In the average man's life,
there are 2 or 3 emotional experiences burned into his heart and his brain.
And no matter what happens to me, I'll remember November 22nd as long as I live.
There has 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? - I'm just a patsy.
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.
Sync, corrected by icephoenix www.addic7ed.com
In Dallas, preparations were already under way
for extraordinary police protection when the President should arrive.
Do 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 sun tan 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.
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 egg shells even thinner for the Secret Service,
whose job it is to guard the man.
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.
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.
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 newsroom.
There has been an attempt on the life of President Kennedy.
Bobby?
Uh, 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 this all right now?
Is this all right?
Ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to introduce to you
the chief camera man 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, Jimmy, I was standing at the Trade Mart awaiting his arrival there.
All of a sudden, 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 into a police car and went to Parkland.
These two men come running in. One of them had a large machine gun.
They was hollering for stretchers and cots and everything.
The Governor, they brought him in first.
What happened after this?
Then the President comes in near behind him,
and they took both of them back to the room there.
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
has gathered where the President normally would enter
and discussing heatedly with one another
some subject or other. Of course, we have no idea what.
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 in Dallas, Texas. May I have your name please, sir?
- My name is Mr. Abraham Zapruder. - Mr. Zapruder?
- Zapruder, yes, sir. - And would you tell us your story, please, sir?
I got out about a half hour early,
to get a good spot to shoot some pictures.
A 5-year-old boy and myself were by ourselves on the grass there on Palmer Street,
and I asked Joe to wave to him, and Joe waved, and I waved...
- And then... - It's all right, sir.
You waved.
As he was waving back,
He was... The shot rang out and he slumped down in his seat.
And then all the sudden this next one popped,
and Governor Connally grabbed his stomach and kind of laid over to the side.
And then another one. It was just all so fast.
And President Kennedy reached up, looked like he grabbed his ear,
and blood just started gushing out.
- Did you see the person who fired the...? - No, I didn't see any person fire the weapon.
- You only heard it? - I only heard it.
And I looked up and saw a man running up the hill.
If it's a conspiracy, not only the President was hit,
the Governor was hit, who knows if the next shot
would have 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.
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.
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.
It was odd because there were no commercials.
It was just a continuous experience.
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.
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?
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 greatest regret,
two priests who were with President Kennedy
say he has died of bullet wounds.
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 1:00 Central Standard Time,
today, here in Dallas.
He died of a gunshot wound in the brain.
Close enough.
I have no other details
regarding the assassination of the President.
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.
I just can't believe it.
I feel like someone in my own family died today.
I can't believe it.
Ma'am?
I can't say nothing...
Like a daze. You don't know what's going on.
Why? Why did it happen?
Who would have done such a thing is your 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 had come from an automatic weapon,
fired possibly from a grassy knoll.
I saw some police run up this grass.
I thought, "they're chasing the gunman." I ran with them.
The report is that the attempted assassin,
we now hear it was a man and a woman.
I got to the top, looked around.
A policeman went over the fence, so I went over the fence, too.
There was nothing there.
The television newsman said that he looked up
just after the shot was fired,
and saw a rifle being withdrawn from a 5th- or 6th-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.
Federal 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 6th floor, we found an area
near a window that had been partially blocked off by boxes of books.
And also the three spent shells
that apparently had 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 going to 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
as shot three times in the chest in the Old Cliff section of Dallas.
Then the manager of a shoe store
saw the suspect walk into the Texas Theater.
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!" And the officers hustled him into the car
and ran away just as fast as they could.
As we mentioned just 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? How'd you approach him?
I approached him, and as he approached me,
the man hit MacDonal in the face with 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.
The President was shot, and 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's 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 it to him in any way.
Down there in this 3rd floor corridor,
a crowd of cameramen and reporters wait for a possible appearance
of the man accused of killing President Kennedy and a Dallas police officer.
Now apparently a great deal of confusion.
Mr. Oswald has looked through the door. I don't know if you saw him.
Oswald lives at 1026 North Beckley.
He's an employee of a bookbinding firm in the building,
which the police and Secret Service men 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.
Cleared everyone out of the emergency room and the hospital, completely,
on the first floor, there. And they came out and told us
we would have to go and move the remains into a casket.
Lyndon Johnson had ordered that the body
be brought immediately to Air Force One,
so there was a little tug-of-war.
They 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 Service men...
Well, about two or three of them got into the hearse
and just drove off and left Mr. O'Neill 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.
Not everyone realized that Johnson was already the President,
because, in fact, he'd 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.
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 of November 22nd, 1963
as the date when a President was killed.
But it was also a date 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 who 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.
