The StoneZONE with Roger Stone - May 21, 2025


Lawrence Schnapf ｜ 05-20-25

Topics
JFK assassination records Arlen Specter intimidation and Parkland doctors' testimony
Hosted by
Roger Stone Troy Smith Jake Novak
Mentioned
John F. Kennedy Lyndon Johnson Donald Peel Curtis Lee Harvey Oswald Larry Schnapp Nicks Earl Warren Arlen Specter George Joe Anides Bobby Kennedy Tom Clark Zabruda Anna Paulina Luna Carlos Marcello Robert F. Kennedy Jack Kennedy Walker J. Edgar Hoover William Manchester Lawrence Schnapp and 11 more
The Stone Zone ｜ 05-19-25 Sam Antar ｜ 05-21-25

Episode Stats


Length

20 minutes

Words per minute

149.01

Word count

3,123

Sentence count

202

Harmful content

Misogyny

3

sentences flagged

Toxicity

1

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

A hearing today on declassification of documents pertaining to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, chaired by Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna (D-VA), focused on the lack of access to documents related to the JFK assassination.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.200 This is the Stone Zone with Roger Stone.
00:00:04.820 The Stone Zone.
00:00:20.720 This is the Stone Zone.
00:00:23.500 Now, get in the zone. 0.94
00:00:25.420 It's the Stone Zone.
00:00:27.060 Here's Roger Stone.
00:00:30.000 There was a hearing today on the U.S. House Task Force on declassification of the documents pertaining to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy,
00:00:44.880 ably chaired by Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna.
00:00:48.700 Shortly after JFK was murdered, the new president, Lyndon Johnson, actually resisted the idea of a national commission to investigate Kennedy's murder.
00:01:00.300 He initially wanted a Texas state commission.
00:01:03.200 He wanted Supreme Court Justice Tom Clark, who was a crony of his, to chair it.
00:01:08.840 Listen to LBJ's conversation with J. Edgar Hoover.
00:01:13.460 Here's President Johnson talking to Hoover on Monday the 25th about how to proceed with the investigation.
00:01:20.500 Two things.
00:01:22.980 Apparently, some lawyer and justice is lobbying with the Post because that's where the suggestion came from to this presidential commission, which we think would be very bad.
00:01:33.120 They put it right in the White House.
00:01:35.040 We can't be checking up on every shooting straight in the country, but they've gone to the Post now to get them an editorial.
00:01:46.160 The Post is calling up and saying they're going to run an editorial if we don't do things.
00:01:49.360 President Johnson's plan was to have two simultaneous but coordinated investigations by Hoover's FBI and the Texas Attorney General, Wagoner Carr.
00:02:01.520 Johnson was absolutely against appointing a presidential committee.
00:02:06.220 It's hard to not be taken aback by Johnson referring to the assassination of his predecessor just three days earlier as a shooting scrape.
00:02:17.500 We can't be checking up on every shooting scrape in the country.
00:02:25.940 Johnson's point was that he didn't want to involve the White House in the investigation, but the way he talks about it is perhaps a window into what he really thought about President Kennedy.
00:02:39.700 I find that shocking.
00:02:41.360 Larry Schnapp, welcome.
00:02:42.960 Larry Schnapp is, as I say, an attorney, adjunct professor of New York Law School, one of the leading researchers and experts on the Kennedy assassination and the effort to learn more about it through greater transparency.
00:02:57.900 Welcome to the Stone Zone.
00:02:59.740 Hi, Roger.
00:03:00.360 So, listen, it was your letter that first brought my attention to the fact that the president's order, while extremely well-intentioned, was probably actually too narrowly written.
00:03:14.900 It really suggests that the National Archives release everything in the John F. Kennedy assassination records collection.
00:03:23.740 But the federal government has a lot more documents than that, and there are many important things missing.
00:03:30.460 Tell us about that, and then tell us about today's hearing.
00:03:33.900 Okay, well, the president's executive memo, I believe that they didn't realize what they were writing because it did say that he didn't say –
00:03:44.820 The president made a finding that it was in the public interest, which is the terminology used in the statute, the JFK records assassination statute, that it was the public interest that all of the records in the possession of the federal government be released.
00:04:01.140 Now, the way the order was then written, it looked like he was referring to the records that were in the collection that is maintained by the National Archives.
00:04:16.380 Back in the 90s, the Records Review Board basically got all the records from the agencies, and then they were transferred to the National Archives.
00:04:26.420 But when the Review Board went out of business in 1998, their work wasn't done.
00:04:32.940 Congress had just decided it wasn't going to fund them anymore, and there were outstanding search requests.
00:04:38.400 So what I've been trying to do is to try to alert the people that were tasked by the executive order to comply with it,
