The President's Daily Brief - PDB Situation Report | February 8th, 2025: Trump Takes A Wrecking Ball To USAID & Declassifies JFK Files

Episode Date: February 8, 2025

In this episode of PDB Situation Report: The Trump administration moves to reform the federal government, setting its sights on USAID; the agency responsible for administering civilian foreign aid. Former Congressman Jim Renacci joins us to break down what this means. President Trump issues an executive order to declassify records related to the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, former Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, and Martin Luther King Jr. Author Gerald Posner shares insights on what may, or may not, be revealed. To listen to the show ad-free, become a premium member of The President’s Daily Brief by visiting PDBPremium.com. Please remember to subscribe if you enjoyed this episode of The President's Daily Brief. YouTube: youtube.com/@presidentsdailybrief Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the PDB Situation Report. I'm Mike Baker, your eyes and ears on the world stage. All right, let's get briefed. We'll begin today's show with the Trump administration's efforts to reform the federal government. Well, good luck with that. And specifically, it's targeting of USAID. That's the agency ostensibly responsible for administrating civilian foreign aid. Former Congressman Jim Renasey will join us to give his insight on that. Later in the program, President Trump, Trump issued an executive order last month to declassify records related to the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, former Senator Robert F. Kennedy, and Martin Luther King, Jr. Now, author Gerald Posner, he spent a lot of time researching these assassinations. He'll stop by to explain what we should and shouldn't expect to learn in the coming days.

But first, today's PDB spotlight. President Trump and Doge are taking a sledgehammer to the United States Agency for International Development, announcing massive layoffs and then folding that remnants of USAID into the State Department. To some, USAID was a pillar of American soft power, providing aid, shaping global influence, and furthering U.S. interests abroad. To others, well, it was a taxpayer-funded boondoggle, and when was the last time you heard the word boondoggle, propping up far-left pet projects, including D-E-I-N-A. initiatives worldwide. So what's the reality? Is USAID an essential tool for diplomacy? Or is it bureaucratic waste? Or is it something in between? Well, joining me now to break it down is

former Ohio Congressman Jim Brunacy. Congressman, thank you very much for taking the time to join us here on the Situation Report. Well, let's start out with how would I refer to this. It could be a salacious question, but if you wouldn't mind, you've spent a lot of time looking at the issue of government spending of USAID and waste and fraud and government. What are the most egregious cases of wasteful spending that you've seen, and your experience, with USAID? Anything that doesn't relate to a requirement to benefit the United States government and taxpayers, in my mind, is an egregious situation, whether you're buying condoms

for, you know, one country or, you know, all these things that we're here. They're all greets because in the end, what we really want to have is we want to, that entity was formed in 1991. And the goal really was to make sure that other countries around the world realize that the United States was a friend. Because if we remember back then, we had a Cold War and we had Russia doing the exact same thing. So that was the purpose. Now the purpose of the organization still should be doing some of them. And remember, China today is the enemy that is doing a little bit of that around the world, too. So anything that relates to making sure that other countries realize that the United States is a, you know, as far as I'm concerned, is, you know, we're trying to build our relationship.

That's a positive thing. Yeah. I think just for the benefit of our situation reported viewers, the reference to Congress, the reference to Congress, condoms is, we talked about this on the PDB. We highlighted it as a story, believe it or not. I think it was actually the first condom story we've done on the PDP. But there apparently was upwards of, depending on who you talk to, upwards of $100 million set aside for a health initiative that included tens of millions of dollars of condoms for the residents of Gaza. So I thought we'd just get that out on the table. So I take your point, and I agree 100%. Look, there's a real need for however you want to refer to it, a tool of diplomacy, the use or the extension of soft power from America. And that was, you're absolutely right, that was a key element of this,

the driver behind USAID at the outset. How did it change, right? At what point is it too much autonomy with USAIDs? So is this a matter of not shutting it down, but reimagining it, perhaps as an element of a different organization? It's one of the reasons I left Congress. I was so frustrated. Here I'm a successful businessman.

You've got to look at your expenditures. We weren't doing it. Congress has no oversight on these agencies. Congress is not doing a budget on a annual basis. Congress is not doing all of their, there's spending reviews. All of this is a normal job of the United States Congress. We have appropriations, bills that are supposed to be passed.

We have budgets that are supposed to be passed. Most of your listeners don't realize we haven't done that probably for 25 to 30 years, if you go back to where we're really done both. That's going to shock a lot of people. How could they not have oversight of expenditures from an organization like USAID? or how could they have just dropped the ball on their other responsibilities in terms of audits and efficiency when Congress holds the purse strings? They do hold the purse strings.

