Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 10/8/24: Kamala Says Iran Greatest Threat, US Approved IDF Aid Strikes, Hillary Demands Censorship, CIA Caught In Major Coverup

Episode Date: October 8, 2024

Saagar and Ryan discuss Kamala says Iran greatest threat to US, US approved Israel bombing aid trucks, Hillary demands censorship, CIA caught covering up key JFK facts.    To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show AD FREE, uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.com/   Merch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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shaping the Black community. From breaking headlines to cultural milestones, the Black Information Network delivers the facts, I also want to address the Tonys. Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I had high hopes. To hear this and more on disappointment and protecting your peace, listen to Checking In with Michelle Williams from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey guys, Ready or Not 2024 is here and we here at Breaking Points

are already thinking of ways we can up our game for this critical election. We rely on our premium subs to expand coverage, upgrade the studio, add staff, give you guys the best independent coverage that is possible. If you like what we're all about, it just means the absolute world to have your support. But enough with that. Let's get to the show. During our 60 Minutes interview, Kamala Harris was also asked a question that it seems like she wasn't quite ready for. And you might not be ready for the answer here. Let's take a listen.

Which foreign country do you consider to be our greatest adversary? I think there's an obvious one in mind, which is Iran. Iran has American blood on their hands, okay? This attack on Israel, 200 ballistic missiles, what we need to do to ensure that Iran never achieves the ability to be a nuclear power. That is one of my highest priorities. So if you have proof that Iran is building a nuclear weapon, would you take military action? I'm not going to talk about hypotheticals at this moment. I'm sorry, what? What?

I've been upset about this basically from the moment that I saw this because- This was not in the interview, it was in the overtime part. First of all, why didn't they put that in there? That's an insane thing to say. So we're talking about a regional power, non-nuclear state, maybe nuclear, that threatens Israel. That is the right answer if your name is Israel. If you're the president of the United States, look, even within a liberal framework, say Russia. Russia is a stupid answer too, but you can make a case for it, right? It's got nukes. It invaded Ukraine. All right, I still think that's not all that high priority in their idiotic worldview. I get it. Yeah, exactly. You got boomers who are worried

about, you know, oh, yeah, I lose through drills or whatever. Okay. So I get that. I still think it's an incredibly dumb answer. But Iran? And notice that she said it's our greatest threat. She talks about American blood on their hands. I assume that she's talking about those proxy attacks on U.S. soldiers, three killed in that Jordanian attack recently and then previously the war in Iraq. But then she starts talking about Israel. Hold on a second. You said our greatest adversary, not Israel's greatest adversary. I mean, that is honestly one of the most troubling answers I have ever heard from a presidential candidate, because what does that mean for your worldview of what you think adversary to the United States is? Not to Israel, not voting for the president

of Israel. Supposed to be voting for the president who's looking at our commerce. I mean, like I just said, you could make a fine case for Russia. I still think it's dumb. China's the most obvious answer. Even within that, I mean, Biden says China, right? Like, what are we doing here with Iran? Yeah, I think she treated it as a pop quiz, didn't know the answer, and reached for one. Oh my gosh. I don't think she actually believes that Iran is our biggest threat. How cool, though, would it be to have a president who said none? The only thing we have to fear is fear itself. Honestly, that would be a better answer.

Again, I don't agree with that necessarily. But I could make a philosophical case in one where America is so powerful that our own division and lack of unity is a threat to us, to global instability, and to other nations. In fact, I don't not believe that, but I just think that they're within the framework of greatest adversary. But I just have no idea how you arrived at Iran. Also notice, Ryan, she didn't even think about it. She immediately went to it.

It's like, if you look back at those previous debates, and I said this on Twitter, I was like, I honestly think that is the stupidest answer to this question in several decades. During the Cold War, it was not really that difficult. The only time where it's ever been in flux is that 2012 famous debate, Romney and Obama, where Romney says Russia and Obama correctly makes fun of him. He's like, well, we don't have bandits anymore, Mr. Romney, and all that. And Obama was right, by the way, because he said China. But in the year of our Lord, 2024, to say Iran is so crazy. Again, we are not talking about a nation that in any way, like when you say greatest adversary,

you are talking about global competition. You are talking about somebody who poses a genuine existential threat to the superpower. There is only one nation in the world for which that's not even 100% true, but you can make a case for it, and that's China. That's why the Russia one is so dumb. And that's why Iran, I mean, again, we're talking about shipping lanes. Okay, fine. You know, a little damage to the U.S. economy. I'm not even saying it would be good. I think it would be a disaster, you know, to get into a war with Iran. But to say our greatest adversary, they're doing backflips in

