Speaker 1: It's night Side with Dan Ray on WBZ Costin's new radio.
Speaker 2: And I gave it a great ideal of all.
Speaker 3: Here is a bulletin from CBS News in Dallas, Texas.
Speaker 3: Three shots were fired at President Kennedy's motorcade in downtown Dallas.
Speaker 3: The first reports say that President Kennedy has been seriously
Speaker 3: wounded by this shooting.
Speaker 4: The voice of Walter Cronkite on it was a Thursday afternoon.
Speaker 5: Oh no, I don't let me.
Speaker 4: It was a Thursday afternoon. Excuse me, it's a Thursday afternoon.
Speaker 4: In nineteen sixty three, when John Kennedy was assassinated by
Speaker 4: a gunman, shooting out of the fifth floor of the
Speaker 4: Texas school Book Depository as his depository, as his motorcade
Speaker 4: made its way through Dealey Plasm. I have followed that
Speaker 4: case for a long time. Ported on the assassination on
Speaker 4: the fifteenth anniversary in nineteen seventy eight, twentieth anniversary and
Speaker 4: nineteen eighty three from Dallas, Texas. Interviewed most many of
Speaker 4: the principles. But no one who I know knows as
Speaker 4: much about what happened and also as much about what
Speaker 4: we don't know. Is my friend Tom Semilac. Tom Semilac,
Speaker 4: in the mid nineteen ninety served as the deputy director
Speaker 4: of the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Review Board,
Speaker 4: an independent federal agency that was responsible for the review
Speaker 4: and public release of classified records on the assassination, which
Speaker 4: you now housed at the National Archives. Tom has been
Speaker 4: my guest before, and he joins us again tonight. Tom,
Speaker 4: another sad anniversary. Sixty one years ago today we lost
Speaker 4: the thirty fifth President of the United States.
Speaker 6: Good evening, Dan, and thanks for having me. Yes, it's
Speaker 6: hard to believe that it's sixty one years ago today
Speaker 6: that President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, And of course
Speaker 6: for those of US Bostonians and New Englanders, and of
Speaker 6: course all Americans, but particularly here a special and very
Speaker 6: profoundly sad impact.
Speaker 5: Tom. You've had a stellar legal career.
Speaker 4: You're the general counsel, head of government relations for John Hancock,
Speaker 4: the US segment of the Toronto based manual Life and
Speaker 4: you're also a member of that company's leadership team. You've
Speaker 4: been with John Hancock since nineteen ninety nine, twenty five
Speaker 4: years now. You also had served as an Assistant Attorney
Speaker 4: General here in Massachusetts, I believe when Scott Harshbarker was
Speaker 4: Attorney General. So you've had a very interesting career. But
Speaker 4: I want to focus on your work with the Kennedy
Speaker 4: Assassination Records Review Board. You were intimately evolved in this
Speaker 4: in the nineteen nineties, which would have been about thirty
Speaker 4: some odd years after the assassination. We are now sixty
Speaker 4: one years after the assassination. How much more do we
Speaker 4: know now than when your organization that tried to do
Speaker 4: such great work and often I think felt steymied. How
Speaker 4: much more information have we learned quantitatively in the last
Speaker 4: thirty years in your opinion.
Speaker 6: Well, Dan, I think that the barometer of how much
Speaker 6: more we've learned can be gauged by what authors, historians,
Speaker 6: and researchers have done with the records that the Assassination
Speaker 6: Records Review Board declassify and sent to the National Archives
Speaker 6: Facility in College Park, Maryland, and that's where the records
Speaker 6: are housed. There are records that are available online, and
Speaker 6: it really is satisfying to know that the work of
Speaker 6: the Review Board has led to a more complete history,
Speaker 6: if you will, of the assassination and the events surrounding it.
Speaker 6: The mandate for the Review Board was not to reinvestigate
Speaker 6: and come to any conclusion following up on what the
Speaker 6: Warren Commission had done in nineteen sixty four and the
Speaker 6: House Select Committee on Assassinations had done in the late seventies. Rather,
Speaker 6: it was at that point, as you noted, thirty years
Speaker 6: after the assassination, rather to release the records for all
Speaker 6: Americans to go find and research and delve into and
Speaker 6: if they won't come to their own conclusions about what happened, well,
Speaker 6: this was.
Speaker 4: The murder of a president of the United States in
Speaker 4: broad daylight in Dallas, Texas at high noon. Just to
Speaker 4: get people a little bit familiar who weren't around at
Speaker 4: that time. And again at sixty one years so you
Speaker 4: would have had to have been eight or two years
Speaker 4: old to really have specific memory. Rob, I know you
Speaker 4: have three cuts. Play the second catch. Just to continue
Speaker 4: to continue the theme.
