All language subtitles for Truth.Is.The.Only.Client

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[suspenseful music]

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[muffled chat]

[man]
Ladies and gentlemen,

we have a press report
over the wires

that the president
of the United States
has been the victim

-of an assassination.
-[crowd gasps]

We will play the funeral march

from Beethoven's Third Symphony.

[crowd loudly speaking]

["Symphony No. 3, Funeral March"
by Beethoven]

For my generation,
everyone remembers where
he was on the day

that President Kennedy
was assassinated.

President Kennedy was a hero
for our generation.

The Kennedy assassination
is the most important
murder case in world history.

It's quite understandable,
I think, that, uh,

there should be, uh,

it should be so hard to accept

the assassination as the work

of one mixed-up, limited-power,

strange young man.

It's not Shakespearean.
It doesn't fit.

-[man 1] Did you fire
that rifle?
-[Lee] Just the facts

as you people have been given,
but I emphatically deny
these charges.

[Vincent]
There are two realities
in this case.

One reality is that,
at its core,

this is a simple case.

But there's
another reality here.

Because of the unceasing
and fanatical obsession

of thousands
of Warren Commission critics,

the conspiracy theorists,

it's now the most complex
murder case

by far in world history.

Nothing even remotely
comes close.

-[muffled chat]
-[man 1] Do you have anything
to say in your defense?

[gunshot fires]

[man 2]
There was a shot.

Oswald has been shot.
Holy mackerel.

[Lloyd]
The man whom the commission
concluded killed the President

was himself killed
in the Dallas Police Station.

Now, that must strike people
as impossible.

[somber instrumental music]

Hi, my name is Brendan Sheehan.

I'm a judge in Cuyahoga County

Common Pleas Court,
in Cleveland Ohio.

I've always been interested
in the Kennedy assassination,

even though I wasn't born
when it happened.

My parents emigrated
from Ireland around the time
he was elected,

and as the first
Irish Catholic President,

Kennedy was, of course, revered.

On my 15th birthday, in 1982,

my father was brutally murdered

by a Nazi serial killer,
Frank Spisak.

Spisak had been targeting
African Americans

on the campus
of Cleveland State University,

and for some unknown reason,
he killed my father,

who supervised the Physical
Plant Department at that school.

It seemed like a random crime.

That experience inspired me
to go to law school.

As a young lawyer, I tried cases
in front of Judge Burt Griffin.

He had been a staff lawyer
on the commission

that investigated
President Kennedy's murder,

known as the Warren Commission.

I often asked Judge Griffin
about his experiences,

which we then turned
into a seminar

that we present in schools.

When your teachers asked us
to come out here,

I thought,
"What a great opportunity it is

for you to actually be
with someone

who investigated
the assassination
of President Kennedy."

It's something that you studied.
So, I wanted to start off

by asking you guys
a couple questions.

How many of you think
that Lee Harvey Oswald

was the only person involved
in the assassination?

Raise your hands, come on.

None, a couple. How many
of you think there's a--

more people involved
than just Lee Harvey Oswald?

Wow! Alright.

[Brendan]
In the face of decades
of conspiracy theories

swirling around this murder,

Judge Griffin had
always been adamant

that the Warren Commission
got it right.

Yet, today,
many people don't believe it.

What are the real facts
of this case?

How can we determine
the difference

between fact and fiction?

Along with Judge Griffin,

I sought out other investigators and figures

involved in the events

to get the real story.

[Howard]
I think you have
to try to recapture, uh,

the enormous enthusiasm
that there was in Washington,

uh, with the Kennedy
Administration,

the young, liberal,
charismatic candidate

winning a close election

a-- and coming into a,
an administration

with a commitment to talent,
meritocracy,

meeting the needs
of the country,

whether they be
foreign or domestic.

[crowd cheering]

We shall pay any price,

bear any burden,

meet any hardship,

support any friend,

oppose any foe,

to assure the survival
and the success of liberty.

[crowd clapping and cheering]

There was tremendous
optimism at the time

of President Kennedy's
inauguration,

but it was the height
of the Cold War,

and the threat of nuclear war
was very high.

In 1959,
off the coast of Miami, Florida,

on the island of Cuba,
Fidel Castro overthrew

Cuban President
Fulgencio Batista.

When Castro formed
a relationship
with the Soviet Union,

tensions reached a high point.

Both President Eisenhower
and the newly elected
President Kennedy

supported a CIA plan

to aid a dissident militia
of anti-Castro Cubans

to invade the island
and overthrow Castro.

Known
as the Bay of Pigs Invasion,

it was a disaster
for the dissidents

and an embarrassment
for the United States.

And only a year and half later,
when Soviet missiles

were discovered
being assembled on the island,

the Cuban Missile Crisis
brought us to the brink

of nuclear war
with the Soviet Union.

It shall be the policy
of this nation

to regard any nuclear missile
launched from Cuba

against any nation
in the Western Hemisphere

as an attack by the Soviet Union
on the United States,

requiring
a full retaliatory response

upon the Soviet Union.

[C. Ellen]
At the same time,

tensions around demands
for civil rights

for African Americans were
at a point of boiling over.

This was the environment
surrounding

President Kennedy's murder.

[Burt]
The country was aware
that this--

this,
this was a national disaster

that we were facing here.

If there was a conspiracy,
ev-- we had--

everybody had to find that out.

When a major political
assassination occurs,

it's almost automatic
that people think

about a political
motivation for it.

[man on radio]
Here is a bulletin.

President Kennedy has been shot

and seriously wounded.

[Burt]
Let me kind of give you
my first reaction when I heard

that the President
had been shot,

which was that this was
a southern segregationist,

uh, that was the shooter.

And then, of course,
it very quickly turned out

that it wasn't
a southern segregationist.

It wa-- in fact, it was somebody

from the completely opposite end

of the political spectrum,

a Marxist.

And then I thought this was
a cov-- this was a frame-up.

This was the FBI framing
somebody that they,

as a part of a group,
that they had been out
to get for decades.

So, uh,

when I got to Washington,
I certainly came

with a lot of skepticism.

There was a concern,

after the assassination,
immediately after
the assassination,

both in the federal government

and in the Soviet Union

as to whether Johnson
would think they did it,

that all of a sudden we would
exchange nuclear weapons

and the whole world would end

in the World War III

with bombings everywhere,
nuclear weapons.

And so, to the degree

that the question was,

"Did the Soviet Union
have a hand

in what Oswald did in Dallas?"

That is scary,

and Johnson was scared
after the assassination.

He was afraid that
there were going to be
additional shootings,

and he was going to be
one of them, with good reason.

Uh, so,
what an effort was made to do

is to settle that down.

There were bombers in the air,
literally,

SAC bombers in the air

waiting to be told
whether to go to Russia or not,

and that's not a good thing.

So, "Let's settle it all down."
And they did settle it all down.

We didn't have World War III.

[suspenseful music]

[Howard]
There is, uh, something about
the community interest in this

that bespeaks
that affection and lost,

uh, aspirations
of the early 1960s,

and it comes from people,

for the most part, who've been
disappointed time and time again

by the Federal government's, uh,

addressing social or economic,

uh, ills in, in our society

as they've emerged
time over time.

[Brendan]
Suspicions
of a possible conspiracy

and speculation
about the culprits began

even before the Commission
began its work.

It became the lasting impression

of the assassination since then.

Former Charles Manson
prosecutor, Vincent Bugliosi,

first studied this case
when preparing

for an unscripted mock trial
of Oswald in 1986.

In the brief time I have
to address you,

address you
in this historic trial,

I want to point out what must
already be obvious to you.

That Lee Harvey Oswald
and Lee Harvey Oswald alone

was responsible
for the assassination
of John F. Kennedy.

[Vincent]
Most Americans believe
that the Kennedy assassination

is still unsolved.

The reality is
that this case was solved

by the Warren Commission
when they issued their report

on September 24th, 1964.

And their findings were
that Oswald killed Kennedy

and acted alone.
And since that time,

over 50 years ago,

no credible evidence
has surfaced

which would alter
the fundamental findings
of the Warren Commission.

We thought there would be
a great deal of appraisals

of the Warren Commission's work,

but nobody foresaw
the extent to which,

um, the criticisms
and conspiracy theories,

uh, would, uh, would arise.

People seem to glom onto
any inconsistent facts

without taking, uh, account
of the, the whole picture.

Over the past 50 years,
at one time or another,

one or more conspiracy theories
have accused 42 groups,

82 assassins,

and 214 people by name

of being involved
in the conspiracy.

I told the jury one time,
I said, "You know, folks,

I'll agree with you,
I'll stipulate that three people
can keep a secret,

but only if two are dead."

We all know, uh, piling con--

you know,
unsupportable conspiracies on,

on, on a volume of conspiracies
doesn't lend credibility

to any of them. In fact,
the more conspiracy theories
you have,

uh, the more you come
to believe that none of them
are likely to be true,

uh, because certainly
all of them cannot be right.

I personally am unaware

of any major event
in world history

that has been shrouded

in so much intentional
misrepresentation.

Also,
there are about a thousand books

on the assassination.
95% of them are pro-conspiracy.

And I have to tell you,
when I got on this case

and started learning about it,
I became very disturbed

with the conspiracy community.

They accused
the Warren Commission of bias,

distorting the evidence
and suppressing the truth

from the American people.

And I found out that it was
they who were guilty

of these precise things.

[suspenseful music]

[Eugene] If I can help in anyway, I will. I'm calling with a suggestion.

-I've just talked
to Nick Katzenbach.
-[Bill] Yes.

[Brendan] This phone call
between Yale Law School Dean, Eugene Rostow, and Bill Moyers,

Special Assistant to now President Lyndon Johnson,

appears to be the first mention
of a Presidential Commission.

It occurred on Sunday afternoon after Ruby killed Oswald.

The call refers
to Deputy Attorney General
Nicholas Katzenbach.

Katzenbach had been
recently involved in an effort

to desegregate
the University of Alabama.

[Brendan]
On Monday, November 25th,

the day of Kennedy's funeral,

Nicholas Katzenbach sent a memo

along those lines
to Bill Moyers.

Two paragraphs have
been fathered for conspiracy
theorists since that time.

The second paragraph says,

"The public must be satisfied
that Oswald was the assassin.

That he did not have
confederates who are
still at large.

And that the evidence was such

that he would have been
convicted at trial."

Katzenbach goes on to state
in a succeeding paragraph,

"Speculation
about Oswald's motivation

ought to be cut off,

and we should have some basis
for rebutting the thought

that this was
a Communist conspiracy

or, as the Iron Curtain press
is saying,

a right-wing conspiracy to blame it on the Communists."

Often ignored is
the introductory paragraph.

"It is important
that all of the facts

surrounding President Kennedy's assassination

be made public in a way
which will satisfy people

in the United States and abroad

that all the facts
have been told

and that a statement
to this effect be made now."

Well, what is the role
of the Justice Department
going to be?

Uh, because if we didn't know,
then we learned shortly

that there was, in fact,
no federal law

that made shooting the President

or killing him on the streets
of Dallas a federal crime.

But Robert Kennedy made it,
uh, immediately known

that he did not want to play
any role whatsoever

in the investigation
of his brother's assassination.

And, of course,
after Ruby killed Oswald,

it was clear there was
not going to be a trial,

uh, of Oswald,
but the State of Texas

and the District Attorney
within the Dallas County

were eager to conduct
further investigations.

Two congressional committees
were anxious to unleash
their talent.

So it was a, a very complicated
political, legal,

uh, situation with great
national and international
repercussions.

[Brendan]
The establishment of this Presidential Commission

was intended to resolve
potential conflicts

between many different
investigations.

As a result,
President Johnson appointed
four members of Congress,

Representative Hale Boggs,
Representative Gerald Ford,

Senator John Sherman Cooper,
and Senator Richard Russell,

two members
of the establishment,

former CIA Director
Allen Dulles, and John McCloy,

who had been head
of the World Bank

and the governor
of Post-War West Germany.

And he named the Chief Justice
of the Supreme Court,

Earl Warren, as Chairman.

[Stephen]
It was particularly important

to have someone
who would be above the fray,

whom the country would trust.

And I suppose
that President Johnson

was concerned
they wouldn't trust him enough.

There is no one, I think,
in the country who could bring

the prestige, both personal
and of the institution,

uh, to the task of finding out
what actually happened.

