All language subtitles for JFK.Revisited.Through.The.Looking.Glass.2021 Web

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.

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.

That straight, sleek look
that it should have,

and very often you'll find

a zipper hidden in the...
arm and--

Good afternoon,
ladies and gentlemen.

You'll excuse the fact
that I'm out of breath,

but about 10 or 15 minutes ago,

a tragic thing,
from all indications at this point,

has happened
in the city of Dallas.

This is Walter Cronkite
in our newsroom.

Here's a... piece of copy
that was rushed to-- to me

and was torn off
from the United Press.

President Kennedy
has been shot in Dallas.

Along with
Governor Connally of Texas.

They've been taken
to Parkland Hospital there,

where their condition is,
as yet, unknown.

And just now we've received
reports here at Parkland

that Governor Connally was
shot in the upper left chest,

and the first unconfirmed reports

say the President
was hit in the head.

That's an unconfirmed report

that the President
was hit in the head.

Police began chasing

an unknown gunman
across the railroad tracks.

Would you see if they need
some coffee or something?

These people
are awfully shaken up.

They were in the line of fire.

The President's car
was some 50 feet

when we heard the first shot.

And then as the car
got directly in front of us,

a gunshot from
the top of the hill

hit the President's side--
side of the temple.

Where did the shots come from?

The shots came from the hill.

Excuse me
just a moment, John.

There was just word
from the hospital

that they have dispatched
a call for a neurosurgeon.

All we can do now
is pray for him,

and that's about all we can do.

President's wife,
Jackie Kennedy, was not hurt.

She walked into the hospital.
A priest has been ordered.

Emergency supplies of blood

also being rushed
to the hospital.

Just a moment.
We have a bulletin coming in.

We'll now put you directly
through Parkland Hospital

and KBLX news director,
Bill Hamdon.

Two priests, who were with

President Kennedy,
say he is dead.

- Just two priests announced it?
- Yes.

But it's not the truth, is it?

The flash, apparently official,

President Kennedy died

at 1:00 p.m.
Central Standard Time,

some 38 minutes ago.

I just can't see
why anybody would want

to shoot Mr. Kennedy
for all the things he's done for us.

He tried to keep us from
getting into war and everything.

It's a simple matter of a bullet
right through the head.

All the information
that we have received

now indicates that it did come

from about the fifth or fourth floor
of that building.

We're checking it out now.

10-4 now, and 112.

We found empty rifle hulls,

and it looked like the man
had been there for some time.

Police made a systematic search
of the building.

They found no weapon.

We just got the word.

Lyndon B. Johnson
has been sworn in

as the President
of the United States

just prior to a takeoff
to return to Washington.

Behind the casket
is Mrs. Jacqueline Kennedy.

They are helping her down.

Now, new President,
Lyndon Baines Johnson.

We have suffered a loss
that cannot be weighed.

At Bethesda Naval Hospital,

the autopsy team
has completed work.

Now the body of the slain President
and his widow

are at last brought home
to the White House.

Who do you think
would do something like this?

Probably some segregationist crackpot
or something.

Just...
They had it all planned out.

I really believe that his blood
will be on their hands.

Here is the suspect.
Can we roll it please?

People have given me a hearing

without legal representation
or anything.

- Did you shoot the President?
- I didn't shoot anybody.

I emphatically
deny these charges.

This is
24-year-old Lee H. Oswald.

He answers the description
of a young man

sighted at the
Book Depository Building.

Police chased
Oswald into a movie theater.

Police said he fired at them,
killing Patrolman J.D. Tippit.

A rifle was found in a building
where he worked.

Police refused
to say whether they have

any fingerprints
from that weapon as yet.

The man obviously was an
excellent shot, or very lucky,

in that witnesses
said three shots were fired,

at least two of them
found their marks.

At the Capitol Rotunda,

there will be
three short speeches

before the public is allowed
to start viewing the body.

Chief, do you have any concern
for the safety of your prisoner?

No, but because necessary

precautions
will be taken, of course.

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.

I'm just a patsy.

So great is the crush
outside the Capitol,

that people who have not
been in line can't possibly.

We are now switching to Dallas

where they are about to move
Lee Oswald and whether--

He's been shot.

There's a man with a gun.

Lee Harvey Oswald,

the man who Dallas police say
killed President Kennedy,

himself is dead.

The man Dallas police
seized at the scene,

and are holding, has been
identified as Jack Ruby.

He is being held by the Dallas police.
Now, back to Washington.

Fifty-three countries

are represented in all today.

There are a dozen members
of ruling royal families,

30 foreign ministers.

Things should be all right
in the few months ahead.

I'm sure the...

entire citizenry of the nation

will stand faithfully
behind the government.

This bizarre sequence of double killings
raise great questions.

Who actually fired the shots
that killed Kennedy?

Was there a conspiracy?

The first wound described is
a wound in the back of the head

and would seem to indicate
a shot from behind.

But the doctors
also said there was

a wound in the throat
at the front,

which seemed to indicate a shot
from the other direction.

The new President,
Lyndon Johnson,

appointed a commission
of seven prominent Americans

to investigate
the whole affair.

Earl Warren, Chief Justice
of the United States.

Richard B. Russell,
senator from Georgia.

John Sherman Cooper,
senator from Kentucky.

Hale Boggs,
representative from Louisiana.

Gerald R. Ford,
representative from Michigan.

John J. McCloy,
presidential adviser.

Allen W. Dulles,
ex-head of the CIA.

Are you convinced that he was shot
from the School Book Depository?

Well, I think we better leave
all that, you know.

The evidence report
will cover all-- all of that.

The Warren Commission
makes these major findings.

Lee Harvey Oswald
assassinated President Kennedy.

He did it alone.

He was not a part
of any conspiracy,

either domestic or foreign.

Some other details

will be of interest
mainly to historians

and others having
some special interest.

But there was one
further piece of evidence

that the public cannot see.

Abraham Zapruder's film
of the actual assassination.

This murder now
is the most thoroughly

documented crime
in American history.

And for those
who care to pursue it

down to the last detail,
it's all there.

This is Dealey Plaza.

To this day,
it remains a crime scene.

In the years
since the Warren Report,

many significant
re-investigations were made

into the murder
of President Kennedy.

Each one revealed
new facts and evidence

that shed more light on what
really happened here that day.

Starting in 1975,
after the Watergate scandal,

Senator Frank Church
conducted an investigation

into the abuses and crimes
of the FBI and CIA.

During that time,
the public learned of the CIA plots

to assassinate foreign leaders

like Patrice Lumumba
of the Republic of Congo

and Fidel Castro of Cuba.

Plots orchestrated
under Director Allen Dulles.

But the Church committee
didn't stop there.

Senators Richard Schweiker
and Gary Hart

were tasked to reexamine
the roles of the CIA and FBI

as the chief investigators
for the Warren Commission,

and look for signs
of conflicts or cover-ups.

J. Edgar Hoover writes,

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

"and he acted as our informant."

Now, who said that at the time
of the Warren Commission report?

Did anybody ever imply that--
that Jack Ruby

was a confidential informant
for the FBI?

Nobody breathed that.
That was classified.

Faith in what
the American public was told

by the Warren Commission
was starting to unravel.

The intelligence agencies
did all the wrong things

if they really
were looking for conspiracy

or to find out
who killed John Kennedy.

The search for real
answers gained momentum.

Then, 12 years
after the assassination,

the most iconic
piece of evidence was leaked

and finally
shown to the public.

It's the film shot by the Dallas

dress manufacturer,
Abraham Zapruder.

And it's the execution
of President Kennedy,

and Bob and Dick,

would you please narrate

what we're seeing
as we show this film?

Now, before
he goes behind the sign,

the President
is waving to the crowd.

When he comes out from
behind the sign, he is shot.

Then Governor Connally is shot.

He's already been hit.

He's already been hit.

And now?

At the bottom of
the screen, the head shot.

That's the shot
that blew off his head.

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

We'll talk about it in a minute.

Seeing the shock and brutality

of the actual assassination

caused a public outcry.

The government formed

the House Select Committee
on Assassinations, the HSCA.

The committee
will come to order.

The HSCA
re-interviewed witnesses

and took new testimonies

that exposed
massive inconsistencies

with the original
Warren Report.

Has any other scientist to date

linked the so-called pristine
bullet to the injuries?

Not that I'm aware of. No.

The Pentagon has destroyed
its Kennedy assassination file,

and we don't know
why that was done.

But at
the end of that investigation,

what the HSCA
learned was considered

too damaging to be made public.

And close to
a half-million records

were to remain
sealed until 2029,

a fact that we made clear

at the conclusion
to our 1991 film, JFK.

The media controversy
that accompanied

the film forced Congress
to do something about

the secrecy that still surrounded
these classified files.

Hearings were held
on Capitol Hill.

Most Americans did not

believe or support the verdict

of the Warren Commission
initially.

And now more than three in four,

according to all recent samplings
of public opinion,

think some conspiracy
was involved.

And in 1992,
the John F. Kennedy

Records Collection Act
was passed.

Clerk will report the title.

Senate 3006, an act to provide

for the expeditious
disclosure of records

relevant to the assassination
of President John F. Kennedy.

