RedHanded - JFK Part One: America on the Edge | #406

Episode Date: July 3, 2025

Who shot JFK is irrelevant, how many people shot him is the real question. Once you have decided there was more than one shooter, the fate of the world is sealed forever.This is the original conspiracy theory, the dawn of the tin foil hat era. The assassination of the President in broad daylight, in front of hundreds, it had everyone asking questions.Questions that went totally unanswered by the Warren Commission, tasked with proving that a lone nutcase shot JFK and that the CIA had nothing to do with it… they failed in their mission.Exclusive bonus content:Wondery - Ad-free & ShortHandPatreon - Ad-free & Bonus EpisodesFollow us on social media:YouTubeTikTokInstagramVisit our website:WebsiteSources available on redhandedpodcast.comSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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This might just be the most important book you'll ever read. Go to SurvivalGuidebook.com to get your copy of How to Survive Against the Odds today or visit your favorite bookstore. I'm Hannah. I'm Saruti. And ich bin ein Berliner willkommen, our red-handed JFK is dead. And happy Fourth of July. Oh well, quite, yes. Freedom-loving Americans. Happy Independence Day to our friends and enemies in the United States. But the British are coming today! We're here. Yeah, we here. I still can only associate the name Paul Revere with a racehorse, but never mind. Congratulations to you on rising up against your oppressors and showing the King who was

boss. I don't want to be here either. And to celebrate the liberation of the land with free from us and also because of some sneaky documents that were released recently by the Trump administration, we've decided to bring you two episodes on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Not because they are easy, because they are hard. And hard, they have been, and I will explain why. Similarly to when we do spy cases. They're difficult to gather information on, and JFK is particularly difficult, not only because it's almost entirely intelligence based. This has been breadcrumbed over the past 50 years and

there's multiple commissions and they all find different things and everything is eyewitness testimony which you obviously can't really trust and everyone says the opposite thing. So in order to make this as coherent as I can I've kind of strung it all together because if I'm like well this commission this, and then this committee said the opposite, I might have to die. So to stop me from assassinating myself and you assassinating your ears, that's how I've decided to do it. I'm excited. Okay. Hopefully, I was thinking about it on my bike this morning and I was like,

I'll just have to explain it on the fly if it doesn't make sense. We got this. We got this. Okay. As much as when we went to the John F. Kennedy Museum. Do you know how angry I am that when we went there I knew nothing about this and didn't pay any attention? I know. I also paid very little attention. It was quite boring. It was quite boring and we were also quite tired. And if I remember rightly, it was quite hot outside and I was just like...

It was one of those really annoying days where you've got evening flights. So you're just like, well, I guess we'll just kick about for however many millions of hours. Oh, I have to check out to my hotel at 10 o'clock. My flight's at 10 o'clock. I've got 12 hours to kill. Oh and I'm in America so breakfast stop to 8 a.m. Yeah no so we did go to the JFK Museum. Yeah we got a magnet and you remember those women. I certainly do remember the women. It was so funny. Hannah, me and our friend Jen who was the brains behind Dark Valley, the podcast. We were hanging out at JFK Museum, we're like, yeah, it's pretty cool. Not really paying that much attention, but like, let's get a magnet to commemorate this momentous day. We got one, we're hanging out in the gift shop. And then these women

were like, trying to get into the gift shop, but security wouldn't let them. And they were like, I just want to buy a magnet. I don't want to come into the museum. I just want to buy a magnet. Was this woman's argument on the outside? And they were like, I just want to buy a magnet. I don't want to come into the museum. I just want to buy a magnet was this woman's argument on the outside. And I don't think any of us wanted a magnet. I don't think any of us of our sport magnets. I think we were just kicking about. Yeah. And this woman was like, I need a magnet.

And the security guards were like, absolutely not. You can only come into the gift shop if you go through the museum. I'm like, what a weird stance to take. What a weird stance to take, because I just thought like, if people want to not come to a museum and just buy some magnets, that's no money in your pocket. Why'd you care? But they were very insistent. So then this woman manages to get Jen's attention and is like, hey, hey, hey lady, hey lady

on the inside of this gift shop, on the inside of the JFK museum gift shop, can you please buy me a magnet and pass it to me like fucking illegal smuggled in contraband and then Jen's like yes sure stranger which one do you want and then there was a big discussion about which magnet she wanted which and taking over magnets to the door to show this woman she eventually settled on one and then maybe we bought the same magnets to remember that because it was the weirdest thing. No, no. I can't.

Do you not remember? No. The women just left. So then Jen came out with three ugly fucking magnets and that's why we have those magnets. Oh my god. Oh that would have been way better story if I'd have told it right, wouldn't it? We didn't buy the magnets. She asked for three magnets.

Jen bought her three magnets. By the time we got out the fucking gift shop, she'd legged it with her two mates. Because she was like, actually her mates were like, fucking, we don't need these fucking magnets, Kathy. Jenn bought her three magnets by the time we got out the fucking gift shop she'd legged it with her two mates Because she was like actually her mates were like fucking we don't need these fucking magnets Kathy And then we ended up with three magnets, and that's why I have a JFK magnet. Oh That's a much better story. I'm sorry. I can't just... Honestly, the brain fog is for real. It's terrible. I'm usually pretty good at remembering things and telling stories, as is my job. Yeah, you did get Keth wrong though for quite a long time.

Look, we've known each other for 10 years. Allow me Keth and the JFK story. Magnet story being horribly wrong. Fine. I'm so embarrassed. Can I just take that again? Jesus Christ. I would say, although I'm not a particular fan of the magnet, I'm a fan of the memory of the magnet, the magnet itself isn't good. Apparently I'm not a fan of the memory of the magnet either. But get out.

But I do think that out of all of the presidents, mainly because he died young, right, JFK is the cool one. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so he's a womanizer, he's a playboy, and look, he's a good looking guy. He's a good looking guy. Even in the now times. Absolutely. Hard to argue with. Absolutely. Not even in that kind of like, this is my granddad who went to war, he's just kind of hot because he's in a uniform and he sacrificed himself and like the cameras were really low quality. No, JFK, certified hottie, for sure. Exactly.

He's a cultural icon, even though he was only president for about five minutes. He's got that riz, and he's got a good voice. Well, speaking of his greatest hits, which ones can you think of? Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country. Mm hmm. We do this not because it is easy, but because we go to that talking about space. Mm hmm. We're going to space, not because it's easy, but because it is hard.

Mm hmm. I love those bitches. No, not one. You've done pretty well to be honest. What do you mean duck, Jackie? Well he couldn't duck. Do you know why? Why? Because he was in like essentially a steel corset because of his back problem so he couldn't duck. He couldn't fault. He couldn't move out of the way. I didn't know he had back problems. Oh my god. Oh, this is going to be fun. Is it from all the fucking? No, but he did very famously say that his favorite position was a woman on top

because it was a bad back. Okay. Another really famous one. I think my favorite one is forgive your enemies, but never forget their names. Anyway, you've done pretty well that I've actually lost the list. But like, those are the big hitters. They're the biggies. The journey of a thousand miles starts in a single step. Okay. We should negotiate fear and never fear to negotiate. Bangers. That's why he's iconic. He had great scriptwriters, that's what he had. But he's, it's the delivery too, like he's, every president has scriptwriters. And this is what I was gonna say, it's not like today we're like you can't have a scriptwriter,

we're just like who did you pick to be your scriptwriter and what fucking shambolic things are you saying? A man may die, nations may rise and fall, but an idea lives on. Is that him? That's him. That's my favourite. This series isn't really about JFK, it's about the Cold War and how it changed the world and every single one of us indelibly forever. The war on terror is just the Cold War in a

hijab. Look it up. Fight me. But with loads more bombs I'll give you that. Sure. JFK's death played out against a background of an America and a world on the edge of destruction. So okay fine some of this series is a bit about JFK or should we say Jack Fitzgerald? No one called him John. Nobody. I was like, who's Jack Fitzgerald? It's JFK.

Got it. And how his death not only marked a turning point in American foreign policy, but in its wake, so began a mistrust in the government. Can I just say, if you've never listened to this podcast before, I am not as stupid as I have come across in the first 10 minutes of this episode, and I promise you I will have more to add throughout the next two parts. After JFK died, and then Malcolm X, and then Martin Luther King, and then Bobby Kennedy, and then there was Watergate, the world started to wonder if those at the top really had the best interest of those beneath them at heart.

No, they don't. No, they don't. A 2013 study recorded that 74% of Americans believe that there was a conspiracy to assassinate President Kennedy. And a majority of those 74% believe that the reason we still don't know who did it or why it happened is the result of a state-sanctioned cover-up. It is entirely bonkers that 74% of a nation as big and as powerful as America are I'm like, yeah, no, we know that our secret services either knocked off the president and hid it, or they hid it for someone else. I am not entirely surprised because I think that 74% probably maps exactly onto if you were to ask the question, do you trust the government? And it would probably be the same percentage.

I don't remember which episode it was, but we did an episode a while ago where we were talking about, maybe it was the QAnon episode, talking about how few Americans trust their government. And look, I think there is something to be said, as we've always said, for questioning the higher-ups, not just saying blindly follow them. But in such a low trust situation, yeah, scary, scary. And I would bet that by the end of this two-parter, you will 100% not 74, 100% know why this is where that started. So Kennedy won the presidency in 1961

beating Futurama star Richard Nixon by a hair in the closest election in US history. There are people who argue that the mafia won Kennedy that election. I am not one of those people. The opinion is out there. I believe it to be incorrect. Kennedy, John F. Kennedy, Jack Kennedy, had a lot of enemies. The second he stepped into the Oval Office, he was taking away power from people who really loved having power. For a start, he signed an executive order to curtail the powers of the Federal Reserve in favor of the US Treasury.

