Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast - The Secret Agent Who Killed JFK…

Episode Date: March 26, 2024

The Secret Agent Who Killed JFK…

There's about four theories, Fidel Castro. The mafia did it. Pentagon did it, theory. I'm going to tell your audience, killed John Kennedy. We had him in a plan to kill Fidel Castro. On November 22nd, I was caught with my pants down when the same plan was used but on John Kennedy.

Can you kind of start at the beginning for people that don't know? John Kennedy, it's 1963. He's campaigning. He's beginning the very early phases of campaigning for what's going to be the 1964 presidential election. He's in Texas, which that year is going to be, you know, historically is a solidly democratic state. Right. The South as a whole is solidly democratic because. And he's running as a Democrat.

Right. He's a Democrat. But it's up in the air a little bit because he's making major moves on. civil rights. And the Solid South, which was almost a one-party state in Democratic hands at the time, is starting that it looks like that could wither, even though his vice president, Lyndon Johnson, who's with him, is from Texas. So he's down there knowing that that, even then, it was a high electoral vote count state. He's going to need Texas, or he's going to want to certainly hope to cinch it up in some way, shape, or form.

And again, this is early in what we would call campaign season. But he's down there. He gets off at Lovefield. He and his wife get into a car with the governor of Texas, John Connolly. There's all sorts of internal rivalries involving Lyndon Johnson, Governor Connolly, Ralph Yarbrough, stuff I won't go into, but all behind-the-scenes stuff. And he is in a motorcade, and he is going to speak at an indoor event, but he's going through Dallas to get there, Dallas Fort Worth.

The car goes down in Houston. It's November 22nd, 1963. It then makes a left onto Elm Street, anywhere from three to five shots, depending on your shooting scenario, ring out in Daly Plaza. And John Kennedy is wounded in his torso and in his head. John Connolly, who's sitting in front of him, also sustains wounds to his torso, his wrist and his thigh. John, both of them are rushed to Parkland Memorial Hospital. It's around 12.30 Central Standard Time. And while he's being treated,

there is a obvious man hunt on to try and get whoever it is who killed the president. It's somewhat chaotic, as you might imagine. And Kennedy is eventually pronounced dead at Parkland Hospital. Governor Connolly survives. And while this is happening, the Dallas police eventually arrest, a couple hours later, arrest and apprehend a worker from a building that was on that parade route in Daly Plaza, a worker from a building called a Texas school book depository named Lee Harvey Oswald, a former defector to the Soviet Union who had returned to the United States. Oswald is not only accused of killing John Kennedy. He's accused of killing a Dallas police officer, J.D. Tippett, who was alleged to have tried to arrest him along the way. And then Oswald stridently denies that he had anything to do with these killings.

On TV, he says he's innocent and that he's just a patsy, but he on his way to be arraigned for the crime two days later. So this was on Friday, November 22nd is the killing. Sunday, November 24th, he's being taken out of the basement of the Dallas police building a nightclub owner by the name of Jack Ruby pulls out from like a gaggle of reporters and police officers. And as Oswald is being escorted out, shoots Oswald in the stomach. Oswald will then die not long as after from those wounds. And that for my father and my grandparents was, and for many, many Americans is what caused a lot of skepticism and doubt. You know, modern American, political assassins in the United States typically admit to their crimes. They typically do it from

short range. And they certainly don't get killed while they're denying the crime. So it leaves a taste in the mouth of a lot of Americans that there's something more here. Lyndon Johnson, who takes over as president, is sworn in actually on Air Force One as they're taking the body of John Kennedy back to be autopsied in Maryland. He eventually orders a presidential commission to investigate the case. And several months later in September of 1964, that commission, run by the Chief Justice Earl Warren, known as the Warren Commission, comes out with a conclusion that the person who was arrested and shot, Lee Harvey Oswald, was the lone deranged assassin. There was no conspiracy.

He had no help in any way, shape, or form. And that is what many people refer to as the quote-unquote official version. But in fact, about 15 years later, the case is reopened by Congress because it's of many doubts that have circulated since that time, since 1963, and they actually concluded that there was a likely conspiracy. So I'll end it at that, but that's sort of the overview. Right. Okay. And since then, I mean, there have just been numerous conspiracy theories. Correct. So we've had hundreds of books written on this topic. I would imagine that if you

get past the Civil War in World War II, it might be the most commented upon period of American history and books that we have. And I've probably read 120 books on my own, besides going into the archives, going through files, going through documents, watching documentaries, even interviewing witnesses, going to conferences. Highly controversial event. It is a traumatic event. It is a traumatic event. for people like, again, my father was a young, he was a 20-year-old guy when this happened. He never got over it. My grandparents never got over it. Many Americans never fully got over it and had answered questions.

And of course, you hold up a president in high esteem and he's killed at that young and age, and you don't feel as if your government fully leveled with you, that's going to be an issue that a lot of people take an interest in. Yeah, well, political assassinations in the United States, in general, but especially in the United States, where you feel like things are so stable is really, you know, disheartening, let's say. You know, the one thing I always feel like about our government is that it's, you know, for all of the infighting, it's stable. They're not blowing up cars. They're not killing each other. They're not, you know, they're not, you know, having their political rivals arrested and thrown in prison, although, you know, the Trump thing might change that.

But regardless, you know, that's, I've always felt secure. So can you imagine, like Kennedy, you know, love him or hate him at the time? My God. I mean, you know, that's just so, I can't imagine anything less democratic. Right. Well, there have been a couple of attempts since, you know, Garfield was assassinated in. a hundred years before but then in a span of 10 years if like again i told my father's three heroes john kennedy martin luther king bobby kennedy imagine having all three of them killed in a five year span oh yeah you have no trust nothing of malcolm x and other people you know um fred hampton etc you know who wouldn't have been on the radar of a lot of people you know fred hampton but The point is that we had a period of, of, you know, going from the 50s where you talk about politically stable, it doesn't get any more stable than America in the 1950s to the 1960s, which, you know, I referred certainly to the second half of that decade.

I would tell my students, 65, 75, the age of social upheaval. And the assassination Kennedy really kind of starts it at the end of 63. And really the decline of faith and trust in the American government, you've got to be careful with, you know, causation correlation. But it starts in 64. You know, we weren't headlong into Vietnam in 64. So the people who think that that was what caused it. What I think caused it is there were a lot of Americans who didn't believe their own government that on the story of what happened to their president. And that only got larger as the decade went further and as the decades went further.

Right. So what are some of the theories? So I'd argue that there's that there's about four theories that really get some currency. One of which, you know, some of it depends on the nature of the people who investigate. the theory that my father eventually settled on and understood my father was was liberal my grandfather was an actual Marxist they would get into the fight see my father was like an anti-Marxist liberal but my father eventually settled on on Fidel Castro having killed John Kennedy and I mentioned that it would be it's a theory that doesn't get a whole lot of currency in the community

of people who research, and I'll explain why. I don't think it gets enough credit. People are very quick to dismiss it. But the theory goes is that our government was trying to kill Fidel Castro. Right. Which is well documented. That's well documented. That's not for debate.

And one of the last attempts, certainly in the Kennedy administration, was actually a poison pen was handed to a potential, you know, insider. within the Cuban government, literally like the day of John Kennedy's assassination. And for my father, when he learned that and that this person was told that Bobby Kennedy personally approved of the plot, whether that's true or not, my father became convinced that it was Fidel Castro, that it was Oswald's connections to Castro, which we'll talk a lot about soon. And, you know, because ostensibly on the surface at the very least, Castro was the accused assassin Lee Harvey Oswald's sort of political idol. And so the ideas is that Castro then said,

you know what? At this point, I'm playing with fire. I'm going to kill them and get rid of their people before they get rid of me. And that was the last straw when he heard in the days leading up to that poison pen plot that he was that bobby was behind it that that secured it that was that was my father's argument now what a lot of people will say and on you know to some extent i agree with it which is fidel castro would never be crazy enough to kill john kennedy because it would invite a guaranteed attack on Cuba and wipe out his regime. My father used to always point out, well, A, his life is on the line. If he believes that really and truly, doesn't have a whole lot to lose.

And B, within the Cuban Missile Crisis, if you actually study it, the one person, along with Che Guevara and people in the Cuban government, who was willing to really ratchet things up and in a way that would have almost certainly resulted in the destruction of Cuba was fidel like the rational figures were grushchev and kennedy in 62 when we almost had a nuclear war castor was the one who behind the scenes was saying stuff that if you know people followed through probably would have resulted in a nuclear war so that but my argument to my father it's going to become more obvious to people when I talk about this in more depth later on is it's one thing to be willing to take risks to preserve your own life. It's another thing to

take unnecessary risks. And no one is smartest Fidel Castro. And remember, Fidel Castro outlived all the people who were trying to get rid of his regime. Every president who was trying to get rid of him, he outlived all of them. He's not going to use Lee Harvey Oswald, who has, as we will talk about, open affinity for Fidel Castro to kill John Kennedy, right? Because you don't have to, you know, say, invade my island. You could use Castro infiltrated anti-Castro groups. He could have any one of those people do it and shifted the blame away. So in other words, I don't think he would have used Oswald to pull it off. That's why I dismiss Fidel Castro. But that is one of the theories that still sometimes gets tossed about, but it's not very well, doesn't have a

lot of currency. Relatedly, and one that gets a lot more currency, I would especially say in mainstream circles, is the mafia killing John Kennedy. And the argument there is, and the argument there is twofold. And it actually connects back to Fidel Castro. The twofold argument is, one, no attorney general before and certainly since, I should say, certainly before and arguably since beyond Bobby Kennedy has ever done more to try and crack down on the mafia. It was almost a non-existent priority before Bobby Kennedy. And Bobby Kennedy, and Bobby Kennedy, made it the priority of the Justice Department. He was despised by people in organized crime

and adjacent groups like Jimmy Hoffa and the Teamsters. And so the argument goes in this front that they killed John because killing John would make sure that Bobby loses any influence because Lyndon Johnson also hated Bobby Kennedy, the new president. The other element to the mafia argument is, is that the mafia also had enormous financial interests in Cuba that were lost when

Fidel Castro took over in a communist revolution and nationalized everything and got rid of the casino industry, basically. And so the mafia wanted those, that island back. And a lot of people, as I'll get to in a little bit, a lot of people thought that Kennedy was wishy-washy on the issue of getting rid of Castro. So, and then there's a third, which I think is a bit more controversial. It's almost accepted as common wisdom, but when you look at it, which is the argument that the mafia killed Kennedy because they helped them get elected and they felt betrayed. I don't want to get too much into that, but I think if people actually look into the

details. They'll find that that's a weaker rendition of what actually happened than people. It's almost taking it like face value now, and it shouldn't be. Either way, they clearly had a motive to kill him. And it ties in very nicely to the guy who killed John killed Oswald, Jack Ruby, who was a nightclub owner, who he wasn't a made man, but he clearly had ties. to organize crime, groups like the Teamsters. He had weird movements and associations and visits in the weeks leading up to the assassination. And so a lot of the mafia did it theory is rooted, one, in that motivation that I'm talking about. And two, in the fact that Jack Ruby kills Oswald.

Many people think it was silencing Oswald. and therefore his ties to organized crime feed into that motive that organized crime hated Bobby wanted John and Bobby gone hence they kill him so that's sort of the second major theory the mafia did it theory right

then there's a Pentagon did it theory and the argument there goes or national security state. The argument there goes that, A, they thought John Kennedy was a sissy when it came to communism. These people, and this is not an exaggeration if you see the movie 13 days about the Cuban Missile Crisis,

the period of time we came closer to a nuclear war than just about any in American history. And, you know, any outsider nowadays looks back at that and says, wow thank god john kennedy figured out how to ease the tensions there so we didn't get into a nuclear war but there were people in the pentagon who not only wanted to invade cuba knowing there would be a nuclear war right they actually thought we could win a nuclear war and their their their their mindset was we'll kill a hundred million of them they'll kill 30 million of us and we win And it sounds nuts, but these people were nuts.

I don't say that lightly. They were borderline cyclopaths, right? They despised Kennedy. They thought he chickened out at the Bay of Pigs in 1961 when he wouldn't give air support. They thought that he had whisked out in the Cuban missile crisis and should have invaded. they things that were like symbolic that he did like talk about going and you know doing a joint space program with the Soviets they freaked out about that um well i think nuclear test ban treaty they freaked out about that i i think um you know the bay of pigs things thing you know he

definitely he definitely dropped the ball there i mean in my opinion i you know i've read a couple of books about it. I feel like he should have sent in an airbus report. I really think he let those guys get slaughtered. And then as far as the Cuban missile crisis, like, I think he made the right call. Like, I mean, especially later on finding out they had active, you know, the ability to have active nukes. And they had, what, shoulder nukes? They had a bunch of things that we didn't realize they had. Like, that would have gone nuclear. Like, I think he made the right call. And we know even more so now because we know from when when the Soviet Union fell after the Cold War in 1991, we get access to their people and their archives. And we know, you know, even from cruise ships like grandchildren and stuff, like the pressure on his side, he had what we would call right wingers there.

