1
00:00:00,320 --> 00:00:02,680
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to the best of Coast to Coast podcast.

2
00:00:02,759 --> 00:00:06,199
Speaker 1: Become a Coast Insider and you can hear this complete conversation,

3
00:00:06,240 --> 00:00:10,120
Speaker 1: as well as recent shows featuring guests discussing new cases

4
00:00:10,160 --> 00:00:14,320
Speaker 1: of the troubling cattle mutilation phenomenon, worries, some instances of

5
00:00:14,440 --> 00:00:17,799
Speaker 1: clandestine c I, a torture, and the evidence that the

6
00:00:17,880 --> 00:00:21,919
Speaker 1: lost city of Atlantis may have really once existed. Check

7
00:00:21,920 --> 00:00:25,320
Speaker 1: out these programs and many other fascinating episodes waiting for

8
00:00:25,400 --> 00:00:28,200
Speaker 1: you and the Coast to Coast archive by heading over

9
00:00:28,280 --> 00:00:30,680
Speaker 1: to Coast to Coast a m dot com and signing

10
00:00:30,760 --> 00:00:34,200
Speaker 1: up for Coast Insider. Now here's a highlight from Coast

11
00:00:34,200 --> 00:00:37,839
Speaker 1: to Coast AM on iHeart Radio and welcome back to

12
00:00:37,880 --> 00:00:40,880
Speaker 1: Coast to Coast. Russ Baker with us A Family of Secrets,

13
00:00:40,920 --> 00:00:43,519
Speaker 1: one of his best selling books. He's the author of

14
00:00:43,560 --> 00:00:47,360
Speaker 1: this investigative book. He has written for major news organizations

15
00:00:47,400 --> 00:00:50,320
Speaker 1: all around this planet. He's the founder and editor in

16
00:00:50,360 --> 00:00:53,200
Speaker 1: chief of the groundbreaking new site who What y dot

17
00:00:53,320 --> 00:00:56,520
Speaker 1: org or dot com It Takes You There, which specializes

18
00:00:56,560 --> 00:01:00,440
Speaker 1: in digging into stories that the mainstream media hardly touches.

19
00:01:00,560 --> 00:01:03,920
Speaker 1: And Russ welcome back to the show. I really appreciate it.

20
00:01:04,400 --> 00:01:07,160
Speaker 1: Thank you, George. Always good to be here. Why are

21
00:01:07,200 --> 00:01:11,759
Speaker 1: we so fascinated and I am with the jfk assassination?

22
00:01:13,640 --> 00:01:16,680
Speaker 1: You know, I always think about that because there there

23
00:01:16,720 --> 00:01:19,760
Speaker 1: are so many reasons. It's so profound. It touches every

24
00:01:19,800 --> 00:01:23,280
Speaker 1: aspect of our being. To me, this is the story

25
00:01:23,400 --> 00:01:26,959
Speaker 1: that unlocks the potential to understand who we really are,

26
00:01:27,600 --> 00:01:31,560
Speaker 1: the world we really live in, and the possibilities that

27
00:01:31,640 --> 00:01:34,280
Speaker 1: are in front of us that we never really seem

28
00:01:34,360 --> 00:01:38,560
Speaker 1: to grasp. Are we naive to think that we're living

29
00:01:39,000 --> 00:01:43,520
Speaker 1: on a planet, uh in a country that is so wholesome.

30
00:01:45,160 --> 00:01:47,560
Speaker 1: I believe we are. And I have to say, and

31
00:01:47,920 --> 00:01:49,880
Speaker 1: let me say, I am proud to be American. I

32
00:01:49,960 --> 00:01:52,520
Speaker 1: love course here, and I realize it's a great privilege.

