Pearl Harbor by Steven M.Gillon. FDR and Cocaine

My co-author Eric Fettmann, who has read an advance copy of a new FDR book by Steven M. Gillon entitled "Pearl Harbor" discusses certain aspects of FDR's health. I'm told in particular he theorizes how Dr. McIntire treated FDR on a daily basis with nasal medicine for his "sinus" condition that contained cocaine. He further notes that a number of physicians confirmed that cocaine was commonly employed at this time. In the 1960's when I was an operating room technician, before med school, cocaine was routinely employed as an anesthetic for nasal treatments and still is today.

The use of cocaine by FDR for "sinus treatments" is not surprising. We know, from readily available information that from mid-1939, FDR saw McIntire on a daily basis for "sinus treatments". I believe the only incorrect assumption is that cocaine was being used to treat FDR for chronic sinusitis. Cocaine is a powerful anesthetic and vasoconstrictor and was being used to combat the pain brought on by the constant irritation from therapy. With the goal of affecting a slow cosmetic removal of the cancerous lesion, FDR had innumerable painful procedures over his left eye and in his sinuses, performed by McIntire Between early 1940 and late 1941. Daily use of cocaine obviously leads to addiction, ceasing use, brings about a"rebound" phenomenon, a nasal swelling and intense congestion begging for more cocaine. Mcintire had no problem obtaining cocaine for medical use.

Yes, FDR was probably dependent on cocaine from 1939 on. The really interesting part is how it affected the other aspects of his health, i.e. his blood pressure, and even more so his personality and decision making. I would refer the reader to "An Anatomy of an Addiction" by Howard Markel, 2011, Pantheon Books, which provides an excellent and detailed discussion of the effect of cocaine on Sigmund Freud and William Stewart Halsted. It is a good basis for the non-medical historian to begin to understand how FDR really functioned.

Unfortunately, the historical community continues assess Franklin Roosevelt as Howard Bruenn portrayed him and not how he really was. McIntire's continuous assertion that he rarely touched his patient is so much crap, he was a top notch physician and FDR always received the best medical care. McIntire knew how dangerous this was for FDR, he had not other options. Sometimes the best medical care creates addiction.

A Tale of Two Presidential Medical Coverups. Grover Cleveland and Franklin Roosevelt

Here's a great example of how one cover-up was revealed and yet another perpetuated.

My reading of the recent (highly recommended) book By Matthew Algeo "The President is a Sick Man" brought about this post. You will soon discover why.

On July 1, 1893 Grover Cleveland had an extensive surgical procedure aboard the yacht Oneida to remove a (subsequently biopsy proven) cancer of the hard palate. A second surgery was eventually performed and he was fitted with a prosthesis (now in the Mutter Museum in Philadelphia) to replace the portions of his upper jaw (maxilla).

On August 29, 1898, reporter Elisha Jay Edwards

of the Philadelphia Press published the following article exposing the absolute truth of the incident based on an eyewitness account.

Two days later he followed it with a confirmation with even greater detail.

The White House, assisted by the reports of a rival newspaperman, Alexander McClure of the Philadelphia Times, went on a campaign to deny Edwards' story.

On September 1, 1893, The New York Daily Tribune published the following story which continued and cemented the cover-up

Edwards was villified. Twenty four years later he was vindicated. In September 1917, one of the operating surgeons, W.W. (Willlam Williams) Keen

wrote an article in the Saturday Evening Post that confirmed the story. Kean followed the story with a book, the first edition of which being a proud addition to my library. Kean lived to the ripe old age of 95. Kean was also connected to Roosevelt. He was called to Campobello at he outset of FDR's polio in 1921 and misdiagnosed him as having a spinal cord infarction (stroke). Most famously, he submitted an outrageous bill for his services to the family.

On April 13, 1945, Chicago Tribune reporter Walter Trohan (here with great Republican senator from Ohio, Robert Taft, who died of Cancer at age 63)

published on the front page of the Chicago Tribune, the following account of Franklin Roosevelt's (who died of cancer at age 63) health on the day after his death. Trohan lived to the ripe old age of 100 and was never publically villified for his article. Presidential physician Ross McIntire simply ignored it, as did the American public.

Twenty five years later, FDR's physician Howard Bruenn (here with Samuel Rosenman) published a paper that perpetuated and reinforced the cover-up, one that still needs to be continuously reiterated, despite our widely circulated book.

The ghost of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the most powerful man of the twentieth century, continues to exert its influence. Eventually, acceptance of Roosevelt's cancer will equal that of Cleveland's. Unfortuately, the process will have taken more far more than twenty-four years!

Sometimes doctors explode cover-ups after a quarter of a century- sometimes they perpetuate them.

"Hyde Park on the Hudson" Bill Murray, Margaret Suckley

There will be quite a bit of attention paid in a year or so to a movie, adapted from a British play with the above title centered around a visit of King George VI to Hyde Park. I am sure it will be well written well produced and well acted as Bill Murray and Laura Linney will be playing the featured roles. The movie asserts a physically intimate "incestuous" relationship between FDR and his distant cousin Margaret Suckley. (I might point out here that the the second most influential man in FDR's life after his father, Reverend Endicott Peabody, was married to his first cousin).

