Author and former Washington Post reporter Jefferson Morley, one of the world’s most credible authorities on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, joins the podcast for the second of a two part episode to talk all about the JFK assassination. Mr. Morley is the editor of the blog JFK Facts (jfkfacts.org).
In this episode, Morley and Dr. Bill Kanasky discuss video and audio from the day of the assassination plus Jim Garrison and the trial of Clay Shaw. They talk about if there were other threats or attempts on JFK’s life before Dallas and why the withholding of documents related to the assassination continues to this day. Morley and Kanasky discuss the KGB and Soviet reaction to the assassination, origin of the term “grassy knoll”, who was Jack Ruby, the single bullet theory, where is President Kennedy’s brain, the CIA’s files on Oswald, what remains in the files that have yet to be released, and more.
Full Episode Transcript
[00:00] Bill Welcome to the Litigation Psychology Podcast brought to you by Courtroom Sciences. This is part two of my interview with JFK expert Jefferson Morley. Let’s, let’s kind of focus on Dallas, um, for, for a little bit. Um, so we have two, two kind of very unique things that I know that you’ve been over. I’m dying to get your, uh, your take on this. Um, we have full video coverage of this assassination. It’s, there’s full video coverage of this. And I, correct me if I’m wrong, one of the motorcycle police, um, officers inadvertently had their microphone open during the shooting. So based on the film and the audio evidence, there’s always been this debate on number of shots, number of shots, number of shots. And you know, shots two and three came right on top of each other. Any, I mean, are the scientists still disagreeing about this or is, is it leaning one way or the other?
[01:02] Jefferson Um, so let me just to make it clear. So there’s the Abraham Zapruder’s film, which was taken from, um, fifty, hundred feet away—a very clear shot, um, uh, and then there’s a film taken by a man named Orville Nix, who was standing farther away but following, uh, the motorcade. And, and, and his film depicts the assassination, uh, as well although not in much detail. And then yes, one of the officers had their, uh, uh, microphone open, and so the sound of the motorcade was recorded, um, in real time. And it is said that those recording impulses, uh, are consistent with five shots coming from two different directions. You know, the acoustic evidence—and this is, this is trying to be very dispassioned about it, acoustic evidence is difficult for a couple of reasons for me. One, you know, if you listen to the tape, you can’t hear those impulses. That is something that has been derived by acoustic scientists picking out of the, the static. So you know, that, that, that alone means this is like you sort of have to take this evidence on somebody else’s trust. It’s not self-evident. You know, that’s the problem with, uh, with the, with the acoustic evidence. Um, the acoustic evidence is very suggestive because the sound impulses, um, on that film match very closely the sound impulses of an experiment done in Dealey Plaza in 1978. A very kind of clever experiment to recapture the sound of the gunshots and where they might have come from. So, uh, you know, I myself don’t like to lean on the acoustic evidence because it’s just, its status as evidence is problematic. It’s not clear-cut. I’m not saying it’s not true, but the debate about how it is true is incredibly complex and it comes in the end, I think it comes down to some just some judgment questions that are not really scientific. But I think that the, you know, more importantly is the Zapruder film. You know, I mean, and, and, and what your point that yes, this was, this was filmed. You know, that film was not seen in public. It was seen in public once in 1969 with the Garrison trial, but it wasn’t seen in public until, until February 19—March 1975. So it was 12 years later that people actually got to see, you know, what was on the Zapruder film. And so, you know, in that time that was a great favor to the government’s version, you know, that the president had been hit by a shot from behind. That’s what they said. And then you watch the Zapruder film and, you know, it sure looks like he’s, that somebody who was hit by a blow from the front. Now there’s, you know, there’s theories about how you could be hit by a bullet from behind and your head would fly towards the bullet. And you know what? A crime scene is not a, a laboratory. You know, weird things happen when people get hit by bullets. Any cop will tell you that. Anybody who’s experienced in crime scenes will tell you that. So you know, there’s just, there’s just no telling. But the commonsensical, the most likely explanation, and one which has been endorsed by some physicists, is that the Zapruder film depicts a man being shot from the front. In addition, we have the testimony of the doctor who tried to save his life, Dr. Robert McClelland, who just died, um, recently in the last couple of years. And a highly credible witness, was a surgeon himself, 34 years old, assistant professor of medicine, went on to a long distinguished career. And he said, you know, he went in there and saw the president’s wound and you know, he was standing over the table, he was, you know, two feet from the president watching the people trying to save him. He looks down to see the president’s wound and he was sure the president had been shot from the front and had a blowout wound in the back of his head. So you know, you’ve got the Zapruder film and, uh, you’ve got Dr. McClelland’s testimony. That’s, that’s pretty strong evidence, um, in my book. Now there’s counter evidence and counter arguments, we can go into those, but it, it’s not ridiculous on its front say the president was shot from the front. I would say the preponderance of evidence suggests that that was the case.
