The Colonel's Corner The Devil's Chessboard Part 22

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0:00 Hello, Bridget. How are you? Good afternoon, Colonel. I am proud to say that I'm almost finished with my painting away my winter blues. Cool. Yeah. Boy, what a difference. You know, nothing like a fresh coat of paint. Yep. Brightens everything up. Yeah, man. Vassar, how are you doing today? We're doing well. Thank you, Colonel. Cool.

0:34 All right. Everything in the household seems to be in good shape at the moment. I still got blocks of ice, but it is getting above freezing. All right. I won't tell you that I was walking my grandson today on his stroller ride in my bare feet. The weather is back very nice today, although it was very cold this morning.

1:03 today's day over what we've had the last couple of days any day. All right, so you got to get yourself grounded, which is what I try to do on those walks. We are on chapter 18, the big event. Let's dive in. October 1963, Dulles sent Arthur

1:31 Schlesinger assigned copy of his new book, The Craft of Intelligence, to give to President Kennedy. Schlesinger found the inscription that Dulles had scrolled in the book a little tepid. By now, the White House historian clearly saw through what he later described as Dulles' faux bonhomie.

2:00 but still committed to maintaining civil relationship with the CIA crowd for his own good and that of the president. Schlesinger typed up an agreeable thank you letter for Kennedy to send to Dulles, ending the vaguely teary words, I hope you will stop by and see me before too long. Looking over the letter before he signed it, JFK told Schlesinger,

2:27 That's a good Rooseveltian line. It had not occurred to Schlesinger before, but he immediately realized Kennedy was right. The letter he had written to Dulles for the president's signature did indeed recall FDR as a master of polite brush off. Dulles' book was published by his friend Cass Canfield, the legendary publisher at Harper and Row.

2:54 Dulles spiced the book with a few colorful espionage tales but it essentially was an argument for the kind of aggressive intelligence establishment that he had built. He drew a dire picture of the espionage battlefield in the Cold War where Soviet agents employed the darkest tools available to achieve victory while their western adversaries

3:22 hampered by operating in the open, oh my God, Democrat societies were forced to play by more civilized rules. Holy shit. If that's not one of the most blatant lies I have ever heard told. The Soviet spy, quote, has been fully indoctrinated, unquote, in the communist principle, quote, that the ends alone count in any means.

3:53 which achieve them are justified, unquote. That's the motto of the CIA, not the KGB. Well, it may be the KGB too, but it's definitely the CIA. Meanwhile, he observed taking another swing at the Kennedy philosophy of peaceful coexistence, U.S. leaders shy from Soviet-style ruthlessness, quote, because of our desire to be loved, unquote.

4:21 There was a strange looking glass quality to the craft of intelligence. Many of the extreme measures he accused the Soviet espionage network of employing were in fact standard operating procedures at the CIA, including secret assassinations as a political weapon. According to Dulles, the KGB had built an executive action section to murder enemies of the state. But this is precisely what Dulles.

4:49 had done within the CIA. Dulles also denounced another flagrant example of Soviet, quote, cold-blooded pragmatism. Okay, let me fix that. All right, there we go. Okay, so basically, we're talking about The Craft of Intelligence, a book Dulles wrote that has massive bullshit in it. Dulles had...

5:22 had denounced another flagrant example of Soviet Cold War, cold-blooded pragmatism, the massive recruitment of Nazi war criminals for intelligence work. Coming from the man who had adopted Reinhard Galen and untold numbers of Hitler's henchmen, and in fact helped build the West German intelligence system out of the poison of the Third Reich.

5:54 The utter gall of this statement surely provoked howls of derision inside the Kremlin. Dulles was such a master of the craft of intelligence that he sometimes appeared to believe his own lies. In 1965, he sat for a remarkable interview with John Chancellor of NBC News for a special that was titled The Science of Spying.

6:20 but was actually more concerned with the morality of the CIA. I can make that a very short segment. They have none. Chancellor spoke with Dulles in his Georgetown study where the retired spymaster, and I should put air quotes around retired, usually dished out an artful hooey that was sopped up by journalists who periodically sought him out.

6:46 But Chancellor brought a more skeptical edge to his conversation with Dulles than other reporters. The old man was compelled to justify himself more than usual. Did the CIA operate on a higher moral level than the KGB? Chancellor asked him. Certainly, Dulles replied. The Soviet spy agency was, quote, one of the most sinister organizations ever organized. As far as I know, we don't engage in assassinations or kidnapping or things of those kind.

7:16 As far as I know, we never have, unquote. What a fucking liar. Sorry. No, Chancellor continued. Did Dulles? So, Chancellor continued. Did Dulles himself adhere to a moral standard when he was the director of the CIA? Dulles paused briefly and had a calculating look on his face. Then he leaned confidently into the camera.

7:43 and said, yes, I did. And why? Because I don't think, given the caliber of men and women I had working for me, I didn't want to ask them to do something that I wouldn't do. Okay, but there isn't anything you wouldn't do. As if reading Chancellor's mind, Dulles felt compelled to further defend his personal sense of morality. Quote, all I can say is that I was a Parson's son.

8:15 and I was brought up as a Presbyterian, maybe as a Calvinist. Maybe that made me a fatalist. I don't know. But I hope I had a reasonable moral standard, unquote. He had zero moral standard. On occasion, Dulles did give journalists glimpses into the darker truth about the CIA, only to quickly pull the wool over their eyes. When Washington columnist

8:44 Andrew Tully interviewed Dulles for his 1962 book, which promised the inside story on the CIA. He asked the espionage legend what his organization would do if a foreign agent threatened the security of the United States. He was very blunt and said we'd kill him. But then his face resumed its normal expression, and he assured Tully that his question was hypothetical and that

9:13 he could not possibly conceive of such an unpleasant scenario actually occurring. When Cass Canfield asked Dulles to write a book drawing on his long career as a spook, Dulles was initially noncommittal, telling the publisher, first of all, I shall have to persuade myself that I have the aptitude and the skills to do effective writing, as I am not much of a believer in quote-unquote ghosts. It was another

9:43 less than truthful statement, for Dulles always relied on others, including CIA personnel and media assets, to write magazines articles for him, speeches for him, and books. Despite Dulles' retirement status, the craft of intelligence was an agency enterprise, drawing on the writing skills of Howard Hunt, Howard Roman, and friendly Fortune magazine reporter Charles Murphy.

10:11 as well as research and editing skills by top CIA analyst Sherman Kent and Dulles' former right-hand man, Frank Wisner, whose career came to an end in 1962 because of quote-unquote mental problems. Dulles also drew on his extensive academic contacts for help, including W. Glenn Campbell of Stanford Hoover Institute,

10:38 who provided ready access to his extensive files to justify the quote-unquote communist threat. Kent also suggested that Dulles use your potent association with Princeton to good effect. Joseph Strayer, the longtime chair of Princeton's history department, was drafted to do part of Dulles' book dealing with the roots of espionage.

11:11 Dulles was so deeply connected to the media world that the critical response to The Craft of Intelligence was all but assured when it was published in the fall of 63. Washington Post heralded what amounted to little more than a predictable Cold War screed as one of the most fascinating books of our times. The New York Times quote-unquote critic.

11:36 found a clever way to celebrate a book that revealed very little about Dulles' actual spycraft, praising it as brilliantly selective candor. The Times Review provided more quotes for the book, declaring, there is material enough here on breathtakingly high-level sleuthery to keep Helen McGinnis and Ian Fleming busy writing all kinds of thrillers.

12:06 It actually says nothing, by the way. And everything it does say is projected on someone else for what they were doing. Dulles had enjoyed a warm relationship with the New York Times executives and editors for years. When Dulles was named CIA director, Times General Manager Julius Ox Adler, Julie, as Dulles effectively called him, warmly congratulated his friend, Allie.

12:35 which is his pet name for Alan. The Times executive told Dulles that his appointment was the best news I have read in a long time. The supposedly independent media. If Dulles needed any assurance that he continued to be a power player after he left the CIA, the publication of The Craft of Intelligence delivered it. Held by the leading publications.

13:04 The book became an immediate bestseller and won him speaking invitations before influential audiences up and down the eastern seaboard as well as California. Dulles also was invited to appear in Texas. He chose the dates October 25th through the 29th to be in Dallas. He met with his old friends in Houston and Dallas and spoke at the Dallas Council.

13:35 on world affairs. Dulles often used speaking engagements and vacations as covers, and his detour through Texas bears the markings of such a strategy. His stopover in Texas stood out as an anomaly in the book tour, otherwise dominated by the two coasts. The spymaster's date book during his Texas trip typically left out as much as it revealed.

14:05 with the big gaps in his schedule throughout his stay there. But Dulles was wired into Texas oil industry, for which his law firm, Sullivan & Cromwell, had provided legal counsel for decades, as well as into local political hierarchy, including Dallas Mayor Earl Cabell, the younger brother of his former CIA deputy, Charles, a fellow victim of JFK's post.

