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A Better Life New York
Decoding the JFK Assassination Part 2: Last Moments, Controversial Autopsy, and the Silencing of Lee Harvey Oswald
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Did you know that the JFK assassination is still shrouded in mystery and controversy, decades after that fateful November day? Join us as we unravel the intricate web of events from Lee Harvey Oswald's enigmatic arrival at the Texas School Book Depository to the split-second decisions that forever altered history in Dealey Plaza. Our detailed recounting provides a gripping, minute-by-minute narrative of President Kennedy's final moments and the unsettling shifts in security protocols and public sentiment leading up to the tragedy.
The aftermath of Kennedy's assassination was a whirlwind of confusion and emotional turmoil. We bring you into the heart of that chaos, as journalist Dan Rather stumbled upon the breaking news at Parkland Hospital and the conflicting reports of Oswald’s movements emerged. Hear about the eerie resemblance between Officer JD Tippit and JFK, and the heartbreaking actions of Jacqueline Kennedy as she tried to preserve a part of her husband’s brain. Our exploration captures the conspiracy theories, poignant emotions, and the raw humanity of those involved.
As we delve into the suspicious circumstances surrounding the handling of Kennedy’s body and the peculiarities observed during his autopsy, we uncover the enigmatic role of Jack Ruby, his mob connections, and the silencing of Oswald. We also offer insights into films and books that delve deeper into the assassination, highlighting works endorsed by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and the controversial Curtis LeMay. Finally, we set the stage for a comprehensive look into the RFK assassination, offering parallels to contemporary issues and a deeper understanding of this complex period in American history. Tune in for a thought-provoking episode filled with compelling narratives and thorough analysis.
Hello everyone and welcome back to A Better Life, new York. This is part two of our episode into the JFK assassination. Dom and I are just beginning that fateful day where Kennedy is shot in Dealey Plaza and we take it up at that point. I hope you will enjoy this episode as much as you enjoyed episode one. We have gotten great feedback from it and if you haven't listened to episode one, I tell you to go back and listen one episode back and you will enjoy it. It is a great look into a time of our history. Now JFK, part 2. That takes us to infamous day, november 22nd and the days after, on 7th of 23 am, oswald goes to work at the Texas Depository in Dallas with Buell, wesley, frazier, you gotta love these names.
Speaker 1:Sounds like something from a movie. A young worker there, frazier, asked about a long paper-wrapped package Oswald's arms where Oswald says it's some curtains Right, he said it was curtain rods. Right Says oh, some curtains here, but I think it was curtain rods. The president speaks at a breakfast and attends members of the Fort Worth Chamber of Commerce which were largely conservative Republicans. Kennedy 9-10. Now Kennedy takes his place. So at 10.40 am Kennedy's motorcade to Hotel Texas for the Caswell Air Force Base. At 1.20, air Force One departs Caswell Air Force Base for Dallas, texas. At 11.35, air Force Two arrives at Love Field. 11.38, air Force One arrives at Love Field. At 11.44, the Kennedys and the Connellys disembark Air Force One and are greeted by Johnson.
Speaker 1:Motorcade cars have been lined up earlier that morning. 11.55, the motorcade departs Love Field about 15 minutes after the party had arrived and the president and his wife take time for shaking hands for enthusiastic supporters. The motorcade's route Love Field to West Mockingbird Lane and progresses down Main Street. At 1229, the motorcade turns right westbound onto Houston Street and enters Dealey Plaza. The motorcade approached the Texas School Depository. The motorcade made a sharp 135-degree left turn on Elm Street and downward slope. A giant Hertz rental car clock on top of the depository building was seen to change from 1229 to 1230 as the limousine turned down Elm Street Witnesses recall the first shot was fired after the president started waving with his right hand.
Speaker 1:Onlookers recalled hearing three shots. The Zapruder film shows that the president re-emerged after being temporarily hidden from view in the Stimmons Freeway sign and the film frames 215 to 223 and his mouth was already open, wide in anguished expression, by frame hands clenched into fists. He then raised his fist in front of his face and as he turns to the left towards his wife, connelly is also hit. Secret Service agent Clint Hill testified he heard one shot, then jumped off the running board of the Secret Service follow-up car directly behind Kennedy at the equivalent frame of 3.08, about a quarter of a second before the president's head exploded on frame 313. Hill then rapidly ran towards the president's limo.
