JFK Facts Podcast #111: Task Force on Declassification to Hold 2nd Hearing on the JFK

hello everybody larry i'm here how are you well my new york times article today what's that basking in the globe my new york times profile today what was that i've been trying to save the central park geese um and so some reporter wrote about it and so this other guy myself where we were in the metro section today oh oh yeah you said you sent me a link about this so just forgive us uh jfk fans uh a little bit of new york gossip here so the central park geese are geese who live in the park and are threatened so their resident yeah so what happened is the port authority is trying to reduce the amount of geese because they're afraid that's going to cause airstrikes on planes but so they basically are trying to eliminate all the geese in all the parks at least they're destroying their eggs um and we think this is cool yeah it's cruel and and so we're trying to at least get the geese in central park protected um because they only really travel a mile but it's a typical bureaucratic response, you know, overreaction. And then the first thing you try to do is kill. Right. Yeah, that's always the solution. Let's go kill something. And she referred to me as a tough talking environmental lawyer. Well, well, well spoken. Welcome, everybody, to the JFK Facts podcast. Lots of news happening. so let's get right down to it so the big news announced was the May 20th hearing second JFK hearing of representative Anna Paulina Luna's task force on declassification of federal secrets that's going to happen on Tuesday next week I know a little bit about the witness list and I think it's going to be remarkable. Living witnesses to the JFK assassination story, Abraham Bolden, Judge Tunheim, Dan Hardway of the HSCA, and Dr. Don Curtis, one of the Parkland doctors. So that's shaping up as a real, you know, a real big event. I think that's going to be really striking um abe bolden's participation is especially important because his story is so uh so remarkable and so it it's such a shame that it's not known and uh he deserves uh hero's welcome really i mean in the jfk assassination story of which there are very few people who distinguish themselves um he is one person who did abraham bolden of the secret service. The one man who tried to do his job after the Kennedy's assassination is the only guy who lost his job and got sent to jail. So looking forward to that a lot. Been working with Congresswoman Luna also on obtaining JFK records from the CIA that have not been turned over yet. And we expect some answers tomorrow. We have a meeting scheduled tomorrow and we will get some answers about are they going to make this stuff available or not. And this is a real acid test of, you know, President Trump's order. Is the CIA going to comply with the president's order or not? And I think we're going to find that out tomorrow. So what says all records in the possession of the federal government, not just in the collection? Yeah, I mean, you know, if they're playing games at this point, that is going to be so revealing. Right. I mean, the mandate for release of this material without any prejudice or games or, you know, redactions is so strong. Like, what could possibly be the motivation for withholding something now except to incriminate yourself, right? If they're still withholding something, if they're still playing games, they are incriminating themselves. So looking forward to that tomorrow. You know, I really don't know what to expect. Could go different ways. Are you going to be hearing from her? she's going to be hearing from the CIA and I'll be hearing from her. Okay. So that's, you know, and that's definitely going to happen. So, and then, and, and we'll have a hearing next week, which I think will in part also be about, you know, the ongoing situation in terms of compliance with the president's order. So do you know, is she going through Gabbert? Or does she go directly to the head of the CIA? She told me that Gabbard had helped and that had assigned her people to also look for these records when the CIA said, you know, they couldn't find them. They couldn't find them. You know, what I love about that is, you know, it's called a central intelligence agency for a reason, right? Which is the intelligence is centralized. So if you need it, it's in one place where you can find it. So the idea that they can't find their own information, under any other circumstances, it would be comic. Yeah. so i think it's really great that dr curtis is going to be speaking because not only is he a witness to the assassination i mean to what happened at parkland but he has an incredible story about the inside story about how specter and the warren commission really tried to intimidate the doctors. Yeah, no, I listened in on a conversation with Dr. Curtis the other day, and he was telling that story about how Arlen Specter terrorized them. And that was his word, terrorized, and made people change their testimony and how deliberate it was. And And, you know, people should understand who he was. He was one of the first three people in trauma room one when President Kennedy was brought in. And there's no disputing that because the accounts of the other two doctors confirm that he was there. He was a resident at the time. He was not a doctor. But, I mean, he had medical training. He'd done his internship. He was a resident. And he was coming back from lunch and, you know, was drawn into this drama. So he had that firsthand knowledge. But the story that he tells about about how Spector, you know, molded the record to achieve the results that he wanted. That's a story that we really need to have on the record and to have it from a living witness is really remarkable. That's how that was one of the tools that the Warren Commission lawyers who are very good lawyers, how they manufactured a record. because Spectre in particular, he'd ask a question and it was an inconvenient answer. He would ignore it or he would go off the record, you know, you know, and so and, you know, he'd go off the record and say, you're wrong. That's not the way it happened, you know, and then if they continue to insist that's the way it happened, he just changed topics. Right. So and the other thing that Dr. Curtis, I hope he mentions, is that, and this is to refute the arguments of the people who critique and attack the Parkland doctors of saying, well, they didn't have a chance to see President Kennedy's wounds. He told me and his boss told him that when Dr. Kemp Clark pronounced President Kennedy dead, he picked up President Kennedy's head to show the other senior doctors why he had called why he pronounced him dead he wanted to show them why he decided that and so those doctors had a chance to see the extent of the back of the head so the idea that they didn't get a chance to see the wound is is not correct no so um i've i've heard dr curtis tell tell the story and um you know i'm i'm i'm very happy that he's going to come and tell that and