The JFK Cover-Up: Conspiracies, Cuba, and the CIA. Plus: Netanyahu’s Alive (We Think?), With Chris Ryan.

Summary

Wait a Second… — The JFK Cover-Up: Conspiracies, Cuba, and the CIA. Plus: Netanyahu’s Alive (We Think?), With Chris Ryan

Podcast: Wait a Second…
Hosts: Jason Concepcion, Tyler Parker
Guest: Chris Ryan
Date: March 19, 2026

Episode Overview

This episode dives deep into the labyrinth of conspiracies, cover-ups, and unresolved mysteries surrounding the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the subsequent government investigations, and the tangled connections to Cuba and the CIA. With guest Chris Ryan, Jason and Tyler untangle the labyrinthine, often-bizarre evidence and stories—ranging from CIA machinations, mob involvement, and the mythic figure of Lee Harvey Oswald to the enduring cultural fascination the assassination holds. The latter part of the episode pivots to contemporary “wait, what?” news, touching on viral Netanyahu death rumors, current UFO sightings, and more.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

Setting the Historical Scene: Paranoia & Geopolitics of the Early 1970s

• [00:08] Jason opens with a dramatic rundown of the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Nixon at DEFCON 3, Watergate, and the strategic paranoia that colored politics at the time.
• **The connection between Watergate, Cuba, and intelligence agencies is drawn—the “Bay of Pigs thing,” Nixon’s tape schemes, and the shadowy world of CIA intrigue becomes the thematic backbone of the conversation.

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The CIA, Cuba, and the House Select Committee on Assassinations

• [04:52] Jason introduces the real-life spy story: following the Church Committee’s findings that the CIA and FBI withheld information from the Warren Commission, Congress launched a new investigation (the HSCA).
• George Joannides, a secret CIA agent who’d overseen the DRE (a Cuban exile group entwined with Lee Harvey Oswald), was quietly embedded as a liaison to the HSCA, ensuring the committee’s efforts were stifled.
• Quote — Jason Concepcion [06:32]:
  “The Agency was paying the DRE up to $50,000 a month in 1963. Nice work if you can get it.”

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Generational Impact & Pop Culture’s Role

• [07:13] Chris shares his mother’s emotional reaction to Oliver Stone’s JFK:
  “She was in tears. She’s a big Kennedy head. And she was like, ‘they lied to us.’ For her, it was an undoing of belief in institutions...”
• Pop culture’s role in shaping the myth:
  The further we get from the event, the more the JFK assassination feels like a novel or an unsolvable historical fiction, triggering both fascination and skepticism.

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The George Joannides Revelation & Deep Cover Spycraft

• [09:47] Jason and Chris recount the shock of learning—thanks to modern document releases—that Joannides, embedded with the HSCA, had been running anti-Castro Cubans and was intimately familiar with Oswald.
  Quote — Chris Ryan [10:34]:
  “He only smiled in one incident that people remember: when he produced a completely redacted CIA document.”
• The importance of bureaucracy:
  Investigative journalist Jefferson Morley figured out who was reading what inside the CIA by tracing the routing slips (“sign, basically like, I’m reading it and I’m now sending it on to this guy”).

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Oswald’s Timeline: The Making of a Perfect Fall Guy

• [15:10] onwards, with acute detail at [16:30]-[21:11]:

  • Oswald’s bizarre journey from CIA-associated air bases, through defection to the USSR, back to the US with State Department help, no prosecution, free passport renewal, and a cashiered repatriation loan.
  • Oswald’s ongoing involvement with Russian émigrés in Texas, the attempted assassination of Gen. Walker, public pro- and anti-Castro agitation, and strange, compartmentalized interactions with various intelligence cutouts.

• Quote — Jason Concepcion [17:06]:
  “The CIA opens a 201 file on Oswald and begins tracking him at that point. This came directly across James Jesus Angleton’s desk... obsessed with moles.”

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Theories: Lone Gunman, Unwitting Patsy, or a Labyrinth of Collaboration?

• Chris is skeptical of the lone gunman thesis:
  “I do not think that Oswald, entirely on his own, conceived of and executed a plan to assassinate the President and successfully did so, and then was killed by Jack Ruby...” [13:36]
• The panel leans toward “compartmentalized permission” — rogue elements, anti-Castro Cubans, and perhaps mobsters nudging Oswald without full CIA sanction, creating enough bureaucratic fog to avoid culpability.
• Quote — Jason Concepcion [29:01]:
  “I think all the cover-up is because Angleton and the rest were like, oh fuck. Like, this looks terrible for us. Like, we really did fuck up. We were watching this guy and then we missed it...”

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Jack Ruby: The Lingering Enigma

• [31:45] Jason: “The one thing that makes me really scratch my head to this day is the Ruby piece. Where the fuck did this guy come from?”
• Chris links Ellroy’s fiction and real-life speculation: Ruby had long-term mob and intelligence ties, suggesting foreknowledge or deeper involvement.
• Quote — Chris Ryan [33:15]:
  “I just can’t explain away Ruby.”

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The Many Absurd Ways the CIA Tried to Kill Castro

• [33:35] Tyler, Chris, and Jason rattle off notorious (and hilarious) plots, from exploding seashells to LSD-laced cigars, poison pens, and beard-destroying thallium salts.
• Quote — Chris Ryan [33:47]:
  “The most exciting stuff is exploding seashells while he’s snorkeling.”

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The Enduring Mystery: Documents, Delays, and Deep State Continuity

• [37:42] Frustration over delays in document declassification—every administration promises a JFK “document dump,” every administration balks after seeing the files.
• [38:30] Chris: “Sometimes when a new administration comes in, you’re like, well, all the old guys are gone and now new people are in... In fact, that’s not true.”

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Dissecting the Mythos: Why Can’t We Move On?

• [45:58] Assassinations, mobster deaths, CIA “accidents”—the 1960s were an era of wild turbulence and deepened national distrust.
• Quote — Chris Ryan [47:45]:
  “The assassination of Robert Kennedy is also like another one that just is like... And then they got his brother.”
• Chris and Jason bond over the literary interpretations (DeLillo’s Libra, Tears of Autumn, Ellroy’s fiction) and how fiction can infuse or even overwhelm the historical account.

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“Lucid Score” — Ranking the Mystery’s Cultural Power

[56:59-62:43]

• Legs: Decades-long cultural power.
• Unintentional Comedy: The absurdity of CIA capers (exploding seashells, beards, etc.) gives it dark humor.
• Sinisterness: Off the charts—murder, cover-up, endless secrecy.
• Intrigue: Endlessly fascinating, even compared to UFOs.
• Danger: Still strong—publishing “the truth” could conceivably remain dangerous, though chaos in modern news may have dulled public impact.

---

Modern Paranoia: The Doom Scroll

Netanyahu “Death” Rumors – Is He Alive?

• [62:50-66:31]
  • Wild social media panic after rumors spread Netanyahu was killed; perceptions of proof-of-life videos being faked (notably, a viral screenshot with six fingers, fueling AI-alteration conspiracies).
  • Jason speculates these serve operational security:
    “I think he’s alive... but they want to give Iran zero targeting data for the drones.” [65:44]

UFO Sightings & Missing Aerospace Figures

• [67:20-76:37]
  • Recent viral UFO “chase” in NYC sparks Reddit and social media conspiracy.
  • Several US and British former military pilots have been recruited by China—possibly for knowledge transfer, possibly for money.
  • Suspicious disappearance of General Neil McCaslin, with sci-fi tinged speculation (e.g., “Maybe the best hypothesis is aliens beamed him up to the mothership.”).

The Banksy Unmasking

• Identity long speculated—hosts decline to “snitch.” Disappointment in the art world as the myth of anonymity erodes.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Chris Ryan [10:34]:
  “He only smiled in one incident that people remember: when he produced a completely redacted CIA document.”
• Elevator in Dallas anecdote [31:13]:
  “Ain’t no way that boy could have made that shot now.”
  —local Texan, to Chris and Bill Simmons, at the Book Depository Museum.
• On government capers [35:04]:
  Jason: “There is thallium salts which would be dusted on Castro’s shoes. This is like, they actually tried it. This isn’t like this is what they tried.”
• On conspiracy theorists [58:03]:
  Tyler:
  “Was it the FBI or the CIA that coined the term ‘conspiracy theorists’? When did that happen?”
• On why some mysteries endure [61:16]:
  Chris: “I’m more intrigued by the story that I have about the existence of UFOs or alien life... I need these guys, I need little green men to just be like, here’s what we want.”

