All Episodes
Previous Next
Jan. 31, 2023 - Project Camelot
01:06:34
JOHN KOERNER: THE JFK JR ASSASSINATION. INTERVIEW WITH AUTHOR
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Thank you.
Hi, everyone. everyone.
I'm Kerry Cassidy from Project Camelot and very happy to be here today.
So, we had some login issues there.
They're constantly screwing around with stuff.
So, anyway, I'm very happy to have John Korner with me, and he is the author of Exploding the Truth, all about the JFK Jr.
assassination.
And so welcome, John.
Thanks, Carrie, for having me.
It's a pleasure to be here.
So here we are.
I'd like you to talk about your background and why you decided to focus so much on, really, I know you've written several books, the Kennedy stories and in particular this assassination.
Well, conspiracies have always been interesting to me, and there was a kind of discount, and it's just some kind of crazy idea.
But if you look at the facts in a lot of these cases, they all add up to being truth.
And two of the books I did about conspiracies kind of got, you know, me interested in this.
I did one about the McKinley assassination, and I come from Buffalo, grew up in Buffalo, and that one always been real fascinating to me.
So it was my first kind of conspiracy book.
And then the second one I did, was about the JFK assassination.
And that was in part based off my research for my graduate degree about the drug trade in Laos and how JFK was attempting to end the drug trade and it was in part why the agency conspired to kill him.
So I had these two other conspiracy books and I could see that there were these forces in the world that were behind a lot of the explanations for these major events.
And it seemed to me like from the very beginning That there was more to the story about when JFK Jr.' 's plane went down in July of 1999.
I mean, right away, it just was questions right off the bat.
Like, why was it taking so long to find the wreckage, the bodies?
Why was the debris field so large?
Just basic questions I was asking right away.
And in the book, I try to figure these things out, and I come to some pretty shocking conclusions.
So you were fascinated by the inconsistencies that you found and then I was actually wondering on a more personal level how you know did you know because it took a lot for you to do the investigation and I saw that you did a tremendous amount of investigation more than I've been reading a couple other books on JFK Jr.
and I thought your approach to investigating and to really being very sort of dogged about all of it was really striking and so I wanted to find out on a personal level why you wrote the book.
Well I think I felt like no one had told this story before and I wanted to make sure that people understood as I went into this story more that this wasn't his fault.
And I wanted to make sure the truth had come out that he was blamed for this, that this was somehow his own fault, that he had killed his family.
He was reckless.
All those things were not true.
So I felt almost this obligation to him and the Kennedy family.
To show that, at the very least, this was not his fault.
There was more to the story, and as I dug into this more deeply, I felt almost like a vocation.
I had to get this story out there because, up to that point in time, the official version was that it was facial disorientation, that he did this to his family, and that was not what happened, and it was close.
So I felt like with the other two books, like with McKinley and with JFK, I have this approach where I'm trying to tell new versions of these events that haven't been told before and I feel like if I get the truth out then I can change the narrative and then people can start asking real questions about what really happened on those days and then as I go on and on I just feel like I have to get the story out.
One more thing has to be uncovered and then I just feel like I just have to keep going and find the truth.
Okay.
Well, I do understand that as far as being a writer, but I actually meant personally in terms of what resonated with you on a personal level.
Is it that you've always been a fan of the Kennedys, or you know what I'm saying?
Was it anything along those lines?
Did you grow up in a similar, you know, nearby, or do you know what I'm saying?
Because every, you know, you're an author, granted, but there are so many stories out there that one can wrap their mind around.
So was there something about JFK Jr.
or the Kennedys that had kept your, you know, sort of attention?
Yeah, there are a number of things.
One thing about him that fascinated me is he seemed like one of the only people in politics that rose above politics.
He was loved by almost all people in the world.
He was this graceful man, a really good person, a good husband, a good son.
And I feel like that kind of person is just not around anymore.
And it was important for me.
I admired him growing up to see how he kind of was able to rise above politics and just stay normal, have a decent childhood, just grow up as a man.
I grew up in New York State, and he was an important person in our state's history, so I felt his story needed to be told and not forgotten.
I also teach a professor of American history here in Buffalo, and I've always admired the Kennedy family.
I talk a lot about President Kennedy.
And his efforts to end the war in Vietnam, the war in Laos, and his efforts for the civil rights movement and different things that he's able to do as a president.
The missile crisis, ending that with Cuba, just to me, he seems like a type of president that was to be admired.
And I think that this kind of approach for me personally was just kind of right on the money.
My grandfather too, I should mention as well.
He, from the very beginning, On the day that JFK was assassinated, right away he thought that there was more to the story then.
And he kept this scrapbook of clippings about different things that he felt were proof that there was more to the story.
And I have that scrapbook to this very day.
Kind of keeps me going and kind of I feel like that sense of being a historian, being a person who records the past, I think probably comes from my grandfather and his respect for that kind of approach.
I think that is probably where it came from.
Alright.
He was a World War II veteran.
He really was.
He served his country and I think part of respecting him and his legacy is part of this too.
Absolutely.
All right.
Well, you know, many of us are, of course, fans of the Kennedys and the Kennedy family.
And yes, absolutely JFK Jr.
Now, what I was hoping you would do is kind of go through, maybe just a blow by blow if you know, briefly, obviously, but your thoughts on on what led up to him getting on the plane?
