All language subtitles for JFK - Destiny Betrayed -S01E04 - Chapter Four

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[suspenseful music]

[tense music]

[gunshot]

[dramatic music]

[Richard Schweiker]
This report documents

the failures of the
US intelligence establishment

in their investigation

of President Kennedy's assassination,

and their cover up
to the Warren Commission.

During the 1975
Church Committee investigation

of US intelligence activities,

Committee Member
Richard Schweiker,

in an interview at the time,
remarked about Oswald that

"everywhere you looked with him,

there are fingerprints
of intelligence."

Those fingerprints
extended back to 1959

when Oswald defected
to the Soviet Union.

State Department intelligence officer,
Otto Otepka,

had noted the marked increase
in the number of Americans

defecting to Russia
at that time.

He also noted that some of them
came from the military.

He therefore suspected
that some of these men

were fake defectors.

They had been assigned
by the CIA

to garner intelligence
behind the Iron Curtain.

He sent a letter to the CIA
asking which ones were real,

and which were their agents.

Oswald was one of the names

on Otepka's list.

Otepka's request was
forwarded to James Angleton,

Chief of Counterintelligence.

He instructed that there be
no research done on Oswald,

but Otepka continued to work
on the Oswald case.

[Lisa Pease]
The only thing of significance

was that he was
really interested

in Lee Harvey Oswald
before the assassination.

And he actually had a study
of these defectors in his safe.

Well, things got worse.
His office was not only bugged,

they planted people
in his office, to spy on him.

They started putting
confidential documents

in his burn bag, and then
trying to blame him

and saying he's burning
confidential documents.

The guy's gone, you know, wacko.

[Whoopi Goldberg] As a result,
he was formally removed

from the State Department
on November the 5th, 1963,

just 17 days
before the assassination.

So you will not see Otepka's
name in the Warren Report,

and he was not called
as a witness before that body.

And in fact, James Angleton,
the man who had access

to all the Oswald files
at the CIA,

coordinated the agency's response

to the Warren Commission's requests.

-Can you describe
the setting up

of the Oswald file at the CIA?

-It could be opened
after a few documents

arrived at the CIA from
other intelligence agencies,

and that would be enough
to trigger the opening

of a 201 file. Sometimes
they call it a personality file.

And another thing
that could trigger

the opening of a 201 file
would be an American citizen

defecting to
a communist bloc country.

Well, the interesting thing is,

Oswald met
both of those criteria

within nine days
of his defection.

And they didn't open a 201 file
on him for 13 or 14 months.

Immediately after the defection,

Oswald's threat to commit
an act of espionage,

which his words were

"something special about
my Marine Corps experience-

which could only be

the U-2, which is a program
he'd worked on,

a very secret CIA program--
that threat caused him to be put

on the mail-intercept program
and not opening a 201,

at the same time,

which is a very, very
unusual combination,

and can only be explained
by Oswald being part of

a very covert,
very sensitive ongoing operation,

which was the hunt for a mole.

The history of the KGB
and the CIA, their wars, uh,

are not actually
shooting each other

so much as trying to
penetrate each other.

And so we-- we call them moles,
or penetrations.

And so, it was an ongoing war;
very, very, complicated.

But that's what the mole hunters
were doing for Angleton

is looking for KGB moles
inside of the CIA.

So, 351 164 was the--
the file in the security office

that was opened up
right after his defection.

And that was shared only with
Angleton's mole hunting office,

but not with any of the other
components of the CIA.

The CIA and the FBI knew

what the KGB would
figure out very quickly

was because of his assignment
in Atsugi, Japan,

where he tracked the
super-secret U-2s at the time.

So once you've established
the lure,

the place where you
trap the animal

isn't in the Moscow embassy,
it's back at Langley

where they thought the mole was.

You want the KGB to contact
their mole to ask questions.

The moment that the mole
asks a question, it's over.

He or she is-- is exposed.

This program,
which did not work, years later,

was put in front of
probably our most celebrated

and capable
counterintelligence officer

in the history of
the Central Intelligence Agency.

His name was
"Pete" Tennent Bagley.

He began searching for the mole,

he was the key person leading it
for years with Angleton.

Well, after he was retired,

he attended a meeting
of former CIA officers

down in the Carolinas.

And a British researcher
happened to be down there,

his name is Malcolm Blunt,
and they met and got along well.

And fortunately for history,

a couple of years
before Pete Bagley died,

Malcolm sat down with him
one day

and showed him
all those first documents

that had come into the CIA
on Oswald

from the State Department

and the Navy components
at the embassy.

And Pete Bagley
looks at Malcolm and he says,

"Was he witting?"

And Malcolm didn't really know
how to respond.

And so Bagley raised his voice
and insisted,

"He had to be witting!
He had to be witting!"

That was a telling,
seminal moment

in the history
of CIA/KGB spy wars,

in the history
of Lee Harvey Oswald.

His early use by the CIA was just
a very, very important one

because finally,
after all these years,

a very senior CIA officer
had just told Malcolm and us

that Lee Harvey Oswald
was a witting false defector

when he went to Moscow.

[Goldberg]
There was another unusual event

that took place at the time
of Oswald's defection--

the source of his income
changed.

-Oswald's
last quarter of earnings

in the United States, before he
defected to the Soviet Union,

should have been paid by
the United States Marine Corps.

