Eurabia

Islam in Europe

under1% 1%-3% (Italy, Slovenia) 3%-4% (Greece, Norway, Serbia, Spain) 4%-5% (Austria, UK) 5%-10% (Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland) 10%-20% (Russia, Bulgaria, Montenegro, Cyprus) 20%-40% (Macedonia) 40%-60% (Bosnia and Herzegovina) 60%-80% (Albania) 80%-95% (Kosovo) over 95% (Turkey)

Eurabia was originally the title of a newsletter published by the Comité européen de coordination des associations d'amitié avec le monde Arabe. According to Bat Ye'or, it was published collaboratively with France-Pays Arabes (journal of the Association de solidarité franco-arabe or ASFA), Middle East International (London), and the Groupe d'Etudes sur le Moyen-Orient (Geneva). During the 1973 oil crisis, the European Economic Community (predecessor of the European Union), had entered into the Euro-Arab Dialogue (EAD) with the Arab League. Bat Ye'or later used the journal title Eurabia to describe the associated political developments.

In her book, Bat Ye'or states that Eurabia is the result of the French-led European policy originally intended to increase European power against the United States by aligning its interests with those of the Arab countries, and regards it as a primary cause of European hostility to Israel. Her definition of the term is:

“

Eurabia is a geo-political reality envisaged in 1973 through a system of informal alliances between, on the one hand, the nine countries of the European Community (EC) which, enlarged, became the European Union (EU) in 1992 and on the other hand, the Mediterranean Arab countries. The alliances and agreements were elaborated at the top political level of each EC country with the representative of the European Commission, and their Arab homologues with the Arab League's delegate. This system was synchronised under the roof of an association called the Euro-Arab Dialogue (EAD) created in July 1974 in Paris. A working body composed of committees and always presided jointly by a European and an Arab delegate planned the agendas, and organized and monitored the application of the decisions.

”

Current use of the term differs from than that of Bat Ye'or, with more attention focused on Muslim immigration and demographics, and the difficulties of assimilating Europe's Islamic populations. Niall Ferguson wrote in the New York Times that the idea of Eurabia has

“

...gained credibility since 9/11. The 3/11 bombings in Madrid confirm that terrorists sympathetic to Osama bin Laden continue to operate with comparative freedom in European cities. Some American commentators suspect Europeans of wanting to appease radical Islam. Others detect in sporadic manifestations of anti-Semitism a sinister conjunction of old fascism and new fundamentalism.

”

The term has been popularized by writers such Oriana Fallaci, Robert Spencer, Daniel Pipes, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Melanie Phillips, Mark Steyn (and several web sites). Others, such as Bernard Lewis and Bruce Bawer have presented comparable scenarios.

Waleed Aly, in an article published in The Age (Melbourne), responding to Raphael Israeli's call for controls limiting Muslim immigration to Australia (lest a "critical mass" develop) observed that Raphael Israeli's comments are a cause for concern "because they are not as marginal as they are mad." Aly continues that Israeli's latest book "is an unoriginal appropriation of the 'Eurabia' conspiracy thesis of Jewish writer Bat Ye'or: that Europe is evolving into a post-Judeo-Christian civilisation increasingly subjugated to the jihadi ideology of Muslim migrants" and that the theory has received "enthusiastic support" from intellectuals in Europe and activists in the USA.

Libyan leader Muammar al-Gaddafi, in a speech that aired on Al-Jazeera TV on April 10, 2006, said:

• "We have 50 million Muslims in Europe. There are signs that Allah will grant Islam victory in Europe - without swords, without guns, without conquests. The 50 million Muslims of Europe will turn it into a Muslim continent within a few decades."
• "Allah mobilizes the Muslim nation of Turkey, and adds it to the European Union."
• "That's another 50 million Muslims. There will be 100 million Muslims in Europe. Albania, which is a Muslim country, has already entered the E.U."
• "Bosnia, which is a Muslim country, has already entered the E.U. Fifty percent of its citizens are Muslims."
• "Europe is in a predicament, and so is America. They should agree to become Islamic in the course of time, or else declare war on the Muslims."

However, not all supporters of the theory see 'Eurabia' as inevitable. Some advocate the prohibition of Islam and some advocate a direct confrontation. In an article entitled Confrontation, Not Appeasement, Ayaan Hirsi Ali demands a confrontational policy at the European level to meet the threat of radical Islam, and compares policies of non-confrontation to Neville Chamberlain's appeasement of Hitler. Specifically, she proposes: *careful monitoring of the demographic growth of the Muslim population in Europe;

• registration of all violent incidents against women, Jews and homosexuals, including the (religious) identity of the perpetrator;
• Europe must recognise the United States and Israel as allies in the struggle against radical Islam; development of alternative energy sources;
• reduction of dependence on oil;
• a European immigration policy that makes entry conditional on allegiance to the national constitution: Immigrants should sign a contract to obey the Constitution, and would be deported if they break it;
• ideological confrontation with the generation infected by radical Islam: all Muslims must explicitly renounce radical Islam, offer good education;
• close all Islamic schools; and prohibit the opening of new ones

During the conference "The collapse of Europe" at Pepperdine University, Ayaan Hirsi Ali asked for "reform, meaning, to reduce government, where government is unnecessary, and especially the welfare state."

According to Johann Hari, "Steyn's wider response to Islamism is to make democratic societies more like the one the Islamists want to build."

The Economist has described the concept of Eurabia as "scaremongering".

Scholar Matt Carr wrote in the July 2006 issue of Race & Class that

“

What began as an outlandish conspiracy theory has become a dangerous Islamophobic fantasy that has moved ever closer towards mainstream respectability.

