Fourth Reich Archaeology - The Warren Commission Decided ep. 1

Episode Date: November 8, 2024

We are in the big game now. Jack gets capped and it’s up to FBI informant Gerald Ford Jr. and a ragtag band of Fourth Reichsmen helmed by ex-CIA chief, Allen Dulles, to investigate (read: cover up) the murder. We recap the first half of Jerry’s life’s work and his entry into the keystone of the political pyramid, including the insane amount of intersections Jerry has with historical personages and events, with a heavy center of gravity in the intelligence community… We’re in the late 50s/early 60s as his star continues to rise in Congress. We recount how he was tapped in the 1960 presidential election as a potential candidate for Vice President to his old pal Dick Nixon. That’s right, our man Jerry, who time and again has been quoted as saying that his “sole political ambition” was to be speaker of the House, threw his hat in the ring to play second fiddle on the 1960 Nixon ticket. He loses that bid to Boston Brahmin, and Kennedy family rival, Henry Cabot Lodge. Of course, Nixon loses and JFK takes the reigns. But not for long, as Jack breaks the golden rule–don’t mess with the CIA. And that’s how Jerry gets the professional opportunity of a lifetime. We know there are lots and lots of JFK podcasts out there that go through various aspects of the criminal conspiracy to assassinate the president. That’s not what this is. We’re still digging in Jerryworld here. We want to provide our listeners with something fresh and unlike anything else out there. You won’t want to miss it.In part one of this miniseries, we go over the contours and conclusions of the Warren Commission and set the stage for what’s to come in our archaeological expedition. We explore Jerry’s favorite turn of phrase, and the title of this miniseries. We explain, at a high level, the conventional recitation of what happened on November 22, 1963 and in the days that followed. And we cover the Commission’s thirteen findings, all of which point the finger at Lee Harvey Oswald as a lone assassin. So sit back and join us as we embark on the mother of all side quests – an exploration into the assassination and cover up of the 35th President of the United States. We hope that this miniseries broadens our listener base as we continue to grow. To that end please tell your friends and family about our project. And, as always, we are grateful for financial support on Patreon.

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 the 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 on. 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 to 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 get a lot of killers.

Why you think our country's so innocent? This is not going to see. I am. Thank you, Fort Reich is coming. In fact, Fort Reich, Archaeology, Archaeology. This is Fourth Reich Archaeology. I'm Dick. And I'm Don.

Thank you for joining us once again, and welcome. Welcome back. We hope you had a chance to tune in and enjoy our last election special, wherein we accurately predicted that Trump would take the election on the strength of victories in Pennsylvania and Michigan. Look, it's not our fault, folks. We just calls them like we sees them. But now, we are back in Jerry World and thrilled to have you with us. We would once again like to thank all of those who have subscribed to the podcast, who have rated and reviewed the podcast, and who have told their friends, loved ones, co-workers, teachers, students, and strangers on the street about our podcast. And we implore everyone listening to do the same because we certainly are intent. to reach a wider audience and to get the word out about the Fourth Reich that we're all,

unfortunately, living in. Reminder that we are on Twitter and Instagram at Fourth Reich POD, and we are always reachable, dear listener, by email at forthrightepod at gmail.com. We are absolutely buzzing. to invite you to join us on our most ambitious dig yet. We're calling it the Warren Commission Decided, in honor of Jerry Ford's favorite legalese turn of phrase, and we'll dig into that phrase in a minute. In many ways, the 10 episodes that we've done on Jerry World to date

have all been leading up to this moment. So once again, you'll get more out of this if you start from the beginning of the Jerry World saga. But if you can't wait, go ahead and keep listening, and hopefully you'll be motivated to flesh out the picture of how we got here. We are in the big show now. It is time for the Warren Commission. John F. Kennedy is dead. And we're getting into Jerry Ford's real ascent to the center of power. And most people know very little about. Gerald Ford. And I think that has to do with the fact that Gerald Ford is largely only known as an unelected president. And he's kind of has this reputation. We've talked about it a lot as an idiot, a sort of a bumbling fool. And what he's remembered for today, if not for that sort of clownish

quality, and if not for the fact that his wife, Betty Ford, has her name on a chain of drug and alcohol rehab facilities. Probably the most notable thing about Gerald Ford is his service on the Warren Commission as one of its seven members. Yeah, and I actually would say that most people probably don't even know that he was on the Warren Commission. Surely the noided and the JFK assassination conspiracy theorists do, but, you know, maybe we ask the listener, go around and talk to the folks you know in your personal life and see how many of them realized that our president, Jerry Ford, was on the seven-person Warren Commission. In any event, given that Fourth Reich archaeology is the number one global source of deep history

on our president, Gerald Ford. Obviously, we got to do something extremely hard. And who killed the president? Oh, man, why don't you fucking stop it? Shit, who did... This is too fucking big for you. You know that? This is...

