Original subtitles

But we can no longer risk

emergency improvisation of national defense.

We have been compelled to create

a permanent armaments industry

of vast proportions.

Added to this...

three and a half million men and women

are directly engaged

in the defense establishment.

We annually spend on military security alone...

- January 1961.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower's Farewell Address to the nation.

Now this conjunction...

of an immense military establishment

and a large arms industry

is new...

in the American experience.

The total influence...

economic, political, even spiritual,

is felt in every city,

every state house,

every office of the federal government.

- We must guard against the acquisition

of unwarranted influence,

whether sought or unsought,

by the military-industrial complex.

We must never let the weight

of this combination

endanger our liberties,

or democratic processes.

November, 1960.

Senator John Fitzgerald Kennedy,

of Massachusetts,

wins one of the narrowest

election victories in American history

over the vice president,

Richard Nixon,

by a little more than 100,000 votes.

Alongside his beautiful

and elegant wife, Jacqueline Bouvier,

Kennedy is the symbol

of the new freedom of the 1960s,

signifying change and upheaval

to the American public.

That all men are created equal.

Every degree of mind and spirit

that I possess...

will be devoted to the cause of freedom around the world.

Today, the proudest boast is...

"Ich bin ein Berliner!"

He inherits a secret war

- against the communist Castro dictatorship

in Cuba, a war run by the CIA

and angry Cuban exiles.

Castro is a successful revolutionary,

frightening to American business interests

in Latin America.

This war culminates

in the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion

in April 1961,

when Kennedy refuses to provide air cover

for the exiled Cuban brigade.

- Kennedy, taking public responsibility

for the failure,

privately claims the CIA lied to him

and tried to manipulate him

into ordering an all-out American invasion

of Cuba.

In October 1962, the world comes

to the brink of nuclear war,

when Kennedy quarantines Cuba

after announcing the presence of offensive

- Soviet nuclear missiles

90 miles off American shores.

Soviet ships with more missiles

sail towards the island,

but at the last moment,

they turn back.

- The world breathes with relief.

In Washington, rumors abound that JFK

has cut a secret deal

with Russian Premier Khrushchev

- ...no wish to war with Soviet Union... - not to invade Cuba

in return for a Russian withdrawal

of missiles.

Suspicions abound

that Kennedy is soft on communism.

Kennedy also finds himself embroiled

in Laos and Vietnam.

We've got our difficulties there,

quite obviously.

Unless a greater effort is made by the government,

to win popular support, I don't think that

the war can be won out there.

And the final analysis...

it's their war.

They're the ones who have to win it or lose it.

Early that fateful summer,

Kennedy speaks of his new vision

at the American University in Washington.

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.

We must reexamine our own attitudes

towards the Soviet Union.

Our most basic, common link

is that we all inhabit

this small planet.

We all breathe the same air.

We all cherish our children's futures.

And we are all mortal.

You fucking asshole!

You come back here!

Don't leave me here!

They're going up to Dallas.

Friday.

They're gonna...kill...Kennedy.

Call somebody...

And stop them.

These are serious fucking guys!

She's high as a kite on something.

- Been that way since they brought her in. - Please help!

Please!

In Dallas, Texas,

three shots were fired

at President Kennedy's motorcade

in Downtown Dallas.

The first reports say that

President Kennedy has been seriously wounded

by this shooting.

What's wrong, Lou?

Boss, the president's been shot.

In Dallas. Five minutes ago.

Oh, no.

How bad?

There's no word yet,

but they think it's in the head.

Come on.

Napoleon's has a TV set.

Apparently, three bullets were found.

Governor Connally also appeared to have been hit.

The President was rushed by Secret Service

to Parkland Memorial Hospital,

four miles from Dealey Plaza.

We are told a bullet entered the base of the throat,

and came out of the backside,

but there is no confirmation.

Blood transfusions are being given.

A priest has administered the last rites.

There's still a chance, damnit.

Come on, Jack. Pull through.

From Dallas, Texas.

The flash, apparently official.

President Kennedy died

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

2:00 Eastern Standard Time.

Some 38 minutes ago.

Vice President Lyndon Johnson

has left the hospital.

Presumably, he will be taking the oath of office shortly

and become the 36th President of the United States.

He did so much for this country,

for colored people.

Why?

Why?

He's dirty!

Goodbye, you sorry bastard!

Die!

- Hey, shut the fuck up!

God, I'm ashamed to be an American today.

The President of the United States...

is dead.

I have just talked to Father Oscar Hubert,

of the Holy Trinity Catholic Church.

He and another priest tell me that the pair of men

had just administered the last rites

to President Kennedy.

Shortly after 12:30,

as the president's motorcade near the freeway entrance

near the park in the westside of Downtown Dallas,

those terrible shots rang out.

The president is dead.

Bullets were coming up over our heads...

from that fence up on the knoll.

- I seen his face when it hit. He just...

His ear blew off...

and he turns this real white.

He kind of flopped over on his stomach...

And um...

with his foot sticking out.

Excuse me.

None of us thought it could happen in America

- or any place else, and yet...

All this blubbering over that no-count son of a bitch.

They're bawling like they knew the man.

Makes me want to puke.

For God's sake, chief, the president was shot.

A bullshit president.

I don't see anybody crying for all those thousands of Cubans

that bastard condemned to death and torture at Bay of Pigs.

Goddamn peace treaties.

I heard shots from over there.

Well, I heard some shots from right over there.

- How many shots? - Uh, I can't...

That's what happens when you let the niggers vote.

They get together with the Jews and the Catholics...

and elect an Irish bleeding heart.

Uh, chief, maybe you had a little too much to drink.

Bullshit.

Here's to the New Frontier.

Camelot in smithereens.

I'll drink to that.

A flash bulletin.

Dallas police have just announced that they have a suspect

in the killing of a Dallas police officer, a J. D. Tippit,

who was shot at 1:15 in Oak Cliff.

That's a suburb of Dallas.

Police are saying there could be a tie-in, here,

- to the murder of the president.

The suspect, identified as Lee Harvey Oswald,

was arrested by more than a dozen police officers,

after a short scuffle at the Texas movie theater in Oak CIiff.

Officer Tippit was killed apparently...

...by a revolver, which was found on Oswald.

There is apparently...

They oughta just shoot the bastard!

They should give him a medal for shooting Kennedy!

- Oswald!

Oswald, did you fire that rifle?

No, sir, I didn't.

I don't know what I am charged with,

- but I emphatically deny these charges.

Well, the kid must've gone nuts, right?

- I said, Oswald must've flipped. - Yeah.

- Right? - Yeah.

Just went ahead and did this crazy thing before anybody could stop him.

I think I'll get out of here. I've got to get home, chief.

What the hell are you talking about?

Yeah, who would ever have thought

that goofy Oswald kid would pull a stunt like an assassination.

Just goes to show, you never can know about some people.

- Am I right, Jack? - Yeah.

- Am I right, Jack? - Yeah.

- Well, bless my soul. - Huh?

Yeah, all these years I thought you were on my team.

Sometimes, I don't know. Are you kidding?

I couldn't be more serious, Jack.

The little red eyes of yours have me wondering about your loyalty.

Look at that. Look at that lightning.

- Who's been going through my files? - Huh?

You've been going through my files, haven't you?

You little weasel.

You're starting to get paranoid.

You really are!

You were going through all my files.

You're a goddamn spy.

Why the hell would I want to look through your files, chief?

I've seen enough here this summer already to write a book.

I always lock my files!

You're the only one here today.

- What do you mean, you bastard? - Huh?

What do you mean, you're going to write a book?

What? No, I mean, well, you know what I mean.

I've seen a lot of strange things here.

Strange people.

You didn't see a goddamn thing!

- Goddamn you.

You didn't see a goddamn thing,

you hear me, you little weasel?

- You didn't see a goddamn thing!

Full name is Lee Harvey Oswald.

O-S-W-A-L-D.

- Stand back, please. - Did you shoot the president?

I didn't shoot anybody, no, sir.

They have taken me in because of the fact

I have lived in the Soviet Union.

I'm just a patsy!

God, he sure looks like a creep.

I protested at that time I was not allowed legal representation...

during that very short and sweet hearing...

I really don't know what this situation is about.

Nobody has told me anything, except that I am accused of

murdering a policeman.

I know nothing more than that, and I do request

someone to come forward to give me legal assistance.

Were you ever in the Free Cuba movement

or whatever that it's called?

That's the Fair Play for Cuba Committee.

What did you do in Russia?

And what happened to your eye?

He seems pretty cool to me for a man under pressure like that.

- A policeman hit me.

Gives me the willies.

Okay, come on, sugarplums, it's past your bedtimes.

Oh, Mattie, honey.

- Get a hold of yourself.

Why, Mr. Jim?

He was a fine man.

Lee Harvey Oswald...

- A fine man. - After a stint in the marines,

he apparently became fascinated

by communism.

He is still believed to be a dedicated Marxist

and a fanatical supporter of Fidel Castro

and ultra left-wing causes.

He spent last summer in New Orleans

and was arrested there in a brawl

with anti-Castro Cuban exiles.

And apparently, Bob, Oswald has been passing out...

- Hello, Lou?

Yeah, sorry to disturb you this late.

It's all right, I'm watching it, too.

Yeah, a matter of routine,

but we better get on this Oswald connection to New Orleans right away.

- Mm-hmm. - I want you to check out his record.

Find any friends or associates from last summer.

Let's meet with the senior assistants and investigators

day after tomorrow, all right?

That'd be on Sunday?

Sunday, yeah, at 11:00.

- All right. - All right. Thanks, Lou.

I would say that, without any doubt,

he is the killer.

The law says beyond a reasonable doubt

and to a moral certainty.

I thought it was a motorcycle backfire,

and I looked over to my left

and a second shot hit him in the face.

Police say the rifle,

a cheap World War II, Italian-made Mannlicher-Carcano...

was ordered from a Chicago mailing house

and shipped to Oswald's alias, A. Hidell,

at a post office box in March of 1963.

This is the same rifle that was used

to assassinate the president.

That ties it up.

He did what?

Another nut.

Jesus Christ! Anybody can get a rifle in Texas.

As far as Oswald's associates, boss,

the one name that keeps popping up is David Ferrie.

Oswald was seen with him several times last summer.

I know David.

Strange character.

Yeah, he's been in trouble before.

Used to be a hot-shot pilot for Eastern Airlines

but got canned after an alleged homosexual incident

- with a 14 year old. - These backyard photos

were found yesterday among Oswald's possessions.

- Get Kohiman.

He told somebody the Texas trip.

Yesterday, mentioned to somebody about Ferrie.

Find it out.

Did he shoot the president, Marina?

He no shoot anyone.

He good-- good man. Good husband.

So it seems David Ferrie drove off on Friday afternoon for Texas.

A source told Kohlman he might have been a getaway pilot for Oswald.

What getaway pilot?

Hold on. Hold your horses.

What kind of source?

The anonymous kind, chief.

I think I remember this guy Ferrie,

speaking at a meeting of some veterans group,

ranting against Castro.

Extreme sort of stuff.

Susie, back up.

They're bringing him out.

- Numa, turn it up. - Yeah.

- Here he comes!

Come on, here he comes! Get that stuff!

Come on, let's get him!

Is there anything you want to say in your defense?

Oswald!

What happened?

He's been shot! - He shot him!

- He's been shot!

He shot him on TV! Just shot him!

There's a man with a gun!

- There's absolute panic! - It's the guy in the hat.

Seventy cops in that place. What the hell were they doing?

Well, no trial now.

Looks like somebody just saved the Dallas DA a pile of work.

Pandemonium has broken loose here in the basement of Dallas Police...

Lou.

Lou, let's get David Ferrie in here anyway.

It's wrong.

This is crazy!

Yesterday, in the midst of sorrow,

the business of government went on.

The President meeting with Henry Cabot Lodge,

our ambassador to Vietnam,

and members of his cabinet.

The major subject was Vietnam,

a crisis that does not pause for bereavement.

And from this meeting, came affirmations that the United States

would continue its policy of aiding the new government of Vietnam

in its war against the communist insurgents.

Chief?

David Ferrie.

Come on in, Dave.

Thank you for coming.

You remember me, Mr. Garrison?

I met you on Carondelet Street, right after your election.

- I congratulated you, remember? - How could I forget?

You make quite a first impression.

And I've heard over the years you're quite a first-rate pilot, Dave.

- Really? - Yeah.

Legend has it you can get in and out of any field, no matter how small.

- Huh. - I'm a bit of a pilot myself.

Flew grasshoppers for the field artillery in the war.

Here, have a seat. Make yourself comfortable.

Mind if I smoke, Mr. Garrison?

How could I?

Dave, as you know,

President Kennedy was assassinated on Friday.

A man named Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested as a suspect,

and was then murdered, yesterday, by a man named Jack Ruby.

We've heard reports that Oswald spent the summer here in New Orleans,

and we've been advised that you knew Oswald pretty well.

I never met anybody named Oswald.

Anybody that told you that has to be crazy.

But you are aware, he served in your Civil Air Patrol unit

- when he was a teenager?

No. If he did, I don't remember him.

I mean, there were lots of boys in and out, you know?

Well, I'm sure you've seen this.

Perhaps you knew this man under another name.

No, I never saw him before in my life.

Well that must've been mistaken information we got, then.

Thanks for straightening it out for us.

There is one other matter that's come up, Dave.

We were told that you took a trip to Texas

shortly after the assassination on Friday.

Yeah, now that's true. I drove to Houston.

What was so appealing about Houston?

I hadn't been there ice skating in many years and I was with

a couple of young friends and we decided we wanted to go ice skating.

- Dave, may I ask why the urge

to go ice skating in Texas happened to strike you

during one of the most violent thunderstorms in recent memory?

Uh...

spur-of-the-moment thing.

- Storm wasn't that bad. - I see.

And where did you drive?

Uh, we went to Houston...

then Saturday night drove to Galveston

and stayed over there.

And then Sunday?

In the morning, we went goose hunting.

You bag any geese on this trip?

I believe the boys got a couple.

But the boys told us they didn't get any.

Come to think of it, they're right.

We got out there, where the geese were,

and there were thousands of them, all over the place.

But, uh, you couldn't approach ‘em.

They're a wise bunch of birds.

Your young friends also told us you had no weapons in the car, Dave.

Isn't it a bit difficult to hunt for geese without a shotgun?

Well...

Yes, I remember now.

I'm sorry, Mr. Garrison. I got confused.

We got out near the geese,

and only then did we realize we had forgotten our shotguns.

Stupid, right?

Uh, so, of course, we didn't get any geese.

I see, Dave. Well, thank you for your time.

I'm sorry that this has to end inconveniently for you,

but I'm going to have to detain you for further questioning by the FBI.

Why, what's wrong?

Dave, I find your story simply not believable.

Really?

Come on.

What part?

Gentlemen, this afternoon the FBI released

David W. Ferrie of New Orleans.

After extensive questioning and a thorough background check,

the Bureau found no evidence that Mr. Ferrie

- knew Lee Harvey Oswald,

or has had any connection with the assassination of President Kennedy.

The special agent in charge would like to make clear

that Mr. Ferrie was brought in for questioning

by the District Attorney of Orleans Parish, not by

- the Federal Bureau of Investigation. - I thought we were on the same side.

What the hell business is it of theirs to say that?

Pretty fast, wasn't it? The way they let him go.

They must know something we don't.

So let's get on with our lives, gentlemen.

We got plenty of home-grown crimes

- to prosecute. - President Johnson

- has announced the creation of

- a Blue Ribbon Presidential Commission

- to probe the events in Dallas. - Goodnight.

The Commission will be headed by Chief Justice

of the United States Supreme Court, Earl Warren,

and is expected to head off several Congressional

and Texas inquiries into the assassination.

On the panel are Allen Dulles, ex-chief of the CIA,

Representative Gerald Ford,

John J. McCloy,

former head of the Chase Manhattan Bank...

Fucking out of control.

All these hippies running around on drugs.

The way young people look,

you can't tell a boy from a girl anymore.

I saw a girl the other day.

She was pregnant.

You could see her whole belly.

And you know what she had painted on it?

"Love Child."

Oh, it's a mess down there, Jim.

We've bitten off more Vietnam than we can possibly chew.

‘Course it figures with that polecat Lyndon in the White House.

You know, I sometimes think things have gone downhill

since John Kennedy died, Senator.

Oh, don't get me started on that.

Those Warren Commission fellas were picking gnat shit out of pepper.

Nobody's gonna tell me that kid did the shooting job he did

from that damn bookstore.

- Here you go, Senator Long. - Oh, thank you, honey.

I thought the FBI test-fired the rifle to see if it could be done?

Sure, three experts, and not one of them could do it.

They're telling us that Oswald got off three shots

with world-class precision from a manual bolt-action rifle

in less than six seconds,

and, according to his Marine buddies,

he got Maggie's drawers.

You know what that means?

He wasn't any good.

Average man would be lucky to get two shots off.

- And I tell ya, the first shot

- would always be the best.

- Here, the third shot's perfect.

Then they got that crazy bullet zigzagging all over the place,

so it hits Kennedy and Connally seven times.

Ah.

One pristine bullet?

That dog don't hunt.

You know, something's always bothered me about that from day one, too.

Legal representation.

Do you think there were other men involved, Russell?

If I were investigating the case,

I'd round up 100 of the world's best riflemen,

find out which ones were in Dallas that day.

- You been duck hunting?

I think Oswald's a good, old-fashioned decoy.

What'd he say? "I'm just a patsy.”

You better believe it.

Jim?

Honey?

Dinner's just about ready.

Got a surprise for you tonight.

Tried something new.

Jim?

- Jim? - What?

Dinner.

Smells good, but, honey, do you realize that Oswald was interrogated

for 12 hours after the assassination with no lawyer present,

and nobody-- nobody recorded a word of it?

- Huh. - I can't believe it.

A police captain with 30 years experience and a crowd of federal agents

just had to know that with no record

anything that Oswald says is gonna be inadmissible in court.

Well, honey, why don't we talk about it at the dinner table.

It's getting cold.

Jasper, what are you doing in here?

Daddy said it was all right if I was real quiet.

Sure, it is.

Honey, if I ever handled a minor felon like that, it'd be all over the papers.

And this is the alleged murderer of the president!

- Do you really think so?

- Yeah. Again and again,

- credible testimony is ignored,

leads are never followed up, its conclusions selective,

there's no index, it's one of the sloppiest,

most disorganized investigations I've ever seen.

You know, dozens and dozens of witnesses in Dealey Plaza that day

are saying they heard shots coming from the grassy knoll area

in front of Kennedy, not the book depository behind him,

but it's all broken down and spread around,

and you read it and the point gets lost.

