Okay, let's unpack this. It is Monday, February
2nd, 2026. If you've been awake for the last
12 months, you know that the world of historical
research and honestly just the world of American
culture has been turned upside down. We finally
got them. We did. It still feels a little surreal
to say it out loud, doesn't it? It really does.
I mean, for my entire life and probably for the
lives of most people listening, the JFK files
were this mythical MacGuffin. They were the Holy
Grail locked away in the National Archives, guarded
by, you know, top men. Right. Just last year,
in 2025, the dam finally broke. It was a long
time coming. We're talking about a process that
started with the Warren Commission in the 60s,
went through the Church Committee, the House
Select Committee in the 70s. The Oliver Stone
movie panic in the 90s. Exactly. That was a huge
catalyst. And then finally, the executive order
signed by President Trump shortly after taking
office for his second term. And that's why we
are here today. We aren't just rehashing the
same old documentaries you've seen 100 times
on cable TV. We are looking at this through the
lens of the complete record. We have the Warren
report. We have the HSCA findings. And now, finally,
we have the final tranche. More than 60 ,000
documents released in March 2025. That number
is just staggering. 60 ,000. It's not a few redacted
memos. It's a mountain of raw data, of cables,
of internal reports. Exactly. So our mission
today is ambitious. We're going to sift through
that mountain. We're going to look at the time.
Timeline, the ballistics. Yes, we are going to
do the math on the magic bullet and the personalities.
And we really want to try and separate the Hollywood
myths. The Oliver Stone stuff, the Seinfeld spitball
theories. Are from the cold, hard reality found
in these files. And I think the goal here isn't
just to solve a murder case. Because in many
ways, the murder case is, well, maybe deceptively
simple. I think that's the perfect way to put
it. The goal is to understand why this event
broke us. Why did November 22, 1963 become the
moment the American public sort of collectively
stopped trusting its institutions? That's the
real question. Because when you actually read
these files, the old ones and the brand new ones,
you don't see a well -oiled machine pulling off
a perfect conspiracy. You see a catastrophe of
bungled procedures, of ego battles, and most
importantly... of secrecy secrecy that created
a vacuum and as we know conspiracy theories are
just what rushes in to fill that vacuum precisely
i have to admit i went into this prep feeling
pretty cynical i've always been a something else
must have happened guy you just don't have the
president get shot in broad daylight without
some bigger plot right that's the gut feeling
most people have but digging into the ballistics
and the timeline and especially the new files
well i'm ready to have my mind changed or maybe
confirmed i don't know let's just start at the
beginning take us back november 22 1963 Dallas,
Texas. The day America lost its innocence, as
the cliche goes. But what was the actual day
like? I always picture it in black and white,
grim and gritty. That's the hindsight bias kicking
in, you know. It's easy to project the tragedy
backward onto the whole day. Actually, the mood
in Dallas that morning was surprisingly vibrant.
Really? Yes. It had been raining earlier in Fort
Worth, where they spent the night. A dreary,
gray morning. But by the time Air Force One wheels
touched down at Lowe Field in Dallas, the sky
had cleared, the sun was out, it was warm. And
that weather detail is actually critical to the
mechanics of the shooting, isn't it? It's like
the first domino. It is the first domino to fall.
Because the weather was nice, the Secret Service
made the call to take the plastic bubble top
off the limousine. Now that top wasn't bulletproof,
was it? No, not at all. It was just plexiglass.
But it might have deflected a shot, or at least
obscured the shooter's sight picture. It adds
a variable. But because the sun came out, the
top came down so the people could see their president
and his wife. And the people wanted to see him.
I know Dallas had a reputation as a city of hate
back then. Adlai Stevenson, the U .N. ambassador,
had been spat on there just a month prior. That's
right. The Kennedy team was genuinely nervous
about this trip, from what I read. They were
terrified. The local press had been running hostile,
full -page ads. There was a real fear of protests,
of something ugly happening. But when the motorcade
started rolling from Love Field, the reception
was electric. The complete opposite of what they
expected. Totally. We're talking about crowds.
10, 12 deep on Main Street, cheering, screaming,
people hanging out of windows. It was a hero's
welcome. Kennedy turned to his aides at one point
and remarked on how great the reception was.
This was the unofficial launch of his 64 re -election
campaign, right? That's exactly how he viewed
it. And it was going better than anyone dared
to hope. It was a triumph. So they are driving
through this canyon of applause. Everyone is
happy. The car turns off Main Street onto Houston
Street. And then it makes that fateful, sharp
left turn onto Elm Street. That turn is... So
important. It's a very sharp 120 degree turn.
The limousine, which is a 1961 Lincoln Continental,
a beast of a car, had to slow down to a crawl.
