Speaker 1: Brought to you by the all New Toyota Corolla. Welcome
Speaker 1: to you Stuff you should know Fromdhouse Stuff Works dot Com. Hey,
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, There's Charles W.
Speaker 1: Chuck Bryant, and very appropriately for this one, we have
Speaker 1: our buddy Matt, who's guest producing because he knows how
Speaker 1: to do that kind of thing in addition to his
Speaker 1: awesome show stuff they don't want to know, which he
Speaker 1: does with our other friend Ben. And uh, it's it
Speaker 1: covers conspiracy theories. And we are podcasting on who killed
Speaker 1: JFK the day before the anniversary of that Fateful Day anniversary,
Speaker 1: right fiftieth anniversary November nine in Dallas. And so you
Speaker 1: made a joke that Matt was just gonna be over
Speaker 1: there the whole time going shia. Really uh huh. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it wasn't a mob. Yeah, three tramps whatever. I like
Speaker 1: the three trans want It's it's ridiculous, but it's my
Speaker 1: favorite one. Yeah, I got some good stuff on that
Speaker 1: um In two thousand three, Josh An ABC News poll
Speaker 1: came out ten years ago, seventy of Americans believe the
Speaker 1: assassination of John F. Kennedy was part of a broader plot.
Speaker 1: What percentage believe that and believe that Lee Harvey Oswald
Speaker 1: acted alone. Well, so it's the thing. It's it will
Speaker 1: not die. No, it won't. It never will, I don't think. Well,
Speaker 1: it's very much entrenched in popular culture as well too,
Speaker 1: Like even it's become a parody of itself as well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, was just the idea that there's this outstanding
Speaker 1: question that will never be put to rest. Yeah, Like
Speaker 1: Lone Gunmen and Grassy Knoll, like all these are almost
Speaker 1: like buzz terms. Now, Yeah, the Lone Gunmen, they made
Speaker 1: an appearance in the X Files, they were recurring characters.
Speaker 1: Trio of Guys, Uh and the Misfits have a song
Speaker 1: about the afk assassination. Um magic Bullet but there's a
Speaker 1: band called Magic Bullets. There's all sorts of stuff. Um,
Speaker 1: So let's get into this because I think our colleague
Speaker 1: Jonathan's Tricklin of tech Stuff did a really good job
Speaker 1: of like handling what could have easily been like a
Speaker 1: fifty page quagmire. And he basically says like, but here's
Speaker 1: all the facts, and this is why the what's on
Speaker 1: the surface is probably the likeliest thing to happen and happened.
Speaker 1: We should see U a little bit here. There are
Speaker 1: hundreds of books written about various conspiracies, uh conspiracy theories
Speaker 1: on the JFK assassination, and we are we don't have
Speaker 1: like eighteen episodes to dedicate to this, so this will
Speaker 1: be a skimming of the topic. UM. I don't want
Speaker 1: anyone to be like, oh, Josh and Chuck are gonna
Speaker 1: get down the bottom of this, like people, that's some
Speaker 1: people's life's were, you know, dedicated to this? Yeah. I mean,
Speaker 1: if we're anything, we're dilettants. Every week we go from
Speaker 1: one subject to the next. That is true. So I
Speaker 1: guess let's begin at the beginning, just to get it
Speaker 1: all out on the table. Okay, all right, Okay, so Chucky.
Speaker 1: On November eighth, nineteen sixty three, UM, the Secret Service
Speaker 1: found the proposed route for the president Presidential Murtorcaide's visit
Speaker 1: to Dallas. And there was a reason the president was
Speaker 1: coming to Dallas. It was a very good reason. And UM,
Speaker 1: this is why he was in Texas, why he was
Speaker 1: trying to basically sort of unite the Democratic Party. Um,
Speaker 1: he was meeting with with his vice president and the
Speaker 1: governor of Texas, and there was some bickering going on
Speaker 1: within the party and he basically wanted to He's trying
Speaker 1: to get reelected, is what he was doing, right, But
Speaker 1: that was a big part of it. But it is true.
Speaker 1: Governor Connelly Um and Senator Richard Yarborough were publicly feuding.
Speaker 1: Um and they're both Democrats, so basically their great father
Speaker 1: was going to come and make peace with them among
Speaker 1: them publicly tour the state of Texas to help him
Speaker 1: self get reelected, but also to show Texas like, hey,
Speaker 1: the Texas Democrats are all family. Here. Family fights sometimes,
Speaker 1: but we're still all family and we still have the
Speaker 1: same grand vision. I know, I'm a Catholic from New England,
Speaker 1: but we're all the same. It me nine Texan. Uh so, okay,
Speaker 1: where are we? They find out the route from love
Speaker 1: Field to um Daly Plaza. They publicize that in the newspapers.
Speaker 1: Everyone knew about it because you know people, they wanted
Speaker 1: people to come out and wave like they did on
Speaker 1: November nine. The route was published in the papers and
Speaker 1: the published one Yes. And then on November twenty ninety three,
Speaker 1: that fateful day, Air Force one lands at love Field
Speaker 1: the President gets in his presidential limousine and they started
Speaker 1: making their way toward Deeley Plaza, along with Governor Connelly
Speaker 1: and his wife and of course Jackie and then a
Speaker 1: couple of secret service dudes. That's in the one car.
Speaker 1: In a car behind them is lb J Senator Yarborough
Speaker 1: and some other secret service guys. Right, that's right. So
Speaker 1: they're apparently as they were headed toward Deely Plausa, they
Speaker 1: got delayed because um, Kennedy stopped and uh kind of
Speaker 1: soaked up the people waving and cheering and all that
Speaker 1: and gave gave some back to him. Yeah, and so
Speaker 1: they were a little bit delayed, um getting to Deely Plaza.
