Speaker 1: Get ready.
Speaker 2: Hey, August twenty seven, twenty twenty five, allegedly, according to
Speaker 2: that thing we call a calendar and whatever might pop
Speaker 2: up on your computer, it is Wednesday, and it's the
Speaker 2: middle of the week, and I'm glad to have Larry
Speaker 2: Hancock with me. Now I did want Larry last week,
Speaker 2: but he was busy, and besides, things were crazy, So
Speaker 2: things happen anyway. Larry. Of course, if you go to
Speaker 2: Larrydshancock dot com you can check out his blog. There
Speaker 2: will be links in the show notes to be able
Speaker 2: to follow up on that, and god knows what else.
Speaker 2: Because we're having a different sort of discussion tonight, I'll
Speaker 2: begin it like this. The Kennedy Center. I noticed there's
Speaker 2: some goings on over there, And look, I don't care
Speaker 2: about your politics, but you would think that when you're
Speaker 2: talking about the forming arts, and that's what the center
Speaker 2: is for, that that's what they would be concerned with,
Speaker 2: not the politics of whatever, except maybe the politics of
Speaker 2: performing arts, which there are politics seemingly in everything. But
Speaker 2: does that count for maintaining the integrity of an institution?
Speaker 2: Now I bring up the Kennedy Center because well, you know,
Speaker 2: anything that hasn named Kennedy and it catches my attention. Duh,
Speaker 2: it's just the way it works. But also because I
Speaker 2: have a reverence for art, but I also have a
Speaker 2: reverence for history, and I recognize the need for museums.
Speaker 2: And I know the type of people that undermine, destroy, restrict,
Speaker 2: and remove museums from a landscape. It's because they don't
Speaker 2: want the truth of history told, because they want to
Speaker 2: give you their version of it. Now, we all know
Speaker 2: that thector does write the history. After all, the defeated
Speaker 2: don't often have the ability to record their side of
Speaker 2: the story. But if one takes in the whole of
Speaker 2: a historical situation, they might be able to learn about
Speaker 2: the vanquished, the defeated, the oppressed, and etc. In some ways,
Speaker 2: maybe through the lens of the victor, because the victor
Speaker 2: survives long enough to put up the institution and present
Speaker 2: it as something educational. And believe me, education goes on
Speaker 2: all the time, whether it's I think a new term
Speaker 2: should be miseducation instead of you know, like there's information,
Speaker 2: there's misinformation, there's education, there's mis education. Well, maybe there's
Speaker 2: a better term for that, And I'm sure Larry Hancock
Speaker 2: can help me out with it, because that's part of
Speaker 2: what we're going to talk about tonight. Why well, you know,
Speaker 2: one of the pinnacles in my mind whole life. I mean,
Speaker 2: it's even part of our language to bring up certain
Speaker 2: institutions as the place, the one place where you know
Speaker 2: this or that is going on, like dishonesty. You know
Speaker 2: that's DC. I mean, that's all there is to it.
Speaker 2: You know, corrupt cops. A lot of people would think
Speaker 2: la first, but I mean it's just the way of things.
Speaker 2: It makes it into the lexicon because it has a
Speaker 2: basis in reality. And I don't know, I've always thought
Speaker 2: of a place like the Smithsonian as one of those
Speaker 2: places that's above the fray, that's above the ever changing.
Speaker 2: It needs a new face once in a while, but
Speaker 2: the information that's retained in it should only be added
Speaker 2: to as new discoveries are made. Sure, But is it
Speaker 2: being politicized? Is it being manipulated for people's comfort? Is
Speaker 2: it being up? And I've watched that happen a lot
Speaker 2: when it comes to JFK stuff, et cetera. And Larry,
Speaker 2: I bet you've seen it a whole lot more in
Speaker 2: the JFK world. When people make adjustments and sometimes you
Speaker 2: see adjustments because new information came into existence, and other
Speaker 2: times you see adjustments being made because well it's convenient,
Speaker 2: or it fits their new movie, or it fits their
Speaker 2: new book, or it goes along with something prescribed in
Speaker 2: one way or another. Think about when something is prescribed, right,
Speaker 2: if you scribe, what are you doing? You're writing, or
Speaker 2: you're accounting for recording. And if you do it ahead
Speaker 2: of time, you did it ahead of time. Anyway, all
Speaker 2: of that strange rant to introduce Larry Ancock and to
Speaker 2: give you a vague idea about what we're going to
Speaker 2: discuss tonight. First though, Larry, how you doing.
Speaker 3: I'm doing good, Chuck. We've had a little coal front.
Speaker 3: I'm through. We've had some rain so on Oklahoma. It's
Speaker 3: a lot better August than it has been, kind of
Speaker 3: a precursor to fall. Not quite an early fall yet,
Speaker 3: but this time of the year when it can be
Speaker 3: one hundred and ten, having it be in the seventies
Speaker 3: for a day or so makes everybody a lot, puts
Speaker 3: them in a better humor. So I'm good.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, look two days here in the extremely hot
Speaker 2: and sweaty southeast and tell you the truth. It well,
Speaker 2: it eased up a bit past couple of days only,
Speaker 2: which I was surprised at because August is usually nothing
Speaker 2: but brutal here. But look, changing weather is one thing,
Speaker 2: and changing people and indeed generations go by. But certain
Speaker 2: things do stand, you know for a while. I mean,
Speaker 2: I know, our country isn't that old, but certain institutions
Speaker 2: I don't know, they seem to be outside of the
Speaker 2: winds of change can be changed by, like I said,
Speaker 2: new information, new discoveries, new methodologies, et cetera. And I
Speaker 2: always think of certain places as repositories of that information.
Speaker 2: The Library of Congress is another great example, right, isn't
Speaker 2: that like the largest collection of literature on the planet
Speaker 2: except for what we don't know about in the battles
Speaker 2: of the Vatican. Really, I mean, you know, here we go.
Speaker 2: These should be prideful things because of their well, their
Speaker 2: educational value. That has nothing to do with who's in charge,
Speaker 2: who got voted for, what the current trends are, et cetera.
Speaker 2: Or am I just crazy? I mean, is this just
Speaker 2: you know, one of those I don't understand the culture
Speaker 2: and the meaning of tradition, et cetera. I think there's
Speaker 2: something to be said for that, but what are your
Speaker 2: thoughts on that?
Speaker 3: And you've got to put a stake in the ground
Speaker 3: in some areas. It's just like an example would be
Speaker 3: if you're going to be using statistics and metrics on
Speaker 3: the economy, there's got to be a stake in the
Speaker 3: ground that says that's outside the political process because political
Speaker 3: decisions will be made on it. So it's got to
Speaker 3: be done outside of political control. If you put statistics
Speaker 3: in charge of a particular party or particular administration, you're
Speaker 3: looking at grave consequences down the road. So data, i'd say,
Speaker 3: that's one place where you've got to put a stake
Speaker 3: in a ground. You can't. You've got to collect data
Speaker 3: in a neutral fashion, which quite frankly, is what science
Speaker 3: is all about. And although I'm not a fan of
Speaker 3: a lot of things that go on in academity academia,
Speaker 3: data integrity is one thing you know that's that's required
Speaker 3: for science, and it's required for vision making, decision making,
Speaker 3: and that's one place you've got to put a stake
Speaker 3: in the ground. The other place you got to put
Speaker 3: a stake in the ground is for history. You have
Speaker 3: to put a stake in the ground because you're going
Speaker 3: to be making decisions for the future based on what
Speaker 3: you see in the past. But if you start rewriting
Speaker 3: that history, if you start spinning it for political purposes,
Speaker 3: then your decisions will go bad too. So Jack I say,
Speaker 3: my first response is institutionally as a country, as a nation,
Speaker 3: or as any group quite frankly doesn't even have to
Speaker 3: be at that level. If you can't put a stake
Speaker 3: in ground for your data collection, and you can't put
Speaker 3: a stake in the ground for your history, you're going
Speaker 3: to start making mistakes and you're going to pay for them.
Speaker 3: And if that sounds hard nosed, well, yep, that's what
Speaker 3: it is.