Speaker 1:The Warren Commission report stated that seconds after the shooting Roy Kellerman consulted his watch and said 1230 to William Gere before he radioed police chief Jesse Curry that the president had been shot. Curry then commenced and ordered Parkland Hospital to stand by for Dallas police radio log reflecting that the communication was made at 1230. As the limousine began to speed up. Mrs Kennedy was heard to scream, she claimed onto the rear of the car. At the same time, hill managed to climb aboard and hang onto the suddenly accelerated limo. As Kenny returned back to the seat and Hill shielded her, the Connellys stated they heard Kenny say I have his brains in my hand. The limo driver and the police motorcycles turned their sirens on and raced estimated 80 miles an hour to Parkland Hospital along the Simmons Freeway and Harry Hines Boulevard, approximately four miles away.
Speaker 2:So let's start off at Love Field. We're talking about before the concern for the president's safety, given what happened previously, with officials being spat on and whatnot, and the serious concern for his safety when the limo was taking off. Emery Roberts, who was the, I believe, the special agent in charge that day, called back a Secret Service agent that was getting on the back of the limo, and this is all on video. You can see it on YouTube. Vince Palmara has it on his YouTube channel. The Secret Service agent throws up his hands like three times to say what's going on. What's going on?
Speaker 2:To add to this situation, the concern of safety, that day in the Dallas Morning News a full page advertisement was taken, had Kennedy's photo on it and it said wanted for treason, and it had bullet points as to the various things that they believed that he committed which would amount to treason. And one of the individuals who paid for the ad was purported to be Nelson Hunt, the brother of HL Hunt. So you have that happening right then, and there the protection being pulled. You had the military intelligence group for that area was told to stand down that day. So typically in a situation like that, military intelligence would assist the Secret Service and local police in the present security. They were told to stand down that day. Security they were told to stand down that day. You have the day before the motorcade route was published and it showed going down Main Street. So what happened was, if you went down Main Street it wouldn't have conveniently been in front of the Texas School Book Depository. So that was actually changed and the Secret Service broke their own rules regarding the speed of the president's car. When it's open like that, it does have a bubble top. It was not used that day. The bubble top was not bulletproof. The only thing that would have happened is you would have been able to tell where the bullets came from, but it wouldn't have protected the president. He would have been shot anyways. But so you have. You also even have the parade cars being changed like where they were in the parade.
Speaker 2:Typically the press is in the vehicle vehicle either in front of the president or behind, usually in front, so you could get his face and photographs and video. On November 22nd they were placed last in the line so they couldn't get any video. No evidence. You also saw when the turn was made, the left-hand turn from Houston on to Elm. You saw the open windows. There was no police officers on roofs, except for one, which is interesting. The records building did have a guy up there and some people actually speculate that he was a shooter, but the security was just basically pulled. As a matter of fact, the motorcycle police officers were told that day under no circumstances are you to get involved with safety. You're just there to ride, that's it. Don't get involved with anything. And, according to Vince Palmera, some of the Secret Service agents that he's interviewed stated that when shots were being fired, emory Roberts ordered them to stand down. So that's why it was a setup, with his Secret Service protection being pulled and the assassination allowed to occur.
Speaker 1:Back to Oswald for a minute. Oswald left the building at 1233, right. Oswald left the building through the front door. He'd been confronted by a patrolman, Marion Baker, and depository superintendent Roy Truly in the second floor lunchroom. Baker let Oswald pass after Truly identified Oswald as an employee. Oswald was next seen by his secretary as he crossed through the second floor business office. He left the building through its front door at approximately 12.33. Initially, Trulia and Chris Campbell, the depository's vice president, said that they had seen Oswald on the first floor storage room. When asked his interrogations about his whereabouts, Oswald claimed that he went outside to watch the parade, referring to the presidential motorcade, and was on with William Shelley, a foreman in the depository, in front, and he was at the front entrance of the first floor when he encountered the police. It's interesting.
Speaker 2:Yeah, what also happened was and this is a fairly recent development in the case there were three women watching the motorcade on the fourth floor. So once they saw the shooting, about 15 to 30 seconds afterwards, the first lady went to stairwell. Now that day, for some reason, at the time of the assassination, the elevator was no longer usable within the school book depository. So anybody in the building if you wanted to traverse it you had to go up and down the stairs. So three women were in the stairs and none of them saw Lee Harvey Oswald. They did see Truly and the police officer going up, but they never saw Oswald going down. It was very. The Warren Commission buried it, you know. They didn't even show it. And one of their attorneys said yeah, this is very problematic because the timing is such that they should have definitely run into Oswald Coming down the stairs?
