Original subtitles

Mrs.

Ruth Payne probably knew the Lee Harvey Oswald family better

than anybody living today.

The fact that you sheltered the family of the accused assassin

of a United States president, has this bothered you in any way?

Has this changed your own personal life?

Very much?

Do you feel there is a lesson to be learned here out of the

tragic events which have happened?

And if so, what?

In a downtown building, a gunman waits at a six floor window, a

high powered rifle by his side.

Ruth and Michael Pay are two gooders who nobody would've ever heard of

if it hadn't been for the accident, that one of the people they helped

out in life was Lee Harvey household.

I would say they were two of the most innocent people I ever met.

Ruth was completely candid with the fbi.

I think most of the time she's telling the truth, but I think

there's certain soft spots where she's lying because she has to.

If you really examine the pains, who they really are, what they

really did, you might find one of the real keys to the Kennedy case.

I would always have terrible if only feelings, along with many secret service

men and many people of the nation.

Anyone who's ever had any contact with these people say,

If only I had done something.

I probably should start with Thirsty Night or with, uh, I mean with the night before.

I first became aware of Ruth Payne in 2008 after reading a popular

new book on the JFK assassination.

I was surprised to find that this liberal Quaker woman was suspected of

playing a role in the assassination plot.

I was even more surprised to find that she was still living just

50 miles north of me and that she agreed to be interviewed for my film

When you went to school,

this is all very, very close to me.

I was there, of course, my life turned upside down.

I met Lee Anne Oal at a party in Dallas in February of 1963, so it

was less than a year that I knew him.

I was interested in knowing her simply because she was a

Russian and spoke a language.

Well, I've been trying to learn it, and of course the best way is to

speak with someone who does not.

She was expecting a child and was worried about the marriage.

So we talked as women, and at that point I was separated from Michael, so we were

both having difficulty with our marriages.

I said, Well, why don't you come and stay with me at least until the baby's born.

Oswell just came out some weekends.

He did not live at my house.

He was not invited to a very small.

President John F.

Kennedy departed Washington on Thursday morning, November 21st, 1963.

On Saturday morning, November 23rd, his body was returned to the White

House Os usually came out for the weekend to visit with his family

and we'd have meals together.

But on Thursday, the 21st, he came out late afternoon and as we crossed

paths, I said, Na president, which means our president is coming.

And he just sort of brushed by.

He went to bed very early.

I didn't see him that morning.

He was already gone when I.

And then, uh, I went off to the dentist, but I left the TV on for Marina and when

I got back it was like 11 something.

We both just sat and watched tv, prepared some lunch.

One of the newsmen said he saw a, a little cloud of something pink coming

up from the president's head, the

people running up the hill.

She said to me, What a terrible thing this is for Mrs.

Kennedy.

And how sad that now the children will have to grow up without a father.

I was crying and she was very upset.

Indeed.

This was our condition when, uh, men came from the, uh, police department in

Dallas and that was the first that we had any indication that, uh, her husband

was associated with this tragic event.

They wanted to know if he had a gun.

And foolishly I said, No, cuz that's what I thought.

And translated to Marina who said yes, he had a gun and she led the

officers to the garage and there on the floor was a blanket roll.

She had seen the gun and the blanket roll, but officer picked it up and it was

so empty, it just folded over his arm.

Clearly didn't have a gun in it.

I was just so shocked

I was plane.

You are obviously, uh, an intelligent person and, and,

and well read, uh, apparently.

Uh, do you believe, for example, that.

That there was any conspiracy, international communist

conspiracy involved in this?

No.

I think there certainly was not.

Kennedy was elected at the height of the Cold War.

Like most politicians of his day, JFK talked tough on communism, but his

support for civil rights and international dialogue earned him hatred from many

right wing corners of the country.

Kennedy inherited an escalating involvement in Vietnam that went

back to the Truman administration.

Cuba.

After Fidel Castro's socialist revolution was becoming a new battleground in the

Cold War, the red scare was in full effect with many Warhawks actively planning for

a nuclear showdown with the Soviet Union

that both sides begin anew.

The quest for peace before the dark powers of destruction unleashed by science.

Engulf all humanity.

Let us never negotiate outta fear, but let us never fear to negotiate.

If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the fuel.

Who are Rich?

Ruth and Michael Payne are very important in the warrant commission volumes.

They were asked the total over 6,000 questions.

Ruth herself was asked about 5,000 questions, which is the most questions

that any single witness was asked?

By far.

They asked a lot of questions, , but I did not feel there was suspicion of me by

anyone on the Warren Commission cuz they were really looking into it thoroughly.

The suspicion comes from people who were looking for plots.

And trying to figure out, you know, who, it's so hard to feel that such

a great man could be brought down so easily by such a small person.

That's really hard to take in.

I think the conspiracy theory did more harm to the country

than the assassination did.

It undermined trust, not only in government, but in institutions

to understand the assassination is an enormous investment of time.

Analyzing where the information is coming from, who's saying it, whether

it was corrected later for people who do dedicate themselves to this.

The inescapable truth about the Kennedy assassination is that the testimony, the

evidence do not add up to the conclusion that the Warren Commission came to.

So, oh, they made sense to me.

The Warren Commission withheld mountains of evidence from the public.

The man who was most active on the Warren Report was a Dulles former head

of the CIA, who Jack Kennedy hit fired, and who really hated Jack Kennedy.

J.

Edgar Hoover, on the day of the assassination, and within two hours

of Oswald's arrest was announcing that Oswald had done it and done it alone.

How could he have known that Oswalt did not have Confederates

who were still at large?

The FBI intimidated witnesses to stick right with the official version.

Numerous leads were missed.

Two of the White House in Washington comes the final verdict on the fateful

tragedy, which engulfed the nation.

10 months ago.

US Chief Justice Earl Warren, is the bearer of the sad epilog.

The report in 1964, Earl Warren was asked if the commission's documents

would ever be released to the public.

His answer, Yes, there will come a time, but it might not be in your lifetime.

Over the last five decades, public outcry led to the release of millions of pages of

documents, but many of the most sensitive files were held back by the CIA and fbi.

For most Americans, the killing of John F.

Kennedy remains unsettled history.

Finally, in the mid seventies, the a brooder film was shown to the public.

It shows Kennedy going back to the left and everybody goes, Hey, wait a minute.

If he shot from behind, why is he going back to the left?

This is very heavy.

It's the film shot by the Dallas dress manufacturer, Abraham, uh, Zda at the

bottom of the screen, the headshot.

So then the House select committee looked at it again and they

concluded that it's likely there was a conspiracy, both in Kennedy's

case and Martin Luther King's case.

And that was an official conclusion.

I submit to you that what took place on November 22nd, 1963 was a kutar.

This was a package of unfathomable lies.

Packaged together, though, uh, with a cinema artist, great skill,

it really illustrates how wrong.

That film was or how fictitious it was because there we were, but it

was not us and not even our names.

The OS was introduced to Janet and Bill Williams.

All I can find out about the Williams is that the tax returns are classified

and that Bill Williams has links through his family to the CIA and does

classified work for bail helicopters.

I was surprised that he didn't try to reach me, and I guess

he was nervous about me.

I'm not sure.

Oliver Stone is a wonderful filmmaker, but he's used this to

put certain myths into the American bloodstream that abide to this day.

Subcommittee will come to order today.

We consider legislation that would publicly release the investigative

files and other documents relating to the assassination.

Mr.

Chairman, I'm committed to the principle that Americans are entitled to know

the truth about the assassination, President Kennedy, and feel that Congress

should do its best to allay fears of the American people in this regard.

The next witness is Oliver Stone, one of our most successful film

directors, a Vietnam veteran.

Welcome, Mr.

Stone.

You are probably the reason that we're all here today among some of the records

that we were dying to get hold of in order to elaborate on our theories in

the film are the testimony of people like Richard Helms Howard Hunt, CIA

agent at that time, Ruth Payne, who, uh, knew the OS wells very well in.

All these names that you're mentioning, uh, the ones that are living,

did you contact them or of none?

Representative.

None of these people would talk to us.

Thank you so much, Mr.

Stone.

