WEBVTT - JFK Assassination Convert Phil Robinson 0:00:01.360 --> 0:00:04.400 I'm John Cipher and I'm Jerry O'sha. I was a 0:00:04.480 --> 0:00:07.840 CIA officer stationed around the world in high threat posts 0:00:07.840 --> 0:00:09.520 in Europe, Russia, and in Asia. 0:00:09.600 --> 0:00:12.680 And I served in Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East 0:00:12.760 --> 0:00:16.840 and in war zones. We sometimes created conspiracies to deceive 0:00:16.880 --> 0:00:17.759 our adversaries. 0:00:18.040 --> 0:00:21.720 Now we're going to use our expertise to deconstruct conspiracy 0:00:21.760 --> 0:00:23.520 theories large and small. 0:00:23.800 --> 0:00:26.280 Could they be true or are we being manipulated? 0:00:26.800 --> 0:00:32.479 This is mission implausible. So, as you know, we've been 0:00:32.560 --> 0:00:35.960 careful about putting our foot too deep into the JFK wormhole, 0:00:36.360 --> 0:00:39.000 but we found an interesting way in. We're going to 0:00:39.040 --> 0:00:41.639 interview and talk to one of our friends, Phil Robinson, 0:00:41.760 --> 0:00:45.800 a well known Hollywood director and writer who did fall 0:00:45.840 --> 0:00:46.720 down that rabbit hole. 0:00:46.760 --> 0:00:48.640 So we're going to be doing that, And as always, 0:00:48.640 --> 0:00:50.080 I just want to know, what are you hiding? 0:00:50.520 --> 0:00:53.680 Why have we done so many episodes of this show 0:00:53.800 --> 0:00:57.400 with two former CIA officers and you just refuse to 0:00:57.480 --> 0:00:59.400 do JFK until I browbeat you. 0:00:59.840 --> 0:01:02.280 Well, as you know, dam you know, you recruit assets early. 0:01:02.320 --> 0:01:05.080 And I was four when JFK was killed and John 0:01:05.240 --> 0:01:06.720 was only two, so you know, we. 0:01:06.840 --> 0:01:09.880 Yeah, with all the drinking we did, and now we're older, 0:01:10.080 --> 0:01:12.520 I could very well know that the CIA was involved 0:01:12.520 --> 0:01:14.760 in killing Kennedy and I forgot it completely. 0:01:15.000 --> 0:01:17.800 All right, let me ask you this. Forget JFK. You 0:01:17.800 --> 0:01:19.560 don't have to tell me what it is. But is 0:01:19.600 --> 0:01:22.960 there a big shocking thing that the CIA did that 0:01:23.400 --> 0:01:26.520 if you told us would be like, WHOA, I can't 0:01:26.520 --> 0:01:27.080 believe that. 0:01:28.319 --> 0:01:33.440 No, yes, but had a good way. It's like what 0:01:33.800 --> 0:01:36.319 you did this, you saved all those people. 0:01:36.480 --> 0:01:38.559 But you know what, people are so cynical that would 0:01:38.560 --> 0:01:39.840 be like, that's what we expect you to do. 0:01:39.920 --> 0:01:42.120 Well, it's it's a lot of ways. It's the lack 0:01:42.200 --> 0:01:44.680 of something which makes puts us oh Is at a disadvantage. 0:01:45.080 --> 0:01:49.240 After nine to eleven, we know that al Qaeda was 0:01:49.320 --> 0:01:52.600 talking about a second strike and there were plans in place. 0:01:53.040 --> 0:01:55.800 It never happened. There's a lot of reasons for that. 0:01:56.440 --> 0:02:00.000 But we you know, terrible things could have happened, bombs 0:02:00.120 --> 0:02:01.840 that didn't go. I mean, those are sort of the 0:02:01.840 --> 0:02:02.920 things I'm thinking about. 0:02:03.040 --> 0:02:06.000 We definitely stopped lots of terrorist attacks. We've definitely stopped 0:02:06.040 --> 0:02:08.320 lots of terrorists. But is that what you're talking about him? 0:02:08.360 --> 0:02:09.079 Is that exciting to. 0:02:09.040 --> 0:02:10.960 You for us to say it's not exciting enough, that's 0:02:11.000 --> 0:02:11.440 your job. 0:02:11.520 --> 0:02:14.839 Come on, you want what do you want? You want 0:02:14.840 --> 0:02:15.559 to met? 0:02:15.919 --> 0:02:18.040 It was pretty goddamn exciting that much, I can tell you. 0:02:18.080 --> 0:02:19.280 I bet it is exciting. 