Tag Archives: #assassination

Fred Litwin and the return of Nick Nalli

www.mattkprovideo.com/2025/02/18/fred-litwin-and-the-return-of-nick-nalli/

On The Trail of Delusion, Episode 13,

Renowned scientist Doctor Nick Nalli discusses the dictabelt recording, the physics of the Zapruder film, the notorious “back and to the left headsnap, and other issues related to the Kennedy assassination evidence.

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 in Oliver Stones film flam at the demagogue of Dealey Plaza Fred Litwin is here he’s a longtime author and certainly Watcher of politics joining us uh Fred Litwin great to have you here thank you very much

[Music]

Welcome to another edition of
On the Trail of Delusion
my bi-weekly podcast where I try to separate the the wheat from the chaff and actually give you something substantive on the JFK assassination rather than the conspiracy Gruel you get all over the Internet
so today I’m I’m really quite happy to bring back Dr Nick Nalli foremost scientist who who has studied all aspects of the Kennedy assassination


But let me tell you about his bio he’s got a master’s degree and a PhD in atmospheric and oceanic studies his PhD was from the University of Wisconsin at Madison
He worked for the for NOAA and the the US government which studies oceans and climate and now he’s a Atmospheric or imagery scientist at the Department of Defense
I mean an incredible background and uh so we’re so lucky because the last time Nick was on
On the Trail of Delusion
it was a great show I mean it was just a fantastic show and and there’s a lot more to talk about and perhaps Nick will come back for a third time because the science the science of the JFK assassination is absolutely fascinating
There’s so much to it and in fact there’ll be more and more over in fact I can’t wait until Nick publishes his first book and I’ll be the first one to buy it believe me so Nick welcome to
On the trail of Delusion
thank you Fred for having me back on this I enjoy doing this type of thing when I when I get time to do it sometimes tough to find the time but but I I very much enjoy talking about uh two things the science science in general and then also the this JFK assassination which we’re all fascinated by so today what I’m going to do is I’m going to I have some prepared slides actually right and it’s going to be I think because I want to get through two different things here and to get into it a little a little bit of depth and to do that it’s just easier to have the slid so think of this as like being in a college class um and feel free to ask questions uh if you have any uh the audience won’t be able to do that but uh but you can I hope I don’t fall asleep like I used to in college no this this you won’t because you you like this stuff and and yeah so by the way well done on your debate there uh with Matt crumpton

yeah that was very uh nice and I see you had a lot of viewership on that so that that’s really great okay good so just a quick again upfront disclaimer any scientific results or conclusions as well as any views or opinions expressed during the podcast or those of myself do not reflect the views of the US federal government or DOD just so these are topics that I’m going to talk about uh first being the the dpd the Dallas Police Department dict toel recording is it Acoustics evidence and then the second is the rer film does it suffer from alterations or Illusions okay so starting off with the the dict Bel so and there’s a lot of slides to get through here uh is it acoustic evidence and I’m gonna hat tip to Michael Odell Dale Myers Paul Hulk and believe it or not yes Tink Thompson because his book last second in Dallas contains information on this that uh was sort of an introduction to me when I read it so him him as well okay so the birth of the Acoustics evidence so this is sort of just the introductory slide uh this goes back to and in this information you can find in really nice detail on Dale Meyer’s site he has a report that he U published there and he really goes into some nice detail on the history uh Tink Thompson’s book also has a bit of that a little less detail but it’s there so I’m going to just kind of highlight it um in the mid 70s it was Gary Mack and Pen Jones who first made these unsubstantiated claims that the Dallas police radio recordings captured gunshots and Gary Mack claimed over a period not just one time as an off off oneoff but uh over a period of time that there were seven to eight gunshots that he heard on the recordings um and you know that’s quite an extraordinary extraordinary claim right I mean imagine being around this where you hear someone saying that there were tapes made of police in the motorcade from a motorcycle police officer and they heard seven eight shots on those tapes now if that were the case that would be hard evidence of of a conspiracy of course you have to analyze it and make sure you’d want to get the tapes and of course that’s exactly what happened so the house select committee formed for a different reason and formed mostly in responsibility to the zeep rder film um uh so Blakey met with JFK critics in DC uh and Mary frell is the one who brought up the police tapes this is both according to Dale Meyer’s version and Ting Thompson’s version uh and that’s what led to the multi-decadal boondoggle known as the acoustic evidence so this is going from the mid-70s till now and again so I’m going to try to distill that all down so Acoustics evidence just simply recur refers to an audio recording of a continuous Dallas Police Department FM radio transmission that was came from a motorcycle that had its its microphone stuck open on the channel one so there were two channels that the police used this was on channel one so this next slide here uh channel one was used for or radio communications used by the Dallas Police Department a not special events this just daytoday they use channel one they recorded their Communications in a transparent way to be transparent have full transparency there’s nothing cestine going on they’re recording what they’re doing uh that that was recording on a what’s called a dick to belt and that was basically a tape uh that used a stylus so it wasn’t like a magnetic tape you can’t think of it as like an eight track tape for the older people or or cassette tape it was it was like a tape but it used a a stylist that recorded physically the the sound so right off the bat that gives you a sense that okay it wasn’t even a magnetic tape which is already sort of like an old technology magnetic tapes this is like even older so it’s kind of a primitive recording medium but but but all they were trying to do is record The Voice the the words that that the police were saying to one another that was the important thing they weren’t trying to that was the the they weren’t looking for high quality high-fi recordings they’re just looking for the words so the there’s a second Channel they use so channel one channel two that was used for special events and I cannot think of any more special an event than a presidential motorcade so the police officers indeed were using in the motorcade channel two to broadcast uh and those Communications were also recorded but they were recorded on a different type of piece of equipment which is interesting but it might be due to you know funding or whatever at the time but they used a gray autograph and I believe that was an older technology I think uh don’t quote me on that uh so the the autograph was basically like a a record player it had a disc um and it had a stylus the only difference between that and a regular record player is that um as the needle moved inward It sped up and the reason for that was to keep a linear um because as you get toward the center there’s less less the even though the angular motion is the same the linear motion slows down because you have less less uh distance to cover so it speeds up as it moves in um interpretation of the recordings is also Complicated by these other issues by the way all this is uh stuff that I had learned pretty well from Michael Odell and he’s the one who really kind of become a master of all this uh so it’d be good to have him on at some point yeah for for sure yeah yeah CU he he really figured all this stuff out so to conserve the recording media um both these devices had an automatic sound Activation so they switched off when there’s nobody talking makes sense that’s actually uh uh that’s being economical um but that complicates things right so during times where nobody’s talking there’s no recording and so that makes it difficult to keep time on the tapes again for day-to-day recordings it’s perfectly fine but when you’re trying do this sort of forensic stuff it becomes more difficult you have to account for it um they also had an automatic gain control feature AGC and what that does is it’s dampening out loud noises and elevating soft noises so what it’s trying to do is trying to keep a a constant sort of amplitude or volume throughout and the reason again is all they’re caring about is words so if there’s loud noises like um recycles that can be suppressed down a little bit or if they’re talking softly or they don’t have the microphone up close enough to their mouth uh then it gets elevated so you can hear them so that’s the automatic game control then finally the gray autograph was um prone to skipping let me switch this to um uh here we go I’m going to go to the laser pointer there we go so uh so uh the the gray autograph also had an additional problem so the there’s dict about autograph the autograph was prone to skipping okay because it’s like a record player and so it would could Skip and that’s another complication to deal with right all right so now I decided this is decades and decades and to try to keep it all straight I decided to put it together as uh as a saga in three episodes and so the first episode A New Hope 1978 to 1982 um so just having a little fun with this as well um in so I already mentioned in the mid 70s Gary Mech is the one who claims to hear gunshots on the radio recordings Mary frell provides him with like a multi-dimensional copy or something to that effect and he he goes around telling people I can hear multiple shots seven shots eight shots on these recordings so then the house committee assassinations is formed slowly shortly afterwards not in response to that but Blakey meets with them DC Mary frell brings up the police tapes and and so they get the tapes and they I think they get kind of what’s close to R I think the original copies of the tapes maybe um and they performed their own investigations including an acoustical experiment at D Plaza 1979 that’s when the house sub committee releases this report concludes a probable conspiracy and it’s based upon this Acoustics evidence and specifically this W report which they said was a 9 5% confidence that there was a gunman on the grassing up it was a couple years after that that 1982 there is a panel that’s formed and releases a report NRC is National research Council of the academy National Academy um prestigious very prestigious um they investigate the claims simultaneously Steve Barber a musician discovers what’s called a cross talk uh and we’ll get into what that is which suggests the time is off and ourc report ultimately dis sprws the Acoustics and debunks it and that’s it we would hope that should have been it the end one movie but no about 20 years later out of the blue uh there’s this 2001 paper appears in a um peerreview Journal by um DB Thomas and he what happens in the paper he claims to find an alternative cross talk that uh that changes things and puts things back gets the timing and it overrides the uh the whole cross talk that Steve Barber discovered uh so so what happens is then Odell Michael Odell finds an error but then Thomas conceives it and then says well there’s another cross talk and so so basically we’ve begun a new whole chapter and that’s why I’ve kind of broken it up this this all starts here uh Dale Meyers later goes on ABC national television also British BBC television as well uh and basically shows at the open mic where the uh House Sub committee determined that you had to have a Open Mic motorcycle at this location for these Acoustics evidence to to be to be correct U it wasn’t located there and then 2005 liner ATL that’s the surviving panel members from the house committee the Ramsey panel uh they issue a full rebuttal of Thomas’s 2001 paper and then also his check cross talk and then Thomas though unded according to tank Thompson that’s his word undotted uh in 2010 publishes a pro conspiracy apology um entitled he no evil politics science the forensic evidence in the JFK assassination which is a weird title because science and politics have nothing to do with each other right that’s the whole purpose of science science is it doesn’t care about that stuff it just is what it is the world is what it is and we’re just trying to figure it out the universe does not care about politics anyway so um I read that book has a lot of good information in it but a lot of bad stuff as well um and it exaggerated the confidence of the grassy n shot to a ridiculous number

99.999% and then the Final Chapter now so in 2010 by the way the Return of the Jedi the JFK empirically dedicated investigators very good yeah I thought I’d again that’s thought I’d have fun doing this stuff so in in 2007 in 2010 Dale Myers actually puts a report out on his on his uh website his web blog and and it’s over that period because he had different editions but so it’s the 2010 Edition really is the one that but you know it came out 2007 but the 2010 Edition includes a response to Thomas’s book but 2013 comes along and lar Sabel commissions the sellus to do their own independent analysis of the recordings and they come to a conclusion that rejects the Acoustics as well they conclude that the open mic’s not even in the motorcade now again I’m going to get into all this in more detail but I’m just just sort of the overview uh Thompson and so some from 2013 about to 2021 about uh Thompson is at meetings saying that he has a new book in the works and Michael Adell is a consultant for that uh he debunks things that are going on but he’s ignored and then in 2021 Thompson publishes last second in Dallas the book that is his his sort of sequel uh he has a rised reconstruction in there and we’ll get into that in more detail all right so now we’re going to go kind of back and be a little more detailed on what we just talked about so house SE Committee in this late 70s um they were able to get original tapes from the Dallas Police and imagine their disappointment but you you know at the same time I might not have been surprised they listen to them and there’s no gunfire on them they don’t hear anything resembling gunfire whatsoever um um despite that the house committee still decided that they would submit these to acoustical Engineers for analysis that’s you know that’s reasonable and they you know they got the tapes and they probably wanted to just make sure uh and they figured we’ll give them to experts and just to make sure uh that there’s nothing on there so that included J James Barger who is with bolt Baron and Newman BBN and then uh Professor Mark Weiss and Ernest ashkanazi w at St City University of New York these were sort of acoustical experts so it was bargar who first came who first looked at this stuff they they did it in not simultaneously they first went bargar and then Weiss and eskinazi um the an acoustic experiment was set up by uh Barger where they went to D Plaza and they set up a bunch of microphones in an array and then they had live gunfire I think they were using the weapon um the Caro from the Texas School Book Depository and the grassy those two locations so they fired off test shots they had their microphone array and they were looking to see if they can discover uh patterns that would resemble the waveforms that were on the dickout so they did that and then that was handed handed on to Weiss and asazi who performed an additional analysis and it was based upon that Acoustics evidence that the house committee made their their change from a lone gunman to probable conspiracy so this kind of I guess I really talked about all this right here that uh in a way I guess I didn’t need this slide so other than what they did is they they found matches between the waveform impulses and the dictabelt with the test muzzle blasts the echo in D Plaza this shows a diagram from the report that kind of shows what we’re getting at so they had they had buildings in D Plaza there and they were able to come up with different trajectories of sounds uh as they would Echo off of buildings and from the muzzle blast and and such and they were looking for those sounds to see if they correlated with the impulses on the diabel when they did that they came up with a 50% confidence of a way form match with a with the shot that came from the grassy null uh so 50% is half and half so you know it’s it’s like a a random thing so it’s not very good assessment so what happens is then they handed the hell committee said went to Weiss and ask gazi to take a look and what they did is they took the data from Barger and they used a hard copy map and basically pen and P you know P paper and pencil analysis uh to to see what they could come up with and they came up with using their methods a 95% confidence of a gunshot from the grassy null assuming that this specific um that there was a motorcycle located this specific location and the only motorcycle that they could come up with that was reasonably seemed could have been was this HB mlan so it ended up becoming well it’s going to be uh police officer HB mlan he has to be here and if he’s there then we get a waveform match by the way we talk about the waveforms that’s what this is and this is from Weiss and askanazi report so this is in time I believe and so sound is pressure waves through the atmosphere they’re compressive waves coming at you so what it means is that you’ll get momentary high pressure and low pressure coming at you um so so what these sort of waveforms are showing is they’re showing periods of high pressure and low pressure from sways and a lot of what you see here is what we might call static or random basically uh just not much signal there there’s just a lot of what’s you know noise or static uh but you’ll see some places that are spikes that might look like they’re something that’s outside of a a a white noise and definitely here and so that’s where they said the S the suspect impulses are now mind you if you look at the whole set of waveforms you’ll find things like this everywhere right so it’s not anything you unique here but these were the waveforms that they were trying to match is these here um one thing that we got to point out is because of this automatic game control that was on the recording you you the recording itself is never going to have anything that’s really large and that’s the reason why um you wouldn’t expect it that well that was the reason that they hypothesized that we’re not hearing the gunshots is for that reason uh but although even then you you know the the one of the police officers said I believe or someone said that yeah you can still hear gunshots on these things so that that’s that’s ridiculous um so anyway we’re going to go on okay so uh this is the quote First debunking of the acoustic evidence uh it was formerly done by the the NRC Ramsay panel U so they’re the ones who were put together as a result of this Richard sprag I believe this Richard sprag was the one who said you can hear gunshots I think on tapes like this or someone of that nature so he knew that there was a problem because he knew from the photograph the photographic evidence that uh he didn’t think there’s going to be a motorcycle in that location so this is the problem when you rush to judgment to to to borrow that phrase as the house committee did so you know they they kind of rushed this and they didn’t really established things and you have to be you have to establish things they never established that there was a police officer there they just kind of said well yeah he probably could have been there this HB mlan and they let it go with that and this gets you in trouble when you do things like this so This Richard brag knew no there I don’t I don’t think there’s anybody there so he he he didn’t keep his mouth shut um and he went to the justice department and told them about it and then you know they became convinced there’s a problem so that’s what led to this NRC panel being form and that included Nobel prizing physicist uh Norman Ramsey and Luis Alvarez the hated Luise Alvarez he was also on that panel and they immediately found problems but simultaneously in the meantime around the same time they had put out these dick Bel recordings on floppy um bino discs that was in Gallery magazine Gallery magazine now is that like a Gallery magazine that what kind of magazine is that a soft porn magazine like or Playboy that’s what I thought yeah good thank you for that so yeah so so you know Steve Barber and Todd Von they were uh J they bought the magazine for the for the record right like they’re buying Playboy for the interviews they bought the that’s exactly right yes yeah so they’re JFK Buffs and uh but C barara was a musician and uh amaz this is just really these stories are I tell you you can’t make them up so he Steve Barber listens to this and he notices something that nobody else notices that’s this thing called a cross talk where he notices that there’s someone’s voice appears on this channel one open mic and he’s like wait a minute that voice I heard on the channel two and it turns out that’s what the cross talk so so you envision this motorcycle officer has an open mic and but there but the motorcade is still broadcasting in Channel 2 and so someone else’s Channel 2 broadcast got picked up by his open mic and that’s the cross talk now the reason why that becomes um something is because then you can use the channel two to help time things in the channel one because channel one is just open the whole time and so there’s no other broadcast there’s no time markers in there where K to had had time markers specifically things like the the the specific cross talk was this bill Ducker a sheriff he’s saying hold everything secure until homicide investigators get there and we we know that that happened about one minute after the shooting of course we know it’s going to happen after the shooting but it took about a minute before you had police office saying this stuff because they didn’t know even what was going on and so that’s what when I call it the hold cross talk is just because it’s what’s being spoken so that was on channel 2 it got picked up on channel one it’s happening at the same time that the supposed gunshots are happening right so so that’s sort of a debunk right then and there and so Barber notifies the NRC panel of the finding and they uh you know they they found they had found other problems themselves but they they affirmed that yeah that’s that’s that’s the case so the suspect impulses occurred about 1 minute after the shooting and basically all they do is they make sure that it’s true right that they go through their own you know rigor to make sure that it’s not uh that that the the claims here are are correct and so that was it that should have been the end of it and it was for all intents and purposes for uh for 20 years but then again as I said out of the blue uh this paper appears in 200 2001 by a an entomologist at USDA that’s United States dep of Agriculture uh he claims in this paper that there’s another cross talk and this one was spoken by this officer Samuel Bella and that that cross talk trumps the the whole cross talk and that yes it’s the grass andol Gman because it restored the timing the paper receives mainstream media attention because it’s that’s an extraordinary claim I mean I mean that’s it’s huge uh if that’s the case you know he basically saying there’s a grassy old gunman so that became out in the open right away and of course people hear about it so T Thompson heard about it and and Michael Odell this person who up to that point would have been what you call an unknown uh and he was not a JFK buff I talked to him he wasn’t a JFK buff he was just a a computer scientist uh and he he liked this type of stuff and he was quite like whoa interesting so uh you know this could it be that someone really scientifically proved that there’s a grassy n gun so he just looked into it uh but within I don’t know maybe a couple months he can confirm for you I mean short order he he found out the problem and by the way this problem is not necessarily Don Thomas’s fault right so what happened is there are skips in the channel 2 autograph recording that weren’t accounted for they weren’t even accounted for by the NRC they they they didn’t account for these things and so what happened is the the omission of these SK the time due to these skips uh they invalidated Thomas’s conclusion but they did not invalidate the NRC conclusion uh the impulses were too late 30 seconds too late still and Don Thomas acknowledged this so when when U when Michael Adell got a hold of Don Thomas to tell him about this uh Thomas acknowledged it and he actually at a JFK meeting too that his his objections were were overruled and and that was it and the thing is is there was nothing wrong with that and it wasn’t really a bad doesn’t really reflect bad on Thomas it wasn’t error due to himself it was just something that nobody had caught Odell caught was the one who caught it again that should have been in the end of it so the Ramsey panel survivors published a rebuttal paper and that debunked it and that should have been the end of it now this is another little side out here so independently and this is stuff that again Michael D can get into with you if you want uh he independently went back and debunked the uh the Weiss askanazi report so he and this is I think the his um I think Odell’s um paper on this is is online I think you can find it at the the McAdams website he has it out there uh where he what he did is he tried to reproduce their result and was unable to do so and he he concluded the following this attempt to reproduce that experiment has demonstrated significant errors and wa’s results at every step falsifying their report that’s what he did he falsified their report basically puts us back to where things were before the house committee and hired them to do the analysis he tried to contact all of them but they all decline the comment now usually when you have someone declining the comment it usually means that it’s sort of like a tacit admission um and and and it’s also like sort of like in a little bit maybe you’re a little embarrassed by it at least that’s the way I take it definitely that’s the case for Weiss and eskinazi to my knowledge and Fred you might even be able to confirm I don’t think they ever spoke up again about about the Acoustics I think they kind of remain mum um for the rest of their time and and markk Weiss uh he passed away in 2020 and uh his obituary is here and you notice they feature in the obituary that he worked in the Watergate tapes but when you go into the obituary there’s no mention of the Acoustics and so that’s sort of more um I think um pass acknowledgement that they knew that they had problems with what they did um it would have been better if they came out publicly and acknowledged it it’s what I think they should have done but certainly better that they not go out and try to defend the indefensible it just makes things much worse yeah it just better if you if you feel like you can’t admit you’re wrong then just keep quiet about it and let it go all right so now the Dale Myers and sist reports this is all really great stuff because it’s all different it’s all independent lines of argument so Dale Myers used an upper polar geometric analysis that just means you use cameras from different angles and you’re able to redu three dimensionality out of it so he he used the the different films put them all together especially this film but also others and uh he was able to determine exactly where HB mlan was and that was he was 175 ft from the HOSA committee position that he needed to be one and a half seconds before the shot so 175 ft and one and a half seconds it’s a little bit too fast right so so bottom line is he wasn’t there and that invalidated uh the the the house committee um conclusion uh and again this is all published in detail now he went on ABC talked about this in 2003 but but he has a detailed report that you can find from his website that talks about all this independent of that Larry Sabo 9 2013 uh commissioned the sonist solists are are sonar sh for sonar analyst they’re like a engineering and Tech contractor supports the military espec I think especially in the Navy for for sonar which is sound um they performed an independent analysis of the dict tabel what they did is they looked at the channel one audio and they an analyzed the motorcycle engine speed and they were able to determine by the sound and they knew what kind of motorcycle they actually knew what kind of motorcycle it was and they were able to deduce the engine speed was way too fast it was going it was like going like uh like uh 30 or 40 mil an hour or something to that effect it it was it was not in the motor cave basically So Not only was it not in the position that was supposed to be it just wasn’t even in the motor cave right so all right so now that leads us to in spite of all this um tin Thompson still triy to resurrect the Acoustics in his book so as I mentioned he he worked on this book and he teased it at meetings JFK meetings about this book that he he’s going to come up and um and that the book was last second in Dallas and he comes up with a Revis scenario from his from his earlier book um his book six seconds in Dallas this one here he changes what what happened um and he claims that there’s a second shot to the head so Jeff K is shot in the head from the grassy null at z313 and then later he shot the head from behind which is just um doesn’t take into account aam’s razor whatsoever I mean it’s just a very convoluted way of trying to get somebody on the grassy know it’s I can describe it um so so he he relies on Thomas’s check cross talk which was debunked um by Michael Odell uh in and um in his book uh so tin came up with a couple of his own arguments I’m not going to get into detail here that’s the type of thing that uh Michael Dell might want to talk about maybe um but more formidably T consulted with James barer the original the original expert that the H committee uh relied on along with a junior engineer and they wrote an appendix for tin’s book and the appendix is pretty looks pretty technical it is technical uh but Michael Dell already had known about all this stuff and he knew there were problems there um he just kept mom about it uh so so those that something that he might want to talk about as well now this is sort of a sort of an overview conclusion of everything I just talked about um from a scientific perspective so it’s the Acoustics non-evidence uh there’s there’s nothing there it was a was a motorcycle uh broadcasting on channel one it wasn’t part of the motorcade and had its microphone stuck open it did not record anything from the crime scene uh there are three General categories of arguments that discredit it I’m going to distill it down one is timing issues so this is the original one this is the one that most everybody had been focused on this started with the uh with the hold cross talk that uh Steve Barber came up with that went into the ramsy report uh basically the suspect W forms on the dict to Belt happened one minute after the shooting approximately the open mic location assumptions uh the open mic motorcycle was not in the location it needed to be that’s at Myers talked about and not only that but it wasn’t even in the motorcade it was someplace else uh and that’s what sonus came up with and then finally insufficient audio information content what does that mean it means that the dict belt Was A Primitive recording media and it did not contain information that could tell you that there were gunshots that’s the reason why we didn’t hear the gunshots is the waveforms themselves one thing about a gunshot it’s loud what does that mean High amplitude so if you were to look at a waveform that really captures that information that what you’re hearing you’ll see like a very large amplitude and then it might come off and then maybe there’s shock wave or something like that that’s not there um and that’s because they they didn’t record that information they they did not record that information they could not they could not record that information now why is that such a big deal um it’s because right from the start before all this stuff they should have known this they should have realized that the these recordings we we cannot definitely tell you that there’s an acoustical signature that’s associated with gunfire to the exclusion of other ambient sources what are other ambient sources motorcycles people yelling oh also cross talks so the whole cross talk discovered by Steve Barber uh that itself from Channel 2 is a non-ambient is an is an ambient source of sound that is not a gunshot turns out Michael Dell has looked into that a little bit and uh it can create impulses that look just like it and so the suspect waveforms are most likely I think uh and this is what Michael Dell thinks uh were due to the the whole cross Talk itself so the gunshots was just the the cross talk so when when Weiss and as asanagi did their test of firing from the sixth floor window what they were they they claimed to have matched that wave form to the the dictabelt where did they really go wrong in that in sort of that match I don’t think that they went wrong there because what they were trying to match were all the different sounds that came out of De Plaza due to a gunshot from certain locations right so from both from the you know and from the Texas schoolbook depository and so you got like a muzzle blast a Bist ballistic crack or shock wave and then Echoes from buildings and so they were looking for matches between those types of sounds along against the waveforms of that was on the dicta Bel so they they in other words they created the they created those sounds and then they recorded them from a microphone array and then they were able to find for that one microphone near the intersection that there was a a waveform match but the thing is what does it mean what does match mean right so this is where you have to get into the you have to kind of get into the weeds a little bit which is not what I’m doing yeah you have to figure out well how what does it mean that something is matched and then not only that but is that the only source that can create those waveforms that’s what this here is and that’s where the whole thing was sort of doomed even if a lot of these other problems are going away as I mentioned um even if the timing even there was no hold cross talk let’s say there’s no you know F maybe Dale Meers found that there was the police officer there even if all that were the case in my opinion is still a problem because you haven’t proven that the recording is a gunshot it could be due to other things right and that’s what that’s what Michael had already shown but like but in theory it could be I mean there’s other sounds that can give rise to things so that’s called that’s the information content problem it’s what you can derive out of data certain data you know data gives you information and then it depends on how much information is in there what kind of conclusions that you can make oftentimes you don’t have enough information so you make assumptions that const strain things a little bit in this case the assumptions they made was that the dict number one was a police officer in the motorcade number two they were located at that location and number three that the dict Bel had gunshots on it but we didn’t even hear the gunshots and there’s no way for him that suggests that that’s a gunshot right so those those were the problems they were fatal problems from the beginning in my opinion in my opinion all they could have ever claimed if everything else were to go away all they could have ever claimed was we did an analysis and from our analysis we cannot rule out the grass SE null as a location we did an analysis we got a waveform match from a grassy n shooter a waveform match as I mentioned um uh so we can’t rule it out but we don’t know if it was gunshot or not that’s it okay all right so let uh and that’s what I just said here so yeah so this just uh I forgot what he even had in these slides uh that so that that’s that’s kind of what these are showing when I was just talking about so this is what a grassy null test shot looks like this has got the amplitude information in there see how how you got this loud sound this is the muzzle blast and you might have a shock wave after that and it kind of goes off into this tiny little area here see uh so but then this is what the dicta Bel had right there’s a big difference between these and what they did is they just assumed that well that’s because there was this automatic game this got truncated and that’s an assumption though you know that and that assumption you you can’t make that assumption unless you have very good proof to do so so that’s where their mistake was and by the way this here this is Michael Odell doing his own waveforms where he just made a k sound I guess he went and that’s what it produces so so a k sound can make uh you know can make impulse matches basically what he’s trying to get at and that’s that’s what the the hold was right so the whole cross talk was most was very likely causing this U anyway again he can get into much more detail about that all right so I think if you don’t have any other questions about Acoustics we can go on to the zville no just one question a very quick question about Ting Thompson I mean what where did he what fooled him or what you know what what you know he he he overrides all of this and accepts the Acoustics evidence and and so how how did he fool himself yeah well that’s a great question and that’s a great way of putting it because I think that is the best way of putting it is he’s fooling himself and I think Michael I think um Richard feineman had some sort of quote about be careful about fooling yourself because you’re the easiest person to fool um I I think that he probably was looking for Vindication of his earlier work which was perfectly fine I mean again he had a wrong conclusion but otherwise was a contributor to to the knowledge base and I I I think he was just looking for validation of that for whatever reason I don’t know if it’s ego or if he wants it to be and um and and it’s this uh don Thomas provided part of that so they I know that those two because I’ve heard about this I wasn’t at these meetings but I heard that the two of them kind of collaborated quite a bit um and so he’s one of the ones who Who provided him that and then and then there was other people at these meetings that provided other things things that he he he just kind of took and ran with one of them being David wimp uh who is the one who first put the idea in his head about the blur illusion which we can get to and uh and then there was another person too at at one of these meetings that that uh talked about the second shot to the head oh you know if you notice later in your own data you know there’s a forward there’s a there’s a emotion forward and that was more than the head snap and so yeah he was shot in the head you know again twice um and no it’s not what’s in the data it’s not there so it it’s too bad that Thompson did that I think his last second Dallas could have been a really it’s like I say it was a missed opportunity to me he could have come out and re um he could have corrected things from his first book in a proper way and and uh instead he he he didn’t he sort of doubled down and and made it worse worse than his original book but other than that it was a it was a you know interesting book you read it he talks about his he does a lot of biographical uh talking in in the book about his what he did you know during that time period during the exciting time period with his Life magazine and he got his hands in the zi rer filming looked at stuff and so you can kind of get a sense of being that person and being sort of in that moment and and being excited by it and you know it was like big part of his life and so you can read the book and enjoy it for that reason but not not for his conclusions