33
00:01:52,720 --> 00:01:55,279
Speaker 1: But this country is not perfect, and we've done lots

34
00:01:55,360 --> 00:01:58,360
Speaker 1: of terrible, terrible things. We're doing them right now. We've

35
00:01:58,400 --> 00:02:01,040
Speaker 1: got wars going on all of of the world. We

36
00:02:01,200 --> 00:02:05,680
Speaker 1: benefit with frankly, an artificially high standard living at the

37
00:02:05,760 --> 00:02:08,600
Speaker 1: expense of other people elsewhere. And we don't talk about

38
00:02:08,639 --> 00:02:11,120
Speaker 1: any of this, we can't hear about it, and we're

39
00:02:11,200 --> 00:02:15,960
Speaker 1: constantly being pressured to get in line and to do

40
00:02:16,000 --> 00:02:18,720
Speaker 1: what we're told. And this is the story that breaks

41
00:02:18,800 --> 00:02:23,160
Speaker 1: us free. What got you interested in the JFK case, Well,

42
00:02:23,200 --> 00:02:24,960
Speaker 1: you know, George, I was working on a book about

43
00:02:24,960 --> 00:02:28,440
Speaker 1: the Bush family. It became my best seller, Family and Secrets.

44
00:02:28,639 --> 00:02:31,040
Speaker 1: I was just really trying to understand how we got

45
00:02:31,080 --> 00:02:34,200
Speaker 1: into this Iraq mess where we were lied into this

46
00:02:34,280 --> 00:02:37,919
Speaker 1: tremendous conflict where so many people died. Uh. And as

47
00:02:37,960 --> 00:02:39,960
Speaker 1: I was digging into it, I discovered that there were

48
00:02:39,960 --> 00:02:43,080
Speaker 1: things about George W. Bush I didn't know. They led

49
00:02:43,120 --> 00:02:46,119
Speaker 1: to his father, Georgia H. W. Bush. I began realizing

50
00:02:46,160 --> 00:02:48,360
Speaker 1: we didn't know that much about him, and I said, wow,

51
00:02:48,720 --> 00:02:50,880
Speaker 1: we don't know a lot about people who have been

52
00:02:50,960 --> 00:02:53,240
Speaker 1: president of the United States. And so as I dug

53
00:02:53,240 --> 00:02:57,360
Speaker 1: into the father, I uh learned that he couldn't remember

54
00:02:57,760 --> 00:03:02,080
Speaker 1: where he was on November twenty nine. Where George H. W.

55
00:03:02,200 --> 00:03:05,200
Speaker 1: Bush Bush forty one was he could not remember, And

56
00:03:05,240 --> 00:03:08,359
Speaker 1: I said, wow, I know that's truly amazing. How old

57
00:03:08,400 --> 00:03:11,280
Speaker 1: would he have been then? I think it was years old,

58
00:03:11,320 --> 00:03:14,280
Speaker 1: forty three years old and he doesn't remember where he was.

59
00:03:14,600 --> 00:03:17,320
Speaker 1: I can't understand if you were three, and even then,

60
00:03:17,360 --> 00:03:20,560
Speaker 1: a three year old might remember where they were. I

61
00:03:20,639 --> 00:03:24,480
Speaker 1: was thirteen, Russ I was an English class. I found

62
00:03:24,520 --> 00:03:26,680
Speaker 1: my teacher a couple of months ago. We put her

63
00:03:26,680 --> 00:03:30,160
Speaker 1: on the air. It was really emotional for us. I

64
00:03:30,160 --> 00:03:34,360
Speaker 1: mean just I remember being in the class. I'm thirteen

65
00:03:34,440 --> 00:03:37,880
Speaker 1: years old. She walks in. Her name was Nancy Leonard.

66
00:03:38,520 --> 00:03:42,920
Speaker 1: She walks in crying, telling us that the president was killed.

67
00:03:43,600 --> 00:03:47,360
Speaker 1: And we're thirteen years old. You know, it doesn't register

68
00:03:47,520 --> 00:03:50,760
Speaker 1: with a kid like that. And then we get home

69
00:03:50,800 --> 00:03:54,200
Speaker 1: when I saw my parents crying, and I'm I realized,

70
00:03:54,520 --> 00:03:58,040
Speaker 1: Jesus is awful. And I went through that entire week,

71
00:03:58,640 --> 00:04:03,760
Speaker 1: that weekend of Oswald getting shot, in that that whole situation.

72
00:04:03,840 --> 00:04:09,320
Speaker 1: It was awful. Absolutely, and Uh, I remember where I was,

73
00:04:09,360 --> 00:04:12,440
Speaker 1: and I was I think five, you know. And so

74
00:04:12,560 --> 00:04:15,080
Speaker 1: I became interested in knowing not only why he couldn't

75
00:04:15,080 --> 00:04:17,680
Speaker 1: remember where he was, but where was he? And so

76
00:04:17,720 --> 00:04:21,040
Speaker 1: I spent years on this, and what I discovered totally

77
00:04:21,080 --> 00:04:24,160
Speaker 1: shifted what what that book was supposed to be. I've

78
00:04:24,200 --> 00:04:28,960
Speaker 1: got five chapters in Family Secrets just on uh Bush Sr.