I never did believe it.

Mattie, I'll do the dishes. You take Eb on up.

Night, baby.

Elizabeth, honey, your bedtime, too.

Honey, that was three years ago.

We've all tried so hard to put it out of our minds,

you just keep digging it up again.

You're the DA of New Orleans.

Don't you think the Kennedy assassination is a little bit out of your domain?

I mean all those important people already studied it.

All right, I just can't believe a man as intelligent as Earl Warren

ever read what was in those volumes.

Well...

I mean, maybe you're right.

I'll give you one hour to solve the case,

till I can get these kids in bed,

and then you're mine,

and Mr. Kennedy will have to wait until morning.

Daddy, look what I drew.

Well that's something, Jasper. What is it?

- It's a rhino in a cage. - Mm-hmm.

- Can I stay up another hour? - I don't think so, son.

- Aw, Papa. - Pickle and Snapper.

My two favorite dancing partners.

- All right. Goodnight, doodle bugs.

- Goodnight. - One hour, you hear?

- Hmm? - Some Saturday night date you are.

Mama warned me this would happen if I married such a serious man as you.

- Oh, she did, huh? - Mm-hmm.

Well, when I come up,

I want to show you how Saturday night got invented.

All right?

I sealed off the area,

and I held off the trains until they could be examined,

and there were some transients taken on at least one train.

Mr. Bowers, I believe you already talked to us

about this matter before your deposition, is that correct?

Yes.

Now, is there anything else you told us

that I haven't asked you about that you can think of?

Nothing that I can recall.

Witness is excused.

Well, we got a long freight that was in there.

We pulled some people off there and took them to the station.

Do you mean some transients?

Tramps and hoboes.

And were all those questioned?

Yes, sir, they were taken to the station and questioned.

And?

Ask the question, ask the question.

All right, let's go back to that Amos Euins matter.

Uh, yes, sir.

Traffic had been cut off into the area since about 10:00,

but there were three cars that came in during this time, from around noon

- till the time of the shooting.

The cars circled the parking lot and left,

like they was checking the area.

And one of the drivers seemed to have something he was holding up to his mouth.

That last car came in about seven to 10 minutes before the shooting.

It was a white Chevrolet, four-door Impala,

muddy up to the windows.

Um... towards the underpass,

I saw two men.

They were standing behind a picket fence.

They were looking up towards Main and Houston,

- following the caravan as it came down.

Uh... one of them was middle-aged, heavyset.

The other man was younger.

There were two other men.

They were on the eastern end of the parking lot,

- and each of them had uniforms.

At the time of the shooting, there seemed to be some

commotion.

I just am unable to describe...

- A flash of light or smoke or...

- something...

- which caused me to feel that

something out of the ordinary had occurred there,

- on the embankment.

Goddamn.

No!

Jim?

- You all right? - Oh, honey, it's incredible.

What?

The whole thing.

A lieutenant colonel testifies that

Lee Oswald was given a Russian language exam as part of his Marine training

- only a few months before he defects

to the Soviet Union.

- A Russian exam! - I can't believe it.

Honey, it's 4:30 in the morning!

I have five kids

- gonna be awake in an hour and-- - Honey, in all my years in the military,

I never knew a single man who was given a Russian test.

Oswald was a radar operator. He--

He'd have about as much use for--

- for Russian as a cat has for pajamas. - These books...

have gotten to your mind, Mr. Garrison.

And then this-- this colonel.

- He makes it sound like nothing, he says - I wish you'd stop reading them.

- Oswald did badly on his test. He--

he got only two more Russian words right than wrong.

- Ha! That's like me saying Touchdown here

is not very intelligent because I beat him three games out of five

the last time we played chess.

What? Are you gonna...

stay up all night every night, for what?

So you'll be the only man in America that's read all 26 volumes

- of the Warren Report? - Do I have to spell it out for you?

Lee Oswald was no ordinary soldier, he was--

He was probably in military intelligence.

That's why he was trained in Russian.

- Let's go back to sleep. - There's no accident he's in Russia.

Let's go back to sleep.

Goddammit, dear, I've been sleeping for three years!

Morning, boys.

Ready for a walking tour?

7:30 Sunday morning.

It's not exactly fresh blood we're sniffing here, boss.

Old stains, Bill, but just as telling.

531 Lafayette Street.

Remember whose office this was in '63?

Sure, Guy Banister.

Ex-FBI man.

Died couple years ago.

Banister headed the Chicago office.

When he retired, he became a private eye here.

I used to have lunch with him.

John Birch Society, Minutemen.

- Oh yeah, I remember him now. - Slightly to the right of Attila the Hun.

He used to recruit college students

to infiltrate radical organizations on campus.

Headed the Anti-Communist League of the Caribbean.

All out of this office.

Come around here, I want to show you something.

See that?

Now, take a look here.

544 Camp Street.

531 Lafayette Street.

Same building, right?

But with different addresses and different entrances,

both going to the same place,

to the office upstairs.

Guess who used this address?

Lee Harvey Oswald.

Now how do we know he was here?

‘Cause this office address was stamped

on the pro-Castro leaflets

he was handing out in the summer of '63

down on Canal Street.

Now these are the same leaflets they found in his garage in Dallas.

What's this?

What the hell is this doing on this piece of paper?

After the arrest, 544 Camp Street

never appeared on the pamphlets again.

Asshole.

He was arrested that day for fighting with some anti-Castro Cubans,

but actually he had contacted them

a few days earlier as an ex-Marine

trying to join their anti-Castro crusade.

When they heard he was now pro-Castro...

well, they paid him a visit.

What is this Fidel shit?

You lied to me, you hypocrite!

Liar! Son of a bitch!

People, do not take this paper.

This is communist propaganda.

Carlos, if you want to hit me, hit me.

Come on, you pinko shit.

Go back to Moscow, communist!

- There was no real fight,

and the arresting lieutenant later said he felt it was a staged incident.

- Break it up!

In jail, Oswald has a private session

with Special Agent John Quigley of the FBI.

Oswald is released,

and Quigley destroys his notes from the interview.

The arrest gets him a lot of publicity and as a result...

Oswald appears on a local TV debate.

But you-- you are a communist, are you not?

Uh, no, Mr. Bringuier.

Uh, I am not a communist.

I'm a Marxist-Leninist.

You are not a communist, but you are a Marxist-Leninist?

What is the difference?

Now, here's another one for you.

What would you say if I told you...

Lee Oswald was trained in the Russian language when he was a Marine?

I'd say he was probably getting intelligence training.

Well, Lou, you were in the Marines.

Who would be running that training?

Office of Naval Intelligence.

Take a look across the street.

Post office.

Upstairs in 1963, that was the Office of Naval Intelligence.

And just by coincidence, Banister, before he was FBI, was ONI.

And what's that little saying they have?

"Once ONI, always ONL."

Well, he likes working near his old pals.

Bill...

Lou, we are standing in the heart of the United States government's

intelligence community in New Orleans.

That's the FBI there, all right? That's the CIA.

That's the Secret Service.

That's the ONI.

Now, doesn't this seem to you...

a rather strange place for a communist to spend his spare time?

What you driving at, boss?

We're going back into the case, Lou.

Murder of the president.

Good Lord, wake me up, I must be dreaming.

No, you're awake, Bill, and I'm deadly serious.

We're going to start by tracking down your anonymous source

from three years ago.

Now how'd you find out David Ferrie drove to Texas that day?

Hell, I can't remember last night,

let alone three years ago, boss.

You're not under cross-examination here, Jack.

What I need is a little clarification about the night

- Guy Banister beat you over the head.

Now don't tell me you don't remember that,

all right, ‘cause you called our office.

You called our office from your hospital bed,

and you were hopping mad about it.

Now, here's my problem.

You told me you and Guy were good friends for a long time.

More than 10 years.

- And he never hit you before? - No, he never touched me.

Yet on November 22nd, 1963,

- the day of the president's murder,

- the police report says...

Says he pistol-whipped you with a .357 Magnum.

It also says you had an argument about the phone bill.

- Here, take a look at it.

Well, does a simple argument over a phone bill sound like

a believable explanation to you?

There's more to it than that.

How much more?

I don't think I should talk about it.

Well, I'd ask Guy, we were friendly, you know.

Heart attack, wasn't it?

You buy what you read in the papers.

You have other information?

- I didn't say that. - You have other information?

I didn't say that. All I know is that he died suddenly.

Just before the Warren Report came out.

Why did Guy beat you, Jack?

You didn't see a goddamn thing! You didn't see a goddamn thing!

You're the only one in the place!

You didn't see a goddamn thing!

Oh, hell. I guess since Guy's dead, it don't matter no more.

It was about all those...

people that was hanging around the office that summer.

See, I was never part of the operation, you know.

I was just there taking care of their private eye work,

you know, as it came in for Guy.

Not much did, but that's why I was there.

It was a nuthouse.

All the Cubans coming and going.

I mean, Christ, they all looked the same to me.

You gonna play with this rifle or you gonna pack it? Come on.

Dave Ferrie.

You know about him?

- Yeah, we know Dave. Was he there? - Mmm.

Christ, he practically lived there.

Don't fuck this one up.

See, the whole thing it was...

the whole cloak and dagger stuff, you know.

They called it "Operation Mongoose."

Whole idea was they were gonna train these Cuban exiles, you know,

- for another invasion of Cuba. - Mm-hmm.

Why, hell, Banister's office,

that was part of the supply line, you know,

from Dallas through New Orleans to Miami.

- They were stockpiling arms, explosives.

All this right under the noses of the intelligence community

- in Lafayette Square? - Yeah, oh yeah.

Everybody knew everybody, you know,

they were all part of the network.

They were all working for the CIA!

You know, pilots, and them Black Operators,

and the-- the civilians, and military.

Hell, everybody in those days was running guns somewhere.

Fort Jefferson, Bayou Bluff, Morgan City, you name it.

Oh, McAllen, Texas, yeah, big gun-running operation.

Banister. Now, tell-- where-- Where does he fit in all this?

He was running his camp up north of Lake Pontchartrain.

You know, Ferrie was doing a lot of the training.

- They had a shooting range.

Lot of tropical territory, you know, like you got in Cuba.

- Some Americans were trained there, too.

- A few. Nazi types, mercenaries.

Ferrie, though, Jesus, he was the craziest.

Anyway, late summer, the whole--

the party was over.

‘Cause Kennedy didn't want another one of them Bay of Pigs, so he...

- he told the FBI, "Shut up the camps,”

you know, and confiscate the napalm, C-4, and the stuff like that.

So I think that the G-men,

they were just going through the motions for Washington.

See, their hearts were still with their old FBI buddy Banister.

Oswald?

Yeah.

- Yeah, what? - He was there, too. He was there.

He was there, sometimes meeting with Banister.

Give me an allowance, you know, because I got expenses...

With the door shut.

Other times...

you know, shooting the bull with Ferrie,

whatever, but he was there, all right.

Anything more specific, Jack?

It's important.

One time the secretary got upset, I remember.

I can't believe it, Mr. Banister.

Lee Oswald is down on Canal Street

handing out communist leaflets supporting Castro.

It's okay, Delphine.

He's with us, it's okay.

Was anyone else involved at Banister's level?

Oh, yeah. One guy, I don't know.

Big, white hair.

I saw him come in the office once,

but he looked out of place.

You know, like a society guy.

And I can't remember his name, but Oswald was with him.

But he had something to do with money ‘cause Banister, you know,

he never kissed anybody's ass--

Ooh, he kissed his.

I don't... uh...

Clay something.

Yeah. That was his name, Clay.

- Clay. - Bertrand?

- Bertrand, yeah! Yeah, that-- - Clay Bertrand.

- Clay Bertrand. - Well, I don't know.

I don't know.

- Uh... maybe not. I got to go. - No, that's right. Clay Bertrand.

- No, no. That's right. - No, I got to go.

He was in the Warren Report. He got Oswald a lawyer.

- Was Kennedy ever discussed, Jack? - I don't know.

- The assassination, Jack? - No.

Never. Not with me.

- Look, I've-- I got to go. - Hold on.

- That's all I'm gonna say. - Hold on, Jack.

- I've said enough. - Hold on. What's the problem?

- What's the problem? - What's the problem?

Do I have to spell it out for you, Mr. Garrison?

Nobody knows what we're talking about, here, Jack.

Oh, you are so naive.

When'd you first do business with this Bertrand?

Pipe the bimbo in red.

Mm-hmm. Lordy.

Yeah, she's cute all right,

- but not half as cute as you, Deano.

Thank you.

You should try a legitimate line of business.

Why are you dancing on my head for, my man?

We been thicker than molasses pie since law school.

‘Cause you keep conning me, Dean, I read your testimony

- to the Warren Commission-- - There you go again!

- Grain of salt! - You tell them the day after

- Two sides to every coin! - the assassination,

you're called on the phone by this Clay Bertrand

and asked to fly to Dallas and be Lee Oswald's lawyer.

Right.

That's pretty important, Dean.

You also told the FBI that, when you met him,

he's six foot two,

then you tell the Commission he's five foot eight.

Now how the hell does a man shrink like that, Dean?

They put the heat on, my man, just like you're doing.

I gave them anything that popped in my cabeza.

Truth is, I never met the dude.

Oh, wonderful. One likes friends that have friends.

Indeed.

I don't know what the cat looks like,

and, furthermore, I don't know where he's at.

All I know is sometimes he sends me some cases.

So one day he's on the phone,

talking to me about going to Dallas, repping Oswald.

Did you ever speak to Oswald in Dallas?

Hell, no.

Like I told that Bertrand cat right off--

Cashew piece?

This ain't my scene, man.

I deal in muni court. I'm a hack in nigger town.

Then how'd the hell did your name get in the Warren Commission, Dean?

Like I told to the Washington boys,

Bertrand called that summer

and asked me to help the kid upgrade his Marine discharge.

Well, I was led to believe that, uh,

Mr. Bertrand said that he would take care of any--

Oh, that's fine.

Hello, to whom am I speaking?

I'm Clay Bertrand. Whatever they owe, I guarantee.

There wasn't no conspiracy, Jim.

If there were, why the hell didn't Bobby Kennedy prosecute it as attorney general?

He was his brother, for Christ's sake.

How the fuck all those people could keep a secret like that, I don't know.

It was Oswald.

- He was a fruitcake, you know. - I think we're having

- Hated this country. - a communication problem, Dean.

I know you know who Clay Bertrand is, all right?

Now stop eating that damn crabmeat a minute and listen.

I'm aware of our friendship...

but I want you to know I'm gonna call you in front of the grand jury.

And you lie to the grand jury as you've been lying to me,

I'm gonna charge you with perjury.

All right, I took nine judges on right here in New Orleans, Deano.

I beat 'em all.

So am I communicating with you?

Is this off the record, Daddy-0?

Good.

In that case, let me sum it up for you real quick.

If I answer that question you keep asking...

if I give you the name of the big enchilada, you know...

then it's "bon voyage, Deano."

I mean like permanent.

I mean like a bullet in my head, you dig?

You're a mouse fighting a gorilla.

Kennedy is as dead as that crabmeat.

The government's still breathing.

- You wanna line up with a dead man? - Read my lips, Deano.

Either you dance into the grand jury with the real identity of Clay Bertrand

or your fat behind is going to the slammer.

Now, do you dig me?

- You're as crazy as your mama.

Goes to show it's in the genes.

You have any idea what you're getting yourself into, Daddy-o0?

The government's gonna jump all over your head, Jimbo,

and go "cock-a-doodle-doo."

Good day to you, sir.

District Attorney Garrison to see Prisoner 5388,

Ward Block 237B.

We don't need no gates out there with that swamp.

Many of 'em gone in there, ain't none of 'em come out.

Hey, Willie!

O'Keefe!

You got visitors here.

You don't give ‘em no trouble now, you hear me boy?

- How you doing, Mr. Broussard? - Hey, let's go, Willie.

I want to thank you, Mr. O'Keefe, for this time.

I ain't got nothin' but time, Mr. Garrison.

Minutes, hours, days, years of 'em.

Time just stands still here,

like a snake sunnin' itself on the road.

- Clay Bertrand, Willie?

Yeah, Clay.

I met him sometime in June of '62 at the Masquerade Bar.

Dave Ferrie took me there, for the express reason to meet him.

For sexual purposes?

Well, yeah.

Did he pay you for this?

Twenty dollars each time. Hell, ain't no secret.

That's why I'm in here for.

Anything else unusual about him you'd be able

- to describe in a court of law?

I remember he had some kinda thing wrong with his leg.

He'd limp. You know, don't get me wrong,

he's not one of those "limp wrists."

He's a butch John, I mean, you'd meet him on the street, you'd never snap.

- You could play poker with him,

go fishing with the man,

you'd never snap in a million years.

One night we was over at Dave Ferrie's place having a party.

It was sometime late in the summer of '63.

There was about nine or 10 people there. Cubans.

You know, friends of Dave, been doing some stuff in the bush with him.

Place was a mess, man. Dave's mind was a mess.

Has all these mice cages all over ‘cause he's working on this cure for cancer.

- Viva Cuba libre!

Dave's smart, though, he's sharp.

Speaks five languages.

He knows philosophy, medicine, military history, politics.

Said he wanted to be a priest but...

they defrocked him ‘cause he was queer.

And that's where you met Oswald for the first time?

- Yeah, strange guy.

Dave introduced him as...

Willie, why don't you say hello to Leon Oswald.

Hey, how you doing, man?

What the fuck is he doing here?

Fuck you, motherfucker!

Okay, okay, come on, come on, come on.

- Leon's in a bad mood.

Don't get excited, he's all right.

Would you say that this "Leon" was actually Lee Harvey Oswald?

Fuck yeah!

Hey, man, I got no reason to lie to you.

I'm already in jail.

Go on, Willie.

Finally, they got outta there,

and I found myself alone with Dave

and this Leon,

two of the Cubans,

and this guy Bertrand.

Kennedy.

- Kennedy. - Dave pulled out these clippings

- Kennedy, fuckin' Kennedy! - he'd been carrying around, you know...

- He fucked us - He'd been obsessed with Castro

- in '61 and '62 - and Kennedy for months.

- and he's fuckin' us now! - He started in again.

Fuckin' little asswipe closed down the camps,

took all our C-4,

took 10,000 fuckin' rounds, 3,000 pounds of gunpowder,

all our fuckin' weapons!

I tell ya...

Shit, you wanna free Cuba?

You got to whack out the fuckin' Beard.

Yeah, well, that faggot Kennedy won't let us.

Our hands are empty, how can we kill him?

It's a real problem getting at him, Castro has informers on every block.

