Fourth Reich Archaeology - Conspiracy Epistemology: An Interview With Max Good

Episode Date: January 31, 2025

This week, we are grateful to welcome another guest to the pod - filmmaker and researcher Max Good. You may know him from his truly excellent (and we mean really, truly excellent) documentary "The Assassination and Mrs. Paine." If you don't, you would be wise to watch the film ASAP, available wherever fine films are streaming. In his movie, Max presents some of the last-recorded interviews with key witnesses and researchers around the JFK assassination including Ruth and Michael Paine, the bizarrely well-connected couple who famously hosted Marina and Lee Oswald in their Irving, Texas home in the lead-up to November 22, 1963. In this episode, we discuss Max's movie, what it was like confronting spooked-up witnesses like Ruth Paine and CIA-connected author Priscilla Johnson McMillan (author of the pro-Warren Commission 1977 book, "Marina and Lee"), and the importance of family history in deep politics. But that's not nearly all.  We spend much of the conversation situating our collective truth-telling work in the broader historical and political context in which we live. We talk about the right-wing appropriation of "conspiracy" discourse, the encroachment of technofascist oligarchs into the reality of political conspiracies, and of course Trump's promised JFK disclosure. We also benefit from Max's sincerity and generosity of spirit as he reminds us to meet people where they are, take a kind approach to potential allies out there in the world, and keep our eyes on the ultimate goal of a true people's movement to reclaim the mantle of democracy while shunning the billionaire class and their cynical faux-populism.  We hope it will be both an educational listen, and also one that balances off the bleak picture of our present moment with some hopeful thoughts for a more humane future

Colonialism or imperialism, as the slave system of the West is called, is not something that's just confined to England or France or the United States. Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. So it's one huge complex or combine. Either you are with us. where you were with the terrorists. And this international power structure is used to suppress the masses of dark-skinned people all over the world and exploit them of their natural resources.

We found no evidence of a conspiracy, foreign or domestic, the Warren Commission of science. I'll never apologize for the United States of America, ever. I don't care what the facts are. In 1945, we began to require information, which showed that there were two wars going. His job, he said, was to protect the Western way of life. The primitive simplicity of their minds renders the more easy victims of a big lie than a small one. For example, we're the CIA. He has a mouse.

He knows so long as a die. Freedom can never be secure. It usually takes a national crisis. Freedom can never be secure. insecure. Pearl Harbor. A lot of killers. You've got a lot of killers.

Why you think our country's so innocent? This is not going to see. I am. And I'm Don't know. We are absolutely thrilled. We are absolutely thrilled to have a very special guest with us today, a real feature for our series within a series, The Warren Commission decided, and that guest is Max Good. You may have heard of Max from his phenomenal documentary film,

The Assassination and Mrs. Payne, which chronicles the role of Dallas housewife Ruth Payne in the aftermath of the Kennedy assassination and her role in propagating the official narrative in all those years since the assassination. Max was heroically able to put Mrs. Payne on record, on film, and as far as I'm know is really the only person to challenge her with some of the documents directly and made thereby an invaluable contribution to the historical record. So that would have been enough for me to admire Max deeply and greatly, but the fact that he agreed to come on our podcast just kicks it up that one more notch. Max, welcome. And thank you so much.

for joining us today. Hey, guys. Great to be here. I'm a fan of your work. I've been following the podcast and you're writing on Twitter. So we're on the same team. Absolutely. So today, you know, rather than just do a summary of Max's film, because, listener,

if you haven't already maybe pause the episode right now, go watch it and then come back. But we want to bring things a little up to date and kind of reflect on some of the aspects of assassination research more broadly that we all contend with as people who address these issues to the public and bring it up to the current events as the incoming Trump administration is floating around the idea of JFK disclosure at long last. So, Dick, maybe you want to start us off with posing a little provocative questions here to get us started. Thank you, Don.

And I guess this one will go directly to Max, but Max, I wonder, given the pervasiveness of politics, and how it has permeated every aspect of our day-to-day lives, whether you're online or talking just amongst friends. It seems like nowadays it's okay to talk about politics. I'm wondering, what is the role of politics and political heuristics in interpreting historical events and conducting the, quote, conspiracy research that we all love,

much. Well, thank you for this question. Yes, I love to talk about higher-level issues related to conspiracy research because you can really get lost in the details and people can kind of fetishize the minutia of parapolitical research, hidden history. I mean, you can spend your whole life on it and many people have. But, yeah, on a higher level, we've got to think about the sociological, the political, psychological aspects.

