JFK Facts Podcast #109: The CIA Is Slow Walking the Joannides File

Okay. Hello, everybody. A lot happening in the world of JFK. Hello to Chad Nagel, JFK Facts staff writer, who we are going to talk to today because he's had some outstanding reporting on the site, if you haven't seen it, mining the JFK records to good effect. So thank you, Chad. We'll We'll turn to you in a minute. But I want to talk about what's going on right now, because I mean, and when I talk about right now, I mean today. Okay. People say there's nothing happening in the JFK files. There's nothing going on. And the people who say that are remarkably under-informed about what is actually happening in the U.S. government today as concerns JFK files. I put out a piece this week assessing the progress that we've made so far. When President Trump issued his order back in January, I drew up a list of 15 documents that were of interest, not like smoking gun material, but things that were clearly of interest to JFK researchers. With the idea of how we could measure progress towards full disclosure. That was what the president said he wanted, full and complete disclosure. So how could we measure that in a way that was objective? So in consultation with JFK researchers, asked people for suggestions and drew up a list, 15 and later 18 documents. And when the House Task Force on Declassification of Federal Secrets was formed, chaired by Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna of Florida, she proposed a hearing on the JFK files in Dallas. And she took massive grief on social media for that proposal when people saying just release the files. So I gave her the list. And I said, look, if you want to do good work on, you know, see how many of these things you can shake loose. Well, thanks to the order and thanks to Representative Luna, we obtained eight of the 18 documents that were of interest. And a couple of them are of extraordinary interest. interest. Arthur Schlesinger's memo about the reorganization of the CIA, which attracted wide media attention, and rightly so, was one of them. The long classified testimony of James Angleton to various investigatory committees was also revelatory. And other JFK researchers have discovered other things, noteworthy information in the new files. We're going to have a piece coming soon on the files that were released from the president's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, which show that through this board, this independent board, which was supposed to advise the president on intelligence issues, this was how JFK capitalized his idea of reorganizing and reforming the CIA after he had decided not to take up Schlesinger's recommendation for reorganization. But these new files show that the idea still remained in Kennedy's mind. So that was great progress. And I felt that after six weeks, Trump had basically done nothing. And I gave him a D plus. But after 100 days, the picture had significantly improved. and where to the point that he deserved, I thought, a B minus. He'd made a lot of progress, especially compared to where we were even two years ago. The progress is extraordinary. And that's the first thing I want to do tonight is step back. And we are at crunch time on JFK records. This is a very important time. The next couple of weeks are going to be decisive in determining whether the Join E.D. file and other key CIA files can be shaken loose from an intelligence community that clearly does not want to surrender them and is clearly, I think, slow walking the release of certain files that it regards as too embarrassing to be made public. But let's step back. Let's step back 10 years ago, 2015. The idea that the government should release all of the JFK assassination files unequivocally was a quixotic idea held by me and Rex Bradford and a couple of other people who talked about it. And basically, no one else in the universe cared. Donald Trump certainly didn't care. Nobody at the CIA cared. Nobody at the major news media organizations cared. And now full JFK disclosure is almost the law of the land. So let's understand that's a radical, dramatic transformation and a big credit to the JFK research community, which has forced this onto the agenda and forced these documents into the open. Now, we've seen the reflexive dismissal of people in mainstream media who can't really be bothered to absorb any new evidence that has emerged since the Warren Commission or not take it seriously. But in the big picture, they're definitely losing ground. Eight years ago, full JFK disclosure was a campaign promise that President Trump promptly broke when he gave the CIA and FBI four more years of secrecy. Mainstream media didn't care, but JFK Facts and the Mary Farrell Foundation and other people called attention to Trump's broken promise. And people in the mainstream media and in conservative media were paying attention. And they started giving Trump grief about it, which in the long run paid off. Full JFK disclosure had no interest for Trump's successor, Joe Biden. He continued Trump's policy of acquiescing to the CIA and FBI and giving them whatever they wanted on the JFK files. Three years ago, the Mary Farrell Foundation felt it necessary to sue Biden and the National Archives for failure to enforce the JFK Records Act. And the Justice Department immediately announced its opposition to our very reasonable request. Two years ago, in June 2023, Biden renounced all interest in JFK files and turned over their final disposition to the CIA and NSA, which promptly issued transparency plans, ill-named transparency plans, which made clear their intention to keep JFK secrets indefinitely, if not forever. eight months ago Trump welcomed the endorsement of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and he reversed his 2017 position out of embarrassment caused by public attention to his broken campaign promise and he started calling for full disclosure of assassination related files six months ago Trump was elected and four months ago he issued his executive order on assassination files calling for full and complete disclosure of government materials related on the assassinations of JFK, RFK, and Martin Luther King. But could he deliver? That was the question. That was our question. And the list of 15 or 18 documents was intended to be a neutral objective report card of performance. Now we have most of those documents, at least most of the documents that had been turned over to the National Archives before. Trump has largely delivered on that promise, while failing to deliver on securing outstanding documents that are still in the possession of the CIA, the FBI, the Defense Department, and the Kennedy family. So for sweeping away thousands of unjustifiable redactions on documents, Trump deserves a lot of credit. He's torn the veil of secrecy away from the JFK assassination story. But the job is not yet done. And in danger of failing six weeks ago, Trump now deserves credit for progress. We've made a lot of progress, but significant challenges remain. And that's the subject of what I'm talking about tonight. The easy part is actually over, and crunch time has arrived. The ultimate test of the CIA's willingness to submit to the rule of law in JFK files has arrived. That's the Joe Anides file. Will the CIA release the personnel file of George Joe Anides, the Miami-based undercover officer whose paid agents generated propaganda about Lee Harvey Oswald before and after JFK was killed? We don't know. The fact that they haven't released it yet, although Representative Luna asked for it last week is a sign that they are slow walking this. They don't want to turn it over. You see, on the Joe Aniti's file, the CIA really has no defense. Even their pro bono lawyers on social media are stumped. How do we explain a CIA officer whose paid agents generated propaganda about the so-called lone nut? Let's say Oswald did kill the president. Okay. A lot of people believe that. So let's accept that proposition. If that's true, how do we explain Joe Aniti's actions in generating propaganda about him? And more importantly, how do we explain the fact that when he was asked about it 15 years later, he didn't have an innocent explanation. He lied and said he didn't know anything about it, which under the circumstances was obstruction of Congress. A felony, HSCA counsel Bob Blakey reminded me. Blakey told me he thought Joe Anides was guilty of a felony by obstructing and