Earlier today we posted video of The Gateway Pundit interview with Democratic Presidential Candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
** You can read our earlier post and watch the entire video here.
** You can donate to Robert Kennedy, Jr.’s campaign here.
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. discussed John F. Kennedy’s death in 1963 and his memories of that historic day.
Robert Jr. told The Gateway Pundit that his father’s initial impulse was to call the CIA and ask about their involvement.
Robert was picked up early from school and made it home around the same time the CIA Director had arrived at his home.
Here is the transcript from our discussion earlier today.
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr: It was an interesting historical event because and I remember it as a kid, I remember when it was happening, but Gary Francis Powers, who was the U2 pilot, was shot down over Russia where he was spying. And we (the US) had denied that we were spying, but the U2 was flying at over 60,000, I think maybe even 100,000 feet, and nobody could see it. And they thought it could not be shot down, and the Russians shot it down. But Gary Francis Powers, who was the pilot, had a kit that he was supposed to take, I think it was anyway, it was poison, and it was in a coin with a little needle on it that he was supposed to prick himself and it would kill him instantly. And he was under orders to do that, and he just didn’t do it. And he parachuted instead. And the Russians captured him, but they didn’t immediately say they had captured him. So they just accused the United States of having a U2 that had crashed in Russia, and the Eisenhower administration, on the advice of Alan Dulles, denied it. And then they (the Soviets) produced Gary Francis Powers.
This is kind of an interesting intersection in my own life because the radar operator at the Atsugi Air Force Base where that U2 (spy plane) had taken off. And who was in charge of monitoring the U2 flights was Lee Harvey Oswald. He was a Marine who was working there, and then he subsequently defected. But it was a fake defection. It was a defection that was orchestrated by James Jesus Angleton, who was the head of counterintelligence at the CIA.
Oswald was a CIA asset and was ordered to do this fake defection because they knew that there was a spy in Langley and that the only way that the Russians could have shut down that U2 is if they had a spy who had given them the plans.
They (CIA) wanted to find out who the spy was, and they still never did. But they had a plan was that Oswald would defect the Soviet Union, and the Soviet Union would be wondering who he was and whether he was real. They (the Soviets) would contact their spy in Langley to go and look at his files. And they had a trigger system on his files. If anybody touched his (Oswald’s) files, they would immediately know who it was. And that’s how they hoped to uncover the spy.
And that’s why two and a half years later, Oswald walked into the – after noisily defecting and making headlines all over the country at that time that a US. Marine had defected to Russia. It was huge news. And he had gone into the US. Embassy and renounced his citizenship. – And he goes back into the embassy at that point, and they give him his passport back without any questions, and they give him $600 to fly to Dallas. And then he was picked up by a CIA asset called George de Mohrenschildt. Incidentally was a cousin of my Aunt Jackie’s, an oil man who worked for the CIA in Dallas. And he got him the job at the Book Depository, et cetera. Anyway, it’s just interesting that Gary Powers story has another interesting intersection with my life.
Jim Hoft: That’s incredible. What a story. My gosh. And how long was he at the Depository before the shooting?
Robert Kennedy, Jr.: He had just gotten that job. Mohrenschildt got him a number of jobs and he went back and forth. His handler in the CIA was a guy called David Adley Phillips. And I actually interviewed maybe four or five years ago, I interviewed a Cuban assassin who ran a group called Alpha 66. And his handler was also David Adley Phillips. And he had met Oswald in Dallas during one of his meetings with David Adley Phillips. Anyway, it’s just interesting.
Jim Hoft: Very much. Was that research you did, Robert, or is that something that…
Robert Kennedy, Jr.: I did a book called American Values. That is my favorite of all the books that I’ve written. And it’s basically a biography. But also the kind of overarching trajectory of that book is my family’s 60-year fistfight with the CIA, which I grew up with because the CIA was only a couple of – it was less than a mile from my house. And so, we used to ride our horses every morning, my father would take us at dawn every morning, horseback riding. And we’d ride through the forests around the CIA and past the buildings, et cetera. My father was going in there almost every day to harangue them about Operation Mongoose and all these other things. And they hated him at the CIA, and they put in they fired Dulles after the Bay of Pigs, and Charles Cabell, who was the second in command, the military commander of the CIA, and Richard Bissell. And they put in John McCone, who was a sort of a conservative Republican Catholic business guy who they thought would calm down the agency, but nobody told him what was going to happen at the agency. But when the day my uncle was killed in ’63, as you I think, mentioned earlier, my father’s first phone call when Hoover called him and told him his brother had been shot, my father’s first phone call was to the CIA desk officer, who my father said, “Did our people do this?”
Then he called Harry Ruiz-Williams, who was one of the Cuban refugees. And I grew up surrounded by Cuban refugees who my father had gotten out of Castro’s prisons in the year after the Bay of Pigs and was finding them schools and finding them homes and getting them, many of them enlisted in the US. Military and finding jobs for them. And one of the chiefs of the brigade was Harry Ruiz, who had fought with Castro and been friends with Castro. And then later, when Castro turned Marxist, had turned against him. He was my father’s closest friend among the refugees, and he was in Washington that day. And my father called him next and said, “Was it your guys who did this?” Because he suspected the Cubans had done it, because the Cubans were always threatening. They wanted to kill him. And they were trained. A lot of them had worked for Batista. They were snipers. They were people who the CIA had trained to kill Castro. And they were all involved with American Mafia, and they were killers. And David Adley Phillips had run the propaganda for that operation for the Bay of Pigs. And he had been sort of the Havana Bureau Chief for a while, and the chief propagandist during the Guatemala overthrow and later- then the third call my father made was to John McCone, and he asked McComb to come to our house.
McCone drove down the road and arrived there just before I came home from school that day because we were picked up early. As soon as my uncle was shot, we were picked up and kind of rushed home. And when I came home, McCone was walking in the yard. We had about an eight-acre yard. McCone was walking in the yard with my father, and my father, in that walk, said to him, “Did our people do this?” McComb told him no. McComb didn’t know I’m sure McComb thought he was telling the truth, and clearly he wasn’t the guy who ordered it. So anyway, but it was my father’s first instinct to believe that the CIA had killed his brother.
Jim Hoft: And you have similar thoughts, by the way. Thank you for that. That’s an amazing story. And sorry for your loss, your family, all the heartache that your family went through. But you’ve said similar things in about your father’s death.
Here is the video.