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On The Trail of Delusion, Episode Four with Dr Martin J Kelly, Jr.

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On the Trail of Delusion, Episode 4, Dr. Martin J Kelly Jr
“This was a fun interview. Martin J Kelly Jr. is a brilliant man and his insights into the JFK assassination and conspiracy theories in general are important.” –Fred Litwin

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 D Plaza
Fred Litwin is here he’s a longtime author and certainly Watcher of politics
joining us uh Fred Litwin great to have you here thank you very much [Music]

so welcome to on the trail of delusion
our next episode here is with an incredible guest professor
Martin J Kelly Jr
who is uh one of my favorite people on the internet when it comes to talking about the JFK assassin ation
but look at this bio
Martin has a BA, Bachelor of Science from Colombia from 1965
I take it you weren’t there protesting Israel back in 1965
Nope
He’s got a PhD and experimental Psychology fromTufts in 1970

he was professor emeritus at Hobert and William Smith Colleges
30 years of teaching psychology and the history of science um

he was born in New York City in 1938 moved back in 2002 and is an expert on the medical evidence and all the aspects of conspiracy thinking in JFK assassination and in general
so welcome to our podcast Professor Kelly

so let’s start off and just tell me a bit how did you get interested in the JFK assassination

well in the in the late 1980s I had my family had broken up so I was on my own uh living on my own for a while

and I started to reread some of the conspiracy literature
just to you know make my Self feel like I was alive
and I had read only Mark Lane’s book in 1966 Rush to Jjudgment

and I was a lefty and I assumed that it was conspiracy of some sort
because that’s what all the public discussion was
and everybody I knew thought there was a conspiracy had said
ET so I started reading all these conspiracy books
about 1987 1988
I don’t know how many of them I read 20 30 I mean it was unbelievable I mean I read about the mafia I read about the the CIA the Office of Naval intelligence Etc all through this reading I you know I was convinced that there was something wrong here because nothing in these books said that there was anything right about the official point of view

but I couldn’t put my finger on what it was that was wrong because everybody had so many different theories

So finally what I did was I said

you know why don’t I look at one of these non conspiracy books so I took a look at Latimer’s book

Kennedy and Lincoln

which received nothing but negative commentary in in conspiracy literature

and I read that book and it led me to the warrant commission and the actual research

and when I got to it I realized that this conspiracy stuff was completely you completely wrong

it wasn’t based on the evidence and it was mostly hysterical rather than analytic

and so around 1992 just when the Oliver Stone thing was coming out

I started to give individual lectures and so forth on the the case and anti-conspiracy .

before that I’d given some informal lectures on the conspiracy

now when I think about it I want to crawl into a hole but you know whatever

and so then I taught a course for five years at Hobart William Smith on the JFK assassination

by disciplinary course in Psychology and history not telling the students what my view was until about the seventh week

at which point they were shocked because I had them all read these conspiracy books and I mean they were people saying

I still remember her and she asked me when I first uh revealed this in the first course I taught

had a picture up uh on the screen a slide I said yeah yeah yeah

and then then I had them read Posner

and they looked up and the first time I did this I had a wonderful student her name was Lindsay Sparrow

I still remember her and she asked me when I firstrevealed this in the first course I taught

had a picture up uh on the screen a slide of of Oswald in that that party with ferry from 1949 that you see okay right and you know it was there it was and I said this is a picture of Oswald with Ferrie in 1949

The only problem with this picture is that at this point Oswalt was was 10 years old

and so Sarah was great student she said

what are you saying

I said well I’m saying that this whole thing is a fraud and everybody was dead silent

30 students and I I explained to them what it was and then Lindsay sparoh said

Professor how did you get hooked in by this

I said we’re all we’re all susceptible to this nonsense

we were reading Christopher lash as well

so I talked about how dramatic explanations tend to hold the floor while sober analytic explanations don’t hold anything because they’re boring and and have no sharp edges

you know and that was it so after that I went I kept going to the conspiracy conventions and so forth and you know I stopped going after 2003

because as I tell my daughters I lost my beanie with the propeller on it

you know um

very good well well you know the Latimer book what really you know what what fascinated about Latimer is that you know for better or worse he did all these experiments

you know he was really keen on doing experiments to to sort of finding out sort of the truth and what was going on

and and I contrast that with Dr Cyril Wecht

who certainly had access to a lot of resources and he never did any testing

he could have tested the single bullet theory

he could have done all sorts of things and he didn’t do any of that

yeah he’s a he’s a puzzle to me

uh because I knew lattimer I

I met him in Chicago in 93

and corresponded with him for about four or five years a

nd I knew Michael Boden and and Levine who are on the forensics panel for HSCA.

because the they they came through our College one time so they knew very well Latimer hated him thought he was a fraud

and B and LaVine were friends of his and they said he’s a very competent forensic guy except on this case right

and they were very clear about they were very clear about that and and lol

you know he didn’t want to speak badly he said you know he’s just uh too personally involved so you know I read I read Wecht’s book

you know

the first book that came out I don’t know if you remember this Fred it’s really telling since my background is also in Psychology he he reports how when he first got into the archives to look at the Kennedy material he was tempted to put on his jacket

right

said okay there you go you know Freud is now turning over in his grave

he didn’t do any particular research on it

he tended to to mock everything

he parodied the the single bullet theory without ever understanding it

he didn’t he never showed any acknowledgment of of the uh of the diminishing velocity aspect of it of

the sideswiping I’ve heard him in public scream and yell he said

oh this is tumbling this is tumbling

where does this stuff come from

I mean he was an hysteric and so you know that was basically it

I met him a few times

I talked with him uh you know he knew I was friends with these people

and so he was respectful to me but he also sensed said I was not on his side so he was very wary you know I

Litwin: actually spoke to Cyril Wecht when I was like 19 years old

I was in Montreal and we were corresponding and I arranged to talk with him

I probably still have a tape recording of it downstairs

and I asked to him about John Latimer

and the only thing he could say to me about John Lattimer was is a member  of the John birch Society

that’s not true

Well, True or not I mean it’s just irrelevant to to you know his the medical uh his medical expertise and what he was saying about the autopsy X-rays and photographs

well he had he had a lot of experience treating gunshot wounds in World War II

I mean you know nobody mentions that yep in fact at one time uh this was in Chicago at the first Midwestern meeting

which opened up oddly enough on April Fool’s Day

He said I don’t want to get into a quote contest with Dr lattimer because he’s got the advantage because of his specialty

so he was you know making a big joke

it’s very funny and at the same time you know pointing out that that that ladimer is only a urologist