Speaker 1:Yeah, all of them, not the cop, the people, everyone, yeah because they were already at the fourth floor.
Speaker 2:He would have been starting out at the sixth floor and they didn't hear anything. So it wasn't like there was somebody running down the stairs, which, in a stairwell, you would definitely hear that they buried that and it demonstrates that Lee Harvey Oswald definitely was not up on the sixth floor. However, there's a prison right across the way and, believe it or not, there were several prisoners who saw the whole thing and they were looking at the sixth floor and they saw two people in there. One of them seemed to be a dark guy with a bald spot and he was with a white guy and they saw the whole thing. Never interviewed, of course. Of course not.
Speaker 1:Of course not when you're a prisoner.
Speaker 2:You have bad eyesight, so you can't.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm sure you don't. So Merriman Smith reported that she ends up willing to pull a surprise for reporting it. She's a UPI reporter that she heard three shots President Slimazine, about 12.36,. President Slimazine arrives at Parkland Hospital, admits Kennedy and Connelly and immediately begins treatment. Malcolm Perry, the assistant professor of surgery at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center and a vascular surgeon, was there to treat Kennedy. Perry performed tracheotomy following the cardiopulmonary resuscitation performed by another surgeon. Other doctors worked frantically to save the president's life, but the wounds were too severe.
Speaker 1:So the only thing I know about that day is, at 1240, viewers of the live soap opera as the World Turns received the first national television report of the shooting by Walter Cronkite, and it wasn't like a picture, it just was a newsflash. I was five or four years old, sitting on my mother's lap and I do remember her starting to cry and I do remember this day. It's probably my first memory of life, to be honest. Wow, it was quite a day because it got progressively worse and my mother was pretty shook. She was home by herself with me and I remember it completely. I think she might have even called my dad at work. So Dan Rather, in the beginning of his. He happens to be in the right place at the right time, right, so to speak. He's on CBS. He calls Parkland Hospital. The doctor tells him, heather, in the beginning of his, he happens to be in the right place at the right time, right, so to speak. Yeah, he's on CBS. He calls Parkland Hospital. The doctor tells him that Kennedy is dead. So now we're around somewhere between 1230 and 1250. Estimates that the deposit billing was sealed off by the police Around that time. The streets in and around Dealey Plaza weren't immediately closed. Photographs are taken nine minutes after the assassination show vehicles still driving on Elm Street in front of the depository, which is amazing. Right At 12.50, kennedy's top military aide, general Godfrey McHugh, calls for Air Force One from Parkland to state that they will be leaving for Andrews Air Force Base At one o'clock. President Kennedy is officially pronounced dead.
Speaker 1:Those who treated Kennedy observed the president's condition, that it was morbid, meaning there was no chance of survival in the hospital. I'm absolutely sure I never knew. He never knew it would hit him. Last rites were administered. Uber needed to temporarily remove a sheet covering Kennedy's face to give the last rights to be performed. Connolly was taken to emergency surgery where he underwent two operations that day.
Speaker 1:After receiving word of the president's death, the acting White House press secretary, malcolm Kilduff, entered the hospital room where the new president, johnson, and his wife were sitting. Kilduff said Mr President, I have to announce the president's death. Is it okay with you that the announcement be made? Johnson ordered the announcement to be made only after he left the hospital. When asking that the announcement be delayed, johnson told Kilduff I think I had better get out of here before you announce it. I don't know why. We don't know whether this was a worldwide conspiracy, or whether they are after me as well as they were after President Kennedy, or it would be after the Speaker. We just don't know. He later recounted to Merrill Miller I asked that the announcement be made after we had left the room so that the international conspiracy were out to destroy our former government and leaders in government In that government. We would minimize the opportunity for them doing so. Certainly worth it After losing the depository.
Speaker 1:At this time, oswald walks seven blocks boarding a bus. This is really interesting stuff, right. Here's a guy who just shot the President of the United States. He gets on a bus the best. When the bus became installed in traffic. He exited the bus, walked to the nearby bus station and hired a taxi. He asked the driver to stop several blocks past his rooming house and then walk back to the house. He arrived at the house at 1 pm, according to the housekeeper, erlin Roberts. Of course, even Oswald had a housekeeper back in those days. The rest of us still clean ourselves Departed three or four minutes after arriving in the rooming house. He last saw him standing at the bus outside At 1.15,. Supposedly Oswald shot and killed Dallas police officer JD Tibbett near the intersection of 10th and Patton Street. From the rooming house 13 people witnessed Oswald shoot Tibbett or fleeing the immediate scene. But that evening five witnesses had identified Oswald in the police lineup. It's about 1.15, the first report of Officer Tibbett being shot. There is all different reports about what happened to Tibbett, different people right.
