45: The JFK Assassination | Red Thread
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A man sat on the edge of his creaky wooden chair. The gim... Jesus. Already a typo. Great. The gim...

The glimmer glow of a single desk lamp illuminating the documents sprawled before him, his hands trembled slightly, the weight of decades pressing down as he traced the familiar name etched into history. John F. Kennedy. For years this man had led a successful career, but within him was a secret buried so deep it had become a part of his very bones. He told no one, not even his wife. The world had pointed its fingers at Lee Harvey Oswald, the investigators more than happy to throw the man in jail.

But the man in the chair knew the truth. It had been his steady hand that pulled the trigger that changed history. His ink painted the letter in front of him, at admission, and the final words sealed his fate.

I was the shot they never saw. I was the one who killed Camelot. He breathed a deep sigh and after a beat, pushed the tip of his pen onto paper once more. And I did so to ensure Red Thread would have enough content forever. Signed, Isaiah slash Al Wendigoon. Four million subscribers. Yeah! He did it. You time traveled just to kill JFK. Why would you do that? He was so handsome. He was so handsome. I did...

Look, Mr. John and I had a conversation and we knew that someone had to be a martyr to get the ball rolling. Oh, it was a consensual assassination. Is that what you're saying? And he chose for it to be himself. Have you seen Harry Potter?

mm-hmm i have okay you know how at the end how snape how uh dumbledore's like snape you're gonna have to kill me so that you don't blow your cover so this all goes well i was snape and i was like i don't want to do it mr president and he's like there's no other way so i shot him that's what happened yeah that's that's i'm sure that's the excuse all assassination uh people have made assassins have made it was just like harry potter sir please don't lock me away

He wanted it. He wanted to die. I'll also say that that was very generous of you to nudge me the extra 30,000 subscribers to give me 4 million. I appreciate that. I rounded up. I thought it would have been rude to round down or something or give an exact number because it's always fluctuating.

I appreciate it. I want to say I am so hyped for this episode. I, one of the first videos I did on the channel that blew up was a video called, I proved the JFK conspiracy with a whiteboard and I knew nothing about research. I was not as good as it back then. I've wanted to redo that video forever. And this, this feels like a vindication. I love the topic. I I'm familiar with it. So I, I am very excited. I'm excited. So you're, yes. Okay. So you're going to take, you're going to take the conspiratorial side of this, uh,

idea then what would give you that idea me yeah i'm i'm uh i recently had a run-in with um um some higher ups so i'm gonna be taking the more official story uh mr b scares you i'm not i'm not an asset i'm not an asset of the i'm not an asset of the uh of the uh establishment so right i got you

I knew it. Okay, awesome. Before we start this episode, big thank you to the sponsor of this episode. We'll hear more from them later on in the show. And also show notes in the description below. You can click on the link and read our research. There's 23 pages of writing about JFK, Lee Harvey Oswald, as well as the conspiracies surrounding his assassination. So you can go read that. We'll be reading from it in this episode, of course, but there'll be more details down there. Wait, he died?

And pictures. Apparently. Is that the conspiracy that he didn't actually die? Surely there is. What if his head just did that? What if his head just did that? Wow. Or if you're just sitting at your home one day and your skull just flew out of the top of your head. That'd be pretty alarming. Yeah.

Before we get into it, Caleb, you've got very exciting news. Caleb has been on so many side quests lately, it's insane. He's a busy boy. I've been busy. Yeah, I released a video game. I released a top secret video game I've been working on. I got a development studio called Sour Boys Interactive, and we released a demo and the announcement of the game. It's called Black Pine. Yeah.

And it's a four-player horror co-op. Some detractors have called it a clone of games like Phasmophobia or Lethal Company. When I see that, I'm like, okay, good. That's what we were trying to do. Those games are really fun. I'm glad you're saying that because you take inspiration from things you enjoy and things you love and not...

Trying to pretend that you're not doing that is obviously nonsensical. I love those types of games, and I wanted to do that and then weave in a really cool narrative. Even if it's a little below the surface, just do cool shit in a unique way. We don't have a publisher. It's my team. I'm the executive producer of the company. I'm involved in development day to day, and I want to do stuff like have Isaiah and Jackson here help write some levels or some narratives, some undertones

in the game. So it's like, it should be a totally unique thing. It should be a really unique thing because most development companies don't have that level of transparency or just access to design and tech and art. So it's hopefully going to be really cool. Wishlist it. It's on Steam. It's called Black Pine.

It'll be linked below as well. In the description, go click the link and wishlist it. I'm so excited about it. I'm so excited about it. So Black Pine's really cool. Before he ever mentioned me writing anything for it, I just played the demo and thought it was super hype. I played it on stream. It was a ton of fun. I'm so interested in the background lore. I'm so interested in the world. It is a very fun game that I'm going to be playing more of on stream and editing and stuff like that. It's just a ton of fun. I was playing...

And I was on stream and I'm like, hey, I'm just going to go off the beaten path and see what's out there. And then I see this light out in the distance and I wander up to it and it's an ocean buoy. Yeah. It's like the middle of the woods. And I was like, what? What is this doing here? Whatever. So chat kept that there's a, you know, a monster in it. Spoilers. And chat kept being like, try to hit it with the buoy. Oh,

There's so many different elements and stuff going on. It's a very cool game. You should definitely go play it. How many people have got the demo so far? We have 20,000 people right now that are dicking around with it. I can't believe that that many people. That is insane. 20,000? Yeah, dude. It's really cool. Oh my gosh. Almost 200,000 just hits on the Steam page in and of itself. I didn't think people would care.

So seeing people care, it really makes me very grateful and excited to be awesome. Yeah. And not only I mean, the mystery that we're going to the way we're going to be able to spin yarns in this little unique, funny, lighthearted, but also hopefully very scary. And it's sometimes serious world. Yeah. Like we have a voice actor like, dude, I'm just so excited. There's a character that's going to be released in the next in early access, which hopefully should be early 2025. Yeah.

But right now we got a demo obviously it's just dude. I'm so fucking excited like I feel like a little You said so excited. It's very Caleb cracks me up so much Jackson because it's like it's like he was 10 years old. He says I'm gonna make candy and video I'm gonna make candy and be a youtuber. It's awesome. It's so good

I love it. You spent like 30 minutes at the end of last week's episode recording just gushing and talking about the story, explaining the story and lore to me. And it sounds so fucking cool. The broader world that you guys have created and the details that you've poured into the game in terms of the lore and stuff. It sounds incredible. I can't wait to see it pan out. So you guys go check it out. It's linked below in the description, wishlisted on Steam as well as install and play the demo. The demo is available for everyone now, right? Yeah.

- Yeah, and it's, we're just starting out, this is only a, this is less than a year old company, and the actual idea itself is it's six months old.

um and like it's there's a lot's going to change uh and there's bugs there's going to be problems just any feedback we want all of it criticism feedback every possible thing you guys can give it's one of those things where the people playing get to be a part of the development like process basically but definitely yeah that's the goal i mean i mean you know i'm a youtuber dude that's what youtube's all about uh and like

Yeah, it's just so fucking cool and exciting. I'm very, very... It's unbelievable. Do you think JFK would have played it? Just to bring it back to the episode? He'd have played it and he'd have got so excited and happy his head would have just done that again. His head would have... He would have been mind-blown, let's put it that way, by the lore.

Alright, let's talk about JFK because we're on a time limit, right, Isaiah? Yeah, so my wife and I, we just bought our first house earlier today. Oh, congratulations! We closed on it earlier today, so we're going to go to a little steakhouse to celebrate. That's great. But I got a couple hours, so we'll certainly knock this out by then. Sweet. Buying your first house.

It's a crazy stressful process, but man, it feels good when it's finally over and you're in there. I'm very excited. I also can't wait to just rip Caleb's four plans for his studio and just build the same one. Just build a clone of his house. Yeah. That'd be cool. All right. Who wants to take us in? I'll kick us off. Why not? So we start with a quote from the White House.

John F. Kennedy was the 35th president of the United States, 1961 to 63. The youngest man elected to the office on November 22nd, 1963. Tomorrow, I didn't even realize that. Oh, that was perfect timing. I didn't even plan that. Yeah, tomorrow, when he was hardly past his first thousand days in office, JFK was assassinated in Dallas, Texas, becoming also the youngest president to die. Maybe.

Maybe this is why they don't elect young people anymore. Too afraid that they'll be assassinated. Yeah, old people are just like invulnerable to bullets. Wasn't Abraham Lincoln pretty young too? Comparatively? I don't know. Was he? He looks old. I think he was compared to like the office. He was like 50 something. He was 56. Oh wait, no, that's when he died. Well, yeah, that means he had to be elected when he was 51, 52. Yeah.

Semi-young or whatever. That's unheard of in today's time. Yeah. He looked like he was a hundred. People aged quicker back then, I think. Well, yeah, all the disease and also, you know, the Civil War. And his bitch wife used to whoop his ass. I think it's more simple than that. I think it's just that they didn't have Photoshop back then. The photos we see all the time are just like airbrushed the fuck out of. Abe Lincoln.

Abe Lincoln. Abe Lincoln, in fact. For a moment, on November 22nd, 1963, America came to a screeching halt as a country. The publicly popular president, John F. Kennedy, was shot dead at Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas, on a political trip that was intended to build momentum in a highly conservative area for his eventual re-election. His death was captured by a man named Abraham Zapruder, a civilian using a home movie camera, released a few years later to the public.

Only two days later, his killer, Lee Harvey Oswald, would himself be assassinated by a nightclub owner named Jack Ruby. Oswald's assassination, the one that he himself conducted, would... Yeah, we have to clarify which assassination. There's a lot of assassinations here. The assassination of Oswald or to Oswald. Um...

would play a significant role in the creation of the Warren Commission. An 888-page report created by President Lyndon B. Johnson on November 29, 1963, created just a week after Kennedy's assassination, its goal was simple and obvious. It was tasked with investigating the death of Kennedy. Regardless of the veracity of this report and the information within, Kennedy's assassination is widely considered to be the most famous and most documented assassination in history.

Thus, there is no surprise that there are a myriad of conspiracy theories relating to it.

Theories range from there being a second shooter to the mafia themselves being involved and even so far as to suggest that the government of all people were involved, insinuating the U.S. government capable of assassinating someone. Who would have thought? Yeah, as if they'd ever do such a thing. Oh, well, the next sentence... I was making a joke and the next sentence was a joke. As if they'd ever do something like that. Yeah, the U.S. government would never hurt anyone. They're the good guys. I believe them. I don't...

I like regardless of this no theory has ever been definitively proven until now is saying that in this episode we are going to definitively prove the theory we're gonna put ourselves on the hit list with the CIA yet again put ourselves on a hit list for the 45th time in a row also just real quick I was looking because Lyndon B. Johnson's name popped up in the in the script there and I like a winter soldier moment happened with me and I remembered that he he had a nickname for his penis do you guys know this I

I've heard it before, but what was the nickname? I know you had to have special trousers ordered. Yeah, I'll read this quote directly. President Lyndon B. Johnson had a nickname for his penis, Jumbo. If a colleague came into the Capitol bathroom as he was finishing at the urinal there, he would sometimes swing around still holding his penis, hooting, Have you ever seen anything as big as this?

Oh my lord, that's awesome. Apparently it was so big you had to have pants custom ordered. Whoa. That's my president. They should run on that. That should be their platform. Having the biggest hog. I'd vote. Also apparently super racist from what I've heard. I've heard that as well. Well, that's not fun anymore. But no, go ahead. Make your jokes, Jackson.

Make it a laughing matter. Let's talk about JFK as a kid. JFK. I'm excited. John Fitzgerald Kennedy was born on May 29th, 1917 in Brookline, Massachusetts. He was the second oldest of nine children born to parents Joseph Kennedy Sr. and Rose Fitzgerald, who were deeply entwined in the Irish Catholic community.

He was born into a prominent, wealthy, and politically active family who were themselves already very influential at the time, the Kennedys. John's father had built the family a fortune in banking, shipbuilding, and many other ventures. He himself served as a U.S. ambassador to the United Kingdom from 1938 to 1940, and the atmosphere in the family home was extremely competitive, and the children were encouraged to excel academically and athletically.

