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Speaker 1: Welcome to a special episode of the Chuck Podcast. Why

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Speaker 1: am I calling it a special episode?

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Speaker 2: Is a very special episode of Blossop Noah kid, Sorry,

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Speaker 2: I'm showing my age here, but when we used to

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Speaker 2: say when you ever heard the phrase a very special episode,

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Speaker 2: it usually was blossom for whatever reason.

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Speaker 1: But this one's a special episode. We're going a little

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Speaker 1: bit long and a little bit less on the news,

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Speaker 1: although it is something that's been in the news over

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Speaker 1: the last couple of weeks, and that is the release

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Speaker 1: of new files about the JFK assassination. More importantly, about

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Speaker 1: what the government did or did not know about Lee

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Speaker 1: Harvey Oswald before before he ended up becoming the chief

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Speaker 1: suspect and assassin of John F. Kennedy. On that front,

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Speaker 1: my guest is Jeff Morley. He is the man behind JFK. Fax.

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Speaker 1: If you are familiar with his name, it's I'm guessing

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Speaker 1: because you're already a subscriber to him on substance. But

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Speaker 1: he's been you know, he tries to. He certainly has

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Speaker 1: his own theory on the conspiracy, and the two of

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Speaker 1: us disagree on where this is headed. But at the

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Speaker 1: end of the day, he's focused on what he can

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Speaker 1: prove what the documents have said. And this man has

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Speaker 1: been through these documents for decades. I'm not just talking

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Speaker 1: a year or two. He'sn't somebody that just started doing

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Speaker 1: this when the Internet was invented. He's been doing this

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Speaker 1: story basically back since the early nineties. And he's probably

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Speaker 1: as well known of an expert on all things the

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Speaker 1: government has or may have on Oswald as anybody there

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Speaker 1: is out there. So I think you will enjoy this,

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Speaker 1: but I do want to leave you with this before

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Speaker 1: I just let you dive in to this episode. When

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Speaker 1: we think about the issue of trust and how much

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Speaker 1: of it's been lost, you know, I talk about government,

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Speaker 1: there's distrust of government out there. It seems like it's

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Speaker 1: it's you know, and there's lots of reasons for it.

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Speaker 1: Right the government didn't do any of these weapons of

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Speaker 1: mass destruction. Right, that was a moment of government distrust,

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Speaker 1: making people question whether they can believe their leaders. You had, frankly,

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Speaker 1: the fact that government didn't send anybody to jail after

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Speaker 1: the Great Recession. Right here was this massive, essentially destruction

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Speaker 1: of the American economy all to make extra money on

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Speaker 1: bad mortgages, and no one went to jail for this.

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Speaker 1: I think that has added to this distrust that people

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Speaker 1: have out there of government with the press. I think

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Speaker 1: that we've had a few a few of these moments.

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Speaker 1: I think the fact that the major media seemed to

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Speaker 1: go along with the Iraq War and the weapons of

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Speaker 1: mass destruction narrative, I think really did hurt the image

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Speaker 1: of the accountability press scop if you will, for a

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Speaker 1: lot of folks, you know, I know some people will

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Speaker 1: bring up the current you know, how Biden was covered

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Speaker 1: or how Trump was covered. But I think in many ways,

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Speaker 1: the reason it is easy to to beat up the

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Speaker 1: press corps on this stuff really does go back to

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Speaker 1: the at least in this century, to the Iraq War.

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Speaker 1: But when it comes to government distrust and this ability

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Speaker 1: to sell a conspiracy theory, whether it's Russia. And when

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Speaker 1: I say the conspiracy theory in Russia, I mean whether

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Speaker 1: you're on the left side of the isle or the

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Speaker 1: right side of the isle. Right each believes in their

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Speaker 1: own version of a conspiracy that has to do with Russia,

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Speaker 1: Putin and Trump. But the fact that there are so

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Speaker 1: many willing subscribers to these theories. Again, whether you believe

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Speaker 1: he is a part of this or where do you

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Speaker 1: believe it was manufactured in order to frame Trump? It

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Speaker 1: is easy for many people to believe that there is

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Speaker 1: some deep state out there. And why is that? Well,

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Speaker 1: I think it goes all the way back to the

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Speaker 1: core sort of moment where the public realized the government

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Speaker 1: didn't tell him everything that they know, and that is

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Speaker 1: on JFK and what happened to JFK and everything. The

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Speaker 1: fact is, I certainly am somebody that believes Oswald did it.

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Speaker 1: The question is what did the CIA know about Oswald?

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Speaker 1: And how did this guy go back and forth to

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Speaker 1: the Soviet Union so easily. It's always been for me

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Speaker 1: the core of the America government just really let that happen?

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Speaker 1: Willie Nilly? Did the Russian government Soviet government? Really have

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Speaker 1: you know? How did that all happen? It's always been

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Speaker 1: a huge curiosity and the fact that we've had to

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Speaker 1: drag the truth, drag transparency out of the government one

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Speaker 1: Foyer request at a time, or use a movie that

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Speaker 1: frankly warped all the conspiracy theory in neraors. I mean,

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Speaker 1: I'll be honest with you, I think Oliver Stone he

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Speaker 1: did more to damage I think the belief in that

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Speaker 1: conspiracy theory because he didn't believe in one. He took

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Speaker 1: his movie and made it a compendium of all of them,

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Speaker 1: and some of them were just sort of cuckoo. It

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Speaker 1: was a fun movie, but some of the theories he

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Speaker 1: laid out there there were very small threads to them.

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Speaker 1: But the movie did at least get Congress to act

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Speaker 1: to come up with a law that demanded even more

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Speaker 1: release of records. And the fact of the matter is

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Speaker 1: the CIA's behavior in the fifties and sixties around the

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Speaker 1: globe is not something America likes to brag about. And

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Speaker 1: I've always had a theory that the reason why there's

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Speaker 1: been such hesitance with both President Trump and President Biden,

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Speaker 1: who both got talked out of releasing everything even though

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Speaker 1: the law stated that they had to. Why do they

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Speaker 1: get talked out of it? My thesis has always been

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Speaker 1: that if you pull the thread on what the CIA

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Speaker 1: knew about Oswald preassassination, that it unravels all sorts of

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Speaker 1: things in Latin America, and that really Oswald was somebody

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Speaker 1: that they were likely using as an asset to monitor

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Speaker 1: things they had. Perhaps these guys had no idea this

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Speaker 1: guy was capable of doing what he did. And you know,

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Speaker 1: my thesis has always been the cover up had to

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Speaker 1: do with Oh my god, they're going to think the

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Speaker 1: CIA was involved with this. But whatever is the reason,

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Speaker 1: here's what is true. You're not being told the truth.

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Speaker 1: Our government has not been transparent about this. We have

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Speaker 1: had to pull teeth and it is governments. You know,

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Speaker 1: when elected officials complain to me about the ease with

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Speaker 1: which conspiracy theories are sold to the American public, my

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Speaker 1: response is, well, if you were fully transparent about this one,

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Speaker 1: this one, this to me, I mean, think about it

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Speaker 1: today's baby boomers, right, this is sort of the core.

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Speaker 1: This is sort of the core first moment where that

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Speaker 1: in Vietnam of when they sort of lost their trust virginity,

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Speaker 1: if you will, with the American public. I think the

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Speaker 1: inability of the government to tell the truth on JFK

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Speaker 1: and Vietnam in that period of time essentially planted the

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Speaker 1: seeds that have allowed plenty of politicians to exploit the

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Speaker 1: belief in a deep state or government conspiracies, which I'll

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Speaker 1: be honest with you, I think are just much harder

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Speaker 1: to actually perpetrate today. We have too much transparency in

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Speaker 1: many ways, too many government is too big to sort

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Speaker 1: of keep a secret. I think there's just impossible to

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Speaker 1: do that. But the fifties and sixties version of this

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Speaker 1: government was a bit more covert, in clandestine, and it

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Speaker 1: is possible that there are things that operatives convince elected leaders. Hey,

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Speaker 1: you don't want to open up this can of worms.

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Speaker 1: It will only create problems diplomatically for the United States

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Speaker 1: for decades if you do it. That's my thesis as

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Speaker 1: to why we're still sitting here clamoring for more information

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Speaker 1: and feeling as if we still don't have the full story.

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Speaker 1: And guess what, we still don't have the full story.

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Speaker 1: I have a theory. Jeff Morley has a theory, so

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Speaker 1: may you. But ultimately, when you think about the ease

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Speaker 1: with which politicians can exploit government distrust to make you

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Speaker 1: believe the government might be behind something, it's government's fault

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Speaker 1: themselves for why it's so easy to do this, because

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Speaker 1: they haven't been and this is Democrats and Republicans. They

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Speaker 1: haven't been forthcoming and transparent on one story that everybody

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Speaker 1: in America knows a little something about. So with that,

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Speaker 1: I'll sneak in a break join my conversation with Jeff

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Speaker 1: Morlan on what we learn from the new files just

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Speaker 1: released by the Trump administration. Hey, joining me now is

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Speaker 1: Jeff Morley. I have known Jeff some thirty years. I

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Speaker 1: knew him when he was at the Washington Post, and

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Speaker 1: he has been on the JFK story for a long time.

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Speaker 1: And I think, Jeff, I would love for you to

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Speaker 1: sort of tell your origin story of sort of how

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Speaker 1: you because JFK Facts is I think the you know,

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Speaker 1: there's there's no better place on substack to sort of

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Speaker 1: to find somebody who both is doing this journalistically and

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Speaker 1: has a open mind about various theories that could be

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Speaker 1: behind it. So it's sort of like a literally a

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Speaker 1: sort of reality check for anybody who is a conspiracy

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Speaker 1: theorist on all things JFK. You have served as sort

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Speaker 1: of this center of trying to gather the information, be

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Speaker 1: fact based about it, explaining what's missing, what information do

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Speaker 1: we still need? Things like that, How did you become

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Speaker 1: JFK FACTX? What give me the origin story?

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Speaker 3: Well? Really, I was I had been interested in the

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Speaker 3: JFK story in the nineteen eighties. I read, you know,

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Speaker 3: the books, not just the conspiracy books, but the Kennedy presidency.

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Speaker 3: But I felt like as a as a reporter, you know,

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Speaker 3: I was working at the Nation and the New Republic

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Speaker 3: had nothing to add, you know. I mean, I felt

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Speaker 3: like there were no people to interview or anything like that.

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Speaker 3: And then that changed in nineteen ninety two or nineteen

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Speaker 3: ninety three, actually, after Oliver Stone's movie came out. In

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Speaker 3: response to the Fearer, Congress passes this law, the JFK

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Speaker 3: Records Act, and it was a very it was a

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Speaker 3: very you know, sensible thing for the government to do,

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Speaker 3: which was there was all this controversy, and they said,

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Speaker 3: we're not going to reinvestigate, but we are going to

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Speaker 3: make public everything that the government has in his possession.

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Speaker 3: And this was where Stone really scored with public opinion

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Speaker 3: in all the controversy, which he pointed out.

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Speaker 1: I hated the movie. I loved the movie, and I

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Speaker 1: hated the movie because look, I I was. I consumed

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Speaker 1: all the conspiracy books, both you know, and the Warren

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Speaker 1: Commission and all these things, and I was always mad

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Speaker 1: at how Oliver Stone treated every He decided to take

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Speaker 1: every theory and make one theory right. So it bothered

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Speaker 1: me how he did the editorial, but it did need

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Speaker 1: to a good outcome, and that it got the government

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Speaker 1: to act. So you're right, but I'll be honest Stone's

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Speaker 1: interpretation drove me nuts.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, well, so that's why the law was a good response,

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Speaker 3: which is make a bit what you will, We're not gonna.

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Speaker 3: And so that's when I got involved because the law

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Speaker 3: mandated that all government records related to the assassination being

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Speaker 3: made public, and most of them were not made public.

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Speaker 3: And so when I realized what that law meant and

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Speaker 3: people we began talking about the agencies in response to

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Speaker 3: the law. The law was passed in October of ninety two.

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Speaker 3: You know, the CIA and the FBI, they responded immediately.

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Speaker 3: They started me taking things about and putting things into

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Speaker 3: the National archives. And as soon as I saw those records,

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Speaker 3: I'd been reporting on the CIA in Central America and

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Speaker 3: things like that. As sin as I saw these records,

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Speaker 3: I mean no question, it was a reporting gold mine. Here.

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Speaker 3: I mean operational records of of of CIA operations, you know,

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Speaker 3: in living memories. So when I started looking at those

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Speaker 3: memories and looking at those documents, you know, there were

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Speaker 3: names of living people and so you could just start

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Speaker 3: calling them and you know, right, away. I wasn't going

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Speaker 3: to try and solve the assassination or prove this, prove

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Speaker 3: any conspiracy theory. There was you know, there was so

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Speaker 3: much argumentation, and you know, and I thought, well, there's

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Speaker 3: gonna be there's gonna be good stories in here. I

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Speaker 3: knew enough about how the CIA worked and the history

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Speaker 3: of the CIA that there were gonna be good stories.

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Speaker 1: And right, the dullest c I A right, yes, yes,

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Speaker 1: yells run CI A yeah.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, and so and so so right away, you know,

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Speaker 3: there were stories. And so I did a story for

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Speaker 3: the for the Washington Post thirty years ago this week,

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Speaker 3: which was an interview with a woman Jane Roman, who

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Speaker 3: had her name was on these pre assassination cables about Oswald. Well,

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Speaker 3: nobody ever, you know that before it got somebody, a

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Speaker 3: CIA employee who knew about Oswald before the assassination to

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Speaker 3: talk about it. Like and so it wasn't like, you know,

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Speaker 3: the whole discourse of conspiracy, but it was so distorting.

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Speaker 3: Was like, just leave that aside. This is a good story, right,

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Speaker 3: This one was right in the thick of it. And

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Speaker 3: sure enough, what she had to say it was really interesting.

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Speaker 3: And basically it was we were paying close attention to

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Speaker 3: this guy, and she I mean, she said it, you know,

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Speaker 3: a keen interest on a need to know basis. That's

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Speaker 3: what the documents showed her. Well, that was very different

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Speaker 3: than the Warren commissioned story that we didn't know anything

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Speaker 3: about the guy and now he's the CIA officials saying.

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Speaker 3: So this was a rich body of records. And that's

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Speaker 3: how I got I got going on it. And so

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Speaker 3: you know, I was doing reporting, but not a very

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Speaker 3: popular subject at the Washington Post. People didn't really want

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Speaker 3: to hear it, and you know I would come to them.

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Speaker 3: I came to them with my best story yet and

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Speaker 3: they weren't interested. So you know that was pointing. But

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Speaker 3: you know, it's a newsroom's a collegial place, and you know,

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Speaker 3: if my colleagues didn't agree with me, they didn't agree.

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Speaker 3: I wasn't going to cry and go home. You know,

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Speaker 3: had good positions, interesting work at the Post. JFK wasn't everything,

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Speaker 3: so but you know, I had a strong interest. And

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Speaker 3: so then I decided, if the paper's not going to

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Speaker 3: do it, I'll go out and make the news myself.

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Speaker 3: I'll do a Freedom of Information Act request. And so

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Speaker 3: that was pursuing the files of George Joanedes, another CIA

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Speaker 3: official who was in the midst of all the events

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Speaker 3: that led to Kennedy's assassination. And you know, that went

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Speaker 3: on for long.

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Speaker 1: That the birth of the Mary Farrell Foundation, which is

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Speaker 1: sort of the backbone of your ability to essentially sue

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Speaker 1: the government at times to make sure they comply. Right.

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Speaker 3: Well, I was on the same trajectory as the Mary

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Speaker 3: Farrell Foundation. Rex Bradford was a computing genius who put

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Speaker 3: together this website, and he realized early on in the

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Speaker 3: late nineties, Internet is just beginning to reshape everything. Let's

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Speaker 3: put all the JFK records online. Let's make them accessible

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Speaker 3: to everybody. We've had this gatekeeper problem. You know, for

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Speaker 3: thirty years, the government had a closed fist about these

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Speaker 3: JFK records. Nobody outside the government could see them. You know,

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Speaker 3: maybe if you were lucky, you could get into the

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Speaker 3: National Archives. Then things start to open up. Things start

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Speaker 3: to be deposited in the National Archives, hundreds of thousands

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Speaker 3: in a million pages of records. Rex starts scamming and

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Speaker 3: organizing those and putting them online. And so when I

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Speaker 3: met him, I was like, this is the coolest thing

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Speaker 3: since sliced bread. We got to do more of this,

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Speaker 3: and so I became like the vice president. And here's

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Speaker 3: where the JFK facts comes from. It was in twenty twelve.

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Speaker 3: I've been you know, suing the CIA for years. We

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Speaker 3: were getting nowhere in public opinion, and I was like, Rex,

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Speaker 3: you know, next year's got twenty thirteen, it's gonna be

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Speaker 3: the fiftieth anniversary. There's going to be so much bad

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Speaker 3: journalism about JFK. Like just you know, people don't know

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Speaker 3: the fact. You know, you know that Oswald actually denied

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Speaker 3: killing the president. Like that simple fact is you know,

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Speaker 3: routinely admitted. You know, in any criminal case, as you

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Speaker 3: know that hasn't been adjudicated, you always say, you know,

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Speaker 3: the alleged killer, right right, even if it's totally obvious

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Speaker 3: that they're you know, well Oz J.

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Speaker 1: Simpson is still an alleged killer.

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Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, yeah, right, uh you know, and Oswald was

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Speaker 3: never that was never adjudicated, there was no real finding

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Speaker 3: against him. So so Rex and I were talking about

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Speaker 3: that and we said, well we've got this. By then,

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Speaker 3: Mary Farrell had been up for ten years, and it

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Speaker 3: was like this incredible resource you could go and search

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Speaker 3: a million pages of JFK records and you know, there

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Speaker 3: was no there was no intervening authority saying you can't

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Speaker 3: look at that, or you know, people began to learn

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Speaker 3: what was the story with Kennedy's assassination. So we had

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Speaker 3: this archive, but I said, we need like a news front,

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Speaker 3: you know, we need to be in the conversation. And so,

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Speaker 3: you know, two thousand, this was twenty thirteen, the blog

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Speaker 3: of sphere was starting to grow. Twitter was starting to grow.

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Speaker 3: You know, we just wanted to be out there to

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Speaker 3: counter both the bad journalism and the stupid theories, of

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Speaker 3: which tons of both, and so so we thought this

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Speaker 3: was a good opportunity. So that created. I created the

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Speaker 3: JFK faxx blog and ran that, and then when substack

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Speaker 3: came along, I got turned onto substack in twenty twenty

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Speaker 3: one and migrated it to there. And then it's a

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Speaker 3: really great platform, you know, it really.