Bullshit. They got all kinds of new stuff.

I can show you dozens of fuckin' poisons. Just stick it in his food.

He'd die in three days.

No trace!

We can put something in his beard, make his beard fall out.

He'll look fuckin' ridiculous without his beard.

The real problem is... is that fucking Kennedy.

He's doing all kinds of deals...

...Khrushchev. Licking his ass.

An inspired act of God should happen here, okay?

And put a Texan in the White House!

Then the Cubans left.

Dave was drunk now, really drunk.

- He started in on Kennedy again.

‘Cause I will kill.

Right in the White House, I'll stab him right in his fuckin' heart!

- Somebody got to get rid of this fucker.

Come on, Dave.

You ain't never gonna get that son of a bitch.

No? It won't be long, mark my words.

- That fucker'll get what's coming to him.

It can be blamed on Castro.

The whole country'll want to invade Cuba.

All we got to do is get Kennedy in the open.

David, David, always some harebrained scheme or another.

Oh!

What have we here? Let's have some more champagne.

- Shall we?

What about the Secret Service, the cops?

If it's planned right, it's no problem.

- Look how close they got with de Gaulle.

Eisenhower was always riding around in an open top.

We need three mechanics in three different locations.

An office building with a high-powered rifle.

Triangulation of crossfire, that's the key.

- That's the key.

The diversionary shot gets the Secret Service looking the other way.

Boom! You get the kill shot.

The crucial thing is one man has to be sacrificed.

Then, in the commotion of the crowd, the job gets done.

The others fly out of the country to someplace with no extradition.

Why don't we drop this subject...

it's one thing to engage in badinage with all these youngsters,

but this sort of thing could be so easily misunderstood.

Ouch! Ow! Ouch!

I didn't think much about it at the time.

It's just bullshit, you know.

Everybody likes to make themselves out to be something more than they are.

Especially in the homosexual underworld.

But when they got him, man...

I got scared...

Real scared.

And that's when I got popped.

You realize the things you're saying, Willie,

are gonna be attacked by a lot of different people.

Oh, bring all those motherfuckers on, man!

Bring their college degrees in here, I got nothin' to hide.

You can't buy me.

- They can't buy me. - I don't wanna buy you.

- I don't even need this damn parole. - Nobody--

- What are you talking about, parole? - See, this is about the truth coming out.

You a goddamn liberal, Mr. Garrison. You don't know shit...

‘cause you never been fucked in the ass!

This ain't about justice. You think this is about justice?

No, this is about order.

Who rules.

‘Cause, see, fascism is coming back.

Nobody wants to buy you, no one's promising you a parole, here.

I want to be perfectly clear about that.

What I need to know is why.

All right?

Why are you telling us this?

‘Cause that motherfucker Kennedy...

stole that motherfucking election, that's why.

Nixon...

was gonna be one of the great presidents till Kennedy wrecked this country.

Got niggers all over the place asking for their damn rights.

Why you think we got all this crime now?

He promised those motherfuckers too goddamn much, you ask me.

Revolution's coming, bullshit, man.

Fascism is coming back.

I'm gonna tell you this.

The day that communist son of a bitch died was a great day--

a great day for this country.

And I just hate to think that they blame it on some silly fuckin' Oswald.

Didn't know shit anyway, man. People got to know.

People got to know why he was killed.

Because he was...

a communist.

Go ahead, man.

You go ahead, you put me on the stand,

I'll tell the same goddamn story!

Don't matter fuck all to me!

All right, Willie.

Thank you.

We'll be in touch.

All right.

Hey, you know, you're not a bad-looking man, Mr. Garrison.

Not bad-looking at all.

I get outta here, I'm gonna come see you.

We could have some fun!

None of their testimony's gonna hold up in court, chief.

Hell, all three of 'em have reputations lower than crocodile piss.

Does that bother you, Bill?

I always wondered in court why it is because a woman's a prostitute,

she has to have bad eyesight.

Now go find this Clay Bertrand.

Start by checking around the Quarter.

And the six of us, with almost no budget and in secret,

are gonna solve a case that the Warren Commission couldn't solve?

I didn't pick you because of your legal skill, you know.

Gee, thanks, boss.

But because you're a fighter.

I like a man who's not afraid of bad odds.

Mr. Garrison, how are you?

Remember me?

I surely do. Did you vote for me?

I certainly did, sir.

We sang together at the Royal Orleans, remember?

Yeah, we sang...

"You're the Cream in My Coffee."

Mr. Garrison, we haven't seen enough of you lately.

Been too busy, Paul.

Elected men, they can't have as much fun as they used to.

It's always nice to see you.

Pleasure to serve you, always.

- Hey, Jim. - How are you?

- Good seeing you again. - Nice to see you.

- Hey, Jim. - Al.

- Jim. - Welcome back, Lou.

- Paul. - Yes?

You think I could get a martini?

Been waiting for you, sir.

Perfect.

- Keep that table open for us, will ya? - Yes, sir.

Find out anything on those hoboes?

- Photographer from...

The Dallas Times Herald got some great shots of ‘em.

Never published.

Can't say that comes as a surprise anymore.

They took ‘em to the sheriff's office and they let ‘em go.

No record of 'em ever being questioned.

Take a good look, chief.

Any of 'em look like the hoboes you remember?

These two look pretty young.

Not a single frayed collar or cuff,

new haircuts, fresh shaves, clean hands,

new shoe leather.

Well who the hell are they, then?

- Hi, Susie. - Hello.

- I'm sorry I'm late. - Come on, sit down.

This could be it. This could be it. Let's start looking for ‘em.

- What about that railroad man,

- Lee Bowers?

Saw those men at the picket fence.

Graveyard. Dead. August this year.

- Single car accident...

on an empty road in Midlothian, Texas.

The doctor said he was in some kind of strange shock when he died.

We need to find more witnesses, Lou.

Well, there was Rose Cheramie, a whore.

She said she was a dope runner for Jack Ruby.

And...

she said that Ruby knew Oswald for years.

Can we talk to her?

She's dead, too.

- Hit and run. - Oh, mama.

Why don't we go right to the horse's mouth, chief?

Jack Ruby's been rotting away in a Dallas jail cell for three years.

Maybe he's ready to crack.

Can't do it, Bill.

If we go to him, our investigation'll hit the front pages by sunrise, all right?

It'll blow up right in our face.

Susie, what did you find out on Oswald?

Uh, negative on his tax records.

Classified.

First time I know a DA can't get a tax record.

So I put together a list of all the CIA files on Oswald

that were part of the Warren Report and asked for them.

- There are about 1,200 documents. - Ooh.

And can't get one of them.

All classified as secret on the grounds of national security.

They gave me his grammar school records!

- It's a study of his pubic hairs!

Lonely kid, no father.

Joins the Marines at 17.

He learns Russian,

he acts overtly Marxist,

but he's stationed at a top-secret air base in Japan,

where U2 spy flights over Russia originate.

He's discharged from the Marines, supposedly because his mother's sick.

Stays home three days,

then with a 1,500-dollar ticket

from a 203-dollar bank account, he goes to Moscow.

Mr. Oswald, do you understand

the severity of the action that you're about to take?

Yes, I do, sir, and I am also very familiar...

I wish to renounce my citizenship,

and become a Soviet citizen.

I'm going to make known to them

all information I have concerning the Marine Corps.

And he disappears for six weeks, presumably with the KGB.

Finally they shuttle him to a radio factory in Minsk,

where he lives as high on the hog as he ever has.

He's given 5,000 rubles,

a roomy apartment with a balcony,

has affairs with local girls.

- Makes sense, he's a spokesman.

But-- but he never writes, speaks,

or does any propaganda for the Russians.

He meets Marina...

whose uncle is a colonel in Soviet intelligence,

at a trade union dance.

She thinks he's Russian by the way he speaks.

Six weeks later they marry...

have a daughter.

The only explanation for the royal treatment

can be that he did give them radar secrets,

or fake secrets.

Six months after he arrives in Russia,

Francis Gary Powers' U2 spy flight

goes down in Russia.

That plane was untouchable.

Powers hinted that Oswald could have given the Russians

enough data to hit it.

And as a direct result...

the peace summit between Khrushchev and Eisenhower failed.

I can't help thinking...

maybe someone in our military didn't want the peace conference to happen.

- Susie, come on. - Maybe Oswald was a part of that!

- Susie, you are an assistant DA, remember? - It gets weirder.

Just stick to what you can prove in court.

- Facts? You want facts? - Please.

- Susie, don't get sidetracked. - From 1945 to '59--

How does he get back to the States? That's the point, all right?

- Does he have any problems with Uncle Sam? - No! None.

The State Department issues him a new passport within 48 hours,

and loans him the money to travel.

He's never investigated or charged by the Navy

- for revealing classified information.

Or, as far as we know,

debriefed by the CIA!

Son of a bitch should've been prosecuted as a traitor

the minute he stepped off the boat.

What about Marina, she have any problems getting out?

No! None either.

No, it's bizarre.

It's next to impossible to get Russian sweethearts out.

This is a man who has defected once already.

It's crazy.

Ordinary people...

they get blacklisted for having leftist affiliations.

- It doesn't add up, does it?

Next thing we know, he's living in Dallas-Fort Worth October '62...

working six months

- at Jaggars-Chiles-Stovall.

This is a photographic firm that contracts to make maps for the US Army.

Oswald becomes chummy with the White Russian community of Dallas,

- all rabid anti-communists.

It's odd.

- His closest friend is an oilman...

named George de Mohrenschildt,

who's about 35 years older than Oswald,

who is only 23 and supposedly broke.

De Mohrenschildt is a member of the Dallas Petroleum Club,

speaks five languages,

and was in French Vichy Intelligence during the war.

- Also rumored to have been

a Nazi sympathizer.

I think you really talk like a redneck...

De Mohrenschildt draws a picture of Oswald as an intellectual, well-read,

speaks excellent Russian,

a man who adored JFK.

Oh.

I think he's made some mistakes regarding Cuba.

I think he's doing a pretty good job.

If he succeeds, in my opinion, I think he'll make a great president.

- A really handsome one, too. - Yes.

That's scenery, Susie, now don't get sidetracked.

This is the same man that, bottom line, nailed Oswald to the Warren Commission

as a potentially violent man, and linked him to the rifle.

Well, in that sense, Castro is an experimenter.

What you got there?

You have a rifle in there?

Lee...

Tell me.

What are you shooting at?

Rabbits or fascists?

I uh....

- I hunt. - You hunt?

Mm-hmm.

Hillbillies.

We don't know he's CIA, let's circle him very probable.

- All right. - Call him Oswald's handler.

The Oswalds are introduced by George de Mohrenschildt

- to Janet and Bill Williams.

I'm an engineer for Bell Helicopter.

It's through Janet Williams

- in October '63

that Lee gets the job at the warehouse

right smack on Elm Street at the book depository.

Presumably so he can now exercise his intellect

stacking school texts at a dollar 25 an hour.

Marina fights often with Lee about many things.

His secrecy, their lack of money...

She says that Lee is not sexually adequate.

- Lee, you'll hurt her! You'll hurt her!

- Lee hits her on several occasions.

Now, at the age of 24, he rents a small room in Dallas

under the alias of O. H. Lee.

Do you want to look at television?

- Are you all right, Mr. Lee?

No, thank you. I'm fine.

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

and that Bill Williams has links through his family

- to the CIA,

and does classified work for Bell Helicopter.

- Bill's convenient separation from Janet

allows Marina to move into her house,

where she suddenly becomes Marina's best friend.

- And, there,

- Marina and Lee have a second daughter. - I have to go away...

- I have to go away...

- Just for a short while.

- What is the matter with this family?

- / love Lee...

And I... sorry him.

You're sorry for him?

Yes.

When he's arrested,

Marina buries him with the public.

Her description of him is that of a psychotic and violent man.

I have too much facts...

and facts tell me...

that Lee shot Kennedy.

After, they kept her locked away for two months,

surrounded by federal people,

in fearing she'd be deported back to Russia.

All right, the poor woman was probably suffering from nervous exhaustion.

- They taught her how to answer.

And when they think she's ready, they buy her new dresses,

polish her appearance, and wheel her out on cue.

I would like to thank the Warren Commission...

Now, Oswald was no angel, that's clear.

But who was he?

I'm lost, boss.

- What are we saying here?

We're saying that when Oswald went to Russia,

he was not a real defector,

that he was an intelligence agent on some kind of mission

for our government and remained one till the day he died.

That's what we're saying.

Therefore, because Oswald pulled the trigger,

the intelligence community murdered their own commander in chief?

Is that what you're saying?

I'll go you one better, Bill.

Maybe Oswald didn't even pull the trigger.

Nitrate tests indicate he hadn't even fired a rifle on November 22nd.

And on top of that, they didn't even bother to see

if the rifle had been fired that day.

He had his palm print on the weapon.

Well, it went to the FBI, Bill.

FBI didn't find a goddamn thing.

It comes back a week later and one guy in the Dallas police department

- suddenly finds a palm print.

For all we know, it could've been taken off Oswald in the morgue.

There's no chain of evidence.

I never could figure out why this guy orders a traceable weapon...

to this post office box,

when he can go into any store in Texas,

give a phony name, and walk out with a rifle which can never be traced.

To frame him, obviously.

There's a lot of smoke there, but there's some fire.

We're talking about our government, here.

No, we're talking about a crime, Bill. Pure and simple.

Y'all got to start thinking on a different level, like the CIA does.

Now we're through the looking glass, here, people.

White is black.

And black is white.

Just maybe, Oswald is exactly what he said he was.

A patsy.

It's unbelievable. You were here?

Yes, sir.

This is where I was sitting.

Shots came from near that wooden fence over there,

- near the overpass.

And I saw a man run from the fence toward those railroad cars.

I made it very clear to the Warren people

that one of the shots came from behind that picket fence.

I heard the report, saw the smoke come out

- six or eight feet above the ground,

- right out from under those trees.

- We, uh, all four of us...

- all railroad men...

- seen about the same thing.

The smoke came from behind the hedge.

I was standing next to my friend, Mary Moorman,

who took the photograph when he was killed.

- Um...

I stepped down to the curb and yelled, "Hey, Mr. President!"

Look over here!

And then shots rang out.

Mary fell to the ground right away.

She was yelling, "They're shooting, they're shooting, get down!"

I just stood there watching.

The driver had stopped.

I don't know what was wrong with that driver.

Then...

out of the corner of my eye...

I saw a flash of light in the bushes...

and that last shot....

just ripped his head off.

I looked up and I saw smoke coming from over there, on the knoll.

We came around here to look for tracks.

It rained that morning, and we found a bunch.

Cigarette butts...

and someone had stood about here.

That's a good spot, chief.

For the head shot.

Everything was just frozen.

Seemed like people weren't even breathing.

Like you were looking at a picture.

Except for this one man.

I saw this one man

running from the corner of the book depository over towards the parking lot.

It was about 11:00 in the morning.

And I was driving west on Elm Street toward the Triple Underpass

in a rented car.

A light blue Valiant.

I will never forget that day.

There was quite a bit of traffic and I stopped alongside this green pickup truck.

And I remember it being very noticeable

because it had one of its wheels parked up on the side of the curb.

And then when I saw the gun, I thought...

Well...

the Secret Service is not very secret.

Then the next morning, on Saturday, I went down to the FBI office

and the agents showed me some photographs

and I picked out three pictures that looked

generally like the driver of the truck.

That's the man.

You mean you identified Jack Ruby on Saturday?

That's right.

The day before he shot Oswald?

That's right. When I saw him on TV...

I was shocked.

I turned to my family and I said,

"That's the man I saw in the truck."

But you didn't seem nearly so sure in your statement to the Warren Commission.

What about these others?

You said one of them might be him.

They look a little bit like him, but I'm sure this is the man.

Well, it was him I was chasing up the grassy knoll.

I thought maybe our guys had shot back.

- And maybe we got one of them.

When I got up to the parking lot,

all I saw were railroad workers and Dallas' finest.

Secret Service, ma'am. You're coming with us.

I am not! I don't know you. We got to find this shooter!

I said, you're coming with us, and I want those pictures in your pocket.

- I don't have any, son of a bitch!

- He put a hurt on me but good. - Just smile and keep walking.

But they musta been watching the whole thing ‘cause they knew everything

Mary and I had done all day.

‘Couse I guess I wasn't too hard to find, wearing that red raincoat.

How many shots did you say you heard?

Four to six.

That's impossible!

You heard echoes.

Echoes!

We have three bullets and three shots that came from the book depository.

That's all we're willing to say.

No, sir.

I saw a man shooting from over there behind that fence.

Now what are you going to do about that?

You got to go out there and get him!

We have that taken care of.

You only heard three shots, and you're not to talk about this with anybody.

No one. Do you understand me?

Which is strange,

‘cause it's less than 20 minutes after the assassination.

Get her out of here.

I knew something was crooked as a dog's hind leg.

Sure enough...

When I read my testimony as published by the Warren Commission,

it was a fabrication from start to finish.

Well, that's what bothers me, Mr. Garrison, is they've been altered.

My statements.

See, this one here says...

"Mercer could not identify any of the photographs

"as being identical with the person that she had observed

slouched over the wheel of the green Ford pickup truck.”

Well, that is not true.

I never said any such thing, I recognized him and I told them so.

Let's take your time, be sure.

I'm sure.

And then here on the Dallas sheriff's report,

this is really strange.

You see that notarized signature right there at the bottom of each page?

That is not my signature.

And there never was any notary present during any of my questioning.

Mrs. Mercer, as a former FBI man, it's...

It's difficult to accept this.

Beverly, tell Mr. Garrison about the Carousel Club.

Okay.

Well, I used to go over there a lot to see Jack,

and especially my friend Jada, who danced there.

It was the real swinging spot in town. Everybody came.

Businessmen, politicians from Austin, LBJ's friends.

Dallas was a slowpokin' town back then!

I mean you chewed toothpicks,

- played dominoes, spit, dated policemen,

- but Jack, that was exciting.

- There were always cops there.

- Jack liked them around...

even though he used to throw out the drunks himself.

He was kind of a violent-tempered man, actually.

Hey, how are ya!

You know, everybody in those days knew Jack was in the mob.

Hey, sweetheart!

Cops back then...

- they were bad. - Hey, Tippit.

They'd shake you down for the money in your pocket.

You know, there was this one case...

- Yeah, um, Beverly, what about Lee?

- Beverly, come over here! - Well...

One time I came in, and Jack introduced me to these two guys.

- Hi! - Hi, baby.

He says, "Beverly, I'd like you to meet my friend, Lee."

I want you to meet my friend, Lee Oswald.