Because I just want to say that, you know, I did write to you briefly about it, but my position is that, I don't know if you even know who 107 is, but that 107 is JFK Jr.
And so that JFK Jr.
might have actually survived, as did Carolyn and her sister, and that the Navy intervened because they were warned that he had a death threat against him, and that they actually purposely exploded the plane.
So that's kind of where I'm coming from.
But I want you to share your version.
So that people can see, you know, not only your diligence, but where the areas of the story may actually sort of coincide or meet.
And I don't expect you to necessarily go along with this theory.
It's not proven, obviously, but there is a guy named Juan O'Savin who named himself, I can, you know, John, Juan is John in, you know, Spanish.
And O for Jackie O, and Savin for the Savin Hill Library where JFK Jr.' 's, you know, JFK is his library is.
So the idea being that, and I've actually met Wano Savin, and we believe he, some of us, that he's wearing a disguise, you know, like Tom Cruise, this very sort of excellent Facial disguise that that I have testimonies from whistleblowers about that it is very very convincing that in some cases I've been told your own family would not recognize you.
So the question is and he was known to be a master of disguise when he was young so I don't know if you are aware of that I don't know if you have even heard this theory before you know and discarded it But could you talk about what led up to him getting on that plane?
If there was any anomalous things that went on, you know, I did read your book, but I can't remember every detail.
And I know that there was some strange things about, for example, the place where the plane flew out of.
That was an airport that was not heavily surveilled.
And it had it was rather, I guess, I don't know if you would call it poorly managed or loosely managed.
But could you address all that?
Sure.
So he is taking a trip to Rurie, Kennedy.
She's having her wedding that weekend in Hyannisport.
So he leaves from Caldwell Field to head up there.
He's going to drop off his sister-in-law in Hyannisport, then head up there for the wedding with his wife, Caroline.
And he leaves at 8.39 p.m.
from the airport, precisely.
That's a takeoff time, 8.39 p.m.
And then what's interesting is that he radios into air traffic control at Hyannisport at 9.39 p.m., precisely.
It's one hour into the flight, and he is telling them that he is on approach.
And this is such a key moment in the story, because if he was under any duress, or the plane was under any duress, he would have reported that at that moment in time.
And then one minute later, his plane is dropping off of radar and dropping 14,000 feet per second on radar.
So the official story that he is suffering from spatial disorientation, it doesn't make any sense because he would have said something when he called into air traffic control.
The plane was in an even course.
It had no deviation.
We also know that the night was clear.
There was no reports from local weather.
There was anything but a clear night.
So there was nothing that could have caused him disorientation.
So we do know that the debris field was 14 nautical miles.
They were finding pieces of luggage, clothing, sneakers on land.
So this indicates that there was some kind of breaching of the cabin, some kind of explosion.
And there were three witnesses that did see or hear an explosion coming from the aircraft.
So this is what This indicates to me, anyway, that there looked like there could have been an explosion on the aircraft.
We also know that he had an accident with a paraglider on Memorial Day.
It was May 30th of 1999.
So he fractured his ankle and there was this speculation that, well, maybe he couldn't handle the brakes On the aircraft, the up and down motion.
But we know he had completely healed from it.
The cast was taken off the day before.
He was walking around New York City.
He got a workout in.
He went to get a vitamin water and a snack just before he boarded the aircraft.
And the convenience store worker said he asked him how the leg was.
He said it feels perfect.
So there was nothing wrong with his leg.
He was healed completely.
And we know that there's nothing wrong with the atmosphere and he called into air traffic control.
So all those different things indicate that this was not his fault, basically.
Right.
And that was completely counter to what was out in the press.
Absolutely.
So in terms of His relationship with the Clintons.
I know you talked about that briefly.
I did hear your other interview that you did with, I don't remember the host name, but a recent interview you did.
It was coincidental because I don't, I didn't know that you'd even been doing interviews.
And I tracked you down.
That was just sort of, I just stumbled on your book and then decided to track you down and See if you are still around and could be interviewed.
So what I'm wondering is, is with all of that in mind, were you aware that that he that he he was going to run?
I think you were he was hoping to run for governor that he did have a meeting sometime prior to going on that flight with Hillary Clinton.
And did you ever, you know, I don't know how much online research did you do, like things like there were things on online saying that he came out of that meeting looking pale, you know, things of this nature, where people said something happened during that meeting that seemed to jar him in some way.
There's another author who, and I don't have his name in front of me, but he's written an in-depth story about John F. Kennedy Jr.
prior to the crash, and he actually tells a completely different story of that day, the day before the crash, so to speak.
He's pointing, and he's somebody who supposedly knew him well, and again, sorry that I don't have his name in front of me, but
I'm just curious, did you read these other books at all before you did your book and did you question as to why these people would have said certain things like the meeting with Hillary and then this other guy saying that he thought that the magazine George was in trouble?
And that his marriage was in trouble, you know, in various ways.
And I'm not going to go into that too much here.
But in other words, did you hear about that?
Or did you read other books before you did your book?
Oh yeah, I read a lot of other sources and materials.
I got contacted by some Navy SEAL divers who talked to me about the process for how that would take place.
One person from the Kennedy family wrote me a letter.
So there were a number of things that I received during the course of my research that indicated different things and conclusions that I came to about his attitude and what he was thinking at the time.
One weird thing about the recovery process is there is a diving team that could have been used right there that is right off Hyannisport that they did not use.
