Speaker 1: Fellow conspiracy realist, we are returning to you with a classic.
Speaker 1: We usually publish a classic episode or an interview that
Speaker 1: we feel is relevant or worth your time. As many
Speaker 1: of us know in the audience tonight, our good friend
Speaker 1: Rob Reiner has passed away as well as his spouse.
Speaker 1: We want to respect their memory and the privacy of
Speaker 1: their family at this time, but we also want to
Speaker 1: hold space for just the excellent work he did earlier
Speaker 1: on a show about the mystery of JFK.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right. He and his wife, Michelle Singer Reiner
Speaker 2: were discovered deceased in their home and it's an ongoing investigation.
Speaker 2: Does seem like there's definitely foul plays, so we want
Speaker 2: delve into that aspect of it. But we just found
Speaker 2: him to be such a lovely jenner, us intelligent and
Speaker 2: kind man in this conversation, and I think we all
Speaker 2: had our you know, starstruck moment with him, as his
Speaker 2: work has loomed large in all of our lives, and
Speaker 2: it was just so neat to meet somebody who absolutely
Speaker 2: delivers on being what you exactly what you hope they would.
Speaker 3: Be, absolutely And there are details that Rob and the
Speaker 3: entire team uncovered while they were making Who Killed JFK
Speaker 3: that we don't even get into in this episode, fully
Speaker 3: because it was coming out at the time that we
Speaker 3: recorded this interview with him. But there is stuff in
Speaker 3: there that I had never heard before. Specific names, locations,
Speaker 3: you know, all kinds of stuff.
Speaker 1: Co hosted by Sola Dad O'Brien. Who Killed JFK was
Speaker 1: really close to Rob and it's something that he had
Speaker 1: spent decades thinking about investigating, and it did just such
Speaker 1: a phenomenal job with his team. We fanboy a little
Speaker 1: bit in this interview, to be fair, but I think
Speaker 1: we were all just unanimously so fundamentally impressed that you
Speaker 1: could be a guy this cool and this accurate for.
Speaker 2: Sure, And so you know, if you're looking for a
Speaker 2: way to honor his memory, I know he would love
Speaker 2: it if you listened to that serious because it was
Speaker 2: something that, to y'all's point, had been ges dating, you know,
Speaker 2: in him for a long, long long time. And also
Speaker 2: check out the sequel to Spinal Tap, which he hipped
Speaker 2: us to the fact that he was working on that
Speaker 2: when we all off, Mike told him how much we
Speaker 2: loved that movie. It's out now in streaming.
Speaker 1: So without further ado, let's hear from Rob.
Speaker 4: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
Speaker 4: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 4: learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
Speaker 4: production of iHeart Radio.
Speaker 3: Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
Speaker 3: my name is Noel.
Speaker 1: They call me Ben. We're joined with our guest super producer.
Speaker 1: Back to the freight train, Williams. Most importantly, you are you.
Speaker 1: You are here. That makes this the stuff they don't
Speaker 1: want you to know. As you are listening to this
Speaker 1: on the day this podcast publishes, it is an infamous
Speaker 1: anniversary in the United States. Sixty years ago, the President
Speaker 1: of the US John Fitzgerald Kennedy was assassinated November twenty second,
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty three, riding in a presidential motorcade in Dallas, Texas.
Speaker 1: The tragedy of this day fundamentally altered the course of
Speaker 1: American and indeed global history. Decades later, the world and
Speaker 1: tire still has questions about what led to this murder
Speaker 1: and how it occurred. We've asked these questions previously in
Speaker 1: Stuff they Don't Want you to Know, but tonight we
Speaker 1: are immensely fortunate to be joined with the legendary director,
Speaker 1: the actor, the activist, the writer now podcaster Rob Reiner,
Speaker 1: creator and co host of Who Killed JFK? Thank you
Speaker 1: for joining us, Rob, It is a profound honor.
Speaker 5: Oh thank you, Ben. This so sweet to you. Thanks
Speaker 5: for having me.
Speaker 2: Can I just get my fanboy thing out of the
Speaker 2: way really quick? But this is Spinal Tap is my
Speaker 2: favorite movie of all time, and that force everyone in
Speaker 2: my life to watch it while I literally tear up
Speaker 2: because it's very nice and hilarious and it's just everything
Speaker 2: I love about rock and roll. It's so good. Well,
Speaker 2: I hear you're work.
Speaker 5: It'll it'll make you feel good that we're now engaged
Speaker 5: in the filming a sequel. We're going to do it.
Speaker 5: It's the first time in forty years. We came up
Speaker 5: with an ida and the four of us are going
Speaker 5: to get out there and and make a sequel to
Speaker 5: Spinal Tape. Take it to eleven.
Speaker 3: The three of us are musicians and uh we we've
Speaker 3: you know, got video degrees and everything, so we we
Speaker 3: just are right in that exact place where this is
Speaker 3: spinal like where Spinal Tap just is, like I don't
Speaker 3: know it's a mecha.
Speaker 2: Saloom's large And I just wrapped up a podcast documentary
Speaker 2: about the Stones in seventy two, and I had a
Speaker 2: lot of tape I was working with from them from
Speaker 2: those days, and I realized, I think you were doing
Speaker 2: their voices. I think the spinal tap guys are the
Speaker 2: Stones circa seventy two, with their soft spoken, little British
Speaker 2: little something to it. Maybe I'm wrong, but.
Speaker 5: In the film, there's a fine line between stupid and clever,
Speaker 5: and we try, we try to hit that line.
Speaker 1: And isn't that Isn't that also in some ways part
Speaker 1: of the discourse that has surrounded uh, the allegations of
Speaker 1: conspiracy in the JFK assassination.
Speaker 5: You know, look at that segue. Wow, I gotta I
Speaker 5: gotta put a neck brace on uh and call my
Speaker 5: insurance agent because.
Speaker 2: He's got a point, though, Rob stupid and clever, that
Speaker 2: that's something that we see a lot with conspiracy stuff,
Speaker 2: because yeah, that's true. Maybe clever is a bit of
Speaker 2: a misnomer, but it's all about like how close are
Speaker 2: there facts involved? Is there some logical reasoning behind it?
Speaker 2: Or are people just passing the time?
Speaker 5: Right? Right? No, you're You're exactly right, because the name,
Speaker 5: the words conspiracy theory have gotten a weird take now
Speaker 5: because everybody you know who's aspiring to you know, QAnon
Speaker 5: or disinformation or they're going on wacky websites and things.
Speaker 5: Anybody who talks about conspiracy theory has got a tinfoil
Speaker 5: hat and you know, is running around, you know, spotting
Speaker 5: UFOs all over the place. But there are actual conspiracies
Speaker 5: that actually happened, and this is one of them. And
Speaker 5: the podcast that we do Who Killed JFK? That I
Speaker 5: do with Solidad O'Brien is the deepest dive and the
Speaker 5: most comprehensive look at that conspiracy and how it happened.
Speaker 5: And you know, as we say in the podcast, it's
Speaker 5: the greatest murder mystery in the history of America. Nothing
Speaker 5: like it has ever happened before. And the America was traumatized.
Speaker 5: There was a concentrated trauma put at the heart of
Speaker 5: America at that point, and people who were alive at
Speaker 5: the time will never get over it. It was a
Speaker 5: collective trauma that gripped the entire country and we're still
Speaker 5: feeling the effects of it today.
Speaker 1: And that note about never getting over it, there's something
Speaker 1: there's something poetic with the beginning of episode one. I
Speaker 1: think maybe we also before we start with the first
Speaker 1: episode of Who Killed JFK. Let's travel back, if it's
Speaker 1: all right, to your experience to the moment the day
Speaker 1: of the assassination. Again, it's November twenty second, nineteen sixty three,
Speaker 1: just a few days before Thanksgiving. You are, I believe,
Speaker 1: sixteen years old. Could you paint the picture for us
Speaker 1: and for our listeners of that experience.
Speaker 5: Yes, I mean, anybody who was alive at that time
Speaker 5: and was aware knows exactly where they were when they
Speaker 5: heard that news. You can talk to anybody, they'll tell
Speaker 5: you exactly where they were and what was happening. I
Speaker 5: was sixteen, as you said, I was in high school.
Speaker 5: I was in my physics class, and I'll never forget
Speaker 5: a student walked in whispered into the teacher's ear, and
Speaker 5: he turned to us and said, I have some terrible news,
Speaker 5: and he related to us what had happened to the president,
Speaker 5: and we were all just stunned and shocked. We were
Speaker 5: sent home from school. Everybody was sent home, and we
Speaker 5: turned on our televisions and we watched non stop a
Speaker 5: television on the reports up until and I was one
Speaker 5: of the people who watched the person who was accused
Speaker 5: of killing President Kennedy, Lee Harvey Oswald. I watched him
Speaker 5: get assassinated on live television. I mean it actually happened.