The facts of the matter, though, are far from the reality. Whether or not FDR and Margaret Suckley ever physically consummated their relationship is still a matter of great speculation. By far the leading expert on the relationship is the renowned historian Geoffery Ward, who has not publicly opined on the matter. I'm sure after all the hoopla the press will be beating a path to his door to find out what he thinks.

My take is that Daisy, as FDR called the spinster Suckley (pronounced sook-lee), and the President were never physically intimate, though clearly she filled a very special emotional role in FDR's life. FDR, for all the public aplomb, was a very lonely man and enjoyed gossip. Daisy was the vehicle to share his intimate thoughts and kept him up on all of the goings on in Hyde Park. Their correspondence and her famous diary reveals that Daisy had a deep and enduring love for her distant cousin. I'm not sure that FDR was capable of loving anyone other than himself, though he surely had a great affection for her and let down his guard with Daisy as much as any person that can be documented.

Until 1941, FDR was intimately involved with Marguerite Alice "Missy" Lehand. He also had a fling with publisher Dorothy Schiff. FDR liked woman and was a flirt but it would be doubtful that Missy would have tolerated her "FD" having another steady bedmate. In the mid-twenties, as the great historian Frank Costigliola points out, FDR spent far more time alone with Missy rehabiliating from polio on the houseboat Larooco than he did with Eleanor. Unfortunately, all of the pertinent correspondence between FDR and Missy has been destroyed (unlike FDR's medical records!) Just to add another twist to this amazingly tangled web of intimacy, Missy was also in love with FDR confidante William Bullitt, who himself was concurrently involved in a homosexual relationship! (see Costigliola). Admittedly, this all sounds very strange, but it is indeed the case.

After 1918, Eleanor evolved into a role of a sister rather than a wife. She had a great respect for FDR and his ambition to be the POTUS and did what she could to assist him to that end. They entered into a peculiar, even bizarre by some standards, relationship, whereupon he set her up at Val Kill, where he established a furniture business for her and she lived in a blissful menage a trois with a well known lesbian couple, Nancy Cook and Marian Dickerman. The three women all taught at a prominent NYC girls school. Of course the love of Eleanor's life was the cigar-smoking reporter Lorena Hickok. One needs to go no farther than Rodger Streitmatter's 1998 publication of their correspondence "Empty Without You" to fully appreciate this. During FDR's Presidency, Eleanor would dutifully show up for ceremonial events and knit during a fireside chat, but other than matters of the children and Eleanor's "causes", that was about the extent of their relationship.

Now let's go back to the weekend of "Hyde Park on the Hudson." Daisy's diary, which I will address in more detail later, finds her to be an interested yet distant observer of the pomp and circumstance. It is doubtful that she played any greater role than that. The real female hero of the event was FDR's favorite daughter-in law, Betsey Cushing (yes, her father was the neurosurgical icon, Harvey Cushing) Roosevelt, who was more or less the official hostess. Eleanor wanted little to do with the whole event. Betsy was charming and filled the bill with great success.

Betsey was married at the time to FDR's oldest son Jimmy. After Jimmy took up with his nurse, they divorced (the first of four for him) and married the exceedingly wealthy and accomplished Jock Whitney. Whitney later became ambassador to the court of St. James where Betsey established a close and unique relationship with queen to be Elizabeth (who, with Margaret, did not make the 1939 trip). Betsey was truly one of the great women of the twentieth century as a patron of the arts and philanthroper. Interestingly and perhaps tellingly, her children with James were adopted by Whitney and abandoned the Roosevelt name! Hopefully someone will write a long overdue biography of Betsey.

Now that I've shocked most of you with the facts, I am going to enter into some educated speculation about Daisy and the "P" as she referred to him in her diary. "FDR's Closest Companion" edited and wonderfully annotated by Geoffery Ward is really all we have to historically assess their relationship. It is an exceedingly valuable tool and a must read for anyone attempting to understand FDR. The diary does, though, raise almost as many questions as it answers.

Virtually the most important years of the relationship between FDR and Daisy were from 1939 to 1941. In these years, Daisy gave FDR Fala, whose activities she virtually obsessed on. Likewise, the time included FDR's decision to run for an unprecedented third term and all of the monumental events that occurred prior to America's entry into World War Two. It also included the years that his pigmented lesion was cosmetically removed and the time he nearly died from a massive gastrointestinal bleed. In fact, the only entry into in the usher's diary on the night that FDR was nearest to death was, yes, Margaret Suckley. Yet for all of this, Daisy's diary is notably silent. It is also notable that nowhere does Daisy address the seizures that were observed and recorded by dozens of people with far less access to the president.

OK, now for the speculation: Of course, Daisy knew about all of FDR's medical problems. After FDR opened his library in 1941, he gave Daisy the job of "archivist", a position she occupied for many years after his death. While FDR was alive, he, with Daisy's assistance, made sure that not an iota of evidence about his health problems made it to the shelves. After he died, it was Daisy's mission to continue the job. Either she destroyed the sensitive parts of the diary or Doctors McIntire and Bruenn went over the diary together with her.

