The HSCA "Investigation" with Robert Tanenbaum

Speaker 2Aside from the Warren Commission, there is only one other investigative body that was specifically dedicated to the Kennedy assassination, the House Select Committee on Assassinations, which was established in September of nineteen seventy-six and wrapped up in the early days of January nineteen seventy-nine. In this bonus episode of Solving JFK, we'll be speaking with Robert Tanembaum, who has a unique perspective on the HSCA. For a period of time, he ran the day-to-day operations of the investigation into the Kennedy assassination as deputy chief counsel. Before that, Tannenbaum was an assistant district attorney focused on homicide in New York City where he never lost a felony trial. After his time on the HSCA, Tana Bomb was a law professor at UC Berkeley served two terms as mayor of Beverly Hills and has written thirty three books. His newest book, that day in Dallas, gets into the details of his time on the HSCA.

Speaker 2Was the HSCA a real investigation or were their political or parapolitical motives that were more important than pursuing the truth. We'll hear what Bob Tanabam has to say coming up next on solving JFK.

Speaker 1Mr. Chanabam is an honor to have you here with us on Solving JFK.

Speaker 0Well, thank you very much for having me.

Speaker 2Obviously, I'm very interested in your whole career, your super interesting guy. But I've got a ton of questions to ask you about the HSEA and your time on it. So I guess just to start, and by the way, I'm just finished reading your book that David Dallas. Very, very, very good book. And you really get into your time on the HSEA in that book. Can you talk a little bit about how you were initially hired to be on the HSEA and then what your job was like as deputy chief counsel?

Speaker 0Well, yes, very interesting to me is that in my career in the DA's office, where I had prosecuted to verdict that is, pick the jury's opening statements, cross examination, summations, and then that's what I mean when I say try a case. So I prosecuted more cases than anybody else except for one person. Richard A. Spray, who was the chief? He was a deputy chief in Philadelphia. He was Mr. Pennsylvania. Anyone had a serious case. They went to Richard Spray. He had tried more, prosecuted more cases than I. And I can tell you, what an outstanding human being he was. This is what happened. I had no weekly or knowledge about what was going down anywhere else because I was flooded with no less of Lee Cases trying to get to a specific I was still trying murderers murderers. It was all part of the whole fact. I love that every day was a new anxiety day as far as I was concerned. And so what happened was in October of seventy six.

Speaker 0Richard A. Spray was designated. I don't know anything about this. He was designated chief counsel of the House Select Committee on Assassinations. And it was too full. One assassination issued for one subcommittee was who murdered JFK and that was a separate investigation. The other investigation was the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King. I mean, talked about two incredible Americans. And so Without my knowing it's free, had done an investigation on me. And he called me up and he said he would like me to come to Washington with him. This is out of the clear below. And I would take over the Kennedy investigation. And he would work with me on it. Well, I checked around who he was and so on and so forth. A friend of mine said, you guys are the perfect pair. You'll work eighteen hours a day. He'll work eighteen and a half hours a day. So you don't have to worry about anything. But here we met.

Speaker 0And we agreed that we need to hear from the committee themselves that they are not going to interfere politically with what is going on. We're not going down there when they brief. We're not going down there because someone said that there was a CIA or anything else. I was let it out in a second. But we were going down there to see what the evidence said. And whatever the evidence said, we, of course, will submit it to the committee. This is a congressional committee. It wasn't spray committee. It wasn't a town about committee. And that we would tell the American people the truth. Well, we found. And we ran down every rabbit hole you can run down with respect to other potential caracers in this whole scenario. LBJ, mafia, etc. So that was acceptable to the committee. They said they would definitely not invest in a political atmosphere here. It took us four months to realize they were lying and it became very apparent.

Speaker 0And here's what happened. My first week in my first week, literally in Washington, this is now seven and January. I got a telephone call from Senator Richard Schweiger, who was in charge of the Senate Committee investigation into the assassination of President Kennedy. and the response of the intelligence executive offices, how they responded to all this, how this could have happened without anyone really knowing it and so on. So it was an insurrection also about the assassination and the executive intelligence agencies that should have been on top of this whole thing. And in fact, it weren't. So what happened was church asked me to come and see him. First week in Washington. And of course I did, and Senator Richard Schweck, it was a conservative middle of the road Republican. He wasn't looking for press conference. He wasn't looking to make a name for himself. He had by saying crazy things, for which there was no evidence.