[05:40] Bill Did, there was, um, between pictures and video and eyewitness testimony, weren’t there many people actually running towards the grassy knoll and all pointing towards the grassy knoll, um, immediately after the shooting?
[05:52] Jefferson Absolutely. Absolutely. So just for, just for people who are unfamiliar, the grassy knoll is an area that was in front of the president’s motorcade. It was a grassy embankment in the park that the president’s motorcade was going through. And the reason we say, you know, why do we use that funny term “the grassy knoll,” you know, why does that always come up in the JFK discussion? Well, Merriman Smith was a UPI reporter who was in the presidential motorcade. He was a few cars back. Combat veteran, very experienced reporter, um, and he hears the shots and he knows right away what’s happening. He grabs the radio phone in the car and he calls the United Press International desk in New York and, you know, he says, “Three shots fired at the presidential motorcade in Dallas, you know, more to come.” And the car takes off following the, the president’s limousine to the hospital. So UPI gets that report and they put it on the wire right away because Merriman Smith’s their guy, you know, they can count on, they can take it to the bank. And so they start putting it out and there’s these initial reports: “Shots were fired at the president’s motorcade. It was believed he was injured.” The first reports were very incomplete, but they came from Merriman Smith. The press car goes to the, goes to the hospital. They’re taking the president out and Texas Governor John Connally, who was also wounded in the gunfire, and they’re taking them in to be treated in the trauma rooms of the hospital. Merriman Smith runs in, he talks to a couple of Secret Service agents on the scene, goes to the payphone in the hospital, calls his desk again in New York, and dictates a second draft of his story. And in that story, he says the president was struck by gunfire from a grassy knoll to which police, to which policemen ran. So Merriman Smith coined the term “grassy knoll.” And within 30 minutes of the crime, experienced reporter, high quality reporter, won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting that day, he spoke to eyewitnesses because he didn’t quote the Secret Service agents by name, but he said he spoke to more than one of them who said the shots came from the front. And so that’s why we talk about the grassy knoll. Again, that’s credible evidence, right? I mean, highly trained observer. Initial first reactions is always your most, accurate, most likely to be accurate, right? So Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter says shots, quoting sources who were there, says shots came from the front. That is also strong evidence. And yes, a lot of people did run there. I, I combed through the accounts of police officers who were there because I thought that was especially noteworthy, right? People who are not trained in law enforcement probably make a mistake or might well make a mistake. But people who were trained in law enforcement, where did they go? 21 cops—21 different cops said they thought shots had come from the front. And about 50 witnesses’ testimony was compiled over the year. More than 50 said that they, they thought at least one shot had come from the front. So it wasn’t something that somebody made up after the fact. There was substantial eyewitness and ear witness testimony that said, you know, that’s what happened. And indeed, uh, uh, the Jesse Curry, the Dallas police chief, eventually came to that conclusion as well. So it wasn’t, there wasn’t some fanciful thing that somebody made up. This is what law enforcement sources were saying.
[09:21] Bill Unbelievable. Just amazing, amazing stuff. Mr. Morley, let’s go to some viewer questions, that I’ve collected all week. Um, first one is, um, Jack Ruby. Jack Ruby. Was, was this a mob hit? Was he, was he a mobster? He was, he, it sounds like he has a pretty sinister background.
[09:41] Jefferson He was not. He ran a strip club. He was sort of a pathetic guy, um, but, um, but he was perfect for the mission that he was assigned because it was a chance to be somebody. And you know, we don’t know who told Ruby to do what he did, but, um, he’s like I was saying before, Ruby saved the U.S. government a world of trouble by killing Oswald.
[10:06] Bill Oh yeah, he did.