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Speaker 1: Well, especially for an independent journalist like yourself. It's a way,

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Speaker 1: ye know, finance your journalism, you know.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, no, and so so basically I have this bit,

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Speaker 3: this beat, the JFK beat, A narrow beat, to be sure,

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Speaker 3: but very deep, right because of you know a lot

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Speaker 3: of interest. And so yeah, so the substack caught on

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Speaker 3: and now now I have a secure you know, living

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Speaker 3: and you know substack, I mean they only take eleven

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Speaker 3: you know, like if you publish on Kindle, right, Jeff

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Speaker 3: Bezos takes thirty percent, and if you do their app

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Speaker 3: on Apple, you know, Tim Cook takes thirty percent. Okay,

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Speaker 3: these guys take eleven percent. I mean, you know if

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Speaker 3: they were taking thirty percent, I you know, I'd be

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Speaker 3: a borderline. So it's a really good platform. And you know,

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Speaker 3: now it's really reaching point if people want to know

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Speaker 3: more about what I do, jfkfacx on dot substack dot

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Speaker 3: com and some place.

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Speaker 1: Oh, it's a it's a it's a worthy it's a

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Speaker 1: worthy sub And before we get into some details, let's

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Speaker 1: say because I had a really fascinating moment with my son.

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Speaker 1: He's going to go to college in Dallas. He's going

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Speaker 1: to SMU And when we were looking at the school,

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Speaker 1: I realized I had never gone to the Texas school

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Speaker 1: Book Depository. I'd never gone to the Grassy Knoll right,

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Speaker 1: And if you have it, it's unbelievable. I will be

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Speaker 1: honest with you. I I it it it. It made

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Speaker 1: certain things in my mind clearer. And what was really

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Speaker 1: interest Jeff was my son's reaction to the just simply

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Speaker 1: the reenactments. Right when you go into that Texas school

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Speaker 1: book depository, it's all about the reenactment, and they just

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Speaker 1: are constantly. You can't go anywhere without them showing you

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Speaker 1: the motor cater And his first question, what do you

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Speaker 1: think it is? When he watches the reenactment, he goes,

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Speaker 1: why didn't he shoot him there?

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Speaker 3: Why did he.

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Speaker 1: Wait till he And I said, son, welcome to the conspiracy.

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Speaker 1: I said, there you go, I said, you know, that's

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Speaker 1: that is arguably probably how the beginning. I've always thought like,

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Speaker 1: how did the mind go there? For anybody? Well, when

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Speaker 1: you start to look at the choices he made to

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Speaker 1: why didn't you shoot there? Why did you wait here? Now, look,

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Speaker 1: there's a plausible explanation. Maybe he couldn't look JFK in

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Speaker 1: the eye right in his scope. It's very like I've

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Speaker 1: you know, that's a possibility, right, maybe he could, you know.

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Speaker 1: But it was really just to see it in the

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Speaker 1: eyes of a sort of newly forming adult as they're

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Speaker 1: processing information about it, and.

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Speaker 3: It's it's you know, it's a great natural question and right,

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Speaker 3: you know, one of the when you go back and

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Speaker 3: look at at the at the event itself, you know,

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Speaker 3: those natural questions were suppressed. Okay, so sometimes they were

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Speaker 3: suppressed by coercion. Sometimes they were suppressed by shock and grief.

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Speaker 1: And well, there was a necessity, there was a necessity

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Speaker 1: at the time to wrap it up, right.

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Speaker 3: You know.

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Speaker 1: I watched this movie recently because I had never seen

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Speaker 1: it before, as government propaganda movie to the world, what

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Speaker 1: is it the drums? You you may know what I'm

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Speaker 1: referring to that essentially tries to explain to the world

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Speaker 1: what happened to JFK. Right, you know, no, no, we didn't.

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Speaker 1: It wasn't domestic politics that killed him, you know, but

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Speaker 1: it was just sort of and they paper over everything

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Speaker 1: and they just sort of sell it. You think it's

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Speaker 1: called the Banging the drum or the Drums of I

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Speaker 1: can't remember the title of.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, I know the one. Yeah, I mean, there's a very,

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Speaker 3: there's a.

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Speaker 1: Very We were in a hurry. We were in a

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Speaker 1: hurry to explain. Yeah.

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Speaker 3: And I have a friend who was who was a

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Speaker 3: new frontiersman, you know, he was involved in the war

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Speaker 3: on poverty, and you know, one of those people who

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Speaker 3: came with Kennedy and such a bright prompt, and he said,

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Speaker 3: you know, we just had to get over it. You know,

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Speaker 3: we had to put it behind us. There was no

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Speaker 3: there was nothing else to be done, you know, And

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Speaker 3: so the idea of of thinking about what had actually

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Speaker 3: happened to the president, you know, my friend, you know,

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Speaker 3: he couldn't come back to it until thirty forty years

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Speaker 3: later because because of that impulse that we just have

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Speaker 3: to put it behind us. So, you know, then you

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Speaker 3: go into this thing, a very complicated story. And there's

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Speaker 3: sort of two polls that I tried to navigate. I

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Speaker 3: mean one and when I went in, when I when

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Speaker 3: I started, you know, I didn't find the theory convincing,

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Speaker 3: but I didn't.

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Speaker 1: What is your scholarship? What books were the best informer

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Speaker 1: in your head? You know, you've read a lot of them.

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Speaker 1: But in time, if you were to tell my son,

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Speaker 1: who's eighteen and you want to know more, where would

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Speaker 1: you tell them to begin? What books would you tell

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Speaker 1: him to read?

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Speaker 3: Well, there were two books that were especially influential to me.

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Speaker 3: They're old now, and you know, we've learned a lot

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Speaker 3: since then, but as models of how to attack the subject.

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Speaker 3: The first one was called Accessories after the Fact and

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Speaker 3: written by a woman named Sylvia Maher. She worked at

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Speaker 3: the un in New York and she was one of

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Speaker 3: the early skeptics, and she was the one who indexed

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Speaker 3: the twenty six volumes of evidence that the Warren Commission

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Speaker 3: released with its report. And so that index really made

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Speaker 3: the Warren Commission body of evidence accessible to researchers. The

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Speaker 3: government itself did not do that because they really didn't

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Speaker 3: want people looking too closely at it. And so Sylvie

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Speaker 3: DeMar's book Accessories after the Fact is basically saying the

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Speaker 3: facts that were adduced by the Warren Commission do not

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Speaker 3: support the conclusion that they reached, and it's pretty obvious

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Speaker 3: that that's true, and she does it in micro detail,

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Speaker 3: you know, And that's where that book I began to

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Speaker 3: get a sense of those forces that were impinging on

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Speaker 3: the story. And so you see how Fbia designed to

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Speaker 3: get the verdict that they wanted when the witnesses actually

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Speaker 3: said something very different. So that book, Accessories after the Fact,

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Speaker 3: was very good a model of kind of how to

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Speaker 3: take it across. It's not a conspiracy book. It doesn't

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Speaker 3: have a theory in it. And the second book was

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Speaker 3: it was originally called Conspiracy by Anthony Summers, and then

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Speaker 3: he did another edition of it with more reporting called

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Speaker 3: Not in Your Lifetime. And this book is impressive because

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Speaker 3: Tony went in the seventies, he was a BBC reporter.

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Speaker 3: He went to New Orleans and interviewed I mean dozens

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Speaker 3: of people who you know should have been interviewed by

431
00:24:09,840 --> 00:24:13,840
Speaker 3: any serious investigation, and you know, and uncovered this whole

432
00:24:13,880 --> 00:24:17,720
Speaker 3: business of Oswald and New Orleans associating with these anti

433
00:24:17,720 --> 00:24:21,920
Speaker 3: Castro people, you know, making the story of a lone gunman.

434
00:24:22,160 --> 00:24:25,359
Speaker 3: Just you know, why is this leftist spending all this

435
00:24:25,440 --> 00:24:29,800
Speaker 3: time with right wing people? Why there's CIA people shadowing

436
00:24:29,840 --> 00:24:34,320
Speaker 3: him everywhere? And Tony's book was published in the The

437
00:24:34,359 --> 00:24:38,480
Speaker 3: new edition was published in the in ninety three, and

438
00:24:38,640 --> 00:24:42,879
Speaker 3: it was just it was very It showed that the

439
00:24:42,880 --> 00:24:46,080
Speaker 3: official story was so simplistic. So those were two books

440
00:24:46,119 --> 00:24:49,200
Speaker 3: that were very influential to me. There's a couple more

441
00:24:49,200 --> 00:24:52,119
Speaker 3: that I would that I recommend to people now, a

442
00:24:52,160 --> 00:24:55,640
Speaker 3: book called Brothers by Dave Albert, which is a really

443
00:24:55,640 --> 00:24:59,960
Speaker 3: good book about what Bobby Kennedy thought about his brother's death.

444
00:25:00,520 --> 00:25:05,000
Speaker 3: M and because Bobby Kennedy never believed the official story,

445
00:25:05,119 --> 00:25:10,479
Speaker 3: not not for a second. And this book, David interviewed

446
00:25:10,480 --> 00:25:12,919
Speaker 3: a couple of hundred people in the Kennedy sphere and

447
00:25:12,960 --> 00:25:17,639
Speaker 3: in the sphere, and he got amazing access to, you know,

448
00:25:18,160 --> 00:25:21,080
Speaker 3: people in the Dulles family and the Kennedy family, and

449
00:25:21,000 --> 00:25:23,720
Speaker 3: and you know, it shows why Robert Kennedy didn't believe

450
00:25:23,760 --> 00:25:25,679
Speaker 3: the official story and what he was trying to do

451
00:25:25,800 --> 00:25:28,000
Speaker 3: about it. So those are three books that I would

452
00:25:28,040 --> 00:25:30,800
Speaker 3: recommend to anybody who wants to kind of get you know,

453
00:25:30,880 --> 00:25:34,960
Speaker 3: get going in understanding the story and from with from

454
00:25:35,480 --> 00:25:36,760
Speaker 3: a critical perspective.

455
00:25:37,640 --> 00:25:40,159
Speaker 1: So so let me, I want to I want to

456
00:25:40,200 --> 00:25:42,480
Speaker 1: try to tackle this before I get to sort of

457
00:25:42,480 --> 00:25:45,640
Speaker 1: the most recent releases and what what you're looking for

458
00:25:45,680 --> 00:25:48,480
Speaker 1: in the next set of releases and what Telsey Gabber

459
00:25:48,600 --> 00:25:50,679
Speaker 1: just announced and I'm curious what you think that is.

460
00:25:50,680 --> 00:25:54,600
Speaker 1: But before we get to that, for me, I feel

461
00:25:54,640 --> 00:25:58,520
Speaker 1: like the thread that matters the most is obviously Oswald, right,

462
00:25:58,800 --> 00:26:03,639
Speaker 1: and the sort of trace Oswald's path And and you know,

463
00:26:03,680 --> 00:26:06,600
Speaker 1: the hardest, the thing that has always been hard to

464
00:26:06,640 --> 00:26:09,480
Speaker 1: wrap my head around is how did the United States

465
00:26:09,520 --> 00:26:14,880
Speaker 1: government allow a marine to go to Russia and then

466
00:26:14,960 --> 00:26:21,000
Speaker 1: come back pretty quickly and get in back into polite society, right, Like, ultimately,

467
00:26:21,080 --> 00:26:24,200
Speaker 1: like if you know nothing else, that's an agreed upon fact,

468
00:26:24,680 --> 00:26:28,560
Speaker 1: right the Morn Commission. Right, we know Oswald went to Russia,

469
00:26:28,920 --> 00:26:33,280
Speaker 1: worked in renowned citizenship, then comes back. All this happens

470
00:26:33,280 --> 00:26:35,520
Speaker 1: in the middle of Gary Powers too. There's all sorts

471
00:26:35,560 --> 00:26:40,200
Speaker 1: of You're just sitting there going, what is this obviously Oswald?

472
00:26:40,400 --> 00:26:43,320
Speaker 1: You know, look, I have my own theory right of

473
00:26:43,359 --> 00:26:45,840
Speaker 1: what Oswald could have been. Was he a CIA asset

474
00:26:46,040 --> 00:26:48,720
Speaker 1: that went rogue? And they've you know, I've always thought

475
00:26:48,760 --> 00:26:51,520
Speaker 1: that what if the CIA's paranoias is like, we didn't

476
00:26:51,520 --> 00:26:53,520
Speaker 1: do it, but by God they think we They're going

477
00:26:53,600 --> 00:26:56,480
Speaker 1: to think we did, So we've got to distance ourselves

478
00:26:56,480 --> 00:27:00,000
Speaker 1: from Oswald. Right, There's all sorts of but ultimately Oswald

479
00:27:00,320 --> 00:27:04,919
Speaker 1: is trying to understand how did Oswald not end up

480
00:27:04,960 --> 00:27:08,680
Speaker 1: in jail in America for going to Russia and coming

481
00:27:08,760 --> 00:27:12,600
Speaker 1: back and why was this so easily allowed? Am I

482
00:27:12,920 --> 00:27:14,919
Speaker 1: wrong that this is not really a thread?

483
00:27:16,400 --> 00:27:19,359
Speaker 3: And my own reporting in the last couple of years

484
00:27:19,600 --> 00:27:28,040
Speaker 3: has really focused on the Oswald file. I have assembled

485
00:27:28,359 --> 00:27:31,280
Speaker 3: for the first time. It's not available anywhere else, the

486
00:27:31,880 --> 00:27:36,080
Speaker 3: complete pre assassination file that the CIA had on Oswald.

487
00:27:36,400 --> 00:27:38,720
Speaker 1: As you say you've assembled the file, you mean you've

488
00:27:38,720 --> 00:27:41,600
Speaker 1: taken all the various releases over the years and put

489
00:27:41,640 --> 00:27:42,919
Speaker 1: it into a file, right.

490
00:27:43,400 --> 00:27:46,760
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I mean the documents have all been declassified.

491
00:27:46,800 --> 00:27:51,400
Speaker 3: The last one, the last classified document in the Oswald file,

492
00:27:51,440 --> 00:27:55,000
Speaker 3: wasn't declassified till twenty twenty three, So the first time

493
00:27:55,040 --> 00:27:58,240
Speaker 3: we had the complete file with no redactions in it.

494
00:27:59,600 --> 00:28:03,040
Speaker 3: So those the documents had been released piecemeal over the years,

495
00:28:03,040 --> 00:28:06,280
Speaker 3: they're not available in any one place. Using a CIA

496
00:28:06,400 --> 00:28:09,879
Speaker 3: document that lists all the files, I went and found

497
00:28:09,920 --> 00:28:12,960
Speaker 3: all of them.

498
00:28:11,000 --> 00:28:11,080
Speaker 1: And.

499
00:28:12,720 --> 00:28:15,240
Speaker 3: Then I taught a class and we crowd sourced it

500
00:28:15,280 --> 00:28:17,960
Speaker 3: and we found additional material that belonged in there, and

501
00:28:18,440 --> 00:28:20,440
Speaker 3: eventually we came up with one hundred and ninety eight

502
00:28:20,480 --> 00:28:25,879
Speaker 3: pages of information about Oswald. Twelve State Department reports, twelve

503
00:28:25,960 --> 00:28:31,360
Speaker 3: FBI reports, eleven CIA memos, four newspaper clippings, two cables

504
00:28:31,359 --> 00:28:34,240
Speaker 3: from O and I, and one from Immigration and Naturalization.

505
00:28:34,720 --> 00:28:37,159
Speaker 3: All of this was sitting in one place in the

506
00:28:37,200 --> 00:28:40,880
Speaker 3: CIA when President Kennedy left for Dallas. So you know,

507
00:28:41,240 --> 00:28:43,400
Speaker 3: the first thing is, you know, the idea that Oswald

508
00:28:43,440 --> 00:28:46,280
Speaker 3: was a loan nun. I mean, no, he was a

509
00:28:46,400 --> 00:28:51,320
Speaker 3: known quantity the top CIA officials right before the assassination. Okay,

510
00:28:51,720 --> 00:28:55,640
Speaker 3: that's that's a new fact. And now defenders of the

511
00:28:55,640 --> 00:28:58,200
Speaker 3: official theory have sort of retreated and say, yeah, that's true,

512
00:28:58,200 --> 00:29:01,680
Speaker 3: but it's irrelevant. You know, they were gathering information, but

513
00:29:02,120 --> 00:29:06,040
Speaker 3: they just missed. They were just incompetent. You know, I

514
00:29:06,040 --> 00:29:07,880
Speaker 3: wrote a book about Dick Helms, and I wrote a

515
00:29:07,920 --> 00:29:10,600
Speaker 3: book about Jim Angleton, and you know, you can say

516
00:29:10,600 --> 00:29:14,600
Speaker 3: whatever you want about them. Nobody ever said those guys

517
00:29:14,640 --> 00:29:19,800
Speaker 3: were incompitent. Yeah, you know, they didn't lack the necessary skills.

518
00:29:19,800 --> 00:29:21,480
Speaker 3: They might have been criminal, they might have been stupid.

519
00:29:21,520 --> 00:29:26,080
Speaker 3: That I've been foolish, obtuse, incompetent never, and so I

520
00:29:26,120 --> 00:29:30,000
Speaker 3: don't think that that incompetence argument, you know, holds water.

521
00:29:30,040 --> 00:29:33,720
Speaker 3: And in larger perspective, you know, something that we've learned

522
00:29:33,800 --> 00:29:37,280
Speaker 3: and also something I really came to appreciate. You know,

523
00:29:37,760 --> 00:29:40,880
Speaker 3: the people around Kennedy, they didn't believe the official story.

