All language subtitles for JFK.Destiny.Betrayed.S01E01.WEBRip.x265-ION265

[march music playing]

[reporter] Shortly before
the dawn of Saturday morning,

John Fitzgerald Kennedy
comes home to the White House.

He had been
the nation's 35th President

for a period of
two years and ten months.

[Oliver Stone]
I'm Oliver Stone

and this is Dealey Plaza,

the place where
John Kennedy was assassinated

on November 22, 1963.

Back in 1991,
I made a film called JFK.

That movie tried
to explore the mysteries

that enshrouded this place
and that day.

We also tried
to explore the reasons

why President Kennedy
was killed.

At the end of our film,
we alerted the public

that almost 30 years
after Kennedy's assassination,

tens of thousands of documents
were still being kept secret

about his murder
and his policies.

JFK created
a yearlong sensation

in the media.

Some quarters praised the film.

Others attacked it.

But at the end of that
unprecedented controversy,

a new agency of government
was formed.

It was called the Assassination
Records Review Board.

The board went to work

declassifying
this immense amount of material.

Yet the public has
not been made aware

of what, in fact, constitutes

a new factual record
of who Kennedy was

and the real circumstances
of his murder.

In this series, you will be
informed for the first time

what was in many
of the most important of these files.

We have to do this.

We have to keep doing this,

because democracy,
and our freedom from fear,

dies when there is
no longer trust

between the people
and their government.

[theme music playing]

[inaudible dialogue]

[man over radio] A dark
page in the annals of America

has been written to the crack
of an assassin's bullet.

A nation mourns,
the world grieves.

The man who became
35th President

less than three years ago
is dead.

His rendezvous
with grim destiny

begins a little after noontime

as his plane lands in Dallas.

At 1:25, the motorcade
moves into the downtown area.

Death is six minutes away.

In a warehouse, a sniper
with a rifle poised waits.

The cheers of the crowd
almost muffled the three shots.

The assassin's aim is deadly.

The area is a swarm
with police rangers

and secret servicemen.

The murderer slips the net,
but a few blocks away,

a man is captured after he is

reported to have
killed a policeman.

That man is a 24-year-old
pro-Castro Texan

who once sought
Soviet citizenship.

He is charged with murder.

Meanwhile, the President
had been rushed

to a nearby hospital

where life lingered
as a waiting world prayed.

A half hour later, he was dead,

his life crushed like
his wife's abandoned bouquet.

[Whoopi Goldberg]
After his brother's murder,

without hesitation,

Attorney General Robert Kennedy

began investigating
a domestic conspiracy.

[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]
My father's first phone call

was to the CIA desk officer
at Langley

and he asked him...

"Did your people
conduct this horror?"

[David Talbot] We know
from how Bobby operated

that terrible day,

November 22nd, 1963,

at his home
in McLean, Virginia,

that he immediately suspected
there was not a lone gunman.

Why do we know this?

Because he was being told
by his closest aides,

people like Kenny O'Donnell
and Dave Powers,

who were in the limousine

immediately behind
President Kennedy's limousine.

They were both
World War II veterans.

They knew
what gunfire sounded like.

[gunshots echoing]

They reported it to him

that gunfire
had not just come from the rear,

it had come
from different sides.

There was gunfire
from the front as well.

It was a crossfire.

[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]
I was in the East Room

with my dad and with Jackie
and a couple of my siblings,

and Lyndon Johnson came in
and told the adults in the room

that Lee Harvey Oswald
had been killed

and that a man had shot him.

And I said to my dad and mom
at that time,

"Why did he shoot him?

Did he... Did he
love our family?"

And nobody really
answered the question,

so I didn't know
whether we were

supposed to be happy
that he got shot.

And the way that they acted

was that this
only compounded the tragedy,

and it was not
a good thing, and...

But I didn't really
understand it.

I did immediately
have that question,

"Why would this man
shoot in public,

"in a place where he knew
he was gonna get caught,

"why would be make
that sacrifice of his own life

"to kill Lee Harvey Oswald?

Did he love our family?"

And, you know, within
a couple of years, right,

it was very clear to everybody,

he did not love our family.

He was a mobster.

[Talbot] When Bobby
looked at the phone logs

of who Jack Ruby
was talking to on the phone

before he went into
the Dallas basement

of the police station,

he said it read
like the witness list

of the Senate
Rackets Committee.

In other words, all mob guys.

[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]
My father at that time

was not aware

of the level of involvement
between the CIA and the Mafia,

that they essentially were
a seamless organization.

[Goldberg] In 1961,
the FBI had discovered

secret CIA-Mafia plots
to assassinate Castro.

And when
Attorney General Robert Kennedy

was told about them,

he requested a full briefing
from the CIA.

They admitted to the plots,

but they claimed
they had stopped,

when in fact
they were still ongoing,

run by CIA officer
William Harvey

and Chicago mobster
Johnny Roselli.

[Talbot] And who was
the third party

that he suspected

in the assassination
of his brother?

The CIA, the Mafia,
anti-Castro exiles.

In fact, he calls up somebody

who's involved
with the Cuban exile community

and says bluntly,

one of your guys did it.

That's Harry Ruiz Williams.

He doesn't accuse him
of doing it,

but he says
one of your guys did it.

Did Robert Kennedy
ever stop inquiring

into his
brother's assassination?

The day that his brother died

he lost virtually
all the investigative capacity

at the Justice Department.

He had 30,000 employees
at the Justice Department,

and half of them
were FBI employees

who ostensibly worked for him.

Traditionally, however,

and in reality, they worked
for J. Edgar Hoover.

