Episode 20: JFK - "Executive Action"

The film Executive Action was released on November 7, 1973. In his interview with author Brent Holland, Mark Lane describes writing the screenplay with Donald Freed with the intention for Donald Sutherland to produce the movie. That fell through and the film was rewritten by Dalton Trumbo. Lane's intention was to point a clear finger at the C!A but the film was retooled to ensure the only organization absolved was the C!A. 

⚠️ Film spoilers lie ahead.

Links:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Action_(film)

https://www.amazon.com/Assassination-Oval-Office-Dealey-Plaza/dp/0988305062

https://jfk.boards.net/thread/212/46-spas-raikins-report

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W79o9ff-HSY

Need more? You can visit the website at: https://consaracytheories.com/ or my own site at: https://saracausey.com/. Don't forget to check out the blog at: https://consaracytheories.com/blog. 

Transcript

Transcription by Otter.ai.  Please forgive the typos!

Welcome to con-sara-cy theories. Are you ready to ask questions you shouldn't and find information you're not supposed to know? Well, you're in the right place. Here is your host, Sara Causey. 

Hello, Hello, and thanks for tuning in. In tonight's episode, I will be talking about the film executive action. As of this recording, it was not available for free on Tubi I had to go over to YouTube and pay a couple of bucks to rent it, but it was time and money well spent. Nevertheless, I would encourage you to just do a quick search because as I've said before, to be and Pluto as well, some of the other streaming platforms that offer content for free, sometimes they rotate movies around. So it's at least worth a quick search to see if you can find it anywhere free of charge before you pay to rent it. Nevertheless, it was a very interesting film. When I watched it, I thought my God I am amazed that this was ever made, let alone released. And the only reason I think that happened is because enough years had gone by that it wasn't as fresh anymore. So let's sign up tonight and take this ride. executive action has been a bit stuck on my to watch list for a while now. When I first heard about it, I was like holy smokes, I definitely want to see that. But you know, I'm always reading something I'm always watching something and my to read and to watch lists are phenomenally large. So I was reading one night, the JFK pop pop from the Oval Office to Dealey Plaza, which is a book by Brent Holland. He interviews several people as research for this book, including Ted Sorensen. And I think that's probably in terms of the big get for this particular book. I think Ted Sorensen is probably the big get for the book. I'll cover that in some other episode. It's worth its own space of time. But he talks to mark Lane Mark lane, of course, being the author of rush to judgment, plausible denial, the film rush to judgment as well. And so Mark Lane talks about having written the film executive action, I'm quoting now from Brent Holland's book and his interview with Mark lane. And this is Mark Lane talking. That's the film that I wrote with Donald freed a good friend of mine was Donald Sutherland, and he was going to produce it, it was so clear what that film said. The film said basically, that Charlie India, alpha killed President Kennedy, I wrote it with Donald freed as I said, and then Donald was unable to raise funds for it. So he sold it to a guy named Ed Lewis. And Ed Lewis brought in someone to rewrite it. Dalton Trumbo is a good writer, actually, Donald Sutherland was so committed to this project. Donald's a very, very bright person, I think, and a wonderful actor. He's Canadian, you know that. And we call it executive action, which is the phrase used by the Charlie India alpha, meaning killing the head of state, Donald love the title, but Donald was very clever, too. And he said, I think, which is cool, that executive action done on all the movie marquees around the country will put the words conspiracy in America. But the first letter of each word will be red, and the rest will be black. In other words, Charlie, India alpha, but he couldn't get the funds for it. So he gave it to Lewis Lewis then had it rewritten. And only one group is exonerated by the entire film. I think that's when we'll gear is asked by Burt Lancaster, Burt Lancaster was a friend of mine, too. And we had discussions about this, but he has asked, Are you saying that Charlie, India Alpha was involved? And the answer was absolutely not. So from the film, which said, the Charlie India Alpha did it, we had a film which only cleared one organization in the entire country. And that was the Charlie India Alpha. That's the way executive action was changed in quote. So like, Whoa, that in the next time that I have a free evening, I need to watch this film. And I did. We had had some inclement weather, the satellite