Jeff Morley
Appearances
The Ben Shapiro Show
Ep. 2171 - Who Shot JFK?
I think you're confusing Mr. Oliver Stone with Mr. Roger Stone.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Ep. 2171 - Who Shot JFK?
It's Roger Stone who implicated LBJ in the assassination of the president. It's not my friend Oliver Stone.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
We just wanted to be out there to counter both the bad journalism and the stupid theories of which tons of both. And so, so we thought this was a good opportunity. So that created, I created the JFK facts blog and ran, ran that. And then when Substack came along, I got turned on to Substack in 2021 and migrated it to there.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
And then it's a really great platform, you know, especially for an independent journalist like yourself, it's a way to finance your journalism, you know? Basically, I have this beat, the JFK beat, a narrow beat to be sure, but very deep because of a lot of interest. The Substack caught on and now I have a secure living. Substack, they only take 11%. If you publish on Kindle, Jeff Bezos takes 30%.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
And if you do their app on Apple, Tim Cook takes 30%. These guys take 11%. I mean, if they were taking 30%, I'd be borderline. So it's a really good platform. And, you know, now it's really reaching people. And if people want to know more about what I do, jfkfacts.substack.com is the place.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
Yeah, no, and it's, you know, it's a great natural question. And, you know, When you go back and look at at the event itself, you know, those natural questions were suppressed, okay? Sometimes they were suppressed by coercion. Sometimes they were suppressed by shock and grief.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
Yeah, I know the one. Yeah. I mean, there's a very interesting. There's a very real... We were in a hurry.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
Yeah. And I have a friend who was a new frontiersman. You know, he was involved in the war on poverty. And, you know, one of those people who came with Kennedy and such a bright prompt. And he said, you know, we just had to get over it. You know, we had to put it behind us. There was nothing else to be done. You know, and so the idea of...
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
of thinking about what had actually happened to the president. You know, my friend, you know, he couldn't come back to it until 30, 40 years later because of that impulse that we just have to put it behind us. So, you know, then you go into this thing, a very complicated story, and there's sort of two poles that I tried to navigate. I mean, one, and when I went in, when I started, you know,
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
I didn't find the official theory convincing. But I didn't have.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
Well, I tell you, there were two books that were especially influential to me. They're old now, and we've learned a lot since then. But there's models of how to attack the subject. The first one was called Accessories After the Fact. And it was written by a woman named Sylvia Marr. She worked at the UN in New York. And she was one of the early skeptics.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
And she was the one who indexed the 26 volumes of evidence that the Warren Commission released with its report. And so that index really made the Warren Commission famous. body of evidence accessible to researchers. The government itself did not do that because they really didn't want people looking too closely at it.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
And so Sylvia Amar's book, Accessories After the Fact, is basically saying the facts that were adduced by the Warren Commission do not support the conclusion that they reached. And it's pretty obvious that that's true. And she does it in micro detail, you know, and that's where that book, I began to get a sense of those forces that were impinging on the story.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
And so you see how the FBI designed to get the verdict that they wanted when the witnesses actually said, something very different. So that book, Accessories After the Fact, was very good, a model of kind of how to take it across. It's not a conspiracy book. It doesn't have a theory in it. And the second book was, it was originally called Conspiracy by Anthony Summers.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
And then he did another edition of it with more reporting called Not in Your Lifetime. And this book is impressive because Tony went in the 70s. He was a BBC reporter.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
He went to New Orleans and interviewed, I mean, dozens of people who, you know, should have been interviewed by any serious investigation and, you know, and uncovered this whole business of Oswald in New Orleans associating with these anti-Castro people, you know, making the story of a lone gunman just, you know, Why is this leftist spending all this time with right-wing people?