”

Justin Vaisse, co-author of Integrating Islam Political and Religious Challenges in Contemporary France, says his book intends to debunk "four myths of the alarmist school." Using Muslims in France as an example, he writes:

• The Muslim population is not growing as fast as the scenario claims, since the fertility rate of immigrants declines
• Muslims are not a monolithic or cohesive group
• Muslims do seek to integrate politically and socially
• Despite their numbers, Muslims have little influence on foreign policy (e.g. policy toward Israel)

The "Eurabia" theory has been compared to historically antisemitic writing by British columnist Johann Hari. He calls the two "startlingly similar" and says that "there are intellectuals on the British right who are propagating a conspiracy theory about Muslims that teeters very close to being a 21st century Protocols of the Elders of Zion."

Shadow governments

A shadow government is a "government-in-waiting" that remains in waiting with the intention of taking control of a government in response to some event.

In a parliamentary system, the largest opposition party often refers to itself as a shadow government and, if it is sufficiently large, it may also have a Shadow Cabinet in which top opposition leaders shadow the policies and actions of the corresponding cabinet ministers.

They are prepared to assume the respective ministries of responsibility should their party come to power in an election.

For example, in Britain the largest opposition party's defence spokesman might refer to themselves as the Shadow Defence Secretary.

Smaller parties may also have spokespeople, but these do not generally use shadow names.

It is also used as a somewhat pejorative term to denote a government that takes over in the event of a disaster.

Guerrillas sometimes have equivalent structures to the present government in hopes that when the guerrilla-group overthrows the present government, the guerrilla-forces will more easily be able to transition from militarist to administrative capacity.

Also, the term "shadow government" can be used loosely to refer to a guerrilla-force that controls and administers the majority of the physical area of a country, rendering the official national government significantly less able to administer its policies.

In nations with less apparent strife, several safeguards are in place in the event of a disaster strong enough to disrupt the functioning of the government.

The United States has Continuity of Operations Plan, Continuity of Government and the presidential line of succession plans.

The tasks and objectives of Operation Gladio varied from country to country but in many countries the 'stay-behind' army consisted of a pre-planned cabinet to rule the country in an interim fashion if the country were invaded by Warsaw Pact states, either in-country or in exile.

In the United Kingdom the Civil Contingencies Secretariat is responsible for planning for government continuity in the event of a catastrophe.

None of these safeguards is itself a "shadow government", but they provide, at least in theory, a blueprint for what to do if the governmental structure collapses.


The concept of a "shadow government" is extremely popular in works of conspiracy theory and conspiracy fiction.

Conspiracy theorists define a shadow government as a "secret government within the government".

This secret government is the "real" government that controls the legitimate and visible government's agenda.

The members' identities and meetings in smoke-filled rooms of the shadow government are known by only a select few.

Believed to be controlled by Freemasons, Illuminati, Jews, the Antichrist or alien infiltrators, this secret government is often portrayed as having storehouses of dreadful secrets, staff being unknowningly used to further an agenda, and an interest in controlling the path humanity will take into an ominous future.

The shadow government is often funded by money that has been purposely "misplaced" within the government's system, or concealed behind government-contract projects that are false fronts for other undertakings.

One of the most popular conspiracy theories about a shadow government among ideologues of the far-right is the notion of a "Zionist Occupation Government".

Diana Princess of Wales Multi Theories

The wreckage of Dodi's limo

Diana, Princess of Wales, (Diana Frances; née Spencer; 1 July 1961 – 31 August 1997) was the first wife of Charles, Prince of Wales. Their sons, Princes William and Harry, are second and third in line to the thrones of the United Kingdom and fifteen other Commonwealth Realms.

A public figure from the announcement of her engagement to Prince Charles, Diana remained the focus of near-constant media scrutiny in the United Kingdom and around the world before, during and after her marriage, even in the years following her sudden death in a car crash, which was followed by a spontaneous and prolonged show of public mourning. Contemporary responses to Diana's life and legacy were mixed but a popular fascination with the Princess endures. The long-awaited Coroner's Inquest reported its conclusion on 7 April 2008 that Diana and her companion Dodi Fayed were unlawfully killed by the negligent driving of the following vehicles and driver Henri Paul in which she was travelling.

Although the initial French investigation found Diana, Princess of Wales had died as a result of an accident, Mohammed Fayed and the Daily Express have persistently raised conspiracy theories that she was assassinated. This led in 2004 to the establishment of a special Metropolitan Police inquiry team, Operation Paget, headed by the then Commissioner Lord Stevens to investigate the conspiracy theories.

Paul McCartney is dead (1966 Hoax)

"Paul is dead" is an urban legend alleging that Paul McCartney of the band The Beatles died in 1966 and was replaced by a look-alike and sound-alike.

The legend dates from September 1969 when students published claims that ‘clues’ to McCartney's death, presumed to have been placed deliberately by The Beatles or others, could be found among the lyrics and artwork of The Beatles' recordings. The rumour was rebutted by a contemporary interview with McCartney published in November 1969 but continues to attract some interest, particularly on the Internet.

The rumour has been the subject of much social research.^{[citation needed]}

A claim that a hoax was perpetrated by The Beatles themselves, either as a joke or to stimulate record sales, has been denied by the band members.

History

The first known printed article on the subject is "Is Paul McCartney Dead?" written by Tim Harper^[2] in the Drake University paper, the Times-Delphic, on 17 September 1969. The rumours surrounding McCartney began in earnest on 12 October 1969, when someone telephoned Russ Gibb (a radio DJ on WKNR-FM in Dearborn, Michigan serving the Detroit market). Identifying himself as "Tom" (allegedly Tom Zarski^[3] of Eastern Michigan University), the caller announced that McCartney was dead. He also asked Gibb to play "Revolution 9" backwards. Gibb thought he heard "Turn me on, dead man."^[4] Gibb also produced (with John Small and Dan Carlisle) The Beatle Plot, an hour-long radio show on the rumour. The show aired on WKNR-FM on October 12, 1969 and has been repeated in the years since on Detroit radio.

