All language subtitles for JFK - Destiny Betrayed -S01E02 - Chapter Two

[tense music]

[tense music]

[gunshot]

[dramatic music]

[Whoopi Goldberg] The evening
of the assassination,

the body of President Kennedy
was returned to Washington.

The autopsy was performed
at Bethesda Medical Center,

a naval institution.

And there has always
been a question

about the practices
of the men who performed

what was one of
the most important

and confusing autopsies
of the 20th century.

-Would Milton Helpern
in New York

have been a good choice
to do the autopsy?

-I know this
directly from Milton,

this is not hearsay.

He had his bag packed.

And he had already contacted two
other top forensic pathologists

to see if they would be available.

All of the top
forensic pathologists

in the United States
were within one-hour drive

or flying time from D.C.

Not one of them
was called upon.

The autopsy
should have been done,

legally speaking, in Dallas.

And there was a forensic
pathologist, Earl Rose.

He was there
to assume jurisdiction

and to do the autopsy.

He was pushed up against
the wall and threatened.

Hands on guns,
a lot of expletives and so on,

he followed them
out to the driveway,

and they took the body
illegally out of Dallas,

in violation of the laws of
Dallas and the state of Texas.

-There were two
Navy pathologists,

Commander James Humes,

and his associate,
Jay Thornton Boswell.

These two military pathologists
who had never done

a single gunshot wound autopsy
in their entire careers.

And this is something
that really has to be emphasized

to every American--
I don't care,

Democrat, Republican,
liberal, conservative.

This is your president.

And you've got
multiple gunshot wounds

to determine angles,
trajectory, range, sequence.

And then
you've got to correlate

with the multiple
gunshot wounds in Connally.

This is a formidable task
that would have required

two or three major forensic pathologists
to undertake.

So they called
Humes and Boswell.

-They realize
they're over their head.

They called in an expert

from the Armed Forces
Institute of Pathology,

a guy named Pierre Finck.

Dr. Humes and Boswell
started the autopsy

before their forensics consultant
even got there.

They took the brain out.

Obviously, some key clues
would've been lost

by doing that.

But they realized
they were in over their head,

so they asked to have
a medical examiner

because Dr. Finck,

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

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

So they asked for permission
to bring in somebody

who knew what they were doing.
Permission was denied.

[Goldberg]
After Air Force One

left Dallas for Washington,

two of the key doctors
who had tried to save

Kennedy's life
at Parkland Hospital

held a press conference.

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

-What were the two
major points of evidence

revealed by Kemp Clark
and Malcolm Perry

at the press conference?

-Dr. Perry
performed the tracheotomy

to help Kennedy breathe.

And at a press conference

right after
the failed resuscitation efforts in Dallas,

he was asked, he said,
well, where was the bullet?

He said the bullet looked
like it was coming at him.

He had an entrance wound
in the throat.

Kemp Clark was the head of
neurosurgery at Parkland.

He said that the president
had a gaping wound

in the occipital parietal area,

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

And so the description
he gave of that

was entirely consistent
with an exit wound.

And he made that clear
in the press conference.

[Goldberg] What Clark
and Perry both revealed

at that press conference

would indicate an assassin
from the front,

but no news footage
has survived.

Although Assistant White House
Press Secretary

Malcolm Kilduff's statement
that day

seems to support
this conclusion.

-Dr. Burkley told me that it was

a simple matter of a bullet
right through the head.

[reporter] President Kennedy,
we are now informed,

was shot in the right temple.

It was a simple matter
of a bullet

right through the head,
said Dr. George Burkley,

the White House medical officer.

-We have a transcript today

of what they said
at the press conference.

So it's White House
transcript 1327-C.

That's a very important
historical document

because the Secret Service
confiscated the videotapes

from the local TV stations.

[Goldberg]
The Secret Service also lied

to the Warren Commission

about there being
no recordings or transcripts

of the news conference.

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

recorded not long afterward,
where he confirms

having seen a large wound
in the back of the head.

The day after the shooting

and the Parkland
press conference,

Dr. Perry was seen
by nurse Audrey Bell,

who had been with him
in the operating room.

[Audrey Bell] Saturday morning
when I got over there,

Dr. Perry came up to the office.

I said, you look awful.

Did you get any sleep
last night?

He said, well, not too much.

Between the calls from Bethesda
that came in during the night.

I said, what about?

He said, oh, whether
that was an entrance wound

or an exit wound in the throat.

He said, they were wanting me
to change my mind.

-In his
Warren Commission testimony,

he basically retracted
what he had said,

and they forced him
to back down

and sort of intimidated him
on the witness stand.

It was really quite embarrassing
for me as a physician

to see how someone else
who was telling the truth

was basically forced
to recant his own opinion.

-In 1975, Dr. Shires hired me
on the faculty

at the University of Washington
in the cardiac surgery division.

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

We developed
a professional relationship,

and we would operate together
on complex cases.

And I was particularly
interested in

Dr. Perry's position

with the JFK assassination because

he did the tracheotomy
on him after he was shot.

The problem is that Malcolm
categorically refused

to ever discuss
the assassination.

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

And then one night,
after we had operated together

for many hours
on a complex case,

we were sitting
in the surgeon's lounge alone,

drinking coffee.

And I once again asked him
about that neck wound.

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

unquestionably
an entrance wound.

I took that admission as
a given in confidence.

So it was sort of
tacitly in confidence.