I don't remember the other guy's name,

but he was a weird-looking guy.

He had these eyebrows.

He kinda looked like a buzzard!

Well...

Lee didn't make much of an impression. He was...um...

- Well, he really wasn't very good-looking,

and he didn't look like he had any money.

And he was in a bad mood, so I didn't pay him much mind.

You know, I may not remember a name, but I always remember a face.

Then a couple weeks later when I saw him on the television...

I screamed, "My God! That's him!"

"That's Jack's friend!"

Will you testify, Beverly?

I don't think so.

Now I thought when we came here, we had an agreement.

I don't want to become another statistic, like her.

We could call you in, Beverly, we could call you in.

If they can kill the President of the United States...

do you think they're gonna think twice about a two-bit showgirl like me?

I understand the pressure you're under, Beverly.

Don't think for a minute I don't.

We both do.

Mr. Chief Justice...

You understand that I cannot tell the truth here, in Dallas?

There are people here who do not want me to tell the truth...

who don't want me to have a retrial?

Mr. Ruby, I don't see why you don't just tell us now.

My life is in danger!

If you request that I go back to Washington with you,

that is if you want to hear further testimony from me,

can you do that, can you take me with you?

No, that could not be done. There would be no safe place for you.

We're not law enforcement officers.

Mr. Ruby, there's a great deal at stake in this matter.

See, if I am eliminated...

there won't be any way of knowing any bit of the truth pertaining to my situation.

And, consequently, a whole new form of government

is going to take over this country.

Yeah!

And I know that I won't live to see you some other time.

‘Cause I want to tell the truth...

and then... I want to leave this world.

The Zapruder film establishes three shots in 5.6 seconds.

Here.

I'm Oswald.

Time me.

- Go.

Time?

Between six and seven seconds.

And that's without really aiming.

The key is the second and third shots came almost right on top of each other.

It takes a minimum...

2.3 seconds to recycle this thing.

The other problem is there was a tree there...

blocking the first two shots

at the time they occur in the Zapruder film.

Didn't J. Edgar Hoover say something about that?

The leaves had fallen off in November?

It was a Texas Live Oak, chief.

It sheds its leaves the first week of March.

You take this Carcano, the world's worst shoulder weapon,

and you try to hit a moving target at 88 yards,

through heavy foliage. No way.

Here.

FBI tried two sets of tests.

Not one of their sharpshooters could match Oswald's performance.

Not one.

And Oswald was, at best, a medium shot.

The scope was defective on it, too.

I mean this is the whole essence of the case to me.

The guy couldn't do the shooting.

- Nobody could.

And they sold this lemon to the American public.

The Zapruder film was the proof they didn't count on, Lou.

We got to get our hands on it.

That means we have to subpoena Time-Life.

Let me ask you something, Lou.

Why not just shoot Kennedy coming up Houston?

There's plenty of time.

He's out in the open.

I know, I keep asking myself the same thing.

It's a frontal shot.

Even if you miss him for the first shot,

if he accelerates, you still got him for the second shot.

Now, the only reason for waiting to get him on Elm,

is you got him in a triangulated crossfire, all right?

You put a team there, down at the fence,

for a frontal shot, flat, low trajectory.

Put a third team down here, in this building, here, on a low floor,

when Kennedy gets to the kill zone there, it's a turkey shoot.

How many men?

Okay.

One shooter,

one spotter on a radio, maybe three teams.

I'd say these were professional riflemen, too, chief, they're serious people.

Hunters.

Patient.

Takes skill to kill with a rifle, chief.

You got to figure, that's why there's been no execution of a chief executive

with one in 200 years.

- Three...

two...

- one...

Main Street's over there, right?

Original parade route on the way to the Trade Mart.

Its too far, right?

Too far.

Impossible shot, so they change the parade route,

bring him down here,

moving at a normal 25 miles per hour.

They knew the motorcade would have to slow down to about 10 miles per hour

- to make that turn there,

and that's where you got him.

Who do you think changed the parade route, Lou?

Beats me.

Secret Service, city officials, Dallas police.

You know who the mayor was at the time?

Earle Cabell.

Guess who his brother is.

Who?

- General Charles Cabell. - Who?

Deputy Director of the CIA.

Kennedy fired him in '61 because of the Bay of Pigs fiasco.

Moved back to the Pentagon, called Kennedy a traitor.

When he came to New Orleans...

to address the Foreign Policy Association, you know who introduced him?

Who?

Our friend, Clay Shaw.

And the Warren Commission call him?

His boss was the one on the Warren Commission

who handled all the leads to the intelligence community.

Allen Dulles?

Head of the CIA since '53.

Kennedy fired them both.

Cabell was his deputy for nine years.

Talk about the fox investigating the chicken coop.

Now we'll have to subpoena them both.

Clay Bertrand?

Sure, I know him. Comes around the Quarter.

Who is he, Joe? I've been to all the bars,

nobody wants to talk.

Why should they talk to you?

I told your uncle I never met a lawman who wasn't a punk.

He's a big-shot businessman.

I seen him on the TV news a lot, with all the other big shots.

The guy's a fag, you know.

Goes by another name.

What's the other name?

Shaw. Clay Shaw.

Clay Bertrand is Clay Shaw?

The guy who used to run the International Trade Mart?

Yeah, what's the big mystery? Everybody down here knows the guy.

Then, why does he call himself Bertrand?

Who gives a shit what he calls himself.

Hey, what about that grand jury thing?

You think you're gonna give us a little help on that?

I hope so. We could use it.

Your hunch was right, boss.

But it's even spookier than we thought.

Starting in September '63 on,

- two months before the assassination,

there are sightings of Oswald all over Dallas,

buying ammunition...

Jasper, cut it out!

...getting a telescopic sight fixed, going to rifle ranges.

Early November,

at a Dallas downtown Lincoln-Mercury dealership,

where he tells the salesman, Albert Bogard,

Let's take it out for a test drive.

...despite the fact he has no license,

and, from what Marina says, doesn't know how to drive,

he hits the curves like A. J. Foyt at the Indy 500.

Bogard later told his boss he drove like a madman.

Hey, 300 bucks down now, Mr. Oswald, you can drive outta here.

What?

For this heap?

No honest, working man can afford to buy a car in this goddamn country anymore.

Maybe I'll have to go to Russia and buy a car.

Really dumb dialogue, like he's trying to draw attention to himself.

- Yeah, maybe you should. - A real moron. He walks out.

Salesman remembers him as about 5'7"

but we know from Oswald's draft card that he was actually 5°11".

Other witnesses see him on several separate days

- at different firing ranges.

- And one time, November 9th,

- he decides he needs to practice

- on the target of the guy next to him.

I didn't pay two bits for a target just to have someone else shoot at it.

- Hey, I'm sorry, buddy.

I thought I was shooting at that son-of-a-bitch Kennedy.

About as subtle as a cockroach crawling across a white rug.

Then he shows up at Silvia Odio's,

a Cuban lady in Dallas working in the anti-Castro underground.

The two Cubans introduce him as Leon Oswald.

- Because he is a friend of ours! - Something about the men bothers her.

About 48 hours later, one of the Cubans calls her back.

What did you think of Leon Oswald last night?

I don't care, I don't know Oswald.

You know what he said to us?

He said, "You Cubans don't have any guts, ‘cause Kennedy should have been killed

after the Bay of Pigs, and some Cubans should have done it."

It's like he's giving her information

- she doesn't even ask for. - Why did you tell me this?

She's scared, doesn't see them again...

till she sees Oswald's picture in the paper.

But the Warren Commission says that Silvia has bad eyesight

because they have Oswald in Mexico at this time,

trying to get back into Cuba.

The CIA has a camera outside the Cuban Embassy

and they say that this...

is Oswald in Mexico. Now...

If this is Oswald, it must be our third Oswald.

It's interesting, the extent to which the Warren Commission went

to make him a communist.

I'm beginning to think the whole point of the Mexican episode

was to lay the blame at Fidel Castro's door.

I mean, if Oswald, or someone

purporting to be Oswald, had gotten into Cuba,

come back, then killed the president,

the American public once again would've supported a Cuban invasion.

I even have doubts about this photo, boss.

- This pretty much convicted Oswald

in the public's mind, but Oswald told Captain Fritz during his interrogation

- that the photo was fake. - This is not me.

That came from Janet Williams' garage.

Well, I never saw this picture!

That is my face, but my face has been super-imposed.

The rest of the picture is not me at all,

and I have done a lot of photographic work,

and that picture was made by someone else!

I took this picture to two experts.

Look at the way the shadows on the nose...

fall in a straight line like it's high noon,

but the shadow down here on the ground reads more like

late afternoon or early morning.

It's not the same time.

Also, look at the crop marks across the chin.

It seems like this head is pasted onto somebody else's body,

implicating him with the rifle and the gun.

So who the hell are you, Alex Hidell or Lee Oswald?

Well, you're the policeman, you work it out.

Now it gets positively spooky.

In January, 1961 in New Orleans at the Bolton-Ford dealership,

when the Oswald we know is in Russia,

there's a man using the name "Oswald" to buy trucks

for the Friends of Democratic Cuba.

Salesman never sees him again,

but guess who's on the articles of incorporation

of the Friends for Democratic Cuba?

Who?

- Guy Banister.

- Banister has someone

using the name "Oswald" to buy the trucks.

Hoover, at the FBI, writes a memo dated June of 1960,

that someone could be using Oswald's passport and identity.

Goddamn, they put Oswald together from day one!

Like some dummy corporation in the Bahamas,

you just move him around a board.

Anybody want to quit?

All right, dumb question. Put your hands down.

Hey, Bill.

I found Clay Bertrand.

Who?

Grab your socks and hose and pull.

Clay Bertrand is Clay Shaw.

- Damn. - Shaw?

Director of the Trade Mart?

- Former director of the Trade Mart. - Oh, my God.

That's incredible.

Can you get some sworn statements?

Now, that's going to be tough. Nobody is talking.

I think we should have him in for a little chat.

Oh, honey, I hate for him to get dragged into this.

He's done so much for the city, with all that restoration in the Quarter.

Remember, we saw him at the Bali Ha'i fundraiser?

He seems like such a nice man.

Honey, it'll be off the record.

I'll bring him in on a Sunday.

Quiet, little chat between gentlemen.

In heavy fighting in Vietnam today,

seven more American soldiers died,

- and 23 were wounded.

The body count for this week now stands at 67 Americans

and 626 enemy soldiers killed in action.

Liz?

President Johnson, meanwhile, said he regretted

there is no end in sight to the war in Vietnam.

Five-hundred thousand American troops

- Out here, honey! - are now fighting...

We face more cost...

more loss... and more agony.

Come on outside and help the kids hunt for Easter eggs!

Oh, honey, that's the kids' job, all right?

You know I don't like these tribal rituals, anyway.

Besides, I told you I'm talking to Clay Shaw this morning.

Honey, we're going to Antoine's with the kids, like we do every year.

- No, I told you I was talking to Shaw.

Well, why in the world did you do it in the middle of Easter Sunday?

‘Cause when I scheduled it, I didn't realize it was a holiday.

For Pete's sakes, honey, look at the calendar!

Liz, honey, you were there, why didn't you say something?

You said a Sunday, not Easter Sunday.

Clay Shaw is important.

And we're not.

I didn't say that, Liz.

I didn't say that.

You're missing most of your life, and you don't even know it, honey.

- The kids are missing out, too.

- You're not the only one making - Look, I'll rush,

- sacrifices around here. - And I'll be there by 2:00, I promise.

Okay? Now--

You just go ahead without me.

Mr. Garrison, what can I do for you on Easter Sunday?

I'm sorry, Mr. Shaw, to interrupt this holiday,

but I feel this is a conversation we might better have

out of the everyday bustle in this office.

I'm not sure I understand.

Well, in an investigation we're conducting,

your name has come up a number of times.

I wouldn't imagine where.

We recently talked to a number of men who claim to know you.

Are you acquainted with a David Logan?

Uh, no. Never heard of him.

A Perry Russo?

No.

A Willie O'Keefe?

No, I don't believe I know anyone by that name.

Mr. O'Keefe told us he met you at the Masquerade Bar, down in the Quarter.

- And several evenings later,

you had him over for dinner at your apartment on Dauphine Street.

Do you recall that?

Of course not. I don't know this man.

Be still my heart.

Obviously then, I wouldn't have him over for dinner.

- Hope you like squab.

- Champagne? - Yeah.

Perhaps a few more details about the evening will refresh your memory.

Mr. O'Keefe told us dinner was served by a uniformed waiter.

A colored man.

He particularly remembered that you sat at one end and he at the other,

which he found rather unusual because the table was so long.

How was your mousse?

Does that bring back memories of Willie O'Keefe?

Not at all.

But on the other hand, I do have a lovely Chippendale dining table

and I often have a friend over sitting at one end, while I sit at the other.

It's precisely the point of a long dining table.

The splendor of the meal adds to the enjoyment of it.

I would imagine that a uniformed waiter helps.

It adds a taste of elegance,

for which I must confess a weakness, now and then.

I call him Smedley.

Real name is Frankie Jenkins,

but I could hardly imagine anything more uncouth during dinner...

than my turning toward the kitchen and hollering "Frankie!"

Where is all this leading to, Mr. Garrison?

After dinner, you paid him to have sex.

That is absolute nonsense.

The Quarter is filled with vivid imaginations, my dear Mr. Garrison.

Grimy young hoodlums, who will say and do

- anything, as you well know. - In the course of that night,

Mr. O'Keefe told us that a man named David Ferrie stopped by the house

along with another young man.

- Who? - David Ferrie.

No, I don't believe I know anyone by that name.

Course never having met Mr. O'Keefe I could hardly have met Mr. Ferrie.

- Here you go. Here you go.

- You're mine, Mary. You're mine.

The four of you partied early into the morning hours.

Look at this picture.

I'm sure I've never met anyone of such a bizarre appearance.

- Come here, bitch!

- Come here!

- The only way you get this

- is do exactly what I say.

- I'm the man, don't ever forget it!

- You want it? You want it?

Does the name Clay Bertrand mean anything to you?

- Clay Bertrand... Clay Bertrand. - Clay Bertrand.

I believe there was a man with a name similar to that,

worked over at the Chamber of Commerce. Is that the man you had in mind?

No, it was not.

Mr. Shaw, can you identify this man?

Naturally.

Are you claiming, Mr. Garrison, that Mr. Oswald also had dinner with me?

Mr. Shaw, have you ever met Lee Harvey Oswald?

You really have me consorting with a sordid cast of characters.

- Just answer the question. - Of course not.

Such a pity, that assassination.

In fact, I admired President Kennedy.

A man of true panache, wife of impeccable taste.

- I'm hungry! - Well, why don't we just go ahead

and order without your daddy, I don't think he'll mind.

I want a Shirley Temple!

- Oh, kids, put your water guns away. - Me, too!

- When's Daddy coming, Mama?

Soon, he's coming soon.

He's really sorry he couldn't start with us, but he promised he'd be here.

- Daddy never keeps his promises.

- I'm bored!

Mr. Shaw, this is an Italian newspaper article saying you were

a member of the Board of Centro Mondo Commerciale in Italy,

that this company was a creature of the CIA for the transfer of funds in Italy

for illegal political-espionage activity.

It says that this company was expelled from Italy for those activities.

I'm well aware of that asinine article.

I'm thinking very seriously of suing that rag of a newspaper.

It also says that this company is linked to the Schlumberger Tool Company,

here in Houma, Louisiana,

which helped provide arms to David Ferrie and his Cubans.

Mr. Garrison, you're reaching.

Am I?

I'm an international businessman. The Trade Mart, which I founded,

is America's commercial pipeline to Latin America.

I trade everywhere.

I am accused...

as are all businessmen, of all things.

I somehow go about my business, make money, help society the best I can,

and try to promote free trade in this world.

Mr. Shaw...

have you ever been a contract agent for the Central Intelligence Agency?

And if I were...

Mr. Garrison, do you believe...

I would be here today...

talking to somebody like you?

No.

People like you don't have to, I guess.

May I go?

People like you, they just walk between the raindrops.

May I go?

Yes.

Regardless of what you may think of me, Mr. Garrison,

I am a patriot first and foremost.

I've spent half my life in the United States military

serving and defending this great country, Mr. Shaw,

- and you're the first person I ever met

who considered it an act of patriotism to murder his own president.

Now, just a minute, sir. You are way out of line.

I'm sorry, Mr. Shaw, it's getting late. That's all the questions we have.

Thank you for your honesty and for coming in today.

I enjoyed meeting with you gentlemen.

And you, Miss Cox. It was most pleasant.

I wish to extend to each of you,

and to each of your families, my best wishes for a happy Easter.

"One may smile and smile and be a villain."

Goddammit, we got one of ‘em.

Did you see that?

- Hi, honey. - Hi.

- Tough day. - Daddy, where you been?

My sympathies.

Liz, I'm really sorry, but the meeting took much longer than expected.

Just a second, Jasper.

We waited for hours, Jim!

Honey, you could've telephoned.

I know, I don't know what to say, except I'm sorry, all right?

I just don't have rabbits on my mind.

You know what I think?

Daddy?

I think you care more about John Kennedy than your own family!

All day, the kids are asking, "Where's Daddy?"

What am I supposed to tell your kids, Jim!

- Papa? - I don't know what to tell them.

How about the truth?

I'm doing my job to make sure they can grow up in a country,

- Papa? - where justice won't be an arcane,

vanished idea they read about in history books.

- Oh, that sounds real dandy. - Like the dinosaurs,

- or the lost continent of Atlantis. - But it doesn't replace a husband

or a father on Easter Sunday.

Well, it's gonna get worse, Liz.

Do you know who killed President Kennedy?

Was there a conspiracy here in New Orleans?

- Excuse me, gentlemen. - I don't know what you're talking about.

- Get out of here!

- Watch out! Watch out!

Congratulations, boss, you're page one.

And it ain't pretty.

It says we've spend more than 8,000 dollars

on unexplained travel and investigative

expenses in a period since November 1966.

Goddamn!

They went to the public records.

They got the vouchers that we requested for withdrawals.

Shaw must've gotten them on our tail.

It could've been Ferrie, Martin, Andrews, any of ‘em.

Damnit!

We didn't talk to Ruby ‘cause of them and they're on our asses for a measly 8,000!

They hunted down the news, it's their business.

Well, you'd at least think they'd attempt to understand what we're trying to do!

Well, getting angry doesn't accomplish a damn thing!

Son of a bitch.

Well, this changes everything, now, doesn't it?

What do you mean?

Well...

Either we pull out now, or we go through some heavy flack together.

