This is Gary and Shannon and you're listening to KFI AM six forty, the Gary and Shannon Show on demand on the iHeartRadio app. You should be on my d your names on.
This show or I got twenty two brackets?
Do you really?
No?
But Kono does so I'm rooting for him.
Yes, does he really have twenty two brackets? He told me that you need a hobby.
Kono, he needs a fan. Go spend time with your kids.
Put in the deepot. Yeah, you have kids, for crying out loud.
I did tell him A trick though, when you're doing March madness is to take.
The to do one bracket is not the tip?
No, I mean if you're doing it with kids, is you take the playpen and you turn it upside down and you tell him it's a fort and they have even less chance of getting out of that thing.
My dad used to be a big proponent of what he called the pen. Put her in the pen, oh yeah, which is oddly similar to penitentiary.
Which started the lifelong fear of doesn't that casery?
Doesn't that sound kind of nice?
Now?
Being put in the pen for an afternoon, You just go sit there with your blanket and just chill.
Bowl of water, where for you to go kibble or something like that to keep you busy? Why not welcome to Spring by the way, is it really yeah, it's here as of what two in the morning. I think it was something like that.
Or you were in a tank top underneath that.
I am not, I am not. I do not own tank tops.
Well, we are on a bikini watch for you.
Is that what we are on.
You've got a vacation coming up in July.
July.
Yeah, Well, there's no time like the present. It's March.
The best time to start my exercise regimen was yesterday, and the second best time is today, right, Okay.
Well, there was a story that caught my eye and it was about well, we've talked about the fact that Southwest is doing away with the free bags, and the story was, like the stuff that people have packed in their checked bags on Southwest, why not take advantage of it if you don't have to pay for a check bag. Hell, let's fly Southwest and check that crap that we don't want to take with us.
I used to think that the craziest thing I saw that same article, the craziest thing I'd ever seen packed for you know, for luggage, was a cooler like a styrofoam cooler, completely taped up so it wouldn't leak and it wouldn't wouldn't fall open of fish like from Alaska. And we were actually in Canada coming back into the United States, but people were flying with giant smart coolers full of fish. Very smart. But that was the weirdest thing I'd ever thought or I'd ever seen and thought,
that's you can do that. I didn't know you could do that.
Right, So there's a bunch of stuff and I was wondering, is this a thing? Have you flown with? Something crazy? They gave some examples in this article that I'm failing to remember at this point, but it was odd, like wheel covers, a rim, a tire rim. Yeah, but just like the crazy things that you have packed in your check baggage, if anything, A child? Do you put a kid in there?
Probably not not very many.
You know, A cocaine Do you put cocaine in there? I don't know. Let us know, use that talkback feature on that heart radio app.
We'll be talking about the happiness ranking that came in about the United States. We've fallen even further down the list, Michael Monks is going to join us in the ten o'clock hour a couple things specifically out of City Hall, the homelessness oversight program that they're looking at. Oh and guess who's going to be short by about I'd say a billion dollars in our budget, the great City of
Los Angeles. But we're going to continue to elect the same people over and over and over and over and over. We're always short on the budget. It's like the state budget.
If nobody pays attention, nobody listens, it affects nobody. They hold a press conference once a year where they talk about the budget and how we're screwed, and then nothing ever comes of it.
There's some fun, strange science stories that are coming up later this, later this or later in the show, including a woman who can smell disease, a very specific and very strong sense of smell. This woman has and she's developing breakthroughs.
When it comes to Parkinson's, President Trump is expected to sign an executive order to close the Education Department. This is something he's been talking about for quite a bit. He's going to hold an event at the White House to get rid of this and pass on all the responsibility to the states. This is going to happen today,
apparently the signing at one pm hour time. Now, this does require an Act of Congress formerly formally closing a department, but even without formally shutting it down, the Trump administration could make it nearly impossible for employees to do their jobs.
This will be an interesting fight as it goes on, because, like you said, this will take an Act of Congress. This is also not something that's been around forever. I mean, this isn't even as old as I am. The Department of Education. And for a lot of people, they think that these departments that exist at the federal level have been around since seventeen eighty seven or whatever time you think that these departments were established. The Department of Education
was established in nineteen seventy nine. It was Carter who established it after Congress passed the Department of Education Organization Act with bipartisan votes. Does the plan to diminish or disintegrate the Department of Education have enough votes in Congress?