Ladimer literally did not like him

I mean when I met him and we started talking he said you know this guy’s a fraud he said and he’s been up on charges

I mean that’s when I first heard about that R told me that in 93 so right you know he was charged again after that

yeah so let’s go into the the medical evidence

You know that you really know the medical evidence quite well so perhaps we could start talking a bit about the the the Fatal headshot and the and the backward motion

back into the left motion of JFK’s head

the people get this wrong so often

what do you want to say about that

well this is one of the one of the keystones for in the popular mind of this case when this film was Zapruder film of the assassination was first shown on television in 1975

the back into the left movement wasn’t the the telling point for the viewers it’s a it’s a motif in Oliver Stone’s film in the end Kevin Costner back and to the left back and to the left

you know as if it were a waltz you know and so uh there’s a very clear dependence upon this as a you know Prima fascia proof that Kennedy was shot from the right front

the problem with this is that there’s no damage to the left side of the brain even though Kennedy’s right side of of his head was facing the knoll

and and and really facing the Knoll a shut from the Knoll would have been perpendicular to the right side of his head
and would have to go through his his left hemisphere in his brain

There is no disturbance of that at all

all the damage is on the right hemisphere

second of all the a small bullet from that distance will not throw any a body back that way
Kennedy’s and and you look at the zapruder film

Kennedy’s head goes back a little bit for about one frame

and then his body seems to catapult back as if jerked like a marionette

A small bullet through the head cannot transfer enough momentum to do that

and I was always puzzled by that until I realized that the explosion out the right front side of the head probably was a a strong force in the movement back and it turns out that it is it’s What’s called the jet effect okay it’s not it’s not responsible for the whole movement but it’s responsible for the initial movements so that’s it yeah and how how much uh was a sort of a neuromuscular spasm played did that play a role in in yeah that that that’s that’s what accounts for for the the movement of the body jerking back uh the the um the bullet go goes in from the rear it it it fragments and creates a what’s called a cavity ation Force which is it empties some space behind the brain compresses the brain from the rear and in that space there’s this tremendous Force called cavitation force and then as that Force Works its way out uh the bullet goes through the brain

opens a hole in the right front of of the skull and the force then sloes out tremendously fast that way unfortunately that that Force only lasts for about one frame about Point uh about about 60 milliseconds but the right side of the brain contains the motor neurons for the left side of the body and the muscles in the left side of Kennedy’s back are connected to those neurons which get destroyed when you destroy a neuron you cause the nerve fiber to to depolarize that means there’s an electrical signal that goes to the muscle and so Kennedy just gets boom jerked back like that from from that

it can’t not have have happened because we see his brain destroyed we see his body you know flash back like that this cons conspiracy people who are an odd Bunch Gary agar is the one I I’ve argued with him about this he’s probably doesn’t like me I feel very bad about that but he uh he’s claiming so you know this doesn’t look anything like any of the the the examples in the animal literature for Des cerebrates and so forth I say it’s not a decerebrate reaction it’s a normal reaction you’ve got a bunch of motor neurons all of which are destroyed at high intensity immediately they set off normal signals to the muscles and and the muscles contract and then of course he stops arguing and starts you know doing some other stuff so this is very straightforward if you look at it without any particular kind of axag grind I I’m I’m absolutely amazed at the fact that because the left hemisphere of Kennedy’s brain was intact that they now have to argue that the photograph was of a different brain that they switched out the brains at Bethesda you think that’s more absurd than switching the bodies I mean well it’s incredibly absurd and I I but they have to argue that they have no choice but to argue that because they know that the status of the brain is a really good indicator and in fact I’ve shown some letters from Sir W back in the 1970s where he basically made the same point you know how do you explain the left hemisphere is intact and and I’m just amazed you know again what amazes me about Sir W is the fact that he won’t explain why he changed his opinion about the head shot you know in fact he tries very much to hide his initial opinion that the autopsy materials were extremely clear about what had happened well he’s subscribing to a paranoid idea

I mean that’s basically it I mean he had a conversation with with ladimer that ladimer recounted to me in which uh he he supposed that it was a plastic bullet that went into the head and then disintegrated and lattimer looked at me said

what do you think of that I said

well it sounds crazy yeah if a bullet were that easily disintegrated by entering the brain it would it would travel to the brain like a like a bumblebee on speed

