Inside the JFK Conspiracy: How Brad Meltzer Unearthed a Forgotten Assassination Plot

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1:06probably no president has fascinated this country and our history as much as john f kennedy jfk everyone who lived through it remembers where they were when jfk was assassinated he's considered the golden boy of american politics but i didn't know this amazing conspiracy that was happening right before JFK took office. Best-selling thriller writer, Brad Meltzer, one of my favorite writers, breaks it all down. He just wrote a book called The JFK Conspiracy. I highly recommend it. And we talk about it right here on the show.

1:48This isn't your average business podcast, and he's not your average host. This is The James Altucher Show.

2:05brad melzer author of the jfk conspiracy brad welcome back to the podcast good to be back my friend best-selling author i think we've we've we last episode with you we completely broke down as much as we could your your writing style and process i tried to analyze what a brad melzer book was, and you did it again with the JFK conspiracy, which is sort of a fictionalized version of the first assassination attempt on JFK. And I've read a ton of JFK biographies. I did not know about this incident until I read your book. Yeah, and it's not fictionalized. It's a true story. This is a real story that happened.

2:45We all know the story of Lee Harvey Oswald killing JFK. But what no one, very few people know, and I didn't know until we started researching the book is there was a plot in 1960 to kill JFK. It's true. This really all happened. There's 30 pages of footnotes in the back of this book that JFK at the time in 1960 is coming out of his house. He's just been elected. There's a guy in a car with seven sticks of dynamite waiting for him. He picks and waits for JFK to go and meets him in Palm Beach, Florida because he thinks that JFK's security is the weakest there, which he's right about that. And he also knows that every day at just before 10 o 'clock, JFK comes out on Sunday mornings to go to church.

3:30So at 9.50, right on time when JFK comes out, all the assassin has to do is hit the gas in his car and hit the little trigger mechanism that he's built. And truly, James, boom, we'll go the dynamite. And I just ruined chapter one of the JFK conspiracy. That's chapter one of it. But when you see what saves his life and why he doesn't die that day. It's the craziest JFK story you've never heard in your life. And we built the JFK conspiracies just wound up being, we were like, we have to tell this story because no one's ever heard it. And, you know, was it, so the guy was declared afterwards, he was arrested several days afterwards and he was declared, you know, mentally insane.

4:12What, just out of curiosity, like what happened to him? Like, how long did he live? Like, what did he go to? Yeah, it's this guy's name, Richard Pavlik. He's a formal disgruntled postal worker, putting the word postal in postal worker. And, you know, so two things. So one, why do you not know this story, right? Like, how do you not? The reason is when it happens, it becomes this huge story. It's, you know, it's all over the papers. It's ready to go nationwide. It's on the local papers in Florida. It's about to go nationwide. And the day it's about to hit the press, two planes collide over New York City.

4:48and everyone on board both planes dies. It's a horrible air accident. Everyone dies except for one kid. This one little boy actually is the sole survivor of this double plane crash. And America becomes obsessed with this kid and whether he's gonna live or die. And so instead of being on the front page, this JFK story gets moved into the center page, you know, second page or inside the paper and it becomes a footnote to history. What happens to Richard Pavlik, as you said, he's declared incompetent. They consider him, he's a nut. He's clearly a nut and got something loose in his head. And he has his own motivations.

5:20He hates Catholics. He hates anyone who's different than what he is. He doesn't want anyone to hold a presidency who's different than he is. And we should talk about the context of that and what's going on in the 60s at the time. But what's so crazy is he spends three years kind of bouncing through the judicial system and finally gets released because of a law that allows people that are mentally incompetent to actually go free. the law is signed by JFK. And the irony of all ironies is that this guy gets out because of the person who he actually tried to murder. And then truth is after that, he's just old at that point.

5:57He later dies soon after. Did JFK realize that this law was going to release the guy who tried to kill him? That's a good question. I don't know there's any way to know that. I can't possibly know. You know, when it happens, don't forget. So we start the book with showing you JFK when he's a World War II hero. And as a World War II hero, he's on this PT-109 and his boat hits basically and gets smashed apart by a Japanese cruiser. And everyone's decimated. One of the sailors on board is unconscious. They're all swimming for their life. JFK grabs the unconscious guy and puts him on his back like, I'm the best swimmer.

6:40I got him. And everyone's like, we'll help you. He's like, I got him. they swim to an island and on the island there's no water there's no food after a day or two on the island they're like if we stay here we're gonna die so we gotta go swim another couple miles to a new island and jfk's like put him on my back again the guy i'm telling you that not to make him sound macho or cool but jfk in his head and by the way when he's done his father's like okay it's time you got your medal you're you're a war hero in world war ii it's time to come home and get your release. And he's like, no, dad, I'm not coming home.

