JFK's Assassination and the CIA's Psychic Cold War

Summary

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Podcast Summary: The Why Files – Operation Podcast

Episode: JFK's Assassination and the CIA's Psychic Cold War

Date: August 8, 2026
Host: AJ Hackwith
Style: Entertaining, heavily-researched, lighthearted with co-host banter

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Episode Overview

This episode blends two of history’s most captivating themes: the secretive world of Cold War psychic espionage and the enduring mysteries of JFK's assassination. AJ Hackwith explores the intersection of wealthy American elites, CIA mind-control experiments, and bizarre cosmologies involving seances and supposed ancient alien "gods"—all linking back to surprising connections around the events in Dallas, 1963. The episode investigates the shadowy figures who circled Lee Harvey Oswald, the secret networks funding early parapsychology, and the unsettling ways elite influence, intelligence operations, and inexplicable coincidences converge.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Origins of America’s Psychic Cold War (00:29–07:46)

• The Roundtable Foundation:
  • Founded by Dr. Andrija Puharich, funded by America’s wealthiest families seeking contact with the "afterlife."
  • Early studies in psychic phenomena, especially telepathy, conducted in a Faraday cage to rule out conventional explanations.
  • Notable Donors: Alice A. Bouverie (Titanic survivor’s heir), Henry Wallace (FDR’s Vice-President), and others connected to the White House and OSS/CIA.
  • Investigative focus: “If the human brain is a radio, can it both transmit and receive thoughts?” (00:54)
• Indian Medium D.G. Vinod:
  • During a séance, Vinod channeled a group calling itself “The Nine”—claimed to be ancient Egyptian gods, but actually advanced extraterrestrial minds influencing human history.
  • “We are nine principles and forces, personalities, if you will.” – Vinod as The Nine (06:13)
  • The group’s supposed mission: select nine people to reshape human civilization via influence on powerful circles.

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2. The CIA, ESP, and Operation Stargate (09:45–14:14)

• Shift from Private to Government Interest:
  • Puharich is recalled to military service; begins searching for drugs to enhance psychic abilities.
  • The search for “worthy vessels” continues, including failed mediums and eventually the famous Israeli psychic Uri Geller.
• Stanford Research Institute (SRI):
  • Geller undergoes successful remote viewing experiments verified by scientists: “Geller got ten in a row. Impossible odds witnessed by trained scientists.” (13:20)
  • SRI’s work led to the CIA’s clandestine “Stargate Project”—training psychic spies for over 20 years.

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3. The Secret Networks Around JFK (14:17–22:46)

• Intersecting Circles – The Paynes and The Nine:
  • Ruth Forbes Payne Young: séance attendee, philanthropist, and connected to both the Nine and government agencies.
  • Her husband, Arthur Young, invented the Bell helicopter, funded Puharich’s research.
  • Their son, Michael Payne, and his wife Ruth, become central in Oswald’s personal life.
• Intricate Introductions:
  • Through these circles, Lee Harvey Oswald’s wife, Marina, meets Ruth Payne at a party (16:41).
  • Oswald’s entry into the Payne family’s orbit is orchestrated by George de Mohrenschildt—a Russian aristocrat, oilman, and CIA contact.
  • “Of every man in Dallas, only one can sit across from Lee Oswald and talk about [Minsk]... George was eager to chat with someone from his hometown.” (18:10)

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4. The Chain of Custody: From Séance to Sniper’s Nest (20:15–24:46)

• How the Rifle Got There:
  • Oswald's rifle traced from Chicago to the Payne's garage in Irving, Texas.
  • Nearly all key evidence—rifle, photos, and even a spy camera—came out of the Payne household.
• The Day of the Assassination:
  • Description of Oswald’s last night with Marina, his emotional distress, and his suspicious “curtain rods” package (22:45).

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5. Warren Commission Omissions and Quiet Connections (24:39–31:51)

• The Official Story:
  • Recap of the shooting, Oswald's arrest, Jack Ruby’s murder of Oswald, and the Warren Commission’s “lone gunman” conclusion.
• Unasked Questions and Hidden Evidence:
  • Minox spy camera found in the Payne home—FBI attempts to relabel it as a “light meter”, and conflicting serial numbers suggest its true purpose remains unclear (28:40).
• Phone Call Mystery:
  • The day of the assassination, Michael Payne tells Ruth Payne, “We both know who is responsible for the assassination,” a quote buried for years (29:52).

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6. The Secret World Overlapping the Investigation (31:51–36:10)

• Allen Dulles’ Questionable Role:
  • Warren Commission chairman was Kennedy’s fired CIA director, with personal ties through his mistress to the Payne family.
• Deaths and Cover-Ups:
  • Mysterious deaths of key witnesses (George de Mohrenschildt, mobsters, and the only congressman who questioned the Warren Report, whose plane vanished).
  • Destruction of Lab 9, Puharich’s home, and potentially crucial files after his work on the psychic programs.

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7. Debunking vs. Uncomfortable Truths (36:11–42:27)

• What’s Confirmed and What’s Speculation:
  • Séances, donor lists, initial ESP experiments, and Oswald’s connections can be historically traced.
  • The “Nine” as alien gods exists mainly through Puharich’s testimony; predictions surfaced after the fact.
  • Geller’s psychic feats validated in some reports, but the Stargate program was ultimately shut down.
• Patterns and Coincidence:
  • The host acknowledges that corrupt coincidence isn’t necessarily evidence of conspiracy, but “the same people kept appearing around psychic research, military money, the Paynes, Oswald and the CIA.” (41:01)
  • “Coincidences are not a conspiracy. Until they are.” – AJ Hackwith (41:04)
• Concluding Reflection:
  • “There are people out there right now sitting around a table, deciding who lives and who dies… The people at the table change, but there's never an empty seat.” (42:13)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “I yelled the guy's finger for a full minute. Pull my finger. It's a two second transaction. Anything longer, you're dating.” – Co-host (05:04) (comic relief)
• “Of every man in Dallas, only one can sit across from Lee Oswald and talk about Lenin Avenue stretching to Victory Square, about the river, about the smell of popcorn at the circus.” – AJ Hackwith (18:10)
• “We both know who is responsible for the assassination.” – Michael Payne, in a phone call to Ruth Payne (29:52)
• “But correlation is not conspiracy.” – AJ Hackwith (40:59)
• “Coincidences are not a conspiracy. Until they are.” – AJ Hackwith (41:04)