had gone out and I'm like, this is the perfect time. I'm going to pull up YouTube on my phone, and I'm going to sit and watch executive action and did not disappoint. As I said, I sat there and thought I'm surprised that this was ever made, let alone released. Now some people will make the argument last because it's propaganda. It's BS, it's nonsense. It was released because it's nonsense. There are people who think any, any anything at all that's contrary to the Warren report is Soviet propaganda. Like they still see shadows of the KGB everywhere. And you know what, maybe they're right. Maybe those of us who don't think that it was KGB propaganda, you know, any contrary opinion to the Warren Commission is not automatically Soviet propaganda. Maybe we're the ones that are wrong, who knows, but there are plenty of people that have been accused of being killed KGB propagandists, we saw that again, the whole orange MAN and Russia thing. There's collusion with Russia everywhere. It's around every corner and like, are we still doing this? God? Anyway, so executive action starts with a message that comes up on the screen about an interview that LBJ gave where he doubted that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone and that he suspects a conspiracy. We and of course Mark lane is involved in the storyline even though it's been edited, Mark Lane still get some credit for that. Several researchers are also credited in the film's credits, the ones that I as I was hastily writing these notes and trying to watch at the same time, David liftin, and pin Jones Jr. Were the two that stuck out to me. There's a disclaimer as well at the beginning about the film being a work of fiction. It's a screenplay by Dalton Trumbo. It's just a work of fiction. Wink. So June 5 1963, is the start of the film. And we see this little cloister of wealthy, powerful white dudes, old, white, wealthy, powerful dudes having their little private meeting. And they say that one family holds too much political power in the US. You can we imagine two terms for JFK, two terms for Bobby two terms for Teddy. And then the ones who are not in the presidency would also be in power, too. They would just all rotate in this incestuous power bloc. They also mentioned the oil depletion act, shutting down mergers under the Antitrust Act, shutting down military bases. He's dealing with liberals and minorities. He's going to turn Asia over to the commies. In Europe, pop pops happen by conspirators, but in America, it's always a madman who does it. So this is also really interesting because it gives us in a very short window of time, with not a terrible amount of dialogue. It gives us the measles scene of old, rich white dudes making their little plan here and their reasons why they're angry. He's dealing with minorities, he's dealing with liberals, he's gonna turn Asia over to the damn commies. He's gonna wreck what we've got going with our business dammit, he's got to go. And as they say, so in Europe, pop pops happened by a group of conspirators in America, it has to be the lone wolf madman. And so they talk about they have their like, black ops guy who's played by Burt Lancaster, and he has this I don't know what you want to call it. So your presentation a creepy presentation. Like okay, there was Lincoln, and he was sitting down and in a stationary position. Garfield was walking but slowly, McKinley was standing and was stationary. Roosevelt meaning Teddy Roosevelt was standing and he was stationary and then FDR was sitting in stationary don't have to be an expert marksman. There are still ways that the Secret Service can be unbeknownst they can be hit unawares unprepared. The Mad Men were just fanatics. They were willing to die for a cause they were crazy. They were zealots. They also mentioned the Charlie India alpha and anti Castro Cubans. They say you would need a team of three men, one team and muting two teams of three guys, you need one team for the actual action and then you need another team to serve for backup and get away. They specifically mentioned a triangulation of crossfire. And then they show a group of snipers that are training in a desert somewhere. And they talk about how there's a climate of violence now. The president should be given less protection than any other leader would have. And then in a climate of violence, the whole thing becomes believable. According to the movie, Hoover doesn't like JFK, the Charlie India Alfa doesn't like JFK. They have front companies that you know we would have our choice of how to get this done. I mean, pick people out of a front company if we had to. We can't get caught. Because if we get caught then it makes America look like a banana republic. It has to look like the lone wolf pop popper crazy cuckoo bird nut bag, did it alone. And it's okay because that's exactly what we'll do. We will set up a patsy and we will get a lone nut crazy Kook to blame.

