Speaker 1: I'm John Cipher and I'm Jerry O'Shea. I was a
Speaker 1: CIA officer stationed around the world in high threat posts
Speaker 1: in Europe, Russia, and in Asia.
Speaker 2: And I served in Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East
Speaker 2: and in war zones. We sometimes created conspiracies to deceive
Speaker 2: our adversaries.
Speaker 1: Now we're going to use our expertise to deconstruct conspiracy
Speaker 1: theories large and small.
Speaker 3: Could they be true or are we being manipulated?
Speaker 1: This is mission implausible. So today's guest is Gus Russo.
Speaker 1: He's an investigative reporter and writer. He's an author of
Speaker 1: many books on subjects from JFK to Fidel Castro, gangsters,
Speaker 1: the FBI, CIA, and so, Gus, g it's great to
Speaker 1: have you with us today.
Speaker 4: Oh, it's pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: You're sort of one of these people that has dug
Speaker 1: into everything related to mart I wanted to talk you about.
Speaker 1: RFK Junior is resurrecting a conspiracy theory that the CIA
Speaker 1: was behind the murder of President John F.
Speaker 3: Kennedy.
Speaker 1: And you've written some You've read a lot about this
Speaker 1: in fact, and so could you tell us a little
Speaker 1: bit about that conspiracy it's something that just doesn't seem
Speaker 1: to die, and Jerry and I get it all the time.
Speaker 4: It's one of the craziest ones because there's no evidence
Speaker 4: at all that the CIA did it. It's just total
Speaker 4: theory based on pretty much nothing. I lived through it.
Speaker 4: I was interested in this case back in the seventies.
Speaker 4: I attended the House Select Committee on Assassination's hearings. The
Speaker 4: open hearings interviewed a lot of people. My theory about
Speaker 4: why they say this is that we all lived through
Speaker 4: the Church Committee years and when the Church Committee fingered
Speaker 4: the CIA for doing all these plots around the world,
Speaker 4: it left an impression on the generation that the CIA
Speaker 4: is the source of all evil. And I think we
Speaker 4: all might agree that those operations were almost entirely the
Speaker 4: brainch out of the white houses that were around, whether
Speaker 4: it's Eisenhower or Kennedy. But a young generation thought that
Speaker 4: the CIA masterminded all these plots and coups and everything,
Speaker 4: and that stuck with a lot of people, even in
Speaker 4: the face of subsequent evidence to the contrary. Do you
Speaker 4: really look at it hard? What they go back to
Speaker 4: is a phrase that President Kennedy allegedly said after the
Speaker 4: Bay pig. Tom Wicker wrote an article in The New
Speaker 4: York Times about the Bay of Pigs and thirty pages
Speaker 4: in he put a quotation in there that came from
Speaker 4: an anonymous source that heard from another anonymous source. The
Speaker 4: President Kennedy said, I'm going to tear the CIA to
Speaker 4: one thousand pieces. There's no way to know if you
Speaker 4: ever said it, because we have no way of knowing
Speaker 4: where it came from. I don't believe he ever said it,
Speaker 4: and the people of the intelligence field who were back
Speaker 4: and there in those days also say they have no
Speaker 4: idea that he ever said it. In fact, President Kennedy
Speaker 4: doubled the CIA's budget and ivoyed and got an internal
Speaker 4: CIA report of their relationship with all presidential administrations, and
Speaker 4: by far the best relationship they had was with JFK.
Speaker 4: That's what they said. So that's it. Based on this
Speaker 4: quote that Kennedy was going to tear the CIA into
Speaker 4: a thousand pieces, which he obviously didn't do, and that
Speaker 4: he fired Alan Dulles, who was the CIA director at
Speaker 4: the time of the Bay of Pigs, and he didn't
Speaker 4: fire Alan Dulles. In reality, all you have to do
Speaker 4: is read Dulles's biographies, and you'll see that Dulles offered
Speaker 4: his resignation after the Bay of Pigs and Kennedy turned
Speaker 4: him down. Kennedy said, no, Alan, you're a friend of
Speaker 4: the family. We wanted you to stay on when you
Speaker 4: wanted to retire. Anyway, you only stayed on because we
Speaker 4: begged you to. He didn't want to be there, and
Speaker 4: he was saying, come on, let me resign and you'll
Speaker 4: look better and I'll be retired, but please stay on.
Speaker 4: He offered three times to resign. Finally, in the fall,
Speaker 4: four or five months after the Bad Pigs, Kennedy said,
Speaker 4: I guess you should go because the heat is getting
Speaker 4: too much. But thank you, you've been great. He stayed
Speaker 4: close friends with Dallan Dallas, as did Robert Kennedy. We
Speaker 4: have all the letters back and forth between them. One
Speaker 4: of the most telling things is that when LBJ set
Speaker 4: up the Warrant Commission, it was Robert Kennedy who pretty
Speaker 4: much demanded that Johnson put Dulles on on the warrant commission.
Speaker 4: He was like an uncle to the book, to the
Speaker 4: Kennedy brothers, and against that they have this one alleged quote.