And they weren't.

Because we asked to see his
Marine Corps earnings records

that the Marine Corps deposits

with the Social Security Administration.

They did not pay him
any money the last quarter

he was in the United States
before his defection.

But no income
from the Marine Corps,

when he should have had.

[Goldberg]
Could this all be coincidence,

or was Otto Otepka
correct in suspecting

Oswald
was not a legitimate defector?

And is this
why Angleton told his secretary

to withhold information
from Otepka?

-The line that the CIA
fed the Warren Commission,

we didn't, really didn't know
anything about this guy.

We now know that
that was complete nonsense.

Oswald was a figure
of intense interest

for four years
before the assassination,

and a dozen senior CIA officers

were very well acquainted
with him.

Everything he did,
where he went,

what his politics were,
his family life.

I mean, remember, they were
reading his mother's mail.

That's how closely
they were watching him,

right up until
Kennedy was killed.

And then, Kennedy was killed,
Oswald's arrested,

and they say, ah, we know
nothing about this man.

[Goldberg]
In fact, ARRB records show

that James Angleton and the CIA were
receiving reports on Oswald

up until one week
before the assassination.

The Warren Commission
pushed the idea

that Oswald
was a staunch communist,

citing evidence of
his distributing pro-Castro leaflets

in New Orleans,

and by his supposed
defection to Russia in 1959.

But records show
that Oswald was working with

fiercely anti-communist elements.

And not surprisingly,
many of these groups were known,

and in some cases supported,
by the US government.

In the spring of 1963,

Oswald moved from Dallas back to
his hometown of New Orleans,

where he began associating
with men who,

it would be revealed, had clear connections

with
these government efforts.

One of these men, David Ferrie,
had been with Oswald

in the Civil Air Patrol
back in 1955,

and was known
as an extreme anti-communist.

He was also a trainer
and a pilot for the CIA

in its secret war against Cuba.

Oswald was involved in these
Cuban exile training activities

with Ferrie.

Another person Oswald was seen
with in New Orleans in 1963

was Guy Bannister.

Bannister
was an extreme right-winger

who was close to the FBI,
the CIA,

and the American Nazi Party.

Bannister gave Oswald
his own office

at 544 Camp Street.

Oswald now began
to use his office

to print up and stamp
pro-Castro literature,

much of it associated with
the Fair Play

for Cuba Committee
centered in New York.

Against their advice,
he began a chapter of the FPCC

in New Orleans,
of which he was the only member.

-The Fair Play for Cuba committee
was created

in April of 1960,

at exactly the same time
that President Eisenhower

ordered the creation of
a program to overthrow Castro.

Very interesting,
the coincidence of those two events.

Oswald had another job
working with Guy Bannister

to develop adverse information
on political leftists,

or communists or communist sympathizers.

He did this at
the universities like Tulane.

So all this stuff in New Orleans
that he's doing,

that includes FPCC propaganda
and other things, are done to,

very publicly on television,
on the radio,

in the streets, uh,
of New Orleans

to develop this profile,
to establish his bona fides

as a hot-headed
pro-Castro supporter.

At some point, the FBI,

I think probably
after the assassination,

decided they didn't--

they wanted to disconnect
Oswald from the FBI.

And of course, that Bannister,
who's associated with the FBI,

would have to be
disconnected as well.

The problem with that,
many of those handbills

had the 544 Camp Street
address on them.

There was a message from
New Orleans to the Bureau

written by Special Agent Maynor,
who actually mentioned

pamphlets that had the 544 Camp Street
address on it.

And before
that message was sent,

it was scratched out.

[Goldberg]
After the assassination,

when the FBI questioned Bannister,

a former FBI agent himself,

they did not ask him
about Oswald.

One of the places Oswald
leafleted in front of

was Clay Shaw's
International Trade Mart.

Shaw, who was arrested
by New Orleans D.A. Jim Garrison

on charges that he was
part of the conspiracy

to kill President Kennedy,

always denied he was
associated with the CIA.

[interviewer]
"You have never, yourself,

had any CIA connection?"

-"None whatsoever."

[interviewer] "Any association
with the organization?"

-"No, none."

[Goldberg]
The Review Board has shown

these denials to be false.

Shaw was both
a highly valued contract agent

and had a covert
security clearance

for a project codename QKENCHANT.

New Orleans attorney
Dean Andrews

had worked with Oswald in May
of '63 in an attempt

to upgrade his military

discharge from its
undesirable status.

After the assassination,

a man calling himself
Clay Bertrand phoned Andrews

and asked him to consider going
to Dallas to defend Oswald.

Under oath, Clay Shaw denied
that he was Clay Bertrand.

And Andrews claimed that
because of medication he was on,

he had only imagined
the phone call.

But today,
because of the work

of the Assassination Records
Review Board, we now have

evidence and 12 people
who confirm

that Shaw used this name
as an alias.

Andrews later admitted that
Shaw was Bertrand

to author Harold Weisberg,
but made him promise

not to reveal this
until after Andrews' death.

Evidence of another aspect
of Oswald's time in New Orleans

is supported by
Robert Tanenbaum,

the Deputy Chief Counsel
of the House Select Committee,

and others who have seen film
of Oswald, David Ferrie,

and CIA director of Cuban Operations
David Atlee Phillips

at anti-Castro training camps.

