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Jan. 17, 2022 - The Unexplained - Howard Hughes
59:22
Edition 605 - Dave O'Brien - JFK Update
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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 Unexplained.
Hope that everything's okay with you.
The weather continues grim and grey and damp and I hate the winter.
But I'm counting off, as I've said before, like a kid with an Advent calendar.
I'm counting off the days and the weeks before we get to March and then we get to what we might call spring.
I suppose in the summertime I'm going to be complaining about it being too hot.
Hope everything's okay with you wherever you are.
Thank you very much for all of the emails that you've been sending in.
There was an email that was sent to me by a woman in Australia and I tried to reply because it required a response.
It was an Outlook address and it kept bouncing back.
So if that was you and you didn't get a reply and you were expecting one, that's the reason.
Please send it to me again.
Maybe if you have another email address.
Just some shout outs that I also did on the radio show, but not sure if the people who sent these emails heard me say that on the radio show last weekend.
Stephen sent me photos of a red light in the sky.
To me, it looks a bit like a navigation light on a crane, Stephen.
But maybe you need to get a UFO image analyst, somebody like Jason Gleaves, to take a look at that if he could.
It was a picture or series of pictures taken on the 7th of January.
Who else?
Peter in Macclesfield.
Thank you very much for your kind email.
Mark in Cannock and Keith and Linda.
I did mention you on the radio, but Linda used to listen to Capitol Radio in the days when I was on the breakfast show with Chris Tarant for 10 years of my life.
Just before we get to the guest on this edition of The Unexplained, I just want to talk about something weird that happened on that radio show on the Sunday, before we'd even begun it.
I spoke in the handover to the previous presenter, a guy called Nick Dubois, and he said, oh, you're talking about dreams tonight.
I had a weird dream.
He then told a dream more or less the same as one that I've been having repeatedly for the last year or two, several times a year, maybe more.
The dream is a plane, passenger plane, probably a 747, is coming back to Heathrow Airport, but lands on railway tracks.
And we speed to the airport along railway lines, through stations.
And I'm thinking this is really weird.
What about the wings of the plane?
What about other trains?
I don't know what that dream means, but I've been interested to hear that other people have that dream.
And also, interestingly, at a very similar time to when I talked about that last Sunday on the radio show, that would have been January the 9th, newspapers in the UK and a lot of listeners, including Keith and Polly and many others, and thank you for it, sent me links to this story in various newspapers.
Pilot from crashed plane in US pulled safe to safety moments before train hit.
Video shows Los Angeles police officers freeing a pilot from a plane that had crashed onto tracks.
That apparently happened around the time that I was doing that radio show and I knew nothing about it.
And a lot of listeners drew parallels between that story and what I was talking about.
Was it some kind of premonition or this dream that I was talking about?
I don't think it was, but who knows in the cosmic scheme of things.
But the dream that I've been having, interesting to see that one other presenter at the radio station and other people have been having that dream about being on a plane, a passenger plane that lands on railway lines and then travels to the airport on railway lines.
Strange dream.
One listener, Vicky, suggested that it might be just because the fact that I live near a railway line and I'm also on the main flight path to Heathrow.
There are far fewer planes going over, though, lately in these COVID days, but maybe that's what it is.
Perhaps I'm just hearing these things in my sleep.
How fascinating, A. Just wanted to talk about that, though.
Okay, guest on this edition, he's been on the show before, Dave O'Brien, has given years upon years upon years of his life into researching the JFK case.
He's got a new book out, Case Not Closed, and there is a lot of new information about this, which I think you will find interesting.
A lot of stuff I've been going through the book today, just speedily flipping through, that I don't think you will have heard discussed in quite this way before.
So Dave O'Brien, the guest on this edition, thank you to Adam for his work on the podcast, getting it out to you.
Busy time this is for Adam, and also for maintaining the website that he designed.
And thank you to you for being part of this.
I could not do any of this without you.
And if you'd like to make a donation to the podcast to keep it running, then please go to my website, theunexplained.tv, and you can follow the link and make a donation from there if you'd like to.
If you've done that recently, thank you very, very, very much.
Okay, let's get to the guest now.
Dave O'Brien.
And he is the man who brought us through the Oswald window that we talked about a couple of times.
Now the new book and new research on the JFK case.
Dave, thank you for coming back on.
Howard, it's great to be with you and your audience again.
Thank you.
Let's start with some basics for people who've never heard you before, Dave.
What is a guy from Toronto doing, I won't say obsessed, that's a bad word, but so tied into the story of JFK and the assassination?
What's the ongoing appeal?
Because you've given years to this.
I sure have.
I started researching this, Howard, in 1965 at age 13.
And I was always keenly interested in history.
I loved JFK.
And here in Canada, we were actually learning U.S. history much more than our own Canadian history, which should never have happened.
But that's what it was.
And when he was killed, I was devastated.
And I was fortunate enough that a year and a half later, after his death, I was able to read the 888-page summary edition of the One Report, as well as all 26 volumes.
It took me almost 20 months to do it.
And when I read it as a 13 and 14 year old, even at that age, I could see incredible discrepancies in its own evidence against Lee Harvey Oswald.
And it's so much, it did not make sense.
I wrote a school project that ended up being 188 pages, got an A, And from there, it just blossomed.