concealing knowledge of what he knew about Oswald's Cuban contacts in the summer of 1963. So the CIA's apologists, they can't even figure out how to apologize or rationalize this away. so they just don't talk about it but the fact that they don't talk about it doesn't mean that the story doesn't exist it does exist and people are acting on it that's what I want to talk about now so in working with Representative Luna I've called her attention to this problem of the Joe Anides file and other CIA files that are still in possession of the agency related to the assassination, but have not yet been produced. And the Congresswoman is very action oriented and very direct. It's very refreshing to see in Washington. She's not cowed by the CIA. She doesn't defer to them. She doesn't want to suck up to them. She doesn't excuse their malfeasance the way our friends in the mainstream media do. She just wants answers. And so she has, as of today, told me that she is pressing Director Ratcliffe for the Joe Aniti's file and for other CIA material that's related to the assassination. So some people say there's nothing going on, but I'm here to tell you differently that Congresswoman Luna and now Tulsi Gabbard, Director of National intelligence is involved, and people are pushing for these records to get them released soon. So that's the crunch time. That's where we're at now. There's no explanation from the CIA about Joe Anides or what he was doing in 1963, much less why he lied to Congress in 1978. The CIA's defenders in the press have no explanation for this story, so they're preferred to ignore it. But here we are. And I'm telling you, we're going to have answers very soon. This process, this process of JFK disclosure has come, like I said, from being a quixotic idea of a handful of people, often scorned, usually ignored, and is now being implemented at the highest levels of the US government. So that's great progress. substantial obstacles remain. This poses very difficult choices for the CIA of how they respond to this. And we don't know, you know, we don't know how that's going to turn out. But we do know that full disclosure is now possible in a way that it was not possible two years ago. And we know the key documents that are still in dispute and that are still being withheld. So with that, We are awaiting these crucial decisions from our government. So I don't know what to think, really. Or I think a lot of different things. And at the end of the day, you just don't know. The Kennedy assassination story is filled rife with deception and misconduct. And so is it possible to clarify that? Is it possible to hold the agency to account? Is it possible to make them account for something that they lied about for many years and really don't want to talk about? You know, if we have a functioning democracy, it should be possible. So I continue to hold out that faint hope that we do have a functioning democracy and, you know, hope that we'll get positive results as soon as next week. so stay tuned for that um and you know recognize that um people who say there's nothing in the jfk files they just don't know what they're talking about it's that simple so um with that lengthy introduction i wanted to get that off my chest because i feel strongly that we are making progress And it's very easy to overlook that. And it's very easy to look at other things that are going on in American society right now, which are very serious and can't be separated from the JFK story entirely. But if we just focus on this story, which is very important to people all across the political spectrum, we have made tremendous progress. And we have reached a decisive turning point with a very clear empirical question before us. Will they release the Joe and D.D.'s file or not? It's that simple. So I'm hopeful. I did not think that we would be at this point. And now we are. So life is full of happy surprises sometimes. And I've had one. So with that, I want to talk a little bit about, turn the floor over to Chad Nagel, JFK Facts staff writer, who came up with a couple of really good stories in this past week. And I want to talk a little bit about those. Chad, how are you? Fine. Thanks, Jeff. Thanks for the lead up. I did do actually the one that I did before the last one seems like an eternity ago for some reason, but it was just last week. They were both within the same week. I think one was on Monday and one was on Saturday. and you know it as you say I mean it's based on going to the archives and digging through in this case FBI files which you know people don't really pay much attention to FBI files to be honest it's it's it's sort of the the afterthought usually but in this case well as you know I'll start with the second one first but a shout out to to David Boylan a great researcher who co-wrote the book, the recent book, The Oswald Puzzle, which everyone should read with Larry Hancock. Yeah, I should say David Boylan, just to give him his due as a JFK researcher in Providence, Rhode Island, and really an expert on South Florida in the 1960s. That's really if you have a question about what's going on in Florida in the early 1960s, around the time of Kennedy's assassination, David is a great source. And he came up with this lead, which was what, Chad? Well, it was a memorandum from the Miami field office of the FBI. And what I thought was so interesting about it, first of all, the Miami field office obviously did some kind of investigative work on the assassination. So afterwards. And I but what I was shocked to find was that when I he found this this this report and it was missing two pages, the online version. But it had a RIF number, a research identification form number. Those are the the 13 digit numbers assigned by the Assassination Records Review Board. And so the main thing was to find it. Well, I have a big supplementary list that was given to me by the archives of all the FBI documents in the JFK collection. And there's really, really a lot of boxes, but there are only two boxes for the whole Miami field office. And that was including, you know, the HSCA as well. I mean, they, I would have thought that they would be much more intensive in their investigation from that office, because it seems an obvious, you know, point of concentration for suspicion and so forth. even the CIA station in Miami did an investigation there. But anyway, so there were only two boxes, but I didn't have a location. But I thought, well, I'll just ask for those two boxes and see, because, you know, that's Miami. So I got it relatively quickly, and it was in the first of the two boxes. And I was amazed immediately to just be able to shuffle numerically to the place where that document was and to find the missing two pages, which were a write-up of a Cuban exile informant of the FBI, his interview that was given to an FBI special agent based in that field office named Thomas Arian. And I mean, on the very first page, it said, Herminio Diaz, who was the subject of the report is or was working for the CIA. And it was very conspicuous because it was one sentence alone, like a single sentence paragraph between the first and the third. The first paragraph began with, he was here recently briefly, meaning probably Miami, and he is in contact with the CIA. Well, for those of you who don't know very much about Arminio Diaz, he's always been a sort of, of, you know, for some reason, the suspicion of him has always felt credible. But we didn't really have that much to go on. Of course, we had Rob Reiner's podcast, his super hit podcast from, I guess it was 2023, that did so well. And of course, he had to give a final episode where he names the gunman in Dealey Plaza, which was kind of fun, but not, you know, it was based on on speculation. And he named Erminio Diaz as one of them. And I think what he based that on was an interview given to Tony Summers and the former HSCA chief counsel, Robert Blakey, in 2007 by an elderly Cuban exile who had something he wanted to get off his chest. And he relates this kind of hearsay tale where another Cuban exile said that Herminio Diaz told him that he was involved in some way in the assassination. And I think what's important to remember is that, you know, there was never any specification of how he was involved. This guy who gave the interview to Anthony Summers he said oh he was really great with guns He was a crack shot He was always around weapons etc etc and always carrying one But it doesn necessarily mean he was an actual gunman in Dealey Plaza We don know We just don know And in any case it was hearsay So we have that. And then if you researched Herminio Diaz's profile, you could connect him both to U.S.