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November 8, 2023 38 mins

Who wanted the president dead? And is the unexpected murder of the lead suspect the first clue in the answer to this mystery? Our hosts, Rob Reiner and Soledad O’Brien, discuss why the question “Who Killed JFK?” endures in the American imagination 60 years later. Did President Kennedy have a target on his back when he transformed from ‘Cold Warrior’ to global peacemaker? 

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Speaker 1 (00:13):
What you're about to hear is one of the most
incredible stories I've ever heard, and it's going to be
getting quickly. So let me first introduce myself. I'm Solidad O'Brien.
I'm a journalist. A few months ago, the film director
Rob Reiner called me and he asked me what I
knew about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, a

(00:34):
crime that happened sixty years ago. I told him I
thought I knew the story. It turns out I don't.

Speaker 2 (00:44):
The assassination of President John F. Kennedy is the greatest
murder mystery in American history. I was sixteen years old
when it happened, and it has never left me. In
order to understand the magnitude of this world changing event,
you have to start at the end of the story.

Speaker 1 (01:02):
That's Rob. He knows a thing or two about telling
a good story. He's the creative powerhouse behind movies like
The Princess Bride, When Harry Met Sally, stand By Me,
and Spinal Tab.

Speaker 3 (01:14):
That's just to name a few.

Speaker 4 (01:16):
John F.

Speaker 2 (01:17):
Kennedy was president at a time when the world was
on the brink of nuclear war, and he tried to
put us on a path towards peace.

Speaker 1 (01:26):
I wasn't even born when this happened, but the way
Rob tells it, it's like it just happened, because, in
a way, it's a story that's not over.

Speaker 2 (01:36):
In order to understand what really happened on November twenty second,
nineteen sixty three, we're going to start at the end
of the story with a paunchy, middle aged nightclub owner.

Speaker 4 (01:47):
His name is Jack Ruby.

Speaker 2 (01:50):
Ruby is wandering through a crowd in a parking garage.

Speaker 1 (01:54):
I'm looking at a photo of this moment, I'd probably
be thinking who is this guy?

Speaker 3 (02:00):
I mean, he doesn't look like he's a cop or
a reporter.

Speaker 4 (02:04):
And it's not just any parking garage.

Speaker 2 (02:07):
It's the parking garage of the Dallas Police headquarters. Hundreds
of reporters are gathered to photograph Lee Harvey Oswald, the
ex marine who is suspected of assassinating President John F. Kennedy,
on a street in Dallas in broad daylight. Oswald is
being moved to the county jail, and Ruby is there

(02:29):
to witness it, or so it seems.

Speaker 4 (02:33):
Oswald appears.

Speaker 2 (02:34):
The police are escorting him down a hallway toward a
car that will take him to the county jail where
he'll wait for trial. The trial where America will finally
get an answer to the question who would want to
kill the President of the United States. Oswald is in handcuffs,

(02:57):
He's flanked by officers. Ruby weaves his way to the
front of the crowd. People at the station know Ruby
officers would often come to his local club, so Ruby
is able to easily position himself just a few feet
away from Oswald. Suddenly, Ruby reaches into his pocket and

(03:18):
removes a thirty eight caliber Colt Cobra revolver. He lurches
forward and from point blank range, fires into Oswald's stomach.

Speaker 4 (03:28):
Oswald crumples to the ground.

Speaker 2 (03:30):
One of the policemen who recognizes Ruby says, Jack, you
son of a bitch.

Speaker 1 (03:35):
The entire incident is caught on live TV. Americans around
the country watch stunned as the man suspected of killing
their beloved president is himself murdered. It's astounding, and I
just have to ask, Rob, you were watching this live?

Speaker 2 (03:54):
I was, and like the rest of the nation, I
was in shock. I had so manyquestians who was Oswald?
Did he actually kill the president?

Speaker 4 (04:05):
And why? Why would Ruby, a local nightclub owner take
it upon himself to kill Oswalt.

Speaker 1 (04:11):
I know Jack Ruby says he did it because he
wanted to spare Jackie Kennedy the grief of returning to
Dallas for Oswald's trial.