And then a year after that, at age 16, I happened to become a pen pal with Dr. Malcolm Perry, the first physician to treat President Kennedy that day.
So your credentials in this are impeccable.
I mean, you've given this more time than many of the professional investigators who would have moved on afterwards.
So you will know a lot about this.
I don't think I've ever asked you this.
And because I'm a little younger than you, and, you know, I was only a little toddler when all of this was being debated.
So I don't have memories of it as you will have the memories.
Can you recall at what stage people began to start saying this is not just what it appears to be?
Yes.
There was two things.
One, one of the pioneer researchers, Mark Lane, he wrote a book called Rush to Judgment.
And now I know a lot of people didn't read the book initially, but it started, it just opened some eyes.
And then what happened was it slowly started to chip away.
And then in 1968, I believe it was, the Freedom of Information Act came to be so that independent researchers like me and Mark Lane and others could start to file Freedom of Information Act lawsuits and start to get information that was meant to be concealed until 2038.
And that's what we started to do.
And a lot of the evidence that came out of those lawsuits, again, was contradictory to what the one report.
But the big thing, Howard, was 1975 when Dick Gregory and Geraldo Rivera and Robert Groden showed for the first time ever the Sapruder film on national TV in America.
And that just absolutely opened up the floodgates for criticism.
And the Sapruda film obviously has become a benchmark of history.
I think they first of all showed Stills from It in Time magazine, didn't they?
Or one of the news magazines in America.
And that's how the appetite to see this thing became increased.
I mean, just for those, again, who are not familiar with the story, there's a whole generation who won't know much about this.
You know, John F. Kennedy, 1963, November, goes to Dallas, Texas.
There is a motorcade through the streets, and he is, as history reveals, shot dead there.
And that's how the controversy began.
But there was a man filming from a patch of grass nearby in color, Super 8 film, I think, as they used to have in those days, Kodak film.
And his name was Zapruder.
And his film became and still is pivotal.
Yes?
Oh, correct.
There's another film called by Orville Nix that's also very telling.
But yes, the Zapruder film has been analyzed up and down 9,000 times a day ever since.
And controversy has emerged from that as well.
You would think that a film would just tell you exactly what happened, but that's not exactly how it worked.
And indeed, we'll get into that because you're analyzing a fresh the Zapruder film, which I think it absolutely is overdue to be analyzed again.
So we will talk about that.
Good starting point, though.
You talked about freedom of information requests and documentation.
As we both know, at the rear end of last year, they sanctioned the release of a whole clutch of documents, but a whole clutch of other documents still remain secret, I think, for another 30 years.
Where are we at with that?
Well, on December 15th, President Biden released about 1,500 documents.
There are still several thousand that he decided not to classify.
He put a one-year date ahead.
It could happen again next year, but there are still thousands of documents he decided not to in the interest of national security.
And how he's done that is he's allowed the CIA, FBI, all kinds of agencies, security agencies, to have a look at the documents and tell him which ones that they think is okay to release.
And so we still have all these documents.
No bombshell has come out so far.
But one of the interesting things that I recently wrote about from the latest release is that we finally got some affirmation that the CIA and organized crime back in 19 early 60s were attempting to assassinate Fidel Castro.
And that's what I wrote about in my first book, Through the Oswald Window.
And so I was delighted to see this affirmation finally in government files, FBI and CIA files that showed a very nefarious relationship between the mob and the CIA.
Now, isn't that interesting?
Because that's been talked about by people like you.
But to actually see it, and I know that some of the newspapers actually gave a little snippet, a photographic snippet of this, to actually see it referred to, I think is significant.
But we need to know more, don't we?
We do need to know more.
And I think that American people, it's amazing that 58 years later, 65% of Americans still do not believe in the official government version that Lee Harvey Oswald was the alone assassin of President John F. Kennedy.
And I think that tells us that there's still an appetite to get the information out and to finally get at the truth.
I think there is an appetite.
I understand why you're interested.
I know that I've been interested my whole life long because so much of this does not add up and we need to get further answers.
And I still believe that there may be people alive who have further answers, but that's another issue.
You say there's an appetite for it.
When I last talked about this on the radio, which was around the time that those documents were released, I was talking about the arc of connection between John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, Madeline Monroe, and the people around them, which was interesting in itself.
But I got one and only one communication from one listener.
And in all the years that I've been talking about this on the radio and other places, I've never had that kind of response to a JFK piece.
There's always been tremendous interest.
But this guy said, oh, can't you give it a rest about JFK?
Do you think we'll ever get to the stage where more people will start to think like that about this?
Well, there's definitely that movement afoot, just as there is a movement currently going on to A, get all the documents released finally by President Biden, and two, have Congress or the Senate officially reopen the JFK case.
And so both movements are afoot, and I don't know who will prevail at the end, but of course, you know what camp I'm in.
And I think that the part of my new book talks about the efforts going on and how people can get involved to make this full disclosure happen and actually get a new investigation based mostly on new information that has come out and new technologies that have been applied to the old original evidence that, again, contradict the findings of the Warren report.
We just have to use modern times to find out what happened almost 60 years ago.
And I think one of the things, and we have talked about this before, one of the things that would help you enormously is even if a lot of the principles are now dead because so many years have elapsed, as you say, since the event itself.
