WEBVTT

1
00:00:04.000 --> 00:00:09.080
This is Later with Lee Matthews the
Lee Matthews Podcast. More of what you

2
00:00:09.199 --> 00:00:14.039
here weekday afternoons on the Drive.
Paul Brands is a columnist for USA Today

3
00:00:14.039 --> 00:00:17.239
and the Dow Jones market Watch.
He's one of the most followed journalists in

4
00:00:17.239 --> 00:00:21.600
the White House Press Corps, and
his newest creation is called Countdown to Dallas.

5
00:00:21.600 --> 00:00:27.120
The incredible coincidences, routines, and
blind luck that brought JFK and Lee

6
00:00:27.160 --> 00:00:32.640
Harvey Oswald together on November twenty second
of nineteen sixty three. This, Paul,

7
00:00:32.880 --> 00:00:38.799
is the so called crime of the
century. Indeed, well it really

8
00:00:38.960 --> 00:00:42.840
was. I mean, the thing
that really boggles the mind after all this

9
00:00:43.119 --> 00:00:50.759
timely is how one person could do
it in such a casual fashion. This

10
00:00:51.119 --> 00:00:56.200
was over in six seconds, one
guy wiping out the most powerful man of

11
00:00:56.240 --> 00:01:00.000
the world and just the blink of
an eye. Six seconds. Six decades

12
00:01:00.439 --> 00:01:03.000
we're still debating what happened that day, but it really is just just an

13
00:01:03.000 --> 00:01:07.719
amazing thing. I try not to
debate so much as look at some of

14
00:01:07.719 --> 00:01:10.680
the facts. And one of the
things that's always fascinated me, Paul,

15
00:01:11.239 --> 00:01:17.120
is the weapon that Lee Harvey Oswald
chose, being a marine, being very

16
00:01:17.120 --> 00:01:19.959
good at what he did, a
good marksman. There were so many other

17
00:01:19.959 --> 00:01:23.439
weapons that would have been more effective
for him to use. Do we know

18
00:01:23.519 --> 00:01:29.319
why he used the Carcino, Well, it was a chief first of all.

19
00:01:29.359 --> 00:01:34.280
I mean he paid about the twenty
bucks for shipping. Back in nineteen

20
00:01:34.400 --> 00:01:38.920
sixty three, you could easily buy
rifles through the mail. The questions asked.

21
00:01:38.959 --> 00:01:42.519
He had effect signatur and all that, but it was a cheap weapon,

22
00:01:42.519 --> 00:01:48.040
and he practiced with it for months. His wife Marina said that he

23
00:01:48.040 --> 00:01:51.519
would when they were living in New
Orleans in the summer of sixty three.

24
00:01:51.599 --> 00:01:55.760
He would sit on the porch in
the dark at night and just to play

25
00:01:55.760 --> 00:01:59.719
with the bolt action, back and
forth and back and forth, and he

26
00:02:00.280 --> 00:02:05.920
practiced a couple of times. There
could have been maybe better weapons, more

27
00:02:05.920 --> 00:02:10.719
expensive weapons, but that is what
he chose. And his own Marine Corps

28
00:02:10.840 --> 00:02:16.639
instructor later said he wasn't surprised at
all that Oswald was able to do it.

29
00:02:16.680 --> 00:02:21.199
He thought that he was a pretty
good shot, even in the Marines.

30
00:02:21.759 --> 00:02:23.400
Well, and that was my first
That's what struck me first. When

31
00:02:23.439 --> 00:02:28.960
I visited the Dallas Book Depository and
I'd heard all along, Oh, he

32
00:02:29.240 --> 00:02:31.759
couldn't have made that shot. Couldn't
have made that shot. Any marine worth

33
00:02:32.039 --> 00:02:38.599
his salt could have made those shots. Well, that's true, you consider

34
00:02:38.680 --> 00:02:44.719
that he had a four power scope. It was actually a pretty easy shot.

35
00:02:45.280 --> 00:02:47.479
It's often been asked, well,
why didn't Oswald shoot when the car

36
00:02:47.719 --> 00:02:53.240
was approaching the depository? It would
have been a head on shot. I

37
00:02:53.280 --> 00:02:58.639
think Oswald clearly had time to think
about what he was going to do and

38
00:02:59.199 --> 00:03:02.840
how he would do it. He
decided to wait until the car was on

39
00:03:02.919 --> 00:03:08.360
Elm Street, after it a turned
left, went down that curving road in

40
00:03:08.400 --> 00:03:12.400
front of the grassy knaw and all
that and again. Back to his own

41
00:03:12.439 --> 00:03:16.719
Marine Corps instructor, James Zam,
he said that Oswald made the right decision

42
00:03:16.800 --> 00:03:22.439
in terms of waiting then to shoot, because he didn't have to move his

43
00:03:22.680 --> 00:03:25.400
rifle as much. If he were
aiming the other way, angle would have

44
00:03:25.439 --> 00:03:29.840
been a little bit harder, the
gun would have had to move a lit

45
00:03:29.960 --> 00:03:32.360
more often. So that is why
he chose to shoot. There is actually

46
00:03:32.360 --> 00:03:38.240
a very easy shot from that vantage
point with the four power scope he had.