though all right so we’ll go on now this is a good segue say that PR film does it suffer from alterations or Illusions um this is hat tip to Roland Zada he’s a uh Kodak film expert Francis Corbat who’s the who’s the principal scientist at the itch Corporation Max howand Paul Hook and the six floor Museum de Plaza uh particularly Max and six floor for giving me a couple frames from the Z film uh okay so just background again on what the film is it’s forensic photographic evidence and so I I love photographic as physical because it’s uh it’s tangible but also it records phys physicality um uh remote sensing is what it is it’s the process is deriving information from em radiation and photogrametry is a subdiscipline of remote sensing um and so it involves the measurement of photographing images it’s applied in numerous fields of study including forensic science obviously but others as well um just a quick overview of the zapa camera so it was a bell and Hall zoomatic had a shutter speed of about 55 milliseconds per per per frame um and then it exposure time of 25 milliseconds so what happens is the shutter opens for 25 milliseconds and then it closes and then it’s closed for about half of the time so you got to keep this stuff all in mind so opens captures an image closes and then for about 25 milliseconds or 30 m milliseconds it’s closed things are going on and it’s not doing anything then it opens again um he used smartly K Krome 2 outdoor reversal film it was not opt it was not highspeed it would mean and we’ll get into what that means it was optimized for bright lighting conditions which is what we had in November 22nd okay so there’s this thing that’s going on there’s this thing called zilm denialism was what I’m going to call it and it’s one of these again these things can’t you can’t make some of this stuff up so ad hoc assumptions we know what those are and conspiracy theorists using them in drove so if there’s something you don’t like just come up with well that an ad hoc assumption um and and you just keep doing it and so what they’ve done is they’ve built so many ad hoc assumptions that come around the universe is sort of circular it’s a curved Universe due to relativity I guess maybe or something it’s come right back around and now the that Pruder film which is the whole impetus for the first generation waren commission uh critics including tankk Thompson uh you know they relied on it for criticizing the warrant commission report for the single bullet theory the back end to the left and that’s why the house select committee was form was because of it um so but now we’ve had so many of these head HW hypotheses that now ironically you got a lot of people out there a lot of them it’s not even fringed by The Fringe standards it’s you know there’s it’s almost become a mainstream thing and now Tink Thompson is becoming the one who’s sort of being uh forgotten about out uh they they deny it’s authentic they think that it was tampered with and altered and and then if they don’t do that that’s alterationist if they’re not doing that then you have uh others who just deny things like so for example you watch it in full watch it in full speed and Jeff K and Connelly they react at the same time you can see it I mean it’s it’s it’s so obvious when you watch it um people deny that they say no they’re not reacting at the same time I I think I do think this was one of the faults of the Warren Commission that the Warren Commission didn’t really adequately um examine or discuss the zuder film they yeah they missed the lapel flip they missed the fact that they react at the same time you’re right about that yeah they they they didn’t do that did they now uh yeah and that it’s and it’s it’s it is I mean it’s a fact and then then and another thing is there’s the head snap uh which we’ll get into but that’s being denied right so there are two different lines of reasoning for denying it one is the tink Thompson it’s a blur illusion uh de motion blurring and then the other is uh a lot of people are saying this too but I’m not going to get into it too much is that it was due to limo limousine breaking uh we’re g to get into both of these um but first before we do that is it authentic yes it is um first of all how do you determine it’s authentic well one of the things is you you do have to rely on Expert uh testimony uh because uh most everybody out there even I’m not an expert when it comes to the K kod Chrome Kodak film um I know a lot about it I’m an imagy scientist um I know a lot about how this stuff works but I I don’t know the details on that film so you have to go to The Experts first of all and so Roland Zada has said that there’s no detectable evidence and manipulation IM image alteration on the zip prer in camera original film and all supporting evidence precludes any forgery there too so this is what he said he he because he was paid by the way to take a look at it and found nothing he found found all the markings were there it was his codex film produced and at that time period I think 1962 um or 1963 and and and it it’s it’s authentic uh also there’s an i Clan cha of custody now this David ran who’s no long he’s not a lone gunman guy uh read his book read his book he talks about the chain of custody um there is no chance for conspirators to do anything with it they never got a chance U and then zaper himself testified that uh that they are authentic and Camera original and first generation Co copies another thing is that coherent alter those they say co coherent meaning yeah you can go in and screw it up you can go in there and take the film and ruin it basically I mean it was 8 millimeters and Kennedy’s head on that fatal shot would have been was Tiny um you can go in there and try to mess it up but if you’re going to try to do something that’s coherent through a film to to meet some sort of preconceived notion about what happened before it happened or after or before you know what happened I mean it’s it’s it’s not possible um it was not possible in 1963 and not even trivial today and by the way it was a reversal film meaning that there was no negative the film actually got produced as was there’s not a film negative now what happens in the real world let’s say in the real world there was a conspiracy and they did this comp cockamamy thing they they sh have been broad daylight um what they would have done is they would have tried they would Seas they would have send the the gusto in get everybody’s camera films you know and because it would take a Gusto to do this basically and then destroy them um they wouldn’t have come up with this thing about trying to you know alter it and then finally this is me a philosophical question if the zpp film could be altered and was then how do we know the assassination even happened now you could say well you know you know Vince bully obviously doesn’t think it was needed to determine what happened right well that’s true we didn’t need the film to know that it happened but that isn’t what I’m talking about I’m talking about once you go in that rabbit hole of denying evidence that you don’t like uh then you can deny all of it you can deny everything in fact you you know they deny the autopsy they deny a lot of things um so you can deny everything you can deny the fact that the you could say that the media was in on it you can deny you could say that uh that they set it up that it was a contrived thing that happened uh you can come up with all these head hoc hypothesis the the whole thing was conted because Kennedy just wanted to to get out he he didn’t want he wanted a nice soft exit from the presidency and he ended up going to uh you know Aruba or something like that I don’t know yeah it’s it’s the only play left to conspiracy theorists because the evidence points to Oswald so okay we have to claim that’s planted and altered and faked that’s the point and once you go down that rabbit hole you can just do it everywhere and you go no then you’re just spinning your wheels and you’ve got nothing and that’s so so that’s just my philosophical question about it so yes the zpp Brut film is authentic sadly it shows uh the president being shot in the head graphically and gruly all right so um this is the materials here that we’re going to be looking at I just everybody knows this so it’s SE frame 32 12 and 313 I rendered them in Gray scale notice I put a scale on here I put that on there because it’s I’m trying to show this is a quantitative Endeavor uh what I’ve done is I’ve this this image is a matrix of numbers and the numbers I’ve got Grace scaled according to this scale here but so what I’ve got is a matrix of numbers here and and here as well it’s uh frame 313 that we have this uh what is claimed to be the um camera the the panning error due to to the fact that what’s happened is the The Limousines got a little in front of the camera now you so you got you got both of them by the way this woman is a little bit blurred here because she’s moving but you but you notice she’s a lot more blurred here uh that’s again so what’s happened is it’s a lot like Lee Harvey Oswalt shots what’s happened is because the limousine is orthogonal the the that the amount of tracking the linear the angular tracking is at the maximum point so it turns out it’s right here at this fatal moment that it was the most difficult to do the filming uh because the limousine has to take the most panning and then not only that but it’s on a Downs slope so if you notice he’s had trouble zaper had trouble keeping the limousine centered right I mean this Frame here is mostly all wasted on the on the lawn and we barely got them down here um if you were centering it JFK would have been more up would have been more up here um so so that’s all just matters effect so that so what’s happened here by the way this is not due to the gunshot this is not a startle error which be kind of more erratic this is just the limousine got a little bit ahead of him he had a little difficulty tracking it because this moment happened before he would even heard the sound I believe um certainly before he would have react maybe maybe he would have heard the sound but but uh he wouldn’t have reacted that fast and and one other thing too this is how you know it’s tracking error also is because these the sunglint here off the Chrome is horizontal it’s maybe one degree off of horizontal but it’s a totally horizontal thing so it just has to do with limousine got a little ahead of him as he was trying to hand along and it it was it got difficult all right so this shows them in the typical fashion the repeating animated uh jet file uh and you see a lot of these all over the place in the internet uh they’re in full color it’s very gory it’s some the reason why I rendered it in Gray scale by the way I mean one is because we’re just doing some photogrametry here but but another thing is because you know it’s it’s just very gory so you know you don’t need the go to to do the analysis um anyway you could see between the two frames that he has a forward head snap uh it’s clear as day and it was measured by Ting Thompson to be about 5 cmers uh you’ll notice though that the second frame blurs and you can kind of see that especially here you can also see it in John Connelly’s head you can kind of you can just kind to see it in other places uh that’s where the blur illusion comes in but however before we get to that I want to point out it’s not due to limo breaking because to get into physics again classical mechanics what we’re talking about here something called a fictitious force that happens from a decelerating frame of reference Newton’s laws apply in an inertial frame meaning that Newton’s Laws hold in the frame basically that’s what the initial frame is so so whenever you got a reference frame that’s accelerating and decelerating it’s not inertial anymore and what happens is fictitious force is going to arrive now you can get rid of the fictitious forces by using let’s say we use the the street pavement as our initial frame then what happens is it’s no longer it’s no longer fictitious forces uh but but but what happens is in this analysis is more convenient to use the limine as the as the frame of reference in which case then you end up with fictitious forces if it slows a fictitious Force though due to this in a deating reference frame means that everybody in the reference frame all the objects will behave in the same way and what that means is that their Center masses all react in the same way so you got a center mass in your head and one in your body and what happens is it would both snap and not only that but everybody in the limo would snap that way as well because there’s a lot of time that went through the between these two frames 50 milliseconds that’s a lot of time if you’re talking about you know narrowing down your your um scale your time scale if you have like a high-speed camera there’s a lot that can go on between those two that 50 milliseconds so there’s a lot of time between there and so if you’re GNA say that this is due to limo breaking then everything else in there is gonna be due to you’re gonna have the same thing happening I’m really hammering this home maybe I’m beinga a dead horse but there are people who claiming this is do limo limo breaking and it’s not one other thing too it’s 5 cm approximately in one frame that implies deceleration of the car by 2 miles per hour per frame or 40 mil hour per second so hot damn this this limousine can do a break it’s like going from zero to 40 in one second that’s that’s one uh sports car there so other words it’s it like there’s no breaking that’s going to cause that is what I’m also trying to say I mean if there was a breaking it’s not going to cause that much all right so anyway I I beat that to I’m sorry about that but I just feel like I have to to hammer it home so now what about the blur illusion we could see that it becomes very blurry here is that see see con’s head kind of goes is that what’s happening here so let’s take a look all right so what is that so it’s an ad hoc hypothesis the forward motioning of that head is due to blurring um extreme motion blurring can indeed cause Distortion in film images all right so this is why you know Paul hul is the one who said I should look into it I didn’t want to because I’m thinking it’s not necessary but but but he did point out you know this is these are I believe these these frames here from the Zep P film they’re frames uh 405 408 409 409 this is later in the film a part of the film that most people don’t care about um I believe Thompson includes these in his book to illustrate the point uh and it was something that I had to think of a little bit about because because I I looked at and well they do have a point here and that is that did you know so so what happened is after Kennedy was shot in the head then Z prud became quite unsteady and it was no longer just panning error he was just probably nervous as hell and I’m surprised he didn’t just drop the camera which I probably would have done um so so that that led to this sort of extreme blurring and if you notice the lamp post here is distorted uh and then there seems the white bleeding in on it and there’s a person in back of it here so don’t worry about this guy here back there so that’s what’s going on there but it’s sort of like um looks like it’s moved right so so that’s what the point was and so what’s what’s what’s interesting is this is a legitimate phenomenon you can have blurring creating um distortions I don’t want to call it illusion but distortions U but so the question is that’s what is that what was going on here so to to get to this I got a hold of Roland Zada and asked him about it and unfortunately he provided me exactly what I was looking for he provided me this this this kod chrome movie film specs um for that particular film and um it’s this page here the second page that I was most interested in providing me something exactly what I was looking for which is this curve here now I’m gonna go ahead and zoom in on that that’s what this is so I took that and I zoomed in in on it and then what I did is I digitize it now what is it it is a plot of the density of the film versus the log exposure in Lux seconds which is intensity seconds and what that means is intensity seconds just means that the the shutter opens the film is exposed to light coming in and it’s exposed over a period of time and it’s both the combination of the intensity of the light how bright it is along with how long it’s sustained so it’s a combination of both so so so if you have a like a a light that comes on very bright and goes off before the the shutter closes then that will register is less bright than if a is just on the whole time while the shutters open so so that’s what this is depicting so what I did is I took this and I digitized it so then I have I have my computer now so I got numbers in my computer density means it’s more opaque so the film is more opaque at lower exposure they have it in log rhythmic here I I then took it to to linear and this where you can kind of see it becomes nonlinear um so it’s a linear axis but the curves are nonlinear and so what’s happening is it’s saying that the film is opaque and it becomes um less it becomes less opaque as it’s exposed longer but it sort of like starts very fast and it tapers off that’s the What’s called the non- highspeed part of it the outdoor part it’s trying to make sure that it doesn’t saturate the film’s design so you don’t saturate then what I did is I took the gray scale so I averaged gray scale is just an average of those three colors here and I took the negative so now what happens is um it’s the opposite so now as exposure goes up um the U it becomes higher numbers and now I wanted to get rid of these numbers because these numbers don’t really mean anything now so I I turned it into what’s called brightness it’s a number from zero to one so so from lower exposure to higher exposure you end up from numbers of zero brightness so now it’s really making sense zero brightness means it’s going to be black and then we go up to White all right so and it has to do with how long again the the film is exposed I won’t go into all this in detail uh I don’t we won’t have time but this is just my methodology so what I did is I simulated the effect of the film response on motion blurring and then I assessed whether motion blurring can create the illusion of isolated motion let’s worry about this side more so what I did is I took that that response curve and I took it and I and took the brightness array that came to me from the zap prud film itself I converted it back to exposure and then I blurred the exposure by applying a box car filter horizontal so I blurred it and then I took the exposure back to brightness so what this is doing is simulating the effect of blurring according to a film that has an exposure curve that sort of is nonlinear that it responds to the light in a nonlinear fashion this is all the try to investigate the idea does this effect which can cause Distortion Like lamp posts against the with extreme you know the the camera was extremely um um unsteady at that point can that also cause the JFK effect and that this is the result so the left side is c312 and a blurred c312 so 312 and blur Z 312 what we’re looking for is do it create a head snap and the answer is no it does not you see a lot of the other stuff is very similar right you can see that these the the the the Chrome here becomes distorted and you see his head kind his head does what it does but everybody kind of blurs out and there’s no isolated motion on his head conversely or on the other hand also if we go over to the right what I’ve got is the Blurred 312 and z313 which is already blurred and now you notice this all looks quite the same they’re all blurred about the same way the only difference is just that I only had a horizontal blur where that PR had a little bit off about one degree off so that’s the only thing you could kind of notice here otherwise uh that all looks fine but then you go over to here and his head’s still snapping forward uh so it it there’s no there’s no blur illusion and that doesn’t explain it so so blur or not it’s his head that’s being hit

and bonus but wait there’s more but wait there’s more uh so I I just thought I’d talk about this a little bit so the there’s this thing on the internet that oh you know his head is blacked out the back so that’s part of the alterationist they went in there they knew within hours that there had to be D he was shot from the in the head from the front and there was a big blowout we have to cover it up so they they so so this bottom line is this whole thing that I just talk about explains what’s going on uh what’s happening is that there’s a point in the curve where if you don’t get enough exposure you don’t get enough intensity exposure uh you’ll end up with just a blackout right and and that that’s what’s happened here so all has happened here is his head’s in the shadow the sun’s on that side you’re facing the Sun and his head’s in Shadow and so it’s just it’s too dark because it really is in Shadow and by the way his back is also in Shadow it’s blacked up too but but you know details but but that’s what’s going on is just that there’s not been enough intensity uh seconds to to cause a reaction so it’s blacked right and and really that’s uh that’s all it is and uh this paper by Farid he actually modeled it and he showed the same thing use a 3D model to show you get the same effect and one other thing too is when it comes to photo fakery it’s nothing new there I’m not saying it can’t happen that you can’t do it but this is also extremely difficult to to fake shadows and then especially if it’s a 8 millimeter and his head is a tiny little part of the 8 millimeters it’s very difficult to fake this type of thing all right so that’s what the black patch is it’s simply the the the the it’s like today you can even take your your your camera phone if you take it out in the dark and you try to take a picture and there’s no lighting it comes out black and this is sort of the same thing the only difference here is you have a film response whereas with cameras you don’t have to worry about film all right so conclusion um this forward head stap again I didn’t Discover it all I did was analyze it um it was discovered by Rich fan I believe uh and it’s exactly what it appears to be it’s not due to illusion it’s not due to limo breaking it’s just a measured isolated forward movement of JFK’s head on the order of 5 Centimeters between two frames um in accordance with principles of classical Dynamics It could only originate from an impulse from a directional real Force real Force means not fictitious Force but a real Force um his his head suffers a fatal wound so the force is due to a bullet impact uh and that’s only consistent with a impact that’s going from back to front uh so it’s it’s him being hit and had and that if you do a an in-depth dynamical calculation which is what I done had done in a certain way using forces I did I I treated the skull and the soft tissue in certain ways you end up with a movement on the same order of magnitude about 5 cenm so it so what’s observed agrees with what physics would predict um so the Z film provides independent Cooperative forensic evidence that JFK was shot in the head from the rear and I believe that’s all I have well that’s a great presentation I mean I really really appreciate that that’s fantastic I mean what what what again going back to the warrant commission well the first the first generation critics I mean it used to be the first generation critics would take all the evidence the 26 volumes the zuder film or whatever c399 and they would argue the evidence and the problem is now is the ne the new generation of of critics do the opposite we we we do not want to argue the evidence we’re going to tell you the evidence is phony planted fake and whatever that’s the only it’s it’s a whole new way of arguing and it means you can’t really discuss the the the assassination because they reject all the evidence it’s extremely frustrating you can’t Bec is impossible to to discuss it at that point it’s uh the analogy I always like to use is that it’s like um it’s like talking about how many angels can dance in the head of a pen you know arguing with each other about that um you’re G to get nowhere and so soon as people start denying it then you can’t go I just say well how do you know that he was assassinated then and then they think that’s oh I’m not no but no but You’ gone down that path and and there are people by the way believe it or not I come up with that crazy thing but then there are some out there who think that is what happened that he wasn’t assassinated yeah or or people saying Jackie Jackie shot him or whatever you know really gets really yeah yeah Mrs Kennedy you know with her poison dart gun Ting Thompson’s not responding to any of any of the critiques of of his book yeah I noticed that he there was that interview recently that was circulated on the social media I I listened to it and he um he had a sympathetic interviewer who didn’t bring anything up like that no hard questions the only hard questions were or what You Know What’s the magnitude of the conspiracy that would have to go into doing all this and he was very uncomfortable with those questions I could see it um because because he’s not IR he’s not irrational but he’s irrational about this uh but but he because I could see that he’s thinking oh my God that’s like Fringe you know I’d have to be saying that you know everybody’s in on it he doesn’t want to go there he’s wants to say well no all I proved is that he was shot by more than one gunman and I didn’t we’re going to leave it go at that but we’re like you can’t just leave it go at that I mean you can’t just say that and say okay well I’m done you know you you have to you know okay what who was the gun you know you have to you go further than that he doesn’t want to do that it’s too bad well look it’s this is all uh fascinating stuff and there’s still a lot more to discuss uh about um uh the head wound and stuff youve because you’ve written so much and so obviously a third a third uh session is going to be upcoming in the near future uh but thank you much it’s been been amazing okay great Fred I’m glad uh glad that hopefully we uh everybody’s uh enjoys this who’s watching it okay thank you very much and uh we’ll see you soon for another edition of on the trail of delusion

[Music] [Applause] [Music]

About the secret JFK files

www.mattkprovideo.com/2025/02/11/about-the-secret-jfk-files/

Is there anything of interest in the so-called “secret files” about the President John Fitzgerald Kennedy (JFK) assassination?

President Donald Trump said he would release all the files in his first term, then “THEY” asked him not to do so. Suspicious?

Then Trump said he’d release everything in his SECOND term, and so far… he hasn’t?

Why won’t Trump release the files? What is in them that needs to be kept secret?

Was the Warren Commission hiding something? Something that might indicate a second shooter or that Lee Oswald was working for a government security agency?!?!?

Was the Church Committee hiding something?

What did the 1978 House Select Committee on Assassinations have to hide? What were they afraid of?

What material(s) did the Assassination Records Review Board decide not to release to the public and Why?

Welcome to the first episode of On the Trail of Delusion, a podcast that separates reality from fiction in the JFK assassination. Our guest is Robert Reynolds who is an expert on the JFK assassination files. You can visit his terrific website at http://www.jfkarc.info

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Dealey Plaza Dallas, Nov 22, 2024

www.mattkprovideo.com/2024/11/23/dealey-plaza-dallas-nov-22-2024/

Two years in a row…?

Here are some video clips of the goings on in Dealey Plaza ( Dallas, Texas) to commemorate the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963.

I disagree with many of the things said and done today ( November 22, 2024,) but remembering President Kennedy will always be a good thing.

HERITAGE OF NONSENSE, Book Trailer

www.mattkprovideo.com/2024/10/10/heritage-of-nonsense-book-trailer/

HERITAGE OF NONSENSE, Book Trailer

A Heritage of Nonsense: Jim Garrison’s Tales of Mystery and Imagination Paperback –

by Fred Litwin (Author)

A Heritage of Nonsense contains nine stories that illustrate Jim Garrison’s malfeasance, his paranoia, and his conspiratorial mindset. There is a commonality that runs through this book: the insidious nature of conspiracy theorists, gullibility that stretches the imagination, and a smattering of mental illness. For the first time ever, you’ll read about the East German Stasi files of Richard Case Nagell, a man who desperately needed psychiatric help; the truth about Rose Cherami who supposedly had foreknowledge of the JFK assassination; a gay rights activist who channeled Lee Harvey Oswald at a séance; a Las Vegas entertainer who became a suspect in Garrison’s investigation because of one phone call; and the search for a lost map of Dealey Plaza. I even solve a longstanding JFK assassination mystery. And a whole lot more.

You can buy the book on Amazon:

https://a.co/d/djAJYkW

Editorial Reviews

Review

“In the late 1960s, New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison spoon-fed the public scenario upon scenario of implausible JFK assassination conspiracy theories, many of which have been adopted by well-known Warren Commission critics. Using actual evidence, clear reasoning, and common sense, Fred Litwin masterfully debunks many of the more popular vignettes of Garrison’s theories. A Heritage of Nonsense is a must-read for anyone who wants to be properly informed.”
— Robert A. Wagner, Author of JFK Assassinated: In the Courtroom: Debating the Critic Research Community

“For anyone harbouring lingering doubts that Garrison was a deluded charlatan, this book nails that coffin shut tight. With a strong commitment to first-hand testimony and primary source analysis, Fred Litwin is the highest form of amateur investigator writing about the Kennedy assassination, setting the record straight against the leading peddlers of conspiracist nonsense. Fred’s meticulous research, his compassion for the victims of shameless witch hunts, and his low tolerance for paranoid hogwash, make him a formidable opponent to anyone who places their ego and ideology ahead of clear facts and sound logic.”
— Michel Jacques Gagné, Author of Thinking Critically About the Kennedy Assassination, and host of the Paranoid Planet podcast.

“No reasonable person can possibly take any of Jim Garrison’s conspiracy theories seriously after reading this book. Good job, Fred Litwin!”
— David Von Pein, Author of Beyond Reasonable Doubt: The Warren Report and Lee Harvey Oswald’s Guilt and Motive 50 Years on [with Mel Ayton]

”Litwin exposes JFK assassination absurdities the way The Amazing Randi exposed spoon bending illusionists. His latest is a necessary source book illuminating an abomination in US history where a libel was cloaked in an enthralling conspiracy theory. Litwin challenges us to ask ourselves: do we want the truth or to believe what feels more exotic than the truth?”
 Eric Dezenhall, author of Wiseguys and the White House and Best of Enemies [with Gus Russo]

Tags:

#heritageofnonsense, #fredlitwin, #litwin, #kennedy, #assassination, #conspiracy, #debunk, #history, #skepticism, #book, #Garrison, #jim, #jimgarrison, #booktrailer, #1963, #2024, #clayshaw, #shaw, #neworleans, #cheramie, #nagell, #broshears, #kordelski, #mattkordelski, #motiongraphics, #animation, #2Danimation, #videoediting, #premiere, #adobe,#adobepremiere, #aftereffects, #adobeaftereffects, #photoshop, #motion,

On the Trail of Delusion, Episode 9, Dr Alecia Long

On the Trail of Delusion, Episode 9, Dr Alecia Long

www.mattkprovideo.com/2024/09/08/on-the-trail-of-delusion-episode-9-dr-alecia-long/

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 Stones film flam at the demagogue of D Plaza Fred Litwin is here he’s a longtime author and certainly Watcher of politics uh joining us uh Fred Litwin great to have you here thank you very much

hey welcome to another edition of On the trail of Delusion where we try to separate the wheat from the chaff and we actually try to present serious discussions on the JFK assassinatio

the kind of material that you just won’t see on typical Conspiracy YouTube videos

I’m absolutely delighted today to have Alicia long as my guest Alicia is a professor of history at Louisiana State University at Baton Rouge Alicia has written four books the latest book that she’s written is cruising for conspirators which is all about Jim Garrison’s prosecution of Clay Shaw in the 1960s

this is her fourth book and there’s another book coming on the way which we’ll talk about

Alicia has a ma from Ohio University and a PhD from the University of Delaware and I have to say that your book Cruising for Conspirators is not only one of the best books written on this topic but I I know this topic but in fact when I read this book I found it exciting I found your narrative to be incredibly exciting even though I knew it was going to happen

www.//a.co/d/bt4UT6C

I said wow this is so well written and so interesting um that uh this book is going to stand the test of time I mean a 100 years from now people will still be referring to this book as one of the classic books on the case so I’m absolutely delighted um to be here and my first question is sort of what got you interested in Jim Garrison

So you know my work and training as a historian uh my dissertation was focused on the City of New Orleans and so New Orleans really is kind of like the central location for the stories and histories that I’m interested in as a you know research historian and um my first book was um about the history of prostitution in New Orleans

between the end of the Civil War and 1920 and the Storyville vice district and one of the sources that’s very rich in New Orleans is court records

and so the first book was really based on a series of Court records and um what you see immediately whether you’re looking at New Orleans or Louisiana more broadly is you know that there are many miscarriages of justice and that’s that’s true everywhere um but because New Orleans is such a distinctive place and has so many characters

Sometimes these stories are just super Vivid out of the court records and um I originally set off I think to write a book about morals in the 1960s just to kind of understand that decade in the city’s history but you know I came across the Shaw story and the Garrison prosecution and that seemed like you know a glaring example of a miscarriage of Justice and um you know as you know the evidentiary record around just the Garrison investigation is huge and so you know it’s it’s that was plenty of material to write a book and it’s plenty of material to write half a dozen

you know more books in terms of uh you know that particular h District Attorney’s tenure in office

but it was also really uh you know it was a very volatile time in the United States

but it’s also a really volatile time uh of change in New Orleans and so that’s you know that’s my background as a historian and a research historian is is New Orleans

and also the history of sexuality so so the first book is really about you know kind of as a feminist take on uh prostitution and this book uh really reflects kind of my sense of uh you know how badly uh LGBT plus people were treated

in fact and in law um in the mid 20th century and how this case not only is an example of that but it really kind of provides us a window into um how that worked uh you know on a kind of mechanical level in law um and in culture and society and so that’s kind of that’s where my research comes from

it’s an interest in New Orleans in the history of sexuality it’s you know New Orleans is a fascinating place so you know you’re you’re an historian and I think you’ve probably read a lot of uh conspiracy books on the JFK assassination but can you talk a bit about uh your expertise as a historian and what that brings to the table and how you might when you read conspiracy books how you know how are they lacking in what you would call good material for historians so you know I mean I was I was thinking about this a lot and I’m teaching a historiography course for graduate students this semester where we really look at the history of how historians are trained um what they’re taught to believe about what they’re doing um and how that changes over time and you know in the early 20th century I think historians were uh really obsessed with the idea of objectivity and they felt like they could just be objective enough that they could you know rebuild the past in a very reliable um way and that that belief and objectivity uh I think has really waned over the course of the 20th century and into the 21st and I think most people are willing to acknowledge that they have uh you know presumptions about things um that they have sort of you know they bring things to the table with them that help shape their work but having said that I mean I think the really valuable thing about the way historians are training in graduate school is that you really are taught to focus on evidence right right I mean question formulation is uh you know an act of creativity and Imagination and you know predisposition what are you interested in um but once you settle on a question you know you really are trained to identify as much archal material as you can and try to put that story together in as complete a way as you can understanding that there are questions you won’t be able to answer much of the material written about Garrison at the time um and then let’s say like in the late 20th century no one was super polarized but beyond that the books that seemed to me the best books were the books that were dealing in evidence right either um archal evidence or they’re going out and doing interviews like you you’ve done a lot of interviews right um and you’re talking to people um you know about things they experienced or saw firsthand and there you know this whole class of books related to The Garrison investigation that are so obsessed with defending Jim Garrison um and defending his um activities um particularly around the Kennedy assassination but more generally I think I tried really hard to be fair to Jim Garrison um as a historical figure um I don’t think he’s an admirable person um or public official um but I really looked at his you know his record from you know the late 40s forward and a lot of the things that happened and you know this I mean a lot of the things that happened in the Garrison investigation there was a pattern that was already set you know before he got there that uh is that gets replicated uh in his prosecution of Clay Shaw and there are numerous examples of that so you know I think looking at that you know staying in the evidence um is something that I think historians are trained to do and I teach a course for undergrad um called the history of conspiracy in the United States and we really look at it from the time of the Declaration of Independence to the 21st century and you know there’s a question that I always ask them you know when they make U assertions about things and there are um I have numbers of students who are you know predisposed to conspiracy thinking um but we always kind of you know land on that question about what is the evidence here yeah right and you know in terms of the Kennedy assassination the preponderance of the evidence is that Lee Harvey Oswald did it are there many you know questions about you know where he was and what he was doing and what the hell is going on here and you know mean obviously um but if if we’re going to stay in the evidence that’s where you land yeah very true and I think the the same can be said the evidence against Clay Shaw is pretty weak if not of almost non-existent right yeah it’s very shoddy