He couldn't investigate it.

And-and so, his posture,
first of all, he was shattered,

so the first year, he wanted,
nothing could bring Jack back.

He didn't wanna hear about it.

He told Nick Katzenbach,

"I'm not gonna testify
before the Warren Commission,

I'm not gonna have
anything to do with it,"

and he tried as little
as possible to comment on it.

When he did comment
on it privately,

he would say
they did a shoddy job.

But publicly he would
never say anything.

But he knew what it was.
It was a commission.

And commissions in this country
have a tradition

of essentially
anointing orthodoxies.

He knew whatever investigation

was under the control
of the White House,

of Lyndon Johnson's
White House and the FBI,

was going to be
a bogus investigation.

I have talked to many
of Bobby Kennedy's close aides,

Dick Goodwin, Frank Mankiewicz,
Adam Walinsky,

all of them have told me
that Bobby Kennedy

did not believe
the Warren Commission,

believed that
it was a fairy tale,

a convenient cover-up.

And Bobby Kennedy
was determined to get the truth

and to bring
a new official inquiry

to look into
his brother's murder

as soon as he was back
in the White House.

[man over radio] To the
White House in Washington

comes the final verdict
on the fateful tragedy

which engulfed the nation
ten months ago.

US Chief Justice Earl Warren

is the bearer
of the sad epilogue.

The report
on the assassination

of President
John Fitzgerald Kennedy,

compiled by the commission
created by President Johnson,

which was headed
by the Chief Justice himself.

[Goldberg]
The Warren Commission

was not Lyndon Johnson's idea.

Johnson had been in favor
of a Texas state investigation

into Kennedy's murder.

The concept
of an independent panel

was strongly suggested
to the White House,

first by Eugene Rostow,
dean of the Yale Law School,

and brother of Walter Rostow.

On Sunday, November 24th,

Rostow told
Johnson's assistant Bill Moyers

that they had to appoint
a blue ribbon panel

because America
and world opinion

had been so shaken
by the murder of Oswald

and the performance
of the Dallas Police

that the public
was not believing anything.

The Washington Post
was also in favor of the idea.

Publisher Kay Graham
and editor Al Friendly

were going to run an editorial

endorsing the concept
on November 25th,

the day of JFK's funeral.

And powerful columnist
Joseph Alsop

used all his techniques
of persuasion.

[Joseph Alsop over phone]

[Goldberg]
Johnson began moving forward,

appointing
an extraordinary federal panel.

In regard
to the Warren Commission,

who do you think was the most

puzzling appointment
to this Commission?

Allen Dulles' appointment
to the Warren Commission,

I think is one
of the great frauds

of American history.

Have you ever committed

any act of violence
in your life?

No.

Lyndon Johnson
went around telling people

that Bobby Kennedy,
of all people,

lobbied to have Dulles
put on the Commission.

I don't think that even if you
had ten more Commissions,

you'd never get away
from the idea

that maybe there was a plot.

We just didn't find
any traces of it.

What really happened
with Allen Dulles

was the CIA lobbied to have him
put on the Commission

'cause they needed to have one
of their own on the Commission

to make sure that
certain doors remain closed.

He also names Gerry Ford,

the young congressman

from Michigan
to the Commission.

Ford is very close
to J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI.

[Goldberg]
Not everyone was as eager

to serve on the Commission
as Dulles was.

Johnson conjured up images
of atomic annihilation

to intimidate Earl Warren
into chairing the Commission.

Johnson did the same
with Senator Richard Russell.

[President Johnson over phone]
We gotta take this

out of the arena

where they're testifying

it's Khrushchev
and Castro did this

and did that
and kicking us into a war

that can kill 40 million
Americans in an hour.

[Goldberg] Even before
Oswald was killed,

Cliff Carter
of Johnson's White House

had called the Dallas Police

and told them
not to indict Oswald

as part of
a communist conspiracy.

Why?

For fear of a confrontation
with the USSR.

Johnson's nuclear warning
was based upon CIA reports

that Oswald had been to Mexico

seven weeks
before the assassination

and visited the Cuban
and Soviet consulates.

FBI director J. Edgar Hoover

understood this information
was not accurate.

Hoover also added
that the case, as it stood,

was not strong enough to
obtain a conviction of Oswald.

The FBI would do approximately
80 percent of the investigation

for the Warren Commission,

and Hoover would
keep his doubts

about the Oswald case
concealed.

With that
and much more kept secret,

stories were leaked
to the press

that alleged assassin
Lee Harvey Oswald

would be found guilty
by the Commission.

The Commission worked
in almost complete secrecy.

There were only a handful of
investigatory articles published

about the JFK case
while they were in session.

Yet, even though
almost no one knew

what the Commission was doing,

on the day the 888-page
Warren Report was released,

the press accepted it
without reservations.

In fact, the night
it was issued to the public,

both NBC and CBS aired specials
propagating its conclusions,

but not asking questions

about how these conclusions
were arrived at.

[reporter] In 300,000 words
of lean and orderly language,

the Warren Commission
makes these major findings.

Lee Harvey Oswald assassinated
President Kennedy.

Lee Harvey Oswald was
himself killed by Jack Ruby

in full view
of millions of Americans.

[Goldberg]
It was later revealed

that NBC approached the FBI

and told them
they would reveal nothing

in their reporting
on the Kennedy case

that would contradict
their findings.

It was also discovered
that some members of the press

cooperated in supporting
the Commission's findings

in return for
access to witnesses.

In 1978, producer
Bernie Birnbaum of CBS

admitted that sources
on the Commission

leaked its contents,

and his program
was in production

for months in advance.

