Marrs, Jim 1943-

views updated

Marrs, Jim 1943-

(James Farrell Marrs, Jr.)

PERSONAL: Born December 5, 1943, in Fort Worth, TX; son of James Farrell and Pauline (an author) Marrs; married Carol Worcester (a teacher), May 25, 1968; children: Cathryn Nova Ayn, Jayme Alistar. Ethnicity: “White.” Education: North Texas State University, B.A., 1966; graduate study at Texas Technological College (now Texas Tech University), 1967-68. Politics: Libertarian. Religion: Methodist.

ADDRESSES: Home and office— P.O. Box 189, Springtown, TX 76082. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: Magpie (magazine), owner and editor, 1963-64; reporter, cartoonist, and photographer for various Texas periodicals, including Denton Record Chronicle, Lubbock Avalanche-Journal, Lubbock Sentinel, and Fort Worth Star-Telegram, between 1965 and 1980; Jerre R. Todd and Associates, Fort Worth, TX, director of special projects, account executive for public relations for Six Flags over Texas for Colonial Golf, public relations director, copywriter, and cartoonist, 1980-81; Marketing Group, Dallas, TX, public relations consultant and copywriter, 1982-83; Springtown Current, Springtown, TX, co-owner and publisher, 1983-84; First Bank and Trust, Springtown, TX, communications director, 1985-1995. Jerre R. Todd and Associates, copywriter, public relations director, and cartoonist, 1972-74; communications director for Innotech Energy Corp. and Northeast HealthCare Center, both 1985-86; community relations consultant. University of Texas at Arlington, teacher of continuing education classes, 1976-2007; City of Fort Worth, workshop teacher for Operation CLASP, 1984. Sammons Cable Television, producer of the program Texas Roundup, 1982-83; Cowtown Trails (monthly tourism magazine), co-owner, publisher, and editor, 1983-84. Guest on media programs, speaking as an expert on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and the existence of UFOs, including Geraldo, The Montel Williams Show, This Morning, Tech TV, CNN, Art Bell Coast to Coast, Today, and the Larry King radio show. Military service: U.S. Army Reserve, served in military intelligence, 1969-70.

MEMBER: Investigative Reporters and Editors, National Society of Professional Journalists (Sigma Delta Chi), North Texas Reenactment Society, Springtown Optimist Club, Delta Sigma Phi.

AWARDS, HONORS: White Helmet awards, Fort Worth Fire Department, 1969, 1971; Associated Press writing awards, 1969-76; National Writing Award, Aviation/ Aerospace Writers Association, 1972; Human Rights Leadership Award from Freedom magazine, 1993.

WRITINGS:

Crossfire: The Plot that Killed Kennedy, Carroll & Graf(New York, NY), 1989.

(And director) Who Didn’t Kill.… JFK (video; also known as Fake), 3-G Home Video, 1991.

(And director) The Many Faces of Lee Harvey Oswald(video), 1992.

The Enigma Files: The True Story of America’s Psychic Warfare Program, Harmony Books (New York, NY), 1995.

Alien Agenda: Investigating the Extraterrestrial Presence among Us, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 1997.

Rule by Secrecy: The Hidden History that Connects the Trilateral Commission, the Freemasons, and the Great Pyramids, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 2000.

Inside Job: Unmasking the 9-11 Conspiracies, Origin Press (San Rafael, CA), 2004, 2nd edition published as Inside Job: The Shocking Case for a 9/11 Conspiracy, 2005.

The Terror Conspiracy: Provocation, Deception, and 9/11, Disinformation Co. (New York, NY), 2006.

Psi Spies: The True Story of America’s Psychic Warfare Program, New Page Books (Franklin Lakes, NJ), 2007.

The Rise of the Fourth Reich, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 2008.

Above Top Secret: Uncover the Mysteries of Digital Age, Disinformation Co. (New York, NY), 2008.

Author of scripts for the dental education video series “Bucky Bunny,” Spindletop Productions. Contributor to periodicals, including Esprit and Freedom. Author of pieces for Texas Sesquicentennial Wagon Train publication.