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Key Timestamps for Important Segments

| Timestamp | Segment | |---------------|----------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 00:29–04:09 | Introduction to Puharich, the psychic race, and funding for The Nine | | 05:11–07:46 | First séance, Vinod channels The Nine, donors, and their supposed mission | | 09:45–11:46 | Encounters with Uri Geller and psychic research at SRI | | 14:17–16:41 | Wealthy families tied to The Nine and JFK circles | | 18:10–20:15 | George de Mohrenschildt’s CIA role and introduction of the Oswalds to Paynes | | 20:15–22:46 | How the rifle and Marina Oswald ended up at the Payne house | | 24:39–28:40 | Aftermath of the assassination, Warren Commission, and hidden evidence | | 29:52 | The infamous Michael Payne phone call | | 31:34–36:10 | Dulles connections, deaths, and cover-ups | | 36:11–42:27 | Separating fact from speculation, analysis of connections and “coincidences”| | 41:04–42:13 | Concluding thoughts on elite power and unseen influence |

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Flow & Tone

AJ Hackwith’s narration combines sharp wit, skepticism, and respect for the real-life oddity of the connections involved. The co-host injects levity (e.g., “They should have checked his belly button,” 07:34), emphasizing the podcast’s signature blend of humor and investigative rigor. Hackwith emphasizes documentation and facts but is clear-eyed about where coincidence shades into conspiracy and where answers remain elusive due to secrecy and cover-ups.

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Takeaways

• There are unmistakable links among 1950s-60s American elites, Cold War intelligence agencies, and the people surrounding JFK and Lee Harvey Oswald.
• The Warren Commission’s investigation missed or omitted these overlapping networks, leaving room for doubt and speculation.
• Claims of psychic experiments, alien guidance, and secret societies may not be provable, but the human actors—and their real-world influence—are well-documented.
• The episode invites listeners to ponder whether power naturally clusters, or if sometimes even coincidence builds the architecture of history—and whether the truth will ever be fully known.

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Transcript

[AJ Hackwith]

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[AJ Hackwith]

See terms On March 29, 1977, George de Morenshield told a journalist that his close friendship with Lee Harvey Oswald was an assignment from the CIA Dallas office. Congress sent an investigator to take a statement. When he got to the house, George's family said he wasn't home, but he was. He was in his bedroom, dead from a shotgun wound that nobody heard. But the story doesn't start in 1977, and it doesn't start in Dallas. It starts in 1952 in a mansion in Maine where America's wealthiest families held a seance and nine people were chosen by ancient gods to change the world. And on November 22, 1963, they did. August is the perfect time to hit reset before the fall rush. And for me, that reset always starts in my closet. That's why I keep coming back to Quints. They focus on well made essentials that naturally become the clothes you than all season long. Quince is built around fewer, better pieces, premium materials made to last the stuff you actually reach for instead of it just sitting in a drawer. They do the everyday staples, really. Organic cotton tees, mongolian cashmere sweaters, plus premium denim and tailored chinos starting at around $75 with the fit and fabric you'd expect from a designer label, not a discount rack. That's the whole model. Actually, everything's 50 to 80% less than comparable brands. Because Quints works directly with ethical factories and skips the middlemen. I can vouch for this one myself. Their cotton modal Henley is on constant rotation for me. I wear it in every episode. And their Pima cotton tee is another favorite because that extra long staple cotton holds its color and shape wash after wash. And it's not just clothes. Bedding, bath, cookware, travel gear. Quince has quietly become my go to for the house too. Upgrade your everyday go to quince.com thewai files for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns now available in Canada and the UK too. That's quinc.com thewifiles for free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com thewifiles. In 1948, the Cold War got weird. There was the space race, the arms race and the psychic race. Rumors out of Moscow said Soviet scientists were testing telepathy in labs. If mind could be a weapon, American intelligence wanted one. But there was a problem. No respectable scientist would touch the subject. And Congress was never going to fund seances. At least not publicly. The psychic race needed a man willing to bet his career on it. That man was a 30 year old doctor from Chicago named Andrea Puarich. The army put Porich through medical school at Northwestern. During the war, while he was still a student, Puarich published a theory that his colleagues wouldn't go near. He believed the human brain was a radio. Neurons didn't just fire, they transmitted. And anything that could transmit could also receive. If he was right, telepathy wasn't magic. It was biology. And Porich wanted to prove it. He rented a 45 room mansion in Glencove, Maine and started building. He converted one of the rooms into a Faraday cage. A chamber wrapped in copper screen that blocks radio waves and electricity. If the brain is a radio, you test it like a radio. Put a psychic inside a room that no signal can penetrate and see what still gets through. He called the project the Roundtable foundation of Electrobiology. So the program had a name, a facility and a testing protocol. The only thing Primrouge was missing was money. He needed private funding.

[Co-host or Sidekick]

Private funding. That reminds me, I need to launch the Kickstarter for my vasectomy.

[AJ Hackwith]

Just why you want me to have the cat eat you?

[Co-host or Sidekick]

Reward. Tears. Reward. For $10 you can hold the camera. For $50 you can hold the scissors. For 100 you can hold me.

[AJ Hackwith]

I'll give you 500 to never talk about this again.

[Co-host or Sidekick]

200.