Speaker 0He said, I won't, I want to tell you two things, both of which are very, very difficult for me to deal with because of you. I know you're back, one of these said, you're around the homicide bureau, you're around the criminal courts in the DA's office, and you try. Everyone knows you, you're a fanatic, you try all these cases. And he said, I do want you to know this. The CIA will totally try to deceive you. They did everything they could to upfuscate our investigation on the Senate side. I'm sitting in his office, sort of club chair listening to this. He said the second thing I want. And here are my notes. He said the second thing I want to tell you is, and this has got wrenching for me to tell you. The evidence in this case, as far as we're concerned, here on the Senate side, is a result of this investigation. And remember, church, Senate Church was the lead person in this whole investigation, which we've seen tremendous amount of publicity at the time in the mid-seventies.

Speaker 0And he said, from the evidence, I want you to know that we believe that the CIA murdered the president. Wow. I felt that ten buckets of ice water had just been poured on my head. I said to him, only, this is what the evidence tells you. He said yes. I said, you understand that. I want to thank you for your time and your opinion. But we're not going down there to vindicate anything. You know that. He said, absolutely. You go with the evidence, take you. I said, that's exactly what our mission is. Well, he was right to CIA, interfere with the investigation and its entirety. And an interesting thing happened. In nineteen, well, it was an sixty-one. Alan Dullis was in charge of the Bay of Pigs fiasco, the investment, the invasion of Cuba in nineteen sixty-one. And it was a fiasco. The CIA was in charge of this. They had Richard Nixon approving it in nineteen fifty-nine device president. He was of course going to be elected.

Speaker 0everyone knew that he would be Jay of K in the nineteen sixty election. So they thought wrongfully. And the president was very disturbed that he felt he got the wrong information about the entire invasion. And so Jay of K fired Alan Dullis. And, you know, this is the same Alan Douglas, one of the family of John Twisted Dolls, who was Secretary of State, he's a well-heeled people and influencing what was going on in our country. And so he replaced Alan Dolls with a very pro lawyer at JFK person, his name was John McCone. John McCone has come up with probably one of the most important pieces of evidence in the case. And that was to say that McCone and Others in the government were very concerned that the public might find out. This was their concern. That the government, that the people of America might find out that Lee Harvey Oswell was a contract employee of both the FBI and the CIA. Since nineteen fifty-seven, Oswell, was at a Suhi Air Force Base in Japan monitoring those U-tuflights.

Speaker 0Gary Powers was the captain of one of those planes that got shot down. Well, our government was against to the extent that basically, instead of dealing with other major issues that I'm going to get to in a second, that they fit in there must be a mole because to get that plane up, require very, very serious training, but to get it down as well, was a reverse of that. And so they set eyes rolled up, who worked with Angleton at the hour American supersonic, and he worked with Angleton. I said, well, did. And they said, I was World Up of someone now who was defecting. You remember this whole scenario? It was a lie, but they wanted to get to them all. And they said, I have important information. I just got to get into the right people. All those kind of stuff. They never got them all. But here's what happened. I think you're going to find very fascinating. James Rally was the chief of the Secret Service at the time.

Speaker 0Rally wrote a note to McCone, who was headed to CIA now since six new one. And the letter to Rally, which McCone wrote in response was March third, six new four. March third, six new four. McCone responds to Larry and McCone says, you know, we're concerned about leaks also about Lee Harvey Oswell, because people, you know, I'd have to do what he's training and his suspect activity. And he said, McCone, that the leaks are very important because if anyone believes these leaks, the wrong persons, the leaks, could lead the media to erroneously claim that the CIA and perhaps others would directly involve in the Dallas action. The Dallas action is how they refer to the assassination of President Kennedy. And then on page two, the top of page two of this repage letter, third page is a signature page. McCone wrote the following, while the person's involved in the assassination were in the employ of this agency, the CIA.

Speaker 0What, imagine that? What I'm telling you, this is evidence. While the person's involved in the assassination were in the employ of this agency as well as the FBI, the versions of his side and says it's impossible to monitor and they take twenty-four hours a day responsibility over our agents. I checked out this document to make sure it was legitimate. It passed every test. It was found where it should have been found that numbers are what consisted with the numbers of the pages before and after. And the reason I mentioned this is because the governments were initial reaction was, well, that's a fake letter. It's a legitimate letter, it pissed, muster, on every aspect of what we're talking about here. It was used in nineteen seventy-eight and it was used in nineteen ninety-one in Russell's book, Dick Russell's book. So it's not something I found and no one else has had. It's been out there since seventy-eight, yes, I'll go ahead.