And if you did some of the stuff that was being proposed, especially by these Pentagon folks, in the XCOM meetings, the meetings that Kennedy organized to try and, you know, talk through and, you know, game plan out what to do in the, in the Cuban Missile Crisis. If we had done what they had wanted, it would have absolutely escalated into a nuclear exchange. And what did we give up? We gave up some nuclear weapons that were antiquated, that were no good anyway, that were, you know, scheduled to be taken down. Like, so what? So you dropped, you know, two dozen of nukes that were really just not going to make a difference anyway. Right. And I mean, you don't, it doesn't, I have things that I think a very realistic view as we'll hear in this conversation about John Kennedy. I don't throw him on a mythical mountain. But you can make a very serious argument, A, that he saved the world. And B, you know, it's very difficult. I'm a big time presidential historian. But, you know, it's like with sports, it's very difficult to say, you know, if, you know, Babe Ruth were on the Red Sox and stayed on the Red Sox instead of going to the Yankees, you know, Woody have hit 40 home runs. You're dealing with counterfactuals. Is somebody like a really great president

or did he do what every president would have done? This is a rare example of where you could actually say, no, we are very lucky John Kennedy was the guy there. Because at one point, if you look at the people who were invited to that meeting, several of those people either ran for president or could have run for president and they were proposing things that would have led to a nuclear war so he's held his ground when other people who we would have maybe had in his place did not so we were very lucky

he was the guy in place at that time he was very pragmatic right and that's by the way is going to become a huge discussion as we go forward. That's where I think people overstate how great or not great he was. More than anything, he was pragmatic. But a group of people who hated him at the time and who did things even during the missile crisis that were provocative that they really should not have done. Any person with common sense would not have done

unless you wanted to force John Kennedy's hand would be the senior leaders at the Pentagon. And the sort of the very common argument for this Pentagon did it theory is to make an argument based on John Kennedy and Vietnam. And for people who don't know, Vietnam was in its very, very early phases of the Vietnam War at this point in time. We basically had Green Berets there. It was advisors. And there's a real debate as to what John Kennedy would have done. But, you know, the people in this debate, they sometimes, you know, whether he was definitively going to pull out of Vietnam or not. And I certainly don't think he was going to expand the, if he could avoid it, the involvement there. If you're looking at it from the perspective of did the Pentagon do something to try and get rid of him, you have to take what their.

mindset is going to be and this is the guy who over and over again in their minds and this is documented gave in in their minds to the communists and now he's going to pull out of southeast asia so he's going to give him southeast asia also right in their minds he's he's practically a communist right for doing this kind of that's that's the that's the argument and so there is some evidence that that he had circulated a memorandum, National Security Act Memorandum 263, which was certainly calling for at least the initial phases of what could become a full withdrawal, was circulating right before he got killed. And right after he got killed, it gets changed in a substantive way that doesn't allow for a pullout. And so the Pentagon did it people really focus on that. Because the

changes the the ingredients for the substantive change they argue were in place before john kennedy got killed and if assuming that that memorandum was supposed to represent his honest opinions on vietnam who why would you who thought they could change it and get away with it and how would you think you could get away with it the argument is oh well they they know they're going to knock them off yeah right and And so, but, and there is some, again, there's, you know, A, they certainly had motive means and opportunity with, you know, equivalent of whatever kind of special forces you could have mustered for that period of time. And they do have a military connection to Oswald. Oswald served in the Marines for people who think that he never stopped being a military intelligence agent.

We'll get to that in a little bit. The argument is that they manipulated him somehow, turned him on John Kennedy, and they did it because they thought Kennedy was going to cave to the communists, both in Cuba, where they asked the other thing that's going on, and I'll get to our very next theory, is that John Kennedy, the pragmatist, while his administration, I think this gets mythologized, was absolutely working behind the scenes

to try and undermine the Castro regime to the point of trying to topple it was also simultaneously making secret backroom overtures to Castro starting in September of 1963. That, we have good reason to think that leaked out. And that would absolutely freak out

the people in the Pentagon also. The problem is, is A, you've got to get me to people who could get to Oswald. I'll get to this when we get further into my own theory. You really have to get me to people who can get to Oswald in the months leading up to the assassination. And there's not a whole lot of evidence of military Pentagon interaction with Oswald at that time, at all, in my opinion. And then the second thing is any kind of super high level. plot you're taking huge risks of it being leaked and these people you know that whenever we give

these theories we often look at what they have to gain and we don't look at what they have to lose they would have been executed for treason if they got caught like they have a lot to lose so at the very least you're going to spend the rest of your life in in federal prison right in a box somewhere right i'm willing to entertain the pending this is what i mean i'm waiting on some authors there's a author who i'll mention probably more than once his name is john newman he himself spent years in military intelligence and national security agency and he's brilliant um but and he's clearly working towards that kind of argument and has been sort of most of the way there for the last 30 years. And I'm willing to give him a chance to lay it out. And the only problem is

he, every time he's super thorough and he's been taking his books on, multi-volume books on the Kennedy assassination year by year. And he's only on 62. And every like three months, he gets diverted on like another book on another topic that's related, but not really directly related to the Kennedy assassination. So I don't know. if we're going to see his pure Kennedy assassination book until like 2028 or something. Right.

And tentatively, for the reasons I mentioned, I'm deeply skeptical. Which brings Lee broadly to a theory that we'll keep on coming back to. And it actually combines elements of some of what we've been talking about, which is the anti-Castro forces writ large,

which includes, by the way, the mafia, who the CIA had recruited into Castro assassination plots. It includes the anti-Castro exiles, the people who after Castro takes over in Cuba, flea to the United States and are still very much heavily concentrated in places like Miami, and who want to take back the island. And they're the people who feel betrayed at the Bay of Pittsburgh. I will quickly say as an aside in the Bay of Pigs, but one thing I'll say for John Kennedy, it is very obvious, and this gets to the third group of people in that umbrella, the subset of CIA people who are involved in anti-Castro operations. It's very clear. Kennedy inherited the Bay of Pigs from Eisenhower and Nixon, the previous administration.

And the CIA, and this is documented in reports from internal reports from the CIA that have been released in the last decade, they knew that this was a plot that was very unlikely, the Bay of Pigs operation, the invasion, was very unlikely to work. And they neglected to inform John Kennedy of that fact. They knew it had been compromised, like that Castro had informants, inside the exile community. They knew that they likely weren't going to get the spontaneous invasion in Cuba that they were predicating this all on. And essentially, essentially they set him up to force his hand to commit air power. If John Kennedy commits air power, remember, this was a covert operation. It was supposed to be done in a way that America could at least

claim, I think many people would find it silly even at the time, but they could at least claim that the official government of the United States had nothing to do with it, plausible deniability. But if John Kennedy has to commit error, there's no denying that we're officially supporting it. And then you're dealing with a violation of international law during the Cold War. The United States is invading a sovereign country. So, he there's definitely a lot of human exiles who were also betrayed but i i would argue that they were betrayed by the people above them in the in the CIA more than they were by john kennedy but the mid-level agents this is really important for where we're going to go the mid-level people

who would never be in the room with john kennedy you know and telling him a debriefing him on the future plans and who had very close personal ties to these exiles, who they trained, who had given them assurances and who did not know that John Kennedy was set up in any way, shape, or form, absolutely blamed John Kennedy and were absolutely radicalized by the failure to provide air support. And when you add those three groups up together, the exiles, the mid-level CIA people,

and the mafia types involved in anti-Castro operations, we'll come back to it. But that, I think, is the theory that has probably had the most currency in the Kennedy assassination community amongst people who are rational.

There's all sorts of people who are way out there, in my opinion. But that would be those four theories overall in that theory in particular. Okay. So what's the theory

that you feel after researching is the most likely or that you are leaning toward. Okay, so I'm going to tease your audience a little bit, and I'll work my way up to where I go. I'm going to tell your audience that I think James Bond killed John Kennedy, and I obviously mean that in a metaphorical sense.

And I'm going to say this in two broad strokes, and then I'll give you all the details. First off, my general approach to true crime period and my general, you know, sort of approach to history in many ways, is your goal is to explain the strongest pieces of data, the strongest data points as many as you can with the least amount of speculation. And this does involve an element of speculation to it. But I think it weaves things together. It's relatively simple. And it certainly explains the strongest data points. And the data points that I find most important to explain, and that it's going to be sort of the focus of my discussion,

are those that involve Lee Harvey Oswald. And the reason for that, there's a real point of logic. to it, which goes like this. No matter what you think Lee Harvey Oswald's role was on November 22nd, 1963, it's all but impossible to imagine a scenario where understanding him and what he's doing in the days and months leading up to the Kennedy assassination isn't the key to understanding what happened. And the reason is no one is going to be able, is going to set somebody up for a crime first of all, they have to be able to set that person up. They have to be in a position to set them up.

And they really have to be in a position and manipulate their movements. Because if you don't, what happens if Lee Harvey Oswald is in lunch with 20 people? Right. Now, there's some of that that actually comes up. But the point is, you've got to make sure that he doesn't have an airtight alibi,

even if he has nothing to do with the shooting. right but of course if he has something to do with the shooting whether he's a pure lone nut or whether you you know my father always thought that castros people put him up to doing it by himself um either way you've got to be in a position to influence his actions right what is the likelihood that a uh a staunch supporter of communism who's gone to the Soviet Union stayed there become disenfranchised comes back is still is still a supporter of communism you know loves castro loves the idea of it ends up in the working in the texas depository building was also in the military and is a and you know can fire a weapon obviously um you know is there like what are the odds that there

happens to be this guy that works there on that floor in that building on that day and Kennedy's route is I believe was changed at the last minute to go by the is am I wrong about that so that's a tricky that's a tricky matter um it you know we know how where he was intended to go and that that was fairly set in stone how you specifically get there is a a little bit tricky, but here's the thing, to your point, and worth, and it's, you astutely bring it up. Anybody who knew, and you would have known September of 1963, that Kennedy was going to take a visit to Dallas, if you had done any kind of background, you would have known the general route he would have taken. So you had two months where what you would have done, if you were, if you were

trying to plot to kill him is get somebody who you either were tending to set up or actually fire on john kennedy in some building along the route and what a lot of people don't know and my co-author on my king assassination books killing king has written what i think are the best books on the kennedy assassination even has a free series of essays online called tipping point on a site called mary feral he did a great job in some of his early books in showing that Lee Harriazzo is applying for other jobs and they all happen to be along that route. Right?

So, you know, people seem to think that this had to be intricately planned for months on end. You just need to get people, you know, if you have to take two weeks to plan every ambush, military history would be very, very different. You just need to have people who are sitting on go ready to be where once you find out within two hours of where John Kennedy is actually going to go, you just need to have people able to be there with guns. Right. It's happened, God knows how many times in military history, where the ambush is planned at the last minute.

You know, so you're absolutely right. are the odds that Oswald, I would say it a little bit there. I'd say, what are the odds at Oswald is applying for jobs, you know, four or five jobs along what everybody would have known the parade route was once you knew he was visiting Dallas for a general purpose. So I think that's very significant. Now, I'll return to that real quick. The other, you know, element of it is, is to the bond theory, as we'll see, and I won't talk about it much, is from actually our government's angle and really from John Kennedy's angle. The one thing John Kennedy and at Lee Harvey Oswald shared in common, they were both obsessive James Bond fans.

Okay. And we'll talk about it. In the case of John Kennedy, that comes with an affinity for like covert operations that I think gets well played down by people who want to put him on a pedestal, especially from the left. Oswald, since he was a boy, he was obsessed with the cloak and dagger. Favorite show was I Led Three Lives. He obsessively read James Bond books and other spy novels. And so you actually give a great entry point to where I'm going to start with in taking me to my theory because you bring up what are the odds that this pro-Castro, you know, one-time Soviet defector is going to be on the parade route. Well, if you say that in the research community that I'm a part of, many, many people will say,

oh, that's because he never really was pro Castro and pro-Soviet. He was an agent or a source or an asset for the American intelligence community. And I'll get back to this when I talk about the importance of viewing Oswald on his own terms with his own agenda. But there is a case to be made. And it goes back to Oswald in the military and Oswald's defection. So Oswald joins the military underage in the late 1950s. People give different reasons for it. His mom was overbearing for sure.

His brother did it. So he may have been influenced by it. Some people say he might have been put up to it by intelligence, shadowy types. He goes into the military, and it's not long before he starts to visibly show an interest in all things Russia and Soviet. And there's some evidence that he was already interested in communism as a teenager. It's the other thing. He's interested in spy stuff, and he had an interest in political theory. But, you know, I'm sure the audience members, maybe the young.

The way to think about this right now is imagine if somebody, maybe Russia now, but if somebody showed an interest in al-Qaeda when they were in the Marines, what that would be like. You're talking code red to the 10th power if that happens. And that did not happen to Lee Harvey. So that's red flag number one, because the guy is receiving like Russian record. has Russian books, his friends call him Comrade Osvaldovich. Everybody knows this guy is dabbling in all things Russia, and nobody seems to do anything to temper or mitigate against it.

This is the Marines. This is the most gung-ho version of our military, even now, during the height of the Cold War. He studies the Russian language. takes a Russian test, again, no evidence of anything happening to him. He's doing this for part of the time while he's serving at a military base in Japan, at Suga, Japan. Two things about that base. It houses the U2 spy plane, which is our most sensitive piece of spy equipment at the time. Now, Oswald only had a peripheral connection to

that plane. I think it's sometimes that's overstated. But it also was a major, and this is only recently known, it's a major sort of nuclear security area. Super important to intelligence community types and stuff.

