Tag Archives: #history

Countdown to Dallas, Episode 1, New Channel

http://www.mattkprovideo.com/2025/06/05/countdown-to-dallas-episode-1-new-channel/

Transcript

The President’s car is now turning on to Elm Street and it will be only a matter of minutes before he arrives at the trademark

[Music] On October 14th, 1963 Lee Harvey Oswald applied and got a job at a place called the Texas School Book Depository

Here’s how it looked at the time
A nondescript red brick building perched on the southeast corner of Houston and Elm Streets
It offered a magnificent view of a place called Daily Plaza.
Here’s the building today
Now the question of just how Oswald got the job just 5 weeks before President Kennedy’s motorcade drove right by has been a longstanding question for those studying the assassination
Some think it’s fishy
Surely they say proof of a conspiracy
I’m Paul Brandus a longtime White House-based journalist speaker at seven presidential libraries
My latest is Countdown to Dallas.
In Countdown to Dallas I tell the rest of the story about Oswald and the depository
And for one surprising twist you might not know about stick around to the end of this short video
That mid-October 1963 story starts here in the Dallas suburb of Irving where Oswald’s wife Marina and their 21-month-old daughter June were living with a woman named Ruth Payne.
Marina was also days away from giving birth to her second daughter Marina the young Soviet

Immigrants a woman she met through the local immigrants

Marina was the victim of spousal abuse
Lee was a wifebeater hitting Marina on a regular basis
Ruth who wanted to improve her Russian took Marina in

That’s the backdrop
Oswald living on his own was also unemployed
He had just gotten back from Mexico City after a futile effort to get a visa to travel to Cuba
He needed a job badly
On the 14th Ruth Marina and some other women in the neighborhood were having coffee and the subject of Lee’s unemployment came up
Oswald had several job prospects
One was at a bakery
the other driving a truck but Lee didn’t know how to drive
One woman at that coffee Lenny May Randall mentioned that her brother Wesley Bule Frasier had just gotten a job at the Depository in downtown Dallas
She thought they might need an extra man
Now Marina Oswald’s English was poor
Lee did not allow her to learn it
So Ruth Payne called the depository and spoke with a boss there
His name Roy Truly
Truly said yes he could use another man to fill orders for school books
Tell Oswald to come down and apply
Now you have to remember what a pathetic work record Oswald had.
He’d been fired from two jobs in just the past 6 months
And a potential third employer checked on a reference who said Oswald was not a good employee
Oswald was unwanted
His skills were minimal
but a menial job filling boxes with books Oswald filled out this job application
His address was a lie
Said he’d lived in Dallas continuously
That was a lie
he had just gotten out of the Marines and was honorably discharged
Two more lies
that he had been on his last job for three years
Another lie
Five lies on one page
It’s a reflection of Lee Harvey Oswald’s habit of lying about well just about everything
But unlike other potential employers Roy Truly did not check on any of this
It was just a menial job after all
So Oswald lucked out
So that’s how Oswald got his job at the Depository
A group of suburban women having coffee
lacking the skills to work in a bakery or drive a truck
having poor references that might have resulted in work elsewhere
on and on
It took a series of small things for this job to work out
Now I mentioned one final twist to this story that may surprise you
I’ll get to that in a second
But it’s also important to remember this
When Oswald got the job President Kennedy’s visit to Texas had not been finalized
A trip had been announced but the final decision on Dallas would not be made until a month later
November 14th when the location for Kennedy speech at the Trademart was set
That decision that location was made by none other than Ken O’Donnell the president’s top White House aid
The Secret Service had recommended other locations
Other parts of town which would have meant different motorcade routes
Conspiracy theorists who are sure that Oswald’s job was some kind of setup
that he was somehow placed in the depository can never explain how all of these little things unconnected ranging from suburban women having coffee to President Kennedy’s own right-hand man picking that final location occurred
And here’s the final twist to this story
You might not know that in 1963 the Texas School Book Depository had another location at 1917 North Houston Street.
Roy Truly the boss nearly assigned Oswald to that location.
Had he done so Lee Harvey Oswald would have been nowhere near Dealey Plaza on the day of the president’s visit.
Great tragedies often take a series of small and seemingly unconnected events to occur
This was one of them
There are other stories to tell about Oswald his life
that very different era
decades of presidential security and the attitude of numerous presidents towards it
And also the science of cognitive dissonance
why humans are wired to think and process information and data the way they do
and why this fuels the beliefs that so many people have in assorted conspiracy theories
Not just the Kennedy assassination
but everything from Pearl Harbor to the moon landing to 9/11 even Princess Diana’s car crash
The science behind our beliefs that’s also explored
All of this and much more can be found in my latest book Countdown to Dallas and in a podcast of the same name Both are available everywhere

“Least of My Brothers” April 25, 2025 at San Antonio College

www.mattkprovideo.com/2025/04/30/least-of-my-brothers-april-25-2025-at-san-antonio-college/

Jesus said: “whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.” (Matt. 25:40)

On April 27, 2025, at noon I showed my documentary “The Least of My Brothers” at the RTF Building at San Antonio College. This is the intro before I showed the film, and then I took questions from the students and teachers who showed up.

This is the promo video I made for the event (a re -edit of a much earlier promo)

imdb listing:

www.imdb.com/title/tt1825162/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0_tt_8_nm_0_in_0_q_least%2520of%2520my%2520broth

Wikipedia page on Vidor, Texas.

This is iPhone video of the intro and Question and Answer session after I showed the documentary:

Transcript of the introduction:

Welcome to our kickoff event of the 2025 multicultural conference as part of Fiesta
this is a documentary screening of a film called
The Least of My Brothers
and the filmmaker is here with us today
This is Matthew Kordelski
He is a graduate of the film program at Rowan University in New Jersey and the 2D animation program at Austin Community College
He runs his own production company for films motion graphics animation podcasts and commercial videos
He has an animated YouTube channel about dogs I love it
It’s very fun Um
He spent 5 years researching the murder of Bill Simpson which is what this film is about Bill Simpson was the first African-American to desegregate the sundown town of Vidor Texas He did not find the answers he thought he would find In this documentary he demonstrates that close examination and inquiry often helps us discover that there is more than meets the eye
So without further ado
Matt Kordelski any questions for our filmmaker today
yeah You know it’s funny You and I had earlier a minute ago were talking about Orson Wells
And one time Orson Wells was giving a talk and nobody showed up and the announcer said “Orson Wells has done this,he’s done that, he’s done that, he’s been an actor a writer a playwright.”
And Orson Wells comes on and goes
“I wish there was as many of you as there are of me”

But anyway uh anybody ever heard of the story of Vidor Texas and what happened there
you have from me or from Do you heard of it uh no I mean I heard about it when it happened It was a shocking horrific crime in the National Navy Okay Not too far from where I would live at the time Anybody heard of a Sundown Town oh yeah
All right
A little bit of backstory
This was made in the early 1990s In the early 1990s for good or for bad was the golden era of trash media
I’m going to say a man’s name that not so long ago if you said this guy’s name in San Antonio you would provoke a riot
Howard Stern he was the king of trash radio
You remember that okay Um he was the king of trash radio
Just there was no rules Whatever you could do to get attention he did it
Jerry Springer on TV was the same thing and all these guys They set the bar pretty low in terms of quality but they set the bar pretty high in terms of ratings
It was completely insane
People you would neve, r have on your TV show Ku Klux Klansmen, Nazis neo-Nazis


and the host did not want to make it a civil discussion They deliberately would get a Klansmen and somebody from Lewis Farrakhan’s group and hoping they’d fight It was insane Now into this environment they decided to desegregate the white housing complex in Vidor Texas
not long after that uh an African-American man moved in and then he got tired of the harassment and the day he moved out he was murdered I heard that and I came to a presumption that surely somebody from the clan killed him I spent five years digging and digging and digging I’ll let we’ll talk about this afterwards I did not find the answer I thought he would But the theme of this festival is more than meets the eye Keep an open mind Don’t make a snap judgment on just because that’s a bad guy who’s done a history of bad things Maybe they didn’t do that thing But hey we’ll talk about it afterwards Thank you for coming

Transcript of the Q&A

All right. Thank you for sharing your video

We can now go to a Q&A.