But what they should be doing is they should be passing a budget and then they should be passing appropriations bills. Their appropriations bills would say USAID, you only have this much money and this is what it's supposed to be spent for. We're not doing that. Congress isn't doing that. And at the same time, we should be passed on a budget. budget that says, hey, USAD, what are you doing? And let's zero base this out and determine what you

should be doing. Those are the real inner workies of Washington that aren't getting accomplished and aren't getting completed. But why not? I guess that's the big question that I have. And I suspect a lot of people will have listening to you talk about this. Yeah, well, look, it's one of the reasons when I was there, we couldn't get a budget pass when we tried to cut costs. And that's why we get the CRs. I don't know if your listeners understand what a CR is, but it's just a continuing resolution. And that's the real problem in Washington. You can't, like, and I was a member of Congress, but you can't blame, you can't blame President Biden, you can't blame Bush, you can't blame if you're not doing your job. You've got to blame Congress for not doing enough oversight. Now, here's why I give President Trump

a whole lot of credit. He probably doesn't have the authority to do some of the things he's doing, And that's what the Democrats are complaining about. They're saying, he doesn't have this authority. He can't cut this cost. And it's probably true, and there'll be lawsuits about it. But I think he learned from 2017 to 2020 that if he doesn't do this, Congress won't do it. Yeah, I want to circle back to USAID specifically. But before I do, I just want to drill down a little bit more because, I mean, I'm fascinated by this.

I would have assumed that an organization such as USAID every year would be required to submit a proposal for their budget and they would have line items. Now, obviously there will be certain events that come up, one-offs and events of the moment that have to be dealt with in an ad hoc manner. But for the most part, I would imagine that they were proposing a budget and that Congress would then, whether it's OMB or whomever, would then be going through that budget and approving. it sort of on a line item basis. And that doesn't happen from what you're saying. No, it doesn't. And look, it may not even be a line item. They may say, we're going to, we're going to spend, you know, $20 million in Africa. We're going to spend $10 million in this country. They should at least be doing that. And then Congress should be looking at what they're spending it on. And that should be the oversight. So that's a twofold thing that should be done by Congress. Remember, that's also the number

one goal of Congress oversight, and we're not doing enough of that. So I really do blame Congress for a lot of this. If we pass budgets that said, in total, we're going to spend X amount of dollars for aid to other countries. And then in the appropriations bills, you say, we're going to allocate $50 million or $50 billion, or what is the number is, to USAID, but we want you doing X, Y, and Z. then you approve all that and then you come back and you do oversight over what USAID is doing, that's the job of Congress. I am just fascinated by the inability of Washington, D.C. to just get crap done, do their job, right?

And look, I run a business. And if we didn't, you know, question where every dollar went when somebody came to us and proposed a budget, or if our clients, you know, said, that, don't worry about a budget, you spend what you need to, that'll be fine. Now, okay, to be fair, that would be a happy day from a business perspective, but it doesn't happen. But let's focus on USAID in particular. Do you imagine that what could happen? I know this is speculation, but do you imagine that what could happen is we end up with a much smaller entity that is placed underneath the control and management and oversight of the State Department? I do think we have to have an agency that's under control of the State Department.

and that should be a division of the Secretary of State's office. These are expenditures, again, to promote the United States around the world, the influence of the United States versus China versus Russia. That's the whole goal of USAIP, but we've gotten away from that and there's no oversight. So I think if you take that organization and you put it under the Secretary of State, which is what we have, now that's what President Trump has done, And then you ask, you know, the Secretary of State to monitor, oversee those expenditures, but you also have to have Congress to agree to spend them.

See, that's the key. And I know people get mad at this, but in Washington, it's Congress's job to authorize and approve expenditures. They have the power of the purse. The president does not have the power of the purse. And what we have now is the president saying, hey, you're not doing your job. I'm going to take some of that power away and I'm going to just cut it. And you're going to have to do your oversight and all those things, especially when it comes to USAID. But look, we could talk about every agency without a budget, without appropriation

bills, any stream of spending and no oversight. Do you think the president has overstepped in terms of, again, I'm just focused on USAID. Do you think he's overstepped as authority? Well, I would tell you this. In 2017, the president tried to on cuts spending in USAID, and the, I think it's the budget office came back and ruled that it was not proper for him to do that. It was the impounding out. Impalming control out. They said back then, President Trump, you can't do this. This is authorized by Congress. You're not allowed to do this. Now, Trump, President Trump, overseas those. agencies, so he should have some authority to oversee what they're spending about. This organization was set up back in 1961, authorized Congress, authorized by Congress, to be an independent agency, which might be a problem, which means we might have to change that. So I think we've got to look at all of these things, because here's a problem at Washington. What was good in 1961 might not be necessary in 2000.

2025, and I think we're running into some of that now. Why was it set up as an independent agency? Why would it be given that sort of autonomy if, in fact, it is designed to be a tool of projection of U.S. diplomacy and power, an influence? At the time, President Kennedy was trying to show that he wasn't a person directing the funds and there was an independent agency authorized by Congress. to derive the funds. Again, could have been the right thing to do back then. Yeah, I don't know that it takes a rocket scientist or anybody with any government experience

to imagine that that's problematic to say you're going to set up an autonomous, independent organization to spend money. I don't have any issue with the current administration, with the Trump administration saying, we're going to take a fine tooth comb to every dollar that goes out, you know, every tax dollar that goes out that the U.S. government spends to ensure that it is in the best interests of the American taxpayer, of U.S. national security, et cetera. How do you feel, and again, I know this was a sort of soft science. I'm asking you for opinion rather than talking about facts, but how do you feel about how

the Trump administration went after U.S. I.D? It was fairly, what should I say, aggressive, sort of a weekend purge of their offices in a way. When you talk about Congress authorizing organizations, they do that all the time. They authorize the organization to oversee banks. They separated it. Congress has no authority over it. That was a law passed. And all they have to do is fund it.