Speaker 2:What's problematic about that whole scenario is that at that time Lee Harvey Oswald is in the Texas theater watching a movie. Battle Him, I think it was.
Speaker 1:Battle Him in the Republic, yeah.
Speaker 2:Where he's seen by multiple people, and the reason why he made an impact on people is that at that time of the day it was a Friday afternoon, 1 o'clock or so Not too many people in this gigantic movie theater, like hundreds of people, could have sat there. Oswald was sitting next to people and it seemed that he was looking for somebody or waiting for somebody to say something to him. One of the things that's interesting is that in Oswald's wallet there was a bill that was torn in half. There was only half of it there, so it seems as if he was supposed to meet somebody who would have had the other half of that bill. In terms of the identification getting to tip, it was easy to point the finger at somebody because he had a. His eye was hit, he was wearing a t-shirt, everybody else was dressed. Lineup was such that anybody would pick Lee Harvey Oswald out Again the problem is that he didn't have any residue on his hands.
Speaker 2:He didn't have gunpowder on his hands, so he didn't fire a revolver that day and it's questionable as to whether or not that revolver that he had could have even been fired because the firing pin was in such a rusted condition. But Tippett was executed that day. Several of the witnesses say that there was two people there who did it.
Speaker 1:And different looking men had a jacket on.
Speaker 2:Yeah, one was short and heavy and one was a little bit taller. It can't be coincidences. So the Tippett murder has something to do with the overall plot Right which we could get into.
Speaker 1:I've heard every scenario we can get into them. Later on we can come back to Tippett, just to mention that he looked ridiculously like JFK and people always said that to him, but we'll leave that there hanging for now. That's certainly it is. But back to Parkland, right? Johnson wants to get out of there and of course there's Kennedy's dad, jacqueline's, beside herself, crazy right. And of course, being that she's right, when you watch the video you think she's trying to climb out of the car. She's not. She's going back for part of his brain, trying to put it back in his head.
Speaker 2:She kept it in her hand the whole trip and then she gave it to a doctor and said will this help?
Speaker 1:Yeah, very sad so she had her pink Chanel suit on. Famously enough, and I think they have it in the Kennedy Library it still exists. I don't know where it is. I think I saw it in the Kennedy Library. When I was there in Boston I saw it somewhere. It was either in the Smithsonian or in the Kennedy Library.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the Johnsons wanted her to change and she said no, I want them to see what they did to my husband.
Speaker 1:So the limousine? Strange things happen to the limousine right.
Speaker 2:So limousine pulls up into what looks like a garage-type structure in Parkland and all of a sudden the Secret Service scramble for five-gallon buckets and they're cleaning it out with soap and water. It's bizarre because they're breaking the law. I'm not an attorney. You could certainly say whether or not that's a crime scene. Absolutely a crime scene, right? So they're destroying a crime scene.
Speaker 1:And it's a state crime scene because it's a murder of a person.
Speaker 2:And at that time there was no federal law about killing the president. So this was clearly a Texas state matter legally. So they're destroying the evidence. But people did have a close view of the car and they were able to see, for example, that there was a bullet hole through the windshield and they saw dents in the chrome. So clearly there was a lot of impact to the vehicle itself. But unfortunately the Secret Service committed a crime by destroying the crime scene and the car was immediately shipped back to Detroit or something right?
Speaker 2:Yes, so what happened was Johnson ordered the vehicle to be immediately rebuilt. They took out the windshield, they repainted it, they took out the seats and they cleaned up everything and I would assume it got new carpeting and new seats and then it was painted black. It's still displayed, I believe, in Michigan, and interestingly, lyndon Johnson never rode in it again.
Speaker 1:So there's the car. Here's the next part. So Johnson orders everybody to go back to the Air Force One, correct? So the coroner comes along and he's going to take the body because it's in his jurisdiction of the murder.