Speaker 5: I watched this man. We found out his name was
Speaker 5: Jack Ruby, who's a local nightclub owner of a place
Speaker 5: called the Carousel Nightclub. He went into the Dallas police station,
Speaker 5: drew a gun and stood right in front of Lee
Speaker 5: Harvey Oswald and shot him to death. And for many
Speaker 5: of us, that was the moment at which we said,
Speaker 5: what the heck is going on? The man who has
Speaker 5: supposedly killed the president is now being murdered himself. Why
Speaker 5: is that happening? Who's doing this? Who's behind all this?
Speaker 3: You're talking to three guys who were born in the eighties,
Speaker 3: so you know, when we first encounter this, we get
Speaker 3: to an age where, you know, our parents decide we
Speaker 3: can learn about the JFK assassination, or our schools decide
Speaker 3: we are allowed to learn about it. We have all
Speaker 3: of this information already built in, right, but in going
Speaker 3: back and listening to Who Killed JFK this podcast, we're
Speaker 3: being presented with this information as it was happening, right,
Speaker 3: So we get that experience that you're sharing with us now, Rob.
Speaker 3: And one of the things you mentioned early on is
Speaker 3: how comedians like Mort Sahl and Dick Gregory were kind
Speaker 3: of they're using their material as a way for America
Speaker 3: to begin to process this information, right, Yes, Yes, And
Speaker 3: what's interesting about that is these guys were both brilliant
Speaker 3: social and political setu arterists.
Speaker 5: These were the most incisive, well observed type people who
Speaker 5: looked at American life and observed it in the most
Speaker 5: intelligent and fine way. And when they diverged from their
Speaker 5: normal routines. In the case of Mortsaul, I was nineteen
Speaker 5: when I watched him go. I was opening for The
Speaker 5: Hungry Eye for a singer named Carmen McCrae who was
Speaker 5: a great jazz singer. And when I would finish my
Speaker 5: set with my partner Larry Bishop, we'd go into this
Speaker 5: smaller room where Dick, where mort Saul was not doing
Speaker 5: his normal routine. He was only talking about the Kennedy
Speaker 5: assassination and the Warren Commission report on the assassination had
Speaker 5: come out and he was attacking it. He was saying,
Speaker 5: it's full of lies. It doesn't make any sense. And
Speaker 5: that and people like Dick Gregory who went on Geraldo
Speaker 5: Rivera's show and for the first time they exposed the
Speaker 5: Zapruder film, which was the film that the only film
Speaker 5: that really captures the assassination by a guy named Abraham Zapruder,
Speaker 5: was a local dressmaker. Those people, those two comedians, really
Speaker 5: started the conversation moving forward. People started getting engaged, and
Speaker 5: those people could draw your attention. They were great speakers,
Speaker 5: They were great incisive commentators on the times. When I
Speaker 5: saw Mark Saul, I started really getting into it. I
Speaker 5: read a book called Rush to Judgment by a writer
Speaker 5: named Mark Lane, and he completely disbanded the Warren Commission
Speaker 5: and pointed out the inconsistencies, the things that were left out,
Speaker 5: the lies. And you started getting into realizing that this
Speaker 5: was not only a cover up by the government of
Speaker 5: what had happened, but it uncovered as you track it
Speaker 5: over the years, this conspiracy that American forces got together
Speaker 5: to kill an American president in broad daylight on an
Speaker 5: American street. And the more you look into it, the
Speaker 5: more disturbing it is. And you know, I was saying that,
Speaker 5: you know, you look at something like this, and that
Speaker 5: sixty years has gone by, and unless you're following it closely,
Speaker 5: there are revelations that come out in drips and drabs,
Speaker 5: and when they come out, unless you're following it all,
Speaker 5: you don't know what that has to do with anything else.
Speaker 5: So this podcast what it does is it takes sixty
Speaker 5: years of revelations, puts it all in one place and
Speaker 5: hopefully makes it understandable to people and completely you know,
Speaker 5: fills in the puzzle of what actually happened on that.
Speaker 1: Deckh And this is something that I think is key
Speaker 1: the contextualization. We were talking a little bit air rub.
Speaker 1: People who are somewhat familiar with the JFK assassination and
Speaker 1: the ins and outs of it may be surprised to
Speaker 1: learn that documents pertaining to it were classified until quite
Speaker 1: recently and new information begins to emerge. Who killed JFK?
Speaker 1: Does a phenomenal job of connecting some of these puzzle pieces,
Speaker 1: And already you've mentioned some very bright points about this
Speaker 1: that remain controversial, especially the Warren Commission, which I think
Speaker 1: you do a supreme and scrupulous job of pointing out
Speaker 1: some possible conflicts of interest possible Yeah, Okay, well, guys, Rob.
Speaker 5: Here's what's interesting about this. Yeah, there were huge conflicts
Speaker 5: of interests. First of all, there's still almost five thousand
Speaker 5: documents that have not been released to the public, and
Speaker 5: you know, we may never see those documents. But the
Speaker 5: conflict of venters that you're talking about, and there were
Speaker 5: two investigations. People have to understand. There are two official
Speaker 5: government investigation of the assassination of JFK. The first was
Speaker 5: the Warren Commission, which came out in nineteen sixty four,
Speaker 5: and the second one was done by a group called
Speaker 5: the House Select Committee on Assassinations, and now it came
Speaker 5: out in the mid seventies. It came out to actually
Speaker 5: the report came out in the late seventies. Both of
Speaker 5: those investigations were compromised. And the way in which that
Speaker 5: happened is in the first investigation, the Warrant Commission, Lindon
Speaker 5: Johnson was very concerned about things getting out that might
Speaker 5: implicate the Russians or the Cubans in a way that
Speaker 5: might ultimately cause a nuclear war, and he wanted to
Speaker 5: avoid that. He didn't want any information to come into
Speaker 5: the investigation that would do anything but point to Lee Harvey,
Speaker 5: Oswald as a loan gunman. So what he did is
Speaker 5: they put together this commission headed up by Chief Justice
Speaker 5: Earl Warren, but his name was mostly titular in this
Speaker 5: they put in charge of the gatekeeper sense of all
Speaker 5: information coming from the CIA into the hands of a
Speaker 5: man named Alan Dulles. Alan Dulles was the first civilian
Speaker 5: head of the CIA in the nineteen forties. Now, Alan
Speaker 5: Dulles was one of the architects of the Bay of
Speaker 5: Pigs invasion. The Bay of Pigs invasion was an attempt
Speaker 5: by the CIA to train Cuban exiles to go into
Speaker 5: Cuba and overthrow Castro, who had overthrown Battista just a
Speaker 5: few years prior. Alan Dulles had this plan with the CIA,
Speaker 5: working with these Cuban exiles, they went into the Bay
Speaker 5: of They went into Cuba and they did invade, and
Speaker 5: they thought that Kennedy would offer air support, that once
Speaker 5: the troops got in there, they would send American planes
Speaker 5: and they would take back Cuba. Kennedy told them before
Speaker 5: the And by the way, Kennedy inherited this plan from
Speaker 5: Eisenhower and Nixon. He was only in office for two
Speaker 5: or three months when they when they did this. He
Speaker 5: told them ahead of time, I will not send American
Speaker 5: airplanes because I don't want the United States footprint. I
Speaker 5: don't want to any fingerprints on to be tracked back
Speaker 5: to the United States. He told them that, and Dulles said,
Speaker 5: there's no way, don't worry about it. Once we get
Speaker 5: in there, he's going to see this and he's going
Speaker 5: to want to send those those airplanes. He never did,
Speaker 5: and what happened was all the Cuban exes. They were
Speaker 5: slaughtered on the beaches in Cuba, and it was a
Speaker 5: complete and utter disaster. Months later, Kennedy fires Alan Dulles,
Speaker 5: and very you know is known to have said, I
Speaker 5: want to take the CIA and break it up into
Speaker 5: a thousand pieces. He was furious at the CIA because
Speaker 5: they were doing these covert activities without presidential approvals. I mean,
Speaker 5: they were doing them separately and then you know, then
Speaker 5: reporting back to the president. So he wanted to get
Speaker 5: rid of it. He puts Johnson puts Alan Dulles in
Speaker 5: charge of any information coming from the CIA into the
Speaker 5: Warrant Commission, and you know, obviously nothing got in. No,
Speaker 5: we didn't know, we didn't know about the CIA's connection
Speaker 5: to the mafia. We didn't know about the CIA's extra
Speaker 5: judicial killings of heads of state, which they did many
Speaker 5: of We didn't know about out a lot of the
Speaker 5: involvement with the Cubans in Cuba. We didn't know any
Speaker 5: of this stuff. So Alan Dalles is compromising that. Now.