Speaker 1: But when they did, at about twelve thirty, as they
Speaker 1: were arriving in the presidential motorcade, a shot rang out
Speaker 1: and then there was two more shots at least. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and uh with the second shot, they think the president
Speaker 1: he threw his hands up to his neck and Jackie
Speaker 1: leaned over to kind of like say what's going on,
Speaker 1: and then all of a sudden, the back right side
Speaker 1: of the President's head blew off. Yes, it is very graphic.
Speaker 1: If you see the slowed down enhanced Zapruder film on
Speaker 1: YouTube today. Very affecting too. It's really sad. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: terribly sad. And this was not even a part of
Speaker 1: our generation. Like this kind of stuff still makes people
Speaker 1: like our parents breakdown sometimes, you know. So that was
Speaker 1: thirty Within about anywhere between four and eight seconds, at
Speaker 1: least three shots were fired, one missed probably the second
Speaker 1: and third one hit the president first in the back
Speaker 1: of the neck, exited his throat, and the third one
Speaker 1: blew his head off. Yeah, let's talk about the that
Speaker 1: magic bullet since we should go ahead and clear that up.
Speaker 1: H it hit I guess this is a second bullet
Speaker 1: that passed through his throat. It went on to hit
Speaker 1: Governor Connelly in the back, but in his armpit. Yeah,
Speaker 1: below the right armpit. Um exited below the right nipple.
Speaker 1: Um then hit his wrist that was in his lap,
Speaker 1: and then continue through the wrist through his left thigh.
Speaker 1: And that's why they call it the magic bullet. And
Speaker 1: if you've seen Oliver Stone's movie, they kind of, you know,
Speaker 1: m make fun of it in court like that is
Speaker 1: one magic bullet. That's where it got the name back
Speaker 1: into the left back into the left Remember the Seinfeld thing,
Speaker 1: yeah with the spit with Keith hernandez. Um. But and
Speaker 1: I remember my brother in law, the Marine, explaining to
Speaker 1: me years ago that bullets tumble and can do some
Speaker 1: really crazy things, like he's seen it happen on firing
Speaker 1: ranges and and pus. Also, this is a very very
Speaker 1: powerful bullet. Yeah. It was a six point five millimeter bullet,
Speaker 1: which is basically like a little um howits her shell? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's huge and it travels very quickly. Yeah, and um,
Speaker 1: they have done test that, even though it seems unlikely,
Speaker 1: that show that it is possible that a bullet can
Speaker 1: change directions and do kind of crazy things once it
Speaker 1: starts hitting bone and other things. Yeah. So um that was,
Speaker 1: like you said, the second bullet most likely. Um, Within
Speaker 1: just a few seconds after the first shot, Kennedy is
Speaker 1: lying there, um motionless. Jackie's like reaching back across the
Speaker 1: trunk of the car. Yeah, trying to get help from
Speaker 1: a secret Service agent who I believe jumps into the car. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well actually they they think that she was picked up
Speaker 1: part of his brain tissue. Okay, I heard that before too. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I looked into that today, but I was watching the
Speaker 1: repruter film and it looks it looked to me like
Speaker 1: she was reaching back like help. But I've heard that
Speaker 1: before as well. Well. Apparently she was quoted um by
Speaker 1: I think Connolly's wife and one other person at the
Speaker 1: time of saying he's dead and look, I have I
Speaker 1: have his brain in my hand. Um. She I read
Speaker 1: her testimony for the Warran Commission and she says she
Speaker 1: didn't even remember any of that. But whether or not
Speaker 1: that's true, it's awful. So when she was trying to
Speaker 1: hold his head together on the way to the hospital, Yeah,
Speaker 1: So in the car behind them, uh, a Secret Service
Speaker 1: agent pounces on LBJ and like throws him onto the
Speaker 1: seat and lays on top of him. Um. I think
Speaker 1: his name is Rufus young Blood, the CIA or the
Speaker 1: Secret Service agent. The motor kid just takes off to
Speaker 1: the hospital park Memorial Parkland Parkland Memorial and um again,
Speaker 1: the the motor kid inner dally Plase at twelve thirty.
Speaker 1: By one pm, the President has been pronounced dead at
Speaker 1: Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas. It was just a few
Speaker 1: miles away. Um, so that was one pm. That was
Speaker 1: one pm. Um, I guess we should talk about the
Speaker 1: grassy Knoll real quick because a lot of people, um
Speaker 1: have said, you know, a shot have There were a
Speaker 1: lot of misleading and conflicting accounts, which is where a
Speaker 1: lot of the trouble started. I witnesses not collaborating stories. Uh.
Speaker 1: The acoustics at Dealey Plaza were funky because of all
Speaker 1: the buildings and it's three side buildings and then one
Speaker 1: side like Grassy Knoll. Basically yeah, so like, where did
Speaker 1: the shot come from? I thought it came from over here.
Speaker 1: From the sounds, um, it was basically pretty tough to pinpoint.
Speaker 1: And the Grassy Knoll there was a police officer named
Speaker 1: Clyde hey Good that there are pictures of him, you know,
Speaker 1: running towards the Grassy Knoll, and a lot of folks thought, hey,
Speaker 1: he's running like towards a suspect, when in fact, he
Speaker 1: was running toward another police officer to you know, say, hey,
Speaker 1: what should we do? I guess? So the I guess.