And ask yourself, what the hell are we doing? What are we trying to accomplish? And how can we be effective if we do have a goal with this? So, yeah, I've been researching this stuff for about 20 years. And, you know, I've noticed a lot of people can get lost and kind of lose sight of what they're trying to do. People can, you know, at the heart of this, it can be a process of kind of kind of a paradigm shift. I don't know if you guys have gone through that but many many people who come into contact with this information hidden history they may go through a process where they their worldview changes fundamentally and that's that's an amazing process but it's also kind of a vulnerable state to be in where you're in confusion, you're trying to understand what's real, who's been lying to you, which sources

can you trust, can you reestablish some stable, accurate, reliable worldview if yours is breaking apart? And yeah, people can be vulnerable to going down rabbit holes, being manipulated, in certain directions or just kind of having their minds blown and being too open to anything they hear so I I always was intent on trying to be responsible with this stuff trying to be factual and yeah not not get too blown blown out of proportion yeah some of my thoughts. Any other specifics you guys are thinking about? Yeah. I mean, for me, I think there's a line that can be very difficult to navigate, right? On the one hand, you want to be factual and you want to as much as possible view the facts through as

objective a lens as possible. But at the same time, given the fact that there's all these pre-existing sort of narrative traps that are set precisely to capture, I feel like people in that state of vulnerability that you just described, you know, whether it's, I don't know if you guys ever came across like the David Ike lizard people nonsense. or the Alex Jones or the QAnon, all of these different prefabricated narrative frameworks that are out there to suck people in. And so is there also, do you think, some responsibility when you are presenting this stuff to help people avoid what you know to be those types of traps? Yeah, you have a responsibility to be extra vigilant about being factual because you know the other side is out there saying you're crazy and you know there are a lot of out there theories that are not going to do your cause any good. if you think you have important information that the world should know about and you're trying

to reach people, you've got to consider where they're at and what's going to turn them off and really what priorities you have in terms of what you can unify on, what's factual and not speculative. And, you know, yes, I've experienced, I saw, I heard of David Ike, you know, maybe I bought a book once and never read it. I saw Alex Jones, his rise about, you know, 20 years ago when he really kind of took over a big wing of the hidden history community. and this culture, this subculture, is rife with paranoia for good reason.

I mean, people are studying co-intel pro and government corruption and, you know, MK Ultra, all this stuff. And yes, I think there is a concerted campaign against this. have to be. There are infiltrators, but there are also just people on different, different pages, and it's important to recognize that and try, try to come to some common ground. I always remember that, coming from the left, I always kind of scoffed at people who brought up the NWO, the Builder Berger's, you know, the Fed, the trilateral commission, globalism, you know, these were right-wing issues. But if you look into them, there's a lot of important stuff to learn about the power structure

there and a lot of legitimate questions. So I think, you know, it can go both ways. You can get too sure of yourself in your own perspective. But, you know, you've got to be humble. You've got to be, you know, this whole thing is about being able to learn new stuff or learn that you were fooled. So, yeah, maintain a level of humbleness that you could be wrong. and when people really lack that humbleness, I'm often turned off quickly. It's a good point, and it actually raises another question I have.

So when we're doing this work, this conspiracy research that we all here love so much, it reminds me that inherent in that work is a political message, right? So take, for example, the Kennedy assassination, As a researcher, when you are approaching that event and looking for explanations, what you're doing is you're taking a political stance, right? And by that, what I mean is that you're deciding, based on a hypothesis, whether that hypothesis is that the U.S. government was involved, or the Russian government was evolved, or whether it was a lone actor, whatever.

your hypothesis comes from a political starting point. I wonder, Max, what sort of guardrails you put in place or can you think of to protect against letting that political starting point infect the research? Yes, it's an inherently political thing to be involved in. I think you've got to look at the implications of what we're talking about You know, some of the top ones for me are obviously that we don't live into democracy. The government and all the major institutions of our society are deeply corrupt, not truthful, not honest.