And Connolly says that when they're referring here in the movie to Governor Conley says that JFK will bring will make a political pilgrimage to Texas probably in the fall. And so if somebody like Wilgers character I think it was speaks up and says like this is extreme. This is taking the extreme option is there any other way that we could just do away with him by obliterating his reputation which by the way I'm gonna button and say here that's one of the things that I've been predicting I have been on my soapbox saying, at this point not even the legacy is safe. We're supposed to think that JFK was 24/7. Penis. All he did was have sex. 24/7 never read. He never had a sandwich, never played with his kids nothing 24 73656 And he was just an evil monster. And so maybe it was better that he was gotten out of the way that could easily happen. In the say, like I've talked about in the in the episodes I've recorded regarding dag hammer sholde. The story that was published, where Baron Lea claims that Daphne Park said Yeah, we did it in reference to Lumumba, something like that could happen years into the future with JFK. We did it. But it was to the betterment of a country that we did it he was going to throw everybody into World War Three by trying to make peace with the Soviets, which you couldn't freaking do. He was having a bunch of sex, the guy was just an old lecherous pervert, so we're better off without him. That can easily become a narrative mark. My words may not be in my lifetime. Somebody may sit and listen to this podcast 100 years from now and be like, God damn, she played that one, right? I mean, it could happen could happen. So we'll get his character brings up this thing about why don't we just do away with his character do away with his reputation. And one of the other businessmen speaks up and says if he could have just been shamed and discredited instead, we would have done that. We see the pop poppers practicing from bucket trucks. They've got a car filled with dummies, and they're up at different locations, different heights to practice from bucket trucks. Super creepy to think about all of this in the film anyway, not necessarily saying in reality, but in the film being carefully calculated and orchestrated ahead of time, like somebody is planning to kill this man. June 10, we see that JFK goes to American University to give this piece of speech and to talk about the test ban treaty. Burt Lancaster's character Farrington, he's like the black ops guy, that's the planner, he's the string puller for this wealthy cabal of businessmen. Farrington meets with his operative who is coordinating the target practice. And he encourages a slowdown of the car in order to improve accuracy and to cut down on the actual pop popping time. In other words, in order for the Pop Pop errs to get in, do what needs to be done, do it effectively and then be able to get the hell out. We're gonna have to cut down on the physical amount of time it takes and that can easily be done if you slow the car down. Each man only knows his job. Nobody knows the whole plot and full except for the cabal of businessmen. And then the black ops guy that Burt Lancaster's playing. And even then, when you think about that, they don't know the pot poppers that Lancaster has hired. So I guess it's fair to say nobody knows the whole thing in completion. So the plan is that these pop hoppers would stay out of the country for at least two years, they'd be given 25 grand in within 36 hours, they would be given 25 grand a year for five years, and then they would be given a bonus of 100 grand if nobody broke cover. So I mean, they have they have motive, these amounts sound very small to us today. But we have to go back in our minds to 1963. It was it was worth a lot more than June 19. Kennedy gives us civil rights speech. And they have this computer that they say has offered up 14 Goats, which that's going to be their patsies. And that is one of the goats is Lee Harvey Oswald. And they say that we can steer Oswald's political record to the left. They ask was Oswald naval intelligence or was he Charlie India alpha. We see that there were discrepancies and Oswald's military history, his mother's health problems, a letter from the doctor. It's like there was a letter from a doctor that was written on like September 5, no, wait a minute. I'm getting this backwards. It was written on September the third, but it said that it treated Mrs. Oswald on September the fifth and it's like, Well, why would you be writing about on September 3 about something that hasn't even happened yet? Just weird stuff. There are suspicions about what what was Oswald's motive actually for the defection to the Soviet Union. And then he comes back to the US and there's really no trouble there's no hassle for him, which is also weird. They mentioned a Ralph P. Waterford. Why did he meet Lee Harvey Oswald when he came back to the United States. There's also something odd. If I'm not mistaken, I believe that is a reference in real life to a man named rakin, who was a representative of the travelers Aid Society that met Lee Harvey Oswald when he returned to America I think That's what they're getting out with this character of Ralph P. Waterford. So foster tells Farrington Foster is one of the old rich white guys in this Cabal. And then Farrington is the Black Ops dude that's coordinating it all. Foster tells Farrington that other races will take over the world, the US needs control of Asia to help reduce the population there. And then we can use what we learn over in Asia to apply to America. And he says, we'll get rid of the people of color and poverty prone whites, although as I'm sure you can imagine, he doesn't say people of color. And I have written in my notes here and all caps and underlined Welcome to hell. This is what Nazis do. Okay, I have told you and I have told you and I have told you, this is what Nazis do. They start out with minorities, they start out with people that are impoverished, that are disenfranchised, that are at a disadvantage to be able to fight back. That's where they start. They're freaking evil. And then it spreads to the rest of the population. And I have not ever seen anything as corrosive to the soul as Nazi ideology. It just, it ruins people. It is a diabolical way of thinking, truly. So this was very freaky, to me very upsetting. The idea of well, we're a bunch of white supremacist and these other races are going to take over the world. So we have to do this population control. And we'll use Vietnam we'll use Southeast Asia as our incubator for it. And whatever we learn about population control and mass murder over there, it's okay we'll bring it over here. And then there'll be millions of undesirables that just won't be in the population anymore.