14:34 Bay of Pigs house cleaning. So Charles Cabal got fired and his brother just happens to be the mayor of Dallas. With Kennedy's trip to Texas just weeks away, the president was a hot topic in the local circles. Dulles' strongly critical views of President JFK's presidency were ardently shared by the men in Texas.

15:08 Because they didn't like the fact that he was trying to get rid of the oil depletion break in taxes for something that's supposed to be a depletable asset, which oil is not. They typically viewed him as a dangerously weak leader. E.M. Ted Dealey, the reactionary publisher of the Dallas Morning News, thought so little of Kennedy.

15:41 that he once berated him at a White House luncheon in front of a group of visiting Texas publishers. Quote, we can annihilate Russia and should make that clear to the Soviet Union, unquote, as he lectured JFK. The general opinion of the grassroots thinking in this country is that you and your administration are weak sisters. We need a man on a horseback to lead this nation.

16:08 And many people in Texas and in the Southwest think that you are riding Carolyn, which is his daughter's, tricycle. Kennedy did not let his anger flash in public, but he fixed Dealey, the man whose family name was on the plaza where he was murdered, with a hard look. Quote, JFK said, the difference between you and me, Mr. Dealey.

16:35 is that I was elected president of this country and you were not. I have the responsibility for the lives of 180 million Americans, which you have not. Wars are easier to talk about than they are to fight. I'm just as tough as you are, and I didn't get elected president by arriving at soft judgments, unquote.

16:58 The Texas oil crowd was also furious at Kennedy for moving to close their tax loopholes on the oil depletion allowance, which threatened to cost them millions of dollars, if not billions of dollars. This kind of government mischief would have been unthinkable under Eisenhower, as Vice President LBJ, a Texas native, was supposed to make sure that the man in the White House didn't mess with their wealth.

17:28 But by the fall of 1963, the once powerful LBJ, former Senate Majority Leader and master of the backroom deal, was a fading figure in Washington, unable to take care of his oil tycoons who had paved his way to power. He had promised to protect them, the petroleum industry lawyer Ed Clark said, and he couldn't deliver. JFK had put Johnson

17:55 on his 1960 ticket to win votes in the South. But as the 1964 campaign approached, LBJ had lost so much clout below the Mason-Dixon line, largely because of his subservient role in Kennedy's liberal pro-civil rights presidency that he couldn't even be counted on to deliver the Southern states. With the South looming like a lost cause for Kennedy,

18:22 it was becoming more and more important to lock up the states in the North and the West that he had lost to Nixon in 1960. Johnson began to seem like less of an attractive running mate. On November 13th, 1963, when Kennedy convened his first important strategy meeting for the 64 race at the White House, neither Johnson nor his staff was invited. That had to send a big signal. They increasingly panicked.

18:54 Vice President took it as one more sign that he was going to be dumped. If the Kennedys were indeed looking to get rid of Johnson, they were given the perfect opportunity by a growing Washington scandal that fall involving Bobby Baker, the Senate Majority Secretary who had long served LBJ as a influence peddler, shakedown artist, errand boy, and pimp.

19:21 In September, lurid stories about Baker's wide network of corruption began appearing in the press, including the campaign slush fund and Capitol Hill party houses, stocked with young call girls who catered to every sexual whim, with which Baker bought the loyalty of Washington politicians. You know, another whorehouse.

19:52 was Baker's puppeteer. Baker, who was referred to as Johnson's protege, and little Linden in the press, resigned from his Senate office as the scandal intensified. Hoping to protect the man he admired and called the leader. But the heat under Johnson only grew, and the vice president was convinced that it was his longtime tormentor, Bobby Kennedy,

20:21 who was stoking the flames by quietly feeding damaging information to the press. Lyndon Johnson had entered the 1960 Democratic presidential sweepstakes with a cocky self-assurance. He had run the U.S. Senate like it was his own personal fiefdom from the moment he took over as majority leader in 1955. He was his party's mover and shaker, the biggest wolf in the pack.

20:49 and he felt confident that the nomination was his. Even as Kennedy's campaign under Bobby's management outmaneuvered him at the DNC convention in Los Angeles that July, LBJ vowed not to give in and accept the vice president position. Hand on your heart, Johnson told his friends in LA, the omnipresent Henry and Claire Booth lose. I wouldn't be on JFK's team.

21:19 if he got down on his knees, LBJ was quoted as saying. Months later on the VIP bus to Kennedy's inaugural ball, Claire found herself seated next to LBJ and was teasing him about being in the number two spot. Come clean, Lyndon, she said. What did it feel like for the swaggering Texas to be on the rear position? He leaned close and said, Claire, I looked it up.

21:49 One out of every four presidents die in office. I'm a gambling man, darling, and this is the only chance I have. Another example of LBJ's humor, but it also revealed something darker in the man. He undoubtedly was very keen on presidential mortality rates.

22:17 By 1963, however, it was Johnson who was the ghost, the once commanding figure whose future grew dimmer by the day, and he knew it. In March, Susan Mary Alsop, Joe's convenient wife, told Schlesinger that LBJ had unburdened himself to her husband while the columnist was dining with LBJ and Lady Bird. According to Alsop's wife, Lyndon had been very dark and bitter about his frustrations.

22:47 and his prospects. Schlesinger added his own observation about LBJ. Quote, he really has faded astonishingly into the background and wanders unhappily around. A premature elder statesman, unquote. Johnson began even to physically fade as the months went by, losing weight so that his suits hung off of him.

23:16 In January of 63, after listening to Bobby Kennedy deliver an inspiring speech at the National Archives celebrating the centennial of the Emancipation Proclamation, civil rights lawyer Joe Raw passed Schlesinger a note. It read, Poor Lyndon. Lyndon must know he's through. Bobby is going to be the next president. The Kennedys had turned the swaggering Johnson into a useless figure.

23:46 LBJ used one of his memorable barnyard metaphors to describe his plight. Quote, being VP is like being a cut dog. He knew that he was the odd man out in the glamorous Ivy League groomed world of the new frontier. They're trying to make a hick out of me, he complained to the New York Times' Scotty Reston. And as usual, he focused his resentment not on JFK.

24:17 but on Bobby Kennedy, whom he blamed, not without reason, for isolating and diminishing him. Bobby symbolizes everything Johnson hated, observed Kennedy's aide, Richard Goodwin, who later worked in the Johnson White House. He became the symbol for all the things that Johnson wasn't, with these characteristics of wealth and power and ease and Eastern elegance. With Johnson,

24:47 always looking at himself as the guy that they thought was illiterate, rude, and crude. They laughed at him behind his back. I think he felt it. It was a mortifying position for LBJ, a pathologically ambitious man with an ego that was as mountainous as it was fragile. And yet it was only to get worse for the VP as Kennedy prepared to visit Johnson's home state in November.

25:19 On November 14th, the day after the White House strategy session on the 1964 campaign, the president privately confirmed that Johnson would not be on the ticket. While conversing with his secretary, Evelyn Lincoln, JFK told her that he was planning a major government reform during his second term. And to accomplish his ambitious agenda, he needed a new vice president who believes as I do.

25:48 Kennedy told Lincoln that he was leaning towards Terry Sanford, a young moderate governor of North Carolina. But it will not be Lyndon, he said. Richard Nixon, who had weathered his own dump Nixon movement in the Eisenhower administration, was keenly attuned to Johnson's growing humiliation. Nixon was the first major national figure to voice Johnson's agonizing fear.

26:18 And with typical cunning, he chose to do it in LBJ's backyard. Nixon showed up in Dallas on November 21st, 1963, the day before JFK's presidential party was due to arrive. Nixon was there on business. He was attending a PepsiCo company meeting, a client of his New York law firm, PepsiCo.

26:49 the company that had acquired one of the world's largest navies, more than most countries have, PepsiCo, the same company that was involved later in the Salvador Allende overthrow, that PepsiCo. LBJ had become a political liability, Nixon told the Texas reporters, and if the upcoming presidential race looked close, he predicted that Kennedy would drop him.

27:23 Nixon's prediction, which was prominently displayed in the Dallas Morning News the next day, November 22nd, was another blow to LBJ. But he had even bigger concerns. Later that morning, a life investigative team was scheduled to convene in the magazine's New York offices to begin a deeper probe into Bobby Baker.

27:49 William Lambert, the investigative unit's leader, was certain that they were sitting on an explosive story that would bring down the vice president. This guy looks like a bandit to me, he told his boss, George Hunt. LBJ, he told Hunt, had used public office to amass a fortune, shaking down political favor seekers for cash and consumer goods, even putting the squeeze on insurance executives.