You know, people who go home to their families, police officers, people who work in medical services and others, they go home to their families and they talk.
So I've always felt that there is somebody, maybe more than just a somebody, who knows a crucial element in this jigsaw.
And I guess that's what you must always be looking for.
It is.
And I do agree that obviously almost 100% of everyone who was involved in November 22nd, 1963, is now deceased.
But what is shocking is how much evidence exists, both physically in the form of images, film, photographs, and statements that actually were taken from hundreds of witnesses that were never interviewed by the Warren Commission, for instance, that tell a completely different story about what happened to President Kennedy that day than what the official Warren report says.
And so we have all this documentation.
It's a matter of, for instance, does testimony from three or four key witnesses that were never heard by the Warren Commission, but are on record, either through an official deposition through the Dallas County Sheriff's Office or through a reporter that tracks somebody down like Penn Jones Jr. or Mark Lane.
There's all kinds of information out there that still exists and I think would stand up in a public trial of Lee Harvey Oswald had he lived.
Okay, you start the book, Case Not Closed, with a very interesting reflection on a small incident that has stayed in my mind and always occurs to me every time I do any research on all of this.
And that is Lee Harvey Oswald is in the Texas book depository, supposedly looses off the fatal shots, then makes a rapid exit from the building, and on his way out of the building encounters very briefly a police officer.
It's not often talked about.
It's in movies and TV series about this.
It is referred to.
You go into this at the very start of the book.
Why?
Because I was one of few reporters at that time, in 1979, who was granted access to the Texas School Book Depository Building and the Oswald window when it was still locked and sealed from the public.
And so when I was at the window and making my observations, I decided to do a test to see if I could get from that window down to the second floor lunchroom in the 90 seconds allotted by the Warren Commission.
And I was able to do that, no problem.
But the problem was, as I followed the same route as described by the Commission, along the sixth floor, down the stairwell, four flights of stairs, over to the second floor lunchroom in the book depository.
When I got there, within the 90-second timeframe, I established it was possible for Oswald to have that confrontation with Marion Baker.
However, what is really striking to me is that when I got there at 90, just I think it was 87 seconds, I absolutely could not pass the visual test that Oswald apparently did with Officer Baker.
In other words, when Oswald was confronted by the police officer, Baker had a gun pointed at his head and wanted to question him.
Oswald was calm and collected.
He looked like he was just surprised.
The officer recognized that there was no problem here.
Oswald's boss affirmed that he worked there, and so Baker went on his way up the other stairs.
Oswald then walked out the door and went out the building.
Now, when I did that, I was slightly out of breath.
I was slightly sweaty.
My palms were a bit wet.
There's just no way if I had been confronted by a police officer at that very moment, I would have looked guilty as hell, and I would not have passed that test as Oswald did.
So I've established that Oswald could not have had that confrontation with Officer Baker and therefore could not have been at the sixth floor window at the very moment the shots were fired.
And that's so significant because it indicates to us that seemingly the case for the prosecution of Lee Harvey Oswald begins to fall apart from the very beginning because that's your initial identification and you build a case based on that.
If that does not stand up, then the rest of your case begins to look shaky.
Exactly.
And then since then, Howard, just so you know, because that was 1979, there's other evidence that has come to light, again, that not included in the Warren report, that verifies that what I've just told you about Oswald not being at the sixth floor window is likely.
And for instance, we have the testimony that you won't find in the Warren Report of Geraldine Reed.
She was actually at her desk opposite the second floor lunchroom at the time of the shots.
And she says that Oswald went into the lunchroom about one minute before the shooting and went to get a bottle of Coca-Cola from the vendor machine and didn't have change.
So that he went over to her desk, give her a dollar bill, and said, would you mind changing this so I can get a pop?
She did.
And then less than a minute later, actually the shots rang out when Oswald was standing right there with her.
They both looked at each other, surprised.
They didn't know what the sounds were.
And then he went and got his pop And then had the confrontation with Baker.
So now we have testimony, and there's another lady, Carolyn Walther, who's also said that she saw Oswald in the lower floors in a minute or two prior to the assassination.
So there's no way Oswald could have been in the floor one minute before the assassination and rushed up to the book depository window, killed the president, and then came right back down to meet Baker.
It's just not possible.
So that doesn't stand up.
And as you say in the book, there's a whole raft of people whose evidence, whose testimony was not considered, you know, was not heard by the Warren Commission or was somehow suppressed and has now been lost through the mists of time.
So again, we have more holes in the case.
Absolutely.
And the more you look at it, especially I would encourage people that are interested in it to go and research files released by the Assassination Records Review Board, which looked at this case in the mid-1990s.
It's probably, in my mind, the first investigation, formal investigation, that took a completely impartial look at this.
And they uncovered incredible amounts of evidence that was suppressed, ignored, dismissed, or altered by the Warren Commission and even the House Select Committee in 1978.
And all that information is there.
For instance, they uncovered 26 doctors or medical professionals who were present at the autopsy who filed reports of seeing a wound at the right rear exit wound, a massive exit wound at the right rear skull area of the president, which matches more than 12 medical professionals at Parkland Hospital who also said they saw the exact same thing.
