Who Killed JFK? Episode 6: The Richard Case Nagell Case

Episode 6 of the Who Killed JFK? podcast with Rob Reiner and Soledad O'Brien really hit paydirt with an account of Richard Case Nagell, given to Dick Russell, which provides the most convincing evidence I've heard so far that Lee Harvey was indeed a patsy, set up to take the fall for the assassination of JFK on November 22, 1963.

Who was Nagel?  He was a CIA double agent -- same as Oswald (according to Russell and this podcast), tasked by the Soviets, whom he wasn't really working for, to kill Oswald.  Why?  Reiner and Russell explain that the Soviets knew of the CIA plan to kill Kennedy and blame it on them (the Soviets), as a pretext for the U. S. to then invade Cuba and once and for all get Castro out of power.  Extensively interviewed by Russell over a period 20 years before Nagell's death from a "heart attack" in 1995, Russell tells us in the podcast (and in his 2003 book about Nagell, The Man Who Knew Too Much) that Nagell was ordered by the Soviets to kill Oswald to prevent the assassination of JFK.  This put Nagell "between a rock and a hard place," as O'Brien aptly puts it.  If he follows the Soviet orders and kills Oswald, the CIA will likely kill him.  If he doesn't follow those orders, the Soviets will do the same.  Nagell tries to let Oswald know he's being set up, without being too specific, because Nagell doesn't want to bring CIA down on him.  Oswald shrugs him off. So in a move that seems crazy if you don't know any of this background, Nagell walks into a bank in Dallas two months before JFK's assassination, and fires a gun in the air, twice.  He wants to get arrested, because he figures that prison is the safest place to be, with potentially CIA and Soviet assassins both apt to kill him.

The CIA does eventually get Nagell with a "heart attack gun" (not science fiction, check it out online) in 1995, one day after the Assassinations Records Review Board (established by Congress in the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992) sent Nagell a request for information.  Fortunately for the truth, Nagell had already talked extensively with Russell in the preceding decades.

So where does this leave us?  Well, as I said in reviews of earlier episodes of this podcast, it convinced me early on that, at very least, Lee Harvey Oswald was not the sole shooter in Dallas on November 22, 1963.  I'm now convinced that Oswald was far more than not the only shooter that day: he was indeed the "patsy," as Oswald after the assassination said he was, in the murder intricately plotted and carried out by the CIA to punish JFK for his failure to provide support for the Bay of Pigs invasion, prevent him from furthering detente with the Soviet Union, and we can now add to provide a pretext for a US all-out attack on Cuba.

I'm looking forward more than ever to the next episodes in this crucially important podcast.

See also Who Killed JFK?  A Review of the First Three Episodes of this Podcast ... Episode 4: The Real Manchurian Candidate ... Episode 5: Sheep Dipped