Speaker 2: Well, some people would say, Larry that look, not everything's
Speaker 2: so black and white with this, because there are focuses,
Speaker 2: And that's true. There are focal points. There are things
Speaker 2: that are made more important. You know, we don't preserve
Speaker 2: the poetry from everyone who writes a poem, right, we
Speaker 2: don't preserve the history of oh, I don't know the
Speaker 2: papers of every person who was like a member of
Speaker 2: the town council. Necessarily, there's a level of importance, there's
Speaker 2: a level of impact where we have to preserve, say,
Speaker 2: you know, presidential papers because they are an important figure
Speaker 2: in the government, in policy, in culture, in the reality
Speaker 2: as it's being shaped. That's an important figure. This is
Speaker 2: why you're supposed to retain all the presidential papers, whatever
Speaker 2: they are, right, stuff like this, So is there a
Speaker 2: priority in collection that is maybe really the argument that
Speaker 2: some people are trying to make or are they just
Speaker 2: doing what they do with everything nowadays? And you know,
Speaker 2: we went from f your feelings to whatever your feelings are,
Speaker 2: that's what reality is, which is kind of a strange
Speaker 2: twist because I thought that was the liberal thing to do,
Speaker 2: but now it's not. It doesn't matter liberal conservative. When
Speaker 2: people get power, they seem to behave differently than when
Speaker 2: they were the minority. And this is why it's so
Speaker 2: difficult and so necessary to have a neutral gathering place
Speaker 2: where you say, look, maybe the liberals papers aren't important,
Speaker 2: but the conservatives are, or the conservatives papers are just stupid.
Speaker 2: You know, we need to go with the progressive stuff
Speaker 2: and save that. The priority here is not about that.
Speaker 2: It's about there is a way to set priorities here.
Speaker 2: But it's not about your feelings. It's not about what
Speaker 2: you like, it's not about the persuasion you prefer is it.
Speaker 3: It's a matter and this really, it really doesn't need
Speaker 3: to be a batter debate. It's been established over and
Speaker 3: over again that there are a set of best practices
Speaker 3: and those really are beyond debate. I mean thousands of
Speaker 3: hours of headswead have gone into determining what best practices
Speaker 3: should be in data collection. As I mentioned, that's where
Speaker 3: i'd set one of my mistakes. You know, you collect
Speaker 3: data in a certain way for it to be considered credible.
Speaker 3: If you don't follow those sorts of best practices, then
Speaker 3: it's not credible, it's not reliable. It has to do
Speaker 3: with how you collect it, how you vet your sources.
Speaker 3: And that's pretty well laid out by this point in time.
Speaker 3: You know that's been done enough with enough critique to
Speaker 3: know what works and what doesn't work because it can
Speaker 3: be judged like if we follow these practices, we know
Speaker 3: we get good data because the data allows us to
Speaker 3: make good decision. It works same thing in history. Again,
Speaker 3: there's no big surprise here. There best practices in history.
Speaker 3: You can go to a graduate history history class and
Speaker 3: go through them, and it's a matter. One simple rule
Speaker 3: is primary sources You always use primary sources. If we
Speaker 3: were talking about slavery, slavery at the Smithsonian, I don't
Speaker 3: care who what anybody now thinks. What did these slaves
Speaker 3: think about it? We have lots of collections of verbal collections,
Speaker 3: and we have written collections from them. What did they
Speaker 3: think about it? How did they feel about it? What
Speaker 3: did they feel about the practices? What did these slave
Speaker 3: owners feel about the practices. That's the way you present
Speaker 3: the history of slavery well. And you don't get to
Speaker 3: make the call whether it's good or bad. It was
Speaker 3: their decision as to whether it was good or bad.
Speaker 3: You don't get to reverse engine hear that, well.
Speaker 2: Right, And here's where I'm going to take a swipe at,
Speaker 2: you know, one of the liberal popular positions from recently,
Speaker 2: and why it needs to be swiped at. When you
Speaker 2: look at slavery, Yeah, you can't just turn your head
Speaker 2: away because you find it repugnant. You need to look
Speaker 2: at the business of it. Indeed, you need to look
Speaker 2: at what those practices were, What kind of paperwork needed
Speaker 2: to be kept, what were the prices, what drove the market?
Speaker 2: All of these things are relevant to the way that
Speaker 2: practice was conducted. You might not like it. You might
Speaker 2: not want to look at how much was a human
Speaker 2: being worth and why, but it was a reality. So
Speaker 2: it needs to be examined and we need to understand it,
Speaker 2: I think fully and thoroughly. And yeah, I did just
Speaker 2: boil it down to what about the business practices because
Speaker 2: that is highly relevant in the history. Or am I
Speaker 2: you know? Am I just blowing smoke about this or
Speaker 2: what it is?
Speaker 3: And that's why you need to look at what the
Speaker 3: people said about it. And I'll give a very painful
Speaker 3: example from my personal history that deals with what you
Speaker 3: just described, Chuck. I had relatives living in Texas at
Speaker 3: the time of the Civil War who were slave owners.
Speaker 3: I have letters that they wrote. One of those letters
Speaker 3: is from one of them who was in the Confederate
Speaker 3: Army who wrote back and said, we're going to lose
Speaker 3: you need to sell the slaves. And the slaves were
Speaker 3: sold not too long after that. And this is all
Speaker 3: in a series of correspondents. The slaves were sold, but
Speaker 3: not too long after the end of the war, they
Speaker 3: were back as individuals, as freemen. Okay, they could come
Speaker 3: or go at their own will. So we've had a
Speaker 3: big change in morality A big change in you know,
Speaker 3: the personal side of the equation. But those same individuals
Speaker 3: were back working for my relatives as freemen. They could
Speaker 3: make their own decision, and their own decision had been okay,
Speaker 3: I was okay working for these people. I'm freed, I
Speaker 3: need a job. I'm going to go back to work
Speaker 3: for them. So that melds together the equation of the
Speaker 3: reality of making a living with the sea change that
Speaker 3: really occurred. They made the decision to go back, and
Speaker 3: I think that's the one of the big things that
Speaker 3: you you miss if you don't get down deep in
Speaker 3: the reality of the situation. It was their morals and
Speaker 3: their ethics, but there the big change was before they
Speaker 3: had no free will, they were slaves. Afterwards they put
Speaker 3: themselves back in the same situation of their own free will.
Speaker 3: And that that kind of package is the whole thing
Speaker 3: for you. It tells you that you know it was.
Speaker 3: It was certainly bad when they didn't have free will,
Speaker 3: but the economics of the situation and the relationship they
Speaker 3: had made that the place they went preferred to go
Speaker 3: get a job afterwards, and they got paid differently than
Speaker 3: they had been before. So it's it's a complex thing.
Speaker 3: But I would that's where I submit. It's not my
Speaker 3: call on that. I can't. If I did not have
Speaker 3: that correspondence that relates that story, I probably have a
Speaker 3: different impression with Wolf's what was going on at the
Speaker 3: end of the Civil.
Speaker 2: War, all right, And Texas is immensely a dynamic and
Speaker 2: complex in that story, because look, there's a reason why
Speaker 2: there's one star on the flag of Texas, and it's
Speaker 2: because it was the Republic of Texas at one point.
Speaker 2: I think, and now I may be rusty on my
Speaker 2: Civil War history here a little bit, but I think
Speaker 2: there was a certain point at which Texas wasn't necessarily
Speaker 2: committed to one side or the other. I don't think
Speaker 2: they were part of the first people that you know,
Speaker 2: joined the the secession, if you will, And that may
Speaker 2: have been for a variety of factors, and all of
Speaker 2: that dynamic needs to be recognized here. When did Texas
Speaker 2: actually enter into the Confederacy? Not everybody decided on one day,
Speaker 2: even though there was, you know, that circumstance, and that
Speaker 2: changed things in the reality of the people you're talking
Speaker 2: about in your own personal history. If the state of
Speaker 2: Texas was in was in they were in. If they
Speaker 2: weren't going to be in. They weren't going to be
Speaker 2: in And there were even you know, slaves being held
Speaker 2: in other places that didn't necessarily join right away in
Speaker 2: the Civil War and quotes right in exactly the same fashion,
Speaker 2: it wasn't necessarily homogeneous clean action that occurred all on
Speaker 2: one day.
Speaker 3: And there's it wasn't homogeneous between North and South either, right.
Speaker 3: If you really look at the history at the times,
Speaker 3: you find you find a lot of opposition to slave
Speaker 3: holding in the North, but a lot of you know,
Speaker 3: just the opposite. There were strong contingents in the Midwest.
