Joe Rogan Experience #1759 - Oliver Stone

1. 0:00 – 1:48

   Why JFK still matters: trust, history, and the post-’63 national security state

   1. OSOliver Stone0:00

      (drumbeats) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out. The Joe Rogan Experience. (rock music plays)

   2. JRJoe Rogan0:06

      Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. (rock music plays) Uh, so thank you, Oliver, thanks for being here, man. I r- I really appreciate it, and I really enjoyed your documentary. I, like you, well not as much as you, but I am a, a conspiracy freak when it comes to the JFK assassination. And, uh, I, I've been fascinated by it for decades and, uh, but no one is, I don't think anybody is as fascinated by it as you. And-

   3. OSOliver Stone0:35

      (clears throat) Well, I get the impression that you have the impre- I'm a full-timer, but no-

   4. JRJoe Rogan0:39

      No, not a full-timer.

   5. OSOliver Stone0:40

      ... I have a career. (laughs)

   6. JRJoe Rogan0:41

      Well, I know you do.

   7. OSOliver Stone0:42

      Yeah.

   8. JRJoe Rogan0:42

      Listen, I'm a huge fan of yours. But it's kind of fascinating that your d- your film, the JFK film, was approximately 30 years after the assassination.

   9. OSOliver Stone0:53

      Yeah.

   10. JRJoe Rogan0:53

       And then this is approximately 30 years after that.

   11. OSOliver Stone0:57

       Yeah.

   12. JRJoe Rogan0:57

       We're still going through this.

   13. OSOliver Stone0:58

       Yes.

   14. JRJoe Rogan0:59

       And they're still withholding documents.

   15. OSOliver Stone1:02

       Yeah.

   16. JRJoe Rogan1:02

       It's really kind of amazing, isn't it?

   17. OSOliver Stone1:04

       No, it's not. It's, you know, everybody's dead from this, from that era, but it's all the more important that we understand our history 'cause it's, it's fading, but the reason we're in this kind of disbalanced situation in the United States, where we have no, less and less trust is because of the past. And if we go to this particular incident in '63, it's a, it's a demarcation point, it's a turning point for the country. And I think, that's what's fascinating to me 'cause I have a historical interest. I've written and made The Untold History of United States and-

   18. JRJoe Rogan1:38

       Yes.

   19. OSOliver Stone1:38

       ... I'm very interested in history and I just think we have to pay attention because the roots of our problem are here. A- and do you want me to talk about that or do you want me to go up?

   20. JRJoe Rogan1:46

       Sure, yeah, please.

2. 1:48 – 4:17

   The “deep state” and permanent bureaucracy: who really checks in with whom

   1. OSOliver Stone1:48

      I, you know, I don't want... Uh, I, I'm, I'm gonna, I have to generalize because from the time he was killed, in '63, that November, we... Think about it, w- not one American president, not one, and you can name them all, have ever challenged the military or the national security state or the intelligence agencies. Not one. They haven't been successful. They, they've cut the budgets occasionally, but not by much, but essentially they keep going up and the Defense Department has a record year this year of 700 and some $60 billion. Who says, who says you can't to the military or to the intelligence agencies? They seem to have a inordinate amount of power. Kennedy was the last one who was trying to curb it and he made a serious effort towards peace. He was, you know, last of the presidents to talk about peace very nobly. And people have said, "Oh, he just talks," but no, he was doing things and we can talk about that too.

   2. JRJoe Rogan2:41

      Yeah.

   3. OSOliver Stone2:43

      That's why it's important. It's crucially important. This country has gone the wrong way since the national security state has gotten bigger, stronger, more money, more paranoid, less trust in every which way.

   4. JRJoe Rogan2:56

      The cynical amongst us would say that that's inevitable.

   5. OSOliver Stone2:59

      (sighs)

   6. JRJoe Rogan2:59

      That whenever you have these situations of power, especially when you have, you know, what people like to call the deep state, but what's essentially this group of people that never leave office and they have an, incredible amounts of power. The, the people that are in the intelligence agencies and the people that are in the Pentagon and the people that are in all these positions of immense power, but they don't get elected in and out. They don't have four-year terms.

   7. OSOliver Stone3:24

      Yeah.

   8. JRJoe Rogan3:24

      And th- these are the people that the president, when a new-

   9. OSOliver Stone3:27

      Yeah.

   10. JRJoe Rogan3:27

       ... newly elected president has to check in with and...

   11. OSOliver Stone3:30

       It's a very dangerous, uh, situation 'cause it's a frozen bureaucracy.

   12. JRJoe Rogan3:34

       Yeah.

   13. OSOliver Stone3:35

       And they die off, but they, then they, they're replaced by insiders and as a result, we are the b- we're the b- we're the biggest bully on the block, r- around the world. No question. We have the most power inter-militarily, supposedly, and nuclear in every which way.

   14. JRJoe Rogan3:51

       Yeah.

   15. OSOliver Stone3:51

       We tell other countries, we intervene. We often tell our allies what to do or we make them do it. We have, we declare ourselves to have enemies and we, we keep insisting on it. Uh, we talk about, uh, China, we talk about Russia, Iran, Korea, North Vietnam, I mean, (laughs) North-

   16. JRJoe Rogan4:11

       North Korea.

   17. OSOliver Stone4:12

       Excuse me, uh, Cuba.

   18. JRJoe Rogan4:13

       Oh, okay.

   19. OSOliver Stone4:14

       Uh, yeah, North Korea, Cuba, and don't forget Venezuela.

   20. JRJoe Rogan4:17

       Wow.