Speaker 2:His name is Rose. He was a top-like forensic guy. So JFK would have gotten 100% proper autopsy with this guy. And what happened was the Secret Service brandishing their guns, literally steal the body. They take the body with them, breaking again Texas law, because Texas law is if there's a homicide the autopsy is done here. But they took the body with them.
Speaker 2:And the quintessential book on that whole activity is by David Lifton and it's called Best Evidence and he demonstrates in his book that the reason why they did that is there was a pre-autopsy or surgery done to JFK to remove bullets and to obscure the trajectories of the shots.
Speaker 2:And it's fascinating because what he did, david Lifton was a law student out in UCLA and one of his professors was Wiebler, who was an attorney for the Warren Commission and one of many, but he was an attorney for them. And in the 1960s David Lifton discovered this document written by the two FBI agents Siebert, I believe, and O'Neill, talking about how when the president's body appeared at Bethesda there was surgery to the head area and Liebler was floored by it, said you found new evidence and he then interviewed people who handled the body at Bethesda. We know from the photographs and the video that the president was in a brass ornamental coffin, but these people all claim that they took his body out of a crash. They call it a crash bag, a body bag, military style body bag. So it seems that something happened between Dallas and Bethesda and there was time to get the body out of the whatchamacallit out of the coffin and, it is believed, david Lifton recently passed away.
Speaker 2:He was on this thing since 1966. And what he believes happened was they took Kennedy's body and they stored it next to the galley of the airplane. And what happened was and he interviewed a guy whose job was to refuel Air Force One. So when Air Force One landed back in Washington it's a very important job because if God forbid, world War III starts, the president gets on Air Force One and goes to wherever he has to go, so it's important that it's always loaded with fuel.
Speaker 2:What happened was this guy was there for hours waiting for the clearance to be able to fuel Air Force One. The reason why he was delayed was there was a cleaning company that was used to clean out Air Force One and Lifton supposes that they had to deal with the blood and all that. What's also interesting is one of the doctors at Bethesda said that the president had his arm raised and in rigor mortis and he had to like press down on it and Lifton didn't understand how that could have occurred and he gave the scenario to an ex-girlfriend of his who he said was really brilliant. She says oh, that's easy If you were correct and he was placed on a galley shelf. What happened was when the plane made a steep turn, he moved a little bit and his arm dropped. So when his arm dropped, now when you lay him on his back, rigor mortis kicking in the arm is sticking up. So it seems that also.
Speaker 2:Let's go back to Parkland for a second. The initial incision to insert a tracheal tube was done over a bullet hole, so it was a clean incision. When you look at the autopsy photographs, it's this massive gash which a tracheal tube could not have functioned. Within that gash it would have been impossible because it has to seal around it. It has to seal around it. So it's just more indication that actually somebody was there to take bullets out of the president.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it seems to be. We're in Parkland to take the body. We're back on the plane, right, jacqueline's in the back with the body and LBJ is about to be sworn in. He calls some judge that Kennedy hated. Actually, right, right, some judge he wanted removed, or something like that to swear him in a federal judge, or Kennedy didn't want to appoint him, or some story like that. That judge comes to swear Johnson in and he wants Jacqueline to stand next to him and she makes that statement about changing her clothes that you have already made. And then, when you watch the video, it's the most chilling thing. I think, yeah, a little wink, yeah, johnson turns around and his friend I don't know who that was.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the name escapes me, but his buddy was a Texas congressman and he gives Johnson a nice wink and it's captured in a photograph of the swearing-in which Johnson lied about because he said he asked Bobby Kennedy if he had to be sworn in. Now everybody knows that the assumption to the presidency is immediate for the vice president once the president is dead, so you don't have to be sworn in. If you're the vice president, you immediately assume the presidency.
Speaker 1:But I saw actually not just a picture, photograph, I saw a video on one of the things where you literally see these guys winking at each other and the president of the United States was just assassinated in an open car and they're winking at each other like it was some kind of he got a big smile on his face yeah.
Speaker 1:Like you were right. You were right all those years ago when you said you'll take your odds. You took your odds and you won. It's unbelievable to some extent. So now the body supposedly and Johnson, they come back to Washington.
Speaker 2:What's interesting? Just one other thing about the body. By all accounts, a significant portion of the president's brain was blown out. Yet in the autopsy at Bethesda his brain weighs in at above average. More proof that there was skullduggery going on with the autopsy and some of the results that they created. Because if the guy lost a significant portion of his brain, this is from the Parkland doctors and nurses, I mean, they could see in there. Even Clint Hill said that the president had a big hole in the back of his head Right.
