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- [00:00]
Michael Moynihan
Looking for incredible international content? Meet Highflix your go to streaming platform for incredible award winning series and movies from Israel and across the diaspora. Their hit series the Lesson was just named one of the top International Series of 2024 by the New York Times and its first episode is already being called one of the best streaming episodes ever. From groundbreaking stories to unforgettable performances, Hyflicks has it all. Use promo code LAKE for a 50% discount on their annual subscription rate when you sign up@hyflicks.com that's C H A I F L I c k s.com every now and again a Work of Art is so profound that it reaches across the transom and actually affects current events. Well, if you had to rank the most politically resonant pieces of American pop culture in the last 50 years, I would say this film tops the list.
- [01:08]
Eli Lake
Now we're through the looking glass here, people. White is black and Black is white.
- [01:17]
Michael Moynihan
Directed by the most celebrated filmmaker in America at the time, Oliver Stone. Jfk. A masterpiece featured the biggest movie star on earth, Kevin Costner, saying things like this.
- [01:31]
Eli Lake
President Kennedy was murdered by a conspiracy that was planned in advance at the highest levels of our government. And it was carried out by fanatical and disciplined cold warriors in the Pentagon and CIA's covert operation apparatus.
- [01:45]
Michael Moynihan
It was a full frontal attack on the American state as we know it. A three hour video essay explaining just how and why the US Government, up to and including a former president, colluded to murder John F. Kennedy. Republic RIP it was as explosive a text as could be imagined, including a long scene analyzing the famous Zapruder tape. Amateur footage of the assassination, forcing the audience to watch Kennedy's head being blown off by a bullet. Again and again and again, back and to the left. And yet Stone's film wasn't buried. It wasn't covered up after Hollywood executives were leaned on by hidden political forces. No, it was nominated for eight Academy Awards. An insane endorsement of a wild accusation. The political equivalent of Kendrick Lamar calling Drake a pedophile at the Super Bowl. More than any other document, this film codified the murder of JFK as a conspiracy in the minds of the American people. In many ways, it changed the course of history. Because you'd have to say that if Oliver Stone had not been given $40 million to make a film about the deep state killing a president, well then this declassification of files relating to the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy would almost certainly not be happening right now.
- [03:17]
Eli Lake
That's a Big one, huh? A lot of people are waiting for this. We're along for years, for decades.
- [03:25]
Michael Moynihan
The chain of events that led to Donald Trump promising to release secret files about supposed government collusion in multiple assassinations really begins with Oliver Stone, a dazzling filmmaker, a traumatized Vietnam vet, a political firebrand, and also a total crank. In Oliver stone's mind, the 20th century is a crime scene and the US government is always holding the murder weapon. The conspiracy he puts forth in JFK is vast. I will let the artist take it from here.
- [03:59]
Eli Lake
You will find that there are essentially two conspiracies hypothecated. The first one, a conspiracy to kill the President, which is very small and covert in nature.
- [04:08]
Michael Moynihan
His film was such a significant political text that in 1992, just four months after its release, Oliver Stone gave testimony before Congress. By the way, we've edited this down a little bit because it is long.
- [04:21]
Eli Lake
It had to come from an element in government that was practiced in this art of assassination. The only people with that sort of experience are obviously the intelligence agencies who had been doing it abroad in the 1950s and in the early 60s. I think that that expertise was brought home into America. There is a second conspiracy I hypothecate, and that is the conspiracy to cover it up. And that cover up, I believe, has been going on for 28 years and most recently expressed itself in the VMN attacks and misrepresentations on my film. That cover up, I believe, involved people like Lyndon Johnson. We know that autopsy was a compromised, if not a rigged affair. The COVID up extends, I believe, to the FBI and Mr. Hoover at that time chairman of the FBI. And I think it extends to people in the Warren Commission. But I don't think necessarily that the people involved in the COVID up were people involved in the conspiracy to kill him. What I did in the movie was show a paradigm of possibilities. I showed a President that deeply divided the country, made many enemies through policies intended to end the Cold War. I think we have a President that was moving on many fronts to rock the boat, to shake the establishment. And I think we must look there for the root causes of people who were, if not involved in assassinating the President, were certainly relieved to see him go.
- [05:49]
Michael Moynihan
So there you have it. Lyndon Johnson, J. Edgar Hoover and the Warren Commission covered up a CIA Pentagon murder of the 35th president. That testimony and Stone's film were so influential that in 1992, Congress passed a law ordering the government to release hundreds of thousands of secret CIA files. How many films can claim to have had such an effect. It is not only a great film, it's probably one of the most impactful films of the 80s or 90s, considering that it really changed people's perceptions. This is Michael Moynihan, co host of the Fifth Column podcast and a Free Press contributor. I mean, keeping in mind that the first conspiracy theory stuff about the JFK assassination came within a month of the actual assassination. But it was after JFK that it became really the thing that everyone believed. If there's a conspiracy theory that everyone in America believes or a vast majority of people believe, it's this one. It's true. There have always been Americans who believed that it was impossible that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone or even shot Kennedy at all. And this view ebbed and flowed in our culture. But by the end of the Cold War, the JFK truthers were largely considered fringe and paranoid. That is, until Stone dressed JFK trutherism in the language of respectability. Once the nation had heard these accusations, accompanied by a swirling John Williams score, they became a fixture in American culture. You found it on Seinfeld.
