It's nine with Dan Ray on WAZ Boston Video.
We're talking with Tom Samuelon. He is the former deputy director of the John F. Kennedy Assassination Records and Review Board. Let's get back to calls and again looking for questions or we can talk about experiences later after Tom leaves us. But but your theories or your thoughts or question or a comment, that's what that's what we're doing right now. We go to Richard in Boston. Richard, you are next on Nightside.
Welcome, Oh, good evening, thanks for taking my call. I came in late, sir. I was wondering if you ever looked at the person who was the mayor of Dallas, Earl Cable, and someone said that he caused the MOTIKEI to change to go in front of the book depository. And the connection with him was his brother. His brother,
I believe his childs Cable. He was a general assistant in the CIA and President Kennedy fired him, and many people thought that that was one of the connections that maybe the CIA were responsible for killing the president and this man might have been involved with the assassination with his brother, the mayor.
Let's see what Tom said If anybody would be able to give you a response to that would be Tom Samlike interesting, certainly thought, Tom.
I think that the characterization of the relationship between the mayor and the CIA official is correct. I do not think there is any credibility to the theory that the mayor was involved in any way and in any way changed the Motorcate route. Although like every aspect Dan, as you know, of the assassination, they are small. It all is in dispute and sometimes it's hard to weave our way through what reality there is in what's fiction. But I don't I don't think that that's accurate.
Okay, I just thought that because the President Kennedy fired his brother who was an assistant in the CIA.
And it's no Richard, you explained it very well and I had never heard that. But again, that's it's ironic, and is that there's so many conspiracy theories or that that has sort of muddied the water over time. Yeah, it seems to me. But anyway, Richard, thank.
You for taking my call, and I thank you. It was a very interesting show. Thank you, thank you for raising it.
Appreciate it. Hi, good night. Let me go next to Gina in Bridgewater, Gina, you were next time, and I said with Tom similar K, Deputy Director, I mean that.
Was just I remember this my mother speaking of it because she was in the hospital at the time and she had my brother the next day, meaning tomorrow, and she named my brother after him, his middle name, the first name. And I also remember a story that JFK wanted my dad to be his personal bodyguard many years ago, and he refused it only because he said he wanted to have a family and if he did that, he wouldn't have been able.
To What did your dad do? You know, we don't know who your dad was, Gina, But what did your dad do that? Did he tell that story at family tables or what? What did your dad remember?
Somebody did mention that and he wanted him to, probably because he was in the military years prior and was decent. My dad was John. He was just a decent person, that's all.
Did you did your father know former President Kennedy?
I have no idea.
Okay, all right, well I don't think Tom can comment on that one, but that's an interesting story from family. Thank you, Gene, appreciate you call very much. I have a great night. Let me go to Ron and Newton. Ron, you are next with Tom Samlik Right ahead, ron.
Ah, Dan, thanks so much for having this. Tom, just a quick question on what's what do you think is the possibility that artificial intelligence and the amazing computation there's the whole series of courses now the I T and a whole department could supplement and because these computers can computate variables, uh you know, the many data sets that you can put together and also look at different scenarios much better than we as human beings.
Uh.
I completed a course on Saturday on the application to medicine, which is why I ask that's a great.
Ca I think it is a great, great question. It really is the latest chapter in how technology can be used in criminal investigations. And if you go back to nineteen sixty three, not only were their mistakes made and things that would definitely not have been done today. And if you look at the How Select Committee in the late seventies, they did certain ballistic testing and other types
of technologic developments. Including Dan, you may recall the stuck microphone on a Dallas police motorcycles who was in the who was motor keate? And that turned out to be. It's been disputed, and once again one of those things that's in controversy. I think AI will definitely become part of the JFK assassination story. With AI just everywhere in the news, and the uses for it are incredible, and so I think people will will try to apply it to the JFK assassination investigations.
As far back as nineteen ninety nine, Intitute of Medicine published a report on two areas here in all of
the deaths that were occurring. Even then, we had computational ability using simulation models where we could plug in variables to the different decision trees and do what they call it Monte Carlo simulation, looking at maybe one hundred thousand variables forward and you could come up, you could you could you could find things out that were outside of the box in the manner that you would pick.
