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1:06

Have you ever told a friend, oh I'm

1:09

fine, when you really felt

1:11

just so overwhelmed, or

1:14

sent a text, can't sleep,

1:17

are you awake, when you couldn't find

1:19

the words to say, I'm scared

1:21

to be alone with my thoughts right now, then

1:23

this is your sign to reach out to the

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988 Lifeline for

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24 7 free confidential

1:29

support. You don't have to hide how

1:31

you feel. Text, call, or

1:34

chat anytime. The

1:48

how and the who is just scenery for the

1:50

public. Oswald, Ruby,

1:52

Cooper, the Mafia. Keeps them

1:55

guessing like some kind of parlor game. Prevents

1:58

them from asking the most important question. Why?

2:01

Why was Kennedy killed? Who

2:03

benefited? Who has the power to cover

2:05

it up? Who? The

2:08

organizing principle of any society, Mr. Garrison,

2:11

is for war. The authority

2:13

of the state over its people resides

2:15

in its war powers. Kennedy

2:18

wanted to end the Cold War in his second term. He

2:21

wanted to call off the moon race, cooperate

2:23

with the Soviets. He signed

2:25

a treaty to ban nuclear testing. He

2:27

refused to invade Cuba in 1962. He

2:32

set out to withdraw from Vietnam. But

2:35

all that ended on the 22nd November

2:37

1963. So

2:42

that, Dominic, was Mr. X,

2:44

played by Donald Sutherland in

2:47

Oliver Stone's JFK, which

2:49

came out in 1991 and is a very

2:51

serious and sober documentary on the JFK assassination.

2:54

I mean, of course it

2:56

is, isn't it? It's an

2:58

absolute melange of assassination, related

3:00

theories, and conspiracy concoctions. It is.

3:03

So I saw JFK at the cinema, Tom, when

3:06

I was a teenager. And it

3:09

was actually the film that got me

3:11

interested in American history. And were you

3:13

convinced when you watched it? No, I

3:15

sort of knew it was controversial because

3:17

I'd read articles in Empire magazine and

3:19

in the newspapers about the

3:22

controversies because people had criticized it, historians

3:24

had criticized it. Think

3:27

about whether or not it was true. What I loved

3:29

was the idea that the assassination opened up a

3:32

kind of bigger story, which was the

3:34

Cold War, the military industrial complex, the

3:36

Vietnam War, all of this

3:39

stuff, bi services, FBI, CIA. Yeah, I

3:41

loved that idea. So

3:44

I wrote an incredibly boring A-level

3:47

research essay about

3:50

Canada's domestic policies. And it

3:52

was at that point that I started to doubt

3:54

Oliver Stone's film, because it struck

3:56

me that he hadn't been sufficiently radical.

4:00

to explain this vast conspiracy.

4:02

It's the Mafia in it

4:04

as well, aren't they? The

4:06

Mafia, anti Castro, exiles, the

4:08

CIA, the FBI, the

4:11

Secret Service. We will talk about Oliver Stone's film a

4:13

little bit later in this podcast. But in

4:15

a weird way, the Oliver Stone film, it

4:17

is like a sort of the history of post-war

4:19

America and microcosm, isn't it? Because it has all

4:21

these anxieties. But I was

4:23

about to say packed into it. It's not packed into it,

4:25

because it's a sprawling, incredibly long film. We

4:29

watched it a couple of days ago, actually, at home. And

4:31

I couldn't believe how long it was. We

4:34

had to divide it over multiple days because

4:36

I kept falling asleep. But do you think

4:38

that's because your attention span has faded due

4:40

to the impact of TikTok? Yes, I spent

4:42

so much time on TikTok, Tom, that I

4:44

can no longer watch it. Half an hour.

4:47

Well, five minutes. Yeah, exactly. And

4:49

obviously, the Stone film is merely an

4:51

example of this enormous industry, because the

4:54

Kennedy conspiracy theory industry is,

4:56

I suppose, bigger than today, even the

4:58

Freemasons conspiracy theory, to mention one that

5:00

we've already done. Sure. I mean, it's

5:02

up there with Atlantis and

5:04

indeed aliens. And aliens may feature

5:06

in this episode, may they not?

5:08

Because today, we are talking about

5:10

the conspiracy theories, how

5:12

credible any of them may be, and

5:15

you are going to give your judgment.

5:17

My verdict. Oh, my word. As a

5:19

distinguished historian in modern America. What pressure?

5:22

What pressure? Never have I entered a podcast, Tom,

5:24

under such enormous pressure. Sure, you're caped. So one

5:26

thing I will just say before we start, I

5:28

enjoyed your Donald Sutherland. He's, of

5:30

course, Canadian. I don't know whether

5:32

you tried to incorporate that in the... Yes, I did.

5:34

Yeah, very nice. Very nice. So he

5:36

would say oot instead of out. That's what

5:39

Canadians apparently do. Well, unless he's playing an

5:41

American. Which is what he was doing, of

5:43

course. Yeah. Hence the complexity of the accent.

5:45

It's an incredibly sophisticated accent, because I'm playing

5:47

a Canadian, playing an American. I know that

5:49

we've been getting some grief from Canadians for

5:53

not doing any episodes on Canada. So

5:55

this is one. But... No,

5:57

it's count. So

6:01

I wanted to do an homage to the

6:03

Canadian accent to reassure all our Canadian listeners

6:05

that we love and value you very, very

6:07

much. Oh, that is kind. All right. Let's

6:09

get back to the Kennedy assassination. So

6:12

we talked last time, didn't we, about

6:14

the Dallas Police Department's investigation, which I

6:16

think we both agree was

6:19

pretty thorough, actually. They made

6:21

mistakes. They obviously made one

6:24

horrendous mistake in allowing Jack Ruby into

6:26

the basement when they were bringing Oswald

6:28

out. But I mean, as we explained

6:30

last time, they had gone to tremendous

6:32

efforts to try to stop that happening,

6:34

hadn't they? Yeah. But

6:36

otherwise, they actually, I think, did reasonably

6:38

well. And they think absolutely that they've

6:40

got their man, don't they? So Captain

6:42

Fritz, the guy who's basically

6:44

conducting the interrogation of Oswald, at

6:46

two o'clock on the day after

6:48

the assassination, he comes out and

6:51

he speaks to a television reporter

6:53

and he says, I can tell you that this case

6:55

is cinched, that this man killed the president. There's

6:58

no question in my mind about it. Apparently, he had

7:00

a very gravelly accent. Right. Yeah. He

7:03

assumes it is absolutely done. It's a

7:06

done deal. But presumably, it's Ruby's murder that changes

7:08

that. It does in the long run. Everybody

7:11

thinks it's done, I would say, by

7:13

the 23rd of November. That's the day

7:15

after the assassination. On the evening of

7:17

the murder itself, so the 22nd, President

7:19

Johnson, as he had suddenly become, spoke

7:21

to J. Edgar Hoover at the FBI

7:23

and said, obviously, I want you to look into this.

7:26

There's no more enforcement agencies, not just

7:28

the Dallas law enforcement agencies, should

7:31

look into this. And the following day,

7:33

so the same day that Fritz is talking to the press,

7:35

Hoover sent Johnson the FBI's

7:38

preliminary findings. And they

7:40

list all the evidence and they

7:42

say, yeah, we completely agree with the Dallas Police

7:44

Department. There's absolutely no doubt in our minds, everything

7:46

points to Lee Harvey Oswald's guilt. But

7:48

as you say, the murder of

7:50

Oswald by Jack Ruby changes everything.