Well, the Commission, of course, says there was no such wound on the president, that the bullet entered the rear crown area of his skull and exited above his right ear, and that's because that shot had to have come from Oswald above and behind.
But now we've got all these more than 46 medical professionals who have identified this massive gaping exit wound at the right rear of the skull, thanks to the ARRB.
And this is the kind of information that's coming out since that the lone nut advocates just don't want to acknowledge as being realistic.
You involve, and this is new, in this new book, a man called Johnny Cairns who contributes, I think, four chapters to it.
What did he bring to the party?
He is amazing.
I think he's 31 now.
He's from Edinburgh.
And his specialty is focusing in on the circumstantial or the physical evidence relative to this case.
And so what he does is he takes four chapters to analyze the, for instance, the rifle itself, the Manlikerker Canel, the ammunition linked to that rifle and Oswald, the paper bag that Oswald apparently handcrafted to carry that weapon into the book depository.
Just to interrupt, did he have actual access to those items?
I don't know that he's had access to them physically, but he is well entrenched into the JFK assassination community with people like Jim Diugen DiEugenio and people like that who have had access.
Jim was just recently dealing with Oliver Stone and the release of JFK Revisited, and that's just ongoing now.
It's just released and is doing incredibly well.
So Johnny has taken, studied the information, talked to all kinds of experts about the rifle, the ammunition, people that have complete knowledge about what's going on here, and it's established that a lot of the physical evidence that was used by the commission to incriminate Oswald actually would never have stood up in a public trial of Oswald.
To give you just one little tiny tidbit, there was three shell casings found at the sixth floor window, and one of the shell casings, the Warren Commission never told you this, but one of the shell casings was severely dented.
And experts have since analyzed the shell casings that do exist and are still in the National Archives and have concluded that there's no way that that particular shell casing that was found at the scene could have ever been fired that day because of the damage.
It would have caused the rifle to explode.
And so that's the kind of information that Johnny Cairns has uncovered and has written about extensively for this book and for other projects.
He's really quite amazing.
So does Johnny Cairns contribute to the idea that Lee Harvey Oswald was in the building but wasn't firing shots?
Yes, he does.
He believes that Oswald did not fire a shot that day, that he was framed as the lone assassin, that he did not shoot at the president.
I think, I don't know if he believes that Oswald was completely innocent, like 100%, whereas I believe Oswald was involved, but I just don't think he fired a shot.
But yes, Johnny believes that had Oswald lived to stand public trial, there's not a chance in the world he would have been convicted of murdering John F. Kennedy.
And that's why it has been claimed through history that he was gunned down by Jack Ruby, and we never got to know the truth.
Exactly.
And that's, I mean, he doesn't go into that specifically, but you put two and two together, and it becomes pretty clear that the major problem was that when Oswald was arrested, he was denied legal representation.
And then Ruby took him out.
And then the big problem was that when the commission was formed by Lyndon Johnson, Oswald was still not allowed legal representation.
And Mark Lane was supposed to represent Oswald's interests before the Warren Commission hearings, and he was denied.
And so Oswald never got a defense of any kind.
And Johnny Cairns puts together four evidence, which in essence makes up a defense for Lee Harvey Oswald that he never got.
And it's very compelling.
Right.
What about the Kennedy family?
I don't think I've ever asked you before, but have you personally had contact with the Kennedy family?
There is, of course, one contemporary member of the Kennedy family who wants this reopened, reanalyzed, and re-inquired into.
Yes, it's Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
He wants a new Official investigation, not only into John Kennedy's murder, but his father, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King.
And so he's lobbying at this as we speak to have this happen.
But there are roadblocks.
For instance, Carolyn Kennedy will not permit the exhumation of her father's body, which would tell us so many things if that could happen.
So right now, even within the Kennedy family, there's this mixed messaging.
But Robert F. Kennedy is the one person that's more known to everyone who is definitely pushing for this.
And behind the scenes, there's a lot of effort going on to help him.
Well, let's see what happens about it.
You know, the powers that be are very powerful, I was about to say, and they can make things happen or not, as the case may be, but that's fascinating in itself.
One of the things, or rather a number of the things that would help you enormously would be, as many other people have tried over the years, if you could locate the many photographs that were taken at the autopsy.
There were many, many photographs taken by the security service at the autopsy and spirited away afterwards.
And those photographs of the autopsy have never seen the light of day.
They would reveal, it seems to me, looking at this, an awful lot if we were able to get to them.
Yes, in fact, four experts are featured in my two books, Dr. Cyril Weck, Dr. Michael Chesser, Dr. Gary Aguilar, and Dr. David Mantic.
These people all bring expertise, and they're all medical doctors, and they have looked at the medical records, the autopsy photos and X-rays in the National Archives.
And all four of them in recent years have brought information from their research of these physical evidence in the National Archives to say that it's just not possible that one person carried out this assassination.
In my latest book, JFK Not Closed, Dr. Michael Chester and Dr. David Mantic, for instance, point out that they have seen a cluster or what they call a snowfall of metal fragments that go from the front of the head on JFK at the top end all the way almost to the back, but did not exit.
And this is evidence that the president was actually struck in the forehead area just under the hairline, and a bullet transited his head from front to back.
And this is new evidence that has come out based on, and we have the x-rays, we have even a photograph showing an incision under the president's hairline that accounts for this frontal shot to the head.
