www.mattkprovideo.com/2024/05/11/gerald-posner-on-delusion/

On The Trail Of Delusion,

Episode 3, Gerald Posner Acclaimed writer Gerald Posner, author of CASE CLOSED: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of JFK.

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TRANSCRIPT:

INTRO:
I want to thank everybody for coming this afternoon.
My name is Fred Litwin
Noted author Fred Litwin
And of course Fred is also the author of “I was a teenage JFK conspiracy freak,” ” on the trail of delusion” and “Oliver Stones film flam at the demagogue of Dealey Plaza”
Fred Litwin is here he’s a longtime author and certainly Watcher of politics
Joining us is Fred Litwin great to have you here thank you very much [Music]

Fred Litwin:

Okay welcome to another edition of On The Trail of Delusion.
A podcast on the JFK assassination where we try to separate reality from fiction which is something you would you see so often uh on the internet particularly on YouTube when it comes to the JFK assassination
My guest in this episode is acclaimed author Gerald Posner who has written 13 acclaimed books uh including three that were on the New York Times non-fiction bestseller list Case Closed,
Why America slept and God’s Bankers
He’s a contributor to Forbes he was a finalist for the Pulitzer prize in history
His latest book is Pharma which came out in 2020 which is an expose of the pharmaceutical industry
Gerald was a lawyer in New York City
you can reach him on his website http://www.posner.com and he also has a substack where he writes frequently on a variety of topics

including the pharmaceutical industry and on the whole trans craze which is something we both have something to talk about there at the end of this podcast
So welcome Gerald Posner

Gerald Posner:
Fred great to be with you um you know I sort of from the time you wrote
“I was a teenage conspiracy freak “
I was always intrigued by your work and then the amazing
“On the trail of Delusion “
it was just a fantastic work of original scholarship on the extent of how bad the Garrison investigation was
So we’re a mutual admiration Club here
I really admire your work on the on the JFK

Fred Litwin:

Well thank you very much and CASE CLOSED was was a book that really did it for me
I mean I um I was sort of on the fence and then I just decided I had to buy a copy of CASE CLOSED

I kept putting but putting it off because you know there everybody was nitpicking