524
00:29:42,080 --> 00:29:46,080
Speaker 3: Robert Kennedy didn't believe the day of the assassination, Robert

525
00:29:46,120 --> 00:29:48,880
Speaker 3: Kennedy called John mccoone, who was the director of the CIA,

526
00:29:49,000 --> 00:29:52,400
Speaker 3: not a CIA man. Kennedy had brought him in from

527
00:29:52,440 --> 00:29:56,240
Speaker 3: the outside, but he was a friend. And Robert Kennedy

528
00:29:56,280 --> 00:29:57,800
Speaker 3: takes him out and they walk on the lawn at

529
00:29:57,840 --> 00:30:01,720
Speaker 3: Hickory Hill, his estate there and near CIA Hitwards and

530
00:30:01,760 --> 00:30:05,720
Speaker 3: he said, did you did your people do this? And

531
00:30:06,360 --> 00:30:08,479
Speaker 3: Robert Kennedy later told the story and he said macone

532
00:30:08,520 --> 00:30:11,840
Speaker 3: had assured him in a way that convinced him that

533
00:30:12,040 --> 00:30:14,560
Speaker 3: they had that the CIA wasn't involved. That was at

534
00:30:14,560 --> 00:30:17,560
Speaker 3: two o'clock in the afternoon. By five o'clock that afternoon,

535
00:30:18,000 --> 00:30:20,680
Speaker 3: RFK called his friend Harry Williams, a leader in the

536
00:30:20,880 --> 00:30:25,040
Speaker 3: Cuban opposition to Castro, who he knew very well, and

537
00:30:25,440 --> 00:30:27,800
Speaker 3: by five o'clock he wasn't asking the question anymore. He

538
00:30:27,840 --> 00:30:31,800
Speaker 3: said to Harry Williams, your guys did it. And so

539
00:30:32,760 --> 00:30:36,160
Speaker 3: Robert Kennedy's you know, realization his brother had been ambush

540
00:30:36,200 --> 00:30:39,120
Speaker 3: that crystallized very quickly, and he wasn't alone, you know.

541
00:30:39,240 --> 00:30:41,720
Speaker 3: Jackie thought that. Jackie Kennedy thought, all.

542
00:30:41,640 --> 00:30:43,560
Speaker 1: Right, let me introduce to a counter narrative there just

543
00:30:43,560 --> 00:30:47,120
Speaker 1: simply nobody wants to believe alone nut does something like this, right,

544
00:30:47,560 --> 00:30:49,760
Speaker 1: how do you how do you account for that in

545
00:30:49,800 --> 00:30:52,320
Speaker 1: your own in your own research, you know what I mean,

546
00:30:52,400 --> 00:30:55,120
Speaker 1: like you constantly because you're pretty good about this, but

547
00:30:55,160 --> 00:30:58,520
Speaker 1: you're constantly you got it? Well, you know, you know

548
00:30:59,280 --> 00:31:02,040
Speaker 1: what if everybody wants to believe it because they don't

549
00:31:02,040 --> 00:31:03,960
Speaker 1: want to believe the alternative.

550
00:31:04,000 --> 00:31:07,800
Speaker 3: Well, I mean, yeah, the notion. Look, history is tragic,

551
00:31:08,080 --> 00:31:11,120
Speaker 3: you know, happened for no reason. We can't we can't

552
00:31:11,160 --> 00:31:14,960
Speaker 3: impute reason where there is no reason, and the desire

553
00:31:15,040 --> 00:31:20,600
Speaker 3: to create, you know, a narrative about Kennedy's assassination, you know,

554
00:31:20,800 --> 00:31:24,600
Speaker 3: I mean that, sure, that's a human tendency, but I

555
00:31:24,640 --> 00:31:28,240
Speaker 3: would say, you know, uh, I don't think Robert Kennedy

556
00:31:28,400 --> 00:31:32,719
Speaker 3: was a political politically deluded. I mean, did he have

557
00:31:32,760 --> 00:31:35,520
Speaker 3: a desire to explain his brother's death that you know,

558
00:31:35,960 --> 00:31:39,479
Speaker 3: a conspiracy would have fulfilled some emotion that you know,

559
00:31:40,160 --> 00:31:43,360
Speaker 3: I think you know, Charles de Gaulle didn't believe the story.

560
00:31:43,520 --> 00:31:46,400
Speaker 3: Fidel Castro didn't believe the story. These were not politically

561
00:31:46,400 --> 00:31:50,760
Speaker 3: deluded people, right, These are some of the best, most savvy,

562
00:31:50,960 --> 00:31:54,160
Speaker 3: effective political actors on the world stage at that time.

563
00:31:54,280 --> 00:31:56,960
Speaker 1: Well, and let's but let's also take people back. I mean,

564
00:31:56,960 --> 00:32:00,400
Speaker 1: I think sometimes what what makes people skeptical that there's

565
00:32:00,440 --> 00:32:03,560
Speaker 1: a conspiracy is, well, the United States wouldn't behave it

566
00:32:03,560 --> 00:32:06,160
Speaker 1: doesn't behave that way. Now, well that's true. But the

567
00:32:06,200 --> 00:32:10,720
Speaker 1: CIA of the fifties, you know, I one of my

568
00:32:10,840 --> 00:32:15,000
Speaker 1: theories as to why the CIA constantly convinces presidents not

569
00:32:15,080 --> 00:32:18,680
Speaker 1: to follow the law, Okay, like whatever happens in that room.

570
00:32:19,400 --> 00:32:23,160
Speaker 1: You know that that that, you know, the the CIA's

571
00:32:23,200 --> 00:32:26,640
Speaker 1: history in the nineteen fifties, particularly in Latin America, is atrocious.

572
00:32:26,720 --> 00:32:30,600
Speaker 1: It's embarrassing, it's awful, it's so many things, and that

573
00:32:30,680 --> 00:32:33,640
Speaker 1: if you unravel it, it could actually you know, my

574
00:32:33,760 --> 00:32:36,480
Speaker 1: guess is that the CIA directors go to these presidents

575
00:32:36,480 --> 00:32:39,440
Speaker 1: and say, you don't understand, if we go down this road,

576
00:32:40,120 --> 00:32:42,800
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, we're going to find out every

577
00:32:42,840 --> 00:32:46,680
Speaker 1: coup we were involved with, every you know, assassination we

578
00:32:46,680 --> 00:32:50,080
Speaker 1: were actually that you know that there's this fear of

579
00:32:50,240 --> 00:32:53,960
Speaker 1: not Oswald uh and anything with Kennedy really the fear

580
00:32:53,960 --> 00:32:57,440
Speaker 1: that it exposes all the bad operations of the fifties

581
00:32:57,440 --> 00:32:58,040
Speaker 1: of the CIA.

582
00:32:58,560 --> 00:33:01,280
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, and and and that was that was lbj's

583
00:33:01,320 --> 00:33:06,240
Speaker 3: operation reaction after reading the Inspector just nineteen sixty seven

584
00:33:06,320 --> 00:33:09,920
Speaker 3: Inspector General's Report, which was the CIA's first response to,

585
00:33:11,400 --> 00:33:15,560
Speaker 3: you know, reports that they were involved in assassinations. And

586
00:33:15,640 --> 00:33:18,120
Speaker 3: Johnson came away and he said, we were running a

587
00:33:18,120 --> 00:33:20,760
Speaker 3: goddamn murder inc in the Caribbean. You know. It was

588
00:33:20,760 --> 00:33:24,280
Speaker 3: like it was like even Johnson, you know, sounded surprise.

589
00:33:24,800 --> 00:33:28,000
Speaker 3: You know, a man with a lot of capacity for misdeeds,

590
00:33:28,040 --> 00:33:32,000
Speaker 3: even he would at what happened, you know. And Johnson

591
00:33:32,040 --> 00:33:36,080
Speaker 3: appointed the Warren Commission. But Johnson didn't believe it's conclusions,

592
00:33:36,440 --> 00:33:40,080
Speaker 3: and he said so repeatedly. He was talking to CBS

593
00:33:40,120 --> 00:33:42,480
Speaker 3: News when they did a piece on him in retirement,

594
00:33:42,880 --> 00:33:45,160
Speaker 3: and he wouldn't let them use it on camera, but

595
00:33:45,240 --> 00:33:47,800
Speaker 3: he said he didn't believe that Oswald had acted alone.

596
00:33:47,920 --> 00:33:51,080
Speaker 3: You know, So if Lyndon Johnson didn't believe the Warren Commission,

597
00:33:51,440 --> 00:33:57,760
Speaker 3: you know, why should I you know, like, yeah.

598
00:33:56,760 --> 00:34:00,440
Speaker 1: Now there's no doubt and so effort by this CIA

599
00:34:00,520 --> 00:34:03,840
Speaker 1: to cover up its relationship with Oswald, right, and the

600
00:34:03,960 --> 00:34:05,040
Speaker 1: question is why.

601
00:34:06,200 --> 00:34:10,200
Speaker 3: Yeah, So that's really to get to, you know, get

602
00:34:10,239 --> 00:34:12,560
Speaker 3: around to what I'm looking at now and what you know,

603
00:34:12,600 --> 00:34:15,200
Speaker 3: what we're learning from the new releases, which I think

604
00:34:15,280 --> 00:34:18,720
Speaker 3: is a lot. You know, it goes to that question

605
00:34:19,120 --> 00:34:23,239
Speaker 3: the pre assassination knowledge of Oswald, and you know, we

606
00:34:23,280 --> 00:34:27,040
Speaker 3: did learn some significant things on March eighteenth, when those

607
00:34:27,120 --> 00:34:30,359
Speaker 3: you know, these long suppressed documents had begun to had

608
00:34:30,360 --> 00:34:34,960
Speaker 3: begun to appear. There's both a macro thing shedding light

609
00:34:35,040 --> 00:34:40,200
Speaker 3: on the political situation that Kennedy was in, right and

610
00:34:40,320 --> 00:34:44,600
Speaker 3: Arthur Schlessinger's memo about reorganizing the CIA was one of

611
00:34:44,680 --> 00:34:47,160
Speaker 3: the things that came out, and you know, we understand

612
00:34:47,200 --> 00:34:50,799
Speaker 3: why Kennedy mistrusted the CI and why he wanted at

613
00:34:50,840 --> 00:34:55,839
Speaker 3: these contemplated really reorganizing them in a very fundamental way.

614
00:34:56,520 --> 00:34:59,120
Speaker 3: So that's kind of the macro situation, and then we

615
00:34:59,320 --> 00:35:03,520
Speaker 3: drilled down to them micro and we stay well in

616
00:35:01,960 --> 00:35:06,000
Speaker 3: the testimony of James Angleton to the House Select Committee

617
00:35:06,000 --> 00:35:10,360
Speaker 3: on Assassinations, a passage just declassified fifty year old transcript

618
00:35:10,920 --> 00:35:12,839
Speaker 3: shows that he lied to them about what he knew

619
00:35:12,840 --> 00:35:16,239
Speaker 3: about Oswald before the assassination. We're just getting that kind

620
00:35:16,280 --> 00:35:19,800
Speaker 3: of information now, and we're also getting a bigger picture

621
00:35:19,840 --> 00:35:23,480
Speaker 3: of you know, Kennedy in the Cold War, Kennedy in

622
00:35:23,600 --> 00:35:26,720
Speaker 3: conflict with his own security apparatus.

623
00:35:27,080 --> 00:35:30,640
Speaker 1: So you know, we're learning more. So let's go to

624
00:35:30,680 --> 00:35:34,160
Speaker 1: the releases. Okay, because the most recent there was two

625
00:35:34,280 --> 00:35:38,400
Speaker 1: laws passed. One there was a chunk of everything should

626
00:35:38,400 --> 00:35:41,360
Speaker 1: have been released in twenty seventeen, and Trump doesn't do

627
00:35:41,480 --> 00:35:44,640
Speaker 1: it right, What did he hold off on releasing the

628
00:35:44,640 --> 00:35:45,160
Speaker 1: first time?

629
00:35:46,000 --> 00:35:49,080
Speaker 3: So the JFK Records Act, passed after the movie in

630
00:35:49,120 --> 00:35:52,080
Speaker 3: ninety two, had a twenty five year sunset provision, which

631
00:35:52,120 --> 00:35:58,040
Speaker 3: is this JFK Independent Board obtained records from government agencies,

632
00:35:58,239 --> 00:36:01,160
Speaker 3: put them into national archives. The agencies were given the

633
00:36:01,239 --> 00:36:05,640
Speaker 3: right to withhold certain material on grounds of national security

634
00:36:05,760 --> 00:36:08,880
Speaker 3: or privacy. They could ask they could say, don't publish

635
00:36:08,960 --> 00:36:11,720
Speaker 3: this name until, you know, until he dies. He doesn't

636
00:36:11,719 --> 00:36:15,680
Speaker 3: want in public. Well, you know that was that was legitimate,

637
00:36:16,200 --> 00:36:19,080
Speaker 3: you know concern. But the law was after twenty five

638
00:36:19,160 --> 00:36:22,960
Speaker 3: years everything would be public, made public regardless. Well, when

639
00:36:22,960 --> 00:36:25,680
Speaker 3: twenty five years rolled around in October twenty seventeen, it

640
00:36:25,719 --> 00:36:29,439
Speaker 3: came to Trump, Pompeo, Mike Pompeo and Chris Ray went

641
00:36:29,840 --> 00:36:33,680
Speaker 3: to Trump and there's a Reuter's story about this and said,

642
00:36:34,160 --> 00:36:36,920
Speaker 3: you know, we can't release this stuff. At least there's

643
00:36:36,960 --> 00:36:38,680
Speaker 3: a lot of stuff that we don't want to release.

644
00:36:39,000 --> 00:36:41,520
Speaker 3: And at that point there were redactions in about sixteen

645
00:36:41,680 --> 00:36:47,120
Speaker 3: thousand documents in a collection. For perspective, there's about three

646
00:36:47,200 --> 00:36:51,960
Speaker 3: hundred and nineteen thousand different records in the JFK collection. Okay,

647
00:36:52,480 --> 00:36:56,920
Speaker 3: but sixteen thousand. It's not insignificant number. It's a couple percentage.

648
00:36:57,520 --> 00:37:01,000
Speaker 3: So and among those, as we could tell, you know

649
00:37:01,719 --> 00:37:05,640
Speaker 3: that there was very interesting, you know material. So when

650
00:37:05,640 --> 00:37:08,120
Speaker 3: the agency and when Pompeo said, look, you can't release it,

651
00:37:08,400 --> 00:37:12,920
Speaker 3: Trump said bye, and he they released some stuff. But

652
00:37:13,000 --> 00:37:15,680
Speaker 3: basically Trump kicked the can down the road and.

653
00:37:15,640 --> 00:37:17,279
Speaker 1: He punted it for it was it five years he

654
00:37:17,320 --> 00:37:17,759
Speaker 1: punted it.

655
00:37:17,760 --> 00:37:21,319
Speaker 3: What was the punch exactly four? So he said, we'll

656
00:37:21,320 --> 00:37:23,879
Speaker 3: revisit this in October twenty twenty one.

657
00:37:24,360 --> 00:37:27,239
Speaker 1: Well, then that's Joe Biden's.

658
00:37:26,280 --> 00:37:29,480
Speaker 3: Well Biden, So, Joe, that's right at the end of

659
00:37:29,520 --> 00:37:32,719
Speaker 3: the pandemic. So Biden says, look, we had a pandemic.

660
00:37:33,719 --> 00:37:36,239
Speaker 3: CIA can't do this. We're gonna wait, We're gonna give

661
00:37:36,280 --> 00:37:36,959
Speaker 3: him another year.

662
00:37:37,520 --> 00:37:39,880
Speaker 1: Okay, another punt. Yeah.

663
00:37:39,960 --> 00:37:41,400
Speaker 3: When the Washington Post called me up and said, what

664
00:37:41,440 --> 00:37:43,320
Speaker 3: do you think, I said, this is like the COVID

665
00:37:43,360 --> 00:37:46,080
Speaker 3: bg ate my homework. You know, it's like this is

666
00:37:46,120 --> 00:37:48,640
Speaker 3: the lame list. Excuse me, You've had twenty nine years

667
00:37:48,680 --> 00:37:52,840
Speaker 3: and you're gonna blame it on the COVID. So so

668
00:37:53,080 --> 00:37:55,560
Speaker 3: then a year later, Biden did the same thing Trump did.

669
00:37:55,560 --> 00:37:58,319
Speaker 3: He released a bunch of stuff, and he held a

670
00:37:58,360 --> 00:38:00,760
Speaker 3: bunch of stuff and so that.

671
00:38:00,640 --> 00:38:03,280
Speaker 1: Brought but he also signed an executive order that seemed

672
00:38:03,320 --> 00:38:06,640
Speaker 1: to try to no more or something right, what was

673
00:38:06,760 --> 00:38:07,920
Speaker 1: explain that part of it.

674
00:38:08,239 --> 00:38:11,000
Speaker 3: Yeah, So what Biden did was he held back a

675
00:38:11,040 --> 00:38:12,680
Speaker 3: bunch of stuff. He released a bunch of stuff, but

676
00:38:13,160 --> 00:38:15,560
Speaker 3: he didn't want this question to come back to him,

677
00:38:15,600 --> 00:38:17,600
Speaker 3: and so he issues an order in June of twenty

678
00:38:17,640 --> 00:38:20,920
Speaker 3: twenty three and he says, look, from now on, the

679
00:38:20,960 --> 00:38:24,040
Speaker 3: release of this material is up to the NSA, the

680
00:38:24,080 --> 00:38:28,480
Speaker 3: CIA or DoD whatever agency holds that, and they have

681
00:38:28,600 --> 00:38:32,560
Speaker 3: this plan for release. And they were called, in typically

682
00:38:32,600 --> 00:38:36,360
Speaker 3: deceptive way, transparency plans, and the transparency plans were designed

683
00:38:36,400 --> 00:38:39,560
Speaker 3: to make sure that there was no transparency. And so

684
00:38:40,120 --> 00:38:43,920
Speaker 3: those went into effect, and so that was really that

685
00:38:44,000 --> 00:38:47,399
Speaker 3: was actually sort of a step back because it sort

686
00:38:47,440 --> 00:38:52,160
Speaker 3: of visciraated the JFK Records Act by putting the control

687
00:38:52,640 --> 00:38:55,280
Speaker 3: of the disposition of the documents back in the hands

688
00:38:55,280 --> 00:38:58,040
Speaker 3: of the agency. The whole reason that the law worked

689
00:38:58,239 --> 00:39:01,600
Speaker 3: and was very effective was the final decision about a

690
00:39:01,640 --> 00:39:05,239
Speaker 3: CIA document was not made by a CIA official. It

691
00:39:05,320 --> 00:39:07,759
Speaker 3: was made by an outside of a person who could

692
00:39:07,840 --> 00:39:12,120
Speaker 3: balance national security and you know public interesting.

693
00:39:11,840 --> 00:39:13,560
Speaker 1: It's a board, what it right, It's a board that

694
00:39:13,600 --> 00:39:14,600
Speaker 1: oversees this. Who is it?

695
00:39:15,440 --> 00:39:20,200
Speaker 3: Yes, so that it was the Assassination Records Review Board.

