CLASSIC: Secrets revealed? JFK in 2017

For decades after the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963, hundreds of thousands of Americans -- and millions of people across the planet -- have had lingering, troubling problems with the US government’s official narrative of the tragedy. Now, recently declassified documents may shed light on the story, either confirming or contradicting the official tale of Kennedy’s death. Or will they?

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
It's time for our weekly classic episode where we bring
you some of the best and strangest stuff from our archives. Matt,
this one is This one is an update because ever
since you and I started this show, as Paul helpfully
pointed out, ten years ago, this year we started the

(00:21):
audio podcast version of this we've been tuned in. I
feel like a sucker man. Every time I hear their
JFK updates, I think maybe, yeah, well I feel the
same way Ben. We get a little trickle it's trickled
down jfkanomics. Sorry, sorry, yeah, I know it's worth it. No,

(00:42):
it wasn't. But every once in a while you get
a few new documents that have been declassified and you think, oh,
maybe there's gonna be something in this trove that's gonna
let us know what really happened. And well there was.
There was some stuff that went down in twenty seventeen,
and we talked about it. That's what this episode is.
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is

(01:05):
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn this stuff they don't want you to know. Hello,
and welcome back to the show. My name is Matt

(01:27):
name they call me Ben, you are you? And that
makes this stuff they don't want you to know. Now,
we are looking at a developing situation, and in the past, guys,
we've been hesitant to cover things like as they're unfolding
because a peak behind the curtain here, of course, and
our super producer Paul Decktt will agree with us, hopefully.

(01:51):
I'm sure I'm looking at his body language. Oh, he's
wishing was he's hedging. He's hedging, he's hedging his bats.
I respect that. We We feel just terrible if we
report on something that is occurring in the news, right,
and by the time our episode comes out, the situation

(02:13):
is completely changed because like spoiler, you guys, this is
not live correct, right, we did this like a week ago.
The good thing about this specific topic is that the
occurrence happened in nineteen sixty three, So that makes it
fifty plus years of history that we can cover and
then bring in some of this new stuff that actually
occurred around nineteen sixties. Yeah, and you know, we don't

(02:35):
want to be old beans that I'm pretty good I'm
saying that now. I don't think so you don't think
I think it's work. I think it's gonna beans. Yeah,
I don't know. Well right in and let us know.
Are they moldy or just stale? It's just like I'm
using it as like a just a term of figure
of speech. You guys are skeptical about bag of badgers,
but that took off, It really did. Okay, what are

(02:57):
we talking about today? Can we get to the thing
for crying out loud? Yes, let's start with the facts.
The brass tax. President John F. Kennedy was assassinated on
November twenty second, nineteen sixty three, at about twelve thirty
in the afternoon, in Dallas, Texas while they were writing
in a presidential motorcade and in the probably the biggest

(03:20):
understatement of our entire show, all hell broke loose. Yeah,
it's true. And then you fast forward several decades and
there's a survey by a site called five thirty eight
dot com and they found that only thirty three percent
of the people responding actually believe the findings of the
official Warren Commission. That's the one that concluded in nineteen

(03:43):
sixty four that the lone gunman Lee Harvey Oswald was
responsible for the death of President Kennedy. And today sixty
one percent of the US public believe that at least
one other person was involved. Yes, just a single gunman.
So you guys know, I'm kind of a Kennedy novice.
Can you catch me up on the Warren Commission? Sure?

(04:06):
The Warren Commission, we've talked to about this before on
the show, officially is known as the President's Commission on
the Assassination of President Kennedy, which I don't know. I
feel like one too many presidents in there, but that's fine.
I didn't name that. Can you make it into an
acronym for me? That helps me digest it a little better? Ben, Oh,
the tpcot aop K, that's better before Anyway, it was

(04:29):
formed by the President that immediately followed the president's death.
Lyndon Johnson, correct, by the way, was a real pill.
Apparently he was a pill. A lot of accusations have
been made about him in his involvement with the assassination
of JFK over the years. We have not found any
of them to be completely true, but there are some
juicy details in there. But has a very pleasant sounding name.

(04:51):
When you say the initials LBJ, it's very mollifluous. It
is I just what you know, there was a thing listeners, friends,
neighbors that Lyndon Johnson used to do. It was called
the Johnson treatment. He would get in people's faces, like
grab them by their lapels four heads inches away. He
followed one guy into a bathroom busted into the stall

(05:14):
y because that wouldn't fly today. Yeah, while he was
doing his business. Well, he's a large gentleman as well,
very tall and imposing, bit of a bull in the
china shop kind of scenario. Absolutely, what did old LBJ do? Okay?
So he formed the President's Commission on the Assassination of
President Kennedy on November twenty ninth, nineteen sixty three, just
a few days after President Kennedy was shot, and it

(05:36):
was all the whole reason to have this was to
investigate what happened on that day, right, because people wanted answers,
and the Commission acted as quickly as they could to
this day. You can read their full report. Well, yeah,
their quote unquote full report. All of the information. It
was given to the Commission quickly in government time isn't

(05:58):
like days, right, I mean this report likely took many
months to Yeah, yeah, this is not quickly in people time.
It's quickly in government time, so they were racing to
determine whether there was any truth, any sands to the
multitudinous rumors surrounding this assassination, and the commission eventually concluded
that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone under his own power,

(06:22):
no assistance from any criminal organization, intelligence agencies, any shady dude,
or foreign government or foreign government. That's very important, and
that Jack Ruby, the man who would later assassinate Oswald,
had no previous relationship with that guy either, So Jack
Ruby apparently the sas. Yeah, the story was that the

(06:45):
lone gunman was killed by a lone gunman and nothing
is related. Nothing to see here, folks know, none of
the conspiracies you've been reading about, or anyone's been saying
in papers or these weird rumors, none of that's true.
Please continue with your regularly scheduled programming. And when when
the When the three of us started this show, one
of the things that we wanted to do was to

(07:05):
explore the stuff on the fringes, right, and and we
stay away from the JFK assassination because there has already
been so much work done on it, right, and there's
stone comes in and makes a movie and then a
whole bunch of other conspiracy theories back into the left. Yeah,
and nothing, you know, nothing that we would have found

