Oliver Stone on the JFK Assassination Cover-up

The community of people that are obsessed with the JFK SS. Thank God. It's pretty thorough. It's amazing. There are a lot of nutcases too out there, but those serious people are really good, and they're the ones that kept this case alive. Well, it's a thing that a conspiracy theorist really looks to. I don't use that word. I think truth seekers much more. Okay. We'll forget about that word, but someone who's interested in uncovering the truth about this assassination, the type of person that has that mindset that's interested in uncovering the truth about any historical... Yes, that's correct. This is one of the best ones. That's it. Because there's significant... What a historian does. Yes. There's significant evidence, and there's significant evidence that there is a conspiracy. Significant evidence. Significant. I mean... I would say from the beginning there was... Yes. Where you have a shot from the rear and a shot from the front. Yes. Well, I was going to get into that. So when you detail so brilliantly in this documentary all of the people that were involved in manipulating evidence, whether it's autopsy photos, whether it's the evidence about the actual shots, where they were fired from, the impact, like where the exit wounds was, all these various people that were involved, how many people knew what had actually happened? Because it seems like there was a concentration of people that was not small. And one of the things that people who like to use the pejorative term conspiracy theorists, they always want to point to people can't keep a secret. Well, the fuck they can't. They had to. It's a giant maze. It's so confusing that no one would be believed if they could... Right. Think of it as departments of this. Somebody pops up and says, I know this. So he disappears in the maze. It's another piece of information. There's been no attempt by government to follow up on this at all. They had the HSCA in 1978, right? That came about because of pressure. And a lot of that was classified still and disappeared for a while. We got it out, all that stuff. They decided that there was a probable conspiracy based on the acoustic evidence of the motorcycles. We don't want to go into that because that's a whole other story. Acoustic evidence from sound from the rear... Acoustic evidence from sound from the rear... ... from the recording? Yes. The shots, the shots. The physical evidence of the impact on the body is way more important and way more obvious. First of all, the establishment of the magic bullet was one of the most preposterous things that the United States public has ever accepted. And I think we did a great service by driving a stake through that heart of that vampire because it's been around forever. Well, you detailed it in so many different ways, too. You detailed all the various ways that they had tried to establish it. Once they found the wound in the back, they tried to establish... Well, don't confuse it. First of all, the magic bullet, there's no chain of custody on it. The FBI lied and we proved it in the film. Yes, you did. Because the times don't match. So the FBI down and out lied. Now, Hoover, of course, never believed... One had to believe, wanted to believe that Oswald did it alone. He had to because they put themselves in a straitjacket. They said three shots. There were not three shots. It was probably four or five shots. One assassin who... Why? What's his motive? He was a perfectly reasonable young man. He was in the corridor being yelled at and he said, I need a lawyer. I'm a passing. Yes, yes. You know, the guy didn't behave like he was proud of what he had done. No. Which is what they said. He was a communist, an assassin. They had this background of visiting Russia. Of course, we found out. We found out, the community found out that it wasn't everything that didn't meet the eye. It was a whole other story going on. What about the... That Oswald had been an associated with the CIA? Yes. Not that he'd been an agent, but he'd been watched by the CIA for four years. We know without a doubt now because of what we declassified. Angleton, James Angleton, the counter terrorist chief, had a file on Oswald since before Russia. They knew him. They knew what he was doing up until the week... Well, apparently, they disappeared his flash warning about a week before the assassination, which means to say, you don't need to check Oswald if you are a secret service. You see him somewhere on a parade route. You'd have to clear out those type of people. They get... The secret service is very aware of people who have backgrounds, who could be dangerous. They took that off, the signal on Oswald. The other thing is that Oswald was working both sides clearly, that he was working with a pro Castro in the anti-Tuba movement. But to see how he set up both. You see how he set up the pro and the... Right. It made it clear that they were well aware of him. Dip him in the Cuban poison. Sheep dip him. Just make him look like a commie who loves Castro. That was the intention, I believe. I believe that the CIA was so upset about these two near invasions of Cuba that this was a chance, like killing Kennedy, to get the United States to move against Castro. And this is what Johnson... This is where Johnson is not... You can't blame Johnson because he felt that there was his pressure right away. And he said to the Warren Commission guys, he says, look, there's a lot of pressure to point the finger at Russia and Cuba. We don't want to do that because we're going to have a nuclear war if we do that. Like 40 million people are going to be dying. That's what he told Warren. Warren went white. In those days, it was very serious. 