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The drop of 65,000 pages and 17 audio files related to Sen. Robert F. Kennedy’s June 1968 assassination happened too soon for JFK Facts’ team to read and analyze them. Remember, the documents are not searchable on the National Archives page highlighting the RFK collection. But if you enter “mp3” into the search box, you can find those audio files, including the Los Angeles Police Department’s interview with Sirhan Sirhan on June 6, 1968. Listen in.

On the weekly JFK Facts podcast, Larry Schnapf and Chad Nagle discussed the FBI files, the RFK release and other matters, and subscribers joined the discussion.

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The story of the most explosive JFK file still withheld by the CIA is the story of the personnel file of undercover officer George Joannides. His paid agents generated propaganda about Lee Harvey Oswald before and after JFK was killed, and he obstructed Congress’s JFK investigation in 1978.

It’s been 100 days since President Trump issued Executive Order 14176, calling for “full and complete” JFK disclosure, and the Joannides file — containing 44 documents from 1962-1981 — is still withheld from public view.

I’ll report on the ongoing efforts of Rep. Anna Paulina Luna to obtain the Joannides file and other key JFK records still held by the CIA.

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Does full JFK disclosure important because it advances President Trump’s ambition to tame the so-called “deep state?” Does Trump’s advocacy of full JFK disclosure serve his authoritarian agenda?

Or does full JFK disclosure matter because it holds the CIA accountable for abuses of power related to November 22, 1963, and highlights the need for Kennedy’s liberal policy vision today, a vision quite different than Trump’s?

In a related issue, we talk about Robert F. Kennedy’ Jr.’s decision to release the autopsy photographs of his father. Radical transparency? Or unnecessary invasion of privacy?

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JFK Live hosts, Jefferson Morley and Larry Schnapf’s live discussion of the latest developments in the JFK story—including the just-announced JFK hearing on Capitol Hill, Tuesday, May 20, featuring living witnesses to the JFK story.

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JFK Facts is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

JFK Facts is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

JFK Facts is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

JFK Facts is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

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The declassified file that Rami discovered sheds new light on young Lee Harvey Oswald and how he got to the Soviet Union. Further study of the file begs the question: how did Oswald get to Finland?

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You can follow Aaron’s unique work on his podcast, American Exception.

If you would like to join the live call-in show, it is recorded each Thursday at 8 p.m. EST. JFK Facts emails a weekly reminder and the link to join the live call every Thursday afternoon.

The recorded version usually posts the following Tuesday.

If you want more information on The Oswald File course, please visit https://www.morleycourses.com/

You can read Grant’s insightful Afterword to the “Badlands” series here.

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On today’s podcast, we play the entire 14-minute erased phone conversation between President Lyndon Johnson and FBI Director J Edgar Hoover, while host Jefferson Morley puts the deleted recording in context.

This phone conversation was almost certainly deliberately erased, but more than 60 years after JFK’s death, we can still learn something from the eerie hiss of this destroyed historical record.

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AI’s potential, alas, is not a deliverable.

The AI video firm Synthesia is offering a snippet of a virtual talking head (circulating on Twitter) who declaims about JFK’s assassination. Is she a real person or a CGI robot? The latter I think but who knows. She starts by saying, cryptically, “The future is overrated,” adding “Trust me I should know,” which sure sounds like the prelude to a scam, especially when followed up with a reference to Gerald Posner’s outdated book “Case Closed,” and concluding with this ungrammatical pensee: “The future knows it is Oswald alone.”

Come again, my little avatar? The future isn’t a person or a being so how can it know something? And, if this future-with-a-consciousness is “overrated,” then maybe its knowledge of the JFK story may be overrated too. Or maybe just non-existent.

In this case, AI is merely AI: Authenticated Ignorance.