How slow are we talking? About 11 miles per hour.
Just a slow gliding pace. And that slowing down
is what made the target acquisition so much easier
for anyone watching from above. The target became
predictable. And this brings us into Dealey Plaza.
For listeners who haven't been there, paint the
picture. Because it's not some vast open area.
No, it's actually quite intimate. It feels smaller
in person than you'd think. It's like a concrete
bowl. On one side, you have the Texas School
Book Depository, a seven -story brick building
looming over the intersection. The sniper's nest.
The sniper's nest. On the right, you have a grassy
slope, the famous grassy knoll, topped by a picket
fence and little concrete pergola. And straight
ahead, the road dives down under the triple underpass.
It's a contained space. The car is moving down
Elm. Let's set the scene inside. You have the
driver, Bill Greer, and another Secret Service
agent, Roy Kellerman, in the front. Correct.
In the middle jump seats, you have Governor John
Connolly and his wife, Nellie. And in the back,
of course, JFK and Jackie. And just seconds before
the history of the world changes, Nellie Connolly
turns to the president. She's beaming. She is.
She's so happy with the reception. She gestures
to the cheering crowd and says, Mr. President,
they can't make you believe now that there are
not some in Dallas who love and appreciate you.
That is such a gut -wrenching irony. It's almost
literary. It is. And Kennedy answers her. He
smiles and says, no, they sure can't. And those
are the last words he ever spoke. And then the
sound. The first shot rings out. A sharp crack.
Now looking at the witness statements, and there
are hundreds of them, about 80 % of people heard
three shots. But almost nobody reacted instantly
to the first one as gunfire. They thought it
was a firecracker or a motorcycle backfiring.
Exactly. Or a firecracker. It was a festive atmosphere.
People's brains weren't coded for violence. But
inside the car, Governor Connolly knew. Because
he was a hunter. He was a hunter. He recognized
the crack of a high -powered rifle immediately.
He says his first thought was, my God, they are
going to kill us all. He turns to his right,
trying to see where it came from, trying to locate
the threat. Let's talk about that first hit.
Because usually when we see the footage, the
Zapruder film, we all focus on the headshot.
But the first bullet hit Kennedy in the back.
Correct. This is the shot that entered his upper
back, near the base of his neck, passed through
his neck, and exited his throat. In the Zapruder
film, you can see Kennedy suddenly stop waving.
His elbows fly up. His fists clench in front
of his face. He's grimacing. I've seen that.
He looks like he's choking. He's grabbing at
his throat. That's the reaction to the tracheal
injury. He's struggling for air. He literally
cannot speak. Now, at this point, this is a survivable
wound. It's serious, but survivable. If the shooting
stops right here, JFK probably lives. Maybe with
a raspy voice for the rest of his life, but he
lives. Jacqueline Kennedy turns to him. She sees
something is wrong. She does. She puts her arm
around him, and you can see the confusion and
concern on her face. She doesn't understand what's
happening. But the shooting doesn't stop. No.
About five seconds later came the fatal shot,
frame 313 of the Zapruder film. It's the most
scrutinized piece of film in history. More than
the moon landing, probably. I would say so. The
president is struck in the head. The impact is
catastrophic. The source material from the Warren
Commission and the HSCA details that brain matter
and skull fragments were ejected from the exit
wound on the front right side of his head. It
was so violent that motorcycle officers riding
to the left rear of the car were sprayed with
blood and tissue. It's just, I can't even imagine.
And Jackie's reaction, I mean, you can't judge
someone in a moment of trauma like that, but
she climbs out onto the trunk of the moving car.
For years, people thought she was trying to escape.
That's the common misconception, and it's a tragic
one. But the Secret Service agent, Clint Hill,
the man who ran from the follow -up car and jumped
onto the back of the moving limo, he testified
very clearly. She wasn't fleeing. She was trying
to get something. She was reaching for a piece
of the president's skull that had been blown
onto the trunk. She was trying to put him back
together. Oh, my God. That is just it's beyond
heartbreaking. I have his brains in my hand.
That's what she said later at the hospital. It
is a moment of pure primal horror. Clint Hill
pushes her back into the seat, covers the president's
body with his own and pounds on the trunk, screaming
at the driver. Get us to a hospital. The car
lurches forward and speeds up, heading for the
underpass, racing to Parkland Memorial Hospital.
OK. This is where the story shifts. It goes from
a public assassination to a scene of total chaos
that plants the seeds for every conspiracy theory
to come. The scene at Parkland Hospital. I read
the logs in the 2025 release and it sounds like.
Absolute anarchy. Anarchy is the right word.