And it took them five days to recover the bodies, which I think was why they needed to cover up the crime scene.
They could have used one locally, but they chose not to use the Navy instead.
And then you also have, in my mind, from what I had concluded, it seemed like he was struggling over this, but he wanted to do one or the other, the Senate or run for governor.
And it seemed like, from what I had understood, I've come to a different kind of conclusion from this, that Caroline wanted to stay in New York City and not Albany, that this is where they wanted to raise a family.
And this was more appropriate because his uncle was a senator, his father was a senator, and it would have been a family legacy to be a senator from New York.
That was his true desire.
But the Clintons were in the way of this, and that was an obstacle to this.
But I think in his heart, that was what he wanted to do, run for the Senate, because it was family legacy and would have been a better place to raise a family than in Albany.
It would be more fit to the way he would have.
And by the way, with the magazine, he was at that point in time.
Alversone just recently came out with, he mentioned this, that he was going to do an article about the Kennedy assassination, an upcoming issue of the magazine.
And they're going to sell the magazine so he can run for office.
So the fact that he was going to sell George, it shows, not that he was in trouble, but he was going to the next stage of his life.
He was going to run for office.
And that was on his mind, these two things.
Articles about his father's assassination and running for office, that was happening to him in the latter part of 1999.
And it probably got him killed.
Okay.
And I realized that you also highlighted the fact that the name of the magazine, George, is alluding to his father's killer, which is, you know, George Bush Sr.
So, you know, that's in your book, but it's also been out there, you know, this idea.
There is some thought that he, as I say, that he survived.
So with the scenario that you have, in which we do have a cover-up, so that's kind of in keeping with both kind of scenarios, and One thing I'm very curious about is how the witnesses, like the three witnesses, you really go into a lot of detail and you also have trouble tracking down.
I think you had to go to microfilm and various things.
All your research, the whole way, you seem to be blocked time and time again.
And then I wondered if your overall feeling was, were you being blocked because There was something nefarious had gone on and they didn't want you to find out what that was.
The complete reversal of that would be as if you were being blocked because some people were trying to I mean, this has been years and years and years and even years since you wrote your book.
So I'm wondering if you've heard these theories and do you discount them?
Do you take them into account?
Have you been even considering writing another book?
Or is it just something that you just don't follow?
Well, after I went coast to coast to talk about this, and right after I was on there, I got an email from a lady that lives in Hyannis Port, and she had said that there are more witnesses to this that heard the explosion.
They just don't want to come forward because they're scared about it, because they know what happened to other witnesses like in the JFK assassination, so they think that they should just stay quiet about this.
But three have come forward, and there was this one interesting thing you mentioned in the microfilm.
So there's one reporter from the Hyannis Port Gazette, This person was identified by other researchers and it's the Martha's Vineyard Gazette, sorry.
It's a small little paper in Martha's Vineyard and this person had seen the explosion and they were interviewed on two different networks, UPI and CBS, and they didn't give the person's name, I think, to protect them.
So another reporter had called up the editor there And said, can you give us the name of this person who saw the explosion?
And they wouldn't do it.
They said the person had gone away to college, so they wanted to just maybe protect their identity.
So I had some basic facts about who they were.
It was a male reporter.
It was probably like an intern that was there just over the summer.
So I tried to find a microfilm from that newspaper for that summer.
And I went through all the names of the reporters, eliminated all the women.
And there was one name that was there for just the summer and then disappeared after the summer was over.
So by process of elimination I concluded that was probably the person who witnessed this explosion.
And I had also Before this happened, I requested that microfilm from three different libraries in the Boston area, and all three of them denied my request for that.
I just got the microfilm because the Library of Congress is required to give me their microfilm, and they did.
And I got the microfilm only from that source.
So I was able to track down this person's name, and sure enough, there was a person, a male intern, who worked at the newspaper just that summer.
There was just one name that disappeared.
And when we've gone back to school that I didn't put the name in the book to protect his identity, but I did track down who his name was.
So there are these three witnesses to the explosion that happened that night.
Right.
Well, and, you know, again, you didn't quite answer, I guess, I asked you more than one question.
But yeah, so first of all, let me let me go through this.
So have you heard these theories that I just kind of laid out that an alternative theory to yours, and Did you find there any value there?
Because the same, in other words, if the Navy, I was sent, you know, when I have put out information, I've been investigating this story for a while, not just, you know, the assassination, but actually that's been the last thing I've investigated.
But before that, you know, the nature of 107 and JFK Jr.
and what would happen if he was still alive and so on and so forth.
And one thing that I that I looked into was was the idea that, you know, I've put that out to the to the, you know, not to the press, but to I'm pretty well known broadcaster out there.
So I have people write to me.
So I had a guy write to me and he said that he he actually he would I don't it wasn't his theory, but it was somebody who contacted him and wrote out exactly what they seem to think they knew about what happened that night.
During the crash, okay, and what they had a sort of a blow-by-blow and I was just looking for it I don't have it in front of me.
I did publish it but basically saying that That that night Somehow he had known he was threatened He had was planning to run again the meeting with Hillary didn't go well that he was threatened in the meeting and that somehow in that
Time span he contacted, you know, he was already well familiar with being, you know, protected by the Secret Service and various agencies and things like that.