Javis organization out there building, buildings, paying for buildings, renovating buildings, overseeing our financial systems after the 2007 collapse. and yet there's no oversight or accountability. So that organization is also set out as a separate and distinct organization that can't be controlled by Congress. Now it can be stopped. It can be eliminated. When it comes out, President Trump did this law.

I think he's just so fed up with the inability for Congress to do things. He is doing things quickly and he's moving very fast. I think he pauses after this is probably. probably one of those. He probably needed to pause before he did everything. But again, I'm sure he is so frustrated and he wants to move the needle. He doesn't have a lot of time. President Trump's got four more years and probably only two more years because we all know that two years into a current president term, they usually lose members of the House and members of the Senate. I'm not saying that's going to happen here, but I think if you look at history, it's going to. So this president has two years,

and he can't wait. And for that, you have to applaud him. Now, there will be a tremendous amount of lawsuits and there will be a tremendous amount of pushback. But in the end, this is a wake up for the United States Congress. Do you think it's going to have any impact? I mean, it sounds like the U.S. Congress has been fairly sort of an inert body for a long time. So even with this sort of shock and awe start to the drop administration, do you think it ultimately makes any difference or are we just going to see continued dysfunction? I hate to sound so cynical. I don't mean to denigrate all the people to work hard up on Capitol Hill because there's a bunch of them. But I'm curious. The America people are frustrated as well. And we keep putting people back in

Washington doing the same thing over and over again. And if nothing else, I think this would be a wake call to the voters that says, look, if these guys or women are not going to do their job, we've got to replace them of people that will. And I think that will. And I think that will be. be the best thing that happens out of all this. Congressman Renesi, if you wouldn't mind, we have to take a quick break, but if you'll stay right where you are, we'll be back shortly with the next segment of the Situation Report. Thank you again for joining us. This is Euphoria Calvin Klein, the new Elixir Collection, featuring three perfume

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Congressman, Jim Renaci. Congressman, thanks again for sticking around. Very much appreciated. If you wouldn't mind, could you talk a bit about the current effort by the Trump administration to generate, what would we call them, buyouts, I guess, from the federal workforce? You've got to think of it from this standpoint. the president doesn't have the authority to do that. And I saw that there's already been the court case thrown at him. And the authority is he's spending money that he's not allowed to spend without the approval of cars.

And those by-outs probably need to be approved by Congress. But in the end, I think he's sitting back saying, Washington won't do this, Congress won't pass this. I'm going to test it. I'm going to keep doing. these executive orders, and I'm going to move as quickly as they can. We'll see if Congress catches up, but it will also shake up. I hope the voters will say, hey, wait a minute, this is probably something that should be gotten. Yeah, I know it's not apples to apples,

but it strikes me a little bit as if, I mean, it's a pushback as well. You don't have the authority to spend that money. You could say under President Biden, I know it's not apples to apples, both. President Biden was forgiving student loans. He didn't have the authority to do that either. That's a cost to the federal government. And you're right. These will be the same things. These will be lawsuits. And again, I see this as an awakening. And it's going to be awakening for the American voter and the American taxpayer to say, wait a minute, maybe the president should have that authority or numbers of Congress, you need to start doing your job. I take your point. I think you're absolutely spot on in terms of the mindset in the White House.

It's a very good point. I think they're just saying, look, we're going to do these. We may get pushed back on some of them, and they already have, on some of these executive orders. But I think they're just saying, we're just going to keep putting them on the table and signing them. And if you want to push back, fine. But, you know, we've got an agenda and we're going to pursue it. If you were in charge of Doge, you know, the government efficiency department, if you were in charge of that, what would you go after to have the most impact on the government waste? If you look at the drivers of our debt, what is really driving our debt, we bring in about $4.5 trillion a year into the Treasury. We spend about $6 trillion a year. We spend about $4.5 trillion

on Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and interest. So we're approximately at a breakkeeping just paying for those programs. Then you have a million and a half or $1.5 trillion in deficit approximately every year. Half of that is the military. So when you really start saying, how do I get this budget employees and fix it? Number one, you've got to start looking at the drivers and look, nobody, it's an elected official, wants to talk about that, but there is waste in Social Security, there is waste in Medicare, there is waste in Medicaid. We need to look at all those programs because those are the biggest spending items. Now, this aid to other countries, I mean, it's about $40 billion a year on a six and a half trillion dollars spurn.

So it's money that needs to be looked at, but it's not enough to fix the problems. You know, you started by asking me if I was totally empowered. The answer would be I require, there's two things we need to do in America in the United States to fix our federal system. We need to require a balanced budget. That would really shake things up. And then we need to require term limits because those that stick around, they stick around because they like to keep spending the money. If everybody was termed out after so many years and you were required to balance a budget,

we would fix all of these problems very quickly. We are on the exact same sheet of music. I've been banging about term limits for I don't know how long. I don't believe that it's going to happen. I think there's too much self-interest in Washington, D.C., but I think you're spot on until you get those term limits in place, whatever they may be. Extend the term for a congressman to four years, right? Nobody's rushing to get out of D.C. to go back to their farm, right?