- [07:15]
Eli Lake
I'm saying that the spit could not have come from behind that. There had to have been a second spitter. The Simpsons, the Rand Corporation, in conjunction with the Saucer People. Thank you. Under the supervision of the Reverse vampires, are forcing our parents to go to bed early in a fiendish plot to eliminate the meal of dinner. We're through the looking glass here, people.
- [07:44]
Michael Moynihan
And the Sopranos.
- [07:45]
Eli Lake
My cousin acted alone. I did not sanction this. The Long Gunman theory.
- [07:51]
Michael Moynihan
This was the moment that conspiracy theories went overground. At the dawn of the Internet age, tinfoil hats were no longer just for oddballs. They were for moms and dads and me and you. Today you can find these dot connectors everywhere. Just listen to Rob Reiner, the cuddly director of When Harry Met Sally and the man who played meathead on all in the Family. Going through the Looking Glass. They have a stack like this, a file on Oswald.
- [08:18]
Eli Lake
The CIA does.
- [08:20]
Michael Moynihan
None of that ever came out. Nobody understood the connection between Oswald and the CIA for years. For four years when he went to Russia, there's thousands of pages on him. Oliver Stone's movie asked a question that the American people have never been able to get off their mind because the official investigation, the Warren Commission, into the crime of the century, was lacking. The CIA and the FBI hid evidence from the fact finders and the fact finders themselves hid evidence from the public. Now, in 2025, Donald Trump has signaled he is Willing to share the last state secrets remaining from one of the most painful chapters of our recent history. I'm Eli Lake and from the Free Press, you're listening to Breaking History. After the break, why the murder of the 35th president remains a mystery wrapped in a riddle inside an enigma.
- [09:11]
Eli Lake
Who shot John? Who shot John? Who shot John? You telling us nothing with your warrant? Before you ask out in battles if you're silent in truck. Who shot John, shot John? Was it the Communists or was it the Cubans? Saul? Intelligence and who shot Jack Rubin?
- [09:48]
Michael Moynihan
Now, I hate to disappoint, but it seems fair to warn you up front. I'm not going to crack the case of who shot John Kennedy in this podcast. Sorry about that. Personally, I believe it's almost certain that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone on November 22, 1963 at Dealey Plaza. But at the same time, I understand why people don't. This isn't QAnon. It's not flat earth. The murder of John F. Kennedy is a really strange chapter of American history. It's full of mysteries, coincidences and lies.
- [10:21]
Eli Lake
It doesn't make any sense. He drove past the book depository and the police said conclusively that it was an exit wound. So how is it possible that for Oswald to have fired from two angles at once. It doesn't make sense. I'll tell you this. He was not marksman enough to hit a moving target at that range. But if there was a second assassin, that's it.
- [10:47]
Michael Moynihan
We just heard from Woody Allen's Albie Singer in the autobiographical Annie Hall Speaking. For many Americans still today, JFK's death remains an open wound. After nearly 62 years, we still have not closed the case despite the official commission chaired by Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren, a 1978 House committee investigation and the declassification of reams of documents by order of Congress. The story of the JFK conspiracy theory is not limited to a few hucksters red pilling traumatized boomers. No, it is also the story of how the government squandered its most precious asset, the trust of the American people. The investigators failed not because they reached the wrong conclusion, but because of the way they went about it. Over the decades, our country would discover that the Warren Commission, the official investigation of the crime, had in fact hidden plenty of information from the people. It looked suspiciously like a cover up led by government insiders.
- [11:55]
Eli Lake
Then you have an official commission to.
- [11:56]
Michael Moynihan
It with a person who had been the former head, you know, the CIA.
- [12:00]
Eli Lake
It's not necessarily a commission that Gives.
- [12:01]
Michael Moynihan
You the feeling it was doing it robustly. This is author Gerald Posner, whose book Case Closed actually makes the best argument for the official version of events. Despite that, he can see why people distrust the investigation.
- [12:16]
Eli Lake
A lot of documents stay sealed. They don't release the President's autopsy in deference to the Kennedy family. And there were rumors the autopsy was bad and the Zapruder film wasn't seen. Time Life bought it and only put stills out in Time magazine. And when it was shown finally in.
- [12:32]
Michael Moynihan
1975 by Geraldo Rivera on his overnight program, everybody said, oh my God, he.
