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On the Trail of Delusion, Episode 6, Gus Russo
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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]
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