7:12Even though his dad can pull strings, do whatever. He's like, no, I need to keep continuing fighting World War II. And that's what he does. And the reason I tell you that story is that JFK, when this plot to kill him happens, he's not like, oh, we should be scared. He's like, World War II didn't kill me. This guy's not gonna do it. So he doesn't really give a crap about this guy. He barely registered him. And to this day, no one even know He's told Jackie, his wife, that it even happened because he's just like, nothing's going to hurt me. And whether he thinks he's invincible because of World War II or because he's a Kennedy or because he's just – he has no reason to believe that he could be killed.

7:52He doesn't care at all about this guy. He doesn't – I don't think he gives him a second thought. At first when I was reading the World War II story in the book, I was wondering why you included it. But then it is actually an impressive story. Like, you know, he at the time, his whole life, as you mentioned, he's a sickly, he was a sickly child. Like he and he grew up with Addison's disease. He was his back was was wrecked. And he was taking like all these drugs for heavy amounts of cortisone for it. And so for him to kind of pull off like he was legitimately a hero in World War Two. There was no question of his leadership abilities, of his heroism.

8:36Like regardless of what you think of JFK politically in any way, this was a legit story. And so it's important to put it in context. Yeah, and not only that, I think it was important because in that story, in World War II, the guy's a stud, right? He's swimming for miles with – like everyone's swimming for their life and he's the guy who's holding someone on their back. And he's like, I got him. I'll take care of him. Never thinking about anyone. Never thinking about himself, but only thinking of others. And so you think like, this guy deserves to be president. This is who you want to be president.

9:10But then we also show you the stories of him cheating on his wife and being reckless with his marriage and being not a great husband at all. And so is JFK, the point of telling you those stories is, it's not to take a crack at him either. It's that, is he this amazing war hero who unleashes a new level of idealism and takes us to the moon and he's amazing? Or is he a reckless, deceitful husband who can't be trusted? Or is he, so is he good? Is he bad? Or is he like the rest of us, a little bit of both? And we realized as we told the story that you can't tell the story of the JFK conspiracy without telling the story of his marriage and the infidelities and who he is because he's complicated.

9:54We've reduced the Kennedys to these cliches. You know, JFK is the guy who died in Dallas and he has a beautiful wife and he has a great life and Kennedy's Camelot. And it's just a cliche. It's not reality. He's so much more complex and interesting than that. And we felt like it was important to show you just where that rollercoaster, all the highs and all the lows. You know, and also the influence of his father. Like you mentioned how his father, there was this tension. His father tried to keep him in, get him out of World War II. Like you said, his father wanted a son who was president. And after the older brother, Joseph, who died in World War II, was no longer around, JFK was the guy.

10:36And you point out the story where at one point JFK, eventually he picked his brother, Robert Kennedy, to be his attorney general. but at first he didn't want that. He didn't want to have the deal with the nepotism issues and all the accusations. But Joe Kennedy was like, no, you're going to pick your brother. So it's a great moment. I love that you found that one. It's one of my favorite moments in there. Yeah. So basically, again, we all know the story of Bobby Kennedy becomes the attorney general, but he doesn't want the job at first. He's like, I don't want to look like I'm just, you know, my brother gave me a job.

11:11I don't want to look like this is nepotism. And they send this, you know, this very respected elder statesman back to Joe Kennedy, to the dad, this powerful, amazing, you know, legend in politics. And sorry, just, sorry to interrupt, but just to make this elder statesman, Clark Clifford, he was like the conciliary for like five presidents in a row. Oh yeah. Like he was a Democrat, Republican. He was like there. Right. Doesn't matter what you are. This guy knows how to deal with presidents and is not fazed by anything. And he goes to Joe Kennedy and he says like, listen, we've thought this over.

11:46We've been through, we talked to Jack, we talked to Bobby, we talked to everyone and we've decided he should not be the attorney general. And Joe Kennedy listens to it and looks him dead in the eye, says basically, that's great, Bobby's gonna be attorney general. And that's exactly what frigging happens. He's not listening to anybody. And I love that frigging power play that he just rams forward his belief that I don't care what you say, I don't care how many presidents you know, Clark Clifford, I'm in charge. I'm in charge. And it's an awesome little power moment. That's where you start understanding what the Kennedys are really dealing with as a family.

12:25It is a wild place to grow up. Yeah, and it's interesting because Joe Kennedy, of course, was the first head of the SEC, the Securities and Exchange Commission. Franklin Roosevelt appointed him to that because he said he wanted to hire the criminals to run the the uh criminal institution they know they know where all the tricks are so so and then he was later ambassador to the uk until and people don't really notice he was so pro-hitler they had to basically say joke you're out of there tone it down right but but it was because their time in england that jfk also this is right before uh world war ii jfk he was like a college kid he wrote a book i think it was called while england slept about how england just ignored hitler's rise to power and why they did this.