- [12:36]
Eli Lake
Was shot from the front Kennedy. Because that's what it looks like when you watch the film.
- [12:40]
Michael Moynihan
So no wonder people have been suspicious over the years. So I approach the doubters of the official line with humility and charity. They are not crazy. In fact, they are in illustrious company. Because one of the weirdest things about this story is that some of the senior officials blamed by the conspiracy theorist for JFK's murder were in fact conspiracy theorists themselves. And the most prominent conspiracy theorist of all was Kennedy's own Vice President and future President, Lyndon Baines Johnson. So what happened that day, November 22, 1963? What happened to send America down a rabbit hole it has never been able to climb out of? What happened the day JFK was murdered?
- [13:30]
Eli Lake
Well, first we got this from Dallas, Texas, the flash. Apparently official. President Kennedy died at 1:00pm Central Standard Time, 2:00 Eastern Standard Time, some 38 minutes ago.
- [13:46]
Michael Moynihan
The Dallas police arrest Lee Harvey Oswald after he shot a police officer and have the murder weapon used to kill JFK. A World War II era bolt action Carcano rifle. He purchased it under a phony name.
- [14:00]
Eli Lake
On page 10 of that catalog is listed the very rifle that was purchased by Lee Harvey Oswald under the name of a Heidel. It's very simple to purchase this gun. It only cost $12.78. If you buy the scope with it, it only costs $19.95.
- [14:20]
Michael Moynihan
During his perp walk, Oswald protests his innocence, but drops a strange insight into his life.
- [14:29]
Eli Lake
No, they're taking me in because of the fact that I'm just a patsy.
- [14:34]
Michael Moynihan
President, the Soviet Union. What? Yes, this former Marine defected in 1959 to the USSR. Well, that's weird. I wonder what? Oh, wait, hold on. What's that?
- [14:50]
Eli Lake
He's been shot. He's been shot. Lee Oswald has been shot. There's a man with a gun.
- [14:56]
Michael Moynihan
Oswald is killed only two days after Jack Kennedy's murder by a nightclub owner named Jack Ruby. Live on tv Imagine what is going through the heads of the American people. It must have felt like being buried by an avalanche of apocalyptic mad libs. In Dallas, Texas, Blank was killed in front of the American people. How did Blank get into the blank? With a murder weapon. What the blanking blank is going on at this point? The world is upside down. How could a rational person not suspect that something funny was going on? A conspiracy makes far more sense than whatever the news is trying to tell you. Jack Ruby shooting Oswald deprived America of a trial. And as the press dug into Ruby, it turns out that he's part of the Dallas underworld, the Mafia. And when asked why he did it, Ruby's motive doesn't exactly seem solid either. He did it, he claims, because he just loved Jack Kennedy that damn much. He wanted to be a hero, huh? And so Jack Ruby unlocks the first genre of JFK conspiracies. The mob did it.
- [16:08]
Eli Lake
If they can whack a president, they can whack a president of a union.
- [16:12]
Michael Moynihan
That was Joe Pesci in Martin Scorsese's the Irishman rehabilitating the theory that it was gangsters who offed Jack Kennedy. Though that film came out in 2019, the truth is that the Mafia theory has largely faded in recent years. But to sum it up, it goes like the mob helped elect Jack Kennedy in 1960 with the expectation that he would support the toppling of Fidel Castro's regime in Cuba. And the mob would get their Havana casinos back. What they didn't count on was that the new President a would refuse to send air support to an invasion of Cuba known as the Bay of Pigs. And Battles would appoint his brother Bobby Kennedy as Attorney General. Bobby had been waging a vendetta against organized crime for years. So instead of JFK trying to take out Castro, the President was declaring a war on the very same mob who helped elect him. Perhaps predictably, the Mafia decided then to kill him. Or at least that's how the theory goes. Well, did they do it? Did the Mafia kill Kennedy? The truth is, I really don't think so. But hold on. There's a lot more to get your head around before you decide which JFK conspiracy is the right conspiracy for you. If Kennedy's murder was in fact a well conceived plot, perhaps one of the most natural suspects would be America's greatest enemy at the time, the Communists. Well, there was plenty of fuel for that fire. Back to 1963. As the country reels from Kennedy's murder, more information begins to eek out about Oswald and he is a very strange guy. Six months before he murdered Kennedy, Oswald tried and failed to kill a retired far right general named Edwin Walker. Here is Walker explaining the incident to a local NBC news affiliate.
- [18:00]
Eli Lake
Well, the police from the city came in to investigate a rifle shot that was fired into the house, fired through the west window and hit the cell and hit the wall across the room and went through the wall over the desk at which I was sitting.