And so the evidence, again, is becoming very clear when we get to examine it with new technologies and new medical expert eyes that the case just does not hold up for Oswald firing all the shots from above and behind.
Now, you said this yourself.
The world thought until recently that the Zapruder film had been unpicked and looked at and analyzed as many times as it's possible to analyze a film.
But you've unearthed new technology.
You've been in contact with a group of people.
I'm just looking for their name here.
Is it D3 something?
Sorry that I haven't got that in my notes, but it's a group of people who have high-tech equipment and can analyze these things that have brought a completely fresh take to the film, yeah?
Yes, the group is called DP3D, which stands for Daily Plaza 3D.
What this group is doing is that they've employed about four different new modern technologies to all the photographic and film evidence in the JFK assassination.
So in other words, the exact moments of 1230 and thereabouts on November 22nd, 1963.
And what they've done is applied their technology to build a 3D model, a motion picture 3D model of exactly what happened at those critical moments in Daly Plaza.
And I've seen some of their work, obviously.
And it is absolutely, I believe, is going to be a game changer because of how professional it is, how accurate it appears.
And in doing so, in creating this, they're able to tell us the origin of all the shots that occurred that day.
And again, we're basing that on the Warren Commission's conclusions, not on any theory or speculation, on the Warren Commission's theory itself, its conclusion that all the shots came from the sixth-floor window of the book depository building.
When they reconstruct the crime, Howard, using all these technologies, it becomes apparent that, for instance, the single-bullet theory just could not be, that there's not a chance that one bullet caused all seven non-fatal wounds in the world.
Well, this is one bullet that you have a picture of in the book, and I think was in the previous book, too, that is supposed to have done all sorts of gymnastics.
People have been saying for the last recent years couldn't possibly have happened.
So, in your view, in the light of this new analysis by this group, how many shooters were there?
Were there three?
I believe there was three, at least.
At least three shooters.
That's what I can tell you.
I know that based on what I saw, and this will come as a surprise to some people listening, that there's no way that the CE399, that bullet, caused all the wounds in the two men.
And in fact, this video that they're creating, 3D animation video, shows that even Connolly's wounds were not caused by one shot.
The two different shots caused Governor Connolly's wounds.
And then, of course, they go into what shot caused the head wound.
And now we're talking about a frontal wound that the autopsy x-rays and photographs reveal.
And so we are looking at at least three assassins.
But when their recreation comes out about the 60th anniversary date, I think that will be a game changer, Howard, that may help us get a new investigation going.
And one of the things about this new analysis that you refer to in the book is that you're not just analyzing what happened to the people immediately around JFK.
you know, that's his wife, that's the governor, you know, that's the people immediately around the security service personnel, that sort of thing.
You're also looking at reactions of people all around that scene to see how the reactions, not just the motions of Kennedy's head, as we've had analyzed for all these years, but the reactions of people in the vicinity and in the car are affected by what happens.
Exactly.
The amount of detail that this group goes to is phenomenal.
To give you an example, the green highway steamen's freeway sign that is seen on the Sapruder film, that's where Kennedy disappears for a little bit.
And when he comes from out of the sign, he is clearly hit.
His hands are at his throat, and he's reacting to his non-fatal shot.
Well, Dallas County removed that sign some years ago.
And so when they recreated Daly Plaza, they wanted to put the sign back in, just to give you an example.
And they were able to use laser scan technology.
They were able to use photography with drones.
They were able to take all the photographic images, convert 2D images into 3D images, and place the Stevens Freeway sign in their recreation, exactly where it was on November 22nd, because that's a critical piece of evidence.
And these guys are so detailed.
They've actually even showed the shadows that existed that day that the car caused.
They were able to show the glint off the chrome of the front fender of the limousine and even the bullet that hit the windshield in the president's car.
And they're able to account for that in their presentation.
So yes, they were able to recreate absolutely everything, the people's reactions, exactly what happened in and around that sequence.
And if you've ever been to Daly Plaza, Howard, you'll know that it's pretty small.
People are surprised by that.
It's a pretty small plaza.
And so when you see this 3D version upcoming, you will be shocked.
It's like you were right there at the very moment that it happened.
So three shooters, where were they?
I'm presuming that one of them would have been in or around the book depository.
Yes, there's definitely a shooter at the six-floor book depository window.
Their findings also indicate at least one shooter on the grassy knoll, and they haven't revealed to me yet where the third shot came that, for instance, struck Connolly separately from the bullet that struck him in his back near his right armpit.
There was a second bullet that struck his wrist and his wrist only.
But they haven't, now that had to have come from the rear, but it wasn't the book depository window.
And I don't know if it was the Dow Tech building or somewhere even further along Houston Street.
But again, that's the kind of thing that will come out, and it will be scientifically proven.
It won't be speculation what they come up with.
And when we see that, we're hoping that it will be a game-changing moment.
If there were three shooters involved on that day and one of them wasn't Lee Harvey Oswald, then there are three people who will have gone through their lives knowing what they've done.
Isn't it astonishing to you that not one of them or anybody close to one of them or all of them has ever revealed anything about this?
Yes and no.
I mean, I would like them to have done that, but no, I think it depends on the nature of the conspiracy.