This act provided funding

and formed the Assassination
Records Review Board,

the ARRB.

The public wasn't going
to have to wait until 2029.

Declassification
was to begin now.

The board was given a budget

and timeline
of four years to declassify

and make public
as many documents

and records as possible.

They managed to collect
over two million pages

of declassified records
and artifacts.

They are all housed at the
National Archives in Maryland,

and since then,
the public has been free

to view, study,
and investigate.

There is now so much more
that we know,

and with those facts in hand,

we will go back
and piece together

what really happened that day,

and discover the reasons why.

Let's begin.

Something has happened
in the motorcade.

Standby, please.

The JFK case

was such a mass of confusion.

For example,
the Warren Commission

was limited
to only three shots,

because three shells
were found on the sixth floor

of the School Book Depository.

On that floor,

we found the three empty shells
that had been fired,

but they had
characteristics on them

so that our ballistics expert

was able to prove that
they were fired by this gun.

Any of them fired at me?

No, there was never any...

All three at the President?

All three at the President,
and we have them.

The FBI concluded that

all three bullets
struck inside the car.

He was hit
by the first and the third.

The second shot
hit the governor.

The third shot
tore a large part

of the President's head off.

The Warren Commission
put itself in a straitjacket.

They could not possibly allow
more than three shots,

because four shots or more

would have clearly
indicated conspiracy.

And they were not going there.

...scratched my face.

Records show the first shot

had missed
its target completely,

and the final shot
hit Kennedy in the head.

So, how does one account for
one bullet hitting two victims,

and doing all this damage?

Arlen Specter was
a Yale Law School graduate

working in the
Philadelphia district attorney's office,

when he was asked to serve
on the Warren Commission.

Aha! What if one bullet
made all seven wounds?

Arlen Specter, he is the one

that gave birth to
the single-bullet theory.

What if one bullet went into
Kennedy's back

and came out his neck,

and then went into Connally's back,
piercing the lung,

destroying four inches
of the right fifth rib,

exiting from
the front of his chest,

going into
the back of the wrist,

shattering the distal end
of the radius.

In a 6-foot-4 guy like Connally,

that's a big heavy bone
comminuted fracture.

Exits from
the front of the wrist,

goes into his left thigh.

Whatever you want,
whatever you need,

this bullet happily
and readily obliges you.

It is indeed a magic bullet.

CE-399 was the magic bullet,

and all government
investigations so far

have treated that bullet

as absolutely foundational
to this case.

How important
is chain of custody

in a legal proceeding?

Chain of custody
basically refers to

the integrity of evidence.

If I pick up
a piece of evidence

and I transfer it
to somebody else

for holding or processing,

my name is the first name
on this list.

The second person
who touches this

and takes possession
of it is next.

And if you don't do that,
there's no way to prove

that the evidence
you collected on day one

is the same one you get on
day 25 when you go to court.

Can you walk us through

the magic bullet's
chain of custody

from the Parkland employees to
the Secret Service to the FBI?

Well, the magic bullet was
supposedly found on a stretcher

at Parkland Hospital,

and went through several hands

before it got
to the Secret Service.

Richard Johnsen was the
first Secret Service agent

to handle it, and he carried it
back to Washington, D.C.

When he got back
to Washington, D.C.,

he gave it to
the chief of the Secret Service,

who was James Rowley.

And at the White House,
James Rowley

gave it to Elmer Lee Todd,

and Todd then took it
to the FBI lab

and gave it to Robert Frazier.

We have interesting information
produced by John Hunt,

a private citizen
who went to the archives

on four or five occasions

to track down the story
about the magic bullet,

and what he found
was truly astounding.

He practically moved into

the National Archives
in Washington, D.C.

They allowed him
to set up a desk

with a computer
and his own scanner.

And he also...
did something different.

He didn't interview policemen
and FBI people,

and he wasn't
swayed by their excuses.

He went straight to,

"This is what you told
and you signed your name."

Working with the FBI

and Warren Commission
documents,

John Hunt asked
the most basic question.

"Was CE-399 in evidence

"the same bullet
that was found on the stretcher?"

At 7:30 at night,

this is the day
of the assassination,

November 22nd, 1963,

a bullet appears in the record,

and it's signed for
by Robert Frazier,

who is the main investigator
at the FBI lab.

And it's not just one document.

There are multiple documents
that indicate

that Frazier signed for
a bullet at 7:30 that night.

Now, here's where
things get interesting.

Elmer Lee Todd received
the bullet at the White House

from chief of the Secret Service,
James Rowley.

And Todd documents,
very clearly in writing,

that he got this bullet
at 8:50 p.m.

How is that possible?

How can Robert Frazier
receive the bullet

in the lab at 7:30
from Elmer Lee Todd,

when Todd didn't get
the bullet until 8:50?

You would think that they would
have handled it, you know,

like it would have been gold
going to the bank.

There it is in the record,

someone is lying about
when they got the bullet.

It gets worse, though.

Todd initialed that bullet,

the one that he got at 8:50,

and everyone else
who touched the bullet

after that initialed it too,

including Robert Frazier.

I went to the archives
to look at this bullet.

And specifically,
what we want to know is,

do we see Todd's initials
on this bullet?

He said he initialed the bullet.

It is not there.

Todd's initials are not
on the magic bullet.

I was very interested in finding out
what the Review Board

would show us about this.

So, we began scouring
their evidence,

and we found out
something very interesting.

We found out
that the Warren Report

had from an FBI report

saying that the guys
that found the bullet

later identified that
as the bullet they'd seen.

The internal record
didn't show that at all.

The internal records
said this bullet

didn't look like
that bullet at all.

But the FBI had reported to the
Warren Commission that it did.

They'd lied.

We then talk to the FBI agent

that was supposed to have
carried that bullet around.

His name was Bardwell Odum.

I got Bardwell Odum
on the phone.

I sent him the documents that
said that he had done this.

He said,
"I never had that bullet.

"I never showed any bullet
to anyone.

"If I'd had the bullet,
there'd be a 302.

"I would have filed a report,
particularly in that area.

"Everybody was very uptight
about getting everything right."

So, we scoured for 302 reports.

His name appears nowhere
in the record.

This is just something
that the FBI invented.

It's conceivable
that some mysterious bullet

showed up from who knows where.

Todd did not initial it,

and it ended up in
the FBI lab as the magic bullet.

One can only surmise
that, somewhere in the FBI,

they realized they had to
close the loop on Oswald's guilt.

And so they just
switched it out.

Because none
of the four people,

either the guys at Parkland,

or the two
Secret Service agents,

could identify the bullet.

The guy who is supposed to have
gotten confirmation that

they did identify the bullet
said he never did it.

And the record supports that.

So, there's--
there's good reason to be

very suspicious
about the magic bullet.

The chain of custody doesn't
start from the laboratory.

It starts from the crime scene.

Each piece of evidence
should be photographed,

documented,
and preserved properly.

From the scene,

evidence is collected,
sent to the laboratory.

We have to keep
the chain of custody

when they enter the lab.

Who examined?

Who did the further analysis?

And each step have to maintain

until you submit to the court.

If this chain broke,

then my evidence
becomes inadmissible.

The other problem

is the lack of damage
to the bullet

after going through two men,
smashing two bones,

and making seven wounds.

Dr. Joseph Dolce

was a much-honored battlefield surgeon
during World War II.

He worked
for the Warren Commission.

And so they gave us the original rifle,
the Mannlicher-Carcano,

plus 100 bullets,
6.5 millimeters.

And we went
and we shot the cadaver wrists,

and in every instance,

the front or the tip
of the bullet was smashed.

Under no circumstances,

do I feel that this bullet
could hit the wrist,

and still not be deformed.

Dolce came to believe

that two bullets
had struck Connally.

Since Arlen Specter
pre-screened

the medical witnesses
for the commission,

Dolce's name is not in
the Warren Report,

and his testimony
is not in the volumes.

And even Connally
refused to accept

the single-bullet theory.

Former Senator
John Sherman Cooper

is the first member
of the Warren Commission

to agree to talk on television

about what went on
inside the deliberations.

Yes, there were disagreements.

I think the most serious one

that comes to me
the most vividly,

of course, is the question of
whether or not the first shot

went through President Kennedy

and then through
Governor Connally.

Although it never specified

the order of the shots,

the Warren Report
had one bullet

going through Kennedy
and Governor Connally,

another missing the car,

hitting a bystander on
Commerce Street, James Tague,

and the final shot
hitting Kennedy in the head.

I could not convince myself

that the same bullet
struck both of them, although...

You mean
that you yourself didn't--

Weren't convinced about the
single-bullet theory, which...

No, I wasn't convinced by it.
Neither was Senator Russell.

Senator
Richard Russell of Georgia

did not want
to serve on the commission.

After he attended
the first meeting,

he quickly became disenchanted
with the proceedings.

Particularly the roles
of J. Edgar Hoover

and acting attorney general
Nicholas Katzenbach.

His personal papers at the
University of Georgia Library

contain a memo

written after the initial
December 5th, 1963,

executive session.

"Something strange
is happening.

"Warren and Katzenbach know
all about the FBI

"and are apparently
planning to show Oswald

"as the only one considered.