Speaker 2So yeah, the Macoon rally memo, like what you just laid out, that document sort of confirms all of these other things that you sort of already know. But to your point, it is, I would say, disputed as a document. Now, the reason that's disputed is two reasons. And so I'd like to zoom in on that with you if I can. One of those reasons is they asked the National Archives where it was, the National Archives said they can't find it. Well, on that reason, strike that out. uh... that is not a good argument because uh... one of my friends uh... is canadian attorney and your island or who's an expert in the gfk records act went to the national archives looking for the final determination forms from the ARB and uh... long story short he was there for three days and they couldn't find the thing that he asked for but turns out it is it was in one of the boxes it was labeled something different so The fact that national archives can't find something is meaningless in terms of ascertaining whether or not it exists.

Speaker 2Their whole situation is a disaster. Also, there's a part of the ARB that allowed agencies to turn documents over before the act was operational. And if they did that, then the documents would not be put in with the other JFK record. So, okay, that part of it is not an issue. The other part that people hang on is an argument, and I just don't really know. is the it says like CEO like there's some sort of numbering on in the top right corner and that's not consistent with CIA numbering. I really don't know, but what I do know is there's someone else who worked on the HSEA. I'm not at liberty to say this person's name. You know this person.

Speaker 0I have a take from him. He founded and he covered every issue along with a Mr. Bunch. who is regarded as the best of all the researchers. They before I ever would talk about it, I went through every aspect, including all of these numbers and so on and so forth. First of all, who would lie about the content of this letter? It's another embarrassment of our government because there are at least one, two, three, four areas where they knowingly lied had approvable and I'll get to it a second, but go ahead, no, I think it's important to have this Discussion, and let out.

Speaker 2Right, so on this document, there's another person who basically told me, I know that the McCone rally document is real, because I was there, and I saw it with my own eyes. And I obtained a copy of it for myself, and I don't want to go on the record, because I could be held criminally liable because of that. And so my question is, did you see it with your own eyes at the HSCA, or you came across it later?

Speaker 0Oh no, no, I did not see it with my own eyes. It was described to me in accuracy. I said, it's explain to me how you would know it was real or not real. And they went through this with me. And they talked about all the numbers. These are serious people here. These people had nothing else to do when they found the document. And it was a phony. And it just so happens to be a major admission by the head of the CIA. By the way, Nothing ever happened with the CIA, you know, seriously dealing with this thing, that they have conducted themselves in a shameful manner throughout. Now, one other quick thing I want to mention to you about the HSA, why it became a sham. On page thirty seven of the forensic of the forensic medical panel report, page thirty seven, the forensic medical panel report for their house, select committee on assassinations, Chief of the staff there writes the following. These are people who took over after spreading our left.

Speaker 0First thing they did was hire CIA people to conduct this investigation. Well known CIA agents and operas. And in it at page thirty seven. The chief of staff and his responsible for all this says that the Parkland doctors must have been mistaken. When they say they saw the opening and the back of the president's head, that's the fourth shot. It hit him from the front area, away into the area of the stockage fence. So it was not, so it wasn't directly in front of him on L. It came from the side of the, and the, limo had in past that area and that's how JFK gets hit right in the temple area and it blows the back of his head out. And Bobby Sargas, who was on his monitor, who gets hit with blood, brain and other matter coming out of JFK's head. And the win this is then run in the book. all in the book, they run to the area where they said that shots were being fired over the head from the stockage fence, they were in the line of fire they said.

Speaker 0Some of whom covered their children, they were worried they were getting a shot. And so, what is the truth about this? Keep in mind when I just read to you, the staff, the senior CIA staff who took over when we left, said the popular doctors must be mistaken about the evulsive head wound because all of the twenty six witnesses at Bethesda said they did not see the evulsive head wound. The truth about what I just told you and this comes from the lips of those people who just referred to by this lie. And that was the very twenty six witnesses who allegedly didn't see this not only saw the whole gaping hole, they reported it under oath to the committee, the very committee that is now alleging this situation. That is, you know, the island dollars thing, the single board theory, this forensic medical panel thing and NAA. Keep in mind, when NAA came out, neutral and artificial analysis, the head of our committee here now run by the CIA, said, hey, you know what now?