Phillips was
a propaganda specialist,

and his tactics to neutralize
the Fair Play for Cuba Committee

included infiltration, surveillance,

and recruitment
of other agent provocateurs.

David Phillips also created an
anti-Castro Cuban exile group.

The Student Revolutionary Directorate,
or DRE,

was based in Miami,
and had a chapter in New Orleans

led by Carlos Bringuier.

Records
released by the ARRB

show the CIA
was funding this group

and helped plan activities,
including the attack

on a Cuban hotel
which housed Soviet advisers.

[Jefferson Morley]
AMSPELL was the CIA's code name

for the Cuban Student Directorate.

The name doesn't appear

in the final report
of the Warren Commission.

They certainly did not know
that the group was receiving

51,000 dollars a month
from the CIA in 1963,

and they didn't know that
the group was being run from Miami

by George Joannides,

a psychological
warfare officer,

who reported
directly to Dick Helms.

The DRE published the first
JFK conspiracy theory

saying that Oswald and Castro were
the presumed assassins.

and that publication
was paid for by the CIA

under the auspices
of George Joannides.

The Joannides story tells us

that Dick Helms'
hand-picked man in Miami

was controlling the group that
had the most to do with Oswald

before and after
the assassination.

I found out Joannides' identity
many years later,

and I went to Bob Blakey,

the head
of the HSCA investigation,

and I said, "Bob, did you ever
know this guy Joannides?"

And he said, "Yeah, you know,
we dealt with him a lot,

he was the liaison."

And I said, "Did you know
what he was doing in 1963?"

And he said, "He wasn't
doing anything in 1963.

We had an agreement with the CIA

that nobody who was operational at the time
of the assassination

would be involved
in the investigation."

And I said, "Bob, think again.

Joannides was running
those Cubans

who were in touch with Oswald.

He was running the Cubans
who were blaming Castro

for the assassination.

And then he came along,
and he stonewalled you."

The reason why they brought
Joannides in to do it

was to hide the connection
to Oswald.

He was definitely shocked

because he saw
just how clever they had been.

They had gone right to
the heart of his investigation,

and figured out
how to paralyze it.

[Dan Hardway]
I no longer trust anything

that the agency has told us
in regard to the assassination.

It lied
to the Warren Commission.

It lied to the ARRB.

It lied to the HSCA in admitting
that Joannides was employed

in a covert capacity
as liaison to the HSCA.

It has admitted
that it violated its charter,

and ran a domestic
covert operation

aimed at subverting the HSCA
and its investigation.

[Jefferson Morley] On the night
of the assassination,

the spokesman for the DRE
in Miami got on the phone

and started telling reporters,

"We know all about the guy
who killed the president."

And they talked to 10 or 15 reporters
that night.

So the CIA's propaganda assets
shaped the story

from the first hours
after Kennedy was dead.

[Goldberg]
Even the Assassination

Records Review Board

had trouble getting documents
from government agencies.

In late 1992, a month
after the Records Act

was passed,
the Secret Service

began its compliance plan,
but by January

of 1995, it had begun destroying
important documents.

-And they destroyed
a group of records

which involved threats
to President Kennedy

in the fall of 1963.

They have what are called
threat sheets.

And there were many threats
made to President Kennedy's life

during the year 1963.

They fought us on release
of those records,

they even enlisted
Vice President Gore's wife

to help them because she had
a very legitimate concern

for mental health records.

And the idea was
that this might disclose

the names of people
who had mental health problems.

In the end, when we required
agencies to disclose,

to swear under oath
that they had located

all assassination records,

and had turned
everything over to us,

the Secret Service refused to sign
the document under oath.

I think that was telling.

-The destruction of records
is actually referenced in the,

uh, Assassination Records
Review Board final report.

A very, um, very disappointing.

They were records
that related to trips

that President Kennedy had taken
in the fall of 1963

prior to him going to Dallas.

In the FBI, uh, a stop or flash
was placed on Oswald's files,

which meant that no one
could ask for a document

in those files,
or no one could even

add a document to those files,
without going through

the FBI's espionage division.

And that lasted for four years.

It was essentially
a blinking red light

on Oswald's files at FBI.

On 8 October 1963,

an FBI agent
whose name was Marvin Gheesling

took that status
off of Oswald's files.

He dropped the flag
on Oswald's files.

What that action did was to
lower Oswald's threat profile

at the FBI just weeks before
the Kennedy assassination.

And what that would mean is
there was no reason

to put Oswald's name
on the security index.

One thing about
the security index is

when you have
a presidential motorcade

going through
a particular route,

anybody who's on that index

has to be removed
from where they are.

They cannot be
on the parade route.

That action at the FBI
didn't happen in isolation.

The same thing happened at CIA
at exactly the same time.

And of course,
it exposes the president

to a dangerous situation
that he shouldn't have been.

[Goldberg] Few people
knew that there had been

at least two prior plots
to kill President Kennedy in 1963.

One was in Chicago
on November 2nd.

The second one was in Tampa
on November 18th.

-Kennedy ended up
not going to Chicago.

Tell us about that plot.

-An informant,
on October 31,

an informant named Lee,

who could have been
Lee Harvey Oswald,

gave a warning to the FBI stating
that four Cubans

were headed
to Chicago to shoot Kennedy.