So he contacted someone and maybe it was the the Navy, but they basically seem to have concocted some scenario and that he he and and Carolyn and
Um, her sister Lauren didn't get on the plane, that a Navy pilot got on the plane, flew the plane, played a recording at the, that moment an hour in, uh, that he then parachuted out of the plane and it had, you know, set a thing to have it blow up so that it fits the scenario.
And then the Navy again, cordoned off the whole area.
So in other words, they didn't let anyone else come in.
to to mess around or find out anything and then you know certain things went on from there now there is this is just sent to me by person okay so so I don't know you know when I I don't know how public when you're writing your book how public you were back in those days like where you fairly known when you're writing that book or where you Relatively unknown, and then you became known after that.
I don't know the sequence of events.
But I get all kinds of people writing to me with all kinds of details.
Even people that have known him, grown up around him, this and that and the other.
107's voice has been analyzed, for example, and has exactly the same voice imprint as John F. Kennedy Jr.
is set.
And you can do your own research to see if you haven't considered these ideas before.
But the reason I'm bringing up the crash and that part about the witnesses is, on the one hand, the witnesses would be threatened, or on the other hand, they would be thwarted.
And maybe both.
Because on the one hand, he was threatened, and his family, in theory, was threatened by Hillary.
Okay?
This is the beginning of the premise.
Okay?
Right.
So, that is out there.
Okay?
I'm not making this up.
This is information that's out there.
So, you can either think it's right, or think it's wrong, and so on and so forth.
Had you heard that he had been threatened with Hillary, let's start there.
Yeah, I definitely had heard that.
That's one of the theories, that she wanted to eliminate him because he's a threat for running for Senate.
And it does make sense to me because the Senate would be a more, I think, natural fit for him.
Especially if you wanted to have a family.
New York City would be better for Caroline and their marriage and for the legacy of the Senate and the Kennedy family, his uncle and his father being in the Senate.
I think it makes better sense that they would be the enemy here.
One more thing I can mention too that would support your theory that would go along with this very well.
At 2.15 a.m.
ABC News that Peter Jennings reported that they had the Navy had picked up a rescue signal that was giving off its its beacon in the ocean and the ABC News reported that it was it was the Piper Saratoga in the water and the Navy was closing in on it and then they changed their story completely and they say no this was in fact a downed
Naval military aircraft.
What?
Are you kidding me?
And then the story just goes away.
There's another aircraft in the water.
So who crashed?
Is the pilot dead?
Did it collide with JFK's plane?
Did they just make that up?
I mean, and also, how could you confuse those two signals?
The Saratoga signal is completely different than a naval aircraft signal.
So, that story there, it lends a lot of credence to what you're saying, because there is this, either they made this up, Or there was a naval aircraft in the area that, for some reason, was a mission that it was on, or it collided with JFK's plane.
Either way, it's either a lie, or there's another aircraft in the water that, for some reason, is throwing them off the trail here of what really happened.
So that lends a lot of credence to what you're saying about this.
There's more than what's been told to us for a long time.
Okay, so again, with that in mind, now I do wonder because you were digging into a story back then that was considered to be very, I guess, controversial, right?
And I think you even do mention that you got very sick before you got into your book or something.
Maybe you can talk a little bit about that.
And I am also wondering if you've been threatened.
Well, yeah, this was, this happened when my first JFK book came out about the secret drug trade in Laos.
You may have seen the movie Kill the Messenger, where another reporter from San Jose Mercury News, who also wrote about the CIA's drug trade that was in South America, he was targeted too.
And I feel I was targeted as well.
I mean, I was Perfectly healthy.
And then all of a sudden, I just somehow contracted this.
I got some kind of disease that they couldn't figure out what it was.
My body was shutting down.
I lost all my muscle tone.
I lost 45 pounds.
I couldn't speak or eat.
And they kept asking me had I been to Southeast Asia because there was some Poison or drug or disease I had contracted that they had never heard of before Somehow I got it and I should have I should have been killed by it and this was just as my book was coming out on the drug trade and Every day my family thought I was going to die and I made it through for about six months.
It took me to recover but It looked like from all indications that I had somehow been poisoned and I Almost convinced that it was probably an attack on my life.
And during that time too, it's so weird.
I mean, I have a hard time talking about this because it's so bizarre, but there are these, my sister even can confirm this.
She was taking care of my house at the time when I was gone.
There were these Blackhawk helicopters, unmarked helicopters, that were strafing the lawn near our house and just buzzing in our backyard.
It was a crazy time.
I mean, there were nails put in front of my cars, all the car front of my tires.
That was strange.
Someone did that to me.
All four tires.
All six.
Actually, eight tires.
Nails in all front of them.
If I moved the car any way, the tires would have exploded.
So, just strange stuff has happened to me.
I don't know.
Just, it's been, it's been very weird.
Okay.
So, okay.
What, that was right around the first book.
And then, so you, you got over that.
You published the first book, which, by the way, I really want to read as well.
And then, how long after the first book did you write the JFK, or start investigating, not so much write, but start investigating the JFK Jr.
assassination?
It was pretty much right after that.
I mean, there was another book I did between then called Hunting the Nazarene.
It's about That's a more difficult book to explain, but it's about the time period after Jesus' resurrection, and I tried to investigate what happened in those days after he rose from the dead.
It's not often documented what took place then, so I wanted to figure out what was happening.
Was he hunted down again by the Romans and someone tried to kill him again?
It's not often talked about, but I wanted to do an investigation about those days.
That's kind of what that book is about.