Speaker 0If you guys persist in contradicting us, we have science. So you must believe the Earth is flat. This is exactly what they said. knowing that the metallurgical PhDs in our country said this whole thing is a sham and it's invalid. So, you know, and let me tell you about a piece of evidence in this case that is dynamite talking about evidence here. It's not just a letter that's taken common. And again, I want someone to tell me, putting aside all the numbers, everything formed, everything matched. And I know well the person who found this thing and very, very good person, very good person. But here's the issue. that I wanted to mention to you. There were a couple of them. The first is what we call my new metallic fragments, which you've heard about. If I was shot in the back of the head now, there would be no my new metallic fragments in the front of my head. So what do we have in this case?

Speaker 0We have my new metallic fragments, since our JFK said, at the right side of his head, and I would encourage everybody to get a hold of these three skull x-rays that show it. It's a rectangle, and it goes from front to back. And they super pose JFK's face on it. It's very worthwhile, you must say it. And what it does is two things. It tells us the direction of the head wound, and it tells us the point of entry. Totally consistent with JFK's motorcade moving forward and geographically from the front. He gets hit right in the side of the head. His head snaps back. Now, as far as that goes, I must tell you the following with his head snapping back. the shot that hit that there were three shots if there were two flaries of shots. The first three shots, all of the scene witnesses who are very important in the case, people pass them off because they don't, they don't try cases, they don't know what they're talking about.

Speaker 0And what's important about the flaries is that witnesses can be very invaluable, even though they don't say, that I saw the defendant with the gun and I can identify him in a line-up. That's what they think down important. Here in this case, they said the first floor of your shots happened very quickly and I collected all because I had the ability to be involved with immunable evidence, scientific, acoustical, visual and acoustics, which people weren't really available at the time of this all. And they said the first flurry had two or three shots. Turns out it was three shots from science, and it took two point six seconds. Then they said it was a pause. They didn't know how long. They didn't have a stopwatch. Four point eight seconds, we know. And the fourth shot was a boom blast. And it came from the stockage fence, no hill area. And the people on the bridge, like Mr. Holland and his staff people, they all turned to their left.

Speaker 0And that's when I said the people who were running with the grass, hit the deck, felt they were in the line of fire with shots coming over their head. But here's the key to this thing. And this is where put everything else aside. If JFK was hitting the rear, you know what JFK's head did when he was shot. He finally snapped back until his left and leaned in his wife's right shoulder. And he was what finally depressed. He was slumped dead and immobile. Now, you're teaching a classiness. Totally in good faith, knowledgeable. You ask your classmates. When someone is shot in the back of the head, how does the head go backwards? The government's position was there were only three shots, two of which hit the president, one in the head, and one in the back. The one in the back, we know as a total sham, because that's the one that had a downward detonation, a downward try. Somehow goes vertically up his body, out his throat.

Speaker 0and still fractions the absolute nervous shows no damage, no deformity. That's the single bull theory, by the way. And so what we have here is we know from watching frame three, one three. Zapuru to frame three, one three shows the hit to Kennedy's head in the blast. It flares out of his head being blown up. Well, how does he let go backwards if the three shots the government's telling us? Okay, from the rear. So you know what the government did? There's no went to the line to see I. A. They gelatinize ten skulls to replicate human skulls. And they fight up from the same height of the window in the depository, the so-called snipers nest window, and the high and the rifle, the Malica volcano. And they fire at ten times, which direction do you think the skulls moved? They will move forward. They were shaking from the back. In this case, watch the head movement. It's not the body moving the head.

Speaker 0It's the head moving the body. That's what is going on here. And at frame three, thirteenth, we see that shot coming from the stackage fence. There was a fifth shot that came in front, three, twenty, eight, frame three, two, eight. We found that out when I was in Washington, and the reason we found that out was that the three, two, eight issue of rose because there were several things that happened, but we didn't know if there was a shot for it. There were fragment issues. The first two issues were we found out from watching the film a hundred times, that one of these fracture issues on frame three, twenty-eight has a enlargement of the wound that occurred. And not a three, twenty-eight, but occurred at three, thirteen. That wound opened up the area above his right ear and it slapped down. It also moved JFK's head forward because that was a shot that hit him in the top of the shot that was unaccounted for by the government.