"This to me is
an untenable position."

His papers revealed that he
wrote a dissenting opinion

for the presentation
at the final

commission meeting
of September 18th.

On that day,
he shared his concerns

with President Johnson.

He also thought
that Oswald did not act alone.

Russell was strongly influenced
by the Zapruder film

and by the testimony
of Governor Connally.

I understand there's some...

some question
in the minds of the experts

about whether or not

we could both have been hit
by the same bullet,

and that was the first bullet.

I just don't happen
to believe that.

I don't believe
that I will believe it.

This forced
the other commissioners

to include Connally's dissent
in the report.

And as a result,
they could not absolutely deny

the possibility
of a conspiracy.

Russell became
the first commissioner

to criticize
the Warren Report in public.

He was followed
by commission members

John Sherman Cooper
and Hale Boggs.

But then Walter Cronkite
interviewed John McCloy

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

Are you satisfied
that as much effort

was put into challenging that case
as into establishing it?

I'll answer that
in just a moment.

If I may just say one thing,
I would--

I'd like to say
in the first place,

I had some questions

as to the propriety
of my appearing here

as a former member
of the commission

to comment on
the evidence of the commission.

McCloy never
answered Cronkite's question.

But even worse,
CBS employee Roger Feinman

later discovered
internal documents

showing McCoy
consulted extensively

on the series
through his daughter, Ellen,

an administrative assistant to
CBS President Richard Salant.

In 1992,
reporter Jerry Policoff

confronted Salant
and Ellen McCoy

with the documents revealing
John McCloy's instructions

for the content of the show.

Only then did Salant
admit to their concealment.

CBS, NBC,
and The New York Times

continued to support
the commission's finding

and never publicly reviewed

the 26 volumes
of supplemental evidence.

Mr. Dulles, let me put some
of the criticisms to you.

Surely.

Some of the papers
and some of the documents

that are in the archives are--
are there

but are withheld from public view
by the FBI, the CIA,

an organization with which
you have some experience.

Is there anything in those
which years from now,

when they may be released,
will upset applecarts?

Oh, no, I don't think so.

No, I think everything
that really is-- is vital

insofar as forming
a judgment as to what

really happened
has been made available.

The Warren Commission
was aware of something else

that was wrong
with their evidence.

All kinds of ballistic tests
show that the bullets, in fact,

came from that rifle.
That was his rifle.

You took
a picture of him with it.

- No, no.
- His home prints and fingerprints

are all over
the School Book Depository.

You have been misinformed.

The ballistics tests
did not prove anything at all.

This is
the weapon that was used.

A rather well-worn
military rifle.

We know that Oswald
had possession of that rifle

because we have him
photographed with it.

And we have his wife
saying that it was, quote,

"Faithful rifle of Lee Oswald."

Is the rifle in evidence today

the same rifle
the commission said

Oswald ordered
through the mail?

The rifle that Lee Oswald

allegedly ordered
under an alias of Alex Hidell,

was obtained through
Klein's Sporting Goods store in Chicago.

It was a mail-order, got it out of
American Rifleman magazine.

He wrote on the coupon
he wanted

a 36-inch model,
Mannlicher-Carcano,

6.5 millimeter, for $19.95.

Robert Frazier
was one of the examiners

and he was
a firearms expert for the FBI.

And he testified
that he did measure it,

and the measurement

was 40.2 inches in length,

from barrel to stock.

There's a 4.2-inch difference
in the one he ordered,

versus what they found
in the Book Depository.

Klein's may have indeed delivered

a different Mannlicher-Carcano
model to Oswald,

but there are other
anomalies to the story.

The model that Oswald ordered

showed these
strap attachment points

on the bottom
of the barrel and stock.

In the photograph
is Lieutenant Carl Day,

with the
Dallas Police Department

bringing a rifle out
of the Book Depository.

One of the straps at the back of the gun
is on the left side

of the stock
embedded in the stock.

That's clearly not the rifle
that was ordered,

or at least appears in the
Klein's Sporting Goods store.

The straps shown in the
so-called backyard photos

are on the bottom,
and not on the side of the stock.

Marina Oswald took
backyard photographs of Lee Oswald

holding a rifle
and a pistol on his hip.

And in that first photograph,
that she took three of,

Commission Exhibit
133A and 133B

show a ring on the ring finger
of the right hand.

133C, the ring appears
on the left hand.

In fact, the Dallas Police
showed Lee Oswald

one of the pictures
while he was still in custody.

He said, "That's my face,
but I don't remember

"ever having that picture taken of me."

But after all these questions
are asked,

the underlying mystery remains.

Why would anyone use a rifle
in an assassination,

knowing there was a paper trail

that would lead
right back to them?

Was there a palm print
found on the rifle?

The foremost fingerprint expert
the FBI had, Sebastian Latona,

took that rifle and attempted
to lift prints off of the rifle,

the stock and/or the barrel.

He testified
to the Warren Commission

that he found no usable prints

anywhere on that rifle,
on the metal or the stock.

But yet,
Lieutenant Day in Dallas,

before the rifle went
to Washington, said he found

a partial palm print on the
trigger guard on the left side

and a partial print underneath
the stock on the barrel.

But Sebastian Latona
said there was no evidence

that a lift had
even been attempted.

No partials at all?

Nothing that he could
use in court.

There has to be
eight points of identification.

He found nothing
that would match that.

J. Edgar Hoover, on 2192.

Yes?

I've seen the reports
on this investigation.

This man, Oswald,
he had fired three shots.

He then threw the gun aside,

and... he apparently had come
down the five flights of steps.

A stairway
from the fifth floor.

You can prove that?

Oh, yes.
Oh, yes, we can prove that.

Did anybody hear,
anybody see him?

Most of the employees
were down on a lower floor, but

he was stopped at the second floor
by a police officer.

And some workers,
some manager in the building

told the police officer, "Well,
he's all right, he works here.

"You needn't hold him."

So they let him go.
That's how he got out.

At the time
that I heard those shots,

I ran into that building and
made it up to the second floor.

It was approximately
a minute and a half to two minutes.

In possibly
less than two minutes,

investigators came
to the School Book Building

with stopwatches
and critical eyes.

Not only police and government agents
traced that route,

Chief Justice Warren
and some other commission members

did it for themselves.

I was interested in finding

a specific witness
to the assassination,

which was Victoria Adams.

She worked on the fourth floor

of the Texas School Book Depository,

and she knew Oswald.

I went to the National Archives

searching for
her original testimony.

I was told that the tape

containing her testimony
was missing.

And later I learned that
that tape

had been destroyed
by the Warren Commission.

And so I finally
ended up finding her

and getting
her side of the story.

Vicki Adams was 22
at the time of the assassination,

and she testified
that immediately

after the assassination,

she ran down the back stairs

to get outside
to see what was going on.

If that were true,

she would have seen Oswald
on the back stairs.

But she testified that she
saw and heard no one.

She had realized
that something was wrong,

because no one
was believing her.

So she asked David Belin,
who was questioning her,

"Interview Sandra Styles,

"a coworker who went
down the stairs with me."

This became
a rather serious problem

for the Warren Commission,

because discrediting one woman
was easy to do.

But discrediting
a corroborating witness,

that may have been
a little bit tougher.

So Belin said,
"We don't need Sandra Styles,

"we have you."

We've had Mr. Belin here

with us too,
one of our counselors

who's been here
several times, and...

He knows this city now
as very few people do.

According to Vicki's
original FBI testimony,

she left the window
on the fourth floor

within 15 to 30 seconds
of the assassination.

The Warren Commission elevated
that time to one minute.

She said she arrived
on the first floor

within 60 seconds
of the assassination.

The Warren Commission elevated
that time to several minutes.

So what
the Warren Commission did

was successfully
deceive the public

into thinking that Vicki was
just another confused witness.

Case closed.

Reenactments prove,

the report says,
that Oswald did have time,

just enough time to
fire the shots, secret the rifle,

and get down to the
second floor cafeteria.

But in 1999, I found a document
in the National Archives

that had been suppressed
for 35 years.

It was a letter written

by Assistant US Attorney
Martha Jo Stroud.

It was a transmittal letter
forwarding

Vicki's signed testimony
to J. Lee Rankin,

the head honcho
of the Warren Commission's

investigation at that point.

In the last paragraph
of that letter,

almost as an afterthought,

we're introduced to a woman
by the name of Dorothy Garner.

Garner was Vicki's
immediate supervisor

who had stood
at the window with Vicki.

The letter quotes Garner
as saying that she saw

Vicki go down the stairs

before she saw
Officer Baker and Roy Truly come up.

When I found and interviewed
Dorothy Garner,

she confirmed everything.

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

that Vicki had left
the window immediately,

that she actually followed
Vicki outside the office

and to a point where she could
see her going down the stairs.

And during that whole time,
she never saw Oswald.

So the Stroud letter became
a very dangerous document

for the Warren Commission.

Without the Review Board's
declassification process,

we would never have learned
of the corroborating testimony

of three witnesses
that provide powerful evidence

that Oswald was not
on the sixth floor

at the time of the shooting.

Legally speaking, the autopsy
should have been done in Dallas,

and there was a forensic pathologist,
Earl Rose.