JFK Facts and the Mary Ferrell Foundation will continue to explore how Large Language Models can assist in understanding the clandestine events culminated publicly on November 22 and the CIA coverup than followed. In recent years, JFK researchers have made a great strides in understanding the role of certain CIA officers in monitoring and manipulating Lee Harvey Oswald, the accused assassin who denied killing the president. There is more work to do and perhaps AI technologists can help.

The Mary Ferrell Foundation hosts an large, up-to-date, OCR’ed, and clean data set. We have useful prompts derived from years of JFK research. We have a vast international audience eager for JFK news and insights. We’re asking ourselves, “What can AI help us achieve?”

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Each set of circumstances surrounding the destruction of JFK assassination-related records — whether by a government agency or an individual — tells its own story. Taken together, these stories (as told in Chad Nagle’s ongoing series “Trail of Destruction") illuminate the extraordinary and disturbing lengths the U.S. government is prepared to go to advance the official narrative of the “lone gunman” in President Kennedy’s murder.

This week’s story comes from Hunter Leake, the CIA’s number two man in New Orleans, who disclosed he used Oswald for intelligence purposes.

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Russell’s book, “The Man Who Knew Too Much” was among the first JFK books to document the CIA’s hand in events leading to JFK’s assassination in clear and convincing detail. His research and commentary are central to Rob Reiner and Soledad O’Brien’s popular “Who Killed JFK?” podcast. He is a friend of Marina Oswald Porter. And his recent biography (and film) makes the case for his friend Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as the next president of the United States.

Russell is a maverick with impact, so you will want to hear what he has to say.

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Have a listen above.

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Yet her story is largely unknown.

For reasons that will become clear, Marina has not given an interview in three decades. But soon, you will be able to listen to an in-depth conversation that has not previously been heard.

Tune in to the JFK Facts Podcast at 8 tonight (Tuesday, Feb. 13) for a world-exclusive interview: Marina Oswald Porter Has One Last Thing to Say.

After that time, you can download the Marina Oswald episode here. It also will be posted on the JFK Facts YouTube Channel on Feb. 13.

If you can’t do that, click on the player at the top of this post to listen to last week’s conversation above.

JFK Live is held every Thursday night at 8 pm ET.

JFK Live is really just a big Zoom call, open to all. Comments and questions from people who are new to the JFK story are welcome.

Click here to join the call. (Meeting ID: 884 9319 4600.)

You can also listen at your convenience. The JFK Live podcast is posted on the site on week after it takes place. Click on the “Podcast” in the navigation of the JFK Facts home page.

And, if you like what you hear and want more high-quality, fact-checked JFK content, visit the JFK Facts YouTube channel.

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In the 1980s he was a Capitol Hill aide who helped put together the legislation that became the JFK Records Act. In the 1990s he was a movie prodcuer who helped Oliver Stone put together the movie “Nixon.” Eric was friends with Howard Hunt, the Watergate burglar with JFK secrets. He is pals with John Dean, the Watergate whistleblower. And he’s still making movies with Oliver Stone, most recently a pro-nuclear power documentary.

I thought, who better to talk to about where we are now in the JFK story than Eric?

JFK Facts is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

If you can’t do that, listen to last week’s conversation above.

JFK Live is held every Thursday night at 8 pm ET.

The JFK Live podcast is really just a big Zoom call, open to all. Comments and questions from people who are new to the JFK story are welcome.

Click here to join the call. (Meeting ID: 884 9319 4600.)

You can also listen at your convenience. The JFK Live podcast is posted on the site on week after it takes place. Click on the “Podcast” in the navigation of the JFK Facts home page.

Please enjoy last week’s meeting in the player above.

And, you like what year, do a deep dive on the JFK Facts YouTube channel.

JFK Facts is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

JFK Facts is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

If you can’t do that, listen to last’s week’s conversation above.

JFK Live is held every Thursday night at 8 pm ET.

The JFK Live podcast is really just a big Zoom call, open to all. Comments and questions from people who are new to the JFK story are welcome.