[10:07] Jefferson And, and, and, and and that is, um, that tells you that the perpetrators might have been in the U.S. government because the idea of Oswald on trial was so dangerous to so many people. Um, so, uh, no, Ruby was not, uh, was not an organized crime figure himself. He was responsive to organized crime figures. And his participation is in the, in the whole story is an indication that, you know, there was a mafia element to the, you know, to November 22nd. Um, that doesn’t mean that the mafia were the intellectual authors of the crime, but the fact that Ruby killed the prime suspect was pretty good, pretty good, uh, you know, indication that something was afoot. I should say on, on my website, on JFK Facts, I, I got a, I got an email from a woman who said, “My mother worked for Jack Ruby and would you like to hear her story?” I said, “Yeah, I definitely would.” And so it was a woman who, she was a dancer, a burlesque dancer, who worked this, kind of the circuit of strip clubs in the Southwest—Tulsa, Dallas, New Orleans, Galveston. And so they would come to town, you know, once every, two times a year. And, uh, I checked this woman out and it was true. The women who worked in Jack Ruby’s club, they’ve written memoirs and talked about their experience. And she was one of them. She that was definitely one of them. Her stage name was Gail Raven. And, uh, Jack Ruby had—so I corresponded through the daughter with the mother and, um, asked her a few questions. And she said that Jack Ruby had a big crush on her and, uh, you know, was asking her to marry him. And she was like this 20-year-old knock and she was like, “No Jack, I’m not going to marry you,” you know? Um, but they were friends. She said, you know, he really cared about her and he tried to take care of her and she appreciated it. And so she went to see Ruby after he was arrested for killing Oswald. And so I said, “Well, why did your friend Jack kill Oswald?” And so this woman said—and you can find this on the JFK Facts if you search for Gail Raven—she said, “You know, I don’t think Jack had any choice. You know, everybody works for somebody, you know? And I think the people who Jack worked for, you know, told him he had to do that.” Who did he work for? I said she didn’t know, but that was her impression that, that Jack Ruby did not have a choice in this. He had to do this. And she knew him pretty well. So I thought that was very interesting evidence. And then the second thing she said was he detested Bobby Kennedy, like all the mobsters.
[12:47] Bill Yeah.
[12:48] Jefferson The Attorney General was coming after them. Well, you know, so if you detest Bobby Kennedy, right, why do you want to kill Lee Oswald? It’s like, it’s, it’s a non-sequitur, you know, and just shows that there were other agendas at work. You know, the, the official theory, it just doesn’t explain anything. So that’s why, that’s why people don’t believe it. That’s why it’s kind of useless in thinking about this story. It just doesn’t, it doesn’t explain what happened.
[13:13] Bill Wow. All right. Another question. Um, Single Bullet Theory. Has that been debunked at this point or do people still think the Single Bullet, uh, Theory, uh, has, has legs?
[13:25] Jefferson Uh, I don’t think the Single Bullet Theory is correct. And I mean, in my mind, it has been debunked and in the minds, in the minds of a lot of people. You know, it’s important to understand why we got the Single Bullet Theory. Because originally, that was not the first story the American people were told. The FBI said the first shot hit Connally, the second shot hit Connally in the back, the second shot hit Kennedy in the back, and the third shot hit Kennedy in the head. And that was the story. That was what the FBI report concluded. Um, the FBI, however, did not interview James Tague, who was a bystander who was standing down the street. And when the gunfire rang out, Tague was hit by something and he turned around and he talked to people. And what had happened was a stray bullet had hit the curb where he was standing. He was standing down the street from Kennedy, um, about, you know, 15, 20, 30 feet. And a bullet had hit the curb and a piece of the concrete had come up and hit him right in the face, and he had this cut on his face and he showed people. And there was a picture in the paper, you know. So he was actually wounded very slightly, but he was actually wounded in the attack on the front. Okay, so now well, if the first bullet hit Connally, the second bullet hit Kennedy, the third bullet missed and hit Tague, and the fourth bullet hit Kennedy in the head, that’s four shots. That’s four shots in less than seven seconds. And that was, that was utterly impossible with the rifle that Oswald had. So the Warren Commission, when Tague’s testimony came forward, they had to deal with it. And so what they did was they came up with the Single Bullet Theory. They said, “No, no, no, the first bullet went through Connally, through Kennedy. The second bullet missed and hit Tague, and the third bullet hit Kennedy in the head.” They did, they weren’t even that precise. They said we don’t know whether the first shot missed or whether—the incredible sloppiness in, in a very important investigation. “We actually can’t tell you the sequence of the gunfire.” Another reason why people find the story hard to believe. And so the story changed—the Single Bullet Theory. So is it possible that a bullet penetrated Kennedy and penetrated—so that bullet would cause seven—if that’s true, that bullet caused seven wounds, right? A wound in the back of Kennedy, a wound in the front of Kennedy, a wound in the back of Connally, a wound in the front of Connally, it comes out, goes into his wrist, and comes out of his wrist. Seven. That bullet, if the Single Bullet Theory is true, that bullet caused seven wounds. So the bullet that they found and said that was that is not misshapen at all.
[16:15] Bill The pristine bullet.