Speaker 1: The way it's been explained away over the years is
Speaker 1: the the acoustics and the fact that that cop was
Speaker 1: running towards the Grassy Knoll has made some people think
Speaker 1: that there was more than one shooter, and another shooter
Speaker 1: was on the grassy knoll. That's right. The official line
Speaker 1: is that that's not the case, though, that's right. Um,
Speaker 1: so one PM, the president's pronounced dead. At two thirty eight,
Speaker 1: UM Johnson, Jackie Kennedy, UH, Johnson's staff, pretty much everybody
Speaker 1: was back on Air Force one and UM they called
Speaker 1: Bobby Kennedy to ask what to do and to tell
Speaker 1: him what had happened. And Bobby Kennedy said, you need
Speaker 1: to swear Johnson and before you guys leave the ground.
Speaker 1: So they found a judge, brought her on board, and
Speaker 1: she swore Johnson in as president, and then they took
Speaker 1: off and flew back to Washington. Very famous photo, yeah,
Speaker 1: with him being sworn in on board Air Force one,
Speaker 1: right with Jackie on NASA's or Jackie Kennedy's face. Just
Speaker 1: like the fact that she was able to stand is
Speaker 1: pretty amazing. Apparently they turned her in such a way
Speaker 1: so that the blood stains were an apparent in the photograph. Man,
Speaker 1: I don't know if it was Air Force one yet
Speaker 1: it was. UM, alright, so where are we? Uh? Four
Speaker 1: minutes after the shooting, Dallas police uh looked at the
Speaker 1: Texas School Book Depository building and said, hey, that might
Speaker 1: have been where this came from. It's a pretty prime
Speaker 1: location for a sniper. And there was an eyewitness named
Speaker 1: Howard Brennan who saw a figure in the window and
Speaker 1: gave a description which fit Lee Harvey Oswald. So this
Speaker 1: this one dude actually saw him in the window on
Speaker 1: the sixth floor. Pretty believable that you could see someone
Speaker 1: from that range. The guy said, I knew it was
Speaker 1: Oswald all along. So there was a cop that was
Speaker 1: in the book depository within two minutes of the shooting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Marian Baker was kind of took the initiative to go
Speaker 1: ahead and get in there. So we went in there
Speaker 1: and he met up with the superintendent of the building,
Speaker 1: a guy named Truly, and they started um walking up
Speaker 1: the steps and at the second floor they came upon
Speaker 1: Lee Harvey Oswald who was leaving. He was leaving. Truly
Speaker 1: vouched for Oswald, and Oswald was allowed to leave. And
Speaker 1: the reason Truly vouched for Oswald's because just a couple
Speaker 1: of weeks before, about a month before, Oswald had gotten
Speaker 1: a job at that book depository, so he checked out
Speaker 1: as far as Truly was concerned. The officer who was
Speaker 1: with Truly said, well, okay, and they kept looking and
Speaker 1: a few minutes after that, lieutenant showed up and took
Speaker 1: over the crime scene and they started scouring the building
Speaker 1: and on the sixth floor they found the sniper's nest
Speaker 1: that's right with UM three empty cartridges and the gun
Speaker 1: UH telescopic rifle, UH telescopic site, and a bolt action rifle.
Speaker 1: And it was pretty much a no brainer at that point,
Speaker 1: or at least on the surface. This is where it
Speaker 1: came from, right, So, um, after Oswald left his uh
Speaker 1: left the book depository, he went to um the place
Speaker 1: where he was running a room, the house where he's
Speaker 1: running a room, and grabbed a pistol. And as he's
Speaker 1: walking along and this is about the same time that
Speaker 1: Kennedy's being pronounced dead, he's walking along the street, he
Speaker 1: Um encountered a cop named J. D. Tippett, and apparently
Speaker 1: Oswald just opened fire on this cop, shot him four times,
Speaker 1: killed him instantly. Yeah. Well, he was investigating Oswald because
Speaker 1: the the A p B had already come through with
Speaker 1: the description of Oswald, and he was like, well, this
Speaker 1: guy fits that description. Let me talk to him. And
Speaker 1: it didn't take long though I don't think there was
Speaker 1: much of a discussion before Oswald shot him and killed him.
Speaker 1: And um, actually, when Oswald was finally apprehended, it was
Speaker 1: for the murder of the cop. They they didn't know
Speaker 1: he had anything to do with Kennedy at the time. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: at the time. Uh, he ducked into a theater, the
Speaker 1: Texas Theater, into the movie War as Hell, And I
Speaker 1: think he snuck in, And that's why they called the
Speaker 1: cops because they're like, hey, someone stuck in the theater.
Speaker 1: So he would have had a bought a ticket. He
Speaker 1: might not have ever been caught. You never know. You
Speaker 1: know what's interesting about that, there's all these parallels between
Speaker 1: the Lincoln assassination and the Kennedy assassination. Um, some are untrue,
Speaker 1: some are just ridiculous. But one of them was that
Speaker 1: John Wilkes Booth killed Lincoln in a theater and went
Speaker 1: and hit out in a warehouse, and Lee Harvey Oswald
Speaker 1: killed Kennedy from where our house and went and hit
Speaker 1: out in a theater where he was caught. That's a
Speaker 1: pretty good one. I like that one. Um. So he
Speaker 1: was apprehended in the theater and reportedly said, well, it's
Speaker 1: all over now. But he also said something interesting at
Speaker 1: one point to the media I'm a patsy, which has
Speaker 1: fueled speculation over the years that, uh, well, we'll get
Speaker 1: into the different theories before we go any further. Get this,
Speaker 1: the president of the United States of America has just
Speaker 1: been shot in front of a crowd in Dallas. That's right.
Speaker 1: That's huge, that's enormous. That's what's going on right now.
Speaker 1: And there's a man hunt for this guy who's just
Speaker 1: been caught for killing a cop. Yeah, so people don't
Speaker 1: know that the president's killer has just been caught as well.
