The JFK Episode, Part Two: Down the Rabbithole

In the second part of our deep dive into the assassination of John F. Kennedy, we examine some of the more plausible theories of what really happened on that fateful day in 1963.

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Episode Transcript

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. A
production of I Heart Radio. Hello, welcome back to the show.

(00:25):
My name is Matt, my name is Noel. They called
me Ben. We're joined as always with our super producer
Paul Mission Control decond. Most importantly, you are you. You
are here, and that makes this the stuff they don't
want you to know. This is part two of our
two part or possibly three, four or five part series

(00:45):
on the JFK assassination. Now and part one fellow conspiracy Realist.
We established Kennedy's background, We talked about some of his
notable winds, some of the controversies of his administration even
before the ass fascination, and we went along the official
timeline of the murder along with some of the issues

(01:07):
that people have with that story. So today, in part two,
we're getting to the juice. We're getting to the red meat.
We're diving deep, so strapped in here are the facts
we established this earlier. It's amazing when you think about it.
The public, both in the US and abroad, largely disagrees

(01:30):
with the government's official opinion on this assassination, to say
the very least, like even the most skeptical people, may
I think twice about a green with the war in commission,
Oh very much. So? Why because it's the government telling
us what the government did. No, I'm just shooking. It's
not what the government did. It's just their official findings. Right.

(01:53):
But they're all paid by us. Wait a second, well
and drug revenue. Hey yeah, but this is this is
weird because these conspiracies, you know, as we said, they
can seem widely varied, but they're all feeding from that
same faucet that you just described, Matt. The the very

(02:16):
American distrust of the government, which I would say is
a healthy distrust. Uh, And the continued secrecy, the continued
stolen walling, the various discrepancies that have come out in
the decades since the murder. There are different perspectives on
these discrepancies, but there's one thing that's stuck with me
now I wish got pointed out more often. And this

(02:38):
is a little bit of a stick in the mud
kind of thing, but it's important to note. First, of course,
this murder investigation gets a lot more scrutiny than an
everyday homicide, and that's logical, and it makes sense that
it would receive more scrutiny in the decades after, because sadly,
we have to remember there are so many homicide and

(03:00):
investigations in the US every year and in almost every
country every year, and they can all each have their
own discrepancies and accuracies, missing paperwork. These cases, when discovered,
they don't automatically send people into the land of conspiracy.
Bureaucracies are big, they're unwieldy, they can screw up. And

(03:22):
if you are, you know, just a regular person, then
your case, even if there is well, pardon my French,
some free of foot, your case is not going to
get as much attention as the as it would if
you were president or even a celebrity, you know what
I mean. That's that's just the reality, and things can
get lost. Incompetence is uh, I don't want to say common,

(03:47):
but incompetence happens, and in its own cold way, that's
kind of as frightening as the idea of a highly
organized conspiracy, right, like, what would you prefer? Would you
prefer a successful cover up or would you prefer a
bunch of people who were just so bad at their
job that they couldn't figure out what happened to the
president apples to oranges. Now I'm getting that's true. It's

(04:08):
a very important calculu. I think I would prefer the
the laser focused cover up to utter incompetence. But that
would wouldn't you argue that maybe we sort of get
kind of a mixed bag of both. Sometimes I just
had an image and you guys tell me what you
think about this. It feels like the government is mom
and dad, where all the kids were in the back

(04:31):
of the van. We're going on a road trip. It
just our entire lives. It's a it's a giant road
trip with the government driving. It's mom and dad were
in the back and we hit something in the car.
It's night. We don't know what it was. We have
no idea. Mom and Dad get out of the car
and confer with each other while we're all in the
in the dark, still in the van in the back,

(04:51):
and they have to come up with like the story
of what happened, uh when in reality, we hit a
dog it ran across the street, but we don't want
to tell the kids that we hit a dog, because
that would be terrible, So we come up with the
story that we tell the kids. Is that crazy? What
do you think? No, I mean, everybody builds their own mythologies,

(05:14):
whether you're talking about a family or a nation, or
a community, or a church or a company or however
people whatever people call their thing that they get together
to hang out and well, I guess what I mean
is they're the ones in charge, so they have to
come up with, like the official story of this is

(05:34):
what's happened? Everything's okay. Basically, I think in a lot
of cases that we've looked into. Maybe I'm in a
bit of a bubble here because I've spend so much
time stuck in this world, But I think in a
lot of cases, what happens is somebody screws up due
to incompetence right or to due to factors beyond their control,

(05:56):
act of God, etcetera, etcetera, And the actual conspiracy is
an exercise and covering up that incompetence. Like, it is possible.
We're not going to say is what happened, but it
is possible that someone in the Secret Service accidentally, you know,
panicked invest of intentions. Like we mentioned in part one,

(06:16):
they're trying to draw their firearm and accidentally shoot the president,
and that's like not something you would want to publicize.
So that accident or that incompetence, rather than a conspiracy,
becomes the genesis of a conspiracy for the government to
protect itself or to protect its own image. Um. But

(06:39):
again there's that while that is a very popular theory,
especially in recent recent years, that hasn't been proven conclusively.
But we don't know it's proven or disproven conclusively because
we can't read it. It's like one of those ndia'
s that doesn't allow other people to read the n
d A. What's in there, we don't know. It's like
the National Inventions Grissy Act and the gag order they

(07:02):
pull where you can't talk about what happened. We don't know.
We don't know how many inventions have been pulled by
Uncle Sam. And we don't know what happened with jfk
or at least what the CIA found, because they're not
going to tell you until they get more black markers.
So at the time of his demise, John F. Kennedy
was one of the world's most important human beings. One

(07:24):
of the most recognizable names and faces um in in
the entire world, the entire planet um. Maybe even the
most important you know of of everyone, given his influence
over a global superpower like the United States during an
incredibly dangerous, divisive, and heady time as the Cold War.

