I was transiting through Dallas almost a year ago, and … well, I just had to swing by Dealy Plaza. The book repository, the Carcano bolt-action rifle, the X marking the spot on the road down to the underpass, the grassy knoll itself.
Been there, done that, still none the wiser.
The site of one of the two most famous assassinations of the 20th century is a magnet for Kennedy fans, conspiracy theorists and rubbernecking tourists like myself.
The other site is in Sarajevo, where Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated, and yes, I have stood on the spot from where Gavrilo Princip fired the shots that started World War I. (And yes, I agree: it’s a double that makes me look like a dark-tourism weirdo, but whatever. Goes with the job, I guess).
Nobody is really sure why the Great War started – the theories are made respectable by being subject to the somber debate of historians.
Nobody is really sure about the Kennedy assassination either, but in that case the controversies tend to be called conspiracy theories.
Multimedia-propelled rise of the Kennedy assassination conspiracy theories probably did more than anything to prime Americans to be receptive to conspiracy theories about other things
The multimedia-propelled rise of the Kennedy assassination conspiracy theories – the endless stream of books, TV and radio shows, Oliver Stone’s movie, podcasts and websites – probably did more than anything to prime Americans to be receptive to conspiracy theories about other things: UFO’s, “globalists”, reptilians – and Jeffrey Epstein.
But every so often – very rarely, but it does happen – bits of conspiracy theories get revealed as the truth. It happened this week, right in the middle of the latest eruption over the so-called Epstein Files.
Only this revelation was about the Kennedy assassination.
For decades, the CIA has said it had little or no knowledge of Lee Harvey Oswald’s activities prior to the Kennedy assassination.
But on Monday the Washington Post published new information unearthed by the “Federal Secrets Taskforce”, a congressional inquiry set up by the House Oversight Committee that exists to follow up President Trump’s executive orders (in both his administrations) to release assassination files on Jack and Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King.
On 3 July, this taskforce got delivery of a CIA record that proves the agency was involved in an operation on US soil that brought them into contact with Lee Harvey Oswald, months before President Kennedy was shot.
The documents confirm that George Joannides, a CIA officer based in Miami in 1964 was helping to finance and oversee an anti-Castro group of Cuban students based in the city.
Mr Joannides had a covert assignment as “deputy chief of the psychological warfare group” in Miami, for which he received a service medal in 1981.
Oswald, then involved in the “Fair Play for Cuba” group, clashed publicly with the Cuban student group, but later approached them and offered them his help.
All of this was reported back to CIA headquarters by Mr Joannides. But he was known to the students as “Howard”.
That name came up in various investigations of the JFK hit, but the CIA always denied he was one of theirs.
Until this month, when the agency supplied a DC driving license application that used the false name of “Howard Mark Gebler”.
The CIA told the Warren Commission, the first official inquiry into the assassination, that Howard did not exist.
In 1978, the second official inquiry, the House Select Committee on Assassinations (which concluded that Oswald was probably part of a conspiracy), was also told by the CIA that Howard did not exist.
After the movie JFK came out, another review, the Assassination Records Review Board, was told there were no records related to Howard.
But now, suddenly, there are records.
Republican congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna, who chairs the current assassination review, told the Washington Post “the CIA was lying to the American people, and there was a cover up”.
Who did the covering up? In a wonderful bit of work, the CIA had appointed a liaison officer to the 1978 House Select Committee on Assassination, which was raking over the Warren Commission findings. That person was none other than George Joannides, AKA “Howard”.
Read more: Trump files lawsuit against Murdoch and WSJ reporters
Researchers on the 1978 Committee told Ms Luna’s committee that Mr Joannides stonewalled them when they tried to dig deeper into CIA records.
Jefferson Morley, a longtime JFK researcher and former Washington Post journalist told the paper the “Howard” documents were “a breakthrough, and there’s more to come”.
None of this proves that the CIA was involved in the actual killing of Mr Kennedy, as some conspiracy theorists believe, nor that it knew of any plot in advance.
But it does prove that this government agency has not been forthcoming with what it did know.
And that just whets the appetite of those who believe the US government as a whole has not been telling the full story to the American people – and the rest of us.
And it is against that background that the Jeffrey Epstein affair needs to be seen.
Donald Trump has made a big play, on two occasions, of signing executive orders to disclose all the records held by the US government on the three notorious assassinations in the 1960s. It’s what the MAGA base expects.
Part of Mr Trump’s appeal is that he is not a politician, so not part of the “Washington Swamp”, with its compromises – and presumed Kompromat.
The outsider, who has no skin in the game and could force the “deep state” to confess all. So why wouldn’t he disclose all that the state knows about Jeffrey Epstein as well?
Epstein is the freshest meat in the conspiracy burger factory. Although he died in prison in 2019 (itself a conspiracy theorist subject), almost all the relevant witnesses are still alive – apart from Virginia Giuffre, the one time Mar-a-Largo employee recruited by Ghislaine Maxwell to work for Epstein as a masseuse, who died tragically in Australia in April.