Speaker 2: If Kennedy was going to rip the CIA in one
Speaker 2: thousand pieces, replace it with something else, replace personnel as
Speaker 2: a There'd be paperwork involved in that right from Kennedy's paper.
Speaker 2: He'd be giving orders. There'd be discussions that would be
Speaker 2: in the NSC. So making a simple declarative sentence, whether
Speaker 2: he made it or not, doesn't mean he's.
Speaker 3: Going to file through.
Speaker 2: And if he was going to follow through, CIA would
Speaker 2: know it because they would know through the NSC they'd
Speaker 2: be talking about replacements personnel.
Speaker 3: There's no evidence of any of that.
Speaker 1: Let me ask you, there are some real conspiracies, and
Speaker 1: I think you did some digging in front out there
Speaker 1: actually is a conspiracy around this, and the conspiracy is
Speaker 1: that the Soviet intelligence services used money and their influence
Speaker 1: to try to push this conspiracy theory. Is that true?
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's true. Disinformation is certainly real, and I think
Speaker 4: what we're going through now, it's my contention that they
Speaker 4: perfected disinformation that the Soviets at the time came up with,
Speaker 4: The CIA created aids, The CIA tried to kill the pope.
Speaker 4: The CII did everything, but this was their laboratory, the
Speaker 4: Kennedy case, and it started immediately after with getting books
Speaker 4: published magazine articles, newspaper articles. They would read our stuff,
Speaker 4: as you know, they read our papers and books and
Speaker 4: find a way to insert into our own narrative little
Speaker 4: things that would seem to make sense. I will agree,
Speaker 4: I wouldn't call that a conspiracy. That's just intelligence world.
Speaker 1: Well, Russian intelligences conspired to say what can we do
Speaker 1: to create a price grotory and put it into their systems.
Speaker 1: So in a way, conspiracy just more than one person
Speaker 1: coming up with the plan to do something. And frankly,
Speaker 1: Gus there was some connections between the CIA and the
Speaker 1: JFK assassination, not in the fact that any CIA people
Speaker 1: were involved in it. But as you remember, there was
Speaker 1: a Russian, a Soviet defector named Urinasenko who came to
Speaker 1: the United States around that time, and he had known
Speaker 1: Lee Harvey Oswald. He had seen Lee Harvey Oswald's file
Speaker 1: when he worked for the KGB second chief director at
Speaker 1: the internal part of it. Sure, of course, this created
Speaker 1: inside the government a big oh my god, you know
Speaker 1: where the Russians involved in the assassination. They've interviewed him
Speaker 1: and they looked at him and they thought that, you know,
Speaker 1: there's no way he would because he's a marine and
Speaker 1: he defected to the Soviet Union. Therefore, they'd be greatly
Speaker 1: interested in him and they would use him as a
Speaker 1: potential assassin.
Speaker 4: LB Jay knew pretty quickly that Russia had nothing to
Speaker 4: do with it because NSA was bugging Nikita's Dasha and
Speaker 4: his other residences and they heard him talking about, oh
Speaker 4: my god, how did this happen? This guy lived here,
Speaker 4: Oh my god, they're going to think we did it.
Speaker 4: And the NSA reported that back to Johnson and that
Speaker 4: sort of put that away for the government. We knew
Speaker 4: Russia didn't have anything to do with it, but Russia
Speaker 4: was so concerned that we might think that they sent
Speaker 4: Uri over to make sure we knew they had nothing
Speaker 4: to do with it. But for me, the fascinating mystery,
Speaker 4: I don't want to say conspiracy, but the lasting mystery
Speaker 4: of that whole thing is what happened in Mexico with
Speaker 4: Oswald hanging with Cubans for about a week, and that
Speaker 4: is I've dug up a lot of things there that
Speaker 4: make it look like they knew what was going to happen,
Speaker 4: that Oswald was going to do this, and that has
Speaker 4: never been investigated by the government at all Warren Commission
Speaker 4: didn't look into it. The House Committee spent two days
Speaker 4: down there. Our researcher. We hired a detective for a
Speaker 4: documentary I did, and we spent he spent about a
Speaker 4: year dredging up embassy sources who were there when Oswald
Speaker 4: was there for us, and we learned a lot. And
Speaker 4: by the way, I interviewed during Thesenko for a documentary
Speaker 4: I did with Peter Jennings probably twenty years ago. When
Speaker 4: I did a show with Crouplind back in ninety three
Speaker 4: called Who Was Lee Harvey Oswald? It was a big undertaking.
Speaker 4: We spent two years traveling the world interviewing. We had
Speaker 4: a big budget. Our senior producer, Mike Sullivan, said, let's
Speaker 4: find out first if Oswald pulled the trigger, let's see
Speaker 4: who shot him first, and we could work back words
Speaker 4: from him. That's the easiest way to do it. And
Speaker 4: so we spent the first few months trying to figure out, forensically,
Speaker 4: ballistically who did it, and it was overwhelming. I was
Speaker 4: waldfire all the shots, and then it became a lot
Speaker 4: easier to see who he was connected to, which was nobody,
Speaker 4: and we went We really worked hard. We tried to
Speaker 4: do the due diligence and it just didn't hang up.