So at times have changed. So, you know, maybe you get two four-year terms as a congressman, maybe you get two six-year terms of the senator, but then you leave. You take that self-interest out of there, and I think it has an amazing impact on people's ability to make bigger, bolder, braver decisions. They're not wrapped up in their own self-interest of getting re-elected on a constant basis. I've said it. It should be eight years for members of Congress that should be two six-year terms for Senate. We should put those term limits in place, and we're sure require them to balance the budget.

it will be an amazing change for our country. What about the eligibility age for Social Security? I know I'm about to hit that third rail. But is that ever likely to happen? Because, again, we want a benefits package that's going to stick around, right? That's going to be feasible and solving going forward. So do you think that's something that Washington could ever approach? Because, again, under your theory of like what was good in 61, when USAID was started,

may not be relevant today, life expectancy and the time that people work and continue to work, that's changed. But do you think realistically that that's something that could be taken care of by Washington? Well, let me tell you the real problems with Social Security that nobody really pays attention to. Number one, the program was designed 45 years ago, assuming that people would die at age 65. That doesn't happen. So they're slowly moving the age limit up. But we're also taking all all the funds that are going into this impressed fund, which, by the way, Congress is not allowed to touch,

and we're only investing it in treasury bills. Now, think about that. A treasury bill is averaging about 1 or 2% a year, and that's the only place you're allowed to put Social Security funds into. You've got to go back to President Bush, where he wanted to allow Social Security Trust Fund to invest in a stock market. Well, if you would invest in the stock market, back when President Bush, George W. was in office, we've averaged about a 10 or 12 percent return

all those years years versus about a 2 percent return. Inflation has averaged about 3.5 percent. So our return is not even keeping up with inflation. So that's one issue. But there's also other changes have been added to Social Security. Your spouse, either spouse, may never have worked or put money into Social Security, yeah, the wife can collect, or the husband can collect 50% of whatever that person that the one spouse put in. So think of that number. We're not even keeping up to make up for the one spouse, and yet the other spouse who may have never put a dime in to collect 50%. There are problems inside the system that need to be changed more than just raising in retirement age. That should be done too. But I just name it.

off three things that could make the system solving if they were just looked at. Yeah, I remember that moment in time when President Bush, his administration, pushed the idea of investing in the stock market, and the pushback was fairly remarkable, particularly from obviously from the Democrats, you know, arguing that, oh, my God, you know, the White House wants to gamble with your savings and your, so, yeah, I think a lot of people have the same feeling. And I, again, that speaks to impartial. why President Trump is now president, the frustration over inaction, the frustration over wasteful spending, lack of oversight, all of these things.

I was going to say, remember, President Trump has said he doesn't want to touch Medicare and Medicare or Social Security, but let me give you another thing for your listeners to really think about Medicare. The reason Medicare we put in, the average couple puts in about 150,000 in their lifetime, They take out about 340,000. These are numbers you can find in the statistics. I was on the budget committee. But where does most of the spending occur?

It occurs in the last hundred days of the individual's life. So when you bring that up, you cause a whole other issue. But it's something we need to look at. If the majority of spending is in the last 100 days of somebody's life, how do we change it so that, you know, right now we're, we're spending twice as much as we're putting in in Medicare. It's another program, and the driver of that is that last 100 days. Another touching subject, something nobody wants to talk about,

but it's an issue we need at least address. Yeah. Well, no, if anybody up on Washington on Capitol Hill goes after that, then they know that they're going to lose the next election. So that brings us back around, the circle of life brings us back around, to term limits. Congressman Jim Renaci, look, this has been fascinating, and I very much appreciate your time. We've got a lot of other things we could talk about, and I would love for you to come back and have another conversation with us on the Situation Report. All right, coming up,

President Trump, maybe you've heard about this. He's ordered the release of the remaining files on the JFK, the RFK, and MLK assassinations. What's in them? Well, that's a good question that you should ask. And what might we finally learn? Is there a smoking gun? in there, or is it just going to be an unsatisfying release? Gerald Posner, he spent a lot of time looking at these assassinations. He's the author of Case Closed. Lee Harvey Oswald and the assassination of JFK. He stops by to share his insight on those.

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Tap the banner to switch today. Terms apply, limited time offer subject to change. See Visible.com for plan features and network management details. Welcome back to the Situation Report. Within days of taking office, President Trump signed an executive order while he signed a bunch of him, but he signed an executive order to classifying all remaining federal records related to the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, and Martin Luther King, Jr. Now, the order directs intelligence agencies and the Justice Department to release these files in full,

citing the public's right to transparency. For decades, records on these cases have been withheld or heavily redacted with previous administrations, including the first term for President Trump, delaying full disclosure. Supporters say this move could finally put conspiracy theories to rest, or could it? Revealing the full scope of government investigations, a skeptics, argue that it might raise more questions than answers. And you can count me as one of the skeptics. So what should we expect from these long secret files? And will they change our understanding of these assassinations? Joining me now is Gerald Posner is a great author. He's an investigative journalist,

and he's written two great books. Case closed, Lee Harvey Oswald and the assassination of JFK, and also killing the dream, James Earl Ray and the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. here. Gerald, thanks very much for joining us today. You know, honestly, we could spend a handful of hours talking about this. I got a long list of questions, but I'm going to be mindful of time. I just want to get one thing out of the way. Correct me if I'm wrong. You started, I don't want to say conspiracy theorists because that I think sometimes makes light of people who have alternative of views. But you started, you know, your belief system with JFK thinking that there was more to it than Lee Harvey Oswald. And that has evolved. Talk to me about that process.