I, uh... I don't know what this is all about.
- Did you kill the President? - No, sir, I didn't.
- 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.
Back up, man. Come on, man!
- Did you shoot the President? - No, they're taking me in
because of the fact that I live in the building.
- What time did you leave? - 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
that was 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.
Bought under the alias of A. Hidell.
Handwriting experts have established that the handwriting on the purchase order
was in fact made by Oswald.
At the 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,
were committing all of their resources to trying to solve the crime.
Could you hold him in the doorway? Would you get him in the doorway?
On the other hand, they were ill-equipped
to handle the tsunami of reporters.
Well I was questioned by a judge
for a death, and at that time, 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.
- Did you kill the President? - No, I have not been charged with that.
In fact, nobody has said that to me yet.
The first thing I heard about it
was when the newspaper reporters in the hall asked me that question.
- You have been advised, then? - Sir?
You have been advised, then.
Okay, men, okay.
- Help! - A policeman hit me.
At 1:35 this morning a complaint was read.
A charge that, "Lee Harvey Oswald did voluntarily
"and with malice of forethought,
"kill John. F. Kennedy by shooting him with a gun."
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?
Well 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 was seen with the package?
Yesterday morning.
After the shooting in Dealey Plaza,
Oswald was the only employee at the Book Depository
that fled the building.
45 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.
During 12 hours of interrogation
by the Dallas Police Department over the weekend,
he told one provable lie after another.
Did you fire that rifle?
Just as fast as 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,
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 10:00 in the morning.
That will be early enough for him.
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 am not... I don't think that the people
will try to take the prisoner away from us.
Lee Oswald is to be taken soon to the county jail.
- 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.
Dallas police meant to transfer Lee
into the regular prison during the night
to avoid the press.
And then someone must have overruled them
so that Lee could be photographed by the press
during the transfer.
We're standing, 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's through this corridor, 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 are waiting for a glimpse of Lee Oswald.
- There he is. - There he is.
- Here he comes. - Now the prisoner.
Let me have him. I want him.
Being led out by Captain Fritz.
There. There he is.
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 down. He is shot. Oswald is down.
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.
- Where did he go? - He was here.
They just put their guns there. I saw the flash on the black...
- Oh, yeah, right in the gut. - Point blank range.
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 detectives, you know, he had a hat.
The situation is now that Lee Harold 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.
A 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 is not moving. He is in the ambulance now.
Attendants, police are quickly trying to get...
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 President John F. Kennedy died.
Rolling.
And I believe the man...
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, of course.
Killing him just like that,
that ain't going to bring President Kennedy back to life.
And after he 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 a fire
and stand him up for one day. And then the next day, start again.
Thank you.
They've got a man that I believe...
I didn't see it. I think it's the man.
What's he look like?
I can't give you a description now.
He is known locally.
Immediately after the ambulance left,
somehow I had 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 couldn't tell you.
Do you know what kind of business he happens to be in?
- Bob, I wouldn't want to say. - Right.
The Dallas City Hall is normally a public building,
but today it was really under armed guard.
We...
Is this a confirmed report as to who did the shooting?
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 P.M.
- He died? - He died at 1:07 P.M.
We have arrested the man. The man will be charged with murder.
- Who is he? - The suspect's name is Jack
Rubenstein, I believe.
He goes by the name of Jack Ruby.
And here at 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?
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 Fritz 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 going to 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.
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 superhuman 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.
There 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 pall-bearers you see here are newsmen.
There were not enough relatives, or friends,
on hand to serve as pall-bearers.
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, that one test of societies
is how do they handle transfer of power at the top?
Lyndon Johnson, whatever you of thought him,
and a lot of people disliked him greatly, some even hated him,
would be the President of United States.
I think it shouted about the strength of the country,
and that we swear by the rule of law.
The President of 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.
The people of Europe just cannot believe
believe that a lone avenger made his way into a major police
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.
I mean, 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.
Investigation into all the facts of these last four days
may not be limited to the State of Texas or the F.B.I.
Some Congressmen already have suggested a Congressional investigation.
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 F.B.I. 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.
I'm going to ask McCloy, Dulles, Ford, and Boggs,
and Cooper and Russell, and Chief Justice Warren as chairman.
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 everyone 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,
that ought to be satisfying 90% of American public opinion.
Senator Russell on 2191.
I'm highly honored you would think about me in connection...
But I couldn't serve with Chief Justice Warren.
- I don't like that man. - You can serve with anybody
for the good of America, and you're going to do it.
I can't arrest you, and I'm not going to put the F.B.I. on you,
but you god damn sure are going to serve, I'll tell you that.