79
00:04:29,000 --> 00:04:31,920
Speaker 1: And where he was and what I learned. Um And

80
00:04:32,000 --> 00:04:33,560
Speaker 1: we don't have the time to go into it all here,

81
00:04:33,600 --> 00:04:35,919
Speaker 1: but what I learned was that the reason he was

82
00:04:36,000 --> 00:04:40,120
Speaker 1: picked as president vice president CIA director was that he

83
00:04:40,160 --> 00:04:43,640
Speaker 1: had a secret past working in the CIA, that he

84
00:04:43,720 --> 00:04:46,880
Speaker 1: was in fact in Dallas and no November twenty two,

85
00:04:47,120 --> 00:04:50,159
Speaker 1: that that week he had met with Alfred Ohmer, the

86
00:04:50,240 --> 00:04:54,880
Speaker 1: head of CIA Plots, coups and assassinations, who had been

87
00:04:54,920 --> 00:04:57,720
Speaker 1: living abroad, who had left the agency around the same

88
00:04:57,760 --> 00:05:01,320
Speaker 1: time that John F. Kennedy fired Alan us Uh and

89
00:05:01,720 --> 00:05:04,240
Speaker 1: some other key people, and that this man had come

90
00:05:04,240 --> 00:05:07,640
Speaker 1: into the Dallas area for some reason the week that

91
00:05:07,720 --> 00:05:11,400
Speaker 1: Kennedy was killed, and there he was meeting with George H. W. Bush.

92
00:05:11,440 --> 00:05:14,400
Speaker 1: All of these other key figures in the CIA were

93
00:05:14,520 --> 00:05:17,480
Speaker 1: in Dallas, either just before it or at the time.

94
00:05:18,120 --> 00:05:21,320
Speaker 1: It's very very clear that people who would all assemble

95
00:05:21,400 --> 00:05:24,880
Speaker 1: for the coups and Guatemala and Iran and all these

96
00:05:24,960 --> 00:05:28,599
Speaker 1: other places had assembled once again. And I said, my god,

97
00:05:28,640 --> 00:05:30,960
Speaker 1: if we can have a president of the United States

98
00:05:31,320 --> 00:05:33,839
Speaker 1: who had some kind of knowledge or awareness of the

99
00:05:33,880 --> 00:05:38,200
Speaker 1: assassination of a prior president, we are in big trouble

100
00:05:38,240 --> 00:05:42,080
Speaker 1: here and not remember where he was. So let me

101
00:05:42,720 --> 00:05:45,200
Speaker 1: now remember where he was, George. And also the media

102
00:05:45,240 --> 00:05:48,280
Speaker 1: doesn't care. This is the thing that drives me bananas.

103
00:05:49,120 --> 00:05:51,640
Speaker 1: It does not care. I I have twelve hundred foot

104
00:05:51,680 --> 00:05:55,160
Speaker 1: notes in that book. I interviewed hundreds of people. Maybe

105
00:05:55,200 --> 00:05:58,200
Speaker 1: I don't know a thousand people doing all of this work.

106
00:05:58,240 --> 00:06:01,120
Speaker 1: I've got all those credentials to Columbia School of Journalism,

107
00:06:01,160 --> 00:06:03,799
Speaker 1: New York Times, blah blah blah. And when I touch

108
00:06:04,000 --> 00:06:08,799
Speaker 1: this particularly sensitive topic, they say it is too big.

109
00:06:09,240 --> 00:06:12,760
Speaker 1: It's it's amazing. They're more concerned about groping than they

110
00:06:12,800 --> 00:06:16,000
Speaker 1: are this incredible story. What do you think the fewer

111
00:06:16,080 --> 00:06:20,240
Speaker 1: would be if if President Bush said I was in

112
00:06:20,320 --> 00:06:23,680
Speaker 1: Dallas at that time? What? What? What would happen? What

113
00:06:23,720 --> 00:06:27,640
Speaker 1: would people try to conclude? You know? I think the

114
00:06:27,800 --> 00:06:31,719
Speaker 1: worry is that everything would just grind to a halt. Uh.