Fred LaBour and John Gray, juniors at the University of Michigan, having heard the WKNR broadcast, published a review of Abbey Road called "McCartney Dead; New Evidence Brought to Light", itemising various "clues" of McCartney's death on Beatles album covers, in the October 14, 1969 issue of the Michigan Daily. LaBour and Gray invented many of the "clues", and were astonished when the story was picked up first by newspapers in Detroit, then Chicago, and by the weekend, both coasts. Beatleologist Andru J. Reeve, opines that LaBour's story was "the single most significant factor in the breadth of the rumor's spread." Terry Knight, a former Detroit DJ and then singer on Capitol Records, had visited the Beatles in London for the August 1968 White Album session during which Ringo Starr walked out. Although Terry's song, "Saint Paul", was written about the impending breakup of The Beatles, it was picked up by radio stations in autumn 1969 as a tribute to "the late" Paul McCartney. Of this, Richard Harrington commented in 1994: "[T]his very strange song actually came out in May 1969 - five months before the first article on the subject appeared in the campus paper at Iowa's Drake University. More mysteriously, 'Saint Paul' is the only Knight composition administered by Maclen Music — McCartney and [band-mate John] Lennon's exclusive publishing company!"

The rumour gained momentum when Roby Yonge, an overnight disc jockey on the Top 40 station WABC in New York, discussed it "incoherently" on 21 October 1969. Yonge was immediately fired for making the broadcast. WABC, a 50,000-watt clear-channel station, could be heard clearly in 38 states, and as far as Africa's Atlantic coast.^[11] Soon, national and international media picked up on the story and a new "Beatle craze" took off.

Celebrity lawyer F. Lee Bailey hosted an hour-long RKO television special in which he both prosecuted and defended the claims, cross-examining various "experts", including LaBour, leaving it to the viewer to decide. LaBour told Bailey during a pre-show meeting that he had made the whole thing up. Bailey responded, "Well, we have an hour of television to do. You're going to have to go along with this." The program aired locally in New York City on November 30, 1969, and was never re-aired.

McCartney's death was rebutted and the rumours declined when, in November 1969, Life magazine published an edition with cover story entitled "The case of the missing Beatle", "Paul is still with us" which included a contemporary interview with McCartney.

The rumour is the subject of several books, including American journalist Andru J. Reeve's 1994 book Turn Me On, Dead Man (ISBN 1-4184-8294-3) and English author Benjamin Fitzpatrick's 1997 book, Rumours from John, George, Ringo and Me.

"Paul is dead" analyst Joel Glazier hypothesised in 1978 that Lennon's love of word play and studio editing may have been responsible for some clues in later albums, but that after cult-leader Charles Manson claimed The Beatles were hiding references to an upcoming racial war in their song "Helter Skelter", the band members chose not to reveal the joke.

The advent of the Internet gave "Paul is dead" rumours new life, but with the basis for the belief shifting from supposed deliberately placed clues, towards supposedly significant differences in McCartney's appearance after 1966.

In 2009, the Italian affiliate of Wired magazine published an article by Italians Francesco Gavazzeni (IT analyst) and Gabriella Carlesi (medico-legal) in which they compared McCartney’s facial attributes (including skull and jaw shape) in photographs allegedly taken before and after his alleged demise (but of undisclosed origin), and concluded that it was possible that the photographs were not of the same person. They noted however, that they had not had direct access to McCartney, and that they were less certain of their conclusion than might have been the case had they been dealing with a corpse, where a more rigorous analysis would have been possible.

The ‘clues’

Hundreds of supposed clues have been reported by fans and followers of the legend; they include messages perceived when listening to a song being played backwards, and symbolic interpretations of both lyrics and album cover imagery. Oft-cited examples are the fact that McCartney is the only barefooted Beatle on the cover of the album Abbey Road, and the belief that the words spoken by Lennon in the final section of the song "Strawberry Fields Forever" are "I buried Paul". (Lennon and McCartney each later said that the words spoken are actually "Cranberry sauce".)

The story

A common story for the alleged death is that on Wednesday, 9 November 1966 at 5 am, McCartney, while working on the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album, stormed out of a recording session after an argument with the other Beatles and rode off in his Austin-Healey which he subsequently crashed into a lamp post, and died.

That story was pieced together from the lyrics of multiple Beatles songs:

1. "He didn't notice that the lights had changed" ("A Day in the Life").
2. He then crashed into a lamp-post (a car crash sound is heard in "Revolution 9" and "A Day in the Life").
3. He was pronounced dead on a "Wednesday morning at 5 o'clock as the day begins" ("She's Leaving Home")
4. Nobody found this out because the news was withheld: "Wednesday morning papers didn't come" ("Lady Madonna").
5. A funeral procession was held days later, as was supposedly implied on the Abbey Road album cover by the Beatles' appearance. (John Lennon dressed all in white, supposedly like a clergyman. Ringo Starr wore a black suit, like an undertaker, Paul McCartney wore a blue suit without shoes, as, supposedly, a corpse would, and walked out of step with the other Beatles, and George Harrison dressed in blue jeans, supposedly symbolising a gravedigger).

According to the story, McCartney's place in The Beatles (as well as his private life) was then taken by ‘William Shears Campbell’, who, it is suggested, was the winner of a McCartney look-alike contest. Other suggested names for the replacement include Billy Shears (the name of the fictitious leader of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band), William Sheppard (based on the alleged inspiration for the song "The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill"), or some combination of these names.