You have the president of the United States lying
dead in trauma room one. You have the governor
of Texas bleeding out in trauma room two. And
in the hallway, you have a literal standoff taking
place. A physical confrontation. A standoff between
who? Between the president's Secret Service detail
and the Dallas County medical examiner, Dr. Earl
Rose. You see, and this is a fact that blows
people's minds. In 1963, Killing the president
was not a federal crime. Wait, seriously, I keep
forgetting this detail. It wasn't a federal crime.
That's insane. No, it was just a homicide, which
meant legally jurisdiction belonged to the state
of Texas and Dallas County. Dr. Rose was doing
his job. He stood in front of the gurney and
said, in no uncertain terms, there must be an
autopsy here in Dallas. The body does not leave
this hospital until I say so. And the Secret
Service wasn't having it. Not even a little bit.
Their job was to protect the president or his
body and get him back to Washington. Witnesses
describe agents with guns drawn. They physically
shoved Dr. Rose against a wall. They essentially
hijacked the body. Wow. They forced their way
out of the hospital, loaded the bronze casket
onto the hearse, and sped to Air Force One where
Lyndon Johnson was waiting to be sworn in. I
get the emotion of it. They wanted to get him
home. They didn't trust Dallas. They were in
shock. But that decision. That was the original
sin of the entire investigation, wasn't it? Without
a doubt. Because they took the body, the autopsy
wasn't done by forensic experts in Dallas who
dealt with gunshot wounds every single day. It
was done hours later at Bethesda Naval Hospital
in Maryland. by military pathologists. Who weren't
forensic experts. They were hospital pathologists.
They studied diseases. They looked at tissue
samples under a microscope. They weren't trained
to track bullet paths or distinguish entry from
exit wounds in a mutilated skull. And that incompetence
would haunt this case forever. We will get to
the disaster of that autopsy later, but I want
to go back to Dealey Plaza for a second. The
car is gone. The president is gone. But the crowd
is still there and they are running. They are.
And this is crucial for the conspiracy narrative.
They aren't looking up at the book depository
window where the shots actually came from. Almost
everyone is running up the grassy knoll. Because
that's where they thought the shots came from.
Right. The acoustics in Dealey Plaza are incredibly
tricky. It's an echo chamber. You have tall buildings
on three sides and a concrete underpass. The
sound waves bounce all over the place. To many
people standing on Elm Street, the crack sounded
like it came from the picket fence line at the
top of the hill. So the police run up there.
They jump the fence. They have their guns drawn.
What do they find? Nothing. There's a parking
lot. A railroad yard? There was a tower operator
named Lee Bowers sitting high up in the rail
yard tower. He had a perfect view of the area
behind the fence. The perfect witness. You'd
think so. He testified that he saw some commotion
and two men milling around near the fence a few
minutes before the motorcade, but he didn't see
anyone shooting and he didn't see anyone running
away with a rifle after the shots. He just saw
smoke, maybe from a motorcycle. So nothing. Meanwhile,
back at the book depository, witnesses did see
something. Yes. A construction worker named Howard
Brennan was sitting on a wall across the street.
He looked up because of the commotion. He saw
a man in the sixth floor corner window taking
aim. He saw the gunfire for the final shot. He
saw the man withdraw. And he gave a description
to the police. Almost immediately. White male,
early 30s, slender build, about 165 pounds, wearing
light colored or khaki clothing. It was a very
good description. And when police searched the
building, they found what we now call the sniper's
nest. They did. On the sixth floor in the southeast
corner window, someone had stacked boxes of books
to create a screen hiding the gunman from the
rest of the floor. It created a little perch.
They found three spent shell cartridges on the
floor and stashed between some other boxes nearby.
They found the rifle. An Italian manlisher Carcano
M9138. That's the one. Which brings us to the
man. Lee Harvey Oswald. The man who, according
to the official story, changed the world all
by himself. But he wasn't just some random guy,
was he? He wasn't just some drifter. No. And
this is where the new files, the 2025 release,
really add a lot of depth. Oswald wasn't just
a lone nut in the sense of a man with no history.
He had a file. A thick one. Let's profile him.
Because I think people dismiss him as a patsy
too easily without looking at his psychology
and his history of violence. Oswald was a deeply
troubled, angry young man who was obsessed with
Marxism from the age of 14. He joined the Marines
largely to get away from his overbearing mother.
He was smart, but undisciplined. And he's trained
as a sharpshooter. Now, sharpshooter, is that
a sniper? What does that term mean in the Marines?