3. 4:17 – 6:30

   Perpetual-war mindset: threat inflation, Orwell, and post–WWII Cold War framing

   1. OSOliver Stone4:17

      It's a major, considered a major threat. Although these threats are inflated, over- infla- over-inflated, and we should, we can talk about each one of these individually, but I, that's what I've done, you know, with my spare time and documentaries. (laughs) I've done Ukraine, I've done Russia with Putin, and I'm very interested in w- what we call enemies. And I keep seeing this c- this over-inflation of it. Because why? Think about Orwell. Remember the old, the George Orwell 1984?

   2. JRJoe Rogan4:45

      Mm-hmm.

   3. OSOliver Stone4:45

      You know, the, the state exists to fight a perpetual war or prepare for war. That's what we've been doing since 1945, '6. After World War II, we didn't stop. World War II, we start moving into World War III. We said that our allies in World War II, the Russians, were a great threat to our country, although they were depleted. Their energy was depleted, their money, they were broke, broke, broke. We had promised them money, we cut off them payment. The moment Roosevelt died, Truman cut off the aid payment that we were sending to them, some $10 billion. And since that time, uh, we just keep... Uh, we kee- we pushed the Cold War, uh, and I, we have to, we can discuss the whole Cold War if you want, but it was really-

   4. JRJoe Rogan5:28

      Yeah.

   5. OSOliver Stone5:29

      Think about life before 1945. Think about, we were in a war with Hitler, right? It was a war that was forced upon us. We went in very late, in the nine- think about the 1930s and the '20s. The Roosevelt re- uh, fr- uh, the Franklin Delano Roosevelt was, recognized the Soviet Union. He was one of the first. He was the first. He, he was, had a vision for post-World War II, which is beautiful. You have to understand that there was a, a vision of a world dominated by the great powers. It would be United States, uh, br- Britain-... uh, China and the UN- and U- and USSR at that time. Uh, that was the four powers he envisaged that would control... And he believed in the United Nations. He was... It's a shame he didn't see his vision come true. He died in April of '45, Truman took over and it was a different... The moment Truman took over with his group, the Soviets were seen as the enemy right away. Right away. There was no co- going back on it.

4. 6:30 – 11:29

   Assange, moral authority, and rules-for-thee-not-for-me foreign policy

   1. JRJoe Rogan6:30

      Um, i- i- speaking of this, this, uh, idea that the United States is the biggest bully, have you seen this video that was recently released from China where a Chinese representative is talking about Julian Assange. And, uh, the, the Chinese representative is, uh, saying that the United States has no moral high ground to stand on when they talk about what is going on in other countries, particularly in China, when... With what they're doing to prosecute and to, uh, force Julian Assange to be extradited to the United States, and the way they're going after him for what's essentially just being a journalist and exposing what many people believe is war crimes.

   2. OSOliver Stone7:08

      Yes.

   3. JRJoe Rogan7:09

      And that, that speaks to what you're saying, is that, like, we have rules for the rest of the world-

   4. OSOliver Stone7:15

      Yes.

   5. JRJoe Rogan7:15

      ... and we don't follow them ourselves.

   6. OSOliver Stone7:17

      That's correct. Yeah. We, um... The Assange case is a, is a very typical of what happens at the, when the, the state becomes scared of its position. It gets... It, uh, it's, it's dissonance become enemies of the state.

   7. JRJoe Rogan7:32

      Yeah.

   8. OSOliver Stone7:32

      And the same thing has happened to some degree in China, yes, and they are paranoid about it. And you could say... But the... To draw an equation between our power and their power is wrong, because, you know, a bully, w- he goes around, he scares the neighborhood, right? He, he... It works for a certain period of time, but he's a hated individual. There's fear because he's there, right?

   9. JRJoe Rogan7:53

      Yeah.

   10. OSOliver Stone7:53

       I've seen your mov- I've seen your... You know, you talk about martial arts, you think about it as a movie, the guy's always kicking ass in the neighborhood, and until the new hero comes along and-

   11. JRJoe Rogan8:03

       Right.

   12. OSOliver Stone8:03

       ... and deals with it. And he generally s- he wins, the new hero wins. But with the, the new hero wins by not enforcing that kind of fear on the rest of the people.

   13. JRJoe Rogan8:11

       Hmm.

   14. OSOliver Stone8:12

       You've gotta have modification of behavior. That's what's... Nothing wrong with our power. I think the United States has power to defend itself, no question. But we have to modify our behavior to behave in a humane way with people and recognize people's differences. But that seems to be less the case as we become more disciplined, more ironed about how we have to... How they, people have to behave. We tell them, "In your country, you can't do this, you can't do that." Now, some countries are different. They have different customs, different cultures. They don't have to agree with the way we run business. We call it democracy, although a lot of people question the democracy inside this country. I mean, we... You know what the elections are like here. It's become very suspect, elections-

   15. JRJoe Rogan8:55

       Yeah.

   16. OSOliver Stone8:56

       ... itself. And the money behind the elections, I mean, it takes a fortune to get elected. You go to Washington, I mean, I think it's hard to get a, an audience with a congressman. I do think you have to pay money in order to get the, the ear of a congressman. Uh, so it's... You know, our democracy is not functioning in the way it was meant to function. And, uh, other countries... And we want other countries to hit... Restore their democracies, but their democracies... It works better in Europe to a certain degree, because they don't have long election periods. They have short election periods control... And the money is, is very hard... Is well controlled. They don't allow private, the private sector to take over the elections as we did here in this country with the United Nation, with the United... Uh, Supreme Court's decision allowing, uh, corporations to exist as individuals.

   17. JRJoe Rogan9:45

       Yeah, that was a tremendous mistake. And if you go back and look at where this country took a bad turn, you... I would agree with you that it seems like it was during this time period where JFK was assassinated, that JFK had these ideas, um, getting rid of the CIA. He wanted to, uh, pull us out of Vietnam. He only wanted to se- I mean, you, you talk about this really in detail in your documentary, the, the new documentary that's available right now on Showtime.

   18. OSOliver Stone10:15

       Yes.