Speaker 3: Actually during the war, the South was successful and in
Speaker 3: a lot of sabotage operations because they had supporters in
Speaker 3: the Midwest, in Illinois, in Indiana, in New York City. Right,
Speaker 3: things were the things that were imposed on the Northern States.
Speaker 3: We were very strong from a security standpoint, a lot
Speaker 3: of a lot of pretty brutal methods going on because
Speaker 3: there was support. But of course the same as due
Speaker 3: in the South. You know, Texans being pretty independent, were
Speaker 3: not necessarily all for just jumping into the game on
Speaker 3: anybody side. So you know, it's a complex story. But
Speaker 3: back to the point I mean, you can't. You need
Speaker 3: doing historical practices that you don't get into the complexity
Speaker 3: of the situation and you don't see it correctly. You can't.
Speaker 3: You can't overwrite it. You have to look at the
Speaker 3: primary sources. What were those people saying. And that's where
Speaker 3: I get back to the argument about how it's being presented.
Speaker 3: It's not my call as to how it's being presented.
Speaker 3: Is is their story being presented? Is there is their
Speaker 3: story being presented in full and equitably and without anybody
Speaker 3: making it match how they want it to read. You know,
Speaker 3: your displays should be real. It should be real photographs,
Speaker 3: real letters, real audible interviews. We have a lot there's
Speaker 3: a large amount of anthropology that's been done in this
Speaker 3: country over the over the centuries, actually with the indigenous
Speaker 3: Americans to capture their side of the story, with with
Speaker 3: the slaves. You know, that's what needs that's the history.
Speaker 3: So my call of anybody going there is a pitchmark.
Speaker 3: It is not to get back to what you were
Speaker 3: saying earlier. I can look at it and say are
Speaker 3: you following the best practices or are you not liberal conservative?
Speaker 3: Whatever you want to be. I can say, are you
Speaker 3: following the correct practices to tell the story in a
Speaker 3: neutral historical fashion.
Speaker 2: Well because otherwise, look, if you leave it to the
Speaker 2: narrative devices of people that are going to be influenced
Speaker 2: by only their own perspective. You know, you could turn
Speaker 2: around and say, you know, my family had these people
Speaker 2: that they fed and clothed, you know, without charging them
Speaker 2: any money in exchange for a bit of help, you know,
Speaker 2: doing whatever it was they were doing, And you could
Speaker 2: turn it into that, and you end up with a
Speaker 2: tone def a statement like oh it was like job training,
Speaker 2: you know, yeah, and we will that the politics.
Speaker 3: They needed work and I helped them out. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 3: they just couldn't leave when they wanted to. It's kind
Speaker 3: of like indentures. Right, It's amazing to me that we
Speaker 3: missed the whole point. An indentured servitude gets down to
Speaker 3: the point with like, I'm always stunned by the fact
Speaker 3: that did you folks realize that Benjamin Franklin escaped from
Speaker 3: his indentured servitude. He left and stole away. And you
Speaker 3: know this is Benjamin Franklin, right, because he was financially enslaved.
Speaker 3: He could not leave that job. But yeah he did
Speaker 3: and he got a ship in the darken night to
Speaker 3: a different colony.
Speaker 2: Right, which almost exactly is. And there were rules, by
Speaker 2: the way, this is another thing. There were rules in
Speaker 2: different places, and they called them, you know, the code
Speaker 2: Noir in some places right where there were standards by
Speaker 2: which you were supposed to handle your slaves, just like
Speaker 2: you know, and I hate to put it this way,
Speaker 2: but there are standards by which you're supposed to handle
Speaker 2: your livestock. There are standards by which you're supposed to
Speaker 2: handle other things, and even if they were five eighths
Speaker 2: of a human being and everything. Look, I'm kicking a
Speaker 2: lot of emotional tires here, I know I am. But
Speaker 2: the point is all of them need to be recorded
Speaker 2: because that gives you a sense of the actual transactions
Speaker 2: and institution that it was. Right. I mean, you picked this, okay,
Speaker 2: and you picked one of the hardest things to have
Speaker 2: to be honest about and be objective about. When recording everything,
Speaker 2: you got to record it all, and yes, that includes
Speaker 2: recording the brutality, the dehumanization, et cetera, all of it,
Speaker 2: all of it. That's how you're ever going to have
Speaker 2: a chance to be able to examine that history correctly
Speaker 2: or am I missing your point now?
Speaker 3: And you I think you're making a good point there,
Speaker 3: because you've got it's got to be the full history, right,
Speaker 3: it can't just be a slice of the history. And
Speaker 3: you know, we talked about this earlier and this you know,
Speaker 3: it's it's not that this is Yeah, there's a real
Speaker 3: problem with how we present this in our national institutions,
Speaker 3: because our national institutions really should be above political control.
Speaker 3: Anybody that thinks differently, I'm sorry, I disagree. You know,
Speaker 3: you've got to have if you're going to be a
Speaker 3: democratic nation, you've got to have someplace where you draw
Speaker 3: the line over political control. But this, this does impinge
Speaker 3: even on the work that we do in our research.
Speaker 3: And I think I mentioned this earlier, Chuck, and that
Speaker 3: that's that's one of the things that we we run
Speaker 3: into in our research of conspiracies and and and things
Speaker 3: get really complicated, is where you only you took the
Speaker 3: view that somebody else had expressed. And I'm going to
Speaker 3: go ahead and relate what I've just been through. Everybody
Speaker 3: that's listening this probably knows that David Boylan and I
Speaker 3: have recently published a book on only Harvey Oswald. And
Speaker 3: I've had to recant in several areas where I took
Speaker 3: other people's words for it, who I thought had trusted,
Speaker 3: you know, and found out later that maybe they didn't
Speaker 3: have the full picture. We have a fuller picture now,
Speaker 3: So some of my views have changed. And sometimes you
Speaker 3: need to post a notice that says, oh, by the way,
Speaker 3: you know what was up here. You know ten years
Speaker 3: ago we changed. Don't be shocked. Here's why we changed it,
Speaker 3: you know, because we found something new. Yeah, that could
Speaker 3: be rather innocent, like renaming a dinosaur, or it could
Speaker 3: be something more sensational about it. We found a skeleton
Speaker 3: for President's closet. And okay, we need to tell this
Speaker 3: part of the story. But in regard to Lee Harvey Oswald,
Speaker 3: I had written there'd been a letter that Lee Harvey
Speaker 3: Oswald had written to the Communist Party USA in the
Speaker 3: summer of nineteen sixty three, and in part of that letter,
Speaker 3: in a couple of sentences, he talks about asking for
Speaker 3: vice this when he if he should go underground. Now
Speaker 3: that's a pretty pretty strong thing, you know, and can
Speaker 3: be easily sensationalized if you just took that part of it, Okay,
Speaker 3: which I did, because that suggests a lot of different
Speaker 3: things that might be going on. When I got a
Speaker 3: chance to read the fully redacted and released letter recently unreducted, sorry,
Speaker 3: unredacted letter recently, it's a different story. And what the
Speaker 3: full story is that Lee Harvey Oswald had been after
Speaker 3: he had done his leaf living and his ro tests
Speaker 3: for Fair Play for Cuba Committee in New Orleans, he'd
Speaker 3: been on the radio in a debate and really gotten
Speaker 3: pretty well trashed in the debate because they surprised him
Speaker 3: and pulled out the fact that he had been in
Speaker 3: the Soviet Union, he had said bad things about the
Speaker 3: United States, he married a Russian wife, he believed in Marxism.
Speaker 3: He wanted to talk about Castro and the success of
Speaker 3: Cuban Revolution, the social progress in Cuba, and they blindsided
Speaker 3: with him with that, and it really really was a
Speaker 3: pretty He did is pretty well with it, but the
Speaker 3: problem is the people that were debating really cast a
Speaker 3: lot of doubt on him and the Fair Play for
Speaker 3: Cuba Committee because of his association with it. Right in
Speaker 3: this letter, he is.
Speaker 2: Right, yeah, really quickly though, I would say that even
Speaker 2: you have to parse this out further because ed Butler
Speaker 2: did an interview with him that radio show called Latin
Speaker 2: Listening Post, and that interview was not as confrontational as
Speaker 2: the later what was it, conversation carte blanche they called it,
Speaker 2: I believe, which included Berengere, you know, the Ed Butler
Speaker 2: one on one pretty much let Oswald set out some
Speaker 2: things without being challenged too much. Butler was.