40 million people, my God. He had all the weight of the country on his shoulders. And that's why he accepted this lousy job as the chief commissioner. So Johnson used that story, but Johnson believed... I think he believed it. I think he believed there was... I think he believed in some way. I'm not sure. Let me put something that's very important. Marvin Watson was his aide to Johnson. In 1970, in 19th... Church Committee, he testified. He testified that Johnson, after he read the IG report that we talked about earlier, which said that there were no assassination... President Kennedy or Robert had never approved, authorized any assassination attempt on Castro. He read that report. And he told Watson, according to Watson, he said, I now believe the CIA was probably involved in the assassination. That's what he said. Wow. In 1967, when he read the report. It comes out at the Church Committee, which is classified, disappears for some reason. We find it again because of this ARB. So he was probably left in the dark as well. I do believe so. I think he's definitely involved in the cover-up because he doesn't want to have a war. But he changes the whole policy of Kennedy right away. We have that declassified call between him and Robert McNamara. What is Johnson saying that call? Do you remember? It's in the film. He says, I was never in agreement with you and the president about withdrawing from Vietnam. I thought you were wrong. He says that proudly because he's going in. Right. Why he wants to go into Vietnam and not Cuba is another issue. But think about that. Just think about the implications of that. Johnson is moving towards war in Vietnam. And how deep in that he... He was looking to do something to weaken the grip of the CIA. Not just get rid of those three guys, but he also wanted to diminish the CIA's influence on power. He only thought he had 100 things to deal with around the world. That's the problem, right? He wasn't... And he was newly in office. Well, yeah, by 60. He said statements about the generals. He said, they're not worth a bucket of piss or whatever it was. Generals think they know everything. They always want to go to war. They want the parades, but they don't want the casualties. They don't want the result. And that's true for the United States. We go to war with a lot of hoopla and we come out and we leave our people who go over there mostly in very difficult states, either suicide or veterans' hospitals with limbs blown off. It's not fun, war. We treat it like... I think the United States has never experienced a war. I think that's a problem. On our shores. Yeah. And when we do, we're shocked. So we have a distorted perception of what war is. Yes. And it's much more realistic because every Russian is related to somebody who was killed in World War II. Right. They... Well, it's in their hearts. It's seared in. And I can't speak for the Chinese, but they lost like a couple of million men in Korea. So they must have been a lot of family pain there. Have you ever tried to calculate how many people were involved in the cover-up of the assassination? Because when you break down all the various people that you document, everyone from Arlen Specter to everyone that's on the Warren Commission's report, it's very clear that those folks had to know that what they were doing was bullshit. From what you said about the FBI chain of custody for the magic bullet to the alteration of the autopsy photos and the difference between the... The autopsy itself. Yes. The autopsy itself. The difference between the Dallas autopsy and the way they looked at it at Bethesda, Maryland. There wasn't no autopsy in Dallas. It was just... The examination of the body. It was very quick, the tracheotomy. Yeah. The tracheotomy and also the description of the exit wound. In his head. Well, yeah, that comes out later. Yeah. Although some people didn't see it, but 40 people... What the ARB did, thank God, was collect all the people who saw the rear exit wound. And it was huge. In the film, we showed the 40 people who saw it. What's really crazy you document in the film was the fact that it wasn't really his brain. Yeah, I was going to go to that. Yeah. Please, the brain that they had used as a piece of evidence that this was Kennedy's brain had clearly been in formaldehyde for at least two weeks. Yeah. Well, I'm so glad our documentary, and this is James Diugenio who wrote it. He's really the guy who reads everything, remembers everything through all these years. And there's a million documents. We drove a stake through the magic bullet. That's clear. There's no chain of custody of the FBI lied. They also, in the matter of the autopsy, the brain is intact. And it was photographed as such. It was a clean... The whole area was still there. Whereas it's impossible because the brain was seen. You see it spraying out in the car when there's a Pruder film. You see it, the nurses, Audrey Bell is talking about it's... I can't remember the medical term, whatever it's called. It's spilling out on the floor of Parkland. And when they weigh the brain as they do in an autopsy, it comes out normal. Well, not just normal, but extra large, right? A little bit. Larger than average. It's impossible. And what's more important is, and this drives a stake again through the heart of the photographer of the autopsy, John Stringer, the autopsy photographer. He's a straight guy. He's pro-war and commissioned, all that stuff. They bring him back. The ARB brings him back. And they show him the photos that we now have of the... That are in the National Archives. And he says, I never photographed that. He took an up view of the brain. He never took a basilar view from the below. I never photographed that. And that's very important. There's also some evidence that they had drawn hair in to cover up the exit wound. Yes. I know about the evidence, but definitely