as well as her Presidential campaign in 2008.
One of his many undertakings in Congress was to advocate on behalf of active-duty soldiers who received harsh sentences for declaring themselves conscientious objectors and others who claimed to have been tortured in military brigs.
Judge helped write the Articles of Impeachment against President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, which U.S. Rep. McKinney introduced in December 2006, before leaving office.
“John Judge was a personal friend and I was privileged to spend time with him discussing all sorts of topics, political and otherwise. John served as the media director for Cynthia McKinney during her 2008 Green presidential campaign and we worked very closely together for most of the year,” Scott McLarty, national spokesman for the Green Party of the U.S., told APN.
“We had the best time in the media room at the Green Party’s 2008 presidential nominating convention in Chicago, with evenings hanging out at a local Chicago pizza restaurant. I’ll miss running into John at bookshops here in D.C. John’s pioneering and critical investigation into our country’s secret history deserves to be kept alive,” McLarty said.
“At the time of his death, John Judge was working on creation of a Hidden History Museum and Research Center in Washington, DC, to educate a new generation about covert operations, and to support the work of investigative journalists and researchers looking into the National Security State and the rise of secrecy, government plans for extra-Constitutional jurisdiction during emergencies, and threats to civil liberties and international relations,” the COPA website states.
In just one example of Judge’s writings, he once wrote, “Under the evil genius of Allen Dulles, whose espionage attacks on the Soviet Union date back to the 1920′s, $200 million in Rockefeller and Mellon funds was directed into the hands of Hitler’s spymaster Reinhard Gehlen and his 350 Nazi spies, who formed and founded our Central Intelligence Agency in 1947.”
“An avid public speaker, Judge never spoke about himself but rather, humbly retained a tireless devotion to the search for truth beyond the official government or mainstream media record. Until his final days, Judge was a seeker of truth and justice of the first order. He is irreplaceable in the annals of serious research and documentation,” COPA states.
Judge is survived by his long-time companion and life partner, Marilyn Tenenoff.
According to the Post, Tenenoff said that 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.”
A celebration of his life will be held in late May. In lieu of flowers, tax-deductible donations can be made to support the preservation of Judge’s books and archives, via the Museum of Hidden History, P.O. Box 772, Washington, DC, 20044, according to COPA.
To know more concerning the topics about which Judge researched and wrote, please visit: http://judgeforyourself.org/
http://politicalassassinations.com
http://museumofhiddenhistory.org
(END/2014)
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article identified Mr. Esco as former Green Party of Georgia Chair; however, he states that he was a former Green Party of Georgia Secretary.