Speaker 3: The best picture has just been transmitted by wire. It
Speaker 3: is a picture taken just a moment or two before
Speaker 3: the incident. If you can zoom in with that camera,
Speaker 3: we can get a closer look at this picture.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and that was probably one of the last pictures
Speaker 4: of President Kennedy alive just before before the shooting. And
Speaker 4: then of course there was the announcement that Walter Cronkite
Speaker 4: need at least it probably was made of the other networks.
Speaker 4: But we learned that afternoon around this was one thirty
Speaker 4: Boston time, maybe well maybe a little bit. It's more
Speaker 4: like two o'clock Boston time, because the shooting had occurred
Speaker 4: about twelve thirty Dallas time, and this was the This
Speaker 4: was when the nation learned from Walter Cronkite that indeed
Speaker 4: President Kennedy had been assassinated cut three rob.
Speaker 1: From Dallas, Texas.
Speaker 3: The flash apparently official President Kennedy died at one pm
Speaker 3: Central Standard time two o'clock Eastern Standard time, some thirty
Speaker 3: eight minutes ago. Vice President and Johnson has left the
Speaker 3: hospital in Dallas, but we do not know to where
Speaker 3: he has proceeded. Presumably he will be taking the oath
Speaker 3: of office shortly and become the thirty sixth President of
Speaker 3: the United States.
Speaker 4: Cronkite at all he could do but to compose himself,
Speaker 4: and of course Linda Johnson did take the oath of
Speaker 4: office from a federal judge. On what that had become
Speaker 4: if force one and everyone remembers the picture of Linda Johnson,
Speaker 4: obviously in a state of shock, and his wife, Lady
Speaker 4: Bird Johnson, and President Kennedy's widow, Jacqueline Kennedy standing next
Speaker 4: to the president as that as that plane left left Dallas,
Speaker 4: heading back to Washington with the president's body.
Speaker 5: My guest is Tom sam Aluk. Tom, I.
Speaker 4: Want to chat a little bit more about your thoughts,
Speaker 4: and I go, I know you're not speaking here officially,
Speaker 4: but I'm fascinated by the fact that.
Speaker 5: We still really don't know for sure.
Speaker 4: What events set in motion the assassination of President Kennedy.
Speaker 4: I know you've it's been your life, life's work, and
Speaker 4: I'm sure people will have questions and theories, and I
Speaker 4: just didn't want this night to pass without our understanding
Speaker 4: and acknowledgment of a very important night. I remember, I
Speaker 4: know exactly what I was doing on this very night
Speaker 4: sixty one years ago. Tonight, I was playing hockey, high
Speaker 4: school hockey, pre season hockey game, you know, without coaches,
Speaker 4: at a rink somewhere in the South Shore, which i'd
Speaker 4: have to I wouldn't be able to find for a
Speaker 4: million dollars, may not even exist. So much time has passed,
Speaker 4: but it all seemed very weird. You're younger than I am, Tom,
Speaker 4: if I'm not mistaken, I don't know if you recall
Speaker 4: what you were doing that night, you probably would glued
Speaker 4: to the television like most of America was.
Speaker 6: Well, i'll date myself, Dan. I am a little younger
Speaker 6: than you, and I was in the first grade, and
Speaker 6: I remember, interestingly, they had not told us at school
Speaker 6: that the president had been shot. And so I got
Speaker 6: off the school bus after a complete day of school
Speaker 6: and was met by my younger brother, Bob, who was
Speaker 6: four years old, two years younger than me, and I
Speaker 6: remember exactly what he said, and he had learned from
Speaker 6: being around the TV. And my mother was home, and
Speaker 6: I stepped off the bus and he was waiting for me,
Speaker 6: and he said President Kennedy was shot and jumped in
Speaker 6: missus Kennedy's lap. That's what a four year old had
Speaker 6: for an understanding of what had happened. And walked up
Speaker 6: the street with him into my house. And it was
Speaker 6: not unusual that my mother was in the family room ironing,
Speaker 6: but what was different was that the TV was on,
Speaker 6: but it was news and she was crying, and I
Speaker 6: didn't quite understand. I knew that we had followed President Kennedy,
Speaker 6: and my oldest sister Carol, had had scrap books from
Speaker 6: when President Kennedy had been elected Senator from Massachusetts. But
Speaker 6: this was different because I knew we didn't know him.
Speaker 6: But my mother was crying and I knew was it
Speaker 6: was bad news. And like so many million Americans that
Speaker 6: do have memories of that day, it's kind of seared
Speaker 6: in your memory forever.
Speaker 4: Even the memory of a first grader. My guess it's
Speaker 4: Tom Semilak served as deputy director the President John F.