And there's multi-level conspiracies, for instance, where people, even the people involved, don't know who else was involved.
It's even possible that a shooter at a particular location did not know who the other shooters were that day in Daly Plaza.
So it's hard to say, but we feel that finally, instead of focusing on conspiracy theories, if we go back and start looking at the evidence itself, eventually the evidence will tell us where the assassins were, and will they tell us who they were?
I don't know about that.
But if we can at least scientifically, beyond a reasonable doubt, establish there was three or four assassins rather than just one in the book depository window, then I think whether that is enough to go on to find out who was involved, that may be one area that the passage of time will not allow us to find.
But I would personally be happy enough to realize and have the historical record reflect the fact that it was not Lee Harvey Oswald acting alone that killed the 35th president of the United States.
So you're much less interested, and we've talked about this before, in the mechanics of any possible conspiracy theory, whether it was the mob, whether it was some kind of government-connected cabal or the security services or whoever it might be or the military-industrial complex, whatever you want to call it.
You think that the mechanics of this, if you get to understand what happened clearly enough, then it may well point you to who did it?
Yes, I think that's very possible, and I'm hopeful of that.
But if it doesn't point to the actual naming of who was involved at the conspiracy level, then I can at least sleep at night.
Will it happen?
That's also possible, because you never know.
It's the old saying, follow the money.
Well, in this case, the evidence was never followed.
And I think that's what we have to do.
We have to follow the evidence, and the evidence may tell us who was involved in the assassination of the president.
For instance, to give you just an example, we know Oswald had a connection with David Ferry while in Louisiana.
David Ferry had a connection with nefarious CIA officials such as E. Howard Hunt and Frank Sturgis during the Bay of Pigs invasion.
And so now we've got the Bay of Pigs, the Castro, the CIA working with organized crime to get rid of Castro.
And so where does that take us from there?
It's still speculative, but I think that once we get into the evidence, there's got to be national security intelligence files that details more than what we know about Oswald's position while he was in the Marine Corps and his trip to Russia and his incredible return back to the Americans.
And so there's lots of evidence that we don't know yet.
That kind of evidence may tell us who might be involved with Oswald and help to frame him as the lone assassin of the president, because I believe unequivocally that Oswald was, in fact, framed on November 22nd, 63.
What about the so-called deathbed confession of Everett Howard Hunt?
Yes, that's there, but what do we make of it?
And I think what, there's an example, I think, what when we take this information, we have to evaluate based on who he was and that he lied for a living, we have to take that into regard.
But does the evidence, once we uncover everything that has been suppressed for so many years, will that back up what Howard Hunt says or will it debunk it?
That's the kind of thing that we have to do.
And I'm very intrigued by it because of his connection to the Bay of Pigs and also to Watergate.
And so he's a very nefarious figure.
And I think it's quite possible that he may have even known Lee Harvey Oswald.
But again, that's the kind of information that I still think we can find 60 years after the fact.
Of course, one of the factors that might mitigate against getting extra information that finally gives us more clarification is the idea that this might have been some grand plan for a coup d'etat.
I mean, those sorts of things are not supposed to happen in America, are they?
No, they're not.
And if it was that sinister, as you just indicated, then that would certainly explain why there's been this cover-up all these years and a determined effort to have all documents sealed until 2038.
But thanks to the Freedom of Information Act, independent researchers, and subsequent investigations such as the ARRB, we now have information prior to 2038 that we weren't supposed to have.
And a lot of it does not support the findings of the Warren Report.
And that's what we've still got to dig at.
And I don't think we'll find a bombshell even with the remaining files that are to be released.
But the evidence, again, I believe will lead us to what we at least need to know about how that day went down, if not who was completely behind it beyond Oswald.
Right.
You talked about the importance of freedom of information requests to unearth documents.
I recently spoke with John Greenwald from the Black Vault, who I'm sure you will know.
He's been responsible for all kinds of unearthings of all kinds of documents.
He's been at it since I think he was a kid of 15.
He's now in his 40s.
So, you know, he's an expert on this.
Are you requesting documents, relevant documents at the moment?
And if so, what documents might they be?
Well, it's very hard right now to use the Freedom of Information Act effectively because a lot has been released.
A lot of documents we don't know even exist like by title.
And so it's very, very difficult.
And so the emphasis, I think, has shifted a little bit.
Not that the work will continue on the freedom of information side, but the emphasis has shifted to there's a gentleman out of New York, a lawyer by the name of Larry Schnapp, and he is suing the executive branch to try to force Biden to release all remaining documents, ASAP.
And he's also actively lobbying Congress and the Senate to officially reopen the case.
And there's where the emphasis is now.
And because if we get that opportunity again, there's certain things that will happen.
A, we will avoid another Warren Commission setup.
That's for sure.
And number two, it will be an impartial investigation.
In other words, people from both sides of the debate, Oswald acted alone, there was a conspiracy, they will all be involved in a new investigation to get at the facts.
And then once we do, and there's subpoena power and all the things necessary to finally get at this information that's only been available through Freedom of Information Act filings, then I think that's the more logical step to go now as the 60th anniversary approaches.
And that's what's going on actively as we speak.
To the best of your knowledge, did Jackie Kennedy, Jacqueline Kennedy, ever speak very much about the events in Dallas?