(07:29):
would have been new news. It would have been old beans. Oh,
I'm not giving up on it, all right, I'm telling
you guys, say no, See, nobody gets old beans yet.
But that's just because of this episode hasn't come out.
I'm I'm I'm telling you, guys. Invest now get in
on the ground floor of these various catchphrases. So the Commission,

(07:53):
the Commission has a quote where they they sum up
this relationship quote. The Commission made intensive inquiry into the
backgrounds and relationships of Oswald and Ruby to determine whether
they knew each other or were involved in a plot
of any kind with each other or others. It was
unable to find any credible evidence to support the rumors

(08:15):
linking Oswald and Ruby directly or through others. The Commission
concluded that they were not involved in a conspiratorial relationship
with each other or with any third party. In quote,
and there is some very important information that will get
to towards the close of this show to discuss specifically
what may have been held to the Chess, to some

(08:36):
of the intelligence agencies, and not given to the Warren
Commission specifically, right, So they're doing their best, people on
the Warn Commission and doing their best. I hate to
steal a line from Beauty and the Beast, but the
typical conspiracy stuff you will you're going to hear about
the JFK assassination might as well be tal as old
as time at this point. However, recently there were documents files,

(09:07):
a plethora and I am using that word correctly of
files pertaining to the assassination that were classified for decades
and again, like in the past couple weeks, as we
record this, As Noel pointed out earlier, this is a
bit of a time travel experience. Whenever you're listening to
a podcast, we're in early November when we're recording this.

(09:31):
It's November. It's November. What year is it only? Just okay,
year of our Lord two thousand and seventeen. Oh, whoa
the whole time? Yeah, yeah, we are. Then, so recently
several of these documents, a plethora of these documents were
release were declassified and for years, people who do not

(09:53):
believe the official story or the findings of the Warring Commission,
have been have been vinced that there will be some
sort of great revelation that comes forth right in the
public eye. I have to put myself in that camp. Yeah, honestly,
because we've talked about these records being released by the

(10:13):
past at least two presidents. When when there's a date
that comes up, that's essentially, hey, if the president decides
he or she can release these documents, And every time
that has happened up until this year, they have said, uh, no,
we're not going to release the documents. Yeah, something something
always comes up. Yes, So there is this thing, this

(10:36):
act that Congress passed called the JFK Assassination Records Collection Act,
which they passed in nineteen ninety two. Bush Senior, Yes, yes,
George Bush at George HW. Bush. That is a George W.
Bush's father. Um, gotta do the voice? Do you give
you the voice? You were doing the voice off arrows Well.
Um on October twenty six, nineteen ninety two. My daddy

(11:00):
pass uh this act, he signed it. And the final
release date because it's fifty fifty years after is uh
October twenty six, twenty seventeen. Yeah, So uh that that
was a date that, uh, the current president used to
release his document. Mister president, mister president, H question from
the front H bemble and stuff. They want you to

(11:22):
know what does this collection consist of. I'm gonna call
you all beans. All right, let's jump back into a
real world, Matt. So I could I just need to
go through some of this, sure, what is? But what's
in this collection? Okay? So this collection, uh, it's basically

(11:42):
all of the intelligence agencies and federal government organizations and
agencies in the US. They got all the documents relating
to the assassination of JFK, and they collected them all
and they sent them over to the National Archives. Okay,
So in this collection, it's approximately five million pages of
records like printed pages. Yeah, we're we're talking Indiana Jones
style vault just talk going all the way up to

(12:04):
four stories or whatever. M Eighty eight percent of these
records are open and full. So that's a huge amount
of five million records. No one accidentally used a black highlighter. Well,
according I don't think there's any such thing as a
black highlighter. It's an awesome Onion article where it says
the where it's like FBI and CIA realize that they've
been using black highlighters, so wonderful, So no black highlighters

(12:29):
in eighty eight percent, In eleven percent of them, they're
released in part with the black highlighters going through, which
would be stuff like proper names, dresses maybe you know,
it's usually proper names and proper places, specific places that
would be like a little dangerous, or numbers. That's where
you see stuff like blank met with blank approximately twelve
forty PM at blank, Yes on this blank exactly that

(12:53):
they blanked, oh about stuff about yeah yeah yeah. So
then one percent, there's a remaining one percent of this
five million pages that is identified as assassin related and
they remain completely sealed or at least up until this year.
And there was a governing board that that made the

(13:17):
call here, So it whenever we deal with government related
documentation or filing, we run into all these dry names.
So here's another one. The Assassination Records Review Board, Ye,
the a r rbaland they they are the ones who

(13:37):
said you have to you have to redact these these
eleven percent documents, right, and then this one percent nobody
can see. Ever, who do you think they get to
do the manual redacting. It has to be it can't
just be some intern It has to be something pretty
high level. Yeah, you have to have at that level compartmentalized,

(13:58):
a crappy kind of sloggy job. Can you imagine just
having to go through thousands of pages and just like
X stuff out that. I'm sure it's very process oriented,
and I bet it's viewed as highly important. I can imagine.
I think, I think you're right. I don't mean to
diminish it. I just mean in terms of process what
age ye? Sure? Um? And that agency the it was

(14:20):
a temp agency. It just it was there for a
time and then it went away after it fulfilled its job.
Are you talking about ARB. Yeah. ARBE only lasted from
ninety four, nineteen ninety four to nineteen ninety eight. Interesting,
and according to the Act itself, that Congress passed all
the records that would that were previously withheld, the one
percent and the eleven percent, All of those records should

(14:42):
be released on October twenty six, twenty seventeen, unless further
authorized by the President of the United States, which will
be withholding. Yes for withholding, So unless the President decided
or was told to decide to not release these documents
slippery slop, right, which happened again previously at the other

(15:03):
a little what do you call on the road the
markers the other markers where it could have been released
or at least in place. Sure. Yeah, And this, as
as you said, Matt, was signed by President George H. W. Bush,
who was just in the studio with us a moment
ago on October twenty sixth, nineteen ninety two. In July

(15:25):
of twenty seventeen, the National Archives released almost four thousand
records right. That included stuff from the FBI and the
CIA and somewhere. Some had been withheld in full in
the past, and some were released redacted. And I gotta
tell you, ladies and gentlemen, friends and neighbors, the three