[Howard]
The Commission's task
was broadly defined

in the Executive Order,

to develop
all the relevant facts

and to report them,
uh, to the President

and to the,
the people of the United States.

They were subsequently
given the, uh,

the subpoena power
and the ability to grant
immunity by Congress,

uh, shortly after
they became operational,

uh, and, uh, their, uh,
first duties, of course,

were to appoint
a General Counsel.

They decided on J. Lee Rankin,

uh, who was a,
a, Republican from Nebraska

who had been, uh,
brought into the Eisenhower
administration in 1953.

He was well known
to Chief Justice Warren

and largely respected.

[Murray]
I had a great deal
of respect for Mr. Rankin.

He had argued--
uh, as Solicitor General,

he had argued the case of Brown
against Board of Education.

You know, possibly
the most important case
of the last century.

Uh, and he had done it
with integrity and with honor.

[Howard]
The Chief Justice was very,
uh, clear that his goal was

to investigate and determine
the truth, whatever it might be,

and lastly that he did not want
to have anyone on the staff

who was
with a government agency.

He didn't want-- not want
anyone to come in to the, uh...

[stutters] into the effort

with any preconceived
commitment to a particular
agency or outcome.

The jobs that Rankin wanted
me to direct attention
to immediately

were one, recruiting.

And two, organizing, uh,

helping organize the scope
of the investigation.

[Brendan] Since it was the staff attorneys who would have the task

of performing
the actual investigation,

it was imperative to have
skilled lawyers

of unimpeachable character.

Organized like a law firm,

the staff was to be
made up of teams

of senior and junior attorneys
from around the country

and across
the political spectrum.

I was interesting
in getting some diversity. Uh,

all males, of course.

Uh, you could never get away
with such a commission today,

uh, as my wife reminds me.

Uh, and, uh,
but I wanted to have

re-- representatives
of both parties,

I wanted to have
some geographical mix,

and, uh, so I then looked
for recommendations from others.

[Brendan]
The senior members
recruited were Frank Adams,

former New York City
Police Commissioner,

Joe Ball, a distinguished lawyer from Los Angeles,

Bill Coleman, who had been the first African American clerk

on the Supreme Court,

Leon Hubert, from New Orleans,

and Bert Jenner, a name partner in a major Chicago firm.

The junior members
were David Belin,

a Republican
in civil practice in Iowa,

Burt Griffin,
a Cleveland lawyer,

Jim Liebeler, who was leaving his job with a Wall Street firm,

David Slawson,

who was then
practicing law in Colorado,

Arlen Specter, who was serving

in the District Attorney's
office in Philadelphia,

and Sam Stern,
a former Warren clerk.

While all the named members
of the Warren Commission

and many of its staff attorneys have passed away,

I had the rare opportunity
to interview Howard Willens,

David Slawson,
Burt Griffin, and Sam Stern.

I also had the opportunity
to interview Alfred Goldberg,

a historian
with the Department of Defense

who was brought in
by Earl Warren

with the goal of having
the final report read

more like
a historical chronology

and less like a legal brief.

Rankin brought in New York
Law Professor Norman Redlich

as a special assistant
to the Commission.

And Norman then brought in
Mel Eisenberg,

who was an associate
for a New York firm.

Finally, additional young staff attorneys were brought in.

Richard Mosk,

Stuart Pollak, Murray Laulicht,
and Lloyd Weinreb.

And in the final months,

a young law clerk
for the Supreme Court Justice,

Arthur Goldberg,
joined as a fact checker.

His name, Stephen Breyer.

Justice Breyer now serves
as an Associate Justice

of the Supreme Court
of the United States.

[Howard]
Uh, this was an extremely
talented group,

each of whom has succeeded
at everything

he had attempted during
the course of his life,

from grammar school
through the practice of law.

Here you had people
from the outside
deliberately chosen

because they did not
have to take orders
from the Commission

or from J. Lee Rankin.

If they didn't like

what this Commission was doing,

or if there was
a conclusion reached
that they disagreed with,

they were free to go public

with their disagreement

and thereby impeach
the credibility
of the entire report.

Uh, and so,
it was important to not repress

the enthusiasms
and the investigative inquiries

of some of the more, uh,
talented and aggressive
investigative lawyers.

They recognized
the limitations of the FBI work,

they recognized
its achievements,

but also the fact that it was
only a starting point

and much more work
needed to be done

in order to deal not only
with ascertaining the facts

with precision and completeness,
but also to, uh,

answer this rumors that were
constantly circulating.

[Alfred]
The commission had to undertake
its own investigation.

It couldn't simply
rubber stamp the FBI report,

and there were reasons
for believing the FBI didn't
look good in these things.

So, there was,
from the beginning,

there was a certain amount
of suspicion and distrust

between the commission
and the FBI.

When the Commission
decided to conduct
its own investigation,

it was the decision by lawyers

that they wanted to develop
a body of sworn testimony

on the basis of which
they could have more o-- uh,

confidence in the, uh,
accuracy and the integrity

of... [stutters] the testimony.

Uh, and they then could base
their judgement

o-- on that body of testimony.

[Brendan]
The weight of the fact-finding
and initial thinking

fell on the staff.

It was these lawyers

that would investigate

the case from the ground up.

[Howard]
In middle January, the, uh,

Rankin arranged
for the Chief Justice

to come in, uh, a--
and meet with the staff
for the first time.

And, and the Chief Justice, uh,

after the amenities,
told the staff,

as he had told me
in his chambers,

how he had reluctantly accepted
this responsibility,

and why he was determined,
uh, to ascertain the truth.

I must say that they,
in the main,

the lawyers who were there
were first rate.

They were independent people
and nobody was going
to tell them

what to do or how to do it.

You know,
what I recall most vividly

from the-- that meeting
with the Chief Justice

was that the Chief Justice
said to us,

"Your only client is the truth."

And that set the tone
of what we did.

And, uh,

I wish the public
could know that.

There were no restrictions
placed on the scope of our,

uh, our investigation.

I mean, to the contrary,
I mean, we were,

uh, given carte blanche.

Uh, we, we were encouraged
to follow our inclinations,

follow our leads and go as far
as we thought was necessary.

I would say that all of us,
at least certainly myself

and everybody
that I associated with,

uh, we would love
to have been the one

to find a conspiracy

or something that wasn't known.

[Burt]
The evidence was overwhelming

that Oswald had killed
President Kennedy.

We worked as hard as we could

to find evidence
that would refute that

and evidence that would show
that there was a conspiracy.

For, for one thing, not only was
the public concerned about that,

but frankly,
if we could find a conspiracy,

we'd all be national heroes.

We also knew

that this wasn't an ordinary
murder investigation.

This, this was an event
that was going to be examined
for centuries.

[Stuart]
That report was written
by members of the, of the staff.

Members of the Commission,
uh, reviewed what we did,

there was input in terms
of things that should
be investigated,

but the members... [stutters]
of the Commission did not write
this report.

Uh, which is, of course,
not surprising,

uh, that's why
you have a staff for

and you wouldn't
have expected them,

uh, you wouldn't expect
the Chief Justice

or Senator Russell
or anybody else

to be sitting down,
writing the report.

They didn't write it.
That was the product

of the staff and all
of the staff were trying to,

you know, accurately depict what
the investigation had disclosed.

My job was
checking the citations,

that is to say,
looking at the underground--
underlying material,

the FBI reports and so forth,

which were referred to
in the report

or the 20-some-odd
volumes of appendix.

And I was pretty amazed
at the degree

to which there had been
an investigation.

Uh, I think that just--
I was doing,

I think, a part of a year of,
uh, Lee Harvey Oswald's life.

And they've knew,
virtually, where he was

at almost every second.

Ninety four witnesses appeared
before the Commission,

395 depositions were taken
by staff lawyers

in half a dozen or more cities
around the United States.

There were 61 sworn affidavits

and there were two
written statements,

the latter two being
by President Johnson
and Mrs. Johnson.

A total of 552,

uh, witnesses who,
through one means or another,

provided, uh,
their view of facts

that-- on which the Commission
based its conclusions.

[suspenseful music]

Three shots were fired
at the President.

The first shot missed.

The second shot entered
his upper right back,

exited the front of his throat.

The third shot entered
the upper right back

of the President's head,

exited the right
frontal portion of the head.

[music continues]

I did all scientific work,
which means fingerprint
identification,

handwriting identification,

fabric identification
and so forth.

The FBI had done reports
on all these things.

And then I went out
and commissioned a,

an independent, uh, scientist,

that was true for all the,
all the tasks I, I had.

And I would depose
both the FBI person

and the independent person
in front of the Commission.

Well, I crosschecked
the FBI work because there were,

uh, suspicions about the FBI.

Um, and so,
I wanted to make sure I had
an independent confirmation.

I also, at the end,
made sure that everything
we did was published.

So all the depositions,
all the testimony,

all the photographs we had,
they were all published.

And they all pointed
in just one direction, Oswald.

[light tense music]

[Vincent]
Oswald's rifle, a 6.5mm
Mannlicher-Carcano rifle

was determined
by firearms experts

to be the murder weapon.

So the weapon that killed
John F. Kennedy

was owned and possessed
by Lee Harvey Oswald.

[Melvin]
Oswald had ordered a,
um, a rifle by mail.

There were, uh,
fingerprints on the rifle.

The leading fingerprint expert
outside the FBI confirmed

that these were Oswald's prints.

There was also a palm print.

And so, Oswald's palm print
was on the rifle

as well as the fingerprints.

[Howard]
So we have the rifle
on the scene,

and so-- and we have
the three cartridges,

uh, that were used
to fire the three shots.

Now, there were witnesses
in Dealey Plaza that day, uh,

they heard anywhere
from two to eight shots.

Uh, the consensus seemed
to be three shots.

The Commission concluded
there were three shots,

based in part on the,
um, plurality of the views

and also the fact that
there were three cartridges.

The thing that people
don't understand,

those of us who are in the,
the legal process,

is that in every, uh,

case,
whether it be an accident case

or a, uh, any type of dispute,

there are always facts
which are inconsistent

with what ultimately is
the assessment of what occurred.

Uh, for example,
in this instance, uh,

some people heard two shots,

some people heard four shots,
some people heard five shots.

So there is, there is various
evidence that is inconsistent

with the, um,
the overwhelming evidence,

including scientific evidence
that there were three shots.

[suspenseful music]

[Howard]
So, the question is, uh,
where had the rifle been,

and how did it get
to the Depository,

and the evidence developed
that the rifle

had been kept wrapped
in a blanket in the garage

at the Paine household
in Irving, Texas.

On Thursday 21st,
he went out to the garage,

uh, and he got the rifle
and he put it in a brown bag,

he broke it down into pieces
and put it in a brown bag.

The package was found
on the sixth floor
of the Depository

and inside the package
were found remnants
of the carpet

in which it was kept
at the Paine garage.

After the shooting
in Dealey Plaza,

Oswald was the only worker

at the seven story
Book Depository building

who fled the building.

These are very,
very incriminating things.

Forty-five minutes later,

Oswald shot and killed
Officer J. D. Tippit

of the Dallas Police Department

when Tippit stopped him
on the street

for questioning.

[Howard]
This murder and,

and Oswald's subsequent flight

was witnessed
by at least 12 people.

They traced him
into the theater,

the Texas Theater,
uh, at which point

the police were called
and they apprehended him
in the theater.

[Vincent]
When Oswald was
interrogated for 12 hours

over a three day period
by the Dallas Police Department,

he told one provable,

let's underline
the word provable,

one provable lie after another,

all of which, of course,
show a consciousness of guilt.

So in my mind, uh, there's no
question about Oswald's guilt.

I'm satisfied, not just beyond
a reasonable doubt,

but beyond all doubts.
It's not even an open question.

[suspenseful music]

[Brendan]
One of the unusual aspects
of Oswald's life

was when, in 1959,

the former Marine
defected to the Soviet Union.

Moscow-based American journalist Priscilla McMillan,

who by coincidence
had previously worked
for Senator John Kennedy,

was asked by an official
at the consulate

to speak to a new defector
residing in her hotel.

[Priscilla]
So that afternoon,
I went back to my hotel,

the Metropol, and asked him
if I could talk to him.

He claimed he was a Marxist.

And I'd not seen any Russian

for quite a while who claimed
that they were a Marxist

and that they believed in.
And, and he said he'd read Marx.

He believed in Marx's Leninism.