Speaker 5: The big revelation, the big, big, big revelation was in
Speaker 5: the second investigation that was for the House Select Committee
Speaker 5: on Assassinations. And we bring this up in the podcast
Speaker 5: as well. And this didn't come out, This didn't come
Speaker 5: out until years after the investigation. But the man put
Speaker 5: in charge of being the liaison between the House Investigation
Speaker 5: and the CIA was a man named George Joannedes. You've
Speaker 5: never heard of his name, You don't know who he is,
Speaker 5: but I can. What I'll tell you is George Joannedes
Speaker 5: was a former CIA agent and he was the head
Speaker 5: of a counter intelligence program that developed assets, one of
Speaker 5: which was Lee Harvey Oswalald. So the guy who was
Speaker 5: the gatekeeper again to the CIA was the very guy
Speaker 5: who they wanted to who they should have questioned. We
Speaker 5: interviewed Robert Blakey, who was the counsel to the House
Speaker 5: Select Committee. He had no idea that this is what
Speaker 5: Joe and Edes did. And when he found out many
Speaker 5: years later, he was furious. He said, if I had
Speaker 5: known then what I knew now, I would have put
Speaker 5: Joe and Edies on the stand. He was the answer
Speaker 5: to many of our questions of how the CIA was
Speaker 5: involved in the assassination. So you know, there you have
Speaker 5: two big pieces of information there, separated by many, many years,
Speaker 5: and we try to put it all together in one place.
Speaker 1: And there's also the question a lot of our fellow
Speaker 1: listeners will be asking, which is is there such thing
Speaker 1: as a former CIA agent?
Speaker 5: It makes me think, no, there's there's no such thing.
Speaker 5: I mean a CIA agent.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 5: You you you you may not be active in the
Speaker 5: way you were when you were being paid by the agency,
Speaker 5: but you have security clearance and uh you have it
Speaker 5: for your life. And you you know, it was an
Speaker 5: interesting thing recently with a Trump I think try to
Speaker 5: strip uh? And did I think strip uh John Brennan
Speaker 5: of his security clearance because you didn't like what John
Speaker 5: Brennan was saying about him and about his uh, you know,
Speaker 5: his involvement in January sixth. So yes, you're you're always connected.
Speaker 5: Once you once you're there.
Speaker 2: Even about the clearances. I mean the relationships, these lifelong
Speaker 2: relationships and contacts that you can leverage even minus the
Speaker 2: security clearances. Correct, I mean I think that stuff is
Speaker 2: money in the bank.
Speaker 5: Yeah, No, that that's that's true power.
Speaker 3: Just a real quick insert here for anybody that wants
Speaker 3: to deep down the rabbit hole. I'm looking at a
Speaker 3: declassified document here that describes mister Johan Ed's work from
Speaker 3: December nineteen sixty two to April nineteen sixty four, and
Speaker 3: it describes him as the case officer for the Cuban
Speaker 3: Exile Group Directorio Revolutioncenario as Study and teal is known
Speaker 3: as student.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's a student directed anti Castro group.
Speaker 1: And there's there's something else too. And I know people
Speaker 1: are yelling at their phones right now or however you
Speaker 1: listen to shows the House Select Committee, you have this,
Speaker 1: you have this terrifying observation rob in who killed JFK.
Speaker 1: Where you say, look, these are two fundamentally flawed investigations
Speaker 1: and they reach two very different conclusions. And one thing,
Speaker 1: one thing that I think stands out for people were
Speaker 1: who were born after that assassination is to read the conclusion.
Speaker 1: So the House Select Committee, and see that they have
Speaker 1: dropped the C word. They have said the assassination seemed
Speaker 1: to be the result of a I believe the quote
Speaker 1: is probable conspiracy. Y, yes, I mean the Warren Commission
Speaker 1: basically said that Lee Harvey Oswald was a lone gunman,
Speaker 1: did it all by himself.
Speaker 5: The House Select Committee said it was probably a conspiracy
Speaker 5: based on all the investigation they had done, but they
Speaker 5: didn't say who was involved in the conspiracy. They never
Speaker 5: could get that far because of this guy, George Joannides.
Speaker 5: They didn't name the mob, they didn't name the CIA,
Speaker 5: they didn't talk about the Cuban exilese. They just said,
Speaker 5: based on the information they had, it was probably a conspiracy.
Speaker 5: So you have two diametrically opposed conclusions, and that those
Speaker 5: are the two government.
Speaker 3: Records now and Warren Commission is nineteen sixty four, so
Speaker 3: very soon after the assassination, and the House Select Committee
Speaker 3: isn't until nineteen seventy six. So just imagine, like again,
Speaker 3: already we've got decades separating, a decade separating these two things.
Speaker 3: And you wonder why Americans in general, you're talking about
Speaker 3: drips and drabs information coming out from the very beginning.
Speaker 3: It's like we're getting little bits and pieces right, and
Speaker 3: I swear it feels like it's designed that way.
Speaker 5: Yeah, well, I don't know design, but if you think
Speaker 5: about you mentioned Dick Gregory. The House Select Committee was
Speaker 5: born out of an investigation by Idaho Senator Frank Church.
Speaker 5: They had a committee there set up in the Senate
Speaker 5: and that was based on information that was coming out
Speaker 5: that the CIA was doing all kinds of things that
Speaker 5: they were not aware of. And it came out as
Speaker 5: a revelation during that that they were doing these extra
Speaker 5: judicial killings, that other things were going on. And then
Speaker 5: Dick Gregory went on The Heraldo Show and they showed
Speaker 5: the Zapruder film for the first time. Now, the Zapruder
Speaker 5: film was, you know, the Warren Commission saw it. The
Speaker 5: public had not seen it. Nobody still need photographs, just
Speaker 5: some still photographs, but we didn't have a context and
Speaker 5: we didn't see it. When that came out and the
Speaker 5: Church Committee started revealing what they knew, that gave birth
Speaker 5: to the House Select Committee. And that was, like you say,
Speaker 5: well over ten years after the Warren Commission came out.
Speaker 5: So now all of a sudden, you have another flashpoint now,
Speaker 5: when Oliver Stone made his film a JFK in nineteen
Speaker 5: ninety two or ninety one, I believe it was that
Speaker 5: also triggered the JFK Records Act and the creation of
Speaker 5: the Assassination Records Review Board, which was another investigation. So
Speaker 5: these things are separated by many, many years, and during
Speaker 5: each of these investigations, more and more and more information
Speaker 5: came out. So, like I say, it's very tough to follow.
Speaker 5: And unless you're tracking all this stuff when it comes out,
Speaker 5: you wouldn't You wouldn't know how to put those pieces together.
Speaker 5: That's what we try to do in this podcast.
Speaker 2: And you do it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I would say accomplished so far. And folks, full
Speaker 1: disclosure here we are in media arrests. We are listing
Speaker 1: along with you all. We do not know how this
Speaker 1: story concludes, yet we do what I do. Want to
Speaker 1: throw one thing here, that's an interesting note, Rob that.
Speaker 5: I before you say that, before you put a pin
Speaker 5: in it, I want to hear the interesting note. But
Speaker 5: by the end of it, by the tenth episode, you
Speaker 5: will hear what we believe happened that day, and we
Speaker 5: will name the shooters that we believe are shooting, and
Speaker 5: we will name the positions that we believe those shooters
Speaker 5: were in. So I'm just no level.
Speaker 1: Will you come back on the show?
Speaker 5: Sure?
Speaker 3: Sure, absolutely, Okay, so it'll be later than this, early
Speaker 3: in the morning, we promised you.
Speaker 2: I agree.
Speaker 1: So there's something interesting in speaking of contextualization. There is
Speaker 1: a there is a deep temptation often that pulls us
Speaker 1: away from objectivity when we start connecting dots, right because
Speaker 1: humans identify patterns. And I noticed that of the seven
Speaker 1: official members of the Warren Commission, one died under it
Speaker 1: or disappeared under extremely mysterious circumstances before the House Select Committee,
Speaker 1: uh and the Church Committee got their crack at this,
Speaker 1: And that would be Hail Bogs, who disappeared over over
Speaker 1: the hinterlands of Alaska.
Speaker 5: There was a plane crash that you know, we can't
Speaker 5: say sure what happened there. We don't know, and we're
Speaker 5: not going to be some conjecture over this. It happened.
Speaker 5: But there are a lot of mysterious deaths that occurred
Speaker 5: right after the Warren Commission came out. There was a
Speaker 5: very famous woman who was married to a CIA agent.
