WEBVTT 1 00:00:06.799 --> 00:00:15.560 Get ready. 2 00:00:13.039 --> 00:00:17.280 Thirtieth day of January twenty twenty six, allegedly according to 3 00:00:17.280 --> 00:00:19.039 that thing we call a calendar, And here's me going 4 00:00:19.079 --> 00:00:21.760 live early on a Friday. And I'm not going to 5 00:00:21.839 --> 00:00:24.239 try the experiment I have in mind for the Friday 6 00:00:24.320 --> 00:00:28.160 night shows this week, but perhaps in two weeks we'll 7 00:00:28.160 --> 00:00:30.839 try a little experiment and see we can improve communications. 8 00:00:31.440 --> 00:00:34.399 But up until we start taking calls at eight pm Eastern, 9 00:00:36.119 --> 00:00:39.520 I've got a piece of JFK stuff to play for you. 10 00:00:39.600 --> 00:00:39.880 Now. 11 00:00:40.640 --> 00:00:44.960 This is not mine, and it was actually produced around 12 00:00:45.000 --> 00:00:50.280 the thirtieth anniversary of the JFK assassination. Michael Parente wasn't 13 00:00:50.320 --> 00:00:54.000 the first to the only person to poke holes, you know, 14 00:00:54.119 --> 00:00:57.759 into the lone gunman theory, that's for sure, but he 15 00:00:57.840 --> 00:01:02.079 took a different approach, and one that did shape quite 16 00:01:02.119 --> 00:01:06.159 a bit of what it is. I thought afterwards. Thirtieth anniversary, 17 00:01:06.280 --> 00:01:09.719 obviously is nineteen ninety three. I had been in for 18 00:01:09.760 --> 00:01:13.480 about five years and was starting to get sophisticated enough 19 00:01:13.519 --> 00:01:17.359 after studying the baseline evidence to begin looking at other 20 00:01:17.359 --> 00:01:18.640 people's points of view. 21 00:01:19.519 --> 00:01:20.840 And this is. 22 00:01:22.239 --> 00:01:25.879 Well, Michael PARENTI will introduce it himself and explain it 23 00:01:26.000 --> 00:01:29.680 himself in about a forty seven minute presentation here, so 24 00:01:29.680 --> 00:01:32.680 hopefully we can fit the whole thing in before we 25 00:01:32.719 --> 00:01:35.439 get to the live Friday night show. 26 00:01:36.439 --> 00:01:39.680 I've been looking at history, and I've been impressed and 27 00:01:39.799 --> 00:01:44.680 depressed by the fact that history is really a chronicle 28 00:01:44.799 --> 00:01:46.239 of immense atrocities. 29 00:01:47.200 --> 00:01:48.840 What we have in history is. 30 00:01:48.799 --> 00:01:52.799 The fact that when surplus value develops, when there's more 31 00:01:52.840 --> 00:01:55.799 than a subsistence economy, you have some portion of the 32 00:01:55.840 --> 00:02:00.159 population that will do everything it can to enslave and 33 00:02:00.239 --> 00:02:03.200 to expropriate the labor of the rest of the people, 34 00:02:03.560 --> 00:02:07.480 whether it's a slave society as an ancient Greece and Rome, 35 00:02:08.039 --> 00:02:11.560 or feudal society where people were reduced to serfs, or 36 00:02:11.719 --> 00:02:14.719 in capitalist society where people are driven to the edge 37 00:02:14.719 --> 00:02:18.960 of insecurity and made to work faster and harder. And 38 00:02:18.960 --> 00:02:21.680 one of the things that's used in that arrangement is 39 00:02:21.879 --> 00:02:26.120 a very conscious instrument of control that's very necessary, and 40 00:02:26.159 --> 00:02:27.840 that instrument is called the state. 41 00:02:28.800 --> 00:02:33.960 Okay, this is very basic presentation and is necessary. I 42 00:02:34.000 --> 00:02:35.840 know some of you are going, oh, sounds like a 43 00:02:35.840 --> 00:02:40.759 whole bunch of liberal crap, and maybe, but then again, 44 00:02:41.080 --> 00:02:45.400 you know, nineteen ninety three, how old was I. 45 00:02:45.520 --> 00:02:46.319 Let's see. 46 00:02:47.680 --> 00:02:52.719 Eighteen twenty one years old. Yeah, I was twenty one 47 00:02:52.800 --> 00:02:55.960 years old, and I was particularly moved by somebody making 48 00:02:56.039 --> 00:03:01.599 relevant and rational statements. And yeah, uh uh for you 49 00:03:02.360 --> 00:03:06.719 a trumpy people, you know, sorry, but there was stuff 50 00:03:06.759 --> 00:03:10.360 before the idiocy. And for you liberals, you can have 51 00:03:10.560 --> 00:03:11.759 yourselves all day with this. 52 00:03:12.680 --> 00:03:14.560 I don't care. This is reality. 