(07:45):
So in short, Kennedy definitely had some enemies, both foreign
and domestic. UM. And pretty much any president is going
to you know, rub some people the wrong way or
be seen as an adversary, which is why you'll find
claims implicating everyone from the CIA to the KGB to
like we discussed in the last episode, the Mafia, to

(08:07):
Fidel Castro, to even the Secret Service, the organization that's
um intended to protect the president, and also Kennedy's own
vice president, Mr Lyndon B. Johnson. UM. So, just how
many conspirators are we talking here? Oh? Yeah, shout out
to Vincent BOOGLIOSI. Uh did some excellent work on the

(08:29):
Manson case. He's a former l A district attorney. I
do recommend. He's also a great writer. I recommend reading
his stuff. He had this statistic that really stuck out
to me. He said in his estimation as of twenty thirteen.
It was a while ago that forty two groups, forty
two different groups, eighty two different assassins, and two hundred

(08:53):
and fourteen different you know, just people had been had
been accused of being involved in the assassination in one
way or another. That's a lot of people. That's many groups.
That would be a testament to cooperation if that were
the case. Well, is that is that like all working
together for the assassination or is that like one assassination?

(09:16):
Theory was was like two groups seven people like I
just don't Yeah, it's it's the latter, not the former. Okay, okay,
It's not like a big Avengers endgame team up, but
just a bunch of people saying this was the plot
of the movie in different movies. But as we've seen,
they all kind of coalesced and depart and converge at

(09:39):
these different moments. So our question today is do any
of these claims actually hold up? And on the other
side of the coin, do we know of any that
can be entirely dismissed? The answers get murky pretty quickly.
Here's where it gets crazy, getting right into it. Uh,
Weirdly enough, most of these ideas they're either unprovable or

(10:03):
they suffer from glaring plot holes if we're going to
keep the screenwriting analogy going. But a lot of people
believe some version or another, or believe at the very
least some part of one of these stories. Again, even
if in all the rest of their conversations, they are

(10:24):
the most skeptical person post James Randy on the planet.
And that's because they're they're strange, strange things about this story,
both leading up to November nine and in the wake
of the assassination. You could call them coincidences, you could
call them just complications, where you could call them discrepancies,

(10:47):
or like many people, like more than half of America,
you could call them indications of a conspiracy. And we
why do we know this? Why can't we say this
with such certitude? Because people in tracking the public opinion
about the conspiracies since November twenty nine, like continually, Gallup

(11:10):
has been tracking this. Oh yeah, and they keep trying.
You can check it out right now. They update it.
I can't remember the exact last time they updated have been,
but it was like for the fifty year anniversary. And
again there's there's it's just they keep tracking it, and
it's around fifty, right, I think it was fifty two percent,
and then we talked about sixty one maybe percent in

(11:33):
our last episode. It's it's around it's a little over
half of Americans right now believe that something weird went
down with JFK's assassination. So I think it would be
smart if we use this episode to really let's break
down some of the series. Let's look at the suspects.
I've I've heard a lot about Lyndon B. Johnson, and

(11:54):
he's probably one of the major suspects since simply because
he potentially had something to gain directly if JFK was
out of the picture, right, that would that would be
the idea. I mean, it's it's a brutal concept though,
to think that your only way toward promotion is to
organize the death of your boss. That's I mean, corporate

(12:16):
America can be ruthless, but I don't know how often
it gets to that level. But maybe we all saw
a House of cards. We know that people do anything
to to get to the top. Star Jenny from Forrest
Gump and and she's it was always hurt right the
whole time. There was never an I don't think history
is important. In the truth is important. Kevin Spacey had

(12:39):
taken time off from doing his regular creepy stuff to
to act in that show. That's that's probably unfortunately the
best way to phrase it. Oh man, Yeah, I did
really like parts of that show. Well, you're right, you're right.
What will people not do for power? And though this number,
this number of people who believe in some ass sspect

(13:00):
of the theory, uh that it's waxed and waned over
the years, you'd be interested to know that the number
of people who believe Oswald acted entirely on his own
is surprisingly low. Like for a while, was hovering around
thirty in a poll um. More recent polls from Gallop

(13:20):
in five thirty eight have indicated that, like we said,
the majority of a narrow majority, narrow majority of people
in this country are convinced there was a conspiracy of
foot So let's dig into the suspects. Let's start with
one of the inside job theories. Let's start with a

(13:43):
man that was so proud of his junk that he
gave it a name and showed it to his co workers.
That's right, folks, none other than Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson.
We have some people who are convinced they've solved this one.
By the way, so the or of the Lennon B.
Johnson conspiracy is, how would we describe it? This guy

(14:06):
wants to be president so bad that he kills his boss.
Is that it? That's like the gist, right, I mean,
I think that's the kind of theory that almost seems
like it's plausible, right when you hear that, or maybe
even imagine it if you if this is a murder
investigation on a TV show that we watch every week
as Americans and or wherever you live. I'm sure they're

(14:29):
true crime shows wherever you are, we'd look at somebody
who has motive, and I mean, being next in line
for the presidency could be clear motive. Yeah, yeah, that's true.
Because there's not going to be an election held for
a time. You're just automatically going to be the acting president. Um,

(14:50):
all right, So that's a powerful motive. Even if we
take the personalities out of the equation, the core of
this conspiracy seems to hinge on the allegations of one person.
It's a person named Madeleine Brown. Uh, no relation, I presume, right, No,
I don't think so no, I don't aware of Okay, so, uh,

(15:13):
no judgment if that's the case. But Madaline stated that
she had an affair with Lyndon Johnson, who was a
known philanderer, and that before the murder. The night before
the assassination, lb J was at a party and he
was there with Richard Nixon. He was there with the

(15:38):
FBI director j Edgar Hoover, and she said that l
b J kind of after a conversation this party, lb
J came to Madeline, came to her and said in
her ear, whispering, after tomorrow, these Kennedy's will never embarrass

(15:58):
me again. That's no threat, that's a promise. So that's like,
that's what she said. And then you would never say
that that's what that's her idea of the account. But uh,
there's this guy in uh in the world of independent
research whose work is pretty Solid's a guy named David Perry,

(16:22):
and he's really skeptical. Just so you know where he's
coming from, folks. He believes he's debunked this and he
says that his research has proven beyond the shadow of
a doubt that lb J could not have been at
that party that night. Instead he echoes the belief that

