Chatter: The JFK Assassination and Conspiracy Culture, with Gerald Posner
The Lawfare Podcast
The Lawfare Institute
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 22 November 2023
⏱️ 102 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Sixty years ago today in Dallas, Texas, Lee Harvey Oswald shot and killed President John Kennedy. For almost as long, various (often contradictory) conspiracy theories about that day have been circulating. Gerald Posner used overwhelming evidence and logic to dismantle these theories in his classic book Case Closed, first published in 1993 and re-issued with updates in the three decades since then.
David Priess spoke with Gerald about why some anniversaries of major events resonate more than others; the limits of memory; what drove him to first research and write about the Kennedy assassination; what actually happened on November 22, 1963; early conspiracy thinking about it; Jim Garrison's flawed investigation of Clay Shaw; Oliver Stone and his influential film JFK; speculation about the Dealey Plaza "umbrella man" and about Cuban government involvement; decades of US government document releases; new memories from a former Secret Service agent; the impact of grand conspiracy thinking on society; and more.
Among the works mentioned in this episode:
The book Case Closed by Gerald Posner
The book Reclaiming History by Vincent Bugliosi
The book Hitler's Children by Gerald Posner
The book Rush to Judgment by Mark Lane
The book Six Days in Dallas by Josiah Thompson
The movie JFK
The Lawfare Podcast episode The JFK Assassination Documents, with Gerald Posner and Mark Zaid (December 22, 2021)
The book Day of the Jackal by Fredrick Forsyth
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
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Transcript
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| 1:00.0 | Welcome to Chatter. I'm David Priest. This week, author Gerald Posner on the JFK Assassination and Conspiracy Culture. |
| 1:07.0 | Kennedy's assassination had passed into being a sort of a quasi board game. |
| 1:12.0 | You could sit around a table and say who |
| 1:14.0 | killed Kennedy and people have their own theories oh I think it was the CIA I |
| 1:17.2 | think it was the FBI I know I like Castro the odd person might say it was |
| 1:20.4 | Oswald because it would become popular culture in the worst possible way. |
| 1:24.0 | For Oswald to be part of a plot, he has to be brought in by the conspirators at some point to kill Kennedy. There has to be |
| 1:34.0 | some evidence of a contact, a person who visits him, |
| 1:37.3 | somebody who shows up a telephone call, |
| 1:39.5 | and those seven weeks, there's no evidence of that contact. |
| 1:46.2 | I conclude that there's no question that Lee Harvey Oswald was the shooter and |
| 1:51.8 | the only shooter to the plaza. He fired three shots from behind. He killed the president that day. |
| 1:57.0 | Gerald, welcome to Chatter. |
... |
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