November 21, 2013 • 44 mins
For the 50th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas, Josh and Chuck delve into the killing, the investigations and the conspiracy theories to get to the bottom of an enduring national question.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the all New Toyota Corolla. Welcome
to you Stuff you should know Fromdhouse Stuff Works dot Com. Hey,
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, There's Charles W.
Chuck Bryant, and very appropriately for this one, we have
(00:23):
our buddy Matt, who's guest producing because he knows how
to do that kind of thing in addition to his
awesome show stuff they don't want to know, which he
does with our other friend Ben. And uh, it's it
covers conspiracy theories. And we are podcasting on who killed
JFK the day before the anniversary of that Fateful Day anniversary,
(00:45):
right fiftieth anniversary November nine in Dallas. And so you
made a joke that Matt was just gonna be over
there the whole time going shia. Really uh huh. Yeah,
it wasn't a mob. Yeah, three tramps whatever. I like
the three trans want It's it's ridiculous, but it's my
favorite one. Yeah, I got some good stuff on that
(01:06):
um In two thousand three, Josh An ABC News poll
came out ten years ago, seventy of Americans believe the
assassination of John F. Kennedy was part of a broader plot.
What percentage believe that and believe that Lee Harvey Oswald
acted alone. Well, so it's the thing. It's it will
(01:27):
not die. No, it won't. It never will, I don't think. Well,
it's very much entrenched in popular culture as well too,
Like even it's become a parody of itself as well. Yeah,
you know, was just the idea that there's this outstanding
question that will never be put to rest. Yeah, Like
Lone Gunmen and Grassy Knoll, like all these are almost
(01:48):
like buzz terms. Now, Yeah, the Lone Gunmen, they made
an appearance in the X Files, they were recurring characters.
Trio of Guys, Uh and the Misfits have a song
about the afk assassination. Um magic Bullet but there's a
band called Magic Bullets. There's all sorts of stuff. Um,
(02:09):
So let's get into this because I think our colleague
Jonathan's Tricklin of tech Stuff did a really good job
of like handling what could have easily been like a
fifty page quagmire. And he basically says like, but here's
all the facts, and this is why the what's on
(02:30):
the surface is probably the likeliest thing to happen and happened.
We should see U a little bit here. There are
hundreds of books written about various conspiracies, uh conspiracy theories
on the JFK assassination, and we are we don't have
like eighteen episodes to dedicate to this, so this will
(02:51):
be a skimming of the topic. UM. I don't want
anyone to be like, oh, Josh and Chuck are gonna
get down the bottom of this, like people, that's some
people's life's were, you know, dedicated to this? Yeah. I mean,
if we're anything, we're dilettants. Every week we go from
one subject to the next. That is true. So I
guess let's begin at the beginning, just to get it
(03:13):
all out on the table. Okay, all right, Okay, so Chucky.
On November eighth, nineteen sixty three, UM, the Secret Service
found the proposed route for the president Presidential Murtorcaide's visit
to Dallas. And there was a reason the president was
(03:33):
coming to Dallas. It was a very good reason. And UM,
this is why he was in Texas, why he was
trying to basically sort of unite the Democratic Party. Um,
he was meeting with with his vice president and the
governor of Texas, and there was some bickering going on
within the party and he basically wanted to He's trying
(03:55):
to get reelected, is what he was doing, right, But
that was a big part of it. But it is true.
Governor Connelly Um and Senator Richard Yarborough were publicly feuding.
Um and they're both Democrats, so basically their great father
was going to come and make peace with them among
them publicly tour the state of Texas to help him
(04:16):
self get reelected, but also to show Texas like, hey,
the Texas Democrats are all family. Here. Family fights sometimes,
but we're still all family and we still have the
same grand vision. I know, I'm a Catholic from New England,
but we're all the same. It me nine Texan. Uh so, okay,
where are we? They find out the route from love
Field to um Daly Plaza. They publicize that in the newspapers.
(04:43):
Everyone knew about it because you know people, they wanted
people to come out and wave like they did on
November nine. The route was published in the papers and
the published one Yes. And then on November twenty ninety three,
that fateful day, Air Force one lands at love Field
the President gets in his presidential limousine and they started
(05:04):
making their way toward Deeley Plaza, along with Governor Connelly
and his wife and of course Jackie and then a
couple of secret service dudes. That's in the one car.
In a car behind them is lb J Senator Yarborough
and some other secret service guys. Right, that's right. So
they're apparently as they were headed toward Deely Plausa, they
got delayed because um, Kennedy stopped and uh kind of
(05:27):
soaked up the people waving and cheering and all that
and gave gave some back to him. Yeah, and so
they were a little bit delayed, um getting to Deely Plaza.
But when they did, at about twelve thirty, as they
were arriving in the presidential motorcade, a shot rang out
and then there was two more shots at least. Yeah,
(05:51):
and uh with the second shot, they think the president
he threw his hands up to his neck and Jackie
leaned over to kind of like say what's going on,
and then all of a sudden, the back right side
of the President's head blew off. Yes, it is very graphic.
(06:13):
If you see the slowed down enhanced Zapruder film on
YouTube today. Very affecting too. It's really sad. Yeah, it's
terribly sad. And this was not even a part of
our generation. Like this kind of stuff still makes people
like our parents breakdown sometimes, you know. So that was
thirty Within about anywhere between four and eight seconds, at
(06:35):
least three shots were fired, one missed probably the second
and third one hit the president first in the back
of the neck, exited his throat, and the third one
blew his head off. Yeah, let's talk about the that
magic bullet since we should go ahead and clear that up.
H it hit I guess this is a second bullet
that passed through his throat. It went on to hit
(06:57):
Governor Connelly in the back, but in his armpit. Yeah,
below the right armpit. Um exited below the right nipple.
Um then hit his wrist that was in his lap,
and then continue through the wrist through his left thigh.
And that's why they call it the magic bullet. And
if you've seen Oliver Stone's movie, they kind of, you know,
m make fun of it in court like that is
(07:18):
one magic bullet. That's where it got the name back
into the left back into the left Remember the Seinfeld thing,
yeah with the spit with Keith hernandez. Um. But and
I remember my brother in law, the Marine, explaining to
me years ago that bullets tumble and can do some
really crazy things, like he's seen it happen on firing
(07:40):
ranges and and pus. Also, this is a very very
powerful bullet. Yeah. It was a six point five millimeter bullet,
which is basically like a little um howits her shell? Yeah,
it's huge and it travels very quickly. Yeah, and um,
they have done test that, even though it seems unlikely,
that show that it is possible that a bullet can
(08:02):
change directions and do kind of crazy things once it
starts hitting bone and other things. Yeah. So um that was,
like you said, the second bullet most likely. Um, Within
just a few seconds after the first shot, Kennedy is
lying there, um motionless. Jackie's like reaching back across the
trunk of the car. Yeah, trying to get help from
(08:24):
a secret Service agent who I believe jumps into the car. Yeah.
Well actually they they think that she was picked up
part of his brain tissue. Okay, I heard that before too. Yeah,
I looked into that today, but I was watching the
repruter film and it looks it looked to me like
she was reaching back like help. But I've heard that
before as well. Well. Apparently she was quoted um by
(08:46):
I think Connolly's wife and one other person at the
time of saying he's dead and look, I have I
have his brain in my hand. Um. She I read
her testimony for the Warran Commission and she says she
didn't even remember any of that. But whether or not
that's true, it's awful. So when she was trying to
hold his head together on the way to the hospital, Yeah,
(09:10):
So in the car behind them, uh, a Secret Service
agent pounces on LBJ and like throws him onto the
seat and lays on top of him. Um. I think
his name is Rufus young Blood, the CIA or the
Secret Service agent. The motor kid just takes off to
the hospital park Memorial Parkland Parkland Memorial and um again,
(09:32):
the the motor kid inner dally Plase at twelve thirty.
By one pm, the President has been pronounced dead at
Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas. It was just a few
miles away. Um, so that was one pm. That was
one pm. Um, I guess we should talk about the
grassy Knoll real quick because a lot of people, um
have said, you know, a shot have There were a
(09:55):
lot of misleading and conflicting accounts, which is where a
lot of the trouble started. I witnesses not collaborating stories. Uh.
The acoustics at Dealey Plaza were funky because of all
the buildings and it's three side buildings and then one
side like Grassy Knoll. Basically yeah, so like, where did
the shot come from? I thought it came from over here.
From the sounds, um, it was basically pretty tough to pinpoint.
(10:19):
And the Grassy Knoll there was a police officer named
Clyde hey Good that there are pictures of him, you know,
running towards the Grassy Knoll, and a lot of folks thought, hey,
he's running like towards a suspect, when in fact, he
was running toward another police officer to you know, say, hey,
what should we do? I guess? So the I guess.
The way it's been explained away over the years is
(10:40):
the the acoustics and the fact that that cop was
running towards the Grassy Knoll has made some people think
that there was more than one shooter, and another shooter
was on the grassy knoll. That's right. The official line
is that that's not the case, though, that's right. Um,
so one PM, the president's pronounced dead. At two thirty eight,
UM Johnson, Jackie Kennedy, UH, Johnson's staff, pretty much everybody
(11:06):
was back on Air Force one and UM they called
Bobby Kennedy to ask what to do and to tell
him what had happened. And Bobby Kennedy said, you need
to swear Johnson and before you guys leave the ground.