28:15 for an expensive Magnavox stereo console that Lady Bird coveted. As Bobby Baker later commented, Johnson was always on the lookout for an odd nickel or dime. In fact, the insurance executive, Don Reynolds, was scheduled to testify about Johnson's influence peddling practices at another meeting on November 22nd in a closed session of Congress.

28:44 The two meetings, one in New York and one in Washington, would have likely determined the political fate of LBJ had they not been overshadowed by JFK's assassination. Lyndon Johnson's days might have been numbered as VP, but he was not entirely abandoned in Washington. If LBJ was rapidly losing favor with the Kennedy administration, he had managed to retain the support of many key figures.

29:13 inside the national security arena. Johnson had been the dominant political figure in a state with a booming defense and aerospace industry, and he had long cultivated those ties and espionage officials. At the beginning of the Kennedy presidency, Johnson made a strange power grab trying to get JFK to grant him extraordinary supervisory powers.

29:42 over the country's entire national security apparatus, including the Department of Defense, CIA, State Department, and the Office of Civil and Defense Mobilization. Kennedy did not even bother responding to Johnson's maneuver, simply ignoring it. It had been drafted as an executive order for him to sign.

30:13 basically giving his job domestically to LBJ. The accompanying letter that LBJ sent over to the White House was left unsigned. But Johnson's executive order power play was never forgotten in the White House. Even a friend of LBJ's longtime Democratic presidential advisor, Jim Rowe, was flabbergasted after Johnson showed him the proposed order.

30:44 calling it, frankly, the most presumptuous document any VP has ever sent to a president. Despite the White House rebuff, LBJ continued to enjoy a special bond with national security hardliners during Kennedy's reign, often embracing their aggressive positions on Cuba and other hotspots, as well as leaking inside information about White House policy developments.

31:11 to his contacts in the Pentagon and CIA. Sounds so familiar. Dulles was among those who maintained warm relations with LBJ, even as both men's stars fell within the Kennedy court. In retirement, the spymaster continued to invite Johnson to Washington functions. In the summer of 63, Johnson hosted Dulles at his ranch in the Texas Hill Country.

31:42 Dulles' visit to LBJ Ranch did not appear on his calendar. That's weird. But it was briefly noted in a syndicated news photo, which appeared in the Chicago Tribune on August 15th. That showed the vice president astride a horse while Lady Bird and Dulles looked on. Considering how estranged both men were from Kennedy and how notoriously conniving,

32:11 They both were. The picture could only have produced a sense of puzzlement in the White House. Those resolute voices in American public life that continued to deny the existence of a conspiracy to kill JFK that someone would have talked. This line of reasoning is often used by journalists who have made no effort themselves to closely inspect the growing body of evidence.

32:38 and have not undertaken any of their own investigative reporting. The argument betrays a touchingly naive media bias, or it's the plan as part of the cover-up. A belief that the American press establishment itself, that great slumbering watchdog, could be counted on to solve such a monumental crime, one that sprang from the very system of governance of which corporate media is an essential part.

33:07 The official version of the Kennedy assassination, despite its matriarch of improbabilities, which have only grown more inconceivable with time, remain firmly embedded in the media consciousness as unanswered questions that would be lie, even a minor sense of inquiry.

33:34 In fact, many people have talked during the past half of a century, including some directly connected to the plot against Kennedy. But the media simply refused to listen. One of the most intriguing examples of someone talking occurred in 2003, when an old and ailing Howard Hunt began to unburden himself to his eldest son, St. John. St., as his father called him,

34:00 was a loving son who had suffered through the upheavals of the spy's life along with the rest of his family. Late one night in June of 1972 at the family's home in suburban Maryland, Hunt had frantically woken up his 18-year-old son. I need you to do exactly as I say and don't ask any questions, Hunt said. He ordered St. John to fetch a window cleaner, rags, and rubber

34:28 gloves from the kitchen and to help him rub away fingerprints from a pile of espionage equipment, including cameras, microphones, and walkie-talkies. Later, Saint helped his father stuff the equipment into two suitcases, which they loaded into the trunk of his car. Hunt and his son drove through the darkness to the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, where Hunt got out and tossed the suitcases into the water.

34:57 On the way back home, Hunt told Saint that he had been doing some special work for the White House and things had gone south. It was the beginning of the Watergate drama in which Howard Hunt played a starring role as the leader of the White House plumbers, the five burglars who were arrested while breaking into the Democrat Party national headquarters. All five of the men had a long history with Hunt, dating back to the earliest days of the Castro regime.

35:27 and at least two, Frank Sturgis and Virgilio Gonzalez, were rumored to have played roles in Kennedy's assassination. As the Watergate scandal unfolded, Hunt drew Saint and the rest of his family deeper into his disintegrating lie. Saint's beloved mother, Dorothy, was an exotic beauty with her own espionage background. She would die in a plane crash.

35:56 in the middle of the Watergate crisis while serving as a mysterious courier for her husband. When her United Airline flight in Washington's Dulles Airport crashed while landing at Chicago's Midway Airport in December of 1972, Dorothy Hunt was carrying $2 million in cash and money orders, some of which later was traced to President Nixon's re-election campaign.

36:22 As Nixon frantically tried to cover his tracks with the scandal, sketchy money began flowing back and forth. The president was desperate to keep Hunt quiet, and during one White House meeting, Nixon was caught on his taping system, figured it would cost a million in cash. We could get our hands on that kind of money. Hunt felt that Nixon owed him and his team. I had five men whose family needed to be supported, Hunt later said.

36:52 And I had a big house, stalls for six horses, kids in private school. I had needs for contributions that were greater than the average person. There's a long tradition that when a warrior is captured, the commanding officer takes care of his family. Nixon knew that Howard Hunt had played key roles in some of America's darkest mysteries. On June 23, 1972, while discussing the Watergate break-in with H.R. Haldeman,

37:20 his devoted political deputy and White House chief of staff, Nixon was taped saying, Hunt will uncover a lot of things. You open the scab, there's a hell of a lot of things. This involves these Cubans, Hunt, and a lot of hanky-panky that we have nothing to do with ourselves, unquote. Nixon wanted Haldeman to lean on Richard Helms.

37:50 who was then the CIA director, by warning him that if the spy agency did not help shut down the growing Watergate scandal, the president's belief is that this is going to open up the whole quote-unquote Bay of Pigs thing, and it's going to make the CIA look bad, and it's going to make Hunt look bad, and is likely to blow the whole Bay of Pigs thing. And we think it would be very unfortunate for the CIA and for the country at this time.

38:19 Nixon's ploy didn't work. When Haldeman sat Richard Helms down in his office and delivered the president's veiled threat about the Bay of Pigs thing, the normally icy cool Helms exploded. The Bay of Pigs had nothing to do with this, he shouted. Nixon only succeeded in further antagonizing a very powerful Washington institution, one capable of far more deviousness than even he was.

38:49 What Nixon meant by the whole Bay of Pigs thing, according to Haldeman, is it was Nixon's way of referring to the Kennedy assassination. Other historians have speculated that it was shorthand for the CIA mafia plot against Castro. In any case, the Bay of Pigs thing was an apt code name.

39:12 It conjured up all kinds of swampy intrigue that began leeching through the Kennedy administration after Allen Dulles and his agency suffered their humiliation in Cuba. Everything the CIA wanted to keep deeply hidden, and Howard Hunt was knee-deep in the muck. Hunt's adventures in the spycraft eventually tore apart his family and sent him to federal prison for nearly three years. By 2003, the retired spy was living on a modest ranch.

39:42 in North Miami, where they all seem to go, with his second wife, Laura, who was 27 years younger. She had fallen for him while he was giving a prison interview on Watergate. I liked all of those men. That must seem strange to you, Laura Hunt, told a Miami Herald reporter. Not for what he'd done. I don't admire that, but I admire him for serving the government, and I admire his intellect.

40:12 At 84, Hunt seemed to be fading out, suffering from various maladies, including hardening of the arteries. He had a new family, including two children he had had with Laura. But St. James Hunt felt it was time for his father to finally come clean for the sake of his first family. Following years of estrangement, St. began to spend more time with his father,

40:43 shows with him at his miami house when the old man felt up to it dredging up the past laura did not want saint james reopening his history but he felt strongly that it needed to happen after his family fell apart saint james had gone on a road as a rock musician oh what a cia guy's son as a rock musician say it's not so he had also turned into a drug peddler

41:13 A CIA son involved with drugs. Huh. A trip that eventually deposited him in the coastal area of Northern California. But by the time he reunited with his father, he was sober, middle-aged, and a law-abiding citizen who was eager to make sense of his early life. He was interested in talking to his father. Saint's father had always insisted that he had nothing to do with Kennedy's death.

41:41 that he was at home in Washington the day it happened, which means nothing. Hunt claimed that he was shopping for ingredients at a Chinese grocery store in Washington to cook dinner that night with his wife when the news bulletin of Kennedy's death came over the car radio. But Saint, who was in the fifth grade at the time, had zero memory of his father being home that day when he got out of school early or that night.