Speaker 3: Hold up.
Speaker 4: He was the ultimate loaner, no doubt about it.
Speaker 1: I think that's why conspiracies getting built up, right, How
Speaker 1: is it possible that this absolute loser could impact world history?
Speaker 1: And so people have to create stories to fill that void.
Speaker 4: And Lee Harvey Alliswall had a very powerful gun, that
Speaker 4: Carcato rifle. We spoke to all the ballistics people, this
Speaker 4: is a gun you did not want to get in
Speaker 4: front of. This thing is like a cannon. And he
Speaker 4: was good with it. I held his Marine targets in
Speaker 4: my hand, and he was a good shooter at two
Speaker 4: hundred yards with a bolt action weapon. I can go
Speaker 4: up with this ballistic stuff forever. But I'd just say
Speaker 4: that this was an easy shot. People who say it
Speaker 4: was a hard shot, I asked him, and where did
Speaker 4: you hear that? And they say, I don't know if
Speaker 4: somebody told me. When you really look at it, it
Speaker 4: was a really easy shot. You only hit twice, two
Speaker 4: hits in nine seconds from a target that's moving slowly
Speaker 4: away from him. It was nothing anybody could have learned
Speaker 4: to do that shot.
Speaker 2: In a CIA officers We're not saying there's no conspiracy,
Speaker 2: there's no possibility of it. There are permutations be between
Speaker 2: Oswald did it on his own and Oswald was a
Speaker 2: dupe and a stooge of the Russians.
Speaker 3: Of the CIA.
Speaker 2: It certainly possibly he could have mentioned this too while
Speaker 2: he was in Mexican talking to the Soviets.
Speaker 3: A low level guy would write it up and send
Speaker 3: it in in the KGB archives.
Speaker 2: Or he could have told Cuban intelligence officers when he's
Speaker 2: down there, I'm going to get Kennedy.
Speaker 4: Which does exactly what he said. It's exactly what he said.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So for us though, it's is there proof?
Speaker 2: And in the intelligence world you don't want to be
Speaker 2: pretty sure when the possibility of getting it wrong is
Speaker 2: nuclear war.
Speaker 3: Right. When the Warren.
Speaker 2: Report was written, the concern was that if people really
Speaker 2: came to the conclusion, rightly or wrongly, that it was
Speaker 2: the Soviets that did it. They were concerned that there'd
Speaker 2: be forty million dead inside of three hours, right if
Speaker 2: we point the finger wrongly and things get out of control.
Speaker 2: So today we don't really think about that so much,
Speaker 2: except of course, when we have WMD in Iraq, where
Speaker 2: Agency officers, analysts who Johnny and I know some of them.
Speaker 2: They were pretty darn sure that there was WMD in Iraq, right,
Speaker 2: I mean they Saddam said he had it. There was
Speaker 2: reporting that it was there. He had it in the past,
Speaker 2: He's threatened to use it. But we didn't have proof
Speaker 2: that it was there. We just were like pretty sure.
Speaker 2: And so same for the Warren report.
Speaker 5: Weld under the second, Well, we take a quick break.
Speaker 1: And we're back.
Speaker 4: I've been a few, literally thousands of people on this
Speaker 4: subject over the years, and what I concluded, what I
Speaker 4: learned from them. Johnson feared World War three was going
Speaker 4: to break out, and he was terrified of that. So
Speaker 4: when the Warrant Commission was formed, he instructed the FBI
Speaker 4: to not investigate Mexico City. He was afraid of where
Speaker 4: it might lead. And I'm hanging on my wall a
Speaker 4: letter from the FBI guy who went down to Mexico City,
Speaker 4: the only Spanish speaker who could go down and investigate
Speaker 4: the Cubans. He went down that night and he was
Speaker 4: called in his hotel rooms and he was told that
Speaker 4: Johnson had told Hoover to tell him, do not leave
Speaker 4: your room, don't talk to anybody while the trail was hot.
Speaker 4: I just don't want to go there. He was terrified.
Speaker 4: Even though he knew that the Kruse Jef didn't push
Speaker 4: this thing, he was worried that if they found out
Speaker 4: the Castro was behind it, Americans would demand retaliation against Castro,
Speaker 4: which would bring the Russians in like they had a
Speaker 4: year earlier during the Missile crisis, which was right at
Speaker 4: the front of Johnson's mind. The crisis had just happened,
Speaker 4: so he was worried that Cuba might have had something
Speaker 4: to do with this, or was involved or had knowledge,
Speaker 4: and he didn't want to go there. So there was
Speaker 4: no investigation of Oswald in Mexico. And another interesting thing,
Speaker 4: Bobby Kennedy was the one who put Dulls, his family friend,
Speaker 4: on the Warren Commission. Dulles knew about the plots that
Speaker 4: Robert Kennedy with the CIA were trying to pull off
Speaker 4: against Fidel, and Dulles never told the other commissioners. They
Speaker 4: were dying to know why a pro Castro guy like
Speaker 4: Oswald would shoot Kennedy, and Dallas said, I have no idea,
Speaker 4: and they looked at him and said, were we doing
Speaker 4: anything to piss off Lee, Harvey Oswald and the Warren
Speaker 4: Commission attorneys that I've interviewed said when they found out
Speaker 4: about these plots via the Church Committee, they were incensed
Speaker 4: at the lives of Alan Dulles. They were looking for
Speaker 4: this motive. Why a pro Castro guy would shoot Kennedy
Speaker 4: made no sense. We were at peace with Castro allegedly,
Speaker 4: and Dulles zipped up. That was a favorite of Robert Kennedy.
