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JFK Book Reviews - The Road To Dallas · The Lone Gunman Podcast : JFK Assassination

• 0:19
  Speaker 1: What's up, everybody? Welcome in to JFK Book Reviews, a
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: division of the Lone Gunman podcast. I am the biggest,
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: the baddest of the bobs, Rob Clark, here with you.
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  Speaker 1: And this week, On the show, we're going to be
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  Speaker 1: reviewing The Road to Dallas by David Kaiser. And boy,
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  Speaker 1: is she a thicken. A book like this is just
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  Speaker 1: begging to be spanked. Yes. I love the simplistic artwork. Again,
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  Speaker 1: the subtitle is The Assassination of John F. Kennedy. The
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  Speaker 1: Road to Dallas by David Kaiser. A little bit about Kaiser.
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  Speaker 1: He is a published author. He's written about seven books
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  Speaker 1: or so. This book here was published in 2008 by
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  Speaker 1: Harvard Press. I think it was Belknap. Yeah, Belknap at Harvard.
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  Speaker 1: It has 536 pages, and boy, let me tell you,
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  Speaker 1: it's busted up in three parts. You've got Part 1,
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  Speaker 1: Part 2, and Part 3. Part 1 being the criminals, Cubans, Kennedys,
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  Speaker 1: and the CIA. Part 2 is Lee Harvey Oswald, and
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  Speaker 1: Part 3 is Converging Paths. All combined for a grand
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  Speaker 1: total of 17 chapters. There is a conclusion. There is
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  Speaker 1: notes on sources. There is notes. There is acknowledgments. There
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  Speaker 1: is an index. There is a table of contents. And
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  Speaker 1: there is an introduction to the book, which we'll get
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  Speaker 1: to in just a second. The reason I chose this
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  Speaker 1: book is because I actually consulted it for this past
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  Speaker 1: week's show, because it's one of the few books that
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  Speaker 1: really goes into some detail about the Dallas Mafia. In fact,
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  Speaker 1: this is where the book starts off. And then it
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  Speaker 1: branches out into the ties with Marcelo, excuse me, faction
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  Speaker 1: of the Mafia, and of course goes into Traficante, and
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  Speaker 1: all of the ties between the Cubans and the CIA,
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  Speaker 1: and I believe he was inspired to write this book
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  Speaker 1: based on the fact that the HSCA, well, not only
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  Speaker 1: did he think that the Warren Commission got it wrong,
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  Speaker 1: but that the HSCA was really focusing in on the mafia.
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  Speaker 1: And the key for him was, of course, Jack Ruby
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  Speaker 1: silencing Oswald and his ties to the mafia and what
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  Speaker 1: you could kind of go through and prove. again I
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  Speaker 1: think this is a very well written book it's easy
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  Speaker 1: to read and it goes into a lot of the
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  Speaker 1: subjects that we've been discussing on the show recently and
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  Speaker 1: let me just read you a little section out of
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  Speaker 1: the introduction because Sometimes some things just make you go, hmm. So,
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  Speaker 1: in talking about the Odeo incident, he claims, this is Kaiser,
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  Speaker 1: of course, he plainly states the men who visited Sylvia
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  Speaker 1: Odeo that night were almost certainly Lauren Hall, Lawrence Howard,
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  Speaker 1: and Oswald. And he goes through and tells who Hall
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  Speaker 1: was and who Howard was and that Hall had ties
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  Speaker 1: to Santos Traficante. Okay. Trafficante was visited in a cell
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  Speaker 1: by Jack Ruby. Hall reestablished contact with Trafficante in Florida
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  Speaker 1: during the first half of 1963. And now he and
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  Speaker 1: Lawrence Howard and his fellow mercenary were transporting a truckload
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  Speaker 1: of arms to Florida from Southern California where Hall had
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  Speaker 1: been speaking to right-wing extremist groups and raising money. They
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  Speaker 1: intended to use the arms in a raid on Cuba.
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  Speaker 1: Lauren Hall had been involved in many discussions of the
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  Speaker 1: assassination plots against Castro, including one failed attempt known as
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  Speaker 1: the Bio-Pauly Raid in the previous June, and had also
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  Speaker 1: heard a great deal of talk about assassinating President Kennedy.