The New York Times
got its version

out of the Warren Report
within 48 hours

and in an introductory essay,

you have
Anthony Lewis saying,

right there with the release
of the Warren Report,

he said the Warren Commission
released all the documents

and all the evidence
it had acquired,

except for the names
of a few sensitive people

and withheld nothing else,

all the documents were released.

The irony of this
is the Commission,

Warren Commission documents
were not released

for two or three months later.

They finally came out
in November.

So here you have
The New York Times

assuring the public

that all the documents
have been released

and that no question
remains unresolved,

in the absence of having seen
any of the 26 volumes

of supplementary evidence.

If you read
the Warren Report,

you get
a very convincing picture

that Oswald did it
and he did it alone.

And that report, as you know,

was sent worldwide
with a lot of publicity.

What wasn't sent worldwide
with a lot of publicity

was the 26 volumes of evidence.

And that is where
you begin to see

that the evidence they use
in the Warren Report

does not always match up
with the evidence

that was given to them during
the Commission's investigation.

[Goldberg] The Commission
published those volumes

at Allen Dulles' suggestion.

Here's the Commission Report.

I keep it here,
by my right hand here.

And here are
the various volumes,

twenty-six of 'em.

[Goldberg]
In a private conference,

Dulles said,
"No one reads anymore.

"They'll be a few professors
who will read the record,

but the public
will read very little."

But still,
the Commission classified

tens of thousands
of pages of documents.

These included FBI reports,
Secret Service reports

and hundreds of their
own internal memoranda.

In 1967, the Warren Report
was under attack

from several books
and magazine articles.

Walter Cronkite interviewed

Warren Commissioner
John McCloy

during a four-night special
co-hosted by Dan Rather.

Are you satisfied
that as much effort

was put into
challenging that case

as into establishing it?

In other words,
did-did the accused man

get a fair trial?

I'll answer that
in just a moment.

If I may just say one thing,
I, which I'd like to say

in the first place
I had some questions

as to the propriety
of my appearing here

as a former member
of the Commission

to comment on the evidence
of the Commission.

There seems to be
some question,

and I think there is
some question

about, uh, the advisability
of doing that...

[Goldberg] McCloy never
answered Cronkite's question.

But even worse,
CBS employee Roger Feinman

later discovered
internal documents

showing the network
had violated

its own journalistic code
of ethics.

McCloy consulted extensively

on the series
through his daughter Ellen,

an administrative assistant

to CBS President
Richard Salant.

In 1992,
reporter Jerry Policoff

confronted Salant
and Ellen McCloy

with the documents revealing
John McCloy's instructions

for the content of the show.

Only then did CBS
admit to their concealment.

CBS, NBC,
and The New York Times

continued to support
the Commission's finding

for decades afterwards

and never publicly reviewed

the 26 volumes
of supplemental evidence.

By the time the Assassination
Records Review Board

came along in the mid-1990s,

there were still 3,000

Warren Commission documents
withheld.

[Ed Herlihy]
Revolution is over,

order has returned to Havana,

but enthusiasm and fervor
still fill the air

following the final
assumption to power

of the revolutionary regime,

now the legally recognized
provisional government.

Havana's ovation
for Fidel Castro himself

hadn't been long deferred.

These scenes show
his triumphal march

across the island
to the capital

following the victory.

In every town and hamlet,

a cheering welcome
greeted the rebel leader.

[Donald Sutherland]
In 1959,

Fidel Castro had come to power

by overthrowing
the corrupt and brutal despot

Fulgencio Batista.

During Batista's
25-year hold on power,

he was closely allied

with American big business
and organized crime,

allowing him to accumulate
a personal fortune

reportedly worth $300 million.

When he fled the country,
it took three cargo planes

to transport
his holdings to Portugal.

In June of 1959,

Castro's systematic
land reform,

which limited the size
of property holdings,

went into effect in Cuba.

The law caused
many American businessmen

to petition the White House
for action to be taken.

And so, in 1960
under Eisenhower,

the CIA created
the Cuban Project

in their effort to oust Castro.

Kennedy, who had campaigned
as a strong anti-communist,

signed off on
the Bay of Pigs invasion plan

in April of 1961.

Kennedy's approval of the plan

contained two
distinct limitations,

America would supply
arms and equipment,

but there would be no Americans
in the landing force.

Second,
after preliminary air strikes

by Cuban exile pilots,

there would only be
further strikes

after the invasion
secured an airfield.

Dulles believed
that Kennedy would,

like Eisenhower,
support the operation

with direct US military
intervention if needed,

all the while assuring him
it would not be necessary.

Well, first,
I wanna say that there

will not be
under any conditions,

be an intervention in Cuba
by United States Armed Forces.

[Sutherland]
The invasion was a disaster

and became the first stain
on his administration.

Victory has 100 fathers
and defeat is an orphan.

Further statements, uh,

detailed discussions

are not to, uh,
conceal responsibility

because I'm the responsible
officer of the government.

[Sutherland] In public,
Kennedy accepted the blame.

In private,
he and his brother suspected

they had been
lied to by the CIA.

Allen Dulles confessed

that the mission
was bound to fail

as it was planned by the CIA
without US military support.

He confessed this while, uh,
preparing an article

for Harper's Magazine

with young editor
Willie Morris

that he couldn't have done this
with his small group of exiles,

his Cuban brigade.

He needed the Marines
and the Air Force to go in.

And he thought Kennedy
was going to be

young and pliable,

and that at the eleventh hour,

Kennedy will be forced
to send in

the full might
of the US military.