Beijing. They're doing backflips in Moscow over this. If you're so dumb that you think that, I can't help you. I think the actual answer to this is that our greatest adversary is ourselves, our own military adventurism, our recklessness, and also our sanctions policy, which Jeff Stein has covered so well. Our sanctions policy, which is going to eventually drive the rest of the world to stop using the dollar, which is the main thing. I think that's a fine answer. And the reason why, again, this is fine, is it acknowledges like superpower status. And it's like, actually, the only threat to us is ourselves because we're so big, we're so powerful that only our own missteps can lead us into disaster, which is true. I mean, if you look at Iraq and all,

nobody could have damaged America more than the American invasion of Iraq. But yeah, I mean, I just, ideologically, framework-wise, to talk about Iran. I mean, also, when you say our greatest adversary, at least on Russia and China, we have a limiting principle of war called nuclear weapons. At the end of the day, that stops it from escalating into the worst areas. With Iran, they don't have nukes, at least not yet. And we're on the precipice of a potential Israeli strike on nuclear facilities or even oil facilities, which could lead to blowback. That actually could lead to a full-blown hot war, which would draw the United States in almost certainly. So is that where we're setting the stage here? I mean, that's the crazy part too. The latest leaks out of Israel are that they have decided not to target the nuclear sites

because they're inside of a mountain and they can't do it. We paid them off, begged them not to do it. Instead, they're going to attack the oil industry, which Iran has said it will respond by attacking Saudi, Iraq, and other oil fields throughout the Middle East and just setting the entire thing on fire. So we'll see how that goes. We have an interesting example of our own recklessness that I was referring to over at Dropsite. If you can put up this element here. Our correspondent over in Israel, Yaniv Kogan, writes this piece, Blinken-approved policy to bomb aid trucks, Israeli cabinet members suggest. Wow. And that might sound crazy.

Go read the story. I'll put the link in the description down below. What Yaniv identified here is that October 16th and 17th, from the end of the early morning hours of the 17th, Secretary of State Blinken goes to Israel. So this is 10 days after the attack. And humanitarian aid has been cut off to Gaza. First thing that Netanyahu says to him is that, look, I can't actually lift this siege. I've got people in my cabinet who don't want a bottle of aspirin getting into Gaza. And he says, I will negotiate this with Biden, not with you. And Blinken says,

Biden's not getting on a plane and coming to visit here unless you change this policy. Okay. And so Blinken thinks that that bluster is going to move Netanyahu. He meets him six hours later. Netanyahu still hasn't moved. So what Yanni reports here, Blinken sits down with the security cabinet of Israel and they hash out a humanitarian aid policy. And the policy that they finally agree to is that, OK, we will let in some aid trucks, not through Israel, though we'll let them come in through Egypt. Egypt has to basically let us monitor everything that's going in. And if we believe that there is any Hamas involvement

with any of these aid convoys, we are allowed to strike those convoys. And Blinken then signs off on those. And one of the key pieces of evidence of this, the first draft was published in English, which is kind of a giveaway. It's going back and forth. And the word that they use to thwart, they say, we will thwart it if it's connected to Hamas. We will thwart the convoy is the same Hebrew word, Yanni points out, that they often use to describe assassinations. So thwart is, they're clear about what's going on here. The State Department's spokesperson, Matthew Miller, was asked by Sayyid Erekat yesterday about this report at the State Department briefing. Let's take a listen to that.

Let me ask you about a report in Dropside. And it says that Secretary Blinken approved a policy to bomb aid trucks. That's what an Israeli cabinet member said. Are you aware of this report and do you have any comment? I am aware of the report. I'm glad you asked me about it. Look, the suggestion that we in any way signed off on bombing humanitarian convoys is absurd. It's just not true. Of course, Israel has the right to target Hamas militants.

That has always been the case. And so look, if you had a situation where Hamas commandeered a convoy and Hamas militants were operating a convoy, of course, Israel would have the right to strike those militants. That's not been the situation that we've seen over the past year, except in some very limited circumstances. There have been a few reports here and there of Hamas commandeering convoys, in most cases, returned quickly to the humanitarian organizations. There's not been any widespread evidence that we have seen of Hamas actually taking convoys and commandeering them, which is, I think, the scenario or the proposition of this scenario presumes. So the strikes that Israel has conducted on humanitarian convoys have been times when they have had failures in their deconfliction processes, where they have had intelligence failures, and when they've just made basic mistakes. And the thing that we have made clear about those