The following day, a landlady
reported to the Chicago police

that she had rented a room
to four people

that had rifles
with telescopic sights,

and a sketch of the motorcade.

The FBI passed that
on to the Secret Service.

And the Secret Service
botched the surveillance

of these four individuals.

Two of them escaped,
but they actually picked up

two of the snipers,
and they detained them.

They were stonewalled
by the snipers.

They didn't get any information
out of them.

While this was goin' on,

there was another threat
coming in from

another alternate patsy
named Thomas Arthur Vallee,

who was making
open and loud threats

that he would
assassinate Kennedy.

They only picked him up
when Kennedy canceled

his trip on November 2nd
at 10 in the morning.

One day before the trip,

the Diem brothers
had been assassinated.

And that was
the stated reason

for the cancellation
of the trip to Chicago.

What you found in Vallee,
and the whole Chicago plot,

is so many similarities to what
eventually happened in Dallas

that it-- it can't be
considered coincidental.

Vallee, if we compare him to Oswald,
is an ex-Marine.

He had been posted
like Oswald in the

Far East on a station
that was linked to the CIA

because there were U-2 surveillance
planes on it.

It was easy to portray him
as disgruntled, anti-Kennedy,

a loner, armed.

He had another intelligence
link that he shared with

Oswald in that he trained Cuban
exiles for combat, which was

a CIA responsibility.

And Oswald, we know,
at least offered to do that.

He most likely
did train Cuban exiles,

but we know he tried to.
Oswald, as we know,

was moved from New Orleans
to Dallas in October

to be there just at the
right time for the motorcade.

And he's placed
in a tall building

where he gets a job,

he's adjacent to
the perfect kill zone.

Now, if we look at what
happened to, uh, Vallee,

he's moved like a pawn in August
from Long Island to Chicago

to be in there in time
for the motorcade.

And where does he get a job?

In a tall building
adjacent to the motorcade

with a perfect view
of a, uh, kill zone.

It would have forced Kennedy's
motorcade to do a sharp turn,

slow down and be in a point

where you could have had
perfect triangulation of fire.

-And what about
the trip to Florida?

-On November 18th,
Kennedy was scheduled to do

a 27 mile-long motorcade
in Tampa.

The Secret Service
was very nervous

about the Floridian Hotel

where the motorcade
would have gone by.

It would have forced
a sharp turn.

Nobody fired away at him.

But in this case,
the alternate patsy

would have been
a Gilbert Policarpo Lopez.

He was a Cuban exile.

He, uh, attended

Fair Play for Cuba Committee meetings.

One day after the assassination,
on November 23rd,

he makes his way to Mexico City.

The Fair Play for Cuba Committee
loaned him money for his travel,

and he ends up being
the lone passenger

on an airplane to Cuba.

The CIA, they found out

about the Fair Play
for Cuba Committee,

the weird trip to Mexico City,
the fact that he was

a lone passenger on a plane
to, uh, Cuba.

And they didn't pass
on the information

to the Warren Commission.

So when the HSCA found out
about this lead

that wasn't pursued,
even they called it egregious.

-And what do you think
was the relevance of it?

-Well, if he had been
assassinated in Tampa, Lopez,

he would have been
the potential patsy.

If they had to admit
to a front shot,

because Oswald was behind,
there were rumors

that he had assisted Oswald
in the assassination in Dallas.

-Had anyone, anyone
tried to speak to

the Warren Commission
about these incidents?

[Paul Bleau] Abraham Bolden
was the first Black

Secret Service agent assigned
to the White House detail,

and he was handpicked
by Kennedy.

He was in Chicago, uh,
when this plot went down.

So he was there
when the Secret Service

was briefed about
the four snipers,

and he witnessed how much the
security was lax for Chicago.

And he also witnessed,
after the assassination,

the steps that were taken

to keep the Chicago plot
completely secret.

No paper trail,
compartmentalized,

agents ordered to
keep silent about it.

This information did not make
its way to Secret Service agents

that were protecting Kennedy
for future motorcades,

including Dallas.

[Goldberg]
Secret Service Agent Elmer Moore

was aware of Agent Bolden
and the Chicago plot.

-I met with Elmer
three times face-to-face.

Several phone calls, very short.
One very long one.

I first asked him,
"Did you ever interview

Thomas Arthur Vallee?"

And he said, "Oh, Washington wouldn't

let me see the files on that."

I said, "Oh, well,
what about a man,

a Secret Service agent
by the name of Abraham Bolden?"

His demeanor completely changed.

He stood up from his chair.

He pulled out his revolver
and he put it on the table,

right in front of me.

He leaned over the table,
and he says,

"Jim, tell me right now,
who are you working for?"

I said, "I'm an independent
researcher."

He told me

in a very loud voice,

and with a very stern look
on his face,

"That goddamned lying nigger.
We finally got him."

I said, "You got him?"
He says, "No."

He said,
"Kelley and the chief got him."

I think that, uh,

Moore and the rest of his crew

were scared speechless
that Bolden knew somethin'.

[Paul Bleau] Abraham Bolden
was one person

who did try to say what he knew
to the Warren Commission,

but they blocked him.
He was blocked from talking

and eventually railroaded
into some phony crime

and put into jail
for a number of years.

[Jim Gochenaur]
Moore leaned back in his big

comfortable leather chair,

and he said,
"Who killed Jack Kennedy?"

