Original subtitles

REPORTER: The President of the United States is dead.

Tonight, the assassination that shook our country

to its core.

It was just a shock that caused everybody to stop

and think for a moment about how the world had changed.

Police quickly catch the culprit,

but many believe there’s more to the story.

EVY POUMPOURAS: The first question any good theorist asks

is, "Who wants Kennedy dead?"

Now, we’ll explore the top theories

surrounding one of America’s most shocking events.

JEFFERSON MORLEY: So, he was convinced

that Kennedy was killed by enemies

high in his own government.

BEN COWAN: He believed that Fidel Castro

orchestrated the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

Is there a conspiracy behind John F. Kennedy’s assassination?

And if so, who is really responsible for his death?

[music]

Dallas, Texas, November 22nd, 1963.

At 11:25 a.m. President John F. Kennedy

arrives on Air Force One.

PHILIP SHENON: President Kennedy goes to Dallas

to give a lunchtime speech at a convention center

known as the Trade Mart.

Between his arrival at Love Field and his speech,

he’s to lead a motorcade

through the center of downtown Dallas.

PATRICK HINDS: The motorcade has over 12 cars.

Kennedy is riding in a three-rowed

Lincoln Continental convertible limousine

with the top down.

PHILIP: President Kennedy and Mrs. Kennedy

are in the back seat,

President Kennedy on the right side,

Mrs. Kennedy on the left.

Ahead of them are Texas Governor John Connally

and his wife Nellie,

and ahead of them are two Secret Service agents,

one of them is driving.

BEN: It’s a very sort of warm reception for Kennedy,

and there’s something like 200,000 people

lining the route, so it is no small turnout.

PHILIP: And at one point, Mrs. Connally in the car

says, "You can’t say Dallas doesn’t love you, can you?"

And President Kennedy replies, "No, you certainly can’t."

LAURENCE: Those are his last words.

JEFFERSON: The motorcade comes down Main Street

to the end of Main Street, where it hits Dealey Plaza,

takes a sharp right turn on Commerce Street,

and then a sharp left turn

in front of the Texas School Book Depository.

And it’s at that moment that the first gunshots are heard.

[gunshot]

REPORTER: Something, I repeat, has happened

in the motorcade route.

A gunshot rings out, and then two more.

Both President Kennedy and Governor Connally are hit.

Two shots hit Kennedy.

The first enters his upper back

and comes out through his throat.

And then the second enters the back of his skull.

PHILIP: He is rushed to Parkland Memorial Hospital.

That’s where he would soon be declared dead

at the age of 46.

LAURENCE: Connally is also gravely injured, but survives.

One hour after the shooting, Kennedy’s death

is officially announced to the media.

As word spreads of this, everybody stops where they are.

People are crying.

BEN: There’s a lot of screaming, there’s chaos,

and just a lot of fear and confusion.

PHILIP: It was just a shock that caused everybody

to stop and think for a moment about how the world had changed.

EVY: Any divisiveness or any fractions

within the country, everybody just comes together

in this moment to grieve.

LAURENCE: As the world stops to mourn,

a manhunt begins.

PHILIP: As soon as it’s clear

that President Kennedy’s been hit

and the motorcade rushes out of Dealey Plaza,

the police go interview eyewitnesses.

And perhaps the most important witness

of that day was a steamfitter,

a Dallas man named Howard Brennan,

who says that he saw a man with a rifle

on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository.

LAURENCE: Deputy Constable Seymour Weitzman

and Deputy Sheriff Eugene Boone rush inside the book depository.

And there they find quite literally the smoking gun.

PHILIP: They find a Mannlicher Carcano rifle,

an Italian-made rifle, and they also find

three spent cartridges, suggesting that somebody

had just fired three bullets from the sixth floor.

They find the books have been moved around

to create sort of a sniper’s perch.

They also find a 38-inch brown paper bag.

LAURENCE: The shooter escapes, but building staff

identify a prime suspect.

An employee at the Texas School Book Depository,

Buell Wesley Frazier, offers a colleague

a trip into downtown Dallas

on the morning of the assassination,

and the colleague is carrying a long brown paper bag

in which he says he has curtain rods.

EVY: A manager in the building, Roy Truly, looks around,

and he sees that one of his employees

is actually missing.

It’s the same man who brought in

that suspicious brown paper bag that morning.

LAURENCE: It’s Lee Harvey Oswald.

Police radio his description to all city units.

EVY: So, it’s been less than an hour

since President Kennedy was shot,

and thanks to the quick work of the Dallas P.D.,

they actually have a promising lead.