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
Why is CIA people shadowing him everywhere? And Tony's book was published in the... The new edition was published in 93. And it was just... It was very, it showed that the official story was so simplistic. So those were two books that were very influential to me. There's a couple more that I would, that I recommend to people now.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
A book called Brothers by Dave Albert, which is a really good book about what Bobby Kennedy thought about his brother's death.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
And because Bobby Kennedy never believed the official story, not for a second. And this book, David interviewed a couple hundred people in the Kennedy sphere and in the CIA sphere. And he got amazing access to, you know, people in the Douglas family and the Kennedy family. And, you know, it shows why Robert Kennedy didn't believe the official story and what he was trying to do about it.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
So those are three books that I would recommend to anybody who wants to kind of get get going in understanding the story from a critical perspective.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
And my own reporting in the last couple of years has really focused on the Oswald file. Yeah. I have assembled for the first time, it's not available anywhere else, the complete pre-assassination file that the CIA had on Oswald.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
Yeah, yeah. I mean, these documents have all been declassified. The last one... The last classified document in the Oswald file wasn't declassified until 2023. So for the first time, we had the complete file with no redactions in it. So those documents had been released piecemeal over the years. They're not available in any one place.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
using a CIA document that lists all the files, I went and found all of them. And then I taught a class and we crowdsourced it and we found additional material that belonged in there. And eventually we came up with 198 pages of
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
information about Oswald, 12 State Department reports, 12 FBI reports, 11 CIA memos, four newspaper clippings, two cables from ONI, and one from Immigration and Naturalization. All of this was sitting in one place in the CIA. when President Kennedy left for Dallas. So, you know, the first thing is, you know, the idea that Oswald was a lone nut.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
I mean, no, he was a known quantity to top CIA officials right before the assassination. That's a new fact. And now defenders of the official theory have sort of retreated and say, yeah, that's true, but it's irrelevant. You know, they were gathering information, but they just missed it. They were just incompetent. You know, I wrote a book about Dick Helms and I wrote a book about Jim Angleton.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
And, you know, you can say whatever you want about them. Nobody ever said those guys were incompetent.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
You know, they didn't lack the necessary skills. They might have been criminal. They might have been stupid. They might have been foolish, obtuse, incompetent. And so I don't think that that incompetence argument, you know, holds water.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
And in larger perspective, you know, something that we've learned and also something I really came to appreciate, you know, the people around Kennedy, they didn't believe the official story. Robert Kennedy didn't believe the day of the assassination. Robert Kennedy called John McCone, who was the director of the CIA, not a CIA man. Kennedy had brought him in from the outside, but he was a friend.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
And Robert Kennedy takes him out and they walk on the lawn at Hickory Hill, his estate there near CIA headquarters. And he said, did your did your people do this? And Robert Kennedy later told the story and he said McCone had assured him in a way that convinced him that they had that the CIA wasn't involved. That was at two o'clock in the afternoon.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
By five o'clock that afternoon, RFK called his friend Harry Williams, a leader in the Cuban opposition to Castro, who he knew very well. And by five o'clock, he wasn't asking the question anymore. He said to Harry Williams, your guys did it. Um, and so Robert Kennedy's, you know, realization, his brother had been ambushed that crystallized very quickly and he wasn't alone.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
You know, Jackie thought that Jackie Kennedy thought, all right, let me introduce the counter narrative here.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
Well, I mean, yeah, the notion, look, history is tragic, you know, happened for no reason. We can't we can't impute reason where there is no reason. And the desire to create, you know, a narrative about Kennedy's assassination. You know, I mean, that sure, that's a human tendency. But I would say, you know, I don't think Robert Kennedy was a political genius. politically deluded.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
I mean, did he have a desire to explain his brother's death that, you know, a conspiracy would have fulfilled some emotion that, you know, I think, you know, Charles de Gaulle didn't believe the story. Fidel Castro didn't believe the story. These were not politically deluded people, right? These are some of the best, most savvy, effective political actors on the world stage at that time.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
Yeah, no, and that was LBJ's reaction after reading the 1967 Inspector General's report, which was the CIA's first response to you know, reports that they were involved in assassinations. And Johnson came away and he said, we were running a goddamn murder ink in the Caribbean.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
You know, it was like, it was like, even Johnson, you know, sounded surprised, you know, a man with a lot of capacity for misdeeds, even he would, and what happened, you know, and Johnson appointed the Warren Commission, but Johnson didn't believe its conclusions. And he said so repeatedly. He was talking to CBS News when they did a piece on him in retirement.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
And he wouldn't let them use it on camera. But he said he didn't believe that Oswald had acted alone. You know, so if Lyndon Johnson didn't believe the Warren Commission, you know, why should I? You know, like.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
Yeah. So that's really to get around to what I'm looking at now and what we're learning from the new releases, which I think is a lot. You know, it goes to that question, the pre-assassination knowledge of Oswald. And, you know, we did learn some significant things on March 18th when... these long suppressed documents had begun to appear.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
There's both a macro thing, shedding light on the political situation that Kennedy was in. And Arthur Schlesinger's memo about reorganizing the CIA was one of the things that came out. And we understand why Kennedy mistrusted the CIA and why he wanted, or at least contemplated really reorganizing them in a very fundamental way. So that's kind of the macro situation.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
And then we drill down to the micro and we say, well, in the the testimony of James Angleton to the House Select Committee on Assassinations, a passage just declassified, 50 year old transcript, shows that he lied to them about what he knew about Oswald before the assassination. We're just getting that kind of information now.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
And we're also getting a bigger picture of, you know, Kennedy in the Cold War, Kennedy in conflict with his own security apparatus. So, you know, we're learning more.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
So so the JFK Records Act passed after the movie in 92 had a 25 year sunset provision, which is. This JFK independent board obtained records from government agencies, put them in the National Archives. But the agencies were given the right to withhold certain material on grounds of national security or privacy. They could ask, they could say, don't publish this name until he dies.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