Speaker 1: In my opinion, we've come to the conclusion that the
Speaker 1: big conspiracy that the CIA was behind it is not true.
Speaker 1: But are there things that still need to be figured
Speaker 1: out or where we should still look into.
Speaker 4: For me, the only thing would get my attention in
Speaker 4: the newspaper if Castro opened up his archives, which won't happen.
Speaker 4: And also there are archives in Mexico City that we
Speaker 4: got a peek at because they did their own investigation
Speaker 4: in Mexico. The National Archives, at my behest tried for
Speaker 4: years to get those from Mexico and couldn't get them.
Speaker 4: The sneak peaks we've had are that there was Cuban
Speaker 4: contact with Oswald. I'll tell you the story we were
Speaker 4: told by the operatives who were in the Cuban embassy
Speaker 4: in Mexico City who were there at the time. They
Speaker 4: said that Oswald came in. They didn't know who he was,
Speaker 4: and when he didn't get a visa, immediately he went nuts.
Speaker 4: And then he went over to the Russian embassy and
Speaker 4: went nuts. And he thought they would know of him
Speaker 4: because he had handed out leaflets in New New Orleans
Speaker 4: pro Castro and he wanted to be at whatever a
Speaker 4: spy for Fidel and he got so mad, and according
Speaker 4: to Castro, we know this from Castro's own lips. Oswald said,
Speaker 4: I'll kill that bastard Kennedy for you. I'll show you now.
Speaker 4: Castro told us that through telling that to his confidants,
Speaker 4: who reported it back to the FBI. After he says
Speaker 4: that Cuban intelligence operatives in that embassy started to hang
Speaker 4: out with this guy during the week that he was there,
Speaker 4: which we know nothing, or we felt we knew nothing.
Speaker 4: They wanted to suss this guy out, see if he
Speaker 4: was a nutter, if he really was going to do this.
Speaker 4: They even offered him money, and they told us in
Speaker 4: our documentary that he turned it down. It wasn't about money,
Speaker 4: it was ideology. They said, if you do this, you'll
Speaker 4: be a herod Keep in mind when people ask me
Speaker 4: if there was a conspiracy, I say, well, it depends
Speaker 4: on your definition. It's a conspiracy of silence. I'm convinced
Speaker 4: that Cubans knew he was going to try to do
Speaker 4: it and encouraged him because he'd Jeff Gabe been trying
Speaker 4: to get a Castro for two years. I don't know
Speaker 4: if you know Brian Ltel, former CIA officer. He ran
Speaker 4: the Cuba desk for the agency in the eighties, and
Speaker 4: they told Brian that well. The morning of the assassination,
Speaker 4: he was in the G two headquarters Cuban Intelligence in
Speaker 4: Havana when work came down from Fidel to redirect all
Speaker 4: the surveillance issues that were pointed at Miami, where JM
Speaker 4: waves CIA base was, and turned them to Texas. This
Speaker 4: is from a Cuban defector to Brian Lttel, and why
Speaker 4: do you want to point it Texas. The answer was
Speaker 4: something's going to happen, and I want to be the
Speaker 4: first to note from Fidel. So the word got to
Speaker 4: him that something might happen in Texas and he wanted
Speaker 4: to know immediately. And I believe this got back to
Speaker 4: Johnson this kind of stuff because he was in touch with,
Speaker 4: mixed with the Mexicans. He had great friends in Mexicano,
Speaker 4: including the president. And I'm convinced from people I spoke
Speaker 4: to that he was told that night there's more to
Speaker 4: this than just this guy. He was hanging out with
Speaker 4: the wrong people, and that this gets out, it's all
Speaker 4: gonna blow up. And Johnson just said, I'm not going there.
Speaker 2: And CIA, we have something called duty to warn.
Speaker 3: It's a law, and.
Speaker 2: If we know about an assassination attempt coming up against
Speaker 2: a foreign official, even an unfriendly one, we are honor
Speaker 2: not honored, we are legally bound.
Speaker 3: To tell them this.
Speaker 2: Now, we don't have to go into great detail, we
Speaker 2: don't have to give away sourcing. And I can remember
Speaker 2: one time in the Philippines there was an advansaer of
Speaker 2: a country that is very hastile to us, and we
Speaker 2: had heard that Islamis were looking to kill him and
Speaker 2: I had to have a meeting with him. I sat down,
Speaker 2: his bodyguards were there and I said, look, but you
Speaker 2: know who I am.
Speaker 3: I'm the with CIA and does a plot to kill you?