Three shots fired, three spent shell casings

found next to a rifle that they believe

was brought in by Lee Harvey Oswald,

who is the only person who has fled that book depository.

Every other employee is there

still actually talking to investigators.

It appears that Oswald is the man responsible

for the assassination.

PHILIP: The Dallas Police Department

sends out a message to be on the lookout

for somebody who looks like Lee Harvey Oswald.

And Officer J.D. Tippit

is in a patrol car about three miles away.

He sees a man on the side of the road

who appears to fit the description of the man

who’s been identified in Dealey Plaza

as the president’s assassin.

The police officer tries to stop this man

and is gunned down by him,

and this man, according to many witnesses,

is Lee Harvey Oswald.

EVY: If police had any doubt that Lee Harvey Oswald

assassinated President Kennedy, that doubt is gone

the moment he killed Officer Tippit.

PHILIP: A local merchant named Johnny Brewer

has seen this man duck into the local movie theater.

A little bit before 2:00 p.m.,

police officers find Oswald seated there.

He’s armed.

He puts up a struggle before he’s arrested.

PATRICK: One of the arresting officers,

Nick McDonald, testifies that as they reach him,

Oswald raises his pistol and pulls the trigger.

But McDonald grabs the gun just as the hammer falls,

hitting the webbing between his thumb and index finger,

probably saving his life.

LAURENCE: Oswald is brought to the police

and court’s building in downtown Dallas

and charged for both murders.

Subsequent investigation uncovers a lot more evidence

that actually implicates Oswald.

They find a photo of Oswald that was taken by his wife

where he’s holding a rifle that matches the murder weapon.

Oswald had made a fake ID in the name of Alek Hidell.

The rifle that was found in the school book depository

had been ordered in the name of Alek Hidell

and sent to a post office box in that name.

PHILIP: Virtually all of the ballistics evidence

points to Oswald as the gunman in Dealey Plaza.

His palm prints are found on the weapons,

and the bullets fired in Dealey Plaza

almost certainly came out of the rifle

that’s found on the sixth floor.

LAURENCE: But none of this evidence

is ever presented in court.

PHILIP: So, Oswald is held in custody downtown.

He’s interrogated by the FBI, the Secret Service,

the Dallas Police Department,

the Dallas District Attorney’s Office.

He goes through rounds of questioning.

What we know from those interrogations,

that he lies again and again and again,

and he insists he had nothing to do with the president’s murder.

Then something absolutely crazy happens.

Sunday morning, November 24th,

police are actually ready to transfer Oswald

to the county jail.

They have an armored car ready in the basement of the building.

JEFFERSON: And as he’s being brought out

in front of the TV cameras,

Jack Ruby, owner of a local nightclub,

steps out of the crowd with a .45

and shoots Oswald once in the stomach

on national TV.

[gunshot]

LAURENCE: Ruby is arrested and Oswald is taken

to the same hospital as Kennedy,

where less than 48 hours after the president,

he’s declared dead as well.

PHILIP: Oswald’s death on November 24th

means that there will never be a trial,

never an opportunity to resolve an awful lot of the evidence

that points to Oswald as the gunman in Dealey Plaza.

LAURENCE: New president Lyndon Johnson

establishes a commission to investigate the assassination.

It becomes known as the Warren Commission.

PHILIP: It’s sort of the ultimate blue-ribbon commission.

Among the other members are the former director

of the Central Intelligence Agency, Allen Dulles,

as well as a young congressman from Michigan

by the name of Gerald Ford.

The Warren Commission works for nearly a year

compiling evidence, gathering information.

And on September 24th, 1964,

they present an 888-page report

to President Johnson.

LAURENCE: The Warren Commission expresses no doubt.

They state that Lee Harvey Oswald

is the only man responsible for JFK’s death.

EVY: They also find that Jack Ruby acted alone

in killing Oswald.

But over the years, a lot of people

have questioned these findings,

saying that they might appear to be a little too neat.

LAURENCE: Making this report far from the last word on JFK.

LAURENCE: When the Warren Commission releases

its findings in 1964, it marks the end

of the official investigation into the JFK assassination.

They find that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone

in killing President John F. Kennedy.

LAURENCE: But that answer doesn’t satisfy

the public for long.

BEN: Skeptics write books.

First, a trickle of books, and then a flood of books

questioning the findings of the report

and leading to a larger distrust both in the commission itself

and in the sort of firmament of American government.

LAURENCE: After 12 years of scrutiny,

the U.S. government takes action.

JEFFERSON: The House Select Committee on Assassinations

was created in 1976.