Speaker 5: Her name is Mary Meyer, and her sister was having
Speaker 5: an affair with Jack Kennedy and she died at the
Speaker 5: minute the And this is one of the reasons I
Speaker 5: wanted Solidad O'Brien to do this with me, because she
Speaker 5: did a podcast about this called Murder on the Towpath
Speaker 5: in which this woman was assassinated walking in Georgetown. And
Speaker 5: the day that she was killed, James Angleton, who was
Speaker 5: the head of counter intelligence for the CIA, along with
Speaker 5: Ben Bradley, who was editor of the Washington Post, they
Speaker 5: arrived at Mary Meyer's art studio and confiscated a diary
Speaker 5: that she kept. So there's that. And you know Dorothy Killgallan,
Speaker 5: who was killed shortly after attending the Jack Ruby trial
Speaker 5: and was the only one to have actual interviews with
Speaker 5: Jack Ruby. She was killed. And there was a number
Speaker 5: of people that we did a study and there were
Speaker 5: about I think eighteen critical key witnesses who died of
Speaker 5: either a heart attack or suicide or accident or jump
Speaker 5: out of a window something within two years of the assassination.
Speaker 5: And they ran some numbers on it and it's like
Speaker 5: seven hundred trillion, I mean, some crazy number the odds
Speaker 5: of all of those people dying in that way. But
Speaker 5: you know, we don't get into any of that stuff
Speaker 5: because we can't prove why these people died. I mean,
Speaker 5: and so what we've tried to do in the podcast
Speaker 5: is just stick with what we know. These are things
Speaker 5: we know, and then you know, we do our best
Speaker 5: guess as to put together based on everything we know,
Speaker 5: what actually happened.
Speaker 1: And we'll pause here for a word from our sponsor
Speaker 1: before we return and ask Rob Ryder who killed JFK.
Speaker 1: And we have returned.
Speaker 2: We talked a little bit off Mike before we started rolling,
Speaker 2: just about this event being sort of the beginning of
Speaker 2: this massive polarization of the American people, and it being
Speaker 2: you described it as sort of an end of innocence,
Speaker 2: and I think in Ben you wrote in the outline
Speaker 2: here this really was a moment that you could trace
Speaker 2: back to when distrust in our government really kind of
Speaker 2: began as much more of a mainstream thing. Rob, can
Speaker 2: you kind of cut couple all those ideas together into
Speaker 2: sort of your thoughts on what that end of innocence means?
Speaker 5: And well, I mean, we you know, after the Second
Speaker 5: World War, we were the heroes, We were the good guys,
Speaker 5: and we couldn't do nothing wrong. I mean, we you know,
Speaker 5: we had prosperity and people, you know, the gi Bill
Speaker 5: and people were living in you know, the suburbs, and
Speaker 5: they were you know, things were doing, you know, better
Speaker 5: for a lot of people, not for not for black people,
Speaker 5: but for a lot of Americans. And then you have
Speaker 5: this moment happened in nineteen sixty three where it's like
Speaker 5: your father was he I mean, you know, the leader
Speaker 5: of the country was just killed like that. And we
Speaker 5: knew at the time, I mean, which came out that
Speaker 5: Kennedy was trying to make a forge a path to peace.
Speaker 5: He gave a very famous speech at American University where
Speaker 5: he talked about we cannot go down this road of
Speaker 5: nuclear holocaust. We have to find a way to forge
Speaker 5: path to peace. Well, in the context of that, he
Speaker 5: wrote a memo which is on file that he was
Speaker 5: going to call for the removal of a thousand troops
Speaker 5: out of Vietnam that year and the removal of all
Speaker 5: military out of Vietnam by the end of nineteen sixty five. Now,
Speaker 5: we don't know would he have done that, would he
Speaker 5: not have done that. What we do know is that
Speaker 5: he wrote the memo, and certainly the hardliners in the
Speaker 5: CIA and the military knew that, and they were worried
Speaker 5: that that was going to happen. So what happens. Kennedy
Speaker 5: gets assassinated, Johnson becomes president, and the next thing you know,
Speaker 5: we're stepping up the war in Vietnam. And that to
Speaker 5: me was the beginning of a huge divide in America.
Speaker 2: Who does that benefit though, staying in Vietnam? Like I
Speaker 2: think I understand, but just from your respective like the hardliners,
Speaker 2: as you mentioned, like, who is benefiting from US maintaining
Speaker 2: a presence in Vietnam when it was such a disastrous,
Speaker 2: you know, conflicts.
Speaker 5: Well, first of all, ideologically, the hardliners are thinking, and
Speaker 5: that was certainly the thoughts of the day, there was
Speaker 5: a better dead than red. They believed that there was
Speaker 5: this domino theory and that if one country went fell communists,
Speaker 5: that there would be a domino theory and the rest
Speaker 5: of the world would go communists. They were actually afraid
Speaker 5: that the world was going to turn into a communistic world.
Speaker 5: So ideologically that's what they thought. Now on a purely
Speaker 5: economic standpoint, you know, you make money, you go to war,
Speaker 5: and in the military industrial complex, which by the way,
Speaker 5: Eisenhower warned us beware, in the military industrial complex, they
Speaker 5: want they want to be able to do that because
Speaker 5: it's good business. So those two things are happening there.
Speaker 5: And for young people, they're being sent off to war
Speaker 5: to in a war that they don't believe is just
Speaker 5: they don't believe is legal. And if you remember, I
Speaker 5: mean people who want to study their history, there was
Speaker 5: a thing called the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which was
Speaker 5: all about the fact that we were told that our
Speaker 5: ship was fired on in Vietnam in this Tonkin ship
Speaker 5: was fired on and so I mean in the Gulf
Speaker 5: of Tonkin, and that was the pretext for why we
Speaker 5: went to war in Vietnam. So you had a lot
Speaker 5: of distrust going on, and the country started divide. There
Speaker 5: were protests all over the country, and we divided as
Speaker 5: a nation. And I believe that it was the beginning
Speaker 5: of the divide that you see now. This country couldn't
Speaker 5: be more divided than they are now. And I would
Speaker 5: point back to what happened in going into Vietnam. That
Speaker 5: was the beginning of that divide.
Speaker 3: Well, and there's so many things to talk about here
Speaker 3: that branch from that. But we learn in your podcast
Speaker 3: that JFK was maintaining maybe off the books, we would say,
Speaker 3: contact with Soviet officials, like the highest Soviet officials and
Speaker 3: Cuban officials, and attempting to smooth things out directly rather
Speaker 3: than through the mechanisms that would normally you'd need to
Speaker 3: go through to vice.
Speaker 5: Conversation back channel. He was back channeling with Kruse Jeff.
Speaker 5: He was back channeling with Castro directly with Kruse Jeff
Speaker 5: and Castro to make sure that and this is on
Speaker 5: the heels of the Cuban missile crisis, which happened a
Speaker 5: year after the Bay of Pigs. The Cuban missile crisis,
Speaker 5: as people know, or you know, maybe they're learning for
Speaker 5: the first time, was we were on the brink of
Speaker 5: a nuclear war, and those of us who were alive
Speaker 5: at the time will never ever forget it. We found
Speaker 5: out that there were nuclear weapons in Cuba that were
Speaker 5: put there by the Russians ninety miles away from America,
Speaker 5: and they could reach Washington in twenty minutes. So we
Speaker 5: were doing drills in school. Now they have active shooter drills.
Speaker 5: In my time, they had a duck and covered drill
Speaker 5: that you under the desk. You'd get under a desk
Speaker 5: in case of a nuclear Now. I used to make
Speaker 5: a joke about it, which is, you know, it was
Speaker 5: a known fact that the material that they made school
Speaker 5: desks out of could actually repel a nuclear bomb. But it's,
Speaker 5: of course it's ridiculous. It's optics though, right, it's this
Speaker 5: idea with safety, you know, yeah, that we better, you know,
Speaker 5: keep ourselves safe. So we were all believing that that's
Speaker 5: what we were a minute away from a nuclear holocaust,
Speaker 5: and that was that was the basis fun, you know,
Speaker 5: which we lived. So uh, he started the back channel.
Speaker 5: He said, you know, we can't let this happen. What
Speaker 5: can we do? They you know, he settled the Cuban
Speaker 5: missile crisis, Kennedy did. He He made a deal with
Speaker 5: Cruse Chef. We had missiles in Turkey. He said to
Speaker 5: Kruse Chef, will take those missiles out of Turkey if
Speaker 5: you take these missiles out of Cuba, which happened. But
Speaker 5: then he said, from there on, we got to make
Speaker 5: sure that nothing like this happens again, because the whole world.
Speaker 5: We're going to blow up the whole world if we
Speaker 5: do this. And so he started back channeling to Castro
Speaker 5: to Kruse Chef and the CIA was well aware of that.
Speaker 5: They became well aware of that, and that added to
Speaker 5: their distrust of Kennedy in terms of his fight against communism.
Speaker 1: And also there seems to be this it was a
Speaker 1: thing that the American public was largely unaware of, but
Speaker 1: there was internal descent escalating into chaos. At the same time,
Speaker 1: there was this move for de escalation.