- [18:19]
Michael Moynihan
Oswald also took a trip to Mexico City before the Kennedy shooting and met with officials at the Cuban and Soviet embassies there. Red flag, Red flag. Ostensibly to get a visa to travel to Cuba. Another holy shit moment. At the time, Oswald was also a kind of political activist. He joined the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, a new left organization comprised of many prominent intellectuals like Gore Vidal and James Baldwin. Oswald became a spokesman for the group and even engaged in debates with anti Castro emigres. Here's a 1963 interview on a local television station in New Orleans where Oswald explains his political philosophy.
- [19:00]
Eli Lake
Are you a Marxist? I think you did admit on an earlier radio interview that you can yourself a Marxist. Well, I would very definitely say that I am a Marxist. That is correct. But that does not mean, however, I am a Communist. What is the difference between the two? Well, there's a great deal of difference. Several American parties in several countries are based on Marxism, such as Ghana. Certain countries have characteristics of a socialist system such as Great Britain with its socialized medicine. These then are the differences between an outright country, communist country, and countries which adhere to leftist or Marxist principles. In your work with the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, what are you advocating? We advocate restoration of diplomatic, trade and tourist relations with Cuba.
- [19:48]
Michael Moynihan
That's a strange ideology for a former Marine. But then again, Oswald was not your ordinary Marine. He was such a strange fish that even before he was accused of killing Kennedy, a fellow Marine wrote a novel based on Oswald's life called the Idol Warriors. While he served, Oswald was mercilessly teased, called Mrs. Oswald and later Oswaldski by his battle buddies when he was stationed in Japan. He was an oddball with delusions of grandeur who began ordering Russian language newspapers to base. He was obsessed with Marxist Leninism.
- [20:22]
Peter Savodnik
While he's sort of in the tail end of his military service. What kind of prompts him to leave is, is this kind of growing fascination with the Marxist communist cause and increasingly with the Soviet Union.
- [20:36]
Michael Moynihan
This is my free press colleague Peter Savodnik whose book the Interloper is the best treatment of oswald's sojourn in 1959 to the Soviet Union.
- [20:45]
Peter Savodnik
And, you know, one of the things about Oswald that's kind of sad but also, I think, rather telling is that he's not an especially intelligent man. He's not an especially, to say the least, astute or intellectually attuned man. So whereas, like other leftists, by the late 50s, early 60s, had already kind of lost interest in the Soviet Union and were focused on, first it was Mao, then it was Cuba, and then elsewhere in Latin America, Oswald is, for the most part at this point, oblivious to all that. And what he's excited about is this idea of another father figure, another cause that he can glom onto or he can break into, as it were. And that is the Communist cause and the Soviet cause.
- [21:33]
Michael Moynihan
After obtaining an early discharge from the Marines, Lee Harvey Oswald hops a ship across the Atlantic and finds himself in Helsinki, Finland. He walks up to the Soviet embassy, renounces his American citizenship, and obtains a Soviet visa. When he finally arrives in Moscow, the KGB believed at first they'd hit pay dirt. Oswald served at a large military base that launched the top secret U2 planes that surveilled the Soviet Union. But within a few days, the Soviets realized Oswald knew nothing that could really help them.
- [22:04]
Peter Savodnik
He was in proximity of this very important weapon, but he didn't know anything about it. He certainly didn't have any sophisticated understanding the mechanical engineering aspects of it. He didn't know anything about rocket science or rocketry or how to build a rocket that might reach it. And so it was not hard for the KGB in a matter of 48, 72 hours, to rule out his utility. I think it became clear to them pretty quickly that he was useless to them.
- [22:33]
Michael Moynihan
The Soviets tell him they will not be granting him citizenship. Oswald is devastated. He goes back to his hotel, despondent and ready to end it all.
- [22:42]
Peter Savodnik
He goes into the bathroom and he slits his wrist. And the KGB ultimately finds him there, and they rush him to a hospital. They determined that he was not very serious about trying to kill himself. And then he's held for a little bit longer in the psych unit because they want to evaluate him. And now the kgb, the Soviets have a bigger problem, which is do we allow this guy to stay and avoid what could very well be an international incident, which is a dead US Marine on Soviet soil, or do we force him to go and perhaps run into other problems of some sort? And I think ultimately there's this kind of calculation, fine, if he wants to stay, he can stay, and we can kind of bury him. We can disappear him, as it were, in some provincial city where no one will ever see him or know him, and he'll be kind of swallowed up by the vastness of the Soviet Union. And that's exactly what they do.