LAURENCE: The committee takes a closer look

at the Warren Commission Report.

They agree with most of what the Warren Commission says,

particularly regarding the evidence against Oswald.

They’re confident that Oswald did shoot Kennedy

from the sixth floor of the book depository.

LAURENCE: But they uncover a new piece of evidence.

Assassination researchers in Dallas came to the committee

and said it may be that the sound of the gunshots

was captured on this policeman’s radio recording.

BEN: So, the committee has multiple acoustic experts

go over this recording, and upon first listen,

they think, actually, there weren’t three shots

as previously thought, but four.

Three shots did in fact come from

the Texas School Book Depository,

but that one shot came from a grassy knoll

in front of the motorcade.

In other words, Oswald didn’t act alone.

And if he didn’t act alone,

someone planned this killing with him.

And if so, who was it?

The House Committee uses a word that will become connected

to the Kennedy assassination from then on.

The word they use is "conspiracy."

So, the audio evidence that seems to point to a conspiracy

is later disputed, and in many minds,

it is found to be completely in error.

But it’s almost too late to put the toothpaste back in the tube,

that the idea of conspiracy is now even further cemented

in the minds of millions of Americans.

LAURENCE: If the JFK assassination is a conspiracy,

who’s behind it?

EVY: Almost immediately after the shooting,

one conspiracy theory rises to the top.

So, while there’s only circumstantial evidence

to prove it, there’s a lot of circumstantial evidence.

Even Lyndon Johnson did at some point

make an aside to an ABC news reporter

that he believed that Fidel Castro

orchestrated the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

Why is Fidel Castro a suspect?

Let’s start with motive.

At the time of the assassination,

there is no foreign power with a bigger grudge

against Kennedy than Castro.

PHILIP: President Kennedy is so determined

to get rid of Castro, that he tells the CIA

to go forward with an invasion of Cuba

that becomes known as the Bay of Pigs Operation.

They send Cuban exiles into Cuba

with the CIA support to oust Castro.

It’s a debacle, and afterwards,

certainly Castro knows that President Kennedy

is so determined to remove him from power

that he had actually ordered an invasion of his country.

LAURENCE: Documents that are later declassified

reveal more evidence.

After the Bay of Pigs Invasion fails,

the Kennedy administration, through the CIA,

tried to kill Castro in the most exotic of ways.

Everything from poison cigars,

to poisoned skin-diving suits,

to exploding seashells, but yes.

Certainly, Castro knew the presidency

was plotting against him.

PHILIP: So, we know that Fidel Castro

has reason to want to see President Kennedy dead.

And the questions in all of the years since

is what role did Lee Harvey Oswald

play in whatever plot was developed

to try to kill the president?

LAURENCE: During their investigation,

the Warren Commission conducts a thorough background check

on Oswald.

Even when he’s serving in the Marine Corps

for three years, Lee Harvey Oswald is not shy

about the fact that he’s a Marxist,

so much so, his colleagues in the Marine Corps

used to refer to him as "Oswaldovich."

In 1959 he defects to the Soviet Union

and marries 19-year-old Soviet citizen

Marina Prusakova, and they have a child.

They live there until 1962 in an apartment

just a few blocks away from where the Soviets

are training Cuban spies and soldiers.

Back in the U.S. in April of 1963,

Oswald goes down to New Orleans.

There, he tries to start up a pro-Castro activist group.

BEN: It’s clear that Oswald likes communism.

But the biggest revelation for investigators

is that it turns out that Oswald went to Mexico City

in September of 1963--

which of course is just two months

before JFK’s assassination--

and while there had contact with officials

at the Cuban embassy.

LAURENCE: According to author Gus Russo,

during these meetings Oswald makes a chilling offer.

Russo talks to various sources,

including an FBI case officer

who has two high-level informants

within the Communist Party.

And these two informants are two brothers

by the names of Morris and Jack Childs.

The Childs brothers meet with Fidel Castro

after the Kennedy assassination and learn just how much

Fidel Castro knew about Lee Harvey Oswald

in the weeks before the assassination.

EVY: According to Russo’s research,

Oswald tells embassy officials,

"I’ll kill that bastard Kennedy when he goes to Dallas."

Castro is immediately informed about this.

The embassy staff calls him up

and they ask him, "What do we do?"

Castro denies taking Oswald up on his offer.

I don’t think there’s any credible evidence

that Fidel Castro played any role

in ordering President Kennedy’s assassination.

But I think it’s clear that he was well aware

before the assassination that Lee Harvey Oswald

had marched into a Cuban embassy in Mexico City

and made the statement that he was going to kill Kennedy.