(15:45):
of us spend a lot of time reading these terrible
scans from like the vault, the FBI vault, where you
can you can see someone has made some scribbled notes
in the margins and gone over, gone over it to
black out different parts of things. And they're they're tough

(16:06):
to read, you know, it's it's a it's a pain
to read. Yeah. I think it removes all this context.
I mean too, I mean like there's so much redactive
that it literally strips it of largely any meaning. You know,
it's very frustrating. Yeah, Not to mention, you're dealing with
intelligence agencies that are making these producing these documents, and
a lot of times there are like crypto cryptograms or

(16:28):
there are uh anagrams, they're like they're they're weird. There's
weird stuff that goes on in some of these documents.
Not to mention, they're already pretty dry. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Uh So this the binality of evil aside, which is
what I'm going to categorize a lot of this redaction
stuff as the binality of evil aside, Right, the inactions

(16:51):
of good people aside. Uh, there is still a struggle
to release this information, yes, whatever it might contain, right,
And a lot of people wondered whether there would be
some smoking gutten, whether there would be some sort of
memo from you know, nineteen sixty two where one one

(17:13):
intelligence operative says to another, Hey, I just got off
the phone with so and so, and they said that
it's going down in Dallas. You know, yeah, that is
not the case. There's some stuff that's kind of close
to that, but it's not, it's not that specific, and
that wasn't the only release. That July release was actually

(17:36):
jumping the gun a bit on that October twenty six,
twenty seventeen date, because on the actual date, the National
Archives released another almost three thousand documents, which is huge,
and this included a bunch of other stuff that they
also released that was pertaining to that Assassination Records Review Board.
A lot of the emails, well they're emails from nineteen

(17:58):
ninety four to ninety nine eight, So I wonder what
that even looked like like forward forward for Yeah, yeah,
I don't know. But they released fifty two thousand plus
emails and almost seventeen thousand files from the from that
review board that actually decided what was going to be
redacted and not. And then on November third, just a

(18:20):
few days ago, there was another release from the National
Archives of six hundred and seventy six records and this
was Central Intelligence stuff they were previously denied entirely, the
CIA stuff. Yeah, yeah, the CIA stuff. And you also
have Department of Justice, Department of Defense, how Select Committee
on Assassinations, and even stuff from the National Archives like

(18:42):
a single document. So what does this all mean? You
can also. I think that was excellent review of the
chronology of this. You can, by the way, take a
line from Matt and view all these files yourself. You
can read along. Yeah, you can read along if you
are if you are willing to again put up with

(19:05):
some poor quality reproduction. Yeah, some scrolled new its and
margins and a lot of a lot of missing pieces. Right,
it's a crueling journey if you want to go on it.
But I really do think it's worth seeing the history.
And the big question is to what end does this matter?
Was there anything worth reading in there? We will tell

(19:28):
you after a quick word from our sponsors, assuming we
don't get assassinated during the break, We're back and I
think we'll just jump right in with a couple of
selected articles. A lot of these come from various news sources,
because we've kind of had to go through and research

(19:50):
via the news with all of the official researchers who
are going through all this stuff. Yeah, there's a gentleman
being interviewed on CBS. I was watching just before we
went in the studio, and he said he has this
massive team of researchers and interns and all these people
going through the documents, and he says they've been working
on it since that July release and they've gotten through
about eight percent of the newly released documents. Why didn't

(20:12):
we sick our team of interns and researchers on that, Well,
I mean, I guess we could have, So we don't
have one. We just sicked ourselves on it, which you
know's that's fine. So we went to all the top,
top notch news sources that you're familiar with, Daily Mail,
teen Vogue, National Inquirer has been killing it lately, by

(20:33):
the way. I know, really, I'm not kidding. I'm not kidding. Seriously,
good journalism coming out of teen Vogue. I don't know
what we did. We did look around, and that's what
we can't tell. If he's joking, I'm not, it's true.
Ask anybody she's okay, yeah, all right. See, And you're
probably wondering because we are moving a little quickly on
this stuff. You're you're probably thinking, Matt, no, Ben, you

(20:55):
You guys obviously just checked with someone off Mike about
teen Vogue got the co sign? You got the co sign?
Who is this mystery person? It is our new co worker,
Kathleen Quillian, who is sitting in with super producer Paul
helping to engineer this session. Yes, and she's going to
play a big part in the Stuff Media family very soon, right, Yes, Yes, indeed,

(21:16):
welcome spoiler, welcome, welcome. So point being, the point remains
that when you're looking at this sort of stuff, it
is paramount to investigate every single new source you can find. Yes,
you should, regardless of whatever your starting point may be ideologically, experientially, etc.

(21:40):
You owe it to yourself to check as many things,
especially things that come from places that you might disagree with. Yeah,
you got to get a lay of the land exact
to kind of be your own aggregator too. And it's like,
because you know this is the kind of stuff where
there are going to be, it's going to be mired
in various opinions on one side of the other, so
you kind of get the full picture, it's best to
kind of have a broad spectrum of material, which is

(22:03):
what we tried to do, what Matt largely tried to do.
This is his baby right now. Yeah, Matt's are Bloodhound
one us well, and I actually found just gonna let
everybody know, I found a CNN article that was in
my opinion, the best kind of middle ground for all
the sources I had been finding everything from the intercept
to the Guardian and just everything in between. The Fox News,

(22:23):
the CNN article hit the main I guess the main
documents that I found to be pertinent. Does that make sense?
It does give it to us. Okay. So the first
document involves a telephone call that was intercepted on September
twenty eighth, nineteen sixty three, allegedly from Lee Harvey Oswald
to a KGB agent in Mexico City. This is a

(22:46):
good one. Oh yeah, So this memo from the day
of Kennedy's assassination. It talks about this call that was
intercepted to the Russian embassy in Mexico. He spoke to
the console that I'm not gonna try and pronounce the
name Valie of Mirovich. Yes, this was an identified KGB officer,

(23:09):
and the gentleman was speaking in broken Russian. Can I
can I interject here? Yes? There is there is one
um Oddly I hesitated to use the word funny, but
I think it is funny. There is one odd side
note in this. In this conversation, Oswald insisted that the

(23:31):
conversation be held in Russian. Yes, and his Russian was
cartoonishly bad. It's like, uh, it's it's like like on
the level of saying, uh, bonus nachos instead of buenos
noche it cos you speaks Spanish. And to the point
where the KGB folks we're like having difficulty understanding him