7:53

Because now Oswald cannot be put on the stand. There

7:56

will be no trial. There will

7:59

be no resolution. It looks as if he's

8:01

been silenced. Yes, exactly. Even at

8:03

that point, people are already

8:05

talking actually about should

8:07

we have some form of

8:10

resolution anyway? Because

8:12

we need to put to rest public doubts.

8:14

They know that there will be conspiracy theories.

8:16

Well, there already are, aren't there? In Paris

8:18

and London, we talked about that in the

8:20

previous episode. Yes, the people are already saying,

8:22

is it a conspiracy? At that point, people

8:24

are saying, is it either a communist conspiracy

8:26

or is it something like the Ku Klux Klan?

8:28

So actually Lyndon Johnson at Lovefield

8:30

waiting to fly off to be inaugurated.

8:33

He had said, should

8:35

we go back to Washington? Is this a communist

8:37

conspiracy? I mean, that's a reasonable supposition to make.

8:40

So on the afternoon of the 24th, that

8:42

is the day that Oswald was killed by

8:44

Jack Ruby, the Dean of Yale

8:46

Law School, a guy called Eugene Rostow, whose

8:49

brother Walt ended up becoming

8:51

Lyndon Johnson's National Security Advisor. Ooh,

8:53

very ambitious. So the Rostows

8:55

are a Russian Jewish family who

8:58

become very, very fierce anti-communists, or

9:01

say they say. Well, Walt Rostow

9:03

is famously associated with getting Lyndon

9:05

Johnson into Vietnam and being the

9:08

ultra-hawk on Vietnam. Anyway, that's by

9:11

the by. Or is it? Eugene

9:13

Rostow calls, well, maybe,

9:15

yes. He calls one

9:18

of Johnson's aides and he says, I think

9:20

we should have a presidential commission. Johnson

9:22

gets the message. Hoover also thinks

9:24

that they should do something, have something

9:27

public. Hoover, that Sunday afternoon, the 24th

9:29

of November, actually calls a Johnson aide,

9:31

we know from kind of recordings and

9:33

transcripts and so on. And he says,

9:35

we should have something done so that

9:37

we can, and I quote, convince the

9:40

public that Oswald is the real assassin.

9:42

Now, for conspiracy theorists, that is a kind of smoking

9:45

gun. That is absolute

9:47

evidence that J. Edgar Hoover

9:49

and the Johnson White House were plotting to

9:51

implicate Oswald. Because Oswald had said, I'm a

9:53

patsy. I'm a patsy, yeah. That they're talking

9:56

to frame him. Of course, there

9:58

is another way of interpreting that conversation, which is a

14:00

full of government and you believe there is a deep state in

14:02

all these things. And you would look

14:04

at these names, you would look at the

14:06

former president of the World Bank, John McCloy,

14:08

the ultimate Washington insider, the former CIA chief,

14:10

Alan Dulles, US Senator Richard Russell

14:12

from Georgia and so on and so forth. And you would

14:15

say, Oh, come on, you can't expect

14:17

us to believe that these people are not

14:19

implicated in the conspiracy. But Russell is very

14:21

reluctant, isn't he? He kind of has to

14:23

be strong armed. Nobody really wants to do

14:25

it, to be completely honest with you. They

14:27

just think, God, a massive hassle. I'll

14:29

get a lot of grief. I don't want

14:31

to be staring at ballistics reports for the next

14:33

few months. Yeah. And it's

14:35

a painful and unsettling thing to have to

14:38

investigate, I imagine. I mean, lots of them

14:40

must have named Kennedy personally. It is. Richard

14:42

Russell, for example, who's a, he's a segregationist

14:44

democratic senator, but he's also one

14:47

of these people who's been in the Senate since the

14:49

14th century. And he is,

14:51

you know, a very institutionalized kind of character. He

14:54

doesn't want to do it. And Johnson actually says

14:56

to him, well, I've told everyone you're doing it.

14:58

It's too late. You have to do it to

15:00

serve the nation. And he very grumpily says,

15:02

OK, fine, I'll do it. Hoover is

15:04

always a bit, you know, I mean, not not

15:06

ambivalent. He's actually extremely anxious about

15:09

the Warren Commission because he is worried

15:11

that it will embarrass the FBI, that

15:13

it will come out that the FBI

15:16

had been aware of Oswald and

15:18

they hadn't really done enough about it. And

15:21

he thinks, oh, we'll just look like idiots.

15:23

And he doesn't really massively cooperate with the

15:25

commission. So the commission doesn't depend on the

15:27

FBI to do its work for it. They

15:29

do their own work independently. So

15:32

conspiracy theorists sometimes say the FBI were

15:34

actually controlling the Warren Commission. They weren't.

15:37

Hoover is very jealous of his

15:39

institutional position. So there's no

15:41

way he would cooperate very enthusiastically

15:44

with a different kind of organization. And they do

15:46

all this work for the next year. Their

15:49

report is almost 900 pages long. The

15:53

supporting volumes of testimony. There's

15:55

26 volumes, Tom. Three

15:58

thousand different documents. 150

16:00

witness statements. I mean, it is a monumental

16:03

undertaking. So, Don DeLillo in his

16:05

novel Libra about Lee Harvey Oswald

16:08

and the assassination, he makes the

16:10

famous comment that this is the

16:13

kind of thing that James Joyce, if

16:15

he'd lived to be 100 and moved

16:17

to Iowa City, would have written. The

16:19

point being that it contains within it

16:21

a complete and total portrait of America

16:24

in the late 50s and early 60s,

16:26

a bit like, you know, Ulysses, the

16:28

portrait of Dublin. I

16:30

mean, imagine as a resource for

16:32

future historians. Unbelievably useful. Yeah, absolutely.

16:34

Because I mean, if you think

16:37

about those 500 witnesses and

16:39

people they interview, they're everybody from

16:42

policemen, doctors, drifters

16:45

who happen to be in the streets of Dallas

16:47

that day, you know, people

16:49

who worked at the Texas Book

16:51

Depository, the Oswald family, government

16:53

people, the people in the motorcade. I

16:56

mean, just this colossal range and the

16:58

conclusion of the Warren Commission is unequivocal.