John, also called Jack, suffered from scarlet fever when he was just two years old. This bacterial infection can be incredibly life-threatening, and it nearly took his life, but under the care of Boston City Hospital, he managed to recover. Illness plagued John throughout his entire life, diagnosed with colitis in 1934, and continuously riddled with back pain. For those unfamiliar with colitis, I will let the Cleveland Clinic define it. Colitis means inflammation in your colon where digested food becomes poop.

That's like a parable from the ancient times. Pesci kids didn't know what the colon does. Yeah, I don't know why they needed to define that. I put that one in here because I was just surprised that an actual doctor's guidebook uses the word poop. It's just such a juvenile way of dealing with it. It's not stool or excrement or anything. No, it's just poop. Fecal matter.

That's where your poop lives. Poop lives in your butt. After his death, it was also revealed that John had Addison's disease, hyperthyroidism, and possibly autoimmune, a polyendocrine syndrome type 2. If he wasn't assassinated, he may have not even lived another year or two. Although he had said to his family and friends he hoped for another 10 years, which is a bit of a non-sentence, really.

I hope for another 10 it's like okay so that means nothing John enrolled at Harvard oh go ahead no I was just thinking about what there would be lethal I guess the autoimmune the syndrome yeah the really long words autoimmune polyendostream syndrome type 2 that probably means death eventually I'm no doctor but that means not good sounds like to me he was a pussy

Yeah, it sounds like he needed to grow up a bit. Yeah, dude. He had everything, though. Wait, hypothyroidism, doesn't that make you fat? I mean, that is a gross oversimplification of that, but yes, it can result in weight gain. Yes, he's right. He's based and he's red-pilled. That's the only thing that it does. Yeah, it can do a lot. I think Addison's disease is a disease of the thyroid that results in hypothyroidism. Well,

Well, I've always just heard of people who are overweight using that as an explanation for why they're overweight. An explanation or an excuse? I wasn't going to say excuse. Because I've heard both.

But John enrolled at Harvard in 1936, studying government with a focus on political science and international relations. For his senior thesis, he wrote Why England Slept, which was an examination covering Britain's involvement in World War II, analyzing their delayed rearmament in the stages leading up to the war. The thesis would go on to be a published novel in 1940 and become a bestseller, showcasing John's analytical skills, which would set the stage for his future political career.

Planning for further education, he instead served in the United States Navy from 1941 to 1945 during World War II. He received the Navy and Marine Corps Medal and also the Purple Heart Medal for his heroism and injury sustained during his time served. Soon after leaving the Navy, he would start his political career. Also, he was shot down in a plane, by the way, and was the sole survivor of an entire PT-109.

Yeah. That's how he got the Purple Heart, right? Yeah, I mean, it's very incredible. His military history is remarkable. Anyways, at the age of 29, John would be elected into the House of Representatives from the Massachusetts 11th District. At the age of 29, John would be elected into the House of Representatives from the Massachusetts 11th District, and he would serve three terms or six years for non-Americans.

John would continue to move up the political totem pole and would then move into the Senate in 1952 after a hard-fought election. John would serve in the Senate for a further two terms until 1960, when he then announced he was running for President of the United States of America.

I don't know how the American system works. I assume it's kind of similar to over here. So you start off at the House of Representatives and get your feet wet. That's where most of the politicians live. They live in the House of Representatives for a bit. And then if they get into government, they get to move on to the Senate. Or they have a reality television show.

that's true uh the senate's like there's only two people from each state for the senate right yeah so the the way it works is uh you have the house of representatives which is literally representatives from the state how many are there 300 or 435 each state has a different amount that they can send right it's depending on the district on population size right like dc has one so i think it's 435 um

Um, so there's that many representatives. So, uh, it's, I guess, easier to become a representative than it is the Senate because there's only a hundred members of Senate. Um, cause each state gets two, two, um,

But you don't have to start at the House of Representatives. You can just run for Senate. And people like Donald Trump's case, you don't have to do anything in politics. You can just start with the presidency. If you have fame. Well, maybe once he's done as president, he'll try to run for Senate.

That would be funny. He goes back down the poll. I'd be curious, actually, if a president went back to the Senate or just gave up after that. I think you clock out after that, don't you? Obama! Maybe you're not allowed to win. He was a senator. Did Obama? Obama! Oh yeah, Obama is a senator. No, he was a senator before he became president. He's a voice actor now. After he retired. He's a voice actor now. Is that the voice actor for your game? Yeah. My fellow... Hello.

Before we continue on with the story about JFK's political career, I want to include some details about Rosemary Kennedy, his sister. Born the third child on September 13th, 1918, Rosemary apparently experienced developmental delays, and as such, she had difficulty keeping up academically and socially, which may have been caused by a difficult birth that resulted in a lack of oxygen to her brain.

She reportedly struggled with mood swings, tantrums, and impulsivity, which the Kennedy family worked hard to keep hidden due to the societal stigma and their desire to project an image of perfection. In the early 1940s, Rosemary's behavior became increasingly difficult to manage, and she began to act out in ways that were considered scandalous at the time, such as sneaking out, socializing inappropriately. Keep in mind, she was at least 23 years old at the time and a fully grown woman.

In 1941, Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., her father made the controversial decision to subject her to a prefrontal lobotomy

a then experimental and dangerous procedure. Still experimental. It's not, there's not a lot of evidence behind it. It's not proven now. At the time, at the time, not well known, but now we know. Now you can go down to the shop to get a prefrontal lobotomy anytime you want. Yeah, it's consumer, it's consumer grade now. You can buy it at, you can buy it across the counter. OTC fucking prefrontal lobotomy.

The decision was made without consulting her mother, Rose. The lobotomy was performed, and instead of calming her and improving the quality of her life, it left her permanently incapacitated. Crazy. She could no longer walk or talk properly and was left with the mental capacity of a toddler.

After the lobotomy, Rosemary was institutionalized for the rest of her life where she lived at St. Colettus, a residential care facility for individuals with developmental disabilities in Wisconsin. The family rarely spoke about her publicly, and for many years, her condition was hidden from the public view as the family had political ambitions. And it wasn't until the 1960s that this came into light through her sister, Eunice Kennedy Schreiber.

Eunice and Rosemary's story to advocate for individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities founding the Special Olympics in 1968, which is a lot of very important people are involved in the Special Olympics. It's got an interesting history.

Rosemary Kennedy passed away on January 7th, 2005 at the age of 86. And we wanted to include this story because it's an important story in the context of the Kennedy family overall. And a very interesting anecdote that shows how politically ambitious and perhaps broadly disingenuous they are. How concerned with the aesthetic optics of their, their existence in the, I mean, they, they, they like, they legitimately lobotomize their daughter, which is,

Who, whose only crime, as far as I could tell, was sneaking out and socializing inappropriately at the age of 23. And, and you know, to, to, to play devil's advocate, like we don't know what lobotomies, like how people felt about lobotomies in that time. I mean, now we know they're dumb as fuck, but like a lot of people got them back in the olden times. Um,

Yeah. And like, well, there was an idea that it would just calm you down. Yeah. Got rid of your like rebellious side. Yeah. It wasn't understood. They didn't, they didn't really know. So obviously still insane, uh, giving our, given our, you know, what we know now. Um, and certainly nothing to look past, but yeah, it's important to note. I feel, I feel like they just didn't know back then as well. Yeah.

maybe well yeah I don't think they would have thought that it would have like actually killed her or anything or incapacitated her to this level but it is still even back then I feel like it would have been a really like bold big decision to make about your daughter who was just sneaking out and socializing with the wrong people who you didn't like I guess yeah

Yeah, I would like to do a history of the lobotomies because they I mean, they usually they treat people with like schizophrenia or like delusions and hallucinations, like people who are really off the off the rocker, you know. So it is weird that they would do it if the if the extent of her behavior was purely scandalous. It seems like a fucking sort of a, you know, bold choice. Seems like a lot. Yeah.

I wonder if lobotomies, there is an actual use case for them eventually, and we just haven't discovered it yet. Like we haven't, we haven't pushed too far in where the secret button is in your brain that makes you like perfect or whatever. The calm button. Yeah. We got too, we got too scared and nervous. So we backed away. I don't remember what the, what the idea is, but I believe you like scramble the amygdala. And there is a lot of, of sort of a, you know, there's a, there's the, the, the,

sort of brain the neural link you know the future of being able to manipulate your brain i feel like the neural link is our 21st century version of lobotomies um yeah well it's yeah it's the opposite of lobotomies though it's like opening your brain pathways or something yeah exactly but the idea is to just fundamentally change the way a part of your brain works because like the amygdala controls like your stress a lot of your stress response so if you just didn't have an amygdala

Would you be crazy and stressed out? People who have anxiety disorders often have larger amygdalas than people without. So there's an actual scientific provable... That's why JFK's skull exploded in that car. Yeah, his amygdala was huge. His brain was too big. He was too stressed out. That's how cool he was. Just as a...

offshoot of that i would be way too scared to do anything with my brain absolutely i'm not touching that shit you're not you're not putting anything on my brain no neural link nothing what is it get it out dude i hate that every time i start thinking about folds and lobes and sinuses and that i have eyeballs and they're connected i just start getting fucking freaked out and i'm like yeah yeah there's an alien living in your head get it out of my head lobotomize

Am I that thing? Am I the brain? Am I referring to myself in third person? Yeah, what am I? Am I my eyes? What am I? Am I vision? So much more, obviously. I hope I'm my toes. Yeah.

Fine Christ. Back to John F. Kennedy. While running, he focused on the advancement of science, civil rights, and economic development. He believed with the modern challenges they faced, they needed modern leadership. And in the eyes of the public, John was a charismatic young man, a sharp contrast to his opponent, Richard Nixon.

Not a crook. Yeah, but Richard Nixon still has his head. Yo! You got him there. Gotcha, John. Gotcha. Maybe Richard Nixon was the one holding the rifle. Have we checked his alibi? Where was he? I don't think you can slander the dead, so that's funny.

John would even canvas for his elections by going up to people's houses and talking with them, creating an emotional, personal connection with the public. The results were close, but Kennedy would end up beating Nixon for the presidency, and he made history by becoming the youngest United States president to ever be elected at the juvenile age of 43. What a young whippersnapper. What a young man.

Kennedy had a number of accomplishments as president of the United States. He would establish the Peace Corps, push the United States program, which would directly lead to man first stepping on the moon in 1969. And he would also lay the groundwork for future legislation related to civil rights. His consistent high ratings showed his popularity. The public loved him, but the popularity didn't matter as even popular people are weak to bullets. His political career...

This document is so mean to Kennedy. Gosh. His political career and his life would all get cut short on November 22nd, 1963 when he would be assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald. The Kennedys are awesome. But anyways. I was thinking, I was actually thinking about that during this entire chapter here. They should make a TV show called The Kennedys or does that already exist? That might already exist. But they should. Like, for the TV show

throughout his entire life, leading up to, of course, his execution. Or assassination, I mean, not execution. Like, that should be the dramatic ending to the seasons. You know how they did it for, like, the royal family or whatever? The Crown? I think that TV show was called? Yeah, but the difference is, like, all the living members of those families are far enough removed. Like, you have JFK's nephew who's still running for office, or was running for office. Yeah, but if you stop the show, if you stop the show at the, like...

at his assassination there's nothing really that's so far long ago that it doesn't even matter now well yeah i'm talking about like the uh like the sister being lobotomized and stuff like that there's but we already know they probably get into some complications depicting all that i mean didn't the crown the people in the crown some of them are still alive to this day and also it dealt with things like maybe the crown assassinating um what was her name princess diana oh i didn't realize the crown went to all that oh well then never mind i'll shut up

Trust me, there's nothing off the table when it comes to entertainment and TV shows. You know what? Sure. I'm with you. Let's make one. Let's do it right now. I think they should because he was a war hero. He was a war hero. Even the lobotomization could be like a dramatic arc in the TV series. They could cover everything. I'm surprised they haven't, honestly. All right.

Let's find out who Lee Harvey Oswald was. I'll take this one. Wait, never mind. How long is it? Call me sympathizer. I heard. I'll take it. I'll take it. Yeah, you take this one.