It's a specific qualification. There are three
levels. Marksman, which is the basic level, then
sharpshooter, and then expert at the top. He
was in the middle. He was a decent shot. Certainly
capable of hitting a slow -moving target at 80
yards, which was the maximum distance in Dealey
Plaza. But the real turning point in his life,
the thing that should have put him on every watch
list, is 1959. He defects. At the Soviet Union.
In the middle of the Cold War. You can't overstate
how big a deal that was. It's a massive red flag.
He walks into the U .S. Embassy in Moscow, slams
his passport down on the desk, and renounces
his American citizenship. He tells them he's
going to give radar secrets he learned in the
Marines to the Russians. Which should have put
him on a do -not -fly list for the rest of his
life, at the very least. You would think. The
Soviets don't quite know what to do with him.
They think he might be a spy. They send him to
Minsk to work in a radio and television factory.
He meets and marries a Russian woman, Marina
Prusakova. And he thinks he's found his communist
paradise. For about five minutes, the reality
of Soviet life bores him to tears. It's not the
revolutionary paradise he imagined. It's gray,
it's bureaucratic, it's dull. So in 1962, he
gets disillusioned and decides to come back to
the U .S. And the U .S. government just lets
him with his wife after he threatened to commit
espionage. Not only do they let him back, they
loan him the money for the travel. See, that's
one of those facts that conspiracy theorists
seize on, and you can't blame them. It looks
incredibly suspicious. It does. The 2025 files
clarify this a bit. There are memos showing the
State Department policy at the time was to encourage
defectors to return. They saw it as a propaganda
win. See, even the communists prefer America.
But they clearly, tragically underestimated the
threat he posed. So he lands back in the Dallas
-Fort Worth area. He's frustrated. He's failing
at life. He can't keep a job. He's beating his
wife. And he's getting more and more radical.
He finds a new cause, Cuba. He moves to New Orleans
and starts a one man chapter of the Fair Play
for Cuba committee. He was the only member, wasn't
he? He was the founder, chairman and sole member.
He's handing out pro Castro leaflets on street
corners. He gets into a fight with anti Castro
Cubans, gets arrested. He's desperate for attention.
Then he goes to Mexico City in September 1963,
just two months before the assassination. Right.
He visits the Cuban and Soviet embassies trying
to get a visa to go to Cuba or back to Russia.
Both embassies reject him. They see him as unstable.
He's melting down. And this leads to the Walker
incident. To me, this is the smoking gun for
his violent capability. Absolutely. This is crucial
context. Seven months before JFK, in April 1963,
Oswald Tase's mail -order Carcano rifle stalks
the home of General Edwin Walker. Who is a very
prominent right wing segregationist figure in
Dallas. A political target. A huge political
target. Oswald waits until it's dark and he fires
a shot through Walker's dining room window while
Walker is sitting at his desk doing his taxes.
He missed though. By an inch. He hit the wooden
window frame. But the intent was murder. Marina
found a note he'd written giving her instructions
on what to do if he was caught. This proves Oswald
wasn't just a talker. He was a hunter of men.
He had political targets in his sights long before
Kennedy ever came to Dallas. So fast forward
to November 22. He shoots the president. He leaves
the rifle. He calmly buys a soda from the vending
machine in the lunchroom, which is such a bizarre,
chilling detail, and walks out the front door
before the police manage to seal the building.
His co -worker saw him and said, hey, where are
you going? And he just mumbled something and
kept walking. He gets on a bus, then a cab, goes
home, grabs a jacket and a pistol. And this is
where the PASI theory falls apart for me. Me
too. If he was just a patsy, some fall guy set
up by the CIA or the mob, his job is done. He
should be laying low, waiting for his handler
to exfiltrate him. Why does he do what he does
next? The Tippett murder. Right. It's about 1
.125 p .m., maybe 45 minutes after the assassination.
Oswald is walking through the Oak Cliff neighborhood.
A Dallas police officer, J .D. Tippett, pulls
up alongside him. Oswald matches the description
of the suspect that was broadcast on the police
radio. So Tippett is just doing his job, a routine
stop. A routine stop. He gets out of his car.
Oswald doesn't put his hands up. He doesn't explain
himself. He draws a .38 revolver and shoots Officer
Tippett four times. And it wasn't a panic shooting
from a distance. The reports are brutal. It was
an execution. Tippett falls to the ground. Oswald
walks around the patrol car, stands over him,
and puts a final billet in his temple. That is
not the act of a scared patsy. That is the act
of a man who has decided he is at war with the
world and will not be taken. He then runs, ejecting
the shells as he goes, and ducks into a movie
theater. The Texas theater. He sneaks in without
paying. The movie playing, ironically, is war
as hell. The shoe store manager next door sees
him and calls the police. They surround the place.