Moo Sciaambra who developed a lot of testimony among Witnesses and the the big example there’s the Clinton Witnesses you know whose initial depositions are all over the place but by the time they come to testify these story sort of narrowed into something that is you know moderately coherent and and consistent um but that’s because he he works with these witnesses to develop that testimony that is something districts attorney District Attorneys do um but there was a you know there was a lot of really shady stuff um you know happening there I think the same and I’m gonna I’m gonna flake on the name this morning I’m sorry but the the drug addict who

uh yeah that’s also you know another one of those stories where Bundy understands what they’re looking for and he hands it to them what let’s go back to I mean you you live in Baton Rouge I do you you have a an expertise on understanding New Orleans but also Louisiana um I’m from Canada so I don’t have that expertise I don’t have that knowledge so perhaps you can talk a bit about Louisiana and New Orleans and what what is it about those places that makes this case interesting or stand out or what you know what do people need to know about Louisiana and New Orleans yeah I would say just kind of generally I’m I’m really grateful I I came to LSU at uh in 2007 and that was my second academic job taught at Georgia State University before that and had worked in the Louisiana State Museum for six years before that so I’ve been at this long time now and um but one of my charges and I was hired to teach Louisiana history and I teach a big survey course on Louisiana history every semester um and I’m really grateful for that because you know before I had that job I I really was I think I had a lot of expertise on New Orleans I had less expertise about the state and and that has really kind of enhanced my understanding of um not just how New Orleans is distinctive but how it fits into um the States history and and the States history is very it’s not it’s not that it’s just conservative it’s that you know there seems to be historically speaking a kind of you know a preference for demagoguery right among among the populace uh at the state level um and and you know in in many cases at the you know local level and it’s also really important and and I do this in in cruising for conspirator is really explain how Jim Garrison became so empowered um in his first term in office that by the time he got to investigating the Kennedy assassination there were no controls over him none I mean he effectively was unsupervised he had the governor in his pocket he he arguably got John mckian elected um and so mckian you know is hands off um he has beaten the Attorney General um at the United States Supreme Court and um you know so he is he is a super empowered local official and you have to sort of understand that larger context of what was happening in Louisiana not just in the 1960s but over time to understand how somebody could be operating in the way that he was operating um during that period of time I think there was a history of of uh police corruption in in in Louisiana as well um yeah and and this um this new book that I’m working on um what’s so interesting to me is how these people uh keep popping up over time and so Persian geret right uh is U dismissed from the police force in 1953 um for um you know they sort of soft pedal but there’s you know there is testimony that he and his partner are actually coordinating these safe cracking robberies right while they’re cops and so ultimately he’s dismissed from the police force and this all happens the the new book is a is about marage and a murder and a miscarriage of Justice in the early 1950s and there’s a a murder of this woman named U Diddy Cooper by her um then husband James Cooper who owned the Quarter Two Sisters restaurants you can sort of see how this all like floating around in the French Quarter and Jer is right in the middle of it right um and this big police corruption Scandal I think in part um accounts for why there is such a miscarriage of Justice in her murder um but so you have to sort of you know know who these people are and who these characters are and so if you know that backstory about persan jery um Jim Garrison making him his chief investigator in 1962 is this extraordinary kind of Fu right um and you know and also a kind of indicator of how that office will be run in terms of um using that office to um enrich themselves using the legal process um in ways that are very Sim iCal yeah one one of my favorite stories about persing jery was told to me by Milton brener um that he that he would find out which cases in the DA’s office were not going to be prosecuted and then he we go to those people and say well I can get your case dismissed if you pay me money and of course it would all it would looked at those people like he was highly successful right yeah he he he was a real operator uh and I love after he left the DA’s office um at the time of the um first campaign for re-election for Garrison that he told I don’t remember who he told this to but he described himself as an underworld on budsman right you know it’s it’s classic it’s it’s fascinating tell me a bit about um perhaps a history of homosexuality in Louisiana or New Orleans and how it was looked upon in the 1960s because sometimes people think oh New Orleans was so uh open about stuff but it wasn’t completely open so if you want to perhaps talk a bit about homosexuality sure I mean there’s you know this is important I think you know particularly because of you know contemporary uh kind of conservative culture War issues and I think sort of understanding the longer history of this is really important particularly for young people who have you know grown up in a world that is so different yeah from you know the uh 21st century uh you know world and and and you know New Orleans likes to Pride itself on being liberal um and its critics like to think of it that way but there is actually you know there are a lot of these uh you know reformers in New Orleans in the early 1950s who are themselves kind of obsessed with homosexuality and particularly the visibility of it in the French quarter and they battle it really hard um through city ordinances um through uh lobbying the state legislature and having a sort of legal regime set up in place by the late 1950s in New Orleans or for the state actually and you know homosexuality which it would have been called at the time you know it’s becomes the kind of this placeholder for uh decadence and the kind of disreputability uh that the city has and so you know there’s a huge campaign there’s a big one in 1953 there’s another one in 1958 um and the early 1960s police are raiding gay bars on a very very consistent basis and just hauling people in and often they’re not even charged but it’s you know it’s the it’s the harassment and and and I’ll also say because you know I think it’s really important to distinguish you when particularly when doing this kind of work like uh you know kind of close historical work really to distinguish between the police and the District Attorney’s offices um because there’s often a lot of tension in there and and what I found in the historical record and I’ve written a couple of articles about it um is you know the police are kind of dragged into to right uh this um because for them it it’s a lot of trouble and a lot of hassle to be raiding These Bars all the time and and dragging these people in and processing them and then a lot of these cases just get n acrossed so it’s like you know it’s it’s you know it UPS their level of uh you know work you know and and processing people in the French Quarter and and I think they knew that for the most part uh you know not always but for the most part the the establishments that were gay or gay adjacent um were no different than and in many cases a lot um less criminally adjacent than many other places in the French Quarter but they ultimately get sort of drawn into these reformers quests to uh rid the City of New Orleans of this reputation and a visible you know homosexuality homosexual communities in the French border that is something that’s important again to understand with regard of the Garrison investigation and the shaw matter and there’s a there’s a photo that I use and I think youve probably I’m sure you’ve seen this one of three of Garrison’s investigators sitting at a table and it’s full of you know mug shots of men and boys and you know exactly what those are that’s that big pool of pretty vulnerable gay people they have arrested and now they can sort of you know try to button hole and harass and there are you know a number of specific cases of that type they don’t create that uh you know situation but they exploit it mercilessly not just in the of Shaw but in trying to uh find witnesses who will confirm these you know this crazy theory that they have developed about you know David fery and Clay Shaw and Lee Harvey Oswell and and that also I mean the going combining that with the DA’s power of subpoena he actually could actually um subpoena to appear either before the grand jury or in his office but um people were sort of scared of Garrison he had a lot of power they were nervous absolutely they were I mean a lot of G people went underground and you I mean you have people uh you know talk about that in interviews um that the District Attorney’s Office does um and they also uh there’s one interview and again I’m not going to remember the specific name because there’s so much of this kind of stuff but that um you know one gay bar owner uh said that his partner had been told that if they would produce testimony you know putting Clay Shaw and David FY together that they could run their drag shows um without harassment right and and you also see it in Jean Davis’s testimony before the grand jury where he you know is essentially like saying I’ll say whatever you want me to say because I’ve always given you evidence isn’t that right Mr Garrison and then Garrison says yes and like Gan Davis is a kind of quintessential you know kind of gay bar owner who uh is you know very much part of a certain segment of uh the gay community in the French Quarter um but also an informant for the police um you know trying balance all those things so he can stay in business yeah and stay out of jail ideally exactly yeah so it’s an incredible milu and I I mean I’ll go back to there’s one conspiracy author who claims the problem with me and others like you is that you don’t understand New Orleans and only this person understands New Orleans and I find that you know quite quite ridiculous that uh people say that because you certainly understand New Orleans and Louisiana well you know I think you have to under just with regard to this particular um author um you know I recently discovered that there was a second part of um a very absurd uh it proport to be a book review um of cruising for conspirators and and you know it’s not I can’t really take it seriously because at the first one in the first review uh that this person wrote uh it was clear this person had not read the book right I mean I think they might have read a um you know an excerpt or a preview um but yeah I mean there’s some people just so um defensive and uh and mean is not the right word but just so sort of like angry and costic and toxic yeah and you can’t I you know you cannot engage meaningfully with a person who approaches their subject matter in that way and I’m about as a as a professor you know as a teacher I’m all about you know having just you know having respectful disagreements with people yeah and walking away with a relationship with that person intact um and and you know that to me is teaching and that to me is dialogue and I think there are some people in the conspiracy Community with whom you can have conversations um you know but not many not many it’s really it’s a how few you can and and and then I’ll just say this and then we can move on but you know I also think there is no little sexism in in you know some of the treatment that I received um from one author in particular and you know I hope that person will do some self-examination um because I think they have a problem with women I hope so too and I think you’re right but uh I somehow doubt it yeah well I’m not g to get my hugs up but don’t hold your breath no so let’s talk a bit about um Clay Shaw okay what led Garis Garrison to Clay Shaw and what kind of life he was leading um in New Orleans in the 1960s he had it pretty good uh right up until um you know he becomes a suspect and um he’d been traveling he was in Spain for a period of time he was in England for a period of time he had uh saved enough money and made enough money from uh you know flipping properties in the French quar that he had a secure retirement in place and uh I think he was enjoying himself despite the dangers I think he had a you know pretty uh active uh sex life and that was an important part of his life um and had been for a long period of time he’s very attractive man you know and I didn’t have problems finding Partners when he is identified I mean you have to I mean know what happened in December when he’s interviewed in December I think the tone of that interview is is really interesting because you see him in that particular interview kind of like balancing the danger he’s in with a kind of covering you know a sort of closedness around his identity as a homosexual and and when he is uh you know when he’s arrested there’s this whole period of time where for practical reasons I think but also because he’s doing a lot of self-examination he stops picking men up and and having relationships and a lot of people you know fall away from him and he kind of isolates himself and there are a very small number of people with whom he has relationship Jeff bson is probably like the you know the closest example with whom he’d been a couple for you know many years before and um you know this upends his life I mean he you know he becomes identified as a potential conspirator in the assassination of JFK and I just I think about him often in you know in the courtroom uh watching the Auda film over and over and over and watching Kennedy’s head be blown apart and being identified as a person had something to do with that to you know to stand in that room that was a really devastating you know thing for him uh and he never quite recovered from it and you know even when he is you know like there’s a letter I want to say it’s like from maybe six months before he dies he says you know it doesn’t matter that I was found not guilty this is going to be my legacy this is you know and and and that’s also you know a part of the tragedy is that despite losing resoundingly in court right um in a you know in an environment that he largely controlled the terms of Garrison I mean you know despite losing uh he still goes after him and and you know when he dies all bets are off so you know people who support Garrison just seem to like you know alide the the the verdict in court you know there’s always there’s always a reason that it’s corrupt you know there’s always a reason that you know these people are wrong and it’s a you know it’s a I don’t think it’s a very balanced way to look at those events no the G gon’s supporters would say well Garrison never mentioned homosexuality well that is BS and it’s not true Garrison was kind of a u a master of you know saying something and then disowning having said it you know what I mean as as it became inconvenient I mean and you know you can say what you want about James failen but you know Garrison didn’t sue him over that article you know um in fact you know also think Garrison was one of those people who understood the value of publicity um good or bad right as long as he was in the news uh that was that was working for him in some way um and you know so this not true and um you know I once saw um a noted Garrison Defender um I was on a panel with this person it’s one of the rudest people um I’ve ever been on a panel with I me just like astoundingly rude and unprofessional but um you know this person you know in talking about that James failen article uh in in response to a question from the audience says well you know he made a mistake there and he was sorry well how do you know number one what difference does it make I mean you know you don’t have to out somebody multiple times to you know to have used that as a methodology um to make somebody you know um legible as as suspicious um and so you know that is what happened and you know if you want to excuse it you’re welcome to do that but it it that is not a um that is not an evenhanded um you know uh evaluation of of that evidence I’m I’m struck by uh his Playboy interview in September uh 1967 if you look at the Preamble the intro to that interview um they talk about Clay Shaw being the queen bee of the homosexual community in New Orleans well that’s not Garrison saying that but he wrote a large part of that it really is him saying he never objected to to Playboy putting that in and that there’s these Illusions all over the case yeah and then you and you’re the person who made me aware of the confidential um article um that appears just months before this case goes to trial and the fact that it’s you know fed by evidence from the District Attorney’s office and the way that evidence was handled in that case is I mean just scandalous in terms of like chain of custody and I’m talking you know about the the material taken from Shaw’s home uh the night of the arrest and how that gets like moved around to Robert Heath’s office how it goes to you know uh Garrison’s Suburban home for a photo shoot with Life magazine and you know these are uh you know that is just it’s like a complete uh you know betrayal of the public trust the way the evidence in that case was used and I would be more shocked by it if it were a kind of unique circumstance but um you know it was not and um you know there were many Shenanigans undertaken by Garrison and his investigators as regards evidence in that case and many others what’s amazing is that the case went to trial that’s the amazing thing and that really has to do with cowardice on the part of those three judges who who let the thing move forward I think they were afraid of Garrison and they were afraid of um somehow being branded as people who didn’t want to get to the truth about the Kennedy assassination and that that was a scary thing um at that period of time and that points to another thing about G Garrison had a very very uh he was responsible for some of the judges getting elected so he had some of the judges sort of in his back pocket he absolutely did and I you know I have read somewhere and I don’t I don’t know this to be the case and I’m trying to remember it was in a transcript of of you know of an interview that somebody gave a deposition and and there was an implication that Hagerty who had a drinking problem you know hackery actually had like bounced a bunch of checks the District Attorney’s Office you know kind of knew this and kind of threatened to make it public if you know if Hagerty didn’t uh you know play ball uh in their View and and that Hagerty made some of the calls he did I think actually you know was to his credit um in that in that courtroom knowing you know that Garrison could make him look bad if he wanted to but and then you know his behavior after the case when he’s like you know caught in the motel room with the prostitutes and you know uh brings porn movies from that have been seized I me you know it sort of gives you a sense of the irregularities that you know uh you know are part of criminal district court in in New Orleans during that era um and uh yeah it’s you know it’s a crazy crazy story yeah and you you could see it in some of the grand jury testimony I mean Carlos koga’s grand jury testimony Garrison sort of threatening them continually threatening them you know um you know you should think about what you’re saying and and uh I’ll give you time to go outside and take a break and come back in and and bobu too right I mean who they you know I mean literally threatened physically threatened um yeah and and and have material um of him um that is um you know very incriminating um and um you know try to hold that over his head and that he refused to testify and that he refus to uh help you know underg guard that flimsy story um I think also was pretty brave right um you know in in that moment because you know they’ll threaten anybody um to get what they want I mean it seems to me that’s what the record suggests is happening yeah yeah for sure the other thing that I I’m found striking is the um perhaps this whole case would have gone wouldn’t have gone forward if if there had been Discovery in Louisiana courts right the Garrison didn’t have very stingy yeah yeah um yeah and you know this is also a period of time when they have the you know non-unanimous jury verdicts um and you know so in this case I think there were 12 I think you know only nine of them would have had to say guilty um you know to to get a guilty verdict the way you know this worked at at that time in Louisiana law and that has since been addressed and now you do have to have unanimous jury verdicts particularly in capital cases but um you know also I mean I mean I’m asking you a question now but like what’s interesting this is such a low bar case I mean it’s a conspiracy case now conspiracy cases can be extremely serious and if he was convicted he could spend a long time in prison but I mean they’re fairly easy cases to prove if there is in fact a demonstrable conspiracy right the crime didn’t even have to happen they just have to have people in discussion with each other but the evidence you know that they present for that of this you know conspiratorial discussion is so flimsy um and Russo is such a disaster on the stand also a very vulnerable person uh who is you know manipulated threatened uh you know um in certain ways it’s it’s it’s amazing that it went ahead it’s amazing that the trial you know went on um and I guess I’m less familiar and you may know more about this I sort of less familiar with uh how that was evaluated from outside Louisiana you know how people saw that um and and did they see it as just a kind of you know Banana Republic kind of you know charade you know uh in Louisiana or was it you know something that was taken seriously and I’m trying to think you know if if I know the answer to that I’m not so sure that I do but I think you know like the national networks I think had Garrison’s number um but but they covered the case you know because it was big news and and I think also well certainly in Louisiana the times pikun and the state’s item really took him seriously and and they could have really blown a lot of this out of the water but didn’t and didn’t say Garrison until after the verdict yeah and that you know that too is you know the newspapers yeah then he needs to resign you know but they’re hedging their bets the whole time it reminds me of that uh the time of the 1927 flood in the Mississippi River and everybody in the city can see that the river is rising but the newspapers are not printing anything about it you know and um it’s you know because they’re it you know they’re involved in the business community and the business Community is concerned that this could hurt business and you know there’s and and and in a way you know they give Garrison a pass for a long time it’s not that it’s not that they’re not critical of him sometimes they are um but just in terms of you know the reporting on the thing it’s it’s often very you know shallow um and and there were people who you know bucked that Trend I think like Rosemary James is probably one of those people um but you know it um it it makes you think about like what you’re seeing in the newspapers and and how to evaluate that on balance you know um in in any case that you’re looking at yeah you were you were one one of very lucky to talk to Rosemary James what what did she tell you about Garrison so I talked to her twice and and in one of the cases I did a formal uh oral history interview with her and I have a transcript of it and um you know she she knew Shaw I mean she had dinner his house uh she was married to her I think first husband at the time and uh you know they were they were so social people but she was also you know a television news reporter at this period of time and and you know she knew Garrison did not play fair um that he tried to make her the issue you know once they uh you know released that story that they have somehow done him wrong but you know she went and told him that they were going to do it and he could you know ask them not to or you know have his side of it you know kind of and he didn’t and uh you know that too I think is a you know a calculation on his part um you know to get it out there but then act like you know the forces against me are you stacked against me um you know kind of thing and uh yeah it’s newspapers are not objective sources they’re the first draft of things and um you know they make mistakes and they don’t always correct them and so you have to you know make sure that um there’s some kind of you know uh corroboration uh for uh particularly significant claims that they make yeah she by the way one what do you think of um well Garrison’s the prosecution of Garrison after the case for uh the bribery and the with the pinball machines and also the income tax evasion well I think probably um so so two things about it one is it’s very interesting that Jer of course is the person who you know turns the evidence um in the in the pinball case uh you know testifies for the feds um and um you know I’ll say this he wasn’t convicted Y and um you know but the transcripts the recorded transcripts that ran in the newspapers were extremely damaging and I’ve never read and I I don’t you know I don’t even know if full transcripts are out there I’ve never read all the trial testimony in those 1970s cases he’s not convicted in either one of those cases and the justice department then and now doesn’t like to take things to Court unless they think they can win um and you know they didn’t win against him and that’s important to acknowledge um but do I think uh Garrison was on the take absolutely and and I think there is evidence of that it just apparently was not compelling enough um in court to get a jury to convict him and uh but even even that and this is probably some sort of like Poetic Justice but like even at that even though he’s not convicted that badly damages him uh not so much that he couldn’t several years down the road get reelected as a judge because he is an appealing political figure to people but he’s not reelected um you know to that what guess it would have been the fourth term or the third term I’m trying to think yes the third term I think yeah I’m not sure third or fourth I reach TR to 66 four years I think he’s there yeah I think his fourth the beginning of his fourth term and Harry conik Jr or Harry conik beats him and I I didn’t know this at the time I published the book but I you know I found something you know Garrison sued him um and said the uh the the election was corrupt um and and and tried to you know sort of get the vote results overturned and um you know and that’s just you know he’s a sore loser you know and uh and but again he was not convicted and he does then become a judge and um you know that doesn’t make him a saint but you know he you know apparently some voters at least were willing to you know Overlook uh those uh trial you know interview transcripts and recorded uh you know conversations between him and Jer yeah well if you read some of those recorded conversations it’s pretty damning but of course U afterwards Jer sort of retracts um everything because he wants to go back to New Orleans and have a life and he realizes that Garrison still has some power um ultimately he does say no it was it was real but but uh it’s kind of interesting to to note that U yeah and yeah that that is you know I mean J had you know been around a long time and um you know had family and you know um you know children and you know does come back to Louisiana and he’s critical of Garrison in the early 90s you know when the when the when JFK comes out you know he’s one of the voices in the newspaper who says it was you know all a sham and a scam and uh you know and uh late in life he he gives an interview I think it’s to the times pyun and you know he um you know he basically admits you know that you know to being sort of a quasa criminal um as a cop and after um but I think you know he saw that and a lot of people saw that as you know just the way things were uh during that period of time yeah he he actually I think he stole all the the all the money on the take money from the from the police himself yeah and took a police character a woman drug addict to New York City um yeah it’s like this I I’m I’m in the records now for you know 1953 and uh you know the investigation into the police and uh you know he fights really hard to be reinstated and it’s ultimately the Louisiana Supreme Court that turns back his claim he kind of tries to make a you know a civil service claim to be reinstated to the police um so that was important to him but you know at that point he essentially becomes you know like an underworld bar owner and you know um you know uh very criminally adjacent oh and I just wanted say one more thing which is that you know the tax evasion charges Aaron con is the person who turns over evidence to the justice department about a Garrison’s taxes versus you know salary and you know what he’s spending and and you know con was a you know a dogged investigator and um also you know an enemy of of garrisons but he’s the person who does that this is not like the you know the CIA telling the justice department to you know I mean you know you know Garrison had you know throttled them in the press and I’m sure they didn’t like him any um you know but they receive evidence from a local source that leads to the tax evasion charges so this is not some sort of you know criminal conspiracy uh you know emanating from the CIA or the FBI it’s it’s cone and it’s a personal Grudge in that particular case the funny thing in the bribery case was the Garrison uh fired his attorneys in the middle of the case and and and and then became his own attorney MH and that probably turned the case around he gave a a long summation at the end I think that probably uh uh convince people you know part of his whole story was they’re after me because of the assassination blah blah blah and and uh I it was a crazy it was absolutely crazy in a certain way you know he must have been I you know he must have been impressive yeah in in the courtroom you know um with opening statements and closing statements but you know one of the things I say at the end of cruising for conspirators I think he kind of you know do you know what jump the shark means yeah you know he sort of jumped the shark at a at a moment um in that summation where he basically says a conspiracy charge is like a murder you know and he and he he’s gets the thing ginned up into something so big that I think it might have given the jury pause you know um what we have here before us is not a very good case um and then he sort of like you know saying you know this is about the president’s murder and if you don’t find this person guilty you’re you know you’re uh you know you’re implicated um in letting the government get away with this conspiracy to kill the president and you know I think he really overdid it there and I think that probably in no small part uh contributed to the uh you know the outcome uh among the jury members um although they were also just exhausted and worn down by the time they they went into that room I mean they’ve been a marathon of closing statements so do you think there was uh do you think Garrison was actually gay himself there may have been some repressed homosexuality that played a part in this so you know I think um uh again Aaron con is a person who like very closely documents uh Garrison’s extraordinary sex life that’s what con calls it and um you know Garrison certainly was sexually Reckless um you know as a person who was married and you know fathered to five children I think um you know he brazenly you know had affairs um and you know mostly what is documented is uh very young women um and he did you know uh uh you know frequent like normal Wallace’s house and you know so he’s he’s clearly having sex with women but there is a there’s a kind of undercurrent of you know like men having sex with other men on the down low is you know what we would call it now right and and I think there’s certainly the possibility of that and and I think that for two reasons one is um I recently discovered uh a newspaper story about Jer when he was about 15 years old and he’s in a car with a 30-year old man very late at night and there’s a car accident and he’s injured so he ends up going to the hospital and when I first looked at it I didn’t I didn’t a lot about it and then I came back to it and it’s like is he hustling you know and there’s this whole kind of like hustling culture in and around the French quarter and you know again Jer married children but I do think there are you know men who have sex with other men and and of course the best evidence for sort of thinking about Garrison’s sexual compulsivity if that’s a word like you know is is grabbing the teenage boy in New Orleans Athletic Club and and so I think for him it might have been more about youth than about you know gender per se and and I tend to think and again I’m not you know I’m not an LGBT plus person but you know I tend to think of being gay is sort of like an identity that people adopt and you know and being proud of who they are um not just sexually but on the whole and so like I think of being gay as an identity and then I think you know some people engage in sex acts that they don’t identify with do you know what I mean like they don’t see it as part of you know and I and I think there was a lot of that kind of thing um you know in New Orleans in the 1950s and 60s uh you know men who married because everybody was expected to get married you know if you know if you didn’t get married that was like considered the problem um but then might also have been having sex with other people male or female so you know I don’t think he was gay but do I think there’s you know a possibility that you know he had uh sex of some kind or the other with men sure absolutely and you know here’s an example like a weird example around this is um uh it’s in the book of another Garrison Defender who talks about uh Garrison and this friend of his having sex with a woman uh you know a sort of a manaja one gal two guys but that they never touched each other’s penises oh well then like you know good times you know it’s like I mean it’s just sort of there’s this you know desperate attempt to excuse everything he does is somehow you know holy pure and you know um you know it’s just it’s a very strange story um but I think it might in fact be a very telling story yeah I I I went through the papers of Patricia Lambert and and she has I have I have not published it but she has a a full transcript of talking to that boy from the New Orleans Athletic Club mhm um which he talks about what happened and also the boy’s brother two two transcripts and so uh some really damning evidence there but um yeah and you know also where are her papers uh sixth floor Museum oh okay oh that’s great I’m glad they’re there yes that that happened I’m sure but what is also true is that the good old boy Network protected him yeah and he had a lot of control over the grand jury who the grand jury Foreman was and Le I’ve recently discovered leish who was one of the grand jury Foreman during this period of time in the 1950s was also a grand jury foran so there the you know there’s this kind of I I I hesitate to call it this but that’s I mean that’s the way it functions it’s kind of good old boys network uh in which this is kind of covered up and so Drew Pearson writes about it but the local newspapers don’t write about it um and Aaron con you know writes a letter and says you know this happened and the grand jury needs to look into this um and you know he got away with it um you know and that’s certainly you know assault um it’s you know attempted crime against nature um you know he could easily have been charged with a 1489 if that family had been willing to you know come forward and do that but but you know they too have interests in the community y um and I think you know also the interest of their sons you know um one of at least one of whom was a minor um and so you know that would have been a very you know I don’t want to say shameful but I think it would have been a very embarrassing thing um to have pursued charges against the sitting district attorney um yeah they were a prominent Catholic Family with high high ranking Catholic clergy so it was a very uh there was no way they’re going to bring that forward was well and also the the you know speaking of you high ranking Catholic clergy and people covering for them um you know conic did that very consistently uh you know sort of like uh made cases or allegations against a priests um you know uh go away for long periods of time um so you know this again the good old boys network at work um you know people looking out for each other so the sad part of this whole case is the fact that unfortunately Clay Shaw died before his damages case could be heard which then allowed G Garrison to write about Shaw and his book and say what ever he wanted to say right that was very unfortunate it was and I’m not you know what’s so interesting is that that weird quirk in Louisiana civil law that said you know you had to have these kind of immediate family members who could step in as plaintiff he didn’t have anybody in that category so you know the claim ultimately according to Louisiana law dies and the Supreme Court decides that the Louisiana law is not inherently prejudicial which says much more about uh the way people thought about you know families and and categories of you know relationship during that period of time in the law um and again I think that’s really reflective of um our own moment you know where uh we are there are parties uh who are attempting you know in the United States to pathologize unmarried childless pet owners you know and somehow the problem these are levers that people try to pull you know and and Shaw’s sexuality was one of those Le that Garrison was willing to use to try and and bring a case forward um against a person who had some vulnerabilities but also had enough uh resources to uh hire very good attorneys and uh you know defend himself um in court thankfully and that raises the whole issue of people who can afford uh those sort of lawyers the miscarriages of justice that occur because of that absolutely and I don’t I can’t remember the percentage it’s something I talk about um in class in in my Louisiana history class there’s a far higher percentage of people in jail incarcerated in Louisiana and we you know we incarcerate more people than anyone else in the world per capita um and you know most of those people have pled out the majority of people never get to trial they take a lower charge they make some sort of deal for lesser time and and and so there’s a way in which our whole you know contemporarily but also historically the way the law is used not to bring about justice but to really kind of like keep certain populations of people under control you know um by manipulating those things and um you know I I think in many significant ways uh lisiana is um a kind of on the Leading Edge of um you know Injustice uh in the United States with you know with its current carceral crisis and and and many of those things but also because of the way uh the Contemporary Administration in Louisiana has just written off anybody uh who disagrees with a very you know Conservative Christian nationalist kind of uh you know position I.E like putting the Ten Commandments in every classroom in the state including uh at universities uh and I’m hoping lawsuits will uh you know keep that from happening because I would find that deeply offensive right to have teach in a university classroom with um a Biblical passage required to be uh in in every room um you know so yeah it’s a a lot of extremes down here absolutely so you know you you teach a you know you’ve taught a course on conspiracy and so tell me a bit about your students and what they think and and after and and after what they think after going through your course right about this case and other and other cases of conspiracy you know i’ I’ve noticed something uh in the class and I don’t know what this means um I’ve taught it I want to say I’ve taught it three times now um it’s a it’s an upper division course and it’s a fairly demanding course and so they have to you know show up and be prepared or they they just can’t successfully you know navigate the course um and I have more women who take that course than men um they and women are a majority of you know University students in the United States today anyway but the males male students who have taken that course tend to be far more uh conspiracy-minded than the women and I don’t I don’t know what that’s about um but that’s just what I’ve noticed um in that course and I think there’s a you know a lot of young men use Reddit and you know um there is a lot of you know this kind of kind of conspiratorial conversation on Reddit and and I think there’s a way particularly that young men are being socialized around conspiracy that is different uh for young women uh who you know who’s who are being fed different kind of things by algorithms or using different platforms so you know my students are really interesting and they teach me things all the time about you know what’s out there in the digital world and you know what they’re things I have no idea about because I don’t I don’t use social media that much um but you know I think they’re pretty smart and I you know I think they’re self- selected group these particular students but they’re very skeptical of um you know broad conspiracy claims um and they come to their own conclusions about those sort of things I’m not I’m not there to um you know uh persecute uh people who believe in conspiracies but they often you know will you know self-report about relatives or you know stepdads or you know whatever like being like real conspiracy you know nuts um and how uncomfortable that makes them and you know what’s so um what’s so alarming about that is is that you know conspiracy has a very long history uh in the United States and you know sort of like bubbles up here and there but I can’t think of a Time besides the McCarthy era um when consp consp iracy has been so consequential in American politics they just got a tendency to believe in conspiracy and to think very lazily about things um to not think critically about you know claims that are being put out in front of you and so you know it’s it’s particularly consequential at the moment in a way that you have sort of like qanon Advocates who are now very influential members of Congress and you know charlatans are not they hold these offices of enormous consequence in people’s lives um and so you know it’s a it’s a very um it’s a time when I think it’s important to slow down and and think about things uh carefully um rather than just kind of getting whipped up you know by the claim of the moment um I mean on the JFK side it used to be it was the left wing that it was all conspiratorial but now it’s the rightwing has discovered oh my God you know it’s a deep State and I’m seeing more and more more congressmen or senators and Republicans um who are like oh oh the JFK assassination oh my God this is evidence of the deep State um you know and the the same forces it’s it’s it’s striking and it’s it’s very uh it’s horrifying but if you think about it like that’s where the JFK records act come from now I’m very grateful for the JFK records act yeah and I think in the end it’s a good piece of legislation but what it was responsive to is Oliver Stone’s movie yep you know and and and his theory of the case um which runs completely counter to the conclusions um taken by you know the government uh bodies investig investigative bodies who looked into the case um so you know they get whipped up into into cultural you know uh soup too and and do things that sometimes have you know beneficial consequences but come out of you know a willingness to uh you know accept a kind of theorizing about the intelligence agencies or um you know U good Lord I mean you know just yeah uh it’s crazy times yeah so the one thing I I do say about Jim Garrison and and Clay Shaw and the whole case is I I wish somebody would make a movie you know I do too and I wish they would license my book you know but what a great topic for a movie Ian it’s just oh yeah you know I I when I tell people this story they’re so fascinated nobody really knows it and it’s a very interesting story yeah you know I tell you and and this is probably just me being like older or oldfashioned um but you know young people don’t read books and you know and uh and and yeah if somebody could make a you know a version of this that runs counter to the kind of mythologies uh and you know U you know shaming of people um in in JFK and and you know tell that story from you know a different angle um you know I think that’ be fabulous um and uh you know you know time will tell huh time will tell so we’re gonna we’re gonna end the interview but I think um I know is there anything else you want to tell us about you know your terrific book well thank you for your uh compliments and you know um one of the great things about being a professor or a writer or a thinker and and you know you you know this too is that you know you’re constantly learning how to do new things and um and and in part that’s the kind of appeal of that sort of work and um so I was you know moving probably plotting Le a narrative non-fiction Direction there and and I’m going to move further in that direction um uh in in this next project which you know I I see as an as a series of books right that gets us to back to this question and and I hope to retell this story in in a different way um as as I go on this journey uh with this new set of books so um you know I’m excited about the future but I you know I also stand by cruising for conspirators and it’s the book I’m proud of it’s in the evidence and uh and I think I did try to be even-handed and objective but you know I wasn’t in the bag for anybody I had a you know I had an idea that this was had been a miscarriage of justice but um you know I think it was and I think that book shows it and as as does your work kind of like your books show us kind of pathologies not just in you know conspiracy thinking about the JFK assassination but just kind of more uh you know more specifically around the Garrison case so I I appreciate you having me and uh getting to be a part of this broader group of conversations uh with people who I also really admire and respect and learn from and um you know have fruitful discussions even if we don’t always agree and it’s great having you but when when could we expect your next book what is there a time frame so you know actually um I’m getting ready for the fall semester and I’m setting some deadlines for myself so I don’t get pulled Way Off Track and I’m hoping to have a first draft by you know like a year from now right um and these are it’s it’s not you know it’s not a book like uh cruising it’s not a you know it’s not like a 10 year inter um and so I’m hoping to kind of move through these at a at a faster clip um but it’s it’s a different kind of work for me so I feel like I have to produce a full um a full example out of the series uh in order to look for you know an agent and and then try to sell the longer Series so I you know I just I’ve talked to enough people in publishing to understand that because my track record is somewhere else that I have to produce the first uh book in the proposed series and and then go from there so I’m hoping in about a year I’ll have a draft full draft great I I can hardly wait it’s going to be a fantastic book I know it well you’re very kind and it’s it’s a lot of fun to talk to you always so yeah yeah you’re you’re amazing and so we’ll we’ll have more more discussions on Garrison we’ll have a panel discussion etc etc but thank you very much Alicia and we really really appreciate your tremendous work well that’s very kind of you and uh you know thanks so much I really appreciate it okay thank you very much