He was there
to assume jurisdiction

and to do the autopsy.

He was pushed up
against the wall

and threatened,
hands on guns,

a lot of expletives and so on.

He followed them
out of the driveway,

and they took the body
illegally out of Dallas

in violation of the laws
in the state of Texas.

After Air Force One

left Dallas for Washington,

two of the key doctors who had
tried to save Kennedy's life

at Parkland Hospital,
held a press conference.

They were Dr. Malcolm Perry
and Dr. Kemp Clark.

When were the
two major points of evidence

revealed by Kemp Clark
and Malcolm Perry

at the press conference?

Dr. Perry performed
the tracheotomy

to help Kennedy breathe,

and at a press conference
right after

the failed resuscitation efforts
in Dallas,

he was asked,
"Well, where was the bullet?"

He said, "The bullet looked like
it was coming at him.

"He had an entrance wound
in the throat."

Kemp Clarke

was the head of neurosurgery
at Parkland.

He said that the President
had a gaping wound

in the occipital-parietal area.

That's, you know,
the right rear of the head.

And so the description
he gave of that

was entirely consistent with
an exit wound.

We have a transcript today

of what they said
at the press conference.

So it's White House transcript
1327C.

That's a very important
historical document,

because the Secret Service
confiscated the videotapes

from the local TV stations.

There is, however,
a surviving clip of Dr. Perry

recorded not long after the
press conference.

What Clark and Perry
both revealed that day

would indicate
an assassin from the front.

And Assistant White House Press Secretary

Malcolm Kilduff's statement

seems to support
this conclusion.

It's a simple matter of a bullet
right through the head.

The day after the shooting,

Dr. Perry was seen
by Nurse Audrey Bell,

who had been with him
in the operating room.

Saturday morning,
when I got over there,

Dr. Perry
came up to the office.

I said, "You look awful.

"Did you get
any sleep last night?"

He said, "Well, not too much,

"between the calls from Bethesda
that came in during the night."

I said, "What about?"

He said, "Oh, whether
that was an entrance wound

"or an exit wound
in the throat."

He said, "They were wanting me
to change my mind."

In his Warren Commission
testimony,

he basically retracted
what he had said

and they forced him
to back down

and intimidated him
on the witness stand.

It was really quite embarrassing
for me as a physician

to see how someone else
who was telling the truth

was basically forced
to recant his own opinion.

Did it occur to you at the time
or did you think,

"Was this an entry wound
or was this an exit wound?"

Actually, I didn't really
give it much thought

and I realized that perhaps

it would have been better
had I done so.

But I actually
applied my energies,

and those of us there all did,

to the problem at hand.

And I didn't really
concern myself too much

with how it happened or why.

In 1975, Dr. Shires hired me

on the faculty
at the University of Washington

in the cardiac surgery division.

So I got to know Malcolm
when I joined the faculty.

We developed
a professional relationship,

and we would operate together
on complex cases.

I was particularly interested in...
Dr. Perry's position

with the JFK assassination

because he did the tracheotomy
on him after he was shot.

The problem is that Malcolm
categorically refused

to ever discuss
the assassination,

and he wouldn't answer
my questions about that neck wound.

And then one night
after we had operated together

for many hours
on a complex case,

we were sitting in
the surgeons' lounge alone,

drinking coffee,

and I once again asked him
about that neck wound.

And this time, he said
it was an entrance wound,

unquestionably
an entrance wound.

One of the-- the main reasons
Dr. Perry changed his testimony

and publicly agreed
it was an exit wound

is a Secret Service agent
put the pressure on him,

and that person was Elmer Moore.

In 1970,
Elmer Moore was the head

of the Secret Service office
in Seattle

and a graduate student
named Jim Gochenaur

became friends with him,

and he admitted
to Gochenaur that he regretted

putting pressure on Dr. Perry.

So I asked him directly.

I said, "Mr. Moore,
did you pressure Dr. Perry?"

He stopped for a minute.

He says, "Well, I was
ordered to do that."

He expanded on it.

And he said
that Inspector Kelley

had ordered him
to talk with Perry

and convince him
that it could be

either an exit
or an entry wound,

not an entry wound.

And I thought
it was pretty interesting

that he would admit to something
that's pretty close to a felony.

Elmer Moore was also in charge

of getting
the doctors at Parkland

to change their testimony,

and agree
that there was no big hole

in the back of Kennedy's head.

Charles Crenshaw,
a third year resident,

was in the emergency room
at Parkland that day.

He later said in public that
he felt the wounds in Kennedy

originated from the front.

From here, through.

Charles Crenshaw wrote a book,

Conspiracy of Silence,
in the wake of the film JFK,

saying, "Look,
I was at Parkland Hospital.

"I saw Kennedy,
I was involved in the treatment,

"and Kennedy's wounds
were not consistent

"with a shot from above
and behind because

"he had a defect involving
the right rear of his head."

Using the most precise

medical terminology
that you can use.

Okay, let's see,

it was on the right rear

and he shifted the head,
a little bit, to the left,

lifted up the, well, kind of
the matted area, the flap.

And you could see the... hole,

and there was...

brain and spinal fluid
dripping down out of it.

Then I noticed it was dripping,
you know, down into a bucket.

As early as 1981,

copies of the autopsy photos
were leaked

and distributed
among JFK researchers.

The image
of Kennedy's head wound

contradicted what was witnessed
by the Parkland doctors.

I recall the injury being
right along in this area.

It's as if the autopsy materials
were designed

to hide what
was really happening,

as opposed to what
they should usually do.

They're supposed to reveal
the full extent of things.

The evening
of the assassination,

the body of President Kennedy
was returned to Washington.

The autopsy was performed
at Bethesda Medical Center,

a naval institution.

All of the top
forensic pathologists

in the United States

were within one-hour drive
or flying time from D.C.

Not one of them was called upon.

There were two
Navy pathologists,

Commander James Humes

and his associate,
J. Thornton Boswell.

These two military pathologists
who had never done

a single gunshot-wound autopsy
in their entire careers.

This is something that really

has to be emphasized
to every American.

I don't care,
Democrat, Republican, liberal, conservative.

This is your president,

and you've got
multiple gunshot wounds

to determine angles, trajectory,
range, sequence.

And then you've got to correlate

with the multiple
gunshot wounds in Connally.

This is a formidable task
that would have required

two or three major forensic
pathologists to-- to undertake.

So they called
Humes and Boswell.

They realized
they were over their head.

They called in an expert

from the Armed Forces
Institute of Pathology,

a guy named Pierre Finck.

Dr. Humes and Boswell
started the autopsy

before their forensics
consultant even got there,

but they realized
they were in over their head.

So they asked to have
a medical examiner, because Dr. Finck,

who is a forensic pathologist,
wasn't doing autopsies.

He hadn't done one
in more than two years.

So they asked for permission
to bring in somebody

who knew what they were doing.
Permission was denied.

There were a lot of people
at the Bethesda morgue.

The latest count
by all the researchers

that I know of is
about 33 people.

There was a gallery, bleachers.

Apparently, all three rows
were filled with people.

These three autopsy pathologists
were given a body,

told, "Here's the body,

"he was shot from behind,
he fell forward,"

which they wrote
in their autopsy report,

figure out how the wounds fit

the known circumstances
of the shooting.

But what this really speaks to
is the fact that the autopsy

was not in the control
of the surgeons

that were charged
with doing it.

It was in the control of people
who were there,

who were telling them
what they could do and what they couldn't do.

Let's talk about
those two wounds, Captain.

You examined this
whole area of the back.

Yes, sir.

So on the night of the autopsy,

Humes and Boswell said,

"Hey, we got a bullet hole
in the President's back,"

which they
examined with the finger,

then with an instrument,
then took x-rays,

then took out the lungs.

And no bullets.

In a murder case,

that is a very serious
problem for them.

So where did that bullet go?

It was just, like you say,
a work of fiction.

A call came in
from the FBI in Dallas.

A bullet was found.

Darrell Tomlinson,
a maintenance man

at Parkland Hospital,

trying to get to the men's room,
passing by the ER,

found the stretchers
blocking the way,

bent down,
moved the stretcher,

and there was a bullet.

How did that bullet get there?

Humes and Boswell came up

with this totally
absurd conclusion

that when the President lay

on the stretcher,
supine position,

and pressure
was applied to his chest

for cardiopulmonary
resuscitation,

that pressure, applied
anteriorly, forced the bullet,

which had gone
deeply into the tissues,

back out through like a tunnel.

In and out, a car in reverse.

And what's
very important to note is

bullets don't go
in and out like that.

The bullet becomes encased.
But that was their conclusion.

Keep in mind, they did not know
that there was a bullet hole

in the front of
the President's neck.

Commander.
Now, Captain Humes,

how many autopsies
have you performed?

Approximately 1,000.

It wasn't until the next morning
when Humes decided,

"Hey, maybe we outta talk with

"the surgeons
at Parkland Hospital."

Earlier that day,
the doctors at Parkland Hospital

had determined that the bullet

had fortuitously
ripped through the trachea.

So they enlarged
that bullet hole.

And now they learned,
for the first time,

that there was a tracheostomy

superimposed
upon a bullet wound.