The Federal Reserve is a bit misleadingly named. It's not like the National Bank of America. It's a private enterprise. Kennedy also rescinded an executive order to combat inflation, which really pissed off Big Steel. Essentially Big Steel had been told like, oh, don't worry, you can hike it up. And Kennedy was like, actually, no, you can't. And they were like, fuck you. I've just lost billions. Top dogs of all industries across the Americas were asking, who the fuck did this kid think he was? He's a Kennedy. 1961 may have been the first time a Kennedy made it into the Oval Office,

but they were a very powerful clan nonetheless, and they still are, even after they pulled all this shit. Kennedys are still causing havoc on Capitol Hill to this very day, as I am sure you are aware. But for now, we'll stick to the olden days, where the Kennedy dynasty was big shit. JFK's father was the American ambassador to Great Britain, and his maternal granddad and namesake, who was called Honey Fitz, was the mayor of Boston. So yes, nepo baby, 100%. Jack Kennedy was rich and his family were important in a way that most of us could never

even imagine. But that didn't mean that JFK didn't know hardship. And I don't just mean like, my dad didn't hug me kind of way. Like his life was really fucking hard. Anthony Sumner, who wrote Not In Your Lifetime, which I, if you're going to read one book on the assassination of JFK and you're not going to dedicate your life to the study of how and why this happened and you want a really good overview. Not in your lifetime is the best one out there. And Anthony Sumner

describes JFK's life in, in my opinion, the most succinct way. John F. Kennedy was dying his whole life. Jack, the second eldest of nine little Kennedys, had scarlet fever very young and then possible colitis, that's what they think it is, throughout his entire childhood. There were so many Kennedys that when they went swimming their mum put them in different swimming hats so she could count who was there and see who was swimming the best by colour. Anyway, he did make it to college,

but that was where he very famously injured his spine so badly that he was turned away from the army and the navy when he tried to join up. In wartime, they were like, sorry, my friend, too wonky. But no one says no to a Kennedy forever. If your dad is the ambassador to the United Kingdom. Today is the worst day of Abby's life. The 17-year-old cradles her newborn son in her arms.

They all saw how much I loved him. They didn't have to take him from me. Between 1945 and the early 1970s, families shipped their pregnant teenage daughters to maternity homes and forced them to secretly place their babies for adoption. In hidden corners across America, it's still happening. My parents had me locked up in the godparent home against my will.

They worked with them to manipulate me and to steal my son away from me. The godparent home is the brainchild of controversial preacher Jerry Falwell, the father of the modern evangelical right and the founder of Liberty University, where powerful men, emboldened by their faith, determine who gets to be a parent and who must give their child away. Follow Liberty Lost on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, very quick break because I know you are gagging to get back to this particular episode. But we have to tell you a little bit about what's going on on Patreon this

week. Certainly. Well, this week we have Under the Duvet where I explain how hypnosis works. Badly. But it works! It does work! And I will tell you how I came off the pill and now the back knee's back. We also have a little chat about Russell Brand and contemplate the composition of the soul and whether it even fucking matters. And then I do a little review on a throwback dating TV show that I watched on Channel 4 called Perfect Match where I literally couldn't believe, A, that people

were smoking in clubs because it's that old and then all the horrific things that were coming out of people's mouths. And you can listen to all of that over on Patreon and you can watch it too under the duvet is every week we release it every Wednesday morning and also on Patreon you can get red handed totally ad free and we also do monthly bonus episodes and you can find all of that at patreon.com forward slash red handed. So big JK senior pulled some strings and monkey back Jack ended up an officer on a patrol torpedo boat stationed around the Solomon Islands during the war.

Everyone aboard really liked the handsome Nepo baby. But he was so sickly there was a running joke that the mosquitoes were too afraid to bite him for fear of dropping dead. And death was never far from John F. Kennedy. In 1943 his ship was split in half by a Japanese destroyer in the Pacific. Eleven men, including Officer Jack, were left splashing around with the sharks. Ten of them swam miles toward land. But one crewmate was just too injured to swim.

So JFK dragged him by a life jacket strap as he paddled towards the nearest beach and somehow all 11 men made it. Isn't that amazing? He's got a back so bad the army and the navy don't want him and he's like so sickly that it's a joke and he's the one that's dragging his crewmate by a strap. In my imagination the strap is in his teeth. I don't know if that's dragging his crewmate by a strap. In my imagination, the strap is in his teeth. I don't know if that's true. Let's leave it there.

And actually they were rescued thanks to a message that JFK carved into a coconut shell. It's a story so fantastical, it was printed in the Reader's Digest for all of America to read. It's a pretty good story, isn't it? It is a pretty good story isn't it? It is a very good story. I mean could there be a better story of war hero overcoming adversity, saving lives, using ingenuity in a coconut shell, like it's everything the Americans love? Quite. The next year the war hero had the first of four unsuccessful back surgeries. Over his short life JFK would endure fusing of his vertebrae, metal

plates and all sorts of bone infection horrors. He also had Addison's disease, a progressive malfunction of the adrenal gland. He was actually read his last rites several times throughout his life and experienced debilitating back pain 24-7. As I said. The reason he claimed that he liked women to go on top. He slept on a backboard and actually once he becomes, well on the on the campaign trail and then when he is elected, he wore fake tan all the time because he looked so ill that in photographs, because he couldn't let anyone know. So there was quite a circus to get him looking like a well man.

Yeah, I think, you know, American politicians, any politicians, you know, you can't let them know how sick you are. Oh no. Or, you know, if you're Biden, maybe already dead. Sue's absolutely right. If JFK's health was public knowledge, there is literally no way he would ever have been elected. And in fact, old floating head Nixon tried to get his hands on JFK's medical records several times, but he never quite managed it. During Kennedy's lifetime, his litany of medical grievances was politics best kept secret.

A fact which has been used by some to paint JFK as duplicitous to the core. But, to the core. But it could also be interpreted to reflect the immeasurable strength of a man who just did it anyway. President JFK also took the world to the brink of nuclear war. The Cuban Missile Crisis was categorically the closest we have ever come to all going bang and the threat of a cataclysmic nuclear holocaust hung heavily over the 60s. Once the atom was split, war really could end it all for the first time in history. And since no one had come up with the concept

of mutually assured destruction yet, people were scared that the Soviet Union was going to press the big red button first. Yeah it was all fine when America were the only ones that could do it. The Cold War happened because that changed. So the majority of the Senate were in favor of a pre-emptive nuclear strike against the Soviet Union. I think this is another element certainly at the beginning of the Cold War. Public opinion was like, well why can't we just Nagasaki them? I don't understand why we can't do that because nobody really understood that it meant because then we will there will be no earth left. Now if you've listened to our MK Ultra series you'll know that wasn't the only vibe shift of the era. The Cold War also changed attitudes behind closed doors.

In 1948, a National Security Council directive was passed, which meant that the CIA could basically do whatever they wanted to stop the spread of communism. Therefore, covert action was covered by a blanket of plausible deniability. It's a very important phrase and I won't bang on about it too much because we spoke about it in MKL Jim but as long as the CIA could say well we kind of thought maybe they were doing

something a bit communist they were allowed to do whatever they wanted as long as they had plausible deniability. Which meant that the CIA could assassinate whoever they wanted whenever they liked and they did multiple times. And that's not conjecture. That is fact. Anyway, top-level governance, sort of an autonomous world order, can't be maintained in an ethical or moral vacuum. It just doesn't work like that, especially when death and destruction are integral in your policies, which they kind of have to be to keep that plausible.

So it was decided that the only evil was communism and the only sin was letting it get too close. Anything that happened to a communist didn't matter because they were a communist. That's how you sell this whole thing. Everyone does it. Every propaganda machine uses the same tricks. So nobody in America was loving their enemies anymore or turning the other cheek. Except maybe good Catholic president, JFK. First Catholic president. I actually think the only one. Having said that, his election campaign was quite arms-raising. But once he was in office, there is evidence that tells us that he wasn't so in favour of the necessary big

kaboom that was so popular with his peers. In his inauguration speech, JFK hoped that both the US and the Soviet Union would begin a new quest for peace before it was too late. And one of his first policies was the support of a neutral and independent Laos, which could only be achieved by ending US support for the country's current anti-communist leader who had been installed by the CIA. independent Laos, which could only be achieved by ending US support for the country's current anti-communist leader who had been installed by the CIA. JFK attended a summit in Vienna where Nikita Khristchev also was and Khristchev agreed

to help make Laos neutral. So that meant that the Americans and the Russians had to work together and that had never happened before and it had never been agreed. It is the only thing they agreed on at that particular conference in Austria, but it is quite historic anyway. Another issue was much, much closer to home. The communist devil was in Havana. If you are not very good at geography, like me,