00:04:49.360 that we're not just talking about the records that are in the collection that are classified.
00:04:54.180 We're talking about the records that were never put in the collection.
00:04:57.880 So, for example, we had the Joe Anides files.
00:05:02.040 George Joe Anides was a covert agent for the CIA.
00:05:06.280 He was responsible for the Cuban exile group, the DRE.
00:05:11.240 They're the ones that – their representatives came in contact with Oswald in August of 1963 when they had the street fight.
00:05:18.260 And then they're the ones that came out with Oswald's biography within hours of the assassination.
00:05:24.960 So they knew all about him.
00:05:27.860 But those files were never turned over to the Review Board.
00:05:31.740 The Review Board and the HSCA were misled.
00:05:34.680 In fact, George Joe Anides, as we learn today, most people learn today for the first time,
00:05:39.940 he was the one tasked by the CIA to work with the HS, the House Select Assassinations Committee.
00:05:47.060 And when he got involved, suddenly the amount of records that were being given to the HSCA was slowed down, slow-walked, redacted.
00:05:58.400 And basically they did the same thing they did to the HSCA and to the Review Board that they did to the Warren Commission,
00:06:03.980 which was to run the clock out on them.
00:06:06.160 So there are other records that are also not in the collection.
00:06:09.560 For example, Carlos Marcello allegedly confessed while in jail to a cellmate who had been an undercover agent for the FBI
00:06:20.260 that he was behind the assassination, or at least maybe funded it.
00:06:25.400 Those tapes are sealed.
00:06:27.760 They've never been given the light of day.
00:06:30.600 They're not in the collection.
00:06:31.860 And we've asked the Attorney General, Pam Bondi, to get those because she can get them unsealed.
00:06:40.000 There are records that Robert Kennedy took from the White House in the hours after the assassination
00:06:47.020 that were never turned over to the Review Board or the archives.
00:06:52.700 They are supposedly going through declassification review, but it's been going on forever.
00:06:58.820 The Review Board was trying to get them when they went on the business, and that process came to a halt.
00:07:06.700 And they may have some really important stuff because these are files from the White House in that Bobby Kennedy was involved.
00:07:12.040 There are also other records, like William Manchester had tape recordings of interviews with Jackie Kennedy and Robert Kennedy
00:07:25.220 that were supposedly very explosive, particularly with Jackie Kennedy allegedly saying things about Lyndon Johnson.
00:07:32.960 Those records, those tapes, were sealed by a deed of gift from the Kennedy family, or at least a settlement, until 2067.
00:07:43.740 The Arb tried, the Review Board tried to get them released in the 90s,
00:07:48.080 and Carolyn Kennedy was on the verge of doing it, and then her uncle Ted said,
00:07:51.760 I don't think your mother would want to do it.
00:07:53.560 And then they've been shut down.
00:07:55.100 And NBC has some films that could possibly show that Oswald was on the front steps of the Depository Building at the time of the shooting.
00:08:07.560 Not sure, but at least they could be studied.
00:08:10.640 And then Walter Sheridan, who was a right-hand man of Bobby Kennedy, did his own investigation for Bobby.
00:08:17.200 The Review Board asked for those records, and once again, you know, he basically sent them over to NBC,
00:08:24.460 and NBC has been with Holina all these years.
00:08:26.600 The Arb actually sued to get them, but they went out of business.
00:08:30.360 So there's a bunch of records out there that haven't been given to the National Archives yet.
00:08:35.120 So we need not only just to release the records in the collection, but also those that are not in the collection yet.
00:08:40.440 And despite what the Democratic witness today said, a lot of interesting and important stuff came out today.
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00:09:20.240 That was a great compendium, and I learned almost everything you just said from you.
00:09:25.560 And I was pleased to pass that on to Chairwoman Anna Paulina Luna. 0.68
00:09:33.420 What do you make of the so-called Orville Nicks film?
00:09:39.140 Nicks was an air-conditioned repairman, filming with his own 8mm camera.
00:09:45.140 There's some evidence that the Assassination Records Review Board viewed all or portions of his film.
00:09:51.460 That film seems to be missing, no?
00:09:53.100 Yeah, so apparently he gave it over to the government.
00:10:00.180 The HSCA supposedly had it.
00:10:02.720 The House Select Assassinations Committee supposedly had it.
00:10:06.020 They sent it out to get analyzed, and somewhere along the line it disappeared.
00:10:11.480 And so the Nicks family has tried to get it back.
00:10:14.680 They actually, they're actually in litigation right now.
00:10:17.640 They sued the government.
00:10:19.120 The government made a motion to dismiss, to dismiss the lawsuit.
00:10:23.140 And actually, the Nicks family has survived a motion to dismiss.
00:10:27.760 Now this is for, obviously we prefer to get the film back.