Delusion, Episode 7, Dave Perry

www.mattkprovideo.com/2024/07/24/delusion-episode-7-dave-perry/

On the Trail of Delusion, Episode 7, Dave Perry

Dave Perry’s John F. Kennedy Assassination Pages

www.dperry1943.com/

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 Stones film flam at the demagogue of Dealey Plaza
Fred Litwin is here he’s a longtime author and certainly Watcher of politics uh joining us uh Fred Litwin great to have you here thank you very much [Music]

okay welcome to another edition of on the trail of delusion
where I try to separate fact from fiction and actually provide you an intervie with with real substance uh as opposed to some of the conspiracy nonsense you see on the web u
today is a special day my guest today is Dave Perry somebody I’ve been dying to talk to for quite some time
who is an incredible JFK researcher let me tell you a bit about him
Dave is a graduate of Massachusetts State University at Worster Massachusetts Dave worked for 30 years for the Continental insurance company and he ended up as the assistant vice president of Southern Regional operations
and we’re going to talk about some of his experience in a few minutes he’s been researching the JFK assassination for over 40 years he’s got an incredible website which you’ll see in the notes and on the screen which you could read a lot of his terrific research he’s got a superb book out about the JFK assassination he has uh debunked all sorts of things he’s been on many many documentaries including a PBS front lines 1993 documentary who was Lee Harvey Oswald he is an incredible researcher and I’m really glad to have him well thank you for having me I think this is going to be a little bit of fun yeah yeah so let’s just start off and just tell me a bit about how you got into the JFK assassination well this goes back to 1976 it was the bicentennial year and I was looking for some things to do to kind of celebrate the occasion and I decided I was going to do two things one I was going to build a model of the USS Constitution wow and the other one because I was reading about uh problems with the Kennedy assassination and the fact that they might be reinvestigating and since I was a claims adjuster I figured I would uh look into that too over the years I often wondered if I should have stuck with building the model of the Constitution yeah we all have similar questions like that but in the end it uh what what happened was I I was a claims adjuster uh at the time and uh I was primarily involved with workers compensation cases and they’re a little bit different because uh instead of uh like Auto liability where you’re trying to protect the company and work as compensation you’re trying to set it up to pay the employee for their injuries and during the course of this I’d also investigated a couple of workplace fatalities and I knew how to get in the court records I knew how to talk to attorneys that kind of stuff and I figured well I’m going to start working in that direction with the Kennedy assassination I was from Massachusetts and uh but I didn’t have much interest in them uh I was really not a fan fan of the cedes but then uh what happened was I started looking at the literature and a lot of it looked fishy particularly a lot of the books that were written early on there were no endnotes there were no references to things uh sylv Mar did a a great job because she started looking into the uh the Warren volumes with which are pretty difficult to work your way through and I read uh Josiah Thompson’s book 6 seconds in Dallas read Mark Lane’s book uh I looked at Mark Lane a little differently from the beginning because I was of the opinion because I dealt with ambulance Chaser attorneys that I thought he was kind of an ambulance Chaser he got in cahoots with margarite Oswald and became the point person on the case and if you’ve ever watched defense attorneys uh they have a tendency to try to you know get the case so there’s so much reasonable doubt that you’re going to say hey well it it really maybe there’s an issue here so I knew we were going to have that problem so what I did was I started reviewing the literature I started uh trying to get documents of course at the time uh it was extremely difficult as a matter of fact I really didn’t get into uh the document end this and probably until the late uh 1980s early 1990s uh when I figured out a little bit about Freedom of Information and the one thing I’ll always remember I don’t know how it is now because most of this stuff is online but I remember at one point uh I wanted to get a hold of the Lopez report on Mexico City because we were all thinking that was really a bizarre episode and at the time you had a credit account when you when you first signed in to the National Archives they allowed you 50 pages as an individual so I started uh ordering Pages under my wife’s name my name my son’s name my daughter’s name I left the dog’s name out of it Aussie would not pass alello aie was not named after Oswell he was actually named after russie osbor but anyway uh I had in the end I had burned up all my 50 pages particularly I burned up a lot of them getting the tip and autopsy photos I was one of the first ones to be able to get those officially under Freedom of Information so when I sent for the Lopez report they said I could have a copy but it was going to cost me about 25 bucks so I sent him the check and I got this oh I want to say about 250 pages of which 20 words were visible right the whole thing was redacted and we we ran into a lot of that so then I hooked up I’m sure you’re familiar with the late Harold Weissberg yeah and he taught me how to skirt my way through Freedom of Information because you had to be kind of very specific back in those days as to what you wanted all you would be turned down but he showed me the ins and outs of it and I was able to begin to file in the correct way and I managed I’ve got notebooks full of stuff some of it now which has appeared unredacted you can go back in get some of it but as usual we’re still waiting for more of the files to come out so I guess the short story is I use my background as a uh claims adjuster to be able to get myself know where to go you know most people wouldn’t know technically where to go to get a death certificate right right well I’ve done that many many times I’d also testified quite a bit so when in the 1990s unsolved history knocked on my door I had a pretty good idea of you know how to handle that kind of information to make it more relevant to what was going on okay so it’s great you had the some real skills to actually go out there and investigate uh uh on your own as opposed to uh I remember when I first got into the case I read Mark Lane’s Rush judgment and and I couldn’t check his footnotes because uh I lived in Montreal Canada no no Library had the 26 volumes so I couldn’t even check his footnotes and of course I couldn’t afford to buy the 26 volumes back then so it was kind of frustrating not being able to go any further um it’s kind of amazing we have so much online today that’s an amazing part of the case and I had been into Dallas uh originally to train a a group of heavy equipment people on how to detect heavy equipment that was being stolen and sent to Mexico so I came down here and of course the first thing I did is I scrambled down the street and walked into daily Plaza right and like everybody else I was completely shocked at how small it was y when my company transferred me down here this was my chance to get involved with a lot of the people that had been doing this for a while the JFK Center Gary Shaw and Larry Howard matter of fact I I worked across the street from Mary Ferrell uh Mary Ferell was a secretary in the office building next to me and we go to lunch quite a bit uh eventually met Gary Mack back when he was working at a radio station here in Dallas Jack White and another thing in my past life uh originally uh uh I was working up in Upstate New York up in Glenn Falls for continental and my uh 13-year-old son for Christmas wanted a electric guitar and I went and I bought him the electric guitar and I asked the people in the store hey who can teach my son rock and roll I don’t that’s what he’s interested in and they said well as’s a guy in Glenn Falls where you live you’ll be lucky if you can get a hold of them his name is Gus Russo right so I called Gus up and he said yeah I’ll take him on so first visit I bring him in and he’s got this rack of books on the Kennedy assassination and I said hey you’re into this too and that’s how we became good friends so I’ve known him long before just about anybody else in this and the interesting thing is once I moved to Dallas he’d literally come down and and stay with me well the next thing that happened was I was working as a volunteer uh behind the counter of the now defunct uh JFK Center in the Dallas West End and that was uh Gary Shaw and Larry Howard were co-directors I was also at the time very friendly with Jim lvll he’s a detective in the white cowboy hat right left to Oswalt Gus had come into town so I I said to uh Jim uh his he had a favorite restaurant Mexican restaurant in Dallas I said I’m going to take you out to lunch Gus and I were waiting and in comes Jim lvll and he’s got Gary Shaw Larry Howard and Bud finsterwald who was with the assassination archives and Research Center in Washington run by him and Jim are and uh I suddenly realized Jim has stiffed me for a big [Laughter] lunch and uh we’re talking it up and uh all of a sudden Bud starts talking about how they’ve got the things solved they’ve got a a person who knows exactly what went on and I always remember he he looked at the both of us and said well after this uh what are you guys going to do for a hobby in essence you know rather than chasing this around well about a couple of weeks went by and lo and behold I get an invitation through bud to go to the press conference now at the time uh Gary Mack was working at kxas Mary was doing whatever she was doing and I was the only one that that uh of the group of us that got invited to the press conference so I go to the press conference and there’s this Ricky Don White who’s uh claiming that his father uh not only shot Kennedy from the grassino but also uh JD tippet and as I’m listening to this stuff there were certain parts of the story that really didn’t make sense so afterwards I went up and I talked to a little bit to get a little more background on them and it just wasn’t it wasn’t working out right so I went back to the JFK Center talked to Gary Shaw and said look I’m an exclaims adjuster I want to look into this want to literally help you out so the first thing that I did was I went down to the Records building because Ricky claimed he lived across the street from tippet at the time of the assassination well to verify it I went down and I got uh the deed records uh well it turns out that they both families did live on Glen karon but Ricky moved there four years after the assassination H so that was the first crack the next thing I did was is time had gone by I had been sending the information I was gathering up to Harold Weissberg and we were trying to figure a way uh to get Rosco White’s military file actually uh went to the United States Navy because he was part of the Marine Corps and filed the Freedom of Information there uh relying on the fact that he had now become a public figure that was one of the you could do back in those days if they were a public figure so I set the news clippings and I got denied so what I did was I refiled again about two months later with the adant general of the United States Navy and coincidentally in the request I asked for the request for anybody else who had requested the military his military records rasco White’s military records so about 3 weeks go by and I get this huge packet that’s got Rosco White’s complete military file along with a note that the only other person who was requested the record was Ricky White and he requested it in 1989 but he was claiming he found the military records about three or four years earlier in in his father’s Foot Locker I started to thinking wait a minute here why would he be requesting them if he already had them that kind of stuff I also found out that Rosco had been burned in a a fire they were claiming he was killed because he wouldn’t take on one more assignment well what I did was it turned out that the fire was an industrial accident my line work right I went down to the courthouse and found all the lawsuits around it including the fact that everybody was saying it was flat out an industrial accident he was welding some material exploded on them was not the way they were describing so over a period of six months I had determined that this story was bogus and and I didn’t wasn’t quite sure what to do with it

Gary suggested I I write an article for the third decade when that got around I started getting phone calls from people well you know how to do this you know how to do that and that was the point I should have gone back and built the model of the Constitution

That’s when I went down the rabbit hole right

So then what I started

Well the next thing that came up is I got a call from Bower’s sister-in-law

She had seen a program with Geraldo Rivera called NOW IT CAN BE TOLD which claimed that Lee Bowers was killed because of something he said

And to make a long story short I investigated that one and I found out that the whole Geraldo show was based on some false premises uh like the fact the death certificate was missing well I went down a city hall and asked for a request for the death certificate.

They told me I had to wait because it had to come up from Austin I got I had the death certificate within about a week and the other thing that they came out in the show was that the a what about the autopsy well that’s missing too well when you got the death certificate it was so obvious he was killed in an automobile accident that that no autopsy was required so it got to be every one of them I looked into yeah there’s actually a good book about his death out there I don’t know if he worked on that book but uh I guess he had an allergic reaction and that caused him to uh to crash or whatever well the other thing about uh interesting about Bowers years later I got a phone call uh from a woman who uh was retired accident investigator for the Department Department of Public Safety (*Anita DIckason).

I originally thought from talking with relatives that he had bad allergies and in my article I said he I thought he sneezed or something and lost control and and hit a bridge

A bridge abutment and by the way the the bridge abutment they talk about is a little concrete post it I think it’s Stones movie it’s like a train trestle

no it’s very very small

But I talked to the ambulance driver who nobody had interviewed and he said when I got there he was unconscious

And of course Penn Jones wrote a story about it which was actually fiction about

this woman came along and she had access to stuff that I didn’t have and she wrote a book about it too based on some of was based on my stuff

But she found out why there was more information about why no autopsy was conducted that kind of stuff

And it appears that he had a heart attack before went unconscious and hit the post

So he was never driven off the road by a black car all that kind of stuff right

Right now the one the one thing I I like we talked about a little bit about this before that I want to get into is

It seems like every year particularly on the anniversary new books come out and this year was no different

well first of all

Retired secret service agent Paul Landis came out with a book where we suddenly discover that he found a bullet in the limousine and didn’t know what to do with it so he put it on a stretcher

right

Which became CE 399

I did a little segment on my web page and what I try to do in my articles is show for example

how the Secret Service operated as opposed to what is going on in a particular book now Landis through his co-author goes into a great great detail about how although he was a secret Service agent he didn’t know what to do with the bullet

You know he didn’t know who to turn it into

So he brought it around and he put it on the stretcher and of course that became the famous e399 the pristine bullet

years ago and I I’m going to back up because this is a rather interesting story that kind of put me on the trail of Oswald was definitely involved and whether or not he acted alone is another question

But anyway he and Marina were estranged

Marina was living in Irving with Ruth Payne

He was moving around but he ended up in a rooming House in Oak Cliff

Right

he used to get a ride into work every once in a while in and out of work with Buell Frasier who was an order filler at The Book Depository

19 years old at the time and uh when he wanted to go out and visit Marina

Buell would drive him in and out so the word is out that Kennedy is Coming to Town

there’s going to be a motor Cade so everybody in The Book Depository is talking about this

well Lee comes over to Buell and says :

“hey can I get a ride out to the house tonight?”

Buell says yeah okay and then he went back to him and he said

“well wait a minute this is not Friday this is Thursday”

and he says “yeah but I got to get some stuff from the house ”

So Buell gives him a ride out the next morning uh Oswald walks down to Buell’s house with a brown paper bag which he puts in the back seat

Buell’s driving him into work asks him

“what that is”

and he says “well that’s curtain rods”

and that’s the beginning of the famous curtain rod story

yeah

the only people I was ever

able to verify that story with was Buell who would be a sole Source but I also managed to do it with Lenny may Randall his sister who he was living with him

so there were at least two people that talked about this bag

May have gotten it right or wrong but that’s what it was that morning Marina wakes up because the night before they had a fight Le was trying to get back to her actually promised her hey if you get back with me I’ll buy you a washing machine uh she wasn’t having any of it so the next morning she gets up and she looks on the dresser drawer and there’s about $79 there which is about every penny that Oswald had and in this teacup that she got from her grandmother in Russia is Oswald’s wedding ring now to a lot of us that spoke volumes yeah also when he made the attempt on walker uh Marina indicated he left a lot of instructions on what to do if he was caught including how to get to the jail how to bail them out that kind of stuff so anyway the of uh what happened was uh Ruth Payne called into the FBI and said hey uh because Marina had gone downtown to be interviewed now they figured out who was involved she says I I found this wedding ring what do I do well few hours later two Secret Service agents appear at the door take the wedding ring and give her a receipt and mark it now this is just a wedding ring and they’re creating a chain of evidence right right and here you got Paul Landis years later saying he didn’t know how to handle the Magic Bullet

I also found an article from the 1980s where he gave an interview to the press a big long interview about the assassination and back and back then he said he found a fragment and then he gave it to somebody he wasn’t sure who

yeah

So as time goes by I guess memories get better y What It Is

Well the aside to to that wedding ring story, the wedding ring disappeared

completely disappeared

And I guess you know time goes by I I want to say back in the early uh 2000s the this Century

I get a call from a friend of mine who has a friend who’s a lawyer over in fort worth and they’ve got this box of material on the Kennedy assassination and they don’t know what it is

And they want to go through it but they want somebody who knows about the assassination

So I go over to this Law Firm over in Fort Worth and I’m going going through it and to me

Oh as an aside the attorney that originally handled the case had instate dementia

so he they brought the box over to him he had no idea

So they didn’t know what to do with it and

so I’m looking through this and I determined that what had happened was Priscilla McMillan Johnson was trying to write a book with Marina

eventually did it was called “MARINA & LEE”

and this was the paperwork for the copyrights and all the information to create this book

So I’m pulling all these files out and I’m generally figuring out that’s what it is

it’s nothing that exciting and then come out comes this little envelope and inside it was Oswald’s wedding ring

I could not believe it

I looked on the inside to drive to and there was a little hammer and sickle in there s

o I figured this this was probably it

it had been missing nobody knew about it so then I’m trying to work on the provenance

I got in touch with Hugh Ainsworth we we had him call the autopsy doctor that that did the re autopsy on on Oswald

no that that didn’t have anything to do with it

So then I uh I had had an episode where Marina and I got into it a little bit over something and we didn’t get along anymore

So I had Ainsworth call her up and say hey Dave Perry’s found the ring

She didn’t want it so now the Law Firm is trying to get rid of it

As a matter of fact at one time I got a call from Robert Oswald and he said well I’m interested in getting my hands on the ring

And I said well you know this is a family thing next in line for the ring is June and if she doesn’t want it next in line is Rachel

Because in the meantime I’ve been talking to the Sixth Floor and their attorney said there’s no way we can we can get it so there it sits in this law office from for about 10 years about 2012

I get a call from a uh an auction house up in New Hampshire

Now the interesting thing was I used I was doing provenance work for this auction house

the vice president calls me up and says

“hey I understand You’ found Oswald’s wedding ring”

I said yeah

And he said

“we have it and what had happened June had found out about it contacted them our and hour auctions right”

and uh eventually they came down uh because they wanted to film me and how you know the history of how I got a hold of the ring

and then they flew me and my wife Up To Boston because the auction was in Boston for the auction

And it brought in $9,000 it was it was given

well course I I I called uh RNR auctions and I said hey yeah I know you’re not going to do this but I’m going to ask anyway who bought it well they can’t do that but they did say that it it was sold to a woman in Texas did the money go to June or uh I don’t know how all I know there was uh $90,000 plus another 20% went to the auction house right so was actually I think 108 or 100 I I have the feeling the money might have been split between the whole family okay you know I don’t I don’t know where Rachel is but I think June moved in to the Dallas area and Marina lives out in rock wall and I’m thinking oh gee that’s too bad uh it would be great to have it in the sixth floor well I think about a year went by the dates are kind of fuzzy over a period of time but I got a call from uh Nicola Lanford uh the director and she says Hey tonight I want you and my wife Nikki want you both to come down here I got something to show you after hours we went down after hours and the woman donated the ring oh nice to the sixth floor and she brought us up to the sixth floor and they I think they have it in a big display case there so I turned to nickol and I said do you know this is the only thing in this Museum that actually belonged to osmo yeah so it’s really amazing all these little you know once you get to be known yeah how to swirl your way into the archives the calls you get so yeah so you’ve been involved in so many in so many things I mean you you have you’ve debunk so many things in in uh down in Texas I mean I’d love to hear some of your stories I don’t know if you want to talk about uh Mr wit or Tosh plumbley or Beverly Oliver uh or Judith I mean they’re all great stories Steven Louie was an interesting one when I was working behind the counter at the JFK Center he people would roam in and out was really funny you know you’d look up and all of a sudden Robert groden would be in from Pennsylvania Harry Livingston would be in people would be dropping in and out he came in one day and was just poking around and he he asked me a question and somehow or other I determined who he was and I said can we have lunch so I went out to lunch and I said okay from your own mouth I want to hear the story of the umbrella man and of course I I guess he was of that generation where maybe Kennedy would remember how John and his dad got kicked out of England because his dad was a Nazi sympathizer right yeah and the prime minister at the time was a guy named Neville chamber who always carried an umbrella and the way Whit told the story was I was going down there because I felt Kennedy was going to be a big appeaser just like his father and what I wanted to do was uh show him the Neville Chamberlain connection and that that was basically it and of course when he when he appeared before the house select commit people would come back and say who saves an umbrella that long well I do know and also I don’t know if you ever saw the pictures of it but uh somebody on the panel asked him to the open to open the umbrella and of course this was when the story of the poison dart coming out of the elev umbrella was going on so the whole panel ducked when he opened the kind of funny yeah it was a flet supposedly a flet yeah bu

[ __ ] you still get that you still mean I mean just uh what two years ago Oliver Stone told an interviewer that that he he perhaps a flette was fired to Kennedy the the thing about it is uh I I’ve over a period of time I’ve read a a lot of Psych psychological information I read a lot of Elizabeth lofa stuff she’s very good cognitive all that kind of material but what has always gutten me is the people who come to a conclusion and then get the evidence that tracks to whatever conclusion they’ve already come to and disassociate themselves with anything unrelated or that might screw it up and then over a period of time there’s always somebody that’s coming out of the wood woodwork that kind of becomes a I don’t know a thing a celebrity an assassination celebrity Jean Hill she became one Beverly Oliver and then most of them start embellishing their stories and once they start embellishing the stories then if you’re a good investigator you can go in and you can kind of look at the timelines and could this really have happened and that that was that was basically all I was doing I I have calendars that show what Oswell was doing on a certain date what Beverly Oliver was doing on a certain date that kind of stuff right but what was he was an interesting s line I mean I’ve met a lot of great people through this I’ve also met a few rather strange folks I had one fellow write me a letter telling me he was going to have me indicted as a traitor because I didn’t believe Beverly Oliver and I’ve got a few of those letters on file well that would have been an interesting lawsuit I mean I mean that would have been a lot of fun um so yeah do you want to I mean you dig in do you want to talk about um I don’t know Tosh plumbley Tosh plumbley is an interesting character because he’s currently Rob Riner included Tosh plumbley in his uh who killed JFK podcast as one of the people um who who flew uh John roselli and E Howard hunt uh to the null um you know that

morning well what’s interesting about Plumley uh now again I’m going back to the last century here I’m going back to 1990s right uh the fellow who wrote Crossfire Jim Mars he used to have a monthly meeting of assassination group IES uh over at uh University of Texas at Arlington and he invited me and Gary uh to these meetings well Gary and I got to the point when we would go over there every every month there would be something outrageous coming up and all of a sudden we hear that uh plumbley is coming over and I started looking into it and I couldn’t figure out he W he was claiming I couldn’t figure out if he was claiming that he flew in the hit team to redb bird airport or he flew the prevention team into redb bird airport yes reading the various stories and I didn’t know if they were embellishments or not but Gary and I got together and we looked through the available literature and we would we decided that that the Crux of the whole story was where he was standing now for those of you that have never been to daily Plaza you’ve all heard of the grassy null well you can literally flip that over to the other side so there is a mirror image of the grassy null on the other side and plumbley claimed he was standing with another person halfway up that null uh basically that’s what he said in one of his stories right so when we got there we listened to his speech and um then they had a question and answer session so Gary said Well when the motorcade was coming down Main Street where you I was standing there when it made the right turn on the Houston Street where were you standing I was standing there when it made the left turn onto Elm I was standing there when it went under the triple underpass I was standing there now we Gary and I had already set this up so Gary said well let me explain something to you if if you are where you were you are going to appear in one of the canceler photographs does anybody happen to have one of the canciller photographs and I had Groen one of groden’s books that had two pictures of the canciller photographs and of course he’s not in either of them right nor is his sidekick so now all of a sudden well maybe I was farther up the hill than I originally thought that kind of stuff so at that point we knew the story was was kind of bogus and then later on uh under Freedom of Information I managed to get a whole bunch of information on plumbley and found out that he forged the pilot’s license uh he ended up at jail for kiting checks all kinds of stuff so he went from an Ohio jail to being involved in the the Kennedy assassination so that but but Gary and I had figured very early on that that was a bogus Tale

But it it it creates excitement that yeah he’s one of these sort of Adventure characters who appear in you know uh Jerry Heming and and uh there was a Jim Rose character I don’t know Jim Rose from The Garrison era who was also sort of one of these people who had supposedly flown people around and Gordon Noel uh a bunch of these people seem to be involved in the case and and Richard case Niguel who was another one you know and and and yet when you look closely at them it’s just it’s just it’s not there’s nothing really there yeah and and it’s it’s like the general public they are really not that dis disc Discerning first thing when I get a hold of a book I start looking at the footnotes and where the footnotes are coming from right and of course then you have the problem with somebody is footnoting a bogus situation and now with AI and all the other internet capabilities it’s getting worse but fortunately it’s more modern um basically what I’ve been doing over the probably about the past 10 years is working on oswal’s trip to Mexico City right to a lot of us that is the Lynch pin of this whole thing uh if if you follow the TR course first of all the CIA denied they were following him they were following him since 1959 but it took us a long time to get that information out of them without it being being redacted so and my personal opinion is uh when Oswell went to Mexico City and got turned down by the Cubans and the Russians uh he he was really trying to get out of the country he was going to ditch his family and go back to Russia basically is what we think the Russians declined him the uh Cubans declined him and he went back into the United States and um at that point the CIA in Mexico City should have called the FBI in Dallas and the FBI in New Orleans because they were the two previous locations where he lived and said we don’t know where he is but we think he’s coming back in town now the FBI in Dallas knew where Marina was so this whole thing could have been avoided if the CIA made a phone call and my personal opinion is the reason they didn’t make the phone call is because they were working on uh with the FBI on discrediting the P fair play for Cuba Committee of course all Oswald was the only member in New Orleans which was a hot bed of Andy Castro stuff uh and they were just letting him go because they they figured they would use him in the future never expecting that he would end up in the situation that he did and over the years uh not only me I’m sure you know Jeff Morley and Newman and a few others we managed to get the cable traffic after the assassination and Langley and Mexico City were all beside themselves because I’m I’m of the opinion they they really knew and dropped the ball on that whole thing well I don’t know if you’ve read Gus Russo’s book brother brothers in arms yeah which is a very interesting take on what happened in Mexico City and I’m going to have him on in a future date to go over uh Cuba and Mexico City and this new new book a woman I know about June Cobb that’s a very interesting book uh uh she had done a lot of good research on June and Jerry Cobb uh which is a whole other you know these these things are like spider webs they go everywhere but unfortunately in at the end of her book she’s determined that the Babushka lady is really an assassin which we have a lot of questions about that that conclusion well was the Babushka lady Beverly

Oliver well I I invest this was another one I in I investigated this actually trying to determine if Beverly was the Babushka lady and right away I ran into some problems she was literally discovered by Gary Mack back in the 1970s she claimed that uh she had a prototype yesika Super Eight camera right that she got from her boyfriend Larry Ronco who worked over at the Six Flags amusement park in Dallas that she took film of the motorcade which would be similar to the next film and that the FBI confiscated the film that’s the basic story so the first thing I wondered after I found out about Larry Ronco Larry Ronco uh worked at Six Flags and ran the photo booth you would go up to the booth to buy film right so my and and primarily they sold Kodak film and later on through statements that she made I found out that this camera had a cartridge in it that she had to send to Rochester to be

processed Rochester at the time being the headquarter I think it still was the headquarters of Kodak so the first thought to that came to my mind is how how does a 20s something singer at Six Flags

uh and her boyfriend get a hold of a prototype camera from Japan where you have to set the cartridge to

Rochester I it just made no sense sense right well the first thing she she denied is she said uh she never said it was super rate well then she’s got to lay that one back on uh Gary Shaw because in his book coverups uh he describes her saying it was a super R Cameron but that’s the bottom line how does uh how do you get a hold I mean a 20s something year old singer at Six Flags has got a Japanese prototype superate camera oh and by the way two years before the camera came out matter of and one year before Kodak invented the Super Eight now what I found is this is that when you start questioning these people right and they have this exotic material the first thing they’ll do is they will say oh it was a

prototype all right and then you contact the people involved as I did with yeshika and Kodak and you find out no no prototype existed on November 22nd