- [23:41]
Michael Moynihan
So Oswald is sent to Minsk, the capital of Belarus today, where he is given a job in a radio factory. His life is like the Truman Show. The KGB keeps regular tabs on him. Everyone he interacts with is an informant of some kind. We know this because both Norman Mailer and later Peter Savodnik got access to reams of the KGB's actual files. They include mundane details about this strange ex Marine. His eating habits, how often he masturbated, what he discussed in the break room of the factory, and his political opinions. But while the Soviets knew everything about Oswald at this point in the Soviet Union, by the time he was shot by Jack Ruby In 1963, the CIA and the FBI still claimed to know very little. What they saw was a defector to the Soviet Union returning to America and shooting the President. Surely it was logical that he had been ordered to do so by the kgb. It's a fair question and one that obsessed leaders of our own government. Even before Chief Justice Earl Warren's commission could investigate the crime, the new President, Lyndon Baines Johnson, was consumed by the idea that it might have been a Communist plot. And he was even more concerned by what that would mean for the future of planet Earth. Consider this phone call from Johnson to his former mentor, Senator Richard Russell of Georgia. It's November 28, 1963, just six days after the assassination. Johnson is cajoling his old friend to serve on the Warren Commission.
- [25:16]
Eli Lake
It's already been announced and you can serve with anybody for the good of America. And this is, this is a question that has a good many more ramifications than on the surface. And there we got to take this out of the arena where they're testifying that Khrushchev and Castro did this and did that and kicking us into a war that can kill 40 million Americans in an hour.
- [25:44]
Michael Moynihan
Johnson is asking Russell to serve on the commission to deflect attention away from the Soviet Union. He knows that the Cold War is on a knife edge and an accusation like this could tip us into thermonuclear war. Now, that call reminds me of Plato's concept of the noble lie, when a leader has to practice deception in public for a greater good. And this is not the only conversation like this that Johnson had as he was recruiting for the Warren Commission. He made it clear to all that he spoke to that he did not want them to blame the Cubans or the Russians full stop. After all, who wants to be the President of a smoldering crater where America once stood? But the noble lie would come to haunt America because this deception helped undermine the American people's trust in the story their leaders were feeding them. Indeed, in his last televised interview the former President admitted to Walter Cronkite that he could not bring himself to believe the official story. In 1975, two years after LBJ's death the full tape was revealed during a.
- [26:50]
Eli Lake
Long interview I had with Mr. Johnson at the LBJ ranch in September 1969. We talked about the Kennedy assassination. A portion of the interview was not broadcast at the President's request on the grounds, he said, of national security. I asked Mr. Johnson then whether he was satisfied there was no international conspiracy in his assassination. I can't honestly say that I've ever been completely relieved of the fact that there might have been international connections. You mean you still feel that there might might have been? Well, I have not completely discounted. Well, that would seem to indicate that you don't have full confidence in the Warren Commission Report. No, I think the Warren Commission study and think, first of all, it's composed the ablest, most judicious, bipartisan men in this country. Second, I think they had only one objective and that was the truth. Third, I think they were competent and did the best they could. But I don't think that they or me or anyone else is always absolutely sure of every thing that might have motivated Oswald or others that could have been involved.
- [28:19]
Michael Moynihan
Absolutely wild. What on earth must this have sounded like to the average American? After years of being told to believe the Warren Report's assertion that Oswald acted alone here was a former President of the United States suggesting that he never really could, quote, completely discount that Oswald had been a part of a great unrevealed conspiracy. It would be like Barack Obama telling Stephen Colbert that jet fuel doesn't melt steel beams and inside the corridors of power. Johnson was not the only man doubting the official narrative. James Jesus Angleton, the chief of the Counterintelligence Directorate of the CIA also figured Oswald was engaged in in a conspiracy with the Russians. If the President and a CIA chief didn't believe their own story, why should we expect the American people to? Why should anyone? Well, basically, no one did. The fact is that while the finger was pointed at the Soviets from inside the White House, the Kremlin didn't believe Oswald acted alone. Either, as they had their very own distinctively anti capitalist conspiracy theory. Here is an excerpt from the Sword and the A History of the KGB by Vasily Mitrokin, a KGB defector.
- [29:40]
Eli Lake
It would have been wholly out of character had the center failed to interpret President Kennedy's assassination by Lee Harvey Oswald in Dallas on November 22, 1963 as anything less than conspiracy. The Deputy Chairman of the KGB reported to the Central Committee in December that the reliable source of the Polish Friends, the Polish Intelligence Service, an American entrepreneur and owner of a number of firms closely connected to the petroleum circles of the south, reported in late November that the real instigators of this criminal deed were three leading oil magnates from the south of the usa, Richardson, Murchison and Hunt, all owners of major petroleum reserves in the southern states who have long been connected to pro fascist and racist organizations in the South.