[16:16] Jefferson Yeah, it’s Commission Exhibit 399. So it’s like, how does a bullet cause seven wounds and not get misshapen? It’s just, it’s just not credible. I mean, people say, oh well, if you know, Oliver Stone, you know, in JFK, they talk about the bullet changing direction in the air. I mean, it doesn’t really line up, you know, it’s not really possible. Stone might have exaggerated, Jim Garrison might have exaggerated in that movie, but it, it’s just not, it’s not, it’s not plausible. And a lot of the, of the doctors’ testimony—when they probed Kennedy’s back wound, they couldn’t tell that it went all the way through. And that was one of the things that they were prohibited from doing in the autopsy was—usually they take a pointer, you know, for a bullet wound that penetrates, they take a pointer and stick it into the wound and see where it comes out, and that tells you the bullet path. They were not allowed to do that during the autopsy. So Kennedy’s back wound was never explored, and the testimony—the available testimony—is the doctors did not think that that bullet wound went all through. The Single Bullet Theory was invented later to rationalize those wounds and put them all together, but it’s very controversial. It’s just very controversial. And so, you know, if you want to still believe in the Single Bullet Theory, you know, it’s kind of a willful suspension of belief, you know? It requires, it requires a lot of intentional avoidance of evidence in order to come to that conclusion.
[17:48] Bill Speaking of evidence, um, I’ve read some about this, I want to know: where did President Kennedy’s brain end up, and is it, is it missing?
[18:02] Jefferson It is missing.
[18:04] Bill How is that possible? How was it—I don’t understand I just…
[18:08] Jefferson Because of Bobby Kennedy. Um, so there’s a couple things to, to, to know about the story. So the president’s brain was preserved, um, and, uh, but the, the, the brain that was in possession of the National Archives after the autopsy, um, weighed a certain amount of—I forget what the figures are, but let’s say 1500 milligrams or something, um, you know, such a large—and that’s, that’s the weight of a typical, you know, male human brain. Um, so much of Kennedy’s brain was destroyed by the fatal shot, you know, it, it’s just not possible that there was that much mass left, left in the specimen that survived. So the question of, you know, what happened to the brain—one question is whether that, the brain that was survived was even his. But then Bobby Kennedy took possession of it, and that’s where it vanishes. And, um, the best guess is that Bobby Kennedy disposed of it because he didn’t want people—it was just too ghoulish for him to be, you know, thinking that people might someday write about it. And so, um, you know…
[19:24] Bill Yeah, makes sense me. I get it. I get it. Okay, uh, final question from, from our audience. This is interesting because I’d heard about—I had to look this up and I looked it up this morning—the Babushka Lady. Listen, I, I looked up Babushka Lady. This person who appears to have a camera, right? Like Zapruder, we’re talking has a front row seat to the shooting. I mean, front row seat. And it’s my understanding she never came forward, or somebody said somebody came forward but they didn’t buy her story. What is the story on that? Because that, she was close. I mean, she was close to this assassination.
[20:04] Jefferson Uh, you know, it’s, it, it’s a great mystery. Nobody knows who the Babushka Lady was, but she called the Babushka Lady because she has a headdress which resembles a Russian woman’s headdress. She does appear to have a camera. There’s other people who have been identified in the crowd who have cameras, who—no photographs from that camera have ever surfaced. So, um, just one of those imponderables.
[20:30] Bill Unbelievable. Okay, let’s, let’s transition and then we can wrap up. Um, I got a quote for you, Mr. Morley: “A little incident down in Mexico.” Who, who, who is that? Was that Hoover and LBJ having a conversation that, uh, “Oh, there’s, we got a little trouble in Mexico City,” right?
[20:56] Jefferson Well, the, the, the trouble starts when, when, when, uh, the CIA station of Mexico City reports that Oswald had visited, um, the Cuban consulate and the Soviet embassy six weeks before the assassination. And they had been—he had been picked up by the CIA’s surveillance networks’ audio and photo because they watched everybody who went into those offices. So there was a tape of somebody on the phone, um, calling himself Oswald. The CIA did have possession of that tape. They denied it at the time, uh, saying that the tape had been erased, um, which was not true. And Goodpasture, who was the deputy to the station there, uh, told me personally in an interview that she had made a copy—what she called a dub—of the, of the Oswald tape because he was a person of interest. Yes, they did recycle the tapes and reuse the tapes, but on, on cases where there are people of special interest like Oswald, they made a copy right away for the file. So it wasn’t erased despite what the official story said. So, um, they send tapes to, they send an FBI agent from Mexico City to the border to meet another FBI agent who takes the tapes, flies back to Washington. Hoover calls Johnson and says, “You know, we got the, uh, we got this guy on the tape, but it’s not—we’re not sure that it’s Oswald.” And so Hoover himself raises the possibility that he had imitated or impersonated Oswald in Mexico City. And that, that, you know, has remained part of the story ever since. They backtracked and said, “Oh no, we never got a tape,” and, um, uh, the conversation that between Johnson and Hoover about this, that tape was also erased inexplicably. We have a transcript of that, but we don’t have the tape itself. Um, so, you know, these were radioactive secrets at the time and the government was trying to hide it. And the best way to hide it was I put this cover story on top which said, “One man alone and unnamed killed the president for no reason and another guy killed that guy because he felt like it.” And that’s the story, believe us, please believe us. We’re respectable good people, you’re, we’re the President, we’re the Director of the FBI, just believe us. And you know, at that time that worked, you know? Before and shock J. Edgar Hoover was a hero. Johnson had a, you know, had his hands, well being a new president, you know, people wanted to believe and, you know, they were being lied to on a massive scale. And we’re still living with that legacy now.