And then, when he testified

in front of the House Select
Committee on Assassinations

a year later,
he once again said

that it was consistent with
an exit wound,

which, of course, was required

if the single bullet theory
would hold water.

One of the main reasons
he changed his testimony

and publicly agreed
it was an exit wound is,

a Secret Service agent
put the pressure on him,

and that person
was Elmer Moore.

He apparently was also
in charge

of getting
the doctors at Parkland,

in addition to Dr. Perry,
to change their testimony

and agree that there was
no big hole

in the back of Kennedy's head

and that the bullet wound
in the neck was an exit wound.

In 1970, Elmer Moore
was the head

of the Secret Service office
in Seattle,

and a graduate student
named Jim Gochenaur

became friends with him.

And he admitted to Gochenaur
that he regretted

putting pressure on Dr. Perry.

-So I asked him directly.

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

He stopped for a minute.

He says, well,
I was ordered to do that.

He expanded on it,

and he said that Inspector
Kelley had ordered him to

talk with Perry and

convince him that it could be
either an exit

or an entry wound--

not an entry wound.

And I thought
it was pretty interesting

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

[Goldberg] Charles
Crenshaw, a third-year resident,

was in the emergency room
at Parkland that day.

He too,
later said in public

that he felt the wounds
in Kennedy

originated from the front.

-From here

-[interviewer] Right.
-Through.

[Gary Aguilar] Charles Crenshaw wrote a book,

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

saying, look,
I was at Parkland Hospital.

I saw Kennedy, and was involved
in the treatment.

And Kennedy's wounds were not consistent
with a shot

from above and behind
because he had a defect

involving the right rear
of his head.

-I looked at the wound again.

I wanted to know and remember
this the rest of my life.

And the rest of my life,

I will always know
he was shot from the front.

[Goldberg] Arlen Specter
was a Yale Law School graduate

working in
the Philadelphia District Attorney's office

when he was asked to serve
on the Warren Commission.

Specter was placed
in charge of medical evidence,

and when he questioned
Humes and Boswell

before the Commission, they said
two shots hit the president,

one in the neck,
one low in the rear skull,

entirely supporting
the Commission's final conclusions.

However,
when interviewed by

the Assassination Records
Review Board,

Humes and Boswell admitted
to meeting with Specter

eight to ten times
in advance of their testimony.

And it is important to note

that the wound drawings
presented in the Warren Report

were created in the days
before that testimony

and were not based
on the autopsy photos.

Instead, Harold Rydberg,
the 23-year-old head

of the Medical Illustration Department
at Bethesda,

was given verbal instructions
by Humes and Boswell who said:

"We'll tell you what to draw."

-The Warren Commission
heard testimony

from a number of witnesses,

including Parkland doctors,
by the way,

and including a Secret Service
agent, Clint Hill,

that the right rear quadrant
of the head was missing.

[Goldberg] Hill was
the only Secret Service agent

to run to the presidential
limousine during the shooting.

He later said that there was blood
and brain tissue

hurtling back
over the trunk of the car.

And as he approached
the president,

he saw a large wound
in the rear of the skull,

which he could see through
with no brain there.

-The two FBI agents
at the autopsy,

Frank O'Neill and James Sibert,

they reported what they heard
during the autopsy,

what they heard
the pathologists say--

specifically, Dr. Humes.

They were interviewed by
Arlen Specter in early 1964.

He proceeded to write
very unfavorable comments

about them in a summary memo
for the record.

We know with confidence

why he didn't like
what they had to say

because they were
providing evidence

that the single bullet theory
could not be true.

[Goldberg]
This was as far as

the investigation would go.

Neither Sibert nor O'Neill
were asked to testify

for the Warren Commission,

and their written notes
became classified.

In 1997,
their depositions were taken

by the Assassination
Records Review Board.

-Both Sibert and O'Neill,

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

the autopsy photographs,

that are the most controversial.

And they both said
that they didn't see

anything like that
at the autopsy.

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

I don't mean
the photo's been doctored,

it looks like the head
has been put back together,

you know, by embalmers
and then photographed."

That was what he said,
under oath.

Sibert did not remember
drawing a diagram of the wound

for the House committee,
so he drew a new one

for the Review Board.

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

And it shows what could
only be an exit defect

in the right rear of the skull.

[Goldberg] In 1979, the
House Select Committee report

stated that 26 people

present at the autopsy
in Bethesda

all disagreed with the Parkland
doctor's description

of Kennedy's head wound.

-When you went through
the declassified affidavits

that the House Select
Committee prepared,

what did you find about
the alleged differences

between the Parkland
and Bethesda witnesses

on this issue?

-Not only were-- were we allowed
to see their statements,

but we were allowed
to see the sketches

where they had drawn
the big hole

on the back of the head.

And this was totally opposite

of what the House Select Committee
had told us.

-When the Assassination Records
Review Board came along,

out come those
witness statements,

out come the diagrams.

And lo and behold,
it turns out

that the witnesses
at the autopsy

all agreed with the doctors
at Dallas

that that defect involved
the rear of the head.

And the summary statement

basically misrepresented
that truth.

They basically lied
about what was there.

[Goldberg]
To make this even worse,

if one looks at the official
back of the head photo,

there appears to be
nothing missing.

But there likely was something.

This was a piece of bone

that did not arrive
in Washington

until after the autopsy
was over.

And if it came from
the back of Kennedy's skull,

it created even more problems
for that picture.