I politically understood that Cuba is close enough to America to fuck shit up. I didn't realize how far... you can see it from Miami. So USA backed President Batista was toppled in 1959 and there was a new kid in the Caribbean. As a result Eisenhower had severed all diplomatic ties with Cuba and Kennedy inherited the embargo. Similarly to the USSR, popular opinion in Washington was that Castro should be dealt with violently or not at all. And even if that is the attitude that Kennedy went into his presidency with, it doesn't

seem like he left the earth with it. You can find a lot of evidence in the book, JFK and the Unspeakable, suggesting that President Kennedy was repeatedly presented with drastic military strike options for Cuba and he never signed them off. He repeatedly outright refused to invade Cuba, so the CIA came up with their own pig-shaped plan to force the young president to play ball. Some people are of the opinion that this was all some sort of game that JFK was playing and actually his foreign policy was a lot more aggressive than people want to believe. I think that's actually quite an outdated opinion. I think within the last 10 years,

there is more than enough evidence to have come out of the White House for me to believe that he was repeatedly presented with military plans to a strike Cuba and he just repeatedly refused to And the CIA Who in my opinion were doing the bidding of those who the US being at war worked

in their considerable financial favour. So the CIA played dirty, is what they did. Just a few months into the Kennedy administration, the CIA launched their own invasion of Cuba, which would go down in history as the Bay of Pigs and also as a colossal disaster for the Americans. The idea was that the CIA would send boats full of Cuban exiles and guns to Cuba and that would force Kennedy to provide air cover therefore sanction a full-blown invasion of the island and thus Topple Castro. They obviously didn't tell him that that's what they were going to do and when he

figured out what they had done he said according to an eyewitness that he wanted to splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds. And he told an aide, they figured me all wrong. And he refused to provide the air cover because he knew that's what they wanted. So with no backup, the CIA-backed Cubans had to surrender to Castro's forces and they were taken prisoner. And that's absolutely true. At a conference held in Cuba in 2001 that featured ex-operatives, journalists and declassified documents, this narrative was confirmed. The Bay of Pigs invasion was cooked up by the CIA thinking they could force JFK

into doing what they wanted, which was invade Cuba. Also director of the CIA, Alan Dulles, who you may remember from our MK Ultra series, left behind handwritten notes after he died, which have now been titled, The Confessions of Alan Dulles, in which he explained how the whole operation worked. But worked is maybe the wrong word, because the invasion was a total failure, and the outcome was that Castro actually became more powerful and much friendlier with the Soviet Union and all of their missiles. JFK held tight though and so did the CIA. Then in July 1961 the company, another name for the CIA,

presented Kennedy with a nuclear attack plan on the USSR, scheduled for two years' time. Records we now have note that the president stormed out muttering, and we call ourselves a human race. Over the next few years, Kennedy and Khrushchev sent each other secret letters full of analogies about Noah's Ark and animals. But the core of their message to each other was, we are of opposing ideologies, but we have the same problems and we want the same thing. Nuclear disarmament and world peace. Kennedy told the UN as much in 1961, saying, the weapons of war must be abolished before they abolish us.

It is therefore our intention to challenge the Soviet Union, not to an arms race, but to a peace race. To advance together step by step, pace by pace, until general and complete disarmament has been achieved. And who knows, maybe you meant it. I am not for a second suggesting that everything politicians say is true or they mean it. I am not suggesting that nothing Kennedy was doing was covert. The point is, it is the only time in the entirety of the Cold War where there is even an attempt

to open a dialogue between the West and the East. And that dialogue was all well and good, until the CIA plonked some photos that U-2 spy planes had taken over Cuba on JFK's desk one morning. These aerial images showed that the USSR was storing nuclear missiles in Cuba. And that was a very big problem. A big, large, huge problem that evolved into the 13-day-long Cuban Missile Crisis, the closest this planet has ever come to full-blown nuclear war. And to the fury of the CIA and the Joint Chiefs of Staff,

that still wasn't enough to get Kennedy to invade Cuba. Instead, the President opted for a naval blockade, obstructing further Soviet ships filled with bombs from reaching their Caribbean protégé. Actually, the USSR crafts turned around long before they reached the blockade, and Khristchev agreed to take all of his missiles off Cuba if JFK lifted the blockade and pinky promised he wouldn't do an invasion. And just like that we all lived to fight another day. But the American military top brass, the CIA and quite a lot of the Senate were not thrilled.

Even though Kennedy had negotiated his way out of certain death, it was not good or aggressive enough for them. They would have been even more upset if they knew that Bobby Kennedy, JFK's brother, had been secretly sent off to Turkey to remove some missiles that were pointing at Moscow. That was a secret condition and it wouldn't be revealed until decades later, but that probably would have pushed them over the edge. Quite a few things would be given the same blind date big reveal treatment. Bobby Kennedy survived his brother, albeit only for a few years.

Bobby's memoirs are absolutely full of JFK gems. He wrote that his elder brother was being pressured from all angles to bomb Caribbean Communists into oblivion, so he passed JFK a note that read, Now I know how Tojo felt when he was planning Pearl Harbor. Which is so significant. Like, I feel like there isn't anybody who doesn't know this, but just in case you don't, the Japanese bombing Pearl Harbor was the only reason America entered into World War Two, because they felt they had no choice. So Bobby Kennedy is saying that this is the same thing and he's not wrong.

No, no. It's just coming from inside the house. So because of Kennedy, America had not entered into a war because they felt like they had no choice, which is what they historically had done. Perhaps JFK was in pursuit of real peace, not just for Americans, but one that made the world worth living in for everyone. Yeah, he, um, there's another good quote from him that's something along the lines of a person's ideology shouldn't make them immaterial. It shouldn't make them not matter.

It shouldn't make it not a bad thing that they die, which for an American president in the Cold War is a fucking radical thing to say. Yeah. So yes, who knew what he really thought? But what we do know is that he refused to cast the first stone. And Washington was absolutely furious about it. One advisor told President Kennedy

that what he had done was akin to the British appeasing Hitler at Munich. Which is a really sick burn when you consider that JFK wrote his Harvard honors thesis on that particular event and called it the inevitable result of the slowness of conversion of the British democracy to change from a disarmament policy to a rearmament policy and then he later changed that very snappy title to Why England Slept. Yeah!

It's okay to change your mind guys. I said loads of shit at uni that I don't stand by now. No, it's tricky, isn't it? It's a very timely conversation as well to have this idea of like, how much do you try to appease, what can be appeased, what ideologies can be appeased, who is on board for any sort of appeasement? I mean, you know, the idea of like, now we very critically look back at the British Prime Minister, was it Lord Chamberlain at the time, trying to appease Hitler.

And there's a lot of criticism of that and saying like, what the fuck were you thinking? Hitler was never going to come to the table. He was never going to be appeased because his ideology was, you know, not in the realm of being appeased. But at the time, can you blame somebody for trying? I mean, obviously, I don't want to sound like I think we shouldn't have gone to war with the Nazis. And obviously, there's all the arguments that the British knew and everybody knew what Hitler was doing, etc. So I take all those points. But yes,

where do you draw the line? Where do you stop appeasement for full blown war? And that's something that can only really, I would argue. No, actually, I don't argue that. That's a very tricky thing. That's a very, very tricky thing. Mm-hmm. And there are people who think that this was all a smokescreen covering an ulterior Kennedy clan motive that was probably to do with the Mafia. And it might have been, but it would seem at least publicly that JFK was attempting to change the Cold War landscape. He ignored the moralisation of communism and publicly encouraged his electorate to look

inward, often citing Luke chapter 6 verse 13. Why do you notice the speck in your neighbour's eye but not the log in your own? After the Cuban Missile Crisis was resolved by negotiation and not bombs, the big war went cold again. JFK continued to pursue nuclear disarmament and kept writing his little Noah's Ark letters to Khrushchev. And then he started to push through a nuclear test ban. His chapter in versing and charisma and being fit had worked.

Public opinion, a year or so into his presidency, was a lot less new-cap-y than they had once been. And the nuclear test ban was ratified on the 6th of October 1963. And that ban meant that neither the US nor the Soviet Union could test nuclear weapons on land, in the sea, or in space. So don't even think about it. Which made JFK even more unpopular with the military and the Secret Service and the Senate. They all thought that they had a limp-wristed sell-out in the top spot.

Peace Nick President is what they would call him. And on top of all of that, we now know, because of a previously unreleased memo, that as of the 11th October 1963, the official Kennedy government policy on Vietnam was to have all American military personnel removed from Vietnam by 1965. Whether he would have done it or not isn't really the point. There's a lot of, in my opinion, quite dismissive arguments of, well of course he wouldn't have actually pulled out of Vietnam. Maybe. But we know that conversations were happening of that being a possibility and at no other time was that on the table apart from under Kennedy. And just five days after that memo was written, a certain American who had previously

defected to the Soviet Union started working at the Texas School Book Depository on the corner of Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas. Kennedy was pretty good at keeping his little letters to the East under wraps, but these days back and forths about opening a channel of communication between the capitalist and the communist leaders of the world are now in the public domain. William Atwood, Kennedy's ambassador to Guinea and speechwriter, has since testified under oath to a committee investigating intelligence agencies that he was asked by President John F. Kennedy to negotiate a peace deal with Fidel Castro, a task Atwood was well placed to do. In his previous journalism career, he had interviewed Fidel twice. Plus, as an ambassador, he was also impressive enough to get the Cubans' attention, but

not important enough that anyone in Washington would notice that he was gone. Which he had freely admits himself. He was like, I was the ambassador to Guinea. No one was like, where's Egon? Another journalist was a part of Kennedy's Cuban outreach program too. Algerian-born, French national, Sean Danielle. He went to Cuba in November 1963 to pass on a message from Kennedy to Castro. Initially, Danielle had a tough time getting hold of Castro or any of his advisors and for a while it looked like the mission was a bust.