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Listener Entry Points: Timestamps for Key Segments

• [04:52] – The real story behind the House Select Committee and CIA sabotage
• [13:36] – “I do not think that Oswald... entirely on his own...”
• [16:30-21:11] – “Run-through” of Oswald’s timeline: training, defection, and return
• [29:01] – Conspiracy and cover-up: When did the real cover-up begin?
• [31:13] – Book Depository Museum anecdote
• [33:35] – CIA’s bizarre assassination plots against Castro
• [37:42] – Document dumping, secrecy, and modern conspiratorial politics
• [45:58 & 47:45] – The ‘60s: assassination decade and its lingering darkness
• [56:59] – The "Lucid Score" for JFK—does the mystery have legs?
• [62:50] – Doom Scroll: Netanyahu death rumors and proof-of-life video comedy
• [67:20] – Modern UFO flaps, missing generals, and international spy intrigue

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Episode Tone and Style

• The episode is conversational, witty, and a touch irreverent—blending “rabbit hole” historical deep-dives with pop culture and lighthearted banter.
• The hosts and Chris Ryan oscillate between open skepticism, nerdy enthusiasm, and fatalistic laughter (“There really is no better time than... just release it all. No one’s paying attention.” [42:21]).

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Summary Takeaway

If you want an informed, literate, and weirdly hilarious look at the tangled knots of the JFK assassination and the endless appetite for government scandal, cover-up, and conspiracy in American life, this episode of “Wait a Second…” delivers—with decades of context, a parade of strange characters, and the assurance that, decades later, nobody really knows what’s behind that final redacted page.

Transcript

[A]

It's October 1973, and you just took the country to DEFCON 3, ostensibly to deter the Russians from getting involved in the Yom Kippur War. You are President Richard Nixon, and the walls are closing in on you. When the British Prime Minister finds out, he'll suggest, not entirely diplomatically, that an American president dealing with a scandal like Watergate might have another reason to put the world on nuclear alert. Meanwhile, the Arab states have turned off the oil because of your support for Israel. The price is headed to the moon. Gas stations are starting to run dry. Your defense secretary has been telling the British ambassador quietly, that there are maps, there are plans for Saudi Arabia and Kuwait and Abu Dhabi and their oil fields. You know, just in case you need to go in. You have also this month, fired the special prosecutor investigating you. Your attorney general refused to do it and resigned. His deputy refused and was fired. The third man in line did it. The word impeachment is now said on television without any embarrassment at all. But the thing that keeps you up at night is the tapes. Days after the Watergate break in, you sat in the Oval Office with your chief of staff and told him the FBI was getting too close. You needed the CIA to call off the Bureau, and you needed a lever to make them do it. You knew the Agency was sensitive about Cuba, so you told him to go to the Director of Central Intelligence, Richard Holmes, and say this. Look, the problem is that this will open the whole Bay of Pigs thing. And the President just feels that, without going into the details, don't lie to them to the extent to say there is no involvement, but just say this is sort of a comedy of errors, bizarre. Without getting into it, the President believes that this is going to open the whole Bay of Pigs thing up again. He delivered the message, and according to him, Helms freaked out, shouted, the Bay of Pigs has nothing to do with this. Later, you push helms out of CIA. But the investigation didn't stop. By summer 1974, you'll be out, the first president to resign the office. Helms landed softly as the ambassador to Iran, a loyal ally in the region. In the winter of 75, he'll travel to New York City to spend a day on the movie set talking with Robert Redford about the actor's performance as a CIA analyst on the run from the Agency in a film about rogue operations to seize oil fields in the Middle east and the panicked, murderous cover up that follows. It will be called Three Days of the Condor, and it will be one of the year's big Hits. This is. Wait a second. Jfk, Cuba and the House Select Committee on Assassination. This episode is brought to you by Brooks Running. Max softness, Max energy, Max run. Go on a run that never runs out. In the new Brooks Glycerin Max 2 dual cell DNA tuned cushion is optimized for soft landings and powerful toe offs while a glide roll rocker helps provide a more fluid step through. To help you truly tune out and max your run, shop the Glycerin Max

[B]

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[A]

I'm Jason Concepcion. As always, that's Tyler Parker.

[C]

Hello.

[A]

And we are so pleased to be joined today by the spiritual leader of the CR heads, subreddit, Chris Ryan.

[D]

I can neither confirm nor deny the existence of that subreddit.

[A]

It's the only affiliated subreddit that I will visit because it's like, that's really nice. It's the nicest one.

[C]

Yeah, they're all, they're all excited to be there. They're all really positive.

[A]

Super psychedel.

[C]

Yes.

[D]

10, 10,000 men who are just, hey, man, how's it going? I like to live and die in LA too.

[A]

Let's talk about it.

[D]

Want to be best man in my wedding?

[C]

I love the cr. I consider myself one of their member.

[A]

Oh, yeah, yeah.

[C]

I'm a CR head for sure.

[D]

Thanks, brother.

[A]

Yeah. Well, we can only have you for this topic.

[D]

You could have Bill Simmons, but we have.

[A]

We could have Bill also. But today we're talking about a classic topic in the genre, one with lots of resonance for our current timeline. The JFK assassination and specifically the CIA's role in the attempted overthrow of the Castro regime and its later attempts to sabotage investigations into any kind of potential CIA role in the JFK assassination itself. Let's start here. In 1976, following the church committee's finding, the CIA and FBI had withheld information from the Warren Commission, which investigated the JFK Assassination. Congress created the House Select Committee on Assassinations, as it's known. And it was tasked with reinvestigating the murders of both JFK and Martin Luther King Jr. It had subpoena power, a staff of investigators and a mandate to go where the Warren Commission did not go. Its chief counsel was G. Robert Blakely. And he believed that if you gave investigators the right tools and they got genuine access, they'd get answers. However, the CIA had other ideas. They sent a liaison to the committee named George Johanides. And he was a CIA agent, unbeknownst to the House Select Committee recently pulled out of retirement. And his job basically was to make sure that the House Select Committee never found any obfuscate. George was the case officer who in 1963 had been running the DRE, the Directorio Revolutionario Estudiantil, a CIA backed Cuban exile group in Miami. The agency was paying the dre up to $50,000 a month in 1960. 3. Dollars a month.

[C]

Nice work if you can get them in.

[A]

And in August 63, three months before the assassination, the DRE's New Orleans chapter had a series of public confrontations with a man named Lee Harvey Oswald. George Johanides did his work successfully with the hsca. And the committee's tenure expired before investigators could press the matter further. And we're here to talk about it?

[D]

Sure, man.

[A]

I think here, let's start here. I think whether or not you believe in a second gunman or someone on the grassy knoll, a cover up exists clearly.

[D]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

When did you start grappling with the idea that well, they really are covering up?

[D]

I think most people my age probably were introduced to alternative JFK theories during the watching Oliver Stone's jfk. So I saw that in the theater. I can't remember how old I was, but I was too young to see it. And I went with my mom. We were in Florida visiting my grandmother and we walked out and she was in tears. She's big Kennedy head. And she was like, they lied to us. Like, you know, she was basically taking the movie at face value. I think for her it was an undoing of a belief in like institutions, in a certain national narrative and a myth that she had been told. You know, I, I didn't know any better. So to me like I was just like, that sounds, that sounds right. I'm in high school. Like it sounds like Jim Garrison is absolutely right. I think there are some flaws with Jim Garrison's for sure there are flaws with all the arguments, but it's become kind of like, you know, I would not describe myself as a scholar or anything like that. But like what I really, I love reading about it. I love literature about the Kennedy assassination. I love fiction about it. Because I think in some ways the further we get from the moment, it feels more like an act of fiction than it does like a, you know, a solvable mystery that is. Is of historical record. This is kind of like what we were talking about with Epstein when I came on the show the first time, where it's like sometimes it's a coping mechanism for an individual to look at a story like this and just be like, I need to think of this more like, more like a novel I'm reading than like, these guys can just do whatever they want with impunity and nothing really matters.

[A]

Yeah, I remember renting JFK. My indelible memory of JFK is that it was a 2VH set at Blockbuster.

[D]

Yeah, yeah, sure.

[A]

And walking away thinking, no way, really? Holy shit, did that really happen? Now I'm the same as you. There are problems with every theory. There's also something about the texture of reality. It's like that Errol Morris documentary about the lady with the umbrella where it's like the closer you get to any event, the more granular in detail you look at something, the weirder stuff starts popping out and it doesn't make sense altogether. That said Joe Anides story in particular shocked me when I read it. It was. You can go look at this New York Mag. Intelligencer article by Scott Ciari. Sorry if that's.

[D]

That's from a couple of years ago.

[A]

Right, From a couple years ago. And it's before the recent revelations that Joe Anides was actually a CIA agent. And like that has been confirmed through the recent Trump related JFK releases. So they really did secretly place an ex CIA agent who had ran Cubans into Cuba in the 60s, knew Oswald, placed him with a committee that was investigating the events. And he just went in there. There's a really interesting detail in this story where apparently Joe Anides was a very gruff guy, grim gentleman who didn't smile at all. He only smiled in one incident that people remember. It's when he produced like a completely redacted CIA document.