Speaker 3: Kind of set him up for the second one. It's
Speaker 3: kind of like, well, that wasn't bad, Let's go on
Speaker 3: this the next show, and then wham right.
Speaker 2: But that was My point is that literally, you need
Speaker 2: to examine both of those things separately. And somebody might
Speaker 2: have just heard you put them both together and say
Speaker 2: that they were okay, But yeah, see what I mean,
Speaker 2: you got to look at both of these things separately.
Speaker 2: I'm not saying this to you, Larry, you know this,
Speaker 2: but I mean my point is that you take a
Speaker 2: look at the Ed Butler. You listen to it yourself.
Speaker 2: I've listened to it, I don't know how many times.
Speaker 2: But the point is that it's not very confrontational. It
Speaker 2: appears as though, yeah, that's what it sounds like, he's
Speaker 2: being set up. But either way, if you don't want
Speaker 2: to talk about the intent. What you can say is
Speaker 2: that his points of view were not challenged Bill and
Speaker 2: Gehre was added to the next interview, and he was
Speaker 2: used as a foil while the interviewer was also challenging him.
Speaker 2: So literally, he was being challenged from two different directions.
Speaker 2: In the next interview, that is a completely different conversational
Speaker 2: dynamic where he trips over himself. He says, Oh, I'm
Speaker 2: not a Communist, but I'm a Marxist lendedness, and they
Speaker 2: ask him what that means, and he goes into a
Speaker 2: thing about well, they make so many TVs here and
Speaker 2: so many people have so many phones there, and it
Speaker 2: just it becomes this convoluted mess because he does not
Speaker 2: know how to defend himself. He was blindsided by it,
Speaker 2: like you said, obviously, and was that the point of it? Well,
Speaker 2: here we go. You have to examine the history and
Speaker 2: now take a look at what he does afterwards. And
Speaker 2: it happens to be this letter, which was always represented
Speaker 2: as very strange because Oswald did not have, as far
Speaker 2: as we know, an official you know, membership with the
Speaker 2: Communist Party of the United States, right, he did not
Speaker 2: have an official membership with the fair Play for Cuba
Speaker 2: Committee either, Right, So all of these things need to
Speaker 2: be mentioned and need to be understood when you're examining
Speaker 2: just this particular piece of correspondence and what inspired it
Speaker 2: or what it came before it. Right, So I'm just
Speaker 2: saying for the purposes of context, like you do for
Speaker 2: me all the time. Isn't that correct? Oh?
Speaker 3: Absolutely? And when you understand that he had just had
Speaker 3: he had felt good about himself and what he was
Speaker 3: doing after that first radio show, as you say, and
Speaker 3: then he came out the second one shell shocked, and
Speaker 3: literally he starts again writing several people Socialist Workers Party CPS,
Speaker 3: and he's writing them saying, you know, I'm even thinking
Speaker 3: of moving back to your area. Could I volunteer and
Speaker 3: work on your paper? Could I help you? You can
Speaker 3: see he's kind of going through a trauma. And in
Speaker 3: the letter he's literally saying. What he's saying is he
Speaker 3: doesn't just say go underground. What he says first is
Speaker 3: should I lower my profile? Go underground? Because I realized
Speaker 3: that what I'm doing, the way I'm doing it might
Speaker 3: actually make the fair Play for Cuba Committee look bad.
Speaker 3: You know, he actually says, I'm concerned that people might
Speaker 3: use me and my background to make the FPCC and
Speaker 3: the Cuban Revolution look bad, and I'm not feeling good
Speaker 3: about that. Should I change the way? Should I change
Speaker 3: what I'm doing? Which is a totally different interpretation of
Speaker 3: what's going on if you have that full context and
Speaker 3: the full letter, because he is literally going on to say,
Speaker 3: you know, I'm looking for advice, which is not the
Speaker 3: classic Oswal. Up to that point in time. Oswell always
Speaker 3: ran and ran his own game. He's pretty headstrong. But
Speaker 3: now he's had to suck it up and realize that
Speaker 3: maybe the way he's been doing things isn't maybe he's
Speaker 3: going to have to make a change, and he's becoming
Speaker 3: much more notional at that point in time, which is
Speaker 3: really important for understanding Oswal and what happens next. But
Speaker 3: I guess back to the point of this story is
Speaker 3: if you didn't have the context for it, and you
Speaker 3: don't have the full letter, just quoting oswal Is asking
Speaker 3: the Communist Party about going underground makes it a lot
Speaker 3: more sensational, a lot more suspicious, a lot more suspect,
Speaker 3: which is the way I wrote it up in my book.
Speaker 3: And now he needed to take it back and you
Speaker 3: need to be honest about that in history, which is
Speaker 3: why historians peer review each other. And that's another thing
Speaker 3: that I wanted to bring up about putting stakes in
Speaker 3: the ground. Best practices don't mean even one historian's take
Speaker 3: on something. The important thing is to let them beat
Speaker 3: each other up. See what comes out of it. Get
Speaker 3: the historians that know the subject. If you're going to
Speaker 3: put up something as a not a primary source, but
Speaker 3: something that's been written about it, and you're doing it
Speaker 3: in an institution, even in a museum, it needs to
Speaker 3: give references. It's like for the full story in this,
Speaker 3: read this and read this. We have this in the bookstore,
Speaker 3: and we have two different versions in the bookstore. Read
Speaker 3: them and see what you think. That's the way to
Speaker 3: go about being institutionally neutral and really truly following best practices.
Speaker 3: If you just got one book on the subject, or
Speaker 3: a controversial subject, okay, not do you call a dinosaur
Speaker 3: an aptosaurus or a bronosaurus? Okay, you only have one
Speaker 3: book there, But if on slavery, you might want to
Speaker 3: have a couple of different views from professional historians. So
Speaker 3: back to our larger topic of you know, where do
Speaker 3: you put your sakes and ground and what do you
Speaker 3: do as far as institutional history. You do it the
Speaker 3: right way. Otherwise you politicize it and you just cut
Speaker 3: your legs out from under yourself.
Speaker 2: Well, absolutely true. And the other thing that I've noted
Speaker 2: over the years is sometimes, you know, if you allow
Speaker 2: ego to be the driving force and only accept the
Speaker 2: narrative coming from somebody's ego, that doesn't want to be
Speaker 2: wrong because then you know, oh, gee, I sold you
Speaker 2: on something. I told you, I had the answers, and
Speaker 2: now I have to say I'm wrong. There's a serious
Speaker 2: reluctance about that, but that is part of the process.
Speaker 2: People are gonna get things wrong. This is not you know, like, oh,
Speaker 2: Larry failed on this. I didn't fail. He just made
Speaker 2: an error that needed to be corrected, and quite frankly,
Speaker 2: is probably kind of happy that it was corrected because
Speaker 2: now a more accurate assessment can be made. Like, for instance,
Speaker 2: you know, it's still weird to me that he's going
Speaker 2: to the Communist Party when he doesn't have an affiliation
Speaker 2: with them, though, you know, so somebody could say, well,
Speaker 2: why is he doing that when he's this headstrong guy.
Speaker 2: Normally that seems to think he knows better than everybody
Speaker 2: in there. I mean, if you listen to Ruth Pain
Speaker 2: right and other people that you know did actually have
Speaker 2: proximity to him.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 2: And I'm not saying that Ruth pain is my primary
Speaker 2: source on this, but does seem as though the guy
Speaker 2: was pretty confident in most of his actions. Now all
Speaker 2: of a sudden, we have a written record here of
Speaker 2: him approaching, you know, people that he doesn't necessarily know personally,
Speaker 2: but asking for advice because they might be an authority.
Speaker 2: I think the same kind of thing actually happened when
Speaker 2: he asked for John apt to be his lawyer right
Speaker 2: in Dallas, because it just happened to be an authority
Speaker 2: figure he knew of. And so now we see a
Speaker 2: different aspect where he might reach out to someone that
Speaker 2: he believes as an authority, whether he has a personal
Speaker 2: interaction with them or not. And we have a different
Speaker 2: dynamic emerging here where there might be other pieces of
Speaker 2: evidence here where he reaches out to somebody who is
Speaker 2: an authority on things in his mind. Whether that's you know,
Speaker 2: the way it should have gotten Yeah, good.