Speaker 0It hit him at the top of the head here. And then the third thing it did was it damaged the interior of the windshield to the left of the rear view. And it then struck kindly into risk ultimately. And that's how we know that commonly then drops the steps in. So we had to find out, and moment behold, the three twenty eight, we found that we found the frame that it referred to all this that had the flare at three twenty eight of what I was talking about here. And, and a problem that really, another problem arose, which I think you'll get a kick out of here. It said that we had to go through all this to get to the truth here. In December of sixty three to secret service in the FBI December of sixty three to secret service in the FBI found that Connelly and JFK was struck by two separate bullets. Both were shot within one point nine seconds of each other. Between one point nine seconds of each other.

Speaker 0Well, the manual bolt action we know to get that rifle cock takes two point three seconds. So therefore, we know beyond any and all that, officially scientifically from practice that we couldn't have two successive shots coming from the alleged murder weapon. Because they were hit within one point nine seconds and the fastest you can get that shot off in the America volcano is two point three seconds. So now we're confronted with the issue. Guess what? The America volcano is not the only rifle using this case. So where we have here, we have an issue of critical importance, which we all have, people talking about it enough and it's from Dr. Robert Shaw who was the thoracic surgeon for government economy. And Robert Shaw, you know, as we see all the time from the experts, particularly medical, they'll always have a recording machine. Because they want to know if you come on the case, you'll listen to that recording machine, you can pick it right up.

Speaker 0It's all for the benefit of disclosure, accurate disclosure, and sure was talking into his microphone. And he said, there's a twenty-seven degree declination of the wound untrue wound into the back of Connelly. And that being the case, why do I mention it? Because the twenty-seven degree declination from the rooftop of the county records building in the northeast area of Houston Street and Elm in that area and in the depository. The county records rooftop. How's the direct shot down Elm? And guess what? It's a twenty three degree, twenty seven degree declination. There you have it. I mean, you want to talk about evidence in case. Don't, don't ever get scared by someone who's telling you this thing was made up or anything else. The evidence is over. I'll tell you something else when people say, well, maybe they were naive, what they did in this case, the CIA, was shows that the government knowingly contrived a predetermined conclusion through the pretence of an investigation.

Speaker 0It was a funny probe, and both the warm commission in the House of Representatives, this regard at all convincing interests were the evidence. That's what happened in this case. The more you go through it, the more you see and realize the necessity of continuing forward in this thing, there are so many good people out there, just like the people who proved the ordennial dot to my satisfaction of the legitimacy of the McCone letter. They're out there and they would be fascinated To get involved finally, because this eighty thousand page distribution that we heard about in a week or two ago, it is about as meaningful as the price of soybeans in Ciccura, Alaska. You think after sixty-two years of deceit, That's a CIA, would have anything in those eighty thousand pages.

Speaker 2On the CIA, I have a few really, really specific questions that I'd love to get answered if I could, on this is back to the HSA. So we covered on the podcast last season, Oswald's alleged trip to Mexico City. And part of that saga was David Atley Phillips being caught in a lie to the HSA. And I understand you were the one who actually subpoenaed and interviewed Phillips about those tapes.

Speaker 0That's just right.

Speaker 2Richard Spray didn't deserve it. Okay, gotcha. I learned from your book that when Philips was testifying, you gave him the Hoover memo. And then he, you know, this Hoover memo talking about how all the FBI agents in Dallas heard the Mexico City tape of Oswald, which proved that Phillips was lying that the tape had been erased, and then Phillips read the memo, folded it, put it in his jacket, and left the hearing. That is a wild scene. Can you just tell me a little more about that?

Speaker 0Well, what happened was, Dick Spray. As a result of working with him, I can't realize, pretty quickly, he's an extraordinary human being brilliant and his integrity knew, no, no. It was nothing in that integrity issue about him, that in any way, with doing anything other than further his reputation positively. And he called in, Phillips, but he didn't have the memo from Jayad Góhova. The Jayad Góhova memo was dated November twenty-third And in it, Hoover said that out to all the supervisory personnel in the service, and it said that our agents who had been questioning Oslo for seventeen hours have come to the, and have listened to the tape made of kind of, of philips that the voice on the tape is not the voice of Lee Harvey Oswell. So someone else was involved in this whole thing on the October first tape. You could go on and on with the lies here. The October first issue was that a phony says his name was Lee Henry Oswald.