- [30:30]
Michael Moynihan
Of course, for Moscow the culprits had to be oil magnates, oligarchs, capitalist running dogs. Seems as though the JFK conspiracy is very much in the eye of the beholder. The Soviets blame the capitalists. Johnson blames the Soviets. Oliver Stone blames the government who sent him to Vietnam. JFK's death has become a Rorschach test where everyone sees their own worst enemy. After the break, how the conspiracy theories began to look inward and point the finger at the deep state operating within the American government itself if you've been following my work on breaking history, you know how important it is to understand the way history shapes today's headlines. But too often that context is distorted by bias or reduced to oversimplified narratives. That's why I partnered with Ground News, an independent app and website that prioritizes showing the full spectrum of perspectives. For every story shaping our world, I get a quick summary alongside every news source covering it from across the spectrum, whether that's corporate media or independent voices like the Free Press. Just swipe to compare how some outlets frame FBI agents suing the doj, for example, as a defense against political retaliation, while others see it as an attempt to obstruct accountability, mirroring in some ways the conflicting narratives around JFK's assassination, which fueled fears that a deep state government wasn't telling the United States citizens the truth. And if history has taught us anything, it's that the truth is often buried or suppressed. That's why I find Ground News Blindspot Feed indispensable. It surfaces important stories the left and the right aren't talking about giving you a clear picture of of the world as it is not just as Big Tech wants you to believe. With insight on every outlet's biases and financial incentives, Ground News is tackling one of the most urgent issues of our time, restoring trust and transparency in the media. So go to groundnews.com breakinghistory to save 40% on the unlimited vantage plan we use, knocking the price down to just $5 a month. It's an investment in your ability to think critically and stay informed while also supporting platforms like ours.
- [32:51]
Eli Lake
Have you ever spotted McDonald's hot crispy.
- [32:54]
Michael Moynihan
Fries right as they're being scooped into the carton?
- [32:58]
Eli Lake
And time just stands still?
- [33:04]
Michael Moynihan
Ba da ba ba ba.
- [33:07]
Eli Lake
Mr. Garrison, are you saying that members of the Pentagon ordered the President killed because of his opposition to the war in Vietnam? I would say that the fact that the military of the United States was behind the murder of John Kennedy is so obvious that most of the people in the United States have to be aware of it. Of course, the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency were involved in the murder of John Kennedy, just as they were involved in and the escalation in Vietnam which followed. You mean direct involvement? Of course.
- [33:45]
Michael Moynihan
We just heard from former New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison, who was the inspiration and main character of Oliver Stone's movie jfk. It was Garrison who was played by Kevin Costner as the last Boy Scout willing to take on the American government. So help me God. Today, most JFK assassination researchers have dismissed Garrison as a charlatan. But Stone was right to portray him as a kind of pioneer, even if he was largely a pioneer of bullshit. Along with lawyer Mark Lane, it was Garrison who first began to forward the theory in 1966 that it was the CIA, in conjunction with the Pentagon, that murdered Kennedy back in 1963. Now, in order to get there, you have to start thinking of the world around you as an elaborate deception. In his role as Jim Garrison, Kevin Costner sum this up with a shout out to Lewis Carroll.
- [34:36]
Eli Lake
Y'all gotta start thinking on a different level like the CIA does. Now, we're through the looking glass here, people. White is black and black is white. Just maybe Oswald is exactly what he said he was, a patsy.
- [34:53]
Michael Moynihan
Once one is through the looking glass, well, then anything is possible. Oswald himself was a spokesman for the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, a pro Castro organization. But for Garrison, this is only evidence that in fact, he was deeply anti Castro. Like the CIA, his theory was that Oswald was actually a military intelligence agent sent to Moscow, then allowed to return in order to build a credible backstory of Soviet involvement. In fact, said Garrison. It was the CIA who had pulled off the murder and the CIA who made sure Oswald was perfectly placed to be blamed and labeled a Soviet assassin. This case, made by the rogue district attorney and partially co signed by Oliver Stone, requires Lee Harvey Oswald to play a part in the mysterious Operation Mongoose. Now, Operation Mongoose was a real top secret CIA program. Its existence is no fabrication or fantasy of a conspiracy theorist. Even if the details of their work sound exactly like the fabrications and fantasies of a conspiracy theorist. Mongoose existed to dream up ways to kill and discredit Fidel Castro. And they seem to have a real sense of the absurd. One plot would place a chemical in his scuba suit that would cause his beard to fall out. Another was to booby trap seashells, exploding cigars. They pitched it. The Bugs Bunny ideas never really went anywhere but they were part of a serious broad strategy to eliminate the leader of Cuba. Why is it unlikely that this wacky bunch of ACME assassins trained Oswald to kill Jack Kennedy? Well, the man who oversaw Operation Mongoose was unlikely to want JFK dead given that he was JFK's own brother, the Attorney General, Bobby Kennedy. Bobby knew the details of Operation Mongoose inside and out as was revealed when these plots were declassified in 1975 in an explosive congressional investigation into the American deep state led by Senator Frank Church. However, the Mongol's movements are murky. Cast your mind back to earlier in the episode. Do you remember this?
- [37:06]
Eli Lake
If they can whack a president, they can whack a president of a union.