LAURENCE: Russo keeps digging.

EVY: Russo speaks to some former Cuban spies

that tell him that when Oswald makes this offer,

they actually encourage him.

One officer tells Russo that they offer Oswald money,

and then tell him that they’ll help him evacuate

if he’s successful doing this.

BEN: Oswald’s end goal is to get a visa

to get either to Cuba, or to the Soviet Union, or both.

And eventually, the Cubans do give him some form

of temporary visa in October of 1963.

EVY: But according to Russo’s findings,

they don’t actually intend to bring Oswald to Cuba.

They plan to pick him up and kill him,

and then dump his body in the Gulf of Mexico.

LAURENCE: According to Gus Russo,

there’s more evidence to support this claim.

EVY: Russo finds reports of a private plane

sitting on an airfield in Dallas on November 22nd.

And that plane takes off for Havana

after the assassination.

As we know, Oswald is not on that plane.

But that might be where he’s headed

when he encounters Officer Tippit,

and the entire Cuban plan changes after that.

BEN: So, that’s the theory. The Warren Commission

and also the later House Committee on Assassinations

dismiss the idea that Castro or the Cuban government

could have been responsible for the killing of JFK.

And today, Oswald, Castro, Johnson-- they’re all dead.

So, I’d say any hopes of proving this theory are gone.

LAURENCE: When Lee Harvey Oswald visits Mexico City

in the fall of 1963,

investigators are desperate to know what he’s up to.

PATRICK: He makes several visits to the Cuban embassy.

What happens there? Are the Cubans involved?

You have to ask, right?

LAURENCE: But the Cuban embassy isn’t the only place

Oswald visits in Mexico.

BEN: While in Mexico City,

he also goes to the Soviet embassy

in his quest for a visa, and he ends up

kind of bouncing back and forth

between the Cuban embassy and the Soviet embassy.

PHILIP: So Oswald, in visiting the Soviet embassy,

is taken to meet with a Valery Kostikov.

Oswald has one meeting on September 28th with Kostikov,

and they have a subsequent telephone conversation

on October 1st.

LAURENCE: Authorities dig into Kostikov’s background,

and they make a chilling discovery.

PHILIP: Valery Kostikov is actually a KGB agent

and a KGB assassinations expert.

Doesn’t that suggest that this man, Lee Harvey Oswald,

is up to no good?

BEN: So, that leads us to the next big question,

which is, is the Soviet Union,

led be Premier Nikita Khrushchev,

involved in JFK’s assassination?

Khrushchev may have a motive to kill Kennedy

that’s just as strong as Fidel Castro’s.

As we know, Kennedy is on a crusade against communism,

and communism is represented on the world stage

by its biggest superpower, the USSR.

BEN: Premier Khrushchev is trying to promote revolution

and communism around the world,

and JFK is trying to do the exact opposite.

So, these two are pitted against each other

at a geopolitical level.

And unfortunately for JFK,

90 miles from the Florida coastline

the Soviets have a communist nation in the form of Cuba.

EVY: Communist Cuba would not have happened

without the Soviets.

They give the Cubans training,

financial and military support.

Castro’s victory is also a victory for Khrushchev.

LAURENCE: Then in 1962, Khrushchev experiences

a very public defeat, thanks to President Kennedy.

PHILIP: A year before Kennedy’s death,

the United States and the Soviet Union

had almost gone to war when the Soviet Union

attempts to set up missile launch pads in Cuba

that can be used for nuclear weapons.

PATRICK: Kennedy isn’t okay with Soviet nukes 90 miles away,

and this begins what’s known as the Cuban Missile Crisis,

which ultimately, after a lot

of back-and-forth political posturing,

Kennedy wins.

LAURENCE: Two years later in 1964,

Khrushchev is removed from office.

But before he’s removed, in 1963,

Khrushchev is still clinging to power,

looking for a way to redeem himself

among the communists.

PHILIP: That would certainly add some logic to the idea

that maybe Khrushchev wanted to see Kennedy dead.

PATRICK: If Oswald walks right into the embassy

and offers to kill Kennedy in Dallas,

maybe the Soviets go for it.

Otherwise, why is he meeting

with a KGB assassinations expert?

BEN: There is an even-further-out theory,

which is that Khrushchev started plotting to kill Kennedy

even before the Mexico City machinations.

LAURENCE: Author and attorney Michael Eddowes

shares details of his investigation

in the 1977 book "The Oswald File."

BEN: Michael Eddowes comes up with this theory

that Khrushchev conceives of this plot to kill Kennedy

when Oswald is still living in the Soviet Union

beginning in 1959.