a variety of things and I said I have to read it
I went to the store I was living in Oxford in the in the UK went to the bookstore and in in the center of Oxford I knew they had a copy
I bought it it sat on my coffee table for like a week or two I didn’t want to open it
I was scared and I decided to open it and I said you know what I’m going to skip the part on Oswald I’m going to go right to the chapter on the medical evidence and I read that chapter
And said oh my God this is amazing.
Everything in here is true and coherent and makes sense and it just it my eyes completely opened and I said you know there was no conspiracy
it all makes sense
But you know Fred it’s very interesting
when you say that the you went right to the medical evidence
so in my view and as the somebody who delved into this and you know worked on it for a few years
the medical evidence yes and ballistics and all is very very telling
but all it tells you in the end is that one shooter at Dealey Plaza hit the targets that day
Target of Jack Kennedy and then also wounded the governor
it doesn’t tell you if there were other assassins
that the Dealey Plaza who never fired a shot
It doesn’t tell you who the Assassin was
Doesn’t tell you even if it does tell you who the Assassin was
if they did it for their own
and that’s why when you say you first skipped the Oswalt part
because for me in in an interesting way when people say
what’s the single piece of evidence that most convinces you it was a lone assassin
I sort of say
the story of Oswald.
now that’s not an easy sound bite and it’s not something for people to grasp
But you understand it so well because it’s really only when you start to understand Oswald that you get an idea for why this happened
And why he was not somebody that any group of conspirators would have trusted very long to to be part of it
Yeah
And I think I I was already convinced that Oswald was part of it
and then but once you realized that he was the only shooter
who on Earth would work with this guy
I mean I mean it just doesn’t the whole thing doesn’t make sense
you know and uh
what what do you think his motives were
what what what’s what’s your research telling you on his motives
I think that’s the great mystery that we we sort of debate about and talk about because we never know since he took it to the Grave with him
Thanks to Jack Ruby
Unfortunately maybe even if he had lived and gone to trial and been convicted
He still wouldn’t have told us why he might have done what James R did after the king assassination and continued for decades to say
“oh it was it wasn’t me it was some mysterious other person who made me do it”
All so maybe we wouldn’t have found out even if he had lived
but right
people want to know why
I you know as an attorney I I get that in a criminal trial if you’re doing a murder trial you don’t need to establish motive to show the crime was committed
But juries don’t like that
they like to know the why for Oswald
My speculation my informed speculation on it is that
he had committed himself a few months earlier to political assassination for his cause of affecting change
this sort of odd mixture of left-wing Marxism with a bit of Anarchy thrown in
this ideology that he had that he was the result of his own reading and having spent time in the Soviet Union
when he defected having studied what he thought were the sins of capitalism and he committed himself to assassinating
as you know not the president of the United States but a retired army General
who he thought was a right-wing threat like in the form of Hitler in the 30s
He overestimated the extent Edwin Walker this retired army General might affect history
But to Oswald he was a threat
Oswald tried to kill him in April
failed
when the bullet was deflected along a window frame of Walker’s house
now at that point Oswalds already ready to make the move to
effectuate political change through the barrel of a gun
as Mao would say.
And later comes the opportunity of a lifetime
for him it’s the president of the United States
the biggest possible machine to throw into the the the Cog of the Machinery of government
and for Oswald
it’s an impossible opportunity to bypass
that being said you will have a thought about this
I’d like to know what you think about it
there is the night before the assassination which gives me some pause about his commitment to killing the president
and that is he has to go outside of Dallas to a suburb where his wife Marina is living with Ruth Paine
they are separated Oswald and his wife at that point
He has to go there because his rifle that is tied ballistically to killing the president to the exclusion of every other gun in the world the next day is sitting in the garage of the Paines
and his and Marina doesn’t know it nor his Ruth Paine
He has to retrieve that rifle
and bring it in the next morning to the assassination which he does disguised in brown paper bag
his curtain rods he tells the driver his colleague who brings him in that night.
He has a long heartfelt discussion the border is almost not really on an argument but a plaint of pleading with his wife to come back with him
He says to Marina
let’s get back together we need to do this
he had a very tumultuous relationship with her
he had hit her at times
um
it had been violent she had separated from him he said
I’ll buy you a washing machine
that was big thing for him
they didn’t have much money
they had a few hundred dollar uh and she said said
I I was just being I was so mad at him I rebuffed every effort he made I just kept saying no no no no
and later that night when they went to sleep
she later recounted that at one point she had rested her foot against his leg and he had he pushed it away
with she thought of ferocity and she thought:
” boy he’s in a mean mood”
the question that is impossible to answer
Was he just Faking It the night before
was he pretending that he wanted to get together with her
or if she had said said yes is it possible that the assassination of John Kennedy would not have happened
that he was what I called once an equivocal assassin
that he was ready to kill the president
people hate to hear that because they want to think this is a dedicated assassin
it’s like this is the like Siran Siran
an RFK writing down in a book
“RFK Must Die RFK Must Die”
Ready to kill him at any cost
that’s not Oswald
he has tried to kill someone
he’s ready to kill the president of the United States
I believe that when he went to Dealey Plaza the next day with his rifle he didn’t know what the security would be like
and let me tell you
if there were Secret Service in the building
it wasn’t a suicide mission
he wasn’t going to take the rifle out and try to kill the president if co-workers of his had stayed on the sixth floor of the depository
where he set up a snipers Nest
I don’t think he was going to kill them and then kill the president
So there’s an unusual phase here in which we expect zealots to be the Assassins
He is a zealot of sorts
But there’s a moment here in which he could have had a genu reflection moment
and and backed away from the assassination
you may not agree with that but it’s it’s hard to say you know I mean I think
I do think he was play acting a bit but who knows
it’s it’s impossible what I do find interesting is he left all that money for Marina on the bedside table
um
which he could have used for a getaway
I mean I don’t think he was even thinking of of getting away
He didn’t know whether he’d actually get a shot off
He may have also thought that if he did get a shot off that perhaps he’d be killed and that would be the end of it
um so he didn’t you know he he left he left all that money for her
so I don’t think he was thinking about how to get away
you’re right
well you know that’s a great question because he left essentially their life savings right
less than a couple hundred dollars
and she didn’t see that when she first woke up
that would have scared the hell out of her
she didn’t see also that he’d take it off his wedding ring
which he never took off and left in a little demit test teacup that belonged to her I think it was her grandmother
um and that frightened her
when she finally saw that
but he did take enough much and I forget the exact amount
like $13
right
which was enough for getting on a bus that would have taken him down to Laredo Texas
where he could have gotten a transfer to go back into Mexico
if he was taking that route we won’t know uh
but there I do not think that Lee Harvey Oswald who at least had thought through the assassination in terms of waiting on the floor until all his co-workers were gone
setting up the sniper Nest
so he was basically hidden from sight from the adjoining tall buildings on the six and seventh floor
they couldn’t look straight into him
he wasn’t taking the shot
just as the limousine first turned the corner into Dealey Plaza
the straight on shot that so many people say
oh that was a better shot
no it was the most exposed shot for him
yeah
U so he he sets himself up at an angle to shoot at the car
when it makes the 90 degre
more than 90° turn and heads away from the depository slowly
and he he’s and he drops the rifle on the sixth floor
sort of throws it
where he thinks it might be hidden for a moment
that has to be the case
because he can’t walk out of the building with the rifle
he’ll immediately be tackled
arrested and known as the Assassin
he then has an effort to go somewhere
he gets in a taxi for the first time any of us can remember
right
he’s very tightfisted he doesn’t have much money
he gets out of the taxi it’s so slow gets on a bus
the uh you know and and goes back to his rooming house to retrieve his pistol
runs into a Dallas policeman
who thinks he’s looking a little suspicious for whatever reason
will’ll never know why since he didn’t call that Callin
and shoots him dead w
hatever he was planning Fred went to RI at that moment the moment
he runs in a tippet
so the Oswald wasn’t he was clever enough at just turned 24 years old to have some crazy idea of how he thought
he might be able to get away and he didn’t have as you said a lot of money
they besides the bus ride uh it’s not going to do a a lot of Wonders for him so
um
I do think he was headed out of Dallas
but I’ll tell you
I have nothing to prove that
yeah
I I I think that I think that when when he actually killed the president
I think he probably thought
oh my God what do I do now
you know and
yeah
he he realized he had to go back home and he had to get his gun but
uh I
I think he was walking around thinking about what do I
where do I go
what do I do
if he had that 200 bucks on him or 170 bucks that he left Marina
that would have not only gotten him to Mexico
but enough money to bribe people and actually do something quite substantial down there
to really get away
no that’s true and that’s why there’s what I call unwarranted speculation
which means you’re just picking it up out of the blue
or you’ve just seen a Tik Tok video and then sort of speculation
based upon the history of how we understand him
and what his options
limited options
were and as you just said
he had no option of going down to Mexico if that was his plan
and being able to bribe officials of that
all he had was the ability to go to the Cuban Mission and say
I’m seeking political Asylum you rejected me because you didn’t think I was committed to the revolution
you turned me away here six weeks ago
and wouldn’t give me a Visa
or the Soviets but more likely the Cubans and saying
you know what the
I just struck a blow for the revolution
now that that shows you the extent of his naivity
because the Cubans wouldn’t have touched him with a thousand foot pole
afraid that if they had any connection to the person who just shot the president of the United States
the entire Island would be torched by
uh you know the the United States
So that wasn’t going to happen
but that might have been his idea that he could seek status as a
you know
of safety at one of those missions
it’s sort of like James Earl Ray foolishly thinking after he killed King
that he wanted to get to White Run Rhoodesia or South Africa t