But then I got into this other one about JFK Jr., because it had been Always on my mind that there was just more to this story than it was being told.
And I got into it and I was like, it just makes sense if Robert Kennedy and John Kennedy were both targeted that there would be the same kind of issue to target his son.
It just would make sense to me and that's what I concluded.
You know, that's logical.
Yeah.
In essence, did your family have an issue when they knew that you were getting into, you know, another sort of Kennedy investigation?
Did they ever put two and two together and think it was because you were investigating something that was, I don't know, you know, associated with the Kennedys that you were threatened or you got sick?
Did they ever put those things together or did they just think it was anomalous?
No, they really thought that that was a targeted attempt on my life.
I mean, it just seemed to them that there was no other explanation for it because I was perfectly healthy and the way I was poisoned was just... it was...
A type of poison that could only be really administered by the CIA, the type of thing that they would only have access to.
And it was a type of thing that really was meant to make someone suffer.
die a very slow agonizing death that was what i was doing i the body just each muscle shuts down at a time your face fills up with fluid your lungs fill up with fluid you just want to die every day and it just was well it sounds like a miracle that you did survive uh But what I was really asking was, once you got into investigating the Jonah Kennedy Jr.
assassination, did your family, like, try to stop you or say, you know, please don't do this, remember what happened last time, that kind of thing?
They were very worried about it.
Yeah.
They thought that it was going to happen again.
And I was going to end up dying again.
I mean, I have two kids and they said, do you really want to do this?
And what if you are left without a father?
And is it worth it to risking their lives too?
So while you were doing the investigation of JFK Jr.' 's crash, were you threatened at that time?
Were these things with nails and with your car and such happening or not?
Yeah, that one happened after the JFK Jr.
book came out, with the nails in front of my car.
It was very strange, because I had just done an interview the night before, and the day after, I took some pictures of this, and this was someone that chose to do this just in my car.
And each wheel had these nails that could have punctured all four of my tires, and it could have caused some serious damage.
If I didn't see that, it could have really got into, it could have probably killed me.
And that happened right after the book had come out.
Okay.
So that might be an attempt on my life, too.
Anybody who threatened you to your face during that period or no?
No, not directly.
It's been, I've had a lot of good response from the book actually.
It mentions people contacting me, a Kennedy family member contacted me, a witness from Martha's Vineyard contacted me.
So it's been fairly positive in terms of the public response.
I've given two lectures locally about the book in local libraries and they've been all sold out.
A lot of people have been interested in this.
I'm actually the author-in-residence at one of the local libraries, and they've been very supportive of the book.
They've had me there a couple times to talk about it, and people there have been supportive of asking questions about it.
This area has been very supportive of my work and my books.
I'm very thankful that the people of Buffalo have just been really great about all the books I've written and this one has been well received.
So, you know, and just let me say that because of the work I do, As an investigative journalist, I've had the same thing.
When we first started, it's called Project Camelot, when we first started we had multiple flat tires in bizarre places and eventually we actually were in the Swiss Alps and our whole tire, the whole wheel fell off the car and we had just... Oh my god!
Got to the top of a very winding, in what's called Grindelwald, up at the very top of the Swiss Alps, pulled into a parking lot, and we're going relatively slowly when the whole wheel just fell off the car, and we took it to the guy, you know, to a mechanic, and he said it was cleanly sliced off.
So, it was supposed to probably happen when we were on the way up the mountain.
It was just a fluke that it didn't.
Because had it happened, we were on a very narrow winding road up a mountain pass.
And, you know, obviously you could bring your own conclusions.
So, we had a lot of those kinds of things happen back in those days.
Thankfully, that has stopped.
But I've had other things.
I've had death threats and various things in various forms and fashions.
So I do understand.
Now, I'm wondering if with this information, you know, did you have, you know, I want to be sure that you are not having an issue after this interview, for example.
So, you know, I just want to sort of stay in whatever area you're comfortable with.
But I do want to know, That if you had heard that he might have survived, did you ever hear that and what was your reaction?
Yeah, I did hear that.
Before I answer that question, I just want to mention one more thing about the nails that just occurred to me.
The strange thing about that incident is I had just gotten my car The day before.
So no one in this neighborhood knew that that was my car.
So it was a brand new car.
So someone with connections, very high up, must have found out that I got a new car.
Because when I came, I came back home to park this car.
So it couldn't be like someone that hates me in the neighborhood or something, which no one does.
But I mean, no one knew that that was my car.
So someone must have known, got information from some database or something that they're connected to, that John Kerner has a new car.
It's time to send him a message.
This new car, we're going to make sure this is not going to get on the road.
So no one except someone with connections could have known that I had a new car.
That really frightened me a lot.
But yeah, I had also heard that theory too, and I hope it's true, because if it's true, he was a great man.
I want him to be alive.
And the thing about the Navy I wanted to mention too, it makes sense to me because his father was in the Navy.
I think he could have turned to them for help.
His father was a Naval veteran.
He won a Medal of Honor for being in the Navy.
So I think he could have turned People in the Navy could have had some connection to save his life.
That part of it, I think, makes some sense because his father would have been a veteran.
He was a veteran from the Navy and maybe he thought if anyone could save him, it would have been them.
Right.
Well, I appreciate that.
Now, there's also what had occurred to me is that he probably, even since he was a young boy, had what we call mentors and I would imagine that some of his mentors Would have been in what you call it, you know, the agencies, because the agencies were protecting him, a lot of social security and various people.