and and tell his story next week because it definitely needs to be heard you know it's it was and um you know and from a living witness this is the the this is the important thing i think about it is that this isn't you know you and me who are coming along later and have our opinions because we've read a bunch of books or something this is a guy who was there you know it's like very ethical because when the first film when the first crew that made that movie the parkland doctors they wanted him to talk and one of the producers was trying to get him to say things in a different way and he said no and you'll notice that he was that did not participate in that film he's not in the film yeah and he refused to give them consent because he wanted to say things the way he saw them and he wasn't gonna let anyone else put words in his mouth yeah no and uh you know i asked him when I when I first met him and talked to him I didn't meet him in person talked to him on the phone um and I said you know could I tell his story and he said no he didn't want any publicity he didn't want me to use his picture and so you know I had to respect that and not you know not report I mean I'm summarizing some of the things he said here but you know I wasn't going to write a story over his objections because he genuinely didn't and he said he said to me can you get somebody in washington to hear my story i i knew luna i said well why don't you talk to the congresswoman and so that that connected them and um uh and uh you know he was ready and so when she invited him he's coming so and i'm just sharing stuff that he mentioned at the Kappa conference you know um he came in we had a 2018 conference about the last the living witnesses and we had a bunch of doctors there was the last time that Dr. McClellan showed up and Dr. Curtis was there yep yep yeah that's where he learned about him we had no idea about the importance of his testimony until he started talking the other guy that's really good is this Dr. Donald Miller. Dr. Donald Miller was a surgeon up in the University of Washington. He was a partner with Dr. Perry. Oh, right. Because Dr. Perry moves to Washington. Yes. And Dr. Perry wouldn't talk forever. And then one time they had a seven hour surgery. And finally, Dr. Perry said, OK, you know, they did a wonderful job on this patient. He says, ask what you want and then he dr millard has written about what dr perry told him that dr perry regrets that he gave into the pressure about the front the frontal wound yeah yeah yeah the pressure from our inspector uh yeah from uh the secret service agents also yeah right no and and and the whole fact that that as dr mcclellan said you know he left dallas to get away from it you know to get away from the pressure what he felt was the pressure from the government not to talk right um that's like you know they're in their their late 20s so they were most of them some of them were in their early 30s but they're they're relatively young doctors and their careers could be ruined right so you know it's scary yeah yeah anyway um uh looking forward to that testimony um so um i want to announce some changes in the jfk live and the jfk facts podcast um i will it is difficult to book guests for a specific 8 p.m eastern podcast every week people are not flexible on that or they're not willing to make the time for this podcast. So that creates problem getting guests and a key to a good podcast is good guests. So what we're going to do, what I'm going to do from now on is we're going to have a JFK Facts podcast, which will be an interview with a guest, which I will do and we'll put out every Tuesday. And we'll continue the JFK live conversation at eight o'clock on Thursdays with Larry and Chad leading the discussion, which will be a discussion just what it is now, a discussion of JFK facts of the JFK podcast and of latest developments in the JFK story. So what I want to do as part of this transition is not only get more guests, you know, on the JFK Facts site on a wider variety of topics, but also I want to focus the JFK Facts audience, and I'm speaking now to everybody who's here tonight. um we got 77 000 pages of documents and so i don't want to sit around and chat about it i want people to write about it and let's get this on the record you know let's tell what the new jfk story is so i'm going to put out a call this week for um for people to write for jfk facts to submit stories with some writer's guidelines what kind of stories we want and what kind of stories we don't want. But that's my priority now, I think, is to really get people to write about and put on the record what we are learning from these new disclosures. It's not enough to simply talk about it anymore. We have to produce some new knowledge, some new information. Trying to create a stark record. Yeah. And, you know, we are, I think, you know, you may not know about it, but, you know, we're in the midst of an AI revolution, which is going to change, you know, how we live in a profound way, kind of in as much as the internet did, maybe more. so um you know we need to be adapting to that world and and and getting out this story and and not just the jfk story but all of the implications of the jfk story and we need to you know share that with the world um and not just you know talk about it among ourselves so um with that i will say, you know, welcome questions. You can raise your hand down at the bottom. You can just speak up about any and all of this. Jeff, do you want to talk anything about Marcelo? Oh, so yeah. One of the documents that we obtained this week, thanks to Rep Luna, was an FBI file on Carlos Marcella, which was not known before. Its existence had been pointed out to me by Professor David Kaiser, who had been seeking it when he was writing his JFK book, The Road to Dallas. And so I gave the file number that I got from Kaiser to Rep Luna, and she asked the archives for it and they produced it. And so we got a 2,900 page file on Carlos Marcello, which Larry has had a chance to look over. So Larry, why don't you describe what the Marcello file that we got is and what does it tell us, if anything? So it's file number 46. We've known about it. It's only was partially disclosed in the past. As I said, Jeff, you know, David Kaiser had always been asking for it. In fact, he tried to get it right after the president's order was issued and got crickets. So, Jeff, it's great that you were able to get this. The overwhelming number of documents in this file. Now, I did a quick, I read every page, but I did a quick look. So I just wanted to see what the content was. Most of the documents, it's about the Guatemala situation where when Carlos Marcello had a passport that allegedly said he was born in Guatemala and he used that. And then later on, he denied that he did it. So the government was after he got deported in 1961 and returned, the government sued him and they brought charges for defrauding the United States using a false passport and then perjury for lying about about