Speaker 2 (04:19):
Right and the sun sets in the east. Knowing what
we know about Jack Ruby's mob connections, that is ridiculous.
To understand what Ruby was doing, all you have to
do is listen to what Oswald said the day before
he was shot. It comes down to this one sentence,
and he said it to the press, and it's been

(04:41):
over sixty years and you cannot get that sentence out
of your head.

Speaker 3 (04:47):
I'm just a patsy. Usually criminals will say you got
the wrong guy. But a patsy exactly.

Speaker 2 (04:55):
A patsy is a pawn who takes the fall for
somebody else. It this way, if Oswald is a patsy,
when he goes to trial, he's going to reveal who
set him up. Jack Ruby was there to silence Oswald,
to hide the truth about what really happened and who
really assassinated the president.

Speaker 3 (05:17):
That leaves me with so many questions.

Speaker 2 (05:20):
It should when you think of Ruby as a loose
thread and you start to pull on it, others come loose.

Speaker 1 (05:28):
Okay, for sixty years you've been pulling at those threads.
But there have been lots of investigators, lawyers, journalists who've
come to conclusions. You don't think conclusions means case closed.

Speaker 4 (05:41):
I don't.

Speaker 2 (05:42):
And in this podcast, I'm going to tell you why.

Speaker 1 (05:49):
This is who killed JFK sixty years later? What can
we uncover about the greatest murder mystery in American history?
And why does it still matter today? I'm your host,
Solidad O'Brien. President John Fitzgerald Kennedy was the youngest president
in US history when he took office in nineteen sixty one.

(06:12):
He was also the youngest US president to die when
he was killed by an assassin's bullet almost three years
later on November twenty second, nineteen sixty three. He was
forty six years old. On that fateful day, his flight
arrived at Dallas love Field at eleven thirty seven am.

Speaker 5 (06:31):
And here is the President of the United States. How
the crowd is after they're going wild?

Speaker 6 (06:37):
The President in very obvious good spirits, and the President
and his wife are going to be visible all through Dallas.

Speaker 1 (06:45):
I think we all know this story Kennedy was riding
in an open car motorcade through the city of Dallas.
It was time to start campaigning for reelection, so he
rode in the back of a convertible with his wife
Jackie by his side, before an adoring crowd.

Speaker 5 (07:02):
President's card now turning onto Element Street, and it appears
as though nothing has happened in the motorcade route. Something
I repeat, harp happened and the motorcade route park and
Hospital has been a by then by the bear guns
got boon.

Speaker 1 (07:17):
We all know what happened because a man named Abraham Supruder,
a local Dallas dressmaker, filmed it all on his eight
millimeter camera. In the film, we see the motorcade entering
Daily Plaza just before twelve thirty in the afternoon. Suddenly
the president is shot in the neck. Seconds later we
see the fatal shot.

Speaker 3 (07:37):
To his head.

Speaker 1 (07:39):
Then the President's limousine races to Parkland Hospital.

Speaker 7 (07:43):
Kennedy apparently got ahead.

Speaker 8 (07:45):
He fell fate down in back seat of his.

Speaker 9 (07:47):
Car the flash Apparently official.

Speaker 6 (07:50):
President Kennedy died at one pm Central Standard.

Speaker 1 (07:55):
Time, approximately seventy minutes later. Lee Harvey oswae Xus Marine
is arrested at a movie theater. I think I have
about as much knowledge of this case as the average person,
which is the basic Oswald kills Kennedy, Ruby kills Oswald,
and then there are like a hundred theories trying to

(08:17):
answer why. Sixty years later, we all still want to
know why. How old were you when Kennedy was assassinated.

Speaker 2 (08:28):
I was sixteen, and like everybody else, I remember exactly
where I was when I heard. I was in my
physics class in high school. I remember one of the
students walked in whispered in the ear of my physics teacher,
and he turned to the class and he said, I

(08:48):
have some terrible news. They sent us all home from
school and we turned on our televisions and we watched
non stop. It felt like we lost our father. It's stunning,
and you have to understand that we all heard that

(09:09):
Kennedy was assassinated at the same time. We all saw
Lee Harvey Oswald killed by Jack Ruby.

Speaker 4 (09:17):
At the same time.

Speaker 2 (09:19):
So now you have a country of you know, one
hundred and seventy million people at the time. I can't
remember exactly all experiencing something at the same time. It's
not like it was thrown up on social media and
repeated over and over, and people saw it at different times.

(09:41):
It is a profound collective trauma. In nineteen sixty five
sixty six, the war in Vietnam was ramping up. Kennedy
had talked about getting us out of Vietnam.

Speaker 4 (09:56):
I was of draft age.

Speaker 2 (09:59):
So my generation got very upset by what had happened
to Kennedy because it directly impacted us, and so we
really started distrusting the government. There was a phrase an
expression that we had during that period, and it was
never trust anybody over thirty.

Speaker 1 (10:19):
I've noticed that people always seemed to frame the murder
of JFK as the moment Americans started distrusting the US government. So,
as someone who's not white, I can tell you people
of color had plenty of reasons not to trust the
government long before Kennedy died. When this happened, at the
height of the Civil Rights Movement, black people were already
speaking about systemic oppression at the hands of government. Young

(10:42):
white men may have started distrusting the government because now
they knew what it felt like too. But I have
to tell you, I'm probably as interested in the mystery
and the conspiracy theories around this murder as most people
who grew up in the aftermath. But Rob feels a
sense of urgency to understand the truth, and I want

(11:04):
to understand why it matters so much. So I'm hosting
this podcast with Rob, who's a storyteller and whose work
is known for digging deeply into the American consciousness. I
think Rob's fascination with this case and all the work
he's done to find answers does exactly that. So Rob,

(11:26):
tell me about the moment when you started to think, hmm,
I don't know that I can trust the official story.

Speaker 2 (11:33):
Well, I maybe. I was nineteen at the time. I
was performing at a club in San Francisco. It was
called The Hungry Eye with my friend Larry Bishop, who
was Joey Bishop's son, and we were opening for Carmen McCrae,
now mort Saul, who was a brilliant political satirist. He
was playing in the smaller room at the club, and

(11:53):
so when we would finish our set, we'd go and
listen to him and more. You know, at that time
he wasn't doing as normal routine. All he talked about
was the Kennedy assassination and how the government was lined
to us, so I started reading up on it, and
the first book I remember reading was a book by
Mark Lane called Rush to Judgment. And the more I read,

(12:16):
the more the Warren Commission report just fell apart.

Speaker 1 (12:20):
The Warren Commission refers to the government's official story, which
was published in nineteen sixty four following a ten month
investigation into what happened on that day in Dallas. They
declared Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone, that he killed the
president with shots from a rifle he fired from the
sixth floor of a building called the Texas School Book Depository,

(12:43):
which overlooked the president's passing motor cade. I know about
the Warren Report because that's what I was taught in school.
A lone gunman killed the president. And that was decades
after Rob watched a skeptical Mortsaul. For decades, journal and
civilian sleuths had continued their own intricate investigations into the story,

(13:06):
and there are now separate theories that the mob murder
JFK or the CIA set it all up, or that
a population of Cuban exiles did it. There are so
many theories. Where do you begin.

Speaker 2 (13:20):
You're right, I mean, there's a lot to sift through,
and it wasn't until twenty fifteen. I was making a
film LBJ with Woody Harrelson, and the producer Matt George,
introduced me to Dick Russell. Now, Dick Russell wrote a
book called The Man Who Knew Too Much, and after
one conversation with Dick, all the pieces of the puzzles

(13:43):
started to fall into place.

Speaker 1 (13:45):
The Man Who Knew Too Much is about a CIA
agent named Richard case Nagel who knew Lee Harvey Oswald.
Dick Russell was a sportswriter in nineteen seventy five when
he stumbled upon Nagel, and since then Dick's written three
books about the sassination of JFK, making the investigation one
of his principal beats as a journalist. Rob shared his

(14:07):
fascination and after that one conversation they became a team.

Speaker 2 (14:12):
So we went to Dallas. We visited Dally Plaza, and
we talked to as many people as we could who
were still alive that were there that day. I talked
to bul Frasier, who was a guy who drove Oswell
to work that day. We talked to forensics experts, We
met with CIA asset named Tosh Plumley, who flew CIA
agent E Howard Hunt and mobster Johnny ROSSELLI to Dallas

(14:35):
that day and was positioned on the south knoll of
Daily Plaza when the shots were fired. We tried to cover,
as they say, the waterfront.

Speaker 1 (14:44):
Those are all names that will make sense later in
the series when we dive into the mystery of it all,
But for now, Rob invited me to sit down with
him and Dick Russell.

Speaker 3 (14:55):
You know, Dick, I'm always.

Speaker 1 (14:56):
Interested in helped people's obsessions be again. Is it wrong
to say that you've had an obsession about this assassination? Yeah?

Speaker 10 (15:06):
I think it's absolutely true. I mean I have had
an obsession with it for many years, and in the
mid nineteen seventies, when I was living in New York
and freelancing for a lot of different newspapers and magazines,
I spent pretty much two full years on this trail.
It was in nineteen seventy six, but a Senate committee
headed up by Idaho Senator Frank Church exposed a trove

(15:29):
of CIA secrets that prompted the formation of the House
Select Committee on Assassinations. So the HSCA reopened the investigation
into Kennedy's death, and a couple of years later, they
determined that Lee Harvey Oswald had not acted alone, but
the murder was likely a result of quote, a conspiracy.

(15:52):
They didn't say anything specific about who else was involved.
They just vaguely said others left the door open.

Speaker 3 (16:14):
What do you want people to walk away from this
podcast with?

Speaker 2 (16:17):
I want the American people to know the truth, to
be presented with all the facts, and that those facts
will lead them to only one conclusion.

Speaker 4 (16:26):
This was a conspiracy.

Speaker 2 (16:27):
And if people don't know the truth about their government,
the foundation of our democracy starts to crumble.

Speaker 1 (16:32):
So the reason that we're here, the reason that you
are doing this is you want the truth.

Speaker 2 (16:37):
Yes, I want the truth, And to contradict a character
in a film I directed, I think we can handle
the truth.

Speaker 1 (16:45):
So I guess I would say I'm doing something a
little bit different here. I'm sort of taking off my
journalist's hat for this one, because you're really the one
who's done so much of the reporting on this story,
and I'm going to let you lead me in this
journey pushback where I think I need to push back,
But largely I guess I'm trying to understand your point
of view.

Speaker 3 (17:06):
So I guess we start with the biggie, who do
you think kill JFK.

Speaker 2 (17:12):
Like any murder mystery, you start with the suspects who
had the motive. To answer that, you have to understand
that the JFK that was murdered in nineteen sixty three
was a completely different JFK than the one who was
elected in nineteen sixty. When Kennedy was running for president
in nineteen sixty, we were in the throes of the Cold.

Speaker 4 (17:35):
War with the Soviet Union. The stakes could not be higher.

Speaker 1 (17:42):
To understand that time, Rob suggested we talk to John Meacham.
He's a historian and a Pulitzer Prize winner, and he
talks to us about what it was like back in
nineteen sixty when the nation was paralyzed by the looming
threat of nuclear war with Soviet Russia.

Speaker 7 (17:58):
The fear was, and it was an ambient fear, that
a small war, a small conflict one place, could be
lead to a chain reaction where there would be total
war that would be planet wide. The images we all
have in our heads we have in our heads for
a reason. Kids weren't getting under desks to practice in

(18:20):
the event of a nuclear holocaust.

Speaker 1 (18:23):
Was it terrifying as a kid? I mean, were the
kids like panicking when there were those drills?

Speaker 4 (18:27):
Yeah, it was terrifying.

Speaker 2 (18:29):
This is the time that we were born in the
whole idea of the domino theory that if one country
went communist, another would go and then another and we'd
be overtaken by the Soviet Union.

Speaker 1 (18:42):
So then, John, did that existential anxiety lead to kind
of a fervor against communism, almost to the point like that,
you know, someone could be seen as a trader if
they weren't against communism enough.

Speaker 4 (18:57):
That's the motive force of McCarthyism.

Speaker 1 (19:00):
McCarthyism comes from Congressman Joe McCarthy in the early nineteen fifties.
He pioneered this atmosphere of fear in the US that
communists were everywhere. Your neighbor could be a communist, your
child's teacher could be a communist. People said, better dead
than red. That's what things were like when Kennedy started
to become a national figure.

Speaker 7 (19:21):
When John Kennedy runs for president in nineteen sixty, he
wants to be sure that the Democratic Party is seen
as as tough on communism as the Republican Party.

Speaker 4 (19:33):
I can remember the central question of the debate was
could Kennedy in his youth stand up to Nixon and
show his bona fides in terms of fighting communism?

Speaker 7 (19:45):
Robi're Wright, the question was, what are you going to
do about Cuba? In nineteen fifty nine, the Cuban Revolution
had broad Castro to power, Batista had fallen. Suddenly you
had the pos ability of what would emerge as a
communist country ninety miles off the coast of Florida.

Speaker 1 (20:07):
As an American of Cuban descent, I'll say that it's
impossible to overstate the importance of Fidel Castro's communist Cuban
Revolution in this moment in history. That put Cuba in
alignment with the Soviets, which scared America, considering the island
was only ninety miles off the coast of Florida. The Cubans,
who were anti Castro and anti communists fled to the

(20:30):
harbors of America, which welcomed them. Meanwhile, the Soviets were
busy strategizing over how to take advantage of their new beachhead.

Speaker 2 (20:40):
Any misstep towards Cuba could have resulted in an all
out nuclear war.

Speaker 7 (20:45):
And people wanted to note, was Kennedy up to the job.

Speaker 8 (20:50):
I do not shrink from this responsibility. I welcome it.
Let every nation know, whether use us well or ill,
that we shall pay any price, there any burden, meet
any hardship, support any friend, op post any foe to.

Speaker 11 (21:17):
Assure the survival and the success of liberty.

Speaker 2 (21:21):
Prior to Kennedy taking office, the Eisenhower administration planned a
secret attack on Cuba called the Bay of Pigs, and
the objective was simple.

Speaker 7 (21:32):
Go into Cuba, start a revolution, toppel Castro, and bring
Cuba back on side, if.

Speaker 4 (21:38):
You will, with the free world.

Speaker 2 (21:40):
The key to the Bay of Pigs was to make
it look like this was solely expatriate Cubans and that
the Americans had no involvement.

Speaker 7 (21:52):
Turns out, the Cuban people were not sitting around waiting
for a bunch of exiles to come and do.

Speaker 3 (21:58):
This, just the opposite.

Speaker 1 (22:00):
People still talk about the Bay of Pigs today because
of how much of flaming failure it was. Here's what
ended up happening. When the Cuban exiles invaded the island,
they were met with a fierce defense from Cubans on
the ground.

Speaker 2 (22:15):
The CIA had urged Kennedy to send air support, but
Kennedy he told them before the attack there would be
no US fingerprints on this operation. And with no US
air support, the exiles were left stranded and they were slaughtered.
And now you got to remember, Kennedy inherited the Bay
of Pigs from the previous administration. He had only been

(22:38):
in office for about three months, and he went along
with the wishes of the CIA to show you how
tough he was. But after that disaster, he started to
suspect that the CIA was trying to bully him into
a war that he didn't want.

Speaker 7 (22:53):
He felt betrayed, he felt stabbed in the back, disappointed,
and disenchanted.

Speaker 2 (23:00):
Publicly, he took full responsibility for the failure, but privately,
after the Bay of Pigs, people heard him say that
he would splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and
scatter it to the winds. The CIA didn't know that
he wanted to tear them apart, but they would soon.