[Sutherland] While drafting
the article in 1965,

Dulles told his editor,

"That Kennedy,
he thought he was a god."

[Talbot] Jack Kennedy
did stand firm.

He did not send in the military.

He did not make it
an even bigger global crisis

than it already was.

Kennedy, after
the Bay of Pigs debacle,

is just furious.

He knows he's been
lied to, deceived

by his senior military
and intelligence advisers.

He announces that the agency
is going to be downsized.

And he vows famously,

he tells friends
he's going to shatter the CIA

into a thousand pieces

and scatter it to the winds.

And actually, he does move

to decapitate
the top of the CIA.

He lets it be known
that Allen Dulles,

as well as his two
top advisers, Richard Bissell,

who is also very involved

with the Bay of Pigs,
and General Cabell,

who was the right-hand man
to Allen Dulles.

So the top three people
in the CIA

immediately know
their days are numbered.

And he forces them out
before the end of the year.

It wasn't just the Bay of Pigs
that angered President Kennedy

when it came to the CIA.

In that same month
in April of 1961,

he was also being lied to
about a coup in France,

a military coup that was aimed

at overthrowing
President Charles de Gaulle,

one of our strongest allies.

[Sutherland] Allen Dulles,
who had a long history

of antagonism with de Gaulle,

falsely reported to Kennedy

that the vast majority
of the French military

was staunchly opposed
to de Gaulle's support

of Algerian self-determination.

What he didn't tell him
was that as far back as 1959,

the CIA had discussed
his overthrow.

This coup attempt,

orchestrated by
four French Generals,

was quickly put down

and several news reports
pointed to Allen Dulles' hand

in supporting the episode.

JFK assures
the French ambassador,

"I have nothing to do with this,

I stand in full support
of President de Gaulle."

But he says something
very, very alarming.

He tells the French ambassador,

President Kennedy, that "I'm not
in full control though

"of in my entire government.

"I'm not in control of the CIA.

And I can't speak
for what's happening there."

That's a stunning admission
for a US President to make.

[Sutherland]
Beyond a coup, in fact,

there were at least
six attempts

to assassinate de Gaulle
by the OAS

and others that continued
even after he agreed

to grant Algeria
its independence.

In one of these plots,
there is evidence

that French dissidents
and the CIA

conspired to poison de Gaulle.

[Goldberg] Allen Dulles
was the only commissioner

who did not have a regular job.

Therefore, he became

the single most active member
of the Commission.

He asked the most questions,

a remarkable 31% of the total,

and he attended
the most hearings

even more than
chairman Earl Warren.

Yet, in spite of this,

he never revealed
to the Commission

the CIA plots to kill Castro

or why Kennedy had fired him
over the Bay of Pigs.

Behind the scenes,
he tipped off the CIA

about certain questions

the Commission would ask
regarding Oswald

and he rehearsed with them

the precise wording
of their denials

of any contact
with the alleged assassin.

Contrary to media reports,
the Warren Commission

was not unanimous
in its beliefs.

Senator Richard Russell
of Georgia

did not want to serve
on the Commission.

After he attended
the first meeting,

he quickly became disenchanted
with the proceedings,

particularly the roles
of J. Edgar Hoover

and acting attorney
General Nicholas Katzenbach.

His personal papers

at the University
of Georgia Library

contain a memo written
after the initial

December 5th, 1963
executive session.

"Something strange
is happening.

"Warren and Katzenbach
know all about the FBI

"and are apparently planning
to show Oswald

"as the only one considered.

This to me is
an untenable position."

His papers reveal that he wrote
a dissenting opinion

for the presentation
at the final Commission meeting

of September 18th.

On that day,
he shared his concerns

with President Johnson.

[Governor Richard Russell Jr.
speaking]

[President Lyndon B. Johnson
speaking]

[Goldberg] He also thought
that Oswald did not act alone.

Russell was strongly influenced
by the Zapruder film

and by the testimony
of John Connally,

who himself did not believe

the first shot that hit Kennedy
also went through him.

I did not hear the second shot,

the one that hit me.

I understand
there's some, uh,

some question
in the minds of the experts

about, uh, whether or not

we could both have been hit
by the same bullet

and that was the first bullet.

Uh, I just don't
happen to believe that.

I won't believe it,
never will believe.

[Goldberg] This forced
the other commissioners

to include Connally's dissent
in the report,

and as a result,

they could not absolutely deny

the possibility
of a conspiracy.

Is there a transcript
of that final meeting

of the Warren Commission?

At that meeting,

he was gonna probably
voice his opinion

and his dissent
against the single bullet

striking both men and coming out
as pristine as it was.

Richard Russell probably thought

the only female in the room
was a stenographer

because apparently
she was over there

doodling or writing or whatever,

but there's no record of...

no official record
of that session.

[Goldberg] In 1968,

Harold Weisberg
told Senator Russell

that the National Archives

had no transcript
of the final meeting.

Russell was beside himself

and had his assistant confirm
what had happened.

Russell became
the first commissioner

to criticize
the Warren Report in public.

He was followed by
Commission members

John Sherman Cooper
and Hale Boggs.

[Ed Herlihy]
A record number of Americans,

upwards of 67 million,

go to the polls to elect

the 35th President
of the United States.

So now my wife and I prepare
for a new administration

and, uh, for a new baby.
Thank you.

[Sutherland]
The years of dissent are over,

and Kennedy must now shape
his own policy as President,

sometimes in conflict

with what his
predecessors have done,

especially in foreign policy.