You know, that was legitimate, you know, concern. But the law was after 25 years, everything would be made public regardless. Well, when 25 years rolled around in October 2017, it came to Trump. Pompeo, Mike Pompeo and Chris Wray went to Trump, and there's a Reuters story about this, and said, you know, we can't release this stuff. At least there's a lot of stuff that we don't want to release.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
And at that point, there were redactions in about 16,000 documents. Yeah. In a collection, for perspective, there's about 319,000 different records in the JFK collection, okay? So 16,000, it's not insignificant numbers. It's a couple percentage points. And among those, we could tell that there was very interesting material.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
So when the agency and when Pompeo said, look, you can't release it, Trump said, bye. And they released some stuff. But basically Trump kicked the can down the road. And he said- He punted it for, was it five years he punted it? What was the punt? Exactly four. So he said, we'll revisit this in October, 2021. Well, then that's Joe Biden this time. That's Joe Biden.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
So Joe Biden, that's right at the end of the pandemic. So Biden says, look, we had a pandemic. CIA can't do this. We're going to wait. We're going to give them another year.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
Yeah. When The Washington Post called me and said, what do you think? I said, this is like the covid blog ate my homework. You know, it's like this is the lamest excuse. You've had twenty nine years and you're going to blame it on, you know. So so so then a year later, Biden did the same thing Trump did. He released a bunch of stuff. And he held a bunch of stuff.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
Yeah, so what Biden did was he held back a bunch of stuff. He released a bunch of stuff, but he didn't want this question to come back to him. And so he issues an order in June of 2023. And he says, look, from now on, the release of this material is up to the NSA to, the CIA or DOD, whatever agency holds that, and they have this plan for release.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
And they were called in typically deceptive way, transparency plans. And the transparency plans were designed to make sure that there was no transparency. And so those went into effect. And so that was really, that was actually sort of a step back because it's sort of, it's sort of,
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
eviscerated the JFK Records Act by putting the control of the disposition of the documents back in the hands of the agency. The whole reason that the law worked and was very effective was the final decision about a CIA document was not made by a CIA official. It was made by an outside person who could balance national security and public interest.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
Yeah, so that it was the Assassination Records Review Board. There's no structure now. So that was the step backwards. And Biden's order was he basically gave control of these the last of the documents back to the agencies. Right. So along comes Trump. OK, now Trump had caved the first time. Right. he took a lot of grief from his friends.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
And Tucker Carlson and Andrew Napolitano in particular, you know, really chastised him. And when you listen to the interviews, Trump's very uncomfortable. He's not the usual blustering self. He's like, he doesn't want to talk about it. He's embarrassed.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
Well, you know, but Trump said at one point, if you'd seen what I'd seen, you wouldn't have. Yeah, yeah. You know, I think that's just so much blarney. You know, like, there's no reason. I mean, if he knew something substantive, why wouldn't he say it? I don't believe that he knows anything substantive.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
Yeah, so anyway, Trump's embarrassed. And then RFK is running. RFK made this an issue when he was running as a Democrat and an independent. He had a petition to open up all the JFK records. And when RFK came on board with Trump at that rally last August— And that's when Trump got back on the JFK bandwagon. He said, we're going to release all the JFK files. And there's this roar of the crowd.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
I mean, it was a great applause line for Trump. And I think that's when he latched back onto it. It's like, oh, this is cool. And he goes on Joe Rogan and says, I'm going to, you know, he incorporated that into his message. And I think he's trying to, you know, regain face with his followers, you know. So he comes to office and he writes this very expansive speech.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
welcome executive order 14176, calling for a plan to release the JFK, RFK, and MLK plans. So We saw yesterday Tulsi Gabbard is acting on the RFK and MLK.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
Yeah. And so that's the RFK and MLK part, which is now seems to be moving for the first time. We haven't heard much about that since Trump's order. We've heard a lot more about JFK because... The Order, the National Archives, released a lot of stuff on March 18th. You know, a little too hasty.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
Well, the good thing is that almost all of the redactions have come off. There are still some redactions, but the problem there may be that the original copy is redacted. I mean, it's like the original copy in the government file.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
Yeah, it's marked out with black magic mark. I mean, maybe you could do some chemical analysis, but the more recent redactions are done with, you know, basically with white tape. And so it's easy. You just take the tape off and there's the... So some documents can't be redacted, but most of them have. And so we see these documents in their entirety for the first time.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
And like with the Schlesinger memo and the Angleton Senate testimony, these last details are important. And if you think about it, it stands to reason, right? I mean, if you want to hide something and you're being pressured to release things, well, you release the things that are least damaging or least important to you first.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
And the things you release last are the things that are most important to you. So what we're seeing now is what these agencies thought was the very most important thing. Now, sometimes it's ridiculously trivial. Like, The CIA had a station in Morocco, you know, and like they'll black that out, even though they just never they never wanted to admit they had one.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
For whatever reason, their argument, their argument is, well, somebody else said it, but we've never acknowledged it. You know, so that's that's the game they play. So this body of records is, you know, it's big, about seventy seven thousand people. pages.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
So those several thousand pages of those several thousand documents that still had redactions, uh, that they composed a body of records running to close to 80,000 pages. And so that's what we're going through now. And, um, and there's a lot of still going through it.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
I mean, somebody asked, they said, Jeff, how many of the 77,000 pages they've been through? And I was like, uh, one half of 1%. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I don't go through and read everything, each document individually. I do targeted searches for documents and try and focus my searching that way. But there's a lot of work to be done. There's a lot of work to be done. There are cool stories.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
I'm going to have a story soon about a story that comes from those. In February, the FBI announced that in response to Trump's order, they had found 1,400 more documents of assassination-related material, which they turned over to the National Archives. So I went to see that material, and a bunch of us went to see it. And we have a story about
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
a very interesting story that's in there that has been previously redacted. So- Got a little hint?