We think, I think that holds out a lot of possibilities.
Thanks Ron, great call, Thank you very much.
Great called Tom. I final question, and I'd say I promised I would let you go after one more segment if in your opinion and again this is your opinion, but it's an opinion that is based on knowledge that and observations that none of us have had a chance
to look at. If Jack Ruby had not been lurking in that police garage and had not been able to successfully kill Oswald, and if Oswald had gotten to his jail cell that night and it had never been that had lived for some period of time, do you think that that we would have gotten the story which was
just a roundabout way of asking, Uh, it appears. It appears to me that the Ruby aspect of this story, if you believe that Ruby was just so empathetic towards history, was that he was empathetic towards Jacqueline Kennedy, and that's why he was felt compelled to kill Oswald. But if that moment had not occurred, I truly think that somehow, some way we would know.
I think you're probably right, Dan, or at least we would have a better chance of knowing, if you think about it. Oswald had defected to the Soviet Union. He six weeks before the assassination. He had traveled to Mexico City, visited the Russian and the Cuban embassies. He had had run ins with the anti Castro Cubans in New Orleans. He had been in the Marines.
There is such a.
Rich history for someone who was only twenty four years old when he was killed. Just think if he had spoken.
Now back to Dan Ray live from the Window World night Side Studios on WBZ News Radio.
Well, we're back here, and I hope you heard the Amber alert, Tom Sam like. That is something that happens, and you well know that we were not able to That's something we're obligated to do. Glad we did it. I apologize for breaking on trend of thought. I'm gonna let you go in about four or five minutes here, but I just wanted to, first of all, thank you very much for your time tonight. Thank you for the
work that you have done. How was it that you became the deputy director of this of this Assassination Records Review Board, which I assume has now has in effect gone out of business, is no longer an active agency. And I assume I'm correct on that, if I'm not contradict.
Me, Yeah, Dan, you are correct. The life of the board sunset if you will. On September thirtieth, nineteen ninety eight, when the final report was literally handed to President Clinton in the Oval Office, and he had a tremendous amount of interest in the assassination Dan. One thing I wanted to mention just to give your listeners some sense of
what the volume of records that we're talking about. There's over five million records that are at the National Archives as part of the JFK Assassination Records Collection, and so the question may be, well, what are the number of records that remain. The estimate is, and I don't know exactly, but it's between three and four thousand documents that haven't
been fully released. So there are many that, as I was talking about earlier, may have a name or something that relates to a intelligence gathering or method that we redacted, that is the Review Board redacted, but I think can probably be opened up now. There may be about five hundred documents that have been completely withheld that may not
be exactly accurate, but it's around that. But your head on the former chairman of the Review Board, Judge John Tunheim from Minneapolis, and Judge Tunheim agrees that it's time, it's long past the time the loss that everything should be released twenty five years after the passage of the law that created the collection and the Review Board, and that was twenty seventeen, and that's when President President Trump said that he would release all the records. That was
just being consistent with blow second opportunity. He has said that he would do it, and so we'll wait and see when he is president again on January twentieth.
Well, you know, one of the things that I mean remember from that era, and I can't tell you whether it was when the One Commission report was released or whatever, was the number seventy five stuck in my mind, and I can I followed it as a you know, as a young teenager and a high school student and a you know, an aspiring college student, and I thought that it was going to be released seventy five years, you know, everything would be released seventy five years after the assassination,
which whatever that would have put it at, I guess twenty thirty eight or something like that. I'm doing the math in my head quickly. And one of the reasons, and again I don't know that I ever saw this as a television report, but or I started in a newspaper that they wanted to make sure that everyone who was alive at that time, particularly immediate family members, would probably not still be alive and does anything like that ring a bell with you in your mind?
Yes, it does, and that I I don't recall what the basis of that calculation was relative to the Warren Commission records, but that would have been superseded by the law that created the review Board and the collection itself in nineteen ninety two.
Fair enough, And so it's going to be up to Donald Trump. And Donald Trump, certainly with his appointments, has I think pretty much indicated that he's going with a different type of team this year this presidency. But this is one that I think everyone in the country would support.