-based organized crime figures like Meyer Lansky and Santo Traficante, both of whom he worked for in some capacity. And you could also connect him to a CIA sponsored operation called the Cuban Revolutionary Council because he came to the United States and worked for the head of that operation, the Cuban head, who was a CIA asset who actually had two cryptonyms. And we don't know what he was doing for them, but there was that nexus, that connection between the mafia and the CIA. But what we didn't have was any statement that actually connected him directly to the CIA. So this is the first thing. And so it's kind of a major triangulation of, I don't know what you would call it, suspicion, some sort of evidence because someone's directly saying that he worked for the CIA. So really, Erminio Diaz, and I know that his 201 file, his personality file, is one of the JFK most wanted files that's sought from this declassification and may not be as smoking gun as the Joe Anides files, but still very interesting. And I think this really adds ammunition to the cause to get to pry his file loose and see what his relationship was. but what i thought was striking about the story was we had these stories like you said hearsay stories from two friends of erminio diaz saying that they believed he was involved in kennedy's assassination and then david boylan turns up a document about erminio diaz four days after the assassination right in which he comes up timing yeah the timing is absolutely it's very striking Before we had we had this allegation that somehow he might be involved in the JFK story. And now we have this story. An FBI agent investigating JFK's assassination goes and talks to one of his informants. And he says, Arminio Diaz is working for the CIA. So like. That's a pregnant story that was drawn. This new evidence draws Arminio Diaz closer into the events of November 22, 1963. Now, does it prove he was involved in the assassination of Kennedy? No, it doesn't. But it does show the nexus of CIA-sponsored Cubans and Kennedy's assassination. And it calls to mind another new revelation that the CIA station in Miami did not believe the story of a lone gunman. And they immediately investigated not Castro, not organized crime, not Oswald. They investigated anti-Castro Cubans for a possible role in Kennedy's death. And we never got the results of that. And now we see this reputed assassin, maybe not Erminio Diaz, is somehow now more closely implicated in the events around the assassination. And I think also we can state as a fact that Erminio Diaz was an assassin. I mean, it's not if the CIA describes him as the killer of this fellow Hernandez, who was a Cuban government official in 1948. If the CIA is admitting that in one of its own reports, which it does, then you have what's legally called a declaration against interest. It's automatically more credible. Herminio Diaz was a hitman. I'm sure he was very much a gangster heavy who worked for these mobsters and who was very proficient with weapons and had killed a lot of people. I mean, that's and we have to remember. And this is one of the ironies given the current administration's policy. I mean, I feel I have to mention this. You don't have to give it any credence, but obviously there's a crackdown on illegal immigration. It's not going very smoothly. And back then you have a man that immigrated effortlessly into the United States after being debriefed by the CIA. He was allowed in. It's, to me, unthinkable that the CIA did not uncover his past, his history of murder, that he had actually killed an official in Mexico City, a Cuban government official in Mexico City. And he's allowed to immigrate without, you know, a second thought. I mean, I do think that that, and also I want to say that under the JFK Records Act, his 201 file should have qualified as an assassination related file immediately anyway. I mean, even without the allegations of Ronaldo Martinez, who's in that video, in that interview, all of the connections of Arminio Diaz and all of his, you know, why was he there? You mentioned the CIA investigation of the Miami station, JM Wave, into Cuban exiles. I mean, it seems very likely that it would have picked up him in its sort of net of inquiry. I mean, it's very likely. And that, again, is one of the JFK Most Wanted files that we want to see. So, I mean, I think it's a significant breakthrough. I don't know what it means. And I don't, again, it's still sort of hearsay. And the statement by the other Cuban exile, who was an FBI informant, that he was working for the CIA is very vague. but he is a very very suspect character in all this and i really you know i just hope that uh that that moves forward uh and i might i might just add one last thing which is that so that the piece that i wrote before that which was about the fbi basically ceding its kind of domestic intelligence role to the to the cia by by acknowledging that there were these operations going on in Puerto Rico that were, you know, basically the DRE, which is the AMSPEL organization, the AMSPEL operation. And they just allowed the CIA to classify all of that from the very beginning. And so they didn't, I mean, it was clearly not an aggressive, if you could call it any kind of pursuit of of its own of its own um responsibility but again with with with arminio diaz on november 26 1963 i mean the fbi didn't do anything with that i mean weren't they supposed to be investigating the assassination as well i mean they were the no they they'd gotten orders from hoover that they were supposed to determine that oswald was the real assassin and nobody else was involved so right right they that order had already come down the fbi high right hoover said that on the weekend said that on the 24th um and so no fbi agent who wanted to keep his job was going to do anything different than that um and so uh no uh people like germinio diaz were not um investigated i mean i thought it was interesting that thomas arion even you know went so far as to question his informant and, you know, and came up with this information about Raminio Diaz's connection to the connection to the CIA. So, you know, it's, but I think the point of your earlier piece, Chad, is an important one as well, which is when the FBI goes along with the classification of CIA domestic spying operations, the CIA's domestic spying operations, which are illegal, let's not forget, are protected. And they're protected by they were protected by the FBI. And so, you know, things that might have been disclosed much, much earlier are only now coming to light. And, you know, and justice delayed is justice denied. You know, the fact that these these these things weren't disclosed, that the CIA had effective veto power over disclosure of these operations, as your story showed, that enabled them to keep this covered up for a long time. And we see that a lot in a story I'm working on, which I'm going to publish soon, about what the new records tell us about the CIA penetration of the fair play for Cuba committee. Because what we see from these documents, and this is what I'm seeing now, is you see the convergence of two areas of CIA activity related to the assassination. There's the surveillance of Oswald, which starts in November 1959 by the counterintelligence staff and continues to be run by them for the next four years. That's one kind of set of activities, keeping track of this ex-Marine when he goes here and there and they read his mail. They read his mail in the Soviet Union. They read his mail in Dallas. They take his picture in Mexico City and so on. You know, that's a whole set of activities. And then there's another set of activities, which are to infiltrate, penetrate, disrupt and destroy the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, which was a popular leftist group that was effectively opposing U.S. policy. And this is something that's forgotten about the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, which is now just thought of as, oh, that's something Lee Harvey Oswald had something to do with. Well, no, the reason the Fair Play for Cuba Committee was targeted by the CIA and FBI was precisely because it was very effective. It started out as just a