-The Harper fragment was
a piece of fresh skull bone

that was found
in Dealey Plaza,

not on the day
of the assassination,

but later by Billy Harper.

-And reached down
and picked it up.

And at that time knew
that I had something

that most likely
was significant.

-It was found in a position

where the FBI said
that was to the left and rear

of where Jack Kennedy was
when he was assassinated.

It was then taken in
by this medical student

in to his professors.

And they looked at it
and they said it looked like

it was occipital bone,
which is back here.

[Goldberg]
It measured approximately

three by two inches

and therefore
would have fit neatly

in the rear skull wound
visualized by Dr. McClelland.

This bone was given
to the FBI on the 25th,

after the autopsy report
had been written by Dr. Humes.

The FBI gave it to
Kennedy's physician,

Admiral Burkley,
at which point it disappears.

All we have today
are the pictures

taken of it in Dallas.

This bit of evidence
raises the question:

If the rear of the skull
in the official autopsy,

was mostly filled in
with bone fragments

found in the limousine,

where does
the Harper fragment fit?

-Never realized Kennedy was so dangerous
to the establishment.

Is that why?

-Well, that's the real question, isn't it?

Why?

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

Oswald, Ruby, Cuba, the Mafia,

keeps 'em guessing
like some kind of polygon.

And prevents them from asking
the most important question.

Why?

Why was Kennedy killed?

Who benefited?

Who has the power
to cover it up?

Who?

[typewriter clinks]

[Donald Sutherland] At age 34,

Congressman John F. Kennedy

realized that if he were
going to challenge

for a seat in the Senate,
he needed to broaden

his knowledge
of foreign affairs.

So he decided, in 1951,
to take a seven-week journey

to the Middle East and Asia,

accompanied by
his sister Patricia

and his brother Robert.

During their stop in Vietnam,
Kennedy planned to meet

with Edmund Gullion.
Gullion was a career diplomat

who had once helped Kennedy write
a foreign policy speech.

Kennedy and his brother
made it a point to seek him out,

meeting at a rooftop
restaurant in Saigon.

-And it was one of
the most important experiences

in his pre-presidential career.

[cannons booming]

A war was going on--
France versus the Viet Minh.

Eighty percent
of their military material

was coming from
the United States.

[Sutherland] And because
of this, Kennedy wanted to see

what the status of this brutal,
colonial war really was.

[Philip Muehlenbeck] When he met
with the French generals,

that's when he formed
the impression

that the war was going well,
because that was, you know,

what the French generals
were telling him.

His opinion started to change
when he met Edmund Gullion.

He had told Kennedy
that the French

were actually losing the war,
and that the war was unwinnable.

In fact, he said that if the US
were to replace the French,

that the US
would also lose the war.

-Because Gullion
made JFK understand

that nothing short of
independence

would ever win in Vietnam.

And if independence had to come
at the hands of the communists,

they would go
with the communists

rather than stay a colony
of any independent force.

[Sutherland]
Gullion's warning that America

was backing
an imminent French defeat

caused Kennedy to begin
a six-year crusade

to formulate an alternative foreign policy,

one opposed to
the confrontational

with-us-or-against-us

advocated by
President Harry Truman.

Truman had broken away
from his predecessor

Franklin Roosevelt's strategy
of cooperation with the USSR,

creating a worldwide
Cold War face-off,

later amplified by
Dwight Eisenhower

and his Secretary of State,
John Foster Dulles.

-Can you describe
the 1953 letter

that JFK sent to Dulles
about Indochina?

-He sent a letter
to John Foster Dulles,

who was then Secretary of State,
asking him 47 questions

about American support
for France in Vietnam.

One of those questions was,

"What specific evidence
is there, Mr. Secretary,

that France is winning the war?"

[Sutherland] Foster Dulles'
eventual answer to this letter

was codenamed Operation Vulture.

Vice President Richard Nixon
was the main lobbyist

for the air operation
in Congress.

Planned as a massive air armada,

it featured scores of bombers
and fighter planes

designed to save
the French position

at what would become
the fatal siege

of Dien Bien Phu
in the spring of 1954.

Vulture included
the possibility of dropping

two or three atomic bombs.

[Aaron Good]
The US leadership--

John Foster Dulles
in particular--

took the initiative
to offer the French

the use of the nuclear weapons.

And even the French
themselves said

this is going too far for us.

This is going too far,
and we can't be a party to this.

[Sutherland] Kennedy spoke
on the Senate floor

in strong opposition to Vulture.

[John F. Kennedy] No amount
of American military assistance

in Indochina can conquer
an enemy which is everywhere

and at the same time nowhere;

an enemy of the people
which has the sympathy

and covert support
of the people.

[Sutherland] When Eisenhower
could not get the British

to sign on to the project,
he rejected it.

And as Ambassador Gullion
predicted,

France lost its colonial war
in Indochina.

Kennedy gave his support

to the liberal presidential candidate
Adlai Stevenson

and began giving speeches

confronting the shared Cold War
orthodoxies of both parties.

[John F. Kennedy]
The determination of people

to control their
national destinies.

In my opinion,
the tragic failure

of both Republican
and Democratic administrations

to comprehend the nature
of this revolution

has reaped
a bitter harvest today.

And it is by rights
and by necessity

a major foreign policy
campaign issue

that has nothing to do
with anti-communism.

[Sutherland] Even for
the liberal Stevenson,

that was too much.