"Aha!" said Humes and Boswell.

"Now we know!"

The shot fired from the rear,
entered the back,

moving around
2,000 feet per second,

comes out, then stops,
sees the starched white collar,

gets frightened to death,
plops into the front of his clothing.

And that's where
the bullet came from,

found by Tomlinson
on the stretcher.

Four or five months later,

under Arlen Specter's
single-bullet theory,

that bullet has been rejuvenated,
it's been revitalized.

That bullet has
now gone through

Kennedy, through Connally,

and now, as of April of 1964,
the Stretcher Bullet,

Commission Exhibit #399,

the hero of the
Warren Commission report,

is now from
Connally's left thigh.

How is that possible?

It's unbelievable!

...which is scientific evidence

that the wound was made from behind,
and passed forward.

Dr. Humes destroyed
his original autopsy notes.

Now, Dr. Humes,
the chief autopsy pathologist,

and what we all know
as doctors,

notes taken while
you're doing something

are much more important,

and are likely
to be closer to the truth

than anything you write later.

And he admitted that
he'd destroyed autopsy notes.

You destroyed
your original notes

in a medical legal autopsy?

And remember, that night
Oswald is still alive.

You're going
to be asked, doctor,

at some point in time under oath
to give sworn testimony.

Why did you
destroy those notes, doctor?

Doesn't a pathologist
keep his notes?

And he said, "Well,
I destroyed my own autopsy notes

"because they were splattered
with the President's blood

"and I didn't want them to become
objects of morbid curiosity."

The third doctor, Dr. Finck,

who was there,
also wrote some notes

and complained bitterly
about the fact

that his notes disappeared, too.

He was so upset
because he had to go home

and reconstruct
all of his notes from memory.

The two FBI agents
at the autopsy,

Frank O'Neill and James Sibert,

they reported what they heard
during the autopsy,

what they heard
the pathologists say,

specifically Dr. Humes.

They were interviewed
by Arlen Specter in early 1964.

He proceeded to write
very unfavorable comments

about them in a summary memo
for the record.

We know with confidence

why he didn't like
what they had to say,

because they were
providing evidence

that the single-bullet theory
could not be true.

Neither Sibert nor O'Neill

were asked to testify
for the Warren Commission,

and their written notes
became classified.

In 1997,
their depositions were taken

by the Assassination Records
Review Board.

Both Sibert and O'Neill

were shown the photographs
of the back of JFK's head,

the autopsy photographs that
are the most controversial.

And they both said
that they didn't

see anything like that
at the autopsy.

O'Neill had said,
"It looks like it's been doctored.

"I don't mean the photo
has been doctored.

"It looks like the head
has been put back together,

"you know, by embalmers,
and then photographed."

That was what
he said under oath.

Sibert did not remember

drawing a diagram of the wound
for the House committee.

So he drew a new one
for the Review Board.

And it's one of our
most important wound diagrams.

And it shows what
could only be an exit defect

in the right rear of the skull.

This new evidence,
combined with

the Review Board's
declassification of 40 witnesses

who saw a hole in the back
of Kennedy's head,

constitutes powerful evidence
of a shot from the front.

Who was
the autopsy photographer?

John Stringer.

He was a Navy civilian.
He was widely respected.

He had written a textbook

on medical photography
for the Navy.

So he was
the photographer of record.

He photographed
the autopsy itself

and also photographed
the President's brain.

The autopsy photos
of the President's brain

are housed
at the National Archives.

These photos cannot be
scanned or reproduced,

but are only available
to be viewed on site

by researchers
authorized by the Kennedy family.

Half of the brain photos
are taken

of a brain from above,
superior views,

which is what Stringer said
he shot of the complete organ.

But the other half
of the brain photos in the archives

are taken of the bottom,
called basilar views.

Now, we were very careful
to question Mr. Stringer

about all the photographs
he took,

and ask him what kind of film
he used for black and white,

what kind of film
he used for color.

Jeremy Gunn showed Stringer

the color positive
transparencies of the brain,

and Stringer immediately noted,

"Well, these aren't Kodak.
These might be Ansco."

He said, "I don't see the name
of the manufacturer on here,

"but these don't have
the right notches in the corner."

So Jeremy Gunn said,

"Did you use this film
with these notches in it?"

Stringer said, "No."

"Did you take basilar views
when you shot the brain?"

And he says,
"Not as far as I know."

Doesn't this all lead to the question

if Stringer did not take these photographs,
then who did?

Robert Knudsen
was a Navy photographer

who was detailed
to the White House in 1958.

If you read his obituaries in
The New York Times

and The Washington Post,

you will see
that he is credited

with photographing
Kennedy's autopsy,

except officially he was not.

Robert Knudsen was not interviewed
by the Warren Commission.

So they finally found
Robert Knudsen in 1978.

And to its credit,
the House Select Committee

did a deposition of him.

To their discredit,
they never published it.

They buried it for 50 years
and it got released in 1993.

And I know why they buried it,

because everything he told them
about autopsy photography

contradicted what
they thought they knew

in the official record.

After his death in 1989,

his wife was interviewed by

the Assassination Records
Review Board.

He told her that one photograph
in particular,

presumably
the back of the head,

had been severely altered.

Where was the wound covered?

In one sense,
probably worth saying

that what you're saying
is very different

from what
the United States government

has said for a long time.

And why didn't he say
something to somebody?

John Stringer is still

the autopsy photographer
of record,

I think they both took pictures
and I personally think

that many of
John Stringer's pictures

never made it
into the official collection.

And a lot of the ones
we're looking at

are Robert Knudsen's pictures.

Saundra Spencer worked
at the Anacostia Facility,

a Naval Photographic Center,

which was quite separate
from the Bethesda lab.

That weekend,
she received film.

The photographs
that Saundra Spencer developed,

which never made it
into the official record.

The only evidence we have of them
is her testimony.

Saundra Spencer
was visibly upset

when she looked at the
official autopsy photographs

because she said,
"I developed pictures of him and his family

"for almost three years,
and he never looked like this."

She said, "He looks terrible
in these photographs."

- She started to cry.
- In front of the Review Board?

Yes, she started to cry
in front of Jeremy and I

and the person
from the archives,

and she said,
"He did not look this bad

"in the photographs
I developed on Sunday."

He was very cleaned up.
It was very respectful.

And in one of the photographs
she developed,

there was a brain,
an intact brain,

sitting next to the body,

the nude body of the President.

Strange, first of all,
that it's intact

because FBI agent Frank O'Neill
told the Review Board

that over half of the mass
of the brain was missing.

So the brain autopsy,
or autopsies,

there were probably
two such events,

occurred later
and were not done on November 22nd.

Anybody
that's seen the Zapruder film

can see Kennedy's head
explodes

and debris flies
all over the place.

Jackie Kennedy climbed out

onto the trunk
of the limousine,

picked up a chunk of the President's brain,
had it with her,

took it in and gave it to

one of the doctors
at Parkland Hospital.

When you look at the
autopsy photographs of the brain,

which I've seen
the originals of,

you can just see
that the brain is disrupted,

but very little
of the tissue is missing.

Then we look at the
autopsy report of the brain,

what they call
the supplemental brain examination.

The brain in evidence
that's weighed there

weighs 1,500 grams.

1500 grams is--
is above average weight

of an adult male brain.

There was one report
of 8,000 autopsies

and the average weight of
an adult male brain

was 1,336 grams.

So they're saying
that President Kennedy's brain

was well above
the average weight.

Where did all that brain tissue
disappear to?

That flies around Dealey Plaza,
that Jackie has in her hand,

that everybody is picking off
of their clothes?

There are two photographs
of the brain at the archives.

I viewed those in 2015.

The brain looked to me
to be distorted.

My first thought was
that the brain had been sitting

in a jar of formaldehyde
for a long time.

The Review Board
had a consultant.

A renowned forensic pathologist.

He looked at the brain photographs
and he said,

"This is a very well-fixed brain.

"It's all gray.
It's not pink at all.

"It's been fixed for
two or three weeks in formaldehyde.

"It's been fixed
at least two weeks,

"maybe as long as three weeks."

I looked at Jeremy Gunn
and he looked at me

and the hair stood up
on the back of my neck,

because I knew that JFK's brain
was examined...

less than three days
after he was killed.

One can only imagine
that they wanted

the-- the damage to the brain

to be consistent
with the hypothesis

that Oswald
had done the shooting.

So if you had a defect
going all the way to the back of the head,

like so many witnesses
testified to it,

it might raise questions
about whether that huge defect

could've cau-- been caused
by a single shot to the head

as Oswald is supposed
to have done.

At a teaching hospital,

there was
no shortage of brains.

Autopsies were very frequent.

Frequently, the brain was saved

for teaching medical students,

so it would not
have been difficult

to find a brain
for replacement.

This is just one more reason

why this cannot be
President Kennedy's brain

in the photographs that
we have stored at the archives.

What we have here... is evidence
that impugns the authenticity

of the brain photographs
in the National Archives.

If there was a trial today,

these brain photographs would
not be admissible as evidence.

I'd hate to be
in your shoes today.

You have a lot to think about.

You've seen
much hidden evidence

the American public
has never seen.