[23:43] Bill That’s incredible. Tell our audience what’s a 201 file? And Oswald had a 201 file now, didn’t he?
[23:51] Jefferson Yeah. The 201 file is, is actually a nomenclature used across the federal government. Um, it’s a basic personality file—it’s typically another name for it. And so at the CIA when there’s somebody, a personality of interest—you open a 201 file on him. And that doesn’t mean he or she is part of your operation, doesn’t mean it’s a spy, just means somebody you’re interested in for whatever reason. Maybe you want information from them, maybe you want help from them, maybe you suspect them of being a bad guy. Whatever it is, if once the agency gets a certain amount of information—and they typically, they had like a three-document rule or a five-document rule. If you had five documents on somebody, that was good enough for a 201 file. That was enough. So that, and that might be—the document might be a newspaper clip. Like in Oswald’s 201 file, there were newspaper clippings about his defection to the Soviet Union. But Oswald definitely had a 201 file as a—as a ex-Marine who had a security clearance. Um, you know, he was an object, an immediate obvious object of intelligent interest.
So um, but what’s interesting about Oswald’s 201 file, and this is part of the story of this manipulation, is they didn’t open the 201 file for a year. Oswald defects in October of 1959, and the CIA takes note of him in 1959. There’s a story in the Washington Post, although a post about a Marine defecting to the Soviet Union, and um, they opened a file on him, but it’s not a 201 file. The Oswald’s first file was opened up by the CIA’s Office of Security. And this Office of Security is like the internal police force of the CIA, and their job is fairly mundane. They make sure that, you know, your desk is locked up at night and they make sure that the records are shredded, and they vet, you know, people who are going to work for the CIA.
So the CIA opens at an Office of Security file in Oswald, not a 201 file. Well, why would they do that? That was probably because, like I said before, they were looking for moles, and they thought Oswald might be of interest to a mole. And the Office of Security was involved in mole hunting, just like Angleton’s people in that Special Investigations Group. So the Special Investigations Group holds the Oswald file under the auspices of the Office of Security for a year, from November 1959 to November 1960. And then in November 1960, after they’ve got five or ten documents about Oswald, they finally opened the 201 file. So Oswald’s file was handled very carefully from the beginning. And the fact that they didn’t open up a 201 file for a year—very unusual. So Oswald has a special status within the CIA from the start. He has watched especially closely from November 1959 to November 1963. And then in 1963 the CIA says, “Ah, we never heard of this guy before, he just slipped past us, we know nothing about,” which was, you know, pretty much of the lie. They knew a lot about it.
[27:09] Bill Yeah,
[27:10] Jefferson But they pulled the wool over the eyes of the Warren Commission. And it wasn’t until really, it wasn’t until the 90s when we had the releases from Oliver Stone’s movie that we got a fairly complete paper trail of the pre-assassination Oswald.
And it’s very revealing. Oh, senior CIA officers watched this guy go to Dallas. That’s probably the simplest way to put it. They watched him every step of the way, and he wound up in Dallas killing the president.
[27:33] Bill That’s absolutely incomprehensible. I, yeah…
[27:40] Jefferson And, and so, and so, you know, this is the playing record. And so the way that the defenders of the official theory, you know, deal with it is they say, “You’re a conspiracy theorist.” Well, you know, you’re not talking to me because I don’t have a conspiracy theory. I’ve been writing about this for 30 years. So your criticism is—it’s irrelevant to what I’m talking about. And you know, and so then, you know, people have just decided, “Look, you know, I’m not—I want to believe my government,” you know? That’s a natural impulse. I sort of sympathize with it. I want to believe the government works, it’s honest, you know? But the evidence just doesn’t allow you that, you know, that conclusion. Kennedy’s assassination, the story is disturbing, even if we don’t know it in its entirety yet.