Speaker 1: That's right. So this is a it's a pretty emotional time. Uh,
Speaker 1: and let's talk about Oswald himself. But first, um, let's
Speaker 1: do a message break and we'll talk about Oswald when
Speaker 1: we come back. A h alright, So here's a little
Speaker 1: bit about Lee Harvey Oswald. He was a mixed up guy. Um,
Speaker 1: he was sort of an outcast, sort of didn't really
Speaker 1: fit in. He was born in Um his father died
Speaker 1: two months before he was born, which I think, you know,
Speaker 1: probably has a lot to do with emotional scarring later
Speaker 1: on and maybe being a mixed up kid. Uh. He
Speaker 1: was in an orphanage for a little while with an
Speaker 1: older brother and half brother, but his mother was able
Speaker 1: to get him back out of that orphanage uh and
Speaker 1: raised them age five five when he got taken on
Speaker 1: the orphanage, which was enough years to also do some
Speaker 1: damage psychologically. I think that probably set the theme because
Speaker 1: I read a little bit about what you know, contemporary
Speaker 1: reports of him growing up concluded his problem was and
Speaker 1: that it was. One social worker said that he believed
Speaker 1: his mother doesn't give a damn about him, uh so
Speaker 1: uh and that somebody else said that they've never met
Speaker 1: a kid more emotionally starved than this guy. Uh So.
Speaker 1: I'm quite sure that being left it in an orphanage,
Speaker 1: even being picked back up after a while it was,
Speaker 1: probably did have a pretty big effect on him on
Speaker 1: his development and how he viewed his mother. Well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and when you look at what he did for the
Speaker 1: rest of his life, um, it seems like he was
Speaker 1: always looking for a new family quote unquote, um, whether
Speaker 1: it was the Marxist or the Communists, or Cuba or Russia. Like,
Speaker 1: it seems like he never and it's kind of a
Speaker 1: it's like one oh one, you know, he was looking
Speaker 1: to fit in somehow somewhere with somebody, but at the
Speaker 1: same time, it was always on the fringe of wherever
Speaker 1: he was at. Yah, you know what I mean, Like
Speaker 1: he's never happy with where he was. He wanted to
Speaker 1: fit into whatever was counter what he was doing or
Speaker 1: with the status quo of where he was right. So
Speaker 1: at sixteen he drops out of school and tries to
Speaker 1: join the Marine Corps. Um he was too young, so
Speaker 1: they said come back later. He wrote the Socialist Party
Speaker 1: when he was Socialist Party of America when he was seventeen,
Speaker 1: to say, hey, I'm weigh into Marxism and like, can
Speaker 1: I come join your club? I guess at the very
Speaker 1: least we send me a free button. Uh. And then
Speaker 1: at seventeen he reapplied to the Marine Corps and he
Speaker 1: was old enough at that point. And turns out he
Speaker 1: had quite an act for shooting guns. He's a sharp
Speaker 1: shooter during boot camp, but then during the actual ranking
Speaker 1: testing only rated as a marksman, which is still really good. Yeah,
Speaker 1: just below sharp shoot the sharp shooter the highest or
Speaker 1: is that the dead eyes the highest level. I think
Speaker 1: sharp shooters size. But at the same time, even while
Speaker 1: he was a marine, a Marine marksman, he um he
Speaker 1: taught himself Russian. He studied about the Soviet Union and communism.
Speaker 1: And this is during the Cold War. This is like
Speaker 1: during the most paranoid finger pointing part of the Cold War.
Speaker 1: But Oswald's in the Marines, like teaching himself Russian and everything,
Speaker 1: see what I mean, like a confused guy. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: even still like it's just it's so strange to me
Speaker 1: learning about his experience that he was relatively left alone
Speaker 1: while expressing pretty publicly this interest in the Soviet Union
Speaker 1: and communism during the peak of the Cold War. It's
Speaker 1: just I thought, if you had if you even wore
Speaker 1: the color red, people like communists get him. But apparently
Speaker 1: you could just hide him plain sight or admire the
Speaker 1: Soviet Union plain sight. Well, he eventually would find himself
Speaker 1: on a watch list because he went to Russia um
Speaker 1: under um he obtained a passport falsely with an application
Speaker 1: to a college in Switzerland and applied got to Moscow,
Speaker 1: applied for citizenship there and they were like yet, and
Speaker 1: so he he goes, oh, yeah, if you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna kill myself. He basically did the same day
Speaker 1: he was rejected by Russia. He slit his wrist and
Speaker 1: the warmhearted Soviets were like, well, okay, you can stay
Speaker 1: a young man. I thought that was interesting. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: what allowed him to stay. Ye, like, yeah, that's just weird. Yeah,
Speaker 1: is so he said, I don't want to be Um. Well,
Speaker 1: he he did not officially announce his citizenship in America,
Speaker 1: although he expressed interest in doing so. Yeah, he kind
Speaker 1: of mouthed off about it, but never actually did it.
Speaker 1: That's right. Uh. In Russia he fell in love with
Speaker 1: a lady named Marina Prusakova. And you're not going to
Speaker 1: try our middle name nicola Venna nice Nikolavna. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think that's right. And um, basically he was like, you know,
Speaker 1: we should probably go back to the United States because
Speaker 1: it turns out Russia sucks. These breadlines I weren't expecting
Speaker 1: them to be so long. Yeah, it said he'd become disenchanted.
Speaker 1: I think that's a nice way of saying that Russia sucked. Right,
Speaker 1: So he says, Hey, I know a place where you're
Speaker 1: gonna love. It's called Texas. Let's move back there. Uh,
Speaker 1: just forget the fact that you don't speak any English.