You know, going back
to when we were children,

I think that most of us
in this courtroom thought

that justice came
into being automatically.

That virtue was its own reward,

that-- that good
would triumph over evil.

But as we get older,
we know this just isn't true.

Individual human beings
have to create justice

and this is not easy,

because the truth
often poses a threat to power,

and one often has to fight power
at great risk to themselves.

The one physician present

at both Parkland Hospital
and the Bethesda morgue

was George Burkley,

Kennedy's personal doctor.

Arlen Specter did not depose
George Burkley,

but Burkley did an interview
with the JFK Library in 1967,

and was asked this question.

I see.

The reason
he didn't say anything was,

he was intimately involved
in the coverup.

Burkley signed
the autopsy descriptive sheet

with a bullet in the back
at the level of T3.

And he also signed
Kennedy's death certificate,

which also placed
that wound in the back.

That death certificate
is not in

the Warren Commission volumes,

and the descriptive sheet
in the Commission volumes

does not have
Burkley's signature.

In 1977, through his lawyer,

he wrote a letter
to Richard Sprague,

Chief Counsel of the House

Select Committee on Assassinations.

He said he had
information indicating

that others besides Oswald

must've participated
in the assassination.

He was willing
to talk about it at this time.

Sprague,
who made clear his intention

to fully investigate
the CIA's involvement,

was forced out two weeks later.

Dr. Burkley
submitted a written statement

to the House Select Committee,

but there is no official record

of him being
deposed as a witness.

In 1982, he told
JFK researcher Henry Hurt,

"I know there was
more than one gunman,

"and when Henry Hurt

"tried to recontact Burkley
for more details,

"Burkley
cut him off at the knees.

"I don't want to talk
about it anymore."

The very next year,
Burkley talked

to Michael Kurtz,
another JFK researcher,

told him that he knew there was

a conspiracy
to kill the President

and that he recalled
an exit wound

in the back of
President Kennedy's head.

Now, that's
a very significant statement.

That the only doctor we know of

who was present at
both Parkland for treatment,

and at Bethesda
during the autopsy,

told Michael Kurtz in 1983

that Kennedy had an exit wound
in the back of his head.

When Kurtz tried to
recontact Burkley,

Burkley cut him off
at the knees.

"I don't want to talk
about this anymore."

Dr. Burkley was deceased
by the time

the Review Board was impaneled.

So then Jeremy decided, well,

we can ask
the executor of his estate,

his daughter, to sign a waiver

so that we could
go to the law firm

that Mr. Illig
used to work for,

because he was deceased also,

and see if there were

any records
in the file of Mr. Illig

that would have
revealed what it was

he wanted to tell
the HSCA in detail,

and she said she would do that.

And then Jeremy
called her on the phone,

she had completely
changed her mind

and adamantly
refused to sign it

and terminated the phone call.

The face sheet for the autopsy,

where it shows the
front and back silhouette of the body,

where you mark scars
and bullet wounds and things,

the face sheet
showed the bullet wound

in the back at the level
of thoracic vertebra T3,

which is five and a half
to six inches below.

That location coincided with

what Sibert and O'Neill
wrote in their report.

And in order to make the facts
fit the single-bullet theory,

one bullet
doing all this damage,

the doctors needed an exit point
for the back wound.

The Warren Commission raised
the wound in the back

so that it would align
with the alleged exit wound

in the front of Kennedy's neck.

Commissioner Gerald Ford

did this simply
via the stroke of a pen,

changing the description
in their report

from back, to back of the neck.

As I recall,
they said about Gerald Ford

that he could not
chew gum and walk at the same time.

Now, all of a sudden,
he becomes a forensic pathologist,

and a photographer,
and a criminalist, and an expert,

and he knows where the bullet hole was
and he moved it up.

But then in 1979,

the House Select Committee
moved it lower in the back

because they had pictures
from the autopsy.

It is conceivable that,
at the time,

the Warren Commission thought

no one would ever
see the autopsy photos.

When the Review Board
declassified

the notation showing
what Ford had done,

the former commissioner replied
that it had nothing to do

with a conspiracy theory.

He was only trying
to be more precise.

This is directly contradicted
by a conversation Ford had

with French President
Valéry Giscard d'Estaing.

Ford told him
the assassination

was not the work
of one person.

It was something set up.

"We were sure it was set up,

"but we were not able
to discover by whom."

With all the documents

declassified
by the Review Board,

we can see
this scene in a new light.

In regards
to the JFK assassination,

conspiracy theories
are now conspiracy facts.

The forensics show evidence

of multiple shooters
with Oswald,

not even at
the sixth floor window

at the time
of the assassination.

And his fingerprints not found
on the supposed murder weapon.

Still, there was no trial
for Lee Harvey Oswald.

These people
have given me a hearing

without legal representation
or anything.

Did you shoot the President?

I didn't shoot anybody, no, sir.

Attorney Mark Lane tried to
represent Oswald in the proceedings,

but was denied
by the Warren Commission.

Did the accused man
get a fair trial?

I can tell you
from my experiences

having tried several hundred cases
to verdict,

and being responsible
for thousands of cases

as head of the criminal courts

and running
the homicide bureau,

that I don't believe there's
any courtroom in America

where Oswald
would've been convicted

on the evidence
that was presented

before the Warren Commission.

Instead of a
jury of 12 American citizens,

judgment was passed
by a panel of seven

appointed wise men
and career statesmen.

A judgment perpetuated
by the media at that time.

Looking at the
declassified documents,

we see there's
even more mystery

behind Oswald to uncover.

A man who was,
in his own words, a patsy.

Murdered on live television.

This was the dreary funeral
of Lee Harvey Oswald,

alleged murderer
of President Kennedy.

Burial was in
an otherwise empty plot

in Rose Hill Cemetery
outside Fort Worth.

A plot that we were told
was bought

long ago by Oswald's mother.

No one was on hand
for the funeral as mourners,

except the family
of the dead man.

Oswald spent his early years
in an orphanage.

At the age of 17,
he joined the US Marine Corps.

A year later, he was sent

to one of the most
secret US bases in the world,

Atsugi in Japan.

From here,
the CIA operated spy flights

over communist China

using U-2 reconnaissance planes.

During the
1975 Church Committee investigation

of US intelligence activities,

Committee member
Richard Schweiker

remarked about Oswald,

that everywhere
you looked with him,

there are fingerprints
of intelligence.

Many people said he was a
forthright, upstanding American

as a young person,

and yet they later depicted him
as a Castro-loving,

Cuban-loving,
Russian-loving person.

In the spring of 1963,

Oswald started
handing out pamphlets

for the Fair Play for Cuba Committee,

a pro-Castro, pro-Cuban
Revolution group

that was popular
on college campuses.

And some of them,
he stamped "544 Camp Street",

which was an office
in downtown New Orleans

near where the CIA's offices were,

right across the street,
in fact.

There was also the home of
the Cuban Revolutionary Council,

which was
the leading anti-Castro group.

Why would a pro-Castro activist
put his headquarters

in the same headquarters

as the leading anti-Castro group
in the country?

'Cause he was a provocateur.

This gets back to being
an agent, or a double agent,

because he played both roles.

Here was Oswald
who had two associations.

One, he has a group of
anti-Castro Cubans.

At the same time,
he was handing out leaflets

for the
Fair Play for Cuba committee,

with the other side
of the fence.

So the two groups that had
the most motivation

to assassinate the President,
he was dealing with.

And not surprisingly,

many of these groups were known
and, in some cases,

supported,
by the US government.

In the spring of 1963,

Oswald 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 with these

Cuban exile training activities
with Ferrie.

I do know
that I saw him one time

with a man
by the name of Guy Banister.

And... what Guy's role was

in all of this,
I-- I really don't know.

Banister was
an extreme right-winger

who was close to the FBI,

the CIA,
and the American Nazi Party.

Banister gave Oswald his own office
at 544 Camp Street.

Oswald now began
to use his office

to print up and stamp
pro-Castro literature.

After the assassination,
when the FBI questioned Banister,

a former FBI agent himself,

they did not ask him
about Oswald.

At some point, the FBI, I think
probably after the assassination,

decided they didn't--
they wanted to disconnect

Oswald from the FBI,

and-- and of course, Banister,
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.

The Warren Commission
pushed the idea

that Oswald
was a staunch communist,

citing evidence
of his defection

to the Soviet Union in 1959.

His trip to Russia raised
a number of questions

that we wanted to get into.

For example,
when any American went to Russia

and renounced
his American citizenship,

and subsequently
changed his mind

and wanted to come back
to this country.

Upon returning to this country,

there was a thorough debriefing

by the CIA,

with one exception,
as far as we can ascertain, Oswald.

Now, that smacks
of an intelligence relationship.

Did you kill the President?

No, they're taking me in

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

State Department
Intelligence Officer Otto Otepka

had noted the marked increase
in the number of Americans

defecting to Russia
at the 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.

The 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 tried to
blame him in saying

he's burning
confidential documents.

The guy has gone,
you know, wacko.

As a result,

he was formally removed
from the State Department

on November 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.

In fact, 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.

The CIA Deputy Director of Plans,
Richard Helms,

swore to the Warren Commission

that the agency never had

or contemplated
any contact with Oswald.