Then he said,
"Well, I'll tell you who didn't.

With 100 percent certainty.
It wasn't the Russians."

And my head is starting to swim.

I wanted to break in right
at that point, but then he said,

"I'll tell you why--

JFK was the Russians' boy.

He was giving away
everything he could.

That the man, for all intents
and purposes," he says,

"Dare I say it?

Jim, I will say it,
JFK was a traitor."

[Oliver Stone]
The ghost of John Kennedy

would turn over in his grave

at these cruel words.
But the truth is,

the competing narrative
of his life and death,

as told us by Allen Dulles
and his ilk--

of a leftist assassin
killing a president

with three shots
from a sixth-floor window--

has won the day

and continues
as the official story.

But, the ghost
will not be appeased.

[Donald Sutherland]
After the Bay of Pigs debacle,

JFK began to use
his brother Bobby

as a foreign policy advisor.

Bobby was influential in the
decision to fire Allen Dulles.

He then figured
as an important advisor

during the Berlin confrontation, on Vietnam,

in both 1961 and '63,
and during the Missile Crisis.

-Uh,
after the Cuban Missile Crisis,

wasn't President Kennedy attempting
a back channel

with Russia and Cuba,
and your father was aware of it?

-Jack had an intense interest
in Cuban history

and all the history
of Latin America.

And he-- he believed
that Castro had a point,

in fact he sent a message
to Castro

that he read
and admired Castro's declaration

at the Sierra Maestra

about the liberation
of Cuba and the--

the right of the Cuban people
to exercise sovereignty

over their nation,
and over their island.

The message that he sent
through Lisa Howard and Attwood

was a message that

"We don't care
if you're communists.

We don't care
if you're Marxists.

We don't care
what kind of government

that you experiment with.

The only thing we care about is
that you don't make your island

a platform for Soviet
aggression in the hemisphere.

And that you stop your campaign

against the Alliance
for Progress nations,

against the Social Democrats,

Betancourt in Venezuela,
Lleras Camargo in Colombia,

people who really were trying
to democratize their country

and develop
fair systems for the poor.

By '62, President Kennedy
was actively engaged

with Khrushchev,
and they had a secret

exchange of 26 letters
with each other.

And they were operating
through back channels,

because both of them
found themselves

in identical positions,
um, surrounded by war hawks,

surrounded by
a bellicose intelligence

military establishment,
and all of them viewing

all-out thermonuclear war,
not only as inevitable,

but in some cases, desirable.

The first of those letters
was smuggled by Khrushchev

through a KGB spy
named Georgi Bolshakov.

Georgi was a friend
of my parents.

My uncle wrote the first
of his from Cape Cod,

and he talked about how
his children and their cousins,

which meant us,
were playing in the yard,

and that these two leaders
had no right to bring the world

to a crisis that would
destroy children like us

who had no political
involvement.

And the millions of other people
around the world

who would be destroyed.

And that it would be
their failure and their sin

if they allowed that to happen.

And they proceeded
along a course

that ended up with them
really talking very seriously

about complete demobilization.

And Khrushchev's career was,

um, it was ended
by that as well.

-Among the many traits

the peoples of our two countries have
in common,

none is stronger than
our mutual abhorrence of war.

Almost unique among
the major world powers,

we have never been
at war with each other.

[Lisa Pease] Norman Cousins,

who was then the editor
of the Saturday Review,

had gotten a meeting
with Khrushchev.

And so Norman Cousins
goes to Kennedy, and he said,

"Let's talk
about antinuclear plans.

Let's see if we can, you know,

go for some sort of
form of disarmament."

He's like, "What can I say
as to your level of commitment?"

And Kennedy's like,
"I'm 100 percent committed

to disarming our nukes."

And that was very difficult
because, again,

there are hardliners
on both sides.

And so, they ended up with
the Limited Test Ban Treaty

where they banned all
above-ground testing.

But that's what came
of that meeting,

is that conversation.
But when he came back,

he also said, "Khrushchev's
gonna need a real sign from you

that you're really
committed to this."

-And of course,
this became very eloquently real

in June of 1963, when Kennedy
gives the famous "peace speech"

as it came to be known,
at American University.

-I realize the pursuit of peace

is not as dramatic
as the pursuit of war.

And every graduate
of this school,

every thoughtful citizen
who despairs of war,

and wishes to bring peace,
should begin by looking inward,

by examining his own attitude

towards the possibilities
of peace,

towards the Soviet Union,

towards the course
of the Cold War,

and towards freedom and peace
here at home.

First, examine our attitude
towards peace itself.

Too many of us think
it is impossible,

too many think it is unreal.

But that is a dangerous,
defeatist belief.

It leads to the conclusion
that war is inevitable.

That mankind is doomed.

That we are gripped by forces
we cannot control.

-I think Mr. Kennedy has done
some significant things

in civil rights, and I would
include the attorney general.

I think, uh, both of these men
are men of genuine good will.

And, uh, I think
there is a necessity now to

seize the urgency of
the moment.

[Oliver Stone]
Although we've focused

primarily on foreign policy,

we cannot overlook
Kennedy's battles in the South

with Governor Ross Barnett
of Mississippi

and, in that June of '63,

with Governor George Wallace
of Alabama.

[George Wallace]
And I'm asking from you

an unequivocal assurance

that you will not
bar entry to these students.