They do. They turn the house lights up. When
they enter the auditorium, Oswald pulls his gun
again. He tries to shoot the arresting officer,
but the hammer lands on the web of the officer's
hand and doesn't fire. He fights them all the
way out, screaming and punching. Screaming, I
am not resisting arrest, while he is actively
resisting arrest. And then, at the station, he
says the famous line, I'm just a patsy. A line
that has launched a thousand books and a hundred
documentaries. Okay, we have the man, we have
the timeline, now we have to do the hard part.
The physics. The magic bullet. Or Commission
Exhibit 399, to give it its formal, less exciting
name. This is the thing that convinced me for
years that there was a conspiracy. The idea that
one bullet could hit JFK in the back, come out
his throat, make a right turn, hit Connolly in
the back, come out his chest, shatter his wrist,
and end up in his thigh. It just sounds like
Looney Tunes physics. It does if, and this is
a very big if, you assume the two men were sitting
directly in front of each other at the same height,
facing perfectly forward. Which is how it's always
drawn in the diagrams in the conspiracy books.
It's always a straight on view. Exactly. And
the early diagrams were wrong. The Warren Commission
itself got this wrong at first. But the limousine
was custom built. The jump seats, where Governor
Connolly was sitting, were not directly in front
of the rear seat. They were situated about six
inches inboard, closer to the center of the car,
and about three inches lower than the president's
seat. Okay, so Connolly is lower and more to
the middle. And he wasn't facing straight ahead.
At the moment of the shot, he had turned slightly
to his right to look at the crowds. So if you
account for that offset and the turn... If you
line them up as they actually were, and you trace
a line from the sniper's nest window down to
the car... The trajectory isn't a zigzag. It's
a straight line. It's geometry. So it passes
through Kennedy's neck. Which is a soft tissue
wound. It then enters Connolly's back near his
right armpit, exits below his right nipple, smashes
the radius bone in his wrist, which was resting
on his lap, and then embeds itself superficially
in his left thigh. Seven wounds, one bullet,
one straight line. It's geometry. And the timing
dictates it too, right? The timing is the key.
In the Zapruder film, Kennedy reacts, and Connolly
reacts almost immediately after. The time gap
is less than a second. The Carcano rifle is a
bolt -action rifle. The fastest an expert marksman
could cycle the bolt and fire again was 2 .3
seconds. So lest there were two shooters firing
almost simultaneously, One bullet had to hit
both men. Okay, but what about the bullet itself?
It was found on a stretcher at Parkland, and
people always say it was pristine. How does a
bullet smash a rib and a wrist bone and look
brand new? That's another one of the great myths
of this case. It wasn't pristine. That's just
not true. It was flattened on one side, the base
was deformed, it was squashed. But it wasn't
fragmented into a dozen pieces. And why wasn't
it? Because of the type of ammo. This was a 6
.5mm Western Cartridge Company round. It's a
fully metal -jacketed military bullet. It is
designed to pass through targets, not expand
or explode inside them like a hunting round.
By the time it had a heavy bone of Connolly's
wrist, it had already passed through two torsos.
It had slowed down immensely, which is why it
deformed instead of shattering. But I have to
play the skeptic here because this is a big one.
There was a massive wrench thrown into this just
a couple of years ago. Paul Landis. Ah, yes.
The Landis revelation of 2023. A true curveball.
Paul Landis was a Secret Service agent on the
detail that day. For 60 years, he kept quiet.
Then he writes a book claiming he found the bullet.
Not on a hospital stretcher. He says he found
it on the back seat of the limo lodged in the
upholstery right behind where Kennedy was sitting.
This was a bombshell. Landis claims he picked
up the bullet. put it in his pocket to secure
the evidence. Then later, in the chaos at the
hospital, he placed it on Kennedy's stretcher
to make sure it stayed with the body. He thinks
it might have rolled onto Connolly's stretcher
by mistake. If he's telling the truth. That kills
the single bullet theory, doesn't it? Because
if the bullet fell out of Kennedy's back and
landed on the seat, it never hit Connolly. It
absolutely gets it. If the bullet didn't go through
to Connolly, then Connolly had to have been hit
by a separate shot. which means a second gunman
from somewhere or a shot sequence that the Zapruder
film timing and the Carcano's firing rate simply
don't allow for Oswald alone. So do we believe
Landis. After 60 years of silence. It's so tough.
Memory is a fragile, malleable thing. We are
talking about an 88 -year -old man recalling
seconds of absolute chaos from six decades prior.
His written reports from 1963 don't mention finding
a billet. He says he was in shock and it just
didn't register. It's possible he's misremembering
a fragment as the whole bullet, but it's one
of those tantalizing loose ends that ensures
this debate will never, ever truly die. OK, let's
talk about the other ballistics controversy,
the headshot, the mantra, back into the left.