Can you feel like asking the filmmaker?

And I actually want to start if it’s okay.

Yeah.

Anything that’s. You must have
had to talk to a lot of residents.

Her?
Yes.

Including some pretty despicable racists
and others.

Yeah. Yes.
So how do you.

That was my first song.

As I was watching this again was.

How do you engage with someone who

you’re totally opposed to in terms
of what they stand for?

And you saw the movie documentary
to see some of to talk to them.

How do you measure?
It was a lot of discipline.
I had to try in my usual.
I mean, I was talking to Klansmen
and I was on phone calls

with neo-Nazis and, you know, racist
people, and I promised I’d be fair.

And then I think I was I mean, I couldn’t
it would have been the easiest thing

in the world to cut this, to make it
look like maybe the Klan did it.

There’s enough circumstantial.

What if I if I could have done that,
I promised them I would,
and they were kind of looking like rosy.

Yeah. But, yeah, I just get.
I need to buy me a little light and start
reading about different races, different ethnic groups.

In other questions, friends.
I mean, at some point, somebody, one of your one of your sources
that you recorded said,
well, there’s no violence here against black people.
It’s it’s just threats. The threats are pretty bad.

I mean, that’s not but,
you know, like to stand on, my true.

It’s not, it’s not.
And, if you’re right, it’s
like one thing I was surprised, making is,
was when I was talking to Bill Haley,
somebody got help.

You got trouble for making threats,
but they were rather nonsensical threats.

Somebody said, I’m going to get a load of
dynamite and blow up the housing complex.

You go up and saying that
even though he never had

the dynamite, there’s no evidence
he was really going to do this.

But threat of force.

Now, I’m not a lawyer.

I support you, but yeah, you’re right
that that’s no excuse.

I mean, pretty frequently
that you can’t yell fire in a theater
and you can’t threaten to blow up
in front of a solid point.

That’s pretty bad, too.

And by other companies, I mean the bad guy
here seems to be the media.

You know, the media come in and they’re,
you know, how they’re married or whatever.

But it would be better if we heard, like, you know, actual news clips that would substantiate that.

The one sort of negative thing
that we have about me
is the evidence that we have is the, the, you show the put the plan to
I fair harassment and current affairs

and you know and and
and they came up empty

and they wouldn’t let me use any of that footage.

But and so,
I mean, that’s pretty bad, but,
you know, if if the enemy is the media,
it seems like we need

to have those headlines or whatever
or clips or descriptions,

you know, specific incidences,

the media, you know, pushing a dishonest.

Okay.
You’re you’re right about that.

00:02:54:41 – 00:02:59:00
And I, I thought I made the point
that I’m not saying there was no racist

00:02:59:00 – 00:03:03:23
so racism or trouble there, but I’m saying
that I think the media exaggerated

00:03:03:39 – 00:03:06:07
and that that provide evidence
for the media.

00:03:06:07 – 00:03:09:33
Oh, yeah, but I couldn’t
I mean, there’s you can argue all day.

00:03:09:50 – 00:03:11:41
So the TV should have stayed away.

00:03:11:41 – 00:03:13:52
They shouldn’t have covered. It was good.

00:03:13:52 – 00:03:14:53
Is that the solution?

00:03:14:53 – 00:03:16:50
No, I mean, I, I wrestle with that, like.

00:03:16:50 – 00:03:18:04
Okay, you make a very good point.

00:03:18:04 – 00:03:21:08
No, I been let me back up and say
I thought it was a film.

00:03:21:20 – 00:03:23:42
And I said in the beginning,
oh, yeah, I heard all about this.

00:03:23:42 – 00:03:25:16
No, I had not heard anything about it.

00:03:25:16 – 00:03:28:50
What I thought we were going to hear about
is the same as next up in YouTube.

00:03:28:50 – 00:03:30:14
And there on the screen behind you.

00:03:31:35 – 00:03:32:51
Jasper was.

00:03:32:51 – 00:03:33:54
So that was Jasper.

00:03:33:54 – 00:03:35:47
That’s Jasper. Okay, so I was confused.

00:03:35:47 – 00:03:36:50
Did you have the time in me?

00:03:36:50 – 00:03:38:22
This everybody, when he got the joke

00:03:38:22 – 00:03:41:34
that Ross just moved away from fighter
to get away from the Klan.

00:03:41:36 – 00:03:44:34
I got
I think we got a stage town. Ha ha ha.

00:03:44:34 – 00:03:45:51
Jasper and I made it.

00:03:45:51 – 00:03:48:06
People got the joke. I mean,
and he really did do that.

00:03:48:06 – 00:03:50:55
That really did happen.
Yeah, yeah. Oh. He didn’t.

00:03:50:55 – 00:03:53:44
So you you opened my eyes here to you.

00:03:53:44 – 00:03:55:43
Okay. You know, you think about.

00:03:55:43 – 00:03:58:43
Do we know what happened to the old lady
with that?

00:03:59:31 – 00:04:00:49
I don’t think she’s still alive.

00:04:00:49 – 00:04:03:23
She never paid. Who was a paper dancer?
They knew.

00:04:03:23 – 00:04:07:31
They they you had to pay X amount of money
to these people that you bother,

00:04:07:31 – 00:04:10:30
but they you. She was never gonna pay
to take your judgment.

00:04:10:30 – 00:04:12:44
I don’t know how she tried to compensate.

00:04:12:44 – 00:04:13:56
Right, exactly. Exactly.

00:04:13:56 – 00:04:15:53
And they knew that? Yes.

00:04:15:53 – 00:04:18:04
So. But, So the the, the,

00:04:19:15 – 00:04:21:46
the two black women on the fourth
for the family

00:04:21:46 – 00:04:25:22
who moved into the white thing,
did they really have trouble?

00:04:25:27 – 00:04:27:20
They they couldn’t
find any employment. Right.

00:04:27:20 – 00:04:29:26
Nobody would give a job. Applications.

00:04:29:26 – 00:04:32:19
What are you doing? Applying that.
There was some tension there between.

00:04:32:19 – 00:04:35:20
I agree, but I would point out that
that’s what they say happened.

00:04:35:20 – 00:04:38:24
I couldn’t corroborate that, but I one.

00:04:38:24 – 00:04:39:02
Why would they lie?

00:04:39:02 – 00:04:41:09
I can’t figure I mean,
if somebody was offering them a job,

00:04:41:09 – 00:04:44:50
you know, they, they say that’s what
happened at a reasonably they’re lying.

00:04:44:50 – 00:04:46:28
They never did find work environments.

00:04:46:28 – 00:04:48:01
And we told them,
why are you even applying?

00:04:48:01 – 00:04:51:01
This is our

00:04:51:23 – 00:04:52:18
yeah.

00:04:52:18 – 00:04:53:12
Your question.

00:04:53:12 – 00:04:53:51
Yeah, yeah.

00:04:53:51 – 00:04:57:33
And this shows
the nuances and complexities like,

00:04:57:49 – 00:05:01:34
you know, they’re they’re they’re
there was there was tension

00:05:01:34 – 00:05:04:34
by the there, there, there could have been
I mean, there were threats.

00:05:05:20 – 00:05:09:25
There is this woman, apparently
may not have been able to find a job.

