November 17, 2017 • 63 mins
For decades after the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963, hundreds of thousands of Americans -- and millions of people across the planet -- have had lingering, troubling problems with the US government’s official narrative of the tragedy. Now, recently declassified documents may shed light on the story, either confirming or contradicting the official tale of Kennedy’s death. Or will they?
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. Hello,
(00:24):
and welcome back to the show. My name is Matt.
My name they call me Ben. You are you? And
that makes this stuff they don't want you to know. Now.
We are looking at a developing situation and in the past, guys,
we've been hesitant to cover things like as they're unfolding
because peek behind the curtain here of course, and our
(00:47):
super producer Paul Decan will agree with us, hopefully, I'm sure.
And I'm looking at his body language. Oh he's he's wishing.
Was he's hedging, he's hedging his bats. I respect that. Um.
We we feel just terrible if we report on something
that is occurring in the news, right, and by the
(01:09):
time our episode comes out, the situation is completely changed
because like spoiler you guys, this is not live correct, right,
we did this like a week ago. The good thing
about this specific topic is that the occurrence happened in
nineteen sixty three, So that makes it fifty plus years
of history that we can cover and then bring in
(01:29):
some of this new stuff that actually occurred around Yeah,
and you know, we don't want to be old beans
that I'm I'm saying that now, I don't think so
you don't think I think it's gonna beans? Yeah, well,
right in and let us know are they moldy or
just stale? It's just like I'm using it as like
a just a term of figure of speech. You guys
(01:52):
are skeptical about bag of badgers, but that took off,
it really did. What are we talking about today? Can
we get to the thing for crying out loud? Yes,
let's let's start with the facts. The brass Tax President
John F. Kennedy was assassinated on November twenty two, ninety three,
about twelve thirty in the afternoon in Dallas, Texas, while
(02:14):
they were writing in a presidential motorcade and in uh,
the probably the biggest understatement of our entire show, All
hell broke loose? Yeah, it's true. And then you fast
forward several decades and there's a survey by a site
called five thirty eight dot com and they found that
(02:35):
only thirty of the people responding actually believed the findings
of the official Warren Commission. That's the one that concluded
in nineteen sixty four that the lone gunman, Lee Harvey Oswald,
was responsible for the death of President Kennedy, and today
sixty one percent of the US public believe that at
(02:56):
least one other person was involved. Yes, not justice single gunman.
So you guys know, I'm kind of a Kennedy novice.
Can you catch me up on the Warran Commission? Sure?
The Warren Commission, We've talked about this before on the show,
officially is known as the President's Commission on the Assassination
of President Kennedy, which I don't know. I feel like
one too many presidents in there, but that's fine. I
(03:18):
didn't name that. Can you make it into an acronym
for me? That helps me digest it a little better? Ben? Oh,
the T PC O T A O P K better before. Anyway,
it was formed by the president that immediately followed uh
the President's death. Lyndon Johnson, correct, by the way, was
a real pill. Apparently he was a pill. A lot
(03:39):
of accusations have been made about him and his involvement
with the assassination of JFK over the years. We have
not found any of them to be completely true, but
there are some juicy details in there, but has a
very pleasant sounding name. When you say the initials lb J,
it's very mellifluous. It is. I just what you know.
There was a thing listeners, friends and neighbors that Lyndon
(04:01):
Johnson used to do. It was called the Johnson treatment.
He would get in people's faces, like grabbed them by
their lapels four heads inches away. He followed one guy
into a bathroom, busted into this stall. That wouldn't fly today. Yeah,
while he was doing his business. Well, he's a large
gentleman as well, very tall and imposing, bit of a
(04:21):
bull in the china shop kind of scenario. Absolutely what
LBJ do? Okay. So he formed the President's Commission on
the Assassination of President Kennedy on November twenty nine, nineteen
sixty three, just a few days after President Kennedy was shot,
and it was all the whole reason to have this
was to investigate what happened on that day, right because
people wanted answers, and the Commission acted as quickly as
(04:45):
they could. To this day, you can read their full report. Well, yeah,
they're quote unquote full report. All the information it was
given to the Commission quickly in government time. Isn't like days, right,
I mean this rep were likely took many months to yea, yeah,
this is not quickly in people's time, it's quickly in
(05:05):
government time. So they were racing to determine whether there
was any truth, any stands to the multitudinous rumors surrounding
this assassination, and the commission eventually concluded that Lee Harvey
Oswald acted alone under his own power, no assistance from
any criminal organization, intelligence agencies, eating shady dude or foreign
(05:29):
government or foreign government. That's very important, And that Jack Ruby,
the man who would later assassinate Oswald, had no previous
relationship with that guy either, So Jack Ruby apparently the story. Yeah,
the story was that the lone gunman was killed by
a lone gunman and nothing is related. Nothing to see here,
(05:50):
folks know, none of the conspiracies have been reading about,
or anyone's been saying in papers of these weird rumors.
None of that's true. Please continue with your regularly scheduled programming,
and when when the When the three of us started
this show, one of the things that we wanted to
do was to explore the stuff on the fringes, right,
and and we stay away from the JFK assassination because
(06:14):
there has already been so much work done on it, right,
And there's Stone comes in and makes a movie, and
then a whole bunch of other conspiracy theories back into
the left and nothing, you know, nothing that we would
have found would have been new news. It would have
been old beans. I'm not giving up on it. I'm
(06:35):
telling you guys, it's going to see. Nobody gets old
beans yet. But that's just because this episode hasn't come out.
I'm a I'm I'm telling you guys. Invest now get
in on the ground floor of these various catchphrases. So
the Commission, the Commission has a quote where they they
(06:56):
sum up this relationship quote. The Commission made intensive inquiry
into the backgrounds and relationships of Oswald and Ruby to
determine whether they knew each other or were involved in
a plot of any kind with each other or others.
It was unable to find any credible evidence to support
the rumors linking Oswald and Ruby directly or through others.
(07:17):
The Commission concluded that they were not involved in a
conspiratorial relationship with each other or with any third party.
In quote and there is some very important information that
will get to towards the close of this show to
discuss specifically what may have been held to the Chess,
to some of the intelligence agencies and not given to
(07:39):
the warr In Commission specifically. Right, So they're doing their best,
people on the Warring Commission, and doing their best. I
hate to steal a line from Beauty and the Beast,
but the typical conspiracy stuff you'll go you're going to
hear about the JFK assassination might as well be tale
as old as time. At this point, however, very recent Lee,
(08:02):
there were documents, files a plethora and I am using
that word correctly of files pertaining to the assassination that
were classified for decades and again, like in the past
couple of weeks, as we record this, as Noel pointed
(08:22):
out earlier, Uh, this is a bit of a time
travel experience. Whenever you're listening to a podcast, we're in
early November when we're recording this. It's November. It's November.
What year is only just okay, year of our Lord
two thousand and seventeen. Oh whoa the whole time we
are then? Uh so recently, uh, several of these documents
(08:45):
a pleathor of these documents were release, were declassified, and
for years people who do not believe the official story
or the findings of the War in Commission have been
um have been convinced that there will be some sort
of great revelation that that comes forth right in the
(09:06):
public eye. I have to put myself in that camp. Yeah, honestly,
because we've talked about these records being released by the
past at least two presidents. UM. When when there's a
date that comes up, that's essentially, hey, if the president decides, uh,
he or she can release these documents, And every time
that has happened up until this year, they have said, uh, no,
(09:29):
we're not going to release the documents. Yeah. Something something
always comes up. Yes. So there was this thing, this
act that Congress passed called the JFK Assassination Records Collection Act,
which they passed in Yes, George Bush, George H. W. Bush,
that is a George W. Bush's father, UM, gotta do
(09:51):
the voice. Do you do the voice? You were doing well? Um?
On October, my daddy passed, uh this act, he signed
it and UM. The final release date, because it's fifty
fifty years after is Uh, October two thousand seventeen. So
(10:11):
uh that that was a date that uh, the current
president used to release his documents. Mr President, Mr President. Uh.
Question from the front, Hi, Ben Bolen stuff. They want
you to know what does this collection consist of? I'm
gonna call you all beans. Alright, let's let's jump back
(10:33):
into a real world. Matt. So I could I just
need to go through some of this? Sure, what is?
But what's in this collection? Okay? So this collection, uh,
it's basically all of the intelligence agencies and federal government
organizations and agencies in US. They got all the documents
relating to the assassination of JFK, and they collected them
all and they sent him over to the National Archives. Okay,
(10:53):
So in this collection, it's approximately five million pages of records,
like printed pages. Yeah, we're talking in Indiana Jones style
vaults just going all the way up to four stories
or whatever. Of these records are open and full. So
that's a huge amount of five million records. No one
accidentally used a black highlighter. Well, according I don't think
(11:15):
there's any such thing as a black highlighter. It's an
awesome Onion article where it says the where it's like
FBI and CIA realized that they've been using black highlighters
for decades, so wonderful, So no black highlighters, and in
eleven percent of them they're released in part with the
black highlighters going through, which would be stuff like proper names,
(11:36):
dresses maybe you know, it's usually proper names and proper places,
specific places that would be like a little dangerous, or numbers.
That's where you see stuff like blank met with blank
approximately twelve forty PM that blank on this blank exactly
that they blanked about about. Yeah. So then one percent,
(11:58):
there's a remaining one percent of this five million pages
that is identified as assassin related and they remain completely
sealed or at least up until this year. And there
was a governing board that that made the call here,
So it whenever we deal with government related documentation or filing,
(12:25):
we run into all these dry names. So here's another one.
The Assassination Records Review Board, the a r R being
they they are the ones who said you have to
you have to redact these these eleven percent documents, and
then this one percent nobody can see. Ever, who do
(12:48):
you think they get to do? The manual redacting. It
has to be can't just be some intern it has
to be something pretty high level. Yeah, you have to
have at that level, compartmentalized, crappy, kind of sloggy job.
Can you imagine just having to go through thousands of
pages and just like X stuff out. It's very process oriented,
and I bet it's viewed as highly important. I I
(13:11):
can imagine. I think, I think you're right. I don't
mean to diminish it. I just in terms of process
what age sure, UM and that agency the it was
a temp agency. It just it was there for a
time and then it went away after it fulfilled its job.
Talking about Yeah, are only lasted from and according to
(13:31):
the act itself that Congress passed UM, all the records
that would that were previously withheld, the one in the
eleven percent, all of those records should be released on
October seventeen unless further authorized by the President of the
United States, which will be withholding, yes for withholding, So
unless the President decided or was told to decide to
(13:56):
not release these documents. Slippery sloop, right, which happened again
previously at the other a little what do you call
on the road the markers, the other markers where it
could have been released or at least in sure. Yeah,
and this as as you said, Matt, was signed by
President George H. W. Bush, who was just in the
(14:16):
studio with us a moment ago on October nineteen. Uh.
In July of seventeen, the National Archives released almost four
thousand records right that included stuff from the FBI and
the CIA, and somewhere some have been withheld in full
(14:38):
in the past and somewhere released redacted. And I gotta
tell you, ladies and gentlemen, friends and neighbors, the three
of us spend a lot of time reading these terrible
scans from like the vault, the FBI vault, where you
can you can see someone has made some scribbled notes
in the margins, gone over, gone over it to blackout
(15:03):
different parts of things, and they're they're tough to read,
you know, it's it's a it's a pain to read
all this context. I mean too, I mean like there's
so much redactive that it literally strips it of largely
any meaning. You know, it's very frustrating. Yeah, not to
mention you're dealing with intelligence agencies that are making these
producing these documents, and a lot of times there are
(15:25):
like crypto cryptograms there, there are uh anagrams, they're like
they're they're weird. There's weird stuff that goes on in
some of these documents, not to mention they're already pretty dry.
Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh So this the banality of
evil aside, which is what I'm going to categorize a
lot of this redaction stuff as the banality of evil aside, Right,
(15:49):
the inactions of good people aside. Uh. There is still
a struggle to release this information, yes, whatever it might contain, right,
And a lot of people wondered whether there would be
some smoking gun, whether there would be some sort of
memo from you know, nineteen sixty two where one one
(16:13):
intelligence operatives says to another, Hey, I just got off
the phone with so and so and they said that
it's going down in Dallas. You know. Yeah, that is
not the case. There's some stuff that's kind of close
to that, but it's not it's not that specific. And
that wasn't the only release that that July release was
(16:35):
actually jumping the gun a bit on that October date
because on the actual date, the National Archives released another
almost three thousand documents, which is huge and This included
a bunch of other stuff that they also released that
was pertaining to that Assassination Records Review Board. A lot
of the emails, well they're emails from so I wonder
(17:01):
what that even looked like. I like forward forward for Yeah, yeah,
I don't know. But they released fifty two thousand plus
emails and almost seventeen thousand files from the from that
review board that actually decided what was going to be
redacted and not. And then on November three, just a
few days ago, there was another release from the National
(17:22):
Archives of six hundred and seventy six records and this
was Central Intelligence stuff they were previously denied entirely the
CIA stuff. Yeaheah, the the CIA stuff. And you also
have Department of Justice, Department of Defense, how Select Committee
on Assassinations, and even stuff from the National Archives like
a single document. So what does this all mean? You
(17:46):
can also, I think that was excellent review of the
chronology of this. Uh you can, by the way, uh
take a take a line from Matt and view all
these files yourself. You can read along. Yeah, you can
it along if you are if you are willing to
again put up with some poor quality reproduction some scrolled
(18:07):
newes and margins, and a lot of a lot of
missing pieces. Right, it's a crueling journey if you want
to go on it. But I really do think it's
worth seeing the history. And the big question is to
what end does this matter? Was there anything worth reading
in there? We will tell you after a quick word
(18:29):
from our sponsors, assuming we don't get assassinated during the break.
We're back and I think we'll just jump right in
with a couple of selected articles. A lot of these
come from various news sources because we've kind of had
to go through and research via the news with all
(18:49):
of the official researchers who are going through all this stuff. There.
There's a gentleman being interviewed on CBS. I was just
watching just before we went in the studio, and he
said he has this massive team of researchers and interns
and all these people going through the documents and he
says they've been working on it since that July release
and they've gotten through about eight percent of the newly
released documents. Why didn't we sick our team of interns
(19:12):
and researchers on that, Well, I mean, I guess we
could have. We don't have one. We just sicked ourselves
on it, which you know, it's that's fine. So we
went to all the top, top notch news sources that
you're familiar with, Daily Mail, to Vogue, National Enquirer has
been killing it lately. By the way, I know, I'm
(19:33):
not kidding. I'm not kidding. Seriously, good journalism coming out
of teen Vogue. I don't know what we did. We
did look around, and that's what we can't tell. If
he's joking, I'm not, it's true. Ask anybody she's okay, yeah,
all right. See, and you're probably wondering because we are
moving a little quickly on this stuff. You're you're probably thinking, Matt, no, Ben,
you you guys obviously just checked with someone off Mike
(19:56):
about teen Vogue sign. You got the sign. Who is
this mystery person? It is our new coworker, Kathleen Quillian,
who is sitting in with super producer Paul helping to
engineer this session, and she's going to play a big
part in the stuff media family very soon. Right, Yes, yes, indeed, welcome, spoiler, welcome, welcome.
(20:17):
So point being, the point remains that when you're looking
at this sort of stuff, it is paramount to investigate
every single new source you can find. Yes, you should,
regardless of whatever you're starting point, maybe ideologically, um, experientially, etcetera.
(20:38):
You owe it to yourself to check as many things,
especially things that come from places that you might disagree with. Yeah,
you gotta get a lay of the land. You got
to kind of be your own aggregator too. And it's like,
because you know, this is the kind of stuff where
there are going to be, it's going to be mired
in various opinions on all side of the other, so
you kind of get the full picture. It's best to
kind of like have a broad spectrum of material, which
(21:01):
is what we tried to do, what Matt largely tried
to do. This is his baby, right, Yeah, that's our
bloodhound on Well, and I actually found, um, just gonna
let everybody know, I found a CNN article that was
the in my opinion, the best kind of middle ground
for all the sources I had been finding everything from
the Intercept to the Guardian and just everything in between,
the Fox News. Uh, the CNN article hit the main
(21:24):
I guess, the main documents that I found to be pertinent.
Does that make sense? It does give it to us. Okay.
So the first document involves a telephone call that was
intercepted on September nineteen sixty three, allegedly from Lee Harvey
Oswald to a KGB agent in Mexico City. This is
(21:44):
a good one. Oh yeah, so uh this memo from
the day of Kennedy's assassination. Um. It talks about this
call that was intercepted to the Russian embassy in Mexico.
He spoke to the console, um that I'm not gonna
try and pronounce the name Vali. Yes, this was an
(22:05):
identified KGB officer, and the gentleman was speaking in broken Russian.
Can I can I interject here? There is there is
one Um Oddly, I hesitate to use the word funny,
but I think it is funny. There is one odd
side note in this. In this conversation, Oswald insisted that
(22:29):
the conversation be held in Russian, and his Russian was
cartoonishly bad. It's like it's it's like like on the
level of saying, uh, bonus nachos instead of buenos nchez
if actually speaks Spanish, and to the point where the
KGB folks like having difficulty understanding him and probably going Lee,
(22:54):
you mind the speak English and he's and he's like yeah.
But it seems like per Apps they knew there was
some you know, some eavesdropping going on, and maybe that
was one of the reasons. But again, you're speaking to
a console at the Russian embassy in Mexico and you're
gonna speak Russian. So I don't know, Maybe it's just
I guess to hide amongst all the other conversations that
(23:16):
occurred today. Sure, and the person who wrote the memo
has said that relayed the belief on the FBI's part
that Oswald was trying to get out, right, who was
trying to get to the USSR, yes, or you know,
or somewhere else who knows exactly want to get a
visa right for some reason, possibly even to get into Cuba.
(23:37):
And this whole trip that Lee Harvey Oswald took to
Mexico City very close to when the assassination occurred, is
one of those things that just has a ton of
conspiracy theories surrounding it, and rightly so, I mean, that's
completely understandable, especially because the US government spent quite a
(23:57):
lot of blood, sweat and tears. I'm trying to convince
people otherwise, and now all of a sudden the story
has changed, like, oh, wait, we did know he was
in Mexico City, and like, ah, we did, we didn't,
we did, and we didn't. Well, yeah, and especially when
you bring into account the tumultuous relationship that the US
had with Cuba, especially you're right around that time and
(24:19):
specifically involving President Kennedy. So what's next. I really appreciate
that you mentioned Cuba here exactly. There's a cable from
the FBI in nineteen sixty seven, and it's just a cable.
So it's like, I don't know something that can you
explain cables really fast? We've talked about these before. Telegram
kind of. It's just almost just a quick communication kind
(24:42):
of thing coming from an operative or from a diplomat
or something. It's a lot of times you'll hear hear
cables used with diplomatic community, right, cable will depending on
the context. A cable can function as a straight point
A to point B thing that he's not going to
be vulnerable in theory, vulnerable to the same sort of
(25:03):
surveillance techniques that could be used in a traditional letter
or something happening over an open line, so it's very
much like a telegram. But the thing is with a telegram,
for instance, you know, um, Johnny Johnny Q public could
with the right equipment just tune in and then also
hear whatever is happening. Right. Uh, So a cable is
(25:25):
supposed to be a little bit uh, not like leak proof,
but more sustent more yeah, yeah, yeah, leak resistant, more secure.
And that's why you hear the folks at Wiki leaks
Julian Osane, is he still locked up? I think the
(25:46):
treadmill at the embassy. Yeah, okay, Well, Wiki Leaks, you know,
lives on cables, right, reporting cables, And I bring that
up to point out again that cables are in theory
more secure. And surely I would think that the cable,
the term cable probably doesn't mean the same thing as
today as it did then. Uh And actually it just confirmed.
(26:09):
It looks like it just refers to a confidential text message.
So I'm wondering if maybe today it might just be
some kind of encrypted person to person communication. See and
now on the document itself, in big bolded type, it
says sent by coded teletype. So there you go. So
(26:29):
what happened? Oh, so this was talking about a Cuban
gentleman who is being interrogated. Um, there's a lot to
go through with this one document for this tiny little thing.
But anyway, this gentleman who was being interrogated, UM was
asked about whether or not Oswald was a good shot,
(26:53):
like just hey, is he you know, is he good
with the rifles and a good sniper? And the gentleman replied, oh,
he was good. And then when you know, he was
further asked like, well, why would you say that, and
this gentleman said, well, I knew him, Cuban Cuban officer.
So that's that's another interesting thing because you will find
(27:14):
a lot of experts and people who spend their entire
careers researching just this one day in Dallas in n
uh They believe that Oswald was actually a terrible shot,
and a lot of the evidence indicates that he was
he was not the world's best sniper. And then you'll
find opposing evidence or opposing people with the opposing view
(27:35):
that he was actually an amazing crack shot. So maybe
one of those theories implies that he was some kind
of stooge or patsy, a fall guy or whatever. Or
was in communication with Cuba or the Soviet Union via Cuba.
It amazing, It's like, it's crazy. It goes on. So
remember what we said at the top. The official Warrant
(27:58):
Commission conclusion was at Jack Ruby acted acted alone, right,
and uh just did what he saw as his patriotic duty.
I'm killing the guy who killed the president. You know,
instant karma is gonna get you, etcetera. Someone. It turns out,
as this was revealed in these classified files, someone called
(28:20):
the FBI threatening to kill Lee Harvey Oswald a day
before his murder. Wow. So a document from November sixty
three indicated that j Edgar Hoover Um actually addressed Oswald's death,
specifically referencing that it was at the hands of Jack Ruby,
and the quote goes as follows quote there is nothing
(28:42):
further on the Oswald case except that he is dead,
which Alex Hoover. Hoover then indicated that agents in the
FBI's Dallas Field office received a call from a gentleman
speaking in a very calm tone, who claimed to be
a member of a committee that was responsible for Oswald's
(29:04):
assassination or there were a committee that wanted to kill Oswald. Hello,
I am a member of a committee of concerned patriots,
and we want you to know that as patriots, we
are planning to kill the assassin of John F. Kennedy.
Thank you for your time. All right, then gonna logg
(29:25):
that call. So this, this situation develops further. Right now,
we're getting into of course, we're getting as jagg Or
Hoover creep. Why is he a creep? He's a creepy dude?
Are you serious? Maybe? Why do you think he's agreed
(29:46):
because he killed Martin Luther King Jr. Pretty obviously, whoa dude,
I've never heard you that resolute about something like that.
Well he okay, sorry, he didn't pull the trigger, but
he ran. He ran active and illegal campaigns against against
people that he saw as a threat to his version
(30:08):
of the status. Quote you know he didn't he like
have files on like John Lennon even and then like
he was basically responsible for tailing anyone he saw it. Yeah, racist,
ultra nationalists, power mad unlike all that. But you use
the term creep, I you know. So Anyway, the FBI
(30:28):
at this point contacted the Dallas Police just to reiterate
to them, Hey, somebody just called us and was really
really creepy on the phone, talking about how they want
to kill Oswald. Just do us a favor and protect him,
like really protect him, please, Okay, Yeah, And they said, yeah, well,
we'll totally do that, and they did not. Yeah. Quote
(30:49):
Ruby says no one was associated with him and denies
having made the telephone call to our Dallas office last night.