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slash red thread to see what gift you can get this week. Again, that's drinkag1.com slash red thread to start your holiday season off on a healthier note while supplies last. Big thank you to AG1 for helping out the show and helping out everyone's gut health at home. Really appreciate it. And a big thank you to you guys for sticking through the ad and listening. It really does help.

Please go check them out if you feel like, you know, AG1 is something that you might be interested in. It really does help out the show when you do click on those referral links down in the description below. So a huge thank you to those of you who do. And now back to finding out why JFK's head did that thing that it did so long ago. All right. Who is Lee Harvey Oswald? Well, born on October 18th, 1937 in New Orleans, Louisiana, which is where I'm at. Lee Harvey Oswald struggled from an early age.

Only two months before his birth, his father, Robert Oswald, a third cousin of President Roosevelt, died from a heart attack, leaving his mother, Marguerite, a new widow who was to raise him and his two brothers alone. His childhood was plagued with instability and poverty, and he was described by others as a shy and lonely boy who struggled to make friends growing up.

As he reached his teenage years, it seemed he was desperately searching for a purpose in life, feeling disconnected from the typical American culture, and thus he looked outwards as he felt abandoned by the institutions that compromised the country. He began to describe himself as a Marxist, and he began to idolize the Soviet Union, as he saw their ideas and values as wholly opposite to what he was tired of.

From a young age, he showed violent tendencies, getting in arguments with his family, and even striking his mother and threatening his sister-in-law with a pocket knife. After skipping school too many times in the seventh grade, he attended a psychiatrist evaluation where Dr. Renatus Hartogs said he was in a, quote, vivid fantasy life, turning around the topics of omnipotence and power through which Oswald tries to compensate for his present shortcomings and frustrations. That's pretty harsh.

This is literally like the Chad JFK versus the virgin Lee Harvey Oswald right now. Just to go from the juxtaposition of how cool JFK was and how he fucking succeeded at everything, how he was a war hero, how everyone loved him, to literally the first paragraph of Lee Harvey Oswald is how much of a failure and how no one likes him and how he beats women and sucks. It's a bit on the nose. The Chad 6'5 Carcano round versus the virgin Kennedy skull. Yeah.

Harden gave Oswald and his family recommendations on seeking help and assistance, but nothing really got through to the emotionally detached Lee. 1955, he dropped out of the 10th grade, and by this point, he had lived in 22 different locations and attended 12 different schools. After dropping out of school, he decided to enlist in the Bereans. Only a week after his 17th birthday.

While in the Marines, he operated as a sharpshooter and was stationed in a variety of places from California to Japan. While in the Marines, Oswald was quite public about his admiration for Marxist ideologies and Russia in general. So much so that he was given the nickname Oswaldkovich. Isn't that... Oswaldkovich. That's crazy. I think... Like...

I thought that would have made you ineligible to be in the US military of all things if you were showing like love for Russia at that time or Marxist ideals. I mean you can be in and say whatever you want I think as long as higher ups don't get worried about it. I'm sure this wasn't super well known among leaders. This was probably just like guys who knew him personally. Yeah maybe.

According to Donald Kamerat, a soldier who served with Oswald, he had his name written in Russian on his jacket and would regularly play records of Russian music. At this point, it was clear to many that Oswald had a very strong interest in Russia and Marxist ideologies. On the Marines, he had several incidents. The biggest incident Oswald had was while handling an unauthorized .22 caliber handgun, he accidentally discharged the gun and shot himself in the arm.

This resulted in him being court-martialed, and then later he was court-martialed again for fighting with the sergeant he thought was responsible for his punishment on the matter. This incident led to him being demoted from private first class to private, and even imprisoned for a short period of time. In September of 1959, Oswald would leave the Marines through a hardship discharge after claiming that his mother was struggling with health issues and needed him at home.

Only two months later, in October, Oswald defected to Russia, which changed his hardship discharge to a dishonorable discharge after defecting to Russia. He rescinded his American citizenship, an act that would be published in newspapers at the time. And then there is a newspaper clipping here showing that. I guess it didn't happen that often. I thought it would have happened like

semi often at least for it not to be I don't think it's often that a soldier applies for Russian citizenship yeah soldier it's probably pretty rare he arrived in Russia right before he turned 20 he knew very little Russian and he came with $1500 in his pocket around $14,000 a day

He was on a visa, but he began the process to become a citizen immediately. The day his visa was due to expire, he learned his citizenship application had been refused. Oswald was so distraught, he went to his hotel, sat in his tub, and slit his left wrist. While horrific, the wound was only minor, and he had done it moments before his interest, a Russian travel agency, guide was due to come to his hotel room.

He was taken to the hospital and kept under observation for a week, where he began to be taken more seriously. He was asked repeatedly, do you want to go back to the United States? He was certain, himself, directly going to the United States Embassy in Moscow and expressing his desire to renounce his American citizenship. Officials allowed Oswald to stay in Russia temporarily, even though they had not granted him citizenship.

After Oswald recovered, he was granted an extended residency permit and was sent to live in Minsk, Belarus, which at the time was part of the Soviet Union, and it was there that he would work in a factory that worked on electronic devices.

Oswald was given a nice apartment and received a government stipend to cover expenses, though was kept under regular surveillance. Oswald was living a nice life in Russia, the one he had always wanted for himself, even if he wasn't a citizen.

But he still wasn't satisfied, though. It seemed that Russia wasn't what he thought it would be. He met a woman named Ella German, and they entered a relationship. That sounds like a fake name. What's the name of this Russian spy, Ella German? Ella German, okay. Ella has said she did not love him. Although he was pleasant looking and not as rude as other men, she continued to date him purely out of pity and loneliness. Hey, that's the same thing my wife says about me.

But the breaking point was Elle. Even the women in his... When did she say that? That is so... That's so mean. Yeah, it's so unnecessary. Why would you say that to him?

Or in general, you know that, you know, this sounds like to me, this sounds like someone who is now being interviewed by the FBI to see if she has a connection with the conspiracy. And it's like, I never cared for my small penis. Yeah, exactly. He was stupid and an idiot. And I hate him, actually. Yeah, that's what it sounds like.

But the breaking point was Ella learning Lee had been having affairs, and when he still decided to propose, she rejected him. Okay, well, that's probably why she hated him. That's probably why she hated him. That's a pretty good excuse.

Yeah, anything from that to assassinating the President of the United States, all reasonable to give that response, I think. I always wonder about how much of the action of him assassinating the President has retroactively changed his life history. Obviously, investigators and news reporters and stuff are going to hyper-focus on the negative aspects of his life because he literally killed a sitting President. Yeah.

And I wonder if a lot of this was made up, like him beating his mother and shit like that. Yeah, it's hard to know how much is actually true when it comes to that. But, I mean, the fact that he killed a president probably means he was incredibly unstable and violent. So, you know, that kind of speaks to a little bit of truth there. Yeah. Man, the FBI did a great job inventing this fake person, didn't they? Even gave him a newspaper entry 10 years prior. So...

In his diary, he would write, quote, I am starting to reconsider my desire about staying. The work is drab.

The money I get has nowhere to be spent. No nightclubs or bowling alleys. No places of recreation except the trade union dances. I've had enough. He misspelled so many things there. It makes me frustrating. Also, this makes me like unreasonably mad that he gets all the way to Russia. Does all this drama stuff cuts his wrist open and that he's like, what do you mean? There's no bowling alley. I can't bowl. What are you talking like? I hate that. What do you think Russia was?

I don't know, man. That's just fucking Disneyland. Yeah, he literally, he's over there. He's like, this is going to be so much better. And then he gets there. He's like, what? No, McDonald's. What? I can't. I can't go amusement park. What? What's wrong? Yeah, it is kind of insufferable that he did so much to get there and then immediately just hates it. Like you dick. Yeah, I want to punch him in the teeth. I think.

When Oswald was asked by the Minsk passport office if he still wished to become a Soviet citizen, he said that he did not, but he did request that his residency be extended by a year. During that time in 1961, Oswald would meet a woman named Marina Prusakova and they would start a relationship together. Six weeks after Oswald met Marina, they would get married and the following year they had a daughter together.

So he got busy fast. In 1962, Oswald would return to the United States with his new family and settle down in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, where his family lived. During that time, he worked at a variety of different jobs. He had begun to write a manuscript of his life over in Russia, but eventually gave up and it became a forgotten subject. Forgotten project. Yeah.

This guy's making me so mad. He's such a jerk. He goes from like, I can't. Oh, you want to make me leave? What if I do it? And then he cuts himself. And it's like, I'm so mad. There's no bowling alleys. Yeah, I don't like it here. And then he gets back and starts writing about how great he is. And he says he doesn't want to become a citizen. He changes his mind. And then he wants to stay there a year. And he meets a girl. Then he goes back to the United States, which he has tried to revoke his citizenship of. Um...

And then he, so after that, uh, he's like, I'm going to write about it. And then he doesn't do that. He began to work as a sheet metal worker, but also gave this up after just three months. I'm going to kill him. His next attempt at working was at a graphic arts firm as a trainee, but apparently he was so rude in the office that it left everyone on thin ice with the prevailing sense that a fight was just waiting to break out.

After all of this and then seeing Lee read a Russian book, his boss fired him. I like how reading the Russian book was the tipping point. That's so funny. That was too funny. I could take the yelling at employees and fist fighting, but Russian, get out. Yeah. So under the name A. Hiddle, Oswald purchased a secondhand 6.5 caliber Carcano rifle and a 38 Smith & Wesson Model 10 revolver.

He used these in March of 1963, where he would attempt to assassinate retired United States Army Major General Edwin Walker. Oswald attempted to shoot and kill Edwin Walker through his house window, but when the bullet hit the window, the bullet would fragment and only hit Walker's forearm.

At the time, nobody knew who attempted to assassinate Walker, but after the Kennedy assassination, it was found that it was most likely Oswald through an investigation by the Warren Commission. Yeah, that's something about him that I'd never hear get talked about enough. He tried to shoot someone else beforehand. Yeah, there's like a history of him doing the exact same thing. Yeah, he couldn't even do that right the first time. He sucks. God, he sucks. He sucks so hard. He got so lucky with assassinating JFK. Otherwise, he would have just been a footnote in history.

Yeah, he tried to assassinate a general and failed. So he's like, well, I guess the president will have to do. I'm clearly so good at this. I need to raise the stakes. I need to raise this. And somehow it worked. It's probably like he fucking tripped over when he was shooting and it actually helped him somehow. Like ricocheted four times and then hit him. Yeah. Well, actually, there is a theory that we'll get to when we start talking about conspiracies that I genuinely do believe. So we'll get there. Okay. I'm excited for that.

The bullet used was made by the same manufacturer that made the bullets that struck Kennedy and Oswald's wife Marina. Oh, and Oswald's wife Marina told authorities that Oswald admitted to her what he had done.

Walker was a prominent anti-communist figure. Many people believed that this was the motive for Oswald. Marina had also told authorities that Oswald equated it to someone assassinating Hitler trying to justify his actions. Oswald had quickly gone from strongly disliking people with different political views to actively trying to kill them. It's amazing what people are capable of when you just start thinking of everyone as Hitler.

Like when you start thinking of the people as Hitler. It's amazing what happens when you dehumanize your opponent across the board. Yeah, so easy. From April to September in 1963, Lee and his family moved to New Orleans. He was very active in his political interest during this time. After being fired from another job at a coffee company, he established his own chapter at the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, a pro-Castro, president of Cuba at the time, organization.

While he had no official ties to them, he would hand out leaflets in downtown New Orleans. He would also go on to local radio programs. A notable occurrence of this being a debate with Carlos Bringnear. Bringwiener? Bringnear. Sure. Bringwiener? Yeah. Bringwiener, an anti-Castro figure.

Simon New Orleans has raised a fair few suspicions, particularly with conspiracy theorists wondering if he had connection to U.S. intelligence who may have used him as a spy to infiltrate the Fair Play for Cuba committee after having used him as a spy to infiltrate communist Russia. After this, he went to Mexico where he stayed for just a week.