1963 the other one related to this is another fellow by the name of James files he claims he was the grassy n assassin and he killed Kennedy using a Remington xp100 gun some articles were written about this gun actually the XP 100 took 222 rounds I believe and in his article he has a picture of the gun and he changed the two maybe it was 221 and he changed the last number to a 222 so it would match the story well when I wrote my article on my web page about the problem with the weapon files comes back and says he got a prototype so what I did is and again this is kind of the stuff most people don’t know all of these companies have historians right so in the 1990s I call up Remington firearms and I still remember the guy’s name Jack Heath was his name talk to him right and I told him the story and he said well send it up to me and then he called me back up and he says this is completely ridiculous first of all the XP 100 did not come out until 1964 so that was what I wrote in the article and then files comes back and says say well I had a prototype oh and now I remember it was it was chambered to take the the 221 and he said that he bored out the barrel to take a 222 so now wait a minute here are you going to go through all this problem why don’t you just put a 221 in it well he had to do that so he could dove dale with this article written by this guy John ramaker right because ramaker had already changed the 221 to the 222 so I called Heath up and I said he he’s got a prototype he says how are these people getting hold of these prototypes when we’re keeping these completely undercover so I go would go through these and you know some oh no I had a prototype of this or a prototype and it and when you catch them then they get defensive they get they get mad at you right right yeah yeah for sure um tell me a bit about um your friendship with Hugh answorth cuz I think it’s a he he was a great man and uh I knew him uh for a brief period I’ve been to his house a few had dinner with him a few times and he was very very kind enough to give me a blurb for one of my books and uh I really really really miss you a lot well this one’s kind of funny this the the Ricky White story just opened the floodgates as far as I was concerned I came home from that press conference and I was sitting with my wife and saying we got to watch the news tonight because this is like big media I mean CNN had a camera there um so uh we watched the news and I said this this thing is not lying I’ve talked to this guy and there something fishy and on the TV comes this guy named Hugh aworth and he’s a reporter for the Dallas Morning News and he says well I’ve known about this and this seems rather fishy to me to

paraphrase so I watch him and I go over remember this is last century so I go to the phone book and I look and lo and behold there’s hu ainsworth’s phone number so I called him up and I said look I was at the press conference uh I’m working on this case I’m a Kennedy researcher uh and he’s kind of weary and I I said I just like to meet you and by lunch had discuss this a little bit so he says okay I’ll meet you for lunch we picked the place in North Dallas and he said I’m going to give you about 15 or 20 minutes so we go over we meet sit down and two hours later right is still going on and he finally says well I got to get back he says I got to say you are the TR strangest conspiracy theory guy I’ve ever met in my life and we got to start meeting once a month well I would start going over to his house and at the time uh I was uh Microsoft uh certified in Windows 95 and he had a computer and he and his wife Paul are they’re one of these people people that there ought to be police tape around the computers you don’t want to let them near them so so it turned out we’d go over there and we’d talk about various investigations he did along with uh I’d work on his computer because within the course of a month he completely screw the thing up so uh and what we not only talked about Kennedy he did he did a lot on the non- serial serial killer Henry Lee Lucas I mean he he did a lot of stuff he he managed uh to coordinate the uh Marina’s uh selling of the historic diary he was well actually uh he was the Space and Science Guy for the Dallas Morning News nothing was going on that day November 22nd so he went down in the daily Plaza to see the president he was there when Kennedy was shot uh he and another reporter are walking by a a patrol car and they hear this radio call that a policeman has been shot in O Cliff so he decides this may have something to do with it so he goes down uh he didn’t get up close to the the tippet shooting scene but he was with some of the police officers doing the search he ended up in the Texas theater when Oswald was arrested so he goes back to the newspaper and he tells the editor you know he’s got all this stuff he says write it up and a couple of days go by and the editor comes out to him and says hey look you’re really the point guy on this they’re going to transfer Oswald out of the jail I want you to be down there to cover that so it turns out he’s the only person on the face of the Earth who was at all three places yeah amazing assassination Oswald’s arrest and his his assassination the B when I was at his house I not he uh we were talking and he showed me on his desk a CD of U Perry one of Perry Russo’s hyp hypnotism sessions

uh when he was in New Orleans for Jim Garrison and so I said look can I borrow that i’ like to make a copy he said yeah take it but just send it back to me and so I took it back to Ottawa made a copy sent it back to him and it turns out that that um the National Archives Nara has lost or they can’t find their own copies of Russo’s Hypno hypnotism sessions they supposedly it’s supposedly on tape and so I was really happy I got one of them from Hugh yeah so that again it was It was kind of interesting because uh as I mentioned the floodgates for me open with that Ricky White story yeah yeah so was was was Hugh FBI or was he CIA here’s the other problem we have with this is that uh over a period of time I got friendly with CI local CIA and FBI guys right so people have come back and said well you know he was working for buck rll no but I appeared on TV with him and I sat down had lunch with him so this is the the the bashing of somebody you don’t like their opinion of so what you do is you skew it and you say well he he was involved in this and involved in that it’s it’s rather funny uh you know pen Jones most I’m sure most of the people watching this will know who pen Jones is yep well Hugh believed that pen Jones was one of these guys that was constantly gilding the Lily so to speak and I came to that I mean I I knew Penn and it was It was kind of the same way he would take some story and you know roll it way out of proportion but uh he and answorth did not get along at all it turned out at one of these Jim Mars meetings somebody got up and said do you realize that pen Jones got the uh Elijah Thompson heroism in journalism award for his work on the Kennedy

assassination so everybody else goes home and thinks that’s real interesting

I go home and say well I want to check up on that well the first thing I found out was it wasn’t over the Kennedy assassination it was it was two years before over the politics that went on in midan and Penn had a newspaper and he was writing these articles in this newspaper and the building got firebombed matter of fact I drove there down there one time to meet with the then current owner a guy named baram alderdi who showed me where the molotov cocktail hit well it turned out long after the award he got the award it was found out that the molotov cocktail was not thrown uh by political rivals or somebody trying to burn down the newspaper but by pen Jones’s son who was slightly autistic oh wow so I keep working on this and eventually I’m over to Hugh’s house and I said hey you know a few weeks ago uh found out that uh Jones got this award for heroism and journalism he says really yeah I said yeah and I said they were claiming was over the Kennedy assassination but it was not it was over the politics down there and I said what I found out is and I I know you and pendan get along there were articles written about how you might have gotten into a fist fight with him at one time I can’t prove that and he kind of chuckled and I said but uh it turns out that to get this award uh because he was with a little local newspaper he had to get an on board from a bigger newspaper so they sent the material to the Morning News

I said the the submission for the award required two signatures and the first signature is the editor of the Dallas Morning News and the second signature is [Laughter] you

that’s a very good story then all of a sudden he said you know wait a minute many years ago said

oh my God it probably was me so I said said yeah you didn’t like the guy but you were kind enough to get him the award that is a terrific story there are millions of these little stories that you that you run into that are so funny but all it is is Serendipity

yeah you for sure

they they take Serendipity and turn it into a conspiracy

[Music] [Applause] [Music]

Delusion, Episode 6, Gus Russo

www.mattkprovideo.com/2024/07/05/delusion-episode-6-gus-russo/

On the Trail of Delusion, Episode 6, Gus Russo

http://www.onthetrailofdelusion.com

Music by: Power Music Factory Suspense Background Music No Copyright

Channel URL : / powermusicfactory

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 Stones film flam at the demagogue of Dealey Plaza

Fred Litwin is here he’s a longtime author and certainly Watcher of politics

joining us uh Fred Litwin great to have you here thank you very

okay good evening welcome to another edition of on the trail of delusion the
my online podcast where we actually try to separate fact from fiction uh
the wheat from the chaff and actually give you something substantive on the web rather than the usual conspiracy nonsense that is all over the place
so welcome to another episode my guest today is Gus Russo a good friend of mine
and just an absolutely amazing investigative journalist so let me tell you a bit about Gus

For 30 years Gus Russo has been an investigative reporter author of nine non-fiction books writer and producer of many national and international documentaries for major networks

his books have received book of the month club and history book club featured elections and five of them have been option for films uh one of them the outfit was a Pulitzer nominee he’s written three books on the JFK assassination Brothers in Arms was his last book The kennedies the castros and the politics of murder um he’s also written where were you he is an expert on the JFK assassination he was a major investigator for the PBS Frontline documentary on Lee Harvey Oswald and so welcome to on the trail of delusion Gus Russo welcome to have you hey thank you Fred great to see you okay so speaking of on the trail of delusion I have to show you the shirt I wear Appo the flat Mars Society okay
right very very appropriate
okay
so my first question is you know what got you interested in the JFK assassination
well you know uh I’m old enough to uh report that I was alive when it happened
if you went through it especially as a a Catholic from a Catholic Family JFK was our first Catholic president our family worshiped the Kennedy’s and it was a bit it was quite uh a traumatic experience and there were some initial you know confusions about what happened obviously
in the fog of war and all that and they kind of I wrote I write about this in the introduction to live by the sword
some of the things that looked a little sketchy to me as a kid even but when the Warren Commission came out I think most people I fact I know most people pretty much accepted it I had this interest in it everybody you could not be interested in it it was an incredible event but the Warren Commission
I don’t know if you know this Fred but uh when it came out 80% of the American people actually believed it
you know
they bought the commission the report and I was probably one of them
but then a couple years later Mark Lane came out with rush to judgment
which really changed everything
as a young person never occurred to me that an attorney could write a book with all these misstatements and lies I thought
I thought it’s got to be true he wouldn’t be lying about this about the testimony of Jack Ruby or this or that and and the uh the murder of JD tippet and I said my God this guy you know he’s an attorney he’s got a real publisher and it was a big bestseller so that really got everybody going including me I was too young to do anything really firsthand but I was reading the books majored in polyi my career path was going to be music I was a musician since I was 13 and I’m professional playing teen centers and all that stuff and uh I minored in music at at College at University of Maryland and I majored in polyi

and after college I moved to New York to be a musician

but I was always interested in the case so some of the Bands I was in at the time were touring bands traveling all over pretty much the eastern half of the country especially New England so anytime I was in a town where there was some connection to the JFK case that’s where I became sort of you know an amateur gumshoe I would say oh Jim hosty lives here I’d call him up you know let’s have let’s have lunch you the day after our gig you know so it was more of a hobby uh but I was obsessed with I I I felt I think I learned early on that I had some ability to talk to people probably because when you’re a front man in a band you learn how to talk to an audience and the rhythm of how to communicate so um it came naturally to me uh so I was doing it like crazy I was building up a database of of people phone numbers and people all over FBI guys um uh Cuban Exiles what a CIA you know whatever and so um Along Comes The U I still living Upstate New York and then the house select committee happened and I was really aimed to be on the scene for that as much as possible so I would drive down or take a train down from upstate New York whenever they had an open hearing a public hearing and I was there for a lot of the big ones when they showed the zuder film when they with when they did the uh uh when they showed the U the the sound of the acoustics with the the BR film I was in the front row which was wrong I snuck in because that was where the Witnesses were supposed to sit I sat next to HB mlan and and you can see me in the footage of that day so I was there I got I spoke to Weiss and ashkenasi who were I mean I was crazy I I’d speak to anybody so after the thing was over I took them out went to lunch with Weiss and ashkanazi and picked their brains because I didn’t it it didn’t make sense to me the whole static filed tape with uh all this with alleged gunshots uh and I gave him you know a bit of a piece of my mind it wasn’t very wasn’t didn’t go down very well with him anyway during that period uh I became friendly with Scott Malone who uh was a DC uh private investigator and and reporter he worked for the New Times magazine and a few others maybe Mother Jones I can’t remember but we became friends and he introduced me to a lot of the staff of the hsca uh like Kevin Walsh and people like that uh so I was part of that it was a tighter Community back then it wasn’t a thousand millions or whatever of JFK researchers it was only a handful of us and we all sort of knew each other um and we very Cooperative we go over to Scott’s house after hearings and hang out with some of the staff and it was just a great time the only reason I mentioned all that is that that’s how the Frontline thing came to be because Scott Malone went from there to be one of the lead reporters for Frontline
when the show started in the early 80s and stayed with them for a long time so I continued my music work and my Private Investigations in 1988 I got a communication with from Jack Anderson who was doing a big special on the assassination who shot JFK and that was my first paid gig I sent him some of my phone numbers that I had for the show I was like a longdistance connection I didn’t I wasn’t out in the field with it but I sent him my some files and some phone numbers and uh that really got me interested in the documentary world I’m trying to get to a Frontline and so that’s my interest just by doing it for my own thing it wasn’t never pretended to be a money maker or any or a book or anything it was just my I had to figure out what this all about what made you sort of skeptical of the conspiracy stuff that you were you initially believed in well yeah uh the house committee I was I was really impressed with and I met some of these folks when I was there the um the scientists who did the uh the trajectory studies the ballistic studies I I came away okay Oswald shot him I knew that from the time of the committee done he did it but then there were big mysteries about what else was involved you know what who did somebody get him to do it did somebody know he was going to do it there was you have to understand that in the 70s and 80s the CIA was the big Bugaboo you know it they were in in the 70s it was all about killing foreign leaders allegedly or trying to and then in the 80s it was all about drug running uh you know working with the contras and uh the CIA was just this evil empire and so the question was did they what did they know and what were they covering up about this even though Oswald shot him in my opinion in my conclusion was what did the CIA know about Mexico what did they know uh you know about uh oswal allegedly being a fake Defector right all these things were swirling and it was all around the CIA so that for me the rest of my time was spent not investigating Oswald but investigating the CIA and stuff like that yeah yeah so that gets me up to around 1991 or 92 uh Scott Malone who was still working with Frontline said gosh we got to do something we should propose a show for the big anniversary 1993 and so we spoke to Mike Sullivan who ran who was the lead executive producer at Frontline and he loved the idea and uh he gave us a little discretionary funds to travel around and put together a proposal Scott and I and uh we put together after a couple months maybe three or four months actually Scott and I had a really nice proposal and we took it up to Boston for front line is headquartered and Mike loved it and he said well let’s let’s try to do something and um and Mike was great uh it wouldn’t have happened obviously without him and without him going to England and getting the be I think it was a BBC could be wrong about that but he got the britz to co-fund it because it was what we were going to do was really expensive Scott and I proposed that we would just travel the world and and figure we put more money in into it than the hsca did I mean it was a big budget and they went for it and I’m going oh my God this is like a researcher’s dream come true I’m going to be well paid I’ve got a ridiculous budget to go anywhere I want and interview everybody I could fly any all days notice I could go anywhere uh we Scott and I started it and the team expanded obviously we brought in Tony and Robin Summers also known as you really indefatigable uh workers when did you get the budget like how long did you have it how long a time did you have to research the JFK assassination you know it we started out slowly Scott and I it got serious and so it’s hard to Define it it was almost two years I’m sure first was Scott and I and then the team grew and that was about a year once maybe even a little longer than a year it was crazy it was I mean I didn’t have to get permission to do anything I just I had a my own Frontline credit card if I would to go to LA to interview somebody I just did it you know and sent them the bills and uh uh they trusted Scott and I and Tony and Robin I was going to say that uh Tony’s book uh conspiracy yeah was originally supposed to be entitled if I remember correctly was there conspiracy question mark and it was a book of questions to in in Tony’s defense it wasn’t supposed to be he was saying it was a conspiracy but he thought there was questions to be asked it was well researched and uh so Tony was on for a while he and Robin his wife who’s a great investigator and writer they did great work in in Russia for us they went to Moscow and Minsk they did all those interviews with the KGB uh they went to Mexico City Scott and I did all over the United States right and and Scott also went to Japan I mean Scott spent a month in Japan running down oswalt’s Connections in the queen bee club or whatever it was right and oh man that almost killed the budget because at the time uh the Japanese Yen and whatever the exchange rate was such that if you went out for a dinner it was $300 you know and if you took somebody to dinner it was 600 so right Frontline was getting all these receipts for oh he bought somebody an Apple for $20 and but that’s the kind of money they were willing to spend we came back from Japan with nothing right I mean1 $20,000 must have gotten spent just in Japan but we were committed to to do things nobody else had done and run down everything and that’s what people don’t understand about that show they think oh they set out this St I was well did it we were talking to every everybody 99% of whom didn’t make it into the final film right right but once we realized that it was Oswald That’s Mike said okay that’s our show we started out without saying that we said let’s look at everything and see where we land well that’s where we landed you know it’s I’d like to in a future show I really do want to talk to Anthony Summers about where he now stands on the J he’s gened a lot of uh a lot of stuff about the case over the years yeah he should be spoken spoken to you know it’s same with well I think the book he the title he originally wanted was called not in your lifetime which was his F which he eventually used for republishing but that’s what he really wanted but the publisher that no conspiracy is the way you’re going to sell a million books and you know he was right same with pner with case Clos that was the publisher suggestion I think Gerald told me I could be wrong about this that he thought it was a little arrogant to say case closed but the publisher said no no no you’ll sell 10,000 more books with that title so you know I could be wrong Gerald will correct me if I am but I I remember him telling me that so the Publishers have a say in how these books are marketed and and it does affect the the writer you know the author um he’s got to present it that way at that point that’s how we did it uh and uh and we interviewed so many people uh who didn’t make the show uh and those are some of the funnier crazier stories of beh we should do it behind the scenes front line let’s we should let’s talk about I mean it was it’s a terrific documentary I mean I really I’ve watched it many many times and you know it’s you know what always strikes me when watching something like that or reading your books for example is that it it’s real history as opposed to the when you read a conspiracy book it it reads differently because it’s it’s it’s it’s full of of conjecture and nonsense so it’s always a a pleasure to read Real History oh well thank you yeah watch a real documentary well you know I was sort of trained by some of the best people you know I worked with Sai Hirsch a lot I I worked with Tony Summers who’s a hard worker Ren Robin I worked with Frontline which is one every award you can win and they sort of gave us our marching orders and they told us here’s how you do it here’s how you corroborate uh who else have I jack Anderson who was an award-winning uh columnist in the US here um and these I was fortunate you know having to connect to DC that I had I uh uh met a lot of really you great reporters and investigators who sort of brought me in um to that World um I was just doing it as a hobby I just you know I’m sort of like a farest Gump in a way you know my whole life and so I just stumbled into these characters in DC and uh they said okay here’s how you do it you know and and so I did it and the other thing I like is is the doc injury is is on Lee Harvey Oswald it’s not focusing on you know the the medical evidence or you know there’s evidence of sick Shooters and it’s you know the all that crazy nonsense that right it’s it’s it’s very very interesting so tell us you know what what are some of the crazier stories from that time I mean you you met all all sorts of characters I mean for instance God Tosh plumbley for instance uh you know Tosh plumbley yeah I met TSH before Frontline um I mean I was one of the early ones maybe Gary Shaw was on to him before I was but uh Tosh is a character I the way I got into him was again my DC connections I think that Scott had introduced me to a guy named Jonathan Wier in DC who was the leite the chief Aid to Senator John Kerrey later became Secretary of State and they were fascinated with all this CIA uh drug running stuff and he Carrie did the carry report he worked on the Iran Contra report the CIA stuff in in Central America was the big thing in fact we all we all read this book I pulled this off the shelf you see this one uh yes yeah yeah yeah yeah this was like all about the CIA and a lot of drug smuggling 1981 and this is the first place plumley’s name is mentioned um and so when you mentioned you want to speak about him I remember this anyway I think car’s office must have read this book and they read everything and so they deposed plumbling at some point I got a call from Jonathan weiner said you want to come down to Washington senator wants to meet with you we have somebody who mentioned the Kennedy assassination during all of our interviews and maybe you’re the guy to talk to him so that’s where I learned about plumbley so I spoke to him called Plum he lived in Colorado at the time and uh he had the wild tale that you can look up everybody knows about flying in aort team into Dallas on the morning of the assassination he had a long history allegedly of uh helping the CIA run drugs and and he was involved in the Bay of Pigs supposedly just everything and um it got so intense with him that you know and I don’t want to say yet unbelievable but just off the- wall kind of stuff I brought him to Baltimore where I had just moved back to Baltimore from New York around 1989 and I I uh bought him an airline ticket I said let’s hang out for a few days so he came to Baltimore and he hang out he hung out with me for three or four days and uh I didn’t know what to make of it he um he had no corroboration for anything he came across as a little sketchy I learned a lot more later when I got his FBI file that he was arrested many times for forgery and fraud and and he had this flight plan that he gave me of the trip to Dallas which is probably in my papers at Baylor I don’t even have it anymore but with everybody’s name who was on the plane you know including Johnny roselli yeah Johnny roselli and I think aracha crazy things our teamate I can’t remember all the names but they were names who would never e Howard hunt eventually was one of them on the plate too anyway so um coule okay so we do the Frontline show I didn’t even utilize plumbley that but skip over that a couple years later a friend of mine from 60 Minutes a producer wanted to interview plumbley so uh because he wanted to do something explosive when the Kennedy cas so I brought him I brought him and this lady friend of mine Liz uh and this producer down to Miami we all flew to Miami he was going to set us up with all these Cuban Exiles and we were going to do extended interviews with plumbley and get all the details once and for all I still have about four or five hours of videotape of him in Florida uh telling us his story uh to cut to the chase it went nowhere uh uh there was you know it was that’s other thing you should know about that era was a lot of wasted money traveling around interviewing people who had ended up having nothing but um plumbley was just one of many uh I should point out that the one of the big things that got everybody interested in the CIA and Drug running was a Frontline show on the CIA and drugs it was produced by Olivia wild the actress uh her mother and father produced it or I know her mother did she was a reporter for Frontline Leslie Coburn so they had gotten into this whole Nexus from which plumbley came and um but I can’t it’s hard to remember any more deal details than that other than oh I remember I do remember one detail he showed us he said he was on the south null right yes when the assassination happened right so we got pictures of the South no and there ain’t nobody there it’s crazy well it’s amazing that he’s now in in in Rob riner’s podcast oh sure yeah it’s like it’s a new thing it’s new it’s only like 30 some years old and uh you know one of one of the one of the allegations was that uh you know plumbley was at nag Head North Carolina that’s the other one yeah of course with Oswald as part of this false Defector training or whatever oh it was the illusionary Warfare yes and in fact I got the memo I think that Mike Sullivan wrote for for you guys uh with you I published that about uh there was nothing in nag head there’s no facility in nag head you said Mike Selvin wrote a memo or so yeah or was or was it Mike solivan but there was a there probably two uh oh could you send me that please yeah it’s a great memo basically that that there’s there was there’s nothing in Naga R yeah we ran that all down we even knew o where Oswald was at that date I think he was in Minsk you know I mean I mean just incredible story and and uh but there it is in Rob riner’s podcast don’t get me started on the Rob Riner show oh my God we’ll be here for a year well the other another character like like Tosh Plum is a Gordon Novel you know Gordon Noel is another sort of character who has all these stories I knew Gordon I knew Gordon he called from time to time I met him in New Orleans uh and uh yeah same things it’s a good analogy uh a lot of stories no evidence and and a lot of ways to disprove it I can’t remember all the details these years later I do remember he sent me a patented invention of his a car engine that runs on water and of course that never happened Gordon what a character he was doing all sorts stuff like that and and and wow we I mean but again I mean people believe him you know and and I know there’s Richard case Nel is another one who told all sorts of stories I mean for some reason you know the J these JFK researchers are skeptical about everything but these guys come along with these ridiculous stories oh yeah that kind of makes sense the hobo the fake hobo oh chony chy oh I was dealing with H God there was one after another Oh Thomas Beckham well that get Scott and I went down to Louisville Louisville Kentucky what a great character I mean if you catch he’s a fraudster and he has a sense of humor about it he just thinks it’s the biggest joke in the world and everything he does is phony if you when you catch him on it he busts out laughing oh you got me that time Gus yeah just to tell our audience I mean Thomas Beckham was a character out of New Orleans uh who basically early days he was sort of a musician and that didn’t go anywhere but he decided to he was sort of into being a con man and so he would put on a concert some famous star is coming and of course Ricky Nelson he bring in a Ricky Nelson bring a somebody named Ricky Right somebody named Ricky Nelson and just rip off all the money and um and uh or for a while he wore a priest outfit trying to raise money for Cuba which he pocketed um so he had a history and of course he got entangled in the Garrison invest investigation and the funniest thing is he testified before the Garrison grand jury you could read his testimony online and it’s hysterical because first off he’s claiming he has all these degrees you know so I got a PhD in in anatomy he does I saw all those degrees in his storefront he Harvard Yale you name it you know he’s making it all up and at one time they wanted ask they asked him about the precept what what denomination are you and he he couldn’t answer the question I’m not really sure what Den what what denomination you know I’ll have to look it up when I get home well the important thing about Beckham is that you know there was this rumor going around in the 80s that there was a confession tape and with the hsca that’s what got us interested or me interested and uh I mean I got to such a point with my craziness and that I found a way to get a hold of some of those hsca tapes long before this stuff was all released uh don’t even asked me the details but I heard the confession tape long before anybody outside of the committee and uh and so I said to Mike SUV I said well this guy’s telling this wild story of uh knowing all about the conspiracy in New Orleans so he said go down and check him out so we Scott and I flew down to Louisville and it we had a great time I mean it was another big waste of money but we had a blast with this guy uh his his little storefront was like on Main Street or whatever it was downtown Louisville uh with the whole wall was every wall was filled with fake diplomas he was trying to sell me some Gus where where do you want to graduate from he had Harvard Rings want to gra you want a Harvard classroom and then he tried and he was a musician right or he thought you know he played guitar and he said yeah I wrote that song From a Jack to a King I said no you didn’t I knew who wrote it right I said no I’ll tell you who wrote it Tom and he said oh you got me we bust that laughing so we got out the guitars somewhere there’s a tape recording of me and him jamming for most of the afternoon because when he testified and he actually he test after he told that crazy confession story they actually deposed him uh the hsca deposed them and he told the the hsca that he had he had more degrees than a thermometer well he had them laughing didn’t he I mean they were once the once once they got on to the degrees and he was saying well yeah you know I’m I’m I I could practice uh surgery and whatever and a I’m a brain surgeon and and then they realized okay this is this is we have to end this interview because it’s just nonsense you know that was the end they realized it but yet he goes on and Joan melon bought all the stories made him the central character in her book it’s crazy uh he uh he signed some a some pictures for me I think at the time he was gone by the name Wade Hampton uh and I still got those pictures somewhere uh he showed me the Ricky Nelson poster and it was great it it showed uh uh sort of a blackout image uh profile of a guy playing guitar you couldn’t tell who it was but all around it had all Ricky Nelson’s hits Traveling Man all the different hits and it said hear him sing all the hits and he did thing all but it wasn’t the same Ricky Nelson some fun what’s interesting is he had for a while I I put on I have online I found in the files Bob lavender was this guy who was a I guess a print manager ran a print shop in Seattle was his manager for a while and Bob lavender was the guy sort of I guess maybe introduced them to Fred Chrisman because for a while Chrisman and uh another con man Chrisman and Beckham were working together as a con right a variety of schemes and then Chrisman of course was also the target of Jim Garrison I mean it just it the whole thing gets so crazy right it it just you you can’t make this stuff up and yet people still talk about these guys yeah I know it’s amazing they’re still talk when I saw that on the Riner show that he brought up plumly I said oh my God where’s this guy been you