Click here to join the call. (Meeting ID: 884 9319 4600.)

You can also listen at your convenience. The JFK Live podcast is posted on the site on week after it takes place. Click on the “Podcast” in the navigation of the JFK Facts home page.

Please enjoy last week’s meeting in the player above.

JFK Facts is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

JFK Facts is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

JFK Facts is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

JFK Facts is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Wolff told us that Cooper was privately caustic about the Commission’s investigation.

Wolff recalls his boss complaining of the Commission, “They look but they do not see.”

You can listen to all JFK Facts Podcasts here.

JFK Facts is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

JFK Facts is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

In our conversation, Mark Shaw, author of the new book, Fighting for Justice, talks about what he learned from an aide to Senator John Sherman Cooper, a Republican from Kentucky and member of the Warren Commission.

According to aide Morris Wolff, Cooper said the Commission set out to blame Oswald alone and refused to investigate other possibilitieis. Cooper disagreed with Warren Commission’s “lone gunman” findings and wanted to file a dissenting view but was quashed by Chief Justice Earl Warren.

Shaw tells the story here.

JFK Facts is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

In this week’s episode, Jefferson Morley talks to Alison McClelland about her father’s extraordinary story from his boyood in East Texas to his medical education to his central role of a lifetime in the JFK assassination story that began on November 22, 1963 and continued through his testimony to the Warren Commission, his involvement in Jim Garrison’s investigation, as well as the Journal of the American Medical Association’s factually false response to Oliver Stone’s JFK, and his reflections on the JFK story generally.

JFK Facts is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Landis book, FInal Witness, will be publicly available tomorrow October 11.

We will return to the open discussion format next week.

Meanwhile, go here to listen to previous JFK Facts Podcast episodes.

JFK Facts is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

JFK Facts is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

JFK Facts is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

JFK Facts is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Listen to all the JFK Facts podcast here.

JFK Facts is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

JFK Facts is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

JFK Facts is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

JFK Facts is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

JFK Facts is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

JFK Facts is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

This episode takes the place of the regularly scheduled Zoom conference call on Thursday night, May 25 at 8 pm ET. See you on June 1.

JFK Facts is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Join us tonight, Thursday May 18, at 8 pm ET for this week’s discussion about the latest JFK developments. Click here here to participate. (Meeting ID: 884 9319 4600.)

Tonight you can join co-host Larry Schnapf and I for this week’s JFK chat.

Click here to join the call.

This week we’ll be talking about my story on James Angleton, a special offer for fans of Seymour Hersh and allegations from RFK Jr.—plus any other developments in the ever-evolving JFK assassination story that you might know of.

We convene every Thursday night at 8 pm ET.

The podcast is a Zoom call, open to all. Comments and questions are welcome. All points of view about the JFK story are welcome too.

Click here to join the call. (Meeting ID: 884 9319 4600.)

You can also listen at your convenience. The podcast will also be published on this site (and podcasting platforms) next week.

JFK Facts is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Tonight (and every Thursday night) at 8 pm ET.

The podcast is really just a big Zoom, open to all. Comments and questions are welcome.

Go here to join the call. (Meeting ID: 884 9319 4600.)

You can also listen at your convenience. The podcast will also be published on the site (and podcasting platforms) next week.

JFK Facts is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Co-host Larry Schnapf and I will host another discussion of the latest news and developments related to the JFK assassination story.

Tonight (and every Thursday night) at 8 pm ET.

The podcast is really just a big Zoom, open to all. Comments and questions are welcome.

Click here to join the call. (Meeting ID: 884 9319 4600.)

You can also listen at your convenience. The podcast willbe published on the site (and podcasting platforms) next week.

JFK Facts is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

For next week’s show, join us tonight, Thursday Feb. 23 at 8pm Eastern Time for the latest in JFK news and clues. We’ll talk about the late Richard Belzer, Rep. David Schweikert’s bill to free the JFK files, and the lawsuit filed by the family of Malcolm X.