And when you, you know, I have a network like that.
And so when you get to know one, you get referred to another and so on and so forth.
And so also the idea that he might have had a mentor that he was consulting with even during the time of You know, when he's creating a magazine, he's naming it after his father's killer.
He's going down the journalistic road.
He's actually perfectly positioning himself to investigate his own father's death in his magazine.
And then.
With the success of the magazine, that increases the potential for having an audience for whatever he might come across.
And there are some investigators out there.
I don't know if you tracked them or got involved in looking up.
I think one of them is a well-known journalist called Wayne Madsen.
And I think, I might have this mixed up, but he was one of the people that was going to be investigating JFK Jr.' 's father's death for JFK Jr., for the magazine, in fact.
He was assigned it right before John Jr.
was supposedly killed.
That lends itself not only to the idea that he was becoming more of a potential threat as time moved on.
His success made him more of a threat, if anything.
You know what I'm saying?
Had he had a less successful business and if it wasn't in such an interesting, you know, in the media.
It was, he actually, he went from being a target of the media to being, you know, actually targeting the media himself and having access, you know, great insider access because of his magazine.
So that positioned him in a very interesting way.
The meeting with Hillary is another element Whether that meeting had the portent that it really did, we don't know at the moment.
Did you have any, now you may not want to say this, and certainly, you know, you're free not to say so, but one wonders when I do investigations, and I happen to be a very public, I broadcast a lot, and I talk about my current investigations, and sometimes I'll write an article, you know, a preliminary article about my investigations and stuff, and then people will write to me with clues that they have.
You know, or they'll give, they'll actually contact me with real stories.
So did you have any sort of hidden witnesses that came forward to give you any clues or help you in your research in any way?
Yeah, there were a few people that I had contacted before I started the book to feel them out about what they thought for their input on, but I actually had these sources for the Kennedy, the first Kennedy book.
I had talked to them and I thought, well, what do you think?
Is this going to be a good way to good path to go down?
Is there more to the story here?
And I think when you look, when you start looking at it, researching a book, You don't really know where it's going to go, like what paths it's going to take.
And you have to be open to new conclusions from when you started the book.
So things that you might think are one thing end up being something else.
And that's kind of where books often go.
And yeah, one thing I was thinking about when you talked about JFK looking into his father's assassination that occurred to me.
That was an obsession with him pretty early on from high school.
His high school girlfriend, Meg Asione, she said he talked about it all the time that he was questioning the Warren Commission report.
So he did his homework about this for a long time.
He was invested in looking for the truth.
And then it makes sense, like you said, he had the platform then.
To use that to bring the truth to the public.
In fact, Oliver Stone mentioned this in a recent interview.
He was going to hire Wayne Madsen to do the investigation in the next issue of George.
That's been confirmed by Oliver Stone.
He was going to help him with the research.
Right.
He also traveled in Hollywood circles, as you may know.
And, you know, There are reasons to believe that, you know, certain of the people in Hollywood, you know, when you're in that milieu, I worked in Hollywood for 20 years, so I have some familiarity with this and was also in the entertainment community on my own, but You learn things and you learn that you can be targeted.
And of course, they were a big, huge media target, right?
That was a part of an issue between him and Carolyn that was talked about a lot.
She couldn't handle it.
or didn't like the media attention that was just non-stop, understandably, and so on.
So, being a celebrity has its own baggage that does involve danger, and his mother was often quite concerned about danger for her son.
As he was growing up, as you may know, and so growing up with a background like that, one of the things he did was he I think he was quite sort of skinny and.
You know, not sort of built up when he was really young and then he built up his body and he got very strong, right?
So it seems that he was getting advice from someone who was saying, you know, and maybe learning.
These are things that we don't hear a lot about, but learning things like maybe, you know, tai chi or karate or whatever kind of self-defense One would have said these were a no-brainer.
You have a mother who's very concerned for your welfare.
You're being constantly sort of protected by, at least initially for his first very young years.
I think up until when he turned 12 or whatever the age was.
So again, him being learning about that world of being a target and also learning how to disguise himself when he wanted to be free of the press, for example.
So all of these things have to do with a certain way of thinking, right?
I'm just throwing all of this out there because I was very struck when you told me about how the Navy cordoned off the area and wouldn't let anyone near there.
And how, like you said, they didn't use the local divers.
In other words, every step of the way.
The other thing is when supposedly the bodies were immediately cremated at sea.
And that was actually counter to the Kennedy family Catholic tradition, yeah.
They normally would have put them in the plot, I don't know what you call these things, you know, the Kennedy... Or buried them next to his father in Oregon National Cemetery, where his uncle is, you know, Teddy Kennedy.
It was outrageous that that would happen.
He should have been buried next to his father, yeah.
And so that seemed very, that was one of the first things I had read online, where someone said, not only that, but Roman Catholics don't cremate, I guess, their bodies normally.
That was a Kennedy family thing, as well as Roman Catholics.
And so, again, you've got something happening that is out of, you know, out of sorts, out of the normal way of procedures surrounding that family.
So, then you've got something to hide with regard to the bodies.
Obviously, you can jump to that conclusion, right?
Oh, yeah.
And I think the point about his mother is interesting, too, because I think once she passed away, Then the idea of her protecting him, having to protect her, that goes away.
He can run for office.
Then he's more afraid to be himself.