There is not a doubt in my mind that if Daisy knew of FDR's wishes to suppress the knowledge of any notion of his illness, she absolutely would have done everything in her power to follow them- and there is little doubt that she knew, though with a highly unsophisticated fund of medical knowledge. What remains of her diary is a sanitized version to best comport with FDR's wishes. I suspect the final product is a collaboration between her and Bruenn, who after 1970 created the presently accepted fairy tale of FDR's health.

OK. Now I've said it. I doubt many will believe what I just committed to cyber-posterity but somewhere down the line perhaps it will be appreciated.

Thanks for listening. comments appreciated.

My reward for an unedited video of the March 1, 1945 speech is now $15,000. (like the scientist who recently offered a cash reward to Michelle Bachman to produce a single person who is mentally retarded from an HPV vaccination, I have no expectation whatsoever that I will ever have to pay!)

Review of David M. Jordan's FDR, Dewey and the Election of 1944

Since I am sensitive to the fact that posting a negative review on Amazon will adversely affect the sales of Mr Jordan's work (my critics were aware of this and used it to that end) I have decided instead to confine my comments to this blog.


Perhaps this review will be viewed as sour grapes, but as long as non-physician historians continue to opine upon medical facts, I feel obliged to defend the thesis put forth in "FDR's Deadly Secret" that Mr. Jordan dismissed in one sentence as "not dispositive".


This work once again echoes "the gospel according to Bruenn", that has influenced every FDR biography since James MacGregor Burns' Pulitzer Prize-winning work done in collaboration with Dr. Bruenn in 1969.
Mr Jordan even quotes Turner Catledge's July 1944 account of FDR's seizures without ever stating the reason for this behavior. My neurological colleagues, ones who are qualified to judge the veracity of my allegations, have chosen to publish my article on FDR's epilepsy as fact in their prestigious journal NEUROLOGY.


FDR's battle with cancer and other health problems played an ongoing and important role in many of his most important decisions, especially his obsessive focus on the establishment of the United Nations. FDR ran in 1944 because he felt that he could best accomplish this goal as a sitting president.


FDR's Deadly Secret has taken the important step of exposing the long-standing deception perpetrated by FDR and carried out by Doctors McIntire and Bruenn. Without consideration of the reality of FDR's health, any narrative of his life, especially from the period after 1940, cannot be considered valid.

An Amazing FDR Artifact. His T-Shirt from February 2, 1944

The story of how the existence of this T-shirt came to light defies all odds.

On February 2, 1944, FDR went to Bethesda Naval Hospital for an operation to remove a "wen",known to doctors as an epidermoid cyst, from the back of his head at the hairline. It was described by Daisy Suckley to be about the size of a bantam's egg.

While the procedure was well known to have occurred, remarkable for anything pertaining to FDR's health, the details were not. Until the recent publication of Harry Goldsmith's book, rumors were rampant whether this was indeed a benign cyst of something more sinister and malignant.

The operation was one of the subjects addressed in the press conference of February 4th, where the President deflected the problem in his characteristic style of it to reporters with some humorous, inane comments.

The surgeon had been thought to be Winchell Craig, the chief of Neurosurgery at Bethesda. In fact, he was indeed present and scrubbed in but as first assistant to George Webster, the chief of plastic surgery. This fact was revealed in a letter from Webster to Goldsmith that Harry put in his book.

Webster's letter also confirms that the surgical lesion was indeed a wen. He also described that the surgery was inordinately bloody and FDR's t-shirt became soaked with blood and had to be removed and replaced.

After the procedure it was found, to the dismay of all present, that the bloody t-shirt had mysteriously disappeared. The entire hospital was locked down and searched but the shirt was never located. Webster bemoaned to Goldsmith that the fate of the t-shirt would never be known.

This is where an astounding degree of serendipity enters the picture.

About six years ago I was in Dayton, Ohio at the annual convention of collectors of Pulp magazines known as pulpcon (it has since been moved to Columbus). As most of my conversations at the time, I was speaking to one of the principal dealers, John Gunnison and the subject of my book on Roosevelt came up, since John was indeed a resident of Bethesda Maryland.

As I mentioned FDR, John piped in:

"my father was one of Roosevelt's medical assistants and worked at Bethesda."

I then mentioned the operation and was flabbergasted when John told me "oh yes, the operation was very bloody and FDR's t-shirt had to be replaced." When I enquired as to how he knew this he exclaimed, "my father was the one who was assigned to get a clean shirt. He took the bloody one, put it in his locker and replaced it with one of hos own!!" This conversation occurred at a time prior to the publication of Webster's letter, so there was absolutely no way that John could have known the story from anyone else and this was the first I had heard of it.

As it turns out, I had told my story to one of only a handful of people in the the world who knew the shirt's whereabouts! The odds of this happening are in the billions!