[AJ Hackwith]

Done. The first check came from Alice Aster Bouverie. Her father was the richest man on the Titanic. He went down with a ship in 1912. And Alice inherited a fortune and an obsession with the afterlife after that. The donor list read like a who's who of American wealth and power. Business tycoons, heiresses, and of course, politicians. Henry Wallace, Franklin Roosevelt's former vice president. He cut a check. These people sat on corporate boards, advised the White House and had some ties to the oss, which became the CIA. Poolrich tested mediums and clairvoyants from around the world, and most of them disappointed him. Then The Indian philosopher D.G. vinod took Pooleridge's right ring finger, held it for a minute and whistled softly.

[Co-host or Sidekick]

I yelled the guy's finger for a full minute. Pull my finger. It's a two second transaction. Anything longer, you're dating.

[AJ Hackwith]

That's not what this was.

[Co-host or Sidekick]

He pulled his finger and heard whistling. Hello?

[AJ Hackwith]

Vinod spent the next hour describing private events from poor Rich's life in perfect detail. The roundtable was now in business, and On New Year's Eve 1952, Vinod lay down inside the testing room. At 9 o', clock, Vinod started talking. It was Vinod's voice, but the words weren't his. The words came from nine ancient Egyptian gods, and Poric recorded everything. The voice was slow and deliberate, nothing like Vinod's. We are nine principles and forces, personalities, if you will. The voice called itself the great Aeneid. The Nine Gods of Heliopolis worshiped in Egypt for 3,000 years before Christ. And they said they weren't a myth. They were real and physical. And they weren't gods. They were alien minds on a spacecraft watching Earth. The nine said they controlled the universe and guided all of human history. But they worked through influence, not miracles. A person met someone at the right time, a door opened, a decision looked ordinary until years later, when the pattern became visible. Vinod came out of the trance with no memory of what happened. But Poolrich had dozens of pages of notes, including physics equations that didn't make sense, at least not to him. But he didn't have much time to study his notes, because six weeks later the United States army recalled Poolrich to active duty. He went to Edgewood Arsenal in Maryland, where the military tested hypnosis, LSD and mescaline on soldiers. His orders were to find a drug that enhanced extrasensory perception, psychic research and mind control, funded by the US Military. That summer he went back to Maine on leave, and on June 27, 1953, under a full moon, he gathered nine people at the mansion, one for each of the nine gods. And he picked these people carefully. Eight were wealthy and connected. Pooeridge took the ninth chair for himself. Binod sat in the middle. At midnight the nine returned. And this time they came with a mission. They said the nine people at the table were chosen to transform human civilization. They didn't answer to any religion or government. They answered to something much older and much more powerful. Then the cotton threads appeared. Nine threads on the floor three feet from Vinod. Nobody saw where they came from.

[Co-host or Sidekick]

They should have checked his belly button.

[AJ Hackwith]

Whose?

[Co-host or Sidekick]

The magic guy. What's his name? Conad?

[AJ Hackwith]

Vinod.

[Co-host or Sidekick]

Rimrod.

[AJ Hackwith]

Vinod.

[Co-host or Sidekick]

Whatever it is, my money's still on belly button.

[AJ Hackwith]

There was one thread for each person at the table, identical to the sacred thread Hindu Brahmins receive at initiation. The nine chosen ones picked up the threads and accepted the assignment. Nobody outside that room would have believed a word of it. Pulidge barely believed it. But three years later, a stranger a thousand miles away sent him a letter that proved the nine were real. You know that feeling when you text the team, hey, did anybody call that guy back? And you get nothing? Silence. Tumbleweeds. Then two hours later, somebody drops a single thumbs up emoji, like that's an update. Meanwhile, the guy's already found somebody else, hired them and is probably going to send them a Christmas card. That's why today's episode is brought to you by Quo. Spelled Q U O. The business phone system. Built so you never miss a call. Here's what I like about it. All your calls, texts and voicemails live in one place. So it doesn't matter who picks up. Anyone on the team can see the whole conversation and just handle it instead of starting from zero. And if nobody's around, Quo's got a built in AI agent that answers after hours fields questions. Even books the appointment for you. You're covered even when you're closed. Set it up in minutes, keep the number you already have and add people as you grow. No IT department required. Money is on the line. Always say hello with Quo. Try quo for free. Plus get 20% off your first six months when you go to quo.come that's qu-com y. After the session, Vinod returned to India and the nine went quiet. When the money ran out, Poolrich went to Mexico looking for sacred mushrooms to open his mind.

[Co-host or Sidekick]

Ah, the classic wellness retreat. My Uncle Irving took the Same trip in. 74. Left as an accountant, came back as a rainstick guy. Yeah, I can still smell the patchouli. And let me tell you, a glurbing looked terrible in a fish bun at the hotel.

[AJ Hackwith]

Poolrich's room was accidentally given to an American couple from Michigan. Dr. Charles Lockheed and his wife. Poolrich met them D Lockheed said they were contactees. Space Intelligences spoke through them. These were Pulrich's kind of people. So they kept in touch. A month after Pulrich came home, a letter from Lockheed arrived. It described a young Arizona contactee, George Hunt Williamson. No connection to Maine, no connection to Porich. He never heard of the Roundtable. But somehow Williamson received the same transmission from the nine on the same nights in 1952 and 1953. Pulridge still had his doubts. But then he got to the last page. The letter contained the Einstein Lorentz transformation. The physics equation that describes how time and space distort near the speed of light. Porich recognized it. The Nine spoke the same equation through Vinod. Nobody outside that copper room could have known this. The Nine broadcast the same message to two receivers separated by a thousand miles through people who never met. After that, Puritch stopped doubting. He spent the rest of the his life following the instructions from that room. But the Nine were silent. Koolrich searched for another channel, but every medium he tested came up empty. It took 15 years, but the nine finally found a vessel worthy of delivering their message. A 24 year old Israeli paratrooper who could bend spoons with his mind. When she said I don't dance now, I make money moves, that was a mission statement for a whole new generation.