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  Speaker 1: As he implied to Sylvia Odeo, he realized that in
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  Speaker 1: Oswald he had come across a man willing to do
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  Speaker 1: either job. Hall, moreover, was not the only Traficante associate
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  Speaker 1: in Dallas. His visit coincided with a talk by John Martino,
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  Speaker 1: another mobster who was involved in gambling in both the
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  Speaker 1: United States and Havana, and who had been jailed from
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  Speaker 1: 59 through 62 by Castro for trying to smuggle money
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  Speaker 1: out of Cuba after the revolution. Once released and repatriated
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  Speaker 1: to the States, Martino became a link between Traficante, anti-Castro
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  Speaker 1: Cubans in the Miami area, and he actually helped mastermind
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  Speaker 1: the Biopoly raid in June. Martino made another unexplained trip
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  Speaker 1: to Dallas on October 27th, 1963. And something that I
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  Speaker 1: hadn't thought about before. Now, let me just say, I
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  Speaker 1: don't agree with his conclusion that the three people that
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  Speaker 1: visited Sylvia Odeo were Hall, Howard, and Oswald. I just
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  Speaker 1: don't think it was Hall and Howard. I'm not unconvinced
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  Speaker 1: that it wasn't Oswald. It could have been, um, I
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  Speaker 1: just don't think that the two Cubans or Mexicans with
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  Speaker 1: whoever this Oswald person was at Sylvia Odeo's house were
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  Speaker 1: Hall and Howard. But it is what it is. But
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  Speaker 1: what this book prompted me to think about was the
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  Speaker 1: fact that in October of 1963, around the same time
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  Speaker 1: Of course, this is after the Odeo incident. Because we
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  Speaker 1: can't put Holland Howard in Dallas at the time of
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  Speaker 1: the Odeo incident. But we can put him in Dallas
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  Speaker 1: about halfway through the month of October 1963. And it's
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  Speaker 1: around this interesting time when Martino comes to Dallas. to
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  Speaker 1: give a talk the DRE including Salvat the big swinging
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  Speaker 1: dick head honcho from Miami comes to Dallas to implement
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  Speaker 1: a new leader of the Dallas DRE a new delegate
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  Speaker 1: and all this kind of at the same time you
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  Speaker 1: have Hall and Howard showing up in Dallas just happened
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  Speaker 1: to be passing through. It's a very interesting amalgamation of
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  Speaker 1: characters that converge on Dallas in October of 1963. So
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  Speaker 1: that got me thinking, and which any good book should
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  Speaker 1: get you thinking, even though you might not agree with
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  Speaker 1: everything written in said book. And I started to panic
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  Speaker 1: when I was reading through the introduction because there's a
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  Speaker 1: whole lot of inferences there without a lot of footnotes. Uh,
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  Speaker 1: but the further I got into the book, it is
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  Speaker 1: footnoted very well, uh, using primary source documents, uh, things
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  Speaker 1: you can't argue with type of thing. But again, you know,
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  Speaker 1: sometimes somebody will look at some evidence and, and come
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  Speaker 1: to a different conclusion than you will another person looking
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  Speaker 1: at the same evidence. And that's okay to have different opinions. Um,
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  Speaker 1: This book is selling right now on Amazon. If you
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  Speaker 1: want a new copy, paperbacks like the one I got.
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  Speaker 1: And it's about the size of a hard copy. It's
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  Speaker 1: pretty big. $ 25. 99. The hardcover. First edition is selling for
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  Speaker 1: about $ 40 new. But you can find copies on Amazon
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  Speaker 1: for as little as $ 2. 56. And I'll put the link below.
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  Speaker 1: for the books, of course, in the description of this video,
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  Speaker 1: as I always do. Any book that I talk about here,
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  Speaker 1: just look in the description, you'll see a link where
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  Speaker 1: you can grab it if you want to. If not,
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  Speaker 1: that's fine too. But, so this book does a very
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  Speaker 1: good job of setting the table for the climate in
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  Speaker 1: 1963 and the relationship between the Mafia The anti-Castro Cubans.
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  Speaker 1: and the cia and kind of what they were all
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  Speaker 1: doing and where they were all intersecting type of thing
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  Speaker 1: and you can kind of see where the roads are
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  Speaker 1: going hence the name the road to dallas And then,
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  Speaker 1: of course, we come to the section of the book,
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  Speaker 1: the second part, on Lee Harvey Oswald and his dubious
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  Speaker 1: or ties to the anti-Castro Cubans. Fidel Castro, of course,
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  Speaker 1: his dealings with the FPCC, the ACLU, the right wing
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  Speaker 1: in Dallas. And then, of course, we get to part
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  Speaker 1: three of the book, which is dealing with the aftermath
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  Speaker 1: and the cover-up and the cover-your-ass and all of that.