696
00:39:20,600 --> 00:39:23,560
Speaker 3: There's no structure now, So that was the step backwards

697
00:39:23,600 --> 00:39:26,319
Speaker 3: in Biden's order was he basically gave control of these,

698
00:39:26,400 --> 00:39:29,680
Speaker 3: the last of the documents back to the agencies. Right,

699
00:39:30,480 --> 00:39:33,680
Speaker 3: so that along comes Trump. Okay, Now Trump had caved

700
00:39:33,680 --> 00:39:39,000
Speaker 3: the first time. He took a lot of grief from

701
00:39:39,080 --> 00:39:44,040
Speaker 3: from his friends, and Tucker Carlson and Andrew Politano in particular,

702
00:39:44,560 --> 00:39:47,600
Speaker 3: you know, really chastised him. And when you listen to

703
00:39:47,640 --> 00:39:52,080
Speaker 3: the interviews, Trump's very uncomfortable. He's not the usual blustering self.

704
00:39:52,239 --> 00:39:54,719
Speaker 3: He's like, he doesn't want to talk about it. He's embarrassed.

705
00:39:55,280 --> 00:39:57,880
Speaker 3: But they showed him something. There's no doubt in my mind.

706
00:39:57,920 --> 00:39:59,759
Speaker 3: They you know, you have the problem.

707
00:39:59,440 --> 00:40:02,040
Speaker 1: You've got a You've got to to make him change

708
00:40:02,080 --> 00:40:04,680
Speaker 1: his mind. You've got to show him a fear of something.

709
00:40:05,440 --> 00:40:08,719
Speaker 1: So that's what, like, what is it that Pompeo showed him?

710
00:40:08,719 --> 00:40:09,920
Speaker 1: But anyway, you know.

711
00:40:09,920 --> 00:40:13,120
Speaker 3: But Trump Trump said at one point, if you've seen

712
00:40:13,160 --> 00:40:16,560
Speaker 3: what I've seen, you wouldn't have Yeah, you know, I

713
00:40:16,560 --> 00:40:19,640
Speaker 3: think that's just so much blarnie, you know, like there's

714
00:40:19,640 --> 00:40:22,520
Speaker 3: no reason. I mean, if he knew something substantive, why

715
00:40:22,560 --> 00:40:24,399
Speaker 3: wouldn't he say it. I don't believe that he knows

716
00:40:24,440 --> 00:40:26,200
Speaker 3: anything substantive, but I don't.

717
00:40:26,040 --> 00:40:28,440
Speaker 1: Usually blurts it out anyway, right, Like he was a

718
00:40:28,560 --> 00:40:32,040
Speaker 1: terrible you'd never tell Trump a secret. He'll eventually tell everybody.

719
00:40:32,360 --> 00:40:37,000
Speaker 3: Yeah. So so anyway, Trump's embarrassed. And then RFK is running.

720
00:40:37,239 --> 00:40:40,719
Speaker 3: RFK made this an issue when he was running. He

721
00:40:40,719 --> 00:40:44,400
Speaker 3: had a petition to open up all the JFK records.

722
00:40:44,560 --> 00:40:48,040
Speaker 3: And when and when RFK came on board with Trump

723
00:40:48,600 --> 00:40:52,600
Speaker 3: at that rally last August and he's that's when Trump

724
00:40:52,640 --> 00:40:54,520
Speaker 3: got back on the JFK bandragon. He said, and we're

725
00:40:54,520 --> 00:40:56,480
Speaker 3: going to release all the JFK fouse and there's this

726
00:40:56,719 --> 00:40:59,080
Speaker 3: roar of the crowd. I mean, it was a great

727
00:40:59,080 --> 00:41:01,840
Speaker 3: applause line for Trump, and I think that's when he

728
00:41:02,160 --> 00:41:04,520
Speaker 3: latched back onto it. It's like, oh, this is cool,

729
00:41:04,520 --> 00:41:06,799
Speaker 3: and he goes on Joe Rogan and says, I'm gonna

730
00:41:06,800 --> 00:41:10,520
Speaker 3: you know, he incorporated that into his message, and I

731
00:41:10,560 --> 00:41:13,840
Speaker 3: think is trying to you know, regain face with his followers,

732
00:41:14,400 --> 00:41:17,080
Speaker 3: you know. So that so he comes off as and

733
00:41:17,160 --> 00:41:22,080
Speaker 3: he writes this very expansive, uh you know, welcome Executive

734
00:41:22,200 --> 00:41:26,359
Speaker 3: Order one four one seven six, calling for a plan

735
00:41:26,480 --> 00:41:30,400
Speaker 3: to release the JFK, RFK and MLK plans. So we

736
00:41:30,440 --> 00:41:33,480
Speaker 3: saw yesterday Tulca Gabbard is acting on the RFK and

737
00:41:33,600 --> 00:41:33,799
Speaker 3: m l.

738
00:41:33,920 --> 00:41:36,680
Speaker 1: We're taping just a timestamp this you said, yeah, I'm fine,

739
00:41:36,680 --> 00:41:38,839
Speaker 1: We're taping on Friday, April eleventh, so in this case

740
00:41:39,040 --> 00:41:40,440
Speaker 1: on April tenth, anyway.

741
00:41:40,160 --> 00:41:44,880
Speaker 3: Going yeah, yeah, And uh so that's the that's the

742
00:41:45,000 --> 00:41:47,080
Speaker 3: RFK and MLK part, which is now seems to be

743
00:41:47,160 --> 00:41:49,600
Speaker 3: moving for the first time. We haven't heard much about

744
00:41:49,680 --> 00:41:51,879
Speaker 3: that since Trump's order. We've heard a lot more about

745
00:41:51,960 --> 00:41:56,359
Speaker 3: JFK because the order. The National Archives released a lot

746
00:41:56,360 --> 00:42:00,080
Speaker 3: of stuff on March eighteenth, you know, a little two.

747
00:42:00,080 --> 00:42:02,320
Speaker 1: By the way, some of this is the same memo,

748
00:42:02,520 --> 00:42:06,239
Speaker 1: same documents, just with less black blacked out stuff. Right.

749
00:42:06,719 --> 00:42:10,799
Speaker 3: Well, the good thing is that almost all of the

750
00:42:10,840 --> 00:42:15,080
Speaker 3: redactions have come off. There are still some redactions, but

751
00:42:15,160 --> 00:42:19,920
Speaker 3: the problem there may be that the original copy is redacted.

752
00:42:21,280 --> 00:42:24,080
Speaker 3: I mean it's like the original copy in the government.

753
00:42:23,840 --> 00:42:25,880
Speaker 1: Because they don't know how to unredact it is what

754
00:42:25,920 --> 00:42:28,399
Speaker 1: you Yes, it's marked out with black magic mark.

755
00:42:28,440 --> 00:42:31,040
Speaker 3: I mean maybe you could do some chemical analysis. But

756
00:42:31,800 --> 00:42:34,680
Speaker 3: the more recent redactions are done with you know, basically

757
00:42:34,719 --> 00:42:37,399
Speaker 3: with white tape, and so it's easy. You just take

758
00:42:37,440 --> 00:42:40,680
Speaker 3: the tape off and there's the So some documents can't

759
00:42:40,680 --> 00:42:43,400
Speaker 3: be redacted, but most of them have, and so we

760
00:42:43,480 --> 00:42:47,200
Speaker 3: see these documents in their entirety for the full first time.

761
00:42:47,600 --> 00:42:52,160
Speaker 3: And like with the Slessinger memo and the Angleton Senate testimony,

762
00:42:52,840 --> 00:42:56,640
Speaker 3: these last details are important. And if you think about it,

763
00:42:56,640 --> 00:42:59,160
Speaker 3: it stands to reason, right, I mean, if you want

764
00:42:59,160 --> 00:43:02,600
Speaker 3: to hide something and you're being pressured to release things,

765
00:43:03,200 --> 00:43:05,480
Speaker 3: well you release the things that are least damaging or

766
00:43:05,600 --> 00:43:08,520
Speaker 3: least important to you first, and the things you release

767
00:43:08,640 --> 00:43:10,600
Speaker 3: last are the things that are most important to you.

768
00:43:10,640 --> 00:43:13,959
Speaker 3: So what we're seeing now is what these agencies thought

769
00:43:14,160 --> 00:43:19,080
Speaker 3: was the very most important thing. Now sometimes it's ridiculously trivial,

770
00:43:19,160 --> 00:43:22,560
Speaker 3: like the CIA had a station in Morocco, you know,

771
00:43:22,680 --> 00:43:24,720
Speaker 3: and like they'll black that out even though.

772
00:43:24,600 --> 00:43:26,839
Speaker 1: Every they just never they never wanted to admit they

773
00:43:26,840 --> 00:43:28,560
Speaker 1: had one. Is that right? For whatever reason?

774
00:43:28,640 --> 00:43:31,120
Speaker 3: Their their argument is, well, somebody else said it, but

775
00:43:31,160 --> 00:43:35,200
Speaker 3: we've never acknowledged it, you know. So that's that's the

776
00:43:35,239 --> 00:43:39,239
Speaker 3: game they play. So this body of records is, you know,

777
00:43:39,280 --> 00:43:44,280
Speaker 3: it's big, about seventy seven thousand pages. So those several

778
00:43:44,320 --> 00:43:48,680
Speaker 3: thousand pages of those several thousand documents that still had

779
00:43:48,719 --> 00:43:53,640
Speaker 3: redactions that they composed a body of records running to

780
00:43:53,800 --> 00:43:57,000
Speaker 3: close to eighty thousand pages. And so that's what we're

781
00:43:57,000 --> 00:43:59,800
Speaker 3: going through now, and there's.

782
00:43:59,560 --> 00:44:01,719
Speaker 1: A lot still going through it correct right at the Yeah,

783
00:44:01,719 --> 00:44:02,080
Speaker 1: I mean.

784
00:44:01,920 --> 00:44:03,800
Speaker 3: Somebody asked, they said, Jeff, how many of the seventy

785
00:44:03,840 --> 00:44:05,480
Speaker 3: seven thousand pages they've been through? And I was like

786
00:44:05,840 --> 00:44:08,759
Speaker 3: one half of one percent, you know. Yeah, I mean

787
00:44:08,880 --> 00:44:13,160
Speaker 3: I don't. I don't go through and read everything, you know,

788
00:44:13,600 --> 00:44:19,239
Speaker 3: each document individually. I do targeted searches for documents and

789
00:44:19,280 --> 00:44:22,080
Speaker 3: try and focus my searching that way. But there's a

790
00:44:22,080 --> 00:44:23,480
Speaker 3: lot of work to be done. There's a lot of

791
00:44:23,520 --> 00:44:28,040
Speaker 3: work to be done, But there are cool stories. I'm

792
00:44:28,040 --> 00:44:31,480
Speaker 3: going to have a story soon about a story that

793
00:44:31,560 --> 00:44:36,120
Speaker 3: comes from those. In February, the FBI announced that, in

794
00:44:36,160 --> 00:44:39,320
Speaker 3: response to Trump's order, they had found twenty four hundred

795
00:44:39,360 --> 00:44:44,080
Speaker 3: more documents of assassination related material, which they turned over

796
00:44:44,080 --> 00:44:47,160
Speaker 3: to the National Archives. So I went to see that material,

797
00:44:47,239 --> 00:44:49,480
Speaker 3: and I have a bunch of us went to see it,

798
00:44:49,520 --> 00:44:52,640
Speaker 3: and we have a story about a very interesting story

799
00:44:52,680 --> 00:44:56,480
Speaker 3: that's in there that is has been previously redacted.

800
00:44:57,160 --> 00:45:01,319
Speaker 1: So you want to drop a little This has to

801
00:45:01,360 --> 00:45:02,040
Speaker 1: do with.

802
00:45:03,480 --> 00:45:08,799
Speaker 3: After the assassination, Jader Hoover sanctioned seventeen FBI agents for

803
00:45:08,840 --> 00:45:12,000
Speaker 3: their handling of Oswald. And the thing that he was

804
00:45:12,080 --> 00:45:16,080
Speaker 3: most worried about was this very anomalous fact that six

805
00:45:16,120 --> 00:45:21,879
Speaker 3: weeks before the assassination, FBI senior FBI agents took Oswald's

806
00:45:22,000 --> 00:45:26,239
Speaker 3: name off of basically a watch list. It's called the

807
00:45:26,320 --> 00:45:30,000
Speaker 3: Security Index, And what it is is it's a notice

808
00:45:30,040 --> 00:45:33,960
Speaker 3: to all FBI offices everywhere. If you get any information

809
00:45:34,560 --> 00:45:39,120
Speaker 3: or any inquiry that's the standard about this person, right,

810
00:45:39,200 --> 00:45:43,440
Speaker 3: please let headquarters know. So Oswald had been a defector

811
00:45:43,440 --> 00:45:47,080
Speaker 3: in the Soviet Union, returned, he went right onto the index.

812
00:45:47,480 --> 00:45:48,640
Speaker 3: He's a person of interest.

813
00:45:49,200 --> 00:45:52,360
Speaker 1: Of course, he was a Soviet citizen. And then defected

814
00:45:52,400 --> 00:45:55,840
Speaker 1: and then came back and made of course he's a

815
00:45:55,840 --> 00:45:59,120
Speaker 1: person of interest, right, and he has a Russian wife.

816
00:45:59,160 --> 00:46:02,400
Speaker 3: So an FBIA interviews him twice that summer in the

817
00:46:02,440 --> 00:46:04,919
Speaker 3: summer of sixty two, and takes him off the list, says,

818
00:46:04,960 --> 00:46:07,480
Speaker 3: this guy's not a security thread anymore. That was his judgment.

819
00:46:07,840 --> 00:46:11,120
Speaker 3: A year later, Oswald's arrested and they put him back

820
00:46:11,160 --> 00:46:13,520
Speaker 3: on the list, because that's why you have the list

821
00:46:13,800 --> 00:46:18,360
Speaker 3: to find out if that's August in the nineteen sixty three.

822
00:46:18,680 --> 00:46:22,400
Speaker 3: In October of nineteen sixty three, these same senior FBI

823
00:46:22,480 --> 00:46:26,640
Speaker 3: agents take him off the list and they say, we're

824
00:46:26,640 --> 00:46:28,839
Speaker 3: not going to pay close attention to this guy if

825
00:46:28,840 --> 00:46:32,399
Speaker 3: he gets arrested. We don't care. You know, how did

826
00:46:32,400 --> 00:46:36,160
Speaker 3: that happen? Because I mean, if Oswald killed the president,

827
00:46:36,200 --> 00:46:40,640
Speaker 3: which I tend to doubt that, right, there is negligence.

828
00:46:40,760 --> 00:46:44,400
Speaker 3: And in the memos that we found the FBI, Kartha Deloche,

829
00:46:44,440 --> 00:46:47,000
Speaker 3: one of the top guys that the FBI says, if

830
00:46:47,040 --> 00:46:49,719
Speaker 3: we put this out to the Warrant Commission, they it

831
00:46:49,760 --> 00:46:52,799
Speaker 3: will be taken as an admission of negligence. So to me,

832
00:46:53,120 --> 00:46:54,920
Speaker 3: this is evidence of negative CIA.

833
00:46:55,320 --> 00:46:58,480
Speaker 1: This was a cio ya moment for the FBI to

834
00:46:58,560 --> 00:47:00,600
Speaker 1: use some jargon, right right.

835
00:47:01,120 --> 00:47:04,160
Speaker 3: The thing that the thing that is, when you take

836
00:47:04,200 --> 00:47:08,640
Speaker 3: the redactions off what you see. The FBI only made

837
00:47:08,640 --> 00:47:13,400
Speaker 3: that decision after consulting with the CIA, So it was

838
00:47:13,440 --> 00:47:15,600
Speaker 3: a joint decision. It wasn't just an FBI.

839
00:47:15,760 --> 00:47:17,680
Speaker 1: And let's go back again. I want to go back

840
00:47:17,719 --> 00:47:20,239
Speaker 1: into time because people need to understand this. The c,

841
00:47:20,320 --> 00:47:23,440
Speaker 1: I A and the FBI weren't exactly pals. There's a

842
00:47:23,480 --> 00:47:27,520
Speaker 1: bit of a there's distrust between those two agencies.

843
00:47:27,920 --> 00:47:30,319
Speaker 3: Correct, and and and and and that could be a

844
00:47:30,320 --> 00:47:32,080
Speaker 3: factor in all of this.

845
00:47:33,320 --> 00:47:35,440
Speaker 1: Like the CIA goes, we don't want you and we

846
00:47:35,440 --> 00:47:38,680
Speaker 1: don't want you sniffing around our guy, because I look,

847
00:47:39,040 --> 00:47:41,759
Speaker 1: whatever Oswald is, it's pretty clear to me he's a

848
00:47:41,800 --> 00:47:44,400
Speaker 1: CIA as set. The question is is he a rogue

849
00:47:44,400 --> 00:47:46,840
Speaker 1: CIA asset or not? And I and I you know,

850
00:47:47,239 --> 00:47:49,520
Speaker 1: but so the question if you told me the c

851
00:47:49,960 --> 00:47:52,080
Speaker 1: you didn't want the FBI sniffing around their guy, that

852
00:47:52,280 --> 00:47:55,279
Speaker 1: makes sense, right, yeah, and and and and so you

853
00:47:55,360 --> 00:47:59,759
Speaker 1: know he's acting in a way that is you know,

854
00:48:00,080 --> 00:48:02,680
Speaker 1: it's the definition of a security threat where you would

855
00:48:02,719 --> 00:48:06,399
Speaker 1: do something right, you go talk to him, he talks

856
00:48:06,480 --> 00:48:07,040
Speaker 1: to a Russian.

857
00:48:07,160 --> 00:48:09,080
Speaker 3: You know, why are you down there in Mexico City

858
00:48:09,160 --> 00:48:11,800
Speaker 3: talking to a Russian like that kind of activity?

859
00:48:12,239 --> 00:48:12,400
Speaker 1: You know.

860
00:48:13,600 --> 00:48:17,839
Speaker 3: So Oswald has he's a defector with a Russian wife.

861
00:48:19,360 --> 00:48:22,400
Speaker 3: He tries to infiltrate a CIA funded group in New Orleans.

862
00:48:23,040 --> 00:48:26,480
Speaker 3: He's arrested doing that. He's an advocate for the Fair

863
00:48:26,520 --> 00:48:29,160
Speaker 3: Play for Cuba Committee, a leftist group that has been

864
00:48:29,200 --> 00:48:33,680
Speaker 3: officially deemed subversive by the US government. He goes to Mexico,

865
00:48:33,719 --> 00:48:36,160
Speaker 3: he's trying to travel to Cuba. That's a violation of

866
00:48:36,200 --> 00:48:38,800
Speaker 3: the law. And then he meets with goes to Soviet embassy,

867
00:48:38,800 --> 00:48:42,920
Speaker 3: and he's in contact with a suspected, if not certain Kgbing.