00:05:10:44 – 00:05:11:13
So, I

00:05:11:13 – 00:05:14:29
mean, there could have been something
there, but.

00:05:14:29 – 00:05:17:40
And what I found out after I made the move
as we cut this, like, five

00:05:17:40 – 00:05:20:52
times, is by the fifth or sixth version
I made, I kept was working.

00:05:20:52 – 00:05:21:59
It was like two hours long.

00:05:21:59 – 00:05:24:35
I could cut you down and blah, blah, blah.

00:05:24:35 – 00:05:26:18
The two women who left Vidor

00:05:26:18 – 00:05:29:23
Ironically, Bill Simpson left fire
because he feared violence.

00:05:29:23 – 00:05:31:58
Sure. And he met with violence
his first night out.

00:05:31:58 – 00:05:33:54
And the two women who left fire,

00:05:33:54 – 00:05:36:54
I heard they moved to a housing complex
in Houston and got robbed.

00:05:37:32 – 00:05:39:47
Oh, wow. Like they were.
They were a target.

00:05:39:47 – 00:05:43:10
I heard they they they won
with being the victim of urban violence

00:05:43:10 – 00:05:44:31
because they were killed.
They werent killed but

00:05:44:31 – 00:05:50:00
They robbed the the
the other personal
thing I was gonna mention, is that I,

00:05:51:00 – 00:05:53:41
I saw well, reporters is Darlene Dorsey.

00:05:53:41 – 00:05:55:15
Is she here in San Antonio?
I’ve heard that.

00:05:55:15 – 00:05:58:40
Yeah, she
she is now Darlene Dorsey Pickens.

00:05:58:40 – 00:06:00:57
And she used to work at a TV station.

00:06:00:57 – 00:06:05:34
I used to work,
so I know her so online as I was watching,

00:06:05:40 – 00:06:09:11
so, like, I should I looked up Darlene
Dorsey invited me to this.

00:06:09:36 – 00:06:11:06
Yeah, because I spoke to her on the phone.

00:06:11:06 – 00:06:13:33
I never need to get her on camera.

00:06:13:33 – 00:06:14:04
I’m gonna.

00:06:14:04 – 00:06:15:52
I think I took a picture, a screenshot.

00:06:15:52 – 00:06:17:55
I’m hoping it comes out of the same
when I.

00:06:17:55 – 00:06:20:11
I follow her friends on Facebook.

00:06:20:11 – 00:06:23:11
Okay, I’m going to second
guess what I saw you,

00:06:23:31 – 00:06:26:18
you know, on this documentary
and see what she says.

00:06:26:18 – 00:06:27:55
Yeah. Dorsey, I heard she moved to San Antonio
00:06:29:50 – 00:06:31:04
Anyone else?

00:06:31:04 – 00:06:32:02
Two questions.

00:06:32:02 – 00:06:33:51
What inspired you
to make this documentary?

00:06:33:51 – 00:06:34:45
And how did you.

00:06:34:45 – 00:06:37:11
I never got the hint that you were biased…
00:06:37:11 – 00:06:38:53
through out the documentary?

00:06:38:53 – 00:06:41:37
So how did you maintain

00:06:41:37 – 00:06:44:24
the professionalism of this?

00:06:44:24 – 00:06:45:35
It wasn’t in your head. What if.

00:06:45:35 – 00:06:50:23
I mean, I heard the story and back,
and then, I suppose this is still true.

00:06:50:23 – 00:06:53:11
It is really true. In the 1990s,
it was scandal of the week.

00:06:53:11 – 00:06:54:02
It was outrage of the week
00:06:54:02 – 00:06:56:22
The whole country got worked up over something,

00:06:56:22 – 00:06:57:25
that’s all you’re talking about.

00:06:57:25 – 00:06:59:02
And you move on to something else
you to do.

00:06:59:02 – 00:07:01:19
You young people, is that still true today?
00:07:01:19 – 00:07:02:47
Somewhat. Okay.

00:07:02:47 – 00:07:05:05
Well it happened and I just
everybody assumed

00:07:05:05 – 00:07:07:31
they’re going to make a movie,
that we’re going to make a TV movie.

00:07:07:31 – 00:07:10:07
It was going to be a documentary
and nobody did it.

00:07:10:07 – 00:07:11:16
And I thought, well, I should.

00:07:12:17 – 00:07:14:41
And it took me 5 years

00:07:14:41 – 00:07:17:39
Anybody here RTF Majors?

00:07:17:39 – 00:07:21:00
Well, anyway, nowadays
you could make a whole movie

00:07:21:00 – 00:07:23:51
like this on your phone,
and it would probably look better.

00:07:23:51 – 00:07:26:10
Sound better

00:07:26:10 – 00:07:26:58
There is parts of this movie that make me cringe

00:07:26:58 – 00:07:29:29
Oh, this is awful.
I want to do better, blah blah blah.

00:07:29:29 – 00:07:32:29
I was using BetaCam SP, huge TV camera

00:07:33:05 – 00:07:35:29
and I was working for video companies.

00:07:35:29 – 00:07:37:03
And on the weekends
I would take the camera,

00:07:37:03 – 00:07:39:30
go do some work to find people.

00:07:39:30 – 00:07:40:33
You know, I didn’t live in Vidor

00:07:40:33 – 00:07:45:12
I was living in Austin
So I had to drive to Vidor. Meet people,
Interview them. Come back

00:07:45:12 – 00:07:49:38
and I cut it together and there was like
a two hour version and everybody hated it.

00:07:49:38 – 00:07:51:53
I cut down,

00:07:51:53 – 00:07:54:02
cut out a lot of the repetition.

00:07:54:02 – 00:07:58:59
And at one point there’s amazing new
technology of Mini DV Cameras came out.
Remember those?

00:08:00:13 – 00:08:02:04
Well anyway, it was picture quality

00:08:02:04 – 00:08:05:04
pretty much equivalent to a BetaCam SP
and I see what the consumer would buy it.

00:08:05:18 – 00:08:06:14
So I reshot.

00:08:06:14 – 00:08:09:28
So if you know some of the interviews,
the people are older

00:08:09:32 – 00:08:12:26
and the camera style is a little different.
I did that in Mini DV

00:08:12:26 – 00:08:15:10
And, I mean, I, I wish it was way

00:08:15:10 – 00:08:19:59
they talk about how you can bump something up to 4K,
but now I had I made professional

00:08:21:04 – 00:08:25:35
During MOST of this, I’d say about 75, 85% of this.

00:08:25:36 – 00:08:29:53
I still thought I was going to find
something

00:08:30:29 – 00:08:34:19
to blame this on the Klan or neo-Nazis
or a white person from Vidor

00:08:35:44 – 00:08:37:03
75% of the way through.

00:08:37:03 – 00:08:39:30
I still thought the Klan did it

00:08:39:30 – 00:08:45:16
Even though I found no evidence

00:08:45:37 – 00:08:47:45
Absence of evidence is not
evidence of absence.

00:08:47:45 – 00:08:50:30
I still couldn’t
shake that loose from my head.

00:08:50:30 – 00:08:52:06
What about that to the very end?

00:08:52:06 – 00:08:56:07
And then realize that there’s two black guys
spending their lives in jail?

00:08:56:08 – 00:08:59:32
They never said anything about
“the Klan put us up to this”

00:08:59:32 – 00:09:01:00
And, before.

00:09:01:00 – 00:09:02:26
Yeah, that’s what I can.

00:09:02:26 – 00:09:05:33
I talked to
there’s people who wouldn’t appear on camera, but

00:09:05:33 – 00:09:09:20
would talk to me on the phone of the FBI guy
Ron Kelly

00:09:09:20 – 00:09:12:02
He wouldn’t appear on Camera
But he talked to me on the phone.

00:09:12:02 – 00:09:13:30
Judge William William Justice.