the passport. so this is this is just to recap right they can't get him on anything else they know he's involved in a lot of illegal stuff but he's sophisticated enough surrounds himself with people they can't touch him they can't so this is one way that they can like try and limit his criminal activities by tying him up in court and and uh and all of that so does it tell us anything about Marcello Well I mean it you know it clear that he did this Now, he went on trial on November 4th, 1963. The jury found a not, reached a non-guilty verdict on November 22nd at 3.30 after two hours of deliberation. And it turned out that he bribed one of the jurors. So then he went on trial again in 1965. And again, he didn't get convicted. They got him later on during the Bride Lab. But so the file is principally about the government's efforts to convict him and all the documentation. There are grand jury minutes that are redacted. But there's a few interesting snippets in there. The one thing I'm disappointed in was that the file skips from June of 62, then it goes to the fall of 63. And the reason I'm disappointed in that is because it was allegedly in September of 62, when Marcelo allegedly told Ed Becker, when he went out to his farmhouse that he was going to get rid of kennedy and you know you get rid of the head of the tail the head of the door and there's not there's nothing about that in this file right right about that the only other thing that's in there uh there is at the very end there is something about david ferry um now i'm not a garrison expert so but apparently after after ferry died one of the detectives who's a former police person, policeman for New Orleans, asked the Justice Department for copies of files that they had, he had seen when, when the weekend of the assassination, they, they raided Ferry's apartment when he was, you know, in Houston. Right. And they wanted, they wanted to retrieve the letters that they had seized from ferry on november 22nd right so that's an interesting story and we don't know anything more than that about the letters right right just know that they asked for them and yeah very convoluted process because hoover got involved yeah okay no so is there something in the file or not in your no there's nothing well only one factoid that eliminates a rumor which is someone once claimed or some people claim that ferry is the one that piloted marcello from honduras to texas and it's not it's clear that there was another person that was with a pilot and they were looking for okay um uh want to answer a couple questions from the chat um from sam were Are the Schlesinger tapes with Jackie held by ABC ever released? No, the answer is no. ABC played selections of William Manchester's interviews with Jackie Kennedy in 2013. But those transcripts have never been released, and they are important JFK records. So thank you for that question, Sam. Another question was, will the Marcello file be available by Mary Farrell? I think so. I'm going to give a copy to Rex Bradford. And I think that that's the right place for the right place for it. By the way, this is not the tapes that we're seeking. So we're still seeking the tapes from the Camtex sting operation when he was in jail in the mid 80s, where he allegedly confessed to Jack Van Langenham that he planned the assassination. We don't have the tapes. We don't have transcripts. The tapes have been sealed because they weren't used in the criminal proceeding. So that's something that the Department of Justice is going to have to pursue. That's not something Congress can do. Hey, everybody, I wanted to call your attention to one surefire way to deepen your knowledge of the assassination of President Kennedy. And that's to read my three books about the CIA, a trilogy of spies that tells how the assassination actually unfolded in the eyes of CIA insiders. You see, my work on JFK's assassination is rooted not in the literature of conspiracy, but in the history of CIA operations. And that makes all the difference when it comes to understanding the events that culminated on November 22, 1963. You'll want to check out my three CIA books that tell the story of the founding generation of the Central Intelligence Agency and what three insiders actually thought about JFK's assassination. Meet charismatic station Chief Winston Scott as he surveils Lee Harvey Oswald six weeks before Dallas. Meet Urbane CIA Director Richard Helms as he fends off President Richard Nixon's attempts to blackmail him over JFK's assassination. Meet James Angleton, the ingenious, paranoid, and sinister counterintelligence chief who had controlled the agency's file on Oswald since 1959. In these books, you'll see the real historical foundation of the events that led to President Kennedy's assassination. And you'll understand this event in a much deeper way. Check out my books at jeffersonmorleybooks.com. You can buy all of these books there, as well as my other nonfiction book, Snowstorm in August. So check out the Trilogy of Spies. Let's take some questions, starting with Dr. Nova. I was rereading The Ghosts recently, and I was in the end section where I talked about when Angleton was diagnosed with cancer, and he essentially not only had to quit smoking, but apparently sobered up for the first time in decades. And it was then, you know, in that period that he also seemed to look back on maybe what he did was somewhat wrong. You know, it's where you get the quote about being in hell with all the other guys. and I was kind of curious thinking about that what are kind of the implications that you know you think of you know Angleton and and Bill Harvey and all of these guys they were like pickled spies like all of these all of these people that you ever see in this whole web of things from you know Ferry, Shaw, Philby like none of these guys were ever sober for more than 10 minutes it seems well certainly uh yeah certainly angleton was uh you know an alcohol a dysfunctional alcoholic by the you know by the 1970s um in but in you know in 1963 how dysfunctional were they you know i don't know i mean philby was a legendary boozer um you know and uh this you know post-war Washington. I mean, that was the that was the world of the three martini lunch, the five martini lunch. So, yeah, a lot of people were, you know, very drunk, intoxicated. And, you know, I think that, you know, what's the significance of it? I mean, when people are intoxicated, you know, they're paranoid, they, you know, and I think that that there was a definitely a conspiratorial paranoid mindset, you know, that we see in things like Operation North Woods and in MKUltra, you know, there was a paranoid mindset in the U.S. government. And well, and beyond paranoid, I think that, you know, the alcohol abuse is probably part of that. I would put it that way. I mean, doesn't it also seem like it would tend to make them kind of toss their morality aside? I mean, so many of these people, horrible things trash all the time uh no i think the tossing the morality aside was