53 00:03:15.759 --> 00:03:19.560 And uh, Parente laid it out perfectly in my mind. 54 00:03:21.199 --> 00:03:23.319 That is what they do is set up a state, 55 00:03:23.400 --> 00:03:26.560 an organization that has a as Max Weeber, who wasn't 56 00:03:26.639 --> 00:03:29.960 a Marxist, as Max Weber called it, an organization that 57 00:03:29.960 --> 00:03:33.800 has a monopoly on the legitimate uses of force and violence, 58 00:03:34.039 --> 00:03:35.840 on the use of legitimate force and violence. 59 00:03:37.800 --> 00:03:39.080 But that's what we have today. 60 00:03:40.120 --> 00:03:44.439 We also have developed, in modern times some democratic features, 61 00:03:44.560 --> 00:03:47.039 some means of trying to fight back and restrain this 62 00:03:47.159 --> 00:03:49.400 arbitrary power. What are we trying to say that, along 63 00:03:49.439 --> 00:03:51.879 with government, we also have a thing called the state. 64 00:03:52.439 --> 00:03:56.080 And along with governance, along with policies, and along with 65 00:03:56.120 --> 00:03:58.759 those things, we have this other instrument. Even in a 66 00:03:58.800 --> 00:04:02.919 democratic state, and that instrument, whether it's in democratic France 67 00:04:03.000 --> 00:04:07.159 or democratic England, or democratic Germany or democratic Italy all 68 00:04:07.479 --> 00:04:15.960 or democratic USA or democratic can in all these countries, 69 00:04:16.160 --> 00:04:19.560 all of them have these other instruments and agencies that 70 00:04:19.600 --> 00:04:25.240 act like a bunch of gangsters, that act repressively, that 71 00:04:25.399 --> 00:04:28.199 use surveillance, that use every dirty trick in the book 72 00:04:28.360 --> 00:04:31.600 on equal enforcement of tax laws, name it, the bringing 73 00:04:31.600 --> 00:04:36.120 in of drugs into whole neighborhoods and communities, trumped up 74 00:04:36.480 --> 00:04:40.920 murder charges, assassination that you have in the middle of 75 00:04:40.959 --> 00:04:43.720 these democracies, you have the state within the state known 76 00:04:43.759 --> 00:04:47.199 as the national security state. And that state is capable 77 00:04:47.360 --> 00:04:49.959 of the most unspeakable crimes that you can think of. 78 00:04:50.319 --> 00:04:53.439 And those crimes are perpetrated against their own people. They're 79 00:04:53.439 --> 00:04:56.800 perpetrated against people all around the world. Not long ago, 80 00:04:56.879 --> 00:04:59.360 I got a letter from a woman who's been a 81 00:04:59.399 --> 00:05:04.439 community organizer in Chicago, and she said, with grief in 82 00:05:04.480 --> 00:05:08.120 her heart, she said, I remember the sixties. I remember 83 00:05:08.160 --> 00:05:14.319 the tremendous democratic organization and leadership that was developing in 84 00:05:14.360 --> 00:05:17.959 the Latino and African American communities. 85 00:05:19.560 --> 00:05:21.120 And I remember those leaders and. 86 00:05:21.000 --> 00:05:23.839 Everything on one of them today is either dead shot 87 00:05:23.879 --> 00:05:26.800 by the police or in marrying prison on trumped up charges. 88 00:05:27.480 --> 00:05:30.759 And I remember the demoralization that took place, the shattering 89 00:05:30.800 --> 00:05:35.519 of those organizations. And after those organs organizations were shattered 90 00:05:35.639 --> 00:05:38.439 and demoralized, then in came the drug traffickers. 91 00:05:38.600 --> 00:05:39.600 And those drug. 92 00:05:39.319 --> 00:05:42.000 Traffickers, the thing I remember the most about them is 93 00:05:42.040 --> 00:05:45.720 that they were aided and abetted by the FEDS, by 94 00:05:45.759 --> 00:05:46.759 the federal. 95 00:05:48.519 --> 00:05:52.399 Agents themselves. And this is what happens. 