[D]

And they're like, what the fuck is this? And he's just like laughing at them. So I'm trying to think of like the best way to put the shock of this New York magazine story, which is largely about this guy Jefferson Morley, who is a Washington, used to be a Washington Post reporter, now has A substack called JFK Facts. He wrote this book about James Jesus Angleton, the CIA, sort of the, the ghost in the machine in the CIA. Anyway, this guy Joe Anides is supposed to like, he would ordinarily, like, if you were part of the, the, the assassination committee that Jason's talking about, this was the guy who was like, hey man, I need this file. And he'd be like, all right, let me go make sure that there's, you know, nothing in there about like the, whatever, faking the moon landing. And then I'm going to give it to you. I, I, some, for instance. And the whole time everybody thinks he's just like a CIA lawyer who's working on this committee. And then only after the fact it comes out that he was in fact a CIA agent working on Cubans in Miami, working in New Orleans, and was like intimately aware seemingly of what was going on with Oswald for like a year before Kennedy's assassinated in November of 63.

[A]

The thing about Morley that I think is really interesting is he realized early on into this investigation of his, he had, I think, been tasked to write a story for the Washington Post about it. And he realized right away that the reports themselves were often lies or didn't quite explain what they were writing about. But if you looked at the routing numbers, which is like how they addressed certain reports through this very siloed bureaucracy, you could see who was reading stuff. So he was able to establish, people

[D]

had to put like a number code or like sign, basically like, I'm reading it and I'm now sending it on to this guy. And so everybody had to basically initial it.

[A]

So there was, he was able to establish pretty, pretty solidly that from at least 59 on, from the period when Oswald, who had worked at a CIA U2 intel collection facility in Japan, had defected to Russia. This is crazy that this guy did this.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

From that point when he defected to Russia, apparently with the promise that he'd give them U2 information, the CIA was actively reading his mail. And not just like the CIA, it was top 30 or so top level officers, including James Jesus Angleton, including Allen Dulles, the director. It was like very siloed at the top. So by the time you get to 63 and New Orleans and then eventually Dallas, the CIA had been on this guy.

[D]

Yes, they knew who this guy was.

[C]

You said they had been like reading his mail.

[A]

Oh, yeah. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. For a while. Which then raises the question, and maybe this is the central question, like, how did they miss that? He was gonna do this or did they know? Where do you land on did they know?

[D]

I definitely think that this was not entire. I do not think that Oswald, entirely on his own, conceived of and executed a plan to assassinate the President and successfully did so, and then was killed by Jack Ruby that would be arrested in a movie theater randomly in Dallas. Like, nothing about that version of events really hangs together. I don't know how far I go with it.

[A]

Okay.

[D]

I think that what I. What I think I subscribe to, like I said when I. When this pod started, is like the literary adaptation of this, which is that there are crimes, misdemeanors, old wounds, like beefs that go across decades and centuries and they cost people a lot of money and people don't forget and that different factions of different organizations collaborated in some way, knowingly or unknowingly, specifically or generally to okay this. To say, like, this is okay, that this is happening, or we think that this is a good idea because maybe then Cuba, maybe then, yeah, whatever. And so ultimately, like, whether you think that's a collaboration or a partnership between the CIA and the Mafia and anti Castro Cubans and. Or, you know, whatever, I don't think it was the Russians. Is. Is, I guess the one thing that people have to kind of, like, come down one side or the other on.

[A]

LBJ was very concerned that people might think it was and that it would.

[D]

And he was like, if that were to come out, we would have a war that would cost like, 40 million lives.

[A]

I think if there's an original sin to this, it's that LBJ and others were so spooked by the Russian connections that they were like, the Warren Commission must be accepted. Like, people must buy everything the Warren Commission is selling so there is no momentum towards a potential nuclear war at all. And I think that passion to shut the door on it is part of what made everybody go, hold on a second. What is going on? Let me quickly run through the timeline of Oswald, 57, posted to Atsugi Air Base, Japan, CIA facility that ran U2 spy planes into Russia. At this posting, he taught himself Russian, earning the nickname Oswaldovich from fellow Marines who thought he was a weirdo. And he was always talking about leftist politics. 1959, second rifle qualification test scores a 191, which is one point above the minimum for marksman, which is the lowest passing grade. 1959, discharged from the Marines. October 31, 1959, walks into the U.S. embassy in Moscow and announces his intention to defect to the Soviet Union and to share military Information with the Soviets.

[C]

I think it's also something that I definitely did not know that he was discharged from active duty on a hardship claim and then sailed for Europe nine days later.

[A]

Yes. Shortly after being turned down for his defection request, he tries to kill himself. The Soviets relent and allow him to stay. 1960s, right. It's very strange. All right, 1960, whatever.

[C]

Just fine.

[A]

Yeah. The CIA. CIA opens a 201 file on Oswald and begins tracking him at that point.

[C]

1960, what is a two do it.

[A]

It's basically like a interest kind of thing. Yes. And this came directly across James Jesus Angleton's desk, who was, you know, the counterintelligence chieftain of the CIA. The person whose job it was to catch spies against the US and who was obsessed with moles and the idea that there were moles throughout the US government. 1960-62, Oswald works in a Minsk radio station. 1961, he meets Marina, who would then become his wife, a 19 year old pharmacy student. 1962, Oswald, Marina and their infant daughter return to the US despite having publicly offered military secrets to the Soviets. Oswald is not prosecuted. His passport is renewed with apparent alacrity. No problems getting back in the US and the State Department even gives him a repatriation loan to get himself started back on US oil.

[C]

So how, how on earth could that.

[A]

We'll get to that. We will talk about that. The Oswald settle in Dallas, Fort Worth in 1962 and Oswald Falls in with the Russian emigre community. Oswald meets George de Morenshilt, a former like white Russian, by which I mean like loyalist to the czar Russian who fled, whose family fled Russia after the Communist revolution. Very weird guy who died apparently by suicide on like the day he was supposed to be interviewed by the House Select Committee. Get to that later. March 1963. Oswald orders the Mannlicher Carcano rifle. April 1963. Oswald uses the rifle to attempt to assassinate Major General Edwin Walker, who was a very right wing, pro segregation, pro John Birch, neo fascist type figure. 1963, April, Oswald moves to New Orleans. August 1963. Oswald meets with various members of the DRE over this period. The next few months he has the very famous radio debate with members of the DRE because at the same time

[D]

he's also doing public demonstrations in support of Castro.

[A]

Support of Castro, Yeah.

[D]

So there's a lot of like weird performative misinformation that he is propagating where he's just like I'm at once meeting with anti Castro Cuban exiles, but also doing Public demonstrations in support of Castro and getting in fights with people who are Cuban exiles or part of the. Like, you know, and then doing public radio debates on New Orleans radio about Cuba. Like it's, it's a bizarre stretch and it suggests, it suggests somebody is, was, was pulling the puppet strings there a little bit.

[A]

September 1963. After this very tumultuous summer in which he engages in these debates with members of the Cuban exile community, he goes to Mexico City where he visits both the Cuban consulate and the Soviet Embassy.

[D]

This is the shit.

[A]

Attempting to obtain a visa to travel to Cuba and then the Soviet Union. Both are denied. October 1963. He returns to Dallas. October 10, 1963. CIA headquarters sends a cable to Mexico City stationed in response to their inquiry about this guy Oswald, who showed up, went to the Cuban consulate and the Russian consulate. Do we know anything about this guy? And the CIA sends report signed by Officer Jane Roman, basically saying that we have no idea. We last checked up on this guy in 1962, but we have no idea what he did.

[D]

Jane Roman is basically Angleton's secretary, chief of staff secretary.

[A]

10-16-63, Oswald gets a job at the Texas School Book Depository.

[D]

For Tyler's say listeners, they have been monitoring this guy for better, better part of a decade. They definitely know who he is. They have paperwork on him very high up. People in the CIA have been across all of this shit. And street level Mexico City station is like, do you guys know this guy? They are like, no, no.

[A]

Yeah, we, yes. No, we don't know him.

[D]

Can we do Mexico City mystery man really quick?

[A]

Let's do the picture of the mystery man.

[D]

There is a photo. Was that attached to when they first were communicated, when Mexico City was communicating?

[A]

Yeah.

[D]

They're like, I can't remember where, where she was.

[A]

I believe. I believe what happened was they were like, hey, do you know this guy Oswald? We got a picture of him.

[D]

Yeah. And it's not Oswald. Okay.

[A]

It's a guy who looks nothing, is clearly not Oswald.

[D]

It's clearly not OSWALD. Yeah.