42:09 He found his father's cover story about cooking Chinese meal, which Hunt told under oath at a trial related to Kennedy's assassination, absurd. I can tell you that was the biggest load of crap in the world, Saint said. My dad in the kitchen chopping vegetables with his wife, I'm sorry. That never happened ever. His mother told Saint John around the time of the assassination that his father had indeed been in Dallas.

42:40 The mystery of his father's whereabouts that day would prey on Saint for years. He was determined to find out what happened. In 2003, Howard Hunt was finally ready to talk. He feared that his life was going to come to an end, and he was deeply regretful that he had so little to leave his family after all they'd endured. For a time, he flirted with the idea of telling all to actor Kevin Costner.

43:07 who had starred in Oliver Stone's film, JFK. Costner dangled a big financial reward in front of Hunt if he revealed everything he knew about Dallas. But when the money never appeared, Hunt finally dismissed the actor as a numbskull. St. John nonetheless urged his father to continue down the road of full disclosure. He made a plea in a long letter to his father.

43:33 telling him that the time had finally came to reveal it, and he owed it to him and his family. Soon afterwards, Hunt phoned his son in California and summoned him to Miami. On December 7, 2003, St. John Hunt flew to Florida. When he arrived at his father's house, St. John found Hunt in bed looking frail and washed out. Papa, can we talk about my letter?

44:06 Hunt suggested that St. will him back to his bedroom in case his wife returned. We don't want to get her upset. St. John said, I think she's very naive about the darker side of politics. Well, Hunt said, that's one of the reasons why I love her. St. John promised he would never reveal what he was about to tell him without his permission. Hunt launched into a remarkable story of the plot to kill JFK.

44:40 It was, even at this late date in Hunt's life, still a carefully parsed tell. He clearly was not telling everything he knew, and he seemed to be downplaying his own role in the crime, as well as the complicity of his former CIA superiors to whom he remained loyal. He also couched much of his narrative in an oddly speculative manner, as if he did not fully

45:08 understand the exact configuration of the plot. Nonetheless, what Hunt did tell St. John was stunning. Over the following months, the spy elaborated on his story as his health occasionally improved. At one point, St. brought in an expert on the Kennedy assassination in Watergate, Eric Hamburg, a Los Angeles writer, producer, and former aide to Senator John Kerry to help videotape his father.

45:37 Laura Hunt ultimately cut short her husband's extraordinary journey of truth-telling with his son. But before Hunt died in 2007, he left behind video interviews, audio tapes, and notes in his own hand, as well as somewhat revealing memoir called The American Spy. Hunt's confessional trove amounts to a tortured effort to reveal what he knew while still guarding sensitivities and loyalties and whatever was left of his good name.

46:07 After his father died, St. John would make a valiant effort to get Hunt's confession, which should have made headline news, into the hands of media gatekeepers. A 60 Minutes producer spent days poring over the material, but he was finally forced to apologize that the story had been spiked at 60 Minutes. In the end, the only Rolling Stones

46:34 Along with a smattering of alternative media outlets covered the story of Howard Hunt's astonishing final statement about the crime of the century. St. John's own memoir of his father's escapades and his family's ordeal bond of secrecy was released by a small Oregon publisher and received little attention. This was the story that Howard Hunt left behind.

47:00 Sometime in 63, Hunt said he was invited to a meeting at one of the CIA safe houses in Miami by Frank Sturgis, a soldier of fortune who had worked under Hunt in the anti-Castro underground. A man with whom Hunt would forever be linked when they were later arrested for Watergate. Also in attendance at Miami meeting with David Morales, another CIA veteran of the anti-Castro campaign.

47:30 who was well known to hunt. Morales, a big intimidating man who had grown up in a poor Mexican family in Phoenix, did not fit the polished CIA profile. Dave Morales did the dirty work for the agency, according to Wayne Smith, a diplomat who worked alongside Morales at the U.S. Embassy in Havana before Castro took power. If he were in the mob, he'd be called a hitman.

48:04 Thomas Klein, a colleague of Morales' in the CIA's Miami station, was more complimentary in his description, but it amounted to the same thing. Quote, we all admired the hell out of the guy. He drank like crazy, but he was bright as hell. He could fool people into thinking he was stupid by acting stupid, but he knew about cultural things all over the world. People were afraid of him. He was big and aggressive, and he had a mystique.

48:32 Stories about him permeated the agency. If the agency needed someone action-oriented, he was at the top of the list. If the U.S. government, as a matter of policy, needed someone to be neutralized, Dave would do it, including things that were repugnant to a lot of people, unquote. Harken back to Alan Tullis saying, we don't do that. Ruben Carbajal, Morales' lifelong friend.

49:01 from their boyhood days on the streets of Phoenix, was even more blunt. Didi, the man who was like a brother to me, when some asshole needed to be killed, Didi was the man to do it. That was his job. According to Morales' daughter, he was a CIA peon. Her father was utterly devoted to the agency. He did whatever he was told. They gave him a lifestyle that he would never have had.

49:31 under normal circumstances. He did everything for the company. His family wasn't his life. The company was his life. At a secret Miami meeting, Morales told Hunt that he had been recruited for an off-the-board operation by Bill Harvey. You know, Bill Harvey, the guy that's supposedly the Rome station chief going to the Gladio Sardinia thing. Yeah, that Bill Harvey. The aim of this off-the-board operation

50:05 it soon became clear, was to assassinate JFK. Morales and Sturgis referred to the president's planned demise as, quote, the big event, unquote. In his account of the meeting, Hunt presented Harvey and Morales as the key operational figures in the plot. Harvey did not attend the meeting, but seemed to loom over it. Hunt suggested that Harvey was in charge of hiring the sharpshooters to kill Kennedy and transporting the weapons to Dallas.

50:36 According to Hunt, the gunmen were likely recruited from the Corsican underworld. And by Corsican underworld, remember about Operation Gladio and what we learned about the Corsican mafia running the drugs for the CIA out of Southern France, where OAS was, and we've already determined that there were at least two OAS agents in Dallas.

51:05 that day. And Harvey is in Rome and the island of Sardinia, which is right off the coast of France and Italy. Okay, as Harvey once indicated, when it came to high delicate assignments, working with Corsican gangsters was preferable because they were harder to trace to the CIA than the Italian or American mafia men.

51:37 Hunt found Harvey and Morales to be disturbing characters. The two men could have been manufactured from the same cloth, Hunt wrote in his memoir. Both were hard-drinking, tough guys, possibly completely amoral. Possibly? They were killers. They were assassins. Morales was rumored to be a cold-blooded killer, the go-to guy in black ops situations where the government needed to have someone neutralized.

52:06 I tried to cut short any contact with him, said Hunt. To Morales, Kennedy was a no good son of a bitch, MF-er, that was a quote, who was responsible for the death of men he had trained for the Bay of Pigs. We took care of that son of a bitch, didn't we? Morales told his attorney, Robert Walton, in 1973, after an evening of drinking, loosened the CIA hitman's tongue. It was one more confession.

52:36 that the media ignored, even after it was reported by one of their own, Gaten Fonzie, a Philadelphia investigative journalist who, after going to work for the House Select Committee on Assassinations, unearthed some of the most important information related to the Kennedy case. Hunt may have been wary of men like Harvey and Morales, but he shared the venomous attitude of JFK. Towards the end of the Miami meeting, Sturgis made the group pitch to Hunt.

53:06 You're somebody we all look up to. We know how you feel about the man, meaning Kennedy. Are you with us? Hunt told the group his main reservation about joining them was a tactical concern, not a moral one. Look, he told Sturgis, if Bill Harvey has anything to do with this, you can count me out. The man's an alcoholic and a psycho. Sturgis laughed. You're right. But that son of a bitch has the balls to do it.

53:34 As Hunt related a story to his son, he remained fuzzy about his own involvement. In the end, he said, he played only a peripheral, benchwarmer role in the killing of Kennedy. It was Bill Harvey who was the quarterback, according to Hunt. Despite Harvey's reputation for hard drinking, the agency's assassination chief had the experience and connections to pull it off. While assembling his Castro assassination team,

54:00 Harvey had reached out to a variety of underworld professionals, including, with Dick Helms' permission, the infamous European assassin codename Q.J. Nguyen, whom the CIA had recruited to kill Patrice Lumumba. Now, if you recall, Q.J. Nguyen was Skorzeny, according to the guy, the Major Gannis, that wrote the Skorzeny paper book we did a long time ago.

54:29 And Harvey was well positioned as Rome's station chief to once again plumb the European underworld for a Dallas killing team. And Otto Skorzeny is the one that trained the OAS in France to go down to Algeria during that civil war. He's part of this. Otto Skorzeny set up the training camp on Sardinia.