Until the evening of the 19th of November, 1963, when Fidel Castro himself showed up at John Daniel's hotel out of the blue, apparently really ready to talk. The pair of them spoke well into the night. And according to John Daniel, who I believe has this on tape, Castro said, I believe that Kennedy is sincere. I feel he inherited a difficult situation.

A president of the United States is never really free. I believe he now knows the extent that he has been lied to. He could become, in the eyes of history, the greatest leader of the United States. The leader who may at last understand that there can be coexistence between capitalists and socialists in the Americas. The stage was set for a new world order. Jean-Daniel and Fidel actually spent quite a lot of time together. And on the 22nd of November 1963, the two of them were having lunch at Castro's beach house.

At 11.30pm the phone rang. After Fidel Castro hung up, he said gravely, everything is changed. Everything is going to change. And everything had. A few days earlier, back stateside, a woman called Rose Shirami was picked up by Louisiana State Police because she was lying in the middle of the road. Rose was a dancer with a sizable heroin habit, hence the lying down in the middle of the

road. And we're bringing her up because she told her arresting officers that she had met two men who were driving from Miami to Dallas. And they had stopped off at the club where she was working, and these two men, who'd come from Miami and were going to Dallas, were openly speaking about their plot to kill President John F. Kennedy when they got to their destination. Which was an odd thing to say, completely out of the blue. Quite a specific thing to say, I would argue. Yes. But despite this specificity and oddness, Rose was not taken seriously.

And had President Kennedy not been assassinated in Dallas, you know, days later... It's like literally like two days. No one would have thought twice about a strung-out dancer's warning. Rose died in 1965. She was one of 50 people associated with the assassination of John F. Kennedy that would die within just three years. All 50 of those deaths have been officially ruled to be a coincidence. 50 is a lot of coincidences in three years, I would argue.

The day after Rose got taken to the station to dry out, President John F. Kennedy was getting ready to head down to the Lone Star State. And he told his assistant press secretary, quote, and he told his assistant press secretary, quote, when I get back from Texas, there's going to be a lot to change. Vietnam is not worth another American life. Last year, law and crime brought you the trial that captivated the nation. She's accused of hitting her boyfriend, Boston police officer John O'Keefe with her car. Karen Reed is arrested and charged with second-degree

murder. The six-week trial resulted in anything but resolution. We continue to find ourselves at an impasse. I'm declaring a mistrial in this case. But now the case is back in the spotlight and one question still lingers. Did Karen Reed kill John O'Keefe? The evidence is overwhelming that Karen Reed is innocent. How does it feel to be a cop killer, Karen? I'm Kristin Thorn, investigative reporter with Law and Crime and host of the podcast Karen, The Retrial. This isn't just a retrial. It's a second chance at the truth.

I have nothing to hide. My life is in the balance and it shouldn't be. I just want people to go back to who the victim is in this. It's not her. Listen to episodes of Karen, The Retrial, exclusively and ad-free on Wondery Plus. You know those creepy stories that give you goosebumps? The ones that make you really question what's real? Well, what if I told you that some of the strangest, darkest, and most mysterious stories are not found in haunted houses or abandoned forests, but instead in hospital rooms and doctor's offices.

Hi, I'm Mr. Ballin, the host of Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries, and each week on my podcast, you can expect to hear stories about bizarre illnesses no one can explain, miraculous recoveries that shouldn't have happened, and cases so baffling they stumped even the best doctors. So if you crave totally true and thoroughly twisted horror stories and mysteries, Mr. Bolland's Medical Mysteries should be your new go-to weekly show. Listen to Mr. Bolland's Medical Mysteries on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Spotify or Apple podcasts.

Texas has always been tricky territory for Democrats, and JFK was no different. Dallas was specifically difficult. It was the lair of the rightest of the right and the virulently anti-communist John Birch Society. JFK's calling of the civil rights movement a moral issue and not a political one wasn't going down particularly well in Texas either. But refusing to be intimidated and ignoring suggestions that he should give it a miss, the JFK went to Texas anyway. The plan was to drive through Dallas doing the old smile and wave and hopefully convince some Nixon voters that Catholics weren't so bad after all.

On the morning of the 22nd of November 1963, President Kennedy was looking through the morning papers in his hotel room. The Dallas Morning News had printed him a special welcome. An advertisement paid for by the John Birch Committee read, Welcome Mr. Kennedy to Dallas. Why do you say we have built a wall of freedom around Cuba where there is no freedom in Cuba today? The POTUS turned to his FLOTUS and said, We're heading into nut country today. His safety was probably weighing on his mind more than usual. Not just because everything is bigger in Texas.

Because recently a presidential motorcade had been cancelled because of a plot to shoot the president from a high window of an office building with a rifle. Now we don't know for sure, but maybe that's why Kennedy said on the last day of his life, quote, Last night would have been a hell of a night to assassinate a president. Anyone perched above the crowd with a rifle could do it. Or perhaps, you know, he just had some sort of presidential premonition. Just before lunchtime, the Kennedy party left Dallas airport in an open top limousine. The president was in the third car in a 15 vehicle motorcade.

The limousine actually had this like bubble top like the Jess is all like the Pope mobile, but he was like no Yeah I get it. He wants to look exactly relatable. He wants to look like, you know, he's there for the people He wants them to see him everything Obviously, you know, he's there for the people, he wants them to see him, everything. But obviously, you know, everything's hindsight. So I've obviously now found out 2020 means fuck all. 2020 just means average sight. What else are they lying to you about? So much! We should really be saying hindsight is 1020. Or is it hindsight is 2010? I forget.

But it's not 2020. It's the better one. By 1229, the procession was slowly moving through the crowds of central Dallas and just about to turn onto Dealey Plaza at 11 miles an hour. 11.2 miles an hour if you want to be really smart. Despite being a nut country, the reception for the president was actually quite warm. Dealey Plaza was filled with people, waiting to catch a glimpse of their illustrious leader that literally none of them voted for. Dallas was a landslide, Nixon. But one such citizen was someone

called Howard L Brennan. As he waited for the cars to cruise past, he happened to look up, and he noticed a figure stood in the far right window of the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository on the corner of Dealey Plaza. Brennan watched this slender man disappear and reappear several times. He looked about 5'10", in and around his early 30s. And similarly another onlooker, Arnold Reynolds, turned to his wife and asked her if she wanted to see a Secret Service man. And Arnold Reynolds pointed up to the window on the opposite side of the sixth floor where he saw a man holding a rifle with a telescopic sight. What exactly happened at 12.30 that day really depends on who you believe.

But here are the broad strokes. As the car carrying JFK was driving away from the corner of Dealey Plaza, there was home to the Texas school bookository. Several rifle shots rang out. Another thing about this case that has been very difficult. Texas School Book Depository building and House Select Committee something something something on assassination like it's everything is so long. What is a Texas school book depository? My understanding.

Is it a library? No. Okay. It is where they print and send out school textbooks. I think. Again, if I had known when we were literally in that building, I would have asked. Never mind. President John F. Kennedy exclaimed, Oh my god, I'm hit as he grabbed his throat and then his head exploded. Jackie Kennedy spent the

immediate aftermath holding her husband's head together. Later she would vividly describe watching a piece of his skull come off. Governor of Texas John Connolly was in the same car. He was also shot. Then a Secret Service man jumped onto the running board and the car sped to the nearest hospital. President Kennedy would not be pronounced dead for a few hours. The Secret Service on the scene could be heard saying they needed to get the President to safety, Secret Service on the scene could be heard saying they needed to get the President to safety, but they didn't mean Kennedy. They meant Lyndon B. Johnson. Yeah, he's not announced dead, but they've all just watched his head explode.

They're like, OK, next president, let's get him out of here. Priorities have changed. Everything had changed, and everything was going to change. After the shots rang out, Howard L Brennan, the man in the crowd, looked back up at the man in the window that he had seen earlier. He was standing right up against the windowsill. And then, quote, he drew the gun back from the window, as though he was drawing it back to assure

himself that he hit his mark and then he disappeared. Yes that was a direct quote Sarutti Bala doesn't use the word his self. And Howard L Brennan gave this description of the mystery window man to a police officer immediately. More reports came in from those in the crowd. Elizabeth Cabell, the wife of the Mayor of Dallas, said that she had seen a projection sticking out of the same window. 15-year-old Eunice Lee saw the window man shoot twice from that window on the sixth floor. Others present were sure that they actually saw two men at opposite windows of the depository building, one white man and one who looked a little

bit darker. This is mental. The Dallas County Jail happened to be directly opposite and on the same height as the upper levels of the Schoolbook Depository building. So a fair few men being held in the Dallas jail are on the same eyeline, right? And a bunch of them testified that they saw more than one man. Most of them say two. But who gives a fuck what prisoners think? Robert Jackson, photographer of the Dallas Times Herald, claims that he saw a rifle slowly being drawn back through the right hand open

window as well, although he didn't manage to get a picture of it so he probably needs to remove Calm Under Pressure from his CV. In the moments after the shooting, staff from the school book depository reported hearing gunshots inside the building to the police and so the floors were searched one by one. This is something I have never really understood. From the official narrative three shots, very fast, very quick succession, too fast to be possible in my opinion, never mind. Three shots and then in a minute and a half, the police are already in the depository school book building, looking for the shooter with a description. I am not sure how, which you're kind of, no one really knows where the initial

description of the shooter comes from. How in a minute and a half from last shot, are the police already, having taken multiple reports, got a description and they're already in the building? I don't know. I think this is such a tricky case, to put it mildly. It's just separating the myth, separating everything that's like the conjecture, the hearsay, the secrecy around it to actually get to the facts. I just, I just don't know. I just don't know how it's possible. I just feel like it's such a mythologised story that, I don't know, I just feel like we're telling the, reading out a plotline of a fucking thriller.