The Oliver Stone mantra, the three most famous
words in conspiracy theory culture. It's so intuitive,
right? If I punch you in the face, your head
goes back. If you get shot from the front from
the grassy knoll, your head should snap back.
Kennedy's head snaps violently backward and to
the left. Therefore, he was shot from the front,
case closed. It makes perfect sense in a bar
fight. It doesn't make sense in wound ballistics.
There are two forces at play here that the Rockefeller
Commission and later scientific panels identified
and proved. First, there's the neuromuscular
reaction. Okay, what's that? A massive trauma
to the brainstem, which is what happened here,
can cause a momentary violent seizure. Every
muscle in the back contracts at once, arching
the spine and snapping the body stiffly backward.
It's an involuntary nerve reaction. And a second
force. It's called the jet effect. This was proven
in experiments using taped melons and skulls
filled with gelatin. When the bullet exited the
front right of the skull, it blew a cone of brain
matter and blood forward. Physics Newton's third
law dictates an equal and opposite reaction.
The violent ejection of matter forward pushes
the head backward. Like a rocket. Exactly like
a rocket. the force of the exiting material is
greater than the force of the incoming projectile.
So the physics actually supports a shot from
behind, even if our eyes tell us the complete
opposite. Precisely. And the autopsy, flawed
as it was, was very clear on one thing. The entry
wound was in the back of the head, and the beveling
of the skull bone, which shows the direction
of force, proved the direction was back to front.
Okay. So the physical evidence, while messy and
complicated by things like Paul Landis, still
points to Oswald. But then... Enter Jack Ruby,
because this is the moment the narrative spirals
out of control and becomes a true conspiracy
fever dream. Sunday morning, November 24th, Oswald
is being moved from the city jail to the county
jail. And the Dallas police, in their infinite
wisdom, decide to announce the exact time of
the transfer to the press. So the basement is
just a mob scene of reporters and cameras. It's
on live TV. Millions of people are watching.
And out of the scrum pops Jack Ruby. A local
nightclub owner. A guy with known low -level
mob ties. A guy who ran strippers and hustled
cops. Not exactly a model citizen. He just steps
out, pushes a pistol into Oswald's stomach, and
fires one shot. Oswald crumples to the ground
live on national television. America's first
live televised murder. Why? What was his reason?
What did he say? Ruby gave a few reasons over
time. He said he was distraught over the president's
death. He famously said he wanted to spare Mrs.
Kennedy the discomfiture of coming back to trial.
He claimed he wanted to be a hero. That sounds
suspiciously noble for a strip club owner with
ties to organized crime. It does. And this is
where the mob theory gains the most traction.
Ruby owed money. He was connected to guys like
Carlos Marcello and Santo Traficante, two mob
bosses who absolutely hated the Kennedys for
cracking down on them. The theory is that the
mob used Ruby to silence Oswald to prevent him
from talking. Because if Oswald lives, he goes
to trial. We hear his defense. We see the evidence
tested in court. With Oswald dead, the book is
closed. Exactly. Ruby's act denied history its
trial. It left a permanent question mark. And
Ruby himself didn't last long. He was convicted,
but his conviction was overturned. While awaiting
a retrial, he was diagnosed with cancer and died
in prison in 1967. So within four years, the
president, his alleged assassin, and his assassin's
assassin are all dead. It's too neat. It wraps
up too perfectly, which paradoxically makes it
feel incredibly messy and suspicious. It's the
perfect fuel for a conspiracy fire. So the government
steps in to try and put out the fire to tell
us what happened, the investigations, and this
is just a comedy of errors. A tragedy of errors,
really. First, you have the Warren Commission
in 1964. immense pressure from the new president,
LBJ, to close the case, to find a simple answer,
and most of all to assure the public that there
was no foreign conspiracy that could lead to
World War III with the Soviets. So they came
to a quick conclusion. A very quick conclusion.
Oswald acted alone. Ruby acted alone. Case closed.
But they were flying blind, weren't they? The
files show they weren't getting the full story.
They were being actively lied to, or at least
misled by omission. The CIA and the FBI withheld
massive amounts of information. The CIA, for
instance, never told the Warren Commission about
their own plots to assassinate Fidel Castro,
often using the mafia to do it. Which is kind
of relevant. It's incredibly relevant. If you
are investigating why a pro -Castro Marxist might
kill the president, it probably helps to know
that the president's government was actively
trying to kill Castro. So who exposed that? The
Church Committee in the mid -70s. They were investigating
CIA abuses, and they uncovered all of this, the
so -called family jewels. It proved the CIA was
in the assassination business. It didn't prove
they killed Kennedy, but it proved they were
capable of the mindset which validated public
suspicion. Then you had the one and only trial
ever brought, the Jim Garrison case in New Orleans.