54:57 That's all been established in previous books we've done. In fact, among the strange and murderous characters who converged on Dallas in November 1963 was a notorious French OAS commander named Jean Sautere, S-O-U-E-T-E-R-E, who was connected to the plots against President de Gaulle

55:26 Satre was arrested in Dallas after the Kennedy assassination. And this book says that he was expelled to Mexico. He was not expelled. A Dallas police officer put him in his car and drove him to the border. He was not expelled. He was protected. Satre's expulsion.

55:53 brought an urgent inquiry from French intelligence officials to the CIA about a dangerous outlaw's likely whereabouts, since de Gaulle was about to travel to Mexico. Hunt's speculation about the Kennedy conspiracy were in line with the suspicions of the House Assassination Committee. When the congressional inquiry got underway in 1976, the panel's most energetic investigators zeroed in on the CIA's antope.

56:21 anti-Castro operation as the nest, and Bill Harvey soon emerged as a prime suspect. We tried to get Harvey's travel vouchers and security file from the CIA, but they wouldn't allow us to have them, according to Dan Hardway. Hardway was a Cornell law student with whom congressional committees gave a weighty task of investigating the CIA's possible links to the CIA. One CIA official told me,

56:50 So you're from Congress. What the hell is that to us? You'll be packed up and gone in a couple of years and we'll still be here. But we did come across documents that suggest Harvey was traveling a lot in the weeks leading up to the assassination while he was supposed to be running the Rome station. Near the end of our investigation, I typed up a memo making my case against Harvey as the leading figure in the crime. I typed it up in the committee's secure room.

57:19 on yellow security paper with a purple bond marked top secret. The memo disappeared. While the Miami co-conspirators made it clear that Bill Harvey was playing a central role in the big event, they assured Hunt that the chain of command went much higher than Harvey. Vice President Johnson himself had signed off on the plot, according to Morales. Hunt found that plausible.

57:47 As he observed in his memoirs, LBJ was an opportunist who would not hesitate to get rid of any obstacle in his way. Hunt was mindful of Washington's strict caste system, but he was convinced that Harvey's rank and position was such that the VP would talk to him. This is where Hunt began to obfuscate. There is no evidence that LBJ and Bill Harvey ever was in close contact. And in fact, the two men's rank and position were desperate enough.

58:18 to make communications unlikely. And it's simply not credible that a man in Johnson's position would have discussed something extraordinarily sensitive like this with Harvey. Yeah, he'll talk about the whole Watergate and all that other stuff with those people, but when Nixon is in... But LBJ talking about murdering somebody when he had his own personal hit man?

58:49 Are you kidding me? The man Johnson did know best in the intel world was Alan Dulles. Unlike Harvey, Dulles had the stature to be seen with LBJ, as we know he did when he visited the ranch. Howard Hunt was fully aware of the seating arrangements at the Washington power table. He knew, in fact, that Dulles outranked Johnson in that circle. Hunt undoubtedly realized that the VP might be a...

59:18 passive accessory or even an active accomplice in what would be the crime of the century. But Johnson was certainly not the mastermind, and yet loyal to the end, even to his deathbed, Hunt could not bring himself to name Dulles. In his memoir, Hunt engaged in a kind of sleight of hands, hypothesizing about the likely identities of the conspirators as if he didn't know.

59:43 But in his communication with St. John, Hunt was more emphatic about the plotters. In addition to Harvey and Morales, the name David Atlas Phillips and Cord Meyer was Hunt's speculations. Phillips was the CIA counterintelligence specialist who had worked closely with Hunt on the Guatemala coup and the Bay of Pigs. Like Harvey and Morales, Phillips did not belong to the Ivy League. He was Texas born. He had a...

1:00:14 He had been a nose gunner in World War II, not an OSS gentleman. After the war, he rambled around Latin America, trying his hand at acting and publishing before being recruited in the CIA. His covert work won the admiration of Richard Helms, who made him chief of the agency's Cuba operation after Harvey was whisked off to Rome. In the position, Phillips was free to roam within

1:00:43 the world of anti-Castro and anti-Kennedy from it. Meyer belonged to the agency's Georgetown set. At Yale, he had dreamed of a writing career. After returning from the war, he devoted himself to the cause of world peace. But after he was initiated into a spy fraternity where he fell under the spell of James Angleton, he became the chief of the CIA's culture war, secretly dispersing cash.

1:01:14 to literary types whose ranks he once was a member. After his beautiful wife, Mary, left him, Meyer became increasingly embittered, especially when the rumors began flowing that she was JFK's mistress. Hunt carefully refrained from naming Dulles in his confession, but nearly every CIA official whom he implicated had been directly working for Dulles.

1:01:42 Dulles had recruited them and promoted them throughout the agency. Meyer was particularly beholding to Dulles, who had saved his career in 1953 when Joe McCarthy wanted him purged. Howard Hunt might have been worried about joining the JFK plot managed by Bill Harvey, but if he knew that Alan Dulles was at the top of the chain, he would have been fine. Despite his coyness about his own role, some felt that Hunt

1:02:13 had been much more than a bench warmer. At one point, the CIA itself seemed poised to make Hunt the fall guy. In the 70s, as congressional investigators inched uncomfortably close to the CIA's role, Hunt's own colleagues seriously considered throwing him to the wolves. In August of 78, I'm going to have to wrap this up, but I'm going to read this last paragraph.

1:02:41 In August of 78, as the House Select Committee on Assassinations entered the final stage of its probe, a former CIA official, Victor Marsetti, published an eye-opening article in the spotlight, a magazine put out by the right-wing Liberty Lobby, whose pages often reflected the views of the group's eccentric founder, Willis Carto. Marchetti wrote that the CIA officials had decided

1:03:08 that if the assassination committee crept too close to the truth, the agency was prepared to scapegoat Hunt and Sturgis. Hunt's luck was run out, and the CIA had decided to sacrifice him to protect his clandestine service. The agency is furious with Hunt for having dragged it publicly into the Nixon mess and for having blackmailed it after he was arrested. Besides, Hunt is vulnerable.

1:03:38 an easy target. His reputation and integrity had been destroyed. In the public hearings, the CIA will admit that Hunt was involved in the conspiracy to kill Kennedy. The CIA may go as far as to admit that there were three gunmen shooting at Kennedy. Marchetti described the CIA plan as a classic limited hangout strategy, spy jargon for releasing some facts while the others remain hidden.

1:04:06 While the spotlight was a sketchy publication at the time, Marchetti himself had credibility. A former Soviet military specialist for the CIA, he had risen to become a special assistant to Richard Helms before resigning in 69 over disagreements with the agency. In 73, Marchetti wrote a critique of the agency, the CIA and the cult of intelligence, which the agency forced his publisher, Alfred Koff, to heavily censor.

1:04:36 but Marchetti remained a CIA loyalist at heart, and he retained strong ties to the agency. In the ensuing uproar over the Spotlight article, Hunt sued for defamation of character, insisting that he had nothing to do with the JFK assassination, but he ultimately lost the court case. Liberty Lobby's attorney, famed JFK researcher Mark Lane, succeeded in convincing the jury that Hunt might indeed have been in Dallas.

1:05:06 as his own son came to believe. All right, we'll pick up there tomorrow with the trial. That's a good place to kind of stop. And I do have to leave early because I have to do the six o'clock with Badlands Media on our crazy book, Stolen Elections. So does anybody have...

1:05:37 anything that they want to. Bridget, go ahead. I need to text Ash and Brian. If anybody raises their hand, go ahead and take over for just a second. Bridget, go ahead, SR. Thank you, Colonel. I'm sitting here listening to all of this and I'm thinking, geez, we get to the point where what's going on with Johnson and the whole nine yards.

1:06:19 and they're hollering and screaming about Yale graduates, Ivy League graduates. You wonder what's really going on with these people, and now it comes to light, and you really, if you all have been following the Colonel and War Hamster concerning secret societies, this highlights it to a T. Yes, it is.

1:06:47 Very interesting how all of it overlaps. I agree with that. Cindy, did you want to say something? Yes. I'm going to tell you this because I saw it myself. Downtown Fort Worth, where the Sundance Square starts, there's a hotel. Outside the hotel, hidden in a little garden alcove, is a statue almost life-size of JFK holding the Fort Worth Telegram newspaper.

1:07:18 That states that he had stayed in Fort Worth the night before he went to Dallas. And it states the Democrats at the party where he was with all the big shot Democrats of Fort Worth told him not to go to Dallas. So I don't know what they know. They knew, but they didn't. I don't know if they elaborated to him, but it states that on the newspaper. It's on the statute, him holding that newspaper.

1:07:50 Interesting. Yes, I thought it was when I ran across it and went, what the heck? Nobody's talking about the LBJ connections to the Murchison family as well as Hoover's connections. I searched the book Devil's Chessboard for it. The Murchisons are only mentioned like twice. Right. But they held a party the night before that Hoover was at and allegedly

1:08:19 LBJ, one house employee claims that they saw LBJ there. A little bit weak. I think, you know, David Talbot really buys into this Hunt story. I think Hunt is a weak witness because he's, I mean, as he's, you know, giving this testimony to his son, you know, the book that he's putting out there.