Co-host Larry Schnapf will provide expert commentary on developments on Capitol Hill and in the courts. Your comments and questions are welcome.

We are no longer using the Riverside studio. Join us on Zoom by clicking here.

Look for Meeting ID: 884 9319 4600

You can also listen later at your convenience. This podcast will be published on the site in the next week.

JFK Facts is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Read the Heath Memo.

In the podcast, I explain, among other things, how the Heath memo illuminates the story of George Joannides and the CIA’s pre-assassination interest in Oswald.

I first reported about Heath’s memo last Thursday: “Declassified Memo Reveals CIA Investigated Cuban Exiles for JFK's Assassination.

Here is Heath’s unredacted memo.

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Titovets first told the story in his 2010 book “Oswald Russian Episode,” which got little media attention in the United States. He offered no theory of the assassination to flatter conspiracy theorists. Defenders of the official theory of Oswald’s guilt mostly ignored his account. Nonetheless, Titovets is that rarest of people: a living witness to the history of JFK’s assassination.

Here are some highlights of our conversation.

First Impressions of Oswald

They met at the flat of mutual friends, a Spanish speaking couple named Ziger whose daughters were friendly with Oswald.

“During that first meeting he had the possibility to learn a lot about me,” Titovets said (4:44). “…. At the end of the party, he suggested we go together. … He showed me where he lived and when we were about to part… I wanted to suggest my apology to him… I had asked him a lot of questions during that night, questions about how to pronounce this and that, and I wanted to thank him…. I tried to think of some nice phrase to thank him and nothing came to mind. At that time I was not that experienced with common English phrases. I said “I shall expose you,” when I meant, “I have been exploiting you.”

“There was a sudden change in his attitude,” Titovets recalled. “There was a torrent of words and I thought with dismay I had lost my sparring partner. I was, well, in shock.”

He realized that Oswald had gone through an ordeal when he arrived in Moscow and told Soviet officials he wanted to live in the Soviet Union. His request had gone up to the Politiburo, the highest level of the communist government. Oswald knew the Soviet intelligence service, the KGB, was paying close attention to his every move. Titovets understood that Oswald had good reason to protect his “inner” self against being exposed.

As Oswald erupted, Titovets feared he had lost his new-found English-speaking friend. But no.

“Lee must have realized my situation,” Titovets went on, “and suddenly he calmed down, and I think he felt sort of sorry for his outburst. He said, ‘OK I’ll see you to you to your bus stop.’ On the way he suggested, ‘Let’s get together. Come over to my place.’”

The exchange, Titovets said, was “interesting from a psychological point of view” because “it revealed something of Oswald’s character,” namely that “he was reasonable person.”

“He wasn’t carried away with his emotions,” Titovets explained. “Another person would say ‘Go jump. I don’t want to have anything to do with you.’ But in this situation, he looked at my face, at my dismay, and he realized I didn’t mean that….. The moment he understood correctly … he was a changed man.”

Oswald and Titovets began a friendship that would continue for three years and two months until Oswald was died a violent death in Dallas, Texas, some 5,500 miles away from Minsk.

Oswald defended capitalism

“It was at his place that we started to compare political societies,” Titovets says (10:05). At one point, they had “a rather hot exchange.” Titovets says he was the stubborn committed Soviet socialist who thought "we were the best of all.”

He said Oswald—often portrayed as a fanatical communist—defended the American capitalist system in their exchanges. “You live here like slaves,” Oswald told Titovets, emphasizing his southern pronunciation, “Suh-laves.” Oswald added, “You can’t go abroad.”

Even though Titovets was free to travel in the vast Soviet Union from Latvia in western Europe, to Siberia, six time zones away, he privately had to concede the point. “He was right,” he said.

