Original subtitles

Johnny Tackett: In the average man's life

there are two or three

emotional experiences burned into his heart and his brain.

And no matter what happens to me,

I'll remember November 22 as long as I live.

There's been an attempt on the life of President Kennedy.

They are combing the floors of the

Texas Book Depository building to find the assassin.

Did you shoot the President?

Lee Harvey Oswald: I'm just a patsy.

Tom Pettit: Oswald has been shot

at point blank range, fired into his stomach.

Police are working on the assumption

that Oswald's murder was to shut him up.

Elements of the Central Intelligence Agency

killed John Kennedy.

The story has been suppressed.

Witnesses have been killed.

We have a right to know who killed our president

and why he died.

♪ (The Sixties theme, Composer Blake Neely) ♪

In Dallas

preparations were already under way for

extraordinary police protection

when the President should arrive.

You anticipate any trouble on the President's arrival?

Because of what has happened here,

previously, we would be foolish, I think,

not to anticipate some trouble. I don't--

Really, I don't anticipate any violence.

Here comes Air Force Number One,

the President's plane now touching down.

There's Mrs. Kennedy, and the crowd yells,

and the President of the United States.

And I can see his suntan all the way from here.

Looking at how things actually went

it wasn't just a trip to Dallas,

it was a political trip

preparing for the 1964 elections.

Shaking hands now with the Dallas people,

Governor and Mrs. Connally.

Governor Connally on your left.

Robert MacNeil: It was whether

Kennedy could use his charisma and his influence

to get all the squabbling Democrats

in Texas to come together

before the election the next year.

And here comes the President now.

In fact he's not in his limousine,

he's departed the limousine and he is reaching

across the fence shaking hands.

In those days

everybody could get a lot closer to the President.

I was standing behind Mrs. Kennedy

and I saw a hand reach through

the chain link fence, and break off

one of the red roses.

Thousands of children now swarming,

trying to get over the fence.

The Dallas Police trying to keep them back.

This is great for the people and

makes the eggshells even thinner

for the Secret Service,

whose job it is to guard the man.

Well, the trip had gone terrifically well in Texas.

Pretty hard to write a script for it going any better.

Thousands will be on hand for that motorcade now,

which will be in downtown Dallas.

A number of my classmates were gone,

they were at the parade.

My father had been invited to have lunch

with Kennedy at the Trade Center.

There was a mood, a climate of excitement.

The speech of President Kennedy,

at the Dallas Trade Mart, will be broadcast by 570 radio.

Stay tuned for the President's Dallas speech

at the Trade Mart on 570 radio.

♪ (Elvis Presley singing Big Boss Man) ♪

This bulletin

just in to the KILT News terminal,

Dateline Dallas. Three shots were fired

at the motorcade of President Kennedy

today, in downtown Dallas.

Reporter: Police radios are carrying

that the President has been hit.

Parkland Hospital has been advised

to stand by for a severe gunshot wound.

This is Walter Cronkite in our news room, and...

There has been an attempt

on the life of President Kennedy.

(indistinct speech)

Just turn the mic on.

I can't hear you, Johnny. What do you want?

You want me to move back a little bit?

Is it all right now?

Is this all right?

Ladies and gentleman, I'd like to introduce to you

the Chief Cameraman and Assistant News Director of

WFAA television. This is Bert Shipp.

Bert, we have brought the people pretty much up to date.

Would you tell them exactly

what you know as of this point?

Well, Jay, I was standing at the Trade Mart

awaiting his arrival there. All of a sudden the--

we saw them approaching, they didn't slow down.

Matter of fact, they were going 70, 80 miles an hour past us.

And then I jumped in a police car

and went to Parkland.

These two men come running in,

one of them had a large,

what appeared to be, a machine gun,

and they were yelling for stretchers,

and cots and everything.

And the Governor, they brought him in first.

Reporter: What happened after this?

Rike: Well, then the President

comes in near behind him and--

and they took them all--

both of them right to the operating room.

Albert Thomas, Democrat of Texas,

is standing outside the corridor

of the emergency room,

said he's been told the President was still alive,

but in very critical condition.

The President has not arrived here.

A group of Secret Service men,

and other officials is gathered

where the President normally would enter,

and discussing heatedly with one another

some subject or other.

Of course, we have no idea what.

Reporter: Now, here's an announcement

from the platform.

Mr. Eric Johnson with an announcement.

Thank you.

A gentleman just walked in our studio

that I am meeting for the first time as well as you.

This is WFAA TV Dallas, Texas.

May I have your name please, sir?

My name is Abraham Zapruder.

-Mr. Zapruder? -Zapruder, yes, sir.

Zapruder. And would you tell us your story please, sir?

I got out... about a half hour earlier

to get myself a good spot to shoot some pictures.

Five year old boy and myself

were by ourselves on the grass there,

on Commerce Street, and I asked Joe

to wave to him, and Joe waved,

and I waved and the--

Reporter: That's all right, sir.

As he-- As he was waving back,

he was, he was-- the shot rang out

and he slumped down in his seat.

And then all of a sudden this next one popped

and Governor Connally grabbed his stomach

and kind of laid over to the side.

And another one, it was just all so fast,

and President Kennedy reached up

and grabbed-- looked like he grabbed

his ear and blood just started gushing out.

Did you see the person who fired these?

No, not-- I didn't see any person fire the weapon.

You only heard it?

I only heard it. I looked up and saw

a man running up this hill.

Robert Caro: If it's a conspiracy

not only the President was hit,

the Governor was hit,

who knows if the next shot

would've been for Lyndon Johnson?

Johnson's car pulls into the emergency bay

at Parkland Hospital, four agents reach in,

and they grab Johnson and pull him out,

and start to run him down

one corridor, around, looking for a safe place.

Mr. Johnson, his whereabouts

are being kept secret for security reasons.

If anyone knows where Mr. Johnson is,

it is not us at this moment.

Lawrence Wright: It was a signal moment

in our cultural history,

suddenly, it occurred to us, the right thing to do is

to turn on the television.

Reporter: Reports continue to come in,

but in a confused and fragmentary fashion.

President Kennedy has been given

a blood transfusion at Parkland Hospital,

here in Dallas, in an effort to save his life.

Lawrence Wright: It was odd because

there were no commercials,

it was just a continuous experience.

Cronkite: Two priests have entered

the emergency room at Parkland Hospital where he rests

after the assassination attempt,

which now was about a half hour ago.

What are your feelings right now, ma'am?

I am absolutely shocked, stunned.

We have the same birthday, and I'm just crazy about him.

Who would want to shoot the President?

What did he do?

I mean, he's been doing so much for the country,

someone goes ahead and shoots him?

Reporter: A flash from Dallas.

Two priests who were with President Kennedy say

he is dead of bullet wounds.

This is the latest information we have from Dallas.

I will repeat, with the greatest regret,

two priests who were with President Kennedy

say he has died of bullet wounds.

Bob Huffaker: Malcolm Kilduff,

the assistant press secretary,

was filling in for the regular press secretary,

and then he had to draw himself up

to give the most fateful announcement

that a press secretary might have ever had to give.

All the cameras were rolling,

and I remember he put his fingers

like this on the desk, and pressed very hard

to stop his hands trembling.

John F. Kennedy died at approximately one o'clock,

Central Standard Time... today, here in Dallas.

He died of a gunshot wound in the brain.

Close up.

I have no other details

regarding the assassination of the President.

Reporter: The people standing here

are stunned, just as all of us are, beyond belief...

...that the President of the United States is dead.