   19. JRJoe Rogan10:15

       And that-

   20. OSOliver Stone10:16

       JFK Revisited.

   21. JRJoe Rogan10:16

       Yes. Which is, it's so thorough. How long did it take you to make that?

   22. OSOliver Stone10:21

       A year and a half. Uh, it, it's on Showtime now. It's a limited... They have a 90-day hold on it. End of February, it becomes available widely.

   23. JRJoe Rogan10:30

       Hmm.

   24. OSOliver Stone10:31

       And we will get it out wid- in the United States. But it's available in foreign countries. It's, uh, in about 15 foreign countries. Uh, but still, the United States is... Listen, we're lucky to have gotten Showtime to do this, because they're a good company. They've given me a platform in the past with my Putin documentary, as well as my Untold History of the United States. But this-

   25. JRJoe Rogan10:53

       Yeah, kudos to them, 'cause, um, it, it's a controversial subject. It's a very complex subject. And for you to be able to cover it in such incredible detail the way you did, from the beginning, you could tell from your documentary, you, you can tell f- from the beginning there was a concerted effort to, um, to pin the blame on Lee Harvey Oswald and to, without a doubt, remove any evidence to the contrary.

   26. OSOliver Stone11:24

       Yes. The, the, uh-

   27. JRJoe Rogan11:25

       Yeah.

   28. OSOliver Stone11:25

       You're jumping around. So, I mean, the... I was gonna just finish the Kennedy piece.

   29. JRJoe Rogan11:29

       Oh yeah, please.

5. 11:29 – 18:05

   JFK’s break with the war machine: Bay of Pigs and the Cuban Missile Crisis

   1. OSOliver Stone11:29

      The Kennedy thing, you know, remember that he, he resisted war.

   2. JRJoe Rogan11:33

      Yes.

   3. OSOliver Stone11:34

      And people get this confused because they say, "Oh, he went into Vietnam," but no, you have to look at the whole thing the way it was... He av- he avoided war twice in Cuba, and this is very important to remember. The Bay of Pigs was a setup, you know. The CIA controlled that operation. They went in. They expected... They knew that operation would not work unless the United States came in militarily to back up that invasion of Cuban exiles. They expected it because Eisenhower would have done it in the past. That was...

   4. JRJoe Rogan12:02

      Hmm.

   5. OSOliver Stone12:02

      They got used to it in the 1950s that the United States would back the CIA. Kennedy made it very clear that he would not.... put US combat troops into Viet, into, into Cuba, made that clear, or give air support unless, unless they were, established a beachhead. He was willing to g- to meet them halfway. He was saying, "Okay, we'll go if, if you succeed." But it didn't succeed. It was fucked from the beginning, 'cause Castro knew it was coming. He was... He knew about this seven days or eight days be- before, maybe more. And they were, they were stranded on the beach. As a result, that started the... That was a few days after he became president in April.

   6. JRJoe Rogan12:39

      Right.

   7. OSOliver Stone12:39

      Right? S- he had very little experience, but he was shocked at what happened, and he took full responsibility for the debacle. He said, "I'm the responsible officer of government," which is a very good thing to do. He established a hierarchy, but he really wasn't in charge and he knew it. He told de Gaulle and he also told other people, "I'm not sure I'm in charge of this government," 'cause they had the, a secret branch, the CIA, that does what it does. The military definitely is not controllable. All the chiefs of staff were wildly against him, uh, including Curtis LeMay, the Air Force chief. They... Uh, they saw him as an inexperienced young man, although he had been in war and he'd actually been heroic, uh, had a heroic, uh, situation there where he really earned his... he earned... He was in, in the Navy PT boat, and he saved a, saved a lot of men during that horrible experience that he had in the South Pacific. But aside from that, he wasn't scared of the generals because he'd been in war. I guess that was what I'm trying-

   8. JRJoe Rogan13:35

      Hmm.

   9. OSOliver Stone13:35

      ... to say. And-

   10. JRJoe Rogan13:35

       Yeah.

   11. OSOliver Stone13:36

       ... the second thing he did was a year later, and this is crucial, people don't quite get it, is that when the, the missile crisis happened in October of '62, this was a key moment for Kennedy. This is what signed his death warrant, I believe. He didn't go in. He didn't invade. Everybody in the Pentagon, including Eisenhower, including, uh, his senior civilians, uh, experienced in it said, "Go into Cuba. Take them out, because the Russians had put nuclear missiles into Cuba." Okay?

   12. JRJoe Rogan14:07

       Mm-hmm.

   13. OSOliver Stone14:08

       And this was against all Ameri... You couldn't do this 90 miles from American shores. It was against all, violated all, the concept of America as a sovereign country. There was no question that he had to go in, and he didn't. This is very important to understand. If he had done it, we've now found out that the Soviets, yeah, they had not only... They had a lot of troops there. They had 100,000 troops roughly. They would have been... It would have led to one, one... It would have built up into a nuclear, uh, a nuclear explosion out of Cuba, somewhere else, somewhere else in the, in the ocean. The, the, the blockade. Ships would have blown up, one thing after another. Khrushchev, the Russians would have reacted. The- we would have reacted over... And then step by step, we would have been into possibly an Armageddon with Russia, although we had way, way far more nuclear weapons than Russia did. That's what the reason the Pentagon wanted the war then. They wanted to wipe out the Soviet Union. This is very much in the back of their minds.

   14. JRJoe Rogan15:07

       So they wanted to do it the same way we had done to Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

   15. OSOliver Stone15:11

       Yes. Behin- it was beyond that, too. I mean, way beyond that. I'm, I'm saying this. It's important to realize their thinking was that... Their thinking was that, "Now we're in... We- we have a tremendous, uh, advantage. In a few years, we won't. Th- the Soviets are gonna build up," and they did in the 1970s. They got p- practically to parity. That's what Reagan was talking about, you know. Uh, he said, "We have to take on the Soviet Union," the same thing. But in the 1962 period, it was possible in their minds to win. First strike, blow them up. We take a limited amount of casualties.