We have 74 co-sponsors on the bill at this present time, and we think

that, uh, a result of the initiation of these hearings, we'll soon,

uh, get the, uh, required number.

The National archives are preparing to release more than 3000 documents present.

George h w Bush signed the JFK Records Act in October, 1992, which initiated

the collection of those mainly FBI and C documents, and called for

their public release 25 years later, which is October 26th of this year.

Top secret documents about the assassination of President John F.

Kennedy are now public 54 years after his death.

It is just a fraction of the documents today, President Trump delayed the

release of many of the secret files, following concerns from national security

agencies over what should be made public.

At the 11th hour here it appears the CIA and the FBI said there were

concerns about national security.

Here is something that's been on the books for more than 25 years.

This release of documents we've known it's coming.

Everyone knew it was coming, and with less than six hours left, all of a

sudden there's a nuisance of, Well, no, we need to look at this further.

We haven't had enough time to to look at it.

I'll guarantee a conspiracy theorist are going crazy.

Yeah.

Over that.

According to the two most basic theories, Ruth Payne was either

a CIA asset who holds secrets to the biggest murder mystery in US

history, or an innocent bystander who's been slandered and harassed by

people like me for the last 50 years.

For those of the conspiratorial persuasion, there are

more nuanced question.

Such as whether Ruth was an active member of an assassination plot

or just an unwitting pond, or whether she's in such deep denial

that she believes her own lies.

Of course, if you trust Ruth, this all sounds like paranoid gibberish.

Michael Payne plays a smaller role in the story because he wasn't

living at the house at the time.

Although the suspicions around Michael are just as intense.

Ruth and Michael Payne were not your typical family living in the working

class suburb of Irving, Texas in 1963.

Both Paynes were well educated liberals born in New York

City to affluent families.

Ruth was a Quaker and Michael a Unitarian.

Despite the fact that Michael worked for a military contractor, the pains

both described themselves as pacifists.

The first time I went to interview Ruth, I discovered that Michael had just moved

into the same retirement home even though they had been divorced for 40 years.

That's Michael Payne.

Michael, this is Max.

Good.

I'm doing a documentary with Ruth.

I'd love to talk to you.

Oh-ho the project,

right?

A little poll here.

How many of you people think there was a conspiracy?

No, they're not here.

, take your choice.

The cia, fbi Johnson, you know, uh, one RT or another's.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I, I would, What has happened in this country over the years?

I wouldn't doubt it.

I mean, I wouldn't be.

If there was a conspiracy.

Yeah.

Well, you're one of my liberal friends,

what the truth was, but did ask.

I think that Oswell did it.

I don't happen to know anything else here.

He has shot the president of the United States States the biggest

so-called democracy in the world that's going to go down in history,

and he was the one who did it.

I was only able to talk to Michael Payne for half an hour.

It was clear that he was already beginning to lose his memory.

That from what I was told, he became increasingly incoherent

over the next few years.

I know it's hard.

And thank you for revisiting this.

It's all hard.

It's always hard.

I was interviewed by the networks and they've done every 10th anniversary,

20th, 30th, 40th, 50th anniversary.

ABC did one of the best, which began by saying, Oswell did it, and

they were going to show you why.

More than two thirds of Americans still believe there was a

conspiracy to kill the president.

But unless you are an irredeemable conspiracy theorist beyond the pale,

so to speak, what we will do tonight is demonstrate that those theories are wrong.

There was a televised mock trial in 86 of the JFK case with Jerry

Spence representing Oswald, Vince Boogalo representing the prosecution.

Because Spence wasn't well prepared, Vince carried the day and one of

his best witnesses was Ruth Payne.

Call your next witness.

The government calls.

This is Ruth Payne.

Here, take the witness stand.

If you would.

Please tell us your name.

I'm Ruth Payne.

Uh, Mrs.

Payne.

Your occupation, ma'am?

I'm a school psychologist.

I work with school children.

It was like a regular trial and they brought in jurors and a judge from Dallas

and the real witnesses, including myself.

Didn't you tell the Warren Commission that you were impressed

how calm Lee was and how completely certainly was of his innocence?

You of course, are not an agent for the cia, are you?

No.

No.

You see, you laugh.

Yes, I do.

You are not an agent for the kgb, are you?

No.

Are you laughing again?

Well, you ridiculed me for laughing.

No, I don't mean ridicule you for it.

I just wanna know if you find the inquiry amusing.

No.

The back bedroom is where Ruth Payne stayed with her children.

The front bedrooms or Marina oal stayed with her kids.

Okay.

And.

The famous garage is over here on the other side of the house where the gun was.

Right, right.

So let me know if you have any questions.

Okay.

The people that are suspicious of me, fortunately, don't really

come around to talk to me.

That does not happen.

And I'm grateful for that.

Haynes were connected.

They were to cia.

She was a Quaker . No, she said she was a Quaker.

They were connected to the CIA before all this happened.

Well, officially we try to be neutral as far as all the different theories.

Like they might mention something like, you know, I heard the

the, were working for the cia.

You know, I might mention, Well, you know, it's pretty much impossible to know

if someone's working for the CIA or not.

Cause that's the first rule working for the CIA is you

don't let anyone know, ever.

You know, So the official story.

I don't like to offend anybody, but if you believe it, you've

got the IQ of a, of a, an amba.

See, you had the IQ of an AMBA until yesterday.

Yeah.

There are all kinds of claims and rumors about the pains, but no concrete evidence

has ever directly linked them to the cia.

Most of the suspicions revolve around their immediate family.

Everybody has connections of some sort.

My father did work for the S A I D and some people who work for U S A A D are

also in the CIA A, but that wasn't true.

My father, I don't believe.

Your sister was, I think she worked briefly with, uh, an outfit.

All I really know that she's told me about it is that she was helping develop

questionnaires for non-English speakers.

It's possible, but, uh, I think unlikely that some of the contracts

she may have been working on could have been something that CIA wanted.

But, uh, I don't know.

Researching online, I was able to track down Ruth's sister, Sylvia Hoke.

She was still alive at age 90, Sylvia, but unfortunately she

wasn't interested in talking.

Would you be willing to, uh, answer a few questions?

Every man, woman, and child lives under a nuclear sword of dams

hanging by the slenderest of threads.

Capable of being cut at any moment by accident or miscalculation, or by madness.

Each year of the Kennedy presidency was marked by a major Cold War crisis in 1961.

The CIA enacted a plan that had been in the works long before Kennedy took

office, the Bay of Pigs invasion.

Kennedy went along with the covert operation to overthrow Fidel Castro.

But when the CIA trained anti-Castro gorillas were quickly overwhelmed

by the Cuban army, he rejected CIA demands to send in the Air

Force and finished the job.

Mistrust and resentment would mark Kennedy's relationship with the military

and CIA for the rest of his life.

After the Bay of Pigs fiasco, Kennedy remarked that he wanted to quote splinter

the CIA into a thousand pieces, and he fired CIA Director Alan Ellis soon after.

The following year, Cuba was again at center stage.

In the Cold War.

The US discovered that the Soviet Union had stationed nuclear missiles on the

island just 90 miles from Florida.

The resulting 13 day showdown brought the world to the brink of nuclear war.

Somehow, Kennedy and Soviet leader, Nikita Crue, were able to

diffuse the situation despite the influence of Warhawks on both sides.

At the height of the crisis, Attorney General Robert Kennedy met with

the Soviet ambassador and told him, We are under pressure from our

military to use force against Cuba.

If the situation continues much longer, the president is not

sure that the military will not overthrow him and seize power.

Mrs.

Payne, what is the next thing that happened pertaining to the assassination?

Well, the next thing they announced on the television that the president had died,

and very shortly after that there were six officers that came to my front door.

There are those who feel they can just tell that Ruth Payne is lying,

that it's written all over her face.

Some say that she's too articulate that she must be a CIA agent.

Repeating rehearsed lines, we can read into the accused whatever we like.

What did Marina Ruth has given so many interviews and we expect her to perform

the appropriate emotions each time.

Shock, sadness, anger, regret.

One of the officers, um, asked if he had any guns and I said, No.

Translated the question to Marina.