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
This has to do with, after the assassination, J. Edgar Hoover sanctioned 17 FBI agents for their handling of Oswald. And the thing that he was most worried about was this very anomalous fact that six weeks before the assassination- senior FBI agents took Oswald's name off of basically a watch list. It's called the Security Index. And what it is, it's a notice to all FBI offices everywhere.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
If you get any information or any inquiry, that's the standard, about this person, please let headquarters know. So Oswald had been a defector in the Soviet Union, returned, he went right on to the index. He's a person of interest.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
And he has a Russian wife. So an FBI agent interviews him twice that summer, in the summer of 62, and takes him off the list, says this guy's not a security threat anymore. That was his judgment. A year later, Oswald's arrested. And they put him back on the list because that's why you have the list, to find out if... That's August of 1963.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
In October of 1963, these same senior FBI agents take him off the list. And they say, we're not going to pay close attention to this guy. If he gets arrested, we don't care. How did that happen? Because, I mean, if Oswald killed the president, which I tend to doubt... That right there is negligence.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
And in the memos that we found, the FBI, Cartha DeLoach, one of the top guys at the FBI says, if we put this out to the Warren Commission, it will be taken as an admission of negligence. So to me, this is evidence of negligence.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
Right. The thing that is when you take the redactions off what you see, The FBI only made that decision after consulting with the CIA. So it was a joint decision. It wasn't just an FBI.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
And that could be a factor in all of this. Mm hmm.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
Yeah, and so, you know, he's acting in a way that is, you know, fits the definition of a security threat where you would do something right. You would go talk to him. He talks to a Russian, you know, why are you down there in Mexico city talking to a Russian? Like that kind of activity, you know, so Oswald has, he's a defector with a Russian wife.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
He tries to infiltrate a CIA-funded group in New Orleans. He's arrested doing that. He's an advocate for the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, a leftist group that has been officially deemed subversive by the U.S. government. He goes to Mexico. He's trying to travel to Cuba. That's a violation of the law.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
And then he goes to the Soviet embassy and he's in contact with a suspected, if not certain, KGB. So any one of those five things could get an American into deep, deep trouble in 1963. And he did five in 60 days. And the response was, let's turn down the lights on him and look at him a little less closely.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
Yeah, so just to give people the background, so Oswald goes public. He's pamphletarian for this leftist group, the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, which was a very popular campus group to support the Cuban Revolution and oppose U.S. policy towards Cuba. And This is very unusual in a conservative southern city. The Fair Play for Cuba had rallies in New York and San Francisco. New Orleans?
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
And in fact, when Oswald wrote to the Fair Play for Cuba committee and said, I'm going to set something up here, they said, don't go public because it's going to provoke a violent reaction. Well, Oswald goes public And sure enough, it provokes a violent reaction.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
These Cuban exiles, members of the Cuban student directorate confront him on the street and they throw his pamphlets and they're kind of face to face, you know, shouting at each other. A crowd gathers. There's actually a film of it. And a couple of policemen come along, break it up and arrest them. And Oswald's arrested and the four Cubans are arrested.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
So the following Monday, they're in New Orleans Municipal Court and Oswald comes in. This is an interesting detail. The court's still legally segregated in New Orleans in 1963. There's a colored section on one side and a white section on the other. Oswald comes in and he goes and he sits in the colored section out of sympathy.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
Oswald was very, especially for a Southern man who didn't go to college, Oswald was instinctively pro-civil rights. He'd grown up around poor, especially poor Latino kids. So there was some identification there. In contemporary terms, you'd say he was anti-racist. So on the other side, the Cubans come in and This is a political event for them.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
This is the struggle against Castro brought to New Orleans. And so they talk to reporters and say, why are you covering this guy? And why don't you cover and criticize Castro and all that? What we worked on is if we have that film footage, I believe that four people who were in that courtroom confronting Oswald had CIA connections. In fact, I'm sure of it.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
Well, you identified three of the four, correct? Yeah, three of the four. And then the fourth one, I did a very, I asked one of the leading facial recognition people and we assembled a bunch of photographs. And the fourth one who I was pretty sure about he said it was only, there wasn't a great correlation. It was, it might've been like 60% or something like that.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
And so it was like, you know, yeah, you probably- It was tough, right. Yeah, it wasn't confirmation. And so I kind of had to take that guy off the table. It feels to me like it's him, but- You know, you have to have a methodology and that sort of show. But here, Chuck, it's interesting that you brought that up because this is another story that I'm going to do.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
So that was like the CIA had a presence in New Orleans in the summer of 63. And somehow that was, you know, Oswald was known to that presence. That's what that story showed. What we learned in the latest release was we got the fuller files of these two of the guys who were in the courtroom that day.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
And what the declassified version showed was they had been tasked by the CIA in the summer of 63 to spy on pro-Castro forces in New Orleans using duplicitous methods, like go join and pretend you're a supporter. Now, they weren't aimed at Oswald, but that was a standard CIA practice in New Orleans at the time Oswald was there. It was not FBI surveillance.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
It was surveillance, and it was specifically targeting the same type of pro-Castro person that Oswald was.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
Yeah, I mean, you have these people displaced by Castro's revolution. One of the guys in the courtroom confronting Oswald was a man named Frank Barthez. He had owned the biggest railroad in Cuba. And he was basically, you know, he lost everything. He just returned to being a middle-class guy.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
So there was incredible bitterness and there was incredible bitterness towards Kennedy because he hadn't overthrown.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
And so by 63, so he didn't follow through with the Bay of Pigs.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
Right. The roots of it are anti-JFK, but not to find a point on it. The anti-Democrat is what is what the Cuban exiles wanted. Kennedy, nobody will.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