1:08:47 is is saying that you know i had nothing to do with you know this this whole conspiracy theory about the cia killing um kennedy and you know he does mention bill harvey in the book he speculates that it could have been him um i want to say david atlee phillips was another quote unquote um cia whistleblower who he also you know points the finger at this like

1:09:16 The problem with Howard Hunt is that, like, he's one of the most non-credible people at, you know, who's ever been, and that's saying something with the CIA.

1:09:32 You know, on the one hand, he's publishing a book saying, I have nothing to do with this. On the other hand, you know, his son who's got, you know, who's involved with drugs and who's got like kind of a sketchy past and potentially, you know, the claim, you know, about credibility from him is that the family kind of needed money. Okay. I mean, why did he give this testimony to his son?

1:10:00 rather than other people? And why was it that when the money fell through, it was his son who gets the book deal? It's weak. Everything that you say is valid. And I think what you have to do is take the pieces of it that can be verified. We've had multiple sources.

1:10:30 on the OAS being in, there is another source of Harvey, his deputy, placing him in Sardinia and the fact that he traveled during that entire time way more than a normal Rome station chief would. I think what you have to do in all of this is take all of the pieces

1:10:57 And do exactly what you just said. The theory is plausible. I mean, David Talbot's theory is plausible. The only thing I'm saying is he seems to be doing a lot of work to build up this story with St. John and their relationship and this whole narrative about him coming clean to his son. Yeah. That's a narrative. That's all. Yeah. And the bits and pieces of it.

1:11:27 that can be corroborated still leave you with some very damning information. And to me, one of the most, to me, it's the most damning is the fact that there were verified from other sources, the OAS people that are assassins and the whole QJWIN.

1:11:57 which has come up in three different assassination plots that we've looked through. So that's the piece that I find the most fascinating because you're not just going to pull that code name out of thin air. So anyway, SR, go ahead. Go ahead, Illini.

1:12:24 Don't forget, this book was written before – I'm trying to remember the JFK Washington Post assassination reporter who's really covered this, and he was at a congressional hearing about a year ago. They finally released the last JFK files that their analysis shows James Angleton had Lee Harvey Oswald's file on his desk the week before.

1:12:50 the assassination in Dallas. So that's a piece of out-of-sample information that David Talbot didn't have when he was putting this book together. Yeah, because this book was published in 2015. Yeah, and I think it's just, I think that if you're going to run a Patsy, you are going to have his file on your desk.

1:13:21 No mention of James Angleton anywhere in this. He had to have known. Okay. SR, go ahead. Thank you, Colonel. And thank everyone for being here on Spaces and on Rumble. What's got me going here is the reporter that had the story spiked. We have to look at it from some sense to say that, yes, there is.

1:13:56 Some validity, probably quite a bit validity to what was being said because it got spiked. You're not going to wind up going to the press and the press just deciding, oh, something this huge should go away. Somebody within the CIA, no doubt, put the kibosh on it.

1:14:23 We're digging through and taking a look to see what's real and what isn't. Yeah. And that's why I have carefully chosen these books so that you can get all kinds of different people's views. We obviously don't know. And I find it really interesting.

1:14:45 as Illini points out, that you get these different viewpoints because somewhere in the middle of all of this is the truth. And regardless of who they pick to focus on, they apparently were all players in this line of work. And they had repeatedly engaged in this line of work.

1:15:13 That should be really the most damning part of all of this. They had an entire fucking footlocker full of assassins that they could pick from. That should be the most damning part of this entire thing. Not focusing on which one pulled the trigger. The fact that they had an entire cadre of assassins that they used all around the world to assassinate people.

1:15:42 That is the takeaway. So I see someone trying to come up. Or Hamster, did you want to say anything? Yeah, real quick. I just thought it was pretty interesting in this chapter that Nixon got a little bit of mention in a chapter that's about E. Howard Hunt, who, of course, would later lead the Watergate break-in. Right. Which ostensibly led to Nixon's downfall. We've talked a bit about what it was, what was the trigger.

1:16:21 that got the deep state, CIA, whatever, to turn against Nixon. And basically, we staged the Watergate break-in and then all the follow-up persecution. Just a little front-running. When we get into the Foundations series on our shows, I'm going to make a connection, a Nixon connection, that's going to tie that all together in the prettiest bow you have ever seen. So keep this.

1:16:51 today's E. Howard Hunt and Nixon connection in mind. And, you know, until I started doing this three years ago, I really had no idea how nefarious Nixon was. I mean, from the very beginning, how nefarious he was. And I've just found this entire journey fascinating, looking into all of these different people.

1:17:21 unreported in any significant fashion in today's day and age, where we've glorified President Eisenhower, even though he loved the assassination program, that Nixon was his vice president during all of that, doing all kinds of nefarious things. I find all of it very fascinating. You're going to love that little bow we tie here in the next month or two. Okay.

1:17:51 started putting this stuff together, the foundations. That was one of my oh shit moments where the colonel is going to absolutely drop her phone when she's going to do this. There's a reason they called him Tricky Dick. Yeah. All along? Yeah. Colonel, I think with your mentioning these different kind of teams of assassins in Dallas, it reminds me a lot of the MLK assassination.

1:18:21 With kind of overlapping teams that seem to have been going on in Memphis. Yes. Yes. And, you know, you get really get the sense that there were like little groups of three each doing their own thing. And, you know, to the extent that one group of three did or didn't know about the other group of three and maybe a third group of three. And really, you see the same pattern.

1:18:52 partly the same pattern with the rfk assassination because as lisa peace you know pretty clearly shows there there were two different polka dot dress girl teams in other words it's no longer polka dot dress girl it's polka dot dress girls and with with the los angeles thing it may have been different because the attempt seems to have been like if you have you know you see two polka dot

1:19:21 dress girls running two different directions and or their associates running different directions who had been with one of the polka dot dress girls that's very useful in sort of scrambling and or getting easy contradictions correct it provides camo yeah eyewitnesses it it creates camouflage right so you know and so um yeah it's it's kind of interesting that these

1:19:53 common theme of these multiple assassination teams kind of overlapping each other you know to some degree is is um the the idea that the cover-up aka scrambling and building in contradictory witness testimony is just completely built into the plot it is and you know it's but it's it's also you know on two different levels it's built into the plot and the actual shooting teams overlapping each other

1:20:22 And also it's, you know, built in to the plot in terms of like kind of scrambling narratives that, you know, like who, what were the Cubans that were really trying to kill Castro and who was just pretending to kill Castro as we see in the RFK Operation Mockingbird versus people like Bill Harvey type narrative.

1:20:51 Also, you know, in Italy with the like you and you have the Zionist connections to Angleton, but you also have the, you know, P2 connections to Angleton. They just overlap with each other, you know, in a planned way that can just really scramble stuff. Right. And scrambling is the goal. It's the goal. It's almost like you could almost see.

1:21:22 Well, it also allows coordination. With Angleton having the Vatican desk as well as the Mossad desk, it allows coordination. And that's why I've come away with the collective intelligence network operating as a cohesive body to include MI6.

1:21:51 Because they show up in most of the research that we've done. There's multiple layers so that you can have, you know, if one element gets exposed, you still have other fallback options, which is why they send multiple hit teams. I mean, you read the MLK, the real story of MLK that came out in the trial.

1:22:22 of the actual trial, they sent in multiple hit teams and he was not leaving alive. And it was just a sequence of events. If you don't get them from this angle, you're gonna get them from this team. And if for some other reason he comes out the back, we've got this other team and he just wasn't gonna leave alive. You just come away from that as a conclusion. And I think that's the same with JFK.

1:22:51 Right. And also, you know, the multiple teams can also give you not just help you in scrambling the narrative, but it can also give large influential groups with a stake, a long term stake in the cover up. Correct. Correct. Our fingerprints really are on this. Whether it means we actually did it is another thing. But we could have many different groups as fingerprints. It's like when it comes to fingerprints on this.

1:23:22 It's like the more the merrier as far as planners are concerned. Correct. Good observation. SR, go ahead. And then I need to run. Thank you, Colonel. I'm thinking back before we had all of this information that's come out at this point in time. And I'm looking at what was going on during that time in my lifetime and the stories that were coming out.

1:23:51 Everything that was said about the assassination and everything that went down, there was cover-ups all along the way that nobody really understood. Everything from the point of, okay, they were into, what is it, these people who can see the future, Gene Dixon or whoever it was that told JFK he shouldn't go to Dallas and all this other stuff. It was all focused on

1:24:20 Just the family itself, not the assassination in total. That's how they got away with it. Yeah, somebody just said over on Rumble that Gaddafi's son was just assassinated. I had just read that before I came on to the podcast, which I find very interesting. Very interesting, actually. Okay. All right. We're going to call it a day.