To those new states
whom we welcome

to the ranks of the free,

we pledge our word

that one form
of colonial control

shall not have passed away

merely to be replaced
by a far more iron tyranny.

[Sutherland] The Congo
is the second largest country

in Africa.

In 1960,

it had been granted
its independence

from Belgian colonial rule

and carried out
a democratic election.

In the disorder
of the transition,

the Belgians,
backed by England and France,

sought to eliminate
its charismatic prime minister,

Patrice Lumumba.

Once again, Eisenhower
and CIA Director Allen Dulles

favored the European nation
in this colonial conflict.

And Lumumba,
in order to stop that,

had invited Russian advisers

into the Congo
to secure the country.

At that point,
Eisenhower gave the go-ahead

to have him assassinated.

[Major John M. Newman]
Eisenhower got very impatient

with Allen Dulles.

He had told him
to get rid of Lumumba

and it wasn't happening.

And so he got very frustrated
in the middle of an NSC meeting

and just blurted out,

you know, an order to kill,

not to anybody in particular,

but blurted out
to the everybody assembled there

to kill Lumumba.

Kennedy never knew this.

He gets elected
the following November of 1960,

and he heads
in the opposite direction.

[Sutherland] But events
are already in motion.

With the backing of British
and US intelligence and arms,

Colonel Joseph Mobutu's forces
captured President Lumumba

at the beginning
of December 1960.

[Richard Mahoney]
Dag Hammarskjold,

the UN Secretary General
calls JFK,

who's the President-elect
at this point,

and asks him to intercede

to get Lumumba
released from prison.

When Kennedy intervenes
to save Lumumba,

that's a signal directly

to the CIA
and the Belgian secret police

that they have to
dispatch this guy immediately.

And so 48 hours

before Kennedy
takes the oath of office,

Lumumba is delivered
into the hands of his enemies.

He's taken out
and shot in the head.

Kennedy doesn't know this
until a month later.

Who finally tells him?

The CIA? No.

They still keep it a secret.

He's informed by his
UN ambassador Adlai Stevenson.

His face crumbles.
He's holding his hand.

He's grimacing in anguish

hearing about the assassination
of Patrice Lumumba.

Kennedy would say
in meetings about the Congo,

"The one way to keep
the US out of the Congo

is to keep the UN
in the Congo."

And Kennedy backed Hammarskjold

in terms of, um,

getting a government of
national unity in Leopoldville.

[Sutherland] Hammarskjold died
in a mysterious plane crash

in September of 1961

as he was working
on a peace treaty

between the breakaway state
of Katanga and the Congo.

[Mahoney] The reason why
Katanga seceded

was because it was
an extremely rich province

in a wide range
of very valuable minerals.

And the Belgian company,

a colonial company
called Union Minière

convinced
the Belgian government

to use Belgian military
and paramilitary forces

to encourage
the province to secede.

So the province secedes
from the Congo

and announces itself
as an independent country

supported by British

and Belgian imperial interests.

Dag Hammarskjold is dead,

but the United Nations lives.

His tragedy
is deep in our hearts.

But the task for which he died
are at the top of our agenda.

The US ambassador

and close friend
of President Kennedy,

Edmund Gullion,

set a cable home saying,

contrary to
the official explanation

for this, you know,
tragic incident,

this was an assassination.

[Sutherland] The photographs
of Hammarskjold show his body

as the only one
not burned or charred.

And he had a playing card,
reportedly the ace of spades,

stuffed into his shirt collar
above the knot of the tie.

Now, due to
Susan Williams' book

and the new evidence
offered by Desmond Tutu

and the Union of South Africa's

Truth and Reconciliation
Commission,

there are
controversial documents

that indicate Allen Dulles
was involved

in the sabotage of the plane.

The project was called
Operation Celeste

and it was to be carried out

through a secret
white supremacist group

called SAIMR.

[Mahoney] Kennedy understood

pretty early
in his administration

that the
Central Intelligence Agency

had an agenda
that was completely their own.

[Sutherland]
Kennedy now conveyed

to Prime Minister
Macmillan of England

that he would not be backing
European imperialism

in the Congo.

And he allowed
UN Ambassador Adlai Stevenson

to vote for
a use of force resolution

to expel
all foreign mercenaries

from the breakaway region.

At the end of 1962,

Katanga's forces fired on
a UN helicopter and outpost.

Kennedy approved
a UN military attack,

codenamed
Operation Grand Slam.

One month
after combat operations,

Katanga was defeated

and the Congo
was one country again.

Kennedy came back
to the United Nations

a year after that

to reiterate the fact

that the peacekeeping operation
is working,

we have
a democratic government,

and we still do not accept
Belgium's role

in the secession of
this province called Katanga.

[President Kennedy]
Today the clouds have lifted a little

so that new rays of hope
can break through.

The pressures on West Berlin
appear to be temporarily eased.

Political unity in the Congo

has been largely restored.

A neutral coalition in Laos,

while still in difficulty,

is at least in being.

The integrity of
the United Nations Secretariat

has been reaffirmed.

Today, we are here to review
the major findings

of our full investigation
of FBI domestic intelligence.

[Goldberg] After the
Watergate scandal in 1975,

Senator Frank Church
conducted

the first
full-scale investigation

of the abuses and crimes
of the CIA and FBI.

Many secrets were revealed

for the first time
to the public.

For example,
the FBI's programs

to destabilize
the Black Panthers

and to harass and intimidate
Martin Luther King

into perhaps
taking his own life.

The public was also
made aware of the CIA plots

to kill foreign leaders

like Patrice Lumumba
and Fidel Castro.