- [37:11]
Michael Moynihan
The murder of Oswald by the mob affiliated Jack Ruby had popularized the theory that the Mafia had been behind the killing of Kennedy. Well, if you still need proof that investigating the Kennedy assassination is a tangled weave capable of bamboozling just about anyone. Get your head around this. Operation Mongoose had led to a brief alliance between the CIA and the Mafia collaborating on plots to try and poison Fidel Castro. I kid you not. Here is CIA contract agent and former FBI G man Robert Mayhew at a press conference during the 1975 Church Committee investigation.
- [37:51]
Eli Lake
My only understanding was that the capsules were to be given to someone.
- [38:01]
Michael Moynihan
When Jim Garrison uncovered reports of the collaboration of one, the CIA with two, the Mafia, he added one and two together and made five. Though there has never been any evidence in the last 62 years pointing to Oswald being involved with the Mafia or the CIA, let alone with both at the same time, Garrison ran with the idea that Mongoose had been a plot not just against Castro's life, but against. But against JFK's. Unlike most cranks in their basement, Garrison had the power of subpoena. He was elected as a city's prosecutor. He could send people to jail. And he used that power, accusing a New Orleans businessman named Clay Shaw of facilitating a plot between right wing Cubans, the CIA and the mob to frame Oswald for Kennedy's murder. At trial, these dramatic accusations did not stick. A jury acquitted Shaw within an hour. But Garrison remained a gadfly on this issue for years, eventually living long enough to advise Oliver Stone on the film that revived his reputation. Yes, he advised on a film about his own work. It was an inside job, you could say. But today, on the brink of a potentially monumental reveal of secret CIA files, where do all these theories leave us? After the break, where the JFK conspiracy stands today. Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Kevin Costner.
- [39:33]
Eli Lake
Here's a simple way to determine if I am paranoid assassin. Two men who profited the most from the assassination, your former president, Lyndon Baines Johnson, and your new President replaced Richard Nixon to release the 51 CIA documents pertaining to Lee Harvey Oswald and Jack Ruby. Or the secret CIA memo on Oswald's activities in Russia that was destroyed while being photocopied. All these documents are yours. The people's property. You pay for it. But because the government considers you children who might be too disturbed or distressed to face this reality, or because you might possibly lynch those involved, you cannot see these documents for another 75 years. I'm in my early 40s, so I'll have shuffled off this mortal coil by then. But I'm already telling my 8 year old son to keep himself physically fit so that one glorious September morning in the year 2038 he can walk into the National Archives and find out what the CIA and the FBI knew.
- [40:36]
Michael Moynihan
This is a scene from JFK reenacting and rewriting the closing arguments of Garrison's trial, railing against the idea that the files pertaining to the assassination won't be released for another 75 years. Well, it has not been 75 years yet. So why is Trump about to disclose all of these files? Such was the power of the film's grasp on the popular and political spirit, that indirect response to Oliver Stone's film. As we said earlier, Congress passed a law that required the government to release the remaining files related to the assassination by 2017. And in 2017, Trump complied with that law up to a point. But even the most unpredictable President drew a line at releasing them all. Back in October 2024, though, Trump went on Joe Rogan and explained that he would in fact be opening the remaining JFK files in his second presidency.
- [41:27]
Eli Lake
It's time to open them. I can't tell you whether or not they're going to find anything of interest, and I did partially open. I think I've opened 50%. But I was asked not to do it, and I thought that was a reasonable ask. But now I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it very soon.
- [41:44]
Michael Moynihan
And so one might say we are reaching a kind of end point. The documents are coming, right? That's great. We can all put down the goddamn looking glass now. Maybe, for what it's worth, Trump's former CIA director, Mike Pompeo, does not think the coming declassifications that Trump authorized will shed too much light on what we already know.
- [42:02]
Eli Lake
The news value of them is grossly overrated.
- [42:05]
Michael Moynihan
I think we released, I can't remember on our watch, 140,000, 180,000 pages of those documents while I was the CIA director. We should do our best. The most important reason to do it is because everybody out there talking about these things will get to see that there's less there than meets the. So what is it that's coming? We know Pompeo thinks it's a nothing burger with cheese, but what about the people who've dedicated their lives to this monumental chapter of American history? What are they hoping to discover on that fateful day when the CIA finally lifts the veil? I thought I'd ask them. Jefferson Morley, who is the best skeptic of the official narrative surrounding the JFK assassination, writing today, told me that he thinks there will be a number of revelatory files in the final release on very specific events.