is that those mistakes are unacceptable and that humanitarian workers need to be protected and humanitarian aid needs to be protected. So the idea that anyone in this department signed off on bombing humanitarian comrades is just absolutely ridiculous. So if you notice there, Sagar, he starts by calling the report absurd, any one of this department signed off on bombing humanitarian convoys is just absolutely ridiculous. So if you notice there, Sagar, he starts by calling the report absurd, but then throughout the answer, he basically confirms the report that if Israel believes that Hamas is involved with these convoys, then of course they have the right to strike it. That rationale is of course the one that the IDF has used each time it has struck a convoy. If you think back to the World Central Kitchen attack that killed all those aid workers, they said,

well, we thought that there were a couple Hamas militants at some point before it went into the warehouse, and we thought maybe they were still there. Every attack on an aid convoy has used this very rationale. The other policy option available is, you know what, don't attack humanitarian aid convoys. Let's just have that as our policy. That's an available policy, and still to this day, not one that the U.S. has insisted on. I mean, the report itself, I actually encourage people to go read it. But on the response from Matt Miller, what did you make then of his categorical denial? Or was there room for this within his framework? What did you think of that? So if you're used to parsing these responses, absurd is a word that they use that's not a

categorical denial. Oh, I like that. Right. Yeah. It's absurd, but it could be. Yeah. It doesn't actually mean it's not true. That's good. And then he later says, of course, you know, if Hamas has commandeered an aid convoy, then Israel has a right to strike that. That's what we reported. Got it. And so they're confirming that that is the policy. Because like I said, the alternative policy is we don't care who is driving the aid convoy. You don't strike an aid convoy. If something happens to an aid convoy, you deal with that later in other ways. The Flower Massacre, where 100 plus people or so were slaughtered at this intersection. There was a Hamas security official who was in charge of

the security around that delivery of the flour. This is often who aid organizations are communicating with, the Hamas police officials. Hamas is the de facto government. So you're going to find Hamas. And if you're Israel, you have been saying for years that UNRWA is a front for Hamas. So a low-level or mid-level operative who is behind the button on the drone, all, oh, UNRWA? Well, we already believe that they're a front for Hamas and thoroughly infiltrated and a terrorist organization that ought to be banned. There's UNRWA. And you see one guy with a gun like, all right, well, we're going to hit this aid convoy. It also raises the question, who do they want to do security for these aid convoys? Is Blackwater available for business to start shepherding aid convoys through Gaza?

What are they talking about? So the result is that aid convoys get struck. And the result of an aid convoy getting struck is not just that that particular flower or water or medicine doesn't get delivered, but then the aid organization itself not only has lost personnel, but usually stops for an extended period of time delivering aid. What do you make of this in the context of previous stuff you guys have reported about Blinken and his overruling of things within the department? That he's effectively acted as basically an attorney for like Smotrich and Ben-Gavir, like taking their harshest ideological positions and massaging them into something that's acceptable from a U.S. perspective. And I think that if you delved into his heart of hearts or something, what he would

be saying is, look, it was either this or abject starvation because they were telling me that not a single aspirin was going to get in. And I got 50 trucks in. And then the next day, there were 60 trucks in. And yes, the result was that some convoys got struck. And that's unfortunate. But the alternative was much worse. So I think that that's what they would argue. But on the other hand, it's the greatest superpower in the history of the world that is just getting walked around by a client state. That's what Al-Khawar underscores to me.

It's like we go through all this bureaucratic BS to approve all of this Israeli violation of U.S. law. And then you see the same machine kick in to justify anything Ukraine wants to do. And it's like when you put those two things together, you're like, what are we doing here? These are choices. Yeah, yeah. These are explicit choices. These are by, I mean, if anything,

it seems to me like Blinken is such a powerful force because Biden is so cooked and so irrelevant that Blinken does run a lot of US foreign policy with respect to these discrete choices. When Biden can coherently be like, just give them whatever they want. But he's the one actually mechanically executing all of this. There was a new Axios report this morning. I love new Axios reports.

Absolutely. Four sources say that Biden is increasingly frustrated and doesn't trust. He doesn't trust that the Israelis are honest brokers when it comes to their talks with him. It's like, okay, got it. Very useful. Any other plans on the State Department? When's the next briefing? Today.

I'll be at it. I was at this one, and I got dissed on the follow-up. What do you want to ask him today? I don't know. People should. What do you want to ask him today? I don't know. People should tell me what they want to ask. One thing I have been wanting to ask is what happened to the American concern for civilian casualties? When Israel bombed this top Hamas command, killed a top Hamas commander in 2002, it was six months after 9-11. Oh, you're talking about the Bush administration.

