Austin/San Antonio, Texas based digital film maker, animator and motion graphics editor.
http://youtu.be/hnApJDsCw28
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm3021382/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1
This a presumably modern video made for an old song… I wonder how they did this? I am assuming it was done in after effects with some kind of “old film” filter / LUT applied on top of it? How you think they did it? The tunnel effect at 25 seconds in particularly intrigues me…. They could have used just any kind of 3D app, but I wonder if it wasn’t something in After Effects. One way they could have done would be to make a light grey and black striped surface at the top of a Photoshop file and then colored stripes on the bottom half of the image- then apply a cylinder effect in After Effects. But they had the camera move like it was a round donut, and then the tunnel does an “S Turn” after a point. Can this be done in after effects?
My attempt to duplicate the shot with a grey and black striped Photoshop image with the After Effects “CC Cylinder” effect applied to it. I made it a 3D object and had the 3D camera move through it:
I still haven’t figured out how to make a curved tunnel in after effects.
Drone, timelapse footage of San Antonio College ACCESS building
The below video was shot with the timelapse feature on an iPhone ( mounted on a plastic tripod) color corrected (Hue/Saturation) in Adobe After Effects.
Welcome to another edition of On the Trail of Delusion, where we try to separate the wheat from the chaff and try to give you something interesting on the JFK assassination as opposed to some of the ridiculous slop you’ll see on the internet and on YouTube.
So today my special guest is Adam Gorightley who is an author who has written many many books but also has a terrific website http://www.historiadiscordia.com which you’ll see a link to in the bottom and his articles have appeared in all sorts of publications on the internet underground magazines countercultural publications. But what’s of real interest to us here on this podcast is that Adam has done some absolutely fundamental amazing work on people like Kerrie Thornley, Fred Chrisman, Thomas Beckham, and Raymond Brochures. These are all names that sort of came out of or were associated with the Garrison investigation. And so I’m very happy to have Adam with me today. And Adam, tell us how you got into, looking at some of these characters.
Yeah, thanks for having me on, Fred. Well, let’s start with Kerrie Thornley. Back in the early 90s or so I became aware of him probably even earlier than that. I was during that period uh like I start had started writing for Z and I was really interested in conspiracy theories and UFOs and paranormal and all this kind of far out stuff. Thornley came into my awareness. First of all, I saw some articles he had written for a Zine called FACT SHEET FIVE, which was really an important Zine during that period. FACT SHEET FIVE was basically a catalog this guy named Mark Zunder put out listing all the Zines available. 2:42 He did this month after month, put a lot of work into it. And there was I saw a column called Conspiracy Corner by this Kerrie Thornley guy and it’s like I actually couldn’t make a lot of sense out of it but uh I became more aware of 3:01 him and as uh time went on uh I came across a book called Conspiracies Coverups and Crimes by an author named Jonathan Vankin you might be familiar with. 3:13 Yeah. and uh he was covering some of the more far out conspiracy theories in that 3:20 book becoming prevalent at the time and some of the characters one of whom was Kerrie Thornley 3:27 and just a thumbnail sketch Thornley had known Oswald and the Marines for a 3:34 short period of time then got sent over to Japan where uh Oswald had been 3:40 previously stationed at Atsugi and he was working on a book at during that 3:45 period called the IDLE WARRIORS which was like being a Marine during peace time, the cold war and kind of the 3:53 malaise and things going on with that period. And he based them uh the main 4:00 character in the book was Johnny Shelburn which Thornley based on 4:06 himself and other Marines he had known in that period including Lee Harvey Oswald. And so Thornley got over to uh 4:13 Japan and that’s when he around the time that Oswald defected and he went “whoa I’m going to change the focus of this book to be entirely on Oswald “you know. So that was kind of the first curiosity that he had known Oswald in that period and was writing a book about 4:32 Oswald uh prior to the Kennedy assassination. And so Venin covered that in his article 4:40 about Thornley. And he also got into some of the more far out theories 4:46 surrounding Thornley who was investigated and uh indicted by I’m not 4:52 sure if he was ever indicted. Fred Litwin: Yeah. No, he was. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. By Jim Garrison. And Garrison had these 5:01 smattering of theories. one that Thornley was the second Oswald that he 5:06 was connected to the military and the aerospace industry and they were somehow 5:11 involved and he also claimed that Thornley was CIA and uh on and on and on 5:18 and so Thornley denied all those accusations initially but then later like in the ‘7s 5:25 after the Garrison investigations he started thinking about that and he was also some would say suffering from uh 5:33 paranoid schizophrenia, which might have been uh helped along by, you know, the 5:40 prosecution of Jim Garrison causing that paranoia. But he started he 5:45 was looking back and he now by this time he was thinking, well, maybe Garrison got some things right. There was a lot 5:51 of odd stuff going on during that period. And how did I happen to run a, 5:57 you know, my paths and Oswald come together? Was there some other sinister force there? You know, was the 6:04 conspiracy setting him up as an alternative pepsi? So he started 6:09 believing all these things or entertaining these uh notions and uh 6:15 ultimately at one point he started to believe he was a part of the MK Ultra 6:21 project and that he he and Oswald were part of a Nazi breeding experiment to 6:27 create, you know, these future assassins of America. his life kind of spiraled 6:32 out of control during that period. But and so that was kind of a nutshell of uh 6:37 Thornley in that book uh Venin put out. It was just one chapter and I I was 6:43 fascinated by the guy started collecting materials and 6:48 uh Ven said it one point he was uh considering um writing a biography of 6:56 Thornley. I go, “Oh man, I’ll love it when that came out.” But he never got around to that and I had this material 7:03 and eventually I had enough content I felt to pursue writing a book on 7:09 Thornley and that turned out to be the prankster and the conspiracy which was published in u 2003. So I guess you’re 7:18 asking how I became interested in these characters. that was one of the characters and how they became 7:23 and and and you also published uh this book Caught in the Crossfire um which I have to say is an absolutely fantastic 7:30 book and anybody anybody interested in Carrie Thornly this is the book to get. 7:36 It’s chalk full of primary sources, documents, photographs, stories. I mean 7:42 it’s it’s absolute essential reading and you’ll find links to it in in the comments below. 7:47 Came into contact. How did this happen? It was kind of odd how I came into contact. We were never quite clear how 7:53 our paths crossed, but I met up with a guy named Bob Newport. And uh this was 7:59 after I wrote the Thornly book. I think I might have Yeah, I interviewed him for the Thornly book actually. He was 8:05 friends with Thornley uh growing up and he uh mentioned he had some Discordian 8:12 archives and I didn’t even mention that uh Thornley and a buddy of his named 8:17 Greg Hill started this spoof religion back in the late 1950s called 8:23 Discordianism which is the worship of the Greek goddess and of chaos and discord. It was kind of started as a 8:30 spoofed religion but became a kind of collective for different artists where they shared ideas and it was kind of a 8:38 platform to u kind of riff on uh 8:45 different religions and philosophy and politics. And it was a circle of different writers and artists that 8:53 exchanged uh sometimes humorous stuff, collages. They had these things called 8:59 groovy packs where they’d send a bunch of things in a uh envelope with a joint 9:04 usually and you take the joint out and take a hit and put put your own spin on 9:09 this uh collection of materials sent to you and send it on to the next guy. And 9:14 a lot of this material became like these projects ended up in a book called the 9:19 Principia Discordia which you could say was uh kind of the Bible of Discordianism. So 9:26 anyway, where I was going with all this and here’s a here’s a book that that you know another very important book uh uh 9:34 the sort of the origins of uh the Discordian Society which you were you were part of writing this book 9:40 right and that’s where I was going. um Newport told me at one point uh he had 9:48 some uh what he called the Discordian archives and I actually met him at at 9:54 Robert Anton Wilson’s house in like 2001 and he brought an armload of this material and I thought, “Oh, this is 10:00 some great uh stuff.” You know, I’d like to maybe use it for a book at uh some 10:06 point. He said, “Well, you’re welcome to do that. I’ll let you I’ll let you take some of this along. There’s more I 10:12 have.” But so I borrowed that and scanned it and started working on this book. And later on, we’re like in 2009 10:19 or so, he said, I was in LA where he lived and he said, “Well, come on over and you can have everything.” And it 10:24 turned out to be oh, a dozen of boxes, which was all the material that Greg Hill had put together 10:32 for these uh archives over the years. And a lot of them were I mean, he just saved everything. He’s all his 10:40 correspondents and he’s saved, you know, the carbons of what he sent out to 10:45 people and there was just a wealth of material and some of that stuff in there was uh files on the garrison 10:53 investigations and a lot of uh communications Thornley was having with different people during that period. saw 11:01 that the material that kind of fell in my lap uh has been used for these 11:07 different projects. Is that is that material in in some sort of physical archive somewhere? 11:13 I’m actually uh working on that right now. The archive is at my house here. 11:19 Okay. And u it should be going into a uh library archive. Uh it’s probably going 11:27 to happen at the end of this uh year or early uh next year. Uh more news 11:34 to follow on that. But uh yeah, I’ve been working it placing it at a library 11:40 for quite some time and uh university library. 11:46 That’s good. I um I’m struck with with Thornley in the fact that you know Garrison went so far as to think that he 11:53 was the body in the in the Oswald photograph in the backyard you know and 11:59 I mean it’s just and and and what’s amazing is you know bro people like brochers were sort of into selling that 12:07 as well you know you know oh I know I recognize those hips you know I mean it’s it’s so ridiculous 12:14 I guess we Oswald is the one who started that rumor cuz I think he’s 12:20 Was it he or someone and said that Well, that’s not me. My head’s been super imposed on uh that uh photo of me. Where 12:29 was it? In Fort Worth or wherever he Yeah, it was in his backyard in down in Dallas on Ne holding the communist 12:37 literature in one hand and I guess the rifle. I’ve been there. I’ve been to that house. Oh, backyard. 12:43 And so anyway, that kind of rumor got started and uh Garrison heard about it 12:50 and uh he just pick up on these things. Um Thornley’s dad was a photo engraver 12:57 of some sort. So he thought that his father or Thornley would have had 13:03 the skills to do that and that. But then brochures testified. I guess it was 13:10 brochures who really said, “Yeah, that was uh Thorn Lee in the backyard posing 13:16 as Oswald.” And that started a lot of the second Oswald stuff. And there was 13:22 witnesses uh Garrison said he had several witnesss who saw Thornley with 13:28 Marina Oswald, but that never really panned out when I was looking at there was one witness who came forward, but 13:35 you know, it all seemed sketchy. was Yeah. And and I mean he he he told I 13:41 mean he even wrote a memo to the HSCA about the backyard photograph and you know how lucky we might be because the 13:48 father was a photo engraver. And then you know he he was just so insistent. Garrison so believed that Thornley was 13:55 in New Orleans um when Oswald was there and they must 14:00 have crossed paths because Barbara Reed you know said that you know they had been together. 14:06 another character write about. Yeah. And there was some overlap as I 14:11 recall because there was a few weeks. Yeah. Uh them being at the same who knows. 14:18 Well, yeah. You would have thought uh Thornley would have recognized Oswald 14:24 quite obviously, but and if he had seen Oswald, he would have been really interested in talking to him 14:29 and really uh there’s no reason to hide that. I mean, he would have been really interested. 14:34 Barbara Reed claims she saw them together in a coffee house or a 14:40 restaurant. And uh then if you look through some of that materials, there 14:45 supposedly was a second witness and there was an affidavit uh produced by this fellow. I forget his 14:52 name, but it was never signed. So it seemed like one of those things where Reed or Garrison put it together and 14:59 say, “Here, sign this so we can have another witness.” and whoever it was didn’t sign it. That kind of tells you 15:05 something. Um, yeah, Reed was a character herself. We talked about the Discordian society, 15:12 this kind of prank religion of these uh it was a real mix of like libertarians, bohemians, uh, 15:21 pranksters. And really when it started in the Southern California, it was just 15:28 three guys. uh Hill Thornley and Bob Newport. But when they went to New 15:34 Orleans, they uh kind of started in New Orleans branch of the Discordian Society 15:40 there with a another character called Roger Leven who kind of got sucked into 15:46 the Garrison Investigation at one point. And Barbara Reed was involved and Reed claimed that she was the goddess Iris 15:53 herself. She was involved in all kinds of stuff. I mean, she was uh pretty 15:59 fundamental to the uh resurrection of the old style jazz scene being uh 16:07 reinvigorated there in New Orleans. That’s something certainly positive you can say about her. And uh 16:13 but she was also one some people described her as she was somebody who 16:19 always put herself in the middle of these different situations whether she 16:25 whether she actually had any uh connection to them and you know there’s rumors that her and Garrison had some 16:33 type of relationship and and she was basically 16:38 kind of like Jack Martin uh initially a witness but Then they become part of the 16:44 investigation team. So you can see how this whole thing was so conflicted, you 16:50 know. Yeah. And Weisberg would spend a lot of time at Barbara Reed’s house and and trying to sort of get information from 16:58 her or bounce ideas off of her and they’d all meet at her house, all these people together and and it was like a 17:05 cauldron of rumors. I mean I mean New Orleans, everybody was talking in New Orleans. 17:11 I think Thornley made the mistake. At some point he met uh Reed uh he’d 17:18 returned to New Orleans for a little bit of time like in ‘ 64 after the assassination and the topic came up and 17:27 I think she confronted him at that time saying well yeah I saw you uh with 17:33 Oswald don’t you remember that? He’s going, “Well, no, you know, I think I guess it 17:40 could have been possible and I didn’t recognize him.” And that kind this opened up the 17:46 the whole thing to spin out of control. 17:52 Yeah. And I, you know, I feel I feel for for Thornley. I mean, he was dragged to New Orleans and indicted and he didn’t 17:58 have a lawyer and and uh you know, these gar, you know, the garrison’s men are trying to convince him of whole variety 18:05 of things and cross-examining him and and uh you know, I mean, my god, he was 18:10 put through the ringer and then you had the ridiculous Harold Weisberg actually asking I think Fred Nukem to can you 18:18 draw some some whiskers on a picture of Thornley to make him look like Oswald. 18:23 Yeah, I was looking at some of that uh material today and somehow 18:29 Thornley did have a lawyer at one point named Lavine and somehow they came 18:34 across this correspondence with the DA’s office with uh Fred Nukem and they sent 18:41 Weisberg was involved. They sent a photo of Thornley out of the Tampa Times and 18:46 they asked uh N uh Nukem if he could retouch it. a lot of basically the 18:52 hairline to uh make him look more like Oswald. I guess they’re pursuing this uh 18:59 theory. So once again, uh who I don’t know exactly what they did with that 19:04 photo, but it wouldn’t be surprised me if his investigators had the touched up photo and taken around. Do you recognize 19:13 this uh fellow, you know, and and then Weisberg wrote the letter on DA stationery and then 19:19 Yeah. Yeah. To make it look all official. And it was just a bizarre bizarre incident. 19:26 And then I mean and then David Lifton got involved because he became friends with Carrie Thornley and realized this 19:33 is all silly. Yeah. And so he started writing about that out in Los Angeles. It was just um an 19:40 interesting Sylvia Maher was a friend of Carrie Thornley’s. Mhm. Yeah. She wrote a letter uh kind of 19:47 defending him. Uh and uh yeah, they exchanged several letters and 19:52 and he sent her a lot of Discordia stuff and and they exchanged letters and and I 19:58 think she contributed to his defense fund and you know she she early on realized this is all so ridiculous. 