[Guest or Musical Interlude]

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[Co-host or Sidekick]

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[AJ Hackwith]

The call came from Israel. Uri Geller claimed he could read minds and influence events. He said he could bend metal and stop clocks. Pulrich was skeptical, but witnesses said Geller was the real deal. So Poruch flew to Tel Aviv to watch him work. Soon after that, both men were on a plane to America. At his estate in Ossening, New York, Puric launched Operation Lab 9. He built another Faraday cage, had a new medium, and once again asked to speak to the ancient astronaut gods. And this time they answered. But a different voice came through Geller. It called itself Spectra. A superintelligence aboard a spacecraft 53,000 light years away. It was still denying, but using a new name. And it had new instructions. To complete this new mission. Coolrich knew he needed help. So he took Geller to the Stanford Research Institute in California. The infamous sri. Two physicists, Russell Targ and Harold Puthoff, were also experimenting with psychics. Specifically remote viewers. SRI was recruiting and training people who project their consciousness anywhere on Earth and beyond. Some of their most talented subjects could even see through time. The first experiments were easier than sending your consciousness to Mars. The subject was given a sealed envelope and asked to draw what was inside. The experiments were conducted in a shielded room similar to a Faraday cage. Over seven days in all, August 1973, Geller made drawing after drawing. One envelope had a picture of grapes, 24 of them. Geller drew 24 graves. Another image was the solar system. Geller drew that too. Geller got 10 in a row. Impossible odds witnessed by trained scientists. In October 1974, Targ and Puthoff published their experiments in Nature. This highly respected peer reviewed journal printed evidence that minds could see through walls. The CIA noticed. They launched a secret program that eventually became Stargate. And for over 20 years, Stargate trained the CIA's psychic spies. And back at Lab 9, the guest list grew. Scientists from SRI, wealthy elites, politicians, even European nobility showed up using fake names. And one of those wealthy elites was British businessman John Whitmore. Whitmore was so impressed with poor rich that he wanted to make a movie about the name. So they brought in an out of work TV writer, Gene Roddenberry. Gene Roddenberry wasn't impressed. He thought the psychics were making it all up. But something must have stuck with him, because years later, in Deep Space Nine, there's a character named Vinod. The episode is about a cult leader who is protected by a small inner Circle.

[Co-host or Sidekick]

Season 2, episode 15, Paradise. The cult leader jams everyone's technology so nobody can leave the planet.

[AJ Hackwith]

You know the episode number Human?

[Co-host or Sidekick]

I've seen every episode of Star Trek ever. Except the one with a whale. Not the whale. Star Trek went down a dark alley and I could not follow.

[AJ Hackwith]

Whether Pooleridge was a cult leader could be debated, but he had an inner circle. And they kept receiving Instructions from the 9. Prepare humanity. Get the right people in place. The transformation is coming. One member of the inner circle was Ruth Forbes, P.A. payne Young. That Forbes, she was also the great granddaughter of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Her husband, Arthur Young, made his own fortune when he invented the bell helicopter. In February 1963, their son, Michael Payne, was at a dinner party with his wife, also named Ruth. At that party, they became friends with a Russian housewife who spoke almost no English, Marina Oswald. The Paynes didn't know it at the time, but seven months later, Marina's husband would be sneaking around their garage hiding a rifle. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. You've heard me mention BetterHelp plenty of times on this show, but I don't know that we've ever really dug into how many people actually love this service. Once they start using it and you don't have to take my word for it. Head to betterhelp.com reviews and you can see real customer feedback updated every single day. Hundreds of people writing in about what their experience has actually been like. And the numbers back it up. BetterHelp has an average live therapy session rating of 4.9 out of 5 based on over 1.7 million client session reviews. More than 6 million people worldwide have used the platform. That's a lot of feedback and it speaks for itself. BetterHelp therapists all bring at least three years and 1,000 hours of hands on experience plus the full training and certifications across a range of specialties. Getting started is simple. Answer a few questions, get matched with a therapist suited to you, and switch anytime if it's not the right fit. So go see the reviews, see what stands out to you and see if BetterHelp is right for you. Visit betterhelp.com yfiles that's betterhelp.com yfiles before that dinner party could happen, someone had to bring Marina Oswald into that room. In the summer of 1962, Lee Harvey Oswald returned to Texas with a Russian wife, a baby daughter and a problem. He spent nearly three years in the Soviet Union and announced he wanted to give up his American citizenship. And then he changed his mind. The Russian speaking community in Dallas helped the family at first, but Oswald wore them out with his temper and his politics. One by one they walked away. But not George de Moreenschild. He was a Russian born aristocrat who became a Texas oil man. He moved in the same wealthy social and diplomatic circles as the Drexels, the Morgans, the Bouviers and the Kennedys. He also had friends in the US Government, specifically the intelligence community. J. Walton Moore was an officer in the CIA's Domestic Contacts Division. They collected information on Americans overseas. After every foreign trip, George sat down with Moore and told him what he saw. In 1962, Moore brought him an assignment. An ex Marine living in Fort Worth, just back from the Soviet Union, Moore. He was perfect for the job. He grew up in Minsk and Oswald had lived in Minsk for years. Of every man in Dallas, only one can sit across from Lee Oswald and talk about Lennon Avenue stretching to Victory Square, about the river, about the smell of popcorn at the circus. George was actually eager to chat with someone from his hometown, but he wouldn't risk his business or his reputation. Moore said both would be fine. In fact, there was a juicy oil contract in Haiti that that could land his way if he helped out the agency. So George de Morenshilt, with fresh orders to make a new friend, drove to Fort Worth. And for about six months he ran Oswald's life. He drove him to job interviews. He helped the family find housing. He even stepped into arguments when Lee got violent and Lee listened to George. On paper, the friendship made no sense. George de Moorenschild dined with senators and oil executives. Lee Oswald worked a factory job and red Marks during lunch. But the friendship was real. George liked him. He told people he felt sorry for Lee. He was bright, bitter, and in over his head. He stayed close until February 22, 1963, when he brought the Oswalds to a small party in Dallas. One of the guests was Ruth Payne, a separated mother who studied Russian. Marina needed someone to talk to, and Ruth wanted someone to practice with. By the end of the evening, they exchanged phone numbers. That spring, George the Morinshelt left for Haiti and never saw Harvey Oswald again. But he didn't need to. His mission was complete. The CIA's man in Dallas made one introduction, and it was the only one that mattered. The only thing left to do now was wait and watch history unfold.