And that you will step aside, peacefully,

do your constitutional duty.

[Oliver Stone]
In both showdowns,

using federal troops,

the Kennedy Administration
won admission of Black students

to the last public colleges
in the South.

George Wallace made it clear
that this fight was not over.

-And-- and-- and-- and the--
the South this year,

next year, will decide
who the next president is.

Whoever the South votes for
is the president.

And you're gonna see
that the South is wanting

to be against some folks.

[Oliver Stone] That night,
Kennedy addressed the nation

in what many consider
the finest presidential speech

on civil rights
since Abraham Lincoln.

-And that the rights of every man
are diminished,

when the rights of one man
are threatened.

Even America,
because his skin is dark,

cannot enjoy the full
and free life,

which all of us want.

Then who among us
would be content to have

the color of his skin changed?

One hundred years of delay
have passed

since President Lincoln
freed the slaves,

yet their heirs,
their grandsons,

are not fully free.

And this nation,
for all its hopes,

and all its folks,
will not be fully free,

until all its citizens are free.

We face, therefore,
a moral crisis,

as a country and a people.

And this is a matter
which concerns this country,

and what it stands for.

And in meeting it,

I ask the support
of all of our citizens.

Thank you very much.

[Sutherland]
By the fall of 1963,

Kennedy had made many enemies.

He was working on an American
withdrawal from Vietnam,

an upcoming state visit
to Indonesia in '64,

an independent,
unified democracy in the Congo.

Through Nasser, a balanced
policy in the Middle East.

Normalization of relations
with Cuba.

And a detente with Russia--

even going so far
as to offer them

a joint mission to the moon.

But on November 22nd,

another face of America
asserted itself.

[reporter] Several thousand
enthusiastic Texans are on hand

to give the President and
Mrs. Kennedy a warm welcome.

[Sutherland] On that day
the world changed.

Lyndon Johnson
did not have the understanding

of Third World countries,

nor did he have
the anti-colonial sympathies

that President Kennedy had.

Therefore, numerous changes
in foreign policy took place

within a short period of time
after the assassination.

-President Johnson
did a 180-degree turn

in terms of Congo policy.

The US, which under Kennedy,

was a champion of
African nationalism

and the lead peacekeeper
in the Congo,

becomes the agent of
white reactionary nationalism

and imperialism led by

the Belgians and
the South Africans,

and of all things,
the anti-Castro Cubans.

[rapid gunfire]

[Sutherland]
The CIA now began

to furnish planes and
Cuban exile pilots

to fly sorties
to stamp out the rebellion.

According to one pilot,
the CIA manned the embassy,

and brought members
of a secret operation

from the Bay of Pigs
codenamed Operation 40.

-All of whom
mount this operation

to return a reactionary government to power

under Joseph Mobutu,
and to bring Moise Tshombe,

who was the secessionist
leader of Katanga

back in as prime minister.

And it was as if the
United States had never really had,

you know, this deep association
with African nationalism

under President Kennedy.

[Sutherland]
Joseph Mobutu became

the front man
for imperial forces,

profiting in the billions
from the riches of the Congo.

The Congo never recovered from
the assassination of Lumumba.

And today, despite
its natural resources,

it is considered a failed state

where 80 percent
of the population

live in abject poverty.

Like Foster Dulles,

Johnson now favored
Saudi Arabia over Egypt,

and greatly favored Israel
in the Middle East.

The fairness and even-handedness
Kennedy was building was lost.

In 1968, when Johnson
learned Israel had acquired

atomic weapons,
he made the decision

to order CIA director
Richard Helms

not to tell the Pentagon
or the State Department.

In 1973, while Egyptian tanks

were crossing the Sinai

during the Yom Kippur War,
Commander Moshe Dayan

proposed the use
of nuclear weapons.

Kennedy's goals of peace through
alliances with moderates,

and a solution for

the Palestinian
refugee problem,

were abandoned.

In Latin America,
JFK's Alliance for Progress,

a program promoting
economic development,

suffered as well under Johnson.

In 1964, Johnson said,

you could take all
the gold in Fort Knox,

and it would just go
down the drain in Latin America

unless the private investor could have
some confidence

that he could make
his investment,

and it would not
be confiscated.

Johnson's
private investment idea

broke with Kennedy's policy,
which was to make

most of the loans out of
the United States Treasury,

thereby charging little or

no interest.

Under Johnson's leadership,

the future allotments
for '67 to '69 were reduced

and much of it was shifted
to military programs.

By 1973, it was eliminated.

Under Secretary of State
George Ball referred to

the island archipelago
of Indonesia

as the true
breaking point in Asia--

more important to
the United States than Vietnam.

-What were some of Kennedy's
plans for Indonesia after 1964?

-Three days
before Kennedy was killed,

he signed an 11-million dollar
aid package that included,

you know,
not just military weapons--

because that's something
they hadn't been willing

to provide before Kennedy,
and Kennedy knew, look,

if we don't
give them the weapons,

they're just gonna go
get them from the Soviets.

So he did agree to that.

But Kennedy wanted to emphasize
roads, infrastructure,

education, you know,
money for food,

money to help levee places
and create rice paddies.

Kennedy wanted to help Indonesia
become self-sufficient.

[Bradley Simpson]
President Johnson

had a visceral
dislike of Sukarno

that led him to conclude
that he didn't want to spend

any political capital attempting
to appeal to a leader

that he viewed
as a regional bully.