So whatever was really going on, this is what we're told from the official narrative. An officer working his way through the building stopped a young-looking man, about 5'10", coming from the opposite direction. The officer let the man pass, however, when he was told by an employee that this man worked in the building and was not a threat. I'm sorry. Why? Why is that? Like, what are you searching for

if it's not a youngish looking 510 man? Because am I right in thinking, as you just alluded to, they're going into the fucking school book depository, print house, warehouse, library, whatever the fuck it is, with an idea of the kind of person, physically speaking, that they're already looking for or no. How long is up his string? Kind of. I am not sure we know that that particular officer knew the description. It's all happening quite fast. Everyone's panicking. People are running. And he sees this guy coming towards him. And in the moment someone just goes, oh no, he's fine. He works here because in their mind, they're looking for a stranger they're looking for someone they don't know. Totally yeah. I can see how in a split second that

decision could have been made. And it was made and so the man Lee Harvey Oswald left the Texas school book depository and went home. His landlady remembered seeing him in a bit of a rush when he got in. And also she remembers there being a police patrol car on the street outside that gave two short beeps, almost like a signal. Oswald quickly changed his clothes and left the house armed with a Smith and Wesson revolver, the same kind that the Prince of Egypt shot Rasputin with. At 12.44 pm the Dallas police department circulated a description of the shooter, which most likely came from Howard L. Brennan.

Law enforcement were on the hunt for an unknown white male, about 30 years old, 165 pounds and about 5'10", armed with a rifle. At 1.16pm something very strange happened. Police HQ were startled to hear an unfamiliar voice on their police radio airwaves. A civilian was speaking to them and this person said, was speaking to them and this person said, Hello operator, we've just had a shooting out here, 10th street, police officer down, somebody shot him. This mystery radio person then described the shooter to be about 30, slim and wearing a white jacket

and dark trousers. So what has happened here is a normal person has watched a police officer be murdered in broad daylight and he goes to his patrol car and he goes into the police radio and says this is what's happened you need to send someone. The officer in question was one JD Tippett and the shooter was Lee Harvey Oswald. It is really difficult to tell you exactly what happened on 10th Street. There were multiple eyewitnesses but they all tell different stories. Some people say it's just Oswald, some people

say it's two people, some of them say it looked like Oswald and JD Tippett knew each other. Some say that Tippett is calling to Oswald through the car window. I mean eyewitnesses at the best of times, let alone in a scenario like this. I'm not saying it's completely irrelevant. Of course it's not completely irrelevant. But of course it's a mess. Yeah. For a murder that happened in broad daylight with multiple witnesses, multiple, multiple, we know so little. Even without the CIA getting rid of fucking documents, it's difficult. Dallas, understandably, after the president had just had his head exploded,

was on high alert. So it isn't surprising that a shoe shop salesman rang in an odd looking man who slipped into his shop as a police car rolled by. The stranger looked like he'd been running. And the shop owner watched as he left, crossed the road and dipped into a cinema. A cinema called the Texas Theatre, home to world-class talent like us. We have a photo which I have found of us sitting in the row in which Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested. We too and we're dressed like criminals. We are, yes. So we're both wearing black and white stripy tops.

We just, for some reason. There was a very strange period of time where we started buying the same clothes. So we've both got Pugsley Adams tops on. And yeah, mad. I found it. We'll put it on socials. So the shoe shop man, he goes up to the box office and he asks the clerk there, who in my head is just a spotty teenage boy like in The Simpsons, he's like, did that man who just go in, did he buy a ticket? And when it was established that the clerk had not been paying attention and the flustered looking 165 pound 30 ish looking man had just walked into a film screening right in the middle of the feature,

with no ticket, the police were there in no time. That shopkeeper, ma'am. Good work. Iam. Good work. I know. Good work. I, for a very brief period of my life, sold shoes in House of Fraser.

It's fucking boring. He's just dreaming of being a detective. I was BEGGING for Lee Harvey Oswald to run through the door. Just like wander into a view cinema across the road so you can go and scout it out. Get a slushy while you're there. Exactly. It's a good day out. So yeah, the police get there quick time and patrolman Nick Macdonald, no doubt nervous to be in pursuit of a cop killer, headed into the picture house. The stalls were almost empty so Macdonald had no problem identifying his mark. He approached Lee Harvey Oswald and ordered him to his feet, and Oswald shouted, I am not

resisting arrest, twice, again depending on who you believe. And then there was a bit of a scuffle. Once he was in cuffs, Oswald said, well, it's all over now, allegedly. And then Lee Harvey Oswald was taken into custody at about 1.50pm, despite being described as 30ish multiple times. It was only 24. Later, Howard L Brennan picked Oswald out of a lineup, identifying him as the man he saw in the window of the Texas school book depository. And so, Lee Harvey Oswald was charged with the murder of

President John F Kennedy and Officer JD Tippett on the 23rd of November 1963. When he's brought in, there is no connection to Kennedy at all. He's brought in for murdering Tippett and then they're like, oh wait, this lines up very nicely doesn't it? The next morning, Lee Harvey Oswald was scheduled to be moved from the police station to the county jail. A swarm of press waited outside hoping to catch a glimpse of the killer. And also, standing outside the Dallas Police Station, was a Mafia connected nightclub owner who had a habit of bringing sandwiches and bottles of whiskey to the Dallas Police Department. One Jack Ruby.

At 11.21am, as Oswald was being led to the van that was supposed to take him to jail, ironically opposite the window he is supposed to have shot the president from, the whiskey and sandwich man shot the 24-year-old Lee Harvey Oswald live on television. And it was broadcast across the nation and the world. It was completely undeniable. As Oswald fell to the ground, a journalist ran over to him and asked if he wanted to make a statement or a confession. Lee Harvey Oswald used his last moments of consciousness to shake his head, not because he was unable to speak. He was just refusing to give anyone what they wanted of him.

And then, as Lee Harvey Oswald was carried toward an ambulance, the most hated man in America was artificially respirated, which for someone with a chest wound, quite literally the worst thing you can do. Pumping a bunch of air into a torso riddled with holes can, and almost certainly would, cause severe internal bleeding. That seems pretty obvious and surely a paramedic would know that. We don't know who did it. There is no record and nobody saw. Lee Harvey Oswald died a couple of hours later. He was buried in a moleskin coffin in Fort Worth. And we still know basically nothing about him. And it's probable that what we think we do know isn't true.

Seven months after he killed Lee Harvey Oswald on camera, Jack Ruby was questioned by Congressman Gerald Ford. Ruby insisted that he'd acted alone, no one had asked him to do anything, and quote, no underworld person had attempted to contact him. He says that he killed Oswald because he was really upset about Jackie Kennedy having to come back to Dallas for Oswald's trial. He genuinely gives that as the only reason. And look, obviously he sounds crazy, but we have dealt with crazy before. And we

have come across people who have killed people for more bonkers reasons. So I don't know. Yeah, just not this time. Ruby's misplaced and misguided patriotism was more than enough for authorities to just write him off as a psychiatric case. And the official narrative was codified. One nut killed another nut in Nut Country The End. Jack Ruby begged to be taken to DC for lie detector tests, but the assassin's assassin request was denied. Jack Ruby was convicted of murder, there was absolutely no denying that he had pulled the trigger.

The whole world had seen him do it, but that didn't stop him from appealing his conviction. Twice. Ruby died of cancer in 1967. That's the official story anyway. Just before he passed on though, he told news cameras the following. The world will never know the true facts of what occurred. My motive, the people that had so much to gain and had such an ulterior motive for putting me in the position I'm

in, will never let the true facts come above board to the world. Look, two ways to look at it, you could think, is tell them the truth. Somebody put him up to it, somebody paid him off to shoot this guy so they could make him a scapegoat for who, you know, for who really killed John F. Kennedy. Or he's just nuts. Exactly. And he just wants some attention before he goes out. And if that was the only weird thing about this, fine. But it ain't. Let's keep going. Ruby also spoke to the press about mystery injections he said he was being given in prison. And he was given a fresh trial after all of his appeal lobbying. He died before he could testify

though, convinced that he was being poisoned. Without Jack Ruby, I still think that this would have been a conspiracy theory for the ages. Oh, absolutely. But he just pours petrol on it. I mean, can you just imagine? Like JFK gets shot in the fucking head and then the guy who they arrest for shooting him gets shot outside of a courtroom. Like, come on, that is just like, I don't know, it's just

enormous. I cannot imagine how people must have been reacting to this story. And then the guy who shoots the shooter originally is like, I did it. It was all me, all me, baby. And then he so violently changes his mind. Yeah. And he doesn't want to tell them who's pulling the strings, because that's his bargaining chip. He's like, no, like, get me out. Jack Ruby will get his moment in the sun next week. I genuinely think he's put up to it. And he thinks that they're going to save him. And, you know, he is repaying some sort of a debt, a financial

one or a moral one, don't know. And they're like, don't worry. You just do this. Your debt is repaid. We will help you. We will sort you out. We will cover you. And then as soon as the like jail door

swings behind him, they're like, psych-bye! What are you going to do about it? LB Okay, I'm going to hold my verdict until the end of next week, because you know this case far better than I do. But right now I will play as much as possible Devil's Advocate and say, here's this guy who maybe confesses his crime. And then he's like, Oh shit. I don't know. I'm nuts. And then I'm just going to say like, nah, I didn't do it.