And I think even though he mourns her, it's a big turning point in his life where he can kind of be his own man.
A lot like his father too, because when JFK's father had a stroke in the first year of his presidency, it was a big important moment for him because then he couldn't be controlling his son anymore.
He became kind of his own man.
And his father was unable to talk or speak or walk, kind of like an invalid.
And that was a great moment for JFK because he could no longer have to do what his father said and very much freed him from control.
And I think, not that she was controlling, but he felt very close to her.
And I think after she passed away, that he could feel like he could run for office and she wouldn't be as upset about it.
Right.
But again, also growing up with that sort of hanging over your head.
So there is this incredible trajectory that one could trace having to do with, you know, a young man with a mission, some would say a vendetta, you know, to carry on his father's, you know, you know, example, you know, and mission, a mission interrupted to That on the case of his father and wanting to carry through on that and all of that.
So that is another thing he did as a lawyer.
He was also defending the poor.
He also started an organization to defend the poor, as I recall.
This was in another book.
So he was actually doing, you know, I don't want to, whatever you want to call it, that kind of work with a social conscience, if you will, even as incorporating that into his work and so on and so forth.
So that's a really interesting sort of aspect to him.
Have you heard the 107 talks at all?
The ones about him being alive today?
No, 107 is someone who is, he's actually doing videos a lot.
He's interviewed constantly, every week actually.
I've interviewed him once.
Most of the time he, so it sounds like you don't know anything about 107.
Okay, go ahead.
Okay, so you've never heard him even talk, right?
No.
Okay, well it might be interesting after this interview if you check that out.
But nonetheless, he's someone who doesn't go on camera.
He only shows his legs and feet, and he wears these cowboy boots, his signature cowboy boots.
And he is someone who wrote a book called Kid by the Side of the Road that involves The Kennedy legacy, in essence.
The kind of book that you would expect the son of JFK to have written, to be quite honest.
So, there's a lot of evidence, a lot of interesting similarities going on there.
Now, in terms of your book, though, can you talk about The other instances when people tried to block you, because I remember there was a librarian who also wouldn't help you and other blocks along the way, and I was wondering if you could reveal from your point of view, were those people acting afraid of somebody?
Was it a fear or was it they were trying to protect him?
Which, do you know, do you have a thought on that?
I think maybe they're trying to protect them, and I tried contacting this lawyer in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, who saw the explosion, and he had told me that he'd be willing to talk about this, and Then he said, well, give me a week.
I got to finish this court case.
Then I will talk to you about what I saw.
And then I contacted him another week and I said, well, what's up?
You know, he said, you're going to speak to me about your, your, you know, what happened that night because he was fishing that night and you saw the explosion.
And this was written up in the day John died.
He documented it with that author, John Anderson, so I wanted to see if he would talk to me.
And he said that he would, and then he went back on his promise after a week and got spooked or scared or something.
And decided not to talk to me about it.
But what he said was he did see an explosion.
He was fishing that night.
There was a flash of light in the sky, followed by this massive explosion.
And it was right where JFK's plane was coming over Martha's Vineyard.
And that was one of the witnesses.
Another one was this detailed.
The other one was the reporter at Martha's Vineyard.
Where I got resistance from all those different librarians who went and gave me the microfilm to show who was the reporter.
But then I got it finally from the National Archives, the Library of Congress, I should say, that they had it.
And that was when I finally discovered who the person actually was.
So there was some resistance from the witnesses to come forward.
And I mentioned I didn't get that letter from a person in Martha's Vineyard.
She emailed me after it was a coast-to-coast and she said that there are other people that are just scared to talk because they did see the same thing.
It was a clear night.
There was no storms or rain or anything.
It was a good night.
People were out there fishing, walking around, and people saw the explosion.
They heard it and they just didn't want to talk about it.
The area was cordoned off very quickly, very suspiciously.
There was debris everywhere and it just It just didn't make any sense that it, because if the plane went down normally, it would have been like an accordion in one little area, but there were 14 nautical miles of debris.
So it was like a big explosion.
So there's no way it was the way that they said it went down.
Something exploded.
The question that you have is, was he in the plane or not?
That's the other thing to think about.
Was there someone else in the plane?
And that's, you know, a created incident to actually allow him, I mean, to escape, in essence, become, you know, a person, actually a group of people, the three of them, for them to disappear.
on a very sort of engineered and planned situation.
So I know that these people had been seeming to be either threatened or protecting of him and his legacy or whatever it is.
And so in this case, one thing I have had people write to me and say that the people who knew him never bought That he actually died in that plane.
I'm just saying, that's what I was sent.
In other words, that the people in Martha's Vineyard, people that have, you know, knew him maybe being closer to the situation, that was their point of view, that they really didn't believe that he died that way.
And they also knew he was not a negligent pilot, which I think is a huge piece that you brought out in your book, right?
That he was very well trained and that he'd flown that same route at night five other times, correct?
With a flight instructor too, yeah.
And that he also flew it with a, I don't know what you call it, a hood over his head.
Yeah, he did a simulation with a hood over his head.
So he did it in a simulated With a training course, so he did that in the dark.
He knew what he was doing.
He had everything that he needed for doing that flight correctly.
So yeah, he was a great pilot, very meticulous, never took any chances.
In fact, this was how he escaped from the world.
It was like his father's obsession with boating.
He loved being in the air.