hat those countries would give him safe haven
there was no chance that those governments
already ostracized in the world and under attack for being white run governments would allow the the murderer Assassin of Martin Luther King Safe Haven there
and not extradite him back
but that’s sometimes the Assassins don’t think it out very clearly
in the for the aftermath to get away
that’s really very very true
let me ask you what what you know
Given the fact that the evidence against Oswalt is so overwhelming
and and so clear what what do you think of of why the the Persistence of of conspiracy theories today
how do you account for this
because I mean it just it just seems like conspiracy theorists they they they ignore
they try to explain
they you know it’s uh
in fact I think there what really bugs me now about conspiracy theorists is that in the 60s at least they used the evidence to try and convince you that there was something there
now they claim everything is faked and phony and and uh and that’s their evidence of conspiracy
what how do you count for the Persistence of JFK assassination conspiracy theories
I think there is this psychological desire for a lot of people
And in William Manchester who wrote “Death of a president”
talked about this this desire
that you almost want to instinctively feel that there’s more than just this 24 year-old loser in life
Lee Harvey oswalD
who managed to pull off the first real successful thing he ever did
and it was the assassination of the president
uh it just seems too big a feat
especially when the president is Jack Kennedy
and it means Camelot and it’s
you know
it’s the the best and the brightest and all of this
it can’t be and Kennedy had admittedly as any president has
but Kennedy had a lot of enemies
a lot of people that really hated him
a lot of people that cheered his death
I’m sure
within the the mafia his brother was going after them relentlessly
among Pro Castro Cubans
who thought he was trying to destroy Cuba
a whole series of people
so I understand that that’s easy to confuse and conflate and say
ah I couldn’t have just been this guy it had to be more
but what you said a moment ago
I think is so interesting
that in the beginning is after
The Warren Commission report came out in ‘ 64
even before that
conspiracy theories were more of questions about
what had happened
the whole story wasn’t available
the public had not seen the Zapruder film
there were questions about
did Jack Ruby have mafia ties
all of these issues and the those questions there was even a book put out
COUNTERPLOT by Edward J Epstein
in 67 or that that asked a lot of questions that have since been answered
but at the time were fairly good questions
there was also a knee-jerk response by some leftwing writers like Buchanan in Europe
um some far-left writers to say
this is being pinned on a leftist at a time when it’s the right who wanted Kennedy dead so it must be a setup
all the evidence is overwhelming because they planted it all
all right the U and then later people said W what is that thing with uh Dulles the former head of the CIA
who Kennedy had dismissed on the Warren Commission
we don’t tend to think and then the commission locks up the files
the requests often of the Kennedy family for you know 50 years
and people can’t see the material they think that that’s hidden
so I get that
and then the biggest thing that happens that guarantees conspiracy theories will never go away
is what you ended up writing a book about
and that is that
we had a public official and district attorney in a major city
that had a Nexus
that City had a Nexus to the assassination
because Oswald had spent time there only months before the assassination
who said
by the way
there’s this massive conspiracy and tried to bring it to trial
and all the conspiracy theorist from Mort Saul everybody else
they all went down and worked for him
Harold Weissberg
they worked for Garrison
they believed in Garrison
And when Garrison failed
they refused to believe the extent to which that that was a fake prosecution
and I think at that point they were committed to it
they refused to give it up
and just at the point maybe when things could be dying down
in comes the House Select Commitee ( On Assassinations)
which does a tremendous job on debunking a lot of things
and then as they’re running out of time
they get these sound experts in
Weiss and AI from New York
who think I maybe on this tape that belonged to a motorcycle
might have been in Dealey Plaza
we hear four shots
and of course
you know what you hear when you listen to it
yeah nothing
nothing
nothing
right they pick up suponic turns out that’s a minute and a half away from the assassination
it’s not real but at the time it lets the select committee say 95% certainty of conspiracy
and boy you’re never going to change it at that point
you’re of and running
and so the theories are wild they get Wilder over time
one of my personal favorites
I liked him a lot
we had a communication
we could talk to other even though we never agreed on the case
was David lifton’s “Best Evidence”
the idea that the bodies were
you know
the coffins were swapped
they had to do surgery on the President on the way back to the autopsy
to make it look like he was shot from the rear
and this goes to show you the nature of conspiracy theories
I remember saying to David once
“but David let me ask you a question
you’ve posited this theory in which a sort of secret team steals the body
they perform this intricate surgery
to make it look as though the wounds are from the rear to frame Oswald
so when the autopsy is done the evidence will match v
ery high-risk operation with a lot of potential for going wrong
two caskets at Bethesda
all of this if
if the two of us were planning the conspiracy to Kill the President
we wanted to frame Oswald and he’s going to be behind the president
why don’t we just put the world class shooter somewhere behind the president in the Dal Tex building
in a neighboring building
that person will shoot the president from the rear
and then you don’t have to do the Sur you don’t have to steal the corpse
you don’t have to have the two coffins
you will have the wounds already from the rear
where Oswald was
and you’ll frame him even easier
isn’t that a much simpler more straightforward and less risky conspiracy
and he would have reasons as to why it wasn’t so
I learned a long time ago common sense and conspiracy theories Common Sense doesn’t necessarily
push somebody off of a theory of very convoluted Theory they may have spent a lot of time developing
I I find it amazing that you take um
I mean even an easier way to get rid of Kennedy would be to leak uh all the all the inamar well his affair with Judith exner
my God you’re going out with the girlfriend of a mafia mafiosi captain in Chicago
uh boy that’s putting National Security at risk
and and Hoover finds out about it and what does hoover do?
he actually puts an end to it
doesn’t leak it
he could have leaked it and destroyed Kennedy
now he puts an end to it and says
don’t do this
yeah
because a Hoover was was in the end a a great collector of information
Hoover wanted the information in case anybody ever moved against him
or he needed a favor or whatever else
the more information he had the better
he was
I did a book many years later on Ross Perot
he was a collector of information
Perot never used it but he had it in case somebody moved against him
and so you know those people like that are are really
sometimes
the the can be the the most dangerous
and so so there’s were so many ways to to get rid of Kennedy you could
and by the way I did I did I spoke to David Lifton a couple of months before he died
because I wanted to ask him about this whole notion of General Curtis LeMay being at the autopsy
the conspiracy theorists or claim Paul o Conor had said
lton was the first guy to interview o Conor
so I called him up in Las Vegas and uh
we talked for about an hour and he couldn’t really remember
he didn’t remember OConnor saying anything about LeMay
but I wanted to go back and check the tapes
he seemed to be a very sort of um lonely man at that point
he he was he he at one point uh our conversation got cut off
because he was on a cell phone a
nd he sent me an immediate email
call me back immediately a
nd he wanted to talk about uh the book best evidence
and the second edition and this Edition and he was very proud of it
but he really wanted to somebody to talk to
yeah uh David David was an amazing person a prodigious researcher
Trish and I met him a number of times when we lived in New York
when he would come to visit his mother
at a little coffee shop a Greek coffee shop in the’ 60s off of First Avenue
and I remember he told us once
we said to him uh you know are you dating anyone now
and he said
no the the last uh woman I was dating said :
“If you were as interested in my body as you are in Kennedy’s our relationship might last”
but it didn’t last and so I think that was only half in jest
that was probably true
the one thing I do really appreciate about David Lifton was he was one of the first people to understand that Jim Garrison was a charlatan
Right
and you could read his various writings and and uh and
and that’s what I appreciated about Sylvia Meagher she also really realized that Garrison was really ridiculous
If you go to the Sylvia Meagher archive which is now all online at Hood College
I mean I’ve been going through it and reading all of her letters and her unpublished memos about Garrison
but some great writing about what she was seeing at the time and she it was very clear
to her and she was very very distressed that so many conspiracy theorists just couldn’t see it
the well they couldn’t see it or as you know they didn’t want to see it
or they had this fall back of even when they started to have internal doubts they didn’t say
it publicly
they said
he must have something he must have something right
it’s going to come up soon and save the day and you mentioned
Lon this happens to a number I think of people who buy conspiracy theories
they tend to rely on the accounts of eyewitnesses
sometimes eyewitnesses have changed their story dramatically over the decades
they don’t look at the original accounts or are “eyewitnesses” who’ have inserted themselves
and I use “eyewitnesses” in quotes into the story for their 15 minutes of fame years later
I as an attorney as an investigative journalist I know that eyewitness accounts are very very important
but you have to be careful about relying on them because eyewitnesses are often wrong
it’s why at Dealey Plaza you get “Eye Witnesses”
eyewitness accounts are all over the place so one of the things that was the Lynch pin for David Lifton was a classic case of how I differ with him on on Research or approach to case
he had a witness tell him that he saw a wood coffin at Bethesda in the hallway and there was a bronze coffin the president was put into
so that meant for Lifton there were two coffins and he then worked backwards from that into the amazing theory about swap coffin swap bodies everything else
if I had come across the eyewitness who told me he had seen a wood coffin at Bethesda I would think immediately there’s an account of the wood coffin and there’s an account of the the bronze coffin
one of them is wrong
I don’t think both are right
so my immediate feeling is okay one of those witness is wrong
let me find out which is more credible
and why so his view is they both must be right and that’s where you get into real trouble
where you take every eyewitness account as being absolutely true like in Garrison’s case
when you had the all the instances of the witnesses who spotted Oswald wandering around with guy banister you know on on the voting registration and things like this
if you take eyewitnesses accounts as uh as accurate you could get in a lot of trouble very quickly
absolutely
people
most people haven’t read Elizabeth loftus’s work on eyewitness accounts
I mean it’s really you you see that in the medical evidence I mean
yeah
yes doctors at Parkland who who worked on Kennedy for frantically for 15 minutes
yeah