Speaker 4: Kennedy Assassination Records Review Board. We will continue our conversation
Speaker 4: with Tom Samilak if you would like to join the
Speaker 4: conversation six one seven two five four ten thirty or
Speaker 4: six one seven a nine ten thirty.
Speaker 5: My name is Dan Ray. This is night Side. This
Speaker 5: is a moment in.
Speaker 4: Time that changed our generation. It changed the world. It
Speaker 4: was the opening, it was the ending moment of the
Speaker 4: peace and prosperity of the nineteen fifties post World War Two,
Speaker 4: and it opened up some tumultuous years which involved other
Speaker 4: assassinations and political unrest and upheaval. And we'll get to
Speaker 4: all of that with my guest Tom semelek Uh, and
Speaker 4: we're gon we're gonna drill down a little bit, particularly
Speaker 4: on now President elect Trump's pledge to get all of
Speaker 4: the records. And I think I'm correct when I say that.
Speaker 4: If I'm not, Tom my friend will correct me. But
Speaker 4: I believe that Donald Trump has made a pledge that
Speaker 4: he will get all of the Kennedy assassination records out
Speaker 4: into the light of public day and transparent and done transparently.
Speaker 4: We'll continue on Nightside.
Speaker 5: Stay with us.
Speaker 4: It's going to be an interesting program. I promise you
Speaker 4: if you if you're young enough and you don't know
Speaker 4: a lot about the Kennedy assassination, you definitely want to
Speaker 4: stick with us. And if you're a little old and
Speaker 4: you remember it, we'd love to hear your recollections as well.
Speaker 4: Back on Nightside right after this.
Speaker 1: Now back to Dan Ray live from the Window World
Speaker 1: to Night Side Studios. I'm WBS Radio.
Speaker 4: You know, I think I misspoke. Kennedy was actually shot
Speaker 4: on a Friday. So it was it just so happened
Speaker 4: that the twenty second of November falls on a Friday.
Speaker 5: There was it was and you know, this is better
Speaker 5: than I do.
Speaker 4: Tom, I misspoke. I said it was it was a Thursday.
Speaker 4: It was actually a Friday that November twenty second. It
Speaker 4: was a Friday this year. It was a Friday sixty
Speaker 4: one years ago.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 4: I I just I was talking to someone today, having
Speaker 4: interviewed Jim Levelle, the Dallas police detective who had was
Speaker 4: handcuffed handcuffed to Walt Oswald when Oswald was shot by
Speaker 4: Jack Ruby.
Speaker 5: Vell was an interesting guy.
Speaker 4: I did you guys ever get a chance to talk
Speaker 4: with him?
Speaker 6: No, we did not. We focused on where the records were,
Speaker 6: and we did come into contact with a lot of
Speaker 6: interesting players and characters. One that comes to mind was, actually,
Speaker 6: if people saw the nineteen ninety one Oliverstone movie JFK.
Speaker 6: Kevin Costner plays Jim Garrison, and there were records to
Speaker 6: be found in New Orleans, and Garrison was deceased by
Speaker 6: the time we were in business, but we dealt with
Speaker 6: people who had records, and we actually dealt with Garrison's successor,
Speaker 6: who was Harry Connick Senior, who interestingly the father of
Speaker 6: the well known entertainer and he had succeeded Garrison, and
Speaker 6: we dealt with his office on the records from the
Speaker 6: Garrison investigation.
Speaker 4: Well, Garrison, if I recall, correctly, had some very specific
Speaker 4: beliefs and he then got ripped pretty good. I always
Speaker 4: felt I wasn't sure if Garrison was as nutty as
Speaker 4: people as the media portrayed him, or if he was
Speaker 4: right over the target conversely, and that there were people
Speaker 4: who wanted to, you know, to discourage people listening to him.
Speaker 5: What was your impression of Garrison?
Speaker 6: Well, I think that it's funny that debate continues even today.
Speaker 6: He did become a judge after Connick defeated him for
Speaker 6: a district attorney. I think he probably got some things right,
Speaker 6: but he kind of served the assassination up on a
Speaker 6: buffet platter.
Speaker 5: It was like.
Speaker 6: Everything was there and it probably didn't occur like that.
Speaker 6: We may not know everything that happened, but it wasn't
Speaker 6: every theory that you can imagine.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, it was interesting just getting back to this
Speaker 4: Dallas police detective. Anybody who's seen the picture of Oswald
Speaker 4: being shot, His name was Jim Level and I interviewed
Speaker 4: him in nineteen seventy eight. He would have been at
Speaker 4: that point he was I guess he was born in
Speaker 4: nineteen twenty maybe I'm guessing nineteen twenty or something like that.
Speaker 5: So when I interviewed him, he.