Bear in mind, each of you, this may affect the rest of your careers, your lives.

If any one of you want to pull out now,

I assure you I will bear no ill feelings towards that person

and will reassign you to regular duties.

There it is, then.

Thank you.

That means a great deal to me.

I'm giving this office 6,000 dollars from my National Guard savings account,

SO we cah continue.

I'll make speeches where I can and pick up additional money.

Mr. Garrison, what shall I tell them?

- They're piling up outside the door.

They want a statement, the phones are going crazier than bugs on a cake.

Neither confirm, deny, nor discuss, Sharon.

Goodbye, ladies, gentlemen.

I'm going home to where I can get a decent day's work done.

Mr. Garrison's own silence on the subject

has raised some interesting questions.

With taxpayer money, has he uncovered

- some valuable new evidence,

- or is he merely saving the information

which will gain, for him, exposure at a national level?

Yeah?

Did your office plant that garbage in the fuckin' paper?

- Who is this? - You know exactly who the fuck this is!

- Dave? - Yeah, you got it.

Listen...

Since you're the only straight shooter in that fuckin' office,

I'd like a fuckin' answer from you. Did you plant it?

Dave, you think we're out of our minds?

The whole building's been a zoo since that broke.

We can't get a thing done. Reporters crawling everywhere.

You think we want that?

Somebody planted that fuckin' story!

Somebody tipped off the press I'm one of fuckin' Garrison's suspects.

I can't-- I can't go home!

The fuckin' maggots are everywhere!

Do you know what you've done to me?

Calm down, Dave, what?

From here on, I am a fuckin' dead man.

- A dead man! - What are you talking about?

Dave, you even weren't mentioned in the story. Don't jump to conclusions.

Look, meet me in the lobby of the Fontainebleau in 20 minutes.

I guarantee you the boss will protect you.

He likes you, he likes your mind.

I guess, you know, I just don't know who to trust anymore, you know?

I suppose I could use a pot of hot coffee and a few packs of Luckies.

So you got anything new in the investigation?

Who you scared of, Dave?

Me? Everybody.

- Agency, mob, Cubans.

That's it, follow the Cubans. Check 'em out.

Here, Miami, Dallas.

Check out a guy named Eladio del Valle.

He used to be my paymaster when I flew missions into Cuba.

He's somewhere in Miami. You're on the right track.

Hey, hey! Don't be writing this down.

I ain't cooperating here with no one. What's going on here?

There's a death warrant for me! Don't you get it?

Damn!

Wait a minute, you ain't bugged, are you?

Son of a bitch, Lou. Are you?

Dave.

I always play square. No bugs.

I'd love you to go on the record, but I'm in no hurry.

- Whenever you're ready.

I haven't slept since that shit article come out.

Why'd you guys have to go and get me involved with this?

Did we get you involved or did Clay Shaw, Dave?

Cocksuckin' faggot!

- He got me by the balls. - What do you mean?

You know, photographs, compromising stuff.

And he'll use ‘em, too. The Agency plays for keeps.

I knew Oswald. He was in my Civil Air Patrol unit.

I taught him everything. He was a "wannabe," you know?

Nobody really liked him ‘cause they thought he was a snitch.

I treated him good.

He'd talk about his kid, you know, really wanted her to grow up with a chance, but--

- What's this?

What's going on here?

Ain't nobody coming in here.

- Just room service.

Black, black-- just give it to me.

Black.

- Shit.

My neck is killing me.

I got cancer, I've had it for years.

I been working with mice, you know, trying to find a cure.

Did you ever work for the CIA?

You make it sound like some remote fuckin' experience in ancient history.

- Man, you don't leave the Agency.

Once you're in, they got you for life.

Shaw?

Shaw? Shaw's an "untouchable."

Highest clearance.

Shaw, Oswald, the Cubans-- all Agency.

What about Ruby?

Jack? Jack was a pimp.

He was a bagman for the Dallas mob.

He used to run guns to Castro when he was still on our side.

We almost had Castro with us, then we tried to whack him.

Everybody's flipping sides all the time.

It's fun and games, man, fun and games.

What about the mob, Dave? How do they figure in this?

They're Agency, too, man.

CIA and the mafia working together,

trying to whack out the Beard.

Mutual interests. They been doing it for years!

There's more to this than you could dream!

Check out something called "Mongoose."

"Operation Mongoose."

Government, Pentagon stuff.

They're in charge.

But who the fuck pulls whose chain? Who the fuck knows.

"Oh, what a deadly web we weave when we practice to deceive.”

Then who killed the president?

Oh, man, why don't you fuckin' stop it!

Shit!

Who did--

This is too fuckin' big for you, you know that?

This is-- who did the president? Who killed Kennedy?

Fuck, man!

It's a mystery!

It's a mystery wrapped in a riddle inside an enigma!

The fuckin' shooters don't even know! Don't you get it?

Fuck, man!

I can't keep talking like this.

They're gonna fuckin' kill me!

I'm gonna fuckin' die!

Son of a bitch!

- It's all right, David.

I don't know what happened.

Fuck!

All I wanted in the world...

was to be a Catholic priest,

live in a monastery,

pray, serve God.

I had one fuckin'...

one terrible fuckin' weakness!

And they defrocked me!

Then I started to lose everything.

It's gonna be okay, Dave.

You just talk to us on the record and we'll protect you, I guarantee it.

They'd get to you, too.

They'll destroy you.

They're untouchable, man.

I'm so fuckin' exhausted, I can't see straight.

Out of here!

Oh, Lord.

A little early for Mardi Gras, isn't it?

Paris Match, largest magazine in France.

My name is Bulgarinov, I am with Literaturnaya Gazeta of Moscow.

Victoria Taylor, British Private Eye.

Do you know who shot the president? Mr. Garrison is too busy...

Boss, I'm telling you,

something or somebody is putting tremendous heat on David Ferrie.

If we sit on our behinds any longer, I don't think the guy's gonna hold on.

Look at this bullshit!

He keeps changing what he says.

We can't possibly call him to a grand jury.

Susie, watch the language, would you please?

My instinct is that Ferrie is gonna keep on deteriorating,

and we'll end up getting more out of him when he finally cracks.

Oh, bullshit! Now, if you start to--

If we call him in now, he might freeze up

and we'll lose the best shot we ever had.

You guys don't get it, do you? He can't go down any further.

We got to protect him full time.

We don't have enough funds to protect anybody full time.

I know what you're going through with Ferrie, Lou, all right?

We'll talk tomorrow.

I got a plane to catch.

- Going to Washington.

Washington?

Yeah, an interesting lead says he's closely connected to these events,

but he won't come down here.

I'm onto Ferrie's Cuban paymaster, Eladio del Valle, in Miami.

I tell ya, I need more men. I got to get him in, boss.

I can't even pull the teams to watch Ferrie.

Listen, I gave this man my word.

This is our case!

- Hold it! Hold it! - For God's sake, Numa--

I got something to show you.

I think you'll find it very interesting.

Numa, what is that thing?

Williams found this in your office.

We think the conference room is also bugged, maybe the phones.

We're gonna have to debug the whole place.

Bugging the DA's office! This is outrageous!

Mr. lvon, it's for you. It's urgent.

You can believe what you want to, but we're gonna have to be more careful.

All these new volunteers, I mean, any one of them could be--

Okay, Numa, you handle it, all right? I don't have...

- I don't have time for this nonsense.

Well, we--

We've obviously got the bastards worried now.

I'm coming to Washington.

Dave Ferrie's dead.

Found his body at his apartment a couple hours ago.

What's it look like, Nick?

I don't see any violence, Jim. Heart attack, maybe an aneurysm.

Looks like natural causes.

This is addressed to no one, and no signature.

"To leave this life is, for me, a sweet prospect.

I find nothing in it that is desirable,

and on the other hand, everything that is loathsome."

- Goes on and on.

"Daily we are propagandized more and more by the rising crime wave."

Pretty flowery for Dave Ferrie.

Proloid?

Yeah, I took it once for a low thyroid condition.

It raises the metabolism, Lou.

Did David Ferrie strike you as the kind of person with a low metabolism?

Hardly, I'd say the opposite. Hypertension.

You know, Ferrie was the only one to express any kind of remorse

about the whole thing.

I think it got him killed.

Lou? Boss?

More bad news from Miami.

They found Ferrie's Cuban friend, Eladio del Valle, today.

Hacked to death with a machete in his car.

He was tortured, shot in the heart at point-blank range,

and his skull was split open with an axe.

Now, ain't that the devil's piss.

Found another note, same thing, no name, no signature.

"When you receive this, I will be quite dead, so no answer will be possible.

- I offered you love, and all I got..." - Jesus.

They must've been hard pressed to come up with that one.

Nick, can I have a word with you?

What would happen if a man suffering from hypertension

were to take an entire bottle of Proloid?

He'd die pretty quick,

either a heart storm or a ruptured blood vessel in the brain.

Uh-huh.

Can you ascertain if there's Proloid in his system?

Not in a routine autopsy.

But if we looked at the spinal fluid, there might be a high level of iodine,

but it's difficult to know.

What you thinking, Jim?

I don't know, it doesn't make sense, Nick.

I mean, the man's afraid of dying,

then he kills himself in a way that leaves no trace?

But he leaves two unsigned suicide notes?

If it's a suicide, I seen weirder, Jim.

The fact is he's gone, chief, and so is our case.

Unless we go for Shaw now.

With whose testimony? Willie O'Keefe, a male prostitute?

Jack Martin, a drunk? Vernon Bundy, a dope fiend?

Shaw's got respect, Lou.

Newspaper editors, the American Bar Association--

I agree with Bill.

- We haven't got the goods yet! - We wait...

Shaw's gonna get whacked. Now, how many corpses is it gonna take

before you lawyers figure out what's going on?

You watch your mouth! Ferrie did this to himself.

Where you going, boss?

I don't know, Bill. I just don't know.

- Hey, Bill! - Hey, where you at, Frank?

You're wasting your time here. Big Jim gave strict orders, no FBI allowed.

- It's you I want to talk to, Bill. - No, no.

Boss would fry me in hog fat if he knew I talked to you.

Your boss got a serious problem, Bill.

Real serious.

We know what's been going on over at your office.

Yeah, I guess you do.

You've got nothin', Bill. I'm talking as a friend now.

You're riding on the Titanic.

Time to jump off before you get destroyed along with Garrison.

Frank, I don't want to hear this.

We're talking about your career, here, Bill, your life.

You're a young guy.

We know you're working that Castro thing.

- No, I'm not. - Yes, you are.

Look we know Oswald didn't pull that trigger.

Castro did.

But if that comes out, there's gonna be a war, boy.

Millions of people are gonna die.

And that's a hell of a lot more important than Jim Garrison.

Goddammit, look at me when I talk to you!

- You're goddamn too self-opinionated-- - I can't, I can't!

Shut up! Shut up!

If you got a brain in that thick skull of yours, you'll listen to me.

You listen real hard.

Now, get in the car.

Jim Garrison?

Yes.

I'm glad you came.

Sorry about the precautions.

Well, I just hope it was worth my while, Mr...

I could give you a false name, but I won't.

Just call me "X."

I've already been warned by the Agency, Mr. Whoever, so

if this is another type of threat, I don't--

I'm not with the Agency, Mr. Garrison.

And I assume if you've come this far, what I have to say interests you.

But I'm not going to name names, or tell you who or what I represent.

Except to say you're close.

Closer than you think.

Okay?

Everything I'm gonna tell you is classified top secret.

I was a soldier, Mr. Garrison.

Two wars.

I was one of those secret guys in the Pentagon

that supplies the military hardware, planes, bullets, rifles,

for what we call "Black Operations."

"Black Ops."

Assassinations, coup d'états, rigging elections, propaganda, psych warfare,

and so forth.

World War Il, I was in Rumania, Greece, Yugoslavia.

I helped evacuate part of the Nazi intelligence apparatus

just before the end of the war.

We used those guys in the fight against the communists.

In Italy '48, stole the elections. France '49, broke the strikes.

Overthrew Quirino in the Philippines, Arbenz in Guatemala, Mossadegh in Iran.

We were in Vietnam in '54, Indonesia '58, Tibet '59.

Got the Dalai Lama out.

We were good.

Very good.

Then we get into the Cuban thing. Not so good.

Set up all the bases for the invasion supposed to take place in October '62.

Mm-hmm.

Khrushchev sent the missiles to resist the invasion, Kennedy didn't invade...

and we were standing out there with our dicks in the wind.

A lot of pissed-off people, Mr. Garrison.

You understand?

I'll come to that later.

So... 1963.

I spent much of September '63

working on the Kennedy plan for getting all US personnel

out of Vietnam by the end of 1965.

This plan was one of the strongest, most important papers issued

from the Kennedy White House.

His National Security Action Memo 263

ordered home the first 1,000 troops for Christmas.

But then in November,

One week after the murder of Vietnamese President Diem in Saigon,

and two weeks before the assassination of our president,

a strange thing happened to me.

Colonel.

Excuse me, I got a note saying you wanted to see me, General?

I do indeed.

You are going to the South Pole.

lam?

You are.

Dr. Mooney's got the details, I want you to check with him.

Have yourself a nice vacation.

I was sent by my superior officer, we'll call him "Y,"”

I was sent by General Y to the South Pole,

as the military escort for a group of international VIPs.

I was on my way back, in New Zealand,

when the president was killed.

Now...

Oswald was charged at 7 p.m. Dallas time with Tippit's murder.

That's 2:00 in the afternoon of the next day, New Zealand time.

But already...

their papers had the entire history

of this unknown 24-year-old man, Oswald,

studio picture, detailed biographical data, Russian information,

and were pretty sure of the fact that he killed the president alone,

although it took them four more hours

before they even charged him with that crime in Dallas.

It felt to me as if...

well, a cover story was being put out,

like we would in a Black Op.

Anyway, after I came back,

I asked myself,

why was I, the chief of special ops, selected to travel to the South Pole

at that time to do a job that any number of others could have done?

And I wondered if it could've been because...

One of my routine duties, if I had been in Washington,

would've been to arrange for additional security in Texas.

So I decided to check it out...

and sure enough, I found out

that someone had told the 112th Military Intelligence Group

at 4th Army Headquarters at Fort Sam Houston to "stand down" that day

over the protests of the unit commander, Colonel Reich.

I believe it's a mistake.

Now this is significant because it is standard operating procedure,

especially in a known hostile city like Dallas,

to supplement the Secret Service.

I mean, even if we had not allowed the bubbletop

to be removed from the limousine,

we would've placed at least 100 to 200 agents on the sidewalk, without question.

I mean, only a month before in Dallas,

UN Ambassador Adlai Stevenson was spit on and hit.

- Right, yeah. - There had already been several attempts

on de Gaulle's life in France.

We would have arrived days ahead of time,

studied the route, checked all the buildings,

never would've allowed all those wide-open empty windows overlooking Dealey.

Never!

We'd've had our own snipers covering the area.

The minute a window went up, they'd have been on the radio.

We'd've been watching the crowd,

packages, rolled-up newspapers, coat over an arm,

never would have let a man open an umbrella along the way.

Never would've allowed that limousine to slow down to 10 miles an hour,

much less take that unusual curve at Houston and EIm.

You would have felt an Army presence in the streets that day,

but none of this happened.

It was a violation of the most basic protection codes we have.

And it is the best indication of a massive plot in Dallas.

Now who could've best done this?

Black Ops, Mr. Garrison. People in my business.

People like my superior officer could've called Colonel Reich and said

"Look, we have another unit coming from so and so providing security.

You'll stand down." I mean, that day, in fact,

there were some individual Army Intelligence people in Dallas

I'm still trying to figure out who and why.

But they weren't protecting the client.

And, of course, Oswald.

Army Intel had a "Harvey Lee Oswald" on file,

but all those files have been destroyed.

Many strange things were happening,

and your Lee Harvey Oswald had nothing to do with them.

We had the entire cabinet on a trip to the Far East.

We had one third of a combat division returning from Germany

in the air above the United States at the time of the shooting.

At 12:34 p.m., the entire telephone system went out in Washington

for a solid hour,

and on the plane back to Washington,

word was radioed from the White House Situations Room to Lyndon Johnson

that one individual performed the assassination.

Does that sound like a bunch of coincidences to you, Mr. Garrison?

No.

Not for one moment.

The cabinet was out of the country to get their perceptions out of the way.

Troops were in the air for possible riot control.

The telephones didn't work to keep the wrong stories from spreading

if anything went wrong with the plan.

Nothing was left to chance.

He could not be allowed to escape alive.

Well, I never thought things were the same after that.

Vietnam started for real.

There was an air of...

I don't know,

make-believe in the Pentagon and the CIA.

Those of us who'd been in secret ops since the beginning

knew the Warren Commission was fiction,

but there was something...

something deeper.

Uglier.

I knew Allen Dulles very well, I briefed him many a time in his house.

But for the life of me, I still can't figure out why he was appointed

to investigate Kennedy's death.

The man who had fired him.

Dulles, by the way, was General Y's benefactor.

I get out in '64.

Resigned my commission.

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 them guessing like some kind of parlor game,

prevents them from asking the most important question: "Why?"

Why was Kennedy killed?

Who benefitted?

Who has the power to cover it up?

Who?

In 1961...

right after the Bay of Pigs--

Very few people know about this, all right?

I participated in drawing up National Security Action Memos 55, 56, 57.

- General? - These are crucial documents,

classified top secret, but basically in them...

Kennedy instructed General Lemnitzer, chairman of the Joint Chiefs,

- that from here on forward,

the Joint Chiefs of Staff would be wholly responsible

for all covert paramilitary action in peacetime.

This basically ended the reign of the CIA.

Splintered it, as JFK promised he would,

into a thousand pieces,

and now he was ordering the military to help him do it.

This was unprecedented!

I can't tell you

the shock waves that this sent along the corridors of power in Washington.

This and, of course, the firing of Allen Dulles, Richard Bissell,

and General Charles Cabell,

all of them sacred cows in Intel since World War II.

You got some very upset people here.

Kennedy's directives were never really implemented because of...

bureaucratic resistance,

but one of the results was...

the Cuban operation was turned over to my department

as "Operation Mongoose."

Mongoose was pure Black Ops.

It was secretly based in the south campus of Miami University,

which was the largest domestic CIA station,

budgeted annually over hundreds of millions of dollars.

Three hundred agents, 7,000 select Cubans,

50 fake business fronts for laundering money.

They waged non-stop war against Castro.

Industrial sabotage, crop burning, the works.

And all of this came under the control of General Y.

All he did was take the rules of covert warfare he'd used abroad,

and brought them into this country.