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  Speaker 1: And for a book that came out in 2008, you've
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  Speaker 1: got to remember this is five years before the 50th anniversary.
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  Speaker 1: And this is, of course... a good bit of time,
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  Speaker 1: 10 plus years after the ARRB got a bunch of
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  Speaker 1: these files released online. This is the dawn of the
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  Speaker 1: internet time, you know, back when he was writing this book.
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  Speaker 1: And he used it to the best of his ability
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  Speaker 1: back then to be able to research and write this book.
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  Speaker 1: Now this is not his first foray into the subject matter.
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  Speaker 1: He did, in 2000, write a book called American Tragedy, Kennedy, Johnson,
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  Speaker 1: and the Origins of the Vietnam War. That book was
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  Speaker 1: the winner of the 2001 Four Word Magazine Book of
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  Speaker 1: the Year in the history category. So no slouch, no slouch. Uh,
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  Speaker 1: Kaiser was a American history professor who taught at the
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  Speaker 1: United States Naval War College from 1990 until 2012 and
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  Speaker 1: has taught at Carnegie Mellon Williams College and Harvard University.
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  Speaker 1: Harvard University. Hmm. Uh, uh, Interesting. He also has a
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  Speaker 1: website I'll link up in the description as well. But
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  Speaker 1: back to the book. I mean, there is no plot
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  Speaker 1: spoilers here. We all know how the story ends, right?
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  Speaker 1: But of course, the road to getting there, pun intended,
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  Speaker 1: is always the most interesting. And I think Kaiser... did
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  Speaker 1: a good job of looking into the Dallas Mafia, I
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  Speaker 1: think better than anyone else has ever done it, and
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  Speaker 1: making those connections between the Dallas Mafia, the New Orleans Mafia,
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  Speaker 1: the Florida Mafia, Cuba, Castro, all that. Interesting folks that
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  Speaker 1: we talk about here on the show all the time.
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  Speaker 1: These gunboat cowboys and anti-Castro Cubans. It's all there in
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  Speaker 1: this book. Now, of course, as I pointed out to
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  Speaker 1: you a little earlier, some of his conclusions I don't
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  Speaker 1: 100% agree with. But that's okay. It's okay. I think
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  Speaker 1: he did some very good work. And I believe... If
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  Speaker 1: you can grab this book for $ 2. 50 on Amazon, do it.
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  Speaker 1: It's worth it. It's worth a little bit more than that,
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  Speaker 1: but it's definitely worth $ 2. 50. You know what I mean?
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  Speaker 1: That's David Kaiser's The Road to Dallas. I'm going to
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  Speaker 1: give this book here, this book here, for everything that
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  Speaker 1: it is, for when it was published, for how it
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  Speaker 1: is written, for the story within I'm going to give
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  Speaker 1: this book a solid 8 out of 10 guns up
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  Speaker 1: 8 out of 10 guns up I think it's very
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  Speaker 1: good I thoroughly enjoyed reading it it's not pretentious at
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  Speaker 1: all and it's easy to read and there is a
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  Speaker 1: ton a ton a ton of information packed into this
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  Speaker 1: Almost 600 page book. But yeah, that's it. And if
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  Speaker 1: you like this book review, then by golly, you'll love
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: the show that we do here every Friday night live
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: on YouTube at 7 p.m. It's called The Lone Gumman
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: Podcast and we examine and investigate all aspects of the
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: Kennedy assassination just for you. We do it again on
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: Wednesday nights for our channel members only. We do an
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: entire show just for them. It's unheard of. It's astounding
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: what we do here. So yeah, if you like this,
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: you'll like that. Make sure to check it out. As
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  Speaker 1: I said, I will put some links in the description
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  Speaker 1: for you to peruse at your own speed. And that's
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  Speaker 1: it for me this week. This has been Big Bad
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  Speaker 1: Bob for another JFK Book Review, a division of the
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  Speaker 1: Lone Gummin' Podcast, and we'll see you next time, folks. Peace.