00:09:13:30 – 00:09:14:40
He’s the one who started all this.

00:09:14:40 – 00:09:15:50
When you desegregated the housing complexes

00:09:15:50 – 00:09:18:25
you know, he talked to you on the phone
a couple times.

00:09:18:25 – 00:09:21:38
I spoke to the author of a book
called Sundown Towns I spoke to.

00:09:21:42 – 00:09:23:39
Mayor Woods of Vidor on the phone.

00:09:23:39 – 00:09:26:39
She didn’t want to appear in it
but she spoke to me and a couple.

00:09:26:45 – 00:09:28:32
And then the pastor of the church,

00:09:28:32 – 00:09:30:55
one of the churches Bill SImpson went to
he talked me on the phone.

00:09:30:55 – 00:09:34:29
I kind of realized
I’’m wrong. Its NOT the Klan.
They didnt do this.

00:09:36:04 – 00:09:36:22
Do you think

00:09:36:22 – 00:09:39:22
they still contributed to the general

00:09:40:07 – 00:09:41:53
cultural violence and environment?

00:09:41:53 – 00:09:43:37
Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely.

00:09:43:37 – 00:09:45:18
They stoaked it.

00:09:45:18 – 00:09:47:49
If the Klan had not gone to Vidor

00:09:47:49 – 00:09:51:48
would the Bat Lady and certain other people
still be obnoxiously rude, yes,

00:09:51:48 – 00:09:54:42
but that they’re still there,
they’re like stoking the hostility.

00:09:54:42 – 00:09:59:00
Yes, I think they
they really got people riled up

00:09:59:18 – 00:10:03:06
and getting on TV got them riled up and,
you know, bringing up it was violent.

00:10:03:06 – 00:10:04:20
Do You guys know the history of the Klan.

00:10:04:20 – 00:10:08:35
The Klan was originally this rather small thing
in Tennessee.

00:10:09:13 – 00:10:13:07
And then there was a play based on the
memory of the Klan called The Klansman,

00:10:13:25 – 00:10:16:42
that got turned into a silent movie
called “BIRTH OF A NATION”

00:10:17:35 – 00:10:20:27
And they
you had to get in trouble for saying this,

00:10:20:27 – 00:10:24:57
but a nationwide craze, flew
by flying cosplayers.

00:10:25:10 – 00:10:28:09
They saw the movie BIRTH OF A NATION
and the Klan took off again.

00:10:28:31 – 00:10:29:36
Then it kind of faded away.

00:10:29:36 – 00:10:32:00
Then it came back
during the civil Rights movement,

00:10:32:57 – 00:10:33:33
and then it kind of

00:10:33:33 – 00:10:36:58
faded away
and it bumped up a little bit in the 90s.

00:10:36:58 – 00:10:39:47
I couldn’t tell you what the
with the response of it.

00:10:39:47 – 00:10:42:54
But did the Klans being there stir the pot?

00:10:43:00 – 00:10:46:50
get people excited,
get somebody who was quietly racist to be loudly racist?

00:10:46:50 – 00:10:48:22
Yes, absolutely.

00:10:48:22 – 00:10:49:01
Absolutely.

00:10:49:01 – 00:10:52:01
And the Klan is always,

00:10:53:02 – 00:10:54:55
you know, it’s all blacks.

00:10:54:55 – 00:10:57:30
Go back to your country,
go back to your country.

00:10:57:30 – 00:11:00:16
We’re all guilty of that.
Absolutely.

00:11:00:16 – 00:11:02:29
Especially white people.
Oh, I go back to your country?

00:11:02:29 – 00:11:04:00
Fine, go back to France, Go back to Russia

00:11:04:00 – 00:11:07:00
Native Americans,
you know, and it’s it’s like,

00:11:07:11 – 00:11:11:23
how hypocritical are we too
because this was not our.

00:11:11:41 – 00:11:14:35
Our land and boundary delineation.

00:11:14:35 – 00:11:16:07
You know, it. Was already here.

00:11:16:07 – 00:11:20:12
Yes.
You know so it was,it was kind of ridiculous.

00:11:20:12 – 00:11:22:10
I completely agree.

00:11:22:10 – 00:11:24:47
And there’s different versions
and there’s one

00:11:24:47 – 00:11:28:10
I had one with the history of the Klan.
I had another one with the history of Vidor.

00:11:28:10 – 00:11:30:28
And I cut it out because it was boring People thought, but,

00:11:31:53 – 00:11:34:40
they,

00:11:34:40 – 00:11:35:47
One of the Grand Dragons lived there. There was a metal pipe.

00:11:35:47 – 00:11:36:23
Lived there.

00:11:36:23 – 00:11:38:25
And I found his house , there was still

00:11:38:25 – 00:11:41:25
believe it or not,
the metal pipe that he would light the cross on

00:11:42:13 – 00:11:44:39
If you go to my YouTube channel,
there’s a lot of deleted footage.

00:11:44:39 – 00:11:47:30
If you’re interested, look up,
“The least on my brothers” YouTube channel.

00:11:47:30 – 00:11:49:47
Theres things that I cut out because I thought it was slower.

00:11:49:47 – 00:11:52:34
But yes, if I think it goes, of course
they’re neo-Nazis.

00:11:52:34 – 00:11:54:45
There was that one group?

00:11:54:45 – 00:11:56:04
They weren’t neo-Nazis.

00:11:56:04 – 00:11:57:23
In so much as he never said

00:11:57:23 – 00:12:01:30
anything about Hitler or Germany
or Germany, National Socialism,

00:12:01:53 – 00:12:06:25
but there’s no denying what he wanted for
America was a heck of a lot.

00:12:06:25 – 00:12:08:07
Like, what did Hitler wanted for Germany.

00:12:08:07 – 00:12:10:06
So from that point of view, He WAS a Neo-Nazi

00:12:11:16 – 00:12:13:00

00:12:13:00 – 00:12:16:00
So you were shooting this for five years?
Yes.

00:12:16:47 – 00:12:18:04
So what kept you going?

00:12:18:04 – 00:12:21:20
And was it that you were trying,
as you said, you were trying to prove

00:12:21:20 – 00:12:24:20
that the Klan did it, or like,
they were like,

00:12:25:41 – 00:12:26:53
I wanted to make a movie.

00:12:26:53 – 00:12:31:57
I want yeah, I can tell you,
I’m some great crusader on a horse

00:12:32:09 – 00:12:33:59
I wanted to make a movie

00:12:33:59 – 00:12:36:16
So I started,
but I didn’t want to spend five years.

00:12:36:16 – 00:12:37:40
I never meant to spend five years.

00:12:37:40 – 00:12:40:37
I thought it would maybe be six months,
but I couldn’t find people.

00:12:40:37 – 00:12:41:36
I didn’t have time to edit.

00:12:41:36 – 00:12:45:12
I didn’t have access to editing equipment
which which was a thing back then.

00:12:45:12 – 00:12:45:50
It’s not today.

00:12:45:50 – 00:12:47:27
You can do it all on your phone,

00:12:47:27 – 00:12:52:02
but back then I to get access to an AVID,
get access to BetaCam Cameras
00:12:52:02 – 00:12:53:21
That was not an easy thing to do.

00:12:57:13 – 00:13:00:42
Is that what kept you going
was that you were trying to prove

00:13:00:42 – 00:13:02:35
that the Klan was responsible

00:13:02:35 – 00:13:03:38
Yes. Yeah.

00:13:03:38 – 00:13:06:52
So one, I wanted to crack open the case
and show what really happened.

00:13:06:52 – 00:13:07:21
You know, I was right.

00:13:07:21 – 00:13:10:40
I wanted to finish my movie,
I wanted to, so I did everything.