   16. JRJoe Rogan15:44

       Wow.

   17. OSOliver Stone15:44

       20, 30 million people. Do you remember Dr. Strangelove?

   18. JRJoe Rogan15:47

       Yes. I was just gonna talk about that.

   19. OSOliver Stone15:48

       It's the same kind of thinking.

   20. JRJoe Rogan15:49

       Yeah.

   21. OSOliver Stone15:49

       And Kubrick got it right. That was their thinking. "We can win now, wipe them out, get rid of this threat."

   22. JRJoe Rogan15:55

       And just lose a couple cities.

   23. OSOliver Stone15:56

       Communism will be dead. (laughs)

   24. JRJoe Rogan15:58

       Yeah.

   25. OSOliver Stone15:58

       Although there was China, of course, in the background. But they were willing to take out China too. They had plans for that on that... When it got to its worst point in that crisis, in those 13 days, they had plans for China o- off of Okinawa.

   26. JRJoe Rogan16:10

       Wow.

   27. OSOliver Stone16:11

       It was gonna be a, a real conflagration. And they would have won that war, so to speak. I mean, hopefully a male and a female would survive it. (laughs)

   28. JRJoe Rogan16:19

       Hopefully-

   29. OSOliver Stone16:19

       But that's the thinking.

   30. JRJoe Rogan16:20

       ... a male and a female.
6. 18:05 – 22:18

   Eisenhower’s warning, Kennedy’s Peace Speech, and the economics of militarization

   1. JRJoe Rogan18:05

      It's, it's amazing that Eisenhower was the one that was doing this when Eisenhower's the one who had that speech.

   2. OSOliver Stone18:10

      You know, at the end of his... Yes.

   3. JRJoe Rogan18:12

      Yeah.

   4. OSOliver Stone18:12

      It's a great speech. I love it, but-

   5. JRJoe Rogan18:13

      Do you want some coffee?

   6. OSOliver Stone18:14

      No, no, just water. Uh.

   7. JRJoe Rogan18:16

      I'll pour you some just in case.

   8. OSOliver Stone18:17

      Okay.

   9. JRJoe Rogan18:18

      But that speech is what everyone points to as being the moment in time where the-

   10. OSOliver Stone18:24

       (clears throat)

   11. JRJoe Rogan18:24

       ... military-industrial complex is recognized, but the fact that Eisenhower wanted him to go into Cuba, Eisenhower wanted him to go into Laos, that the-

   12. OSOliver Stone18:30

       Yes.

   13. JRJoe Rogan18:30

       ... Eisenhower wanted war.

   14. OSOliver Stone18:32

       Yes. Well, he didn't-

   15. JRJoe Rogan18:33

       Even-

   16. OSOliver Stone18:33

       ... want war, why, he thought that we could-

   17. JRJoe Rogan18:34

       But he thought it was the right thing to do.

   18. OSOliver Stone18:36

       He thought that was the right thing to do because we could pressure the Soviets down, that's what he felt. And, uh, that's what John Foster Dulles and Allen Dulles, the CIA chief, also felt that very strongly, that we have to push the Soviets hard to make them back down, and that was not the right reading of the Soviets. The Soviets were paranoid beyond belief about us. They-

   19. JRJoe Rogan18:55

       Hmm.

   20. OSOliver Stone18:55

       Their hardliners are the ones who threw out Khrushchev a year later.

   21. JRJoe Rogan18:58

       Hmm.

   22. OSOliver Stone18:59

       He got thrown out of office, too. So say, hardliners in the United States, hardliners in Russia are the people who got rid of Khrushchev and Kennedy. That was their payback for, for being peace warriors.

   23. JRJoe Rogan19:09

       So did this-

   24. OSOliver Stone19:10

       The great speech, by the way, was Kennedy's speech.

   25. JRJoe Rogan19:12

       Yes.

   26. OSOliver Stone19:12

       In 1963, in June, the Peace Speech. That's the most important speech he ever gave.

   27. JRJoe Rogan19:17

       Which one is that?

   28. OSOliver Stone19:17

       He called for, uh, peace, and talking about a concept of peace where everyone, our children, our mortality, the very air we breathe, we have in common with the Soviet Union, which took so many casualties in World War II. Um, it's a... You should re-read that speech. I, I-

   29. JRJoe Rogan19:34

       Yeah, I will.

   30. OSOliver Stone19:34

       I put it into the documentary, a piece of it.
7. 22:18 – 27:05

   Vietnam: Kennedy’s hidden withdrawal path vs. LBJ’s rapid pivot to war

   1. OSOliver Stone22:18

      The polls all showed that. However, he did have a very tough election coming up in '64 with Barry Goldwater on the, from the conservative side growing in power. Goldwater was a significant speaker, a threat, and very much a hardliner. Kennedy was (laughs) very precarious position when, for example, he didn't want any, to go any further with Vietnam. He put advisors in. Uh, he put advisors into Vietnam when he came in, yes, because Eisenhower had started the policy of helping Vietnam. "We cannot lose Vietnam," the domino theory, "We'll lose Asia," all that stuff. Kennedy didn't quite see it that way because he'd been to Vietnam in 1950s as a young senator with his, with his brother actually, and he had talked to some seasoned diplomats out there who were more of his thinking than, than the Pentagon thinking, and they had told him that this Viet- the French are f- are screwed in Vietnam, they're never gonna get out of this mess, and they didn't. It was a war like the war we had years later, where they were undone by the guerrilla and the desire for independence and the guerrilla forces they were fighting.

   2. JRJoe Rogan23:23

      It's such a, I mean, I'm listening to you lay this out, and it, it, it just occurring to me of what an immense task it is to get into office not knowing all this information-

   3. OSOliver Stone23:33

      That's right.