the photograph shows that the hair had been pulled in. The shot is bizarre. It's bizarre shots. So the autopsy is off. The brain is off. Photos are off. Then you go... The Garrison trial revealed one of the autopsists, Peter Fink, saying that they were not in charge of the autopsy. The military was. Right. And they let him put his finger in the back hole. They told them what to do. And they were very bullying. In fact, there was... Can you imagine having... Doing an autopsy on the president and having 20 or 30 people looking at you from a gallery? And they were telling him what he was able to do and not able to do. So the autopsy was being directed. Yeah. I showed that in the movie. Don't touch that. Right. Don't do that. Which is... So you have to think that... Plus they have the best autopsy people in the world, civilian, all around Washington. Why didn't we... Why wouldn't they call him in? No. Right. There's no desire. So they had a predetermined ending that they wanted to achieve. Or a result that they wanted to achieve. Three bullets. Three bullets. One assassin. But this is what's crazy. It's like you've got to think, okay, well then you have at least those 30 people that are in the audience watching that autopsy. What do they know? I don't know that. But isn't that crazy? If all 30 of them know that Lee Harvey Oswald didn't act alone... No, we don't know that. We don't know. We don't know some of them. But there's obviously a directive. Well, there again, we don't know. I shouldn't say obviously a directive, but they're doing something to influence the way this autopsy is being done. At least some of the people are giving direction, giving instruction. And you've got to wonder why would they do that? What motivation would they have unless they knew that there was a predetermined result that they need to achieve? You have of course the Johnson fear that it would become hysteria. Russia or Cuba being accused of killing him and it would be a situation that they could no longer control. That's a legitimate excuse to cover up. One interesting story. It's in the four hour version, not in this two hour version. That's coming out in the end of February. We show a moment in the autopsy where one of the technicians... The doctor looks up and he says there's cigar smoke blurring this thing. It was just cigar smoke smells, covers up the air and stuff. You don't smoke a cigar in an autopsy. An autopsy crazy. He says, who's doing that? Tell him to point it out. He goes over to the gallery and guess who's smoking the fucking cigar? Who? General Curtis LeMay, the figure from the strange love that Kubrick was satirizing. That's hilarious. And he says, can you point it out? LeMay simply looks at him, blows smoke in his face. And the guy wrote... He was a technician. He just wanted... He's telling the truth, walks back, couldn't get him to put the cigar out. Wow. That's pretty interesting.The Jerogan experience. The community of people that are obsessed with the JFK SS. Thank God. It's pretty thorough. It's amazing. There are a lot of nutcases too out there, but those serious people are really good, and they're the ones that kept this case alive. Well, it's a thing that a conspiracy theorist really looks to. I don't use that word. I think truth seekers much more. Okay. We'll forget about that word, but someone who's interested in uncovering the truth about this assassination, the type of person that has that mindset that's interested in uncovering the truth about any historical... Yes, that's correct. This is one of the best ones. That's it. Because there's significant... What a historian does. Yes. There's significant evidence, and there's significant evidence that there is a conspiracy. Significant evidence. Significant. I mean... I would say from the beginning there was... Yes. Where you have a shot from the rear and a shot from the front. Yes. Well, I was going to get into that. So when you detail so brilliantly in this documentary all of the people that were involved in manipulating evidence, whether it's autopsy photos, whether it's the evidence about the actual shots, where they were fired from, the impact, like where the exit wounds was, all these various people that were involved, how many people knew what had actually happened? Because it seems like there was a concentration of people that was not small. And one of the things that people who like to use the pejorative term conspiracy theorists, they always want to point to people can't keep a secret. Well, the fuck they can't. They had to. It's a giant maze. It's so confusing that no one would be believed if they could... Right. Think of it as departments of this. Somebody pops up and says, I know this. So he disappears in the maze. It's another piece of information. There's been no attempt by government to follow up on this at all. They had the HSCA in 1978, right? That came about because of pressure. And a lot of that was classified still and disappeared for a while. We got it out, all that stuff. They decided that there was a probable conspiracy based on the acoustic evidence of the motorcycles. We don't want to go into that because that's a whole other story. Acoustic evidence from sound from the rear... Acoustic evidence from sound from the rear... ... from the recording? Yes. The shots, the shots. The physical evidence of the impact on the body is way more important and way more obvious. First of all, the establishment of the magic bullet was one of the most preposterous things that the United States public has ever accepted. And I think we did a great service by driving a stake through that heart of that vampire because it's been around forever. Well, you detailed it in so many different ways, too. You detailed all the various ways that they had tried to establish it. Once they