He went with intent to visit the Soviet and Cuban embassy seeking visas. According to witnesses, he was nervous and agitated and fought with the Cuban officials who did not want to grant him a visa.

He really hated America that much that he went around to all these different fringe groups at the time, just like getting membership with them. Well, he developed the idea that all of his troubles were because of the United States capitalist ideal. So anything that is not that is good. So he doesn't care if it's Russia, if it's Cuba, whatever it is, he is trying to associate that with himself because he thinks that will fix

fix it yeah he's he's all his whole identity is just anti-america whatever anti-america yeah whatever is the opposite is what he wants to be at the moment yeah and somehow anyway um on october the 16th of 1963 oswald would start working at the texas school book depository which was the building oswald shot and assassinated kennedy from

That same month, Oswald would have his second daughter with his wife Marina. Oswald was seemingly beginning to spiral down more into his lunacy and his violent rhetoric. He threatened to, quote, blow up the FBI and Dallas Police Department, end quote, in a note he left with a receptionist at the Dallas FBI office. Oswald did this because the FBI was investigating him after he visited the Soviet embassy in Mexico.

The note that Oswald left was later destroyed by the FBI after Oswald was named as a suspect in the Kennedy assassination. Why do they do this? It's clear that Oswald was like kind of acting against the, you know, the US government on his own pretty much from what we've heard. Why would they then destroy that evidence which makes them look suspicious? Yeah, it makes them look guilty. God, they're so stupid. What poops?

Well, I think, I mean, maybe it could just be like stupidity on their part, but who knows? Because honestly, as much as I want to be like, oh, well, they destroyed it because it's part of the conspiracy. I don't know what destroying that note would help the conspiracy, right?

Unless he wrote in parentheses, and also I didn't try to kill the president or something. I think the claim is that they destroyed the note so that it removed any kind of evidence that indicated that they had prior knowledge of Oswald before the assassination. Oh, I see. I see. You gotcha. Yeah, that would make sense. So it doesn't look like they're bad that it got through. Yeah. Yeah.

He clearly wasn't afraid of getting into trouble as he had already attempted to assassinate a former U.S. Army general and threatened to blow up the FBI all in the same year. Oswald wasn't going to slow down and on November of 22nd, 1963, speed would reach all new levels. Now we have the... It's crazy to me. I'm used to this kind of stuff happening from people without any futures and stuff, but to do this with two children...

uh you're like incredibly selfish that's how caught up he was in it that's how like down the pipeline he went yeah i just wanted to like make that note like he was actively having kids while still planning to like you know kill a sitting president he was twitter brained yeah he would have gone hard king in current year he would have been on twitter instead of assassinating presidents all right the assassination do you want to take this caleb

Uh, sure. During the early morning of November 22nd, 1963, Oswald arrived to work at the Texas School Book Depository carrying a long package wrapped in brown paper. Curious colleagues asked what the package was. Lee replied that it contained curtain rods. It's generally believed that it was actually his disassembled rifle that he would later use in the assassination of JFK. That's what I believe.

That's just a funny way to phrase it. It's like, well, what else would be in there? Curtain rod. It was actually full of curtain rods. You found the gun in the room. No one knows how it got there. It was three feet of intestine full of colitis with food turning into poo-poo.

I also don't know how it would be... How do you disassemble a wooden bolt-action rifle? Like, you wouldn't... Whatever. Anyway. Maybe you'd add the scope off? Yeah, I guess. Because then it'd be inaccurate. If you took the scope off and then, like, put it back on, it wouldn't be accurate.

Yeah. And by the way, that gun was like insanely accurate. If you guys don't remember, you guys don't remember the story. If you don't remember where this story goes, that gun was fine shooting that day. Yeah. We don't know. Maybe he was like just aiming to scare JFK. He was aiming off to the side or something. It was so inaccurate. That would be really funny if it's like, I will threaten the president. Oh my gosh. Then shot him again.

Yeah, just to be sure. Accidentally fires three times. At around 11.40 a.m., Kennedy, along with his wife Jacqueline and the Texas governor, John Connolly, would greet supporters at Dallas Love Field Airport. They had already been up and campaigning since 7 a.m., giving speeches to the enthusiastic crowds who had shown up in support. After meeting the adoring public, the group boarded the motorcade, which included, from the front to the back, the lead car, the presidential limousine, and the Secret Service follow-up car, the

the vice presidential car, and the vice presidential follow-up car, and additional support vehicles. The front seats of the presidential limousine carried Secret Service agents Bill Greer and Roy Kellerman. The middle seat carried Texas Governor John Connolly and his wife Nellie. And the rear seat carried President Kennedy and First Lady Jacqueline.

Um, no one could guess that they were minutes away from the president's death as they traveled through Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas, as a part of the route that would eventually take them to the Dallas trademark where JFK was scheduled to deliver a speech at luncheon.

At a delicious luncheon. What's that? At a luncheon. Is it an advance for a lunch? Lunch, yes. Pretty much, yeah. It's like a speech. A formal lunch or a formal word for lunch. And normally there's someone there to say stuff. Yeah. Someone's not cultured. Someone's never been to a luncheon in his life, clearly. Yeah, I don't know what that is. I don't like the idea of adding an eon to the end of a word that I already know. Dinnerion. Yeah, I prefer dinnerion. Podcastion.

Anyways, from 11.45 a.m. to 12.15 p.m., several of Oswald's co-workers took a break from work to go outside and watch the presidential motorcade passing by. This was the last time the co-workers saw Oswald, who was eating his lunch on the sixth floor. They noted afterwards that at the time he was seemingly calm and normal. He was not seen again until after the assassination. A janitor saw Oswald near a telephone on the first floor at around 12 p.m., and around the same time, another worker had begun to eat their lunch on the sixth floor and did not see Lee at all.

Between 1215 and 1230 is when it was believed that Oswald prepared to shoot Kennedy. In the southeastern corner of the building, Oswald arranged a barricade of boxes to shield himself and provide a shooting rest. Oh, he made a box fort.

Little guy had a box full of it. It'll fuck going to box fault at 1230 PM. The motorcade would drive past the Texas school book depository and approach a triple underpass classic Dallas, Texas. This is when the assassination occurred, but let's dive into each shot that fired that was fired. Most people agree that three shots were fired based on eyewitness testimony, bullet wounds, and the so-called Zapruder film giving visual confirmation of the events.

The first shot fired by Oswald would miss and ended up hitting the curb on the street, and as a result, fragments of the concrete would strike a bystander named James Togg on the cheek, causing him to bleed. It should be noted that Togg claims that it was the second shot that injured him, which, if true, would throw a wrench in the upcoming theory about the magic bullet. The second and probably the most controversial shot would strike both Kennedy and Connolly.

I want to say colony. Kennedy and Connolly. This is what most people call the magic bullet theory, which is the key conclusion of the eventual Warren Commission, providing an answer and determination that Oswald acted alone in his assassination. According to his theory, the bullet entered Kennedy's upper back and exited through his throat and then entered Connolly's back. Fuck!

and then entered Connolly's back, exited his chest, and struck his right wrist, and finally lodged in his left thigh. Ew. They shared the bullet. That's gross. Yowch. Ugh. And especially with colitis. How dirty JFK's blood was, probably. Ugh. Yeah. Yowch. Yeah, I wonder if Connolly got, like, 18 thyroid diseases after that. Yeah. True. That's why it's called the magic bullet. Huh?

I said, that's why it's called the magic bullet. Oh, right. Because it gives you disease. It had some fucking wizardry on it. The third and final shot was the fatal bullet that struck Kennedy in the head, ultimately leading to his death. While riding in the motorcade, Kennedy was wearing a back brace due to his back problems, and many believe that the back brace restricted him from ducking down after the second shot leading to his death. According to the Warren Commission, it is thought that all three shots were fired in a time range of 4.8 to 7 seconds.

Since the shots and bullets are so controversial in this case, we will take a better look at them later on, specifically the second shot or the so-called magic bullet.

At 12:31 p.m., the limousine would speed away from the scene, rushing to Parkland Memorial Hospital, which was about four miles away, and at 12:38 p.m., Kennedy would be declared dead. While everyone was frantic and trying to get Kennedy to the hospital, Oswald boarded a bus to escape the scene. Traffic was most likely heavy, leading to him to get off only two blocks later and grab a taxi back home. There, he changed his clothes, grabbed his revolver, and left.

At 1.15 p.m., standing around the corner of East 10th Street and North Patton Avenue, Oswald would encounter Dallas police officer J.D. Tippett, where they had a short conversation through the car window. When Tippett would get out of his car to approach in front where Oswald was, Oswald would shoot him multiple times, killing him instantly before fleeing on foot.

A shoe store manager saw Oslo, aka Oswald, acting suspiciously around a Texas theater where he snuck in without paying to see War is Hell. He was using a fake name at that time. Yeah, Oslo. He was on the run. Yeah, exactly.

When the man named Johnny Brewer alerted the ticket clerk, the police were called at 1.40 p.m. They arrived 10 minutes later, where Officer Nick McDonald was the first to reach Lee, who appeared to have given up, saying things like, it's over now. As McDonald got closer, Oswald pulled out a pistol he had hidden in his pants and fired at the officer. But luckily, nothing happened. When Oswald pulled out the gun, the hammer had come down on the webbing between his thumb and index finger. Startled, Oswald struck McDonald,

who then hit back and disarmed him. As he was escorted out of the Oswald theater, Oswald was screaming that this was police brutality and that he was the victim. Oh man, I hate him. I hate him so much. He's attempted to kill two innocent people. I didn't shoot anybody. They think of me because of the fact that I'm a Soviet Union. I'm just a patsy. Sounding the patsy alarm. I believe him.

Shit. Yeah. He was taken into custody and transported to Dallas police headquarters where he denied having any involvement with the murder of Kennedy or Officer Tippett. He continually denied and proclaimed his innocence. And by the next morning, he was arraigned for both the assassination of President Kennedy and the murder of Officer Tippett. During the next few days of interrogation, Lee admitted that he had gone home after the assassination and had changed his clothes and grabbed his revolver before going to the movies.

When confronted about his guns, he said he didn't have the rifle. And when they showed images that they had of him holding the two weapons, he replied that they were just fakes. He denied everything, even on who a Hildell was, even on who a Hildell was as the interrogators brought out his fake Selective Services systems card with that very name and his images attached.

He refused to answer any questions about the card in front of him, saying he knew as much as they did about it. A Selective Service System card is a document issued to men in the United States who have registered with the Selective Service System, which is itself the agency responsible for maintaining a list of individuals who could be drafted into military service. Wait, so why did he have a fake name there?

How is it even possible? Because that's what he used to buy that gun earlier, right? Yeah, but like, I get that if he's like got ID or something, but this is a very specific selective service system card. Surely that's like heavily scrutinized. Well, that was probably just the easiest thing to fake because you can't buy a gun by just saying, oh, this is my name. You have to have like identification. So he had a fake ID to purchase one and this was probably that fake ID.

Yeah, it just seems like a weird choice for a fake ID to be the dropped cop. It is less common than a driver's license, I'm sure, but maybe there was a thing back in the 50s that it was easier to get one or something. When asked where he was during the assassination, he said he was eating lunch in the first floor lounge called the Domino Room. He had gone to the second floor to grab a Coke and encountered a Dallas police officer with a gun before heading back down.

In his words, he claimed that he saw two... Am I allowed to say this on podcast or should I just skip this? Go ahead, Caleb. What a great idea. No, I'm not going to say this. You shouldn't. Do it, Caleb. No, I can't say this. I'm not going to say this. I have a video game development company. I'm not going to say words.

He saw two N-word employees, but not the N-word. Not the hard R. Yeah. The 1950s. It's like... The way that quote-unquote progressive people would say it in the 1950s. Yeah. Still very regressive.

I'm not American I don't know what's I know the hard R is offensive I think that is offensive I can tell you if you call someone that right now It will be offensive It would just be like something an old fucking Out of touch racist person would say Actually you know what Jackson Try it out Say it If I said it right now and you peer pressured me To say it you'd share equal blame by the way I wouldn't I don't want to say it

No, I will take all of the blame. I will 100% peer pressure you into it. No, I'm not saying that. I don't know anything about your American words and what's not allowed to say. I guarantee you that's a problem in Australia too. I guarantee you that's a problem in Australia too. In his words, he claimed that he saw two the word for black in Spanish. Employees on his way to the lounge. He was referring to Junior Jarman and Harold Norman who both testified in court that they had walked through the Domino room during lunch break.