it would just waffle all over the place he said he he doesn’t know any physics and Larry sturdivan uh who was a consultant to the uh house subcommittee and is a physicist and scientist and has a good book on this the JFK myths y said that he had met wet in during the hsca period and said you know he has no physical science intuitions he has no intuition from physics he said it’s really rather amazing which was essentially what laimer was telling me ladimer was angry at him he just said well he was a fraud you know so it’s unfortunate you know yep it’s it’s really unfortunate um so let’s how about Let’s Take on the the single bullet theory that that was uh famous War you know people the conspiracy folks just rattle on about the Magic Bullet and uh the shape of the Magic Bullet and they can’t believe it and it must have been planted and and uh you know how do you explain all this you know all this stuff going on so uh again another area of the medical evidence is completely misunderstood by the critics well they they resist it I mean they they they don’t want to deal with it and of course wet you’re the person you’re interested in here uh has insisted and has until the day he died I suspect that he’s never seen a bullet that did all this work that was so undamaged okay which means that he’s just ignoring what’s on the record from people who actually treated the wounds etc etc so uh there’s no question that the single bullet notion is is correct and the evidence shows it I mean it’s not really a theory and and you know you might be interested in this and maybe the viewers would be interested in this that you know there’s a way in which the language of ordinary life gets gets kind of mixed in with the language of analysis and so you can get you can get fooled by this kind of talk and you see this uh you know I mean this is what viken Stein actually the later wienstein reacted to he said yeah a lot of these things are not problems but they’re they they certainly come up in the way you talk about them I mean so so that’s basically it so it’s a theory in the sense that when they first proposed it they didn’t know whether it was true or false okay so it’s theoretical in that sense but it’s not a theory because it has no theoretical components it has no no no no features it has no uh elements from which things can be derived it’s basically an hypothesis about what happened to the bullet right nobody found the bullet they didn’t find it at autopsy they didn’t find it in the car they found the bullet on Connelly’s stretcher at Parkland and that was it and so they put two and two together at the beginning and said okay this bullet we found found on the stretcher c399 which is this What’s called the magic or pristine bullet uh was found on Connelly stretcher and we presume that on evidence this is the bullet that went through Kennedy and went went through Connelly and then from that point on you have to work a rather complicated story to see what happened here because it is a complicated physical event there’s no question about it and of course it it flies in the face of any kind of magical not itions and so forth which which the CT people the conspiracy people tend to purport so that’s all there is to it I mean uh we could start at the beginning the the the notion here is that if c399 found on Connolley stretcher is the bullet that went through Conley and therefore went through both men then how do you show that well you have to show first of all that the bullet one through Kennedy and this is where you get a you know there are people working Industries and books on just this aspect of it but you know there’s there’s a bullet that went to went into Kennedy uh right around the borderline of his lower neck and his upper back around uh cervical uh vertebrae six or seven uh T1 thoracic just below it in that area and we know this for two two reasons one is there’s a there’s a there’s a bullet hole in his back noted at autopsy and the the analysis of his jacket shows that this was an entrance WB and that there were metal deposits on it and the threads were driven in towards the body he’s got disturbances next to his cervical spinal cord because the bullet did not hit the spinal cord it went to the right of it as you look at his back H you’ve got you’ve got uh X-rays and and pictures that show there’s a disturbance in there you’ve got the autopsy which which noted that there was a a Nick in the plura and a Nick in the lung and that there were uh air bubbles in the trachea right before it exited out of his throat at the tracheal level and you have testimony from John EOL to hsca he didn’t testify to the warrant commission he was an autopsy guy who claims that that the autopsy doctors would tracked right there in the autopsy that they pointed out that they would the track with the with the plur and the lung right there they iel said I was looking right through the front of his of his of his upper torso and Humes uh was just pointing out there it is so the idea that they didn’t track this wound is nonsense uh you get to the trachea which is where the exit wound is and again here’s another industry the doctors at Parkland Hospital who treated Kennedy or tried to save his life noted a very small wound there uh it didn’t look like an exit wound it was just about the circumference of the bullet however the sh has the has an an elongated slit in it which is an exit wound for an unshed fabric the bullet goes through the shirt and it rips a Meridian along the line of least resistance in the in in the weave and so you get you get the the shirt ripping in in in a small length rather than a round hole because of the asymmetry and the strength of the fibers and then what happens is the fibers get splayed away from the body which is the way the shirt is described in evidence right so it clearly went through no question about it why is there such a small hole again back to your point about laimer he did experiments on this he showed that the collar and the tie kept the skin short so that it didn’t spray out so it kept the wound small wh why is this important well because the entrance wound in Conelly is elongated which suggests that the bullet was not nose on into Conley but when in some what sideways and if it went in somewhat sideways and went through and and skated along his rib the way Dr Shaw describes in the warrant commission he’s got two testimonies there that it went in there did not hit nose on and ripped out about uh five inches of of the fifth rib and then exploded out by his right nipple with with a large wound that there’s a there’s good reason why the bullet doesn’t look damaged the way a nose hit bullet wood I mean it’s it the the c399 is damaged it is crimped in its on Long longitudinal axis in the in the in the bottom half as if it were put in a vice and that’s exactly where it hit the rib it sideswiped the rib it got compressed and then exited now here’s the difference that people have to pay attention to and of course you know the conspiracy people argue against this the bullet is harder than the bone and so uh the bullet’s going to be more resistant to to deformation than the bone is when it hits the bone and so it can destroy the rib and not be deformed itself just on on its basic hardness if you if the velocity is slower than the muscle velocity muscle velocity is 2200 ft per second if it’s slower than the muscle than the muscle velocity then of course is going to be less impact on the harder bullet and it’s going to get less are damaged but the rib will still be damaged because it’s softer so this is all in in accordance with simple science this is not you know this is not quantum physics or you know Nostradamus predicting that dayart will die from you know pneumonia you know it’s ridiculous so uh that’s it and uh the evidence in the Auda film that the single bullet is correct is is obvious Kennedy when he comes out from behind the stem and sign in the film and the the shot is from the right front of of the of the limo you see Kennedy’s elbows elevated as if in a kind of involuntary movement and the reason is is that some disturbances happened at C6 in the spine where the forarm nerves are connected it’s obvious and uh then you see within a frame a frame is 55 milliseconds you see evidence that the bullet is exiting Connelly’s body in frame 223 the jacket op slightly in 224 the lapel bulges out and covers the white shirt and and and interrupts its image in the camera so this is the this is maybe uh what fourth 40% of a second after Kennedy’s arms go up so they they hit by the same bullet there’s no question about it wet again uh I don’t see how finally held on to his hat after he was hit in the wrist like this it goes through comes out goes into his wrist according to Dr Gregory at Parkland it went in backwards and they know that because it carried fibers in from his coat into the wound and they they that’s an Evidence bounced off his wrist and embedded itself about half an inch into his thigh backwards and then fell out onto the stretcher seems obvious and what happened is that the damage to connell’s and I’m I was surprised that W for this because this this evidence had been available since January of 1964 it’s in the Texas monthly medical journal that’s that most people know about all the medical reports con thumb the the the nerve that that contracts the thumb was not damaged by the bullet the nerve that that flexes the thumb the right thumb was did receive some damage so there’s no reason why he would drop this hat and of course his wife testified