[28:27] Bill That’s absolutely incredible. Related question then—I have it up on my monitor right here because I was reading back through it this morning—who is Jane Roman and describe your interview with her? Um, and then she wasn’t very happy with you after that interview, now is she?
[28:44] Jefferson You know, so when the—when the JFK—new JFK records began to come out in 1993, I immediately started going through looking for interesting stories. And I asked for the pre-assassination Oswald, because I always thought, how was it that this guy was so, you know, defector to the Soviet Union—like, what did people think of him inside the CIA? I was not trying to concoct the “CIA did it” theory. I just wanted to hear what did somebody, you know, what would somebody say? And so on this October 10th, 1963 memo that was released for the first time in 1993, there’s a list of CIA personnel who were funding, and most of them were code names. And so you—you couldn’t figure out who they were. But there was one named Jane Roman, and I recognized the name because Howard Roman had been a deputy to Allen Dulles. He helped Allen Dulles write his books. He was a career CIA, and I wondered if Howard Roman wasn’t related to Jane Roman. And she was—he was. Jane Roman was Howard Roman’s wife and she was a CIA officer too.
And she worked for Angleton. She was Angleton’s, you know, right-hand man or right-hand woman. She was the liaison officer between the Counterintelligence Staff and the rest of the federal government. So if Angleton, the Counterintelligence Chief, wanted to talk to an FBI agent or, you know, a State person or whoever, those communications went through Jane Roman. She prepared them, she sent them out, she answered them, you know? She’s handling a very keen function for, you know, one of the top two or three men in the CIA. And so there’s her name on the thing. So, uh, I think, who, you know, who is she? So I started searching, um, real estate records in DC and Virginia, and I find—I didn’t find her home address, but she had—she had co-signed for a loan on her daughter’s, uh, apartment. And, uh, so she showed up on the mortgage route. And so I found her. I called her and I said, “Would you sit for an interview? I have these documents,” and she said yes.
And so I went there with John Newman, uh, who is a JFK researcher, former Army intelligence officer, very savvy observer of the JFK story from—through the lens of an intelligence analyst and official. And, uh, we questioned her about this, about this cable that was written about Oswald on October 10, 1963. And, uh, she had signed off on—she, she had signed off on a draft. So what had happened was Oswald had shown up in Mexico City. He’d been picked up by the surveillance. The Mexico City station had heard his name on the audio and they said, “There’s this guy Lee Oswald in Mexico, you know, who is [he]?” And so they went and they went to his 201 file and they look, and there’s a ton of stuff in this 201 file. There’s about 40 documents in there. And, and Jane Roman has signed for the Oswald file. She signed—she signed for the most recent reports on Oswald about when he got arrested in New Orleans fighting with the Cubans. So they were very well informed about Oswald.
And so we asked her, you know, what was going on here, and she said several very interesting things: that this was a sign of keen interest in Oswald, um, held on a “need to know” basis. That language implies an operation. Yeah. She said that, um, she didn’t deny that she had signed it. Um, we pointed out to her that, um, in the cable—the cable that went out, that went to Mexico City—there was a line at the end which said the latest headquarters information that we have on Oswald was that he returned from the Soviet Union in June 1962. So she’s writing a cable in October of 1963 saying, “We—last we heard this guy returned from the Soviet Union. He’s grown up a little bit,” um, and, uh, you know, and it was sort of reassuring about him. Now she had the cable about his arrest in October ’63. So the most recent information about him was not 17 months old, it was like two weeks old. And so we said, “What is that?” And she said, “Well, yeah, maybe I’m signing off on something that I know isn’t true.”
Now, I don’t think—I think that we pointed that out to Jane Roman and she did not know it at the time. I think she wrote a draft and that line might not have been in the draft that she wrote, right? That could have been written by—there’s a very complex procedure where other people have to approve the final text of the CIA cable as it goes out. One person has to authenticate it and another person has to approve it. It’s a very demanding process before anything goes out. And Jane Roman wasn’t one of those two people, she was just preparing the draft. So she might not have been wittingly lying, but she said when looking at the record, “Maybe I’m signing off on something I’m—I’m signing off on something I know isn’t true.” And so, you know, the point of the story is that that cable’s not proof of the conspiracy, it’s proof that information about Oswald was held very closely and very tightly at the highest levels of the CIA.
[34:10] Bill Wow.
[34:12] Jefferson And that’s, you know, that’s indisputable. And people, you know, who believe the official theory, they’ve stopped arguing with me because when I say this is the case, they don’t have anything to say. There’s no counter argument. They can’t say it’s not true—they know it’s true, they just can’t explain it. And so they say, “You’re a conspiracy theorist.”