PATRICK: Khrushchev realizes he’s got a golden opportunity

on his hands.

Here, he’s got an American citizen,

a former Marine, and a vowed communist

who speaks Russian.

And everybody knows he’s there in the USSR.

The Associated Press had reported on his defection.

Eddowes believes that Khrushchev detains and kills Oswald

while in the USSR, then replaces him

with a KGB agent, someone who looks very similar.

PATRICK: So, it’s not Lee Harvey Oswald

who lands back in the United States in 1962.

It’s an impostor whose mission it is

to kill John F. Kennedy.

LAURENCE: Eddowes believes he has definitive proof

that Oswald was replaced.

BEN: On his Marine records, Oswald is listed as being 5’11",

but that the person who killed Kennedy

is actually 5’9".

The original Oswald also had a cranial operation as a child,

leaving him with an indentation behind his ear

and a dime-sized hole in his skull.

PATRICK: But according to Eddowes,

the autopsy on the Kennedy assassin

shows no such features.

It does, however, show that the assassin

has a large scar on his wrist, which Eddowes notes

the original Oswald did not have.

LAURENCE: His argument persuades the Texas courts

and Oswald’s widow Marina to have his body exhumed.

BEN: So, this is huge news.

Eddowes has managed to convince, you know, authorities

and Lee Harvey Oswald’s widow

that there’s something to this theory.

EVY: So, in 1981 they dig up the body,

and it’s in an advanced state of decomposition.

Eddowes and widow Marina Oswald

agree to have the Dallas County Medical Examiner Linda Norton

do the examination.

BEN: Dr. Norton is able to match dental records

and also identify the evidence

of the childhood cranial surgery,

which together show that actually the body in the grave

really is that of Lee Harvey Oswald.

PATRICK: So, Khrushchev didn’t replace Lee Harvey Oswald

with another killer, that much we know.

But the Soviet conspiracy theory is still alive and well,

because it doesn’t prove that Oswald himself

didn’t work with the USSR to plan and execute

the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

EVY: But that’s not what the House Committee says.

In their 1976 report,

they find that neither the Cubans nor the Soviets

are behind the assassination.

But they do think that somebody else could be involved.

For almost 60 years, one detail in the JFK investigation

remains undisputed--

Lee Harvey Oswald’s communist ties.

But in 2017, thanks to newly declassified documents,

fresh evidence comes to light that could change

everything we think we know about Oswald.

PATRICK: Recently declassified intelligence reports

reveal that the KGB does their own investigation

into Oswald.

They have him under very tight surveillance

from the moment he enters the USSR,

so they have a lot of intelligence on him.

And according to the KGB report,

contrary to what we’ve all been led to believe,

Oswald stops being a communist sympathizer.

EVY: The KGB reports that over his time

in the Soviet Union,

Oswald actually becomes disillusioned with the cause,

and by the time he leaves in 1962,

he is not a communist anymore.

PATRICK: This goes against decades of conventional thinking

about Oswald and the assassination.

If he’s not a communist, then who killed JFK?

BEN: So, the KGB does believe that Oswald killed Kennedy.

They do say that they think he’s part of a conspiracy.

It’s just not the conspiracy you think.

So instead, the KGB theory is that Oswald

is part of a militant anti-communist conspiracy group

whose intent is to poison relations

between the Soviet Union and the United States

by killing Kennedy and framing the communists for it.

DAVID DENTON: Khrushchev will say in an interview in 1964

that in fact Oswald was working

with extremist anti-communist forces

in the United States.

LAURENCE: Many wonder if this theory

is simply Soviet propaganda.

PATRICK: Of course, Khrushchev wants to take suspicion

off of himself.

But independently of the KGB,

a U.S. investigator also looks into this theory.

BEN: Jim Garrison, the district attorney

of New Orleans, comes to believe

that a murky conspiracy involving business leaders

and Lee Harvey Oswald have brought together

all these right wing anti-communist elements

to kill JFK.

LAURENCE: To prove his theory, Garrison spends six years

interviewing witnesses.

DAVID: Through the 1960s, Jim Garrison’s investigation

leads to a man by the name of David Ferrie.

Back in the 1950s, David Ferrie serves in the Civil Air Patrol,

which also has as a member Lee Harvey Oswald.

Dave Ferrie was rabidly anti-communist

and heavily involved in the anti-Castro movement

in New Orleans.

BEN: So, you might be thinking, "Now, wait a minute,

someone who’s anti-Castro should like Kennedy."