know so so so getting back to to to front line I mean you have a lot of crazy stories but but you actually you did an amazing amount of work and and tell us of course everything LED back to Lee Harvey Oswald yeah and so so tell us a bit about Oswald and what you found out and you you talked to everybody from I’m sure the Ruth pain to oh yeah we film we filmed Ruth we filmed everybody I spoke to Jean de Mor Shield Jean I can’t remember how she pronounced it but she was Ill she was in California at the time we wanted to get her on the show uh now we spoke like I said uh 90% or more of the people we spoke to didn’t even make it on the show there was just not enough time in the world but we wanted to I mean I we were on fire I was doing eight interviews a day sometimes I mean it was and Scott was off doing his and we were filing reports um it’s crazy but um we interviewed for for instance Jay Walton Moore the CIA guy who lived in Dallas who all these conspiracy Notions were about him running Oswald or some nonsense and he was a great guy I interviewed um another guy who didn’t make it on the showed Ed Walker Edwin Walker I interviewed him well on the phone I interviewed him I didn’t go to his house but uh it didn’t work out because he was kind of out of it uh there’s a funny story there but you don’t have time um uh I interviewed Walker we interviewed just about everybody we nobody was off limits you know we gave everybody the opport to make their case and um I’m trying to think of U I’m looking at some I scribbled down some names here U oh John Thomas Mason the oswal look alike I spent an afternoon at a barbecue with him great guy what he was not well Charles steel who handed out the the pist we interviewed Charles he didn’t want to go on camera uh one of the tramps we we found out who the tramps were before it was made public I think because Jim lvll had been keeping those police records Secret in his own house and I was good friends with Jim and he said go I’ll tell you who the tramps really were he brought down the file I think one or two of them had passed away I interviewed the family of one one was in Florida and they described the whole thing oh yeah they just a bunch of friends got together once a year and they would ride the trains and you know the family had no idea that this guy was mistaken for E Howard hunt they said really my father was he how so we ran down the tramps and they never made it into the show we never even talked about it because it was a waste of air time how about can you tell us a bit about the the picture of David ferry in Oswald yeah yeah well I I was pretty much living in New Orleans during that show I was back and forth so much uh that was one of my main territories New Orleans and Dallas with side jumps everywhere um and um one of the first people I went to see was Colin HR uh who was in The Civil Air Patrol with Oswald one of the first first people I think I spoke to down no no it’s Ed Butler first Inca and then Colin so I went to the library the New Orleans Public Library where Colin worked and I I walked up to the third floor and there he was in the science division or whatever he was in and he was very nice guy and he said yeah i’ be happy to talk to you about I remember Oswald and and and so we spoke and U he said oh you might want to go down to the first floor Carlos koga’s wife works down there I said okay and then I went to see Carlos koga’s wife and and she set me up with Carlos and also there was a third person working in the library this is my first day on the job down there and I’m thinking this is really a small town you know you spend a day there and you meet everybody you can see how and right away I could see how Garrison could create any conspiracy theory he wanted to because everybody knew everybody you know it was a really small town and this is in ’92 and 93 I can only imagine how small it was in 1963 and of course everybody was running from Garrison to the FBI and from the FBI to the Garrison I mean back and forth yeah yeah I mean it was you know the thing I and so Colin speaking of the getting back to the photo again this is I can digress Forever on this stuff but uh I started talking to I had the FBI report of all the Civil Air Patrol guys with who were with Oswald at the time and allegedly fairy there’s an FBI Report with names them all and I looked them up and called them up knocked on their doors when I must have spoken to a dozen of them and it became clear some they didn’t want to talk they were still in fear of being involved in this story The Garrison thing is really strange um people don’t know that a lot of people who were connected to Oswald in any way we’re living in fear of the terror of Jim Garrison you know I don’t want to talk to you is Garrison involved in this oh geez you know when I called Sergio aracha Smith first thing do you work for Garrison I said Noh Sergio in fact I think he did Garrison just die at that point I can’t remember I said no we don’t work for Garrison I must have said that a half dozen times to people when I called them up they were nervous about this guy so the Civil Air Patrol kids who were adults by this point they um they were the same way some of them didn’t want to talk because of Garrison and I convinced some of them eventually and they said well okay being you’re a good guy you’re not working with Garrison yeah oswal was there one of the Biv wax and uh we we did have a picture floating around and blah blah blah I said oh I said got to get the picture we leaned on them and kept asking them well I don’t have it I’m I’m sure some of them had it some of the ones who said they didn’t uh and I the another guy said I had it but I destroyed it you know um and when Garrison came on the scene so it was hard to track it down eventually it led to a guy John sirolo I guess something like that and I when I found that out I called the people up at Frontline because srao I I don’t care remember if he wanted to be paid for it or whatever we weren’t allowed to pay anybody so I called Mike Sullivan and Ben Lerman was another one of our lead producers on this project and then Ben contacted srao who wasn’t living in Louisiana at the time and he made the deal I don’t know if it was we got it for free I still don’t know the details on that or whether he paid him something but uh they made the final thing to get the photo based on what these cap guys were telling me in in New Orleans uh that he had it uh so that’s how it came about we even had a big press conference at the national Press Club in DC about that photo and about the fingerprints on the rifle that we had uncovered that had that Waring commission never saw we got them from Rusty Livingstone the cop he sent us the uh the his original highdefinition photos of the prince on the trigger guard fresh prints and we had the hsca fingerprint we hired him to look at them and he said this is unbelievable if I had had this to the hsca days it would have been great but um so we had this press conference where we announced the photo at the same time we didn’t pretend that the photo meant anything we said here’s this photo that the hsca had been looking for there’s Ferry there’s Oswald everybody in the photo said that we interviewed them said that U Oswell and Ferry never had any communication you know Ferry was only there by fluke he occasionally went to these Biv whacks oswal only went to one or two meetings because his mother wouldn’t let him and she eventually completely stopped him from going so he was rarely there it wasn’t like they were Civil Air Patrol buddies they just happened to be there at the same day had no interaction and we said that at the press conference it was kind of weird because we said we got this breakthrough photo but it doesn’t mean anything right I think I think even John Cavolo said that he doubted that that uh Ferry would have remembered him and he took the picture yeah oh yeah yeah um and I went out to moan airport and interviewed Fair’s friends there and a bunch of people and you we we we ran down the fairy story really hard and obviously there was nothing there um and um I spoke to Sergio aracha he became a really good friend he he was in Miami and he opened up a lot of Cuban Exile doors for me and he told me all about Ferry and it was a consistent story you know he was just a victim of Garrison and uh the whole thing was that Garrison came up with was fantasy and it destroyed a lot of people that’s there’s a sad part to this I mean I’m convinced that Garrison is what caused ferry to have a stroke or you know whatever it was um uh and um caros Springer’s wife had a miscarriage from the stress of all this Clay Shaw David Ferry died uh Clay Shaw eventually died after the from the stress of all this there’s a there’s a lot of trail of bodies behind Jim Garrison aracha lost his job in ARA lost his job oh it was just he was a a sick guy Jim Garrison and um he destroyed people’s lives not even connected to the Kennedy case he had a history of inditing enemies and destroying them um you know and I asked I think it was who was the musician L Martin Lon Marts I asked Leon Martins I said why did you people keep voting for him for for Garrison and he and and Al Bobo they said in unison well he was good entertainment he was colorful you know I said great you know uh but um that was their excuse for electing this guy to Da but he was a bad bad guy I never saw so many people harmed by one guy at that point in my life and um so there you go so going back to you mentioned Leighton Martins I mean one of the things that fascinated me was that you know uh for a while Martins lived with David Ferry they were they were friends in New Orleans yeah but you had a you had a meeting with with Leighton Martins Morris brownley and Alba buff they were all friends of David Ferry um can you tell us about that and their thoughts about Oliver Stones JFK oh well they they they laughed at it pretty much I remember uh I I had more than one meeting I had a lot of meetings with those guys there’s a photo in my first book with all of us having dinner but no I spent a lot of time with them I remember Leighton called me that they all went to see the premiere of it New Orleans together those guys right and and Leighton called me as they were coming out of the movie theater and he said it was unbelievable he said we didn’t even recognize Jim Garrison in the movie he said that was nothing like him it would they he said we were laughing it was so opposite of the truth they thought it you know if it wasn’t so tragic it would have been funny but yeah I remember him calling me the night he saw it and said he was unrecognizable as Jim Garrison you know Kevin cner as Jimmy Stewart kind of you know every man whatever uh that wasn’t the guy they knew uh so and that was pretty much everybody’s opinion down there Rosemary James and everybody they they just couldn’t believe what they were seeing yeah they uh in fact I remember that um Harry conik Senor had met with Oliver Stone before they made he told me he said you know they came to New Orleans he and cner and one of the producers and they came to my office and he told them everything he said you’re crazy for doing this uh you you got it all wrong and and um Oliver Stone said thanks and left and did it anyway I mean he was well warned that you know that’s the thing that he was wrong about Garrison Stone needed obviously he needed a protagonist to hang this complicated story on the Kennedy assassination and so I could see in one way why he could do it through Garrison but not through Garrison as the hero you know as the anti-hero I understood as a as a having written some screenplays you need that you need a central character and I think there’s also psychological thing Oliver Stone is pretty much an outsider in Hollywood like a black sheep in a lot of ways he sort of likes that big you know I’m the little guy against all the big studios and Jim Garrison was the same thing in New Orleans he was the black sheep of New Orleans another of the other attorneys or you know people respected him and he ident they identified with each other I think as being you know the White Knight against all the big forces you know and uh so I think there was some bonding over that between the two of them and um so you know stone is very much like that um he he uh he does controversial things and he’s hard it’s hard to get his movies funded because of that reason he can’t I don’t think he’s got anything big made in Forever uh because uh you know I think I think the JFK thing helped him in the short run but in the long run hurt his career you know I who knows but um you know I could tell you a lot of stories about because I was down in in Dallas and New Orleans when they were film fing and uh the movie JFK and there’s a lot of stories there that aren’t fit for public consumption just right not just not good stuff you know so so getting back to just Sergio aracha Smith and Carlos Binger and Carlos Koga I mean those were three anti-castro Cubans who were living in New Orleans who uh basically were targets of Jim Garrison who were sort of was trying to put pressure on them to come up with stories about Lee Harvey Oswald yeah and and and of course Garrison painted Oswald as this right- Winger uh who putting on a a fake Act of being being a a Marxist yeah so what are what are your thoughts about you know bringier and aracha and and uh Koga well these are people who came out of Cuba these were Cuban Exiles who hated Fidel with a passion uh and some of them not not aracha but some of the Exiles hated Kennedy because of the Bay of Pigs right and uh I don’t I I know aracha didn’t hate Kennedy in fact he was one of the few who knew that the kennedies were their friends not their enemies the kennedies to the larger Exile community in Miami especially had abandoned them they were traitors to the Cuban cause arachin knew differently because he knew Bobby Kennedy and was sort of in that uh pipeline of information from was actually feeding information from New Orleans about Cuban Exile stuff that was going on he was helping plan the next Invasion that was going to happen they were sending Exiles down to Central America to train aracha was part of that pipeline so he was very close to Bobby Kennedy went up to Hickory Hill a number of times so the very guy that Garrison is after one of them was actually Pro Kennedy working in this very secret operation uh and he’s accused of killing you know a JFK which is ludicrous and as you know Garrison eventually thought Bobby Kennedy was in on killing his brother because Bobby Kennedy had Walter Sheridan spying on him or something so did did AR catcha give you the impression of being a gangster type uh person who would who or or a killer oh my God not just the opposite he was the most uh discreet gentlemanly guy always dressed to a tea uh and wore suit beautiful suits and ties and he was a diplomat and he came across as a as a diplomat and no no no he you have to meet these people to realize and right away all these theories go out the window soon as you just say hi to them uh aracha and his family were just the sweetest family his his wife and I met his kids and they stayed friends for a while aracha gave me box fulls of his things his family sent me things after he passed away I mean one of the things he gave me was um I still have it hanging on my wall there’s a few pictures of me with him but he he went up to to um Hickory Hill when Garrison was after him it’s in my First Book Live By The Sword and he um said Bobby will you help me get out of this and Bobby said it wouldn’t be right for me politically to make a statement about a DA and sorry I can’t help you but he said and this this did make aracha mad he said but here take please have this as a momento and he gave him a PT 109 tie clip which aracha gave to me and I’m hanging on my wall here in a frame um and uh so there were some hard feelings about that not being helped by the kennedies after all he had done for the kennedies but um he knew the kennedies hadn’t given up on Cuba and not all the Exiles knew that that’s an important thing bring air uh he may have been more right-wing in terms of um you know thinking the kennedies had abandoned them uh but he was anything but you know an assassin or an Oswald guy uh he introduced me to everybody in New Orleans all the other Exiles like kog and different people and um uh you know he was just hurt by like everybody else he was hurt by gison you know and um now these were good people and it’s hard to communicate that to PE folks who won’t go and meet people you can’t do it on the internet right yes and and and it’s too late now because so many people are gone and the conspiracy theories just flourish um and a great example is um de brues Warren De brues right the FBI agent he was accused of all kind of cover up in New Orleans right and about Oswald and I went down to meet with him great guy just the nicest guy and um he said we had a great conversation about the whole case at the end I said well I have to ask you are you aware that you’re accused of covering up osworld and you know it was a moment I’ll never forget he got real sad and he with he whole demeanor changed and he said Gus let me tell you he said you know I’m an Irish Catholic JFK was Irish Catholic he said I worshiped the ground He Walked on he said we all did most a lot of the FBI were Irish Catholics in those days um and he said I’d have turned over and A Tear came to his eye he said I’d have turned over every stone in this city if I could have found out who killed him yeah you understand I said yeah I think I understand I’m sorry to even bring it up you know really emotional stuff that you don’t get online well it’s it it it it really is incredible how the conspiracy theorists will almost there a whole cast of characters who are treasonous you know all these FBI CIA people they’re all oh they do they all hated Kennedy they’re all wanted to kill him um they’re all guilty of treason without ever talking to any of these people and seeing you know they what they felt you know I went all over the dullas thing as you saw in my first book I went to New Mexico and interviewed his sister and and some other family relatives and I went to Miami and interviewed his friends D’s friends down there I went to the library in New Jersey where they had his papers uh that’s the complete opposite of the truth the kennedies and dullas were as tight as you can be he was like a grandfather to Bobby Kennedy they looked up to him so much that’s why Bobby put him on the Warren Commission you know to protect the Kennedy’s interest and Jackie and Dallas loved each other they were trading James Bond books all the time um and uh I mean it’s just crazy just as crazy as saying aracha was involved as saying Dallas was involved I mean and no JFK didn’t in a fit of anger fir dullas after the bad pigs dullas came in and offered to resign and B Jack said no I need you and but he said no the thing is Dallas wanted to retire Jack begged him to stay on for a while during his administration so it wasn’t like I don’t want to be fired he would he would love to have been fired he wanted to retire so he went in and said Jack you know uh you know I was I wanted to retire this is I gotta leave you I I’ll take on the blame for this and this shouldn’t come on you and uh uh Ken said no don’t do that Allan eventually four or five months later uh when the heat was getting so bad Kennedy said all right maybe you should retire you maybe you should leave just read the oral histories at the Kennedy Library from Dulles from Bobby Kennedy about how conial and and gentlemanly the whole thing was it wasn’t like I hate Kennedy because he fired me that’s the complete opposite of what happened um anyway I could go on it’s it’s ludicrous you know well you see the same thing with a lot of sort of uh former CIA agents you’ve talked to a lot of CIA people um and uh you see a lot of lot of all of them are you know David Atley Phillips for example yeah yeah how many books is he in where he’s guilty of killing uh being involved in the assassination have you ever seen the letter from his son dley Philip’s son DAV David Jr he wrote a letter to I I to Dale Meers it’s I might have a copy I think it’s on Dale’s website um where he says what this did to our family this these crazy accusations you know speaking of interviewing CIA people I joined apio The Association of Former Intelligence Officers which really ought to spark a lot of conspiracy theories about me but the truth is a CIA guy told me he said gsh you know you can join this organization I said how I’m not an intelligence officer they said well we have this associate member thing hardly anybody knows about if I sponsor you in it was Ned Dolan he said if I sponsor you you can join us at all our luncheons I said well I’d be crazy not to and and I was the only journalist at the time who did it U so I’d go to these luncheons where three or 400 CIA guys all the cream of the crop in the 90s they were all still alive shackley and Helms Colby um Nester Sanchez the case officer for for kbella we were having lunch four times a year together and uh I did this as a journalist to get to know these people so they trust me to have interviews and I did I got interviews with all of them some off the Record uh n Sam Halper and he was part of this for 10 years I did this uh and and um we would go to Fort Meyers in in uh near DC and uh beautiful big ballroom and they even asked me to speak before the group it was so funny they asked me to present my First Book Live By The Sword to The Association of Former Intelligence Officers which I did and uh uh it was so funny because I’m looking down at the tables and there’s all these guys who know much more about this than me I made a joke about it I said I think I opened up by saying well the good news is I won’t have to explain to you who Alan dullis is like I do at a library the bad news is you know more about it than me and they all laughed they were very good to me they they they uh did anybody confess to you that they killed Kennedy privately I mean off the Record there was confession line no uh uh but you know Nester Sanchez told me among many people told me that Bobby knew about the amales operation and at the time it was off the Record uh nestor’s deceased now uh and uh uh a number of other people you know told me things that I could never use uh at the time uh who else um Elden Rudd of the FBI you know he was in Mexico City right and he wouldn’t tell me anything on the record and he told me a lot about Mexico City that I wish I could have put in the book but uh um it let me know that I was on the right track you know one of the things I remember asking Elden Rudd was he was in the American embassy as a leat the FBI legal atach and I he was he was out west too maybe Phoenix can’t remember I called him up and I said uh you we’re doing this show and uh he said I I don’t want to be involved I said can I ask you one maybe it was a book I was asking him for my first book and I said can I ask you one question yes or no and I said if I was to say in my book or in my writing that there was more to Mexico City especially regarding Cubans and oswal would I be right he said you’d damn well be right he said that’s all I’ll say and even that I couldn’t print but that that let me know I was on the right track right right very important yeah so that’s the kind of stuff you get that you can’t use but gives you the fire to keep moving in that direction he wasn’t asking for money like they always say oh they want to be famous he didn’t want to be famous he wanted to be retired in wherever he was Scottdale or whatever so it had the Ring Of Truth one other person I should ask you about the CIA Bill Harvey so did did did he confess to you or did you know told us about Bill Harvey well he was deceased by the time I got really into this spoke to his widow right I spent two days with her a house in Indianapolis I think it was Indianapolis there’s so many cities I can’t remember but I think it was Indianapolis he she was there uh CG Harvey uh his nephew who sort of ran the estate uh she was wonderful I mean but she hated Bobby Kennedy oh as did Bill uh no doubt about it he hated Bobby Kennedy didn’t hate Jack he and he wasn’t a murderer Bill Harvey wasn’t a murderer it’s funny in their big living room in Indianapolis there was a stuffed Mongoose right and I wish I really wanted to get this I begged them for it and it had a sash around it it said Robert F Kennedy man I wanted that she gave me a a copy of Harvey’s his copy of the church report which had all his Source his notes in the margins which some of the pages I duplicated in my first book Harvey had his issues he was a drinker uh he like many CIA people he thought Bobby Kennedy was weigh in over his head which he was with these Cuban operations he there’s an anecdote in my first book lived by the sord of where Bobby Kennedy shows up at the CIA station in Hemstead the JM wave Bobby just shows up unannounced and uh starts tearing uh confidential or top secret teletypes off the machine rips them off and Harvey says what the hell are you doing he said I’m taking these out of here and so these CIA guys are going nuts you know you can’t do this so that was part of the problem Bobby and Bobby later admitted it he knew he was you know in over his head with all this stuff he didn’t know about discretion and and how to run these things and it made a lot of people upset because they had to follow his orders and yeah there was problems but it wasn’t like let’s kill Ken JFK it wasn’t that kind of thing at all you know well you know look you know in can me there’s lots of politicians don’t like but I’m not going to kill them I mean it’s just and and they didn’t dislike Jack they they had a big problem with Bobby yeah because he was the one going to CIA headquarters every day after work at the justice department and Dick Helms used to tell me all the time about we I used to walk into his car from the AIO luncheons and he would just tell me horror stories about Bobby coming to the to the uh to Langley and just yelling at everybody and not knowing what he was doing you know and they just sort of said yes Bobby you know yes Bobby because they worked for him you know and uh so yeah it was it was just like a Keystone Cops at times you know and the CIA didn’t really want these operations they were told to do them you know and you witness the fact that after the kennedies were out of office all this stuff went away if the CIA wanted to kill Castor they’ have kept doing it this was White House stuff right right you know and same with Eisenhower and the that came Eisenhower the White House ran most of these big operations the CIA guys demanded what they called higher authority for any big operation because their careers were on the line so they always got it and very often the higher authority ordered ordered it Eisenhower ordered Iran overthrow Guatemala I highly recommend to your viewers get a book called The Declassified Eisenhower the truth about the golf playing grandfatherly Ike he was really proactive the as were the kennedies and the CIA they job is to follow the directives of the White House whether they like it or not and anyway that’s you know digression but that’s what you get from knowing these people okay look we’ve gone a little over an hour I don’t we’re not going to get we don’t have time to get into your the main Crux of of brother brothers in arms which is you which is fine it’s worthy of a complete show on its own just briefly before we end this episode can you tell us a bit about JFK’s foreign policy uh the conspiracy theorists would tell us that his foreign policy was one of rapmon uh with the Soviets and the Cuba he was going to exit Vietnam um he was going to bring in a new era of peace to the world and that’s why he had to be killed so could you speak a bit to that my God where do I start uh let’s see number one his reproach M the the peace speech at American University was aimed at Cru they were on good terms with each other they actually respected each other a lot witnessed what happened after the assassination how destroyed cruff was uh and Cru je was put under house arrest so all our hopes were gone Kennedy was killed cruff was destroyed uh those two if they had have lived and stayed in power everything would have been different I think however um uh Cru Jeff uh Kennedy gave the speech aimed at Moscow it was not ever aimed at Cuba that was uh called his bone in the throat he could never he and Bobby could never you know disabuse themselves of the uh uh I don’t know they they they were embarrassed by the Bay of Pigs and it never left them Castro traveled around the world after the Bay of Pigs was you know after he won the Bay of Pigs invasion He travel the world embarrassing the kennedies making speeches they’re cretans they’re cretans and they’re cretans and they and the kennedies just couldn’t take it um so um anyway um there was no rap ront with Cuba ever during the Kennedy years it just shifted from Eisenhower had the mob doing it Eisenhower’s CIA and uh Bobby got the Cuban Exiles he got a few Cuban loyal Cubans who were in on this uh to uh continue the operations and uh so what was the rest of your question uh Fred beyond the well the the fact that you know I think Cuba is a main thing the fact that they they really were were were very very dedicated uh they wanted to get rid of Castro they that was their their their number one goal in that and that uh conspiracy theorists misunderstand things like operation Northwoods right which really came out of out of operation Mongoose right I was the first person in my first book to write about it because uh as I was researching my first book in 1997 is when the califano papers were released and Northwoods is in that cache of 200 uh pages of documents or 300 I can’t remember but uh Northwoods was a part of it I referred mostly to the part of it called op plan 380 which was a new Invasion plan uh and I talked about that but I got I think I was the first one of the first people to get my hands on those documents and uh you know it had nothing to do with Killing Kennedy I mean I just don’t get the connection that they’re making uh you know uh in fact same with with Vietnam and all that lunacy Kennedy uh was a hawk you have to understand the 1964 election was looming and the Republicans were going to use all this against Kennedy especially Cuba and Castro 90 miles offshore and Kennedy had to show that he was strong on these things and uh hence he was trying to remove Castro before the election in my opinion that’s what it was all about and um with Vietnam he put the troops in there first he uh escalated the whole thing a lot of it pressure was coming from his own father because there was the Catholics and the the um in Vietnam who were being persecuted the the monks were emulating themselves on the streets and uh this was a personal thing too but at any rate um I caught up Kennedy’s uh head of sinpac at the time uh or um who was in charge of his Vietnam operation brute krulac Victor VI krak I think his name was brute and I called him up and I said I gotta find out was he pulling out of Vietnam you were in charge of it and uh he laughed he said Gus how old were you when Kennedy was killed I said 13 He said uh well you knew as much about what to do in Vietnam as we did and he said here’s exactly what he told me he said on Wednesday Kennedy was thinking of pulling out on Thursday he was thinking of escalating right and on Friday he was going to pull out again he said he didn’t know what to do he whatever the wind blew uh it was an intractable situation uh once the first blood was shed in Vietnam Everything Changes in Warfare It’s called the tripwire effect because then you can’t pull out because how do you justify these first Dead GIS to their families if you say oh was a big mistake and you you’re caught up by that point and once the trip wire had been hit uh there was no getting out of it and it was one of the great tragedies of the 20th century was Vietnam and Kennedy um and yeah I read a lot about it I can’t give you all the details in a short amount of time but there is no doubt uh he was going to stay in Vietnam if not escalate Johnson didn’t want to have anything to do with it but Kennedy’s cabinet stay with Johnson for a transition and they said oh Lyndon you don’t know as much about politics in Asia as we do uh and Johnson thought it was a bad idea and they convinced him he didn’t know what he what he thought and he said okay if you if if mcnamar and you guys know more than me let’s do it and he regretted that to the day he died that he kept Kennedy’s cabinet because had it not been for Vietnam his presidency would have been amazing yeah absolutely Vietnam destroyed his presidency and it was Kennedy’s cabinet who told him what to do uh oh it was it was tragedy on top of tragedy we could G for a year about that you know but anyway um one I guess the the funniest person we should talk about before we go is uh Fletcher proudy yeah I had one or two interactions with Fletch I I went to his house I think he was living in Virginia and uh uh it was one of those things that you didn’t waste too much time on you know you may know more about him than I did I of course he wrote uh uh his book The Secret team so he had to be spoken to but again it’s a guy with a theory with with no corroboration for any of it his big thing was that milit that book The Iron Mountain yes which he thought was real it was fic yeah it was fic it was it was it was like a hoax yeah it was a hoax and so I think when I found that out I said okay check please done with BR you know and and and interestingly um as everybody sort of Knows by now that’s the Donald Southern car character in E and JFK the ex- character and of course proudy never met with Garrison like that that was all fiction uh and and uh that’s the other thing with Oliver Stone that he bought on to that Fletcher proudy stuff at all it’s uh yeah $45 million wasted yeah and and I mean Fletcher proudy was was was a horrific anti-semite oh yeah that’s true I forgot about that yeah I mean my God he he was going he was writing for I mean he presented at one of the uh cardo uh the the intern the one of the Holocaust denal conferences I mean it’s just it’s just unbelievable wow Mark Lane didn’t mark Lane marry Willis cardo’s daughter well he was Mark Lane was also part of that crowd in facte for a while was the anti-zionist uh editor of one of the Publications a je a Jewish lawyer working for the anti-semites crazy I remember going through your papers at Baylor and I I found a memo uh uh to Oliver Stone about Fletcher proudy saying you know look we have we have an issue here oh yeah you know there’s stuff I think that was Jane rone wrote that letter right his head of research was trying to warn him about that you know this is this is really serious I’ve looked into this and and it’s actually true you know there there there’s it’s really bad yeah and it was uh that you I Stone hired me for a minute before I knew I didn’t I never had the script he wouldn’t but he he knew my he knew my work for some reason and uh uh no actually I had written him years before that he should do a Kennedy assassination movie Back in 88 long before we could blame you you mean it’s I may have been the first person but I think he always wanted to do it but he liked that I showed the kind of work that i’ done I to write the script and he flew me out there and and I thought my my day had come in this is around 1990 or something and I thought my my ship had come in and uh uh he said no no I’m doing something different he said but I want you I want you to help me because you you know where everybody is I had all these phone numbers that’s a great story so he I I did hang around on the scene in Dallas in New Orleans and if you needed to contact like Buelle Frasier or somebody I said I’ll call up you I know him and that was my connection to this thing but there’s a great story there which we you don’t have time for probably but uh uh all the people who uh Stone wanted to meet and the deal was he promised them dinner with Kevin Costner that that never happened oh Kevin got

sick there’s so many great stories about that movie we’ll we’ll talk about a whole separate hour sometime
okay
that’d be great
well look I think we’re going to end it here because U going on to brothers in arms
and yeah Cuba and Mexico City those are big topics
very important topics
which I really want to get to because your stuff on Cuba is the best around
it’s very important part of the case that nobody really discusses or I should say
they discuss but they get it all wrong and yeah
thank you for that yeah
it was so sad they did they just didn’t really read that book they you just skimmed it
and I’ll give you for the next thing
I will reveal uh one the name the real name of one of our sources the Oscar character in uh and I’m prepared to uh tell you more about him
he was one of our great sources on Oswald in Cuba he had the Oswald file he was a G2 guy and

there’s a great footnote on what happened to him

and who he really was

so there’s a teaser great oh that’ll be a great future episode when we really get into Cuba in a in a big big way so Gus thank you very much uh oh thank you friend always is fun talking to you and uh we’ll be in touch soon thank you very much yep thank you [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Delusion, Ep 5

www.mattkprovideo.com/2024/07/01/delusion-ep-5/

Steve Roe on “On The Trail of Delusion” Episode 5.

This is episode 5 of the podcast/Youtube show produced by author and JFK expert Fred Litwin, of which I am the editor and creator of all the motion graphics, titles and animations.

“On the Trail of Delusion”

This episode is a talk with Steve Roe, who authored one of the chapters of the book “Pieces of The Puzzle,”

which focused on the life of controversial former Army Major General Edwin Walker-

who tried to indoctrinate his troops along John Birch-er lines and engaged right wing politics after he resigned.

He was alleged the target of an assassination attempt by Lee Harvey Oswald.

I created the graphics with Adobe Animate, Adobe Photoshop and After Effects.

The producer’s website is:

http://www.onthetrailiofdelusion.com

Welcome to another edition of On the Trail of Delusion. I’m Fred Litwin. And today we’re going to do another episode to separate fact from fiction and try to actually give you something of substance about the JFK assassination rather than the usual fantasy stuff you see on YouTube. I’m very excited today. My guest is my good friend, Steve Rowe.

Steve Rowe was born in Michigan, but he actually grew up in Texas and he worked in the oil and gas industry for 35 years, including many, many years in South America, ten years in South America. There’s a lot of stories, I’m sure, with that. He’s married. He lives in San Antonio. In terms of the JFK assassination, he has he’s authored a chapter in Gail Nix, Jackson’s book Pieces of the Puzzle.

And Steve also has a terrific blog. And you could find the address where you can go to his blog in the notes, but a terrific blog on the assassination, on General Walker and a whole variety of other topics. So, Steve Rowe, welcome to On the Trail of Delusion.

Hi, Fred. It’s so good to see you. Like sex for the intro there. Yes. So. So tell me, I mean, basically, how did you get interested in the JFK assassination? Well, when it first happened. Right. Yes, Cliff, I was eight years old. I grew up in Dallas and I was in elementary school at that time.

Then.

So I pulled said I was there at recess. You know, I’ll try to bowl as quickly as I can. So, you know, we get called into the film room and I saw this ball. And so, you know, eight year old kid, we’re pretty impressionable. We don’t want to think, gosh, what’s going on in the world? The president name a little cable.

My mother was at home working parking park. Also. She would alternate route. So I found her kind of crying. She’s watching TV, the coverage room and the wireless rigs going on here. So that’s what kind of sparked it. And then a little bit later, when I got a little older, started going to the library and reading some

I started out in the conspiracy books mainly, you know, everybody.

I gave it up in the seventies, you know, just lost interest in that and my career going. And anyway, I picked it back up again and late nineties to early 2000 still believed in the conspiracy but right the changed my life.

So what led you to change your mind.

I just put the books away. Right. Went and went in to start reading the documentation. You know, Mary Farrah Fawcett. And this got through the documents, reading it. And but there’s always something that bothered me about that whole thing, even when I was a kid, you know?

Well, if there was a conspiracy, wanted to leave the building, you know. So anyway, I just went through the documents. We start reading up and come to find out a lot of the stories books were there will be is the. So you got to go primary documents. That’s why I did it.

n
I totally agree. I mean, primary documents completely changes your your life.

I remember one time I was living in Singapore and I bought Richard Trask’s book Pictures of the Pain, and I was still sort of on the fence. And I got this book and I started reading and said, Wow, this is real history.

This book doesn’t read like the conspiracy books. You know, it was it was such a pleasure to read something real.

Where did your interest come in? Start for for General Walker and that part of the case.

Back in 2000, 15 or so.

I was contracted by the only Jackson

where I wrote that chapter in a book. We were friends, you know, from Dallas, in Oakland, Dallas. We

so I got kind of involved with that as a group.

three, was going to talk about Joe Walker a year or two, too. So but, you know, it’s a really untold part of that. That’s fascinating.

and all in. I got really, really stick it an anchor still in the is a fascinating guy.

So that’s how I got it And I said, you know I need to get in here and

research it and

get some truth out there a little bit, especially about the shooting,

Well, I got to say, I mean, you you know, I’ve been very fortunate to have a tour of where General Walker used to live in Dallas. You given an amazing tour of the area, the laneway, the house, all the buildings around it. I mean, I strongly if you if you ever have a chance. Hi, hire Steve Rowe to give you a tour of the Walker shooting.

It’s absolutely amazing.
And believe it or not, this highly decorated Army general, Korean War vet, World War two commando, all that was a mama’s boy. He was a mama’s boy. Right. In fact, he’s got a big picture of his mother. And you can see a little better.

the threat from within

what he felt. There were a

threat of communists inside our government, inside of our

clergy, all over, you know, so these really, really paranoid about it. And we’ll go into why.

I had a conversation with a guy named Bob Rowan. He runs the New York military

symposium up there

he’s got a little fi about

General Walker.

00:08:32:00 – 00:08:37:13
Unknown
and he gets people to come in there. They remember General Walker and some of them do, you know, they were there.

00:08:37:12 – 00:08:37:19

00:08:37:19 – 00:08:41:04
Unknown
true. If there was a real life force, if it would be

00:08:41:03 – 00:08:42:03
Unknown
Edwin Walker

00:08:42:02 – 00:08:46:08
Unknown
I mean when I got that guy’s name through, so much history

00:08:46:07 – 00:08:48:04
Unknown
from World War Two to

00:08:48:03 – 00:08:49:09
Unknown
Korea to

00:08:49:08 – 00:08:51:02
Unknown
civil rights

00:08:51:01 – 00:09:00:06
Unknown
Germany on the front of the line there, to the Kennedy assassination, to the old history. It’s just incredible to

00:09:00:05 – 00:09:04:16
Unknown
that so much more interesting than my opinion, the JFK assassination.

00:09:04:16 – 00:09:05:01
Unknown
But

00:09:05:00 – 00:09:06:20

00:09:06:20 – 00:09:09:04

00:09:09:04 – 00:09:12:07
Unknown
A little history about Walker first.

00:09:12:07 – 00:09:13:20
Unknown
For instance, a point down here.

00:09:13:20 – 00:09:16:03
Unknown
He grew up on a ranch up there.

00:09:16:05 – 00:09:18:14
Unknown
The ranch has been around since the 1850s,

00:09:18:14 – 00:09:23:15
Unknown
finally he went into the Frontier Institute in Kerrville, which is

00:09:23:15 – 00:09:30:17
Unknown
that was a military school set up in 1923 by former Texas Ranger

00:09:30:17 – 00:09:31:02
Unknown
Yep.

00:09:31:03 – 00:09:32:06
Unknown
And Charles Ryder,

00:09:32:06 – 00:09:34:21
Unknown
There was an all male military school.

00:09:34:23 – 00:09:36:09
Unknown
Walker is right there.

00:09:36:09 – 00:09:38:14
Unknown
that’s. Walker The second time left.

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Unknown
Here’s a picture of the Walker family.