newspaper ad. It wasn't even intended to be a nationwide organization. And it was just a newspaper ad defending the Cuban Revolution in 1960 and saying U.S. media coverage was unfair, hence the title Fair Play for Cuba. And it sprung up and rapidly spread. And within a couple of years, there were 25 chapters around the country and they were organizing opposition to the U.S. policy of hostility. the week Kennedy was inaugurated the Fair Play for Cuba committee put 600 people into Lafayette Park to protest U.S. policy towards Cuba the FBI was taking down the license plates numbers four FBI three FBI agents and four informants were in the crowd taking down the license plate numbers those people were then tracked down their bank accounts were searched this was very systematic repression and what what we see in the new JFK files is this collaboration that you talk about Chad between the FBI and the CIA with the CIA taking the lead and the ability to say all all of that's secret and we're not going to talk about that so the the the CIA's war on the fair Play for Cuba Committee is something that's also emerging from these new files. And what we see is those two activities, the surveillance of Oswald and the secret war against the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, those both originate in the same place, the counterintelligence staff of the CIA. And one of the new memos is a memo from Jane Roman, whose name is all over the pre-assassination Oswald file as the point of contact. She received lots of information about Oswald over the course so four years. And she was also assisting in the operations again to destroy the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. So those two things were, they might have been separate activities when they started, but by the fall of 1963, they had pretty much merged and they were both being handled by the counterintelligence staff of the CIA. And so that's where the story's heading now, is these secret operations around Oswald and the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. The George Gioaniti story is part of that. Your story, Chad, about the collaboration of the CIA and the FBI in places like Puerto Rico, that's another aspect of the story. That's what's coming to light right now. And can I just add one thing? You know, Jeff, as we've reported that JFK Facts was given exclusive access to the 2400 FBI files that were newly discovered at FBI headquarters and transferred to the archives. At first, when we were going through these 16 boxes, it was sort of like, well, we've seen these documents before. They're actually part of the FBI's JFK task force that was gearing up to prepare to comply with the JFK Records Act before the ARRB came into being. So it was kind of between 92 and 94. But what I found was interesting, and as you know, was that, you know, what was ultimately published, what was ultimately released from those FBI files, both as FBI and CIA documents, okay, so they had RIF numbers for both. I mean, the same document had a RIF number from both the CIA and the FBI, was that you didn't see any of the handwritten notations and marginalia that are all over these documents. And, you know, there's a term sanitization, which the CIA always use, make sure it's sanitized. And that obviously implies you don't have any of the handwritten notes on there. And they don't, the ones that were released, but you do actually see, and it's dated, you can see when they, the point at which the CIA or somebody says, yeah, this is delayed, delayed, delayed, and there are years going forward. So that piece about Puerto Rico was originally going to be about two documents that were the same day, May 28th, 1964, that were FBI surveillance of Cuban exile groups. One was in Puerto Rico and one was in Dallas. And in the interest of brevity, because one document made the point, I left out the Dallas one. But the Dallas one covers all these groups, including DRE, Alpha 66 and a bunch of others and fair play for Cuba committee, as if that's, you know, the same. But basically, it was making the point that, you know, Cuban exiles are being surveilled in Dallas. And there's handwritten notations that say, yeah, this, you know, this was referred to the CIA, was withheld in full. And then these stamps that go all the way through the 1980s that basically say, yeah, yeah, you know, you have to keep. I don't know what was held back and what wasn't during that time. I'm not sure exactly when it was released. But it is sort of illuminating and it is kind of interesting. So there is something new in those files that we didn't see. You see this determination to keep those covert activities against U.S. citizens, including Oswald, out of public view for as long as possible. And the JFK Records Act in 92 forces a degree of disclosure. But there's plenty of foot dragging there, which, you know, which continued really right through March 18th, 2025. 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 vial 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 go to jeffersonmorley.com and check out the Trilogy of Spies. We got a couple of questions from Mark Lobel. The first comment is, and I hope you never get tired of hearing it. You may have felt alone. You may have felt like you were, you know, fighting like tilting at windmills. But the obvious thing is there were so many of us who did care and still care and are so appreciative of your efforts and all the other professionals and researchers. When you think of how much we know today compared to what we knew from 63, 64 forward, it's mind boggling. That's just a comment. A couple of questions, maybe a third question. Sure. And I'm afraid to ask some of these, and that is question one, how do we know that these records exist? How do we know that the Joannidis file exists or any of the other key documents? Question one. Question two is in the chat, Larry mentions a six-month time frame, And I would like embellishment of what does that mean if there's such a thing. And question three is, I thought this struck me and no one has ever mentioned this and we've never seen any discussion of it anywhere. In terms of following Oswald, were they tapping his phone in all of his locations? We know that there were tappings going on of, you know, Martin Luther King and Marilyn Monroe, etc. There were lots of things like that occurring in that era. There's never been a mention that I'm aware of that they were tapping Oswald to know even more of what was going on in his life. So I hope I haven't overwhelmed you with those questions. So in reverse order, you know, were they tapping his phone? We don't have any evidence of that, but one of the key documents that we seek in the Joe Anides file is a clearance that he received in June 1963. And it's a clearance for what's called special intelligence, capital S, capital I. Now, in the CIA context, that's a term of art, special intelligence, and it can refer to any tightly compartmentalized operation. But often, I wouldn't say typically, but often, maybe, yeah, maybe typically, I would say most often, it refers to wiretap information. And the reason that you get a special clearance for that is that wiretap operations are very expensive to mount. They're very productive once you have them in place. And once they're revealed, your losses are total and complete. So you have to preserve the confidentiality of a wiretap. That's highly important. And that's why there's a special clearance. Well, Joe Anides was approved for a special intelligence clearance in 1963. So what wiretap information was he supposed to receive? You know, that's one of the things we want to know. That's why we want to file. My suspicion is that Joe Anides may have been cleared for that wiretap information from Mexico City that picked up on Oswald there So that the answer to your third question So the answer to your second question a six time frame that the announced time frame for the House Task Force on declassification of federal secrets. They gave themselves six months to deal with JFK, RFK, MLK, and a host of other things. I mean, to me, that was a bad idea. That's way too much to cover in way too short a time. But that's a different issue. And on your first question, how do we know these documents exist? Well, we know that the Joe Anides file existed because when my Freedom of Information Act lawsuit was settled in August of 2008, the CIA issued me a formal finding of the documents