It's September twentieth, nineteen sixty three. A man in a dark suit walks into a post office in al Paso, Texas, emails three registered letters, then strolls across the street and enters the State National Bank. He approaches the teller and asks for one hundred dollars in American Express travelers checks. As the teller works on his request, the man in the dark suit pulls out a forty five caliber revolver and fires two shots into the ceiling of the bank.
As people duck for cover. The man casually exits the bank. An off duty police officer named Jim Bundron, who is in the vicinity. Here's the shots.
Believe it or not.
I was on my day off, that's Officer Bundron.
I heard the shots. Everybody was just, you know, just shocked. Right, says where is he and what's he wearing? And he said in a blue suit, white shirt, red tie. Evidently he had run out of the bank with a gun in his hand. And I know he couldn't have gotten that far ahead of it, right, And this car pulls out of the alley. Then I could see his face was flushed. I could see the white shirt red tie and I just I drew and he didn't say anything.
Officer Bunden arrests him, and as he's being handcuffed, the man in the dark suit invites the officer to look into the trunk of his car. The officer carefully opens the trunk and in it he finds a bizarre collection of cameras, photos, and documents.
He had a real small minulti camera I think in the loser probably called a spy. Came right and he had his own processing with him. I searched his car and he had pictures of top secret restricted areas, pictures of inside of compounds, had a lot of pictures of dead bodies.
The man in the dark suit is Richard case Nagel.
That's Dick Russell. Richard case Nagel is a former US Army veteran, three times Purple Heart recipient, intelligence officer and CIA operative.
Nagel's arrested and charged with attempted bank robbery.
And then there is a preliminary here. I sat and just talked to him. It's like you and I were talking, and he says, well on a graduate company. He says, I really don't want to be in Dallas. I said, well, what do you mean by that? He says, you'll want him there.
Nagel was arrested on September twentieth, nineteen sixty three, two months before President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas.
This is who killed JFK Sixty years later? What can we uncover about the greatest murder mystery in American history? And why does it still matter today? I'm your host, Solidad O'Brien.
Now, last episode, we took you through Oswald's bizarre return to the United States. We met his CIA connected babysitters, George de Moornshield and Ruth Payne, who were tasked with looking out for him. We discussed the time that Oswald spent in New Orleans, where he was arrested for handing out pro castro leaflets. We also introduced you to the CIA's head of counter intelligence, James Jesus Angleton and his Wilderness of mirrors. Angleton was known as the Poet's Spy,
and he was obsessed with removing Castro from Cuba. Now, it's important to keep all that in mind as.
We move forward.
So what comes next?
Okay?
In New Orleans in the summer of nineteen sixty three, while handing out the leaflets for the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, Oswald gets into a fight with a bunch of anti Castro activists. He's arrested, and the first thing he does is request to speak to an FBI agent. On September twenty fifth, the White House announces that the President will be visiting Dallas in November. Then we start to see a swell of covert activity. Chess pieces are
being moved around the board. Richard case Nagel, the man in the dark suit who shot two bullets into the ceiling of the bank. He's going to give us insight into how all this covert activity will lead us to a history changing event.
So Dick explain to us who is Richard K. S.
Nagel.
Nagel was a decorated veteran, a Bronze Star medal winner, and a former intelligence officer. As we mentioned earlier, he first met Oswald in Japan, where they were tasked to try to recruit a Soviet officer to defect.
So how did you firm encounter Nakel?
I first heard about him from another JFK researcher in the nineteen seventies. I was intrigued hearing about this Bronze Star medal recipient that claimed to have known Oswald, So I did some research. I went to El Paso, where he was arrested for the so called bank robbery. I went through the newspaper and court files.
There.
There were both Secret Service and FBI files saying that he requested quote to speak to a Secret Service agent about an urgent matter the afternoon of the assassination. I knew I'd stumbled onto something, so I found out where he lived. I traveled to Manhattan Beach in southern California, and I just knocked on the door and this shadowy figure with a scar across his face opens the door and asked me what I wanted. I told him I'd come all the way from New York to interview him.
After an uncomfortable silence, he let me in and once we sat down, I asked if I could tape him, and he looked at me and said no, but I'm going to tape you. So he turned on his tape recorder started to talk, and he spoke cryptically, but it was about knowing Oswald and that had been involved in
the assassination. For some reason, he seemed to trust me, so we agreed to meet again, this time at a CD dive bar because he was aware that his movements were being tracked, and he was there that he told me that what he knew about the assassination had ruined his life.
