All Episodes
Previous Next
Feb. 2, 2019 - The Unexplained - Howard Hughes
01:06:44
Edition 381 - Dave O'Brien

Canadian Researcher Dave O'Brien returns and says he has new information on the JFK assassination in 1963...

| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Warning.
The following program contains some descriptions of a graphic nature.
Listener discretion is advised.
Across the UK, across continental North America and around the world on the internet, by webcast and by podcast, my name is Howard Hughes and this is The Return of the Unexplained.
And as I look out from where I'm recording this now, I can see a carpet of snow here.
Things have turned colder in London Town, but nothing compared with places like Chicago, where I understand it's been incredibly cold.
I think for some people, colder than in living memory, but extremely cold.
And I turned on WGN radio from Chicago last night on the internet and heard that things are improving there slowly.
And they're saying that it is going to be the biggest turnaround in temperature, the fastest and biggest turnaround in temperature that people have experienced since records began, which is an astonishing thing and just reflects what is happening to the weather, I think.
But my thoughts are with you in Canada.
I know you're used to this kind of thing, but maybe not like this.
We're all living in interesting times, aren't we?
Some things to say about the website.
You know, we had the relaunch recently, and it has not been without problems, we have to say.
There are some podcast aggregators and some internet radios that still don't have the show.
We have been trying really hard.
Adam has been sending communications to them.
I've been contacting them, in some cases phoning them up and asking them to please include the show, especially the companies that run internet radios like Logitech.
As far as I'm aware, the show is still not back on Logitech squeezebox devices and those sorts of things.
It is back.
It returned last night to Pure Radios in the UK and around the world, so that's good news.
We were in touch with them.
I know that in terms of podcast aggregators, we are back and have been back for a while on iTunes.
I think we're back on things like Stitcher.
We're available on Spotify.
I'm not sure if we've returned to Podbean or Pocket Cast yet.
But Adam is the person who's working on all of this.
I have to say that I know broadcasting and sound technology.
That's my thing.
And, you know, how to do shows.
But Adam is the person who knows about websites and all of this stuff.
So I'm relying on him and I know that he's looking into all of this.
But please, if you have a problem or you know somebody who is having a problem accessing the show, please go to the website and there is a section there in the contact section to contact Adam Cornwell, the webmaster, and let him know about this.
And you can always get in touch with me.
The address on the website for me is mail at the unexplained.tv.
That's mail at theunexplained.tv.
And that will always get through to me.
And, you know, I love to see your emails and I do see them all.
Thank you very much for them.
Recent emailers include Janet in Sydney.
Janet, nice to hear from you.
Please look after yourself and your mum.
Funding suggestion from Ian Anderson.
Thank you for that, Ian.
Thank you to Ian, Lee, and Steve for your emails.
Chris in Atlanta, Georgia, recommends that we talk about the Kentucky Goblins.
I thought they were a basketball team.
Only kidding.
I must find out about them.
Great name, Kentucky Goblins.
And Matt.
Matt in the UK asked me to give him a shout out.
Matt, thank you very much for listening to the show and nice to hear from you, Matt.
Got a story just before we get into the guest this time from Phil.
Phil says that this was just before Christmas.
He was looking for a documentary on his on-demand facility about John Lennon and Yoko Ono.
And as he was looking, Alexa, his Alexa box, sang a line from a song out of nowhere.
And the song was a line from, anyway, A Day in the Life by the Beatles.
It was, I read the news today, oh boy, sung by John Lennon.
I checked the date that this happened.
Strange coincidence, it was December the 8th.
That date, of course, in 1980 was the fateful day that John Winston Lennon was shot dead outside the Dakota building in New York by Mark David Chapman.
And the world was never quite the same again.
We lost someone great.
Phil says, I swear that coincidence or whatever it was happened.
What an amazing story, Phil.
Thank you for that.
If you have a story like that, would love to know it.
So we've dealt with problems on the website.
Remember, if you want to get in touch with me, then you can go to the website and it's mail at theunexplained.tv to email me.
The website address is theunexplained.tv.
Theunexplained.tv.
And we'd love to know your thoughts about the new website.
It is still bedding in, but I think it's got a lot of functionality the previous website didn't have, which is a good thing.
Okay, the guest on this edition is a return visit to Mississauga, Canada, and Dave O'Brien, a man who's extensively for many years researched the killing of John Fitzgerald Kennedy in Dallas, Texas in November 1963.
He says that he's got some new information about this.
Now, I know it's always a controversial topic, and I know that I will get email from people saying they simply don't agree with him.
I do put, and I will put in the conversation points to him that people have made about his research.
I find what he has to say very interesting, and I always find Dave a very good guest, but my view of it is not nearly as important as your view of it.
Let me know what you think about this when you've heard Dave O'Brien in Canada.
So I think we've covered all the bases there.
Please stay warm if you want, you know, you're in one of the cold parts of the world.
It is some, it's certainly a cold period we're going through at the moment.
So, you know, you've just got to keep the heating turned on and hope that it passes quickly if, like me, you don't like this kind of thing.
And if you get in touch, if you email, last thing to say, please tell me who you are, where you are, and how you use the show.
I'd love to hear that information.
Believe me, I do see all of your emails as they come in, and if they require a response, they get one.
All right, let's cross to Mississauga, Canada now to Dave O'Brien, author of Through the Oswald Window with what he says is new information about the assassination of JFK in 1963.
Dave, thank you for coming back on.
My pleasure, Howard.
Good to be with you and your audience again.
Well, we're in the depths of winter here in London, and you were telling me just before we started recording this that just remind me, what temperature is it in Mississauga, Canada now?
Minus 14 and very snowy.
How do you listen?
People over here, because we're spoiled and molly-coddled in the UK, I think, they complain when there's a bit of a small freeze and they say, oh, I can't get the car out of the drive.
the public transportation doesn't work.
You guys are all geared up for it, aren't you?
Snow tires and all that stuff.
Oh, we've got it all, but on a day like today, when it's so much, it still causes havoc because the cleaning, the trucks, they just can't keep up with it, and so it makes for a very slow commute wherever you're going.