that had been denied under the lawsuit, and the court had upheld their withholding of that information. In such cases, in a Freedom of Information Act, the government is obliged to produce what's called a Vaughn Index. And the Vaughn Index is a list of all the documents they didn't give you. So the way it works out is you lose the lawsuit, The government has the right to retain the material and not show it to you. The one thing the government has to do is they have to tell you what they didn't give you. And that's the purpose of a Vaughan index. So in August 2013, I received a Vaughan index for the Joe Anides personnel file. And it had about 300 documents in it, none of which I was allowed to see. But all of which were described in a declassified way by the CIA. And the Joan Ede's file that we seek is a selection of documents from that file. So it existed in 2008. Now, does it still exist, you know, 15, 16, 17 years later? You know, the government is forbidden from destroying records that are requested in a Freedom of Information Act case, in most cases. So, you know, if those records were destroyed, that would be highly unusual. So I believe that the Joe Anides file, until I get told that it doesn't exist, I will believe that it does. How do we know the other ones exist? I mean, only the presumption that they are identified in other CIA files as being extant. and again it would be highly unusual if they were if those kinds of materials had been destroyed in the interim especially if they had come up in the context of congressional investigation so nothing is in this world but I do believe that was that? Files identified as assassination records because then there's also in addition of FOIA there's a JFK prohibition destroyed? The CIA would never admit that the Joe Anides files were assassination related. A position that Judge Tunheim from the review board took exception to and said that they were obviously assassination related and should all be released. Hi. I appreciate the opportunity, Jeff. I'm an independent journalist from South Texas down here in the Rio Grande Valley. And I became interested in this very recently with this hate is done from March. And that's how I got introduced to you. And I've just been continuing to follow you because I think and and, you know, everybody else, because I think this is an important topic, because, you know, if if something like that happened in 1963, then we're still living with the consequences of it. And so my question to you was, I don't know if you had a chance to see Secretary Gabbard speak to Hagan Kelly today. They talked about the files. They talked about RFK. They talked about the declassified files recently and everything. And so I just wanted to ask what your thoughts were in case you haven't heard the interview. she pretty much you know got asked by kelly if she thought you know there was any cia involvement she pretty much asked straight out and what tulsi gabbard said was well you know i haven't seen anything that would really suggest it and you know it was kind of a sort of like wishy-washy answer so i just wanted to ask you what your thoughts were about it if you haven't seen it yet i guess It's unfair. Yeah. Thank you. Thanks for your question, Jonathan. A couple of people have sent me that. I don't doubt that when Tulsi Gabbard looks at these files, is there something that says the CIA was involved in the assassination of the president? No. I mean, you have to look at the totality of the records. This isn't just about what emerged in the past two months. This is what's emerged in the past 20 years. And there's a wide variety of evidence that has come forward since the 1990s. And it pretty consistently in every aspect of the assassination undermines the official story. The new evidence undermines the notion that one guy fired three shots at the president and one of them hit them. The accumulation of eyewitness, medical testimony, eyewitness testimony, photographic evidence, and the evidence of CIA operations around Oswald. I mean, that story, it doesn't describe reality. And so is that obvious by looking at a handful of records that Tulsi Gabbard's looking at? No, it's not. So I don't particularly worry about that. I think that Gabbard has taken a positive role by saying all intelligence agencies should turn over their JFK records right away. This isn't about, you know, the purpose of this exercise is not to prove any given thesis. The purpose of this exercise is to prove that the CIA is under the control of the people, and that it has to obey the law in an assassination of a president. Now, we had a law, strong law, and we had a deadline that was eight years ago. So they blew that deadline. They're obviously not interested in complying with the law. But, you know, they're backing up now and they're surrendering things that they had no intention of surrendering. So we're making progress. And, you know, Tulsi Gabbard's helping in that regard. that's not the final word on how we analyze these documents she's not an analyst and she doesn't have all the records so nor does she have i'm glad what she's doing nor does she have the the mosaic that you have and other people have about how to put all the pieces together we're not at the stage where you know this you know this instant analysis this social media you know, you have to decide big questions in 30 seconds and less than 280 characters. I mean, it's just nutty. It's no way to get at the truth. And we shouldn't really participate in it, you know, any more than we have to. Ben Cooper. Thanks. My impression, based on reading that all occurred many years ago, and therefore that may be corrupted by my failing memory, is that you bring up this Fair Play for Cuba committee, and I'm not sure what the significance of the CIA penetrating it was, but my understanding was that Oswald was essentially the only member of the Fair Play committee in New Orleans and had been put up to join it by the anti-Castro Cubans who allowed him to use their address at 544 Camp Street and so forth. Is there anything in what you've now learned that contradicts that or confirms or contradicts that impression? Well, I mean, it is striking that Oswald, who was in his personal expression, leftist and supportive of the Cuban revolution. But when he lived in Miami, I mean, in New Orleans in 1963, he spent very little time with people of similar ideology. And he spent a lot of time with anti-Castro Cubans. And all of his activities on behalf of the Fair Play for Cuba committee were done actually in defiance of the Fair Play for Cuba committee. when he wrote to them and said, I'm going to open a chapter in New Orleans, they wrote and said, don't do that. You'll attract attention and you might have violent reprisals. He ignored that advice. He went public. He did get attention and he did get violent reprisals. He got into a fight with the Cubans and got arrested. So he was not acting like a member of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee in good faith. And he did seem to be playing both sides of the fence, both posing as an anti-Castro person, associating with anti-Castro organizations and people, and also associating with the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. So, you know, that whole nexus, that's what the Joe Aniti story is about, is what was going on there. And it was all going on under Joe Aniti's eyes. He was running that group at the time, and he had a residence in New Orleans. So, you know, That's the crux of the issue, really, is right there. That's the story that they can't explain and that they obviously don't want to explain, which is why they're slow walking the Joe Anides file right now. Is there anything in the files you've read so far that either confirms or contradicts any of that? What do you mean any of that? both what i said and you just said yeah yeah no i mean no that's all that's all well established uh you know that that joanides ran the group that the cubans uh uh took on oswald that they publicized him uh that that was reported back to joanides that's all nobody disputes that you know that's part of the interesting part about the the media silence around the story is the defense of the CIA, they don't have the option of a cover story. The CIA hasn't supplied any cover story because they were caught red-handed. And so there's not like a rationalization that they can supply to friendly reporters. It's too well documented. So