I mean their eyewitness accounts are going to be all over the map because they weren’t paying attention to where the wounds were
they weren’t doing a forensic examination um and they’re just eyewitness accounts um
the AARB said in their final report the only thing worse than an eyewitness account are 30-year-old eyewitness accounts
yes that
no that’s absolutely right
but you know there there’s something interesting also you can have an eyewitness account that recounts information that you’ve concluded as a
as an investigator as an author is incorrect because you’re able to show it from documents
photographs
x-rays
whatever else
then you go back to the individual who’s made that original account
and you show them the material or you confront them with it and the question is
if they still stick to what they saw well and they’re locked into that story
but sometimes they have a reason as to why they said that
and the best example are the Parkland doctors
you know I interviewed in 1992 uh this six I mean including the six from you know
pepper Jenkins to to Baxter to all of the main group that treated the president
and I asked them
why did you all end up saying in your statements that you thought the president had a front wound which was later obliterated by doing you know
unfortunately putting the tube in and and and therefore once they do that and intubate the president
you no longer can see it but by their eyewitness accounts they all saw front wound and they they didn’t hesitate
they didn’t say I was wrong in that
they say now we understand why we thought that
we never flipped the president over
we never turned the body over
so therefore all we saw was a small hole on the very front of the neck
which we all assumed that’s the entrance wound
if we had flipped him over and seen a slightly higher wound on the high rear neck shoulder area of even smaller diameter
then we might have thought
Ah that’s a straight through bullet
we didn’t know that at the time
that makes perfect sense and if you don’t follow up and ask that question
I see the doctors still quoted as you know there was a documentary you know
just put out last year
in which the doctors all say
front wound front wound front wound
and they are never given or it’s never disclosed as to why
they thought that
and why they now have changed their mind upon reviewing the autopsy x-rays
and photo yeah and when and when and when they were shown the autopsy X and photos
they say
oh yeah that really is exactly the way it it looked there’s nothing inconsistent
I mean one of the favorite pieces I found was uh
a statement that Dr Berkeley had given to I think the hsca where he said
you know by the way
I saw the body in Parkland
I saw the body at Bethesda and the wounds were the same
it was all consistent uh
conspiracy theories will never quote that from uh from George Berkeley the
and I’ve always thought I’m surprised that there aren’t more
and when we say conspiracy theorists it covers a wide range
so it covers everybody who from people think there are eight Shooters at Dealey Plaza
to people just think it was Oswald possibly shooting
but in a plot with with others
are used and um I’ve always thought that the overwhelming as you said
physical evidence
the eyewitness evidence
the ballistics evidence
the x-rays the
The follow-up examinations done by um the house select committee establishes without a question that the only shooter that hit the president that day was shooting from the general direction of the sixth floor of the depository where oswal was left 30 minutes before the assassination by his co-workers who went downstairs for lunch
Then you look at the the snipers nest
and the those fingerprints and the gun and Oswald’s immediate Escape as he leaves the building
and goes on home to get his gun
and I’m convinced that Oswald the Assassin
the much tougher issue to answer is
was he doing it for himself or was he motivated to do it for something else
that’s always the harder part of the equation
but people who think it’s a conspiracy gets stuck in Dealey Plaza
they get stuck in the minutia of bullet angles and Reflections and maybe the second shot
and oh the single bullet
or the photographs taken of the backyard
on things that I think are important
can’t get to the case without it a lot of chapters and chapters as you know just on the physical evidence
on the single bullet
you need to establish that first
but once you get to oswald being the Assassin
then the real question for those of us who investigate
is Oswald a Lone Assassin or tool of a conspiracy
and I come to the conclusion
as you do
that it’s a lone assassin for a whole bunch of reasons
but I’ve always thought that that is the area that I’d be focusing on
if I was still suspicious
it was a conspiracy
yeah well in fact what I find funny is uh take Clay Shaw um
you can go to all the
JFK assassination boards
people who think that he might have been involved
but nobody really cares about his life
nobody really cares about him
nobody goes to the archives to go through his files
I mean I have but I mean they don’t care about Clay Shaw
but but um if they really thought he was a conspirator
they would be pouring over his life
pouring over all the all the financial records
which are at The Archives
but they don’t really care
I’m struck by the fact that Garrison
whatever you say about Garrison
he investigated the JFK assassination for over two years maybe 3 years in total
he followed every single lead
he could find and he found nothing
Absolutely nothing
And of course he had you know a tool that no other researcher had
and that was the power of subpoena
power of the office
he was a prosecutor
I mean he could really do things
he could hold the grand jury
you could have a trial um you know
I like to say that the uh the jury
I think that I say only half tongue in cheek that they aquitted Clay Shaw would have been faster if they hadn’t taken a bathroom break
before they came back with the the you know not guilty verdict
so Garrison failed to find it now
how do you leave the Garrison investigation believing in a conspiracy and convinced that
somehow that investigation had some worth
you have to tell yourself that he must have found nothing
because the CIA came in penetrated him and made sure there was nothing there
and all the embarrassing things that Garrison does
the overreach
the knowing
it’s a lie going down the wrong path
you know intimidating and abusing Witnesses
that’s all set up by the CIA and Garrison Falls for it
and then he you know later can be eviscerated by people like
eup FR who write books about it
so you know that’s how you sort of think it’s it’s a grand plot
I get it is the same people think that after Oliver Stone did JFK
and Congress had passed the JFK act
and a whole new generation of people were convinced it was a conspiracy
that somehow somebody from Langley must have gotten me to write a book called Case Closed
a couple of years later
everything is tied into I just always love how government
I was a Poli Sci major at Berkeley
nd I know my view of government is is fairly ineffective and inefficient
even when it’s trying to do something good
it tries to build a homeless shelter and it’s never on budget or on time or anything else
but when you get the nefarious of the secret government
they do everything at Peak efficiency
no mistakes
absolutely perfect
every time and they don’t leave one you know unturned Stone anywhere
maybe in a maybe in the movies that’s the way it works but not in real life
no it’s absolutely true and by the way I mean you have Garrison working for three years the the house select committee over two years the warrant commission over one year you’ve got at least six years of Investigations into the assassination
and nobody found a conspiracy
I mean it’s just striking that that you just you can’t find one what is remarkable about it
of course is in in many ways that there’s it makes sense today that among
let’s say
generation you know Z Millennials or that asked about the Kennedy assassination
they’ll have no idea what you just said
how many official investigations
how many thousands of hours have been spent
how many eyewitnesses
how much evidence
how many experts ballistics and film were brought in
all they know is maybe the Stone film
Maybe they’ve seen the Zapruder film on on the internet
and if you told them what you just said Fred
about the number of official investigations
instead of convincing them
oh maybe there’s nothing here would probably convince them
that’s evidence
there is something here because the culprit now is no longer
you know
the Soviets or the Cubans or the mob
maybe the mob did some you know little work with Ruby
but it’s the CIA
it’s the it’s the government
it’s the secret government um
and and to the extent that everyone thinks it’s the government that’s responsible
for it all these government investigations of course
you expect nothing more than a rubber stamp
that says it was Oswald alone because they have to follow the party line
So I don’t think we would convince anybody with that
no no it’s absolutely true I mean uh
I I’ve always been fascinated w
ell first off by getting back to Oliver Stone
I mean you know
you talked about the the
the evidence here and the points to oswald
it’s funny that some people sort of all Stone but candria and some others sort of
want to go with the other end
I don’t want to talk about all the ballistics and all the medical evidence
I want to go right to why he was killed
and clearly he was killed because of oh he wanted to change American foreign policy
he was going to usher in a whole new world of peace and detente and and
uh rap RMA with Cuba
and so he had to be killed
and that’s the evidence for a conspiracy
I don’t have to go into the medical evidence
that’s pretty it’s pretty remarkable
you’re right
and look it I I understand that when a public figure dies whether it’s Bobby Kennedy
Martin Luther King
uh you tend
you don’t know what they would have done in the rest of their lives
but you tend to fill in the rest of their lives in even a grander and better way
nobody fills in the rest of their lives um with them
squandering every opportunity and becoming drunks and and ending up in a halfway house.
They think of them going on wherever they’ve been in their lives they’re going to do even greater achievements coming forward
and certainly that was the case with Jack Kennedy
this young charismatic president no doubt about it
fresh this bolt of energy and and Technicolor in the white house after the Eisenhower years
and the all the questions and problems that we then develop later in the 60s
like Vietnam
those issues
people like to think
well that wouldn’t have happened if Kennedy had been president
It’s easy enough to say
we just don’t know
you can argue it any way you want
I’m sure that there were people on
but you
know there were people in the KGB and the Soviet Union that hated that President
because he had a standoff with Nikita Kruchev
and he won that standoff over the Cuban Missile Crisis
there were people in Havana that knew that somebody in the United States government
probably the CIA
was trying to kill Castro and had failed
and the president might well have authorized that
and even though he hadn’t sent in the necessary reinforcements for the Bay of Pigs
they knew he was no friend of Fidel
and so there were left wingers wanted him dead a
nd there were right-wingers, John Birchers and others who thought that he was too liberal
a president coming and they wanted him dead as well
so the idea that after he was dead
he never you know that’s the reason for killing him
whoever kills him is doing it for sometimes an ideological purpose
I get that
it’s not just revenge for the KGB or the Cubans
there is a reason to stop him in the future
but the idea that all of these problems developed
he was the president of peace and therefore we can work work backwards
to understand that it had to be the government killing
to me is just what I call circular reasoning
in logic
in high school logic and debate class they would have been thrown out or given a d