20:06 But he was Thornly was uh poking the bear we might say when it came to uh 20:11 Garrison. Uh he was he wrote a few different things saying how Garrison was 20:18 an out of control authoritarian and things like this and they even became 20:25 part of a Discordian prank called called Operation Mindfuck 20:30 right where uh and it had to do part of that came out of um there was that dude 20:37 Howland Chapman who I guess was supposedly an investigator. He’s a Gilly 20:42 Plaza regular as they called him. And uh he was a John Burch Society guy who 20:49 believed that the Illuminati was involved in the assassination which was a pretty common kind of John Burchian 20:57 thing at that time that was being spread. But he was the one who came up with, as I understand it, he got a hold 21:04 of those uh three [ _ ] photos and got those to uh Garrison. 21:09 Anyway, Thornley heard about Chapman and Chapman was the one who really convinced Garrison that there was a shot from the 21:15 sewer, right? That Yeah, that too. You know, so you have this you have this 21:20 thing Chapman goes to see Garrison, convince him there’s a shot in the from the sewer and like one day later Garrison is issuing press releases, you 21:27 know, there’s a shot from the sewer. I mean, it’s we’ve we’ve solved it. There was whatever 21:33 two men, three men men, six men, men on the triple overpass. It was 21:39 constantly changing, you know, but he denounced it like we’ve solved it. It’s over. 21:44 Yeah. It’s a done deal. Um I was going to say this. So this Illuminate Illuminati 21:51 thing tickled Thornley and Robert Anton Wilson, these other guys and they got interested in uh 21:58 researching the Illuminati and they tied it into the Discordian society and some of the prank letters they sent I mean 22:05 they’d send stuff to like Welch with the John Burch Society and other people but 22:10 apparently they sent some to Garrison claiming yeah that the Illuminati was behind the assassination. 22:17 And I found one in Weisberg’s files. It was Robert Anne Ton Wilson wrote a spoof 22:24 letter along those lines to uh Weisberg. And Weisberg was one of the ser of this 22:30 bunch too, you know. 22:36 Well, yeah, in in a certain sense, but yeah. 22:42 So, so yeah, Thornley, you know, a fascinating character. Um uh but that 22:47 you know led you to write about you know people like uh Beckham Chrisman and Brochers. I don’t know if you want to 22:53 talk about one of those characters. Um, yeah, with brochures. Um, 23:01 I’ve been a reading Kennedy assassination books for a long time like you as a young man and u 23:10 you know I came came across uh oh different pro garrison stuff back in 23:18 the mid 80s or so you know and I go wow that’s a lot of his theories and the 23:26 people he claimed were perpetrators involved in the conspiracy. They show up 23:31 in other books. People were repeating this. So, it was and of course Oliver Stone ended up running with it. But, you 23:38 know, you see that stuff as a young guy and it’s like, wow, this is the district attorney of New Orleans. He’s got a lot 23:45 of power and you hear him talk, you know, charismatic guy and all that. It’s like, yeah, he start repeating this 23:52 stuff as fact. it, you know, later on you dig into it, it’s like, huh, maybe 23:58 not so much. Yeah. Um, so, uh, but I remember seeing brochers 24:04 mentioning a book, uh, by Bernard Festerald. Yeah. Coincidence or Conspiracy, I think it 24:11 was called. Yeah, it was a paperback book. Yeah. Which I have. Yeah. Bernard Festerwald. Yeah. And it’s like a who’s who and good 24:17 resource at the time. Um, and brochures was in there. And once again, it’s one of those characters. It’s like what? 24:23 This guy, they said he knew Ferry knew that Ferry was part of the assassination team, but 24:31 then brochures had also threatened the LBJ at one point. He was also involved 24:38 in UFOs. It’s like what is that this guy, you know? Then um 24:44 as I was writing the first Thornley book um 24:49 started coming across you know in the National Archive files of Garrison brochure statements and yeah he’s making 24:57 all these claims that uh Thornley was part of this group of 25:02 assassins that were also homosexuals and uh that somehow that was part of the 25:10 motive and he connected seemingly connected did Clay Shaw and Ferry and 25:15 Thornley to the assassination. And yeah, he had these crazier ideas like the 25:21 superimposed uh photo and I in uh in the Discordian archives I came across uh 25:29 other materials in the correspondence and I think you mentioned this in your book where a friend of uh Thorn Lee’s 25:37 named Luis Lacy had some interactions with brochures in the around 1970 you 25:42 know so I kind of incorporated that into the book and showed what a kind of she 25:49 she thought he was nuts. Um, it had to do with uh I don’t know if I need to go 25:55 into the all all the details, but uh but he he was another one of these characters kind of like Barbara Reed 26:02 involved in a lot of different stuff. Some of it seemed uh pretty positive, 26:07 you know, like he was helping homeless people in his mission there in San 26:12 Francisco. And he was he had a hand in uh what do he what was it the first uh 26:19 gay liberation day in San Francisco, but then he was somebody who’d always have a 26:24 falling out with people and got into a big row with lesbians in San Francisco. 26:30 So they kind of kicked him out in following years of being involved in the 26:36 gay liberation. So he kind of started his own. He he had this group called the Lavender 26:42 Panther which were like gay vigilantes that were take going to take on uh 26:49 people who were beating up gays and he was just always showing up in uh papers. 26:55 But he’s also kind of a unhinged guy who’s always getting into confrontations 27:00 with uh people and had mental issues. And here we go. This is one of your uh 27:06 you were you were a priest caller. He was sort of a supposed reverend, a man of the cloth, but uh but who knows how 27:14 real that is. And well, he got some credentials through the Universal Life Church, right? Yes. 27:19 Which anybody could get get at that time. And so you and so did uh the likes 27:25 of Fred Chrisman, uh Carrie Thornley. I mean, a lot of people were becoming universal life ministers for a lot of 27:32 different reasons. Tom Beckham as well. Uh part of it was to run scams. 27:39 You know, I think some people during the Vietnam War era thought they could avoid 27:44 the draft be becoming a minister. And so there’s a lot of different motivations, 27:49 but uh Garrison be came across that these guys were all ministers and stuff 27:56 that led to another one of his theories that they were these so-called somebody 28:01 later called these wandering bishops that were using these fringe or obscure 28:07 religious uh churches organizations as fronts to hide their activities as 28:15 political assassins. I mean, and part of that I think was based on 28:23 Jack Martin was feeding that them that information, but he was also involved in these groups as well, you know, uh, with 28:30 David Ferry. So, it’s like you’re involving all these other people’s, but your main witness witness 28:38 uh, you’re letting slide because he’s feeding you the information he want you 28:43 want to hear. you know, uh, Jack Martin. Jack Martin, another 28:49 crazy, unreliable narrator, just like Barbara Reed and, uh, Reverend Braymond 28:56 Raymond Brochures. And these were some of uh Garrison’s uh Yeah. I mean, I love the fact that that 29:01 brochures would went on went on uh a TV show and basically claimed that he had 29:07 channeled Lee RB Oswald at a seance, you know, and Oswald said, “Well, I’m 29:13 innocent.” You know, and and and that’s when the Garrison’s men really got interested. Oh, you know, well, he also 29:19 said he knew fairies, so they got interested. They they brought him to New Orleans. Of course, that was a great 29:24 holiday for brochures. He was off with the boys for a week, you know, having a great time. 29:31 Chrisman too got a vacation with he and his lawyer and he there was a big uh 29:36 Chrisman was trying to get more squeeze more money out of uh Garrison at the time. He was uh given $500 29:44 for he and his lawyer to go to New Orleans. And Gresman said, “Well, that 29:50 that’s not enough, you know, to pay our time.” But you look at $500 and 29:56 When was that? 19 68. 68. It’s more like uh I don’t know three 30:03 or $4,000. So was plenty. And he spent that weekend there and had a uh good 30:08 time apparently. Yeah. En enjoyed it. Uh 30:14 talking to I uh interviewed his son Fred Chrisman Jr. 30:20 who’s uh around. Oh wow. And uh he said that Yeah. He said that 30:25 uh Chrisman was uh absolutely thrilled, almost giddy to get the attention and go 30:32 to uh New Orleans. Uh Thornley’s wife or ex-wife that by that time wasn’t 30:38 thrilled at all. She was pissed and kind of upset by the whole thing. They were separated at the time. And so Fred 30:45 Chrisman Jr. had those memories. Do you think uh do you think I mean I mean Garrison learned about Chrisman through 30:52 uh and Beckham through an anonymous letter. Do you think Chrisman wrote that letter first? Yeah. First let me say Chrisman 30:59 had an extensive uh history of writing fake letters. So under uh assumed names. 31:07 Um some other insights from uh Fred Chrisman Jr. 31:14 But uh he lived with his his Chrisman and his wife were separated, 31:20 but uh Fred Jr. would visit like in the summer there in Tacoma. And Chrisman had 31:28 a uh office uh underground office, underground lair where he’d uh do what 31:36 uh Chrisman Jr. called uh his father would do his disinformation work. And 31:43 what he the setup he had uh he had there was a large desk there with three 31:48 different typewriters. So he he’d use different typewriters to produce letters, you know, that’d be harder to 31:54 trace. And he he’d collect uh different uh stuff like letter heads from 32:01 wherever, government agencies. if there was an estate sale or like a law firm 32:07 that went out of business, he’d collect different things that he could emboss to make it look official. So, there’s a lot 32:14 of evidence that he concocted a lot of letters and I have a few of those just 32:21 to show them in the book I’m working on on Chrisman. But unfortunately, a lot of 32:26 his files got his home files got tossed out. Chrisman Jr. has a few examples of 32:33 stuff and uh photos that he shared with me. So yeah, Chrisman had a history of 32:39 doing that. There’s two anonymous u letters. Uh the first one was uh 32:49 named five uh people who were involved who had information. So two of the 32:55 people named were Chrisman and Beckham. There was uh also uh Sergio Aracha and Lewis Rebel. 33:04 They were part of that friends of Democratic Cuba 33:11 anti-Castro uh group. Somehow they got lumped into this letter. And also somebody called 33:16 Martin Graci. There’s no Martin Graci. There was a Julio Graci. Uh so 33:24 and there was Bob Bob Lavender as well. Well, Bob came later. I guess he came 33:30 later. I think uh at least uh Garrison suspected 33:35 and Boxley, his investigator, they suspected he wrote this uh letter. It 33:41 wasn’t signed, but he’s connected to that letter. And that’s why Boxley went 33:46 to interview him about that. and he had some of the same information that appeared in that 33:52 letter. So, it’s hard to say exactly if uh 33:58 uh Lavender what his role was. Was he just repeating that information he had heard overheard 34:07 from Beckham and Chrisman or was he a collaborator in this uh farce? So, there 34:14 was that letter. Then there was the uh second anonymous letter 34:20 that that first anonymous letter was like 67 and early 68 uh was the one that 34:28 is just a one-page letter anonymous not signed to anybody. There’s this guy you 34:33 need to check on in Tacoma Chrisman. Uh he travels around the 34:40 country and he’s involved in this thing. Jim, you need to look at this guy. 34:46 Whatever. And that that seems more like a uh Chrisman letter. You just don’t 34:52 know for sure, you know. Yep. But Chrisman had this habit of or 34:59 he was trying to build this mystique around himself. I mean, it goes back to the UFO days and 35:07 uh I believe hoaxing the Mory Island UFO incidents in his letters about 35:14 battling the underground creatures, the daros in Burma during World War II. it 35:20 he was just creating this uh mystique around himself as this action 35:27 man who was involved in paranormal events and was a deep cover secret 35:34 agent. There is the famous uh document called the easy papers. Are you familiar with that? 35:40 Yeah. And I’m pretty sure Chrisman concocted that. It’s like a six-page 35:48 document allegedly written by an analyst at CIA who pulled Chrisman’s uh file to 35:57 lay out this information about him. And it’s obviously a hoax, but yeah, it 36:03 reads just like uh other Chrisman um 36:08 hoax letters. I shared that with Fred uh Chrisman Jr., Right. And 36:15 I’m not I’m not a big fan of AI or any of that, but he said we got a my son and 36:21 wife uh want to run this through chat GPT to compare it to uh his book Murder 36:28 of the City Tacoma, right? Which is right here. Yep. And according to Chatch GPT, 36:37 uh it’s the same author. Huh. Okay. What that means, I don’t know. There’s a 36:43 lot of slop that’s comes with AI, but it it was an interesting analysis. 36:50 Yeah. So, yeah. And and of course, you know, Garrison receives these anonymous 36:55 letters and he then has to bring Chrisman in to testify and Chrisman said nothing. I mean, really nothing. And 37:02 then Garrison went on to tell the HSCA, “You got to look at this guy Chrisman. He’s he’s a he’s a real suspect uh in 37:10 the assassination.” And lo and behold, he’s not even in Garrison’s book. Yeah, he had a bee in his bonnet about 37:17 uh Chrisman for sure. Um well, he was as you know, he was in the original version 37:25 of uh Chrisman’s book. Yeah, he was he was in the original version of Garrison, 37:31 excuse me. Yeah, Garrison’s book, but was removed later. I talked to Larry Hapen about that um 37:40 when uh Garrison was uh writing that called his assassination memoir whatever 37:47 on the trail of the assassins. Yeah, you’re familiar with that title. Um he intended yeah to have a chapter on 37:54 Chrisman. I think the first publisher looked at I forget who this was now, but 38:00 they said, “You promised us a connection with the CIA and it’s just not here with 38:06 Chrisman. You know, it’s not working at all.” There you go. Yeah. And so Garrison 38:12 regrouped and he contacted Fred Nukem who was involved in that touchup photo 38:18 and said at that time the U House select committee assassinations had ended and 38:25 Garrison wasn’t happy with the work they did on Chrisman. He he it was his opinion he gave them a bunch of leads to 38:32 follow where they could have proved it but nothing uh they you know determined 38:37 that Chrisman had an alibi and I mean comparing him to the photos, I guess, of 38:43 the three tramps, I guess, of the million different people claimed were 38:49 the three tramps. I guess Chrisman maybe vaguely looked like the old man [ _ ] 38:54 but uh whatever the case, uh Nukem 39:00 suggested Larry Happen is the guy who really looked into Chrisman during that uh period in 6970. 39:07 and happened and got a hold of Garrison and said so many words you know you’re barking up 39:15 a tree there it’s going to undermine your book by using this information about Chrisman 39:22 because like I saidan had determined he’s the one who found out that Chrisman had an alibi he’s a uh 39:30 he was a teacher I forget he was might have been teaching high school at that time and was at some conference or 39:37 something and met up with uh one of the persons who worked with 39:44 Chrisman at where was he at? That might have been I think it was Reneer High School in Reneer, Oregon 39:53 who uh saw Chrisman there on the day of the assassination and they provided 39:59 written uh records to the House Select Committee on Assassination. So I mean 40:05 that so that was kind of a important piece of uh information 40:12 witnesses that Hannan brought uh forward that basically threw a wet towel over at 40:18 least Chrisman being in Daily Plaza on the day of the assassination. Of course that didn’t stop any of these theories 40:26 from growing since Chrisman died after the House Select Committee on Assassination. Man, 40:32 you can get online and punch in Chrisman and uh a lot of people are sold on the 40:37 theory that he was one of the three tramps. 40:43 Yeah. No, and you know, and it’s and it’s it’s it’s and I mean even Garrison was like, “Well, isn’t it amazing that 40:49 Chrisman was uh you know, living uh in Oregon and and and Fred Clay Shaw went 40:55 to uh Portland after San Francisco after the assassination. He must have they 41:00 must have crossed paths. That’s why he was going to Oregon to see Chrisman. And he’s writing this to the HSCA. I mean, 41:08 it’s just incredible. Hey, I’ve been to Portland many times, too. Yeah. I’ve been to Tacoma, Seattle. So, 41:17 yep. As I could be connected. So, yeah. No, a fascinating character. Looking forward to your book. I think 41:23 it’s going to be a really really uh really good book. And uh we’ll go into uh Chrisman in more detail when that 41:29 book comes out. Uh Beckham sure Beckham is another you know character who is associated with Chrisman who went on to 41:37 become not only a garrison suspect but Joan Melon’s key suspect in her book 41:42 Farewell to Justice. What can you say? Um boy where to start with Beckham. I mean he was a lifelong 41:48 conman. you’d done some good work on him as well. I have an extensive write up in 41:54 the book, but he was involved in one scam over another over the years. He was 42:00 like a lot of people associated with Chrisman. He had it used different aliases. Mark Evans was one as a uh 42:08 rockabilly and southern singer or sometimes a uh preacher of some sort. He 42:14 had all these different scams and like Chrisman and uh some of these other 42:20 folks they were uh connected to were involved in diploma mills of one type or 42:28 another. And somehow the two uh and Beckham was pretty young. He was in his 42:34 early 20s at the time he met Chrisman in 1966. Was a pretty accomplished conman 42:40 by that time. And uh during the fall, I 42:46 guess he got there supposedly in the spring of ‘ 66 through the fall, they started a bunch of dummy companies. One 42:53 of them was a course to teach law enforcement that cost uh $500, 43:01 you know, and the FBI got involved in breaking that up. They’re also involved 43:06 in a kind of a scam charity called the Northwest Relief Society that uh would 43:13 leave uh donation cans in different bars and stuff and the Olympia PD I think got 43:18 in and broke that up. And I think there might have been more serious stuff going on. There’s definitely allegations that 43:26 there was a stolen car ring and just a lot of shady stuff. But uh Beckham 43:33 basically split. This was his mo in the end of ‘ 66 and went to uh Omaha where 43:40 he started the same kind of shenanigans again. A lot he’d go and uh he’d start 43:46 like a uh thrift store which he’d also set up as a universal life church where 43:53 he could be a minister like in the basement and it would like a fly by night. He’d 44:00 be there for a uh few m few months or a few weeks uh allegations that he was 44:07 fencing stolen material. Then he’d move on to the next scam. My 44:15 my favorite Beckham scam is in the early 60s when he he promoted a Ricky Nelson 44:20 concert and and of course lo and behold he brings in a Ricky not the Ricky Nelson 44:26 but somebody else with the same name and well it might have been him it might have been him posing as ran off with the 44:33 money and he did the thing on a more serious level the same like I said the same mo in 76 where and this was in Alabama he 44:42 started collecting money for for a benefit for a couple of police officers that were killed for a country and music 44:49 show. He claimed that initially Ernest Tubs was going to be there with his group and but he got indicted for wire 44:58 fraud and whatever and he ended up u federal indictment being prosecuted by 45:06 uh Jeff Sessions, a future attorney general of these United States. But he 45:12 used he got off. who was acquitted and he used the claim that he was working for the CIA and so he was like doing a 45:21 lot of this stuff in the interest of national security. I don’t know but it was there was enough 45:28 reasonable doubts in the juror’s minds to uh get him uh acquitted. 