ADAPTATIONS: Crossfire was one of two books adapted by Oliver Stone for the film JFK, 1991.

SIDELIGHTS: Jim Marrs is the author of books in which he seeks to uncover truths he feels have been hidden by governments, both national and multinational. Marrs does not see himself as a “conspiracy theorist,” but rather as an investigative journalist who has unearthed contradictory information about such topics as the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, the aims of the Trilateral Commission, and visits by extraterrestrials. A former reporter for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram and a popular professor at the University of Texas at Arlington, Marrs has found his books on the bestseller list repeatedly, especially since director Oliver Stone used Marrs’s Crossfire: The Plot that Killed Kennedy as a basis for the film JFK. According to Robert Wilonsky in the Dallas Observer, Marrs “would prefer you refer to him as a ‘truth seeker.’” The reporter added: “Jim Marrs can’t be ignored. Few in this country shout about The Truth louder than he.”

Crossfire examines the numerous theories regarding the assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy. The book is based upon a decade of research, including interviews with Lee Harvey Oswald’s family and a bystander who was struck by a bullet during the assassination. Marrs’s coverage of the event is encyclopedic: He includes numerous theories on Kennedy’s demise and voluminous evidence of a government cover-up conducted in lieu of a truthful investigation. His work does not make a definitive statement on who killed Kennedy or why, but it does demonstrate that the “single gunman theory” cannot account for the extent of Kennedy’s wounds. Marrs once told CA: “Crossfire was largely ignored by the major media and Oliver Stone was viciously attacked by some because, for the first time, we presented a wealth of assassination information which had not been filtered first through those same major media.”

The mainstream media has tended to dismiss Marrs out of hand; the reading public feels otherwise, however. Marrs’s books have found major publishers and achieved bestseller status, and he is a frequent guest on television talk shows. Wilonsky called the author “a celebrity on the conspiracy circuit.… The curious seek his wisdom.”

In 1997, Marrs published Alien Agenda: Investigating the Extraterrestrial Presence among Us. The book claims that the U.S. government knows about alien encounters and has sought to cover them up by belittling those who investigate them. The work also explores possible alien influences in the major world religions and in the dawn of organized civilization, and it hints that aliens have plans for Earth’s future. National Review correspondent Andrew Stuttaford observed: “In a saner time, Alien Agenda would have been a crudely mimeographed pamphlet, pushed into your hand by a disheveled gentleman on a street corner. In the America of 1997 it will probably be a hit. And there is a sting in this campfire tale. The UFO myth mingles with and reinforces the other folk beliefs that increasingly shape a country where reason has gone quiet.” Stuttaford was correct on one point: Alien Agenda did indeed become a hit that went into its third printing within a month of publication. A Publishers Weekly contributor called the work “the most entertaining and complete overview of flying saucers and their crew in years,” and Booklist correspondent George Eberhart concluded: “The facts are mostly accurate, and the writing is crisp and journalistic.”

Rule by Secrecy: The Hidden History that Connects the Trilateral Commission, the Freemasons, and the Great Pyramids finds a secret conspiracy of world domination behind one organization’s public facade. According to Marrs, the world’s wealthiest citizens exercise an undue influence over governments, with an eye toward a one-world ruling body. These manipulators, he believes, can trace their ancestry back through time in such secret societies as the Freemasons and the Illuminati. A Publishers Weekly reviewer observed of the book: “Conspiracy buffs will have a field day wading through this morass, but other readers will remain unpersuaded.”

In Psi Spies: The True Story of America’s Psychic Warfare Program, Marrs reveals that, when U.S. of ficials learned during the Cold War era of Soviet attempts to use psychics as long-distance spies, they established an American program to attempt the same thing. The premise of both attempts was that people with psychic powers can use the technique of “remote viewing” to uncover secret enemy activities. Marrs offers several stories of psychic warfare as it was practiced throughout history, then explains how he believes the American program worked. Marrs claims that American-trained psychics learned much about real events, such as the loss of the unmanned Mars Observer spacecraft in 1993, and mysteries, such as the existence of a Loch Ness monster. Not surprisingly, many of these psychic discoveries continue to defy verification, but reviewers found Psi Spies to be an entertaining account nonetheless. The book also offers tips for readers who wish to enhance their own psychic ability to monitor events from afar.