And she said, Yes, he did.

And she led the policeman into the garage.

And there on the floor was a blanket roll.

And uh, the officer picked up the blanket roll and it was so clear right

away, I thought there was nothing in it.

And it folded over his arm.

It was clearly an empty blanket.

And that was the point at which I felt, Oh, it could have been Lee.

It could have been Lee.

And it was at that point that I thought it could have been Lee.

And this is the worst moment ever because I thought, Oh my

God, it could have been me.

It could have been Lee Conspiracy theorists must explain the pains away.

They must be wrong.

And guess what?

You can't say they're lying cuz they're meticulously honest.

They haven't changed their story from day one.

Their core is about telling the truth.

Since the release of his 1993 bestseller, case closed, author and former attorney,

Gerald Posner, has been the go-to expert representing the official story.

The record is now abundant with the evidence in original material that you

can draw the conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone on the other side.

You have a 92 year old Philadelphia lawyer, Vince Soria, a legend

among conspiracy researchers.

In 1964, he was among the first to publicly challenge the conclusions

of the Warren Commission.

For over 50 years, his analysis of the case has been considered to be

the most cutting edge or the most extreme, depending on your persuasion.

It wasn't a cast conspiracy, it wasn't a Soviet conspiracy,

It wasn't a mafia conspiracy.

Our institutions did it.

Our government did it.

In order to have a conspiracy, you've gotta complete a circle.

In this case, you've gotta get the Oswalt into the Dallas area.

You've gotta get Oswalt into the Texas Book Depository in Time.

People with garage where they so-called murder weapon can be stored.

Suppose it, the conspiracy says you don't just wait.

Somebody will get OAL and his family in the Dallas.

We'll just wait.

Maybe he'll happen to find a job in the Texas Book Depository.

Once you see a conspiracy, it's over for the pains.

You can't close the circle without the pains.

There's no way they could be innocent.

No.

I didn't get into the conspiracies at all because I don't have

a paranoid bone in my body.

I just don't see ghosts anywhere.

The other side of that is I'm kind of naive and uh uh, it has been

a blessing, frankly, to be naive.

It was through the auspices of George Desmoines Shett that Ruth and Michael

Payne are introduced to the Oswalds.

Oswald becomes chummy with the white Russian community of

Dallas, all rabid anti communists.

It's odd.

His closest friend is an oil man named George DeMar Shield, who's

about 35 years older than Oswald, who is only 23 and supposedly broke.

I think the only time I met, uh, George DeMar Shield was at this

party in February, and uh, he and his wife Gene were there, but I didn't.

I wasn't, didn't hear much from them because I spent most of the evening with,

uh, Marina in a bedroom with the baby.

Des Moines Shield is a member of the Dallas Petroleum Club, speaks

five languages and was a French BIE intelligence during the also rumor

to have been a Nazi sympathizer.

We met the OAL in the summer of last 1962 when we heard that, uh, there was a young

couple, We arrived from Russia and we were in very difficult financial condition.

Why would a white Russian, who is vehemently anti-communist

associate with Oswald?

I don't know.

Good question.

Not what I asked.

Shortly after this, in about April of 1963, George Desmoines shed

leaves the Dallas Fort Worth area.

Then he goes on to Haiti and reportedly there is $300,000 deposited into

was account before he went to Haiti.

He went to Washington and sat down in a secret meeting with

Army Intelligence and the cia.

So you can see that Newmar show to somebody with a kind of spook background.

So the question then becomes was, did Warren, she being paid off for doing

his escort services with Oswald and then leaving them with Ruth and Michael Payne?

That's a question we can't answer because unfortunately when the House

Select Committee was trying to service subpoena, he was either murdered or

took his own life with a shotgun blast.

There have been allegations that Desmoines show was somehow connected to the cia.

Is that possible?

I think it's.

But it's an allegation.

It's only a theory, but we have to take it very seriously that Ruth Payne

was acting as a babysitter for Marina.

She's arranged to do all kinds of things for Marina, the way that

George Marin used to do, take her to medical appointments and so on.

I was lonely, and this was someone to talk to, somebody I could, could help

me with Russian, and that's really why, um, I invited Marina to stay

at the house when I did, from the time Ruth met the Oswalds until the

assassination was exactly nine months, from February 22nd to November 22nd, 1963.

For nearly half that time, the Oswalt's actually lived in New Orleans.

It wasn't until late September that Marina moved in with Ruth just two

months before the assassination.

At the end of Lee's New Orleans stay, it was arranged for Ruth Payne

to travel with Marina all the way from New Orleans back to Dallas.

And you have to ask, was that simply done?

Outta the goodness of Ruth Payne's heart, you are supposed to have brought Marina

and the gun from New Orleans to Dallas.

Was there any such gun that you traveled with, Marina with?

I was certainly unaware there being a gun at all.

Uh, either in my car or in the garage, or I didn't know that dazzled had one.

But, uh, I can read the papers.

, I can judge that.

He must have had one.

And, uh, as near as I can figure out, it's possible.

It was in my car when I took Marina and her baby and most of their worldly goods

from New Orleans in September of 63.

I've always called Oswald a politicized sociopath.

Had Oswald lived, I think he would've been upset that people took the

credit away from him for doing it.

He had that kind of mentality.

He suddenly realized he had an opportunity to, uh, no longer be a little guy,

but to be someone extraordinary.

Did you kill the president?

No, I have not been charged with that.

In fact, nobody has said that to me yet.

The first thing I heard about it was when the newspaper report is in the

hall, uh, asked me that question.

Okay, what did you do in Russia?

Lee presented that people didn't see in him his potential, how great he was.

He's a kid who just turned 24 years old, who has defected to Russia in

the heart of the Cold War, goes to New Orleans and forms a pro Castro

organization, goes to Mexico City and tries to get to the revolution in Cuba.

He's done unlocked by 24.

I think it's a lone move thing that he probably wanted to make a mark on

society suddenly occurred to him that he could, He was proud of what he had done.

He was intelligent, he was dyslexic.

He believed violence.

Was the, uh, was it the only effective tool almost from

the beginning of this case.

Her and Michael are always there to discredit Oswald, to caricature Oswald,

to say he wanted to be a big man in history, which of course makes no sense at

all because if that's who OAL was doing, then he would've admitted that he did it.

Okay?

But he never did.

And in fact, he said just the opposite, I'm just a Patsy president.

No, That taken me in because of the fact that I lived in Soviet.

I'm just a Patsy president.

Here's a man who feels that life has been tough and he hasn't.

Got a proper deal.

People have been given, but I in fact, deny these trucks.

Here's a guy who learns Russian in the Marines, leaves the Marines under false

pretenses, goes to the Soviet Union, supposedly gives away secrets to the

Soviets, gives up his citizenship, decides he wants to come back.

The government pays its way back.

This is a guy who had worked at a cia U2 spy base as a radar operator.

He knew a lot of the codes.

He then defected to Russia, promised to turn over state secrets

at the height of the Cold War.

He's there for 20 months, returns with a Russian wife, and he's not arrested.

Who's he working for?

He's a communist in Dallas, but all of his friends are white, Russian anti-communists

or people connected with the cia.

Central to many of the theories is the idea that Oswald was

actually a fake defector sent to the Soviet Union as a spy.

Seen through that lens, everything Oswald does, leading up to the

assassination has a different meaning.

Was he continuing to do intelligence work infiltrating radical groups?

Was he manipulated into place by larger forces?

Are you a Marxist?

I would very definitely say that.

I, uh, I, uh, a Marx, that is correct, but that does not mean

however, I'm a, uh, communist.

What is the difference between the two?

Well, there's a great deal of difference.

Several, uh, American parties in several countries are based on

Marxism, such as gu, uh, Ghana.

Uh, certain countries have, uh, characteristics of a social

assistant such as Great Britain with its, uh, socialized medicine.

These then are the differences between an outright communist country and

countries which adhere to leftist are Marxist, uh, uh, principles.

I guess this morning is Priscilla Johnson McMillan, the author of Marina and Lee,

I want to talk to you about the time you interviewed Lee Harvey Oswald in Russia.

Yes.