[A]

So October 1663, he gets a job at the Texas Schoolbook Depository obtained by a friend of his wife's, Ruth Payne. Ruth Payne. By the way, who's Ruth Payne's sisters in the CIA? Her, I believe father and mother are in intelligence. She's always claimed she has no, she has never worked for the CIA, but she has multiple members in her family in the CIA. Whatever. November 1963. Oswald makes an unusual trip to Irvine, Irving, Texas, where Marina and the daughters are living. He goes to get his rifle. And then November 22nd, the assassination. Okay, so you've laid out your theory. I'll tell you my theory. I think a couple of things about Oswald. Here are my assumptions about Oswald. First, I think he was a sincere communist. I mean, he's talking with Marines when he's in Japan, like about leftist politics. They're calling him Oswaldovich. He grew up very poor, never had any money to speak of. I think he was sincerely engaged by left wing politics. And I think he sincerely thought, like, the US capitalist system doesn't work. And secondly, I do think that he fired the shot. And this is what I think happened. I think when he goes to Russia, when he defects, Angleton and others go, oh, interesting. Here's our chance to trace information flows. Like we can. We can. If he is an agent, we can trace the information that he's sending maybe back to the US through and kind of roll up his network. Maybe this is something that Angleton would have been obsessed with. And I think the Russians similarly are thinking, well, this guy's either a spy or he has real information. If he has real information, great. About the U2, we love it. If he's a spy, then we just watch him and we roll up his network here, Right. It becomes obvious that he doesn't have anything. They let him go back. Why does the State Department let him come back? I think because Angleton is like, perfect. He's gonna come back. He's a spy. Right? We're gonna roll up. I love this. The Russians would surely know about Angleton's paranoia about this subject. And maybe there was a little bit of trolling going on.

[D]

This is after Kim Philby.

[A]

This is after Kim Philby. This is 60.

[D]

Kim Philby is a famed, infamous British spy who was living and working in Washington for quite a while and developed a very close relationship with Angleton, who wound up being a longtime double agent. He was a Soviet agent and it was like a huge, huge scandal in England. It was the Cambridge Five.

[A]

Cambridge Five, yeah.

[D]

And it was like several. Several British spies who were actually in fact, working on behalf of the Soviets.

[A]

And it kind of broke Angleton's brain.

[D]

Yeah. So then Angleton spends a lot of the rest of his career.

[A]

Yeah.

[D]

Chasing ghosts, Just basically, like, living. And there are a lot of fictional depictions of Angleton in fiction of guys who are just basically buried in, like, their own libraries of insanity, like, of paperwork saying this is happening. And he's running 14 layered, like, honey trap schemes to like, draw things out. And it's, it's. It, to Jason's point, it is the kind of thing that that character would do. You know what I mean? It's the kind of thing that person would do, would just be like, I, I think the question you would ask then is, is Oswald one of a thousand or one of one? Like, is he one of a thousand people that they were like, interesting. This guy is doing this and he's going over like, there's this dude's in Cuba, this dude's in Mexico, this dude's in Russia. This guy was like, selling secrets, doing whatever. Just. Just get it all in the mix. Let's just read their mail, let's see what. Make sure we keep an eye on where they're going. We're never going to tip our hand that we've always been aware of this, because it's ridiculous to assume that for 10 years before he takes a shot from Dallas that there are forces that are like, well, what happens if this firebrand Democrat senator who's Joe Kennedy's son, wins election in very, very tight margins.

[A]

Yeah.

[D]

Betrays us with Bay of Pigs and then is seemingly a threat to the military industrial complex and may or may not want to get out of Vietnam? And then, like, what we do is count on this dude hitting a full court shot from, from tower in Dallas. Like, none of that shit comes together.

[A]

I agree with you. So my theory, I think, tries to weave that together. So I think. So they let him back in, I think, because perhaps Angleton and the higher ups think that this is a great way to sniff out other spies in the country. They keep an eye on him all through this time. Meanwhile, Oswald keeps getting more enmeshed in leftist politics. He's activated by Cuba and the almost invasion and the Cuban missile crisis and that he would potentially blame the Bay of Pigs on jfk. Right. JFK is in this weird position where he okayed the invasion but then didn't provide the air support. So he's kind of like in this weird middle ground where he didn't make a decision and everybody on either side hates him. Meanwhile, he. As he is. I think Oswald's main motivation is, I want to be a hero of the Communist Party. I want to be a hero of the left. I want to be a hero. I want to be like, have a parade in Cuba that I saved them. And I want to be like a hero in the Soviet Union for the Communist Party. Right. And so I think he is pamphleting on his own, trying to create this Persona of this left Wing fighter. But none of it's really gaining traction. He gets the rifle. He knows that Walker is a fascist. His people around him have been talking about it. This is a really right wing guy, pro segregation, like yada, yada, yada, communist, anti communist this and that. He takes a shot at him, right? He doesn't hit him, but it shows a willingness to take a shot at somebody. And then he runs into these anti Castro CIA backed Cubans unbeknownst to him. And this is where I think now I'm going to step off into full fantasy land. I think these guys, they come across him. It's reported that they went and made an approach to him as pro Castro, pretending to be pro Castro and be like, hey, what's going on? And I think they took the measure of this guy and I think he's like, oh yeah, I could help the revolution. I'm a Marine, I worked at the U2 base. You know what else? Walker, I did that. And I think maybe two or three or a handful of pro Castro CIA back Cubans go, why don't, why don't you try Kennedy? You know? And they don't tell anybody. It doesn't go up the chain. Like, yes, Angleton and them are watching, but they don't know what's going on on the ground because it's so compartmentalized. And they don't know that the higher ups are watching. And they're just thinking, these Cubans are just thinking, my uncle, my dad, my brother, my friend got mowed down on that fucking beach because that bastard Kennedy betrayed us.

[D]

And there's CIA agents who feel the same way.

[A]

Yeah, maybe, maybe this guy gets lucky, who knows? And I think they get surprised by it when it happens. But the fact that literally like less than 24 hours after the assassination, that group the Dre puts out a press release that's like, pro Castro activist kills the President, we should go to war with Cuba. Shows that they were kind of like waiting for it. And so that's what I think happened. And I think all the COVID up is because Angleton and the rest were like, oh fuck. Like this looks terrible for us. Like we really did fuck. We were watching this guy and then we missed it. And then some of the might have been watching.

[D]

Like my point is like they may have been watching 10,000 Oswalds.

[A]

You know, I think that's probably the

[D]

case and that they might have been like, oh shit, one of these guys really broke bad, really like blew up in our faces. DeLillo. Don DeLillo. One of the great American novelists. So this one is Libra, and he write. This is about Oswald, essentially, but it's also about a couple of disaffected CIA agents who are putting together a plan to take a shot at Kennedy but miss and blame it on Castro and thus reignite the. The desire to take over Cuba. Take Cuba back from Castro. In this book, he basically posits Oswald as an individual, wants to merge with history and that sort of like the ideologies and the politics of all of that are secondary to his desire to become part of why we're talking about him today. You know, to become a historical figure of great importance, regardless of. Regardless really of whether he pulled the trigger. You know, I don't know. It's funny. I went a couple years ago, me and Bill actually went to the Book depository. We were in Dallas. And it's an amazing museum. Incredible. If anybody's listening to this and they get a chance to go. It's unbelievable. Museum. And you basically go up to the sixth floor. Was sixth floor, six floor.

[A]

Yeah.

[D]

And they have like a series of iPads along the wall so that you can watch what the cars, you know, like, path would have been.

[C]

Yeah.

[D]

And you see, you can basically walk along and watch it. They have like the corner where Oswald was. And we were in an elevator going down and this dude who was, you know, like, had big belt buckle in the elevator with his girlfriend, me and Bill. And he just looked at us, he was like, ain't no way that boy could have made that shot

[A]

now.

[D]

And I was like, this is fucking awesome. This is what brings us all together

[A]

now. I will say multiple people have recreated the shot and made it. Like, it's not. It's not impo. It's not like an easy shot.

[D]

It's like a Mac McClung dunk.

[A]

Yeah. But it's like it can happen. Like, people could make it. I think the one thing that makes me. That makes me really scratch my head to this day is the Ruby piece. Where the fuck did this guy come from? Like, he wanders into a secure police station. Yes. The cops knew him because of. He owns a strip club and there are a lot of cops in there and they're on friendly terms. But he wanders in armed, gets literally into Oswald's guts with a revolver and shoots him in front of everybody.

[D]

If you read your James Ellroy.

[A]

Yes.

[D]

Ruby's in on this. Much earlier. Right. Like, Ruby's in on it when they are. I mean, like Ruby's up in Wisconsin working With the mob working with FBI agents, CIA agents like. Elroy has a slightly more fevered but similar take to Delillo. It also includes a Miami assassination attempt that was like planned but never pulled off because it was supposed to basically be a distraction. Elroy also pretty explicitly implicates that Hoover was aware that this was going to happen and let it happen because he hated Kennedy. So yeah, I mean the RWBY piece is like, it's beyond, it's, it's. You're right, it is one of those things where you're just like, you could take any single one of these things and basically be like, yeah, I don't, I don't work for the CIA. My, my mother in law like did some transcription work for them a while back or something and you could explain away everything. I just can't explain away Ruby.

[A]

Yeah, the Ruby part is the part that really gets me. And then there's the revelations from the earlier commission before the House Select Commission, the Church Commission, which are particularly with regards to Cuba are so insane that it's hard to really process like how insane they are.

[C]

This was some of my favorite stuff to discover this in the research. The different methods that the CIA tried to use to kill Castro.

[A]

Yes.