Who did the president? Who killed it? Fuck, man. It's a mystery. It's a mystery rocked in a riddle inside an enigma. The fucking shooters don't even know. Don't you get it? Fuck, man!

That's right. Yeah, I think by this point, point in time, we think that we've built up a trust with you, our beloved listening audience over the past three months that we've been doing this show. And we sincerely hope that this mini-series will take our project to a whole other level. And the project really is a series within a series. You know, we're taking a detour from Jerry World, but still staying close to our Fourth Reich every man. Yeah, so before we get into the meat of it, we wanted to discuss a little bit the name of our series. You probably recall from our intro music that Jerry Ford was fond of

describing his take on the JFK assassination thusly. The Warren Commission decided that we found no evidence of a conspiracy, foreign or domestic. Now, on first listen, it sounds like he's just saying that there was no conspiracy. In other words, that he's saying that Oswald acted alone, that Ruby acted alone in killing Oswald, and that's all there is to the case. But let's take a closer look at the phrase and its meaning. Dick, let's don our lawyer caps here. Let's affix Esquire to our names. And let's scratch behind that legalese. Yeah, sure thing. Let's look at the sentence itself, right? The Warren Commission

decided that we found no evidence of a conspiracy, foreign, or domestic. There are two key qualifiers in that statement. The first is that it's the commission decided, What did it decide? It decided that it found no evidence. So it's not the Warren Commission found no evidence. It's the Warren Commission decided that it found no evidence. And so getting to found no evidence. Found no evidence does not mean that there was no evidence or that there was no conspiracy. That's right. The only thing that it means on its face is that the commission decided. The evidence it did review did not evince a conspiracy. Right, right. So the active subject in the sentence is the commission. And what Jerry is saying is essentially that the evidence that the commission looked at, it decided that that evidence did not support a conspiracy. Conspiracy theorists have confronted or had confronted Jerry about the statement. And of course, whenever he was confronted, he would say that the statement means that there

wasn't a conspiracy. And he stood by that there wasn't a conspiracy. Nonetheless, the statement itself, the words on the page suggest otherwise. Right. Yeah, we'll play the clip from the Bob Costas interview where Costas kind of fucks up a bunch of of facts and tries to ask a question about it. But basically he teased Jerry up to just say one more time that, well, look, if other people looked at the evidence,

they might see different evidence or they might take a different conclusion. But when we looked at the evidence, this was our conclusion. Now, that last phrase is key, because I understand you lobbied for it to be worded that way. Not that there could not have been a conspiracy, but that we honestly found no evidence of a conspiracy. evidence of a conspiracy. But then that raises the question, was there a so-called rush to judgment?

We did not rush to judgment. We spent 10 full months in page after page after page of testimony. We deliberated and came to what I think were very sound conclusions. I do not think in the intervening years that any new credible evidence has been unearthed. The evidence that we found in our extensive investigation is still the basic information available. Now, some people take our evidence and come to different conclusions,

but I still strongly subscribe to the conclusions of the Warren Commission. And I think that that nuance, that's really what this whole mini-trial. series is all about is and we're going to probe very deeply into this question of how can all of these people like our fourth Reich every man Gerald Ford look at all of this evidence that makes it just plain as day and I think listener that you will join us in concluding that there was absolutely a conspiracy in the assassination of JFK, just like the House Select Committee on Assassinations

determined in the 1970s, just like the members of the assassination records review board concluded by and large in the 1990s, and just like the vast majority of any serious researcher that's looked into the assassination has concluded. And so what we're interested in is how can somebody look at all that evidence and still maintain that the official narrative has legs? And listener, the Warren Commission was set up as a cover-up from the jump. And episode two of this mini-series will be all about that process. But suffice it to say for now maybe dick maybe we should talk a little bit about what this miniseries is what it isn't and give a little roadmap or a preview at what's to come right so we know that there's lots and lots of

JFK podcasts, TV shows, series, books, and on, and on, and on, that go through the various aspects of the assassination. And many of those are very well done. One that I've been listening to lately is the solving JFK podcast, Matt Crumpton's podcast, and it's very good. He's also a lawyer. He takes a very even-handed approach to not only proving up a case about a conspiracy, but really looking at the best arguments on both sides, issue by issue, of the whole assassination story. So if, you know, if you're looking for something like that, find it elsewhere because we're leaving that up to other folks that, you know, that's their entire focus. Right. At this point, I think there have been literally thousands of books, both fiction and nonfiction, written about JFK, including written by the likes of Stephen King, Don DeLillo, and even Jerry Ford, right? If you want the full-on JFK story, there's a little mine of gold mine of information out there waiting to be had.

That's not what this is. We're still digging in Jerry World. I'd like the listener to think of us at the excavation site. We're still in Jerry World. We've discovered a pocket in the earth. And we're using this discovery to provide. ride our listeners with something fresh and unlike anything else that's out there. A Jerry flavored view of the JFK assassination and the commission.