in 1996 that he had oned the Hat all the way to the hospital even if everybody agrees he was shot so the Hat’s not definitive for anything but what kept saying that kept yelling it so this is this is a very clear case I mean it’s to be honest with you it’s kind of open and shut and uh you know it it’s a wonderful wonderful example uh of what’s happened to the the of you know pop culture epistemology not only in America in the Western World you know I mean really so I mean that’s that’s basically it yeah I mean I I was amazed when I when I you know when I first got the uh a c ROM the early 90s a CD ROM of the house select committee and assassinations their volumes of evidence and all of a sudden I saw a real trajectory diagram and everything everything worked it was like you know I had never seen a diagram like that that iracy books have this diagram of connecting the dots you know and and showing it uh uh showing it how makes a right turn makes a left turn yeah that’s right so um it was just ridiculous that was in the film as well that was Kevin Kostner you know makes a right turn makes a left turn yeah well because I mean there was an itch study of of the the plaza that was available for the hsca so they would they they did some work on it and the men are lined up you know I mean Conley turns a bit has turned a bit to his right so that when the bullet goes through Kennedy his right arm put pit is exposed so the Bullet goes in right behind his right armpit I mean this is you can see it in the film yep and and also Dale Meyers so Dale Meers work showing exactly how they were aligned exactly the same thing yeah is is absolutely incredible and people don’t want to admit it are they you know they’ll find any reason to ignore um what he’s done he works for the ca paid by the CIA being paid by the government or the government you know whatever right right Myers got an Emy for that work you know that was terrific stuff and then there’s another you know there’s another study after that in the 90s so I was surprised for example when the records Bureau people sded that there was a conspiracy I mean I have no idea what that’s about 1996 uh what’s his name Douglas Holmes right yeah I don’t know I I I didn’t I not studied it I’ve seen some stuff they’ve written I don’t though they can’t read the evidence I’m not sure what it’s about you know and tell me a bit about what you know the the Parkland doctors yeah you know everything is we we go they go on about the Parkland doctors and what the doctors saw and of course it doesn’t correspond to to what the uh what what they saw at the autopsy and and etc etc and and uh but you know we it’s it’s so ridiculous because the the Parkland doctors were busy resuscitating Kennedy they had 15 to 20 minutes they were pretty busy they weren’t examining wounds well that’s true and of course the this is one of the things that nags at people it nags at me I mean you have you have a number of people who claim that uh the the large gaping hole which we see in this bruta film and we see in the x-rays is on the right side of Kennedy’s head not in the back not in the occipital but in the parietal and temporal and so and it’s a flap that falls down over his ear skull with bone attached to it that is right there in the sauda film you can see it and so uh you if you don’t believe that you have to argue that the brutal film is is you know falsified which is Impossible by the way it just is not possible and um so all of the the statements that these doctors are making clearly are slightly an error but everyone didn’t make the make them as starkly to the occipital as the conspiracist people’s claim if you look at that famous um what shall I say pasti of all the people putting showing where the wound is you know the doctors and etc etc some of them have the have the have the hand back in the in the back part of the skull where where right near where it was so the the the observations varied and the the people who worked in Partland got to look at the autopsy material and they agreed that in fact the what they saw in the Au material had to be correct that was all it was to it so uh you know there’s not much there but you know you get these claims 22 people saw it on the right side that’s not true I mean it’s you know you get people who still show up you know I was there I mean this is a case that attracts you know dingbats like flies you it’s incredible and and I think you know malcol Perry was always think pretty consistent he said look I at first glance it looked like an entrance room but I I spent only looking at it I immediately didn’t even clear off the blood I had to make the tracheostomy incision um and that was my first impression and I I could have been wrong this is exactly the encapsulation of of what happened there exactly it’s precisely the case and that’s obviously what they thought when they saw the autopsy materials you so he was always pretty clear and uh there was I don’t know why there’s such an issue and there people are trying to like we need to get his initial uh what he said on the the day of the assassination we have to get the transcript and what was he saying and and he oh they he was blackmailed they tried they threatened if they threatened they threatened Malcolm Perry he would lose his license if he didn’t change his opinion you know that it’s really strange because um you know you have to be aware that that there is a touch of paranoia necessary to hold conspiracy in this case from the beginning I mean I was a conspiracy person I was a bit paranoid when you were a conspiracy person you were a bit paranoid there’s no question about that paranoid ideas are inversely related to knowledge right the more knowledge you get the the smaller becomes the paranoid Corpus that’s it okay it’s an inverse relationship mathematically and so uh that’s what you have I mean it’s just you have to claim that everything is rigged and jimmied up and you know rigged sounds familiar these days I mean you have to make these claims in order to to make the conspiracy uh analysis of this case you know palatable at all it’s just nonsense I’ve always said if if they you know Big Challenge is take all the stuff that conspiracy people say and put it into a narrative you know you’ve got all these planted bullets extra Riflemen extra bullets flying around all these wounds covered up alteration of the the film alteration of the body uh Witnesses being threatened killed murdered uh I put it into some sort of narrative it doesn’t work you you can’t it would look exactly like a painting by Dolly after he embed on drugs for a week right very very very true very true um so yeah so but and how much you talk about paranoia but also what about politics I mean there seems to be sort of this U I don’t know like a JFK cult like okay JFK was going to lead us into a new era of peace and Tranquility uh peace with the Russians uh withdrawal from Vietnam rap Rosman with cu and so therefore he had to be killed yes is uh well I believe that too because I was a Kennedy fan I I voted for him it was the first time I voted and um you know he was a big hope for us I mean he was larger than life on the TV I mean he was like the father that Freud was imagining when he talked about the father being the head of a country and so uh and so you know and and he did Institute some some what shall I say liberal kinds of things certainly slightly leftwing things like the peace score and Vista and so forth um but Kennedy was a cold warer he was a devout anti-communist and so to to claim that he was going to give up Vietnam because red against his ideology is to is to speak nonsense and there are very good books about this there’s a there’s a book by Bruce meof he used to teach at State University of Albany it’s called pragmatic Illusions and he goes through this he goes through what kenned he was like you know left-wing historians criticize Kennedy I mean you should read what Chomsky wrote of him God you know he’s the devil you know uh I mean so so you that that’s it I mean he was a good president there’s no question about that but even with civil rights if you go into it I spent a lot of time studying Kennedy and and his brother uh he had to be cajoled into moving on civil rights he was a died in the wall you know typical gradualist which might be considered to be a conservative position or at least a classical liberal position and and didn’t want to do anything in a hurry and and Robert you know said listen we can’t let them you know arrest people in Mississippi like this you know I mean that’s what got him moving so that’s it and he was you know he what do they think the Cuban Missile Crisis shows that he’s he’s he’s in favor of Communism you know come on so it’s well you have you have the the peace speech of June 1963 yes yes well you know I read the peace my reading of the peace speech is that Kennedy basically was saying to the Russians look I’m not going to impose my view of Peace on the world but uh communism is pretty bad and you guys uh are capable of a lot of evil and uh we’re not going to we’re not going to stand for it stay in your own backyard basically yeah listen when did anybody decide you have to be uh a left Winger to to to want a peaceful world where does this come from you know that’s nonsense well the other thing that I think a lot of conspiracy people Miss is the fact it takes two to tango yeah the Russians were pretty bad and pretty you know communism was pretty evil and and the Russians just be whatever Kenedy may have thought I mean they they