00:10:33.760 But if they don't get the film back, they'll get damages for having lost it.
00:10:38.060 But this is a very important film because it's the flip side of the Zabruda film.
00:10:43.220 He was on the other side of Kennedy and closer.
00:10:47.940 Well, at least they had a close-up.
00:10:50.280 They were on a close-up.
00:10:51.020 But this film is equally as important as a Zabruda film because it's the flip side.
00:10:57.720 So like when Zabruda is blocked by the traffic sign, well, Nicks' film isn't blocked by that
00:11:04.160 because they're on the opposite side.
00:11:05.480 He's like on the infield there.
00:11:07.860 So, and they just learned this past week apparently that when the Nicks family negotiated some sort of release
00:11:18.460 with the sixth floor that the attorney representing the Nicks family was also representing the sixth floor museum.
00:11:26.860 So there's a little conflict of interest there.
00:11:29.420 But that's definitely a film that is really important.
00:11:33.060 And it famously, at least allegedly, disappeared while it was in the hands somewhere between the laboratory that was analyzing it
00:11:42.340 and the House Look Assassinations Committee.
00:11:44.020 Now, when I wrote my book, The Man Who Killed Kennedy, The Case Against LBJ,
00:11:48.980 I actually got Arlen Spector, who was chief counsel to the Warren Commission,
00:11:53.400 to admit that the Zabruda film was missing frames and that it was not as it appeared.
00:12:02.020 Nicks' film, seems to be because he was filming with a zoom lens, I think you're right,
00:12:05.600 could answer the age-old question as to whether President Kennedy was shot from the front and the back.
00:12:12.320 It's interesting to me that Paramount has recently come out with a documentary called
00:12:17.020 What the Parkland Doctors Saw.
00:12:20.020 Multiple doctors say in that stunning documentary that they saw wounds in JFK consistent with his being shot from the front and the back.
00:12:30.460 But most importantly, two things, that several doctors say that the wound in his throat was not an exit wound,
00:12:37.380 it was an entry wound from the front, and secondarily that they were all threatened by the FBI not to discuss anything they had seen in the room where the autopsy was performed.
00:12:52.380 To me, when you add that to the fact that we know definitively that Lee Harvey Oswald had been subject to a paraffin test by the Dallas Police Department,
00:13:05.660 which did not indicate that he had any nitrate burns, no powder burns on his chest, his arms, his hands, or his cheeks,
00:13:12.580 indicating that he did not fire a weapon that day.
00:13:18.160 Perhaps this is why he says when he, it's very unlikely that they tried him out in public, and he says what?
00:13:25.420 I am a patsy.
00:13:26.700 I didn't shoot anyone.
00:13:28.860 That appears to be telling the truth.
00:13:30.360 The Warren Commission, of course, telling us that Jack Ruby had no known association with organized crime,
00:13:38.100 which is another fallacy, he was a button man for the mob in Chicago, he worked for Carlos Marcello in Cuba,
00:13:46.900 yet another one of the many, many falsehoods put forward in this continuing effort.
00:13:53.940 Larry, have you seen anything in the disclosure so far that would indicate a larger conspiracy beyond Lee Harvey Oswald definitively? 0.81
00:14:04.760 Well, no one is going to be putting anything in writing, that here's how we're going to kill the president.
00:14:12.980 But, so, you know, we're getting, we're getting like, the records are like mosaics or pieces in a puzzle.
00:14:21.180 And so as you get the puzzle together, it begins creating a picture.
00:14:25.040 But I want to go back to what you said about the doctors, because today's testimony,
00:14:28.760 Dr. Donald Peel Curtis testified today.
00:14:33.140 He is a very important witness for two things.
00:14:36.760 Number one, he was the third person in the room when the president was brought into the trauma room,
00:14:44.200 and he did a cut down on the left leg.
00:14:49.520 But he made some observations about what happened in the ER that demonstrates that when people see the Parkland movie
00:14:58.180 or read the testimony of the Parkland doctors, the supporters of the Warren Commission say,
00:15:05.340 well, they were too busy taking care of the president.
00:15:07.420 They didn't get a chance to look at his wound.
00:15:09.320 What Dr. Curtis said today, he told me it's a couple years ago, and I'm glad he was able to do it today,
00:15:14.160 is that after Dr. Clark pronounced the president dead, Dr. Clark was the neurosurgeon.
00:15:21.480 He was at the head of the gurney.
00:15:23.140 He lifted up the president's head and then explained to the other senior doctors,
00:15:28.380 the heads of the different departments, who were there against the wall.
00:15:32.780 They weren't treating the doctor, but they weren't treating the president.
00:15:35.820 He wanted to explain to them why he was pronouncing, why he pronounced the president dead.
00:15:41.300 He showed them the wound and described the wound.