96 00:05:53.040 --> 00:05:55.000 That is, we are dealing with the state that was 97 00:05:55.040 --> 00:06:03.079 engaged in domestic counterinsurgency, and it was more interested in 98 00:06:03.160 --> 00:06:08.879 having a population that was unorganized and demoralized than a 99 00:06:08.920 --> 00:06:13.120 population that was organized that was effectively fighting for its 100 00:06:13.279 --> 00:06:16.720 democratic rights. Because if it's organized and it's effective and 101 00:06:16.759 --> 00:06:20.120 it's powerful, it will start making demands and start pursuing 102 00:06:20.120 --> 00:06:22.600 its interest and it will start cutting in on the 103 00:06:22.639 --> 00:06:27.000 interests that those police and those coppers and those undercover 104 00:06:27.120 --> 00:06:31.920 people and those forces of military and law and order 105 00:06:32.120 --> 00:06:36.120 are dedicated to protecting, protecting the status quo, protecting those 106 00:06:36.199 --> 00:06:38.800 with property against who those who don't have it. And 107 00:06:38.839 --> 00:06:41.040 by the way, for the last thousand years, we've had 108 00:06:41.079 --> 00:06:44.319 theorists who've made that point, except they make it proudly. 109 00:06:44.720 --> 00:06:49.360 Adam Smith said, as the divisions of property become increasingly unequal, 110 00:06:49.399 --> 00:06:51.399 it is more and more necessary to have a state 111 00:06:52.279 --> 00:06:54.600 to defend those who have property from those who do not. 112 00:06:56.079 --> 00:06:57.639 John Law, The purpose of. 113 00:06:57.600 --> 00:06:59.600 The state is to defend those who have property from 114 00:06:59.600 --> 00:07:04.360 those who do not. James Harrington, you can go on, 115 00:07:04.600 --> 00:07:09.240 James Madison, Alexander Hamilton. The only difference was that when 116 00:07:09.279 --> 00:07:11.360 Mark said it, he said to defend those who have 117 00:07:11.439 --> 00:07:15.959 property from those whose labor is expropriated by those who accumulate. 118 00:07:15.399 --> 00:07:17.560 Wealth off their labor, who have all the property. He 119 00:07:17.720 --> 00:07:20.079 changed it a little bit and he said it. 120 00:07:20.040 --> 00:07:23.000 Wasn't just plves and have nots, it was halves taking 121 00:07:23.040 --> 00:07:26.360 it from those who produced it and created the haves. 122 00:07:28.680 --> 00:07:32.639 And throughout the world, dominant economic interests today have enlisted 123 00:07:32.639 --> 00:07:36.040 the efforts of assassins and torturers as we talk at 124 00:07:36.079 --> 00:07:36.560 this moment. 125 00:07:36.639 --> 00:07:40.040 The CIA and other such agencies in this country and 126 00:07:40.120 --> 00:07:41.720 other countries. 127 00:07:41.800 --> 00:07:46.279 Have sponsored violence, tortured death squads, drugs in scores of 128 00:07:46.279 --> 00:07:49.680 countries from zay Yea to Angola, to Mozambique to Olsalvagtor, 129 00:07:49.680 --> 00:07:52.600 to Guatemala, to Indonesia to a stem Moore, and you 130 00:07:52.680 --> 00:07:56.560 go on and on to Western Europe to the USA, 131 00:07:57.000 --> 00:08:00.920 to Chicago and Detroit and Boston and New York. They 132 00:08:00.959 --> 00:08:08.199 are systematically targeted in many countries, the clergy, the peasant leaders, intellectuals, journalists, 133 00:08:08.279 --> 00:08:13.120 student leaders, labor union leaders, workers and any community activists 134 00:08:13.120 --> 00:08:13.519 and such. 135 00:08:13.839 --> 00:08:15.000 Tens of thousands have. 136 00:08:15.000 --> 00:08:19.120 Been murdered and assassinated to prevent social change, to destroy 137 00:08:19.399 --> 00:08:23.360 any kind of redistributive politics, any kind of government, any 138 00:08:23.439 --> 00:08:26.439 kind of social movement that is not willing to reduce 139 00:08:26.480 --> 00:08:31.399 its people to economic fodder. And with NAFTA, with the 140 00:08:31.439 --> 00:08:33.960 North American Free Trade Agreement, we now see the third 141 00:08:34.000 --> 00:08:37.919 worldization of the us A will continue full speed ahead. 142 00:08:38.759 --> 00:08:42.360 The gangst The nature of the state is cloaked by 143 00:08:42.360 --> 00:08:45.919 the democratic facade and by the democratic substance of the government. 144 00:08:45.960 --> 00:08:48.679 I mean, there is some democratic substance there. Democratic victories 145 00:08:48.679 --> 00:08:51.320 have been one, we have struggled, and certain things have 146 00:08:51.399 --> 00:08:51.720 been one. 147 00:08:51.759 --> 00:08:53.440 And yet in the midst of this, the state still 148 00:08:53.480 --> 00:08:53.840 goes on. 149 00:08:54.039 --> 00:08:58.320 And what is so compelling about an issue like drugs. 