That's something Hoover said. And Hoover went on to say
that the FBI had evidence of Oswald's guilt and intercepted
communication he had with Cuba and the Soviet Union. Hoover
went on to say he was concerned that there would
(31:10):
be doubt in the public sphere about Oswald's guilt and
the President Johnson would point a commission to investigate the assassination,
which that actually did happen. However, Yeah, However, I think
at this point it's important for us to note UH
something we've mentioned on the show before. It's a fascinating
(31:32):
thing about the evolution of the the phrase the thought
terminating cliche conspiracy theory. So, in the wake of the assassination,
U S Intelligence agencies sent UH confidential memos two various
media institutions of note like New York Times, Chicago Papers,
(31:55):
San Francisco, et cetera, and they said, look, here's the story,
is the official story. If anyone says something different, uh,
make sure to make sure to dismiss it and make
sure to call it quote a conspiracy theory. It's the
originating place of this, right, and that's how it entered
(32:18):
the mainstream lexicon of the United States. And that's why
you have to be very careful. You know, like we
live in a world where there's an information glut, and
it's very very easy for someone to go make a
website that purports to be uh, some sort of legit
news source, right, and then just write all kinds of
(32:41):
cockamami stuff. Right, But you gotta be very careful when
you hear everybody, and I mean everybody in the West
calling something a crazy conspiracy or a person a conspiracy
theorists writer shutting the stuff down because you know, alright,
I feel like I have to do the rent just briefly,
(33:02):
just briefly, just briefly. Okay, yeah, we've got like two
more hours in the studio, right, We're good, Okay, sorry,
but just just briefly. It is it is a lack
of critical thinking to say that anything called a conspiracy
theory is automatically um is automatically bullpoop, right, because we're
a family show, so you know, saying that saying that,
(33:26):
for instance, the the Royal family of the United Kingdom
is descended from some secret race of half reptilian alien
half human hybrids, is that that would be called a
conspiracy theory, right, Shout out to David Ike. But then
people are also calling a conspiracy theory to say that, uh,
(33:46):
international banks are laundry money for drug cards, just like
the whole use of like fake news right now, you know,
I mean, all stories and theories are not created equal,
and especially when a term is applied is like a
term of abuse or like a diminutive of that's when
things start getting sketchy. So it's like a conspiracy theory
versus a fringe notion or something, you know what I mean. Like,
(34:07):
I don't know when you when you apply that term,
it seems to to large large proportions of the population
discount the idea and you know the whole sure, yeah, absolutely,
and that's a mistake. Yeah, And you know, I really
appreciate you bringing up the fake news concept because we're
absolutely right. Psychologically, we our species are built to seek classification, right,
(34:30):
to seek hierarchy, to seek order, which means that it's very,
very convenient to uh wrap everything up in a symbolic
phrase and throw that phrase in as a shortcut to
critical thinking. It's like, I like jazz, but I don't
like fusion. It's just like that. Uh So, now we're
(34:50):
already in the thick of it. We're finding out from
these released files that at least several things at least
in a few cases, the things that the War in
Commission and the US at large we're saying it turned
out not to be true. They don't quite jad. No,
there's no fusion. There's just jazz. So let's insert right here.
(35:11):
If you haven't already listened to our episode on or
maybe watched our video, I don't know if we have
an episode on it on uh the Central Intelligence agencies
and the US government's plans and tactics to assassinate Fidel
Castro of Cuba, because you need to you need to
get that information right now. We did do a video
on that. Yeah, pause, go watch that video then come back. Well,
(35:33):
maybe if you're driving, just hang out an ad break
to give them time to do it. We can. Yeah,
what do you say, what better time than the present?
And we've returned, let's say you want to do a
couple more specific files. Yeah, we have to keep going.
(35:53):
There's so much stuff here, right, I don't know, I
candidly do not know if we were going to get
to all of it, So we don't. We do want
your help after you listen to this episode of Folks.
If there's something that you feel your fellow listeners need
to know about this release, please write to us and
let us know and we'll we'll put it on the
air as well. So the CIA did consider placing mafia
(36:16):
hits on Castro. Yeah, mafia hits. So they Now that
you've listened or watched that video, you know that there
were some crazy theories or some crazy plans brought up
by the government in the United States to kill Fidel Castro.
Exploding cigars, weird umbrellas, stuff in wet suits that yeah,
(36:37):
like from like the Novelty store. Well but but but
but really crazy stuff that doesn't seem true. In the
National Spy Museum, I think you can see some of
that stuff. For a couple of other places where we
can find it. Um. But this specifically was a the
Rockefeller Commission, a document from nine and he was detailing
(36:59):
the c a's role in all kinds of foreign assassinations
and specifically plans to assassinate Castro in the early days
of the Kennedy administration. And the report said that Attorney
General Robert Kennedy, the brother of President JFK also assassinated Yes,
and a whole other story, a whole series of episodes,
but we'll get into that some other time. Uh. He
(37:20):
told the FBI that he learned the CIA hired some intermediary,
another person, a third party to come through an approach
sam gen Kanna Gian Kanna. Do he does that sound
familiar to from m No, this is a prominent mafia
person and known mafia person at the time, with the
(37:42):
proposition they broach this guy saying, Hey, we're gonna pay
a hundred and fifty thousand dollars to get somebody with it,
either within your organization or somebody else to kill Castro
in Cuba. Like that's crazy. The government was gonna hire
mafia hitman. Well, I mean it probably like you know,
it gives them plausible deniability or I mean I if
it's not like if it's someone that's completely not not
(38:03):
connected to the government. Oh yeah, sure. In this case,
it would probably be layer upon layer upon layer. If
you're talking about the government hiring a mafia guy to
hire some other guys. And I know the fifty grand
doesn't sound like a really big amount of money, but today,
right today, it's today. Yeah, I did the inflation calculation
(38:24):
work in this Uh it's it's about one point two
million dollars. Wow, I do a hit for that. Well,
what well, here's the here's the problem, don't it. Don't
ever say that. Here, here's the issue. The Attorney General
Robert Kennedy had been trying to prosecute this gentleman. He
he you know, he's a Sicilian mobster. They've got files
(38:45):
on him. They've been trailing him, they've been tracking him,
they've been listening to him. They've been trying to get
him on something big. And if the government is going
to pay him that much money to go do an assassination,
it makes the state's case, or the you know, the
government's case a little it harder to prosecute um quote.
Attorney General Kennedy stated that CIA should never undertake the
(39:05):
use of mafia people again without first checking with the
Department of Justice. Check in. Yeah, just check in, because
it would be difficult to prosecute such people in the future.
But that's so weird though. They didn't say never do this. No,
they just said, guys, just check in your dad first,
(39:25):
ask your dead first. Yeah. It was Robert Kennedy, So
I was like, uh. The report also said that the
CIA was later interested in using mobsters to deliver poison
pale to castro uh, to order to kill him. Than
you got you know, that was that was fantastic And
I feel like there's a little bit of President Obama
(39:46):
influence in there. There was the cadence I think you are,
I think Matt is just you just got a promotion,
my friend whoa whoa, and I impersonator in chief. Yes,
so pretend to be a president and call the CIA
for us and get this sorted out. Okay, good, Okay,
(40:06):
Well we're done here. Everybody have a great week. No. Uh.
Continuing though on this, this one thing that's hugely important
about this point in specific is that this sort of
um contradictory, uh, this contradictory set of pursuits by various
government agencies. This situation where the left hand does not
(40:27):
know what the right hand is doing, lends a lot
of credence and gives a lot of sand to the
claims that intelligence agencies in the US and in other
countries function as their own independent governments. Yeah. Absolutely, And
then you imagine that these independent governments, you know, in
their own functionings, sometimes doing the same work, or at
(40:49):
least overlapping, sometimes just doing vastly different stuff. But is
there anyone in charge? When you think about the government
that we've elected, the for the people, by the people,
democracy that we have in this country, Like you've got
these operating hands, if you will, in this octopus, Like
(41:10):
where is the head? I don't think it's the elected official.
This is the point that if you cut off one
head and grows somewhere else, so that there's so many
heads that you don't know which one is the real head.
Oh my god, what is happening? I am seriously, I
am waiting at some point, I you know, I know
not everybody loves Marvel movies, but at some point I'm
hoping that a stranger like shakes my hand and like
(41:33):
whispers hal Hiram, you know, you should just start doing
that with people. I can't do it. No, No, it's
over real. Well at parties, it's like you can't give
yourself a nickname. You can't be the one who goes
up to people and says, hell, hi got you. Well,
like started started, the conversation would be like, hey, did
you hear Taylor swift new stuff? Man? I was jamming
on it all day. Not The Deiled too much, Best,
(41:56):
this Great Mean this Morning where it was squid word
from SpongeBob and it split screen where it's like his
eyes closed and it says you when you're asleep and
realized Taylor Swift's new album comes out at midnight, and
the next frame was the same as eyes my wife
is because he was stoked about it. The single tier
oh my gosh oh and Maria Bamfer's new show or
(42:19):
the second season comes out to check it out. It's
okay plugging other shows and albums. Yes, well, it's important.
This is important stuff, you know, and we are we
are very conscious that this kind of sifting through archival
(42:40):
information can be dry, right, and we also acknowledge that
we're talking about stuff that's dangerous implications in the present day. Uh,
and we're we're trying to keep our chins up about it.
But the situation is dire as we record this, and
there are a ton more documents we didn't discuss, I
(43:01):
mean literally thousands, and each of them probably has a
tiny little story to tell. And that's why we're encouraging
you to go in and do some of the research yourself,
or at least sift through the news sites. Well let's
we're not even to the crazy, but let's laundry list
a couple of Okay, so FBI director, and again this
is this is a lot of Matt's research and needed
(43:22):
spot on job man, Thank you so much, you got it.
So uh. FBI Director Hoover Ran forwarded a memo to
the White House in sixty three, right after Kennedy's death,
and it was this memo was classified as top secret
for years, and it's it's it's exploring the U. S
(43:44):
intelligence agencies best guesses toward the Soviet Union's reaction to
the assassination. Yeah, and we have a quote here. According
to our source, officials of the Communist Party of the
Soviet Union believe that there was some well organized conspiracy
on the part of the ultra right in the United
States to affect a coup. They seem convinced that the
(44:07):
assassination was not the deed of one man, but that
it arose out of a carefully planned campaign in which
several people played a part. WHOA, Now, are they falling
prey to the conspiracy theories? Are they spreading propaganda? Because
we do know after the assassination the USSR did pretty effectively,
(44:30):
uh capitalize on the opportunity to spread dissent and shout
out to General Smedley Butler. We do know that there
have been coup attempts in the United States. You're typically
not going to read about them in your history books.
Smedley Smedley M E. D L. E. Y sounds like
(44:50):
a made up name. I love it. Speaking speaking of
my daddy, George H. W. Bush, his daddy, my grandpa,
my Grandpapi. He's a guy who supposedly went through and
decided to do the business plot. Isn't that crazy? My
daddy was a business man and his daddy was a
business man. My daddy was CEI a man. President President Bush. Yeah, yeah,
(45:12):
thank you for coming by. We're we're in the middle
of the show though. Oh well, I'm sorry. I'll just
go in the corner and do some paint. Okay, all right,
all right, I'll be over here. Okay, hey, can you slip, Matt?
Why do you keep bringing that guy to this? Why
do you keep letting push you around like that? And
he just pushes you out of your chair and then
(45:32):
does this is a little creepy laugh. I gotta admit.
When he was in office, just I know it's okay.
I can hear you talking about me over there? I know,
just give me two seconds. Um. When he was in office,
I wasn't the biggest fan. But afterwards, like this guy
is chill, like he is so cool. He's just painting.
He likes to go to Gagley, he likes to go
to Brieves game. Did you know he can play the
rhythm guitar part for every three eleven song? Dude, I've
(45:55):
been trying to learn the piano. Did you know that
amber is the color of his energy? He keep saying that.
I feel like he thinks that that was his idea,
but it's clearly a lyric from three eleven. Right, Okay,
so point pete yes before we get through derailed. Uh,
these various these various pieces of information are coming out,
(46:16):
and in many cases, if they are not contradicting the
official narrative, they are at the very least complicating it. Yes,
you know, so uh we have we have people who
are saying, uh, never mind this official stuff called all
the conspiracy theory. But that then at the same time
(46:37):
we are finding secret communications between people where an intelligence
agency is saying, ah, pretty much everybody thinks, like the
world's other superpower is pretty convinced that not one guy
did this exactly. And then they're like, Okay, well, don't
tell anybody. I just wanted you to know, and let's
(46:58):
just keep it secret. That's so strange. It feels strange now,
But we have to we have to understand. One of
the one of the most vulnerable points of any any
state powers existence is always going to be the succession, right,
the passage of power from one typically one individual to another.