17:00

Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. He fired

17:02

the crucial shots from the sixth floor

17:04

window of the Texas Book Depository. He

17:07

went on to kill the Dallas policeman,

17:09

JD Tippett. Jack Ruby acted alone in

17:11

killing Oswald. They say that Ruby and

17:13

Oswald were not connected in any way. No

17:15

evidence they say can be found that

17:18

Oswald or Ruby was part of a

17:20

conspiracy. They say, of course, Lee

17:22

Harvey Oswald's motive will never truly be known because

17:25

he's dead. However, we

17:27

can reasonably surmise that he was

17:29

a loser and a loner who

17:32

had, you know, had a

17:34

very troubled life. He'd found some sort

17:36

of meaning in Marxism. And it was this

17:38

that motivated him to try to cement his

17:40

pace in history by murdering

17:43

the president. End of story. But they

17:45

would say that, wouldn't they Dominic? Well,

17:47

that is the thing because of course,

17:51

when this comes out, there are a lot of

17:53

people who distrust it. And

17:56

maybe before we get into the

17:58

conspiracy theories themselves. There was

18:00

something about America, isn't there Tom, that

18:03

means that I think it is peculiarly vulnerable,

18:06

if vulnerable is the right, it's not too loaded a

18:08

word, to conspiracy theories. Because

18:10

for example, distrust of government is built

18:13

into America's sense of itself. Yeah, well

18:15

the Constitution and the right to bear

18:17

arms. The Declaration of Independence. Yeah, we

18:19

did a series of podcasts about the

18:22

American Revolution. The American revolutionaries

18:24

undoubtedly have perfectly reasonable, I'm not going

18:26

to say legitimate because obviously I regard

18:29

it as utter treachery. They

18:32

have understandable and rational

18:35

reasons for distrusting George

18:37

III and being frightened about British intervention

18:39

and the colonists. But Dominic, you say

18:41

George III, I mean, it's not George

18:43

III, is it? It's his ministers and

18:45

the government. But the idea that George

18:47

III is this kind of maligned figure,

18:50

a spider at the center of a web,

18:52

coordinating things. I mean, that is a paranoid

18:54

understanding of what's happening that I guess does

18:57

feed into American history. Yes. The

18:59

idea that the people at the top are plotting against

19:01

the people at the bottom. For a conspiracy to work,

19:03

you need a Mr. Big. Yes, and George III is

19:05

the Mr. Big of the Declaration of Independence, having

19:07

previously not really featured in

19:10

all the discourse around taxes and

19:12

stuff when it was colonists versus

19:14

parliament. The other thing of course is

19:16

that we talked about the American Revolution podcasts. There

19:18

is a very rich, if that's the right word,

19:21

strain of anti-Catholicism in the years leading up

19:23

to the American Revolution, an idea that there

19:25

is a sinister conspiracy to

19:28

subvert American religion, subvert American morals,

19:30

all of that sort of thing.

19:32

The incorporation of Quebec, very disturbing

19:34

to a lot of American colonists.

19:37

And that anti-Catholicism, for example, and various conspiracy

19:39

theories like it, so it might be Catholics,

19:41

it might be the Freemasons, it might be

19:43

Jews, it might be the East Coast elite.

19:46

They run through American political history as

19:48

they do in various degrees,

19:50

of course, in lots of other countries

19:52

as well, but I think America is

19:54

founded on a kind of conspiracy theory.

19:57

Don't you think so? Yes, just on the point that Catholics

19:59

are cons... against good, honest American Protestants. I

20:01

mean, that is a dog that doesn't bark

20:03

in this issue, does it?

20:05

Kennedy is the first Catholic president, the first

20:07

Catholic mess to be celebrated in the White

20:10

House following his murder. But as far as

20:12

I'm aware, the idea that it's

20:14

the Vatican. I believe there are very

20:17

niche conspiracy theorists who made

20:19

this claim. I'm sure there are, but I mean, it wouldn't be the Vatican,

20:21

would it? It would be, I don't

20:23

know, Protestants trying to kill him or something. It would be

20:25

Lambeth Palace, somebody artificial with Canterbury. But

20:27

that doesn't actually, that doesn't kick in. No,

20:30

it doesn't. But of course, when

20:32

Kennedy went to Dallas, people were giving out pamphlets

20:34

in the streets of Dallas that said, John if

20:36

Kennedy is a traitor. And when Adlai Stevenson, his

20:38

ambassador to the UN had been to Dallas, he

20:40

had been jostled and jeered and attacked by people

20:42

who thought he was selling out to the communists.

20:45

So there is a ready

20:47

audience for this kind of thing. And a year later

20:49

in 1964, a

20:51

very well-known historian called Richard Hofstadter published

20:53

a book called The Paranoid Style in

20:55

American Politics. And it

20:57

seems so perfectly timed because Hofstadter

20:59

was a historian of things like

21:02

populism and anti-intellectualism and

21:04

the sort of status anxieties that drove people

21:06

into having all these resentments and fears. And

21:09

America in the early sixties, you

21:11

know, there's a lot of this stuff around. First

21:13

of all, there's the legacy of McCarthyism. McCarthyism is

21:15

only 10 years old. So people who thought

21:17

they were communists to the South of government. Then

21:20

there is the resistance of the South, the

21:22

federal intervention in the cause of civil

21:25

rights. So they say an overreaching, overweening

21:27

government. And then the third element is

21:30

in places like California or the

21:32

Southwest, you have the growth of

21:34

this new kind of Barry Goldwater

21:36

conservatism, libertarian conservatism, which

21:38

says, you know, big government,

21:40

big business, big institutions have basically eroded

21:42

a lot of our freedom since the

21:45

1930s, since the New Deal. This

21:48

is the sort of stuff that Ronald Reagan is

21:50

reading in the Reader's Digest on. Yes, of course.

21:52

So another of our previous focus, we need to

21:55

fight to get this freedom back. Can I just

21:57

ask, when are the first conspiracy theories specifically relating

21:59

to Kennedy? Because there's no internet,

22:01

presumably people are talking about this in

22:04

bars and whatever. When does it start

22:06

to be published? About a month after

22:08

the assassination. So the first iteration, Vincent

22:10

Buglerius has gone through all these conspiracy

22:13

theories in his book Reclaiming History. A

22:16

guy called Mark Lane, he publishes it in

22:18

a kind of libertarian weekly. He

22:20

has an article called Defense

22:22

Brief for Oswald. That's

22:25

December 1963. Mark

22:27

Lane then a few years later goes on to write

22:29

a book, which is the key book in really igniting

22:32

the conspiracy theory stuff called Rush to Judgment. Mark

22:35

Lane is a communist. He's a very keen advocate

22:37

for left wing causes. Now you

22:39

can see why he would be disposed to say Oswald,

22:42

who said he was being framed, I'm just

22:44

a patsy, and has been

22:46

accused of being a communist and was

22:48

a communist and a Marxist, he's been set up

22:51

and I really need to put this right. So

22:53

Mark Lane's stuff is absolutely crucial.

22:56

There are other communists, say for example, there's a

22:58

guy called Thomas Buchanan, who is living in Paris,

23:01

who publishes a book called Who Killed

23:03

Kennedy in London in May 1964. And

23:07

who does he think killed Kennedy? He says there are

23:09

two gunmen, and I think almost

23:11

all these communists or left leaning authors

23:13

tend to say this is a right

23:15

wing conspiracy. Sometimes they will say

23:17

within the US government, but often they will

23:19

say right wing nutters, oil men, the Ku

23:22

Klux Klan, you know, Cold Warriors,

23:24

all these people kind of working together.

23:26

And what about Jim Gollison, played by

23:29

Kevin Costner in JFK? Kevin Costner, yes.

23:31

Kevin Costner enters the story in 1967.

23:34

Now, at this point, the

23:36

conspiracy theory industry is gathering momentum and you

23:38

can see why, because this is the era

23:40

of Vietnam. America

23:42

has now got tens and tens of thousands of

23:45

young men fighting and dying in Vietnam. The

23:47

whole temperature of American life has changed.

23:51

Riots on campuses, riots in the cities,

23:53

the economy beginning to take

23:55

a sort of turn for the worse. Johnson

23:57

embattled this real... classic

24:00

moment in the documentary, Tom, when

24:02

the music changes from kind of, you know, please,

24:05

please me. And then suddenly it's

24:07

the Grateful Dead or something, you know,

24:09

Jimmy Hendrix doors, the doors exactly. We're

24:11

at that moment in the story. Jim

24:14

Garrison is the New Orleans district attorney.

24:17

And in 1967, he says, I'm actually

24:19

gonna solve the case myself. And

24:22

he charges this bloke called Clay

24:24

Shaw, who's a local businessman

24:26

and kind of philanthropist, who's

24:28

very well known a society figure. But

24:31

I think not coincidentally is gay.