My last question is do you believe that this was not a matter of a group of people who conspired to do this, that however it was done, whether it was the lone gunman or two or three people, that the real embarrassment was the failure of intelligence, the failure
of someone to pick this up in advance. Do you think that was the motivation why certain documents above and above and beyond the reasons that are actually given, it was a failure of intelligence, and that we did not want to let the rest of the world know that our intelligence agencies maybe were not as good as they.
Claimed, Well, I think that's part of it, Dan, There were a lot of mistakes. There were a lot of warning lights, if you will, because Oswald, whatever his role was, if he had a role, and people differ on that, but the FBI and the CIA were very aware of Oswald. They had been cracking him when he defected from the US and he left the Marines and he first traveled to Europe and then ended up in the Soviet and we released documents, the Review Board released documents from nineteen
in sixty of their Trapped eight department. They're tracking him and his mother is trying to get help to find out where he is. So that just continued up until the assassination. That there was FBI and CIA awareness, So a lot of mistakes made.
So again my thought, I'm not saying it's a theory, but my thought is that there was a sense, you know, there was a sense back in nineteen sixty three of this superiority not only of our military but of our intelligence agency. I mean, we were number one in the world, we had won World War Two and all of that, and this kind of pierced that belief, if you will.
And so I'm just wondering if at its core it is not to cover up the actions of Oswald or whomever, but to cover up our failure to keep an eye on him and understand where he was.
And that maybe it's both. Maybe there was a desire to cover up the failures but also not open any doors beyond the loan gunman, because it's at the height of the Cold War, So you may have what you'd call a dual cover up, the covering up the mistakes and covering up what may have happened, or a desire not to learn what may have happened beyond a loan gunman.
Yeah. Boy, it's it's it's the story of it's the story of our lives, Tom sam luk Uh, and it is the new story of our generation. And and you have been there. And when when President Trump does disclose whatever he's he has promised to disclose, I hope that they can't you involved in it, and give the credit to to your agency of which you served as deputy director. Thank you, my friend, Thank you so much. As all
welcome down. We will we will do this again when and if Donald Trump, let's let's the world know exactly as much as he can what happened on that horrible afternoon sixty one years ago. Today. Thanks Tom Semilak.
I'll look forward to seeing.
You perhaps at the Marry and Brett food pantry this spring.
Indeed, thank you Dan.
Thanks Tom, Tom Samuli, great friend. Okay, now, because of the interruption of the Amber a Lord, a couple of folks dropped off. Here's what I'd like to do. I would like to give all of you an opportunity, since Tom is no longer with us, to tell me what you think happened. Okay, Now again, I'd just love to know if you think it was a foreign power, if you think it was the single gunman Lee Harvey Oswald, if you think there might have been organized crime involved
in this. Certainly the Ruby involvement brings the whole question of organized crime into focus. We have thirty minutes left. This is the sixty first anniversary. I remember as a student in the nineteen sixties when they remembered the one hundredth anniversary of the assassination of Lincoln, which would have
been obviously in the spring of nineteen sixty five. Because Lincoln was assassinated in April of eighteen sixty five, it won't be too long now before they will be remembering the one hundredth anniversary of the Kennedy assassination, thirty nine years from tonight. As I've told you before, I'm a bit of a numerologist in that regard because it kind
of does put things in context. We are very much closer to the one hundredth anniversary of the Kennedy assassination than we are to the actual day and night of the assassination. So I'd love to hear from you. What do you think If you are someone who's a student of it, feel free. We have about twenty twenty six minutes left before we get to the eleven o'clock news, and of course then we will go to twentyeth hour.