   4. JRJoe Rogan23:33

      ... not having real access to what the actual data is.

   5. OSOliver Stone23:36

      That's right.

   6. JRJoe Rogan23:36

      You get into office, and then you have to deal with a multitude of w- world-changing events and world-changing, uh, uh, uh, p- positions, and all, and you're dealing with it all as you're catching up.

   7. OSOliver Stone23:54

      I know. It's amazing.

   8. JRJoe Rogan23:55

      It's a crazy job.

   9. OSOliver Stone23:56

      B- Berlin.

   10. JRJoe Rogan23:57

       Yeah.

   11. OSOliver Stone23:57

       Berlin was-

   12. JRJoe Rogan23:58

       Right, don't forget Berlin.

   13. OSOliver Stone23:59

       ... another one. He's gotta m- and then don't forget the, the ongoing threat of, uh, Cuba. 'Cause the, the-

   14. JRJoe Rogan24:04

       Cuba, Vietnam.

   15. OSOliver Stone24:05

       Cuba.

   16. JRJoe Rogan24:05

       Yeah.

   17. OSOliver Stone24:05

       Dulles had launched the, the, uh, the, the CIA chief, Allen Dulles, not... had launched the, uh, Cuban expedition against, at the s- they decided to do Bay of Pigs before he came into office. And on top of it, don't forget also, (laughs) he comes into office, he didn't even know that they had-... we'd been, participated in the, in the Patrice Lumumba coup in the, in the Congo.

   18. JRJoe Rogan24:25

       Hmm.

   19. OSOliver Stone24:25

       Now, Kennedy was very interested in Africa, and it's, people don't know all this story, but he really got involved heavily with Dag Hammarskjöld, who was the UN president, in, in, in, uh, in, in Africa. When Lumumba was killed because of our machinations over there, we wanted to get rid of him, we had a plan to get rid of him. Whether we were the ones who pulled the trigger or no, I'm not sure, because the South Africans and the, and other people were involved, Belgians were involved, but still, he was killed. No one told him for three weeks.

   20. JRJoe Rogan24:55

       Hmm.

   21. OSOliver Stone24:55

       Then he got the call from the CIA and they told him that he'd d- he was shocked. And his face, we have a photograph of him in the film when he hears about Lumumba's, uh, death. So, all these problems come on his plate, right? So a very difficult situation for him. That's why I'm saying he was, had to be, he had to be very careful in running for re-election.

   22. JRJoe Rogan25:15

       Hmm.

   23. OSOliver Stone25:16

       He knew the problems. Now, as a very seasoned politician, he'd been around for a few years and he didn't wanna sound like a, uh, uh, a, what do you call, a peacenik? No. Definitely that was out of the... he had to keep saying things like, "We are going to help the Vietnamese, South Vietnamese." But in truth was that he had no desire to help them if they were losing, and he made that very clear, and that's in the film, too, because we found a declassified file from the SECDEF, uh, meeting of Ap- of, uh, April or May of '63, right before the, right before his death. And in that meeting, McNamara, who represents him, says, "We gotta speed up this withdrawal of troops. Speed up this withdrawal of troops." And at that point, he knew, McNamara knew they were losing in the South Vietnamese. He knew it. So what I'm saying is that Kennedy and McNamara together were willing to pull out of Vietnam, w- win or lose. And that's a... he couldn't say that publicly.

   24. JRJoe Rogan26:15

       Right. Because the re-election.

   25. OSOliver Stone26:17

       Yeah, he pa-... the National Security Action Memorandum 263 calls for the withdrawal of the first thousand troops, serious withdrawal, but there was an appendix where all troops out by '65, but he didn't put that in writing. And, uh, this we know about now, but we didn't know about it then. I got a lot of flak when I made my movie in '91, the original film about-

   26. JRJoe Rogan26:38

       Mm-hmm.

   27. OSOliver Stone26:39

       He says it's about withdrawing from Vietnam. Kennedy never intended to withdraw from Vietnam. That's bullshit. It's clear as bell, because McNamara not only wrote it up after, uh, after my movie came out, he wrote a book called... I forgot the name of it. He said the same thing. He said Kennedy was pulling out, so did McGeorge Bundy, his National Security Adviser. Excuse me, I gotta pee. You made me drink water, and it killed me.

   28. JRJoe Rogan27:00

       Oh, you gotta pee already? Yeah, go ahead. Go ahead. Sure.

   29. OSOliver Stone27:02

       Can I, can I get a second? Oh, geez.

   30. JRJoe Rogan27:03

       (laughs)
8. 27:05 – 31:01

   Pre-Dallas plots and security failures: Chicago, Tampa, and Secret Service whistleblowing

   1. JRJoe Rogan27:05

      We'll be right back with Oliver Stone. How aware was Kennedy that he was in danger? Was he at all aware?

   2. OSOliver Stone27:12

      Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. In fact, he had that Irish sense of tragedy (laughs) , you know, it's...

   3. JRJoe Rogan27:17

      Hmm.

   4. OSOliver Stone27:17

      He always... He, uh, he went to Ireland before he died and he, he kind of knew it, you know? He's, he-

   5. JRJoe Rogan27:23

      You think he knew that they were gonna try to assassinate him?

   6. OSOliver Stone27:25

      It was... Oh, he knew about that because there were several attempts already.

   7. JRJoe Rogan27:29

      Were there other attempts?

   8. OSOliver Stone27:30

      Oh, yeah.

   9. JRJoe Rogan27:30

      Oh, I didn't know about that.

   10. OSOliver Stone27:31

       We ta- in the documentary-

   11. JRJoe Rogan27:32

       That's right.

   12. OSOliver Stone27:32

       ... we go into Chicago-

   13. JRJoe Rogan27:34

       That's right.

