Amateur sleuths, politicos, and others hoping to glean new insights from the latest trove of unredacted John F. Kennedy files were likely frustrated if they dove into the archives in search of names that might satisfy the lingering questions of who — if not Lee Harvey Oswald — actually assassinated the president and who else may have been involved in the murder plot.

Blaze Media co-founder Glenn Beck underscored in his "Glenn TV" Wednesday Night Special that while the JFK files are disappointing if approached with questions of who, questions about what — "What has been going down? What are they trying to protect? What is the source of most of this mess?" — yield illuminating answers.

Beck and his team, aided in part by artificial intelligence, parsed through the JFK files with the "what?" type of questions in mind, testing long-standing theories, highlighting patterns of institutional abuse, and identifying the significance of certain previously unreleased files.

Over the course of the special, Beck zeroed in on what-centric documents that should put to bed any remaining doubts that the CIA is (or at least until recently has been) an unchecked, meddlesome, and dangerous organization willing to interfere in American elections, businesses, and media reports.

Going beyond the archives, Beck handily demonstrated with a replica of the rifle Oswald supposedly used in 1963, along with the appropriate "CIA bullets," that the single-shooter narrative is plausible. Beck also spoke to Shane Stevens, the grandson of Billie Sol Estes — a Texas businessman with alleged ties to Lyndon B. Johnson — about an expert-authenticated recording in which an alleged associate of LBJ accused him of hiring a hit man to take out Kennedy.

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While the audio recording and Stevens' commentary fuel more who-questions, Beck made clear that the contents of the JFK files, the substance of which is not always readily apparent, nevertheless reveal much about the intelligence community of Kennedy's time — one that proved capable of routine wrongdoing, was familiar with Oswald, and grew more brazen in the months following the president's slaying — as well as the practices they wanted to keep hidden.

Off the reservation

Beck covered a lot of ground in his Wednesday special, discussing, for instance:

• new evidence of the bad blood between JFK and the CIA that was brought to a boil after the 1961 Bay of Pigs fiasco;
• the parallels between Kennedy's counter-moves against the CIA in the early 1960s and President Donald Trump's moves against the U.S. Agency for International Development in recent months;
• indications that the CIA was tracking Lee Harvey Oswald from the moment he departed the Soviet Union;
• the agency's connections to the establishment that sold Oswald the rifle that shot Kennedy, as well as to the ammunition used in the assassination;
• the CIA's infiltration of the American media and businesses and its apparent attempted wiretap of then-Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy; and
• former CIA asset John Garrett Underhill Jr.'s allegation that elements of the agency killed the sitting president because he caught wind that they were "carrying on a lucrative racket in gun-running, narcotics and other contraband, and manipulating political intrigue" for their own ends.

Beck also touched on the CIA's surveillance of Barry Goldwater, citing it as another damning example of precisely how "out of control" the agency had become around the time of Kennedy's assassination.

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President Donald Trump was hardly the first Republican whose presidential campaign was infiltrated by politically motivated elements of the deep state on behalf of an incumbent Democratic president.

Barry Goldwater, a major general in the Air Force Reserve who long served as a senator for Arizona, was similarly surveilled when he ran for president against Lyndon Johnson following the Kennedy assassination. Whereas the FBI spied on Trump, in Goldwater's case, the CIA, which is prohibited by law from operating stateside, did most of the legwork.

Much has been said and written about the CIA's infiltration of Goldwater's 1964 campaign. The agency's infiltration of the Goldwater campaign has been public knowledge for roughly 50 years.

Everette Howard Hunt Jr., a 20-year veteran of the CIA who was a major agency player in the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba and ended up serving prison time for his role in the Watergate burglary, told Senate investigators in 1973 that he directed a spying campaign on Goldwater's 1964 campaign.

According to Hunt, the instructions concerning this espionage came down from his CIA superiors and in turn allegedly came "down from the White House." Hunt told investigators that he "dispatched a couple of people to the Goldwater headquarters to see what was going on."

The spies apparently obtained advance campaign schedules, news releases, and "any other information they could get," said Hunt. This information ultimately made its way up the chain at the CIA, including to a superior allegedly stationed at the Johnson White House.

In the special, Beck highlighted a 46-page document consisting of numerous memos — some marked "secret" and written by Scott Dudley Breckinridge Jr., the former deputy inspector general of the CIA — regarding Hunt.

'The audio sounds convincing.'

Breckinridge noted in a Dec. 20, 1973, memo marked "secret" that agency files showed that during the fall of 1964, when Hunt "was alleged to have been engaged in surveillance activities of Barry Goldwater," Hunt was in the CIA's Directorate of Operations, which is also known as the Clandestine Service.

"Our files showed Hunt was in DO Division ... and in August 1964 was assigned to the Washington field office," wrote Breckinridge.

Again, the what was telling: the CIA was running clandestine operations in the nation's capital with the apparent aim of keeping Johnson in power.

Haunting tape

In a portion of the special, Beck explored the theory of Lyndon B. Johnson's involvement with the assassination with former Nixon administration staffer Roger Stone. Beck proved more willing to entertain this particular theory on account of a haunting audiotape played in full for BlazeTV subscribers and in excerpted form on YouTube.

In January, Alex Jones of Infowars hosted Shane Stevens and played never-heard-before digital audio of Clifton Carter, the former executive director of the Democratic National Committee and an apparently close associate of LBJ, claiming in conversation with Stevens' grandfather, convicted fraudster Billie Sol Estes, that Johnson hired a man named Malcolm "Mac" Wallace to kill JFK.

"The audio sounds convincing," said Beck. "I didn't want to take anyone's word for it."

'I do believe it helps confirm the LBJ and Mac Wallace involvement.'

In addition to speaking directly to Shane Stevens about the audio and listening to the actual analog tape live, Beck indicated that his team "had a JFK assassination expert examine the original tape," whose input left him "convinced that it is an authentic recording."

Dory Wiley, JFK assassination expert and CEO of Commerce Street Holdings LLC, told the program in a statement, "I've known about these tapes for years. Estes made several copies and gave them to some of his closest friends."

"I believe them to be genuine," continued Wiley. "The voices sound like the Billie Sol Estes and Cliff Carter from other sources I have heard."

Wiley added, "I believe them to be correctly dated and recorded at the time Shane has declared, and I believe the accusations. This does not mean there wasn't involvement by the CIA, the Secret Service, FBI, Mafia, or others, but I do believe it helps confirm the LBJ and Mac Wallace involvement."

Clifton Carter appears to say in the audio, "Well, Sol, it's been a pretty touch-and-go situation. Lyndon and I have had quite a few unpleasant words here lately over the deal that he hired Mac Wallace to assassinate the president."

"It's been hectic in every way, but we've lived through it this far and I guess we'll continue to do so," Carter appears to say. "Lyndon should have never issued that order to Mac. But we've had our differences and I'm true blue to Lyndon, as I've always been and tried to carry out every order that he's ever given me. But this is one I'll probably never be able to forget."

When pressed about his delay in releasing the audio, Stevens told Beck his grandfather tried on more than one occasion to "release the truth" but came to fear for his life.

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