(23:55):
and probably going blio mind the speak English and he's
and he's like yet, But it seems like perhaps they
knew there was some you know, some eavesdropping going on,
and maybe that was one of the reasons. But again,
you're speaking to a console at the Russian embassy in
Mexico and you're going to speak Russian. So I don't know,
Maybe it's just I guess to hide amongst all the

(24:16):
other conversations that occurred to day. Sure, and the person
who wrote the memos said that relayed the belief on
the FBI's part that Oswald was trying to get out right,
who's trying to get to the USSR Yes, or you
know or somewhere else who knows exactly want to get
a visa right for some reason, possibly even to get

(24:38):
into Cuba. And this whole trip that Lee Harvey Oswald
took to Mexico City very close to when the assassination occurred.
Is one of those things that just has a ton
of conspiracy theories surrounding it, and rightly so, I mean,
that's completely understandable, especially because the US government spent quite

(24:59):
a lot of of blood, sweat and tears time trying
to convince people otherwise, and now all of a sudden
the stories changed, like, oh, wait, we did know he
was in Mexico City, and like, ah, we did, we didn't, Wow,
we did, we didn't. Well, yeah, and especially when you
bring into account the tumultuous relationship that the US had
with Cuba, right especially you're right around that time and

(25:21):
specifically involving President Kennedy. So what's next. I really appreciate
that you mentioned Cuba here exactly. There's a cable from
the FBI in nineteen sixty seven, and it's just a cable.
So it's like, I don't know something that can you
explain cables really fast? We talked about these before. A
telegram kind of it's just almost just a quick communication

(25:43):
kind of thing coming from an operative or from a
diplomat or something. It's a lot of times you'll hear
hear cables used with diplomatic community, right, A cable will
depending on the context. A cable can function as a
straight point to point beefing that is not going to
be vulnerable in theory, vulnerable to the same sort of

(26:05):
surveillance techniques that could be used in a traditional letter
or something happening over an open line. So it's very
much like a telegram. But the thing is with a telegram,
for instance, you know, um, Johnny john Q, public could
with the right equipment just tune in and then also
hear whatever's happening. Right, So a cable is supposed to

(26:27):
be a little bit uh, not like leak proof, but
more more Yeah, yeah, yeah, leak resistant, more secure, And
that's why you hear the folks at Wiki leaks Julian osans,
is he still locked up? I think he is. I
think he's still just doing the treadmill at the embassy. Yeah, okay, well,

(26:51):
Wiki Leaks, you know, lives on cables, right, reporting cables,
And I bring that up to point out again that
cables are in theory more secure, and surely I would
think that the cable, the term cable probably doesn't mean
the same thing as today as it did then, and
actually it just confirmed. It looks like it just refers

(27:12):
to a confidential text message. So I'm wondering if maybe
today it might just be some kind of encrypted person
to person communication. See and now on the document itself,
in big bolded type, it says sent by coded teletype. Ah,
there you go. Okay, so what happened? Oh so this

(27:33):
was talking about a Cuban gentleman who is being interrogated.
There's a lot to go through this one document for
this tiny little thing. But anyway, this gentleman who was
being interrogated was asked about whether or not Oswald was

(27:53):
a good shot, like just hey, is he you know,
is he good with the rifles? Are you a good sniper?
And the gentleman replied, oh, he was quite good. And
then when you know, he was further asked like, well,
why would you say that, and this gentleman said, well,
I knew him, this Cuban Cuban officer. So that's that's
another interesting thing, because you will find a lot of

(28:16):
experts and people who spend their entire careers researching just
this one day in Dallas in nineteen sixty three. Uh,
they believe that Oswald was actually a terrible shot, and
a lot of the evidence indicates that he was. He
was not the world's best sniper. And then you'll find
opposing evidence or opposing people with the opposing view that

(28:37):
he was actually an amazing crack shot. So maybe one
of those theories implies that he was some kind of
stooge or patsy, a fall guy or whatever, or was
in communication with Cuba or the Soviet Union via Cuba.
It is amazing. It's like, it's crazy. It goes on.
So remember what we said at the top, the official

(29:00):
were in commission conclusion was that Jack Ruby acted alone,
right and just did what he saw as his patriotic duty.
I'm killing the guy who killed the president. Yeah, you know,
instant karma's gonna get you, etc. Someone. It turns out,
as this was revealed in these classified files, someone called

(29:22):
the FBI threatening to kill Lee Harvey Oswald a day
before his murder. Wow. So a document from November twenty
fourth of sixty three indicated that j Edgar Hoover actually
addressed Oswald's death, specifically referencing that it was at the
hands of Jack Ruby, and the quote goes as follows.

(29:43):
Quote there is nothing further on the Oswald case except
that he is dead, Aux Hoover. Hoover then indicated that
agents in the FBI's Dallas Field office received a call
from a gentleman speaking in a very calm tone, who
who claimed to be a member of a committee that

(30:03):
was responsible for Oswald's assassination or they were a committee
that wanted to kill Oswald. Hello, I am a member
of a committee of concerned patriots, and we want you
to know that as patriots, we are planning to kill
the assassin of John F. Kennedy. Thank you for your time,

(30:25):
all right, then gonna log that call. So this this
situation develops further. Right now, we're getting into of course,
we're getting his jack or Hoover creep. Why is he
a creep? He's a creepy dude? Are you serious? Maybe?

(30:45):
I I Why do you think he's agreed because he
killed Martin Luther King Junior pretty obviously? Whoa dude? I've
never heard you that resolute about something like that. Well, okay, sorry,
he didn't pull the trigger. Yeah, but he ran He
ran active and illegal campaigns against against people that he

(31:07):
saw as a threat to his version of the status
quote I know he didn't he like have files on
like John Lennon even and then like he was basically
responsible for tailing anyone he saw it you're talking about
and tell pro Yeah, racist ultra nationalist power made all that,
but you use the term creep I thought, you know.

