THE SECOND OSWALD
New Podcast and Play About the Second Lee Harvey Oswald Released on the 60th Anniversary of US President Kennedy’s Assassination
A new podcast and play, THE SECOND OSWALD sheds light on a little known aspect of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination in Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963. Could the accused assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, been set up to be the patsy? The series focuses on writer Kerry Thornley who served with Lee Harvey Oswald in the US Marines and wrote a novel about him a year before he killed JFK. Thornley would later implicate himself in the conspiracy and became a major influence on Q-Anon and other fringe underground groups through his writings. This is not just another conspiracy theory. The limited podcast series and play is written by former National Public Radio (NPR) commentator and Peabody award winner Andrei Codrescu.
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What if the blueprint of the JFK assassination was already written by Kerry Thornley? What happens to a person when they go down the conspiracy rabbit hole? The United States is at a critical juncture in its history with unscrupulous forces challenging its existence using unfounded conspiracies. We can trace the rise of modern conspiracies to the greatest unsolved crime of the 20th Century – the murder of President Kennedy. Kerry Thornley is the missing piece of the puzzle. Thornley, who denied any part in the JFK assassination to the Warren Commission, later confessed to being involved in the plot. New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison charged Thornley as a possible double for Oswald. Thornley was later exonerated, but his involvement was even greater than Garrison suspected. Thornley is the co-founder of an alternative philosophy called Discordianism.
Episode 1: The Useful Idiot / Episode 2: Mother of All Lies / Episode 3: A White Knight in New Orleans / Episode 4: Operation Mindf#ck!
The podcast series features many of Kerry’s friends including Sondra London and Bob Newport and rare audio recordings of him. The series is contextualized through analysis and commentary by UC Davis Professor Kathryn Olmsted, who wrote Real Enemies: Conspiracy Theories and American Democracy, World War I to 9/11. As well as Jesse Walker, Editor at Reason magazine, and author of The United States of Paranoia: A Conspiracy Theory, and Steven Beschloss, who wrote The Gunman and His Mother: Lee Harvey Oswald, Marguerite Oswald, and the Making of an Assassin; and Peter Savodnik, author of The Interloper: Lee Harvey Oswald Inside the Soviet Union. Included are interviews with Adam Gorightly, author of The Prankster and the Conspiracy: The Story of Kerry Thornley and How He Met Oswald and Inspired the Counterculture and author of Caught in the Crossfire: Kerry Thornley, Oswald and the Garrison Investigation. Additional interviews with Professor Joan Mellen, author of A Farewell To Justice: Jim Garrison, JFK's Assassination, and the Case That Should Have Changed History, and Professor Alecia P. Long, author of Cruising for Conspirators: How a New Orleans DA Prosecuted the Kennedy Assassination as a Sex Crime. Special thanks to Jimmy Nolan for his insight into New Orleans.
Taking us on this journey is renowned essayist, Peabody Award winning filmmaker, and former NPR commentator Andrei Codrescu. With his family, he fled the brutal Communist dictatorship in Romania in 1965 and later covered the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989 for NPR and ABC’s Nightline. Andrei Codrescu and Kerry Thornley were both long-time residents of New Orleans, and the city’s unique culture will be a part of the podcast. Andrei Codrescu’s poetic voice will lend a distinct style to the narration, which many Americans will remember from his regular appearances on NPR’s All Things Considered.
Ram Devineni (producer and editor) produced, edited and directed the feature documentary, The Karma Killings, which was shot in India and released on Netflix. Recently, he produced The Russian Woodpecker, which won the Grand Jury Prize at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival and was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award. He made the short documentary “Ginsberg’s Karma,” which was funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Rene Veron (audio engineer and music) / Bob Holman (Kerry in the play). “The Second Oswald” is made possible in part with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of New York State Governor and the New York State Legislature. Artwork by Harsho Mohan Chattoraj.
A new play by Andrei Codrescu about writer Kerry Thornley who served with Lee Harvey Oswald in the US Marines and wrote a novel about him a year before he killed JFK. Featuring Bob Holman as Kerry. Produced by Ram Devineni and Rattapallax, Inc. November 13, 2023 at Bowery Poetry Club, NYC.
Followed by a conversation between Andrei Codrescu and Jesse Walker on the United States of Conspiracies -- From the JFK Assassination to QAnon.
Jesse Walker is books editor of Reason, where he has written on topics ranging from pirate radio to conspiracy theories and from cults to copyright law. Walker's second book, The United States of Paranoia: A Conspiracy Theory (HarperCollins, 2013), was named one of Amazon's top 20 nonfiction books of the year and made the Chicago Tribune's list of the year's best books.
Supported through a grant from Humanities New York and New York State Council on the Arts. with the support of NY Governor and the New York State Legislature.