What kind of a man was he for Lauren?

Lonely, pathetic, lost seeming to need help.

I returned to Russia in 1958.

It was during that time that I met Lee Harvey Oswald.

I wrote a story about him as a defector who was very unusual,

if not nonexistent at that time.

Someone who claimed that he wanted to live permanently in the Soviet

Union because he was a Marxist.

He said he hated the United States and that the Russians he dealt

with had all treated him very well.

He did tell me that he would give the Russians any secrets that he possessed.

Um, but I assumed he didn't possess any.

I could see that he was angry, but not off the scale angry.

In fact, I thought he might be acting a little bit.

It's just a little too contrived that you happen to know OAL in Russia.

Yeah.

That you then wrote a book, uh, absolving.

All of those people who are suspected in conspiracies that you happen

to work for the State Department and that you are to notice the

initial CIA tattooed on your back.

. Well, I translated for the State Department for a month in 1956.

Uh, but three years before I became a journalist.

Mm-hmm.

and, um, I would never have done such a thing.

War II wear two hats.

In 1967, Joseph Stalin's daughter defected to the us.

The person the CIA selected to help her put out a book on the horrors of Russian

communism was Priscilla Johnson McMillan.

I did translate Lana Ali Louisa's book, and I didn't know it at the time, but

that was a CIA operation from the get go.

You didn't need to know that story, but I certainly wouldn't tell

it to the conspiracy the either.

Because they might make, they wouldn't know what to make of it.

Do you know what I mean?

It's too complicated.

According to polling by Gallop, a majority of Americans have always believed assassin

Lee Harvey Oswald did not act alone.

The number peaked at a whopping 81% of Americans in 1976.

That was shortly after the Zza Bruter film was released.

A majority of nearly every demographic group across the country believes

others were involved in the killing, with the exception of one group

whites with a college degree.

The principle argument, uh, in defense of the War Commission conclusion

is an argument from authority and invariably, you're asked to waive

the differences between the sources.

On the one hand, you have the Chief Justice of the United States,

the former head of the Central Intelligence Agency, A Dolls.

You have congressman and Senators serving on the Warren

Commission, including Gerald Ford.

These are the people who have come up with the facts and conclusions

that proved Oswald did it.

And on the other hand, you have these kind of crack bot skeptics out there.

Can't get a job, disaffected hate in America.

Ka leftist.

Who are you going to believe?

I mean, really there have been different generations of conspiracy thinking.

At the very beginning.

There were about a half dozen people and they were very savage.

It makes life much simpler if you think that events of great importance

happen because it was a conspiracy.

It's very threatening to think they can happen for trivial reason.

Who is likely to have wanted Kennedy dead?

You'd have to say the ca, but perhaps also the military as well.

What kind of a piece do I mean and what kind of a piece do we seek?

Not apacs, Americana enforced in the world by American weapons of war.

Both the United States and its allies and the Soviet Union and

its allies have a mutually deep interest in a just and genuine piece.

And in hauling the arms race, we are both devoting massive sums of money to

weapons that could be better devoted to combat ignorance, poverty, and disease.

We are both caught.

In a vicious and dangerous cycle.

Kennedy was telling people privately that once he got reelected, he was

gonna back out of Vietnam and he was not gonna commit force of the

United States to a land war in Asia.

He had infuriated them with a be of pigs.

You infuriated them with a nuclear test band treaty.

He infuriated them during the Cuban missile crisis and he was

not gonna let them have their war.

Next.

Very, very few people were ever allowed the intimate details, I'm

sure, uh, Kennedy was taken out.

And, uh, anyone who doubts the official statements of US government,

it's crazy when you do look into the issues conspiracy theorists race,

sometimes you find a good answer.

But conspiracy theorists are unwilling to accept it.

And you know, this includes everything from the shooting sequence to

Oswald's relationship with the CIA and the FBI and the Cubans.

The Warren Commission wasn't perfect, but for a lot of the conspiracy

theorists, it approaches a faith.

It's a belief system.

You'll see that your own patriotic view and faith in America may strongly

color your view of the Kennedy case.

If you're a believer in America's good faith, the integrity of its fundamental

institutions, you're liable to try to filter your understanding of the Kennedy

case and much else through that prism.

Well, I think it's healthy to be skeptical about the government, but to believe that

there could be a coup deta in the United States carried out or at least tolerated

by the government against the president.

That's a very cynical view of the government, and I

think that that's corrosive

just north of Martha's Vineyard off Cape Cod.

Lies.

Naau Island.

The seven Mile Long Island has been a privately owned getaway for the

Forbes family for more than 150 years.

Naau Island is the stuff that conspiracy dreams are made of.

Among the many members of the Forbes Klan who have vacationed on the island over

the years are Michael and Ruth Payne.

Michael Payne's mother was a Forbes and he spent summers on

Naau Island since childhood.

One of his mother's closest friends was a woman named Mary Bancroft.

Bancroft was a spy and longtime mistress of CIA director Alan Dulles.

Dulles and Bancroft were invited to stay on the Sean Island.

Mary Bancroft knew the pains int.

And saw Michael at a young age, and so she could turn to her partner Alan Dulles and

tell 'em You want some people on the left?

I know some people on the left.

That could be a big help to you.

So you got a direct line to the top of the CIA right there, which I think is the

most telling thing of all of the pain.

Saga Na Shawn Island was kind of a hideaway for these extraordinarily wealthy

people, people with tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions of dollars.

Ruth Payne visited Naau Island that summer of 1963, even though she's

supposed to be estranged from her husband.

While you're making connections, my mother-in-law knew Allen Dolls

So obviously there's a plot.

Michael has a long list of relatives and, and goes back and he's got

somebody that signed the Declaration of Independence in his for Bears.

In fact, Michael Payne traces his lineage to several famous elite

Boston families, Not only the Forbes and the pains, but also the Cabots.

And the Emersons.

His great great grandfather was Ralph Waldo Emerson.

His great uncle, who was a really lovely man, was, uh, the governor General of the

Philippines when the Philippines came to us after the, uh, Spanish American War.

More conservative I guess, but, uh, um, very interesting people

and concerned also about the world.

Michael's father was a declared Trotskyite, met with a little group of

people that wanted society to change and were working on how to do that.

They were at no point interested in violent actions, but there's,

uh, two branches of the Forbes.

There's the guys that put out the magazine and are sort of the wealthier brand.

And then the ones that had an island off the coast of

Massachusetts was Michael's group.

So yeah, I spent a few summers there.

Nice folks.

I liked the family.

So Michael comes from a very rich family.

But you guys lived pretty modestly in Dallas.

Yes, exactly.

Did he have any sort of trust fund from the Forbes family?

Well, he had his, he had an account, uh, that there's a, a, uh, investment

company that holds accounts for anybody, but a number of members

of the family were invested there, and it's called the JM for company.

Uh, so yeah, he had an account there.

Michael felt, you know, it wasn't money he earned just came to him.

And there, I think we've forgotten the whole concept of no blis, of no

blessed leash if much is given to you, as much you should be giving back.

Uh, but uh, that was definitely a feeling of the.

When I, um, first heard of Lee, I was sort of looked forward with eagerness

to an opportunity to talk with someone with whom I didn't believe I would

agree, but at least it was interesting to talk to a man who would been to Russia

and apparently had his own opinions.

I would say he was the kind of person who likes to put himself

in a position of a belligerence.

Michael claimed he only met with Lee Oswald six times.

They went to both left wing and right wing meetings during those six times,

which is probably some kind of record, Oh, I wanna say this about Michael Payne.

I met him only once.

He didn't make any pretense.

He told me that he and Oswalt would go to right wing meetings.

We discovered we were both interested in the activities of right wing

groups in Dallas, which were common, numerous of that time.

And, uh, I think he described his activities as spying on them.

Did you ever have a chance to talk about Cuban communi or Castro Con?

He did mention that, and it was unfamiliar to me, so I didn't, uh, didn't take it up.

He just had to mention it briefly and when it was brought to my attention,

I did recall that he had, that

Michael liked to pose provoking students to talk about their Cuba

beliefs, portraying himself as a pro Cuban guy, which he certainly was.