And especially the media that many people take for granted that the media is, least effective on on a basic level that they couldn't fail to cover something this important if there was anything substantive there I think that's that's kind of the unconscious assumption for a lot of people that this conspiracy stuff can't be real because the media and the people I trust

the New York Times, NPR, whatever magazine you read, they would have told me about this. I read the New Yorker. I'm a smart person and they would have told me about this if it was real. you know um and you know this gets into deeper issues of identity uh you know your status within society marginalization nationalism not just in a pejorative way but just in a casual way right

i mean this is a country where values of patriotism are very strongly inculcated through the education system and through civic life. And I think that is something that maybe we on the left can fall out of touch with, right? Yeah. And so much of it is subconscious. Even people, mainstream people on the left who think they are critical and skeptical of the system and politics. A lot of them take... these assumptions as given that that our institutions are functioning that we do have a functioning

democracy um so when you start challenging that uh there can be a lot of pushback um and yeah it is really fascinating to see the right-wing kind of co-opting i would say a lot of this deep state hidden history kind of perspectives when really, you know, almost all of it started on the left. You know, there's a history of right-wing conspiracy theorizing with John Birch Society and, you know, Red Scare, stuff like that and, you know, globalism and that, you know, CIA is infiltrated by communists. But it is odd to see the right wing take over so much of this space. And you see it on Twitter, I'd say,

those of us on the left are kind of a minority at this point yeah yeah one thing i definitely notice on there is just how signal boosted some of the right-wing accounts seem to be that they'll be you know come out of the blue these accounts and maybe they'll get retweeted by elan musk or something like that and just to use the rocket metaphor blast off to some massive reach when you know very serious researchers have been talking about this stuff for years and absent that kind of finger on the scale will never get that level of reach yes that's true I mean this they're operating on a mass scale they've got billions and they're using this stuff in a superficial way as it like of course is there's a lot of

there's fake populism demagoguery going on where they can use these grievances against the system and the elites for their own purposes uh and you know what's what's their real goal is Is the goal to have a more democratic, equal society where, you know, where we don't have billionaires and people dying in the gutter? Or is it something else more nefarious? Is it, you know, becoming the world's first trillionaire and going to Mars and living forever? or just maintaining their hold on power. Yeah. I think, you know, maybe there's an opportunity with this second Trump administration

that some of the people who are following him thinking he's going to really shake things up and, you know, bring out the truth during the swamp and all. this shit. Some of those people are in for a rude awakening, hopefully this second time maybe, they'll see that it was just posturing. Yeah, do you really want, you really want to have elect billionaires? Do you believe in billionaires running our country? I'm slightly skeptical, you know. Yeah, I wonder what's, What's their ultimate goal with this information? You know, when I see somebody like Tucker Carlson promoting these things, I'm always saying, well, what's he getting at?

What's his vision for society? Is he pushing this stuff because he wants Trump to get elected? Is he pushing it because he wants to be president after Trump? or a, yeah, wants to sterilize, like, certain elements of society? I don't know, but I have a hard time believing it's really about democracy, you know, on a basic level. I think these people are the elites, and they've used this, I mean, they're devious. of course they're going to use this stuff against us or whatever our grievances are our arguments our research they know how to co-opt it and you know put their own people in there and

pretend like they're they're on our side yeah and i think even just unpacking who is the they here is elucidating because once upon a time right You could say that the same tactics of co-optation, of manipulation and distortion of the same factual record towards a vastly different end goal or, you know, as part of a vastly different project than what we may be interested in exposing hidden truths and bringing light to areas that. that we think have undermined all the democratic principles that the government purports to stand for. And where the they, once upon a time, may have been the likes of the Office of Policy Coordination first and then the CIA and this sort of state-sponsored propaganda apparatus, I think you also can't fall into ossified thinking that those institutional affiliations are eternal because the they now, like you just said, Max, it's Tucker Carlson, it's RFK Jr. You know, these are the people that are intervening in the discourse to grab on to some of the same

truth bombs or whatever you want to say. I actually listened the other day to this whole Tucker episode or broadcast. I think it was a live recording that he did in Milwaukee sometime earlier in the fall with RFK Jr. And they talked a lot about this stuff. And it's like the underlying insights and the underlying facts that they point out, they could say, you know, 10 truths and a lie, you know, they'll sneak in, they'll basically join 75% of what probably all three of us believe with respect to the degree to which the media lies about things, or the degree to which the CIA historically has been involved in covert and nefarious deeds, you know, domestic and foreign. But then the takeaway will be something completely opposite