45:34 He had started another things he was starting were these fake detective 45:40 agencies and once one he named this the central 45:46 intelligence alliance or something he used the initial CIA so he was kind of being 45:53 truthful that he had started he he’d worked for the CIA 45:59 but yeah quite a uh character but it was that time. Yeah. And so came out of that 46:07 uh trial that uh once again these rumors were surfacing again that he’d worked 46:14 for the CIA somehow involved with the Kennedy assassination. That’s 46:20 when the House Select Committee got started uh talking to him again during 46:25 that period when he was being uh prosecuted for that Alabama scam. He was 46:32 in jail in Pineluff and that the HSCA started talking to him there and 46:38 interviewed him a couple more times. Uh, and he told and and from what I 46:44 understand, he got immunity to talk to them. So he could say any damn thing he wanted to and and he was 46:52 always kind of working the scam seemed like over the years to create a this 46:59 false story that he could uh profit on about him being involved in the uh 47:05 Kennedy uh assassination as an unwitting kind of dupe who got sucked into the 47:11 thing and he was during the uh time he was being uh He was talking to the HSCA. 47:20 He was also shopping around a book which was I guess some version of which was 47:25 later published in the 2000s called the remnants of truth. Yeah, it’s definitely remnants of uh 47:33 truth. So yeah, it was something he’s always trying to uh I mean my my favorite is when he was 47:38 testifying before the HSCA, he was listing off all his degrees, a degree in 47:44 this, degree in that, all the universities, and he said, “I have more degrees than a thermometer.” 47:50 He actually he stole that from uh one of his earlier uh trials when he was uh in 47:59 I think it was when he was in Omaha. He got busted for a diploma mill 48:05 and the judge chastised him and that the district attorney there said, “Uh, yeah, 48:10 this man has more degrees than a thermometer.” And so Beckham loved that and he 48:17 started using it himself. And that’s what’s funny about that book of his remnants of truth. 48:23 And not a really a whole lot in there about the Kennedy assassination. I mean, there’s a few pages. There’s like a 48:31 dozen or more pages of all his diplomas. Yep. There’s personal testimonies from his 48:38 family members. It’s like, okay, it’s it’s a bizarre book. And and uh I I 48:44 mean, it’s just what a what a bizarre story. And I can’t believe that Joan Melon bought it. I mean I mean he 48:50 actually she was convinced that he had converted to Judaism. She has a picture picture of him in his 48:56 in in these re rabbitical robes, you know, in her book. And then she has some claims that he had some sort of military 49:03 document that he gave her that convinced her that he was, you know, involved in all this. And of course, you never see 49:08 the document. Yeah. That was similar in that same book. Um I believe it’s in the 49:14 introduction of the book. She also goes after Thornley claiming he was CIA and 49:19 that she saw a document that proved that. And I later I asked her at the 49:26 time and that was when did that book come out? 2005 or something or 49:32 emailed her asking if I could get a copy of that. So at the time I read that I go whoa that’s you know I took it kind of 49:39 half seriously. I’d like to see that document that proves I finally she never sent me the 49:46 document at the time. She said she was sick or something. and when she got better, she’d get it to me. And but I 49:53 pursued I emailed her a couple times, never heard back. I finally figured out what the document was. And you can see 50:00 it in a post that the story of Discordia uh called was Carrie Thornley, CIA. 50:08 And so, no, that document did not prove Thornley was CIA. You can go people want 50:15 more information, they can go read that. But yeah, there’s and so there’s also the document where she claims the 50:23 document was from Chrisman claiming that Beckham was part of this operation at a 50:30 place called the farm. I think secret military kind of clockwork orange place 50:36 where they were creating these military assassins. And so yeah, I never bothered 50:42 asking her. I’d like to see what the document sounds like. another phony thing that maybe who knows Chrisman 50:48 cooked up or who knows we’ve never seen it. Why don’t you show it, you know? 50:54 Yeah. Um, now he does uh Beckham uh he does uh have a 51:04 ministry there in uh where is that Kentucky or at least did 10 15 years ago 51:10 and an actual uh church chapel that was a former u synagogue I think 51:18 right and so he’s kind of a self-styled uh 51:23 dude [Laughter] Uh yeah. So I guess he can say whatever 51:30 he wants to say. He’s a minister of after some fashion, I guess. 51:36 Yeah. You know, I strongly recommend people go read his uh his testimony 51:41 before the Garrison Grand Jury. It is abs it’s absolutely hysterically funny 51:46 when you read because it just the way he lists off his degrees and and the way he 51:52 answers questions and and uh you know and he he actually was accusing Garrison 51:57 of homosexuality in his grand testimony. That was the big bombshell he dropped at 52:03 the end just Yeah. Um what I think he was uh doing 52:10 it’s uh that he was he was nervous of obviously of going back to New Orleans, 52:17 but I don’t think he was nervous about Kennedy assassination stuff. He still had some charges hanging over his head 52:25 for a number of uh things. There was that uh store that he and his brother 52:32 ripped off. They both worked in this uh clothing store and they stole a huge amount of uh the uh 52:40 merchandise there and were going to start their own stores. Once again, you look at the numbers, it was like $12,000 52:46 of merchandise. So, you’re talking in today’s numbers $100,000 worth of 52:52 stuff. So, that charge was still hanging over his head. his brother had uh 52:59 already uh served his time, but uh Beckham, as he was want to do, had been 53:06 able to skip out on I think uh it looked like he faked uh a suicide at that time, 53:12 went into a mental facility, then got out of there before he could face those 53:18 charges. So that those were still going on. And uh there was also the uh 53:23 statutory rape charge that had never really been adjudicated either. So he 53:29 had had these things going on. And if you look at his testimony, he kind of touches on on all that stuff and 53:36 provides alternative facts of what you actually happened that he wasn’t. So, I 53:43 think he was just trying to spin and cover for his past criminal 53:49 activities. If if you kind of read between the lines and a lot of that stuff and he never 53:55 he never really addresses questions. He just goes off on and then of course he he he ends up 54:03 telling the HSCA about his involvement in the assassination. They they realize it’s all ridiculous. But then years 54:09 later, Garrison believes, “Oh, there’s a confession tape, right?” Yeah. It’s it’s it’s Beckham. And Garrison’s all 54:16 excited. I’m I’ve been vindicated. There’s a confession tape, you know, and I was right all along. 54:22 And it was just was just it was just Beckham, you know. Well, Guy Russo has a uh good story 54:29 about the confession tape. Yeah. Gus Gus Russo. Yeah. You interview You interviewed him. Did 54:36 he talk about that? Okay. Yeah. Well, he basically he went to see Beckham in his office in uh I don’t know, Kentucky or 54:43 Omaha and Beckham is all these fake diplomas on the wall and and at some point uh he sort of says, “Yeah, it’s 54:49 all ridiculous. Let’s just play guitar and they end up guitar the the afternoon rather than talk about anything 54:55 serious.” Well, Russo has this story where he uh 55:01 he was working with Bernard Festerwald and uh going to the National Archives 55:08 looking for stuff. And this was like uh kind of after 55:13 during and after the House Select Committee on Assassinations. And at that time, all that was available 55:22 were like old FBI files and other stuff. the House Select Committee stuff had 55:28 been embargoed and um and part of that embargo came 55:35 from the Black Congressional Caucus really started the force that started those 55:42 hearings on the different assassinations and they uh were trying to keep a lid on 55:48 the U MLK materials just because of the hijinks of the FBI all 55:55 that they thought it would tarnish his image. You know, there’s all the wire taps of his 56:02 affairs, alleged affairs, and that type of stuff. So, that’s kind of the reason there was the embargo on those 56:07 materials. But, and has Gus told you this story before? No. No. Go ahead. No. 56:12 Okay. And so, he was going in there and u 56:19 looking for stuff. And one day he went into a little al cove where he found a 56:25 uh like a uh sheet that listed a bunch of uh stuff and he looked at the 56:31 numbers and it was related to the embargoed material. So he took he 56:37 grabbed whatever this was a uh sheet of paper that was somewhere in this alco 56:42 took it back to his desk and started writing down all these he rec it didn’t say the house select committee and 56:49 assassinations he just recognized the series of numbers he goes whoa that’s 56:54 interesting that’s all the embargoed material 56:59 and there’s a a list of everything one of the stuff on there was confession tape da da Huh? So what he did, he 57:08 thought maybe I can do something with this list. Um he thought 57:16 during certain times like during lunch uh breaks and uh maybe on weekends there 57:23 was more inexperienced staff there uh students uh and people maybe not quite 57:31 uh as swift on the uptake as the regular archivist who manages. I’ll take some of 57:38 those numbers to them and see what they bring back to me. And sure enough, they brought back to him some of these 57:44 embargoed materials. Uh, a lot of them were these cassette tapes, 57:50 right? Yeah. And so he So he’s kind of freaking out here. Whoa. 57:56 He goes back and one of them, I’m not sure if he ever actually listened to the 58:01 uh Beckham tape, but he started listening to these tapes on the 58:07 equipment there. And the archives would uh supply you 58:12 with a tape player and a duplicate thing where you could make copies. So that was the plan. he was going to come in there 58:19 during lunchtime, start getting these embargoed classified materials basically 58:27 and uh but he it it was going to take a long time and so uh Fster said, “Well, 58:35 maybe we can get some machine where you can high do a high-speed dubbing.” and they got a hold of this big clanky 58:43 huge machine that he was somehow able to get into the archives and started uh 58:49 burning multiple copies at high speed and got busted by somebody caught him 58:56 there. They would first they caught him with you can’t use that high-speed machines. You’re going to break the damn 59:01 tapes. Oh, okay. Well, they and he got clearance from the people at who are 59:07 working during lunchtime. But this is one of the regular archists and he so you got to stop that right now. You 59:13 can’t use them. The archives started walking away. He turned back and saw it was the embargoed material and he just 59:19 flipped out, you know, and took all the material and u re so hight tailed it out of there 59:26 and went back home to Maryland or where it was that weekend uh expecting the FBI 59:31 to raid him, but nothing ever came of it. Uh, and you could, you should ask 59:37 Gus. He has a write up of this. It’s like a dozen pages of this whole uh, 59:43 experience. But that’s when he first heard about that uh, confession confession tape which led him to doing 59:51 some research on Beckham and like you said uh, going to his storefront and 59:57 guess he was in Kentucky at that time and figuring out Yeah. that he was just a uh good humored kind of con man. And 1:00:06 they ended up jamming on guitars and singing uh that night. 1:00:12 Yeah. It’s it’s it’s I mean it’s just I mean I could I could I could just sense how excited Garrison was to believe that 1:00:20 he was finally being vindicated, you know, by by Thomas Beckham. I mean it’s just so funny. Well, there 1:00:28 yeah, there had been these rumors about the uh confession tape and Garrison heard about it. Different stappers was 1:00:35 saying there’s a con uh confession and so that was spreading through the you 1:00:42 know JFK research community at that time. It was the hot hot thing. 1:00:47 Beckham’s confession tape which confessed to all number of things. Yeah. and 1:00:54 implicated dozens of different people, you know, that had uh materialized 1:01:01 during the Garrison investigation. I mean, Beckham connected them all or 1:01:08 claimed that, you know, they were all connected. Oswald, Ruby, 1:01:13 uh, Banister, etc., etc. Yeah, he loved to drop names. I mean, 1:01:19 he’s just absolutely incredible. And uh what a what a character. I mean just 1:01:24 really funny. I mean if I if you again if you read his testimony either the HSCA or Garrison’s grand jury, you can’t 1:01:30 help but laugh when you read it. I mean it’s actually quite funny when you read it. I don’t know. I just don’t know how Garrison 1:01:36 could have taken him seriously um after that. But he did. Of course another name is not in Garrison’s book. 1:01:43 He left Beckham out of his book as well. That is true. Yeah. 1:01:48 I wonder why. Yeah. But like I said, Joan Millan ran with it and gave him his story and other 1:01:56 shot in the arm. Yep. And and yeah, and she she bought a hook, line, and sinker, including the 1:02:01 fact that he even converted to Judaism, which was absolutely hysterical. And it was his own branch of Judaism, 1:02:08 right? It was his own special branch, you know. I don’t know. I don’t know what the heck it is, but he wears a yarmaka. And uh I 1:02:14 think I think uh he might have some uh 1:02:19 family ties are Jewish to Judaism, but it’s Yeah, it’s pretty 1:02:25 Well, he changed he sort of changed his name for a while. So it was like B apostrophe E C E sound like it was a a 1:02:33 Jewish name. Yeah. Yep. You can’t make this stuff up. 1:02:40 Okay. So tell me what’s next? You’re writing a book on Chrisman. Tell us about your your upcoming book and where you’re going to go from there. 1:02:47 Yeah, it’s about it’s almost done. Like I mentioned, I uh interviewed Fred 1:02:52 Chrisman Jr. which was interesting getting uh hold of him and he’s been really uh 1:02:59 helpful in the endeavor and other people I mentioned like Larry Hapan and uh 1:03:04 Hannon, that’s how you say it. Yeah. Larry happening and uh number of other people. It it’s 1:03:12 been going on for numbers years. It was kind of like the uh Thornley book where just out of an 1:03:19 interest I’d gathered material on Thornley and you know after a while you 1:03:24 just have so much stuff and written articles related to Charisman. It got to 1:03:30 a point, well, maybe this is a book. And yeah, I’ve learned 1:03:35 quite a bit over time to really expand on, you know, what’s out there already. 1:03:42 Well, I can’t wait till it comes out and we’ll have you back on to uh discuss the book when the book is published. Uh it’s 1:03:49 it’s definitely a needed book and uh your stuff is absolutely magnificent. So, uh, u, we’ll put links into your 1:03:56 books in the description of the of the podcast and, uh, I strongly recommend everybody go and buy Adam Goritley’s 1:04:02 books. They’re just terrific. Yeah. And check out Historia Discordia that has some of JFK assassination 1:04:09 stuff, but lot of good stuff. A lot of stuff on these characters are are on online on 1:04:15 your website. Very important stuff with documents, photographs, um, etc. A lot of good primary material. Yeah, I got 1:04:22 pretty obsessive for a while with some of those posts there. I look back at them now, it’s like, good lord, 10,000 1:04:30 words in a blog post. The hell’s wrong with you? Yeah, it’s too much. 1:04:37 Okay. Well, thank you very much and uh we’ll be back in touch uh sometime next year. 1:04:42 Okay, sounds good. Thanks,
Technical Notes:
This was originally shot as a 1280 by 720 ZOOM Call. I edited the first few shots using Adobe After Effects (“detail Preserving Upscale” with the rest edited with Adobe Premiere and it’s basic scaling feature. ( I think I over did the extreme close up on the guests face.)