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[AJ Hackwith]

The rifle started in a Chicago mail order warehouse. It ended in a garage in Irving, Texas, wrapped in a blanket tucked behind camping equipment. Between those two points, a chain of introductions ran through one family. Ruth Payne was separated from her husband, Michael, who still paid the mortgage on the house in Irving. Michael worked as a research engineer at Bell Helicopter in Fort Worth. He also held a security clearance. His Mother was Ruth Forbes Payne Young, the woman who accepted a cotton thread at a seance in Maine. His stepfather was Arthur Young, the man who designed the Bell helicopter and signed the checks for pooler's research. In September 1963, Ruth Payne packed her station wagon and drove east on a two week trip to visit family. One of her stops was her sister Sylvia's house in Falls Church, Virginia. Falls Church is next door to Langley and Sylvia worked for the CIA. Then Ruth swung south to New Orleans where the Oswalds were coming apart. Lee was out of work and Marina was pregnant with the her second child. Ruth made her an offer. Come live with me and Irving until the baby comes. Marina said yes and moved in permanently. But Lee stayed behind. He only came out on weekends. By that fall he had almost nothing. His wife and children moved out. He lived in a rented room. He was almost broke. The one thing he owned was wrapped in a blanket in the Payne's garage in Irving. Michael Payne thought it was camping gear. By October leave, Lee needed work. Ruth made a few phone calls and helped Lee get a job as a warehouse clerk in Dallas. His first day at the Texas School book depository was October 16th. That same morning he was offered a job with an airline. Better work, better pay. He kept the warehouse job at Dealey Plaza. When Kennedy came to Dallas for a motorcade his route was unknown to the public until November 19th. Lee Oswald had already been at the Depository for over a month. On the Evening of Thursday, November 21, Oswald came out to Irving a day early. Marina was surprised and not in a good way. He played with his daughters outside until dark. Then three times that night Lee begged her to move back to Dallas. She said no. Three times he went to bed angry. In the morning he asked her for a kiss and she turned away. Then Lee Harvey Oswald was gone. He left his wedding ring on the dresser and he never took the that ring off. Not in two and a half years of marriage. He left $170 in cash. Almost everything he had. He did not leave a note. He walked into work carrying a long paper package. A coworker asked what was inside.

[Co-host or Sidekick]

Curtain rods.

[AJ Hackwith]

Oswald said it was curtain rods. It wasn't kurt kranz. Let's talk about the number the Fed doesn't want you to say out loud. PCE inflation just came in at 4.1%. That's double their own 2% target. A target they've now missed five years in a row. And here's the part of that that should really get your attention. The Fed's own projection says we don't get back to 2% until 2028. That's three more years of your dollar buying less than it does today. You're already feeling it. Grocery bills are up 32% since 2020. Retirees have lost 26% of their purchasing power. And if your 401k isn't up 30% or more in real terms, you're not gaining. You're going backwards. And it doesn't stop there. The next wave of inflation is already in the pipeline. Here's the thing. Gold and silver were never really a bet on inflation. Their insurance against the currency that's losing value on purpose. Golden Crest medals can show you how to move part of your IRA or 401k into physical gold and silver, tax and penalty free or help you buy directly if that's a better fit. It's a free conversation. No pressure, just information. Visit goldencrestmetals.com the Y Files or text the word files to metals. That's 63825. You'll receive a free investor kit explaining how physical gold and silver can can be added to an IRA or 401k, a free portfolio review with no obligation or hard sell and on qualifying purchases, up to $25,000 in bonus silver. At 12:29 on November 22, 1963, the Presidential Motorcade turned from Houston onto Elm street in Dealey Place.

[Letter or Document Reader]

Plaza.

[AJ Hackwith]

Kennedy sat in the back of an open top Lincoln, waving at 12:30. The shots came three rounds. Kennedy slumped over. Governor Connolly collapsed in the seat ahead of him. The limousine raced to Parkland Hospital where doctors pronounced the president dead at 1 o' clock on the sixth floor of the depository. Police found three spent shells, a cardboard box near the window and a long empty paper bag. And hidden near the Stairwell, a bolt action 6.5 Carcano rifle that traced directly to Lee Harvey Oswald. And you know the rest of the story. 45 minutes later, Officer J.D. tippit was shot dead on a sidewalk in Oak Cliff. Police arrested Oswald at the Texas Theater. Two days later, in the basement of Dallas police headquarters, a strip club owner named Jack Ruby stepped out of a crowd and shot Oswald on live television. Oswald died at Parkland Hospital. There was no trial, no cross examination, not one word of testimony from Oswald. But there didn't need to be. He was the shooter, the lone gunman, and that was the end of it. But a murdered President and a murdered suspect left the country full of questions. So seven days after Dallas, President Lyndon Johnson appointed a commission of seven men to answer those Questions chaired by the Chief justice of the United States, Earl Warren. The press called it the Warren Commission. For 10 months the Commission took testimony from hundreds of witnesses. In September 1964 it published its answer an 888 page report backed by 26 volumes of evidence and one conclusion. Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. Case closed. Officially. Except the case never closed. Clothes for the American people. Instead, the questions got louder. Within a few years, most Americans didn't believe the official story. And people spent decades digging into details that the Commission ignored. What they found always led back to one house. Michael and Ruth Payne's. Marino lived with the Paynes. Oswald was there every weekend. He was there the night before the murder. The murder weapon was in their house. Nobody was closer to the Oswald family but than the Paynes. Ruth Payne became the commission's most valuable civilian witness. She testified longer than almost anyone and she translated for Marina, who still spoke very little English. Her translations were the backbone of the official story of who Lee Oswald was and what he intended to do that day. The backyard photos. Oswald posing with the rifle and his Marxist newspapers. They came out of Ruth Payne's garage with the rest of the family's belongings. The rifle came out of that same garage. Garage. And so did one piece of evidence almost nobody talks about. When Dallas police searched the Payne's house Detective Gus Rose found a Minox camera loaded with film in Oswald's bag. A Minox is a German spy camera. Small enough to hide in the palm of your hand. Intelligence agencies love them. Warehouse clerks couldn't afford them. The camera was photographed and put into police inventory. Then the camera disappeared. But something showed up in the FBI's inventory. A Minox light meter. Three times the FBI asked Gus Rose to change the paperwork from camera to light meter. Rose refused every time. And he testified to all this under oath. Reporters asked why the Dallas PD said camera and the FBI said light meter. There wasn't a good answer. So J. Edgar Hoover sent orders to the Dallas find that camera. And the next day someone did. Michael Payne. The next day Michael Payne handed the FBI a Minox micro camera. He said it was his and was in the garage the whole time in a coffee can. Michael said the police weren't interested in a spy camera found in a house occupied by a defector's Russian wife.