So they found a judge, brought her on board, and
she swore Johnson in as president, and then they took
off and flew back to Washington. Very famous photo, yeah,
(11:27):
with him being sworn in on board Air Force one,
right with Jackie on NASA's or Jackie Kennedy's face. Just
like the fact that she was able to stand is
pretty amazing. Apparently they turned her in such a way
so that the blood stains were an apparent in the photograph. Man,
I don't know if it was Air Force one yet
it was. UM, alright, so where are we? Uh? Four
(11:52):
minutes after the shooting, Dallas police uh looked at the
Texas School Book Depository building and said, hey, that might
have been where this came from. It's a pretty prime
location for a sniper. And there was an eyewitness named
Howard Brennan who saw a figure in the window and
gave a description which fit Lee Harvey Oswald. So this
(12:14):
this one dude actually saw him in the window on
the sixth floor. Pretty believable that you could see someone
from that range. The guy said, I knew it was
Oswald all along. So there was a cop that was
in the book depository within two minutes of the shooting. Yeah,
Marian Baker was kind of took the initiative to go
ahead and get in there. So we went in there
and he met up with the superintendent of the building,
(12:36):
a guy named Truly, and they started um walking up
the steps and at the second floor they came upon
Lee Harvey Oswald who was leaving. He was leaving. Truly
vouched for Oswald, and Oswald was allowed to leave. And
the reason Truly vouched for Oswald's because just a couple
of weeks before, about a month before, Oswald had gotten
a job at that book depository, so he checked out
(12:59):
as far as Truly was concerned. The officer who was
with Truly said, well, okay, and they kept looking and
a few minutes after that, lieutenant showed up and took
over the crime scene and they started scouring the building
and on the sixth floor they found the sniper's nest
that's right with UM three empty cartridges and the gun
(13:20):
UH telescopic rifle, UH telescopic site, and a bolt action rifle.
And it was pretty much a no brainer at that point,
or at least on the surface. This is where it
came from, right, So, um, after Oswald left his uh
left the book depository, he went to um the place
(13:40):
where he was running a room, the house where he's
running a room, and grabbed a pistol. And as he's
walking along and this is about the same time that
Kennedy's being pronounced dead, he's walking along the street, he
Um encountered a cop named J. D. Tippett, and apparently
Oswald just opened fire on this cop, shot him four times,
killed him instantly. Yeah. Well, he was investigating Oswald because
(14:03):
the the A p B had already come through with
the description of Oswald, and he was like, well, this
guy fits that description. Let me talk to him. And
it didn't take long though I don't think there was
much of a discussion before Oswald shot him and killed him.
And um, actually, when Oswald was finally apprehended, it was
for the murder of the cop. They they didn't know
he had anything to do with Kennedy at the time. Yeah, yeah,
(14:24):
at the time. Uh, he ducked into a theater, the
Texas Theater, into the movie War as Hell, And I
think he snuck in, And that's why they called the
cops because they're like, hey, someone stuck in the theater.
So he would have had a bought a ticket. He
might not have ever been caught. You never know. You
know what's interesting about that, there's all these parallels between
(14:45):
the Lincoln assassination and the Kennedy assassination. Um, some are untrue,
some are just ridiculous. But one of them was that
John Wilkes Booth killed Lincoln in a theater and went
and hit out in a warehouse, and Lee Harvey Oswald
killed Kennedy from where our house and went and hit
out in a theater where he was caught. That's a
pretty good one. I like that one. Um. So he
(15:06):
was apprehended in the theater and reportedly said, well, it's
all over now. But he also said something interesting at
one point to the media I'm a patsy, which has
fueled speculation over the years that, uh, well, we'll get
into the different theories before we go any further. Get this,
the president of the United States of America has just
(15:30):
been shot in front of a crowd in Dallas. That's right.
That's huge, that's enormous. That's what's going on right now.
And there's a man hunt for this guy who's just
been caught for killing a cop. Yeah, so people don't
know that the president's killer has just been caught as well.
(15:50):
That's right. So this is a it's a pretty emotional time. Uh,
and let's talk about Oswald himself. But first, um, let's
do a message break and we'll talk about Oswald when
we come back. A h alright, So here's a little
bit about Lee Harvey Oswald. He was a mixed up guy. Um,
(16:12):
he was sort of an outcast, sort of didn't really
fit in. He was born in Um his father died
two months before he was born, which I think, you know,
probably has a lot to do with emotional scarring later
on and maybe being a mixed up kid. Uh. He
was in an orphanage for a little while with an
older brother and half brother, but his mother was able
to get him back out of that orphanage uh and
(16:36):
raised them age five five when he got taken on
the orphanage, which was enough years to also do some
damage psychologically. I think that probably set the theme because
I read a little bit about what you know, contemporary
reports of him growing up concluded his problem was and
that it was. One social worker said that he believed
(16:58):
his mother doesn't give a damn about him, uh so
uh and that somebody else said that they've never met
a kid more emotionally starved than this guy. Uh So.
I'm quite sure that being left it in an orphanage,
even being picked back up after a while it was,
probably did have a pretty big effect on him on
his development and how he viewed his mother. Well. Yeah,
(17:18):
and when you look at what he did for the
rest of his life, um, it seems like he was
always looking for a new family quote unquote, um, whether
it was the Marxist or the Communists, or Cuba or Russia. Like,
it seems like he never and it's kind of a
it's like one oh one, you know, he was looking
to fit in somehow somewhere with somebody, but at the
(17:41):
same time, it was always on the fringe of wherever
he was at. Yah, you know what I mean, Like
he's never happy with where he was. He wanted to
fit into whatever was counter what he was doing or
with the status quo of where he was right. So
at sixteen he drops out of school and tries to
join the Marine Corps. Um he was too young, so
(18:01):
they said come back later. He wrote the Socialist Party
when he was Socialist Party of America when he was seventeen,
to say, hey, I'm weigh into Marxism and like, can
I come join your club? I guess at the very
least we send me a free button. Uh. And then
at seventeen he reapplied to the Marine Corps and he
was old enough at that point. And turns out he
had quite an act for shooting guns. He's a sharp
(18:26):
shooter during boot camp, but then during the actual ranking
testing only rated as a marksman, which is still really good. Yeah,
just below sharp shoot the sharp shooter the highest or
is that the dead eyes the highest level. I think
sharp shooters size. But at the same time, even while
he was a marine, a Marine marksman, he um he
taught himself Russian. He studied about the Soviet Union and communism.
(18:50):
And this is during the Cold War. This is like
during the most paranoid finger pointing part of the Cold War.
But Oswald's in the Marines, like teaching himself Russian and everything,
see what I mean, like a confused guy. Yeah, but
even still like it's just it's so strange to me
learning about his experience that he was relatively left alone
(19:11):
while expressing pretty publicly this interest in the Soviet Union
and communism during the peak of the Cold War. It's
just I thought, if you had if you even wore
the color red, people like communists get him. But apparently
you could just hide him plain sight or admire the
Soviet Union plain sight. Well, he eventually would find himself
(19:32):
on a watch list because he went to Russia um
under um he obtained a passport falsely with an application
to a college in Switzerland and applied got to Moscow,
applied for citizenship there and they were like yet, and
so he he goes, oh, yeah, if you know, I mean,
I'm gonna kill myself. He basically did the same day
(19:52):
he was rejected by Russia. He slit his wrist and
the warmhearted Soviets were like, well, okay, you can stay
a young man. I thought that was interesting. Yeah, that's
what allowed him to stay. Ye, like, yeah, that's just weird. Yeah,
is so he said, I don't want to be Um. Well,
(20:13):
he he did not officially announce his citizenship in America,
although he expressed interest in doing so. Yeah, he kind
of mouthed off about it, but never actually did it.
That's right. Uh. In Russia he fell in love with
a lady named Marina Prusakova. And you're not going to
try our middle name nicola Venna nice Nikolavna. Yeah, I
(20:36):
think that's right. And um, basically he was like, you know,
we should probably go back to the United States because
it turns out Russia sucks. These breadlines I weren't expecting
them to be so long. Yeah, it said he'd become disenchanted.
I think that's a nice way of saying that Russia sucked. Right,
So he says, Hey, I know a place where you're
gonna love. It's called Texas. Let's move back there. Uh,
(20:59):
just forget the fact that you don't speak any English.
You don't know anybody in Texas. Everybody back in America
thinks I'm a weirdo and I'm your husband. Uh, just
let's go and move to Texas. And she's like, she said,
what did you say in Russian? He's like, nothing in Russian?
