Episode 96: Remembering JFK at Year 62

Recording this type of episode is tough because we're reflecting on something terrible... the absolute worst day of someone's life. 

Many have asked: what do we know from the latest JFK files document dump? Has there been a proverbial smoking gun yet?

Kinda, sorta, but not really. 

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My award-winning biography of Dag is available on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Decoding-Unicorn-New-Look-Hammarskj%C3%B6ld-ebook/dp/B0DSCS5PZT

My forthcoming project, Simply Dag, will be available globally next summer. 

 🦄 Join the Unicorn Dispatch newsletter here: https://sara-causey.kit.com/2d8b7742dd. 

Transcript

Transcription by Otter.ai.  Please forgive any typos!

The discussion reflects on the 62nd anniversary of JFK's assassination, emphasizing the complexity of his legacy. The host, Sara Causey, critiques oversimplified portrayals of JFK and highlights the nuances of his character. She examines the recently released JFK files, noting the lack of a smoking gun and the increased clarity on U.S. intelligence operations in the early 1960s. Specific details include CIA and FBI activities, Cuban diplomats as U.S. agents, and improved context from previously redacted documents. The conversation also touches on privacy concerns due to inadvertent data exposure and the broader implications of a "government within a government."

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

JFK assassination, conspiracy theories, Camelot myth, historical fiction, intelligence operations, US surveillance, Lee Harvey Oswald, Warren Commission, smoking gun, Kennedy family, Honey Fitz, government within a government, Operation Gladio, privacy concerns, JFK files.

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. Tonight. I want to talk about remembering JFK at year 62 these types of episodes are always difficult to record because we're reflecting on something terrible. We're reflecting on absolutely the worst day in a person's life, the worst thing that ever happened to them. And one of the additional tragedies of that, in my opinion, is that when somebody is cut down in their prime, you feel like they were on an upward trajectory, young, charismatic, etc, the murder overshadows that person's life, and that's a shame. When I was pulling notes together for what I wanted to say in this episode, I've actually been doing other forms of research, because there's a novel that I want to write. It will be historical fiction, but historical fiction with a generous wink, more like a Romana clay jfk's life was interesting. The family dynamic was interesting. And people go way off on I'm trying to think of how I want to put it, hit hit piece territory. They go way off into sex, drugs and rock and roll, essentially. And they get into easy to manage tropes, JFK as the womanizer, the himbo, the drug head, or JFK as a genius and a saint of liberal politics that should be carved in marble, and it's like, but wait a minute. We're human. We have these different variations in our character, and it cheapens the human experience to make someone an icon. I'm thinking of Bonnie Raitt an icon carved out of soap, to make somebody an icon carved out of soap, and to say they never sinned, they never did anything bad in their whole life, or to make somebody a devil poured into a flesh suit. I've been reading about JFK and the image, and in particular, like the imagery that Jackie created posthumously, the Camelot myth and King John and Queen Jackie and oh, they were so in love, and everything was perfect until a pop popper took it all away. And it's like, I feel like there's some high inaccuracies there. I feel like that's not all of the story. But then we also have the backlash against that of people who want to point out the worst possible things that anybody could say about Jack or about the entire family, and again, I'm just ah as a as both a writer and a reader, that frustrates the hell out of me.

I've been reading a biography about honey Fitz, Jack's maternal grandfather, who he liked quite a lot, and vice versa. And he was a character not perfect, though we're not saying that he was perfect. I was reading some story about him with a hooker named toodles, like just when you think this story can't get crazier. Oh, it does. But he totally, to me, seems like the kind of guy that you would sit in a bar with, have a beer, have some whiskeys, and your face would hurt from laughing. And one of his nicknames also, besides honey, Fitz, was Fitz Blarney because he could just talk and talk a blue streak. And he totally seems like that type to me. But again, we have these shades of a person's personality, of their behaviors, of the things that they do, the way they conduct themselves. And it's just not simple to put somebody in one bucket and keep them there forever. So recording this kind of episode again, because it can get into the territory of oversimplification, and it can get into glorifying the murder and only thinking about JFK as a murder victim, that's tough. What I would like to focus on tonight is a question that a lot of people are asking, and that is, what have we learned from the JFK files that were released earlier this year? There was so much Sturm und Drang around the Orange Man. Is he going to do this? Are we finally going to get some answers now that we're months down the road, researchers have had time to go through at least some of this document dump. What do we know now that we didn't know before? And is there anything new to talk about? Select your frosty beverage of choice, and we'll saddle up and take this ride.

Sara's award winning biography of Dag Hammarskjold Decoding the Unicorn is available on Amazon. Her forthcoming project, Simply Dag, will launch globally next summer to stay in the loop join her email list. The link is provided in the write up for this episode. And now back to the show.