I could see that he was
pretty an angry person.

[Vincent]
Oswald was a complex individual.

He was a dyslexic,

but he voraciously read
serious books,

mostly biographies
of world leaders.

I think he was intelligent,

slightly
on the intellectual side,

but very, very unstable,

and an emotionally unhinged,
malcontent,

uh, whose wife, Marina,
said, "He'd only be happy
on the moon."

His life was left-wing politics,

and he viewed himself
as a militant soldier of action

in the, uh,
Marxist class struggle.

[light somber music]

[Priscilla]
He thought he was coming
to a revolutionary country

where everything
would be simple.

But it was not simple.

He didn't like the bureaucracy.

Everything you did, you had to,

uh, go to some bureau
and apply and wait
for hours for an answer.

He didn't like the food.

He didn't like his job.

People were cautious
about getting to know him.

Um, probably...

they didn't like him much.

He certainly didn't distinguish
himself as a hard worker.

He slacked off all the time
at the factory,

but they let him
get away with it.

They treated him very,
very well,

much better than they would've
ever treated a soviet citizen,

but, uh,
he didn't appreciate that.

He thought he was special.

And ev-- everywhere he lived
he felt he was special.

One thing we know
is that Lee Harvey Oswald

had delusions of grandeur.

Uh, he viewed himself
in a very historical light.

In fact, his diary, he called,
"The Historic Diary."

A squad member
of Oswald's in the Marines

said that Oswald wanted
to do something

that 10,000 years from now

people would know about.

Uh, his wife, Marina,

said that he compared himself

with the great figures
of history.

So certainly we know that
Oswald was someone

who didn't just want
to create a ripple,

but wanted to change
the tide of history.

[Brendan] Lee Oswald met Marina Prusakova

while living in Minsk,
in the Soviet Union.

Priscilla McMillan
later got to know Marina

and learn about
her relationship with Lee

when researching her book,
Marina and Lee.

[Priscilla]
Well, the relationship between
him and Marina went very fast.

Very, very fast.
And it makes you think

that Marina sort
of set her cap for him

and aimed to, um, marry him.

[gentle music]

When they were on the ship

coming back
to the United States,

Lee was writing the whole time.

He was writing about his life
in the Soviet Union.

He ignored Marina completely.

And it was very,
very hard for her,

because she was coming
to a new country with a baby,

and, um,

he paid no attention
to her at all.

He would hit her
across the face,

and her face would get very red.

Sometimes her eyes--
had a black eye.

She was ashamed,
you know, to let people see

that he beat her.

[Ruth]
I first met Lee and Marina

in February 1963, February 22nd,

um, at the home of a friend.

And, uh, he had invited me
because he knew

I was trying to learn Russian
and that he was going to have

a couple of Russian speakers
there and thought I might
be interested.

At the party itself, uh,

Marina would spent a good bit
of the time in the bedroom

trying to get
her young daughter to sleep.

Uh, but sh-- also, she really--

she couldn't understand
the conversation,

she really didn't have any
English skills at that point.

And, uh,
so I went into the bedroom

and tried to talk to her.
I was...

not real strong in Russian,
but I did make an effort

to talk and we did talk.

And they were living in the,
the Oak Cliff section
of Dallas at that point.

I guess it was the second time
I went down to visit her

in Oak Cliff
during the time of--

Lee would've been
at work at that time.

And we went out to a park
and she was telling me that, uh,

she was expecting another baby,

but also that Lee wanted her
to go back to the Soviet Union.

And, um, and I gathered she was
seeing this as a separation,

and that that would be
the end of the marriage.

And here she is, one child
and another on the way,

and she loved America,
she really wanted to stay.

So I was upset that that was
what Lee seemed to want for her.

I came another time to see her
and, uh, discovered that Lee

was all packed up,

ready to go
on a bus to New Orleans.

And, uh, in fact,
he wanted a ride to the station

with his things and I did that.

Uh, and he was expecting--
he got a ticket for Marina

and was expecting her
to get on the bus

with the baby
and all the paraphernalia
that goes with that

and go down to New Orleans when
he had a place for them to stay.

So I said, "How about
if Marina stays at my house?

I have a phone. You can call
and I can bring her down

to New Orleans
when you have a place."

[Brendan]
What Ruth didn't know
was that Oswald needed

to leave town
for a very specific reason.

[Vincent]
How many people know

that six and a half months
before Oswald killed Kennedy,

he attempted to murder
another public figure,

Major-General Edwin Walker.

He became very popular

uh, in the United States
among the ultra-right-wing,

because it was discovered
that he was indoctrinating
his troops in Germany

with literature
from the John Birch Society.

[Burt]
And for that reason,

he was relieved
of his command by Kennedy.

But, um,
Walker had come back to Dallas

to actually be a hero

of the ultra-conservative
community,

many of whom wanted him
to run for president.

[light tense music]

[Priscilla]
Well, Lee began sighting

the house of General Walker.

Marina knew nothing of this.

He also began
practicing shooting

once he got,
he got both a pistol and a rifle

through a mail order.

[Burt]
One of the things he learned

was that there was a way
that you could shoot at Walker

while he was in the house
from behind a fence,

that picket fence, uh,
that was behind his house.

A few nights before
his income taxes were returned,

uh, Walker was
in a back room study

on the first floor of his house.

Oswald was, uh,
behind the picket fence.

And Oswald shot at Walker
with his Mannlicher-Carcano
rifle.

[Priscilla]
He buried the rifle.

He ran home
and came home breathless.

And he told Marina
he had shot Walker,

and Marina didn't know
who that was.

And he laid down on the bed

very red and breathing heavily.

But eventually
he told her who Walker was.

And then he listened that night
and especially the next morning

to the radio.

And he said, "I missed."

He said, "He moved
his head at the last minute,

and it's only because he moved
his head that I missed."

[somber music]

I think what brought Walker
within the crosshairs of, uh,

of Oswald's Carcano rifle

is that, uh, Walker,
like Kennedy, was a bitter enemy

of Oswald's beloved
Fidel Castro.

To stand in ovations
around the country,

Walker was demanding that
the United States invade Cuba

and remove Castro from power.

I heard later, much later,

that, um, Marina had recommended
that he move to New Orleans.

Part of why she was saying that

was because she knew he had made
an attempt to kill somebody,

and felt
that that was the very--

she was very worried
about it and didn't know
what to do, I'm sure.

But thought maybe leaving town
would be a good idea.

[Brendan]
Before Oswald left
the Dallas area,

he had Marina snap a picture
of him holding the rifle

used in the attempt on Walker.

In the photo, Oswald had
a pistol in his pocket

and two left-wing newspapers,

The Militant andThe Worker.

The authenticity of this photo
has been challenged

by conspiracy theorists.

[suspenseful music]

Marina, Oswald's wife,

told the Warren Commission,
told me personally,

that she took the backyard photo

of Oswald holding the Carcano
rifle, the murder weapon.

You know
what their position is on that?

"Well, it's Oswald's head,
but it's been super imposed

upon someone else's body."

[Brendan]
In the mid-1970s,

The House Select Committee
on Assassinations

was able to take advantage

of modern technological
advances and methods

to prove that the photo was,
in fact, genuine.

Lee calls on the phone
as agreed,

he calls my house and,
uh, she, she's elated, really,

that he's called
and says to her daughter,

[speaks in Russian]
"Father loves us."

And she was eager
then to go down

to join him in New Orleans.

So we... [laughs]
piled in my station wagon,

uh, two mothers and three kids,

went on down to New Orleans.

Over the summer,
I, um, wrote Marina,

a good practice for somebody
trying to learn Russian.

And then I'd learned
from what she wrote that, uh,

Lee had lost his job again.

Lee said he was going to go
look for work at other places.

And...

it just seemed that, that
he didn't have plans for her.

And I suggested
that she could come back with me

and stay at my house,
like, until he got a job

and that he would
have saved enough money

to have an apartment
for them again.

I think he was
really quite grateful

to have a chance
for her to be with somebody.

[Brendan]
While living in New Orleans,
Oswald participated

in activities in support
of Fidel Castro.

He joined the Fair Play for Cuba Committee

and passed out literature,
deliberately,

in the vicinity
of an anti-Castro group,

provoking a fight.

He was arrested
but subsequently released.

Both Oswald
and the Anti-Castro groups

participated in radio
and television debates,

where Oswald continually voiced his support of Fidel Castro.

[interviewer]
In your work with the Fair Play
for Cuba Committee,

uh, what are you advocating?

We advocate restoration
of diplomatic,

trade, and tourist
relations with Cuba.

[Brendan]
Marina's explanation
to the Warren Commission

was that Oswald was trying
to assemble a dossier

demonstrating his devotion
to the Castro regime.

His real goal was to leave
the United States

and go to Cuba and be part
of the insurrection

that Castro was hoping
to lead in Latin America.

Meanwhile, Ruth thinks,
Ruth Paine thinks

that Oswald's looking
for a job... [softly chuckles]

...uh, in-- and-- uh,

and not knowing
where in the country he's
going to look for a job.

[Brendan]
In truth, Oswald was headed
to Mexico City.

At the Cuban embassy there,

he attempted to get
a transit visa

through Cuba
back to the Soviet Union.

He was denied
because it would require
approval from the Soviets.

At the Soviet embassy,
he was told such a visa

would take months and require
approval from Moscow.

Oswald left Mexico City
discouraged.

Oswald is very unhappy,
very frustrated,

feels he's been,

uh, rebuffed,
if not rejected, in Cuba,

and has to go back
to the United States.

[somber music]

[Brendan]
After Oswald returned
from Mexico City,

again without a job, he moved into a boarding house in Dallas.

Marina remained at Ruth Paine's
home in Irving, Texas.

I didn't really know
where Lee was living, but, uh,

he gave us a phone number
as to where he was.

Marina and I were visiting
a next-door neighbor

and talking with, uh, a further
neighbor who came around

to coffee klatch to the women
and their children
in the morning.

And, um, I mentioned
that he was looking for a work

and not doing too well
getting anything.

And, uh, the neighbor,
Linnie Mae Randle,

mentioned that her brother

was working
at the School Book Depository

and at-- early in the fall year,

and they were still filling
school book's orders,

and she thought there might be
an opening there.

So I translated that--

when we got home,
I translated that to Marina,

who asked me to call
the School Book Depository

and see if, in fact,
they were hiring.

And so I called
and talked to someone

who didn't say
whether they were hiring,

but I described
this young man with a wife

and two little girls.

And, uh, they--

Roy Truly, the guy who was
the personnel person,

said,
"Well, just let him come by."

So, he didn't say
there was an opening,

but he suggested
that he could come by.

[Burt]
Oswald's normal
practice was to go

to spend the weekend at Ruth
Paine's house with Marina.

But on Thursday, November 14th,

Marina suggests to Lee

that he should not
come out that weekend

because he'd spent three days
there the previous weekend,

the holiday weekend,
and maybe the family,

the Paine family needed
some time for themselves
without him.

So he accepts that.

[Ruth]
By Sunday, she was lonely

and I suggested I'd call

using this number that we had,

and, uh,
so she could talk to him.

So I dialed the number and,
uh, someone answered

and I asked for Lee Oswald
and she says,

"There's nobody here
by that name."

And also I checked the number,
that was the right number,

um, and I hang up in confusion

and, and told Marina
what had happened.

Well, the next day,

when Lee called
as he usually did

after work on workdays,

uh, Marina said th--
that we had tried to call him

and he bawled her out

for trying to reach him
and asking for him by name.

He says he's using
a different name.

He's living as O. H. Lee,

which is the reverse
initials of his name.

And Marina asks him why,

and he said, "Well,"

he doesn't want the FBI
to be able to find him.

"Because," and part of this,
as he explains it to her,

is that the FBI is going
to cause him to lose his job.

She's very angry

and stops talking to him.

And probably
what she said to him was,

"You and your aliases."

She knew that when he was
going under an alias,

something bad was cooking.

Because he had gone under
the name Hidell for a long time,

and she figured out
that that was really Fidel.

And now he was O. H. Lee.

She thought that meant
he was up to something,

she just didn't know what.

And she scolded him.

[Burt]
He tries to call her back
the next day,

which is Monday before
the Friday of the assassination.

She won't answer the phone.

I think it happens again,
also, on Tuesday.

So, uh,

all we know is that here is
this man who's being rejected

by his wife, who's living alone,

and there's a long history
of other bad relationships
between them.