I don't know if anybody's even asked that. I don't know if there's been a poll taken of members of Congress as to whether or not they would support this, But we do know that Republicans obviously hold the majorities in both the House and Senate, so if they fall in line behind the Republican president, that may actually take place. But it's going to be fought by multiple different agencies. We know the teachers' unions have already vowed that they
would fight. Randy Whitegarten is the head of the American Federation of Teachers, says that she will sue the administration if it goes forward with these plans to obliterate the Department of Education.
I looked into what is it that the Federal Department of Education does, and essentially the answer I got via the internet was manage money, which makes me very nervous. Of course, you're going to have the teachers' unions. Any sort of hit on the on education period is going to be fought by people in education because it's a slippery slope, isn't it. You get rid of the Department of Education, suddenly you're looking to cut other areas. That's
just the way it is. You're going to put your hackles up as soon as someone comes for your industry. But in terms of what the US Department of Education does. It's a lot of federal student loans, things like that, meal programs, the things that your state are local departments of educations are concerned about as well. It is not as big as I thought it was. The Department of Education. We mentioned that a couple of weeks ago.
We saw the size of it at just about four thousand employees, I think, And that was before some of the cuts had been before some of the enticed retirements, you could call it before those two place.
But if it comes down to processing student loans, for example, why do you need a human And I'm listen, I'm not advocating for robots to take over everyone's job, but that seems like something that could be run through a program and done without one of the four thousand people.
What happens to the federal loan programs that are out there though? Too?
They can still exist though, right, just using machines to process that kind of stuff.
I mean, there's got to be somebody. There's got to be somebody to answer the phones. The phone. He was using a phone. People use that phone anymore?
No, No, everything's online, everything's done electronically. No one's answering
No?
the phone at the Department of Education to process.
If I called you right now, would you answer the phone now?
Absolutely not. You can send me a text.
But you know that I don't usually call you, so when I call you, it's usually something important, right.
But I know that you didn't just get news that someone died. So if you called me right now, no, I would not answer.
A little offended.
I mean, if I wasn't with you right now and you called, yes, I would pick up the phone.
Oh well, okay, are you.
Just gonna randomly start calling now.
Just to keep score During the week I called you eight times and you only answer.
That'll be fun.
Let us know, what's the craziest thing you put in your in your airline baggage? And by the way, you weren't too far off according to some of these that have already come.
Oh really, weed, okay, no animals, children, children, Yes, I knew it. Listen, if I had a kid and there was space in that bag, a dead one, that's what it says. Jesus, it's a matter. This is why you don't know.
Okay, So baby, why you don't pick up the phone? Baby, isn't enough, That's not crazy enough for me.
I just started reading this book by Leanne Moriarty. I forget the name of it, but it's about I just started it. But it is a woman on a plane who is walking up and down the aisles telling people when they're going to die and what they're going to die of. And she says things like I expect heart failure age eighty three.
She's the one who did big little lies. She is uh, here one moment, yes here, one moment, here, one moment. That's nice.
That's shout out to the Frozen River. A book I just finished, an excellent read.
My wife is reading James. Oh yeah, I have that wory of Huck.
Finn, not Jim's perspective exactly. It's acclaimed. It's been on the bestseller list now for like a million weeks.
Have you read it?
No, my aunt gave it to me. It's it's up, it's in the queue.
Okay, excellent. When we come back, Gerald Posner, we've talked with the Geraldi four about the JFK files. We'll talk with him next about what we found in these tens of thousands of pages that were released this week.
You're listening to Gary and Shannon on demand from KFI Am six forty.
We've had the opportunity to speak with author Gerald Posner before regarding his book Case Closed, from back in nineteen ninety three. In it, he contends that it was Lee Harvey Oswald that acted alone when it came to the assassination of JFK back in nineteen sixty three.
And that was the conclusion that the Warren Commission came to. Yet the conspiracy theories continued to abound throughout the years. It is a fascination of the generation of President Trump, There's no doubt about that. And one of his things that he wanted to have done was more files to be unredacted and released, and that is what happened this week.
And as we talked about yesterday, you have to really be in the know to go through the weeds that are these documents and find any bombshells or any mildly
interesting things. And we knew that it would take some days, and we just happened to know one of the people who has gone through all of the information painstakingly throughout the years and has come up with really all of the detail that we know surrounding the assassinations of JFK and Martin Luther King Junior as well and joins us Now, Gerald, good morning. Have you had a chance to pour through these thousands of documents, you know.
Shannon, So, I'm about forty two thousand pages into the whole release.
Believe it or not that I mean.
I even tried to use AI at a couple of times to see if any of the AI chats would be able to if you sped document into them then say, well, this is new in the twenty twenty five release and it has never been seen before. But it just didn't work very well, or at least I wasn't able to master it.