Oswald on life under communism

Titovets recalls that when Oswald first came to the Soviet Union in October 1959 he felt at home (22:45). He said, “I knew that I belonged.’ … When he left the country [in May 1962], his impression was communists [caused] a lot of evil, starvation of people, that sort of thing.”

Oswald and Fair Play for Cuba Committee

While in Minsk, Oswald met and married Marina Prusakova. When he tired of the regimented life in the Soviet Union, he and Marina and their first-born child moved to the United States in June 1962. He and Titovets stayed in touch via letters.

The Oswalds settled in Fort Worth Texas. When Lee could not find steady work, the Oswald moved to New Orleans where Lee had lived as a teenager. In May 1963. Oswald became involved with an American organization called the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, which defended Fidel Castro’s new left-wing government in Cuba from U.S. aggression. The FPCC, as it was known, had chapters in two dozen American cities. The group mounted public demonstrations and letter writing campaigns in opposition to U.S. policy of overthrowing Castro’s government.

Oswald’s advocacy on behalf of the FPCC led to a series of confrontations with local anti-Castro exiles on the street and on the radio (24:43). These Cubans were affiliated with the Cuban Student Directorate, a CIA-funded group. In these clashes, Oswald proved himself “an experienced agitator,” Titovets said. “A very good speaker…. a promising political activist.

Oswald and Non-Violence

More than most JFK authors, TItovets pays close attention to Oswald’s political writings which he found original, though not particularly Marxist. “The idea of non-violence penetrated all of his teaching,” Titovets said (28:03).

The Oswalds wanted to return to the Soviet Union

In 1963 Marina wrote plaintively to Titovets about what she had lost by moving to the United States, a country where she didn’t speak the language and her husband was often unemployed (33:07). Oswald told Titovets they would meet again in Leningrad. Oswald made arrangements for he and Marina to moved back to the Soviet Union, together or separately.

On Kennedy’s assassination

Titovets was in Moscow pursuing biochemical research when he heard the news that President Kennedy had been assassinated in Dallas. He told me he mostly felt sorry for Kennedy. America, he thought, “had a history of doing away with their presidents.”

On Oswald’s arrest

“That was a shocking experience to me…. I felt for him…. I didn’t believe and I never believed that he did kill President Kennedy. It’s absolutely impossible for him to do that.”

On Oswald’s assassination.

When Oswald was brought out before TV cameras two days later, Titovets saw a man step out of the crowd and fire a single shot into Oswald’s stomach. “They showed it on TV even in our country,” he said of Jack Ruby’s murder of his friend. He likened the experience to getting murdered himself. “I felt sorry for him, really sorry him.” (37:18)

‘Absolutely out of his character’

Titovets said that his own friendship and interviews with people who knew him convinced him that Oswald did NOT shoot President Kennedy (44:01). That would have been “absolutely out of his character,” he said.

‘Oswald was selected’

When I asked Titovets to speculate on what did happen on November 22, 1963, he replied, “The plot came from people who had means and way to cover that… it was top people. They didn’t like his politics. They didn’t like his new way of dealing with Soviet Union, his approach to the Vietnam war. There were many reasons to remove the president.”

“It would have shocked the American people to learn the real truth,” he went on. “Oswald was selected as a very convenient person for that… For the man in the street that was enough…. What do you expect from a crazy person?”

Titovets said he finds the official attitude about Oswald’s sole guilt to be ‘absolutely discouraging,” Oswald “was not guilty at all on his personal level,” he insisted. “I’m waiting for the time when he is officially rehabilitated.”

JFK Facts is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

The podcast takes the form of a conference call every Thursday night at 8pm ET. The conversation is open to all.

To participate in this week’s podcast, sign up at the Riverside studio here.

This Thursday night why the positive media coverage of MFF v. Biden. We’ll talk about Tulsi Gabbard and JFK, and we’ll answer your questions.

Register to join the conversation at 8 pm ET on Thursday October 27. Just click here.

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