You're right, Mike. And look, nobody approaches a controversial, historical subject without some prejudgment. Then you have to find out if you're right or not. So when I started looking into the Kennedy assassination in the early 90s after the Oliver Stone film, my inkling was that Maybe the mob had some role in a conspiracy because of Jack Ruby's, the nightclub owner from Dallas, who murdered Lee Harvey Oslo, the accused assassin, four days later, in police custody. So you can't look at that and not immediately think maybe there's something to that. Are they doing a silencing of the accused assassin? So I went in suspicious, but then you end up following the evidence.

And what I returned to my publisher, Random House at the time, was whatever conspiracies might have been brewing against Jack Kennedy, there were people wanted them dead. Lee Oswald wasn't part of any plot. He got up in that window in the place that he worked in Dallas in 1963 for his own work motivations. My publisher was pretty downcast at first. They let me off for a year, year and a half to look into the case. And I came back and said, you know, the Warren Commission got a lot of things wrong. Ballistics can be updated.

There's new evidence. But they got the basic conclusion right that it was Oswald alone. They said, really? And that's sort of where the evidence takes you. Yeah, I can imagine what that meeting was like when you put that on their desk. Because again, I guess it's a theory, it's a conspiracy because it's got legs, right? People want to believe that there was something more than just one individual who created such a world-shaking event. In looking at this upcoming release, you know, hopefully it's a release, a full release of the JFK files,

What do you expect to see out of this? What I'm interested in is I don't think there will be a smoking gun there. By the way, all of these files have been seen before by a government organization in the late 90s, the Assassination Review Board. They then passed 35,000 over the National Archives with some type of redaction, some of them withheld in full. Now we're down to about 3,000 to 3,500. There's not a precise count.

That's what everyone wants to see. About 500 of those are fully redacted. No one's seen a page of them. But guess what? $499 are tax files. Tax files of Lee Harvey Oswald, Jack Ruby, the companies that Oswald have worked for. So let's get the tax files out there. Then the rest of the documents, there are about 400 that have just a social security number redacted,

of somebody who worked for the church committee in the 70s or somebody who worked for the assassination review board for the Congress in the late 70s. If you have a social security number and somebody's alive, you can keep it redacted, keep it away from the identity thieves. But for the most part, these files can be released in full. And where I think they might show is that your former employer, the CIA, knew a little bit more about Oswald's unhinged behavior six weeks before the assassination when he visited the Soviet and Cuban missions in Mexico City.

And then the question is, did they do anything with it? And we know the answer to that is not do anything means pass it over to the FBI when he came back into the United States, but it's not how they do things. Well, yeah, at that point in time, you know, kind of looking at the atmospherics of it all, and the interplay between the CIA and FBI, they didn't play well together, you know, back in the 60s, 70s. You could argue in the 80s, to some degree in the 90s. So I think you're spot on, right? And I've talked about this before, that because there would seem to be, and I take your point about a social. Security number, yes, it always gets redacted, you know, fine. But it would seem to me that what we're going to see is going to be very unsatisfying for people, but it's going to, it's going to

speak to this idea that Oswald was on the radar from a counterintelligence perspective of the agency, of the CIA, and perhaps, you know, to some degree they had conversation with the FBI. But I think there's an element of embarrassment here that shows that they weren't proactive enough to prevent this tragedy from happening. I think you're absolutely right. As a matter of fact, it's very interesting because the FBI had an open investigation on Oswald. This CIA had him on the radar because he defected the Soviet Union in 1959.

It was in the press. He comes back to the United States with a young Russian bride. He's handing out leaflets on the streets of the... streets of New Orleans just months before he goes to Mexico City, trying to get people to join this new Cro-Cathrow organization. And what's interesting is to think we have to remember, this is the heart of the Cold War. Just a year earlier, we had the Cuban missile crisis in which the two superpowers came to a standoff, that is to the edge of World War III. There are no Cuban diplomatic missions or embassies in the United States. We kicked them all out. The closest one to us,

proximity-wise, was in Mexico City. So the CIA definitely had eyes. on both the Cuban mission and on the Soviets. Now, not many Americans walks into those two missions and asked for our visa to go and join Castro's Revolution down in Havana. And now you get a guy who does it, who had been a defector to the Soviet Union. And at one point, we know from the KGB agents who saw Oswald at the Soviet mission, who years later told their story, Oswald took out his 38 caliber revolver, slammed it on the desk at one point. One of the KGBB agents grabs it, empties it up its bullets. They have a meeting afterwards in which they view him, is sort of, you know, unstable to say the least. The question is, what did the CIA have in terms

of ears and eyes on those two embassies? Did we have a human asset inside one or more of them that we had turned? Did we have video surveyed ends? Did we have audio? Because afterwards, Wynn Scott, who was the chief for Mexico City for the CIA, said, oh, well, we did catch somebody on video, but it turns out not to be Oswald, and the cameras weren't working all the time. And then when it came to sound recordings, there was a sound recording plate for a Warren Commission counsel, and then later, there were none that were ever found. So whatever the agency had, it did not want to disclose how it penetrated two of its enemies, the Soviet Union and the Cubans, in the middle of the Cold War, so they didn't give any a battle writ of the commission.