[Co-host or Sidekick]

This spy camera was in a coffee can, of course right next to the microfilm in a sugar bowl and a cyanide in a spice rack.

[AJ Hackwith]

And the serial number on Michael's camera had five digits. The Minox Corporation said their cameras had six digits. And the serial number is important. It's how Minox could trace a camera's manufacturer, date and origin. A five digit number makes it untraceable. The Warren Commission had the Paynes under oath for days. Nobody asked them one question about that camera. The rifle, the photos, the translations, the spy camera and the job that put Oswald in that window. Every one of those things ran through Ruth Payne's house. Even Oswald's mother said she believed both Marina and Ruth Payne were involved somehow. The family at the center of the evidence was never treated as part of the case. And here's the thing. The FBI was already looking at the Payne's. Twice. In the weeks before the assassination, an agent stopped by. He was keeping tabs on the defector's wife who lived there. The Bureau had a file open on Lee Harvey Oswald before a single shot was fired. So when the shots came, every phone line that touched Oswald's world became a live wire and the FBI started listening. On the afternoon of the assassination, Michael Payne called Ruth from work. He said he felt sure Oswald killed the President but he didn't feel Oswald was responsible. Then came the next sentence.

[Letter or Document Reader]

We both know who is responsible for the assassination.

[AJ Hackwith]

When Commission lawyers asked Michael about this, he denied saying it. And the call never appeared in the Warren Report. It was reduced to a few sentences in an FBI file called Commission Document 206. And in that file the source was redacted. The names of the people on the call were redacted. Just a male voice and a female voice. The phone numbers were not identified for more than a decade. We both know who was responsible. That quote only lived in that buried report. When the files were opened in the 1970s, it was revealed that it was in fact Michael and Ruth Payne on that call. Something else was missing from the Warren report. In all 26 volumes, all 888 pages, Poolerich, the Roundtable and the Nine didn't appear once. But they should have. The seance world was closer to the Commission than anyone knew. One of the seven commissioners was former director of the CIA and longtime villain on this channel, Alan Dulles. Dulles should not have been on that commission for a few reasons. One, Kennedy fired him after the Bay of Pigs. Kennedy said he wanted to, quote, shatter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it to the wins. He believed Dulles wanted to drag the US Into a war with Cuba, which they tried over and over. So Dulles was out. And there's another reason. Dulles had no business being on the Commission. He had a Secret. During the war, he ran a spy in Switzerland. Mary Bancroft. She was his agent, and she was his mistress. And for more than 40 years, Mary Bancroft's best friend was Ruth Forbes Payne Young. They traveled together. They vacationed together.

[Co-host or Sidekick]

Hold on, hold on, hold on. The commissioner spy girlfriend's best friend is the seance lady whose son had the rifle in his garage.

[AJ Hackwith]

Those are the facts.

[Co-host or Sidekick]

I seen tighter plots and vertical dramas.

[AJ Hackwith]

You watched those.

[Co-host or Sidekick]

Guilty pleasure. Hate is welcome.

[AJ Hackwith]

While Dulles sat on the commission, Bancroft wrote him a letter reminding him how well she knew Michael Payne's mother. That letter wasn't in the report for either. It was found 40 years later. The man Kennedy fired had the files on the family that housed this killer. The files on the family of his mistress's best friend. And 14 years later, someone started burning the files. On September 5, 1976, George de Morenschildt wrote a letter to the director of the CIA begging for help. He said vigilantes surrounded his family. Their phone was tapped. They were followed everywhere.

[Letter or Document Reader]

Either FBI is involved in this or they do not want to accept my complaints. We are driven to insanity by the situation. I tried to write stupidly and unsuccessfully about Lee H. Oswald and must have angered a lot of people, people I do not know. But to punish an elderly man like myself and my highly nervous and sick wife is really too much. Could you do something to remove the net around us?

[AJ Hackwith]

The director read the letter, and he recognized the name. His prep school roommate was De Moren, Schilt's nephew. And in de Mornchild's own address book, there was an entry for an old friend. Bush. George H.W. poppy. The director of the CIA was George Bush. Bush's staff asked how well he knew the writer. Bush said he knew the man since the 1940s. Then, in a memo, he added a strange sentence.

[Letter or Document Reader]

I do know this man, de Morenshield. I don't recall his role in all this.

[Co-host or Sidekick]

I don't recall his politician, for I recall vividly, but not until I have counsel present.

[AJ Hackwith]

And Bush wrote back to George de

[Letter or Document Reader]

In your situation, I can well imagine how the attentions you described in your letter affect both you and your wife. However, my staff has been unable to find any indication of interest in your activities on the part of federal authorities in recent years. I can only speculate that you may have become newsworthy again in view of the renewed interest in the Kennedy assassination and thus may be attracting the attention of people in the media.