So I'm back to the old school.
Way of doing it, which is, you know, looking each pdf the government puts out out, comparing it to what was published before, sometimes.
To see what they have now declassified.
It's a slow and torturous process. They don't even give you a finding aid, you know, to just search if
you're looking for one person. So it takes a long time, and it's why you end up, by the way, with tabloid headlines like in the Daily Mail or on X or wherever else from some influencer then says, oh my god, you know the Russian warned three months before the assassination that Lee Harvey Oswo was going to kill JK, and no one listened because someone's reading through the fowles and they don't realize that claim was out, like, you know, thirty years ago and debunked a long time ago.
But it looks like news to them. So you know, a lot of the things you see are old news. Some of it is interesting.
About what the CIA might have had on surveillance on Oswald, but there's nothing in here that's earthshaking.
And that's why I thought today.
The headline in the Daily Mail was so fantastic. I don't know if you happen to see it, but it sort of was the indication to me that will never be over this. The Mail actually has a headline that says hidden bombshell on the JFK files.
And then here's the quote. The JFK files apparently.
Say nothing, and that says everything end quote, So they're saying, brilliant, No wonder, it's not in there, it's somewhere else, that's right.
Is there something that you sat down when you were getting ready to pour over these pages that you sat down wondering is there a question mark? In your mind, even if it's the minute, even it's a minute detail, is there something that still is for you unanswered?
Yeah, I mean I was looking forward to see these pages that have been redacted, like thirty seven pages Mexican Intelligence sending information to the CIA about Oswald.
Now you look at.
It after the assassination and most of his newspaper clippings and public information. It's not like they had a secret agent inside the Cuban mission and said, by the way we tape recorded and when he was in Mexico City or something like that.
So that was a bit disappointing.
There's a nineteen sixty one memo from Arthur Sussinger, one of Jfkage's most trusted age, one of the best and brightest that's been out for years, in which Sussenger sort of criticizes.
The CIA and says, you know that you've.
Got to be careful with them and everything else. And then there's a page that's blanked out. So conspiracy theories have long thought and that page that's blanked out must be where Cesssenger says something like the CIA is trying to undercut your administration, mister president, you know, maybe you should disband them. And then the CIA learns about that, and they go ahead and in an Oliver Stone style, thought they killed the president. Well, we finally get that
page declassified. I was interested, as he had said, and it turns out to be. This makes you to realize what these bureaucrats actually hold back for all these years about CIA staffing.
The messenger is telling the.
President that they have too many operatives, too many spooks in the Paris embassy under diplomatic cover. Of course, it's interesting that they are overstaffed with spies in Paris, not in like Nairobi or Delhi or someplace.
They all want to go to Paris service spies.
And also that they are using too many sources in these other countries in Latin America, and that so the CIA is holding that information back because they want don't want to disclose that they're staffing numbers or that to other countries, even decades afterwards. But meanwhile, people that it's natural human supposition that if you see something that's been blacked out with a black sharpie, you think that's where
the real gold is. You want to see it, and then when it's revealed it's In this case, it was a letdown for most people.
Yeah, or someone's social Security number. I mean, we found out that was some of the things. Can you hang on one second, Gerald and come back for another segment because we have more questions? Yeah, absolutely, Gerald Posner, author of Case Closed. We'll talk about more about the JFK files that were released this week and maybe what we learn going forward, if there are more things that we can pull out of the government.
You're listening to Gary and Shannon on demand from KFI AM six forty.
We're talking with Gerald Posner, author of many books. Specifically today, we're interested in Cold Case, which was published back in nineteen ninety three about the assassination of John F. Kennedy Junior. How about John F. Kennedy Actually not Junior. I get for Kennedy Junior's tragedy, different story. So, Gerald, we were talking about these tens of thousands of documents released this week at the behest of President Trump, and there is I still have a hard time kind of wrapping my
head around how much more there might be. I mean, if we're talking about somewhere between sixty and sixty five thousand documents that were released this week, are we looking at another tranch of sixty five thousand more that still could be released, or I mean, where do we stand in terms of how much we have seen versus how much still exists that we haven't seen.
I don't think he can hear us. Oh maybe he's taking a break. Yeah, you know, I was thinking about. The good news for Gerald Posner and other people is that with a lack of information, you know, a continuous lack of all the answers, all the teas crossed in the eyes dotted, we can continue with our conspiracy theories. I mean, mine, being my fan fiction, is that it
was connected to the mafia and the CIA. Sounds like I couldn't get it together to get them killed because they were too worried about having fun in Paris.