(16:43):
we talked about earlier in part one, which is that
a lot of people in Texas didn't particularly care for Johnson.
So if you don't particularly care for someone, they make
an easy target for you know, gossip and and things
like that. So he was just kind of like, um,

(17:04):
you know, like people were very very anti one political figure,
celebrity or another. Would it's easy for them to agree
when they hear rumors that this person has done something unethical, illegal,
or murderous, you know, like if you already don't like

(17:24):
if someone already didn't like Ronald Reagan or Hillary Clinton
and they saw something that said, hey, these folks are
out here, I don't know, committing stamp fraud, kicking babies.
There they're running up to strangers and slapping their feet,
and you already didn't like him, you would be like, yeah,

(17:46):
I always thought I always thought Reagan looked like a
foot slapper, you know what I mean? Look at you?
Is something in the eyes you could tell like a
doll's eyes. Definitely like a Slapton doll, except when they
see toes they light up. So so this this seems

(18:08):
like at least from this perspective, it seems like sure Johnson,
as any politician at that level would be is is
perhaps madly ambitious, but he was also not an intelligent person,
and he had to be aware of the potential chaos
that would ensue globally, not just domestically, but globally if

(18:32):
a president was assassinated. But he also knows he could
take the reins and everything would be all right. Yeah,
that's true. He's he's one of those people. He's like, oh,
it'll be better if I do it. I mean, which
you know, a lot of people are, even though a
lot of people are wrong in that estimation. At this point,

(18:52):
we're giving just a taste. That's one of the big,
big suspects, but a lot of folks feel that for
various reasons, that has been debunked. We're not saying it's
been totally debunked, yet, we're saying that the the majority
of people believe that to be the case. The majority
of people who have investigated this don't seem to think

(19:12):
it was Johnson. So let's pause for a word from
our sponsors, and we'll return with more suspects. If we
can't find somebody in the executive branch about corporate America. Oh,
tell me more, I mean after the break. Okay, so

(19:36):
before the break we alluded to going into the corporate
world now with this particular conspiracy rabbit hole. Um, so
what are we talking about? Business interests like big oil
or the military industrial complex for example, the idea being
specifically with the military industrial complex. The idea here is
that the war or war in general is good for business,

(19:58):
which we have talked about anytimes on the show. We
have a whole episode about that, I believe, right then, Yeah, yeah,
we do. We also know the full Eisenhower quote, the
one that popularized the phrase military industrial complex. What he
was originally going to say was military industrial congressional complex.
Someone pulled his leash, So we pulled his leash before

(20:21):
he got to the public. So we know that first.
I mean, if we just unpacked this a little bit,
we know that the military industrial complex is real, and
it is tremendously powerful, and in fact, government agencies have
done the bidding of corporate America right there was there

(20:43):
was not really a compelling reason for the US to
invade Guatemala. That's the number one example. U. There aren't
always compelling reasons of democracy, driving US intervention in other
countries on pretty much recontinent except Antarctica, some version of

(21:03):
this has happened. So the the two forces intertwined, the
military power and the corporate power, they can do a
lot of heinous stuff and they have. You know, you
can see recent examples where oh, I'm trying to remember
which multinational just got accused of working with warlords to

(21:26):
keep whatever their product is, uh, extracting on time. Well,
I know there was a whole thing with chocolate again again, Yeah,
child Labor and all the major chocolate companies and palm oil.
That's another one. Rare earth minerals or metals excuse me,

(21:47):
they're they're all kinds uh. The idea there is that
it kind of ascribes a motive in that it makes
it sound as though oil cartels's appropriate way to describe
those operations. It makes it sound as the oil cartels
and people like Lockheed and their version of Halliburton and

(22:11):
what have you all said, Well, we've got to have war.
War is an economic necessity, so for us, for us,
well for everyone, for the greater good, har Rump for
Rump for Rump and this this Kennedy guys, just not
getting with the program. That's ridiculous. We thought he was
one of us, he was born into this class. How

(22:33):
Darry betray us? And it's true that JFK did talk
about coming to some resolution, but I could not find
I'd be interested if there was, but I could not
find any specific claim or timeline about pulling out from Vietnam,
which did, of course accelerate massively after Kennedy's assassination. But

(22:58):
then again, you get into speculative history, you know, like
how much of a difference would he have made if
he had been alive with the were the die already cast?
You know what I mean, had the dominoes from the
French Indo China War already fallen in such a way
that the US was going to be there regardless? I mean,

(23:19):
would Gulf of Tonkins still have happened? That's the big question, right, Um,
Gulf of Tonkin did not happen. Huh huh, we can
say that, right. I know, I'm just playing. I'm just
playing a spoiler. No, it's not a spoiler. I just
got scared. I thought I heard something behind me. Uh
it was just her scully. Okay, So I want to

(23:41):
talk again about MLK because it's not as though John F.
Kennedy was going around being an anti war, anti Vietnam War.
But the possibility that maybe thing he wasn't pushing things
the way that certain powers wanted him to push the wings,

(24:02):
It just it makes me think about how Martin Luther
King towards the end nineteen sixty six, sixty seven, mostly
sixty seven and sixty eight, he's speaking out directly against
the war in Vietnam and he gets killed. Um thinking
about Robert Kennedy and what he was trying to do

(24:24):
just before he got killed. I don't know, man, I
think it's it's maybe the combination of those three assassinations
for some reason in my mind makes this theory like
there's business interests of some kind having to do with
the Vietnam War and conflict profits in general. That's what

(24:47):
makes it feel real to me. I guess I feel it.
And then also, I mean, there's the idea that Martin
Luther King was assassinated due to his power to inspire
the nasses for social change, sure, yeah, which would include
everything from pulling out of of wars to you know,

(25:09):
having more equitable society in general, you know, from it
ain't always Umm, he was getting close to the S word,
the dirty, dirty S word, not socialism. Oh no, not
that one cross fingers from exactly. Uh. And then just

(25:32):
for the record, Uh, Robert F. Kennedy was shot by
Sir Hans Sir Han fatally on June. So there's a
very very short interval of time, which means it's not
implausible to ask, Uh, it's not implausible to ask if
these murders were related because he was a U. S.