150 00:08:58.840 --> 00:09:00.879 As Michael Levine's point out, is. 151 00:09:00.799 --> 00:09:03.519 That it's not that we're saying the government is not 152 00:09:03.720 --> 00:09:08.320 doing enough about drugs or they're losing the war against drugs. 153 00:09:08.679 --> 00:09:11.240 Is that the government or elements in it are active 154 00:09:11.559 --> 00:09:15.679 perpetrators and purveyors of drugs. And what it is so 155 00:09:15.840 --> 00:09:20.879 compelling about the JFK assassination is how nakedly the gangster 156 00:09:21.000 --> 00:09:22.519 nature of the state is revealed. 157 00:09:22.960 --> 00:09:23.960 It is an awakening. 158 00:09:25.240 --> 00:09:28.519 And to know the truth about the JFK assassination is 159 00:09:28.559 --> 00:09:33.360 to create a delegitimating force that calls into questions the 160 00:09:33.519 --> 00:09:37.279 entire state system and the entire social order it represents. 161 00:09:38.679 --> 00:09:43.080 And this is why for thirty years the mainstreams press 162 00:09:43.360 --> 00:09:47.960 has suppressed or dismissed out of hand in the findings 163 00:09:48.039 --> 00:09:54.159 about JFK's death, the findings of independent investigators like Peter Dale, Scott, 164 00:09:54.480 --> 00:09:59.919 Harold Weisberg, Carl Oglesby, Mark Lane, Anthony Summers, Philip Millinson, 165 00:10:00.360 --> 00:10:04.360 Jim Garrison, Cyril Weckt, and dozens and dozens of others. 166 00:10:05.120 --> 00:10:07.000 They're called assassination buffs. 167 00:10:07.399 --> 00:10:08.559 They're not buffs. 168 00:10:08.879 --> 00:10:13.240 Even that word is a limiting and marginalizing and diminishing term. 169 00:10:13.480 --> 00:10:16.039 A buff is a kind of a hobby pursuer. 170 00:10:16.080 --> 00:10:16.480 You're seeing. 171 00:10:16.919 --> 00:10:20.240 It's a kind of a quirky person who follows quirky 172 00:10:20.279 --> 00:10:21.039 little interests. 173 00:10:21.120 --> 00:10:26.279 Would you talk about Holocaust buffs? Would you know? They 174 00:10:26.320 --> 00:10:28.639 are serious investigators of a very. 175 00:10:28.759 --> 00:10:32.600 Serious crime which leads to all sorts of serious understandings 176 00:10:32.720 --> 00:10:39.240 about the criminal nature of the state. And this is 177 00:10:39.240 --> 00:10:43.240 why they relentlessly, the mainstream media, and the opinion leaders 178 00:10:43.320 --> 00:10:47.080 and the political leaders of this country relentlessly attack or 179 00:10:47.120 --> 00:10:48.279 ignore this literature. 180 00:10:48.360 --> 00:10:49.559 And this is why they give. 181 00:10:49.480 --> 00:10:54.000 Fulsome gushing ready publicity to the likes of Gerald Posner 182 00:10:54.159 --> 00:10:56.679 with his Bookcase Closed, which got. 183 00:10:56.320 --> 00:10:58.000 Put into every major magazine. 184 00:10:58.039 --> 00:11:00.000 I couldn't put the TV on all week without seeing 185 00:11:00.080 --> 00:11:02.799 in the guy's face and hearing him blather these kind 186 00:11:02.879 --> 00:11:07.919 of cliche statements whose credibility are dependent on you being 187 00:11:07.960 --> 00:11:11.360 totally ignorant of what the investigators for thirty years have 188 00:11:11.399 --> 00:11:13.600 been uncovering and the questions that have been raising. 189 00:11:14.720 --> 00:11:15.320 And we did a. 190 00:11:15.279 --> 00:11:18.200 Grotesque, idiotic whitewash of the whole thing. 191 00:11:18.919 --> 00:11:20.320 And this is why they savage. 192 00:11:20.679 --> 00:11:24.080 They savaged all of A Stone's movie JFK, a movie 193 00:11:24.120 --> 00:11:27.960 that was very accurate about the specifics of the murder, 194 00:11:29.559 --> 00:11:33.639 a movie that reached millions of people that broke through 195 00:11:34.039 --> 00:11:37.360 that thing that they were keeping down, the only movie 196 00:11:37.519 --> 00:11:40.360 in the history of Hollywood. And I wrote a book 197 00:11:40.360 --> 00:11:42.919 called Make Believe Media, which is about TV and films, 198 00:11:42.960 --> 00:11:45.519 So I think I know something about films At least, 199 00:11:45.759 --> 00:11:47.799 I did spend the better part of a year reading 200 00:11:48.159 --> 00:11:50.600 a lot of literature. It's the only movie that I 201 00:11:50.679 --> 00:11:55.600 know of that was attacked six months before it was 202 00:11:55.600 --> 00:12:00.519 ever released in the Washington Post and the New York 203 00:12:00.559 --> 00:12:04.440 Times and in Time and Newsweek, and attack relentlessly for 204 00:12:04.639 --> 00:12:09.120 a year after it was released. And this is also 205 00:12:09.159 --> 00:12:11.480 why in this past week they kept up the relentless 206 00:12:11.480 --> 00:12:15.559 propaganda campaign with the thirtieth anniversary of the Kennedy assassination 207 00:12:15.679 --> 00:12:16.399 to show. 208 00:12:16.240 --> 00:12:18.440 That Oswald was the loan assassin. 