Norman said that there was someone in the room, but he really could not remember who it was. German testified that it was not Oswald. Oswald made many requests for legal representation, but the problem was that he wanted John A.B.T. Abbott? John Abbott? John Abbott? Abbott?

Abt? Is that his real name? It's probably a typo for Abbott. It's probably a typo for Abbott. I've never heard of the last name Abt. No, that's his real name. Wow. John Abt. That's crazy, yeah. Who was chief counsel to the Communist Party at the time. Or lawyers connected to the American Civil Liberties Union.

apt was away at the time and no one could get in contact with him and any local representation was rejected by Oswald. On November 24th, Oswald was planned to be transferred to a county jail for long-term detention pending the trial. When he was being escorted to the police basement, Oswald would be shot by Jack Ruby, who was in the crowd in the abdomen with a single shot from a .38 caliber revolver. This entire event would be broadcast on live television. Oswald would be taken to Parkland Memorial Hospital and

the same hospital Kennedy was taken to, and he would die that same day. Jack Ruby, a nightclub owner, was then arrested and his actions fueled widespread speculation about conspiracies and cover-ups. Was Jack Ruby seen as a hero at the time?

No. No. No. Because everyone... One of the answers. You have to think about this. Imagine if right now a president was killed, right? And then one week later, the vice president, now president, puts together a commission to investigate if there was a conspiracy, right? Like, that's almost unheard of with how...

I mean, other than this, it is unheard of for how much speculation there was into what happens. And then two days after the president dies, he

the guy who did it is gunned down by just a rando. Yeah, you don't get any answers. That guy had so... You know what it unironically was probably like when Epstein died in his jail cell? True, yes. Actually, yeah, I see that. Yeah. Yeah. Where it's like, well, now we'll never know. Like, obviously, you hate Oswald, but it's like, who did you work for? Why did this happen? Yeah, you want answers. You want answers before he can die. Yes. Exactly, yeah. Okay. All right, so now...

the aftermath into the aftermath so yeah this is a short one i could take this one okay returning to john f kennedy's assassination people began to mourn as soon as they found out about the assassination which was of course fairly quick given the public nature of the act his funeral was held on november 25th 1963 and over 1 000 people attended with representatives from 90 countries while millions watched from home on the tv

The same day Kennedy was assassinated, Lyndon B. Johnson, the guy with the big penis, would be sworn in as the acting president. The Johnson. Yeah. Do you think that was his opening speech or whatever? He just flops out his member? His middle name is Big. Lyndon Big Johnson, yes. Yeah. Lyndon Big Johnson, yeah. That's funny. Many different conclusions were reached by different government investigations when looking into the assassination.

Did I hear a little thank you there? Yeah, it was really quiet. He said it's like himself. I appreciate it. Sorry. The following year after his funeral in 1964, the Warren Commission concluded that Oswald had killed Kennedy.

and acted alone, firing three fatal shots. In 1979, the House Select Committee on Assassinations would re-examine the evidence, concluding that Kennedy, quote, was probably assassinated as the result of a conspiracy. And of course... Insane wording. Yeah. Of course, we know the definition of conspiracy means an act conspired by a group of people. So that flies in the face of, you know, the initial commission's conclusion that Oswald...

had killed Kennedy alone. Their conclusion added doubt to the lone gunman theory, but their conclusion itself leads to many more questions with no current answers. They determined, with a high level of probability, 95%, that a second shooter was likely to have fired shots after analysis of an acoustic recording. They also... I just want this to be pointed out, that anyone who calls you a conspiracy theorist who's thinking something was janky about the JFK assassination...

A house appointed committee said there's a 95% certainty there was a second shooter. Yeah, which obviously probably the result of a conspiracy. A massive level of fuel. And the only reason that committee got put together is because of the MLK assassination, which was also super shady. But anyway, go ahead.

They also believed that there were four shots fired and that the second assassin was located in the now infamous grassy knoll, which is the hill on the other side of the book depository, right?

Like a grassy hill. Well, it's across the... It's not really on the other side. It's like... The book depository was kind of behind Kennedy. It was like behind him to the right. Whereas the grassy knoll is straight to the right. So it's kind of on the same side of the street as the book depository. But Kennedy was going around a curve. So kind of across. But yeah. So the grassy knoll is parallel to Kennedy when he got shot, basically.

Yes. Yeah. Okay. The findings in conclusion of the HSCA, that's the House Select Committee on Assassinations, cast significant doubt on the Warren Commission's conclusion. And while the HSCA now added credibility to the idea that this was a conspiracy, it still left and opened many unresolved questions like...

One, who beyond Oswald may have been involved? Obviously, that's the most important question. Two, was there any evidence of government or organized crime complicity? Which is also, when it comes to the government, killing its own president, pretty big. That's a pretty big insinuation. And then number three, how reliable was the acoustic evidence that fueled this in the first place?

The assassination of Kennedy also led to significant changes in how US presidents are protected with the Secret Service implementing stricter protocols for presidential security. Jack Ruby, the nightclub owner who shot Oswald, ended up being sentenced to death in 1964, but in 1966 the conviction would be overturned due to the original trial being held in Dallas where it was determined that the intense media coverage and public outrage would have made it impossible for Ruby to receive a fair and impartial trial.

While Ruby was waiting for a retrial, however, he would die on January 3rd, 1967 after being assassinated by lung cancer.

Understandably, this case has had a rise of conspiracy theories and most Americans believe that Oswald didn't act alone. A Gallup poll done in 2023 found that 65% of Americans think Kennedy assassination involved some kind of conspiracy. If a majority of the country and indeed the US government through Avenue of the HSCA believe that the Kennedy assassination involved a conspiracy, we have to ask

Who were the main actors of the conspiracy? Dun, dun, dun. Who do you guys think? Now we get into the fun part. Wait, wait, wait, wait. Did I even ask? Do you guys actually believe in the conspiracy or do you think he acted alone?

I don't think the feds were directly involved. I do not think he acted alone. Agreed. Okay, I think... So, here's my opinion. I think he acted alone, but there was something out of everyone's control that led to the air of conspiracy being believable, let's say. And we'll get to that in a second. Who wants to take the magic bullet theory? I'll take the magic bullet theory. So...

Before we get into the conspiracy theories, it's important to know the specifics behind the magic bullet theory, as many of the conspiracy theories revolve around it being wrong. The magic bullet theory was proposed by the Warren Commission to explain how a single bullet could cause wounds to both Kennedy and Connolly during the assassination, and it was the central forensic evidence that suggested there was a single lone shooter. Just to remind you, the theory states that the bullet entered Kennedy's upper back,

exited through his throat, and then entered Connolly's back, exited his chest, struck his right wrist, and finally lodged in his left thigh. And that's a lot to keep track of. We'll have a picture on screen right now for audio listeners. If you want to head over to the YouTube video, you can see this little diagram of the bullet trajectory as they describe it. In other words, five distinct points of contact

On entry and exit wound, that's one, two, three, four, five, six. Six breaches of the human body with one bullet. How rare would that be, Isaiah? It's a one in a million. It's like for all... I mean, bullets can do weird stuff. It's not outside of complete possibility. For a rifle round to go through him...

hit off because it'd go in his body and then it would come out kind of his neck because it's deflecting off bones and stuff like that and then hit still have enough energy to go completely through Connolly and then through multiple points of Connolly's body as well. It's I mean, it's like bullets do weird stuff. So it's not I won't it's not him. Yeah, it's not impossible, but it's a one you're never going to recreate that shot.

Many critics over the years have said that the magic bullet theory is not possible and that there must have been a second shooter. They cite the fact that the bullet that went through Kennedy and Connolly was still intact despite going through two bodies. Critics of the premise also mentioned that in the Zapruder film, Kennedy and Connolly's reactions to getting hit are delayed and don't align with getting hit by the same bullet.

Importantly, there was a fourth bullet. That would mean that the likelihood of there being another shooter is significantly higher as Oswald wouldn't have been able to shoot that fast with his rifle. The theory also heavily relies on the idea that Kennedy and Connolly were seated in such a specific way that would cause the bullet to zigzag through them. John Connolly himself has said that he doesn't believe in the magic bullet theory.

Connolly's memoirs in history shadow an American Odyssey. He would state, quote, my ears and body told me I was not wounded in three places by a bullet that hit President Kennedy. I remain convinced that he was hit twice and I once by three separate shots, end quote. So one of the guys who got shot is like, it wasn't the same bullet. The guy that got shot next to Kennedy was like, nah. Yeah. Connolly would hold this belief until his death in 1993.

If we were to disregard the magic bullet theory and buy into the idea that there was another shooter, then who else was involved? I want the CIA one. Take it. I need it. I need it in my blood. Okay. CIA is responsible. Let's go. So...

The CIA being responsible for the death of Kennedy is probably the most popular theory in this case. There were concerns the CIA withheld. I love talking bad about them. The CIA withheld information from the Warren Commission, like them surveilling Oswald before the assassination, with people describing the actions of the CIA as a benign cover-up.

In a report by CIA Chief Historian David Robarge, he would state that CIA officers were instructed to be, quote, passive, reactive, and selective, end quote, when working with the commission, which apparently stemmed from several factors tied to the CIA's culture, priorities, and self-preservation at the time.

CA had also hidden that they intercepted Oswald's mail through an illegal secret project called HT Lingual that aimed to intercept mail that was being sent to the Soviet Union and China. Since this project was illegal, it is suspected that they didn't mention this interaction as it would have brought eyes to the project and it would potentially implicate them if they had previously had any level of interaction with him. Okay, so I don't think they hid that due to the fact that...

you know, it kind of showed that they had some level of knowledge of Oswald. I think they simply hit it because the project itself was illegal and they wanted to continue the project. Correct. Uh, and they also might've had information on Oswald. They never brought to everyone's attention because the issue with the CIA is they're entirely internal. Yeah. Um, so if the CIA finds something, they will tell the CIA and no one else. Yeah. Um,

Which is why here you have the FBI, or not even the FBI, the Warren Commission was set up by Lyndon B. Johnson. You have the president making a commission to investigate Kennedy's death, and the CIA withholds information. Willingly.

Willingly, yeah. Guilty! Knowingly. The quote from the historian is be passive, reactive, and selective, as in don't tell anything you don't have to. What kind of quote-unquote government establishment does that? Yeah, it's no conspiracy to say that the CIA acts independently of the US government throughout time and has in fact acted above government overreach. They act above the president, essentially. It's insane. Mm-hmm.

Yeah, they just get to do their thing and get funding for it. Some also bring up E. Howard Hunt, who was an officer in the CIA. Hunt was one of the main figures involved in the Watergate scandal and had publicly vehemently supported the Warren Commission's conclusion about the Kennedy assassination. However, before Hunt would die, he allegedly admitted to his son that he knew of a conspiracy to kill Kennedy from within the CIA.

He implicated himself in the event, naming it, quote, the big event. And he mentioned the involvement of high-ranking figures like Cord Mayer, David Alte Phillips, and Lyndon B. Johnson. Given the statements were secondhand and lack corroborating evidence, it's hard to pay them much mind. Unless you're me and believe all of it. But how would an assassination orchestrated by the CIA play out well?

There are many variations posed by a variety of people. Some believe that Oswald was the lone shooter, but was hired or manipulated by the CIA to kill Kennedy and have him be the scapegoat. Evidence backing this claim was him calling out that he was a patsy, which is slang for someone who is the fall guy or the scapegoat.