[C]

Including like there's poison pills and things like that. But the most exciting stuff is exploding seashells while he's snorkeling.

[A]

So painted in bright colors to be placed in the area where Castro habitually went scuba diving.

[C]

And did they think like, I want it like, did they think like, oh, he really likes shells that have like a tinge of pink to him? Yeah, he's always grabbing those. Like, let's put a little pink on this.

[D]

And then there was like in, in American tabloid, I think there's like a hot batch of heroin. This has to be used on him.

[A]

That was. So the real life version is an LSD like substance put in his cigars that would, I guess they intended not to kill him but to make him disorientated during his speech. A poison pen, when he went like, and you know, put the, put the plunger down.

[C]

It's supposed to be too small for him to even realize that it happened.

[D]

And it wasn't like in jfk. They. Doesn't Pesci scream about like doing something to make Castro's beard fall out.

[A]

There is thallium salts which would be dusted on Castro's shoes. This is like they actually tried it. This isn't like this is what's they tried.

[C]

Public speech.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

While he's talking

[D]

And I understand why they would want to like mask their involvement in this, I guess, if you're playing like role playing here. But like, you guys could have come up with some more like elegant ways to kill Kennedy then, like, if that's really like, you know, this is what kind of speaks to like the idea of like, maybe Oswald did do it, you know what I mean? Because it's like these guys could have thought of a hundred ways to be like, we're going to bring Kennel Kennedy down in scandal or we're going to

[A]

get him, poison him while he's with his mistress. With, with Sam Giancona's mistress.

[D]

And that's in American tabloid. A lot of it is like, we're going to blackmail Kennedy. We're going to get him caught with, with other women and we're going to blackmail him. But like, yeah, you know, you just basically this is a pre digital communication age of. I think maybe it was like, it's just like an idea gets planted. You know, that's what, that's what DeLillo kind of runs with is like, it doesn't have to be, hey man, I'm hiring you to kill Kennedy. It can putting, it can be putting like putting guys in, in weird positions and allowing things like, yeah, let's let him back into the country. Yeah. When Mexico calls, don't. Don't let him know that we know who he is. Oh no. Did he kill Kennedy? That's too bad. That's not, that's. Yeah, that's an outcome we were, we're not happy with, but we can deal with for sure. You know, I think that ultimately the, the thing that makes the Kennedy assassination, you know, for my mother, it was like this great portrayal and she was a Kennedy Democrat and she thought the world was going to change for the better. For me, you know, when I read about it, it's more just like a fascination both with the characters in it and with the COVID up of like, well, why, why, why the COVID up? Why are we still redacting things? You know, like these people are for the most part dead, you know, so like, what are we. What do you think would happen if we all knew? That's what you guys knew. And it's like, I don't even know if it's knowing the truth because it's just basically being like, well, what's in these documents?

[A]

That's where I go to too is like. And I think it's either. It's one of two things either the other stuff is so much crazier. Than exploding seashells and dust that makes Castro's beard fall out and the known assassinations of various figures around the world. Rafael Trujillo, Patrice Lumumba, et cetera. Right. That it's like even more extensive than we thought. For instance, there's Trump, like LeBron throwing chalk in the air, has been okaying the release of various files. And they haven't really moved the needle on jfk, but it has told us a lot about, like, how many CIA agents were staffed at embassies around the world.

[D]

It's really bad that, like, we keep having presidents who are going to be like, one of my signature things is release all these files. And then like, they get like that first day briefing and they're like, yeah, yeah, because Trump won Biden, and now Trump too have all, in various ways, promised to drop stuff. And then like, I feel like Biden

[A]

was supposed to do it in 22 and then was like, I'm gonna delay it.

[D]

And that was the thing. Didn't he create, like, basically he's like, we got it. Like, the CIA has to create their own, like, accountability task force. I'm not doing this.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He just found a way to kick the can. I believe that there was a law post jfk, the movie that was like, okay, let's clear the decks. Let's really get it all out there. And that law has just been kind of like, kicked down the road. Kicked down the road. It got to Biden and Biden was supposed to do it in 22. And he was like, no, forget it.

[D]

Like, I think he and I, like, this, are so interested in the story because it just brings together so many other things, sub genres that we're interested in. Like, I'm interested in the mob, I'm interested in the CIA. I'm interested in communism in the 50s and 60s. And it's like, relationship to America and American government. I'm interested in the response to that, like, rise of, like, and like, the suppression of leftist movements in this country and where that suppression is coming from. There's all these interesting stories. And then I also think when you read this stuff and Joe and I, it's is like, Joe Anides is like the greatest example of this is like, sometimes when a new administration comes in, you're like, well, all the old guys are gone and now new people are in and it's day one and we're going to start with like, it's 00 on the scoreboard. And in fact, that's not true. Yeah, these People are all in and around Washington. If they're not working in the government, they're working for lobbyists, or they're working for law firms, or they're working, you know, they're writing a book or doing whatever they're doing. And like, so many of the people that Jefferson Morley has been in contact with, people who are on these committees, people who are working in the agency through multiple administrations, then when, like, Trump goes out and somebody comes in, they'll. Maybe some of them will get hired back and maybe Kennedy era people are no longer with us. But, like, you can see the. The kind of connective thread between people from the 60s and people from today, and you can see in some of our own contemporary politics, like, some of the chaos that's been sowed by information and misinformation and the dissemination of it. But for you, yes, as somebody who's like, I'm a novice, I'm. I. Have you seen jfk?

[C]

No.

[D]

Oh, do you give a shit? Do you care at all about this?

[C]

I definitely give a shit. Like I was saying to you before, like, at a certain point, it seemed like, oh, I'm going to have to dedicate a significant chunk of time that I'm not, like, going, like, deciding to,

[D]

like, getting into jazz.

[A]

Yeah, yeah.

[B]

What?

[A]

Yes.

[C]

Yeah. You know, like, I'm fine learning about Thelonious Monk, but if I got to get down to, like, whose drummer was whose. Yeah, then that starts to get a little bit much for me. But, yeah, I definitely give a shit. It's more like the stuff that grabs my attention in this beyond. Just like the lengths they would go to, to try to find interesting ways to kill somebody are like, reading in between some of the lines, just like, the inconsistencies where it's like, okay, Oswald is capable of shooting this president that's in this moving car. But then you mentioned that he can't assassinate a general through a window.

[A]

Standing still.

[C]

Standing still in his own. Like, it's like sort of little things like that. Whereas, like, this. He's gotta warm up, right?

[A]

Sure. He's gotta get, you know.

[C]

Yeah. But yeah, it's more like. I think it activates me in the same way that there is, like, LeCarre stuff does, you know, like, this is espionage. This is subterfuge. This is like, this is someone with an answer telling a secretary, tell them no.

[A]

Yeah, tell them.

[C]

Tell them no. And let's just see what happens.

[D]

Yeah, it's like, how does power actually manifest itself? Is it like executive orders or is it guys in offices refusing requests for stuff. You know what I mean? Like that and that. That. I don't think if we had done this podcast like 15 years ago, I think I probably would have been more like, well, there are certain institutions in the United States, life, in American life, and we just have to know one way or the other where they stand and what they've done. I have no faith in institutions whatsoever anymore. So it doesn't really matter, like, if they killed Kennedy or they didn't. You guys, there's no better time than to fucking throw your hands up and be like, we did it.

[A]

There really is no better time than. Right?

[D]

Yeah, we're all too distracted. Ye. Wait more, Ted.

[A]

No, Friday, this Friday, just release it all. Because nobody's.

[D]

If I was them and like, Leon Black bank of America stuff came out Friday, I'd be like, by the way, I saw it.

[A]

We killed it. I did it.

[D]

One tweet. Now I deleted it.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

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[A]

The thing for me that really is like is activating is how the more you get a peek behind the curtain, the more you realize that, like, there's no Harlem Globetrotters and Washington generals, that they are really, like, part of the same touring group. Like, on a certain level. For instance, the fact that the CIA was working with some of the most famous mobsters in America to undermine Castro in Cuba. This is at the same time that the FBI is basically saying that organized crime does not exist. Like, we're working with these people. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then you, you know, you have the fact that, like, a lot of those people end up dead in weird ways. Sam Giancana, who is like the leader of the outfit, what a major figure in Midwest organized crime, was called to testify in front of the House Select Committee and was under police guard and someone got into his kitchen and shot him to death. Unknown who. Probably one of the cops, honestly. But, like, and this story is, like, full of things like that.

[C]

George Roselli found chopped up in a steel drum in a Miami bay.

[A]

George de Morenshield, the friend of the Oswald family, the White Russian emigre with who was a known CIA informer. He gave the CIA a bunch of information about, like, Yugoslavia trade deals. When he had been over there, he got, you know, the, the card from one of the investigators of the House Select Committee, like, will you come testify? And then that day decides to kill himself. Like, there's so many things where you're just like, Jesus.

[D]

Like, the assassination of Robert Kennedy is also like another one that just is like. And then they got his brother. Like, and those things are like, they could be completely disconnected.