Speaker 1: You don't know anybody in Texas. Everybody back in America
Speaker 1: thinks I'm a weirdo and I'm your husband. Uh, just
Speaker 1: let's go and move to Texas. And she's like, she said,
Speaker 1: what did you say in Russian? He's like, nothing in Russian?
Speaker 1: And so they moved to Texas and uh, she apparently
Speaker 1: very quickly became just she felt isolated, she didn't have
Speaker 1: any friends, and a woman named Ruth Payne UM felt
Speaker 1: bad for her and took her under her wing and
Speaker 1: they became kind of friends. And Ruth Payne will come
Speaker 1: into play a little later on. Yeah, and this is
Speaker 1: where he was finally sort of um on the radar
Speaker 1: of the FBI. Yeah, when he moved back. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: can't move to Russia and then come back. And they just,
Speaker 1: you know, don't even bother talking to you know, but
Speaker 1: they did talk to him and they said, okay, well listen,
Speaker 1: if if the USSR gets in touch with you and
Speaker 1: want you to do sp N, just let us know. Sure. Okay,
Speaker 1: They're like, all right, we'll have a great day. Thanks
Speaker 1: for the coffee, ma'am. She's like, what did you say
Speaker 1: in Russian? It's pretty remarkable. So on April tenth nine, Um,
Speaker 1: another interesting thing happened a few days after losing his job.
Speaker 1: He tried to assassinate Major General Edwin Walker. This guy
Speaker 1: was a piece of work himself. Yeah, he was a
Speaker 1: hardcore right wing conservative, possibly gay man. Oh I hadn't
Speaker 1: heard that. Yeah. Later in life, in his seventies, he
Speaker 1: was arrested twice for fondling men in public. I wonder
Speaker 1: if he was the model for um, the dad in
Speaker 1: American beauty. Oh, maybe I could see that then. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean he never married, and they I don't think
Speaker 1: they ever came right out and said he was gay.
Speaker 1: But he was arrested twice for fondling police officers. If
Speaker 1: that's the case, email and let us know. Okay, Yeah,
Speaker 1: which is neither here nor there, but it's interesting. No,
Speaker 1: but he he was, like you said, extreme, a right
Speaker 1: wing extremist in the very definition of the work. He
Speaker 1: was very um, well respected, decorated military leader, like he
Speaker 1: was commanding all of the troops in West Germany. At
Speaker 1: one point when no he hated the Kennedys. He called
Speaker 1: Harry Truman and Eleanor Roosevelt pink, which means that they
Speaker 1: were communists sympathizers, which is a big deal. He was
Speaker 1: temporarily relieved of his post while he was investigated for that,
Speaker 1: and he said, you know what, I'm not even gonna
Speaker 1: I'm not going back because the US has given up
Speaker 1: his sovereignty to the United Nations and I can't fight
Speaker 1: for it any longer. And this guy was so convinced
Speaker 1: by his own convictions that he refused a military pension
Speaker 1: for years afterwards because he didn't want to have anything
Speaker 1: to do with him. Well, apparently he refused it, but
Speaker 1: then kind of quietly tried to get it right. Well,
Speaker 1: and they gave it to him. Yeah, um, But then
Speaker 1: he was celebrated as a great soldier later on in
Speaker 1: life and after his death. So another example though of
Speaker 1: Oswald is sort of a confused guy, like he tries
Speaker 1: to assassinate this right wing conservative general he also was
Speaker 1: at a marine. He also killed Kennedy. He was just
Speaker 1: sort of like it didn't seem like he knew what
Speaker 1: he believed. Well, he believed that Um was the general's name.
Speaker 1: Walker was like Hitler in the making. Yeah, basically that
Speaker 1: he was an extremist who needed to be taken up,
Speaker 1: but he missed. Yeah, from about a hundred feet away,
Speaker 1: he shot into his dining room from the street where
Speaker 1: he was sitting in a desk and hit the window
Speaker 1: pane and uh that you know, made the bullet go
Speaker 1: a different directions, so he missed. So Lee Harvey Ostal,
Speaker 1: it's basically doing anything he can to insinuate himself in
Speaker 1: international global politics. Yeah, but he got away with it
Speaker 1: like they never It was a cold case until they
Speaker 1: finally caught him and put the you know, I think
Speaker 1: his wife was the one who's who fingered him later on, Yeah,
Speaker 1: because he comes home and says, hey, we're moving to
Speaker 1: New Orleans and she's like, what did you just say?
Speaker 1: And so they moved to New Orleans and UM while
Speaker 1: they're there, she's like, I've had enough, you're shooting at
Speaker 1: um public figures. Now we're moving from Texas to New Orleans.
Speaker 1: I'm moving back, and she moved in with her friend
Speaker 1: Ruth Payne. And that surely had an effect an impact
Speaker 1: on Oswald. There's no way it couldn't because he already
Speaker 1: had abandonment issues from his mother. Now his wife leaves
Speaker 1: him because he's just crazy, and he's like, well, you
Speaker 1: know what, fine, I'm gonna stay here and I'm going
Speaker 1: to start a chapter of a pro Cuba pro castro
Speaker 1: sympathizer club and I'm gonna be the one and only member,
Speaker 1: but I'm gonna be a loudmouth member. I think you
Speaker 1: wanted more than one member. But it was another example
Speaker 1: of like nobody was interested in this guy. Nobody. Russia
Speaker 1: didn't want him, No one joined his club, his wife
Speaker 1: left him, Cuba didn't want him. No. He went down
Speaker 1: to Mexico and visited the Cuban and Russian embassies, trying
Speaker 1: to basically get in them with them, and they're are like,
Speaker 1: it's okay, thanks man. Yeah, like nobody was. I think
Speaker 1: the words strictly used was no one was ever very
Speaker 1: impressed with Oswald. They were unimpressed Soviet and Cuban officials.