All over the world, people are going to remember

all their lives

what they were doing when they first heard

that President Kennedy had been killed.

The crowds are standing around

in silence and sorrow in the rain.

The strange thing is, you don't even notice it's raining,

and if you do notice, you don't care.

Unidentified male: I just can't believe it.

I feel like

someone in my own family has died,

and I just can't believe it.

Ma'am?

I can't...

Like a daze.

You don't know what's going on.

Why? Why did it happen?

"Who would've done such a thing?" is the question.

In the first minutes and hours

chaos and confusion was

radiating out from the scene itself.

It was very pervasive.

Secret Service agents thought the gunfire was

from an automatic weapon,

fired possibly from a grassy knoll.

I saw some police run up this grassy--

I thought they're chasing the gunman,

I ran with them.

The report is that the attempted assassins,

we now hear, it was a man and a woman.

MacNeil: I got to the top,

looked around, a policeman went over the fence

so I went over the fence too.

There was nothing there.

Cronkite: A television newsman

said that he looked up just after the shot was fired

and saw a rifle being withdrawn

from a fifth or sixth floor window.

It was originally thought that the shots came from in here,

and now it's believed that the shots came

from this building here.

I see police officers running back

toward the Texas School Book Depository building.

They are going to continue searching

in that building for

the would be assassin of the President.

The center of downtown Dallas

is in a virtual state of siege.

They are combing the floors

of the Texas Book Depository building

in an effort to find the suspected assassin.

In the building on the sixth floor

we found an area near a window

that had partially been blocked off

by boxes of books,

and also the three spent shells

that had apparently been fired from a rifle.

Crime lab lieutenant J. C. Day

just came out of that building

with a British .303 rifle.

It was a 7.65 Mauser.

A high powered Army or Japanese rifle of .25 caliber.

A 3030 rifle.

Much of the first things you hear

are gonna be wrong.

And to some degree

you are constantly trying to separate out

what seemed to be a fact.

In Dallas a Dallas Policeman,

just a short while ago, was shot and killed

while chasing a suspect.

J.D. Tippit, a good experienced police officer,

was shot three times in the chest

in the Oak Cliff section of Dallas.

Then the manager of a shoe store saw

the suspect walk into the Texas Theater.

Watson: Someone has been arrested

in one of the downtown theaters,

they don't know if it was the man

who shot the policeman,

or the person who actually shot President Kennedy.

Police suddenly jumped this man

and started to drag him out of the theater,

hustled him out to the car, as the crowd broke

and started to maul the police officers

and grab this man trying to run with him.

They shouted '"murderer",

the officers hustled him into the car

and ran away just as fast as they could.

As we mentioned a short while ago,

a number of arrests have been made in Dallas

in the wake of President Kennedy's death.

We have scenes of one of those arrests in the downtown area.

This was just after a Dallas policeman

was shot in the vicinity of a downtown movie house.

Paul, Paul Bentley.

How did you approach him? Tell us the story.

I approached him and as he approached me

the man hit McDonald in the face his left hand,

reached for the pistol with his right hand,

and as he reached for his pistol

I grabbed him along with two or three other officers.

What did he say to you after he was arrested?

He just said this is it.

It's all over with now.

This is a picture of him.

He probably does not look exactly like this now

after he's been questioned.

That's Lee Oswald.

Caro: The President was shot,

then a police officer was shot, then someone named

Lee Harvey Oswald is arrested.

Oswald may be a suspect in the assassination. Who is he?

Lee Oswald of Dallas, a former Marine

who spent some time in Russia,

who at one time had applied for Soviet citizenship.

The description that we had of the suspect in Oak Cliff

was similar to the description we had,

and the man we were looking for as the assassin.

But at that time we had not been able to connect

the two in any way.

Down there in this third floor corridor

a crowd of cameramen, reporters

wait for a possible appearance

of the man accused of killing President Kennedy

and a Dallas police officer.

Now, there will be a great deal of confusion.

Mr. Oswald is put through the door.

I don't know if you saw him.

Oswald lives at 1026 North Beckley.

He's an employee of a book binding firm in the building

from which the police and secret servicemen believe

the President was shot today.

Mrs. Kennedy

accompanied the body in an ambulance

from the hospital to the airport,

where it will be flown back to Washington.

They got everyone out of the emergency room,

and the hospital completely, on the first floor there,

and they came out and told us that

we would have to help move the remains into a casket.

Huffaker: Lyndon Johnson had ordered

that the body be brought immediately

to Air Force One.

So, there was a little tug of war,

it almost shook the crucifix off of the top of the coffin

as they were trying to

get that coffin out of the hospital.

Took him out and put him into the...

...hearse, and one of the secret serviceman,

well, about two or three of them got into a hearse,

and just drove off and left Mr. O'Neil

and the rest of us just standing there.

Vice President Johnson is expected to be sworn in

as President aboard an airliner,

before flying back to the nation's capital.

Max Holland: Not everyone realized

that Johnson was already the President

because he in fact had taken the oath in January '61,

the same oath the President takes.

Johnson wanted to show the American people that

the government was functioning without interruption.

And also, perhaps, he wanted to show that

his predecessor's family bore him no ill will

for the assassination.

Cronkite: Lyndon Baines Johnson

is flying back to Washington

to take the reins of government,

at which time President Johnson

will have to take into his hands the reins

of the most powerful nation in the world.

We think November 22, 1963,

as a date when a president was killed.

But it was also a day when a president was created.

Is there any doubt in your mind, Chief,

that Oswald is the man who killed the President?

I think this is the man that killed the President, yes.

Is there any evidence that anyone else

may have been linked with Oswald to this shooting?

At this time we don't believe so.

Lee Harvey Oswald: I-- I don't know

what this is all about.

Reporter: You kill the President?

No, sir, I didn't. People keep asking me that.

Reporter: Did you shoot the President?

I work in that building.

Were you in the building at the time?

Naturally, if I work in that building, yes, sir.

Reporter: Did you shoot the President?

Oswald: No. They're taking me in

because of the fact that I lived in the Soviet Union.

I'm just a patsy.

This is room 317, Homicide Bureau,

here at the Dallas Police Station.

As you see they are bringing the weapon

allegedly used in the assassination

of President John F. Kennedy, this afternoon,

at 12:30, here in Dallas.

6.5 apparently made in Italy in 1940.

Police have traced the rifle,

purchased in Chicago, by mail order to Oswald.

He bought it under the alias of A. Hidell.

Handwriting experts have established

that the handwriting on the purchase order

was in fact made by Oswald.

At a price of $12.78,

the life of the President of the United States,

apparently, was bought.

In the wake of the Kennedy assassination

the Dallas Police, on the one hand,

they were committing all of their resources

to try and solve the crime.

Could you move him in the doorway?

Would you get him in the doorway?

On the other hand,

they were ill equipped to handle

this tsunami of reporters.

Well, I was questioned by Judge, however,

I protested at that time that I was

not allowed legal representation.

In bringing Oswald out, they were,

of course, doing something

that you would never see happen today.

But they were trying to cooperate with the press,

with the understanding that there would

not be questions shouted at him.

Reporter: Did you kill the President?

No, I have not been charged with that. In fact nobody has

said that to me yet.

First thing I heard about it was

when the newspaper reporters in the hall...

...asked me that question.

You have been charged with that.

-Sir? -You have been...

Okay. We can't hear you down here.

Reporter: What did you do in Russia?

Mr. Oswald, how did you hurt your eye?

A policeman hit me.

Bill Lord: At 1:35 this morning

a complaint was read,

a charge that, quote, "Lee Harvey Oswald

did voluntarily and with malice of forethought

kill John F. Kennedy by shooting him with a gun." End quote.

