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