And so they moved to Texas and uh, she apparently
(21:19):
very quickly became just she felt isolated, she didn't have
any friends, and a woman named Ruth Payne UM felt
bad for her and took her under her wing and
they became kind of friends. And Ruth Payne will come
into play a little later on. Yeah, and this is
where he was finally sort of um on the radar
of the FBI. Yeah, when he moved back. Yeah, you
can't move to Russia and then come back. And they just,
(21:41):
you know, don't even bother talking to you know, but
they did talk to him and they said, okay, well listen,
if if the USSR gets in touch with you and
want you to do sp N, just let us know. Sure. Okay,
They're like, all right, we'll have a great day. Thanks
for the coffee, ma'am. She's like, what did you say
in Russian? It's pretty remarkable. So on April tenth nine, Um,
(22:04):
another interesting thing happened a few days after losing his job.
He tried to assassinate Major General Edwin Walker. This guy
was a piece of work himself. Yeah, he was a
hardcore right wing conservative, possibly gay man. Oh I hadn't
heard that. Yeah. Later in life, in his seventies, he
was arrested twice for fondling men in public. I wonder
(22:28):
if he was the model for um, the dad in
American beauty. Oh, maybe I could see that then. Yeah.
I mean he never married, and they I don't think
they ever came right out and said he was gay.
But he was arrested twice for fondling police officers. If
that's the case, email and let us know. Okay, Yeah,
(22:48):
which is neither here nor there, but it's interesting. No,
but he he was, like you said, extreme, a right
wing extremist in the very definition of the work. He
was very um, well respected, decorated military leader, like he
was commanding all of the troops in West Germany. At
one point when no he hated the Kennedys. He called
(23:09):
Harry Truman and Eleanor Roosevelt pink, which means that they
were communists sympathizers, which is a big deal. He was
temporarily relieved of his post while he was investigated for that,
and he said, you know what, I'm not even gonna
I'm not going back because the US has given up
his sovereignty to the United Nations and I can't fight
for it any longer. And this guy was so convinced
(23:34):
by his own convictions that he refused a military pension
for years afterwards because he didn't want to have anything
to do with him. Well, apparently he refused it, but
then kind of quietly tried to get it right. Well,
and they gave it to him. Yeah, um, But then
he was celebrated as a great soldier later on in
life and after his death. So another example though of
(23:56):
Oswald is sort of a confused guy, like he tries
to assassinate this right wing conservative general he also was
at a marine. He also killed Kennedy. He was just
sort of like it didn't seem like he knew what
he believed. Well, he believed that Um was the general's name.
Walker was like Hitler in the making. Yeah, basically that
(24:16):
he was an extremist who needed to be taken up,
but he missed. Yeah, from about a hundred feet away,
he shot into his dining room from the street where
he was sitting in a desk and hit the window
pane and uh that you know, made the bullet go
a different directions, so he missed. So Lee Harvey Ostal,
it's basically doing anything he can to insinuate himself in
(24:37):
international global politics. Yeah, but he got away with it
like they never It was a cold case until they
finally caught him and put the you know, I think
his wife was the one who's who fingered him later on, Yeah,
because he comes home and says, hey, we're moving to
New Orleans and she's like, what did you just say?
And so they moved to New Orleans and UM while
(25:01):
they're there, she's like, I've had enough, you're shooting at
um public figures. Now we're moving from Texas to New Orleans.
I'm moving back, and she moved in with her friend
Ruth Payne. And that surely had an effect an impact
on Oswald. There's no way it couldn't because he already
had abandonment issues from his mother. Now his wife leaves
(25:25):
him because he's just crazy, and he's like, well, you
know what, fine, I'm gonna stay here and I'm going
to start a chapter of a pro Cuba pro castro
sympathizer club and I'm gonna be the one and only member,
but I'm gonna be a loudmouth member. I think you
wanted more than one member. But it was another example
(25:45):
of like nobody was interested in this guy. Nobody. Russia
didn't want him, No one joined his club, his wife
left him, Cuba didn't want him. No. He went down
to Mexico and visited the Cuban and Russian embassies, trying
to basically get in them with them, and they're are like,
it's okay, thanks man. Yeah, like nobody was. I think
the words strictly used was no one was ever very
(26:06):
impressed with Oswald. They were unimpressed Soviet and Cuban officials.
I mean, if this guy was a Patsy, he was
the perfect Patsy. Oh yeah, but you can also take
all of this evidence and say, well, this is what
made him do this. Yeah, if he was a Patsy,
you imagine how easy it would have been for like
(26:28):
one of the theories is the mafia, for them to
put their arm around and be like, you're you're a
pretty great guy, right, you know what you should do?
You should kill the president? Yeah? Yeah, he would have
been very easy to manipulate, I imagine because he's also
just twenty four. It when the kid, which is crazy,
um so he uh he left New Orleans, went back
to Dallas, got a job, and about a month later
(26:50):
at the school book depository, Uh shot and killed John F. Kennedy. Yes,
so um Oswald's done is shooting He's called. They started
to investigate his background, and Lynnon Johnson ordered a um
an investigation of full investigation into the Kennedy assassination, what happened,
(27:11):
what lessons learned, all that stuff, And this commission, led
by Chief Justice Earl Warren UH was called the Warrant Commission,
and the report they compiled several hundred page reports called
the Warrant Report. And in addition to the several hundred
page report, they also released twenty six volumes of transcripts
(27:31):
of the hearings that they conducted. So it's this exhaustive
investigation that was very transparent. Supposedly, there's so many documents
that to try to censor them, really censor them, it
would be virtually impossible. So a lot of people point
to the very fact that the Warrant Report is so
voluminous that it is like in fact correct, and it's
(27:55):
not part of a larger cover up at least. Yeah,
and acsuently the article did you read the one in
the New York Times that some people think they're still
documents the CIA won't release. Well, they won't. Well, but
the one anti conspiracy guy that they interviewed said, people
that I don't know how the CIA works that believe
this stuff. He went, there would be no documents period.
(28:17):
They wouldn't be hiding things, they wouldn't exist Operation killed
President Kennedy. Yeah, I mean he's sort of like a
little pad on the head, like you think there are documents,
you sweet little conspiracy theorists. Um, alright, So the warrant
Commission comes out and immediately conspiracy theorists start to suggest
different things, like one theory was that it was an
outside job by the KGB and or Cuba. Right, we
(28:40):
should say, the warrant Commission concluded that Lee Harvey Oswell
killed President Kennedy on his own volution, by himself, um,
without acting at the behester the benefit of anybody else. Yeah,
just a lone, singular, crazed gunman. So the conspiracy theories
are everybody else saying no, that's not the case, and
(29:04):
we gave the example of the Grassy Knoll, the acoustics
and daily plause of the fact that a cop was
running towards the Grassy Knoll, and conflicting eyewitness accounts, like
from the literal beginning of this event. In history, there
have been all sorts of hey, that people have been
able to make conspiracy theories out of, Like there's been
(29:26):
no shortage of all sorts of different weird things that
you can start to piece together with other things and
come up with these very interesting, some um sound conspiracy theories,
but that when you really get down to them, they're
not supported by evidence exactly. I'm glad you said that. Uh.
The KGB or Cuba theory that maybe their governments were
(29:48):
acting out and trying to kill Kennedy had some legs
because the Bay of Pigs had just happened. They were
certainly no friends of Kennedy at the height of the
Cold War. There was definitely a motive there, but um,
there was no evidence to tie Oswald in any substantive
way to either of these countries. No, they looked at
his finances over they went back a year and a
(30:09):
half and looked at his finances to see if there
were any weird payments or whatever, and apparently the only
amount total that they could have they couldn't account for
came to like a hundred and sixty dollars could have
been cash and diamonds, though I guess it could have
been so how they liked the deal. One of the
other popular theories I mentioned was the mob and that
(30:30):
Jack Ruby was working with the mob, and the second
Oswald said I'm a patsy. They're like, we need to
go take care of this, like right now. Yeah, we
haven't mentioned Jack Ruby. Two days after Um, Kennedy was killed, Um,
they were transporting Lee Harvey Oswald and a guy named
Jack Ruby, who was a Dallas nightclub owner, came up
(30:51):
and shot Lee Harvey Oswald in the chest and killed him.
Lee Harvey Oswald actually died in Parkland Memorial, the same
hospital that Kennedy had two days before. Yeah, very famous
photo which has since been made into very funny photo.
Have you seen the band one? No, you never saw that.
It was big years ago. It was, you know, the
photo of Ruby killing Kennedy, and someone went in and
(31:12):
photoshopped and in musical instruments because they're all like have different,
you know, pained expressions. And Jack Ruby's at the keys
and I think Lee Harvey Oswald has a guitar and
it looks like it's pretty funny. Check it out. How
about another moment here for a message break touch All right,
(31:34):
let's get back to it. So we were talking about
the mafia. Um, because Jack Ruby owned a nightclub, Everybody's
just like, well, he's went down with the mob. What's more,
Lee Harvey Oswald probably was acting on behalf of the
mob because he had an uncle in New Orleans who
was mafia connected. Mobbed up, as they say, Is that
what they say? Yeah? But um, apparently there's no evidence
(31:56):
that Oswald and his uncle communicated at all, and the
these connections are fairly h tenuous at best. Jack Ruby
himself said that the reason he did it was because
he wanted to spare Jacqueline and Caroline the heartbreak of
(32:16):
having to come back to Dallas to testify against Lee
Harvey Oswald. That's what he officially said. And apparently there's
a transcript of and it is just hearsay, but it's
um Oswald talking with his lawyer saying that, Um, he's
saying like this whole charade we're doing that. He that
(32:39):
he shot Oswald while he was blacked out, and he
he can't be held responsible. That it's all just it's
just just stupid, and they should go with the truth that,
you know, he did this because he wanted to spare Jackie. Interesting,
that's supposedly it. But then apparently also it's supposedly he
said that that was a charade as well, So who knows. Well.