I remember this. Six months after 9-11, Islamophobia and fear of terrorists is ripping through the American body politic. They take out a top Hamas commander and kill like eight civilians or so in that strike. Bush, like the Bush administration loses it on them. Like this is an unacceptable civilian death toll. Now you can take out two to 300 civilians in a single strike aimed at a top Hezbollah commander. And the answer from

the state department is, well, you know, Hezbollah shouldn't be near all of these civilians. Right. Not even, not even a reference in a Lloyd Austin statement or a Blinken statement or a Biden statement or a Harris statement, not even a line that says that this civilian death toll is unacceptable. What happened? So I'm curious from their perspective, what happened in the 20 years since then to make it so that we're cool with that? You should ask them that. I'd like to see that. I remember I brought that up before about the Bush administration, how in 2002, even Ari Fleischer, who actually, that's the ironic part.

Fleischer said that in 2002, but now he's on Fox News being like, actually, Israel is the most moral army in the history of the world. I'm like, wait, but I know nothing matters, but you said that. He'd be like, well, that was President Bush, not me. Yeah, you're the compassionate conservative. Amazing. Camp Shane, one of America's longest-running weight loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results.

Campers who began the summer in heavy bodies were often unrecognizable when they left. In a society obsessed with being thin, it seemed like a miracle solution. But behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children was a dark underworld of sinister secrets. Kids were being pushed to their physical and emotional limits as the family that owned Shane turned a blind eye. Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually like a horror movie. In this eight-episode series,

we're unpacking and investigating stories of mistreatment and reexamining the culture of fatphobia that enabled a flawed system to continue for so long. You can listen to all episodes of Camp Shame one week early and totally ad-free on iHeart True Crime Plus.

So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today. Over the past six years of making my true crime podcast hell and gone, I've learned one thing. No town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend. I've received hundreds of messages from people across the country begging for help with unsolved murders. I was calling about the murder of for help with unsolved murders.

I was calling about the murder of my husband at the cold case. They've never found her. And it haunts me to this day. The murderer is still out there. Every week on Hell and Gone Murder Line, I dig into a new case, bringing the skills I've learned as a journalist and private investigator to ask the questions no one else is asking. Police really didn't care to even try. She was still somebody's mother. She was still somebody's daughter. She was still somebody's

sister. There's so many questions that we've never gotten any kind of answers for. If you have a case you'd like me to look into, call the Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is your girl T.S. Madison and I'm coming to you loud, live,

and in color from the Outlaws podcast. Let me tell you something. I broke the internet with a 22-inch weed. 22 inches. My superpower? I've got the voice.

My kryptonite? It don't exist. Get a job. My podcast? The one they never saw coming. Each week, I sit down with the culture creators and scroll stoppers. Tina knows. Lil Nas X.

Will we ever see a dating show for the love of Lil Nas X? We should do a show show all my exes. X marks the spot. No, here it is. My next ex. That's actually cute, though. Laverne Cox. I have a core group of girlfriends that, like, they taught me how to love.

And Chapel Rome. I was dropped in 2020, working the drive-thru, and here we are now. We turned side-eye into sermons, pain into punchline, and grief, we turn those into galaxies. Listen, make sure you tell Beyonce, I'm going right on the phone right now and call her. Listen to Outlaws with T.S. Madison on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts, honey. All right, let's move on to Hillary Clinton. This is something I've been wanting to put in the show for quite some time.

I actually watched this interview live. I was sitting in the state of Pennsylvania. It was in the morning. My father-in-law loves to keep CNN on. Don't ask me why. But I was forced to endure this struggle session. And this, it's funny because it's one of those things where Smirconish clearly does not realize the magnitude of what actually just was said. But if you're listening carefully, you're like, that's one of the most insane things I've ever heard.

So here we have Hillary talking about how imperative it is to censor and to monitor content. Let's take a listen. There should be a lot of things done. We should be, in my view, repealing something called Section 230, which gave platforms on the Internet immunity because they were thought to be just pass-throughs, that they shouldn't be judged for the content that is posted. But we now know that that was an overly simple view, that if the platforms, whether it's

Facebook or Twitter X or Instagram or TikTok, whatever they are, if they don't moderate and monitor the content, we lose total control. We lose total control. All right. So what do we take away from that, Ryan? We lose total control. Right. Who's the we and what are you controlling? What are you controlling? What are we talking? You know, it's interesting too, we should consider like what the context of this interview actually happens because it happened within the general context of being asked, not necessarily about social media, but about the election strife ahead of this election. So that was specifically being talked about in the context of quote-unquote misinformation ahead of the current election. And I was thinking, wow, that's very revealing, isn't it? It also gets to the bitterness of Hillary because you have to remember that the

through line for all of this is still Russia 2016. And now they've faux-intellectualized the argument about all this. And look, you know, the whole Section 230 thing, there's arguments to be made, actually. I've seen from the right, from the left about it, about liability and all that. But if you're making the argument explicitly to say that we need straight up much more criminal liability for platforms for spreading misinformation, that gives the game away in a very certain sense. Yeah. And it also suggests that she still believes that most of big tech, obviously she feels like Twitter has fallen, but she still feels like most of big tech is susceptible to her pressure. Yeah. there, that they're not doing enough according to her, but she feels like if she makes the case, if Democrats put enough pressure on them, they can.