0:02:19.760 --> 0:02:22.600 But yeah, it's more fun when it's did you kill 0:02:22.680 --> 0:02:24.760 presidents and stuff? I guess that is true. I guess 0:02:24.800 --> 0:02:26.919 that is why conspiracy theories win. 0:02:27.120 --> 0:02:29.800 Is it interesting if a president form president was a 0:02:29.800 --> 0:02:31.680 spy for us? Or if we do have to kill 0:02:31.720 --> 0:02:32.680 him for it to be interesting? 0:02:32.919 --> 0:02:33.119 Wait? 0:02:33.360 --> 0:02:34.800 Was a former president of a spy for you? 0:02:34.919 --> 0:02:37.000 I'm not saying that, but it would that be interesting 0:02:37.000 --> 0:02:37.240 to you? 0:02:37.480 --> 0:02:39.200 That would be which one ran the CIA? 0:02:39.440 --> 0:02:40.280 Yeah, that's true. 0:02:40.480 --> 0:02:42.280 All right, I'm excited to hear what your friend Phil 0:02:42.360 --> 0:02:43.320 Robinson has to say. 0:02:44.760 --> 0:02:48.440 Today's guest is Phil Robinson. Phil is a Hollywood big shot. 0:02:48.520 --> 0:02:51.919 He's a writer and director, having written and directed such 0:02:51.960 --> 0:02:55.760 classic films as Field of Dreams, Sneakers, Some of All Fears, 0:02:56.320 --> 0:02:58.799 and involved with Band of Brothers and he Rewrote a 0:02:58.840 --> 0:03:02.400 personal favorite of mine. But more importantly, he's a friend 0:03:02.400 --> 0:03:04.840 of ours and for our purposes today, he's a recovering 0:03:04.880 --> 0:03:07.560 obsessive on the assassination of President John F. 0:03:07.639 --> 0:03:08.000 Kennedy. 0:03:08.200 --> 0:03:10.560 Phil, welcome, It's very nice to be here. 0:03:10.800 --> 0:03:12.880 It's funny just because we know you, we know that 0:03:12.919 --> 0:03:14.720 you were interested in this. I know you've done some 0:03:14.800 --> 0:03:17.560 work on the Cuban missile crisis and Beya Pigs. But 0:03:17.560 --> 0:03:20.160 how did you get involved in following the rabbit hole 0:03:20.240 --> 0:03:21.640 of the Kennedy assassination. 0:03:22.000 --> 0:03:24.120 I was in college in I guess it was the 0:03:24.160 --> 0:03:26.280 beginning of college in nineteen sixty seven. A friend of 0:03:26.280 --> 0:03:29.120 mine was a rabid conspiracy buff and he turned me 0:03:29.160 --> 0:03:33.000 on to Mark Lane's book, excellent book called Rush to Judgment, 0:03:33.440 --> 0:03:38.640 which was a fairly scholarly dissection of the war and Report. 0:03:38.720 --> 0:03:41.800 And I think Lane did a real service by saying, Hey, 0:03:41.800 --> 0:03:44.560 the War Report's got a lot of problems. There's a 0:03:44.600 --> 0:03:50.960 lot of inconsistencies, there's omissions, there's mistakes. Lane inferred that 0:03:50.960 --> 0:03:53.120 that was the result of a cover up, but he 0:03:53.200 --> 0:03:56.160 also implied, look, this could be a rush to judgment. 0:03:56.240 --> 0:03:58.640 They were told to come out with this conclusion. They 0:03:58.680 --> 0:04:02.120 worked very fast, and they ignored certain things, they covered 0:04:02.160 --> 0:04:05.000 up other things, and this was the result a report 0:04:05.040 --> 0:04:08.200 that said Oswald acted alone, there was no conspiracy. The 0:04:08.240 --> 0:04:12.280 conspiracy theories kind of began at that point, and I 0:04:12.360 --> 0:04:15.480 was obsessed with them. They were fascinating. It was fun 0:04:15.520 --> 0:04:18.279 to talk about that the CIA and the FBI and 0:04:18.320 --> 0:04:23.159 the Secret Service and the mafia and anti Castro Cubans 0:04:23.279 --> 0:04:26.160 or Procrastro Cubans, and all these people were involved in 0:04:26.200 --> 0:04:29.680 the conspiracy and somehow kept the secret all these years. 