References to the phenomenon

By members of the Beatles

• In 1969, McCartney said of the rumour: "Anyway all of the things that have been, that have made these rumours, to my mind have very ordinary, logical explanations. To the people’s minds who prefer to think of them as rumours, then I am not going to interfere, I am not going to spoil that fantasy. You can think of it like that if you like. However, if the end result, the conclusion you reach is that I am dead, then you are wrong, because I am very much alive, I am alive and living in Scotland.”
• Lennon joked about the rumour in the years following its initial growth^{[citation needed]} and referred to it in the song "How Do You Sleep?" on his 1971 solo album Imagine, commenting "Those freaks was right when they said you was dead."
• McCartney referred to the rumour with the cover of his 1993 live album Paul Is Live, sending up both the Abbey Road cover and its "hidden clues".^{[citation needed]}
• On a segment of Saturday Night Live in which Paul McCartney was a guest, Chris Farley asked him of the rumour: "That was a hoax, right?" McCartney assured him that he is not really dead.

By others

• The Rutles, a parody of The Beatles, included a couple of "Paul is dead" parodies.
• In the June 1970 comic book Batman # 222, Batman investigates a rumour that Saul Cartwright of the rock band The Oliver Twists is an impostor and that the real Saul had died a year ago; it turned out that Saul was real but the rest of the band were fakes.
• The 1972 National Lampoon album Radio Dinner featured several mock numbered clues, including a short backwards track saying, "I'm dead!" in a Liverpudlian accent.
• The Simpsons television show has included many references to the story.
• The Onion's Our Dumb Century collection includes a fake headline from 21 January 1981, that reads, "Secret Album-Cover Clues Reveal John Lennon Is Dead."
• In the film Sleepless in Seattle, Tom Hanks's character comes home to find his son listening to an album and declaring "Dad, this is amazing. If you play this backwards it says 'Paul is dead.'"
• In a 1987 edition of American Top 40, host Casey Kasem revisited the "Paul Is Dead" era as a related story to the Bananarama song "I Heard a Rumour". The following year, Dick Clark featured a similar story on Rock, Roll and Remember.
• Many bands have referenced the rumour in their music, including:
  • Swell Maps' early repertoire included songs titled "Paul's Dead" and "Turn Me on Dead Man".
  • SR-71 released a song called "Paul McCartney" on their debut album Now You See Inside which references that Paul is dead.
  • The Union Underground wrote a song called "Turn Me On, Mr. Dead Man", a reference to the "Revolution 9" clue "Turn me on, dead man" (supposedly said by Lennon when played in reverse).
• A post-credits skit in "Hero", an episode of the modern Battlestar Galactica, refers to the legend. In a Sgt. Pepper -style setting, producer Ronald D. Moore utters the term "backmasking", at which producer David Eick gives him a number 9 and says "Turn me on, dead man."
• John Safran's Music Jamboree contains a segment about the conspiracy with a mock George Harrison-is-dead conspiracy, following Harrison's death in 2001.
• In early 2009 on The Colbert Report, Stephen Colbert made reference in a skit to a news article about an excess of caffeine causing delusions of ghosts. As part of his reaction, he said, "But how could I have been interviewing Paul McCartney, when he's dead?"

Marilyn Monroe and the Barbiturate OD

Marilyn Monroe (June 1, 1926 – August 5, 1962), born Norma Jeane Mortenson, but baptized Norma Jeane Baker, was an American actress, singer, and model. After spending much of her childhood in foster homes, Monroe began a career as a model, which led to a film contract in 1946. Her early roles were minor, but her performances in The Asphalt Jungle and All About Eve (both 1950) were well received. Monroe was praised for her comedic ability in such films as Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, How to Marry a Millionaire, Some Like It Hot and The Seven Year Itch.

The typecasting of Monroe's "dumb blonde" persona limited her career prospects, so she broadened her range. She studied at the Actors Studio and formed Marilyn Monroe Productions. Her dramatic performance in Bus Stop (from the William Inge play) was hailed by critics, and she won a Golden Globe Award for her performance in Some Like it Hot.

The final years of Monroe's life were marked by illness, personal problems, and a reputation for being unreliable and difficult to work with. The circumstances of her death, from an overdose of barbiturates, have been the subject of conjecture. Though officially classified as a "probable suicide", the possibility of an accidental overdose, as well as the possibility of homicide, have not been ruled out. In 1999, Monroe was ranked as the sixth greatest female star of all time by the American Film Institute.

On August 5, 1962, LAPD police sergeant Jack Clemmons received a call at 4:25 a.m. from Dr. Ralph Greenson, Monroe's psychiatrist, proclaiming that Monroe was found dead at her home in Brentwood, Los Angeles, California. She was 36 years old. At the subsequent autopsy, eight milligram percent of Chloral Hydrate and 4.5 milligram percent of Nembutal were found in her system, and Dr. Thomas Noguchi of the Los Angeles County Coroners office recorded cause of death as "acute barbiturate poisoning," resulting from a "probable suicide". Many theories, including murder, circulated about the circumstances of her death and the timeline after the body was found. Some conspiracy theories involved John and Robert Kennedy, while other theories suggested CIA or Mafia complicity.

On August 8, 1962, Monroe was interred in a crypt at Corridor of Memories #24, at the Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Westwood, Los Angeles. Lee Strasberg delivered the eulogy. The crypt space immediately to the left of Monroe's was bought and reserved by Hugh Hefner in 1992.

In August 2009, the crypt space directly above that of Monroe was placed for auction on eBay. Elsie Poncher plans to exhume her husband and move him to an adjacent plot. She advertised the crypt, hoping "to make enough money to pay off the $1.6 million mortgage" on her Beverly Hills mansion

Timeline

Many questions remain unanswered regarding the circumstances and timeline of Monroe's death after her body was found.