Former Warren commissioner
Gerald Ford

was President at this time.

Prior to the formation
of the Church Committee,

Ford had appointed
his own commission

headed by Vice President
Nelson Rockefeller

to investigate
domestic CIA activities.

On January 16, 1975

at a luncheon
with executives and editors

of The New York Times,

President Ford,
in explaining why he appointed

such a conservative panel

to investigate
these CIA crimes,

said that they needed to guard
the national interest.

Editor A.M. Rosenthal asked,
"From what?"

Ford blurted out,

"From things
like assassinations."

Don't you think that is
an exceedingly loose way

to run an agency, um,

particularly the CIA?

Well, we are going to
try to run it tighter.

[Goldberg]
When CIA director William Colby

turned out to be
honest and open

with the Rockefeller
and Church Committees,

he was replaced by
George H.W. Bush,

who, during his
confirmation hearing,

hid his relationship
with the CIA.

As part
of the Church Committee,

Senators Richard Schweiker
and Gary Hart

set up a subcommittee

to investigate
the Kennedy assassination

and how the Warren Commission

had been served
by the FBI and the CIA.

That report severely criticized

the Warren Commission's
lack of independence

and their over-reliance
on government investigators

for their findings.

After a lot of prodding
and pressuring

from the Warren Commission
counsel,

J. Edgar Hoover writes
Mr. Rankin and said,

"Yes, we did have
a relationship with Mr. Ruby

"and between March 11, '59,
October 2nd, '59,

"on some eight,
nine occasions,

"he acted as our,
as our informant

"or something to that effect.

"Now, who said that?

"Who said that at the time
"of the Warren Commission report?

"Did anybody ever imply that,
that Jack Ruby

"was a confidential informant
for the FBI?

"Nobody breathed that.

That was classified."

[Goldberg]
The Church Committee had access

to the internal CIA report
on their plots

with the Mafia to kill Castro

which began in 1960
under Director Allen Dulles.

In that report,
the agency admitted

they had
no Presidential authorization

for the assassination attempts,

yet during
his nearly ten-month service

on the Warren Commission

Dulles never told
his colleagues

about this Mafia connection.

Senator Schweiker
was infuriated

by both the alliance
and the attempted assassination

of a foreign leader.

I think the Warren Commission
has in fact, uh,

collapsed like a house of cards.

And I believe
that the Warren Commission

was set up at the time,

uh, to feed pabulum
to the American people,

uh, for reasons not yet known,

and that one of
the biggest cover-ups

in the history of our country
occurred at that time.

[Goldberg]
While working as a technician

at a film facility,

Robert Groden
had come into possession

of a copy of the famous
eight millimeter Zapruder film.

In six years, he had shown it
in public only three times.

In 1975,

television host Geraldo Rivera
heard about this

and scheduled Groden

and comedian
social activist Dick Gregory

on his ABC program
Good Night America.

...the film shot by

the Dallas dress manufacturer
Abraham Zapruder.

And it's the execution
of President Kennedy.

[Robert Groden] Now, before
he goes behind the sign,

the President
is waving to the crowd.

When he comes out
from behind the sign,

he is shot.
Then Governor Connally is shot.

[Geraldo Rivera]
He's already been hit.

[Groden]
He's already been hit.

[Rivera]
And now?

[Groden] At the bottom
of the screen,

the head shot.

That's the shot
that blew off his head.

Now the Warren Commission
said that

all of the shots
were fired from behind

by Lee Harvey Oswald,
a lone assassin

firing at the President.

And as you can see clearly,

the head is thrown
violently backwards.

Completely consistent
with the shot

from the front right.

That's the most
upsetting thing I've ever seen.

We'll talk about it in a minute.

[Goldberg]
Due to public outrage

that national viewing caused

the creation of
the second major inquiry

into
President Kennedy's murder.

This was called

the House Select Committee
on Assassinations.

[Dr. Cyril Wecht] When one
considers all the things

that happened
and did not happen,

the missing pieces of evidence

and, uh, and, uh, documents
that were destroyed and so on,

I have no idea
what might have happened

in Dallas that day.

What's the situation
with the HSCA files in 1979?

After the House Select
Committee on Assassinations

close up shop,

they-they sealed
many of the witness reports.

These were not available
to the public.

[Judge John R. Tunheim]
Close to half a million records

which were segregated,

they were to be sealed
under house rules

at the time until 2029,

uh, some of them had leaked out,
some were a part of the report

on the House Select Committee
on Assassinations,

but most were not released.

If it takes me 30 years to nail
every one of the assassins,

then I will continue
this investigation for 30 years.

I owe that not only
to Jack Kennedy

but to the country.

Hey, there's Clay!

[Goldberg] But then, in 1991,

due to the uproar
over the film JFK,

hearings were held
on Capitol Hill.

Most Americans did not
believe or support the verdict

of the Warren Commission
initially.

And now more than
three in four,

according to
all recent samplings

of public opinion,

think some conspiracy
was involved.

[Goldberg]
At the end of that film,

the public was made aware

that the House Select Committee
had classified

the vast majority
of their materials

until 2029.

Of course
we could not go further

than we could
because many of these files,

as you know, were sealed
to the American public

in the 1960s,

and were never opened

and the Warren Commission
information

was always compromised
by the fact

that the CIA, the FBI,
military intelligence

never gave
any significant information

to the Warren Commission
members.

And in fact,
the Warren Commission

was chaired, uh...
was one of the members

of the Warren Commission
was Allen Dulles,

who had been fired
by President Kennedy

as the chief of the CIA.

There seems to be the element

of the fox investigating
the chicken coop here.