Yeah, 230 is interesting for people to know. That's the section of the law that says that if you're a platform, basically, let's say you're a comment section, that you are not personally liable, that your company is not liable for something that somebody says in a comment section because the argument is that you can't have a free-flowing debate of user-generated content if you have to fact-check every single thing that every Tom an equal chance and that the published product of that platform was the sum of the parts of the voices that were allowed to flow freely into it. So the argument is if you're no longer balanced and your algorithm is pushing something far to the left or pushing something far to the right or driving a particular narrative, then you are actually a publisher

and you no longer should have the shield of 230. Let's say, to take Twitter for example, if they can prove that Musk goes in and puts his thumb on the scale, or old Twitter. If with old Twitter you could prove that they were going in and putting their thumb on the scale and pushing it in Biden's direction on the Hunter Biden story or whatever else, then you would say, well, actually that's not protected. And you now can be sued for defamation. I just think the context of this, well, actually, you know what? We never got to talk

because that also came after that Tim Walz clip from the debate. We haven't spent enough time. We all had to move on. But yeah, okay, as a leftist, give us the take on why Tim Walls was wrong. Shocking for Tim Walls. Well, first of all, he did the stupid, you can't yell fire in a crowded theater. Which is fake. Yeah, it's actually incorrect. Hey, if there's a fire, you absolutely can. And if you yell fire in a crowded theater and you do not cause panic, then that also is fine. Like you're allowed to do that. Right. This is a commonly cited thing.

I don't know what the origins of it even are. It was in a Supreme Court ruling where he was saying like obviously you can't yell fire in a crowded theater and cause – Yes, that's right. Falsely. You can't fals't yell fire in a crowded theater and cause- Yes, that's right. Falsely. You can't falsely yell fire in a crowded theater and cause panic. So you need all of those different elements. You have to know it's false and you have to cause panic. And they were using it to lock up socialists who were calling for resistance to the draft. That's right. World War I. But they weren't, uh, resistance to the draft. That's right. World

war one, but they weren't even calling for resistance to the draft. They were telling people to call their member of Congress and, and argue to repeal the draft law. So, and, and they, and that, that, and they locked the head of the socialist party up for like six months for that, whatever. Um, so like terrible for anybody to point to that in any way. More worrisome, I thought, was what he said right after that. He's like, he said, you don't have a right to hate speech. Yeah, that's right. Oh, actually you do. He's like, bro, that's the whole point. Right. Free speech that is just loving speech makes no sense. Who's going to prosecute for loving speech? Well, it's especially terrifying in the context

of all these like democratic current efforts to like institutionalize what is it the uh the definition of anti-semitism what is the ihra definition which basically is just it's anti-semitic to criticize israel which is nuts i mean and by the way that fits with a lot of those republican bds laws that are already on the books totally unconstitutional for you and to just to outspout outsourcing the definition of something like that to a private organization, which could then go on its website and change it again. Yeah, the whole thing is crazy. But anyway, I mean, it's alive and well in the sense of industrial complex.

Wasn't it Columbia that said you can't use Zionist in a pejorative way? That just happened. Yeah, didn't you? You talked about that. Well, Columbia, it's different. It's private. We can criticize it, but there's not much you can do on an institutional level. You can say you don't get federal funding. Yeah, but you made a good point. You're like, wait, but what about in history classes? And in papers? Yeah, it's like

in papers, in a literal academic context. But suddenly, a lot of those concerns just disappear. Because what we all know is that they really mean it, that if it's in a historical context, it's fine. But if it's in a political context on campus and you don't like it, and especially if the donors don't like it, that's when you're going to get expelled. And that's when it's a problem. Okay, we've got Jefferson Morley standing by, so let's get to it. Camp Sheen, one of America's longest-running weight-loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. Campers who began the summer in heavy bodies were often unrecognizable when they left. In a society obsessed with being thin, it seemed like a miracle solution.

But behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children was a dark underworld of sinister secrets. Kids were being pushed to their physical and emotional limits as the family that owned Shane turned a blind eye. Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually like a horror movie. In this eight-episode series, we're unpacking and investigating stories of mistreatment and reexamining the culture of fat phobia that enabled a flawed system to continue for so long. You can listen to all episodes of Camp Shame one week early and totally ad free on iHeart True Crime Plus. So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today. Over the past six years of making my true crime podcast hell and gone, I've learned one thing. Subscribe today. Every week on Hell and Gone Murder Line, I dig into a new case, bringing the skills I've learned as a journalist and private investigator

to ask the questions no one else is asking. There's so many questions that we've never gotten any kind of answers for. If you have a case you'd like me to look into, call the Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is your girl, T.S. Madison, or wherever you get your podcasts. night don't exist. Get a job. My podcast, the one they never saw coming. Each week, I

sit down with the culture creators and scroll stoppers. Tina knows. Lil Nas X. Will we ever see a dating show for the love of Lil Nas X? I'm just gonna show all my exes. X marks the spot. No, here it is. My next ex. That's actually cute, though. Laverne Cox.

I have a core group of girlfriends that, like, they taught me how to love. And Chapel Rome. I was dropped in 2020, working the drive-thru, and here we are now. We turn side-eye into sermons, pain into punchline, and grief, we turn those into galaxies. Listen, make sure you tell Beyonce. I'm going right on the phone right now and call her. Listen to Outlaws with Tia Madison on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts, honey. All right, joining us today is Jefferson Morley, who's the author of many books on the JFK assassination. He's been investigating it for many decades.

How long? 30 years. So 30 years at this point. You have a new piece out. And let's put this up on the screen. This is at his sub stack, JFK Facts, which everybody should subscribe to. One thing that Jefferson is known for is almost never relying on anonymous sources. Everything is document-based and people who are willing to put their name to something This latest story is significantly based on an anonymous source

Which to me signals how important you think it is That's true that you're willing that you're willing to go forward on so tell us what what this source told you and and why this is in advance on what we Understand or at least adds new questions to what we understand about the assassination. This source approached me a few years ago and said in the course of working at the CIA had seen a document that disturbed them. And so we talked about that. I investigated a little bit, found a lot to corroborate that. I also checked out the source professional expertise, experience,

and I felt very confident. This source is highly credible. And I wouldn't, like you say, I rarely, rarely use unnamed sources. But in this case, I felt if the source was willing to take a chance of disclosing classified information, then I could take a chance on the source. Right. Do you feel like that this source will ever come forward? Are we going to learn who this is at some point? I think the sources will be willing to do that. All right. So let's talk about what they told you. What did they show you? The source said two really significant things.

One that there was a file room in a CIA office in Herndon, Virginia where the CIA keeps its assassination related records. Now that doesn't mean that those are all secret records. Those may be records that have been shared with the Congress. We don't know. But that there is a dedicated facility like that. And I did some reporting, talked to people who have worked in that building, one of whom confirmed to me that there was a JFK facility within a SCIF, a secure compartmentalized intelligence facility. And so I felt good about that. The second thing that the source said was that in the course of duties at the CIA,

the source had seen a document about the CIA's reaction to the congressional investigation of the 1970s. And the source felt that this document, lengthy document, 40-50 pages, apparently produced by the CIA Inspector General's office, showed an intent to deceive the congressional investigators. The source says this document shows that they knew they weren't being totally forthcoming. And when Congress didn't penetrate their deception, they celebrated. Now, there's no document like that that's been released in the past 30 years

with all the JFK releases under Trump and Biden. There's no document that fits that description in the remaining 3,500 JFK documents that still contain redactions. So this document is not in the JFK collection. Obviously, it should be. One of the important things about the story, and this also made me feel good, was when I asked the CIA for comment, they did not deny any of the facts in the story.

In fact, they said something slightly disturbing. If you parse their statement carefully. What they're saying is, we're under no obligation to release this document, and if we want to keep it public, we will. Got it. And so one of the things you talk about in the story is about Oswald in Mexico. Yes, and that's the core of what he's talking about. The source says that the House Select Committee was called in and showed a bunch of documents about the CIA surveillance of Oswald in Mexico City shortly before the assassination of President Kennedy. The CIA has always said, we never obtained any photographs of Oswald in

Mexico City. The source says one of the things that he saw in the JFK file room was what looked like a video case that was labeled Oswald in Mexico and dated 1963. Now, if there is photography of Oswald in Mexico City in the possession of the CIA today, that alone will rewrite the JFK story because they have been so adamant about denying this over the years. And what you see, the larger point of the story here is that what you see is this fits a pattern of withholding information, closely held information that the CIA had about Lee Harvey Oswald before the assassination. And that's what's really going on here is they are withholding JFK documents to this day. And the source's story

makes that story, you know, makes that clear. And the fact that the CIA is not denying it, not saying that, doesn't say the document doesn't exist, doesn't say the facility doesn't exist, you know, we're on to something. So this is really about, you know, why does it matter today? Well this is about accountability, you know, it's about transparency. We've had these assassination attempts on President Trump, lots of conspiracy theories, politicization of that. Obviously we need transparency, we need of that. Obviously, we need transparency. We need credible investigations around that. And the same goes for President Kennedy.

