Maureen Callahan, a columnist at DailyMail.com, joined "Forbes Newsroom" to react to the thousands of documents relating to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy that were released by the Trump administration.
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NewsTranscript
00:00Hi, everybody. I'm Brittany Lewis, a breaking news reporter here at Forbes. Joining me now
00:07is Maureen Callahan, columnist with DailyMail.com. Maureen, thanks so much for coming back on.
00:13Thanks so much for having me, Brittany.
00:15After a much-anticipated promise, thousands of documents related to the assassination
00:21of President John F. Kennedy were released by the Trump administration. What do you make
00:26of the document dump? Anything surprise you?
00:30Well, so it was 80,000 pages, and that's not all of them, despite the promise that we were
00:36going to see all of them. I actually wasn't quite surprised. It felt like a very passive-aggressive,
00:46our-hand-has-been-forced news dump, because none of these documents were organized in
00:51any comprehensive way whatsoever. So there was no prioritizing. There was no categorization,
00:59such as here are witness statements. Here are images. Here is the autopsy report, which
01:04by the way, the Navy pathologist who oversaw the autopsy of JFK the night after the autopsy
01:12took all of those reports home and burned them in his fireplace.
01:18So seeing the sort of lack of meat on the bone, you know, with this document dump is
01:24quite bracing and upsetting, frankly.
01:28And I want to read one of the first lines of your column in DailyMail.com. You wrote
01:33this, the JFK files apparently say nothing, and that says everything. What do you think
01:39that says, that we're not getting any bombshells, any of the things we were looking for just
01:43yet?
01:45I think it says to us that they're never coming. I think it says to us that the top spies at
01:51America's alphabet agencies, who may or may not have been involved in this, wink, wink,
01:57would never have put in writing their plans. They would never have memorialized a successful
02:04execution of a sitting U.S. president on U.S. soil. There's no there there. And this is,
02:14I feel, is my own feeling. It feels like the ultimate F.U. to an American public that
02:21has been very patiently waiting, loathed these many decades, for some sort of answer, because
02:28nobody, not even Jackie, not even Bobby Kennedy, not John Connolly, the Texas governor who
02:34was sitting in front of JFK when he was shot, ever believed the Warren Commission's finding
02:40that it was a lone gunman.
02:43I want to talk about just some of those theories that have really become popularized in recent
02:48years, because a Gallup poll from 2023 found that 65 percent of Americans think that there
02:54is some theory involving the Kennedy assassination. There is a conspiracy there. Did any of these
03:00documents answer any of these popular questions? Was the government involved? Was the motive
03:05what motivation did Lee Harvey Oswald have? Also, the most popular theory, was there a
03:10second shooter?
03:12Right. So, you know, here's here's one thing. It's again, as I said, 80000 pages without
03:19categorization, without being prioritized in any manner. So newsrooms are still trying
03:26to digest this massive, massive document. You would think that whoever is working in
03:34whatever department was in charge, the National Archives, I believe, in charge of getting
03:39the stump ready, which Trump said he was going to do, would have done so in a better manner.
03:47I don't I don't think we're ever going to. We still don't know what Lee Harvey Oswald's
03:51motivation was. Jack Ruby's motivation for shooting Lee Harvey Oswald while he was in
03:57police custody on live television. OK, this was the most high value suspect the federal
04:05government had in its custody. And he was just left wide open for yet another assassin
04:14to shoot him like none of it adds up. And when you get to the point where in the 1990s,
04:19Seinfeld does an entire episode parodying the notion that there wasn't a second shooter
04:26on the grassy knoll who can forget right back into the left, back into the left. You know,
04:32you've gone through the looking glass.
04:35You are an expert on all things Kennedy. You wrote a book, Ask Not the Kennedys and
04:39the Women They Destroyed. As someone who is an expert on everything in this family, what
04:44do you think is missing from the conversation when it comes to these documents, when it
04:48comes to these theories, when it comes to the public wanting to learn more about what
04:52happened?
