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Evening Brief: CIA Forced to Change Oswald Narrative, Trump’s Medicaid Cuts to Affect Rural America

BY Guy D. McCardle

The CIA’s decades-long Oswald cover-up is finally unraveling, Trump’s Medicaid cuts are gutting rural America like a trout on a dock, and even his “ceasefire magic” with Putin fizzled faster than a wet match—three reminders that truth, health care, and peace are all in short supply. Here is your SOFREP Brief for Saturday evening, July 5th, 2025.

Lee Harvey Oswald’s smug smirk in this photo says it all—he knew he was in deep with people way above his pay grade, and now, decades later, the CIA’s carefully stacked house of lies is starting to collapse. Image Credit: US National Archives

CIA Finally Comes Clean on Lee Harvey Oswald—Sort Of

After six decades of denial, deflection, and outright deception, the CIA is quietly revising its story on what it knew about Lee Harvey Oswald before he shot President John F. Kennedy. For years, the Agency stuck to the line that Oswald was just another name in the crowd—barely on their radar. But newly released documents punch holes in that narrative like buckshot through cheap drywall.

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Turns out, the CIA wasn’t flying blind. In fact, they had Oswald pegged as early as 1959, thanks to a mail intercept program run under the watchful eye of counterintelligence chief James Jesus Angleton. That’s right—Uncle Sam was reading Oswald’s mail long before Dealey Plaza became a crime scene.

Even more damning? George Joannides, a CIA psychological warfare specialist, was running an op that directly intersected with Oswald’s orbit. Joannides worked with a group called the Cuban Student Directorate—a group Oswald conveniently had public run-ins with. For decades, the CIA swore on a stack of redacted memos that they had no ties to that organization. Now we know that was a lie.

It gets worse. Angleton, along with fellow senior officials Richard Helms and Joannides, didn’t just hide the ball—they faked the whole damn game. They misled congressional investigators and stonewalled inquiries. Angleton even had a 180-page dossier on Oswald sitting on his desk a week before JFK’s motorcade rolled into Dallas. That’s not “minimal knowledge”—that’s a full-blown surveillance file.

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The documents also expose a catastrophic failure—or intentional sabotage—of interagency cooperation. The CIA didn’t loop in the FBI or Secret Service on what they had. And those agencies didn’t bother sharing with each other either. That information vacuum may have directly impacted the President’s security arrangements.

Now, let’s be clear: these revelations don’t flip the official story that Oswald acted alone. But they do shred the decades-long cover story the CIA sold to the American public. Jefferson Morley, one of the few researchers with enough patience to dig through the mountains of classified sludge, said it plainly: “The cover story for Joannides is officially dead.”

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He’s right. The CIA has finally, grudgingly admitted it knew far more about Oswald—and had more contact with him—than it ever wanted us to believe. That might not change the official history books, but it sure makes them smell a little more like gasoline.

 

Trump’s Medicaid Cuts Are a Bullseye on Rural America

If you live in a small town, you might want to start praying your local hospital can keep the lights on. Trump’s latest Medicaid cuts—over $1 trillion slashed over the next decade—won’t hit Wall Street or big city clinics first. They’ll hit the heartland, where hospitals are already teetering on the edge and Medicaid is the lifeline holding them up.

Rural hospitals don’t have the luxury of fat margins. Most are lucky to break even. Medicaid keeps the doors open—even though its reimbursements often don’t even cover the cost of care. Take that away, and it’s like yanking the last brick out of a crumbling wall. In Kentucky alone, the governor says 35 hospitals could go under. That’s not just bad news—it’s a full-blown healthcare vacuum for 200,000 people.

The reason is simple: rural America depends on Medicaid more than cities do. About one in four adults in rural areas rely on it. So when those cuts come, there are fewer paying patients, which means hospitals get squeezed even harder. Fewer patients, fewer dollars, fewer services—until there’s nothing left but a boarded-up ER and an out-of-business sign.

Sure, the bill throws $50 billion at rural health over five years, but it’s like patching a gunshot wound with a Band-Aid. That money isn’t just for hospitals—it’s supposed to cover mental health centers, clinics, and God knows what else. Spread that thin, and it won’t do squat to stop the bleeding.

We’re talking real consequences here. Trauma care, cancer treatment, maternity wards—all on the chopping block. The Congressional Budget Office says 12 million people will lose Medicaid coverage by 2034, and rural Americans are first in line. Hospitals will close, services will vanish, and people in need of urgent care will be left with a 90-minute drive and no options.

And if that wasn’t enough, the bill also tightens the screws with work requirements and limits on provider taxes—both of which mean fewer people will qualify for Medicaid, and hospitals will be left with even less funding to work with.

Bottom line? These cuts don’t just trim fat—they rip out the backbone of rural health care. The communities hit hardest are the ones with the least to spare. No safety net, no backup plan, and no lifeline once those hospital doors shut for good.

 

Trump-Putin Call Yields No Breakthrough on Ukraine War

President Trump admitted there was “no progress” in his recent phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin about ending the war in Ukraine.

Speaking to reporters, Trump said the conversation was long and covered multiple topics—including Iran and the war—but ultimately led nowhere. He expressed clear frustration, stating, “I didn’t make any progress with him at all,” and added that he was “very disappointed” in Putin’s refusal to pull back from the conflict. According to Trump, the Russian leader showed no real interest in ending the aggression.

The Kremlin backed that up in their own summary, confirming that Trump had floated the idea of a ceasefire, but Putin flatly rejected it. Russia, they said, intends to keep pursuing its goals in Ukraine and isn’t ready to change course. Notably, while U.S. arms shipments to Ukraine are currently on hold—partly due to concerns over low supplies—both sides said that issue didn’t come up during the call.

Trump has often claimed he could bring the war to a quick end if he wins back the White House, but this phone call paints a different picture. It shows that Russia isn’t interested in negotiating right now and that the road to peace is still as rocky as ever.

 

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