This, you know, this is a story that doesn't go away in American politics. We're still talking about it 60 years later because of its symbolic importance and because, you know, we have this mistrust of government. Government institutions aren't legitimate. And if you look in the broad sweep of history, when did U.S. government begin to lose its credibility? It was right around 1964, according to the polls, around the Warren Commission report of 1964. Since then, that report, not particularly credible with the American people, confidence in government has been going down. One of the theories that says, actually, there was, there's a theory that says there was no conspiracy to assassinate Kennedy. And in fact, what we're looking at when it comes to CIA

is CYA, that they actually are just covering for their own incompetence. And once, and then it snowballs into covering for their cover-up. Does this fit that, or does this fit the other? I mean, I think that this points more to complicity because of numerous false statements and the way CIA operations are structured. This looks like a CIA operation, not CIA incompetence. But the available evidence, I have good friends who argue the other way, like you're saying, this is just, they screwed up and they're just covering their asses. Well,

that's why we have the JFK Records Act. The JFK Records Act of 1992 says the government has to release all JFK records in its possession. They have to review them and release them. They have a presumption of immediate disclosure according to the law. So if the CYA explanation is right, that doesn't mean that they don't have to disclose these records. They do have to disclose them. And if that's the case, then they should quell conspiracy theories and conspiracy theorizing and say, we screwed up and here's how we did it. But to say we're innocent and we're not going to share all the records with you, that's not credible. And so, yeah, in that, let's take people back if they're not all that familiar about Oswald's time in Mexico and the

meetings that he allegedly was having there and how that would fit into a conspiracy explanation. Why is that significant, Oswald's time in Mexico? So Oswald, the accused assassin who denied- We wrote a book, Our Man. He said he was a patsy. We can put this up, Our Man in Mexico. Yeah. So the story that I tell in Our Man in Mexico is Lear v. Oswald, the man who will be accused

of killing the president and who will deny it and then be killed in police custody, goes to Mexico City six weeks before the assassination and visits the Cuban consulate and the Soviet embassy seeking to get a visa to travel to Cuba. Right. The visa request is rejected. He's told he has to go get that in Washington. And so Oswald returns to the United States. What the CIA told the Warren Commission was, we didn't know anything about this guy. We knew so little about him, we didn't even get a picture of him, a surveillance picture of him. As I report in Our Man in Mexico, the station chief in Mexico City, Winn Scott, said specifically that was not true. He had a very sophisticated

surveillance system around both of those. Unlike the CIA statement that the cameras weren't working that day, false. Investigators established that they were working. And the CIA insists on this, well, we never got his, we never took his picture. So, and in fact, they knew a whole lot about him. Senior CIA officials are looking at Oswald's file six weeks before the assassination, writing cables about him, thinking about him, and, by the way, not calling any attention to him, despite the fact that he had been arrested

for fighting with CIA-funded group that summer. He had a Russian wife. When he defected to the Soviet Union, he offered military secrets. And now he's visiting Soviet and Cuban diplomatic compound where everybody working in those compounds was presumed to be an intelligence agent. And most of them in those were, just like a lot of people in the U.S. Embassy were spies. Of course, yeah.

And so the notion that they didn't get his picture was never particularly clear. And so he people in the U.S. embassy were. Of course, yeah. And so, the notion that they didn't get his picture was, you know, was never particularly credible. So, what's going on here? Did they just miss him? Well, that would be the CYA. We didn't understand who he was. He went on and shot the president. Sorry, Mrs. Kennedy, we just screwed up. What's hard to understand from our point of view today is, you know, the man who supposedly killed the president was well known to top CIA officials. Imagine if one of these accused assassins with President Trump was well known to a small group of top CIA officials. Would we say that's relevant to the story?