00:13:11:11 – 00:13:17:47
And what was interesting
was I was starting to lean towards thinking:
“You know what? The Cops were right”
It really was just a drive by.

00:13:18:28 – 00:13:21:06
And I still thought that Vidor was a racist town.

00:13:21:06 – 00:13:24:06
I interviewed somebody
who was still living in the complex,

00:13:24:24 – 00:13:28:00
and I was about to pack my camera,
and that’s when I looked up.

00:13:28:02 – 00:13:31:39
And then. the shot, of the little girl’s having a tea party

00:13:32:19 – 00:13:36:18
that was going on
So I quick grab my camera and video-ed that.

00:13:37:26 – 00:13:40:01
And then I put the camera away
and somebody said,
“So what are you doing?”

00:13:40:01 – 00:13:40:55
“Making a movie in Vidor”

00:13:40:55 – 00:13:43:55
That was just a black girl who said,
this is not a racist town.

00:13:44:58 – 00:13:48:56
So I pulled the camera back out,
Miked her up and just interviewed her.

00:13:49:31 – 00:13:52:31
And then like on the drive, home,
I thought: hmmmmmm

00:13:52:44 – 00:13:55:06
That was kind of a turning point.

00:13:55:06 – 00:13:56:44
That’s when I kind of realized that I was wrong.

00:13:56:44 – 00:13:59:44
It wasn’t the Klan and Vidor

00:14:01:04 – 00:14:03:43
And then I can’t I’m not going to say
it’s not a racist town
00:14:03:43 – 00:14:08:06
To this day You hear about black people
not wanting to stop for gas there.

00:14:08:06 – 00:14:10:35
But is that true? Or is that hype?

00:14:10:35 – 00:14:11:44
Yeah, I don’t know.

00:14:11:44 – 00:14:14:11
I played with the idea of making a sequel.

00:14:14:11 – 00:14:17:49
Maybe for a hidden camera on a black guy
Have him go buy gas and see what happens.

00:14:18:10 – 00:14:19:08
I thought about that,

00:14:19:08 – 00:14:21:29
In other words, the exact same thing
A CURRENT AFFAIR did?

00:14:21:29 – 00:14:25:35
OOH! Gut Punch! Well done sir!

00:14:25:35 – 00:14:28:04
Now know you say that. Yes I would. Well.

00:14:28:04 – 00:14:31:04
Oh all right,
I’m doing another question like

00:14:31:40 – 00:14:34:23
okay, I was just going to
just make your own comment.

00:14:34:23 – 00:14:39:06
I think what what makes us feel resonant
all these years later is that,

00:14:40:23 – 00:14:43:16
you know, we live in an era of
are conspiracy theories.

00:14:43:16 – 00:14:46:35
I mean, you know, with social media
and all that, and it shows how

00:14:47:08 – 00:14:51:03
people were even back
then, 30, 40 years ago,

00:14:51:18 – 00:14:54:18
we’re still doing things for,

00:14:56:05 – 00:14:59:05
you know, coming in
from outside to kind of,

00:14:59:23 – 00:15:02:23
you know, start this,

00:15:02:47 – 00:15:05:23
make it look like
things are going on in the town.

00:15:05:23 – 00:15:07:50
The media was feeding on it and all that.

00:15:07:50 – 00:15:10:57
And, doing what,
I guess would we call fake news?

00:15:11:26 – 00:15:14:55
And, you know,
this was all happening back then,

00:15:15:15 – 00:15:24:40
and that leads us to the era here now
where people are very skeptical about about the media
and maybe rightfully so,

00:15:25:24 – 00:15:33:50
Apparently they missed lot of the stuff
that was going on in Vidor was really primarily outside forces.

00:15:33:50 – 00:15:40:45
And, you know, and then the whole thing
about it’s about the death of Simpson is, you know,
the conspiracy theories

00:15:40:45 – 00:15:46:43
It took a long time to unravel that it really was
just, you know, street crime. Right?

00:15:47:36 – 00:15:51:25
Everybody
even think that it was a coincidence

00:15:51:25 – 00:15:54:25
you never even got to sleep in his house

00:15:54:29 – 00:15:55:25
on the night that.

00:15:55:25 – 00:15:57:57
He was going to go to sleep in his house.

00:15:57:57 – 00:15:58:53
He gets killed.

00:15:58:53 – 00:16:02:47
Yes. What a freaking coincidence,
this amazing coincidence.

00:16:02:47 – 00:16:07:08
And that’s why I had first thought for
sure it had to be somebody from Vidor that did this.

00:16:07:36 – 00:16:09:11
Although in hindsight, I think about it.

00:16:09:11 – 00:16:12:10
I spent a lot of time talking to the Klansmen
and reading their literature.

00:16:12:13 – 00:16:17:19
I am NOT ori Klan at all.
I’m just saying from their point of view,

00:16:18:08 – 00:16:21:31
if Bill Simpson had been killed
the day he moved IN to Vidor

00:16:21:31 – 00:16:26:58
I’d say maybe it was the Klan
On the day he moved out? Why would they care?

00:16:26:58 – 00:16:31:00
I mean, I could almost see the Klan
paying for the U Haul to help him move.

00:16:31:00 – 00:16:38:49
I am joking but Yes, yes, it is an incredible irony.

00:16:39:43 – 00:16:42:42
And, you know,
I gave some a little bit of,

00:16:43:17 – 00:16:44:07
not lip service,

00:16:44:07 – 00:16:47:07
but I brought up the conspiracy theories,
like, people think that people think that

00:16:48:06 – 00:16:50:41
that when you get into how the landlady.

00:16:50:41 – 00:16:53:28
How did she get into HUD housing for me,
I looked into that.

00:16:53:28 – 00:16:55:38
It was completely genuine.
It was aboveboard.

00:16:55:38 – 00:16:58:18
She never rented throught HUD before.
You’re right, she didn’t

00:16:58:18 – 00:16:59:56
Nobody wanted to rent to Bill SImpson

00:16:59:56 – 00:17:01:48
Nobody wanted the publicity.

00:17:01:48 – 00:17:03:13
She saw him on TV.

00:17:04:15 – 00:17:05:44
She says,

00:17:05:44 – 00:17:08:49
I did this out of the kindness of my heart
to give the guy a place to live.

00:17:09:32 – 00:17:12:32
Ive talked to some people that,

00:17:12:57 – 00:17:14:11
I to go.

00:17:14:11 – 00:17:16:35
It was partly, that she wanted the money.

00:17:16:35 – 00:17:17:41
She wanted to rent that house.

00:17:17:41 – 00:17:23:16
She had a house to rent, she had an empty rental
property that she couldnt rent anybody because it was in a bad neighborhood.

00:17:23:52 – 00:17:28:04
So instead of that house laying empty shes now getting some H.U.D. money.

00:17:29:55 – 00:17:32:17
Plus the notoriety

00:17:32:17 – 00:17:35:17
Yes. Yes.

00:17:35:31 – 00:17:38:31
She she,

00:17:38:33 – 00:17:40:12
she wouldn’t appear on camera.

00:17:40:12 – 00:17:43:24
Partially because her Hollywood agents
told her not to.

00:17:45:10 – 00:17:48:24
At the time I made this, you know,
you saw the thing where she.

00:17:48:25 – 00:17:51:12
She was in the National Enquirer.

00:17:51:12 – 00:17:53:52
“Landlady taking back the streets.”

00:17:53:52 – 00:17:55:51
She’s cleaning up her neighborhood.

00:17:55:51 – 00:17:57:06
She’s a crusader.

00:17:57:06 – 00:18:00:06
No, she wanted to increase the value
of a rental property.

00:18:00:11 – 00:18:03:27
And there was talk of making either
a movie or a TV show about her.