His office wired Kennedy
and specifically requested

that he make no more
foreign policy statements

in any way associated
with the campaign.

The next year, in 1957,

Kennedy found
the perfect opportunity

to assault Foster Dulles,
Nixon and Eisenhower

and to establish
an alternative American foreign policy.

-Algeria became the last stand
for France in its imperium.

There was about a million two
hundred thousand French citizens

who were resident
in North Africa generally,

but in Algeria specifically,

called Pieds-Noirs.

And they were completely
behind the war effort,

and they were threatening
French politicians.

And what had happened
in the French Officer Corps

that was very, very critical
and very dangerous

was that after the defeat
in Vietnam,

a secret organization
called the OAS,

the Organization de la Secrete,

threatened
the government in Paris

that if there was any withdrawal
or any negotiations

with the Algerian nationalists,

that that government
would be overthrown.

[Sutherland]
The Algerian conflict,

fought guerrilla-style,
devolved into terror,

torture and atrocities
on both sides.

France escalated the war--

a point counterpoint
of terror act

followed by retaliation.

-Can you tell us
how did support in Algeria

differ from Vietnam?

-In Algeria,
it was support in a

in a political sense.

We supplied them through NATO

with some amount of
weaponry and aircraft,

but not to the extent
that we had in Vietnam.

It was a war that was
so violent and so lethal

that the Americans stood aside.

They supported France, but
they didn't want to be involved.

[Sutherland]
It was against this backdrop

that Kennedy chose to
express his differences

with the monster that Dulles
and Eisenhower had created,

one now staggering
out of control.

He attacked both
Washington and Paris

for not seeing in Algeria,

a reprise of the 1954
French collapse in Vietnam.

-I am introducing a resolution
which I believe outlines

the best hope for peace
for the settlement in Algeria,

to achieve a solution
which will recognize

the independent personality
of Algeria

and establish the basis
for a settlement

interdependent with France
and the neighboring nations.

[Robert Rakove] Very few people,
none with his prominence,

had been willing to say
what he said,

which was to challenge
a kind of default Euro-centrism

in American foreign policy,

to challenge the kind of
"Europe First" outlook,

especially toward conflicts
in the colonial world.

And Kennedy could even say,

look, this isn't even
doing France any favors.

-That speech earned him
the vitriol,

not only of Republicans
like Nelson Rockefeller,

Barry Goldwater,
Ronald Reagan, et cetera,

but also Democrats
like Adlai Stevenson,

because they saw
that colonial empire

as the only thing
that was holding

the European economy together.

And Europe was the bulwark
against communism.

We had to support
their colonial aspirations

and ambitions in Africa.

My uncle said,
"No, we shouldn't be doing that.

That is going to,
in the long run, weaken us.

And in any event, it's against
every American ideal.

We should be
supporting democracy

wherever it pops up
in the world."

[Richard Mahoney]
Well, Joe Kennedy, his father,

who had a very significant role
in his son's career

at all times, took him aside
and surprisingly said to him,

one day, people are going to see

that you really knew
what you were talking about.

And in fact,
that's exactly what happened.

The fourth republic fell.
De Gaulle came in

and he immediately
initiated talks

with the Algerian nationalists.

[Sutherland] In the
archipelago nation of Indonesia,

President Sukarno had fought
a long battle for independence

from the Dutch colonists.

A self-styled Nationalist,

he balanced the country's communist party,
the PKI,

with his military,
attempting to create

what he termed
"guided democracy."

Partly as a reaction
to the CIA-backed overthrow

of democratic governments
in Guatemala and Iran,

Sukarno and other Third World
leaders arranged a conference

in Bandung, Indonesia in 1955,

beginning what became known
as the Non-Aligned Movement.

[Oliver Stone] And how
did Kennedy's approach to the

Non-Aligned Movement
differ from Dulles'?

-John Foster Dulles
had said that

the policy of neutrality
was immoral.

John Foster Dulles
and Allen Dulles

came from a Christian background,

and they felt, you know,
what they had to say

was good enough
for the rest of the world,

that they knew more
than the president.

There were things
they didn't tell Eisenhower

that they were doing
under his administration.

[Sutherland] In 1958,
Indonesian military dissidents

rebelled against Sukarno
and at Eisenhower's direction,

the CIA initiated
plans to assist them

in overthrowing their president.

[Bradley Simpson]
The United States,

under John Foster Dulles
and his brother Allen Dulles

who was the head of the CIA

saw support for the rebellion as a means
of weakening Sukarno,

potentially breaking up
the archipelago,

and weakening the Indonesian
Communist Party.

And so, for more than a year,

the United States carried out
what, up to that point,

was the largest
and most destructive

covert operation
of the Asian Cold War

in which thousands
of US troops were involved,

in which millions of dollars
in weapons and supplies

were given to
the regional rebellions,

and in which thousands
of people were killed.

[Sutherland]
A CIA pilot, Alan Pope,

was shot down
during the operation,

exposing US involvement,
and the coup attempt failed.

[Robert Rakove] Kennedy,
looking at the broad scope

of American history,
American foreign policy

was fundamentally neutral.

World War I
was the great exception,

until, of course,
the Second World War.

He saw nothing wrong with it.

He could also draw
from the experiences he'd had

traveling in the Middle East
in the early 1950s.

He could draw from
the example of Ireland

during the Second World War,
which had achieved

a kind of difficult
and controversial neutrality.