And, uh, and it's on the 19th

that the route
that's going to take

the presidential motorcade
past the School Book Depository

is first published in the press.

It's reasonable, certainly,
to conclude that it was

after that rejection
that he began to think about...

shooting the President.

[Priscilla]
So he went to work Thursday,

and he asked Wesley Frazier,

the Paine's neighbor,
if he could have a ride out

to the Paine's house that night.

And he said he needed
to get curtain rods

for a place he was going
to rent in Dallas.

Frazier said, "Of course, fine."

Gave him a ride.

On the 21st, uh,

uh, I had been grocery shopping,

I bought a lot
of groceries those days.

And I came home in the car,

and Lee was on the front lawn

with Marina
and their little girl.

And, uh,
I was surprised to see him

because he didn't
usually come out,

he had not come out
any time except the weekend.

He'd never come out
without asking for an invitation

to see if he could come out.

Uh, and Marina, I think,
was very apologetic

about his just showing up.

Uh, and we both--
I thought that,

that he was
kind of trying to make up

over the argument
they'd had on the phone.

But, uh, anyway, he helped
carry groceries into the house.

[Priscilla]
Marina realized that Lee
had come to make up with her

after their blowup
over his having an alias,

and he tried to kiss her

when he got there,
and she turned her head away.

And I think he tried to kiss her
three different times,

and she turned her head
away every time.

And he also said to her, um,

"Come live with me in Dallas,

and I'll find
an apartment tomorrow."

He said that three times.

But she didn't answer.

It was after that,
after her not answering,

that he went into the garage
and got his gun.

I mean, she un--
he unwrapped it,

he located it,

made sure it was
where he thought it was.

If she'd behave
differently toward him

that Thursday night,

maybe he wouldn't
have gotten the rifle.

Maybe he, he wouldn't.

The evidence is rather powerful

that, on Thursday night,

Oswald had gone to re--
try to rebuild

his relationship with Marina.

And we can
certainly speculate that if...

that relationship
had been rebuilt,

if she had said, "Yes,

I'll come back with you,"

that his actions
might have been different.

[Ruth]
We had dinner as usual
and he went to bed very early.

After I had put my kids
to bed with a couple
of songs and stories,

I, um, went to finish up

painting some,
some children's large blocks

that I was making and,
and they were in the garage.

I went in and I found
the light was on.

I thought that was
kind of strange because,

uh, Marina didn't go
in the garage much at all

and she was very much careful
about taking care

of turning off lights.

And I thought maybe
Lee had been in there,

but I didn't know why or...

what. But I did seem--

this is another hint
that he was distracted

or not quite put together,

that he didn't turn
the light out.

Marina noticed in the night
that he wasn't asleep,

that his legs were sticking up,

and when she kicked him,

he kicked back,
that he wasn't sleeping.

Um...

But she was sleeping
in the morning

when he got up, and he said,

"I'm leaving $170
on the bureau for you.

Get, get some shoes for Junie."

And she was asleep.
She didn't wake up.

She didn't get up yet.
He just went out,

but his voice sounded nice,
sort of tender.

Whether he kissed her good-bye,
I don't remember.

Later in the day,
she found his wedding ring

in her grandmother's little
porcelain cup on the bureau.

But she only found that later.

She didn't find it
when she got up.

And we got to think about this
in terms of real people.

It's-- it's a lot of fun
to think about this

in terms of grand conspirators.

But these are real people
living together.

Uh, his wife had just had
a baby a month before.

He saw that, at that point,

his relationship
with her had ended.

He had a job
that was going nowhere,

he hadn't been able
to establish a political role

for himself
in the United States.

In fact,
he had no political future

in the United States and he
hadn't got admitted to Cuba.

And he didn't want
to go to Russia.

H-- his life was over.

And this was a way
to go out in a blaze of fame.

He didn't need any conspirator

to put him up to this.

[gentle melancholic music]

[Ruth]
The next morning, on the 22nd,

when I got up,
Lee had already gotten up

and been gone to get
his ride into town.

I turned on the TV
to watch the Kennedy's

in, in Fort Worth
and watch the whole day. And,

uh, I had an appointment
for my daughter
with the dentist.

So, I was getting ready
to leave for that

and I decided to leave the TV on

in case Marina wouldn't think
about turning it on
when she got up.

And when I came back,
she was-- she thanked me

for leaving it on,
she was, was watching.

And by this time,
the Kennedy's were already
in the motorcade coming, uh,

from the airport.

[sighs]

It's a terrible time.

Terrible memories.

We were watching television
and we heard

that the President...
[softly gasps] had been shot.

[sighs]
And one of the reporters said

he saw a pink spray come up
from the President's head,

and I thought,
"Oh, my God, it's fatal."

[softly cries]

And I got out some candles

to, to light a candle,
a-- and Marina said,

"Is that a way of praying?"
I said, "Yeah."

[deeply inhales]

Uh, we just sat and waited

to hear wh-- what was next.

It was, you know, another--
almost an hour

before it was confirmed
that he was dead.

Somewhere on, on the newscast,

it said that they thought
the shot had been fired

from the School Book Depository.

I went out to tell Marina that,
she was busy hanging up diapers.

We did a lot of diapers.

And, uh, I said
that they thought the shot

had been fired
from the School Book Depository.

And I didn't notice it,

didn't realize until later,
but she went into the house

and apparently,
from her testimony later,

she said she had looked to see

if the blanket was there
that she knew the gun was in.

And she thought it was there.

But then it, you know,
it's like four plus
in the afternoon that, uh,

many officers from Dallas County

and the Police Department
came to the door.

I know they said,
"We have Lee Oswald in custody

for shooting an officer."

And, "May we come in?"
And I said,

"Well, do you have a warrant?"

"No, but we could get one
right away."

And I thought,
"Oh, God. We're all upset."

So I said, "Well, okay, you can
come in. It's all right."

So they came in. [chuckles] Oh!

You have to understand

how naive I was.

I thought we'd sit
on the sofa and talk about it.

And the policemen
sort of fanned out

looking over the entire
house right away and,

uh, one of them asked whether,
uh, Oswald had a gun and,

and I said, "No."

And translated to Marina,
who said that he did have a gun

and led them to the garage
and pointed to this,

uh, place on the floor where
there was a blanket roll on.

Um...

[softly sighs]

The officer picked it up
and it folded over his arm.

It was clearly an empty blanket.

And that was the point at which
I thought it could've been Lee.

[sharply gasps]

And I'd help these officers
in whatever way they need.

[somber music]

Marina didn't come back
after that Saturday morning,

and, um, but she called
and she needed some clothes
for the baby

and, and some, uh,
items that I sent her.

Uh, a mail began to come...

[stutters] sympathetic mail

and maybe a little donation
towards Marina.

Then I would put
those things together

and the Irving Police had
a squad car out in front
of my house.

And so, I'd take it out
to them and say,

"Could you get this to Marina?"

And they did, I guess.

And one day, it included a,

a book that she had been
reading to me from in Russian.

And, uh,
I thought she might want it.

And I-- it was a housekeeping
advice and information.

A couple of days later,

two men came out
from Secret Service

and one of them was
a Russian speaking person.

He was the one
that interviewed me.

He said, "Mrs.--"
he showed me this note.

He said,
"Have you ever seen this note?"

"No, I haven't seen it."

"Do you recognize
the handwriting?"

No, didn't recognize
the handwriting.

"Mrs. Paine,
you sent this note to Marina."

And I said,
"No, I don't think so."

Um, and we went back and forth.

This was the first
and thankfully the only time

somebody accused me of being...
nefarious.

And he said,
"Well, it was in a book."

I said, "Oh, I sent a book,

but I didn't realize
this note had been in it."

And what I've learned
from news accounts

and from testimonies later
was that this was a note

that Oswald had written
for Marina

at the time in, uh, April 1963,

that he took his rifle and tried
to kill General Edwin A. Walker.

And it--
it was very incriminating.

"If I'm taken,
this is where the jail is,

don't keep my clothes,
but you should keep my papers."

It was very telling to me

that this was
authentically written

by Oswald to give to Marina.

[Brendan]
After Oswald was killed,

Marina was living
under the protection
of the Secret Service.

The relationship
was not the same.

Um, she was very embarrassed

that this had happened to me.

And, you know,

um,

and it-- this has been
such a terrible event
in both our lives

that it loomed
when we've met together.

There it was, so huge.

We--
we shared such a terrible grief.

[suspenseful music]

[Brendan]
Everything was pointing
to Oswald as the killer.

What clues were there
that he was the lone gunman?

Abraham Zapruder was
an amateur film buff

who happened to be
filming the motorcade.

This film became
a key piece of evidence

for all of the investigations
to follow.

[Howard]
Four or five members
of the staff,

supplemented by FBI
and Secret Service Agents,

sat down with the Zapruder film
repeatedly

and tried to analyze exactly,
uh, which bullets had hit whom,

uh, in the vehicle
and in what order.

Eventually, the consensus
of the group was that,

making rough judgements
as to when the President

first began to exhibit signs
that he had been wounded,

uh, and examining Connally's
first evidence of being wounded,

uh, that it is unlikely

that there was time
within that interval

for a separate shot to be fired

by Oswald from the same weapon.

And that produced early on
a hypothesis that, uh,

a single bullet, uh, had, uh,
wounded both the President
in his back

and exiting from his throat

and then, uh, entering, uh,
Connally's, uh, body

to create his injuries
in his back,

his wrist, and his thigh.

So, from that examination
and debate, uh...

[stuttering] emerged
a growing conviction

that the FBI conclusion in both
the first and secondary reports

uh, as to the wounds

and the impact
of the bullets was incorrect,

uh, and it led eventually
to a reenactment

o-- of the, uh, motorcade
and, and the assassination,

uh, that the staff recommended

and--
to Rankin and it was opposed

by both the FBI
and the Secret Service.

And so,
what one did during the, uh,

the reenactment was
to line up, uh,

agents who pretended
to be sitting

in the identical position
as the President,

with the Governor Connally
sitting in a jump seat

below and slightly
to the left of the President.

And from Oswald's perspective,

uh, there was no way
for the bullet

to go after exiting
from the President's neck

other than into Connolly.

If it had not hit Connally,
then-- there is no evidence

that it hit
any other part of the car.

That was more or less verified

because, you know,
the answer is,

to the single bullet theory is,

well, how else can you explain

the bullet that exited
from the President's throat?

An-- and the fact is
that there is no logical answer

and that the early description
of, of the single bullet

wounding both people
being a magic bullet

is, in fact, quite--
in the contrary point is true,

that that bullet, uh,
didn't change its mind
where it was going.

Uh, it exited
from the President's throat

on a, on a downward trajectory

a-- and wounded
Governor Connally.

Governor Connally insisted
then and until his death

that he had not been hit
by the same bullet

that hit the President.

Uh, as I have said,

he was the Governor of Texas,

he wanted his own bullet.

The conspiracy theorists claim
that the second bullet

was the magic bullet,
but there was no magic bullet.

That's just a myth, an invention
of the conspiracy theorists.

What they do in their sketches,

they place Governor Connally

directly in front
of President Kennedy

in the presidential limousine,
which he was not.

And then they argue
that a shot fired

from right to left on a downward
trajectory

towards the President

and passing on a straight line
through the president's body.

Once it exited the front
of the president's body,

to hit Connally, they say,
it would've had to make
a right turn in midair

and then make
a left turn in midair.

Well, of course, if you start
out with an erroneous premise,

everything that follows
makes a heck of a lot of sense.

The only problem is
that it's wrong.

Uh, the reality is that Connally

was not seated directly
in front of the president.

He was seated in a jump seat

to the President's,
uh, left front.

So the orientation
of Connally's body

vis-à-vis Kennedy's was such

that a bullet
passing on a straight line
through the president's body

would've had
to go on and hit Connally

for the simple reason
it had nowhere else to go.

[Brendan]
The House Select Committee
on Assassinations also looked

into this during
their investigation

in the mid-1970s.

So, the question is,
what's the nature of the wound

in th-- in John Connally's back?

And I can testify to this.

I asked John Connally
in my office,

who's standing there
with his wife,

"Would you take your shirt off?"

So, I got him
to take his shirt off

and he still has the wound,

not anymore, and the wound
is not an entry wound

in a sense
that the bullet is coming

with not having hit
anything else.