No, she didn't.
And now she has testimony before the Warren Commission, but her recollection of what happened is nearly non-existent, except for her having viewed the Sapruder film like us.
And only then did she realize, for instance, that she jumped onto the rear of the trunk of the car to retrieve a piece of her husband's skull.
She didn't even know she did that.
And then the piece of skull had to be forcibly taken from her hand at Parkland Hospital.
So she's not a great witness that way.
But I know that I've heard from family sources and stuff that she never did buy into the notion that one person acted alone.
What's the basis of that?
I don't know because she, again, she has no formal recollection of that day.
But what a terrible, awful tragedy to go through and then have to live your life beyond that.
You know, my heart has always gone out to her and everybody connected with the family.
No.
Well, to the extent, Howard, that her biggest grief in life while she was living was that her son, John John, would follow a political career of his father.
She just absolutely dreaded that possibility.
No, indeed.
The book also talks about something that has been discussed before, claims that X-ray and photo evidence was somehow doctored or tampered with or amended.
What new can you tell us about that?
Well, it's all pretty relatively new because it hasn't been discussed all that much.
But the thing that really comes to bear on this, that gives us some credibility, is that there was an internal researcher and investigator for the Assassination Records Review Board named Douglas Horne.
And he uncovered evidence that, again, that was suppressed for years, that the body, the chain of possession Of the body is very strange.
And the use of multiple coffins for reasons that haven't been explained are in play here.
And now, when we look at the, when we combine it, what's interesting now is when we combine the stories from Douglas Horn saying that the body had disappeared for almost 90 minutes and that it's possible that some work was done on it.
It went to a lab outside of Washington where the body may have been altered.
Well, this is now supported in part by some of the autopsy and photo evidence that has been uncovered and seen by experts, medical experts like Dr. Michael Chesser and Dr. David Mantic, who say, yes, there is definitely evidence of wound alteration on the president's skull right now.
And so that ties into Douglas Horne's investigation that shows that the body did not go directly from Parkland Hospital to the Bethesda Naval Hospital, that there were some stops along the way.
And so I don't get into that in great detail because I think that's about to come out a little bit more graphically in the months and years ahead.
And that will definitely be a focus, though, Howard, of the new information that hopefully causes a new investigation to occur.
But there was after the event and going to the hospital and getting the president's body on the aircraft, getting the president to Washington, swearing LBJ in on the plane to be president, there was what, with the benefit of hindsight, looks like a kind of unseemly haste about all of this.
Yes, there certainly was.
And in fact, that whole transaction of the body, as you point out, was in fact illegal.
Because in Dallas, when somebody is murdered, the body is taken possession of by the Dallas County Medical Examiner's Office, where an autopsy is performed.
This was a state crime, not a national crime.
And so when the president's body was forcibly removed from Dallas County official hands, then that set in motion everything that was to come afterwards, which is controversy.
So imagine that the body stayed in Dallas and Dr. Earl Rose, who was the medical examiner at that time and was non-military, actually performed the autopsy on the president.
How different would that have been from the body forcibly being removed, taken to the Bethesda Naval Hospital, where three doctors performed an autopsy on the president of the United States, who had never before conducted an autopsy involving death by gunshot?
And that is why the autopsy was completely bungled and why so much misinformation about how President Kennedy died exists to this day.
And there was this breakneck speed of compulsion to get this out of Dallas.
And that was explained away as far as I'm aware over the years as being, well, we have to get all of the principles away from there because we don't know what else might kick off in Dallas.
Yeah, I mean, you can sure make it sound like that was the right thing to do at the time, but you can't escape the fact that the body by law should have stayed there.
And you could have gotten Lyndon Johnson on the plane and back to Washington and sworn in on the plane without the body there so that it could stay in Dallas and undergo a proper post-mortem procedure, but it didn't happen.
And so they had to get the body out of there.
And by doing so, for instance, only then can there possibly be wound alterations on the president's body.
Had it gone straight to the medical examiner's office, none of that could have occurred.
So you're right.
The urgency of all this happening contributed to so much controversy that we can discuss today.
Whereas if it had stayed in Dallas, man, or if Oswald had lived to stand trial is another one, we might not even be talking about this today because it would have been so clearly outlined in the history books as to what actually happened to President Kennedy.
And in the immediate years after the event, America went through a period of great social upheaval.
We think of Lyndon Baines Johnson as being president presiding over what happened in Vietnam.
He was the president in office during most of those events, and it was Nixon who got the troops out of Vietnam in the end.
But there were lots of events that covered over a lot of these questions.
There were too many things for America to think about, it seems to me, in the immediate aftermath years.
LBJ, did he ever say much about the events in Dallas on that day?
No, he did not.
And for probably good cause.
I mean, he formed the Warren Commission, number one.
He not just formed the Warren Commission, which had to be done when Oswald was shot and killed, but he strategically placed the members there.
Alan Dulles, for instance, former CIA director, who was fired by Kennedy.
Gerald Ford was there and acted as a liaison between J. Edgar Hoover and the commission.
And so what we have is a commission put forth by Lyndon Johnson, which he had to do, but certainly the Warren Commission itself is now pretty discredited.
And Lyndon Johnson, we can say, we don't know that he was involved in the assassination, despite all the speculation.