Yeah. So so. The Bay of Pigs, that sense of bitterness, resentment, recrimination, very powerful, especially in Miami. There's a State Department document from October of 63, really itemizing it in very specific terms of how bad of how bad it was. So, you know, that has to be a factor when you think about the assassination.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
And also, you know, I spent some time in New Orleans over Christmas with a local historian. And, you know, a lot of times we focus in the Kennedy assassination story on the organized crime angle, you know, the bomb bosses dispossessed. But this friend of mine pointed out that the normal legal commercial dealings
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
between the United States and Cuba were much larger than that illicit black market stuff, the casinos and the brothels, you know, gambling. The legitimate, you know, business was far, far larger. And those business interests, of which there were a lot in New Orleans, because there was a lot of trade, you know, Cuba's a short boat ride away, you know, they lost a
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
They too were dispossessed by this revolution. And so that bakes into the culture of New Orleans, this commitment to overthrowing Castro. And so when you see the conspiratorial milieu, especially of New Orleans, I think that this was something that was kind of the... There was a lot of this in JFK and Stone kind of- Yes, it was.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
Right, right. I mean, you know, the scenario of the movie- You know, even fairy plotted the ambush. I mean, that's, you know, that's fictionalized. It's simplified to, you know, make it work as a as a movie. And, you know, I it's a movie. It's not a documentary, you know, so I. So that's where, you know. To come back to your original point, you know, we face this choice, Occam's razor, right?
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
Sex elation is usually the best. And then on the other side, you know, when people say, well, Occam's razor, I say, well, you know, there's this doctrine called covert action. What is covert action? One CIA guy, his name was John Witten. He was the chief of the Mexico desk in 1963. And he said this in congressional testimony. They asked him, what is covert action?
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
He said, important illegal manipulations of society done secretly. So people say, well, Jeff, you know, the tragedy of history, you just have to accept a little man killed a big man. And I say, well, on the other side, You know, there's people who believe in covert action. And, you know, what you see as a tragedy, you know, they might see as a cover story because that's what they do.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
Important legal manipulations of society done secretly.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
Yeah, so it came out a couple ways. One was Norman Mailer and Lawrence Schiller, his researcher, went over very quickly and they bought stuff from KGB people. And that became the basis of Mailer's book, Oswald's Tale. And then the JFK Review Board was going then. And one of the mandates of the JFK Records Act was,
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
that the Assassination Records Review Board, this independent civilian panel, should not only seek records from the U.S. government, but should seek them from foreign government. So they reached out to Russia and Judge John Tunheim was the chairman of the review board. He's from a federal judge in Minnesota. And he flew over.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
Yeltsin had given Clinton a bunch of papers, which were not particularly important. But as a follow-up, Tonheim went over there and reached an agreement and he was shown a stack of files. He said it was five feet tall, you know, of folders. And that was the surveillance of Oswald while he was in Minsk.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
And not in an open society, you know, in a very tightly policed, you know, I mean, police state is probably a little strong, but, you know, a very tightly controlled society. So, yeah, he was definitely watched. But. the deal fell through and they never delivered the documents. And so we still think that they exist, but given the state of US-Russia relations, I will say one thing about that.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
There's a man named Ernst Titovits who was a medical student in Minsk and was interested in meeting Oswald because he wanted to practice his English. He was obsessed with learning languages. And so he became friends with Oswald. And Ernst has written a book.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
And when people talk about like a book to read about the Kennedy assassination, his book, Oswald Russian episode is really one of the most interesting because he was very good friends with Oswald. They talked politics. They argued, you know, they flirted with girls. They had parties. They hung out at this girl's apartment. You know, they were really in the same crowd of, you know, 20, 21 year olds.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
So Titovets said, you know, I could never talk about this as long as the Soviet Union existed. But when the Soviet Union fell apart, he immediately said, I'm going to tell the story of my friendship with Oswald. And so he wrote this book, Oswald Russian Episode, which you can get on Amazon. And I highly recommend it.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
But he said something interesting was he didn't just write about his friendship with Oswald, but he went and tried to find these security types who had been watching him. And he talked to a few of them. And he said what they told him was, after watching Oswald for a while, they felt he was not a directed spy. You know, he was living in this apartment building in Minsk.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
Communist Party headquarters was right down the block. He never went, you know, he didn't seem to be seeking out intelligence when they watched him. So that's a subjective, you know, reaction. Sure. That was the impression that one friend of Oswald had, you know, with the benefit of hindsight.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
You know, it's intriguing. I don't know the bodies of records in MLK and RFK the way I do JFK.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
You know, I, you know, I know that they have JFK files that have never been released. And when the FBI found these records in February, I mean, that's the proper response of an agency, which is the president issued an order. They want all JFK files. Let's take another look, see what we got, put it out there. The CIA hasn't done that.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
I mean, if Gabbard's going to get them to do that, to go back and just do a good faith search, not saying you're hiding something, just make sure you get everything, make it public. So that could be, you know, very positive. And that there's somebody in the intelligence establishment saying, this is a priority. There's a public interest here.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
You know, we're not doing business as usual around classification. You know, that's all very, that's all very positive. So, you know, remains to be seen how they delivered on the JFK things. I had a report card of, you know, things that were redacted and are now, and we wanted to be released. And we pretty much have all of those.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
I just got a couple the other day and I want to, I'm going to go through the checklist and see and compare the, I think we ultimately had like 18 things. So that's a big step forward. But that's just the records that had already been acknowledged and given to the National Archives. There are these other things that were never turned over. And that's the next phase of this search.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
