ROCKWELL: Well, good morning. This is the Lew Rockwell Show. And what an honor it is to have as our guest this morning, Mr. Jesse Ventura. Jesse is the author of a brand new book, a very exciting, a very timely book, called They Killed Our President: 63 Reasons to Believe There Was a Conspiracy to Assassinate JFK. This, of course, is only his most recent achievement. He’s the former Independent governor of Minnesota, a former U.S. Navy frogman, a professional wrestler, movie actor, visiting fellow at the JFK School at Harvard, author of eight books. He was the host and executive producer of TruTV’s Conspiracy Theory with Jesse Ventura. And you can say many things about Jesse Ventura, but he’s known for questioning authority. It’s one of his great virtues.
So, Jesse, I noticed an uprise in books and media indoctrination saying, “Don’t question the JFK assassination,” as we’re coming up here on the 50th anniversary. But Americans have never believed the official story, have they?[amazon asin=B00E25841Q&template=*lrc ad (right)]
VENTURA: No, they really haven’t. And they shouldn’t believe it, because once you get — once you delve into it, it becomes abundantly clear to you, when you look at evidence that mainstream media doesn’t generally talk about, that it clearly was not Lee Harvey Oswald acting alone that could assassinate the president of the United States. It just isn’t feasible with what they did. But people are still in denial, Lew. They don’t want to believe that there was a bigger thing. They like to have the lone nut because it gives them only a single thing to blame for it. And it seems that they won’t get off of that.
But if you look at statistics today, in polls, 75 to 80 percent of the public do not believe the Warren Commission. So in many ways, I’m preaching to the choir because most people are on my side on this issue, believe it or not. But you still get the diehards on the other side that defend it to no end that the Warren Commission is, indeed, accurate.
ROCKWELL: On the other hand, there are some people who said, “Well, really, it’s ancient history; too bad it happened, whatever happened; has no application to us today.” But didn’t it mark a real watershed, maybe even a coup in the American government and changed everything?
[amazon asin=1629144894&template=*lrc ad (left)]VENTURA: Oh, Lew, absolutely. When people say to me, “It’s 50 years ago, move on” — No! Because let me put to you this aspect. And again, I can’t necessarily define who “they” are, but I’ll say it: If they can kill our president and get away with it, then what can’t they do?
ROCKWELL: Well, and what haven’t they done?
VENTURA: Exactly.
[LAUGHTER]
That’s the way you have to look at it. This was a definite watershed point in America. A coup d’etat took place that day, a change in our government. And it wasn’t done at the ballot box. It was done through the bullet to the brain of our president. There were two conspiracies, Lew, that happened. There was the conspiracy to actually murder the president, and then there was the second conspiracy to cover that murder up, which is what, of course, the Warren Commission was all about. They weren’t there to find the truth. They were there to simply pad the government story of Oswald being the lone-nut assassin. That’s the reason that I opened the book up — and it’s not even one of the 63. I opened it up — and I assisted upon this — with the Katzenbach memo, which was a memo from then-acting attorney general, Nicholas Katzenbach, to Lyndon Johnson Monday morning. This is Monday morning! And I’ll just paraphrase it. Number one, the public must be satisfied that Oswald was the assassin; that he did not have confederates who are still at large; and that evidence was such that he would have been convicted at trial. And then to get to the very last line of the memo — this is their memo — “We need something to head off public speculation or congressional hearings of the wrong sort.”[amazon asin=B0087GJVDQ&template=*lrc ad (right)]
[LAUGHTER]
I would love to hear the definition of what a “congressional hearing of the wrong sort” is.
ROCKWELL: There are a lot of congressional hearings of the wrong sort we haven’t had, of course, too.
VENTURA: Yeah. But I mean, that’s not a smoking gun, to me, Lew; that’s a smoking cannon, because that outlines the entire cover up, right in the government’s own memo.
And then, you know, one of the things you always hear is, “Well, had there been a conspiracy, after all these years, someone would have talked, right? Someone would have spilled the beans.” They have. It’s just that the media doesn’t report it. We report it in this book.