[Sutherland] Kennedy's
interest in self-determination

for the Third World
led him to become chairman

of the US Senate African
Affairs Subcommittee in 1958.

-We had a delegation from Kenya come
to our house on the Cape.

And the head of
that delegation

was a man named Tom Mboya,

who was a great
Labor leader in Africa.

Around 1959,
the British said to Kenya,

"We're going to leave,
we'll give you five years

to figure out
how to rule this country."

Mboya looked around and said,

"There's not a single
black child in this country

who has a college degree."

So he wrote letters
to every college in America.

And he got a hundred of them,
including Harvard,

to commit to
give a scholarship

to one Kenyan child.

And he would choose the
smartest kids in the country.

My uncle was so impressed by him

that he wrote him
a $100,000 check

to bring these kids over.

In 2004,
the Democratic convention

was in Boston, and I was asked to speak
on the environment.

Right after I spoke,
it was a young first-term,

first-year Democratic senator
from Illinois

who nobody had ever heard of,
who gave a speech

that blew the roof
off the convention.

-The hope
of a millworker's son

who dares to defy to odds;

the hope of a skinny kid
with a funny name

who believes that America
has a place for him too.

[cheers]

[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]
And I asked him about his life,

I knew nothing about him.

And he said that his father
was Kenyan.

And I said, "Oh, have you
ever heard of Tom Mboya?"

And he said to me,

"Tom Mboya is the reason
I'm in this country"

because his father
was the first kid

brought over on the airlift.

[Sutherland]
Kennedy was now the man to see

for visiting
African dignitaries.

During the 1960 campaign
against Richard Nixon,

JFK mentioned Africa
nearly 500 times.

The night of the election,

the Algerian rebels
listened by radio

from their hillside camps,

hoping their American friend would win
the seesaw battle.

It came as a shock to many,
including Eisenhower and Nixon,

when Kennedy won
a narrow victory.

[♪♪♪]

[hum of traffic]

[♪♪♪]

[Goldberg] The JFK case
was such a massive confusion

that the Warren Commission version

of the firing sequence

differed from both
the FBI's and the CIA's.

Although it never specified
the order of the shots,

the Warren Report had one bullet
going through Kennedy

and Governor Connally.

Another missing the car,

hitting a bystander on
Commerce Street, James Tague.

And the final shot
hitting Kennedy in the head.

The FBI concluded

that all three bullets
struck inside the car,

two hitting Kennedy,
and one hitting Connally.

The CIA analysis said

that the first shot did not come
from the sixth-floor window,

and further, that
two shooters were involved.

Their photographic analysis

based on the Zapruder film
was closely held,

records showing that it only
went to Director John McCone.

Like the FBI analysis,
the Warren Commission

either never received it,
or chose to ignore it.

-The Warren Commission
put itself in a straitjacket.

They could not possibly
allow more than three shots

because four shots or more

would have clearly
indicated conspiracy

and they were not going there.

-When Oswald,

under the Warren Commission's conclusion,

had the best opportunity,
it's a lineup,

and as the cars approached
on Houston Street,

then getting closer and closer,

and there you are, Mr. Oswald.

It's coming right at you.

But you wait
until the cars turn

and they're going down
Elm Street

on a diagonal downward.

And the vision is

partially blocked by
foliage on the trees.

And that's when you shoot.

-[echoing gunshot]
-So somehow the first shot,

which he should have been
better prepared for, he missed.

And then the second shot
is the one that ultimately,

they said was the hero
of the single bullet theory

that went into Kennedy's back

and produced the seven wounds
in him and Connally.

And then the third shot hit,
according to them,

Kennedy in the head.

[reporter] It appears as though
something has happened.

-As they began to reflect
upon this

into March, April of 1964,
they were faced with

a seemingly impossible
physical incongruity.

Because they had a problem

with the chronology
of the Zapruder film,

which showed that Connally
is hit about 1.5 seconds

after Kennedy is hit.

Well, the problem was
the best marksman

they could find not worrying about re-aiming

and repositioning
and a moving target,

2.3 seconds
for this piece of junk,

the most inferior weapon
of the genre,

the Mannlicher Carcano.

Now 2.3 seconds
versus 1.5 seconds.

Arlen Specter,
junior legal counsel,

later to become
district attorney,

and then U.S. senator
from Pennsylvania,

he is the one that gave birth
to the single bullet theory.

[camera clicks]

Ah ha! What if one bullet
made all seven wounds?

What if one bullet
went into Kennedy's back and--

and came out his neck,

and then went into Connolly's
back through his chest,

out the front of his chest,

into the back
of his right wrist,

out the front of his right wrist
and into his left thigh?

And that is the
single bullet theory,

which Mark Lane, I think,

was the first one to dub as
"the magic bullet theory."

CE 399
was the magic bullet,

and all government investigations so far

have treated that bullet

as absolutely foundational
to this case;

never doubted that it was involved
in the case,

and never really looked at
the provenance of the bullet.

[Goldberg] The other
problem is the lack of damage

to the bullet after
going through two men,

smashing two bones,
and making seven wounds.

Dr. Joseph Dolce
was a much-honored

battlefield surgeon
during World War II.

He worked
for the Warren Commission.

-And so they gave
us the original rifle,

the Mannlicher Carcano, plus
100 bullets, 6.5 millimeters.

And we went and we shot
the cadaver wrists.