And they're letting this guy just run around talk about communism and reading Russian and study Russian with no at least obvious sign. Well, is he pushing that agenda or is he just taking an interest because he's he's taking an interest he's okay a couple of the people he's close to he's much more open about for instance what castro is doing in cuba which is the

Cuban revolution at the time um but it's pretty clear that that there should have been at least awareness i mean this is a guy who got in trouble for other things like insubordination but did not get in trouble for that. For at least some people, it raises red flags. Then he defects having lied about his reason for needing to take leave. That's a big red flag, by the way. Right. Unless he legitimately Marxist, right? So was his defection to the Soviet Union motivated by this intense interest he's developed in communism and Russian culture

or was he recruited as some kind of spy? I was going to say which, you know, by the way, I've interviewed a former CIA, you know, agent. So, you know, and he explains that, you know, he was in the military when they came to him and said,

listen, you've got to, an aptitude based on your test based on these types of things you have an aptitude like we'd like to talk to you about this you know and so if you were recruited they could have very easily recruit you and then allow you to kind of you know give you an assignment and then because this guy he went to other countries and he'd go and he'd be like a factory worker it's like during the day I work in a factory right you know like and not for like not for like two weeks we're talking months and months and months, six months, whatever, to try and slowly infiltrate, you know, drug organizations or, you know, other, you know, let's say the upper echelon of that society's government, whatever,

you know. So it's to use him as a spy to slip into the Soviet Union, you know, is, is very reasonable, especially if he's already got an interest, you know, and they don't realize his interest is, hey, I'm a fan of this ideology, you know, which maybe it wasn't. You're astute. We're going to, we're going to, we're going to get to that in a second, actually, well, or maybe more than a second. But that particular thought process you just had is going to be real important to my theory of what happened, actually. Now, so let me add some red flag, additional red flags for that, you know, and some of them are pretty darn big.

He seems to have money, and he's not a wealthy person. His family's very working class. He goes on his way to defect. He goes from staying at, you know, mundane motels to going to randomly in the middle of his stay in Finland, staying at one, like a five-star, right? He goes the way he defects. He gets into Russia really quickly. right and a lot of people in the past have said well that's a sign that the soviets have hooked him up and that maybe he's working for the kGB

early on in the kennedy assassination that was a pretty popular theory except in the last 20 years we found out something very interesting oswald happened to have gone to and through for his visa to get into the soviet union He happened to go through a particular, I think it was in Helsinki, embassy that we had set up through our own turncoat within the KGB, who worked out of their embassy foreign service there. The CIA had actually set up a system to get expedited visas for people through that guy. right and that particular you know passing point so to speak so all the places lee harvey oswald happens to go to get into the soviet union that's where he goes is a bad of coincidence

yeah what are the odds um he gets in he goes to the embassy there um to renounce his citizenship and he does not fully give it up but one thing he does do do is all but announce, and all these places are bugged to the hilt. He all but announces that he is willing to trade military or whatever

information he has to the Soviets when he goes in to talk to the American embassy there to basically tell them that he's now going to be a citizen of the Soviet Union. And you know, again, red flag for a lot

of people. It sounds like he's putting on a show, for these folks and specifically so that the KGB would become interested in him there's some interesting stuff the person people at that embassy the guy he talks to is a you know we find out later was a career CIA guy that's now that's not necessarily surprising those places were filled with them right um he goes out of there and he's trying his damnedest to get the Soviets to like fully acknowledge him, give him citizenship, set him up. And he's, they're suspicious, and we know this from their files, they're suspicious of him too. Like, isn't, you know, the same kind of things I'm telling you now are making them suspicious. He gets so frustrated with it that at least

according to the official version, he attempts suicide. And what the Soviets say is, is they play along to some extent because of that they get him a job at a radio factory in minsk and he sets up shop there works there he's a pretty you know decent lifestyle as an american defector there now they claim and that's and this is not believable either that they never bothered to debrief him or find out what he knew that's a lot of poppycock right but he eventually marries a Russian wife a Soviet wife by name of Marina Oswald

he becomes disenchanted with the Soviet Union and he comes home again now a bunch of red flags we actually loan him the money to come back we according to the official version we never bothered to open a

conventional file on him at the CIA for months on end even though again they knew he was in the file on him that he had threatened to give away secrets right they never did and was talking about denouncing his citizenship like i'm not sure this is a guy that you'd be lending money to to come back right coming back by the way with a with a with a soviet wife right um and then add in according to the official version we certainly have no records that they ever bothered to do any kind of

damage assessment in Japan or any of the other military places, but they would have certainly done it in Japan when he defected in the first place. So like you want to know, okay, did they, even though he was a low level guy, you want to know if he interacted with anybody who was high level. Maybe he was part of a cell. No evidence that they investigated that. Instead. At least have a conversation.

Right. Instead, a couple of years later, they loan him the money to come back with a Soviet wife. And even though suspiciously, she comes, she gets her visa to leave in record time. Now, that's from the Soviet end, and that's lead some of the wonder about her affiliations. According to the official version, we did not debrief him when he came back, the intelligence agencies. Understand that if you took a business trip to the Soviet Union in 1959 for a week and came back, you were debriefed. Thousands and thousands of people are debriefed.

This guy lived there for a year, threatened to give away secrets. And at least according to the official version, and we have reasons to doubt it, he wasn't debriefed on the way back. For a lot of people, this are all red flags. And what the other thing we know now is that his files over in the CIA side are being treated in a completely unique and odd way relative to other people in the normal process of things. And by what I mean by that is, we know how files get routed when the CIA starts reporting on somebody. And they're getting routed to places that are very unusual, the places like

the counterintelligence groups in the CIA. Now, I laid out all that case. Right. There's one big issue is that you're dealing with somebody who is literally only 20 years old. He was 20? He was only 20. How long was he in the Soviet Union for? He was in the Soviet Union. I should say he defected when he was 20. He's in the Soviet Union for about two years.

Wow, that's, that is significant. And, and, and, like, this is what I would love to ask your friend. I only know from my own experience. I was a teacher. I taught students of all levels. But I taught students who went to Harvard and eventually sold companies to Google, right? Super mature, very bright kids. I would not trust them on a super top secret mission to infiltrate the Soviet Union at 20 years old, you know, a year or two after they graduated.

I would not put my faith in them at that point. You need maturity to live that life. Right. But the other issue is if he did this, he is like a Daniel de Lewis level of becoming the character. And because everything from his writings to his interactions with his friends to places he goes, and I'm not talking just in the Soviet Union, I'm talking about in the years we'll discuss when he comes back. they're all indicative of someone who at least in his own mind is a leftist. Right. He's all in.

Now, it's important to understand he, I don't think he even, I'm not sure you even graduated high school, right? And many a smart person hasn't graduated high school, but he's not studying, my point is he's not studying political theory like he's Angela Davis at, you know, the University of Munich. here. So what he thinks about what communism is and what leftism is and what socialism is may not be what, you know, again, what, you know, Angela Davis and Bernie Sanders understand it to be. Right. But it's still not, you know, if you would it. I actually, earlier today, I put it into a chat gbt because he wrote a whole little this is my ideal utopia out and i asked the chat gpti to give me the political theory that most closely matches in it was something called anarcho-syndicalism which is sort of like a leftist version of anarchy neither here nor there my point is i know

somebody who studied people who were like long-term moles right and they break character They always break character. It's impossible to not have moments where there are notable people in your life who are like, I think this guy might be working for somebody. There's a big inconsistency here. You're saying at some point there are cracks in the... Right, and this guy's doing it in all sorts of things. Like, why would you ever think that something you typed in 1962 is going to be read a year later?

So those two things make me highly doubtful that he was an official agent of intelligence assets. There is a middle ground and it's actually consistent with some of this weird stuff with his files, which is suppose they did become interested in his pro-communist activities in the Soviet Union when he was in Japan and the Philippines and California. And suppose they started washing him. Suppose they found out from a source that he actually is talking about defecting to the Soviet Union. Well, you may actually facilitate his defection. And the reason is, the reason we don't have a damage assessment after is because they did the damage assessment under this, and this is highly speculative. They did this damage assessment before. Right.

They realized he wasn't any threat. that he had barely anything to provide on the U-2, but they maybe wanted to see if the Soviets bit on what Oswald had to offer, then maybe they didn't have much on the U-2. So you facilitate his defection through cutouts, you let him defect, and the reason you get him back, I guess,

as sort of a, you could probably figure out some way of getting information on him without even debriefing him. And that's more valuable to, after a few months of him not being anybody in the Soviet Union, that's probably a lot more valuable to you than him being over there as some sort of facilitated defector. So are you saying that Oswald said he was never debriefed? Or you're saying there's no proof of it? So the CIA claimed an official documents of this day that they never debriefed him. there is there is what does that mean well the lack of if you're debriefing every single business man that comes back from there from there and you don't debrief him the fact that

there is no debriefing is tantamount to there being some type of a cover up I mean at the very least you would do I do a I do a three a three paragraph you know FBI 302 saying oh we talk to the guy he doesn't know anything he So, so they sent. So here's an interesting thing. First of all, incredibly astute. So John Newman, the guy who I mentioned before, who was an intelligence analyst for years. Right. That was one of his core claims. Like the red flag is the very fact that they would claim something so absurd. Right. Right. So the FBI did try and do like flybys. And on their own reports, they're like, this guy is a real douchebag. Right. He's. He's not cooperative. Now, if anything, what that should do, somebody defected to the Soviet Union, FBI comes over to him and he acts like a real douchebag. That would raise my alarms. But what many people think happened, and I kind of go along with this, is what the CIA did was use people adjacent to him to try and get information from him without. him realizing it so he befriended when he came back to the united states this again is it's like this sort of weird political dynamics with oswald if i'm right he came back because he legitimately became disenchanted with the soviet union note for future reference disenchanted with the

Soviet union not disenchanted with cuba right or the ideology or the ideology just the way they were implementing it like you know you know what i always say about communism is like it's a beautiful concept you just you just can't make it work work and 100% and and you know i want experienced a lot of that firsthand i want free health care right right i want everybody to share in in you know in the you know in the glory that is you know um prosperity i mean i want free food I want everything to be everybody would work for every sounds wonderful it doesn't work right because there's no incentives right right and you know the the old line about the soviet union now granted it was towards the end of the the the Soviet Union's existence but you go into

grocery stores over there and you've got you know everyone's waiting online to get toilet paper and and a couple of potatoes right there's no incentive to actually work to innovate etc And interestingly, again, when Oswald writes his ideal theory out, he seems to try and account for that. But that being said, he comes back, and to your point, he has, he befriends, he finds some people who befriend him, and of all things, the white Russian community. Those are the people who hate the Soviet Union back to, you know, 1917 when the Russian Revolution happened, right? they hate Soviet communism and have to live in the United States and wish they could go back there one day in a free Soviet Union. One in particular, George DeMorinschelt associates with him. And we know that George DeMoran Schultt, he might not have been, and this gets overplayed, that he's not some CIA super spy at all.

But he's certainly somebody who's on the periphery of that. and he actually is social friends with a guy by the name of Jay Walton Moore who is unquestionably CIA located in Dallas and at least from the things that DeMorin Schult says later on in his life before he commits suicide that gets all people all kinds of crazy right um but more encouraged the relationship with oswald and my guess is is that they were tapping DeMoran Schult, probably with DeMoran Schult's knowledge, but even if it's not, find out what you can about what Oswald knows about how things are in the Soviet Union.

Right. And see if you could look into, is his wife like legit, or is she working for the Soviets? And remember, that's got to be a huge red flag that she got out so quickly. And it turns out her uncle is a KGB, like general or GRU general. And just a quick aside, and we have to move on. But there was a defector in the 90s when Soviet Union fell. We just only found this out in the last two years. Who said she was, I think it's called a sparrow.

Right, right. She was sent over here without, you know, to hook, she hooked up, was told to hook up with Oswald to get to the United States to spy over here. But she just decided, F you, I'm going to just be an American when she got here. Right. Any of it. So it sets up a big picture issue, though, to the stuff that we're talking about, which is this and to my theory, which is, I don't believe Oswald was somebody who was actively working on behalf of American intelligence agencies. I do think he was without question very of keen interest to the United States intelligence agencies and was on their radar. far more than they've ever been willing to admit,

as early as 1959 when he is defecting. Oswald returns back to the United States. Again, important for listeners to keep a few things in mind that are going to be themes that we're going to keep on coming back to in this James Bond killed John Kennedy scenario. Right. One, Oz, I do believe Oswald was somebody with his own political agenda and ideas, and they at least leaned left.

And particularly, as we'll see, in the castor direction. The second is that the American intelligence community would have been far more interested in Lee Harvey Oswald than we realize and that they've ever admitted to in terms of monitoring him especially. So those two items there, they're going to, going to be real important for my for where I'm going as we go forward so I'm going to jump a little bit a few months after he returns to an event that becomes very significant people might

know of something related to it because there's a very famous photograph of Lee Harvey Oswald with a rifle in his backyard yeah he's like holding it right holding and the shadows don't match right or you're not worried about that it's fake I don't think it's fake in the reason why is, first of all, his wife says she took it. Now, people will claim, oh, well, you know, she's either she's unreliable or she claimed that she took it first from a different direction or whatever. But keep in mind that nowadays, at least, she insists that he was innocent. So why would she continue to lie about a, and she says she took that photo. Why would she continue to lie about that when it, as much as anything, contributed to the perception that he was guilty?