Others believe that the assassination was carried out by multiple CIA operatives spread out in windows and or on the grassy knoll. And the CIA let Oswald take the fall for the assassination since he already had a strange relationship with Russia and the CIA knew about him beforehand. It's such an attractive idea, but literally everything that we know about Oswald through other, and the fact that he was trying to assassinate other people for similar reasons beforehand. And we know this through corroborating evidence from witnesses. Uh,

Yeah, like, this is an attractive idea. Like, obviously you want to blame the CIA for stuff. Yeah, I just don't buy it. Okay, so to clarify, I don't think a CIA agent took the shot. I'm saying that Oswald...

could have been acting, even if he didn't know it, in the interest of the CIA. Oh, was that? Yeah. Because we know for a fact that the CIA had a lot of informants playing it through Cuba and Soviet Russia and stuff like that, and a lot of them acting as liaisons with the United States. So who's to say that Oswald didn't get radicalized by a quote-unquote Cuban phony

or Cuban agent who was actually working or in the pocket of the CIA. That's true. That he didn't get radicalized and told like, oh, you should get a gun. You should kill the president. I hear he's going to be driving through where you work today. Yeah, he could have been influenced by the CIA without them directly pushing him.

Pulling the trigger. Yes, because anytime I mean, look at modern stuff. Anytime there is some kind of government affiliation in the Middle East or Russia or something like that, it is always through three stringed away connections. It is always a local agent who is paid off by this country that's in the pocket of the United States. It's never a CIA agent doing the operation. It is someone with plausible deniability from the CIA doing the operation. Mm hmm. Yeah.

So yeah, I definitely to clarify. I 100% think Oswald was in that building with a rifle. The only things that are a question to me is if he was acting entirely on his own and even if he was acting on his own as his own head, if it was under the influence of some other party like the CIA and if there was someone else with a rifle in the plaza that day. Yeah, if multiple people took the shot. Yeah.

The most interesting version of the theory that the CIA was involved is probably the theory that Oswald worked with a potential CIA operative known as the Umbrella Man. So during the Kennedy assassination, you can see a man in the crowd holding an umbrella despite it being sunny and not raining. He was opening and moving the umbrella strangely, leading to speculation on what exactly he was doing. Some believe he was using the umbrella as a signal device, and when he closed or moved the umbrella in a certain way, Oswald would know when to shoot.

Some use Kennedy being struck by the first bullet as the limousine passed in front of the umbrella man as evidence for this. Some also speculate that his umbrella could have been used to fire a dart in Kennedy and paralyzing him, making him an easier target to shoot. That's so funny. That's so funny. The idea that you paralyze someone before you shoot them. Yeah.

I'll shoot him once so that I will then be able to shoot him a second. Yeah. Why not just take the umbrella again? So he quits moving so much. Yeah. Just like do what they did to what was his name? Franz Ferdinand. Just jump on the car and unload into him. That'd be so much easier.

That's so funny. Although sounding absurd, this has happened before. No way. A device known as the Bulgarian umbrella was used to assassinate George Georgi Markov by firing a rice and tip dart at him with an umbrella and he would end up dying a few days later. So it is possible for all of this to happen, at least logistically.

The Umbrella Man was particularly odd as the weather in Dallas was sunny and rather nice during John F. Kennedy's assassination, hardly the type of weather one would walk around with an umbrella for. For a long time, nobody would know who the Umbrella Man was until 1978 when a man named Louis Stephen Witt would come forward claiming to be the mysterious Umbrella Man.

Witt would come before the House Select Committee of Assassinations, claiming to be the now-famous Umbrella Man. He even supposedly brought the same umbrella with him. He said the umbrella's purpose was to be a form of symbolic protest against Kennedy's father, Joseph Kennedy, who had supported Chamberlain's policies in the 30s. Neville Chamberlain had been criticized heavily as he conceded parts of Czeslawow's Slovakia to Hitler in an effort to avoid war.

He was often depicted carrying a signature black umbrella, which became a symbol of his appeasement policies. Even though Witt claims to be the umbrella man, there's no concrete evidence to definitively prove it. And the only evidence there is, is his own testimony. What would end up passing away in 2014? Uh, so, uh,

Yes, there was. Okay. For one, it's weird that when the CIA is being questioned, they're like, oh, here's a random guy and the random guy steps forward and is like, I am the umbrella man. Here is my umbrella. Here's a perfectly logical answer to that. Yeah, which by the way, who keeps an umbrella for 20 years? Who has the same umbrella? I don't have an umbrella. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Why did you as a man own an umbrella? I always thought umbrellas were like massage chairs, just like rich people had them.

Yeah, they're fake. They're a conspiracy. They want umbrellas to make you weak. You would keep the umbrella that killed John F. Kennedy, though, so maybe that's the way. Yeah, that's what they want you to think. He'd frame you.

But it was a point of protest around the time. People would protest Kennedy's father with umbrellas. That was a known thing. So I think that's too much of a coincidence for it to be an accident. Also, even if it was part of the conspiracy, what does that do? Why is it like, okay, you can shoot him now. As he's looking through a scope, I assume. Yeah, in case you needed to know.

that you can shoot now yeah there's the president what is it what's it even meant to indicate the only thing i could argue is that maybe because kennedy was driving in an open top convertible maybe if it was a closed top car or something you need a guy on the side to signal which car he was in right um could it be with that that's a stretch

Do what? Could it be wind? Maybe he was like indicating like which way the wind was blowing. Not with an umbrella and not anything to get, not also from that distance. You wouldn't. No, no. I'm not saying like the umbrella would blow in a certain way. I'm saying like, what if he like pointed the umbrella left to indicate like the wind was blowing left or something? Well, I'm saying that from that distance, you wouldn't need to compensate for wind. Oh, right. Was it a 200 yard shot, Caleb? Something like that. Yeah.

Yeah, you would, especially with like the scope set up. He added stuff like that. Like when I mean, maybe a little bit, but not extreme. Not enough that you'd see with the umbrella unless it was like a 30 mile per hour gust or something. But the only thing I could see is if it was to signal which vehicle Kennedy was in, but that's a stretch. I don't think the I think the umbrella man was a coincidence. That being said, it is funny that this guy was like, I'm going to protest your father and then the guy's head explodes. Yeah, that is awkward. I'm so sorry. I didn't mean it.

I didn't know my umbrella could do that. Just freaking a blower. It's crazy. Well, that's so weird. I'm sure we guys. So if the CIA was responsible for the asset, it'd be really funny if Oswald's like, which car is he in? And then completely unrelated, a guy opens an umbrella and Oswald's like, wow, thanks, dude. A sign. A sign.

So the CIA was responsible for the assassination of Kennedy. What was the motive? There are various reasons you can find on why the CIA would assassinate Kennedy, but the most popular reason people bring up is the Bay of Pigs invasion. For those who don't know what the Bay of Pigs invasion was, it was basically a failed military operation conducted in 1961. The CIA trained around 1,500 Cuban exiles and planned to overthrow Fidel Castro's communist government in Cuba.

which by the way, the reason that we had this plan is because we did the exact thing before we keep doing it in Nicaragua or sorry in Guatemala and it worked perfectly fine.

We got a general who was kicked out of the country because he tried to overthrow it. We got him to raise up a group of soldiers and then gave him money and supplies to go overthrow the Guatemalan government. He gets assassinated in Guatemala. Well, sorry, before he gets assassinated, he executes 3000 members of the press who spoke against him. Um,

He gets assassinated and then Guatemala gets thrown into 40 years of civil war that have resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths. All because we did not like... We had American companies like banana farms in Guatemala that were getting mad at having to follow labor laws. So this is why I'm like, yeah, sure. Maybe they killed the president. What if they put it past them? Yeah. This...

They were so emblazoned about this Bay of Pigs invasion because they did it once and it worked. This is straight from the CIA's textbook.

They do this multiple times. I don't put anything past them. So anyway, within three days, Castro would defeat all 1,500 troops. Also, that whole thing about they would pick a patsy to do the shooting. Here, in a 1,500-person invasion, they're not even using American troops. I mean, there's sure some ground agents overseeing it that are American soldiers. But the 1,500 troops are Cuban exiles. So they always do something third-hand, so there's plausible deniability.

So Castro would defeat all 1,500 troops, killing and capturing most of them. By himself. He was just out there with a knife. That's how angry he was. He's a monster. He's so good. He's so strong. The U.S. faced international embarrassment as a result, and Kennedy assumed responsibility.

Afterwards, Kennedy would fire many top-ranking officials within the CIA, and he was outspoken about plans to change the structure of the CIA as well, famously declaring that he would, quote, splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds, end quote.

Some believe that this could have been a motive for taking Kennedy out. There was also bad blood between the military-industrial complex, the CIA, and JFK after JFK expressed consideration of pulling U.S. troops out of Vietnam. Which, obviously, CIA wanted U.S. troops in Vietnam to counteract Soviet kind of influence, communist influence.

Mm hmm. Not only that, but there was express financial gain in several heads of government if we stayed in Vietnam. Yeah, like Lyndon B. Johnson's wife was the primary stockholder of I forget the name of the company, but the one that was supplying the majority of like munitions, which is also why Lyndon B. Johnson is somewhat important.

implicated in the assassination. He gets implicated a lot in it, yeah. There were a lot of people who stand to gain money if the CIA kept doing weird stuff and if we stayed in Vietnam. And then, oh look, Kennedy's dead. Both of those things keep happening. RIP. RIP.

To this day, the CIA denies any involvement with the assassination of Kennedy. Shocker. The House Committee of Assassinations criticized the CIA for withholding information from investigators, though it stopped shortly of directly implicating the agency.

They still persist into our more modern times as well, as the CIA is still fighting to maintain secrecy and confidentiality on around 3% of the documents they have internally about the JFK assassination. These documents would be released years ago, but the CIA has refused to comply. Yeah, did you hear what Trump said in the Joe Rogan interview when he was asked about it? No, what?

Okay, so the CIA, the original papers were supposed to come out

So there's it was called the JFK papers and it was a bunch of like classified stuff by the CIA and a bunch of it came out, but a few of it was covered up. I think it was supposed to come out. There's one time it's supposed to come around 2016 2018 and it didn't it got pushed back to 2021 and then they didn't release it in 2021 citing covid as a reason whatever that means and then.

It was supposed to come out again, like 2022, 23, something like that. And then the Trump administration didn't let it come out. So when Trump went on Joe Rogan not long ago, Rogan asked him about it. It was like, hey, what's with those last few pages of the JFK report? Why isn't that coming out? And Trump said, for one, he said there are some very interesting things in there, whatever that means. And then he said the reason that it's not come out yet is because it is

involves some people who are still living. That's crazy.

That is insane. Wait, how? Are you telling me the reason it won't come out is because it will get people in trouble? Relief it! What do you mean? Who's still living 60 years ago? They had to be like 12 years old. They had to be like 12 years old. No, what it is, realistically, jokes aside, is if there was like information that came out in, say, the 80s,

Like the 70s or 80s. That was stifled. Or like... The House Select Committee on Assassinations was in 1976, right? So there could have been like a CIA agent at the time who didn't give up information that they did know about. Right. That is cited in the JFK reports. Right. Who is still alive. Right. So it's not actual events of the assassination that are, you know...

dangerous right now it just has to implicate people yeah whatever's written in there right uh now that all that being said that doesn't i guess kind of necessarily say that the cia had involvement or whatever it could just be that some people will hear the information that's in there and get emboldened thinking they did and then harass these still living people well it could also be information about other cia operations and stuff like that it could

It certainly could. Granted, this is the part that is explicitly about John F. Kennedy, the Kennedy assassination and CIA internal memos. That is the part that they are withholding, the 3%. But...

I choose to believe that a million percent CIA has some involvement, some level of knowledge. Yes, I think Oswald took the shot. I think the CIA knew in some way. And the fact that they are refusing to release any information, even Trump is refusing to do it, like this far out is, I think, telling. I'll put it this way. I think Oswald did it, but I think that the FBI and the CIA and the US government as a whole has some kind of shame for

about the event, some kind of failing on their part that has led them to be more cagey about the material. If it was just Oswald shooting and killing JFK... Hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on. Important asterisk, some shame around the event that they would then, 15 years later, withhold evidence from a House committee regarding the assassination. If they did have shame for it when it happened...

