Morley Meets Glen Beck

A conversation on December 9th, 2022, between far-left blogger and conspiracy gadfly Jefferson Morley and conservative firebrand Glen Beck brought together two political odd fellows and displayed a somewhat schizophrenic Morley. But the former journalist turned conspiracy theorist evidently is so intent on public exposure for his new claim that he has “smoking gun” proof of an “Oswald Operation” that he lowered himself to appear on the Beck podcast.

“I agreed to go on his show” Morley stated on his Substack site, “because good journalists make a point of talking to people with whom they disagree and because Beck’s show could help me reach people who might otherwise not know of my JFK reporting.”

In response to Beck’s clichéd question “What are they hiding?” Morley stated, “What they are hiding is the “interest of CIA officers in Lee Harvey Oswald … before President Kennedy was killed.”

This response sounded more like the old careful Morley and much less like the Morley who was on display at the December 6th press conference at the National Press Club. Interestingly, Beck did not ask Morley about his “smoking gun” or the witnesses that he claims to now have which could point either to Beck’s lack of knowledge of Morley’s recent claims or a pre-show agreement.

In some cases, Morley was his usual self, spreading the same disinformation that his critics have grown accustomed to. For example, he insisted that “COINTELPRO was a joint CIA-FBI program which was in effect from the late fifties until the early seventies.” But the Church Committee said COINTELPRO was an FBI program that “began in 1956” and “ended in 1971 with the threat of public exposure.” If Morley were to claim that the CIA ran operations like the FBI’s COINTELPRO that would be one thing. But he insists on falsely calling it a joint CIA-FBI venture in order to sling as much mud as he can on the agency.

In response to Beck’s query, Morley said, “What seems to have been going on was a CIA operation against an organization called the Fair Play for Cuba Committee a leftist group to which Oswald belonged. That’s where he was being used for intelligence purposes … is this operation evidence of a conspiracy? You know, we don’t know it might be just incompetence … maybe they ran an operation and this guy Oswald up and shot the President. That part we can’t tell without getting all of the records … what they’re hiding is their pre-assassination interest in Oswald.”

Morley’s admission that Oswald could have shot the President was again like the old Morley and shows that he still harbors doubts about his recently expressed belief that JFK’s enemies “made Oswald a patsy for their crime.”

Then the inevitable happened. Beck intoned “Does it strike you as ... um ... we are living the same kind of history right now?”

“Tell me more about, you know, the comparison” Morley responded.

“We have the CIA and FBI involved in all kinds of things,” Beck declared, “like at Twitter to silence people, to go after groups, the FBI is being used as a weapon, the intelligence departments are also being used as uh as weapons …”

Morley was more than happy to use this line of reasoning to discuss the January 6th insurrection but Beck wasn’t interested. Beck wanted to talk about Twitter and the Hunter Biden laptop but Morley wasn’t having any of that.

“I mean, I don’t know how the Hunter Biden laptop story is relevant to the JFK story,” Morley said. “I do know what I’m talking about here and you know I don’t want the JFK story to get wrapped up in contemporary politics.”

Morley continued “It’s a little bit of a sideshow and I’d rather talk about something we agree about rather than something we disagree about.”

Beck relented and the conversation continued.

“Do you have any doubt that Oswald did it and did it for his own personal desires?” Beck wondered.

“Uh, yes. I don’t think that Lee Harvey Oswald was the intellectual author of Kennedy’s death," Morley responded. "I don’t think that. He might have fired a gun, um I think he knew what was going on but he was not … this was bigger than Oswald. And I think that the records that we’re seeking will shed light on this. Did Oswald slip past all these CIA guys who were paying close attention to him in the summer and fall of 1963, or was there something else going on where people were actually manipulating Oswald to make him be what he said he was, a patsy?”

Morley didn’t explain why Oswald’s simple act of smuggling a rifle into the Texas School Book Depository and waiting for the motorcade to come into view required an “intellectual author.” He also didn’t explain how a CIA plot could lower itself to allow the unstable Oswald to “know what was going on” or exactly how he was “manipulated” into being a “patsy.”

Beck wondered what the motivation of the CIA was and Morley responded with the standard line that they were “afraid” of JFK’s policies on Vietnam and Cuba and “regarded them as a threat to national security. A danger that had to be dealt with by extreme means.”

After briefly talking about Morley’s Watergate book, Scorpion’s Dance, Beck turned the conversation back to the file release scheduled for December 15th. Beck claimed, “Trump tried to get it released, Biden says it needs to be released …”

“No, no, no, no, no,” Morley interrupted. “Actually that’s wrong. Trump said it should be released, said it was released. “Unfortunately, he lied and he caved to the CIA in December ’17 …”

“Wow” Beck interjected.

“… he kicked the can down the road four years um to Biden,” Morley explained. “ So, Biden got the question … what do we do with these JFK documents, and the CIA and the federal agencies said ‘the COVID dog ate my homework you know we couldn’t do it because of the pandemic ... So, Biden said ok we have another year …”

Morley promised to return to the show with any new developments after the file release. With that, undoubtedly to the relief of both men, the unlikely confab ended.