(25:54):
Senator at the time of his death, also pretty close
to being president. Yeah. Also, I'm just gonna go ahead
and point out again it's weird when family members are
all like or functioning at the highest level there in
a meritocracy, people's kids shouldn't hold the same office as

(26:16):
their parents, Like the odds against them being actually qualified
for that are incredibly low, And it's kind of silly
that we pretend collectively it's not riddled with nepotism, And
isn't it just a bit of a coincidence that that
coincidence is already happening? And then both of them get
assassinated by lone gunmen, m one of whom maybe getting

(26:42):
out of jail for like good behavior or he's exhibited
human like traits for long enough that he he's been
allowed to go free. Wasn't he like the Manchurian candidate.
Kind of conspiracy wrapped up in that whole deal. Yeah,
that was the idea. He's maintained that he was not.
He's maintained that it really wasn't his decision. Um, And

(27:04):
he has a lot of supporters, you know, uh, sir Han,
that means uh he he also in two Sirhan Sirhan
told the parole board quote, I sincerely believe that if
Robert Kennedy were alive today, I believe he would not
countenance singling me out for this kind of treatment. I
think he would be among the first to say, however

(27:26):
horrible the deed I committed fourteen years ago, that it
should not be the cause for denying me equal treatment
under the laws of this country. The hutzpah there, you
know what I mean to say, Like, look, the guy
I shot would say that you dudes are being unfair.
She's if he were here right now, he would have

(27:46):
my back. He's got here, and we don't have to
get into why, you know, let's not get bogged down
in the details. I just want you guys to know
that he would agree with me in this situation. Yeah,
the family, many of the surviving Kennedy family members, of course,
don't agree with that. So there was something else we

(28:07):
talked about briefly in Part one that I'd love for
us to go back to, and it's the mob. It
sounds interesting. Over time, at least three different mafia families
have been accused of being involved mafia outfits in Chicago, Miami,
and interestingly enough in New Orleans. To date, right now, officially,

(28:33):
there hasn't been anything solid enough to support these claims.
It's kind of a property, a transference of properties. You know,
you think, okay, the mafia, they do bad stuff. We
can generally agree it's bad to assassinate anybody, including president.
But it was a point brought up earlier independently, deciding

(28:58):
to assassinate a president just because even just because of ideology, Uh,
it feels out a character for the American mafia because
at the end of the day, they are business enterprises,
which means they would need to have some sort of
clear benefit, whether that's cash, whether that's immunity, whether that's

(29:18):
getting a slice of some other future criminal empire. They
would almost certainly have to be hired by somebody, is
what we're saying. They wouldn't have come up with the
idea on their own. It's not like, um, it's not
like Marlon Brando is somewhere and you know and talking
to Leah Harvey Oswalden saying like this the d those

(29:42):
why in us give his rightfle you because uh this
Kennedy or something like that, you know what I mean?
Like it, But people in the world of law enforcement
and the world of the CIA and the FBI definitely
had back channel connections with the mob. They had informants,

(30:04):
some highly placed They also at times, I feel like
it's a dirty secret, but I think everybody kind of
acknowledges this. They also at times had made tacit agreements
to ignore one thing as part of a negotiation for
something larger, you know, And that's you can see um

(30:25):
smaller versions of that in true crime shows or in
fictional dramas like The Wire right where someone someone says like,
I am not going to bust you for this heroin,
I need to know about blah blah blah blah blah.
And we talked about that and spycraft as well, So
it feels like they could have been involved, but they

(30:45):
would have been hired hands, if that makes sense. It
feels like there could have been a political alliance in
some way, maybe with like a singular crime family, right
one organization, not just the mob up right. So if
you're thinking, I think we mentioned we mentioned Miami pretty
extensively when we were talking about the revolution in Cuba

(31:10):
and then the CIA's response and some of the training
that the CIA and other intelligence groups we're doing with
like the resistance basically and training people to go in
there during the Bay of Pigs and other tragedies that
occurred there. I don't know why they would want to
take out Kennedy though, And it's just nothing has been

(31:32):
fleshed out enough, at least to my satisfaction, to to
show a connection that would be strong enough to maybe
believe it. We do know that UH mob families tend
to be a little further right on the spectrum political
spectrum in some cases extremely and they've been active before
with UH secret government initiatives like propaganda to do for instance,

(31:56):
or was the other one operation Gladiol, you know, stay
behind armies, to stay behind right wing fascist armies. But
but yeah, I'm tended to to agree unless something else
comes out. It's there. There are several very interesting characters
in that world of conspiracy, including Jack Ruby, right uh,

(32:19):
strip club owner he knew. He seemed to be very
well acquainted with some of the less savory elements of Dallas.
But that all feeds back to this one idea that
Oswald did not act alone. And this is where we
enter like the land of meta conspiracy. That's a single

(32:39):
thing most people seem to agree with. They think he
did not act alone. They don't know who formed the
rest of his ensemble cast, but they don't think it
was a one man show. That's the thing that more
than half of the u S seems to agree on
even today, that whatever happened, Oswald did not act alone.
He was not a one person play. And technically, if

(33:02):
you want to get very technical, that's true. He didn't
build the rifle. He wasn't out there gathering or from somewhere.
He didn't make gunpowder. Uh. He didn't just naturally pick
up a rifle and know how to shoot it. He
brought bought the rifle from somebody. He was trained by
the military. But This doesn't mean he was necessarily part

(33:23):
of a larger organized group, and it doesn't mean the
people who assisted him were necessarily aware of his end game.
It's sound like he was taking marksman training and someone said,
you know, if you do well enough on this, we'll
give you a badge, and if you do even better,
you might just get to kill the president. Any who,
moving on, I don't think that's how I don't think

(33:44):
that was advertised, you know. And he told when he
was entering into the Texas school book Depository, Uh, they
had this bag. I think he rode the bus there.
He told people it's just a bag of curtain rods.
And that's an answer that's so boring you're not really
going to follow up on it. Well, isn't it quaint
when you hear stories like this, you know, compared to

(34:06):
like post nine eleven America, where you can't go anywhere
with so much as a paper clip, you know, Um,
it just goes to show how kind of blissfully ignorant
we were to the threats that faced us, you know,
in the past. I think true, and things did change
irreparably after the assassination of Kennedy. Uh, but we do