[amazon asin=B00KN0K6EM&template=*lrc ad (left)]Take for example, President Richard Nixon, on his infamous Watergate tapes, right on the tapes — Nixon, right on his own tapes! — says that the Warren Commission is the biggest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people.
[LAUGHTER]
Now, I mean, that’s not me saying it. That’s Richard Nixon caught on his own tapes.
ROCKWELL: Yeah. Of course, it’s an astounding thing. And, of course, Allen Dulles, the head of the CIA, who obviously had a role in the whole business, he’s the actual guy in charge of the Warren Commission.
VENTURA: Well, Kennedy had fired him. This is the former head of the CIA. See, Kennedy made a tremendous amount of enemies. He made an enemy of the CIA. He fired Dulles, Cabell and the third guy and said he was going to break them into a thousand pieces after the Bay of Pigs fiasco because he had felt they had lied to him. He made enemies of the Pentagon and the Joint Chiefs because he would not invade Cuba. And he had ordered the first 1,000 advisers out of Vietnam. And the chances are — he had said that, “We will be out of Vietnam by ’65.” He said that off the record. But he said, “I have to do it after I’m re-elected.” So the Pentagon and Joint Chiefs didn’t like him. He was going to take away the oil-depletion allowance, which is the big write-off for the Big Oil men, so he had Big Oil angry at him. The Mafia was angry at him because Bobby, as attorney general, was waging war on them. Jack Kennedy was attempting to change the course of our government in a dramatic way, towards peace, and he made all these enemies internally doing that, any one of which could have pulled the trigger. And[amazon asin=B004YD6GZW&template=*lrc ad (right)] certainly, if they combined together, they could get this whole job done, including the cover up.
I mean, let’s look at also Lyndon Johnson. Whenever you look at a murder, you have to assess who profits the most from this, who benefits the most. Whether it’s a domestic murder or whatever, when a homicide happens, that’s what you look at. Well, Lyndon Johnson was neck-deep in two major scandals, the Billie Sol Estes scandal and the Bobby Baker scandal. There was talk he could actually go to prison and that Kennedy was going to drop him from the ticket because he was now excess baggage. This was the end of the road for Lyndon. Well, all of a sudden, he becomes president, those two scandals magically just disappear pretty much, and life goes on. So, you know, and what did Lyndon Johnson do? Immediately after the murder, he has the car, which is a murder scene — anybody knows the yellow tape is supposed to go around it until forensics is done. He has it Monday morning — on his orders, it’s up in Detroit, Michigan, being completely refurbished. Now that’s obstruction of justice, plain and simple. How can you take a murder scene — which anybody would know that. Come on. If you watch TV, you know the yellow tape goes around it and in come the investigators. Yet, that car, on orders from our president, the new president, was shuttled off and refurb’ed up in Pontiac Monday morning.
ROCKWELL: And LBJ was involved in some murders in Texas in the 1948 election and at other times.
VENTURA: Yeah. They say he was. In fact, the guy who they claimed to be his assassin, this Malcolm Wallace —
ROCKWELL: Yes.
VENTURA: — his fingerprint was actually identified up in the shooter nest. There were fingerprints up there they could not identify. Well, today, one of those fingerprints has been definitely identified belonging to Malcolm Wallace.
ROCKWELL: I always thought it was significant — and you mentioned about the Pentagon, the hatred of Kennedy — that he fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, an unheard of — General Lyman Limnitzer, for having proposed Operation Northwoods, which was to have a phony terrorist incident, killing people in Miami that would be shooting down a plane, blowing up buses that would then be blamed on Castro and give a justification to invade Cuba.
VENTURA: Yeah, exactly.
ROCKWELL: So, here you have these guys proposing a false-flag operation.
VENTURA: Yep.[amazon asin=B004N84I5S&template=*lrc ad (right)]
ROCKWELL: Makes you wonder what other false flags have taken place since then.