868
00:48:43,400 --> 00:48:47,719
Speaker 3: So any one of those five things could get an

869
00:48:47,760 --> 00:48:51,560
Speaker 3: American into deep, deep trouble in nineteen sixty three, and

870
00:48:51,680 --> 00:48:54,800
Speaker 3: he did five and sixty days. And the response was,

871
00:48:55,360 --> 00:48:57,279
Speaker 3: let's turn down the lights on him and look at

872
00:48:57,360 --> 00:48:58,440
Speaker 3: him a little less closely.

873
00:48:58,840 --> 00:49:00,680
Speaker 1: All right, this is where I want to jeck something

874
00:49:00,719 --> 00:49:03,320
Speaker 1: you and I worked on for a bit and and

875
00:49:03,800 --> 00:49:07,600
Speaker 1: and look, I just you know, my my bosses at

876
00:49:07,680 --> 00:49:11,160
Speaker 1: NBC just decided it was it was not worth my time,

877
00:49:11,320 --> 00:49:14,279
Speaker 1: our time to go down this hole. They didn't I

878
00:49:14,400 --> 00:49:16,279
Speaker 1: really believe that. I know that was the motivation for

879
00:49:16,360 --> 00:49:19,160
Speaker 1: what it's worth. But what we were focused on, and

880
00:49:19,239 --> 00:49:21,840
Speaker 1: what you came to me with was the fact that

881
00:49:22,560 --> 00:49:25,640
Speaker 1: there were people that attended the Lee Harvey Oswald arraignment

882
00:49:26,480 --> 00:49:29,880
Speaker 1: in New Orleans after he's arrested for handing out the flyers,

883
00:49:30,880 --> 00:49:34,600
Speaker 1: and an NBC affiliate happened to cover this, and so

884
00:49:34,760 --> 00:49:37,120
Speaker 1: we were You came to me trying to like, could

885
00:49:37,160 --> 00:49:39,600
Speaker 1: what could we uncover? And and we worked on this

886
00:49:39,760 --> 00:49:41,719
Speaker 1: for a for a while. But take me back to

887
00:49:41,800 --> 00:49:45,840
Speaker 1: that moment, because you had identified there was a photo

888
00:49:45,960 --> 00:49:47,680
Speaker 1: I think in the newspaper or you were able to

889
00:49:47,719 --> 00:49:49,920
Speaker 1: find a the clip. It lives on YouTube, I think

890
00:49:50,000 --> 00:49:52,600
Speaker 1: right of the of the of the New Orleans station. Correct.

891
00:49:53,040 --> 00:49:55,440
Speaker 3: Yeah. So so just to give people the background, so

892
00:49:55,600 --> 00:50:00,200
Speaker 3: Oswald goes public. He's pamphleteeria this leftist group, the fair

893
00:50:00,200 --> 00:50:02,800
Speaker 3: Play for Cuba Committee, which was a very popular campus

894
00:50:02,840 --> 00:50:06,279
Speaker 3: group to support the Cuban revolution in a pope US

895
00:50:06,440 --> 00:50:12,200
Speaker 3: policy towards Cuba. And this is very unusual in a

896
00:50:12,280 --> 00:50:15,200
Speaker 3: conservative southern city like you know. The fair Play for

897
00:50:15,280 --> 00:50:19,319
Speaker 3: Cuba had rallies in New York and San Franciscos, right

898
00:50:21,160 --> 00:50:24,080
Speaker 3: and In fact, when Oswald wrote to the Fair Play

899
00:50:24,120 --> 00:50:25,839
Speaker 3: for Cuba Committee and said I'm going to set something

900
00:50:25,880 --> 00:50:28,360
Speaker 3: up here, they said, you know, don't go public because

901
00:50:28,400 --> 00:50:32,240
Speaker 3: it's going to provoke a violent reaction. Well, Oswald goes public,

902
00:50:32,800 --> 00:50:37,240
Speaker 3: and sure enough, it provokes a violent reaction. These Cuban exiles,

903
00:50:37,320 --> 00:50:39,759
Speaker 3: members of the Cuban Student Directorate, confront him on the

904
00:50:39,800 --> 00:50:42,279
Speaker 3: street and they throw his pamphlets, and they're kind of

905
00:50:42,520 --> 00:50:46,000
Speaker 3: face to face, you know, shouting each other. Crowd gathers,

906
00:50:46,040 --> 00:50:48,759
Speaker 3: there's actually a film of it, and a couple of

907
00:50:48,760 --> 00:50:50,800
Speaker 3: policemen come along, break it up and arrest them, and

908
00:50:50,920 --> 00:50:53,880
Speaker 3: Oswald's arrested. In the cube, four Cubans are arrested. So

909
00:50:54,000 --> 00:50:57,120
Speaker 3: the following Monday, they're in New Orleans Municipal Court and

910
00:50:57,280 --> 00:51:02,520
Speaker 3: Oswald comes in. This is an interesting detail. The court

911
00:51:02,640 --> 00:51:07,279
Speaker 3: is still legally segregated in New Orleans in nineteen sixty three.

912
00:51:07,400 --> 00:51:09,479
Speaker 3: There's a colored section on one side and a white

913
00:51:09,560 --> 00:51:12,359
Speaker 3: section on the other. Oswald comes in and he goes

914
00:51:12,440 --> 00:51:15,560
Speaker 3: and he sits in the colored section out of sympathy.

915
00:51:15,880 --> 00:51:19,720
Speaker 3: Oswald was very especially for a Southern man who didn't

916
00:51:19,760 --> 00:51:23,680
Speaker 3: go to college. Oswald was instinctively pro civil rights he'd

917
00:51:23,719 --> 00:51:28,160
Speaker 3: grown up around poor, especially poor Latino kids, so there

918
00:51:28,239 --> 00:51:32,680
Speaker 3: was some identification there. In contemporary terms, you'd say he

919
00:51:32,760 --> 00:51:37,120
Speaker 3: was anti racist. So on the other side, the Cubans

920
00:51:37,160 --> 00:51:40,120
Speaker 3: come in and this is a political event for them,

921
00:51:40,320 --> 00:51:43,480
Speaker 3: you know, this is the struggle against Castro brought to

922
00:51:43,520 --> 00:51:46,960
Speaker 3: New Orleans, and so they talked to reporters and say,

923
00:51:47,280 --> 00:51:49,160
Speaker 3: you know, why are you covering this guy and why

924
00:51:49,160 --> 00:51:52,719
Speaker 3: don't you cover a criticize Castro and all that. What

925
00:51:52,880 --> 00:51:55,600
Speaker 3: we worked on is, if we have that film footage,

926
00:51:56,000 --> 00:51:58,960
Speaker 3: I believe that four people who were in that courtroom

927
00:52:00,080 --> 00:52:04,640
Speaker 3: confronting Oswald had CIA connections. In fact, I'm sure of it.

928
00:52:05,239 --> 00:52:07,960
Speaker 1: You identified three of the four, great three of.

929
00:52:08,000 --> 00:52:10,360
Speaker 3: The four, and then the fourth one. I did a

930
00:52:10,520 --> 00:52:13,960
Speaker 3: very I asked one of the leading facial recognition people

931
00:52:14,200 --> 00:52:17,319
Speaker 3: and we assembled a bunch of photographs, and the fourth one,

932
00:52:17,320 --> 00:52:20,120
Speaker 3: who I was pretty sure about, he said it was

933
00:52:20,200 --> 00:52:23,359
Speaker 3: only there wasn't a great correlation. It was it might

934
00:52:23,440 --> 00:52:26,040
Speaker 3: have been like sixty percent or something like that. So

935
00:52:26,160 --> 00:52:30,759
Speaker 3: I was like, you know, yeah, you probably it was tough, right, Yeah, yeah,

936
00:52:30,800 --> 00:52:33,120
Speaker 3: it wasn't confirmation, and so I kind of had to

937
00:52:33,160 --> 00:52:35,480
Speaker 3: take that guy off the table. It feels to me

938
00:52:35,640 --> 00:52:37,680
Speaker 3: like it's him. But you know, you have to have

939
00:52:37,760 --> 00:52:40,879
Speaker 3: a methodology, and that's what I showed. But here, Chuck,

940
00:52:41,239 --> 00:52:43,120
Speaker 3: it's interesting that you brought that up, because this is

941
00:52:43,160 --> 00:52:45,480
Speaker 3: another story that I'm wound doing. So that was like

942
00:52:45,719 --> 00:52:47,880
Speaker 3: the CIA had a presence in New Orleans in the

943
00:52:47,880 --> 00:52:51,160
Speaker 3: summer of sixty three, and somehow that was you know,

944
00:52:51,680 --> 00:52:54,640
Speaker 3: Oswald was known to that presence. That that's what that

945
00:52:54,719 --> 00:52:57,400
Speaker 3: story showed. What we learned in the latest release was

946
00:52:57,480 --> 00:53:01,680
Speaker 3: we got the the fuller file of these of two

947
00:53:01,760 --> 00:53:03,520
Speaker 3: of the guys who were in the courtroom that day,

948
00:53:04,880 --> 00:53:08,680
Speaker 3: and what the declassified version showed was they had been

949
00:53:08,880 --> 00:53:12,160
Speaker 3: tasked by the CIA in the summer of sixty three

950
00:53:12,760 --> 00:53:18,040
Speaker 3: to spy on pro Castro forces in New Orleans using

951
00:53:18,239 --> 00:53:22,960
Speaker 3: duplicitous methods like go join and pretend you're a supporter. Now,

952
00:53:23,320 --> 00:53:26,960
Speaker 3: they weren't aimed at Oswald, but that was a standard

953
00:53:27,080 --> 00:53:30,640
Speaker 3: CIA practice in New Orleans at the time Oswald was there.

954
00:53:30,840 --> 00:53:34,800
Speaker 3: It was not FBI surveillance, it was IA surveillance, and

955
00:53:34,880 --> 00:53:38,640
Speaker 3: it was specifically targeting the same type of pro Castro

956
00:53:39,000 --> 00:53:40,840
Speaker 3: person that Oswald was.

957
00:53:41,719 --> 00:53:45,800
Speaker 1: And this is where like the Cuban exile community the

958
00:53:45,880 --> 00:53:50,080
Speaker 1: Bay of Pigs. Right, it all weirdly there was overlap, yes,

959
00:53:50,160 --> 00:53:51,320
Speaker 1: with some of these figures.

960
00:53:51,400 --> 00:53:56,080
Speaker 3: Correct, Yeah, I mean the you have this people displaced

961
00:53:56,080 --> 00:53:59,240
Speaker 3: by Castro's revolution. One of the guys in the courtroom

962
00:53:59,520 --> 00:54:02,600
Speaker 3: confronted Oswald was a man named Frank Bartees. He had

963
00:54:02,680 --> 00:54:07,080
Speaker 3: owned the biggest railroad in Cuba, and he was basically,

964
00:54:07,320 --> 00:54:10,360
Speaker 3: you know, he lost everything. He would just returned to

965
00:54:10,440 --> 00:54:15,719
Speaker 3: being a middle class guy. So there was incredible bitterness,

966
00:54:15,760 --> 00:54:19,400
Speaker 3: and there was incredible bitterness towards Kennedy because he hadn't overthrew.

967
00:54:19,080 --> 00:54:21,160
Speaker 1: Him follow through, right, He didn't follow through in the

968
00:54:21,200 --> 00:54:21,799
Speaker 1: Bay Pigs and.

969
00:54:21,880 --> 00:54:24,600
Speaker 3: So by sixty three, so he didn't follow through at

970
00:54:24,640 --> 00:54:25,120
Speaker 3: the Bay of Pigs.

971
00:54:25,160 --> 00:54:26,600
Speaker 1: He did. By the way, let me interject here, I

972
00:54:26,600 --> 00:54:29,320
Speaker 1: grew up in Miami. This is why the Cuban community

973
00:54:29,360 --> 00:54:32,760
Speaker 1: is Republican. This is the reason. This is the roots.

974
00:54:32,840 --> 00:54:35,320
Speaker 1: If you're wondering how it all began, the roots of

975
00:54:35,360 --> 00:54:37,560
Speaker 1: it or Bay of Pigs, anyway, go ahead, Jeff right,

976
00:54:38,120 --> 00:54:38,640
Speaker 1: The roots of.

977
00:54:38,640 --> 00:54:42,200
Speaker 3: It are anti JFK to put not to find a

978
00:54:42,280 --> 00:54:45,680
Speaker 3: point on it. The anti democrat is what is what

979
00:54:45,840 --> 00:54:50,160
Speaker 3: the Cuban exiles wanted. Kennedy nobody will.

980
00:54:50,560 --> 00:54:52,920
Speaker 1: They just blamed the Democrat because you know, Bay of

981
00:54:52,960 --> 00:54:55,440
Speaker 1: Pigs was an Eisenhower approved operation.

982
00:54:55,960 --> 00:55:05,160
Speaker 3: Yeah, so so the Bay of Pigs. That that that

983
00:55:06,040 --> 00:55:12,600
Speaker 3: sense of bitterness, resentment, recrimination very powerful in the especially

984
00:55:12,680 --> 00:55:17,400
Speaker 3: in Miami. There's a State Department document from October of

985
00:55:17,480 --> 00:55:22,880
Speaker 3: sixty three really itemizing it in very specific terms of

986
00:55:24,040 --> 00:55:26,759
Speaker 3: how bad of how bad it was. So you know,

987
00:55:27,239 --> 00:55:29,840
Speaker 3: that's a that's has to be a factor when you

988
00:55:30,200 --> 00:55:33,279
Speaker 3: when you think about the assassination. And also, you know,

989
00:55:33,360 --> 00:55:35,720
Speaker 3: I spent some time in New Orleans over over Christmas

990
00:55:35,760 --> 00:55:40,040
Speaker 3: and with a local historian, and you know a lot

991
00:55:40,120 --> 00:55:42,800
Speaker 3: of times we focus in the Kennedy assassination story on

992
00:55:42,840 --> 00:55:46,600
Speaker 3: the organized prime angle, you know, the bomb bosses dispossessed,

993
00:55:46,640 --> 00:55:50,000
Speaker 3: and but this friend of mine pointed out that the

994
00:55:50,200 --> 00:55:55,320
Speaker 3: normal legal commercial dealings between the United States and Cuba

995
00:55:56,120 --> 00:55:59,560
Speaker 3: were much larger than that illicit black market stuff, the

996
00:56:00,120 --> 00:56:04,759
Speaker 3: sinos and the brothels, you know, gambling. The legitimate you know,

997
00:56:05,120 --> 00:56:09,440
Speaker 3: business was far far larger. And those business interests of

998
00:56:09,760 --> 00:56:12,560
Speaker 3: which there were a lot in New Orleans because there

999
00:56:12,600 --> 00:56:14,120
Speaker 3: was a lot of trade. You know, cub was a

1000
00:56:14,160 --> 00:56:18,480
Speaker 3: short boat ride away, right, you know, they lost it's not.

1001
00:56:18,680 --> 00:56:21,320
Speaker 3: They too were dispossessed by this revolution, and so that

1002
00:56:21,520 --> 00:56:26,640
Speaker 3: bakes into the culture of New Orleans this you know,

1003
00:56:27,200 --> 00:56:30,920
Speaker 3: hitman to overthrowing Castro. And so when you see the

1004
00:56:31,000 --> 00:56:36,920
Speaker 3: conspiratorial milieu, especially of New Orleans, you know, and I

1005
00:56:37,040 --> 00:56:39,279
Speaker 3: think that, you know, this was something that was kind

1006
00:56:39,320 --> 00:56:43,320
Speaker 3: of the There was a lot of this in JFK.

1007
00:56:43,719 --> 00:56:44,680
Speaker 3: And Stone kind of.

1008
00:56:44,880 --> 00:56:47,280
Speaker 1: Yes, there was. He sort of he used that almost

1009
00:56:47,400 --> 00:56:49,560
Speaker 1: more as a setting and because New Orleans is just

1010
00:56:49,640 --> 00:56:51,080
Speaker 1: a great city to set things into.

1011
00:56:51,520 --> 00:56:51,680
Speaker 3: Yeah.

1012
00:56:51,840 --> 00:56:55,120
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's cinematic, right, right, I.

1013
00:56:55,200 --> 00:57:00,160
Speaker 3: Mean that you know, the scenario of the movie. You

1014
00:57:00,239 --> 00:57:03,319
Speaker 3: know that even Fairy plotted the ambush. I mean, that's

1015
00:57:03,760 --> 00:57:07,799
Speaker 3: you know, that's fictionalized. It's simplified to you know, make

1016
00:57:07,880 --> 00:57:10,440
Speaker 3: it work as a as a movie. And you know

1017
00:57:11,800 --> 00:57:13,840
Speaker 3: it's a movie, it's not a documentary, you know.

1018
00:57:14,160 --> 00:57:14,520
Speaker 2: So I.

1019
00:57:17,160 --> 00:57:23,080
Speaker 3: So that's where you know, to come back to your

1020
00:57:23,240 --> 00:57:28,200
Speaker 3: original point, you know, we face this choice Ockham's Raiser, right,

1021
00:57:29,080 --> 00:57:32,560
Speaker 3: texilation is usually the best. And then on the other side,

1022
00:57:32,760 --> 00:57:35,240
Speaker 3: you know, when people say, well OCAM's razor, I say, well,

1023
00:57:35,720 --> 00:57:41,320
Speaker 3: you know, there's this doctrine called covert action. What is

1024
00:57:41,440 --> 00:57:45,320
Speaker 3: covert action? One CIA guy. His name was John Whitten.

1025
00:57:45,440 --> 00:57:47,760
Speaker 3: He was the chief of the Mexico Desk in nineteen

1026
00:57:47,800 --> 00:57:52,880
Speaker 3: sixty three, and he said this in congressional testimony. They

1027
00:57:52,920 --> 00:57:56,920
Speaker 3: asked him, what is COVID action? He said, important illegal

1028
00:57:57,160 --> 00:58:04,120
Speaker 3: manipulations of society done secretly. Some people say, well, Jeff,

1029
00:58:04,120 --> 00:58:06,280
Speaker 3: you know, the tragedy of history. You just have to

1030
00:58:06,360 --> 00:58:09,840
Speaker 3: accept a little killed a big man. And I said, well,

1031
00:58:09,840 --> 00:58:13,000
Speaker 3: on the other side, you know, there's people who believe

1032
00:58:13,240 --> 00:58:17,760
Speaker 3: in covert action, and you know, what you see as

1033
00:58:17,840 --> 00:58:20,840
Speaker 3: a tragedy, you know, they might see as a cover storm,

1034
00:58:21,360 --> 00:58:27,560
Speaker 3: because that's what they do, important manipulations of society done secret.