Government doesn't do anything great, so they never have done their job well. Kind of sounds like it. Gerald, we lost you there for.
I did hear you?
Gary and Shannon we both just said. By the way, you know, I was a political science maker to UC Berkeley years ago, and I sort of have the view of government that even when he tried to do something that's good for the public, like as building a homeless shelter freeway or affordable housing. It doesn't do it on time or on budget. Often they tried to kill Castro, the CEI did together with the mafia like seven or eight times.
They never even wounded him.
And so the idea of something that became the James Bonds of the world in Dallas and sixty three and pulled off the perfect crime might happen in Hollywood, but not in real life. And you did ask her, you know, sixty eighty thousand pages and now we're going to have another fifty thousand sitting there. No, the good news is this is really it. What I mean by that is, after Oliver Stone's film in nineteen nineteen ninety one, Congress passed this law that said all the government agencies have
to take every assassination related file. So they were sending stuff over from the FBI that dealt with organized crime because people felt the mob might be behind Kennedy's murder.
That had nothing to do with the assassination, but people wanted.
To see the files on Johnny Rosselli or you know, one of the godfathers in Chicago or New Orleans. There's material in there that is only ten gentcy related to Kennedy's death. Millions of pages have been released over the years. This is the last batch that the CIA, Department of State, Department of Defense, FBI fought for some type.
Of classification because they said, oh, it's going to.
Disclose sources, assets, ways of getting information. Most of it, it's just chunk those arguments, and.
They should have about years ago. But this is sort of the last thing.
I think what's happened has been overhyped, not just by Trump, you know, who has a nature of, you know, sort of making it the next big deal.
And here it is that now we have the assassination piles, but.
The average person is stopping them on the streets and said, you know what about the jor k assassination. They may not know anything about it, but they've heard that there are some secret files in Washington. That's probably where the most diabolical secrets are. And I think many people will be disappointed because their expectations were so high for a big disclosure.
I was thinking that this kind of keeps the door open for all of the pontificating about what happened. But you are so right when it comes to well a lot of things. But when you say that we of people a lot more credit than they deserve. You know, when you think about all the conspiracy theories running a rampant, if you're far left or you're far right on just x alone, you know, with the Democrats running their child
sex ring out of a pizzeria. I mean, all the conspiracy theorists really do give people a lot of credit organizational credit alone, which just doesn't happen in the government.
Yeah.
No, you have to write, and it's interesting, Shanon. I wrote a piece resc inly On I was substick called just the Facts. I watched too much Dragon It as a kid. But the peace on conspiracy theories and why they're so seductive. And that doesn't mean that I don't believe in conspiracies. I understand there are conspiracies, and sometimes the government conspires.
Against the public good.
I mean, I've lived long enough that in my lifetime I've seen consequential conspiracies that ended up unwrapping the lies over Vietnam, Watergate, Iran Contra, then the lies that led us into a rack over the weapons of mass destruction. I mean, public officials sometimes do against the public good, and it almost inevitably unravels, even if it takes years to happen. Somebody gets a guilty conscience, some scrap of evidence comes out from a file, a piece of paper.
There's somebody who talks to a relative who shouldn't have talked, and then it comes out after their death, and that's why they don't stay secret forever. One of the reasons I think that people in the Kennedy assassination waited many years is they thought that there would be some deathback confession from somebody who was in a plot to kill the president. And here we are sixty two years later and there's only crickets. And that's because there just didn't happen that way.
Do you think do you think we landed on the moon?
Well not that, of course.
That studio is not far from her YouTube brought right exactly. Yeah, that's where they did the autopsy of the Adian for Area fifty one as well.
They reused that a number of times, and.
They have a great commissary. I'll tell you that they used to.
I don't know what it's like today, is there's budget cuts that may be only a shadow of it's form or so.
This is a good follow by the way, I just subscribe to your sub stack. Just the facts with Gerald Posner. A lot of good stuff in here that has nothing to do with the assassination of JFK. You do a lot of opinion pieces, so that's that's a good follow But you.
Know, Shannon, so what you know somebody said to me recently. I love if somebody said to you me, you know.
I disagree with you completely on JFK, but I agree with you on this or that or somebody else will.
I agree with you on this free.
Speech thing, but I can't stand you on this. And I say, I follow people on X and on other areas. I don't agree with anybody on everything that they say. I want to be challenged, occasioning with opinions that might be a little bit different than what I think, and that's how you get engaged with it. And so you know, somebody often comes to me because they've seen something I've
written about free speech in Britain or wherever else. They and then the next thing I'm writing is something about the Kennedy assassination, and they say, I'm not interested in that. But I try to do an eclectic mix, and I like to hear from people that say, I think you're completely wrong about that. For X, Y and Z as long as they keep it polite, no like down the gutter name calling, and then we can have a discussion. So that's what it is out there.