Now he had the people, the equipment, the bases,

and the motivation.

And don't underestimate the budget cuts that Kennedy called for

in March of '63 either.

Nearly 52 military installations in 25 states, 21 overseas bases.

You're talking big money.

You know how many helicopters have been lost in Vietham?

Hmm?

- Nearly 3,000 so far.

Who makes them? Bell Helicopter. Who owns Bell?

Well, Bell was nearly bankrupt when the First National Bank of Boston

approached the CIA about developing the helicopter for Indochina usage.

How about the F-111 fighters?

General Dynamics of Fort Worth, Texas. Who owns that?

Find out the defense budget since the war began.

Seventy-five going on 100 billion.

Nearly 200 billion will be spent before it's over.

In 1949, it was 10 billion.

No war, no money.

The organizing principle of any society, Mr. Garrison, is for war.

The authority of the state over its people resides in its war powers.

And Kennedy wanted to end the Cold War in his second term.

He wanted to call off the moon race in favor of cooperation with the Soviets.

He signed a treaty with the Soviets to ban nuclear testing,

he refused to invade Cuba in 1962,

and he set out to withdraw from Vietnam.

But all of that ended on the 22nd of November, 1963.

As early as 1961 they knew Kennedy was not going to go to war in Southeast Asia.

Like Caesar, he is surrounded by enemies and something's underway,

but it has no face, yet everybody in the loop knows.

You can forget about your combat troops.

He told McNamara he is gonna pull out the goddamned advisors!

He fucked us in Laos, and now, he is gonna fuck us in goddamn Vietnam!

He won't implement it before the election, he can't afford to.

I hear the NSC meeting was a real barn-burner.

I wouldn't have missed it for the world. Heads are gonna roll everywhere.

Did you hear what Lemnitzer did?

What happened?

Kennedy tried to rub Lem's nose in shit, saying if we didn't go into Cuba,

which is so close, why should we go into Vietnam, which is so far away.

Son of a bitch, there he goes again. He's got his hands on the chicken switch.

Anyway, Lem said that the Chiefs still think we oughta go into Cuba.

- Money's at stake. Big money.

Hundred billion dollars.

Kennedy brothers target voting districts for those defense dollars.

They give TFX fighter contracts

only to those counties that are gonna make a difference in '64.

And the people in the loop, they fight back. Their way.

We have to control the intelligence from Saigon.

Well, just don't let McNamara start sticking his damn nose in this thing!

Every time he goes over to Saigon on some fuckin' fact-finding mission,

he comes back and just scares the shit out of the president!

Now I want Max Taylor on him night and day, like a fly on shit.

Now you control McNamara, then you control Kennedy.

I think it started like that,

in the wind.

Defense contractors, big oil bankers. Just conversations, nothing more.

Then, a call is made, maybe to someone like my superior officer, General Y.

- Yeah? - We're going.

We need your help.

- When? - In the fall, probably in the South.

- We want you to come up with a plan. - I can do that.

Everything is cellularized. No one has said, "He must die.”

There's been no vote, nothing's on paper, there's no one to blame.

It's as old as the crucifixion.

- Or the military firing squad.

Five bullets, one blank. No one's guilty.

Because everyone in the power structure who knows anything

has a plausible deniability.

There are no compromising connections, except at the most secret point.

But what's paramount, is that it must succeed, no matter how many die,

no matter how much it costs, the perpetrators must be on the winning side.

And never subject to prosecution for anything by anyone.

That is a coup d'état.

Kennedy announces the Texas trip in September.

At that moment, second Oswalds start popping up all over Dallas,

where they have the mayor and the cops in their pocket.

General Y flies in the assassins.

Maybe from the special camp we keep outside Athens, Greece.

Pros.

Maybe locals, Cubans, mafia hire. Separate teams.

Does it really matter who shot from what rooftop?

Part of the scenery, right?

I keep thinking about that day, Tuesday, the 26th of November.

The day after they buried Kennedy.

Gentlemen, I want you to know, I'm not gonna let Vietham go like China did.

I'm personally committed.

And I'm not gonna take one soldier outta there

till they know we mean business in Asia.

Lyndon Johnson signs National Security Memo 273,

which essentially reverses Kennedy's new withdrawal policy

and gives the green light to covert action against North Vietnam,

which provoked the Gulf of Tonkin incident.

Just get me elected, I'll give you your damn war.

In that document...

lay the Vietham War.

I don't-- I can't...

I can't believe it. They killed him because he wanted to change things?

In our time?

- They been doing it all through history. - In our country?

Kings are killed, Mr. Garrison. Politics is power, nothing more.

Oh, don't take my word for it. Don't believe me.

Do your own work, your own thinking.

The size of this is...

beyond me.

Testify?

- Me? - Testify.

No chance in hell.

No, I'd be arrested and gagged.

Maybe sent to an institution, maybe worse. You, too.

I can give you the background.

You have to find the foreground, the little things.

Keep digging.

Remember, you're the only person to bring a trial in the murder of John Kennedy.

That's important, it's historic.

I haven't yet.

I don't have much of a case.

You don't have a choice anymore.

You've become a significant threat to the national security structure.

They would've killed you already, but you got a lot of light on you.

Instead, they're trying to destroy your credibility.

They already have in many circles in this town.

Be honest.

Your only chance is to come up with a case.

Something, anything.

Make arrests, stir the shitstorm.

Hope to reach a point of critical mass that'll start a chain reaction

of people coming forward.

Then, the government will crack.

Remember, fundamentally people are suckers for the truth,

and the truth is on your side, bubba.

I just hope you get a break.

Mr. Shaw, sir, you are under arrest,

charged with conspiracy and entering an agreement with other persons

for the specific purpose of committing the crime of murder

of President John F. Kennedy.

We have a warrant to search the premises.

It is my duty to inform you at this time...

you have the right to remain silent, you have the right to an attorney.

Name. First, middle, and last.

Clay Lavergne Shaw.

Address?

1313 Dauphine Street, New Orleans.

Mr. Shaw!

Ever use any aliases?

Clay Bertrand.

Mr. Clark, are you aware of the charges

- filed by District Attorney Garrison?

Yes, Mr. Shaw was included in our investigation.

There was no connection found.

- At all. - Why did the FBI investigate him?

And why, if they did, is his name not mentioned once

in the entire 26 volumes of the Warren Report,

- even it if is to clear his name?

I doubt this attorney general would qualify

- for my staff.

Mr. Garrison has presented absolutely nothing publicly...

which would contradict our findings.

I know of no fact which would refute the Commission's conclusion

that Lee Oswald was the lone killer.

What's your reaction to the chief justice's statement?

Well, I congratulate Mr. Shaw.

Most defendants have to wait for trial before they're allowed to produce

sacred cows like the chief justice of the land as a character witness,

who is, of course, not under oath and free from the laws of perjury.

You realize that you're damaging the credibility of the country,

- possibly destroying it? - Let me ask you...

Let me ask you, is a government worth preserving when it lies to the people?

- Huh?

It has become a dangerous country, sir, when you cannot trust anyone anymore,

when you cannot tell the truth.

I say, let justice be done, though the heavens fall!

The JFK conspiracy, the case of Jim Garrison.

- Honey, this is all about you!

A team of reporters has learned that District Attorney Jim Garrison

and his staff have intimidated, bribed, and even drugged witnesses

in their attempt to prove a conspiracy

involving New Orleans businessman Clay Shaw in the murder of John F. Kennedy.

John Chancler...

was a cellmate of Willie O'Keefe's

at Angola...

He said he'd be cut loose, if he copped to the DA's office.

I sent him up for burglary.

- And there's his old buddy Miguel Torres.

We sent him up, too.

They wanted me to say Shaw was Bertrand.

They said they'd get me a pardon.

Janet Williams

comments on Willie O'Keefe's descriptions

of having met Oswald.

Was he a homosexual?

That's not the Lee I knew. Absolutely not.

I think Mr. O'Keefe must have seen someone he thought was Lee Oswald.

I didn't talk to nobody

after the assassination.

I was on drugs at the hospital.

Like I told the FBI, that call was a figment of my imagination.

Personally, I think he's quite ill, mentally.

With one half of his mind, he is able to go out and fabricate evidence,

then by some osmosis, he is able to convince the other half

that the fabrication is the truth.

Well, I wouldn't worry about it, Liz.

There's only about 20, 30 million people watching this tonight.

Guess my reputation's all right with the people watching Laugh-in.

...because in some way, Mr. Garrison is indebted

and tied to the mob?

The more one looks at Jim Garrison,

the more one finds he has destroyed reputations,

- spread fear and suspicion,

and, worst of all, exploited this nation's sorrow and doubt.

- Jim Garrison has said, quote: - You wanna be in bed with us?

- Sleep with me tonight? - "Let justice be done,

though the heavens fall."

He seeks the truth, so do we.

What Dr. Martin Luther King called his beautiful dream,

expressed so dramatically during the 1963 March on Washington,

was shattered tonight in Memphis, Tennessee by an assassin's bullet.

Police seem to think that the single shot came from across the street.

They say that they have found a Browning automatic rifle,

- fitted with a marksman's scope,

on a sidewalk.

- I'll get it!

Hello?

Hello, is this Jim Garrison's daughter?

Yes.

Virginia or Elizabeth?

Virginia.

Virginia, you're a lucky little girl.

Your daddy has entered you in a beauty contest.

- Would you like to be in a beauty contest?

- I don't know. - My God!

- My God, what have they done?

- Yes. Uh-huh. - It's lynchin' time.

It's lynchin' time.

That sounds fun.

And you get off from school

- Honey, who are you talking to? - ...at 3:00 everyday?

Okay, Virginia, that's all I need to know.

- Mommy, I'm gonna be in a beauty contest!

Who is this? Who is this?!

Hello?

Jim, did you enter Virginia in a beauty contest?

A man just called, he wanted to know everything, her height, her weight--

It's some crackpot.

Martin Luther King was killed in Memphis, today.

Honey, your daughter's life's just been threatened!

Just a crank making calls, happens a dozen times a day at the office.

Our home, Jim! A kidnapper, a murderer, who knows!

Jesus Christ, Liz, only cowards make crank calls!

- How do you know? - All right? Nothing's gonna happen.

How do you even know what goes on in this house anymore!

You're too busy making speeches!

Liz--

Getting every crazed Klansman in Louisiana after us!

- Get a hold of yourself. - I'm leaving! I'm taking the kids,

- Come on, come on! - and I'm leaving!

I can't stand it anymore!

- The government wants you to be scared. - You and your government.

The government wants everybody to be scared to speak out.

- What's the matter with you? - They count on it.

- Don't you have any feelings? - There's nothing to be scared of.

Your own daughter!

What kind of man are you?

I'll take them up to my mother's if it makes you feel any better, all right?

You spend a week.

- What's a week gonna do? - I'll change the locks, the phone lines,

I'll even get a bodyguard. Just get a hold of yourself.

Honey, before this Kennedy thing,

nothing mattered in this world more than your children.

The other night Jasper tried to talk to you, you didn't even notice he was there.

He came to me bawling his little eyes out.

- I promise, all right? - He's sensitive, honey.

- I promise I'll make more time for Jasper. - He needs more from you.

Is it such a chore?

- Goddammit, if I said I'll spend more time - I don't understand you!

with him, I'll spend more time with him, all right?

I cannot fight you and the whole world too, Liz!

I'm not fighting you, I'm trying to reach you!

- You've changed. - Of course, I've changed!

My eyes have opened.

And once they're open, believe me, what used to look normal seems insane.

And now King. Don't you think this has something to do with that?

- Can't you see?

- I don't wanna see, goddammit!

I'm tired. I've had enough!

You're ruining this man Shaw's life,

you're attacking him because he's a homosexual!

That's not why I'm attacking him!

Did you ever for once stop to consider what he was feeling?

You don't believe me? Hmm?

- Oh, I don't know anymore! - All this time and you never believed me!

I just want to raise our children and live a normal life!

I want my life back!

Well so do I, goddammit!

I had a life, too, you know.

But you just can't bury your head in the sand like some goddamn ostrich, Liz!

It's not about our well-being, all right? It's not about our two cars,

and our TVs and your kitchen!

It's about our kids growing up in a shithole of lies, and I'm angry about it!

And my life is fucked because of it.

And if you can see it that way, Liz, you'll see that your life is fucked, too.

You never talked to me this way before, Jim Garrison.

If you don't want to support me, fine, I can understand that.

But don't start making threats about taking the children.

I'm not making any threats, I'm leaving you!

- I'm taking the kids and I'm leaving! - Go on, then, fine. Get out!

- I am! - Go hide somewhere, join the rest of them.

- I am! - They'll tell you I'm crazy.

You'll get plenty of people to tell you I'm crazy!

You won't have any problems filling out your divorce papers on me!

But somebody's got to try, goddammit.

Somebody.

Are we going away, Daddy?

I don't know, Jasper.

Because of Kennedy?

Are the same people gonna kill us, Papa?

No, Jasper.

Nobody's gonna kill us.

I'm scared.

I don't like it when you and Mommy fight.

I know, I don't like it either, honey.

Why do we have to leave?

Don't you love us anymore?

Daddy... Daddy loves both of you, okay?

And there's nothing wrong with feeling a little scared, Jasper.

Telling the truth can be a scary thing sometimes.

It scared President Kennedy, and he was a brave man.

But if you let yourself be too scared...

then you let the bad guys take over the country, don't you?

Yeah.

Then everybody gets scared.

Stay with Mom, Papa.

Please?

- Damn. Here's another one.

The US Attorney in Washington declines to serve our subpoena

on Allen Dulles, Charles Cabell, CIA Director Richard Helms--

any FBI agent we named.

Well, what do you expect from a pig but a grunt.

Without them, it's going to be near impossible, chief,

to prove Shaw's connection to the CIA.

What the hell is going on?

Never before has an extradition request from this office been refused.

We haven't tried to get Julia Ann Mercer in here.

No, she could get hurt.

What?

If you believe what's happened to these other people, no.

Yeah, but she's the best damn witness we have!

I just don't want to do it, that's all. Now, what else?

Well, you got your hate mail here.

And your fan mail here.

The bad news is that the IRS requested an audit of your income from this office.

Well, I expected that two months ago,

and they're wasting their time.

The bad news is the National Guard just asked me to resign after 18 years.

Well, maybe that's the good news.

Never was as good as combat, anyway.

But this is.

Bill, any more on Oswald and Shaw?

Uh, yeah, yeah.

They were seen together in Clinton in early September.

The Civil Rights Movement was running a voters' registration drive.

Rumor is Shaw, a local boy, was working on some arms deal

to discredit the civil rights movement.

Nobody really knows what they were doing there, but...

hell, they stood out like cotton balls.

I got whites and coloreds saw ‘em, but...

last time I checked, there was nothing illegal with registering to vote.

We still got the negro junkie, Vernon Bundy,

who saw 'em talkin' at the seawall near Lake Pontchartrain.

But, hell, it's tough, boss, nobody wants to talk about Shaw. He's--

You keep saying-- see, you keep saying that!

- You're not digging! - I keep saying what?

- You're not digging deep enough. - I'm not digging?

- You do my job, I'll do your job!

I think Clinton is a breakthrough, now, all right?

Now, Shaw denies ever knowing Ferrie or Oswald, right?

Right.

All right, that proves he's a liar.

Keep on it, Bill.

This is interesting.

Oswald went to see the FBI two weeks before the assassination.

Can I see Special Agent Hosty, please?

I'm sorry, he's not in. Can someone else help you?

It seems Special Agent Hosty made three visits to Janet Williams' house,

supposedly to keep an eye on Marina.

He left a note.

Hosty told a Dallas newspaperman that it was a warning to him

to stop questioning Marina at home when Oswald was not present.

She was not a citizen, so possibly he was threatening to deport her back to Russia.

But what the note really said no one knows.

- Hosty tore it up, - Get rid of it!

- and flushed it down the toilet. - Get rid of it, Hosty.

This is just speculation, people, but

what if the note was describing the assassination attempt on JFK?

Come on, people, think!

That's the only reason to destroy it.

Because if it was any kind of threat, like Hosty said, they would've kept it,

‘cause it makes their case against the "angry, lone nut” that much stronger.

Remember the New Orleans meeting with Agent Quigley

- the day he got arrested?

There, again, Quigley destroyed the notes from the interview.

I think we can raise the possibility that Oswald not only was an informant...

but that he may well have been the original source we have for the telex

dated November 17th,

warning of Kennedy's assassination in Dallas on November 22nd.

William Walter, the night clerk on duty in the FBI office here,

he gave me a copy of this,

said it went all over the country, nothing was done,

and the motorcade went ahead on schedule.

And this wasn't even mentioned in the Warren Report.

Determined that a militant revolutionary group

may attempt to assassinate President Kennedy

on his proposed trip to Dallas, Texas.

Shortly after the assassination, Walter says

that the telex was removed from all the files in all the cities,

as an obvious embarrassment to the Bureau.

I believe Oswald was sending information through Hosty.

I have a hunch that, from the get go,

Oswald had infiltrated this group, probably Cubans, right-wing extremists.

- He was told to be at the book depository

that day by his handlers, to either prevent the assassination

or to take part in it.

I mean, they coulda told him anything,

either they were gonna close down the plotters

- that day,

or they were gonna simulate an attack on Kennedy to whip up public opinion

so that Kennedy would have to reverse his policies on communism.

It doesn't really matter what they told him.

- He was under orders.

He was a foot soldier.

- And, uh...

You can't miss.

He is a dead duck.

I don't buy it, chief.

Why would the FBI cover it up?

A telex that disappears from every single FBI office in this country?

There's a word, Bill.

Orders.

Or a cover up!

Jesus, Bill, don't you have enough proof of the FBI's complicity yet?

Maybe I have a little more respect for this country's institutions--

- My God! - than you do, Susie!

How much more do you need?

You tell me how the hell you gonna keep a conspiracy going on between

the mob, the CIA, the FBI, and Army Intelligence,

and who the hell knows what else,

when you know for a fact you can't keep a secret in this room

between 12 people.

We got leaks everywhere!

I mean, we are going to trial here, y'all!

What the hell do we really got?

Oswald, Ruby, Banister, Ferrie are dead!

Shaw, I mean maybe he's an agent, I don't know,

but as a covert operator in my book he is wide open for blackmail

‘cause of his homosexuality.

Shaw's our toehold, Bill. Now, I don't know exactly what he is or where he fits,

and I don't really care.

I do know he's lying through his teeth and I'm not gonna let go of him.

Yeah, and for those reasons, you're going to trial against Clay Shaw, chief?

Well, you're gonna lose!

We should be investigating our mafia leads here in New Orleans.