And in every instance,

the front or the tip
of the bullet was smashed.

Under no circumstances
do I feel that this bullet

could hit the wrist
and still not be deformed.

[Goldberg]
Dolce came to believe

that two bullets
had struck Connally.

Since Arlen Specter

pre-screened the medical witnesses
for the Commission,

Dolce's name is not
in the Warren Report,

and his testimony
is not in the volumes.

In September of 1978,

the House Select Committee
on Assassinations

tried again
to link CE 399 to the case

through the work
of Dr. Vincent Guinn,

and a test called
Neutron Activation Analysis,

which attempted
to show that all fragments

and CE 399
came from only two bullets.

[David Mantik]
Robert Blakey,

who was in charge of the
investigation for the House,

claimed that their work
with Neutron Activation Analysis

was the linchpin
of the case against Oswald.

[Goldberg] Partly
because of the renewed interest

in the JFK case, this test
came under severe criticism.

-People
who had deep experience

in Neutron Activation Analysis

at Lawrence Livermore
Laboratory

re-looked at that

and said that those fragments
that-that came out

might not have even come
from Mannlicher Carcano bullets,

and they could have come
from any one of five bullets,

not the two.

So that
has been completely debunked.

So much so that
Neutron Activation Analysis,

which the FBI used to
use in prosecutions,

was given up more than
ten years ago.

They don't do that anymore

because they know
that it's junk science.

[Goldberg] Without
this test, there was no proof

that CE 399 and the fragments
in Governor Connally's wrist

are from the same bullet.

And even Connally refused

to accept the
single bullet theory.

-Did the Warren Commission

do experiments with
the alleged Oswald rifle on skulls?

[Gary Aguilar] They did human
skull experiments in 1964,

at Aberdeen Proving Ground.

They filled human skulls
with human-equivalent material,

and they were
testified to under oath

by Larry Sturdivan,
the House Select Committee.

He says, "As you can see,
every skull, all ten of them,

moved away from the rifle."

[echoing gunshot]

-The trajectory
from the sixth floor

of the Texas School Book
Depository,

Z-312 or Z-313,

the trajectory
would have resulted in

a blow-out through the face,
and this was confirmed

even by the government's
own data.

[Goldberg]
And photos from the autopsy

clearly show Kennedy's
face to be intact.

And the Warren Commission
was aware of something else

that was wrong
with their evidence.

-All kinds of ballistic tests

show that the bullets,
in fact, came from that rifle.

That was his rifle.

You took a picture of him with it.

-No, no, no.
-[interviewer] His palm prints,

and fingerprints were all over
the School Book Depository.

[Marina Porter]
You have been misinformed.

The ballistics test
did not prove anything at all.

[reporter] This is the
weapon that was used,

a rather well-worn
military rifle.

[Goldberg]
Is this really true,

or is it a myth
that has been allowed to assume

the status of accepted fact
since few have challenged it?

[Oliver Stone] Is the rifle
in evidence today

the same rifle
the commission said

Oswald ordered
through the mail?

-The rifle that
Lee Oswald allegedly ordered

under an alias of Alex Hidell

was obtained through
Klein's Sporting Goods store

in Chicago as a mail order.

Got it out of American
Rifleman magazine.

He wrote on the coupon
he wanted a 36-inch model,

Mannlicher Carcano,
6.5 millimeter, for $19.95.

Robert Frazier
was one of the examiners,

he was a firearms expert
for the FBI,

and he testified
that he did measure it,

and the measurement
was 40.2 inches in length,

from barrel to stock.

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

versus what they found
in the Book Depository.

[Goldberg] Klein's
may have indeed delivered

a different Mannlicher Carcano
model to Oswald,

but there are other anomalies
to this story.

The model that Oswald ordered,

showed these
strap attachment points

on the bottom
of the barrel and stock.

[Brian Edwards]
In the photograph

is Lieutenant Carl Day

with the Dallas Police Department
bringing a rifle

out of the Book Depository.

One of the straps
at the back of the gun

is on the left side
of the stock

embedded in the stock.

That's clearly
not the rifle that was ordered,

or least appears in the Klein's
Sporting goods store.

[Goldberg]
The straps shown

in the so-called
backyard photos

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

-Marina Oswald
took backyard photographs

of Lee Oswald holding a rifle
and a pistol on his hip.

Um, and in that first photograph
that she took three of,

Commission Exhibit
133A and 133B,

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

133C, the ring appears
on the left hand.

In effect, the Dallas Police
showed Lee Oswald

one of the pictures
while he was still in custody.

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

ever having that
picture taken of me."

[Goldberg]
There's also a question

of how Oswald
received the rifle.

[Brian Edwards] If the rifle
was sent from Klein's

to the post office box

rented under
the name Lee Harvey Oswald,

using the alias of A.J. Hidell on the coupon,

it would have been sent back
immediately

because Oswald's name
was the only one

on that post office box.

He was only one authorized
to receive mail.

Marina didn't even have,
her name wasn't even on there.

So that rifle
was addressed to a person

who didn't have the authority

to have any mail
received at that box.

It should have been sent back.

[Goldberg] But after all
of these questions are asked,

the underlying mystery remains:

Why would anyone
use a rifle in an assassination

knowing there was a paper trail

that would lead
right back to them?

-Was there a palm print
found on the rifle?

-The foremost fingerprint
expert the FBI had,

Sebastian Latona, uh,
took that rifle

and attempted to lift prints
off of the rifle,

the stock and/or the barrel.