24:34

He charges him

24:36

with being part of this huge

24:38

conspiracy that involves anti Castro exiles,

24:41

local right wing businessmen, the

24:44

Central Intelligence Agency and

24:46

a kind of secret,

24:48

gay underworld ring of

24:50

people hanging around in gay brothels and

24:53

things spotting to assassinate presidents. Right. He

24:55

says this guy, Clay Shaw is the

24:57

man. And subsequently, almost everybody who followed

24:59

the trial said it was the most

25:01

appalling travesty of justice and circus. The

25:04

clay Shaw was totally innocent.

25:06

And he'd been dragged into court

25:08

and forced to go through this

25:10

incredibly demeaning thing that Garrison

25:12

just got to be in his bonnet about

25:14

him. The jury took just an hour to

25:16

acquit Clay Shaw. And actually,

25:18

Garrison then, you know, was

25:20

everybody wrote him off as a bit of a sort

25:23

of attention seeker and an eccentric. And

25:25

he would there he would have remained had not

25:27

his story come to the attention of Oliver

25:29

Stone. Yeah, because actually, this is

25:31

one thing that struck me about watching JFK back.

25:34

JFK would not be made today. Because

25:36

it is homophobic. Actually, I was

25:38

hesitant to say it's homophobic. But

25:41

most people today would think it was homophobic.

25:43

Because you know,

25:46

the idea is that rent boys, gay

25:48

businessmen are all part of this conspiracy.

25:50

I mean, it's pretty dodgy. Well, the

25:52

idea that, you know, that there are

25:54

conspiracies, that high circles are conspiring to

25:57

break the law and then to conceal law breaking,

25:59

of course. that then gets turbocharged by the

26:01

Watergate conspiracy, right? I mean, this presumably is

26:03

what really gives the whole industry a massive

26:05

shot of adrenaline. I think two things. I

26:07

think one, we mentioned Vietnam earlier, the sense

26:10

the government has lied to you about Vietnam,

26:12

that the government knew Vietnam wasn't going well,

26:14

but it continued to throw more and more

26:17

men into the kind of the more the

26:19

meat grinder. Yeah. So there's that. And then

26:21

of course, as you say, Watergate, I mean,

26:23

actually, if you want to think about the

26:25

JFK assassination conspiracies, and you look at them

26:27

alongside Watergate, you would say the lesson of

26:29

Watergate is that all this stuff is an

26:31

absolute laughable shambles. Yeah. Because when we did

26:33

that Watergate podcast, the only really way

26:35

the way to do that, especially if you're not American, so you

26:37

don't have a dog in the fight, it's

26:40

this ludicrous farce, stupid schemes

26:42

to lure people onto houseboats. Things go

26:44

wrong. I mean, basically, that's the implication.

26:46

Things go wrong. And so with the

26:48

conspiracy theories, would it be fair to

26:50

say that the kind of the key

26:53

focus for conspiracy theories is the

26:55

grassy knoll? Yeah, it is. So

26:57

this is the place where supposedly

27:00

other shooters are either

27:03

joining in with Lee Harvey Oswald

27:05

or are shooting Kennedy to

27:07

make Oswald look guilty, even though Oswald hasn't actually

27:09

done it. I mean, that kind of rifts on

27:12

those two themes, really. By the mid seventies, you

27:14

have the grassy knoll established as the focus of

27:16

all the conspiracy theories. By the way, the grassy

27:18

knoll is seconds, seconds walk, not

27:20

minutes, or seconds walks in the Texas Book

27:23

Depository. Because as we said before, such

27:25

a small space. And we know that when

27:27

the people are asked where the shots came

27:29

from, where did you hear the shots? Some

27:31

say the Texas Book Depository. Some say the

27:33

grassy knoll, which is right next to it.

27:35

So actually, it's not that different. But also,

27:37

isn't the key to people obsessing about the

27:39

grassy knoll, that there is

27:41

video footage of it. So Abraham Zapruder's

27:43

film, and lots of

27:46

photographs and people photographs by, you know,

27:48

a decade on from it have had

27:50

time to pour over every little grainy

27:53

pixel of every photo. Exactly. And they

27:55

come up with kind of very sinister,

27:57

so a bit like deep throat. obviously

28:00

immediately glamorizes the whole Watergate

28:02

conspiracy. They have the

28:05

umbrella man who actually turns out

28:07

to be someone who was protesting.

28:09

It's protesting at Joseph Kennedy's to

28:12

the chamber. We mentioned him. And

28:15

then the badge man, the black

28:17

dog man, and there are three cramps, aren't

28:19

there? Yeah, the tramps who are supposedly very

28:21

suspicious. So I believe they are just tramps.

28:23

But they look very smart. They're very well

28:25

dressed cramps. They're too well dressed by all

28:27

accounts. Yeah, because they're later rounded up, aren't

28:29

they? And people have done enormous work on

28:31

their shoes and stuff and said,

28:33

oh, their shoes are far too un

28:35

scuffed for homeless people's shoes. But with

28:37

the Zapruder film, it has

28:40

the moment where Kennedy's brains literally get shot

28:42

out. And it

28:44

does look as though it's not coming from

28:47

the rear of the head, which you would

28:49

expect if it's coming from the book depository.

28:51

Yeah. And also Kennedy's reaction. People said that

28:53

the way he lifted up his elbows and

28:55

he looked very peculiar. They look at

28:57

John Connell's reaction and they say, I mean, the trouble

28:59

is you can analyze this frame by frame and you

29:01

see in it what you want to see, Tom. But

29:03

just to say, I do think that just looking at

29:05

the Zapruder film, it does look as though the shot

29:07

is coming from in front of Kennedy rather than from

29:09

the rear. Just put that out there. Well, Tom is

29:11

now a grassy, null, truther. Yeah, you're a grassy, null,

29:13

truther. I'm glad to hear it because I don't think

29:15

we should be seen from the same M-sheet just before

29:17

we go to the break, which Theo has been begging

29:19

us to do. The final thing in the 70s that

29:21

gives a massive boost to the conspiracy

29:24

stuff is the House

29:26

Select Committee on Assassination. So this is a committee

29:28

of the House of Representatives that is convened in

29:30

late 1976. The

29:32

70s post-Watergate is awash with

29:35

conspiracy theories and with self-flagellation

29:37

about abuses of power. There's already been

29:39

a thing called the Church Committee into

29:42

the CIA, into some CIA abuses. And

29:44

this committee meets in the late 70s and it reports in 1979

29:46

to its members of the House of

29:49

Representatives. It's a very confusing and mixed

29:51

picture. So usually when you read accounts

29:53

of this, they say that there was

29:55

actually conspiracy after all. Their evidence for

29:57

that is they rely on a kind

29:59

of... Dictabelt from a Dallas

30:02

motorcycle police officer. Acoustic evidence

30:04

of the shots on the

30:06

Dictabelt seems to suggest multiple

30:08

shots, more shots possibly

30:11

fired from different directions. And

30:13

so on the recommendation of their experts, they

30:15

said, well, maybe there were more shots, maybe

30:17

there were more shooters. However, very confusingly, they

30:19

said that all the possible groups that could

30:21

have been part of the conspiracy, so the

30:24

CIA, the KGB, the mafia, whatever, were

30:26

not complicit in it, they don't think. And

30:29

they also say, by the way, the Warren Commission did

30:31

a brilliant job. We really approve of

30:33

the Warren Commission's report. We just have this

30:35

extra evidence. Now that extra Dictabelt evidence has

30:37

subsequently been debunked by other acoustic experts. I

30:39

mean, this is as with all the forensic

30:42

evidence. You know, you ask a different expert

30:44

five years later for a Channel 5 documentary,

30:46

and they give you a different answer, Tom.