The basis for the Oliver Stone movie. Garrison,
the DA, argued a sprawling conspiracy involving
a New Orleans businessman named Clay Shaw and
elements of the CIA. And the outcome. The jury
acquitted Shaw in less than an hour. They didn't
buy it. But the story, the narrative, was powerful.
Which leads to the HSEA in the late 70s, and
they actually concluded it was a conspiracy.
This is the one people always forget. In 1979,
the House Select Committee on Assassinations
said there was a high probability of two gunmen.
And that was a huge deal. What was it based on?
Acoustics again. They found a Dictabelt recording
from a police motorcycle that had an open mic
in Dealey Plaza. A team of acoustic experts listened
to it and said they heard the echoes of four
shots. Three from the book depository and one
from the grassy knoll. So, case closed, conspiracy
confirmed by Congress. For a while, yes. But
science advanced. Years later, the National Academy
of Sciences took that same tape and analyzed
it with much more sophisticated technology. They
found that the shots were actually static spikes
and More importantly, they could hear crosstalk
from the police dispatcher that occurred minutes
after the assassination had already happened.
So the tech wasn't even from the right time.
The recording wasn't even made at the time of
the shots. The acoustic evidence was completely
debunked. But the headline, conspiracy likely,
had already been printed in every newspaper in
America. The retraction never gets the same attention.
And we can't talk about the investigations without
coming back to the autopsy. You called it a disaster
earlier. Give us the gory details. Why was it
so bad? Well. Dr. Michael Baden, who is the chief
forensic pathologist for the HSEA, said it was
a master class in incompetence. For charters,
the pathologists at Bethesda didn't shave the
head wound to see the margins clearly. Which
is basic procedure. It's day one stuff. They
didn't dissect the back wound to trace the track
through the neck. They just probed it with a
finger, decided it didn't go very deep, and concluded
the bullet had fallen out. They missed the entire
bullet path, the one that explains the single
bullet theory. They missed it completely. They
didn't realize it had exited the throat because
the doctors at Parkland, in a desperate attempt
to save him, had performed a tracheotomy, a breathing
hole right over the exit wound, obscuring it.
The autopsy doctors in Maryland didn't call the
Parkland doctors in Texas until after the autopsy
was already finished. That's an unbelievable
failure of communication. It's monumental. It's
the reason we have a magic bullet theory at all.
If they had just talked to each other, they would
have known there was a through -and -through
wound. And then the brain. The missing brain.
It sounds like a bad horror movie. Kennedy's
brain was removed, as is standard, and preserved
in a jar of formalin for further study, and then
it just disappeared. It was kept in a secure
locker in the National Archives for a few years.
Then, around 1966, an inventory was done, and
it was gone. The footlocker was empty. The conspiracy
theory is obvious. The brain would have shown
the bullet came from the front, so the deep state
destroyed the evidence. That's the theory. What's
the non -conspiracy theory? The more likely one.
That Robert Kennedy, the president's brother,
and the attorney general had it taken. Why on
earth would he do that? To hide the medical history.
JFK was not the healthy, vigorous man he appeared
to be. We now know he had Addison's disease,
an adrenal condition. He had severe chronic back
pain from war injuries. He was on a daily cocktail
of steroids, painkillers, and even amphetamines
just to function. And RFK was fiercely protective
of his brother's legacy, the Camelot image. Incredibly
protective. He likely wanted to bury the physical
evidence of the president's frailty and his dependence
on medication. It's a very human, understandable
motive, but it created another huge mystery.
Which brings us finally to the present day, the
files. We waited 60 years. The JFK Records Act
of 1992 passed because of the public outcry after
Oliver Stone's film promised us everything by
2017. It mandated it. And 2017 came and went.
President Trump delayed a full release. Then
President Biden delayed it again. Why? What were
they hiding after all that time? The official
excuse was national security and identifiable
harm. They claimed that releasing the names of
certain sources or methods, even from the 1960s,
could endanger current intelligence relationships
or assets. Which to a skeptic sounds like a cover.
It sounds like a cover for something. Yeah. But
in 2025, the dam broke. President Trump, back
in office, signed the executive order. March
18, 2025. 60 ,000 documents dropped online. I
spent that entire weekend reading summaries.
What stood out to you? Was there a smoking gun?
If you mean a memo signed by LBJ or the CIA director
saying kill him, then no, there is no smoking
gun. There never was going to be one. But there's
a hell of a lot of smoke. Give me an example.