I downloaded several book covers from AMAZON and other websites. Then I cut them up and layered them in Adobe Photoshop. Then I animated them into motion graphics pieces in Adobe After Effects.
One of the animated book covers has some 2d animation made with Adobe Animate (formerly Flash. The Masonic “33” and the spinning Atomic symbol were made with Animate:
A walkaround Dealey Plaza (downtown Dallas, Texas) with Fred Litwin, author of several JFK books, and his friend Steve Roe, co author of a chapter of Gayle Nix’s book “Pieces of the Puzzle.”
Ruth Paine came back to Dallas for the 60th anniversary. She gave a talk in Irving and signed copies of her book. A hard-core JFK Buff Joe Alesi is friends with her and her son Chris. Joe Alesi knew our whole gang are strongly on the lone gunman side and very pro Ruth Paine. So she spent most of the week hanging out with us. Where she knew she’d be safe. (My take) i
In her speech in Irving Texas, she even stopped and pointed at our group and publicly thanked us for “policing the internet”
Ruth Hyde Paine (born September 3, 1932) is [citation needed] a former friend of Marina Oswald, who was living with her at the time of the JFK assassination. According to official government investigations,[1] including the Warren Commission, Lee Harvey Oswald stored the 6.5 mm caliber Carcano rifle used to shoot U.S. President John F. Kennedy in Ruth Paine’s garage, unbeknownst to her and her husband, Michael Paine.
On The Trail of Delusion, Episode 23, Daniel Evans
Lifelong JFK Assassination researcher and Dallas area Tour guide Dan Evans tells Fred Litwin about his journey into JFKA obsession and what he tells visitors what he thinks about Conspiracy Theories.
On the Trail of Delusion, Episode 021, The Marina Oswald Tapes
After her Warren Commission testimony in 1964, many felt Marina Oswald had not been completely forthcoming.
Bobby Kennedy and J Edgar Hoover asked The FBI to wiretap Marina Oswalds phone in an attempt to discover any new information about her late husbands assassination of President Kennedy.
Host Fred Litwin hears these rare audio recordings and his guests Paul Gregory, Denis Moricett, Steve Roe and Marianna Yarovskaya discuss the implications of what Marina Oswald thought about conspiracy theories.
Music by: Power Music Factory Channel URL : / powermusicfactory
TRANSCRIPT:
I want to thank everybody for coming this afternoon. My name is Fred Litwin. Noted author Fred Litwin. And of course, Fred is also the author of I was a teenage JFK conspiracy freak, on the trail of delusion and Oliver Stone’s film Flam. The demagogue of Dealey Plaza. Fred Litwin is here. He’s a longtime author and certainly watcher of politics. Joining us, Fred Litwin, great to have you here. Thank you very much.
Welcome to another edition of On the Trail of Delusion, the podcast where I try to separate the wheat from the chaff and try to give you something substantial on the JFK assassination as opposed to some of the nonsense you’ll find on the internet and on YouTube.
Well, today we have a really special edition.
We’ve got my friend Steve Roe back to give us some incredible information along with Denny Moricet who is a a fantastic researcher on the photographs and videos of the assassination. And we have a filmmaker by the name of marianna.yarovskaya who are going to give us a little story about some newly discovered tapes um of Marina Oswald back in 1964. S
o, let’s go to Steve Roe and he could kick this off with some background information on what we’re going to discuss today. Hi everybody. Good to see you. Here’s a story of how JFK assassination researcher Denise Moriceet obtained the audio files of wiretap operation on Marina Oswald back roughly in March of 1964 from the National Archives.
But now for the first time we can hear those audio files and surprisingly they’re very very clear.
Now there’s been a lot of commentary on these tapes and that they were somehow evidence of Lee Harvey Oswald’s innocence of the assassination of President Kennedy because we hear recordings of Marina discussing her doubts about the official story. But a group of us have listened to these tapes intensely and we think it’s more a matter of Marina Oswald expressing hope that the father of her children might be innocent. That’s very important rather than any reason to think he was innocent. So let me give a little short background story on this leading up to it. After the Kennedy assassination, uh, Marina Oswald was taken under guard by the Secret Service to the end of Six Flags in Arlington. Later on this episode, we’re going to have a brief drop in visit from Paul Gregory, uh, the acclaimed offer of the Oswalds to talk about erroneous rumors that his father was a part of a plot to make Oswald look like a leftist. Uh Paul Gregory’s father, Pete, was a native Russian speaker and helped translate Marine Oswald’s interviews with the Secret Service. While under guard there, uh she made contact with a man named James Martin and uh he was a business manager.
he worked at the Inn of Six Flags and somehow Mr. Martin convinced her to be a business manager for her.
And a lot of stuff in the tape is Marina talking about this business manager agreement with uh James Martin. Uh Marina ended up signing a written contract for 10 years with Mr. Martin as as is her business manager. And after the Inn of Six Flags, when she was released by Russ uh secret service, she ended up in Dallas with several different families of the Russian immigrant community over there. Uh there were some, but but mainly she was the ones that really helped her out were uh uh Russian-American uh native native Russian named Katya Ford and her husband Declan Ford.
They were trying to help her get out of this written contract with Martin cuz she was not very happy with it. So they helped get a lawyer named Bill McKenzie out of Dallas and he got involved with it and he was trying to negotiate out the written contract that eventually eventually he did get settled uh somewhere I believe in May of 1964. So, I’m going to have to file a lawsuit on it and uh just proceed from there. And I’ve talked to a bunch of prominent attorneys here in town and they’re going to testify as to the reasonableness of a fee.
I hope to get it filed tomorrow afternoon depending on whether or not I have a secretary in the office. Uh she’s not wanting to sign some contracts. And I said, “What?” Said what now? Said that she was not uh wanting to sign any some contracts. They had some business contracts. and he started talking, said that she needed an agent to handle her business and so forth like that. And I and he asked me, “Did I know anybody that spoke Russian that could interpret?” I said, “Well, Mr. Gregory over in Fort Worth, the only one I knew.” And he said, “Well, uh, he thought maybe it might be not be best to bring in somebody else on that.” That was out in Martin’s house, right? Uh-huh. But there was no one there to speak Russian men, was there? No, it sure wasn’t. Now, was there a notary public there? No, was not. Okay. Well, they’re just holding out for something. They want $40,000 for Thor and Leech, and they want $20,000 for Martin. Really? Yeah. Oh, God. and they wanted $40,000 to get out of that written contract in uh uh they settled I think in May sometime or about $12,000.
Meanwhile, Marina got a lot of donations from well-wishers, kindhearted people throughout the nation and probably some from the world to help support her. I think the estimate I saw somewhere in the neighborhood of around $65,000 in 1964.
So, uh decision was made uh that Marina wanted to get her own home and the Fords uh assisted with her on that to help her locate a rental home over there uh not too far away from the Ford house in Richardson, Texas. That’s a suburb just north of Dallas. Uh Hat Marie’s warrant commission testimony in January 64. There were some people that were skeptical of her that she wasn’t forthcoming. The message got over to the FBI. The Warner Commission wanted to do some surveillance on her. So there’s two types of surveillance that were available. Of course, uh, one’s the old physical surveillance where FBI would go out there and watch, uh, her home, all the people coming in and out of their home, watch her movements. Uh, so they did stakeouts on her coming and going and the people she was seeing. Now, the second type of surveillance was a wiretap monitor, electronic surveillance. and Robert Kennedy, the attorney general, signed off on the wiretap and electronic surveillance. So, we have the uh uh document showing that. So, this operation eventually went down to the local Dallas FBI office, one of the special agents there, Nat King Pinkson, supposedly well acquainted with these wiretapping. He was the one that placed the wire taps on the the phone at the rental home in Richardson. And I believe it was on February 29th, which was a leap year that year, right before Marina moved into the new place, which a rental home. All right. Once they got this set up, Marina moved in 29 Belt Line Roads where she had her home. And they set up an operation uh listing post over there at 614 Beltline Road, not that far away. And in that place uh the listening post was uh a Russian speaking FBI agent named Anatoll Bogus and this went on for about 2 weeks and it was pretty short duration but it finally got discontinued. So, uh, getting back to all this, we had all these tapes and Denise and I and another researcher, uh, sort of trying to use Google translation, try to get, you know, translate these these things and we we were able to get some of that, but they’re they’re not all that clear. I mean, something gets lost in the translation. So, we thought it might be better to have a native Russian speaker listen to them. and uh uh help translate and uh we did find one and her name is Mariana Yvasaya. Sorry if I mispronounced her name. Mariana Mariana made a film called The Woman of the Gulog with Arthur Paul Gregory who will be on here a little later. Of course, she’s a native Russian speaker and it’s important because you can get all the inflections that go into how the people talk. You know, you get a better feeling talking live than just sitting on a piece of paper from Google Translate. Here’s the audio of the FBI call to Marina as they were trying to trick her into leaving her home. Are you going to be busy today? A little bit. Well, the reason I ask is uh Mr. Boguslav and I would like to take you for a ride and show you a couple of things and ask uh about them. Okay. Mhm. In the afternoon. Here’s Mr. Do you want to take me? I want to take you. Yeah. In a car. Where? Over to Neie Street. And you know to show us about the where y’all walked that night. And then you told me that you had never seen Beckley Street. Mhm. Maybe you would like to see it and we would uh why you want to show me get uh well to get an idea of exactly where you went and everything. Mariana, uh, how would you like to what’s your impression of these tapes when you first listen to Well, um, uh, first of, thank you, Steve. Um, I’m not a professional interpreter. I’m actually a filmmaker. And I was looking at it from the standpoint of a Russian speaker, former Russian journalist who became a filmmaker. And uh, um, to my opinion, it could make um, an interesting short film called The Widow. um for the whole um you know these five tapes. But um this is just my personal view um of you know it it could make an interesting story of a situation of a young girl 22 23 who um became involved in in probably the most significant murder in in American history as as the widow of the murderer. Um um these tapes uh to me say a lot about her character about who she was as a as a person as a human being. I do believe at 22 you are a formed human being. You can say what’s judging by what your interests are. You are pretty formed in my opinion especially back then. 22 was a mature age to my degree to my to my opinion. But as questions maybe I could um shed the light. I I wanted to add that she wasn’t just talking to women. She was talking to George Bouhair. I think there was an interesting dynamic between them because George was unmarried and 60 and she was 23 and uh she was bored out of her mind stuck in that house and she wanted to cook for him as many Russian housewives wanted like to to make a fish or to you know and he would say look I’m unmarried that would look strange. I don’t want to you know compromise myself. I don’t want to compromise you. I can talk to Katya who is married. I can’t talk to you after hours or I can’t come to you after hours. A lot of very interesting details like that. But ask questions. Your parents were alive in 1963 when this happened. Um have they ever talked to you about the JFK assassination? What their impressions? Did they believe in a conspiracy? Oh uh I grew up in Moscow. I was born and raised in Moscow and uh I must say that in in an in a family of Russian intelligencia, right? You know my father was a rocket scientist, my mother was a playwright and honestly um I was born, you know, I was born in the 70s. So, um I think it wasn’t um uh it wasn’t very much of an agenda in the 70s in the in or especially the 80s in u um in the Soviet Union. I think one of the biggest things was that it you know this was not connected of course from their standpoint with the KGB. That was the main point that this had no connection. uh but my parents never discussed it and in fact you know any kind of his American historical milestones were not big in the 70s and 80s um uh in a family um you know in in the family circle what what did uh what’s your impression did she say did she give any information about what she thought about Oswald her husband yes I think that I was a little bit surprised that there was not in the private conversation between her and Katya and they were very very personal. It just didn’t seem like she was um in love in any way of form. You know, that was not it didn’t sound to me like she was um you know a young woman in love. It w it sounded she was a mother of her children and it seemed like she had the duty uh to him. Uh, for example, there was a long conversation about the grave. You know, she would say things like, um, I want to make sure that his grave looks decent, that, uh, it’s not just a little hill like Americans do, but it’s a decent Russian type grave with a little fence and a cross. Because then she ended her speech to Ka that they even bury dogs with um some decency and he deserves it. Even though many people think he’s a dog, but he was a human being.
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So, So that was an interesting dialogue that I remember and that touched me because you know as a filmmaker I thought you know you take this dialogue and only at the end you revealed who that is that it’s the widow of you know the biggest murderer sort of you know that that that could be an interesting that could be an interesting scene. Another um uh impression that I received from listening to her is that she wants to hope that it wasn’t him or wasn’t just him. That maybe he took the gun, maybe he took the gun but didn’t shoot. Maybe there was someone else. Maybe, you know, what if there was this uh uh can of coke? How could he run so quickly? And then very quickly his um conversation partner Carter says, “It’s none of your business to speculate. Let them deal with it. It’s none of your business.” And she keeps saying, “But I want to hope, but I understand, but I don’t but I want to. I understand.” So to me, it it the impression was she understands he was a killer, but she wants to hope that maybe he isn’t.
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It’s it’s I mean it’s fascinating and I think it’s it’s you know I’ve seen this in other posts that I’ve in other interviews where Marina uh was always looking for some angle that maybe in fact she said I want to help. It’s for the children. She said in another interview I posted on my blog. It’s for the children. I want the children to feel better about things. If I could find some evidence that it wasn’t Lee or it was somebody else, it’s be psychologically better for the children. Do you get a sense of her concern for her children about what had happened? Obviously, it does seem despite the yelling, it does seem like she’s a good mother. You know, she she says things like, “How can I even go studies somewhere to, you know, they don’t understand I have those two kids and isn’t it full happiness to be a mother?