13:14See, JFK was kind of like this intellectual, even as a kid, intellectual war hero. And then his career was so easy, you know, after the war, congressman, senator, president. It was like a natural thing. But there were pitfalls along the way. Yeah. I mean, listen, he's cheating on his wife like a dog. Right. And one of the things I think that the real secret weapon in this book for us as we were telling the story is not just that we get to show you the inside of JFK's life, but it's the story of Jackie Kennedy. Jackie Kennedy steals the show from me. I mean, she's just so badass and awesome and frail and strong.

13:55And she's just, you know, again, we've reduced her and him to this, you know, the perfect smile and the perfect hair and the perfect family and the perfect life. And we do him a huge disservice when we just, you know, reduce him to that. And when they get engaged, JFK's, one of his good friends, comes up to Jackie at a party and says, listen, Jack, you know, he likes women. He really likes women. Basically saying to her face, he's going to sleep around on you. That's what he does. And he thinks he's doing a favor for JFK, that he should tell her what she's going to face. And, you know, Jackie's kind of hit with this, and you're just like, what?

14:32And the pitfalls, you know, he's a terrible adulterer. And at the time, again, we all hold the Kennedys up as this kind of mythological family. But at the time, right now we have threads and we have blue sky and we have all these other places where you can – Instagram and Facebook and all these places you can put your words out. But back then you had newspapers that had real guardrails on them. And if you went to the paper and said, I'm going to tell the story about how Jack's sleeping around with this woman, which a family did, a neighbor of theirs did. And someone showed up at the family's house and basically said, if you tell this story again, we're going to ruin you.

15:06We're going to ruin your family, ruin your business, ruin your life. And guess what happened? It worked. Nobody heard those stories. Everyone in Washington knew them, but no one reported on them. Obviously, good luck keeping those stories down. You do your best. But it was amazing to me to try and look at this world that he was in and this marriage that he was in and watching Jackie try to maneuver inside it. It was – it's a pretty humbling moment when you look at her life. Yeah, because, I mean, at one point she actually had to work out a deal with Joe Kennedy to stay in the marriage. Like he wanted her obviously to stay and so just blatantly gave her money to stay.

15:51I don't even know that story, but I'll tell you what she knows. And this is what's interesting is she's just as popular as he is. He's a magnet. People are like, they're drawn to him. They said, everyone, when you read all the firsthand accounts are like, I've never, and just to paint the picture of where we are, it's the end of the 50s and here comes 1960 rolling in. And there's a new word that's really becoming popular at this point in time. And the word is teenager. I know that seems like an obvious word, and it's not like there weren't teenagers before that. But the teenager that happens in the 1960s rolling around is very different because it used to be back in the 50s and in the 40s, 30s, back, all back.

16:34When you go all the way back, your job was largely defined by what your father's job was. If your dad was a blacksmith, you took over the family business, you became the blacksmith. If he was a butcher, you become the butcher. But that when people started moving to the suburbs in the late 50s and early 60s, they started going to better schools. The schools got better. And as a result, these kids had a significant jump in education. And when an entire generation of kids jump in education, guess what? They don't want to become a butcher or a blacksmith anymore. They want to have their own job and their own life.

17:09And you better believe their own president and first lady. And Eisenhower was this symbol of, you know, the old not right way of doing things in the 1950s. Come home, wife has dinner on the table. That's how life is. And here comes JFK and people look at him, especially the teenagers, and they're like, this is not my mother and father's president. And that's appealing. And Jackie is, you know, we think of JFK as this, you know, the first president who, you know, he's on TV and he beats Nixon because JFK is handsome and Nixon's all sweaty and that's why he won the debates. And that's just nonsense.

17:45It's part of the story. But the real part is not just that he's handsome, is that JFK knows how to use television. He knows how to use this weapon in a way that no one else knows how to use it. So they realize, oh, Jackie's popular? Let's put her out there. She speaks Spanish? Let's put her on places where people can hear her in Spanish. like they the kennedy family knows how to weaponize it i mean that in a good way the the this asset that they have and they put it out there on television and in mass media in a way that no other president has ever done before needless to say it's it's a gangbusters move

18:27take a quick break if you like this episode i'd really really appreciate it would mean so much to me. Please share it with your friends and subscribe to the podcast. Email me at alcatra at gmail.com and tell me why you subscribed. Thanks.

18:48Being an entrepreneur is a 24-7 job. And when you're hiring, you need a partner that works as hard as you do. That hiring partner is LinkedIn Jobs. When you clock out, LinkedIn clocks in. LinkedIn makes it easy to post your job for free, share with your network, get qualified candidates that you can manage all in one place. For one thing, you can post a job. LinkedIn's new feature can help you write job descriptions and then quickly get your job in front of the right people. You get qualified candidates. At the end of the day, the most important thing to your business is the quality of the candidates.