Following the reading of the complaint

Oswald said, "That's ridiculous."

Within hours of the assassination,

it was very obvious

to virtually everyone in Dallas law enforcement

that Oswald had killed Kennedy.

Chief, can you tell us in summary

what directly links Oswald

to the killing of the President?

The fact that he was on the floor where the shots were

fired from, immediately before the shots were fired.

The fact that he was seen

carrying a package to the building.

The fact that...

When did he bring that package?

Yesterday morning.

After the shooting in Dealey Plaza, Oswald was the

only employee at the book depository

that fled the building.

Forty-five minutes later,

he shoots and kills Officer J. D. Tippit,

half hour later, at the Texas Theater, he resisted arrest

by pulling his gun on the arresting officer.

Reporter: The door has just opened.

During 12 hours of interrogation

by the Dallas Police Department, over the weekend,

he told one provable lie after another.

Reporter: Did you buy that rifle?

That's the facts you people have been given,

but I emphatically deny these charges.

Within a day or so thereafter,

when they discovered what a complete nut this guy was,

they were satisfied beyond all reasonable doubt

that Oswald had acted alone.

There's only one thing that I can tell you,

without going into the evidence,

that this case is cinched,

that this man killed the President.

And there is no question in my mind about it.

We plan to transfer this man,

not tonight, the van will be here by

no later than ten o'clock in the morning, where it will--

That will be early enough.

Chief, do you have any concern

for the safety of your prisoner,

in view of the high feeling among the people of Dallas

over the assassination of the President?

No, but precautions

will be taken, of course, but I'm not--

I don't think that the people will

try to take the prisoner away from us.

(indistinct speech)

Lee Oswald is to be taken soon

to the county jail.

Chief Jesse Curry: That's true.

And you are going to take him there how, sir?

We are going to use an armored motor vehicle to take him.

Priscilla McMillan: Dallas Police

meant to transfer Lee into the regular prison

during the night, to avoid the press.

And then someone must've overruled them

so that Lee could be photographed by the press

during the transfer.

We are standing by awaiting the transfer of Oswald

from city jail to county jail.

And, for that report,

here is ABC's Bill Lord at the city jail.

Bill, what's the situation?

Well, I am presently in the basement

of the Dallas municipal building,

and it is like an armed camp.

Police officials are frankly worried.

They don't want anything to happen to Oswald.

It is through this corridor of

newsmen, photographers, and policemen

that Lee Oswald will be brought to a vehicle

for transfer to the Dallas County Jail,

a distance of about 15 blocks,

which ironically is just across from the scene

where President Kennedy was assassinated on Friday.

Anticipation has built up here in downtown Dallas

in front of the county jail.

They're waiting for a glimpse of Lee Oswald.

Reporter: There he is. Here he comes.

Now, the prisoner wearing the...

Let's go.

Let me have it, I want it.

Being led out by Captain Fritz,

here is the prisoner.

There is Lee.

(gunshot)

He's been shot! He's been shot!

Lee Oswald has been shot!

There's a man with a gun. Absolute panic.

Absolute panic

here in the basement of Dallas Police Headquarters.

Detectives have their guns drawn.

There is no question about it

Oswald has been shot

at point blank range, fired into his stomach.

He is shot.

-Oswald is shot. -It is Oswald.

Was that the man

who shot the man, or do you know?

That is the man that shot the man.

Immediately after the shooting our only witnesses

that we could talk to were other reporters.

Reporter: Where did he go, Pierre?

Well, he was here, he just-- They just put the gun there,

I saw the flash on the black sweater.

Had the gun right in his belly?

Oh yeah, right...

-Oh, did you see the gun? -Point blank range?

Pierre: I saw him there, he was in the group of men right here.

Masquerading as one of us or what?

I thought he was one of the detective,

you know, he had a hat.

The situation is now

that Lee Harvey Oswald has been shot.

The man who saw the shot fired, said it was

fired by a man wearing a black hat,

a brown coat, a man that everyone down here

thought was a Secret Service agent.

We can hear sirens outside,

and an ambulance apparently is...

...moving down now, into the basement.

Here comes the ambulance...

...and Oswald will be removed now.

The ambulance is being pulled up

in front of us here.

Here comes Oswald,

he is ashen and unconscious at this time,

now being moved in. He's not moving.

He's in the ambulance now,

and attendants, police are quickly piling in.

The ambulance is leaving Dallas Police Headquarters,

Where will he be taken?

I'm assuming Parkland Hospital.

Parkland Hospital,

the irony of ironies, the place

where John F. Kennedy died.

I believe the man--

No, don't take the microphone.

Yeah keep your head up. Let's start again.

What is your reaction to the shooting of Oswald?

Well, I think it's a deplorable situation.

The man is entitled to a fair trial.

They should give him a fair trial 'cause

killing him just like that ain't nothing

'cause that ain't gonna bring President Kennedy back to life.

And after you get a trial

they should let him out on the street

and let the people kill him.

They should not only shoot him,

but cut him up in pieces.

Put him every one hour in the fire

and stood him up for one day,

and then the next day start again.

Thank you.

They got a man that I believe,

I didn't see it, I think it's the man.

What's that? You got him? What's he look like?

Unidentified cop: I can't give you a description now.

He is-- he is known locally.

Immediately after the ambulance left,

somehow I'd begun to suspect that maybe

the shooter was someone

who was known to the police.

Do you know this subject?

Do you know him? Have you seen him before?

-Yes, I do. -Is he from Dallas?

-Yes. -He is?

I-- I couldn't tell you.

Do you know what kind of business

he happens to be in?

Bob, I wouldn't want to say.

Right.

Dallas City Hall is normally a public building,

but today it was really under armed guard.

Jack. Jack Ruby. The Carousel. The Carousel, shot...

We-- Is this a confirmed report

as to who did the shooting?

As far as I know. I just got it from Vic Robertson.

Vic Robertson, from City Hall, reports that...

...Jack Ruby, the owner of The Carousel,

which is a bar in Dallas, did the shooting.

My statement will be very brief.

Oswald expired at 1:07 PM.

He died?

He died at 1:07 PM.

We have arrested the man,

the man will be charged with murder.

Who is he?

The man-- The suspect's name is Jack Rubenstein, I believe...

...he goes by the name of Jack Ruby.

And here in Associated Press

a still picture of the moment, the split second,

as the shot was fired.

This is the man Dallas Police have identified as

Jack Rubenstein,

and this of course, is Lee Harvey Oswald.

You see the gun in the hand of Ruby,

and just about to be fired.

I know my own feelings were,

and I think they were widely shared by many,

if not most Americans, this can't be coincidental.

The assassin is assassinated in the police station.

What in the hell is going on?

Walker: Just learned from City Hall,

from a very authoritative source,

that police are working on the assumption

that there indeed is a connection between

Jack Ruby and Lee Oswald,

and that in some manner of speaking

Oswald's murder was to shut him up.

Captain Will Fitz just told me

that Ruby has said that he did it,

that it was his gun,

and that he had built up a tremendous grievance

over the death of the President.

In Jack Ruby's small mind

he thought he was gonna become a big, big hero.

I mean, he killed the guy who killed the President.

I commend what he did, I think he ought to win

the Congressional Medal of Honor for it,

and a lot of other good American citizens think

he did exactly the right thing

in shooting down this communist.

Word also in, just now, from Dallas,

that homicide chief, Captain Will Fritz

has now said that the case of

President Kennedy's assassination

is now closed with the death of Oswald.