there was that Netflix documentary series about Robert Kennedy

and right at the end

you know

they basically say well you know

Robert Kennedy was going to usher in this whole new era of prosperity

And he was going to tackle Vietnam

And Tackle poverty and Tackle this

and therefore he was dangerous and he had to be killed

and it was the sort of same argument the it

it’s fantastic because I think in some ways and you know Bobby Kennedy’s a perfect example

there’s a need for producers doing a Netflix show or Hulu or whatever Prime to give it real meaning

and it doesn’t seem serious enough to say

by the way this was the first Act of Palestinian terrorism on American soil

by Sirhan Sirhan

a Palestinian who was killing Bobby Kennedy because he supported the sale of jets to Israel

after the six- day war

that’s the wrapup

but it may not be satisfying

so if you know you think he was killed because he was also going to do lot of future change that sounds much more dramatic

FRED LITWIN:

Speaking of of RFK do you have any comments on RFK Jr and uh and some of the statements he’s made about the assassination

POSNER:

Imean Oliver Stone I keep poking at constantly um because I think he’s was so dangerous with the film

great filmmaker horrible history

and and and very bad at passing along his propaganda

Bobby Kennedy Jr I I basically leave leave alone

because it’s such a personal issue for him

I think he’s completely wrong but he’s not doing it because he’s a charlatan

he’s not doing it because he’s trying to create trouble or whatever else

that’s what he believes

other members of his family disagree with him I

I think that he’s far out on the edge there on you know

what he says about the CIA and everything else

it’s demonstrably wrong

but it’s it it’s a useless public debate to get into

because you’re talking to the son of the person who was killed

and he he has a view of that and he’s cast it back to his uncle as well

so it’s all part of a grand plot um

and it’s unfortunate the uh the one thing I agree with him on

is the one thing I agree with stone on uh

let’s get the files out there the uh the

it’s going to be late

it’s not going to change many people’s minds

but the files should have been out a long time ago uh

the more you don’t have transparency on on government records

the more suspicious people are and they the average person thinks they must be hiding something

yeah and let’s talk about those records

I mean you’ve got you’ve got you know like 3500 to 4,000 CIA records

they’ve actually been released they’re just some they have some redactions

um and that’s I think a big problem people think that they’re hiding these documents

but no

it’s been released they have some redactions

even tunheim has said that there’s nothing in there

uh he’s seen it all so

what do you what what do you

I mean I understand you know there’s 400 documents I understand that have redacted social insurance numbers of people who are still alive