Speaker 4: Was very sharp, you know, he was I mean, you know,
Speaker 4: wasn't even probably fifty years of age at that point.
Speaker 4: He would he survived Pearl Harbor.
Speaker 5: He was.
Speaker 4: He actually was in the Navy and was on duty
Speaker 4: as a twenty one year old third class petty officer
Speaker 4: in Pearl Harbor. So he was at these two significant
Speaker 4: events that sort of book ended an era in American history,
Speaker 4: Pearl Harbor to the assassination of Kennedy. When you think
Speaker 4: about it, I mean, World War two ended with the
Speaker 4: United States having dropped the bomb and becoming the premiere
Speaker 4: power in the world, and yet in nineteen sixty three,
Speaker 4: the Kennedy assassination kind of turned the world, our worlds up,
Speaker 4: our world upside down, followed closely by, you know, the
Speaker 4: Quagmar of Vietnam, civil rights assassination of Robert F. Kennedy
Speaker 4: as well as doctor Martin Luther King. Just an interesting guy,
Speaker 4: almost like a not a Forrest Gump guy, because obviously
Speaker 4: this guy was a lot more together.
Speaker 5: But it's I remember sitting with him and just thinking.
Speaker 4: This guy was I did not realize, and he lived
Speaker 4: until he was ninety nine years of age. He lived
Speaker 4: a very full life and died in twenty nineteen. So
Speaker 4: I mean he was He was born in nineteen nineteen
Speaker 4: twenty and as they say, when I interviewed him in
Speaker 4: nineteen seventy eighteen, would have been doing the math fifty
Speaker 4: eight years of age. He was sharp as attack, recalling
Speaker 4: how he reacted and when when Ruby stepped out of
Speaker 4: the crowd. What's your sense the big picture here? Do
Speaker 4: you think we will ever find out the truth? For
Speaker 4: a long time, I thought someone was going to give
Speaker 4: us a deathbed confession that he was the person who
Speaker 4: did this or did that. The longer we go, Tom,
Speaker 4: the less likely I think that is.
Speaker 6: To be right. I think that Dan, many of us
Speaker 6: who have followed the assassination and bet involved in either
Speaker 6: rec release or in one way or another, have come
Speaker 6: to the conclusion in a long time that the unequivocal
Speaker 6: truth is lost to history. That's unfortunate. It was probably
Speaker 6: lost to history a long long time ago, not far,
Speaker 6: not long after the assassination itself, because of mistakes that
Speaker 6: were made in the investigation, because of the Cold War
Speaker 6: environment at the time. I think that there were a
Speaker 6: lot of people who did not want to open any
Speaker 6: doors beyond a lone gunman that could have, in their view,
Speaker 6: made a very complex and dangerous world even more complex
Speaker 6: and dangerous if it was a conspiracy. They didn't want
Speaker 6: to find out, so they wanted it to be simple.
Speaker 6: And as a result, here we are six sixty one
Speaker 6: years later and not knowing what the truth is. And
Speaker 6: that's not fair. It has been fair to the American public,
Speaker 6: and that's why the review board for which I worked
Speaker 6: made the effort to at least to be able to
Speaker 6: say that all the records are released. Unfortunately, as we'll
Speaker 6: probably get into here, that is not yet the case.
Speaker 6: But I hope it will become the case that we
Speaker 6: can say everything that we know to be part of
Speaker 6: the records is available to the American public.
Speaker 4: Well, I guess it's Tom Samlik. He's was the deputy
Speaker 4: director of the John F. Kennedy Assassination Records and review
Speaker 4: Board President Trump. And if I'm wrong, Tom, correct me here,
Speaker 4: because I just got to jump to news in a moment.
Speaker 4: Had made an issue of this on the campaign trail,
Speaker 4: He made an issue of it in twenty sixteen that
Speaker 4: he would release all the records that were available. That
Speaker 4: did not happen. We can talk about maybe why it
Speaker 4: didn't happen. But now President Trump has a second bite
Speaker 4: at that apple, and I, for one hope, hope that
Speaker 4: this great mystery of our lives tom will somehow be
Speaker 4: clarified for us. Do you read what President Trump said,
Speaker 4: both in twenty sixteen or in advance of the twenty
Speaker 4: sixteen election and in advance of this election as his
Speaker 4: intention at least whether he follows through And we'll have
Speaker 4: to wait and see. But am I reading what he
Speaker 4: has said correctly?
Speaker 6: Oh, you are definitely correct, Dan. He did not release
Speaker 6: all the records when he was president in twenty seventeen.
Speaker 6: He said that he would, but he was advised by
Speaker 6: certain people in the administration not to do so, so
Speaker 6: that left many records, uh not released. But you're correct.