Why 15 years later, like removed from people, removed from agencies, are they still lying about it? Well, okay. My idea, and it says it below here. One interesting tangential theory is that the Secret Service accidentally shot John F. Kennedy when the driver of the motorcade hit the gas in an attempt to escape the very real bullets from Oswald. So if, if that is hilarious, if,

If that theory... I honestly believe that could happen. We've seen how ineffective the Secret Service can be in a lot of situations and how human error can take over. It's entirely possible that the fourth bullet or the additional bullet that people think they heard or think that make the magic bullet theory invalidated. It's very possible that that came from a Secret Service agent and then the government obviously can't take...

Responsibility for inadvertently Accidentally killing the sitting president Which shot would have been The secret service one then

I don't know. They pulled the 6-5 Carcano round out of Connolly. I mean, they're hiding stuff. If they're hiding stuff at this point, like... Are you saying the headshot? Like the one that blew his head off? That one was? Potentially. That seems like a little hard to me because then the magic bullet theory still has to happen and also he has to be shot. Unless you're saying that Kennedy...

Got hit by a Secret Service agent and then Connolly got shot by a rifle and then Kennedy got shot by a rifle. All right. Well, I'm getting very confused. I don't know specifically which bullet was which. I would assume that in my theory here that the headshot bullet was the Secret Service. The kill shot? Yeah.

I mean, that would be really funny. Because it would make sense as well. Because they'd be like firing back at where the gunshots were coming from, which would have been on the other side of JFK's head. Oh, you're saying one of the drivers shot? Like one of the people up front? No, I don't specifically know who. It could have been someone on the grassy knoll. It could have been a shooter on the grassy knoll. When I've heard this theory... I've got a complaint, guys. It was you. It was me.

I knew it. That's why Trump couldn't say it. Cause I'm still alive. That's actually so true. I wouldn't be surprised if you were like 85 years old to be honest. I'm immortal. Yeah, that would, I would be, that would be the most normal thing I heard today. Uh, like when I've heard the theory that the guy who jumped on the back of the car, that maybe he fired a shot. I've heard that one before. Uh,

My theory is... Basically, it explains the magic bullet theory because obviously there would be an additional bullet in this situation. And it also explains why the secrets... Well, the CIA and the government as a whole is kind of...

more willing to be cagey about this. And that Secret Service agent that did fire the bullet could technically still be alive to this day if he's like 95 or something. No, because both of the guys who were all three of those guys are dead now because they reached like 30 or 40 when this happened. Okay, well what about like a secret agent of

guy on the hill or something, or even just like a police officer or something. I mean, hypothetically, but he would have to be perfectly at the front of the motorcade facing backwards towards the department store building in order to catch Kennedy and the Crossfire. That's also funny because

Because if... Okay, so if just the kill shot is what killed Kennedy, then the magic bullet theory still has to happen because that was the second shot, hypothetically. And the third shot's the one that killed him. So that would mean that the magic bullet did happen and then a Secret Service agent shot Kennedy. Or a much more funny theory is that

Oswald only hit Connolly and the Secret Service shot Kennedy twice. I like that one. That's my theory right there. The guy in the shotgun seat turned around with the handgun, shot Kennedy once in the neck, waited a second and a half, and then shot him in the head. They hit him with a big justice. Oswald was only trying to kill Connolly. The CIA decided, you know what?

Fuck this JFK guy. You know, it would be so funny. This would actually be the funniest twist ever. If Oswald was trying to kill Connolly. Yeah, Connolly was sleeping with Oswald's wife or something. If he was like, I'm tired of this McCarthyist. Yeah, I'm tired of this... What was he? The governor? Yeah, the governor of the state that he lived in. I'm tired of this stupid governor. And he accidentally kills the president. That'd be so funny. Especially because... That would almost kind of make sense because...

Oswald had previously tried to murder the major general, right? Or major whatever his rank was. She tried to kill that guy, which is kind of like an obscure political figure because he viewed him as like a McCarthyist. And then you have the governor of Texas.

who maybe was more conservative anti-communist. I don't know. Because comparatively, Kennedy was kind of fiscally liberal with his policies and stuff like that. A super communist sympathizer you wouldn't think would pick Kennedy of all people to kill. So maybe Connolly was the target. He was more progressive in a sense. Like he wanted to end...

If you're looking at it from the perspective of the political perspective, it makes way more sense that the CIA would kill JFK than it makes sense that Lee Harvey Oswald would kill JFK. Oswald would, yeah. If you're a propagandist, you can make it make sense that Lee Harvey Oswald killed JFK. On his own volition, yeah.

Uh, which I do, I do think I'm willing to believe that Oswald killed him. It's just who he killed him for or under the influence of that. I ask questions. Yeah. Hmm. So, um, there's a few theories, uh,

Some related theories as to why the CIA might still attempt to hide this information, even if they weren't directly involved. One, they knew or had reports that Oswald was going to attempt to assassinate John F. Kennedy, but failed to act on the report, whether intentionally or unintentionally. It could have been as simple as it was just another semi-credible threat that fell down the list of priorities. So this is the one you mentioned earlier, right, Jackson? Yeah, I think so.

The theory that maybe... Sorry, I didn't realize how much I'd been talking just and I get real fired up about CIA. I got excited. I just talked like nonstop there. No, it's good. So...

I was saying this is what you were talking about earlier that maybe the CIA didn't want to admit that they'd known. You actually see this a ton with modern instances. You know, anytime there's a mass shooting in the US, there's always an announcement of like, yeah, we knew about it. Like some kind of, yeah, it's like, oh, well, this guy had been arrested like three times and we visited his house twice or whatever. It's like, okay, well, why didn't you do anything? So it could have been that.

It's like, why are you even saying that? Like, it sounds like you're bragging about having known, but you didn't do anything about it. There's a phrase that's become a meme now. I forget what it is. It's like we had actionable intelligence. Prior knowledge or something. Prior knowledge. That's it. Everyone's like, oh, we have another prior knowledge story coming up. Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Oswald or second one Oswald was connected or otherwise involved with a foreign government in the act of assassination and CIA feared that the revelation would spark a border conflict or international incident. I disagree because the CIA would have been good for business. That is their favorite thing ever. When they do what I said that. Yeah, I don't agree with that point that, uh,

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, like they lied about the Gulf of Tonkin to get into Vietnam. They did everything in their power to keep us from killing bin Laden in the first year of the Afghanistan war or the Middle East conflict, just so that they could stay over there for 20 years and even stayed over there like eight years afterwards. So yeah, no, they love incidents. They love being the victim. Number three, Oswald was connected to the CIA, but acted independently. It

It's believed that he may have been an undercover agent that was utilized to spy on the pro-Castro groups and or the Soviet Union, or they hid the information to otherwise hide any other number of sources internally that were involved in active operations at the time. Possible. I think your one is more likely with how maybe the CIA influenced Oswald directly. Yeah.

I don't think that he was an undercover agent. I think everything Oswald said he believed, he fully believed. He hated the United States. He loved Russia. He loved Cuba. He loved anything that wasn't the United States. And he wanted to defect to them. So perhaps a CIA handler got to him under the guise of being it. And basically, the CIA wanted Kennedy out of the way. So they manipulated him into...

thinking that's his purpose, that that is his, uh, his big moment to kill the president. Yeah. That's what I think is brainwashing to doing it. He was already susceptible from his early life and his interest in, in those things. Oh yeah. If there, if there was ever anyone who was like, if you're the CIA and you're looking for a guy to kill the president, then find someone who already hates the United States and is trying to defect to other militant groups like Cuba. Uh,

and then simply turn them into your toy mold them into what you want them to be yeah well i don't get though is like why would they have made him kill that general then i guess i don't know anything about that general's politics maybe he was also no no no no i'm so i'm saying that um

I'm not saying that's the CIA. I'm saying once because we know again, look at the Bay of Pigs invasion. We know that the CIA was meddling with Cuban militant forces to try to, you know, turn them against the Cuban government, at least in that scenario. I'm saying that after...

He attempted to kill the general and after he tries to defect to Cuba, that's when the CIA picks him up. Right. Okay. Hypothetically. I mean, it's already a guy who tried to kill one political figure on his way to do something else. They realize, yeah, that he's got the gift. Although he failed at doing that. Which I'm also... It's also not obviously impossible that Oswald acted alone. Yeah.

But I feel like them still refusing to release information, combined with the evidence that the House Select Committee put together about audio files and shootings and stuff like that, that there was some kind of conspiracy. And I don't think Oswald had the fruition to put together his own group of conspirators and potential shooters. No, he doesn't seem like a particularly smart person.

Yeah, exactly. I think maybe the CIA not pretending to be the CIA because there's no way someone like Lee Harvey Oswald would have worked for the CIA. The CIA pretending to be a Cuban liaison or militant force or heck maybe.

A real Cuban military force acting in the pocket of the CIA or something simply got him the equipment and the know-how to stage a two- or three-man assassination attempt. Yeah, it could have literally been as simple as you just said, as the CIA funding some fringe militant group that had already indoctrinated...

Yeah. Just like we know historically they do a lot all the time. Yeah, which they do. And again, like Caleb said before, the people that benefited the most from JFK's death were obviously the CIA and the industrial and military industry complex. All the people that had to profit to be made from it. Yep. All right. So finally, we have the mafia is responsible. Do you want to take this one or me? Do you want to take it again?

Whoever doesn't take it can take the conclusion. So it just depends if you want. Yeah, I'll take the conclusion then. That's fine. All right. So continuing through our theory, we now have the mafia theory. So the Kennedy family has been reported to have connections to crime families for many years. For example, there have been reports that suggest the mafia helped Kennedy win the presidential election. Mob figures like Sam...

I've pronounced this correctly before. Giancana? Giancana? Giancana? I think that's it. Giancana, actually. Reportedly, using his influence to increase voter turnout for Kennedy in key states like Illinois and West Virginia. It's so funny to think of West Virginia as a swing state. Yeah.

Crime boss Frank Costello also claimed to work with Joseph Kennedy, John Kennedy's father, during the prohibition, helping with bootlegging operations. I love that. I love that Joseph Kennedy, the man infamously so fucking scared of his personal image getting out of hand, was involved in illegal bootlegging operations during the prohibition. Oh, yeah.

uh oh my god he would lobotomize his own daughter if she's fucking like snuck out late at night or whatever but prohibition you would like yeah yeah alcohol is more important baby like any good self-respecting american by god um no i uh yeah the bootlegging was super popular everyone was doing it it was all the rage at the time that's actually where nascar comes from it was fun fact um

Evidence would suggest that the Kennedy family had had relation with crime families, especially the mafia. After JFK would take office, his brother Robert F. Kennedy would become Attorney General. He then launched an aggressive campaign against organized crime.

Juxtapositionally, however, under Kennedy's administration, the CIA would collaborate with mafia figures in failed plots to assassinate Fidel Castro. You thought we were done with the CIA. The CIA not using their own agents to attempt assassinations, instead using crime organizations to try to do it. So there's again a level of remove. So crazy to imagine that Oswald was the same thing. I love how even in the mafia is responsible section of this document, the CIA is directly implicated.

And also, that's not even a conspiracy. That's just something they did. The CIA worked with the mafia to try to kill and also worked with. It's a strong word. They would pay people off to try to get the job done, right? And the people are like, who are you to think the CIA would pay off a guy who hates the president to kill the president? It's like, gee, I don't know. To be fair, it is next level to think that the CIA would kill anyone.

a president under its own government as like killing, killing a rival countries, a dictator like Fidel Castro or whatever is one thing, but then killing your own sitting president in the country that you, I think, I think when that sitting president is threatening to, of course, the organization and the vice president conveniently is super on your side. Yeah. I'm not saying, I'm not saying it's out of the realm of possibility for the CIA to do something like that. I'm just saying it is, it is the next level above assassinating.

It is. I agree. It's different than killing another country's leader to kill your own. I agree. Yeah. There's a deep-rooted, almost nihilism to it. Just the...

So there's a forsakenness to it, I guess, being like, we're going to cut off our own head, you know? It's insane. It's actually, yeah. Cause it's not just killing, it's not just killing your own president. It's killing the president that your people that comprise of the country that you exist in elected democratic. Yeah. It feels like to go that far down. There's a word I'm trying to think of to be like being lost in

Or like to push yourself. It's like cutting the rope off. Like, you know, we're too far gone and we don't want to come back kind of way. Yeah. There's a disenchantment to it being like, oh, well, this is the president of our country, but we have better intentions in mind. Yeah. And again, like JFK was doing really well in the polls at the time as well. Everyone loved him apparently. And they said, fuck that. We know better.