And I think that's what Gabbard's talking about. we haven't seen the CIA produce JFK records that were not already at the national archives. That would be an important milestone. If they did do that, if they did what the FBI did, go search their records and make public assassination related material.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
You know, that's the thing why I don't write about him because there's not a lot of new things about Ruby. Right.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
The most interesting thing that has emerged about Ruby in recent years, and it's hard to know what to make of it, but it does seem significant, is that one of the psychiatrists who visited him, one of the psychiatrists who said he was insane, and most of Ruby's psychiatrists said he was not insane, but Dr. Jolly West said, was one of the doctors who said he was.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
And what we have learned is that Jolly West was a contractor for the, for the CIA and a participant in the MK ultra mind control program. So, you know, so, and so, you know, one of the things that they did with people was, you know, dose them with LSD. And, and that was one of the things Jolly West did in his mind control. So Ruby,
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
Well, he said, you know, Ruby showed all of these psychotic, you know, symptoms, which other people did not observe. And it just, you know, it raised the possibility, like, why was he in there? You know, and he was kind of a... you know, people make a name for themselves as a spokesman, you know, a lawyer for TV or a cop for TV. He was kind of doctor for TV.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
You know, he was, he had a public profile. So he sought publicity, but you know, the CIA connection came out many years later. So is there something to pursue there? Well, Jolly West papers are at UCLA and we're going to go out there and take a very close look at them. Is there something in the existing body of records about Ruby that could come out? What, um,
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
I mean, it feels like a modified limited hangout to me. And, you know, and that's where my Occam's razor goes.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
Yeah, yeah. You know, when people put that out, I say, well, you know, what's the evidence that that was the thinking of the people at the CIA at the time? So, for example... Which is the Ferris point, yeah. Yeah. Did people, you know, the people, the CIA people of that generation wrote memoirs, did oral histories.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
When you look at those oral histories and they talk about the Kennedy assassination, do they say, God, we were all over that guy and we just, you know, we just missed him? I mean, I'm not aware of anybody who says that. What they say is we didn't know anything about that guy. And we know that's not true.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
And so those people might have just been not saying they had guilty knowledge and were deliberately lying. They just may have been misinformed or just they believe their institution. Which is, you know, understandable, but I don't see the evidence that somebody said, oh my God, we screwed this up. You know, after the assassination, there's nobody saying, how did we miss this guy?
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
What they say is, how do we pretend like we don't know anything about him? So that's why I tend to doubt the... The CYA thing, I don't see the evidence for it. Just the absence of of, you know, of positive action is not that alone cannot prove the incompetence or the CYA theory.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
You know, I don't rule that out. The crime scene, because it was compromised, you know, the sixth floor was not controlled for about 10 hours after the crime. You know, the exact circumstances of the crime are difficult. Now, there's no smoking gun proof that Oswald did it. Nobody put him in the window with a gun. He was, you know, far, he was down on the second floor very soon after the gunfire.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
So could Oswald have fired a gun? Yeah, I think so. In fact, I would say like for purposes of argument, I'll say, yes, Oswald was up there in the window firing the gun. All this other stuff is still true, you know?
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
Absolutely, absolutely. And, you know, I mean, any criminal investigator will tell you kind of, ear witness testimony of gunfire, notoriously unreliable, notoriously unreliable. But on the other hand, Kennedy's passing by a crowd of several hundred people. So I think any one individual could be mistaken
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
But if you have a bigger sampling, I think you're more likely to get an accurate reflection because people are in all different places. So they wouldn't necessarily be doing the same thing. And 40 to 50 people said they thought, the gunfire came from in front of the motorcade.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
And the doctors who tried to save Kennedy's life said the same thing, that Kennedy had been hit by gunfire in the throat and in the head. So, you know, so bad evidence to me is compelling that other people were firing a gun. So even if you put Oswald up on the sixth floor with a gun, I think it's possible, but unlikely. I think he more had a lookout role than a shooting role. But
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
That's what, you know, that's my response to that argument. But, you know, because the crime scene wasn't controlled, the chain of possession for the gun, the bullets, all of that is totally messed up. If Oswald ever went to trial, you know, criminal attorneys would have no problem dismantling, attacking that chain of possession, you know.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
And in fact, over the years, there have been seven mock trials of Oswald. Typically, bar associations and law. You have prosecutors, defendants, judges, jury and all that. In six out of the seven, Oswald is acquitted or has a hung jury. So that's kind of a man in the street judgment of the body of evidence.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
But I think it tells you something that the criminal case against Oswald is not strong and it's gotten weaker over the years.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
Well, we're looking at AI. We have an AI project at the Mary Farrell Foundation. I mean, I'm very wary of the idea that AI is going to solve the Kennedy assassination for us.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
Yeah, I think AI could help us parse, analyze, organize the body of records that we have. So we're exploring. A second thing is this is underrated information. But just the fact that everybody has access to these records now, that alone, digitization, that alone. Crowdsourcing, yeah. Yeah, it's such a, yeah, it's crowdsourcing.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
You know, like when we had this Oswald file, we put it in front of a bunch of people. I mean, they found, I'd been looking at this file for years and people found stuff that I'd never seen. And that's just the way it works.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
Well, one thing is, you know, social media is toxic and it's toxic because it's binary, right? And it boils things down to thumbs up or thumbs down. And you can't really have a nuanced- You live in a gray area of this world, I feel like, right? And so that's one thing is just to do that. But also, and this is part of it, like, I think feel strongly about this.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
Other people, friends of mine feel strongly about it and they're totally disagreed. And to not take it personally and to say, to listen to that person, even though, how could you possibly think that? That's where I try and check myself and say, Jeff, just listen. Take your feelings out of it. Hear what they're saying. And how is a third person gonna hear what they're saying and you're saying?