   14. OSOliver Stone27:34

       ... and Tampa.

   15. JRJoe Rogan27:35

       Now, can you gl- just give us a brief, uh, outline of those?

   16. OSOliver Stone27:40

       Okay. (laughs) There's a lot of information there.

   17. JRJoe Rogan27:42

       Yeah.

   18. OSOliver Stone27:42

       In Chicago, he, in early November of '63, uh, a landlady complained about four Cubans with arms-

   19. JRJoe Rogan27:50

       Hmm.

   20. OSOliver Stone27:50

       ... in an apartment that she owned, uh, that, that they rented briefly. And, uh, two of them were busted, two of them disappeared, and the two that were busted were interrogated, then let go, which is strange.

   21. JRJoe Rogan28:06

       Yeah.

   22. OSOliver Stone28:06

       There was also a patsy that was similar to Oswald, same profile as Oswald. He'd been a Marine, he'd been in Japan, uh, at an airbase. He'd, he had, uh, expressed his dissatisfa- another airbase, not the same one, not at Utsugi, and he go- he expressed his dissatisfaction with the United States. He defected to Russia. Now, this program, this defector program to Russia seems to have been institutionalized by the CIA, and they sent a certain number of people there to get information about Russia. Now, "Why?" do you ask. I always wondered that question, because back in the '50s, they didn't have land-based information, very good land-based information. They had to get it from sending people there because they-

   23. JRJoe Rogan28:45

       Right.

   24. OSOliver Stone28:46

       They could, they could watch the, the, uh, USSR from U-2s, which is what they did, and satellite photography. But, uh, the guy, there was... uh, Vallee was his name. Uh, he, uh, he was also stopped, but he disappears. Don't ask me what happened-

   25. JRJoe Rogan29:02

       Hmm.

   26. OSOliver Stone29:03

       ... quite as to his details. The point is that-

   27. JRJoe Rogan29:04

       Kennedy was aware.

   28. OSOliver Stone29:05

       ... Kennedy... Yes, he was, but he didn't really get the whole picture. So it brings in the story of this Black se- c- uh, Black Secret Service guy who had, who wa- became his friend, his name was Abraham Bolden, who he himself had appointed. He looked around on his inauguration and he sa- and he s- on Inauguration Day in '61, '61, he said, "How come there's no Black agents here protecting me?" It's a very interesting question.

   29. JRJoe Rogan29:29

       Hmm.

   30. OSOliver Stone29:29

       Bolden became his w- his choice to go in, and of course, he ended up in trouble (laughs) because, uh, he, he was the one who pointed out the details of how badly handled the Secret Service did the, uh, did the inf- uh, used the information, and, uh, he was busted on false, fake charges, went to jail. It's a whole story. That's another story. Ano- this murder, this murder has so many mysteries. I mean, Sherlock Holmes would love it.
9. 31:01 – 43:17

   Operation Northwoods, Mongoose, and CIA–Cuba entanglements around Oswald

   1. JRJoe Rogan31:01

      How mu- how much of, uh, a shock was it for him when, uh, he got ahold of the Operation Northwoods papers, when he found out that the Joint Chiefs-

   2. OSOliver Stone31:10

      Uh, that's a, yeah, that's another, he laughed. I mean, he thought that was a horrible idea. (laughs)

   3. JRJoe Rogan31:13

      Well, it's-

   4. OSOliver Stone31:14

      What-

   5. JRJoe Rogan31:14

      It's so crazy to read.

   6. OSOliver Stone31:15

      Well, it's not so crazy when you think about it, it's, that's the realistic, that's the way they operate.

   7. JRJoe Rogan31:20

      Right.

   8. OSOliver Stone31:20

      Once they put something in writing like that, it becomes more and more feasible.

   9. JRJoe Rogan31:23

      Well, uh, also, you know, when I talk to people about conspiracies, um, and I bring up Operation Northwoods, I say, "You know, no one went to jail for that." Do you understand that those people, the Joint Chiefs of Staff that signed that, like, they, they stayed in office, and if you understand how anything works, things evolve. If this is-

   10. OSOliver Stone31:41

       Yeah.

   11. JRJoe Rogan31:41

       ... how government was run in the 1960s, you can bet your ass that there's some sort of similar but more complex version of it in play in 2022.

   12. OSOliver Stone31:51

       Well, if, obviously, people who are talking about 2001 would point to Northwoods as a, as a, as a father, the grandfather of this operation, because-

   13. JRJoe Rogan31:59

       Hmm.

   14. OSOliver Stone31:59

       ... it required, among other things, plan to invade Cuba. That was the whole idea.

   15. JRJoe Rogan32:04

       Right.

   16. OSOliver Stone32:04

       We need another justification to go to Cuba.

   17. JRJoe Rogan32:05

       Could you please lay out Operation Northwoods for people who don't know what it was?

   18. OSOliver Stone32:08

       Yeah. It was a series of papers that came out because of the Assassination Records Review Board, the result of my film, uh, they found so much. I mean, but basically, that that operation called for an invasion of Cuba through pro- provocation, like things like having Cubans killed, uh, in the air, domestic airliner blow up, and going down over, over Guantanamo Bay yelling, "We're under fire, we're under fire." And, and people would die, you know, and then they'd be blamed on Cuba. Everything would be blamed on Cuba. There'd be blo- uh, opera- sabotage operations in the United States that would be blamed on Cuba. Um, that kind of thing.

   19. JRJoe Rogan32:48

       And it was all done to get people enthusiastic-

   20. OSOliver Stone32:51

       Of course.

   21. JRJoe Rogan32:52

       ... about going to war with Cuba.