When a bullet hits something,

it-- the-- it's called tumbling.

And the bullet
that hit Kennedy's, I mean,

John Connally's back had tumbled

and actually came in
to hit it this way.

And so the wound
in his back is oval,

indicating that the bullet that
hit him was not coming straight,

which is an indication
that it hit something else.

So, our conclusion,
unequivocally,

two shots from behind,

uh, Depository.

And one shot went
through President Kennedy

and struck Governor Connally?

Correct. And so that
the Warren Commission's posit

of a single bullet theory
was correct.

-Now...
-Now we proved it.

We didn't hypothesize it,
we proved it.

Now, there's another reason
why the conspiracy theorists

alleged that this was
a magic bullet.

They claimed that
when it was recovered,

it was in pristine condition.

And they said, "How could that
be? It went through two bodies,

Connally's body
and the President's.

It couldn't be
in pristine condition."

Uh, well, the point is it was
not in pristine condition.

The base of the bullet,

which the conspiracy theorists
never show in their books,

was badly damaged,

2.4 grains lost in weight,

so it was not a pristine bullet.

Secondly, this bullet was a,
uh, fully metal jacketed,

military-type bullet designed
to cause a lot of damage

to anything it hits
without causing
too much damage to itself.

Uh, firearms experts for the,
uh, Warren Commission

and the House Select Committee
both agree that that bullet

could have caused
all the damage it did

without becoming
more deformed itself.

And the thing here,

something-- interesting
thing here and the irony

is that those conspiracy
theorists have wrapped

that magic bullet tag
around the neck

of the Warren Commission

for 50 years, successfully,
I might add.

It turns out it was only they
who had a magic bullet.

[Brendan]
Another popular theory
that has swirled continuously

is the idea
that President Kennedy

was in fact struck by a bullet
fired from in front,

from the so called Grassy Knoll.

This was fueled, in part,
when the Zapruder film

was finally shown to the public.

[Vincent]
The first time
the American people saw this

was on the evening
of March 6th, 1975,

network TV, ABC.

Millions of Americans
seeing the President's head

snapped to the rear concluded
and understandably saw

on the simple law of physics,

the shot must have
come from the,

uh, right front
where the Grassy Knoll was,

not the right rear
where Oswald was

in the Book Depository building.

We have photographs
of Kennedy's brain

and the brain has
two hemispheres.

This is the hemisphere
that faced the Grassy Knoll.

This is the hemisphere
that faced the plaza.

This hemisphere was destroyed

by the bullet that came
in the back of his head

and exited
the front of his head.

Just totally destroyed.

This hemisphere is fine.

If the bullet had shot him
from this direction,

it would've had
to have dissipated

before it got
halfway across his brain.

So there's no evidence
in his brain

that the shot
from the Grassy Knoll hit him.

Now, the people say, "Well,

what about the evidence
of the head apparently
snapping back like this?

Isn't that the head

being snapped back
by a bullet hitting?"

And my answer is no,

because I've looked
at the President's brain

and I've looked
at the President's skull

and there's
no evidence from a bullet
from the front right.

"Well, professor,
what about the snap back?

Do you have
an explanation for that?"

Uh, when Kennedy's brain
was hit,

it released electrical stimulus

to all of his muscles
simultaneously.

And the strongest muscle
in his body would be
his back muscle.

And when all the muscles
tighten up,

which one wins?

The back muscle,
and that's what snaps him back.

Whatever the reason
his head snapped back,

was he shot
from the front right?

And the answer to that is no.

I know what his skull
looks like,

I know what his brain
looks like.

No evidence of shot
from the front right.

So if one occurred,
it didn't hit him.

[Brendan] My own research took me to look at the Zapruder film itself.

I wanted to see
what I could learn

from closely watching
some of the key frames.

So, can we play the,
uh, film through?

We see the President's motorcade
coming down the street

with the President,

the limousine,

the crowd cheering.

The President holds
his hands to his neck,
and you see the shot,

see the First Lady going
on the back of the limousine,

and then, out of sight.

So why don't we, if we could,
let's go to the fatal shot,

which is, I think,
right before the fatal shot,

-frame 312 first. Alright.
-[Chris] Ok, here's 312.

So at 312, we have
the President holding
his hands on his neck,

looking at the First Lady
and the First Lady is
reaching over,

looking at him as his shoulders
are turned towards her.

And then,
if we can go to the next frame

which is frame 313, which is
the fatal shot, if you will.

And then, just so you know,

if you back it up
again to 312...

-Here is 312.
-...and then, before you get
to 312, 313,

if you look at the line,

if you draw a line
on Jackie's head or hat

and you see
the back of his head,

it's all intact, and we see
the frame right there,

so that clearly there is nothing
missing between 312 and 313.

And then, the shot.

We see the President's head
moving forward,

we see the President's back
moving forward,

and we see the brain matter,

all moving forward
to the front of the car.

Now, if we can...

move forward from frame 313

to frame 318,

you see the President's body
jerking backward

from a neuromuscular reaction

as a result
of the right hemisphere

of the President's brain
being blown out from the shot.

Clearly, there is no evidence

of anything striking
the President from the front.

[suspenseful music]

[Brendan]
Further evidence
could have been offered

in the autopsy photographs
and X-rays.

But during the Commission's investigation,

Chief Justice Warren was
so horrified by these images

that he refused to allow
this material to be released

to the Commission,
it's staff and to the public.

The Chief Justice testifi--
testified

and has written that he did
in fact see the materials,

which were delivered
by custodian to his
Supreme Court chambers,

and he looked at the pictures,

uh, found them horrific
and gave them back
to the custodian.

And he felt that he could not
let the documents be seen
by a witness

without necessarily
making them public.

And that's the mistake
that I feel was made,

because the controversy
about the single bullet
conclusion,

uh, was also wide spread
and it had direct relationship

to the autopsy materials,
which were absent.

Uh, the combination
of the lack of those materials
and the inherent, uh,

uh, the questions raised
by the single bullet theory,

uh, fostered a greater
and stronger, uh, um,

body of criticism
to the Commission report

that might otherwise
have developed.

Uh, eventually,
when those materials

were made available
over the years,

21 pathologists
had looked at the materials

supporting
the single bullet finding

and 20 out of 21 agreed
with that finding.

[Brendan]
The House Select Committee
spent significant resources

on modern technology
for their analysis,

which they used to re-examine
all of the evidence
of the assassination,

including forensic pathologists to look at the autopsy.

[Robert]
They took all of the evidence.

They took
the autopsy photographs.

The doctors looked at them

and they determined,

from the bullet holes
in the President,

that both shots came
from behind him and up.

And they did that based on...
[softly sighs]

...a principle called,

um, abrasion collars.

If a bullet goes down
through my skin like this,

it will burn my skin
in a circle.

And if the bullet went
straight in,

it burns a circle straight.

The bullet comes in
from the side,

it burns the ci--
the circle with an oblong,

so, you can determine direction

of bullets by looking
at the hole that goes in

and the same process occurs
on the other side, going out.

This is an anatomically
correct drawing

of the President
as if he was standing up.

And we have one
entry wound here in the back,

and one entry wound here.

This is an abrasion
collar with an entry wound

and there's an exit wound
on Kennedy's neck about here.

And-- remember,
this is anatomically correct,

the President was
in a different position
when the bullets hit him,

and that's the one
that hit him in the head.

This is an anatomically
correct...

drawing from the Zapruder film.

And a--
it's a combination of that

and the photographs
of the skull.

You have an entry wound here,

and an exit wound here.

And in fact, you could see

the beveling on this exit wound,

it's a small hole on the inside

and a large hole on the outside.

[Brendan]
So the analysis
of these pieces of evidence

by the Warren Commission
and later confirmed

by the House Select Committee
concluded that,

of the three shots
fired by Oswald,

only two hit the President
and Governor Connally.

However, at the end
of the House Committee's
reexamination,

additional acoustic evidence
came to light

of a possible fourth gunshot,

which would indicate that there was a second shooter.

What was revealed was
that one of the motorcycle
police officers

had his microphone
stuck in the transmit mode

and the Dallas Police Dictabelt recording of that microphone

seemed to contain a sound wave
of an additional shot.

We made an effort to find, uh,

the top acoustics people
in the country.

We said,
"Would you look at the tape

and see what you can determine?"

And they did that,
and they came back

and they said, "Uh,

we have some inconvenient news."
[chuckles]

"There were indeed
three shots in the Plaza

that probably came
from the Depository.

But there's evidence on the tape

of a shot right before
Oswald's third shot,

and it's from the Grassy Knoll."

So we asked them,
"How confident are you

that there was a shot
from the Grassy Knoll?"

And they said,
"For that one, 50/50."

They said for the other three,

they were up in the 80s and 90s.

Uh, and,

"You mean,
the fact of conspiracy
in the assassination

is a flip of the coin?"

And he said, "Basically, yes."

And then we had two experts
who looked at what,

uh, Bolt,
Beranek and Newman did.

And then we tried
to figure out is,

was there any way to extend this

and increase
our degree of confidence

for the shot
from the Grassy Knoll?

And they did it.

And they got up--
the confidence up to about 95%

that there was a shot
from the Grassy Knoll.

[Brendan]
This conclusion was
controversial

and prompted dissents
by Committee Members.

Their conclusions hinged
on determining

which motorcycle had
the stuck microphone.

Using photos and film
of the motorcade,

they determined that it had to belong to motorcycle officer

H. B. McLain
for their theory to work.

McLain testified about
his actions in the motorcade

before the House
Select Committee

and later recalled
his experiences

in a 2003 interview.

I asked them if I could
listen to the tape.

"Well, you don't need
to listen to that."

So, I just said
everything was possible.

And when I got back to town,

I went back to work
the next day,

J. C. Bowles called me
over to his office.

He said "Mac,
have you heard them,
have you heard those tapes

before you went up there?"
I said, "No, Sir.

And they wouldn't let me
listen to them up there."

So he sent me in--

took me into one
of the other rooms in there,

sat me down and said,
"I want you to listen to these."

So I sat down
and listened to them.

When I got through,
I came back out

and said, "No, it wasn't mine.

Couldn't be."

Because you can tell
the difference in the sound

of a three wheeler running
and a solo motorcycle running.

And it was not mine.

[upbeat music]

[Brendan]
Steve Barber,

a rock drummer from Shelby,
Ohio,

believed conspiracy theories

and was excited to learn in 1979

that the recordings were
going to be published

in an upcoming issue
of Gallery Magazine.

I got my copy,

I put this record on,

and I'm listening
intently to this thing.

I mean, just earphones,

anything I can get my hands on.

I want to hear
every little sound.

No gunshots,
you can't hear any gunshots.

So I'm like,
"Wh-- where are they?"

And I just, you know, I figure,

"Well,
they're in there somewhere,

because there's a lot
of different little sounds."

[Brendan]
What Barber discovered
was known as crosstalk.

That occurs when
one transmission
from one channel

is picked up on another.

The Dallas Police Department
was using two channels

during this event.

Channel One was
the regular police channel,

which recorded
the stuck open microphone.

Channel Two was reserved
for motorcade communications.

He was surprised to hear,

barely audibly
on the Channel One recording,

the same words
he also heard on Channel Two.

That was the crosstalk.

[crackly recordings]

[muffled chat]

There's a voice that's buried

within all that motorcycle noise
and so forth, and I thought,

"I want to-- I'm going to figure
out what's going on here,

see if I can figure out
what this guy is saying."

[Brendan]
The words Barber heard were
Dallas County Sheriff Decker

ordering his men to,
"Hold everything secure

until the investigators
get there."

This transmission on both
recordings provide a timeline

for when the Channel One
recording was made.

So then, when I discovered this
Sheriff Decker transmission,

it proved that section
of the tape is actually
90 seconds

after the, the shooting.

There are no gunshots
on that recording.

We are right back to square one.
The Warren Commission stands,

"Three gunshots
from Lee Harvey Oswald,

nobody else."

[Brendan]
In 1980, The National Academy of Sciences

reexamined
the acoustic evidence.

Barber sent them
his conclusions.

On May 14th, 1982,

the National Academy of Sciences

released their report agreeing
with Barber's assessment.

In October 2013,

a new study commissioned
by Professor Larry Sabato

of the University of Virginia

and conducted by a private firm, Sonalysts,

concluded that the motorcycle
with an open microphone

was traveling
at a high rate speed,

indicating that it was not
in the presidential motorcade.