• 7-7:15p.m. Joe DiMaggio Jr., after trying to get in touch with Monroe all day, telephones Monroe and the two talk about DiMaggio's broken engagement. DiMaggio when interviewed said that Monroe sounded cheerful and upbeat. On duty with the Marines in California, DiMaggio was able to place the time of the call because he was watching the seventh inning of a Baltimore Orioles Los Angeles Angels game being played in Baltimore. According to the game's records the seventh inning took place between 10-10:15 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time, thus meaning Monroe received the call around 7 p.m. California time.
• 8-9 p.m. Henry Rosefeld telephones Monroe and states she sounded normal.
• Around 9 p.m. Monroe telephones hairdresser Sidney Guilaroff to arrange an appointment.
• 9:30-10 p.m. Former boyfriend Jose Bolanos telephones and states Monroe sounded normal.
• Sometime after 10 p.m. Monroe telephones Jeanne Carmen to invite her over for a talk but due to the late hour Carmen declines.
• 10 p.m. Housekeeper Eunice Murray walks past Monroe's door and states she saw a light on under the door but decided not to disturb her.
• 10:30 p.m. According to actress Natalie Trundy (later Mrs. Arthur P. Jacobs) Monroe's agent Arthur P. Jacobs hurriedly leaves a concert at the Hollywood Bowl that he is attending with Trundy and with director Mervyn LeRoy and his wife, after being informed by Monroe's lawyer Mickey Rudin that she has overdosed. Trundy's timeline fits with undertakers Guy Hockett's (see below) estimation that Monroe died sometime between 9:30 p.m. and 11:30 p.m.
• Midnight. Murray notices the light under the door again and knocks but gets no reply. She tells police she immediately telephoned Dr. Ralph Greenson, Monroe's psychiatrist.
• Dr. Greenson arrives and tries to break open the door but fails. He looks through the French windows outside and sees Monroe lying on the bed holding the telephone and apparently dead so breaks the glass to open the locked door and checks her. He calls Dr. Hyman Engelberg. There is some speculation that an ambulance might have been summoned to Monroe's house at this point and later dismissed.

The carpet in Monroe’s room was a thick pile which made it difficult if not impossible for Murray to have seen light under the door, the French windows had blackout blinds which made it impossible for Dr. Greenson to have seen inside the room.

• 1 a.m. Lawford is informed by Mickey Rudin that Monroe is dead.
• Police are called and arrive shortly after 4:30 a.m. The two doctors and Murray are questioned and indicate a time of death of around 12:30 a.m.
• Police note the room is extremely tidy and the bed appears to have fresh linen on it. They claim Murray was washing sheets when they arrived.
• Police note that the bedside table has several pill bottles but the room contains no means to wash pills down as there is no glass and the water is turned off. Monroe is known to gag on pills even when drinking to wash them down. Later a glass is found lying on the floor by the bed but police claim it was not there when the room was searched.
• 5:40 a.m. The undertaker, Guy Hockett, arrives and notes that the state of rigor mortis indicates a time of death between 9:30 and 11:30 p.m. The time is later altered to match the witness statements.
• 6 a.m. Murray changes her story and now says she went back to bed at midnight and only called Dr. Greenson when she awoke at 3 a.m. and noticed the light still on. Both doctors also change their stories and now claim Monroe died around 3:50 a.m. Police note Murray appears quite evasive and extremely vague and she would eventually change her story several times. Despite being a key witness, Murray travels to Europe and is not questioned again.
• The pathologist Dr. Thomas Noguchi could find no trace of capsules, powder or the typical discoloration caused by Nembutal in Monroe's stomach or intestines indicating the drugs that killed her had not been swallowed. If Monroe had swallowed the drugs there should have been residue. If Monroe had taken them over a period of time which might account for the lack of residue she would have died long before ingesting the amount found in her bloodstream. Monroe was found lying face down but lividity on her back and the posterior aspect of the arms and legs indicated she had died lying on her back. The body was covered in bruises, all minor except for one on her hip. There was also evidence of cyanosis, an indication that death was very quick. Noguchi had asked the toxicologist for examinations of the blood, liver, kidneys, stomach, urine, and intestines which would have revealed exactly how the drugs got into Monroe's system. However the toxicologist after examining the blood didn't believe he needed to check other organs so many of the organs were destroyed without being examined. When Noguchi asked for the samples, the medical photographs and slides of those that were examined, and the examination form showing bruises on the body had disappeared making it impossible to investigate the cause of death.
• The toxicology report shows high levels of Nembutal (38-66 capsules) and chloral hydrate (14-23 tablets) in Monroe's blood. The level found was enough to kill more than 10 people.
• An examination of the body ruled out intravenous injection as the source of the drugs, leaving only an enema or suppository as a source. These sources were considered unlikely and had no evidence in support, so Noguchi reluctantly wrote that the drugs were swallowed.
• The coroner, Dr. Theodore Curphey, oversaw the full autopsy. Apart from the cause of death as listed on the death certificate, the results were never made public and no record of the findings were kept.

Many elements of this timeline have often been brought into question. Most notable are the discrepancies in exactly what time Monroe either made or received her last phone call and at what time during the late night and early morning hours of August 4 and 5 her body was discovered.

The funeral

The funeral arrangements for Monroe were made by her second husband, baseball legend Joe DiMaggio. They were re-connecting at the time of her death, and it is rumored that, at the time of her death, he was preparing to ask her to marry him again.

Marilyn Monroe was buried in what was known at that time as the "Cadillac of caskets" — a hermetically sealing antique-silver-finished 48-ounce (heavy gauge) solid bronze "masterpiece" casket lined with champagne-colored satin-silk; the casket had been manufactured by the Belmont casket company in Columbus, Ohio. Before the service, the outer lid and the upper half of the divided inner lid of her casket were opened so that the mourners could get a last glimpse of Monroe. Whitey Snyder had prepared her face, a promise he had made her if she were to die before him.

The service was the second one held at the newly built chapel at Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in West Los Angeles, and only 25 people were given permission to attend. Monroe's acting coach, Lee Strasberg, delivered her eulogy. An organist played "Over the Rainbow" at the end of the service.