(47:19):
So for instance, in the case of the Democratic People's
Republic of Korea, North Korea, one of the things that
is always a big flash point and really dangerous part
of time for the world, not just in that region,
is when they pass from father to son. I don't
know what's going to happen. You know, look at look
at Turkey, right, look at Italy. The this so in
(47:43):
the context of the time, this is very, very dangerous
for the US. It is vulnerable now in a way
that it has not been right at least for a
long long time since the probably the death of Lincoln
is the last time that it was that vulnerable. And uh,
let's see one more example. Maybe absolutely okay, So for
(48:05):
our last entry for the day, we have a document,
a top secret document from n that was created for
the Rockefeller Commission. And in this document there is a
transcript of a testimony of a former CIA director by
the name of Richard Helms. And in this document, um
(48:27):
Helms says that he believes that former President Richard Nixon,
old Tricky Dickey, believed that the CIA was actually directly
responsible for assassinating the South Vietnamese president Go Den Dean,
who died after a coup that was linked to the
(48:48):
Central Intelligence Agency. And we've got a quote from Helms himself, right,
we do. Indeed, it goes as follows quote there's absolutely
no evidence of this in the agency records, and the
whole thing has been I mean, rather, what is the
word I want heated by the fact that President Johnson
used to go around saying that the reason President Kennedy
(49:10):
was assassinated was that he had assassinated President Team and
this was just justice. And then Helms ads, uh, where
he got this from? I don't know, and just yeah,
this is during a deposition. Uh, And that was the
context of the conversations that Helms was asked if there
(49:30):
was any way Oswald was in some way a CIA
agent or an asset or an operative or an agent
of something else. And that's right when the document ends.
But is this when the story ends? We've given just
a few examples, right, And I know that this episode
is running a little a little long because we're digging
(49:53):
into this stuff. But the big question is is this
the whole story? That's where one document ends. Where does
the story end? Are we finally in seventeen up to
speed on exactly what the US Intelligence Agency did or
did not know regarding this assassination? I don't. I don't
(50:15):
think we're there. Here's where it gets crazy. Some of
these files that we mentioned right are still secret. They
were all supposed to be released, and they were released
under If you're listening to this in the future. They
were released under the auspice of the Trump administration, right,
but not all of them were released they were supposed
(50:37):
to be. And we have no idea when more even
if the other stuff will ever make it into the
public sphere. In the eleventh hour, right before this stuff
went public became declassified. Intelligence agencies, the FBI, the CIA,
(50:57):
all your favorite alphabet soup members of the U. S. Government.
They pressured Trump successfully or in pressure the administration, I
should say successfully too, keep some of this stuff secret
past the due date. Uh. In light of everybody's favorite boogeyman,
(51:19):
national security? National security? What does that mean? It's just
like tagging base, you know, you know, like uh, anytime
you don't want to tell the public something you own,
national security, you know, I'd say, I wish I could
do that in my private life for the good of
the realm. Can we just say that from now on?
(51:41):
We can, we can try it. Let's have let's uh,
let's let's call up some of our friends over there
in the intelligence agencies and just say, hey, man, from
now on, if you're gonna say national security, those guys
are not your friends. I've been on the phone with
the FBI field office a couple of times now working
on this other stuff. I think I've got some sway.
I know Paul. Paul's got sway all over Atlanta right now.
(52:02):
Super producer Paul. Yeah, he can make some calls and
just be like, guys, it's now for the good of
the realm. One call. That's Paul. That's pretty good. That's
pretty good. So so unless you are as fortunate as
the three of us to have a super producer like
Paul right in your circle, uh, you're probably lost at
(52:26):
sea a little bit. Conceptually, when you hear the phrase
national security, it's one of those words that just gets
thrown around willy nilly, the same way that people used
to add the descriptor digital in front of everything in
the nineties. Didn't matter what it was, it was digital,
you could charge five dollars. More So, national security in
(52:46):
this context could mean several things. Uh, let's break down
into let's say three or four things. First is preventing
the spread of intelligence techniques, strategies, spycraft highly important, absolutely,
the methods of gathering intelligence, not the intelligence itself, right right,
because if somebody else knows how this stuff was gathered,
(53:08):
then the jig is up, they can protect against it,
right exactly. This is an understandable concern. Right forever, we're
talking about what nineteen sixties and prior to that, maybe
a little bit after that, but mostly you're dealing with
before the assassination, so late fifties, early sixties technology. So
if this stuff is held back to protect techniques from
(53:31):
the nineteen forties literally on display in spy museums around
the country, right, then the question becomes, can you plausibly believe, right,
apply critical thinking, can you plausibly believe that some of
the world's most well funded intelligence operatives would still be
using the same techniques for decades? Well, I have to
(53:52):
just interject here and say I think some of the
techniques are very much human and psychologically based chap perhaps
maybe existing in some of these documents humans, right, yes, yes, exactly,
which are the shortened terms for human intelligence versus signals intelligence.
The second, the second um category here genre of national security,
(54:17):
would be to protect the existing relationship between the United
States and a foreign government. Clearly very important. Yeah, and
you know we have a lot of what did uh
somebody just called this on NPR called the China and
the United States frenemies, but it's we have a lot
of those that we've cultivated over the years. Those relationships.
(54:39):
There is no such thing as friendship in the geopolitical sphere.
There are interests that aligned exactly, interested aligned temporarily or
you know, maybe in a long term for a specific thing. Sure, so, yeah,
I completely agree. Now we have another question. If information
is being withheld to protect the relationship, the conf dental
(55:00):
relationship between two countries, then this would mean that there
could either be privileged knowledge somebody maybe has a skeleton
in the closet, right, maybe maybe the Soviet Union knows
something that the U s public doesn't, right, or there
could be collusion on the part of another country. Right,
(55:21):
that would never happen. No, I'm not here, man, it's crazy.
It's crazy talk, right. Uh. And one example of this what,
of course, as we mentioned, the be the u SSRs
efforts to spread propaganda after the assassination, or of course,
similar attempts by the US in other foreign countries, very
(55:43):
similar attempts, the worst similar work. So there's here's the
here's the here's the third genre. Uh. It could be
when they say national security, it could mean protecting the
lives of current or former government officials. Right. So let's
say one of the theories we hear a lot about
(56:05):
JFK is that a secret service member accidentally fired the
fatal shot. That theories as one of the theories, right,
again unproven, Right. So what is when we talked about
government conspiracies? There's people often go to the idea of
some great collusion in advance. Right. The same the same
(56:30):
institution that cannot, for the life of it figure out
how to do effective policy, is also capable of these
supervillain level Rube Goldberg machinations, right, or lends itself to
covering up a mistake. Right, So how much more realistic
(56:52):
is it that someone screwed up and the people are
trying to remove that from history. So imagine being a
retired official and the public learns that you did something negligent, right, accidental, unintentional,
and then you find yourself up a very dangerous creek
(57:13):
with no paddle whatsoever, especially in the age of cheap information. Totally.
So in conclusion, here, guys, the craziest thing is that,
at least according to Trump's Twitter feed, he has released
everything and long ahead of schedule. That's what he's saying, however,
(57:34):
it seems pretty certain that there's at least a small
number of documents that remain hidden. Uh, it seems pretty clear.
But what we do have is thousands more documents to
tread through. And you know, as researchers and historians and
(57:56):
interns are going through all of this stuff, you know,
per ups, there's going to be some new revelation. Maybe
not the kind of thing that I'm was hoping for
after all of these years, but something. Surely they wouldn't
let it out though, man. I mean, you know, they
know what's in there. They're giving people something to play
with and and you know, feel good about or whatever,
(58:18):
feel like informed. But there's not going to be an answer.
The government wouldn't allow that to happen. I don't. I
don't think. And if it's a if it's a case
of national security, then again the implications are dangerous. It's
twenty seventeen, and if that stuff still applies, I think
we can all agree. I think we can all agree,
folks that the idea of protecting a spycraft technique from
(58:41):
the forties to the sixties doesn't pan out. It's like
tape recorders and suitcases dude, like they're they're on display
like in the music you see. It's I don't know. Well,
in my opinion, there's still the possibility that there's a
needle inside this haystack. But just we there hasn't been
enough time and enough human hands and I is working
through it. So will you at least agree with me
(59:03):
that the government knows exactly what's in there? Again, we're
dealing with the octopus with the So yeah, I don't
know if everybody knows, because there are there are factions
at play, their factions and it's been a long time
and humans die. That's the one thing we all do now,
(59:23):
is there is there something there? There must be there,
There must be otherwise the intelligence agencies would not have
pressured the current administration so strongly not to release some
stuff in the previous several ran the previous several So
there is there is something. Something is rotten in this
particular Denmark, right, So are you planning on going through
(59:46):
these files? You can do it. You can find them literally,
search new JFK files and you will find the National
Archives link that has a spreadsheet in it, and it
also has every single file on that website. So if
you have internet connection and a little hotza, you can
get in there and just start doing it. Because I've
been going through it for the past several days just
(01:00:07):
trying to find things, but there's just too much. And
like we said, you're gonna find all kinds of weird
phrases in there. Um. And there's something I want to
point everyone too if you're gonna look into this. It's
the Merry Feral Foundations ci A cryptomes two point Oh.
It's a really cool website. You can go to m
A R Y F E R R E l L
(01:00:29):
dot org and you can find this thing. And it
has a huge list that's crowdsourced of all these different
acronyms and stuff that are used by all the intelligence
agencies to represent certain things. And it's fascinating when you
go through these documents and you see the legend kind
of like like it actually gives you like a little yeah, exactly,
and it's it's not just a you know ibex o
(01:00:53):
O bi ibex equals this or you know whatever it is.
It gives you a full description of all the different
ways that it can be, things that it can refer to.
It's it's really neat I'm on that as soon as
we wrap here, So tell us what you find and
while you're online, find us if you haven't already. You
can find us on Instagram, you can find us on Twitter,
(01:01:14):
you can find us on Facebook. We have names that
are all approximations of conspiracy stuff, you know, and we
would love to hear your opinion specifically. Have you already
looked into this? Do you think that there is something
important yet to be revealed? Did we miss something? Let
us know and we'll put it in the shoutout. And
(01:01:36):
speaking of shout outs, we want to thank everybody who
wrote in to us via various different things, you know, uh,
social media, snail mail, mirrors in the dark at midnight, cables,
cables in actually for this episode, but it is run
(01:01:57):
pretty excessively long afore we're going to hold it back
for the next one. But we you know, I know,
we don't do it every episode, but we're gonna try
to get back into doing the shoutout corner. We have
a we have a actually we have a a astonishing
piece of correspondence that we received recently, uh, and we
want to give it its full do so please do
tune in next week because unlike the US government, we
(01:02:21):
actually release revelatory things. That's right, until we get shot.
It was a sick burn on the US government. You know,
I'm punchy today man. With without actually going to shout
out corner, we want to give a huge shout out
to Samuel who sent us something in the snail mail.
So can we just say what it is? Signet rings
They go on your pinky and you can seal documents
(01:02:43):
with wax with them. I took the one that has
the alien head. I'm very excited about it. Mine sort
of like a looks sort of like a Coca pelee
kind of figure. I don't think that's what it is.
But Samuel, what is it? What's what's the squiggly one?
I took it because I thought it was meat looking,
but I don't quite know what it is. Ben's yours
is a Illuminati triangle, right you'll see. Uh So we
(01:03:06):
will put pictures of these rings up and go check
us out on Instagram. Uh our our producers giving us
a little bit of a where you're going with These
guys got to wrap it up, and we're getting to
wrap it up. So we are going to wrap it
up and We're going to end this with the most
important piece of information for you, which is, hey, guess
(01:03:28):
oh man, yeah, George. If you don't want to do
all the social media rick and roll, you can find us,
write us an email. We are conspiracy and how Stuff
Works dot com.