47
00:03:38.599 --> 00:03:42.719
Paul brandis author of Countdown to Dallas, The Incredible Coincidences, Routines and

48
00:03:42.840 --> 00:03:45.719
Blind Luck. Now those are some
of the facts you and I just hammered

49
00:03:45.719 --> 00:03:50.879
out. But let's talk about some
of these amazing coincidences. Well, one

50
00:03:50.919 --> 00:03:54.159
of the big ones is why Oswald
was able to get a job in the

51
00:03:54.199 --> 00:04:00.199
book's depository in the first place,
five weeks before the assassination. A lot

52
00:04:00.199 --> 00:04:03.000
of people say, she isn't at
fishy got that job for stuff, five

53
00:04:03.120 --> 00:04:08.360
weeks before Kennedy came to town.
Well it's really not. Would you consider

54
00:04:08.719 --> 00:04:14.439
how he got that job. He
was unemployed, his wife, Marina,

55
00:04:14.520 --> 00:04:18.279
had just had a second that baby. They had very little money. He

56
00:04:18.560 --> 00:04:23.240
needed a job. He'd been fired
a couple of times, really at trouble

57
00:04:23.279 --> 00:04:29.000
holding even menial positions. In Irving, Texas, where Marina was living.

58
00:04:29.120 --> 00:04:32.600
She was estranged from Lead. She
went to coffee one morning with some of

59
00:04:32.639 --> 00:04:38.040
the women in the neighborhood and Ruth
Payne, her interpreter and woman who she

60
00:04:38.160 --> 00:04:42.600
was living with. A conversation ensued
about the fact that, well, Lee

61
00:04:42.639 --> 00:04:46.839
needs a job. One of the
women who was having coffee that morning said,

62
00:04:46.839 --> 00:04:50.480
when my brother Wesley ull Frazier just
got a job at this place downtown

63
00:04:50.600 --> 00:04:56.519
called the Texas School Book Depository,
I wonder if they could use another man,

64
00:04:57.160 --> 00:05:01.399
so Marina. So Ruth Payne rather
called the depository, talked to a

65
00:05:01.399 --> 00:05:04.920
guy named Roy Truley who ran it, said yes, send him down,

66
00:05:04.959 --> 00:05:10.240
I could use another guy. So
Oswald goes down there, applied led on

67
00:05:10.319 --> 00:05:13.839
his application about a bunch of things. A photo of the application is in

68
00:05:13.879 --> 00:05:16.240
my book, by the way,
So I gets the job. This was

69
00:05:16.279 --> 00:05:20.600
October fifteenth, nineteen sixty three.
Well, a lot of people don't know,

70
00:05:21.560 --> 00:05:28.279
Lee, is that the Texas school
Book Depository had two locations in Dallas,

71
00:05:28.560 --> 00:05:32.160
and Roy truly, the guy who
hired Oswald, nearly assigned him to

72
00:05:32.319 --> 00:05:39.639
the other location, which was nowhere
near Daly Plaza where the assassination took place.

73
00:05:39.639 --> 00:05:43.879
It was only after he decided,
well, I could probably use a

74
00:05:43.959 --> 00:05:46.959
lot of more help at the Daily
Plaza location. It was only then that

75
00:05:47.040 --> 00:05:54.240
Oswald was assigned to the Daily Plaza
location of the depository. So if you

76
00:05:54.279 --> 00:05:59.519
think it's fishy that he got that
job five weeks before Kennedy's arrival, and

77
00:05:59.680 --> 00:06:04.360
all of these other people in the
conspiracy chain, the women at the Suburban

78
00:06:04.439 --> 00:06:10.560
Coffee and Roy Trulli, the superintendent, in deciding to assign him to the

79
00:06:10.600 --> 00:06:14.839
other building, they all would have
been involved in the conspiracy. And one

80
00:06:15.000 --> 00:06:17.560
rule of a conspiracy, of course, is that the few of the people

81
00:06:17.600 --> 00:06:20.920
who know about it the better.
Just doesn't add up. And the other

82
00:06:21.000 --> 00:06:24.800
thing to add to that, by
the way, is that when he was

83
00:06:24.920 --> 00:06:30.680
hired on October fifteenth, President Kennedy's
motorcade route had not even been established for

84
00:06:31.000 --> 00:06:36.680
his trip. It was later finalized
by Kennedy's own personal aid, Kenny O'Donnell.