Yeah. I like how I've now fully convinced you the CIA. Hey, I'm still on the side of the Secret Service did it. You haven't convinced me that that's not what happened. Yeah, close enough. Yeah, they were involved in hiding it. Sure, why not? They paid the Secret Service agent to do it. There you go. Yeah, that's a funny theory. The CIA paid the driver to shoot. Yeah. Okay, how about this? They paid... Like, they paid...

Oswald to shoot near JFK but they told him don't actually hit JFK okay don't hit him it's just for show we just want to make a big you know show out of this to make it exciting or whatever don't blow his head up the actual driver to shoot huh yeah I said don't blow his head up

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But then they paid the driver to shoot JFK to make it real. Just to... I like the idea that there were like four completely unrelated parties who were all planning to kill him in that plaza. Yes. Right. As complicated as possible. None of them knew about the other, yeah. The mafia was there as well, ready? With little Tommy guns.

The reason the mafia was embroiled in conspiracy against Fidel Castro was mainly because of the loss of influence and profits in Cuba after Castro took power and they wanted to reclaim their territory. On one end, during the Kennedy administration, they were being targeted by Robert F. Kennedy, and on the other end, they were also actively working with the CIA to destabilize Castro.

So imagine that they're not imagine the CIA not liking the Kennedys. The mafia might have seen this relationship as betrayal from Kennedy, especially after they allegedly helped him with his election. Over the years, many crime families have claimed to be responsible for the assassination of Kennedy. But one sticks out, and that is the Chicago mob. Sam Giancina's brother and nephew claimed that they helped orchestrate the Kennedy assassination.

A man named James Files, who had relations with the Chicago mob, claims to have been the second shooter located in the grassy knoll. He says that his bullet hit Kennedy in the head and that Oswald's role was to plant the rifle and shells in the Texas Book Depository building. He also claims that he was paid $30,000 for his role in the assassination. Later, Files would be sent to jail for attempting to kill a policeman.

I don't think this guy is necessarily like that trustworthy, but considering that the CIA had used the mafia before to try to kill Castro, it is not out of the realm of possibility that they would use the mafia to try to kill Kennedy. The most compelling piece of evidence to the whole mob or slash mafia being responsible in some capacity for Kennedy's death is this next paragraph, if you want to take it.

So Jack Ruby, the man who assassinated Oswald, had also been speculated to be a part of the mob. Ruby owned and operated multiple nightclubs and strip clubs in Dallas, Texas, and these venues would attract mobsters and they served as venues for illegal activities such as gambling and prostitution, which were often controlled by organized crime.

People theorized that Ruby worked with the mob to assassinate Oswald to silence him so that he wouldn't reveal any information. After Ruby was arrested, his first visitor was actually a man named Joseph Kempisi, who was another mafia member. Ruby had also grown up in Chicago where he would run errands for the Chicago Outfit, the city's dominant organized crime group, so he was no stranger to being involved in the crime world.

Some believe that Ruby's ties to the mafia were purely peripheral and that he never actually directly worked with the mafia. But just the fact that Jack Ruby is involved at all and silencing Oswald, going out of his way to assassinate Oswald, which again, like you were saying before, I don't think anyone in the country

Would have been feeling like they should assassinate Oswald. Much less. Much less mind you. A strip club owner from Texas. Why? Who all of a sudden is like. I'm so mad that this guy shot the president. I'm so patriotic. I'm going to kill him. I'm going to ruin my life forever. That is like super sus to me. Either he's been paid by the CIA or someone. To Epstein Oswald. Or by the mob. A man who also. Let's not forget. Has terminal lung cancer.

So that guy's just super patriotic or hypothetically, he owes some debts to the mob. Mob needs someone to disappear. They need a guy to do it. And here comes a guy who probably has a lot of family and medical debts that will disappear if he just shoots this one guy. Right. And then he has a member of the mob visit him in prison. And who do we know that uses the mob to carry out assassinations? That's crazy. Why don't we read one paragraph above?

It's our old best friend, CIA. This still doesn't limit the CIA from being involved. It's insane. Yes, yeah, correct. Oh, man. Oh, and the mob was... Yeah, and the mob was working with the CIA in a close relationship already, so they would have been able to collaborate closely on this. They were working in a close relationship on specifically assassinations. Yeah, oh my god. And then a former mob member assassinates...

An alleged mob member assassinates the guy who just assassinated the president. He has a connection to military groups in Cuba, which is where, guess what? The CIA and the mafia is working. All right, never mind. You might have just done enough to convince me that the Secret Service didn't accidentally shoot John F. Kennedy. Now it's the mob. I have my ways. In 1975, Sam Giansono was murdered by lone gunmen, even though his house was surrounded by guards and police officers.

He was murdered shortly before he was supposed to appear before the church committee, a committee that investigated the abuses by the CIA. And you're looking at that with a bubba. The church committee was investigating the CIA's relationship with the mob, and some believe that Gian Sano was silenced. As of today, there is no concrete evidence to suggest that the mafia was responsible for the assassination of Kennedy. Yes, because everyone who might have said that died.

Well, the mafia themselves directly said it too. Like that. Yeah. The mafia is like, no, we work with the CIA. They asked us to kill him. And the CIA is like, we have no idea what they're talking about. And then they all show. Yeah. Um,

In 1979, the House Select Committee of Assassinations wrote that, quote,

which is slightly less blame than they indirectly attributed to the CIA. Yeah, they didn't afford to see the CIA that much wiggle room, honestly, which is pretty funny. My opinion about it is I definitely think the mob could have been involved, while I definitely do think the CIA was involved. Yeah, I agree. The CIA had to be involved.

In some capacity, yeah. I agree. I think... And I am fully of the belief that Oswald was in that bookstore firing shots, thinking it was of his own volition, but I don't think it was. And I think there was someone else in the courtyard that day. So you don't think Oswald may have been pressured by the mafia, for example? I think he was a young man with...

uh nothing to live for and a lot to prove uh who hated the united states and wanted to do something about it and all i think it would take to put to take that otherwise useless guy and make him a very dangerous guy very quickly is a suggestion and a rifle yeah and then he just had to get pushed in the right direction i think that's what happened yeah he really hated john cannelly

Connolly. He hated John. He hated the governor of Texas so much. So much. Poor guy. I feel bad for John Connolly. Poor guy. At the very least, I think the CIA is culpable of hiding something. Some kind of involvement. I mean, we know that for a fact. They will not release the final pages of the JFK files. It may not be hiding like the crack in the case, but they are definitively hiding something. Yeah.

uh cia prove you're innocent by assassinating one of us not me though not me not me unfortunate caleb you were the last one he shotgunned it all right crap well we didn't caleb would love to be shot by the cia that would be like a lot of videos i could make on that he joins the 27 club by getting assassinated i'm 28 though isaiah

Well, that's how good they are. Oh, shit. They're getting back in time, dude. They show you retroactively. One day you just wake up feeling sore. He just starts fading out of the camera like he's dissolving. That video would go hard, though. Like, recovering from CIA assassination. Oh, I've already got it. Oh, I thought you meant if he dies. If he dies, I've already got it scripted. I'm already ready to go. Yeah.

Well, we didn't solve it. Unfortunately, the evidence just isn't there for us to conclusively say either way what happened on that fateful day. I think there is. But we definitely, we definitely, yeah, I'm 99% of the way there.

Thank you. You've really convinced me today. I went into this thinking that it was a secret service, but now I'm not sure. I told you I have a thing when it comes to this assassination with this story. The Kennedy assassination, of course, was and continues to be a very perplexing and interesting case with many details and many different avenues we could have gone down and many different ideas of why and how the CIA was involved. This document, though, is a long one and I feel like we still...

barely scratched the surface but we've got to end it somewhere the strange nature of oswald adds fuel to the fire of strange theories that are still talked about to this day while most documents talking about kennedy's case have now been declassified there are still some sealed away with information that we may never know and perhaps they hold the answer to why and how john f kennedy was killed hopefully hopefully they release it do you think donald trump will release those documents no

I believe nothing a politician ever says. So, no. Do it, you pussy. Release it. I want to see. Do it, pussy. Come on.

Was it the CIA silencing a man who dared push back against their tyranny? Was it the mob enacting their form of revenge against the political asset they helped install? Or perhaps it was a lunatic with a gun who really wanted to be Khrushchev's best friend. John F. Kennedy's presidency is the biggest what-if in presidential history, and many wonder what he could have accomplished if he served a full term.

Some say his death is part of the Kennedy family curse, but when you have a family that spans generations, has their level of money, political power, and fame, it makes sense that there would be so many odd deaths and odd occurrences in the family itself. Like brain worms, for example. You guys have heard about the brain worm guy, right? RFK Jr. That's Caleb's guy. You better watch it. I love that guy. No, he's great. I love him too. That's Caleb's number one guy. Ha ha!

Yeah, I guess so. He is so entertaining. RFK is so entertaining. I 100% believe Caleb would charge into North Korea with a knife if RFK told him to. That's patriotism, baby. He is his number one ride or die. I'm his top guy. I'm RFK's top guy? Okay, I'll do it for you, Robert. Where's the bear corpse?

Where's the bear corpse? All right, Caleb, did you get your theory out there about JFK? Because we've kind of gone on about ours. Yeah, I think that the CIA was heavily involved

And I wouldn't be surprised if, you know, it's just like the classic. It's like the fucking Afghanistan, the Mujahideen, the Vietnam. It's like, of course, they're involved. But is it them literally doing it? No. But do they got their hands in the pie? Of course. Yes, they do. Yeah. Like I said earlier, JFK being killed with in hindsight makes way more sense for the CIA to kill JFK than a communist.

to kill JFK. Yeah, that motive was more there. Yeah, it just makes so much more sense. So, yeah, I don't know. I think they're heavily involved. I really wish we had the full JFK files fully released so we could see, but, you know. Do we know if they made the suggestion for JFK to ride around with the roof open like that? I don't know.

Who made that suggestion? Because that was my idea. I think I remember hearing that it was John Connolly's department. It was something about his department or the governor's office that had that idea, I think.

I think the original plan was his cover top, but they're like, oh, it's a nice day out. I think it was a last minute decision. Wow. I could be wrong on that. There's also, I remember this. The CIA did a threat analysis for the drive and saw that there were, I think, over 2000 windows he was going to pass on the drive. So their solution was to check none of them. Yeah. No, that's not. So that's cool.

Well, they didn't need to check anything because they knew they already had an agent up there in one of the windows. Exactly. True. Yeah, we don't need to check it. We got a guy. We got a guy in the book building. They get confused and like the internal memo and accidentally hire 2,000 assassins. JFK lands at the Lovefield Airport and there's like a battalion.

On the runway. Ready to shoot. They go to war against JFK. Just a full army battalion. JFK's like, oh my god. Texas loves me. That's so funny. It's like a Civil War firing line. Ready. Aim. Fire.

And then like as soon as he died, the CIA is like, I can't believe Russia did that. Yeah. Cuba and Russia.

I can't believe Cuba and Russia did this. All right. That's it for this episode of Red Thread. We'll update you if the CIA finally releases the rest of the documents pertaining to how guilty they are about killing JFK. If they do that, we'll let you know. You'll hear it from me first, I promise. We'll be the first to let you know. In the meantime, while you're waiting for that, though, you can go check out Caleb's new game. Please give it another shout out, Caleb. Yeah, it's called Black Pine. It's on Steam. You can wishlist it now. It's cool.

Black Pine Incident Response. Go check it out. It'll be linked below. Wishlist and play the demo. Let us know what you think. It's a lot of fun. He's also got sour.gg for candy. Delicious candy. Isaiah, what have you got? Play Black Pine. There we go. It's a fun game. Play it. Thank you, Isaiah. Alrighty. That's going to do it for this one. We'll see you next time. Thanks very much for joining us. See ya.

Bye. And the CIA did it. Bye. Agreed. Bye.