The two continued to meet for fifteen years, and eventually, in nineteen ninety two, Dick published his eight hundred and twenty four page book about Nagel, called The Man Who Knew Too Much. So take me back to where this all started.
For Nagel in Japan in nineteen fifty seven and nineteen fifty eight, Nagel was working for a top secret army intelligence unit that was closely connected to the CIA. It was called Field Operations Intelligence, or FOI.
The American public didn't know that FOI existed until Nagel described its mission in a nineteen seventy four court document. He said it was quote a covert extension of CIA policy and activity designed to conceal the true nature of CIA objectives. He then went on to say, quote, in the event I was apprehended, killed, or compromised during the performance of my illegal FOI duties, the Department of the Army would publicly disclaim any knowledge of or connection with such duties.
In the early sixties, when Nagel came back to the United States, Cuba had become the focus of American intelligence. The CIA gave Nagel the assignment of renouncing his American citizenship and approaching Soviet intelligence to offer his services, much like they'd done with Oswald, and the Soviets then recruited him for their own intelligence.
Gathering, so he became a double agent.
Correct The Soviets gave him two missions, one penetrate a violent group of anti Castro Cuban exiles and two keep an eye on Lee Harvey Oswald, who had just returned to America.
And were those two missions related.
At first, there was no relationship between Oswald and that particular group of Cuban exiles, But in the summer of nineteen sixty three, Nagel went to New Orleans and that's where he was reconnected with Oswald. He learned that Oswald was being brought into plans that he didn't fully understand, and that plots to assassinate Kennedy were being discussed. Oswald was being primed to be the fall guy, but the Soviets,
who had become fully aware of these plans. Didn't want Kennedy killed, and they didn't want Oswald to be blamed. They knew it would be pinned on them or Cuba and could trigger a nuclear war.
So what did the Soviets want Nagel to do?
They wanted him to take Oswald out.
You mean to kill him?
Yes, they wanted him to take Oswald out.
You mean to kill him?
Yes.
Nagel was trapped. His loyalty was to the United States. He knew he couldn't do it, but he also knew that if he ignored the orders from the KGB, they would take him out.
Talk about between a rock and a hard place. So what does he do?
First? He tried to warn Oswald that he was being used, So.
Walk me through that. How did he warn him?
He meets with Oswald in Jackson Square in New Orleans and tries to explain to him that the group of Cuban exiles he's been associated with are not who they say they are, and that he is being used by extreme fascist elements to attempt an assassination on Kennedy in order to justify invading Cuba. Nagel told me that when Oswald heard this, he was quote visibly shaken, but denied there'd been any discussion about killing Kennedy and just shrugged
him off. Nagel knew that when he he couldn't convince Oswald, his life would be at risk, so he figured the safest place for him was to be in prison. He told me that just before shooting up the bank, he mailed a registered letter to Jay ed Garhover detailing what he knew about the assassination plot, and sent another warning letter to his handlers in the CIA. Then, to back up his story, he placed a notebook in his car that contained information that only someone on the inside would
have had. Several of the notations were virtually identical to what the authorities later found among Oswalt's possessions. They both had small Minolta spy cameras, they both had leaflets for the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, and they both had the same unlisted phone number for the Cuban embassy in Mexico City.
Did getting arrested save him?
It kept him alive for a while, but it ended up ruining his life. He was in prison for four and a half years, part of which he spent in a psych ward. That's how they began to build out an nerve that he was nuts.
So, as a person who's interviewing him because you're writing your book, how do you navigate that question of his credibility? How do you decide you know what's true?
First you assess the existing evidence, which means Nagle's notebook, the fact that he had an ID card for Oswald showing up in his lawyer's files, and the newspaper accounts of his trial in El Paso where he tried to bring up Oswald and the assassination. Second, interview as many people as possible who knew him, and I found many
who attested to his background and credibility. A couple of these, Jim Garrison and attorney Bernard Finsterwald Junior, told me Nagel was the most important living witness to what happened on November twenty second, nineteen sixty three. And I realized that the powers behind the cover up were determined to marginalize him first paint him as crazy. Then after he got out of prison, the CIA tracked his movements and there were a number of attempts on his life.
How long were you in contact with him?
I met with him periodically for more than twenty years, and during that time, I saw a man who was torn. He wanted to come clean, to reveal what he knew, but he knew that if he told everything, he'd be killed. So he would drop hints to steer me in the right direction.
Like deep Throat in Watergate.
Right.
And at one point he told me that if anything happened to him, there was a record of everything he knew that he kept stored in various locations and that only certain people were aware of And he believed that's what kept him alive.