Look, I know that this is for people listening, right? This is going to be, again, I'll use the word unsatisfying. I don't know how many people have approached me or talked to me over the past many years who are certain of how, you know, he was killed. They just know it. And there's a variety of different theories, but it always involves sort of a cabal, whether it's the mob and the agency, whether it's others. Look, Gerald, if you'll stay with us, we've got to take a quick break, and then we'll be right back. How many discounts does USA auto insurance offer? Too many to say here. Multi-vehicle discount. Safe driver discount. New vehicle discount. Storage discount. How many discounts will you stack up? Tap the banner or visit USA

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Paradig. Bring it on. Welcome back to the PDB Situation Report. Join me once again is author Gerald Paulsner. He's the author of Case Closed, Lee Harvey Oswald, and the assassin, of JFK, and also the author of Killing the Dream, James Earl Ray, and the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Gerald, thank you again for sticking around very much appreciated. We've got a lot to cover here, and I don't think we'll be able to do it all in one episode, so I'm roping you into future episodes. Let's pick up on Oswald. You commented in our earlier conversation that he

had visited the Soviet embassy, the Cuban embassy in Mexico. I can almost guarantee you that, yes, he was under surveillance by the agency. From a counterintelligence perspective, that's exactly what would happen. I don't know to what degree they were sharing information with the FBI, but I do know from my time that sometimes that information sharing was seriously lacking, and it certainly would have been worse back in the 60s and 70s when they didn't play well together. from your perspective, what are the chances? I mean, we always talk about or people who look at this a lot, they talk about the mob involvement in it, this agency involvement in it. What's the possibility that the Soviets and the Cubans, because, look, Oswald was desperate to show

his value to the revolution, right? I mean, he had an unsatisfactory living experience in St. Petersburg, but he was still keen to prove his worth, basically, to the communist leaders. What's the chances that they saw that, and while they may have thought, as you pointed out, that he was somewhat unhinged, perhaps they saw him as someone they could turn and they did and used him to carry out the assassination. Do you think there's any merit in that? I think there could be, Mike, on the Cuban end, on the Soviet end, the reason I say no is, yeah, I was the first journalist to interview Uri No Senko, the defector who James Jesus Angleton thought was a fake defector, Amy Longer, and, and he said, interviews, I talked to Netcheropernco, the Costa Koff, the other KGB agents who ended up in Mexico

City. Let me tell you, they had watched him when he had defected Oswald. He tried to kill himself when they told him to leave Russia. They didn't want him there. Then they moved him out to midst. They kept all types of surveillance on. They knew he was unstable. And so they wanted to do an operation. They would involve taking a possible hit at the President of the United States. They couldn't trust somebody like him because if it unraveled, that was World War III. The Cubans, on the other hand, were willing to play a little bit more aggressive. And although they may not have said to him, go and try and find a job so you can kill the president, they may have given him some encouragement.

That's why I believe everybody is looking at the U.S. files in the National Archives. I'm wondering why we don't call on how we have no relations with them. That's why we don't do it. But the Cubans could have information on this. But the others are the Mexicans. We do have a friendly relationship with the Mexican government. Mexican intelligence was watching these embassies as well, as well. as well as monitoring the U.S. to see what we were doing. They wanted to make sure that although

it was a nest of spies, everybody played by some rule so it wasn't playing out in violence on their soil. So Mexican intelligence files have never been released from this period. They may well have had more intelligence on Oswald during his social time when he was outside the Soviet and Cuban embassies going to these parties where he was other people. And we actually picked up in terms of the American intelligence. So I'd love to see what the Mexicans have. Yeah, I think that's an intriguing point. I would be somewhat skeptical that they would have much to add. I don't know why I say that other than I just think given that time period, I don't know that they had the capabilities from an Intel service, but I think it's

definitely worth pursuing like everything else, right? I mean, everything's speculation until we see everything that's out there, which is one of the reasons I'm hoping this is a full release of the remaining material for JFK. But with Oswald, I want to keep kind of digging into this, right? Because, again, there's this notion that there were forces of play, and typically those forces of the mob and the agency, the CIA, talk to me a little bit about one thing that always kind of stands out, which is how interesting.

An individual, if it was just Oswald, one individual goes out there and kills Kennedy. And then one individual, Jack Ruby, makes his way in, gets close access and kills Oswald. So talk to me about Jack Ruby and what your insight provides to us. Yeah, I mean, Ruby is one of the major reasons, you know, that not only I was suspicious at the beginning, but a lot of people from the get-go just say that has to be something. What of this, when you actually investigate Ruby, I have more, I think, in the book

than anybody had published at that time, sort of following him from before the assassination through every minute afterwards. He's really a guy who's a wannabe mobster. He's not a mate man. He's not part of the mob, but he wants to be a tough guy. He throws people.