[AJ Hackwith]

Two months after that, George tried to take his own life four times. His wife got so scared that she had him committed. Doctors put him through electroshock therapy and released them at the end of 1976. In March 1977, journalist Edward Epstein went to Palm beach to interview him. They met at the Breakers Hotel for breakfast. That's when George finally admitted his CIA contact, J. Walt Moore put him on Oswald.

[Letter or Document Reader]

I would never have contacted Oswald in a million years if Moore had not sanctioned it. Too much was at stake.

[AJ Hackwith]

The friendship was real. The assignment was too. They took a break for lunch. Epstein went back to his room. They were scheduled to pick things back up at 3. That same morning, Congressional investigator Gaetan Fonzie drove to George's house.

[Co-host or Sidekick]

His name is Fonzie?

[AJ Hackwith]

Yep.

[Co-host or Sidekick]

Cool name.

[AJ Hackwith]

George wasn't home. Fonzie left his card with George's daughter.

[Co-host or Sidekick]

Yay.

[AJ Hackwith]

George came back at 2. He saw the card and went upstairs. Almost 40 minutes later his daughter found him. He apparently shot himself with a shotgun. But six people were in that house and not one of them heard a shotgun go off. But a maid had a tape recorder going. She was recording a soap opera on the tape. You hear a single blast at the 221 than the sound of a gun hitting the floor. And George wasn't the only witness connected to JFK who turned up dead. Or didn't turn up at all. Chicago mob boss Shemjkana was shot in his kitchen before he could testify about the CIA's plots against Castro. Mobster Johnny Roselli went missing and turned up in an oil drum. An ex cop, Richard Cain, was linked to the mob and the CIA. He was also killed in Chicago in a sandwich shop. Hale Boggs was a congressman on the Warren Commission. He publicly criticized the Warren Report and called for a new investigation in the 1970s. He disappeared in a small plane over Alaska in 1972. The wreckage was never found. And a year and a half after Palm beach, the Lab 9 estate burned down. Decades of poor wretch's files went up with it along with the family dog. He didn't talk to the police, but later he wrote he believed it was the CIA. Then poor rich went into hiding. He died in 1995 after a fall down a staircase. By the end of the 1970s, the JFK witnesses were all dead. And everyone in poor rich's world lost their jobs, their reputations and their funding. Some people lost their minds. Every person in the Council of Nine and every person who could name them was gone. This is one of the stories where the true parts are strange enough without any help so let's separate what happened from what didn't. The seances happened. The roundtable was real. And so was that donor list. Goolrich's assignment to find a drug that enhances ESP is true. The nine are a different story. Everything from inside that copper room comes through one man. The aliens, the predictions, the equations. Nobody else saw any of it. And Pool Rich didn't write about it until 1974. After JFK, after the Warren Report, after the Paines got famous, either nine aliens predicted history, or one man made up a story to claim a piece of it. Now, Geller's 10 for 10 really happened in front of witnesses, but he's been controversial for years. But the CIA wrote about him that he demonstrated his paranormal perceptual ability in a convincing and unambiguous manner. But that wasn't good enough to keep Stargate running. The program was eventually shut down because it wasn't yielding valuable results. But that's also being debated. What happened at Dallas is different. There are records, there are witnesses, there's connections. Lot of connections. Too many connections to explain away as coincidence. Lee Harvey Oswald got a job at D. Healy Plaza over a month before the President's route was announced. That's either a coincidence or he knew something. Now, Eileen Toward. He knew something. But until we have all the JFK files, all we can do is speculate. Which we love to do. Now, it's true that everything ran through Ruth Payne's house, but she was never charged. And she said for 60 years she was just helping a friend. She's still around today, and she sticks by that story. And please leave her alone. The spy camera turned up in the FBI's own files. Then it became a light meter. The police receipt says camera. An FBI signed it. The property clerk admitted he changed the paperwork when the Bureau asked him to. And Hoover's teletypes about this still exist. Skeptics will say the camera appears on the Friday list, but the bag wasn't searched until Saturday. Maybe someone confused a camera case for a camera. But a camera case doesn't hold film. And Gus Rose opened it and found a role inside. He said so under oath, and he never wavered. None of it makes anyone a spy. But it's one more thing that ran through that garage that got rewritten on paper. That phone call happened. The Warren Report didn't have much to say about it. And without an actual recording, Michael Payne is innocent until proven guilty. But it's another uncomfortable detail. George Mooreenshield confessed, but he was dying. And he was paid for his story. So the confession is not solid. But he was a CIA informant at the time. J. Walton Moore denied that, but declassified files show George really was reporting to the CIA. The CIA denied a lot of things about jfk, and they still do. I don't think George was killed, but the uncomfortable connections are there. Dulles is the real problem with all of this. His mistress's best friend was all over the place story and was never investigated. That's not a confession. But it proves the Warren Report was incomplete at best and corrupt at worst. And everything flows from that. Dulles should have never been on that commission. And I'll never stop saying it. Dead mobsters happen. Were they connected to jfk? Maybe. Was the mob connected to the CIA? Absolutely. But the one death that should bother you is the dead congressman. The guy from the commission, Hale Boggs. His plane vanished over Alaska. Now, that's a place where planes vanish. But it would be nice to have some closure on that. But no wreckage. No closure Pool. Rich's house really was set on fire while he was away. His kids were home, but they got out in time. Their dog was really killed and his notes were lost, but he published before the fire. So here's what we're left with. An ordinary explanation. Wealthy families are connected. They're connected with each other, with the government, and with the intelligence community. Wealthy people cluster.

[Co-host or Sidekick]

Oh, sure, they cluster around seances, the CIA and the guy who shot the President. My poker buddies cluster around tv, warm, light beer and somebody's wife's meatballs.

[AJ Hackwith]

You have a point. But correlation is not conspiracy.

[Co-host or Sidekick]

And it ain't exculpatory either. Counselor, clearing someone of guilty.