to what we are all getting at. And I'll put this out there for the two of you to comment on, but the more that I think about it, the more it seems like this entire narrative, this entire sort of hijacking of at least JFK truth, if you want to call it that, is geared towards a longer-term project of hijacking all government functions by private industry. And that includes, in this day and age, the intelligence gathering and co-forceding and covert ops functions that have traditionally been run out of the government. Because now we have Palantir, we have any number of military intelligence contractors that have come up during the global war on terror in the post-9-11 period

that are poised to basically unshackle themselves from any accountability that might come from being affiliated with or controlled by the at least ostensibly or purportedly democratic institutions of the federal government. So I'm curious to get both of your takes on that because it's something that's been congealing in my mind the more I've thought about these questions over the last couple of weeks. 100% agree. It has been a long time coming. And what we're seeing today is simply the culmination of decades-long efforts. And it's hard to accept that this is not intentional, right? Going back to Reagan's inauguration address in 1980, he flat out said, government is not

the solution to our problems, government is the problem. And now flash forward to the present day and what you're seeing is pretty much what Reagan called all those years ago, right? You have Elon Musk taking over the Department of Efficiency, right? Taking over this idea of the government is wasteful. We need to cut back spending and all of that. You have people like Cash Patel who are telling, you that the FBI is incompetent. You have people like RFK Jr. telling you that the government is not to be trusted because they put things in your food and in your medicine. So I think it's a long time coming. We're certainly seeing an acceleration of it. And it's very dangerous because it, as you say, eliminates all those guardrails that are in, presumably in a democracy, right?

No longer can you FOIA request records, right? FOIA doesn't apply to private actors. No longer can you do something as simple as vote someone out of office because that's not going to change the fact that the government contracts with these data companies or these military contractors. It is a way for the powers that be to insulate themselves from, the masses. Yeah, I think you're probably spot on with this analysis.

I mean, obviously this has been a right-wing perspective for a long time against big government and being able to show the government's corrupt or inefficient, Doge. You can promote your supposedly libertarian, free market, accelerationist ideas. And yes, for a long time you saw people on the right who wrote about the JFK assassination. They were always wanted to blame it on Lyndon Johnson. He's a Democrat. yes, great. You know, Democrats are corrupt. I think I see a little bit of this with

Ruth Payne also. People on the right say, oh, they're lefties, yes. We can, there's evil like CIA left wing communists. But yeah, this obviously is the explicit playbook for a lot of these Silicon Valley people, which aligns with the Koch brothers and the rest of these people who say they're libertarians, but are, you know, their understanding of that is probably means something like, you know, complete corporate fascism. They get to do whatever they want to do, and they'll do it more efficiently. than any government. And you've seen this weird campaign

to attract younger people, younger men into the libertarian worldview over the last 20 years. And it's been effective. And now you've also seen that the right, They've taken over the mantle of being anti-establishment, you know. The Democrats became boring and just a representation of everything wrong. And the media supposedly is left-wing.

So now they get to go out there and attract people. who just have this gut sense of things are corrupt and my life is not going so great and these people are going to fix it. These people are on my side. Elon Musk is a hero and they believe in free speech. I mean, yeah, it's a joke that they believe in free speech, but he's going to deport people who speak out about Palestine.

You know, see how much these people believe in their supposed principles when they are defending the rights of other people on the other side. So, yeah, with Palantier and Elon Musk and all this Silicon Valley money, I think, Yeah, that's probably their vision in the future. You've heard of this network state thing.