(31:29):
So Anyway, the FBI at this point contacted the Dallas
police just to reiterate to them, Hey, somebody just called
us and was really really creepy on the phone talking
about how they want to kill Oswald. Just do us
a favor and protect him, like really protect him please, Okay, yeah,
And they said, yeah, well, we'll totally do that, and

(31:49):
they did not. Yeah. Quote Ruby says no one was
associated with him and denies having made the telephone call
to our Dallas office last night. That's something Hoover said.
And Hoover went on to say that the FBI had
evidence of Oswald's guilt and intercepted communication he had with
Cuba and the Soviet Union. Hoover went on to say

(32:10):
he was concerned that there would be doubt in the
public sphere about Oswald's guilt and that President Johnson would
point a commission to investigate the assassination, which he did,
which that actually did happen. Yeah. However, Yeah, however, I
think at this point it's important for us to note
something we've mentioned on the show before. Yes, it's a

(32:33):
fascinating thing about the evolution of the phrase, the thought
terminating cliche, conspiracy theory. So, in the wake of the assassination,
US intelligence agencies sent confidential memos to various media institutions

(32:53):
of note like New York Times, Chicago Papers, San Francisco, etc.
And they look, here's the story. There's the official story.
If anyone says something different, make sure to make sure
to dismiss it and make sure to call it quote
a conspiracy theory. It's the originating place of this, right,

(33:19):
and that's how it entered the mainstream lexicon of the
United States. And that's why you have to be very careful.
You know, like we live in a world where there's
an information glut, and it's very very easy for someone
to go make a website that purports to be some
sort of legit news source, right, and then just write

(33:42):
all kinds of kakamami stuff, right, But you got to
be very careful when you hear everybody, and I mean
everybody in the West calling something a crazy conspiracy or
a person a conspiracy theorist writer shutting the stuff down
because you know, all right, I feel like I have

(34:03):
to do the rent just briefly, just briefly, just briefly, Okay, Yeah,
we've got like two more hours in the studio, right,
We're good, Okay, sorry, but just briefly. It is it
is a lack of critical thinking to say that anything
called a conspiracy theory is automatically um is automatically bullpoop, right,

(34:23):
because we're a family show, so you know, saying that
saying that, for instance, the Royal family of the United
Kingdom is descended from some secret race of half reptilian
alien half human hybrids, is that that would be called
a conspiracy theory, right, shout out to David Ike. Okay,

(34:44):
but then people are also calling a conspiracy theory to
say that international banks are laundry money for drug cards,
just like the whole use of like fake news right now,
you know, I mean, all stories and theories are not
created equal, and especially when a term is applied as
like a term of abuse or like a diminutive, that's
when things start getting sketchy. So it's like a conspiracy

(35:05):
theory versus a fringe notion or something, you know what
I mean, Like, I don't know when you when you
apply that term, it seems to large, large proportions of
the population discount the idea you know, a whole sure, Yeah, absolutely,
and that's a mistake. Yeah. And you know, I really
appreciate you bringing up the fake news concept because you're
absolutely right. Psychologically, we our species are built to seek classification, right,

(35:32):
to seek hierarchy, to seek order, which means that it's very,
very convenient to wrap everything up in a symbolic phrase
and throw that phrase in as a shortcut to critical thinking.
It's like I like jazz, but I don't like fusion.
It's just saying that. Yea. So now we're already in

(35:52):
the thick of it. We're finding out from these released
files that at least several things, at least in a
few cases, the things that the Warren Commission and the
US at large we're saying turned out not to be true.
They don't quite jab. No, there's no fusion. There's just jazz.
So let's insert right here. If you haven't already listened

(36:14):
to our episode on or maybe watched our video. I
don't know if we have an episode on it on
the Central Intelligence agencies and the US government's plans and
tactics to assassinate Fidel Castro of Cuba, because you need,
you need to get that information right now. We did
do a video on that. Yeah, yeah, pause, go watch
that video then come back. Well maybe if you're driving,

(36:36):
just hang out. Should we just got an ad break
to give them time to do it? We can? Yeah,
what do you say? What better time than the present?
And we've returned, Let's say you want to do a
couple more specific files. Yeah, we have to keep going.

(36:57):
There's so much stuff here right, I don't know. I
candidly do not know if we were going to get
to all of it. So we do. We do want
your help after you listen to this episode of Folks.
If there's something that you feel your fellow listeners need
to know about this release, please write to us and
let us know and we'll we'll put it on the
air as well. So the CIA did consider placing mafia

(37:19):
hits on Castro. Yeah, mafia hits. So they now that
you've listened or watched that video, you know that there
were some crazy theories or some crazy plans brought up
by the government in the United States to kill Fidel Castro.
Exploding cigars, weird umbrellas, stuff in wetsuits that was poising. Yes, yeah,

(37:41):
like from like the novelty store. Well but but but
little more, but really crazy stuff that doesn't seem true.
In the National Spy Museum, I think you can see
some of that stuff. There are a couple of other
places where you can find it. But this specifically was
a Rockefeller commission from nineteen seventy five, and he was

(38:02):
detailing the CIA's role in all kinds of foreign assassinations
and specifically plans to assassinate Castro in the early days
of the Kennedy administration. And the report said that Attorney
General Robert Kennedy, the brother of President JFK also assassinated. Yes,
and a whole other story, a whole series of episodes,
but we'll get into that some other time. He told

(38:23):
the FBI that he'd learned the CIA hired some intermediary,
another person, a third party to come through an approach
Sam gen Kanna Gian Kanna. Does that sound familiar to
you from the Terminator movies? No, this is a prominent
mafia person and known mafia person at the time, with

(38:45):
the proposition they broach this guy saying, hey, we're gonna
pay a hundred and fifty thousand dollars to get somebody
with it, either within your organization or somebody else, to
kill Castro in Cuba. Like, that's crazy. The government was
going to hire mafia hitman. Well, I mean it probably,
like you know, it gives them plausible deniability, right, I
mean if it's not like, if it's someone that's completely

(39:06):
not not connected to the government. Oh yeah, sure, in
this case, it would probably be layer upon layer upon layer.
If you're talking about the government hiring a mafia guy
to hire some other guys. And I know that one
hundred and fifty grand doesn't sound like a really big
amount of money, but today, right, right today, it's today. Yeah,
I did the inflation calculation work on this. Uh, it's