uh you know the civilizational struggle against communism and you didn't need to be alcoholic to do that you would say you know and that was that's the doolittle report of 1954 recommending that we step up covert action and that and that we have to discard american notions of fair play Right. We've got to we've got to fight fire with fire. And so, you know, once you've decided that. Then anything's possible. Does the rampant alcoholism of people like Angleton and Harvey contribute to that? Yeah, but it's not the cause. Fair enough. Also, the idea of the citizen journalist for JFK facts. I think that's a great idea for the changeover. Thanks for taking my question. Yeah. OK. Jeff, someone asked, Roger Odesso asked, do you know whether NBC ever answered Luna's letter? Do we have heard anything from NBC? I'm going to have news about that tomorrow. Oh, great. Okay, cool. That's all I want to say. Okay. Yes. NBC has responded. Okay. And we want to find out if they've responded, you know, affirmatively. But yes, stay tuned. We're going to have a story on that soon. All right. Carl Golivan. Oh, boy. Thank you. I'm honored you're taking my question. Actually, I'm surprised you don't ask that all my questions be submitted in writing via chat. And I did put one in there that I hope you'll address, considering some information you previously disclosed about Angleton. But I do have an insight to the Arlen Specter issue from a question I asked Cyril Wecht at a conference in Dallas several years ago, a CAPAC conference. I asked Cyril, how on earth did you support Arlen Spector when he ran for senator? Because this is the liar who created the magic bullet theory. And his immediate response was, ah, he's a mensch, which I gather means an honorable man. And I later asked him to clarify. And he essentially said, well, he never deviated from the line that he was required to hold. hold the narrative. And I thank you for letting me share that. Do you see my question in chat? Cyril was a politically ambitious man. He ran for public office. He was involved in Democratic Party politics. Arlen Specter wasn't a morality play for Cyril. It was the rough and tumble of politics. And so, no, I can see Cyril saying that. You know, it's like Cyril probably wanted access to him so he could ask him questions, you know. So just don't forget, Cyril's a political animal. It's not it wasn't a it wasn't a morality question for him of dealing with Arlen Spector. It was a political question because he was a political animal. And thank you. Spector was always a better the better candidate in Cyril's eyes than who was ever running against him. Yeah. question was, do we know the names of the other people he placed and what their other assignments were? No, I mean, all we got was his testimony. And it's not clear that Reuben Efron was one of those. But Angleton did talk about this. The reason why he had made this alliance with Israeli intelligence was because of the valuable intelligence gleaned from Jewish exiles leaving the Soviet Union and going to Israel. And that fit the profile of Reuben Efron, who came from Lithuania, you know, in exactly that manner. So we don't know that Reuben Efron was one of those people, but we do know from the newly released testimony that that was the way Angleton, you know, built his intelligence empire. So thank you for taking my questions. Anytime, Carl. Dennis O'Keefe. I've been out of the country for about 10 days, and I'm just wondering what the status of the Joe Nadez file is at this point. We hope to get some answers about that tomorrow. What you said before about going to change the format. One, will you continue to participate in these discussions? And two, what can we? I mean, I'm a humble community journalist. I'm used to digging and boring documents, but we don't have the overall panorama that you have on the case itself. So what would you want from us going through these files, obviously? Yeah, so what I want to explain is, okay, so how do you write a story about these documents? Well, that's what we'll talk about. And I'll tell you, you know, the kind of stories that we want, like, here's 10 new documents about Bill Harvey, and here's what they tell us. Okay. That's a story we want. A story that we don't want is I found a new JFK document and it proves that my theory is right. Okay. That's a story we will never publish. Okay. But in between there, there's a lot of new information that's newsworthy. But I want to talk to people about how you can write about it so that it makes sense and you can talk about it, you know, wherever you write for. Who do you write for? Well, I'm a retired journalist, local news, community journalist. Weekly newspapers is what I wrote for you. But I had to dig through documentation on the Eastern District, PACER, things like that. So not a lawyer, obviously, but I had to learn a little bit about everything. But you covered, like I was a weekly reporter once, you covered meetings and stuff. Yes, that's what we did. So I think, I mean, you have the skills to write a good story about JFK records. I think if we can, you know, give you a roadmap, give you a template, give you some suggestions to, you know, because the subject is so big that people want to talk about it in this grand way. You know, that's important, but it's also important. We have a lot of new information, like let's understand it and share it. You know, that's what I'm trying to get at. the question stories that have come out which does you know as a newspaper reporter you'll find interesting sure yeah now the quick question i had while i had you guys uh jefferson i finally read your book the ghost and there's the famous cryptic quote by angleton to si hirsch that the cia has many mansion as many rooms and he was not privy to who shot john have you seen anything in the subsequent documentation that could shed light on that quote no okay i mean you know i asked hirsch about that and he said i said what did you make of that and he said i think he was trying to lay the blame on jfk's assassination on somebody else besides himself which i thought was pretty astute so i mean you know i i wrote what we learned from what was Angleton's testimony that he lied about what he knew about Oswald before the assassination. So is that, you know, is that connected to his comment? Yeah, I think it is, you know. He kept secrets about Kennedy's assassination, you know, and he wasn't, he wasn't transparent about it. He, quite the contrary, he was deceptive. It was obviously one of the rooms in the mansion that he worked in that pulled it off, and he didn't know which room. Thank you very much. We have an interesting thread from Thomas Tucker. So apparently, Thomas, Dr. Ronald Jones, was your surgery attending at Parkland when you were a third year medical student? Because Dr. Jones has an interesting relationship with the story. So Thomas Tucker, can you speak up? can you talk to us do you not want to talk Thomas Dr. Jones was a potential person to speak and oh here I am sorry