When somebody tells her, “Oh, she got knocked up again.” and you know when she was still married to Lee she says don’t they understand by saying so you know rudely that being a mother is happiness um yes I think that she she had children’s interest in mind all the time so that she had you know yes she was saying that if Lee w were to to be found innocent it it would be of course better for her for her and for the kids yes yeah that’s that’s very very natural uh thing for for her mother to feel. Sure. And she was a young mother. By today’s standards, she was a young mother, but um so was Katya and you know, I don’t think that that was such a big age difference um for Kaiser to call her immature. I think that Marina was pretty mature for her age dealing with two kids and and being at the center of media attention with journalists basically showing up um at her door morning and night and the fact that she went through the you know, immigrating to another country. I mean that’s that’s a very very big step as well right so she was under a huge huge amount of stress that that’s that’s for sure and so I would I would not call her immature she was calm through all these five tapes you know aside from few segments she was calm and quiet and very composed so you know she was never kind of losing it um as except for like I said did the Warren Commission get the transcripts and tapes. Did the Warren Commission get the the transcript and tapes? Uh, well, I would say they they got a summary of what was on the tapes. Uh, they certainly knew there was a wiretap operation going on. Uh, they probably didn’t want that to be public knowledge. But uh anyway, the the one that the person that did the summary was uh uh FBI agent Bogus and he he listened to the tapes and he wrote down like a summary of what Marina said. Most, you know, most important stuff, I mean, there’s a lot of details that she goes into and uh but you know, he makes a general summary. Uh they didn’t make it sound like somebody who told them somebody had overheard a conversation about naming that person, but they were trying very careful not to mention any wire tap. So Mariana, how would you describe Katcha Ford? I don’t know if I would describe as a mother figure to Marina, but you know, she was certainly uh I don’t know, somewhere about 15 years older than her. I’ve been in the country here now for, you know, well over 10 years for sure. Uh maybe she’s an older type sister or more of a mentor. Uh what was your impression of her? She was a I don’t know much about her background. She seems like um older older generation immigrant. So she’s much more integrated into the American society. Her Russian is much worse than Marina’s. She also mixes Russian and English. So creative this ring English rose English sort of um a hybrid language like you know they would say the word lawyer and then they would conjugate it like the like it would be a Russian word. Um she seems like a yes like an older friend. Um and they discuss very intimate things from women’s sexual desire to cheating to other women. And there is so much gossip going on.
Denny, you you’ve gone through the transcripts or is there anything that sticks out in your mind from the the transcripts? My favorite parts are when Katya and Marina discuss the assassination of President Kennedy. Those discussions come up after that Katya has given Marina information that she has found in newspapers and it’s very interesting to get Marina’s reactions to that information. Uh guys, let me give you a few examples. Here in the tapes, I found two examples of Marina thinking of the possibility of another man involved in a shooting. The first example is when Marina says that a man was seen running across the yard across the Texas school book depository. Marina believes that this man who was running had a role in the shooting.
Mhm.
What is
Mhm.
The second example of this is the fingerprint found on Lee’s raffle. Marina is not convinced that it proves that Lee did the shooting. Marina says, “Yeah, but Lee could have hold the raffle and his fingerprint stayed on it and then gave the raffle to somebody else.
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If I could redirect the conversation to another tape that I got from from you guys and that’s the tape of the first interrogation um done by Mike Howard And um I forget the other guy’s name, the other secret service guy with my father translating. Uh there’s been a whole theory developed and it it emerged out of Moscow, I believe. Uh there’s a whole theory uh that um Oswald did it, but Oswald was really a right-winger of the worst sort uh which prevalent in in Dallas. and uh that the uh white Russians in the area, including my father, had combined to create this story uh that my father deliberately mistransated uh the interrogation to uh to say that Lee was not a communist. The worst thing in the world would be if for them if Lee uh proved to be a communist. He’s not a communist. He’s actually a right-winger. And this Gregory guy who was translating mistransated to to create that impression. uh and they focus on one word and I’ve not talked to Mariana about this and that was her whether she was able to describe the rifle and they say he deliberately my father deliberately um mischaracterized it as as a a dark weapon and I thought that was maybe chney. Uh, but I want Mariana to listen carefully to that tape because you could hardly hear her speaking. Um, and see what she says when she describes the weapon. As I, as I say, they say that’s that’s the key to explaining uh this uh Oswald was actually a right-winger story. But we’re not talking about the FBI wiretaps. We’re talking about something else. This is agent Mike Howard, US Secret Service, Dallas. This recording made in regards to the assassination of President John Kennedy. Investigation being made by the Dallas office. This recording is being made at the end of the Six Flags in Arlington, Texas. Uh where Mrs. Oswald is is being held by Agent Howard at Charles Couple the Dallas office. This recording is being uh made in Russian. Our translator is Mr. Peter Gregory, interpreter from Fort Worth, Texas. Okay. All right. Mr. Gregory, would you ask her what her name is?
She does not know if Lee brought a gun from Russia.
No, she does not know of her knowledge. Did Lee purchase uh any type of a gun uh while uh while living in the United States?
Uh-huh. Uh, she says uh she knew that that there was a rifle in the house. Gun or rifle? What else now?
really fourth word.
New Orleans. Sorry. She says that uh uh she saw the gun in the house in in New Orleans and in Dallas. All right. Now, this gun, was it a a rifle or a pistol? Or just what type of gun can she
It was a gun.
Uh she said she cannot describe. It was sort of a dark uh rifle just like any other common rifle. She says
a baby needs to be fed.
Uh Mariana, would you uh would you know what a rifle looks like? May you know the difference between a rifle and a pistol?
Yeah.
about how uh can you describe this rifle that you saw?
Uh she says that the rifle of the approximately the same length as you’re showing her. However, the the the stock is this what you call stock, but the stock will need uh but the stock was longer and of course that that story of of Oswald being a right-winger was picked up by Jim Garrison who that I see I’ve not read any of that stuff. I I don’t want to waste my time on it. Yeah. So he he made a big deal of the fact that Oswald was not a lefty, that he was a right-winger, that in fact Garrison wrote that Oswald would have been more comfortable reading mine comp than Das Capidal. Mhm. Which was just ridiculous. But that’s that’s Jim Garrison. That’s been picked up by a lot of conspiracy theorists. Well, you can add to that in that I I think this order came directly out of Moscow, right, to change the the narrative and Gus Hall um I think also repeated that narrative. I’m sure being the head of the Communist Party of the US. Yep. and and this this translation of the appearance of the rifle is extremely important in these narratives. Going back to um Oswald being a right-winger story, I think where there are big returns and and that’s that’s to have a thorough examination of the Soviet documents, you know, which are proliferous. I’ve not spent a lot of time with them. You you need to know the Russian to to spend time. Uh, and I thought that would be something that really needs to be to be done. And I’m learning for the first time that one can perhaps go from Moscow to Gust Hall to Jim Garrison. Yes. And in fact, I’ve written about a a possible KGB operation involving Jim Garrison where he accu where there was an article in an Italian communist newspaper about Klay Shaw and I think that sort of was part of a KGB operation. Do you have the date of it? That was March. That was March of 1967. Okay. So, wasn’t in the immediate aftermath? No. The Soviets had a couple of operations to try and convince Americans that the CIA was behind the assassination or or other right-wingers. Uh but I’m and in fact, that’s that’s why I really want to see the uh the Russian files that are still in Moscow to see what other operations they were running. I can’t really recall the sources I used. you know, they were readily accessible as as I recall. Um, you know, I I do have to run. It’s a pleasure to meet uh the two of you. Yeah, it was great meeting you. There’s no reason we can’t do this in the in the near future, but I I I don’t want to be late for my appointment. Yeah, I’d love to have another podcast with you to talk about this in more detail because uh I I I liked your book. Thank you very much.
Marina says maybe Lee didn’t hit the president. He knew better who he was shooting at. Maybe she was talking about Lee shooting at Governor Connelly, but he missed him and hit GFK instead. Is it possible? Do you think it’s possible? Well, I don’t I don’t think it’s possible that’s what he was aiming for, but a lot of people have said that, and in fact, there’s a couple of books out there saying that his real target was Connelly because of uh the refusal to change his undesirable discharge. Yes. But I don’t buy it because I think I think that if he really wanted to hit Connelly, he would have then shot while he was uh coming up Hston Street, you know, where he would have gotten a much better view of Connelly as opposed to Shaney Kennedy was in front of, you know, who was uh I just don’t think it’s that don’t think it works very well. Uh we hear a discussion of writer Patricia McMillan Johnson who later wrote Marina Oswwell’s memoirs Marina and Lee back in 1977 and on the tapes we we hear discussion of Patrician McMillan Johnson. So, you know, we hear of her. Of course, she was trying to persuade Marina to write a book back in the early. I had a telegram today from Harper’s magazine and Oh, I’m glad you brought that up. I got one, too. Good. From Harpers. And what did they say to you? Just a second, Bill. Let me get it. I have it in my coat here. Says, “Hope you will consider possibility of Harper’s publishing Marina Oswel memoirs in a Priscilla Johnson writing them.” Stop. Harper, one of oldest publishers in US whose distinguished authors include both John F. Kennedy and Robert Kennedy. Robert Kennedy. Yeah, that’s the same that’s the same telegram they sent me. Well, I thought I’ll write them a nice letter tomorrow and send you a copy of it. You and I talked about how interesting it was on tape number nine to hear Marina and Katchcha talk about the newspaper stories of Lee allegedly being seen drinking a Coca-Cola right after the assassination.
Oh, yeah.
Well, Denise and I were talking about this time travel reporter who was Darwin Payne. And Dennis, you want to go on about that? It’s pretty interesting. Darwin Payne um entered the house. I think he didn’t even knock or maybe Marina didn’t hear the knocking. And um and in a case she let Marina let Darwin Payne, he was um a reporter for the Dallas Times Herald and she thought he was an FBI agent and she just let him in. I think she called Decline Ford and Decline Ford asked her to um kick him out that he should not be there and she was very worried that she she lets anybody in come in and you never know somebody could be somebody who could do harm to her. Darwin Payne is still alive. I will ask him if he remembers that part. Uh there’s an article in the paper this morning by the reporter that came out there yesterday. Mhm. And he says that he just walked in. Mhm. So, I want you to be real careful about about that cuz I’m very concerned about it. I’m worried about it. So, don’t let anyone come in the house while I’m gone. Okay. Okay. Enough. Um Marina was only 23 when when these conversations took place and uh I moved to America 23. you know, it’s it’s a it’s quite a shock to to end up in another country and she ended up completely alone. So, and her husband ended up being a murderer. Um, and she believed it. She she knew it and she just maybe hoped that he didn’t shoot at the president, but um, you know, she believed for sure that he shot the cop and um, she didn’t doubt that, you know, he was preparing to take the guns and so forth. And uh when she was alone surrounded by uh people who wanted something from her and she she unders she was aware of it. She was aware of it. You know we discussed that Katya mentioned at one point that Marina was immature. I think she was mature for her age just completely in a very strainous circumstance and having to mother two kids. So um yeah and she was also in a very tumultuous marriage where she was being beaten and and so yeah there’s a lot she went through an awful lot coming to America in that whole situation when she ended up living in a in a um house of a married couple Martin and his um wife and I forgot the wife’s name um when the wife seemed to be aware of the fact that Martin was hitting on Marina and then Later they they started having an affair but the white wife seemed to not have said anything because uh they wanted to get paid. I think they were getting considerable sum of uh thousands of dollars to host Marina and um because you know they also had children and Martin was unemployed. Um, and I think, you know, they didn’t kick her out and they didn’t even let her go when when uh uh people were trying to say, you know, she has another she can she can leave separately. You know, both the wife and Martin said no. So it it looked like to me that she felt completely trapped in that very very unhealthy situation when um you know a man much older than she is was was hitting on her and then ended up in an affair and the wife knew it but because of money didn’t want to um um to act on it for the time being.
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from. Well, look, I’d like to thank Marianaa and Denis and Paul for joining us on this episode of On the Trail of Delusion. Hopefully, we can come back soon to discuss Marina’s Warren Commission testimony. I think that would be another ery interesting session. So, thank you very much.
I met Mort Saul in the early 1960s. He was one of America’s great satirists,
0:10political commentators, comedians, and social observers.
0:17Although the landscape of the genre was dominated by Lenny Bruce and Mort,
0:24he was far more cerebral, less costic,
0:29and made a point of never using a four-letter word on stage
0:35or for that matter having a drink or smoking a joint
0:40ever. He recorded the first comedy album
0:46He was the first comedian on the cover of Time magazine. He sold out nightclubs all over the
0:53country. He wrote jokes for President Kennedy.
0:59He has appeared as an actor in a number of films, hosted a television show, wrote screenplays and autobiography,
1:07and became my first political and social mentor.
1:13There came a time in Mort Saul’s career where he developed an unquenchable
1:21curiosity about the assassination of President Kennedy and would venture to New Orleans
1:28where he volunteered his time to Jim Garrison, the district attorney who was
1:34portrayed in the Oliver Stone film JFK.
1:40Garrison prosecuted a man who he charged
1:45with being involved in a conspiracy to murder the president.
1:51For the record, that man was acquitted and Mortzaw returned to Hollywood where
1:58he was criticized, castigated, and deemed an unwelcome guest.
2:07He lives in Northern California now and we still remain friends
2:13over 40 years. He has never forgotten to call and wish me a happy birthday.
2:20I still consider him to be one of the most astute observers
2:26of the American political experience. KPFK listener supported Pacifica radio
2:32Los Angeles. My name is Elliot Mintz. is looking out. Mort, it is just like I can’t tell you
2:38what a gas it is to have you here tonight. Well, we moved heaven and earth, Elliot, as you know, and the
2:44listeners don’t know. Um the um there’s an abundance of riches in addition to uh
2:50uh first I was doing nothing. I don’t know how many of the listeners know that in addition to um doing the show after
2:57you and I got together and we decided to do this and it uh then of course uh they
3:03called from New York and said they had a Johnny Carson show for me in that way that they have of calling that always
3:09sounds like you know Operation Head Start. They’re going to help me urban renewal. The fact is they have a lot of
3:15letters and they can’t hold uh the audience on a chain that much longer. They want to know if I’m dead or not.
3:21So, uh, they’re going to import me for the show and they want to do it Monday and, uh, I that would mean, of course,
3:27flying in Sunday because you have to report at noon in order to, uh, brief the producer. So, um, there’s no way to
3:33do it. They won’t let you fly in that day because they’re afraid of weather delays. Then they wouldn’t let me. I
3:39said, uh, well, I have a show to do in Los Angeles, uh, on Sunday. And they
3:45said, cancel it. And I said, I can’t do that. And then they said I said, I’ll have to cancel this. Well, you’ve been
3:50canceling a lot of shows, you know, that won’t look too good. And um then of course the singular morality. Then they
3:57I said, “What about Tuesday?” They said, “Well, you couldn’t be on because Bob Hope is on Tuesday and he has a
4:02different position than you on Vietnam.” They told me that. So, I couldn’t be on with him. And um then, uh I finally put
4:10it off until Thursday. I’ll be on uh the Carson show uh Thursday night for those of you who have a duality of purpose and
4:17listen to KPFK and watch NBC, but uh they’re covering the full spectrum. I
4:22think Jim Garrison once described NBC as the network who believes in the right of the people to know, right?
4:28He’s not afraid of him, which is uh enough in itself. And I uh I spoke with
4:34um uh with Mark Lane this week who’s in New Orleans and I’ll be down there later this week uh after the New York trip.