There you go. So Foster and Farrington wonder who is behind Oswald because they're convinced that he's intelligence of some kind, they just don't know for whom. They begin what they call the Cubana zation process. And they have Oswald put out fairplay for Cuba literature. They make a reference to Guy Bannister also being in the same building which we know that that was accurate. They want to get Oswald in a fight. Get them on the radio, get him on TV make it public, that Oswald is a rabble rousing, crazy communist sympathizer. On August 28, Martin Luther King's speech takes place. And we see will Gere's character Harold Ferguson begins to come around to the Pop Pop plan after seeing Martin Luther King on TV and then seeing JFK with Martin Luther King at the White House. You can tell that his old racist ass is starting to get uncomfortable. One of the Pop Pop teams as sent off to Montana, we see Oswald passing out flyers and getting into a fistfight. And of course, conveniently the fist fight is filmed on August the 29th. JFK warns that a full scale nuclear exchange could kill 300 million people or more. Ferguson will get his character continues to watch the TV and he's worried. There's this testimony from Edward Teller who's part of the Manhattan Project by the way. He says he's worried about the treaty it might actually lead to war, trying to get peace with the Soviets might actually lead to war. We also see a testimonial from Admiral Lewis Strauss saying the test ban treaty is a path to disaster. Foster that's one of the you know creepy racist dudes from this Cabal. Foster feels that JFK is creating a perfect climate with so many people disliking him. He's become mighty unpopular to various groups of people. This is the perfect climate for a pop pop to take place because nobody will be that suspicious. Farrington says that this op will be his last after this after I pull off this one. I'm done. I'm retiring and Foster says he's okay with that. September The 25th JFK visits University of North Dakota in Grand Forks North Dakota. There's a dress rehearsal that takes place with target photos like they're using sights so to speak through a photographic lens and so they take photos to see if they had been pop popping him that day. How accurate would they have been? The team examines the photos and then destroys them. The Pop Pop team also works on JFK is motorcade route. Now this is another area for conspiracy theorist enthusiasts of debate. Some people say that the motorcade route was changed. Some people emphatically deny that that ever happened. It was always going to be the weird dogleg turn. Makes no sense to me. All you have to do is go look at a map. It seems like logically, you would just go down Main Street and stay going down Main Street, you wouldn't make the weird dogleg turn where you have to practically slow down to a complete stop. That's weird. Just ipso facto weird So one calls Dealey Plaza a long way around to nowhere, and that it makes a good spot for the triangulation. It does. It is a long way around to know where the movie gets that park. Correct. So they are also instrumental in the film. This cabal is instrumental in getting Oswald put into the Texas School Book Depository. Ferguson sees images from Vietnam, he sees the Buddhist monks burning themselves to death. Then he sees that JFK wants a withdrawal from Vietnam and that's the final straw. That's the point where we'll get his character who had been the holdout he had been the one that was like, Don't you think we should destroy his reputation? Maybe we should just get him impeached. We just get him out of the way but not literally by killing him. That's the final straw. He's had enough at that point and he's committed to the Pop Pop plan. The team lead is sent a cipher he decodes it and then flushes the message down the toilet. And the message was to confirm that their team will be the team to do the Pop Pop. They're not going to be backup or getaway. They're going to be the actual pop poppers. They hire an Oswald decoy to portray him and highly memorable, memorable, flagrant, flamboyant ways. On November 6, the decoy Oswald goes into a Boomstick shop to get a telescopic sight mounted and he makes it clear to the clerk at the store that he wants to use it soon. The team also breaks in and steals Oswald's crappy mailorder Boomstick and they laugh at it and they say it's a shit weapon. November 