(33:00):
Another theory is that it was the CIA and it
was an inside job. Kennedy had criticized their practices and
um was, you know, trying to scale down Vietnam, and
those weren't very popular things to do at the time
if you were in the government. And so a lot
of people say, you know what, Lennon Johnson might have
orchestrated this whole thing, and it was an inside job
(33:22):
with the CIA. They're like, he barely ever wore pants,
for God's sake. Uh. I don't know if this remained
true to her death, but both Bobby Kennedy and Jackie
Kennedy at one point I believe that quote he was
felled by domestic opponents. Um. And of course Bobby died
(33:43):
not too long after five years but um, I don't
know if Jackie held that opinion her entire life. I'm
not sure about that. I'm curious, but it seems to
ring a bell that like she was suspicious of LBJ. Yeah. Um,
I know. Since two thousand, there have been five legit
tenured historians that IT published studies, and four or the
five concluded that there was probably some larger conspiracy at work,
(34:06):
but none of them agreed on what it was, so
it's it's hard to get a consensus. So ultimately, what
the what it came down to the official line was
that there were Um, there was a rifle that had
Oswald's fingerprints on it that was found at the crime scene,
that there is a picture in existence that of Oswald
(34:26):
holding that exact same rifle before the crime was committed. Um,
he had already tried to kill a general. Yeah. And
the fact that he said well it's all over now
when he was apprehended. You take all this together, everybody
who a lot of people think it was Oswald. That's
the official line, right, Yeah, And the Suppruter film has
(34:48):
been used to that. You know, hey, how can you
shoot someone from this direction? And they had to go
that direction? Um, there were other films of the incident,
but the Supruter is the most complete. I did look
at some of the others. I've never seen any of
those before. It's weird to see it from different angles, yeah,
if you're used to seeing just the Brooder film. UM. So,
(35:08):
the Warrant Commission did not put this issue to bed
at all, even back then. Uh. The there was another
commission that took place in nineteen seventy six, the House
Select Committee on Assassinations, and they investigated both JFK and
(35:29):
Martin Luther King's assassinations. And this is a group of
UM House representatives who, you know, it's true, are known
for being the rabble rousers of the government, that brands
of government. UM. But they basically investigated this, carried out
a full investigation and found that, you know what, we
actually think that JFK did die as a result of
(35:51):
a conspiracy. We don't think it was the mob, we
don't think it was the c i A, we don't
think it was the FBI, and we don't think it
was the Cubans. But we do believe that it was
a conspiracy and that um Lee Harvey Oswald did not
act alone. This is the House of Representatives saying that, yeah,
well they initially said that there were four shots, but
(36:12):
they were actually wrong. And then later we can did
that um with acoustic evidence and said, you know what,
we were wrong on that and they did never find
any like hard evidence. But was there did they remain
true to that statement? Yeah, that was never their final report.
Interesting yeah, um, yeah, that it was part of a conspiracy.
So that definitely didn't quell any No. And as a
(36:33):
matter of fact, it's like, oh, well, the House of
Representatives just said Kennedy was killed as part of it
a conspiracy, like if if it was dying down before
it flared right back up. And there was another one
almost at the same time, a Rockefeller Commission by Vice
President Nelson Rockefeller. And a lot of people think that
the Rockefeller Commission was basically just like a fact finding
(36:55):
committee that was there to basically cover up and um
derail any other investigations. Really yeah, kind of like we
got this, we got this. You know. It didn't work though,
because of the House Select Committee. Well, they invalidated one
of our favorite little parts of the theory, the three
tramps theory. Um. At the time, there were these three
(37:16):
vagrants that were detained by police that had been traveling
by boxcars supposedly, and um, that's how they travel often,
that is how they travel. And two of the men
for a while, we're believed to have been E. Howard
Hunt and Frank Sturgis, who were the dudes who broke
into Watergate, which would be a nice little coincidence. Yeah.
(37:38):
Well there's a whole side by side photographic comparison of
the two. I mean, it looks a lot like them.
Well it does. Um, the FBI got experts to do
the same thing though that said, no, that that's not them. Uh.
And the third guy, And if you're a conspiracy theorists,
you're like, oh, okay, well thanks, FBI appreciate that. I
believe you. Um. The third guy was rumored to be
(38:02):
what he Harrelson's dad, Charles Harrison. He was a hit
man and he they were estranged. By the way, what
he Harrelson is not like he doesn't talk about this much.
It's not one of his favorite topics. Sorry, we got
to talk about it. But um, he he killed a
federal judge and then when he was caught in a
standoff in nineteen eighty high on cocaine. He said I
(38:26):
killed Kennedy too, and then later on recanted that and said,
I just said that because I was high on cocaine. Yeah,
and I was trying to elongate my life. And like
they I don't think they would have killed me if
they if I had information. That's what he said in
a in an interview from prison. But conspiracy theorists latched
onto this and said he's the third tramp. He was
(38:46):
the youngest one of the three. And the pictures kind
of look alike, you know it to Harrison's dad was
one of a trio of men who killed JFK. Well,
all of this could have been put to bed if
the dudes look nothing like the other guys, but they
all kind of did. So another thing to add field
to the fire for sure. And we should say also,
there's um even more like you were saying, the CIA
still still will not declassify documents that they have about
(39:12):
the JFK assassination. That's not helping things. Something did come
to light though, from UM investigations into the CIA. The
guy named George Joannity's he Um was a CIA agent
who was basically in charge of a group of anti
Cuban Student Dissidents right or anti Castro Cuban student dissidents,
(39:37):
and he was running their operation in Miami and New Orleans.
They actually beat up Lee Harvey Oswald while he was
in New Orleans handing out pamphlets that were pro Cuban
and pro Castro um like a few months before the assassination.
So George Joannity's ran that operation and then later on
(39:58):
in when the House elect Committee was investigating it again,
he was the liaison for the CIA, but no one
told the How Select Committee the involvement he'd had before. Interesting, well, uh,
with Wood, he's dad. He actually had a co conspiracor
that said, you know what, He's confessed this before to
me and even drew maps about where he was hiding
(40:20):
the day it happened. Um. But in arrest records were
released and identified the three tramps as uh Gus Abrams,
Harold Doyle, and John Gedney. It was all sound like
suspicious names and they I think they interviewed a couple
of these guys later in life and they were like, yeah,
(40:40):
we were the guys, and we were just buckscar dudes,
even though we had suits on and we're clean shaven
and oh well, everybody back then was like, even if
you were like just the total complete hobo, you still
wore a suit in Fedora usually. Uh. So again people
(41:02):
point to that and say, these clearly weren't you know,
these guys were paid or you know. And then a
lot of other pinky things happen. People disappeared, witnesses disappeared. Um,
it's it's never going to die. I don't think I
don't think anyone will ever let this go. No, but
that's that's what makes a great conspiracy theory, right. There's
just too many facts outstanding that just can't be put
(41:26):
to bed. So you got anything else, I got nothing else.
If you want to learn more about this, or if
this piqued your interest, you should definitely check out our
buddies over at Stuff. They don't want you to know.
They have a huge, awesome body of work, um that
they've put together over the years and continue to do so.
Uh And you can also read this article on how
stuff works dot com by typing JFK into the search
(41:49):
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search part, it means it's time for a listener mail.
I'm gonna call this Chinese zombies from Sam LaRussa. Hey, guys,
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whole two people, my girlfriend and I still it's pretty great. Yeah.
We listen to you all the time and as you
(42:10):
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I have an incident though to write you about where
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(42:54):
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(43:37):
on the job and then using our work to uh
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Thanks to both of you for holding things down for us,
(43:59):
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(44:40):
the all new Toyota Corolla
Brought to you by the all New Toyota Corolla. Welcome
to you Stuff you should know Fromdhouse Stuff Works dot Com. Hey,
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, There's Charles W.
Chuck Bryant, and very appropriately for this one, we have
(00:23):
our buddy Matt, who's guest producing because he knows how
to do that kind of thing in addition to his
awesome show stuff they don't want to know, which he
does with our other friend Ben. And uh, it's it
covers conspiracy theories. And we are podcasting on who killed
JFK the day before the anniversary of that Fateful Day anniversary,
(00:45):
right fiftieth anniversary November nine in Dallas. And so you
made a joke that Matt was just gonna be over
there the whole time going shia. Really uh huh. Yeah,
it wasn't a mob. Yeah, three tramps whatever. I like
the three trans want It's it's ridiculous, but it's my
favorite one. Yeah, I got some good stuff on that
(01:06):
um In two thousand three, Josh An ABC News poll
came out ten years ago, seventy of Americans believe the
assassination of John F. Kennedy was part of a broader plot.