Because it got him away from all the stress of his life.
So this was his true love, being out there in the sky, just relaxing.
And it was kind of the thing he loved the most about the world, just being a pilot and just seeing the world from above.
And just that's what he loved.
So he was not in any way reckless.
He was a great pilot.
Okay, yeah, that was great to hear.
So in terms of, you know, I guess I'm trying to find out whether did you talk to other authors who had written books about JFK Jr., like did you try to interview the authors of the books at all, that kind of thing?
My research was Mostly the National Archives NTSB report through my own contacts and it was kind of a way that I approached this was I wanted to see what was on the public record and add to it from what I could find.
And then use my conclusions based off of that.
An NTSB report is interesting because you can compare that to what actually happened that night from the witnesses and from the news reports at the time.
And you can make a lot of conclusions based off of that.
And for example, The NTSB report, that's where the information comes from about his being a good pilot.
The flight instructor information with the hood.
So a lot of it is right in there.
It's public information.
Even the weather reports you can look at.
I went through that, like the local weather reports and newspapers to see what the weather was that night.
And that's kind of how I did the research, just looking at primary sources.
Right, I see that.
And, you know, along those lines, you did an incredible job.
So it sounds like you maybe didn't want to be sort of tainted by other authors, necessarily, their points of view.
You kind of wanted a clear field.
Yeah, I mean, because The other, this was kind of the first book that proposed the idea that he was assassinated.
There are no other books before that talked about this idea.
So, The Day John Died by John Anderson, I think his name is.
It didn't, it never talked about this idea.
There was this one passage where it does talk about an explosion, but never goes more into it or why or anything.
So I felt like an obligation to kind of start from scratch and just make my own conclusions and see where it went.
Right.
All right.
So in terms of the sort of situation we're here in the United States with, right?
Have you followed any of the materials coming out of Q, or the information regarding Q, the Q team, what's called the Q team, the Trump team, any of this?
Because there is this theory, I don't know if you've heard about it, that, you know, John F. Kennedy has a Q, if you see it from the sky, around his grave, and that back in the days of even before John F. Kennedy, that there was a desire to create a sort of group of white hats that would be made up of the military,
ex-military and agency people and people that had found ex-military and agency people and people that had found out that there was basically, I mean, the death of John F. Kennedy was considered a coup in our government by many and still is.
And so that group had to be secret.
They had to communicate secretly.
And I've been in touch with various people associated with that group.
And one of them has told me that they have a certain sign that they'll show when they're even being interviewed by the media.
to let the other team members know that they're one of them and they're Surreptitious, and they use code, and Q uses code, and they use numbers, and all this.
And they use a lot of the, what you might call the Illuminati symbolism, but they use it, they sort of twist it around, or turn it on its head, or whatever they do.
So, but on top of it, I was told that the leader of the Q group was Navy Intelligence.
That that was the group that had stayed loyal to the idea of the Constitution, Yeah, I've heard a lot of this, looked into it a little bit.
It's not in my book, certainly.
I tried to stick to the forensics part of the case and his idea of running for politics and who would want to kill him.
So I didn't really get into it in my book too much.
Right.
The reason I'm bringing it up is that regardless of what happened to JFK Jr., that there is a group of white hats that could be called upon in a situation.
Yeah, it goes back to that, yeah.
By the way, I only have about a minute left and I have to get going.
Yeah, I forgot.
I kind of get wrapped up.
All right.
Well, I want to thank you so much for your time and your patience and thoughtfulness.
It's been my pleasure.
And please do stay in touch with me.
I think you might get a lot of response from this interview because I know that my audience has a lot of interest in that.
And so, you know, do you want to give out an email address where people can reach you?
I know your book's on Amazon.
Yeah, they're on Amazon.
Yeah, I think you could get my personal account.
Would that be okay?
I don't know.
Yes, absolutely, whatever you'd like.
So, it's jpkerner, so the last name, K-O-E-R-N-E-R, jpkerner at yahoo.com.
And then the book and the other Kennedy book is on Amazon.
And yeah, J.P.
Kerner at Yahoo.com.
So that's P as in Paul, is that right?
Philip, but yeah.
Yeah, okay.
Well, in other words, so people understand J.P.
Kerner at Yahoo.com.
Right.
Yahoo.com.
Okay, great.
So people can contact you, and I just finally figured out how to share this.
It stopped interrupting it.
So this was the cover that I'm going to have on the interview, obviously a picture of your book, and then just a picture from People magazine in the background there.
So any other thoughts?
I know you have to go, but any other last-minute thoughts you might like to share with the audience, just in general?
Yeah, I was thinking, like, the last line of my book is interesting, that if JFK Jr.
had got a chance to run for president, that his trajectory would have been probably the election of 2004, when he would have been elected president.
And I think he would have been a great president, because he would have helped our country heal after the terrorist attacks, and would have probably been in New York City during that time.
Maybe even was, you know, he probably was, as people were saying, perhaps he even was there.
But if he got elected president, he would have been the same age as his father was on January 30th of 1961 when he was elected that year.
So it would have been interesting.
Same age as his father would have been.
Right.
So I think he's a kind of a man that should be remembered, respected.
And if he is still alive, I hope he is.
And let's hope he keeps doing great work.
All right.
All right.
Well, thank you very much again.
All right.
Thank you, Carrie.
Yeah, you take care.
Okay.
All right.
Bye bye.
▲
Export Selection