Because it is the rifle that was eventually found in the schoolbook depository in the day of the assassination or is supposed to be. Right. There's some strange things about the picture, by the way. He's holding two different newspapers, one's socialist and one's communist. And it gets into the weeds, but those folks don't generally like each other. it's kind of like the quote unquote maga and rhino situation in the republican party um so that's interesting isn't interesting too that he would be holding a newspaper at all so that it kind of dates the like that's a very common thing i think it was meant for a different purpose i think

oswald was trying to again i will be in the minority on this i think he was trying to establish himself as a tough guy, so to speak, and a sort of militant for communism. Down with the cause. Yeah, he's, yeah. Now, you know, other people would say it was the picture was fake to make him look that way. I, again, for the reasons I said, I'm doubtful. It's also, you know, people make a huge deal of it. But even under the official version, it wasn't done in connection. with the Kennedy assassination. It was conducted, it was done in connection with the assassination or attempted assassination of a different person, Edwin Walker, General Enwin Walker, who was a virulent right-wing

general in the military, who proselytized to his soldiers with, you know, really hardcore anti-communist ideas and also racist like so sort of combine them together he would argue that the integration and the civil rights movement was a communist conspiracy type of situation this kind of thing got him into real hot water with the Kennedy family

who eventually the Kennedy administration had him committed and basically kicked out of the military they did not like each other some people somebody wrote a whole book arguing that Walker killed Kennedy. I think it's very much a minority theory. But the picture is in connection with what I believe, as with everything in this case, controversial, was Oswald attempting to

kill or shoot at Edwin Walker, likely as part of a conspiracy, by the way. In other words, he had help not necessarily some kind of grand CIA thing he had help possibly from some right wing types

who did not like Walker either and there's evidence for this I won't go into huge depth that is going to be the trigger

for Oswald A getting out of Dallas and the evidence he was involved is not only the picture there's pictures of actual of the resonance

of Walker Walker is, he's sitting at his study one night in April in 1962, and a shot gets fired through. It might have been April 63. And it misses. Now, mind you, he misses at point blank range on a stationary target. You might wonder, how does this guy then graduate to two strikes on a moving target six months later? Stop. Do you know how fast you were going?

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August 1st. If he was the one that fired, again, all sorts of controversy. So Walker survives, untouched, basically. But they don't catch the person who did it until, again, if you believe official version, afterwards, when Oswald is arrested and eventually killed with. the Kennedy assassination, they go through his materials and they find photographs of Walker's Place.

They find a letter to Marina, his wife, like basically saying, if I get caught, you have to get out of the country kind of thing, and it's clearly was from months before. Marina says he was a part of it. Right?

And so you have this situation. Here's a key thing to understand. I was at a conference, really a sort of a show, after the movie JFK came out, where Oliver Stone was one of the speakers. I went with my father. I was 17 years old. I think Gerald Posner was one of the speakers, and a guy named Edward Epstein was one of the speakers. Epstein was one of the early critics of the Warren Commission. He eventually becomes something of a defender of the official version. he said something at that get-together, which was incredibly interesting and nobody picked up on,

which was he said, and he was, Edward Epstein in 1978 was one of the last people to interview that white Russian friend I talked about George de Moran Schultt, who had peripheral connections to the CIA. He said that not long before DeMoran Schult committed suicide in one of their interviews, De Moor and Schult told him that told Epstein that he had provided, because DeMoran Schult believed that Oswald was a part of the Walker assassination, DeMoran Schult, you know, thought he might have actually put the idea in Oswald's hit. He apparently had conveyed that to the guy from the CIA, J. Walton Moore. At least that's what Epstein said.

that George DeGne Moore and Schult told me that he conveyed to J. Walton Moore that he thought Lee Harvey Oswald had something to do with the Walker assassination. I believe that's what he said. He either said he did that or he said he provided him with a copy of the photograph from the backyard. Either way, understand that as of within several months of the Kennedy assassination, if that's true, They know that there's a guy in Dallas who tried to kill somebody with a rifle. They have that in their, presumably somewhere, in their files somewhere. Obviously, we don't have it.

That would be hugely important going forward. So Oswald then flees, or I think he flees, goes to, moves to where he was born and raised, and it was in New Orleans, Louisiana, where I went to college. And he starts living there. And New Orleans is the next place where you really have to start explaining Oswald in the context of the assassination. And that's because Oswald, while he is simultaneously presenting himself and even setting up a fake front, for a group called the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, a American-based pro-Castro group.

He is behind the scenes. The only people we know he's associating with appear to be anti-Castro. Right. The white Russians are white Russians. Well, no. Now he goes from associating with the white Russians as a former Soviet defector in Dallas. He goes to New Orleans and he starts. hanging out with either actual anti-Castro ex-house.

Those are people who had to flee Cuba, right? And they settled in mostly Miami, but also in New Orleans. Or with Americans who help those people out. Okay. If you saw the movie JFK, that's really the basis of Jim Garrison's investigation, which was the DA of New Orleans who's featured as the hero of that movie in 1990. What they're saying is, in 1992, the strange thing about Oswald and New Orleans is here you have somebody who ostensibly is pro-Castro. He's even handing out flyers urging people to join the pro-Castro cause or the cause of easing tensions with Cuba.

And yet, if you study, and there is some controversy over it, but I think the evidence is pretty solid, if you study who he's associating with and interacting with behind the scenes, and I'm not talking like he's not going on picnics with them that we know of, but he's intermingling with anti-Castro exiles, the people who hate Fidel, people who actually have CIA connections in many cases, and are. are actively working on paramilitary operations in camps in Louisiana, training camps, to get rid of the regime in Cuba. And it raises a really fundamental question, which is, what is Oswald up to? Right. Right. And also, what are the people who are interacting with him up to? Now, the people who think Oswald was a spy from the very beginning think that that's, that he's just

building this legend up of being pro Castro on orders from people. But he's like, but his anti-Castro associations, his right-wing associations, that's who he really is. And again, I don't think that's the case with him. I think what you're dealing with in New Orleans is Oswald is trying, think about the James Bond element. Oswald is trying to infiltrate whether or not. Whether or not he's trying to it's on his own or potentially on the behalf of a group like the FBI who's very worried about these anti-Castro people, some of whom are super radical, right? You know, we had a Cuban missile crisis. If these guys start sinking ships in, you know, the Gulf of Mexico or something, we could get into a war. So there's some evidence of that. Either way, big picture.

I believe Oswald was, in fact, trying to infiltrate these groups, and he was trying to do it by claiming to them, and this we have evidence of, that he's some sort of mercenary for hire who either can train anti-Castro military people or participate in paramilitary activity. that's how he's presenting himself do i think he fooled the people he was interacting with to some extent um and here's what i think happened as a key event the people that oswald's interacting with some of them are again part of these groups that are really radical they have been working in some cases with the CIA, but even the CIA can't control them. One of them is a group called the Direcario Revolutionary and Studiantiel, the DRE. And they're like young, hot-headed students, and we can't get them under control, really. And the CIA, and we're going to talk about this, actually tries to shift up, going to be really important, who they assign to try and get them under control.

and this is one of the groups that Oswald gets into engages with another group of people Oswald engages with he engages with these both American base but also former you know native of Cuban people and in a building everyone would recognize it if they saw JFK it's called 544 Camp Street some controversy over it again I do think he associated with those people. One in particular, a guy by the name of Ernesto Rodriguez, who actually taught Spanish language and pretty good reason to believe that Oswald actually approached him and started at least training to learn Spanish from him. This guy is involved with some radical groups, but what's more important, this guy's brother and his father, and to some extent,

they're all CIA and especially his brother Emilio is hard core CIA anti-Castro like somebody you send into Cuba to try and kill people kind of person right right or more relevantly to work with the people who are going to kill people in Cuba like if there's ever invasion again and we topple the regime and we have some kind of nasty business where we want to kill the communists who are hanging out. That's the kind of people he is so Emilio is. So if he, if Oswald's associating with Arnesto and Ernesto tells Emilio, that's big. But the other group, the DRE, Oswald actually gets into a fight with them on Canal Street in New Orleans. He's distributing literature. Yeah. And these guys.

Yeah, these guys, these Cubans come and they're like, anti-Castro Cubans, they come and they're like, oh, you Gringo, how dare you? And they get into a scuffle, right? And part of the reason why they're upset is Oswald had actually gone to a store run by one of them and presented himself as being some kind of mercenary who could help out this guy's group. And the thing about that fight is there's a lot of suggestions. that it was staged. The police officer who was arresting said it felt like it was staged. And the other key piece of evidence is Oswald seemed to have described it in a letter to the Fair Play for Cuba Committee before it ever happened. Okay. So either he got into another fight that we don't know about or he somehow predicted it. So what am I getting at here? I think that that fight probably was staged and what happened afterwards, even more importantly, was staged.

Oswald then gets invited, he gets tried in court. By the way, all the exiles who show up in the court case, like watching in the audience for this minor, relatively minor crime, they're all CIA connected. Okay. Emilio may have even been one of them. I don't know if that's been firmly established yet, right? again, I mean, I don't know how many CIA people you are interacting with on a daily basis, but Oswald seems to find a number of them. He then, so then he then gets invited to a radio debate,

and this famously is put on TV and is recorded and put out on a record that gets widely distributed by Ernesto after the assassination. on it, more or less what happens is Oswald seems, the radio host, seems to have information on Oswald that the typical person probably wouldn't have readily available. It's possible you could get it if you do a deep dive, but people are suspicious that he had it. And he eventually confronts Oswald. Oswald says, you know, this guy's trying to get Oswald to admit that the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, is a communist organization because it's presenting itself in the United States

is just some quasi-leftists who feel that we're doing bad things in Cuba and it's not in our interest. So here's Oswald, who's not even in the fair play for Cuba Committee. He's basically created a fake front for it in New Orleans and is trying to write to them. He gets confronted on the fly

with the fact that he had defected to the Soviet Union. and it seems to catch him off guard and the radio host is basically using to say how can you say your group isn't communist you bro, you're a Marxist to defect it to the Soviet Union and Russia and Oswald tries to say something along the lines of

I'm I'm I'm a Marxist Leninist but I'm not a Marxist this and the guy who's debating with him Carlos Bringerer is like Marxist Leninist Marxist, you know, Trotskyite, what the heck is the difference? There obviously is subtle differences, but it looks really bad for Oswald, and it looks really bad for the Fair Play for Cuba Committee.

So I want you to think about something. The group that he got into a fight with and the group, the person that he debated, the DRE, they're one of these student radical groups that the CIA has a very difficult time getting control of. and they appointed a new CIA person to manage that group. His name is George Joannidis. He's going to be very important in a minute for what coincidentally he winds up doing later on. Joe and Edis is, we know what he was being told he needed to do. He needed to redirect the DRE away from military operations into propaganda operations.

right okay so joanidi's group gets into a fight with oswald that oswald predicted that the police officer who arrested it insinuated looks staged gets roped into a radio debate where he gets caught off guard with information

that is hard to find and embarrasses the fair play for Cuba Committee, a pro-Castro group. In other words, it sure looks like the exact kind of operation that George Joannidis would have the DRA, would redirect the DRA into a propaganda operation. Two things to understand about, and again, this gets speculative. A few things to understand about Joannidis. we have all of his CIA files except for the period when he ran

the DRE and lived in New Orleans. Those are mysteriously missing. The CIA claims they never existed. The people in the DRE says we absolutely talk to to Joe Niedes and we absolutely at least told him about Oswald. Right. So there's a record. Somebody made any interaction you have

what the FBI is documented. Right, or the CIA. And they did that, and we have no files in it. Second thing to understand, we didn't even know who he was until the 1990s and the work of a reporter named Jeff Morley and that guy, John Newman, but really Jeff Morley. Third thing, one of the big reasons we don't know who he was is when the government, the Congress reopened the Kennedy assassination 15 years later, they just happened to pluck somebody out of retirement,

who they said, this guy is, you know, he has no connection to anyone in the Kennedy assassination. He's retired and you're going to use this guy to communicate with us and he's going to communicate with you, Congress, back, because he has clearance. And guess who that person was that they just happened to pluck out? out of retirement. I don't know.

George Joe and Edis. Okay. When the people who ran that congressional committee found that out 15 years later, they freaked the heck out because they knew they had been set up. They had a guy who was supposed to be some neutral arbiter between them and the CIA. He should have been a witness. Right. Why did the CIA do that?