Speaker 0And he's talking to various people when some of whom were assassins, no assassins, they Mexico City and so on and so forth. And the CIA never corrected it. They knew that he was lying. They knew his name was in Lee Henry Oswald. And why would Oswald be a suspect, seven weeks before the assassination? That's the issue here. Why did they know that, allegedly? So what happened was when I got the memo, I immediately told the committee that I wanted to recall Phillips. And I had already spoken to Phillips before we got the memo, but when I had the memo, I wanted to make sure, you know, he was aware now of what his lie was about. That's when I came to realize in large measure, by the way, from the reaction of many of the congressmen, it was getting too hot for them. Before I put on Phillips, the bottom line was that I want to say, this is a congressman on the committee, before Mr. Turnabout speaks to anybody, and the way I ran the hearings where I would tell them

Speaker 0The committee beforehand, what the issue was, how we would probe through it. If you had any legitimate questions, please let me know and you know, you'll ask them. And I said to the chairman of the committee, Lou Stokes, a very good man. He was like the leading defense attorney in Cleveland. And his brother Carl Stokes, who was the first black mayor of Cleveland, got his brother, Lou, to run. So they get that money. you know, hopefully you use it for purposes, schools, education, infrastructure, all the good things. And I said to Lou, and we remain friendly throughout his life after this, I said, Lou, I'm getting bad advice from members of your colleagues. Anything you stare at me with surprise me. And I said, what's going on? You said they're not, They're not going to graduate a subpoena power. I said, what you hire me, I said, you shouldn't hire us as a matter of fact, because whenever you're going to compromise and assert your truth, Congress can't work without compromise.

Speaker 0That's why we mentioned it. And we did not want it to be political. And you agreed. He said, Bob, the senior staff, the majority membership in this committee, never thought you would get to this bloody mess so quickly. If at all. So I just stared at him. I was stunned again here. And we've stared at each other. He said, well, what do you want to do now? And I said, I resigned affected immediately. And I'll be speaking to spray within an hour. So yeah, I mean, the whole thing with Phillips, by the way, the notion is that I didn't order. This is what goes on in the minds of people who were empty headed. I never ordered any of the transcripts of anyone I spoke to. I had no reason to. I wasn't trying to case here so I would have the document kind of thing. They were there. Take a look at them. So I was, that meeting never happened. I wanted to know because somehow or rather nobody could find the transcript of that meeting.

Speaker 0Then I had with Phyllis, oh, Strages there. There's exactly the same thing. Dip the Estum, but he didn't have to come back because we didn't find it yet. And it was prior to our really getting set up. We got set up and moved on January, one, seventy, seven. Dip the just in seventy six. And that's why as soon as we hired him, we had to go back to him and ask him, what the heck is going on with you? And, and we did that and you're right, you folded it up and you say a word, he walked out. That was that was that was how they reacted to. the concerns of the people of this country.

Speaker 2You talked about congressman stokes, and it kind of sounds like most of the committee members were afraid of the CIA. My question is, were there any who were staunchly pro CIA who you could tell were sort of trying to stifle what you were doing? Or was it more that they just quietly didn't want to support what you were doing?

Speaker 0Oh, no, no. This was an open and notorious to the extent that they wanted to cover for Phillips. And given that memo from Jade, you'll hope that there were hard water on this thing. The J.F. J. I mean, the Hoover document is a clear lie that Phillips gave on the roof. Don't believe me, the blue spray. And spray got it. He could even know that. We had the other memo. We didn't have it yet. That's the memo of Jade, you'll hope, of November, twenty-third. And that memo, of course, was the memo that said that, you know, he had the happy he Philips, you know, lied about what we were talking about here. And, you know, he lied on the page thirty seven issue. There were so many issues that he lied about, but he lied. about what was going on with respect to the committee. And what was happening when he knew otherwise. So that's why when he folds up the memo that I gave him because he said that, you know, there was, this was proof that what he had said to the committee was an overt lie.

