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If you take a dive down the
rabbit hole that is the assassination of President

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John F. Kennedy, one of
the first things you'll notice is just how

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much information there is to digest.
There are over one hundred disputed issues.

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Each one of those topics has its
own cast of characters. Some of those

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witnesses present important testimony that paints the
accused assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, as

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the lone gunman, while others provide
arguments that are either in defense of Oswald

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or they are in support of there
being additional people involved or a conspiracy.

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Out of all of these witness stories, the one that's always the most surprising

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and disturbing to me is the story
of Ralph Leon Yates. This is not

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a famous story, it's not one
that people bring up a lot, but

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it was just so shocking to me
when I read it that it affected me,

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and it's part of the reason that
I went down this rabbit hole of

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the JFK assassination. Yates picked up
a hitchhiker on the Wednesday before the assassination

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on the highway near Oswald's rooming house. Now, this hitchhiker that Yates picked

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up asked him for a ride to
work, and on the drive there,

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the hitchhiker started talking about President Kennedy
coming into town soon and asking if Yates

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thought it was possible that someone could
kill Kennedy up from a tall building.

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A pretty weird question to ask just
a few days before the assassination. On

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top of that, this hitchhiker has
a brown paper sack with him and he

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tells Yates that he has curtain rides
in the sack. So Yates then drops

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this hitchhiker off at the place where
he works and get this, it's the

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Texas school Book Depository building. Later
that day, Yates told a coworker about

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the interaction that he had with this
hitchhiker, and a few days later,

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after the president had been killed,
Yates saw Oswald on TV and believed that

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Oswald was a dead ringer for the
hitchhiker that he had picked up on Wednesday.

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Yeates then came forward to the authorities
about what he had seen, thinking

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that he gave Oswald a ride two
days earlier. But it turns out that

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Oswald was already working in the school
book Depository on that Wednesday, and he

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had been there all morning. We
know this from the time cards when he

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punched in and out, so it
wasn't possible that Yates could have picked up

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the real Lee Harvey Oswald. But
still, after being given multiple light detector

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tests by the FBI, Yates passed
each one, and after three interviews,

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the director of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover himself personally ordered Yates to

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be retested on the polygraph machine again. When Yates again passed the light detector

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test, the FBI agent has told
him that they didn't think he was lying,

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but because Yeates believes something that could
not be true, that he had

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picked up the real Oswald, he
would need to be involuntarily committed to an

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insane asylum. So the FBI sends
this father of five to Woodlawn Hospital for

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the mentally ill, permanently ruining his
life. The story of Ralph Yates has

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a lot of common elements with other
points of the assassination. First, there's

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the argument defending the Warren report.
Since it's proven by his time card that

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Oswald was in the building, we
know for sure that Yeates did not pick

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up Oswald. Second, you've got
the conspiracy intrigue. It obviously seems like

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this hitchhiker, who Yeates says looked
just like Oswald, is trying to impersonate

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Oswald. He mentions all these things
that Oswald would have said in theory right.

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He talks about could you kill the
president? From high up. Yates

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picks him up near Oswald's rooming house
on the Highway. He's got a paperbag

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that he says has curtain rods in
it. He then gets dropped off literally

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at the Texas school book Depository.
It's crazy. If Yeates just saw some

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random guy, why on earth would
j Edgar Hoover personally care about it that

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much. In the end, you
either have to be okay with the cognitive

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dissonance of what happens, since there
is a lot of evidence that points to

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Oswald and maybe this is just a
weird anomaly, or the other path is

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to wonder why there was an Oswald
look alike in the first place and what

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that could mean for the overall case
if what Yates is saying is true,

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Ralph Yeates, like so many other
disputed areas of the JFK assassination, is

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an opportunity for different people to make
different inferences. Now, whether you shrug

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this story off, or you point
to it as evidence of a conspiracy,

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is really based on your own life
experience and your own worldview, And in

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large part the inferences that you're able
to draw are based on your answer to

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a very uncomfortable question, is it
even possible that a motivated group of people

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could have perpetrated the crime of the
century to kill the President of the United

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States of America and get away with
it? In Dallas, Texas, three

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shots were fired at President Kennedy's motorcade
in downtown Dallas. The first reports say

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that President Kennedy has been seriously wounded
by this chewing the flash apparently official President

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Kennedy's guy Central standard, I don't
know dollars this morning the man of monthly

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charge Assination along mission as this is
Solving JFK a podcast about the JFK assassination.

