And it generates a lot of headlines. “Pro-Castro sniper kills JFK,” “pro-Castro marksman,” “pro-Cuban marksman.” Headlines all over the country. Very effective propaganda. Well, George Joannides, the man who was running that operation, his files are obviously related to the assassination. It was his guys who were all over Oswald before and after November 22, 1963. So one of the files that has long been sought is his personnel file, [along with] the documents [detailing] what he was doing in 1963, in 1964.
Joannides later surfaces during the House investigation on assassinations in 1978, right?
He’s called out of retirement in 1978, and he’s made the CIA’s liaison to the House Select Committee on Assassinations, the very group whose records President Trump’s order makes public. Joannides lies in 1978 about what he knew in 1963. So when we get the Joannides personnel file we’ll understand what is going on with this guy. Is he running an operation involving Oswald? Is he called out of retirement to protect the CIA’s Oswald operations?
Many Americans, to some degree, are very interested in the JFK assassination. But this possible narrative of the CIA essentially setting up Oswald as a fall guy has animated many in the MAGA-verse. Why do you think that’s so? Or do you think that is so?
I do think that. I get more phone calls and requests for comment from right-wing media than from liberal media in recent years.
For example, you’re talking to Tucker Carlson.
Yes. There’s more interest over there because, like you say, there’s more enthusiasm. I think because the JFK story is—it’s a fundamental question of whether you believe the government or not. And if you say, “I don’t believe the JFK story,” that’s a way of saying, “I don’t trust the establishment.” And if you say it really loud and really often, as Trump is starting to do, you know, people are like, “Yeah, I’ll get behind that” because that’s a way to, you know, say, F-you to the establishment and to the CIA—and that we don’t believe you.
It’s another version of the deep state argument.
Yeah, it’s like, “We don’t believe you. You’re trying to trick us and our guy is going after you.” So that’s why, you know, they’re excited about it.
Now, I’m not a supporter of President Trump, and he has dangerous authoritarian tendencies. Okay. I say that straight out to my MAGA friends. But this move to declassify all the JFK records, that’s not authoritarian. That’s an antiauthoritarian move. And so I support it. I never expected the JFK thing to be an issue in the 2024 campaign, but I wasn’t surprised that Trump harnessed it because he knows it’s like this symbolic thing that can work for him and he doesn’t have to deliver on the details.
Do you think this had anything to do with how he reeled in Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to be on his side?
Yeah, I think so. And at that rally in August [2024] where he said, “We will release all the JFK records,” listen to the crowd reaction. It’s spontaneous and big. And, you know, Trump heard that, and knew he had a good line.
So let me conclude with what I thought was a quote attributed to you—that the JFK assassination is the Rosetta Stone to postwar American history. What does that mean?
No, it wasn’t me. A colleague said that to me. And I thought it was a striking formulation. Because if you understand that event, you understand so much more about the world, the power-political world from which it came. And we’ve always had this confusion, this blind spot at the heart of our own history, our own sense of history was like, “What was that?” And because the government has no credible explanation and the whole thing is surrounded by mad conspiracy theories and disinformation and stupid apologetics, it’s a sore point. But that’s why it still matters in the political culture, because somehow that event still resonates in our politics today.