It may not, however, be the opinion

of the U.S. Secret Service,

or the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Earl Warren: Our nation is bereaved.

The whole world is poorer because of his loss.

But we can all be better Americans

because John Fitzgerald Kennedy

has passed our way,

because he has been our chosen leader

at a time in history when his character,

his vision, and his quiet courage

have enabled him to chart a course for us...

...a safe course for us

through the shoals of treacherous seas

that encompass the world.

And now that he is relieved

of the almost super human burden

we imposed on him, may he rest in peace.

Dallas today had even more to mourn.

It held funeral services for one of its own,

who was a victim of Friday's tragedy,

Officer J. D. Tippit.

It was a funeral of a very different sort today,

in nearby Fort Worth.

This was the dreary funeral of

Lee Harvey Oswald, alleged murderer

of President Kennedy.

The pathetic group of mourners included:

Oswald's mother, Marguerite;

his wife, Marina;

his brother, Robert;

and Oswald's two children,

one of them a babe in arms.

The six pallbearers you see here are newsmen.

There were not enough relatives

or friends on hand to serve as pallbearers.

George Herman: Now there is a new flag

of the President of the United States

flying in the White House.

In President Kennedy's old Oval Office,

Mrs. Evelyn Lincoln, his secretary and her aides

have removed every scrap,

every vestige of the signs of the personal touches

of President Kennedy.

We know from history,

is, how do they handle

the transfer of power at the top?

Lyndon Johnson, whatever you thought of him,

and a lot of people disliked him greatly,

some even hated him,

would be the President of the United States.

I think it shouted about the strength of the country,

and that we swear by the rule of law.

The President of the United States.

My fellow Americans...

...all I have...

...I would have given gladly...

...not to be standing here today.

Johnson knows

he has to show the country

that the ship of state is sailing on under a new captain.

But, at the same time,

he can't appear to be too anxious to assume power,

and he has to keep the Kennedy people

on board with him.

So that speech means everything.

No words are strong enough...

...to express our determination...

...to continue the forward thrust of America that he began.

John Chancellor: The people of Europe

just cannot believe that a lone avenger

made his way into a major police station

and killed, without difficulty,

the most celebrated and infamous criminal

in the United States.

One of the most important things

that happened after Oswald's murder...

...was that we, you know, were forever denied the "why?"

And the people at the time believed he did it.

The question was why.

There are questions continually coming up

about the possibility of an international plot.

There's still all this thought

that the Russians might be behind it,

or Cuba might be behind it.

Johnson sees there's a real danger in that.

You want to put these rumors to rest.

Investigations into all the facts

of these last four days may not be limited

to the state of Texas or the FBI.

Some Congressman already have suggested

a congressional investigation.

Holland: Killing a president wasn't

a federal crime at the time.

So you had the federal government

intervening in still what was a local murder.

There certainly was a concern

of competing investigations.

There was the Dallas criminal investigation,

there was the State of Texas court of inquiry,

and there were committees on both sides of Congress,

while, of course, the FBI had been given the job to

conduct a full scale investigation.

Johnson realizes something has to be done.

He realizes that he has to appoint a body,

that the public will respect, to look into this.

I've got to have a

top, blue ribbon Presidential Commission

to investigate the assassination.

Now, I want to ask McCloy and Dulles,

and Ford, and Boggs, and Cooper, and Russell,

and Chief Justice Warren as chairman.

Caro: If there's one public governmental official

in the United States universally respected

for his integrity,

it is the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court,

Earl Warren.

If there's one person in Congress

that every one respects

it's Richard Russell of Georgia.

He has to get them both on the Commission.

There is, however, a problem.

Russell is a segregationist through and through,

and despises Warren for the decisions

that he's made on the Court.

Johnson thought if they can agree on a verdict

then that'll be satisfying 90 percent of

American public opinion.

Unidentified female: Senator Russell on 2191.

I'm highly honored you would think

about me in connection with it,

but I couldn't serve there with Chief Justice Warren.

I don't like that man.

President Johnson: You can serve with anybody

for the good of America, and you're gonna do it.

I can't arrest you,

and I'm not gonna put the FBI on you,

but you goddamn sure are gonna serve,

I'll tell you that.

Robert Caro: Lyndon Johnson was known

as the greatest salesman one-on-one who ever lived.

So, he meets first with Warren, and he says,

"If I asked you to put on your uniform,

and fight for America you'd do it.

I'm asking you to fight for America

in a different way."

Then Johnson has to get Richard Russell.

Richard Russell: Mr. President, please now--

President Johnson: No, it's already done.

It's been announced, hell.

Russell: You mean you've given--

Yes, sir, I've made the announcement,

it's already in the papers, and you're on it.

Well, I think you did wrong getting Warren,

I know damn well you got it wrong getting me.

But I'll do the best I can.

President Johnson: I think that's what you do.

That's the kind of American of both of you are.

Announcer: Produced by NBC News,

which is solely responsible for its content.

The Warren Commission, appointed Friday night, will investigate

and make a report on the murder.

As yet, it has said nothing about

how it will proceed, or when.

In the meantime, again,

the FBI is investigating every lead it can find,

and will turn its report over to President Johnson

probably this week.

Willens: It was the FBI's hope

that its report would be,

if not the final word the semi-final word,

and that the Commission's job would be to read it,

and then essentially endorse the findings of the report.

Edward Jay Epstein: The members of the

Warren Commission,

Earl Warren, John Sherman Cooper,

Gerry Ford, Allen Dulles,

Hale Boggs, Richard Russell,

and John J. McCloy realized at their initial meeting

that they had to do an independent investigation.

They didn't want to be a stamp for the

FBI, or the Secret Service.

Holland: There are three issues

the Commission had to grapple with.

You know, did Oswald commit

the physical act of the murder?

And even if he did the physical act,

did he have forces behind him?

And then, of course, what's Ruby's involvement in this?

You had various branches of the investigation traveling,

interviewing witnesses, collecting evidence,

bringing it back to the Commission.

Let's see, the time of day was about--

well we're not very far, two hours from it.

Epstein: There were questions,

how would they deal with the different stories

about shooters from the grassy knoll,

and shooters from different directions?

The lawyers from the Commission

took 395 depositions and there were 94 witnesses

that appeared before the Commission.

Lyndon Johnson wants the report out

so it doesn't interfere with the election in November.

Jim Newton: Warren left for Dallas

because he was a man who had spent

his early career as a courtroom prosecutor,

he understood a crime scene,

he wanted to stand in that window,

and see whether this was a shot

that a marksman could make.

While he was there Warren felt he should talk to Ruby.

There were all these suggestions

that Ruby had killed Oswald to silence him.

So, Warren, I think wanted to hear it

from Ruby himself.

The Warren Commission realized

they were gonna have to invest

a lot more time than was anticipated.

So, maybe two to three month operation

to the conception that

it would probably take six months.

The hourglass of time was running out on them.

Can you say if you still think it was one man?

I think we better not get into that area, you know?

The report will cover all of that in great detail.

This committee labored ten months,

then brought forth a document close to a thousand pages.

President Johnson received that report today.

Epstein: What the public understood

and what I understood,

is: these were very honorable men.

They thought that the Commission had done a good job,

and they would come up with an answer.

When the Warren Commission Report

came out, I believed it. We were still in a time when...

...you tended to believe what officials told you.

It is now 15 seconds after 6:30 PM,

Eastern Daylight Time, Sunday, September 27th.

As of this moment,

the report of the President's Commission

is public record.

For the next half hour, we will search it for answers.

First must come the answers

to the two great overriding questions.