Speaker 1:We saw it on the video too.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And yet they took his brain, they put it at the Smithsonian or the National Archives or wherever it is, and now it's missing, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think I know where it is. I think it's actually with him. A lot of people don't know this, but in 1967, Bobby Kennedy and Ted Kennedy were at the gravesite and they brought the president up, they disinterred him and I think that's where Bobby Kennedy placed some of that stuff. Yeah, I think it's in there.
Speaker 1:I didn't know that. Yeah Forward, oswald is being held at the Dallas Police, at Dallas Police, and on Sunday morning they're going to move him somewhere. Where were they moving him to? I don't even know that. I think the County jail. They were moving in the County jail. And also something that I happened to be watching on television on a Sunday morning, with my parents on TV trays eating muffins or something, and lo and behold, jack Ruby comes out of nowhere and shoots the guy.
Speaker 2:So Jack Ruby was a Chicago gangster. He was not a May guy because he's Jewish. Jack Rubenstein is actually his name, I guess Jacob Rubenstein. He had a couple of places in Dallas where you had strippers and you had comedians and whatnot. The Carousel Club was one of the names, and people saw him in the presence of Lee Harvey Oswald. Purportedly he went to visit H L Hunt the day before the assassination with another gentleman who on the 22nd was arrested coming out of the Dow Tech's building. Nobody knows what they were there for, but it's very interesting.
Speaker 2:But Ruby was a very well-connected gangster. He spent some time in Cuba. People say that he was the guy that went down there when Castro took over Cuba. He took control of the casinos. Santos Traficante, who was the mob boss of Florida, was in Cuba at the time and he was thrown in jail and people say that it was Jack Ruby who went there with a package of money to get him out of prison. So he was a very well-connected guy and interestingly, he was stalking Oswald. There was a 12 o'clock press conference Friday night, saturday morning and somebody made an incorrect statement as to Oswald's affiliations. Somebody said the Free Cuba Movement and it was Jack Ruby, who corrected it and said fair play for Cuba, and you could see in video.
Speaker 1:I have seen them and I saw Ruby there seen them and I saw Ruby there, Ruby's there.
Speaker 2:So then, so that's Friday night, saturday, the Dallas police get a call and the guy on the other end says don't move Oswald tomorrow because he's going to be shot, don't move him tomorrow. And the guy hangs up and the police officer took the call. Yeah, I was like geez, his voice is familiar. And then Sunday morning when Ruby shoots Oswald, he goes oh, that was Jack Ruby. Now I know who it was. He recognized the voice, he just couldn't put it together at that time.
Speaker 2:So Ruby on one hand was stalking Oswald, on another hand, he didn't want to go ahead and do it. There is a brief, one minute or so interview of Ruby. After he has spoken with the Warren Commission went to Dallas to interview him. He asked to be taken to Washington because he felt that he couldn't tell them what he wanted to, and he talks about that. People in very high positions put him in the position that he's in now and the reporter said are these people still in power? And he said yes. And so he certainly knew a little bit about where the octopus of this assassination, where it led to. One of the things that's interesting about Ruby is a book was done on him concerning his activities prior to the assassination, with a big emphasis on his telephone calls, and you just see it skyrocketing from September into November talking to mob guys.
Speaker 1:And it's funny when you see the video and you see it recently with the sound on you hear a horn honk and they bring Ruby out and then you hear another horn honk and then he's shot. So it almost was like a signal.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I happened to run into somebody who told me I don't know how true it is that it was his father who was handcuffed to Lee Harvey Oswald that day. He was a Dallas police officer, he was a detective. He wore a white suit with a white cowboy hat or something like that, and if you see his face he was shocked. He said my dad, he found out he was the only guy in the whole police department that didn't know that Oswald was going to be shot that day.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's the thing you can't tell the guy, because then he's going to behave differently. So that's how that works you can never tell the guy.
Speaker 1:So now Oswald's dead, the Warren Commission does their thing. They come up with this crazy single bullet.
Speaker 2:Yes, Arlen Specter. He was an attorney for the Warren Commission, then he became mayor of Philadelphia, I believe, and then he became a Republican senator, us senator from the state of Pennsylvania. All based on the lie of the single bullet theory, which stated that what happened was they found a bullet at Parkland Hospital, supposedly I say supposedly because the chain of evidence would not pass legal muster. But I digress. They find this bullet, which is it's not pristine. People call it the pristine bullet. It's not really pristine. If you look at the back part of it, it's squeezed a little bit, it's missing some pieces, but the nose of it is in pretty good shape.