[A]

Yes.

[D]

But when you, when you put them as part of, like, the same narrative of a decade of a family, of their roles in the government, their roles in opposition to certain factions of American life, it's just like, sure, they could have been killed by lone government, but like, who benefited from that and who, who would have promoted that idea?

[A]

You know, it also, like, just drives home how insane the 60s are. So, like, JFK gets assassinated November 63. Eight months later, the Beatles are on Ed Sullivan. Like, that's how crazy that decade was.

[D]

Like, the world would change every nine months.

[A]

Yes.

[D]

Yeah.

[A]

Just insanity.

[D]

The interesting thing is, like, I was gonna ask you, as a fellow card carrying member of Lunatics association, is there a theory that is obviously not true, but that you're like, this is just really fun because mine is this.

[A]

Yeah, that's.

[D]

It is. The last book I brought was this book.

[A]

Tears of Autumn is crazy. So, yeah, explain the plot of Tears of Autumn, because that's one you put me on that book, and I was just like, whoa.

[D]

Tears of Autumn is by one of my favorite sort of underrated espionage writers, Charles Makary, who really feels like he might have been in the CIA, too. And he wrote a series of novels about a spy named Paul Christopher. And one of them is the Last Supper, which is kind of an amazing, like, the entire history of the CIA novel. But this one, Tears of Autumn, is specifically about the Kennedy assassination. And the theory posited in this novel is that it is orchestrated by a family in Vietnam getting revenge on Kennedy for the killing of the Vietnamese president.

[A]

And go, yeah.

[D]

And that it is a. A lot of it also involves heroin, the international heroin trade. So, man, it's just. Some of my number one keywords are in there, you know, like, there's just like.

[C]

What's funny is when you said heroin, literally the first, the first thing that entered my head was, oh, Frank Lucas. Okay, got it.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah.

[D]

So I don't want to spoil too much about this one, because if I wish I could go back in time and read this for the first time and have my face fall off again, it is a beautiful novel too. One of the things that's hard is that the novels about this are so good that when you read the history, you're like, yeah, I wish it was boring.

[A]

I wish it was as clear and as gripping.

[D]

So, like, the renditions of Angleton in books and novels is amazing. Reading a biography of Angleton, you're just like, great. And then he looked at another piece of paper.

[A]

Yeah.

[D]

And then he went to a cocktail party. Then he looked at another piece of paper. You know, it doesn't have, like, the same juice.

[C]

It's pretty wild, the hold that it has had on just the collective American imagination.

[A]

Oh, yeah.

[C]

I mean, there are two different Nicolas Cage movies that basically end with him telling someone, honey, do you want to know who killed Ken the Rock? And one of the National Treasures, a movie I also have seen the Irishman, which is like, you know, if they can kill a president, they can, you know.

[A]

Do you have. You've heard now some information regarding the Cuba. The CIA's involvement in Cuba and the assassination of JFK. Do you have a personal theory at this point?

[C]

I, I would, I, I, I need to do more digging to say anything remotely, remotely intelligible. I mean, like, what you said is like, that, that makes a lot of sense to me. The Joan Edie stuff is very. Somebody who I don't want working against me is someone that's only smiled on record one time.

[A]

Yeah, yeah.

[C]

You know what I mean? Like, this is. It seems like a pretty serious guy who's, like, kind of bad news. And so if he's involved in any

[A]

way, part of the reason they sent him to oversee the DRE in the first place was the original officer was, like, not able to control this group. They were like cowboys down there. So his. Part of his marching orders were like, get these guys under control.

[D]

They thought of him as a colonel and that he was, like, very impressive in the quickness with which he made decisions. Yeah. I think also, like, I mean, look, Cuba back in the news.

[A]

A.

[D]

We're.

[A]

Who knows what's going on right now

[D]

in a lot of shit right now as a country. And it's. It's very hard to know what to believe. And I guess maybe that is the lesson of all of this, is like, I suppose I would be a little bit more credulous about official explanations for things if there had ever been a really legitimate official explanation for Kennedy.

[A]

Yeah. And I feel like, especially when you look at the church commission stuff, some of the revelations there, whether it's dosing citizens with LSD just to see what would happen, or infecting people with diseases or this assassination, that assassination. Coo Coo, Coo. Eisenhower, as a president gets a lot of mileage out of doing the military industrial complex speech on the last day of his being president. And because of that, we, like, overlook, like, this coup. That coup here, this, like, thing that he did over here when he overthrew this guy. And it just like, makes me feel

[D]

like John Calipari truthfully complaining about the

[A]

State of College 100. It's like. It's just like that. And it's like, you got guys out

[D]

here who are 25, you want to do an accounting.

[A]

It just makes me feel like, you know, if there was a period when we were the good guys, it was like 1994 to 1998 in there. And that's kind of it.

[C]

I didn't know that MKUltra went on for 23 years.

[A]

Oh, yeah, it went on for a long time.

[C]

Yeah, it's a long time.

[A]

Yeah. That they were just dosing people on the subway with LSD and following them.

[C]

It's a really long time to be like, okay, we made it a little bit different. Let's see what this does to them.

[D]

I Wonder if in 30 years, 40 years, 50 years, if there's still, like, a functioning society, if people what the relationship to, like, today's scandals, controversies, conspiracies, will be. Because I think my romantic fascination with this stuff is the documentation of it.

[C]

Yeah.

[D]

And when you look at all the hard copy files on paper and memos.

[A]

Yeah.

[D]

And like, here's an attached black and white photograph of a man we're claiming is Oswald, who's not Oswald. And you're like, well, how did this, who the fuck decided this. This would know? Or is this just a mistake some like, bleary eyed alcoholic guy made in office where he's like, yeah, that's Oswald. And that guy's actually in St. Louis outside of a Cardinals game or something like that. And then on top of it, you know, like you get documents like the Warren Report, which. Amazing. And one of my favorite descriptions of something is Don DeLillo described the Warren Report as the novel James Joyce would have written if he had lived in Iowa and lived to be 100. Which is. What do you mean by that? It was like, he is like. It, it's. It's obviously about Kennedy, but like, because of the, all the interviews with people that they published, it's basically like a living document of life in the 50s and 60s because people are like talking about going to the dentist and. And I don't know if we're ever gonna have that again.

[A]

Yeah.

[D]

We've had like so many things happen just in the last couple of years. And you're like, is there a. There's, there's not like an Epstein report. There's not like a. There's not like a substantive record. It's all just like speculation and tweets.

[A]

You know, there's also the thing of, you know, in the digital age, you just don't know if things have been changed, if they existed originally. You kind of have to trust that people with specialized skills can trace the provenance of something back to when a file was created. Like, it's impossible. Let's end here. Okay. We talked about some of the ways that the CIA tried to kill Cuba, tried to kill Castro. The eight substantiated ways. If they were coming after Chris Ryan.

[D]

Yeah.

[A]

How would they do it?

[D]

I mean, you would definitely just poison my nicotine pills. I have a very specific. Don't use this against me. I have a very specific brand of milligram dosage. And like they've changed it from mint to peppermint. I'm furious. I have to basically go on like the dark wet to get like my old version. So you. I would go after nicotine.

[A]

You really go on the dark web to get it or.

[D]

No, it's just. But it's, like, not new, old stuff. When I buy it, it's, like, not from, like, the company. It's from, like. It's from, like, Gerald's Pharmaceuticals. And I'm like, okay, you must just have a stash. I would do that. I would put subliminal messaging in Sixers broadcasts.

[C]

Saying what? Whatever. You.

[D]

Yeah. If you were, like, just driving to the Pacific, I'd be like, okay, I can't think of a third one. What would the third one be? What's. What are some of my real. I don't know. What would. Yours. What would. What would get you?

[A]

Well, I think they'd put, like, a C4 in the. In the collar of my dog.

[D]

Yeah.

[A]

Or just, like, exploding dog food. That's, like, on a trigger.

[C]

Right.

[A]

I think, you know, you put any kind of hypodermic needle in the chair that I sit in to write. So, like, sit in. That got me. And I think, you know, the morning coffee, I'm 100% gonna hit that before.

[D]

Oh, yeah. You guys gotta get on that. Yeah.

[A]

You know, so, like, poison my coffee. Be like LSD coffee beans.

[D]

You gotta find out if my barista has ever been to Mexico City.

[A]

And that's the way outside of. That's the way to get me. What about you?

[C]

There was something in the research about how someone could make a frozen bullet that if someone is shot with it, then they immediately go into cardiac arrest.

[A]

That's right.

[C]

Someone would just need it. I love nugget ice. Someone would just need to do this with my ice once, and I'm. I'm done for. It's like an every morning thing for me. I just have to. I'd like me some nugget ice, if not that. There's a lamp I always turn on in my office when I want to, like, you know, have not have the harsh fluorescence beating down a point.

[A]

Right. Yeah.

[C]

Explode that for sure. Yeah. Or, like, I mean, honestly, just if you find the raisin canes this nearest to me.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[D]

Same with me. Just poison my slothful.