Speaker 1: I mean, if this guy was a Patsy, he was
Speaker 1: the perfect Patsy. Oh yeah, but you can also take
Speaker 1: all of this evidence and say, well, this is what
Speaker 1: made him do this. Yeah, if he was a Patsy,
Speaker 1: you imagine how easy it would have been for like
Speaker 1: one of the theories is the mafia, for them to
Speaker 1: put their arm around and be like, you're you're a
Speaker 1: pretty great guy, right, you know what you should do?
Speaker 1: You should kill the president? Yeah? Yeah, he would have
Speaker 1: been very easy to manipulate, I imagine because he's also
Speaker 1: just twenty four. It when the kid, which is crazy,
Speaker 1: um so he uh he left New Orleans, went back
Speaker 1: to Dallas, got a job, and about a month later
Speaker 1: at the school book depository, Uh shot and killed John F. Kennedy. Yes,
Speaker 1: so um Oswald's done is shooting He's called. They started
Speaker 1: to investigate his background, and Lynnon Johnson ordered a um
Speaker 1: an investigation of full investigation into the Kennedy assassination, what happened,
Speaker 1: what lessons learned, all that stuff, And this commission, led
Speaker 1: by Chief Justice Earl Warren UH was called the Warrant Commission,
Speaker 1: and the report they compiled several hundred page reports called
Speaker 1: the Warrant Report. And in addition to the several hundred
Speaker 1: page report, they also released twenty six volumes of transcripts
Speaker 1: of the hearings that they conducted. So it's this exhaustive
Speaker 1: investigation that was very transparent. Supposedly, there's so many documents
Speaker 1: that to try to censor them, really censor them, it
Speaker 1: would be virtually impossible. So a lot of people point
Speaker 1: to the very fact that the Warrant Report is so
Speaker 1: voluminous that it is like in fact correct, and it's
Speaker 1: not part of a larger cover up at least. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and acsuently the article did you read the one in
Speaker 1: the New York Times that some people think they're still
Speaker 1: documents the CIA won't release. Well, they won't. Well, but
Speaker 1: the one anti conspiracy guy that they interviewed said, people
Speaker 1: that I don't know how the CIA works that believe
Speaker 1: this stuff. He went, there would be no documents period.
Speaker 1: They wouldn't be hiding things, they wouldn't exist Operation killed
Speaker 1: President Kennedy. Yeah, I mean he's sort of like a
Speaker 1: little pad on the head, like you think there are documents,
Speaker 1: you sweet little conspiracy theorists. Um, alright, So the warrant
Speaker 1: Commission comes out and immediately conspiracy theorists start to suggest
Speaker 1: different things, like one theory was that it was an
Speaker 1: outside job by the KGB and or Cuba. Right, we
Speaker 1: should say, the warrant Commission concluded that Lee Harvey Oswell
Speaker 1: killed President Kennedy on his own volution, by himself, um,
Speaker 1: without acting at the behester the benefit of anybody else. Yeah,
Speaker 1: just a lone, singular, crazed gunman. So the conspiracy theories
Speaker 1: are everybody else saying no, that's not the case, and
Speaker 1: we gave the example of the Grassy Knoll, the acoustics
Speaker 1: and daily plause of the fact that a cop was
Speaker 1: running towards the Grassy Knoll, and conflicting eyewitness accounts, like
Speaker 1: from the literal beginning of this event. In history, there
Speaker 1: have been all sorts of hey, that people have been
Speaker 1: able to make conspiracy theories out of, Like there's been
Speaker 1: no shortage of all sorts of different weird things that
Speaker 1: you can start to piece together with other things and
Speaker 1: come up with these very interesting, some um sound conspiracy theories,
Speaker 1: but that when you really get down to them, they're
Speaker 1: not supported by evidence exactly. I'm glad you said that. Uh.
Speaker 1: The KGB or Cuba theory that maybe their governments were
Speaker 1: acting out and trying to kill Kennedy had some legs
Speaker 1: because the Bay of Pigs had just happened. They were
Speaker 1: certainly no friends of Kennedy at the height of the
Speaker 1: Cold War. There was definitely a motive there, but um,
Speaker 1: there was no evidence to tie Oswald in any substantive
Speaker 1: way to either of these countries. No, they looked at
Speaker 1: his finances over they went back a year and a
Speaker 1: half and looked at his finances to see if there
Speaker 1: were any weird payments or whatever, and apparently the only
Speaker 1: amount total that they could have they couldn't account for
Speaker 1: came to like a hundred and sixty dollars could have
Speaker 1: been cash and diamonds, though I guess it could have
Speaker 1: been so how they liked the deal. One of the
Speaker 1: other popular theories I mentioned was the mob and that
Speaker 1: Jack Ruby was working with the mob, and the second
Speaker 1: Oswald said I'm a patsy. They're like, we need to
Speaker 1: go take care of this, like right now. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: haven't mentioned Jack Ruby. Two days after Um, Kennedy was killed, Um,
Speaker 1: they were transporting Lee Harvey Oswald and a guy named
Speaker 1: Jack Ruby, who was a Dallas nightclub owner, came up
Speaker 1: and shot Lee Harvey Oswald in the chest and killed him.
Speaker 1: Lee Harvey Oswald actually died in Parkland Memorial, the same
Speaker 1: hospital that Kennedy had two days before. Yeah, very famous
Speaker 1: photo which has since been made into very funny photo.