They, I mean, they have some interesting philosophies on how they're going to remake society. And when you have billions of dollars, you can have a lot of hubris. And I don't know if they really think they're going to live forever. but yeah probably they probably think some of them think that but they definitely believe in maintaining their power and this may be part of that it's it's sad to say but some of our our little world of supposedly being subversive and uncovering truths it can be turned right back on us and yeah controlling the opposition has always been a major playbook and it's pretty effective well i've been down so god damn long that it looks like up for me

Well, I've been down so very damn long that it looks like up to me Yeah, why don't want you people Come on and set me I think that's a maybe it's a good point. We can see if there's anything else that we want to discuss about the sort of theoretical level. But I think this is a good segue point to talk a little bit about more concrete examples and explore how that process has played out in the past with such Warren Commission

defenders as Ruth Payne, Patricia Johnson McMillan, and our boy Gerald Ford. Yeah, well, I think it's important to recognize that what we're involved in here is also an epistemological project. So we are trying to establish truth. We're trying to create knowledge, absorb knowledge, process what's true, understand what's true, spread truth. And, yeah, I see it as a truth as a process. Of course, there is no ultimate objective final truth, but there is historical truth and you can know it in real, meaningful, actionable ways. and part of that is the question of bias so people may say well you you know everybody's biased everybody has their own truth or they're going to be arguing things in a biased way

and seeing things in a biased way and there you can't really trust them and I think that's bullshit. I think we have the power to transcend our own bias. And if you don't believe that, then there's no use in doing any of this. You might as well just give up because you have to believe that we have the ability to question our own bias and and get past it, you know, and change our minds and see things more objectively. In fact, I think it can end up serving the very same sort of nefarious interest that we were just talking about to fall into that trap of, well, if there's no objective truth, then anything goes. That's kind of how you get to the RFKJ.

junior or the Tucker position on or the Steve Bannon position on these things that if there's no objective truth then we make our own truth yeah uh I mean you can see this as as some result of postmodernism uh or whatever but yeah you there is a very clear force of unreality that's been coming about in our world and it's now accelerating to an extreme degree with the kind of breakdown of the faith in institutions and the AI and the constant stream of, you know, computer-mediated content that people are ingesting. So, yeah, I think we're, as a society, we're getting further away from truth. And truth is not just the JFK assassination.

It's our own lives. It's what's real, what's actually going on, how we feel in a non-manipulated way. So, yeah, I think it's good to recognize that what you're involved in is quite serious. You know, we're talking about maintaining. reality, saving reality and in a culture that's losing a grip on reality. And, you know, I'm just, I was just looking at Twitter now and I see things or on the internet and I just, I don't even know if it was written with AI, if it was, if the video is real, if what people are saying.

is real. Half the things when I search for something on the internet and go to a web page, it looks like it was written with AI. So I think this is a deeper process goes beyond hidden history. And also having to do with this is the fact that societal, a lot of the people who are you're involved in this kind of alternative information sphere you can be marginalized nowadays maybe it's becoming more just another little niche of anything goes but my experience has been that people were kind of shamed and made feel crazy or irresponsible, belittled for being interested in this stuff or talking about it. This conspiracy stuff obviously is tainted with a kind of tabloid sense and like a low, low class.

not something respectable people do it's you know how many historians are there working in academia talking about this stuff right given the importance the historical importance of you know whether one of the most decisive climactic events of the second half of the 20th century like what actually happened there you would think given the reticence on behalf of institutional academia to touch it that it's not even important at all yeah it's it's not even worth really talking about but it's really just that it's not what it's not worth for institutional historians is exactly what you just described right being stained or tainted having your reputation attacked as a kooky conspiracy theorist.

Yeah, people, people buy into the system on certain levels as they, you know, progress in their life and their career. And of course, people who hold these views are either weeded out or they learn how to keep their mouth shut and not talk about it. Or they podcast under a pseudonym. Exactly. So I think it's important to build some community around this. And I'm glad it seems like people, younger people are doing that with podcasts.

and remind each other that you're not crazy. And it's pretty easy to see now that the system is insane. So they're not offering any legitimate alternative. Yeah, if you're living in an empire, and once you recognize that, it's clear that you don't build an empire on truth and justice. Yes. Well said. Yeah, I was just re-watching your movie and that point that the late Vincent Celandria

makes, right, when he makes that exact point, it's like, it's not the democracy that we were told it was. And seeing that in the mouth, I think of somebody that's so, he was, you know, obviously very elderly, but it spent so much of his life dedicated to this cause. It does imbue those of us in the know, I think, with a sense of responsibility and duty almost to do our best to meet people where they're at. and I thought one of the things that your film did so well was this thing that we in the legal profession are very much obsessed with which is showing and not telling right when you are making these types of claims I think to bring it back to the idea of how one's political lens could bias or influence the conclusions that you draw, for example, interpreting somebody's testimony