Just go open the lines up. It's not open lines, but it's open to any thought that you have six one, seven, two, five, four, ten thirty six one seven, nine, three, one ten thirty. We probably will never know. As Tom Sammeluk said, you know, lost to history. But how sad I truly did believe that at some point there would have been a deathbed confession. But I was naive because anybody who would have been in a position of any authority at that time I
assume has long since expired. My name's Dan Ray. This is Nightside doing something in remembrance of President Kennedy's assassination sixty one years ago tonight. I remember it clearly, and I remember the day that all well, it was shot two days later that Sunday morning, back on Nightside right after this. Now it's just you and me. Tom Samlik, who was our guest, who again is an extraordinary individual. He's very, very good, very understated again, Deputy director of
the John F. Kennedy Assassination Records and Review BOK. If you missed him in the nine o'clock hour that hour as well as all of our hours, we'll be posted at Nightside and demand Field free over the weekend to give a listen to not only the nine o'clock hour, but the ten o'clock hour coming up at eleven tonight.
We will be going to our twentieth hour, of course, which we do every Friday night, and we'll see exactly I have an idea about what we'll be doing in the twentieth hour, but I'm going to hold off on that because I want to continue this hour and your recollections of what happened sixty one years ago on this very day. It's very date James and Boston. James, you're next to the night side. Welcome.
Hey, I was going good, James.
You go right ahead with Now Tom Samlik has left. But I'd love to know your recollection or your thoughts.
Yeah, I know that he's done. I've been listening to the show. You know, I think the government has something to do with it. They do whatever the hell they want. You know, they're supposed to be elected officials like for the people, by the people, but once they get in an office, they do whatever the hell they want. So I mean, I wouldn't put it past like, you know.
Just.
Use your big words. Yeah big, he's your big words, by the way. Hold on, James, James, James, James, James, James, Hold on for a second. I would like everyone to know. I'm told by my producer Rob that these three children for whom this amber alert was mentioned, all right, this you just heard, they have been found a safe and sound and I'm sure our news department, our news team is hard at work on that. And stick with us. We'll have some information coming up at all eleven o'clock.
Go ahead, James, so I did interrupt you, but I had to get that information out. Go right ahead.
No, that's that's good, that's good news.
Well, you know, I I think that, like you know, he must have angered someone within the government or someone like there's no not a chance that like this Loane gunman shot him and then was killed like two days later. Like that that's logus. And anyone who believes that is you.
Know, like you know, not in the right mind.
Well that was what the war. That was what the Warrant Commission, which was the official government agency, concluded, And then there was a lot of criticism of the Warrant Commission report over time, just an agreeable amount. And there was a book you know that that if you're interested in this, I'm sure that you could find an old copy of the book. It was called Rush to Judgment by Mark Lane. UH and the government UH, in all honesty,
tried to diminish the value of his book. There were a lot of people who are saying, oh, Lane doesn't know what he's talking about. But in retrospect, I think a lot of what Lane wrote about in nineteen sixty three, in nineteen sixty four, in nineteen sixty five actually had a lot of validity. You know that early on. It's amazing to think that a president of the United States could be shot to death on the street of a major American city in nineteen sixty five, and we have
no clue as to yeah, yeah, nineteen sixty three. Excuse me, I misspoke in nineteen sixty three, and have absolutely no clue, definitively as to what happened, how it happened.
Why it happened, Yeah, not for nothing. For them to withhold information documents like they're elected officials, they worked for the people, like we have the right to notice, and they don't have the right to withhold it, you know. And if they want to withhold it, then they shouldn't be in office because it's it's not right.
I happen to agree with you. I think that we are now back in the time and you saw much younger, James. You sound to me like you're I'm all right, yeah. So what I'm saying is back at the time, the Cold War was at its height, and there were some people who thought, well, this must be the Russians who killed Kennedy. Uh, and it was that was that was no. No, I'm just telling you that Lee Harvey Oswald had let me, James,
hold on for a second. Just let me, let me make my statement, and then I want you to react to it. Okay, I just have a little patience with me. Lee Harvey Oswald, who many people believe, I think did fire shots from the school book depository.
Uh.
He was captured that day by a Dallas police officer, Dallas police officer, after he had had killed another Dallas police officer. It's an interesting it's an interesting ruing. He had been in the US Marines, that he defected to Russia in nineteen fifty nine, and people thought, oh, they made him a spy or whatever, and that this was Russia trying to take out President Kennedy height of the Cold War. There were all sorts of theories going on. I don't know if you knew that Oswald had defected
to Russia. Maybe you did.