The line that the CIA fed
the Warren Commission,

that they 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, "Oh,
we know nothing about this man."

In fact, ARRB records show

that Angleton and the CIA were
receiving reports on Oswald

up until one week
before the assassination.

So, you know,
the whole investigation

would have been
totally different

if-- if the public and the investigators
had known

just how much the CIA knew
about the alleged lone nut.

One of the places
Oswald leafleted in front of

was Clay Shaw's
International Trade Mart.

Shaw, who was arrested by
New Orleans DA Jim Garrison

on charges that he
was part of the conspiracy

to kill President Kennedy,

always denied he was
associated with the CIA.

You have never yourself had
any CIA connection?

None whatsoever.

Any association
with the organization?

Not a one.

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
code named 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 the 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 confirmed

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.

In the FBI,

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.

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.

And, of course, that exposes

the President
to a dangerous situation

that he shouldn't have been in.

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

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

Who was the CIA's liaison
they chose to work

with the House Select Committee
in 1978?

George Joannides.

He was the case officer

for the Cuban students

who had a series of encounters
with Oswald

before the assassination.

And then, 13 years later,

when Congress
reopens the investigation,

the CIA calls Joannides
out of retirement,

and make him the point person

to deal with
the Congressional investigators

who are looking into the CIA's

possible role
in the assassination.

The HSCA
knew nothing about this,

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,
Joannides was running those Cubans

"who were in touch with Oswald.
He was running the Cubans

"who were blaming Castro
for the assassination.

"He was Dick Helms'
hand-picked man in Miami,

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

"before and after
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.

I remember that he said,
you know,

"I'll never believe anything
the CIA tells me again."

Even the Assassination Records
Review Board

had trouble getting documents
from government agencies.

What were some of your difficulties
working with the CIA?

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

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

and said,
"We are prepared to release it."

And I asked him, you know,

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

And it was silence
for about two minutes.

And he finally said,
"I know there is a reason,

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

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.

The destruction of records
is actually referenced

in the Assassination Records
Review Board final... report.

Very... 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.

There were many threats made
to President Kennedy's life

during the year 1963.

They're called threat sheets.

And the Secret Service
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,

had turned
everything over to us,

the Secret Service refused
to sign the document under oath.

I think that was telling.

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 was in Tampa
on November 18th.

Kennedy ended up
not going to Chicago.

Tell us about that plot.

An informant, on October 31st,

an informant named Lee
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 going 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 10:00 in the morning.

What you found in Vallee
and the whole Chicago plot

is so many similarities to what
eventually happened in Dallas

that 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.

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... Vallee,

he's moved like a pawn,
in August,

from Long Island to Chicago

to be 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 kill zone.

It would have
forced Kennedy's motorcade

to do a sharp turn, slow down,

and be in a point

where you could've 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.

Secret Service was very nervous
about the Floridian Hotel

where the motorcade
would've gone by.

It would have
forced a sharp turn.

Nobody fired away at him.
But in this case,

the patsy would've been
a Gilbert Policarpo Lopez.

He was a Cuban exile.

He attended
Fair Play for Cuba Committee meetings.

And what do you think
was the relevance of it?

Well, if he had been
assassinated in Tampa,

Lopez, he would've 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?

Abraham Bolden

was the first Black
Secret Service agent

assigned to
the White House detail,

and he was
hand-picked by Kennedy.

He was in Chicago,
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.

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 says, "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,

"We finally got him."

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.

The National Archives is home
to forensic evidence

of Kennedy's assassination,

and government files
regarding Lee Harvey Oswald.

But the Review Board
also declassified

many documents
regarding Kennedy's plans

for withdrawal from Vietnam,

and how he planned
to shape his progressive,

new American foreign policy.

A policy that,
if put in motion,

would completely derail plans
secretly already set up

by the Pentagon and the CIA.

I never realized Kennedy was
so dangerous to the establishment.

Is that why?

That's the real question,
isn't it?

"Why?"

The "how" and the "who"
is just scenery for the public.

Oswald, Ruby, Cuba, the Mafia,

keeps 'em guessing
like some kind of parlor game.

Prevents 'em from asking
the most important question: "Why?"

Why was Kennedy killed?
Who benefited?

Who has the power
to cover it up?

Who?

His first year in office,

Kennedy must shape
his own policy as President,

sometimes in conflict with what
his predecessors have done,

especially in foreign policy.

And 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 détente with Russia.

Even going so far as to offer them
a joint mission to the moon.

But back in April of 1961,

the first stain on his administration
asserted itself.

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

signed off on
the Bay of Pigs invasion plan.

His approval of the plan

contained two distinct limitations.

America would supply
arms and equipment,

but there would be no Americans
in the landing force.

Second,
after preliminary air strikes

by Cuban exile pilots,

there would
only be further strikes

after the invasion
secured an airfield.

Dulles believed
that Kennedy would,

like Eisenhower,
support the operation

with direct US military intervention
if needed,

all the while assuring him
it would not be necessary.

Well, first, I want to say that

there will not be,
under any conditions,

be an intervention in Cuba
by United States armed forces.

The invasion was a disaster.

Victory has 100 fathers,
and defeat is an orphan.

Further statements...

detailed... discussions,

are not to...
conceal responsibility,

because I'm the
responsible officer of the Government.

In public,
Kennedy accepted the blame.

In private,
he and his brother suspected

they had been
lied to by the CIA.

Allen Dulles confessed that
the mission was bound to fail

as it was planned by the CIA,

without US military support.

He confessed this while preparing

an article
for Harper's Magazine

with the young editor,
Willie Morris,

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

his Cuban brigade.

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

and he thought Kennedy was
going to be young and pliable,

and that in the 11th hour,
Kennedy would be forced

to send in... the full might
of the US military.

While drafting
the article in 1965,

Dulles told his editor,

"That Kennedy--
He thought he was a God."

Jack Kennedy did stand firm.

He did not send in the military.

He did not make it
an even bigger global crisis

than it already was.

Kennedy is just furious.

He knows he's been lied to,

deceived by his
senior military and intelligence advisers.

He announces that the agency...
is going to be downsized.

And he vows famously,
he tells friends

he's going to shatter the CIA
into a thousand pieces

and scatter it to the winds.

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

when it came to the CIA.

In that same month,
in April of 1961,

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

a military coup
that was aimed at

overthrowing
President Charles de Gaulle,

one of our strongest allies.

Allen Dulles,
who had a long history

of antagonism with de Gaulle,

falsely reported to Kennedy

that the vast majority
of the French military

was staunchly opposed
to de Gaulle's support

of Algerian self-determination.

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

the CIA had
discussed his overthrow.

This coup attempt, orchestrated
by four French generals,

was quickly put down.

And several news reports
pointed to Allen Dulles' hand

in supporting the episode.

JFK assures the French ambassador,

"I have nothing to do with this.

"I stand in full support
of President de Gaulle."

But he says something
very, very alarming.

He tells the French ambassador,
President Kennedy,

that "I'm not in full control, though,
of my entire government.

"I'm not in control of the CIA

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

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

In 1960,

the Congo had been
granted its independence

from Belgian colonial rule

and carried out
a democratic election.

In the disorder
of the transition,

the Belgians,
backed by England and France,

sought to eliminate
its charismatic Prime Minister,

Patrice Lumumba.

Eisenhower
and CIA Director Allen Dulles

favored the European nation
in this colonial conflict.

Eisenhower gave the go-ahead
to have Lumumba assassinated.

Kennedy never knew this.

He gets elected
the following November of 1960,

and he heads
in the opposite direction.

To those new states
whom we welcome

to the ranks of the free,

we pledge our word that
one form of colonial control

shall not have passed away

merely to be replaced
by a far more iron tyranny.

But events
are already in motion.

With the backing of
British and US intelligence and arms,

Col. Joseph Mobutu's forces
captured President Lumumba

at the beginning
of December 1960.

Dag Hammarskjold,

the UN Secretary General,
calls JFK,

who's the President-elect
at this point,

and asked him to intercede

to get Lumumba
released from prison.

When Kennedy
intervenes to save Lumumba,

that's a signal
directly to the CIA

that they have to
dispatch this guy immediately.

And so 48 hours before Kennedy
takes the oath of office,

Lumumba is delivered
into the hands of his enemies.

He's taken out
and shot in the head.

Kennedy doesn't know this
until months later.

Who finally tells him?

The CIA?
No, they still keep it a secret.

He's informed by his
UN ambassador, Adlai Stevenson.

His face crumples,
he's holding his hand,

he's grimacing in anguish,

hearing about the assassination
of Patrice Lumumba.

Within a very short

period of time
after the assassination,

Hammarskjold died
in a mysterious plane crash.

The photographs show his body

as the only one
not burned or charred,

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

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

There are
controversial documents

that indicate Allen Dulles

was involved
in the sabotage of the plane.

John Foster Dulles
and Allen Dulles,

they felt, you know,
what they had to say

was good enough
for the rest of the world,

that they knew
more than the President.

There were things
they didn't tell Eisenhower

that they were doing
under his administration.

And actually, Jack Kennedy

does move to decapitate
the top of the CIA.