Speaker 1: Have you seen the band one? No, you never saw that.
Speaker 1: It was big years ago. It was, you know, the
Speaker 1: photo of Ruby killing Kennedy, and someone went in and
Speaker 1: photoshopped and in musical instruments because they're all like have different,
Speaker 1: you know, pained expressions. And Jack Ruby's at the keys
Speaker 1: and I think Lee Harvey Oswald has a guitar and
Speaker 1: it looks like it's pretty funny. Check it out. How
Speaker 1: about another moment here for a message break touch All right,
Speaker 1: let's get back to it. So we were talking about
Speaker 1: the mafia. Um, because Jack Ruby owned a nightclub, Everybody's
Speaker 1: just like, well, he's went down with the mob. What's more,
Speaker 1: Lee Harvey Oswald probably was acting on behalf of the
Speaker 1: mob because he had an uncle in New Orleans who
Speaker 1: was mafia connected. Mobbed up, as they say, Is that
Speaker 1: what they say? Yeah? But um, apparently there's no evidence
Speaker 1: that Oswald and his uncle communicated at all, and the
Speaker 1: these connections are fairly h tenuous at best. Jack Ruby
Speaker 1: himself said that the reason he did it was because
Speaker 1: he wanted to spare Jacqueline and Caroline the heartbreak of
Speaker 1: having to come back to Dallas to testify against Lee
Speaker 1: Harvey Oswald. That's what he officially said. And apparently there's
Speaker 1: a transcript of and it is just hearsay, but it's
Speaker 1: um Oswald talking with his lawyer saying that, Um, he's
Speaker 1: saying like this whole charade we're doing that. He that
Speaker 1: he shot Oswald while he was blacked out, and he
Speaker 1: he can't be held responsible. That it's all just it's
Speaker 1: just just stupid, and they should go with the truth that,
Speaker 1: you know, he did this because he wanted to spare Jackie. Interesting,
Speaker 1: that's supposedly it. But then apparently also it's supposedly he
Speaker 1: said that that was a charade as well, So who knows. Well.
Speaker 1: Another theory is that it was the CIA and it
Speaker 1: was an inside job. Kennedy had criticized their practices and
Speaker 1: um was, you know, trying to scale down Vietnam, and
Speaker 1: those weren't very popular things to do at the time
Speaker 1: if you were in the government. And so a lot
Speaker 1: of people say, you know what, Lennon Johnson might have
Speaker 1: orchestrated this whole thing, and it was an inside job
Speaker 1: with the CIA. They're like, he barely ever wore pants,
Speaker 1: for God's sake. Uh. I don't know if this remained
Speaker 1: true to her death, but both Bobby Kennedy and Jackie
Speaker 1: Kennedy at one point I believe that quote he was
Speaker 1: felled by domestic opponents. Um. And of course Bobby died
Speaker 1: not too long after five years but um, I don't
Speaker 1: know if Jackie held that opinion her entire life. I'm
Speaker 1: not sure about that. I'm curious, but it seems to
Speaker 1: ring a bell that like she was suspicious of LBJ. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: I know. Since two thousand, there have been five legit
Speaker 1: tenured historians that IT published studies, and four or the
Speaker 1: five concluded that there was probably some larger conspiracy at work,
Speaker 1: but none of them agreed on what it was, so
Speaker 1: it's it's hard to get a consensus. So ultimately, what
Speaker 1: the what it came down to the official line was
Speaker 1: that there were Um, there was a rifle that had
Speaker 1: Oswald's fingerprints on it that was found at the crime scene,
Speaker 1: that there is a picture in existence that of Oswald
Speaker 1: holding that exact same rifle before the crime was committed. Um,
Speaker 1: he had already tried to kill a general. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: the fact that he said well it's all over now
Speaker 1: when he was apprehended. You take all this together, everybody
Speaker 1: who a lot of people think it was Oswald. That's
Speaker 1: the official line, right, Yeah, And the Suppruter film has
Speaker 1: been used to that. You know, hey, how can you
Speaker 1: shoot someone from this direction? And they had to go
Speaker 1: that direction? Um, there were other films of the incident,
Speaker 1: but the Supruter is the most complete. I did look
Speaker 1: at some of the others. I've never seen any of
Speaker 1: those before. It's weird to see it from different angles, yeah,
Speaker 1: if you're used to seeing just the Brooder film. UM. So,
Speaker 1: the Warrant Commission did not put this issue to bed
Speaker 1: at all, even back then. Uh. The there was another
Speaker 1: commission that took place in nineteen seventy six, the House
Speaker 1: Select Committee on Assassinations, and they investigated both JFK and
Speaker 1: Martin Luther King's assassinations. And this is a group of
Speaker 1: UM House representatives who, you know, it's true, are known
Speaker 1: for being the rabble rousers of the government, that brands
Speaker 1: of government. UM. But they basically investigated this, carried out
Speaker 1: a full investigation and found that, you know what, we
Speaker 1: actually think that JFK did die as a result of
Speaker 1: a conspiracy. We don't think it was the mob, we
Speaker 1: don't think it was the c i A, we don't
Speaker 1: think it was the FBI, and we don't think it
Speaker 1: was the Cubans. But we do believe that it was
Speaker 1: a conspiracy and that um Lee Harvey Oswald did not
Speaker 1: act alone. This is the House of Representatives saying that, yeah,
Speaker 1: well they initially said that there were four shots, but
Speaker 1: they were actually wrong. And then later we can did
Speaker 1: that um with acoustic evidence and said, you know what,
Speaker 1: we were wrong on that and they did never find
Speaker 1: any like hard evidence. But was there did they remain
Speaker 1: true to that statement? Yeah, that was never their final report.