Well, I think we're in for a little more of this, and then here in the northern hemisphere, we're back into springtime, which for me is good news.
Okay, enough talk about the weather now.
You and I have talked on radio about your book, both editions, the first edition and the revised edition, Through the Oswald Window, which starts from the premise of analyzing the events of November 1963 from that window of a Texas book depository.
And that has been a very successful book for you.
I've read some reviews of it online, and we've had fascinating conversations about it.
But it's been updated since then, and there are other aspects of this to talk about.
So as we speak now, just give me a little snapshot of where you are since we last spoke.
Well, as the last year, last November 22nd, obviously, was the 55th anniversary of the president's assassination.
And just prior to that, I was looking through my PowerPoint presentation to cut back on my seminars a little bit.
And I spotted something in the Supruder film that I hadn't noticed before.
And so I believe I've uncovered new information that would suggest that the kill shot that obviously hit President Kennedy could not have come from the sixth-floor southeast corner window of the Texas School Book Depository Building, as concluded by the Warren Commission.
And if that's correct, then there were at least two gunmen and therefore a conspiracy to kill the president.
Which, look, to be fair, is not new.
Other people have said this.
But the way that you're saying this, based on the famous Sapruda film, which is the only color film, as far as we know, of the event and has been much debated and much poured over over the years, you say that you've seen something in it that even though other people have pawed over that for decades, nobody else has.
Well, I know it sounds bizarre, but in essence, that's what's happened.
And I think that to be more accurate, I think it's what we're not seeing in the Sapruder film that we should be seeing if the shot from the rear is correct, as concluded by the Commission.
So here's what I mean.
When you look at frame 312 of the Sapruder film, it's a pretty direct shot.
And what it shows is President Kennedy slumping forward and to the left in the car.
His hands are at his throat.
He's reacting to a shot that's hit him in the upper back just a second or so earlier.
And Mrs. Kennedy, here's the key part, Howard, Mrs. Kennedy is at her husband's front, directly in front of his head, trying to render aid.
She has recognized that something is wrong, and she's trying to help her husband.
And what my point is, in looking at the Zapruder film, is that if the shot came from behind, as concluded by the Commission, then I'm wondering why is it that President Kennedy's forehead didn't slam forward the three inches or so necessary to strike Mrs. Kennedy at her right cheekbone and therefore cause her either to be startled or perhaps even a minor injury.
We know that that didn't happen, Howard, because we see as the film goes on, Mrs. Kennedy jumps onto the rear of the car and picks up a piece of her husband's skull.
My point of contention here is that that should never have happened if the shot came from behind, because Mr. Kennedy's head would have been moved forward to collide with Mrs. Kennedy's head.
And if I may impose upon your audience just for a second, we'll do a quick demonstration of what is Newton's second law of motion.
And it's very simple.
So if your audience takes their hand and gently taps the back of their head, very gently, they will determine and be able to see that it doesn't take much force to move their head forward about an inch or so.
And yet in this instance, we have a high-velocity bullet traveling in excess of the speed of sound, striking the president in the rear of the skull, and it doesn't move the president's head forward any more than what your audience just did with a gentle tap to the head.
This makes no sense to me, given the Newton's second law of motion.
The president's head should have advanced forward, struck Mrs. Kennedy in the head, and therefore everything would have changed versus what we now see in this British film.
Okay, now, you probably have seen some of the reviews of the book, the revised version of the book, and you may well have seen one that I saw before I started recording this, which purports to come from somebody who has a lot of technical knowledge, had experience of the Texas book depository in the 80s, and apparently has studied this in great detail.
And I don't know whether you're aware of this particular review.
Maybe you haven't looked at it, Dave.
And this is, we have to say all of this is hotly contested territory.
Anybody who stands up and says something about this case is always going to be, you know, is always going to be challenged and criticized.
But this person says the author states that it's physically impossible if the shots strike from the rear to cause the backward movement of JFK when shot.
The author, however, ignores the far more violent forward movement of some 2.5 inches in less than an 18th of a second between Zapruder frame 312 and 313.
The author mentions Newton laws, which he just did, but seems to think it is not applicable to that 2.5-inch forward movement.
What do you say?
Well, I'm kind of on the same page with him, but I don't see a 2.5-inch movement forward.
I see about an inch at most between 312 and frame 313.
And then I think what he's also getting at is that the rearward motion on the president was caused by a neuromuscular reaction, which is just absurd when you look into it.
Because what we're asked to believe is that the head moved, let's give him his due.
Let's say the Head did move forward two inches or thereabouts.
Well, the rearward backward movement of the president was so violent and so fast, and also it was about 12 times the distance.
And the only reason the backward movement was stopped was because of the uprest of the seat behind President Kennedy.
So I dismiss the neuromuscular reaction theory wholeheartedly.
I do admit to there being a frontal movement, but it wasn't violent.
And if it was as much as that person indicates, then Mrs. Kennedy would have been hit by the president's head.
And then that would have changed everything.
No, this is a very specific critique.
And I really don't want to, I don't think there's any point in going through all of it bit by bit because we don't have the time.
And everything that is said can be counterpointed, I would say.
One of the things it says, the author states on page 167, it needs to be noted that neither Mr. or Mrs. Connolly, Governor Connolly, reported being showered by anything more than a slight mist after the shot to the head.
Any bone or brain matter of substance or weight traveled slightly left and to the rear of the automobile.
This is completely at odds, says this person, with what Mrs. Connolly stated herself.
She felt like they had been covered by buckshot, that they'd been covered in blood and brain matter.
She describes the scene as hell.
I mean, these are not, I just want to warn my listener, these are not pleasant things to discuss, as you're probably hearing already.
So if you are squeamish in that way, then maybe you don't want to hear this.
But, you know, it's important historical stuff.
What do you say about that?
Well, there was a spray of brain matter and watered down blood and that kind of stuff.
So there's no question that they were left wet by that experience.
There was enough of it that did that.
But any explosive shot to a head will cause movement of blood and brain tissue in particular, because it's slight material, in all directions.