   22. OSOliver Stone32:52

       This was a whole, this is very important, this is crucial to understand. That's, uh, th- this is very crucial, because I do believe that was the motivation for the assassination, the Cuba thing was really the thing that set them off. Forget about Berlin, forget about the detente with Russia, forget about the nuclear pea- peace treaty, uh, uh, nuclear, uh, war, uh, atmospheric treaty that Kennedy signed with Khrushchev. That was a big treaty. Forget all these things. Forget Vietnam. Twice he'd failed in Cuba. This created a tremendous wave of expectation from Cubans who hated him. So it's be- this is where the CIA and Cuba kind of intersect. They use the Cubans very well, 'cause there's a handler in Florida called George Joannides gets involved with them, very interesting character, and we'll come back to him if you want. Uh, the Cubans are used, uh, used everywhere on the map, in Texas, Florida, New Orleans. Oswald is soaked in them. He's, as he, he comes back in the United States, this crazy story, he's soaked with, like, you know, soaked in them. I mean, becomes a member of, uh, the Fair Play for Com- Cuba Committee, which is, by the way, started by the CIA. (laughs) It's not really a legitimate organization. He becomes a member of that, and he, the CIA started both sides. They started the Cu- the, the student movement against, uh, for, for, against Castro, and they started the, uh, Fair Play for Cuba, both sides of the equation. That's typical of what they do. (clears throat) And can I go back one second? 'Cause it's-

   23. JRJoe Rogan34:29

       Sure.

   24. OSOliver Stone34:29

       ... it's a complex situation, and people have a field day with going after JFK here, because JFK had nothing to do with the assassination planning on Castro. How do we know this? There's an o- an Inspector General report. Inspector general of the CIA did a report back in six- '66, '67 for, uh, Helms was asked, he was, uh, Richard Helms was the head of the CIA, LBJ, there'd been this whole scandal thing. Jack Anderson was a very famous columnist, he raised these issues and said that, uh, had said that the, uh, CIA was involved with, uh, with, uh, Cuban groups to assassinate Castro using mob figures, okay?

   25. JRJoe Rogan35:13

       Mm-hmm.

   26. OSOliver Stone35:13

       And this whole thing started to stir up in the, in the '60s. After, after Kennedy had been killed, we started to hear about it. Of course, the Warren Commission wouldn't allow anything like that to come out because Allen Dulles was on the commission. They never heard a word about any of this stuff. It started to come out. Johnson, who was president at that point, wanted to have a full report, and he asked, he made Helms, Richard Helms give it to him. Helms is a character that is slimy that goes way back, but, well, that's another story. (laughs) That's another story. You need to be Sherlock Holmes here. LBJ writes, he says, "Write me the fucking report." The guy writes, uh, the IG guy, who's supposed to be honest, inspector general, writes the report, and it's the whole story, the whole bananas, everything. And he says in the report, "There is no evidence of any president..." That means Eisenhower or Kennedy, knowing, approving of any as- assassination attempt against Castro. Crucial to understand that.

   27. JRJoe Rogan36:09

       Hmm.

   28. OSOliver Stone36:10

       So, and that's Robert Kennedy included, because there's no evidence that we have found, all the research community, that says that Robert Kennedy knew anything. Although, the CIA, after the assassination, made a b- a, a best effort to plant them as assassination people. In other words, this guy, uh, S- Seymour Hersh wrote a book-And, uh, the assis- uh, Halpern, who was on- the number one assistant to Helms, Halpern, was a, uh, help- was his main source and put out all these stories about Camelot really being, planning the murder of Castro. That's why you hear this over and over again. Noam Chomsky, of all people, picked up on it and keeps repeating it. This is just not true. We can't find evidence of it, and the IG report points to it. Helms didn't want to give the report. (laughs) He had one copy he gave to LBJ. That's it. LBJ read it, it disappears into the files. And the Assassination Records Review Board gets the IG report, finally, open, what is it? 20... What is it? 2020 now? '21?

   29. JRJoe Rogan37:14

       Wow.

   30. OSOliver Stone37:14

       You re- you realize that that report... And the historians keep... Uh, the historians k- actually, it was available in the 1990s. I mean, I don't know if they... And historians have a responsibility to read these papers. They didn't, and they keep... Some of these historians keep making the mistake of saying Kennedy was behind getting rid of Castro. Kennedy was in a tough position on Cuba. Yes, he had to move against Cuba. At the same time, he wanted to save his Alliance for Progress. Alliance for Progress was a huge social experiment that he started in Latin America. Very important. $10 billion. And they really... He didn't want to do mili- he didn't want military, the military governments of South America to, to be putting the money into military stuff, so he put it into education, agriculture, everything he could. He made this tremendous effort. And it's, it's a wonderful story. Of course, Johnson closed it down, uh, and put back the money back into the military, uh, regimes. Brazil followed, the coup in Brazil followed, but... Uh, where was I? I'm just trying to say, on Cuba, Kennedy had to give the notion that he was doing something-
10. 43:17 – 1:08:35

    The case for a cover-up: chain-of-custody failures, the ‘magic bullet,’ and manipulated autopsy evidence

    1. OSOliver Stone43:17

       I would say from the beginning, there was... Yes, when you have a shot from the rear and a shot from the front.

    2. JRJoe Rogan43:21

       Yes. Well, that what I- I was gonna get into that. So when you detail, uh, so brilliantly in this documentary, all of the people that were involved in manipulating evidence, whether it's autopsy photos, whether it's the, uh, the evidence about the actual shots, where they were fired from, the impact, like, where the exit wounds was, all these various people that were involved, how many people knew what had actually happened? 'Cause it seems like there was a- a concentration of people that was not small. And one of the things that people who, uh, like to, uh, use the pejorative term, uh, conspiracy theorist, they always wanna point to, "People can't keep a secret."

    3. OSOliver Stone44:06

       (laughs)

    4. JRJoe Rogan44:06

       What the fuck they can't? They had to.

    5. OSOliver Stone44:09

       It's a giant maze. It's so confusing-

    6. JRJoe Rogan44:11

       Yes.