04:55You know, I really I don't know. You know, so Bobby Kennedy, Jr., I am not a fan, but
05:01he has said he believes the CIA was responsible for his uncle's death and that they were involved
05:10in the subsequent cover up. Jackie always kept her mouth shut about it. Robert F. Kennedy,
05:17Sr., himself assassinated in 68, always kept his mouth shut about it, even though he didn't
05:22believe it. You know, as I said in my column from yesterday, John Connolly, Jackie Kennedy
05:29and Bobby Kennedy all had the exact same reaction, which was to use the plural. They, I want
05:38to let Jackie said, let them see what they have done. I'm not changing out of my suit.
05:42John Connolly, oh my God, they are going to kill us all. Bobby, I always knew they would
05:47get one of us. I thought it would be me. So that's like within minutes, an hour maybe.
05:55Nobody believed some rogue loser gunman from a sixth floor depository was able to get off
06:02those kill shots. Nobody.
06:06From your research then, why would they not be more fervent in speaking out saying I thought
06:12it was more than one? People are saying whatever the Warren Commission found, I didn't really
06:16believe. Is it because it was such a traumatic event? Is it because assassinations were pretty
06:21popular in the 60s? I mean, what does that look like?
06:24Well, you know, I've thought a lot about this. I think for someone like Jackie, there was
06:30only so far psychologically she could go. She had two children to raise. She was negotiating
06:36her own PTSD, which she suffered greatly from for her entire life. I think to acknowledge
06:44that it could have been a shadow conspiracy within the federal government would have been
06:49a little too much. Bobby, perhaps for similar psychological reasons, thought initially
06:56it had to be the mob because they were in the crosshairs of his DOJ. The Kennedy family
07:01had a lot of deep connections with the mafia. They helped buy JFK the presidency in the
07:071960s. And you just you have to wonder like how you could continue to live in a country
07:15that you believe slaughtered your relative. I mean, it's a good point. And I want to go
07:23back to the slapdash nature in which all of these documents were released. There was no
07:28organization and there weren't redactions when it came to hundreds of Social Security
07:32numbers, people's addresses, other sensitive personal data. What do you make of that?
07:39I just think it's sloppy. I think it's sloppy. I think it was a hostile act. I think that
07:44nobody who was involved in keeping these documents secret wanted them out. And again, if you
07:49start to comb through them, which any anyone can do after lunch hour, it's so anticlimactic.
07:56I mean, there's so much filler in there, stuff that seems tangential at best, if not outright
08:03extraneous. It really just begs the question if those documents were held secret so long
08:15because they posed, as Trump said during his first term after having to walk back his promise
08:21to release them, he said he was told that the release of those documents would pose
08:27such a grave threat to America's national security that it was just a nonstarter. Well,
08:34what's the grave threat? Because it's not evident thus far in this dump. What could
08:39possibly I mean, the logical question, the only grave threat to national security would
08:45be the knowledge that there was a shadowy cabal in the deep state that did this.
08:52I mean, that is a good point, because when he said that, I mean, that really builds up
08:56these documents. And as of now, there are thousands. No one has been able to go through
09:01all of them yet. But as of now, it doesn't seem like there's any bombshell that was seemingly
09:06foreshadowed there. And President Trump said that all of the records are going to be released.
09:11Do you think that grave threat is going to be in those unreleased records? And why haven't
09:16all of them been released yet? What's the holdup? I mean, I feel like it's almost that
09:21such a great question. And I feel like it's almost a tautology, right? Well, all of the
09:25records haven't been released because all of the records are not going to be released.
09:29They said all they said to us early this week, all of the records are going to be released
09:36Tuesday. By the way, every newsroom in America was on the edge of its seat all day Tuesday.
09:40When are they coming? When are they coming? Well, they got dumped at 7 p.m. OK. And then
09:47we were told it's not all of them. So what who who can tell the truth regarding even
09:56the release of these records, let alone what is contained therein? And I'm obviously not
10:02comparing Jeffrey Epstein to JFK's assassination. But this seems like the same rollout of your
10:09were promised the release of all of the Epstein documents. But there's really nothing new
10:14there were promised the release of the JFK assassination documents. There's really nothing
10:20new there. I mean, why build this up? And then there's really nothing there. I think
10:28that whoever is truly in control of this information flow or the choking off of this information,
10:36the disappearing of this information. It just seems like almost a kind of a great fig leaf.