Who killed John F. Kennedy?

The Commission answers unequivocally

Lee Harvey Oswald.

Was Oswald acting alone

or was he a member of a conspiracy?

The Commission answers, he acted alone.

We knew most people were not going to read

all of the Warren Commission Report,

so CBS News wanted to be able to bring to air

in understandable form for the public at large,

what the Warren Commission itself has found.

There was nothing to support the speculation

that Oswald was an agent, employee

or informant of the FBI, or the CIA,

or any other governmental agency.

Oswald owned the murder rifle.

The mail order purchase slip for that rifle

was in his handwriting.

Oswald's palm print was found

on a surface of the gun.

The media had all concluded that

this was the most exhaustive investigation.

Case closed. Oswald did it alone.

The Commission concludes that three shots were fired,

all of them from the sixth floor window

in the Texas School Book Depository.

Cronkite: The cumulative evidence of eyewitness,

firearms and ballistic experts, and medical authorities

demonstrated that the shots were fired

from above and behind President Kennedy

and Governor Connally.

Bugliosi: When the Warren Commission

came out with their report, the majority of Americans...

...accepted the findings of the Warren Commission.

Cronkite: The bullet entered here,

came out just below the President's Adam's apple.

The Commission believes that the same bullet

then entered the right shoulder of Governor Connally,

passed on through his chest,

continued through his right wrist

and on into his left thigh.

Governor John Connally: The report has been

generally accepted throughout the country.

I think it reflects the thoroughness

with which they went into it,

and I think, at least, it has dispelled many of the rumors

and the speculations that surrounded this,

this very tragic event.

I'm quite satisfied that

it has been very well covered entirely.

It leaves no doubt in my mind

that Lee actually did

assassinate the President of the United States

and kill Officer Tippit.

Cronkite: In the end, we find

confronting each other the liar, the misfit,

the defector, on the one hand,

and seven distinguished Americans on the other.

And yet, exactly here

we must be careful that we do not say too much.

Oswald was never tried for any crime,

and perhaps therefore

there will forever be questions

of substance and detail

raised by amateur detectives,

professional skeptics, and serious students as well.

We are the jury, all of us.

In America and throughout the world.

Willens: The reaction to the report

initially was very positive,

but that didn't last very long.

This book is the number one bestseller

on the non-fiction list in the country,

Rush to Judgment by Mark Lane.

It's gained a vast number of readers, in the recent

groundswell of skepticism

about the findings of the Warren Report.

We did not envision the breadth

and the scope of the criticism.

The author has some highly provocative

and controversial things to say.

So, please greet Mr. Mark Lane.

No matter how illustrious the members were,

we were not going to be reassured by a Commission.

We're already having a little disagreement here

while the commercials were on.

What were you saying, David?

Well, I think I disagree almost totally with Mark Lane,

on several counts. I don't know where to begin.

Let me show you something, just in case we have a chance.

That is a picture of Jack Ruby.

And this was taken five minutes

after the assassination in front of the

Texas Schoolbook Depository Building.

The Commission said Ruby was not there.

This is picture showing how the Commission published it.

He wasn't there when they

published the picture because they cropped him out.

You're accusing Chief Justice Warren and that Commission--

Tell me something about some facts

instead of your deep faith in the Chief Justice!

You're accusing them of deliberate malfeasance.

You are part of the media

which prevented the American people from finding out

-what happened until now. -You are alarming

the American people.

I say the American people should be alarmed.

The public had been kept

in the dark for so long about this,

but had an undying thirst...

...which could only be quenched by getting facts.

We have a right to know who killed

our President and why he died!

And we can't get that from reading the Warren Report.

The critics of the Warren Commission

have three different points of view.

One, where we were simply incompetent.

Two, we were thoroughly corrupt.

And then there's those that say, "Both of the above".

I want someone to tell me that to my face.

At the start, Lane was almost alone.

Now he's just one

among a growing band of doubters.

Their books and articles are on the news stands,

they're in the supermarkets.

Now, according to a recent poll,

only one in three Americans

remains convinced that the Warren Report

has the whole story.

When you have a great number of people

devoting their lives to looking at every word, every comma...

...they can create a lot of mischief.

I believe, very firmly, that

Ruby and Oswald knew each other, and certainly

Tippit and Ruby knew each other.

Before we proceed with that

kind of questioning, let me ask you,

what kind of conspiracy do you think?

Was it communist, left wing or right wing conspiracy?

I am convinced that there were two riflemen.

The Warren Commission was set up,

as you know, at the request

and urging of the Communist Party.

It is obvious that he was working for

somebody else at that moment,

and that somebody else could not be anyone else

than Fidel Castro.

There's no possibility of

Oswald having been in the sixth floor window

of the Texas School Book Depository.

It might have been the servant

of the Castro-Mao Tse Tung communist school of violence.

There was an entire world of assassination buffs.

Some raised valid questions.

Could a bullet, which had done as much,

have come out looking like bullet 399?

It is another one of the very many, highly improbables

that we are asked to accept by the Warren Commission

if we are to accept the validity

of their full report.

Some had completely mad theories.

Cody was killed by a karate chop to the throat

in September, I believe, of 1964.

But everyone, I believed,

had a right to give their views.

You have, apparently, succeeded in persuading

the majority of the American people

that we cannot trust the most

august conceivable panel to do a responsible job.

You talk about faith in these institutions

or faith in the FBI

as if it's a religious experience

to read the Warren Report.

I think, on the contrary, that all we're

supposed to have faith in a democracy

is in our own ability to look at the facts

and reach our own conclusions.

The decreasing trust

by Americans in their government

all started with the Kennedy Assassination.

By 1966, there's this

cultural revolution in the United States.

I mean, we're deeply enmeshed in Vietnam.

There's a lot of protests, there have been riots,

and there's a sense that

things have seriously gone wrong.

We've gone off the rails since November '63.

And the Warren Report is a very important part

of that loss of confidence in the government.

Unidentified male: I don't think that all

the facts were brought out.

I think something was held back.

I think there were more

involved in it than just Oswald.

I don't know how

in the world they could ever reach a conclusion that

one person assassinated him. That's ridiculous.

I saw the whole thing on television,

I just happened to be home at that time,

and I don't think that Oswald,

I think that he was working for the CIA, myself.

Why doesn't America believe the Warren Report?

Because of the conspiracy theorists

who have put this case under a high powered microscope,

splitting hairs and then proceeding to

split the split hairs.

The Kennedy case is now the most complex murder case,

by far, in world history.

Nothing even remotely comes close.

We are left with a series of

real and critical questions about the assassination.

Questions which have not been answered

to the satisfaction of the people of the United States.

David Crosby: When President Kennedy was killed,

he was not killed by one man.

He was shot from a number of different directions

by different guns.

The story has been suppressed,

witnesses have been killed,

and this is your country.

Specter: We aren't trying to hide a thing from you,

or from Mr Epstein and Mr Lane, or the world.

We are laying it all out.

It's right here in the notes of testimony.

And if we have transposed in error a "possibly"

into a "probably,"

then we are delighted to have you point it out to us,

but you can do so only because we've laid it on the line.

Anchor: The Warren Report said,

that Lee Harvey Oswald shot the President

from his window in the Texas School Book Depository.

Three years after Kennedy's assassination,

the major question is still a simple one.

Did the Warren Commission,

with all that time and all these resources,

get its answers right?

Tonight we'll go over those arguments

one by one, area by area.

As the assassination was taking place,

a Dallas businessman called Abraham Zapruder

stood behind that low concrete wall

looking down at Elm Street.