Speaker 6: During the campaign he said that he would as a
Speaker 6: priority that he would he would release the remaining records
Speaker 6: if he became president again. And as we know, January twentieth,
Speaker 6: he will be sworn in as the forty seventh president.
Speaker 4: And that is again eight years ago. So as you
Speaker 4: mentioned to me today, eight years has passed by. We'll
Speaker 4: get into a little bit more. We go to news.
Speaker 4: If you want to call, we got a couple of
Speaker 4: lines that are available six, one, seven, two, five, four,
Speaker 4: ten thirty six one seven, nine, three, one, ten thirty.
Speaker 5: I'm more than willing to talk.
Speaker 4: About this longer than this hour, so don't hesitate to
Speaker 4: fill these phone lines up. We will be back right
Speaker 4: after this with Tom Samlac, a great friend and a
Speaker 4: great attorney who served as deputy director on the John F.
Speaker 4: Kennedy Assassination Records and Review Board, coming back on night Side.
Speaker 1: You're on Night Side with Boston's News Radio.
Speaker 4: I guess it's Tom Samulak, deputy Director John F. Kennedy
Speaker 4: Assassination Records and Review Board. Tom, you again know so
Speaker 4: much more about this than any of us know. I
Speaker 4: just got to ask a couple of questions that I
Speaker 4: want to get the phone calls. Do you think that
Speaker 4: the records which would tell us how this assassination plot
Speaker 4: came to be?
Speaker 5: Because that's that's what we don't know right.
Speaker 6: Right? And Dan, I think that I've read some articles
Speaker 6: today on the sixty first, an first anniversary of the assassination,
Speaker 6: and about what remains classified and what they may mean
Speaker 6: to the assassination. People should understand that there are no
Speaker 6: smoking gun documents to be released because the review board
Speaker 6: for which I worked in the mid nineties would have
Speaker 6: released them at that time. What isn't released and what
Speaker 6: we kept classified at the time, what was supposed to
Speaker 6: have been released in twenty seventeen and hopefully will be
Speaker 6: are things such as sources and methods, names of individuals
Speaker 6: who were still alive. So what would happen when we
Speaker 6: were in operation was the CIA or the FBI would
Speaker 6: meet with us and they would be records that we
Speaker 6: had in the queue to be released, and they would
Speaker 6: give reasons why they couldn't be released, and typically they
Speaker 6: would say something like this individual named in the doc
Speaker 6: or sometimes even more a series of documents retired undercover
Speaker 6: in Europe, and if this record is released again this
Speaker 6: is in the mid to late nineties, if the record
Speaker 6: is released, that person could be killed if their name
Speaker 6: is made public. So the review will would say, okay,
Speaker 6: the compromise is that we will redact the name of
Speaker 6: the individual but release the record, but the name will
Speaker 6: be released within twenty five years or upon the death
Speaker 6: of the person, so that was the compromise that we
Speaker 6: often reached because who were we, as the review would
Speaker 6: to jeopardize someone's life that the intelligence community said would
Speaker 6: have been at risk.
Speaker 4: But okay, yeah, I understand, Yeah, I do understand that.
Speaker 4: Would have these been Americans who are now living abroad
Speaker 4: who had worked for one of the these agencies or
Speaker 4: what have they been a source of a foreign source
Speaker 4: who might have provided some information along the way?
Speaker 6: Well, it was a range, Dan in some instances. My
Speaker 6: recollection is that it might have been a foreign official
Speaker 6: that had provided information to the US Intelligence Community CIA
Speaker 6: or another agency. So it could it could be any
Speaker 6: any one of the situations you mentioned.
Speaker 4: Last question for me, then we're going to go to
Speaker 4: phone calls. Last question for me is I remember the
Speaker 4: book that was written by Mark Lane in the wake
Speaker 4: of the Warren Commission report, Rushed to Judgment, which was
Speaker 4: a criticism of the Warren Commission report, if I recall correct, Yes, Okay,
Speaker 4: who was closer to the reality if you can answer
Speaker 4: this question to the reality of what happened the Warren Commission,
Speaker 4: which released its report ten months later in September of
Speaker 4: sixty four, or Mark Lane, who basically wrote a critique
Speaker 4: of the Warren Commission report in retrospect in your opinion.
Speaker 6: Well, let me put it this way, Dan, and invoking
Speaker 6: again the House Select Committee investigation of the late seventies, which,
Speaker 6: by the way, the Warren Commission concluded that Lee Harvey
Speaker 6: Oswald acted alone. In sharp contrast, fifteen sixteen years later
Speaker 6: in the late seventies, the House Select Committee concluded that
Speaker 6: there probably was a conspiracy involved more than Oswald.
Speaker 4: So that was what was I think referred to as
Speaker 4: the Blaky report.
Speaker 5: Was a professor of.