What kind of texture are we talking about in
these new files? The Mexico City files are the
most revealing. We now have the unredacted cables
from the CIA station chief in Mexico City from
October 1963. They detail intense surveillance
of Lee Harvey Oswald. They have transcripts of
his phone calls to the Soviet embassy. So they
were watching him closely. Very closely. But
the crucial part is the internal panic after
the assassination. We now have the memos where
CIA officials are essentially freaking out, realizing
they had this guy on their radar. They knew he
was unstable. They knew he was talking to the
KGB's assassination department, which is called
Department 13. And they dropped the ball. They
dropped the ball. They didn't flag him properly
to the FBI or the Secret Service in time for
it to matter before the motorcade. So the cover
up wasn't we did it. The cover up was, oh, God,
we messed up and we can't let anyone know how
badly. Exactly. It's what historians call a benign
cover up. The agencies weren't hiding a plot
to kill Kennedy. They were hiding their own gross
incompetence. They were protecting their careers,
their budgets, their reputations. They didn't
want the American public to know that the trillion
dollar intelligence apparatus failed to stop
a guy who was practically waving a giant red
flag in their faces for months. And that actually
makes more sense to me than a grand, perfectly
executed conspiracy. Bureaucracies don't usually
plot perfect murders, but they always cover their
asses. That is the universal law of government.
Yes. Secrecy breeds suspicion. And the fact that
they held these documents back until 2025 is
in itself the fuel that will keep this fire burning.
So here we are. are, 2026, the files are out,
the books are written. What is the legacy of
this single event? The legacy is a broken trust.
Before November 26, 1963, polls showed that Americans
largely believed their government was benevolent
and told them the truth. After 1963 and leading
right into Vietnam and Watergate, which are the
spiritual successors of this event, that trust
evaporated. We became a nation of skeptics. The
phrase grassy knoll isn't just a place anymore.
It's an idiom. It's shorthand for what they aren't
telling you. It's baked into our culture. And
it changed how we see truth itself. The Zapruder
film. It was the first time we saw a real death,
a brutal death in high definition color over
and over again. It birthed the era of cinema
verite. It changed how news was reported. It
made us comfortable with viewing violence in
a way that is, I think, deeply unsettling if
you stop to think about it. So final verdict.
We've done the deep dive. You've seen the new
files. You've studied this for years. Do you
think Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone? I follow
the physical evidence. The rifle found on the
sixth floor was traced to Oswald. The casings
found on the floor were fired from that rifle.
The bullet fragments found in the main bullet
found at the hospital were fired from that rifle.
The flight paths, the geometry of the limousine,
they all point to one shooter in one location.
Lee Harvey Oswald in the Texas School Book Depository.
The magic bullet isn't magic, it's just physics.
However, there's always a however. There's always
a however. I think the investigation was a conspiracy,
not a conspiracy to kill the president, but a
conspiracy of incompetence, a conspiracy to hide
the failures of the FBI, the CIA and the Secret
Service. The incompetence of the autopsy, the
destruction of the brain, the withholding of
files for 60 years. All of that created a mystery
where there might not have been one. It's almost
harder to accept the lone nut theory, isn't it?
Psychologically, it feels wrong. It is. It's
profoundly unsatisfying. Because if the CIA killed
him or the mob or the Cubans. That implies a
plan. It implies that the world is run by powerful
men in smoky rooms. That's scary, but it's an
orderly kind of scary. There's a reason. Right,
there's a structure to it. But if a loser like
Oswald, a guy who couldn't hold a job, a guy
who washed out of everything he ever tried, if
he can wake up one morning, grab a cheap mail
-order Rysol, and single -handedly change the
entire course of history just because he got
lucky with the weather and a slow -moving car.
Then what does that say about the world? It implies
the universe is chaos. It implies that history
hangs by the thinnest of threads, that one angry,
insignificant man can shatter everything. And
that is a much more terrifying thought to sleep
with that night. We want the conspiracy because
we want the order. We want the script. Oswald
is the unscripted, terrifying reality. And I
think that's the final question we're left with,
isn't it? If the perfect investigation had happened
back in 1963. A competent autopsy, a clear chain
of custody, full disclosure from the CIA. Would
we still believe in a conspiracy? Or is the idea
of a lone nut changing history just too random,
too frightening for us as a society to ever truly
accept? Chaos versus the script. I think that's
going to stick with me. It's the ultimate question
of the JFK assassination. Well, thank you for
guiding us through the files and the chaos. My
pleasure. It was a deep dive for sure. And to
everyone listening, the files are out there online.
Go read them for yourself. Draw your own conclusions.
And as always, stay curious. We'll see you on
the next deep dive.