R.(Rolla) Harry Gunnison, John's father, was a pharmacist's mate at Bethesda whose primary job was to assist Ross McIntire and George Fox in putting together the packets of pills that FDR took when he traveled. (Sadly, Mr. Gunnison died in the 1970's, oh! the secrets he could have revealed)

After purloining the shirt, he took it home where his wife thoroughly laundered it. It has been in the possession of the Gunnison family ever since and John has kindly supplied me with photos.

So here it is, FDR's long lost (formerly) bloody t-shirt.

Another Roosevelt Fairy Tale

FDR never denied his polio. In fact, he used it to his advantage as an example of how he overcame it to achieve the Presidency. Yet, he never admitted just how disabled he really was, taking extraordinary measures to present to his constituents the picture of a man who was only minimally bothered by his disability.

Here is a wonderful example. I just purchased this photo on ebay that ostensibly shows FDR after his polio riding a horse. With the state of his legs, this is simply impossible.

This must have been a very calm horse, for if he had taken a step, FDR would have surely fallen off. No doubt a skilled rider was just off camera should any problem had arisen.


I've included the back of the photo that confirms that this was (allegedly) taken after 1921,

The Yalta Speech. Reward Now $10,000. What was FDR's greatest speech?

I recently offerred a $5000 reward for the first person to produce an unedited complete video of the speech delivered by FDR on March 1, 1945 to a national radio audience and a joint session of congress. I have now increased that amount to $10,000. It might as well be a million.

There is little dispute as to FDR's top two speeches: The first inaugural "We have nothing to fear but fear itself" and the day following December 7, 1941 "The day that will live in infamy". Take your pick which is better- they're both forever etched in history as among the greatest ever given (personally I vote for the first inaugural).

After that, there's room for debate. The March 1945 Yalta speech is my vote for number three in importance, obviously not on the basis of the horrendous oratorical performance, but as his final effort to consolidate his presidency into a legacy for the future of the world, The United Nations. It was the last ditch effort of a dying man to do what his mentor Woodrow Wilson could not, establish a successful vehicle to establish world peace.

What is not appreciated, despite every effort on my part, is that FDR actually knew he was doomed before his third term. Nonetheless, Frank Lahey put an exclamation point on it in July 1944, after which the United Nations became FDR's final obsession.

Unfortunately, Roosevelt's appeasement of "Uncle Joe" Stalin to get it done created an environment from which developed the cold war, Korea and Vietnam. The real tragedy of Yalta was not Poland. This was a "fait accompli" forged at Teheran. Stalin already had his puppet government established in Lublin and wasn't about to compromise his western flank.

The loss of Chiang Kai Shek as leader of China, (no bargain but the far better of two evils) was sealed by the secret agreements made at Yalta, unbeknownst to Chiang, his Cheif of Staff General Albert Wedemeyer and Ambassador Patrick Hurley. For a liberal democrat such as myself this may seem an odd assertion, but more than political philosophy, the hard, cold evidence is uncontrovertable.

The lack of existence of the Yalta Speech video is testimony to the incredible power over the media that FDR established over twelve years. If by some miracle a copy survives, it will blow a huge hole in Howard Brueen's fairy tale and confirm all we have asserted in our book. I'm not holding my breath!

It would be interesting to hear from readers how they rank FDR's top speeches. Please respond with comments to lomazow@comcast.net

A Tale of Two Years

At the cost of being repetitious, here are a group of photos from 1940 and 1941. I just bought the earliest one, which underscores just how obvious the lesion was on January 5th.

January 5th

November 11th

September 1941

There are many others. I'll just keep hammering away until the increasingly obvious reality becomes the mainstream opinion. There is only one explanation for the changes in its appearance- surgical removal.

Another Small Piece of the Puzzle

I found this letter on ebay recently in my ongoing search for for details about the real illness of FDR.

It was written in September 1944 by a patient at the National Naval Medical Center at Bethesda, whose duty was basically to sit around and wait to have a flare-up of malaria so experimental therapy could be undertaken.

Most significantly be writes "By the way, this hospital is the personal pet of President Roosevelt and he has a private suite on the nineteenth floor where he comes for a checkup once in a while".

Of course this was never acknowledged by Ross McIntire or anyone else and this is the first hard documentation of the location of FDR's "private suite" I have ever seen.

A related document comes from a newsletter from the museum devoted to the presidential yacht Potomac, an oral history of a nurse who states that he FDR was at Bethesda every Monday for "swim therapy", a curious assertion to say the least considering FDR had a pool constructed in the White House basement shortly after his first inauguration.

Best guess: the swim was to ease the discomfort from radiation therapy for his prostate and/or face.

Why the Right Didn't Reveal the FDR/ Lucy Mercer Rutherfurd Affair.

Here's another document from the Westbrook Pegler papers at the Herbert Hoover Library in North Branch, Iowa.

It's a 1949 letter between two conservative (some would say ultra-conservative) journalists, John T. Flynn, author of The Roosevelt Myth (available free online) and Westbrook Pegler, who later "went off he deep end" writing for the John Birch Society.