30:48

Yeah, well, it's very like analysts looking at

30:50

photographs of the Ortonis monster taken in the

30:52

1930s, then 2010, suddenly announcing they're all fake.

30:54

But this is on the record that perhaps

30:57

there is a conspiracy. And so that then

30:59

begs the question of, well, if there is

31:01

a conspiracy, who is behind it? And perhaps

31:03

we should take a break now. And when we

31:05

come back, Dominic, we will go through the list

31:07

of potential conspirators. Brilliant. And I will get your

31:09

opinion on each of the various major

31:12

suspects. So we will see you very soon.

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32:53

Welcome back to the Rest of History. And we

32:55

have finally reached a stage where Dominique is going

32:57

to take us through all the potential conspirators. And

33:00

I mean, even in the first half, we

33:02

have listed an awful lot of various organizations

33:04

who could be involved. And there's a wonderful

33:06

comment by Boghiose, who we've been quoting quite

33:09

a lot, who says with at least 82

33:12

gunmen shooting a Kennedy in D-lee Plaza

33:14

that day, it's remarkable that his body

33:16

was sufficiently intact to make it to

33:18

the autopsy table. So

33:20

could we kick off with

33:23

your choice of what the least

33:25

likely conspiracy theory is? Because I

33:27

should tell you, I have

33:29

actually asked chat GBT to

33:32

nominate its selection of the least plausible

33:34

conspiracy theory. So I'll be interested to

33:37

see whether yours matches up with the

33:39

mighty depths of AI. No

33:42

pressure then. So in his mighty

33:44

book Reclaiming History, which surveys the

33:47

entire sweep of the conspiracy theories,

33:49

Vincent Burglius, who lists 44 different

33:51

organizations, Tom, that have been accused,

33:53

including the Nazis, the Teamsters, the

33:56

French OAS, so the people that are trying to assassinate

33:58

de Gaulle, and so on and so forth. 214

34:00

different individuals, usual suspects such

34:03

as Richard Nixon and J.A. Gahueva, but they're

34:05

also more exciting figures like my fellow old

34:07

Movernian, James Jesus Angleton. I'm glad to mention

34:09

him again. Abraham Zapruder. Yes.

34:11

The guy who shoots the film. Conceivably John

34:13

Connolly, the governor of Texas injured in the,

34:16

uh, Who gets shot himself. He was offering

34:18

himself up. I think Tom. So what the

34:20

idea there is that he shoots himself through

34:22

his chest and the bullet goes back and

34:24

blows off his head. Well, the list of

34:26

gunman, I love this, the list of gunman,

34:28

so not Lee Harvey, I thought, but Jack

34:30

Ruby, Lyndon Johnson firing from two

34:32

cars. Well,

34:35

he is a Texan and they can fire guns

34:37

in Texas. You would think that would be noticed.

34:39

And the two most interesting ones are J.D. Tippett,

34:42

the policeman who later died and the driver

34:44

of Canada's car, Bill Greer. Shot Kennedy. Again,

34:46

I think that would have been noticed. You

34:48

would see that in the Zapruder footage. So

34:50

are these the most implausible in your opinion?

34:53

No. So the two most implausible are there's

34:55

a guy called George Thompson who says that

34:57

22 shots were fired in D.D Plaza that

34:59

day and five people were killed. Five people,

35:01

but none of them was John F. Kennedy.

35:05

Okay. So he says

35:07

the man you see in the footage

35:09

who seems to be John F. Kennedy,

35:12

he is officer Tippett. Okay.

35:16

It was impersonating Kennedy. So where's

35:18

Kennedy? Kennedy was later seen, he

35:21

says, in New York a

35:23

year later at a private birthday party for the

35:26

writer Truman Capote. Okay. And then went on to

35:28

live a life maybe in the Hamptons or something

35:30

in seclusion with Elvis. Yeah, presumably. And Marilyn. So

35:32

there's another, that's not the most outlandish here. The

35:35

most outlandish there is from a guy called Milton

35:37

William Cooper. I will read you the summary. America

35:39

and the world are controlled by the American council

35:41

on foreign relations, controlled by Henry Kissinger

35:44

and David Rockefeller and so on. And

35:46

the International Trilateral Commission. These people are

35:48

in league with aliens who invaded the

35:50

United States, established a lunar

35:52

base. One of the people who

35:54

did the deal was George

35:57

Bush, senior, who

35:59

obviously was. involved in the oil

36:01

business, but he was also actually trafficking in

36:03

drugs with the CIA. Kennedy

36:05

found out about Bush, the CIA, and

36:07

the drugs, and he said, if

36:09

you do not clean up the drug problem, which

36:12

is undermining the morals of our youth, I

36:14

will tell the world about your deal with the aliens

36:16

and the moon base. The moon base,

36:18

by the way, was built in collaboration with the

36:20

Soviet Union. And so Bush and his colleagues, Kissinger

36:23

and so on, they were not going

36:25

to give into Kennedy's blackmail, so

36:27

they arranged for the driver of

36:29

his car, Bill Greer, to shoot

36:31

him in Dallas and frame Oswald

36:33

for the murder. That's the patsy.

36:36

Yeah. Okay. So, chat

36:38

GPT, it nominates aliens. It's

36:40

actually the aliens who conspired to

36:42

kill Kennedy. Right. And

36:44

that's because they don't want Kennedy to

36:46

develop the moon project and

36:49

discover the alien moon base on the

36:51

moon. Right. One intriguing piece

36:53

of circumstantial evidence that I think backs

36:55

this up, which is that Captain Fritz,

36:58

the gravel voice interrogator of Lee

37:00

Harvey Oswald, was actually brought up

37:02

very near Roswell, where the flying

37:04

saucer, of course, crashed in 1947.

37:07

Oh, that's very good. I mean, it kind of

37:09

ties... Well, it's no more implausible than some of

37:12

the others. I think it's fair to say. So

37:14

I think probably we can park those. But, Dominic,

37:16

if I now am a bit like a baseball

37:18

pitcher, hurl some of the

37:20

conspiracies at you and you see whether you can

37:22

hit them for a homer. Sure. So

37:25

you've talked about this idea that the Soviet Union

37:27

was behind it. Yeah. This is

37:29

quite popular right from the beginning. Plausible? No,

37:32

and also not very popular. So

37:34

people who are interested in conspiracy theories

37:36

about the Kennedy assassination don't like the

37:39

Soviet theory because it's unsatisfying. Too geopolitical.

37:42

It's too geopolitical and it doesn't

37:44

satisfy your need to have a

37:46

secret cabal who are controlling American

37:48

politics. Right. And that is it

37:50

plausible? Yes, it is plausible. I

37:52

mean, countries do assassinate people, but

37:55

it didn't happen. We know that the reaction in

37:57

the Soviet Union, they were at pains not to...

38:00

be seen to take advantage of it. But

38:02

they could put up a show of public

38:04

grief while secretly rubbing their hands. But we

38:06

know from KGB internal files that were released

38:08

in the 1990s that the

38:10

KGB themselves speculated about fascist and racist organizations

38:12

in the American South. Okay, so that's what

38:15

they genuinely thought. The relationship between Kennedy and

38:17

Khrushchev actually isn't that bad. At the end

38:19

of 1962, they're through the

38:21

Cuban Missile Crisis. They have concluded the

38:23

Test Ban Treaty on nuclear tests. Kennedy's

38:25

Secretary of State, Dean Rusk, an

38:28

anti-communist, he told the World Commission, said,

38:30

I cannot see what conceivable interest the

38:32

Soviet Union would have in killing President

38:34

Kennedy, because the Soviet Union leadership from

38:36

Stalin onwards, but particularly after

38:38

Stalin, what they really wanted is stability.