Speaker 2:Now, because they said that they only had three shells, three spent cartridges in the Texas School Book Depository. They would only go with three shots. So you have the president is hit in the back, he's hit in the throat. He's hit in the head, connolly. A shot goes through his body and winds up in his leg. His wrist is destroyed by a shot. You have a shot that hits the chrome of the limousine. You have another shot that comes through the front windshield. You got shots all over the place, but to put together Kennedy's wounds and Connolly's wounds, arlen Specter went to work and he said one bullet went in Kennedy's back, came out his throat, went to Connolly's back, came out, smashed his wrist and then wound up in his thigh.
Speaker 2:Here are several problems with that theory. The Warren Commission hired a guy his name escapes me, but he was a World War II ballistics guy and he knew rifles. He knew bullets. They gave him I don't know if it was the exact rifle, but certainly a 6.5 Mannlicher Carcano. They gave him 100 rounds. He shot 100 rounds into cadavers' wrists. All 100 were severely damaged. Now it wasn't just Connolly's wrist that was destroyed, it also hit one of his ribs and destroyed his rib.
Speaker 2:That's why the two surgeries yeah, it's physically impossible for a bullet for that bullet to have traversed both men and come out in that condition. Second problem with it mathematics. There was more bullet fragments in Connolly's thigh than was physically missing from the bullet which is called CE-399. It just doesn't hold up. It just doesn't hold up. What we found out later is because the president had obviously a hole in his coat which matched the hole in his shirt, which was low. It was down at the I believe they call it the third thoracic vertebrae, which is about six, eight inches down from your neck.
Speaker 2:Gerald Ford admitted that, that he raised the wound for clarification purposes. He didn't raise the wound for clarification, they needed it for the trajectory because the bullet hole in the president's back was far lower than his throat. So it was physically impossible for a shot to come from the sixth floor depository and hit at that location and then go upwards. So you have a lot of problems with the single bullet theory and it really hasn't held up through time as people understand more and more about it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's very interesting. No one believed it at the time, except for the Warren Commission. I don't think anyone believed it. And you think about who was on the Warren Commission. You had Gerald Ford, who later becomes the only non-elected president of the United States. You have Dulles, who hated Kennedy with a passion and was fired by him, and was fired by him much to his dismay. And who am I forgetting? There's one other one, that's really, and a lot of people were intimidated. They were afraid to speak.
Speaker 2:And basically the FBI is what really ran the Warren Commission investigation Right, and initially it was. The whole thing was one guy did it and he had no connections with anybody else, and that's that the one thing which is interesting. They have never, ever been able to come up with a motive, so they left that out. People who they interviewed a guy named George DeMoreshild who was a—they were called white Russians, they were anti-communist Russians was a. They were called white Russians, they were anti-communist Russians. He was living in Texas, seemingly very heavy CIA connections. He knew Oswald and he said that Oswald spoke fondly of President Kennedy. So they never, ever came up with a motive and they just left that out of the report.
Speaker 1:They tried to make him like a lunatic a little bit right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's the beginning of the lone nut.
Speaker 1:He's a lone nut he doesn't have a motive because he's a lone nut. There could be something to that. A lot of these documents were sealed. I remember when we were going through it I was still a kid and my father said we'll never know. It won't be in our lifetime. Somebody will know somewhere in the future. And here we are still trying to piece together. There are some Trump. When he was president he vowed to release everything and at the ninth hour the CIA came in and said you can't release these 200 documents, you can't do it. I think it's a few thousand. I think it's a couple thousand.
Speaker 2:He has since said that people said do you think the CIA was involved? He goes yeah, I think that they were involved. But yeah, it's unfortunate that he didn't release that information. We would have found out. But I think it all depends on what happens in November. But I think that there's enough out there to realize that this was not the work of one man, that this was a very involved conspiracy, and I think that's pretty much established. You'd have to go through life with your eyes closed to really think that Lee Harvey Oswald did this alone, and half of those people that profess that probably are working for the CIA anyway.