115
00:06:31,800 --> 00:06:34,400
Speaker 1: You know, the the the the part of the role

116
00:06:34,440 --> 00:06:36,400
Speaker 1: of the media in this country. And by the way,

117
00:06:36,400 --> 00:06:39,560
Speaker 1: the reason I founded Who What Why was because when

118
00:06:39,600 --> 00:06:41,720
Speaker 1: I would write for these other places. And by the way,

119
00:06:41,760 --> 00:06:43,840
Speaker 1: I just want to be clear, just as I'm proud

120
00:06:43,880 --> 00:06:46,520
Speaker 1: to be in an American despite the imperfections, I'm also

121
00:06:46,560 --> 00:06:49,520
Speaker 1: proud to be a journalist despite the imperfections. I think

122
00:06:49,600 --> 00:06:52,479
Speaker 1: journalism is not fake news. And I think that by

123
00:06:52,560 --> 00:06:57,279
Speaker 1: and large, we do get fairly good, accurate reporting about

124
00:06:57,360 --> 00:07:00,120
Speaker 1: lots of things where they where they won't go is

125
00:07:00,160 --> 00:07:03,560
Speaker 1: on the really big scary stuff. That's of course why

126
00:07:03,600 --> 00:07:06,280
Speaker 1: we love you in your program, because you'll go there.

127
00:07:06,320 --> 00:07:10,720
Speaker 1: But they won't go there, George. They cannot go there.

128
00:07:10,800 --> 00:07:14,160
Speaker 1: It's too scary, it's too immobilizing. If you were to

129
00:07:14,200 --> 00:07:17,680
Speaker 1: tell people, listen, this whole game is rigged, You've got

130
00:07:17,760 --> 00:07:20,040
Speaker 1: a fairly small number of people. When they get to

131
00:07:20,080 --> 00:07:22,080
Speaker 1: the top, they want to stay there and they don't

132
00:07:22,080 --> 00:07:25,679
Speaker 1: want you there. And that's the story. And these people

133
00:07:25,960 --> 00:07:28,760
Speaker 1: by and large will stop at nothing to get what

134
00:07:28,800 --> 00:07:31,280
Speaker 1: they want. That's the real story. That's what the Kennedy

135
00:07:31,280 --> 00:07:34,000
Speaker 1: assassination story is about. Of course, I want to talk

136
00:07:34,000 --> 00:07:36,680
Speaker 1: about John F. Kennedy the man, and how we uh,

137
00:07:36,760 --> 00:07:42,640
Speaker 1: the media, the famous historians, the academic institutions and basically

138
00:07:42,760 --> 00:07:45,720
Speaker 1: buried what a man of consequence he was, what a

139
00:07:45,880 --> 00:07:51,120
Speaker 1: radical he was really uh, what an extraordinary individual he was.

140
00:07:51,400 --> 00:07:54,320
Speaker 1: This has been buried, and so we don't get we

141
00:07:54,400 --> 00:07:56,480
Speaker 1: do get the small picture. I think we get the

142
00:07:56,520 --> 00:08:00,560
Speaker 1: small picture about you know, hurricanes and about lots of

143
00:08:00,600 --> 00:08:04,560
Speaker 1: things that are going on in real time. Also, what

144
00:08:04,680 --> 00:08:07,840
Speaker 1: we get George is the big lie about all of

145
00:08:07,880 --> 00:08:12,880
Speaker 1: the really really big, consequential, scary things. Absolutely, and back

146
00:08:12,960 --> 00:08:16,080
Speaker 1: to Bush for just a second. The fact that he

147
00:08:16,280 --> 00:08:20,560
Speaker 1: publicly says he doesn't remember where he was and everybody

148
00:08:20,600 --> 00:08:23,360
Speaker 1: believes he was in Dallas. What does that tell you,

149
00:08:23,480 --> 00:08:27,760
Speaker 1: rus Well, this is that this is the total disconnect

150
00:08:27,760 --> 00:08:30,360
Speaker 1: and the total denial. I mean, you know, when I've