[Goldberg] Because of
the massive media controversy

that accompanied the film,

Congress was forced
to do something

about the secrecy

still existing 30 years
after Kennedy's death.

Clerk will report the title.

Senate 3006,

an act to provide
for the expeditious disclosure

of records relevant
to the assassination

of President John F. Kennedy.

I will not permit
petty posturing to deflect us

from the higher goal
of securing public access

and official accountability.

Judge Tunheim,
what was the concept

behind the JFK Records Act?

President John F. Kennedy
Records Collection Act of 1992,

was what it was called,

was created largely to clear up

all the questions
that people had

about the assassination
of President Kennedy.

There was a frustration
that the agencies themselves

were never going to release
the information,

and people wanted to know,

and I think people have
the right to know,

and that's what underlined
the entire act.

What were
some of your difficulties

working with the CIA?

One of the censors at the CIA
was at a meeting with us,

and there was a document
that we put up on the screen,

said we were prepared
to release it.

And I asked him, you know,

"Tell us why we shouldn't
release this record?"

And it was silence
for about two minutes.

And he finally said,

"I know there is a reason,

I just can't
think of what it is."

[Judge Tunheim laughs]

[Goldberg]
Over five million pages

of collected records
and artifacts

are housed
at the National Archives

in College Park, Maryland,

and most may be viewed
in person.

The Review Board had
an unbelievable task

to get at the bottom
of the assassination,

not as a reinvestigation,

but to make the record
of the assassination

as robust as possible.

And that included
really pressing

federal agencies

on records that they may
not have thought about

as assassination records,

but also state
and local government.

Obviously Dallas
was important,

New Orleans was important.

[Stone] What about
the Oswald KGB file?

[Judge Tunheim]
The National Security Council

in September 1998

refused to allow
the issue to be raised

in the Clinton-Yeltsin meeting.

We went to Moscow
to try to negotiate release.

We got some records,
not very much.

We got no help
from the Department of State.

In fact,
we weren't even allowed

to go into
the United States embassy

in Moscow.

Uh, they claimed later
it was just a mix-up.

But we could have used
some diplomatic help.

How much media coverage
did the ARRB get?

We issued a hundred
or more press releases.

We didn't get really
too much attention.

We were followed most closely,

probably by
The New York Times,

because they had writers

that focused on intelligence
and intelligence issues.

[Thomas Samoluk] I wish
there had been more attention.

It seemed like, uh,
the American public today,

even 20 years after
the Review Board

was in business,

is still as interested
as they were then

and the day
of the assassination.

It very definitely should have
been an open-ended process.

I think there was some thought
probably among the agencies

that they could just
wait us out.

You know, if they
didn't respond and delayed,

eventually we wouldn't
be in office

as a Review Board anymore

and they wouldn't
have to turn over records.

How did you obtain
the Zapruder film

for the National Archives?

You know, it's the most
important piece of evidence

of one of
the most shocking crimes

of American history.

May I have
your name, please, sir?

My name is
Abraham Zapruder...

[Judge Tunheim]
We tried to get the family

to donate the film
to the United States,

the original.

They could keep the copyright,

they can sell,

uh, you know,
the rights to use it.

They can do
whatever they want with it.

But we wanted the original

and the arbitrators,
in a two to one vote,

voted to award what was really,
I think, an excessive sum.

It was around
16 million dollars.

A hard one to swallow
as far as the amount.

But I think
that there would have been

criticism if that film

was not part
of the official JFK collection.

The Zapruder family,
after getting all this money,

after this windfall profit,

they decide to donate
the copyright

to the Sixth Floor Museum.

So if you want
to publish a book

or do a documentary
about the Zapruder film,

you have to get the permission
of the Sixth Floor Museum.

[Goldberg]
The Sixth Floor Museum

to this day insists
that Oswald shot Kennedy

from that sixth floor window.

And virtually
everything in the museum

is dedicated
to that proposition.

The Zapruder film
shows Kennedy

being knocked
violently backwards

as he was hit in the skull.

His body goes back
and to the left.

Yet this shocking moment

is not discussed
in the Warren Report.

One of the most
serious problems

the Warren Commission had

was in placing Oswald
on the sixth floor

at the time of the shooting.

They said he was there
at 12:30 firing shots.

They then had him
stow the rifle between boxes,

and run down
the single set of stairs

in order to flee
the crime scene.

The problem was,
there were other employees

in the vicinity
of his alleged escape path.

And the testimony
of three of them

conflicted with what was
in the Warren Report.

Barry Ernest went looking
for one of these employees.

My focus was on finding

a specific witness
to the assassination,

which was Victoria Adams.

This would have gone on

from when I returned
from Dallas in late '68

until probably 2000.

There was not much
written about her,

even in her testimony.

But one thing
she did say

was that she graduated
from high school

in San Francisco.

I finally ended up
with a school

called
Presentation High School,

and it had her name in it.

And I wrote to them,
the alumni office

to try and find out
if I could get

an email address
or a telephone number

for this woman.

I never received a response,

but the state police officer
who I knew said,

"Let me handle it."

And within a week,

he had written to Vicki Adams

and asked her
if she was the woman

who once worked in Dallas

and had been a witness
to the JFK assassination.

She had replied to him,
"Yes, that's me."

Vicki worked
on the fourth floor

of the Texas School
Book Depository.

She testified
that immediately

after the assassination,

she ran down the back stairs

in an effort to get outside
to see what was going on.