Yes, of course. The CIA hid all of that, and all of those people who watched Oswald for four years as he made his way to Dealey Plaza, none of them lost their job. None of them even got so much as a demerit, mostly because nobody knew. Over the last 60 years, the story has come out in bits and pieces and my story now is just the latest part of We're getting behind that curtain of official secrecy that has always surrounded Oswald and Cuba operations and when we go through that curtain we see oh, there's still more classified stuff behind it Yeah, and that's that's what's going on today is the CIA saying, you know

We we really don't have to obey that law, you know, that law that says all JFK records. We don't really have to obey that. And, you know, the CIA in the constellation of American power, a very strong institution, on JFK records, they got what they wanted, exactly what they wanted, from two very different presidents. From Trump, who said all the JFK records were released in 2017. Wasn't true. He had cut a deal with Mike Pompeo and the CIA, and lots of records remain secret. And Biden, more expectedly, an institutionalist, said, CIA, good guys, they can handle it from here on out. I wash my hands of the matter. So that's where it is right now. Trump's made a little bit of an issue of it, saying he would release the JFK files when

RFK endorsed him. You know, Trump had a chance to do it in 2017. He didn't. So it remains to be seen if he's elected, would he do it? Okay, question of why. We always talk about this. All the people involved are dead, presumably. So why do they still care so much about keeping this secret because symbolically it's really important and this is why they can't even back up an inch because if they said we screwed up you know people get called up to Capitol Hill yeah it asked the director yeah what's going on here how did this happen how come you didn't tell us about this you know they might get their budget cut. So yes, all the people involved are dead and you know Maybe the CIA could say, you know, that was then this is now

But I think the path of least resistance and when you have the power of official secrecy We're just gonna bury that move along folks And you know, this is what the CIA does. Presidents come and go. Journalists come and go. The CIA is always there. And so I think they're thinking, well, you know, we can just wait this thing out. No, that's all I got. I mean, I guess last thing, if you have a minute. People also point to this police officer who claims that he accidentally squeezed the trigger. I'm sure you've seen this one. What do you think?

What do you make of this? This is the most, the most persistent hoax in the JFK story. The Secret Service man did it. You're going to see people in the comments section probably talk about this. So tell us about this real quick. Oh, okay, sure. Yeah, the claim is that the Secret Service man panicked and turning around accidentally shot the president. The only problem with this theory is

there's no eyewitness evidence to support it. There's no forensic evidence to support it. There's no photographic evidence to support it. And the author who first offered this when facing legal action from one of the Secret Service officers involved, formally retracted the whole thing. So there's no evidence and it's been renounced by the person who offered it. So chances are there's nothing to it. But I just want to say one last thing is, you know, people ask, why does it matter today? What, you know, what did Kennedy's, what was the political meaning of Kennedy's assassination? And I think it's this.

This is more my opinion. You can draw the facts of the facts. After Kennedy, the most warlike faction in the U.S. government always had the upper hand. And Kennedy was steering us away from that, trying to end the Cold War, not going to war in Cuba, pulling out slowly in Vietnam. There's debates about all of those things. But the big picture that Kennedy articulates in the summer of 63, we don't want a Pax Americana, he says. Imagine that. Imagine if there was a Democratic candidate or a Republican candidate who said, we don't want a Pax Americana. We are in a Pax Americana era right now. We are establishing Pax Americana in Ukraine, Gaza. We are trying

to maintain that. There is another way, and the other way died with Kennedy. Yeah. And the key thing to me is whether or not the CIA actually assassinated him. Every president since Kennedy, including LBJ, believed that they did. Yeah, and operated accordingly. Operated accordingly. And this is super important where there's this discourse that tries to marginalize conspiracy theorists. Harry Truman, Lyndon Johnson, and Richard Nixon had their foibles, had their problems. They were not conspiracy theorists. These were men of power who understood how American power worked. And none of them believed the CIA's story of a,

quote unquote, long gun. Yeah, they were terrified of them. They were terrified of them in the FBI. That's right. And it governed a lot of their decision making. Highly recommend people subscribe to- And that's why Trump did not release the documents. Likely. Yeah, seriously. Yeah, there you go. Subscribe to the Substack, buy the books. Appreciate you joining us, sir. Thank you. Thanks a million, guys. Absolutely. We, there you go. Subscribe to the Substack, buy the books. Appreciate you joining us, sir. Thank you. Thanks a million, guys. Absolutely.

We'll see you guys later. Over the years of making my true crime podcast, Hell and Gone, I've learned no town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend. I've learned no town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend. I've heard from hundreds of people across the country with an unsolved murder in their community. I was calling about the murder of my husband.

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I think everything that might have dropped in 95 has been labeled the golden years of hip-hop. It's Black Music Month and We Need to Talk is tapping in. I'm Nyla Simone, breaking down lyrics, amplifying voices, and digging into the culture that shaped the soundtrack of our lives. Like, that's what's really important, and that's what stands out, is that our music changes people's lives for the better. Let's talk about the music that moves us. To hear this and more on how music and culture collide,

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