0:04:29.760 --> 0:04:33.159 I loved learning more about it. Every book that came out, 0:04:33.200 --> 0:04:34.719 I would read it, and then I would bore my 0:04:34.800 --> 0:04:37.119 friends by keeping them ball all night, telling them about 0:04:37.720 --> 0:04:41.440 the hoboes who were removed from the train tracts and 0:04:41.560 --> 0:04:44.640 the railroad overpass over Elm Street, one of whom looked 0:04:44.680 --> 0:04:47.960 exactly like Howard Hunt. And you can show the picture 0:04:48.000 --> 0:04:49.560 and you go, I guess it looks a little like 0:04:49.600 --> 0:04:52.400 Howard Hunt. There was a lot of cool stuff, and 0:04:52.440 --> 0:04:55.680 I realized, after years and years of obsessing on this, 0:04:56.200 --> 0:04:59.200 that I wanted to believe the conspiracy theories. And then 0:04:59.240 --> 0:05:03.200 I was not a applying the same level of rigorous 0:05:03.480 --> 0:05:07.240 skepticism to conspiracy theories that I was applying to the 0:05:07.240 --> 0:05:11.599 government's case. And I started looking at them in a 0:05:11.640 --> 0:05:15.039 different light, and they all fell apart. I remember the day. 0:05:15.080 --> 0:05:17.160 It was in the eighties. I was reading a new 0:05:17.200 --> 0:05:20.320 book about the assassination, and I thought, wait a second, 0:05:20.320 --> 0:05:23.280 this doesn't make sense. They wouldn't have planned it this way. 0:05:23.680 --> 0:05:26.800 And I realized all the conspiracy theories were constructed from 0:05:26.839 --> 0:05:31.599 today looking back at this constellation of facts and semi 0:05:31.640 --> 0:05:35.000 facts and whatnot, and you could select what you wanted 0:05:35.040 --> 0:05:37.640 and connect dots and make a scenario that made some 0:05:37.680 --> 0:05:40.720 sort of sense. But that's not how the conspiracy was constructed. 0:05:40.720 --> 0:05:44.760 It was constructed before the assassination by people planning what's 0:05:44.800 --> 0:05:46.960 the best way to do this? And if you just 0:05:47.120 --> 0:05:49.719 look at these theories from that point of view, none 0:05:49.760 --> 0:05:53.080 of them made sense. They all seemed impossible. 0:05:53.720 --> 0:05:55.960 Neither John nor I think I could speak for John, 0:05:56.360 --> 0:06:00.240 neither of us have gone down the JFK conspiracy. See 0:06:00.279 --> 0:06:02.960 rabbit hole, right. It's a whole industry. It's almost a 0:06:02.960 --> 0:06:06.839 way of life for some people. But with the Warren Report, 0:06:06.839 --> 0:06:09.400 I just have a really basic question in one that is, 0:06:09.440 --> 0:06:12.760 an intelligence officer always gets face, and it comes down 0:06:12.760 --> 0:06:16.600 to the burden of proof. The Warren Report says that 0:06:16.839 --> 0:06:20.120 Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone and there was no conspiracy. 0:06:20.560 --> 0:06:23.679 Is that exactly what it said or did it say 0:06:24.000 --> 0:06:27.640 that we have no evidence that there was a conspiracy 0:06:27.680 --> 0:06:31.159 that others weren't involved. There's a difference between we can 0:06:31.320 --> 0:06:34.520 prove there was no one else involved in a conspiracy, 0:06:34.520 --> 0:06:36.960 which is almost impossible to because you can never prove 0:06:37.000 --> 0:06:39.479 a negative, righty right, it's unfalsifiable. 0:06:39.960 --> 0:06:42.479 I could be wrong. My recollection as they were very definitive. 0:06:42.720 --> 0:06:45.440 I read the first volume. There's twenty six volumes of 0:06:45.480 --> 0:06:48.640 the Warren Report, and then there's some I read that 0:06:48.680 --> 0:06:51.520 when it came out. My recollection is they were very definitive. 0:06:51.800 --> 0:06:54.920 There was no conspiracy. He acted alone, there was no 0:06:55.040 --> 0:06:59.880 second assassin. In the seventies Committee on Assassinations and they 0:07:00.120 --> 0:07:05.560 studied various assassinations, mostly the JFK one, they included a 0:07:05.560 --> 0:07:08.279 lot of evidence supposed as evidence that had come out 0:07:08.320 --> 0:07:12.720 since the Warrant Report, and they concluded it was probably 0:07:12.760 --> 0:07:16.560 a conspiracy. But they then said, but we can rule 0:07:16.600 --> 0:07:23.440 out the CIA, the FBI, the Secret Service, the mafia, Cuba, Russia, 0:07:24.280 --> 0:07:27.480 and anti Castro Cubans. They ruled out everybody who had 0:07:27.520 --> 0:07:32.080 ever been suggested as a possible conspirator, leaving I don't 0:07:32.080 --> 0:07:35.240 know who. And the reason that they said it was 0:07:35.280 --> 0:07:38.360 probably a conspiracy was one piece of evidence which was 0:07:38.400 --> 0:07:44.040 a Dickta belt. A Dickta belt recording supposedly a Dallas 0:07:44.040 --> 0:07:47.640 police officer on a motorcycle in Deey Plaza had left 0:07:47.640 --> 0:07:50.760 his microphone open and there was a dickt de belt 0:07:50.760 --> 0:07:53.520 recording of this that people who listened to it said, 0:07:53.560 --> 0:07:57.240 I hear four gunshots. Based on that one piece of evidence, 0:07:57.520 --> 0:08:01.040 the House Select Committee said there was a fourth gun shot, 0:08:01.440 --> 0:08:05.440 probably from the Grassy Knoll, and therefore it's a conspiracy. 0:08:05.760 --> 0:08:08.680 Some years later, a panel of acoustical experts took a 0:08:08.720 --> 0:08:11.960 look at this and said, no, A, these are not gunshots, 0:08:11.960 --> 0:08:13.800 and b it did not take place at the time 0:08:13.800 --> 0:08:17.680 of the assassination this recording, thereby ruling out that one 0:08:17.720 --> 0:08:20.880 piece of evidence. The interesting thing about what the House 0:08:20.880 --> 0:08:25.160 Select Committee said a fourth gun shot from the Grassy Null. 0:08:25.200 --> 0:08:28.800 Remember the grassy Knoll is where the supposed professional assassin 0:08:29.360 --> 0:08:33.080 was shooting from. If he fired the fourth gunshot, he missed. 0:08:33.240 --> 0:08:37.560 According to that theory Oswald, the amateur fired three shots, 0:08:37.640 --> 0:08:41.120 hit Kennedy twice, the professional and the grassy null fired once, 0:08:41.160 --> 0:08:43.120 and so it kind of doesn't make sense. 0:08:43.640 --> 0:08:47.440 So the FBI. JEdgar Hoover's FBI did an initial like 0:08:47.480 --> 0:08:52.040 fifty page overview very soon after the assassination, and Hoover 0:08:52.120 --> 0:08:56.040 himself pushed President Johnson to simply accept the FBI's report, 0:08:56.360 --> 0:08:58.840 and because Hoover did not want to open up the 0:08:59.000 --> 0:09:02.760 Bureau for criticism. They'd been monitoring Lee Harvey Oswald, they 0:09:02.800 --> 0:09:05.280 hadn't spoke with him, and obviously they weren't tracking him 0:09:05.280 --> 0:09:08.080 on the day of the assassination. And Hoover and Johnson 0:09:08.120 --> 0:09:10.200 were pretty good friends. They lived on the same street 0:09:10.360 --> 0:09:14.280 before Johnson was president, and Johnson eventually realized he did 0:09:14.280 --> 0:09:17.480 have to have a special commission, but he nonetheless pushed 0:09:17.520 --> 0:09:19.719 them to try to accept the FBI view, which I 0:09:19.760 --> 0:09:23.240 think was right. But because trying to protect the Bureau, 0:09:23.640 --> 0:09:26.280 it was limited and it failed to anticipate all the 0:09:26.320 --> 0:09:28.040 possible scenarios and rule them out. 0:09:28.240 --> 0:09:29.960 And I think Mark Lane was right. I think the 0:09:30.040 --> 0:09:34.280 Warrent Commission did omit certain things that they probably should 0:09:34.320 --> 0:09:40.560 have included, particularly regarding Lee Oswald's background. And my theory 0:09:40.600 --> 0:09:43.760 about that is that, as we learned from the Church 0:09:43.800 --> 0:09:48.000 Committee in the seventies, Oswald was a kind of a 0:09:48.120 --> 0:09:52.920 fringe character in this shadowy world in which the intelligence 0:09:52.920 --> 0:09:55.480 community and law enforcement at the mafia were involved in 0:09:55.559 --> 0:10:00.000 all kinds of illegal activities together, assassinations, spying on Americans, 0:10:00.120 --> 0:10:04.000 trading political groups. And I think that Oswald, when he 0:10:04.080 --> 0:10:07.400 was in New Orleans, rubbed shoulders with some of this. 0:10:07.880 --> 0:10:12.680 And I think the Warrant Commission felt if we reveal 0:10:12.760 --> 0:10:16.000 all we know about Lee Oswald's background having nothing to 0:10:16.000 --> 0:10:19.839 do with the assassination, it could bring down the whole house. 