were on their own path to doing some pretty horrible things they were expansionist that’s what they did I that’s why they we had the Eastern European and the AR curtain you know yeah I’m just so this this whole this whole JFK cult and you see that in deog genio and and other people and Oliver Stone it’s just a complete misreading of History well that’s very odd I mean I’ve as you know I’ve argued with a good number of these people and uh you know I suppose they hate me which makes me feel really good and you know I the Eugenio I mean I I saw him live you know giving papers he’s uh uh yes so he’s a very angry guy and I I would just ask him questions at meetings and he said if he asked him a question that that he senses and here’s where the paranoia comes in again you know there’s a kind of hyp sensitivity that these people have then he gets very angry I had a similar experience with Joan melan over at the 92nd Street y here I used to go to the lectures all the time and she gave a lecture on Garrison and somebody asked her a question that you know was a little a little bit of texture to it I thought you was going to kill the person theia is the same way I mean he just he just you know puts everybody down his books are a disgrace his stuff on well you’re an expert on Garrison I mean these books are just they’re terrible it’s absolutely unbelievable how anybody could defend Jim Garrison I mean what that man did was just unbelievable it’s it’s it’s without any doubt and when I read the the Alicia long book on the on the gay theme and it it’s a terrific book by the way y she’s a terrific scholar and I I corresponded with her and you I wrote a review of it I just you know this is a fraudulent but this is what happens in America you know I mean I don’t want to take us too far a field but you know and I have some observations on this in America in the 30s we had all kinds of a rich panoply of Fringe movements of All Sorts anti- this anti- that okay they never hit the main stream they stayed on the periphery and were completely sashed at the B box but if the killing of a president becomes a fringe idea it’s definitionally mainstream and therefore takes over the mainstream of popular culture and so this is what we have 60% of the people when ped think that Kennedy was killed by a conspiracy whether they know anything about it or not they’re GNA think that yep so here we go you know and I think uh the the gay uh element to this uh given what Garrison actually said and what um Tommy Lee Jones said in that interview that I I ran across Garrison was convinced about the homosexuality and that’s how he that’s how he played Clay Shaw in the movie as as a man whose whose gayness was in fact his most Salient feature whereas if you see Clay Shaw in in footage or what do he right he’s not he’s not he’s he’s not he’s not a he’s not a performer of any sort I mean he’s a sober intelligent guy yeah I I actually posted an interview with Tommy Lee Jones and and he actually said that he was instructed by Garrison and stone to play Clay Shaw as a f fascistic gay person remember you know he was a fascist and he was cruel he had that cruelty to him yeah you know and it just just completely untrue and complet you know I mean what one of the books I do want to write in the future is I I have a copy of you know Clay Shaw’s Journal yes and I want to write a book Clay Shaw speaks I mean there was a very educated uh educated highly intelligent man who was very sensitive who terrific writer um my God I mean somebody really does need to make a movie about what happened to Clay Shaw sure I mean listen if you read American grotesque I mean it’s hard not to cry after you read that book y you know that’s a PR good book going back to the United States and the other thing that really the notion that really gets me upset is you have a lot of authors uh starting with Fletcher proudy But continuing on with Oliver Stone and deog Genia would say well we can’t America can’t move forward until we solve the JFK assassination we are stuck with a militaristic program a militaristic government uh endless Wars because we never solved the JFK assassination well that’s just I mean you know British would call this poppy [ __ ] because that’s what it is I mean can you believe this what is it a numbify agent here what are we talking about you know it’s it’s quite a message for young people that you know you’re helpless you can’t do anything because we are stuck um and the only thing you need to do is work on the JFK assassination well the conspiracy notion in general walks people into place because we have a we have right-wing Shout radio here in New York it dominates the am Airwaves it’s unbelievable and uh Roger Stone who is a friend of all these characters and who has written a book as you know in which he claims that Lyndon Johnson was behind the murder you know and um they do this stuff all the time I know you appeared on one of the shows by U Frank Morano and he invited me to be on that show but I didn’t get the email in time uh against Lamar Waldren who I I thought was terrible just foolish oh my God he just makes things up I mean he’s tell says whatever he wants yeah you know he’s just oh you know Jack Ruby’s Club was owned by the mob and this and that I mean you know unbelievable the plot in Tampa which was complete nonsense yes I mean it’s just incredible and and then he’s at the beginning of it he starts to laugh when you say something yeah you remember that well I I I knew then I said of course he’s got to laugh he has nothing to say got away it was it was just incredible and I’ll have to tell you I mean I’ll ask you I mean you know i’ for my podcast series I mean there’s lots of really interesting good people to talk to uh like yourself but who on The Conspiracy side could I speak to that makes any sense is there anybody I could talk to I think none of them and I argue with some people Nick n who is a a non-c conspiracist and is you know colleague of ours and is a highly educated fellow in physics and has done some tremendous work on the on the the head shot and so forth uh he thinks that uh that Tink Thompson uh is is a reasonable person I do not right he is the most sober of all of these conspiracy people his book is the most sober etc etc but he is not he’s he’s as blind to the simple evidence as anybody else and you can’t talk to him I I did talk to him I was he liked to drink and uh you know there was a time when I when you know I couldn’t say no to Martini I like the martini as well so I was in Chicago drinking with him a bit and we were talking about the case he doesn’t care I said what did you think of Latimer’s presentation he said well he’s old I said yeah what did you think of L’s presentation he hasn’t anything to say about the content of it so you know and there’s ladim is showing you know the jet effect and all kinds of stuff in in this film so I at that point just knew that you know who could you call there’s nothing reasonable about this position it’s not based on evidence you have to suspend your your IQ points in order to to buy into any conspiracy theory I mean there are people still hold on to uh the fact that Oswald might have been influenced by somebody particularly in Mexico City is’s no evidence for this and that the psychiatric record on Oswalt is very clear I mean it’s right there in the report you know skitso patterns that means alienation and isolation that’s what that means which means that he didn’t form connections to anybody and that’s the skinny on this guy you know I mean he’s died at 24 I mean he was nothing but a misfit for 24 years you know and so the idea that somebody whispered in his ear you know you should kill the president you know everybody will like you oh God I’ll go and do that right now it’s nonsense it’s a crime of opportunity Kennedy may or may not have gone by his his his room he may may or may not have been able to shoot from the window with with or with with other workers around you know this this is hardly a a conspiracy and so I I I don’t know who you would get to be honest with you you yeah and the whole I mean this the whole notion that Oswalt was an agent an operative with the CIA FBI informant a few people work with both at the same time I mean just it’s a Beggar’s belief I mean how could this be yeah said he had he had a learning disability he dropped out of high school he had a psychiatric record he was charged in the Marines uh he was really aloner and you know it’s like you know the he went to he went to Russia because he you know he he glommed onto Marxism and communism as a way of of you know getting personal authenticity to himself hold it he was not a false Defector I’m sorry all you have to do is listen to his mother okay and the book by Jean Stafford by the way on her is terrific that was originally a two-part article in Esquire right right you know that was and she was one of our great writers by the way uh most people don’t know her but she was a wonderful writer and you know this you know his mother was was was you know was a was a a Wingnut for God’s sake you know and so what else can you get you know he beat his wife I mean that that’s very clear so there’s I don’t know who you would talk to I mean um you know this fight goes on and the opposition has no grounds at all yet it persists and still gets an airing because this is a metric of what’s happened to the culture not what’s happened to the case the culture is worse now you know a really perspicacious culture would have jettisoned this nonsense 30 years ago it