Monroe is interred in a pink marble crypt at Corridor of Memories, #24. Hugh Hefner owns the rights to the crypt next to it. Monroe had visited the cemetery more than once as a struggling actress because Ana Lower, the adult to whom she had been closest during her juvenile years, had been buried there in 1948. Lower was related to Grace Goddard, Monroe's official guardian during much of her childhood. When Goddard committed suicide in 1953, Monroe, by then wealthy, arranged for her burial at Westwood.

DiMaggio had a half-dozen red roses delivered to her crypt three times a week for the next 20 years and never remarried.

Publicity in the 1970s

In 1973, Norman Mailer received publicity for having written the first bestselling book to suggest that Monroe's death was a murder staged to look like a drug overdose. The book has no footnotes and does not cite any interviews with witnesses, police officials or coroner Thomas Noguchi, who performed the autopsy, although there are many references to the Kennedy brothers. In a notorious 60 Minutes interview in August of that year, Mailer told Mike Wallace that he could not have interviewed Monroe's housemate Eunice Murray because Murray was dead before he started work on the book. Wallace said on the air that Murray was alive and listed in the West Los Angeles telephone directory.

In a 1974 book on Monroe's death that was not publicized on television, author Robert Slatzer made controversial claims about not only a conspiracy, but also his alleged brief marriage to Monroe in Tijuana, Mexico in 1952. (During that year her romance with Joe DiMaggio was reported by gossip columnists, although they did not marry until 1954.) Unlike Norman Mailer, Slatzer interviewed an authority whose name, which was unknown to the public at the time, appears in official documents from 1962. Slatzer's source was Jack Clemmons, a sergeant with the LAPD who was the first officer to report to the death scene. According to Clemmons' statements in Slatzer's book, Eunice Murray behaved suspiciously, doing laundry at 4:30 a.m. and answering his questions evasively. When Slatzer approached Murray with questions, she denied any wrongdoing by herself or by Monroe's psychiatrist Ralph Greenson, who had hired Murray to watch the actress for signs of drug abuse or suicidal tendency. Greenson himself refused to talk to Slatzer, having reacted to Norman Mailer's highly publicized book by telling the New York Post that Monroe "had no significant involvement" with John or Robert Kennedy.

BBC investigation

In 1985, the American media publicized an investigation by British journalist Anthony Summers. That year BBC viewers saw a documentary titled The Last Days of Marilyn Monroe that was narrated by Summers and based on his research. (Years later it was seen by Americans under the title Say Goodbye To The President.) The program contained soundbite interviews with, among others, Jack Clemmons and Eunice Murray, who was still alive 12 years after Norman Mailer's erroneous claim that she was dead. A former district attorney named John Miner is also seen being interviewed. He refused at the time to say anything about his interview with a griefstricken Ralph Greenson in 1962, citing a policy of confidentiality at the district attorneys' office and Greenson's doctor/patient confidentiality. Summers also came out that year with the book Goddess, which quoted Miner as saying he was aware that Greenson was now dead, but their 1962 conversation was still confidential.

A People Weekly cover story in 1985 reported that 20/20 had canceled a segment about Monroe's relationships with the Kennedys and the circumstances of her death. Barbara Walters, Hugh Downs and Geraldo Rivera were reported to have reacted angrily to the cancellation. The staffs of both the BBC and 20/20 had worked closely with Anthony Summers. All of these investigations had started after the 1979 death of Ralph Greenson. For the BBC program Eunice Murray initially repeated the same story she had told Robert Slatzer in 1973 and the police in 1962. She apparently noticed the camera crew starting to pack up and then said, "Why, at my age, do I still have to cover this thing?" Unknown to her, the microphone was still on. Murray went on to admit that Monroe had known the Kennedys. She volunteered that on the night of the actress' death, "When the doctor arrived, she was not dead." Murray died in 1993 without revealing further details.

21st century investigations of Monroe

Rachael Bell of Court TV

According to a mini-biography of the events leading up to Monroe's death written by Rachael Bell for Court TV's Crime Library, a sedative enema might have been administered on the advice of Monroe's psychiatrist, Dr. Ralph Greenson, as a sleep aid and as part of Greenson's larger project to wean his patient off barbiturates.

Drawing on Donald Spoto's updated edition of his biography from 2001, Bell elaborates on the theory that Greenson was perhaps unaware of the fact that his patient's internist, Dr. Hyman Engelberg, had refilled Monroe's prescription for the barbiturate Nembutal a day earlier, and that the actress may very well have ingested enough Nembutal throughout the day such that it would lethally react with the chloral hydrate later given to her. Bell writes:

Spoto makes a very persuasive case for accidental death. Dr. Greenson had been working with Dr. Hyman Engelberg to wean Marilyn off Nembutal, substituting instead chloral hydrate to help her sleep. Milton Rudin claimed that Greenson said something very important the night of Marilyn's death: "Gosh darn it! He gave her a prescription I didn't know about!"

Bell goes on to suggest that the suspicious circumstances surrounding Monroe's death are very possibly the result of an elaborate cover-up for what was, essentially, a tragic medical mistake.

John Miner's "tapes" assertion

On August 5, 2005, the Los Angeles Times published an account of Monroe's death by former Los Angeles County district attorney John Miner, who was present at the autopsy. Miner claimed that she was not suicidal, offering as proof his notes on audio tapes she had supposedly recorded for Greenson and that Greenson had played for him. Miner had refused to discuss them during Anthony Summers' 1980s investigation. In 2005, Miner did not explain why he was now willing to break the confidentiality agreement he had made with Greenson in 1962.

The CBS 48 Hours investigation

In April 2006, CBS's 48 Hours presented an updated report by Anthony Summers on Monroe's death. Through Summers, 48 Hours gained access to audio tapes of interviews conducted by the Los Angeles District Attorney's office in 1982.