Because as far as we know, there's actually a dearth of content out there, focus specifically on the commission and Jerry Ford's role there on. For example, in the Smith's just one on this project, Smith devotes just one chapter to Jerry's time on the commission. And that chapter is a little more than pandering about the honorable and good hard work the commission did. And, you know, a discussion about how asinine the conspiracy theorists are and how Jerry and the Warren Commission ultimately got the right result.

Right. And meanwhile, on the other side of the fence, in the sort of conspiracy research side, there is a good deal of discussion of Jerry Ford. But he's kind of lumped in as a tag along with Alan Dulles and John McCloy, I'm thinking in particular, the great JFK researcher Jim de Eugenio, who who has written many books on the assassination. One of them that comes to mind particularly is called Destiny Betrayed. It's a very good book and a very recent and up-to-date book on the assassination. And in that book, he groups Gerald Ford together with Dulles and McCloy as sort of the inside men operating.

on the Warren Commission on behalf of the intelligence community. And while he dedicates a lot of space to drilling down on the roles of Dulles and of McCloy, especially Dulles, Gerald Ford is kind of not a focus. Deugenio, by the way, also was the screenwriter for the docu-series. of the same name Destiny Betrayed, which I'd strongly recommend with the caveat that unfortunately it does feature a good deal of RFK Jr., which I think at the time RFK Jr. had not gone on to really shatter his reputation by debasing himself as he has over the last year or so in the presidential campaign, but it still holds up as an excellent, probably the best documentary

on the JFK assassination. So we'll still recommend it with that calf yet. But this is predates, predates when the parasitic worm took over RFK's brain. Yeah. But nobody has really done what we're doing here, which is to focus on the commission and to focus on. on Gerald Ford, but as our listeners will know, you know, focusing on Gerald Ford does not come at the expense of understanding the context in which he was operating. So don't get the idea that we are putting on blinders here because what we hope to present is a rich world viewed through the lens of Jerry Ford that will shed light on many un and under explored aspects of the case. So we do expect that many of you, especially the more noided among you, are familiar with the JFK

assassination and the cover-up. If that's right, you are likely familiar with the mythic idea of a quid pro quo, cover up for presidency. The presidency of Gerald Ford, that is, right? Like this idea that, oh, Jerry Ford, he went on the Warren Commission, he played ball, and as a reward, he got to become president, right? Or he was elevated into the presidency by a sort of a guiding hand of intelligence. Yeah, it's the path of least resistance, right? If you figure out that, okay, Jerry Ford's president,

oh shit, Jerry Ford was also on the Warren Commission, the most sort of direct lines you start drawing lead to, oh, he got the spot because he was willing to take part in the cover-up. Right. Which, in a way, it's not untrue, but if you've listened to episodes three onward, basically the minute that he comes into contact with the elite milieu that populates the intelligence community, I think you'll understand that Jerry Ford's trajectory into that role where he's among the top candidates to be elevated to the presidency,

it goes a lot deeper before November 22nd, 1963. And in fact, you know, that's why he is in the running for the Warren Commission in the first place. Not because he's Michigan, not because he's from Michigan. That's what I was going to say is more like, you know, the way I like to think about it is that he doesn't become president because he was on the Warren Commission. he gets tapped for the Warren Commission and he gets tapped to be president for the same reasons, right? It's because he's willing to serve. And it's, one isn't the result of the other, both are the result of his willingness to be on sort of this roster of, I guess, ushers of this program. It's actually kind of a parallel to the U.S. as Fourth Reich, right?

It's not as though World War II ends and the U.S. becomes the fascist-adjacent global hegemon, right? We've been this whole time ever since we started the podcast trying to demonstrate. how it's actually a continuity of interest over time. And the same goes for Gerald Ford, that there's a continuity in his role as a sort of servant of the Fourth Reich. And it starts from a young age, and it follows him through his career. Right.

Basically, what we're getting at is as far as Jerry goes, and I guess the Fourth Reich. There's definitely a before and after, 11, 22, 1963. And today's episode will be something of a level set, right? We're just going to go over the basic contours and conclusions of the Warren Commission. Because, listener, we understand that our listening audience is diverse, and not everybody is coming at this with the same knowledge base. So we want to make sure that the basics are covered

and that we do at least provide that foundation for setting the stage for what's to come. Now next week, we're going to tell a really fascinating story, one that I think is buried way under the surface of the entire JFK assassination lore, and that is the story of how the Warren Commission was formed, including our best guesses and analysis at how Jerry Ford's name gets thrown into the ring.