But one thing we can say for sure is that Lyndon Johnson headed the cover-up of the assassination of President Kennedy for what means is what is to be discovered yet, if we can.
Of course, part of that may have just been to draw a line under a terrible event that nobody really wanted to confront and to move America forward from this most awful, heinous event.
For sure.
I mean, that was important.
The nation's healing was important.
But how it came to be and what it ended up doing.
And you've got to keep in mind, Howard, this worked for 12 years.
When the Warren Commission came out, everyone bought it.
I mean, everyone, that this low-nutling Oswald killed President Kennedy.
But in 1975, when that film was shown by ABC, Good Night America, everything changed.
The perception changed.
For instance, nobody knew until 1975 that when the president received the shot to his head, that his head moved violently back and to the left.
They thought his head moved forward as a result.
Well, it had to be, reasonably, because Oswald was above and behind him.
So imagine the country's shock at that very moment they saw the actual Sapruda film and saw the president reacting completely different from what they had been told by the Warren Commission.
And that's exactly what happened.
So for 12 years, the Warren Commission, the U.S. government, they won the public perception of what happened to President Kennedy.
And so it's been, and after 1975, all started to fall apart big time.
What about Marina, the widow of Lee Harvey Oswald, who I think is still alive, isn't she?
She is, yes.
She says nothing and will say nothing, won't do interviews.
But privately, I'm told, she doesn't believe that her husband was involved.
But she felt, my belief is that she felt pressured right after the assassination of a threat to be deported back to the Soviet Union, which she didn't want because she had a small family now.
And so she had to cooperate and she had to provide information that eventually helped to incriminate her husband.
Her silence speaks volumes over the years, but she absolutely will not do it.
Our hope, Howard, is that once she has left us, that her daughters will be a little bit more curious as to what happened.
For instance, there's a procedure that could happen right now if Marina wanted it to happen called a cold case filing.
She could file a cold case request in Dallas to have the case reopened, claiming that her husband was improperly charged in the case and requesting that his guilty verdict or his perception of guilt be expunged from his record.
Now, she won't do it, but we're hoping that his two daughters may do it in the years to come.
That's just one of the ways we may be able to circumvent the cover-up that's been going on and finally get to the truth.
Of course, I think she's 81 now, isn't she?
Yes, yeah, she is.
And so I don't think she's going to say much of anything.
We just don't expect it to happen.
Fascinating conversation as ever.
This case will be of eternal fascination for me.
I'm sorry if some people think that maybe we've heard enough about this.
I think most people, if they're honest with themselves, will always be asking the questions in their head.
At the back end of this then, and in the light of the new book and your ongoing research, Dave, what standout question or questions remain?
Well, The big question is still Oswald's involvement or non-involvement.
Now, I don't pretend myself to think that he was completely innocent.
It just doesn't make sense to me, Howard, that Oswald could have worked in the building and people that he knew nothing about could frame him as the lone assassin of the president.
I think it's a lot more logical to assume that he was part of an organization, which we don't know who it was exactly at this time, who had him, for instance, set up the assassin's perch on the sixth floor southeast corner window, believing that somebody was going to come in and make shots from there that would kill the president.
And I believe that's exactly what he did.
What he didn't know was that his rifle would be taken from his home and pre-shot using the bullets that were later found, the shell casings, for instance, that would be later found at the scene, and that everything would be put in place where he was framed as the actual assassin of the president.
And when he was downstairs and realized, saw such a concentration of police in the book depository building, literally in the seconds following the assassination, he panicked and he realized that something wasn't right and he left the building.
And from there, it just, the case built on him and nobody else.
And I think that's...
Well, again, I don't think he was innocent of the crime, but I think he was not the shooter that day and not the only assassin.
He was involved, in my opinion.
So that would account for some of his rather strange activities.
So the tumblers will have been going around in his head that once this happened, then he'd been involved there.
He wanted to get himself away from this.
He was in the building, knew what was going down, or had a sense of what might be going down, and maybe even had a sense that he was in the crosshairs for being the guy who was going to carry the can for it.
Oh, absolutely, 100%.
I believe that's exactly what happened.
And that he reacted as a conspirator, but not as the only assassin that day.
What happens next from your perspective, Dave?
Then what do you want to do?
Well, we want there to be an official new investigation.
We want new evidence, such as what's being produced by the DP3D group here in America to help provide new information that the government will feel compelled to look at.
And we're looking for all the files to be released.
And then, in and around the 60th anniversary, we want a new formal investigation into this assassination and hopefully, Finally, clarify, if nothing else, the fact that there were more than one gunman in Daly Plaza there to assassinate John Kennedy.
The book is called, the latest one, is called JFK Case Not Closed.
How do people get this?
I think it's been out since December, hasn't it?
It has.
You can get it right now on Amazon or at Barnes and Noble in the United States, and just go on to their websites, and you can order it directly.
Dave, thank you very much.
I always find this such a fascinating thing to talk about, and you're a very compelling guest about it.
And, you know, congratulations on the depth of your work and the commitment.
Well, thank you, Howard, very much.
It's been an honor to be with you again and to your audience.
Well, the JFK case has been controversial for every year of my life, and I guess it will continue to be long after I am gone from this place.
Dave O'Brien, my thanks to him.
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