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
And just try to detach yourself a little bit from it. And so, you know, social media does the opposite. It's like, it encourages you to get in the other guy's face, right? Because that's how you get followers and people think that's cool. And you feel very justified because you've made a killer point.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
You know, I was having a friend of mine, I talked with a friend of mine today who worked in national security for years. And, you know, he's very candid with me. And he said, you know, Occam's razor, Occam's razor, Jeff, you know, and so, yeah.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
And he said, if you're going to argue against that, then you need to encapsulate that argument into your argument because that's going to be the strongest argument against you. So you need to acknowledge that and, you know, say that you understand that and you're not pushing it away automatically because in the end you don't agree with it. Right. That's the thing you've got to watch out for.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
You know, when we had the hearing with Representative Luna. Is that the first time you testified before Congress? Yes.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
Well, I was anxious. I was nervous. I went and took a long walk in the woods before that just to, like, calm down. And I had some good counselors who said, you know, we know how you feel. So, yeah, it's a high-pressure moment. I was, you know, when they said you only have five minutes, I was like, five minutes? Yeah.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
But then I thought, no, you know what? Like say something like, that you feel good about in five minutes and leave it at that. You can't, you can't possibly do anything. And so I felt, you know, that I did that. And then, you know, it was disappointing that, you know, people tried to turn it into a partisan thing.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
Both Nancy Mace did it on the Republican side and a couple of Democrats did it, which is, you know, this JFK thing is fine, but what about Trump? You know, and it's like-
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
Yeah. No. And look. I'm a liberal guy. You know, I'm concerned about Trump's authoritarian moves. It's very disturbing. But I have to say, declassifying all the JFK records, that's not an authoritarian move. To me, that's an anti-authoritarian move.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
Yeah. He has this political agenda. He wants he wants to stick to beat up the deep state and his critics. Um, you know, but releasing all of these records, you know, that's a good thing. And to me, that's, uh, you know, if we're worried about authoritarianism, something like this, strong, open government laws, that's the answer, you know?
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
And so, you know, I have, I wonder, and people say, well, are you just signing on to a Trump, you know, agenda and things? I, you know, am I legitimizing what he's doing? Yeah. You know, I don't think so. I mean, but it's, that's the world we live in.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
Yeah, but I'll tell you, when- I had never heard of Anna Paulina Luna until she started saying on Twitter, you know, we're going to have a hearing in Dallas. And I saw she just got slaughtered. You know, there were 10,000 comments, 90, literally 9,500 of them were negative. And they said, don't have a hearing, release all the documents.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
And so I reached out to her and said, you know, like, what are you doing? And she's a MAGA Republican from a young woman,
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
Yeah. From St. Pete. And I got to tell you, Chuck, I'm totally impressed. Action oriented, down to earth, not cowed by the CIA.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
Yeah. Yeah. And when she did that, I was like. She's standing up to the CIA. She's standing up to her own leadership because of the things she believes in. Now, you know, I read her social media feed. She says some things that, man, I totally disagree with. But you know what? We work well together.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
And if we want to have a discussion down the road about those things, you know, she'll know better where I'm coming from if we have a relationship of trust. And we do. When we make suggestions to her, she responds instantly. So I'm impressed with her leadership and she's doing this the right way. Jeff, you do a podcast. Where can people find it?
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
On jfkfacts.substack.com, we meet every Thursday night at 8 p.m., JFK Live. Typically, I'll have a guest or we'll have a guest who will talk. And then we open the floor up for questions to the guest or just to anybody. But we really focus on, you know, what's the latest news in the JFK story? What does it mean? Where is it going?