But I think what we're dealing with here that is very persuasive is not mist or brain matter or blood.
It's flying debris from his skull, bone fragments.
So for instance, Mrs. Kennedy jumped onto the rear of the car and picked up a piece of her husband's head.
Not brain, not blood, not anything else.
It was a skull bone.
And then also we have what we call the Bill Harper discovery.
He found a 2.5 centimeter piece of skull from the president on the grass in Daly Plaza.
Now, given that we know where the president's car was at the fatal headshot 313 and knowing where Bill Harper was on the grass and knowing where he spotted the bone fragment, we know that that bone fragment flew back about 30 feet after the fatal headshot.
So we're talking about sizable and weighty objects here and what happened to them as a result of the headshot.
Not just a mist.
There would have been a mist of everything gone everywhere, but not bone fragments.
The bone fragments tell us that the shot had to have come from the right front of the car in order to cause anything of weighty substance to fly back and to the right of the limousine.
We dealt with this on the radio show, I know, at the end of last year, but a lot of people will not have heard that.
And it's worth just going back here.
There was a theory that I heard that it was possible that a Secret Service person traveling with a particular kind of loaded weapon in front, I think it was, or perhaps behind the president, could have somehow got into a situation where that weapon in the panic that followed the events there had actually discharged and that had been the bullet that I believe had caused the throat injury.
Yeah, I don't buy that either because for a number of reasons.
One, there is no throat injury.
The shot that struck the president from the rear, the non-fatal shot, Howard, occurred and struck him at five and three-quarter inches below the collarline and slightly to the right of the spinal column.
Yet the Warren Commission moved the bullet entry wound up five and three quarter inches after the autopsy so that it could say that the bullet went on through Kennedy and went on to destroy Governor Conley.
And so that shot just has now been disproven as completely impossible.
There's no way.
There was no neck wound, back neck wound on the president.
There was a front throat wound on the president, but there's no indication that it was a bullet wound of exit or entry at this point because Dr. Malcolm Perry obliterated that wound when he performed a tracheotomy incision to try to restore the president's breathing.
So we'll never know the nature of the front throat wound, but in fact, we do know that there was not a rear neck wound on the president at all.
So what do you believe then, as we look at this in January 2019, you have added to the study of this tragic event?
Yes, I believe that there were a total of three assassins in Daley Plaza that day, none of which were Lee Harvey Oswald.
I believe there was a gunman on the sixth floor southeast corner window of the Texas Book Depository building.
And Oswald's involvement in the assassination was to ready that window for the actual assassin.
He didn't realize that he was going to be set up as the lone assassin after he set the sniper's nest up.
I believe there was a gunman also at the Dell Tex Records building, which was on Houston and Elm Street, just across the street from the book depository building.
And of course, I believe there was a gunman who fired the fatal headshot positioned behind a picket fence at the west end of the grassy knoll.
So you've got a triangulation of crossfire, three shooters, four shots fired that day.
Now, this particular review, and I promise not to refer to it too much now because I think we have to be moving on from this, but I'll quote from it again.
The author's contention that there is an assassin in the Daltex building window fire escape is pure conjecture.
Floor two was occupied by many workers and nobody saw a gunman or thought a shot came from within that building, not on any floor at that time.
Pure conjecture?
Absolutely not.
I mean, I'm hardly the only researcher that claims that a shot came from the Daltex Records building, for sure.
And what I was able to do when I went to Daly Plaza on a few occasions is that I was able to establish that the shot that struck President Kennedy in the back that we just talked about could not have come from the sixth floor window of the book depository building because given the known location of the president's car at the time of the first shot, there was a large oak tree that blocked the view of the sniper from the sixth floor window.
And so he couldn't have fired that shot.
It was too early.
The president hadn't emerged from behind the foliage yet.
But a shot from the second or third floor, one or the other, of the Daltex Records Building makes sense because it's still to the right and to the rear and up, up a bit.
But it was low enough that the oak tree did not obscure it in any way.
And so therefore, there was a clear shot from that location that I believe could have caused the wound to the president's back below the collarline.
And that's the only other location I can see in Daly Plaza that is feasible given that scenario.
And of course, Steve, the oak tree part of this is also disputed, as I've been reading today.
So it's an absolute minefield.
Let me ask you, because it is so contentious and controversial and everybody's got two cents to put in, what's it like to be you in this position?
You must have been getting all kinds of feedback from people.
Oh, yes.
And no matter what you write or what you say about this, there's critics and you have to have a thick skin.
And it borders on absolutely insanity at times.
One of the latest things going around, for instance, was that Jackie shot him and she had a small revolver stuffed into this little animal that she had with her.
And when she reached up to the president, as you see her in frame 312, she had a gun there and discharged it and it went up through his skull and killed him.
And that's why the head moved back.
And so, I mean, this is obviously absurd and ridiculous, but that's what we're dealing with as researchers to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
It's 56 years this year, we know that.
We've just had the 55th anniversary back last November, and you and I talked on radio around that time.
Because of the amount of contention and because some of the arguments seem to go round and round and round, do you think we will ever reach a point, Dave, where we have to put this to one side and just for our own sanity's sake, lay it to bed and put it into history and maybe bring it out again from time to time and analyze the facts, but not worry it in this way?
Because in many ways, we don't seem to be getting anywhere, or do we?
Well, I mean, the progress is slow for sure.
But there is some hope because I don't know if you're aware of this.
I'm sure you're aware of this.
It's been reported in the UK papers, but a group of 60 distinguished Americans, including the Kennedy family and King family members, have called for what they call a truth and reconciliation committee to look into the assassinations of not only John Kennedy,
but RFK, Martin Luther King, and Malcolm X, citing that those four assassinations in the 1960s changed history profoundly, and that all four can be demonstrated to have been very flawed in the investigations by local police, the FBI, and whoever else looked into them.
And so Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Martin Luther King's sons, they are calling for the government, the Department of Justice, to reinvestigate these four assassinations.
And so the question becomes, will this happen?