7, the decoy Oswald goes to a car lot and acts like a complete turd. He uses bad language, he gets insulting, gets in a scuffle with the salesman. And he clearly states his name is Lee Oswald. It's basically like, Hey, I'm going to come here and act like a complete shit ask to you. And by the way, my name is Lee Harvey Oswald, Could you be any more like overt about this? Foster and Farrington decide to make the fake Oswald photos with the Boomstick and leftist magazines? It's decoy Oswald's body with a photo of the real Oswald's face then they do some very primitive photoshopping to get it done. Decoy Oswald goes to a Boomstick range and gets into a squabble with another man. And then the fake Oswald fires at his target causes him out and is sure to give that guy his name as Lee Oswald after he shows out and tells this guy to screw off. By the way, my name is Lee Harvey Oswald, make sure you remember that it'll be significant one day we see the hecklers that shout down adeleye Stevenson over Vietnam. And then Steven says Stevenson says that he doesn't think JFK should go to Dallas since the atmosphere is so hostile and unstable. The team does recon work in Dealey Plaza and the Texas School Book Depository. They also scope out the grassy knoll McNamara and RFK will be the only important people in DC that day a group of others are going to go I think to Tokyo they said the DC telephone system will also go down temporarily. The Secret Service will be with the president Farrington will plant plant fake Secret Service agents in Dealey Plaza. Foster says agencies are watching Oswald, but nobody has raised any concerns to the Secret Service. The Secret Service doesn't feel that anyone in Dallas represents a threat to JFK even though he said threats from Texas already. Foster gives a speech from Richard the second. Let's sit upon the ground until sad stories of the death of kings. Creepy. I'm dropping link. There's also a great not related to executive action. But there's also a great reading recitation that Richard Burton does have that exact part from Richard the second. That's quite good. I'll drop a link to that so you can check it out if you want to. But it is creepy when we start thinking about it in the context of the death of JFK. So November 22 rolls around, a paperboy delivers a paper with the wanted for treason handbill on it. JFK gets to the Chamber of Commerce, breakfast kids are singing. So it's like you have this good juxtaposition. I think this is really well done in the film. You have this good juxtaposition of kids are singing. Kennedy is smiling. Everything seems to be going just fine. But then we know what the poppers are up to and we've seen this handbill have wanted for treason. The Secret Service agents get drunk the night before. The team is getting ready. The team of pop poppers getting ready with its weapons and it gets in place in Dealey Plaza. Naturally, the planners the Cabal this cabal of wealthy old white bastards await the news. So in their in the movie in their triangulation of how this happened, one of the pop poppers is on the grassy knoll. One is in the Texas School Book Depository and one is on a rooftop and in executive action Then the pop popper that was on the grassy knoll is the one with the fatal headshot. The police find Oswald inside the book depository drinking a coke. The team members pretend to simply be secret service agents so they can make their getaway. The phone lines in DC go down as planned. And the officials who were traveling by plane to Tokyo don't have their codebooks so they're sort of hamstrung in the air on a very long trip as well and gets arrested and asserts that he's just a patsy. Jack Ruby makes a call that he needs to leave Dallas for Chicago. And Ruby closes his nightclubs out of respect. Or you know, so he says out of respect wink wink and with quotes, the Pop Pop team escapes on flights out. Oswald is interviewed by the police department with no notes or recordings taken. October 24. Ferguson watches the news out of Dallas and Ruby goes to murder Oswald and Ruby is successful in killing as well. The planners continue to watch on television. Oswald is declared the killer of JFK. And the planners laugh at how unbelievable it all is. And they're just hanging out playing billiards like it's just another day this is unbelievable who would buy it but people are buying it haha let's shoot some pool.