Why did they bring him back? to manage the interactions. Control the narrative. And then let me give you the other key thing for one we're going to be going forward. Joe and Niedes, he worked with the DRE, but he's part of a larger set of two groups within the CIA. That's going to be very important for the next phase of our discussion. a group called the special affairs staff in the CIA and a very closely related group called Jam Wave. Two things they have in common, they are both very actively working to try

and get rid of Castro and get rid of the Castro regime, including assassination. So, again, you have to presuppose some, I think common sense. Speculation. And again, some speculation that's building on speculation. Entertained my idea that this was a setup, that the CIA, with Oswald's cooperation, arranged for a fake fight, and Oswald then gets up and embarrasses this group he's a part of by failing in a debate with a DRE member. And you're going to say, why would Oswald do it? I'm about to tell you why Oswald would do it. As I said before, Oswald had been trying to infiltrate these groups and claiming that he is some sort of, you know, mercenary for hire who could help them get rid of Castro. The one group of people who would have known that there's something amiss is anyone in the CIA who was told that. So the people in the DRE told Joe Niedis. And Joannidis reported this out upstream, he would have been told, this guy actually is a Soviet

defector who's got some pro-Castro leanings. You better check into him. But he also provides an opportunity. Because if they buy into the idea that this one-time communist has come full circle and is really anti-Castro, anti-communist and willing to work with them, they have the keys to the kingdom because the only people in 1963 who are getting in physical proximity to Castro in Cuba are American defectors to Cuba are Americans who are going over there and working on the sugar cane and stuff buying into the cashroll will do radio programs with those people but he is not seeing anybody else because he knows the people are trying to kill him right oswald is the perfect person this is going to get into my theory eventually if you want to

get into cuba and potentially get literally close to castro oswald is the perfect kind of person to do it if you believe he has genuinely turned a corner and gone from enthusiastic communist to disinfected anti-communist. If he really wants to be a mercenary who's helping out the Cubans, how would you establish that? Is he willing to do a fake fight? Right. Is he willing to go to potentially go to jail? Is he willing to embarrass his own supposed group? on a national TV show. So what I believe Oswald essentially did was establish his bona fides on their request essentially with anti-Castro people and the CIA.

And he is reported, by the way, after that debate, when he was embarrassed, the reports are that he went into a bar and was talking about he finally found his popular. of gold at the end of the rainbow. And I think, speculation, what he's saying is, I've been trying for my whole life to be this adventurer spy. I finally found people who can get me into that lifestyle. What I'm not sure if he knew right away, but I do believe shortly after he gets recruited into, and this is where I'm going to go next, is.

is remember Joe and Yidi's reports would have been going which we can't gain access to they wouldn't have just been going to people about the DRE they're being fed up the chain to the special affairs staff

and to J.M. Wave within the CIA both groups within the CIA both actively trying to literally kill Castro and where I'm going next is I believe what happened is they are now going to try and use Oswald in some capacity in a Castro assassination plot and they're desperate

and the reason why they're desperate is as August turns into September they have found out through leaks they being really the anti-Castro forces inside the CIA the kinds of people who train people in the Bay of Pigs. They have found out through leaks and wiretaps at the United Nations that John Kennedy is making secret overtures to Castro to try and normalize relations.

And remember, from the mindset of somebody who was involved in the Bay of Pigs, you're not asking what I'm asking. What I would ask is, is he really sincere or is he playing some game? if you're somebody who got betrayed at the Bay of Pigs, you think he's about to do the same thing all over again. Right. And you thought that you were on your way to possibly getting some kind of ground invasion in Cuba sometime in the next couple years. And now you may not even get the end of Castro's regime.

This guy is betraying you. It's an interesting thing to just keep in mind about the wiretaps at the United Nations. all the wiretapping is being done by a secret sub-department of the CIA called Staff D. And for reasons I still don't understand, Staff D does one other thing. Staff D is the main go-to component in the CIA for assassinations overseas. So the same people who do wiretapping overseas and inside the United Nations, They also do assassinations overseas. They're actually run by a guy named William Harvey.

William Harvey is the guy in charge of the ZR. Rifle program that was the CIA's foreign leader assassination program overseas. He's the guy. By the way, William Harvey despises the Kennedys, but especially Bobby. Everybody hates Bobby Moore, by the way. But keep that in mind. That's who's getting the information that John Kennedy is making secret backroom deals with Carlos Lachuga, the ambassador to the United Nations for Cuba. He's sending out, like, secret through reporters, overtures to try and normalize relations. I should say we don't know 100%.

it's just widely suspected given the operations we know that we're operating that that they found out about it in advance so if something happens if something's going to happen it either needs to happen immediately to Castro or immediately to Kennedy oh yes it's exactly what I'm getting at and it also explains so when I provide this theory to other people they're going to say, especially when I get, go a little bit further and discuss Oswald's trip to Mexico City very shortly, they're going to say, yeah, but they're doing all these things that seem incompetent, right? Like, they have to, you know, they can get Oswald this. They can do us help Oswald do that. And I'm saying, yeah, if they, if they're, they have time. Yeah. I'm going to say to get next to. Right. To get next to cube, get next to cash or that would take a significant amount of time. You're not going over there, cutting down some, helping cut down some fields of sugar cane. And you're. And you're. You're. You're going. You're. You're. You're. You're. You're. You're. You're. You're. You're. You're. You're. You're. You're. You're. You're. You're. You're. You're having lunch with Castro right and so prove himself right and if it ever happens at all right they're desperate and i think that explains why what happens over and i'm going to talk about over the next two months seems pretty damn desperate um now or or incompetent in many ways right

So one of those things, first off, Oswald, who defected to the Soviet Union, engaged in pro-castro activities, which by way, this stuff is known to the FBI for sure, right? His writing to the Soviet embassy is married to a Soviet wife, told your FBI agents to basically kiss his ass when you try to interview. him, right? This guy goes to get a visa to go to Mexico and gets it in record time. The guy right behind him in line, we now know this, we found this out later on, happens to be a low-level CIA agent who was actually even aware of him in New Orleans. Was that because, so some people say, well, this particular, you know, consulate in New Orleans, they actually were part of a special pilot program that was getting people, you know, visas and record setting time. Okay, it's like Finland, right?

How did Oswald happen to know to walk in there at that time when they're on their pilot program? You know, that could be true. The other thing is there should be red flags in Oswald's file that make it nearly impossible for him to go to a foreign country without serious regulation or at least knowing that he had enough money to get himself back this time. Right. Well, there's interesting things on that front, but the thing to the other thing to keep in mind here is that right around this time, which again, it's just like super coincidences,

the FBI decides to lift the flash in his file. Like, they actually have something in his file, like this guy might be up to no good. They randomly decide to get rid of it. We still don't know why and why at that time. But it makes it possible for him to do these kinds of. travels without raising the flags of the FBI. Right. So right after that and before he goes to Mexico, Oswald goes and visits a woman in what is

considered all the way back to the 60s. It's been called the proof of a plot, more well known as the audio incident. And it is indeed incredibly hard to explain if you think Lee Harvey Oswald was acting alone. It's also, I believe, incredibly misunderstood. So Oswald then goes and visits. He goes, he shows up at the door of this woman. Her name is Sylvia Odeo. She is a Cuban exile.

She's living with her sisters in Dallas. She's recently moved there, I believe, from Miami. Her father, this is going to be key. Her father is located in a Cuban prison at this time. It would tell you why in a bit. It all circles back. Oswald shows up at the door with two people. One is named, they go by their Cuban war names.

One is named Angel. One is named Leopold. That's not their real names. It's like their code names. Right. They, they tell Sylvia Odeo that they're part of a group of exiles known as Jure. I forgot what that's in Spanish. There are many, just so people know, DRE, Jure, there are many different subgroups of people,

anti-Cashio exiles, people who were forced off the island, had their properties confiscated, participated in the Bay of Pigs, who've been working very actively to, to try and get rid of the Castro regime. It's like fingers of a hand. However, many of them don't get along with each other. And one thing to keep in mind, especially for how you might appeal to Lee Harvey Oswald, is Jure is a,

it was sometimes called Castroism without Castro. They are a left-wing anti-Castro group. If Castro's regime were to be, deposed and there was some sort of joint government, at least as of 1963, Jure would be part of a coalition government. The right-wing groups that hated Castro, like Alpha 66, hated Jure. Hated, hated, hated, hated. I am going to contend to you that the two people who showed up at Sylvia Odeo's house and said they were Juree were not Juree. they were right wing not left wing that's going to be important in when i get to the final reasons for the plot they show up at sylvia odio's house her apartment out of the blue she does

not know them she's immediately suspicious of them because they know her father's war name and code name and they start floating it to her and they're basically approaching her at that meeting to see if they can use her for help you know and getting equipment and fun raising for a you know groups that are trying to get rid of Castro she's suspicious of them she's new to the area she kind of sends them on their way and the American who's with them who at the very least looks exactly like Lee Harvey Oswald I'll explain a little bit later they do say to her by the way they tell her he's an American he's with us he was once in the Navy and he's coming from, or once in the military and he's coming from New Orleans,

all of which are true of Lee Harvey Oswald. Right. He doesn't speak really when he's there. Then one of them calls her back. And I want everybody to remember, this is late September, 1963, John Kennedy is still alive. We're two months away from Dallas. Here's what he says to her.

He starts talking to her. And by the way, she's a very attractive woman, if you ever see pictures. of her apparently every she even got a priest to basically have an affair with her and break his vow so there's that but she's he's talking to her and he's saying to her you know he brings up the the original mission and then he starts dovetailing or diverting or into digressing into the American and she says his name is Leon right and Leon he tells her he's he's hardcore he's pretty crazy he says we should have killed kennedy after the bay of pigs no this is happening two months before the kennedy assassination right this is why people call this the

proof of the plot here you have somebody who's talking about connecting someone who looks exactly like Lee Harvey Oswald, probably was Lee Harvey Oswald, to the idea of killing Kennedy two months before Kennedy is killed. What people leave out is the next thing he says. He paraphrasing, he also says, we're a bunch of sissies. He says, if you got him, Oswald, Leon, into Cuba, If you could get him into the Cuban underground, he's the kind of person who could kill Castro. Okay. This is all being said two months before the assassination, but notably one week before Oswald's, or a few days before Oswald's in Mexico City, which I'll get to in a bit. I want to go back to Sylvia Odio's father, who she writes because she's so bothered by this meeting.

She writes him in a Cuban prison. He, by the way, writes her back and is like, do not have anything to do with these people. There should be very few people in the United States who should know my war name. But you know, if you knew his war name and you knew him closely enough in Cuba, or somebody told you, you would have known two other facts about Sylvia Odio's father. One, the reason why he was in prison was because he participated, and I'm going to say participated loosely, in a plot to assassinate Fidel Castro in 1960. And I say loosely because he wasn't directly involved in the plot.

He had hid somebody in the Cuban underground at his property, and that is where that person was found. Okay. All right. So that's the guy who's in, so again, if you're desperate to get Oswald into Cuba and desperate to connect him with people who might be willing to get him into a place where he could possibly kill Castro or participate in a plot, he doesn't have to be a shooter. Her father is a pretty good guy to try and take a swing at. There's another interesting thing that we only just found out about Sylvia Odia. like we're talking in the last two months apparently she was a romantic interest

of Carlos La Chuga who I just mentioned five minutes ago he's the person who Kennedy is trying to use to normalize relations with Cuba isn't that a coincidence it's going to get worse than that in about five minutes so then Oswald's on his way to Mexico

and I'm not done with Sylvia Odeo's father yet because that plot is going to be very significant. Oswald goes to Mexico City. Mexico City is like a hub for espionage around the world at this time. Because on the one hand, it's under the sphere of influence of the United States, its police force, its government, all of them are on the take with the United States. On the other hand, they have a long, ugly relationship with the United States. in terms of history that makes

communism appealing in that part of the world. So, they're like a center for espionage for both the Americans and the Soviets, but also the Cubans who are not, you know, too far off on a boat trip. Oswald does some strange things in Mexico City.

So, first off, on the surface, it looks like he's trying to get a visa to go back to the Soviet Union. But the one thing that's clear is he did not like his time in the Soviet Union. To get to the Soviet Union, he's going to try and get a visa to stop in Cuba first. And I had to take a second here to tell everybody that if you dug into Mexico City and I keep on saying, he there's a whole set of theories that he was being impersonated the entire time he was in

Mexico City with a double long involved story I don't believe that to be the case in person I do believe he was impersonated by phone so he goes to the Cuban consulate and he gets frustrated because he doesn't have the requisite materials he needs to go to Cuba, but he's trying to tell them, bro, I'm in the fair play for Cuba committee. I defected to the Soviet Union. I'm diehard communist, right? Why aren't you going to give me a visa? So he gets into fights with people there. They tell him, look, you want to make this work. You want to get a layover. in Cuba on the way to the Soviets, you got to, first of all, you got to get me, like, you got to have a passport. You don't even have a passport with a photo on it. You got to get me some kind of

permission or approval from the Soviet embassy. So the Cuban consulate sends him to the Soviet embassy. Goes to the Soviet embassy. They're not very cooperative. He goes back and forth. over a span of three or four days. And according to the Soviets, and these are KGB people and there's some issues, he eventually just freaks the fuck out, excuse my language. Did I appropriate use of the language? Sorry there. And breaks down in the Soviet embassy because he's not getting his way.