(39:29):
it's about one point two million dollars. Wow, I'd do
a hit for that. Well what, Well, here's the here's
the problem. Don't sit don't ever say that I redact that. Here,
here's the issue. The Attorney General, Robert Kennedy had been
trying to prosecute this gentleman. He know he's a Sicilian mobster.
They've got files on him, they've been trailing him, they've

(39:50):
been tracking him, they've been listening to him. They've been
trying to get him on something big. And if the
government is going to pay him that much money to
go do an assassination makes the state's case or the
you know, the government's case a little bit harder to prosecute.
Um quote. Attorney General Kennedy stated that CIA should never
undertake the use of mafia people again without first checking

(40:11):
with the Department of Justice. Check check in, y Yeah,
just check in, because it would be difficult to prosecute
such people in the future. But that's so weird though.
They didn't say never do this, No, they just say, guys,
just check in your dad first, ask your dead first. Yeah.
It was Robert Kennedy, So I was like, uh. The

(40:34):
report also said that the CIA was later interested in
using mobsters to deliver a poison pale to castro uh
to order to kill him. Thank you you got you know?
That was that was fantastic And I feel like there's
a little bit of President Obama influence in there. Oh,
there was the cadence I think you are. I think

(40:54):
Matt is just owning you just got a promotion, my friend?
WHOA WHOA am I impersonator in chief? Yes? Yes, so
pretend to be a president and call the CIA for
US and get this sorted out. Okay, good, Okay, Well
we're done here. Everybody have a great week. No continuing
though on this. One thing that's hugely important about this

(41:19):
point in specific, is that this sort of contradictory, this
contradictory set of pursuits by various government agencies, this situation
where the left hand does not know what the right
hand is doing, lends a lot of credence and gives
a lot of sand to the claims that intelligence agencies
in the US and in other countries function as their

(41:42):
own independent governments. Yeah. Absolutely, And then you imagine that
these independent governments, you know, in their own functionings, sometimes
doing the same work or at least overlapping, sometimes just
doing vastly different stuff. But is there anyone in charge?
When you think about the government that we've elected for

(42:03):
the people, by the people, democracy that we have in
this country, Like you've got these operating hands, if you will,
and this octopus, like where is the head? I don't
think it's the elected official. This is the point that
if you cut off one head and grows somewhere else,
so that there's so many heads that you don't know
which one's the real head. Oh my god, what is happening?

(42:25):
I am seriously, I am waiting at some point, I
you know, I know not everybody loves Marvel movies, but
at some point I'm hoping that a stranger like shakes
my hand and like whispers Halidram. You know you should
just start doing that with people. I can't do it. No, No,
let's go over real well at parties, it's like you

(42:45):
can't give yourself a nickname. You can't be the one
who goes up to people and says hail Hider, I
got you well, like started start the conversation would be like, hey,
did you hear Taylor swifts new stuff? Man? I was
jamming on it all day, The Deil Too Much Best
Great Mean This Morning where it was squid word from
SpongeBob and it was like a split screen where it's
like his eyes closed and it says you when you're

(43:07):
asleep and realize Taylor Swift's new album comes out at
midnight and the next frame was the same as my
wife is Paul's head because he was stoked about it.
The single tier, Oh my gosh, oh ann Maria Bamf's
new show or the second season comes out to check
it out. It's awesome, Okay, plugging other shows and albums. Yes, well,

(43:31):
it's important. This is important stuff, you know, and we
are we are very conscious that this kind of sifting
through archival information can be dry, right, and we also
acknowledge that we're talking about stuff that has dangerous implications

(43:52):
in the present day, and we're we're trying to keep
our chins up about it. But the situation is dire
as we record this, and there are a ton more
documents that we didn't discuss. I mean literally thousands, and
each of them probably has a tiny little story to tell.
And that's why we're encouraging you to go in and
do some of the research yourself, or at least sift

(44:14):
through the news sites. Well let's we're not even to
the crazy, but let's laundry list a couple okay, yeah, okay,
so FBI director, and again this is this is a
lot of MATS research you need to spot on job man,
Thank you so much. You got it. So FBI Director
Hoover right forwarded a memo to the White House in
sixty three, right after Kennedy's death, and it was this

(44:39):
memo was classified as top secret for years, and it's
it's it's exploring the US Intelligence agency's best guesses toward
the Soviet Union's reaction to the assassination. Yeah, and we
have a quote here. According to our source, official of

(45:00):
the Communist Party of the Soviet Union believe that there
was some well organized conspiracy on the part of the
ultra right in the United States to affect a coup.
They seem convinced that the assassination was not the deed
of one man, but that it arose out of a
carefully planned campaign in which several people played a part. WHOA, Now,

(45:21):
are they falling prey to the conspiracy theories? Are they
spreading propaganda? Because we do know after the assassination, the
USSR did pretty effectively capitalize on the opportunity to spread
dissent and shout out to General Smedley Butler. We do

(45:42):
know that there have been coup attempts in the United States.
You're typically not going to read about them in your
history books. Smedley Sedley m D. L. E. Y sounds
like a made up name. I love it. Speaking speaking
of my daddy, George HW. Bush, his daddy, my grandpa,
my grandpappy. He's the guy who supposedly went through and

(46:05):
decided to do the business plot. Isn't that crazy? My
daddy was a businessman and his daddy was a business man.
My daddy was a CIA man. President President Bush. Yeah, yeah,
thank you for coming by. We're in the middle of
the show though. Oh well, I'm sorry. I'll just go
in the corner and do some painting. Okay, all right,
all right, I'll be over here. Okay, Hey, can you sleep, Matt? Yeah?

(46:30):
Why do you keep bringing that guy to this? Why
do you keep letting push you around like that? He
just pushes you out of your chair and then does
this is a little creepy laugh. I gotta admit. When
he was in office, just I know, it's okay. I
can hear you talking about me over there, I know,
just give me two seconds. Okay. When he was in office,
I wasn't the biggest fan. But afterwards, like this guy
is chill, Yeah, like he is so cool. He's just painting.

(46:52):
He likes to go to gamel. He likes to go
to briefs games. Did you know he can play the
rhythm guitar part for every three eleven song? Dude, I've
been trying to learn the you know. Did you know
that amber is the color of his energy? He keeps
saying that. I feel like he thinks that that was
his idea, But it's clearly a lyric from three to eleven? Right, Okay,
so point peede, yes, before we get through derailed. These

(47:16):
various these various pieces of information are coming out, and
in many cases, if they are not contradicting the official narrative,
they are at the very least complicating it. Yes, you know,
so we have we have people who are saying, ah,
never mind this official stuff called all a conspiracy theory.