Speaker 5: Yes, right right during the Cuban missile crisis. The hardliners
Speaker 5: in both the CIA and the military were We're pushing
Speaker 5: Kennedy like crazy, make a strike, take them out, take
Speaker 5: those missiles out, go after them. And they were very
Speaker 5: upset with him when he chose this this other path.
Speaker 5: It was. It was contentious. There was a lot of screaming,
Speaker 5: yelling going on in the White It's thirteen days, very
Speaker 5: famous time, thirteen days where we all lived on the
Speaker 5: edge of are we going to be blown up?
Speaker 1: Do you feel rob that there was a somewhat of
Speaker 1: a of a like lack of respect amid the unelected
Speaker 1: power structures of US governance, because from what we've been reading,
Speaker 1: it seems as though when Kennedy enters office, you know,
Speaker 1: the CIA still still high off the oss World War
Speaker 1: two actions. They're kind of coming in with this attitude that, yes,
Speaker 1: you will be a figurehead and you will do what
Speaker 1: we the adults say.
Speaker 5: Is not only that, yeah, not only that. But Kennedy
Speaker 5: campaigned in nineteen sixty as a anti communist, you know,
Speaker 5: strong against communism. There was a big debate, you know,
Speaker 5: with with Nixon. It was on television, was I think
Speaker 5: it was one of the first televised debates, and he
Speaker 5: had to show that he had real bona fides in
Speaker 5: fighting communism. He ran as a anti communist, strong willed,
Speaker 5: a guy who would stand, you know, in his inaugural desk,
Speaker 5: We'll stand up to any foe, We'll fight anybody to
Speaker 5: do this. And he knew in order to win he
Speaker 5: had to show his strength against communism. But as the
Speaker 5: realities presented himself, he realizes that that strength that he
Speaker 5: showed could lead to world hundreds and hundreds of millions
Speaker 5: of people being killed. And so the reality set in
Speaker 5: and he said, no, I got a oh, a different,
Speaker 5: a different direction here.
Speaker 2: And they were mad.
Speaker 5: They were angry at him because they assumed that he
Speaker 5: was going to be a you know, a real, real
Speaker 5: you know, as as an extension of the McCarthy days,
Speaker 5: where go after the comedy, get him out of government,
Speaker 5: get you know, anybody could be a comedy. They're lurking,
Speaker 5: you know, get get rid of them. Uh, they thought
Speaker 5: he was going to be one of those guys.
Speaker 2: That's a proper witch hunt, though not the way it's
Speaker 2: kind of been dog whistle ified by the Trump administration.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: That was people actually being persecuted who did not have
Speaker 2: any affiliation.
Speaker 5: Yes, yes, a lot of them were.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, And it makes me wonder about the just
Speaker 1: real quick, the concept of greater good, which seems to
Speaker 1: be you know, both an ideological motivating force for a
Speaker 1: lot of the more hawkish factors here. And I have
Speaker 1: to say, uh, one of the things that I went
Speaker 1: back and rewatched after listening to the first several episodes
Speaker 1: of Who Killed JFK? Was a you good men, and
Speaker 1: there's you know, there's there's something there that reminds me
Speaker 1: and probably a lot of our listeners too, reminds me
Speaker 1: so viscerally of that rationalization where where we have characters
Speaker 1: who are saying, look, did I do something quote unquote wrong? Maybe,
Speaker 1: but I did it for the right reasons. Do you
Speaker 1: feel do you feel that that was sort of a
Speaker 1: common mentality in the Operation Ensure.
Speaker 5: I mean that is, you know, the military is there
Speaker 5: to protect us, and that's good, we want that. But
Speaker 5: the question is how far do you go to protect us?
Speaker 5: Are you willing to commit war crimes? In the case
Speaker 5: of Nazi Germany? Are you willing to do anything? And
Speaker 5: that's what the character that Jack Nicholson plays in Few
Speaker 5: Good Men. He says, you want me on that wall,
Speaker 5: you need me on that wall. I'm doing what you
Speaker 5: can't do. And so the question always is how far
Speaker 5: are you willing to go in order to uh to
Speaker 5: protect people? Are you willing to blow up the world?
Speaker 5: I mean, who wins? Nobody wins in that situation. You're
Speaker 5: not protecting anybody.
Speaker 2: And unfortunately, as just mere mortal voters, we don't get
Speaker 2: to the side how far that line is? No, we don't, no, no.
Speaker 5: But what we're hoping is that we, as normal voters,
Speaker 5: are electing people who have the good sense to know
Speaker 5: where that line is, and that that's where we are now.
Speaker 5: I mean, we're we couldn't be more divided. You've got
Speaker 5: one guy who's willing to do anything, you know, Donald Trump,
Speaker 5: is willing to do anything to keep power, and that
Speaker 5: means he even said it. I'm not making it up.
Speaker 5: He said it. We'll put the vermin you know, we'll
Speaker 5: take and we'll put them in in in in camps,
Speaker 5: and we'll make sure you're familiar with We'll get the blood,
Speaker 5: you know, the disgusting the that's poisoning the American bloodstream,
Speaker 5: will put him in camps. That's he said that.
Speaker 1: But he's also plagiarizing Adolf Hitler too, well, yeah, because
Speaker 1: he can't make your stuff up.
Speaker 5: He's not smart enough. But I mean, and I always
Speaker 5: heard that he had mine komf on his vin stand. Well,
Speaker 5: he probably had it on his best name. He didn't
Speaker 5: read it. I mean, I don't know how much of
Speaker 5: you bred who knows. I don't know what he does
Speaker 5: with reading.
Speaker 2: Mine from the Bible and he didn't read either of them.
Speaker 5: Yeah, right, he probably held mine comf. He held my
Speaker 5: comf up the wrong way too. But guys, but we're
Speaker 5: getting too far a field here. But the truth is,
Speaker 5: we want to elect people who know where that line
Speaker 5: is and not to cross it, because when you cross it,
Speaker 5: you're not protecting people.
Speaker 1: You're also not electing a lot of the decision makers
Speaker 1: to your point, directly and representative democracy.
Speaker 2: There's no one.
Speaker 1: No average voter votes for a Supreme Court nominee, No
Speaker 1: average voter votes for the people in charge of the
Speaker 1: NSSA or the CIA.
Speaker 5: No. But what you are voting for is you're voting
Speaker 5: for a president who nominates Supreme Court justices, who nominates
Speaker 5: a secretary of Defense, you know, any of the positions.
Speaker 5: You're nominating somebody, or you're voting for somebody who has
Speaker 5: the power to nominate people who are sensible, who know
Speaker 5: where the line is. That's representative government, and that's what
Speaker 5: you want. You want somebody who's reasoned, who's intelligent, and
Speaker 5: who can make the right decisions.
Speaker 2: Hey, let's take a quick pause here for a word
Speaker 2: from our sponsor, and then we'll return with more from
Speaker 2: Rob Reiner, and we're back. Let's jump right into our
Speaker 2: conversation with Rob Reiner already in progress.
Speaker 3: Let's take it back to nineteen seventy five, to the
Speaker 3: Church Committee again, because it's directly related to this. That's
Speaker 3: when the American public learned about a couple of things
Speaker 3: that you might be familiar with if you're listening to
Speaker 3: this show MK Ultra and Cointelpro specifically when it comes
Speaker 3: to assassinations. I'm thinking about Cointelpro. If you jump five
Speaker 3: years after JFK's assassination and you look at Martin Luther
Speaker 3: King Junior, you look at JFK's brother RFK, So it's like,
Speaker 3: again not directly perhaps related to Cointelpro, but it is
Speaker 3: a secret it is a secret thing that we didn't
Speaker 3: know about, that the FBI was doing to investigate people
Speaker 3: that they thought would be counter to the vision of
Speaker 3: the world that they had.
Speaker 5: Right, that's right, that's right. And you mentioned it's counterintelligence program.
Speaker 5: I mean, that's what they're doing. They're trying to root
Speaker 5: out anybody that goes against their ideology. You mentioned Ultra.
Speaker 5: MK Ultra was a program that was designed at the CIA,
Speaker 5: and this was during the Cold War where there was
Speaker 5: a lot of concern about moles infiltrating our intelligence community
Speaker 5: and getting information, and we wanted to try to see
Speaker 5: if we could get our people inside the you know,
Speaker 5: the Soviet Union, inside the KGB. There was this big
Speaker 5: cat and mouse game going on, headed up by this
Speaker 5: head of counter intelligence, James Jesus Angleton, who was a
Speaker 5: brilliant guy, genius, but also paranoid beyond belief that he
Speaker 5: thought there was, you know, a mole everywhere you look.
Speaker 5: So this mk Ultra program was designed to try to
Speaker 5: create spies, people who would look like, you know, dissidents
Speaker 5: or whatever. And there was a program set up at
Speaker 5: a place called Nag's Head and we'll get you'll get
Speaker 5: into this. You'll hear this in the other episodes. It
Speaker 5: was in North Carolina where they took disaffected youths, Oswald
Speaker 5: being one of them. He was part of that program.