1035
00:58:27,280 --> 00:58:30,040
Speaker 1: Mas me a talk about another treasure trove of information

1036
00:58:30,360 --> 00:58:34,480
Speaker 1: that we you know, the one of my favorite dramatized

1037
00:58:34,600 --> 00:58:38,160
Speaker 1: you know, to me, it's not quite a documentary, it's historical.

1038
00:58:39,360 --> 00:58:42,480
Speaker 1: I think dramatic history, I guess you'd call it, which

1039
00:58:42,520 --> 00:58:47,600
Speaker 1: is Chernobyl, right, And Chernobyl was able to be done

1040
00:58:48,320 --> 00:58:51,560
Speaker 1: because there was a treasure trove of information finally released

1041
00:58:51,560 --> 00:58:55,640
Speaker 1: by the Ukrainian government Right Democracy movement, and so there

1042
00:58:55,720 --> 00:58:58,760
Speaker 1: was a period of time right after the fall of

1043
00:58:58,960 --> 00:59:02,400
Speaker 1: the Soviet Union where there was some information that was

1044
00:59:02,440 --> 00:59:07,680
Speaker 1: available what did the Russians in that period of transparence

1045
00:59:07,800 --> 00:59:11,720
Speaker 1: somewhat transparency in the basically from about ninety three to

1046
00:59:12,280 --> 00:59:15,080
Speaker 1: ninety nine, right before Putin gets in, maybe maybe a

1047
00:59:15,160 --> 00:59:19,840
Speaker 1: year or two after before Putin truly clamped down. Was

1048
00:59:19,960 --> 00:59:24,120
Speaker 1: much ever released or gleaned from from old Soviet files

1049
00:59:24,840 --> 00:59:27,160
Speaker 1: When it comes to sort of Oswalt's presence in the

1050
00:59:27,200 --> 00:59:27,880
Speaker 1: Soviet Union.

1051
00:59:28,760 --> 00:59:31,920
Speaker 3: Yeah, So it came out a couple of ways. One

1052
00:59:32,320 --> 00:59:37,360
Speaker 3: was Norman Mailer and Lawrence Schiller, his researcher, went over

1053
00:59:37,600 --> 00:59:42,960
Speaker 3: very quickly and they they bought stuff from KGB people,

1054
00:59:43,400 --> 00:59:49,280
Speaker 3: and that became the basis of Mailer's book, Oswalt's Tale.

1055
00:59:50,960 --> 00:59:55,320
Speaker 3: And then the JFK Review Board was going there. And

1056
00:59:55,480 --> 00:59:57,840
Speaker 3: one of the mandates of the JFK Records Act was

1057
00:59:59,000 --> 01:00:02,680
Speaker 3: that the Assassinated Records Review Board, this independent civilian panel,

1058
01:00:03,240 --> 01:00:05,680
Speaker 3: should not only see records from the US government, but

1059
01:00:05,720 --> 01:00:10,520
Speaker 3: should seat them from foreign So he reached out to

1060
01:00:10,760 --> 01:00:14,360
Speaker 3: Russia and Judge John Tunheim was the chairman of the

1061
01:00:14,960 --> 01:00:17,960
Speaker 3: of the Review Board. He's from a federal judge in Minnesota,

1062
01:00:18,800 --> 01:00:23,480
Speaker 3: and he flew over. Yeltsin had given Clinton a bunch

1063
01:00:23,600 --> 01:00:27,400
Speaker 3: of papers which were not particularly important. But as a

1064
01:00:27,480 --> 01:00:30,160
Speaker 3: follow up, Tonheim went over there in reached an agreement,

1065
01:00:30,440 --> 01:00:33,520
Speaker 3: and he was shown a stack of files. He said,

1066
01:00:33,520 --> 01:00:37,240
Speaker 3: it was five feet tall, you know, of folders. And

1067
01:00:37,480 --> 01:00:40,760
Speaker 3: that was the surveillance of Oswald while he was in Minsk.

1068
01:00:41,800 --> 01:00:46,640
Speaker 1: And we have to assume an American marine decides to defect.

1069
01:00:47,120 --> 01:00:50,480
Speaker 1: I'm guessing the Russian intelligence agencies didn't trust that guy

1070
01:00:50,840 --> 01:00:55,680
Speaker 1: any more than our agencies would trust a Soviet defector

1071
01:00:55,680 --> 01:00:57,920
Speaker 1: who then comes back to the United States. Right, I

1072
01:00:57,960 --> 01:01:00,320
Speaker 1: would assume he was on a higher lene level of

1073
01:01:00,400 --> 01:01:04,520
Speaker 1: surveillance than mostly acts and and and and and and

1074
01:01:04,720 --> 01:01:05,040
Speaker 1: and and.

1075
01:01:05,480 --> 01:01:07,680
Speaker 3: Not in an open society, and you know, in a

1076
01:01:07,920 --> 01:01:11,680
Speaker 3: in a in a tightly police you know, I mean

1077
01:01:12,680 --> 01:01:15,760
Speaker 3: police state is probably a little strong, but you know,

1078
01:01:16,280 --> 01:01:18,880
Speaker 3: a very tightly controlled society. So yeah, he was definitely

1079
01:01:18,920 --> 01:01:23,240
Speaker 3: watch But the deal fell through, and and and they

1080
01:01:23,360 --> 01:01:26,800
Speaker 3: never delivered, they never delivered the documents, and so we

1081
01:01:27,040 --> 01:01:30,920
Speaker 3: we still think that they're that they exist. But given

1082
01:01:30,960 --> 01:01:34,520
Speaker 3: the state of US Russia relations, you know, I will

1083
01:01:34,560 --> 01:01:38,280
Speaker 3: say one thing about that. There's a man named Ernst

1084
01:01:38,360 --> 01:01:43,000
Speaker 3: Titovitz who was a medical student in Minsk and was

1085
01:01:43,200 --> 01:01:45,960
Speaker 3: interested in meeting Oswald. Because he wanted to practice as English.

1086
01:01:46,000 --> 01:01:49,080
Speaker 3: He was obsessed with learning languages, and so he became

1087
01:01:49,160 --> 01:01:52,680
Speaker 3: friends with Oswald. And Ernst has written a book, and

1088
01:01:52,760 --> 01:01:56,080
Speaker 3: when people talk about like a book to read about

1089
01:01:56,080 --> 01:02:00,720
Speaker 3: the Kennedy assassination, his book Oswald Russian Episode is really

1090
01:02:00,840 --> 01:02:03,840
Speaker 3: one of the most interesting because he was very good

1091
01:02:03,920 --> 01:02:06,920
Speaker 3: friends with Oswald. They talked politics, they argued, you know,

1092
01:02:07,040 --> 01:02:09,320
Speaker 3: they flirted with girls, They had parties, They hung out

1093
01:02:09,360 --> 01:02:11,680
Speaker 3: at this girl's apartment. You know, they were really in

1094
01:02:11,760 --> 01:02:14,200
Speaker 3: the same crowd. You know, twenty twenty one year old.

1095
01:02:14,920 --> 01:02:18,240
Speaker 1: Dude's hanging out, right, A young guy's hanging out. Yeah.

1096
01:02:19,360 --> 01:02:21,840
Speaker 3: So Titovitz said, you know, I could never talk about

1097
01:02:21,880 --> 01:02:23,880
Speaker 3: this as long as the Soviet Union existed. But when

1098
01:02:23,960 --> 01:02:26,800
Speaker 3: the Soviet Union fell apart, he immediately said, I'm going

1099
01:02:26,840 --> 01:02:28,760
Speaker 3: to tell the story of my friendship with Oswald. And

1100
01:02:28,840 --> 01:02:31,240
Speaker 3: so he wrote this book, Oswald Russian Episode, which you

1101
01:02:31,280 --> 01:02:35,040
Speaker 3: can get on Amazon and I highly recommend it. But

1102
01:02:35,120 --> 01:02:37,600
Speaker 3: he said something interesting was he didn't just write about

1103
01:02:37,640 --> 01:02:40,320
Speaker 3: his friendship with Oswald, but he went and tried to

1104
01:02:40,400 --> 01:02:42,920
Speaker 3: find these security types who had been watching him, and

1105
01:02:43,400 --> 01:02:44,840
Speaker 3: he talked to a few of them, and he said,

1106
01:02:44,880 --> 01:02:48,760
Speaker 3: what they told him was after watching Oswald for a while,

1107
01:02:48,840 --> 01:02:52,520
Speaker 3: they felt he was not a directed spy. You know,

1108
01:02:53,240 --> 01:02:57,360
Speaker 3: he was living in this apartment building in Min's Communist

1109
01:02:57,400 --> 01:03:00,840
Speaker 3: party headquarters, was let right down the block. When you know,

1110
01:03:01,320 --> 01:03:04,080
Speaker 3: he didn't seem to be seeking out intelligence when they

1111
01:03:04,160 --> 01:03:07,960
Speaker 3: watched him. So that's a subjective, you know, reaction. Sure,

1112
01:03:08,080 --> 01:03:11,760
Speaker 3: that was the impression that one friend of Oswald had,

1113
01:03:12,000 --> 01:03:13,680
Speaker 3: you know, with the benefit from hindsight.

1114
01:03:15,200 --> 01:03:17,480
Speaker 1: So let's go back to now. One of the more

1115
01:03:17,520 --> 01:03:20,680
Speaker 1: interesting things that on the week on April I think

1116
01:03:20,680 --> 01:03:22,840
Speaker 1: it was April tenth that the d n I had

1117
01:03:22,920 --> 01:03:26,960
Speaker 1: Telsea Gabbert implied in her new release of saying there's

1118
01:03:26,960 --> 01:03:30,040
Speaker 1: more files is this idea that more files were found,

1119
01:03:30,880 --> 01:03:36,240
Speaker 1: JFK files were found. What you know, do you have

1120
01:03:36,360 --> 01:03:39,520
Speaker 1: a sense of what that could be? Do you have

1121
01:03:39,680 --> 01:03:43,200
Speaker 1: a theory of what what was? You know, that stuff

1122
01:03:43,240 --> 01:03:45,200
Speaker 1: that had never been delivered to the archives.

1123
01:03:46,760 --> 01:03:52,120
Speaker 3: You know, it's it's intriguing. I don't know the bodies

1124
01:03:52,240 --> 01:03:55,960
Speaker 3: of records in MLK and RFK the way I do JF.

1125
01:03:56,480 --> 01:03:58,520
Speaker 1: Well, she was implying on JFK files that there was

1126
01:03:58,600 --> 01:03:59,040
Speaker 1: more on that.

1127
01:04:00,280 --> 01:04:04,440
Speaker 3: Uh, you know, I believe you know, I know that

1128
01:04:04,520 --> 01:04:07,040
Speaker 3: they have JFK files that have never been released, and

1129
01:04:07,760 --> 01:04:10,280
Speaker 3: you know what the what the FBI when the FBI

1130
01:04:10,360 --> 01:04:13,280
Speaker 3: found these records in February. I mean, that's the proper

1131
01:04:13,440 --> 01:04:16,880
Speaker 3: response of an agency, which is the condition in order

1132
01:04:16,920 --> 01:04:19,320
Speaker 3: they want all JFK files. Let's take another look, see

1133
01:04:19,360 --> 01:04:21,920
Speaker 3: what we got, put it out there. You know, the

1134
01:04:22,000 --> 01:04:24,920
Speaker 3: CIA hasn't done that. I mean, if Gabbett's going to

1135
01:04:24,960 --> 01:04:27,080
Speaker 3: get them to do that, to go back and just

1136
01:04:27,160 --> 01:04:30,400
Speaker 3: do a good faith surge, not saying you're hiding something,

1137
01:04:30,520 --> 01:04:33,920
Speaker 3: just make sure you get everything, make it public. So

1138
01:04:34,080 --> 01:04:36,439
Speaker 3: that could be, you know, very positive, and that there's

1139
01:04:36,480 --> 01:04:41,080
Speaker 3: somebody in the intelligence establishment saying this is a priority.

1140
01:04:41,160 --> 01:04:43,600
Speaker 3: There's a public interest here. You know, we're not doing

1141
01:04:43,640 --> 01:04:47,480
Speaker 3: business as usual around classification. You know, that's all very

1142
01:04:47,880 --> 01:04:51,720
Speaker 3: that's all very positive. So you know, remains to be seen.

1143
01:04:51,760 --> 01:04:56,560
Speaker 3: How they delivered on the JFK things. I had a

1144
01:04:56,640 --> 01:05:00,160
Speaker 3: report card of you know, things that were redacted and

1145
01:05:00,400 --> 01:05:03,320
Speaker 3: are now and we wanted to be released, and we

1146
01:05:03,480 --> 01:05:06,640
Speaker 3: pretty much have all of those. I just got a

1147
01:05:06,680 --> 01:05:09,520
Speaker 3: couple the other day, and I want to I'm going

1148
01:05:09,560 --> 01:05:12,320
Speaker 3: to go through the checklist and see and compare. I

1149
01:05:12,400 --> 01:05:17,000
Speaker 3: think we ultimately had like eighteen things. So that's you know,

1150
01:05:17,160 --> 01:05:20,240
Speaker 3: that's a big step forward, but that's you know, that's

1151
01:05:20,520 --> 01:05:23,800
Speaker 3: just the records that had already been acknowledged and given

1152
01:05:23,880 --> 01:05:26,960
Speaker 3: to the National Archives. There are these other things that

1153
01:05:27,120 --> 01:05:30,280
Speaker 3: were never turned over, and that's the next phase of

1154
01:05:30,360 --> 01:05:33,400
Speaker 3: this search, and I think that's what Gabbert's talking about.

1155
01:05:33,520 --> 01:05:39,920
Speaker 3: So we haven't seen the CIA produced JFK records that

1156
01:05:40,000 --> 01:05:43,280
Speaker 3: were not already at the National Archives. That would be

1157
01:05:43,320 --> 01:05:45,680
Speaker 3: an important milestone if they did do that, if they

1158
01:05:45,720 --> 01:05:48,280
Speaker 3: did what the FBI did, go search their records and

1159
01:05:48,400 --> 01:05:50,800
Speaker 3: make public assassination related material.

1160
01:05:51,800 --> 01:05:54,240
Speaker 1: So we just spent nearly an hour just on one threat,

1161
01:05:54,320 --> 01:05:57,960
Speaker 1: which is OZWA. Yeah, the others. The second most intriguing thread,

1162
01:05:58,280 --> 01:06:02,480
Speaker 1: obviously when it comes to the JFK assassination is Jack Ruby.

1163
01:06:04,960 --> 01:06:08,400
Speaker 1: And I've always noticed your work has always been primarily

1164
01:06:08,480 --> 01:06:11,360
Speaker 1: focused on Oswald and the CIA and the pre time.

1165
01:06:12,960 --> 01:06:16,000
Speaker 1: How much time have you spent on Ruby? How much

1166
01:06:16,120 --> 01:06:18,640
Speaker 1: is missing on him? What more would you love to

1167
01:06:18,760 --> 01:06:21,560
Speaker 1: know about him? That is that you think is in

1168
01:06:21,600 --> 01:06:23,920
Speaker 1: an archive, but you don't have, you know.

1169
01:06:24,360 --> 01:06:26,480
Speaker 3: That's the thing why I don't write about him, because

1170
01:06:26,800 --> 01:06:33,280
Speaker 3: there's not a lot of new things about Ruby. The

1171
01:06:33,360 --> 01:06:36,240
Speaker 3: most interesting thing that has emerged about Ruby in recent years,

1172
01:06:36,280 --> 01:06:38,120
Speaker 3: and it's hard to know what to make of it,

1173
01:06:38,240 --> 01:06:41,280
Speaker 3: but it does seem significant, is that one of the

1174
01:06:41,360 --> 01:06:46,400
Speaker 3: psychiatrists who visited him one of the psychiatrists who said

1175
01:06:46,440 --> 01:06:51,400
Speaker 3: he was insane. And most of Ruby's psychiatrists said he

1176
01:06:51,600 --> 01:06:56,280
Speaker 3: was not insane, but doctor Jolly West was one of

1177
01:06:56,320 --> 01:06:58,400
Speaker 3: the doctors who said he was. And what we have

1178
01:06:58,560 --> 01:07:02,120
Speaker 3: learned is that West was a contractor for the for

1179
01:07:02,200 --> 01:07:04,760
Speaker 3: the CIA and a participant in the m k Ultra

1180
01:07:05,400 --> 01:07:06,600
Speaker 3: mind control program.

1181
01:07:07,360 --> 01:07:08,920
Speaker 1: So you know, so.

1182
01:07:10,960 --> 01:07:15,920
Speaker 3: And so you know, one of the things that they

1183
01:07:16,000 --> 01:07:18,840
Speaker 3: did with people was you know, dosed them with LSD

1184
01:07:20,120 --> 01:07:22,560
Speaker 3: and and that was one of the things Jolly West

1185
01:07:22,640 --> 01:07:24,440
Speaker 3: did in his mind control Ruby.

1186
01:07:25,360 --> 01:07:26,520
Speaker 1: So we think or we don't know.

1187
01:07:27,440 --> 01:07:31,240
Speaker 3: Well, he said, you know, Ruby showed all of these

1188
01:07:31,280 --> 01:07:35,360
Speaker 3: psychotic you know, symptoms which other people did not observe.

1189
01:07:36,680 --> 01:07:39,919
Speaker 3: It just you know, it raised the possibility like why

1190
01:07:40,120 --> 01:07:40,919
Speaker 3: was he in there?

1191
01:07:41,240 --> 01:07:41,400
Speaker 1: You know?

1192
01:07:41,840 --> 01:07:46,320
Speaker 3: And he was kind of a you know, people make

1193
01:07:46,360 --> 01:07:48,520
Speaker 3: a name for themselves as a spokesman, you know, a

1194
01:07:48,680 --> 01:07:51,520
Speaker 3: lawyer for TV or a cop for TV. He was

1195
01:07:51,640 --> 01:07:53,760
Speaker 3: kind of doctor for TV. You know, he was he

1196
01:07:53,760 --> 01:07:58,200
Speaker 3: had a public profrace, he sought publicity. But you know,

1197
01:07:58,320 --> 01:08:01,240
Speaker 3: the CIA connection came out many years later. So is

1198
01:08:01,280 --> 01:08:04,520
Speaker 3: there something to pursue there? Well, Jolly West's papers are

1199
01:08:04,560 --> 01:08:06,920
Speaker 3: at UCLA, and we're going to go out there and

1200
01:08:07,000 --> 01:08:09,280
Speaker 3: take a very close look at them. Is there something

1201
01:08:09,320 --> 01:08:11,720
Speaker 3: in the existing body of records about Ruby that could

1202
01:08:11,760 --> 01:08:12,000
Speaker 3: come out?