Not very weird and suspicious activity.

That's what you do when you're trying to smoke somebody out.

His father was George, Live in Payne, a leading TR on the West coast.

Michael Payne works with Be Helicopter as secret clearance.

You don't get that qui pro quo.

He's an agent.

You know that immediately.

Is it true he had a security clearance there or was a military contractor?

Oh, I would think it would be.

Have to be.

Yeah.

He had been working for his father-in-law who invented the Bell

Helicopter and was doing research on vertical takeoff and landing.

Bell Helicopter has been a major military supplier since the 1940s.

Their model, uh, one Huey became an icon of the Vietnam War as the war expanded

under the Johnson administration.

Sales skyrocketed.

Something big about the Ruth Payne story simply doesn't gel.

My thinking about the pains is you'll never find a piece of paper

cuz they weren't formally hired.

I think they would do little favors for you.

Someone like Alan Dulles out of patriotism.

I don't know anybody who thinks they were part of the plot to kill the president,

but, uh, a lot of us, including me, think that they might have been manipulated,

uh, to do certain things like invite Lee to a job at the book Depository

a month before the assassination.

Mrs.

Payne, did you, um, help him obtain the job that he, uh, had at the

Texas School Book Depository?

Well, it came about through a coincidence.

I was having coffee with a neighbor, Rena was there.

She was still trying to learn English, so I knew that she really

didn't follow the conversations.

So when we went home, I said to my neighbor, mentioned that there

might be, uh, still some hiring at the school book Depository.

And she said, Oh, could we find out?

Could you call and see whether they are hiring?

She makes the phone call on Monday, and then he goes in for the interview on

Tuesday and he starts work on Wednesday.

The people involved in this plot have done site selection in advance.

They're planning to murder President Kennedy on this trip.

Oswald is gonna get a job at that building.

That's the setup.

There have been published reports supposing that he may have been planted

in that building by conspirators who wanted him there, where he

could fire the president or to get others in positions to do so.

But these witnesses before the Warren Commission told another version of

how and why Oswell was employed.

Mrs.

Payne who knew Oswell needed a job.

Mrs.

Linnie may ran.

Who knew where he might get one from.

Roys truly at the Texas School Book Depository.

So I did call school book depository talk to Roy truly.

And, uh, uh, said there's this young man as a wife and another baby on the way,

and he's looking for a job and he doesn't drive, which limits what he can do.

Um, and I was wondering if there was an opening and, and he wouldn't say whether

there was an opening, but he said, Go ahead and let the young man come by.

So that's what I relayed to, to Lee.

And then he did go to the school book to Boston and ask for work.

You had made the comment, I believe last week, if I'm not mistaken,

that, uh, the FBI had been here.

Is that correct?

At your residence?

Mm-hmm.

, uh, to, to visit apparently even Marin Oswald or Lee Harvey Oswald, or both?

Uh, what was the occasion of their best?

Well, the uh, agent expressed to me that it was routine for them to come to people

who had come to live in this country from countries behind the Iron Curtain.

At the time that Kennedy was killed, the FBI had just received a

letter postmark from Dallas, which was purported to be from Oswold.

It was addressed to the Soviet embassy in Washington.

This was an explosive conspiratorial letter.

There was actually a warrant drawn up for his arrest for

the murder of the president.

As part of an international conspiracy, Lee asked to borrow my

typewriter and typed out a letter I went by and he sort of hid it

like he didn't want me to read it.

I don't know.

That's kind of weird.

Later that evening.

Um, Michael came for dinner and it gave us a chance to move some furniture.

I noticed Lee had left this letter that it seemed like he didn't want me to

read on my desk, and the desk was open.

A little flip top, secretary desk as we walked in to move furniture around.

I just.

Closed the desk in it and had that letter in it.

It was a letter that he was writing to the Soviet embassy in Washington trying

to push for him and Marina to get a ticket to go back to the Soviet Union.

And he was saying that Comrade Coston with whom he had had meetings in

Mexico City and regretted that hadn't had time to complete our business.

According to a declassified CIA report, the comrade Costin mentioned

in Oswalt's letter is Valerie Kotov, a KGB agent, believed to

be involved in executive action, including sabotage and assassination.

The circumstances of the cost and letter are highly controversial, and

many researchers believe this link between Oswald and a communist assassin

was planted by the true conspirators.

So you talked to the fbi.

On, on at least a couple of occasions about Oswald.

Yes.

Earlier in October.

And then I, I was disturbed enough about this letter that I made a copy of it and

thought, Well, I'll, I'll just show it to the FBI guy when he comes out next.

You did give the FBI a letter that was supposed to have been written by a

lead of the Soviet Embassy, didn't you?

This was a, uh, draft of a letter that he left on my desk that

concerned me very deeply because I could see he was lying in it.

He left and used my typewriter and that offended me deeply.

He left Defend.

It offended you that he that lying on my typewriter.

That's right.

I didn't know who he was writing the letter just said, Dear serves Ruth took

that rough draft without his knowledge of permission and gave it to the fbi.

Actually, I had this conversation with the FBI man.

He also was interested in, uh, preserving our rights.

As outlined in the Constitution.

And uh, so he and I had a real understanding.

Ruth plays a strange role in this letter.

The Soviets got the letter and were convinced the letter was a phony.

Either he was making it up or it was a forgery.

They went so far.

This to accuse Ruth of having forged it.

Less than two weeks after Ruth takes Oswald's letter,

President Kennedy is killed.

We're both sitting here on the sofa watching the television when the

news came that he had been shot.

And I translated that to Marina and we watched anxiously with the rest of

the world to hear what would happen.

And finally we did hear that, uh, the president, soon after the

assassination, Michael calls Ruth from his job at Bell Helicopter.

Declassified FBI documents revealed that their conversation was being monitored.

An informant reported that Michael was overheard to comment that he felt Sure Lee

Harvey Oswald had killed the president, but did not feel Oswald was responsible.

And further stated, we both know who is responsible.

According to the records, that phone call was made about an hour after

the assassination, which means it was a few minutes before Oswald was

actually arrested for the crime.

Pure garbage.

Pure garbage.

I did describe the phone call that Michael and I had after

the assassination when we were.

Commiserating with each other about Kennedy's killing and, uh, thinking

that it was a conspiracy of, you know, right wing radicals who had done it.

Uh, so we both thought we knew , but we didn't know who had done it.

Uh,

I I hear that every now and then that that one comes up.

Yeah.

But, uh, I just, nothing to it.

On the morning after the assassination, the first call the new president took

was from FBI director Jay Edgar Hoover.

While we have the audio for all the other calls from this period,

for some reason this one was erase.

Luckily, a transcript of this call was declassified in 1993.

The topic of conversation was the evidence against Lee Harvey Oswald lbj.

Have you established any more about the visit to the Soviet Embassy

in Mexico in September, Hoover?

No.

That's one angle that's very confusing for this reason.

We have up here, the tape and the photograph of the man who was at the

Soviet embassy using Oswald's name.

That picture and the tape do not correspond to this man's

voice, nor do his appearance.

In other words, it appears that there is a second person who was

at the Soviet Embassy down there.

Lee was, in my opinion, not somebody a spy agency would hire.

I couldn't see him as connected to the Soviet Union.

I think they were very happy to see him leave.

Actually the possibility of a communist conspiracy involving Oswald

could have triggered World War ii.

This was taken very seriously at the highest levels of the government.

Dick, yes, you and my man on that permission and you're gonna do it.

And don't tell me what you can do and what you can't.

This is a question that has a good many more ramifications.

And on the surface, we got to take this out of the arena where they testifying

at ku, Jeff and Castro did this and did that, and, uh, kicking us into a war that

can kill 40 million Americans in an hour.

Now, the reason I asked Warrens cause he's the chief justice of this country, He came

down there and he told me no twice, and I just pulled out what Hoover told me.

About a little incident in Mexico sit in.

I said, Now, I don't want Mr.

Cru to be testifying for a camera that he killed this fella.

And he started crying.

He said, Well, I won't turn you down.

I'll just do whatever you say.

