American Conspiracies - Jesse Ventura [23]
When I came back to the States, a week or so later I had a two o’clock meeting penciled in on my schedule—but whom I was supposed to meet with was blank. That’s very unusual for a governor’s public schedule. So I asked my chief of staff, “What’s the deal with the two o’clock meeting?” He rolled his eyes and said, “CIA.”
I expected it, because they have their jobs to do. I had been with Castro and why wouldn’t they want to debrief me? And that’s precisely what it was. The two agents from the CIA came into my office—one of them I’d already met, shortly after I became governor—and they very respectfully gave me the old “Twenty Questions” routine. They went through their litany, and I answered them as honestly as I could. Typical intelligence questions: What did Castro’s health appear to be like? Was he in control of all his faculties? Did he seem bright for his age?
I said I felt that he was very much in control. His mental capacity seemed to be right-on. I offered a few opinions. I told them, “I know his mom lived to be a hundred, so it’s in his genes, and looks to me like he just might make it. Do I think this guy is gonna die within the next couple of years? I’d have to tell you no, he looks fit as a fiddle for his age.”
Their faces were expressionless. They said they were finished, and thanked me. I looked coldly at them and said, “You’re done. You’re all done?”
They said yes.
I said, “You’re sure? There’s no other question you want to ask me, there’s nothing you want to tell me, anything like that?”
“No, sir, we’re all done.”
In that case, I wanted to send them back with something to think about. “Well,” I said, “I have something that I want to tell you, and I’ll leave it up to your discretion who should hear this. You take it to whoever you think is appropriate. A need-to-know basis.”
They feigned being very surprised and said, “Governor, we don’t understand what you’re talking about.”
I said, “Well, here’s what I’m talking about. If you or your people ever put a tail on me again, and don’t tell me beforehand, and I discover it—you’re gonna find the tail floating in the river.”
They looked at me in seeming astonishment. They looked at each other and pretended they didn’t have a clue as to what I was talking about.
I said, “That’s fine. If you don’t get it, you can take it and tell it to somebody that does. I’m sure somebody upstairs, above you, knows exactly what I’m talking about—if you don’t. So you be the judge, like I say take it to where it needs to go.”
I’ve often wondered how far it went. Did it get to George Tenet, who was the director of the CIA at the time? To George Bush? Dick Cheney? Or maybe it didn’t even leave the room. Maybe they didn’t even bother with passing along my little message, I don’t know. But at least I got it off my chest, and let them know that the next time they try to fool me, they ought to do a better job.
One night after I got back to Minnesota, I had dinner with Jack Tunheim. He was a Minnesota federal judge who, after Oliver Stone’s JFK film came out, was put in charge by President Clinton of reviewing the still-classified assassination archives for potential release. Tunheim told me that, in following up on the intelligence side, he’d encountered some of the shadiest characters that he’d ever come across. The judge also told me I had great knowledge of the case, and that I was on the right track.
On the fortieth anniversary of the assassination on November 22, 2003, I decided to go to Dallas again to pay my respects. I’d left office the previous January. I was the only elected official who spoke in Dealey Plaza that day. No one else even bothered to show up. This speaks volumes to me. Does our government still have a collective guilty conscience when it comes to John F. Kennedy?
When I ended up teaching at Harvard in 2004, I decided to focus my next-to-last class on the Kennedy assassination. I knew that was a gutsy move to make at the Kennedy School of Government. I hadn’t wanted to try it too soon because, if Harvard objected, I didn’t