Speaker 1: Interesting yeah, um, yeah, that it was part of a conspiracy.
Speaker 1: So that definitely didn't quell any No. And as a
Speaker 1: matter of fact, it's like, oh, well, the House of
Speaker 1: Representatives just said Kennedy was killed as part of it
Speaker 1: a conspiracy, like if if it was dying down before
Speaker 1: it flared right back up. And there was another one
Speaker 1: almost at the same time, a Rockefeller Commission by Vice
Speaker 1: President Nelson Rockefeller. And a lot of people think that
Speaker 1: the Rockefeller Commission was basically just like a fact finding
Speaker 1: committee that was there to basically cover up and um
Speaker 1: derail any other investigations. Really yeah, kind of like we
Speaker 1: got this, we got this. You know. It didn't work though,
Speaker 1: because of the House Select Committee. Well, they invalidated one
Speaker 1: of our favorite little parts of the theory, the three
Speaker 1: tramps theory. Um. At the time, there were these three
Speaker 1: vagrants that were detained by police that had been traveling
Speaker 1: by boxcars supposedly, and um, that's how they travel often,
Speaker 1: that is how they travel. And two of the men
Speaker 1: for a while, we're believed to have been E. Howard
Speaker 1: Hunt and Frank Sturgis, who were the dudes who broke
Speaker 1: into Watergate, which would be a nice little coincidence. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well there's a whole side by side photographic comparison of
Speaker 1: the two. I mean, it looks a lot like them.
Speaker 1: Well it does. Um, the FBI got experts to do
Speaker 1: the same thing though that said, no, that that's not them. Uh.
Speaker 1: And the third guy, And if you're a conspiracy theorists,
Speaker 1: you're like, oh, okay, well thanks, FBI appreciate that. I
Speaker 1: believe you. Um. The third guy was rumored to be
Speaker 1: what he Harrelson's dad, Charles Harrison. He was a hit
Speaker 1: man and he they were estranged. By the way, what
Speaker 1: he Harrelson is not like he doesn't talk about this much.
Speaker 1: It's not one of his favorite topics. Sorry, we got
Speaker 1: to talk about it. But um, he he killed a
Speaker 1: federal judge and then when he was caught in a
Speaker 1: standoff in nineteen eighty high on cocaine. He said I
Speaker 1: killed Kennedy too, and then later on recanted that and said,
Speaker 1: I just said that because I was high on cocaine. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I was trying to elongate my life. And like
Speaker 1: they I don't think they would have killed me if
Speaker 1: they if I had information. That's what he said in
Speaker 1: a in an interview from prison. But conspiracy theorists latched
Speaker 1: onto this and said he's the third tramp. He was
Speaker 1: the youngest one of the three. And the pictures kind
Speaker 1: of look alike, you know it to Harrison's dad was
Speaker 1: one of a trio of men who killed JFK. Well,
Speaker 1: all of this could have been put to bed if
Speaker 1: the dudes look nothing like the other guys, but they
Speaker 1: all kind of did. So another thing to add field
Speaker 1: to the fire for sure. And we should say also,
Speaker 1: there's um even more like you were saying, the CIA
Speaker 1: still still will not declassify documents that they have about
Speaker 1: the JFK assassination. That's not helping things. Something did come
Speaker 1: to light though, from UM investigations into the CIA. The
Speaker 1: guy named George Joannity's he Um was a CIA agent
Speaker 1: who was basically in charge of a group of anti
Speaker 1: Cuban Student Dissidents right or anti Castro Cuban student dissidents,
Speaker 1: and he was running their operation in Miami and New Orleans.
Speaker 1: They actually beat up Lee Harvey Oswald while he was
Speaker 1: in New Orleans handing out pamphlets that were pro Cuban
Speaker 1: and pro Castro um like a few months before the assassination.
Speaker 1: So George Joannity's ran that operation and then later on
Speaker 1: in when the House elect Committee was investigating it again,
Speaker 1: he was the liaison for the CIA, but no one
Speaker 1: told the How Select Committee the involvement he'd had before. Interesting, well, uh,
Speaker 1: with Wood, he's dad. He actually had a co conspiracor
Speaker 1: that said, you know what, He's confessed this before to
Speaker 1: me and even drew maps about where he was hiding
Speaker 1: the day it happened. Um. But in arrest records were
Speaker 1: released and identified the three tramps as uh Gus Abrams,
Speaker 1: Harold Doyle, and John Gedney. It was all sound like
Speaker 1: suspicious names and they I think they interviewed a couple
Speaker 1: of these guys later in life and they were like, yeah,
Speaker 1: we were the guys, and we were just buckscar dudes,
Speaker 1: even though we had suits on and we're clean shaven
Speaker 1: and oh well, everybody back then was like, even if
Speaker 1: you were like just the total complete hobo, you still
Speaker 1: wore a suit in Fedora usually. Uh. So again people
Speaker 1: point to that and say, these clearly weren't you know,
Speaker 1: these guys were paid or you know. And then a
Speaker 1: lot of other pinky things happen. People disappeared, witnesses disappeared. Um,
Speaker 1: it's it's never going to die. I don't think I
Speaker 1: don't think anyone will ever let this go. No, but
Speaker 1: that's that's what makes a great conspiracy theory, right. There's
Speaker 1: just too many facts outstanding that just can't be put
Speaker 1: to bed. So you got anything else, I got nothing else.
Speaker 1: If you want to learn more about this, or if
Speaker 1: this piqued your interest, you should definitely check out our
Speaker 1: buddies over at Stuff. They don't want you to know.
Speaker 1: They have a huge, awesome body of work, um that
Speaker 1: they've put together over the years and continue to do so.
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