1203
01:08:12,120 --> 01:08:17,479
Speaker 1: What? Let me ask, Let me present a scenario and

1204
01:08:17,560 --> 01:08:20,840
Speaker 1: tell me how conlu inconclusive this would feel to you

1205
01:08:21,640 --> 01:08:24,920
Speaker 1: if the CIA finally admits that, look, Oswald was an asset.

1206
01:08:26,000 --> 01:08:28,240
Speaker 1: We covered up our relationship with him because we were

1207
01:08:28,320 --> 01:08:30,880
Speaker 1: paranoid that everybody would assume we were involved when we

1208
01:08:31,000 --> 01:08:33,679
Speaker 1: really weren't involved. Turned out, this guy was more rogue

1209
01:08:33,720 --> 01:08:39,160
Speaker 1: than we thought. We messed up. We're sorry. Now, If

1210
01:08:39,200 --> 01:08:42,000
Speaker 1: that is the story, would you ever believe it?

1211
01:08:43,479 --> 01:08:47,560
Speaker 3: I mean it feels like a modified limited hangout to me?

1212
01:08:47,840 --> 01:08:52,160
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, And you know and and and that's where

1213
01:08:52,200 --> 01:08:55,680
Speaker 1: my Okham's razor goes. Well, like, what would be the

1214
01:08:55,800 --> 01:08:58,559
Speaker 1: various motivations for the CIA to cover up their relationship

1215
01:08:58,600 --> 01:09:02,360
Speaker 1: with Oswald? One is they were involve okay. One is

1216
01:09:03,040 --> 01:09:05,000
Speaker 1: they fear that they would be blamed for it?

1217
01:09:05,360 --> 01:09:05,479
Speaker 3: Right?

1218
01:09:05,640 --> 01:09:07,519
Speaker 1: Like that would be my other that would to me

1219
01:09:07,640 --> 01:09:09,160
Speaker 1: be the other most plausible scenario.

1220
01:09:09,800 --> 01:09:12,960
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, you know when people put that out, I say, well,

1221
01:09:13,640 --> 01:09:17,360
Speaker 3: you know, what's the evidence that that was the thinking

1222
01:09:17,439 --> 01:09:19,400
Speaker 3: of the people at the CIA at the time. So,

1223
01:09:19,680 --> 01:09:22,559
Speaker 3: for example, just the fairest point, Yeah, yeah, did people

1224
01:09:23,320 --> 01:09:25,919
Speaker 3: you know, the people the CIA, people of that generation

1225
01:09:26,200 --> 01:09:29,200
Speaker 3: wrote memoirs, did oral histories. When you look at those

1226
01:09:29,320 --> 01:09:31,800
Speaker 3: oral histories and they talk about the Kennedy assassination, do

1227
01:09:31,920 --> 01:09:34,200
Speaker 3: they say, God, we were all over that guy and

1228
01:09:34,280 --> 01:09:36,960
Speaker 3: we just, you know, we just missed him. I mean,

1229
01:09:37,080 --> 01:09:39,040
Speaker 3: I'm not aware of anybody who says that. What they

1230
01:09:39,120 --> 01:09:42,200
Speaker 3: say is we didn't know anything about that guy, and

1231
01:09:42,520 --> 01:09:44,760
Speaker 3: we know that's not true. That that's not true, right,

1232
01:09:44,880 --> 01:09:47,840
Speaker 3: And so those people might have just been not saying

1233
01:09:47,880 --> 01:09:50,439
Speaker 3: they had guilty knowledge and were deliberately lying. They just

1234
01:09:50,560 --> 01:09:53,640
Speaker 3: may have been misinformed or just they believed their institution,

1235
01:09:54,320 --> 01:09:57,640
Speaker 3: which is, you know, understandable. But I don't see the

1236
01:09:57,800 --> 01:10:00,840
Speaker 3: evidence that somebody said, oh my god, we screwed this up.

1237
01:10:01,120 --> 01:10:05,240
Speaker 3: You know, after the assassination, there's nobody saying how did

1238
01:10:05,320 --> 01:10:08,320
Speaker 3: we miss this guy? What they say is, how do

1239
01:10:08,520 --> 01:10:10,840
Speaker 3: we pretend like we don't know anything about him. So

1240
01:10:11,280 --> 01:10:15,000
Speaker 3: that's why I tend to doubt the CYA thing. I

1241
01:10:15,080 --> 01:10:18,240
Speaker 3: don't see the evidence for it. Just the absence of

1242
01:10:19,680 --> 01:10:25,400
Speaker 3: you know, of positive action is not that alone cannot

1243
01:10:25,479 --> 01:10:27,719
Speaker 3: prove the incompetence or the CYA theory.

1244
01:10:28,200 --> 01:10:30,320
Speaker 1: And then the other theory could be what if both

1245
01:10:30,400 --> 01:10:32,200
Speaker 1: things are true? Oswald did it and he was part

1246
01:10:32,240 --> 01:10:32,400
Speaker 1: of a.

1247
01:10:32,400 --> 01:10:36,599
Speaker 3: Conspiracy, you know, I don't rule that out. The crime

1248
01:10:36,680 --> 01:10:39,759
Speaker 3: scene because it was compromised. You know, the sixth floor

1249
01:10:39,920 --> 01:10:44,120
Speaker 3: was not controlled for about ten hours after the crime.

1250
01:10:44,600 --> 01:10:48,240
Speaker 3: You know, the exact circumstances of the crime are difficult.

1251
01:10:48,360 --> 01:10:51,000
Speaker 3: Now there's no smoking gun proof that Oswald did it.

1252
01:10:51,120 --> 01:10:53,840
Speaker 3: Nobody put him in the window with a gun. He was,

1253
01:10:54,040 --> 01:10:56,719
Speaker 3: you know, far he was down on the second floor

1254
01:10:56,960 --> 01:11:01,280
Speaker 3: very soon after the gun fire. So clud Oswald had

1255
01:11:01,320 --> 01:11:05,160
Speaker 3: fired a gun. Yeah, I think so, But I in fact,

1256
01:11:05,240 --> 01:11:07,599
Speaker 3: I would say, like for purposes of argument, I'll say, yes,

1257
01:11:07,760 --> 01:11:09,720
Speaker 3: Oswald was up there in the window firing the gun.

1258
01:11:10,160 --> 01:11:12,960
Speaker 3: All this other stuff is still true, you know. And

1259
01:11:13,160 --> 01:11:16,840
Speaker 3: then you know, I think the evidence for that the

1260
01:11:16,880 --> 01:11:19,240
Speaker 3: president was hit by gunfire from two different directions. I

1261
01:11:19,280 --> 01:11:20,920
Speaker 3: think that evidence both men.

1262
01:11:21,000 --> 01:11:23,760
Speaker 1: All right, well, I will I hear you there but

1263
01:11:23,800 --> 01:11:25,880
Speaker 1: I'll tell you something that I found fascinating when I

1264
01:11:25,920 --> 01:11:28,800
Speaker 1: finally visited the grassing all myself, is that you do

1265
01:11:29,720 --> 01:11:33,320
Speaker 1: realize that there could be echoes. So if you told

1266
01:11:33,439 --> 01:11:37,960
Speaker 1: me eyewitnesses thought they heard something there, it was more

1267
01:11:38,000 --> 01:11:41,120
Speaker 1: of a canyon like feel than I expected. So the

1268
01:11:41,240 --> 01:11:43,880
Speaker 1: possibility of echoes where you think, and we know this

1269
01:11:43,960 --> 01:11:46,800
Speaker 1: and eyewitness accounts people swear, oh, I think I heard

1270
01:11:46,840 --> 01:11:48,320
Speaker 1: guns from here and here and here, and what they

1271
01:11:48,400 --> 01:11:50,720
Speaker 1: really heard was the echo of the gunfire, and they're

1272
01:11:50,760 --> 01:11:52,200
Speaker 1: not used to hearing gunfire.

1273
01:11:52,720 --> 01:11:58,160
Speaker 3: Absolutely absolutely, And you know, I mean, any you know,

1274
01:11:58,439 --> 01:12:02,600
Speaker 3: criminal investigator will tell you kind of earwitness testimony of

1275
01:12:02,680 --> 01:12:10,000
Speaker 3: gunfire notoriously unreliable, notoriously. But on the other hand, Kennedy's

1276
01:12:10,200 --> 01:12:13,600
Speaker 3: passing by a crowd of several hundred people, So I

1277
01:12:13,680 --> 01:12:16,480
Speaker 3: think any one individual could be mistaken.

1278
01:12:17,400 --> 01:12:19,240
Speaker 1: But you know, if you have a.

1279
01:12:19,280 --> 01:12:22,560
Speaker 3: Bigger sampling, I think you're more likely to get a

1280
01:12:23,400 --> 01:12:26,840
Speaker 3: you know, an accurate reflection because people are in all

1281
01:12:26,920 --> 01:12:30,240
Speaker 3: different places, so they wouldn't necessarily be doing the same thing.

1282
01:12:30,320 --> 01:12:33,840
Speaker 3: And you know, forty to fifty people said they thought

1283
01:12:34,400 --> 01:12:36,640
Speaker 3: the gunfire came from in front of the motorcade. And

1284
01:12:36,720 --> 01:12:39,720
Speaker 3: the doctors tried to save Kennedy's life said the same thing,

1285
01:12:40,200 --> 01:12:42,160
Speaker 3: that Kennedy had been hit by gunfire in the throat

1286
01:12:42,200 --> 01:12:46,479
Speaker 3: and then the head. So you know, so that evidence

1287
01:12:46,520 --> 01:12:49,880
Speaker 3: to me is compelling that other people were firing a gun.

1288
01:12:50,000 --> 01:12:51,920
Speaker 3: So even if you put Oswald up on the sixth

1289
01:12:51,960 --> 01:12:55,759
Speaker 3: floor with a gun, I think it's possible, but unlikely.

1290
01:12:55,840 --> 01:12:59,559
Speaker 3: I think he more had a lookout roll than than

1291
01:12:59,560 --> 01:13:04,760
Speaker 3: a shooting role. But that's what you know, that's my

1292
01:13:04,920 --> 01:13:08,000
Speaker 3: response to to to to that are. But you know,

1293
01:13:08,960 --> 01:13:11,439
Speaker 3: because the crime scene wasn't controlled, the chain of possession

1294
01:13:11,479 --> 01:13:14,040
Speaker 3: for the gun, the bullets, all of that is totally

1295
01:13:14,120 --> 01:13:16,720
Speaker 3: messed up. If Oswald ever went to trial, you know,

1296
01:13:16,920 --> 01:13:21,280
Speaker 3: criminal attorneys would have no problem dismantling attacking that chain

1297
01:13:21,320 --> 01:13:25,320
Speaker 3: of possession, you know. And in fact, there over the

1298
01:13:25,400 --> 01:13:29,920
Speaker 3: years there have been seven mock trials of Oswald, typically

1299
01:13:30,840 --> 01:13:36,120
Speaker 3: bar associations and laws. You have prosecutors, defendants, judges, jury

1300
01:13:36,200 --> 01:13:38,799
Speaker 3: and all that. In six out of the seven Oswald

1301
01:13:38,880 --> 01:13:42,360
Speaker 3: is acquitted or has a hung jury. So that's kind

1302
01:13:42,360 --> 01:13:44,479
Speaker 3: of a you know, a man in the street judgment

1303
01:13:44,520 --> 01:13:47,800
Speaker 3: of the body of evidence. But I think it tells

1304
01:13:47,840 --> 01:13:51,320
Speaker 3: you something that you know, the criminal case against Oswald

1305
01:13:51,439 --> 01:13:53,719
Speaker 3: is not strong, and it's gotten weaker over the years.

1306
01:13:54,120 --> 01:13:57,920
Speaker 1: What new technology would you love to see applied to

1307
01:13:58,040 --> 01:14:01,160
Speaker 1: some of the evidence that is still exists.

1308
01:14:02,120 --> 01:14:07,240
Speaker 3: Well, you know, uh, we're looking at AI. We're talking

1309
01:14:07,560 --> 01:14:10,599
Speaker 3: we have an AI project at the Mary Farrell Foundation.

1310
01:14:11,520 --> 01:14:14,479
Speaker 3: I mean, I'm very wary of the idea that AI

1311
01:14:14,600 --> 01:14:16,800
Speaker 3: is going to solve the Kennedy assassination for us.

1312
01:14:17,200 --> 01:14:18,920
Speaker 1: I was thinking more on the DNA front.

1313
01:14:18,960 --> 01:14:22,360
Speaker 3: But anyway, yeah, I think I think I think AI

1314
01:14:22,640 --> 01:14:27,400
Speaker 3: could help us parse, analyze, organize the body of records

1315
01:14:27,439 --> 01:14:33,920
Speaker 3: that we have. So we're exploring. A second thing is

1316
01:14:35,040 --> 01:14:40,680
Speaker 3: this is underrated. But just the fact that everybody has

1317
01:14:40,800 --> 01:14:46,720
Speaker 3: access to these records, now that alone, digitization, that alone, Yeah,

1318
01:14:46,760 --> 01:14:49,360
Speaker 3: it's such a yes crowdsource. You know, like when we

1319
01:14:49,439 --> 01:14:51,439
Speaker 3: had this Oswald file, we put it in front of

1320
01:14:51,479 --> 01:14:53,519
Speaker 3: a bunch of people. I mean, they found I've been

1321
01:14:53,560 --> 01:14:55,719
Speaker 3: looking at this file for years and people found stuff

1322
01:14:55,760 --> 01:14:58,640
Speaker 3: that I'd never seen. And that's just that's just the

1323
01:14:58,680 --> 01:14:59,240
Speaker 3: way it works.

1324
01:14:59,320 --> 01:15:00,880
Speaker 1: You know. I was just going to say, how do

1325
01:15:01,000 --> 01:15:05,200
Speaker 1: you check yourself? How do you how do you you know?

1326
01:15:05,360 --> 01:15:08,360
Speaker 1: I worry. I worry about this confirmation bias. Right, I

1327
01:15:08,439 --> 01:15:11,160
Speaker 1: worry about it with myself all the time, and I

1328
01:15:11,280 --> 01:15:14,080
Speaker 1: think if you do worry about it, you probably are

1329
01:15:14,120 --> 01:15:17,920
Speaker 1: pretty good at at least about seeing alternative explanations. How

1330
01:15:18,000 --> 01:15:20,400
Speaker 1: do you deal with that? How do you force your

1331
01:15:20,439 --> 01:15:23,640
Speaker 1: mind to to like, you have a you have a conclusion,

1332
01:15:23,720 --> 01:15:26,040
Speaker 1: but you but and and you know, how do you

1333
01:15:26,120 --> 01:15:27,320
Speaker 1: avoid confirmation bias?

1334
01:15:28,520 --> 01:15:34,519
Speaker 3: Well? One thing is, you know, social media is toxic,

1335
01:15:35,040 --> 01:15:39,000
Speaker 3: and it's toxic because it's binary, right, and oils things

1336
01:15:39,240 --> 01:15:42,519
Speaker 3: down to thumbs up or thumbs down, and you can't

1337
01:15:42,560 --> 01:15:44,120
Speaker 3: really have a nuanced.

1338
01:15:43,880 --> 01:15:46,160
Speaker 1: You live in a gray area on this world. I

1339
01:15:46,240 --> 01:15:47,760
Speaker 1: feel like right and so and so.

1340
01:15:48,240 --> 01:15:51,000
Speaker 3: So that's one thing, is just to do that. But also,

1341
01:15:51,200 --> 01:15:54,559
Speaker 3: and this is part of it, like I think feel

1342
01:15:54,600 --> 01:15:57,320
Speaker 3: strong about this. Other people friends of mine feel strong

1343
01:15:57,320 --> 01:16:00,479
Speaker 3: about and they're totally discreet, and to not take it

1344
01:16:00,600 --> 01:16:04,200
Speaker 3: personally and to say to listen to that person, even

1345
01:16:04,240 --> 01:16:07,720
Speaker 3: though how could you possibly think that?

1346
01:16:07,840 --> 01:16:08,000
Speaker 1: You know?

1347
01:16:08,160 --> 01:16:10,200
Speaker 3: That's where I try and check myself and say, Jeff,

1348
01:16:10,320 --> 01:16:12,560
Speaker 3: just listen, take your feelings out of it. For you

1349
01:16:13,200 --> 01:16:16,439
Speaker 3: hear what they're saying, and how is the third person

1350
01:16:16,560 --> 01:16:18,840
Speaker 3: going to hear what they're saying and you're saying and

1351
01:16:19,040 --> 01:16:21,000
Speaker 3: just trying to detach yourself a little bit from it.

1352
01:16:21,520 --> 01:16:24,120
Speaker 3: And so you know, social media does the opposite. It's

1353
01:16:24,160 --> 01:16:26,400
Speaker 3: like it encourages you to get in the other guy's face, right,

1354
01:16:26,400 --> 01:16:29,120
Speaker 3: because that's how you get followers, and people think that's cool,

1355
01:16:29,200 --> 01:16:32,760
Speaker 3: and you feel very justified because you've made a killer.

1356
01:16:32,880 --> 01:16:35,240
Speaker 1: Well, every story is are you on a side? Are

1357
01:16:35,280 --> 01:16:37,960
Speaker 1: you on the conspiracy side or the you know, non

1358
01:16:38,040 --> 01:16:40,600
Speaker 1: conspiracy side, And it's like, you know, I live in

1359
01:16:40,680 --> 01:16:43,760
Speaker 1: both worlds on this issue, which is like I do

1360
01:16:44,120 --> 01:16:46,559
Speaker 1: like I'm sort of like, well, the most say it's

1361
01:16:46,600 --> 01:16:49,439
Speaker 1: not telling the truth that I know. I don't know

1362
01:16:49,520 --> 01:16:52,360
Speaker 1: anything else yet. You know, I was having a friend

1363
01:16:52,400 --> 01:16:52,679
Speaker 1: of mine.