I couldn't go great okay so talk to us Thomas tell us your story well um yeah Dr. Jones was my surgery attending when I was a third year medical student at Parkland Hospital he never really told any of the medical students the story about JFK and I'll just say that he was rather crusty and curmudgeonly. Yes. Let's put it that way. And what did you learn from him? How to stay out of his way, mainly. So he did not want to talk about this He did not ever talk about it no And did you ever try and raise it with him Did you ever see anybody else try to raise it with him No I did not So you just knew by reputation that he'd been in Trauma Room 1 with JFK? Yes, I knew about it from all the stories. And he had been interviewed before in multiple media, so I knew about that. uh he made it very clear in 2013 that he was done with the story and the last time he spoke he did mention that when he was you know he was one of the doctors that were deposed by specter and he did say that after the interview was over as they're walking i think out in the hallway Spector said to him, we have some witnesses who think they heard shots from the grassy knoll area, but we don't believe they're credible and don't tell anybody. So, so, so, Dr. Tucker, so did you know any of the, just by, in the same way, any of the other Parkland doctors who, you know, were participated in the events of November 22nd? second uh not i i knew them from lectures that they gave at the medical school but i didn't know them personally no yeah so um at that time what did you think i always thought that it's it's it's hard to contradict well-trained highly placed medical professionals as to what they've seen in a trauma room i mean when you've got the head of neurosurgery at one of the biggest trauma centers in the united states saying that he saw a hole in the back of the head and part of the cerebellum i don't know how anybody can contradict that yeah were you were you did you do a lot of trauma in Were you part of the ER trauma unit? As a medical student, we rotated through trauma in the emergency room. So, you know, Dr. Perry and the other doctor said that the wound looked like an injury. Is that consistent? You're talking about the neck wound? Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Yes. I think those doctors, you know, those doctors have seen more gunshot wounds than anybody. Yeah. The Dallas Knife and Gun Club was ever active. So they had seen a lot. Right. Dr. Curtis said there was some club they called it. They had so many Saturday night shootings. Right. Dr. Dr. Tucker, what kind of doctor are you? I'm an oncologist. Oh, so what do you think about Ruby? uh you know i've never really looked into that so i don't know i i know that he supposedly died of lung cancer but that's all i know about it and it came very quickly supposedly well it can i mean there are people who can die from it within a few months so that's not outside their realm because by the time it's diagnosed it's already pretty widespread you know that's the reason. Well, thank you for that history lesson, Dr. Bell. Very interesting. Very interesting. How did you learn about the fact, our podcast? Gosh, I don't remember. I've been listening to you guys for so long. Oh, good. Thank you. It's really good to hear your perspective. That's great. All right, take care. Let's hear from Gerald Pechenuk, because we haven't heard from him before. Yes, I'm glad I got on. I've been keeping up on your facts on JFK postings. And I have a question that you may find unusual, because it's something I've been... I know Permadex was named a number of individuals, Clay Shaw. This came out of the Garrison investigation. And I don't know how much you've talked about it because I can't say I've read all the stuff you put on. But what I want to bring up is a gentleman I was connected with for many years. I did not know till after he was deceased that he became the head of Permadex. Who was that? The gentleman's name is Dr. Bert Servas. That's a capital S-E-R, capital V-A-A-S. Now, if you go into the OSS, you go into their journal, you will find he's very honored by the OSS. He flew an unflagged plane into Formosa to get the surrender of the Japanese when he was a young man. He lived till he was 94. He became the head of the Indianapolis, Indiana combined municipal suburban city council for something like 40 years. He's the big fixer of Indianapolis. You know, ask Mike Pence, ask Richard Lugar, ask anyone. And I had extensive discussions with him on other issues. But the long and short of it is, he was the publisher of Ben Franklin's journal, The Weekly. He became the owner of that as well. Saturday evening post. Oh, yeah. So, okay. So, so, so my question is, do you know anything in these new documents that was happening in the documents about permindex? Okay. That, that was my question generally. And whether you have anything you want to say about that on your, I mean, you know, so just for the background, you know, I sometimes worry that we're like talking in code with people so permindex is an italian company that is implicated in the jfk story because of clay shaw's connection to it i think is that fair to say gerald and mortimer bloomfield i don't know anything about mortimer bloomfield so um I mean, I don't know about his connection to JFK. So what would be significant about your friend who was the head of Permadex? I mean, people have connected Angleton to Permadex. I'm interested in knowing more about that. But who was Servaz? Was Permadex involved in the assassination? We're kind of getting far afield. I'm not saying I won't go there. but like okay are we looking right good all good questions and uh i honestly can't answer you but i so what i would say is but what i would say is somebody an italian journalist contacted me and you know reminded me there have been a lot of investigations these things in italy and it is covert politics in italy so i want to know more about it if you don't want to find out anything more about your friend or see anything let me know yes and then the other person they were involved with the assassination was de gaulle so you got matai enrico matai italy de gaulle france jfk it's an international trade association so therefore i believe that's why there's interest in it but very very little said and that's why i ask you because you know the whole picture baby well Well, no, that's one of the things I don't know. I don't know that much about Permadex. So I always want to know more. All right. Be in touch. If you find out more, let me know. Okay. Just let me know where to email you. And I'll be glad to as I follow up. So take this email, Morley JFK Facts. Okay. Morley JFK Facts. Okay. Morley JFK Facts at gmail.com. I got it. Thank you. anybody on this call can also reach me at that email. All right. Well, I commend you very, very much because this is, you know, I was 11 years old. The teacher came in and said JFK was assassinated. I was in Brooklyn. Everyone cried and we went home and it had a profound effect