Okay. So he winds up failing at this. but several strange things happen as he's doing this let me give you a few first off the folks in Mexico the CIA is surveilling

both the Cuban consulate and the Soviet embassy and even though Lee Harvey Oswald is supposed to have gone in and out of both buildings on multiple occasions their story to the present day is, oops, due to a series of unfortunate events,

we have no record of him actually going to either building except reports. No tapes, no photographs. At one point they said, yeah, you know, our systems just happened to be broken. those two days. And anybody we'd have who would be taking pictures, they must have been on siesta time. Okay. So we have no surveillance of him. By the way, who would be handling surveillance of him in Mexico City? Staff D. The same people who would be intercepting the communications at the United Nations, the same people who handle assassinations. Can I ask a question

real quick. Yes, absolutely. I'm sorry. Do you think he was really trying to go to the Soviet Union, or you think he was just trying to use that as a way to stop at Cuba and get off? I think a hundred percent he was using it as a way, as a pretext to get into Cuba. And I think he was encouraged, but I'm going to say this in a bit. I think he was trying to play the people who were thinking they were playing him, and I'll get that in second. The second very strange thing that happens. Oswald, again, he sets off alarms. So the CIA outpost, we call it the Mexico City Station, they send in, they send a request up to the headquarters in Langley, Virginia, by cable, early version of email facts, basically. What can you tell us about this guy,

Lee Harvey Oswald? He came into the Cuban consulate, through a fit. It's going back and forth with the Soviet embassy. Can he tell us anything about him? And so the CIA writes them back, says the headquarters. And they say, we regret to inform you that the latest information we have on Lee Harvey Oswald is May in 1962. Like, he's basically on his way back to the United States. That's the last thing we have. Sorry, he's not very interesting.

Bye. It's like a paragraph. Right. Here's the problem. That's completely false. So CIA headquarters had been receiving all of the FBI reports and CIA reports, but a lot of really in-depth FBI reports on Lee Harvey's Aswell's activities since he came back to the United States. so the guy who the most suspicious thing you said about him was he returned to the united

states in may with a soviet wife well he's has they knew at langley that he had maintained contact with the soviet embassy that he had engaged in ongoing uh procastro activity right that he was a member of the fair play for cuba committee or purported to be and that he had engaged in a street fight distributing pro-castro literature right all of these things would raise huge alarms at mexico city station and they did not tell them any of that and john newman who i mentioned and jeff morley who i mentioned they analyzed the routing slips for these fbi reports so they were the ones who not only knew that the F that the CIA had all of this material it was supposed to be in Oswald's 201 file if it was they lied about having it there and if it wasn't why was it mysteriously removed right when he was going to Mexico City right and they looked at the people that the Morley and Newman they went looking for the people who signed off authenticated this document.

Right. And not only that, they had signed off as reading all of those FBI materials personally. So why did you tell, they found one. And they went to her and they said, and this is in the mid-1990s, 30 years later, why did you tell your own people that you had no? no up-to-date information on Lee Harvey Oswald, when you had all of these really relevant points and facts that you read, they eventually get her to admit that she was signing off on something she knew to be untrue. Again, remember, this is for events two months before

the assassination involving the person who is eventually going to be accused of killing the president. I'm signing off on something that I know to be untrue. It's indicative, I kid you not, she says, it's indicative of a keen interest by the CIA in Oswald, two months before the assassination. Then she says, I can only speculate from looking at the routing and where it's going, but it's telling me that the people in the, remember that's name from before, I'll remind everybody. The people in the special affairs staff had kept Lee Harvey Oswald's information from Mexico City Station

on a need to know because it was on a need to know basis. Quick reminder to your listeners. The special affairs staff was the group within the CIA that was trying to kill Fidel Castro. The Special Affairs staff is the group within the CIA that employed that guy George Joannidis who would have been involved with that staged fight with Oswald

a month before in New Orleans. And now, according to somebody in the CIA, they are lying to their own people about what they know about Lee Harvey Oswald. two months before the assassination, when he's trying to get into Cuba. But she doesn't say who told her what to say? She just says it's- No.

She doesn't specify like Jimmy and, you know, whatever department told me. It gets inferred by the people who are above her in the chain of command on the routing sheets. Okay. And they are indeed from the special affairs staff. Okay. Now, the other element to this that's strange about Mexico City is that somebody calls the Cuban consulate, says they are Lee Harvey Oswald and starts asking questions that Lee Harvey Oswald would never ask. makes no sense and that clearly looks like an impersonation

and my sense is the people at the Mexico City Station are trying to figure out what he's up to the people in headquarters they're trying to lower as one researcher said they're trying to dim the lights on Lee Harvey Oswald the reason they're trying to do that

is they're trying to get Lee Harvey Oswald out of desperately trying to get him out of Mexico into Cuba at the last minute to see if he could somehow participate in an assassination plot against Castro. I don't believe Lee Harvey Oswald would have gone through with any assassination plot against Castro. I believe if Lee Harvey Oswald got to Cuba, he would have tried to find the nearest senior member of the Cuban Communist Party, ratted out that he was part of a anti-Castro assassination plot in hopes of becoming a hero to the Cuban Revolution. I think that's what his agenda. It got sabotaged also. So this is getting me to my key factor. And I'm going to take us to Dallas in a minute.

I want us to take us to a different situation. What were some of the plots that were in operation to plan to kill Castro that were going on in the 60s? A lot of people know the crazy plots, like exploding cigar, you know, poison his or infect his scuba suit with tuberculosis. Right. by the way he got the CIA got some of their ideas from Ian Fleming the author of the James Bond novels he had come to visit John Kennedy and John Kennedy asked him what do you do about Cuba and I think his first response was something witty like ignore it and then he started listing off all of these you know crazy science you know not science fiction fiction but spy fiction type of plots in the presence of them was Alan Dulles who was the head of the CIA Right and Alan Dulles then strikes up a relationship with Ian Fleming and like hits him up for these kinds of ideas It in Fleming or not Ian Fleming with the guys that made one of the Bond movies

The set guys got a phone call after one of the James Bond movies had come out about the re-breather you know that it was just a little thing it had two little tubes and it was a rebreather that he could swim underwater and they got a phone call from someone at like you know CIA or somewhere some military technical services yeah saying listen that device like how you know how long they go is that a real device and they were like they were like yeah it's a real device like they didn't really understand what they were saying and they said well how long can you breathe underwater with it he goes as long as long you can hold your breath and they were like oh so he he doesn't work i mean it's a it's a what are you and they were like oh okay we thought oh never mind not surprising given what i know

about cia yeah um now those are the goofy plots there was another plot and it's going to be very significant in the long run um it's called operation pathfinder and the plot of Apporation Pathfinder was to assassinate Fidel Castro while he was riding in his Jeep using a long-range rifle from a high-floor building in a moving vehicle, the Jeep.

The person who concocted that plot was a man by the name of Carl Jenkins. Carl Jenkins, who by the way is still alive at like 99 years old. Many, many years later, well, first of all, just what we know without this story. He was one of the big-time paramilitary trainers of the people like the Bay of Pigs.

So he was like, you know, almost green beret type. Years later, decades later, he gets actively involved and becomes part of a, as a peripheral figure in Iran-Contra. Part of the reason why we know what he did in Iran-Contra was materials and testimony given by somebody who had become his very good friend when they worked together privately in the Middle East. His name is Gene Wheaton. Gene Wheaton approached the assassination's records and review board, the group that was formed after the movie JFK, to release files on the Kennedy assassination. You ever have time, I can give you a very unique story. My students, high school students are the only high school class in American history to have written a bill that became a federal law. And they based it on the JFK Records Act. It's about civil rights cold cases.

That being said, we got years later, after the review board disbanded, we got records of their outside investigations. One of them was they were approached anonymously by this guy Gene. Wheaton, who had been a private contractor who had peripheral connections to intelligence figures from his time in the Middle East, who had become very good friends with this guy, Carl Jenkins, this paramilitary trainer for the CIA, when they were both working privately in the Middle East on some sketchy things and became such good friends that Jean Wheaton basically stayed at his place with Jenkins and his wife for weeks on end. Jenkins, Wheaton approaches the review board and says, look, I have some information to provide to you.

Under no circumstances, are you to ever put out anything that releases my name? Of course, they made a mistake, and we found it in the 2000s. So that didn't work. He says, look, I stayed with a one-time CIA guy and apparently somebody who has some contract kind of. interactions during Iran-Contra. His name was Carl Jenkins. And Carl, he was heavily involved in anti-Castro operations, covert operations in the 1960s before he went to do similar stuff in Vietnam. And Carl and I were very good friends. And Carl would invite over a lot of the old school, you know, in that time they wouldn't, they'd be in their 40s.

a lot of 40s and 50s, a lot of the old school anti-Castro people he trained and developed because they became like family to him. He would invite them over to drink and have, you know, a good time. And I got to be friendly with them because I was friendly with him. But Carl wasn't very good. And these people, some of them were not very good at holding their liquor. And at one of the get-togethers, Carl started talking about John Kennedy, who he and the other people there, did not like because of Bay of Pigs. And they basically said that they, like the people in the room, were training people to kill John Kennedy.

not killed out, sorry, kill Fidel Castro. Remember what I told you, Operation Pathfinder? And they implied pretty clearly that they turned it. When things broke down, they turned it on JFK. Okay. Carl Jenkins had been involved in an earlier assassination plot against, probably more than one, against Fidel Castro. In 1960,

I should say, I should be careful. Carl Jenkins had been called out of retirement in the late 1970s right around the time the Kennedy assassination was reinvestigated, randomly out of the blue to debrief somebody who had just been released from a Cuban prison. The person who he had been called a debrief had been somebody, who, and you've got to ask yourself, why would they call him to debrief somebody? It implies, certainly out of retirement, that he had to have intimate knowledge of who this guy was and what this guy was doing. Why else would you bring somebody out of retirement?

You could have anybody and their mother do it, right? Right. Including active employees. Carl Jenkins is brought in to debrief this person. So it turns out that the person he's brought back to debrief is somebody who was involved in a CIA plot against Castro in 1960, that failed, obviously, try and blow him up with a bazooka. Okay. It got shut down and the person had to escape.

The person was eventually found on somebody's farm. The farm was Amador Odio. Okay. The father of Sylvia Odio. Yeah, this is the guy he was hiding. Yes. That's why Amador Odio was in pretty. prison in 63 when

when Sylvia, his daughter, wrote him about this strange visit. Now, you ask yourself, who would know Amador Odio was in the underground and who would know that Amador Odio in 1963 was involved, you know, could be somebody could be involved in an assassination plot.

Right. My guess is would be any CIA officer who was involved in that 1960 plot. Guess, speculation, but I don't think it's too hard. My guess is Carl Jenkins was the who arranged that plot. That's why he was called out of retirement to debrief the person who escaped from the prison. And why that debrief never mentions anything to do with the assassination plot, even though that's the reason why the guy was in prison.

He was steered away from talking about it by Carl Jenkins. Okay. So let me return to the Cuban. Now, Oswald comes back to United States, the United States, sets up back in Dallas. He's estranged from his wife, and part of the time he's living away. And there is some suggestion, I think it's pretty solid. that he is visiting a home in Dallas that belongs.

It's privately owned, but it's being used as a sort of hangout for radical Cuban exiles. It's called the House on Harlandale Street in Kennedy assassination lore. He is reported to the police as having visited that home. Oswald is. He's, the radical groups that are associated with that, and it gets very controversial, are connected to a CIA officer in part by the name of David Phillips. I'll come back to him in a bit. Now, just so that you know, after the assassination, these guys, these exiles who are hanging out in the Harlandale, We're talking like November 23rd.

They all book out of town. They all get out of Dallas. We're at a place with exos where Oswald is seen as attending. Right. Oswald, of course, back to our original. He has the rifle from back when he was tried to assassinate General Edmund Walker. Right. If you believe Edward Epstein, the CIA at least has partial, if not full knowledge,

that Oswald was involved with that assassination. The CIA knows that he had been part of a anti-Castro propaganda campaign in New Orleans. They know that he had been part of a if you follow my line of thinking that they had used him, and I say CIA, I mean mid-level people, people like Carl Jenkins. They knew that he had been part of a CIA operation to assassinate, get into Cuba and try and assassinate him that fails. Remember what the guy said at Odio's house. Initially, Oswald tries to kill Cascio,

but the very first thing he has him say is he's the kind of guy who thinks we should have killed Kennedy, right, after the Bay of Pigs. Right. So, flash forward to November 22nd, what do I think happened? I do think there were more than one shooter in Daly Plaza.

I believe it was very likely some combination of either exile, organized crime, CIA type of people, all of whom were involved in anti-Castro assassination plots. By the way, Ruby was involved in gun running to anti-Castro forces. So he's mafia connected and he's exile connected. I don't know if Oswald fired shots and I don't know if he fully understood what was happening his initial behavior after the assassination we're talking like immediate 10 15 minutes after

does not strike me as somebody first of all it may provide him with an alibi there's very limited time for him to get to the lunchroom he's found in with a coke that police officer pulled a gun on him and Oswald, according to the police officer, act like it was nothing. This is a guy who couldn't sleep at night after he attempted to kill General Edlin Walker. We're supposed to believe, you know, a minute ago, he shot the president of the United States. He's got a Coke in his hand and he's calm, cool, and collected.

Right. He leaves the building. Again, that's a little bit suspicious. Yeah, but you think maybe he realized at that point he was a patsy? He's starting to put it together? I think within 15 to 20 minutes, he realizes it. Why? Well, one of the things that makes him look like he didn't know what was happening is he offers his, according to one witness, a couple of witnesses, he offers his cab to another woman.