(47:38):
But that then at the same time, we are finding
secret communication between people where an intelligence agency is saying, ah,
pretty much everybody thinks, like the world's other superpowers, pretty
convinced that not one guy did this exactly. And then
they're like, okay, well don't tell anybody, just want you

(48:00):
to know, and let's just keep it secret. That's it
feels strange now, but we have to we have to understand,
one of the one of the most vulnerable points of
any any state powers existence is always going to be
the succession, right, the passage of power from one typically

(48:20):
one individual to another. So for instance, in the case
of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, North Korea, one
of the things that is always a big flashpoint and
really dangerous part of time for the world, not just
in that region, is when they pass from father to son.
I don't know what's going to happen, you know, look

(48:42):
at it, Look at Turkey, right, look at Italy. This
so in the context of the time, this is very,
very dangerous for the US. It is vulnerable now in
a way that it has not been right at least
for a long long time since the probably the death
of Lincoln is the last time it was that vulnerable.

(49:05):
And let's see one more example, maybe absolutely okay, So
for our last entry for the day, we have a document,
a top secret document from nineteen seventy five that was
created for the Rockefeller Commission. And in this document there
is a transcript of a testimony of a former CIA

(49:25):
director by the name of Richard Helms. And in this document,
Helms says that he believes that former President Richard Nixon
old Tricky Dickey believed that the CIA was actually directly
responsible for assassinating the South Vietnamese president go Den Dean,

(49:48):
who died after a coup that was linked to the
Central Intelligence Agency. And we've got a quote from Helms himself, right,
we do. Indeed, it goes as quote, there's absolutely no
evidence of this in the agency records. And the whole
thing has been I mean, rather, what is the word
I want? Heated by the fact that President Johnson used

(50:10):
to go around saying that the reason President Kennedy was
assassinated was that he had assassinated President Team and this
was just justice. And then Helms ads, uh, where he
gotten this from? I don't know, and just yeah, this
is during a deposition, and there was the context of

(50:30):
the conversations that Helms was asked if there was any
way Oswald was in some way a CIA agent or
an asset or an operative or an agent of something else.
And that's right when the document ends. But is this
when the story ends. We've given just a few examples, right,

(50:51):
And I know that this episode is running a little
a little long because we're digging into this stuff. But
the big question is is this the whole story? That's
where one document ends. Where does the story end? Are
we finally, in twenty seventeen, up to speed on exactly
what the US intelligence agency did or did not know

(51:14):
regarding this assassination. I don't think we're there. Here's where
it gets crazy. Some of these files we mentioned right
are still secret. They were all supposed to be released,
and they were released under if you're listening to this
in the future, they were released under the auspice of
the Trump administration, right, But not all of them were

(51:39):
released they were supposed to be And we have no
idea when more even if the other stuff will ever
make it into the public sphere. In the eleventh hour,
right before this stuff went public became declassified. Intelligence agencies,
the FBI, CIA, all your favorite alphabet soup members of

(52:04):
the US government. They pressured Trump successfully or in pressured
the administration, I should say, successfully, to keep some of
the stuff secret pass the due date. In light of
everybody's favorite boogeyman, national security, national security, What does that mean?

(52:27):
It's just like tagging base, you know, okay, you know,
like anytime you don't want to tell the public something
your own national security. You know, I'd say I wish
I could do that in my private life. For the
good of the realm, Can we just say that from
now on? We can? We can try it. Well, let's
have let's let's let's call up some of our friends

(52:48):
over there in the intelligence agencies and just say, hey, man,
from now on, if you're gonna say national security, dude,
those guys are not your friends. I've been on the
phone with FBI Field Office a couple of times now
working on this other stuff. I think I've got some sway.
I know Paul. Paul's got sway all over Atlanta right now.
Superproducer Paul. Yeah, he can make some calls and just
be like, guys, it's now for the good of the realm.

(53:10):
One call, that's Paul. That's pretty good. That's pretty good, Paul.
So so, unless you are as fortunate as the three
of us to have a superproducer like Paul right in
your circle, you are probably lost at sea a little bit. Conceptually,

(53:31):
when you hear the phrase national security, it's one of
those words that just gets thrown around willy nilly, the
same way that people used to add the descriptor digital
in front of everything in the nineties, it didn't matter
what it was. It was digital, you could charge five
dollars more. So, national security in this context could mean

(53:51):
several things. Let's break down into let's say three or
four things. First is preventing the spread of intelligence techniques, strategies,
spycraft highly important. Absolutely, there's the methods of gathering intelligence,
not the intelligence itself, right right, because if somebody else
knows how this stuff was gathered, then the jig is up.

(54:13):
They can protect against it, right exactly, This is an
understandable concern, right if forever we're talking about what nineteen
sixties and prior to that, maybe a little bit after that,
but mostly you're dealing with before the assassination, so late fifties,
early sixties technology. So if this stuff is held back
to protect techniques from the nineteen forties, it's literally on

(54:37):
display in spy museums around the country. Right, then the
question becomes, can you plausibly believe, right apply critical thinking,
can you plausibly believe that some of the world's most
well funded intelligence operatives would still be using the same
techniques for decades? Well, I have to just interject here

(54:57):
and say I think some of the techniques are very
much human and psychologically based chat perhaps maybe existing in
some of these documents humans right, yes, yes, yes, exactly,
which are the shortened terms for human intelligence versus signals intelligence.
The second, the second category here genre of national security,

(55:20):
would be to protect the existing relationship between the United
States and a foreign government. Clearly very important. Yeah, and
you know, we have a lot of what did somebody
just called this on NPR called the China and the
United States frenemies. But it's we have a lot of
those that we've cultivated over the years. Those relationships. There

(55:43):
is no such thing as friendship in a geopolitical sphere.
There are interests that aligne exactly, interested align temporarily or
you know, maybe in long term for a specific thing. Sure, so, yeah,
I completely agree. Now we have another question. If information
is being withheld to protect the relationship, the confidential relationship

(56:04):
between two countries, then this would mean that there could
either be privileged knowledge somebody maybe has a skeleton in
the closet, right, maybe maybe the Union knows something that
the US public doesn't, right, or there could be collusion
on the part of another country. Right, Oh, that would

(56:25):
never happen, No, I'm not here man. It's crazy. It's
crazy talk, right U. And one example of this, of course,
as we mentioned, the be the USSR's efforts to spread
propaganda after the assassination, or of course, similar attempts by
the US in other foreign countries, very similar attempts, or

(56:48):
the worst, strikingly similar work. So there's here's the here's
the here's the third genre. It could be when they
say national security, it could mean protecting the lives of
current or former government officials. Right. So, let's say one
of the theories we hear a lot about JFK is

(57:09):
that a secret service member accidentally fired the fatal shot
as one of the theories, right, again unproven? Right? So
what is when we talked about government conspiracies, there's people
often go to the idea of some great collusion in advance. Right.