As the President was coming down from

Houston Street, making its turn,

it was about halfway down there,

I heard a shot,

then I heard another shot or two,

I couldn't tell you if it was one or two.

And then I saw his head practically open up,

all blood and everything, and I kept on shooting.

The Warren Commission could use the film

and each frame to reconstruct

each moment of the assassination.

Part of the reason why, I think,

the film captured the American imagination

is because it pushes us to think about

something more complex,

and each person who looks at it,

you know, people see different things.

Where did the shots come from?

If the shots did not all come

from the Book Depository window,

then there was, most likely, some form of conspiracy.

I think that the,

that the massive head wound,

where the President's head was literally blown apart,

came from a cornering angle on the grassy knoll.

He's struck and his head

doesn't go directly back this way,

but it goes back and over this way,

which would be consistent with the shot

from that direction and Newton's Law of Motion.

Seven men on a railroad bridge right here

said that when the shots were fired,

they looked toward the wooden fence,

and each of the seven said he saw puffs of

white smoke come from here.

The grass knoll underneath that green tree,

and you could see a little puff of smoke,

it looked like a puff of steam or cigarette smoke.

When you stop to think about it,

no one saw anyone with a gun,

rifle, on the grassy knoll.

No expended cartridges from a weapon were found there.

Not one bullet, other than those fired from Oswald's rifle

has ever been found and linked to the assassination.

Now, there were two doctors and one priest

who claim that-- who said flatly that there were...

...entrance wounds in the President's neck.

If the wound in the President's throat

was an entrance wound,

then clearly this would be proof that

the bullet came from the front.

Mark Lane has suggested that

this wasn't an exit wound by the President's tie,

but an entry wound. That Kennedy was hit

in the throat from the front.

The doctor at Parkland

didn't want to talk

about the President's injuries,

but the press more or less forced him to.

And the wound in the President's throat

was pretty clean.

He thought it was an entrance wound.

What about this

wound that you observed in the,

in the front of the President's neck?

Actually, I didn't really give it much thought.

And I realize that perhaps it would've been better

had I done so.

There was a wound in the back of the neck

that had not been seen by the Parkland doctors

because they never turned the body over.

You did not turn the President over?

No, there was really no reason to,

it made very little difference to me,

since my immediate concern was

with an attempted resuscitation.

You can ad infinitum,

and people will only remember

that a doctor at Parkland said he had been shot,

you know, from possibly the front.

So it's, you know, kind of

trying to put the genie back in the bottle.

A bullet hit the President from the back,

bullet hit him from the front.

The bullet which killed him came from the right front.

Unless the laws of physics were not working that day,

the reaction of the President...

...tells us where that shot came from.

Some critics say

by the very fact that in the picture

you can clearly see the explosion of the bullet

on the front side of the President,

that that certainly indicates

the bullet came from the front.

Well I don't believe any physicist has ever said that.

Quite contrary, it does indicate that

the bullet was coming from behind.

It's a minor explosion where

pieces of material go generally

in the direction of the bullet.

Bugliosi: If you look at the individual frames

of the Zapruder film,

at 312, frame 312, the President's head's okay.

At frame 313, 1/18th of a second later,

the President is struck in the head.

In what direction is the President's head pushed?

Not backwards, but slightly forward.

Is there any doubt that the wound

at the back of the President's head

was the entry wound?

There is absolutely no doubt, sir.

Bugliosi: So at the all-important

moment of impact,

the President's head is pushed forward,

indicating a shot from the rear,

where Lee Harvey Oswald was.

CBS News Inquiry

'The Warren Report' continues.

Cronkite: The time span between shots,

is a point upon which the critics have seized.

Could Oswald have fired three shots in 5.6 seconds?

There was a lot of attention being given

to the Zapruder film, and when exactly

the President was hit first, and then hit second.

Cronkite: CBS News had a

tower and target track constructed to match exactly

the heights and distances in Dealey Plaza.

Willens: If there wasn't enough time,

then you would have a second shooter.

Bugliosi: Oswald was not an expert shot.

He was a good shot.

But making the shots was not that tough at all.

CBS did it. A guy from the military did it.

Those three shots he got off in 2.6 seconds.

The Zapruder film became the lens

through which the assassination was seen.

If it didn't happen on the Zapruder film,

it didn't happen.

Zapruder started his camera

after the limousine was about 70 feet

into Dealey Plaza.

Well, Oswald had the President

in his sights for many seconds before that.

And this gets into the whole question,

is how much time did Oswald have to shoot the President?

There are so many interesting questions

and problems that come from the film.

We believe so much in the image,

we believe so much in, in the sort of

ultimate truth of film and of images.

Then they become our memory.

Reporter: Is it impossible that the bullet would have

gone through President Kennedy,

gone through Governor Connally,

and not suffered any more damage

than is shown in this photograph?

Dr. Cyril H. Wecht: I, I would hesitate

really to say it is absolutely, 100 percent impossible.

But it is highly improbable.

Could a single bullet

have wounded both President Kennedy

and Governor Connally?

The single bullet theory has become

perhaps the most controversial aspect of the report.

Holland: If the Warren Commission

couldn't prove that one shot had hit both men,

that meant there were two shooters,

ipso facto there's a conspiracy.

Bugliosi: The conspiracy theorists

claim that the second shot was a magic bullet.

They argue that a bullet

would have had to make a right turn

and then a left turn in mid air.

The reality is that Connally was not seated

directly in front of Kennedy.

If you figure out the alignment

of where the men sat,

and if you look down the Mannlicher-Carcano, as I did,

and as the others did who conducted the onsite test,

and had the automobile placed in the position,

it is perfectly plain, I submit to you,

that the bullet that exited from

President Kennedy's throat

would have to strike either the automobile,

which it did not, or someone else in the automobile.

To believe that it didn't hit Governor Connally,

that would be a real magic bullet,

one that disappeared in thin air.

Reporter: To the Dallas County Courthouse

for more developments on the Jack Ruby verdict.

Jack Ruby has just been found

guilty of murder with malice

and has been given the maximum sentence,

death in the electric chair,

after the jury deliberated two hours and 25 minutes.

Just what do you think of this verdict?

I believe that Jack Ruby was a paid killer,

to close the mouth of my son, Lee Harvey Oswald.

Holland: The question of whether Ruby

knew Oswald before or was in cahoots to kill him is

one of the most important questions.

Willens: Because Ruby knew people in

criminal activities, there was a lot of investigation

about a potential conspiracy.

Ruby would've been one of the most

unlikely and worst hit men that the Mob could ever get.

Phil Burleson: On November 24, 1963,

Lee Harvey Oswald is supposed to

have been transferred at 10:00.

At 10:00 the evidence is undisputed that

Jack Ruby as at home asleep.

Then he got dressed and drove downtown.

The receipt shows that

Ruby was sending a money order

to one of his strippers from a Western Union office

across from the courthouse at 11:17 AM.

We know that at 11:20,

three minutes later, a block away,

Jack Ruby killed Lee Harvey Oswald.

And the evidence showed that he was down there

anywhere from five to 15 seconds.

Five to 15 seconds!

If this is a hired assassin

who is supposed to have some advanced information,

he is the world's best timer.

What type of man is he?

Uh, Jack is a very emotional type person,

and um, as I was saying a while ago,

he is the type of man that probably would give you

the shirt off his back one moment,

and then turn around and do something

as nutty as this in the next.

Jack Ruby: I never used the term angry,

that's not in my vocabulary.

He was known for a quick temper.