I think that’s actually quite reasonable

there might be a few informants who are named who might be still alive

as well um but what what’s what’s in this these redactions

well you know I mean

you in the lead into that you said something that was critical

which is we talk about it online

and you know and and those who think it’s a conspiracy talk about it a lot and write about it and we’re inside baseball

so we know what’s taking place

but the when I have a discussion with somebody in the outside

I run into somebody and they say oh you’re that guy who wrote “c”CASE CLOSED”

what about those Kennedy files and I say

by the way they’re just redactions

sometimes a single word

sometimes just a line

in files that have already been seen by the assassination review board

um years ago

before they were sent over

there’s no smoking gun in there

you’ve you’ve left them at the the train station

because they don’t know any of that t

hey think they’re completely sealed files that nobody’s ever seen

and the one of the things is

you talked about the social security numbers of people who are alive

we also have in there the tax files of Lee Harvey Oswald Jack Ruby

uh one of the firms that he worked for in New Orleans

those should be public record

we could take out some material uh the I think the CIA in some cases

and we’ve seen this on what’s been released in its entirety in the last few releases is fighting over methods and means

means of operation that could at times be embarrassing to them

on issues not even related to the assassination itself

but they were included as assassination related document

all of the Organized Crime Files that were put in at one point

might reveal informants

and I do think that it’s possible

we won’t know this until the final files out

that here we are essentially you know we’re

we’re talking about this 60 years later after

the year you could well have had a young 22, 23, 24 year old asset in the in the federal police in Mexico City
a Mexican federal police officer at the time providing information
maybe you had somebody working who was servicing and providing food or deliveries to the Cuban mission young who is still alive in their 80s
So I understand why that would be particularly material that they don’t want released
Even in an instance in which you had a CIA asset who was providing information in Mexico City in the 60s 60 years ago if the family of that CIA asset is today involved in Mexican Politics
the disclosure that a grandfather or father had been a CIA asset could T have turmoil and effect in in Mexican politics
so there are these side issues as well
that take place nothing to do with who killed the president
But the fight over the disclosure of the documents and and I think that one of the the good things about the JFK act when it was passed in ’92 and said
“we’re going to get all these files out in 25 years” and fell in the Trump Administration 2017
when they came due is they said everything will be released that’s related to the assassination in full
no redactions
we’re used to getting the government files that have a name redacted and then we sort of guess it who it is and figure it out of that
Here the battle is they have to release them without any redactions at all
So those files held back with the single redactions
the line the paragraph
they make it to the public sound as though there’s much more
when they are all out
when when that’s a great question
but when they are yeah
if there is no Smoking Gun it’s not going to convince many people
They’re just gonna say
” well they had 60 years to get rid of the key documents they had 60 years to bury the real one they haven’t turned it over it’s still hidden somewhere”
So I don’t think the final disclosures will make much of a difference then they’ll say well we never thought there’d be there’d be stuff in the documents anyways
But I mean I I saw um uh John Whitten or he went under the name John Scelso
(44.25)
He was a highly uh he was a person that was in the CIA at a very very high level and when he testified well he testified before the HSCA but you could read the AARB documents where he was pleading
“Don’t make my don’t make some of my documents public because uh I think he immigrated to Mexico or somewhere else” he said
I lied I lied on my immigration forms because I was with the CIA and if you make this public it may put my all everything at risk you know
and so yeah it’s a great exam no it’s a great example
you’re absolutely right and you know Fred also I think there has to be again if you just have what I call a common sense discussion with somebody who doesn’t know the details of the of the sealed files but my what I try to ask them is if they’re really believe that there’s a massive conspiracy here and that the CIA was at the heart of it and other intelligence agencies US government then I say okay so you think that you’re telling me that the CIA managed to pull off essentially the perfect crime in Dallas in 1963 they fooled Fred Litwin they fooled me they fooled the house select committee the warrant commission they’ve gotten away with it no smoking gun no bit of evidence that proves it was a conspiracy but somehow this government entity that sabotaged Garrison whatever else they’ve done along the way they somebody made an error and they sent a document over to the assassination review board that found its way to the National Archives it’s going to that’s going to unpeel and expose the entire conspiracy when they realized that instead of they fought to keep it secret but they haven’t sent anyone into the National Archives no no secure Zone to steal the document back to take it back to do whatever they haven’t done that so the mistake that they’ve made is they pulled off the crime but they sent the document that exposes it all to the National Archives and we’re waiting for it to be released if you really believe that you have more faith in the ability of the this of these plotters to mess up than I do so even if there had been a plot I don’t think that we’d find the smoke Smoking Gun document and this batch of documents of the archives now that may feed somebody’s conspiracy but that’s just my view of it you know uh we have a case right now in Canada I don’t know if you’ve been watching uh some of the interference claims um China’s interfered greatly in Canadian politics and there was a a virology lab in U out west where there were two Chinese spies working there and there was a big investigation and ultimately the they were fired um um but the government covered up all the files about what happened at that lab and telling the public you know we can’t release these files because of it’s National Security and ultimately after a couple of years they did release the files and lo and behold there was nothing there of National Security it was embarrassment fact that they knew about this they did nothing they didn’t care um was all embarrassment it’s the cover up always that is the worst because it does try to cover the embarrassment uh there’s a a public television service PBS show right now in America and maybe in Canada as well called Mr baates against the post office
it’s about the 20-year scandal in the United Kingdom the post office a 20-year coverup why to stop the embarrassment of the post office for what they had done with a computer system that was showing fraud that wasn’t fraud at all and even in the Kennedy assassination as you know um I do think that what some of the early researchers uh what may be Harold Weissberg um his book whitewash or maybe Mary frell looked at was what they thought was evidence of a cover up and I do think in the Warren Commission it was lies from the CIA or omissions because they didn’t want the Warren Commission to know about the plots to kill Castro so they kept a close Fest about what happened in Mexico City they grudgingly gave whatever was asked for and at the same time the FBI we know is running as fast as they could away from oswal to make sure that nobody could point a finger at them and say oh you Jade G Hoover the vaunted FBI you had an open file on this guy you weren’t investigating him a little bit more so that made the warrant commission look bad on some areas later so I always say that you know the the cover up Was Won by those institutions in both the CIA and the FBI to cover their own bureaucratic reputations like you describe here on the instance in Canada with the rology lab and the inability of the government to admit what happened to the post office in London so not surprised that these agencies when they’re cooperating with a government commission are also thinking uhoh let’s make sure there’s no collateral and unintended consequence it comes back to bite Us in the ass yeah and there’s another uh I mean uh Jefferson Morley has brought up the case of uh there’s a memo written by Arthur slesinger in 1961 about the reorganization of the CIA and it’s like a seven-page memo there’s around a page and a half that’s redacted and the last release by the CIA actually in that redacted section you could see the title of the section it was about you know controlled American sources what does that mean and and so morle is saying oh my God there’s something really really secret here and this is why it had to you know can’t be released because the CIA blah blah blah well all I you know what I did was I went to Slinger’s book a thousand days and I looked up the term you know controlled American sources and all of lo and behold there’s like two and a half pages in there where he discusses the problems of the CIA exactly what he means and of course this was basically CIA Personnel in embassies around the world who were not under the control of the state department so do you have the redacted text okay that’s fine there may be something specific in there but you have this material that slesinger actually wrote himself describing the problem so we know what it’s about you know Fred you’re such a buzzkill see they’re going off and looking at Slinger’s own book to discover what he meant right I’ll tell you that takes all the fun out of speculating what could have been meant by
uh the one of the things you know you a lot of people like to focus on this turbulent relationship that JFK had with the CIA after the Bay of Pigs
and there’s no question he did uh and I often think to myself the the way the intelligence World Works through a lot of mirrors
it’s a Hall of Mirrors
right
it’s hard to determine what happens if they wanted to bring that President down
they wanted to mortally wound that president in terms of his reputation they knew about the Affairs that Judith Exner
Affairs they had the information might not have been an American newspaper that would have published it but it might have been um a French newspaper leamon it might have been a British newspaper like the guardian or the equivalent of that to break the news and then the American Press would have to catch up they could have started a firestorm on this President and that public Firestorm that they can’t control that but that reaches a crescendo and that would be different uh there is nobody at Langley that was thinking about oh we have to kill him they wanted to ruin him they had the personal information that could have been totally destabilizing now that still would have been a crime it still would have been horrific you can’t have the CIA releasing information that they picked up on a US president of foreign sources I understand all the reason that those people should be then in jail but that aside um people I think often forget about that they s they think CIA Kennedy was hard on them that must mean they killed him at D Plaza yeah and and I and I think it also said points to the fact that these conspiracy theorists are so easy to to claim treason
you know oh you didn’t like Kennedy well you know yeah you you you obviously Comm committed treason
well you know no a lot of people may not have liked Kennedy but they’re not going to commit treason
there’s lots of Canadian politicians I don’t like but I’m not going to commit treason against the state
maybe on any uh you know Canadian Prime Minister as well but on certainly every American president there are there probably some group talking at some point point about i’ like to get that no good SOB
there’s some extremist group
now if somebody had uh God forbid it killed President Obama you know are they anti-abortion people
are they Islamic revolutionaries are they uh whatever you have a group of people in every presidential assassination there’s a group
there are a number of hate groups and others that immediately come to the top of the list as possible suspects then you get the Assassin as you do with siron or with Ray or with Oswald the question is did they do it for themselves or did they do it for one of these groups so people get confused they think that because xgroup the Mafia the CIA the KGB whoever hated Kennedy they must have been behind the assassination no they may have cheered it on they may have been very happy that it happened but doesn’t you still have to have the oldtime causation you need to have the connection you need to show that oswal did it on behalf of these people not that he was just inspired to do it and that really where the failure is because in my view for whatever it’s worth the window for the connection comes down to literally about a six week six and a half week period out of oswalt’s 24 years is the period when he comes back from Mexico City he goes down on September 25th when he’s taking an overnight bus ride down to Mexico City from New Orleans the White House announces for the first time publicly that Kennedy’s going to make a trip in November to Texas nobody knows it publicly beforehand so any idea of being a plot with the Mafia the CIA whoever else to have Oswald killed Kennedy in Texas couldn’t have taken place before the White House decides they’re going to send Kennedy to Texas.