And number two, the methodology involved, because I don't know if we can trust a congressional inquiry, given what's going on with Trump now and Russia and all that kind of stuff.
And I don't think that a special counsel like Robert Mueller can be appointed to look into these assassinations.
But there is now an official calling by very important people to reopen this.
And this may be our final shot, Howard.
And if it doesn't work, then I think you may be right.
I think time will move on and we should just move away from it.
And yet, as we talk about these things, and as you mentioned those cases, Martin Luther King, Robert Kennedy, and of course JFK himself, we're minded to think back to an era where these things happened in a way that they don't happen certainly so much today.
You know, the way to stop somebody who you vehemently, violently disagree with is not seen to be a violent way.
It's more the ballot box than the gun these days.
So we're looking back on an era where something happened, some kind of blip in people's thinking, behavior, some kind of process behind the scenes, something was going on.
And it's almost worth analyzing what was happening in the 1960s.
We know it was a great maelstrom of change.
We know the Vietnam War was happening then.
We know that there was a lot of discontent involving many people, students and minorities and others who had been done down or not given their due in various ways.
So there was a boiling point happening there.
But this was an era nothing like the era we have today in many ways.
For sure.
And I think this is an example of where time has helped us.
For instance, we now know that the FBI and the CIA were not truthful to the Warren Commission in its investigation.
And the FBI was the chief investigative arm of the Warren Commission.
And so that's very troubling.
And then we also know that the FBI really did not like Martin Luther King whatsoever.
And now there's information that suggests that they may have had an involvement in certainly the cover-up of what happened to Dr. King.
And of course, they didn't like Malcolm X because he was a more volatile version of Dr. King.
And Bobby, of course, he was heated by the CIA and organized crime.
And so what we have now is an interconnection of government agencies that have, it seems to have worked together in some way, at least for the cover-up part of these four assassinations.
And the results have been staggering because of it.
When you consider that after JFK, we have three successive U.S. presidential elections that were determined by bullets as much as ballots.
And so the head gets dizzy trying to calculate how might history be different today if those assassinations had not occurred.
And it's really profound.
And I think that's part of what we're going to, why we have to continue to look into this and not let it go until we get some answers.
Of course, one of the most problematic things is the very true and inescapable physical fact that the people who are involved in these incidents, and particularly JFK, you know, most of them are no longer with us because of the passage of time.
So it's going to be even more difficult than it might have been had we tried to do this 35 years ago.
For sure.
Now, one of the nice things about this panel of 60 people is that many of the prominent people who are still alive are behind this movement.
And the newest generation of Kennedys and Kings and the Malcolm X family are now calling for a reinvestigation.
And so there's optimism, optimism in the air.
It's just a matter of how they go forward with this if they do, because I don't think we can trust the FBI or the CIA to cooperate.
And in fact, we know that's the case because Robert Blakey, who was the chief counsel of the House Select Committee on Assassinations, he has signed this petition.
And he said that he presently has a lawsuit against the CIA because when he was running the House Select Committee on Assassinations, he said the CIA absolutely would not cooperate and release any files to that committee, even though they were subpoenaed to do so.
And so there's an example of the blockade that's up against attempts to investigate this, even by an official government body, which is why we have to tread carefully as to how we might go forward with this.
Do you think of the way that we've had to get to this era where people are much less trusting of officialdom and politicians, their governments and the people who may be behind them, to be able to do this?
Because I can remember back to I was a child in the 70s, and it seems to me that we were a much more trusting, a much more accepting society than we are now.
Absolutely, Howard.
And of course, Watergate comes to mind because Watergate showed us that the government at the highest levels can lie and cheat and do criminal activities and then try to cover it up.
And since Watergate, for sure, then we've had a demise, of course, in the trust in the government.
And this has grown today.
We all look at everything now with a skeptical eye.
But one of the problems to counter that, Howard, is that Dr. Searle Weck told me this in Dallas last November.
He said that the longer this goes on and the farther younger people are removed from the JFK assassination, to give you that example, the less interest they are in it and the more they are inclined to just accept the official government version, which is the Warren Commission.
And so time is both an enemy and hopefully an ally now that this panel has spoken up.
But opinion polls, which are done from time to time, always show that a lot of people don't buy the official explanation.
Now, that's a bold statement, and it's a one-stop statement.
You know, what they do buy, well, they probably buy any one of 20, 30 different versions.
But on one level, people simply do not accept, it seems, what they have been told.
And I don't know how that, and you're looking at it from Canada, and I'm looking at it from London.
So, you know, we can't know as well as somebody who was born and bred, say, in Dallas, Texas, but what that does to your faith in your nation in some respects.
I mean, we know that America is indeed a great power and a great nation and has done many great things in the world.
But events like this must gnaw away at people on some level, I would have thought, unless I'm completely wrong.
No, I don't think you're wrong at all.
And I think that the latest poll that I saw was 76% of Americans believe that Oswald did not act alone.
And so they have this opinion.
And yet it hasn't really translated to pressure on the government to figure out what did happen then.
And so I think that's where the passage of time comes in.
But then now we're in this era with Trump and a lot of controversy and things going on that revitalizes the kind of skepticism that you're talking about.
And whether this translates to this investigation happening, who knows?
But I do know, of course, that Donald Trump did not release all the files last year.
And in fact, took about 800 files and said that they will remain classified until 2021.
And so the answer becomes why?
Like after all the- Perhaps there's nothing sinister in that.
Maybe it's just to protect locations and individuals.
Well, yes, but there's no living people that could be harmed by it.
I mean, Clint Hill is alive still, the Secret Service agent.
James Lavelle, who was handcuffed to Oswald when he was shot, he's still alive.
Dr. Robert McClelland, Parkland doctor, chief of neurosurgery, is still alive.
And so these people can't be harmed by the truth coming out.
And as for the argument of government secrets and methodologies And operations coming to light, I have to think that they have changed after 50 years, and that's no longer an issue.
I have to tell you that the part of the entire JFK story that intrigues me the most and chills me the most is not perhaps so much the events themselves, which are horrific and horrible and should never ever be repeated, we hope, in our lifetime or anybody's lifetimes.