38:40

They fear instability in the global system.

38:42

They fear an attack by the Americans.

38:45

Killing the American president would be a bonkers

38:48

gamble. It wouldn't gain them anything, because it

38:50

would just mean that somebody else of the

38:52

same political persuasion followed him. You know, if

38:54

they were caught, if they'd be in real

38:57

trouble, there could be a nuclear war, why

38:59

would they do it? What about Castro, who

39:01

is Kennedy's kind of a great opponent in

39:03

the bad pigs and the Cuban Missile Crisis?

39:06

Again, superficially plausible. Again, unsatisfying

39:08

for genuine conspiracy theorists, because

39:11

if it's just a baddie,

39:13

an offshore baddie, again, that

39:15

doesn't satisfy your desire to have

39:17

the key that explains all history

39:19

and all politics. Oswald clearly

39:22

was very interested in Cuba.

39:24

He's obsessed with Cuba. But US investigations,

39:26

I mean, they have a vested interest in

39:29

seeing if it is Cuba, of course. So

39:31

they properly investigate this, do they? They properly

39:33

investigate that there's no evidence whatsoever. We know

39:35

from people who were with Castro on the

39:37

day, so a French journalist called Jean Daniel,

39:40

that Castro was shocked and worried

39:42

on the day of Kennedy's assassination.

39:44

He was worried that he would

39:46

be framed for it. The

39:49

National Security Agency intercepts of Cuban communications show

39:51

that the Cuban leadership were actually talking to

39:53

each other and saying, oh gosh, the next

39:55

president will be even worse than Kennedy was.

39:57

Right, because presumably they don't know much. about

39:59

LBJ? No, they don't at all. And Castro

40:01

and his men are going around asking people,

40:03

what's LBJ like? You know, will he be

40:05

hard on line on us? And Castro was

40:07

actually interviewed, Tom, this is an amazing fact.

40:09

Castro was interviewed by the House Select Committee

40:11

on assassinations in the 1970s. They went to

40:13

Cuba to interview him about it. And he

40:16

said, why would we have done

40:19

that? He said it would be insane. If

40:21

we were caught, they would attack us and

40:23

they would kill me and they would destroy

40:25

our revolution. Why would we do it? So

40:27

here's a twist. What if it's the Cuban

40:29

exiles who were thinking exactly that? Very, very

40:32

popular. Now, there is a woman called Sylvia

40:34

Odio, who was a Cuban exile. And she

40:36

claimed that in September 1963, Lee Harvey Oswald

40:40

was one of three men who had come to

40:42

her apartment to raise money for Cuban exiles. And

40:45

the Oswald had said, Oh, exiles don't

40:47

have any guts because we should have killed Kennedy after

40:50

the failure of the Bay of Pigs. One

40:52

slightly weird thing about this is of course, why

40:54

would Oswald be hanging around with Cuban exiles? He

40:57

hates the Cuban exiles because he loves

40:59

Fidel Castro and the Cuban

41:01

Revolution. Now it is true that

41:03

Kennedy had not given the Bay of Pigs invasion

41:05

air support and that some exiles blamed him for

41:08

this. On the other hand, there

41:10

are three important counterpoints to this. Number one

41:12

is that after the Bay of Pigs, Kennedy

41:14

went out of his way to give more aid

41:17

to Cuban exile groups and to sort of

41:19

butter them up a bit to show that he was still on

41:21

their side. Number two is

41:24

that the leaders of those exile groups, contrary to

41:26

what people think, are not

41:28

kind of hardened criminals and plotters.

41:31

They are the people who had been kicked

41:33

out by Castro and fled Castro because of

41:35

a Marxist revolution. They are the

41:38

professional classes of Cuba. They are

41:40

professors, intellectuals, businessmen, they are

41:42

not people who are accustomed

41:45

to ordering murders and arranging

41:47

murder. And number three

41:49

is that actually, Kennedy, by the end of his

41:51

life, actually gets some better with

41:53

the Cuban exiles than probably any point before.

41:55

There's an example at the end of the

41:57

Cuban missile crisis. He and Jackie had gone

42:00

to Miami and done a whole big

42:02

thing where they'd welcomed returning prisoners from the

42:04

Bay of Pigs. There had been

42:06

tens of thousands of people there who had been

42:08

chanting, liberty, liberty. And Kennedy had said one day,

42:10

they'd given him a flag, and he had said

42:13

one day this flag will be returned to free

42:15

Havana, and everybody had cheered and been in tears.

42:17

So the idea that he is just hated is

42:20

not quite right. And the

42:22

other thing, of course, there's no single

42:24

piece of evidence. There's no piece of

42:26

evidence that proves that a Cuban XL

42:28

did it. Right. Those

42:30

are presumably the leading external agents.

42:34

What about internal agents? So probably

42:37

the most popular theory is that it's the

42:39

CIA, right? Yes. Kennedy, after

42:41

the Bay of Pigs, had said he wanted to

42:43

smash the CIA up and destroy it. To splinter

42:45

it into a thousand pieces and scatter it to

42:47

the winds. But did he say that? It is

42:49

commonly thought that he did say it. You'll see

42:51

that quoted many times, but people have tried to

42:53

find the source of the quotation, and they've never

42:55

really been able to find it. And

42:57

if you need to have said it, all it needs is

42:59

for the CIA to think he said it. But his relationship

43:01

with the CIA is not as bad as it's thought. He

43:04

didn't smash it up. He gets a new

43:06

guy in to run it called John McCone, who he

43:08

has lunch with, I think, once a

43:10

week or something. He gets on pretty

43:12

well with McCone. He gets on, you know, some

43:14

of the CIA people are bitter about the Bay of

43:16

Pigs. Some of them aren't. The CIA

43:18

do have a history of

43:21

being complicit in the assassinations of foreign leaders,

43:23

but they have no history of intervention on American

43:25

soil. Are they employing Oswald? Some people say Oswald

43:27

was actually working for the CIA. Why? If Oswald

43:30

is a loser, a loner and a Marxist with

43:32

the CIA, employ such a man. Unless he's just

43:34

pretending to be a loser. It's a hell of

43:36

a deep cover that goes back to his childhood.

43:39

That might be. I mean, fine. If you believe

43:41

that. You're fangishly clever, aren't they, in the CIA?

43:43

Well, if you believe that, but everything we know

43:45

of the CIA suggests that, you know, the CIA

43:48

has many clever people working for it, but they

43:50

don't have supernatural powers to suborn people from the

43:52

age of five or six or something. The

43:55

other issue with the CIA is why Kennedy? And

44:00

one of the reasons that we spent so much

44:02

time talking about Kennedy's early life, his service in

44:04

the Second World War, his time in politics, and

44:06

all of that, to talk about the murder victim,

44:09

I think was to show, I think personally,

44:13

without any shred of doubt, that

44:15

there was nothing radical about Kennedy that would be

44:17

a threat to the CIA's interests. He's

44:19

keen on the Cold War. He doesn't like communism. He's

44:22

a moderate domestically. Why

44:25

would the CIA want to target him

44:27

specifically? What threat does he represent to

44:29

them? Maybe he'd reveal the existence of

44:31

aliens in Roswell? I don't know. Well,

44:33

that's the thing. One would have to

44:35

reach for implausible explanations, I

44:38

would say. Okay. Well, another

44:40

very popular one. I think it's what

44:42

powers James Elroy's novel American tabloid. The

44:44

guy who looks behind it is J.