After that, we're going to survey the commissioners and provide a little biographical, note on each of them and discuss their dynamics. And then it's kind of off to the races. We'll discuss the substance of the commission's work, Jerry's role on the commission, and most importantly, we're going to pay very close attention to all those red flags that signal to us that there's a lot more to the story than meets the eye, and that it was impossible for Gerald R. Ford Jr. to have unwittingly gone along with a false conclusion. That's right, folks. We are pointing the finger and telling Jerry Ford

jacuz. Wouldn't be Fourth Reich archaeology if we didn't create for you, our listener, an immersive, enjoyable experience, even as we cover some pretty dark subject matter. So let's get digging. Okay, so lest you're not at our site, we are not at our favorite dig site. Believe you me, listener, we are knees deep in the mud in Jerry world. And let's just take a moment to pick up where we left off in our last episode in the 1950s.

To tie it all back. To tie it all back to why we started this in the first place. So the last time we were with Jerry, it was the 1950s. We were covering the Eisenhower administration. His good friend Dick Nixon had just become vice president. Jerry had started a separate bromance with the Dulles brothers and was by all means being welcomed into the inner sanctum or at least as close as a measly congressman from Michigan's fifth congressional district can get to the inner sanctum and that is the

intersanctum to the intelligence apparatus of the American Empire. that to remind the listener about Jerry's trip through Asia alongside John Foster Dulles, Secretary of State under Eisenhower, they, you know, went on a real junket around the periphery of the American Empire together. And I think Jerry came away from that with a redoubled commitment to the imperial ideology that Dulles so forcefully espoused. And that won him the attention of John Foster's brother Alan Dulles, head of the CIA, who handpicked Jerry to serve on the House intelligence appropriations subcommittee where he was given as much as any civilian outside of the

intelligence community was given the inner workings of the intelligence apparatus because he had to sign the checks right he was one of the select group of congressmen who was holding the purse strings of the CIA at the heyday of imperialist adventurism. Through the 1950s, Jerry's stock is on the rise. Our man is doing all the things that he was doing his whole life, the grindset, the upward mobility, chasing that paper, so to speak. And his stock rose to new limits. When Nixon was running for president in 1959

and addressing a national gathering of young Republicans, he gave a shout out to his buddy Jerry, calling him a prime example of the new leadership that the forward-looking GOP could depend on. I tell you, folks, it's harder than it looks, it's a long way to the top if you want to rock and move. It's a long way. Ford was hot shit.

At this point, he had been shrugging off the offers to run for Senate and for running for governor for Michigan. His public sort of statement to everyone was that his only desire was to be Speaker of the House one day. You never dreamt to becoming president. The Congress was what matters. to you, right? Yes, I really enjoyed serving in the House of Representatives.

My total political ambition, political ambition was to be Speaker of the House of Representatives. ...was to be Speaker of the House of Representatives. But there's another story, too, isn't there, Dick? So this was one that, I mean, certainly before digging into this project, I had no idea, but the year is 1960. It's January. We're just starting off a new

decade. Newsweek magazine publishes a blind item describing its ideal candidate. And they write it up as, quote, a young man from the House of Representatives who has shown a capacity to learn facts. unquote who do you think that's talking about dick it sounds a lot like our boy jerry it sure does maybe you want to so uh you know a blind item that's a that's one that was new to me i don't know if it would be new to many people but and i guess it happens pretty regularly in journalism or not i don't know uh so it's like a columnist will write a piece and they're describing for in this instance it would be the candidate that would be the perfect fit for vice president and they describe a person or they may describe a place or a thing or whatever but they never mention it by name so when they're

describing this ideal VP candidate they're saying all these words about this amazing candidate they're never mentioning anyone by name but they're 100% talking about Jerry and we know that because within a month, the same columnist follows up stressing that Jerry Ford would be a valuable asset in the campaign. And then in short order, the New York Herald, the National Review, Wall Street Journal, they start dropping pieces about how Ford would be a great choice for Nixon. This is the most amazing part of all of this, I think, is that Smith reports that there's credible sources to suggest that Nixon was behind the Newsweek blind item that began it all.

This was another, you know, classic Dick Nixon trick. He had planted the seed that started, started everything, started everyone talking about. Yeah, I was going to say this, the whole spectacle was set up to stage this process. Not for Nixon to pick Jerry, though, but rather for Nixon to pick the Boston Brahman Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. Ladies and gentlemen, here is Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge. My fellow Americans, our responsibility is great. He had three old dollars, one out car, a wife, We must remain strong