doesn’t yeah so talking a little bit about the culture just in general American I as as a Canadian I mean I I don’t like to talk too much about American politics because our politics is pretty pretty bad here um uh we have sort of a left-wing version of Donald Trump in power with Justin Trudeau yes um for as bad as Donald Trump is on Russia Justin Trudeau is actually worse on China you wouldn’t believe what’s going on here with foreign interference and his his in ability to come to grips with it but I’m not surprised I’m not surprised yeah but but American politics I mean there is this sort of whole woke nonsense going on yeah and and the whole the whole ridiculous uh um takeover of Institutions by by I don’t call them Pro Palestinians but Pro Hamas students yeah well this a complicated business I mean um the I’m I’m 86 now so I I I’m I’m forgetting the last name of that wonderful Canadian at Toronto who’s against wokeness oh Jordan Peterson Jordan Peterson is one of our great public intellectuals along with Douglas Murray you know two of the great int public intellectuals in the western world and I met Jordan Peterson he was here at at city college about four years ago and you know and it seems to me that Canada has the same kinds of problems that America has in fact in some ways it’s worse because Peterson was reacting to legislative moves y to tell people what they could say we haven’t gotten that bad yet although you know I suppose we could get there if you wanted no I mean listen um it all Springs out of the 60s because after um after Israel won The Six Day War and uh America was in Vietnam against a swell of people uh who were opposed to the war and I was among them and still think the war was not a good idea and um the the left-wing U people in America turned anti-government at that point and so they dragged Israel along with it since we were helping Israel and Israel was depending upon us and we were in favor of Israel they started to to to jump all over them first time I ever heard about the plight of the Palestinians was at a cocktail party with a bunch of left Wingers like myself in 1968 okay so what about the Palestinians I’m looking around what Palestinians what are we talking about you know and so uh and then we have then that once the war was over the leftwing in America uh invaded Academia a lot of them are academics and they they became part of the curricular discussion I mean I was in that environment I taught from’ 69 to 99 you know I I got up one day and and looked at the faculty handbook and and I I discovered a sentence in there that said factly are are encouraged not to disagree with other people’s ideas we must respect them and I’m looking around said who put this in here put this right well you know what happened in Canada was was that was that a lot of uh War resistors from the United States moved to Canada yes we took in a lot of people a lot of them went into Academia and they were the ones that really introduced into Canada this whole notion of being anti-American hating the Americans hating American foreign policy phenomenon it’s the same phenomenon for it yeah and and it sort of poisoned Canadian Minds um throughout the country it was really it’s really horrible what it happened it’s leeched into everywhere I mean it’s Le in America it’s leeched into HR departments and and and and companies and so forth it’s in the language I mean it’s you know critical race Theory here and there and and it’s mudded up the the the waters because you know my youngest daughter is a curriculum person she used to write the curriculum for training for a Teach for America and uh she’s now working in a kind of charter school thing and she was involved in the common Corps curriculum uh installation in Tennessee and she said you know the rightwing there unfortunately is using the leftwing tactics to keep slavy slavery from being taught at all by claiming that it hurts people’s feelings and she said you know I can’t tell you how I could discuss this with people because they won’t discuss it so you know anybody who’s against the Common Core Curriculum just uses this one element and then destroys the whole Enterprise so you know we’re in trouble we are we’re in serious trouble yeah yeah you’re qualified all the time for Being for making sense okay no I I I think the the the Chinese must look at us and say oh my God they’re lost they’re lost in the west they they we have Beed our next to them as in you know Conrad Lorenzo’s book you know they’re ready to bite the jugular vean here and you know they there are predatory Nations and they are one of them yep I mean let’s face it you know they’re not big enough yet you know I mean what’s going to happen when they invade Taiwan well we we we we’ll we’ll send them a strongly worded note yeah I mean I’m on the left and I think that that this is a possibility this is not a left right issue yeah this how do you decode reality here you know well you know one of my one of my better friends here in Canada is a is a socialist who uh is horrified of what has happened to the left because it’s abandoned the working class absolutely and it’s just taken on identity Politics as it’s as its Mantra and and we’re abandoning the the the intern the international part the international ISM part of the left has been abandoned yes yeah I mean this is the history of the left in America you had the the the growth of an identifiable left uh at the turn of the 20th century in the wood Wilson Progressive Era and we had the Romantic left you know with Randol Bourne and and Walter Litman and so forth and and influenced by uh by wsw worth and all these people and then we had the old left which is the workingman people and they worked all through the 20s and 30s and did a lot of things that were helpful to the average working citizen then you had the new left of the students in the 60s who did did push some stuff through civil rights uh voting rights etc etc etc and now you have the silly left yes thinks that the way you speak is where all the action is come