- [42:52]
Eli Lake
A few days after the assassination, the Miami station of the CIA launched an investigation of the assassination. And they called in agents and they said, query your sources on these five questions. Okay? They did not investigate Lee Harvey Oswald. They did not investigate Fidel Castro. They did not investigate organized crime. They did not say alone nut killed the President for no reason and were not interested. What they said was, go talk to your sources among anti Castro exiles and see who has the money and the guns who might have pulled this off. Okay? We didn't know about this investigation until 2017 and we still don't have the results of it. So a good search launched by President Trump would go back and capture situation reports that were submitted by these officers in the course of this investigation. So these sit reps, which are known to exist or did exist in the 1970s would give us some clue. Well, did the CIA find out that one guy killed the President for no reason and another guy came along and killed him for no reason? Or did they find out something else? Okay, the answers are overdue. Let's just put it that way.
- [44:04]
Michael Moynihan
Gerald Posner, who has written the best book arguing that Oswald acted alone, is keen to find out everything the CIA and FBI really knew about Oswald when he visited the Cuban and Soviet embassies in Mexico.
- [44:16]
Eli Lake
If you ask me what my hope is for, like, a big get, it's not that there necessarily is a plot.
- [44:22]
Michael Moynihan
To kill the President, but maybe the CIA knew more about Oswald's unhinged behavior.
- [44:30]
Eli Lake
At the Cuban and Soviet missions. We had to have a lot of surveillance on those two enemy missions in the middle of the Cold War. And then what they should have done.
- [44:39]
Michael Moynihan
Of course, is share the information when Oswald comes dejected back into the United.
- [44:44]
Eli Lake
States ten days later. And who had an open investigation on that would have made the case a priority and potentially would have stopped the assassination.
- [44:51]
Michael Moynihan
Other redacted files that should be released include James Jesus Angleton's testimony before Congress on what his office knew about Oswald in his journey to Russia and back. Plus the personal files on some of the agents running anti Cuban propaganda operations out of Miami. And there are more. So there is a chance that maybe, perhaps we might discover something that resembles a conspiracy. Again, I have my doubts, but let's see what the files say. On the other hand, I'm almost certain it won't be enough for many. Even if the FBI were to unveil JFK himself writing the Ark of the Covenant and singing a lost Beatles song, many would still be disappointed. Even if the released files contained a photograph of LBJ pulling the trigger from the grassy knoll, it would still be rejected by some because the JFK assassination theories are just too complicated and also too addictive to just give up on them. Even if you believe in a conspiracy, have to be wrong, right?
- [45:52]
Eli Lake
Because there's so many.
- [45:53]
Michael Moynihan
This is Michael Moynihan again. There's the CIA, there's the Mafia, there's lbj, there's the Cubans, there's the Soviets. I mean, if there was a conspiracy, one of those things is true, and everybody else is wrong. It's been six decades since Jack Kennedy was killed, and today trust in government is even lower than it was back when we decided that perhaps the deep state really murdered our handsome president. So is it any wonder that in this second Trump administration, the Republican Party is committed to opening the Kimono and lifting the veil on not only the JFK assassination, but almost every outstanding conspiracy theory theory of the last half century.
- [46:33]
Eli Lake
It is with profound honor that I have been entrusted by Speaker Mike Johnson and Chairman James Comer to lead the House Force or the House Oversight Task Force on Declassification of Federal Secrets. Together with the help of the White House, our intelligence allies, the Department of Defense, the Department of Justice, we will be conducting investigations into the the assassinations of JFK, RFK and Dr. Martin Luther King. Unidentified aerial phenomena, also known as UAPs, unidentified submerged objects, also known as USOs, the Epstein client list, the origins of COVID 19 and the 911 files.
- [47:11]
Michael Moynihan
Well, I welcome the sunshine. I want to know the remaining state secrets too. But I also wonder if even this dramatic moment will ever satisfy the beautiful minds in the DOT connectors. Because once you go through the looking glass, it's hard to come back out. If you believe in conspiracy theories, then why wouldn't Trump and his allies be in on it too? Or perhaps the documents proving who really had murdered JFK were destroyed long ago. You get the picture. When black is white and white is black, anything is possible and nothing is real.
- [47:48]
Eli Lake
Who shocked John? Who shot John? Who shot John? You telling us nothing? With your warrant report, you'd rascal in battles if you sighted in truck who shot John? Who shot John? Was it the gun? You.
- [48:22]
Michael Moynihan
Thanks for listening to Breaking History. If you liked this episode, if you learned something, if you disagreed with something, or if it simply sparked a new understanding of our present moment, please share it with your friends and family and use it to have a conversation of your own. And if you want to support Breaking History, follow us on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you love this episode, there's more great content@the FP.com Become a subscriber today. Until then, see you next time.
- [49:08]
Eli Lake
Who shot John? I wanna know who shot John? That mafia baby who shot John? It's making the crazy the men in the tailor way to deny it Don is the Kennedy Spectator denier who shot John? Is the CIA who shot John? It's a KPA who shot John? Asking every death who shot John? It was you and me who shot John? Who shot John?