for the rest. I'm 73 now. So I think I'm not the only one. and I think you've done a wonderful job. Yeah, you're over to me. So I was 10 when he was shot. Very similar experience. Were you in Catholic school, Gerald? No, PS 242 on Flatlands Avenue in Brooklyn. Very good. So anybody else have questions, comments, concerns? One of the questions is, is the hearing, do you know that's going to be another open one? Is it more like a round table? It has been described to me as a hearing. I think because Abraham Bolden wanted to be sworn in. He wanted to give his testimony under oath. And I think Luna wanted to accommodate that. So I think that's what's going to happen. Hopefully she'll use her gavel this time and the Democrats will be a little more respectful. Yeah. Martha Whetstone has raised her hand. So let's hear from Martha. I brought this question up previously, and I'm just checking to see whether Jeff had been able to find any more information about that tape that came out implicating uh uh j not jf not jf k lbj uh between billy saw estes and uh the clark clark cape uh tape and jeffrey had said his initial impression was it seemed um probably legit but that it needed to be pursued more and because that seemed pretty illuminating, but it didn't get much coverage at all. Yeah, I haven't done any more on that. I mean, I did talk to Sean Carter, Billy Saul Estes's grandson, and he told me how the tape came into his possession. And, you know, based on what I hear, you know i think it i think it's an authentic tape um the question that i had was like i wanted to do some reporting on why were these men talking on the phone and recording a conversation about jfk's assassination in 1971 yes yes that's what was going on because it's not like i mean there's a lot of intentionality there so no i don't think you can understand those comments until you understand the circumstances that those men were in and that would cause them to do something like this. So I always, you know, reserve judgment on the tape until I could, you know, know something more about that. I'll take it as a reminder to be back in touch with Sean Carter. I talked with him a couple of months ago when it came out and, you know, I'll take it up with him, but I, I haven't done anything since, you know, my original reporting, you know or my original conversation with him yeah the context is important and maybe you know were they in the middle of some legal enforcement or something going on that maybe this was a way to protect themselves you know by creating a right and i read where billy saw essence had a record of saying that he had tapes back in those days that yeah no um when when this tape surfaced, a friend of mine said, I've been hearing about this tape for 25 years. And that it had finally surfaced. So yes, I think, you know, the existence of these tapes was known. So, you know, but what do they really tell us? I think we need to do more research. This is 71, Jeff? Yeah, I think because Johnson's still alive. Still alive, right. That's what I was trying to verify. Yeah. Right. So Johnson dies in January of 73. And I think that Sean said that it was that the tape was from 1971. I'm pretty sure he did, because that's the year that sticks in my mind. And Jack Anderson's story started in 67 and they kind of leak into 71, don't they? The Jack, you know, Jack Anderson stories with with Roselli and the murder. yeah um uh edward morgan was roselli's lawyer and he was anderson's source for a series of articles and and there was one in in march of 67 and there was another one in january of 71 which might have been connected with this tape uh uh so yeah and at the time of the assassination wasn't it really heating up on Johnson with his connection with Billy Saul Estes and that there were articles just right about being published before the assassination and yes and there was Life magazine had a big uh investigation of of LBJ on the press um which was pulled after the assassination about Johnson's corrupt dealings. But there still was Senate hearings in the spring of 64. Obviously, they were hamped on by the Democratic Party. I think it was on the other person. Bobby Baker. Yeah, Bobby Baker. Right. Yeah. Right. It was another Wheeler dealer in Johnson's orbit. But wasn't there thinking that that would be a huge incentive time-wise for Johnson to be involved to kill that story? And, you know, and suddenly it seems like after the assassination, that story just went black. Yeah, absolutely. No, that's definitely true. We have Ron and Don and Jordan and Jeffrey. Jeffrey's new I think Okay Jeffrey are you new? No I've actually asked a question before Am I up now? Am I up now? Sorry Thanks for answering Today I listened to Matt's podcast Assuming JFK podcast and something that struck me when listening to it was when LBJ was talking to Hoover, he explicitly said, we don't want any House or Senate investigation. And I juxtaposed that against, and this is one of the things, because I kind of joined a little bit late, when Oliver, in the hearing, asked for there to be a reopening. And I really thought that that was really interesting. And again, I did join a little bit late. So is there any update on the possibility that there will be a reopening of a true investigation? And thank you for taking it. I'm really grateful to you guys for doing this. I mean, I'll recall for that. I don't see any political will behind that right now. I mean, the country is going through an enormous political change. The idea of reinvestigating Kennedy's assassination. I mean, to me, that's a non-starter. I think that we're going through a period of full disclosure and that's very healthy and that's the most we can hope for right now. There might be some very specific forensic studies that could be done, but 60 years later, I mean, but I think LBJ was also concerned about having multiple investigations with Congress people wanting to start, you know, sharing the spotlight. And so it could have been the reasons that some people think that it's, he's trying to prevent the truth from coming out, or he's just trying to move on and not get into a situation where, you know, he wanted an investigation he could control. Right. He could control. And he died. Right. Did you guys, are you guys familiar with the call that I'm referring to? Yeah. It really was interesting the way that he was really trying to say, no, we're not going to do this or not, you know, and, and Hoover, like saying, well, I think the words, it would be a three ring circus. Okay. Well, yeah, I mean, yeah, both Hoover and Johnson said on Sunday, November 24th, we need to convince the public that Oswald alone did it. Johnson said that to his aides Hoover said that to his aides So you know that when before the investigation began they announced the finding that they wanted and they got the finding that they wanted from the Warren Commission. We now know that that finding is not very credible. The guy that ended up working with the movie industry, I forget his name