0:10:20.400 --> 0:10:22.680 So let's just put a lid on that stuff. And 0:10:22.720 --> 0:10:24.400 I think in the course of doing that, it made 0:10:24.440 --> 0:10:27.600 it look like they were covering up the assassination, when 0:10:27.600 --> 0:10:30.160 in fact they were covering up something else. That's just 0:10:30.200 --> 0:10:31.200 a theory. 0:10:31.440 --> 0:10:35.280 Years ago, there was a reporting that had come out 0:10:35.640 --> 0:10:39.199 from in the press, but according to the agency, there 0:10:39.440 --> 0:10:45.360 was real indications that the GRU the Russian intelligence service, 0:10:45.480 --> 0:10:50.640 was offering bounties for the killing of American CIA officers 0:10:50.679 --> 0:10:55.000 back then in Afghanistan and of US officials. And we 0:10:55.040 --> 0:10:59.600 could never prove that one hundred percent officially, and to 0:10:59.600 --> 0:11:03.520 a certain extent that that's good insofar as even if 0:11:03.520 --> 0:11:07.000 we're only ninety ninety five percent certain that's true that 0:11:07.000 --> 0:11:09.599 the Russians are putting bounties on the heads of our officers, 0:11:10.280 --> 0:11:14.559 that is arguably that's a cause for war, I mean, 0:11:14.559 --> 0:11:17.560 because you have to respond to that. So you've got 0:11:17.559 --> 0:11:20.360 to have at one hundred percent learn that in the 0:11:20.360 --> 0:11:23.400 Iraq war, with WMD claiming that it was there, when 0:11:23.559 --> 0:11:26.160 it turns out it likely was, but it wasn't. 0:11:26.320 --> 0:11:29.920 If with the Kennedy assassination, with Oswald having close ties 0:11:30.040 --> 0:11:33.240 to both Cuba and certainly to Russia, if one of 0:11:33.280 --> 0:11:37.000 the theories entertained and talked about was there is good 0:11:37.040 --> 0:11:40.439 reason to believe that Cashrow or Russia was behind this. 0:11:41.440 --> 0:11:43.280 Where does that take us? That takes us on a 0:11:43.440 --> 0:11:46.520 maybe to the brink of war, and is that really 0:11:46.520 --> 0:11:48.560 worthwhile if we can't be certain? 0:11:48.920 --> 0:11:51.600 But in that case, you are actually suggesting a potential 0:11:51.640 --> 0:11:52.559 cover up to. 0:11:52.559 --> 0:11:55.920 Me based on nothing. It does make sense. He was 0:11:56.200 --> 0:11:59.800 a Russian citizen, He was in the Russian embassy. Before this, 0:12:00.880 --> 0:12:03.760 the Bay Pigs had gone down. He and Cruise Jutt 0:12:03.760 --> 0:12:07.280 has squared off in Vienna the Cuban missile crisis. The 0:12:07.360 --> 0:12:10.760 Russians may have seen him, or some rogue element may 0:12:10.800 --> 0:12:13.080 have suggested to him that it would be a good 0:12:13.120 --> 0:12:16.720 idea for Kennedy to be gotten rid of zero evidence 0:12:16.720 --> 0:12:19.240 of this, right, I mean but it's how many Americans 0:12:19.240 --> 0:12:21.599 in those days were hanging out in the Russian embassy 0:12:21.760 --> 0:12:23.760 and then having the shootcaster. I think. 0:12:24.200 --> 0:12:26.560 But he was such a low level schmuck, the fact 0:12:26.600 --> 0:12:28.480 that they would suggest, hey, you're the one we want 0:12:28.520 --> 0:12:29.040 to kill. 0:12:28.840 --> 0:12:31.880 The president of the United States, and we know from 0:12:31.880 --> 0:12:34.640 our business it may not have been a guy a 0:12:34.720 --> 0:12:38.600 KGB officer saying go shoot him, but a KGB officer saying, 0:12:38.640 --> 0:12:41.680 if only he were gone. There's all sorts of ways 0:12:41.720 --> 0:12:44.360 short of paying him money to do this. 0:12:45.000 --> 0:12:46.800 Man, you are you were going down the rabbit hole, 0:12:46.880 --> 0:12:49.280 Jerry Are No, I'm the different help tree. 0:12:49.840 --> 0:12:52.440 The difference Betwe is like, I can see that as 0:12:52.440 --> 0:12:55.760 a possibility, but it's completely unproven. It's total conjecture. I 0:12:55.880 --> 0:12:57.160 get that well. 0:12:57.240 --> 0:12:58.840 And I think you