Now, I can buy that a hell of a lot easier than I can the government.

Ruby is all mob, knows Oswald, sets him up.

Hoffa, Trafficante, Marcello, they hire some guns to do Kennedy,

and the government doesn't want to open up a whole can of worms there because

it used the mob to try to get to Castro.

You know, Castro being assassinated by the mob, by us,

it sounds pretty wild to John Q. Citizen.

So they close the book on JFK.

Makes perfect sense to me.

I don't doubt their involvement, Bill, but at a low level.

- Oh, come on! - Could the mob

change the parade route, Bill?

Or eliminate the protection for the president?

Could the mob send Oswald to Russia and get him back?

Could the mob get the FBI, the CIA, and the Dallas police

to make a mess of the investigation?

I mean, could the mob get the Warren Commission appointed to cover it up?

Could the mob wreck the autopsy?

I mean, could the mob influence the national media to go to sleep?

And since when has the mob used anything but. 38s for hits up close?

The mob wouldn't have the guts or the power for something of this magnitude.

Assassins need payrolls,

schedules, times, orders.

This was a military-style ambush from start to finish.

This was a coup d'état with Lyndon Johnson waiting in the wings.

Oh, okay, so now you're saying Lyndon Johnson was involved?

- Huh? The President of the United States? - I know this, Bill.

Lyndon Johnson got one billion dollars for his Texas friends, Brown and Root,

to dredge Cam Ranh Bay for the military in Vietnam.

- That's just for openers. - Boss!

Are you calling the president a murderer?

If I'm so far from the truth, why is the FBI bugging our offices?

Huh? Why are our witnesses being bought off and murdered?

Why are federal agencies blocking our extraditions and subpoenas,

- when we were never blocked before? - I don't know!

I don't-- maybe there's some rogue element in the government or something.

- Oh, come on! - With a full-blown conspiracy

to cover it up?

You ever read your Shakespeare, Bill?

Yeah, I do.

Julius Caesar.

"Brutus and Cassius, they, too, are honorable men."

Who killed Caesar?

Ten, 12 senators.

All's it takes is one Judas, Bill.

A few people on the inside.

Pentagon, CIA--

This is Louisiana, chief.

I mean, how the hell do you know who your daddy is?

- ‘Cause your mama told you so.

You are way out there taking a crap in the wind, boss,

and I, for one, am not going along on this one!

Chief, I've had my doubts all along about Bill.

Been fighting us all along.

Well, we need him back.

Boss, Broussard wasted a whole damn month trying to prove that mob boys,

like Jack Ruby and Brading, are hooked up with Hunt Oil.

I don't trust the guy.

I will not hear this, gentlemen. Now, I value Bill as much as any person here.

I think it's time we all made room for someone else's ideas, including me.

Maybe Oswald is what everyone says he is and I'm just...

I'm just plain dumb about it.

I've seen him copying files, leaving here late at night.

I just plain don't trust--

Maybe you two didn't hear what I said.

Now, I said I will not tolerate infighting among the staff!

I'm afraid I cannot work with Bill Broussard anymore.

Are you giving me an ultimatum, Lou?

What?

- Are you giving me an ultimatum?

Well, if that's what you want to call it.

You know, I never thought it would come to this.

I guess I am.

Well, I will not have any damned ultimatums put to me, Lou.

I'll accept your resignation.

Well, you sure got it.

You are one stubborn son of a bitch.

And you're making a hell of a mistake.

Boss, aren't you being a little hard?

No, I don't think I am, Susie.

Anyone else?

And now, Jerry, here's Jim Garrison,

the District Attorney of New Orleans, Louisiana.

Welcome, District Attorney Garrison.

So, you're investigating the murder of President Kennedy.

You know, I must say, we have heard some strange things

coming out of your office in New Orleans.

First we heard that the Cuban exiles killed the president.

Then, the mob.

Now your latest theory seems to be that the CIA,

and the FBI, and the Pentagon,

and the White House,

all combined in some elaborate conspiracy to kill John Kennedy.

Let me ask you,

is there anyone besides Lee Harvey Oswald

who you think didn't conspire to kill the president?

Let's just say this, Jerry.

I've stopped beating my wife.

Maybe you should ask Lyndon Johnson. We know he has some answers.

Now, there have been a number of reports in reputable news media,

Time, Newsweek, our own NBC,

that you've gone way beyond the legal means available to a prosecutor,

that you've intimidated-- even drugged-- witnesses,

bribed them,

urged them to commit perjury.

Do you have a response to this?

Your faith in the veracity of the major media is touching, Jerry.

It indicates that the Age of Innocence is not yet over.

But ask yourself...

If we'd learned on November 22nd, 1963 that the Premier of Russia had been shot

from a Moscow office building by a lonely, capitalist sympathizer,

who, himself, was then liquidated by a patriotic Muscovite within 48 hours

while surrounded by armed police,

I think it would be pretty apparent to any free-thinking person

that a coup d'état and a transfer of power had just taken place in the Soviet Union.

- And we would not be asking questions

or attacking Jim Garrison or his record.

We would, in a free-thinking society,

be asking hard questions about why he was killed

and what forces were opposed to him.

Jim, you know, there are some people who might say you're paranoid.

Maybe I'd better show you some pictures,

so you can begin to understand what it is I'm talking about.

These are arrests.

Now, these arrests were photographed...

minutes after the assassination.

Now, they were never shown to the American public.

Jim, I'm sorry, these pictures can't show up on TV.

- Well, sure they can. - No, I'm sorry, they can't.

No, the--

- The camera can pick these up. - Jim, I'm sorry.

They can't. We have libel laws, you know.

Those men you just saw were arrested in Dallas minutes after the assassination.

They were never seen again.

No record of arrest,

- no mugshot, no fingerprint. - Jim, hold that thought.

- We're gonna be back, - They got away--

right after these commercials.

- Who were they?

Chief!

Bill, what the hell are you doing here?

I'm sorry about the other day, chief.

I didn't mean to walk out on you like that.

Bill, you came all the way to tell me the obvious?

No, boss, look.

I just got word there's gonna be an attempt to kill you

somewhere between here and New Orleans.

A mob guy was brought down by Shaw from Canada.

- This is serious, chief.

You're gonna need a bodyguard tonight in Phoenix.

Bill, when you were in the Army,

did you have a chance to find out what an order meant?

- Hmm? - Yes.

You happen to remember my ordering everyone on the staff not to participate

in passing on these endless rumors about how somebody is gonna be killed?

Yes, I do, boss, but this--

No, there is no "but."

There is no "but" in a military situation, Broussard!

I don't appreciate your dumping this paranoid garbage on me.

And I don't appreciate your inability to follow a simple order,

especially when it means I'm personally gonna end up paying for your flight

back to New Orleans.

Let's get you a ticket.

Boss, I'm sorry.

- I'm just looking out for you. - Thank you.

Get a receipt.

Come on, come on. He's out of here.

Jim, where are you going?

It's me, Samuel.

Hey!

- How long were you in that restroom? - None of your goddamn business.

Jim, bad news,

Bill's turned.

I think he's given everything we've got to the feds.

We studied the memos and there was nothing there, chief.

Nothing.

We went to confront him and the landlady said the son of a bitch just took off.

- Left everything.

It's unbelievable. I'm sorry.

Mattie, could you get Mr. Garrison a drink, please?

- Something sure scared him.

Well, Bill doesn't scare that easy. Somebody got to his thinking.

He was never that good a thinker.

He sure fooled us.

No, no, Numa, don't turn it down.

- Turn it up, I want to see this.

Well, you know what's happening, he's winning.

Senator Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota.

He'll never make it.

If he wins, they'll kill him.

He'll stop the war.

They'll kill him before they let him be president.

Thank you, Mattie.

Boss, with Broussard, they have everything.

All our witnesses, our strategies for the trial.

We got to double check his work.

There could be false leads. We can't go to trial.

We don't have a prayer!

I don't think so, Al.

I have to agree with Al, boss.

This is not one we're gonna come out on.

You remember the Hemingway story, The Old Man and the Sea?

The old fisherman manages to catch this great fish,

a fish so huge that he has to tie it to the side of the boat

in order to get it back in.

But by the time it reached the shore,

the fish had long since been picked apart by sharks.

Nothing was left but the skeleton.

And that's what's gonna happen to us.

Then what'd we go to all this trouble for, boss?

It's a means to an end.

Now, this war has two fronts.

In a court of law, we hope, against the odds,

to nail Clay Shaw on a conspiracy charge.

In the court of public opinion, it could take another 25, 30 years

for the truth to come out.

But at least we're gonna strike the first blow.

What if you're wrong?

I never thought for a second I was, honey.

- Liz.

Will you come to the trial?

I don't think so.

- CBS News has projected

Senator Robert Kennedy the winner of the crucial California primary.

And that is what has been going on within the United States

over the period of the last three years

the division, the violence,

the disenchantment with our society,

the divisions, whether it's between blacks and whites,

between the poor and the more affluent,

or between age groups or on the war in Vietnam,

that we can start to work together. We are a great country,

an unselfish country, and a compassionate country.

And I intend to make that my basis for running...

Senator Kennedy has been shot!

We don't know how serious it is, but we do know Senator Kennedy has been shot!

Get the gun! Get the gun!

Stay away from the gun!

They killed him, honey.

Hmm?

He won, and they killed Robert Kennedy.

- No. - They shot him down.

Oh, my God.

Both of them?

Both brothers?

You were right.

It hasn't ended.

For the first time...

I feel really scared.

I wish I could've loved you more.

Sometimes I feel like I didn't ever love you

or the children enough.

I'm sorry.

Please rise.

Oyez, oyez, oyez!

The Criminal District Court for Orleans Parish, Section H,

is now in session.

Honorable Judge Edward A. Haggerty, Junior presiding.

Please be seated.

That's Clay Bertrand.

That's the man I saw at David Ferrie's.

That's who you say you saw,

a confessed homosexual,

convicted of pandering and solicitation,

a man who has lied about everything,

and now wants to be taken at his word.

It was that man right there. Yes, sir.

He was at the Pontchartrain wall,

with the man who shot the president.

I remember him ‘cause of his limp.

A heroin addict, injecting himself at the wall,

barely conscious of his surroundings.

Is that the man?

That was the man, right there.

He dropped Oswald off on the voters' line.

I remember ‘cause they were the only white strangers around that morning.

That big, black Cadillac of his made me think they might be FBI.

Said he was a representative of one International Trade Mart in New Orleans.

More than five years ago, for two minutes.

It's fair to say you could be mistaken.

It was just a figment of my imagination.

The cat's stewing you, the oyster's shucking you, I told him.

You got the right ta-ta, but the wrong ho-ho.

Bertrand is not Shaw, scout's honor, and you can tell him I said so.

Objection, your Honor. This office has won

a conviction of perjury against Dean Andrews on this matter.

Exception taken. That case is on appeal.

Mr. Goldberg,

you claim that you met David Ferrie and Clay Shaw on a vacation trip

from your accounting business in New York.

You had drinks...

and, under the influence, discussed killing Kennedy, is that not so?

Yes, I did.

Is it not also true that you fingerprinted your daughter

when she went to Louisiana State University?

Yes, sir, I did.

And is it not also true that you fingerprinted her when she returned

at the end of the semester?

Yes, I did.

Why?

Well, I wanted to make sure that she was the same girl I sent away.

He was one of Broussard's witnesses, chief.

He was totally sane when we took his affidavit.

Your Honor, we call police officer Aloysius Habighorst to the stand.

I'm going to have to ask the jury to leave the courtroom.

Gentlemen, will you please rise

- What? - and follow me?

Name. First, middle, and last.

Clay Lavergne Shaw.

The defendant did not have his lawyer present when asked!

Jesus, Ed, from time immemorial, it's been standard booking procedure

- to ask an alias, you know that! - I call ‘em as I see ‘em!

- Ever use any aliases? - Clay Bertrand.

There's no constitutional requirement that says a lawyer

- has to be present for routine questions! - I'm ruling it inadmissible!

- I'm ruling it inadmissible. - Well, hell, Ed, that's our case!

If that's your case, you didn't have a case.

I wouldn't believe anything Habighorst said, anyway.

I can't believe you're saying this in the courtroom.

Well, I am saying it. Bring in the jury.

Oswald?

No, I did not.

Ever called Dean Andrews?

No, I did not.

And have you ever met David Ferrie?

No.

Wouldn't even know what he looked like,

if it hadn't been for the pictures I'd been shown.

Did you ever use the alias Clay Bertrand?

No.

I did not.

Thank you, Mr. Shaw.

Well, a very great actor has just given us a great performance, Your Honor,

but we are nowhere closer to the truth.

Let it be noted that my office is charging Clay Shaw

with outright perjury on the 15 answers he has given in this courtroom today,

not one word of truth having escaped his lips--

You're out of order, Jim Boy, now sit down!

To prove there was a conspiracy involving Clay Shaw,

we must first prove that there was more than one man

involved in the assassination.

To do that...

we must look at the Zapruder film, which my office has subpoenaed.

- The American public has not seen that--

The American public has not seen that film

because it has been kept locked away in a vault for the last five years,

in the Time-Life Building in New York City.

There's a reason for that.

Watch.

Picture speaks a thousand words, doesn't it.

The Warren Commission thought they had an open-and-shut case.

Three bullets, one assassin.

But two unpredictable things happened that day that made it virtually impossible.

One, the eight-millimeter home movie taken by Abraham Zapruder

while standing near the grassy knoll.

And two,

the third wounded man, James Tague,

who was nicked by a fragment

while standing near the Triple Underpass.

The time frame of 5.6 seconds established by the Zapruder film,

left no possibility of a fourth shot.

So the shot or fragment

that left a superficial wound on Tague's cheek,

had to come from one of the three bullets

fired from the sixth floor of the depository.

That leaves just two bullets.

And we know one of them was the fatal head shot that killed Kennedy.

So, now, a single bullet remains.

A single bullet now has to account for the remaining

seven wounds in Kennedy and Connally.

But rather than admit to a conspiracy or investigate further,

the Warren Commission chose to endorse the theory put forth

by an ambitious junior counsellor, Arlen Specter,

one of the grossest lies ever forced on the American people.

We've come to know it as the "magic bullet" theory.

The magic bullet...

enters the President's back, headed downward at an angle of 17 degrees.

It then moves upward,

in order to leave Kennedy's body from the front of his neck,

wound number two,

where it waits 1.6 seconds,

presumably in midair, where it turns right,

then left,

right, then left,

and continues into Connally's body at the rear of his right armpit,

wound number three.

The bullet then heads downward,

at an angle of 27 degrees, shattering Connally's fifth rib,

and exiting from the right side of his chest,

wound number four.

The bullet then turns right,

and reenters Connally's body at his right wrist,

would number five.

Shattering the radius bone,

the bullet then exits Connally's wrist, wound number six,

makes a dramatic U-turn,

and buries itself into Connally's left thigh,

wound number seven, from which it later falls out,

and is found in almost "pristine" condition,

on a stretcher in a corridor of Parkland Hospital.

That's some bullet.

Anyone who's been in combat will tell you never in the history of gunfire

has there been a bullet this ridiculous.

Yet the government says it can prove it,

with some fancy physics in a nuclear laboratory.

Course they can.

Theoretical physics can prove that an elephant can hang from a cliff

with his tail tied to a daisy.

But use your eyes, your common sense.

The Army Wound Ballistics experts at Edgewood Arsenal

fired some comparison bullets.

Not one of them looked anything like this.

Take a look at CE 856,

an identical bullet fired through the wrist of a human cadaver.

Just one of the bones smashed by the magic bullet.

Seven wounds, gentlemen.

Tough skin, dense bones.

This single bullet explanation...

is the foundation of the Warren Commission's claim of a lone assassin.

And once you conclude

the magic bullet could not create all seven of those wounds,

you have to conclude that there was a fourth shot

and a second rifleman.

And if there was a second rifleman...

then, by definition,

- there had to be a conspiracy,

which we believe involves the accused Clay Shaw.

Fifty-one witnesses, gentlemen of the jury, thought they heard shots

coming from the grassy knoll,

which is to the right and front of the president.

Key witnesses that day,

Charles Brehm, a combat vet.

- Right behind, Jean Hill and Mary Moorman. - Hey, Mr. President!

S. M. Holland, Richard Dodd, James Simmons standing on the overpass.

J. C. Price, overlooking the whole Plaza.

William Newman, father of two children, who hit the deck

- on the north side of EIm.

Abraham Zapruder.

Each of these key witnesses has no doubt whatsoever

one or more shots came from behind the picket fence.

Twenty-six trained medical personnel at Parkland Hospital

saw, with their own eyes, the back of the president's head

blasted out!

Dr. Peters.

There was a large, seven-centimeter opening

in the right occipitoparietal area.

A considerable portion of the brain was missing there.

Almost a fifth or possibly a quarter of the back of the head

had been blasted out,

- along with the underlying brain tissue. - Father, what is the proper time to

declare one dead for the last rites?

There was also a large fragment of skull

attached to a flap of scalp.

The exit hole in the rear of his head measured about 120 millimeters,

or five inches across.

Not one of the civilian doctors who examined the president

at Parkland Hospital

regarded his throat wound as anything but a wound of entry.

But then the body was illegally moved to Washington for the autopsy.

Because when a coup d'état has occurred,

- Hold it! - there's a big difference...

- between an autopsy that is performed

- by civilian doctors, - You're not taking him!

and one that is performed by military doctors under order.

The departure of Air Force One from Love Field that Friday afternoon

was not so much a takeoff as it was a getaway

with the newly sworn in president.

Objection, Your Honor.

Sustained.

On the plane, of course,

Lee Harvey Oswald's guilt was announced

by the White House Situation Room to all passengers

before any kind of investigation had started,

the "angry, lone nut" solution beginning to take its shape.

Objection, Your Honor!

Sustained.

Mr. Garrison, will you please bottle the acid!

The three Bethesda Naval Hospital doctors

picked by the military left something to be desired

insomuch as none of them had any experience with combat gunfire wounds.

Through their autopsy, we've been able to justify eight wounds

- from just two bullets.

Three to Kennedy, five to Connally,

- Look what I found on the floor. - one of them being the magic bullet.

- FBI? - Here.

Colonel Finck, are you saying someone told you not to dissect the neck?

I was told that the family wanted the examination of the head.

Oh, Christ.

Looks like half his brain is gone.

Let's weigh it.

653 grams.

As a pathologist, it was your obligation

to explore all possible causes of death, was it not?

I had the cause of death.

Your Honor, I would ask you to direct the witness to answer my question.

Why did Colonel Finck not dissect the track of the bullet wound?

- Obvious tracheotomy... - Well, I heard Dr. Humes stating that...

That's enough, that's enough. It's duly noted.

Okay, let's check the back, gentlemen.

All right.

There's a considerable amount of spinal fluid coming out of his right ear.

I can feel the end of the wound with my finger.

That won't be necessary, Commander.

- Watch the ear, watch the ear. - Yes, sir.

Shot in the back. Cheap crime.

- He said... - Who's in charge, here?

I am.

I don't remember his name.

You must understand it was quite crowded.

And when you are called, in circumstances like that,

to look at the wound of the president, who is dead,

you don't look around a lot to ask people for their names and who they are.

But you were a qualified pathologist.

Was this Army general a qualified pathologist?

- No.

No, but you took his orders?

Yes.

- So he was directing the autopsy? - No.

- No? - No, no, because there were others.

There were others?

There were others. There were admirals.

- Oh, there were admirals. - Oh, yes.

And when you are a lieutenant colonel in the Army, you just follow orders.

It is not our business to discuss this with anyone outside this room.

As I recall it was Admiral Kenney, the surgeon general of the Navy.

We were specifically told not to discuss the case.

A lot of people that day were deciding what was private,

none of the American people's business.

The chief pathologist, Commander Humes,

by his own admission voluntarily burned his autopsy notes.

President Johnson orders the blood-soaked limousine,

filled with bullet holes and clues,

to be immediately washed and rebuilt.

He sends John Connally's bloody suit right to the cleaners,

The Justice Department denied this office access to the autopsy photos.

And when we finally get a court order

to examine President Kennedy's brain in the National Archives,

in the hopes of finding from which direction the bullet came from,

we're told by the government...

your government...

that the president's brain has disappeared.

That's not all that's disappeared, gentlemen.

With it, I think, the concept of justice.

Objection, Your Honor!

Not only has Mr. Garrison insulted the federal government,

- but he is also introducing-- - Overruled! Overruled!

So what really happened that day?

Let's just for a moment speculate, shall we?

We have the epileptic seizure around 12:15 p.m.

distracting the police,

making it easier for the shooters to move into their places.

The epileptic later vanished,

- never checking into the hospital.

The A Team gets on the sixth floor of the depository.

Now, they were refurbishing the floors in the depository that week,

which allowed unknown workmen in and out of the building.

They move quickly into position, just minutes before the shooting.

The second spotter on the radio talking to the two other teams

has the best overall view, "the God spot.”

- B Team,

one rifleman and one spotter with a headset and access to the building,

moves into the low floor of the Dal-Tex Building.

The third team, the C Team, moves in behind the picket fence

above the grassy knoll,

where the shooter and the spotter are first seen by the late Lee Bowers

in the watchtower of the railyard.

- They have the best position of all.

Kennedy is close and on a flat, low trajectory.

Part of this team is a coordinator,

who's flashed security credentials at several people,

- chasing them out of the parking lot area.

Probably two to three more men are down in the crowd on Elm.

Ten to 12 men, three teams, three shooters.

The triangulation of fire Clay Shaw and David Ferrie discussed two months before.

- They've walked the Plaza.

They know every inch.

They've calibrated their sights, they've practiced on moving targets.

They're ready.

Kennedy's motorcade makes a turn from Main onto Houston.

- It's gonna be a turkey shoot.

- They don't shoot him coming up Houston,

which is the easiest shot for a single shooter in the book depository!

They wait.

They wait till he gets to the killing zone between three rifles.

Kennedy makes the final turn from Houston onto EIm,

- slowing down...

- to some 11 miles an hour.

The shooters across Dealey Plaza tighten, taking their aim,

waiting for the radio to say,

"green, green!"

or "abort, abort!"

The first shot rings out.

Sounding like a backfire, it misses the car completely.

Frame 161, Kennedy stops waving as he hears something.

Connally's head turns slightly to the right.

Frame 193, the second shot hits Kennedy in the throat from the front.

- Frame 225,

the president emerging from behind the road sign.

You can see that he's obviously been hit, raising his arms to his throat.

- The third shot, frame 232,

hits Kennedy in the back, pulling him downward and forward.

Connally, you will notice, shows no signs at all of being hit.

He is visibly holding his Stetson,

which is impossible if his wrist has been shattered.

Connally is turning here now.

Frame 238, the fourth shot.

It misses Kennedy,

- and takes Connally in the back.

This is the shot that proves there were two rifles.

Connally yells out, "My God, they're going to kill us all!"

Somewhere around this time now, another shot that misses the car completely

- strikes James Tague

down by the underpass.

- The car brakes.

The sixth and fatal shot,

frame 313, takes Kennedy in the head from the front.

- This is the key shot.

The president going back and to his left,

shot from the front and right,

totally inconsistent with the shot from the depository.

- Again, back and to the left.

Back... and to the left.

Back... and to the left.

Back... and to the left.

So what happens then?

Pandemonium.

- Get the hell out of here...

The shooters quickly disassemble their various weapons,

all except the Oswald rifle.

Patrolman Joe Smith rushes into the parking lot behind the picket fence.

- He smells gunpowder.

The character produced credentials from his pocket

- that showed him to be Secret Service.

Let's see your ID.

- You see anybody else up here? - No.

Keep looking!

So I accepted that, and let him go

and continued to search.

But I regretted it, ‘cause this guy looked like an auto mechanic.

He had on a sports shirt and pants,

but he had dirty fingernails.

Afterwards it didn't ring true, but at the time...

we were so pressed for time.

Yet all Secret Servicemen in Dallas that day are accounted for.

None were on foot in Dealey Plaza before or after the shooting,

till Dallas Secret Service Chief Forrest Sorrels returned at 12:55.

At least 12 other individuals were taken into custody by Dallas police.

No record of their arrests.

Men acting like hoboes were being pulled off trains,

marched through Dealey Plaza, photographed,

and yet there is no record for their arrests.

Men identifying themselves as Secret Service agents

were all over the place!

But who was impersonating them?

And where was Lee Harvey Oswald?

Around 12:15,

on her way out of the building to see the motorcade,

secretary Carolyn Arnold sees Oswald in the second floor snack room,

where he said he went for a Coke.

He was in a booth on the right side of the room.

Um...

He was by himself, as usual,

and appeared to be having his lunch.

I didn't speak to him, but I recognized him clearly.

At the same time, Bonnie Ray Williams

is supposedly eating his chicken lunch

on the sixth floor.

He's there until 12:15, maybe 12:20.

He sees nobody.

Arnold Rowland's down on the street, he's looking up,

he sees two men in the sixth floor window,

presumably after Bonnie Ray Williams had finished his lunch and left.

- John Powell,

a prisoner on the sixth floor of the Dallas county jail, sees them.

Quite a few of us guys saw them.

Everybody was hollering and yelling and all that.

- We thought they was security guys.

If Oswald was the assassin,

he was certainly pretty nonchalant about moving himself into position.

Later, he told Dallas police he was in the second-floor snack room.

Probably told to wait there by his handler for a phone call.

But the phone call never came.

A maximum 90 seconds after Kennedy is shot,

patrolman Marrion Baker runs into Oswald

in that second-floor lunchroom.

Hey, you!

Do you know this man? Is he an employee?

Yes, he is.

The president's been shot!

But what the Warren Commission would have us believe

is that after firing three bolt-action shots in 5.6 seconds,

Oswald then leaves three cartridges neatly side by side in the firing nest,

wipes the rifle clear of fingerprints,

stashes the rifle on the other side of the loft,

sprints down five flights of stairs,

past witnesses Victoria Adams and Sandra Styles,

who never see him,

then shows up, cool and calm,

on the second floor in front of Patrolman Baker.

All this within a maximum of 90 seconds of the shooting.

Hey, you!

Do you know this man? Is he an employee?

Yes, he is. The president's been shot!

Is he out of breath?

According to Baker, absolutely not.

Assuming he is the sole assassin,

Oswald is now free to escape from the building.

The longer he delays, the more chance the building will be sealed by police.

Is he guilty?

Does he walk out the nearest staircase?

No, he buys a Coke.

And at a slow pace,

spotted by Mrs. Reid on the second floor,

he strolls out the more distant front exit,

- where the cops have gathered.

Oddly, considering that three shots have been fired from there,

nobody seals the book depository for 10 more minutes.

Oswald slips out, as do several other employees.

Of course, when he realized something had gone wrong

and the president had been killed,

he knew there was a problem.

He may even have known he was the patsy.

An intuition, maybe.

The president killed, in spite of his warning.

The phone call that never came.

Perhaps, fear now came to Oswald for the very first time.

So Oswald returns to his rooming house around 1 p.m.,

- a half hour after the assassination.

- A man shot the president!

He puts on his jacket, grabs his .38 revolver,

- and leaves at 1:04.

- Earlene Roberts, the housekeeper,

says she heard two beeps on a car horn, that two uniformed cops

pulled up to the house where Oswald was in his room,

like it was a signal or something.

Officer Tippit is shot between 1:10

and 1:15, about a mile away.

And though no one actually saw him walking or jogging,

the government says Oswald covered that distance.

Now, giving the government

- the benefit of the doubt, - Sir?

- Excuse me, sir? - Oswald would have had to jog

a mile in six to 11 minutes

- and then commit the murder,

then reverse his direction

and walk three-fifths of a mile to the Texas Theatre

and arrive sometime before 1:30.

It's also a useful conclusion, after all.

Why else would Oswald kill Tippit?

Unless he'd just shot the president,

- and feared arrest?

Domingo Benavides,

- the closest witness to the shooting,

refused to identify Oswald as the killer and was never taken to a lineup.

Acquilla Clemons saw the killer with another man,

and says they went off in separate directions.

Mrs. Clemons was never taken to a lineup or to the Warren Commission.

At the scene of the crime,

Officer J. M. Poe marks the shells with his initials

- to record the chain of evidence.

Those initials are not on the three cartridge cases,

which the Warren Commission present to him.

As early as 12:44, only 14 minutes after the assassination,

the police radio put out a description matching Oswald's size

- and build.

Oswald is next seen by a shoe salesman, Johnny Brewer,

lurking along Jefferson Avenue.

Oswald is scared.

He begins to realize the full implications of this thing.

He goes into the Texas Theatre, possibly his prearranged meeting point,

but though he has 14 dollars in his pocket,

he does not buy the 75-cent ticket.

And Brewer has the cashier call the police.

- In response to the cashier's call,

at least 30 officers in a fleet of patrol cars

descend on the movie theater.

Now, this has to be the most remarkable example of police intuition

- since the Reichstag fire.

- And I don't buy it. They knew.

Someone knew Oswald was going to be there.

Brewer helpfully leads the cops into the theater

and from the stage points Oswald out.

There he is.

Sir, can I get you to stand up, please?

- This is it!

Kill the president, will you?

I am not resisting arrest!

I am not resisting arrest!

The police have their man.

It's already been decided...

in Washington.

By the time he is brought out from the theater,

a large crowd is waiting to scream at him.

Lee Oswald must've felt like Josef K in Kafka's The Trial.

He's never told the reasons for his arrest,

he doesn't know the unseen forces ranging against him.

By the time he reached police headquarters,

he is booked for murdering Tippit.

- No legal counsel is provided,

no record made of the long questioning.

By the time the sun rises the next morning,

he is booked for murdering the president.

The whole country, fueled by the media,

assumes he is guilty.

Under the guise of a patriotic nightclub owner

out to spare Jackie Kennedy from having to testify at a trial,

Jack Ruby is shown into an underground garage

by one of his inside men on the Dallas police force,

and when he is ready, Lee Harvey Oswald

- is brought out like a sacrificial lamb

and nicely disposed of, as an enemy of the people.

Oswald!

Who grieves for Lee Harvey Oswald?

Buried in a cheap grave under the name "Oswald"?

Nobody.

Within minutes,

false statements and press leaks about Lee Oswald circulate the globe.

The Official Legend is created and the media takes it from there.

The glitter of official lies and the epic splendor

of the thought-numbing funeral of JFK

confuse the eye and confound the understanding.

Hitler always said...

"the bigger the lie, the more people will believe it."

Lee Harvey Oswald, a crazed, lonely man who wanted attention

and got it by killing a president, was only the first

in a long line of patsies.

In later years, Bobby Kennedy,

Martin Luther King, men whose

commitment to change and peace

would make them dangerous to men who are committed to war, would follow,

also killed by such lonely, crazed men,

men who remove our guilt by making murder

a meaningless act of a loner.

We have all become Hamlets in our country,

children of a slain father-leader,

whose killers still possess the throne.

The ghost of John F. Kennedy confronts us with the secret murder

at the heart of the American dream.

He forces on us the appalling questions:

Of what is our Constitution made?

What is our citizenship, and more, our lives worth?

What is the future of a democracy,

where a president can be assassinated under

conspicuously suspicious circumstances,

while the machinery of legal action scarcely trembles?

How many more political murders, disguised as heart attacks,

suicides,

cancers, drug overdoses,

how many airplane and car crashes will occur

before they are exposed for what they are?

"Treason doth never prosper,” wrote an English poet.

What's the reason?

Well, if it prosper, none dare call it treason.

The American public has yet to see the Zapruder film.

Why?

The American public has yet to see the real X-rays and photographs

of the autopsy.

Why?

There are hundreds of documents that could help prove this conspiracy.

Why are they being withheld or burned by the government?

Each time my office, or you, the people,

have asked those questions, demanded crucial evidence,

the answer from on high has always been

"national security.”

What kind of "national security” do we have

when we have been robbed of our leaders?

What "national security” permits the removal

of fundamental power from the hands of the American people

and validates the ascendancy of invisible government in the United States?

That kind of "national security,"

gentlemen of the jury, is when it smells like it,

feels like it, and looks like it,

you call it what it is.

Fascism.

I submit to you that what took place

on November 22nd, 1963

was a coup d'état.

Its most direct and tragic result

was a reversal of President Kennedy's commitment to withdraw from Vietnam.

A war is the biggest business in America, worth 80 billion dollars a year.

President Kennedy was murdered by a conspiracy

that was planned in advance at the highest levels of our government,

and it was carried out by fanatical and disciplined Cold Warriors

in the Pentagon and CIA's covert operations apparatus,

among them Clay Shaw here before you.

It was a public execution.

And it was covered up by like-minded individuals

in the Dallas Police Department,

the Secret Service, the FBI,

- and the White House, all the way up to

including J. Edgar Hoover and Lyndon Johnson,

whom I consider accomplices after the fact.

The assassination reduced the president to a transient official.

His job, his assignment,

is to speak as often as possible of this nation's desire for peace

while he acts as a business agent in the Congress

for the military and their hardware manufacturers.

Now, some people say I'm crazy.

Southern caricature seeking higher office.

Well, there is a simple way to determine if I am paranoid.

Let's ask the two men who have profited the most from the assassination:

your former president, Lyndon Baines Johnson,

and your new president, Richard Nixon,

to release the 51 CIA documents

pertaining to Lee Harvey Oswald and Jack Ruby.

Or the secret CIA memo

on Oswald's activities in Russia that was destroyed

while being photocopied.

All these documents are yours,

the people's property. You pay for it.

But because the government considers you children who might be too disturbed

or distressed to face this reality,

or because you might possibly lynch those involved,

you cannot see these documents for another 75 years.

I'm in my early 40s,

so I'll have shuffled off this mortal coil by then,

but I'm already telling my eight-year-old son

to keep himself physically fit,

so that one glorious September morning

in the year 2038,

he can walk into the National Archives

and find out what the CIA and the FBI knew!

They may even push it back, then.

Hell, it may become a generational affair,

with questions passed down father to son,

mother to daughter.

That someday, somewhere

someone may find out the damn truth.

We better.

We better, or we might, just as well, build ourselves

another government...

like the Declaration of Independence says to,

when the old one ain't working, just--

just a little farther out West.

An American naturalist wrote:

"A patriot must always be ready to defend his country...

against its government."

I would 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.

People like S. M. Holland,

Lee Bowers,

Jean Hill, Willie O'Keefe.

They've all taken that risk. They've all come forward.

I have here some 8,000 dollars in these letters sent--

sent to my office from all over the country.

Quarters, dimes, dollar bills from housewives,

plumbers, car salesmen, teachers, invalids.

These are people who cannot afford to send money but do.

These are the ones who drive the cabs,

who nurse in the hospitals,

who see their kids go to Vietnam.

Why?

Because they care.

Because they want to know the truth.

Because they want their country back.

Because it still belongs to us,

as long as the people have the guts to fight for what they believe in.

The truth is the most important value we have

because if the truth does not endure,

if the government murders truth, if it--

if we cannot respect the hearts of these people, then this is

not the country in which I was born in, and it is certainly not

the country that I want to die in.

Tennyson wrote:

"Authority forgets a dying king."

This was never more true than for John F. Kennedy,

whose murder was probably one of the most terrible moments...

in the history of our country.

You the people, the jury system, sitting in judgement on Clay Shaw,

represent the hope...

of humanity against government power.

In discharging your duty,

in bringing the first conviction

in this house of cards

against Clay Shaw,

"Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.”

Do not forget...

your dying king.

Show this world...

that this is still a government of the people, for the people,

and by the people.

Nothing, as long as you live,

will ever be more important.

It's up to you.

Has the jury reached a verdict?

Yes, we have, Your Honor.

Please hand the verdict to the clerk.

Will the defendant please rise?

The clerk will now read the verdict.

New Orleans, Louisiana. March 1st, 1969.

We, the jury, find the defendant, Clay Shaw,

not guilty.

- Thank you, thank you. - Wonderful.

Congratulations!

We're gonna go fishing tomorrow!

We believe there was a conspiracy,

but whether Clay Shaw was a part of it is another kettle of fish.

There's Jim! There's Jim!

Mr. Garrison, the American media is reporting this

as a full vindication of the Warren Commission.

Do you agree?

All I think it proves is you cannot run an investigation,

in the light of day, even questioning the intelligence operations

of the United States government.

We understand that the morning paper

will call for your resignation, that you're unfit to hold office,

that you've ruined Clay Shaw's reputation.

Mr. Garrison, are you gonna resign?

Hell, no.

I'm gonna run again.

And I'm gonna win, thank you.

Who do you plan to persecute next, Mr. Garrison?

If it takes me 30 years to nail every one of the assassins,

then I will continue this investigation for 30 years.

I owe that not only to Jack Kennedy, but to the country.

- Hey, there's Clay! There's Clay Shaw!

Mr. Shaw, how does it feel to be acquitted?

It's been exhausting, I must say.

What will you do now, Mr. Shaw?

I should go home and cook some étouffée.

Do you think Garrison will be back for a second round?

I'm sure he will.