now. Jack Valenti. Yeah, Valenti. Wasn't it his also? He was pushing for it as well? Yeah, Valenti was friends with LBJ, and they came up with this idea, how do we preempt, how do we get control of the narrative of Kennedy's assassination? And the House Un-American Activities Committee was preparing to have hearings, you know, and the Texas, you know, Attorney General was thinking about doing an investigation, and Johnson wanted to head off all of that and get control of the story. So that's what the Warren Commission was about. Ron, go ahead. Okay. Hi, Jeff. I just wanted to know if you could have Max Good on. He did a documentary on our friend Ruth Payne, and I think it would be really enlightening to get his perspective on our interview. Yeah. I will do that. I will reach out to Max and have him on the podcast for sure. Great. Thank you. I think it's great that Abraham Bolden is going to show up next week. That's fantastic. One curious thing about his pardon a few years back by Biden was that it basically didn't mention anything about the dirty deal that he was dealt. And it was obvious he was railroaded. So it was a pardon that gave him a pardon but didn't speak to anything that actually happened to him and how disrespectful that whole thing was. so my question is is uh so he's he's going to show up next week and okay so he's not going to show up he's going to testify by zoom okay good good well and then this isn't like the old days where like the watergate where you know some people would be testifying for hours at a time for days at a time so it needs to be very focused and cut to the chase like as far as like focusing on like the real issue which is basically him getting railroaded and like uh so i don't know if there is there any help that the committee is going to get as far as like um trying to focus the questions Bolden's family is working with him to do that. Great. That's fantastic. Okay. Thank you. Why the public shooting as opposed to like putting some poison into his meal? The message. I don't know. I don't know who killed Kennedy, so I can't answer your question. uh because i mean i you know i tend to be in the general area of you guys with this conspiracy but then that was some non-conspiracy person i saw raise that question and i didn't have an answer so i was just wondering uh what the brain can i add something on this i was go ahead well they have i mean i had a friend who was a chef in Boston who prepared meals for the Clintons when they were in the White House, when he was in the White House on Martha's Vineyard, they have tasters in the, they had people in the kitchen watching everything they did and, you know, checking for that kind of thing. So that would be, that, you know, would be one, one reason that might not be the. But we're talking about the CIA. Yeah, but we, I mean, you got to, as Ralph Walder Emerson once said, if you're going to strike the you got to kill him, right? Number one. Number two, this was to reverse government policy and killing the president in the middle, broad daylight, I think sends a message. Not only is the president dead, but it sends a pretty broad message to Johnson and anybody else. I mean, and also it seems very personal to me. It seemed like a very personal attack. I don't know if there's any point in speculating about a question like that, Right. The president died by gunfire. The question is, who is responsible? Not, you know, why didn't they do it some other way? They tried to poison Castro. Look what happened. The CIA couldn't get it done. But all the shenanigans with Oswald in Mexico City, also, like, if they were trying to connect it up to Cuba or Russia, then maybe there's that. Clearly that, I mean, it looks like... That was part and parcel of it. Jordan? Thank you. I want to ask sort of the same question that was asked a few minutes ago, but from a different direction and trying to look at the really big picture. I know that major news organizations have shunned this story for decades. But at this point, if you look at some of the very most basic things like that there were more than one shooter, the evidence for that just at this point seems overwhelming. And so is there something that is actively preventing major news organizations from taking on this story and really trying to make something of it? Or is that something that you would want to happen? I think that there's a culture of deference to the government's story, and it's part and parcel of what's considered legitimate in policy circles in Washington. And so once you get into that much narrower group, there's a kind of groupthink that goes on. So I think that's what, you know, that's what prevents major news organizations from doing this conformity, inertia, fear of, you know, crossing the CIA, you know, having a skeptical view of JFK's assassination is very bad for your career in Washington. And look what happened with the election, this past election, right? I mean, the media did not want to investigate the issue with Biden. And there's a lot of reasons for that. And one person said, if you asked questions, you were not going to get access. Right. I think that's the best explanation I have for it. Also, the CIA has a common culture with these organizations. The CIA's had relationships with people at the New York Times and the Washington Post historically. so that has an impact uh likewise with the television networks um and you know people got invested in their version of this story you know so if you're dan rather and you're a big mocker and you've been saying one thing about the kennedy assassination for 40 years and putting your all your you know reputation on the line to defend it are you going to change your mind just because a bunch of you know people like us have come forward and said look at the evidence No, you're not going to do that. Dan Rather's not going to do that. David Remnick's not going to do that. There is enough muddying of the medical record that people can say with a straight face that all the shots came from the back and it's defensible. Yeah. Oh, I don't know. I mean, there is. So what's your comment, Jordan? Well, I mean, I'm not thinking of Jan Rathers. I'm thinking of, you know, young journalists working for whether it's The Times, The Post or 60 Minutes that they, you know, who's hungry for a story. And they, you know, they investigate almost everything else. I mean, I agree not Biden, but they certainly don't seem to be afraid to go after the CIA and for other things. but they're not going to do that. Yeah, no, and that's true. That's true. These news organizations can be very aggressive and have an adversarial stance for the CIA. The JFK story, it's more foundational and it's just radioactive, which I think tells you all you need to know, really. It's like, why is it still radioactive? because there's something that has to be hidden. I mean, right now, I mean, it's 60 years ago. So even if they break a story, whose scalp are they going to hang? I mean, there's no, you know, I mean, they're