He lets it be known
that Allen Dulles,

as well as his two top advisers,

Richard Bissell,

who is also very involved
with the Bay of Pigs,

and General Cabell,

who was the right-hand man
to Allen Dulles.

So the top three people
in the CIA,

Kennedy forces them out
before the end of the year.

Have you ever committed any
act of violence in your life?

No.

The existence of communism

so close to American shores

kept Cuba on Kennedy's plate.

And the Joint Chiefs of Staff
presented a plan to Kennedy,

called Operation Northwoods,

whereby the CIA
would secretly perform

terrorist acts
in the United States

and blame them on Castro

to justify bombings
and an invasion of Cuba.

And you see all these plans

being sent
to McNamara and to Kennedy.

"Fake an attack by Cubans

"against the
Guantanamo Bay sentries.

"Sink a US ship
in Guantanamo Bay

"and blame it on Cuba."

The one that scares me the most
was very sophisticated.

Take an airliner
and fly it as a drone over Cuba,

without any people in it,

with a tape-recording
that would play,

"We're under attack
by Cuban aircraft!

" 'Oh, my God,
they're going to kill us!' "

Blow up the airplane!

Blow up this huge drone

and use that to start a war.

The President
declined the recommendation.

The Northwoods plan
was our big find

in the way of military records.

They are
universally recognized today

for their importance.

It's one of those releases
that the Review Board members,

the board members themselves
were justifiably proud of

that came out of
the JFK Records Act.

In addition to
the problems with the CIA,

Kennedy's own military advisers
started pressuring him

to send troops to Vietnam.

A country that
Kennedy had visited

10 years earlier
as a Congressman,

and witnessed firsthand
how the French

were losing their war

against the Viet Minh
in the fight for independence.

Once he became President,

Kennedy wanted
to avoid the same trap.

The Vietnam decision
is finally arrived at,

which is NSAM 111,

where Kennedy
says no combat troops,

but will increase the advisers.

And that was his decision,
in the Kennedy presidency.

Never to cross that line.

Near the end of
his first year in office,

Kennedy received a report

from Walt Rostow
and General Maxwell Taylor,

his foreign policy
and military advisers,

that called for
increased training

of South Vietnamese troops,

increased bombings
of the North,

and the use
of US combat troops.

The influence
on Kennedy's reluctance

to committing ground troops

was his ambassador to India,
John Kenneth Galbraith.

My father went to see
Walt Rostow.

He went in to talk to him.

Rostow gestured on his desk to the...
pile of papers.

The Rostow Taylor report
was plainly visible.

My father asked to see it.

Walt said that
his security classification

wasn't sufficiently high.

My father did not think that

Walt Rostow's security classification
was higher than his.

And at the given moment...
the phone rang.

Walt turned to--
to answer the phone

and-- and Dad
picked up the report

and walked out
of the office and read it.

Kennedy sent
Galbraith to Saigon

to write a report that would
differ in its recommendations

from what Taylor and Rostow
had given to him.

Kennedy knew what he wanted

and he knew what my father
would deliver, which he did,

which is a very
detailed and skeptical report

about the efficiency of the
South Vietnamese government,

about the capacity
of any military force

to prevail in
the security situation

that was in existence
in South Vietnam at that time.

Kennedy told Galbraith

to deliver his report to
Defense Secretary McNamara,

and he,
in turn, gave instructions

to begin the withdrawal
to General Harkins,

the commanding General
of all forces in Vietnam.

The Pentagon dragged its feet
on formulating plans,

and McNamara called for
a meeting in May of 1963.

One of the most important finds
of the Review Board

are the notes
from this meeting.

McNamara said,
"It's not fast enough.

"I want you to accelerate it."

He says,
"I want to pull out 1,000 men,

"in December
by the end of the year.

"And I want you to pull out

"complete units,
not just individuals."

He wanted units to come out.

After the withdrawal plan
was approved,

Kennedy sent
Secretary of Defense McNamara

and General Taylor
to Saigon in September of '63.

He planned on using
their report as the basis

to formally order
the withdrawal to begin.

Kennedy controlled the report,

since it was
actually being written

under the supervision
of Bobby Kennedy.

Three days later,

that leaks out
into the newspapers.

Then his opponents find out.

And McGeorge Bundy
says to Kennedy, "Hey, look,

"if they're talking about it
in the newspapers,

"we might as well
put it on paper."

And they put it,
and it was NSAM 263.

And that's how it was
actually written and why.

Well, here's one of the things

McNamara said
in the secret debrief.

He said, "We had agreed,
the President and I,

"that we had trained them,

"we had given them
everything we could.

"And if they couldn't win,
too bad.

"We had to get out
even if they were going to be defeated."

So McNamara and Kennedy had
decided that they were willing

to pull out of Vietnam
in a losing scenario.

That's very important.

But later in that month,
McGeorge Bundy,

who's the National Security Adviser,

puts together a memo

based upon the--
the truth about the war,

which is just going terribly.

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

that Kennedy would be able
to go along with this.

This is reflected in

the National Security
Action Memorandum:

NSAM 273.

The way Bundy 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 going to do it

"is to increase
South Vietnamese forces."

There's not a word
about American forces

or Americanizing the war.

While Kennedy's body
is still in the casket

in the rotunda
over in the Capitol building,

is when Johnson changes NSAM 273
to a new version.

And when it comes
to the key paragraph,

paragraph seven,
which just talks about

how we're going
to intensify the war,

instead of changing a few words,

there's two big hash marks
through that paragraph,

and it's completely rewritten.

And I said--
I asked Bundy in an interview,

I said,
"Who told you to do that?"

He said, "Johnson did."

These changes allowed the US

to unilaterally engage
in combat in Vietnam

rather than simply
supporting and advising

South Vietnamese troops.

And within days,

we're talking about
sending out the DESOTO missions.

These-- These naval excursions

along the coastline
of North Vietnam

that ends up with The Maddox

and the, and the so-called
Tonkin Gulf attacks.

And then
the resolution in Congress

opening the door
to intervention in Vietnam.

In the Review Board's
declassifications,

there's 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.

In retaliation
for this unprovoked

attack on the high seas,

our forces
have struck the bases

used by the North Vietnamese
patrol craft.

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.

Three months
before the election,

Johnson had already planned
for an extensive air war.

It was to begin
after his inauguration.

We intend
to convince the communists

that we cannot be defeated
by force of arms

or by superior power.

When news
came of Kennedy's death,

all over the planet,
people were mourning

and crying
and going to embassies.

In Latin America,
the 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.

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 to a--

A great state of depression
after Kennedy's death.

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
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.

Castro got
the news of Kennedy's death

while discussing détente

with the French journalist
Jean Daniel.

He then exclaimed,
"This is bad news.

"Everything is now
going to change."

When Khrushchev paid his respects
to President Kennedy

at the American embassy,

he was reportedly
holding back tears.

Robert Kennedy knew
that after his brother's death,

relations with the Soviet Union
hung in the balance.

My father, he wanted to convey
a message 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.

The day that his brother died,

my father's first phone call

was to the
CIA desk officer at Langley

and he asked them, "Did your people
conduct this horror?"

We know from how Bobby operated

that terrible day,
November 22nd, 1963,

at his home in
McLean, Virginia,

that he immediately suspected
there was not a lone gunman.

Why do we know this?

Because he was being told
by his closest aides,

people like Kenny O'Donnell
and Dave Powers,

who were in the limousine

immediately behind
President Kennedy's limousine.

They were both
World War II veterans.

They knew
what gunfire sounded like.

They reported it to him
that gunfire

had not just come
from the-- the rear.

It had come
from different sides.

There was gunfire
from the front as well.

It was a crossfire.

I was in the East Room,

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

and Lyndon Johnson came in,

and told the adults in the room

that Lee Harvey Oswald
had been killed,

and that a man had shot him.

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

"Why did he shoot him?

Did he--
Did he love our family?"

And the way that they acted

was that this only
compounded the tragedy.

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.

But I think Allen Dulles' appointment
to the Warren Commission

is one of the great frauds
of American history.

I don't think that even if
you had 10 more commissions,

you'd never
get away from the idea

that maybe there was a plot.

We just didn't
find any traces of it.

What really happened
with Allen Dulles was

the CIA lobbied to have
him put on the Commission,

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

to make sure that
certain doors remained closed.

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,

that sends a signal not
only to the American people,

but to the American media,
to the 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.

They poll historians,
they poll the American people,

and they say, "Who were
the most popular Presidents?"

Well, one metric
that you can use

to objectively--
at least judge the 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 capitals all over the world?

And in that sense,
President Kennedy

beats every other President,
hands down.

Although many of Kennedy's

progressive
and unprecedented goals

and changes in policy were
undone after his assassination,

a few powerful ones remain.

I think Mr. Kennedy has done

some significant things
in civil rights,

and I would include
the Attorney General.

I think both of these men
are men of genuine goodwill.

And... I think
there is a necessity now

to see the urgency
of the moment.

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.

In 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 the--
the South this year-- next year

will decide who
the next President is,

whoever the South votes for
will be the President.

And you're gonna see
that the South

is going to be
against some folks.

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.

If an American,
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 boasts,

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.