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. Hello,
(00:24):
and welcome back to the show. My name is Matt.
My name they call me Ben. You are you? And
that makes this stuff they don't want you to know. Now.
We are looking at a developing situation and in the past, guys,
we've been hesitant to cover things like as they're unfolding
because peek behind the curtain here of course, and our
(00:47):
super producer Paul Decan will agree with us, hopefully, I'm sure.
And I'm looking at his body language. Oh he's he's wishing.
Was he's hedging, he's hedging his bats. I respect that. Um.
We we feel just terrible if we report on something
that is occurring in the news, right, and by the
(01:09):
time our episode comes out, the situation is completely changed
because like spoiler you guys, this is not live correct, right,
we did this like a week ago. The good thing
about this specific topic is that the occurrence happened in
nineteen sixty three, So that makes it fifty plus years
of history that we can cover and then bring in
(01:29):
some of this new stuff that actually occurred around Yeah,
and you know, we don't want to be old beans
that I'm I'm saying that now, I don't think so
you don't think I think it's gonna beans? Yeah, well,
right in and let us know are they moldy or
just stale? It's just like I'm using it as like
a just a term of figure of speech. You guys
(01:52):
are skeptical about bag of badgers, but that took off,
it really did. What are we talking about today? Can
we get to the thing for crying out loud? Yes,
let's let's start with the facts. The brass Tax President
John F. Kennedy was assassinated on November twenty two, ninety three,
about twelve thirty in the afternoon in Dallas, Texas, while
(02:14):
they were writing in a presidential motorcade and in uh,
the probably the biggest understatement of our entire show, All
hell broke loose? Yeah, it's true. And then you fast
forward several decades and there's a survey by a site
called five thirty eight dot com and they found that
(02:35):
only thirty of the people responding actually believed the findings
of the official Warren Commission. That's the one that concluded
in nineteen sixty four that the lone gunman, Lee Harvey Oswald,
was responsible for the death of President Kennedy, and today
sixty one percent of the US public believe that at
(02:56):
least one other person was involved. Yes, not justice single gunman.
So you guys know, I'm kind of a Kennedy novice.
Can you catch me up on the Warran Commission? Sure?
The Warren Commission, We've talked about this before on the show,
officially is known as the President's Commission on the Assassination
of President Kennedy, which I don't know. I feel like
one too many presidents in there, but that's fine. I
(03:18):
didn't name that. Can you make it into an acronym
for me? That helps me digest it a little better? Ben? Oh,
the T PC O T A O P K better before. Anyway,
it was formed by the president that immediately followed uh
the President's death. Lyndon Johnson, correct, by the way, was
a real pill. Apparently he was a pill. A lot
(03:39):
of accusations have been made about him and his involvement
with the assassination of JFK over the years. We have
not found any of them to be completely true, but
there are some juicy details in there, but has a
very pleasant sounding name. When you say the initials lb J,
it's very mellifluous. It is. I just what you know.
There was a thing listeners, friends and neighbors that Lyndon
(04:01):
Johnson used to do. It was called the Johnson treatment.
He would get in people's faces, like grabbed them by
their lapels four heads inches away. He followed one guy
into a bathroom, busted into this stall. That wouldn't fly today. Yeah,
while he was doing his business. Well, he's a large
gentleman as well, very tall and imposing, bit of a
(04:21):
bull in the china shop kind of scenario. Absolutely what
LBJ do? Okay. So he formed the President's Commission on
the Assassination of President Kennedy on November twenty nine, nineteen
sixty three, just a few days after President Kennedy was shot,
and it was all the whole reason to have this
was to investigate what happened on that day, right because
people wanted answers, and the Commission acted as quickly as
(04:45):
they could. To this day, you can read their full report. Well, yeah,
they're quote unquote full report. All the information it was
given to the Commission quickly in government time. Isn't like days, right,
I mean this rep were likely took many months to yea, yeah,
this is not quickly in people's time, it's quickly in
(05:05):
government time. So they were racing to determine whether there
was any truth, any stands to the multitudinous rumors surrounding
this assassination, and the commission eventually concluded that Lee Harvey
Oswald acted alone under his own power, no assistance from
any criminal organization, intelligence agencies, eating shady dude or foreign
(05:29):
government or foreign government. That's very important, And that Jack Ruby,
the man who would later assassinate Oswald, had no previous
relationship with that guy either, So Jack Ruby apparently the story. Yeah,
the story was that the lone gunman was killed by
a lone gunman and nothing is related. Nothing to see here,
(05:50):
folks know, none of the conspiracies have been reading about,
or anyone's been saying in papers of these weird rumors.
None of that's true. Please continue with your regularly scheduled programming,
and when when the When the three of us started
this show, one of the things that we wanted to
do was to explore the stuff on the fringes, right,
and and we stay away from the JFK assassination because
(06:14):
there has already been so much work done on it, right,
And there's Stone comes in and makes a movie, and
then a whole bunch of other conspiracy theories back into
the left and nothing, you know, nothing that we would
have found would have been new news. It would have
been old beans. I'm not giving up on it. I'm
(06:35):
telling you guys, it's going to see. Nobody gets old
beans yet. But that's just because this episode hasn't come out.
I'm a I'm I'm telling you guys. Invest now get
in on the ground floor of these various catchphrases. So
the Commission, the Commission has a quote where they they
(06:56):
sum up this relationship quote. The Commission made intensive inquiry
into the backgrounds and relationships of Oswald and Ruby to
determine whether they knew each other or were involved in
a plot of any kind with each other or others.
It was unable to find any credible evidence to support
the rumors linking Oswald and Ruby directly or through others.
(07:17):
The Commission concluded that they were not involved in a
conspiratorial relationship with each other or with any third party.
In quote and there is some very important information that
will get to towards the close of this show to
discuss specifically what may have been held to the Chess,
to some of the intelligence agencies and not given to
(07:39):
the warr In Commission specifically. Right, So they're doing their best,
people on the Warring Commission, and doing their best. I
hate to steal a line from Beauty and the Beast,
but the typical conspiracy stuff you'll go you're going to
hear about the JFK assassination might as well be tale
as old as time. At this point, however, very recent Lee,
(08:02):
there were documents, files a plethora and I am using
that word correctly of files pertaining to the assassination that
were classified for decades and again, like in the past
couple of weeks, as we record this, as Noel pointed
(08:22):
out earlier, Uh, this is a bit of a time
travel experience. Whenever you're listening to a podcast, we're in
early November when we're recording this. It's November. It's November.
What year is only just okay, year of our Lord
two thousand and seventeen. Oh whoa the whole time we
are then? Uh so recently, uh, several of these documents
(08:45):
a pleathor of these documents were release, were declassified, and
for years people who do not believe the official story
or the findings of the War in Commission have been
um have been convinced that there will be some sort
of great revelation that that comes forth right in the
(09:06):
public eye. I have to put myself in that camp. Yeah, honestly,
because we've talked about these records being released by the
past at least two presidents. UM. When when there's a
date that comes up, that's essentially, hey, if the president decides, uh,
he or she can release these documents, And every time
that has happened up until this year, they have said, uh, no,
(09:29):
we're not going to release the documents. Yeah. Something something
always comes up. Yes. So there was this thing, this
act that Congress passed called the JFK Assassination Records Collection Act,
which they passed in Yes, George Bush, George H. W. Bush,
that is a George W. Bush's father, UM, gotta do
(09:51):
the voice. Do you do the voice? You were doing well? Um?
On October, my daddy passed, uh this act, he signed
it and UM. The final release date, because it's fifty
fifty years after is Uh, October two thousand seventeen. So
(10:11):
uh that that was a date that uh, the current
president used to release his documents. Mr President, Mr President. Uh.
Question from the front, Hi, Ben Bolen stuff. They want
you to know what does this collection consist of? I'm
gonna call you all beans. Alright, let's let's jump back
(10:33):
into a real world. Matt. So I could I just
need to go through some of this? Sure, what is?
But what's in this collection? Okay? So this collection, uh,
it's basically all of the intelligence agencies and federal government
organizations and agencies in US. They got all the documents
relating to the assassination of JFK, and they collected them
all and they sent him over to the National Archives. Okay,
(10:53):
So in this collection, it's approximately five million pages of records,
like printed pages. Yeah, we're talking in Indiana Jones style
vaults just going all the way up to four stories
or whatever. Of these records are open and full. So
that's a huge amount of five million records. No one
accidentally used a black highlighter. Well, according I don't think
(11:15):
there's any such thing as a black highlighter. It's an
awesome Onion article where it says the where it's like
FBI and CIA realized that they've been using black highlighters
for decades, so wonderful, So no black highlighters, and in
eleven percent of them they're released in part with the
black highlighters going through, which would be stuff like proper names,
(11:36):
dresses maybe you know, it's usually proper names and proper places,
specific places that would be like a little dangerous, or numbers.
That's where you see stuff like blank met with blank
approximately twelve forty PM that blank on this blank exactly
that they blanked about about. Yeah. So then one percent,
(11:58):
there's a remaining one percent of this five million pages
that is identified as assassin related and they remain completely
sealed or at least up until this year. And there
was a governing board that that made the call here,
So it whenever we deal with government related documentation or filing,
(12:25):
we run into all these dry names. So here's another one.
The Assassination Records Review Board, the a r R being
they they are the ones who said you have to
you have to redact these these eleven percent documents, and
then this one percent nobody can see. Ever, who do
(12:48):
you think they get to do? The manual redacting. It
has to be can't just be some intern it has
to be something pretty high level. Yeah, you have to
have at that level, compartmentalized, crappy, kind of sloggy job.
Can you imagine just having to go through thousands of
pages and just like X stuff out. It's very process oriented,
and I bet it's viewed as highly important. I I
(13:11):
can imagine. I think, I think you're right. I don't
mean to diminish it. I just in terms of process
what age sure, UM and that agency the it was
a temp agency. It just it was there for a
time and then it went away after it fulfilled its job.
Talking about Yeah, are only lasted from and according to
(13:31):
the act itself that Congress passed UM, all the records
that would that were previously withheld, the one in the
eleven percent, all of those records should be released on
October seventeen unless further authorized by the President of the
United States, which will be withholding, yes for withholding, So
unless the President decided or was told to decide to
(13:56):
not release these documents. Slippery sloop, right, which happened again
previously at the other a little what do you call
on the road the markers, the other markers where it
could have been released or at least in sure. Yeah,
and this as as you said, Matt, was signed by
President George H. W. Bush, who was just in the
(14:16):
studio with us a moment ago on October nineteen. Uh.
In July of seventeen, the National Archives released almost four
thousand records right that included stuff from the FBI and
the CIA, and somewhere some have been withheld in full
(14:38):
in the past and somewhere released redacted. And I gotta
tell you, ladies and gentlemen, friends and neighbors, the three
of us spend a lot of time reading these terrible
scans from like the vault, the FBI vault, where you
can you can see someone has made some scribbled notes
in the margins, gone over, gone over it to blackout
(15:03):
different parts of things, and they're they're tough to read,
you know, it's it's a it's a pain to read
all this context. I mean too, I mean like there's
so much redactive that it literally strips it of largely
any meaning. You know, it's very frustrating. Yeah, not to
mention you're dealing with intelligence agencies that are making these
producing these documents, and a lot of times there are
(15:25):
like crypto cryptograms there, there are uh anagrams, they're like
they're they're weird. There's weird stuff that goes on in
some of these documents, not to mention they're already pretty dry.
Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh So this the banality of
evil aside, which is what I'm going to categorize a
lot of this redaction stuff as the banality of evil aside, Right,
(15:49):
the inactions of good people aside. Uh. There is still
a struggle to release this information, yes, whatever it might contain, right,
And a lot of people wondered whether there would be
some smoking gun, whether there would be some sort of
memo from you know, nineteen sixty two where one one
(16:13):
intelligence operatives says to another, Hey, I just got off
the phone with so and so and they said that
it's going down in Dallas. You know. Yeah, that is
not the case. There's some stuff that's kind of close
to that, but it's not it's not that specific. And
that wasn't the only release that that July release was
(16:35):
actually jumping the gun a bit on that October date
because on the actual date, the National Archives released another
almost three thousand documents, which is huge and This included
a bunch of other stuff that they also released that
was pertaining to that Assassination Records Review Board. A lot
of the emails, well they're emails from so I wonder
(17:01):
what that even looked like. I like forward forward for Yeah, yeah,
I don't know. But they released fifty two thousand plus
emails and almost seventeen thousand files from the from that
review board that actually decided what was going to be
redacted and not. And then on November three, just a
few days ago, there was another release from the National
(17:22):
Archives of six hundred and seventy six records and this
was Central Intelligence stuff they were previously denied entirely the
CIA stuff. Yeaheah, the the CIA stuff. And you also
have Department of Justice, Department of Defense, how Select Committee
on Assassinations, and even stuff from the National Archives like
a single document. So what does this all mean? You
(17:46):
can also, I think that was excellent review of the
chronology of this. Uh you can, by the way, uh
take a take a line from Matt and view all
these files yourself. You can read along. Yeah, you can
it along if you are if you are willing to
again put up with some poor quality reproduction some scrolled
(18:07):
newes and margins, and a lot of a lot of
missing pieces. Right, it's a crueling journey if you want
to go on it. But I really do think it's
worth seeing the history. And the big question is to
what end does this matter? Was there anything worth reading
in there? We will tell you after a quick word
(18:29):
from our sponsors, assuming we don't get assassinated during the break.
We're back and I think we'll just jump right in
with a couple of selected articles. A lot of these
come from various news sources because we've kind of had
to go through and research via the news with all
(18:49):
of the official researchers who are going through all this stuff. There.
There's a gentleman being interviewed on CBS. I was just
watching just before we went in the studio, and he
said he has this massive team of researchers and interns
and all these people going through the documents and he
says they've been working on it since that July release
and they've gotten through about eight percent of the newly
released documents. Why didn't we sick our team of interns
(19:12):
and researchers on that, Well, I mean, I guess we
could have. We don't have one. We just sicked ourselves
on it, which you know, it's that's fine. So we
went to all the top, top notch news sources that
you're familiar with, Daily Mail, to Vogue, National Enquirer has
been killing it lately. By the way, I know, I'm
(19:33):
not kidding. I'm not kidding. Seriously, good journalism coming out
of teen Vogue. I don't know what we did. We
did look around, and that's what we can't tell. If
he's joking, I'm not, it's true. Ask anybody she's okay, yeah,
all right. See, and you're probably wondering because we are
moving a little quickly on this stuff. You're you're probably thinking, Matt, no, Ben,
you you guys obviously just checked with someone off Mike
(19:56):
about teen Vogue sign. You got the sign. Who is
this mystery person? It is our new coworker, Kathleen Quillian,
who is sitting in with super producer Paul helping to
engineer this session, and she's going to play a big
part in the stuff media family very soon. Right, Yes, yes, indeed, welcome, spoiler, welcome, welcome.
(20:17):
So point being, the point remains that when you're looking
at this sort of stuff, it is paramount to investigate
every single new source you can find. Yes, you should,
regardless of whatever you're starting point, maybe ideologically, um, experientially, etcetera.
(20:38):
You owe it to yourself to check as many things,
especially things that come from places that you might disagree with. Yeah,
you gotta get a lay of the land. You got
to kind of be your own aggregator too. And it's like,
because you know, this is the kind of stuff where
there are going to be, it's going to be mired
in various opinions on all side of the other, so
you kind of get the full picture. It's best to
kind of like have a broad spectrum of material, which
(21:01):
is what we tried to do, what Matt largely tried
to do. This is his baby, right, Yeah, that's our
bloodhound on Well, and I actually found, um, just gonna
let everybody know, I found a CNN article that was
the in my opinion, the best kind of middle ground
for all the sources I had been finding everything from
the Intercept to the Guardian and just everything in between,
the Fox News. Uh, the CNN article hit the main
(21:24):
I guess, the main documents that I found to be pertinent.
Does that make sense? It does give it to us. Okay.
So the first document involves a telephone call that was
intercepted on September nineteen sixty three, allegedly from Lee Harvey
Oswald to a KGB agent in Mexico City. This is
(21:44):
a good one. Oh yeah, so uh this memo from
the day of Kennedy's assassination. Um. It talks about this
call that was intercepted to the Russian embassy in Mexico.
He spoke to the console, um that I'm not gonna
try and pronounce the name Vali. Yes, this was an
(22:05):
identified KGB officer, and the gentleman was speaking in broken Russian.
Can I can I interject here? There is there is
one Um Oddly, I hesitate to use the word funny,
but I think it is funny. There is one odd
side note in this. In this conversation, Oswald insisted that
(22:29):
the conversation be held in Russian, and his Russian was
cartoonishly bad. It's like it's it's like like on the
level of saying, uh, bonus nachos instead of buenos nchez
if actually speaks Spanish, and to the point where the
KGB folks like having difficulty understanding him and probably going Lee,
(22:54):
you mind the speak English and he's and he's like yeah.
But it seems like per Apps they knew there was
some you know, some eavesdropping going on, and maybe that
was one of the reasons. But again, you're speaking to
a console at the Russian embassy in Mexico and you're
gonna speak Russian. So I don't know, Maybe it's just
I guess to hide amongst all the other conversations that
(23:16):
occurred today. Sure, and the person who wrote the memo
has said that relayed the belief on the FBI's part
that Oswald was trying to get out, right, who was
trying to get to the USSR, yes, or you know,
or somewhere else who knows exactly want to get a
visa right for some reason, possibly even to get into Cuba.
(23:37):
And this whole trip that Lee Harvey Oswald took to
Mexico City very close to when the assassination occurred, is
one of those things that just has a ton of
conspiracy theories surrounding it, and rightly so, I mean, that's
completely understandable, especially because the US government spent quite a
(23:57):
lot of blood, sweat and tears. I'm trying to convince
people otherwise, and now all of a sudden the story
has changed, like, oh, wait, we did know he was
in Mexico City, and like, ah, we did, we didn't,
we did, and we didn't. Well, yeah, and especially when
you bring into account the tumultuous relationship that the US
had with Cuba, especially you're right around that time and
(24:19):
specifically involving President Kennedy. So what's next. I really appreciate
that you mentioned Cuba here exactly. There's a cable from
the FBI in nineteen sixty seven, and it's just a cable.
So it's like, I don't know something that can you
explain cables really fast? We've talked about these before. Telegram
kind of. It's just almost just a quick communication kind
(24:42):
of thing coming from an operative or from a diplomat
or something. It's a lot of times you'll hear hear
cables used with diplomatic community, right, cable will depending on
the context. A cable can function as a straight point
A to point B thing that he's not going to
be vulnerable in theory, vulnerable to the same sort of
(25:03):
surveillance techniques that could be used in a traditional letter
or something happening over an open line, so it's very
much like a telegram. But the thing is with a telegram,
for instance, you know, um, Johnny Johnny Q public could
with the right equipment just tune in and then also
hear whatever is happening. Right. Uh, So a cable is
(25:25):
supposed to be a little bit uh, not like leak proof,
but more sustent more yeah, yeah, yeah, leak resistant, more secure.
And that's why you hear the folks at Wiki leaks
Julian Osane, is he still locked up? I think the
(25:46):
treadmill at the embassy. Yeah, okay, Well, Wiki Leaks, you know,
lives on cables, right, reporting cables, And I bring that
up to point out again that cables are in theory
more secure. And surely I would think that the cable,
the term cable probably doesn't mean the same thing as
today as it did then. Uh And actually it just confirmed.
(26:09):
It looks like it just refers to a confidential text message.
So I'm wondering if maybe today it might just be
some kind of encrypted person to person communication. See and
now on the document itself, in big bolded type, it
says sent by coded teletype. So there you go. So
(26:29):
what happened? Oh, so this was talking about a Cuban
gentleman who is being interrogated. Um, there's a lot to
go through with this one document for this tiny little thing.
But anyway, this gentleman who was being interrogated, UM was
asked about whether or not Oswald was a good shot,
(26:53):
like just hey, is he you know, is he good
with the rifles and a good sniper? And the gentleman replied, oh,
he was good. And then when you know, he was
further asked like, well, why would you say that, and
this gentleman said, well, I knew him, Cuban Cuban officer.
So that's that's another interesting thing because you will find
(27:14):
a lot of experts and people who spend their entire
careers researching just this one day in Dallas in n
uh They believe that Oswald was actually a terrible shot,
and a lot of the evidence indicates that he was
he was not the world's best sniper. And then you'll
find opposing evidence or opposing people with the opposing view
(27:35):
that he was actually an amazing crack shot. So maybe
one of those theories implies that he was some kind
of stooge or patsy, a fall guy or whatever. Or
was in communication with Cuba or the Soviet Union via Cuba.
It amazing, It's like, it's crazy. It goes on. So
remember what we said at the top. The official Warrant
(27:58):
Commission conclusion was at Jack Ruby acted acted alone, right,
and uh just did what he saw as his patriotic duty.
I'm killing the guy who killed the president. You know,
instant karma is gonna get you, etcetera. Someone. It turns out,
as this was revealed in these classified files, someone called
(28:20):
the FBI threatening to kill Lee Harvey Oswald a day
before his murder. Wow. So a document from November sixty
three indicated that j Edgar Hoover Um actually addressed Oswald's death,
specifically referencing that it was at the hands of Jack Ruby,
and the quote goes as follows quote there is nothing
(28:42):
further on the Oswald case except that he is dead,
which Alex Hoover. Hoover then indicated that agents in the
FBI's Dallas Field office received a call from a gentleman
speaking in a very calm tone, who claimed to be
a member of a committee that was responsible for Oswald's
(29:04):
assassination or there were a committee that wanted to kill Oswald. Hello,
I am a member of a committee of concerned patriots,
and we want you to know that as patriots, we
are planning to kill the assassin of John F. Kennedy.
Thank you for your time. All right, then gonna logg
(29:25):
that call. So this, this situation develops further. Right now,
we're getting into of course, we're getting as jagg Or
Hoover creep. Why is he a creep? He's a creepy dude?
Are you serious? Maybe? Why do you think he's agreed
(29:46):
because he killed Martin Luther King Jr. Pretty obviously, whoa dude,
I've never heard you that resolute about something like that.
Well he okay, sorry, he didn't pull the trigger, but
he ran. He ran active and illegal campaigns against against
people that he saw as a threat to his version
(30:08):
of the status. Quote you know he didn't he like
have files on like John Lennon even and then like
he was basically responsible for tailing anyone he saw it. Yeah, racist,
ultra nationalists, power mad unlike all that. But you use
the term creep, I you know. So Anyway, the FBI
(30:28):
at this point contacted the Dallas Police just to reiterate
to them, Hey, somebody just called us and was really
really creepy on the phone, talking about how they want
to kill Oswald. Just do us a favor and protect him,
like really protect him, please, Okay, Yeah, And they said, yeah, well,
we'll totally do that, and they did not. Yeah. Quote
(30:49):
Ruby says no one was associated with him and denies
having made the telephone call to our Dallas office last night.