found the wound in the back, they tried to establish... Well, don't confuse it. First of all, the magic bullet, there's no chain of custody on it. The FBI lied and we proved it in the film. Yes, you did. Because the times don't match. So the FBI down and out lied. Now, Hoover, of course, never believed... One had to believe, wanted to believe that Oswald did it alone. He had to because they put themselves in a straitjacket. They said three shots. There were not three shots. It was probably four or five shots. One assassin who... Why? What's his motive? He was a perfectly reasonable young man. He was in the corridor being yelled at and he said, I need a lawyer. I'm a passing. Yes, yes. You know, the guy didn't behave like he was proud of what he had done. No. Which is what they said. He was a communist, an assassin. They had this background of visiting Russia. Of course, we found out. We found out, the community found out that it wasn't everything that didn't meet the eye. It was a whole other story going on. What about the... That Oswald had been an associated with the CIA? Yes. Not that he'd been an agent, but he'd been watched by the CIA for four years. We know without a doubt now because of what we declassified. Angleton, James Angleton, the counter terrorist chief, had a file on Oswald since before Russia. They knew him. They knew what he was doing up until the week... Well, apparently, they disappeared his flash warning about a week before the assassination, which means to say, you don't need to check Oswald if you are a secret service. You see him somewhere on a parade route. You'd have to clear out those type of people. They get... The secret service is very aware of people who have backgrounds, who could be dangerous. They took that off, the signal on Oswald. The other thing is that Oswald was working both sides clearly, that he was working with a pro Castro in the anti-Tuba movement. But to see how he set up both. You see how he set up the pro and the... Right. It made it clear that they were well aware of him. Dip him in the Cuban poison. Sheep dip him. Just make him look like a commie who loves Castro. That was the intention, I believe. I believe that the CIA was so upset about these two near invasions of Cuba that this was a chance, like killing Kennedy, to get the United States to move against Castro. And this is what Johnson... This is where Johnson is not... You can't blame Johnson because he felt that there was his pressure right away. And he said to the Warren Commission guys, he says, look, there's a lot of pressure to point the finger at Russia and Cuba. We don't want to do that because we're going to have a nuclear war if we do that. Like 40 million people are going to be dying. That's what he told Warren. Warren went white. In those days, it was very serious. 40 million people, my God. He had all the weight of the country on his shoulders. And that's why he accepted this lousy job as the chief commissioner. So Johnson used that story, but Johnson believed... I think he believed it. I think he believed there was... I think he believed in some way. I'm not sure. Let me put something that's very important. Marvin Watson was his aide to Johnson. In 1970, in 19th... Church Committee, he testified. He testified that Johnson, after he read the IG report that we talked about earlier, which said that there were no assassination... President Kennedy or Robert had never approved, authorized any assassination attempt on Castro. He read that report. And he told Watson, according to Watson, he said, I now believe the CIA was probably involved in the assassination. That's what he said. Wow. In 1967, when he read the report. It comes out at the Church Committee, which is classified, disappears for some reason. We find it again because of this ARB. So he was probably left in the dark as well. I do believe so. I think he's definitely involved in the cover-up because he doesn't want to have a war. But he changes the whole policy of Kennedy right away. We have that declassified call between him and Robert McNamara. What is Johnson saying that call? Do you remember? It's in the film. He says, I was never in agreement with you and the president about withdrawing from Vietnam. I thought you were wrong. He says that proudly because he's going in. Right. Why he wants to go into Vietnam and not Cuba is another issue. But think about that. Just think about the implications of that. Johnson is moving towards war in Vietnam. And how deep in that he... He was looking to do something to weaken the grip of the CIA. Not just get rid of those three guys, but he also wanted to diminish the CIA's influence on power. He only thought he had 100 things to deal with around the world. That's the problem, right? He wasn't... And he was newly in office. Well, yeah, by 60. He said statements about the generals. He said, they're not worth a bucket of piss or whatever it was. Generals think they know everything. They always want to go to war. They want the parades, but they don't want the casualties. They don't want the result. And that's true for the United States. We go to war with a lot of hoopla and we come out and we leave our people who go over there mostly in very difficult states, either suicide or veterans' hospitals with limbs blown off. It's not fun, war. We treat it like... I think the United States has never experienced a war. I think that's a problem. On our shores. Yeah. And when we do, we're shocked. So we have a distorted perception of what war is. Yes. And it's much more realistic because every Russian is related to somebody who was killed in World War II. Right. They... Well, it's in their hearts. It's seared in. And I can't speak for the Chinese, but they lost like a couple of million men in Korea. So they must have been a lot of family