Speaker 5: And we have somebody on the podcast who knew Oswald
Speaker 5: in that program, who was there at Nashead. And what
Speaker 5: they did was they used LSD. They used all kinds
Speaker 5: of uh techniques of torture and things to try to uh,
Speaker 5: you know, get inside somebody's mind. This was like in
Speaker 5: the days of the Manchurian candidate, that you could create
Speaker 5: this elusive illusion of somebody who was not who they
Speaker 5: appeared to be. Now it didn't really work, they didn't
Speaker 5: really were able to be successful. But the fact is
Speaker 5: they were uh uh training people to be assets assets
Speaker 5: for them that somewhere down the line they could could use.
Speaker 5: And Oswald was part of that. Oswald was part of that.
Speaker 5: He also went and learned Russian, He learned uh Rush Russian,
Speaker 5: and he was sent to the Soviet Union as as
Speaker 5: part of an operation to see if they could infiltrate
Speaker 5: somebody into the into the uh you know, Toto, the
Speaker 5: Soviet Union. It was a failure, he didn't get anything.
Speaker 5: But we know that that happened because he was stationed
Speaker 5: in Japan during you know, when he was a marine.
Speaker 5: He was you know, a radar operator for the U
Speaker 5: two spy plane. And there was a guy who was
Speaker 5: also in military intelligence that was teamed up with Oswald
Speaker 5: on an operation to try to flip a Soviet colonel
Speaker 5: to come into the CIA. So Oswald was part of
Speaker 5: an intelligence community. We knew that that. And once he
Speaker 5: went to Russia in nineteen fifty nine sixty, around sixty
Speaker 5: to fifty on sixty they opened a file on Oswald,
Speaker 5: but they call it two to one file. And for
Speaker 5: four years they had reams and reams of documents connecting
Speaker 5: the CIA with Oswald, and none of that came out
Speaker 5: in the Warrant Commission report. That Warren report said there's
Speaker 5: no there's no connect We don't know anything about Oswald,
Speaker 5: and there were thousands of documents that showed that they did.
Speaker 2: That's what I was going to ask, because there's no
Speaker 2: acknowledgment that he was an asset or a reference to
Speaker 2: who his handlers might have been, or he was just
Speaker 2: a lone wolf. He was treated like a civilian who
Speaker 2: just went nuts and did this thing of his own volition.
Speaker 5: Well, it's interesting, you know you said he said I
Speaker 5: was just a patsy. I was a patsy. Now, you know,
Speaker 5: if you're accused of murder, the first thing you're saying
Speaker 5: is I didn't do it. I don't know, I didn't
Speaker 5: do it. You're not saying I'm a patsy. A patsy
Speaker 5: is a guy who knows that something else is going on,
Speaker 5: that he's being set up for. And then when you
Speaker 5: add people ask, well, well didn't he want to you know,
Speaker 5: he was a lone wolf and didn't he want to
Speaker 5: make a name for himself. Well, if you want to
Speaker 5: make a name for yourself, you say what you did.
Speaker 5: You don't say I'm a patsy. You say I did
Speaker 5: it because I believe America.
Speaker 2: You know you do, you know you do that.
Speaker 5: It's the exact opposite.
Speaker 3: Okay, I've read some things and have heard something that
Speaker 3: Oswald was potentially meeting with a group of Cuban exiles
Speaker 3: in Dallas right before the assassination. Did you find anything
Speaker 3: that may corroborate that.
Speaker 5: No, we didn't find that he was meeting with a
Speaker 5: group of Cuban exiles. What we did find was that
Speaker 5: it's known, this is on record that he went to
Speaker 5: New Orleans a few months in April May. He went
Speaker 5: to New Orleans and he joined what they call the
Speaker 5: fair Play for Cuba Committee. Now that was a legitimate organization.
Speaker 5: They had chapters around the country, but when he went
Speaker 5: to New Orleans, he started his own chapter. And he
Speaker 5: was the only member of the fair Play for Cuba Committee.
Speaker 5: There was no other members. He was the only one,
Speaker 5: and he handed out leaflets. And if this is something
Speaker 5: we know because we have photographs. In one of the
Speaker 5: pictures he's handing out leaflets and there's a CIA operative
Speaker 5: in the background of one of those photographs. Now, the
Speaker 5: other thing is when he handed out these photographs, it
Speaker 5: was done at a place where there were uh anti
Speaker 5: Castro people. He was supposed to be pro cast a
Speaker 5: lot of anti Castro and there was a big fight.
Speaker 5: They took his leafless, they threw up in the air,
Speaker 5: there was a scuffle, there was a melee and was
Speaker 5: all caught on on on film. I mean they they
Speaker 5: they and it went on the news. So who's you know,
Speaker 5: who's filming this, who's doing this? I mean, you have
Speaker 5: to make it so that you're you know, setting up
Speaker 5: this guy that he's a pro castro guy and uh,
Speaker 5: you know, otherwise he's just a lone guy sitting on
Speaker 5: the corner handing out leafless. You know who go who
Speaker 5: films the guy handing out leafless at any corner anywhere?
Speaker 3: The narrative somebody making a movie.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a bit of a there's there's this emphasis
Speaker 1: kind of on narrative and even in the even in
Speaker 1: the internal conversations which are now public knowledge regarding the
Speaker 1: Warren Commission, we see that there is this strong drive
Speaker 1: from people who are kind of driving the commission, even
Speaker 1: though they're not official members. I believe it was Jagger Hoover,
Speaker 1: famous dude who said, look, we're going to make this
Speaker 1: look like this story.
Speaker 5: And yeah, you had you had not only Jaye Go Hoover,
Speaker 5: but you know, we have audio tapes of Hoover talking
Speaker 5: to Johnson saying, we can't let this thing get out
Speaker 5: of hand. The House wants to investigated, the Senate wants
Speaker 5: to investigated, but we got to keep a lid on
Speaker 5: this thing because it's it's going to go crazy, so
Speaker 5: we have to control it. And then there's a very
Speaker 5: famous memo by Nicholas Kotzenbach. He was the deputy Attorney
Speaker 5: General under Robert Kennedy, and he released a memo saying,
Speaker 5: we have to convince the public that Lee Harvey Oswall
Speaker 5: was the Loan assassin. And this came out three days
Speaker 5: or a few days right after the assassination, and they
Speaker 5: were already saying this is Oswal, and we got to
Speaker 5: make the public believe this. So everything was designed to
Speaker 5: create that narrative, like you said, and we get into
Speaker 5: it in the third episode where we get into the
Speaker 5: forensics of how the narrative really starts to fall apart.
Speaker 5: It really falls apart because we get into the famous
Speaker 5: single bullet theory and they had a big problem. I mean,
Speaker 5: people who study this stuff know it's impossible to do
Speaker 5: what this one bullet was supposed to have done. And
Speaker 5: for your listeners who don't know about it. The Warrant
Speaker 5: Commission said that three shots were fired from the sixth
Speaker 5: floor of the Texas school Book Depository building, which overlooked
Speaker 5: the Presidential motikaide on Elm Street. Three shots. Initially they
Speaker 5: said the first shot hit Kennedy and in the back
Speaker 5: the second shot. They had a problem because they said
Speaker 5: all three shots hit. The problem they had was the
Speaker 5: first shot missed. And they found out that the first
Speaker 5: shot missed because it hit a curb and a piece
Speaker 5: of concrete flicked into a bystander's cheek and he started
Speaker 5: to bleed. So now they were left with two shots,
Speaker 5: and that two shots had to do all the damage.
Speaker 5: One of the shots we know was a shot to
Speaker 5: his head. That was the fatal head wound, the shot
Speaker 5: that killed Kennedy. Then they have one bullet left to
Speaker 5: say that a bullet went into from the sixth floor.
Speaker 5: From the sixth floor, the bullet went into the Kennedy's
Speaker 5: back right six to eight inches below his neck, then
Speaker 5: traveled up and came out his neck. Then made a
Speaker 5: turn to the Magic Connolly. Hit Connolly in the ribs,
Speaker 5: break some ribs, then makes another turn hits him in
Speaker 5: the wrists, breaks the wrist bones, then makes another turn
Speaker 5: and and it winds up in his thigh. That's what
Speaker 5: they had to make you believe. And the guy who
Speaker 5: came up with that was a fellow named Marlinspector who
Speaker 5: became a senator. At the time, he was just a
Speaker 5: lawyer who was representing the committee, and he came up
Speaker 5: with this single bullet theory, this magic bullet that did
Speaker 5: all that damage. And they said, well, that's what And
Speaker 5: by the way, you can see that bullet. It's on
Speaker 5: file in the in the archives and in the Warrant Commission,
Speaker 5: and it's limited as evidence number three ninety nine, and
Speaker 5: it's pristine. It didn't just looks like it didn't hit anything.