Speaker 2: And he laughed because in their you know, this authoritarian government,
Speaker 2: they would never do this, and he laughed at me,
Speaker 2: but he did increase his security. So they know the Russian,
Speaker 2: the Russians of the Cubans wouldn't do.
Speaker 4: That, so they didn't hire him. So there goes the
Speaker 4: cute Castro did it conspiracy, but Castro knew And if
Speaker 4: you call that a conspiracy, find in fact, we were
Speaker 4: told many details from these Cuban operatives that they encouraged
Speaker 4: him Oswald if he wanted to try this, and that
Speaker 4: he'd be a hero, even to the extent that they said,
Speaker 4: we'll rescue you if you pulled this off. That's what
Speaker 4: we I only had one source on that, so I
Speaker 4: didn't put it in my book, but I believe him.
Speaker 4: He said Oswald was on his way to rendezvous with
Speaker 4: the Russians when Officer Tippitt stopped him. And remember he
Speaker 4: shot Officer Tippet. Most people forget about that, poor guy
Speaker 4: he shot four times point blank by Oswald. So tippittt
Speaker 4: may have stopped at rendezvous and the furthest extension of
Speaker 4: that story is he said, we told Oswald would fly
Speaker 4: him to Havana if he pulled this off, and he said,
Speaker 4: but we weren't going to do that I said, what
Speaker 4: were you going to do? So we're going to dump
Speaker 4: him into the Gulf of mexic Co.
Speaker 1: So we've talked a little bit about this, about the
Speaker 1: CIA is involved or did it? And it comes up
Speaker 1: again and again. So to go back to where we
Speaker 1: started on RFK Junior, there's this view and then Amaryllis Fox,
Speaker 1: who is married to his son, former CIA officer for
Speaker 1: a couple of years inside, there's this. All we need
Speaker 1: to do is get into the CIA archives. We get
Speaker 1: into the intelligen Comunity archives. It'll answer this question for us.
Speaker 1: And we've talked about what that actually means and why
Speaker 1: stuff might not yet be put out because there are
Speaker 1: real reasons for that, not to cover up reasons for that.
Speaker 1: You're someone who digs into the paperwork and the archives
Speaker 1: and the research. What is your view on what the
Speaker 1: CIA is put out and do you think there's a
Speaker 1: smoking gun and what hasn't been put out?
Speaker 4: Oh, not at all. I've been researching at the National
Speaker 4: Archives since the eighties, and I also went to the
Speaker 4: CIA a couple times because they wanted to hear more
Speaker 4: about what I had uncovered in Mexico. They brought me
Speaker 4: down to headquarters. But as far as what the CIA has,
Speaker 4: understand that everything has been released. What these people are
Speaker 4: talking about are cleaner versions of some of these pages.
Speaker 4: Every page is out, some with reactions. They want those
Speaker 4: reactions unredacted, those reactions and I've got them their microscopic.
Speaker 4: It's not like there's gonna be a great new narrative.
Speaker 4: It's two words, and it's usually a person's name. It's
Speaker 4: all sources and I've seen the documents and that's all
Speaker 4: it can be. There's not going to be any smoking gun.
Speaker 4: It's gonna be a name of some Cuban guy who
Speaker 4: was talking to a CIA guy in my in Nevada,
Speaker 4: and he would get killed if that came out, and
Speaker 4: he may still be alive because these guys were in
Speaker 4: their twenties and I'm against getting rid of those redactions.
Speaker 4: Promises were made to people, as you guys know when
Speaker 4: you're out there, and we'll protect you if you talk
Speaker 4: to us. You can't just change your mind fifty years
Speaker 4: later and say, well, under the pressure of Oliver Stone,
Speaker 4: we're going to release your name. I have seen some
Speaker 4: of the redactions they've let out, and it's terrible. Names
Speaker 4: of agents of the sources organiz his crime sources in Chicago,
Speaker 4: so that's what's left. I've seen all the documents, and
Speaker 4: the archivists have seen them all, and the review board
Speaker 4: who looked at this in the nineties saw everything. It's
Speaker 4: gonna be so anti climactic, you're not gonna believe it.
Speaker 3: We'll be right back, and we're back.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna tell you now, if I thought that the
Speaker 1: US government was behind killing the president of United States,
Speaker 1: I would tell people, Yeah, I don't know, Like, give
Speaker 1: me your sense of the Oliver Stones JFK movie and
Speaker 1: where that conspiracy theory story came from.
Speaker 4: I was there when he filmed it. This was in
Speaker 4: the around nineteen ninety. He contacted me because he knew
Speaker 4: that I knew where all the sources worked. I had
Speaker 4: been interviewing them for documentaries. I hadn't written the book yet,
Speaker 4: but he said, you could be really helpful. I'm doing
Speaker 4: this movie. So he brings me to Hollywood and I
Speaker 4: meet with him. I didn't know he was going to
Speaker 4: go after Jim Garrison at the time, so I said, oh, yeah,
Speaker 4: I love to help. I want to see how you
Speaker 4: do this. I'd never been around a fifty million dollar
Speaker 4: movie production. When I eventually read the script and found
Speaker 4: out it was Garrison, I pulled away from the whole thing,
Speaker 4: but I was there for a couple months of the project.