209 00:12:18.960 --> 00:12:21.840 And they're always limiting the question, just as the Warren 210 00:12:21.840 --> 00:12:25.159 Commission did a priori did it was Oswald alone assassin? 211 00:12:25.159 --> 00:12:26.799 Did he act alone? Did he or did he not 212 00:12:26.879 --> 00:12:31.960 act alone? Meanwhile, all the serious investigations investigators have a 213 00:12:31.960 --> 00:12:34.720 different question. It's not that he was not at all 214 00:12:34.799 --> 00:12:36.919 one of the people who shot Kennedy. He did not 215 00:12:37.039 --> 00:12:40.000 act at all, although he was involved in another way. 216 00:12:40.159 --> 00:12:43.720 He was involved as a fall guy. And this is 217 00:12:43.720 --> 00:12:45.879 why they do this. If you want to know why, 218 00:12:45.919 --> 00:12:48.559 you just listen to them. It's not my analysis, it's 219 00:12:48.600 --> 00:12:51.519 what they say. The propagandists of the right and the 220 00:12:51.559 --> 00:12:55.080 center know why they've got to trash this issue and 221 00:12:55.159 --> 00:12:57.759 contain it. Listen to what Tom Wicke of the New 222 00:12:57.840 --> 00:13:01.799 York Times had to say. Now he's never written a 223 00:13:01.840 --> 00:13:05.240 movie review in his life. JFK came out and Tom Wicker, 224 00:13:05.279 --> 00:13:08.279 who is a columnist, a Washington columnist for the New 225 00:13:08.360 --> 00:13:12.080 York Times, suddenly became a movie reviewer, and instead of 226 00:13:12.080 --> 00:13:14.759 getting the usual movie review length of eight hundred words, 227 00:13:15.840 --> 00:13:17.240 he got two thousand words. 228 00:13:17.960 --> 00:13:22.360 It's the whole page with pictures, Nola. And in that review, 229 00:13:22.960 --> 00:13:24.159 he tells us. 230 00:13:25.919 --> 00:13:29.240 That if the quote wild assertions in all of A 231 00:13:29.320 --> 00:13:34.440 Stone's movie are taken at face value, Americans will have 232 00:13:34.480 --> 00:13:37.440 to accept the idea that most of the nation's major 233 00:13:37.519 --> 00:13:43.919 institutions conspired together and carried out Kennedy's murder In an era, 234 00:13:44.639 --> 00:13:47.440 Wicker goes on, in an era when mistrust of government 235 00:13:47.480 --> 00:13:50.639 and loss of confidence in institutions the press not the 236 00:13:50.720 --> 00:13:55.080 least are widespread and viruling, such a suggestion seems a 237 00:13:55.159 --> 00:13:56.519 dubious public service. 238 00:13:59.320 --> 00:14:01.039 So truth on I'm not true has nothing to do 239 00:14:01.080 --> 00:14:01.960 with it. He's saying. 240 00:14:02.200 --> 00:14:07.879 The question is institutional legitimacy. Wicka understands the heart of 241 00:14:07.919 --> 00:14:10.879 the matter. A full revelation about the murder would be 242 00:14:10.919 --> 00:14:14.679 a serious attack upon the legitimacy of the dominant institutions 243 00:14:14.679 --> 00:14:18.000 of state and class, the press not being the least 244 00:14:18.080 --> 00:14:20.600 of one of those institutions, a faithful servant of it, 245 00:14:21.960 --> 00:14:27.720 the system that New York Times writers faithfully defended. Playing 246 00:14:27.759 --> 00:14:31.399 before mass audiences, the movie JFK did not finger a 247 00:14:31.480 --> 00:14:35.639 cabal of malevolent perpetrators, but in fact pointed the finger 248 00:14:35.679 --> 00:14:37.600 at the National Security State. 249 00:14:37.399 --> 00:14:41.519 Itself as the murderer damage control. 