Speaker 2He had nothing to say, just walked out. A few more questions here on the HSCA. So in your role as deputy chief counsel, you hired some big names in the JFK assassination research world to be on the HSCA. I just wanted to throw a few of those names out at you. I'll just go ahead and give them all the same time. Gaten Fanzi, Dr. Michael Bodden, and Dr. Cyril Wack. If you could just comment on kind of what your relationship was like with them and your

Speaker 0Mike Biden was chief assistant, medical examiner in New York, and he ultimately became chief medical examiner when the chief medical examiner passed away. And I worked with him, I would say, once a week for a couple of years, going over a collision manner of death on what'sopsies in my murder cases. He wasn't expert without question. He had issues about wanting to always get ink. When I say that, you know what I mean? He wanted ink. He wanted to be on the front page. And sometimes he would form his opinions that we totally contrary to common sense. And so I would go over that very carefully with him and straighten him out without question. We're not doing here. We're not running for office here. So wounds that were on the arms What were they wounds of lunging or they were wounds of defense? You know, don't tell me that because he had it here. You come up with one side on this thing. You don't know the answer to that.

Speaker 0That was just an example of what I'm talking about. So Sarah Weft, our pay special tribute to in the book because he, he lived in April before anyone was really into this whole thing. He deserved to be acknowledged and I poured in the letter, my letter of condolence and prayers to his wife and family, cigarette and his family, indicating that he was the man for all seasons here. And the third person you mentioned to me was, say, we had bought and served. Get in Fanzi? Okay, phenomenal investigative. He worked for Spray, interestingly enough, he filled it out for you. So I signed him to Miami and he did great work. to the extent that DeMoran showed with someone George DeMoran showed with someone a very important interest to me and to the committee, to the investigation. And I gave him a subpoena to serve on DeMoran's show, who was then living in South Florida. And he did. And then I got a call from the DA in that county where DeMoran's show was resigning.

Speaker 0And he said, I want to report to you to DeMoran's show just killed himself. He just got to subpoena. I wanted to talk to DeMoran's show about all of the information he had about all of the conservative characters who play this off politically, period. You know, no matter who you're working with, from door full or anyone, you want to hold them to the standard of accuracy and common sense and potential cross examination, so that this is not some individual quest at all. It's all about dealing with trying to let the public know what happened. And I believe that with Spray, who became like a forty six year year friend of mine after this, we try cases all over the country together. And it's the example I gave you, you know, about public service. It when we started, what's the unfortunate for me to have been befriended by Spray? Another wise, I never would have had that experience. To be here talking to you is important because you are getting the message out and that's why it's so important.

Speaker 0Anyway, you see fit to do that. So I thank you for that. It's very important.

Speaker 2Thank you. I just have a few more questions here real quick. I've got four questions. I'll keep it as best as I can here. So I've read that you saw films during your time on the HSCA that showed Lee Harvey Oswald with David Phillips and Guy Bannister at a Cuban XL training camp and that you brought people in witnesses who knew them to identify their faces on the film. And of course, this is against the official story because Oswald's supposed to be the enemy of Cuban XL as he's supposed to be a Mr. Pro Castro. The film, of course, disappeared at some point. Could you speak to that or just confirm that that happened?

Speaker 0Well, yeah, what happened was I, I was shown a film. I believe it was in the library at Georgetown. And it was like an eight millimeter, sixteen millimeter, I'm not sure. And in it, were the people you just mentioned? It was the flight, the military, the military, the military character whose name you know, is a well-known guy, he's part of the whole world. The underworld, the people who were involved in militias in the country, and all that kind of nonsense. David Therick. Yeah, there it is. But the film was important because, as well, is walking around with David Phillips, but Phillips was going by his name to get a bishop. And that's what I was able to prove in Washington, that Bishop was the nom de guerre of Phillips, because Oswald, thank you, you were as a great question. Because Oswald was involved with Maurice Bishop. First of all, what would this guy have in a nom de guerre anyway?

Speaker 0What's he hiding from here? And it was important because Mr. David Phillips, whatever name you want to use and buy, was involved with people here, no business being involved with. And that was just another example of it. So when we came down one night early in the morning, it dawned on me, that the bishop, this whole bishop thing was a chess maneuver, believe it or not. You know how you figure all these things out and you check the records of where bishop was and where I was, well, and you know, they're there. It's been there in front of you and then bang on your slide right into it. So I, I was very concerned about Mr. Philips and the Mr. Bishop, call him who you want and whatever, but that added to the whole aspect of what was going along with this case. But I'll say one last thing is that the material I asked folks for, that he did Luc said, and they're not going to give you their subpoenas.