[A]

All right, let's do our lucid score. Lucid is our scoring mechanism for. Wait a second, Link. Does it have legs? Is this a story that has legs? Decades, man one to four.

[D]

Although I do feel like it is becoming a little bit more of a fringe, like, record store geek pursuit.

[A]

Well, I think, like, Jefferson Morley is a great example of a guy who is, like, a respected reporter for the Washington Post. And the more he pursued this, the more it broke his brain. And he's currently on Substack talking about CIA.

[D]

His doc editor at the Post was this guy Rick Atkinson, who wrote amazing World War II military history and also is, like, one of the main talking heads on Ken Burns American Revolution doc. And when he's, like, trying to get this stuff published, Rick Agnes is like, this is kind of boring, dude.

[A]

Yeah.

[D]

Like, this doesn't. Like, who cares? You found out a guy who wasn't the guy was a guy in the file.

[C]

Like, was it the FBI or the CIA that coined the term conspiracy theorists? And, like, when did that happen?

[A]

I mean, that's a good. That's a good detail that I don't

[C]

have the answer to because that seems like a big accomplishment with all this stuff, is that people like me grew up hearing some, you know, JFK theories and being like, well, I'm sure there's something to that. But also, like, aren't you, like, a kook if you believe, too?

[A]

Yeah.

[D]

I mean, the thing is, is that all of this stuff is operating under a hypothesis to confirm what you kind of already think about the world.

[A]

Right?

[C]

Sure.

[D]

Like, I don't. I think it's entirely plausible that a lot of the stuff that happened in the books and novels that I wrote about reading could have happened. That obviously says something about, like, my worldview, that I want something to confirm that. And I'm sure growing up, you had the same thing where it was like, for sure, you're supposed to think this. And then if you think otherwise, it's like, you're a kook, you know?

[A]

Yeah. I mean, it's like the. The Atkinson example is. Is. Is really telling because not everybody is going to be. There's gonna be a lot of people who are like, I'm gonna go on with my day. Okay. There's stuff going on. It doesn't affect me. There's stuff going on above my head that I don't know about. Whereas, you know, my. I guess it's like, how enmeshed are you in the propagandistic depiction of the United States? You know, like, how much did you buy it? Because I think I bought it to a significant enough degree that when you start finding out about this stuff, you're like, wait, what?

[D]

Well, it's also like, when there's an assassination attempt on Trump in Pennsylvania, you're just like,

[A]

a great camera angle just saying, for the shot, they brought the flag down. I'm just saying. And it's hard to get out of that mode.

[D]

It's hard to do, to not just

[A]

say, yeah, okay, so Legs. Unintentional comedy. Sinisterness. Intrigue. Danger 1 to 4. Does this story have legs?

[D]

Yeah.

[A]

Yeah.

[D]

I mean, it's one of the great stories of the American century. And into our.

[A]

Do you think there's ever going to be a period 80 years from now, 100 years from now? We're still here. Where the. Where they're just like, fine, here's the files. We don't care. Like, it's like the Dreyfus Affair.

[D]

No, but that should be now. Like these. Isn't it supposed to be now? Like, when everybody's.

[A]

It should be, you know, like, just

[D]

fucking let us know. You guys aren't going to have to go to jail.

[A]

Yeah, literally. Like, Alan Dulles is an airport now. Like, he's good. Angleton's been dead a long time. All these guys are gone. Oh, my God. You know, I was trying to do research on what happened to these Dre guys. This is like, one of them managed Radio Shacks in South Florida till the early 2000s.

[D]

Anyway, somebody's like, I bought batteries for

[A]

that guy, for that guy who charged the beach at the Bay of Pigs. Unintentional comedy. Is it. Is it funny in any kind of way?

[D]

Well, I mean, there is comic aspects to it. You know, obviously, it's a great tragedy, but there are, like, the beard falling out stuff.

[A]

It is kind of funny.

[D]

Like, guys pretending to be like, Mexico mystery Man. I mean, there is, like, a kind of darkly comic element to it. I wouldn't say it's the funniest thing I've ever come across, but. Yeah.

[A]

So we'll give it a three.

[D]

Yeah.

[A]

Okay. Sinisterness.

[D]

It's pretty sinister.

[A]

We'll give it a four. I think it's very sinister indeed. Intrigue.

[D]

I mean, the most intriguing shit ever.

[A]

It's intrigued off the charts. And then danger. Is it dangerous to us?

[D]

I'm more intrigued by the story that I have about the existence of UFOs or alien life.

[A]

Okay.

[D]

I'd say that, okay, like, aliens, they gotta. They gotta present the case. They gotta. Like, I need. I need these guys. I need little green men to just be like, here's what we want.

[A]

Right? We have much less evidence of.

[D]

Congratulations. You got another blurry picture of, like. I don't know what to say about that. I'm much more interested in who killed Kennedy and why.

[A]

And how dangerous is this for us today?

[D]

I think that's the one that I would say has been now mitigated by, like, just the pandemonium of modern life.

[A]

Right.

[D]

Like, I don't know. How dangerous is it?

[A]

Let's say they dropped it. Like you. Someone dropped the file on you, the full thing. Like the autopsy report where his brain is, like, all the questions, the 44 missing documents, all the stuff. And you were gonna go to press with it how? Like, today, 20, 26 would. Do you think that you'd end up like a grease stain?

[D]

I think it's still pretty dangerous. Yeah, I still think it's dangerous enough that they're not rele. Yeah, that's what I'll say. It's like, I don't know what could be in it. Like, that would. That would be like, we just have to keep this a secret because then you guys would find out where, like, a missile base is. It's like, that's not happening.

[A]

Yeah, that's.

[D]

You know, there are no. There are no active assets who would be executed. CIA assets who are, like, still working in the field. Right. Like, who were part of this. Like, what are you hiding? You know?

[A]

That's an 18 out of 20. It's a pretty high score. I'm sure we'll be back talking about this topic.

[D]

I only do bangers.

[A]

I mean, there's so much to it, honestly. But let's go to the doom scroll.

[C]

Let's do it. The doom Scroll. For the unfamiliar. These are some stories that we've kind of made us raise our eyebrows a little bit as they've come across our desk. We've got some wild stuff going on in the world right now. It's hard to even keep tabs on all of it, to be honest with you, or to pick. But let's kick it off with Netanyahu. Is he dead or is he not? Probably alive, most likely. But last week, rumors started swirling that Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had been killed by Iranian strikes. On Thursday, he gave a press briefing. A screenshot goes viral in which it looks like for a second, he has six fingers on his. Six fingers on his right hand. And so people think, okay, this is AI because it's sort of a known thing that AI has a difficult time with.

[A]

With fingers. Sometimes, yes.

[C]

In particular, his office denies it. But Netanyahu's office then posts a proof of life video of him in a coffee shop talking to somebody else during, like, during that video, he's holding up five fingers while he's ordering coffee so that viewers can count. This is just wild. When asked about the rumors by a staffer, Netanyahu responds with a pun on the word dead. During this video, where he's Getting the coffee. People notice that the coffee is filled to the brim, and yet it doesn't spill or really slosh a drop at all when he picks it up.

[A]

Up.

[C]

No credible outlet is reported as death. They keep posting videos that are intended as proof of life. He had a meeting with Mike Huckabee.

[A]

Yeah. Mirroring each other.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Here's what I think. I think that. I think he's alive, clearly. But I also think they want to give Iran zero targeting data for the drones. I think that they are more pressed maybe than they're letting on. I remember early Ukraine war, Zelenskyy would occasionally appear above ground, but he'd have 40 guys around him and then they'd immediately go back to the tunnels. I think they're worried about the drones. The drones are serious. And I think that they want to give the Iranians the least amount of open source data about his movements in real time. And so I think he's alive. And I think to the extent that those videos are altered by AI, they probably are. And it's probably to take out any kind of identifying anything from the background.

[D]

I keep getting confused about the AI six fingers thing because I'm like, so this is a program that can make like, Sauron dab in front of Yankee Stadium, but it can't cut the last finger off? Like, you know what I mean? Why can't you just like, nail the ten fingers?

[A]

I mean, here's the other thing. You know, Netanyahu has been in office for, you know, almost two decades now, and there's no shortage of people, I think, who would, with alacrity, leap into the Prime Minister's chair, Naftali Bennett, Benny Gantz, et cetera. Why would they suppress it? Like, if he. And it'd be a great propaganda thing to be like, you know, we must take revenge for him, you know, and like. So I. It doesn't. I get that we're in a weird time, but this one seems extra silly.

[D]

This is. This is the conflict is the war that I've been like, yeah, I guess I just have to, like, wait a couple of days for the article to come out about something because.

[A]

Right. Yeah, I don't even really can't. Yeah.

[D]

Like, you'll look on Twitter and you'll just be like, oh, I guess Israel has just been leveled. And then you're like, no, it hasn't. Or like, it just goes up and down with like, the amount of stuff that's on social media with like, where you're just like, I just. I Just seriously just don't know if that's real.