Speaker 3: I think it's very important insight, Chuck, because what we
Speaker 3: do know is that he very He subscribed to and
Speaker 3: very regularly read the publications from cp US at the
Speaker 3: Worker and from Socialist Work, so he would read them.
Speaker 3: He didn't, he didn't. He he wrote back and forth
Speaker 3: to the Socialist Workers Party more and it had written
Speaker 3: to young as a young socialist. But the dynamic is
Speaker 3: usually he would read things. He would read his own
Speaker 3: decisions and not ask for a lot of advice. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 3: you're absolutely right, as the mor George de Morangehaw would say,
Speaker 3: as his friends would say, even to the you know,
Speaker 3: he would make up his online based on what he
Speaker 3: was reading. But what we see happening in New Orleans
Speaker 3: puts him in That's why I said, a much more
Speaker 3: notional state. He's beginning to question whether everything that he's
Speaker 3: doing is the right way to go about it. It's
Speaker 3: not producing the read and and the other thing that's
Speaker 3: coming up, quite frankly is Oswald has never been totally
Speaker 3: an island to himself. You know, he he would he
Speaker 3: likes to if he can find people to talk to
Speaker 3: that believe the same thing, he will talk to them.
Speaker 3: In New Orleans, we know he went to address the
Speaker 3: Jesuit College and that's some very positive feedback and that
Speaker 3: he liked that. So he will also face the fact
Speaker 3: that in New Orleans he's not finding a lot of people.
Speaker 3: There's no George de Morenshield, there's nobody that can even
Speaker 3: accept his progressive notions. So there's there's some reason to
Speaker 3: think he's looking for a little bit more dialogue with
Speaker 3: with somebody, which would be a recent kind of like
Speaker 3: I'm going to go back to the East Coast and
Speaker 3: you know, actually go to work with these people and
Speaker 3: they'll talk to you know, and not throw things at me.
Speaker 3: So it's he is, he is evolving at that point
Speaker 3: in time, and that's a very important thing to pick
Speaker 3: up on because we do see sort of a sea change,
Speaker 3: and that's an oswell and Oswell asking for advice is new.
Speaker 2: It's new, it's new, but it's not inconsistent here. And
Speaker 2: this is why if you just take what Larry just said, Look,
Speaker 2: he's being informed. His worldview is being informed by the
Speaker 2: communist publications. Okay, so whatever you want to say, he
Speaker 2: was regularly reading them as far as we know from
Speaker 2: the monitoring of his mail from him holding it up
Speaker 2: in the backyard photos. Whatever you want to say, it
Speaker 2: does seem as though his worldview was at least partially
Speaker 2: informed by these papers, right, So of course that would
Speaker 2: make sense that his worldview is informed that way. He
Speaker 2: thinks that he might have slipped up here a bit.
Speaker 2: Let me check with the people who have informed my
Speaker 2: worldview to see if there's another direction to go. There's
Speaker 2: a logic here, Larry, that I'm seeing, you know, just
Speaker 2: from listening to you. I mean, it actually makes more
Speaker 2: sense now when we had just the should I go underground?
Speaker 2: Seems like a rather drastic thing to ask somebody you
Speaker 2: don't know, you know, I mean, it is a bit much,
Speaker 2: But we did take it like that for years. We did,
Speaker 2: you know, the people that wanted to make him the
Speaker 2: kooki kami, you know, Loan Nut especially love that. You know,
Speaker 2: look at him, he's a comedy. He's asking him should
Speaker 2: he go underground? See? See he's shifty, shady. Okay. But
Speaker 2: if you put it in a greater context and you
Speaker 2: think about you know, listen, if there is a source
Speaker 2: where your worldview is being shaped by that source, you
Speaker 2: might consult somebody there and say, hey, you know, someone
Speaker 2: wrong here a little bit with my worldview and trying
Speaker 2: to express it. You might go back to what it
Speaker 2: is that informed you, or who it is that informed you,
Speaker 2: or the publication that informed you. Reread your stuff? Did
Speaker 2: I miss something? Is there something else I should be
Speaker 2: able to do? Since you're telling us this part of
Speaker 2: the story, you must know more. I'm just saying it does.
Speaker 2: It's got logic to it. It's got a logic to
Speaker 2: it that you know, isn't kooky and isn't you know,
Speaker 2: drastic and out of left field?
Speaker 3: Uh? And and I think it tells us to two
Speaker 3: more things. One is again, Oswell is not nearly a
Speaker 3: straight line as we would like. He's not just just
Speaker 3: one track, never varies from that tract. He can even
Speaker 3: have self doubt. And in this instance that self doubt
Speaker 3: is very important because when you're reading the letter and
Speaker 3: you're going Oswald is really saying, you know, people might
Speaker 3: take this and use my backstory to actually attack the
Speaker 3: fair play for community and detact you know, the revolution
Speaker 3: in Cuba. And he's saying that, you know, people might
Speaker 3: do that. He is self aware enough without knowing it
Speaker 3: to know exactly at that time in New Orleans is
Speaker 3: beginning to prepare a package based around that second radio
Speaker 3: debate and they'll be working on that package, and we
Speaker 3: don't know exactly when it was available. But at the
Speaker 3: same time Oswald is wondering about could somebody use this
Speaker 3: against me? For sure, INCA and very possibly Special affairs
Speaker 3: staff in Miami are taking that to begin a propaganda
Speaker 3: program built around the Harvey Oswald, and Oswald is smart
Speaker 3: enough to realize that that could happen, and he's beginning
Speaker 3: to back out of it because he realizes the implications.
Speaker 3: And that's a much brighter and more situationally aware Oswald
Speaker 3: than we have thought about in the past.
Speaker 2: And it makes more sense now that the media was
Speaker 2: instantly informed about this stuff because remember this is still localized,
Speaker 2: you know, in national broadcasts are not calm, and you
Speaker 2: know in nineteen sixty three, okay, so you know it.
Speaker 2: Just because ABC News in Laws in New Orleans or
Speaker 2: whatever had it doesn't mean that every ABC News had it.
Speaker 2: You know what I'm saying, I used ABC as an example.
Speaker 2: I'm not saying that's specific. What I'm saying is that
Speaker 2: instantaneously after his name was known and a couple of
Speaker 2: biographical facts were known, our media, even in that day
Speaker 2: and age when we didn't have the instantaneous transmissions of things.
Speaker 2: Already had clips from these radio shows, these audios instantaneously,
Speaker 2: and it seems like that was ready to be distributed
Speaker 2: pretty quickly, and it was something that somebody was aware
Speaker 2: would be useful at some point. So you know right there,
Speaker 2: you know that, like you're saying, look, they were preparing
Speaker 2: packets because you know, maybe explaining what INCA was doing
Speaker 2: because a lot of people, you know, they know it
Speaker 2: sort of, but could you just give you know, a
Speaker 2: bullet point on inco what that was and why that's important,
Speaker 2: why they would have been interested in this specific situation.
Speaker 3: ETHA was a very interesting organization, and I think there's
Speaker 3: a case that could be made with documents that we
Speaker 3: have now. ECO was one of those anti communist groups,
Speaker 3: very very right ring, very anti communists that had been
Speaker 3: organized and founded by a fellow in New Orleans who
Speaker 3: had been a PR specialist. He was a public relations specialist,
Speaker 3: that was his business, and he was strongly anti communist
Speaker 3: and felt that the Communists were really a lot better
Speaker 3: at pop propaganda in PR than we were, that they
Speaker 3: were telling their story better. Yeah, State Department did some things,
Speaker 3: you know, the CIA did some things, but you know,
Speaker 3: the Communist Party out of Soviet Union in particular, was
Speaker 3: so skilled and the fishing that they were telling their
Speaker 3: story around the world a lot better than we were
Speaker 3: telling our story. And he had founded a couple of
Speaker 3: small organizations that began to craft, you know, anti commun
Speaker 3: stories and circulate them. And then he got some major
Speaker 3: financial support from a fellow named Aushner in New Orleans
Speaker 3: who was very well known throughout the Caribbean. He had
Speaker 3: a clinic treated a lot of government officials from different
Speaker 3: Central American and Latin American countries and was quite wealthy,
Speaker 3: and he funded ECO with a lot of money. And
Speaker 3: so they started doing you know, a lot of really
Speaker 3: well done pr It's very clear that actually one of
Speaker 3: the best things, the most effective things they did, were
Speaker 3: a series of truth tapes. And those truth tapes were
Speaker 3: interviews with Cuban expatriots, Cuban refuses who had terrible stories
Speaker 3: to tell about the Castro regime, the appropriation of properties, executions.