She had agreed an out of court settlement with Britain’s Prince Andrew. (Maxwell herself is appealing her 20-year conviction to the US Supreme Court).
At the heart of the Epstein conspiracy is a belief that a circle of rich and powerful people were able to gratify their sexual desires through Epstein and Maxwell, who are alleged to have kept a list of names, and videotapes, to blackmail these men – either for financial gain, or because they were operating a “Honey Trap” for Mossad and possibly the CIA.
Maxwell and Epstein are alleged to have kept a list of names of people in order to blackmail them
The MAGA faithful – repulsed by paedophilia and other forms of sexual exploitation, supportive of “family values” – want to smash any such paedophile ring, and put an end to the “two tier justice” that allows the rich and famous to get away with it.
They associate it with the general malign drift in US politics over the past three decades that has seen de-industrialization, stagnant wages, forever wars and the rich getting richer while their kids can’t get a house.
The Epstein conspiracy was a staple of the influencers, podcasters, TV hosts and political operatives that propelled Trump back to the White House.
They promised the faithful that not only would they get tariffs to bring the jobs back, no more foreign wars and housebuilding on a scale never seen before – they would also get the truth about Epstein and his connections to the “Swamp”.
The Epstein conspiracy was a core part of the anger that mobilised the base that carried Mr Trump back to power.
Now that same base feels its been lied to. Been made to look foolish. Been let down.
Mr Trump has been able to win by getting people who don’t normally vote out to vote. The “low propensity voters” who have low-to-no trust in politics and politicians.
They think the Epstein affair stinks, and they put their faith in Mr Trump when he said he would clean it up.
We met these kind of voters on the campaign trail – the ones who told us they were voting for Mr Trump because “he’s not a politician” and “he does what he says he will do”.
Only now, he is saying there is nothing to see in the Epstein files. Move along. “Are people still talking about this guy – this creep”, the president asked at his last, televised, cabinet meeting on 8 July.
Jeffrey Epstein (left) and Donald Trump pose together at Mar-a-Lago estate, Palm Beach, Florida, 1997
The proximate cause was an unsigned memo published by the FBI and Department of Justice on 6 July, stating, in short, that there is no “there” there, in the Epstein files – all the stuff the conspiracy theorists thought was going to come tumbling out?
It can’t tumble out – because it doesn’t exist. Epstein wasn’t murdered as part of a conspiracy to keep him quiet and protect the paedophile ring of rich and famous – he killed himself.
There is no “Epstein list”, no client list of users of Epstein’s sex trafficking services, no blackmail material. And there was nothing of material significance in the files of the justice department that was not already out there in the public domain. Most importantly, it concluded, there was no evidence to charge anyone else.
They checked 300 gigabytes of information, as well as physical evidence.
The memo stated: “The files relating to Epstein include a large volume of images of Epstein, images and videos of victims who are either minors or appear to be minors, and over ten thousand downloaded videos and images of illegal child sex abuse material and other pornography.
“Teams of agents, analysts, attorneys, and privacy and civil liberties experts combed through the digital and documentary evidence with the aim of providing as much information as possible to the public while simultaneously protecting victims.
“Much of the material is subject to court-ordered sealing. Only a fraction of this material would have been aired publicly had Epstein gone to trial, as the seal served only to protect victims and did not expose any additional third-parties to allegations of illegal wrongdoing.
“Through this review, we found no basis to revisit the disclosure of those materials and will not permit the release of child pornography.”
That memo sparked a cabinet battle between Pam Bondi, the Attorney General and head of the Justice Department, and the two top political appointees across the street at FBI headquarters: Kash Patel, the lawyer and Trump loyalist from his first administration who is now the head of the FBI, and his deputy Dan Bongino, a one time New York cop turned secret service bodyguard, who then built a career as a podcaster and occasional Fox News host.
US Attorney General Pam Bondi is said to be at war with Deputy head of the FBI Dan Bongino
Mr Bongino specialized in conspiracy theories, especially the Epstein conspiracy. He looked crestfallen when having to admit in a Fox Business Channel interview with Maria Bartiromo that he had seen the evidence himself and concluded that Epstein killed himself.
He was reported to be at war with Ms Bondi over her handling of the Epstein files, said he now hated his job at the FBI and looked like he was going to quit. Mr Patel was also reported to be deeply unhappy.
The main source of the stories was Laura Loomer, a right wing influencer and podcaster, who herself is partial to some conspiracy theories. She is also close to Donald Trump.
But Mr Trump himself has become incredibly defensive on the Epstein files story. From Wednesday of this week, he started talking about the Epstein “Hoax” – a word he reserves for attacks on him when he is cornered, much like the Russia Hoax and both his impeachment charges, or the “hoax” that was the election of 2020 that he lost.
We now know that the Wall Street Journal had contacted him the day before, asking him for his response to a story the Journal was planning to run about a birthday present for Jeffrey Epstein that Ghislaine Maxwell had prepared – a bound collection of fifty letters from friends, family and associates of Epstein.
The one the Journal focused on was of a line drawing of a naked woman, framing a printed text and signed “Donald”.