I guess it's southern, you know, matters. But if you just are killed in a hurry. Right. He gets on a bus. And on the bus is when it becomes clear that John Kennedy has been shot and killed. My theory, and I'm not alone and I'm not the first to come up with it by any means, is that what Oswald may have been roped into a plot to scare Kennedy, or at least he was told, we're going to fire some shots, some blanks at John Kennedy,

or we're going to fire some shots over his head, you bring this rifle, and he'll learn his lesson about Cuba. Probably from people, and we have some evidence of this from a guy named John Martinez, know probably from people who what who were trying to reach oswald as leftists uh oswald gets out of the building here's that the president has actually been shot and at that point he starts to realize oh shit yeah i'm in the wrong wrong place or yeah wrong place the wrong time or the right right time depending on whose point of view you're looking at when he gets driving dropped off by a cab near his rooming house.

The cab drops him off like a couple of blocks down. Now, I could go into a whole long-winded thing, how it might be an attempt for him to reach somebody who's anti-Castro right across the street from there. But most people think, and it could be both, that he was looking to see if anybody had, any police had come to his house. Right.

He walks back to his rooming house and then he decides to get a gun again if you're starting the day thinking you're going to kill the president why wouldn't you have gotten the gun and brought it with you to the depository for you know to shoot your way home right he changes close all right he then goes on the street now a lot of controversy as to whether or not lots of, it could go into long story, I won't. He's, I believe, confronted by a police officer named J.D. Tippett. He may have been driven, though, to that area, because it would have been awfully fast for him to get there. J.D. Tippett gets shot probably, at least by Oswald, if not Oswald, and somebody else. But, you know, everybody makes it out to deal. He must have

also killed Kennedy. That's what the Warren Commission said. That's your Rosetta Stone. We can prove that he shot Tippett, therefore he must have shot Kennedy because why else would he shoot Tippett? Well, at this point, at this point, right, go ahead. He's trying to escape. Yeah, he's trying to escape. He's like, I've been set up. Nobody's going to believe me. I need to get out of here. And I'm going to kill anybody that comes in, it is crosses my path. That's going to stop me. He gets rid of his jacket on his way to the Texas theater, walks into the Texas theater without buying a ticket. Now, the interesting thing about the theater is it's actually a pretty good place, Spycraft, to meet somebody who you need to meet. And there are reports that Oswald

appeared to keep on moving around trying to sit next to people. Like, we're together. Right. Hoping my guest to find somebody. Now, I mentioned a guy named John Martino, who, by the way, knew Sylvia Odio. John Martino was a mob-connected, anti-Castro-connected, CIA-connected character who had been in prison in Cuba. He may have been in prison with Odio's father, right, before being set back to the United States and basically going on a book tour with a book called I Was Castro's prisoner. He tries to plant stories immediately after the assassination, linking Oswald to Castro. But years later, after he dies, his very close friend, his business partner, a reporter with whom he is very close to, his wife and his son, who would have been young in

1963, but old enough to remember things, all came forward and said, John told us stuff about the Kennedy assassination. And specifically what he told us was that it was basically an anti-Castro situation. Anticastro people had convinced Oswald, that they were leftist, and had set him up in the Kennedy assassination, some way somehow, we don't have a huge, a lot of details. Oswald got, he was supposed to have been killed. Maybe it was the police officer, who knows. He was supposed to have been killed, he was supposed to be taken out of the country, I'm sorry, supposed to be taken out of the country and killed. No questions asked. And it was supposed to fall on the doorsteps of Phil Del Castro.

But things broke down. He goes to the theater because that's where he was told to meet in the event of an emergency. But the person doesn't show up. The cops descend and arrest him. And we have to get Ruby to kill him. because he may know too much if he gets to trial. Martino's son remembers on the day of the assassination that his father got phone calls after the assassination from people in Miami and that his father turned pale as a ghost. And then his wife and the reporter said

that he had actually once told them that one of the shooters had been in their house at one point, visiting. Okay. He has all the right connections. And if you go to my co-writer on the King Assassination Books,

Larry Hancock's books, someone would have talked. It's really about just trying to trace all of the John Martino evidence and line it up with all the other evidence we know. Flash forward the 80s, this gentleman David Phillips, who has been accused of involvement in the Kennedy assassination, accused of by this point in time, having interactions with Lee Harvey Oswald, and was very actively involved in Cuban, in anti-Castro anti-Cuban regime groups, was involved in Jamwave, the anti-Castro operation. He's written some regular books, nonfiction books, but he's also written some fiction, I put it in quotes books.

One of them, I think, is called a Carlos contract. He never published it. He died before anyone got access to it. In the book at the end, in the character in the book, here's what David Phillips says. I'm paraphrasing I was as the character remember so fiction I was Lee Harvey Oswald's case officer

we had him in a plan to kill Fidel Castro on November 22nd I was caught with my pants down when the same plan was used but on John Kennedy, I still carry that guilt. Was that fiction, or does that make, as I believe, everything make sense?

To put the long story short to everybody, both John Kennedy's quasi-obsession behind the scenes, with trying to get Castro, which included backroom deals that may have been serious and may have not have, but definitely included some with his knowledge, some probably without his knowledge or blessing, interactions with really bad people who hated his gods. And Lee Harvey Oswald's obsession with trying to be part of the spy world. something that he was on the outside looking in on until he hits New Orleans and proves his worth. They both align on November 22nd when a covert operation meant to kill Castro was turned on John Kennedy, and it ultimately fails to accomplish its goal, which was to frame Castro for John Kennedy's assassination.

causing American people to go into an uproar and invade Cuba, and it fails because people in the higher end from President Johnson to Earl Warren realize that Oswald seems to lead to Castro's door, and if we invade Cuba, we will get World War III, and so they have to cover everything up. that plus the people who actually may have known that their operation was turned on john kennedy or they had contacts with lee harvey oswald however innocent they all covered it up to and so that's sort of my my end story there was a lot there um

throwing it back to you um i so what about so Jack Ruby shooting Oswald Why does that happen? Like how do you like if had Oswald lived You know I mean obviously there's good reason for him to be killed But how did they how does how do you How do you get Ruby to kill Oswald

Okay so I think the key thing here is I think Ruby had some vague sense of stuff something big was going to go down. He was doing some suspicious stuff in the months and the weeks leading up to the assassination. I doubt you would never want Jack Ruby to know in advance that John Kennedy was going to be killed. Part of that is because Ruby, I don't know if he had some kind of personality disorder or what have you, but the one big thing about him, two big things, he's impulsive and he's violent, which leads some to think that it was, you know, off the cuff.

but he's one of the big time wannabes in the organized crime world. Like, he really wants to be a bigger player in the nightclub scene, in the quasi-organized crime scene. And for that reason, because he's a little bit off, because you're going to have to, to get somebody to shoot somebody in a basement, you're going to need three days. Surrounded by police. Right. You're going to have to, they're going to have to. They're going to have to be a little bit off. You're going to have to hope that they know the police.

And Jack Ruby knew them quite well. They used to go to his club. Yeah. And you're going to have to get somebody who, you know, even if the person says something, you might not believe him because he's so weird. Right. I was going to say, to be honest, like you could maybe make the attempt to have Ruby do it. But even if he doesn't, I mean, Oswald, you know, worst case scenarios,

Oswald is not someone that is going to be extremely credible if he is, you know, questioned or goes to trial. And it's not like it's the only opportunity you have. There's going to be other opportunities to get to him. And, and, you know, part of the issue is this. Oswald doesn't say everything. He could say a lot of stuff that he knows right there to the police and doesn't say it. And I think part of that is in his own head. And by the way, whenever I see his face in the interviews, I think, you know, it's, it's a huge, obviously speculative body language reading.

I always see him as his face is saying, his body language is saying, you have got to be freaking kidding me with these people. And these people are the people who set him up. Like, they started asking him questions like, oh my gosh, they know that too, right? he's got to be worried about the assassination attempt on Walker and that no one's going to buy the fact that he at least conspired in an attempt on Kennedy right and who's going to believe a communist like you said when he says oh I really didn't fire the shots it had to be somebody else I don't really know who they are yes that is my gun you know it's it's not going to go over too well. So he's got to be calculating too. But to these folks, I think they have to think

that if it hits the fan and he's facing the death penalty, that maybe he's going to say more of what he knows. Yeah, but what does he know? He doesn't know. Well, I think what he would be able to know is that he'd be able to tell you who the people who told him to be near a phone and the depository were on November 22nd, 1963. Right? Because so. Somebody has to be able to make sure that he's not outside with 50 people watching him. Of course, I say this, and there's a major ongoing theory based on a grainy photograph that he was outside. I think that has to be looked into, but my general probable sense is that was just somebody who's as short as I am going up to the steps of the depository trying to get a view of the president. because I know whenever I'm in a parade, I'm short, I have to find high ground if I'm going

to see over anybody. So this picture of what looks to be Lee Harvey Oswald in front of the repository, when I say looks to be, I'm talking very grainy. Right. So they just be a random person like me. So who did kill him, though? Ultimately, I believe it was the kinds of people that Carl Jenkins was training. So Carl Jenkins, according to Gene Wheaton, has mafia connections.

Carl Winkins, definitely, they're practically his sons, has anti-Castro exiles. And Carl Wheaton, I'm sorry, Carl Jenkins. Carl Jenkins has connections to people in the special affairs staff. And I suspect if it goes up high, maybe to somebody like William Harvey, the people in the assassination programs within the sort of rogue element of the CIA assassination programs that includes people

who are mob and organized crime-connected and includes people who are exiles and the exiles are really the front lines of everything. Okay, so he gets shot, it gets blamed on, on Oswald. We didn't invade Cuba. well so here's what we know didn't work right correct so there's a very famous scholar by name of peter dale scott and he calls it the two phase of the conspiracy

unconnected in many in some ways to each other the first is the actual plot to kill kennedy and he's not that far off of where i am um just i think he thinks it goes higher but then the second is the plot to try and make it look like one person did it And he says the first plot, the second plot and conspiracy emerges out of the first. And that's when people like J. Edgar Hoover and Lyndon Johnson start putting two and two together in their heads about Oswald's visits to the embassies and consulates in Cuba. They get a later report that Oswald supposedly threatened Kennedy's life when he was in the consulate. So they're very concerned because they know how close we are to World War III. Lyndon Johnson is on record calling people, including Earl Warren, and saying to him,

including Richard Russell, his friend who was on the Warren Commission, neither man wanted to be on the commission. Right. But how does Lynn and Johnson get them on? he says, well, do you want 100, you know, 100 million dead Americans on your head when this becomes World War III? We know he said that to Richard Russell and Earl Warren's son said, he said it to Earl Warren. So he's very early on.

He's saying stuff to Jay Edgar Hoover. There's, you know, the reason I don't think we have photographs of Oswald and Mexico City is some of them may. be too provocative as to who else is in the picture. I think Lyndon Johnson and the people immediately around him put what they thought was two and two together really fast. Lyndon Johnson years later would tell a reporter, I'll tell you something. John Kennedy was running a murder incorporated in the Caribbean. Whether that's true or not, I think Lyndon Johnson believed it. and he said

Kennedy got Castro Kennedy, Castro got Kennedy Kennedy tried to get Castro, Castro got Kennedy first. I don't think he was accurate on that, but I think he had good reasons to have that as his first

and major suspicion. Well, I mean, I can see saying to the Warren, you know, you know, what was Warren's first name? Earl Warren. Earl Warren. I can see saying like you know investigate it but once you're done you know you you need to really think long and hard whether or not you want this to point to Castro you know what I mean so like

absolutely like like did you see I mean obviously I'm sure you saw you know you saw the the Bay of Pigs movie what was it 13 days what was it 13 days was the Cuban Missile Crisis movie I'm sorry yeah Cuban Missile Crisis when they you know when uh he calls um they his chief of staff calls uh the pilot and says look yeah yeah you were not fired on do not get yourself fired on it's uh it's a bird uh yeah bird shot or whatever you know bird yeah that uh we hit a bunch of birds yes like birds he's like birds he's like i think it's exactly that it was a cover story and remember there's different layers to the cover story right so one of the other Warren commission members is Alan Dulles

Alan Dulles was one of the originators of the Castro assassination plots. He does not want for that that is a top secret thing all the way up into the late 60s, early 70s. He doesn't want that coming out either. He sure as heck does not want it known that we were willing to use the mafia to help pull it off. Right. So he shuts down that whole angle with his buddy James Angleton, who was still in the CIA and running counterintelligence, who some people think was the mastermind of Kennedy's assassination. I do not.

Some people think Dulles was. But again, there was, so there was that. And then there's CYA stuff, right? So let's say you recruited Oswald for an operation of any kind. You sure as heck don't want that out in the public that you were involved with him before Kennedy got killed. Right. So, yes, I agree with you. So a lot of people refer to that as a quote-unquote benign cover-up.