It appears that LBJ bullied Earl Warren into heading the commission by giving him

the impression that there was evidence for a communist conspiracy painting.

Oswald as a lone nut may have been seen as a moral imperative to avoid

nuclear war, but a coverup of Oswald's supposed communist ties may actually

have served as a coverup for something even more sinister and closer to home.

When the Dallas police went to the paint household, one of the detectives

wrote a report about taking out several filing cabinets of notations

and cards and maps, et cetera.

Of Castro sympathizers.

This makes a very good case.

I believe that Michael and Ruth were involved in surveillance

activities of the American left.

These cabinets existed until the Warrant Commission, because there's

several exhibit numbers in the Warrant Commission that referred to them.

But the big difference is when the Warren Commission went through them,

they only found something like one letter from Ruth to one of her relatives.

So in other words, if the original report is accurate, somebody fiddled

with the contents of those file cabinets.

I learned a lot about what's written isn't always true in newspapers and magazines.

One magazine said the police took out.

File boxes of Cuba sympathizers names?

Well, they were my three boxes of, uh, folk dance records, my three little

file boxes of my college papers and a, uh, projector for 16 millimeter camera.

Um, those with the seven boxes of Cuban names.

This is one of the so-called filing cabinets that contained, there's

a report that they contained names and info on Cuban sympathizers.

Yeah, I think that's nonsense.

This is who I used to work for years ago.

That was a special agent.

Did background investigations for the government and uh, just, you

know, for security clearances.

So I've got a natural curiosity.

in 2013, I found out that Ruth Payne was living right here in Santa

Rosa, and a friendship developed.

We're not best of friends, but you know, she knows me well and she

likes me enough that she's given me some very interesting, uh, items.

This entire album here is relating to the pays and many things they've signed

for me of, um, this is Ruth's box of FBI investigative reports that she obtained

under the Freedom of Information Act.

She's read books, she's got a collection.

Her notes are on here, and certainly I'm sure she went through all

of this and, and read all of it.

She's an avid student of the assassination herself.

This is Ruth speaking to me back in August of 2017, says, thanks

for all the work investigating what was available on the internet.

She wanted me to find out about this, uh, particular warrant commission exhibit.

It says Commission exhibit number 4 58.

There's certainly a lot of misinformation traveling around the internet.

All the things the police took were taken without my permission.

When the issue of the contents of the file cabinets came up, Ruth's testimony

was taken off the record and the exhibit numbers were omitted without explanation.

I don't think the pains are hiding anything.

I really don't.

She hasn't shy away from talking about the assassination.

I think she feels a little bit of celebrity in herself.

She's an historical figure in terms of the assassination.

You know, she can't avoid that.

The main accusation against the pains is that they were used in some way, but

they were doing intelligence work looking after radicals and communists and that the

looking after the oswalt was part of that.

I don't know.

There's so much that just all of it can't be true.

I have a sense that the pains, when I talk to them, were speaking from the heart and

talking truthfully, speaking truthfully.

But can I say a hundred percent?

No.

She express to me Friday evening after we had come from the police station,

that she was very worried that this might prevent her staying in the United States.

She could not imagine her husband doing anything of this sort.

He, uh, never said anything that she heard derogatory about.

Husband Marino's mother-in-law, that is his mother, Margarite, invited

this photographer to come to the house and that's why there are pictures.

And this picture was taken as they were getting ready to go in to try

to see Lee at the police station.

I did see Marina later, but really the last contact I had was the

day after the assassination.

I guess the hardest part was not knowing what was going on with Marina

and how she was and what she needed.

Marina was held in federal protective custody for two months

following the assassination.

There are reports that she was coerced into cooperating with the

FBI under threat of deportation.

Marina.

Do you believe that your husband killed President Kennedy?

Well, I don't want to believe, uh, but, uh, I have too much facts and fact.

Tell me, uh, let me shut Kennedy,

who gets two telephone calls on Sunday, two days after the assassination

from Lee Oswald in prison.

Ruth Payne, He telephoned.

The first call, he was asking me to contact a lawyer in New

York and gave me a phone number.

I was quite surprised that he was asking anything of me at this

point, and I was not terribly keen on doing anything for him.

But I thought, yeah, he needs representation.

And so I said I would call.

I did, but I didn't get any answer.

I mean, it just rang.

These people have given me a hearing without legal representation or anything.

I didn't shoot anybody for that.

And then he called again later in the evening to ask to speak to Marina,

cuz he didn't know where she was.

I said, Well, she's not here.

Those calls would've been a footnote to the entire story.

They became important only because they were the last telephone calls

that Lee Oswald made to anybody in the world, and they were to Ruth Payne.

And the only person who can say what Oswald said is Ruth.

He's been shot.

He's been shot.

Oswald was in custody for 48 hours.

But authorities denied that any official records or recordings were

kept during his interrogations.

Millions watched on live TV as he was killed by Jack Ruby, a local

strip club owner with connections to both the mob and the police force.

My first thought was, Oh, and Marina won't have to go to trial.

It'll be simpler.

Uh, so.

I wasn't really a good thought.

Mrs.

Payne, you have been reluctant to speak to television cameras before this evening.

Is there any particular reason for that?

Yes, I think, uh, it's a terrible thing to judge a man before he is

brought to trial, and in this case it's very difficult thing not to do.

The evidence was so incriminating just as we, all of us, the nation saw it on the

television, but now of course, he's dead.

He has been in effect, judged quickly and hanged, and there's no question

of ping people by what we say now.

The world will never know the true facts of what occurred.

My motives, the people that have so much to gain and have such an material

motive for putting me in a position on him, will never lift the true facts.

Board to the to the world.

Are they speaking very high positions, Jack?

Yes.

Since 1959, I felt and knew that Lee, uh, was not a defector,

that he was a government agent.

And I still believe, and still say that Lee Harvey Oswell was set up.

We are all Marines family.

My oldest boy is in the airport and Robert Lee's brother was

a Marine and Lee was a Marine.

And I know that this boy loved the Marines and could not have been a defector.

This is a framework.

Mar Oswald was convinced that he was an agent.

US agent said that when he defected, she went to the state

department, got red carpet treatment, they assured her not to worry.

The Sopr film is a visual record of the assassination To think that if the

film did not exist, that home movie of the assassination did not exist.

We would never be able to prove with any certainty what happened at D De Plaza.

The president was hit in the head.

That's an unconfirmed report that the president was hit in the head.

President's wife, Jackie Kennedy was not hurt.

She walked into the hospital at her husband's stretcher side.

I'm a native of Dallas.

November 22nd, 1963.

I was, um, downtown cheering for my president.

My roommate was teaching at an elementary school, and when it came on over the pa.

That the president had been shot.

The fifth graders in her class cheered.

These kids were hearing at home that Kennedy was a communist, and that's

what was said everywhere in Dallas.

Ladies, gentlemen, welcome to the famous Grassing all area here, Inve Plaza.

This is the, uh, infamous location where President Kennedy was assassinated.

That happened 51 years ago.

Today, Officer Hargan ran up here and when we got up here, I

was standing about right here.

He had blood on his helmet, his face, his shirt.

He had blood and brain.

He was just recovering with blood and brain.

This, I got it from, uh, Arlington National Cemetery.

Actually, when I went to see, uh, President Kennedy's grave site,

I'm more inclined to believe that Oswald didn't act alone.

Yeah,

this man did it.

Lee Harvey Oswald, in my opinion, I mean all the evidence

points to him, it was him.

He tried shooting a, a general Don here, maybe months before this.

They found out it was the same rifle he had

looking the situation over back there, 40 steps behind me.

A bullet crashed through the window and just missed me, and my arm was

laying on the desk and it was bleeding in three places, which turned out to

be fragments from the shell casing.

He had decided to take a shot and try to kill Walker.

Who was a John Birch society leader, very right wing Walker, made sense for him.

That photograph of him with the guns, that was to say about Walker.

I did it and I'm glad seven or eight days after the assassination, Ruth

Payne says she has to return a couple of books to Marina out of nowhere.

In one of those books, she accidentally finds this note,

which the FBI turns into a piece of evidence about the walker shooting.

