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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Today is November 22nd, which may be just another day on the calendar for many people, but for people alive and aware enough in 1963 it was a day they'll never forget. For younger generations, everyone knows the date September 11th and the date January 6th. I can just say those dates like that and you know what I'm referring to, September 11th, January 6th.

Well, November 22nd used to be one of those dates, because November 22nd, 1963 was the day that President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Just about everyone alive back then could tell you where they were when they heard the news. For even earlier generations it was December 7th, Pearl Harbor Day. Ask a younger person today "What's December 7th?" they probably don't know, or at least won't reflexively say Pearl Harbor Day like their grandparents might. Ask about November 22nd, and they might not know it was the JFK assassination like their parents might.

Today is the 59th anniversary of the assassination of President Kennedy in Dallas Texas by Lee Harvey Oswald. As it happens, I was in Dallas a few years ago - 2015 - and visited Dealey Plaza, the site of the assassination. Even that many years later - 2015 - there were still people handing me flyers claiming to prove all kinds of conspiracy theories. That Oswald wasn't the only gunman. That he was tied to this group or that group. For a tourist like me, it was a place of grief and reverence, but also a place of a wacko circus.

People are open enough to JFK assassination conspiracy theories that in 2016 when Donald Trump was running for the Republican presidential nomination and already willing to lie and distort anything that helped his campaign, and his strongest competitor for the nomination was Ted Cruz, do you remember that Trump said this, running against Cruz on Fox TV?

Donald Trump: "His father was with Lee Harvey Oswald prior to Oswald's being shot. I mean, the whole thing is ridiculous. What is this? Right prior to his being shot, and nobody even brings it up. I mean, they don't even talk about that. That was reported and nobody talks about it, but I think it's horrible."

Brian Lehrer: Nobody talks about it, for the record, because nobody has seriously accused Ted Cruz's father of being a JFK assassination conspiracy member, but that didn't stop Trump. Ted Cruz conveniently forgot about Trump smearing his father and has been groveling for Trump's support ever since. My point in raising this now is that JFK assassination conspiracy theories live to this day.

Now on this November 22nd, 2022, we will end the show with an oral history call-in for people who remember the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, along with an interview with a New York lawyer and New York Law School professor who is an expert on the subject and is currently suing the Biden administration for the release of JFK assassination records.

Listeners, if you remember the assassination of President Kennedy, how do you think it affected you personally and how do you think it affected the country? Did you ever fully believe the official government report known as the Warren Commission report that concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald almost certainly acted alone? 212-433-WNYC for this call-in, 212-433-9692.

We're not asking where were you when you heard the news. We're asking if you remember the assassination. How do you think it affected you personally and how do you think it affected the country? Did you ever fully believe the Warren Commission report that concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald almost certainly acted alone? On any of those things, 212-433-WNYC, 433-9692.

On how it affected the country, I've read, for example, that some people say the Beatles became as huge as they were in this country because their first US single, I Want To Hold Your Hand, came out just after Kennedy was killed, and Beatlemania filled a cultural void that many Americans were feeling, whether they knew it consciously or not. I don't know if it's true, but you can find lots of stuff online about a possible JFK assassination, rise of the Beatles connection.

Again, if you remember the assassination of President Kennedy, how do you think it affected you personally and how do you think it affected the country? Did you ever fully believe the Warren Commission report? One reason some people don't believe the Warren Commission report is that Oswald himself was assassinated just days after he shot Kennedy while in police custody. A lot of people who only vaguely know history, especially if you're much younger, don't know that. The killer of Kennedy was himself assassinated a few days later in police custody.

That second killing, the assassination of the assassin, doesn't get remembered as much as the assassination of the president himself. Another reason for the skepticism that some people have about whether the full story ever got out there is that the government-- and this is the news. This is why we're doing this today. The government is still keeping hundreds of documents pertaining to the assassination secret.

I don't think those are the classified documents that Trump took home to Mar-a-Lago, but they are classified documents that only presidents and a few other people with high-security clearances can see to this day. A legal battle is currently going on to get them released.

My guest is Larry Schnapf, a lawyer and adjunct professor at New York Law School, who you may have read about in POLITICO last week. Because Larry Schnapf has obtained internal federal government correspondence through the Freedom of Information Act showing that the National Archives has been trying to get more JFK assassination records released, but the CIA and FBI are resisting that. Both President Trump and now President Biden have sided with the FBI and the CIA, perhaps for good reason. We'll talk about that.

Let's talk to lawyer Larry Schnapf, who is suing the Biden administration and the National Archives for release of assassination records. Larry, thanks for coming on to this. Welcome to WNYC.

Larry Schnapf: Hi there. Thanks for having me.

Brian Lehrer: First, did I say your last name right? I apologize I didn't ask in advance for your pronunciation.

Larry Schnapf: [laughs] Yes, it's Schnapf.

Brian Lehrer: Thanks. First of all, so our listeners can get a sense of you, what's your day job and how did you get so interested, out of all the causes in the world, in going down the rabbit hole of JFK assassination documents?