Speaker 4: A couple months of the project and where that comes
Speaker 4: from in his mind. He bought into Jim Garrison right
Speaker 4: the New Orleans DA who went after Clay Shaw, who
Speaker 4: was accused by the KGB's disinformation of being a CIA
Speaker 4: officer who killed Kennedy, and Garrison bought at hook Line
Speaker 4: and Sinker. Oliver Stone understandably needed a protagonist for a
Speaker 4: Kennedy assassination story, which he was dying to tell. He
Speaker 4: told me, he said, this was the movie I always
Speaker 4: wanted to make, but I didn't have the clout until
Speaker 4: I won a bunch of Academy Awards. Now I had
Speaker 4: the cloud to ask for the money to do it.
Speaker 4: He sort of identified, I think with Garrison, because Oliver
Speaker 4: Stone is kind of a black sheep in Hollywood. Jim
Speaker 4: Garrison was a black sheep among das. It was the
Speaker 4: white knight against everybody. Well, that's who Oliver Stone is.
Speaker 4: This is my own psychological diagnosis here, And I don't
Speaker 4: know what Oliver really believes about those witnesses that Clay
Speaker 4: that Jim Garrison had because they all eventually admitted they lied.
Speaker 4: Jim Garrison forced them to lie on the witness stand
Speaker 4: because he was known to pressure people like that. That
Speaker 4: was his history in New Orleans. He was not a
Speaker 4: good guy and he destroyed a lot of lives over
Speaker 4: the course of his life with the accusations, with persecutions
Speaker 4: and indictments that went nowhere. Oliver Stone wanted to make
Speaker 4: sense of Vietnam because he was traumatized by it and
Speaker 4: this was the only thing that made sense to him.
Speaker 4: That Kennedy was killed so they could escalate the war
Speaker 4: and at last the war made sense to him. And
Speaker 4: that's what his conclusion was. He had no evidence of it.
Speaker 4: He just used Garrison's evidence, which was meaningless because.
Speaker 2: RFK Junior said, and I haven't looked into this that deeply,
Speaker 2: but he has said he suspects that CIA was involved
Speaker 2: in the assassination of Robert Kennedy.
Speaker 6: There's a six fear cutter up.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 6: The war information was run by Alan Dallas, who was
Speaker 6: ahead of the CIA, who my uncle fired because I
Speaker 6: was founding. Yeah, it was a plot, it was a conspiracy.
Speaker 6: There were multiple people involved.
Speaker 2: Why do you think this is this has come up,
Speaker 2: why he still believes it's now and what are the
Speaker 2: conspiracy theories on this one?
Speaker 4: First, I'm not at the expert in RFK. I know
Speaker 4: some things about it peripherally. But where that seems to
Speaker 4: come from is Srahan kept the diary, and in the
Speaker 4: diary he kept writing or Okay must die, and it
Speaker 4: looked to some people like he'd been hypnotized to do this.
Speaker 4: He wrote it over and over again, and they said
Speaker 4: he's a Manchurian candidate. Again, no evidence, it just it's
Speaker 4: just a convenient thing. There's no link to him in
Speaker 4: the CIA. And he also ballistically he did it, but
Speaker 4: it's just people want and he says he also said,
Speaker 4: I can't remember pulling the trigger. Another Manchurian candidate thing,
Speaker 4: and who does Manchurian candidates but the CIA, of course
Speaker 4: they don't. But that I know, that's the story that
Speaker 4: we get from the movies, and uh, they buy into
Speaker 4: this RFK. You know he's into a lot of conspiracy theories.
Speaker 4: And I can send you guys a video it's on
Speaker 4: YouTube of Surehand giving a lucid, sober confession to the
Speaker 4: whole thing. He tells David Frost, I did it. I'm
Speaker 4: sorry I was. I regret it, but he admitted doing it.
Speaker 4: The RFK probably knows the same theories about his uncle
Speaker 4: that seemed to be on the surface meaningful, like I'll
Speaker 4: kill out destroy the CIA. There was no enmity between
Speaker 4: the Kennedys and the agency at all, so the CIA
Speaker 4: would not want to kill Robert Kennedy. They never hated him,
Speaker 4: They never hated Jack.
Speaker 1: It's I don't know, if anything, they probably he Kennedy's
Speaker 1: like Eisenhower before and probably pushed the CIA to do
Speaker 1: too much. It is too It was too handy and
Speaker 1: easy to get things done in secret by the CIA,
Speaker 1: rather than go through the whole political process and get
Speaker 1: people on board.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I've got a great quote from Robert Kennedy and from JFK,
Speaker 4: two great quotes from them. Just before they both said
Speaker 4: to the press that any errors in political operations were
Speaker 4: not the fault of the CIA. They did their job.
Speaker 4: They were instructed by different administrations to do what they did.