19:19And with LinkedIn, of course, you can feel confident that you're getting the best. Based on LinkedIn data, 72 % of small and medium businesses say using LinkedIn helps them find high quality candidates. Find out why more than 2.5 million small businesses use LinkedIn for hiring today. Find your next great hire on LinkedIn. Post your job for free at linkedin.com slash altature. That's linkedin.com slash altature to post your job for free. Terms and conditions apply. Have you ever watched, and they're on YouTube, have you ever watched the Kennedy-Nixon debates from 1960? Of course, of course. They are amazing compared to today's debates.

19:58It's like - Oh yeah, people wouldn't watch them for two minutes, by the way. Like people would be - I remember when I was in high school, I think it was when I was high school, maybe college, but I remember the teacher professor used to make us watch them the first time we watched them with no sound. And just said, just watch, tell me who's winning. I remember watching and you could just see it. You see what JFK is doing and he's calm and he's cool and he's like, what's going on? The reality is, is that on the issues, Nixon and JFK weren't that far apart. Right. They were both pretty trying to be moderate people, trying to find that middle in America.

20:33And I know it's titillating, James, for me to come on here and say, oh, we found a secret plot to kill JFK, and that's great. But the reason we tell the story is, what does it have to say about us now? And if you look at what 1960 is as an election, it's a time where people are completely, the country is bitterly divided. It's the closest presidential election in modern time. Whatever side you're on, you hate the other side. You think they're terrible, awful people. Does that sound familiar to you? Yeah. And that's why we tell the story is because those things, they say that Mark Twain said it, although he never said it.

21:13History doesn't repeat itself, but it sure does rhyme. And although he never said it, it's a really amazingly true sentiment. And you can see what happens there. It's just, it seems like we watch it happen again. Well, you know, you mentioned earlier how we have to put in context, like why this guy Richard Pavlik had these certain beliefs. Back then in 1960, there had never been a Catholic president. Every president before JFK was Protestant. There had never been, you know, he was the, I believe at the time he was the youngest president ever, right? When he was the youngest president to be elected.

21:49I think when he's elected he is, yeah. I don't know if he was the youngest president ever, but he was definitely the youngest president elected. But I'm trying to think. I don't know. And, you know, Al Smith in 1920—was it 19— He's the first. He ran as a Catholic, but he did not win. Right. He gets destroyed. He doesn't even have a chance. JFK is the first one who actually has a chance. Yeah. And like you said, it was a close election. And there's all sorts of theories about whether there were, you know, dead people voting in Chicago. But who knows? I mean, ultimately he won and Nixon conceded.

22:22But maybe you didn't know this. Nixon conceded, but he did get in the court system to overturn the election all the way up until inauguration day, I believe. Oh, I didn't know that part. I know that he waited the 24 hours after to concede. And JFK at the time, we cover this in the book, all of his staff was pissed. Like, how could you not concede? How can you not do this? And JFK said, if it was me, I don't blame him. Count the votes, count them up. Like, you gotta do what you gotta do. And, you know, and again, I firmly believe if you have a problem with the system, then prove it in court. And if you don't, then take a seat.

22:57Yeah. Well, and so you had – and not only that, like you said, 1960 was kind of this battleground where civil rights was just rearing its very – or the racism involved around civil rights was – there was the conflict about to happen that raged all through the 60s, which was the old guard. particularly in the South versus the new guard of young people wanting civil rights for everybody, wanting equal rights for everybody. And, you know, Eisenhower kind of like, didn't really pay attention to this issue that much, unfortunately. But JFK famously, you know, even while he was running, was having conversations with Martin Luther King, helped Martin Luther King get out of jail at one point.

23:38And so he was very much starting. But it's not just about the racism. There is certainly, that's a powerful part of what's changing society at the time. But at the election, no one was acting against JFK when he was running just for that. That was a piece of it. But the bigger piece was he was Catholic. As you said, you hit it right on the head. He's the first Catholic to have a chance, second guy to ever run, but the first one to have a chance. And it sounds silly now that the Protestants were fighting with the Catholics so badly. But back then, Reverend Norman Vincent Peale is one of the most prominent Christian ministers in the country at the time.

24:19He's the guy who wrote the book, The Power of Positive Thinking. But the guy was hardly positive. I mean, he basically was working with Reverend Billy Graham. They were literally plotting and saying, we cannot trust this guy because he's Catholic. We don't know. He's not going to be loyal to the United States. He's going to be loyal only to the Pope. He's never going to be loyal to us. And we got to take him down. And we have to, you know, we can't let him get into the White House. And it's solely because he's Catholic. And at the same time, the other kind of – if racism is one part and civil rights are one part and the Catholicism is the other, there's another part that's even more racist in there, which is there's a resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan.