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January 10, 2024 26 mins

Finally, who killed JFK? Rob and Dick walk Soledad through their theory of who killed President John F. Kennedy. They name the shooters, their locations, and who was behind the tragic, world-changing event.

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Speaker 1 (00:04):
It's nineteen seventy five. We're in New York City at
the offices of the Village Voice newspaper. Shaggy haired reporters
hack away their typewriters and chat around the coffee machine.
You can almost smell the smoke hanging in the air.
One reporter, Dick Russell, is going through his mail and
he comes across an anonymous letter.

Speaker 2 (00:26):
The letter was from someone who identified himself as the
Brooklyn Waiter, and he wrote that he was familiar with
a recent article I had published on the JFK assassination.
He also wrote that I was now part of the
quote great game of researching the JFK assassination, and he
wanted to bring the name of someone to my attention.
The name was Adolph Sheppi Wiedenbach. I'd never heard that

(00:51):
name before, but I kept reading The Brooklyn Waiter claimed
that Sheppey Widenbach was the mastermind behind the JFK assassination.
I didn't know what to make of it. I mean,
who the hell is Adolph Sheppey Wiedenbach. There was no
Internet back then, so I didn't have a way to
find out who this Sheppey w Edenbach was. Then years later,

(01:12):
I was working on a book about the assassination and
stumbled upon an article about a General Charles Willoughby. Charles
Willoughby rose through the ranks of the US military to
become the chief of intelligence for General Douglas MacArthur during
World War II and then the Korean War. It got
my attention because Richard case Nagel had also worked for

(01:32):
the top secret Field Operations Intelligence under Willoughby's command.

Speaker 3 (01:38):
You might remember Field Operations Intelligence as the top secret
army intelligence unit closely connected to the CIA. Nagel described
its role as quote designed to conceal the true nature
of CIA objectives.

Speaker 2 (01:54):
I continued to research Willoughby and found out that not
only was he an extreme, far right anti communist with
connections to Nagel, but he also had connections to CIA
chief Allen Dulles, the Hunt Oil family of Dallas, and
the Cuban exile community. And then, when I thought I'd
read just about everything I could about General Charles Willoughby,

(02:14):
I stumbled upon his birth name. Charles Willoughby was born
Adolph Sheppy Wiedenbach. Was it possible that the letter that
the Brooklyn waiter sent me fifteen years earlier was a
major clue into who killed JFK.

Speaker 3 (02:31):
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.

Speaker 1 (02:45):
In the last episode, we covered the forty eight hours
between Oswald's arrest and his death. We heard about Jack
Ruby's extensive connections to the mafia and Oswald's connections to Ruby.
We watched Ruby as he stopped to Oswald following the assassination,
then murdered Oswald on live TV.

Speaker 3 (03:06):
So where does this guy, Adolph Shepy Wiedenbach fit in
and if he's involved in the whole thing, why is
this the first time we're hearing his name.

Speaker 1 (03:15):
He was a rogue and in this episode we'll find
out how he and other hardline rogue elements came together
to assassinate the president.

Speaker 4 (03:24):
As I see the hallmarks or the markers of this
being a CIA operation that rogues would have conducted.

Speaker 3 (03:30):
That's Rolf Mowitt Larson. He worked as a CIA intelligence
officer from nineteen eighty three to two thousand and six.

Speaker 4 (03:39):
I do believe The reason I can say that with
a different kind of approach than others is because I
am a CIA officer.

Speaker 1 (03:47):
Okay, it's time to lay out exactly what happened on
November twenty second, nineteen sixty three.

Speaker 3 (03:54):
All right, here we go. You've established three groups, each with.

Speaker 1 (03:58):
A motive, and exiles were angry that Castro took over Cuba.
They wanted the country back. The mafia wanted their hotels
and their casinos back. And the hardliners in the military
and the intelligence community were furious at Kennedy. They believed
that he had gone soft on communism and was selling
America out.

Speaker 3 (04:19):
So what do you think happened?

Speaker 1 (04:21):
Well, Ralph Mowatt Larson, the former CIA agent that we
just heard from, he said it had all the hallmarks
of a CIA operation, and he thinks that some people
connected to the agency were involved.

Speaker 2 (04:35):
As we go through this, it's important to keep in
mind Operation Northwoods.

Speaker 3 (04:40):
You'll remember. Operation Northwoods was the concept developed by the
CIA and the military. The idea was to stage a
false flag attack on a prominent US target, then blame
it on Castro to galvanize public support for an invasion
of Cuba.

Speaker 1 (04:57):
CIA agent Bill Harvey's ZR Rifle explored the same tactic
of using a pro communist scapegoat.

Speaker 3 (05:04):
If you remember, ZR Rifle was the CIA program run
by Bill Harvey that was designed to eliminate world leaders
that the US deemed problematic. In nineteen seventy six, the
Church Committee discovered classified documents about this program, which included
a handwritten note from Bill Harvey himself.

Speaker 2 (05:24):
He wrote, quote planning should include provision for blaming checks
or soviets in case of blow. In other words, someone
who is pro communist. Harvey also instructed the Central Registry
to have a quote phony two oh one on that person.

Speaker 3 (05:40):
A two oh one is a file that the CIA
keeps on someone they're interested in.

Speaker 2 (05:46):
He wrote that this phony two oh one quote should
look like a CE file. The CE stands for counter espionage.

Speaker 1 (05:55):
If they wanted a pro communist to take the blame
for an assassination, they had to have documentation to this person,
this fall guy, to prove that he was in fact
a Communist agent. The idea of a pro communist scapegoat
was part of both Operation Northwoods and Harvey's ZR Rifle.
Now let's get into the details. Once the motorcade had

(06:18):
been established. All the tactical leader had to do was
placed the shooters in positions to be most effective.

Speaker 5 (06:25):
Do you know what a triangulation is?

Speaker 3 (06:27):
That's Colonel William Bishop being interviewed by Dick Russell. Bishop
worked in intelligence for many years and worked in black
ops for the CIA.

Speaker 5 (06:37):
Only septrifie it happen nighte this depository, Resciole and the
Billinheer Courses Street.

Speaker 1 (06:47):
Now some people think they were two shooters, some people
think as many as six, but based on the forensic evidence,
the locations of the wounds and the directions of the shots,
we believe there were at least four. There was definitely
a shooter on the sixth floor of the school Book
Depository building. There was another shooter behind the picket fence

(07:09):
on what we've come to call the grassy Kno. Based
on the bullet hole in Kennedy's back and some of
Governor Connolly's wounds. There were most likely shooters in the
Daltex building and the County Records building, and both of
these buildings were across Houston Street behind the motorcade. And finally,

(07:29):
based on the forensic evidence we have, we believed that
a fatal headshot would have come from the overpass on
the south.

Speaker 5 (07:37):
Knole, so we were on the south side and we
were looking for shooters on the other side.

Speaker 3 (07:44):
That's Tosh Plumley, the CIA mercenary pilot who said he
flew mobster Johnny Rocelli and CIA agent E Howard Hunt
to Dallas that day.

Speaker 1 (07:55):
Plumley was positioned on the southknoll of Dealey Plaza at
the time of the show sho He said a shot
definitely came from that area, and based on the position
Kennedy was in at the time and the result of
his head wound, we believe this was a kill shot.

Speaker 3 (08:14):
I know you've been researching this question for decades. Can
you name the people that you think fired at JFK
that day.

Speaker 1 (08:22):
I'm gonna let Dick take this one.

Speaker 2 (08:24):
With all of the information now available to us, we
can name four assassins who were all present in Dallas
that day. It's possible to make a highly educated guess
as to who those shooters were and who was responsible
for where they were placed.

Speaker 1 (08:53):
The people were about to name were all cold blooded assassins.

Speaker 5 (08:58):
To me, it was a job, no more and no less,
and a human target is no damn different.

Speaker 3 (09:07):
That's Colonel William Bishop again talking about his mindset during assassinations.
Later on, during this interview with Dick Russell, Bishop admits
that he himself had a hand in the nineteen sixty
one assassination of Raphael Trujillo, president of the Dominican Republic.

Speaker 5 (09:25):
You look upon your target as a ten can. You
don't allow yourself to become emotionally, psychologically, or mentally involved
with your target.

Speaker 3 (09:35):
You have to be attached to be good at it cold, Okay,
So who were the men in Dallas?

Speaker 2 (09:41):
First there was a Cuban exile named Erminio Diaz Garcia.

Speaker 5 (09:47):
Emigio Lea.

Speaker 3 (09:50):
That's fabian Escilante, a former Cuban intelligence officer.

Speaker 1 (09:56):
Escolante said that Armenio Diaz is one of the people
that we think was almost definitely involved in the plot
against Kennedy.

Speaker 3 (10:04):
Who is Henrimnio Diaz Garcia.

Speaker 1 (10:11):
Escalante said that in the nineteen forties he was a
gangster in Cuba. He participated in a plot to kill
the president of Costa Rica. He said that Herminio killed
several people in the fifties.

Speaker 2 (10:24):
In twenty thirteen, an old friend of Garcia's Rinaldo Martinez
Gomez gave an interview stating that Garcia had admitted to
him that he had been part of the JFK assassination team.
Garcia was killed in nineteen sixty six while on a
mission into Cuba to try and assassinate Fidel Castro. We

(10:44):
think another shooter was a man named Jean Swetra.

Speaker 1 (10:48):
We mentioned Swetra in an earlier episode. He was a
notorious French assassin. Cia files Declassified in nineteen seventy seven
revealed that Swetra was in Dallas on November twenty second,
and was then quickly and quietly deported from the country
almost immediately after the assassination. We believe another shooter was

(11:10):
a man named Charles Nicoletti, also known as Chucky the Typewriter.
He was part of the Chicago mob and a hitman
for Sam g and Conna.

Speaker 3 (11:21):
You may remember Sam g and Conna was one of
two mobsters, along with Johnny Rosselli, that agreed to help
Bill Harvey assassinate Castro.

Speaker 2 (11:30):
Nicoletti was murdered in nineteen seventy seven, right before he
was due to testify to the House Select Committee on Assassinations.
The fourth shooter we know about was a man named
Jack Cannon. Cannon worked under Charles Willoughby.

Speaker 3 (11:46):
Willoughby was the guy you talked about earlier, the guy
you received the letter about exactly.

Speaker 2 (11:52):
Willoughby was the head of intelligence for Douglas MacArthur, and
after World War Two, Cannon worked with Willoughby. Cannon ran
a Bloe black ops group known as the z or
Z Unit. When I wrote my book on Richard K.
S Nagel, The Man who Knew too Much, he told
me that Canon was a part of the CIA unit
that reported to Willoughby, and he indicated that Canon was

(12:15):
directly involved in the assassination of JFK.

Speaker 3 (12:19):
It seems like a lot of people to be working
on a secret plot.

Speaker 2 (12:23):
It was all compartmentalized. Everything was done on a need
to know basis. Most likely none of the shooters were
aware of the others, so in that sense, they didn't
work together.

Speaker 1 (12:34):
The CIA agents that we talked to said that people
in operations like this would be given very specific instructions
of what they were expected to do. They would know
little or nothing about the other people involved.

Speaker 3 (12:46):
As both of you said a little while ago, it's
nice to name the shooters, but knowing who put them there,
that's the real question. Who do you think orchestrated the
assassination of JFK.

Speaker 2 (12:58):
The challenge to answering that is that people want a
simple answer, and it isn't simple.

Speaker 3 (13:02):
I can hear the audience groaning as you say that.

Speaker 1 (13:04):
No, no, no, don't worry. We're about to answer you
very directly. But it isn't a one word answer. It
wasn't the CIA, the mafia, or the Cuban exiles, but
it was rogue individuals that came from those worlds.

Speaker 2 (13:19):
Operation Northwoods and ZR Rifle served as the blueprint. The
people that wrote those documents never thought they would ever
see the light of day. They thought that it would
stay secret forever. Alan Dulles, the godfather of the CIA,
kept these programs from the War and Commission. He knew
what a bombshell it would be.

Speaker 1 (13:40):
So to start, none of this happens without the knowledge
of Alan Dullas.

Speaker 2 (13:46):
We don't think that Dulles played an active role in
the planning, but we do think he would have been
aware of the plan.

Speaker 1 (13:52):
Why do you say that, because it's inconceivable that he
wouldn't be aware of something like this, and it explains
why he was at the remote CIA facility known as
the Farm on the day of the assassination.

Speaker 3 (14:05):
What's the farm?

Speaker 6 (14:07):
This was the top secret facility. What the hell was
Alan Dalles doing going to a CIA facility when he
had been fired two years before.

Speaker 3 (14:17):
That's David Talbot, the author of a book on Dulles
called The Devil's Chessboard.

Speaker 6 (14:22):
He was there all during that fateful weekend when President
Kenny was killed and when Jack Ruby killed Lee Harvey
Oswald on national television.

Speaker 2 (14:31):
With Dulles's approval. I think that James Angleton and David
Attlee Phillips were responsible for ultimately setting up Oswald.

Speaker 3 (14:39):
You'll remember James Jesus Angleton as the poet spy. He
named his world of counterintelligence the Wilderness of Mirrors.

Speaker 2 (14:48):
He and David Attlee Phillips, who worked under Angleton, were
the ones moving Oswald around the chessboard. They were developing
him as a pro communist who would ultimately take the blame.

Speaker 5 (15:00):
Otivele was a damn thing in the world, but a dicoy.

Speaker 1 (15:03):
He was a patsy.

Speaker 3 (15:06):
We started this investigation with Lee Harvey Oswald famously saying
I'm just a patsy. And now Rob, you're fully explaining
why you think that's true.

Speaker 1 (15:16):
Let's take a moment to understand why Oswald's saying he's
a patsy is so important. If I was arrested for
a murder I didn't commit, I would say I'm innocent.
I didn't do it. You got the wrong guy. But
Oswald says I'm just a patsy. Now, why would he
say that? If you look at assassinations of world leaders

(15:37):
throughout history, Julius Caesar, Abraham Lincoln, what happened after their deaths?

Speaker 3 (15:43):
Somebody claimed responsibility?

Speaker 6 (15:45):
Exactly when he was arrested, he said, I'm a patsy.
That's not the words of an assassin who prattly kills
the president.

Speaker 3 (15:54):
That's David Talbot again.

Speaker 6 (15:57):
John Wilkes Booth said six semper tyrannus. As he'd left
to the stage after killing Lincoln, he was proud that
he'd killed the.

Speaker 3 (16:07):
President six semper tyrannus, which means thus always to tyrants,
if you're going to.

Speaker 1 (16:13):
Kill somebody for political reasons, and you think that you're
doing your country a great service, you want to own it.

Speaker 3 (16:20):
What about those who say he was just someone looking
to make his mark on the world, even.

Speaker 1 (16:26):
More reason to own it. If you're nobody and you
want to feel important, to take your place in history,
you want to own that. Setting up Oswald to take
the fall also explains the cover up. How do you mean, Well,
we know that Oswald had extensive connections to the CIA,
So the people who had been handling him since the
late fifties, they now had a personal incentive to make

(16:49):
sure that everything was covered up.

Speaker 2 (16:51):
Their fingerprints were all over Oswald, even if they had
nothing to do with the assassination directly, and any real
investigation would reveal their involvement.

Speaker 3 (17:02):
So the men responsible for Dallas were counting on the
fact that the CIA and FBI would have to close
ranks in the cover up because of their connections to Oswald.

Speaker 1 (17:12):
Exactly. Anyone who dealt with Oswald handled his file, read
his mail, cut his paychecks, gave him his assignments while
he was in the Marines, took care of him when
he got out. They now had to deny any connection
to Oswald, even if they had nothing to do with
the assassination. And we know what happened to those who

(17:33):
tried to talk.

Speaker 3 (17:34):
Okay, so you're saying that we have Dulles as aware
of the event, and Angleton and Atlee Phillips making sure
there was a patsy to take the blame, but who
actually orchestrated This.

Speaker 2 (17:46):
Evidence leads us to the ZR Rifle Chief Bill Harvey
as the strategist and General Charles Willoughby as the tactician.
Willoughby and Harvey then tapped the mafia and the Cuban
exiles to help provide the shooters.

Speaker 7 (18:00):
I think Harvey and Rosselli and a couple other guys
were the people who were training the assassins, and the
theory is that Harvey decided to direct those assassins against Kennedy.

Speaker 3 (18:15):
That's Robert Blakey again. You'll remember he was in charge
of the House Select Committee on Assassinations in nineteen seventy nine.
They concluded that President Kennedy was murdered as a result
of a conspiracy.

Speaker 2 (18:28):
Harvey's hatred for Kennedy was well documented. He hated the
president's politics, and he saw his path toward peace as
the act of a trader, and he hated Kennedy personally
for banishing him to Rome. As we know, Harvey was
also in charge of the CIA's program of hiring assassins
to kill political leaders around the world, and Willoughby was

(18:50):
as staunch and Handi Communist as you could find. He
was deeply involved in organizations like the John Birch Society
and others that would stop at nothing to destroy the
Red menace. He also had a history of involvement in
violent black ops.

Speaker 1 (19:05):
The assassination in Dallas came directly out of the Operation
Northwoods and ZR Rifle playbooks. It had been implemented against
world leaders many times, just never at an American target.

Speaker 3 (19:20):
I'm sure the audience, just like me, needs a moment
to digest all this.

Speaker 1 (19:26):
To me, the names of the shooters and the men
behind them is less important than the reason it happened.
Kennedy represented progress. He wanted to move us away from
nuclear annihilation toward peace, but sadly it prompted a coup
that profoundly changed history.

Speaker 3 (19:46):
Up next, why it matters that we're asking that question today?
I came into the story interested in whether the question

(20:08):
who killed JFK? Could actually be answered? And to what
degree did this question destabilize American's faith in our country's leadership.
The murder of President Kennedy seems to be a moment
where trust was replaced with growing skepticism. Here's Robert Blakey,
who led the House Select Committee on Assassinations in nineteen

(20:30):
seventy six, who still puzzles over it almost forty years later.
Do you think who killed JFK Is even a relevant
and important question today?

Speaker 1 (20:44):
Yes.

Speaker 7 (20:44):
If you talk to young people today, they're turned off
by the society in which they live. They're cynical. Where
did the cynicism come from? I think the cynicism that
are characteristic of young people today are not entirely related
to but are the outcome of the cynicism over the
War On Commission War.

Speaker 3 (21:05):
To this day, a US president was assassinated, and it's
likely that the real perpetrators were not held accountable. The
fact that some of these perpetrators may have been officials
in the US agencies designed to protect us is likely
the very reason why people like rob continue to pursue
this question. That and the fact that clues and leads

(21:29):
just keeps slipping out, like the Katzenbach Memo, which ordered
the Warren Commission to pin it all on Oswald that
was only revealed in the nineteen seventies, the expose about
George Joan Edes, the CIA liaison to the House Select Committee,
that only came out in two thousand and one, And
in twenty twenty three, former Secret Service agent Paul Landis

(21:52):
came forward with a testimony that throws into question the
single bullet theory. It's impossible to stand at a fixed
point in history and say with one hundred percent certainty
we know who killed JFK. Because the story continues to evolve.
So then what does closure look like? You're never gonna

(22:14):
know for sure. There is no document that eventually someone
releases that says, okay, here was the plot in full.

Speaker 2 (22:22):
I think the only closure you get is that you
come to certain conclusions. So this podcast series is going
to show that there was a huge cover up going on.

Speaker 3 (22:31):
To people like Dick Russell crystallizing his theory is closure.
For others like Jefferson Morley, closure isn't up to us.

Speaker 8 (22:41):
The CIA records that are still classified they will help
answer this question.

Speaker 3 (22:45):
In other words, as long as the government is holding
on to records, this story isn't over. But as time passes,
even that becomes more complicated.

Speaker 8 (22:56):
You know, one thing that we see is when they
release these records, you know, people who would have been
really interesting to interview have died.

Speaker 5 (23:05):
They can't talk anymore.

Speaker 8 (23:06):
This guy writes a detailed memo. His name didn't come
out until twenty twenty two, you know, and when we
get the name, you going, look, the guy died in
twenty seventeen. You know, if we'd had that document in
twenty seventeen, that would have been a very important interview.

Speaker 3 (23:23):
For historians like John Meacham. It's about what America might
have been had Kennedy survived.

Speaker 9 (23:30):
It is tempting to want to see our martyred King
as wiser and better than he might have turned out
to be. But 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

(23:51):
of sixty three.

Speaker 3 (23:52):
I think there's a piece of Americana that feels like,
if Kennedy had survived, the country would have avoided the
view now moar, because that's what Kennedy was promising when
he was murdered. It's impossible to know if that would
have happened. But it's enticing to envision that alternate reality.
And after spending time with Dick and Rob, I've come

(24:15):
to see how that reality may be a bastion of
healing in what otherwise is a wound in their psyche.
The loss of President Kennedy happened in their formative years,
and the way they describe it, it was like losing
a parent. The reason they want they need to know
the truth is because only then are they able to heal. Rob,

(24:38):
you're handing the story off to the next generation. What
do you hope for?

Speaker 1 (24:43):
I hope they continue to demand the truth from their government,
and not just about what happened to President Kennedy, but
as a way of coming to grips with our past.
If we want to continue to strive for a more
perfect union, in order to preserve our democra, it has
to be built on a foundation of truth.

Speaker 3 (25:07):
Who Killed JFK is hosted by Rob Reiner and me
Solidad O'Brien, and Our executive producers are Rob Reiner, Michelle Reiner,
Matt George, Jason English, David Hoffman, and Me Solidad O'Brien.
Our writer is David Hoffman, with research by Dick Russell.
Our story editors are Rob Reiner and Julie Pinero. Our

(25:28):
senior producer is Julie Pinneto. Our producers are Tristan Nash,
Dick Russell, Michelle Goldfein, and Amari Lee. Our editors are
Tristan Nash, Julie Pinneto, and Marcus de Lauro. Our project
manager is Carol Klein. Our associate producer is emilse Kiros. Mixing,

(25:48):
mastering and sound design by Ben la Julier. Research and
fact checking by Girl Friday and emilse Kiros. Archival audio
in this episode thanks to Dick Russell. Business affairs by
Himnan Narea and Jonathan Furman. Our consulting producer is Rozanne Galliini.
Recorded in part at CDM Studio and Fourth Street Recording Studio.

(26:12):
Show logo by Lucy Quintanilla. Production assistants by Rocco deel
Prior and Grace Barron. 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 and
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Soledad O’Brien

Soledad O’Brien

Rob Reiner

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