And later, as it turned out,

he was hooked on two kinds of speed,

Preludin and Benzedrine at the time of the shooting.

He had been here at the police station

during the past two days, talking with newsmen

and distributing his card and also making friends.

Jack Ruby was a police and media groupie.

Ruby thought he was our friend.

So, I'm in this very same room Friday night

when we had the defendant up here.

If some of you will recall, he asked a question

from out here in the audience,

he was standing right back here and I didn't know

who he was. I thought he was a member of the press.

And he told me, as we walked out of here,

that he was a nightclub operator.

Ruby's act was that of a vigilante.

He wanted nothing more to be known,

you know, people to flock to his nightclub,

to shake the hand of the man who killed,

the man who killed the president.

I might add, if Ruby silenced Oswald for the mob,

who was supposed to silence Jack Ruby?

He died of normal causes over three years later.

Now, one would think that the conspiracy community

would fold its tent and go home.

But they continued, undaunted and unfazed with this obsession.

Their game is to fool you.

These people want the investigations stopped.

They don't want a trial at all.

Please believe me.

Now, the most recent,

most spectacular development in the Oswald case

involves the CIA.

It involves too, the spectacular

District Attorney of New Orleans,

a man they call the "Jolly Green Giant."

Do you believe that Lee Harvey Oswald

did not shoot President Kennedy?

Jim Garrison: I don't want to get involved in the

speculations as to individuals,

but I will say that it, there's no question

about the fact that there,

there was a plot and there were

a number of individuals involved.

In 1967, he announced, "I've solved the case,

I've found the real assassin."

We will make arrests

based on that, and we will make charges

based on that,

and we will obtain convictions based on that.

Now, you wouldn't pay much attention to this

to this except he was District Attorney of New Orleans.

I've spent hour after hour with Jim Garrison.

He has presented his case to me, detail by detail.

The Mark Lanes and the conspiracy theorists

all flocked, initially, to Garrison.

And I can report that a powerful domestic force,

a force that is still part of the American structure

planned and initiated those acts

that resulted in the assassination

of President Kennedy.

They all thought, "Here's a guy

who is finally going to bring the case

that we've been, you know, arguing about for years."

If I seem somewhat confident,

it is because our office is in its fifth year

and it has never lost a murder case.

The press initially builds Garrison up

because everybody believes

no District Attorney in his right mind

would do this unless he had something.

Bill Gurvich: Arrested this evening

in the District Attorney's office

was Clay Shaw, age 54,

of 1313 Darbeen Street of New Orleans, Louisiana.

Mr Shaw will be charged with participation

in the conspiracy to murder John F. Kennedy.

The charges filed against me

have no foundation in fact, or in law.

I have not been apprised

of the basis of these fantastic charges,

and assume that, in due course

I'll be furnished with this information

and will be afforded an opportunity

to prove my innocence.

Holland: Clay Shaw was a very well

respected businessman in New Orleans.

He had been a distinguished soldier during WWII.

Rosemary James: I knew Clay Shaw.

And the concept of Clay Shaw

as being part of an assassination conspiracy

was just too weird to be believed.

Clay Shaw was also homosexual,

and closeted, and I think that played a part.

This decision to arrest Clay Shaw

I believe, was intended to get the national media back to town.

As soon as he arrested Clay Shaw,

they all came back.

Holland: And then they realized

the truth that there isn't anything there.

Reporter: Garrison has based his case

on the certainty that he can prove

Clay Shaw is Clay or Clem Bertrand.

The name "Clem Bertrand" was first

introduced by a lawyer, named Dean Andrews,

who told the Warren Commission a person

by that name telephoned him,

suggesting he provide legal defense

for Lee Oswald.

Dean had described Clem Bertrand

as having gay tendencies

and representing gays as a lawyer.

Therefore, Garrison believed Clem Bertrand

must be Clay Shaw.

That was the extent of Garrison's investigation.

Do you have enough evidence now to go to trial?

Well if, if I answered that,

I shouldn't be District Attorney.

The case he has built against

Clay Shaw is based on testimony

that did not pass a lie detector test

that Garrison ordered. And Garrison knew it.

Reporter: Can you say positively that

the person you knew as Clay Bertrand

is not the person you are seeing as Clay Shaw?

Scout's honor, he is not.

Garrison started bribing witnesses,

intimidating witnesses.

He said, I could be made to serve this

whole nine-year sentence...

...or I could be cut loose right away.

Hypnotizing witnesses.

We decided to give him

objectifying machinery to make sure

he was telling the truth.

Leon

Leon, does Leon have a last name?

Oswald.

Would you say these, the methods were illegal?

I would say very illegal and unethical.

And he had everyone and

their grandmother involved in the assassination.

At one time it was oil millionaires.

Then it was the Minutemen.

Then it was a homosexual killing.

Yes, sir?

Do you feel that homosexuality

or coercion through homosexuality

was a factor in the finding

or the assassination of John F. Kennedy?

No comment.

At one point he had 16 assassins

in Dealey Plaza.

With that many assassins, I don't know how Kennedy

made it to the autopsy table.

Garrison announced he had discovered a code.

Garrison says Jack Ruby's unlisted telephone number

appears in address books

belonging to Shaw and Oswald.

So, if you take the P and the O,

and you use a telephone dial,

P gives you seven, O gives you six.

He just changed the digits around,

added digits, added letters.

And you reconstruct the numbers,

and, and that, and then you subtract 1300,

and that gives you Ruby's unlisted telephone number.

Reporter: Well, Mr. Garrison,

if the P-O didn't exist until late '65,

how could it then be Jack Ruby's phone number?

Well that's a problem for you to think over

because you obviously missed the point.

Whenever anyone would expose Garrison,

he would then say they're CIA agents

because he's part of the conspiracy.

Who's suppressing all of this information, on whose order?

I'll tell you who's suppressing it,

the Federal Government is suppressing it--

Who in the Federal Government?

The administration,

the administration of your government

is suppressing it because they know

that the Central Intelligence Agency--

On whose order?

On the order of the President of the United States.

Mr. Garrison has come up with

no credible evidence to support

any of his theories.

I think it is unfortunate

that the media of this country

has become so hysterical

for fear of what it might see,

that it spends a good deal of its time and energy

attacking the one serious investigation.

The results of this four months of

public investigation have been to damage reputations,

to spread fear and suspicion,

and worst of all, to exploit the nation's sorrow

and doubts about President Kennedy's death.

I can't make any more comments

about the case, except to say,

anybody that thinks it's just a theory

is going to be awfully surprised

when it comes to trial.

Roll one, sound on film, Clay Shaw trial.

Clay Shaw came to court in good spirits today.

With his long awaited trial underway,

Shaw seems almost relieved

that his case is finally being heard.

Shaw sits quietly in this courthouse,

chain smoking cigarettes. He does not react

when the State talks about things like conspiracy.

The trial went on for six weeks.

It's important to note that

not one witness produced by Garrison

survived cross examination.

They were all proven to be unreliable at best.

It was the most shameful thing you've ever seen.

Everyone knew in the courtroom

that Clay Shaw couldn't possibly

have been more innocent.

In a unanimous verdict by a 12-man jury,

Shaw was found not guilty of

charges that he conspired to kill

the late President John Kennedy.

Reporter: Clay, you know what our

first question is gonna be, don't you?

What?

Reporter: Well, why did you do it?

(laughter)

After the not guilty verdict,

editorials around the country

said it's one of the darkest chapters

in American jurisprudence history.

It's just a crime.

Lane: From what I saw and heard,

I didn't think he had proven

Clay Shaw's guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

I would have voted not guilty for Clay Shaw.