But what chills me the most are the events afterwards.
The autopsy, the secrecy around that, the number of people in what we call the post-mortem room, where this is being done with all of these people, Secret Service and others, making sure that they have their representation.
But facts that we know, like there were hundreds, I think, of color photographs taken of the wounds, of the injuries to JFK, and subsequently they all disappeared or were disappeared, and nobody seemingly knows where they are.
They may tell us a story, but the whole process of how that was done and how the president's body was got out of Dallas very, very quickly, in great haste, and all of that was done, you know, so much of it is by today's standards, I don't think there are things that could happen today, but it was an era where we didn't have the media, we didn't have social media, anything like that.
So those sorts of things can happen.
And it makes me think this, and I wonder if when you've been in Dallas, maybe last November, you got any sense of this, that perhaps some of the people who may have some answers or some information or some interest about all of this would be, if not surviving members, if there are any, of the Dallas Police Department, but perhaps the relatives of those people.
Yeah, I was at a conference in which some people spoke that were the sons or daughters and that kind of thing of people that were prominent with the assassination.
There was one chap there who is still alive.
His name is Jim Jenkins.
He was a lab technician.
He was president at the autopsy.
And he was the last person that we know of that handled the president's brain when it was removed and put into a formulin solution.
And what normally happens there is the brain just sits in a formulin solution for a couple of weeks.
It hardens and then it's cut into very small slices and examined.
And that would have told us bullet trajectory, fragment trajectory, all kinds of stuff.
And that brain went missing.
And so that's part of what you were talking about with the autopsy.
But when we look at the autopsy right from moment one, it is a joke.
The fact that Dr. Earl Rose in Dallas was not allowed to do a forensic examination of the body.
And instead, the body was taken to the Bethesda Naval Hospital in Maryland, where three unqualified autopsy surgeons performed the autopsy, none of whom had ever done an autopsy involving death by gunfire.
This is absolutely ridiculous.
And I think that had Oswald lived to stand trial, this would have been under a microscope.
Skilled defense attorneys would have torn things like this apart, the very points that you raise, Howard.
And I think we'd have a very different story today on the assassination of the president.
But when two things happened, Oswald was assassinated, and then Lyndon Johnson imposed a 75-year ban on all classified materials for release until 2038.
And so the Warren Commission was able to go about its business under that security blanket of knowing that nobody will know the truth for 75 years.
And so that's why we have such a flawed investigation into the assassination of the president.
And fortunately for us, the Freedom of Information Act came to be in 1967 and things started to come out that weren't supposed to come out until 2038 that has changed everything.
And that's what we're still looking to do is get more information because it changes everything.
It changes our perspective.
It changes the truth of what we've been told.
And it makes you wonder why LBJ decided to put a 75-year lid on all of this.
You know, a charitable explanation of this would be that it would be perhaps to quell the pain of this terrible, terrible event somehow, you know, to stop it being constantly raked over, which of course it hasn't done.
It's had the opposite effect.
Exactly.
I don't think, I mean, there's lots of books, including Roger Stone's latest book that says LBJ was involved in the assassination.
But I don't buy that.
But I think he was involved in the cover-up, obviously.
He's the one that created not only the 75-year ban, but he's the one that assembled, personally assembled the seven Warren Commission members.
And it's kind of bizarre because you've got, for instance, Alan Dulles on the Warren Commission, who was fired by Kennedy as CIA director.
And so why was he on the committee?
We believe it's because Dulles could then review all documents from the CIA files and determine exactly what the commission would see and what they wouldn't see.
And so the whitewash was in effect very early.
And I think it was partly because of what you said, Howard, just to kind of calm the waters.
But I also think that it was a very deliberate attempt to hold the truth, knowing that 75 years from now, if it came out, it really wouldn't matter.
And it does astonish one, as we would say here, to consider the fact that there were things that the Warren Commission did not consider or could not consider, and there were people whose testimony was not heard or seen there.
With the benefit of 2020 hindsight, looking at it from this society we're in now, that just seems to be more than astonishing.
It really is.
Can I give you one example that's alarming?
There was an officer, Bobby Hargis, a motorcycle cop.
He was riding at the left rear bumper of the president's car at the time of the fatal headshot.
And he was hit so strong by a spray of the president's blood and brain tissue that it fogged his sunglasses and he nearly lost balance on his motorcycle.
Now, the position of Officer Hargis at the left rear bumper of the car told him that the shot came from the right front of the vehicle.
So he dismounted from His bike and he raced up to the grassy knoll, but by the time he got there, he saw nothing.
So, this is a heck of a story to tell.
And yet, the Warren Commission, in its 888-page summary edition, doesn't mention the name Bobby Hargis or his testimony.
Instead, it's buried, I believe, in volume 18 of the 26 supplemental volumes of the Warren Commission.
And so, this was all very artfully put together.
The summary edition was mass printed, and the supplemental editions were very, were hardly ever printed.
And so the public read the summary edition, never heard of people like Bobby Hargis or Billy Newman and his wife and the two kids that he took to the ground because he said the shot came from behind him, which was the grassy knoll.
And so you're right.
The Warren Commission just refused to certainly interview people who suggested a gunman at a location other than the book depository building.
They were certainly willing to talk to everyone who said, oh, yeah, I heard shots come from the book depository.
And there are staggering little pepperings of information, like the smell at ground level of a discharged firearm, of cordite, whatever.
That is something that was not considered at the time, and yet seems to be so material.
If you smell that down at ground level, how could you, if all the shots were fired from the Texas Book Depository, which is well, well, well above street level and some way away, you'd never smell that, I don't think, unless the wind was a hurricane blowing in specifically your direction.
That's exactly right.
And, you know, there were more than 20 police officers, trained police officers, who felt that a shot came from the grassy knoll area, some of whom said that they smelled gunpowder in the air, just as you're inferring.
And some of them said that there was a flash of light or a puff of smoke that arose from behind a tree.