He's his own bouncer at his club, his nightclub. He throws people out. He pulls a gun on him once in a while. And in Jack Ruby's world, this guy, Oswald, had killed the president of the United States, and Ruby, when he gets the opportunity on a Sunday, he walks down the street, and they're about to bring Oswald out and transfer him from the Dallas police over to the chair.

He sees this rampway, walks down, and when he pulls his gun out and kills Oswald, it's almost the spur of the moment, he thinks the people are going to clap him on the back and say, Jack, you did the right thing. You clean the stain from Dallas. You let me the guy who killed the president. And when he's tackled by the cops, Mike,

He says, hey, you know me, it's Jack. It's Jack. All the cops knew him because they used to hang out at his club. He thinks he's going to get at the most what's called murder without malice. It's a Texas charge in the 1960s, maximum sentence five years, sort of like a man fodder charge. He stunned when he gets convicted of murder. You know, one last thing on Oswald, by the way, when you talk about being part of how he could have been, he took a bus ride down to Mexico City.

That's how he got there, three different buses, takes him overnight. When he's traveling to Mexico City, six weeks before the assassination, September 26 and 27th, that's when the White House puts out of notice for the first time that Kennedy is going to be visiting Texas in November. So every idea for a plot for time and place could not have happened before that announcement from the White House. Then Oswald tries to get to Cuba. He's rejected. A week and a half later, he comes back into Texas. So you have to look for a group, whether you want to say it's the mob,

the Russians, the Cubans, the CIA, whoever, they have to bring him into a plot. There's only a month and a half when he's in Dallas before that assassination. That's where I always challenge everybody to do. Show me a scrap about it. Show me something credible, a telephone call, a person, somebody reaching out to him. It's not like today when you can send a text, send a social media or a direct message. You had to have some type of contact. It's a very narrow window.

And that's where it falls down where you just can't find Oswald in contact with anybody other than his Russian wife and his friends were hosting her out in Irving, Texas. Okay, that's, it's a very valid point. I know right now there's a lot of people watching this and throwing things at the TV because it's, you know, it's never going to be settled. My argument with the release of the documents is always the same, which is, okay, they've got to release them, but don't imagine somehow that it's going to put all of this to rest. because again, as you pointed out earlier on,

I don't think there's going to be a smoking gun. Let's pivot real quick to Martin Luther King because I've been fascinated with that assassination of MLK for some time. And I'm not a conspiracy theorist. I usually have found over the years in terms of investigations that once you do get the evidence in front of you, once you do find information that tends to be a relatively straightforward answer,

and oftentimes life's not as complicated as we might imagine. but with MLK, it's a little bit different. And I've thought for some time now that there's more here. And by that I mean there are other factors at play. Now, with James Earl Ray, how do you square this loop, right? How do you say that this was the act of an individual who couldn't even keep himself out of jail for petty crimes? Somehow he ends up looking like a university professor after dusting himself off or kind of going off the radar for a period of time, then he ends up in Europe where he gets arrested eventually. Talk to me about

the MLK situation and what your perspective is on that. Yeah, so you know, it's interesting, by the way, because you know, Oswald, when he killed Kennedy, was just turned 24 years old. We forget how young he was. And often, as you know, the people, their 20s might grow out of that feeling that they want to change the world through a bullet. And in their 50s, if it didn't happen, it might just be sitting around and watching old reruns on TV. Ray was 40. He was a year older than Martin Luther King. It's unusual, all of a sudden at 40 to turn yourself on to become an assassin. And I believe that Ray is more than an enigma, tougher case to solve. In the end, I'm convinced that Ray would have gone to prison and only stayed silent for one reason.

That was to protect family. No one else. He would have turned anyone else in. He had two brothers who were also ex-cons, and I think that they were looking for a payday. Out of a racist lawyer in St. Louis who was offering up to a $50,000 bounty, doesn't sound like a lot to kill Martyr Ler King Jr. when you think of what a life is worth. But for the Ray's, that was like hitting a lottery ticket.

And Ray thought it was possible. And what was his goal? His goal was to get to White Run, Rhodesia, or South Africa afterwards because he knew he thought he would have some safe haven there. So if you follow it, it's a small kitchen conspiracy. It is for money. And in the end, it's wider. But when I tell that to people, or they read the book, they're disappointed by it.

Because when I say conspiracy, they want a deep state conspiracy. They want a conspiracy with Jake Hoover behind a fence in a dress, shooting at Margaret Luther King or something like that. They don't want the shorter story of, you know, an assassin doing it for payday. Yeah, look, nobody wants Jagger Hoover in a dress. That's, that's, I, you know, thank you for that visual. And all the viewers of the Situation Report, thank you for that visual. So you think essentially it was the act of an individual, in a sense, right?