44:46

Gahueva and the FBI. And

44:49

am I not right in thinking that

44:52

Lee Harvey Oswald's mother, two years before,

44:54

had said she'd complained to newspapers

44:56

in New York that her son

44:58

was working for the FBI and that the FBI

45:00

weren't working to get him out of Russia when

45:02

he was in the Soviet Union. Yeah. Bonkers.

45:06

Why would the FBI, the Federal Bureau of

45:08

Investigation, tasked with solving federal crimes within the

45:10

United States, why would they send a

45:12

man to Russia? It's not in their

45:14

remit. They have no history of sending

45:16

people undercover to foreign capitals. He's not

45:18

an FBI informant. They have him under

45:20

suspicion because he's been to Russia and

45:22

all of that stuff. The FBI have

45:24

no history, again, of assassinating American political

45:26

figures. The FBI would not have

45:29

worked for the CIA because they have a deep

45:31

institutional rivalry with the CIA. J.

45:33

Gahueva is an extremely, when I

45:35

say conservative, I don't just mean

45:37

politically conservative. He is a cautious

45:40

man who hoards information and power.

45:43

But isn't it said that he hates the Kennedys? He

45:46

certainly has a rivalry with Robert Kennedy.

45:48

Whether he hates John F. Kennedy is

45:51

very unclear. He regularly meets John F.

45:53

Kennedy. They work together and have

45:55

done for almost three years. He

45:58

has a huge file on John F. Kennedy. of

46:00

his affairs, going right back to

46:02

Ingavad in the Second World War. Maryland and everything.

46:04

Yeah. Is it plausible

46:06

that if, for example, John

46:09

F. Kennedy was going to move him aside

46:11

at his mandatory retirement age in 1965 when

46:14

Hoover turned 70, is it

46:16

plausible that Hoover would arrange for Lee

46:18

Harvey Oswald to murder Kennedy in broad

46:21

daylight rather than use his big file

46:23

with all the affairs? And

46:25

by the way, with both those, Tom, is

46:27

it plausible that all of

46:30

these people, public-spirited kind of people,

46:32

well-educated, who were working for the

46:34

FBI and the CIA, would

46:36

do their bosses' bidding and that none

46:38

of them would ever talk to the press

46:40

about it or that it wouldn't fall apart

46:43

like Watergate did? To me, it seems utterly

46:45

implausible. Okay. So on the principle of

46:47

Quibono, who benefits from the assassination, one obvious

46:49

person who benefits because he becomes president, a

46:51

result of it, is Lyndon Johnson.

46:54

So what about LBJ? You mentioned that the

46:56

theory that he shot JFK

46:59

in the motorcade. I

47:01

presume that that's an insane idea. But

47:03

is there any remotest shred of evidence

47:05

that LBJ was involved? I mean,

47:07

I have to say that he was very

47:09

clearly, it seems to me, upset and distraught

47:11

and shocked. But maybe he's a brilliant actor.

47:13

I don't know. So people say,

47:15

oh my goodness, it happened in Texas. That's no

47:17

coincidence. In Johnson's home state, which he kind of

47:20

controls, Johnson doesn't control Texas.

47:22

But also lunacy to

47:24

imagine that Johnson, who spends all this

47:26

time in Washington, would think, oh,

47:29

I'll have him murdered in broad daylight in

47:31

my home state, thus

47:33

bringing suspicion on myself rather than maybe

47:35

have him poisoned when we're having dinner

47:37

in Washington. Okay. Why would

47:39

Johnson do it? Why would he set up the Warren

47:41

Commission to investigate it with many of his own political

47:43

opponents? Some people have said, well,

47:45

it's because he wanted to go into Vietnam

47:48

and Kennedy didn't. The reality is much more

47:50

complicated. And of course, Johnson

47:52

is in lots of ways, the results of his policies

47:54

are more liberal than the results of Kennedy's. I mean,

47:56

Johnson is the greatest society in the war on poverty.

47:58

All right. going

48:00

deeper into Vietnam, and the

48:02

idea that it's the military industrial complex,

48:05

that's what Mr. X is alleging in

48:07

the passage from JFK that we began this

48:09

episode with, and it's the famous

48:12

quotation from Eisenhower. Oliver Stone opens the

48:14

film with that. He does. He does.

48:16

Why Kennedy? Why is Kennedy a

48:18

threat to the military industrial complex in a

48:21

way no other president is? Because he wants

48:23

to take America out of Vietnam more. Well,

48:25

first of all, historians disagree about whether Kennedy

48:27

would have stayed in Vietnam or come out

48:29

because the evidence we talked about before is

48:31

so unclear because he's still making his mind

48:33

up, actually. Kennedy has

48:36

stood up to the Soviet Union in

48:38

the Cuban Missile Crisis. He

48:40

is supporting anti-communist forces

48:42

abroad. He's not soft on

48:44

communism. And the thing is, Tom, let's

48:47

imagine that for some reason, the

48:50

CIA, the FBI, military industrial

48:52

complex, whoever it is, think that Kennedy is a

48:54

sufficient threat to them. He's such a radical. I mean,

48:57

they completely misread him and

48:59

they think he is so dangerous that he must be

49:01

assassinated. Why do they not

49:04

do that to Lyndon Johnson, who

49:06

passes sweeping civil rights reforms, who

49:08

passes the great society domestic reforms,

49:11

who pilt American politics

49:13

further to that? Because Dominic LBJ

49:15

is behind it all, obviously. Right. In

49:18

that case, fine. Why do they then

49:20

not assassinate Richard Nixon? Nixon,

49:22

who goes to Beijing, who

49:24

goes to Moscow, who signs arms

49:26

control agreements to the Soviet Union,

49:29

and who does end the Vietnam

49:31

War? Why wouldn't you kill Nixon? And

49:33

also, why wouldn't you kill

49:35

Donald Trump? Trump, who has an

49:37

incredibly hostile relationship with the Central

49:40

Intelligence Agency and with most American

49:42

institutions, Trump, who effectively withdraws from

49:44

Afghanistan, Trump who criticizes NATO, why

49:47

would these groups not move against

49:49

him if they were prepared to

49:51

move against Kennedy? The idea makes

49:54

no sense, of course, because we

49:56

know that American institutions generally do not

49:58

kill politicians. All right. So setting

50:00

American institutions to one side, what

50:03

about other shadowy, extra

50:05

state organizations in America? So

50:07

some of these were

50:09

cited by LBJ himself on

50:12

the first day, and Kennedy,

50:14

as he was going into

50:16

Texas, was worrying about them. And these are

50:18

kind of right wing organizations, Ku Klux Klan,

50:20

all these kind of people. What about them?

50:23

Well, sometimes people say right wing businessmen did

50:25

it. I think we can dispel that immediately.

50:27

Right wing businessmen had just had a bloody big tax

50:29

cut on F Kennedy. So

50:32

it's simply not in their interest

50:34

to do it. The Klan are

50:36

ultimately a very crude and unsophisticated

50:38

organization. First of all,

50:40

why would they be working with Lee Harvey?

50:43

Why would he be involved in any any

50:45

way? Because he's a commie, because he's a

50:47

communist. And secondly, law enforcement agencies would have

50:49

immediately, I mean, who are cracking down on

50:52

the Klan, they would have immediately unearthed this.