Speaker 3: And now we know that a lot of those people
Speaker 3: were pointed towards Eca from the CIA and that he
Speaker 3: worked with the CIA, and the CIA also helped distribute
Speaker 3: those truth tapes to their outlets, their deniable outlets in
Speaker 3: Central America. So ECLO was closely connected to the CIA
Speaker 3: for propaganda purposes. And so when you're looking at that,
Speaker 3: it really raises the question. It's kind of like, well,
Speaker 3: if he knows and Econ knows how to make you
Speaker 3: know the best of Lee Harvey Oswell's you know, efforts
Speaker 3: in New Orleans, is there anybody in Miami that's thinking
Speaker 3: about doing the same thing. A lot to be explored there.
Speaker 3: David Boyle and I are exploring that and doing some research.
Speaker 3: But ECA is just EGA is kind of a clue
Speaker 3: as to the kind of propaganda that the CIA may
Speaker 3: have been thinking about in regard to Lee Harvey Oswell.
Speaker 3: Because based on Jeff Morley's work and the recent documents
Speaker 3: that we now know that everybody at Special Affairs Staff
Speaker 3: in d C in Miami, SaaS Miami Operating based JM Way,
Speaker 3: they all knew about Oswell. They all knew about Oswald.
Speaker 3: Is the rest confrontation. They were all aware of what
Speaker 3: propaganda that had already been done with this radio broadcast,
Speaker 3: and it's almost impossible to think that they could see
Speaker 3: how effective that that radio interview had been that you
Speaker 3: had described and that they would not want to take
Speaker 3: advantage of it in some fashion.
Speaker 2: Well, and here's the thing, multiple things can be true
Speaker 2: at the same time where the CIA could work in
Speaker 2: support of INCA. Whether it was organically created or not
Speaker 2: doesn't matter, because either way it would be advantageous to
Speaker 2: at least exploring how to utilize that information. And even
Speaker 2: in the post assassination, immediate post assassination media frenzy, where
Speaker 2: every magazine and a lot of television and a lot
Speaker 2: of radio was devoted to the assassination in the immediate way, okay,
Speaker 2: not long after, INCA literally produces records Oswald Speaks or
Speaker 2: something they called it. I've seen it before. I owned
Speaker 2: a beat up copy at one time, and it's literally
Speaker 2: if you look at the back of the you know,
Speaker 2: the LP jacket, Uh, yes, it's Oswald's interview And there
Speaker 2: you go. It's produced by INCA. Now they're not a
Speaker 2: record company, and they yeah, sorry.
Speaker 3: They did it in English and in Spanish.
Speaker 2: Yes, they do.
Speaker 3: That matter, which is very interesting. And yeah, there's there's
Speaker 3: a lot that we can be learned when you start
Speaker 3: we start mapping out about who knew what about oz
Speaker 3: Will when that was denied. All this time. You know,
Speaker 3: now that we know that so much of that was
Speaker 3: was taken out of the record, people didn't talk about
Speaker 3: what they knew. You know, we can start to reverse
Speaker 3: engineer some of what might have been going on, because
Speaker 3: otherwise it's just piece bits and pieces laying around and
Speaker 3: you go, you know, that's strange, that's anomalous. But we
Speaker 3: can't connect those bits and pieces. And now I think
Speaker 3: we have a better chance of doing it now that
Speaker 3: we realize the information that was in circulation about Oswald
Speaker 3: that everybody wanted to deny and get out of the record,
Speaker 3: brings a whole new you know, we all thought that
Speaker 3: might be true. Now we know it's true.
Speaker 2: And this also speaks to the you know, the post
Speaker 2: assassination narrative, because that was managed obviously, and some people
Speaker 2: would say it was managed for the reason that you know,
Speaker 2: Johnson gave to h you know, to Warren or Warren
Speaker 2: in the first place, you know, put your uniform back on.
Speaker 2: You got to prevent a nuclear war because the commedies
Speaker 2: did it well, you know, is that legitimate or not. Anyway,
Speaker 2: it had to be managed, and part of the management
Speaker 2: would be managing the information about Oswald, making sure certain
Speaker 2: things got out there. Who knows even distributed. How does
Speaker 2: an organization like income Excuse me, just because I've been
Speaker 2: sick a little lately, I am sorry about that. I
Speaker 2: didn't mean to call at you. How does an organization
Speaker 2: like INCA even get to distribute a record? Somebody wanted
Speaker 2: to help with that, Okay, you don't distribute record distribution
Speaker 2: at that time. There was something to be said for that, okay.
Speaker 2: So they either volunteered to help out INCA, an organization
Speaker 2: that maybe not everybody in the world knew about in
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty three sixty four, you know, they wanted to
Speaker 2: help them distribute a record. They got these things, the
Speaker 2: record stores made sure it was produced in English and Spanish,
Speaker 2: the production was done here. That wasn't something that was
Speaker 2: easily done.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: Then all the way pretty much through the history of
Speaker 2: you know, vinyl and LPs, okay, there is something to
Speaker 2: be said about the organisms that had to come together
Speaker 2: and coalesce to even put that record out. So from
Speaker 2: the time it was recorded to the time it was broadcast,
Speaker 2: or when it was broadcast slash recorded to the time
Speaker 2: it's distributed later, all of these things can be revelatory
Speaker 2: if we know the information, who helped, why, who suppressed
Speaker 2: why so? And here's me again trying to step back
Speaker 2: and take the objective point of view, because this will
Speaker 2: show you something, and you can only do that if
Speaker 2: you're not hunting after it with a prescribed agenda. Again,
Speaker 2: it doesn't matter. Forget about the politics I brought up, liberal, conservative,
Speaker 2: blah blah blah. The labels and language have shifted a bit.
Speaker 2: Forget that. If we just go with I believe Oswald
Speaker 2: did it, I believe Oswald didn't.
Speaker 4: Do it, it.
Speaker 2: Doesn't really matter. You can reveal the whole history. If
Speaker 2: we can take in the whole history of the circumstance
Speaker 2: and show it for what it is, and you don't
Speaker 2: have to believe anything, because if we actually get it all,
Speaker 2: you might be able to parse it out for yourself,
Speaker 2: if we can actually examine the entirety of the record.
Speaker 2: I'm using just this example because it's it's a good one.
Speaker 2: It's got a real time circumstance, it's got a preassassination
Speaker 2: circumstance all evolving around the assassination, and one of the
Speaker 2: key figures in the discussion anyway of the assassination, and
Speaker 2: it's got a posthumous traveling record afterwards too, So to
Speaker 2: me that's most interesting, And if you take it all apart,
Speaker 2: you might get a chance to figure out what actually
Speaker 2: happened to you, you know, because some people have said, look,
Speaker 2: these people were CIA people. They were behaving like they
Speaker 2: cared about you know, Central and South America. But really
Speaker 2: they were just CIA operatives. And well, okay, so was
Speaker 2: Oswald a CIA operative? Yes, well why are they working
Speaker 2: against each other? Then, you know, like, you can't just
Speaker 2: dismiss it with one of those sweeping statements, and especially
Speaker 2: you can't do that unless you've dug into all of
Speaker 2: the circumstances. Like I said, consider what it would take
Speaker 2: to distribute a record for INCA. This is not you know,
Speaker 2: Atlantic Records, This is not you know, Chess Records, This
Speaker 2: is not this is a company that's not in the
Speaker 2: business of doing this, but somehow managed to do that.
Speaker 2: Maybe looking into that would be interesting as well. I mean,
Speaker 2: now you have to actually look at all of it
Speaker 2: and look at the circumstances of the time that have
Speaker 2: nothing to do with it. What would it take to
Speaker 2: make that record and distribute it? These are fair questions.
Speaker 3: Clearly, you didn't put it into Spanish just because you
Speaker 3: wanted to distribute it in the US. There's always an
Speaker 3: intention to take it much more broadly into Latin America,
Speaker 3: you know, and that's going to be expensive and among
Speaker 3: the things. And now we can tell.