00:18:04:28 – 00:18:06:40
And Delta Burke was going to play her.

00:18:06:40 – 00:18:09:40
Oh, wow. And,

00:18:10:08 – 00:18:12:45
No, no, it was
it was going to be Delta Burke.

00:18:12:45 – 00:18:15:31
If it was a TV show
It was going to be Kathy Bates if it was a movie
00:18:16:33 – 00:18:19:54
And for, you know, for whatever reason,
that didn’t happen.

00:18:22:18 – 00:18:27:42
You guys didnt ask about this,
(I thought somebody would,)
I’ve toyed with the idea of making a sequel

00:18:27:42 – 00:18:30:42
“Vidor Today”
I might do that one day.

00:18:31:00 – 00:18:33:56
There actually been

00:18:33:56 – 00:18:35:33
three sequels to my movie

00:18:35:33 – 00:18:39:11
That I didn’t make
I got paid for some of it.

00:18:39:58 – 00:18:43:03
The story, the, the billboard,
the fall. Is it.

00:18:43:05 – 00:18:46:12
“This is Vidor, where
you can get away with murdering a woman.”

00:18:46:37 – 00:18:47:49
Did anybody hear that story

00:18:49:00 – 00:18:49:40
that had

00:18:49:40 – 00:18:53:41
absolutely nothing to do with racism,
with the Klan, the Kathy page?

00:18:54:37 – 00:18:56:22
This young woman in VIdor.

00:18:56:22 – 00:18:58:54
Was killed in mysterious circumstances.

00:18:58:54 – 00:19:01:27
The circumstantial evidence

00:19:01:27 – 00:19:05:03
points to the ex-husband
just incredible amount of circumstantial evidence.

00:19:05:03 – 00:19:06:37
But they can’t prove it.

00:19:06:37 – 00:19:07:43
The father was so angry.

00:19:07:43 – 00:19:09:47
Is is so obviously the ex-husband.

00:19:09:47 – 00:19:11:55
Why aren’t the Vidor cops
doing anything about this?

00:19:11:55 – 00:19:13:59
He put up those billboards.
to embarrass them.

00:19:13:59 – 00:19:14:15
He’s.

00:19:14:15 – 00:19:16:50
I think somebody from
the police took a bribe.

00:19:16:50 – 00:19:18:40
I don’t believe.
I just think they couldn’t prove it.

00:19:18:40 – 00:19:21:32
It’s one of these things that we know
is that guy.

00:19:21:32 – 00:19:23:31
We can’t prove it.

00:19:23:31 – 00:19:26:25
So there was a been a couple of things
like,

00:19:26:25 – 00:19:29:36
Unsolved Mysteries with Robert Stack
did the Cathy Page story.

00:19:30:05 – 00:19:33:14
The Cathy Page story
also kind of inspired

00:19:33:21 – 00:19:36:21
the Movie
“Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri”

00:19:36:48 – 00:19:38:21
I remember them going back five years ago

00:19:39:24 – 00:19:43:03
that the writer said
he was driving from Florida to California.

00:19:43:03 – 00:19:44:12
He saw billboards here.

00:19:44:12 – 00:19:47:01
You know, why is nothing
being done about this murder.

00:19:47:01 – 00:19:51:26
He saw a billboard. He got the idea.
and he wrote a completely fictitious story
insired by that billboard.

00:19:52:21 – 00:19:53:42
Another sequel

00:19:53:42 – 00:19:59:10
Somebody approached me,
Anthony Griffith black NAACP lawyer that represented the Klansman

00:19:59:10 – 00:20:00:30
He wouldn’t talk to me on camera.

00:20:00:30 – 00:20:01:55
He talked to me on the phone.

00:20:01:55 – 00:20:05:21
Well, someAfrican-American podcasters contacted him

00:20:05:21 – 00:20:08:33
and they did something I didn’t do,
but they talked him into doing it.

00:20:09:08 – 00:20:14:01
So there’s his story is on the internet,
and they’re using clips from my movie in that one.

00:20:14:01 – 00:20:17:26
And there was a TV series or like,
it’s on Netflix or on one of those,

00:20:17:37 – 00:20:20:26
Got Saved Texas by Richard Linklater

00:20:20:26 – 00:20:22:26
and one of the episodes
is A History of racism,

00:20:22:26 – 00:20:24:36
and they use a lot of
footage from, from the movie.

00:20:26:04 – 00:20:31:12
I also had a lot of problems, you guys arent RTF Majors
But I didnt have that much footage of The Klan,

00:20:32:06 – 00:20:33:55
There’s only,

00:20:33:55 – 00:20:37:05
I went just did internet
searches on pictures of the Klan

00:20:37:06 – 00:20:40:06
He knows a lot of that,
I Photoshopped it

00:20:40:32 – 00:20:42:19
I’m going to confess that I was a bad boy.

00:20:42:19 – 00:20:43:45
One of the shots in a burning cross.

00:20:43:45 – 00:20:46:02
I faked that

00:20:46:02 – 00:20:48:58
I got 2 wooden dowels
glued together and set it on fire,

00:20:48:58 – 00:20:50:42
because I just needed a shot
of a burning cross

00:20:50:42 – 00:20:52:48
I don’t do anything for you
about the Olympics.

00:20:52:48 – 00:20:55:18
How did you feel in that moment
setting it on fire?

00:20:55:18 – 00:20:56:29
I did in my backyard.
I didn’t feel good about it.

00:20:56:29 – 00:20:57:34
I do in my backyard.
I didn’t feel good about it.

00:20:57:34 – 00:20:59:29
And I also felt journalistically dubious.

00:20:59:29 – 00:21:01:51
But Im not lying
I mean, It did happen.

00:21:01:51 – 00:21:04:46
I just didnt have a shot of it
as, like, one of the early versions.

00:21:04:46 – 00:21:06:05
I said “FAKE”

00:21:06:05 – 00:21:09:43
Some of the words on the screen ok we get it

00:21:09:43 – 00:21:11:28
Cough. Doris and unrelated news.

00:21:11:28 – 00:21:14:09
At one time you shared stock footage
that you were clear to specify.

00:21:14:09 – 00:21:15:35
This is stock footage.
Yes.

00:21:16:38 – 00:21:17:19
And I don’t I don’t

00:21:17:19 – 00:21:20:44
know why I didnt do that on the cross,
but I think that and,

00:21:21:04 – 00:21:24:47
there was I, for a very short
time, was talking to Hollywood

00:21:25:09 – 00:21:26:42
and, like, turning this into a “MOVIE movie”

00:21:26:42 – 00:21:29:08
Oh, man. This is it.
This is my dream come true.

00:21:29:08 – 00:21:32:16
And then Waco happened, like,
oh, we’re going to follow that story.
We’ll get back tto you

00:21:32:16 – 00:21:33:31
Maybe we’ll do something with this.

00:21:33:31 – 00:21:39:07
And, any aspiring screenwriter s in the room,

00:21:39:07 – 00:21:41:02
Every made for TV movie, every one.

00:21:41:02 – 00:21:50:21
Not every movie,
every major TV movie is the story of a woman trying to save her family
through the strength of her heart.

00:21:50:21 – 00:21:53:06
And I like that may be a recurring theme,
but I say no.

00:21:53:06 – 00:21:55:45
It’s ever since they told me
that I can’t look at a made for TV movie without going

00:21:55:45 – 00:21:57:33
oh my God, that is it.

00:21:57:33 – 00:22:00:24
So they either wanted to do the story
of the two black women who moved out,

00:22:00:24 – 00:22:02:15
or the story of the mayor of Vidor

00:22:03:38 – 00:22:06:16
and I was talking to both of those people,

00:22:06:16 – 00:22:09:50
the 2 women who moved out and the mayor of
Vidor about doing the movie and,

00:22:10:42 – 00:22:14:15
the mayor didn’t want to do it
because of the bad publicity.