Uh, he testified
to the Warren Commission

that he found no usable prints anywhere
on that rifle,

on the metal or the stock.

But yet, Lieutenant Day
in Dallas,

before the rifle
went to Washington,

said he found
a partial palm print

on the trigger guard
on the left side

and a partial print underneath the stock
on the barrel.

But Sebastian Latona said
there was no evidence

that a lift
had even been attempted.

[Oliver Stone]
No partials at all?

-Nothing
that he could use in court.

There has to be eight points
of identification.

He found nothing
that would match that.

[Tom Alyea] I was able to enter
this building,

along with the Secret Service,

and shoot exclusive footage

of the finding
of the assassin's gun

and dusting it
for fingerprints.

[Debra Conway] Tom Alyea
was the first reporter

that made it
up to the sixth floor.

I would say that he was a friend
to the Dallas police

because he worked
as a photographer

on many crime scenes,
and he probably knew

most of these officers
that were there.

They found the shells that were ejected
from the rifle,

and they found some,
looked like someone's lunch.

[Brian Edwards]
Alyea described the location of

these three shell casings,

were almost in a line,
facing the same direction

within four or five inches
of the front of the building.

-When you eject them
from a rifle,

they're not going to
land like that.

They're gonna be everywhere.

Captain Fritz was brought over,

and he picked up
these three shell casings

and held them out
in his hand, flat.

Alyea took
motion picture film of it.

[Goldberg]
This was before

Dallas police photographer,

Robert Studebaker,

took pictures of the
shells on the floor.

So clearly,
that was a staged photo.

The X's indicate

where Tom Alyea recalls
the original placement.

The Warren Commission
never interviewed Tom Alyea,

and they never questioned

if the crime scene
had been altered.

-How important
is chain of custody

in a legal proceeding?

-Chain of custody
basically refers to

the integrity of evidence.

If I, uh, pick up a piece
of evidence and I transfer it

to somebody else
for holding or processing,

my name
is the first name on this list.

The second person
who touches this

and takes possession
of it is next.

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

that the evidence
you collected on Day 1

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

-Can you walk us through

the magic bullet's
chain of custody,

from the Parkland employees
to the Secret Service

to the FBI?

-Well, the magic
bullet was supposedly found

on a stretcher
at Parkland Hospital,

and it went through
several hands,

uh, before
it got to the Secret Service.

Richard Johnsen was
the first Secret Service agent

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

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

he gave it to the chief
of the Secret Service,

who was James Rowley.

And at the White House,

James Rowley gave it
to Elmer Lee Todd

and Todd then took it
to the FBI lab

and gave it to Robert Frazier.

We have interesting information
produced by John Hunt,

a private citizen
who went to the archives

on four or five occasions

to track down the
story about the magic bullet,

and what he found
was truly astounding.

-He practically
moved into the National Archives

in Washington, D.C.

They allowed him
to set up a desk

with a computer
and his own scanner.

And he also did
something different.

He didn't interview policemen
and FBI people,

and he wasn't swayed
by their excuses.

He went straight to:
This is what you told,

and you signed your name.

[Goldberg]
Working with FBI

and Warren Commission
documents,

John Hunt asked
the most basic question:

Was CE 399, in evidence,

the same bullet that was found
on the stretcher?

-At 7:30 at night, this is
the day of the assassination,

November 22nd, 1963,

a bullet appears in the record, and

it's signed
for by Robert Frazier,

who is the main
investigator at the FBI lab.

And it's not just one document.
There are multiple documents

that indicate that Frazier signed
for a bullet

at 7:30 that night.

Now, here's where things
get interesting.

Elmer Lee Todd received
the bullet at the White House

from chief of the
Secret Service, James Rowley.

And Todd documents,
very clearly in writing,

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

How is that possible?

How can Robert Frazier receive
the bullet in the lab

at 7:30 from Elmer Lee Todd

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

-You would think
that they would have handled it,

you know, like it would've
been gold going to the bank.

There it is in the record.

Someone is lying about
when they got the bullet.

[David Mantik]
It gets worse, though.

Todd initialed that bullet.

-The one that he got at 8:50,

and everyone else
who touched the bullet

after that initialed it too,
including Robert Frazier.

I went to the archives
to look at this bullet.

And specifically
what we want to know is

do we see Todd's initials
on this bullet?

He said he initialed the bullet.

It is not there.

Todd's initials
are not on the magic bullet.

-I was very interested
in finding out

what the Review Board
would show us about this.

So we began scouring
their evidence,

and we found out something
very interesting.

We found out
that the Warren Report

had, from the FBI,
a report saying that the guys

that found the bullet
later identified that

as the bullet they'd seen.

The internal record
didn't show that at all.

The internal record
said this bullet

didn't look like
that bullet at all.

But the FBI reported
to the Warren Commission

that it did, it lied.

We then talked
to the FBI agent

that was supposed to have carried
that bullet around.

His name was Bardwell Odum.

I got
Bardwell Odum on the phone.

I sent him the documents

that said that
he had done this.

He said,
"I never had that bullet.

I never showed any bullet
to anyone.

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

I would have filed a report,
particularly in that era,

everybody was very uptight
about getting everything right."

So we scoured for 302 reports.

His name appears nowhere
in the record.

This is just something
that the FBI invented.