So he did manage to stay alive.
For a while.
Then, in nineteen ninety five, when the Assassination Record's Review Board was doing its investigation, they heard me talk about Nagel at a conference and decided that they wanted to interview him on the data. Subpoena arrived at his apartment, Nagel was found dead.
So you believe that Nagel was killed before he could talk.
Let me answer that this way. When I called his son to tell him about his father, his son told me that his apartment had just been broken into and was ransacked. Then he told me about his key his dad had left in his apartment to a storage unit in Tucson, and that in that storage unit was a purple trunk which contained a material his father had kept hidden for years. When he heard what had happened to his dad, Nagel's son flew to Tucson to check the
storage unit. He opened it up, looked inside, and the only thing missing was the purple trunk. So was Nagel killed before he could talk?
Yeah?
I believe he was.
And he wasn't the only one.
What happened to Nagel happened to others.
Remember George de mornshieldt Oswald's babysitter in Dallas.
Yeah, you said. The last time he talked about the assassination was in an interview he did with a journalist in nineteen seventy seven. What happened after that?
A little over a decade after testifying to the Warren Commission that Oswald had acted alone, De Mornshield decided he was going to tell the truth about what he knew. So he wrote a manuscript titled I'm a Patsy. I'm a Patsy, which was later published posthumously as a book titled Lee Harvey Oswald As I knew him.
When de Mornshield started to go public. The House Select Committee decided to summon him. De Morshild was living in Florida at the time, not far from Gayton Phonsie.
Remember Gayton Phonsie is a journalist who challenged Arlen Spector on the single bullet theory. At the time, Phonsie was working as an investigator for the committee.
Fonsie goes to De Moornshild's house to talk to him. He isn't home, so he leaves his business card with Demarnshild's adult daughter. He tells her he'll be calling later that night to set a time for a formal questioning. And so when de Marshall arrives home, his daughter tells him about Phonsie's visit gives him fan He's business card.
The Mornschell puts the card in his pocket, goes upstairs, and the next morning he's found dead with a bullet in his head, with Pansie's business card still in his pocket.
They said he'd committed suicide, but his wife told me it was definitely not a suicide, and Nagel told me the same thing, that he was murdered before he could testify.
There was also mob boss Johnny Rizselli right before he was supposed to testify, he was found chopped up, stuffed into an oil drum, and dumped into Biscayne Bay. There were a number of people who died mysteriously. Within three years after the Warren Commission report was released, eighteen key witnesses died of either a heart attack, an accident, or suicide. Something that has always fascinated me is the people who were tangentially involved but managed to survive, like Ruth Payne.
Like Ruth Payne, You'll remember Ruth Payne as one of the CIA connected people who became close with the Oswald family when they returned to the US.
On September twenty fifth, the White House formally announces that the President will be taking a tour through Texas, stopping at Dallas on November twenty second. That same week, Marina accepts Ruth Payne's invitation to have her and her baby move in with her in Dallas. Then, in early October, six weeks before the assassination, Oswald returns to Dallas, takes a room at a boarding house, and gets a job in a building position directly along what will be President
Kennedy's motorcave route. And who do you think helped him get that job. Ruth Painne, Ruth Payne.
There are so many pieces to this picture.
And sixty years later, pieces are still falling into place.
So Rob, where do you go from here? Nearly five thousand records remain withheld. Do you think that in those records is one piece of evidence that details the whole plot?
Well?
I don't, I really I don't.
The CIA most likely destroyed anything. It would be obviously groundbreaking decades ago.
So then what you're both saying is that in all the remaining records, there's no smoking gun.
I don't think there's anything left that would be considered a smoking gun the way we think of it. The closest thing we have to a smoking gun is a document that the Pentagon kept secret for almost forty years. This document outlined a plan called Operation Northwoods.
The Joint chiefs of Staff drafted Operation Northwoods in nineteen sixty two. It remained a secret until decades later, when it was quietly declassified in compliance with the JFK Records Act. But even after the document was declassified, the plan didn't reach the public until two thousand and one, when the investigative reporter James Bamford revealed the full details in his book Body of Secrets. He calls Operation Northwoods quote what may be the most corrupt plan ever created by the
US government. Here's Jefferson Morley.
Operation Northwoods is one of the most significant revelations about the JFK assassination to come out in the last twenty five years.
Operation Northwoods pose this question, what if something were to happen that would convince the American public that the US had to invade Cuba, something that would force America's hand.
Well, stage a violent incident on a prominent target in the United States, and we'll all arrange for it to look like Castro did it. North Woods was what people in the intelligence business call a pretext operation, where you create a pretext for an action, or sometimes called a false flag operation.