Funny the articles here featured is the truth about puberty blockers. Ironically, Gary and I were just talking to a friend recently who has a kid in middle school who was saying, there's at least a handful of kids who are identifying as transgender, and a couple of them who are on the puberty blockers. I would love to dig into that topic with you at some later time, because it's fascinating and you have researched that topic very well, and that
would be We'll have to circle back and talk. Listen to me circling.
Back, Shannon.
No, But Shannon, I wrote that for the Wall Street Journal almost three years.
Ago, the Truth about puberty blockers.
It had come as a result of my work on the last book I did on the pharmaceutical industry. Because those drugs are prescribed off label, so they aren't prescribed for gender dysphoria for teens or children under the age of eighteen. They're prescribed for other purposes. But then doctors are allowed, in their wisdom to give drugs off label. Half the drugs in America are prescribed off label for
other things, and puberty blockers are one of them. And then there's a litany of what the side effects are. Not for me just saying it, but from government accumulation of studies of women and children over a period of years, from bone loss to the fact that they aren't reversible and all it is. When I put that out was saying, hey, get the information before you make decisions that you think are easy, because I know I've been in the same situation.
I come from Northern California, in which somebody will say to me, well, I'm just pausing their puberty and if they don't like what it is, they can restart it with no downside. It's not always quite so simple. So these decisions can sometimes have lifelong consequences, and you just have to be very careful as you go forward.
And you did that three years ago, go and we've already got ago leaps and bounds in that department of three years, all right. Gerald Posner Poster, you can check him out there on Substack just the Fact stot Media. He has written books about the assassination of JFK As well as Martin Luther King Junior. We will have him back.
Thanks for taking time for us today, Gary Shannon is always fantastic and maybe next time we can get.
Together at that little studio that did the moon lighting and have lunch.
Great Forstramia. I hear all right again, Gerald Posner There, Gary and Shannon will continue in just a moment.
You're listening to Gary and Shannon on demand from KFI AM six forty.
I sold this show as okay, so he just says to me, you didn't about adolescence, and I was.
Like, what's exactly what I sound like? Also, yeah it is.
And I'm like, what are you talking about? First of all, I totally sold it before I watch it because I heard it's much watch you have to see it. It's a single shot, because I know how much you like that when we talked about the Bear finale, how intense it makes it when it's a single shot and each episode is a single shot. I even said, Gary, they say that one of the actors and it says that they would just have to follow them on vehicles as
they were shooting it to keep the single shot. And you said, huh, And I knew at that moment you weren't listening. But anyway, after I watched that four episode mess of a show, very well done, very well done, very well acted, but awful. I said to you yesterday, it's an awful show. I didn't need to watch it. You don't need to watch it. It's horrific. It doesn't make you feel good. Each episode makes you feel awful. It doesn't mean it's not a good show. It's just you
don't need to watch it. I wish I hadn't. And none of that registered. And you come in today you're like, you should have told me about the show.
Say that part again. I didn't hear that part. Go back to the beginning. The kid is a phenomenal kid is unbelievable, and we're only one episode, Like, oh you are, yeah, oh unbelievable.
I'll stop talking.
Because you're gonna give it away or because you're afraid of nothing to give away.
It's just all awful but well done.
But it's like I didn't need to see that, Like I, you'll get.
It when you're when you finish, oh, or just don't or just abort and just get no.
I don't think I can. I feel like I got to finish.
Now, would you always do this with books and things, even if you don't like them, even.
If it's a waste of my time? Is it a waste of my time?
No?
Okay, it's just hard. It's hard. That's fine, so we can do hard things like talk to Michael Monks. He's coming up next. Oh good, Gary and Shannon will continue.
Did that segment go just me yelling at you?
Wow?
It was my fault.
Oh, that's nice.
I didn't listen to a word you said when you told me about the show. You and Deborah were vaguely when you and Deborah started talking about shows, it's usually a show that I would have no idea, no desire to watch.
You're being polite because usually we're talking about sex, and you want to be respectful.
How am I going to interject anything when the two of you are talking about that. Your two broads are over there talking about slapping bodies together? What am I supposed to do over here? Okay?
All right, Michael Monks, we'll be back right after this.
You've been listening to the Gary and Shannon Show. You can always hear us live on KFI AM six forty nine am to one pm. Every Monday through Friday, and anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app.