is inherently fraught with both the bias of the questioner, the bias of the deponent, the person that's answering the questions. And so you have to match them up somehow and the way that we conceive of that in the legal profession is, you know, by reference to the factual record, to the evidence, and maybe that's something that we could talk about with your experience dealing with Ruth Payne. Because I'm sure, you know, anybody who watches the movie would have so many questions of, like, what was that like? You know, how do you choose what, to ask what order to do it. And because you don't go about it as a gotcha type of an interview,

but clearly you have a set of facts that you want to confront your witness with. So I think, you know, maybe you could talk a little bit about how that process worked and how you approached it. Yeah. Well, first of all, I admire people who, are from the legal profession and express that in a way that's dedicated to truth, not manipulating facts or learning the art of rhetoric. And there are many of the top JFK researchers are lawyers,

including some of the people in my film. But, yes, obviously, the institution of the law is just as corrupt as the rest of them in our country. But back to my film, I knew that I wanted to reach people who didn't already believe in the conspiracy viewpoint. You know, that's preaching to the choir. And, you know, you have to consider where people are coming from.

There are a lot of people who don't have much knowledge about the JFK assassination, but they lean one way or another. or they have a gut sense one way or another, or they saw Oliver Stone's film, or there are many people, many mainstream people who lived through that time, who saw Oswald get killed two days later and just saw the shadiness of everything.

And they think there was a conspiracy, even if they never really studied it much or have a strong conviction about it, they lean towards that side. But, yeah, I wanted it to be kind of an unfolding process. I did not want to be heavy-handed. I wanted to show both sides. I have several people in the film

representing the anti-conspiracy viewpoint, including the main character, Ruth Payne. And I give her plenty of screen time to do that. And I have Max Holland, Priscilla Johnson McMillan, Jail Posner. Those are some of the top voices for the anti-conspiracy view. Jail Posner wrote the main book of the last several decades that case closed that came out in 93. And Max Holland has been a pretty prominent. prominent critic of a conspiracy viewpoint.

And Priscilla Johnson McMillan, a very interesting case. She was a journalist, spoke Russian, happened to be in Russia and interviewed Oswald when he defected there in 1959. It was the longest interview that anyone ever conducted with Oswald. Yeah. At least according to John Newman. She happens to be the journalist there to do that and write the story. And then somehow, through chance, she befriends Marina Oswald.

Well, she gets picked by Marina in some interesting process. to be the person to kind of write Marina's memoir, to write the main book from Marina's perspective. And she basically becomes Marina's best friend. I mean, they're living together. Hanging out Marina's, she's got basically control of Marina for 15 years until her book comes out, possibly longer, but her book, you know, strangely, should have been published soon after

the assassination, but it doesn't come out until the House Select Committee on Assassinations is, you know, bringing up all these major questions and major doubt about the Warren Commission. And, yes, it just happens to be when they decide to drop this book. in 1977, Priscilla's book, Marina and Lee, comes out. And of course, anybody who's seen my film or knows about this, knows that Priscilla later declassified documents showed that she was a quote-winning collaborator of the CIA and that she applied to work for the CIA back

when she, you know, graduated with a master's degree in Russian literature from Harvard in the 50s and they supposedly rejected her. She went on to work as a journalist but had plenty of contact with the CIA. But those are just some characters. Back to the approach in my film, I just, I wanted to, I intentionally inserted things that would kind of maybe confuse the viewer as to what my perspective was, what the perspective of the film was, so they would feel a little confusion, like what, I'm not sure, what am I supposed to think? I even had people complain about that. And I said, yes, that's how you're supposed to feel. You're supposed to think for yourself.