But David Ferrie was disappointed in Kennedy

for not being staunch enough in their opposition to Castro.

PATRICK: He thinks that Kennedy’s attempts

at a peaceful outcome are weak,

that he’s essentially handed Cuba to the communists.

In fact, he gives a fiery speech in 1961

where he says that Kennedy should be shot.

LAURENCE: According to Garrison,

Ferrie follows through with that threat.

DAVID: In September of 1963,

a few weeks before the assassination of JFK,

an insurance agent named Perry Russo

would state that he was at a party with a businessman

from New Orleans named Clay Shaw,

Lee Harvey Oswald, and David Ferrie,

where the assassination of JFK would be discussed.

BEN: Russo testifies that he remembers them

saying that they were gonna kill Kennedy,

and that they were gonna use something

called a triangulation of shooters.

They also discussed alibis

for the people involved in this conspiracy.

LAURENCE: By February of 1967,

Garrison is ready to reveal his finding.

PATRICK: Newspapers in New Orleans

break Garrison’s story.

He’s convinced that David Ferrie and Lee Harvey Oswald

are long-time friends since their days together

in the Civil Air Patrol.

He believes they wanna take out Kennedy

and frame the communists.

David Ferrie and Lee Harvey Oswald

work together to plan the assassination

with the support of Clay Shaw and the help

of another man behind the scenes named Guy Banister.

Ferrie and Banister were both adamant supporters

of the anti-Castro movement, which included arming people

to go stage attacks in Cuba.

And Ferrie as a pilot was moving the weapons,

and Banister was supplying them.

So, these men did have a hard right background

that involved guns.

Garrison was certainly correct about that.

BEN: Garrison’s theory has Banister and Ferrie

as the brains behind this operation.

Clay Shaw would be handling logistics and financial backing.

And then, in this scenario, there are two shooters

involved in a crossfire--

Oswald, as we know, in the book depository,

and then another unnamed shooter on the grassy knoll.

LAURENCE: Armed with the evidence,

Garrison’s ready for his day in court.

DAVID: Oswald is already dead.

And then Banister’s died of a heart attack by 1964,

so there are already two alleged conspirators gone.

Then, something more unusual happens.

Less than a week after the Garrison investigation

goes public, Dave Ferrie is found dead.

BEN: David Ferrie is found in his apartment

with two typed-up suicide notes,

but the autopsy finds no evidence

either of suicide or of murder,

and that David Ferrie has died of a brain hemorrhage.

PATRICK: Garrison is flummoxed.

He says, "I suppose it could be just a weird coincidence

"that the night Ferrie pens two suicide notes,

he dies of natural causes."

LAURENCE: On March 1st, 1967,

the last alleged co-conspirator alive

is arrested.

Clay Shaw is finally tried in 1969,

and it remains the only trial in American history

associated with the assassination of JFK.

But Garrison is unsuccessful

with few witnesses remaining alive

and others deemed unreliable.

Shaw is acquitted in 45 minutes.

LAURENCE: Ten years later in 1979,

the House Select Committee wonders publicly

if justice was served.

PATRICK: The House Committee’s final report states

that they believe the Louisiana witnesses

were both, quote, "credible and significant,"

and that they were telling the truth

about Ferrie and Oswald’s meetings in 1963.

So, Garrison’s theory’s cause

for a lot of sensational reporting

and a lot of excitement on the part of the public,

and you know, maybe swayed some people

in the court of public opinion.

In actual court, where evidence is required,

they were found to fall apart pretty quickly.

LAURENCE: After decades of pressure

from the American public,

Congress passes the JFK Records Act in 1992.

The act mandates the release of all files

relating to the case.

BEN: So, even all these decades later,

people still want answers, and are now hopeful

that maybe we’ll start to get them.

PHILIP: These documents aren’t released all at once,

but during the 1990s,

millions and millions of pages of documents are made public.

The law had a deadline.

It said that everything in the government’s files

had to be made public in 2017.

EVY: Well, guess what? That does not happen.

But by 2017, tens of thousands of records

have been released.

And one of them gets a lot of attention,

because it appears to confirm a longstanding theory

that the Mafia was involved

in the assassination of JFK.

BEN: From the moment Kennedy dies,

conspiracy theorists are asking the right question,

which is, "Who wants him dead?"

The communists, in a lot of minds,

feature really high on that list.

But there’s another group who might want Kennedy dead

even more, and that is the Cosa Nostra--

the American Mafia.

LAURENCE: In 1962, JFK, along with his brother,

Attorney General Robert Kennedy, are on a crusade

to wipe out organized crime in America.