Speaker 4: They apologized for all these things in the agency were
Speaker 4: great people, and Kennedy doubled their budget. This idea that
Speaker 4: Robert Kennedy was hated by the CIA. There's nothing there,
Speaker 4: absolutely nothing to answer your question. I can't get inside
Speaker 4: Robert Kennedy's mind except that he's read the Manchurian Candidate
Speaker 4: or something. You know.
Speaker 2: He's gone on about something called Operation mocking Bird. There's
Speaker 2: not much out there on it. But there was an
Speaker 2: Operation mocking Bird.
Speaker 3: And this goes back.
Speaker 2: To the early sixties and it was one of the
Speaker 2: things that the CIA got wrong that came out in
Speaker 2: the Church Commission, and it was the CIA and the
Speaker 2: FBI went after a couple of journalists because CIA information
Speaker 2: isual security information was leaking. And the person who authorized
Speaker 2: this bugging of journalists was none other than Robert Kennedy. So, yeah,
Speaker 2: telling him to do it. And yet this is but
Speaker 2: it sounds cool, well appupation Mockingbird, but yeah, look into it.
Speaker 2: It's actually there's like way less there.
Speaker 3: Than meets theater.
Speaker 4: Robert Kennedy was so into covert action. He authorised the
Speaker 4: wire taps on Martin Luther King, the illegal wiretaps. He
Speaker 4: would go down to JM Wave CIA based in Florida
Speaker 4: during the height of these Cuban operations and walk in
Speaker 4: and tear documents off the teletype and just walk out
Speaker 4: with a classified need to know papers and the people
Speaker 4: down there who I spoke to yelled at it. What
Speaker 4: are where are you going with this stuff? He was
Speaker 4: training Cuban exiles that were friends of his in his
Speaker 4: backyard at hip Hickory Hill. They were doing training exercises.
Speaker 4: He didn't understand any tradecraft. It was going to blow
Speaker 4: everything up, and it did. But he loved this stuff.
Speaker 4: That was not an enemy thing with the CIA. He
Speaker 4: really dug it. He wanted to be a spy. I
Speaker 4: think we just cann undo the enmity that came out
Speaker 4: for the Agency in the seventies with the church stuff.
Speaker 4: That's that's still faced with a lot of people, right.
Speaker 2: And I don't want to speak ill of the Kennedys
Speaker 2: here either. Their mindset they're coming out of they're worried
Speaker 2: that the world is going to be destroyed, and their
Speaker 2: mindset was set in fighting the Nazis fifteen years before
Speaker 2: and fighting the Japanese and like the saving mankind. And
Speaker 2: we look at our mindsets today, our mentality is very
Speaker 2: different than within what they were trying to do, which
Speaker 2: arguably I don't even think I was build a better
Speaker 2: for your world if they were willing to get their
Speaker 2: hands dirty.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's basically there was the Cold War hysteria. But
Speaker 4: I will say the CIA guys who orchestrated the Bay
Speaker 4: of Pigs told me that it was more than that.
Speaker 4: They said the Kennedies personally had it in for Pidel.
Speaker 4: It was a personal thing because they lost to him
Speaker 4: after the at the Bay of Pigs, and Fidel spent
Speaker 4: months traveling the world and making fun of the camp
Speaker 4: and he's calling them Cretans and just rubbing their nose
Speaker 4: in it constantly that we beat the big bully, and
Speaker 4: that really chafed that the Kennedys. According to the CIA officers,
Speaker 4: they said this was a personal thing between the Kennedy
Speaker 4: brothers and the Castro brothers. And I think some of
Speaker 4: that plays into it too, because the Kennedys weren't used
Speaker 4: to losing anything obviously.
Speaker 1: You know, incredible investigative reporter. I read your book Best
Speaker 1: of Enemies about a Russian KGB officer, a Soviet and
Speaker 1: then Russian KGB officer Ganadi Vassilinko. I have to say
Speaker 1: I'm amazed at how much stuff you dug up because
Speaker 1: I worked directly on the issues that led to the
Speaker 1: arrest of Robert Hansen and the illegals who arrested in
Speaker 1: twenty ten, Russian legals wasss than twenty ten, and all
Speaker 1: these other kind of things. It's all these people that
Speaker 1: are in your book, Jack Platt, James, Mike Rochford, Paul Redmond,
Speaker 1: They're all I was all worked very closely with them.
Speaker 1: So I was really impressed with that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that story came to me Jack Platt called. I'd
Speaker 4: met Jack just in passing at a book party years
Speaker 4: before this, and he called me up one day out
Speaker 4: of the blue and said that Robert de Niro said,
Speaker 4: you're the guy to do my book affects you. I said,
Speaker 4: excuse me, Jack Platt, I said, yeah, I want to
Speaker 4: do a book about me and my friend me and
Speaker 4: my friend Ganati. And I said, sounds interesting because I
Speaker 4: knew a little bit about it and I signed on
Speaker 4: to it. But yeah, I work real hard on these projects.
Speaker 4: I call up everybody till they agree to talk to me,
Speaker 4: and sometimes you just get a crumb, and sometimes you
Speaker 4: get something you can bring it full circle. These assets,
Speaker 4: these sources that with the FBI and the CIA used
Speaker 4: in the sixties to talk about Cuba or Russia. You're
Speaker 4: putting them in harm's way, and now we're going to
Speaker 4: release their names because Oliver Stone wants you to. It's
Speaker 4: inside it.