Marrs explained his methodology in the Dallas Observer. “This sounds kinda idealistic, but in journalism school… they taught you about trying to find the truth and telling the truth to the public and letting them decide,” he said. “Look on both sides of the issue, look beyond the government’s pronouncements—all this stuff. And, hey, I bought into it. I really bought into that. I thought that was what I was supposed to be doing.” He added: “I’ve always gone for the unconventional and the different. But that’s OK, because if you study something—any subject, I don’t care whatever it is—and come to know the truth of what’s going on in that subject, you’ve got the truth as a defense against everybody.”

Marrs told CA: “My primary motivation for writing is to bring truth to light. As a career journalist, I quickly became aware of the restraints on the presentation of truth by workaday news reporters. There was pressure to hide or slant truth from politicians and government officials, advertisers, and even my own editors. I turned to writing books because, as a committed journalist, I felt there were no journals for my work, only corporate advertising distribution systems.

“I am always captivated by alternative explanations for both history and current events. I scrutinized such work carefully and skeptically. But if I found that unusual or unconventional ideas were backed by evidence and facts, I found myself compelled to write about it. As a journalist, I am not asking for anyone’s belief. I only bring the other side of issues for my reader’s contemplation.

“I have never suffered from ‘writer’s block’ because I know what I want to write before I sit down at the word processor. I study a subject from all angles, contemplate what it all means, and draw my conclusions before ever starting to write. I also usually draw up an outline of how I see the flow of the narrative. When I begin writing, if I get sidetracked or lost, I just consult my ‘road map’ and keep plowing ahead. I am fortunate that my years of being a newspaper reporter facing daily deadlines sharpened my ability to quickly place complicated subject matter into a concise and readable narrative.

“I have always had a curious and questioning nature, so I am drawn to subjects that are considered marginal, unconventional, and even outré. Most writers miss fascinating material because they don’t want to look past the unconventional, either because they fear loss of sales or do not want to be called a ‘conspiracy theorist.’ A case in point is the topic of UFOs. Most writers would not be caught dead writing about UFOs. Yet the subject is one that fascinates millions and has a monumental basis in facts, evidence, and human accounts from all over the world. Most people do not realize that U.S. government documents, which are now public, clearly state that a program of denial and ridicule was instituted concerning UFOs beginning in the early 1950s. This program has been quite effective in retarding any objective and scientific investigation of this subject.

“I do not feel that my writing has changed much, if any. Facts are facts, and information is information. I merely present what is known about a subject and generally allow my readers to make up their own minds on what this means and what might be done about it.”

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, April 15, 1997, George Eberhart, review of Alien Agenda: Investigating the Extraterrestrial Presence among Us, p. 1363.

Dallas Observer, July 6, 2000, Robert Wilonsky, “The Truth Is Way out There.”

Internet Bookwatch, November, 2007, review of Psi Spies: The True Story of America’s Psychic Warfare Program.

Library Journal, November 15, 1989, Gary L. Malecha, review of Crossfire: The Plot that Killed Kennedy, p. 96.

National Review, July 28, 1997, Andrew Stuttaford, review of Alien Agenda, p. 56.

Publishers Weekly, October 20, 1989, Genevieve Stut-taford, review of Crossfire, p. 46; May 5, 1997, review of Alien Agenda, p. 188; March 27, 2000, review of Rule by Secrecy: The Hidden History that Connects the Trilateral Commission, the Freemasons, and the Great Pyramids, p. 65; June 19, 2000, review of Psi Spies, p. 32.

Wall Street Journal, July 25, 2000, Bill Kauffman, “Think You Know What’s Going On? You Don’t,” p. A20.

Washington Post, December 24, 1989, review of Crossfire.