This huge conspiracy, these people, these powerful people made me do it, but I won't tell you who it is because he doesn't know who it is because there is nobody. He's just fucking nuts. But I am open-minded as we go into the rest of it. Isn't it interesting though, that there is footage of him actually killing him? Gets a new trial though doesn't he? And you can only get that if there's new evidence can't you? In the US. I guess there are other reasons.

I don't know what all of the reasons are that he appeals based on and manages to get a new trial. Is it some sort of mental incapacity? Is it some, I don't know, I don't know what else it could have been that gets him this. Could have also, you know, he could have just argued simply like inadequate defense and he's saying, you know, I shouldn't be being put up for first degree because I'm insane. It should at least be, you know, diminished responsibility or some sort of bollocks. I don't know. I'm willing to suspend my verdict on it or my thoughts on it about whether he is just nuts or whether this is a full-on stitcher. But I'm excited. The day after Ruby shot Oswald, the presidential press secretary sent a memo

advising that the now dead Lee Harvey Oswald should be named as the lone assassin of President Kennedy. To stop any speculation in its tracks. No motive needed to be mentioned, but it should be made clear that the evidence against Oswald was so strong that, if he had lived, quote, he would have been convicted at trial. And I can believe that being a reason that they just don't want the humiliation of taking a man to trial and then all of the fallout that comes if he's not convicted. And then it's all the questions of, well, then who really did it? They kind of just want this cut and shot situation.

It's the who really did it that they're worried about. Yeah. LBJ is recorded on tape saying, I don't want Mr. Khrushchev to be told tomorrow that he killed this fellow. Right. So they're worried that the USSR think they're going to be accused of knocking off Kennedy. So they start a war about it because that's how wars get started. It's when leaders are assassinated by opposing nations. A lot of people think LBJ had a lot to gain from Kennedy dying and like yes technically I don't actually think he was anything to

do with it but like LBJ's motive here is like cut and shut this so Khrushchev knows as soon as humanly possible that we are not saying it was him. Which is a good idea. Yeah! So again it's like this thing right with this story if you look at it purely from the pursuit of what is the truth what is the absolute truth maybe the fucking Russians did do it but if that is the truth did they really want everybody to fucking know so then we'd have to go to war like the US would have had to go to fucking war, you can't just let fucking Soviet Union shoot your president in the head and then be like, meh. But then they were

very pro at war so why would they not have wanted that as an excuse? Like it would have made more sense to be like, ah the Russians did it, we're off to war! Like I don't know, it's confusing and that's obviously why this story is so compelling, why this case is so compelling. But there are so many players, so many players, so many motivations, so many reasons this could have happened. It's fascinating and that's why I have a magnet. Yeah, if the Soviets thought, even thought they were being accused of knocking Kennedy off, that would mean big bombs for everybody. And I take your point of like, well, if they wanted war, then why wouldn't they just let it run? Excellent point. I am of the opinion

that by this stage from 1960 to 1963 the opinion had somewhat shifted. Cuba, we can take Cuba there tiny. The USSR are fucking massive and they've got way more missiles. Them I don't want to fuck with. And when it comes to killing leaders to further political agendas, the United States of America knows how the game is played better than anyone because they wrote the rules. And so the Warren Commission was formed, chaired by Chief Justice Earl Warren. The Commission's purpose was to investigate the assassination of President Kennedy and determine who was responsible. Or at least that was the optics.

Again, it was Lee Harvey Oswald and we're gonna double, triple prove it with this Commission of all of these important men. So nobody's gonna ask any questions. So yeah, as LBJ put it, quote, to satisfy itself that the truth is known as far as it can be discovered. The Warren Commission sat for 10 months. Overarchingly there are two things to know about it. One, they concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. Two, the Warren Commission is widely accepted to have been a total whitewash, orchestrated to protect whoever really did it. So let's have a look at how they came to

that conclusion. Everything you're about to hear will be blasted next week but we have to start somewhere so let's get on with it. Eyewitnesses placed Oswald near the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository building three minutes before the fatal shots were fired. Next to that far right window, the one that Howard L Brennan sees him in, Howard L Brennan is basically the only witness from Deeley Plaza that the Warren Commission include in their report. Even if they interviewed other people and they didn't say, Lone Shooter right hand window, they were just not included. Anyway, next to the far right window, Oswald's palm print was found on a book carton.

It's fine, he works there. But why would it only be a palm? Minutes after the assassination, police found a cheap Italian-made rifle with the serial number C2677, and they found with it a Japanese-made, four-power telescopic sight hidden in the sixth-floor storeroom. And that firearm was identified by Lee Harvey Oswald's wife, who's called Marina, and pictures were recovered from her home of her husband holding the same rifle and a pistol. That's a bit complicated.

Lee Harvey Oswald doesn't live with his wife, right? They both live in Dallas. He lives in a boarding house. She lives in her friend's house. Her friend has a garage. And in that garage is where Lee Harvey Oswald stores a bunch of his stuff. That's where the photos are found. J. Edgar Hoover's FBI established that the rifle, the one that was found in the storeroom

and the one that is in the photo, had been ordered from Klein Sports Supplies in the storeroom and the one that is in the photo had been ordered from Klein Sports Supplies in the name of A. Heidel and the rifle had been delivered to a PO box in Dallas that was rented by Lee Harvey Oswald under his actual name. When Oswald was arrested he was carrying an ID under the name Alec James Heidel but it had Oswald's photo on it. A tuft of fibres were found in the grooves of the rifle butt which were matched to the shirt that Oswald was wearing when he was arrested and therefore seemed to have been wearing during the assassination. A paper bag was also

discovered on the sixth floor bearing Oswald's prints. The Warren Commission surmised that Oswald had used this paper bag to smuggle the rifle into the depository building when he arrived for his shift that morning. That's a really boring story about curtain rods, but I just... The argument is, his mate who he works with, right, he gives him a lift to work that day and he says, Lee Harvey Odwals, Oswald explains why he's got this very long narrow paper bag with him and is taking it to work. He says it's curtain rods is the story. What the fuck?

I know I couldn't even bother to write it out like. Anyway that's how the Warren Commission explained the rifle getting into the building. And they also argue that Lee Harvey Oswald was a Marine. He had been a Marine. He was stationed in Japan, which is where the site had come from, the telescopic site. And he also must have had marksmanship training, so he would have been capable of making such a tricky shot from so high up on a moving target. As for motive, Oswald saw himself as a political prophet, destined to make a difference, and he was enraged by the oppression thrust upon him by his society

and circumstance. Oswald's dad died just after he was born. His mum was nuts, and he slept in the same bed as her until he went to the forces. Which does sound weird. He grows up in post-depression but like slightly pre-war belly of the beast New Orleans. I'm sure there were loads of people who were sharing beds with their mums. So Osborne ended up in the Marines where he had a tough time making friends. He was actually court-martialed twice. Once for a pistol and once for chewing out a sergeant. Throughout his service, he was a vocal Marxist and spent his spare time learning Russian. But he's never court-martialed for that. He's never disciplined. He's never...

It's just never even discussed. It's just never even discussed. After he was discharged from the Marines in 1959, Oswald defected to the Soviet Union and wrote to his brother the following. In the event of war, I would kill any American who put a uniform on in defense of the American government. Any government. Any American. You may see some in some places that he was dishonorably discharged from the Marines.

Not true. He was honorably discharged. They changed it after he was shot by Jack Reby. They like posthumously, which I guess they can do, but like, so the point is he was not kicked out from the Marines. Sure. Hospital records also show that Oswald attempted suicide at least once in the I guess they can do, but like, so the point is he was not kicked out from the Marines. Sure. Hospital records also show that Oswald attempted suicide at least once in the USSR, compounding

for the Warren Commission that he was of unsound mind. After a while, he got a job in a factory in Minsk, got married and had a baby, but he was still dissatisfied with communist life and decided that it was time he went home, accepting defeat. According to Marina, the Russian wife that he brought back, Lee decided that it was time he went home, accepting defeat. According to Marina, the Russian wife that he brought back, Lee Harvey Oswald was a controlling wife beater with erectile dysfunction. Once back in the States, Oswald went back to Fort Worth, because that's where his mum lived, and he got a job at a photography firm, where he didn't last very long.