DAVID: One of the biggest revenue streams the mob had,

obviously were the casinos in Cuba.

The mob was kicked out of Cuba by Castro.

PHILIP: So, they were angry with President Kennedy

for not having done more,

so they wanted to see Castro overthrown

so they could get back into Cuba,

reopen their casinos and their liquor operations,

and get going again.

And one way of doing that might be

by killing President Kennedy.

In the minds of some mobsters,

Kennedy took billions of dollars out of their pockets,

and they have killed for a lot less.

And wouldn’t you know it,

right in the middle of the Kennedy case,

there’s a man who could be the key to a Mafia connection.

LAURENCE: That man is Lee Harvey Oswald’s killer,

Jack Ruby.

Jack Ruby was a tough guy from Chicago,

Jack Rubenstein originally.

A thug, a pimp.

Moves to Dallas, opens up his nightclub there,

and quickly becomes a kind of fixture

among organized crime figures.

He was what you would call a wannabe.

He gets these nightclubs up and running,

and they become a conduit

for all the things we know the Mafia for--

gambling, running narcotics, and eventually sex work.

EVY: Theorists long speculated that Jack Ruby and the Mafia

worked together to kill Kennedy.

They say by 1963,

Jack Ruby is heavily indebted to the Mafia,

and they force him to find a patsy

to assassinate the president.

And afterwards, they make him kill that fall guy

so that he can’t talk.

JEFFERSON: A lot more evidence came out in the 1970s

with the House Select Committee investigation,

and that strengthened the notion

that there was an organized crime connection

to the assassination.

LAURENCE: Did Ruby hire Oswald on behalf of the Mafia?

Dallas police have two witnesses

report that on October 4th, 1963,

seven weeks before the assassination,

they see Ruby and Oswald meet in Ruby’s Carousel Club

on Commerce Street in Dallas.

There, they argue over a large sum of money

for an undisclosed job that Oswald will be doing for Ruby.

LAURENCE: But the Warren Commission

fails to interview these witnesses.

After he’s arrested, Ruby denies ever having known Oswald,

and that he didn’t know beforehand

that the assassination was going to happen.

Ruby says that he was several blocks away

busy placing some newspaper ads,

and killed Oswald because of grief,

because of patriotism,

and because he felt for the First Lady,

and wanted to keep her from having to suffer

through a prolonged trial.

LAURENCE: For over 50 years, no one can prove otherwise.

EVY: But then in 2017,

as part of another large dump of declassified Kennedy files,

we see Document 32149267.

It’s a report from the FBI’s Intelligence division

about Jack Ruby.

In it, an informant named Bob Vanderslice

says that Ruby calls him up on the day of the assassination.

He asks if he, quote,

"would like to watch the fireworks."

PATRICK: Vanderslice goes with Ruby to a location

right across from the Texas School Book Depository,

and together they watch the president get shot.

When it happens, Ruby says nothing.

He just turns calmly and walks south

towards the newspaper office where he places the ads,

and thereby creates an alibi.

BEN: If this is true, then Jack Ruby

knew there were going to be quote, "fireworks,"

and he knew exactly where and when the assassination

was gonna happen.

In other words, Ruby lied,

and he knew about the whole thing.

LAURENCE: After months in custody,

Ruby himself claims there’s more to his story.

EVY: At first, Ruby sticks to his alibi.

But then, he changes his tune.

He writes letters, he makes statements to police,

and then even testifies to the Warren Commission

that he knows some things he’s not saying,

but he believes that his life is in danger.

He wants to tell the whole truth,

but he can’t unless he can get some protection

from the government.

PATRICK: But he never gets that protection,

and he dies in 1967, taking with him to the grave

any potential secrets about a Mafia assassination plot.

LAURENCE: Some believe that members of the Mafia

work quickly to cover their tracks

after JFK’s death.

Over a dozen witnesses and participants

die mysteriously in the aftermath of the shooting--

Oswald, Ruby.

Dorothy Kilgallen, she’s the only reporter

to interview Jack Ruby at his trial.

She then openly questions the Warren Commission,

and then dies of a mysterious overdose in 1965.

BEN: So, following this trail of murders,

it reaches its apex in 1968

when Robert F. Kennedy, who also could be seen

as an enemy of the Mafia, is killed in Los Angeles.

EVY: What kind of organization would be willing

to leave behind such a long string of bodies

to keep hold of their power and their secrets?

The Mafia, that’s who.

And if they did, then it worked,

because there is no one left to confirm this theory.