Speaker 5: The whole story of how the CIA was set up
Speaker 5: to distribute that kind of aial to its own deniable outlets,
Speaker 5: its own foreign basically media network.
Speaker 3: We know that the person that was in charge of
Speaker 3: doing that was David Phillips out of Mexico City, which
Speaker 3: brings some more interesting things into the conversation. But in
Speaker 3: the line of our overall thought it it all comes
Speaker 3: back to something simple as if if you don't have
Speaker 3: if you don't present the full primary data, if you
Speaker 3: can't see the full primary data, if somebody doesn't show
Speaker 3: you all of the primary data, then by human nature,
Speaker 3: you're liable to make what you can see fit what
Speaker 3: you want to see, which is a sin that I
Speaker 3: committed when I just saw Underground. Oh okay, that none
Speaker 3: of us are immune for that, and we've got to
Speaker 3: watch ourselves. So there's a warning there. If you again,
Speaker 3: if you don't put those stakes in the ground, you
Speaker 3: start saying you set your filters. We all have filters,
Speaker 3: and your filters go to work, and if you limit
Speaker 3: the information coming into the filter, it makes it even worse.
Speaker 2: Well, and the other point you made about peer review, look,
Speaker 2: not every peer is equal. That's true. But you know what,
Speaker 2: if you don't have things tested, and I'm telling you
Speaker 2: that that's gonna be something I'm going to do at
Speaker 2: Lancer this year is pretty much say look, test it
Speaker 2: all about what I'm going to tell you here. I
Speaker 2: want you to go and prove me wrong. Please add
Speaker 2: to my knowledge if you can. I want that. I
Speaker 2: actually appreciate that part of the process. I don't think
Speaker 2: it's a negative. Some people say, well, oh, you made
Speaker 2: mistakes in your book. Sometimes there are our mistakes. You know.
Speaker 2: A good, very smart friend of mine once made a
Speaker 2: mistake in the very first sentence of his book that
Speaker 2: he showed me after he already had him printed up,
Speaker 2: And I said, I wish you had shown that to
Speaker 2: me in the first place. There are mistakes, But Larry's
Speaker 2: laugh and I think he knows I'm talking about anyway.
Speaker 2: The point is you can make a mistake like that.
Speaker 2: Anybody can. But when you put these things out, I
Speaker 2: mean look, I'd prefer to give people the basis to
Speaker 2: prove something wrong and expand the general knowledge, because that's
Speaker 2: what it's actually all about. At the end of all
Speaker 2: of this, this discussion about who found something, who missed something,
Speaker 2: or anything else. Ultimately, the goal of the historian should
Speaker 2: be to refine the record with new information, with better information,
Speaker 2: with more complete information, with newly discovered things, or maybe
Speaker 2: some things that were already there but having been ignored previously.
Speaker 2: And I think that should be the goal for everybody.
Speaker 2: Revision should not ever be seen as a defeat, but
Speaker 2: should be seen as evolution of the thing we're all after,
Speaker 2: which is the most truthful and accurate portrait of the
Speaker 2: historical event, time period, people, person, business, whatever it may be.
Speaker 2: And politicizing this is going to do nobody any favors,
Speaker 2: no matter what your point of view is. I mean,
Speaker 2: that's the ultimate conclusion to tonight's discussion. In my mind, Larry,
Speaker 2: that's where we should be. But by all means, if
Speaker 2: you have a different way of putting it, or you
Speaker 2: think we need to add to that, you know we
Speaker 2: can close it out. On your final thoughts here about this.
Speaker 3: I think you put that very well I don't really
Speaker 3: have any any final thought other than if you make
Speaker 3: it what you want it to be, or if you
Speaker 3: contaminate your primary sources, you're fooling yourself. And okay, it's
Speaker 3: one thing to do it for yourself, all right, But
Speaker 3: my point would be at the higher level that you
Speaker 3: do it. If you do it at the nation's primary
Speaker 3: national institutions, you didn't just fool yourself, you damage the
Speaker 3: whole society. So you've got to look at the You've
Speaker 3: got to look at the consequences. You have to be
Speaker 3: much more demanding, which is why academia is more demanding,
Speaker 3: why peer reviews are brutal, and having been through a
Speaker 3: number of peer reviews, they are brutal. There it's like
Speaker 3: not something that life is. You don't do it because
Speaker 3: you want people to find things that are wrong, but
Speaker 3: you really don't want to write you know, you would
Speaker 3: prefer they didn't, So you're subjecting yourself to that. But
Speaker 3: if at the national level, if you don't have that
Speaker 3: stake in the ground and go through the process, you're
Speaker 3: not just fooling yourself, you're fooling literally millions of people.
Speaker 3: And what's worse with social networking being what it is today.
Speaker 3: You're you're fooling. You're you're generating data that will feedback
Speaker 3: and make it worse and worse and worse. You'll get
Speaker 3: further and further and further from the truth. We all
Speaker 3: know that when things get repeated, they generally don't get
Speaker 3: repeated right, and the story gets worse. We all played
Speaker 3: that game in school, you know, make a line and
Speaker 3: stay something. By the time he gets to the tenth person,
Speaker 3: it's something totally different. So the risk is even greater
Speaker 3: now from an institutional and a social standpoint. So I
Speaker 3: guess I probably labor that point enough, but we you know,
Speaker 3: there are points places where you need to be squeaky
Speaker 3: clean and get above yourself, and that's one of them.
Speaker 2: You know, one of the lesser known guys who really
Speaker 2: used to lecture me on the phone a lot. Do
Speaker 2: you remember Roger Remington? Oh yeah, he was historian, you know,
Speaker 2: and he was a professor at Aquinas College, a small college,
Speaker 2: you know, middle of the country kind of thing. And
Speaker 2: the brilliance that came from that guy is just it's
Speaker 2: a gift that keeps on giving. He's passed away now
Speaker 2: quite a while, but I can never forget the stuff
Speaker 2: that this man you know, impressed upon me, gave me
Speaker 2: educations in some of those, you know, a couple hours
Speaker 2: phone calls, you know, sternly, very how would you put
Speaker 2: it in a very curt sort of way. He was
Speaker 2: a little he was a little crusty as an old guy. Actually, okay, yeah,
Speaker 2: you talked to him, yeah, okay, yes, so you know,
Speaker 2: and he would lecture me about perspective and there was
Speaker 2: a French concept to that and how history could not
Speaker 2: be written until seventy five years after it occurred because
Speaker 2: there needed to be time for perspective, right, you know,
Speaker 2: the French. I'm butchering the French, but you know what
Speaker 2: I'm getting at. And he said, you know, one of
Speaker 2: the problems that's going to continue to snowball from I'm
Speaker 2: paraphrasing the modern historical literature that occurs right after something happens.
Speaker 2: You know, a book gets written two years after something,
Speaker 2: a book gets written months after, et cetera, is that
Speaker 2: there is no time for a careful examination. And we're
Speaker 2: going to see this problem speed up over time. We're
Speaker 2: going to see it increase in its velocity because the
Speaker 2: more people that get involved in it the more books
Speaker 2: that need to be get made, even though publishing is
Speaker 2: not necessarily the biggest business in the world at this point,
Speaker 2: and who the hell reads a book, clearly not a
Speaker 2: lot of people in power. The point is that we
Speaker 2: now live in an age where instant information is even
Speaker 2: worse than the stuff that used to take a couple
Speaker 2: of years to publish. And it's still you know, it
Speaker 2: has a lot to do with the ethical and ethical
Speaker 2: considerations of the authors, and those very wildly you know,
Speaker 2: you tell me, not everyone is a historian, you know,
Speaker 2: even if they want to be. We could all contribute
Speaker 2: to the history, but we must be careful. And I
Speaker 2: think that you know, as I said before, it's the
Speaker 2: political considerations. All of that have nothing to do with
Speaker 2: getting at the accurate portrait. You know, some people use
Speaker 2: the word truth and this and that, and then people
Speaker 2: want to convolude that and say, well, this is my truth,
Speaker 2: this is your truth, and no, there's only one way
Speaker 2: that things happen. There may be a lot of perspectives
Speaker 2: you can look at it from. You can catch it
Speaker 2: from a bunch of different angles. And the more angles
Speaker 2: you get, and the more what would they call that
Speaker 2: panoramic view you can have of the circumstance, like I say,
Speaker 2: the time period, the business, the individual, the historical event,
Speaker 2: the better off you are, and those things will only
Speaker 2: come to us with time, one way or another. Now
Speaker 2: you have to wait for something to be a little
Speaker 2: less redacted, for you to be able to see something
Speaker 2: a little differently. But that's not a mistake. That's part
Speaker 2: of the process, and all of that needs to be retained,
Speaker 2: doesn't it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we should. We should be warned what he was saying.