on so let me back up and just ask you a question what what is your advice for a new person coming into the JFK assassination what should they do where should they go what should they read what should they watch I don’t know I I I would I would tend to think that uh as an introduction Gerald posner’s book is probably good because it’s very readable yep and uh there is a book by by is mcnight that Patrick Collins always talks about he claims it’s good but I I haven’t read it I I I’d like the that book I think if they can get a copy of Vladimir’s book it’s very clear ladimer book is very clear and I suspect that there’s a cop you can get a an ecopy online somewhere he told he couldn’t get it reprinted because there were relatives that were blocking it uh and including Marina oswal he said H so I don’t know where the details you could probably get it on archive.org it’s probably there yes and that’s probably where you and and I think if people look at that that’s a shorter read and and it just it just reeks of good sense you know that that that’s what I would think um and but you know this this is about about conceptual Acumen uh whether or not you can take a a conceptual Excursion through a mass of material in an analytic way or are constantly deceived by all the noise that comes in as you travel through the material and people say what about the the Doctor Who said so and so I said the you know the the the the the wound in the back of Kennedy’s head is beveled on the inside it was an entrance wound I don’t care what he said you understand he could be singing Dixie for all I know it doesn’t matter and you know what there are many people who are surprised by taking such a position they think analysis is what makes sense when you talk ordinarily it’s not it could be but it isn’t you know right right it’s a real it’s a real problem and this is why people in America don’t do science anymore it’s not an ordinary language you know they say something to you in an equation and you you know you you hide under the desk you know it’s like a bomb so I I don’t know what to say you know it’s it’s um I don’t think I don’t think the schools are the problem here I think the problem is the culture the culture as you know there are many cultural critiques that that I’ve read and used in the JFK course uh Philip Slater’s the pursuit of loneliness is one Christ Christopher lash’s culture of narcissism is one yeah very good terrific books yeah that tell you what’s happened to the American popular mind so what happened in in your class teaching the gfk assciation did your students change their mind about conspiracy towards the end of the course yes I taught I taught it for five years and I can’t tell you the kind of response first because of the reputation I had and I tended to teach high level courses and I’ve been there long while I was there over 20 years when I started this um I had um I had really high-powered students that came in you know and they were from psychology they were from science they were from philosophy they from everywhere and so uh it was it was really like eeden for me because I mean you could say anything and they would understand it you know you don’t always get that uh and every for five years at 30 students a year so 150 students of in all that time 49 of them believe the course and one kid held out to the