Speaker 2: You know, rub should we maybe take this as an
Speaker 2: opportunity to address the elephant in the room That seems
Speaker 2: to me it should be a larger elephant, but it
Speaker 2: seems to have us have been glossed over by the
Speaker 2: media a bit. Paul Landis, Oh, yeah, well that's revelations.
Speaker 5: Yeah. See, that's interesting you bring up, Paul Landis, because
Speaker 5: again it goes back to drips and things coming out
Speaker 5: over a time. If people Paul Anders came out with
Speaker 5: a report about I don't know, a couple of months
Speaker 5: ago whatever, and we interviewed him for the podcast. Yeah,
Speaker 5: he's on there. And this guy was on the trail car.
Speaker 5: He was a secret service aation who was in the trailcar.
Speaker 5: He's riding on the running board behind Kennedy when the
Speaker 5: headshot came. He talks about how brain matter and the
Speaker 5: skull matter flew in his direction and he had a
Speaker 5: duck to get out of the way of getting hit
Speaker 5: by brain matter. And he talked about how when they
Speaker 5: got to Parkland Hospital, which is where they're going to
Speaker 5: take care of Kennedy, that when he helped Jackie Kennedy
Speaker 5: up out of the seat, there was a blood pool
Speaker 5: of blood on the seat where they were sitting, and
Speaker 5: he looked in the back on the top of the
Speaker 5: seat resting there was a bullet and it was this
Speaker 5: bullet and he didn't know what to do because he thought, well,
Speaker 5: this is a piece of evidence, and it was. He
Speaker 5: knew the bullet had been fired because it had striation
Speaker 5: marks on it, but it was essentially pristine, there was
Speaker 5: no other damage to it. And he picked it up
Speaker 5: because he thought, you know, it's a piece of evidence.
Speaker 5: What if somebody takes it and you know, and then
Speaker 5: he went into the hospital and didn't know what to do,
Speaker 5: and he put it on the Kennedy's by Kennedy's leg
Speaker 5: when he was being worked on. And so when you
Speaker 5: hear this and you take it not in context, you go, well,
Speaker 5: so what there was another bullet there? But what you
Speaker 5: have to know is that this is the bullet that
Speaker 5: Arl Inspector claimed to have gone through two people. Now,
Speaker 5: if that happened, then how how did the bullet wind
Speaker 5: up in the back but it bounced back after it wounded?
Speaker 5: You know what I mean? According is so crazy that
Speaker 5: unless you can put all these pieces together, you go, well,
Speaker 5: so the guy found a bullet, big deal.
Speaker 1: And what would the American public have done? There's another
Speaker 1: question we can't answer. What would the American public have
Speaker 1: done in the sixties had they known these and other discrepancies?
Speaker 1: You know, Rob entering into this, we knew there was
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff that we wouldn't get to in
Speaker 1: our conversation, like the autopsy reports, uh, the one that
Speaker 1: got birds. Yeah, the fact that Texas Governor Coddoley also said,
Speaker 1: I don't think that was the same bullet.
Speaker 5: No, he said that he died. He said the bullet
Speaker 5: that Kennedy did not hit me. What would the public
Speaker 5: have done. I think they were worried what the public
Speaker 5: would have done, because it would have put I mean,
Speaker 5: as it is, we have distrust in government now. The
Speaker 5: trust level in government is so low now that I
Speaker 5: think that at that time, it would have, you know,
Speaker 5: just blown the lid off of any trust of the
Speaker 5: Justice Department, the intelligence community, the military. You know, they
Speaker 5: were trying to keep a lid on that so that
Speaker 5: they you know, that trust remained in government. But my
Speaker 5: contention is you trust when you know. And if you
Speaker 5: know the truth and you're open and telling the truth,
Speaker 5: you can say, hey, we made a mistake, we did
Speaker 5: something wrong, we should not have done that. And if
Speaker 5: you do that, you gain trust, you don't lose trust.
Speaker 5: And then that's what we need the basis of all democracy.
Speaker 5: And that's why I've stuck with this for so long.
Speaker 5: I believe that that the foundation of a strong democracy
Speaker 5: is that the American people trust in the institutions of government.
Speaker 5: We have to trust and by the way, people desputs
Speaker 5: know the best way to gain power is to fomote
Speaker 5: foment distrust and that's what Trump's been doing it. It's
Speaker 5: right out of the authoritarian playbook. You make people distrust
Speaker 5: things and then you say I can fix it. I'm
Speaker 5: the only one that can fix it.
Speaker 1: This goes to one of the I think the big questions,
Speaker 1: and I can't speak for everyone, but this is after
Speaker 1: listening to the show and just the caliber the level
Speaker 1: of research and investigation that you have done here. One
Speaker 1: of one of my big questions is why now, like,
Speaker 1: why this moment in time do we get the answer
Speaker 1: for who killed JFK.
Speaker 5: Well, I think again, it goes back to right now,
Speaker 5: we're seeing the potential end of American democracy and if
Speaker 5: people don't think that that could happen, we're seeing it
Speaker 5: right now unfold in front of our very eyes. And
Speaker 5: what we need to do is be honest and truthful
Speaker 5: with the American public. We have a lot of things
Speaker 5: that we've done wrong in this country, you know, starting
Speaker 5: with what we did to Native Americans, then what we
Speaker 5: did to black people who were slaves for so many
Speaker 5: hundred years, and we have to come to grips with
Speaker 5: all this stuff in order to make a more perfect union.
Speaker 5: The people who started this country, they weren't. You know,
Speaker 5: they didn't know everything they you know, Jefferson had slave,
Speaker 5: they had slaves. But they did provide us with a
Speaker 5: working document that could make us better, that we could
Speaker 5: keep doing what we need to do to make us
Speaker 5: better to form a more perfect union. So we have
Speaker 5: this opportunity, and the only way we're going to forge
Speaker 5: a more perfect union is to level with people to
Speaker 5: say this is the truth, this is true, and this
Speaker 5: is not true. And we're living at a time where
Speaker 5: it's very, very hard to get the truth out because
Speaker 5: we're loaded with disinformation. You know. You see on TikTok
Speaker 5: they come out with all of a sudden, ben Laden
Speaker 5: is saying something and it's amplified on TikTok, and then
Speaker 5: everybody jumps on that, and you go, oh, no, that's
Speaker 5: not right. You don't kill people because you don't believe
Speaker 5: in their ideology or you don't like Jews, or you
Speaker 5: don't like Muslims, or you don't like black people whatever.
Speaker 5: That's not making it a more perfect union. So that's
Speaker 5: why we want to do this. We want to put
Speaker 5: try to keep putting us back on.
Speaker 2: The right track. You know, it's funny Rob that like
Speaker 2: my kid is fifteen and just an absolute product of
Speaker 2: the Internet, much more than any other generation, where it
Speaker 2: was a fully formed thing by the time they, you know,
Speaker 2: were of age and just using it from as early
Speaker 2: as they can remember. But my kid very much understands
Speaker 2: the idea of vetting information that they're presented with, you know,
Speaker 2: the idea of being the arbiter of good information well
Speaker 2: time people.
Speaker 5: True, hats off to your kid, man, because most kids,
Speaker 5: from what I understand, and I just was at the
Speaker 5: symposium where they talked about the dangers of AI and
Speaker 5: the genius say, you are working on AI. They don't
Speaker 5: know how to control it. They don't have the single
Speaker 5: foggiest idea of how to regulate it. And what they
Speaker 5: say is a lot of young people will look at
Speaker 5: something informationally on on social media. They'll read the headline
Speaker 5: and then they'll go to the comments. I was hoping.
Speaker 2: Of the generation. Yeah maybe it's maybe it's not. Maybe
Speaker 2: my kid is no similar their peers.
Speaker 5: But well, I mean thinking, you know, like I say,
Speaker 5: hats off to your kid, because I mean, if he's
Speaker 5: really you know, studying this and figuring in trying to
Speaker 5: figure out what's true and what's not true, then hats
Speaker 5: off to them.
Speaker 2: I was just hoping that it was maybe indicative of
Speaker 2: the generation, but your research seems to say otherwise. But
Speaker 2: who knows. You know, every individual is different.
Speaker 3: So yeah, yeah, Hey guys, I just want to articulate
Speaker 3: to everybody listening into you, Rob, why I am so
Speaker 3: excited that you are one of the minds behind this project.
Speaker 3: And it has to do with how your brain functions
Speaker 3: because of what because of the way it's functioned in
Speaker 3: the past, simultaneously focused on the macro and the micro.