Oswald;s trying to get to Cuba

goes to the Mexican and the and Soviet missions

and is denied

nobody assumes

no I’ve never heard anyone contend Fred

that the Soviet officials and the Cuban officials who turned him down

were part of the plot

so that happened legitimately

they really turned him down because they didn’t want him in Cuba then the question becomes when Oswald’s dejected comes back failing to get to Cuba in early October to to Dallas that’s when a group of plotters would have to bring them into the plot so from early October to November 22nd where’s the telephone call you can’t we don’t have text we don’t have emails we don’t have telepathy there has to be some actual contact the FBI looked through all the pay phones at the at the depository in near oswal’s house they checked all the phone records coming in his roommates who lived with him at The Boarding House said he never had a visitor he’d make a call every night or every other night in a foreign language that sounds promising to you realize he was to Marina in Russian so the if you’re going to establish that he was part of a plot I’ve given you a narrow window I don’t mean you personally but to a conspiracy theorist there’s six weeks you have to time into something and they can’t do it they fail at every opportunity and that’s really that’s I don’t think people realize that they think of the conspiracy meaning overtime he could be brought in at any point even if he was an active KGB agent or CIA agent or Cuban agent they still would have to activate him from October the 1st on when he went back to Dallas where is that activation yeah yeah it’s very good point what’s your advice for uh somebody new coming into the JFK assassination what’s your advice for them what they should do what they should read what they should should they join this community all should they avoid it and save years of their life as as unfortunately I did what’s your advice for a newbie I think read as much as you want with a dose of skepticism read case close read your book read Vince bios’s book and be skeptical about it then read uh uh books uh about conspiracies as well and don’t be persuaded by the last book you read but be persuaded by the evidence ask yourself the critical questions of how does evidence stand up you have to have an open mind if you get into this field and you don’t have an open mind then forget about it you’ll find something that’s that supports your theory there’s everything written about it so if you just want a a confirmation bias you’re looking for an Echo chamber you’ll find it in one of the thousands of books that have published but if you’re looking to figure out what happened in the case
just be skeptical about what you read
but compare books see what they say about the evidence and be prepared to think or to realize the conclusion you eventually reach may not be the most Earth shaking
you know
coming to the conclusion that Oswald alone killed Kennedy I’m sure is not what Random House wanted when I went back with my manuscript
right
they were hoping for something a bit grander than that um it’s a great story as you know because oswal’s an amazing character but if it’s not you know people are expecting nowadays grander grander grander stories as a matter of fact Fred is highlight in a book that I did a few years later on the king assassination I conclude that Ry was the shooter I open up the door to the possibility that there was a small kitchen conspiracy with his brothers who have always denied any involvement in the crime and maybe somebody who had paid him and I thought wow that’s really big news because I thought it was Oswald alone without anybody helping when Kennedy and here I’ve got the it’s Ray doing the shooting but a little bit of a possibility for conspiracy but when I went out and would talk about that on the book circuit or that people are very unimpressed with that they don’t think of that as a conspiracy conspiracy means to people from the 90s on big conspiracy government conspiracy xfiles um it doesn’t mean a group of people around the table with family and somebody funding it that that they’re not impressed by well it’s funny because some some people always ask me well do you believe in conspiracies and I say well absolutely Al-Qaeda conspired to bring down the World Trade Center you know the Japanese conspired to bomb Pearl Harbor they look at be like no no that’s not what we mean you know yeah it’s very no it is in fact very interesting and of course you know the Booth’s assassination of Lincoln is a great case of a conspiracy so you know we we do have them and and I understand that uh completely one last question on the assassination I mean is there any area that really is unresolved I mean you you the possibility perhaps maybe somebody egged on Oswald um the one unresolved area for me is the the assassination files that are held in Moscow or Minsk which might detail some of the KGB um um activities to convinced Americans that the CIA was behind the assassination maybe there were other activities we don’t know about but what do you what do you is there anything left to to learn about the assassination I I think those files in Minsk will show the extent to which the the early sort of questions and Dallas and conspiracy theories about the CIA were fanned deliberately as a part of an disinformation program by the KGB and they’re excellent they were excellent at doing that um and I would like to see whatever is left if there’s anything left that hasn’t been destroyed of the original files provided by the Cuban intelligence um from their mission um because you know the idea of Oswald being egged on you know there was a report never confirmed that he had said at one point I can even shoot Kennedy I don’t think he said that at the Cuban mission but it would be fascinating to find out what their original contemporaneous reports they provided some of that to the house select committee but it was cherry-picked by the time it got there um and that would be fascinating to know the the other question that I’ve always just wondered about which we may never get an answer to is uh the same as 9911 you know the CIA was following these two terrorists uh Saudi uh terrorists that they knew about who had went to a terrorist Summit in Malaysia they had Malaysian intelligence couldn’t get sound on it but take video of it they followed those two into the United States into California and in 2000 a year before 911 took place and then they didn’t do what they were supposed to do until the FBI they supposed to turn over to the domestic agency and those two Al hamy and El Madar