they don't have an explanation, which to me means that they don't want to acknowledge that this is an authorized covert operation that's going on. And that's something that they've never been able to acknowledge. And 62 years later, they're still, you know, they're still dancing around that trying to prevent it. But we're at the end of the line. We're going to have a decision soon. Dan Sigler. Hi, Jeff. This question is for you and for probably Larry and Chad as well. I came across sort of a curious single document that I can't figure out what it is involving William Harvey in the earliest part of the JFK document release, which is a single-page document, an FAA document, which purports to give Harvey some kind of certification or authority in the FAA, by the FAA regarding flights. And I'm wondering what, if you have any idea what that document is about. I'm curious as to whether it gave him a right to get on an airplane and fly without a ticket as a FAA certified person. I'm not familiar with that. I think the key to these documents is to not look at one document at a time. You need to look at every Bill Harvey document that was released and look at collectively what did we learn that we didn't know two years ago. You know, to go through and look at one document at a time, it's just, it's not a very productive way of making sense of what was going on and sense of what has been revealed okay i get it thank you um alton sila sila you need to unmute alton uh yep thanks for uh taking my question um there was a mention earlier about alpha 66 and i have always found the alpha 66 carlos bestiana maurice bishop story to be one of the more fascinating angles uh so my question is kind of twofold one to what extent does does this issue uh connect up with that story and then second more broadly do you expect there to be any further information or disclosure related to the maurice bishop story or do you think it's sort of a dead end or a mystery that will never be solved. I mean, there's no doubt in my mind that David Phillips used the pseudonym, the alias Maurice Bishop. Ross Crozier, who handled the DRE, who handled the M spell account before George Joannidis, was named to that position by David Phillips. I interviewed Ross Crozier in person, showed him a memo in which he told Gaten Fonzie that, yes, David Phillips did use the name Maurice Bishop. So he confirmed that that was his memo. He confirmed that he did say that. And then he said that he had recanted that and that he didn't believe that that was true. And I said, well, why did you recant it? He said, well, I was an alcoholic at the time. And I said, well, why would being an alcoholic make you say that David Phillips used the alias Maurice Bishop when he didn't? And he just smiled at me. He didn't have any explanation. He recanted because people in the CIA made it clear that he had to recant. And so the story, his story corroborates what Anthony, Antonio Vecchiana said, which was that Phillips used the alias Maurice Bishop. So that part of the story, I feel, is very well confirmed. Did David Phillips as Maurice Bishop meet with Oswald in Dallas in mid-September, the way Vessiana said? That story is unconfirmed. There's no way to confirm it. And I don't see any sign that in the files that there's anything more about that story to be released. Most of the David Phillips material has now come into the clear. So the thing to remember about David Phillips is that at different points in his life, he told four different stories about Lee Harvey Oswald, about what he knew about Lee Harvey Oswald. And they were all pretty much mutually exclusive. So the guy clearly did not intended to mislead people about what he knew about Oswald because of the four stories he told, only one of them could have been true. um so three quarters of the time he was he was fibbing about oswald was that because he knew something about an assassination conspiracy you know maybe maybe not he he was a very slippery guy and prone to overstating his own importance so you know did he testify deceptively in the jfk yeah he definitely did he definitely did but was he complicit in a plot to kill the president I don't see evidence of that. Diane Shoemaker, haven't heard from you in a while. Yes. Hi. I wanted to ask about, so if, I always thought it was the FBI's job to infiltrate communist organizations and destroy them. So if the CIA is duplicating work of the FBI or trying to participate in this fair play for Cuba, would this be something under that umbrella of the COINTELPRO that they have discussions about this? Yeah, here's how to think about it. In the FBI, those programs to infiltrate organizations that were opposed to U.S. policy, that was called COINTELPRO, counterintelligence program. Now, the techniques used in that were the counterintelligence techniques of the CIA as well. So the way COINTELPRO worked was if the target was in U.S. soil, then the FBI took the lead. If the target was connected with America, but somehow overseas, the CIA took the lead. So the CIA took the lead on the fair play for Cuba committee because they said, falsely, it turned out, that they were funded by the Cuban government. So they said, we're going to go out and we're going to prove that we're the CIA. That's our, you know, that's what we can do. So, so the CIA's war against the fair play for Cuba committee was, there was plenty of FBI involvement, but it was really the CIA's baby, you know, it was the CIA's project because because there was a foreign connection. So the way to think about it is COINTELPRO is the FBI name for it, but the CIA uses the exact same techniques. If it has a foreign connection, the CIA takes the lead. If it has a domestic connection, the FBI took the lead. So that was how it was. But this is also, because this is also a failure of the FBI and the Secret Service in this story, in terms of not protecting the president, not protecting American people. So i don't know it just seems like there's also that part of the story of them fail their failures yeah absolutely of not looking out weren't they suspicious wasn't hoover suspicious of the cia or or they just it was very hostile to this to the cia um never liked them never trusted them oh that's good uh but um but hoover and james angleton did have a working relationship where on things like this on on on domestic uh uh counter subversion there's plenty of memos showing uh disagreements and there's actually memos when macone is asking if everything's okay with the FBI and the documents that were released. So you can see that Hoover was pissed off that he learned that the CIA was bugging Mexico City. Hoover was, you can look at some of the stuff that just got released, it's really interesting. And Hoover was getting reports of threats that the mafia was making and ignoring them. And just one little aside note, Was there any information that just released about the Chicago plot? Any more information about those? Because it seems like they were these Latin shooters, too, but that was foiled. But that they were either Puerto Rican or Cuban. I have not searched for Chicago-related documents. So I couldn't. Nobody's told me anything about that. Right. There was a fake, you know, one of the AI things came up with a fake account. But aside from that, I because I've been focusing on the mafia and I haven't seen anything from Chicago, anything new. Yeah. Greg Dawson, you need to unmute. Thanks Jeff I had a question with regard I think a lot of information that was stored down in JM wave in Miami in 63 along with the group that was down there but have you come across any recent things on David Sanchez Morales um his name his name pops up a few times um but I I have not you know I have not drilled down on him so uh I haven't seen anything are you familiar with um what he did in South America and some other places yeah no yeah very familiar he's he's an important character in the jfk story so um but no i haven't heard anything you know uh i'm always open to you know if somebody's got a story finds an interesting document um uh be great to you know be great to hear about it but i have not heard anything specifically about him. Thank you, gentlemen. I was curious about the Florida-New Orleans nexus. Was there any, the group that Garrison uncovered that kind of revolved around Bannister and Shaw and Ferry that obviously Leary Oswald's kind of tied up in, was there ever any supposition or anything that