LAURENCE: On December 20th, 1991,

Oliver Stone’s film about the Kennedy assassination,

"JFK," is released in theaters.

Almost immediately, it causes an uproar.

The film combines a number of conspiracy theories,

including the alleged New Orleans plot

and the second shooter on the grassy knoll.

But more important than the film’s plot

is the impact it has on this country.

After the film is released, we see a tidal wave

of other publications associated with the JFK assassination.

LAURENCE: Including one from a man who says

he was directly involved.

Robert Morrow claimed to be a former CIA operative

active in the anti-Castro movement in the 1960s.

And he alleged in a book that he was asked

by Tracy Barnes, a senior CIA official,

to buy guns that he said were later used

in the assassination.

LAURENCE: Morrow’s cast of characters

in the alleged CIA plot might sound familiar.

DAVID: Morrow actually names

the same co-conspirators

that are in the movie "JFK," and also those that were pursued

by Jim Garrison in his New Orleans case.

He claims that Clay Shaw, Guy Banister, and Dave Ferrie

were helping in the operations against Castro in Cuba

before the assassination.

PATRICK: Morrow says they also enlisted the help

of the Mafia through Jack Ruby.

On November 22nd in Dallas, they placed four shooters--

Oswald in the book depository, another on the grassy knoll,

and two more, all with Morrow’s rifles.

The month prior, they laid some groundwork.

They sent Oswald to Mexico to meet with the Cubans.

DAVID: Their goal is to frame Castro for the crime,

and therefore bring about a full-scale invasion of Cuba.

According to Morrow, the CIA wants redemption

from their failed Bay of Pigs Operation,

and the Mafia has hopes of being able to return

to reopen their casinos in Cuba.

It’s quite a story-- a complicated CIA plot

with dozens of participants.

And yet, with all those people, including government agents

and known criminals that are under surveillance,

the Warren Commission finds no evidence

that any of this actually happened.

LAURENCE: Morrow offers a potential explanation

for that as well.

Many have speculated that the Warren Commission

never adequately looked into the Cuban connection

or the CIA.

Morrow believes that that’s due to the presence

on the commission of the former CIA director,

Allan Dulles.

When the commission is formed,

they don’t put the current CIA director on it

or anyone from the FBI.

The only one on the commission

with intelligence experience is Allen Dulles,

who just happens to be the man

that Kennedy fired from his position

after the Bay of Pigs failed.

LAURENCE: At the time of the Warren Commission,

CIA involvement in the Bay of Pigs is classified.

The government didn’t want that getting out.

They also didn’t want any information getting out

related to Operation Mongoose,

which at the time was top-secret, but we now know

was a Kennedy-sanctioned CIA operation

to assassination Castro led by Allen Dulles.

EVY: As more documents have been declassified,

more information has been revealed about the CIA.

It is clear that they were withholding information

from the Warren Commission--

information that Allen Dulles knew and kept hidden.

LAURENCE: Some theorists believe that information

could have even saved Kennedy’s life.

In 2013 and 2014, some very damaging records

are released about the CIA as per the JFK Records Act.

They reveal that the CIA actually knew

about Oswald’s trip to Mexico City

before the assassination.

The agency claimed to the Warren Commission

that they only found out afterwards,

but that was a lie.

PATRICK: They had an eye on Oswald

since his defection to the USSR.

They were reading his mail, tracking his movements.

The CIA field office in Mexico City

reported Oswald’s meeting with the Cubans almost immediately.

And the CIA had Soviet agent Valery Kostikov

under surveillance during the time

he was meeting with Oswald.

EVY: Does that mean the CIA killed Kennedy?

No, absolutely not.

But should the CIA have known that Oswald was a threat?

Yes, they probably should have.

And could an earlier intervention

have prevented Oswald from killing the president?

Again, I would say the answer is yes.

In a now-declassified 2013 report,

CIA historian David Robarge finds that the agency

is complicit in keeping incendiary information

from the Warren Commission.

He says they intended to keep the commission

focused on, quote, "what the Agency

believed was the best truth,"

that Lee Harvey Oswald had acted alone

in killing John Kennedy.

PHILIP: I think all of the most credible evidence

suggests that Lee Harvey Oswald fired the bullets

that killed President Kennedy,

that he probably is the only gunman.

But whether or not other people knew,

whether or not other people helped him,

those are mysteries that will probably linger forever.

The National Archives recently released

thousands of newly declassified documents.

Now, almost all of these nearly five million pages

are available to the public.

Perhaps they will provide some closure

to this enduring mystery.

I’m Laurence Fishburne.

Thank you for watching "History’s Greatest Mysteries."