250 00:14:42.000 --> 00:14:44.480 You know, back in nineteen seventy eight, the House Select 251 00:14:44.480 --> 00:14:47.879 Committee reported, in fact, after an investigation, that there was 252 00:14:47.919 --> 00:14:53.720 more than one assassin shooting Kennedy then, and there therefore 253 00:14:53.879 --> 00:14:59.519 was a conspiracy. In response, the Washington Post immediately editorialized 254 00:14:59.519 --> 00:15:02.879 in nineteen seventy eight, quote, could it have been some 255 00:15:03.039 --> 00:15:06.440 other malcontempt who mister Oswald met casually? 256 00:15:10.600 --> 00:15:12.320 It gets better? It gets better with. 257 00:15:13.919 --> 00:15:17.240 Could not as many as three or four societal outcasts 258 00:15:19.879 --> 00:15:24.960 with no ties to any one organization have developed in 259 00:15:25.000 --> 00:15:31.759 some spontaneous way a common determination to express their alienation 260 00:15:31.879 --> 00:15:37.440 in the killing of President Kennedy. It is possible that 261 00:15:37.480 --> 00:15:41.480 two persons, acting independently, attempted to shoot the president at 262 00:15:41.519 --> 00:15:42.399 the very same time. 263 00:15:50.279 --> 00:15:55.559 It is possible. It's not at all likely. 264 00:15:57.759 --> 00:16:02.200 So sometimes those who deny conspiracies create the most convoluted. 265 00:16:01.559 --> 00:16:02.639 Fantasies of all. 266 00:16:04.639 --> 00:16:08.759 David Garrow, who wrote a biography of Martin Luther King, benignly, 267 00:16:08.840 --> 00:16:14.159 patronizingly looks at you, at the public mind, and he 268 00:16:14.240 --> 00:16:18.159 says that the evidence pointing to a conspiracy to murder 269 00:16:18.240 --> 00:16:21.960 Martin Luther King now at large. You see what it 270 00:16:22.080 --> 00:16:25.559 is a large majority of the American people do believe 271 00:16:25.559 --> 00:16:27.279 in assassination conspiracies. 272 00:16:27.639 --> 00:16:29.840 That allows events to have large. 273 00:16:29.600 --> 00:16:33.519 Mysterious causes instead of small idiosyncratic ones. I would say 274 00:16:33.519 --> 00:16:35.840 the Washington Post had the most mysterious cause of all 275 00:16:35.879 --> 00:16:40.480 a few minutes ago. They like that, They like the 276 00:16:40.600 --> 00:16:44.440 large causes, you see. But the question of conspiracy has 277 00:16:44.480 --> 00:16:47.480 to be decided by an investigation of evidence, not by 278 00:16:47.559 --> 00:16:52.879 a priori unscientific and patronizing presumptions about the public mind. 279 00:16:54.039 --> 00:16:57.200 In any case, the evidence in King's assassination doesn't involve 280 00:16:57.320 --> 00:16:58.960 large mysterious causes. 281 00:16:58.639 --> 00:17:00.480 But very immediate actualities. 282 00:17:01.120 --> 00:17:03.720 And the investigators, like Peter Dale, Scott and how A 283 00:17:03.759 --> 00:17:07.400 Weisberger Mark lane Is, they weren't impelled by some yearnings, 284 00:17:07.440 --> 00:17:08.039 you see. 285 00:17:08.160 --> 00:17:10.559 They were impelled by questions. 286 00:17:10.000 --> 00:17:12.759 Of evidence, by things that didn't just seem to make 287 00:17:12.839 --> 00:17:16.519 sense by very immediate empirical things which drew them into 288 00:17:16.559 --> 00:17:20.720 this more and more, but which these people who never 289 00:17:20.799 --> 00:17:23.720 read that evidence don't have to deal with, and so 290 00:17:23.759 --> 00:17:29.400 they can fashion all these theories. The independent investigators demolished 291 00:17:29.400 --> 00:17:32.920 the Warren Commission. The first and most effective, perhaps was 292 00:17:32.920 --> 00:17:35.680 how A. Weisberg's book Whitewash and the Other and then 293 00:17:35.720 --> 00:17:40.119 the other one by Mark Lane rushed to judgment right there, terrific, 294 00:17:40.279 --> 00:17:45.599 written twenty five years ago. Let's focus on a small 295 00:17:45.680 --> 00:17:48.000 part of the actual conspiracy. I can't obviously go through 296 00:17:48.039 --> 00:17:51.279 it all, it would take ages. Let's start with Oswald. 297 00:17:52.359 --> 00:17:55.720 If you watch television this week, you again, for the 298 00:17:55.880 --> 00:18:01.359 seventy eighth time, heard that Oswald was a loner and incompetent, 299 00:18:01.759 --> 00:18:02.559 not very bright. 300 00:18:03.000 --> 00:18:04.680 You heard he was emotionally disturbed. 