So Sukarno bitterly criticized
the US war in Vietnam.

He signaled that he was
going to pursue

a radical, anti-colonial
foreign policy

that the Johnson administration saw
as a direct threat

to American interests,

and something
that had to be stopped.

The US State Department
signaled to the Indonesian army

that overthrowing Sukarno

and killing
lots and lots of communists

would produce
a political payoff.

[Sutherland]
September 30th, 1965.

Following rumors of a suspected
military coup against Sukarno,

leftist officers tried to bring
the disloyal generals to trial.

Their plan
quickly descended into chaos,

and General Suharto
took control.

The Indonesian
army, with CIA support,

blamed the killing of the
generals on the communist party.

General Suharto
then used this as a pretext

to turn the army
on the communists,

and eventually neutralized
President Sukarno,

taking his place as president.

-Five hundred thousand,
at least, were killed,

people that were identified
as communists,

whether they were or not,

whether they even knew
what communism was or not.

If their name was on a list,
they were killed.

-And this is the most consequential legacy

of President Kennedy's
assassination.

The coming to power
of a president

who not only
didn't care about Indonesia,

but who surrounded himself
with officials,

who had a stake in a far more
confrontational approach

towards Indonesia that
ultimately resulted in

a spasm of mass killing
in which nearly half a million

unarmed civilians were killed
by the Indonesian army.

[Sutherland]
Regarding Vietnam,

a review of the
declassified record

shows that Kennedy continuously
pushed back against the Pentagon

by refusing every request
to commit combat troops there.

This conflict is reflected

in a National Security
Action Memorandum-NSAM 273.

Drafted in the days before
his death, in its final form,

it allowed for direct American
involvement in Vietnam.

[John Newman]
McGeorge Bundy,

who's the national
security adviser,

puts together a memo,
uh, based upon the--

the truth about the war,
which is it's going terribly.

And he does it in a way
to try and make sure

that Kennedy would be able to
go along with it.

So the way he writes
the first draft of 273

is to say, look, we need to
intensify the war effort

against the communists.
But the way we're gonna do it

is to increase
South Vietnamese forces.

There's not a word
about American forces

or Americanizing the war.

[Sutherland] In fact,
after much maneuvering,

Kennedy, Bundy,

and Secretary of Defense McNamara

had already settled on a plan
to withdraw 1,000 US troops

by 1963, with the goal
of having South Vietnam

responsible for its own
combat operations.

[John Newman] While Kennedy's
body is still in the casket

in the rotunda
over on the Capitol building

is when Johnson changes
NSAM 273 to a new version.

It's Sunday, and McGeorge Bundy
has to take the old version

around town,
and show it to Rusk

and show it to all the
principals and get their input.

And when it comes to
the key paragraph, paragraph 7,

which talks about how we're
going to intensify the war,

all of a sudden,
the restrictions

that McGeorge Bundy
had put on that,

instead of changing a few words,

there's two big hash marks
through that paragraph,

and it's completely rewritten.

And I asked Bundy
in an interview, I said,

"Who told you to do that?"
He said, "Johnson did."

[Sutherland] In the Review
Board's declassifications,

there is evidence
that Johnson was fully aware

of Kennedy's Vietnam
withdrawal plans,

disagreed with them,
and worked on Robert McNamara

to make him renounce them.

-McNamara came into this,
um, the decision

to withdraw US forces,
and in my view,

he implemented it faithfully

until the time
that Kennedy was killed.

[Sutherland]
These changes allowed the US

to unilaterally engage
in combat in Vietnam,

rather than simply
supporting and advising

South Vietnamese troops,

which led to serious consequences.

-And within days,
we're talking about

sending out the
De Soto missions, these--

these naval excursions along
the coastline of North Vietnam.

That ends up with the Maddox
and--

and the so-called Tonkin,

Gulf, uh, attacks and then
the resolution in Congress

opening the door
to intervention in Vietnam.

-In retaliation
for this unprovoked attack

on the high seas,

our forces have
struck the bases

used by the North Vietnamese patrol craft.

-But the new news there is,

it wasn't Johnson who first
figured out, you know,

the day after Kennedy was shot,

that he needed to
change this NSAM.

He just rubber stamped what

Taylor had been doing covertly
ever since NSAM 263.

[Sutherland]
And, as declassified memos

have revealed,
by autumn of 1964,

during his campaign
against Barry Goldwater,

Johnson had already decided

that he was going to
escalate the Vietnam War.

In fact, the directive

that would become
the Tonkin Gulf Resolution

had been written before the
Tonkin Gulf incident itself.

-We are not about to send
American boys

nine or 10,000 miles
away from home

to do what Asian boys ought
to be doing for themselves.

[Sutherland]
On August 7th,

three months
before the election,

Johnson had already planned
for an extensive air war.

It was to begin
after his inauguration.

[Lyndon Johnson] We intend to
convince the communists

that we cannot be
defeated by force of arms,

or by superior power.

-And no nation
in the history of battle

ever suffered more than
the Soviet Union

in the Second World War.

At least 20 million
lost their lives.

Countless millions
of homes and families

were burned or sacked.

A third of the nation's
territory,

including two thirds
of its industrial base,

was turned into a wasteland.

A loss equivalent to
the destruction of this country

east of Chicago.