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I'm your host, Matt Crumpton,
and over the next few months,

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I'll be your guide to analyzing the
many pieces of conflicting evidence in the JFK

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assassination. What really happened was JFK
killed by Oswald alone, as the Warren

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Report says, or does the evidence
point somewhere else? Perhaps no other case

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in American history has been studied and
argued about more than the assassination of John

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F. Kennedy. Today, people
think about JFK assassination research in terms of

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conspiracy theorists versus Oswald did it alone
Warren Report defenders. But if the Warren

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Commission was wrong and there was some
other scenario than Lee Harvey Oswald killing the

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president and Officer Tippett alone, then
that means that the crime of the century

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is currently an unsolved homicide. While
the Warren Commission concluded in nineteen sixty four

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that Lee Harvey Oswald did act alone, most people are not aware that the

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United States Congress, through the House
Select Committee on Assassinations, reopened the JFK

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case and concluded in nineteen seventy eight
that Lee Harvey Oswald was the shooter,

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just as the Warren Report had said, but that there was also likely another

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shot fired from the front by an
unknown person. This means that the most

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current official government story is that it
is an unsolved conspiracy, and that rings

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true with the view of the American
public as well. In a weird way,

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the JFK assassination is one of the
few topics that still brings people together

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across ideological lines. According to a
five thirty eight survey, the existence of

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multiple shooters in the JFK assassination is
a belief held by fifty nine percent of

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Democrats, sixty one percent of Republicans, and seventy percent of independence. Of

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course, public opinion is not the
same thing as conclusive evidence, and there

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are legions of Warren Report defenders out
there to provide counter evidence to each claim

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by Warren Report critics. People like
Gerald Posner, Vincent Bugliosi, Bill O'Reilly,

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and a lot of people who go
hard on comment sections in John F.

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Kennedy assassination Facebook groups believe that Oswald
acted alone and it's not even a

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close call. The news media also
continues to reinforce the notion that the Warren

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Report has proven to be correct.
My audacious goal is to uncover the objective

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truth about the assassination of John F. Kennedy to the maximum extent possible.

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And the first big question we must
answer is was the Warren Report right that

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Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone? All
right, so let's talk about the name

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of this podcast. Solving JFK.
I received a well deserved many backlash on

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JFK Assassination Twitter. When I dropped
the name of this podcast, I get

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it. It sounds like I'm saying, hey, everybody, I've solved the

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JFK assassination finally, and now we
have the definitive truth. But that's not

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what I mean at all. I
chose Solving JFK for a title because I

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viewed the case as a puzzle to
be solved by anyone who's interested, not

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just me, And if you're listening
to this podcast, we are all actively

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looking for the corner pieces at this
point. My objective, like many before

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me, is to find the truth. Now, almost every book that I've

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come across in the JFK assassination literature
is either a conspiracy book or a lone

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Gunman Warren Report defender book. These
authors have a position on all the disputed

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issues, and they want to sell
their position to you. Now, of

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course, this makes a lot of
sense. Many of these authors have spent

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their whole lives reviewing the evidence,
and they believe that they have the case

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solved for sure, So why should
they waste their time establishing facts that don't

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support their theory of the case.
My lack of knowledge about the JFK case

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is actually an asset in a way, because I'm willing to start from square

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one without a doubt. There are
generations of JFK researchers who came before me,

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and thousands of people alive today who
know way more about the JFK assassination

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than I will ever know. Now. Where my approach is different from all

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these experts is that I'm not deciding
to make a case for or against conspiracy

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from the outset. I'm merely analyzed
and comparing the arguments of each side to

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see who's most plausible on each little
disputed issue. In my opinion, I

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don't know all the answers in advance. This is a journey where I'm gonna

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follow the evidence wherever it leads.
The other unique thing I'm trying out is

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the idea of crowdsourcing information for the
podcast. This case has so many tangents

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to travel down and so many different
paths that we can explore that there's really

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no way to get it right by
myself. That's why I'm going to be

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asking what I got wrong and what
information I left out that's relevant each week.