301 00:18:05.160 --> 00:18:08.759 Joe Posma got on there, turning instant psychiatrists, and he said, 302 00:18:09.000 --> 00:18:11.119 the abby Oswall was a very disturbed young boy. He 303 00:18:11.160 --> 00:18:14.279 had a very disturbed childhood. And he was a passive aggressive, 304 00:18:16.039 --> 00:18:20.920 I said, a passive aggressive, a passive aggressive assassin. That 305 00:18:22.759 --> 00:18:31.680 explains why use a rifle which couldn't shoot straight. He 306 00:18:31.799 --> 00:18:35.960 also was a leftist Alexander Coburn has joined the right 307 00:18:36.039 --> 00:18:38.400 and the center and in a column and the examiner 308 00:18:38.440 --> 00:18:42.240 said he was a leftist. The truth is something else. 309 00:18:43.200 --> 00:18:45.839 Lee Hobby Oswald. All his IQ tests show that he 310 00:18:45.920 --> 00:18:50.119 was above average intelligence. He was a bright guy, a 311 00:18:50.200 --> 00:18:54.160 quick learner. O. Lee Hobby Oswald spent most of his 312 00:18:54.240 --> 00:18:58.000 adult life not as a lonely drifter, but directly linked 313 00:18:58.000 --> 00:19:01.559 to the US intelligence community. At the age of eighteen, 314 00:19:01.640 --> 00:19:05.799 in the US Marines, he had secret security clearance and 315 00:19:05.839 --> 00:19:09.839 he was working at Marine Air Control in Atsugi Base 316 00:19:09.920 --> 00:19:14.279 in Japan. Atsugi was a top secret base where the 317 00:19:14.279 --> 00:19:17.799 CIA launched some of its U two flights and did 318 00:19:17.839 --> 00:19:22.799 other kinds of COVID operations in China. The next year, 319 00:19:22.839 --> 00:19:25.000 at the age of nineteen, he was assigned to El 320 00:19:25.079 --> 00:19:29.359 Toro Air Station in California with security clearance to work radar, 321 00:19:31.559 --> 00:19:34.720 and here he emerged. Certain strange things began to happen. 322 00:19:34.759 --> 00:19:38.119 He emerged as a babbling Russo file and Soviet Communists. 323 00:19:38.359 --> 00:19:41.519 He started playing Russian language records at blast level in 324 00:19:41.559 --> 00:19:44.839 his barracks. He started addressing his fellow Marines in Russian. 325 00:19:46.079 --> 00:19:49.440 He read Russian books and touted Soviet Communism as quote, 326 00:19:49.440 --> 00:19:51.880 the best system in the world. He called his fellow 327 00:19:51.880 --> 00:19:59.880 Marines comrades. Now, the US Marine Corps nineteen fifty eight 328 00:20:01.799 --> 00:20:04.599 was not exactly known as a bastion of liberal tolerance 329 00:20:04.640 --> 00:20:09.960 and free thinking. My buddy Bernard Livingston wrote a book 330 00:20:10.000 --> 00:20:12.640 called Closet Red. He tells of his experiences in the Army, 331 00:20:12.640 --> 00:20:15.559 where they had to filter out anybody who had funny opinions, 332 00:20:15.960 --> 00:20:18.519 who had pink oish opinions, or whatever else. They had 333 00:20:18.519 --> 00:20:21.759 to be reported that the Army constantly, and I'm sure 334 00:20:21.759 --> 00:20:26.119 the Marines constantly surveils anybody who might outspokenly or actively 335 00:20:26.160 --> 00:20:28.799 begin to say or act certainly in the way he did. 336 00:20:29.720 --> 00:20:34.400 But in this instance Oswald's Marine commanders didn't mind. He 337 00:20:34.519 --> 00:20:37.880 kept his security clearance, He kept all the radar records. 338 00:20:37.920 --> 00:20:39.599 He could see what was going in and out, and 339 00:20:39.880 --> 00:20:42.319 knew all about the things that were happening there, and 340 00:20:42.640 --> 00:20:47.319 a wealth of sensitive radar information and otherighly sensitive information 341 00:20:47.640 --> 00:20:48.960 from sensitive. 342 00:20:48.920 --> 00:20:51.000 Basis black operations, as they will call. 343 00:20:52.680 --> 00:20:55.599 Well, if Oswald was a Soviet spy or a Cuban spy, 344 00:20:55.759 --> 00:20:59.000 as some people now claim, he certainly had a novel 345 00:20:59.039 --> 00:21:05.799 way of building a couver other odd things began happening. 346 00:21:06.000 --> 00:21:09.599 In February nineteen fifty nine, lee hobby Oswald failed the 347 00:21:09.640 --> 00:21:14.240 Marine Corps proficiency test in Russian. Six months later he 348 00:21:14.319 --> 00:21:16.440 was practically fluent in Russian. 