What percentage believe that and believe that Lee Harvey Oswald
acted alone. Well, so it's the thing. It's it will
(01:27):
not die. No, it won't. It never will, I don't think. Well,
it's very much entrenched in popular culture as well too,
Like even it's become a parody of itself as well. Yeah,
you know, was just the idea that there's this outstanding
question that will never be put to rest. Yeah, Like
Lone Gunmen and Grassy Knoll, like all these are almost
(01:48):
like buzz terms. Now, Yeah, the Lone Gunmen, they made
an appearance in the X Files, they were recurring characters.
Trio of Guys, Uh and the Misfits have a song
about the afk assassination. Um magic Bullet but there's a
band called Magic Bullets. There's all sorts of stuff. Um,
(02:09):
So let's get into this because I think our colleague
Jonathan's Tricklin of tech Stuff did a really good job
of like handling what could have easily been like a
fifty page quagmire. And he basically says like, but here's
all the facts, and this is why the what's on
(02:30):
the surface is probably the likeliest thing to happen and happened.
We should see U a little bit here. There are
hundreds of books written about various conspiracies, uh conspiracy theories
on the JFK assassination, and we are we don't have
like eighteen episodes to dedicate to this, so this will
(02:51):
be a skimming of the topic. UM. I don't want
anyone to be like, oh, Josh and Chuck are gonna
get down the bottom of this, like people, that's some
people's life's were, you know, dedicated to this? Yeah. I mean,
if we're anything, we're dilettants. Every week we go from
one subject to the next. That is true. So I
guess let's begin at the beginning, just to get it
(03:13):
all out on the table. Okay, all right, Okay, so Chucky.
On November eighth, nineteen sixty three, UM, the Secret Service
found the proposed route for the president Presidential Murtorcaide's visit
to Dallas. And there was a reason the president was
(03:33):
coming to Dallas. It was a very good reason. And UM,
this is why he was in Texas, why he was
trying to basically sort of unite the Democratic Party. Um,
he was meeting with with his vice president and the
governor of Texas, and there was some bickering going on
within the party and he basically wanted to He's trying
(03:55):
to get reelected, is what he was doing, right, But
that was a big part of it. But it is true.
Governor Connelly Um and Senator Richard Yarborough were publicly feuding.
Um and they're both Democrats, so basically their great father
was going to come and make peace with them among
them publicly tour the state of Texas to help him
(04:16):
self get reelected, but also to show Texas like, hey,
the Texas Democrats are all family. Here. Family fights sometimes,
but we're still all family and we still have the
same grand vision. I know, I'm a Catholic from New England,
but we're all the same. It me nine Texan. Uh so, okay,
where are we? They find out the route from love
Field to um Daly Plaza. They publicize that in the newspapers.
(04:43):
Everyone knew about it because you know people, they wanted
people to come out and wave like they did on
November nine. The route was published in the papers and
the published one Yes. And then on November twenty ninety three,
that fateful day, Air Force one lands at love Field
the President gets in his presidential limousine and they started
(05:04):
making their way toward Deeley Plaza, along with Governor Connelly
and his wife and of course Jackie and then a
couple of secret service dudes. That's in the one car.
In a car behind them is lb J Senator Yarborough
and some other secret service guys. Right, that's right. So
they're apparently as they were headed toward Deely Plausa, they
got delayed because um, Kennedy stopped and uh kind of
(05:27):
soaked up the people waving and cheering and all that
and gave gave some back to him. Yeah, and so
they were a little bit delayed, um getting to Deely Plaza.
But when they did, at about twelve thirty, as they
were arriving in the presidential motorcade, a shot rang out
and then there was two more shots at least. Yeah,
(05:51):
and uh with the second shot, they think the president
he threw his hands up to his neck and Jackie
leaned over to kind of like say what's going on,
and then all of a sudden, the back right side
of the President's head blew off. Yes, it is very graphic.
(06:13):
If you see the slowed down enhanced Zapruder film on
YouTube today. Very affecting too. It's really sad. Yeah, it's
terribly sad. And this was not even a part of
our generation. Like this kind of stuff still makes people
like our parents breakdown sometimes, you know. So that was
thirty Within about anywhere between four and eight seconds, at
(06:35):
least three shots were fired, one missed probably the second
and third one hit the president first in the back
of the neck, exited his throat, and the third one
blew his head off. Yeah, let's talk about the that
magic bullet since we should go ahead and clear that up.
H it hit I guess this is a second bullet
that passed through his throat. It went on to hit
(06:57):
Governor Connelly in the back, but in his armpit. Yeah,
below the right armpit. Um exited below the right nipple.
Um then hit his wrist that was in his lap,
and then continue through the wrist through his left thigh.
And that's why they call it the magic bullet. And
if you've seen Oliver Stone's movie, they kind of, you know,
m make fun of it in court like that is
(07:18):
one magic bullet. That's where it got the name back
into the left back into the left Remember the Seinfeld thing,
yeah with the spit with Keith hernandez. Um. But and
I remember my brother in law, the Marine, explaining to
me years ago that bullets tumble and can do some
really crazy things, like he's seen it happen on firing
(07:40):
ranges and and pus. Also, this is a very very
powerful bullet. Yeah. It was a six point five millimeter bullet,
which is basically like a little um howits her shell? Yeah,
it's huge and it travels very quickly. Yeah, and um,
they have done test that, even though it seems unlikely,
that show that it is possible that a bullet can
(08:02):
change directions and do kind of crazy things once it
starts hitting bone and other things. Yeah. So um that was,
like you said, the second bullet most likely. Um, Within
just a few seconds after the first shot, Kennedy is
lying there, um motionless. Jackie's like reaching back across the
trunk of the car. Yeah, trying to get help from
(08:24):
a secret Service agent who I believe jumps into the car. Yeah.
Well actually they they think that she was picked up
part of his brain tissue. Okay, I heard that before too. Yeah,
I looked into that today, but I was watching the
repruter film and it looks it looked to me like
she was reaching back like help. But I've heard that
before as well. Well. Apparently she was quoted um by
(08:46):
I think Connolly's wife and one other person at the
time of saying he's dead and look, I have I
have his brain in my hand. Um. She I read
her testimony for the Warran Commission and she says she
didn't even remember any of that. But whether or not
that's true, it's awful. So when she was trying to
hold his head together on the way to the hospital, Yeah,
(09:10):
So in the car behind them, uh, a Secret Service
agent pounces on LBJ and like throws him onto the
seat and lays on top of him. Um. I think
his name is Rufus young Blood, the CIA or the
Secret Service agent. The motor kid just takes off to
the hospital park Memorial Parkland Parkland Memorial and um again,
(09:32):
the the motor kid inner dally Plase at twelve thirty.
By one pm, the President has been pronounced dead at
Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas. It was just a few
miles away. Um, so that was one pm. That was
one pm. Um, I guess we should talk about the
grassy Knoll real quick because a lot of people, um
have said, you know, a shot have There were a
(09:55):
lot of misleading and conflicting accounts, which is where a
lot of the trouble started. I witnesses not collaborating stories. Uh.
The acoustics at Dealey Plaza were funky because of all
the buildings and it's three side buildings and then one
side like Grassy Knoll. Basically yeah, so like, where did
the shot come from? I thought it came from over here.
From the sounds, um, it was basically pretty tough to pinpoint.
(10:19):
And the Grassy Knoll there was a police officer named
Clyde hey Good that there are pictures of him, you know,
running towards the Grassy Knoll, and a lot of folks thought, hey,
he's running like towards a suspect, when in fact, he
was running toward another police officer to you know, say, hey,
what should we do? I guess? So the I guess.
The way it's been explained away over the years is
(10:40):
the the acoustics and the fact that that cop was
running towards the Grassy Knoll has made some people think
that there was more than one shooter, and another shooter
was on the grassy knoll. That's right. The official line
is that that's not the case, though, that's right. Um,
so one PM, the president's pronounced dead. At two thirty eight,
UM Johnson, Jackie Kennedy, UH, Johnson's staff, pretty much everybody
(11:06):
was back on Air Force one and UM they called
Bobby Kennedy to ask what to do and to tell
him what had happened. And Bobby Kennedy said, you need
to swear Johnson and before you guys leave the ground.