[Sutherland]
After his brother's death,

Robert Kennedy knew

that relations with
the Soviet Union

hung in the balance.

-On November 29th, he--

which is one week
after the assassination,

my father, he had a meeting
with Bill Walton,

who was a friend of the family
and was on a--

it was a cultural trip
to the Soviet Union.

And he asked Walton to convey a
message through Georgi Bolshakov

to Premier Khrushchev,

saying that our family knew
that the Soviets

were not involved
in the assassination,

that it was a right wing plot
from our own country.

-In other words, the CIA,
or forces aligned with the CIA.

They said they also believed
that Bobby Kennedy

intended to run for office,
and that eventually

he would get back
to the White House.

And when he did, he planned to
resume his brother's policies

of detente and peace
with the Soviet Union.

But they had to
bide their time,

and wait for that
political opportunity.

This is a stunning message
to be delivering to Bolshakov,

because, of course,

Bolshakov is going to take this
right to the Kremlin.

[Sutherland] When Khrushchev
paid his respects

to President Kennedy
at the American Embassy,

he was reportedly
holding back tears.

Castro got the news
of Kennedy's death

while discussing detente

with the French journalist,
Jean Daniel.

He then exclaimed,
"This is bad news.

Everything is now
going to change."

Like Bobby Kennedy,
neither man

believed the conclusions
of the Warren Report.

[Lisa Pease] When news came
of Kennedy's death,

all over the planet,
people were mourning and crying

and going to embassies.

In Latin America,
people just lit candles

because they didn't even
have electrical power.

But they wanted
to honor his killing.

In the Yucatan Peninsula,
peasants cleared an area

and planted a peace garden.

[Philip Muehlenbeck] Nasser
learned of Kennedy's death

in the middle of the night.

He got up, dressed,

went down to his office
and then realized,

well, there's nothing
I can do about this.

According to his son,
Nasser went into, uh, a great,

uh, state of depression
after Kennedy's death.

Uh, relations with Egypt
gradually deteriorated,

and they increasingly
shifted their allegiance

towards the Soviet Union
as well.

-A mass was held in the leading

Catholic Church in Cairo,
which has a capacity of 600.

They somehow fit 4,000 people
into that church.

Algeria, which had a special
feeling for Kennedy,

declared a state of mourning
for a week.

Flags were flown at half-mast.

The US ambassador to Egypt said

that he thought the Egyptians
had seen in Kennedy

the best of what they saw
in Americans,

that Kennedy had represented
a kind of ideal of America

to ordinary Egyptians.

-They polled historians, they polled
the American people

to say who are the most
popular presidents.

One metric that you can use to,
objectively at least,

judge their foreign policy
is how many boulevards

are named after
that president

in foreign countries,

how many hospitals,
how many colleges,

how many schools,

how many statues are--
are standing of that president

in capitols all over the world?

And in that sense,
President Kennedy

beats every other president
hands-down.

[Sutherland] That feeling
is not held only abroad.

Many people at home felt
that after Kennedy's death,

a period of depression and
cynicism overtook the country,

and that America was
somehow changed forever.

Our overwhelming disbelief

in the Warren
Commission's findings

contributed
to increased skepticism

of all our foundational
beliefs about government.

-I think there's a direct thread between
the events of 1963,

and the kind of horror show

that America is having to
endure right now.

And I think once you kill
a president in broad daylight

on the streets
of an American city,

and everyone knows
that powerful forces did it,

and it can never be solved,
that crime,

that sends a signal, not only
to the American people,

but to the American media,
to American future leaders.

And if America really wants
a democratic society,

then we should get to the bottom
of this traumatic crime

that continues to reverberate
throughout American history.

[Sutherland]
The Assassination

Records Review Board
made many startling discoveries

in the four years
of its existence.

In October of 2017,
in compliance with

the JFK Records Act
25-year deadline,

President Trump said

unless he was in
receipt of further information,

he would not block
declassification

of the last of the files.

Six months later,

he postponed releasing
the last batch,

which the Review Board

had previously
delayed from 1998.

This means
that 56 years later,

the US government
is still maintaining secrets

about the JFK case.

Can a democracy survive
if it does not know

its deepest secrets about
the darkest days of its past?

-Do you think
there was any connection

between your father's
assassination and your uncle's?

-I don't think anybody
has connected all the dots.

There are dots there.

There are dots that look
like certainly, um, that are,

uh, that we should be investigating.

And my father's death has never
been investigated properly.

[cheering]

[Robert Kennedy] Because
I think we can do better.

And I think we can do better
around the rest of the globe.

I'm not going to be satisfied
until that war is over,

and American soldiers
are brought back in.

[cheering]

-I have therefore
chosen this time and place

to discuss a topic
on which ignorance too often abounds,

and the truth
too rarely perceived,

and that is the most important topic
on Earth: Peace.

What kind of a peace do I mean,

and what kind of a peace
do we seek?

Not a Pax Americana,

enforced on the world
by American weapons of war,

not the peace of the grave,

or the security of the slave.

I am talking about
genuine peace,

the kind of peace that makes
life on earth worth living,

and the kind that enables
men and nations to grow

and to hope

and build a better life
for their children,

not merely peace for Americans,

but peace for all
men and women.

Not merely peace in our time,
but peace in all time.

[♪♪♪]