[Goldberg]
According to the Warren Report,

Oswald was seen
in the second floor lunchroom

within 90 seconds
of the shooting

by Dallas police officer
Marrion Baker

and Oswald's supervisor
Roy Truly,

as they went up the stairs
to the sixth floor.

I turned around and asked him
if the man worked for him,

and if he knew him.

And he said,
"Yes, he works for me,

and I-I know him."

[Goldberg] For Vicki Adams
to have reached the first floor

within 60 seconds

and not have seen
or heard Oswald,

or Baker and Truly,

on the wooden stairs

was in conflict

with the Warren Commission's
assumption

that Oswald was
on those stairs at the time.

[Barry Ernest] So what
the Warren Commission did

was successfully
deceive the public

into thinking
that Vicki was just another

mistaken or a confused witness.

The whole case based
on the Warren Commission

is Vicki was wrong

because she went
down the stairs

later than she thought,

and she saw two men there
who couldn't have been there

unless she had come down
the stairs later.

[Goldberg]
Employees William Shelley

and Billy Lovelady

had been on the front steps
of the building

watching the motorcade pass.

According to their statements,

after the shooting,

they then went
to the railroad tracks

beside the grassy knoll,

returning
to the Book Depository

within several minutes.

The Warren Commission,

needing to keep
the stairs clear

for Oswald's descent,

claimed that
Vicki had come down

after Baker and Truly
had passed

the fourth floor
on their way up,

and late enough
to see Shelley and Lovelady

return from
the railroad tracks.

According to her testimony,

she left the window
on the fourth floor

within 15 to 30 seconds
of the assassination.

The Warren Commission elevated
that time to one minute.

She said she arrived
on the first floor

within 60 seconds
of the assassination.

The Warren Commission
elevated that time

to several minutes.

When Vicki was giving
her Warren Commission testimony,

she felt that David Belin,
who was questioning her,

did not believe her.

And so she asked Belin

if she could be a part
of the reenactments

that were going on.

Belin refused.

When she then said,
"Interview Sandra Styles,

a coworker who went down
the stairs with me,"

Belin said, "We don't need her.
We have you."

Sandra Styles,
when I interviewed her,

uh, she corroborated
everything Vicki had said.

She came down the stairs
with Vicki,

she didn't see or hear anyone
on the stairs,

and she didn't see
Shelley and Lovelady

on the first floor.

In light of that, I went
to the National Archives

searching for
her original testimony.

I wanted the original
stenographer's tape

that was made
by the court reporter,

the only other person
in the room

when David Belin
interviewed Vicki Adams.

But when I asked
about Vicki's tape,

I was told that the tape

containing her testimony
was missing.

And later, I learned that
that tape had been destroyed

by the Warren Commission
for no apparent reason.

And Vicki named three people
who could corroborate her.

And the Commission had
an affidavit from one of them.

The three people
who were Elsie Dorman,

who was a coworker,

happened to be filming
the motorcade

from the fourth floor window.

Sandra Styles
and Dorothy Garner,

Vicki's immediate supervisor,

and had stood at the window
with Vicki.

Not a one of them was called
as a Commission witness.

In 1999, I found a document
in the National Archives

that had been suppressed
for 35 years.

It was a letter written by

Assistant US Attorney
Martha Jo Stroud.

It was addressed
to J. Lee Rankin,

the head honcho

of the Warren Commission's
investigation

at that point.

It was a transmittal letter

forwarding
Vicki's signed testimony.

In the last paragraph
of that letter,

the letter quotes
Garner as saying

that she saw Vicki
go down the stairs

before she saw Officer Baker
and Roy Truly come up.

Now, this is
in direct contradiction

to the Warren Commission's
conclusion

that Vicki was on the stairs

much later
than all this had occurred.

When I found and interviewed
Dorothy Garner,

she confirmed everything.

She said that she had been
at the window with Vicki,

that Vicki had left
the window immediately,

that she actually followed
Vicki outside the office

and to a point where she could

see her going down the stairs.

And it was only after that,

that Baker and Truly
came up the stairs,

according to her.

And during that whole time,
she never saw Oswald.

Garner was putting
Vicki on the stairs

exactly when she said.

So the Stroud letter became
a very, very dangerous document.

[Goldberg]
The Warren Commission

concealed the Stroud document.

Without the Review Board's
declassification process,

we would never have learned
of the corroborating testimony

of three witnesses
that provide powerful evidence

that Oswald was not
on the sixth floor

at the time of the shooting.

[reporter]
Tonight, President Trump

getting caught up
in his own JFK conspiracy

after deciding not to release
all the documents

tied to the assassination.

So all of the records
were supposed

to have been released in 2017.

What happened?

President Trump, uh,

tweeted that he was excited

to release all of
the remaining records

of the assassination
and what they might disclose.

And then at the last minute,
after meeting with the CIA,

he decided to postpone release.

It's 1960s-era material

and there are redactions
that we put in

because we felt in the 1990s
there was still a reason

to keep them
from being released.

But that's changed.

Uh, this is 56 years
after the assassination.

There's no reason

to protect this information
anymore.

It's certainly
against the spirit,

uh, of the JFK Records Act

and technically
now against the law,

because the mandate was
to get everything out by 2017.

You know,
they had 25 years to plan

for the due date
in Washington.

It's not just
the Trump administration,

but they're the ones
who tweeted out

saying it's all coming.

Why the delay?

[Tom Llamas]
Well, the White House is citing

national security concerns,

we know that at least
18,000 records from the CIA

are still being guarded.

[reporter]
The President's decision

coming after an appeal

from the CIA and the FBI,

that releasing certain files
could put the lives

of some of our spies in danger.

[theme music playing]