[AJ Hackwith]

I know what it means, but that doesn't explain the pattern. The same people kept appearing around. Psychic research, military money, the Paynes, Oswald and the CIA. I didn't even get into the Maury Island UFO connection to jfk, but I have a whole episode on that. More names like Fred Chrisman and Guy Bannister. More people connected to New Orleans, all connected to the CIA, all connected to the mob and the death of a president. Coincidences are not a conspiracy. Until they are, the alien gods weren't real. The nine people were. They had the money, the connections, and the power to change the world. And nobody could prove they didn't. There are people out there right now sitting around a table, deciding who lives and who dies. Deciding which elected leaders are inconvenient, deciding what stories you're allowed to hear. It doesn't matter if you're a mobster, a strip club owner, or the president of the United States. If you become a problem, you go away. But nobody at a table like that thinks they're a villain. They think they're chosen. A God, a flag, a voice in the dark. Something always gives powerful people permission, and once they have it, the ordinary rules don't apply to them. The people at the table change, but there's never an empty seat. Thank you so much for hanging out today. My name is AJ you know Hackle Fish.

[Co-host or Sidekick]

Word to the wise, if your new best friend speaks Floyd Minsc and keeps driving the job interviews, ask his dad

[AJ Hackwith]

for the guest this has been the Y Files Getfunner. Learned anything? He'd appreciate it if you could subscribe. I don't care. But he he really wants you to like subscribe, comment and share. That stuff really makes his fins tingle. Like most topics we cover on the channel, today's is recommended by you. If there's a story you want to see or learn more about, go to the y files.com tips send me an email, Catch us on Discord in the comments and you'll find you know where we if you enjoy the stories I tell here on the White Files, check out my other show on the channel. It's called the Basement. It's a conversation show where I chat with the interesting people behind these episodes. Some of them you know, but a lot of them you don't. But they're all people I find fascinating, experts on topics like the moon landing hoax or It Was Real. The JFK Conspiracy DMT laser code was a good one. Precognition with Eric Wargo was one of my favorites. Mark Dantoni was here last week. Mr. Ballin was in. It's random, but it's a lot of fun. And if there's someone you'd like to see on the show, let me know. I'm always looking for good guests. Remember, you can also listen to the why Files as a podcast. Take us on the road. I upload at least twice a week. Episodes. Campfire stories, interviews. You can find it by looking for the Y Files Operation Podcast. I was short of time. I needed a name that seemed to make sense. Anyway, it's there. It's available everywhere you get your podcast. If you need more WI fi in your life, see a doctor, find a date, go outside, touch grass. I'm just kidding. If you need more wildfiles in your life, and who doesn't? Make sure you check out our 247 stream on the Wildfiles backstage link down Below over there, we run episodes back to back, some fun content in between. And the live chat is more entertaining than anything I can produce. Special thanks to our patrons who made the show channel possible. Every episode of the Wild Files is dedicated to my Patreon members. I couldn't do any of this without your support. Some of you have been here for years and I thank you for that. And if you'd like to support the channel, keep us going and join this amazing community for as little as three bucks a month, you get access to perks like seeing videos early with no commercials, exclusive merch, and two private live streams every week just for you. And the whole W Files team is on the stream, not just my mug. You get to see Victoria, Jen, Gino, Hybrid sometimes, maybe. And Jam is on there. And the same usual suspects show up. When I do live streams. There's thousands of people in there. It's hard to be heard over on Patreon. There's a few dozen of us, maybe sometimes a hundred. And you get to talk. You can turn on your webcam, hop up on stage, ask a question, talk about anything you like. I think it's a great way to get to know us as people. Another way to support the channel is grab something for the WI Fi store,

[Co-host or Sidekick]

grab the heck of a T shirt. Or if this was your fist, into it for the CIA. Taste it. Oh, get a hoodie. Something like this hoodie. Get one of these. Adorable squeezy edible.

[AJ Hackwith]

But if you're going to buy merch, make sure you become a member on YouTube. I know. More money. It's worth it, I promise. Cuz YouTube members get 10% off everything in the Wild store forever. And it's only $3 a month. So if you're going to spend 40 bucks on t shirts, fistable coffee mugs, challenge coins, hecklefish plushies. If you're gonna spend 40 bucks, become a member, get the code, it pays for itself and then just cancel. I don't mind that thing is there to save you money. It doesn't make me any money. I give all that revenue to the great team.

[Co-host or Sidekick]

Yeah, keep that secret down in the sack dry.

[AJ Hackwith]

Those are the plugs. And that's gonna do it. Oh, my voice is hoarse. I'm not gonna know until I look at this in the edit. How long was Bubba back there? You guys see a black and white kitten up there? That was Bubba boy. I'm not redoing it. He's staying in. Welcome to the channel, pal. Until next time, be safe, be kind and Know that you are appreciated. Bubs, where are you?

[Guest or Musical Interlude]

Moms? I believe Olivia scenario 51 a secret code inside the Bible said I would I love my UFOs and paranormal fun as well as music so I'm singing like I should but then another conspiracy theory becomes the truth my friend and it never ends no it never ends. I feel the crab cat and got stuck inside mel's home with mk ultra of being only 2 aware did Stanley Kubrick face the moon landing along on a film set where the shadow people there the Roswell aliens just fought the smiling man I'm told and his name was cold But I can't believe I'm dancing with the fish and the fish on Thursday nights When they chase you and. All I ever wanted was to just hear the truth so the weapons are repeat all through the night. Man sightings and the solar storm still come to a got the secret city underground mysterious number stations Planet C2, Project Stargate and what the dark watchers found. Me so I can't forget leave I'm dancing with the fish head fish on Thursday nights with they J2 and the weapons are coming on through the night all ever what it was to just hear the truth to the weapons I repeat all through the night and we'll fish on Thursday nights when they chase you and weapons have to be on. Because she is a camel and camels love to dance when the feeling is right. Always in time.

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