So that no nation will ever dare attack it We must lead by our example Bringing about equality here at home As the Declaration of Independence prompts So is to guarantee that the promise of the American Revolution and not the menace of the Communist Revolution will be the way of the future blow how's it gone to end yeah i think i look at it as like you know always the opportunist

nixon saw that he was faced with this decision right he was faced with a choice to make to pick a VP and he knew it was inherited in that process he couldn't just pick one person he needed a list of some sort and he took that opportunity to first of all elevate his boy jerry on the national stage, right? Give him some FaceTime at the convention. Get folks to recognize his name. Get him some press. This serves Nixon because he'll have someone eventually in the house

that is now a well-known name and someone that the American people can get behind. It serves Jerry because his brand becomes a little more well-known. And it helps Henry Cabot because it makes it look like it was a fair fight, that there were other options and that Henry Cabot was the best pick. Yeah, and it's actually funny because the same process kind of repeats itself. And well, this is getting way ahead of ourselves. But in 1973, when Nixon is mulling over who to appoint to replace Agnew,

he goes through a similar process. Exactly. And that time, you know, Jerry is once again on the list, and he's once again not Nixon's actual favorite pick, at least the way that Nixon tells it. But like I said, getting way ahead of ourselves here. So what happens in 1960? Right. So Lodge is the pick, and they go off and they lose the JFK.

Yeah. Did not Lodge lose to JFK for the Senate seat, too? Yes. So he's like just two of these big Boston families, like, facing off and all these different elections. And Lodge always losing. But he'll get the last laugh when he's JFK's ambassador to Vietnam. Yeah, he'll get the last laugh when he's alive and JFK is dead.

He's still got the back of his skull attack. Fuck. Oh, man. Okay, well, so all that to say is that by 1960, by the early 1960s, Jerry is hot shit. I like this little vignette about the 5960 election because even later in life when Jerry is talking about his term as president, what's the one thing he loves to say about his political career? He never wanted to be president. He wanted to be the Speaker of the House. And all of his moves were just geared towards that job, that promotion. He gets back to the House and he sets his sights on speakership, waiting to pick just the right moment to take on the old-timer minority leader Charlie Halleck. And he wins.

Right. And I know we have some non-American listeners. And so the way that this works is not really that different from a parliamentary system like you'd have in Europe or in other parliamentary systems. The Speaker of the House is elected by the full membership of the House of Representatives, which essentially means that it will always be the senior most member from the majority party, right? the majority of the members of the House are not going to elect somebody from the opposite party, right? So as the Republicans were in the minority at the time, the best position to become Speaker is House Minority Leader. And that is what Jerry finally guns for when things are not going well for the Republicans. they've been out of power for a little while ever since. Remember, we talked about,

they swept in to a full majority with Ike in 1953, but they lost it after just two years. And so they're kind of repeatedly failing to win a majority of seats in the House of Representatives. and Jerry with this new fangled national brand and large name recognition. And remember, he's hardly having to campaign for his own seat at all. So every two years when campaign season rolls around, he's making the run around the whole country to help elect more Republicans and playing that role of sort of a change. cheerleader for the party on a national scale. And he gets that seat, right?

This Charlie Halleck, he's, like, washed up. He's been in forever. And Jerry takes his place with a fresh face. But he's not able to realize his goal of becoming speaker because the party never gets that majority. They keep on failing every two years to win that. majority. So he's minority leader, you know, cycle after cycle for a while, right? Dick, you want to talk a little bit about what's going on on the home front? Yeah. The Ford's keep

having kids and Jerry keeps staying out the house on Betty. Famously in 1965, he was gone almost every single night of the year. Remember, this is a guy whose motto, whose family motto growing up was be home in time for dinner. It's a bit odd to say the least, a bit hypocritical. The other big thing in the early 1960s was that in 1962, Jerry's elevated to the 33rd degree in the Freemason community. So Freemasonry is a huge part of his life still, and he is, I think, 32 third degree is the highest degree, is it not? That's my understanding. That's my understanding.

In the Scottish right, Freemasonry, right? I think there's like different brands and different lodges and all this stuff. They have different systems, but the main branch or the main brand of Freemasonry in Washington, D.C. is the Scottish right right that's the brand that traces its roots back to really to Albert Pike the polymath Confederate general as a whole story of its own but like that is the rank that for example Harry S Truman acquired in the Scottish right free masonry and so Jerry is I mean suffice it to say he is at the top of the Freemasonic pyramid, right?

When you look at your dollar bill and you see that little capstone on the pyramid there with the all-seeing eye, if you look closely, you can see Jerry Ford. Yeah, he's looking back at you and questioning how you're spending your money in his fiscal conservative gaze. Oh, and Dick, could I mention another fella

who happened to be a 33rd degree Scottish Right Freemason. Oh, by all means. Because this is another guy who plays a pretty leading role in the Warren Commission decided. And that's a fellow by the name of J. Edgar Hoover. Oh, right on. And that relationship becomes all the more important and beneficial to both sides in 1963.

When this happens. And now for the next 30 minutes, as the world turns. Here is a bulletin from CBS News. In Dallas, Texas, three shots were fired at President Kennedy's motorcade in downtown Dallas. The first reports say that President Kennedy has been seriously wounded by this shooting. Jack gets capped. And Jerry is thrust into the center of world events right at another major inflection point in the transition into the fourth race. This keeps on happening to Jerry, doesn't it?