So they found a judge, brought her on board, and
she swore Johnson in as president, and then they took
off and flew back to Washington. Very famous photo, yeah,
(11:27):
with him being sworn in on board Air Force one,
right with Jackie on NASA's or Jackie Kennedy's face. Just
like the fact that she was able to stand is
pretty amazing. Apparently they turned her in such a way
so that the blood stains were an apparent in the photograph. Man,
I don't know if it was Air Force one yet
it was. UM, alright, so where are we? Uh? Four
(11:52):
minutes after the shooting, Dallas police uh looked at the
Texas School Book Depository building and said, hey, that might
have been where this came from. It's a pretty prime
location for a sniper. And there was an eyewitness named
Howard Brennan who saw a figure in the window and
gave a description which fit Lee Harvey Oswald. So this
(12:14):
this one dude actually saw him in the window on
the sixth floor. Pretty believable that you could see someone
from that range. The guy said, I knew it was
Oswald all along. So there was a cop that was
in the book depository within two minutes of the shooting. Yeah,
Marian Baker was kind of took the initiative to go
ahead and get in there. So we went in there
and he met up with the superintendent of the building,
(12:36):
a guy named Truly, and they started um walking up
the steps and at the second floor they came upon
Lee Harvey Oswald who was leaving. He was leaving. Truly
vouched for Oswald, and Oswald was allowed to leave. And
the reason Truly vouched for Oswald's because just a couple
of weeks before, about a month before, Oswald had gotten
a job at that book depository, so he checked out
(12:59):
as far as Truly was concerned. The officer who was
with Truly said, well, okay, and they kept looking and
a few minutes after that, lieutenant showed up and took
over the crime scene and they started scouring the building
and on the sixth floor they found the sniper's nest
that's right with UM three empty cartridges and the gun
(13:20):
UH telescopic rifle, UH telescopic site, and a bolt action rifle.
And it was pretty much a no brainer at that point,
or at least on the surface. This is where it
came from, right, So, um, after Oswald left his uh
left the book depository, he went to um the place
(13:40):
where he was running a room, the house where he's
running a room, and grabbed a pistol. And as he's
walking along and this is about the same time that
Kennedy's being pronounced dead, he's walking along the street, he
Um encountered a cop named J. D. Tippett, and apparently
Oswald just opened fire on this cop, shot him four times,
killed him instantly. Yeah. Well, he was investigating Oswald because
(14:03):
the the A p B had already come through with
the description of Oswald, and he was like, well, this
guy fits that description. Let me talk to him. And
it didn't take long though I don't think there was
much of a discussion before Oswald shot him and killed him.
And um, actually, when Oswald was finally apprehended, it was
for the murder of the cop. They they didn't know
he had anything to do with Kennedy at the time. Yeah, yeah,
(14:24):
at the time. Uh, he ducked into a theater, the
Texas Theater, into the movie War as Hell, And I
think he snuck in, And that's why they called the
cops because they're like, hey, someone stuck in the theater.
So he would have had a bought a ticket. He
might not have ever been caught. You never know. You
know what's interesting about that, there's all these parallels between
(14:45):
the Lincoln assassination and the Kennedy assassination. Um, some are untrue,
some are just ridiculous. But one of them was that
John Wilkes Booth killed Lincoln in a theater and went
and hit out in a warehouse, and Lee Harvey Oswald
killed Kennedy from where our house and went and hit
out in a theater where he was caught. That's a
pretty good one. I like that one. Um. So he
(15:06):
was apprehended in the theater and reportedly said, well, it's
all over now. But he also said something interesting at
one point to the media I'm a patsy, which has
fueled speculation over the years that, uh, well, we'll get
into the different theories before we go any further. Get this,
the president of the United States of America has just
(15:30):
been shot in front of a crowd in Dallas. That's right.
That's huge, that's enormous. That's what's going on right now.
And there's a man hunt for this guy who's just
been caught for killing a cop. Yeah, so people don't
know that the president's killer has just been caught as well.
(15:50):
That's right. So this is a it's a pretty emotional time. Uh,
and let's talk about Oswald himself. But first, um, let's
do a message break and we'll talk about Oswald when
we come back. A h alright, So here's a little
bit about Lee Harvey Oswald. He was a mixed up guy. Um,
(16:12):
he was sort of an outcast, sort of didn't really
fit in. He was born in Um his father died
two months before he was born, which I think, you know,
probably has a lot to do with emotional scarring later
on and maybe being a mixed up kid. Uh. He
was in an orphanage for a little while with an
older brother and half brother, but his mother was able
to get him back out of that orphanage uh and
(16:36):
raised them age five five when he got taken on
the orphanage, which was enough years to also do some
damage psychologically. I think that probably set the theme because
I read a little bit about what you know, contemporary
reports of him growing up concluded his problem was and
that it was. One social worker said that he believed
(16:58):
his mother doesn't give a damn about him, uh so
uh and that somebody else said that they've never met
a kid more emotionally starved than this guy. Uh So.
I'm quite sure that being left it in an orphanage,
even being picked back up after a while it was,
probably did have a pretty big effect on him on
his development and how he viewed his mother. Well. Yeah,
(17:18):
and when you look at what he did for the
rest of his life, um, it seems like he was
always looking for a new family quote unquote, um, whether
it was the Marxist or the Communists, or Cuba or Russia. Like,
it seems like he never and it's kind of a
it's like one oh one, you know, he was looking
to fit in somehow somewhere with somebody, but at the
(17:41):
same time, it was always on the fringe of wherever
he was at. Yah, you know what I mean, Like
he's never happy with where he was. He wanted to
fit into whatever was counter what he was doing or
with the status quo of where he was right. So
at sixteen he drops out of school and tries to
join the Marine Corps. Um he was too young, so
(18:01):
they said come back later. He wrote the Socialist Party
when he was Socialist Party of America when he was seventeen,
to say, hey, I'm weigh into Marxism and like, can
I come join your club? I guess at the very
least we send me a free button. Uh. And then
at seventeen he reapplied to the Marine Corps and he
was old enough at that point. And turns out he
had quite an act for shooting guns. He's a sharp
(18:26):
shooter during boot camp, but then during the actual ranking
testing only rated as a marksman, which is still really good. Yeah,
just below sharp shoot the sharp shooter the highest or
is that the dead eyes the highest level. I think
sharp shooters size. But at the same time, even while
he was a marine, a Marine marksman, he um he
taught himself Russian. He studied about the Soviet Union and communism.
(18:50):
And this is during the Cold War. This is like
during the most paranoid finger pointing part of the Cold War.
But Oswald's in the Marines, like teaching himself Russian and everything,
see what I mean, like a confused guy. Yeah, but
even still like it's just it's so strange to me
learning about his experience that he was relatively left alone
(19:11):
while expressing pretty publicly this interest in the Soviet Union
and communism during the peak of the Cold War. It's
just I thought, if you had if you even wore
the color red, people like communists get him. But apparently
you could just hide him plain sight or admire the
Soviet Union plain sight. Well, he eventually would find himself
(19:32):
on a watch list because he went to Russia um
under um he obtained a passport falsely with an application
to a college in Switzerland and applied got to Moscow,
applied for citizenship there and they were like yet, and
so he he goes, oh, yeah, if you know, I mean,
I'm gonna kill myself. He basically did the same day
(19:52):
he was rejected by Russia. He slit his wrist and
the warmhearted Soviets were like, well, okay, you can stay
a young man. I thought that was interesting. Yeah, that's
what allowed him to stay. Ye, like, yeah, that's just weird. Yeah,
is so he said, I don't want to be Um. Well,
(20:13):
he he did not officially announce his citizenship in America,
although he expressed interest in doing so. Yeah, he kind
of mouthed off about it, but never actually did it.
That's right. Uh. In Russia he fell in love with
a lady named Marina Prusakova. And you're not going to
try our middle name nicola Venna nice Nikolavna. Yeah, I
(20:36):
think that's right. And um, basically he was like, you know,
we should probably go back to the United States because
it turns out Russia sucks. These breadlines I weren't expecting
them to be so long. Yeah, it said he'd become disenchanted.
I think that's a nice way of saying that Russia sucked. Right,
So he says, Hey, I know a place where you're
gonna love. It's called Texas. Let's move back there. Uh,
(20:59):
just forget the fact that you don't speak any English.
You don't know anybody in Texas. Everybody back in America
thinks I'm a weirdo and I'm your husband. Uh, just
let's go and move to Texas. And she's like, she said,
what did you say in Russian? He's like, nothing in Russian?
And so they moved to Texas and uh, she apparently
(21:19):
very quickly became just she felt isolated, she didn't have
any friends, and a woman named Ruth Payne UM felt
bad for her and took her under her wing and
they became kind of friends. And Ruth Payne will come
into play a little later on. Yeah, and this is
where he was finally sort of um on the radar
of the FBI. Yeah, when he moved back. Yeah, you
can't move to Russia and then come back. And they just,
(21:41):
you know, don't even bother talking to you know, but
they did talk to him and they said, okay, well listen,
if if the USSR gets in touch with you and
want you to do sp N, just let us know. Sure. Okay,
They're like, all right, we'll have a great day. Thanks
for the coffee, ma'am. She's like, what did you say
in Russian? It's pretty remarkable. So on April tenth nine, Um,
(22:04):
another interesting thing happened a few days after losing his job.
He tried to assassinate Major General Edwin Walker. This guy
was a piece of work himself. Yeah, he was a
hardcore right wing conservative, possibly gay man. Oh I hadn't
heard that. Yeah. Later in life, in his seventies, he
was arrested twice for fondling men in public. I wonder
(22:28):
if he was the model for um, the dad in
American beauty. Oh, maybe I could see that then. Yeah.
I mean he never married, and they I don't think
they ever came right out and said he was gay.