00:09:40:20 – 00:09:42:14
Unknown
There’s only two boys.

00:09:42:14 – 00:09:49:05
Unknown
father, George Walker, and his wife, Charlotte, which is the mama’s boy,

00:09:49:04 – 00:09:51:10
Unknown
gentle walk was named after his grandfather.

00:09:51:10 – 00:09:54:08
Unknown
And this is the name Edwin Anderson Walker. Same name.

00:09:54:08 – 00:09:59:03
Unknown
They went to the New Mexico Military Institute. That’s a private school out there in New Mexico.

00:09:59:05 – 00:10:00:08
Unknown
Well, New Mexico

00:10:00:08 – 00:10:13:11
Unknown
and then he got an appointment to a U.S. military academy or West Point, 1927 by a Texas senator there who, oddly enough, championed the 18 prohibition movement

00:10:13:12 – 00:10:14:23
Unknown
over.

00:10:14:23 – 00:10:16:01
Unknown
I got that from

00:10:16:00 – 00:10:17:23
Unknown
good author names, Peter Adams.

00:10:17:23 – 00:10:20:02
Unknown
he book the insurrectionists.

00:10:20:02 – 00:10:21:10
Unknown
It’s a book about

00:10:21:10 – 00:10:23:02
Unknown
General Walker

00:10:23:02 – 00:10:24:23
Unknown
mainly in his time

00:10:24:23 – 00:10:31:15
Unknown
in the fifties and sixties, very well written book, well, sort of solid sources.

00:10:31:17 – 00:10:34:19
Unknown
I recommend that book for all people instead. Walker

00:10:34:19 – 00:10:38:05
Unknown
I graduated in West Point and 31 is

00:10:38:05 – 00:10:42:22
Unknown
especially he was field artillery. So the commission now is a second meeting.

00:10:42:22 – 00:10:48:12
Unknown
here to all your book of them in 1931 at West Point.

00:10:48:12 – 00:10:53:05
Unknown
that’s a real interesting description from Philip the dead.

00:10:53:05 – 00:10:54:22
Unknown
says.

00:10:54:23 – 00:10:56:13
Unknown
He says Walker

00:10:56:13 – 00:10:57:15
Unknown
was

00:10:57:15 – 00:11:00:06
Unknown
certainly an assertive,

00:11:00:06 – 00:11:03:15
Unknown
kind of aloof character back then. I guess I’m maybe a little

00:11:03:15 – 00:11:04:12
Unknown
shy. I don’t know

00:11:04:12 – 00:11:04:17

00:11:04:17 – 00:11:04:18

00:11:04:18 – 00:11:14:22
Unknown
that he wasn’t an outgoing and boisterous fellow, well understood. And he graduated, you know, down in the bottom of his class, third class.

00:11:14:21 – 00:11:19:00
Unknown
Yeah. This is just the stuff of the Walker papers up in Austin

00:11:19:00 – 00:11:20:19
Unknown
Briscoe Library.

00:11:20:21 – 00:11:21:22
Unknown
This is one

00:11:21:22 – 00:11:26:14
Unknown
description of his military service. I’m not going to bore you. They were like, in there.

00:11:26:14 – 00:11:27:17
Unknown
highly decorated

00:11:27:17 – 00:11:35:07
Unknown
Silver Star for bravery, the Bronze Star cluster, and then all through the campaign. Those

00:11:35:07 – 00:11:36:09
Unknown
unbelievable.

00:11:36:09 – 00:11:38:20
Unknown
You have a medal by the king of Norway.

00:11:39:21 – 00:11:42:12
Unknown
after the war, not the Nazi.

00:11:42:12 – 00:11:50:10
Unknown
Let them. Norway and the king came back to Norway and gave him a medal.

00:11:50:10 – 00:11:53:00
Unknown
now. One of the first

00:11:53:00 – 00:11:56:19
Unknown
four experiences Walker had was with the

00:11:56:19 – 00:12:01:09
Unknown
unit called the Special Service Force or Special Servers.

00:12:01:09 – 00:12:08:14
Unknown
This was a joint Canadian and American commando paratrooper force.

00:12:08:14 – 00:12:12:16
Unknown
this specialized force, the forerunner of the Green Berets,

00:12:12:15 – 00:12:13:16
Unknown
the Rangers,

00:12:13:16 – 00:12:16:02
Unknown
Navy SEALs. I mean, they’re special

00:12:16:02 – 00:12:19:16
Unknown
Walker was a colonel of the third regiment of there.

00:12:19:16 – 00:12:24:17
Unknown
So they went to the Aleutian Islands up there off Alaska.

00:12:24:19 – 00:12:27:22
Unknown
The Japanese had gone in there because of islands over.

00:12:27:22 – 00:12:31:14
Unknown
by time they got there with the Japanese early on they left.

00:12:31:14 – 00:12:42:05
Unknown
So after that they went into the Europe, they went into the most hardest fought battles. It was in Italy and

00:12:42:05 – 00:12:44:06
Unknown
So they saw real heavy fighting.

00:12:44:06 – 00:13:02:10
Unknown
They went into Rome, liberated Rome, and then they went over to France, southern France. And this picture right here is from a Canadian library archives up here. And they’re on a boat, a Canadian boat walker through on the right and the green

00:13:02:10 – 00:13:13:10
Unknown
this is a real interesting picture. This is a turning point of a war years later. This is when he went to Korea

00:13:13:10 – 00:13:15:12
Unknown
this is where it became bitter

00:13:15:12 – 00:13:17:10
Unknown
about the war experience

00:13:17:10 – 00:13:26:02
Unknown
and politicians and the war, as you probably know, the United Nations was created in 1947.

00:13:26:04 – 00:13:27:05
Unknown
Korea was a

00:13:27:05 – 00:13:29:05
Unknown
joint it was a United Nations effort.

00:13:29:05 – 00:13:30:22
Unknown
it ended up a stalemate.

00:13:30:22 – 00:13:43:16
Unknown
Truman was involved with him. And then when Eisenhower took over when he was president, and they met just through the through the line up there. But anyway, he became bitter with the way they were not fighting the war.

00:13:43:16 – 00:13:44:09
Unknown
He was there.

00:13:44:09 – 00:13:45:18
Unknown
He was at Heartbreak Ridge

00:13:45:18 – 00:13:48:01
Unknown
Artillery Infantry.

00:13:48:01 – 00:13:59:12
Unknown
He said they could have won the war. But MacArthur said that the they quote MacArthur out. Truman did in the way they fought the war was your soul.

00:13:59:14 – 00:14:02:22
Unknown
This couldn’t shoot at certain times.

00:14:02:22 – 00:14:07:15
Unknown
new artillery, older enemy sit there and walk back up.

00:14:07:15 – 00:14:09:19
Unknown
And this was kind of the genesis of his

00:14:09:19 – 00:14:10:16
Unknown
later right wing

00:14:10:16 – 00:14:12:07
Unknown
after the Korean War.

00:14:12:07 – 00:14:13:12
Unknown
He ended up in the

00:14:13:12 – 00:14:15:23
Unknown
command of the Arkansas military district.

00:14:15:23 – 00:14:17:08
Unknown
And here he is

00:14:17:08 – 00:14:18:22
Unknown
in Little Rock, Arkansas.

00:14:18:22 – 00:14:21:06
Unknown
This was called Operation Arkansas.

00:14:21:06 – 00:14:24:13
Unknown
There was a ruling by Supreme, but familiar with

00:14:24:13 – 00:14:25:22
Unknown
Brown versus

00:14:25:22 – 00:14:35:06
Unknown
Board of Education, which gave the public schools had to be integrated. The Supreme Court ruling by Earl Warren.

00:14:35:06 – 00:14:37:14
Unknown
Walker was in that district in

00:14:37:14 – 00:14:38:17
Unknown
they were going to

00:14:38:17 – 00:14:42:17
Unknown
integrate Little Rock Central High School

00:14:42:23 – 00:14:47:09
Unknown
The governor of Arkansas, Orval Faubus, fought there.

00:14:47:09 – 00:14:49:12
Unknown
you had his National Guard out there and

00:14:49:12 – 00:15:00:18
Unknown
black people, the Little Rock Nine try to enroll in that high school. The National Guard turned around while Eisenhower got real mad about this.

00:15:00:18 – 00:15:09:02
Unknown
He called them up there. They went they had a meeting at Camp David with the governor and they had a handshake deal.

00:15:09:02 – 00:15:17:06
Unknown
Was going to work it out to proceed, you know, with the law of the land. Well, that didn’t happen. So what happened then

00:15:17:08 – 00:15:39:01
Unknown
plans up in Walker had to draw up plans up to get civil rights. The National Guard is command and they sent troops over to integrate that high school. So they don’t play anything but private.

00:15:39:03 – 00:15:41:12
Unknown
Privately, Walker was not

00:15:41:12 – 00:15:44:15
Unknown
Thriller. It was against

00:15:44:15 – 00:16:12:17
Unknown
theory. People didn’t think the government should be doing that. But he was in the Army and he was taken, ordered, you know, and he did efficiently. So he brought 101st Airborne over there. And they went into town and with an overwhelming force and fought around the school and next thing you know, the students were admitted and he stayed there for two years.

00:16:12:17 – 00:16:18:10
Unknown
And then later, father, he stood up and closed school and

00:16:18:10 – 00:16:21:02
Unknown
in 1959.

00:16:21:02 – 00:16:25:12
Unknown
Walker gives command of the 24th Infantry in Germany.

00:16:25:12 – 00:16:27:07
Unknown
They’re really a high, prestigious

00:16:27:07 – 00:16:27:20
Unknown
thing.

00:16:27:20 – 00:16:30:11
Unknown
This is where Walker got in problems

00:16:30:11 – 00:16:30:22
Unknown
started

00:16:30:22 – 00:16:32:17
Unknown
indoctrinating his troops

00:16:32:17 – 00:16:42:02
Unknown
with what they called the pro blue program. And this was based off his his experience in Korea.

00:16:42:06 – 00:16:51:08
Unknown
He felt that the people now are the soldiers over there now needed to know why they were out there on the line against the communists.

00:16:51:08 – 00:17:05:05
Unknown
he cross the line when he started saying, Well, you need to check the whole front line. Your your your local politicians representatives look at their voting record and stuff like that, which is a direct

00:17:05:05 – 00:17:09:04
Unknown
violation of the Hatch Act, where the military can’t do that.

00:17:09:04 – 00:17:14:01
Unknown
The whole they can’t get political you to

00:17:14:01 – 00:17:15:23
Unknown
right to do that.

00:17:15:23 – 00:17:19:05
Unknown
tabloid paper there called the Overseas weekly

00:17:19:06 – 00:17:24:23
Unknown
newspaper up there in Germany picked up on this stuff and he’s picking up the hey, this guy’s

00:17:24:23 – 00:17:27:23
Unknown
doing some John Birch stuff up there. You know,

00:17:27:23 – 00:17:41:11
Unknown
they ended up on Walker’s command. They bombed back the state. And it’s sort of another big deal in the Senate and what they call the muzzling hearings

00:17:41:11 – 00:17:42:02
Unknown
a while.

00:17:42:02 – 00:18:00:14
Unknown
It was back in 1961 in the States. He went on leave and we thought about it. And that’s when he thought he would resign. When he did hear. So on November 4th, 61,

00:18:00:14 – 00:18:10:01
Unknown
he was probably down there that whole year or down. He he turned in his resignation at Fort Sam Houston,

00:18:10:19 – 00:18:13:18
Unknown
He resigned and I gave him an honorable

00:18:13:18 – 00:18:15:10
Unknown
discharge, I guess

00:18:15:10 – 00:18:19:04
Unknown
Now people ask, why did he resign? He could retire.

00:18:19:04 – 00:18:21:14
Unknown
30 years, a little over 30 years,

00:18:21:14 – 00:18:27:16
Unknown
if he resign, that mean he would going out on inactive status.

00:18:27:16 – 00:18:42:01
Unknown
if he was on inactive status and another war broke, now he could be called back, go back into the military. He didn’t want that. And the reason he didn’t want that, that was the smell

00:18:42:01 – 00:18:44:17
Unknown
Vietnam coming right up.

00:18:44:17 – 00:18:51:05
Unknown
And he wanted nothing to do with Vietnam. You’d already been through a bad experience and he thought, this is

00:18:51:05 – 00:19:05:01
Unknown
going to be a second career where politicians run the war, you know, no fire zone, no shooting time and come to think of it, he was right. Well, that’s why he resigned.

00:19:05:03 – 00:19:09:12
Unknown
And when he resigned, a forfeited pension,

00:19:09:12 – 00:19:25:01
Unknown
Back in 62. Walker was out in California and he was visiting some of these old special service veterans. And they were kind of like a little reunion out there. And a newspaper got wind of

00:19:25:01 – 00:19:36:22
Unknown
and they were asking him how why he was associated with the John Birch Society there gives his reasons, just like an outline.

00:19:37:00 – 00:19:38:11
Unknown
You know, Korean War

00:19:38:11 – 00:19:40:14
Unknown
why they weren’t allowed to win the war.

00:19:40:14 – 00:19:44:05
Unknown
They thought the John Birch Society was a common interest.

00:19:44:05 – 00:19:46:04
Unknown
They know they thought that

00:19:46:04 – 00:19:48:19
Unknown
the communists were getting into the

00:19:48:19 – 00:19:58:18
Unknown
military in the State Department, you know, all kinds of ways to bring them into society. And that’s why he called the threat from within.

00:19:58:20 – 00:20:10:04
Unknown
And he felt that the people he would like to associate with, whether or not he was a member or not, they don’t they don’t carry cards really,

00:20:10:04 – 00:20:14:21
Unknown
What do you do then? In 1961, after resigned, he moved to Dallas

00:20:14:21 – 00:20:16:15
Unknown

  1. Dallas was

00:20:16:15 – 00:20:26:08
Unknown
let’s just say there was a lot of right wingers there, some a little strange, some of them just very conservative, all shades of whatever.

00:20:26:08 – 00:20:55:21
Unknown
he felt that it was a good base of conservatives there or money there, people with money or real conservative. And that’s why he chose to live there. And so this is where he settled eventually. 04011 billboard that Fred, we went to that house, right? Yeah. Well, I noticed the flags are upside down. Yes, the flags were upside down.

00:20:55:23 – 00:21:01:17
Unknown
He would fly those was that’s a symbol of the country in distress.

00:21:01:17 – 00:21:15:19
Unknown
Yeah. Little interesting tidbit about those flags is after President Kennedy was assassinated, you turn them on right side up. So, wow, that just shows you his mindset.

00:21:15:20 – 00:21:17:00
Unknown
You know,

00:21:17:00 – 00:21:40:13
Steve Roe:
Somebody had the bright idea that he should run for Governor of Texas.
So he accepted it, you know,
But I don’t know whether, you know, in the back of his mind, you know,
everybody knew that he didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of winning.

00:21:40:13 – 00:21:59:14
Steve Roe
But, you know, but he’s Very popular, no doubt.
So to do that, he had to run in a Democratic primary. There was nine candidates running for the Democrat primary for governor, and he ended up dead last, of course.
But he did carry his own Kerr County and out there And I think Eckhart county out there in in western Texas

00:21:59:14 – 00:22:05:15
FRED LITWIN
Why did he not run as a Republican?

00:22:05:17 – 00:22:23:18
Steve Roe:
His family was traditionally Democrat. His mother was heavily involved in the Democatic party way back in the twenties, thirties and forties.
But of course, we know who won. John Connelly.

00:22:23:20 – 00:22:54:03
Steve Roe:
This is an ad here put in by Joe Brennan, one of the Birchers in Dallas.
Then you can see the tenure of that.
You know, “the Commies are coming!”
The red scare, the United Nations, these are all talking points of the Birchers.
Theyre a bunch of wackos basically.

00:22:54:05 – 00:23:33:22
Steve Roe:
After he lost that election he milled around a bit.

I believe around for a while, he got involved with a real highly publicized Event.
Some people call it the last civil war in America.
There was going to be an integration of University of Mississippi in Oxford.

The mans name was. James Meredith, a black former Air Force veteran, a resident of Mississippi
Who wanted to move from a black college into the University of Mississippi.

00:23:33:23 – 00:24:06:02
Unknown
So the real interesting story on him,
He filled out all the paperwork and they accepted him. They wrote a letter back and he said,
“Well, thank you for the acceptance But to be honest with you, that,
I’m a black man or Negro,

And they turned around and didn’t accept Him.
So He started all this court stuff
So one or two years later hes trying to enroll.

00:24:06:04 – 00:24:38:01
Unknown
The governor of Mississippi, namely Ross Barnett, was very well, I guess you could call him a segregationist,
but he was also friends with Ted Walker.
So Walker was kind of monitoring this from Dallas.
And saw that things were heating up.
And so a little bit before September 30th, Walker actually did write a letter to President Kennedy.

00:24:38:03 – 00:25:27:17
Unknown
I don’t know if he sent it. It’s in his papers.

Scolding President Kennedy for not honoring theMonroe Doctrine, Basically just being soft on communism.

Walker got a wild idea that he was going to have this big showdown.

Let’s go over there and support Governor Ross Barnett’s efforts to keep James Meredith out of the university

So we had a little press conference in his home in Dallas
and little famous speech from,
they wanted 10,000 strong for every state state come over to Oxford,
support Governor Barnett and then bring your tents and skillets.

00:25:27:19 – 00:26:03:01
Steve Roe

So he kind of started building this up,
the press asked him
what are you going to do?

I mean, Walkers, violence, you know,
He kind of avoided that question.

He ended up going over there.
he went with one of his Bircher buddies Robert Surry.

00:26:03:03 – 00:26:37:23
Steve Roe

But from there, he ended up he went to Oxford, , September 30th,

The marshals came down.

That’s the Justice Department. Robert Kennedy and the Kennedies were monitoring this,

In the back channels, they were trying to work out a deal with Governor Barnett, who’s a Democrat,
said, hey, you need to let this guy in.

00:26:38:00 – 00:27:08:17
Unknown
You know, you’re breaking law. You know, this is the law of the land, you know, So this went back and forth like a pingpongl tournament.
Nicholas Katzenbach, in going down there, represented the Justice Department. So when were the marshals show up on the 30th.

And this was going to be the day that James Meredith was enrolled in the university where they had him sequestered back in Meredith.

00:27:08:17 – 00:27:47:11
Unknown
All of a sudden, all these people show up on campus from all over
a lot of out of towners, rednecks,Klan.

These are pretty violent processes.
And of course, the students on campus as well.
So the marshals surrounded the area and then around sevenor 730 at night on the 30th, the riot broke out.

00:27:47:13 – 00:28:17:10
Unknown
Walker was there. There’s many people that saw him there.

And he was standing by the Lyceum building up there and people were saying he was directing traffic up there, telling the rioters what to do.
He was acting like a general on the battlefield.

People knew Walker, they looked up to him.

00:28:17:12 – 00:28:49:01
Unknown
The Kennedys and the FBI knew he was there.
They were trying to find him anywhere.
This riot Breaks out. And then two people were killed.

Dozens of people were injured. Marshal, amoung them.

Kennedy ordered the army down from Tennessee.
They crossed over from the state line of Tennessee to support the marshals.

00:28:49:03 – 00:29:24:18
Unknown
These marshal were pretty brave individual because they were thowing Molotov cocktails and throwing rocks, rifle gunfire.

And at one point, the marshals tried to call Bobby Kennedy and said,
hey, they’re firing at us. Can we shoot back?

And Kennedy said, No,
Thats not what you want to hear.

00:29:24:20 – 00:29:52:07
Unknown
But in the long run, that was the right call
because had the marshals shot back and killed somebody

Then you got a bigger thing on your hands.

So the army, came down, supported them and took control.

And by four or five in the morning, everything was under control there.

00:29:52:09 – 00:30:27:14
Unknown

Walker had gone back to his motel room over in Oxford.
And then in the morning he started leave with Robert Surrey in a car, and he was stopped at a checkpoint.

And he was arrested.

They took him right back to Oxford, to the courthouse there, and they gave him two or three charges.

00:30:27:19 – 00:30:57:08
Unknown
One of them was insurrection.

In this picture, you can see him leaving the courthouse and
They were going to take him up to the airfield and fly him up to Springfield, federal prison

And it was the orders were given to from the Justice Department to have Walker go through a Psych(iatric) exam.

00:30:57:09 – 00:31:36:03
Unknown

they want to know if this guy is crazy.

He was playing reckless and doing crazy things and was he able to stand trial

He supposed to go through a 60 to 90 day examination

Well, that didn’t work out good
Walker’s lawyers got on that right away and then they started working out a deal.

00:31:36:05 – 00:32:04:08
Unknown
The original bail on Walker was 100,000.

They worked out a deal with the federal attorneys up there that Walker could go hometo Dallas would get his psych exam there,

there were three criteria in it in that exam.

00:32:04:08 – 00:32:42:11
Unknown

One of the criteria was
was he insane?

And the other one, was he able to understand what the trial was going on?

The American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of all people, came to the defense of Walker.

(MATTS NOTES, I looked uo online the criteria for being sane enough for trial and found:

adequately communicate with defense counsel
understand and process information
make decisions regarding the case, and
understand the elements of the charges, the gravity of the charges, and the possible penalties. )

00:32:42:12 – 00:33:05:19
Unknown
They wrote a letter to President Kennedy and told him, You can’t do this.

You cant lock a guy up for 60 days, to do a Psych exam.

Without due representation, He didn’t have a lawyer with him

Well, that was kind of one of the main sparking points to get him out of there.

00:33:05:19 – 00:33:44:05
Unknown

And of course, the next day they were reduced to 50,000, which the Walker family and friends did manage to scrounger name. Mike Walker flies back to Dallas and goes to sacking them and he passes and did a physical exam on well and like a weekend affair where, Dr. Robert Stubblefield gave the Psych exam.

00:33:44:07 – 00:34:28:11
Unknown
Same guy that did Jack Ruby and Stubblefield was with the Southwestern Medical Teaching Hospital over there and next door to Parker and Dr. Lloyd. Was that Parker? He was in charge of the psych ward and which is up on the eighth floor. Anyway, that’s where Walker have spent the week in there. That guy has a been in contact with the lady that did actually did give them to Newman, told them to do that before they were hit, that they woke up.

00:34:28:13 – 00:34:56:11
Unknown
This is a picture of Walker back in Springfield, you know, back in love. You know, we’ve seen that before. You know, the hero’s welcome. There’s another picture of Walker going back to her hearing in Oxford at the federal Circuit Judge Fullerton, which, of course, his mother for the and to the guy on the right is Robert Moore, one of his advisors and lawyers.

00:34:56:13 – 00:35:38:07
Unknown
He’s a controversial figure again. So anyway, they go in January 21st of 63, he goes up to Oxford and the grand jury drops the charges. The government didn’t want to pursue it. So they kind of back now the deal and all around that judge honored it and dismissed it. So now Walker is a free man. Here he is going back to Dallas.

00:35:38:07 – 00:36:15:16
Unknown
But the now his real soap opera,
He caught the eye of an evangelist out of Tulsa, Oklahoma, playing Billy James Hargis

. And really, Game Targets is an interesting character. He was a radio evangelists primarily, and a lot of radio stations were broadcasting them down throughout the south. He was kind of one of these fire brimstone preachers.

00:36:15:16 – 00:37:04:07
Unknown
J Edgar Hoover called him a hillbilly preacher.

What? He’s not wrong. Not a lot of people are not aware of is he’s also known as the balloon preacher. And when I say that he was back in the fifties, he actually went to West Germany during the occupation over there. And he convinced somebody over there, over here that he was going to get a bunch of Bibles together, stick them in these balloons, launches balloons all throughout West Germany on the line, and they would eventually show up in East Germany.

00:37:04:09 – 00:37:48:02
Unknown
So we walked carefully and dropped these Bibles behind the Iron Curtain Walker, who I guess felt that at the comments where a bunch of godless people, you know, they were they didn’t they didn’t want religion. So, you know, he was against the Communists.

So Walker and Argus or Kindred Spirits. Yeah. So they decide to go out on this midnight ride to the midnight ride, you know, from Paul Revere.

00:37:48:04 – 00:38:15:15
Unknown
And they were going to give a speaking tour throughout the United States. It was a bus tour starting in Miami, you know, two or three months with like what I thought, man, I am a worker. So the whole way through the United States, all the way up to the very end of Los Angeles. So they ended up there, very successful tours, big turnouts.

00:38:15:17 – 00:38:35:22
Unknown
We got a bunch of nominations out of it. And you got a lot of listeners who were. So Walker goes on to this tour, April 8th, 1963. Then what happened a couple of days later? this

00:38:35:22 – 00:38:59:00
Unknown
pauses for second or third. That’s water. Yeah. I’ll try to get through this as quickly as I can. Okay. Back on the air.

00:38:59:02 – 00:39:00:04
Unknown
Okay, So

00:39:00:07 – 00:39:15:07
Unknown
what happened on April ten? Here is a from this that original video, a simple Bob Welch screenshot of it. Somebody drives your walker, takes a shot at it

00:39:15:13 – 00:39:17:15
Unknown
and it gets to be it hits

00:39:17:15 – 00:39:20:01
Unknown
the bottom slash of that window frame.

00:39:20:01 – 00:39:42:21
Unknown
It goes through there and you see the detective there. It looks like McIlroy may be the to Gregory Peck gives that one out that night to look at that are Van Cleve and McIlroy in some other places.

00:39:42:23 – 00:40:28:10
Unknown
What he’s looking at it there’s another view, a close up view showing the show on the shot and right below the locking mechanism and Detective Sean, it’s there. Where does it go from there? It goes over Walker’s head and goes into a wall. It strikes a wall. Now, this wall was a wall, a floating, outdated oil wallpaper looking thing, you know, with flowers on it.

00:40:28:16 – 00:41:02:05
Unknown
When this the bullets strike above what they did or did go from there, it went through about eight or nine inches of lap and plaster wall and exit out the drawing room. And the bullet was found right there laying on top of things. We walk our literature. Their pamphlets were all bundled up and there’s some laying out there in the open, and that’s what it went through.

00:41:02:05 – 00:41:46:21
Unknown
And then the there’s another picture of Walker. Walker was slightly injured that night on his right arm. He was bleeding slightly. He took a little shrapnel from probably from the bullet face. And when it shredded out, maybe from where else, you know, striking his forearm, the man in front of him is a boxer with cigaret. We now see those that Mr. Sir is wearing a light colored shirt will kind of go back to the one of these theories you have there.

00:41:46:23 – 00:42:20:00
Unknown
But there’s no death. Lot of people thought was the staged fake shooting, the publicity. He didn’t need that He already had a I mean that’s that’s just what I let’s say he was injured, you know, I mean, how do you think that, you know, go anywhere near the diagram drawn by Bob sorry, at the Warren Commission, the woman gives you Orient there?

00:42:20:02 – 00:42:57:12
Unknown
Well, the north side on the very top would be the back of the alleyway behind the Walker home. So it would be the front entrance, Turtle Creek Boulevard West is on the left. So next monologue would be Jackson, Dr. Jackson’s home. And then on the other side would be the LDS Mormon Church that was there. Okay. Now, on the north side, you’ll see a emblem there called a right.

00:42:57:14 – 00:43:49:15
Unknown
That is the window where the bullet hit that we’re sorry through it. Now, down below that, you’ll see like a little rectangle there. That’s Walker’s desk. And we’ll talk with Walker, where he sat in that story of that shooting. And that will erode to the next wall. So this picture that was found in all Walker belongings, if you look from the bottom floor, the very left corner, that is the window where the shot this this picture was taken by Oswald.

00:43:49:19 – 00:44:11:20
Unknown
This is the back is the back of the house. Yes, sir. This is the back of the house. Right. Okay. Back of the house and the driveway in the back of the house. And picture was taken off that driveway to the left. There’s a lattice there. I don’t have a picture of that, but you can see it. Yeah.

00:44:11:22 – 00:44:44:04
Unknown
And then you have the 57 Chevrolet with a bunch that license plate. We just talking about that real quick because that’s all kind of conspiracy things that car belonged to. When Walker volunteered, it was Charles Clear was his name and Dallas police went out there after all this and see if they can see that car and they found and run the license tag on it.

00:44:44:06 – 00:45:26:23
Unknown
And it was Charles clear, no doubt about it. But law Oswald approached that license plate and it was found with Lonsdale, floor pants, conspiracy things about well, I wouldn’t much doubt when they found it and I know it’s in the record, both detectives out there, Stovall and the Astros, saw it had already been punched out and in Jesse Curry’s book, there’s a picture of that.

00:45:27:01 – 00:46:00:06
Unknown
It’s laying flat on a side of other possessions was well, so look there there it is. The license plate is there is not much that was laying flat for the first. Second thing is they later found a more high resolution photo of that and he blew up and I’ve seen it on my blog articles that much Americans thought it was.

00:46:00:06 – 00:46:33:15
Unknown
The way he found it out blew it up and yeah it’s it’s got a wide border didn’t have a license plate on the lane on top of something like this. Well that is not I mean not the they all the other things anybody else. Okay. All right. Now the shooting of a 14 year old kid that live. Fred, you probably remember some of this.

00:46:33:17 – 00:47:11:04
Unknown
We went out there a couple of years ago for 14 year old kid was staying at his grandfather’s house on Luton Street near Newton Circle, called, which is directly behind the Mormon parking lot, church parking lot. He heard the shot that night and he went over backwards fence, stood up a little box, leaning up there and looked over and was looking directly the LDS parking lot.

00:47:11:06 – 00:47:39:21
Unknown
There are two men that he saw and this gets in another conspiracy them. So the FBI went out there in June of 64. So they want to do their own investigation. They didn’t talk to Walker. They didn’t want to talk to Walker. Well, they did talk to Curt Coleman. And he did talk to, I think the Jackson and Mary Lou.

00:47:39:21 – 00:48:08:10
Unknown
They there was a first person live with her and did their own investigation. So what they did was they recreated were Coleman recreated where he was standing on that back fence. And this is a picture of it. They had to highlight it and read a little bit of the ones that are about the two men, which one? Their number one and number two is.

00:48:08:11 – 00:48:50:06
Unknown
And then number one was a man getting into a car right up there at the fence line real close to Coleman. Number two guy was going to a another vehicle park along the fence line that separates the locker room and the oldest parking lot. You can see let me just say their number one, where he where Kurt Coleman first saw that guy getting into the car park with a massive one.

00:48:50:06 – 00:49:39:19
Unknown
There seem to be the right side is along the fence line where another vehicle was parked. The two is where Kirk Irwin saw this guy walk in to that car on. That’s one. So just the really another view here of it to a level view of it. So a side view of it. B is where this 1958 Chevy two door vehicle was part therefore number two.

00:49:39:21 – 00:50:10:12
Unknown
God walked in. That vehicle in the sea is the alley that goes behind the work route that you see to the right of that C mark is a very, very important there’s like a little startling fixture there. So it’s like autumn or the wood there. You know, this is where the LDS church put their trash cans this block.