And so, you know, I'm trying to provoke a true critical thinking process with that film. I don't want to manipulate people into coming to a certain viewpoint. I want them to, I want to kind of help them use their own brains in a critical way to process information. Obviously, yes, there's bias involved and I have a perspective. Actually, when I first released the film and was promoting the film, I was real cagey about what my perspective was. I would actually not answer that question. But since then, I've kind of become more open and obviously I'm on the conspiracy side

of things. But, you know, if people want to say, oh, he believes in a conspiracy, don't even watch the film, I'd say, hmm, that's an interesting argument. How about watch the film and watch a pro-official story film and decide for yourself? I really believe we can transcend bias and people are capable of critical thinking. and the sources you're looking at you should try to discern whether they're trying to foster that if they're fostering a critical thinking process or they're just trying to make you swallow whatever their viewpoint is and that's that goes for either side of this yeah one of the it was it was amazing to see how priscilla johnson mcmillan when she keeps on repeating the word unwitting when you confronted her with that document she's like oh unwitting does that is that what it says and then when you're like no it says whitting and she's like oh oh that's it yeah i love that exchange winning

unwitting no i think it says whitting yeah uh priscilla and interesting person. She died a few years ago. I was really happy to be able to get some of these people on video before they died. I mean, these are some of their last interviews. Priscilla Johnson-McMillan, Michael Payne, Vince Salandria, David Lifton, and who knows how much longer Ruth is going to last. She's 92. And I would say she's the most important living witness. along with Marina Oswald. They are the two living people who, no doubt, can tell you some real true information about this, what happened.

Yeah. Yeah, and Priscilla Johnson McMillan was also intersected with one of my favorite, spooks of the Cold War era, Cord Meyer, who apparently in that initial CIA rejection, called her goofy and said that he knew her at Harvard. Cordymeyer, of course, was the CIA agent who ran a lot of propaganda operations in Europe in connection with the cultural Cold War. We've talked about a lot on the podcast. He was also married to Mary Pinchot Meyer, who was one of JFK's mistresses, who herself was murdered under very suspicious circumstances just around the time that the Warren Commission report was made public in 1964.

So a running theme on the show, Max, is that the cast of characters and all of this stuff is so small and insular that it's really hard for people that don't have all these connections, right? At one point in your film, Ruth Payne says, well, everybody has some connections when you're talking about her very close, like one degree of, separation connections to Alan Dulles, she said, well, everybody has some connections. But I think when it comes to this extremely narrow set of characters and personages that are pulling a lot of the strings of behind the scenes of Cold War policy, not everybody does actually have all those connections. And maybe that's one of these objective facts that just the accumulation of network connections among the same group of people, among the same milieu that are engaged in these various

activities all around the world and converge on certain events like the Kennedy assassination. Yeah. It's... It's, that's why this analysis is necessary and, you know, we are tracing connections. It may be a little bit of a cliche, you know, where you trace people's heritage back and their family tree. I kind of was aware of that when I did the pain family tree in the movie. but this stuff is meaningful to establish where these people come from who they're associated with I mean you look at the Pains

the Pains are supposedly just some random couple living in a very small modest house in a working class suburb of Dallas but you look into them and Michael Payne comes from the Forbes fan family. He's, you know, part of one of the richest families in the country. Boston Brahmins once again. Yeah. And Ruth, her dad was a big insurance executive. Her parents met at Stanford. Her sister worked for the CIA. Her dad was at least recruited by the CIA. we know, maybe he did work for them at some point.

He worked for USAID, which is a common cover for CIA personnel. Yeah, I was listening to your episode where you talked about Joe Alsop. And, you know, I love hearing these people's pedigree. Like, where do they come from? What, you know, who the hell are they? they definitely come from a different world than me because I don't have any connections like that. Right. Right. And that's probably a lot of, you know, some of our listening audience might have those connections. And I have certainly had acquaintance with people that have kind of a

pedigree of sorts. And there, you do see when you get to know people like that, that there's certain pressures to conform to family traditions. I think neither Dick nor I traces our roots on the American continent back all that far. And so, you know, we have the outsider's perspective on it as well. But it's something that plays a definite role in what, calling back, identity formation. And funnily enough, you know, you mentioned that the pains were adjacent to all of these, what we might call controlled opposition or the compliant left, the anti-communist left up to and including the Trotskyist movement, which we, you know, it's been so deeply infiltrated by the CIA. and the FBI throughout its existence in the U.S. So all very interesting and Johnson as well, right?