Joe Andides was possibly running that group? Was there any connection ever established between them between um uh the david ferry guy banister group and joe anides in florida was that possible that he was also running that group since oswald seems to be a link between all of them or is that something that would be in the joe anides file uh it might well be something that was in there um joe anides had a residence in new orleans um he signed a couple of travel forms where he signed and said he had a home leave residence in New Orleans. So we can say that he was there and worked there because his family lived in Miami, not in New Orleans. So he was clearly going there for work, not for family purposes. So, you know, yeah, what could he have been running that group or having maintaining informal contact with Bannister, who was a former FBI agent and known to the FBI agents in New Orleans. Yeah, it's a great question about the Joe Anides file is, you know, what was he doing in New Orleans? And if Joe Anides was running the Shaw group or was linked to them or something like that, what would the implications of that actually be? I mean, to see if he would, you know, if you were to find out that he was so much more deeply tied into this other group that was so much closer to the assassination. Well, I mean, you know, this is why we're getting down to brass tacks now. I mean, you know, whatever the explanation is, it's been buried very deeply for a long time. And, you know, its implications, assuming that it's being hidden for the reasons they say it's being hidden, because this is top secret national security information that the american people couldn't possibly be trusted with that's what it always is if we accept that then you know that's very hard to explain and very hard to square with the official story that this low nut just wandered through the top levels of the cia and killed the president you know um and it makes that story which has been hard to believe all along even harder to believe even, you know, the Joe and Edie, I mean, the bottom line is, yeah, the Joe and Edie's file could blow up the official story. You know, and I think if we get the whole thing, that's what we're going to find out. So, which is why I'm pleased that we're, you know, we're close to having an answer to, you know, are they going to produce it or not? So. Thank you. Okay. Phil Gerholt. Yeah, thanks, Jeff. I'd like to ask you if you're aware of a memo that was sent from the CIA to the FBI in the summer of 63, stating that the CIA was going to take the war abroad to Cuba, as far as the fair play for Cuba committee. And the very next day, Oswald sought out a visa to travel abroad. I thought that was quite coincidental. Yeah, that's a striking memo in September 1963 where Sam Package, the FBI liaison, says he just got off the phone with the CIA and they're thinking about launching a program against the fair play for Cuba in a foreign country where it has some support. And then, yeah, Oswald immediately applies for a visa to go to travel to Mexico City, where he goes to the embassy and presents his credentials from the Fair Play for Cuba committee as a way of trying to get into Cuba. So, yeah, it's a, you know, it's a striking coincidence. The Church Committee was given a bunch of misleading statements by the FBI and CIA, and concluded that that operation couldn't have had anything to do with the assassination, because, well, they had collected information on Oswald, it wasn't developed. they had collected photographic information on oswald's correspondence it wasn't developed until after the assassination that story we've now learned was well let's just say incomplete because the cia didn't tell the church committee about another operation against the fair play for cuba which was going on that summer um which collected information on oswald that was definitely collected, published, and known by the CIA and FBI before the assassination. So one of the new documents, and this is the one I'm going to write about soon, shows that the Church Committee was fooled by the CIA on this point, and that the CIA did not disclose fully its operations against the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. And when it did report on them, it reported inaccurately, thanks to the misleading statements of the CIA. So- Yeah. Could I also add one more thing? There was a documentary in the late 70s, and I believe it was probably Anthony Summers, and William Gaudet was interviewed. Evidently, he was in line right behind Oswald. He was the next one on the list as far as trying to garner a visa abroad. and Gaudet in that interview he stated that he was worked for the CIA so whether that is true or not I don't know but I think that's very interesting no no that Gaudet did say that and it was true because the number on his passport was very close to the number on Oswald's passport um and it's it was indisputable that he worked for the CIA he was kind of an itinerant newsman And so when they wanted to float stuff in the media, he was somebody who they could rely on. You know, what can you say? I mean, all you can say is, look at Oswald has an astonishing, incredible capacity to run into CIA connected people in 1963. I mean, he runs into him in New Orleans. Remember all those guys from the Cuban Student Directorate? That was an organization supported by the CIA. when Oswald went to court in New Orleans a bunch of Cubans confronted him at least four of them were connected to the CIA then he goes and stands in line and there's another guy from the CIA and then he goes to Mexico City and his picture is taken by the CIA I mean you know and so at some point you have to say uh you know they had him under surveillance you know everywhere he went somebody saw him and reported about him. And that goes on throughout 1963. So, you know, what was going on? I don't know, but you can't say the CIA didn't know about the guy. Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't Gaudet also connect Oswald with Bannister as a witness? He observed them in public. And I think he came out and was one of, you know, what, a dozen people that associated Oswald with Bannister, one of the witnesses. I wouldn't have said Gaudet did that, but Tony Summers' reporting on this was very impressive. And he had a wide variety of people who said that Oswald was in Bannister's company. Delphine Roberts, who was Bannister's secretary, described the relationship in detail. and another another one there was a customs agent in uh in new orleans who was contacted by the church committee and uh he said you know i've been dying for this is in the 70s he said i've been dying for you know for somebody to get in touch with me because i saw oswald hanging out with fairy and all those other guys all that summer and uh you know um and he really wanted to come and testify and the church committee never called him. They didn't want to know the story. It wasn't too high a priority. Tyler Strother, you're a newcomer to our conversation. Jefferson, thank you for all your work that you do. I appreciate everything that you do and it's been great following you. I haven't really followed JFK files or the case really until recently, until they started releasing these things. So I became new with Oswald. I assumed that, okay, Oswald was a lone man and gunman. I wasn't really a conspiracy person, but now more and more things get revealed. It's very interesting. But my question is, do you think that the CIA was involved in the death of Marilyn Monroe? I don't know enough about it to say. I just found these. I was looking. The CIA on their government website has two things they found or they've released about Marilyn Monroe and the CIA. I mean, I don't know what's in there. I just now saw it, but I want to throw these in there. And, you know, it's just interesting. So just look at Anthony Summers. There was a really good documentary last year about Marilyn Monroe and his study. And it looks like, you know, the mob was was bugging her her home. But you should you should read. You should watch that show. I think it was on Netflix. Yeah, because Tony Summers wrote a book about Marilyn Monroe. And this Netflix special was kind of like his research from that book, plus what he had learned since then. Kind of wrapping up. Really illuminating. So if you want to know more about that, that's definitely the place to go. You said Tony Summers? Yeah. Anthony Summers. And