The "Torbitt document", an unpublished typescript on the Kennedy assassination that circulated from 1970 under the pen name William Torbitt. Mae treats it as the most important research on the case and uses it as a test of whoever she hands it to. In No. 288 she tests two: Sylvia Meagher and the House Select Committee's chief counsel.
Across the broadcasts
Introduced as a touchstone: Mae carries it to a fellow researcher and to the committee, and judges both by how they receive it
September 26, 1977
Mae rests the document's authority on its never having been refuted, rather than on who wrote it.
Describing it to her listeners as a 300-page manuscript that came out of Texas in 1970.
"The Torbitt document has not been disproven in any shape or form. It's filled with information about who killed John Kennedy."Mae Brussell, Mae Brussell Research Center, Broadcast 3 (26 Sep 1977), 31:23
Mae uses the document as a test of other researchers: refusing even to hold it marks Sylvia Meagher, for her, as working on a need-to-know basis.
"we talked about that Torbitt document that is so outstanding, the research on the Kennedy assassination. And she said that she didn't have it, and she didn't want to have it."Mae Brussell, Mae Brussell Research Center, Broadcast 3 (26 Sep 1977), 26:06
Mae turns the document into a paper trail: once received, the committee cannot later say it was never shown.
"So now the trick, it's like serving a subpoena, is to put in Mr. Blakey's hands this document."Mae Brussell, Mae Brussell Research Center, Broadcast 3 (26 Sep 1977), 33:43
Connections
Blakey would not say whether the committee had it.