00:22:14:29 – 00:22:16:38
The two women wanted to do it,
but andthen the movie never happened.

00:22:16:38 – 00:22:19:15
So, what are you going to do

00:22:19:15 – 00:22:21:54
Anything else I want to talk about,

00:22:21:54 – 00:22:24:46
you know,

00:22:24:46 – 00:22:27:46
I can talk a little about this,
anyone else?

00:22:28:02 – 00:22:29:19
What do you think?

00:22:29:19 – 00:22:30:53
I think it was the head of the Klan.

00:22:30:53 – 00:22:33:26
He didn’t want to speak about the bus?

00:22:33:26 – 00:22:36:25
Because he was guilty as sin!

00:22:37:37 – 00:22:39:50
He did drive through that neighborhood.

00:22:39:50 – 00:22:42:49
Not HIM but HIS Klan group

00:22:42:49 – 00:22:45:34
His Klan group did go through that neighborhood.

00:22:45:34 – 00:22:46:42
Did drive through the complex.

00:22:46:42 – 00:22:50:01
There was somebody with a machine gun
that is a “threat of force.”

00:22:50:01 – 00:22:53:56
That’s intimidation by third force
actually pointing a gun

00:22:53:56 – 00:22:57:08
at somebody and saying,
I’m going to shoot you is a worse crime,

00:22:57:51 – 00:23:01:00
but you driving it through, holding a gun,
that’s a crime too.

00:23:01:27 – 00:23:03:51
That’s intimidation by “Threat of force.”

00:23:03:51 – 00:23:06:26
I dont know about HIM

00:23:06:26 – 00:23:09:25
but his group absolutely did that.

00:23:09:27 – 00:23:13:59
And that’s why he wouldnt talk about it because
it could come back in court later on

00:23:15:20 – 00:23:17:06
He was pleading the 5th

00:23:17:06 – 00:23:18:10
He did that.

00:23:18:10 – 00:23:21:40
And then, the voice over in,
what was the lady’s name?

00:23:21:40 – 00:23:24:27
Lynn Marie Garsee

00:23:24:27 – 00:23:26:08
Garsee Yes.

00:23:26:08 – 00:23:29:08
Did you does your voiceover
saying that she had

00:23:29:21 – 00:23:32:43
kind of orchestrated multiple interviews
for you?
Yes.

00:23:33:24 – 00:23:34:58
I went to the bathroom.

00:23:34:58 – 00:23:38:14
Did this version have the interview
with the woman whose leg got shot off?

00:23:39:12 – 00:23:39:35
It was.

00:23:39:35 – 00:23:42:24
She got me that interview

00:23:42:24 – 00:23:44:42
No TV network in the world, you get that?

00:23:44:42 – 00:23:46:48
She kept saying no .
Lynn Marie Garsee got me that

00:23:46:48 – 00:23:47:22
Copy that.

00:23:47:22 – 00:23:50:22
And she got me.

00:23:51:09 – 00:23:52:50
Oh, she got me around the neighborhood.

00:23:52:50 – 00:23:55:40
The shots at Bill Simpson’s house.

00:23:55:40 – 00:23:57:43
She she pointed out that at the house,

00:23:57:43 – 00:24:01:11
and she stood there and,
she got me…..

00:24:01:11 – 00:24:01:40

00:24:01:40 – 00:24:05:11
I think there was an
she gave me some other phone numbers.

00:24:07:11 – 00:24:10:11
As far as her getting caught

00:24:10:50 – 00:24:13:50
lying on TV.

00:24:15:04 – 00:24:17:28
Remember the part
where the the TV crew went to her house

00:24:17:28 – 00:24:20:28
to talk to her about this, and she said
people had warned her, not to talk

00:24:21:04 – 00:24:23:01
I can’t prove this.

00:24:23:01 – 00:24:24:39
I think she was just exaggerating.

00:24:24:39 – 00:24:28:06
She probably should like the attention
she was at that point in time.

00:24:28:06 – 00:24:30:00
She was about to be famous.

00:24:30:00 – 00:24:33:08
It was sort of making her story
into a TV show or a movie,

00:24:33:23 – 00:24:36:53
and she said, people came to me
and threatened me not to talk

00:24:37:26 – 00:24:39:21
Who came to you? What are you talking about?
When did this happen?

00:24:39:21 – 00:24:41:59
I think she was
making herself dramatic.

00:24:41:59 – 00:24:43:31
I think from that.

00:24:43:31 – 00:24:45:29
But I think that’s what happened.

00:24:45:29 – 00:24:47:59
Okay, so you don’t think that
she said that you believe.

00:24:49:23 – 00:24:51:22
No, I do not, I do not.

00:24:51:22 – 00:24:55:30
They could easily set him up in Vidor

00:24:55:30 – 00:24:59:35
Like she got him the house
so that the Klan know where to go
in order to get him?

00:24:59:35 – 00:25:03:03
Anyway, It woldnt that hard to figure out
where he went,

00:25:03:03 – 00:25:06:03
But no, I do not think she had anything
to do with that.

00:25:06:19 – 00:25:09:31
She set herself up as a saint.
“I got Bill Simpson a place to live.”

00:25:09:50 – 00:25:13:13
One of the one of the attorneys
for East Texas Legal Services

00:25:13:13 – 00:25:15:53
said they talked to her
right after the shooting,

00:25:15:53 – 00:25:18:28
and they said, did you hear about
what happened to Bill Simpson?

00:25:18:28 – 00:25:20:57
She said, yeah, isn’t that terrible?

00:25:20:57 – 00:25:23:45
How am I going to get my next month’s
rent?

00:25:23:45 – 00:25:28:03
Nobody would tell me that story on camera

00:25:29:08 – 00:25:31:41
Anybody else?

00:25:31:41 – 00:25:31:57
All right.

00:25:31:57 – 00:25:34:57
Matt I hate to cut you off

00:25:35:31 – 00:25:35:54
on time.

00:25:35:54 – 00:25:40:55
To see the deleted scenes, look up YouTube
“The Least of my brothers.”

00:25:40:55 – 00:25:44:28
And thank you for sharing such a
challenging but important film

On the Trail of Delusion episodes

www.mattkprovideo.com/2025/03/24/on-the-trail-of-delusion-episodes-2/

On the Trail of Delusion episodes

I am the video editor and motion graphics creator for this YouTube Series written and produced by author Fred Litwin.

www.onthetrailofdelusion.com

I use Adobe Photoshop, After Effects,and some “Animate” (Flash) to create 2D animations. I finish all the editing in Adobe Premiere.

The opening theme music is:

Music by: Power Music Factory , Suspense Background Music , No Copyright

Channel URL : www.youtube.com/@PowerMusicFactory

Episode 1, Robert Renolds on the so-called “secret” JFK assassination files.

www.jfkarc.info

This was a 1280 by 720 ZOOM call scaled up to 4K in Adobe Premiere Pro. Uploaded Mar 22, 2024.

Episode 2, Robert Wagner discusses his books “JFK Assassinated” and “The Assassination of JFK, Perspectives half a century Later.”

Uploaded April 12, 2024 in 1920 by 1080.

Wagner is unique in that while he is on the Lone Gunman side, he disagrees with the single bullet theory.

Episode 3, Gerald “Case Closed” Posner

Uploaded in 1920 by 1080 on May 10, 2024.

Episode 4, Dr Martin J Kelly, Jr. Uploaded Jun 9, 2024.

Episode 5, Steve Roe on the General Walker Shooting. Uploaded Jul 2, 2024.

Roe wrote a chapter on Gayle Nix Jacksons “Pieces of the Puzzle” and is writing a book General Edwin Walker.