And two other civilian witnesses, Ed Holland and Max Holland, I'm sorry, and Ed Hoffman, they also looked over and saw a puff of smoke and a flash of light come from that location.
And this happens to be exactly where Lee Bowers was in the railroad tower behind the grassy knoll, and he saw two men standing there, and they disappeared immediately after the shots were fired.
So there's all kinds of witnesses, as you infer, that point to a gunman specifically and very precisely at a location to the grassy knoll.
And these people simply are either ignored by the Warren Commission or heard by the Warren Commission or FBI, but completely discredited as mistaken due to the, quote, trauma of the moment, unquote.
And then there is the whole debate about the fact that you may be surprised at who was in Dallas that day, names that you would never expect, or you would be, you'd raise your eyebrows about that.
Yes, you're talking about E. Howard Hunt, yes, sure, has admitted that he was in Dallas, although he denies that he was one of the three tramps arrested by Dallas police afterward.
Yet he gives no details as to what he was doing and if he was, in fact, in Daley Plaza.
Richard Nixon was in town for a Pepsi bottling convention.
Clint Murchison, H.L. Hunt, they had a meeting of some sort going on at Clint Murchison's ranch in and around the assassination time.
A lot of people think that big oil and big southern business was behind the assassination.
So there are, you're right.
There's a lot of people.
Frank Sturgis, another CIA operative, Hunt and Sturgis, you may know them because they were two of the Watergate burglars that were arrested.
Both have said that they were in Daly Plaza at the time of the assassination, but deny they had anything to do with it.
That's kind of suspicious to me.
And then there's Lee Harvey Oswald, a very unusual person who called himself a Patsy.
We're never going to fully know his story, although history suggests that this man was not the lone gunman.
I think so many people, as those polls have shown, feel that way.
But he's not here to tell us a story, but the woman that he married is.
Yes, Marina Porter has changed her story over the years, and so that's kind of a problem.
But we think that she cooperated and indicted her husband about the JFK's murder in the beginning because she was threatened with deportation and what have you.
And so she was just trying to cooperate.
But over the years, her and her daughters, by the way, are very vocal that they don't believe that her husband shot President Kennedy or their father.
And this is one area where in my book, I disagree with a lot of my fellow researchers.
I don't think Oswald was an innocent Patsy.
I think that he was involved in the assassination.
I think he was there to set up that sniper's nest, but he didn't know that his rifle was going to be brought into the book depository building and left to incriminate him, along with three pre-fired shell casings that were left at the scene that could be matched to the rifle.
And I think that Oswald panicked when he was in the second floor lunchroom, left the building, and realized at that point that he was in trouble.
It's certainly a case that you could put, isn't it, that this man perhaps was involved on some level, thought that he was part of a jigsaw, but had no idea until the events unfolded that actually the pivot of the entire thing and the focus of the entire thing was him.
Yeah, you know what?
It occurred to me one day that it makes no sense that Oswald could have had no knowledge of this and was just set up because he was an employee of the book depository building.
It makes much more sense that his fellow conspirators, knowing that this was his role, could then tie him as the lone assassin Of President Kennedy because he was one of the conspirators.
He was involved.
That makes a lot more sense to me as doable than him being a complete stranger and unknowing of anything that was going on with the president just outside the building.
Makes no sense at all.
So I think that's why he was part of the conspiracy.
He was just framed as the lone assassin.
And if there was a conspiracy of that kind, then of course the people behind that conspiracy could not let Lee Harvey Oswald live, hence the appearance of a bit of a Walter Mitty character, but he was important in this story too, Jack Ruby.
Exactly.
And Jack Ruby, by the way, we now know, has mob connections.
And so he didn't act out as an anguished civilian.
And he said he wanted to not have Mrs. Kennedy have to return to Dallas for a trial.
But in the newspapers that followed in the day and a half after the assassination, it was made clear that Mrs. Kennedy would never have to return for trial, that she could just submit a video deposition, and that was fine.
And so his excuse that he at least started out with is invalid completely.
And so now we can trace Jack Ruby to the mob and to specific mob figures who were also connected to the CIA and rebel elements of the CIA, namely E. Howard Hunt and Frank Sturgis.
And then there's a character still, another character named David Ferry, who is known both to Ruby and to Oswald.
And that is the connection of Oswald to both the CIA and to the mob.
And so we've got this little web.
And one of the new things that I have in my book is a chart that shows the connections between Oswald at the center.
And it fans out to show his connections to both the CIA and the mob.
And that also involves Jack Ruby.
So when we connect the dots now, we have a very sinister alliance that was involved in the assassination.
And you're right.
When Oswald wasn't killed by Officer Tippett, then that's what necessitated Ruby to come in.
And because he's the one that had police connections and could just walk right in because he knew 80% of the police officers in the Dallas department.
And that's exactly what he did.
So you think the plan was that he was the man who was the Patsy for all of this?
He is almost allowed to get away from the scene because if there had been a real tight security lockdown, he may not have got away so easily.
But the plan was always that he would be found somewhere, desperado on the run, and would be taken out at that stage.
So that that is a neat ending of the story.
Yes, and that's why I think a lot of people have not been able to explain.
If Oswald was innocent and knew nothing, then why did he go to his rooming house?
Why did he pick up a revolver?
And why did he run away in a frightened manner?
And why did he get into a confrontation with Officer Tippett?
And there are mixed witnesses.
Did he shoot him?
Did he not shoot him?
I believe Oswald did shoot Officer Tippett, although there is some evidence that suggests he didn't, or at least had somebody else involved with him in doing it.
And yet those are the signs of a guilty person.
And then when he was arrested in the Dallas theater, he said, oh, it's all over now.
And he pulled his gun at a police officer.
Well, an innocent man doesn't do that.
And so I think that Oswald realized that he was, I don't know if he realized that he was being set up as the lone guy, but I think it was pretty clear to him that there were people that didn't want him still living.
Those words, it's all over now, were they the actual words that were said?
That's what you believe to be the actual words he said.
Because it's all over now is a very pointed thing to say, isn't it?
It is.
And according to Officer McDonald, who made the arrest, and the officer whom Oswald tried to point his gun at, that's what he said.