The letter clearly reflects that both Flynn and Pegler knew the truth of Roosevelt/Mercer affair (as did Walter Trohan as previosly posted on this blog) whereupon Flynn lays out his philosophy as to why the information should not be released. It was not until 1966 that Jonathan Daniels finally came clean with the story that 0thers had been keeping quiet for over a decade and a half.

The letter also contain a bitter attack on the Roosevelt morality, frankly inferring that "the apple doesn't fall far from the tree".

Another Intentionally Deceptive FDR Photo

This photo is presently on ebay, ostensibly showing FDR standing using a phone with both hands. This is a physiologic impossibility. Someone or something must be holding him up from below or his is being supported in some other way from behind.

The fact of the matter is that he was never able to stand unsupported after 1921. If he attempted this maneuver unassisted he would have fallen flat on his face.

Here's another example. Note the second photo where his left hand is behind his back holding a second cane that can be seen lateral to his left shoe.



FDR never denied he had polio and fought as valiant a fight as any one to overcome it. He did, though, go to great measures, as witnessed above, to hide the extent of his disability. As Carly Simon sung, nobody did it better! People visiting the White House were shocked to find that their president was wheel chair bound.

Sixty Three and Still Going Strong

Since I am now 63 and was born on January 24th and FDR died at 63 on April 15th 1945 and was born on January 3oth, I have now outlived him. While I feel my age, I am just as active as I was thirty years ago.

Even accounting for the increased longetivity of the present, the cadaveric images from Yalta speak for just how sick our 32nd President was- dying of cancer that still today has not been completely accepted as the cause of his demise.

The official cover story of the deterioration being due to terrible strains of managing the war simply does not hold any water. FDR was working a four hour day the last year of his life and spent months of quiet rest in South Carolina and Georgia.

The Lahey Memorandum

First of all, I would like to offer my sincere thanks to all of the fine people at Lahey, especially John Libertino, Lisa Polacke, for their hospitality and kindness in putting together a most pleasurable event last weekend. The star of the show was the Lahey Memorandum, the document rescued from destruction through the efforts of Dr. Harry Goldsmith, who was also in attendance. Now lets dissect what the memorandum really says and means.

The two previous posts are required reading.

The first question is why one of the world's pre-eminent surgeons is prognosticating on a cardiac diagnosis, especially so since the notion of hypertension even being dangerous at the time was not widely accepted?This is coupled with the fact that FDR had a serious abdominal problem in April 1944, well documented by Howard Bruenn in 1970, that was not seen or mentioned by Lahey.

Strange indeed.

As I have previously written, Bruenn likely conferred with Lahey over the wording of the memorandum and his 1970 whitewash was purposely designed to be compatible with it. Bruenn surely did not want to be caught in his lie if it came out. He undoudtedly knew about it. The deal was the following: Lahey and McIntire were long standing associates in FDR's treatment and when Lahey expressed concerned about his reputation and place in history. Mcintire recognized this as legitimate. The only continginency was that he could not mention the real reason for the prognosis- FDR's Deadly Secret.

The other interesting aspect of the document is that when it was finally turned over to Linda Strand by the law firm of Herrick and Smith, it was a copy. The original had been "stolen"! John Libertino believes that McIntire, who knew attorney Hanify, destroyed it. He has a hand-written letter from H &S attorney Edward B. Hanify stating that he did not know where the document was. My take was that Howard Bruenn was the culprit. Regardless, Mrs. Strand verified that the copy was indeed from the original.

The other mystery is Lahey's reference to a "trip to Russia". This did not occur until February 1945, long after the July 1944 date of the document. Roosevelt last trip across the Atlantic was Teheran in November 1943. He was also in Casablanca in January 1943, when Mcintire imposed a strict 8000 feet altitude restriction on his flight to protect his heart (a problem he allegedly didn't have until March 1944!).

Oh! What a tangled web we weave!!!

Others beside me know the truth of all this, likely told of it by Howard Bruenn himself. The family's silence is deafening. The ghost of the most powerful man of the twentieth century continues to prevail.

Did Frank Lahey participate in the coverup? Absolutely!

People in Boston, where the venerable Dr. Frank H. Lahey ruled the roost until his death in 1953, are loath to believe that a man of his ethics (and politics) would participate in a medical coverup. Well, he did. Here's a letter that provides unequivocal proof of that fact, written in late 1944 to Admiral McIntire to explain the circumstances of an interviw by a reporter from a St. Louis newspaper.

The fact of the matter is that within the juggernaut of FDR's powerful medical deceptions, Frank Lahey was just another pawn.

Lahey had a very intense relationship with McIntire as one of the leaders of the military medical effort from 1942. Here is that proof as well.

This is only one of a number of panels of medical superstars that Lahey chaired for Mcintire during the war. Another panel included William Calhoun Stirling, FDR's urologist.

This is probably the time Lahey began seeing FDR professionally as well, or perhaps even earlier during the time of Roosevelt's, massive lower GI bleed between May and July 1942. Its only logical that as one of the world's leading experts, Lahey would have been consulted, though theres not one iota of proof (FDR was exceedingly efficient at covering up his medical problems).