This is (so far) the best episode from the point of view of production values and camera work. The subject lives near me. So instead of this episode just being a ZOOM call, I shot the conversation with my “real” cameras. I even brought along my drone ( even though there was no logical need for it, I just wanted to use my drone).

Also, I had a lot of documentary footage of Fred Litwin and Steve Roe visiting some JFK related sites in Dallas, and of Roes visit to General Walkers grave outside of Kerr, Texas. (Center Point Cemetery, Center Point, Kerr County, Texas, USA)

www.findagrave.com/memorial/22725451/edwin_anderson-walker

www.steveroeconsulting.wixsite.com/website

Episode 6, Gus Russo. Uploaded Jul 5, 2024.

Gus Russo discusses his books Live by the Sword: The Secret War Against Castro and the Death of JFK , Brothers in Arms: The Kennedys, the Castros, and the Politics of Murder, and his work on the PBS FRONTLINE episode about Lee Harvey Oswald.

Episode 7, Dave Perry.

Dallas author Dave Perry discusses how he used his experience as an insurance fraud investigator to re-examine and de-bunk many conspiracy stories related to the Kennedy assassination and the supposed “mysterious deaths.”

He wrote the book: “Tales of Deception and Imagination: Investigating Kennedy Assassination Stories.”

He also tells some great stories about being a JFK researcher in Dallas and his first hand encounters with many witnesses and experts on the case .

His website: www.dperry1943.com

 Episode 8, Nick Nalli. Uploaded Aug 22, 2024.

Scientist Nick Nalli discusses the science and physics of the Kennedy Assassination. He analyzes the science behind the single bullet theory, the “back and to the left” head snap, and the physics of other issues.

Episode 9,Dr Alecia Long. Uploaded Sep 8, 2024.

Professor Alecia Long, a teacher of History at Lousiana State University, discusses her book “Cruising for Conspirators: How a New Orleans DA Prosecuted the Kennedy Assassination as a Sex Crime

This combines a ZOOM Call and some documentary footage I shot of Fred Litwin in New Orleans.

Episode 10, Don Carpenter. Uploaded Jan 23, 2025.

Don Carpenter discusses his book “Man of a Million Fragments: The True Story of Clay Shaw” Clay Shaw was falsely accused by New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison of conspiracy to assassinate President John F. Kennedy.

I took the pre-existing book cover and cut it into layers in Adobe Photoshop and animated them in Adobe After Effects.

Episode 11, Bill Brown on J D Tippit.

Lifelong JFK researcher Bill Brown discusses the murder of Dallas Police Officer J. D. Tippit by Lee Harvey Oswald as he (Oswald) tried to evade capture for the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 2025. Bill Brown has devoured every major book and document of the Tippit case, has visited Tenth and Patton and the other major Kennedy assassination sites many times and has an encyclopedic knowledge of the case.

You can discuss the Tippet case with Bill Brown at the FaceBook group:

Tenth & Patton – The Murder Of Dallas Police Officer J.D. Tippit

This special episode of “On the Trail of Delusion” includes never before seen aerial drone and ground footage of the Tippit death scene in Oak Cliff (Dallas) and newly created 2D animations illustrating the placement of the people involved.

I shot this footage and created the animations to be used in my upcoming documentary ” The Grassy No” and I thought I’d use it here.

Episode 12, Eric Dezenhall, Wiseguys and the White House

Fred Litwin interviews Eric Dezenhall, author of “Wiseguys and the White House.”

The book is about the Mafia/organized crime connections some Presidents had. He also discusses his experience as a public relations consultant to big corporations led him to believe that the James Bond style “fixers” and hitmen we see in many movies don’t exist.

Episode 13, Dr Nick Nalli on the Acoustics Evidence and the Zapruder Film

Dr Nick Nalli returns to discuss the acoustics evidence as well as the Zapruder Film.

Episode 14, Scott Maudsley on Oswald’s Antisocial Personality Disorder. Uploaded Feb 27, 2025.

Fred Litwin and Scott Maudsley discuss Presidential assassin Lee Harvey Oswald’s (alleged) Antisocial Personality Disorder, Narcissism and other possible psychological disorders. They also discuss the books ” Inside The Criminal Mind,” by Stanton Samenow, “Marina and Lee” by Priscilla Johnson McMillan, “Oswalds Game” by by Jean Davison, “Reclaiming History” by Vincent Bugliosi, “Case Closed” by Gerald Posner, “Mrs. Paine’s Garage” by Thomas Mallon, and several others.

Scott Maudsley’s own video on the subject:

I had nothing to do with the creation of that video.)

Episode 15, Robert Reynolds on Trump’s release of JFK files.

The first episode of this series discussed what might be in the JFK files IF they ever get released. Upon his return he discusses what IS in them after President Trump released them.

http://www.jfkarc.info

Episode 15. TBA

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

kennedy,#assassination, #jfk,#conspiracy,#history,#dallas,#texas,#washingtond.c.,#washington, #dc, #records, #201,#file,#201_file,#trump, #obama, #biden, #douthit,#kordelski, #litwin,#youtube, #mexico,#mexico_city,#oswald, #assassin, #lho, #kordelski,

Is this YouTube show too good to be true?


I’ve been enjoying a YouTube show about the history of SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE.
It seems to be made by two 2 very knowledgeable SNL superfans. There doesn’t seem to be ANYTHING these don’t know about their favorite show.

Everything You NEED to Know About SNL 


We’ve all met the type. There isn’t much superfans of something can’t tell you from memory about shows like STAR TREK or whatever else…

Its interesting and engaging and VERY well put together.


SO well put together that it has sparked a benign low level conspiracy theory in my head.


The show is so well produced, has high quality 4K footage from SNL’s earliest days. At first I thought that they were such devoted fans that they had every episode on VHS or DVD and that they “ripped” the source material and edited into their show.
And that may be the truth. BUT, they seem to have footage from episodes ( that I don’t think) was ever released on home video. And you can’t “rip” material from a professional streaming service, can you? I can’t think of how somebody could “rip” materal off of something like PEACOCK. But where there’s a will there might be a way…
And if that was the case, wouldn’t PEACOCK send them a cease and desist?


Using copyrighted material on YouTube is a confusing, slippery slope. If I owned the rights to SNL’s reruns and found out somebody had made an elaborate love letter to my property, I wouldn’t have a problem with it. But that’s me, we’ve all heard of copyright attorneys coming after content creators with a hammer. Maybe because they HAVE to? If they let something slip past, it weakens their claim to ownership? (“Why are you coming after ME when you didn’t go after them??”).


Every episode of this YouTube show ends with saying “SNL’s reruns are viewable on Peacock.”


I didn’t know that. I have PEACOCK and didn.t know they were streaming the earliest SNL episodes. So I clicked on Peacock and started perusing the crude ( in every sense of the word) early episodes. Some of it was better than I remember, some it has not aged well.


I spend more time on YouTube these days than regular TV or even streaming. I assume a lot of us do. I wouldn’t have known to click on PEACOCK to see SNL re-runs if not for this YouTube show made by these superfans.

BUT! a lightbulb went off over my head!


Have I been tricked? Was that YouTube show made by Superfans a ruse? A hidden commercial made BY Peacock itself???


How else would those guys get such extremely high quality footage from episodes that ( I don’t think) were ever released on home video?


The camera and sound quality are both top notch. As good as anything on regular professional TV- let alone YouTube. Their opening and closing graphics were also of professional caliber. Not that some YouTubers don’t put their heart and soul into making pro grade content, many do. But this is a cut above.

Does anyone know if “Everything You NEED to Know About SNL” is being produced by PEACOCK itself or if it really is made by fans who happen to be damn good at what they do?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRqyVjTQ_fE

“An Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live” : Author interview (2003)

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,

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]