4:41And um uh as you know he has a um bribery uh public bribery indictment
4:48against uh Walter Sheridan of NBC. And Walter Sheridan has a strange history uh
4:54for a broadcaster. Um as a matter of fact, Bill Stout of CBS once put it this
4:59way to me. He said when it came to the Garrison case, NBC didn’t use a reporter. They hired a house detective.
5:06They hired one of Robert Kennedy’s lawyers on the Hawa case to operate there. Yes, that’s who Walter Sheridan
5:11is. And he did the Frank McGee show which was called the case uh against Jim
5:17Garrison. and he went down there and Garrison has an indictment against him on the basis of uh publicly bri trying
5:24to bribe um Perry Russo to defect uh uh
5:29to the uh to California where he would not be extradited and to discredit Garrison publicly and um Garrison also
5:37charges in that indictment that uh Russo used uh I mean then not Russo Sheridan used the phrase I will destroy Garrison
5:44I’m here to destroy Garrison used it many times around New Orleans NBC turned that show over to Sheridan, not to any
5:52of its other um reporters. He felt, as he said in Playboy Garrison, that NBC
5:57had gone even they felt they had gone Sheridan had gone too far because they gave him equal time very quickly. They
6:03kind of backtracked. Uh, on the other hand, uh, we find with Newsweek, Newsweek’s continual blasts at Garrison,
6:09and I want to tell all the good liberals out there that that’s your journal. Phil Graham, the Washington Post, good social
6:15democrats, not Time magazine, not a fascistic magazine, but a good liberal magazine, Newsweek, uh, hired Hugh
6:22Ainsworth to cover Garrison. They said he’s an outstanding scholar, having worked for the Dallas Times Herald. Um,
6:29an outstanding scholar. Uh for instance um in his last exchange with Mark Lane in Dallas, he told Mark Lane uh uh uh
6:37something to the effect that uh Warren was not objective about uh Oswald because both of them are left wingers,
6:44extreme leftwingers. So that’s the guy that that Newsweek uh feels is an authority on the case. I want to begin
6:51at the beginning. All right. and follow this thing very very closely so we can really understand not only what’s
6:58surrounding the suppression of what Jim Garrison is doing in New Orleans but also what has been done against you
7:05personally. Now when did it there was a time that you were appearing in nightclubs and making billions and
7:10millions of dollars and selling record albums and you were a comedian and the rest of it and you didn’t talk about the
7:16assassination. Something then happened that obviously was to lead to the change of your entire life. When did it begin
7:22for you, Mort? When did you begin to Well, I began to uh ask questions about this case. I used to ask them socially
7:30and uh I couldn’t find anybody uh to answer me, but then I only mixed with liberals. Uh you know, so I that’s like
7:37looking for an honest man and not having a lamp. And then of course I uh I ran into um uh uh when I had the television
7:45show over at Channel 11. Uh we had uh Mark Lane was coming into town
7:52and he was originally scheduled on the Pine show and some uh benefactors steered him toward my program instead
7:59and he did cancel the Pine Show and they were furious and um as well they might be I suppose about a commitment and Mark
8:06Lane came on in October of um 196
8:14six right he came on with me and he made five appearances Publishers Weekly and the New York Times
8:20agree that Rush to Judgment is a national bestseller because of California and because of Southern California and more specifically because
8:26of that program. And uh yeah, we sold a lot of books. I told people it was the most important book in their lifetime. I
8:32told Lane when I met him that I thought he was the most important man in the country. Rush to judgement. Absolutely.
8:38And uh I think Garrison is now has now replaced him as the most important man in the country. Um when we um uh Mark
8:45and I got along very well and uh the shows were good. We found we didn’t need uh you know actors or fun and games or
8:52anything. We just had to talk and the people cared about it and uh we really got a storm going and because the people
8:59responded I kept going with it. Then of course the KAC show was in the works and I kept going with that. When the KAC
9:06show uh uh began to uh roll of course I got the first national interview with
9:12Garrison. And I got 90 minutes on tape with Garrison and Lane, which I uh uh I
9:17paid for my own trip to New Orleans because the station didn’t think it was worth it. After all, only a man investigating the murder of the
9:23president. This is radio station KAC. KAC. And I went down there and I came back and I played that. And of course,
9:28there was uh there was great suppression at KTV. The program director Jim Gates
9:34kept saying to me, um, well, theatrically, he said he said he wasn’t suppressing me. It wasn’t a matter of
9:39censorship. It was a matter of showmanship. And he said, “Theatrically, it’s boring just hearing you talk about Kennedy.” And even when I was finally
9:47fired at at KTTV the first time, which was uh a year ago, December, he came to
9:53my house and gave me my notice and said, “Your ratings are very bad and you’re going off.” And uh instead of leaving
10:00well enough alone, he uh then got nervous and said, “Uh uh, I think it’s
10:05because you just talked about the same thing all the time. Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy, we’re sick of hearing about Kennedy.” and I’m excising the
10:11profanity. So, um, uh, you know, as we al always say, speak for yourself, John
10:16Alden. I haven’t found too many, uh, uh, people in the American electorate who are really sick of talking about
10:22Kennedy. I find people who are cowed and who are fearful, but I don’t care what
10:27happens to them for talking about Kennedy. Anything that happens other than having your head blown off in Daily Plaza is somewhat anticlimactic.
10:34Um, sane men have grown insane on this subject. Um, for Robert Vaughn to be
10:43quizzed by Senator Robert Kennedy to be pursued around Senator Kennedy’s mansion. Why was Mort Saul fired? Why
10:51does he claim he was fired? And for Robert Vaughn to say, I was fearful of the interrogation, so I said I didn’t
10:57know. And then for Robert Vaughn publicly to declen
11:02Kennedy is a very busy man. and he has the world on his shoulders and uh he doesn’t have time to even know who Mort
11:08Saul is. I don’t know what makes people move this way but only in this case I have found some continuity of integrity
11:14on the part of people in any issue but this issue. Uh now I’m I’m skipping here
11:20chronologically which I don’t mean to do on you but um let me raise a question. Yes. Um at its peak your KAC uh
11:28telephone talk show and the KTV television show what were the ratings like? What was the audience response?
11:34The ratings the ratings on the television show uh were good and healthy and I think that it’s important uh for
11:40the audience to know that uh we presented 30 to 40 minutes of
11:46sketches every week and I wrote them and I produced the program myself and I was
11:52in the office seven days a week and I did all the monologues in between and I booked the guests. I was on there for
11:57two hours. I spent seven days in that office and I made $600 a week. gross.
12:03Now, that’s a pretty cheap way to bring in a show which is sold out on sponsorship. No sponsors complained and
12:09you must be very guarded about that. When you hear remarks such as KAC made about Arbagasta Margolus to have no
12:16sponsors, it has become uh a device in our society because uh there is a an
12:24integimement of new left feeling that capitalism will censure people that it’s
12:30the sponsors. It very seldom is the sponsors. How were your sponsors on the program? I never had any trouble in
12:36television. We’re sold out and they never complained. We even kided them, especially the used car people. We were
12:41sold out. Uh Gates himself said at the end of the show that uh when he finally discharged me for something he called
12:47insubordination. He said uh you are uh which we’ll get to
12:53in a second. He said the the ratings were healthy and the show was a good entertaining show. Uh but this guy can’t
12:59follow direction. That’s said many times and of course that may be said with uh
13:04uh gleam toward uh heading you off the path so that no one else will hire you either because it is a limited industry
13:10to begin with uh limited in courage limited in perspective limited in goals.
13:15Um when the radio program was on at the same time uh of course I had Harold
13:21Weissberg on I had Lane on and we rang up tremendous ratings. Jack theer who was uh the uh potentate at KAC brought
13:29the ratings by and the evening shift at KAC had a 177 the last time he brought them by which meant it passed KHJ people
13:37were really listening why were they listening because I was talking about their president whom they love I was talking about the draft which is every
13:43young man’s stake and uh I was talking about where I thought it was at because
13:50I was taking their pulse uh now because So they of course in the superstate uh
13:56to paraphrase Garrison they must drop you for not communicating. The fact is they drop you because you do
14:01communicate. That’s the real crime to reach other people. Uh I was never such
14:06an extraordinary man until I became an ordinary man and joined the people of course when I began to express really
14:12what was on their minds. But I took a different course of action. I took a a course of action which satisfied me. Now
14:20when they dropped the radio program they gave me no notice. The night they chose,
14:25I said to the audience, “Should I disappear, it is not voluntary. I’ll stay here as long as you need me and you
14:30want to talk to me.” And uh if I disappear, you must rise as an army. It is not voluntary. I played Kennedy’s
14:36inauguration, Roosevelt’s inauguration, and a garrison speech for 20 minutes. And the next day, I was told not to
14:43report. The agency that represented me at that time did not contest this. They’re not interested in money in a
14:48capitalistic society. We’re together to gather. which agency was and um creative management associates and uh they did
14:55not rise as an army. Um they u in fact one of the executives up there quoted me
15:00a story by Jill Sherry in the free press. It’s good to know they read the free press, isn’t it? It’s amazing, huh?
15:06They don’t quote it when it’s not convenient though. It’s got to be the free press on their terms. They’ve got to figure out some way, you know, of
15:12bringing it back home for them on a personal level. That’s right. Document it. Bring it back home. Very well put. So, the uh they dropped the show and uh
15:21uh somebody uh oh, I guess I shouldn’t I shouldn’t betray the confidence. Somebody who was influential here in
15:27town said to me, “You’re going to be dropped on television now. The only difference is the first time you were fired, and a lot of you remember this.
15:34When I was fired on television, I talked about it on the radio. The station got 31,000 letters and reinstated me. This
15:39time, 31,000 31,000 in 3 days at one source, Jim Gates. I got a couple of
15:44thousand myself up in Las Vegas at Caesar’s Palace and other people at the station got letters. That was the core
15:49of them in three days. This time they cut the live show, the radio show. Mhm. And then the television show was
15:55controlled by tape. So I immediately received a letter saying, “You’ve been fired on radio. That is regrettable. Do
16:00not discuss it on television. If you do, uh, this will be insubordination.” And then I got a series of of letters for
16:07record. They would come every day, special delivery from Jim Gates at KTTV, and they would say, “Do not discuss
16:13this.” Uh, KAC maintained that uh, Mort is gone, but anybody’s free to, he has
16:18his platform at KTTV. So Mark Lane then directed one of the
16:24young men on the citizens committee of inquiry, which I want to talk about later, to call the station and say that
16:30it is obvious I’m the only public platform for the district attorney in New Orleans and therefore it is his
16:36opinion that that contributed to my being fired. They wouldn’t let the young man on the air. So since they had said I
16:42had my own platform in television, I put him on television. So they erased him from the television tape and sent me
16:48another letter and said, “You cannot bring this up. You’re not to discuss the radio station.” So I checked with an
16:54attorney and the attorney said, “That means that uh in their interpretation
17:00for them to beat you with chains and for you to go on the air and if I someone in the audience says, “What is that scar?”
17:05You say, “They hit me with a chain.” That’s term disparaging by them. You have a right to express yourself under
17:12an FCC license granted to Channel 11. as long as you don’t disparage them. So I
17:17went on the next week and I said that tape was erased. The young man was on there. So they erased that tape and they
17:23sent me another letter and they said if you mention anyone at the station by name or by title or refer to the fact
17:29that you have a radio program, you will be fired. That day I was in the office
17:35and Garrison called me from New Orleans and he said, “I have an exclusive for you to break on the air. I have
17:40eyewitnesses placing Ruby Oswald and Shaw together in Baton Rouge. Eyeball
17:46witnesses. So I went on the air and I told that on the air and I mentioned about three
17:52minutes about uh the radio program which I isolated so
17:58that if it was cut out they could see the rest of the show which was funny. It was a good show. Biff Rose was on, Phil
18:04Oaks was on, Hamilton Camp, Joyce Jameson. They erased the entire tape and
18:09sent me a letter the next morning firing me for insubordination in mid-contract
18:14at a time when they owed me $83,000. So that’s a capriccious form of behavior
18:20you might think for uh a large organization. But they saw fit to do that over this
18:28issue. They saw fit not even to call me in. And I want to make a a a point here that this is not capitalism is you know
18:35shape up or ship out. This is the way we do things. This is a different form. No one came to me and said, “Shape up.”
18:41That it was just over. No one spoke to me. Nobody. Just the vast silence. My
18:48guest is Mort Saul. And we’ll continue with much more. All right. So, here you
18:53are uh at KTV and KAC with incredibly high ratings. Uh 31,000 letters received
19:00in a period of 3 days. And having turned Los Angeles on to the obviously the most important issue of the day and you are
19:06fired, you are through. What was it like after that, Mark? Did you start to go around and look for other jobs right
19:11away? You see, KTTV, this pending legal action, I’m going to the union for arbitration through AFRA, which I’m a
19:19member and have been for 15 years to settle this. So, I’m not saying there’s a correlation between what I said about
19:26the assassination and uh what happened there, but uh the assassination is not
19:33my first experience at twisting the arm of the establishment, and it’s not my first experience at being threatened or
19:40paying for it. I’m the same guy who was on the cover of Time magazine August 8th, 1960. I’m the same guy who MCed the
19:47Academy Awards with Lawrence Olivier, Bob Hope, Jerry Lewis, and Tony Randall in 1960.
19:54And I’m the same guy that had my own show on NBC a few years ago. I’m the same guy that’s been under contract to
20:00all three networks. Now, what was the attitude? You know, we have to use a very broad canvas, if not a broad brush
20:08here, to see what the attitude is here. I am submitted to network shows at the
20:13same time because I have a national reputation. When I was submitted to the Dean Martin
20:18show, the agent was said, “Oh, no, not that guy. Never.” Because he’s making
20:23speeches and he’s gone crazy on that subject. I’ve gone crazy. It’s only a
20:29couple of years that they were selling Kennedy to me. They thought I was for Stevenson.