raise a good point, which is 0:12:58.840 --> 0:13:03.040 that the Warrant report has good reason to tamp down 0:13:03.040 --> 0:13:07.440 any suggestion that Oswald was working on behalf of the Russians, 0:13:07.440 --> 0:13:10.440 because if they said he was, then we could be 0:13:10.480 --> 0:13:13.120 at war. And I think John's pointed a I would 0:13:13.160 --> 0:13:16.599 assume the Russians had better people than this, you know, 0:13:16.760 --> 0:13:20.000 incompetent to pull this off. And the other thing is, 0:13:20.440 --> 0:13:22.880 if you look at the geopolitics at the time. After 0:13:23.000 --> 0:13:28.440 the Cuban missile crisis, Kennedy and Khrushchev had a rap prochemont. 0:13:28.760 --> 0:13:30.800 They both felt that we are the only two people 0:13:30.840 --> 0:13:34.560 who pulled the world back from nuclear holocaust, and in 0:13:34.600 --> 0:13:38.400 sixty three they were working together on a nuclear arms tree. 0:13:38.640 --> 0:13:42.199 There was actually a warming between those two men in 0:13:42.320 --> 0:13:45.240 nineteen sixty three. I don't know that the geopolitics at 0:13:45.240 --> 0:13:47.960 the time would have led the Soviet Union to want 0:13:48.040 --> 0:13:51.600 Kennedy killed because he'd be replaced by somebody who was 0:13:51.840 --> 0:13:52.839 more of a hardliner. 0:13:53.400 --> 0:13:55.520 But if you're going down rabbit holes and you're like yes, 0:13:55.640 --> 0:13:59.800 But perhaps the KGB, the CIA had been had been 0:14:00.280 --> 0:14:03.160 embarrassed by Kennedy who didn't support them in the Bay 0:14:03.200 --> 0:14:07.760 of Pigs, and the KGB now thought Khushchef was being weak. Therefore, 0:14:08.120 --> 0:14:11.679 those people could have wanted Even if Khrushchef didn't want 0:14:11.760 --> 0:14:14.160 Kennedy killed, maybe the KGB thought it was worthwhile, or 0:14:14.160 --> 0:14:17.720 maybe the CIA wanted Kennedy killed because he wasn't strong enough. 0:14:17.760 --> 0:14:20.200 So that's why this game is interesting, and that's why 0:14:20.240 --> 0:14:22.920 this has stayed on for thirty forty years, because if 0:14:22.960 --> 0:14:25.600 you go take any of these scenarios. They have a 0:14:25.640 --> 0:14:27.480 piece of it that's very interesting, and so of course 0:14:27.520 --> 0:14:28.640 you would want to cover that up. 0:14:28.720 --> 0:14:31.040 In a way, it's a little bit like the religious 0:14:31.120 --> 0:14:34.240 argument of God works in mysterious ways. It's an answer 0:14:34.280 --> 0:14:37.200 to pretty much everything. I don't know that either the 0:14:37.200 --> 0:14:40.520 CIA or the Soviets would have picked Lee Harvey Oswald, 0:14:40.520 --> 0:14:43.680 who was one of life's losers, to pull off the 0:14:43.720 --> 0:14:47.120 biggest event of the century, and there's certainly no evidence 0:14:47.160 --> 0:14:50.600 that they did. And I realized one day, I felt 0:14:51.080 --> 0:14:55.640 I wanted to believe the conspiracy because psychologically this may 0:14:55.680 --> 0:14:59.960 sound counterintuitive. I don't want to believe that one possess 0:15:00.480 --> 0:15:05.240 low life loser can have such a huge, deleterious, damaging 0:15:05.240 --> 0:15:07.800 effect on my life, in the life of my country. 0:15:07.960 --> 0:15:11.600 I'm much more comfortable believing that something this damaging, this 0:15:11.840 --> 0:15:16.440 hugest monumental, could only be pulled off by the most 0:15:16.480 --> 0:15:21.160 powerful forces on earth. Because if a nothing like Oswald 0:15:21.600 --> 0:15:25.040 can have this effect on history, then we're hanging by 0:15:25.080 --> 0:15:26.000 a narrow thread. 0:15:26.360 --> 0:15:30.160 That's why conspiracy are comforting, right, because it helps explain 0:15:31.000 --> 0:15:34.960 unexplainable or complicated or chaotic or random things. 0:15:35.800 --> 0:15:37.480 All Right, we're gonna get right back into that. 0:15:37.560 --> 0:15:39.200 But first let's hear this. 0:15:56.480 --> 0:15:58.840 Did you lose friends, Phil after you came out of 0:15:58.840 --> 0:16:00.960 the rabbit hole? And did you keep all your materials 0:16:01.000 --> 0:16:01.520 and books? 