it's I forget. It's something about Marilyn Monroe, but it came out last year or something. Go on Netflix and look for it. Okay, perfect. Thank you very much. And thank you again for your work and all that you're doing. Hopefully these files get released. That'd be great. Thank you, Tyler. Frank Rizzo. no one in the cia who's in the cia today you know was around when kennedy was assassinated i'm just wondering from your perspective who are these people there today who are like in charge of these files and were they given instruction from on high that certain information should not be released i mean what do they care about who joe anides was and what he did 60 years ago during the kennedy assassination you know what i mean i mean do they have like a institutional uh institutional interest in in keeping some things away from public knowledge yeah i i mean i think i think that's the explanation you can say oh yeah all the people were involved and were dead. But, you know, if something, you know, impugns the CIA's reputation around JFK, which a lot of evidence has, which is why the CIA's reputation is so terrible and why so many people suspect them because of their misconduct, their destruction of evidence, their false statements, you know, nobody believes them anymore. And that's a big problem for them. And so they can't just jettison the, you know, the lone gunman theory without calling their whole institutional credibility and the things that they've been saying for the past 60 years. So, you know, they're in a tight corner. They can't really, you know, correct themselves too much. They've tried a certain modified limited hand out by saying, well, you know, yeah, we did know about Oswald and we didn't really, you know, tell the truth. And, but, you know, sorry, Mrs. Kennedy, you know, it won't happen next time. It's basically, you know, we're not accountable. We're not responsible. Leave us alone. You know, that story has lost its utility and Trump's victory in his executive order show that it has no effect in the American system. Now, the law is everything's got to be made public. And so they're very uneasy because they have a terrible record of misconduct and deception. And to come clean now is really to, you know, to damn themselves. And so they're not willing to do that. It's not that they're sitting around saying, you know, we got the orders to, you know, keep the secret about who killed Kennedy. It's more a culture of secrecy and a culture of protecting the CIA's reputation. And, you know, frankly, making sure that nobody outside the CIA gets control of their secrets. You know, that's really what this is about at bottom is, can a bunch of citizens like us make the CIA do something they don't want to do, you know, and the amazing thing is to me, like, it's worked. I mean, yeah, they blew the deadline for eight years, but they got caught and now they got to come clean. You know, they can't get rid of this thing, no matter how hard they try, but they also can't admit that they're wrong without undermining their own institutional interests. And they use the grounds of the statute, which has, you know, there's specific grounds for postponement. So it could be disclosing sources and methods or people that serve. So they hide behind this. And when you look at the review process that was used, you know, there are people that process the request and then they feed it to the parties within the CIA or the Department of Defense and ask someone up to, you know, to review and say, is this okay to review? release okay so they they but they use the grounds on the statute that gives them the that gives them a veneer of credibility okay no no thank thank thank you jeff there was one that came out that was this year this past dump where they were the memo was showing how to wiretap a telephone for the 1960s yeah why why is that relevant now What is that protecting? No, thanks to both of you for that. Just a quick follow-up to what Chad Nagle was saying, that he got a box and he got his hands in this box and is looking at original. Is that how it works? Is there no one in the room looking to see that you don't do something to these files? Oh, no, the reading room at the National Archives in College Park is very tightly patrolled. oh okay all right if you're sitting there with a box the rule is you can only take out one folder at a time so like i took out two folders at a time like somebody pulls up next to the desk files two files at a time it's not just folders it's files they are they are quite draconian they're like exam proctors they want they patrol around and they watch over you and it can't be a bit of bore but once things are transferred in the box you know if you if you request them you get them nobody is going to try to make sure that you don't uh you know see something it's it's there i mean it it is quite good it's just that none of us have ever really believed that anything in the jfk collection which means what's actually there what's been transferred it has a smoking gun in it And that's why so many documents have been identified as never having been turned over. And if Jeff's right, they still exist. We hope and pray that they do still exist. But no, if you go to the archives, you can see, if you've got an ID number, you can see it. It's a great place. If you have a folder, you can only look at two documents within the folder at a time. Right. You can actually you can actually I mean, yeah, you could conceivably look at more than one document at the same time within the same folder. But in terms of of handling them, I mean, we were together and they wouldn't let like him hold one and me hold another. I mean, that's so, you know, if you go in a group, if you go in a group, you're going to be together looking at the same document at the same time. It's, you know, it's sort of pointless. It's it's a bit silly, actually, but that's the way they do. Harry, you're going to get the last word tonight. Okay, great. Okay, so we got Hancock's book, The Oswald Puzzle. And I'm noticing when I'm looking at the Kennedy and King website that it sparked kind of a spirited debate among the JFK scholars as to whether Oswald was being wittingly or unwittingly positioned by the CIA. What's your view on that, given these latest document releases? They haven't changed my view. I mean, Oswald has guilty knowledge of something, right? I mean, there's multiple indications of that. First of all, his statement, I'm a patsy, right? That implies that he knows somebody else is blaming him for a crime he didn't commit. Okay, that's a complicated thought. but it implies knowledge of other people being responsible for the crime. Second thing is, when he goes to work, he doesn't have his pistol with him. The president is alive. After 1230, the president's dead. The first thing Oswald does is go get his pistol. So that indicates that he thought he needed a pistol, and he only needed it once the president was dead that to me that also implies guilty knowledge so you know was he witting he knew something was going on but allegedly he allegedly left money with marina you know he did some weird things that would suggest he knew something could happen that yeah right yeah yeah but it doesn't he was told something that was supposed to go a certain way and and i think that it could have been something as simple as what happened to Adlai Stevenson two weeks before, right? There was going to be a demonstration that's going to embarrass the president that may start throwing things. He just may have been aware that something was going to happen, but it doesn't mean it was an assassination. Well, one last comment from Ben. You got something to get on the test? Yeah, very quickly. What is our latest state of knowledge regarding the curtain rods? nothing's changed nothing's changed i know that's not a satisfactory answer but nothing has changed since you know in since uh what's his name's freight uh what's his name's book came out a couple years ago is that buell wesley phrasing yeah yeah i mean that if you want to say that's the latest I mean, as far as I know, his latest thing is that he still says that the package was not long enough to be a disassembled, you know, a disassembled rifle. It's not of the kind that that Oswald is supposed to have fired. So, OK, we're going to have to leave it at that. Thank you, everybody. Happy May Day to you all. And we'll see you next week. All right. Thank you.