Sadly, once Barber concluded

that the Warren Commission
was correct,

his friends in the conspiracy
community began attacking him

and those attacks
continue to this day.

This was the only
scientific proof

of a conspiracy that existed.

And...

you know, I came along
and I guess I killed that.

Searching for the truth,
and I f--

found something I didn't expect,
and it...

Here we are, so--

-50-what, 53 years later?
-[Brendan] Right. Right.

-Right.
-Man...

[suspenseful music]

[Brendan] Could there still have been more people connected to the murder?

How did Jack Ruby fit in?

Although both
the Warren Commission

and the House Select Committee
ruled out Cuba,

the Soviet Union,
the FBI and the CIA,

Robert Blakey believes
a conspiracy involving a noted underworld figure was possible.

Do you think that Oswald was
involved in a mafia/organized
crime conspiracy?

No.
Not knowingly organized crime.

My posit, and you have to bring
two things together,

you've got to bring Oswald
together and Ruby together.

Well, the general rule
is that you can only conspire

with other people that you know
or associated with.

So if you want to find out
if there's a conspiracy,

what you do is a link analysis
of the individual.

All the leads
that run out from Oswald

run to Communist groups
of some kind.

All the things
that run out from Ruby

are crime connected.

So why did Oswald
kill the President?

If it was part of a conspiracy,

it was Communist,

and we've already decided
the Communists had
no stake in that.

If you take Ruby and say,
"Who are Ruby's connections?

Uh, who are they connected to?"

[Brendan]
Blakey believes that
the connections between Ruby

and Oswald flow through
New Orleans' crime boss,
Carlos Marcello,

who had a well-publicized grudge against the Kennedys.

The Kennedys were trying
to deport Marcello.

Ruby was certainly exposed
to crime figures

in his business dealings.

For Oswald, it was less clear.

When Oswald was 16,

he served
in the Civil Air Patrol

under Captain David Ferrie,

who would, by 1963,

be an investigator for Carlos
Marcello's legal team.

Another connection
to Marcello was Oswald's
uncle Dutz Murret,

a New Orleans bookmaker.

For me, the critical problem
between anybody in New Orleans

and Oswald in Dallas is that,

uh, when Oswald left
New Orleans,

uh, he went to Mexico City.

He didn't even have
the knowledge himself

that he was going
to go to Dallas.

He was hoping to get to Cuba,

uh, and, uh, he told,

uh, his wife
and he told Ruth Paine

that he would go to either
Houston or Philadelphia
looking for a job.

How does somebody have
communication with Oswald

between October 4th,

when he returned
from Mexico City,

and November 22nd,
when he shot the President?

Even his wife didn't know
where he was living.

The FBI didn't know
where he was living.

-We don't know.
-But-- We don't!

-We don't know
about the connections...
-But--

...but what we're
trying to say is,

if Oswald did it

and it was conspiratorial,

what's the nature
of his conspiracy?

-Well, tell me.
-So what you have is,

the technical phrase for it is
False Flag Recruitment,

meaning the anti-Castro Cubans

pretend to be pro-Castro Cubans,

and they go to Oswald and say,

"We want you to kill
the President

on behalf of Castro."

Would Oswald take
that assignment?

I think of this
as a jigsaw puzzle.

And we're putting pieces in.

And we know that there were--

"Oswald killed the president,"
that's a big section

-of the jigsaw puzzle.
-Right.

Carlos Marcello said he was
going to kill the President

and he was going to use,
he said, "a nut,"

uh, use a patsy
to do it, for it.

So that everybody would think
the patsy was involved.

And now Oswald fits
that definition.

And that's one of the reasons
they had to kill him

-right afterwards.
-Okay.

And that's...

How would they have killed him?
Well, Jack Ruby killed him.

Now the question is,

can Jack Ruby be connected to...

Mar-- Marcello
and the whole mob connection?

And the answer is
"Yes," like, overwhelmingly.

Did Jack Ruby act at that time?

Well, he never admitted it.

He said that he did it,
but, a-- as you put it,

is to prove that Jews had guts.

Your story is not inconsistent

with him having done it
for the mob.

They both could be true.

[Brendan]
While I have the deepest
respect for Professor Blakey,

I strongly disagree
with his theory.

My reason?
The history behind Jack Ruby.

When asked if Ruby was a part
of the, part of organized crime,

the detective who was
a specialist

in organized crime in Dallas

during that earlier time period,

his remark was that, "If Ruby
was a part of organized crime,

organized crime needs
a new Human Resources Director."

Here Oswald had been
in custody for,

uh, a day and a half,
since Friday afternoon

until Sunday morning.

So Oswald was not breaking.

Uh, and Oswald was not
that talkative a person.

Almost the last person
that I would want

to make sure that the conspiracy
stays a secret

is Jack Ruby,
because he was a talker.

The mafia is not crazy,
and they would not have wanted

this talkative fellow,
uncontrolled fellow,

unstable fellow, uh, in prison

rather than Lee Harvey Oswald.

[Burt]
Ruby had some pretty
knowledgeable lawyers

representing him at his trial.

Uh, if Ruby had
some kind of information

that the mafia
was involved in this,

uh, don't you think
his lawyers--

he would've told his lawyers,
and his lawyers would've tried

to have made a deal
of some sort for him?

He got the death penalty
at one point.

Uh, it was a real deal
that he could've made.

[Brendan]
So who was Jack Ruby?

Why did he murder Oswald
and how did he happen to be

in the position to do it?

The Warren Commission staff
began their investigation
of him,

beginning with the date
in late September

when it was first announced
the President was coming
to Texas.

Where was Ruby?
What had he done?

Who had he talked to up until
the time he shot, uh, Oswald?

So we were trying to develop
a chronology of his activities.

I felt that Ruby might well
have been assisted in some way

to do this kind of thing,
or somebody had tolerated him.

Jack Ruby had
been born in Chicago

of Jewish immigrant parents.

When he came to Dallas
after the Second World War,

at the very same time,
he and his two brothers

changed their name
from Rubenstein to Ruby.

Uh, it wasn't
an uncommon thing to do

if you were going
to live in Dallas,

which, uh, was a community,

uh, that had a high level
of antisemitism.

His entrepreneu--
primary entrepreneurial activity

was to run striptease clubs.

He knew people who were involved

in organized crime
from his childhood,

and he knew them
from the striptease
clubs he ran,

because the people
that he dealt with,

the Union people,

uh, also had those connections.

So I started to read
the transcript
of the Ruby trial,

he had been tried
and then, as I recall,
convicted by March or so.

Uh, and-- so I was reading
through the transcript,

uh, and it was really a very
interesting, uh, journey for me,

uh, because, uh,
the issue of Ruby's Jewishness,

uh, had been raised
a number of different ways,

uh, partly by Ruby himself,

who had been incensed
by an ad that appeared
in the Dallas Morning News

on the morning
of November 22nd, 1963,

uh, with a black border

saying "Welcome to Dallas,
Mr. President."

And, uh,
signed Bernard Weissman.

And Ruby assumed that
Bernard Weissman was Jewish,

although he had
never heard of him.

He felt that it was all prob--

unlikely probable
that whoever had placed
that ad in the newspaper

was somehow linked
to the assassination.

And that a Jewish name
had been put on this ad

by people who were somehow
involved in the assassination,

so that the Jews would be blamed

for the assassination
of President Kennedy

and would feed
right into the anti-Semitism

that he felt so strongly
existed in Dallas.

So, you know, Ruby,
at that point became

the first
conspiracy investigator.

So, with his high class
investigative techniques,

he set out to find Weissman.

He looked
in the telephone directory.

He couldn't find Weissman's name
in the telephone directory.

He looked in a street directory.

He couldn't find Weissman's name
in the street directory.

That night, Friday night,

he went to re-- religious
services at his temple

and he asked his rabbi if he'd
ever heard of Bernard Weissman

and Rabbi Silverman had
never heard of Bernard Weissman.

I was not happy
with the politics in the US,

though not that interested
to where I would do
something about it.

[Brendan]
As a young soldier stationed
in postwar Germany in 1961,

Weismann got to know
Larry Schmidt,

who was active
in conservative politics.

Together with a few others,
they formed an organization

called CUSA, Conservative USA.

By November 1963,

Schmidt had become
a right wing activist

in the Dallas area when Weissman joined him there.

Learning of the President's
impending visit,

they decided to place
the newspaper ad

in theDallas Morning News.

Tell us about
the concoction of the ad

and what that ad
was going to be.

Okay. Larry presented
a preliminary heading,

and we looked at it
and talked about it, uh,

and then discussed what--
"Well, let's change this
and let's put this in.

Let's put that in."
And then, ten items.

-We wanted ten questions...
-To President Kennedy.

...to President Kennedy.

So we concoct the ad and I'm,
I'm taking it

-to the fellow
at the Dallas Morning News...
-Yeah.

...uh, the layout guy.

And we're going
to have it laid out.

And, uh, I'm eliminating
this and eliminating that,

all the little mistakes
they've made, and I said,

"Uh, just to put the ad in,
that's not going to do it.

Uh, put a,
put a black border around it.

Just, yeah, put a black border."

And so, I come back in the,
in the day,

the next day and he's got
the layout, and I said,

"Uh, make it a little wider."

So I said,
"No, a little wider than that."

-That's th--
that's the black border.
-And the wider-- that's,

-That's the black border.
-Okay.

I said, "Because that
will attract the attention."

Then, as far as the name goes...

-Right.
-...we invented a name.

"American
Fact-Finding Committee."

"Oh, that's good enough.
It's good enough for the ad,

and we'll rent a box."

But, but look,
the Committee has to have

-some name on-- somebody's
name on it, doesn't it?
-Well,

I or we came up with the idea,
"Well, look,

most of the Jews
in Dallas are liberal."

-Yeah.
-"Pretty strongly liberal."

And I said, "If I put my--
if we put my name in that,

-yeah, that--
that'll be helpful."
-It would show--

-it would show that not every--
-it would show that not every,

not every Jewish guy is,
uh, liberal,

that there are
conservative Jews.

-Right.
-You know?

And fearlessly conservative Jews

-at that particular point.
-Right.

And so, that's--
that's how the name came about.

What did you hope to accomplish
by placing that ad?

Putting us up front, notoriety.

But most of it was
adjusting our point of view out

and to create a stir.
We thought the questions
were provocative enough

that it would promote
a lot of conversation,

positive, negative,
didn't matter,

as long as we had the publicity.

Had any of you ever heard

of Lee Harvey Oswald

-up to that point?
-No. Never.

And had any of you ever heard

-of Jack Ruby up to that point?
-Never.

Ruby really was obsessed
over the whole weekend

with the assassination, period.

Uh, I still remember
the description of his apartment

when the police came in there,
I mean, the whole place

was full of newspaper articles
about the assassination.

And that was all he talked about

to many people
over that weekend.

After he went to services
on Friday night,

he decided he would try to,

uh, get into the police station,

where incidentally, uh,

Oswald was being held
and questioned,

and it was mobbed with newspaper

and news media people,
television, radio, everybody.

And I remember
sitting in the, uh,

in the room in the VFW Building
where the Commission was housed,

where they showed videos
and there was this video

of Oswald being presented,

and the camera panned
around the room,

and wait a minute, can it be?
It was Jack Ruby.

How the h--
how did he get in there?

What was he doing there?

Ruby was there,
we have a picture of Ruby

standing on a table
with a piece of--

a pad of paper in his hand
and a pencil in the other hand.

And he told the police
that he was there

as an interviewer
for the Israeli Press.

Incidentally, Ruby later told us

he actually had a gun
in his pocket at that time.

If he really wanted to kill
Oswald and that was
a premeditated plan,

why didn't he do it
then and there?

When he got home, he found
that he had a telephone call

from one of his strippers
who lived in Fort Worth,

whose name was Little-- no,
her stage name was Little Lynn.

And because he closed
his nightclubs that night,

Little Lynn didn't get paid,

so she wanted Ruby
to give her some money.

So, Ruby told

uh, she made--
this gal had made--

again, we didn't have
cell phones in those days.

She, she had made a phone call
from a parking garage.

And Ruby told
the parking garage attendant

to give her ten dollars and Ruby
would pa-- pay for this.

But the next morning,
Little Lynn called him again

at about 9:30 in the morning.