1:24:55 So thanks for being here. I will see you guys tomorrow. I'm trying to decide probably either by Friday or Monday, we will be done with this book and move on to our next one. Okay, so take care, everybody. I will be on at six o'clock on Badlands Media on the book club with King Khan and Ash.

1:25:25 I will see you guys tomorrow at four. Take care.

Entities here

CIA43 E. Howard Hunt34 Lyndon B. Johnson25 John F. Kennedy25 Allen Dulles25 Assassination of John F. Kennedy21 St. John Hunt17 Dallas16 Richard Nixon16 William Harvey16 Robert Kennedy assassination14 The Craft of Intelligence12 Watergate scandal11 Texas11 David Morales10 Washington, D.C.10 Hunt family10 Robert F. Kennedy8 Rome7 United States6 Arthur Schlesinger Jr.6 Miami6 Richard Helms6 Frank Sturgis6 Laura Hunt5 Bobby Baker5 Operation Pluto5 James Jesus Angleton5 1968 United States presidential election4 Organisation armée secrète4 Cord Meyer4 H.R. Haldeman4 The American Spy4 Cuba4 John Chancellor4 The New York Times4 Sardinia4 KGB4 Bobby Baker Scandal4 Fort Worth3

Claims made here

Allen Dulles member_of Harper and Row documented ▶ 2:27

“That's a good Rooseveltian line. It had not occurred to Schlesinger before, but he immediately realized Kennedy was right. The letter he had written to Dulles for the president's signature did indeed …”

Allen Dulles funded The Craft of Intelligence documented ▶ 2:54

“Dulles spiced the book with a few colorful espionage tales but it essentially was an argument for the kind of aggressive intelligence establishment that he had built. He drew a dire picture of the esp…”

Allen Dulles covered_up CIA host_asserted ▶ 4:21

“There was a strange looking glass quality to the craft of intelligence. Many of the extreme measures he accused the Soviet espionage network of employing were in fact standard operating procedures at …”

Allen Dulles recruited Reinhard Gehlen documented ▶ 5:22

“had denounced another flagrant example of Soviet Cold War, cold-blooded pragmatism, the massive recruitment of Nazi war criminals for intelligence work. Coming from the man who had adopted Reinhard Ga…”

Allen Dulles funded The Science of Spying documented ▶ 5:54

“The utter gall of this statement surely provoked howls of derision inside the Kremlin. Dulles was such a master of the craft of intelligence that he sometimes appeared to believe his own lies. In 1965…”

Allen Dulles headed CIA documented ▶ 7:16

“As far as I know, we never have, unquote. What a fucking liar. Sorry. No, Chancellor continued. Did Dulles? So, Chancellor continued. Did Dulles himself adhere to a moral standard when he was the dire…”

Allen Dulles funded The Craft of Intelligence documented ▶ 9:13

“he could not possibly conceive of such an unpleasant scenario actually occurring. When Cass Canfield asked Dulles to write a book drawing on his long career as a spook, Dulles was initially noncommitt…”

Allen Dulles recruited Charles Murphy documented ▶ 9:43

“less than truthful statement, for Dulles always relied on others, including CIA personnel and media assets, to write magazines articles for him, speeches for him, and books. Despite Dulles' retirement…”

Allen Dulles recruited Howard Roman documented ▶ 9:43

Allen Dulles recruited E. Howard Hunt documented ▶ 9:43

Allen Dulles recruited W. Glenn Campbell documented ▶ 10:11

“as well as research and editing skills by top CIA analyst Sherman Kent and Dulles' former right-hand man, Frank Wisner, whose career came to an end in 1962 because of quote-unquote mental problems. Du…”

Allen Dulles recruited Sherman Kent documented ▶ 10:11

Allen Dulles recruited Frank Wisner documented ▶ 10:11

Allen Dulles recruited Joseph Strayer documented ▶ 10:38

“who provided ready access to his extensive files to justify the quote-unquote communist threat. Kent also suggested that Dulles use your potent association with Princeton to good effect. Joseph Straye…”

Allen Dulles member_of Sullivan & Cromwell documented ▶ 14:05

“with the big gaps in his schedule throughout his stay there. But Dulles was wired into Texas oil industry, for which his law firm, Sullivan & Cromwell, had provided legal counsel for decades, as well …”

John F. Kennedy appointed Lyndon B. Johnson documented ▶ 17:55

“on his 1960 ticket to win votes in the South. But as the 1964 campaign approached, LBJ had lost so much clout below the Mason-Dixon line, largely because of his subservient role in Kennedy's liberal p…”

Lyndon B. Johnson funded Bobby Baker documented ▶ 18:54

“Vice President took it as one more sign that he was going to be dumped. If the Kennedys were indeed looking to get rid of Johnson, they were given the perfect opportunity by a growing Washington scand…”

Lyndon B. Johnson appointed Bobby Baker documented ▶ 18:54

Bobby Baker laundered_money_for Lyndon B. Johnson documented ▶ 19:21

“In September, lurid stories about Baker's wide network of corruption began appearing in the press, including the campaign slush fund and Capitol Hill party houses, stocked with young call girls who ca…”

Lyndon B. Johnson member_of U.S. Navy documented ▶ 20:21

“who was stoking the flames by quietly feeding damaging information to the press. Lyndon Johnson had entered the 1960 Democratic presidential sweepstakes with a cocky self-assurance. He had run the U.S…”

John F. Kennedy removed_from_power Lyndon B. Johnson documented ▶ 25:19

“On November 14th, the day after the White House strategy session on the 1964 campaign, the president privately confirmed that Johnson would not be on the ticket. While conversing with his secretary, E…”

Richard Nixon member_of PepsiCo documented ▶ 26:18

“And with typical cunning, he chose to do it in LBJ's backyard. Nixon showed up in Dallas on November 21st, 1963, the day before JFK's presidential party was due to arrive. Nixon was there on business.…”

PepsiCo carried_out_attack Overthrow of Salvador Allende host_asserted ▶ 26:49

“the company that had acquired one of the world's largest navies, more than most countries have, PepsiCo, the same company that was involved later in the Salvador Allende overthrow, that PepsiCo. LBJ h…”

Lyndon B. Johnson traded_network_to CIA documented ▶ 30:44

“calling it, frankly, the most presumptuous document any VP has ever sent to a president. Despite the White House rebuff, LBJ continued to enjoy a special bond with national security hardliners during …”

Allen Dulles member_of CIA documented ▶ 31:11

“to his contacts in the Pentagon and CIA. Sounds so familiar. Dulles was among those who maintained warm relations with LBJ, even as both men's stars fell within the Kennedy court. In retirement, the s…”

Frank Sturgis member_of White House Plumbers documented ▶ 34:57

“On the way back home, Hunt told Saint that he had been doing some special work for the White House and things had gone south. It was the beginning of the Watergate drama in which Howard Hunt played a …”

Virgilio Gonzalez member_of White House Plumbers documented ▶ 34:57

E. Howard Hunt member_of White House Plumbers documented ▶ 34:57

Virgilio Gonzalez attempted_assassination_of John F. Kennedy speculative ▶ 35:27

“and at least two, Frank Sturgis and Virgilio Gonzalez, were rumored to have played roles in Kennedy's assassination. As the Watergate scandal unfolded, Hunt drew Saint and the rest of his family deepe…”

Frank Sturgis attempted_assassination_of John F. Kennedy speculative ▶ 35:27

Richard Nixon covered_up Watergate scandal documented ▶ 36:22

“As Nixon frantically tried to cover his tracks with the scandal, sketchy money began flowing back and forth. The president was desperate to keep Hunt quiet, and during one White House meeting, Nixon w…”

Richard Nixon paid E. Howard Hunt documented ▶ 36:22

CIA covered_up Watergate scandal documented ▶ 37:50

“who was then the CIA director, by warning him that if the spy agency did not help shut down the growing Watergate scandal, the president's belief is that this is going to open up the whole quote-unquo…”

Richard Nixon covered_up Operation Pluto documented ▶ 37:50

Richard Helms headed CIA documented ▶ 37:50

Richard Nixon ordered_assassination_of John F. Kennedy host_asserted ▶ 38:49

“What Nixon meant by the whole Bay of Pigs thing, according to Haldeman, is it was Nixon's way of referring to the Kennedy assassination. Other historians have speculated that it was shorthand for the …”

CIA covered_up Assassination of John F. Kennedy host_asserted ▶ 39:12

“It conjured up all kinds of swampy intrigue that began leeching through the Kennedy administration after Allen Dulles and his agency suffered their humiliation in Cuba. Everything the CIA wanted to ke…”

