Interview with Baton Rouge NPR station, 11-22-19

[Joseph McBride]

Yesterday on the 56th anniversary of the JFK assassination, I did a twenty-five-minute interview on Jim Engster's radio talk show in Baton Rouge, Lousiana, on the NPR affiliate WRKF. Jim is a knowledgeable interviewer who is open-minded on the assassination, unlike many in the mass media. We had a couple of the expected irate calls but mostly calls from people who care and are well-read on the subject, and we covered a lot of ground. I am still volunteering for JFK, as I did in his 1960 Wisconsin presidential primary campaign. https://www.wrkf.org/post/friday-november-22nd-stephen-handwerk-joseph-mcbride-rene-coman

[Joe Bauer]

Just listened to your interview on the Jim Engster radio talk show.

Several questions.

Do you think you could post something about your 1961 article regarding predicting a possible attempt on JFK's life? Maybe a summary with a few key points?

You mentioned coming to the consideration of L.B.J.'s involvement in the JFK assassination. 

Would that include J.E. Hoover who was told by LBJ right after the assassination that he ( Hoover ) and LBJ were like brothers and how close they were over the years...including being actual neighbors?

Can you share some of your most concerned Warren Commission testimony transgressions as related in Sylvia Meagher's compilations?

One of the most attractive areas of study of the JFK event for me is also the Warren Commission testimonial record.

I read many of them when I can and have done so for years.

The contradictions in these regards Oswald and Marina and Jack Ruby and so many other main connected characters ( including those in New Orleans ) are so stark and yet so frustratingly not followed up on by the WC to a extremely disturbing and truth seeking illogical degree.

In your class at S.F. state you offer near every JFK assassination anniversary, how many students attend? And what kind of interest and knowledge do they show on the subject - and what are some of the more interesting questions they ask?

I feel that the purposeful obscuring and burying of the "real and full" truth regarding L.B.J.'s corrupt activities his entire personal ( child bearing affairs )  business and political lives in our main stream biographical/historical record of him is one of the most egregious acts of truth denial and pollution ever and that has damaged and weakened us as a society to degrees we haven't understood, including the truth about the JFK assassination.

Same goes for J.Edgar Hoover.

And same goes for Nixon.

I believe all 3 were seriously compromised by organized crime while in office.

And I believe all three authorized murders at various times.

LBJ was under psychiatric guard at the very end of his life - why? 

We know why.

Could you imagine if he gave an end of life confessional that told the truth about his most nefarious doings?

 

 

 

[Paul Bacon]

This is a great interview Joseph.  What a difficult thing it must be to try to convince listeners , in fifteen minutes, that there was a conspiracy involving the highest echelon of the United States government.  It took me years to fathom the depth of this conspiracy.  You showed terrific discipline.  Thank you for having kept at this for so long.

You stated that you'd interviewed Senator Yarborough and, among other things, he said that during the limo stop Secret Service agents swarmed the car.  I'd never heard that before.  It means the Z film was altered much more than I previously imagined.  Could you say a little more about what he told you about that?

[Joseph McBride]

My October 1961 writing about the assassination (which I discuss in my book INTO THE NIGHTMARE) was a short story

for my freshman English class at Marquette University High School in Milwaukee, "The Plot Against a Country." Although one could say it

was the first fictional treatment of the assassination, it was pretty bad. It deals with

a Soviet plot to kill the president (I was brought up with a Cold War indoctrination) and

steals its methodology from a Superman comic (JFK is poisoned by licking a stamp

smuggled into the Oval Office by an Eastern European cleaning lady; in the comic

book the bad guys used Kryptonite). My only excuse for that embarrassing plot hook was that

I was fourteen at the time, but that's not a very good excuse. But on the plus side, the story does

show concern that President Kennedy could be killed in office, it recognizes

that a political plot would most likely be involved to kill a president and that infilitration would be necessary, and

I mention the autopsy and some other realistic details. I had done some studying of

the Lincoln assassination as a kid (I had done a lot of reading

about the Civil War, and that was the centennial year), so I knew about political conspiracies. And I had witnessed at close hand how vulnerable

Kennedy was from talking with him twice during the Wisconsin

primary campaign; he had no visible security except for a few cops

around at the Milwaukee event, not guarding him closely in a crowd of 3000 people; at the Wauwatosa Kids for Kennedy

event, attended by about 100 people in a small meeting room at the Civic Center, he came with only an aide, a photographer, and a reporter [Theodore White?], and no security). I think that concern about his vulnerability was why I wrote the story. I also may have known about the Richard Pavlick assassination attempt. The

close friendship between LBJ and Hoover, his neighbor, is well-known, and Hoover supplied

him with dirt from his files that LBJ used against other politicians. Re Sylvia Meagher, I just

suggest you read her exhaustive, brilliant, lucid book, which I consider the best book on the assassination.

We had about a dozen students in the Film and Society class this year at San Francisco State. Some years we have more. I do one class

session on PRIMARY and JOURNEYS WITH GEORGE (for contrast to show how things have changed

with politics and the media), and another showing the Zapruder film, the WFAA interview with Zapruder, the section on the Z film and

the reconstruction of events by Garrison in the Stone JFK film, parts of RUSH TO JUDGMENT (Acquilla Clemmons and

S. M. Holland, the opening with Oswald and Wade, and the ending with Penn Jones),

and parts of WAG THE DOG and BLOWUP to show how photographic history is altered. The

students this year seemed fascinated and receptive -- as I find young people tend to be, more

than older people on this subject -- and asked good basic questions about the how and why

of the assassination. I talk about the alteration of the Z film and refer them to Doug Horne's

fourth volume and other good books.

Edited November 24, 2019 by Joseph McBride

[Rob Couteau]

Great interview - thank you, Joseph. Particularly liked the way you called the assassination a "contemporary issue." So true.

[Joseph McBride]

Thank you, Paul and Rob. I am glad it came out well. The host does

a good job, and he let me cover a lot of topics.  Here's from INTO THE

NIGHTMARE, the portion of my interview with Sen. Yarborough in which

he talks about the shots: 

Senator Yarborough, who had “a lifetime of handling arms,” described for me his reactions to the shots fired in Dealey Plaza, giving an eyewitness and earwitness account that matched that of numerous other witnesses but is, like theirs, at odds over some details with what can now be seen in the altered Zapruder film:

 

The first shot I heard I thought was a rifle shot. The second shot, the motorcade almost came to a halt. They said later that the president‘s car slowed to something like five miles an hour. I wondered what the hell they were stopping for when somebody is shooting. People were jumping out of the car in front of me [the Secret Service followup car] and running to the president‘s car. I thought maybe somebody had thrown a bomb in there. The third shot I heard was a rifle shot.

 

When I asked Yarborough if he thought there was a gunman on the Grassy Knoll, he said,

 

I believe I would have heard or picked the shot up. I just don’t [think so]. I didn’t think so at the time. There’s one possibility -- I don’t think there was a second gunman, but if somebody else fired a shot at the identical time as the gunman in the School Book Depository, if two shots were fired instantly, it would be hard to differentiate them. I know that when I’ve gone deer hunting, if I fire my rifle at the same time as somebody else fires his, you can’t tell the two shots apart. I agree with John Connally that it’s foolish to say that only two shots were fired [Yarborough apparently is alluding to the single-bullet theory, which Connally never accepted].