The JFK Facts Podcast

After hearing last week from Judge Burt Griffin who defended the Warren Commission, Larry and I spoke with Morris Wolff, an aide to Kentucky Sen. John Sherman Cooper, a Republican from Kentucky.

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

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

You can listen to all JFK Facts Podcasts here.

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Larry Schnapf and I talked with the man (with Soledad O’Brien) behind the new podcast “Who Killed JFK?”

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

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

Shaw tells the story here.

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[Editor Jefferson Morley is on vacation this week, so we are reposting his interview with Allison McClelland, daughter of Dr. Robert McClelland, from last October.]

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

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

Larry and I speak with James Robenalt, corporate litigator and popular historian, about his friend Paul Landis, the Secret Service man whose story about his actions on November 22, 1963 has raised more doubts of the official “lone gunman” theory of JFK’s assassination.

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

Instead of our usual open Zoom call, the JFK Facts Podcast this week comes in a different format: a pre-recorded conversation with editor Jefferson Morley about how to bypass conspiracy theories will pursuing the truth about November 22, 1963.

We will return to the open discussion format next week.

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

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

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

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

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

In this week’s podcast, we talked about Israeli media reports on Reuben Efron, the CIA man who read Lee Harvey Oswald’s mail.

Listen to all the JFK Facts podcast here.

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

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

You can listen here to past JFK Facts podcasts.

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

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

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

We talked about Chad Nagle's article "Tale of Two Defectors" and what it means for the JFK assassination story.

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

This week’s JFK Facts podcast is a pre-recorded conversation with Jim Risen, author of “The Last Honest Man,” which is both a biography of Senator Frank Church and a history of his great achievement, the Church Committee, the Senate select committee which investigated CIA abuses of power in 1975-76 and issued a powerful, credible report that led to fundamental reform of the U.S. intelligence community.

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

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

Listen now to last week’s podcast when we talked about about the credibility of the maverick Democratic candidate.

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

Here’s last week’s conversation where we talked about the government’s response to the Mary Ferrell lawsuit and the Citizen Archivist plan.

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

Click here to join the call.

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

We convene every Thursday night at 8 pm ET.

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

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

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

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

Join co-host Larry Schnapf for a discussion of the latest news and developments related to the JFK assassination story.

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

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

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

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

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

Listen to last week’s conversation (above) and join us tonight for another conversation (below).

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

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

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

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

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

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

In last week’s conversation we discussed these two pieces: New Light on the Shooting of General Walker and Target Practice With Lee Harvey Oswald.

This is last week’s show.

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

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

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

Look for Meeting ID: 884 9319 4600

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

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

If you haven’t read the story behind this conversation, go here: Declassified Memo Reveals CIA Investigated Cuban Exiles in JFK’s Assassination.

Read the Heath Memo.

In which I explain the significance of a newly-declassified CIA memo about the assassination of JFK. In a four-page letter to congressional investigators, written in March 1977, Donald Heath Jr., an officer in the Agency’s Miami station in 1963, shared what he knew of the CIA’s secret investigation of JFK’s assassination.

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

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

Here is Heath’s unredacted memo.

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

You can listen here to my extraordinary conversation with Ernst Titovets, a scientist who was close friends with Lee Harvey Oswald from September 1960 to November 1963. When these two young men met long ago, they shared ambitions to make something of themselves. Titovets was an aspiring medical student who spoke rudimentary English. Oswald was an ex-Marine living in a foreign county who sought to forge a new life.

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

Here are some highlights of our conversation.

First Impressions of Oswald

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Oswald defended capitalism

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

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

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

Oswald on life under communism

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

Oswald and Fair Play for Cuba Committee

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

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

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

Oswald and Non-Violence

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

The Oswalds wanted to return to the Soviet Union

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

On Kennedy’s assassination

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

On Oswald’s arrest

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

On Oswald’s assassination.

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

‘Absolutely out of his character’

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

‘Oswald was selected’

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

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

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

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

When the Mary Ferrell Foundation sued President Biden and the National Archives for failure to enforce the JFK Records Act, the media reaction was overwhelmingly positive. Can litigation achieve the intent of Congress? Editor Jeff Morley and JFK Facts readers like you talked it over.

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

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

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

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

This week’s conversation focused on Glenn Greenwald’s comment on Breaking Points that President Trump threatened to release JFK assassination files after his defeat in the 2020 presidential election.

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