00:50:10:12 – 00:50:48:21
Unknown
The view from Kirk Coleman to the alleyway where the shooting occurred. So you could, whether you believe his Oswald or whoever, Kirk Coleman did not see him through the Kirk Coleman saw the other two, the two men, very important. I remember, Fred, we went out there actually over the old concrete pad that they would say, Right, okay, there’s another view, another view of it back in the

00:50:48:21 – 00:50:53:01
Unknown
church parking lot, looking straight down the alleyway.

00:50:53:02 – 00:51:26:15
Unknown
That’s the FBI white station. Wagner Number one was wherever that man first going into that or that station wagon for remember, too, is where he saw the other guy walking through the fence. And one C is the alley right behind or either for quality pictures without trying to pull them out a little bit. So what ties Oswald to this walker to

00:51:26:15 – 00:51:55:18
Unknown
the one of the first things that happened was this letter to Marina in Russian that was found in a Russian helpful crafts book that Ruth claimed gave to the Irving police officer to the marina who was sequestered over there, I believe the Six Flags and were some other stuff, too.

00:51:55:18 – 00:52:27:00
Unknown
But anyway, this letter or a two page letter was stuck inside that little helpful hole dance book. You know, it’s the Russian book. And so anyway, by the time I got that book up to give to the Secret Service that were, you know, had her under the guard there, they of course, checked everything out. Well, they found this letter.

00:52:27:02 – 00:53:02:14
Unknown
So now they’re asking questions. What is it, the Secret Service that a Russian speaker and a person they’re writing that came in from L.A., the Russian speaking community there, And he was working with Marina. So he saw this letter and he approached Marina about that. And then he went over, asked Ruth Bain if she asked if she wrote this letter.

00:53:02:16 – 00:53:42:20
Unknown
He denied it about it. She did. But the letter is written in all Russian grammar spelling, you remember. So Paul Gregory mentioned that and said it’s brand horrendous. And that was me. That comment was made by this Russian speaking agent named to prosecute Lee on her classic You read it. And so this is terrible. So him and Marina sat down together and try to interpret the translate one of the rules.

00:53:43:02 – 00:54:24:22
Unknown
Like you can see there’s too much detail in there that only Marina in our world would know. I’m mailbox key on. Let’s see where I was. All this might be on second page anyway. You know, I’ve got a check coming in. We pay, you know, go down and cashes check. And that’s true. You get fired. Jagger Charles Stovall, I mean, we have one more check for $33 and and then there’s other details in there.

00:54:24:22 – 00:55:09:11
Unknown
You know, Adriana You know, and we did. And then there was at the newlyweds, right? You paid water and gas. Yeah, And water. You absolutely did. And for all I know, no second page of it looks like I’m doing work, you know, of the Red Cross, you know, And then the most cryptic message is at the very end, if I’m alive and thick, imprisoned there, the city jail is down there, located across the bridge, across the viaduct here.

00:55:09:13 – 00:55:43:20
Unknown
Well, that’s the county jail, actually, the city jails or would be the nevertheless, what’s going on? You know, but nowhere in this letter, as you mentioned, Walker you know, and there’s a good reason why he did it. Why would he if he left this letter, went out that night, Why would if Marina would go find this letter ahead of time?

00:55:43:22 – 00:56:17:09
Unknown
Well, he’s gone and saw Walker’s name or General Walker or whatever. So you would what’s he going to do? You know, she probably would have gone panicked, probably would have maybe run out to run out to her house and contact somebody. Maybe maybe they’d contact the police. I mean, she was already getting beaten by him several times. And, you know, he’d left her.

00:56:17:11 – 00:56:42:21
Unknown
She knew he was out of there. So that’s why he probably did it. Probably do want to know where he was going. Didn’t want to tip her All Yeah, for sure was the common sense thing. I mean, I don’t want people say that anyway, but, you know, I did a handwriting analysis, but there are a few English words in there, like a Red Cross.

00:56:42:23 – 00:57:38:02
Unknown
They picked up on that. And, you know, the sign, what it’s all about, No doubt about it. Who else? Run it. Okay. What else it would track to Who? Lee Harvey cfc5 73 is the Walker bullet. That’s the one in the archives. And to the right is C read 99, the so-called magic one. It’s not legit, but they got this from David Long Pines site Interesting thing but you can see both of them are copper jacketed with a right twist and the length of that 573.

00:57:38:04 – 00:58:15:02
Unknown
So they were smashed was what, one in 518 of L.A. The the 3399 is somewhere around three inches. So, you know, it’s definitely damaged. So they look similar. Okay. Well, when police had that that slug in their possession, they sent through a city county lab over there. PARKER They have a got a lab. You know, this gun shots and stuff over there.

00:58:15:04 – 00:58:46:10
Unknown
They just kept a little lab. They’re trying to determine what well, they sent it over there and they can determine the caliber of the bullet. It was a smashed up condition. Well, when the FBI got ahold of it, they were they were charged with. What is it? Well, the FBI did have seen these or Western bullets they’ve gotten with you once.

00:58:46:10 – 00:59:20:14
Unknown
They had 3d3994. All they did, if you see that little ring on the bottom near the base of the bullet, that’s called a cannula, the that sits inside the cartridge, the bullet projectile sits inside the bullet cartridge, and it’s the same one. Where will they be compared to each other? And that’s how they terminate the 6.5 millimeter caliber bullet.

00:59:20:16 – 00:59:59:03
Unknown
Did you want to talk now about whether it’s steel jacketed? Yes. Well, that’s good. I’m coming right up to that. Okay. I’m sorry. Go ahead. That we can wait for for that afternoon. Right, Right, Right. Now, we’re talking about the okay, the slide here for if you remember the old Town record, the initial. Yeah. Yeah. School that was mentioned in the Oliver Stone’s latest Atlantic City movie.

00:59:59:05 – 01:00:24:11
Unknown
That’s the trade. You know, they were selling records and their shoes were not on it. And then, you know, we worked together to get the high definition photos with the hard drive, right? And all that. And we worked that together. We did a lot of work a little bit way away. We ended up flying it. And so I just did the same thing with five, seven, three.

01:00:24:13 – 01:00:59:20
Unknown
Well, let’s see, one initial I can find. So I did a browse through the collection and at the base of this bullet to the left or is Emma and as in like Nancy, this is where all the arresting are actually normally investigating patrolmen that came out to the locker room at night there were two of them and I will put in Billy the Norvell.

01:00:59:22 – 01:01:24:02
Unknown
Well, the FBI came around later 64 and they were charged with trying to find and verify all these initials and stuff like that or something. And they got around seven three when they were looking for. Officer Norvell Well, he no longer work for the police force. He’s on only place for some just for a few months. Well, they finally locate him.

01:01:24:02 – 01:01:49:10
Unknown
I think he was in Arlington somewhere or Irving, and they did locate him and the bullet were them. Took it out there to his place, and they were involved in this. And he said yes to the unit. And he said, Yeah, I put in an army, you know, And on it they said, okay. So he pointed out to me to put it on the base of the bullet, near the base of the bullet.

01:01:49:12 – 01:02:30:21
Unknown
Then there it is, there’s the air. So there’s this crazy, crazy theory out there that’s really embarrassing that about it All supposed to be still jacketed bullet because they mentioned steel jacketed bullet in the case report. The detectives actually normal found that bullet later and it’s got to be is couldn’t be you know the one in the National Archives I think you know and there were several people.

01:02:30:21 – 01:03:05:07
Unknown
So this is just that’s completely nuts. I don’t care if you call a plastic bullet or or silver bullet. There’s the M on that bullet in the National Archives. And that is Billie Jean Norvill in this exactly where he described it exactly like Elmer Todd describe is. Well, they were squished. So the still jacketed bullet is just another saying it’s an embarrassment.

01:03:05:09 – 01:03:25:05
Unknown
Right? Yeah. Well, sometimes and sometimes people make mistakes. I mean, the to the conspiracy people, you’re not allowed to make a mistake at all. So it’s like if it’s if somebody just tried to steal, I mean it’s and you could easily I think you can you can speak to this you can call a cop or jacketed bullet a steel jacketed.

01:03:25:05 – 01:04:02:02
Unknown
At first glance, I imagine. Yeah. Well, this was questioned by the Warren Commission member who was one of the guys that produced the question, Robert Frazier of the FBI. He said it’s worse this effect, what do they call bullets, still jacketed bullets, because I’ve seen the case report refrigerated. The people do call it, but it’s actually a copper alloy.

01:04:02:04 – 01:04:40:06
Unknown
So Frazier explained it, but unfortunately, don’t accept that. You know, he’s, of course, referring to conspiracy in the thousand, maybe conspiracy. Yeah. Way to the high levels of government. So they may not know that I can deny it. Let’s get to this escape route. Why people are interested in this, this and the FBI, when they went back in 64, went out and, you know, they had Oswald’s pictures and they took pictures themselves of comparison.

01:04:40:08 – 01:04:59:15
Unknown
And you see that in record. And there’s a longer in the Oswald pictures were a couple of pictures of railroad tracks. Well, that’s kind of funny. I didn’t know he was a train buff. Anyway, so they were out there trying to make sense of all this.

01:04:59:15 – 01:05:11:11
Unknown
But I drew this diagram. What they theorize could be an escape route by Oswald, and he looked up little left corner.

01:05:11:11 – 01:05:48:21
Unknown
I wish my corner would work, but under under the theorized is the walker home and crosses them and they are there’s an alley that goes directly across them which is no longer you know goes all the way to Irving Avenue. Now one of Oswald’s pictures, he had a looking down the alleyway, looking toward Allendale from the parking lot.

01:05:48:22 – 01:06:21:12
Unknown
In the background was a high rise building. What building was 21 Turtle Square. And that was being constructed during the time in March of 63 being under construction. So the FBI, what they do, they try to figure out what’s going on here, they were trying to pin a date when this might have been this picture might have been taken.

01:06:21:14 – 01:06:55:17
Unknown
It was taken in January, was taken last year. So, you know, pretty good about this. You know, they went to that building that owns that building and they said, well, it’s contact. They got to hold this guy. It was kind of a I forgot it was title was it’s been passable as night. It’s all in the record and he had logs on as he was going to walk in I’m sure which can hold inspector for if J from an FHA loan or whatever.

01:06:55:19 – 01:07:26:10
Unknown
And he was keeping logs of the construction, he was keeping slides, the construction pictures of it. And they looked at this Oswald photo and they could count the floors, but they know one thing. They noticed that there was no crane work going on, nobody working very fast, Moore told me. Well, they don’t work with you. so this would probably take him away.

01:07:26:10 – 01:07:58:20
Unknown
Camp and which we were then, I think the night March 9th or March ten, I think it was March 10th, because March 9th. But, you know, I tracked him down. Oswald was doing overtime at the Jaggers that day, which meant it’s better to think of anyway, So this picture was back there. So while we would take a picture like that, where would we shoot now?

01:07:58:20 – 01:08:30:14
Unknown
In the alleyway there, you know. So I just did a little recon themselves. They were looking to go straight down that alley. It ends up on Irving Avenue. And where did you go from there? Well, we could have gone down to Turtle Creek or wherever. So just kind of mill around there or around there. And then they noticed a 90 foot footpath going up there, not too close toward Blackburn Street, but not that far.

01:08:30:16 – 01:09:14:04
Unknown
We’re going up from the street. That turtle drive was the railroad tracks, which is the Missouri, Kansas, Texas railroad tracks. It’s no longer there. It’s now the Katy Track through right along that 90 foot footpath with the brush miles going up, there will be spot. We need a rifle right there. One of those railroad pictures up there. They noticed the railroad tie was going on them up on one side kind of water.

01:09:14:06 – 01:09:43:04
Unknown
So they went and rocked that track and they found it and then they noticed that that footpath wasn’t real close to the well. Maybe you just give a clue in. This is all a theory, Of course. Okay. Yeah. So anyway, they said, well, where do you go from there. From Marina. These, the city called the bus like since you know, we probably did.

01:09:43:06 – 01:10:29:10
Unknown
So they just tracked down a metro little railroad tracks down to the railroad trestle that crosses over to Blackburn Street there in the lower part of the picture. What, down Blackburn Street and on the corner of Cole Street and Blackburn is bus stop and it was there is still there and that was a bus stop. Well actually they start checking the bus lines do you know what would run that night I created the mousetrap engine bus.

01:10:29:12 – 01:10:56:17
Unknown
So they went through it and they found the bishop line. Which of number? Line number four would come right out of SMU, which would be on the right side of the picture there goes right down cold street to Blackburn and then takes a left from Blackburn, goes in the downtown, goes through downtown, crosses the viaduct over an oak cliff and goes down Bishop Street.

01:10:56:19 – 01:11:21:00
Unknown
And then from Bishop Street to Main Street. It probably wasn’t a bus stop there, but it got off right there near it and would be 1/10 of a mile walk through is really a four. So it was a doable idea. It was doable. That’s what we’re trying to prove. Might might Oswald’s have

01:11:21:00 – 01:11:27:11
Unknown
buried his rifle with his raincoat to protect it, to conceal it.

01:11:27:13 – 01:12:03:11
Unknown
One main thing, it’s a big Marine trench coat, right? Long, long waisted and a great long you know, it’s got to do, you know, this is this is this rifle is practically carbon, but it was 40 inches over one in 36, but it got a 48, you know, now making one year or a 36 year old, I could see liability, you know, I should back up and save a little bit.

01:12:03:13 – 01:12:35:18
Unknown
That time after March 10th. Two days later, he ordered a client rifle for the post office. Two days later we mailed it and he probably mailed off the seaport trader revolver as well. So close to that time, if not the same day. Right. So, you know, you just got to know what time they were going to come and a little bit more money.

01:12:35:19 – 01:13:07:20
Unknown
Why not buy a rifle with the seal Bailey on carbine on shorter. And so that’s what he did. And then probably wrapped it up in his raincoat and took it over there. We had it and he went out there before one time earlier and longer probably wasn’t there. And the station back where he had it, and I don’t know if he had who knows if he had an raincoat or where.

01:13:07:20 – 01:13:43:01
Unknown
The rifle in the brush. I don’t know. Right. Have nobody knows that. You know, this is all in dark. Makes you wonder why he wore black old backyard pictures of far away We were on well after that shooting all that you know everybody knows the whole story with New Orleans and he came back to Dallas and then finally had a job with the Texas Schoolbook Depository.

01:13:43:03 – 01:14:40:23
Unknown
And then they he was it got him. Exactly. Run. October 23 of 63. So there was a Walker rally at Dallas Memorial Auditorium. That’s Memorial Auditorium. I don’t know if it’s still there or not. The one with the big actually, the Beatles played there in 1963. They were there were when all these Walker people, friends that Adlai Stevenson was coming to town to give a speech on the invitation of Stanley Marcus, the Neiman Marcus store name, a real prominent businessman.

01:14:41:01 – 01:15:11:07
Unknown
It was Jewish. The but you know, it was I was it was a liberal, but it was not a liberal firm, he would say today. I mean, he was very practical man. I mean, very smart, extremely poor. And they weren’t he invited Adlai Stevenson to come down there from the United Nations to give a speech. Well, Walker, people got wind of the this was going to happen down there.

01:15:11:09 – 01:15:49:05
Unknown
And to my research and look, there probably Robert, sir, that really have involved with it in security not in the Dallas laboratory and for a rally day, the US rally day, the night before the Adlai Stevenson, they had to rent this thing out the night before the Stevenson trial and workers had anything worse than the United Nations. And so, I mean, they’re signed all over Dallas, you know, bumper sticker to get U.N. out of the U.S. marchers.

01:15:49:06 – 01:16:20:07
Unknown
Remember? So they they organized this night and you have today was a proclamation by Governor Connally. They would be like the USA and Texas, whatever, that William and the Walker people jumped on it and never have a U.S. They were. So why they did this and it was 8:00 at night and you can see the mission were free.

01:16:20:09 – 01:16:57:03
Unknown
I can’t remember how many thousands of people were there, but certainly under 5000, maybe 2000, maybe 3000 for a lot of these right wingers. Walker friends showed up and Walker gave a speech. And, you know, he just went over mental predatory stuff and got them all riled up, you know, And so when you think about it, your version of them get riled up about it.

01:16:57:05 – 01:17:48:08
Unknown
And it was Lee Harvey Oswald. He was there night since the walker that is or his writings this was the Arnold Johnson exhibit Oral Johnson was with the Communist Party then there for years SIPA USA and he was writing to well know but in this letter he mentions I’ve got to cut off here but anyway you can us ACLU meeting excuse me Southern Methodist University SMU they old speech they’re talking about and he got up and talked about Walker but ultra right in Dallas and Lee’s right October 23rd.

01:17:48:08 – 01:18:26:21
Unknown
I you know you read through anyway I tend to mean by Edward Walker in Dallas reading was preceded one day before the attack on Adlai Stevenson. We people know that so he goes on and bottom there is as you can see, the friction between left and right is very great here. Well yeah, that’s true. But I don’t know everybody in Dallas left the right mean the right people.

01:18:26:21 – 01:18:57:07
Unknown
Okay, right. We’re kind of a small minority, but aside from one very, very vocal. But anyway, author was there while he was there is talking and see you were there with Michael Paine. Did you go or that was not or there was an ACLU meeting with Michael Paine? Yes. Michael Paine With Oswald. To the ACLU. Yeah, to Kristin Crystal Lake happens and name was a friend of Michael Brown.

01:18:57:07 – 01:19:20:03
Unknown
These are females who got an a heated discussion with. But yeah, we stood up and talked about the war. I guess you could take his words, but he was writing about it. I don’t know why he was there. Or maybe word. I was like, You’re going to kill the human. You can bear himself. But we got out of there.

01:19:20:03 – 01:20:14:08
Unknown
But you know, so fascinating. Yeah. This is at the Adlai Stevenson speech the very next day. And it’s what, a lot a lot of shame on Dallas. Walker had riled up a lot of these people the night before. And yesterday he was going to go because it’s Adlai Stevenson was free to walk free and this picture here from Dallas Public Library is the guy in the middle standing up in the crowd is a guy be would be read sort of the national indignation convention 39.

01:20:14:12 – 01:20:44:11
Unknown
And I wanted to say that when it was all about protest about the in 61 about the they found out their air force base north of Dallas that the Air Force was training Yugoslavian pilots to fly their planes. So these people got all mad and well, this is a comment, but people, you know, so I thought you, this is it.

01:20:44:11 – 01:21:28:16
Unknown
You know, the commies are here and they’re taking over and our government is training them up and they want McGahee very anti-union, probably a merger. These guys drifted over that much but stood up and started making a ruckus, was interrupting Adlai Stevenson speech and seems as if on stage. And Stanley Marcus was onstage, sitting, sitting in a chair and this McGuinty kid just kept getting up and interrupt them, yelling at him, ask him questions, just disrupt what I mean, you he gets thrown out of the middle.

01:21:28:18 – 01:22:01:09
Unknown
Well, interesting story about this one. All these Walker people get in here, Stanley. Mark, this was, you know, rarity, concerned about the boisterous right wingers in Dallas. You know, they would yeah, it was really worried about Adlai Stevenson. So had a guy that was working for him that a security man was a friend of Jesse Curry’s security of Dallas police.

01:22:01:10 – 01:22:40:09
Unknown
And we had him go over there and talk to Curry and say, look, this is coming up. You know, we count on you guys. We have adequate security to Mr. Stevenson. Curry assured him, yes, we would. So we went back to Mark as a doorman to make sure everything’s okay. And well, anyway, come to find out when they start opening the doors to orient the police.

01:22:40:09 – 01:23:06:15
Unknown
There weren’t a big police presence, so they arrived later. So all these Walker supporters and right wingers, conservatives got in there and got their seats free. So they had a whole big contemporary these know, like Frank McGee just this was going up and down fine Confederate flags, air horns, you name it. So they were carrying all kinds of stuff.

01:23:06:17 – 01:23:37:17
Unknown
And I mean, just trying to embarrass students and interrupt them. So anyway, and meanwhile, it seems to get through speech, you know, and they start to leave. And this is when he gets hit over the head with a placard by a burger lady in court forever. She’s not back then it gets spit upon by the University of North Texas student Robert Hemphill.

01:23:37:19 – 01:24:06:04
Unknown
And anyway, Sam, Architects looking at him in the car and we’re starting to shake the car and everything. They got him out of here, a run over, people getting out of there. But, you know, I mean, it was a just a shameful event. And it’s as well as we’re talking about, and it’s so shameful that the mayor, Earl Campbell, gave a public apology.

01:24:06:06 – 01:25:09:19
Unknown
You know, in the newspapers. And that’s when you really turn on the right wing outlets and probably thought bad. Now what did I give that after Walker? I think the people their little little side story we’re getting toward the end here got who else thought General Walker was up to it? Well, Jack Ruby, of course. Why not? Yeah, that’s the first the first noted conspiracy theories and mostly people in those both in or well read know about Ruby Warren how he reacted that they on the 22nd you know Ruby found that watchman ad in the Dallas Morning News all upset about it one of the sisters now similar to her and you know, Ruby was

01:25:09:21 – 01:25:46:06
Unknown
very sensitive to his own faith. You know, and he knew that the Walker people, the Birchers and all and all these conservatives were were anti-Semitic. He knew that you couldn’t help. But I mean, they were they were people back in a year before. That was it a year or two months before that were putting swastikas on decals on the Jewish merchants downtown, some commissary nearby where Ruby had his blow.

01:25:46:08 – 01:26:23:18
Unknown
You know, he was very sensitive to anti-Semitism. And he he got into a lot of fights in the military. He would really it really bothered him and he noticed it wherever it was. Yes. Yes. You a very, very tough to love. Anyway, this is Robert Somerville writing up about Ruby on his the psych exam. And Ruby talks about taking that prelude and guys probably know very Prelude was an upper Let’s be diabolical back in the darkroom, you take those of you to stay awake.

01:26:23:18 – 01:26:54:08
Unknown
You know, we kept on our night out with his clubs and we go there when they close, collect the money well up. So we talked about Ray Lewis. What? I don’t know what this thing is, is if you combine liquor with CRB, I don’t care about about things. I don’t know what CRT stands for in, in your student research research out there.

01:26:54:08 – 01:27:37:23
Unknown
Know what he’s talking about. What was a drug or that pill or what not all we have taught him there you know he’s talking about the whites and the it’s it’s very detrimental to my people. We’re always a scapegoat or worse truth. I thought Jim Walker might be behind the shooting and he did it in the film that we’ve never a well, that’s kind of General Walker’s bizarre behavior.

01:27:38:01 – 01:28:08:12
Unknown
And that’s all I want to address a sensitive subject. I don’t want to really get down on this, but General Walker was a closet homosexual. They kept it secret all his life. But most of them then, you know, back then, especially here in the military, I mean, you could be booted out of the military, found out they kept it well-hidden, but there were whispers about it.

01:28:08:14 – 01:28:43:16
Unknown
He was arrested twice, was 76 and 77. I think it was. You know, I have those arrest records, but I was just slaves down some improper things with an undercover agent that you got arrested. And so that was in the seventies. And then and before that, in 72, if you recall, Governor George Wallace, which was Walker, was one of the big supporters.

01:28:43:18 – 01:29:26:01
Unknown
He led wars in fact, he attended Wallace’s speech here in Dallas four days before the assassination, when Arthur Bremer took that shot at Governor Wallace over there, paralyzed. I was critical of the law. Walker not really upset so many heads down to the park. I can’t remember the name. The partnership, the derivative on heart rate or whatever. And he goes down there and the it was like a midnight vigil.

01:29:26:03 – 01:30:08:14
Unknown
The heart for Governor Wallace And I’m sure there there’s a lot of people screaming for that. Well, anyway, the park has a curfew, I think curfew after midnight. Anyway, police went over there and tried to get him leave. Leave and he says, no, I’m not going anywhere. So I ended up arresting them, taking them downtown. And this picture right here is taken off film slide off where we William Jones archive.

01:30:08:16 – 01:30:42:06
Unknown
Excellent, really excellent work on these old brilliant films and really cleaning them up and let me this is this is Walker with a goatee look at all fancy now walking out of courtroom number five for this for this hearing for his violation. Walker insisted to be arrested. Go figure. Not at all. But he is increasingly getting more and more bizarre.

01:30:42:08 – 01:31:14:22
Unknown
I mean, to the point, you know, after assassination, these these right wingers all kind of kept a lower profile for, say, was very embarrassing. They were very entertaining and it would be a bad place to do that. So so we kind of went to, you know, a shooting story. When the shooting started, more people would come out. So they less and less people were interested in him, you know.

01:31:15:00 – 01:31:47:19
Unknown
So he started being kind of like a reclusive black individual. You know, if you’re you’d go out and you’ll see people let you know he wouldn’t one big proper guy that it was back in 60 what Walker do later he got his retirement back in 1982. He had a lawyer work on their and I got sent over to the Department of Defense.

01:31:47:21 – 01:32:22:04
Unknown
Then the palm prints decided not to subject to it. And I said, okay. After all, he had given pretty damn good service, you know. So did he get his pension back? You did, sir. It is difficult. 1982. You have this honorable discharge and retirement out of that. Well, he’s get a little financially strapped. They’re a little later. You know, you had a you had a big lawsuit that he won initially.

01:32:22:06 – 01:32:52:20
Unknown
And you’ll see Associated Press in the lower courts in Texas over the Ole Miss riots. What the grand jury, that they tried to sue him for libel and all that. And of course, we had many outlets, you know, reflect your own well on that, too. But he won that. And I think 108 Supreme Court of Texas, let it got knocked down.

01:32:52:21 – 01:33:25:06
Unknown
Enron, the US Supreme Court for all of us spring break. We fought it, Victor. Nearly one reason they did win because at that point these papers could not be sued for libel or political figures like somebody in office. If you’re talking about Senator so-and-so, you know, you know, went after he kicked his dog, whatever, You going to get sued for that?

01:33:25:08 – 01:34:17:13
Unknown
Well, Supreme Court extended that the public for years. So that’s a big ruling. And Walker didn’t give his $500,000. So that’s where it. Chief, you know what happened, General? He died in 1993. The this is the the governor of the state of Texas. And he died. The official cause of death was like all good. The the hard time pronouncing February that’s the heart ventricle goes into a like like a out of rhythm bill right.

01:34:17:18 – 01:34:54:10
Unknown
Some people call it a few of you know where you order for broken then the cause of that initially was pulmonary which was a direct result of is years and years. Smoke is just pretty heavy smoker he probably had emphysema or whatever, but he died at his home. We moved obituary years before he died. Another home there close to love Will.

01:34:54:12 – 01:35:28:01
Unknown
And that’s what happened this week. So he is buried down here in CenterPoint, Texas, and you’ll see a video about that. Perhaps we can go see that. That’s the family grave side me earlier and that’s where he’s laid to rest. And that pretty much concludes my long conversation. And thank you very much. Alive. The big question I want to ask you is what do you know?

01:35:28:03 – 01:36:00:15
Unknown
To me, it’s an open and shut case, but what what do you say to conspiracy people who seem to find a variety of minutia to claim that Oswald was not guilty of trying to kill Walker? The reason they do this, they do this, or they can essentially they take certain particular claims out of context where they like still jack jacketed bullet, but they don’t look at the walker, the letter of the marina.

01:36:00:16 – 01:36:29:21
Unknown
So you have to look at all the totality of evidence. Does it make sense? Does it follow that rational? You have to to look at everything. I mean I mean, that’s just the only sense. I mean, but, you know, these people are I don’t want to really get down on to horror here, but there’s people that are emotionally attached to Oswald that that will just defend him to no degree.

01:36:29:22 – 01:36:55:10
Unknown
But we got to look at all the evidence. And so we have to look at these pictures he took or they took these pictures. What earlier were his rifle right there close to the Walker shooting? What did he take? Backyard photos dressed up in black with two, four, or why? Why did it why did why did he why did he shoe Kennedy and take a shot at Walker when they’re there?

01:36:55:15 – 01:37:27:07
Unknown
Different people. yeah. That’s another thing. Yeah. No. Well if you understand these factors, you know, but you know Kennedy, you know, he never felt bad. But that’s not true. That is not true. He did. He did say some bad things, but he was insensitive. Kennedy’s Cuba policy. Yeah. Yeah. And you know that. You remember our trip down to New Orleans?

01:37:27:09 – 01:38:01:13
Unknown
we went down to the Lafayette Library to, yeah, close walking distance to this Magnet Street magazine street apartment. And in that book, in that library there was about William Manchester’s book, Portrait of a President before the Kennedy assassination, talking about President Carter. Well, guess somebody stamps their place of Cuba in the flyleaf of that book, you know, New Orleans, that’s that’s that’s in the record.

01:38:01:15 – 01:38:24:02
Unknown
You know, you have to find that, you know, he was he was an unhinged individual and he said it to say he’s he’s a pretty smart guy. I mean, you tell him and you read he was a wily coyote type of guy, but he’s a very arrogant. So, you know, I, I mean, he hardly get along with anybody.

01:38:24:04 – 01:38:52:09
Unknown
So maybe the more you think that is why it doesn’t make sense. You know, of course, he tried to hit a motive. Well, you know what to do this way. You that, you know, I think you’re just mad at the world in general. That’s that’s why. But of course, they’re not going to believe me anyway. No, they’re definitely they’re not going to believe you no matter what you say.


You know, it doesn’t matter. I mean, we have to they have to paint Oswald as completely innocent. Innocent as the the white snow around us. And It’s just it’s unbelievable. Yes. Yes, it is. It really is. Isn’t there something in general, more or less, the House Select Committee hearings Tuesday, I think they got something wrong. The wrong bullet.


You mean he we thought that’s not the bullet, but he was thinking the wrong thing. Yes, let me explain that. I went through the Walker papers over and that’s another badly misinterpreted thing. Walker not objecting to. Walker was objecting to the House Select Committee News, watching the televised hearings on TV and. Somebody held up the bullet that he thought was like a pristine bullet, just the bullet like C 399.
Walker was objecting. That was not the bullet that that shot at him easily is described as a hunka lit. And it pretty much was only one side of it. He was objecting to that. He was not objecting to. Well, that’s not the bullet that’s in the next longer. Well, this got all the way back to I guess somebody now selectable this is get the root of this and somebody at the Justice Department, Robert Coutu, is named all over.


A representative from the National Archives. Got that bullet out of the archives, went over to the FBI lab with the microscopes and knew that intimately. And they said, let’s it you know where the initial here’s the evidence boxes. We have Carl Davis name on there but they just badly misinterpret that and then they keep repeating it like it’s fact.

01:40:48:07 – 01:41:14:19
Unknown
Right. But you can’t you know, I don’t know. I mean, I just hope somebody with two brain cells out there can figure it out then. Well, look, thank you very much for for being on on the trail. The usual. We’ll have to save your story about C 399 and the initials on that for another episode. But it thank you very much.


A lot of fun lucky for us thank you for taking time out and good work.