151
00:08:30,400 --> 00:08:36,360
Speaker 1: brought this up on mainstream platforms, they just stare at me, literally,

152
00:08:36,520 --> 00:08:38,440
Speaker 1: just stare at me. You you know, you you come

153
00:08:38,480 --> 00:08:40,480
Speaker 1: back with something, they just stare at me. And then

154
00:08:40,520 --> 00:08:42,400
Speaker 1: they say, we have to go to a break. You

155
00:08:42,440 --> 00:08:45,440
Speaker 1: know what, what could you possibly say about that? Because

156
00:08:45,520 --> 00:08:48,839
Speaker 1: that is so disturbing that he is. I mean, to me,

157
00:08:48,960 --> 00:08:51,080
Speaker 1: that's like the biggest story of my life. And you know,

158
00:08:51,120 --> 00:08:53,520
Speaker 1: and I covered the you know, the Berlin Wall, the

159
00:08:53,559 --> 00:08:57,239
Speaker 1: former Yugoslavia, uh, you know, the kind of the situation

160
00:08:57,280 --> 00:09:01,160
Speaker 1: in Burundi and Rwanda. I mean, I covered all these terrifying,

161
00:09:01,360 --> 00:09:06,400
Speaker 1: lee huge and consequential stories. There's nothing like this. It

162
00:09:06,559 --> 00:09:10,360
Speaker 1: just gets knocked right out of the box. Because what

163
00:09:10,559 --> 00:09:14,880
Speaker 1: happens is when we start saying, hey, we we have

164
00:09:14,960 --> 00:09:18,680
Speaker 1: acknowledged that the CIA and the U. S Military did

165
00:09:18,720 --> 00:09:23,400
Speaker 1: go secretly around the world and destabilize and removed democratically

166
00:09:23,400 --> 00:09:27,400
Speaker 1: elected governments and kill people that there is no reason

167
00:09:27,480 --> 00:09:29,320
Speaker 1: to believe that they don't do it here. Then we

168
00:09:29,360 --> 00:09:31,640
Speaker 1: have to start looking. And I think you've talked with

169
00:09:31,679 --> 00:09:35,240
Speaker 1: me about these thix. The Boston Marathon bombing, those two kids,

170
00:09:35,760 --> 00:09:38,360
Speaker 1: the fact that their uncle was married into the top

171
00:09:38,440 --> 00:09:42,440
Speaker 1: levels of the CIA. Uh, the the guy in Florida,

172
00:09:42,520 --> 00:09:45,880
Speaker 1: the shooter there. You know, the fact that, yeah, he

173
00:09:45,920 --> 00:09:49,520
Speaker 1: worked for a giant military contracting company. I mean, there's

174
00:09:49,559 --> 00:09:52,320
Speaker 1: there's no accountability on any of this stuff. We don't

175
00:09:52,360 --> 00:09:54,439
Speaker 1: know what any of these things really mean. And I

176
00:09:54,480 --> 00:09:56,920
Speaker 1: don't want to feed into the idea that in every

177
00:09:56,960 --> 00:10:01,560
Speaker 1: case there's more to the story. But the uh, you know,

178
00:10:01,640 --> 00:10:05,240
Speaker 1: the the implications of a system where we go to

179
00:10:05,280 --> 00:10:08,600
Speaker 1: war everywhere and we turn so many of our fine

180
00:10:08,720 --> 00:10:13,439
Speaker 1: young people into killing machines, uh, and where the wealthiest

181
00:10:13,480 --> 00:10:16,840
Speaker 1: and most powerful will stop at nothing to get to

182
00:10:16,880 --> 00:10:19,160
Speaker 1: get ahead. These are the kind of things we have

183
00:10:19,320 --> 00:10:21,520
Speaker 1: to talk about this. These are the kind of things

184
00:10:21,559 --> 00:10:23,719
Speaker 1: that are going to set us free and get us

185
00:10:23,720 --> 00:10:26,079
Speaker 1: back to being the kind of country we once thought

186
00:10:26,120 --> 00:10:28,920
Speaker 1: we were listen to more coast to Coast a m.

187
00:10:29,080 --> 00:10:32,240
Speaker 1: Every weeknight at one a m. Eastern and go to

188
00:10:32,280 --> 00:10:34,360
Speaker 1: Coast to coast am dot com for more