went on to be on the planes on 911 t

hey bought their tickets in their real names

they hadn’t changed them

they had California driver’s license

they

it was a terrible story s

o I’d love to know if the CIA picked up sound recordings or anything from Oswald or from their assets at the Cuban mission or the Soviet mission to the extent that they had them that would have indicated how off-kilter he was how potentially dangerous he was and then when he came back into the United States they just put him in the Odd Fellow keep an eye on him in the future if he travels abroad instead of telling the FBI maybe the result would have been the same but it would have been a fantastic thing if they had some indication not that he was going to kill the president but this is a guy trying to get to to Havana and he’s saying things in these missions of being a good communist and everything else in the heart of the Cold War maybe we should tell the bureau to up their case to higher priority right right that’s but that’s what these agencies do they develop information they keep it to themselves they guard it jealously they never share it this was the problem at 911 you know now we hear they’re sharing it better and we’ll find out if there’s another attack if they were sharing it better or not who knows yeah no it’s a very very good point look I’d like to end this up uh J what what are you working on now what’s your uh what’s your next book and what’s your current topic of Interest yeah I have a couple topics of Interest I guess you know

I’m on fire about the uh Trish and I have a small nonprofit called anti-Semitism watch
that we thought a couple of years ago when we formed it well this will be an easy task we’ll just be able to make a dent on anti-Semitism on campus little did we think that was a fire hose so we could be doing that full-time and we’re not making much of a dent
Unfortunately but we’re working on that and we’re very on fire about the this raging anti semitism

not only on college campuses

but worldwide also I’ve been doing some reporting on the money behind

what I call “gender affirming care” quote unquote”

for minors 18 and under I’ve written an Op Ed in the Wall Street Journal

called the truth about puberty blockers a couple pieces since in the in the New York Post about a whistleblower files from a transgender organization that sets the standards of care worldwide it’s a disgraceful story of experimentation and risk and harms that’s playing out in real time I believe one day that this will sound like hyperbole but I think that in 10 years we may look back on this period of affirming children into the medical pipeline to make irreversible changes to their bodies uh without being able to give full consent as great a medical Scandal as labotomy

which remember the doctor who invented that got a Nobel Prize for at the time

so medicine changes its view occasionally the last thing Fred is Trish and I are working on a book together that were close hopefully to being able to get a find a publisher for and is the story about uh a Swiss Finance year who handled a lot of Nazi treasure after the war and was himself a dedicated pan Arab nationalist although he was Swiss and he helps to fund with Nazi funding and some of the remnants of the fourth Reich the early stages of Palestinian terrorism with the pflp Palestinian front for the liberation of palestin the PLO he pays for the defense later of K Claus Barbie when he’s taken back to France the Nazi for he pays for the defense of Carlos De jao we have information that he may have funded the Munich Massacre and so it’s the birth of Palestinian Terrorist on the Embers of the fourth Reich from these Nazis in Europe who thought you know what we failed in the final solution but we think that these Palestinian terrorists who want a country and want to destroy Israel might be able to do it for us that’s the book if we can find the right publish I hope you do I certainly want to read that by the way on on gender affirming care I mean I’ve I’ve written on this as well I agree with you totally one aspect which really bothers me about gender affirming care is um you know in Canada we now have made you know medically assisted suicide and what worries me there is that the trend towards you know affirming medically assisted suicide so that if you want to get a doctor uh you can easily find a doctor who will affir

confirm your desire uh to commit suicide and last year in 2023 we had 13,000 deaths due to M.A.I.D. in Canada

you know so now when Trisha who’s listening to this who’s sitting a few feet away from me is going to say

I Told You So to me
because she’s been she’s been on fire about this particular issue in Canada
and keeps saying to me we should write about that and I say
Trisha we don’t have the time to do it right now we can’t
good Canadian writers are writing about it
but now I know she’s going to hear that and say we should look at it because it is really disgraceful
you’re absolutely right
and you know as a as a lone researcher
you know
as the two of us it’s you you
you can’t save the whole world but these issues do get you
and I will I’ll take a look
all right
maybe I can do a substack at the very least on how outrageous it is

Fred Litwin:
well Gerald thank you very much for appearing on “On The Trail of Delusion” it was a pleasure and uh you are a treasure
I really appreciate all of your research
your journalistic expertise
you are you are amazing
so thank you very very much
FR thank you very much
thanks for your great work on this and I really enjoyed the discussion
it was great to have the chat with you [Music]

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