349 00:21:17.400 --> 00:21:17.640 Only. 350 00:21:17.640 --> 00:21:21.039 In nineteen seventy four, a document that was dislodged from 351 00:21:21.039 --> 00:21:23.640 the Warrant Commission that had been secreted. Thanks to Howrod 352 00:21:23.680 --> 00:21:26.880 Weisberg's legal efforts got the document out, it was shown 353 00:21:27.039 --> 00:21:32.839 that Oswald had attended the US Army Monterey School of Languages. Now, 354 00:21:32.920 --> 00:21:35.440 Monterrey is not open to anyone who just happens to 355 00:21:35.480 --> 00:21:37.279 have a hobby, a language hobby. 356 00:21:37.759 --> 00:21:38.839 You go only for. 357 00:21:38.839 --> 00:21:41.559 Serious training, and you are sent by the government and 358 00:21:41.599 --> 00:21:44.160 it must be related to government work in a language 359 00:21:44.200 --> 00:21:47.759 picked by the government, which is related to specific assignments. 360 00:21:48.480 --> 00:21:54.880 So Oswald learned Russian at the US Monterey School of Languages. 361 00:21:55.839 --> 00:21:59.400 Another odd thing, Oswald was given an early discharge from 362 00:21:59.440 --> 00:22:04.319 the Marines because his mother had injured her foot. Let's 363 00:22:04.319 --> 00:22:07.720 call it this dependency discharge. Your parent needs you. A 364 00:22:07.839 --> 00:22:11.160 jar had fallen on her toe, and he was immediately 365 00:22:11.279 --> 00:22:13.160 he put in the request and he got it within 366 00:22:13.200 --> 00:22:17.720 a week. His fellow Marines were astonished at the velocity 367 00:22:17.759 --> 00:22:18.440 of the release. 368 00:22:19.720 --> 00:22:22.000 It also so happened that the jaw fell on her 369 00:22:22.079 --> 00:22:26.759 foot a year before the discharge, but she was happy. 370 00:22:26.799 --> 00:22:28.160 It wasn't healing right. You know. 371 00:22:30.119 --> 00:22:32.680 This was only one of a number of very strangely 372 00:22:32.759 --> 00:22:36.000 favorable treatments that the US government began to give Lee 373 00:22:36.079 --> 00:22:40.000 Harvey Oswald. He then defected to the USSR. But how 374 00:22:40.319 --> 00:22:43.799 Philip Mellinson raises the question. To get to Russia in 375 00:22:43.839 --> 00:22:44.519 those days. 376 00:22:44.319 --> 00:22:46.559 It would have cost one five hundred dollars. 377 00:22:46.759 --> 00:22:50.599 Lee Hobby Oswald's bank account showed a deposit of only 378 00:22:50.640 --> 00:22:54.319 two hundred and three dollars. He got after he arrived 379 00:22:54.319 --> 00:22:57.599 in London and was there. He left London and went 380 00:22:57.640 --> 00:23:00.680 to Helsinki on October eleventh, in a day when there 381 00:23:00.680 --> 00:23:03.720 were no available commercial flights that would have allowed him 382 00:23:03.759 --> 00:23:06.640 to make it in one day. He had some kind 383 00:23:06.640 --> 00:23:11.240 of private transportation to get to Helsinki. In Russia, he 384 00:23:11.279 --> 00:23:15.160 announced that he was renouncing his US citizenship and that 385 00:23:15.200 --> 00:23:17.519 he had lots of secrets that he was going to 386 00:23:17.559 --> 00:23:20.680 give to the Soviets. He even went into the US 387 00:23:20.720 --> 00:23:23.960 embassy and announced that and made sure they all knew it. 388 00:23:25.720 --> 00:23:28.559 The Soviets didn't bite. They let him stay, but they 389 00:23:28.680 --> 00:23:31.759 at no time thought he could be an agent of 390 00:23:31.799 --> 00:23:35.839 many use to them. They kept him under constant surveillance. 391 00:23:36.440 --> 00:23:39.960 He worked in a factory. He showed no particular interest 392 00:23:40.000 --> 00:23:42.200 in guns, but he belonged to the factory's gun club. 393 00:23:42.720 --> 00:23:44.640 He used to join in the rabbit shoots, and he 394 00:23:44.640 --> 00:23:46.799 could never hit the rabbit. That always someone had to 395 00:23:46.799 --> 00:23:49.160 come behind him and shoot the rabbit while he was firing, 396 00:23:49.279 --> 00:23:50.960 otherwise they would have been there all day. 397 00:23:51.400 --> 00:23:52.079 It was a joke. 398 00:23:52.160 --> 00:23:54.359 He was a miserable marksman, as he had been in 399 00:23:54.400 --> 00:23:56.519 the US Marines. He had been flagged again and again 400 00:23:56.559 --> 00:23:59.240 on the They missed the whole target a number of times, 401 00:23:59.240 --> 00:24:03.640