Officer McDonald said Oswald's only words were, it's over now.
It's all over now.
And then, of course, once he got into police protection, his first words out of his mouth was, I'm just a Patsy.
I didn't shoot anybody.
And that made no sense because, again, if he was a lone assassin and he loved Fidel Castro or communism, then why didn't he say, I did it for Fidel or I did it for Khrushchev or whatever, just so that he could be a hero to some society.
But he never did that.
He maintained his innocence until his last breath.
And by the way, James Lavelle, who was handcuffed to Oswald, went with him, and Oswald was still somewhat conscious on the way to the hospital.
He gave Oswald a chance to, just one final chance to confess, and Oswald didn't do it.
He just stayed quiet.
He would not cop to the assassination or he couldn't proclaim his innocence at that point either, but he did not involve others in the assassination.
We can't know what went on there, but if he was able to communicate, wouldn't you have thought that he would have shed some light on this?
I mean, after all, the man must have known that he was gravely wounded.
So what had he to lose?
Exactly.
Exactly.
That was his moment where he could have, because now there was no trial.
It was pretty clear that he was in bad shape.
And yet he said nothing when given that opportunity.
And James Lavelle, to his credit, hasn't made up a story or hasn't said that he said this.
He just said he said nothing.
I asked him if he wanted to say anything.
He just said no.
He just kind of shook his head very, very faintly, and that was it.
And then a few minutes later, he was dead.
Is there anybody in Dallas you think who's sitting on a secret that would tie all of this together and finally shed the sort of searchlight on all of this that perhaps is needed now?
Do you think there's somebody waiting to come out?
Are you aware of anybody?
I'm not aware of anybody in Dallas specifically, but I would think that if all the documents do come out, and I'm of the belief that probably any really damaging documents have been destroyed along the way,
but if there were something to come out, then I think we would be looking at more of a confession of people like E. Howard Hunt or Frank Sturgis or someone of that ill.
In fact, according to Hunt's son, on his deathbed, E. Howard Hunt did say that the CIA was involved, but it just wasn't him.
So I think that's what we need to happen.
And of course, we're running out of people for that to be possible.
But so I don't think there's somebody just waiting in the wings until they're almost dead, unless it's a government person of some kind.
See, over the years, we've seen and discussed all the who done it theories, haven't we?
We've had Castro, had to be the Cubans, had to be the mob.
It had to be dissident, disaffected elements of the security services.
And fingers have been pointed in all directions.
And what this is coming towards, and we don't know this, of course, and perhaps we never will, is that this was some kind of strange coalition of the disaffected, of those who did not like Kennedy, who wanted this man who some people saw as dangerous because he was challenging so many things on so many levels, that this strange coalition of people got together and organized something that they thought would run like clockwork and didn't.
Exactly.
In fact, you've given me the very central point of my book that goes back to the Cuban Missile Crisis and just before that, the failed Bay of Pigs.
And I think that's where this whole thing originates, where when the Bay of Pigs failed, and by the way, that was a joint CIA and U.S. government military operation that Kennedy decided at the last second to not provide air cover for the invaders.
And therefore, it was a catastrophe.
And so there was a glitch between Kennedy and the military, for instance, and the CIA.
In fact, just after that, he fired Alan Dulles as the CIA director, claiming that he was misinformed about the operation.
And so when the Cuban missile crisis occurred and it was peacefully resolved, and Kennedy said, we'll never invade Cuba again, I think that's when the target went from Castro to Kennedy.
And because there was people that were involved, what I call a sinister alliance, rebel elements of the CIA and organized crime, they both had motivation to get Castro out of Cuba.
And when that policy by the U.S. government changed by Kennedy, then they realized that wasn't going to happen.
And the only way to change that was to get rid of Kennedy and put in place a more militant president in the name of Lyndon Baines Johnson.
But in the meantime, Castro and his heirs outlived, you know, most of them.
Why did he ever?
And good on him.
He, you know, a lot of people, again, think another, yep, one of these conspiracy theories that, well, it had to have been Castro that killed him.
Again, that makes no sense to me either.
There's too much in risk involved.
And so once Kennedy was gone, I think his problems were gone, largely gone as well.
And I think that that was good enough.
I think Castro was in the loop and was aware of what was going on with anti-Castro rebels and stuff like that.
But I don't think that he had any direct information.
But I also do believe that there are files about Oswald that Cuba has that they've never provided.
And so for reasons that I would think that would not be complimentary to them.
Now, isn't that interesting?
Because, of course, now there is a much warmer relationship between the United States and Cuba, and people are starting to go there again.
And life is beginning to come up into the 21st century in Cuba in a way that perhaps it hadn't before.
I wonder if we might ever get a sniff of some of this from there, because maybe there are people there who have fantastic information that we really need to hear.
Well, there definitely is information we need to hear from Cuba because Oswald was tied to them.
He was trying to get back into Cuba.
And there is optimism, Howard, because the Castro family is now, well, at least Fidel and Royal are now out of the government.
And one of the sons is now in charge.
And he seems to be a little bit more progressive, a little bit more moderate.
And so it will take some time.
But perhaps there will be a day now, because of this change of regime, that we will be able to get our hands on some information that has so far been kept from us for 55 years.
And in so many areas, with the passing of generations and the passage of time, the sting goes out of a lot of these things.
So it becomes possible to reveal more than you could comfortably in the past.
So maybe we will see some movement.
Well, that would be nice.
And I liken it back to the Lincoln assassination that, you know, for years, people thought it was just John Wilkes Booth that assassinated President Lincoln in 1865.
And years, in fact, decades went by before it became known that there was a more sinister conspiracy to kill President Lincoln that involved members of his own cabinet.
And so, but by the time that came out, it was so many years later that people said, oh, oh, oh, well, that was a long time ago.
That can't happen again.
And I believe that Dallas was history repeating itself because it happened again.
Back to what is the longest review on Amazon of a book I've ever seen in my life.
I've never, I didn't even know they allowed you to make reviews this long, but there's this big, detailed review.