(34:28):
know some stuff about Oswald, and it's stuff that's real.
It's on. Well, you got a plot twist for you
in the second folks, But let's let's set it up.
Let's usee into it. Oswald traveled a lot, and he
did support the Communist Revolution. He did support Cuba. He
visited the Cuban embassy in Mexico City. He also called
the Russian embassy while he was in Mexico. This all

(34:52):
went down just a few weeks before the murder. As
of now, no one knows for sure what oz Well
talked about specifically when he visited the embassy. Um. We
know some of the outline of the conversation, but we
don't have the full details. And now we have to

(35:12):
do a little bit of a thought experiment. Okay, let's
say that you are the head of the U S
s R. You're the head of the government. You get
this idea that you can use your deep cover operative Oswald,
who is currently in the US and can travel back
and forth from US to Mexico, and get this idea

(35:36):
that you can order him to shoot JFK. You probably
wouldn't do it just because it makes you, by far
the number one suspect. This guy has obvious ties to Cuba.
He's all about communism. You know, he would have made
Russia first to the post, and that kind of move

(36:00):
would count as an act of war just a very
short time after a nuclear armageddon almost occurred, because like,
doing that would mean risking retaliation. Neither government was particularly
keen on destroying the planet. But if you killed president

(36:20):
and changed the conversation, so it seems almost suicidal politically
for for Russia to do that. I mean, what do
you guys think, Like, what would you what do you
think about the possibility of Russia ordering an assassination of
Jfking seems very forward. It seems like they would be

(36:41):
better off waging a disinformation campaign like we've talked about,
rather than straight up arranging for an assassination of a
head of state with that much heft behind his his role,
you know what I mean, and that much public awareness,
that much potential for backlash. I mean, no, sir, it
doesn't make sense. There would be much more clever ways

(37:03):
of exerting influence than that. Maybe just wasn't around a
third story window. Well, I don't know, in a weird way,
if you're let's say a splinter group within FSB or
like whatever was at the time to KGB, Um, if
you're a splinter group within there that thinks, oh, the
only way for US to truly gain power over the

(37:26):
United States is to go to full war with them.
The way to do it would be to assassinate the president, right. Um,
even even if it's like not fully on the surface
that it was you or that it was USSR that
did it, but the intel you would know that the
intelligence agencies would know in some way. I don't know.

(37:47):
That to me, is is pretty compelling because it's not
I think the mutual assured destruction thing is on the
table there, and it would it would always be, but
you would maybe there's a calculation that the US wouldn't
resort immediately to nukes. That's a really good point because
that's like an internal power struggle mm hmm. And the

(38:10):
question is never really the most plausible ideas of US
government involvement are pretty much the same thing. They're not
saying everybody was behind it, They're saying a faction working
within the system did it. I think that is actually
that's a very good point the more that I think
about it. So perhaps leadership wasn't on board, was terrified

(38:32):
of the idea, but extremist in the crowd. That kind
of folks would later become fans of people like Alexander
Dugan were one. We were all gas no brakes on
that one. It was time for war, you know the
way that um the way that some extreme religious groups
have publicly stated they hoped for war in the Middle

(38:54):
East because they believe it will hasten um the prophecies
that they have chosen to treat as fact. Yeah, but
if we're talking government agencies FSB, KGB, there's there's one.
There's one agency. You know him, you love them, You've

(39:14):
heard a lot about him. They've done. In fact, we've
done a lot for our show, Paul, Can we get
an applause sound? Cue? The Central Intelligence Agency. That's right, folks,
the c I A uh, the Chad's in action, the

(39:35):
the uh clearly intelligent agency. Here's the thing. We're joking.
We're joking, but that's actually one of the most difficult
theories are alternative narratives to dismiss for several reasons. I mean,
one of the first reasons is Kennedy in the c

(39:58):
I A Hey hated each other so bad. So like
think of the person you hate the most in the
world pales in comparison. It was, yeah, it was. It
was unsquashable beef. And the CIA, you know, had a
long history even by this point, in pursuing their own

(40:18):
interests and also pursuing the financial interest of private companies
who had ties, again typically nepotistic to the company itself.
I mean, for Pete's sake, the CIA informally calls itself
the company, you know what I mean. They're they don't
particularly care about separation of church and state, but they

(40:41):
would be opposed to separation of business and state. It
doesn't make sense to their mission statement, or that it
doesn't make sense to their practice, I should say. So
they would function at times actively avoiding oversight. They would
function as that faction you just subscribe. And there was
a lot of internal descent at this time. So the

(41:04):
basic gist the CIA had Kennedy killed because they thought
he was going to retaliate against them. Further, as punishment
for their frankly cartoonish attempts to kill Fidel Castro, they
thought he might purge the organization, they might disband it entirely.

(41:25):
So in corporate speak, they decided to get in front
of it and disband the man first. So how do
we even have the discussion of whether or not this
is plausible. Well, we start looking at a certain individual
that we've talked about on this show many times, and
Mr Alan Dulles, who there you go that it's been mentioned.

(42:00):
Oh and we're on this zoom So there's my My
video for some reason is delayed like crazy. So like
I say something and I can't even see what they're doing,
and then it just happens before I can even retaliate. Interesting,
you had you were had a significant disadvantage, My good
sir boy. But yeah, so Alan Dulls, the guy from

(42:23):
the Air Force base. He he was on the War
in Commission. And he also uh was the head of
the CIA at one point. Yes, yeah, he was the
longest serving Director of Central Intelligence or d c I,
and he was head of the CIA during the Cold War.