end that’s a pretty good ratio yeah I thought it was good and and I I finally asked him why and he said well I just think it’s you know I think it’s it’s a conspiracy I said yeah I asked you why he said well because I think it’s a conspiracy so there’s nothing else what can I say to him you know I mean the next step is a variable speed drill for the cranium you know you can’t do anything about it but no they were all that way and I got notes from students you wouldn’t believe it I got a note from a student said you know dear Dr Kelly thank you for teaching me how to think I was just giving him the truth I mean I didn’t do anything here I showed them what was the case I showed them what the Warren Commission had come up with this is not a Magical Mystery of any sort this is real and how many people have even read the Warren report Well w didn’t read it no it’s very clear and and and you know uh I I heard Mark Lane you know the famous angry conspiracy person claim a number of times he said as soon as the the warant report was was available at the government printing office I was in line first okay and I look through all the books he never read this thing he doesn’t know anything if he read it he would have at least paused the bit he doesn’t pause so I mean this just fraudulent you know no my favorite my favorite Mark Lane story it’s on my blog but there was a a document in the in the uh the 26 volum volumes a state department memo describing Lee Harvey Oswald and there was a one one line that was redacted and and it sort of goes Lee Harvey Oswalt and and then there’s a redacted sentence and Lane would say well what’s redacted is it Lee Harvey Oswalt you know and star of stage screen in television or what what’s redacted yeah and and at one point Paul Paul hul figured out exactly what was redacted the sentence was about Robert Webster another Marine who had defected yes and he actually uh told Mark Lane here’s what’s what’s in that redacted sentence but Mark Lane went on with his stick saying you know what what what are they hiding in that redaction it didn’t change his opinion no well he was a huxster I mean he was he was he was a Huer listen when you read Jean Stafford’s book on oswal’s game and she takes up je Jean Davidson Jean Davidson I’m sorry yes she takes up lane and and is obviously while writing it rather angry about how he truncated Jack Ruby’s T testimony to make it look like he he was saying there was a conspiracy when what he was talking about was a paranoid delusion about being persecuted as a Jew that’s right exactly and so I I when I looked at that I said you know we’ve been had here man I mean no shame no shame yeah we’ve really been mean Jack Ruby I mean my God and people still go on oh he wanted to go to Washington he wanted to tell the truth I said just read his testimony you’ll see exactly he wanted to tell Johnson there was going to be a second Holocaust yeah it’s unbelievable I mean he was whacked out this guy I mean and you know we had a history of this kind of you unprovoked provoked spontaneous violence to a guy downstairs one time you know yeah there’s an interview with Breck wall Breck wall was a was a he actually was a producer of a play and he he was for a while he was in Jack Ruby’s Club doing this play he moved across the street it was called Bottoms Up at the adulas hotel and uh so he had a meeting with Jack Ruby to say you know I’m moving my play out of your club and he was with his partner and Ruby instantly punched his partner right in the mouth oh jees at the table and he was shocked oh my God from from being nice this guy immediately turned violent yeah this was this was a story about him yeah and that was Jack Ruby and and uh and of course bre wall uh who was who went on to go to Las Vegas and he was very successful with this play ends up being a villain in Jim Garrison’s piece um because Breck wall the night of the assassination his parents lived in galvaston so he went to galvaston to visit them and David Ferry as you know drove from New Orleans to Texas to to Houston then to Galveston and so Jim Maris Jim Garrison’s and and Breck wall Ruby called Breck wall that night so he said oh Ruby must have been meeting Ferry who told him you know go call Jack Ruby and tell him to kill Oswalt yeah I mean that’s what all the stuff is about this kind of you know concatenation of chance events into it’s a pure delusion tying stuff together uh and then making villains out of innocent people um one day I’d like to write a book just about all the the people who have been hurt by conspiracy well that’s a it’s a sad story but I mean listen the title of your book you know on the road to delusion is in fact uh very very perceptive about what the heart and soul of this movement is about this conspiracy movement it’s not really about a substance it just isn’t and uh the anger and hysteria that you see you know uh and you even see it in some some some people who no longer conspiracy theorists but still hang on we have a guy online who still thinks that Oswald was handled by the Russians even though he believed that nobody else was involved you know and um you know since all of us were conspiracy theorists at one time we have the capability of you know having an erroneous idea you know I can’t imagine you know ladimer having such an idea I mean he was a different breed but listen this is a in in a different kind of culture this thing would wither yeah okay but listen we have now uh you know we have a kind of Roger Stone is a friend of of of the the Republican candidate he’s a friend of of Frank Morano who who’s who did the radio show you were on yeah and and I think I think that the trumpist have figured out that the JFK assassination is too much fun for the left we could use it too and it shows the Deep State absolutely and this thing is rigged this a fraud I mean this is the line this is what I mean by things you know uh it’s it’s not Dudley and the silver shirts anymore from 1933 it’s uh you know it’s Colonel Mustard in in 2024 in the mainstream you know basically right there just saying the same thing it’s sad I mean I I I have a a 25y old grandson Gavin [ __ ] who’s a journalist researcher with Fair substack which is a a kind of anti-woke uh online magazine and he’s been doing this for some time I love Fair the fair people are great yeah he’s been he’s in there he’s he’s been working with him from the beginning and he’s got a degree in English from Kenyon he’s a very bright fellow and he’s you know I we talk a lot he’s you know just doesn’t know what to do he said what would you do about voting I said I don’t know I can imagine you know leaving a bomb in the voting booth I mean what what would I do he said who are you going to vote for I said I I said well I know I won’t vote for Trump because I just find that bad but he said you don’t like Biden I said that like is not the right word I I I don’t find it I don’t find him doing anything that that’s worth wild to me and I hear leftwing people people who are further the left than I am claim that he’s done a lot and I’m looking around for it and I said listen this like anything else is Woody Allen would say if you discuss what he’s done you find out that it’s okay but you know it has other sides and you don’t hear anybody discussing the other sides so you get back to Woody Allen it’s like anything else and you get back to Vicken Stein let’s just have a conversation about what’s being said here right and that’s what it is you know and so uh I don’t know he he he said so you won’t vote for Trump I said no I said I’m going to vote he said but I said I I don’t know well that leavs Robert Kenn Robert F Kennedy Robert Kennedy Jr oh please he was on the same radio show you were on with Frank Morano times it it just I I I find it astounding that that people like Robert Kennedy Jr would would would like Siran Siran to be released I’m sure he would throw him a party uh if he was released unbelievable you know it’s unbelievable I mean I I mean Siran Siran uh totally admitted it uh we know why he did it because of Israel he was the first sort of Palestinian terrorist yes what else is there to say well you know what’s interesting here Fred is that I mean here’s a guy who’s standing in the kitchen about three feet away from Robert Kennedy with the gun in his hand pulling the trigger and he’s he’s he’s restrained with the gun in his hand still firing and Robert Kennedy Jr claims he didn’t shoot Robert Kennedy what are we doing here yeah what are you what are we doing here he didn’t shoot Robert Kennedy what are you doing well he was shot right behind the right ear he turned his head I know he turned it’s just oh my God it’s so simple what’s the problem here it’s so simple and now but they have no he was firing blanks hypnotized I that’s not true he had children yeah no I’m sorry that’s worthy of a joke right it’s worthy of joke I mean listen of course it’s just crazy it’s just it’s no different than the JFK the JFK is the same way yeah so but before we go so what what what what is to be done as as Lennon would say what is to be done I don’t know I mean uh I I I go to a lot of lectures here in New York City I’m going to fewer now because of my age but there are a lot of people who have Minds like like we we’re discussing here that you know have taken a closer look at things and more sane and anti-woke and so forth and they’re they’re not particularly political they’re neither left nor right and you know in that sense and and you and I are neither left nor right totally let’s face it yeah and they give wonderful lectures on things and and they do research etc etc nobody listens to them and so the notion of public discourse yeah that’s important for democracy is gone because it’s been flooded by the cartoon reality of the media you know these do you watch these can you watch these these cable shows in New York MSNBC CNN and Fox News no I don’t I can’t I don’t know which one of them I I I I would spit on first I mean it’s not to do with partisanship it’s to do with the fact that these these are just distorted of Enterprises they bring in billions of dollars yep and this is what we this is our lifeblood I was up in the in in the in the Manhattan College library about eight years ago I spent the summer there it’s right by my my apartment I was doing work on father cogin you remember father coglin yep yeah well he was a Canadian a also you know and came to America and he was a he was a right-wing fascist anti-semite etc etc but they had all of his uh all of his U newspapers bound it’s the only place I could find them anywhere and they let me in and said yeah and they put them with my side one every day and I started to talk with this woman who was behind the the circulation desk she’d been working there for years and we’re talking and then something came up and I and I said something she said listen to me she said don’t ever say anything against Fox News while I’m around I said oh okay you know you know this is what we have Yep this is what we have come come to Canada you have the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation gets over a billion dollars a year from the government to promote anti-israel uh crazy leftism I’m not surprised because when I read about Jordan Peterson’s first case where he ran into the people of I mean he was he was rising up against government initiative there yep so legislation about the way people can speak I couldn’t believe it I still can’t believe it by the way yeah well they want to go they want to go further they actually want preventative attention for people who might Sprout wrong ideas oh my god um but uh hopefully they’ll be sto I person listen when I was in in in the 60s and was in college um I was really infatuated with Albert Kimu I read Kimu and I still read Kimu and I think maybe that’s probably where the truth is that you know we’re all going to be run over by the boulder here right and uh that’s that’s all there is to it I mean I I I can’t see Western Civilization lasting in this form for very long I mean it’s going to implode we have people now fighting about everything in America we have PE Palestinian demonstrations again now yesterday here in New York City we have people uh shooting people uh the threatening politicians you know uh Supreme Court I mean everywhere you go there’s nothing but controversy Y no discussion but controversy so I I don’t know what anybody could do it what’s helpful is that some people listen to us and get get a clear picture on you know this particular case this is an open and shed case it is yeah well look thank you very much for talking to me um uh FR I hope to be able to see you in person before I I leave this blobe I hope so too I really have to come to New York I mean really I lived there for six years so I really want to come back to New York so uh well I could take you to the to dberto which is my favorite tusen restaurant down in 1 street that sounds great [Music] [Applause] [Music]