pain there. Have you ever tried to calculate how many people were involved in the cover-up of the assassination? Because when you break down all the various people that you document, everyone from Arlen Specter to everyone that's on the Warren Commission's report, it's very clear that those folks had to know that what they were doing was bullshit. From what you said about the FBI chain of custody for the magic bullet to the alteration of the autopsy photos and the difference between the... The autopsy itself. Yes. The autopsy itself. The difference between the Dallas autopsy and the way they looked at it at Bethesda, Maryland. There wasn't no autopsy in Dallas. It was just... The examination of the body. It was very quick, the tracheotomy. Yeah. The tracheotomy and also the description of the exit wound. In his head. Well, yeah, that comes out later. Yeah. Although some people didn't see it, but 40 people... What the ARB did, thank God, was collect all the people who saw the rear exit wound. And it was huge. In the film, we showed the 40 people who saw it. What's really crazy you document in the film was the fact that it wasn't really his brain. Yeah, I was going to go to that. Yeah. Please, the brain that they had used as a piece of evidence that this was Kennedy's brain had clearly been in formaldehyde for at least two weeks. Yeah. Well, I'm so glad our documentary, and this is James Diugenio who wrote it. He's really the guy who reads everything, remembers everything through all these years. And there's a million documents. We drove a stake through the magic bullet. That's clear. There's no chain of custody of the FBI lied. They also, in the matter of the autopsy, the brain is intact. And it was photographed as such. It was a clean... The whole area was still there. Whereas it's impossible because the brain was seen. You see it spraying out in the car when there's a Pruder film. You see it, the nurses, Audrey Bell is talking about it's... I can't remember the medical term, whatever it's called. It's spilling out on the floor of Parkland. And when they weigh the brain as they do in an autopsy, it comes out normal. Well, not just normal, but extra large, right? A little bit. Larger than average. It's impossible. And what's more important is, and this drives a stake again through the heart of the photographer of the autopsy, John Stringer, the autopsy photographer. He's a straight guy. He's pro-war and commissioned, all that stuff. They bring him back. The ARB brings him back. And they show him the photos that we now have of the... That are in the National Archives. And he says, I never photographed that. He took an up view of the brain. He never took a basilar view from the below. I never photographed that. And that's very important. There's also some evidence that they had drawn hair in to cover up the exit wound. Yes. I know about the evidence, but definitely the photograph shows that the hair had been pulled in. The shot is bizarre. It's bizarre shots. So the autopsy is off. The brain is off. Photos are off. Then you go... The Garrison trial revealed one of the autopsists, Peter Fink, saying that they were not in charge of the autopsy. The military was. Right. And they let him put his finger in the back hole. They told them what to do. And they were very bullying. In fact, there was... Can you imagine having... Doing an autopsy on the president and having 20 or 30 people looking at you from a gallery? And they were telling him what he was able to do and not able to do. So the autopsy was being directed. Yeah. I showed that in the movie. Don't touch that. Right. Don't do that. Which is... So you have to think that... Plus they have the best autopsy people in the world, civilian, all around Washington. Why didn't we... Why wouldn't they call him in? No. Right. There's no desire. So they had a predetermined ending that they wanted to achieve. Or a result that they wanted to achieve. Three bullets. Three bullets. One assassin. But this is what's crazy. It's like you've got to think, okay, well then you have at least those 30 people that are in the audience watching that autopsy. What do they know? I don't know that. But isn't that crazy? If all 30 of them know that Lee Harvey Oswald didn't act alone... No, we don't know that. We don't know. We don't know some of them. But there's obviously a directive. Well, there again, we don't know. I shouldn't say obviously a directive, but they're doing something to influence the way this autopsy is being done. At least some of the people are giving direction, giving instruction. And you've got to wonder why would they do that? What motivation would they have unless they knew that there was a predetermined result that they need to achieve? You have of course the Johnson fear that it would become hysteria. Russia or Cuba being accused of killing him and it would be a situation that they could no longer control. That's a legitimate excuse to cover up. One interesting story. It's in the four hour version, not in this two hour version. That's coming out in the end of February. We show a moment in the autopsy where one of the technicians... The doctor looks up and he says there's cigar smoke blurring this thing. It was just cigar smoke smells, covers up the air and stuff. You don't smoke a cigar in an autopsy. An autopsy crazy. He says, who's doing that? Tell him to point it out. He goes over to the gallery and guess who's smoking the fucking cigar? Who? General Curtis LeMay, the figure from the strange love that Kubrick was satirizing. That's hilarious. And he says, can you point it out? LeMay simply looks at him, blows smoke in his face. And the guy wrote... He was a technician. He just wanted... He's telling the truth, walks back, couldn't get him to put the cigar out. Wow. That's pretty interesting.