That's something Hoover said. And Hoover went on to say
that the FBI had evidence of Oswald's guilt and intercepted
communication he had with Cuba and the Soviet Union. Hoover
went on to say he was concerned that there would
(31:10):
be doubt in the public sphere about Oswald's guilt and
the President Johnson would point a commission to investigate the assassination,
which that actually did happen. However, Yeah, However, I think
at this point it's important for us to note UH
something we've mentioned on the show before. It's a fascinating
(31:32):
thing about the evolution of the the phrase the thought
terminating cliche conspiracy theory. So, in the wake of the assassination,
U S Intelligence agencies sent UH confidential memos two various
media institutions of note like New York Times, Chicago Papers,
(31:55):
San Francisco, et cetera, and they said, look, here's the story,
is the official story. If anyone says something different, uh,
make sure to make sure to dismiss it and make
sure to call it quote a conspiracy theory. It's the
originating place of this, right, and that's how it entered
(32:18):
the mainstream lexicon of the United States. And that's why
you have to be very careful. You know, like we
live in a world where there's an information glut, and
it's very very easy for someone to go make a
website that purports to be uh, some sort of legit
news source, right, and then just write all kinds of
(32:41):
cockamami stuff. Right, But you gotta be very careful when
you hear everybody, and I mean everybody in the West
calling something a crazy conspiracy or a person a conspiracy
theorists writer shutting the stuff down because you know, alright,
I feel like I have to do the rent just briefly,
(33:02):
just briefly, just briefly. Okay, yeah, we've got like two
more hours in the studio, right, We're good, Okay, sorry,
but just just briefly. It is it is a lack
of critical thinking to say that anything called a conspiracy
theory is automatically um is automatically bullpoop, right, because we're
a family show, so you know, saying that saying that,
(33:26):
for instance, the the Royal family of the United Kingdom
is descended from some secret race of half reptilian alien
half human hybrids, is that that would be called a
conspiracy theory, right, Shout out to David Ike. But then
people are also calling a conspiracy theory to say that, uh,
(33:46):
international banks are laundry money for drug cards, just like
the whole use of like fake news right now, you know,
I mean, all stories and theories are not created equal,
and especially when a term is applied is like a
term of abuse or like a diminutive of that's when
things start getting sketchy. So it's like a conspiracy theory
versus a fringe notion or something, you know what I mean. Like,
(34:07):
I don't know when you when you apply that term,
it seems to to large large proportions of the population
discount the idea and you know the whole sure, yeah, absolutely,
and that's a mistake. Yeah, And you know, I really
appreciate you bringing up the fake news concept because we're
absolutely right. Psychologically, we our species are built to seek classification, right,
(34:30):
to seek hierarchy, to seek order, which means that it's very,
very convenient to uh wrap everything up in a symbolic
phrase and throw that phrase in as a shortcut to
critical thinking. It's like, I like jazz, but I don't
like fusion. It's just like that. Uh So, now we're
(34:50):
already in the thick of it. We're finding out from
these released files that at least several things at least
in a few cases, the things that the War in
Commission and the US at large we're saying it turned
out not to be true. They don't quite jad. No,
there's no fusion. There's just jazz. So let's insert right here.
(35:11):
If you haven't already listened to our episode on or
maybe watched our video, I don't know if we have
an episode on it on uh the Central Intelligence agencies
and the US government's plans and tactics to assassinate Fidel
Castro of Cuba, because you need to you need to
get that information right now. We did do a video
on that. Yeah, pause, go watch that video then come back. Well,
(35:33):
maybe if you're driving, just hang out an ad break
to give them time to do it. We can. Yeah,
what do you say, what better time than the present?
And we've returned, let's say you want to do a
couple more specific files. Yeah, we have to keep going.
(35:53):
There's so much stuff here, right, I don't know, I
candidly do not know if we were going to get
to all of it, So we don't. We do want
your help after you listen to this episode of Folks.
If there's something that you feel your fellow listeners need
to know about this release, please write to us and
let us know and we'll we'll put it on the
air as well. So the CIA did consider placing mafia
(36:16):
hits on Castro. Yeah, mafia hits. So they Now that
you've listened or watched that video, you know that there
were some crazy theories or some crazy plans brought up
by the government in the United States to kill Fidel Castro.
Exploding cigars, weird umbrellas, stuff in wet suits that yeah,
(36:37):
like from like the Novelty store. Well but but but
but really crazy stuff that doesn't seem true. In the
National Spy Museum, I think you can see some of
that stuff. For a couple of other places where we
can find it. Um. But this specifically was a the
Rockefeller Commission, a document from nine and he was detailing
(36:59):
the c a's role in all kinds of foreign assassinations
and specifically plans to assassinate Castro in the early days
of the Kennedy administration. And the report said that Attorney
General Robert Kennedy, the brother of President JFK also assassinated Yes,
and a whole other story, a whole series of episodes,
but we'll get into that some other time. Uh. He
(37:20):
told the FBI that he learned the CIA hired some intermediary,
another person, a third party to come through an approach
sam gen Kanna Gian Kanna. Do he does that sound
familiar to from m No, this is a prominent mafia
person and known mafia person at the time, with the
(37:42):
proposition they broach this guy saying, Hey, we're gonna pay
a hundred and fifty thousand dollars to get somebody with it,
either within your organization or somebody else to kill Castro
in Cuba. Like that's crazy. The government was gonna hire
mafia hitman. Well, I mean it probably like you know,
it gives them plausible deniability or I mean I if
it's not like if it's someone that's completely not not
(38:03):
connected to the government. Oh yeah, sure. In this case,
it would probably be layer upon layer upon layer. If
you're talking about the government hiring a mafia guy to
hire some other guys. And I know the fifty grand
doesn't sound like a really big amount of money, but today,
right today, it's today. Yeah, I did the inflation calculation
(38:24):
work in this Uh it's it's about one point two
million dollars. Wow, I do a hit for that. Well,
what well, here's the here's the problem, don't it. Don't
ever say that. Here, here's the issue. The Attorney General
Robert Kennedy had been trying to prosecute this gentleman. He
he you know, he's a Sicilian mobster. They've got files
(38:45):
on him. They've been trailing him, they've been tracking him,
they've been listening to him. They've been trying to get
him on something big. And if the government is going
to pay him that much money to go do an assassination,
it makes the state's case, or the you know, the
government's case a little it harder to prosecute um quote.
Attorney General Kennedy stated that CIA should never undertake the
(39:05):
use of mafia people again without first checking with the
Department of Justice. Check in. Yeah, just check in, because
it would be difficult to prosecute such people in the future.
But that's so weird though. They didn't say never do this. No,
they just said, guys, just check in your dad first,
(39:25):
ask your dead first. Yeah. It was Robert Kennedy, So
I was like, uh. The report also said that the
CIA was later interested in using mobsters to deliver poison
pale to castro uh, to order to kill him. Than
you got you know, that was that was fantastic And
I feel like there's a little bit of President Obama
(39:46):
influence in there. There was the cadence I think you are,
I think Matt is just you just got a promotion,
my friend whoa whoa, and I impersonator in chief. Yes,
so pretend to be a president and call the CIA
for us and get this sorted out. Okay, good, Okay,
(40:06):
Well we're done here. Everybody have a great week. No. Uh.
Continuing though on this, this one thing that's hugely important
about this point in specific is that this sort of
um contradictory, uh, this contradictory set of pursuits by various
government agencies. This situation where the left hand does not
(40:27):
know what the right hand is doing, lends a lot
of credence and gives a lot of sand to the
claims that intelligence agencies in the US and in other
countries function as their own independent governments. Yeah. Absolutely, And
then you imagine that these independent governments, you know, in
their own functionings, sometimes doing the same work, or at
(40:49):
least overlapping, sometimes just doing vastly different stuff. But is
there anyone in charge? When you think about the government
that we've elected, the for the people, by the people,
democracy that we have in this country, Like you've got
these operating hands, if you will, in this octopus, Like
(41:10):
where is the head? I don't think it's the elected official.
This is the point that if you cut off one
head and grows somewhere else, so that there's so many
heads that you don't know which one is the real head.
Oh my god, what is happening? I am seriously, I
am waiting at some point, I you know, I know
not everybody loves Marvel movies, but at some point I'm
hoping that a stranger like shakes my hand and like
(41:33):
whispers hal Hiram, you know, you should just start doing
that with people. I can't do it. No, No, it's
over real. Well at parties, it's like you can't give
yourself a nickname. You can't be the one who goes
up to people and says, hell, hi got you. Well,
like started started, the conversation would be like, hey, did
you hear Taylor swift new stuff? Man? I was jamming
on it all day. Not The Deiled too much, Best,
(41:56):
this Great Mean this Morning where it was squid word
from SpongeBob and it split screen where it's like his
eyes closed and it says you when you're asleep and
realized Taylor Swift's new album comes out at midnight, and
the next frame was the same as eyes my wife
is because he was stoked about it. The single tier
oh my gosh oh and Maria Bamfer's new show or
(42:19):
the second season comes out to check it out. It's
okay plugging other shows and albums. Yes, well, it's important.
This is important stuff, you know, and we are we
are very conscious that this kind of sifting through archival
(42:40):
information can be dry, right, and we also acknowledge that
we're talking about stuff that's dangerous implications in the present day. Uh,
and we're we're trying to keep our chins up about it.
But the situation is dire as we record this, and
there are a ton more documents we didn't discuss, I
(43:01):
mean literally thousands, and each of them probably has a
tiny little story to tell. And that's why we're encouraging
you to go in and do some of the research yourself,
or at least sift through the news sites. Well let's
we're not even to the crazy, but let's laundry list
a couple of Okay, so FBI director, and again this
is this is a lot of Matt's research and needed
(43:22):
spot on job man, Thank you so much, you got it.
So uh. FBI Director Hoover Ran forwarded a memo to
the White House in sixty three, right after Kennedy's death,
and it was this memo was classified as top secret
for years, and it's it's it's exploring the U. S
(43:44):
intelligence agencies best guesses toward the Soviet Union's reaction to
the assassination. Yeah, and we have a quote here. According
to our source, officials of the Communist Party of the
Soviet Union believe that there was some well organized conspiracy
on the part of the ultra right in the United
States to affect a coup. They seem convinced that the
(44:07):
assassination was not the deed of one man, but that
it arose out of a carefully planned campaign in which
several people played a part. WHOA, Now, are they falling
prey to the conspiracy theories? Are they spreading propaganda? Because
we do know after the assassination the USSR did pretty effectively,
(44:30):
uh capitalize on the opportunity to spread dissent and shout
out to General Smedley Butler. We do know that there
have been coup attempts in the United States. You're typically
not going to read about them in your history books.
Smedley Smedley M E. D L. E. Y sounds like
(44:50):
a made up name. I love it. Speaking speaking of
my daddy, George H. W. Bush, his daddy, my grandpa,
my Grandpapi. He's a guy who supposedly went through and
decided to do the business plot. Isn't that crazy? My
daddy was a business man and his daddy was a
business man. My daddy was CEI a man. President President Bush. Yeah, yeah,
(45:12):
thank you for coming by. We're we're in the middle
of the show though. Oh well, I'm sorry. I'll just
go in the corner and do some paint. Okay, all right,
all right, I'll be over here. Okay, hey, can you slip, Matt?
Why do you keep bringing that guy to this? Why
do you keep letting push you around like that? And
he just pushes you out of your chair and then
(45:32):
does this is a little creepy laugh. I gotta admit.
When he was in office, just I know it's okay.
I can hear you talking about me over there? I know,
just give me two seconds. Um. When he was in office,
I wasn't the biggest fan. But afterwards, like this guy
is chill, like he is so cool. He's just painting.
He likes to go to Gagley, he likes to go
to Brieves game. Did you know he can play the
rhythm guitar part for every three eleven song? Dude, I've
(45:55):
been trying to learn the piano. Did you know that
amber is the color of his energy? He keep saying that.
I feel like he thinks that that was his idea,
but it's clearly a lyric from three eleven. Right, Okay,
so point pete yes before we get through derailed. Uh,
these various these various pieces of information are coming out,
(46:16):
and in many cases, if they are not contradicting the
official narrative, they are at the very least complicating it. Yes,
you know, so uh we have we have people who
are saying, uh, never mind this official stuff called all
the conspiracy theory. But that then at the same time
(46:37):
we are finding secret communications between people where an intelligence
agency is saying, ah, pretty much everybody thinks, like the
world's other superpower is pretty convinced that not one guy
did this exactly. And then they're like, Okay, well, don't
tell anybody. I just wanted you to know, and let's
(46:58):
just keep it secret. That's so strange. It feels strange now,
But we have to we have to understand. One of
the one of the most vulnerable points of any any
state powers existence is always going to be the succession, right,
the passage of power from one typically one individual to another.