Speaker 1 (23:37):
Rob said that if we were doing a podcast about JFK,
we've got to talk to the guy behind the independent
blog jfkfactx dot org. Since twenty twelve, Jefferson Morley has
published a new development to the story nearly every single day.
It's where a lot of JFK investigators go to get
their information. Morley takes the fire hose of information and

(24:00):
distills it into digestible bites. In another life, he reported
on the CIA for the Washington Post.

Speaker 12 (24:07):
Kennedy and the CIA were very alienated after the Bay
of Pigs, and he eventually gets rid of Alan Dulles.

Speaker 1 (24:15):
When you look up Alan Dulles, the guy has a
nickname the Godfather of the CIA. He was the first
civilian director of the CIA. He had close ties to
the oil industry, the finance industry. President Kennedy fired him
after the Bay of Pigs disaster.

Speaker 12 (24:33):
Then comes to Cuban Missile crisis. From CIA surveillance planes
discover the Soviet missiles are being installed in Cuba.

Speaker 1 (24:41):
So this risk between the CIA and the president is
happening in the backdrop of the Cuban missile crisis YEP.

Speaker 2 (24:49):
After the Bay of Pigs disaster, Kennedy's relationship with the
Soviet Union grew hostile. The Soviet threat was becoming much
more direct and Khrushchev was not happy about the Bay
of Pigs and A year later, pictures surface that show
that the Soviets are installing nuclear missiles in Cuba.

Speaker 7 (25:10):
They bring the pictures to Kennedy. He's in his bedroom
on the second floor of the White House.

Speaker 3 (25:15):
That's John Meacham.

Speaker 7 (25:16):
He's having breakfast. They bring it to him, and the
first thing he says is how could they do this
to me? He calls Robert Kennedy, the Attorney General, who says,
with great Ciceronian eloquence, sit, shit, shit, the sons of
bitches Russians.

Speaker 4 (25:35):
A few days later, the President shares the news with
the nation.

Speaker 9 (25:39):
Good evening, my fellow citizens. Within the past week, unmistakable
evidence has established the fact that a series of offensive
missile sites is now in preparation. The purpose of these
bases can be none other than to provide a nuclear
strike capability against the Western hemisphere.

Speaker 13 (26:01):
That moment must have seemed surreal. It was unbelievable nuclear
missiles fired from Cuba could reach Washington in like twenty minutes.

Speaker 7 (26:12):
The President then convenes something called ExCom, the Executive Committee
of the National Security Council. Every possible decision maker would
be in the West Wing more or less around the
clock for thirteen days.

Speaker 2 (26:26):
Behind closed doors, the conversations between various advisors and military
leaders get very heated and dangerous. The military leaders saw
the opportunity that they had been waiting for to invade
Cuba and make sure that the Soviets understood the superiority

(26:47):
of the United States.

Speaker 4 (26:49):
General Curtis LeMay is there.

Speaker 7 (26:50):
He's the cigar chompiing sort of slim Pickens guy from
Doctor Strangelove. At one point he looks at the young
president and says, you're in a hell of a fix,
mister President. And Kenny says, what did you say? And
LeMay repeats it, You're in a hell of a fix,
mister president.

Speaker 4 (27:09):
There was a strict division forming.

Speaker 12 (27:11):
There were fifteen people in favor of immediate attack, and
there were nine in favor of some kind of diplomacy track.

Speaker 3 (27:20):
Here's Jefferson Morley again.

Speaker 12 (27:22):
The majority of those people in that first week said
just attack missiles, destroy them, invade, throw out Castro, and
let's get this thing over with. And Kennedy was in
the minority.

Speaker 2 (27:34):
Kennedy was frightened that he was hours away from having
to push the button in a war that would have
killed hundreds of millions of people.

Speaker 9 (27:43):
I call upon Chairman Khrushow to haul and eliminate this clandestine,
reckless and provocative threat to world peace and the stable
relations between our two nations.