Speaker 3: It's sort of like, okay, we all know historians know that, Yeah,
Speaker 3: seventy five years is a good working number. And the
Speaker 3: thing was that used to be the publishing process. You know,
Speaker 3: you might see a book come out a year or
Speaker 3: two years after the fact, which we did with the
Speaker 3: Kennedy assassination, and you would really know that that was
Speaker 3: too early. But now it's so much worse. You can
Speaker 3: take any event that occurs today and there will be
Speaker 3: I just look at some of the publishers. There'll be
Speaker 3: a book out on it, you know, out in four months.
Speaker 3: You know, something that looks like a book after four months,
Speaker 3: But that'll be lagging behind social media, which will have
Speaker 3: already covered the issue and resolved it, and people's position
Speaker 3: will have been taken within twenty four or forty eight hours.
Speaker 3: So things are getting worse if you don't follow the best,
Speaker 3: it's not getting better. His concerns that it would get
Speaker 3: worse are proven absolutely right.
Speaker 2: And I mean he must have said that to me
Speaker 2: in the late nineties when the Internet was not what
Speaker 2: it is, and you know, well, maybe no, it was
Speaker 2: early two thousands. The latest that could have been is
Speaker 2: two thousand and three when he said that to me,
Speaker 2: and said it to me more than once. If you
Speaker 2: never heard of Roger Remington, by the way, I would suggest,
Speaker 2: if you're well read on the Kennedy assassination, a little
Speaker 2: something called Biting the Elephant. It's one of three or
Speaker 2: four books that he put out very plain covers. He
Speaker 2: said he didn't care about getting readers for them, even
Speaker 2: because he was trying to publish things for other historians
Speaker 2: to pick up. Anyway, I leave it at that, Larry,
Speaker 2: And you know, I'm not trying to promote Roger's stuff.
Speaker 2: I mean, he's not going to make anything from it,
Speaker 2: and I don't think he made anything from it to
Speaker 2: begin with. But he definitely gave me the ten plates
Speaker 2: to understand what it is we really should be doing
Speaker 2: with our best practices, or at least have a vague
Speaker 2: idea about it. I'm not even saying I know all that,
Speaker 2: but either way, these best practices are there for a reason,
Speaker 2: and they pre exist, you know, this little country of ours,
Speaker 2: our Library of Congress, all that, so you know there's
Speaker 2: a reason for it. Just saying anyway, Larrydashhandcock dot Com,
Speaker 2: go there. I still highly recommend the Oswald Puzzle, and
Speaker 2: I can't wait to see what you and David do
Speaker 2: at Lancer this year. I think you're going to be
Speaker 2: one of several controversial presentations.
Speaker 3: Maybe that's that's what we do.
Speaker 2: It is what we do. I think I'm going to
Speaker 2: really aggravate people because I'm going to be in person,
Speaker 2: but you're going to be there virtually, and David will
Speaker 2: also be presenting with you. Not sure if he'll be
Speaker 2: virtual or in person just yet, but you know, if
Speaker 2: you keep up on the news there you'll find out.
Speaker 2: Also in the show notes, you'll see a link to
Speaker 2: l Answer in a discount code if you want to
Speaker 2: attend in person or online. But that aside the link
Speaker 2: to Larry's book the Oswald puzzle, Larry's website, Larry's blog,
Speaker 2: always informative, always evolving, and you know, Larry has changed
Speaker 2: over the years as new information has become available, like
Speaker 2: a responsible person would do. And I I don't know
Speaker 2: what can I say? Larry is basically my favorite living historian.
Speaker 2: How about that? And I hope he is yours too. Anyway,
Speaker 2: thanks Larry for doing this. I took you a little
Speaker 2: bit over, Sorry about that, but I think we got
Speaker 2: the message across. What do you say?
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, definitely is something that needs to be said regardless,
Speaker 3: but just needed to be said. So thanks for the
Speaker 3: opportunity to do it.
Speaker 2: Anytime, Larry. Of course, we'll try and speak to you
Speaker 2: again in two weeks, and who knows what will be
Speaker 2: happening then that we need to address. Hopefully nothing world ending,
Speaker 2: but you know, it is what it is. And if
Speaker 2: nothing else, maybe we'll talk about some more JFK stuff,
Speaker 2: or maybe we'll talk about some of these other documents
Speaker 2: that have been released or are yet to be released.
Speaker 2: I almost want to see what Larry thinks of the
Speaker 2: Epstein thing. I don't know if you guys want to
Speaker 2: hear about that, or if Larry wants to speak about it,
Speaker 2: but be more than happy to take your feedback if
Speaker 2: you write to me at O'Kelly. You know, if you
Speaker 2: look at the email link on olly dot com, just
Speaker 2: click that, it'll give you the address. Whatever I am
Speaker 2: blind JFK researcher at gmail dot com. If you've got
Speaker 2: a pen and you want to write it down or
Speaker 2: you can remember it there, it is Larrydash Handcock dot com.
Speaker 6: And I said, go ahead, call it the.
Speaker 3: Truth about the day of Heay assassination.
Speaker 6: Right, Well, what do you want to know?
Speaker 3: Udy Baker's wild claim?
Speaker 2: Oswald girlfriends you knew Ruby and Barry handswer weapons. Really,
Speaker 2: I imagine I could claim I have four wheels. It
Speaker 2: doesn't make me a wagon.
Speaker 3: But okay, Oswald was on the building and I'm trying
Speaker 3: to prevent the murder of John Kennedy. Come on now,
Speaker 3: has a real effort on the day of pay assassination.
Speaker 1: Book into claim.
Speaker 2: Go to Amazon dot com enter Judith Baker in her
Speaker 2: own words. You'll get the results for a digital copy
Speaker 2: of a book where Walt Brown utilizes her own words
Speaker 2: and the known evidence in the cave to get at
Speaker 2: well a different perspective let's say you can get judithbary
Speaker 2: Baker in her own words from the author himself, signed
Speaker 2: if you request it by contacting doctor Brown at kias
Speaker 2: jfk at aol dot com. It's a fun book and
Speaker 2: it actually dissects the many, many fantastic claims. Judith vary
Speaker 2: Baker in her own words, Thank you information.
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Speaker 4: Revelation through conversation, gravel.
Speaker 8: Through conversation, are as a seams, and truth breaking through.
Speaker 2: The use expressed my caller schools. There anyone else who
Speaker 2: happens again on the air of Jelly dot com not
Speaker 2: necessarily reflecting need us, Lly dot com or Chilli, and
Speaker 2: we are not responsible for any stupidity which might ensue thank.
Speaker 7: You Chili dot com.
Speaker 1: Revelation through con say here it is all bally sall
Speaker 1: e A first really shall be Lady Freezon more.
Speaker 4: The War State by Michael Swanson explains the great national
Speaker 4: transformation that took place and put the Kennedy presidency in
Speaker 4: the context of the times and reveals never before published
Speaker 4: information about the Cuban missile crisis. President Kennedy would not
Speaker 4: have been assassinated if he had been president two hundred
Speaker 4: years ago. His assassination took place in the context of
Speaker 4: the Cold War and the rise of the national security state.
Speaker 3: Before World War II, the United States was a continental republic.
Speaker 4: In the decade that followed, it became an imperial superpower.
Speaker 3: Generals such as Curtis LeMay not only wanted to invade Cuba,
Speaker 3: but knew that there were short range missiles on the
Speaker 3: island armed with nuclear warheads that they could not destroy
Speaker 3: because they were on mobile launchers. Their invasion could have
Speaker 3: led to a Third World War, and they wanted to
Speaker 3: go to war anyway.
Speaker 4: The War State by Michael Swanson reveals why and will
Speaker 4: show you what President Kennedy was up against.
Speaker 3: For more information, The Warstate dot Com