Speaker 6: Yah, Robert Yes, exactly. Yeah, And so those are kind
Speaker 6: of the book ends of the investigation. And the reality
Speaker 6: is that Mark Lane did great research on a lot
Speaker 6: of testimony that, if cass together would would run counter
Speaker 6: to the War Mission's final conclusion. However, will, as we
Speaker 6: said earlier, will never know because the Warrant Commission didn't
Speaker 6: want to open any doors, and by the time the
Speaker 6: House Select Committee came along, as Robert Blake the General
Speaker 6: Council said, the trail had run cold long before they
Speaker 6: got there. But they did uncover some new records, and
Speaker 6: we released some of the House Select Committee records that
Speaker 6: had been kept classified between night say nineteen seventy nine
Speaker 6: and the mid nineties. And I have to say, when
Speaker 6: I saw the unredacted versions, I said, these are leades
Speaker 6: that should have been pursued. They were not, but they
Speaker 6: just run cold now. But I think that certainly there
Speaker 6: are possibilities that there was more to Bory Warren Commission articulated.
Speaker 4: All right, let's let's get some phone calls in here
Speaker 4: and see what people have to say or ask of
Speaker 4: my guest, Tom Semok, former director deputy director of the
Speaker 4: John F. Kennedy Assassination Records and Review Board. Robin Boston
Speaker 4: will start us off. Rob, you go right ahead. You
Speaker 4: got first on first crack at the question of comic
Speaker 4: Go ahead, Rob.
Speaker 7: Hey, thanks for thinking. My car says I've been waiting
Speaker 7: for this because I was five years old, and get
Speaker 7: sent on from kindergarten. The documentary that I just last
Speaker 7: saw show that JFK's brain was stolen or missing or lost.
Speaker 7: The one piece of evidence that could have shown different
Speaker 7: trajectories of more than one bullet and the magic bullet
Speaker 7: that entered and entered the body. That brain was put
Speaker 7: into a metal canvas that with themaldehyde, and they given
Speaker 7: to his secretary who put it into like a metal
Speaker 7: storage chest, and that was the last they ever saw
Speaker 7: a JFK's brain. What is that? What is that? Is
Speaker 7: that fact?
Speaker 6: That is a pretty accurate account. I have to say
Speaker 6: the brain was lost for lack of a better way
Speaker 6: of characterizing it. And Dan, you may remember the fame pathologist,
Speaker 6: and he was also a lawyer from Pittsburgh, Cyril Weck,
Speaker 6: who didn't die that that long ago, and he was
Speaker 6: a medical consultant to the House Select Committee and also
Speaker 6: a longtime critic of the Warren Commission. He actually discovered
Speaker 6: in trying to conduct research I think it was maybe
Speaker 6: nineteen seventy two, so almost ten years after the assassination,
Speaker 6: that they didn't know where the president's brain was. As
Speaker 6: startling as that is to hear, that is the reality,
Speaker 6: and it's a key piece of evidence.
Speaker 4: Why would anybody have put it into a canister and
Speaker 4: given it to well, his secretaries was Evelyn Lincoln. I mean, well,
Speaker 4: I've never heard this one before, but this is a
Speaker 4: great piece of information.
Speaker 6: Go ahead, sir, Well there are Dan, various theories on
Speaker 6: what happened in the president was reinturned I think in
Speaker 6: nineteen sixty seven at Arlington Cemetery, And there was some
Speaker 6: speculation that it was at that point that the that
Speaker 6: the president's brain was put in the casket, and when
Speaker 6: the casket was put back in the ground, it was there.
Speaker 6: No one has any definitive evidence on that, but that's
Speaker 6: a theory that's floated around for years.
Speaker 7: But French trajectories is gone.
Speaker 5: We got we got that. It was an interesting tom.
Speaker 7: That's the war machine went on to make seven hundred
Speaker 7: and twenty eight billion dollars with the Vietnam War. The
Speaker 7: mob went on with Cuba to uh do whatever they did.
Speaker 7: JFK was the mob.
Speaker 4: The mob by sixty three was well out of Cuba. Rob,
Speaker 4: you could put that one away, okay, Rob, The mob got.
Speaker 7: Run out of They wanted to dismantle. They were talking
Speaker 7: about dismantling, you know, the syndicates and things, and and
Speaker 7: they had a lot of people scared. I mean, how
Speaker 7: many times did they try and assassinate Castro? I mean
Speaker 7: did he not have a have an interest in in
Speaker 7: in CND and and and the Domino theory that if
Speaker 7: they did not want Vietnam to fall because they felt
Speaker 7: that communism would persist and they did not want the
Speaker 7: Kennedy brothers to be one half through another in succession
Speaker 7: and run the country for twenty four years, which which
Speaker 7: motivated the government to take him out. It's just too
Speaker 7: much coincidence.