He spent a summer in his native New Orleans attempting to set up a chapter of the Fair Play for Cuba committee, with a view to emigrating to Havana. According to Marina, he'd spoken to her about hijacking a plane and flying there himself. But he didn't. If you believe the Warren Commission, which I do not and I'm not in a minority there, Oswald went down to Mexico City to try and get a visa and get to Cuba the legal way instead. According to the CIA Oswald bowled down to the Cuban Embassy in Mexico City on the 27th September 1963 and he was denied a visa to Cuba. And that is how he ended up

disillusioned and working in the Texas schoolbook depository with a presidential visit in the calendar and a rifle in his PO box. He fired three shots from that rifle and killed the President of the United States of America. With that all tied up nicely, the Commission moved on to the Assassin's Assassin, Jack Ruby. They decided that examination of Ruby's activities immediately preceding and following the death of President Kennedy revealed no sign of any conduct which

suggests that he was involved in the assassination. The Warren Commission dug up every bit of dirt they could find on Jack Ruby, which wasn't difficult for a stripped-up gangster. But they never quite managed to explain why an underworld hangar-on like Jack Ruby would care so much about a presidential assassination that he would kill a man on live TV. No one on the Warren Commission seemed that bothered about joining these dots. But we're going to give it our best am short next week. The report produced by the Warren Commission rounded off with an appendix entitled, Appendix

7, Speculation and Rumours, which is packed with esoteric wisdom like this. Myths have traditionally surrounded the dramatic assassinations of history. The rumours and theories about the assassination of Abraham Lincoln that are still being publicised were, for the most part, brooded within months of his death. Wherever there is any element of mystery in such dramatic events, misconceptions often result from sensational speculations. I'm not going to bore you anymore with further appendices, but essentially the report says anyone who doesn't agree with the findings of the Warren

Commission has been misinformed by unsubstantiated gossip and early reporting out of fast crowded events. They took 32 pages to say that, but that's what they say. Anything you hear that isn't what we've told you, gossip. Here say unsubstantiated no evidence, even though we didn't include loads of stuff. The Warren Commission did concede though that some fault lay with law enforcement. Specifically, the times when the Secret Service

and the Dallas normal police didn't play nicely with each other. Here's a quote. The responsibility for observing windows in these buildings during the motorcade was divided between local police stationed on the streets to regulate the crowds and Secret Service agents riding in the motorcade. The Commission has concluded that these arrangements during the trip to Dallas were clearly not sufficient. No shit. The Commission has concluded that these arrangements during the trip to Dallas were clearly not sufficient. No shit! The Commission also recommended that the Secret Service be put under National Security Council supervision

on account of them being understaffed over work, paid less than the FBI, which is interesting, and in need of a larger budget. And that was that. Except it wasn't. The Warren Commission's job was to dispel any feeling that there might be more to the death of JFK than a crazed lone Marxist. And sadly, they roundly failed. And they would have got away with it too, if it weren't for those meddling civil rights

activists. So now, let's get into the good stuff. Quite a lot of what we are going to lay down for you now has come out at various stages over the last half century. Most significantly, the 1979 House Select Committee established by the US House of Representatives to reinvestigate the assassinations of both President Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. I wish there was a shorter way of saying it. Just no.

Just listen. And yeah, this really does make it look like, you know, those deaths were connected or something. Yes. This House Select Committee, in my opinion, is the most important thing that happens because the government sort of commissions it because there is so much civil unrest and there is so much mistrust in the government that they're like, okay, okay, we'll make a little commission, a committee, whatever you want, and we'll investigate it. What they weren't expecting was for the House Select Committee to actually be quite good

at their job. And when that committee was concluded, they codified something called the JFK Act, which meant that by the year 1992, everything on the assassination of JFK had to be released and put into the National Archives for everyone to see. And they're like, yeah, okay. But if we decide, we being the Secret Service, if we decide that information in those documents is a threat to national security, we're allowed to keep them. And they're the only ones who decide what that means. Hmm, I see.

Now other knowledge bombs have come over the years from independent investigators who have basically dedicated their entire existences to this case. If you have questions, take yourself off to the citations in the show notes. That is why they are there. Yeah, everything we're going to tell you from now on and all of next week, a lot of it is eyewitness testimony from informants. A lot of it is previously secret, now unredacted documents. I haven't put it in here. If I can't cite it, I just can't put it all in. Otherwise it's going to be a boring episode.

Absolutely. And if we can't cite it, then it's also like, this is just a rambling never-ending podcast on all of the various things anyone has ever said about JFK. That actually makes me want to cry. First up on the woes of Warren Trane, JFK's autopsy. After President Kennedy was taken to Parkland Hospital, which is where Oswald would later die to, he was pronounced very obviously dead. But there was a bit of a disagreement over whether the presidential corpse should be taken to DC or stay in Texas. Secret Service men insisted that his corpse be taken to Washington and dealt with there. But the Dallas County Medical Examiner begged

to differ. He reminded the men in black that it's actually illegal to remove a body from Texas before an autopsy can be completed on it. The CIA told him to shut the fuck up, put a gun in his face and JFK's body was taken to Bethesda Naval Hospital, which is quite near to the Capitol. I can understand why people are like, sus. I can also understand why you do need to get the president back to DC and also also, what's Jackie gonna do in Texas for the next however long? She's still got his blood on her pink suit, like... Yeah, no, I can see it from both sides. I can see it with, you know, the Texas medical examiner being like,

well, them's the rules and like, you know, I'm here, I'm gonna do this. I'm also kind of like, you know, I've got to do the fucking autopsy on Jeff K. But yeah, I can also understand them being like, fuck no, DC, here we come. Yes, so they get to DC and three doctors were waiting at Bethesda Naval Hospital for the cadaver, but not a single one of them was a forensic pathologist. The proper forensic pathologist for that hospital

or like the one who was on call or whatever, he just happened to be at a conference that day? Even that one I'm willing to let go. But the rest of it I can't. The autopsy of the president, who'd just been assassinated at the height of the Cold War, was littered with basic errors. For example, Kennedy's head wasn't even shaved. So we can't actually see any head wounds that might have been there because it's covered by his hair. Like they argue that, they're like,

oh well the family were very worried about having an open casket funeral and that's why we didn't shave his head. Quite. I'll get there. Also, how are you going to shave an exploded head? Well, so only a bit of it is exploded. Which bit is a topic of much debate. I see. His face is there. And there's a lot, this is going to be gross, but I have to, I have to explain. Because they don't shave his head, right?

You can't really see much of like, if there are additional entrance exit wouds behind his hairline, they're not in the pictures. Then there are also the doctors argue that they're trying to like hold his head back together but then critics are like no you were hiding what was really there. Anyway any photos that we have of which there are some, most of them magically disappear but the ones that we have don't show the full extent of the damage to his head right? And also his brain wasn't sectioned so the trajectory of the bullets never ascertained. We don't know.

And also, under the instruction of Bobby Kennedy, JFK's neck organs were not examined. But when at least one of the entry wounds that killed the president of America was located in his throat. I can see why people take issue with it. Yeah... It's hard, isn't it? Ugh, I don't know. I don't know. You could cut this however you fucking want. I DON'T KNOW IF YOU CAN! Ha ha ha ha ha!

So, we're told the autopsy recorded that John F. Kennedy sustained four wounds. One small one at the back of his skull, one massive one on the right side of his head, another small one at the base of his neck to the right of his spine, and one last one in his throat. And that is like the Warren Commission, like this is our starting point. These are our wounds. The X-rays that could prove this however have all magically disappeared. Doctors have been asked to draw these injuries from memory on multiple occasions.

So that's what the Warren Commission are going off for quite a lot of their investigation is doodles from doctors who weren't forensic pathologists. From memory. And also quite a lot of hospital staff have been like, I know this many photos were taken and I know that this position of the body was photographed and those images just never emerge. The official report also includes one bullet wound 5.5 inches from the bottom bump of the skull. But the shirt and jacket the president was wearing when he died exhibit a bullet hole six inches lower than that. Similarly, the autopsy describes a small contusion at the back of Kennedy's skull, although the few

photos we have appear to show a wound four inches higher than described, all the way up in his hairline. Which is just impossible! The fatal head wound, the skull exploder, was recorded to be 13 centimeters wide. On the right side of the president's head. This is very important because 21 eyewitnesses reported an enormous hole in the back of Kennedy's head. The right back but the back nonetheless. 11 members of medical staff at the Naval Hospital have testified that the President had a massive hole in the back of his head, the right back. And that would indicate that the shot that exploded his head came from the front, not from the back left of the President's car, which is

where Lee Harvey Oswald's supposed shots came from in the Gospel according to the Warren Commission. There are some x-rays that have emerged over the years and they show a totally intact rear skull, which doesn't make sense considering that multiple Secret Service operatives and Jackie Kennedy herself reported seeing a large chunk of the President's head on the floor of the limousine. And it really doesn't make sense when you find out that a large piece of skull was found on Dealey Plaza the next day, which was adjudicated to belong to President Kennedy, and that piece of skull was found 10 feet behind where he was shot.

So it would seem that those X-rays might not be what they claim to be. So we have to ask, what would anybody have to gain from disguising the locations of JFK's head wounds? The hole in the head of JFK's head wounds. The hole in the head of conspiracy, that's what. For the Warren Commission's account to make sense, these shots have to have come from the unhinged Lenin lover on the sixth floor shooting JFK from behind. Evidence of shots coming from the front of the motorcade like a massive hole in the back of the president's head are no bueno por la migra. Like that doesn't make sense. It's impossible.