Yeah, No, I knew that. I actually did like a lot of reading on it and what not. But I mean, it's interesting to me that you know, so many years later that we still don't have a clue. Yeah, and we really we listened to what we're told, you know, And that's that's kind of sad because It's like what we're told is not always the truth, and then we find out.
Later the truth was. And then it's like the people that are responsible for the lives are dead and they can't You can't prosecute them, you can't, you can't do anything do them.
That's true, you know true. I appreciate you calling him on my break. I gotta get going. I wish I had a better conversation with you, but thank you for calling, and thank you for having an interest in something that happened sixty one years ago today. Thanks James, Thanks good night. We'll take quick break, coming right back. I got Paul in Pennsylvania, Ted in Texas. I'll get both of them
in before the eleven o'clock news, I promise. And the Amber alert situation has been resolved without any injury to the children and our news team. I'm sure we'll have more at eleven o'clock. Coming back on Nightside.
Now, back to Dan Ray live from the Window World night Side Studios. I'm WBZ News Radio.
Back to the calls we go. Let me go to Ted in Texas. Hey, Ded, welcome back. Haven't talked to you in a while. Go right ahead, Ted, Okay, let's put ted on hold. I think he's out walking his dog. Let's go to Paul in Pennsylvania. Paul, you're next on Nightside.
Go right ahead, all right, Dan, great show. I personally, I personally think that it was definitely, at least at the middlemum, a second gunman on the grassian all because you know yourself, Dad, if somebody pushes you from behind, you don't fall backwards. And I think, whoever's the next grassian all shot President Kenny in the throat. And maybe he even had that filhad shot. I don't you know,
Oswald might have been I don't know. I know the simplest explorations that Akman's razor and and that's the one that every pretty much stands by it. But and you mentioned the Mark White. I couldn't believe you did that because I was trying to think that what the author was and when you mentioned Mark White, I must fell over.
Well, as we said, grape minds sake alike?
Right right, well do I wouldn't put myself in the same category as using that. But anyway, you know, it's amazing. I think President Trump, what a good thing is with with Bobby Kenny Junior I know that he'll push, you know, President Trump to release that. And they should also get what happened with Malcolm X, would happened with Martin Luther K, and what happened that RFK Senior. They should get all four of those who released everything. I don't see what
why they're holding and had a lot of people. And for as bad as the sixties were, people forget there's not maybe forty years ago. You know, John Lennon got assassinated. A few months later, Ronald Reagan almost passed away, but President Ackley and then the Pope got shot and you know that was that was within five months, not five five years. So but I hope, damn they get to the bottom of it, and I hope President Trump keeps his word. And there are some people that I don't
know if you release said it or not. There's some people that said that President Trump's even to release the that uh ed afl with that Jeffrey Epstein, you know he does and he doesn't. But right now you know it's JFK.
It was.
It was sixty one years ago, like you mentioned, and there's there's no reason in the world but we American people can't hear the truth of what happened. That's crazy.
I think that. Look, we have a case up here in Boston where a bunch of guys utilized services at a brothel and they're having debates over whether or not their name should be made public here and in a state Supreme Court case. You can you'll see that one. Look, I think that all of this, all of this r F K, Martin, Luther King, Malcolm X, the Epstein file, everything should be out there for the world to see. At this opinion.
You know what, you know what you're you're you're you're a Bostoner. But I remember that case years ago. You remember what that uh what they call that woman, that babysitter that shook that baby to death. They had an aid for.
Your name. Your name was Louise Woodworth.
She was from England and they had some guy they had. If there's an aid for that, there's a it's not a baby. There are something else.
It's called the it's called shaken baby syndrome.
No, but the name. They called her, a state caller, a baby stir. They called her something else. There's some it's some some fancy worth. You never heard of me called babies there anymore. But they you know, those people in England actually.
Thought she was she was if you're I'm just trying to answer your questions fast and furious. Here she was a nanny. Okay, So she was someone who was living in the home with his family.
Uh.
And the parents doctors. But I don't want to get off. I know a lot about that case. But that's frue.