Lyndon Johnson was known as the greatest salesman, one on one,
who ever lived. So he meets first with Warren.
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.
- Mr. President, please... - No, it's already done. It's been announced, hell.
- You mean you've given the... - Yes, sir, I made the announcement.
It is already in the papers with you on it.
I think you did wrong getting Warren.
- No damn way you did wrong getting me. - No.
- I'll do the best I can. - I think that's what you do.
That's the kind of Americans both of you are.
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 F.B.I. is investigating every lead it can find
and will turn its report over to President Johnson,
probably this week.
It was the F.B.I.'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.
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 F.B.I. or the Secret Service.
There were three issues that 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, or 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... About 12:00.
There were questions. How would they deal with
the different stories about shooters from the grassy knoll,
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.
Warren left for Dallas because he was a man
who'd 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 was all these suggestions that Ruby had killed Oswald to silence him,
so Warren, I think, wanted to hear from Ruby himself.
The Warren Commission realized they were going to have to
invest a lot more time than was anticipated.
This maybe 2 to 3 month operation to the conception that
they'll probably take 6 months.
The hour glass 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 10 months,
then brought forth a document close to 1,000 pages.
President Johnson received that report today.
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 p.m., 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's 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 F.B.I., or the C.I.A., 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 this 6th-floor window in the Texas School Book Depository.
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.
When the Warren Commission came out with their report,
the majority of Americans accepted the findings of the Warren Commission.
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 out through his chest, continued through his right wrist
and on into his left thigh.
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 speculation that surrounded this very tragic event.
I'm quite satisfied that it's 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.
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.
The reaction to the report initially was very positive.
But that didn't last very long.
This book is the #1 bestseller on the nonfiction 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 School Book Depository building.
The Commission said Ruby was not there.
This is a picture showing how the Commission published it.
He wasn't there when they published the picture because they cropped him out!
You're accusing Justice Warren and that Commission of...
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 public 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.
1, we were thoroughly incompetent. 2, 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 newsstands. They're in the supermarkets.
Now, according to a recent poll, only 1 in 3 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
that 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 a communist, a 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's obvious that he was working for somebody else at that moment,
and that somebody could not be anyone else than Fidel Castro.
There is no possibly of Oswald having been
in the sixth-floor window of the Texas School Book Depository.
In my opinion, 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 of, I believe, 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 F.B.I.
as if it's a religious experience to read the Warren report.
I think, to the contrary, that all we're supposed to have faith in
in a democracy is our in 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.
We're deeply enmeshed in Vietnam.
There's a lot of protests. There had been riots.
And there's a sense that things have seriously gone wrong.
We have gone off the rails since November of 63.
And the Warren Report is a very important part
of that loss of confidence in the government.
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 the conclusion
that one person assassinated him.
It's ridiculous. I saw the whole thing on television.
I just happened to be home at that time.
I don't think that Oswald...
I think that he was working for the C.I.A., 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.
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.
We aren't trying to hide a thing from you,
or from Mr. Epstein, or 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 have laid it on the line.
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 will 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 and making his turn,
it was about halfway down there, I heard a shot.
Then I heard another shot or two. I couldn't say if it was one or two.
And 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 massive head wound,
where the President's head was literally blown apart,
came from a quartering 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 a 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 can 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 claimed...
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 front of the President's neck?
Actually, I didn't really give it much thought.
And I realize that perhaps it would have 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 explain this ad infinitum
and people will only remember that a doctor at Parkland said
he'd been shot from possibly the front.
So it's kind of trying to put the genie back in the bottle.
A bullet hit the President from the back,
a 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 certainly indicates the bullet came from the front.
Well, I don't believe any physicist has ever said that.
Quite contrary, it does indicate the bullet was coming from behind.
It's a minor explosion, where pieces of material
go generally in the direction of the bullet.
If you look at the individual frames of the Zapruder film,
at 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.
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.
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.
CBS News had a tower and target track
constructed to match exactly the heights and distances in Dealey Plaza.
If there wasn't enough time, then you would have a second shooter.
Oswald was not an expert shot. He was a good shot.
But making the shots was not that tough at all.
CBS did it. Half 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,
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 the sort of ultimate truth of film
and of images. Then they become our memory.
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?
I would hesitate, really, to say that it is
absolutely, 100% 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.
If the Warren Commission couldn't prove that one shot had hit both men,
it meant there were two shooters, ipso facto, there's a conspiracy.
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 midair.
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 on-site tests,
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.
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 2 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.
The question of whether Ruby knew Oswald
before or was in cahoots to kill him
is one of the most important questions.