85
00:06:36.720 --> 00:06:41.839
So it just does not add up. And possibly Oswald didn't even learn

86
00:06:41.839 --> 00:06:46.319
of it himself until maybe a few
days before. That's true, when the

87
00:06:46.399 --> 00:06:54.279
motorcade route was finally finalized, it
was published the next day in both Dallas

88
00:06:54.279 --> 00:07:00.160
newspapers, the Times Herald and the
Dallas Borning News. And Oswald had a

89
00:07:00.240 --> 00:07:05.839
habit of reading the papers that his
coworkers left behind in the domino room kind

90
00:07:05.839 --> 00:07:11.360
of the lunch room at the depository, and he read about it there.

91
00:07:11.480 --> 00:07:18.160
So it really was again just an
incredible crime of opportunity. He was so

92
00:07:18.319 --> 00:07:23.279
unprepared for it, in fact,
that he only had did not have a

93
00:07:23.360 --> 00:07:27.959
full cartridge with me at four bullets, could have had six. He did

94
00:07:28.000 --> 00:07:30.759
not even have time to go out
and buy more he was really just an

95
00:07:30.800 --> 00:07:35.800
incredible crime of opportunity, just an
amazing coincidence. I think that's what people

96
00:07:36.120 --> 00:07:41.680
that's what boggles people's minds. How
could this have happened? Paul brandis Countdown

97
00:07:41.680 --> 00:07:45.519
to Dallas is the name of the
book, and he talks about the amazing

98
00:07:45.600 --> 00:07:49.839
coincidences, incredible coincidences and routines and
blind luck that brought these two together,

99
00:07:49.920 --> 00:07:54.759
JFK and Lee Harvey Oswald. That's
the other thing. The KGB idea that

100
00:07:54.800 --> 00:07:57.800
they were underwriting him in some fashion. I have a hard time with that.

101
00:07:57.920 --> 00:08:01.480
Seems like even the KGB didn't want
him. Well, they did not

102
00:08:01.639 --> 00:08:05.519
want him. You know. I
worked in Russia for a long time and

103
00:08:05.600 --> 00:08:09.800
I visited Minsk in bul Rusk where
Oswald lived, and he was he wanted

104
00:08:09.839 --> 00:08:15.319
to live in Moscow when he defected, and the Soviet government said, now

105
00:08:15.360 --> 00:08:18.920
we don't want him. This guy
just strikes us as a kind of you

106
00:08:18.959 --> 00:08:22.879
know, crazy. He tried to
commit suicide in fact, when they said

107
00:08:22.920 --> 00:08:24.839
no, you can't live in Moscow, you have to you know, leave.

108
00:08:26.720 --> 00:08:30.040
Finally they relented, but they said, well you have to move to

109
00:08:30.160 --> 00:08:33.360
Minsk, which is kind of a
backwater, sort of a town. They

110
00:08:33.440 --> 00:08:39.000
did not want him. He assigned
him to a menial job in a metals

111
00:08:39.080 --> 00:08:43.200
factory had made parts for radio and
TV and that kind of thing. It

112
00:08:43.279 --> 00:08:48.519
was really menial job. Oswald that
hated it, as he hated every menial

113
00:08:48.639 --> 00:08:52.600
job that he had. The KGB
watched him closely. They gave him a

114
00:08:52.639 --> 00:08:56.799
really nice apartment, which some people
think is fishy, but they gave him

115
00:08:56.799 --> 00:09:01.120
a nice apartment because it was easier
to keep an eye on him. There

116
00:09:01.159 --> 00:09:07.600
were monitoring devices all around and that
kind of thing. They did not trust

117
00:09:07.679 --> 00:09:11.679
him, and when he decided that
he had had enough of life in the

118
00:09:11.759 --> 00:09:15.279
Soviet Union it's a terrible place to
live, they said, okay, here's

119
00:09:15.279 --> 00:09:18.600
your exit papers. You know,
bye bye. So they did not want

120
00:09:18.720 --> 00:09:22.320
him either. And what's funny is
that the KGB thought that he was a

121
00:09:22.440 --> 00:09:26.799
CIA guy, and the CIA wondered, well, guy's got to be kg

122
00:09:28.399 --> 00:09:31.240
It's kind of like a classic spy
game, and I have decide trusted the

123
00:09:31.279 --> 00:09:35.440
other. Both sides thought Oswald who
was working for the other. It's really

124
00:09:35.519 --> 00:09:39.879
kind of funny. Paul Brand's Countdown
to Dallas, the incredible coincidences, routines

125
00:09:39.919 --> 00:09:43.799
and blind luck that brought JFK and
Lee Harvey Oswald together, Paul, thanks

126
00:09:43.840 --> 00:09:46.919
for bringing this story together and joining
us today wait. Thank you so much,

127
00:09:46.919 --> 00:09:50.600
my pleasure. Thanks for listening to
Later with Lee Matthews, the Lee

128
00:09:50.720 --> 00:09:56.000
Matthews Podcast, and remember to listen
to The Drive Live weekday afternoons from five

129
00:09:56.080 --> 00:09:58.600
to seven and I Hearts Media presentation