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You can email Solving Jfkpodcast at gmail
dot Com at the end of each

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episode, and before we make our
ultimate conclusions at the end of the season,

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we'll do a rebuttal episode or two
to correct anything that I got wrong

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or address anything that needs to be
addressed. Now, having said all of

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that and the interest of total transparency, my interest in this case was stoked

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by thinking that there was a conspiracy
but not being able to figure it out.

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I can't just turn off the doubts
that I have about the war On

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report, but I can objectively review
the record and consider all of the arguments

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about every issue with an open mind. So while I haven't solved the jfk

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assassination, I really would like to, and I'm going to try with this

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podcast, and I hope you'll help
me. I've been interested in the jfk

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assassination since the first time I heard
about it. What drew me in was

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the vivid and terrifying Zappruter film showing
Kennedy's head explode, combined with Oswald being

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shot two days later by Jack Ruby. It just didn't add up. So

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it was no surprise that as a
student teacher, when given the opportunity to

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dive into an American history subject,
I chose the JFK assassination. At that

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time, I concluded that the Warren
Report, at a minimum had serious problems,

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but there were just too many competing
theories for who did it, if

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not Oswald as the loan Nut.
It was overwhelming. Cuba, Russia,

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anti Castro Cubans, the mafia,
the military, Lyndon Johnson, Texas Oil,

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the FBI, secret Service, the
CIA. That's ten theories right there.

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I walked away from the several books
I had read at the time,

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thinking that the assassination would never be
solved. It was just too complicated,

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too many witnesses, too many experts, too many secret Service agents and Dallas

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police officers to keep up with,
and most of all, too many potential

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bad guy conspirators. I gave up
my shallow inquiry into the JFK assassination after

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that week of student teaching in the
spring of two thousand and four. I

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was going to law school and trying
to start a life, and I didn't

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have time to read thousands of pages
about a true crime that may or may

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not have been solved. Besides,
there were professional journalists whose job it was

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to find out what really happened.
I was sure that eventually some intrepid reporter

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would break the real story. Then
three years later, when I was finishing

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law school, I read a Rolling
Stone story about a deathbed confession by a

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former CIA agent who was infamous for
being one of the Watergate burglars, E

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Howard Hunt. According to Hunt,
the chief conspirators of the assassination were Lyndon

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Johnson, at least four specific CIA
officials, and the leader of a group

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of Cuban exiles. Now, there
are many people who believe that Hunt's confession

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is self serving and unreliable, and
will dive deeper into examining what he said

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if our examination of the Dallas evidence
does not point to Oswald alone. But

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I was struck by the fact that
this man Hunt, who was indisputably a

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CIA agent for his entire career,
was saying the assassination of JFK was a

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conspiracy at the highest levels of government. Now, deathbeak confession or not,

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I wondered what would motivate Hunt to
say such a thing if it was not

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true. In the final days of
his life. What kind of person decides

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to leave this world with a momentous
lie. The Hunt story was very intriguing,

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and my interest in the case was
once again stoked. But I didn't

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get around to following up at the
time because I was lost in the exhaustion

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of studying for the bar exam.
Solving JFK would have to wait. In

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twenty seventeen, when President Trump gave
the green light to release most but not

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all, of the JFK records,
I was back in the game. As

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the new records came out, I
dove in and tried to see what I

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could learn, which led me down
a path of reading every credible JFK assassination

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book. I could find both conspiracy
and loan gunment theories. Then, during

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the pandemic, I had more time
to organize my research and go even deeper.

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Surely there must be a discoverable objective
truth I could find by immersing myself

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in the facts of the case and
using the skills I learned as an attorney

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to help assess whether Oswald acted alone
as the Warren Commission claimed. Next time

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on Solving JFK, We're going to
take a look at all the government investigations

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into the assassination of President Kennedy.
Did the Warren Report get it right?

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Was Lee Harvey Oswald the Lone Gunman. Official President Kennedy died. Thanks for

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listening. For more information about the
show, visit Solving jfkpodcast