[A]

The other thing that messes it up too is the fact that Twitter slash X, like anybody can get verified. So I'll see like something that'll be like, look at this. Oh my God. And it'd be like, you know, the, the account will be like, you know, the Prime Minister of Israel version 2 or whatever, with a verified mark. And then it's just some guy, you know, like, so who knows? Yeah,

[C]

you brought up how UFOs you're not just like bowled over by the stuff. But there was a pretty EERIE Trio of UFOs spotted, quote, chasing each other in Queens in New York.

[A]

I saw that video.

[C]

Some luminous dots spotted hovering over NYC triggered a fresh wave of conspiracy theories and suspicions. It started on Reddit, as all true things do. WOMAN Charlie Correa captioned the 18 second Reddit clip. I came out of my house in Corona, Queens and looked up to what I thought was a shooting star. But then two more joined it. They looked to be chasing each other around before I recorded this.

[A]

Have you seen it?

[D]

I have. I also see some crazy shit in the sky in la, like on a pretty regular basis. I just always assume it's a rocket launch, though.

[C]

FAA authorities declined to comment specifically on the Reddit footage.

[A]

I hate when they do that.

[C]

Yeah, it sucks.

[A]

That's the one that I hate. Just say that we had some stuff in the area or whatever, but don't decline to comment.

[C]

He said this Charlie Correa said, I have a drone and it either emits a green or red blinking light or no lights when recording. He timestamped it. March 8th at 8:30pm Government drones, question mark. UFOs question mark. I mean, it's the video sales. Hopefully we can put the video in there. I mean, these things are darting around up there.

[D]

What if they just don't want the truth out? That's what they won't let you put the video.

[A]

I also think like laser pointer, you know, like three laser pointers.

[C]

Sure.

[D]

I think there's a lot of weird stuff in the sky right now.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[D]

That's my take. I mean, I just feel like as well, it's time to show and prove. If you're Alias.

[A]

I want the UFOs to be real.

[D]

Quit ducking the smoke, guys.

[A]

I really want the UFO UFOs to be real more than anything. I just really need something that I need.

[D]

I need us to get through Trump too, before we get UFOs. I can't have Trump being Like, I'm gonna get on the. I'm gonna cut a deal with these

[A]

guys I met with the aliens. Fantastic.

[C]

Yeah. Maybe they're not, because they know the answer. Like, take me to your leader. They know that answer.

[D]

Yeah.

[C]

And they're not trying to mess around with that. Banksy.

[D]

Sure.

[C]

He's been unmasked.

[A]

This bummed me out. Yeah.

[C]

This. This was very recent. Notorious guerrilla street artist Banksy. Bunch of works that sold for millions of dollars. He was identified as Robin.

[D]

No, no, no.

[A]

Don't say it.

[D]

Don't snitch.

[A]

Don't snitch.

[C]

Okay.

[A]

Don't say it. Don't say it.

[C]

This guy.

[D]

It's also identical.

[A]

It's been out. I will say the name has been out there for a long time.

[D]

Like, it's straight up dislike. Starts throwing dirt on George Joannidis name. It's like, respect Banksy's privacy.

[C]

Good point. Good point.

[A]

So his name's been out there for like 12 years at this point.

[C]

The person who has been identified as Banksy, apparently it goes back to Mail on Sunday report in 2008.

[A]

Yeah, he's been out there. It's been out there.

[C]

There was a period of time where there was a theory that Banksy was

[A]

really musician Robert Del Naha of Massive Attack. I really wanted it to be that for a long time.

[C]

It would have been really exciting.

[A]

Yeah. And some of the timeline stuff matched up also, like,

[C]

part of the investigation for the way that Reuters figured this out. They pull some information from a trip to Ukraine where he was photographed where he was photographed and spoke with locals. There was a falling out with a Jamaican photographer.

[A]

That's weird. That guy's a hater for weird reasons.

[D]

Big time.

[A]

I don't understand.

[C]

2000, an NYPD arrest report including a signed, handwritten confession.

[A]

Well.

[C]

But, yeah, we won't. Thank you for stopping.

[A]

Thank y' all for stopping. Yeah. Wonderful. Doom Scroll. I thought we were gonna talk about the missing UFO pilot. We'll talk about that some other time.

[C]

We can. I mean, we. We can talk about it some more if you want.

[A]

Well, I'll just say I think he defected to. What is this gentleman's name.

[D]

We got some weird shit going on with the force right now.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

General McCaslin was brought up two or three doom scroll. Worked at a couple different government bases

[A]

that worked on experimental craft.

[C]

Yes. That were known. One of which was known to potentially house some stuff from Roswell. And now old boy is nowhere to be found.

[A]

FBI looking for him.

[C]

The wife is posting things saying that he never saw anything. He doesn't know anything. He wasn't. But yeah, I mean,

[A]

barring some weird thing where he. That's very normal. Where he ran away with his mistress to wherever, to the Caymans. I think he. There have been a lot of American pilots lately who have been arrested. They've boogied out helping China or have gone over there to help them for money.

[D]

I would say generally speaking, really like a weird moment for the aerospace industry for scientists working in rocket propulsion and advanced technologies. It's just an odd moment.

[A]

Maybe.

[D]

Maybe a future episode. We can get.

[A]

Maybe a future episode. I mean, they got a guy in February who had two decades of experience including with nuclear delivery systems through the air, who had helped China, was arrested for it.

[D]

But who was the homie who got carjacked in the desert.

[A]

Oh my God.

[D]

A couple weeks ago?

[A]

I don't. Let me look at that real quick

[C]

while you're saying this. McCaslin served as chief engineer on the Department of Defense's Global Positioning System Program. He was assistant program director of the Space Based Laser Project Office and director of Special programs at the Pentagon. He also commanded the Air Force Research Laboratory at Wright Patterson Air Force Base. Which is.

[A]

He's in Beijing right now.

[C]

That's what you think?

[A]

Yeah, yeah. He's helping the. He's helping the other guys.

[C]

One of the most.

[A]

They got him set up a legend.

[C]

Allegedly one of the most fun little tidbits about him. Following his retirement, McCaslin briefly worked with Blink 182 musician Tom DeLong.

[D]

No, Tom's about this.

[A]

Tom has been early on this.

[C]

Delong is a co founder of to the Stars, Inc. A company that says it studies information about unidentified aerial phenomena. So, you know, blinks on it.

[A]

The carjacking thing, it seems like it was just a carjacker, but.

[D]

It's a but wasn't it like in the middle of the desert.

[A]

It was in the middle of the desert. This gentleman was Carl Grill, 67, accomplished Caltech astrophysicist with more than four decades of research. He was fatally shot, well, it seems like on the front porch of his home in California.

[D]

Okay. But in the middle of nowhere.

[A]

In the Antelope Valley. In unincorporated Antelope Valley.

[D]

Okay.

[C]

Some of the particularly wild stuff about McCaslin is that. So he first goes missing on February 27th. Police say that he briefly interacts with a handyman around 10am before McCaslin's wife heads out to go to an appointment. She reports him missing after she gets back his phone, prescription glasses and wearable devices were located at the residence. Bernalillo County. Bernalillo County Sheriff's Office said several other items were missing, including his wallet, hiking boots and a.38 caliber.

[D]

Guy's on a PJ to China, 100%.

[A]

He's over there right now. Looking at maps of Taiwan.

[C]

They discovered a gray US Air Force sweatshirt a little over a mile east of McCaslin's home on March 7. No blood was detected and deputies aren't sure if it belonged to him. But yeah, it's wild. And the wife is both concerned, but

[D]

also not concerned enough.

[A]

Not super concerned yet.

[C]

It seems quite unlikely that he was taken to extract very dated secrets from him. Neil does not have any special knowledge about the ET bodies and debris from the Roswell crash stored at Wright Pat. And then she said, though at this point with absolutely no sign of him, maybe the best hypothesis is that aliens beamed him up to the mothership.

[D]

That's cool.

[A]

I mean, there's been an. So Gerald Brown was the guy February 25th arrested for spending more than two years in China helping to train PLA pilots. Daniel Duggan, former US Marine pilot. Naturalized Australian citizen. He received significant training during his military career and is alleged to have trained Chinese military pilots on tactics and techniques associated with takeoff and landing from aircraft carriers. Shapur Moynian, former US army helicopter pilot of 23 years. He accepted thousands of dollars from the Chinese government to provide aviation related information.

[D]

So are these guys doing it for money or for the love of the game? What's motivating us?

[A]

I think it's both, apparently. Thirty former British pilots alone were reportedly recruited since 2019, with offers of salaries around 270,000 a year. It's pretty good. Yeah.

[D]

So Chinese government out here like man city. Hey, listen, just buying up the best players.

[A]

Get at me. I'm on flight sim. I get on those sticks. I'm just saying. Thanks very much. This has been. Wait a second. What a banger.

[D]

Yeah, thanks for having me, guys.

[A]

Sam.