The Rest Is Classified - Did The CIA Kill JFK?

Episode Date: October 16, 2025

*Declassified Club exclusive: SUBSCRIBE⁠⁠ to listen to the full series* Who really killed John F. Kennedy in Dallas on 22 November 1963? Did the CIA have a vendetta against the 35th President of the United States after their failure against Castro in Cuba? Or was Lee Harvey Oswald just a lone gunman with a need for "justice"? Listen as David and Gordon begin a 3-part exclusive mini-series for Declassified Club members on the conspiracy theories surrounding who killed JFK. ------------------- Join The Declassified Club: Start your free trial at ⁠⁠therestisclassified.com⁠⁠ - go deeper into the world of espionage with exclusive Q&As, interviews with top intelligence insiders, quarterly livestreams, ad-free listening, early access to episodes and live show tickets, and weekly deep dives into original spy stories. Members also get curated reading lists, special book discounts, prize draws, and access to our private chat community. To sign up to the free newsletter, go to: ⁠⁠https://mailchi.mp/goalhanger.com/tric-free-newsletter-sign-up⁠ ⁠ ------------------- Order a signed edition of Gordon's latest book, The Spy in the Archive, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠via this link.⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Order a signed edition of David's latest book, The Seventh Floor, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠via this link.⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ------------------- Email: [e-mail] Twitter: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@triclassified⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Social Producer: Emma Jackson Producer: Becki Hills Senior Producer: Dom Johnson Exec Producer: Tony Pastor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

For exclusive interviews, bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, first look at live show tickets, a weekly newsletter, and discounted books, join the Declassified Club at the Rest Is Classified.com. One in ten Americans believe that the central intelligence agency killed a sitting U.S. president. It was all massive disinformation. The CIA had nothing to do with that hit. It's not that the CIA did it or that the mob did. or even the Castor did it. The CIA and FBI had information that would have put Lee Harvey

Oswald onto the Secret Services watch list. He's still a communist, isn't it? His Marxism compels him to get a visa to visit the Soviet Union. He would have seen a map of the route that John F. Kennedy is going to take. You have distraction shots. Then you have a kill shot. Oswald was a patsy and he was shooting distraction shots. Jack Ruby, a nightclub owner. This is the most wanted fugitive in the United States and John Wilkes Booth. Do you mean to tell me a nightclub owner with a loaded gun is sauntering into the basement of the Dallas Police Department is going to put three holes in his stomach

and kill the suspect on national television? We should say that Anthony does claim to have some information from his time in the White House. All I'm going to talk about is what's available in the public domain. Don't underestimate the budget cuts that Kennedy called for in March of 1963. Nearly 52 military installations in 25 states. 21 overseas bases, big money. You know how many helicopters have been lost in Vietnam?

Nearly 3,000 so far. Who makes them? Bell Helicopter. Who owns Bell? Bell was nearly bankrupt when First National Bank of Boston asked the CIA to use the helicopter in Indochina. How about the F-11 fighter? General Dynamics of Fort Worth, Texas.

Who owns that? Find out the defence budget since the war began. $75 billion going on $100 billion. Nearly $200 billion will be spent before it's over. In 1949, it was $10 billion. No war, no money. Well, welcome, secret squirrels. To the rest is classified, I'm Gordon Carrera.

And I'm David McCloskey. And that was Mr. X. the mysteriously named character from Oliver's Stone's film, J.F.K. Now, of course, in our regularly scheduled programming, we have been looking at JFK and the CIA, and we hope you've enjoyed that remarkable series, looking really at the relationship between JFK, the president and the CIA, and especially over Cuba. And we ended, didn't we, David, with the dramatic moment of, Kennedy being assassinated and here for secret squirrels, secret squirrels even, we've got a,

we've got a, we've got a special treat. I've got into my shadowy mix, Mr. X. Yes, you look very shadowy too. If you're watching this, Gordon, I do. Gordon looks as though he's speaking from an undisclosed location with a strange purple sort of metallic background behind you there and just nothing else to identify where you might be. When I'm actually in the goal hanger offices. You're actually a goalhanger towers. Now, we should say Gordon, that if you were listening to this episode

after having just listened to the first two JFK, the CIA and Cuba episodes, you may want to hold off on starting this very special mini-series until you've gotten to the end of that six-part series looking at

really the misadventures of the John F. Kennedy administration, the Central Intelligence Agency, and Cuba. You don't have to, but this is a special mini-series available only to club members where we are going to kind of tease out some different theories about who killed John F. Kennedy, theories that come really straight from the story we told on the main pod, and they specifically relate to the Central Intelligence Agency, just teed up in your wonderful reading, Gordon, by Mr. X from Oliver Stone's JFK. Did a secret cabal of sort of CIA insiders kill the president?

Did the mafia kill the president, Gordon? We talked in the main pod about the CIA's collaboration with the mob to go after Castro. Did those guns get turned on the president? And then finally, in our last episode, we'll be looking at whether John F. Kennedy may have been actually killed by Castro himself. I mean, if you haven't listened to All Six yet, we have spoiled the ending slightly by telling them that JFK gets assassinated, but they might have worked that one out already. But we kind of did lead up to some of these theories, but this is a chance to kind of explore the theories in a little bit more detail to try and understand it. I mean, we should say there are loads more theories. There are almost an infinite array of theories about who might

have done it and how, which range from a kind of globalist conspiracy. I mean, I've seen George H.W. Bush implicated in it, so the later president of the United States. In collaboration with Henry Kissinger and aliens, I believe as well, in that, in some versions of that theory. Yeah. And so sadly, we're not going to look at every one of those. Even though we love our aliens, I think we've done UFOs, so we're not going to do them here. So we are going to kind of follow really closely on these kind of three different theories in three episodes. And we're not going to kind of go deep into every detail. Because as I've been looking at it, as I'm sure you have, David, you can get lost in the ballistic details of the magic bullet

and its exact trajectory and how possible it was to travel through JFK and Governor Connolly, you know, and you can get slightly lost in some of the kind of deep details of this story. And we're not going to try and do that, but rather kind of set out, I guess, first, the official history of what happened and then try and understand these theories, look at how plausible they are, and actually look at some of the kind of, the kind of of implications of them and how they've played out and why they matter today. And I think in that way, it is a story that really matters because the conspiracy theories or the theories, I should say, are still very prevalent and have played a huge, rich part in American culture right through

to today. You know, I think it's apparent if you've listened to all six episodes on the main pod, coming out of that story, I think you could argue that the CIA, the mob, and the Cubans all separately may have had motive to kill John F. Kennedy. We should say also, Gordon, that when we look at the bob, we'll be joined by a very special guest, Anthony Scaramucci, the mooch, from the rest is politics, US fame, who has his own theories about the mob and claims to have insider information, I believe. You sound almost skeptical about that.

I'm slightly skeptical. I will attempt to be cordial and polite, but I'm going to disagree with the mooch. I'm only skeptical about the mooch because, you know, I know the CIA did it. So I kind of, that's why I can be quite dismissive of the... As you've made it apparent in the main series, Gordon... Gordon Carrera has gone... I will get the chance to explore that and reveal what I really think. Yeah.

That's right. That's right. So I think it's probably worth, though, Gordon, setting up the quote-unquote official version of what happened.