(47:19):
So for instance, in the case of the Democratic People's
Republic of Korea, North Korea, one of the things that
is always a big flash point and really dangerous part
of time for the world, not just in that region,
is when they pass from father to son. I don't
know what's going to happen. You know, look at look
at Turkey, right, look at Italy. The this so in
(47:43):
the context of the time, this is very, very dangerous
for the US. It is vulnerable now in a way
that it has not been right at least for a
long long time since the probably the death of Lincoln
is the last time that it was that vulnerable. And uh,
let's see one more example. Maybe absolutely okay, So for
(48:05):
our last entry for the day, we have a document,
a top secret document from n that was created for
the Rockefeller Commission. And in this document there is a
transcript of a testimony of a former CIA director by
the name of Richard Helms. And in this document, um
(48:27):
Helms says that he believes that former President Richard Nixon,
old Tricky Dickey, believed that the CIA was actually directly
responsible for assassinating the South Vietnamese president Go Den Dean,
who died after a coup that was linked to the
(48:48):
Central Intelligence Agency. And we've got a quote from Helms himself, right,
we do. Indeed, it goes as follows quote there's absolutely
no evidence of this in the agency records, and the
whole thing has been I mean, rather, what is the
word I want heated by the fact that President Johnson
used to go around saying that the reason President Kennedy
(49:10):
was assassinated was that he had assassinated President Team and
this was just justice. And then Helms ads, uh, where
he got this from? I don't know, and just yeah,
this is during a deposition. Uh, And that was the
context of the conversations that Helms was asked if there
(49:30):
was any way Oswald was in some way a CIA
agent or an asset or an operative or an agent
of something else. And that's right when the document ends.
But is this when the story ends? We've given just
a few examples, right, And I know that this episode
is running a little a little long because we're digging
(49:53):
into this stuff. But the big question is is this
the whole story? That's where one document ends. Where does
the story end? Are we finally in seventeen up to
speed on exactly what the US Intelligence Agency did or
did not know regarding this assassination? I don't. I don't
(50:15):
think we're there. Here's where it gets crazy. Some of
these files that we mentioned right are still secret. They
were all supposed to be released, and they were released
under If you're listening to this in the future. They
were released under the auspice of the Trump administration, right,
but not all of them were released they were supposed
(50:37):
to be. And we have no idea when more even
if the other stuff will ever make it into the
public sphere. In the eleventh hour, right before this stuff
went public became declassified. Intelligence agencies, the FBI, the CIA,
(50:57):
all your favorite alphabet soup members of the U. S. Government.
They pressured Trump successfully or in pressure the administration, I
should say successfully too, keep some of this stuff secret
past the due date. Uh. In light of everybody's favorite boogeyman,
(51:19):
national security? National security? What does that mean? It's just
like tagging base, you know, you know, like uh, anytime
you don't want to tell the public something you own,
national security, you know, I'd say, I wish I could
do that in my private life for the good of
the realm. Can we just say that from now on?
(51:41):
We can, we can try it. Let's have let's uh,
let's let's call up some of our friends over there
in the intelligence agencies and just say, hey, man, from
now on, if you're gonna say national security, those guys
are not your friends. I've been on the phone with
the FBI field office a couple of times now working
on this other stuff. I think I've got some sway.
I know Paul. Paul's got sway all over Atlanta right now.
(52:02):
Super producer Paul. Yeah, he can make some calls and
just be like, guys, it's now for the good of
the realm. One call. That's Paul. That's pretty good. That's
pretty good. So so unless you are as fortunate as
the three of us to have a super producer like
Paul right in your circle, uh, you're probably lost at
(52:26):
sea a little bit. Conceptually, when you hear the phrase
national security, it's one of those words that just gets
thrown around willy nilly, the same way that people used
to add the descriptor digital in front of everything in
the nineties. Didn't matter what it was, it was digital,
you could charge five dollars. More So, national security in
(52:46):
this context could mean several things. Uh, let's break down
into let's say three or four things. First is preventing
the spread of intelligence techniques, strategies, spycraft highly important, absolutely,
the methods of gathering intelligence, not the intelligence itself, right right,
because if somebody else knows how this stuff was gathered,
(53:08):
then the jig is up, they can protect against it,
right exactly. This is an understandable concern. Right forever, we're
talking about what nineteen sixties and prior to that, maybe
a little bit after that, but mostly you're dealing with
before the assassination, so late fifties, early sixties technology. So
if this stuff is held back to protect techniques from
(53:31):
the nineteen forties literally on display in spy museums around
the country, right, then the question becomes, can you plausibly believe, right,
apply critical thinking, can you plausibly believe that some of
the world's most well funded intelligence operatives would still be
using the same techniques for decades? Well, I have to
(53:52):
just interject here and say I think some of the
techniques are very much human and psychologically based chap perhaps
maybe existing in some of these documents humans, right, yes, yes, exactly,
which are the shortened terms for human intelligence versus signals intelligence.
The second, the second um category here genre of national security,
(54:17):
would be to protect the existing relationship between the United
States and a foreign government. Clearly very important. Yeah, and
you know we have a lot of what did uh
somebody just called this on NPR called the China and
the United States frenemies, but it's we have a lot
of those that we've cultivated over the years. Those relationships.
(54:39):
There is no such thing as friendship in the geopolitical sphere.
There are interests that aligned exactly, interested aligned temporarily or
you know, maybe in a long term for a specific thing. Sure, so, yeah,
I completely agree. Now we have another question. If information
is being withheld to protect the relationship, the conf dental
(55:00):
relationship between two countries, then this would mean that there
could either be privileged knowledge somebody maybe has a skeleton
in the closet, right, maybe maybe the Soviet Union knows
something that the U s public doesn't, right, or there
could be collusion on the part of another country. Right,
(55:21):
that would never happen. No, I'm not here, man, it's crazy.
It's crazy talk, right. Uh. And one example of this what,
of course, as we mentioned, the be the u SSRs
efforts to spread propaganda after the assassination, or of course,
similar attempts by the US in other foreign countries, very
(55:43):
similar attempts, the worst similar work. So there's here's the
here's the here's the third genre. Uh. It could be
when they say national security, it could mean protecting the
lives of current or former government officials. Right. So let's
say one of the theories we hear a lot about
(56:05):
JFK is that a secret service member accidentally fired the
fatal shot. That theories as one of the theories, right,
again unproven, Right. So what is when we talked about
government conspiracies? There's people often go to the idea of
some great collusion in advance. Right. The same the same
(56:30):
institution that cannot, for the life of it figure out
how to do effective policy, is also capable of these
supervillain level Rube Goldberg machinations, right, or lends itself to
covering up a mistake. Right, So how much more realistic
(56:52):
is it that someone screwed up and the people are
trying to remove that from history. So imagine being a
retired official and the public learns that you did something negligent, right, accidental, unintentional,
and then you find yourself up a very dangerous creek
(57:13):
with no paddle whatsoever, especially in the age of cheap information. Totally.
So in conclusion, here, guys, the craziest thing is that,
at least according to Trump's Twitter feed, he has released
everything and long ahead of schedule. That's what he's saying, however,
(57:34):
it seems pretty certain that there's at least a small
number of documents that remain hidden. Uh, it seems pretty clear.
But what we do have is thousands more documents to
tread through. And you know, as researchers and historians and
(57:56):
interns are going through all of this stuff, you know,
per ups, there's going to be some new revelation. Maybe
not the kind of thing that I'm was hoping for
after all of these years, but something. Surely they wouldn't
let it out though, man. I mean, you know, they
know what's in there. They're giving people something to play
with and and you know, feel good about or whatever,
(58:18):
feel like informed. But there's not going to be an answer.
The government wouldn't allow that to happen. I don't. I
don't think. And if it's a if it's a case
of national security, then again the implications are dangerous. It's
twenty seventeen, and if that stuff still applies, I think
we can all agree. I think we can all agree,
folks that the idea of protecting a spycraft technique from
(58:41):
the forties to the sixties doesn't pan out. It's like
tape recorders and suitcases dude, like they're they're on display
like in the music you see. It's I don't know. Well,
in my opinion, there's still the possibility that there's a
needle inside this haystack. But just we there hasn't been
enough time and enough human hands and I is working
through it. So will you at least agree with me
(59:03):
that the government knows exactly what's in there? Again, we're
dealing with the octopus with the So yeah, I don't
know if everybody knows, because there are there are factions
at play, their factions and it's been a long time
and humans die. That's the one thing we all do now,
(59:23):
is there is there something there? There must be there,
There must be otherwise the intelligence agencies would not have
pressured the current administration so strongly not to release some
stuff in the previous several ran the previous several So
there is there is something. Something is rotten in this
particular Denmark, right, So are you planning on going through
(59:46):
these files? You can do it. You can find them literally,
search new JFK files and you will find the National
Archives link that has a spreadsheet in it, and it
also has every single file on that website. So if
you have internet connection and a little hotza, you can
get in there and just start doing it. Because I've
been going through it for the past several days just
(01:00:07):
trying to find things, but there's just too much. And
like we said, you're gonna find all kinds of weird
phrases in there. Um. And there's something I want to
point everyone too if you're gonna look into this. It's
the Merry Feral Foundations ci A cryptomes two point Oh.
It's a really cool website. You can go to m
A R Y F E R R E l L
(01:00:29):
dot org and you can find this thing. And it
has a huge list that's crowdsourced of all these different
acronyms and stuff that are used by all the intelligence
agencies to represent certain things. And it's fascinating when you
go through these documents and you see the legend kind
of like like it actually gives you like a little yeah, exactly,
and it's it's not just a you know ibex o
(01:00:53):
O bi ibex equals this or you know whatever it is.
It gives you a full description of all the different
ways that it can be, things that it can refer to.
It's it's really neat I'm on that as soon as
we wrap here, So tell us what you find and
while you're online, find us if you haven't already. You
can find us on Instagram, you can find us on Twitter,
(01:01:14):
you can find us on Facebook. We have names that
are all approximations of conspiracy stuff, you know, and we
would love to hear your opinion specifically. Have you already
looked into this? Do you think that there is something
important yet to be revealed? Did we miss something? Let
us know and we'll put it in the shoutout. And
(01:01:36):
speaking of shout outs, we want to thank everybody who
wrote in to us via various different things, you know, uh,
social media, snail mail, mirrors in the dark at midnight, cables,
cables in actually for this episode, but it is run
(01:01:57):
pretty excessively long afore we're going to hold it back
for the next one. But we you know, I know,
we don't do it every episode, but we're gonna try
to get back into doing the shoutout corner. We have
a we have a actually we have a a astonishing
piece of correspondence that we received recently, uh, and we
want to give it its full do so please do
tune in next week because unlike the US government, we
(01:02:21):
actually release revelatory things. That's right, until we get shot.
It was a sick burn on the US government. You know,
I'm punchy today man. With without actually going to shout
out corner, we want to give a huge shout out
to Samuel who sent us something in the snail mail.
So can we just say what it is? Signet rings
They go on your pinky and you can seal documents
(01:02:43):
with wax with them. I took the one that has
the alien head. I'm very excited about it. Mine sort
of like a looks sort of like a Coca pelee
kind of figure. I don't think that's what it is.
But Samuel, what is it? What's what's the squiggly one?
I took it because I thought it was meat looking,
but I don't quite know what it is. Ben's yours
is a Illuminati triangle, right you'll see. Uh So we
(01:03:06):
will put pictures of these rings up and go check
us out on Instagram. Uh our our producers giving us
a little bit of a where you're going with These
guys got to wrap it up, and we're getting to
wrap it up. So we are going to wrap it
up and We're going to end this with the most
important piece of information for you, which is, hey, guess
(01:03:28):
oh man, yeah, George. If you don't want to do
all the social media rick and roll, you can find us,
write us an email. We are conspiracy and how Stuff
Works dot com.
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