But which which which surprised me, Dan was the people in England said they were fully prosecutor because they weren't. They were Irish, And I thought that was most despicable thing those people ever said over there.
No, the parents were not Irish.
No, but they the prosecutor. And Massachusetts wasn't that woman? Was that woman?
You know?
I thought you was on They found her guilty and everything. But I tell what you're saying that I wanted. This is my president, Kenny's family, and I should have.
I hate to do this to you, man, but I've gone full minutes with you, and I got others they got to grab. Okay, thank you, buddy, by appreciate. Let me try ted in Texas one more time. Ted, we've strived once, we missed. You're back right.
Ahead, Okay, I'm back. How are you.
Tight on time, buddy? You go right ahead.
Okay, I'm gonna come. I'm gonna keep it short. I hope you and your family are well. So I think we can I think we can all agree that when President Kennedy was shot, it was a loss of innocence for the entire country. But if you look back over history, you know, my dad, my grandpa, you know, fought in World War One and World War Two respectively. You look back to you know, Arts, Duke, Friends, Ferdinand of Austria, what started you.
Know, World War One?
These terrible, terrible acts and uh, you know, none of us know what really happened, but it was horrific and it really changed our country forever. It was, you know, just very very tragic. But whether you were a report, yeah, yeah.
It was, it was. It was a marker. I mean, we had come out of World War Two as the country we were the most superior. We were at the superior superpower of the world. Russia was moving up when they when they you know, challenge us with Sputnik and all of that. And then we we got into the space race and landed the people in the moon. But on November twenty second, nineteen sixty three. Our veneer of invincibility was shattered.
I totally agree, totally great. And you and I grew up in the same neighborhood at the exact same time, and I think we totally agree and it's just tragic.
So we'll talk.
I missed talking to you. Come on back, We'll call you.
I've been a busy guy, man, I'm working, working, working, I'm trying to make it all happen in Texas and down and Chatham and got my numbers.
I know exactly who this is, my family, I know exactly who that is.
You need there, everybody, Doc, you, Ted, Thrank, you, Thanks all right.
I got to go to Jean and Walpole. Geen you next on nights. I want to get you in here under the wire. Go ahead, Gene.
Uh Man. I don't know. I just got out of work. I don't know if this is this has been talked about before, but there's a d v D out and it's called the Men That Killed Kennedy. I think it was put out by the History Channel at one time. I've had it on had it on VHF, but I got it on d v D now and it's it's it's really really really interesting.
I'm not familiar with that, but but there is, there are all of these theories. Uh again we the theories never would have you know, been propagated. Uh if if we had understood uh the truth shortly thereafter.
You know, yeah, well if you if you could see that that uh that d v d uh it was, it would put a lot of ideas in your head though. And it's really really interesting. The men that killed Kennedy.
And all right, I've got.
On e bay Okay, I've.
Got okay, I thank you. I think you'll like it.
Killed Kennedy. Thank you very much, appreciate it. Jeane, thank you how much? Good night? What's what's the time? Rob? Here we go, okay, Jim Man less than a minute. What do you want to add? Jim, go right ahead.
I want to make some Hey Dan uh okay, there. I think there was a huge contract out on the guy and there are a lot of people looking to do it, and all of a sudden it be you know, the window opened up and they all did it at the same time. So that's why it's a big mess and nobody can figure out what happened because.
So it's like side gangs deciding to rub the same bank at the same.
Time, and all of a sudden the opportunity presents itself. But it was probably a big contract, so a lot of people were wanting it.
You know.
That's what I think.
That's the theory. That's an interesting theory. Cop. No one can dispute that one. We'll see what happens. I hope that that when he becomes president again, President Trump, one of the first things he does is make everything open. Let you know, let's let the sunshine in the greatest disinfectant.
Okay, Thanksgiving, Merry Christmas to you, to you.
Right, Well, we'll talk before Christmas. We may not talk before Thanksgiving. I'm actually off next week, Jim, so we'll no.
You get in here, all right, see a little.
Later, man, Thank you very much. All right, here comes the eleven o'clock news. We have the twentieth hour coming back, and I have a specific question for all of you in the twentieth hour back on nights out after this