Because Ruby knew people in criminal activities,
there was a lot of investigation about a potential conspiracy.
Ruby would have been one of the most unlikely and worst
hit men that the mob could ever get.
On November 24th, 1963,
Lee Harvey Oswald was supposed to have been transferred at 10:00.
At 10:00, the evidence is undisputed that Jack Ruby was 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 A.M.
We know that at 11:20, three minutes later,
a block away, Jack Ruby killed Lee Harvey Oswald.
The evidence showed that he was down there anywhere from 5 to 15 seconds,
5 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?
Jack is a very emotional-type person.
And, as I was saying awhile ago,
he's the type of man that would probably give you the shirt off his back at one moment
and then turn around and do something as nutty as this in the next.
I never use 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.
Saw him in this very same room Friday night.
When we had the defendant up here.
Some of you will recall he asked a question from out here in the audience.
He's 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,
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 investigation stopped.
They don't want a trial at all. Please believe me.
The most recent, most spectacular development in the Oswald case
involves the C.I.A.
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?
I don't want to get involved in the speculations
of individuals, but I will say that
there's no question about the fact that there was a plot,
and there were a number of individuals involved.
In 1967, he announced,
"I've involved 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 have paid much attention 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's 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 5th year and has never lost a murder case.
The press initially built Garrison up because everybody believes
no District Attorney in his right mind
would do this unless he had something.
Arrested this evening in the District Attorney's Office
was Clay Shaw, age 54,
of 1313 Dauphine Street, New Orleans, Louisiana.
Mr. Shaw will be charged with participation
in a 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.
Clay Shaw was a very well-respected businessman in New Orleans.
He had been a distinguished soldier during World War II.
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 a 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.
Soon as he arrested Clay Shaw, they all came back.
And then they realized the truth that there isn't anything there.
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 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.
Can you say positively that the person you knew as Clay Bertrand
is not the person you have seen 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 9-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 methods were illegal?
I would very say illegal and unethical.
He had everyone and their grandmother involved in the assassination.
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 the coercion to homosexuality was a factor
in the planning 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 7, "O" gives you 6.
He just changed the digits around, added digits, added letters.
And you reconstruct the numbers,
and then you subtract 1300...
And that gives you Ruby's unlisted telephone number.
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 C.I.A. agents,"
because he's part of the conspiracy.
Who's suppressing all of this information? On whose orders?
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 orders?
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 result of his 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 that 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.
You know what my first question's going to be, don't you?
- What? - Why did you do it?
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.
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.
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 considered the truth about the death of their President,
any means whatsoever was supposed 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 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.
To show you how uncredible 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 with the Kennedy assassination,
things pointed to Oswald as not only a shooter,
but the shooter and the only shooter.
At its core, this is a very simple case.
- Did you kill the President? - I don't know what this is all about.
If a person is innocent of a crime,
chances are there's not going to be any evidence pointing toward his guilt.
Why? Because he's innocent.
But with Oswald, the physical evidence,
the directly circumstantial evidence, scientific evidence,
everything points toward his guilt.
We'll never know why Lee Harvey Oswald killed Kennedy,
because he's dead. But there are certain things we do know.
At the age of 13,
a probation officer said he remembered Oswald as a truant,
a troubled boy in need of psychiatric help,
without which he might turn violent.
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.
Are you an Marxist?
I would very definitely say that I am a Marxist, that is correct.
But that does not mean, however, that I'm 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'd 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 a stupid, irrational act.
The opportunity presented itself to him
and he probably wanted to make a mark on society
Suddenly occurred to him that he could.
People who think Oswald was sort of a patsy
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 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 an 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.
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 wouldn't talk.
I said what happened to him, and he said,
"I tried to shot General Walker."
General, will you describe for us just what happened last night?
Rifle shot was fired into the house, fired through the west window.
And hit the sill and hit the wall across the room
and went over the desk at which I was sitting.
He was very disappointed to find out
that he 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.
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.
It doesn't satisfy our sense of narrative or justice
that a small person of no distinction
can be of such historical consequence as to kill the President of the United States.
But would we 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,
a cataclysmic circumstance and say,
"yes, that's the way the world works."
There's another group of people for whom that's quite unsettling.
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.
I think the five bullets fired from at least two different directions
were 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.
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 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 2 or 3
emotional experiences that he doesn't forget
because they're burned into his heart and his brain.
And no matter what happens to me,
I'll remember November 22nd as long as I live.
And it's impossible for me now to this day,
and I'm sure ten years from now,
to go out 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 today
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 don't remember what they did but they remember their rhetoric.
And they remember the images.
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.
Sync, corrected by icephoenix www.addic7ed.com