The two great physicians had great respect for each other. That is the reason why Mcintire permitted Lahey to file his memorandum so that his reputation would be respected. One thing that can't be proven, though is highly likely to have occurred, is a deal between the two men whereupon Lahey was not permitted to reveal the real reason for his participation- Cancer.

This is why we are in the very peculiar position of a leading abdominal surgeon offering a cardiac prognosis and a brilliant clinical cardiologist (Bruenn) treating an acute abdomen (at Hobcaw in April 1944). None of this makes apparent sense, but in the context of the cover-up it does.

"In the last couple of years I used Howard"

In 1951, as a result of a renewed accusation that FDR was "the sick man at Yalta" byJames A. Farley, Ross McIntire went into a "protect the boss" mode and, as the keeper of FDR's Deadly Secret granted an interview to U.S. News & World Report to squelch the rumors.

Of course the good and ever loyal Dr. McIntire went to his grave in 1959 denying that FDR had basically nothing more than a cold during his presidency. The whole interview is classic Mcintire, a collection of fabrications that even present day "mainstream" FDR historians would recognize as such. But there is one very revealing sentence that does irreparable harm to the fairy tale concocted by Howard Bruenn in 1970, one that that the very same historians consider gospel.

On the top of the third column of the page above, Mcintire, when asked about Bruenn, casually states "In the last couple of years I used Howard as I had used Dr. Duncan before him." The two year time period is also noted in his 1946 book and in 1946 correspondence back and forth between McIntire and Bruenn. Yet Bruenn, in his highly calculated 1970 work of medical half truths states unequivocally "I first saw the President in March 1944", something he made up as the keeper of the secret after Mcintire passed the torch, either actively or by his demise. Yet every major biography of FDR since continues to buy into this poppycock.

My Lahey Clinic lecture with Harry Goldsmith is in four days. Barring miracles, It will be the highlight of my FDR year.

$5000 Reward Offer

I will pay $5000 cash for a complete unedited video of FDR's March 1, 1945 speech to congress. This is clearly one of Roosevelt's most important speeches, whereupon he pursues his legacy for the future, The United Nations and reports to the nation about his meeting with Stalin and Churchill at Yalta. No complete video has yet been located. The might seem surprising, yet the reason is quite clear. FDR made numerous ad libs and errors that were simply not permissable to be shown in the environment of airtight control of the media. Even the audio version (see link above) has been edited. In fact, Jonathan Daniels had a helluva time coming up with a workable transcript for the "official" version that went to the press and now appears on most websites (see Daniels book for details). You won't find it at the FDR Library. Perhaps, as Michael Moore found a "lost" FDR video of a 1944 speech taken when FDR was recovering from one of his episodes of "influenza", in this case probably a mild stroke, the video might be in some dusty corner of a library or press archive. Perhaps it as actually still classified as secret, despite being given to both houses of congress. Good hunting! Historical truth will be well served if it is located.

The truth about Lyndon Johnson's Gall Bladder Scar

FDR was not the only president to manipulate the press about his health. Here is an anecdote from an extremely reliable source, a high-ranking naval physician, now retired.

After his September 1965 gall bladder surgery, Lyndon Baines Johnson is infamous for showing "spontaneously" showing his scar to the press. For this act, history remembers him as a hayseed with a lack of social graces.

The truth is quite different! It has never been published.

LBJ was with his close confidante, Jack Valenti, at Bethesda Naval Hospital after the surgery that had been performed at Bethesda by Dr. George A. Hallenbeck, chief of surgery at the Mayo Clinic. The president asked Valenti about the publicity surrounding the operation and was told that there was a problem. A rumor was circulating among the press that LBJ was operated on not for his gall bladder but for cancer.

Johnson immediately called Dr. Hallenbeck and asked him if the incision he made would be recognized as one for a gall bladder resection. Hallenbeck replied to the affirmative. LBJ then inquired what type of incision would be made for exploratory cancer surgery. The surgeon informed him that in this case it would extend in the midline from from just below the the breast bone to the pubic area.

Johnson immediately called a press conference that was conducted on the hospital heliport. The photo above was taken at this time.

After the conference, Johnson returned to his room and exclaimed to Valenti "That's one rumor taken care of!".

History corrected, hopefully a lot easier than with LBJ's predecessor.

My Talk at NYMAS

I recently lectured at the New York Military Affairs Symposium on "FDR's Deadly Secret". Below is a link to the podcast of the talk. It may take some ime to download. If you can't access the link, go directly to www.nymas.org and search for the link www.bobrowen.com/nymas/podcasts/Steven%20Lomazow%20M.D%20-%20FDR%27s%20Deadly%20Secret%20160kbps.mp3

How Franklin Roosevelt Really Lived

It is now nearly fifteen months since the publication of our book. While some inroads have been made, and will continue to be made, in getting to the reality of FDR's life, the 1970 fairy tale of Howard Bruenn and the concurrent and most influential Roosevelt biography ever written, by James MacGregor Burns, who collaborated with and was taken in by Bruenn hook, line and sinker, continue to permeate the historical mainstream. Until the Bruenn mythology is thoroughly exposed and expunged, it is simply not possible to accurately assess the life, accomplishments and thought processes of the most important president of the twentieth century.
Admittedly, there is no direct proof or "smoking gun", since the powerful ghost of FDR continues to loom largely, but half a decade of intense research continues to reinforce the correctness of our assertions.