(42:43):
He oversaw what went down in Guatemala in fifty four.
In fifty three the year before that, he uh he
was running point on the Kudata in Iran. Uh. He
was he was big up in the locky YouTube program
The Spy Planes. Uh. He knew about Project mk Ultra

(43:04):
before most of us. Uh, he was down with the
Bay of Pigs. But he was not the director of
the CIA when he was on the Warren Commission. Um happened.
You know, interesting that you would bring that up, Matt,
And how well timed. He was not the head of
the CIA at the time at his time in the

(43:25):
Warran Commission because Kennedy had fired him, oh, due to
a number of a number of things. Um. But he
also like he had a lot of suction and as
the Wire would call it, in the halls of power.
And he definitely played a role in the commission's official

(43:47):
conclusion that Oswald, acting alone, had killed the president. Kennedy,
by the way, before he died, had also cut the
CIA's budget by twenty which is like everybody scrambling. They're like,
how are we going to sell enough coke to make
up for this? You know what I mean, It's a

(44:09):
question I asked myself every day. Yeah, you know, just
to cover costs. Mm hmm, yes, what kind of walking
around money? The correct Yeah. The our podcast meetings are
mainly us located at the metrics of how how much ether,
how many kuludes and how much weight and cocaine we
have to move to keep the show going. You mean,

(44:32):
I mean, okay, yes, yes, And so let's pause for
a moment here, Uh, just to check our doors and
our internet connections and make sure the windows are shut tight. Uh.
And when you come back, we're gonna tell you some
pretty interesting about the government's official conclusion when it comes

(44:55):
to JFK. We're back. Here's the other thing. When we
said not everyone agrees with the War in Commission, we're
just being the public. We all have just been independent investigators, journalists,
et cetera. We mean that the US government is on

(45:17):
record disagreeing with itself. Hear that again. The US government
said Oswald acted alone, and then the US government said
it was a conspiracy. In nineteen seventy nine, the US
House Select Committee on Assassinations, or the h s c A.
You know, I love an acronym um and in our

(45:38):
last Actually Kennedy episode, I really go hard on the acronyms,
and you guys indulge me beautifully. But the h s
c A concluded that Kennedy was likely assassinated as a
result of a conspiracy. Uh, that Oswald, in short, did
not act alone. Um. In addition to that, they found
that a second gunman had likely been present, though the
acoustic evidence they based it on, UH today is considered

(46:03):
somewhat spurious and it's been discredited. Yeah, right, because where
the whole Grassy Knolls situation comes from after the second
shooter was supposedly positioned. And then now song of course,
and also what I'm named after. I don't know if
you know this about me, but I am literally named
after the Grassy Knoll. Yeah, it's still my favorite punt

(46:27):
I ever kicked in that Dan Harmon show. Uh. We
made it to the title guys. But but yeah, that's
is that not Is that not weird? Even if you
consider yourself a skeptical person? Is that not a bit odd?
That the war in Commission, which had arguably some conflicts

(46:47):
of interest, said Oswald by himself, that's it. You know
that that was their answering clue. It was Oswald in
the book depository with the rifle, that was it. And
in the same government comes back and says he somebody

(47:08):
else may have been involved because we heard some other
shots from probably a different place on that old recording
that we had right, right, And whether or not that
recording is discredited. Uh, they they're finding that there was
likely a conspiracy of what would remain the same, because
they're also implying or they're also saying it's possible. In fact,

(47:31):
they said it was probable that someone was supporting Oswald
because if you look at what he was doing, like even, um, well,
who's that guy who killed Lincoln John John six super
tryanish even I mean, when when Booth was. I don't
think there are a lot of people in the crowd
to remember this today, but when Booth was, when Booth

(47:55):
was in play, four people ended up being hanged in
association with the conspiracy. So even back then it wasn't
as simple as one person going up and shooting yet
as support staff. So now we now we turned to
New Orleans. I'm sure a couple of people heard us say,
what the New Orleans mob? What are they? Why are

(48:17):
they getting involved? You know in sixty six, three years
after the assassination d A at the time in New Orleans,
Jim Garrison says, you know what, I figured out the answer?
A group of far right extremists worked with a faction
of people in the CIA to carry out this murder,

(48:38):
and he said, there's a Dallas businessman named Gary Shaw
who was in on it, an instrumental in getting the
boots on the ground. He was the head of something
called the International Trademark in New Orleans. Garrison took this seriously.
The year after he came out with those accusations in
X seven, he arrested Gary Shaw and eventually took him

(49:01):
to trial. So in ninety seven, when Shaw is being
looked at by the d A Jim Garrison. Uh, this
was a story that was getting picked up all over
the place and European press found it. It was just
a few days after Shaw, I think, initially got arrested
by the authorities. Um, this is an Italian left wing paper.

(49:22):
What's the name of it. Then it's like it there
we go. So as soon as the story starts coming out,
they're talking about how this dude Shaw has CIA connections
and it was through a board membership that he had
with a trade organization called Permaedex. Yes, yeah, Permandex. Permandex

(49:49):
had a subsidiary at the time called Central Mandale Commerciale,
which the paper alleged was a CIA front. We'll call
the seen C for short. Yeah, they said the CMC
is a front company. It's another you know, Freedom Airlines.
According to this paper, the CMC was in existence entirely

(50:12):
to help the CIA fund illegal espionage activities in Italy,
and to Garrison, there was a nuance to the anti communist,
anti Castro extremist and their cooperation with the CIA. They
wanted to cry havoc and loose the dogs of war

(50:33):
in a controlled manner. They wanted to kill Kennedy as
a way of maintaining US USSR tensions hinging upon Cuba
and to prevent the US from withdrawing soldiers, influence, and
potential war profits from Vietnam, because they wanted to bleed
them strategically, no seriously, just in the way that they

(50:59):
after an a stand conflict, the way uss ARE ultimately
met its downfall. They were trying to bleed the United
States monetarily in Vietnam. Holy crap. Well, also, I mean
he might be onto something. Here's the thing, Matt, No,
uh yeah, you could ask if the if the Vietnam

(51:23):
War would have still reached the pitch it did had
Kennedy survived. But one thing's for sure, there were a
lot of genuine idealogues in the US government at the time,
they the idea was that if they did not take action,
even if that action is bloody, even if that action
is legal, then communism would sweep the world. Now, later

(51:46):
retrospect would unfortunately prove that a lot of people pretending
to be ideologically motivated were financially motivated through a series
of nesting not widely publicized financial relationships, you know, so
they they were making money from war. And if you're
making money from something, or if it's having a positive

(52:08):
impact in your life, then your skills at rationalization get
pretty matrix level, you know what I mean? Dude, I'm sorry,
I got. I got my institutions confused. In my mind,
I was thinking it was actually the other side playing whatever,
this faction within the CIA in order to keep the

(52:31):
U S. Sorry, I got, I got my conspiracy theory
way too deep there. No, But here's the issue, man,
Like how distinct or those entities at certain levels of history,
you know what I mean. We talked about that in
the spycraft excuse me tradecraft episode where where we had
to we had to say, well, how many times does

(52:52):
an asset flip? You know? Is it like when you
get past quadruple agents and now you're just sort of
working on on stuff like that happens, that really does happen,
and he gets confusing. Um. So the idea here is

(53:12):
that in Oswald, these conspirators, these far right extremist um.
And again this is Garrison's idea, these far right extremists,
these anti Castro Cuban exiles, maybe the MOB and the
CIA or factions thereof, they found the perfect fall guy.