Incidentally, at this point,

the media had announced
that Oswald was going
to be transferred

at ten o'clock in the morning.

Ruby's not--
is scarcely up at 9:30.

He gets a phone-- another
phone call from Little Lynn.

Little Lynn needs $25

to take care of food
and pay her landlord.

So, Ruby says he'll go downtown.

He leaves his apartment
after ten o'clock,

after the time when Oswald
was supposed to have been moved,

and takes with him
his favorite dog, Sheba.

[Murray]
So Ruby goes down
to Downtown Dallas.

As it turns out,
the Western Union office,

uh, was a few hundred feet
from the jail.

And, uh, he's there,
and I think it was like 11:16

or 11:17 in the morning,
and we know that

because there were three copies
of the money order.

Four minutes later, he's
in the basement shooting Oswald.

And, you know, if he-- if he had
a plan to shoot Oswald,

I mean, that was the most
fortuitous way to do it,

uh, to be called by,
by a stripper,

and, of course, we questioned,
uh, the stripper at length
about what happened.

We knew that the, uh, w--
we went to Western Union,

they certified
that the money order was,
uh, was genuine.

And then it happened, you know,
that, uh, one of the policemen

who was standing watch
by one of the driveways,

when the decoy car
that was supposed
to take Oswald came out,

that policeman went to the car,

giving R-- uh,
Ruby the opportunity
to go down the driveway.

So, I mean, just so
many things that happened,

uh, that to me made it
absolutely clear,

and to Burt it's
absolutely clear,

uh, that this couldn't
have been premeditated.

He couldn't have really planned
to go and kill Oswald,

certainly not at that time.

-[shotgun fires]
-[men yells]

[crowd shouts]

[Burt]
When Ruby was wrestled
to the ground

and taken upstairs
in the police department

to be questioned
by Homicide Captain Fritz,

when Fritz asked him,
"Jack, why did you do it?"

Ruby's answer was,
"I had to show the world
a Jew had guts."

My feeling really was
that he did it as,

in an emo-- that Ruby killed
Oswald as an emotional outburst.

He was so emotionally upset
by the assassination,

and he didn't think.

He saw Oswald in front of him,

uh, he had a gun in his pocket,

which he typically carried
with him. So he shot him.

[Brendan]
Since the Warren Commission
report was released,

no one has been able
to show concrete evidence

of any contacts between Jack Ruby and Lee Harvey Oswald

before the assassination.

[suspenseful music]

We decided early on that
it would be useful to explore,

uh, Oswald's sources of income.

The, the very simple minded
theory is that,

if he was an informant
for the FBI or other agency,

or was a member
of a well-to-do conspiracy,

he would be receiving
some income,

uh, to help make him
live more comfortably

while he planned
with his fellow conspirators

to assassinate the President.

We asked IRS to lend us,

uh, an IRS agent
to conduct an investigation
along these lines,

both his sources of incomes
and his expenditures

during the period
from which he returned

to the United States
in June 1962

until November 22nd, 1963.

At the time of his arrest,
he had approximately $183.87.

I may be mistaken on the cents.

It seemed, you know,
thoroughly rebut any suggestion

that he was receiving money
from any source

other than what we were
able to document,

um, and certainly he lived
an austere life, uh, to be sure.

Assume that one
of these groups decided

that they were going
to kill the President,

an assumption I find
prodigiously unlikely.

Oswald obviously would've been
one of the last people
in the face of this Earth

whom they would have gone to
to do their bidding for them.

Uh, not, not an expert shot.

He was a good shot,
but not an expert shot.

He had a $12 mailed order rifle.

Uh, notoriously unreliable,
unstable.

I mean, here's a guy

that defects to Russia
pre Gorbachev.

Even today, who in the heck
defects to Russia?

He gets over there,
wants to become a Soviet
citizen very desperately.

They turned him down.
What does he do?

He slashes his wrist,

tries to commit suicide,
ends up in a hospital.

Just the type of guy
that the CIA or mob

would want to rely upon

to commit the biggest murder
in American history.

If I was going to hire somebody
to be an assassin,

Oswald was-- Lee Harvey Oswald
was probably the last person
on my list.

[suspenseful music]

Even before I investigated, uh,

uh, I realized that you can't
draw a distinction

between foreign and domestic,
uh, conspiracies.

Uh, the real and best example
would be the anti-Castro Cubans,

who I suspected
at the beginning.

They were-- anti-Castro Cubans
were largely in Florida.

And of course, uh,
they were Cubans. [chuckles]

And, uh, they had relatives
and friends still in Cuba.

And they themselves
had been there just until
a few years ago.

Uh, but this was basically true
with all of them,

with Cuba, there was--
any conspiracy had to have,

uh, agents, at least,
in the United States.

So that much, uh,
we just forgot the foreign,

just give us the conspiracy,
period.

The anti-Castro Cubans,

originally, this is
my just personal opinion,

was that they were
the prime suspect,

uh, because they hated Kennedy

because he had aborted
the Bay of Pigs, uh, Invasion.

And they thought they could gain
by having Oswald do it.

This is my theory at the time.

Uh, and then blame it on Cuba.

And so that would trigger
a real invasion.

Well, we found
zero evidence of this.

And so it boiled down to Cuba,

and the reason
it boiled down to them

was because of Oswald's trip
to Mexico City,

where he dealt with, uh,
both the Cuban Embassy

and the Russian Embassy
in ways that, uh,

that even to this day
were not entirely clear,

uh,

except that the CIA t--

did not tell us
a lot that they knew.

[Brendan]
During the Warren Commission's
investigation,

the CIA was being led
by Kennedy family friend,
John McCone.

[David]
When McCone testified
before the Warren Commission,

uh, he didn't mention
anything about Oswald

being in Mexico City,
or at least what we knew
about it.

The principle reason there
is that we had

some very sensitive, uh,
surveillance operations
underway,

both audio and, uh, visual.

And he didn't want,
in a public setting,

to disclose that sensitive,
uh, source.

[light tense music]

[Brendan]
Also kept hidden
from the Warren Commission

was that the CIA,
prior to the assassination,

had plans to kill Fidel Castro

with the full knowledge
of Attorney General
Robert Kennedy

and, presumably,
President Kennedy.

Some of these plots
involved the use of members
of organized crime

who had a vested interest
in reclaiming their casinos,

which they'd lost under Castro.

If that was the case,
could the assassination

of President Kennedy have been
a retaliation by Castro?

In other words,
did Castro get Kennedy first?

The CIA didn't want
the Warren Commission

to know about their plot
to kill Castro.

They didn't want anyone to know
that they got in bed

with the mob to do so.

When it was exposed in the 1970s

that the agency had
been trying to kill Castro

through intermediaries like,
uh, members of the underworld

and Cuban proxies and such,

uh, this became
a big point of contention

about why the agency
had not disclosed this
to the Warren Commission.

The logic being that,
if Castro knew we had been
trying to kill him,

then maybe he'd used his
own proxy, Lee Harvey Oswald,

to take out the President,
who had been trying to kill him.

Well, we concluded very early
on in our own investigation
of the assassination,

and this is roughly
mid-December,

I would pinpoint it,
it's hard to,

that no foreign hand
was behind the assassination,

that Lee Harvey Oswald,
for whatever motives,

had done it on his own.

[Burt]
We did know back in 1964

that Castro had claimed
that we were trying
to assassinate him.

But frankly,
we were all stunned to find out

that the CIA was attempting
to assassinate Castro.

The agency's interaction
with the Warren Commission

I think can best
be characterized

as passive and reactive.

The record is pretty clear
that the CIA only gave up

what it was asked to give up,

it did not
volunteer information,

it did not provide
the Warren Commission
with leads.

It simply responded
to dozens and dozens
of questions

as fully as it could.

But this was part of, I think,

the conscious effort
to make sure

the Warren Commission,
from CIA's light,
stayed on track

looking at Oswald
as the assassin

and not running down
these blind alleys

looking at possible conspiracies
involving the Soviets,

the Cubans, the underworld,
uh, whomever.

And that, later on,
came to be seen

as bit of a cover-up.

And the agency did suffer some,

uh, public, uh,
recriminations because of that.

[Howard]
It raises, you know,
the broader question

that people have raised
over the years

as whether
people like Allen Dulles,

uh, and Robert Kennedy
and others at CIA

who knew of CIA agency plans
to assassinate Castro

should have affirmatively
come forward

and told the Commission

that they knew
of such planning by the CIA,

so as to permit
the Commission to investigate

whether those plans
and the people they may
have involved

suggested any lines
of investigation

that should have been explored.

And most of the staff would say,
"Yes,

it should have been disclosed,

uh, and yes, we would've
conducted a somewhat

more thorough investigation."

Uh, but lastly,
it would not have changed
the ultimate findings,

because, in fact,
the House Select Committee,

uh, did know of these facts,
did conduct a more thorough
investigation

and came up with the same
findings that we had,

namely the lack
of any involvement,

uh, by Cuba in the assassination
of President Kennedy.

[Brendan]
The details
about these CIA plots

only came to light in 1975

during an investigation
by the Rockefeller Commission

into CIA activities.

There was no foreign conspiracy
including, in particular, Cuba.

Uh, why I'm so firm on this,
even though,

uh, I know lot about that was
blocked from u-- us finding out?

Uh, one,
we were able to find out a lot,

and it was all negative
in that respect.

The other thing is the CIA hated
Castro. Absolutely hated.

Uh, when I was talking with,
uh, Ray Rocca once,

just as an illustration,

I suggested something
that slightly ameliorated

what he migh-- the evilness
of what he had done.

And Ray got up, we were talking,
we were sitting at a table,

he banged the table
with his fists, he says,

"Castro is a devil! A devil!"
[chuckles]

And I just laughed like this.

I mean, those guys, if they
could've pinned it on Castro,

would have done it, no doubt.

So despite everything
they hid from me,

in th-- that they knew,

in their own eyes,
despite their fervent wishes,

they couldn't pin it on Castro.

[suspenseful music]

[Vincent]
Oswald revered Fidel Castro

and was a very strong supporter of the Cuban Revolution.

He obviously was opposed

to the Bay of Pigs
Invasion in 1961,

which Kennedy supported.

[Kennedy]
I can assure you

that this flag will be returned

to this brigade
in a free Havana.

[crowd cheering]

[Vincent]
Five days
before the assassination,

Kennedy gave
a foreign policy speech

in, uh, Miami,

in which he all but invited
the Cuban people to rise up

against Castro, promising
prompt US aid if they did.

Uh, the Warren Commission
and the House Select Committee

both believe,
and I agree with them,

that Oswald's love for Castro
and Cuba played a part

in his motive
for killing Kennedy,

We also have
every reason to believe now

that Oswald believed
that we were trying

to assassinate Castro.

Uh, Castro blamed
the United States

for trying to do that
in September 1963,

when Oswald was
still living in New Orleans.

And it was published
in the New Orleans, uh,
Times Picayune,

and Oswald was a devoted,
inveterate newspaper reader.

Moreover, Oswald had
a shortwave radio that--

which he listened to
and which he had with him

in this tiny little room
that he lived in, uh, in Dallas,

in this rooming house
when he lived alone

after he came back from Cuba.

And Havana radio was
filled with accusations

that the United States
was trying to assassinate

Castro and other people.

So my own feeling was that,

one, Oswald saw that there was
nothing immoral

about assassinating
the President
of the United States.

And moreover,
that maybe he could protect...

Castro,
if the right-wing got blamed.

Murder is the most personal
of all crimes.

Unless money is involved,

usually the main passion
and motive for murder is hatred.

[Brendan]
As part of his preparation
for the unscripted mock trial,

Bugliosi felt he needed to find a motive for Oswald's action.

It was his experience
prosecuting Charles Manson

that made it clear to him.

[Vincent]
Manson never knew
the precise identity

of the people whom he ordered
his minions to kill,

but he knew they were members
of the establishment,

and he hated the establishment.

So, in a sense,
the Manson murders were
representative murders.

The victims represented
the establishment
to Charles Manson.

Oswald had this kind
of a curious, uh, entry,

a very important entry to me.

He said, "I've lived
under capitalism and communism

and I despise..."

there is that hatred
that I was looking for,

"...I despise
the representatives

of both systems."

He certainly must have
looked upon Kennedy

as the ultimate
quintessential representative

of a society for which
he had a grinding contempt.