By the time that gets to the Warrant commission, this is supposed to be

a precedent for Oswald shooting.

Kennedy.

If I hadn't taken that book to Marina, we might not even know that

he had made the attempt on Walker.

I was sending things to Marina and of course they looked through a book to

see what might fall out and out fell.

This note that I didn't know was there.

A couple of people from Secret Service came to me and said, Mrs.

Vain.

He recognized this note.

No, I didn't recognize it.

Do I know the handwriting?

No.

Didn't know the handwriting.

She had hidden the note that he wrote her that April when he went

out to try to shoot Edwin Walker, The Secret Service returned that note to

Ruth saying, This is yours, isn't it

That's how suspicious Secret Service was of Ruth Payne.

They thought, she wrote the note of all the defeats in the Cold War.

The capture of Cuba by the communists is the most unacceptable.

The best witness on the Walker case said he saw two people there and it didn't

seem like either one of 'em was oswell.

A lot of people think, frankly, that Walker set up the shooting himself.

The shooter was 30 yards away from a stationary target, and he missed,

but yet we're supposed to believe.

That Oswald hit a moving target from as far away as 270 feet.

There were seven fingerprints taken off the so-called Walker note.

None of them matched Lee.

None of them matched Marina other than Marina.

Ruth Payne has been history's most important witness against Lee Harvey.

Oswald Ruth in her garage provided much of the incriminating evidence and

the Walker note wasn't the only piece that curiously popped up after the

initial police search of Ruth's home.

The infamous backyard photos were found in the second police search

the day after the assassination, and Ruth later handed over two cameras

that had supposedly been overlooked.

One was matched to the backyard photos, the other was a miniature

spy camera, which has intrigued researchers for decades.

Two weeks after the assassination, as doubts about Oswald's trip to Mexico were

surfacing, Ruth miraculously found several incriminating items sitting in a drawer

in the room where the Oswalds had stayed.

You studied Russian?

Yes.

When did you first begin to study Russian?

I think it was around, um, 57.

I been working with a young Quaker group that was interested in cultural exchange.

Yes, it just happened.

Just a coincidence that you chose Russian as a language of your interest?

That just a coincidence?

No, it wasn't a coincidence at all.

I'm telling you that's because I felt there was, it was really

important to communicate among, between our countries in particular.

This was era of the, uh, Cold War, so well.

Okay, and is it a coincidence that it was you, Mrs.

Um Payne?

Yeah.

Yes.

Who directed Lee to the job that put him in the Texas School book Depository?

Yes.

I think that was clearly a coincidence, and it's just a coincidence that

the gun that supposedly killed the president was located in your house.

What do you mean coincidence?

I mean, it just happened.

It's just all of these things just sort of happened all around you.

That's coincidence Now, Mrs.

Payne, I want to tell you something.

I've talked to you about mere coincidences, but you can see that's

a little guilt by association.

Yes.

You can see how when I place questions to you like this, that people can come to

conclusions that you feel are wrong about.

That's true.

In the late fifties, Ruth Payne was in charge of a Quaker

cultural exchange program.

The EastWest Contacts Committee set up Pen pal correspondence

between young Soviets and Americans.

Ruth's group had a liaison in the State Department who was in

close communication with the cia.

Some researchers believe that Ruth May have been recruited as an

intelligence asset during this time.

The CIA was careful not to be directly involved in that, but I think was

in fact giving a certain amount of support to that sort of thing.

I think the story is the pains were used.

Uh, I think they were given very little information and I think they

weren't very real sense victimized.

How do you feel about this stuff proliferating on the internet?

Well, I don't look, That's how I feel about it.

Just live my life.

Separate from that as best I can.

I was surprised after there was a little article in the local paper about me

and some of the comments were horrible.

It's an open internet, so it has a lot of things that are, are not true.

I have

take it now.

Yes.

Yes.

All right.

You bid clubs first?

I did bid club first.

Okay.

So I think So

we don't get photographed every day.

You don't?

No.

Oh,

I think Ruth does much more than I do.

Look fast.

In the aftermath of the assassination, Ruth and Michael

patched up their marriage.

Michael moved back in and they stayed together until 1970 when

they finally did divorce for Good over the following decades.

Ruth worked in various schools as a principal and psychologist.

She raised two children, mostly on her own, and went to graduate

school for a master's in child Psychology, 40 above the bottom.

Later on in her life, Ruth Payne goes down to Nicaragua and there were reports

of her going to San Sympathizer meetings and taking notations of what went down for

many, many people, the veneer come off.

Ruth and Michael Payne, I mean, they're just not credible anymore.

I know woman who in the early 1990s worked with Ruth Payne as a

Christian peace activist in Nicaragua.

This was during the time of the Civil War in Nicaragua, during the Reagan and Bush.

One years.

It was a contentious time down there.

It was very clear that the CIA was supporting the so-called contra freedom

buyers all the way the Contras were the ones opposing the Sanda revolution.

The Christian group that this woman and Ruth were involved with was

called Proco, and they were helping the poor people of Nicaragua who

naturally sided with the Sandinistas.

And because of this, these Christian peace groups were often heavily monitored

by our US intelligence agencies.

My work in Nicaragua was with a Quaker organization.

We had a project to help the poorest of the poor in Nicarag.

And at one of these meetings, a woman showed up and proceeded

to accuse me of a lot of things.

She introduced herself as Ruth Payne representing the Quakers, and I said,

Well, you're not the Quaker Ruth Payne.

Who knew Marina Oswald?

Are you?

This woman told me that after Sue Wheaton had told people about Ruth's

association with the assassination, which they did not know about, then

they became even more suspicious of her.

She and others in their organization believed that Ruth was a CIA agent or

asset who was down there for the purpose of gathering information about the group.

So Ruth had a photographer that came and was with her.

He was there snapping everybody, and that's when they said, Well,

we're doing this article for the Nicaragua network, but Nicaragua

Network had never heard such a story.

They were taking everybody's picture at a meeting and we tried

to take their picture and they left.

I think in her being one of the primary defenders, if not the primary

defender of the official story.

She's been a disinformation agent about the Kennedy assassination.

So even if she didn't have prior knowledge, she continued for whatever

her motives were, whether threat or pure belief to go along with it.

It's so easy to justify what you do.

You know, it is for any of,

I knew that eventually I had to start asking Ruth some even more

uncomfortable questions, even if it could jeopardize our relationship

to let her story go unchallenged would be a disservice to history.

Ready?

Yes.

I've been studying this case for the last few years and trying to be objective

and taking all different viewpoints.

Oh, really?

Okay.

Try not to be too abied Sucks.

, it seems maybe a little extreme to completely dismiss the questions

of conspiracy with all that's come out over the years to you.

It's extreme.

Yeah.

To dismiss the idea of conspiracy, to me it's, uh, it's not extreme because the

things I saw were so telling everything I saw pointed to him and him alone.

Well, this, this is some sort of CIA declassified document about your sister.

Yeah.

Okay.

It's possible researchers have determined that Ruth's sister,

Sylvia, Worked as a psychologist for the cia, likely beginning in 1954.

The document indicates that she was still working there as of 1961.

She had studied psychology, I guess, and she, uh, was helping to develop tests

of intelligence that didn't involve language because they wanted to get

bright people working on the oil fields.

So that's all I know about what she did.

Ruth's father, William Avery Hyde did extensive work for

the Agency for International Development in Latin America.

A I was a well known cover for CIA personnel, and Hyde filed reports

that were directly routed to the cia.

This document reveals that he was under consideration by the

CIA for covert use in Vietnam.

My family had a hostility to communism because my parents had been

active in the cooperative movement.

This is New York City where the, where the local, um, Communist

party people wanted to take over.

Part of the things I was raised up knowing is that, uh, uh, communist

would, uh, think that the end justifies the means, and my folks

didn't feel that way at all, nor do I.

During the Cold War, the government recruited many informants and agents

among liberals who saw communism as the great threat to freedom and democracy.

Risk.

Family seems to fit this description.

It seems that sometimes it's families that are employed within

the intelligence community.

Whole families.

Yeah.

Multiple members of the family.

You mean therefore, I wasn't Also . That's one of the accusations

I see in the summer of 1963.