E. Howard Hunt member_of CIA documented ▶ 39:12

E. Howard Hunt attempted_assassination_of John F. Kennedy guest_asserted ▶ 44:06

“Hunt suggested that St. will him back to his bedroom in case his wife returned. We don't want to get her upset. St. John said, I think she's very naive about the darker side of politics. Well, Hunt sa…”

CIA recruited Frank Sturgis documented ▶ 47:00

“Sometime in 63, Hunt said he was invited to a meeting at one of the CIA safe houses in Miami by Frank Sturgis, a soldier of fortune who had worked under Hunt in the anti-Castro underground. A man with…”

Frank Sturgis member_of CIA documented ▶ 47:00

David Morales member_of CIA documented ▶ 47:30

“who was well known to hunt. Morales, a big intimidating man who had grown up in a poor Mexican family in Phoenix, did not fit the polished CIA profile. Dave Morales did the dirty work for the agency, …”

William Harvey member_of Operation Gladio guest_asserted ▶ 49:31

“under normal circumstances. He did everything for the company. His family wasn't his life. The company was his life. At a secret Miami meeting, Morales told Hunt that he had been recruited for an off-…”

William Harvey recruited David Morales guest_asserted ▶ 49:31

William Harvey headed CIA guest_asserted ▶ 49:31

David Morales member_of CIA guest_asserted ▶ 49:31

William Harvey recruited Frank Sturgis guest_asserted ▶ 50:05

“it soon became clear, was to assassinate JFK. Morales and Sturgis referred to the president's planned demise as, quote, the big event, unquote. In his account of the meeting, Hunt presented Harvey and…”

Richard Nixon ordered_assassination_of John F. Kennedy guest_asserted ▶ 50:05

William Harvey ordered_assassination_of John F. Kennedy guest_asserted ▶ 50:05

CIA trafficked Operation Gladio host_asserted ▶ 50:36

“According to Hunt, the gunmen were likely recruited from the Corsican underworld. And by Corsican underworld, remember about Operation Gladio and what we learned about the Corsican mafia running the d…”

Organisation armée secrète member_of Operation Gladio host_asserted ▶ 50:36

William Harvey recruited E. Howard Hunt guest_asserted ▶ 52:36

“that the media ignored, even after it was reported by one of their own, Gaten Fonzie, a Philadelphia investigative journalist who, after going to work for the House Select Committee on Assassinations,…”

Otto Skorzeny assassinated Patrice Lumumba host_asserted ▶ 54:00

“Harvey had reached out to a variety of underworld professionals, including, with Dick Helms' permission, the infamous European assassin codename Q.J. Nguyen, whom the CIA had recruited to kill Patrice…”

CIA recruited Otto Skorzeny host_asserted ▶ 54:00

Otto Skorzeny member_of Operation Gladio host_asserted ▶ 54:29

“And Harvey was well positioned as Rome's station chief to once again plumb the European underworld for a Dallas killing team. And Otto Skorzeny is the one that trained the OAS in France to go down to …”

Otto Skorzeny trained Organisation armée secrète host_asserted ▶ 54:29

Jean Souetre member_of Organisation armée secrète documented ▶ 54:57

“That's all been established in previous books we've done. In fact, among the strange and murderous characters who converged on Dallas in November 1963 was a notorious French OAS commander named Jean S…”

Jean Souetre attempted_assassination_of Charles de Gaulle documented ▶ 54:57

Lyndon B. Johnson ordered_assassination_of John F. Kennedy guest_asserted ▶ 57:19

“on yellow security paper with a purple bond marked top secret. The memo disappeared. While the Miami co-conspirators made it clear that Bill Harvey was playing a central role in the big event, they as…”

David Atlee Phillips member_of Operation Pluto documented ▶ 59:43

“But in his communication with St. John, Hunt was more emphatic about the plotters. In addition to Harvey and Morales, the name David Atlas Phillips and Cord Meyer was Hunt's speculations. Phillips was…”

David Atlee Phillips member_of CIA documented ▶ 59:43

E. Howard Hunt member_of Guatemala Coup documented ▶ 59:43

E. Howard Hunt member_of Operation Pluto documented ▶ 59:43

David Atlee Phillips member_of Guatemala Coup documented ▶ 59:43

Richard Helms appointed David Atlee Phillips documented ▶ 1:00:14

“He had been a nose gunner in World War II, not an OSS gentleman. After the war, he rambled around Latin America, trying his hand at acting and publishing before being recruited in the CIA. His covert …”

Cord Meyer member_of CIA documented ▶ 1:00:43

“the world of anti-Castro and anti-Kennedy from it. Meyer belonged to the agency's Georgetown set. At Yale, he had dreamed of a writing career. After returning from the war, he devoted himself to the c…”

James Jesus Angleton recruited Cord Meyer documented ▶ 1:00:43

Allen Dulles headed CIA documented ▶ 1:01:42

“Dulles had recruited them and promoted them throughout the agency. Meyer was particularly beholding to Dulles, who had saved his career in 1953 when Joe McCarthy wanted him purged. Howard Hunt might h…”

Allen Dulles recruited Cord Meyer documented ▶ 1:01:42

Allen Dulles recruited David Atlee Phillips documented ▶ 1:01:42

Allen Dulles recruited William Harvey documented ▶ 1:01:42

Allen Dulles recruited David Morales documented ▶ 1:01:42

CIA recruited E. Howard Hunt book_quoted ▶ 1:03:08

“that if the assassination committee crept too close to the truth, the agency was prepared to scapegoat Hunt and Sturgis. Hunt's luck was run out, and the CIA had decided to sacrifice him to protect hi…”

CIA covered_up Assassination of John F. Kennedy book_quoted ▶ 1:03:08

E. Howard Hunt member_of CIA book_quoted ▶ 1:03:08

CIA covered_up Assassination of John F. Kennedy book_quoted ▶ 1:03:38

“an easy target. His reputation and integrity had been destroyed. In the public hearings, the CIA will admit that Hunt was involved in the conspiracy to kill Kennedy. The CIA may go as far as to admit …”

Victor Marchetti appointed Richard Helms book_quoted ▶ 1:04:06

“While the spotlight was a sketchy publication at the time, Marchetti himself had credibility. A former Soviet military specialist for the CIA, he had risen to become a special assistant to Richard Hel…”

E. Howard Hunt member_of CIA book_quoted ▶ 1:04:06

CIA covered_up The Craft of Intelligence book_quoted ▶ 1:04:06

Victor Marchetti member_of CIA book_quoted ▶ 1:04:06

E. Howard Hunt targeted_for_regime_change John F. Kennedy book_quoted ▶ 1:04:36

“but Marchetti remained a CIA loyalist at heart, and he retained strong ties to the agency. In the ensuing uproar over the Spotlight article, Hunt sued for defamation of character, insisting that he ha…”

Mark Lane member_of Liberty Lobby book_quoted ▶ 1:04:36

J. Edgar Hoover member_of Murchison family host_asserted ▶ 1:07:50

“Interesting. Yes, I thought it was when I ran across it and went, what the heck? Nobody's talking about the LBJ connections to the Murchison family as well as Hoover's connections. I searched the book…”

Lyndon B. Johnson member_of Murchison family host_asserted ▶ 1:07:50

E. Howard Hunt spied_on William Harvey book_quoted ▶ 1:08:47

“is is saying that you know i had nothing to do with you know this this whole conspiracy theory about the cia killing um kennedy and you know he does mention bill harvey in the book he speculates that …”

James Jesus Angleton spied_on Lee Harvey Oswald documented ▶ 1:12:24

“Don't forget, this book was written before – I'm trying to remember the JFK Washington Post assassination reporter who's really covered this, and he was at a congressional hearing about a year ago. Th…”

E. Howard Hunt carried_out_attack Watergate break-in documented ▶ 1:15:42

“That is the takeaway. So I see someone trying to come up. Or Hamster, did you want to say anything? Yeah, real quick. I just thought it was pretty interesting in this chapter that Nixon got a little b…”

CIA covered_up Watergate break-in host_asserted ▶ 1:16:21

“that got the deep state, CIA, whatever, to turn against Nixon. And basically, we staged the Watergate break-in and then all the follow-up persecution. Just a little front-running. When we get into the…”

Dwight D. Eisenhower ordered_assassination_of John F. Kennedy host_asserted ▶ 1:17:21

“unreported in any significant fashion in today's day and age, where we've glorified President Eisenhower, even though he loved the assassination program, that Nixon was his vice president during all o…”

James Jesus Angleton member_of Mossad host_asserted ▶ 1:21:22

“Well, it also allows coordination. With Angleton having the Vatican desk as well as the Mossad desk, it allows coordination. And that's why I've come away with the collective intelligence network oper…”

CIA carried_out_attack Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. host_asserted ▶ 1:22:22

“of the actual trial, they sent in multiple hit teams and he was not leaving alive. And it was just a sequence of events. If you don't get them from this angle, you're gonna get them from this team. An…”