To be considered a counterfactual historian is an incredibly difficult position to overcome, especially considering the power and importance of personality that it involves. Ross McIntire and Howard Bruenn were nothing more than the voice, both living and posthumous, of FDR himself, as is now most probably the unified silence of the Roosevelt grandchildren.


It is likely that from prior to his second term and surely prior to his third, that Franklin Roosevelt knew he was doomed to die of recurrent metastatic melanoma. From that time on, the knowledge of his mortality permeated his thought processes. Two hours of each and every day from 1939 on were spent with Dr McIntire (this is well documented in the usher's diary), either receiving medical treatment or masking the melanotic lesion above his left eye. Many of the "vacations" on naval ships were subterfuge for medical treatment. Many of the frequent episodes of "influenza" were not that at all, but rather were the effects of his two cancers and a likely stroke sustained in late 1943, from which he largely recovered but left him with disabling seizures (In this regard I want to thank Dr Joseph Sirven, head of epilepsy at Mayo Clinic, Phoenix, who recently provided key insight in the etiology and dating of FDR's seizures).

As I anxiously anticipate my visit to the Lahey Clinic Boston on April 9th and against great odds await the April 18th announcement of the 2011 Pulitzer prize for biography, I remain confident that eventually the truth will come to light. As I suspected, James Roosevelt will not be in attendance at the Lahey event in Boston. I can understand why and have no desire of putting him an uncomfortable position. If I knew (or even suspected) that my grandfather had a wish that he did not want violated, I would act similarly.

My Talk at Mayo Clinic. Latest news, downloads

Last Friday I had the privilege of speaking at the Mayo Clinic, Phoenix. My talk on FDR's epilepsy was well received and my sincere thanks to Dr. Joseph Sirven, Chairman of the Departmant of Neurology and director of the epilepsy division for his wonderful hospitality and enthusiasm.

A podcast of my talk on "FDR's Deadly Secret" given at the New York Military Affairs Symposium (NTMAS) can be downloaded at

http://bobrowen.com/nymas/

just click below my picture on the website (may take a few seconds to load). Thanks here to Bob Rowen.

Looking forward with great anticipation to sharing the podium with Harry Goldsmith at the Lahey Clinic in Boston on April 9th.

Happy spring to all. Woke up to a snowstorm this morning!

your most appreciative blogger,

Steven Lomazow

SL

My Podcast on FDR's Epilepsy

I had the pleasure of doing a podcast on http://www.epilpsy.com/ with Dr. Joseph Sirven, director of the epilepsy unit at Mayo Clinic in Arizona. Here is the link to the podcast:

http://professionals.epilepsy.com/page/hallway_2011_podcasts.html

I will be lecturing at Mayo on the same topic on Friday March 19th at 7 AM.

The Earliest Picture of FDR's Melanoma- 1920

I just bought this picture on ebay. It is undoubtedly from 1920 and clearly shows the pigmented lesion over FDR's left eye. It is the earliest it can be seen (and believe you me I've looked at thousands of photos). The earliest prior photo is from TIME Magazine in 1923.

As you can see it is quite benign appearing at this time and far less noticeable than the mole on his opposite cheek. Twenty-five years later it killed him, from a bleed into a brain metastasis.

The

The epilepsy of Franklin Delano Roosevelt

My paper in Neurology, the official publication of the American Academy of Neurology, appeared in yesterday's issue. I look forward to the comments of my colleagues.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/48949651/The-Epilepsy-of-Franklin-Delano-Roosevelt

FDR's Many episodes of "the flu" and William Bradley Coley.

I am presently involved in writing a biography of the great cancer fighter, George. T Pack, the founder and for many years the head of the gastric and mixed tumor service at Memorial Hospital (now Sloan Kettering) in New York City.

Among his many accomplishments Pack was known as "Mr. Melanoma" for his treatment of this dermatological killer with surgery, radiation and other modalities such as immunotherapy.

One method of immunotherapy used to fight melanoma in FDR's time by Pack were "vaccines" devised in the 1890's by bone surgeon Willam Bradley Coley. This included such proteinaceous mixtures as denatured Rabies virus. The quality of the therapy was judged by the amount of fever generated in reaction to the dosing.

Of course my one track mind went immediately to FDR as I realized the potential impact of such a treatment upon him.

Even, "pre-Lomazow/Fettmann" loyalists, that remain regrettably plentiful, will concede that FDR was always sick. The "official" reasons were everything from "swamp fever" "intestinal flu" (the alleged reason for losing two thirds of his blood and having none transfusions in 1941!) the the old favorite "the Grippe". The latter was the excuseFDR gave Churchill in 1944 to beg off from a summit intended to be held in Bermuda in April 1944 to plan something called Overlord. We all know that at the very least he had severe congestive heart failure at the time ( though the telegram went out over a week prior to Howard Bruenn allegedly seeing hime for the first time!)