Speaker 0One was because we had information at the CIA itself, had information written down in memo form that was trying to get that indicated that the CIA was involved in the assassination. The other subpoena was, was it a rogue operation or was it an official operation? And that's what they wouldn't give me. And that's what he told me. This thing, basically, is going to fold up. And now, because I know what you're going to do. He knew I was the resultant. He knew he knew me. And that was it. Apparently, I'm glad we got to Bishop. I'm glad we got into the Bishop stuff. Thank you very much.

Speaker 2Yeah, well, thank you. Okay, and then there's a man named George Joe needy's who's become very famous recently because Jefferson Morley's pretty focused on bringing him to light. And he pretty much was the CIA liaison for the HSEA who was kind of running in her fear and said, oh, it turns out that Carlos Bringuer and these guys in New Orleans were actually reporting to him to Joe needy's the whole time. And he said he didn't have any involvement in the case. So did you have any interactions with Joe needy's or was that after you?

Speaker 0No, I didn't once we left. I did not get involved with G&Ds. I didn't get involved with everyone else who were CIA, known operators. who were running this investigation now. It was a created a total sham because of the obvious interfacing and involvement that an executive intelligence agency unelected officials were running the goddamn country.

Speaker 2Yeah, one last question and thanks again for your time today. What do you think we go from here? Do you think the answer is, you know, another congressional investigation or is it just another cultural touch point like Oliver Stone's movie was in the early nineties or what do we do to to get the American people to see the, you know, the information that's now clear that that certainly wasn't Oswald alone to anybody who's really studied it with with the exception of the few people who were predisposed to believe that it was Oswald alone no matter how much they look at it.

Speaker 0No, that's a good question because I'll have a stone. And I put aside the politics of all these people that I'm interested in what they did about this case. He was responsible, I believe, for the JFK Records Act of because the ninety-one the movie came out and he has on a maze he's to be credited in my judgment but putting out so much evidence it's hard to to to process it in one sitting sure I can do it because I spent all this time investigating it you're an expert in it you know what you've read you've dealt with these issues but in nineteen ninety three the assassination records review board was formed as a result of the ninety-two records at the JFK and I testified before the ninety-three assassination record review board and said give over all of the evidence there's nothing in here in any way is going to embarrass a jeopardized national security and if there are We'll have hearings and camera hearings before we judge.

Speaker 0And let him say, Mr. Senator, I know we, in all fairness, you want to be fair, we don't think this should be the default of this moment. Thank you. Let's go on to the next one. That's why this is so important to be done in that fashion. Now, what should happen now? The president of the United States is finally ordered the release. He did this in his first term and now he's doing it again, or has done it again. I haven't read all eighty thousand, believe me, I'm not a speed reader here. But the bottom line is that we know from all these issues that I raised with you, that there are very serious people out there who can help us get to the truth. That's all we're interested in. And let the American people know it, period. And I just think that that's why I say, you know, the ninety three associations are working to review, but because the district court judge who spoke to me about this appear to be a very decent guy.

Speaker 0I think he was from Minneapolis and he told me about his interest in this whole thing was strictly top of the line as far as I was concerned and that's why I testified. It's all on the record. All this stuff is on the record. So again, I thank you for letting us go through this exercise. And it's no simple task because there's so many different avenues and doors that open. Also, from our investigation, I'll quickly say, LBJ did not was not responsible for his assassination at President Kennedy. The mafia, which was created by one of the senior staff members after we left, came out with a book about the mafia was ridiculous. He's a person who never tried a case or investigated a case in his life. And he's getting his teeth trying in on this case of all cases. So I do think that it's very important for people like yourself to get together with your colleagues and you've been through this a lot.

Speaker 0And make a recommendation to the person because what Trump did say was interesting to me was people said to him, who are very good people, they said to him if he's first term, why did he turn it over? You said you would and he said, if you saw what I saw, You wouldn't have turned it over either. But that's what we want to see. American people can handle the truth. I mean, this is ridiculous. Can't handle the truth. Who can handle it? There are certain people getting shot with gold in their veins. Oh, you can now handle the truth.

Speaker 2Well, yeah, there's about a thousand or so documents still remaining to be declassified, but the National Archives has told Jefferson Morley as recently as last week that they are all forthcoming and they're scanning men. So hopefully that continues to be the case. Again, thank you so much for your time today. It was great talking to you for all the listeners here on Solving JFK. We'll be back with the second half of the series on Lyndon Johnson, starting next week.