When you hear the terms false flag or conspiracy theory, you think of people wearing tinfoil hats. But the US government has had a history of false flag operations. In eighteen ninety eight, the sinking of the USS Maine got us into the Spanish American War.
The USS Maine was a US battleship that mysteriously exploded in Havana, Cuba in eighteen ninety eight. Remember the main was the famous rallying cry after the press claim that Spain was to blame for the explosion which killed two hundred and sixty eight sailors. When the government declared war on Spain, they had the overwhelming support from the American public, and that's how the Spanish American War started.
There was also the firing on US ships in the Gulf of Tonkin in August of nineteen sixty four, which got US into the Vietnam War, and in two thousand and three, the assertion that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction was used to justify the invasion of Iraq. False Flags and disinformation can be very effective tools to rally public support. This is in the actual Operation Northwoods document.
Here's what it says. The Joint Chiefs of Staff have considered the attached memorandum for the pretexts which would provide justification for US military intervention in Cuba.
The north Woods plans were very detailed. Will fake the hijacking of a plane, and we'll take the plane somewhere and we'll say that Castro did it understand?
People who would die on that plane would be American citizens.
This phrase is actually written into the north Woods plan. Quote casualty lists in the US newspapers would cause a helpful wave of national indignation.
Basically killing American citizens. That's astounding.
A hijacked plane wasn't the only option. Operation Northwoods lists eleven other ideas for quote well coordinated incidents that would look credible, including sinking ships and burning aircrafts. There's one more part that I'd like you to read.
Okay, Here's what it says. The desired result from the execution of this plan would be to place the United States in the apparent position of suffering defensible grievances from a rash and irresponsible government of Cuba, and to develop an international image of a Cuban threat to peace in the Western Hemisphere.
Operation Northwoods was kept hidden from the Warrant Commission and the House Select Committee. It was only declassified in nineteen ninety seven.
Did Kennedy know about Operation Northwoods?
Kennedy knew about it.
What was Kennedy's response?
He rejected it in pretty brusque, almost rude terms.
But on November twenty second, nineteen sixty three, a spectacular attack on a US target occurred and the immediate response was to blame Cuba. November twenty second, the day President Kennedy was murdered.
So you're saying the plan that President Kennedy rejected was the plan they used to kill him.
Right.
It was a violent act against the prominent American target, and they had their allegedly pro Castro assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald to take the blame.
And so that's what happens. Within hours of Kennedy's assassination, Oswald is arrested and CIA propaganda assets go to work to link him immediately to the Castro government, and those efforts are quite successful. We have the headlines the next day, pro Castro marksman kills the President, pro Cuban assassin.
Robert Blakey, former Chief counsel and staff director of the House Select Committee on Assassinations, told us something similar.
If what happened is what I think happened, I think that Lee Harvey Oswell was developed as a false flag assassiny.
On the next episode of Who Killed JFK.
President Kennedy had alienated much of the US establishments by the time he was killed in Dallas.
We looked directly at our three main suspects.
That Miami Cia Field Office is more or less the puppeteers of this whole operation.
I asked my mom where's Papa, and she said he's in Dallas on business.
I'm telling you there's no way in hell that it could not have been a conspiracy.
Who killed JFK is hosted by Rob Reiner and me Solidad O'Brien and Our executive producers are Rob Reiner, Michelle Reiner, Matt George, Jason English, David Hoffman, and Met O'Brien. Our writer is David Hoffman, with research by Dick Russell. Our story editors are Rob Reiner and Julie Pinero. Our senior producer is Julie Pinneo. Our producers are Tristan Nash, Dick Russell, Michelle Goldfein, and Amari Lee. Our editors are Tristan Nash, Julie Pignero, and Marcus de Lauro. Our project manager is
Carol Klein. Our associate producer is emilse Kiros. Mixing, mastering and sound design by Ben la Julier. Research and fact checking by Girl Friday and emilse Kiros. Archival audio in this episode thanks to the Assassination Archives and Research Center and Dick Russell. Business Affairs by Henan Nadea and Jonathan Furman. Our consulting producer is Razanne Galliini. Recorded in part at CDM Studio and Fourth Street Recording Studio. Show logo by
Lucy Kintanilla. Special thanks to Joe Honig, Rose Arsay and Dan Storper. If you are enjoying the show, leave us a rating and review on your favorite podcast platform. Who Killed JFK as a production of Solidad O'Brien Productions and iHeart Podcasts