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
Um, and, uh, if you want to find out more about, you know, where we're coming from, that's a great place to start.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
Yeah, and if that's what you want, tell me some new facts about the JFK story. Keep the theories off to the side. We are mining these new releases for new stories related to the assassination. Are we solving the assassination? We're telling you new things that you didn't know before. And if you're interested in the subject, we're the place to go.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
Yeah. Yeah. No, they had, they, for the first 30 years of the CIA, they really had impunity. Now we have a structure that kind of reigns them in a little bit more, contributes responsibility for what they do. But yeah, in those first 30 years, that's key to understanding. And that's what we're getting from these new files is the true details of what that was like when the CIA was ascending.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
Thanks for having me, Chuck. It's great to talk to you. Let's do it again.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
Well, really, I had been interested in the JFK story before. In the 1980s, I read, you know, the books, not just the conspiracy books, but the Kennedy presidency. But I felt like as a reporter, you know, I was working at the Nation and the New Republic. I really had nothing to add. You know, I mean, I felt like there were no people to interview or anything like that.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
And then that changed in 1992 or 1993, actually, after Oliver Stone's movie came out in response to the Fuhrer. Congress passes this law, the JFK Records Act. And it was a very it was a very sensible thing for the government to do, which was there was all this controversy. And they said, we're not going to reinvestigate, but we are going to make public everything.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
that the government has in his possession. And this was where Stone really scored with public opinion in all the controversy, which he pointed out.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
Yeah, well, so that's why the law was a good response, which is make of it what you will. We're not gonna, and so that's when I got involved because, The law mandated that all government records related to the assassination be made public, and most of them were not made public.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
And so when I realized what that law meant, and we began talking about the agencies in response to the law, the law was passed in October of 92. You know, the CIA and the FBI, they responded immediately. They started making making things and putting things in the National Archives. And as soon as I saw those records, I'd been reporting on the CIA in Central America and things like that.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
As soon as I saw these records, I mean, no question there was a reporting goldmine here. I mean, operational records of CIA operations, you know, in living memory. So when I started looking at those memories and looking at those documents, You know, there were names of living people. And so you could just start calling them.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
And, you know, right away, I wasn't going to try and solve the assassination or prove this, prove any conspiracy theory. There was, you know, there was so much argumentation. And, you know, and I thought, well, there's going to be there's going to be good stories in here. I knew enough about how the CIA worked and the history of the CIA. That there were going to be good stories.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
Yeah. And so right away, you know, there were stories. And so I did a story for the Washington Post 30 years ago this week, which was an interview with a woman, Jane Roman, who had... Her name was on these pre-assassination cables about Oswald. Well, nobody ever... you know, done that before, got somebody, a CIA employee who knew about Oswald before the assassination to talk about it.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
Like, and so it wasn't like, you know, the whole discourse of conspiracy, it was so distorting, was like, just leave that aside. This is a good story, right? This was right in the thick of it. And sure enough, what she had to say was really interesting. And basically it was, We were paying close attention to this guy. And she I mean, she said it, you know, a keen interest on a need to know basis.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
That's what the documents showed her. Well, that was very different than the Warren Commission story that we didn't know anything about the guy. And now the CIA official saying so. So this was a rich body of records. And that's how I got I got going on it. And so, you know, I was doing reporting, but not a very popular subject of the Washington Post. People didn't really want to hear it.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
And, you know, I would come to them, I came to them with my best story yet, and they weren't interested. So, you know, that was disappointing. But, you know, it's a newsrooms, a collegial place. And, you know, if my colleagues didn't agree with me, they didn't agree, I wasn't going to cry and go home, you know, had good positions, interesting work at the Post, JFK wasn't everything. So
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
But, you know, I had a strong interest. And so then I decided if the paper is not going to do it, I'll go out and make the news myself. I'll do the Freedom of Information Act request. And so that was pursuing the files of George Ioannidis, another CIA official who was in the midst of all the events that led to Kennedy's assassination. And that, you know, that went on for a long time.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
Well, I was on the same trajectory as the Mary Farrell Foundation. Rex Bradford was a computing genius who put together this website and he realized early on in the late 90s, internet is just beginning to reshape everything. Let's put all the JFK records online. Let's make them accessible to everybody. We've had this gatekeeper problem.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
For 30 years, the government had a closed fist about these JFK records. Nobody outside the government could see them. Maybe if you were lucky, you could get into the National Archives. Then things start to open up. Things start to be deposited in the National Archives, hundreds, thousands, even a million pages of records. Rex starts scanning and organizing those and putting them online.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
And so when I met him, I was like, this is the coolest thing since sliced bread. We got to do more of this. And so I became like the vice president. And here's where... the JFK facts comes from. It was in 2012. I've been, you know, suing the CIA for years. We were getting nowhere in public opinion. And I was like, Rex, you know, next year is 2013. It's going to be the 50th anniversary.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
There's going to be so much bad journalism. about JFK, like just, you know, people don't know the fact, you know, that Oswald actually denied killing the president. Like that simple fact is, you know, routinely admitted, you know, in any criminal case as a, you know, that hasn't been adjudicated, you always say, you know, the alleged killer, right? Right.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
Even if, even if it's totally obvious that they're, you know, well, OJ Simpson is still an alleged killer. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right. You know, and Oswald was never, that was never adjudicated. There was no legal finding against him. So, Rex and I were talking about that, and we said, well, we've got this. By then, Mary Farrell had been up for 10 years and was this incredible resource.
The Chuck ToddCast
Reacting To The JFK Files & Conspiracy Theories
You could go and search a million pages of JFK records, and there was no intervening authority saying you can't look at that. People really began to learn what was the story with Kennedy's assassination. We had this archive, but I said, we need a news front. We need to be in the conversation. This was 2013, the blogosphere was starting to grow. Twitter was starting to grow.