(57:32):
The same the same institution that cannot, for the life
of it figure out how to do effective policy, is
also capable of these supervillain level Rube Goldberg machinations. Right. Yeah,
Its razor lends itself to covering up a mistake. Right,

(57:53):
So how much more realistic is it that someone screwed
up and the people are trying to remove that from history.
So imagine being a retired official and the public learns
that you did something negligent, right, accidental, unintentional, and then
you find yourself up a very dangerous creek with no

(58:17):
paddle whatsoever, especially in the age of cheap information. Totally.
So in conclusion, here, guys, the craziest thing is that,
at least according to Trump's Twitter feed, he has released
everything and long ahead of schedule. That's what he's saying. However,

(58:38):
it seems pretty certain that there's at least a small
number of documents that remain hidden. It seems pretty clear.
But what we do have is thousands more documents to
tread through. And you know, as researchers and historians and

(58:59):
inns are going through all of this stuff, you know,
perhaps there's going to be some new revelation. Maybe not
the kind of thing that I'm was hoping for after
all of these years, but something. Surely they wouldn't let
it out though, man. I mean, you know, they know
what's in there. They're giving people something to play with
and you know, feel good about or whatever, feel like informed,

(59:22):
But there's not going to be an answer. The government
wouldn't allow that to happen. I don't. I don't think.
And if it's, if it's a case of national security,
then again the implications are dangerous. It's twenty seventeen, yeah,
and if that stuff still applies, I think we can
all agree. I think we can all agree, folks that
the idea of protecting a spycraft technique from the forties

(59:45):
to the sixties doesn't pan out. It's like tape recorders
and suitcases, dude, like they're on display like in the
spin music. I see, it's I don't know. Well, in
my opinion, there's still the possibility that there's a needle
inside this haystack, but there hasn't been enough time and
enough human hands and eyes working through it. So will

(01:00:05):
you at least agree with me that the government knows
exactly what's in there? Though, I mean again, we're dealing
with the octopus with they do. So yeah, I don't
know if everybody knows, because there are, yeah, there are
factions at play. There are factions, and it's been a
long time, and humans die. That's the one thing we

(01:00:26):
all do now, is there is there something there? There
must be there, There must be otherwise the intelligence agencies
would not have pressured the current administration so strongly not
to release some stuff in the previous several ran the
previous several So there is there is something something is
rotten in this particular Denmark, right, So are you planning

(01:00:48):
on going through these files? You can do it. You
can find them literally search new JFK files and you
will find the National Archives link that has a spreadsheet
in it, and it also has every single file on
that website. So if you have an Internet connection and
a little hotzpa, you can get in there and just
start doing it. Because I've been going through it for

(01:01:09):
the past several days just trying to find things, but
there's just too much. And like we said, you're going
to find all kinds of weird phrases in there. And
there's something I want to point everyone too if you're
going to look into this, it's the Merry Ferrell Foundations
CIA cryptomes two point z. It's a really cool website.
You can go to m A R Y F E

(01:01:31):
R R E l L dot org and you can
find this thing and it has a huge list that's
crowdsourced of all these different acronyms and stuff that are
used by all the intelligence agencies to represent certain things.
And it's fascinating when you go through these documents and
you see legend kind of like it actually gives you
like a little yeah, yeah, exactly, and it's it's not

(01:01:52):
just a you know, ibex ob ibex equals this or
you know, whatever it is. It gives you a full
description of all the different ways that it can be used,
things that it can refer to. It's it's really neat.
I'm on that as soon as we wrap here. So
tell us what you find and while you're online, find

(01:02:13):
us if you haven't already. You can find us on Instagram,
you can find us on Twitter, you can find us
on Facebook. We have names that are all approximations of
conspiracy stuff. Yes, you know, and we would love to
hear your opinion specifically. Have you already looked into this?
Do you think that there is something important yet to

(01:02:34):
be revealed? Did we miss something? Let us know and
we'll put it in the shout out. And speaking of
shout outs, we want to thank everybody who wrote in
to us via various different things, you know, social media,
snail mail, mirrors in the dark at midnight, cables, cables.

(01:02:56):
We see all of it in actually for this episode,
but it is on pretty excessively long, so we're going
to hold it back for the next one. But we
you know, I know, we don't do it every episode,
but we're going to try to get back into doing
the shout out corner. We have a we have a
actually we have a a astonishing piece of correspondence that
we received recently. Yes, and we want to give it

(01:03:18):
its full do so please do tune in next week
because unlike the US government, we actually release revelatory things.
That's right until we get shout I was a sick
burn on the US government. You know, I'm punchy today, man.
And without actually going to shout out corner, we want
to give a huge shout out to Samuel who sent

(01:03:39):
us something in the snail mail. So can we just
say what it is? Signet rings they go on your
pinky and you can seal documents with wax with them. Yea.
I took the one that has the alien head. I'm
very excited about it. Mine's sort of like a looks
sort of like a Coca Pele kind of figure. I
don't think that's what it is, but Samuel, what is it?

(01:03:59):
What's what's the squad ugly one. I took it because
I thought it was neat looking, but I don't quite
know what it is. Ben's yours is Illuminati triangle, right
they all see nine yea. So we will put pictures
of these rings up and go check us out on Instagram.
And that's the end of this classic episode. If you
have any thoughts or questions about this episode, you can

(01:04:23):
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