According to Summers' sources, Monroe attended social events at actor Peter Lawford's beach home in Santa Monica, California, in the months before her death that also included President John F. Kennedy and Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy. The 48 Hours report quoted a former Secret Service agent as stating that it was "common knowledge" among his colleagues that there was an affair between Monroe and John Kennedy. Rumors of a relationship with Robert Kennedy were not confirmed.

According to newly released FBI documents, Monroe was considered to be a security risk. In March 1962 Monroe visited Mexico on a vacation, where she socialized with Americans who were openly communist. Subsequently the FBI maintained a file about Monroe. Summers stated that, contrary to her public image as a dumb blonde, Monroe was passionate about politics and discussed atomic testing issues with President Kennedy just three months before the Cuban Missile Crisis.

According to the broadcast, Lawford told police that he spoke to Monroe on the phone shortly before her death, that she sounded groggy and depressed, and that she said to him, "Say goodbye to Jack," and "Say goodbye to yourself." Phone records of her long distance calls that evening were lost, which was a cause of suspicion. Former Assistant District Attorney Mike Carroll, who conducted the 1982 investigation, said they found "no evidence of an intentional criminal act," and indicated that suicide was the most likely cause of death. He stated, "The bottles were there. She was unconscious. She had a history of overdose. In fact, she had a history of not only overdosing, but of being resuscitated."

FBI 2006 File Release

In October 2006, under the FOI act, the FBI released thousands of pages of previously classified documents. In early 2007, writer Philippe Mora discovered a three page report among the papers titled Robert F. Kennedy that discussed Monroe's death. This report has since been included in the FBI index under Marilyn Monroe.

Written by a former FBI agent (name is redacted from the report) working for the then governor of California Pat Brown, it details Robert Kennedy's affair with the movie star and claims that Kennedy had promised Monroe he would divorce his wife and marry her, but after the actress realised he had no intention of doing so, she made threats to make the affair public. The report claims that to silence Monroe, who had a history of staging publicity seeking fake suicide attempts, she was deliberately encouraged to do so again but was this time allowed to die. The report implicates Robert Kennedy, Peter Lawford, her psychiatrist Ralph Greenson, her housekeeper Eunice Murray, and her secretary and press agent, Pat Newcomb in the plot. The agent states in the report that he could not authenticate the information.

Mora admits he is not sure what to make of the file: "Is all this the elaborate dirty tricks of Kennedy haters from decades ago, or are we getting closer to the historical truth?"

Jimmy Hoffa

James Riddle "Jimmy" Hoffa (born February 14, 1913 – disappeared July 30, 1975, declared legally dead in 1982) was an American trade unionist.

Hoffa served as the General President of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters from 1958–1971, despite being incarcerated during the latter four years of his tenure. Hoffa, who had been convicted of jury tampering and attempted bribery in 1964, was imprisoned in 1967 after exhausting the appeal process. However, he did not officially resign the Teamsters' presidency until 1971. This was part of a pardon agreement with U.S. president Richard Nixon, in order to facilitate Hoffa's release from prison. Hoffa was last seen in 1975 outside a suburban Detroit restaurant called the Machus Red Fox.

Early life

Hoffa was born in Brazil, Indiana, on February 14, 1913. His paternal ancestors were "Pennsylvania Dutch" and Irish-American. Hoffa's father, John Cleveland Hoffa, a coal driller, died of lung disease in 1920. After his father's death, the family moved to Detroit, where Hoffa was raised and lived for most of the rest of his life.

The Hoffa family later had a summer property in Lake Orion, Michigan, a northern Detroit suburb.

Hoffa began union organizational work through his employment as a teenager with a grocery chain, which paid substandard wages and offered poor working conditions. The workers were displeased with this situation, and tried to organize a union to better their lot. Although Hoffa was young, his bravery and approachability in this role impressed fellow workers, and he rose to a leadership position. A while later, after being dismissed from the grocery chain, in part because of his union activities, Hoffa became involved with Local 299 of the Teamsters, in Detroit.

Leads Union activities

The Teamsters organized truckers and firefighters first throughout the Midwest, and then nationwide across the United States. The union skillfully used "quickie strikes", secondary boycotts, and other means of leveraging union strength at one company, then moved to organize workers, and then win contract demands at other companies. This process, which took several years from the early 1930s, eventually brought the Teamsters to a position of being one of the most powerful unions in the United States. Hoffa played a major role in the growth of the Teamsters union.

Becomes Teamsters President

Hoffa took over the presidency of the Teamsters in 1957, when his predecessor, Dave Beck, was convicted on bribery charges and imprisoned. Hoffa worked to expand the union, and, in 1964, succeeded in bringing virtually all over-the-road truck drivers in North America under a single national master-freight agreement. Hoffa then tried to bring the airline workers and other transport employees into the union.

Hoffa's son, James P. Hoffa, is the Teamsters' current leader. His daughter, Barbara Ann Crancer, currently serves as an associate circuit court judge in St. Louis, Missouri.

Conviction

In 1964, Hoffa was convicted in Chattanooga, Tennessee of attempted bribery of a grand juror, and was sentenced to 15 years. He spent the next three years appealing his conviction, without success; he began serving his sentence in 1967. Just before he entered prison, Hoffa appointed Frank Fitzsimmons as acting Teamsters president; Fitzsimmons was a Hoffa loyalist and fellow Detroit resident, who owed his own high position in large part to Hoffa's influence. On December 23, 1971, however, Hoffa was released from the Lewisburg, Pennsylvania prison, when President Richard Nixon commuted his sentence to time served, on the condition he not participate in union activities for ten years. Hoffa, while glad to regain his freedom, had not sought the non-participation conditions, and was unhappy with this situation.