VENTURA: Certainly. Certainly. The thing is, you know, what we’ve lost sight of in our country today, I believe, is to be vigilant. Our forefathers wanted the citizens to be vigilant. That’s the only way this will work. And the problem is we haven’t been vigilant. And we need to be. And being vigilant means you are a patriot. It does not mean what they’ve gotten — you know what astounds me today, Lew? They’ve taken the word “truth” and made it a bad word.
ROCKWELL: [Laughing] That’s true.
VENTURA: No, they have.
ROCKWELL: Yeah, I know. It’s true.
VENTURA: I’m astounded over that. How can you take the word “truth” and make it bad? Because now people are labeled “Truthers.” Well, that’s a bad word, the truth? And yet, they’ve done it. They’ve morphed the word to where people, initially, when they hear the word “truth” now, it’s got a bad ring to it.
ROCKWELL: Well, it’s astounding. George Orwell, of course, wrote a great paper on how politicians misuse the language, change definitions of words in order to — for power and to cover up their lies and their crimes. So we see this everyday and that’s — [Laughing] — that’s a great point.
VENTURA: Well, I like to refer to it like this. You know, whenever an incident happens, the government will come out with the official story, right?
ROCKWELL: Yes.
VENTURA: Well, that’s properly named because the reason it’s called the official story — this is my definition — is because it’s generally there to protect officials. That’s their story.
[LAUGHTER][amazon asin=B004TC14QO&template=*lrc ad (right)]
That’s why it’s called that: “This is the official story.” So as long as you identify it that way, you’re very clear on everything.
ROCKWELL: Jesse, astounding. And are you, just in your own travels and all the people that you talk to, are you finding an increased interest in the Kennedy assassination as we come up to the 50th anniversary?
VENTURA: Oh, yeah. And especially I find that it’s interesting to young people, people who weren’t even alive, who only have heard of Jack Kennedy and read what’s been written about him. They seem to have a great interest in it. Because when I’m at book signings now, yes, there’s all the people of my generation that lived through it, but there’s also an amazing amount of young people that are showing up at my book signings; you know, young people that I think are thirsty for the truth and thirsty to know if government does deceive you, and can they believe their government. And certainly, in light of the Kennedy situation, my unfortunate answer is, no, you cannot believe your government, especially when — it seems when they form these commissions that the commissions are there not to seek the truth; they’re there to cover it up, which was so blatantly clear to me with the Warren Commission that it’s astounding some of the things.
ROCKWELL: I’ve always thought if the government is making it highly politically incorrect to look into something, you know that you can’t believe them. And, of course, all the important stuff is highly politically incorrect to look into, to have a different view, to dissent.
VENTURA: Well, and the other thing, too, to look at is, if it’s what they told us it was, why would they have to hide documents.
ROCKWELL: Yeah.
VENTURA: You know, like in the case of the murder of John Kennedy. If you apply common sense — and that’s what I love to do. And, of course, common sense today is pretty dangerous in dealing with government. But if you apply common sense, if Oswald was who they say he was, this disgruntled little Marine, who turned Marxist/Leninist, went crazy and murdered our president, how could any documents on him affect national security? And why would anything have to be locked up? Do you know, today, you still can’t get his tax return?
ROCKWELL: Oh, very interesting.
VENTURA: Now, people might say, “Well, how would Lee Harvey Oswald’s tax return be important?” Well, here’s why. That would start a paper trail to where you could see how he was earning his living. And if that paper trail led to the U.S. government, that he was being paid by the United States government, well, that changes the whole story, doesn’t it?[amazon asin=1439193886&template=*lrc ad (right)]
ROCKWELL: Boy, yeah.
VENTURA: Well, that’s why you can’t see his tax return, because it would create the paper trail of finding out who was paying Oswald, how was Lee Oswald earning a living. And the one thing my book will show people is that Oswald couldn’t and didn’t do it. You know, can we tell you precisely who did do it? I think we get close, if we can’t. But you know, naturally, nothing is in court, nothing is sworn to. But what we can show you is 63 reasonable doubts. And if you’re going to convict someone for murder, it has to be beyond a reasonable doubt, not beyond 63 reasonable doubts.