Ruth Payne set out on a long road trip to visit friends and relatives.

She stayed on Naan Island and later spent several days at her sister's

house in the Washington DC area.

Her last stop in late September was to pick up Marin Oswald in

New Orleans and bring her and the Oswald's belongings back to Dallas.

It's right around this time that Lee Oswald allegedly visits the

Soviet Embassy in Mexico City.

Although we know that even j Edgar Hoover had doubts about that by early October.

Oswald is back in Dallas, where Ruth soon helps him get the

job at the book depository.

Five weeks later, the president is dead.

Do you see why people take these connections as being suspicious?

Yeah.

Long term, I'm hoping that real history will prevail.

Max Holland has been a researcher, especially looking at what the Warren

Commission did and what they didn't do, what they knew, and what they didn't know.

That's good research.

I have met Ruth.

I instantly felt an affinity for her because I went to the same college,

Antioch College, and I also worked for the Quakers for a couple years in Washington.

I knew her mentality.

She's not duplicitous or there's not a person hiding

behind the person she presents.

She's, you know, probably one of the most above board people I've ever met.

Quakers often tend to be like that.

They were very, very good people and therefore so ironic that

they were caught up in it.

But in a way, thank goodness it was them and not somebody else.

Ruth has behaved awfully, awfully well.

She handled it just by being honest every step of the way.

I think that they were very, very innocent and maybe their

innocence was a kind of shield.

A favorite tactic of conspiracy theorists is to make accusations

that anybody who they disagree with as a connection with intelligence

community, it's been made against me.

It's been made against Ruth and Michael.

The only explanation could be that we're part of the coverup paid by the cia,

or, uh, for better or worse, I did write one article for a CIA published journal.

So people have turned that into the fact that I work for the cia.

I was aware they gave monetary awards for the best articles of the year.

That's how I earned my living is getting paid for my writing.

So I accepted the award, of course, because it was a thousand dollars.

Priscilla McMillan had remarkable connection because she was

chosen to interview Oswald.

Then, because she was good in Russian, she was able to talk with

Marina after the assassination.

Then they became friends, and then she wrote a book called Marina and Lee, and

it's very personal about the two of them.

She gave me the right to write the truth as I saw it, no

matter how unfavorable it might.

They say there's a document that calls you a winning collaborator of the cia.

What do you make of that?

A leading collaborator.

An unwitting.

A witting asset.

An unwitting asset.

I think they say wit, so I guess that means waiting.

No, I I was just waiting.

Or me . No.

You applied to work for the cia?

Apparently I did.

In the summer of 1953.

Was it 53?

I've seen that date, but I think while I was in college, which would've been

summer of 49, I may, I might have not only was Priscilla Johnson McMillan

classified as a winning collaborator.

She was also debriefed by the CIA on multiple occasions.

In a 1962 contact report, the CIA officer writes, I think that Ms.

Johnson can be encouraged to write pretty much the articles we want.

I was convinced that she will be the right, right person to work with.

She convinced me that it would be very important for history.

Try to explain why such a things happen.

Marina Oswald Porter.

Good evening, Marina.

Hello.

Good evening to you too.

Marina Oswald a hard time.

There is one person's voice obviously missing from this story.

Marina Oswald was only 22 at the time of the assassination.

She's in her early eighties now, still living in the Dallas area.

Marina had long been a convincing witness proclaiming Oswald's.

But in the eighties and nineties, she became an outspoken

critic of the official story.

She did a few interviews during this time, but it was clear that most of

the media had no intention of taking her seriously, and she has refused

all requests for the last 25 years.

To all the evidence conspiracy theories are intact, questions do

remain, and people don't believe.

Among those who don't believe are Mrs.

Kenneth Porter, the former wife of Olivia Harvey Oswell.

Do you believe that he did not pull the trigger, that he

did not fire the fatal shots?

Well, he definitely did not fire, uh, the shots according to all the

evidence that I have right now.

You acknowledge that Lee Harvey Oswald was a man who had been abusive to you.

You have said recently that you did not love him in any way.

I did not.

I never said I did not love him.

Did you love him?

I said, of course I did.

Why are you so eager now?

To protect his memory when at the time you agreed that very

likely he was the assassin.

Yes, I did believe in, in government of this country and law, and

I assume blindly that what I have been told must be correct.

But the fact, But the fact is that there have been a number of independent

investigations now by independent journalists and by independent authors,

and they also have come to the conclusion.

They have come to the conclusion, not they've come to the conclusion.

In 1968, Marina testified that the Secret Service told her you

were associated with the cia.

Yeah.

Well, so what am I supposed to do with this?

What's your reaction?

Why would they tell her that?

I had the impression it was more her brother-in-law rather than Secret

Service or somebody that, that should have told her to stay clear of me.

Did you stay in touch with Marina after the assassination?

We arranged twice to get together.

Once with, um, after she had testified at the Warren Commission.

Then one other time after she bought a house, she wanted to

show it to me and I went over and we visited with our children.

You know, it was just very sad because the, what had happened in

the Kennedy being killed was the biggest thing in either our lives,

and it was just an awful, awful thing.

So, um, I didn't pursue seeing her more and then she got taken up by other people

who thought there was a conspiracy.

Wouldn't it be nice to think it wasn't he, if you're the wife, I finally

did get ahold of Marina's phone number, and she actually answered,

Marina was very friendly trying to.

But she still declined an interview.

She told me not to waste my life on this, that it's too late, and

that the truth will never come out.

The official story just does not stand up to scrutiny at all, and those who

believe it are not invested enough, and I'd even go so far as to say they're

not patriotic enough to try to learn a little bit of very important history.

It's all out there.

Now, one of the things that you study, if you try and take in the big

picture, is what happened to American foreign policy after when Kennedy

was assassinated, there was not one American combat troop in Vietnam.

By 1967, there were over half a million here, American foreign policy

becomes much more militant, much more violent in its third world.

In the coming years, as the Kennedy case is better understood, we'll have a

less exceptionalist view of ourselves.

We don't want to look at ourselves as a shining city on a hill.

That's simply a fantasy.

The failure of the war Commission truly did contribute to the decline

of American democracy and belief in the government, and a cynicism

that permeates the system today.

The direction we're heading now is, is one that's quite terrifying, Endless war,

the militarization of our own police, the huge incarceration state we have.

It's a frightening situation we're in.

It's part of our national legacy.

What happened here, it's part of what steered us in the direction of the

national security state we have today.

We're not told the truth about major policy decisions for decades afterwards,

if ever, and as a result, we have a hidden history of the United States.

There's no mystery here.

It's all self-evident.

It was a coup.

It was designed to be a false mystery, and the debate would be eternal and

the focus on why it was done forgotten.

There's a lot of people who don't like to think the worst about their government,

who don't want to believe that the Warren Commission was a deliberate cover up, and

that Oswald was really an agent of his government and the people around Oswald

framed him for a crime he didn't commit.

It's not mom apple pie in America.

To think things like that in order to commit yourself to truth here,

you're changing your very identity from a citizen of a democracy

to subject of a military empire.

A big step.

Their theory is that you and Michael were involved in surveillance

activities of the radical left.

What that you and Michael were involved in Surveillance

activities of the radical left.

Uh, and that watching it would be the radical left Cuban sympathizers.

Oh, communists.

Oh, absolute news to me.

I wasn't, was not aware of surveilling anybody.

or, or p or watching oal.

Maybe watching Oswald was a job.

You had to keep an eye on this like young communist effector who had returned.

Nonsense.

Absolutely nonsense.

Have you ever done any work for the FBI or cia?

No, I haven't.

No, I was not a oswell sitter for the CIA or whatever kind of

story they're trying to tell.

One of the things that I have felt very strongly is that it was important for

me to answer questions and to say what I knew because I'm interested in truth.

I have really less and less patience with the people who are

still looking for a conspiracy.

It's great that we live in a country that where people can put

out their false notions freely.

That doesn't happen in much of the world, and we can be proud that people

can write books that are full of falsehoods and print 'em and not get.

I'm a very independent person, kind of nobody tells me what to do.

. Mm-hmm.