Foster gets a call and then this isn't this isn't the day then watch the story here and the twist ending so again, spoilers lie ahead. If you're planning to watch this movie, and you don't want me to spoil it for you go ahead and watch the movie first because here comes the big the big day in wall. Foster gets a call and we learned that James Farrington has died from a heart attack at Parkland Hospital. So the planners are further distanced from the events, the black ops guy who coordinated this whole thing that would have known the most outside of the Cabal, because Farrington was the one that was hiring the pot poppers. The missing link, if you will, between these two groups of people has now died at Parkland. And he's out of the picture. We see at the end of the film, collage of photographs of witnesses who died under odd circumstances. Ain't team material witnesses at that point. Of course, it's been much more since then. And they flash up the statistic this is something that Richard Meltzer talks about in his book hit list. The London the London Sunday Times had an actuary calculate what are the odds of these 18 material witnesses all dying, just natural causes whatever, just dying by pure coincidence, and the odds were calculated to be 100,000 trillion to one. That's how the film ends. I thought it was powerful. I thought it was interesting. And you know, it's like with any movie is every word every scenario gospel truth? Of course not. It's a movie. It's a fictional film, based at least loosely on real events and real people. This is one of the things that I would object to, with the way that people criticize Oliver Stone's film JFK, naturally, that should be its own episode, I need to sit down and review that film because for a lot of people in the conspiracy, the JFK conspiracy world that's sort of like the granddaddy of them all. The JFK Pop Pop is the granddaddy of all conspiracy theories, period. But then Oliver Stone's film JFK is the granddaddy of JFK pop up theory specifically, everybody sort of comes back to Oliver Stones, amazing film, like it or not, we all sort of come back there. I take umbrage with this idea that JFK by Oliver Stone is just complete and total fiction. In fact, in that book and Brent Holland's book that's one of the things that Ted Sorensen says is that Oliver Stone's film JFK is quote, a total fiction. I disagree. All due respect to Sorenson. I'm not trying to say anything negative about him as a person, I just disagree with his opinion. Because to me when you say a total fiction, to me, that's like it's exactly what it says. It means the whole thing is fake. And I don't think that's true to me that that would make somebody think Jim Garrison is not a real person. Clay Shaw was not a real person. David fairy was not a real person. Like all of these people that are in the film are figments of Oliver Stones, imagination and he made them up, like Hansel and Gretel or sleeping beauty are Cinderella. And that's not true. Jim Garrison was a real person, as was Clay Shaw, as was David Ferrie. And Jim Garrison really did attempt to prosecute Clay Shaw, there was a real trial, these people really existed. So I think calling it a total fiction is hyperbolic and it's unnecessarily harsh. That's just my opinion. And it could be wrong. I would say a similar thing about executive action, I think to dismiss it out of hand and to just say, Well, I mean, come on. It's It's far fetched this idea that a cabal of old rich white dudes did this and they successfully pulled it off. I mean, no, no, no, no, don't we live in a country where that's not possible? You be the judge. I'm not gonna sit here and tell you what to think I've got my own opinions on it. But watch the film for yourself. If you haven't already come to your own conclusions. Do I think it's possible that things could have gone down that way? Maybe, because we know that there. There were groups, particularly in Texas, have wealthy businessman who did not like Kennedy, and were not sad to see him go. Now. Does that mean they plotted the Pop Pop? No, it doesn't. It could just be that they benefited from it and they were happy when it happened. I wouldn't say that executive action is something that should be completely dismissed out of hand. We do have to keep in mind that it's a Hollywood movie, and some of the things have been fictionalized. My best guess is that there are elements of the film, not the entire film, but that there are elements of the film that touch closer to reality than we would probably like to think. Stay a little bit crazy, and I will see you in the next episode.

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