Disappearance

Hoffa was planning to sue to invalidate that non-participation restriction, in order to reassert his power over the Teamsters when he disappeared at, or sometime after, 2:45 pm on July 30, 1975 from the parking lot of the Machus Red Fox Restaurant in Bloomfield Township, Oakland County, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit. He had been due to meet two Mafia leaders, Anthony Giacolone from Detroit and Anthony Provenzano from Union City, New Jersey and New York City. Provenzano was also a union leader with the Teamsters in New Jersey, who had earlier been quite close to Hoffa.

Investigations into his disappearance

DNA evidence examined in 2001 placed Hoffa in the car of long-time Teamster associate Charles "Chuckie" O'Brien (who has been described as Hoffa's "foster son"), despite O'Brien's claims that Hoffa had never been in the car. Police interviews later that year failed to produce any indictments.

Donald Frankos

In 1993, authors William Hoffman and Lake Headley released the book Contract Killer: The Explosive Story of the Mafia's Most Notorious Hitman, written with the cooperation of former mobster Donald Frankos, who was also known as "Tony the Greek." Among other crimes, Frankos confessed during the course of the book that, while serving a lengthy prison term for the murder of Lucchese crime family associate Richard Bilello, he had participated in a number of mob murders outside of prison via the use of phony furloughs provided by corrupt prison officials.

Frankos claimed that, during one of those furloughs, he took part in the murder of Hoffa, as part of a hit team consisting of himself, Irish mobster John Sullivan, and James Coonan, the notorious boss of the Westies. According to Frankos, Hoffa was lured by his close friend Chuckie O'Brien to a house owned by Detroit mobster Anthony Giacolone. Once there, Hoffa was shot and killed by Coonan and Frankos using suppressed .22 pistols, then dismembered by Coonan, Sullivan, and Frankos. The body was then left in a meat locker in the basement of the house for a lengthy period of time, while debate raged as to how to dispose of it. It was later picked up by a fourth hitman, Joseph "Mad Dog" Sullivan (no relation to John Sullivan), who sealed the body in an oil drum and buried it underneath Giants Stadium.

Frank Sheeran

In July 2003, convicted killer Richard Powell told authorities that a briefcase containing a syringe used to subdue Hoffa was buried at a house in Hampton Township, Michigan. The FBI searched the backyard of a home formerly frequented by Frank Sheeran, who was a World War II veteran, Mafia hit man, truck driver, Teamsters official, and close friend of Hoffa's. Nothing significant was found.

In 2004, Charles Brandt, a former prosecutor and chief deputy attorney general of Delaware, published the book I Heard You Paint Houses. The title is based on a euphemistic exchange apparently used by hitmen and their would-be employers ("I heard you paint houses." "Yes, and I do my own carpentry, too"). House painting alludes to the incidental-to-homicide emplacement of blood spatter on walls; "doing my own carpentry," to the task of disposing of the body. Brandt recounted a series of confessions by Sheeran regarding Hoffa's murder, and claimed that Sheeran had begun contacting him because he wished to assuage feelings of guilt. Over the course of several years, he spoke many times by phone to Brandt (which Brandt recorded) during which he acknowledged his role as Hoffa's killer, acting on orders from the Mafia. He claimed to have used his friendship with Hoffa to lure him to a bogus meeting in Bloomfield Hills and drive him to a house in northwestern Detroit, where he shot him twice before fleeing and leaving Hoffa's body behind. An updated version of Brandt's book claims that Hoffa's body was cremated within an hour of Sheeran's departure.

In 2004, authorities in Detroit extracted floorboards from the northwest Detroit home where Sheeran said he had shot Hoffa. However, by February 2005, the Bloomfield Township Police said the FBI Crime Lab reported that, while there had been male, human blood on the floorboards, the blood did not match Hoffa's. It was later revealed that the DNA had been destroyed when the wrong kind of Luminol was used to find the blood remnants.

Richard Kuklinski

In Philip Carlo's book The Ice Man, written about (and with the cooperation of) convicted contract killer Richard Kuklinski, Kuklinski claimed that he played a large part in the disappearance of Hoffa. He said that he and three other men met Hoffa for lunch at the Machus Red Fox and, when Hoffa got into their van, Kuklinski knocked him out and then put a knife in his head. Kuklinski then took the body back to New Jersey, where it was burned and then buried in a 50 gallon gasoline drum. This drum was eventually put in the trunk of a car, which was then crushed into a block measuring 4' by 2'. This block and many others were then sold to Japanese auto manufacturers as scrap to melt down and make new cars out of.

Events since 2006

On May 17, 2006, acting on a tip, the FBI searched a farm in Milford Township, Michigan, for Hoffa's remains. Nothing was found.

On June 16, 2006, the Detroit Free Press published in its entirety the so-called Hoffex Memo, a 56-page report the FBI prepared for a January 1976 briefing on the case at FBI Headquarters in Washington, D.C. The FBI has called the report the definitive account of what agents believe happened to Hoffa.

In November 2006 KLAS-TV Channel 8 Las Vegas interviewed author Charles Brandt about Hoffa's murder and disappearance. Brandt claims that Hoffa's body was taken from the murder scene and possibly driven two minutes away to the Grand Lawn Cemetery where he was cremated.

Film and television

Portrayed by Robert Blake in the 1983 TV-film Blood Feud, Trey Wilson in the 1985 television miniseries Robert Kennedy & His Times, and by Jack Nicholson in the 1992 film Hoffa. In the 1978 film F.I.S.T., Sylvester Stallone portrays Johnny Kovak, a character based on Hoffa.

Further reading

• The Fall and Rise of Jimmy Hoffa is an account of Hoffa's trials in Tennessee. Author Walter Sheridan was a lawyer working for Robert F. Kennedy.
• The Hoffa Wars by investigative reporter Dan Moldea, which details Hoffa's rise to power.
• Contract Killer by William Hoffman and Lake Headley, which attempts to examine Hoffa's murder in great detail.
• Hoffa! Ten Angels Swearing. An Authorized Biography by Jim Clay was published in 1965 and defends Hoffa's position in his own words.