Yet this does not explain the the countless episodes of presidential absences from view for days to weeks after 1935 or so.

As everything else a highly educated guess: early immunotherapy for melanoma probably accounted for at least a few of these strange febrile episodes.

When I told Ruben Oropeza, Dr. Pack's confidante (a la Daisy Suckley for FDR) about the removal of the melanoma in 1940, he immediately grasped why it could not be totally removed. As a man that removed thousands of melanomas over fifty years he aptly noted that, at the very least, the eyebrow would have to have been removed and "thrown in the bucket" along with the remainder of FDR's political career.

FDR loved being Preseident more than life itself and, in the end, he payed the price to stay in office until the day he died. There are still many very learned skeptics about everything we have been preaching but, in time, the world will appreciate the truth about this remarkable man and not the fairy tale that be and his physicians concocted.

The Epilepsy of Franklin Delano Roosevelt

My paper of this title will appear in the February 15th issue of NEUROLOGY, the most widely read amd prestigious peer-reviewed neurological journal in the world.

In the last two years of his life, FDR manifesting frequent lapses of consciousness that lasted seconds to minutes that neurologists would recognize as complex partial seizures. Epilepsy is defined and more than one seizure and, as in the case of FDR, many forms of seizures do not involve convulsions. An event that probably occurred the day prior to FDR's last visit to Warm Springs may have been convulsive but there are no direct descriptions, only a report of a "brain hemorrhage" that rapidly cleared by Walter Trohan (who almost undoubtedly got ir from a secret service agent) in the News Story Magazine article linked to this blog. Brain hemorrhages do not clear with such rapidity. The only one that FDR undoubtedly experienced was on April 12, 1945 that killed him. In the opinion of this blogger, it was most likely brought about as a manifestation of bleeding from a metastatic melanoma of the brain, a circumstance that occurs as a terminal event in over one quarter of patients who die of this often fatal form of cancer.

The paper describes three stunning eyewitness accounts (these are also in the book).

Here is a document that came out after the book and that is perhaps the most dramatic, showing that his daughter Anna was well aware of the episodes but, as all other reports, did not recognize them for what they truly were.

Now a bit of educated speculation. Based on the description of the events by Francis Perkins, Turner Catledge, Senator Frank Maloney and a dozen others, combined with thirty years of experience as a neurologist, it is possible that the photograph below caught FDR in the midst of one of his events.

This photo is interesting for a number of reasons. It was taken near San Diego, in FDR's private railroad car, the Ferdinand Magellan, on the occasion of his acceptance of the Democratic nomination for a fourth term, appearing in LIFE Magazine and triggering a major FBI investigation.

As it turns out, the balding naval officer in the foreground is none other than Howard Bruenn, whose constant presence at FDR's side at the time was supposed to be a secret. After a number of Bruenn's colleagues recognized the cardiologist, surmised he was there to treat presidential heart disease and started talking among themselves about it, J. Edgar Hoover and company were dispatched to "squelch the chatter" so to speak. This, of course, turned out to be only the top layer of many calculated deceptions with respect to FDR's health in 1944 and 1945.

I will post the Neurology paper on the day of its publication.

The King's Speech: FDR and George VI

Last night , I saw "The King's Speech" and, of course the subject of FDR (not in the movie, though I loved the portrayals of Churchill and Chamberlain) came immediately to mind. Highly recommended.

Details of the June 1939 royal visit to America are beautifully documented on the website of the FDRL. Most of the photos are taken from the President's right.
http://docs.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/royalv.html

This picture of the King and the President, seen on pages 146 and 147 of a 1962 photographic bio of FDR by Graff, Ginna and Butterfield, is not included.



As can easily be seen, FDR's "brown blob" at this time was nearing the zenith of its extent.

Unlike FDR's melanoma, "Bertie's" stammer was not a secret and can be heard and seen on the wonderful website (my favorite video archive) of British Pathe. Here is a link to but one of the marvelous films that can bee seen without charge.
http://www.britishpathe.com/record.php?id=50494

I would also strongly recommend searching the site for Franklin Roosevelt, where countless videos of him can be seen as nowhere else. It was harder to hide the "blob" on video and the contrast between 1938/39 and 1942 provides stark and convincing evidence of how noticeable it was and how it disappeared.

One of the stars of the 1939 royal visit was FDR's all time favorite daughter-in-law, Betsey Cushing Roosevelt (soon to be Whitney). Eleanor cared little for the pomp and circumstance of FDR's world and Betsey acted as more or less the official hostess for much of the visit and made a highly favorable impression upon the couple.

While Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret did not accompany their parents, later, after Jock Whitney was appointed Ambassador to the Court of Saint James, the Whitney's and the new royals, Elizabeth and Phillip, struck up a close personal friendship with them and were among the very few who were addressed by their first names by HRH QE2!

30 days to the release of my paper on FDR's epilepsy. Our book is now available in paperback.

Yours in history,

SL