Speaker 3: Just see if I can get this out so I
Speaker 3: can ask you the question. So if you go back
Speaker 3: to the fall of nineteen ninety one and you put
Speaker 3: yourself on that bridge when you began filming a few
Speaker 3: good men. If you're you are overseeing the creative vision
Speaker 3: of this project, so that means like having that overview
Speaker 3: feel right while micro not micromanaging, but keeping yourself focused
Speaker 3: on the micro thousands of decisions that go into getting
Speaker 3: one shot right. But you're also a producer on that project,
Speaker 3: which means you are getting to see kind of the
Speaker 3: stuff that happens behind the scenes that allows the filming
Speaker 3: to begin. Even how do you think those experiences over
Speaker 3: all of these years shape the way that you've looked
Speaker 3: at this assassination as some kind of set of machinations.
Speaker 5: Potentially, you know that that's a perfect summation of how
Speaker 5: I approach things. It's exactly how I do it. You know,
Speaker 5: as a director, I do have to see the overall
Speaker 5: big picture. I have to see what that looks like.
Speaker 5: And at the same time, I know that these little
Speaker 5: specific details are what make up that big picture. So
Speaker 5: you look at it and you say, does that make sense?
Speaker 5: Does that not make sense? I'm somebody who I love puzzles.
Speaker 5: I like to do puzzles. I like to figure out
Speaker 5: how does something work, how do those pieces fit together.
Speaker 5: I'm not just jigsaw puzzles with crosswords and Sudoku and
Speaker 5: all of those kinds of things. So I do look
Speaker 5: at things in a macro way, but then I also
Speaker 5: look to individual little fine points and does that make sense?
Speaker 5: Does that fit? Does that piece fit into that puzzle?
Speaker 5: Or is that And maybe it does, and they maybe
Speaker 5: the puzzle goes in a different direction. A lot of
Speaker 5: times you look at something and you have a certain
Speaker 5: predisposed idea as to what something will be, but then
Speaker 5: all of a sudden, the thing will tell you that
Speaker 5: it isn't that it's something else, and then you have
Speaker 5: to be open minded enough to go down the road
Speaker 5: of where that's leading you. And so you go down
Speaker 5: all these rabbit trails to find out what and then
Speaker 5: eventually the puzzle comes into shape and you see what
Speaker 5: it really is. And I've been at this particular puzzle
Speaker 5: for sixty years, and it wasn't until I met a
Speaker 5: number of different people who started filling in pieces and
Speaker 5: certain things that I thought, hmmm, that's not maybe true.
Speaker 5: But then when I started putting it all together with
Speaker 5: all the information that I had, I went, Okay, I
Speaker 5: get this now when we lay it out at the
Speaker 5: end of this podcast, I can't tell you one hundred
Speaker 5: percent for sure that these were the four shooters and
Speaker 5: that these were the four positions we're in. I just
Speaker 5: gave something away spoil or alert. But I can tell
Speaker 5: you the best educated guests, based on all the information
Speaker 5: that's been provided, the one thing I know one hundred
Speaker 5: percent for sure it was a conspiracy. There's no question
Speaker 5: about that. There is no question about that this man
Speaker 5: Learvy Oswell did not do what they said he did.
Speaker 5: Did not happen that I know for a fact. Other
Speaker 5: than that exactly how it was put together. I can
Speaker 5: offer you what I think happened, and then you know,
Speaker 5: we hopefully it'll spawn more discussion.
Speaker 1: And that I think is our button, that is that
Speaker 1: is leading us to the rest of the story. Rob,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for your time. We're not blowing
Speaker 1: smoke when we say that this truly is, at least
Speaker 1: in my opinion, a top notch, top caliber investigation, connecting
Speaker 1: things in a way that they have not been connected
Speaker 1: did before to the point about puzzles, and you're taking
Speaker 1: on this herculean task right of unraveling an official narrative
Speaker 1: that was forced upon the American and global public for
Speaker 1: more than half a century, interrogating claims that have, for
Speaker 1: so often and for so long not been given the
Speaker 1: scrutiny that they deserve. We are, as we said earlier,
Speaker 1: right there with everybody listening. We're tuning in as you
Speaker 1: answer the question who killed JFK? And you know, usually
Speaker 1: at the end of these conversations we ask a question
Speaker 1: that feels kind of odd to ask a creator of
Speaker 1: your stature, but where.
Speaker 5: What's your favorite color? What's your favorite color? What are icebreakers?
Speaker 2: What is is there?
Speaker 1: I guess the way to to make this a little
Speaker 1: more bespoke is, sir, is there a way for people
Speaker 1: to reach out to you and your team if they,
Speaker 1: like Paul Landis, have additional information that might help us out.
Speaker 5: I mean, we we it's it's you know, it came
Speaker 5: out through it's being released through iHeartRadio, and there's a
Speaker 5: team there that can field information. Listen. By the way,
Speaker 5: I'm seventy six years old, and you know, I'm the last,
Speaker 5: maybe the last generation alive that will present this, and
Speaker 5: I'm sure that there's going to be a lot more
Speaker 5: information down the road that's going to come out. Like
Speaker 5: I say, almost five thousand documents are still being witheld,
Speaker 5: so we I'm hoping that we can keep this alive
Speaker 5: long enough for all of us to find out the
Speaker 5: exact truth.
Speaker 2: I gotta add really quickly, it looks like you're the
Speaker 2: exact same age as Stephen King. This obviously loomed very
Speaker 2: large for him as well. Yeah, eleven sixty three. You know,
Speaker 2: we talked about comedians and satirists and science fiction and stuff,
Speaker 2: so many amazing ways that folks like that, who maybe
Speaker 2: you wouldn't immediately think can really shed light on this stuff.
Speaker 2: I learned a lot of the stuff from that book,
Speaker 2: and a lot of it is historically accurate. Of course
Speaker 2: it's a work of fiction, but you know the yeah,
Speaker 2: same exact day, So no wonder this is something that
Speaker 2: has been on his mind in the same way. Yeah
Speaker 2: maybe if.
Speaker 5: You're eleven, But you never ever, ever will forget that
Speaker 5: where you that moment and how it affected you. It won't.
Speaker 2: It doesn't get to stand by me too, didn't you?
Speaker 2: Did he direct stand by me? Well?
Speaker 5: I did direct stand by me. I also directed misery,
Speaker 5: which is a stand.
Speaker 2: And you're so boried in your output. I got forget sometimes.
Speaker 5: Castle Rock. We did seven Stephen King books.
Speaker 3: Yep, we didn't even talk about LBJ from twenty sixteen
Speaker 3: and incredible.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we also talk about oh so many things, the
Speaker 1: conversations LBJ had in the wake of things Hoover. The
Speaker 1: list goes on and on, and we're telling you, folks,
Speaker 1: the best way to get these answers. Anytime you were
Speaker 1: hearing this conversation and you think, oh, Robin, the guys
Speaker 1: didn't get to the point, we promise you tune in
Speaker 1: to who killed JFK. And let's keep to your point,
Speaker 1: mister Riiner. Let's keep the story alive every Wednesday. You
Speaker 1: know what a time, folks. We are super excited about
Speaker 1: who killed JFK. It really is as they said earlier,
Speaker 1: it really is a top notch investigation. And my only
Speaker 1: regret is that we didn't get to everything. But I
Speaker 1: am pretty confident that Robin Solidad are going to get
Speaker 1: to most things in this one.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, the level of detail in that show is astounding.
Speaker 3: You know, it's a weird line. Sometimes when we do
Speaker 3: an episode like this, we're promoted, like in a way
Speaker 3: promoting a show, right, but we're just having a conversation
Speaker 3: with someone talking about these topics. But just this show man,
Speaker 3: it's intense.
Speaker 2: And also just to have someone who's as much of
Speaker 2: a legend as Rob is, and I think we're all
Speaker 2: fans of various facets of his work, and you know,
Speaker 2: it's one person who you can truly say as a
Speaker 2: gentleman and a scholar and a legendary director and humanitarian
Speaker 2: and just an overall good guy. I think we were
Speaker 2: all blown away by his candor and generosity and just wow,
Speaker 2: I'm still kind of reeling from.
Speaker 1: That, and as Rob would say, the puzzle continues, the
Speaker 1: mystery unfolds. He gave us some light spoilers. We would
Speaker 1: like to hear your thoughts, folks on what they rightly
Speaker 1: call the greatest murder mystery in the history of the
Speaker 1: United States. Let us know. We try to be easy
Speaker 1: to find online.
Speaker 2: That's right. You can find this at the handle conspiracy
Speaker 2: Stuff on x FKA, Twitter, YouTube, and also on Facebook
Speaker 2: where we have our Facebook group. Here's where it gets crazy.
Speaker 2: Join in on the conversation there. If you wish, on
Speaker 2: TikTok and Instagram, you can find us at the handle
Speaker 2: conspiracy Stuff Show. But wait, there's more.
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Speaker 2: Stuff they don't.
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