1364
01:16:52,800 --> 01:16:54,519
Speaker 3: I talk with a friend of mine today who worked

1365
01:16:54,560 --> 01:16:57,680
Speaker 3: in national security for years, and you know, he's very

1366
01:16:57,800 --> 01:17:01,639
Speaker 3: candid with me, and he said, you know, come comes Strazer, Jeff,

1367
01:17:01,640 --> 01:17:05,040
Speaker 3: you know, and yeah, and he said, if you're gonna

1368
01:17:05,040 --> 01:17:08,240
Speaker 3: if you're gonna argue against that, then you need to

1369
01:17:08,400 --> 01:17:11,280
Speaker 3: encapsulate that argument into your argument, because that's gonna be

1370
01:17:11,320 --> 01:17:14,640
Speaker 3: the strongest argument against you. So you need to acknowledge that,

1371
01:17:14,880 --> 01:17:18,599
Speaker 3: and you know, say that you understand that, and you're

1372
01:17:18,640 --> 01:17:21,360
Speaker 3: not pushing it away automatically because in the end you

1373
01:17:21,400 --> 01:17:24,320
Speaker 3: don't agree with it, right, that's the that's the thing

1374
01:17:24,479 --> 01:17:26,920
Speaker 3: you got to you got to watch out for. You know,

1375
01:17:26,960 --> 01:17:30,479
Speaker 3: when we had the hearing with with Representative Luna, is

1376
01:17:30,520 --> 01:17:30,720
Speaker 3: that the.

1377
01:17:30,720 --> 01:17:34,160
Speaker 1: First time you testify before concres. Yes, it was, welly,

1378
01:17:34,240 --> 01:17:37,000
Speaker 1: how was that? Man? It must scare the crap out

1379
01:17:37,000 --> 01:17:37,120
Speaker 1: of you.

1380
01:17:40,120 --> 01:17:42,680
Speaker 3: Well, I was anxious. I was nervous. I went and

1381
01:17:42,720 --> 01:17:46,000
Speaker 3: took a long walk in the woods before that. That's

1382
01:17:46,080 --> 01:17:48,920
Speaker 3: just to like calm down. And I had some good

1383
01:17:48,960 --> 01:17:51,639
Speaker 3: counselors who said, you know, we know how you feel.

1384
01:17:52,120 --> 01:17:54,240
Speaker 3: So yeah, it's a you know, it's a high pressure moment.

1385
01:17:55,360 --> 01:17:55,640
Speaker 2: I was.

1386
01:17:55,840 --> 01:17:57,760
Speaker 3: I was, you know, when they said you only have

1387
01:17:57,880 --> 01:17:59,679
Speaker 3: five minutes, I was like, five minutes.

1388
01:18:01,439 --> 01:18:03,400
Speaker 1: We're right, we're at an hour. Good luck.

1389
01:18:04,760 --> 01:18:07,760
Speaker 3: But then I thought, no, you know what, like say

1390
01:18:07,920 --> 01:18:11,640
Speaker 3: something that you feel good about in five minutes and

1391
01:18:11,720 --> 01:18:14,000
Speaker 3: leave it at that. You can't you can't possibly do anything.

1392
01:18:14,000 --> 01:18:15,840
Speaker 3: And so I felt, you know that I did that,

1393
01:18:16,439 --> 01:18:19,120
Speaker 3: and then you know, it was disappointing that, you know,

1394
01:18:19,160 --> 01:18:21,679
Speaker 3: people tried to turn it into a partisan thing. Both

1395
01:18:22,160 --> 01:18:25,240
Speaker 3: Nancy on the Republican side and a couple of Democrats

1396
01:18:25,280 --> 01:18:28,679
Speaker 3: did it, which is, you know, this JFK thing is fine,

1397
01:18:28,720 --> 01:18:29,840
Speaker 3: but what about Trump?

1398
01:18:30,040 --> 01:18:32,759
Speaker 1: You know, it was like, you know, that's the problem

1399
01:18:32,840 --> 01:18:35,880
Speaker 1: with the Trump era everything when Trump does something, you know,

1400
01:18:36,160 --> 01:18:38,840
Speaker 1: the thing is is not everything Trump touches is wrong.

1401
01:18:39,400 --> 01:18:42,519
Speaker 1: Not everything Trump does, you know is maybe how he

1402
01:18:42,640 --> 01:18:45,320
Speaker 1: does it is wrong, but the result might be what

1403
01:18:45,680 --> 01:18:48,400
Speaker 1: what the correct answer? You just don't know. Just because

1404
01:18:48,439 --> 01:18:50,960
Speaker 1: Trump touches it doesn't make it toxic, although for some

1405
01:18:51,120 --> 01:18:51,840
Speaker 1: people it does.

1406
01:18:52,080 --> 01:18:54,960
Speaker 3: You know, yeah, no, And look, I'm a liberal guy.

1407
01:18:55,160 --> 01:18:58,920
Speaker 3: You know, I'm concerned about Trump's authoritarian moves. It's very disturbing.

1408
01:18:59,520 --> 01:19:03,719
Speaker 3: But I have to say, declassifying all the JFK records,

1409
01:19:04,200 --> 01:19:08,760
Speaker 3: that's not an authoritarian move to me, that's an anti authoritarian.

1410
01:19:08,960 --> 01:19:12,200
Speaker 1: Now we know why he wants he's trying to exploit, right,

1411
01:19:12,200 --> 01:19:14,320
Speaker 1: because if there's a conspiracy in Kennedy, then guess what,

1412
01:19:14,400 --> 01:19:16,960
Speaker 1: there's a conspiracy to get me right, Like, we know

1413
01:19:17,120 --> 01:19:19,959
Speaker 1: what he conclusion. He's trying to draw with his followers,

1414
01:19:20,280 --> 01:19:22,720
Speaker 1: and that's the thing. It's like, you know, stop trying

1415
01:19:22,760 --> 01:19:26,160
Speaker 1: to glom onto that buddy. But but that doesn't mean

1416
01:19:26,360 --> 01:19:30,760
Speaker 1: the release isn't useful for historical Yeah, yeah, researchers.

1417
01:19:31,240 --> 01:19:33,840
Speaker 3: Yeah, he has this political agenda he wants he wants

1418
01:19:33,880 --> 01:19:35,960
Speaker 3: to stick to beat up the deep state and his credit,

1419
01:19:37,560 --> 01:19:40,360
Speaker 3: you know, But releasing all of these records, you know,

1420
01:19:40,680 --> 01:19:44,320
Speaker 3: that's a good thing. And to me, that's uh, you know,

1421
01:19:44,479 --> 01:19:49,160
Speaker 3: if we're worried about authoritarianism something like this, strong open

1422
01:19:49,240 --> 01:19:53,320
Speaker 3: government laws, that's the answer, you know. And so you know,

1423
01:19:53,640 --> 01:19:55,880
Speaker 3: I have I wonder and people say, well, are you

1424
01:19:56,000 --> 01:19:58,400
Speaker 3: just signing on to a Trump you know, agenda and things.

1425
01:19:58,800 --> 01:20:02,120
Speaker 3: You know, Am I legitimate what he's doing? You know,

1426
01:20:02,280 --> 01:20:04,800
Speaker 3: I don't think so. I mean, but it's that's the

1427
01:20:04,840 --> 01:20:07,240
Speaker 3: world we live in. So I think about fortunately, you know,

1428
01:20:07,560 --> 01:20:08,880
Speaker 3: think about it. But you can't let that get in

1429
01:20:08,960 --> 01:20:10,880
Speaker 3: the way of the work, you know. And I look,

1430
01:20:10,920 --> 01:20:13,800
Speaker 3: I get I mean, and you know, are you concerned

1431
01:20:13,880 --> 01:20:16,360
Speaker 3: that you're being manipulated by the government with the release?

1432
01:20:16,800 --> 01:20:18,880
Speaker 1: Are we can? You know, I get concerned about Telsea.

1433
01:20:19,000 --> 01:20:21,400
Speaker 1: I don't. Look, I don't she's you know, she hasn't

1434
01:20:21,439 --> 01:20:24,360
Speaker 1: proved to me that she's an open, honest broker. Well

1435
01:20:24,479 --> 01:20:25,240
Speaker 1: that's a concern.

1436
01:20:25,760 --> 01:20:30,720
Speaker 3: Yeah, But I'll tell you when I had never heard

1437
01:20:30,760 --> 01:20:35,040
Speaker 3: of Anna Paulina Luna until she started saying on Twitter,

1438
01:20:35,720 --> 01:20:37,559
Speaker 3: you know, we're going to have a hearing in Dallas,

1439
01:20:37,760 --> 01:20:40,519
Speaker 3: and I saw she just got slaughtered. You know, there

1440
01:20:40,640 --> 01:20:43,760
Speaker 3: were ten thousand comments, ninety literally ninety five hundred of

1441
01:20:43,840 --> 01:20:46,360
Speaker 3: them were negative, and they said, don't have a hearing,

1442
01:20:46,800 --> 01:20:49,479
Speaker 3: release all the documents. And so I reached out to

1443
01:20:49,479 --> 01:20:50,840
Speaker 3: her and said, you know, like, what are you doing?

1444
01:20:50,920 --> 01:20:55,160
Speaker 3: And she's a maga Republican from a young woman.

1445
01:20:55,640 --> 01:20:57,280
Speaker 1: From Tampa or Central Florida.

1446
01:20:57,600 --> 01:21:02,360
Speaker 3: Yeah, from Saint Pete. And uh, I gotta tell you, Chuck,

1447
01:21:02,600 --> 01:21:06,800
Speaker 3: I'm totally impressed, action oriented, down to earth, not cowed

1448
01:21:06,880 --> 01:21:07,639
Speaker 3: by the CIA.

1449
01:21:08,479 --> 01:21:11,439
Speaker 1: Hey, she took on her own party over maternity leave.

1450
01:21:11,560 --> 01:21:14,200
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, like no, no, no, and she's

1451
01:21:14,200 --> 01:21:14,839
Speaker 1: got a spine.

1452
01:21:15,040 --> 01:21:18,000
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, and and and and and and and when

1453
01:21:18,080 --> 01:21:21,200
Speaker 3: she did that, I was like, she's standing up to

1454
01:21:21,240 --> 01:21:23,759
Speaker 3: the CIA, she's standing up to her own leadership because

1455
01:21:23,760 --> 01:21:25,720
Speaker 3: of the things she leaves. And now you know, I

1456
01:21:25,840 --> 01:21:27,960
Speaker 3: read her, So I read her social media feed. She

1457
01:21:28,040 --> 01:21:31,439
Speaker 3: says some things that man, I totally disagree with, but

1458
01:21:31,560 --> 01:21:34,600
Speaker 3: you know what, we work well together, and if we

1459
01:21:34,680 --> 01:21:36,960
Speaker 3: want to have a discussion down the road about those things,

1460
01:21:37,200 --> 01:21:39,920
Speaker 3: you know, she'll know better where I'm coming from. If

1461
01:21:39,960 --> 01:21:44,120
Speaker 3: we have a if we have a relationship of trust,

1462
01:21:44,400 --> 01:21:47,320
Speaker 3: and we do. When we make suggestions to her, she

1463
01:21:47,520 --> 01:21:51,160
Speaker 3: responds instantly, so she's I'm impressed with her leadership and

1464
01:21:51,680 --> 01:21:52,960
Speaker 3: she's doing this the right way.

1465
01:21:54,439 --> 01:21:56,920
Speaker 1: Jeff, you do a podcast? Where can people find it?

1466
01:21:57,960 --> 01:22:02,040
Speaker 3: Uh on JFK Facts dot substack dot com. We meet

1467
01:22:02,120 --> 01:22:07,360
Speaker 3: every Thursday night at eight pm JFK Live. Typically I'll

1468
01:22:07,439 --> 01:22:10,599
Speaker 3: have a guest or we'll have a guest who will talk,

1469
01:22:11,160 --> 01:22:13,880
Speaker 3: and then we open the floor up for questions to

1470
01:22:14,040 --> 01:22:17,320
Speaker 3: the guest or just to anybody. But we really focus

1471
01:22:17,439 --> 01:22:20,759
Speaker 3: on you know, what's the latest news in the JFK story,

1472
01:22:20,840 --> 01:22:24,320
Speaker 3: what does it mean to going and Uh, if you

1473
01:22:24,360 --> 01:22:26,080
Speaker 3: want to find out more about you know, where we're

1474
01:22:26,120 --> 01:22:28,240
Speaker 3: coming from, that's a great place to start.

1475
01:22:28,760 --> 01:22:33,000
Speaker 1: Well, you know, I must obviously I know you. I

1476
01:22:33,120 --> 01:22:36,320
Speaker 1: trust you. The one thing you are is your you

1477
01:22:36,800 --> 01:22:41,439
Speaker 1: obsess on finding data to back up conclusions, you know,

1478
01:22:41,760 --> 01:22:44,599
Speaker 1: and you know people may disagree with where you're headed,

1479
01:22:45,240 --> 01:22:48,519
Speaker 1: but you're always looking for facts first, and I think

1480
01:22:49,360 --> 01:22:51,679
Speaker 1: that's important. There's not a lot of the conspiracy theory

1481
01:22:51,680 --> 01:22:52,280
Speaker 1: authors do that.

1482
01:22:53,000 --> 01:22:56,120
Speaker 3: Yeah, And if that's what you want, tell me some

1483
01:22:56,240 --> 01:22:58,720
Speaker 3: new facts about the JFK stort. Keep the theories off

1484
01:22:58,760 --> 01:23:02,000
Speaker 3: to the side. We are mining these new releases for

1485
01:23:02,320 --> 01:23:06,240
Speaker 3: new stories related to the assassination. Are we solving the assassination?

1486
01:23:07,080 --> 01:23:09,439
Speaker 3: We're telling you new things that you didn't know before.

1487
01:23:10,040 --> 01:23:13,240
Speaker 3: And you know, if if you're interested in the subject,

1488
01:23:13,640 --> 01:23:15,439
Speaker 3: where the place to go it is.

1489
01:23:15,760 --> 01:23:19,400
Speaker 1: And I'm so glad I got those book recommendations out

1490
01:23:19,439 --> 01:23:21,640
Speaker 1: of you. I know some people and that that's the

1491
01:23:21,680 --> 01:23:24,720
Speaker 1: way they should. And frankly, you should also read up

1492
01:23:24,760 --> 01:23:27,320
Speaker 1: on the CIA in the fifties and the Dulles brothers

1493
01:23:27,560 --> 01:23:31,200
Speaker 1: because you've got to understand the environment in that moment,

1494
01:23:32,360 --> 01:23:35,400
Speaker 1: on the relationship that the CIA had and didn't have

1495
01:23:35,600 --> 01:23:38,920
Speaker 1: with with our government, and how rogue it is. You know,

1496
01:23:39,000 --> 01:23:41,919
Speaker 1: it was a young it was a young, precocious agency

1497
01:23:42,040 --> 01:23:45,120
Speaker 1: still back then, and people forget you know, and and

1498
01:23:46,240 --> 01:23:49,200
Speaker 1: look it took till Carter and Stansfield Turner frankly to

1499
01:23:49,320 --> 01:23:51,400
Speaker 1: truly begin the reform effort there, right.

1500
01:23:51,400 --> 01:23:54,040
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, no, they had they for the first thirty

1501
01:23:54,120 --> 01:23:59,000
Speaker 3: years of the CIA, they really had impunity. Now we

1502
01:23:59,120 --> 01:24:02,000
Speaker 3: have a structure that it kind of rains them in

1503
01:24:02,120 --> 01:24:05,120
Speaker 3: a little bit more contributes responsibility for what they do.

1504
01:24:05,720 --> 01:24:07,760
Speaker 3: But Yeah, in the first thirty years. That's key to

1505
01:24:07,920 --> 01:24:10,519
Speaker 3: understanding and that's and that's what we're getting from these

1506
01:24:10,600 --> 01:24:13,720
Speaker 3: new files is the true details of what that was

1507
01:24:13,920 --> 01:24:16,479
Speaker 3: like when when the CIA was sent.

1508
01:24:16,680 --> 01:24:18,960
Speaker 1: No, I have a feeling that that's it's really going

1509
01:24:19,000 --> 01:24:21,160
Speaker 1: to fill in the blanks about the CIA in the fifties,

1510
01:24:21,200 --> 01:24:24,000
Speaker 1: which is something that I think, Look, it's not it's

1511
01:24:24,000 --> 01:24:26,160
Speaker 1: an ugly I think it's an ugly stain in America.

1512
01:24:26,920 --> 01:24:29,720
Speaker 1: And and you know, our relationship with Latin America to

1513
01:24:29,800 --> 01:24:34,439
Speaker 1: this day continues to be to oh that hangs in

1514
01:24:34,520 --> 01:24:37,160
Speaker 1: the air. Yeah, we don't realize it. But you talked

1515
01:24:37,200 --> 01:24:39,960
Speaker 1: to Central Americans of a certain generation and that stuff

1516
01:24:39,960 --> 01:24:43,320
Speaker 1: is still fresh, you know, South Americans and Central America

1517
01:24:43,479 --> 01:24:48,280
Speaker 1: very fresh and their history. Yeah, Jeff, thank you for

1518
01:24:48,400 --> 01:24:49,080
Speaker 1: doing this, my friend.

1519
01:24:49,840 --> 01:24:51,600
Speaker 3: Thanks for having me. Chuck, it's great to talk to you.

1520
01:24:52,160 --> 01:24:52,920
Speaker 3: Listen to it again.

1521
01:24:53,280 --> 01:25:03,800
Speaker 1: We will I have a feeling next relief. Awesome. Thanks brother, Well,

1522
01:25:03,840 --> 01:25:05,560
Speaker 1: I hope you enjoy. Many of you are going to

1523
01:25:05,560 --> 01:25:08,280
Speaker 1: be listening to this throughout the holiday weekend. It's been

1524
01:25:08,320 --> 01:25:11,440
Speaker 1: I know a lot of faiths this week are celebrating

1525
01:25:11,520 --> 01:25:15,759
Speaker 1: holidays from Passover to Easter. I hope everybody travels safely,

1526
01:25:16,040 --> 01:25:20,000
Speaker 1: enjoys time with their family, and frankly, is able to

1527
01:25:20,479 --> 01:25:23,040
Speaker 1: other than telling your friends and family about the great

1528
01:25:23,080 --> 01:25:25,559
Speaker 1: new Chuck podcast that you have to listen to. Other

1529
01:25:25,640 --> 01:25:27,920
Speaker 1: than that that you park politics on the side and

1530
01:25:28,040 --> 01:25:31,960
Speaker 1: instead enjoy time with your family. With that, I'll see

1531
01:25:31,960 --> 01:25:33,960
Speaker 1: you in the next episode of the Chuck Podcast. Until

1532
01:25:33,960 --> 01:25:34,639
Speaker 1: we upload again,