Larry Schnapf: Well, I'm an environmental lawyer. I do a lot of administrative work as part of that. A lot of this foyer-related litigation is stuff you do in environmental law, so it's kind of naturally something I would do anyway. I was 10 when the president was killed. I remember precisely where I was like you said. A couple of my friends and I, when we heard the president was shot-- We had heard that he was going to be in our town of New Jersey, the assassin. We went down to our creek with our little Boy Scout knives. We were going to capture the assassin.

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Brian Lehrer: Jack Ruby beat you to it.

Larry Schnapf: Yes, bro. Ruby beat us to it. In college, I did an independent study on the assassination. I actually wrote a screenplay, but my professor said to me that I couldn't use it because everyone knew what happened to Kennedy so it wouldn't be of any interest. [laughs] That was back in the '70s before [crosstalk].

Brian Lehrer: Before somebody should have told Oliver Stone. Because the political article that references you reminds us of the Oliver Stone movie JFK from back then that implicated Lyndon Johnson, JFK's Vice President, who of course succeeded JFK after he was killed. The film implies that LBJ staged a coup. With all the research that you've done, do you dismiss that out of hand?

Larry Schnapf: Yes, that's absurd. In fact, I actually confronted Roger Stone with this theory. He wrote a book a couple years ago alleging that LBJ killed the president. I said to him, "Look, don't you agree that LBJ was one of the most shrewdest politicians of our time?" "Yes." "Don't you agree that plotting to kill a president is a very dangerous endeavor? If you fail you're going to be hung for treason." He agreed, and I said, "Given what you know, wouldn't you think that if LBJ really wanted to get rid of JFK, all he had to do was have his buddy Hoover release what was dirty out in Kennedy." In 1964, that would've ruined his reelection campaign. That's an absurd theory.

Brian Lehrer: Yes. Okay, so we'll dismiss that. Just to be clear, I think you might have said Roger Stone, who's the Trump associate who was--

Larry Schnapf: Right.

Brian Lehrer: Of course, as I know you know, but it's easy to have Roger Stone on our lips these days. Oliver Stone, who made the movie JFK. Let me take a phone call and then we'll continue to explore what it is you're suing for.

Larry Schnapf: Okay.

Brian Lehrer: Brenda in Parsippany, you're on WNYC. Hi, Brenda.

Brenda: Good morning, Brian. Love your show. I was 15 when JFK was assassinated, and an announcement was made in high school that he'd been assassinated and they released us. I only lived about two blocks from the high school, so went home quickly and of course, turned on the television. At that time there were only three stations. I don't even know how to describe it, because it was almost like the innocence before-- It was the whole thing about the Kennedys and Jackie, and it's like all of this just came to an end.

Being a baby boomer, I had been-- My parents talked about World War II, but that was really to me like somewhere in the past. It was very difficult. Then for the next four or five days, it was just like you were sort of in a depressed state.

Brian Lehrer: Yes. Then so much changed for the country, like you say. Eddie in Plainfield, you're on WNYC. Hi, Eddie.

Eddie: Hi. Good morning. Definitely, I remember it, and I remember seeing Oswald being shot. I never believed the Warren Commission story. That's nonsense. I don't believe America would be in the shape it is now if Kennedy had not been assassinated. He was such a uniter. That's just my opinion. That's where all this mess started. Thank you.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you very much. Larry, can you explain a law that was passed in 1992 about records that were supposed to be released 25 years later? That would be 2017 when Donald Trump was president. Trump delayed it. Now Biden has delayed it again. What's going on?

Larry Schnapf: In 1992, Congress determined that 29 years was enough time. That the records should be released expeditiously. They created the Assassination Records Review Board to basically scour the government for all assassination-related records, and then have them transferred to the National Archives. Also, the Assassination Review Board would be able to then determine if the records can be declassified or not.

By the way, the Warren Commission had illegally classified the records. There's an interesting loss to history hearing that our former Congresswoman Bella Abzug held in November 1975, where even David Belin, who was a staff attorney for the Warren Commission and later the executive director of the Rockefeller Commission, admitted that the Warren Commission had no authority to classify records, and yet they classified them.

Anyway, we have lots of classified records. The Assassination Review Board released a lot of records, but others, the records could be postponed from release if there was identifiable harm to national security that outweighed the public interest in the information. The agencies had the burden of proof showing there was clear and convincing evidence that there was identifiable harm to national security.

In 1998, when the ARB went out of business, they basically allowed some records to be postponed, all of which were to be released. Also, there were outstanding information or records requests that were made, that when the ARB went out of business were still outstanding. Including a request to the Robert Kennedy family for records that Bobby Kennedy had grabbed an hour after the president was shot from the Oval Office.

Now we get to October 2017, the 25th anniversary of the law, when the rest of the records that had been postponed were supposed to be released. What we have learned from my litigation against the National Archives, where I was seeking the underlying correspondence in relation to-- President Trump postponed the records twice. First, in October 2017 he postponed them for six months, and then in April of 2018, he postponed them for three and a half years.

He did not comply with the law in either case, because the law requires that the president, in that case, has to identify in a non-classified way the harm, and then explain on a document-by-document basis how that harm outweighs the public interest in knowing and seeing these records.