I mean, we're 10 episodes deep into Jerry World, and we've seen this happen time and time again, right? It reminds me of that Henry Kissinger quote that you and I really nerded out over... Must be more than six months ago now, Dick, if you could believe it. Yeah. Kissinger is one of my favorite people to listen, speak about Jerry Ford. I had to get that whole sentence out because he's definitely not one of my favorite people. But in terms of people who speak about Jerry Ford, like listen to what Henry Kissinger says. Like he says some crazy shit about Jerry, including that he's probably the most important president.

of the 20th century. But it was at Jerry's funeral where Henry Kissinger would comment that Jerry had an impact that was so profound that it's rightly to be considered providential. According to an ancient tradition, God preserves humanity,

despite its many transgressions. I'm the president of the shadow government, The Grand Governor of the Federal Reserve Public enemy of the society The one you cannot see, the 33 degree Because at any one period There exist 10 just individuals Who without being aware of their role

Redeem mankind Before you call the shop, but now is I'll turn Blow up the system and the tables have returned You're here to knowledge you've got to never learn I strike a match and me go with me, please first. Gerald Ford was such a man, propelled into the presidency by a sequence of unpredictable events. I'm the real WMD. I'm your number one public enemy. He had an impact so profound as rightly to be considered providential.

Providential. Providential. Yeah, should we do a quick little lightning round? Because I imagine some listeners might tune into this without the benefit of having listened all the way through jury world. That's fine. Hopefully you'll be inspired to go back and listen to all those episodes after this. But just by way of recap, right?

So why don't I take over for the first part of this, which is his everyman stick, and then you take over for how that got him into basically every circle and what made him the perfect fourth Reich every man, right? So there's this thing about Jerry, which I'm calling the everyman stick that he was able to cultivate at this point, right? Let's go over just from the get-go, his background, his upbringing. He falls perfectly into this mythos, this idea of the self-made man. He comes from humble beginnings in Grand Rapids. He went to South High, not Central High. He worked while he was in school. He worked his way through college.

Through nothing more than his sheer grit and hard work, he was able to get his way into Yale law. Jerry also fits perfectly into the mythos of the 20th century American as the defender of freedom and justice and liberty. He took up arms against fascism when he joined the Navy, and he came out of that a lieutenant commander. And despite what we just talked about with respect to his family life, he was a family man, or at least like to give off the appearance of being a family man this facade this persona that jerry cultivated throughout his life this is what he was able to leverage at every turn right and that's where i'll pick up and say that he leveraged that persona when he was thrust into the circle of the national elite, right? At Yale law, not only did he parlay his role

as an athletic coach into the role of a law student at Yale. He also got himself into the executive committee of the original America First Committee. And there, he joined ranks with the likes of the faculty advisor of that group, Dickie Bissell, right, the heir to the Hartford Insurance Fortune, and a future CIA honcho. He joined with the likes of Sergeant Shriver, right, who would marry into the Kennedy. family and become the first director of the Peace Corps. He joined with the likes of R. Douglas Stewart, the heir to the Quaker Oates Fortune, right? He's rubbing elbows with some serious sions of the American aristocracy. And while at Yale, he spent a good deal of time in Manhattan

at the moment in which the media is massifying, right? And he is a business partner of the guy who coins the word cover girl, Harry Conover. Conover, in turn, was a protege and collaborator of none other than Edward Bernays, Sigmund Freud's nephew and godfather of American propaganda and post. public relations, right? Bernays had, like the Dulles brothers, been at the Versailles Conference, at the real birth of the American Empire after World War I, where the United States emerged as the only major power really fully intact to emerge from that global conflict.

and Bernays kind of takes the commercial side of things to light the spark for consumerism. And Jerry Ford was right there on that ground floor. And soon after that, you know, after he gets his Yale law degree, after he comes home and spends a little time practicing law, wearing that officer's uniform from his naval service, right? He gets into Congress, and almost immediately he gets right into the center of appropriations first for the Defense Department and shortly thereafter for the CIA and the intelligence apparatus. You know, at every turn throughout all of this, what people are saying about Jerry is things like Jerry is a decent man. Jerry is the hard worker. Jerry will keep his mouth shut.

Jerry will do what's right. He's a straight shooter. He's a team player. He is, in other words, as much as anyone who is not coming from that old boys network of Yankee Doodle East Coast boarding school to Ivy League pipeline. Yes, exactly. It's not Jerry's pedigree that gets him where he wants to go, but his reputation. And ironically enough, he actually does. does have the pedigree on both sides of his family, right?

The only wrinkle there being that his uber wealthy millionaire biological father essentially disowned Jerry when he chased the infant Jerry in his mother's arms out of their Omaha, Nebraska manse with a butcher. knife when Jerry was mere weeks old, right? And so Jerry's mother all the while had come herself from something of an established family with roots tracing back to before the American Revolution. And so you could also see her desire to reclaim her lineage in its proper place in the American pantheon as being slowly but surely realized in Jerry's assent up the social ladder.