10:43Well, it can't ever possibly come out. It would just be too ruinous to the country or
10:48to the interests of very powerful people. And then when they finally do come out, I
10:53mean, this is this is sort of the lowest level of comparison. But there was so much hullabaloo
10:59over Prince Harry's visa application and how that was going to be kept secret because it
11:05was too sensitive. I think we all know what's in it, OK? He's not that deep of a guy. It's
11:09his drug use, my opinion. And then finally, they say, OK, we're going to release it and
11:17they release it. And it's six pages of blacked out, redacted documents. Thank you. Thank
11:23you so much, federal government, for treating the American people like we are knuckle dragging
11:29morons who can't handle the truth. Thank you. And even if these these documents were kept
11:35secret up until a few days ago, why were they kept secret if there's nothing there?
11:42Right, that's exactly it. It goes it goes right back to that earlier point. Well, either
11:47they're so explosive that they could lead to a national security crisis that threatens
11:54the very existence of this country going forward, or there's a bunch of filler and B.S.
12:00in them that nobody has the time or inclination to read. It cannot be both.
12:06I mean, these were really built up, as I said, more Americans think that the Kennedy
12:11assassination involved a conspiracy than back in the 60s, 70s, 80s. And that poll was just
12:17taken a few days ago or a few years ago. So what do you think's next? Do you think that
12:22any additional information, if there is, is just lost to history?
12:27Oh, I definitely think it's lost to history. I think anything remotely incriminating was
12:31long ago destroyed, never to be seen again. The idea that the Navy pathologist who oversaw
12:37the autopsy again, was there an investigation going on in America of any greater import
12:43than what happened to the sitting president of the U.S. being slaughtered on U.S. soil?
12:49I think not. And I think, you know, this is something that is easy to have also been forgotten
12:56or that successive generations just would not know. But the Zapruder film, which America
13:02sees every November 22nd on the anniversary of the assassination, was not shown to the
13:09American public until 1975. It was like a special. It was a daytime, I believe, Geraldo
13:18Rivera new special when he aired the Zapruder film. So that was 12 years after. And that's
13:26when America got the first look at like, well, OK, his head's going forward. The second shot
13:32seems to be throwing his head backward. And we were all told, well, we don't understand
13:36the laws of physics. So that bullet really was coming from the back, even though his
13:41head went backwards. Do you know what I mean? Like the next film is Little Seeing. That's
13:46another film that was taken by a Dallas maintenance man whose camera was pointed in the direction
13:53of the grassy knoll, where many believe a second shooter hit. So I think we're just
13:59going to have to learn to live with this because I don't think whoever, whoever or whatever
14:08group was really in charge of all of this information ever wanted it to be known. And
14:11I think they succeeded. I mean, really, when you think of this, it's sunlight's the best
14:17disinfectant. Why do you think that even these documents that seem to have no there, there
14:22are no bombshells so shrouded in secrecy? Is there anything that today we as Americans
14:28can learn from this? I think what this actually really reflects is what's going on in the
14:37country right now, which is such a deep distrust of people in charge of our elected officials,
14:45of nameless, faceless bureaucrats. Again, anyone on the left who is wondering why Donald
14:51Trump won and why he has brought along his cohort of disruptors and why these disruptors
14:57seem so attractive to people. This is exactly why. And I really think this time around,
15:05Trump did not let himself get bullied by the intelligence agencies or the NSA saying,
15:09you can't do it, you can't do it, you can't do it, because he still is looking for answers
15:14as to how his would be assassin got so close to him, why the FBI burned that guy's body
15:21before any sort of real investigatory autopsy or findings could be done. I think it's a little
15:28too close to home. And so I think we're going to live with this for a while and we're going
15:33to see exactly what the fallout of this release and any subsequent release, should it happen,
15:40really is a means for the country. Well, if there is significant fallout, if there
15:46happens to be a bombshell that is released in those thousands of pages in the additional records,
15:51Maureen, I hope you come back on and break it down with me. Thank you so much for joining me.
15:56I would love to. Thank you so much for having me.