ROCKWELL: In Webster Hubbell’s book about his time in the Clinton administration, he says when Clinton sent him over to be a big wheel in the Justice Department, Clinton said to him, “Find out for me who killed Kennedy.” So I never heard any more about that, except in that reference in Hubbell’s book.
VENTURA: So Webster never said if he was successful?
ROCKWELL: No. Never, no.
VENTURA: It would be interesting to find out to continue to story.
ROCKWELL: Yeah. That’s right.
VENTURA: What happened? Did he actually go over and inquire as to that? [Laughing]
ROCKWELL: Well, we’d all like to know.
VENTURA: I’d love to know. You know what I’d love to know, Lew?
[LAUGHTER]
VENTURA: Who he spoke to.[amazon asin=1616087080&template=*lrc ad (right)]
ROCKWELL: Well, yeah.
VENTURA: I mean, I wish he’d reveal that and say, well, here, I went to so and so at — that’s what we do in my book. Not to change the subject, but we have a piece of — one of the great things about this book, Lew, is that as people read it — and I explain this at the top of the book — they will be able to go to Internet sites, if they have their computer with them, and they’ll be able to watch or observe what we’re talking about themselves. And one of the most remarkable things that astounded me during the research of this was that we — you can actually see, at Love Field, the Secret Service team ordered off of the bumper of the president’s limousine, because that’s standard operating procedure that the Secret Service ride on the president’s bumper. You can actually see them being ordered off, and the Secret Service guy throwing his arms out to his sides, palms up, like he’s saying, “What’s going on here?”
ROCKWELL: Yeah.
VENTURA: And I mean, people say that’s not dynamic? Apply common sense. Why is standard operating procedure being violated here?
ROCKWELL: Well, Jesse, another reason the Kennedy assassination is important and why it’s so important to tell the truth, as your book does — and, of course, asks all the right questions, too — is that there are a lot of other things that are going on, horrendous things, whether you look at the NSA spying or all the wars and various horrendous technologies DARPA is developing. And really the government is not our friend and I think more and more Americans are realizing that.
So for people to wake up, really, a great place to start is They Killed Our President by Jesse Ventura. It’s very creatively organized. As Jesse says, it’s got the URLs that lead you to other research.
Jesse, I think we all owe you a debt of gratitude for having put out this book and helping people to be much more skeptical of everything the government says, all the various things they’re doing, and helping people understand what happened in Dallas and why it is continuing to have an effect on us right this moment.
VENTURA: Well, I couldn’t say it any better, Lew. Thank you. That’s very flattering, what you said. But for me, it was just a life passion. And I felt that, selfishly, I thought, “You know what? The only way anyone is going to know a hundred years from now, for whatever it’s worth, that the 38th governor of Minnesota did not believe the Warren Commission, is for me to write my own book.” And so that was one of the major reasons I wrote the book is just to go on the record officially stating that I’ll never believe it, you’ll never get me to believe it until many of these questions are answered, and suitably answered, not the buck passed around and give me a bunch of B.S. on it. You know, I want to know the truth and that’s the only way I felt I could work at getting it.[amazon asin=1620878070&template=*lrc ad (right)]
ROCKWELL: Jesse, you’re a hero. Thanks. Thank you.
VENTURA: Oh, I don’t know about that, Lew.
ROCKWELL: Yeah, you are.
VENTURA: I’m just a vigilant citizen. I’m just what our forefathers I think expected of us. And you’re not unpatriotic because you question your government. You are patriotic when you question your government.
ROCKWELL: Darn right.
VENTURA: Thanks, Lew. Appreciate it.
ROCKWELL: Jesse, thank you very much. Bye-bye.
VENTURA: All right, bye-bye. We’ll talk again.
ROCKWELL: Well, thanks so much for listening to the Lew Rockwell Show today. Take a look at all the podcasts. There have been hundreds of them. There’s a link on the LRC front page. Thank you.
Podcast date, October 25, 2013