Generally, when people ask that question, they're hoping for a smoking gun. In their mind, they're thinking it's going to be like the last five minutes of an episode of Murder She Wrote where Jessica Fletcher figures out the real killer, or the last few pages of a Sherlock Holmes story, where Sherlock and Watson solved the great mystery. And I, I hate to burst your bubble, but if you're thinking that the document dump has heretofore produced that kind of result, to my knowledge, based on what I've read and what I have gleaned from other researchers, there has not been some document that really is the smoking gun, the thing that says intelligence agencies plotted against JFK, it was premeditated murder. They knew what they were doing. And here's the evidence in black and white, I'm highly skeptical that we will ever get such a thing. It's possible, right? I feel like Dennis Miller, it's just my opinion, and I could be wrong. Frankly, I hope I am. It would be fantastic for us to get evidence like that, but I'm skeptical that we ever will. So here are a few things I've pulled together, things that are new slash, maybe not necessarily new, but better clarified. One is greater clarity on US intelligence operations in the early 1960s some of these newly released documents show us just how active the Charlie India Alpha was, along with some other US agencies like the Foxtrot Bravo India in terms of domestic surveillance, putting assets inside foreign governments, Having covert ops in places like Latin America, for example, there was a Charlie India Alpha memo from April of 63 that reportedly states that 14 Cuban diplomats were working as US agents. There were embassies in key countries that reportedly had 40 to 50% of their staff tied to Charlie India Alpha operations, and that has surprised some historians. I mean, that is rather staggering to think about the agency having that kind of a footprint. There are some documents that name specific countries or elections within specific countries where Charlie India Alpha intelligence meddled things that had previously been redacted that I guess enough time has passed now that we're allowed to know, which is that a surprise? I mean, if you know anything about history in general, and the things that have been made clear to the public, is that a surprise. I'm just leaving that as an open ended question. Another thing is we have some additional granular detail. It's not necessarily fundamentally new, but we do have a few more granular details that might help with the broader tapestry. The National Archives and Records Administration or Nara released large batches of files, something like 10s of 1000s of pages. Back in March under Executive Order, 14, 176, the files do not appear. Okay, I'm winking here again, kind of like historical fiction with a big wink, these files do not appear. Wink to overturn the core finding of the Warren Commission, and they don't point to some new conspiracy beyond what earlier investigators have already considered. So our kind of Wasp, mainstream historians will certainly say, if a bombshell is coming, we just haven't seen it yet. And although I'm loathe to agree with the mainstream white, Anglo, Saxon Protestant male historians that always dominate things, I tend to concur in this case, that we haven't found some smoking gun bombshell that's going to totally turn the world upside down. We know of better detailed interactions between Lee Harvey Oswald and the Cuban slash Soviet embassies. There's no one, as far as I'm aware anyway, there's no definitive like other person that's been called. Out in these files as being an alternative pop Popper, or some completely new plot that completely takes Oswald out of the picture. In fact, another part of it is we see just how much intelligence was going on around Oswald, just how aware US intelligence agencies were of His presence. He wasn't some weirdo who came out of left field and was totally unknown to the intelligence community. Hello. Hi. How are you? A third thing I would add, really is just kind of a by the way, some of the unredacted context has improved interpretation. Some of the files were previously heavily redacted, so at least having names of particular countries, personnel agencies, etc, can help researchers make better sense of what's going on. It's a little bit like putting in additional texture, additional color, so that you can get some ideas of what the hell is going on in the documentation that you're reading. Do we have some full big picture? I'm sad to say that we don't, because there's still some sensitive material that has remained withheld or has not yet been digitized, because NARA has noted that some records are still subject to redactions for Grand Jury material for other legal or privacy safeguards, the catch all, national security and so forth. There was also some quote, unquote, unexpected issues with the release, apparently, more than 400 social security numbers and some other personal data was inadvertently exposed, or so we're told, inadvertently exposed in the newly released files. So that caused some feathers to get ruffled about privacy and how this kind of declassification is handled. I mean, do we really need to know somebody's social security number, especially if the person is still alive. They still have relatives that are still alive. What are the questions around privacy? As far as that goes, the researcher, Jefferson Morley, has been pretty clear on his sub stack that it's not fair to say we haven't learned anything. We have learned a good deal. Again, I would just push back lightly to say that generally, when people are asking, Well, what's going on with the JFK files? What's new? They're really hoping for that smoking gun. They're really hoping for that thing to push everything else aside and say, Ah, we have an answer now. And thus far, you know, knock on wood, things can certainly change, but thus far, we just don't have that. One thing that I have heard Jefferson Morley talk about that I think is really intriguing is that the files show a government within a government. And I think a lot of JFK researchers are already aware that such a thing existed, but members of the general public, or someone who's just coming to this story recently, they may not know that. They may not understand JFK being at odds with the agency and just how much autonomy and secrecy the agency had. It's like how Truman made the comment that whenever he started the agency, he didn't intend for it to go rogue the way that it had they were supposed to be collecting intelligence to help America, not going out and running the whole freaking world. Kennedy had also admitted that there were things going on within the agency that he didn't know about. It was like its own enclave within the American government. And so I think the more exposure that we can get to something like that, the better, the more light that can be shined on exactly what was going on, the better it's like, whenever I recorded that series, the little mini series here, about the BBC Docu series on Operation Gladio, I was just horrified. I still am horrified by that. It's the kind of thing where it's like, if you watch that documentary and you don't feel completely fucking mad, completely angry as shit, there's something wrong. You should feel angry. You should feel mad. There was a young man who wrote a message to me after he read decoding the unicorn, because he didn't know anything about DAGs story, and he didn't know that dag died in a plane crash, and so when that happened, he was angry. And I was like, You should be angry. I would much rather have written a biography where dag retires to his farmhouse and lives a quiet life in retirement, where he gets to read and write and translate and go out in nature and do the things that were important to him, things that he had planned to do after he left the UN but instead, I have to sit here and write a biography where he gets murdered in a plane crash. It sucks, and I have the same reaction to Gladio and I have the same reaction to this government within a government, a shadow government that operate. Rates beyond any kind of exposure and is, frankly, above the law. What really can can be done to somebody within that kind of a power structure, and that's scary to think about.

Coming back to the idea of remembering JFK at year 62 even though we may not have some magical file that gives us all the answers, that solves all the problems, that puts everything into a neat little bow. I just really want to encourage everybody to remember Jack's life as well, to remember him as a person flawed and imperfect, but trying, someone who wanted to make a difference, who was not an unintelligent, vapid moron with no views of his own, somebody who really was trying, and who also tried to stand up to that power structure and paid the ultimate price for it. Stay a little bit crazy, and I will see you in the next episode.

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