I mean, her whole origin story, she was also from a very wealthy family, I believe, and she was part of the United World Federalists that was a sort of student, anti-communist left group, that Cord Meyer was also involved in, which has its parallels with Fabian socialism in the UK, right? Just like a lot of the U.S. intelligence operations, there are parallels and precedence in British intelligence and zooming all the way out to get that bigger picture is a way, I think, that we all agree can better avoid the charges of bias, you know, the broader of a picture

that you can situate any given narrative into the better, as long as that that broader narrative is sufficiently tethered and anchored in factual evidence. And that's where we diverge from the right-wing faction that will introduce these sort of supernatural or made up in many cases, whether it's lizard people or whatever that can supplant what, you know, people like Max, like you are doing, of laying out the actual documentary record. Yes, yeah. You can either drive people into paranoia, superstition, confusion, kind of blind hatred, or you can try to drive them towards a process of truth, of actually understanding their world. And yeah, I hope there are enough people out there who are going to continue this work. so we can have a

a real awakening and you know we're all susceptible to manipulation and I think it's important

to unify and not be too dismissive you know don't just demonize certain segments, you know. Leaders, you know, leaders, people like that

who are really manipulating things on a big scale, yes, you can, you know, talk about how suspect they are. But there's a lot of people just being swayed back and forth. They're just seen as little elements in somebody's PR campaign. So, yeah, I try to maintain respect for everyone and hope that everybody can participate in this process of really just understanding their world and getting, you know, absorbing some of the important facts about how we got here. Great point. We are about at the hour mark. I think we've taken more than enough of Max's time.

Thank you so much, Max, again, for joining us today. I think it's time that we put into the record some of our final thoughts. Yeah, I don't have a great deal of final thoughts. I think, you know, I would end with another question of as the incoming administration, enters office with this flag of JFK Truth, a waven, you know, and respecting the people who might have a sincere belief in that goal and a sincere belief in the administration's adherence to that goal, you know, how can we formulate our message in such a way? as to put a wedge in between what we consider these bad actors and their sincere,

well-intentioned followers, and what might we expect to come out in the next few years? Great question. What's coming down the pike? Well, Trump did not release the JFK files when he had a chance to do so in his first administration. But for some reason, a lot of people think that he's going to drain the swamp and expose the deep state to the harsh light of justice this time around. yeah I'm I'm highly doubtful I'll I if if he does anything good I'll acknowledge it um but like I said earlier which we should be ready to to offer people an alternative say you know this yes this we saw this guy was a scam artist and you know we need to we need to real people's movement. It cannot be led by some fucking billionaires. And, uh, and, you know,

the world's richest man maybe is not a good hero to have for, uh, you know, remaking society in a more equal, honest way. Um, um, um, Yeah, I don't know what RFK is going to do. He's a wild card. Now he wants his campaign manager, his daughter-in-law, who was a CIA agent, Emerilist Box, to be. What does he want her to be? Some, you know.

Yeah, it wasn't CIA director or DNI. I don't remember what the precise role was. Maybe it was like head of a declassive. classification commission or something like that. Yeah, maybe that was it. But, yeah, I think we just got to maintain your skepticism. And I acknowledge the fact that there's opportunities now. Like things are breaking down in unprecedented ways.

Obviously, the lack of faith in institutions is dangerous in some ways, and that's what people like Priscilla Johnson McMillan and Ruth Payne and the rest of these people always say, you know, oh, the conspiracy theorists are throwing doubt on our institutions, and that's dangerous to society. But it's also an opportunity. And, you know, maybe you can, yeah, maybe you can recruit some of these people to the actual side of truth somehow.

It's an open question. I'm not convinced that we're going anywhere good anytime soon. But there are opportunities. So you heard that, listener. If you have supported the likes of Trump and Elon Musk and RFK Jr. and their ilk, give it a second thought. Watch Max's movie, listen to Fourth Reich Archaeology, and we welcome you with open arms into what you said, very aptly, Max. A people's movement, governed and guided by truth and justice.

That's what we're all about here. Should we sign off, Dick? Yeah, it seems like that's all there's left to do on this one. I want to thank Max Good once again for taking the time today and speaking with us about these very important issues. The listener can catch Max's exceptional film, The Assassination, and Mrs. Payne. Pretty much anywhere, you can stream videos online. And you can also check out what Max is up to on his website,

maxgoodfilm.com, or find him on Twitter at JFK Payne. Be sure to join us next week Be sure to join us next week when we died right back into our series within a series The Warren Commission decided For now, I'm Dick And I'm Don Saying farewell and keep digging.