50:54

It's implausible that the Klan, such a shambolic,

50:56

in many ways incompetent organization would have

50:58

been able to get away with this

51:00

incredibly sophisticated conspiracy and the FBI and

51:02

the Dallas Police Department and the Warren

51:04

Commission and the House of Representatives simply

51:06

not notice, I mean, Baker's belief that

51:08

they would do this. Okay, so one

51:10

last extra government American institution is

51:13

the Mafia. Okay, so the Mafia is a

51:15

very popular, I mean, almost every conspiracy theory

51:17

involves the Mafia, doesn't it? So just to

51:19

give you a bit of context on the

51:21

Mafia, because we're in the last few moments

51:24

of the podcast now, but I think it's

51:26

important to do this. The Mafia in America

51:28

originated in the late 19th century, become supercharged

51:30

in the 1920s and 1930s

51:32

by prohibition. So that's the point at

51:34

which it's becoming enshrined and culturally in all these films

51:37

and things. And then the Mafia is in the headlines

51:39

a lot in the 1950s, because congressional

51:41

committees are leading a big

51:44

crackdown on racketeering and corruption in the

51:46

trade unions, all these kinds

51:48

of things. And actually, Robert Kennedy was a key figure

51:50

in all this, which is one of the things that

51:52

has got people excited. And then

51:55

of course, in the 70s, the great age

51:57

of conspiracy theories, you have the Godfather

51:59

films. So the mafia in people's minds

52:02

now it's possible well it's not possible

52:04

it is well known that the mafia

52:06

loads proper Kennedy because of the general

52:08

he was orchestrating a crackdown

52:11

on organized crime. The question you have to

52:13

ask yourself is if they load robin kennedy

52:16

the attorney general would that way of

52:18

getting rid of him or trying

52:20

to blunt his investigation. Be to

52:22

murder his brother whack him i believe it's

52:24

a technical time to walk his brother but

52:26

to leave robin kennedy himself in post robin

52:29

kennedy might well continue to be a general for

52:31

years. He of course might become

52:33

president as he tried to

52:35

do campaign to do in nineteen sixty

52:37

eight now we know again fbi white

52:40

apps we know that mobsters when they

52:42

discuss the murder of a quite. Amused

52:44

and quite gleeful that Kennedy president Kennedy

52:47

died but no point do any of

52:49

them ever say to each other. Yeah

52:51

we did it yeah lucky luchiano skydid it

52:53

or something like this they actually

52:55

want points big mafia to put

52:57

some karnas talking one of his henchman is talking

53:00

to him and they're talking about who killed kennedy

53:02

and they say it was a marxist guy i'm

53:04

not he was a it was a marxist and

53:06

one of them jokes he wasn't just a marxist

53:08

he was a marksman who knew how to shoot.

53:11

Ho ho ho then actually we also

53:13

know from fbi white app that

53:15

i had a meeting in philadelphia of

53:18

mobsters in nineteen sixty two they had

53:20

joked about wouldn't it be brilliant if

53:22

somebody got rid of both of the

53:24

canada's. I'm the philadelphia

53:26

mafia boss andrew brueno had actually said to

53:28

everybody he told them a story i got

53:30

that you're not the tiny story and he

53:33

said you know there's a king and everyone

53:35

thinks he's a terrible king but actually know

53:37

what he's a good king because. His

53:40

son comes afterwards is

53:42

even worse and that's what happened to us

53:44

if you know the candidates ever disappeared vincent

53:46

buggio see makes the point he says in

53:49

the mafia history in america it is not

53:51

the cecilian mafia. So the cecilian

53:53

mafia targets judges local politicians and so on i

53:55

guess in this way the american mafia has always

53:57

gone out of its way to avoid doing that

53:59

because it's just. want attention of the

54:01

federal government. So even local officials,

54:03

by and large, have

54:05

been able to campaign against the Mafia

54:07

and to call for crackdowns on crime

54:10

without then being shot by a Mafia

54:12

guise. And he says, are

54:14

we ready to believe that the Mafia, which

54:17

considered it too risky to kill even a

54:19

police officer, would find the risk acceptable if

54:21

the victim were the President of the United

54:23

States? So first of all, that's

54:25

that issue. The Mafia has this studied,

54:29

deliberate policy of

54:32

not drawing attention to itself by

54:34

targeting public officials. And number two,

54:37

why would the Mafia, which is

54:40

after all, a professional criminal organization,

54:43

why would they have a hit in

54:45

a public place in such a risky

54:47

way and you could easily miss? And

54:50

why would they involve a man like

54:52

Lee Harvey Oswald, who in every respect

54:54

runs completely contrary to what you

54:56

would expect of a

54:58

Mafia hitman is not accomplished.

55:01

He's not reliable. He's not

55:03

he doesn't even have a getaway

55:05

car. Is it plausible actually, Tom, that

55:08

any organization with a degree of competence,

55:10

the CIA, the Mafia, the Secret Service,

55:12

the KGB, whoever would have Oswald

55:14

firing from the sixth floor, and

55:17

then allow him to walk out of the building

55:19

to get on a bus to get off the

55:21

bus to get a taxi to go into a

55:24

cinema to shoot a policeman? That would seem peculiar

55:26

operating procedures, wouldn't it? Just on the Mafia, though,

55:28

there is the figure of Jack Ruby. And I

55:30

know that you said that, you know, he wasn't

55:32

involved in organized crime, but he's definitely organized crime

55:35

adjacent. I mean, he's running three clubs, he must

55:37

be. Yes. And I know also

55:39

that he denies that he was part of any

55:41

conspiracy. But then he would have done, wouldn't he?

55:43

Of all these organizations, Jack

55:45

Ruby seems to be closest to

55:48

the Mafia. I suppose so. Yes. I mean,

55:50

does that in any way, possibly

55:52

lend credibility to the theory? So you

55:55

need to silently have your world. Why

55:57

would you employ a nightclub?

56:00

owner from Dallas who

56:03

wanders up a ramp in the

56:05

one moment when the police are

56:07

distracted, who seconds earlier has been

56:09

in a queue at the Western Union sending money

56:11

to a stripper. Maybe there's someone in the police

56:13

involved. I mean, you know, in the Western Union

56:15

to make sure that Ruby is... I

56:18

accept that the moment you start tugging on

56:20

a thread of, you know, the whole thing

56:22

comes to pieces. And then, Tom, and then,

56:24

right, you have to silence Oswald. Ruby, however,

56:26

does not die. Ruby goes to prison. Well,

56:28

he does in the long run. He dies

56:30

in prison. Yeah, but everybody dies, Tom. I

56:32

mean, this is the thing about the conspiracy theorists. They will

56:35

point to witnesses and they'll say, he died in

56:37

1982, he died in 1984, died in a

56:41

car crash in 1967. Yeah, of

56:43

course, they all died. Everybody dies. All

56:45

right, Mr. Sinek. All right. All

56:48

right. So basically, none of those conspiracy theories

56:50

you feel measures up, which

56:53

then leaves the question, well, who

56:56

did kill Kennedy? Who

56:58

and why? And

57:00

I think that we should finish this episode.

57:03

And in our final episode of

57:05

this immense epic sweep through the

57:07

JFK assassination, we will

57:09

look at your analysis of

57:11

who was responsible for JFK's

57:13

assassination and find out whether you

57:16

agree with the Warren Commission. But

57:18

if people simply cannot wait to

57:21

find out the ultimate Dominic

57:23

Sandbrook approved solution to

57:26

who killed JFK, you can,

57:28

of course, join our chat

57:30

community as we love

57:32

to call it. And you can

57:34

do that at the rest is history dot com.

57:37

And we will welcome with open arms. However,

57:39

if you don't want to do that, if

57:41

you want to wallow in conspiracy

57:44

theories and not have them all put to the

57:46

sword, then you'll have to wait till Thursday. But

57:48

either way, we will see you very soon. Thanks

57:50

very much for listening. Bye bye. you