Mr Trump reacted furiously, denied it was he who has sent the letter, and has now filed suit in a Federal Court in Miami against the Wall Street Journal, two journalists, publisher Dow Jones Corp, and its owner, Rupert Murdoch alleging defamation and slander. He is looking for damages of $10 billion.
In a post on Truth Social late on Friday, Mr Trump said: “The Press has to learn to be truthful, and not rely on sources that probably don’t even exist. President Trump has already beaten George Stephanopoulos/ABC, 60 Minutes/CBS, and others, and looks forward to suing and holding accountable the once great Wall Street Journal. It has truly turned out to be a ‘Disgusting and Filthy Rag’ and, writing defamatory lies like this, shows their desperation to remain relevant.
If there were any truth at all on the Epstein Hoax, as it pertains to President Trump, this information would have been revealed by Comey, Brennan, Crooked Hillary, and other Radical Left Lunatics years ago. It certainly would not have sat in a file waiting for “TRUMP” to have won three elections. This is yet another example of FAKE NEWS!”
This is not Mr Trump’s first clash with Mr Murdoch. According to Michael Wolf’s deliciously gossipy book “The Fall – the End of Fox News”, Mr Murdoch dislikes Mr Trump and vice versa.
The two are entangled in Mr Trump’s conspiracy theory that he won the 2020 election (Fox News was the first to call Arizona for Biden, setting off a strongly negative reaction from Mr Trump, and leading to the numerous attempts by Mr Trump to overturn the election outcome).
Mr Murdoch blames Mr Trump for the Dominion voting Machines lawsuit – the result of weeks of Fox News peddling a baseless allegation that voting machines used in the 2020 election had been tampered with to swing the election for Biden.
Dominion, the company that made the machines, sued Fox. Mr Murdoch, who initially feared it would cost him $50 million, ended up settling the case with a payment of $795 million. Mr Wolf also claims that part of the price was the sacking of Fox’s top-rated presenter, Tucker Carlson. Mr Carlson has since launched his own media brand, which specializes in trafficking conspiracy theories.
At the start of this week, Mr Carlson spoke at a Turning Point USA conference, where he got straight into the Epstein affair. He claimed the reason why the FBI doesn’t have compromising video’s of Epstein clients/associates is that the original search warrant on his New York mansion in 2007 was “designed to protect Epstein and make sure they never got any incriminating evidence”.
He also alleged that Epstein was working on behalf of an intelligence service “probably not American”, and went on to say that in the current climate “nobody is allowed to say that it is the government of Israel”. He claimed that “everybody in Washington DC (where he was a long-time resident) believes that as well, but nobody can say it”. He said it was not in any way anti-semitic or anti-Israeli to make that claim.
Mr Carlson also had harsh words for the CIA, saying it was not anti-American to criticize the agency for its involvement in what he called “horrible crimes – including the murder of a sitting US President”.
“Never let them insult you by refusing to answer your questions” he told his youthful audience.
Rupert Murdoch looks on as President Donald Trump signs proclamations, initiatives and appointments inside the Oval Office in February 2025
Pam Bondi, when directly asked about the video tapes in the Epstein files and claims that he was an agent of an intelligence service, replied at that televised cabinet meeting: “To the tens of thousands of videos, they turned out to be child porn downloaded by the disgusting Jeffrey Epstein.
“Child porn is what they were. Never going to be released, never going to see the light of day. To him being an agent, I have no knowledge about that, we can get back to you on that.”
Separately, on Friday evening, Ms Bondi and her deputy Todd Blanche (last seen representing Mr Trump in the New York trial of the Stormy Daniels/Michael Cohen election expenses case) filed a case with the a Federal Court in New York to make public Grand Jury transcripts from the Epstein/Maxwell sex trafficking case.
They wrote: “This Court should conclude that the Epstein and Maxwell cases qualify as a matter of public interest, release the associated Grand Jury transcripts, and lift any pre-existing protective orders”.
A grand jury is a panel of citizens linked to a court that prosecutors bring evidence to when they want to bring charges.
It is effectively a pre-trial screening to see if a prosecutor has any actual evidence or is just trying it on.
The proceedings are secret, and the evidence presented to a grand jury is sealed.
Only in exceptional cases is it made public, and only at a judges discretion.
Two weeks of bad publicity for Mr Trump over the Epstein files has led to this action by his appointees.
Ms Bondi has copped most of the blame for talking up the prospects of releasing the Epstein files in the first couple of months after taking the job.
The silence since April has been deafening.
Then came the FBI/Department of Justice memo saying there was nothing to see.
That set in motion a frantic spin-control operation to try and regain control of a story that has rent MAGA-world in two, set cabinet members at each other’s throat, and which looks like the most persistently damaging thing that has happened in Mr Trump’s first six months as President 47.
Mr Trump and his main media supporters rode the tiger of the Epstein files during the years’ long election campaign.
And the trouble with riding tigers is that they are very hard to get off.
The big revelation from the second Trump administration about the Epstein files is that there is nothing to reveal. And too many of the punters just don’t buy it.
Just like they didn’t buy the official JFK story.