Speaker 10 (27:56):
Kennedy writes a letter directly to kruz Job that's dick.
They have been writing letters to each other since Kennedy
took office. The letters started out as diplomatic, but with
the start of the Cuban missile crisis, they take on
a new tone. In the midst of the crisis, Khrushchov
writes Kennedy back, saying quote, we must not succumb to

(28:17):
intoxication and petty passions. I have participated in two wars,
and I know that war ends when it is rolled
through cities and villages everywhere, sowing death and destruction. Kennedy
was a war veteran. He was a guy who nearly
lost his life many times. He was not impressed by

(28:37):
the generals who were telling him to go risk other
people's lives. Khrushchov finishes his letter by saying, quote, you
ought not now to pull the ends of the rope
in which you've tied the knot of war, because the
more the two of us pull, the tighter that knot
will be tied, so let us take measures to untie
that knot.

Speaker 1 (28:56):
It almost feels like these letters are a way for
them to see clearly the one thing that they have
in common. Right, they're both standing in a room with
people they don't trust. I think Kennedy understands that, just
like him, kruse Ship also has a military apparatus that's
ready to take nuclear action, and maybe that's what neither

(29:18):
of these leaders really want.

Speaker 7 (29:20):
Ultimately, the way we got out of it was through compromise.
Through negotiation, we agreed to remove the missiles from Turkey.
Khrushchev agrees, He stands up to his own hardliners in
Moscow and agrees to take the missiles out of Cuba.

Speaker 12 (29:38):
And Kennedy begins to rethink the Cold War, and he
goes from being a pretty conventional Cold War politician to saying,
we got to end this thing. We need a strategy
for peace.

Speaker 7 (29:49):
It's not nostalgic to say that the Kennedy of sixty
one was not the Kennedy of sixty two, and that
Kennedy of sixty two was not the Kennedy of sixty.

Speaker 2 (29:59):
Fe Kennedy gave a speech at American University in June
of sixty three is now known as the Peace Speech,
and it marks his transformation from cold warrior on the
campaign trail to a peacemaker who is blazing his own path.

Speaker 11 (30:16):
I have therefore chosen this time in place discuss a
topic on which ignorance too often abounds and the truth
too rarely perceived. And that is the most important topic
on Earth, peace for in the final analysis, our most
basic common link here's that we all inhabit this small planet.

Speaker 2 (30:41):
The speech was so influential that it even reached the
Soviet Union, where was translated and broadcast across the country.
Khrushcheff called it quote the greatest speech by any American
president since Roosevelt. Kennedy plans to pull a thousand troops
out of Vietnam. He drafts a plan for complete military

(31:02):
withdrawal by nineteen sixty five. He issues a limited ban
on nuclear testing, all part of a comprehensive plan for
world peace. This infuriated the military hardliners in his administration.

Speaker 12 (31:17):
The national security leadership in general was disturbed by Kennedy's
handling of the missile crisis. The Joint chiefs were furious,
and the opposition within the CIA was the most bitter
and virulent in the CIA station in Miami. Castro remained
in power, which the Joint chiefs regarded as intolerable.

Speaker 1 (31:38):
And Castro was public enemy number one to the United States.

Speaker 4 (31:42):
He was.

Speaker 2 (31:44):
Now let's jump forward to November fifth, nineteen sixty three.
Now this is one year after the Cuban missile crisis
and two weeks before Kennedy gets shot. Atwood was a
deputy US ambassador in the Kennedy administration, and he gets

(32:04):
a secret invitation from none other than Fidel Castro. Castro
wants to talk to Kennedy about the potential of a
peace agreement between the two countries. Now listen to how
this all goes down. What he's saying is Atwood now

(32:26):
has an invitation to go down and talk with Fidel
Castro about a change in relations with the United States.
Can we get Atwood off the payroll before he goes?
In other words, Kennedy is saying that these would be
secret conversations. Two weeks after that phone call with Atwood,
Kennedy writes a note and leaves it on his desk

(32:48):
in the Oval office, and the note says, check in
with Atwood.

Speaker 4 (32:53):
About the Cuba initiative.

Speaker 1 (32:55):
So Kennedy is backchanneling with Khrushev and now planning to
do the same thing with Castro.

Speaker 4 (33:02):
Right he's out on his own.