Speaker 5: Yeah, a lot, a lot there.
Speaker 4: That could take four hours of conversation on all of those,
Speaker 4: but Rob, the one about the brain, I'd never heard of.
Speaker 5: Thank you for that information. That was real interesting.
Speaker 7: Thank you great.
Speaker 4: Thanks, You're welcome, my guest, Tom Samlick. You would think, Tom,
Speaker 4: that that there was someone who would have if that's true,
Speaker 4: and it may be true, that someone would have been
Speaker 4: able to would have had to have been there, who
Speaker 4: would have been when if his body was disinterred in
Speaker 4: nineteen sixty seven, you think that there would have been
Speaker 4: a lot of new stories about it.
Speaker 5: And that's that's the first I've heard of that story.
Speaker 4: And I thought I knew a lot, a lot about this,
Speaker 4: but obviously you've heard of that before. As they said,
Speaker 4: you know more about this than I do. So that's
Speaker 4: why I appreciate you being with us tonight. And the
Speaker 4: number is mentioned.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, in subsequent books over the years, it has
Speaker 6: been uh has been raised.
Speaker 4: Yeah, let's take a quick break back with Tom SAMMELUK
Speaker 4: got John, Peggy and Jane coming up, and I'm more
Speaker 4: than willing.
Speaker 5: To take this into the next hour.
Speaker 4: I'm not gonna uh make Tom stick for two hours,
Speaker 4: but we we very well may carry this for a
Speaker 4: couple of hours back on Nightside right after this.
Speaker 1: Now back to Dan Ray Mine from the Window World
Speaker 1: night Side Studios on w b Z.
Speaker 5: The news radio.
Speaker 4: I'm going to try to get everybody in he let
Speaker 4: me go to John and Bellingham. John, you're all my guest,
Speaker 4: Tom Samluck, Deputy Director of the JFK Assassination Records and Review.
Speaker 8: Well, go ahead, John, Good evening, gentlemen. How are you?
Speaker 4: We're good with you, tight on time? You go right ahead.
Speaker 4: What's your comment? A question for Tom Samlock.
Speaker 8: I just have a comment. I was I was ten
Speaker 8: years old at the time, and I remember we had
Speaker 8: an announcement at school that we had to all go
Speaker 8: home early. Nobody knew what was going on, and we
Speaker 8: all got on the buses and the town I lived in,
Speaker 8: in the town of Shirley, Mass I have a friend
Speaker 8: that was we didn't know at the time, friends with
Speaker 8: the Kennedy family and we were almost home when three
Speaker 8: police cruisers pulled up to the bus and stopped us
Speaker 8: in the middle of the road and took our friend
Speaker 8: off the bus, not knowing that they were friends, and
Speaker 8: Jacqueline Kennedy had asked that the family meet them in Washington.
Speaker 8: They were that close of friends. But it was scary.
Speaker 8: I mean the girl, the girl's name was Joan and
Speaker 8: her father was president of Suspend h Uh, a sweater
Speaker 8: factory in Manchester, New Hampshire, a really famous fetter sweater company.
Speaker 8: I guess they were friends for a long time. Pandora sweat. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 8: and all right, pretty scary, but still still in our
Speaker 8: heads for the rest of our lives, you.
Speaker 4: Know, absolutely, absolutely, John appreciate that that story.
Speaker 5: That's interesting.
Speaker 8: It's interesting. Thanksgiving, Hey, save.
Speaker 4: To you and yours. Let me go next real quickly.
Speaker 4: If I can to Peggy in South Austin, Peggy next
Speaker 4: on nights, I.
Speaker 5: Go right ahead.
Speaker 4: Oh.
Speaker 9: I was twenty six years old and I voted President Kennedy.
Speaker 9: I had the whole family. Just came back from lunch
Speaker 9: working downtown to Boston. When my Brooss told us that
Speaker 9: President Kennedy was assassinated. All we could do was cry,
Speaker 9: and he sent us. He sent us home. Also those Kennedy,
Speaker 9: you know what I wad it and now and he
Speaker 9: got brought two minutes for me, all right, two.
Speaker 4: Minutes for you, Peggy, to be honest with you. I
Speaker 4: have Tom Sai. I'm alect my guest, and I'm looking
Speaker 4: for people to ask questions. Let's go next to Jane
Speaker 4: in Shrewsbury.
Speaker 10: Go ahead, Jane, Hi, Dan, I wanted to ask Tom
Speaker 10: about if he's familiar with the book called Mortal Error,
Speaker 10: The Shot that Killed JFK, which was written by Bonar
Speaker 10: Menninger and co authored originally by Howard Donahue as a
Speaker 10: co author. Yes, I'm familiar with it, and do you
Speaker 10: have any opinion?