20:35That’s because I like to know who I’m voting for. And I confess when I meet a stranger. I don’t condemn him, but I ask
20:41who he is before I vote for him. They uh that happened to me repeatedly. And of
20:47course, you know, I I saw the whole liberal syndrome. I tried to call it the way I saw it in Los Angeles. And there
20:54were many subjects on that program. And while I want to stay with the assassination tonight, I just briefly uh
21:01want to point out that everybody knows who they are and that since uh God put
21:07me into the role of holding the mirror up to Dracula, who knows very well what he looks like. Anyway, uh they didn’t
21:15stand up to be counted when they were needed. I made the appeal. I stood up
21:20there and I said, ‘You know who you are and you know the fight I’m in. What’s at stake is America in essence. That’s the
21:28reason that when Bud Schelberg went to Watts and sold the television show off it or two and the articles to Playboy, I
21:35pointed out that Bud Schulberg knows better before he knew the history of the Negro people. He knew the history of the Jewish people and he knew the history of
21:41the unamerican activities committee and that we must all face ourselves. Now, that wasn’t pleasant for everybody, but
21:47we had to say it on the air. I talked about all the ex-left in Hollywood and what they had become since they joined
21:54the establishment. They hadn’t become right. They hadn’t become anything. They had become Unix. And I I wanted to
21:59remind them and ask them if it was worth the price because as Garrison says in the FA legend, the price is you. I
22:05pointed that out. I pointed out that the country is going down the tube because we’re not we have no hope. We have no
22:11optimism as we had under Kennedy and we’re trying to rationalize a war. I pointed out, as unpopular as it may
22:17sound, that there’s a vast store of Jewish people in this city who have turned their back on their commitment,
22:23which is survival, you know, who have gone uh who have gone the other way and
22:28uh who will give Ronald Reagan a standing reception uh a standing ovation that is in Hollywood Bowl because he
22:35says the right things uh about Israel. uh you know and well I suppose everybody will including Omar Sharif and Danny
22:42Thomas the only two Arabs in the in the show business community but the as hard as as it is going down again we have to
22:48point out that uh the Jewish people and I know some here who even fled from Hitler
22:55uh come full circle now and not only rationalize the war in Vietnam but make the same error they made in Germany that
23:02if they have enough money they will buy out. Garrison is painting a picture of a neo-Nazi group. And as Jack Ruby raved
23:09on toward the end in the jail, I helped them because it was a money deal. But I see I’m helping people who will burn my
23:15people. There are Jewish elements, Jewish liberal elements that turned
23:20their back on the president. And they know better. And I know some people out here and they’re in this industry and
23:26they’ve got their answer to me is a large blue pencil drawn through my name in case I can get a job. And imagine
23:34that all they think they can do to a man in America is take away his right to make a living. In between, of course,
23:41you’ve got uh all the liberals with their knees knocking looking the other way. I’d say something about the issue
23:47if I knew anything about it, but I don’t know. Well, I’m sure that they do. In fact, those who are most fearful are
23:54those who come up with the worst conjecture. Yes, I found myself unemployable
24:01completely. Completely. You couldn’t get a job anywhere. Yeah, they nowhere. You know what would happen when your agents
24:06would call nightclubs, TV stations. What would happen is America is not Germany
24:11and it’s not well well enough organized. So sometimes guys fall in the trap and a guy would call you and he’d offer you a
24:17job on Friday and by the time he’d get back to you on Tuesday, he would have changed his mind. What happened in the
24:23interim, Mort? Who would make the telephone calls to the booking agents? Well, I did and uh then after a while uh
24:31I uh didn’t and No, I mean who spoke with the booking agents and the people
24:36who could give you employment and say don’t touch Saul. Oh. Oh, you mean from the other end? Yeah. Well, uh several
24:43people. Uh vice president of a network here in this city and there are only three said to my agent if I try to use
24:51Mort, he said whom I respect, I’ll lose my job. That’s a man with seniority, I
24:56might add, at the network. Um, vice president of uh leading motion picture
25:04tele and television studio here said, “Don’t ever mention his name in this office.”
25:09That offended. They’re that offended by it. Who now were they functioning independently, Mark, because of their
25:15own hang-ups or was somebody actually like who threatened this the the the vice president of the network? Well, you
25:20don’t know because you know you don’t know. It’s hard to be both. As I told you the other night, a corpse and a
25:26detective, too. 15% of this puzzle is missing because people won’t come out of the bushes and say, they won’t come out
25:32of the shadows and say, “We are conspirators.” I don’t believe that the government calls everybody. I think that
25:38people are sufficiently corrupt and enjoy a mutuality of interest u that that they will behave as they do. One of
25:45the leading television commentators said to me when I said, “What are you going to do about the Garrison case?” He said, “Well, I’m going to stay away from him.”
25:52He told me that openly. that that would be his course. That would be his fearless course in informing the
25:57American people of who killed their president. Um I uh the best way of
26:02course was for everybody to call me paranoic and to uh look the other way. And I’ve had some uh pretty important uh
26:10people tell me that because what can they do? Can they uh admit again that this is not the best uh of all possible
26:17worlds because then they might have to do a patch. they might have to do a repair job and they’re not they’re not
26:22prepared sufficiently to even sweep the room and take care of it. Uh be
26:27custodians of the room hygienically uh let alone repaper the walls and make
26:32some improvements on the property. Um they are a by and large a gutless breed.
26:38There are several levels here in Hollywood. There’s the level of uh I’m not talented. He’s having bad luck. It
26:45might rub off on me and I’ll really be in trouble. I better keep away. the straight opportunism. But there’s some
26:50remarks that are hard to answer. There’s Bill Cosby who said, “I have a wife and kids. I can’t be seen with him.” Wow.
26:57How’s that? How’s that quote? A wife and kids. And I addressed my remarks to him one week. I’d like I said, I’d like to
27:02know what you’re going to leave your wife and kids. What are you going to leave your kids in America? We have America. That’s all we have. That’s all
27:11we have. And the signs are uh that we are losing her. More. What about your
27:18friends? What happened with them? Your close friends. People Well, they vanished. I know they’re around cuz I go to see them in pictures all the time,
27:25but I’m glad they’re still available to me on film because my memories are treasured. Really? Was it really like
27:31that? I mean, right now, a social ostrich. What kind What friends do I have now? Yeah. How many people could you call now and say, “Hey, man. I’d
27:37like to get together with you and rap.” You know? Well, uh,
27:42you’re the newest. Uh, I would say uh Mark Lane,
27:48Jim Garrison, uh Maggie Field, and uh Enrico Banduchi at the Hungry
27:56Eye. I’m in pretty good company. And man, that’s I would, you know, I wouldn’t go back for anything. Last
28:03week, uh I was here negotiating for something and I I uh had to go out to
28:08dinner. Had to do the thing. Had to go back, you know, and I went out went out for dinner. And it was very interesting.
28:15I walked into a restaurant in Beverly Hills and you all have to, you know, take a flight of fancy with me. Now you got to remember the breed uh which I
28:22was. I came down the pike and I was a great threat 1956 57 and they denied me
28:28and then then of course I I made it stick with the people. So then they try to absorb you and I was everywhere. You
28:34know when Paul Newman put his footprints in cemented Gromish Chinese I am seated for television. He asked me to. I’m that
28:41guy. I’m the guy. I made pictures and I did television shows and I addressed people at campuses. Okay.
28:48I uh so I went to dinner and uh I uh walked into
28:54uh a Beverly Hills restaurant and my former manager was there who still
29:00handles the affairs of Peter Lofford. He’s a guy who once threatened me with never working again in America. Peter
29:05Lford if I did both of them if I didn’t stop kidding President Kennedy. They loved him. You see, uh, they also, these
29:12same people then change gloves from the left hand to the right hand and see that you continue not to work for asking who
29:19killed him. President Kennedy, you know, is very lucky that I can be objective,
29:24as his memory is, that I can be objective about it. I didn’t love him, so I can give full time to finding out
29:29who did him in. Fantastic. You knew him, didn’t you? When I Yes, I did. And I wrote for him for 19 months. And uh, I
29:37said that on KAC. Senator Kennedy, as I understand it, asked Mr. Vaughn if I ever claimed that. And Mr. Vaughn said
29:44with with the customary courage, I don’t know what he said. Well, I said it. In fact, Senator Kennedy’s had the
29:49opportunity to ask me. And for those of you who can’t get a framework on this, you must remember that I go into the
29:55White House at will. I repeat to you, at will. I ate with Senator Kennedy last
30:01May and I ate with Lynden Johnson the May before that. And I was in Washington
30:06for 5 days in July. I went to the White House, three of them. I walked through the gate. They know me. They know me.
30:14And I refuse to go away. I’m like a very persistent epidemic. Now, back to the point. So, I walked into uh well, it’s
30:20interesting in light of uh in light of having that access and then doing a local television show and having people
30:28running for Congress, using me me in the most opportunistic vein. If nothing
30:33else, they should not think that I’m a fool and they should not think I’m ambitious on the level of a House of
30:38Representatives. I’ve rejected the best, you know. So, if I’m neurotic, I’m neurotic, you know, A1, you know, zero
30:46cool. But anyway, back to back to the uh uh Yeah, and I forgot to mention I used
30:51to sit in with Senator Fulbright in the afternoon at will, whom I really dig, although I’m sure that a lot of liberals
30:56out there think he’s a racist. That’s their way. At any rate, uh, so I walked into Stephanos and I walked in with a
31:04good guy, uh, to talk some business and there sits, uh, Mr. Evans, uh, who
31:10doesn’t say anything to me. I’ve openly accused him on the air. Who is Mr. Evans? Mr. Evans, Mr. Lford’s manager. Used to be my manager. I see. Confidant
31:16of the president at a certain recreational level. And, uh, who now thinks, you know, that guy is killing
31:22himself by discussing that subject, the assassination. He’s doing himself in. He’s self-destructive. It’s a terrible
31:28thing to watch, but they watched it every Friday night as long as it was on. He’s sitting in that restaurant and
31:35people came through the door, actors who know me and know him, and they refused to speak to me during the evening. They
31:41averted their heads. There’s that much terror. And then a manager came over to me who used to handle George Maharis and
31:47she said to me, “Hey, listen. I’m not with the hate group.” And I said, “The hate group?” She said, “I don’t care what anybody says. I’ll use you. I’m
31:54going to do a picture. There might be a part for you. I don’t care what anybody says. That’s in reference to paranoia.
32:00The next night I was in a restaurant called Dominics to further conduct business, which is the great in
32:06restaurants. And uh Jim Ares came in, very jovial, good guy, but then he’s a
32:12conservative. You don’t you have nothing to fear. He couldn’t get near you because he couldn’t find your body
32:18beneath the liberals pounding it. And uh there was uh George Axelrod who used to
32:23be my friend who two years ago asked me to direct a film for him. He now says,
32:29″You used to be America’s conscience and now you’re America’s insanity.” That’s his reply to my plea to clean up the
32:37Kennedy case because it started as a toothache. It is now an abscess and eventually the patient is going to die.
32:45You have no way to get away from Jack Kennedy. you chose him and you go you
32:50rise with him as the phoenix or you go down in flame with him. Sorry folks, but that’s the deal. Now, uh I watched all
32:58that last week. Those are all those are small examples, but they’re the microcosm of the whole thing. The people
33:03who are fearful uh to talk to you, who ask you questions and who run away from
33:08you. That goes all the way down to the actors who would run into me in Carl’s Market or the Mayfair on Santa Monica at
33:142 in the morning and when it was open that late and they’d say to me, “Uh, hey, what what’s with your friend Garrison? He better get his head
33:20examined.” They’d say to me, and I’d say, in essence, this is what’s with my friend Garrison. Because the Playboy
33:26thing was in work. The interview was coming. I’d say the president uh reached
33:31a you know reached an agreement with the Soviet Union about Cuba among other things and he sent the FBI in to bust
33:38the anti-Castro Cuban exile groups training and the next day the CIA gave him a blank check to go ahead and countermanded his order and that
33:45conflict is what brought the government down. People say you’re pl you’re you’re preaching rebellion. I said we had
33:50rebellion. The government was overthrowing Dallas for all we know and then they run off into the woods and
33:56I’ve got them coming and going man. I got them boxed in both ways. If they accuse Johnson, which a lot of them want
34:02to do because they want to help Roberto into the chair, then I say there’s no evidence connecting Johnson to the case.
34:08And if there is, why are you nominating him and rationalizing the war in Vietnam? Or then they come up to me and
34:14they say, “Well, if all of this is true, aren’t you afraid?” And then I say, “No, because a lone gunman did it in Dallas
34:19and he’s long gone.” I’ve got them coming and going because they have no position. But I tell you that I knew
34:25everybody in this town or no just that I don’t see them and there is no studio
34:31open. There is no television. There’s just a vast uneasiness because they have to meet you. They have to meet you
34:37because the plan isn’t complete. Eventually you’re going to get an invitation to uh a screening or a
34:44premiere and you’ve got to meet them in the lobby. And that’s what I got when they got to begin tugging at their collars. When Garrison came out here the
34:50last time to set up this thing on Eugene Bradley when everybody thought all he was doing was sitting in a daisy. That’s
34:57what he’s doing. And I took him in the daisy and we sat in there and all the actors who said I was crazy and all the
35:04comedians, three or four of whom in rebellion could have turned the tide ran up to me and asked to meet him. They’re
35:10all on his side because he’s here. Can you imagine what’s going to happen if he wins? I’ll tell you all out there and
35:16you all know who you are what’s going to happen if he wins. First of all, we’re going to get the country back. I like that part. Yeah. But there’s going to be
35:22a terrible retribution for those of you who denied him and think that your
35:27liberal credentials will let you change hats. You know, General Smemedley Butler of the Marine Corps talked about the
35:32revolution in Nicaragua. The vast majority of peasants had no political belief and they used to wear the the uh
35:38the rebels had a red hatband and the fascists had a blue hat and most people who were smart had a hatband that was
35:44reversible. uh Garrison has charged that all the attorneys defending all the people in
35:51this case are retained by the CIA and he stands flatly on uh uh on that charge.
35:57Now the cat defending Edgar Eugene Bradley was a former FBI man, wasn’t he? I noticed that. Yeah. Yeah. As a matter
36:03of fact, I noticed that too. Uh I also the New Orleans states item pointed out this week which our papers missed here
36:10that um Dr. McIntyre, Bradley’s associate there, has been active in a
36:16draft Jay Edgar Hoover for the presidency movement. Uh, I haven’t heard anybody bring that up, you know, since
36:22uh Walter Winchell, I’d hate to see Hoover step down to the presidency, but
36:27you know, if that’s if that’s the will of the people, let it be heard. Anyway, um um as Garrison always says whenever
36:34we say this, he always says to Mark Laney, he says, “Your sarcastic remarks about the director have made my job
36:41insufferably difficult.” But at any rate, tell for let me interrupt for a
36:47second. Tell us about uh Jade Goover. Um Hoover Well, Hoover is now 73. The
36:52mandatory federal age retirement uh retirement age, I should say, is 70.
36:57Johnson waved it for him. Well, of course, everybody says uh I mean the folklore is that he has so much on
37:04everybody that uh nobody can throw him out. He’s been in office 44 years. 44
37:10years. 44 years. Which means that uh he looks upon the president as a trenchant
37:16for one thing. And as Garrison has said, he’s the finest director the bureau has ever had and uh also the only director
37:23the bureau has ever had. So that’s fantastic. Um, of course the the bureau
37:30Mark Lane says is run and most people agree as a Gustapo like organization
37:36because it reflects the views of that one man who runs it and nobody messes with him. No one ever has. All the
37:43attorneys general walk down the hall to his office. He doesn’t uh report to them. The only one that tangled with him
37:49was uh Bob Kennedy. That was about the only one. What is the relationship like between Bobby Kennedy and Jade Gahouver?
37:55isn’t very good. As a reported in Look magazine, uh when the president was killed, Hoover informed Bobby Kennedy,
38:00called him at Hickory Hill, and he said, “Your brother’s dead.” And he hung up. Um Bobby Kennedy uh wanted to make
38:07certain that he realized that uh he was the boss, as I understand it, which is certainly right. Uh along with being
38:14attorney general, by the way, as Garrison has pointed out, Robert Kennedy had the right to arrest the members of the Warren Commission as accessories
38:20after the fact and ask that they be hanged, which I do not believe he did, although I haven’t gone into the record.
38:28Um why why is Bobby Kennedy walking around with his mouth shut? I don’t know. There are several answers. One is
38:34uh that of course the best source would be him. We would have to ask him. The second is that the elements are so
38:41terroridden that they would kill him if he said anything. The third is that it was a fat calam plea and all the people
38:48in the government were then told it’ll be anarchy. You must go along for the good of your country. Um there are in
38:56other words it’ll bring the country down if uh if they know what happened. Although ironically enough the way they
39:01brought the country up they brought the country down. We now not only doubt the CIA we doubt everybody. Uh there are
39:07people who say he has a deal with the president to carry on in 1972, but I will say that he is amazingly uh he has
39:15an amazing lack of inquiry about this case. Uh when I was interviewed in Washington by Jeremy Campbell for the
39:21London Observer, it’s funny how you’re heard in America. I was interviewed in Washington by the London Observer. Then
39:26the San Francisco Chronicle picked up the story and ran it on the front page on Sunday. The front page it says, “I
39:32know who killed Kennedy,” says Saul. front page, three columns with a photo headline. Um, I never heard from Robert
39:40Kennedy about that, even to admonish me for being irresponsible. Mark Lane has never heard from him, and certainly
39:45Garrison has never heard from him. In fact, uh, there’s evidence that he’s tried to uh, bulldo the Garrison uh,
39:52investigation. Walter Sheridan is his man, as was reported to me uh, last May
39:59when Robert Kennedy was out here. It was a dinner at at which was present Pierre
40:04Salinger, Andy Williams, Milton Burl, Robert Vaughn, and Ed Guthman who used
40:11to be administrative assistant to Robert Kennedy is now the national editor of the LA Times. And you know their view on
40:17Garrison. The only time they give up that cartoon section uh they let Johnson off for a day is to go after Garrison.