[34:32] Bill So what we’re looking at here, based on our discussion today, particularly with the—with the CIA, this is either gross incompetence or it’s—it’s something far more sinister, right? I mean, how can you be that incompetent? I, I, I mean that’s the question.
[34:53] Jefferson Uh yeah, I—I don’t believe—I mean if we had the entire record, if there was nothing secret, then I think the incompetence argument would be—I mean I would listen to it. But if you’re saying, “We’re totally incompetent and we have to keep all this stuff hidden,” that’s not—that’s not plausible. There’s no reason—there’s no reason that we should believe the incompetence argument while there’s still a secrecy argument. So, um, uh yeah, we’re left with this possibility of something, you know, much more sinister, you know? And then the question is, you know—so like a friend of mine said, you know, “Jeff, maybe, maybe we don’t want to know,” you know? Like, and in—in the recent political environment that we’ve had, you know, President Trump has been at war with the CIA. So you know, if you’re like taking a shot at the CIA, are you on Trump’s side? You know, Trump had a stupid conspiracy theory. So if you want full disclosure from the CIA, you know, are you in league with Trump? You know, the politics are very, you know, sketchy and I—I don’t really like to get involved in them.
One of the nice things about the JFK story is I find people who are interested in it from across the political spectrum—libertarian, right, radical left, moderate center. And you know, when we talk about JFK assassination, none of that makes any difference. We don’t argue about that other stuff. We respect our differences whereas we care about this thing, you know? And that’s not—that’s not that—that I think liberal people care especially about community. But you know, people on the right are very worried about the CIA and a very powerful government, you know? So a lot of people come to this story with passion and conviction. That’s reasonable, you know? That’s legitimate. And—and that—and that goes across the political spectrum. So, um, I try not to get involved in the politics, you know? The fact is this is our history and we deserve to have—there’s no reason why we shouldn’t have our history just because it’s going to embarrass somebody at the CIA. That’s not a good enough reason.
[36:54] Bill I completely concur. Um, did you watch—I watched on YouTube, uh, Peter Dale Scott’s lecture essentially comparing JFK to 9/11. Have you seen that? It’s pretty interesting because essentially—Yeah, because he said like, “This is the same story, like it’s the same story,” you know? Intelligence breakdowns, FBI’s not talking to the CIA, CIA’s not talking to the FBI. It’s like you go back to ’63, it’s the same story, isn’t it?
[37:28] Jefferson Uh well, no, no, I mean I don’t think it’s the same story in that I don’t think we know who killed Kennedy. I think we do know who the intellectual authors of 9/11 [were], right? 9/11 was a conspiracy. It was a conspiracy dreamed up by this guy, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. It was bankrolled by Osama bin Laden. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed recruited most of the hijackers—they were in his family and friends. They were on film, they said they did it. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s on Guantanamo now, he said, “I did it, I planned it.” They tortured him, he said, “I did it, I planned it.” To me there’s not much doubt about that. I mean there are—there were some curious screw-ups by the CIA and the FBI, but I think that those screw-ups hide the intellectual authors of the crime. That’s not the case with JFK.
[38:25] Bill All right, let’s wrap this up. Let’s, let’s just wrap this up and talk about, um, some of your, you know, your two—the two books I have read recent. Um, The Ghost is exceptional. Um, uh, James Jesus Angleton. I mean what—talk about a character. I mean this guy, um, I—I read that somewhere, you know, “He’s either a genius or a paranoid drunk,” or maybe a little bit of both. Um, but he was like the first mole hunter, right?
[38:52] Jefferson Yeah. James Angleton was chief of—the first chief of Counterintelligence for the CIA. A brilliant, strange man, probably undone late in his career by alcoholism, um, uh which made his paranoia worse. Um, but a very original mind. Um, everybody who worked with him spoke of that. Um, his colleagues talk about his operational genius. Um, so he was very powerful, very, very sinister figure for the first 25 years of the CIA. And The Ghost tells his story. And the interesting thing about that the book I think is that Angleton’s influence was very wide, and it wasn’t just limited to the mole hunt, although that was the story that most people knew. But helping Nazis escape from Germany after the war, uh, the MK Ultra mind control experiments—Angleton had a hand in. So a wide-ranging influence. I described him as the most powerful unelected official in the U.S. government in this period. And you know, at any given time he might not have been, but the fact that he was Counterintelligence Chief from 1954 to 1974—lasted in such a powerful position for so long in the CIA.