There are some things very few, though I think it's very few of them, that because they were weird and before the assassination, I think you can read more into. but the stuff that happened after a lot of it in my opinion was to stop World War III was to protect the sensitive operations like the anti-castro plots and to prevent the government from being embarrassed by its interest in Oswald okay right and in many cases it becomes a snowball effect because and this is not uncommon in a lot of other cases too however benign your first so-called benign your first wave of covering things up is over time you actually have to cover up the cover up yeah you have to continue yeah you do you have to keep lies like telling any lie yeah once you start lying the moment people inquire it becomes more and more lies to

to cover lies to cover lies. Right. Like you don't want people to know that you knew who may have killed Kennedy and you kept it to yourself. So you so you lie about that. And then you know, again, as you said, it's snowballs. And that's sort of the situation I think we're in now where we have this ridiculous situation where Trump and Biden basically ended our hopes of getting whatever, you know, it's not many, but what few files we have left. um okay um you're working on so you're not working on a book you are but you aren't working on a book so i'm actually once i get my life in gear um a couple major projects i'm trying to um i if i

write a book the next one is probably going to be about what my students did to pass that law okay um and 60 minutes is interested in that story. So I want to have something ready to go. They run a story. I'm also trying to create a nonprofit. Maybe I'll link, if you don't mind, to a GoFundee for it. To create a nationwide program to get students involved at the high school level in the policymaking process similar to what my students had done. Incredibly valuable, you know, valuable process to go through took us years, but everyone who went through it benefited from it. But eventually, I do want to do JFK. I have documentary material for my MLK stuff, and if you ever want me to do MLK

with you, I could give you the link for that book. the two books that I have four total books three of them are co-written one of the co-written is I'm a with I barely did anything on it one of them is called the awful grace of God

that's the first book we did on the King Assassination the update of that book which is the one I would get if I was in the public would be killing King that's in 2018 there's a book called

Shadow Warfare which happens to, has to deal with 50s, 60s covert military operations. I'm a with on that. And then those three books were all done with my co-author, Larry Hancock. And then there's my solo book called America's Secret Jihad, and that's about the history of domestic terrorism, especially domestic religious terrorism. And that, doing podcasts on, I've given congressional testimony about, but the King stuff, I'm trying, I have a lot of material for a documentary, I need to finish some interviews, and I really need AI to reach a point where I can do reenactments for free in 30 seconds clips. Once I get there, I could probably do half this myself with the way editing software is going. Right.

So that's my situation. But I would love to come on, talk about anything. We didn't even talk about physical evidence, and that's my other interest. Well, we will. Yeah. We will do that at some point. Sure. Okay.

Well, listen, I can put all the links in the description box. okay you know of if you send them to me absolutely um so yeah let me go ahead and and wrap this up hold on give me one second sure all right hold on by way this was a great interview what i didn't say anything that's you know sometimes that's the key to a really good interview than my best ones julian's very much the same way right um but he he he like you kept me focused he's willing to let me uh go virtually anywhere i bring something up he'll go to i mean it it's different styles but it's both great yeah i was going to say it's it's always good when the um you know when a guest like knows their story yeah you know what i'm saying like some of the guys i interview like

they've told their story once or twice of their buddies but they don't really have a clear definition or you know outline of what it is and so they go all over the place and it's like I get it. We're not at a party with your buddies. You know, it's like you need to kind of have your story laid out so that you'd be stunned and slightly disturbed about how often I think about this case. Oh, yeah. There's like a TikTok that was going around where wives or something were asking men about like, how often do you think about the Roman Empire? Yeah, yeah. Did you see that? It's the Kennedy necessity. Right.

In recent years, I was diagnosed with OCD. Right. But I never understood that because I had always just thought OCD was like handling doorknobs like multiple times per day or making sure your stove's off. Right. But it could absolutely be obsessive, compulsive thoughts. Anyone who knew me who knew that that was part of the diagnosis would be like, Stu, you are OCD and JFK, more than anything else, would be what I would bring to a therapist to prove it to them if you had it, that you have it, because I'm on the forums every day.

I think about it in the shower. Listen, I'm the same way about two things. world war two specifically the european theater um and colonizing mars very interesting it's 80% of what i watch on youtube interesting i could definitely sympathize with world war two i mean i was a modern american history teacher um i do a lot of i did a lot of simulations with my students where here's the scenario what would you do um before and after um and then of course saving private Ryan scenes and they don't get into it as much as I do like I was I showed them I love showing them the this and I actually like the the speech from the movie the darkest hour

with Gary Olman better than the tape of the post because he wasn't his actual Churchill's actual tape but the the audio recording of Churchill right he doesn't have any verb in the you know recording I'm sure he did it when he was in parliament but we don't have that recording. We only have the later one. Oldman's amazing. So I play them, you know, we'll fight them on the beaches. I go, I'm like, come on.

Like, you've got to be into that. And then I love showing them the scene from, oh, what you might call it. What's the movie with the plane at the end landing on the beach nominated for an Oscar, about six years ago. It's all about Dunkirk. Oh, yeah. It's Dunkirk.

Yeah, yeah, it's Dunkirk. I love, you know, presenting them, you know, you have to solve the following problem. Your soldiers are stranded on the beach. The enemy is giving them a window that they probably shouldn't have, but it's not going to last very long. And you don't have the resources in your Navy at this point. moment to go collect them how the heck are you go what the heck are you going to do to stop your military from being decimated on that beach and nobody says they're all just throw up guesses that don't make any sense and i say this is how you get them back and i show them the everyday people

in fishing boats yeah putting their lives on the line to pick up the people at dunkirk and i get super into that the heroism of it you know the that the They don't get nearly as stoked as I do. They were calling The Miracle at Dunkirk and then Churchill came out and said, listen, you don't win wars through evacuations. Right. It's great. I'm glad we got on that.

What it was was a huge mistake on the part of the Germans not to press their advantage. Yeah. Yeah. What an opportunity wasted. Yeah. I showed them that and then completely unrelated to World War II. I show them the scene from Gettysburg, the Battle of Little Roundtop. did you ever what about do you like the you said saving private ryan which is great what about

enemy at the gate i do not show them that but i try and emphasize as much as humanly possible that the russians did the vast majority of the fighting and dying that's not a bad idea though because it does absolutely show the absolute depths of how terrible the war was yeah well i mean you know like they were it's funny because i always I always think of this. It's not true, obviously, but I always think, like, I think Hitler even said, like, they're defeated. Like, it's over. It wasn't over, but it's like the city isn't there anymore.

You're beaten, and they just, no, we're not beaten. Everybody's dead practically. Like, what are you doing? You have no food. You're starving. You're freezing. We're freezing. It's over.

No. That's what's got to work. worry people about, although I guess Ukraine could point to the same history, but yeah, that's why you got to worry, you know, they're getting their various periods, maybe not now, getting their ass kick, but the one thing the Russians never do is give up. Right. Yeah, you can get a lot done when you're willing to just throw away. Massacre, you know, when you're a butcher, you know, and just you're aiming to send every, you know, send prisoners to, be cat and fodder oh god i love the um they even say it and they it's like order you know 1157 or something

where Stalin gives the order not one step backwards and how they were how they're handing there's three people you're going to waves of like three guys one has a rifle and a cartridge the next guy has just a cartridge and the next guy has a cartridge and they're saying when he gets shot you pick up the rifle use your cartridge when he get shot you pick up the rifle it's like This is insanity. Yeah. And yet, they pulled it off. Yeah, they prevail.

Yeah. But I mean, yeah, there's so many blunders in that history of what, like, you know, why would you divert your military to do? One of my favorites is on D-Day. Hitler, they won't wake up because he's sleeping. What are you talking about? And then what's his face? The tank commander is at a birthday party. What's his name?

The most famous one. Yeah, yeah. Oh, shoot. No, yeah, it's his wife's birthday. Yes, yes. Oh, gosh. I can picture him, too. He's tall, thin.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And he was in North Africa. And somehow his name is skips my mind. Yeah, it's not the Desert Fox. No, it is. It's Rommel. Rommel, thank you. Rommel, okay.

He was supposed to have been the, the, the major like figure at that in the event of something like that and of course we fooled them with the fake army and listen i my poor wife bro i feel so bad like i made her watch a whole thing like they had blow up tanks they made airplanes fake this and she's like what i'm like yeah it was like this complete ghost army's not even real and i said you know what then they put like i like i forget who it was like patent in charge of it yep exactly because they would have that totally diver. It was brilliant. Yeah. You would never use Patton for a fake arm. It's got to be

real. They put Patton in. But did. Do you ever see the picture is the hilarious one where Patton had told everybody that if I crossed the, you know, if I cross in the germany, I'm going to piss in the Rhine. Right. And

nobody, everybody thought it was a joke. But there's actually a picture of Patton peeing in the Rhine. I didn't know that. Yeah. Yeah. No, no. You could go see it. It's hilarious. Very patent to do. People think he was killed, too. I don't quite go with that.

Yeah, I was going to say. The things that happen that are amazing during World War II are it's so over the top. You're like watching. You couldn't make it up. You couldn't make it up. It's like, wait a minute. You're telling me that Mussolini was overthrown. He's placed in a prison.

Hitler is upset about it. So he has paratroopers come down, fly down, land on the prison, bust him out, put him back in power. To bring things full circle, and I brought this up to Julian, but it's a theory that I think has been too discredited in the last three months to foisted. And you'll probably be pissed at me for saying this. one of the most recent books has argued that the guy who did that operation auto scores any killed kennedy oh i've never heard yeah no that that is there is a whole book and that is the main thesis that he had gone to work for the CIA and other groups like the Israelis after the assassination that he was actually the go-to guy in the world if you wanted to do

this kind of stuff which i actually don't necessarily disbelieve that and then he got recruited by james angleton and the cia to basically as part of some sort of quasi-forthright thing he he put together the king kennedy assassination um and it's based on a diary written by a figure who um that's the problem um who without question had very inter one of the most colorful lives you've ever heard his name is pierre lafitte all sorts of connections to the intelligence community but the problem is is that guy by the mission of the authors themselves was like all-time hall of fame con man right and the problem in the kennedy assassination is we have a gillian examples of con men trying to claim that they had

something to do with planning the Kennedy assassination, who we know are full of crap. And this guy is dead and it would be a little bit more elaborate than a lot of other hoaxes. But I think what this probably was was he was planning a big time hoax to make money. And he just died before it materialized. And this author stumbled upon him because of his other connections to other weird events and the family provided the author with the bogus diary and of course if you're that author you're going to be like no way that this could be planned because you're not thinking that way but it's just there's too much wrong with it I mean like the diary itself has got like an iron cross on it or something like that's kind of crazy melodramatic nonsense that you know

I was going to say, did you ever hear about the theory? Obviously, I'm sure you've heard this. Everybody started that Hitler actually escaped the bunker and went to Venezuela. So did you see that History Channel documentary, lifting Hitler? Yes. Yes. Yes. I've seen it. I thought that was actually pretty well done, but I wound up emerging from that, thinking to myself, I don't think there's any chance Hitler's alive, but they made a pretty decent case that. maybe Martin Borman faked his death and got out of there. That was pretty impressive.

The same people did a Kennedy assassination special later. And it made me want to question their Nazi one, only because they were constantly presenting things as if they were like these, oh my gosh, that's crazy. This is brand new. And I'm like, dude, I wrote a high school report on that in 1993. And so they wound up implying it could have been Castro, even though they did do some, they did a very interesting,

they were able to take government documents and scan them into a system that was able to interpret geolocation on a map. So what they were able to do is do like a, they were able to search for those people I was talking to you about in Dallas, the exiles, like people who had gone to Harlandale. And they were able to show very interestingly that all of them lived on houses on Oswald's bus,

route if he had been able to get on the bus to escape from Dallas. Right. But I'm sitting there going, then how does that lead to Castro? And they were trying to make it out as if, oh, well, Castro has a lot of informants in the exile community. And that's how he did it. He used doubles. And there's a part of that, which is true. He had infiltrated those guys out the wazoo.

Right. But there's no evidence that the people that have been implicated in this case beyond that stuff I told you about with like curl Jenkins and stuff like those guys would have had to have been the greatest doubles of all time because they were doing anti-communist stuff in 1985 right um you know it's an awful long time to hang out and and pretend you're working for the you know Americans right yeah you're yeah they're taking it to the extreme yeah so uh yeah that And that show wasn't nearly as well done. But they did get to people in Mexico.

And I wish people could get back to them again, like the people at the embassy and the consulate. There's a story there that needs to be told that's incredibly confusing beyond the one I'm telling. Because if I had gone into the story on how weird, why people think it wasn't really even Oswald in the flesh. I have to be honest, there are times where I actually dabble in that thought. It's so freaking weird. Well, you know, the problem with most people is that they have a limited, you know, bandwidth. Yeah, exactly.

Their interest is. And the more confusing it gets, it's like, okay, that's why typically, you know, obviously Hollywood simplifies stories. Oh, yeah. They have to be stream, you know, stream. lined for people to follow that basic story that's told over and over again. Yeah, I was doing my darness by keeping it chronological and geographical and trying to remind people the stuff before.

But yeah, it absolutely gets to be a complicated situation. Hey, if you like the interview, do me a favor. I'm going to put all of Stu's links in the description box. So click on the links to his books. Also, do me a favor and hit the subscribe button, hit the bell so you get notified of videos like this. A lot of people don't get notified. Sometimes just turning off the bell and then turning it back on might help. Also, I would really appreciate it if you guys would consider joining my Patreon.

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