    7. OSOliver Stone44:12

       ... that no one would be believed if they could-

    8. JRJoe Rogan44:13

       Right.

    9. OSOliver Stone44:14

       ... there's one part... S- think of it as departments of this, uh, departments of this, somebody pops up and says, "I know this," so he disappears in the maze.

    10. JRJoe Rogan44:23

        Right.

    11. OSOliver Stone44:23

        It's another piece of information.

    12. JRJoe Rogan44:24

        Yeah.

    13. OSOliver Stone44:25

        There's been no attempt by government to follow up on this at all. They dismissed... They had the HSCA in 1978, right? That came about because of pressure. And a lot of that was classified still and disappeared for a while, but we got it out, all that stuff. They- they decided that there was a probable conspiracy based on the ac- acoustic evidence of the motorcycles, but we don't wanna go into that 'cause that's a whole other story.

    14. JRJoe Rogan44:50

        Acoustic evidence from sound?

    15. OSOliver Stone44:51

        Acoustic. From- from the rear-

    16. JRJoe Rogan44:52

        From the recording?

    17. OSOliver Stone44:52

        ... and the front.

    18. JRJoe Rogan44:53

        Yes.

    19. OSOliver Stone44:53

        Yes, yes.

    20. JRJoe Rogan44:53

        Yeah. Well...

    21. OSOliver Stone44:54

        The shots, the shots.

    22. JRJoe Rogan44:56

        The- the physical evidence of the- the impact on the body is way-

    23. OSOliver Stone45:00

        That's more important, yeah.

    24. JRJoe Rogan45:00

        ... way more important and way more obvious.

    25. OSOliver Stone45:03

        Yeah.

    26. JRJoe Rogan45:03

        That, first of all, the establishment of the magic bullet was one of the most preposterous things that the United States public has ever accepted.

    27. OSOliver Stone45:11

        And I think we did a great service by driving a stake through that heart of that vampire because it's been around forever.

    28. JRJoe Rogan45:17

        Well, you detailed in so many different ways, too.

    29. OSOliver Stone45:20

        Yeah.

    30. JRJoe Rogan45:20

        You detailed all the various ways that they had tried to establish it. Once they found the wound in the back, they tried to establish-
11. 1:08:35 – 1:18:33

    Oswald’s alibi and the shooter problem: secretaries’ timeline, missing evidence, and escape logistics

    1. OSOliver Stone1:08:35

       And then, of course, we... in the film, we go into... this is very important, the Oswald alibi. It's probable that he was not on the sixth floor.

    2. JRJoe Rogan1:08:44

       Right.

    3. OSOliver Stone1:08:44

       We know this because of the three secretaries-

    4. JRJoe Rogan1:08:47

       Yes.

    5. OSOliver Stone1:08:47

       ... three women who were at the fourth floor window, and they were looking at the parade. And when they saw him shot, they freaked out. Two of the women immediately ran down the stairs to see what was going on on the street, they went down the street. One of them stayed up on the third floor, that was the supervisor, Dorothy Garner. This, we only know because of the Stroud document which came out in the ARRB again years later. This was in 1997. The, uh, Mary Jo Stroud was a DA in, in Dallas. She interviewed the, uh, an- the... Dorothy Garner, who told her the story, and she, sh- she, she verified it to the Warren Commission. They ignored it because they changed their story on the three women, the two women actually, because one... the first woman, they said, had taken longer to get down the stairs, which would have given Oswald time to get off the sixth floor down... I don't know how he would have done that because he had to stash the rifle-

    6. JRJoe Rogan1:09:41

       Yeah.

    7. OSOliver Stone1:09:42

       ... he had to do all this shit and there was all these boxes in the way and he had to go down these stairs at full speed and be on the second floor to be seen by the cop, uh-

    8. JRJoe Rogan1:09:49

       And there was no evidence-

    9. OSOliver Stone1:09:51

       ... like (sighs) -

    10. JRJoe Rogan1:09:51

        ... about the... on the rifle as, as to... as far as-

    11. OSOliver Stone1:09:54

        Not at all. Not at all. The rifle doesn't, doesn't have any chain of custody, at all.

    12. JRJoe Rogan1:09:58

        Yeah.

    13. OSOliver Stone1:09:58

        Nor the bullets for that matter. Nor the bullets.

    14. JRJoe Rogan1:10:01

        Right. And was there evidence-

    15. OSOliver Stone1:10:02

        Oh, and, and fingerprints. And fing- no, no.

    16. JRJoe Rogan1:10:04

        Was there something that they were trying to attribute to Oswald that was connected to-

    17. OSOliver Stone1:10:07

        Yeah, fingerprints, but that didn't work because it was a partial, and the guy who really knew fingerprints said it didn't... it wasn't true.

    18. JRJoe Rogan1:10:13

        Really?

    19. OSOliver Stone1:10:14

        Yeah. No, nothing... not one-

    20. JRJoe Rogan1:10:16

        Nothing connected.

    21. OSOliver Stone1:10:16

        ... piece of evidence that day.

    22. JRJoe Rogan1:10:17

        So there was an... uh, there was an entry wound in his back.

    23. OSOliver Stone1:10:22

        Yes.

    24. JRJoe Rogan1:10:22

        So is there any speculation as to where that was fired from?

    25. OSOliver Stone1:10:25

        Yeah, I would say the rear.

    26. JRJoe Rogan1:10:27

        But... right, obviously, but, like, where?

    27. OSOliver Stone1:10:29

        (laughs) Well, could have been Daltex. I don't know if-

    28. JRJoe Rogan1:10:32

        But was there any-

    29. OSOliver Stone1:10:32

        ... I question the-

    30. JRJoe Rogan1:10:33

        ... eyewitness testimony of hearing gunshots from the rear?

Episode duration: 1:44:34