And so that brings us to the Warren Commission and what our project will be turning to for the next, I don't know how many episodes. But to start, in case our listeners are unfamiliar, and many of you may be, the Warren Commission is the shorthand name for the President's Commission on the assassination of President Kennedy, named after its chairman, Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, Earl Warren. Now, the official mandate for the commission comes from President Johnson's Executive Order 11130. The executive order was issued after Jack Ruby killed Oswald and thereby closing the only criminal case on JFK. The thinking being at the time that the American people would need close.

closure on the events that transpired on November 22nd, 1963. And don't worry. That's just the sort of back-of-the-envelope version of the formation of the commission. Like we mentioned earlier, we're going to do a whole episode about that next week. That's right. The point here is just that there was no longer going to be a criminal case brought. And Oswald would forever be called the man who was alleged to have killed the president. Yep. And the commission consisted of seven members in total, right? Dick, you mentioned Earl Warren, the chief justice and chairman.

And it also had a pair of legislators from each chamber of the legislature. And so you have two senators. one Democrat, one Republican. You also have two congressmen, one Democrat, and one Jerry Ford Republican. In addition, the Warren Commission included the former CIA head, Alan Dulles. It also included John J. McCloy. At the time, and we'll have a lot more to say about him coming up episodes, but at the time, he was working hard as the chairman of the Ford Foundation and the chairman of the council on foreign relations. Right. And we're going to do a whole episode dedicated to digging

into the background of each of the members of the commission. So don't fret that we're keeping at high level for now. We're just setting the stage here. And, you know, as we discussed, the commission was established by President Johnson, and the mandate was to investigate the assassination of President Kennedy, as well as the shooting of Governor John Connolly, Texas Governor John Connolly, who was in the front seat of the limo with Kennedy. and the commission was also charged with investigating the murder of JFK's alleged assassin Lee Harvey Oswald by Jack Ruby just two days after the assassination of JFK. Yeah, and we wanted to mention at the moment when the commission was first formed,

the evidence linking Oswald to the Kennedy assassination was purely circumstantial right he was not arrested at the crime scene he did not have a rifle on him at the time of his arrest he was arrested in another part of Dallas he was just linked to a building nearby Dee Lee plus where the shots were fired, the Texas School Book Depository. But after his arrest, Oswald vehemently denied having been involved in any way with the assassination. And Oswald never got his day in court, like you mentioned, Dick. Yeah. And for those of you who have been down to Dallas to Dealey Plaza, there's a plaque on the book depository. which is now a museum but the plaque

says exactly that this is where Lee Harvey Oswald allegedly assassinated JFK and over the years the people the passerbyes

who have walked by that plaque have either with their fingers or their pens or whatever underlined allegedly and have etched it's crazy they've caused an etching basically under the line, under the word allegedly.

So, you know, it's very much a thing that is a part of the mainstream narrative, right? Oswald never got his day in court. There's actually been, no one has been convicted of the assassination of JFK, for the assassination of JFK. Right. And the reason why he didn't get his day in court is because, like you said, on November 24th after two days in custody as he was being escorted through the Dallas police building Oswald was shot and killed by a strip club owner named Jack Ruby born Jacob Leon Rubenstein

and Ruby was able to get into that position the listener might have seen the famous photographs right it's even caught on video, uh, the shooting of Oswald. So very much different from the killing of Kennedy, right? There's a zero doubt whatsoever that Ruby killed Oswald. But there is a question of whether Ruby was acting alone or if he was acting as part of a conspiracy. And we'll just give a little preview here that the facts that casting suspicion on the person of Jack Ruby is a lengthy list, right? Yeah, and we'll get into all of the weird facts surrounding the Ruby's assassination of Oswald. But it gets weird. Sure does.

So the commission studied the facts for about 10 months, and in September 1964, it released its final report to much fanfare. And that report listed 13 conclusions. And we wanted to just, in sort of summer, fashion list those conclusions off right now so that the official narrative is on the table in the back of the listener's minds and kind of in your consciousness because over the course of the series we will be chipping away at these 13 points and before we get started I just want to point out of these 13 conclusions how many of them as you know as we as we speak

them I want you to think listener how many of them have to do with the one conclusion that is there was a lone assassin that shot from the Texas school book depository building you know we're going to list 13 conclusions I think what maybe nine of the 13 in one way or other have to do with the fact that it's just a lone gunman from the book depository. Even the ones that don't talk about the book depository or the lone gunman, still basically the conclusion that it's drawing is that it was a lone gunman from the book depository that killed the president. But yeah, let's go through the conclusions, and they are as follows.