40:24Guthan got up and said, “Gee, Mort’s threw in the business and it’s a shame. He committed suicide by hanging out with
40:30Garrison and Lane. First of all, I appreciate their concern for the postmortem about me and I appreciate the
40:37judgment and I’m through obviously and uh I wonder what would make them say
40:42that. I wonder why Garrison and Lane would be the enemy. They’re only acting as patriots. They’re proving that they
40:49love their president. you know, they not that he because he’s a dead president, he’s not a remembered president or
40:55spirit uh in this um uh country. Mark, do you believe Bobby Kennedy right now
41:01has a pretty good idea who killed his brother? I don’t know. I don’t have any idea.
41:07Garrison has said that there is no way that the president would not know what’s going on here, which is not to say he’s
41:12a conspirator, but no way. But I don’t know uh I don’t know how Robert Kennedy I don’t know what he knows. Have no
41:18idea. He’s uh quite enigmatic about it all. You believe right now that President Johnson has a pretty good idea
41:24who killed Kennedy. Uh President Johnson of course must he
41:32must know just from an overlap of information. He must have some information. He must know
41:38that Lee Oswald did not do it. He has to know that in order for this immense cover up to go on. So does the vice
41:45president. You’re listening to KPFK. listener supported Pacifica radio Los
41:50Angeles. So we walk up to the house, there’s a tricycle in the driveway and we knock on
41:56the door and Garrison comes to the door in his bathrobe cuz he had the flu. And I put my hand out. I said, “I just came
42:01down to shake your hand.” And he said, “I hope you’re going to do more than that.” And that was the beginning. And
42:07we sat down and we talked to him till about 4:00 in the morning. And we talked to him about everything. And he’s got a
42:14great ortoral style, you know, and he’s a true believer. He really is a in the liberal tradition of this country which
42:20some people would call a liberal hyphen conservative tradition but prizing the individual against federalism and uh uh
42:30we went there on successive nights and he brought the detectives over to meet us the guys working among whom was Bill
42:35Gervich who later defected you recall he made a statement to the press defecting after he left Robert Kennedy’s office
42:43Bill Gervich who said Clay Shaw is being railroaded and Garrison Garrison has no case was in the office and he told me
42:50with great relish how they got Klay Shaw, how Klay Shaw had come in. They asked him to come in and Garrison said,
42:56″I’m charging you with conspiracy to murder John F. Kennedy.” And Shaw said
43:01nothing. The perspiration broke out on his upper lip and he said, “I’d like to go home and consider this.” And Garrison
43:09said, “I don’t think so.” after looking at Andy Shamra, his assistant, because he knew that the guy wanted to clean out
43:16his apartment. They always know that. So, they went to the apartment. Of course, they got the whips and the chains, the executioner’s gown and the
43:22shoes in the shape of coffins, which he said was a Marty Gro costume, but of course, the shoes had never touched the sidewalk, nothing but a carpeted floor.
43:29The shoes in the shapes of of coffins. So, uh, they, uh, then Gervich told me
43:36that he was going to get Sergio Aracha Smith, another one of the Cubans who was in Dallas, whom Governor Connelly had
43:42not extradited. He was going to go down there. He said, “If we get the extradition, I want to go get him.” He said, “With great relish.” And uh, I
43:48said, “How much is involved in going into Dallas to bring a guy back?” And he said, “There’s nothing involved.” He
43:53said, “I go down there, I knock on the door, and he comes to the door and I say, I got you, I got you.” And he said,
44:00″Then we come back.” And I said, “What if he resists?” He said, “I hope so.” And we all laughed a lot. So, um, and
44:07the detectives would come in Garrison’s den, which has a bust of Burton Russell up there. And, uh, which the press
44:12doesn’t tell you. The press says to you, uh, Garrison has a picture of Napoleon.
44:18Yes, he does. But he also has a, uh, a bust of, uh, Burton Russell, and he
44:23quotes from Hamlet a lot. And you, we found out a lot of things about him. We found out that when uh when the uh the
44:30double day stores in New Orleans had uh James Baldwin’s book in other country and they seized it on the basis of uh
44:38pornography and we’re going to close uh the stores and they asked the district attorney to prosecute the case. Garrison
44:45called the guys that had the store and he said, “What are you going to do? You going to fight this?” They said, “No, we’ll just pay the fine and reopen.” He said, “You can’t do that.” And they
44:51said, “Why?” And he said, “Because next time they’ll burn your books.” And he helped them win. even though he’s the
44:56prosecuting attorney. So, we found out um a good deal about him and his
45:02character and the uh and the guys were walking in and out. A lot of the guys were voluntary because he only has a staff really of four and uh four people.
45:09Yeah. In the office. He’s got he’s got the the greatest DA’s office in the country before this case. I mean, he
45:15says he has no grey mice. They’re all lawyers who fight who are very hard to come by. Because if I wanted to say uh
45:21name a profession that’s the lowest, I would have to say the legal profession. Why do you say that? Oh, they Well, they really are the prostitutes of our time
45:28because their passion can be purchased and because uh uh the ones I’ve met are
45:34all starruck because they talk about the scales of justice, but boy, it’s no accident that she’s blindfolded and that
45:42her dress is tattered. They’re unbelievable. They are unbelievable. Anything goes. I had a lawyer out here
45:50for 10 years. When the president was killed, he used to give presents to his
45:55clients at the end of the year. I mean, he’d send you a picture or plastic glasses. And when the president was
46:01killed, he sent a card out. It said, “Because of our great loss this year, we’re going to send the money to a a
46:07donation in the sum of the gift uh to a clinic for mental health because it was a deranged person that took the life of
46:14our president.” Perfect liberalism. Um, all looking the other way. There wasn’t
46:20one member of the American Bar Association who said anything about defending Lee Harvey Oswald and there
46:26wasn’t one member of the American Civil Liberties Union that went in to defend Lee Harvey Oswald. And because as
46:31Garrison said to me in the den that night, because we lost an adversary proceeding because the law wasn’t
46:37protected by law men, then uh we lo we not only lost our president, we lost our
46:42justice, too. Mort, we we come to that point, I guess, in any discussion about this particular subject. you know, the
46:49inevitable reality that we must confront ourselves with, however difficult that might be.
46:55Who killed John F. Kennedy? Well,
47:01as far as we can tell, uh I must tell you that uh Garrison has
47:07every confidence that he’s going into court February 14th, which is a month away. Uh
47:13I um and I expect he will, but the
47:19scenario points toward a um a coalition
47:27uh of um anti-Castro Cuban exiles,
47:35oil rich psychotics. I’m quoting a district attorney in Texas, retired militarists,
47:41various voices of the right, that is at an operational level of the conspiracy and at a planning level.
47:48The Cubans were a good setup because uh they were disenchanted with the Kennedy administration
47:55and also they were lawless. You’ve got to remember that these informants who
48:00work for the CIA along the way, if you have government by hoodlam, what are you spawning? Every cop we know in LA has
48:06his contacts on Main Street or East Fifth Street. He’s got junkies and pimps and peddlers, etc., but he knows what
48:14they are and he keeps them within perspective uh to work for the greater good, as they say. The CIA keeps them on
48:20staff for 20 years and gives them a watch at the end of their service. And that’s the difference. This undercover
48:26thing of doing what you want to and countermanding orders of the president and writing blank checks and not being
48:33checked by the Congress uh spawns a government by hoodlam. That is not to say that the government u uh
48:40subsidized the assassination. We don’t know that and Garrison denies it. I said why do you say ex CIA men? He says
48:47because I can’t conceive of anybody in my government wanting to harm the president. But the point is somewhere
48:52along the line we gave up. We we gave in when the government said we know better
48:58what’s good for you than you know for yourself. That’s why,
49:03you know, the liberalism of today, you know, whether it’s Lawrence Sherman in the 28th district saying, “I’m going
49:10into the convention with a beast slate,” or Robert Vaughn saying, “The war is the
49:15aberration of of Lynden Johnson and not Robert Kennedy is puny.” Or Carl Reiner
49:22saying Dick Van Djk and I are going to host a black tie party at the Daisy for Eugene McCarthy or dissenting Democrats.
49:29This is 20 years too late, man. They’ve been drafting people like you for 20
49:35years so that eventually 435 honorable men in the Congress don’t don’t even
49:41object and nobody votes against the unamerican activities committee and nobody says anything about the war and
49:47nobody says anything about anything and nobody says anything about murder in the streets. I’ve been crying fascism.
49:54fascism. How how much success, how heady was the sensation and how intoxicated
50:00were the fascists in this country to get to a point where they thought they could go ahead with as bold a stroke as killing him in the street? Well,
50:06obviously what makes them think they can get away with it? The experience of getting away with it over the years. They tend to get power drunk because
50:13they’ve been successful. It gets crazier and crazier. They’ve extended fascism
50:19without challenge for so long in this country. A generation since 1945,
50:25the dark days, this long night started with Roosevelt’s death. You can chart the whole thing and it gets to a point
50:31where a whole generation doesn’t know any better. Robert Kennedy talks about uh ma massive retaliation and communism
50:38and capitalism and vehicular capability. You’re brought up on those terms, man.
50:43You can’t even tell when somebody is driving you anymore because it’s 20 years of madness. As much as my Jewish
50:50friends aren’t going to like it, the German people weren’t born crazy. They were made crazy by their government. They were made in the form which is most
50:57convenient to that government which is fascistic, which broke the backs of the unions. And you use anti-semitism as a
51:04dodge. Same thing is happening here. They’re trying to drive the American people crazy. And I’ll tell you something, I think they’re succeeding.
51:10There’s great evidence in the barbarism of day-to-day life and in the lack of direction and the degree of uh the lack
51:19of mental health in this country. Um and I’m not suggesting going to a psychiatrist because most of them are
51:24sellouts too. Sad to say because they know better, but all they want to do is repair you and get you back on the line
51:31to keep punching out Mustang frames. Uh that’s the that’s the trouble. Look what
51:36you have here. FDR dies. What was the plan? To make Germany an occupied
51:42agricultural state. But what happens afterwards? Truman goes into office and
51:48he forms the defense department, the Marshall Plan. He aids the fascists in
51:53the hills of Greece to stop communism. He expand he founds the CIA in 1947. He
52:00gives Jay Ed Garoover a blank check and they go ahead with the unamerican activities committee and they start the
52:06great witch hunts and McCarthy comes on and two bombs on the Japanese people
52:11civilian areas atomic bombs and the Korean war the bullstroke anti-communism
52:18we will not tolerate it uh anywhere the Truman doctrine outside the western hemisphere and uh Russia and Korea and
52:28uh China and Vietnam and Santa Domingo. You can see it step
52:33for step. 22 years of fascism. So your country becomes a colonial power. Now of
52:41course we’re not made for that because that’s not our tradition. So that’s the conflict. That’s why everybody is hung
52:46up and they say, “Well, why do the kids look so weird?” Because you’re driving their body in one direction, their head
52:51is going in another. They’re being pulled apart. It’s the same as taking a young man in this country and tying a
52:57stallion to one leg and one arm each side and pulling in in opposing directions. We’re not made for it. We
53:04weren’t measured for an SS suit. Man, if I was going to form a fascist state, I would go to the Germans. They’re set up
53:10for it. You know, it’s like Sinatra told me, you’re going to buy buy a record company. Don’t found one. He bought one
53:16that was set up already. You have to be efficient. He had a commitment, too, by the way. Sinatra. Yeah. The house I live
53:22in. I don’t hear that from him anymore. I don’t hear from anybody anymore. Where
53:28are all of you or don’t you care? Because I don’t know where you’re going to live. You know, you can only go to
53:34make a movie in England for 3 months. That’s almost closed. Where are you going to go? You can’t hide in
53:39Switzerland. You know, you are an American. You’re not going to feel that good. Everybody says, “Well, if you got enough money, you’ll feel good
53:44anywhere.” It’s really not true. There isn’t anything quite like America. And especially if you’re an American, you’re
53:51really going to miss it. I know you take it for granted, but uh you’re uh going to miss it. You’re going to miss uh you
53:57know the sun coming up in the morning. You don’t think so until you’re in the Holocaust. And of course, it’s too late.
54:03But to get back uh to your question and to stop theorizing for a while, um this
54:09uh this group uh of ex neonazis who would uh uh have brought us fascism
54:17in the name of national security. The facts on who shot the president are in the archives because of national
54:23security. Everything is national security. The CIA is national security. The FBI is national security. And uh
54:30meanwhile, you don’t recognize your own country. Look what we have here. Think of America as a body. You have uh and
54:37think of the pressure points in the first aid class. Mark Lane is saying to you, I’ve got his uh pulse on a left arm
54:44and he has an accelerated pulse and Jim Garrison’s got the right arm and he says it. Mario Savio is uh up there by his
54:51right temple and he says it and Stokeley Carmichael is down by his left ankle and he says it and Adam Powell says it in
54:58his own way. Everybody tells them and Dylan tells them and none of these guys
55:04know each other. They don’t hang out together as the saying goes. They say the same thing. They have that in
55:10common. The patient has a high fever and an accelerated pulse and I can’t find anybody who cares about this guy. They
55:16talk about heart transplants. So what happened to Mike Casperic? They don’t care. What happened to America? That’s
55:22what it’s all about. You don’t have to love your parents. I’m not demanding that. Miss Liberty, what about it? What
55:27about the pursuit of the American dream? An awful lot of good men died so that a
55:33good many of you can sit out there and think about whether you want to sell out or not. I’m worried that it’s too late
55:41for you to sell in. That’s what really terrifies me. I don’t know whether we’re over the hill or not. Naturally, I’m
55:47going to get up tomorrow and go after it the same way the bell rings. You come out of your corner swinging because we got to keep trying because this is all
55:52we have. But it is evident, you know, nobody has to be naive about the
55:58elements in this country. Why did I indict liberals earlier, the so-called social democrats of my routines when I
56:04say the far right? Because there aren’t enough evil men in this country. Their army, they are the generals, but the
56:10privates in their army, the vast ranks of the unwashed are the liberals. It is.
56:16In other words, evil men can only do evil because of the indifference of good men, to paraphrase a philosopher. And
56:22that’s what it is. The road to fascism was paved with those liberal bricks. Every young man who is headed for the
56:27left was castrated by a good liberal who wants him to fit in. And when you [ __ ] a gun and put it at the temple of a
56:33liberal, he signs the petition on the right, not on the left. There is no left in America. There is no dissension. A
56:40few university professors. How many people came up to you and said, “Uh, it’s a terrible thing what happened to
56:45Dr. Spock. They they’re just glad it didn’t happen to them, right? The only reason they’re talking about Vietnam is
56:51because we’re talking about Kennedy.” I know where they’re at. They have sold us
56:57out. That’s really what they’ve done. They’ve sold out a generation. Every time you meet a guy 40, you have a right
57:04to spit in his face because he’s cast a shadow over your future.
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