Speaker 2 (33:04):
He's trying to find a path to peace, the complete
opposite of what the CIA in the military wanted. So
Kennedy leaves a note on his desk. Then he departs
the White House for a campaign trip to Dallas. The
date is November twenty second, nineteen sixty three.

Speaker 6 (33:27):
President and his wife are going to be visible all
through Dallas.

Speaker 5 (33:31):
President cards now turning onto Elm Street, and it appears
to something has happened in the motor Kate route. Something
I repeeve hall happened in the motor Kate route.

Speaker 7 (33:39):
Kennedy apparently got him head. He fell the down in
back seat of his car.

Speaker 9 (33:44):
The flash apparently official.

Speaker 6 (33:47):
President Kennedy died at one pm Central Standard time.

Speaker 10 (33:53):
Christ Jeov's son Sergei wrote in his memoirs that when
his father heard the news, he fell to his and sobbed,
and all over Russia the church bells were ringing. In
JFK's memory. Right after the President's funeral, Jackie Kennedy sat
down to write a letter to Nikita kruz Job.

Speaker 1 (34:15):
Jackie writes, So, now, in one of the last nights
I will spend in the White House, in one of
the last letters I will write on this paper at
the White House, I would like to write you my message.
I send it only because I know how much my
husband cared about peace, and how the relation between you
and him was central to this care. He used to

(34:37):
quote your words in some of his speeches. Quote in
the next war, the survivors will envy the dead. You
and he were adversaries, but you're allied in a determination
that the world should not be blown up. I can
understand why people are still asking questions. The president had

(34:57):
just alienated the CIA and the million terry at the
height of the Cold War, and then he's murdered, and
then the guy who suspected of murdering him is also murdered.
You have to ask is this a coincidence? And if
it isn't, a rational person would ask, well, then what
really happened?

Speaker 3 (35:19):
So I guess my.

Speaker 1 (35:20):
Next question is how in the world would the potential
conspirators be able to pull something like that off.

Speaker 4 (35:28):
Well, like so many political stories, it's all about the
cover up.

Speaker 3 (35:38):
Next time on Who Killed JFK?

Speaker 14 (35:41):
I came away with the feeling that agencies of the
United States government have an interest in preventing a full investigation.

Speaker 1 (35:56):
We explore why so many Americans question the official investigation
into the assassination of President Kennedy.

Speaker 4 (36:04):
That's the shot that blew off his head. It's an
as the horrifying thing I've ever seen.

Speaker 1 (36:10):
Who Killed JFK is hosted by Rob Reiner and me
Solidad O'Brien. Our writer is David Hoffman, with research by
Dick Russell. Our story editors are Rob Reiner and Julie Pignero.
Our senior producer is Julie Pinneto. Our producers are Tristan Nash,

(36:31):
Dick Russell, Michelle Goldfein, and Amari Lee. Our editors are
Tristan Nash, Julie Pigneto, and Marcus de Laudo. Our project
manager is Carol Klein. Our associate producer is emilse Kiros. Mixing,

(36:53):
mastering and sound design by Ben la Julie and archival
audio in this episodeanks to Dick russell Odyssey the Six
Floor Museum, Veritone Geeddy, Images, research and fact checking by
Girl Friday and emilse Kiros. Our consulting producer is Rozanne Galliini.

(37:16):
Business affairs by Hennan Nadea and Jonathan Furman. Recorded in
part at CDM Studio and Fourth Street Recording Studio. Show
logo by Lucy Quintanilla. Production assistants by Rocodel Prior and
Grace Barron, and our executive producers are Rob Reiner, Michelle Reiner,

(37:39):
Matt George, Jason English, David Hoffman and Me Solidad O'Brien
Special thanks to Johonig, Rose Arsa and Dan Storper. If
you're enjoying the show, leave us a rating and review
on your favorite podcast platform. Who Killed JFK as a
production of Solidad O'Brien Productions an iHeart Podcasts
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Hosts And Creators

Soledad O’Brien

Soledad O’Brien

Rob Reiner

Rob Reiner

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