Clay Shaw: I think that Garrison feels

that the end justifies the means.

And he felt that if he could bring to the

American people what he considers the truth

about the death of their President,

any means whatsoever was, was to be used.

It didn't matter much who got hurt in the process.

I would sum it up by saying, that any society

which allows a man like Jack Kennedy

to have the top of his head torn off,

and then protects the assassins,

and obstructs any inquiry,

in an attempt to find the truth

is not a great society.

Information concerning the cause

of the death of your President

has been withheld from you.

Bugliosi: To show you how un-credible

the conspiracy theorists are,

over the last 50 years,

at one time or another,

they have accused 42 groups,

82 assassins and 214 people

of being involved in the assassination.

Could Oswald really have done this?

As a reporter, the greatest story for us

would have been to find out somebody

other than Oswald did it.

And we tried hard to do that,

but at every turn in the Kennedy Assassination,

things pointed to Oswald as

not only a shooter, but the shooter,

and the only shooter.

(commotion)

Bugliosi: At its core,

this is a very simple case.

I don't know what this is all about.

If a person is innocent of a crime,

chances are there's not gonna be any,

any evidence pointing towards his guilt. Why?

Because he's innocent.

But with Oswald, the physical evidence,

the direct and circumstantial evidence,

scientific evidence, everything points towards his guilt.

We'll never know

why Lee Harvey Oswald killed Kennedy because he's dead.

But there are certain things we do know.

Chet Huntley: At the age of 13,

a probation officer says

he remembers Oswald as a truant,

a troubled boy in need of psychiatric help

without which he might turn violent.

Brinkley: After starting in high school,

he promptly joined the Marines.

Oswald's Marine career ended in 1959

when he was dishonorably discharged.

A month later he was in Moscow

where he announced his decision

to renounce his American citizenship.

Reporter: Are you a Marxist?

Oh, I would very definitely say that

I, I am a Marxist, that is correct.

But I, that does not mean, however, that I am a communist.

He desperately wants to become a Soviet citizen,

he wants to renounce his American citizenship.

They turn him down. What does he do?

He slashes his wrists, tries to commit suicide.

Lee Harvey Oswald

had these dreams or delusions that he had been

harboring for a long time

of an act that would lift him from his obscurity.

A squad mate of his in the Marines...

...said that Oswald wanted to do something

that 10,000 years from now people would be talking about.

It looked to me like...

...an irrat-- a stupid, irrational act,

the opportunity presented itself to him

and he probably wanted to make a mark on

society and suddenly occurred to him that he could.

Willens: People who think Oswald was

sort of a patsy and,

and such an ineffectual, innocent person forgot that,

when Oswald was stopped by a police car

and a policeman gets out unarmed to talk to him,

Oswald shoots him four times in the middle of the body.

That, plus his, his previous attempt on General Walker.

Interestingly, on Saturday morning

in the Dallas Morning News,

it said that there may be a connection

between this guy who was just arrested

for killing a police officer and President Kennedy,

and this effort to assassinate

General Walker back in April.

Oswald used to attend a small discussion group,

and he began to rail against this right wing general,

Edwin Walker, who was calling for the invasion of Cuba.

General Walker

was about as right wing as you got in the early '60s.

And Oswald saw Walker as a American Adolf Hitler.

And Oswald said someone should kill Walker.

He then ordered a rifle with a sniper scope,

and he planned, very meticulously

his assassination of General Walker.

He took photographs from different angles,

he figured out how to get his rifle there, and how to escape.

On March 31, a Sunday,

he asked Marina to come out and take his photograph.

All in black, pistol, rifle in his hand,

holding a few radical newspapers,

and Marina writes on the back, "Hunter of fascists"

and dates it April 6, 1963.

McMillan: And then he went,

on the night of the 10th of April,

took up his place and shot at General Walker.

He come in the house 11:30.

He was so pale, nervous and

don't want to talk. I said, what happened to him,

and he said-- he told,

"I tried to shot General Walker."

General, will you describe for us

just what happened last night?

Maj. Gen. Edwin Walker: Rifle shot was fired into the house,

fired thorough the west window,

and hit the sill and hit the wall across

the room and went over the desk

at which I was sitting.

Priscilla McMillan: He was very disappointed

to find out that he'd missed

by less than an inch.

It shows his ability to plan who his target was,

and that Oswald was capable of violence.

I think that was kind of the Rosetta Stone,

that if you understood the Walker shooting,

you understood that Lee was like a cocked rifle,

and he could go off any time.

What set the conspiracy notion

about the Kennedy Assassination

among many Americans, was the sheer

incongruity of the affair.

All that power and majesty wiped out

in an instant by one skinny, weak-chinned little character.

Walter Cronkite: It is true that the answers

to some questions leave us restless.

The theory that a single bullet

struck down both the President and the Governor,

for example, has too much of the long arm

of coincidence about it

for us to be entirely comfortable.

Jim Newton: It doesn't satisfy

our sense of narrative or justice

that a small person of no distinction

can be of such historical consequences

to kill the President of the United States.

But what would be more comfortable?

Believing that a shot was fired

by a second assassin who

materialized out of thin air for the purpose,

fired a shot, and then vanished again into thin air,

leaving behind no trace of himself,

his rifle, his bullet or any other sign of existence.

There are two groups of people.

There's one group

that will look at an extraordinary coincidence

of cataclysmic circumstance and say,

"Yes, that's the way the world works."

There's another group of people

for whom that's quite unsettling.

Robert Dallek: They don't want to believe

that something so random could have occurred.

Can you believe that you could step off

a curb someday and be killed by an oncoming car?

Nobody believes in that kind of possibility

for themselves, but it happens.

Is life that fortuitous, that uncertain?

And for them, oddly, the notion of a conspiracy

is more comforting than the absence of it,

because if there's a conspiracy,

at least there's a plan.

Mark Lane: I think the five bullets

fired from at least two different directions,

are the result of a conspiracy.

Kennedy's killing

touches off a belief in the idea...

...you can't trust government.

There has been a loss of morale,

a loss of confidence among the American people

toward their own government and the men who serve it.

And that is, perhaps,

more wounding than the assassination itself.

Bugliosi: They've lost so much faith

in government that they actually

think that the government is an accessory after the fact,

to the President's murder.

Can't get too much worse than that.

The assassination changed the trajectory of the '60s.

America was a different place

on the day before John F. Kennedy was killed.

So when you look at this,

America as a whole in the 20th Century,

you look at America in the '60s,

you really say, that day was the dividing point.

I guess in the average man's life

there are two or three emotional experiences that he,

he doesn't forget because they're burned into his,

his heart and his brain.

And no matter what happens to me,

I'll remember November 22 as long as I live.

And it's impossible for me now

to this day, and I'm sure

ten years from now to drive to Dallas

without looking at the 6th floor of the

School Book Depository Building.

And it's impossible for me to drive

by the Texas Hotel every day

and not think of that morning

when President Kennedy spoke there.

It will always be with us.

Kennedy, alongside of the other presidents,

Johnson, Nixon, Gerald Ford,

Jimmy Carter, Reagan,

the two Bushes, even Bill Clinton,

people, they don't remember what they did,

but they remember their rhetoric

and they remember the images.

John F. Kennedy: Ask not

what your country can do for you,

ask what you can do for your country.

This is what people wish for again,

in the government.

They want someone who inspires them, who gives them hope,

for whom they have a kind of admiration.

Kennedy's standing hold on the public,

I think, will only fade if and when

we get another president

about whom they feel the same way

as they currently feel about Kennedy.