Speaker 6: I thought it was one of the most I thought
Speaker 6: it was one of the most bizarre theories and not
Speaker 6: based in fact at all as to what happened. If
Speaker 6: I recall correctly, the theory was, and Dan, you'll be
Speaker 6: able to picture this as many listeners will be from
Speaker 6: the Zapruder film and other films from that day, that
Speaker 6: the Secret Service vehicle is right behind the presidential limousine.
Speaker 6: So this bizarre theory was that it was actually Secret
Speaker 6: Service agent that fired the fatal shot that inadvertently hit
Speaker 6: the president in the in the back of the head.
Speaker 6: There were lawsuits about this, and it's it's I think
Speaker 6: it's been debunked for years now, but there's thousands and
Speaker 6: thousands of books literally on the assassinations to get everything.
Speaker 4: Theory of this book that it was done intentionally or unintentionally.
Speaker 6: It was unintentional. It was the shooting had started, the
Speaker 6: Secret Service agent purportedly inadvertently discharged his his long long gun.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, okay, yeah, I think I had heard of that,
Speaker 4: and of course that is the because they had went forward.
Speaker 5: As well as backwards.
Speaker 4: I guess, uh, well, sorry, Jane, are you a believer
Speaker 4: in that theory or just no.
Speaker 2: No, no, I haven't read the book. Somebody else asked
Speaker 2: me to ask about it. But I was looking on
Speaker 2: the Wikipedia page about the book, and it says that
Speaker 2: the theory did not rule out that the second shot
Speaker 2: could have been a critical wound anyway, but it was
Speaker 2: just one of the possibilities that somehow a Secret Service
Speaker 2: agent fired because they never did a ballistics check or
Speaker 2: something like that.
Speaker 10: Something like that, But I haven't read it.
Speaker 4: Okay, well, thanks, okay, okay, any other comment on that one?
Speaker 6: Tom, I know just that there were ballistics done. Some
Speaker 6: people find fault in the ballistics testing that was done,
Speaker 6: but it doesn't lead to that that theory that the
Speaker 6: author put out there.
Speaker 4: Okay, Tom, I got a bunch of calls here. Do
Speaker 4: you want to stick with me for maybe one segment
Speaker 4: in the next hour. I'm sure some of these folks will.
Speaker 6: Have questions in for you, because it's because it's you.
Speaker 6: I'll do whatever you want me to do. How's that.
Speaker 4: Okay, Well, it's late on a Friday night. I'll try
Speaker 4: to see if we can wrap the question. So we're
Speaker 4: looking for people who have questions. Peggy, I think, wanted
Speaker 4: to tell us the story of her experience that afternoon,
Speaker 4: which I'm sure was a terrible experience, but I wanted
Speaker 4: to stick with them with my guest and questions for
Speaker 4: the guest. We'll take a very quick break. We'll be
Speaker 4: back with Tom Sammelak. He had served as the deputy
Speaker 4: director the John F. Kennedy Assassination Records and Review Board.
Speaker 4: I thought the question from Jane and Shrewsby was a
Speaker 4: good one in the sense that it explored a theory
Speaker 4: that apparently has been discounted. This is the crime of
Speaker 4: the twentieth century, and it's a crime, Tom Samluk, that
Speaker 4: I guess we're never going to solve. But I want
Speaker 4: to see Donald Trump, President elect Trump, release every one
Speaker 4: of those records. You told me today, and I don't
Speaker 4: know if you can say it on the air tonight.
Speaker 4: Who was it that advised him not to release the records?
Speaker 6: Well, I think that it was President elect Trump himself
Speaker 6: who recently said that it was Secretary of State Pompeo
Speaker 6: that had advised him not to release the records back
Speaker 6: in twenty seventeen, after he had said that he would,
Speaker 6: but then it didn't actually happen then.
Speaker 5: And you know, it's interesting.
Speaker 4: I put that together with Donald Trump saying a week
Speaker 4: or so ago that there would be two people who
Speaker 4: would not be in the cabinet, the former governor of
Speaker 4: South Carolina, NICKI Haley, for obvious reasons. And also he
Speaker 4: mentioned Mike Pompeo, and that if he felt that Pompeo
Speaker 4: maybe misled him, that might be the reason why he
Speaker 4: made that statement. No way of proving it, but at
Speaker 4: least think about it. Connect the dots. We'll be back
Speaker 4: on Nightside with Tom Samulak talking more about the Kennedy assassination,
Speaker 4: which happened sixty one years ago today and sixty one
Speaker 4: years ago tonight.
Speaker 5: People were in mourning
Speaker 4: Across America, back on Night's side right after the ten
Speaker 4: collect News