Brian Lehrer: Aha. That's the nub of the argument. We have to take a break, and when we come back-

Larry Schnapf: Okay.

Brian Lehrer: -we're going to finish this narrative. I'm going to ask you don't the FBI and CIA have good reasons based on the internal documents that you were able to obtain? We'll continue in a minute with Larry Schnapf, who is suing the federal government for the release of JFK assassination records, and a few more of your phone calls. Stay with us.

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Alison Stewart: WNYC and the New York Public Library have teamed up for a book club experience. I'm Alison Stewart, host of All Of It and the book club Get Lit. This month we've been reading the novel On the Rooftop and now it's time to discuss. Join me, author Margaret Wilkerson Sexton, and jazz saxophonist Roxy Coss for an in-person and live stream book club tonight at 6:00. Get directions on how to borrow the e-book from the New York Public Library, and find free tickets for the event at wnyc.org/getlit.

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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC with JFK assassination researcher and New York Law School adjunct professor Larry Schnapf. Larry, based on how POLITICO reported the internal correspondence that you obtained through a Freedom of Information request, the FBI and CIA may have perfectly good reasons for wanting the documents to remain secret. That they contain names and personal details of still-living intelligence and law enforcement informants from the 1960s and '70s who could be at risk of intimidation and even violence if they were publicly identified.

That many of those people are foreigners living outside the United States, which means it would be more difficult for the American government to protect them. That all sounds prudent and reasonable on its face. Do you think it's not?

Larry Schnapf: First of all, when you look at the documents that I got from the National Archives, they disagreed. The National Archives disagreed with the grounds that the CIA and the FBI were using to request postponement. Unfortunately, the Archives was forced to basically fall on its sword and recommend to the president that the records be postponed further. In some situations, there may be some instances where there may have been a foreigner who was working for our government in the 1960s when Oswald allegedly went to Mexico City. We may have had some people there, or maybe some people in Eastern Europe.

That their names may be revealed and there's a potential that they could be possibly-- or their family could possibly be persecuted. Certainly not 15,000 documents, which is what's in the inventory now. The FBI has about 7,000 documents that they've withheld, and 6,000 of them are related to the mafia. They're using a 100-year rule. That basically they want to wait 100 years from the person's birth before they'll release a document. This is part of a bigger problem of over-classification in our country.

Brian Lehrer: Let me ask this.

Larry Schnapf: Yes.

Brian Lehrer: Since we have about three and a half minutes left, POLITICO says the overwhelming majority of the documents that the FBI has withheld in recent years involve organized crime investigations. We know that one of the leading alternative theories is that the mafia had JFK killed because his brother Robert Kennedy, who was the US Attorney General, was investigating them a lot. How much do you believe that, and ultimately based on your years of research, who do you think was involved in the JFK assassination in addition to Lee Harvey Oswald, if anyone?

Larry Schnapf: I do believe that Carlos Marcello was behind the assassination in a sting operation whose records have been sealed. When he was with the CAMTEX sting operation, he purportedly said to a government informant who was his cellmate that he had planned the assassination. A lot of the people who are conspiracy theorists say that John Kennedy died because-- he was killed because he was having this great debate with the military-industrial complex. I think he was killed because his father promised they'd have a friend in the White House and they were double-crossed.

Brian Lehrer: Who was that guy?

Larry Schnapf: Carlos Marcello--

Brian Lehrer: Yes. Who was he? The mastermind, as you see it?

Larry Schnapf: Carlos Marcello, who was in New Orleans. He was the New Orleans head of the Mafia. He basically ran an independent operation. Right after Bobby Kennedy becomes attorney general, Marcello shows up for a immigration hearing. They arrest him and they deport him to Guatemala and drop him off in the middle of the jungle. Now interestingly, Oswald's uncle worked for Carlos Marcello in New Orleans. Now, I think that Oswald was involved in some level, but I don't think he actually fired any bullets that day. There's more evidence of him being on the ground floor than on the sixth floor.

In fact, Jesse Curry, who was the Dallas, I believe, sheriff or chief investigator, said that nobody could've put the gun in Oswald's hands at 12:30 on the sixth floor. I think he was involved in something. I think he thought there was going to be a demonstration or something. I think the Mafia killed Kennedy, and the reason the Kennedy family has been-- There's lots of records the Kennedy family's been holding back, including their interviews with William Manchester when he wrote the book The Death of a President. I think part of this is they didn't want all this stuff to come out.

No one knew in 1964 that we were plotting with the Mafia to kill Castro. This would've ruined Bobby Kennedy's career because Bobby Kennedy was in charge of that operation. I think--

Brian Lehrer: One theory there, folks, as to what really happened with the JFK assassination. The bottom line is we may or may not ever see the records that would determine whether Larry Schnapf's theory is true or not. Larry, 10 seconds. Do you think we will?

Larry Schnapf: There'll never be a smoking gun, but I think historians will be able to pull the pieces together. I think we may find that the CIA had an operational interest in Oswald prior to the assassination.

Brian Lehrer: We'll see if your lawsuit produces those records. Thank you for joining us.

Larry Schnapf: Right.

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