Speaker 1: I've said this many times, probably even on this podcast.
Speaker 1: The bulk of the classified information that the CIA gets
Speaker 1: from human sources are from our partners overseas, right, So
Speaker 1: the British and the French, and the Tunisians and the
Speaker 1: Malaysians and everybody we share, we work together. They're not spies,
Speaker 1: their representatives of their own government, and they're saying, hey, listen,
Speaker 1: a good relationship with you. You've helped us on things.
Speaker 1: Let me tell you what's happening here.
Speaker 4: This is probably the biggest thing that these amateur conspiracy
Speaker 4: people don't realize at all. They have no conception of
Speaker 4: the human aspect of what you guys do.
Speaker 3: I'm aware of this one story.
Speaker 2: There was a European country and after nine to eleven,
Speaker 2: in an interview, one of their ministers says, oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: that happened in the United States, but we're Europe and
Speaker 2: this isn't going to happen here, and we're but we
Speaker 2: are keeping tabs on and he named some figure. I
Speaker 2: don't remember what it was, but it was like two
Speaker 2: hundred and fifty odd people that we suspect of having
Speaker 2: terrorist connections are who would attack the United States or
Speaker 2: kill Americans or Israelis and Jews. And the local people
Speaker 2: at this embassy are like, we don't know about this list,
Speaker 2: and the government says, basically, oh, he misspoke.
Speaker 3: The minister did, but I'll tell you.
Speaker 2: Within within a week we had three or four copies
Speaker 2: of the list, not from spies, but from people who
Speaker 2: couldn't live with themselves, like, you didn't get this for me,
Speaker 2: here's the list. You just need to be careful. I
Speaker 2: don't want any more people killed. And these are patriotic
Speaker 2: people of that country. They're not our spies. If you
Speaker 2: try to give them like twenty bucks there after, they'd
Speaker 2: never talked to you. Again, people are people, and I
Speaker 2: think the government, that government, my sense was they even
Speaker 2: knew that was going to happen, they just didn't want
Speaker 2: it to be official.
Speaker 4: Fascinating, Well, that's the world that is never portrayed in
Speaker 4: the media, and so people just don't understand those nuances
Speaker 4: of what you do.
Speaker 2: So I spend a lot of time in the counter
Speaker 2: Terrorism Center, and you know that tends to be pretty
Speaker 2: rough and tumble. Sometimes lives are in the line and
Speaker 2: you have to make some difficult moral calls and in
Speaker 2: doing that, and say, with John, we didn't so much
Speaker 2: talk to Rabbiser priest, but we did talk to lawyers
Speaker 2: off friggin' life and the fact that lawyers were on everything.
Speaker 2: Am I going to go to tell me I'm not
Speaker 2: going to go to jail for this?
Speaker 3: Right? Wow?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 2: So I'm just looking forward if I'm in the CIA
Speaker 2: now and somebody comes to me from the NSC and says,
Speaker 2: I want you to put together a plan to take
Speaker 2: over Greenland, just you know, as an example, just or
Speaker 2: I want you to take Denmark or Panama. First of all,
Speaker 2: I'm going to go to a lawyer, and second of all,
Speaker 2: if you're smart, you're going to say I got other
Speaker 2: things to do, right, I mean, you're going to decline
Speaker 2: to do that. And I don't know what it was like,
Speaker 2: unlike with the Bay of Pigs, where I think they
Speaker 2: thought they were saving.
Speaker 1: Cuba and then finding a Cold war.
Speaker 2: So taking over Greenland, there's going to be some lawyers
Speaker 2: who have some really difficult conversations. They go to the
Speaker 2: they talk to officers that look to the law bards.
Speaker 3: It's like, because presidents can't order illegal things.
Speaker 4: When the Kennedys were ordering things, and when Eisenhower was
Speaker 4: ordering things, a lot of those things were still legal.
Speaker 4: Now they're not. They've kings the laws.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's true. So what is it you're working on now?
Speaker 4: Well, just helping the screenwriter. You know, our book Best
Speaker 4: of Enemies got options and we got really a great
Speaker 4: company behind it, with a lot of big actors involved
Speaker 4: in a big screenwriter, and so it's very serious and
Speaker 4: we're working very hard on that screenplay. And I've got
Speaker 4: two or three other projects that are not books, but
Speaker 4: mostly Hollywood related.
Speaker 3: It's been great, it really has. I really enjoyed this.
Speaker 4: Oh well, thank you so much. Appreciate. I had a
Speaker 4: good time, pleasure talking to you guys, and I can't
Speaker 4: wait to keep talking to you, as is my.
Speaker 7: Wont Mission Implausible is produced by Adam Davidson, Jerry O'Shea,
Speaker 7: John Seipher, and Jonathan Stern.
Speaker 3: The associate producer is Rachel Harner.
Speaker 7: Mission Implausible it is a production of Honorable Mention and
Speaker 7: Abominable Pictures for iHeart Podcasts.