0:16:01.760 --> 0:16:04.320 I did not lose friends after I committed that. I 0:16:04.360 --> 0:16:06.640 lost friends while I was in the rabbit hole because 0:16:06.640 --> 0:16:09.960 I bored people to tears night after the night telling 0:16:10.000 --> 0:16:14.840 them these and connecting assassination theories with the Robert Kennedy 0:16:14.880 --> 0:16:17.920 and the Martin Luther King assassination because there were tenuous 0:16:17.960 --> 0:16:20.640 ties that people would make to that. I think I 0:16:20.760 --> 0:16:25.200 probably I was persona on grata in a lot of 0:16:25.640 --> 0:16:28.800 rooms in the college dormitory because oh God, here comes Phil. 0:16:29.080 --> 0:16:30.720 We're going to be up till three listening to these 0:16:30.720 --> 0:16:31.400 horror stories. 0:16:31.960 --> 0:16:35.520 And it's interesting. On one of our other episodes, we 0:16:35.560 --> 0:16:38.640 had Michael Weissan, who was an expert on Russian intelligence 0:16:38.640 --> 0:16:41.440 written some books on history of Russian active measures and 0:16:41.480 --> 0:16:45.760 disinformation campaigns, and he points out that the JFK movie 0:16:46.000 --> 0:16:50.640 by Oliver Stone was actually part of a Russian disinformation campaign. 0:16:50.640 --> 0:16:53.120 In other words, the Russians saw that we were deep 0:16:53.120 --> 0:16:56.280 in these rabbit holes and picked a conspiracy to push 0:16:56.320 --> 0:16:59.200 into different things. Now, back then, we probably didn't have 0:16:59.240 --> 0:17:01.560 the sense of this that we do now to see 0:17:01.560 --> 0:17:03.840 how beautifully evil that is to say, oh, look at 0:17:03.840 --> 0:17:06.680 the Americans are like chasing their tails here, let's throw 0:17:06.720 --> 0:17:08.840 something in the middle of the watch to meet each 0:17:08.880 --> 0:17:09.280 other up. 0:17:09.520 --> 0:17:12.040 I have to say, I mean all of Besonde's movie JFK, 0:17:12.200 --> 0:17:14.480 I think is one of the great movies. I disagree 0:17:14.520 --> 0:17:17.600 with his interpretation of the events, but just as pure 0:17:17.600 --> 0:17:19.639 as filmmaking, I think it's as good as it gets. 0:17:19.680 --> 0:17:20.640 I love that movie. 0:17:21.000 --> 0:17:23.600 One of the things too, that doesn't make any sense 0:17:23.800 --> 0:17:30.200 is conspiracy. Theorists now on the JFK event keep saying 0:17:30.240 --> 0:17:33.800 and hoping that one more there's one more document and 0:17:33.920 --> 0:17:37.520 it will show right. And how many administrations have we 0:17:37.600 --> 0:17:41.560 been through Obama, trum Biden, going back to Trump again, 0:17:42.119 --> 0:17:44.800 if there was a piece of paper that laid out 0:17:44.840 --> 0:17:49.479 this hunting plan. And we've said this before, but just 0:17:49.520 --> 0:17:52.200 to be clear, some of the documents that are still 0:17:52.720 --> 0:17:56.000 being held, one of them that came out was the 0:17:56.119 --> 0:18:00.320 reason we knew Oswald was in the Russian m se 0:18:00.320 --> 0:18:02.520 in Mexico City is because we had this We had 0:18:02.520 --> 0:18:05.919 the embassy bugged and it was against Mexican law, and 0:18:05.960 --> 0:18:10.399 the Mexican president himself said, I will allow you to 0:18:10.480 --> 0:18:12.960 break Mexican law, but I will be in big trouble 0:18:13.280 --> 0:18:15.439 and my legacy will be in big trouble if I 0:18:15.520 --> 0:18:19.240 allow this. So you must promise to keep this secret forever. 0:18:19.840 --> 0:18:23.400 But before that, people are thinking, oh, they're keeping these secrets. Oh, 0:18:23.480 --> 0:18:25.320 this has got to be the one. And then it 0:18:25.359 --> 0:18:27.640 comes out that it basically see, I had just made 0:18:27.680 --> 0:18:31.800 a promise. I come something completely different, and we broke 0:18:31.840 --> 0:18:34.200 our promise and it didn't solve anything. 