But he was arrested twice for fondling police officers. If
that's the case, email and let us know. Okay, Yeah,
(22:48):
which is neither here nor there, but it's interesting. No,
but he he was, like you said, extreme, a right
wing extremist in the very definition of the work. He
was very um, well respected, decorated military leader, like he
was commanding all of the troops in West Germany. At
one point when no he hated the Kennedys. He called
(23:09):
Harry Truman and Eleanor Roosevelt pink, which means that they
were communists sympathizers, which is a big deal. He was
temporarily relieved of his post while he was investigated for that,
and he said, you know what, I'm not even gonna
I'm not going back because the US has given up
his sovereignty to the United Nations and I can't fight
for it any longer. And this guy was so convinced
(23:34):
by his own convictions that he refused a military pension
for years afterwards because he didn't want to have anything
to do with him. Well, apparently he refused it, but
then kind of quietly tried to get it right. Well,
and they gave it to him. Yeah, um, But then
he was celebrated as a great soldier later on in
life and after his death. So another example though of
(23:56):
Oswald is sort of a confused guy, like he tries
to assassinate this right wing conservative general he also was
at a marine. He also killed Kennedy. He was just
sort of like it didn't seem like he knew what
he believed. Well, he believed that Um was the general's name.
Walker was like Hitler in the making. Yeah, basically that
(24:16):
he was an extremist who needed to be taken up,
but he missed. Yeah, from about a hundred feet away,
he shot into his dining room from the street where
he was sitting in a desk and hit the window
pane and uh that you know, made the bullet go
a different directions, so he missed. So Lee Harvey Ostal,
it's basically doing anything he can to insinuate himself in
(24:37):
international global politics. Yeah, but he got away with it
like they never It was a cold case until they
finally caught him and put the you know, I think
his wife was the one who's who fingered him later on, Yeah,
because he comes home and says, hey, we're moving to
New Orleans and she's like, what did you just say?
And so they moved to New Orleans and UM while
(25:01):
they're there, she's like, I've had enough, you're shooting at
um public figures. Now we're moving from Texas to New Orleans.
I'm moving back, and she moved in with her friend
Ruth Payne. And that surely had an effect an impact
on Oswald. There's no way it couldn't because he already
had abandonment issues from his mother. Now his wife leaves
(25:25):
him because he's just crazy, and he's like, well, you
know what, fine, I'm gonna stay here and I'm going
to start a chapter of a pro Cuba pro castro
sympathizer club and I'm gonna be the one and only member,
but I'm gonna be a loudmouth member. I think you
wanted more than one member. But it was another example
(25:45):
of like nobody was interested in this guy. Nobody. Russia
didn't want him, No one joined his club, his wife
left him, Cuba didn't want him. No. He went down
to Mexico and visited the Cuban and Russian embassies, trying
to basically get in them with them, and they're are like,
it's okay, thanks man. Yeah, like nobody was. I think
the words strictly used was no one was ever very
(26:06):
impressed with Oswald. They were unimpressed Soviet and Cuban officials.
I mean, if this guy was a Patsy, he was
the perfect Patsy. Oh yeah, but you can also take
all of this evidence and say, well, this is what
made him do this. Yeah, if he was a Patsy,
you imagine how easy it would have been for like
(26:28):
one of the theories is the mafia, for them to
put their arm around and be like, you're you're a
pretty great guy, right, you know what you should do?
You should kill the president? Yeah? Yeah, he would have
been very easy to manipulate, I imagine because he's also
just twenty four. It when the kid, which is crazy,
um so he uh he left New Orleans, went back
to Dallas, got a job, and about a month later
(26:50):
at the school book depository, Uh shot and killed John F. Kennedy. Yes,
so um Oswald's done is shooting He's called. They started
to investigate his background, and Lynnon Johnson ordered a um
an investigation of full investigation into the Kennedy assassination, what happened,
(27:11):
what lessons learned, all that stuff, And this commission, led
by Chief Justice Earl Warren UH was called the Warrant Commission,
and the report they compiled several hundred page reports called
the Warrant Report. And in addition to the several hundred
page report, they also released twenty six volumes of transcripts
(27:31):
of the hearings that they conducted. So it's this exhaustive
investigation that was very transparent. Supposedly, there's so many documents
that to try to censor them, really censor them, it
would be virtually impossible. So a lot of people point
to the very fact that the Warrant Report is so
voluminous that it is like in fact correct, and it's
(27:55):
not part of a larger cover up at least. Yeah,
and acsuently the article did you read the one in
the New York Times that some people think they're still
documents the CIA won't release. Well, they won't. Well, but
the one anti conspiracy guy that they interviewed said, people
that I don't know how the CIA works that believe
this stuff. He went, there would be no documents period.
(28:17):
They wouldn't be hiding things, they wouldn't exist Operation killed
President Kennedy. Yeah, I mean he's sort of like a
little pad on the head, like you think there are documents,
you sweet little conspiracy theorists. Um, alright, So the warrant
Commission comes out and immediately conspiracy theorists start to suggest
different things, like one theory was that it was an
outside job by the KGB and or Cuba. Right, we
(28:40):
should say, the warrant Commission concluded that Lee Harvey Oswell
killed President Kennedy on his own volution, by himself, um,
without acting at the behester the benefit of anybody else. Yeah,
just a lone, singular, crazed gunman. So the conspiracy theories
are everybody else saying no, that's not the case, and
(29:04):
we gave the example of the Grassy Knoll, the acoustics
and daily plause of the fact that a cop was
running towards the Grassy Knoll, and conflicting eyewitness accounts, like
from the literal beginning of this event. In history, there
have been all sorts of hey, that people have been
able to make conspiracy theories out of, Like there's been
(29:26):
no shortage of all sorts of different weird things that
you can start to piece together with other things and
come up with these very interesting, some um sound conspiracy theories,
but that when you really get down to them, they're
not supported by evidence exactly. I'm glad you said that. Uh.
The KGB or Cuba theory that maybe their governments were
(29:48):
acting out and trying to kill Kennedy had some legs
because the Bay of Pigs had just happened. They were
certainly no friends of Kennedy at the height of the
Cold War. There was definitely a motive there, but um,
there was no evidence to tie Oswald in any substantive
way to either of these countries. No, they looked at
his finances over they went back a year and a
(30:09):
half and looked at his finances to see if there
were any weird payments or whatever, and apparently the only
amount total that they could have they couldn't account for
came to like a hundred and sixty dollars could have
been cash and diamonds, though I guess it could have
been so how they liked the deal. One of the
other popular theories I mentioned was the mob and that
(30:30):
Jack Ruby was working with the mob, and the second
Oswald said I'm a patsy. They're like, we need to
go take care of this, like right now. Yeah, we
haven't mentioned Jack Ruby. Two days after Um, Kennedy was killed, Um,
they were transporting Lee Harvey Oswald and a guy named
Jack Ruby, who was a Dallas nightclub owner, came up
(30:51):
and shot Lee Harvey Oswald in the chest and killed him.
Lee Harvey Oswald actually died in Parkland Memorial, the same
hospital that Kennedy had two days before. Yeah, very famous
photo which has since been made into very funny photo.
Have you seen the band one? No, you never saw that.
It was big years ago. It was, you know, the
photo of Ruby killing Kennedy, and someone went in and
(31:12):
photoshopped and in musical instruments because they're all like have different,
you know, pained expressions. And Jack Ruby's at the keys
and I think Lee Harvey Oswald has a guitar and
it looks like it's pretty funny. Check it out. How
about another moment here for a message break touch All right,
(31:34):
let's get back to it. So we were talking about
the mafia. Um, because Jack Ruby owned a nightclub, Everybody's
just like, well, he's went down with the mob. What's more,
Lee Harvey Oswald probably was acting on behalf of the
mob because he had an uncle in New Orleans who
was mafia connected. Mobbed up, as they say, Is that
what they say? Yeah? But um, apparently there's no evidence
(31:56):
that Oswald and his uncle communicated at all, and the
these connections are fairly h tenuous at best. Jack Ruby
himself said that the reason he did it was because
he wanted to spare Jacqueline and Caroline the heartbreak of
(32:16):
having to come back to Dallas to testify against Lee
Harvey Oswald. That's what he officially said. And apparently there's
a transcript of and it is just hearsay, but it's
um Oswald talking with his lawyer saying that, Um, he's
saying like this whole charade we're doing that. He that
(32:39):
he shot Oswald while he was blacked out, and he
he can't be held responsible. That it's all just it's
just just stupid, and they should go with the truth that,
you know, he did this because he wanted to spare Jackie. Interesting,
that's supposedly it. But then apparently also it's supposedly he
said that that was a charade as well, So who knows. Well.
