Efforts are underway to preserve the records of community radio personality Mae Brussell. Brussell hosted several discussion shows in the 1970s and 1980s at community stations in Carmel and Pacific Grove, California. “Dialogue Conspiracy” and “World Watchers International” focused on a variety of subjects, most notably the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and Watergate. She became so popular that she began distributing tapes of her programs to an extensive mailing list. For a while you could listen to Brussell’s programs on YouTube, but unfortunately they have been removed from the database. You can still audit them at Worldwatchers Archive.
Probably the best known assessment of Mae Brussell’s influence can be found in the excellent Slate podcast Slow Burn. Episode six focuses on Brussell’s theories and conclusions. While the host Leon Neyfakh takes pains to distance himself from Brussell’s ideas, he concedes that “the stuff that she and other conspiracy theorists wrote about Watergate wasn’t that much less plausible than what really happened.”
I share this line of sympathy. As I wrote in a 2017 Radio Survivor post:
“Brussell was, to my mind, a meta-conspiracyist, endlessly linking seemingly discrete events to each other. But her stream-of-consciousness commentaries, and her dialogues and quarrels with other conspiracy researchers, reminds me of what a remarkable era community radio narrated its way through in the 1970s and 1980s. From Watergate to Contragate, from the release of the Pentagon Papers to the full disclosure of the CIA’s MKULTRA LSD program, who, following all of this, wouldn’t come to at least a few draconian conclusions?”
Perhaps the most fond recollection came in 2018 from the pen of Monterey Bay reporter Joe Livernois:
“Mae Brussell was the Queen of Conspiracy, the Doyenne of Intrigue. And she was perhaps one of the most enigmatic characters from Monterey County to ever rise to national prominence. She was that voice on the radio — delivering inconvenient truth in straight incontrovertible monotone late on a Sunday night. But she was also the exemplar of maternal domesticity, driving her five kids to dance recitals and music lessons, cooking dinner every night and incubating a devotion to art and music that still sustains her surviving brood.”
Mae Brussell died in 1988, and her fans have struggled to preserve her records ever since. As Livernois observes, one admirer was going to do it but didn’t, then people started blaming each other for the lack of progress. You get the picture. Bottom line: I think that it is crucial that Brussell’s tapes and correspondence find a sustainable home. She was a unique and fascinating voice in the assassination conspiracy discussions of the 1970s and 1980s and in the post-1960s counterculture. She was also, of course, a significant actor in the history of community radio.
Several weeks ago stage technician and artist Lewis Rhames contacted me about the campaign to get her records properly stored, which is called the Mae Brussell Project. Rhames is acting as the administrator of the endeavor. Her daughter Barbara Brussell has penned a public appeal for help:
“Mae Brussell’s research library includes thousands of documents, photographs, newspaper clippings and notes totaling approximately 40 file cabinets, hundreds of books (many rare and out-of-print), plus extensive handwritten cross-reference and analysis by Ms. Brussell on such topics as the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the Watergate scandal, and the roles of characters like Jimmy Hoffa in the developing dominance of the military industrial complex.
Upon Mrs. Brussell’s passing, her library was moved by family members to a safe location. Several attempts have been made to inventory and archive the materials, each faltering due to age and health concerns of those involved.
The library is now under threat of loss or destruction. Its location is not secure for long-term storage. The loving family members who saved these intellectual treasures are now quite mature, facing their own life challenges, and want only to know that their decades of effort and loyalty were not wasted.
THE MAE BRUSSELL PROJECT seeks to preserve the library and make its contents available to the public.
The project has two phases: preservation of the physical library, and the scanning and publishing of the information. Requirements include:
1. Transportation, one 40-foot trailer or comparable alternative, plus labor, for initial relocation (3 days)
2. Location, 3000 square feet of secure warehouse or office space with scanning equipment, near San Jose or Monterey (one year minimum, ongoing)
3. Technician, one full-time administrator whose duties include management of the facility, digitization of the materials, development of websites and social media presence, and coordination of funding and volunteer resources (ongoing).”
If you think that you might be able to help with this effort, please contact me at matthew@radiosurvivor.com. I will forward your messages to the principals of the Mae Brussell Project. Watch this space for updates on more ways to stay informed about the campaign.