It was him going after this bounty, as opposed to the involvement of the feds in any way. Yeah. Well, as a matter of fact, the feds were down the street that day in terms of Army Intelligence, FBI, the security divisions that were down the street in a firehouse, not far. They had visuals on where King was staying at the hotel, at the Lorraine Hotel. But they weren't there to protect him. They were there to spy on him, as you know. And one of the interesting things, I don't know if Trump was aware of when he signed the executive order,

that said let's release the MLK files as well. MLK's family came out and said, we'd like to see the files beforehand. The reason they said that is in the late 70s, when the House Select Committee finished its work, the Black Caucus was the one that said, we don't want everything out because in those files are FBI surveillance tapes that were illegally obtained

on King's private life, audio tapes and video recordings to show that he was a philanderer, J. Grover, intended to embarrass him and disgraced him in public. So that material is in the files, clearly has nothing to do with the assassination, and it should not be made up. Yeah, I agree with the first part. I agree with the concept that the reason why they're concerned, and likely what we'll learn from the release of those files are all sort of the atmospherics and the result of all that wiretapping and the surveillance that was going on on Martin Luther King. And so I understand why the family would be pushing back and saying,

we want to see everything before you release it to the public. You know, I would say this is I think if we have another situation here, look, it was what was in 2017 when President Trump said, let's review and then it turns out that he did keep things still classified, I think we'd go through that route again this time around and there's material that's held back. I don't even know how you, how do you explain that, right? And more of the point, you would have to explain it. You would have to do a better job as a government to say, this is why after all this time,

we are not releasing these pages or this material. No, you're right. They put themselves into a corner on this because, I mean, you may have a different view of this, but one of the reasons, there are a number of reasons that I don't think Pompeo's in Trump 2.0 is because Trump feels a little bit had on the fact that it was Pompeo argued very, very well when he was running the CIA. Some of the documents in 2017 on the Kennedy assassination should still be withheld for confidentiality. reasons. Any idea or insight or thought as to why that was the case? Why fight, you know, to keep

these things classified? It can't just be because, you know, they don't want to release some social security numbers, right? I mean, if that's the case, you don't say, you see that line right there? That's a social security number that would redact it. So what is it from your perspective, right? Because everybody's got crazy ideas about why they're not releasing this material or what they would expect to find if they saw it. So you asked such a great question. And the answer is so unsatisfying. Just one quick example. One of the things that I and others who have studied the assassination of Wired for years was Angleton's testimony before the church committee in 75. They had redacted large portions of that. Then they released some of it in 2017, some in 2018, some in

2022. So still Pompeo and others are saying there are parts of this that cannot be released. They're redacted. In 2023, we finally got the entire thing. And Mike, guess what? I'm happy to like to Sunday say you, but you know what they actually are withacting? They're redacting the fact that a Romanian defector was defected to the Norwegians and apparently exposed a great deal of the intelligence activity of Romania against Norway. And then there are words that are redacted, for instance, on another page. We passed it along to the French. It was taken by two sources to, and here's the new words, French counterintelligence. It very clearly showed that redacted Romanian and Soviet services. And this is, I say to myself,

you were fighting to keep this secret after 60 years when people look at it and think that you're hiding some secret about who killed Kennedy? That's crazy. And in my view, they overclassified in these instances and then they've held on to those classifications too long. Well, that's been the history of, frankly, of intelligence operations is overclassification, right? I mean, that's just you throw out a big net because, you know, okay, it's a human, you know, instinct, I think. You want to be more protective than not, right? You don't want to make a mistake, and so you tend to over classify, but it has been a problem, and it's been a problem for decades. And so I think going into this, if they don't do a full release and just say, here you go,

is everything. Because, again, I don't believe there's a smoking gun in any of those files, RFK included. But I think I'm get that out there. Look, we've got a lot more, I've got a book here with all my questions for you, and we haven't gotten through 50% of them. So that means you've got to come back, Gerald. No matter what the final show, you're going to get RFK Jr. asking Trump to form some type of commission to look for files elsewhere. So if there's no smoking gun in the files that are released, it's not going to stop those who really believe that their government killed these political leaders and civic leaders. They're going to keep looking elsewhere. And so I just don't think that all of a sudden it's over, no matter even if the release turns out to be very,

very mundane. Yeah, no, I 100%. This is not putting anything to bed, but I think it's time to get it all on the table. And then, yes, if there's other avenues to investigate, by all means, let's do it, right? But anyhow, listen, Gerald Paulsman, thank you so much, man, for taking the time.

And I hope you'll come back next time we call. Well, that's all the time we have for the PDB situation report for this weekend. If you have any questions or comments, you know what to deal with them, right? Fax them to me. or write them on a postcard and mail them to me. Or just email it or text, whatever. Or you could reach out to me at PDB at thefirsttv.com.

Because every month we take some of your best questions and comments, and there's a lot of good ones in there. And we mush them all together into what we call our Ask Me Anything episodes. And keep it within reason, all right? Polite questions only or comments. To listen to the podcast of this show ad free. Well, it's simple. Become a premium member of the president's daily brief by visiting PD.

It couldn't be any simpler. I'm Mike Baker, and until next time, well, you know the drill. Stay informed. Stay safe. Stay cool. Starting a business can seem like a daunting task, unless you have a partner like Shopify. They have the tools you need to start and grow your business.

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