And at the top of it, the person who wrote it says, in a nutshell, the author, that's you, has merely represented most of the standard pro-conspiracy positions we have read to date.
But the greatest flaw is the promise on which, or rather the premise on which the author bases the title, that from the Oswald window, the author could determine that Oswald could not have been the assassin.
This is simply not possible.
Yeah, the gentleman that you're referring To is well known on Facebook forums and stuff like that.
He believes that there was just one assassin, and his name was Lee Oswald.
And he takes every opportunity to condemn people when they post something that might suggest a conspiracy or something that he doesn't believe in.
Well, I mean, there's a lot of technical stuff there that you would have to have read every page of everything that he puts in there.
And of course, he's not here to speak for himself.
And as I know, you would agree, he's entitled to a view.
Absolutely, he is.
And that's why I haven't done anything to try to remove it or do anything else.
He's entitled to his opinion.
I've dealt with him on Facebook forums, JFK assassination forums.
We've had some exchanges, and I don't try to shut him down there either.
He's got his viewpoints as I do.
And you both have a perfect right to express them.
I suppose, though, what it does, without getting into the specifics of all of that, and it's me who raised it, I know, but what it does is it points to both of us the fact that there is always going to be a person on this hand who says it was Levi Harvey Oswald.
He could get that number of shots off in that number of seconds, and that's the end of the story.
And on this side of it, there'll be, it was obviously a huge conspiracy, and we need to know the full details of the conspiracy.
And those two sides, if both of us live to 150, are never going to agree.
Well, you're absolutely right, Howard.
And I wish us both well in living to 150.
And I've always been concerned that I wouldn't get to 87 in 2038 to see the documents being released.
But yeah, you're right.
There will always be this divide.
And if this panel comes to be, for instance, this committee, and they look into it, and even if they conclude that there was a conspiracy in all four assassinations in the 1960s, that will not dispel the people of the, for instance, the person that wrote the review and the many people that we deal with on JFK discussion forums.
It's just, that's always going to be the way it is, and that's quite fine with me.
Somebody once said that's life.
So having said that, and last big question for you, Dave.
Why do you want to put yourself, as we say in London, why do you want to put yourself up for this?
Well, I just believe strongly that history, the history books have not been truthful to us.
There's a little slide that I play at my seminars.
It's the first slide, and it's called Truth or Consequences.
And it says something along the lines that our generation created this lie and that we need to fix it or we have to admit that truth doesn't matter and that we have to find the truth and fix this lie or tell our children that truth doesn't matter and that history for them will be sullied forever.
And we can't have that.
History is that important.
And when you look at the totality of everything that's happened since 1963, it's mind-boggling how this has affected our history.
And so for that reason, to just shrug our shoulders and say, oh, so what?
I can't do it.
I'm going to be in my grave before that happens.
And I'm going to fight the fight.
And if I'm proven wrong at one point down the road, then so be it.
But I know that my attempts are from an honorable position.
I just want the truth.
I believe that I am presenting the truth in my book as far as I can tell.
And I just live with that, and I'm quite content with it.
Canada, your country.
United Kingdom, my country.
United States of America, three great nations where truth and justice are valued above all else.
But what happens if the truth that you talked of, that we get to at the end, is not a complete truth?
Is it all worth it if the truth you get is perhaps a little clearer, but you're still not completely there?
Well, you know, if the truth...
But what we've seen over the years, especially from the Freedom of Information Act, and why I'm encouraged, is that every time some new information is released, it tends to go towards the conspiracy theorists and their positions, not the lone assassin position.
I don't think that's a coincidence.
I think that the more information comes out about like Bobby Hargis and this and that that you can't find in the Warner Report, points towards a conspiracy of some kind.
It's just a matter of what was it?
I mean, there's more than a thousand conspiracy theories out there.
A thousand.
Yeah, and so obviously there's only one that can be true.
And so I'm sorry to say this, but conspiracy theorists are just as guilty of confounding this whole case as the Warren Commission itself.
Mark Lane once said that the best way to disbelieve the Warren Report is to read it.
And unfortunately, I can also say that the best way to disregard conspiracy theorists is to read a lot of the books that are out there because they're nonsensical.
And so we just have to plod forward and rely on information that comes out from files, not from speculation.
And hopefully this will lead us to a clearer picture, if not the total picture one day.
A clearer picture is better than we are right now.
Is this work over for you, or will there be another update of the book coming?
Well, it would have to be something dramatic for me to do another remake of the book.
So for me, this is my swan song, I think.
I'm just going to keep at it.
I'm going to obviously be following what happens to this panel and whether or not they're able to get a reinvestigation.
And that will be fascinating because it'll be looking into four assassinations of the 60s, not just the JFK.
And so if that happens, then I'll be right back into the game in a big way.
But as it relates to just JFK, unless something big breaks from it, I think I've offered about all I can offer on it.
Dave, thank you very much for talking with me again about this.
It is perennially fascinating on so many, many levels.
Tell me what that website of yours is called again.
It's called Through theOswaldWindow.com.
And if you go on to that website, you can A, purchase a book that will be available this Friday.
And also you can view the animated film that I had put together that explains the point of the two heads colliding and why the kill shot could not have come from above and behind the president.
That's there as well.
And so I hope your listeners are able to do that and enjoy it.
And I always appreciate talking with you and your audience, Howard.
Thank you.
Dave O'Brien in Chile, Mississauga, Canada.
Thank you for your time.
Pleasure.
Dave O'Brien, I'm sure you'll have feedback on that.
And if you want to give it, you can either contact him through his website.
I'll put a link to it on my website, theunexplained.tv, or you can send me your thoughts through the contact section there and my address, of course, mail at theunexplained.tv.
My thanks to Adam Cornwell for his work on the website.
And above all, my thanks to you for being part of this.
More great guests in the pipeline here at The Unexplained.
So until next we meet, my name is Howard Hughes.
This has been The Unexplained Online.
I am in London and please stay safe, whatever you do.
Please stay calm and please, please stay in touch.
Thank you very much.
Take care.
▲
Export Selection