00:15:46.200 So the idea that the Parkland doctors made a mistake when they said that the rear of the head was a blowout wound
00:15:52.360 is just not true.
00:15:54.040 So Dr. Curtis served that purpose today.
00:15:56.920 He also goes into great detail about how Arlen Specter intimidated him and the other doctors.
00:16:03.960 And if you have time, I can go through what they did.
00:16:06.820 When we come right back with Larry Schaaf, we're going to talk about that.
00:16:09.920 I knew Arlen Specter.
00:16:11.720 He could be very, very intimidating.
00:16:14.260 We'll be right back.
00:16:15.680 This is the Stone Zone with Roger Stone.
00:16:19.900 The Stone Zone.
00:16:35.300 This is the Stone Zone with Roger Stone.
00:16:38.940 They went after a guy named Roger Stone, who's sitting in the office.
00:16:42.900 And I'll say this in front of Roger.
00:16:44.360 He's no baby.
00:16:45.320 And right now, he's cleaner than anybody in this place.
00:16:48.920 Now, they treated him very unfairly.
00:16:51.540 Now, get him a zone.
00:16:53.320 It's the Stone Zone.
00:16:55.420 Here's Roger Stone.
00:16:56.900 And we're back in the Stone Zone.
00:17:00.560 We're talking to Lawrence Schnapp.
00:17:02.600 He's an attorney and one of the most prominent figures in the country in the ongoing efforts to declassify and release government documents relating to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
00:17:13.860 Larry has sued the Biden administration and the National Archives several times because he believes that full disclosure of these documents is vital to understanding the events surrounding the assassination and to address the learning questions and conspiracy theories.
00:17:29.540 We're very happy to have him today.
00:17:32.260 When we left off, you were talking about Arlen Specter, who I knew extremely well, actually ran his campaign for the U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania, had many vigorous arguments over his cockamamie single bullet theory, logistically impossible, by the way, over cocktails.
00:17:50.520 But you were talking about his intimidating, the Parkland doctors.
00:17:55.900 Lay it on us.
00:17:57.260 Okay.
00:17:57.780 Well, first, before I get to that, one thing I want to mention, Dr. Curtis also said, was that his supervisor, Dr. Walker, when he saw him the Monday after the assassination, you know, they talked about what they had seen in the ER.
00:18:12.040 And Dr. Walker had told Dr. Curtis that he had saw a temple wound in the right temple.
00:18:17.680 And that Dr. Ronald Jones had told him that another doctor, Dr. Lito Porto, had actually put his pinky into the wound.
00:18:28.420 So there were several doctors who saw evidence of a frontal head wound.
00:18:34.000 And that has been covered up and glossed over.
00:18:37.200 Anyway, going to the Arlen Specter.
00:18:39.440 So the first thing, when Earl Warren decides how to conduct the investigation, he instructs all the lawyers that the preliminary interviews are to be not recorded.
00:18:51.700 This was a way that they can basically find out who the good witnesses were and the bad witnesses were.
00:18:56.720 And then once they do get, they find out, you know, they can select the good ones.
00:19:01.520 And then when they would go interview them, they would go off the record if the witness went off the reservation or other tools and ways of intimidating the witnesses.
00:19:11.540 One of them also was a perjury trap where the FBI, for example, would take testimony down on the 302 forms.
00:19:20.400 And then they would change, they would alter the testimony and ask the person to sign the form and say, well, if you, and they would object to the statement.
00:19:30.060 They said, well, you know, lying to a federal officer is a felony.
00:19:32.880 So if, you know, if you're, this is the statement you gave, if you're telling us now the statement that's on paper is wrong, you're potentially going to be liable for felony.
00:19:42.560 You know, the drill, Roger.
00:19:44.580 Yes, unfortunately, I certainly do.
00:19:48.580 Well, as you know, Warren, Earl Warren, the chief justice, did not want to chair this commission.
00:19:52.720 He was trying to get out of it until Lyndon Johnson implied to him that the Russians had been involved in the assassination of John F. Kennedy and that it was Earl Warren's duty to chair the commission in order to avoid World War III.
00:20:06.480 Of course, we've seen no evidence whatsoever that the Russians or the Cubans, the Cuban government was involved in the murder of John F. Kennedy.
00:20:15.040 This is a modern mystery, murder mystery in which the American people are still extraordinarily, I think, intrigued.
00:20:26.240 I give huge credit to Anna Polina Luna, the congresswoman from Florida, chairing this task force. 0.59
00:20:31.800 And also to you, Larry, you've been helpful to the committee with your knowledge.
00:20:36.120 I appreciate your joining us today in the Stone Zone.
00:20:39.080 Many, many thanks to you for joining us and for our listeners out there.
00:20:44.080 Until we meet again, and we're going to continue to cover this Kennedy assassination story because I think there are more twists and turns from the committee.
00:20:53.400 Until we meet again, God bless you and Godspeed.