And when he fired at Kennedy,

in his addled mind
he may have been firing

at the United States of America.

[Brendan]
In 1975,

it was another previously hidden bit of information

that added to the conviction
that Oswald acted alone.

It involved
Dallas FBI agent James Hosty.

[light suspenseful music]

[Burt]
James Hosty is an FBI agent

whose duty was
to keep track of Oswald.

And he then goes
to the only address--

residential address
that he has for Oswald

in a-- with the intention
of talking to Marina

and finding out where--
well, thinking, actually, that,

that that's where Oswald lived,

but later finding out
that he wasn't there,

but he doesn't get an address
because Marina and Ruth

don't have an address
for him either.

[gentle suspenseful piano music]

[Priscilla]
Oswald had moved around so much

that the FBI didn't really know
where he was yet.

[Burt]
When Oswald found out
that Hosty had been there,

he was very concerned,
asked Marina not to tell,

uh, Hosty anything,

uh, and, um,

and asked Marina to take down,

uh, the license plate
and the description of any car

that Hosty might have
if he came back

to interview him.
And he did come back.

He finds out that Hosty
has come back a second time.

So he's really upset about this.

The FBI Office is not
too far from the Texas
School Book Depository,

so it would be
an easy walk for Oswald
to go to the FBI Office.

Oswald goes there and leaves

an angry note to Hosty.

And the note contained
the information

that the secretary at the FBI
Office says it contained.

It was a threat to blow up
the FBI Office... [chuckles]

...if, if Hosty didn't stop
pestering his wife.

Now, come on.

Is someone who is planning

to assassinate the President
on November 12th

going to go to the FBI
and leave that kind of a note?

It's very likely that he's
going to get arrested

within a few days.

Because it's quite clear
that a threatening note
of that kind

should have forced Hosty
or persuaded him

to attach a higher urgency
to interviewing, uh, Oswald

than he presently
was exhibiting.

And it is my view,
of course, that if he
had gone to interview...

[stutters] Oswald within
the week following receipt
of this threatening note,

that interview in itself would
probably have deterred Oswald

from any assassination attempt.

[tense music]

Hosty is very upset
and distressed when he finds out

that the man he's supposed
to be keeping tabs on

is the one who's been arrested

for the shooting
of President Kennedy.

Hosty then goes to discuss
the note and shows the note

to his supervisor,
Gordon Shanklin.

And Shanklin is
terrified by this.

And his fear of what
will happen if J. Edgar Hoover

finds out about this note

and that Hosty
never did anything about it

is petrifying to him.

When Oswald is killed,

uh, Shanklin then,
according to Hosty,

tells Hosty to destroy the note,

which Hosty does.
And the Warren Commission
is never told about this.

If we had known about that note,

we would've known two things.

One, we would've been
reinforced in our belief

that there was no evidence
that Oswald was involved

in a conspiracy, certainly
not before he left the note.

Second of all,

it would-- it would've shown
in a very clear way

that the FBI had failed
to protect the President.

Because here's a guy
who is threatening the FBI,

surely you got to have
somebody looking at this guy

when he's right along
the route of the motorcade.

Oswald was
a very strange fellow.

Uh, that was another evidence
of his strangeness.

The text of that letter,
obviously, was never known.

I'm not sure that it would've
raised the level of concern

in the areas that, uh,

relate to the FBI's, uh,

accomplishment
of its duty to communicate

with the Secret Service.

There was no evidence
of Oswald's

engaging
in any violent activity,

no one at the time knew about
his attack on General Walker.

Uh, he had a, uh,

bizarre history.

I think it took
some hindsight to, uh,

clearly determine that Oswald
was within the standards

that they were, uh, looking for
for a potential threat.

The two main cover-ups
by the CIA and the FBI

had nothing to do
with the Warren Commission.

Both agencies were trying
to protect themselves.

[David Slawson]
Clarence Kelley,
who later became FBI Director

after Hoover,
says almost literally in his,

uh, in fact he does say it
literally in his memoirs,

is that if the Dallas Office
of the FBI had known

what was known elsewhere
in the FBI's files,

the President
would not have died

in Dallas
on November 22nd, 1963.

And, uh,
that's my opinion, too, now.

[suspenseful music]

[Brendan]
In 1991, Oliver Stone's
filmJFK was released.

The film dramatized the idea

that President Kennedy was the victim of a conspiracy.

To make matters worse, a study
guide was sent to educators

in conjunction
with the film's release,

reinforcing
the idea of conspiracy.

Many educators now teach
the assassination

as an unsolved,
controversial crime,

exactly what Judge Griffin
and I try to combat

when we go into schools.

The film did, however,
spur the release

of assassination records
that had been sealed.

99.9% of the Warren
Commission records

and the House Select Committee,
uh, records

have been released for review
by the American people.

Now what about
the one tenth of one percent

that still have not been,
uh, released?

I spoke to G. Robert Blakey,

the Chief Counsel
of the House Select Committee,

and also to Judge John Tunheim,

the Chief Counsel
for the Assassination Records
Review Board.

They both assured me
that their staff saw 100%

of the records
in their unredacted form,

100%.

And there was no smoking gun.

["Symphony No. 3, Funeral March"
by Beethoven]

If we think it takes some
really extraordinary person

or extraordinary circumstances
to kill a president,

then we're not able
to protect the president.

The tremendous irony here
is that most of these people

love and revere JFK,

and yet they've devoted
a good part of their life

desperately trying to exonerate
Lee Harvey Oswald,

the very person who brutally
murdered their hero JFK.

For some people, being told,
"This is the evidence we have.

This is our conclusion,"
um, is sufficient,

um, knowing that there are
lots of coincidences

that are nothing
but coincidence.

There are a lot
of other people for whom
the notion that huge events

like a presidential
assassination can occur, um,

really as a circumstantial
coincidental matter,

Oswald happening
to be in the Depository,

the path of the parade
happening to go that way,

all the other things that
combine to produce an event,

to lots of people,
that's very disturbing.

Um, they find it
much more acceptable

to believe that there's
a conspiracy,

because if there's a conspiracy,
at least someone planned it.

It wasn't a random coincidence.

They say the only real predictor
of future behavior

is past behavior.

And no one but Marina knew
that his past behavior

included trying
to shoot somebody.

[shakily]
Too bad we didn't know.

when I read, as I do,

that there were certain facts

that were not given
to the Commission,

that they didn't find out
about this or that

or the other thing,
I read those with interest.

But I ask myself this question.

I say, "Alright.
Now you have new information,

uh, that was not there.

Does that information
make it more likely

that there was someone
other than Lee Harvey Oswald

and the others named in the--
th-- at the report,

does it make the report likely,

in its overall conclusions,
to be false?

Or, if you had this balancing,
which you have to have,

would you say you still believe
that it is true?"

Yes, it is true. Because
with all that information,

adding it altogether,

it does not show, in my opinion,

that it is more likely
that something else happened

of significance
than what they say happened.

And if anything had come out

in intervening period,
which would, in my opinion,

have caused anyone of us
to have said,

"No, Oswald didn't do it."

Uh, or, "Oswald was involved
in a conspiracy."

Or, uh, that someone else was
involved in the conspiracy,

but not Oswald,
similarly for Ruby...

Everybody I knew
who worked on that staff

would've stood up at this point,
not just me,

but everybody I knew
that would've-- woul-- wo--
stood up on the--

stood up today and said,
"This was a mistake

and we've got to go
and correct it."

what more can you do
to convince them?

And the fact is
that there're people

that will never be convinced.

And it-- and that's true,

uh, whether we're talking
about the assassination

or we're talking
about climate weather,

or we're talking about, uh,

measles vaccinations or,
or whatever.

And it's, it's frustrating,

because it does
strike me at least

as being completely irrational.

Ironically, the agency's,
I think, legitimate decision

not to tell
the Warren Commission

about its anti-Castro activities

possibly did more to harm
the Warren Commission's
credibility

than any other thing
the agency did

or, in this case, didn't do.

The concealment
of evidence from the Commission

by the FBI and by the CIA

inescapably causes people

to distrust
the Commission itself.

Once you have...

uh, employees
of the federal government

lying in an investigation,

you undermine that investigation
in a major way.

So it was terrible
what they did,

and if there's any lesson
to be learned out of this,

you know,
you got to tell the truth

and then got to deal with--
i-- if it's going to hurt you
in some way,

you got to deal with it.

[suspenseful instrumental music]

Th-- the Warren Commission
report became

more and more, uh, challenged,

uh, through the decade
and subsequently,

as we lived in a life
of the Vietnam War,

assassinations
of Reverend King and the, uh,

Senator Kennedy, civil strife,

more presidential commissions

looking at these issues,
Watergate,

uh, I-- I think there is
an underlying distrust

of government institutions
and I think people, the--

I have to reconcile myself
to the fact that that distrust

applied to the Warren Commission

at the beginning
of this tumultuous decade

and, uh, and that distrust
remains today.

So this is one of the real
tragedies in this country,

the loss of trust
and faith in the government.

The belief that "Can we
really trust the government?"

When the trust and confidence
of the American people

in their government
is undermined to the extent

that they believe
that the government

is an accessory after the fact
to the President's murder

in the sense that they're
concealing the truth,

uh, from them,
this has to have had

a deleterious effect
upon the nation's psyche.

For me, that is the lasting
tragedy of the assassination.

It's become a signpost
for the end of trust
in our government.

Yet, when you think about it,

our system persevered
and moved forward

in spite of the cover-ups
and destroyed evidence.

The legacy of President Kennedy
is not failed idealism,

but a strong harvest of seeds
that took root and grew.

In fact, Progressivism thrived.

Less than one year
after President Kennedy's death,

Congress passed sweeping
civil rights legislation

and soon life changing
domestic policies,

such as The Great Society,

including Medicare and Medicaid.

In 1967,
Thurgood Marshall became

the first African American
Supreme Court Justice.

Within six years
of the assassination,

we landed on the moon.

By the 1970s,

key facts concealed
from the Warren Commission

by the CIA and FBI
became public.

So the system worked.

The danger of adhering
to endless conspiracy theories

is that it makes
people apathetic

and leads them
to poor decision making.

Maybe it's time to view
the history of the assassination
with a critical eye

and to separate facts
from speculation.

And maybe it's time to pause

and honor a group of young men

for which
truth was the only client.

["Symphony No. 3, Funeral March"
by Beethoven]

It's a strange feeling.
The life goes on and,

you know, in another 20,
30 years, uh,

you know, we'll,
we'll all be gone.

And we wonder,
as Burt was saying,

you know, how people are going
to look back on it then.

We're very satisfied that we had
done what we were asked to do

and that we had pursued it,
we had come up with a credible,

uh, reliable explanation.

And, uh,

I-- I still take a pride
in what we did

and think that despite
all the criticism
and other theories,

uh, a-- as Warren himself said,

history will remember us
as having been right.

I certainly am
just as certain now as I--
as I was then,

that, uh,
both those things are true.

Ho-- Oswald was the only shooter

and there's no conspiracy.

The facts that have
been disclosed since
our investigation

that should have been
disclosed to me,

uh, have shown nothing
about that there was
a conspiracy,

and most of it
have showed affirmatively
that there was not.

This was not a trial,
this was not a court proceeding.

This was a quest for the truth.

That, that-- and,
and I raise this

when I talk to lawyers
and I said,

"You know, trials are not
a quest for the truth,

the-- they're a battle
of who's going to win."

And, uh, and one of the things
that lawyers try to do

is conceal anything that might
harm their side of the case.

But we were engaged
in something that I think

was better than a trial.

There's also
the personal CYA factor.

And, uh, that's ingrained
in human nature.

Uh, certainly an element
when we see what the FBI
withheld from us,

when you see, uh, the testimony
of the director of the FBI,

who just absolutely out and out,

unquestionably
lied to the Commission,

uh, to protect himself,
protect his agency.

And, uh, that's a human factor,

human frailty,

that, uh,
has got to be recognized

and we, we deal with it
as best we can,

but it's, it's not something
that's going to go away.

Belief in conspiracies
is exciting,

far more exciting
than the truth could be.

What they want
to hear is attacks,

that's where the excitement is.

That's what they like.

That's what feeds
their paranoia.

I am grateful to those of you
who have devoted

so much of the post-report time
to defending it.

Uh, I haven't, and, uh,

uh, I'm glad you did.

["Symphony No. 3, Funeral March"
by Beethoven]