(53:34):
They found the guy that looked like he would kill
the president or try to kill the president. If you
just read you know, if you read like a one
sheet resume of Lee Harvey Oswald, you would think, I
don't know, I can give it a shot. He looks
good for it. Shaw was, like you said, arrested. He

(53:55):
was later in a jury trial and he was found
not guilty. So at least twelve people I thought the
facts didn't add up about garrison accusations. And again there
is a d a. He's not you know, he's not
some crackpot. But dude, But I mean, if you believe
the whole Mob angle, then the c I a like,

(54:18):
through its proxies probably would have been able to pay
them um, either through you know, favors or just cold hardcash,
right exactly. You know, hey, you it could have even
been a threat like you have to help us, you know,
don y gabba ghoul, or we will turn the screws

(54:42):
up on your smuggling operation or something like that, we'll
shut down the union, etcetera. Uh So, let's let's move
from here to talk a little bit about Ozwald. First
things First, yes, he was definitely there in Dallas. We meet,
he's definitely in Dallas. Second, yes, he definitely fired that rifle.

(55:06):
There's no way around it. His prints around the Guiden
he did that. And third, yes, the guy very much
did want to murder the president of the United States.
But as anybody who's currently got a pile of laundry
sitting at home right now can agree, wanting to do
a thing and actually doing the thing or two very
very very different things. Dude, I'm gonna get to it tonight,

(55:29):
cheese ben, Like literally it's on my list for tonight.
Here's my question, like, if we are to believe the
government angle or or this in some way using Oswald
as a pawn, like how do you look for fanatics
like that who fit the bill and then make them

(55:51):
do the thing and act, you know, treat them as
like puppets. Well, also, we're monitoring all of these extremist
groups right sort. Somebody is traveling internationally a lot. You've
got tabs on those people, especially if they're ex military. Um,
so you're you're already monitoring them. You know where they're going,
you know who they're meeting with. Probably or at least

(56:13):
you're monitoring that group that this person X met with
a couple of different times when they were in Mexico
or when they were in you know, Russia or something.
You could just then learn way too much about your
target that you're imagining could be a Patsy slash fall guy.
I mean, it's all, it all makes sense, you're like,

(56:33):
unfortunately put it like that, mad, Sure as hell does. Yeah, yeah,
let's throw a twist in it. That's what this shows about.
So here at this point, like to introduce you all
to a guy named Gayton Fonzie I like the Funds,
who was hired by two different groups US government affiliated groups.

(56:55):
The Church Committee hired him in the HSC that we
mentioned earlier hired him in nine. This dude was hired
to investigate this case and he believes there is a
CIA mafia Oswald link. And he thinks a guy named
David at Leave Phillips, very interesting character, helped orchestrate Oswald's guilt.

(57:21):
Uh there, helped you know, make his story look better. Uh. Phillips,
Fonzie believed, was a CIA operative who actively worked to
embellish Oswald's public image or his image to Intelligence as
a communist sympathizer. But Fonzie thinks it goes deeper than that.

(57:41):
It's deeper than wrap here. Fonzie believes that someone hired
and he thinks it was Phillips hired an Oswald impersonator
to visit that NBSC in Mexico, and he was based
like based in the slang term about this. He was
convinced that people who had seen this quote unquote this

(58:02):
Oswald had seen a different person because he interviewed people
who described the guy they met, and that physical description
did not fit Oswald. There were sketches of this guy
apparently that did not look a thing like Oswald. And
get this, Jagger Hoover agreed. The director of the FBI

(58:25):
was freaked out by this, and he also wondered whether
it was Oswald. He didn't say there was definitely an impersonator.
But it's weird. He's he's mystified, and you can tell
in his writing. We have a quote from the very
day after JFK's assassination where Hoover writes the following. The
Central Intelligence Agency advised that on October one, nineteen three,

(58:48):
and extremely sensitive source had reported that an individual identifying
himself as Lee Oswald contact of the Soviet embassy in
Mexico City, inquiring as to any messages. Special agents of
the Bureau who have conversed with Oswald in Dallas, Texas
have observed photographs of the individual referred to above and
have listened to a recording of his voice. Especially, agents

(59:09):
are of the opinion that the referred to individual was
not Lee Harvey Oswald. Oh yeah, so the hoove man
heavy h is going, Uh what extremely sensitive source. By
the way, that that phrase means that someone highly placed,
and it also means that someone they trust, someone who's

(59:30):
been legit in the past, someone whose cover they don't
want to blow, right exactly. Yeah, But even just as importantly,
someone they believe will be telling the truth. Uh So,
Fonzie also found you know, you'll hear the stories that
Oswald sucked at Russian, that his Russian was broken pretty

(59:52):
much on intelligible. That the folks in Russian intelligence he
tried to contact were like, yeah, what they're talking about,
come with switch English. The other English is much better. Uh.
That's There was someone claiming to be Oswald and they
spoke terrible Russian, almost as bad as that fake Russian
accent I did. But the real Oswald, apparently it was

(01:00:15):
pretty much fluent in Russian. It was considered to be
add a little more gas to this fire. This will
hopefully send everybody off in your own bag of badgers
and rabbit holes. There is a conversation between Lyndon Johnson
and Jagger Hoover that echoes the same concerns, and you
can find it online. You can only find online now

(01:00:38):
because it wasn't declassified for a very long time. And
I think we do is I'd like to set you
guys up for a little bit of acting. I'm bit
of improv Uh, Matt, why don't we cast you as
Lyndon Johnson and Noel uh nailed that Hoover quote, So

(01:01:00):
why don't you behoover? If you guys are comfortable with that? Sure,
all right? So the phone. Let's just just for the
sake of this, let's imagine they're on the phone. So
I think the phone rings. Have you established any more
about the Oswald visit to the Soviet embassy in Mexico
and September. Oh, there's one angle that's very confusing. For

(01:01:21):
this reason, we have up here on the tape and
the photograph of the man of the Soviet embassy using
Oswald's name that pick the tape do not correspond to
this voice nor with the parents. In other words, it
appeared that there was a second person who was at
the Soviet embassy. Boom, I need that applause. Q called
the great out guys. Dude. So they're talking about this,

(01:01:48):
these two extremely powerful people in the know. We're talking
about how there's two Oswald's. Yeah, yeah, just it was
involved with the embassy in Mexico. What the hell is hell?
The American public? So was somebody again? Oswald was there,
he did have the gun. Um, but Marie was in Dallas.

(01:02:10):
Uh was somebody trying to make make this story even
more air tight. The guy in charge of the FBI,
the guy in charge of the White House, both of
them are having a what the moment you know what
I mean. This is just a few notches down from

(01:02:31):
that scene at the end of Usual Suspects not to
endorse Spacey, where the where the detective is looking at
the bulletin board and going, hang on, spoiler alert, real quick,
spoiler alert, real quick, and go we're leaving it, hang
on leaving what they hang on? You know who's not

(01:02:53):
there having that conversation the director of intelligence, the c
I A uh yeah and uh and dulless is awaken
up and his families like, why are you in such
a good mood? And he goes, I don't know, I
just have a good vibe today. I'm kidding. We're not

(01:03:14):
accusing him of that. We're just saying those guys didn't
get along while JFK was alive. But do we need
to run that by illegal? So this is where we're
gonna leave it for now. There is so very much
we've not gotten to yet. What about the three tramps,
those were all later identified as actual homeless people who

(01:03:35):
had gone to a shelter the night before the attack.
They were in the area for sure. What about the
accusations against the Federal Reserve. What about the umbrella man
that we mentioned what about the idea of a second
shooter and so on and so on? Was Jack Ruby
motivated by patriotism when he suddenly assassinated Oswald? Snipping free?

(01:03:57):
The most important loose end of the story. Was he
part of a larger plan? I mean, guys, this feels
like it could be a three parter, a four partter,
a new show. I I don't know. But the issue
here is that, no matter what, none of these theories
will ever be fully put to rest until the government
finally declassifies whatever secrets it's still holding back. And it's

(01:04:22):
very very possible that, I would say probable, that those secrets,
whatever they may be, will never see the light of day.
In reality, it goes back to one single fact, and
it should keep you up at night. What is the
motivation for keeping this stuff secret? What exactly is Uncle
Sam hiding? Because whether you even if you believe it's

(01:04:43):
just Oswald acting on his own, the US government is
hiding something, and just to appeal to the cheap skates
in the crowd, you're paying for it. Don't ever forget
that part. Like you're you know, you're paying for the markers,
You're paying for the printing and you're you're paying for
if there's a cover up, you're paying for that for

(01:05:07):
whoever that body double was it was pretending to be Oswald,
you paid for you know, whatever restaurant they ate at indirectly.
Uh and and you know, and you keep paying. Jeez.
I really have to just say, like it's been a
while since I really delved into this and thinking about

(01:05:28):
it all again, Like we had that discussion on Harmon
Town about this stuff, and man, I just it feels
like we're on the precipice of learning what's what happened, right,
and it's gonna be bad only wherever gonna now? I

(01:05:54):
think we will you really do? Yeah? You wanna make
you want to place bets? Yeah, let's do it. I
think this is what's gonna happen. Julian Assange is gonna escape.
First thing on his list. Get those last JFK files.
Can we make bets on each stage of your scenario here,
like like they do in like the big high level
betting part where you can like bet on like you know,

(01:06:15):
whether it rains in the third quarter of a football game. Yeah,
I'm just playing, Um, I don't know. Ye, Well, that's
the thing. Uh, specifically, we making and listening to this
show today may never know. Uh, it may be released
after some folks die, It may be released after our time.

(01:06:40):
This go round his past, so he may just end
up being an historical mystery. But again, more than half
of the US is waiting to hear what they think
is the real story. And and the thing that's fascinating
about this for me is every time I throw up
my hands and think, well, yeah, maybe it's just that easy.

(01:07:03):
Maybe through a combination and evil luck and the devil's luck,
they will call it um being in the right place
at the right time. Maybe Oswald won the dark lottery
of being a one man shooter and put one of
the world's most important people to rest on his own.
And then you run into other stuff like the new

(01:07:25):
president and the director of the FBI at an absolute
loss over who actually walked into that embassy in Mexico.
All right, what do you have to say? Seriously? You
can contact us all kinds of different ways Twitter, Facebook,
work conspiracy stuff, Instagram, conspiracy stuff. Show. We ask please,

(01:07:45):
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that'd be super cool. Yeah, oh yeah, you can do
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(01:08:07):
media YouTube, by the way, YouTube conspiracy stuff. If you
don't like social media, there are other ways to find us.
That's right. You can use your appendages, your vestigial digits
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Takes a longer time, but it's also cool because it
makes a neat clickie sound, and you can dial one

(01:08:28):
eight three three S T D W I T K,
then proceed to use your mouth to talk into the
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at which point you will prompt you to leave a message.
You have three minutes to tell us your tale. Those
three minutes belong to you, UM. Enjoy them, but use
them wisely. And if you need more time than that,

(01:08:49):
or you really want to give us a whole rundown
with links and details and dates and bullet points and
all that stuff footnotes. You can send us a good
old fashioned email. We are conspiracy at iHeart radio dot com.

(01:09:22):
Stuff they don't want you to know is a production
of I heart Radio. For more podcasts from my heart Radio,
visit the i heart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.