One, the shots which killed President Kennedy and wound wounded Governor Connolly were fired from the sixth floor window at the southeast corner of the Texas School Book Depository. 2. President Kennedy was first struck by a bullet which entered the back of his neck and exited through the lower front portion of his neck, causing a wound which would not necessarily have been lethal. The president was struck by a second bullet, which entered the right to the wound.

ear portion of his head, causing a massive and fatal wound. 3. Governor Connolly was struck by a bullet which entered on the right side of his back and traveled downward through the right side of his chest, exiting below his right nipple. This bullet then passed through his right wrist and entered his left thigh. Then it caused a superficial wound. 4. There is no credible evidence that the shots were fired from the triple underpass, ahead of the motorcade, or from any other location. 5. The weight of the evidence indicates that there were three shots fired.

6. Although it is not necessary to any essential findings of the commission to determine, to determine just which shot hit Governor Connolly. There is very persuasive evidence from the experts to indicate that the same bullet which pierced the president's throat also caused Governor Connolly's wounds. However, Governor Connolly's testimony and certain other factors have given rise to some difference of opinion as to this probability. but there is no question in the mind of any member of the commission

that all the shots which caused the presidents and Governor Connolly's wounds were fired from the sixth floor window of the Texas School Book Depository. Keep that one in mind, listener, because that's a mouthful. That's a real mouthful. Yeah, that's one of my favorites. That one's one of my favorites because they're basically just going, on a limb on a conclusion and making a conclusion that they admit they don't need to make. I admit that there is conflicting testimony about their conclusion and also use this conclusion

to reiterate their first conclusion, which is that the shots were fired from the Texas school book depository. If you need that many fucking clauses in a sentence, chances are you're spous. out in some bullshit. Yeah. Okay, seven. The shots which killed President Kennedy and wounded Governor Connolly were fired by Lee Harvey Oswald.

Eight. Oswald killed Dallas police patrolman J.D. Tippett approximately 45 minutes after the assassination. Nine. Ruby entered the basement of the Dallas Police Department and killed. Lee Harvey Oswald, and there is no evidence to support the rumor that Ruby may have been assisted by any members of the Dallas Police Department. 10. The commission has found no evidence that either Lee Harvey Oswald or Jack Ruby was part of any conspiracy, domestic or foreign, to assassinate President Kennedy. That one is

that one's Jerry's favorite, right? Yeah, that's the classic. 11. The commission has found no evidence of conspiracy, subversion, or disloyalty to the U.S. government by any federal, state, or local official. 12. The commission could not make any definitive determination

of Oswald's motives. Oops. 13. the commission believes that recommendations for improvements in presidential protection are compelled by the facts disclosed in this investigation yeah the best recommendation for improvement in presidential protection that i could possibly give is don't get on the wrong side of the CIA. Right.

Yeah. I wanted to read just before we close out, I wanted to read a few quotes from some high profile kind of bona fide critics of the Warren Commission. And I'm not talking about conspiracy researchers or, you know, marginal researchers and authors, marginal in the eyes of the establishment, not saying that Don from, you know, from my personal perspective. But just to give the listener a sense that when we trash the Warren Commission and its conclusions, we are in the company of senators, of congressmen, of, you know, people who command the respect of the establishment.

So the 65 or so percent of Americans who believe there was a conspiracy are not out on some limb, but are rather really the mainstream. It's only this media imposed. conformity with the official narrative that suggests that those who question the official narrative are some kind of kooky conspiracy theorists, right? Yeah, that's exactly right. And again, notably, the United States Congress, through its House Select Committee on Assassinations, concluded that there was a conspiracy.

Yes, a probable conspiracy. Okay, so the one that I really wanted to read was some comments from Republican Senator Richard Schweiker of Pennsylvania. And, you know, this is a guy who was a key official in Ronald Reagan's presidential campaign administration. by no means a cookey conspiracy theorist or a marginal figure. He is a mainstream guy, and he told the BBC in a documentary, I believe it was in 1976. He said, quote, The Warren Commission has in fact collapsed like a house of cards, and I believe it was set up at the time

to feed Pablum to the American people for reasons not yet known, and one of the biggest cover-ups in the history of our country occurred at that time. The most important thing was that the intelligence agencies did all the wrong things if they were really looking for a conspiracy or to to find out who killed John Kennedy. So it's pretty strong from Senator Schweiker. Similar comments are echoed by member after member of the various committees that have looked into this from the Congress, whether it's the church committee

of the Senate, the Pike Committee, and the House, the House Select Committee on Assassinations, or the Assassination Records Review Board, which was actually not an investigation into the facts of the case, but into the documents and their release under the JFK Records Act. But suffice it to say, listener, you are about to join the majority of Americans in understanding

not only that JFK was killed by a conspiracy that included members of the highest levels of the American establishment, but also that that event was critical in the rise of the Fourth Reich. For now, I'm Dick. And I'm Don. Saying farewell. And keep digging. Thank you.