So really what what I’ve done, Bill, is I’m finishing a trilogy. A trilogy of spies. So Our Man in Mexico, the story of Win Scott, the station—that book in Mexico City is the first in the trilogy. The Ghost, the story of James Angleton, Counterintelligence Chief, is the second. And then I’m going to publish next year the third, uh, installment called Scorpions’ Dance. And it’s the story of Richard Helms, who was CIA Director and friends with Wynn Scott and Jim Angleton—close friends with both of them, um, and also became Director of the CIA. And so it’s a trilogy of spies of three—three of the most powerful men in the CIA in its first 25 years. And that will be out next June in time for the 50th anniversary of Watergate. The largest subject of the book is the CIA in the Watergate. So that’s coming soon.
[41:07] Bill I, I, I cannot wait, uh, to get, to get my hands on that. Jefferson Morley, thank you so much for participating in our podcast. What a great—I mean I could stay up all night and talk to you about this stuff.
[41:20] Jefferson Thank you for the time. If people are interested in getting in touch, you can contact me through JFK Facts, um, editor@jfkfacts.org is my email. Be glad to answer questions, um, and talk more about it. Um, explore the site. It’s going to be updated and kind of given a new look soon, and we’re going to be covering, uh, this, you know, what will happen with the JFK files later this year and President Biden. So if you’re interested in the subject, check us out at jfkfacts.org.
[41:51] Bill Okay, last question. I—I said “last question,” but this time I really mean it. Like, what are you dying to know? What—what, what do you think’s in there? I mean, what’s the—what do you, what are you dying to know? And hopefully President Biden, uh, helps you out. There’s got to be something in there that has got to be the “aha” moment, right? I mean…
[42:13] Jefferson I know, uh, there’s a couple of things that I’m—that are things that are known to exist, uh, that have never come out. Um, a whole bunch of records that I saw in my lawsuit, Morley v. CIA. I got a lot of material and I—there was other things that were identified but they were not released in any form. And I think some of the details about CIA operations involving Oswald in 1963 are in these files. So I—I think that they could be very revelatory if—if Biden made those public… Another, another—there’s a fascinating document out there which is another tape recording. In 2011, a tape recording of the transmissions made to Air Force One on November 22nd—the plane flew back from Dallas with the president’s body—was made public. It was found at an estate sale in suburban Philadelphia and it was in the effects of, uh, General Chester Clifton, who was a military aide. He was a one-star general and he was kind of Kennedy’s assistant on military matters. He had died a few years before and he put this tape out.
And so the—the fact that there was tape recording on the Air Force One was known, and there was a copy of the tape on the LBJ Library website. Um, but the version that surfaced in 2011 was about 20 minutes longer, which indicated a couple of things. One, that the version that was on the LBJ Library had been edited, right, because this material wasn’t on there. Second thing was it showed—the new tape showed that Curtis LeMay, a bitter critic of Kennedy, cut short a hunting trip in Michigan, returned to Washington, and attended Kennedy’s autopsy. Now remember what Jim Garrison found—the generals controlled the autopsy. One of the generals who hated Kennedy made a point of getting to that autopsy. That’s what the new tape showed. I did a forensic analysis of that tape—or gave it to an acoustic expert—and he said, “This tape”—talking about the clip—”General Clifton’s tape has been edited five times.” And he could tell. So he said, so there are five different places where we know that this version has been edited from the LBJ version, but we know that this version was taken from an even longer tape. So the original Air Force One tape from November 22nd, 1963, has never surfaced. And I believe the reason it has never surfaced is because the generals were trying to figure out how do we respond to this assassination? And if and when that tape surfaces, I think we will have a lot more clarity about the JFK story. That tape, you know it existed at one point.
[45:12] Bill I’ve taken up too much of your time. [Laughter]
[45:14] Jefferson Thanks for the opportunity to do it. Uh, you know, let me know when the posted version comes through.
[45:19] Bill Absolutely, absolutely. And we’d love to have you back on after—after October and then with the release of your new book.
[45:30] Jefferson Yeah, yeah, yeah. When the book comes out. And I should say, um, you know, JFK—the JFK story was a subtext in the Watergate era. You know, people were worried even then about what might be disclosed, and that—and that motivated, you know, Richard Nixon and Richard Helms and others. So the—the subtext of JFK in the Watergate era, that’s kind of the—one of the themes of the book.
[45:57] Bill Cannot wait to hear it. Thank you so much Jefferson Morley. To our audience, thank you for sitting through this long podcast. Certainly worth it. We will see you next time.
[46:09] Jefferson Thank you, Bill.
Be confident in achieving superior litigation outcomes. CSI has the expertise, track record, and capabilities to help you win.