Speaker 1:True, I guess what I would recommend everyone to see besides the movie JFK, which is not factually correct. But they definitely bring a lot of questions and it definitely brought on a lot of things. There's a few things I usually watch. I watch JFK, Three Shots Fired, the Change in the World, it's just ongoing, all movies of what we're taking that day, and I don't even think there's any commentary. It's just all kinds of films from all different viewpoints. And then what I like a lot and I think Dom has seen it as well is JFK Destiny Betrayed, which is a documentary in four parts. There's a three-part one out there, but the four-part one goes into much detail and if this kind of stuff bothers you, you'll never make it through the first episode. That's all I could say. My sister who watched it, who I tried to watch it with, said I can't take it anymore. I can't believe this is what our government did to us.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I would say. If you don't have a lot of time on your hands, but you would like to read about the subject, I would give you. I recommend two books. One is written by James Douglas, it's called JFK and the Unspeakable, and that's a book that even Robert F Kennedy Jr says he feels is the best on the assassination. Another one is a little known book. It's called Farewell America. It was written in 1968 under the pseudonym of James Hepburn and in 1968, it was illegal to bring that book into the United States. You would be arrested and fined and I have an original copy of that book. By the 80s you could buy them. They changed the law around and the book talks about mob guys, oil men, spies, and it puts the entire assassination together in such a way that you could understand the size of it, size and scope of it and what it meant to American history.
Speaker 1:There were a lot of moving parts and we can get into that, but we don't necessarily have to the look back at who was involved and it's really all speculation and kinds of things. One of the interesting stories, I always think is so they bring the body back and they're going to do the autopsy at Bethesda.
Speaker 2:Bethesda.
Speaker 1:And so what do they do? They grab a whole bunch of doctors that never done an autopsy before but they're officers, and they bring a whole bunch of generals in a room who are like the joint chiefs. And if anybody's ever served in the military, or known anybody that's served in the military, when a general walks in the room it's like God on earth All right.
Speaker 2:The Kennedy autopsy was jam-packed. It must have been. Bethesda, must have been like a teaching place as well, because there were grandstands there and they've been able to determine at least 33 people in the audience and the surgeons none of them were forensic guys. I don't think any of them had to deal with bullet wounds. Some of them they've done autopsies, but that's like heart attacks and that sort of thing, nothing like this. And the top people in the United States were waiting for the call. That never came that night.
Speaker 2:But what happened was they started the autopsy and they start smelling smoke and one of the autopsy surgeons goes to an orderly you see that guy over there. Tell him to put out that cigar. There was a guy smoking a cigar. So the orderly goes up to him and he says, sir, can you put out that cigar? And the guy took a big draw on the cigar and he blew all the smoke in Horderly's face. And it was Curtis LeMay, the head of the Air Force Joint Chiefs of Staff. His hatred of Kennedy was such that he personally and I think he was in Canada, I think he was in Toronto, I don't know if he was fishing or hunting or what he was doing, but he flew down just to view the autopsy.
Speaker 1:And Bay of Pigs, all kinds of things. Lemay hated Kennedy and it's well known and I think it's well documented. But both Dom and I believe that LeMay had nothing to do with the assassination, even though that he was the Grim Reaper enjoying the autopsy, if you will, of what happened to this guy. Whether he knew who did it or not may be another story, but for some reason neither one of us think that he had no role in it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, curtis LeMay wanted to attack during the Cuban Missile Crisis. And then in 1962, he presented President Kennedy with a plan to launch a full-scale nuclear war against the Soviet Union in the fall of 1963. And after hearing LeMay's plan, kennedy famously stated and they call us the human race.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he wanted to bring the whole world to an end. So I hope, as this is going to end up being a two-parter, we hope that gives you a little edification. For those of you that weren't alive during that period I don't know if Dom was, but I was, but very little.
Speaker 2:Actually, I was born on September 11th 1963. I'm saying birthdays this week, yep, and my grandmother said that I saw Ruby kill Oswald. She was holding me on her lap and we were watching the TV. So that's what she said I saw yeah.
Speaker 1:I'm obviously a little older than that, but it is an amazing part when they say it's when we lost our innocence. I think it's. We became aware of what really goes on in the world is what happened. Having said that, I hope you enjoy this episode. We're going to do another one, dom and I. The next one is going to be about the RFK assassination, which is not as elaborate, but I think there's more information that's more transparent about actually what was going on that day, or on that night, if you will, or morning. It's a very interesting story and I think it says a lot about what was going on in America in the 1960s and, frankly, it's probably going on today as well. So, having said that, thank you all very much for listening. Thanks, dom, dom, for all his hard work and putting it all together, and we will see you again or here you hopefully you enjoy it and please leave us some comments.