going to look for something new now for some current event. In my mind. Yeah. James Williamson. Hey, thanks. this is a little on a somewhat different topic but I think it's okay I hope but you always ask interesting questions so it's okay okay well I knew Priscilla McMillan here in Cambridge I didn't know her I didn't I didn't never had any serious conversations with her about the assassination other than a brief conversation where she said she was convinced that Oswald had done it himself. I'm wondering what anybody has to say about Priscilla McMillan, and in particular, how... I just checked the Wikipedia entry about her, and it doesn't really explain how she came to be sort of the custodian for Marina after the assassination. Does anybody understand how that got sort of put together? Anything you have to say about Priscilla? Well, so a lot has been declassified about Priscilla McMillan. And the most important thing is the cover of her file, which was released in 19 in 2017 or 2018. And the box on the cover sheet, where it says, Whitting Collaborator, that box is checked for Priscilla McMillan. Macmillan. So she's a witting collaborator with the CIA in 1964, around the time that she approaches Marina Oswald, and starts to, you know, prepare to write her biography. So, you know, I mean, what else can we say? It's right there. She was a witting CIA collaborator. So the book that she produces after that has to be considered somehow CIA approved. I mean, she didn't defy the people who she was collaborating with. So presumably they accepted it. So, you know, yeah, there you have it. Interesting ladies. Good writer, I thought. Yeah, no, the book is well done. You know, the thing that you think about with her also is she's also the young reporter in in moscow who interviewed oswald right yeah and she must have been hooked up for that by somebody in the u.s embassy and she had a relationship no no not necessarily that was a legitimate story an american coming to the embassy and wanting to move to the so you she didn't nobody needed to steer her to that story. I thought she was tipped off, but maybe not. I mean, she was covering the embassy, so she heard about it. Yeah. And she had a longstanding relationship with what was the Russian Research Center and is now the Davis Center at Harvard. Right. One of the things that had been declassified was that she had been considered for a CIA position, which she did not get. The Wittig collaborator designation came later. But I was thinking about if you're a CIA official and you're trying to arrange for, assist a defector moving into the Soviet Union, what better way to make sure that that defector is authentic than to have a newspaper reporter right there covering them saying, oh, here's an authentic defector. So I'm not saying that I know that that's what Priscilla McMillan's role was, but she was certainly conveniently, she was well-placed at key times. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. So, okay. We've been talking for almost 70 minutes. Martha, you had another question? Carl, another question? Yes, please. I just point out in chat, it seems that Donald Trump has just, for the first time since 1963, restored or reinstituted JFK's Middle East policy of trying to have good relations with all the Middle East countries, not just Israel. It's sort of extraordinary, really. But on the question of Permadex and Bloomfield, Michael Collins Piper, who I think you historically have not been fond of, his book Final Judgment addresses Permadex and the Bloomfield, former OSS Canadian. So, yeah, put that in the chat, Carl. Okay. And people can follow up. Now, I have a challenge for you, a quick question. Uh-oh. Now, I know for journalistic integrity, you were once willing to smoke crack cocaine. There's C-SPAN footage of you acknowledging that. Would you interview Laurent Guilhaneau? I know he could be available anytime for an interview, author of The Unspoken Kennedy Truth. Send me his information. I'll consider it, Carl. Yes, sir. Thank you. Martha, you had your hand up? yeah um i have a question about it seems to me and i think y'all discussed it last week with the hispanic guy who came out in the papers and worked for the ca who could have been a part of the assassination and he implicated jfk how much actual uh evidence has been tied to jfk that we know of. You mean Diaz? Yeah, I think Diaz was the one. I mean, everything that we know has been reported in JFK Facts. But is there a lot of evidence that we're... Be what we have on JFK Facts and you will have all of the evidence. Now his file is still classified, right? Jeff? uh his cia file is still classified yes so there may be more stuff but whatever is out there we've we have reported yeah can i just add something really quickly since i'm the one who wrote the articles about yes any ideas um i i pointed this out to a smaller audience but in my last article the video interview which used to be on the youtube channel of the British Daily Telegraph newspaper is now gone. So in my article where I linked to it, and it's a YouTube video, it now says something like this is a private video, they took it down. And I don't know why they took it down. But it may have to do with a mistake and editorial error they made in that video where they showed the wrong picture, their picture of the wrong guy. Another one of his Cuban comrades that they kept showing his face zooming in. And it was not erminio diaz that's just a small little bit of trivia in case you know there's confusion about that some people have put bootleg copies of that video up on youtube you can still find it but i didn't want to link to that because it's kind of disrespectful i guess i don't know so um okay yeah and and and there is other stuff by the way in the archives on erminio so martha search for erminio diaz on jfk facts and you'll get everything you know that's known about the documentation and his possible involvement in the JFK story. Chad is going to be reporting on the hearing. And yeah, we should have something up later on Tuesday or first thing on Wednesday. Great. You know, depending on what happens. But yes. Excellent. Okay, so thank you, everybody. On Tuesday, I will have an interview with Peter Kornblew of the National Security Archive, one of the world's leading experts on Kennedy's Cuba policy. And the National Security Archive has a very good sampling of the JFK documents and what they tell us about U.S. covert operations. In fact, they have three different samplings of records from the JFK collection. So I recommend those to anybody who's interested in the subject on NSRchive.org, National Security Archive at Washington, George Washington University. I will have the my interview with him will be posted on next Tuesday. So look for that next Tuesday. He wrote a lot about the back channel stuff. He's wonderful. Yeah, no, and in the interview, we talk about what was going on in Kennedy with the back channel to Cuba in 1963. So look for that next week. And thank you all for coming.