We already know that eyewitnesses on the plaza that day were saying all sorts, but we haven't yet touched on the misleadingly named grassy knoll, which now has national landmark status. I think I went and took a picture with it. You did? I was... It's not a small hill at all. It's actually a small patch of grass next to a fence on a slight incline on the northwestern side of Dealey Plaza in between the book depository building and a railway bridge. I think it being

called the grassy knoll is like very misleading and makes it sound a lot bigger than it is. It is a small like bit of grass. Yeah. Multiple assassination bystanders reported a commotion behind that fence immediately after the shooting, and quite a few people saw a man sliding away down the railway embankment. Others swore blind that they heard shots coming from the grassy knoll itself, which if true would explain why Kennedy had the back of his head blown out, and why the bits of his actual skull were found 10 feet behind where he was shot. These accounts are bad news for the Warren Commission because two vantage points means

at least two gunmen, which blows their lone wolf theory wide open. Of the 172 people that were on Dealey Plaza that day. 132 of them came eventually to say that they heard three shots. However, most of the statements were taken hours after the fact, after the official three-shot story had been blasted over every airwave in the nation. And I get it, like you're panicking and that there's a really interesting thing about gunshots specifically and why we mis-remember them so frequently is the first one you're not expecting it so you always remember that. But then after that's happened, you're just blindly panicking like it's so easy to get things wrong. And if you're not particularly familiar with gunfire, rifles

specifically make three different noises in the making of one shot. Some people just can't distinguish it. The Secret Service on the other hand you would hope. Anyway, I've got more for you and then we're so close. Three empty cartridge cases were found under the open window on the right hand side of the sixth floor of the depository building. The bolt-action rifle with its Japanese sight was found close by behind a pile of boxes and bullet fragments that were extracted from the body of Kennedy and also from Governor Connolly were found to have been fired by that rifle. And then there's another totally intact bullet, later proven to be shot from the same gun, another totally intact bullet, later proven to be shot from the same gun, just happened to be found on Governor Connolly's stretcher at the hospital.

Isn't that funny? Totally intact, just lying around, transferred from the limo to the stretcher, nobody noticed. No other ammunition was recovered. So we've got the official story, three shots, and then there's three bullet casings that are found to prove it. Still those 16 witnesses said they heard gunfire from in front of the motorcade and none of their testimonies were included in the Warren Commission report. Agent Kellerman, who was part of the motorcade, testified that he heard a double bang, like a plane breaking the sound barrier, which he assumed to be two shots fired very close together. But that's impossible for a bolt

action rifle. So either what Kellerman heard was a bullet breaking the sound barrier, or there was another shooter. Gerald Ford, who sat on the Warren Commission, is firmly of the latter opinion, and had gone on record saying that even in 1964 there was evidence of more than one gun. Yeah, Gerald Ford is, uh, I'm amazed he didn't get knocked off, to be honest, how vocal he is about the Warren Commission. Yeah.

And look, we're obviously going to go into it. I think I'm not entirely surprised that even if there were two shooters, that all official narratives would be, no, there was just one, there was just one. We see this even with criminal cases, where there's any hint of the idea that there are multiple accomplices to a murder, multiple perpetrators. And if the police, law enforcement and the prosecution have no idea who that other person is, they always say absolutely not shut down any idea of that. It's just this one person because the minute you open up the idea that it was two and you've got

that wrong, well firstly, there's somebody out there who you haven't caught so the investigation isn't over, therefore it's still open, therefore we must keep digging. And also if you've got that wrong, maybe the person you've got here isn't the actual killer. And also if you're going to take it a step further, if there were two shooters, how do you know he was the one that fired the bullet that killed Kennedy? Questions that would be asked. All of those things are true. The bigger problem for the Warren Commission is if there are two gunmen, then whatever

way you slice it, it is a conspiracy. And that is what they are desperately trying to make it look like it wasn't. Sure, sure. So the Warren Report asks us to believe the following. That Oswald was so confident in his marksmanship that he only took four bullets with him that day because an unspent cartridge was recovered from the chamber of the rifle. No other ammunition is recovered in his lodgings or in his garage or on his person. It's quite confident.

And then B, they also asked us to believe that of the three shots fired, one of them didn't hit anyone and turned up whole at the hospital. And C. That the two bullets that did make contact killed the president and also seriously injured the governor of Texas. More than that, the commission posited that one bullet sailed through the president's back and out of his neck, then into Connolly's back, severing his lung and an artery and a vein, breaking a rib and destroying five inches of bone, and then coming out of his chest, and then going into his forearm, breaking his arm, and then going out of his wrist and into his thigh, which has now become known as the magic bullet theory. Which,

yes, does seem very implausible. I mean the minute a bullet hits something it's slowing down. I'm not saying it can't hit a person and then penetrate and hit another person and cause serious damage, even death, but that many times... It's seven layers of skin and two bones that are shattered by a single bullet is what we are being asked to believe. Yeah. But we have to believe it for the Warren Commission to make sense.

Because it is the only way that two men could have been hit in such a quick succession without there being a second shooter on Dealey Plaza that day. Yeah. Dare I say on a slant of grass. Even the doctor who treated Governor Connolly's injuries has never believed that one bullet could have done so much damage. Mm-hmm. Three members of the Warren commission wanted to include a footnote in their report, citing that they were unconvinced that the little bullet that

could did all of those things. The footnote was not included. And they have to admit that there are two bullets, but only one did the big damage because it's all on film, which I'm sure made the CIA's life a bit more difficult than they were expecting. Even if you think you haven't seen this footage, I promise you, you have. And it's one of, do you know about burnt toast theory? No. So burnt toast theory is that like whenever you burn a slice of toast and you have to

make another one, those minutes it takes for you to make another slice of toast and you have to make another one. Those minutes it takes for you to make another slice of toast, something really terrible was going to happen to you in that time. Or being a little tiny bit later means you get the bus on which you meet the love of your life. This is big burnt toast stuff. Amateur cameraman Abraham Sopruder left his camera at home that morning. And if he hadn't been like, Oh, actually, I will just go home and get it. We wouldn't have the morbidly iconic footage of JFK's head exploding. He actually sold the film to Life magazine for a quarter of a million in 1963. No, in olden days, it was money.

In the footage, it is clear that JFK is hit twice. They cannot deny it. And it also is the story that Jackie tells. There's one bullet, he says, my god, I'm hit. And then there's the second one. Ugh. But what is interesting is that the second time Kennedy is hit when his head explodes it looks like in the film that

he's propelled backwards before he collapses into Jackie and that would be a very odd reaction for a body to make to a shot coming from behind. And Abraham the cameraman himself said that one of the shots he heard, he doesn't know how many he heard, but he was like, I was sure that one of them was much louder than the others. And how could that be true if all of the shots came from the same spot? Decades later, a recording from a Dicta belt worn by an officer on a motorbike appeared. And the same acoustical analysis that was used on the Watergate Gap concluded that gunfire was coming from two different directions.

Yeah, the Dicta belt. It is a study, it is an academic study. There are people who say it's bollocks. Shrug. But there is a study which acoustically confirms two different locations. Yeah. Lyndon B. Johnson was sworn in at 2.30 a.m. aboard Air Force One at the Dallas Love Airfield. The newly widowed Jackie stood next to him, still covered in her husband's blood in that iconic Chanel suit. Johnson was almost the opposite of Kennedy and there are those who think that he may have had a hand in the assassination. He certainly had a lot to gain from JFK's death. He had been accused of hiring a hitman years before,

although nothing really came of it. Yeah there's loads of pictures of like young Kennedy giving these impassioned speeches and Lyndon B. Johnson just in the background being, it's not fair, it was my turn. Like I don't doubt that he had his problems with Kennedy and I can see why people are like, it was Lyndon B. Johnson, he has this affair with this woman and she says that basically all of the like anecdotal evidence about Lyndon B. Johnson being involved kind of come from one lady? I just, I, next, it's not for me. No. So yeah, they are very, very different and as soon as Lyndon B. Johnson comes into power he did reverse a lot of Kennedy's policies very quickly. Most famously Vietnam, saying, I'm not going to lose Vietnam. I'm not

going to be the president who saw Southeast Asia go the way China went. And the rest is quite literally history. Communication with Cuba, secret or not, was shut down too. Castro appealed to LBJ personally, but Johnson never replied. The age of ideological discourse was over. When he announced the nuclear test ban, John F. Kennedy reminded his nation that a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. And when it comes to his assassination, the first step you have to take is deciding how many gunmen were on Dealey Plaza that afternoon. And once you've made that decision, the fate of the world is sealed. And you've got a whole week to think about it. If you're

a fast reader, you've got a week to read some books. Get clued up. Get ready for part two. Yeah, it's a lot. It's a lot. I'm looking forward to next week. Let's get into it. Okay. And we'll see you there. We will. Goodbye. Bye. Kingston Buskers Rendezvous is back! Starting July 10th, come to downtown Kingston for this crowd-wowing festival and enjoy four days of jugglers, musicians, acrobats, comedians, and more. Talented performers from all over the world

can't wait to entertain you all weekend long. It all starts on Thursday, July 10th, with performances right in the heart of Downtown Kingston. And don't miss Buskers After Dark, the Friday Night Fire Show. For more information, go to downtownkingston.ca. In the early 20th century, a seemingly ordinary cook in New York City became the center of a medical mystery and a public health crisis. Hi, I'm Lindsey Graham, the host of Wondries

podcast American History Tellers. We take you to the events, times, and people that shaped America and Americans, our values, our struggles, and our dreams. In our latest series, we follow the trail of Mary Mallon, an Irish immigrant and cook to wealthy New York families who was unwittingly spreading typhoid fever throughout the city. Public health officials identify her as a healthy carrier of the disease, meaning that despite showing no symptoms herself, she's been infecting others for years. But when they try to persuade her to submit to testing in isolation, typhoid Mary will fight back with a vengeance. Follow American history tellers on the Wondery app,

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