(33:00):
Another theory is that it was the CIA and it
was an inside job. Kennedy had criticized their practices and
um was, you know, trying to scale down Vietnam, and
those weren't very popular things to do at the time
if you were in the government. And so a lot
of people say, you know what, Lennon Johnson might have
orchestrated this whole thing, and it was an inside job
(33:22):
with the CIA. They're like, he barely ever wore pants,
for God's sake. Uh. I don't know if this remained
true to her death, but both Bobby Kennedy and Jackie
Kennedy at one point I believe that quote he was
felled by domestic opponents. Um. And of course Bobby died
(33:43):
not too long after five years but um, I don't
know if Jackie held that opinion her entire life. I'm
not sure about that. I'm curious, but it seems to
ring a bell that like she was suspicious of LBJ. Yeah. Um,
I know. Since two thousand, there have been five legit
tenured historians that IT published studies, and four or the
five concluded that there was probably some larger conspiracy at work,
(34:06):
but none of them agreed on what it was, so
it's it's hard to get a consensus. So ultimately, what
the what it came down to the official line was
that there were Um, there was a rifle that had
Oswald's fingerprints on it that was found at the crime scene,
that there is a picture in existence that of Oswald
(34:26):
holding that exact same rifle before the crime was committed. Um,
he had already tried to kill a general. Yeah. And
the fact that he said well it's all over now
when he was apprehended. You take all this together, everybody
who a lot of people think it was Oswald. That's
the official line, right, Yeah, And the Suppruter film has
(34:48):
been used to that. You know, hey, how can you
shoot someone from this direction? And they had to go
that direction? Um, there were other films of the incident,
but the Supruter is the most complete. I did look
at some of the others. I've never seen any of
those before. It's weird to see it from different angles, yeah,
if you're used to seeing just the Brooder film. UM. So,
(35:08):
the Warrant Commission did not put this issue to bed
at all, even back then. Uh. The there was another
commission that took place in nineteen seventy six, the House
Select Committee on Assassinations, and they investigated both JFK and
(35:29):
Martin Luther King's assassinations. And this is a group of
UM House representatives who, you know, it's true, are known
for being the rabble rousers of the government, that brands
of government. UM. But they basically investigated this, carried out
a full investigation and found that, you know what, we
actually think that JFK did die as a result of
(35:51):
a conspiracy. We don't think it was the mob, we
don't think it was the c i A, we don't
think it was the FBI, and we don't think it
was the Cubans. But we do believe that it was
a conspiracy and that um Lee Harvey Oswald did not
act alone. This is the House of Representatives saying that, yeah,
well they initially said that there were four shots, but
(36:12):
they were actually wrong. And then later we can did
that um with acoustic evidence and said, you know what,
we were wrong on that and they did never find
any like hard evidence. But was there did they remain
true to that statement? Yeah, that was never their final report.
Interesting yeah, um, yeah, that it was part of a conspiracy.
So that definitely didn't quell any No. And as a
(36:33):
matter of fact, it's like, oh, well, the House of
Representatives just said Kennedy was killed as part of it
a conspiracy, like if if it was dying down before
it flared right back up. And there was another one
almost at the same time, a Rockefeller Commission by Vice
President Nelson Rockefeller. And a lot of people think that
the Rockefeller Commission was basically just like a fact finding
(36:55):
committee that was there to basically cover up and um
derail any other investigations. Really yeah, kind of like we
got this, we got this. You know. It didn't work though,
because of the House Select Committee. Well, they invalidated one
of our favorite little parts of the theory, the three
tramps theory. Um. At the time, there were these three
(37:16):
vagrants that were detained by police that had been traveling
by boxcars supposedly, and um, that's how they travel often,
that is how they travel. And two of the men
for a while, we're believed to have been E. Howard
Hunt and Frank Sturgis, who were the dudes who broke
into Watergate, which would be a nice little coincidence. Yeah.
(37:38):
Well there's a whole side by side photographic comparison of
the two. I mean, it looks a lot like them.
Well it does. Um, the FBI got experts to do
the same thing though that said, no, that that's not them. Uh.
And the third guy, And if you're a conspiracy theorists,
you're like, oh, okay, well thanks, FBI appreciate that. I
believe you. Um. The third guy was rumored to be
(38:02):
what he Harrelson's dad, Charles Harrison. He was a hit
man and he they were estranged. By the way, what
he Harrelson is not like he doesn't talk about this much.
It's not one of his favorite topics. Sorry, we got
to talk about it. But um, he he killed a
federal judge and then when he was caught in a
standoff in nineteen eighty high on cocaine. He said I
(38:26):
killed Kennedy too, and then later on recanted that and said,
I just said that because I was high on cocaine. Yeah,
and I was trying to elongate my life. And like
they I don't think they would have killed me if
they if I had information. That's what he said in
a in an interview from prison. But conspiracy theorists latched
onto this and said he's the third tramp. He was
(38:46):
the youngest one of the three. And the pictures kind
of look alike, you know it to Harrison's dad was
one of a trio of men who killed JFK. Well,
all of this could have been put to bed if
the dudes look nothing like the other guys, but they
all kind of did. So another thing to add field
to the fire for sure. And we should say also,
there's um even more like you were saying, the CIA
still still will not declassify documents that they have about
(39:12):
the JFK assassination. That's not helping things. Something did come
to light though, from UM investigations into the CIA. The
guy named George Joannity's he Um was a CIA agent
who was basically in charge of a group of anti
Cuban Student Dissidents right or anti Castro Cuban student dissidents,
(39:37):
and he was running their operation in Miami and New Orleans.
They actually beat up Lee Harvey Oswald while he was
in New Orleans handing out pamphlets that were pro Cuban
and pro Castro um like a few months before the assassination.
So George Joannity's ran that operation and then later on
(39:58):
in when the House elect Committee was investigating it again,
he was the liaison for the CIA, but no one
told the How Select Committee the involvement he'd had before. Interesting, well, uh,
with Wood, he's dad. He actually had a co conspiracor
that said, you know what, He's confessed this before to
me and even drew maps about where he was hiding
(40:20):
the day it happened. Um. But in arrest records were
released and identified the three tramps as uh Gus Abrams,
Harold Doyle, and John Gedney. It was all sound like
suspicious names and they I think they interviewed a couple
of these guys later in life and they were like, yeah,
(40:40):
we were the guys, and we were just buckscar dudes,
even though we had suits on and we're clean shaven
and oh well, everybody back then was like, even if
you were like just the total complete hobo, you still
wore a suit in Fedora usually. Uh. So again people
(41:02):
point to that and say, these clearly weren't you know,
these guys were paid or you know. And then a
lot of other pinky things happen. People disappeared, witnesses disappeared. Um,
it's it's never going to die. I don't think I
don't think anyone will ever let this go. No, but
that's that's what makes a great conspiracy theory, right. There's
just too many facts outstanding that just can't be put
(41:26):
to bed. So you got anything else, I got nothing else.
If you want to learn more about this, or if
this piqued your interest, you should definitely check out our
buddies over at Stuff. They don't want you to know.
They have a huge, awesome body of work, um that
they've put together over the years and continue to do so.
Uh And you can also read this article on how
stuff works dot com by typing JFK into the search
(41:49):
bar and see what comes up. And since I said
search part, it means it's time for a listener mail.
I'm gonna call this Chinese zombies from Sam LaRussa. Hey, guys,
don't know you're aware of this, but you have a
bit of a cult here in Wuhan, China. Awesome a
whole two people, my girlfriend and I still it's pretty great. Yeah.
We listen to you all the time and as you
(42:10):
tell us about the stuff we should know. Um, we're
both English teachers, and outside of with each other, the
Stuff you shoud Know podcast is just about the only
English speaking we get on a day to day basis. Um.
I have an incident though to write you about where
Stuff you Should Know save my butt And it just
happened yesterday. Wu Hand schools have a three hour siesta
(42:31):
to avoid the hottest part of the day, and I
usually use the time to plan lessons or take a nap. Um.
Yesterday I decided to forego planning lessons in just nap
and woke up a mirror twenty minutes before my afternoon
dred and twenty minute lesson. Completely unprepared. I started panic,
But then remember, do zombies really exist? Stuff you Should
Know podcast I listened to just earlier that day. My
(42:54):
students are well aware of the zombie apocalypse theory. At
the end of the world. But neither I nor they
knew anything about the history of zombies, and I had
been shockingly irresponsible regarding zombie apocalypse survival strategies. So I
jumped online, ran off twenty two copies of how zombies
work from how stuffworks dot com, highlighted some very good
vocabulary and some grammar patterns, and had a two hour
(43:16):
lesson ready to go in twenty minutes. All thanks to you, guys.
So there you have it. How you saved my butt
and turned it otherwise really awkward two hours of nothingness
into a kick butt zombie survival lesson. Hopefully your cult
following will grow to five, maybe even six people. Uh
and Sam Larusa, thank you for being lazy and napping
(43:37):
on the job and then using our work to uh
do your job. But not really though, because he could
have just been like, oh, well, I guess they're just
gonna sit there quietly for two hours. He like, really hustled,
that's true, he took initiative. Uh. And thanks to you
and you're his wife, right for girlfriend, Thanks to girl friend.
Thanks to both of you for holding things down for us,
(43:59):
and Han, we appreciate that if you are located at
some remote outposts of the world or in some bustling cosmopolis.
Whatever we want to hear from you. You can tweet
to us at s Y s K podcast. You can
join us on Facebook dot com, slish stuff you Should
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Podcast at Discovery dot com, and as always, you can
(44:20):
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40s and Free Agents: NFL Draft Season
Daniel Jeremiah of Move the Sticks and Gregg Rosenthal of NFL Daily join forces to break down every team's needs this offseason.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.