0:18:34.400 --> 0:18:39.040 Some people lie, some people forget details. But there's one 0:18:39.080 --> 0:18:43.000 thing that prevented us from ever knowing definitively for sure, 0:18:43.320 --> 0:18:47.800 and that is the wounds in Kennedy's neck and the back. 0:18:48.080 --> 0:18:51.040 Doctors at Parkland Hospital saw him lying on his back 0:18:51.119 --> 0:18:53.280 with a hole in the front of his throat. Now, 0:18:53.280 --> 0:18:56.040 the Warren Report says that's the exit wound from the 0:18:56.080 --> 0:18:58.840 bullet that entered his back. The doctors at Parkland Hospital 0:18:58.880 --> 0:19:00.720 never turned him onto his back, They never saw a 0:19:00.760 --> 0:19:03.399 hole in his back, They saw the hole in his throat, 0:19:03.440 --> 0:19:07.000 assumed it was an entry wound, did an emergency tracheotomy 0:19:07.040 --> 0:19:10.040 to try to save his life. He dies. The body 0:19:10.080 --> 0:19:13.679 is shipped to Bethesda Naval hospital for an autopsy. The 0:19:13.720 --> 0:19:17.399 doctors who do the autopsy see a tracheotomy opening in 0:19:17.440 --> 0:19:19.560 the front of his neck and a hole on the 0:19:19.600 --> 0:19:22.399 back of his neck, so they say, okay, the bullet 0:19:22.480 --> 0:19:24.879 entered the back of his neck. They never talked to 0:19:24.920 --> 0:19:27.639 the doctors at Parkland who thought that the hole in 0:19:27.640 --> 0:19:31.680 the front was an entry wound. If the doctor's doing 0:19:31.680 --> 0:19:34.760 the autopsy had been told, hey, there's a possibility that 0:19:34.800 --> 0:19:36.560 there was an entry into the front, they would have 0:19:36.880 --> 0:19:41.240 dissected the entire path of that bullet to see if 0:19:41.280 --> 0:19:44.120 the tissue is pushing from front to back or from 0:19:44.160 --> 0:19:46.879 back to front. They never did that. The body was 0:19:46.920 --> 0:19:49.920 sealed in the coffin lying in state, and only then 0:19:49.960 --> 0:19:51.920 did the two sets of doctors talk to each other 0:19:52.080 --> 0:19:54.400 and was too late to examine it. Because of that 0:19:54.480 --> 0:19:58.879 one missed communication, we don't have the definitive proof that 0:19:58.920 --> 0:20:01.680 the hole in the front of his was an exit word. 0:20:01.800 --> 0:20:04.840 There was a law in nineteen ninety two that stipulates 0:20:04.840 --> 0:20:09.480 that anything that Menson mentions the assassination must be cross 0:20:09.520 --> 0:20:12.800 filed into the JFK material. So in CIA, obviously there 0:20:12.840 --> 0:20:15.879 was such pressure even back then on the agency, like, hey, listen, 0:20:16.119 --> 0:20:17.919 we have to make sure that we keep good records 0:20:17.920 --> 0:20:20.120 of all this stuff. And so they said, any if 0:20:20.119 --> 0:20:22.280 you're anywhere in the world and someone says something about 0:20:22.280 --> 0:20:24.600 the JFK, then has to be cross filed into the 0:20:24.680 --> 0:20:29.000 JFK material and files. And the problem then becomes that 0:20:29.080 --> 0:20:31.560 there's a bunch of sensitive material that has nothing to 0:20:31.560 --> 0:20:34.880 do with the assassination in these files. For example, when 0:20:34.880 --> 0:20:37.120 I was in Belgrade and Serbia, I met the former 0:20:37.119 --> 0:20:39.320 head of the Serbian Intelligence Service, and as I was 0:20:39.320 --> 0:20:41.000 sitting down and drinking with him, it turns out he 0:20:41.040 --> 0:20:43.760 was obsessed with the assassination and he talked about it 0:20:43.760 --> 0:20:46.080 for the bulk of the evening of our meeting. So 0:20:46.119 --> 0:20:48.080 therefore I wrote up a meeting with the head of 0:20:48.080 --> 0:20:52.800 the Serbian intelligence Service, and I included the JFK discussion 0:20:52.920 --> 0:20:54.840 had nothing to do with the issues we were doing. 0:20:55.520 --> 0:20:58.440 But then that report gets cross filed into the JFK material. 0:20:58.960 --> 0:21:00.840