-In 1966,
Josiah Thompson, who authored

"Six Seconds in Dallas,"
interviewed O.P. Wright,

who was head of maintenance
at Parkland Hospital,

and who had handled the bullet.

He showed him a photograph
of the magic bullet,

which has a rounded tip.

And O.P. Wright said,
"No, it wasn't like that."

-Wright,
who had worked as a policeman,

he knew bullets,
and he said, "No, no,

the bullet that we found
at Parkland had a pointed tip."

And he just pulled
one out of his drawer

that had a pointed tip
and showed it.

And it looks nothing like 399.

-It's conceivable
that some mysterious bullet

showed up from who knows where.

Todd did not initial it,

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

But then we have the second
bullet that arrives at 8:50.

Is this possibly
the pointed bullet

that was seen by
O.P. Wright in Dallas,

and that then disappeared?

We don't have any idea
where it is today.

That scenario would fit
the known facts.

-So it appears
that a different bullet

was found on that stretcher
than 399.

399 shows up after it's been
to the FBI lab.

And one can only surmise
that--that somewhere in the FBI,

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

And so they just
switched it out,

because none of
the four people,

either the guys at Parkland

or the two
Secret Service agents,

could identify the bullet.

The guy who is supposed
to have gotten confirmation

that they did identify
the bullet said he never did it.

And the record supports that.

So there is--there's good reason
to be very suspicious

about the magic bullet.

-The chain of custody doesn't start
from the laboratory;

it starts from
the crime scene.

Each piece of evidence
should be photographed,

documented,
and preserved, properly.

From the scene,
evidence is collected,

sent to the laboratory.

We have to keep
the chain of custody

when they enter the lab.

Who exam?

Who did the further analysis?

And each step have to maintain
until submit to the court.

If this chain broke,

then my evidence
become inadmissible.

[Goldberg]
Sunday, November 24th, 1963,

Lee Harvey Oswald has been
in detention for two days

after he was caught
in a movie theater

just an hour
after the assassination.

He's being questioned
for long hours,

but there is no stenographer present,

and the police say there was
no tape recorder in the room.

-I'd like
some legal representation.

These police officers have not
allowed me to--to have any.

[Goldberg]
He's confessed to nothing.

He has, in fact, denied
any guilt to his only audience,

the press and the spectators
in the hallways.

[Goldberg]
Lee Harvey Oswald,

while he was alive,

in the strongest terms,
denied he committed the crime.

[reporter]
Did you kill the President?

-No, I have not
been charged with that.

In fact, nobody has said that
to me yet.

First thing I heard about was
when the newspaper reporters

in the hall, uh,
asked me that question.

[Goldberg]
It would be hard to say

that he shot Kennedy
in some cause,

as a politically-inspired shooter
would proclaim.

[reporter] How long have you
been in residence?

[Lee Oswald]
No, they're taking me in

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

[reporter]
What time did you leave--

[Lee Oswald]
I'm just a patsy.

[reporter]
Did you shoot the President?

[Goldberg]
He's about to be transferred

to the county jail.

The FBI has called
the Dallas police

on both Saturday and Sunday,

warning them of threats

to kill the alleged assassin
of President Kennedy.

The police
have decided to proceed

with the transfer anyway.

As you watch, listen
for the two car horns.

One as Oswald emerges,

and the other the moment
before Jack Ruby fires.

[long honk of car horn]

[short car honk]

[gunshot]
[Lee Oswald screams]

[reporter] He's been shot.
He's been shot. Lee Oswald

[Goldberg]
It was the shocking

live murder of
Lee Harvey Oswald

that terminated the Dallas
police as investigators.

J. Edgar Hoover wrote a memo
to the newly sworn-in

President Johnson
that evening, saying,

"The thing I am concerned about
is having something issued

so we can convince the public

that Oswald
is the real assassin."

The day before,
he had told Johnson that

"the case, as it stands now,

isn't strong enough to
be able to get a conviction."

The next day,

Deputy Attorney General
Nicholas Katzenbach

wrote a memo
to the White House saying,

"The public must be satisfied

that Oswald did not have confederates

who were still at large,
and that the evidence was such

that he would have been
convicted at trial.

We need something to head off
public speculation

or congressional hearings
of the wrong sort."

With those two memos,

the FBI became the main
investigatory arm

in the JFK case.

There was never
any serious discussion

that independent investigators were needed.

The idea in Washington now

became to contain
the crime to Oswald,

therefore, cutting off
any connections

to a wider
Russia-Cuba-communist conspiracy

which could provoke
the threat of atomic war.

The day after he was murdered,

the New York Times
pronounced Oswald

as the killer
of President Kennedy.

The Warren Commission concluded

that Ruby shot Oswald
acting alone.

It was not premeditated
or planned,

and Ruby had no help
entering the building.

[Goldberg] Two months
after winning his appeal

and being granted a new trial
outside of Dallas,

Jack Ruby was found riddled
with cancer in his prison cell.

He was placed in the hospital,

and one month before
his new trial was to begin,

he died.

The Warren Commission
never exposed

Ruby's connections
to the Mafia, the FBI,

or with gunrunning
and gambling figures

in Miami and Cuba.

[Brian Edwards]
On other parts of the--

of the case that the government
put against Lee Oswald,

uh, obviously, he was dead.

He had no chance to have
cross-examined witnesses.

Uh, he had no lawyer appointed.

-These people
have given me a hearing

without legal representation
or anything.

[reporter]
Did you shoot the President?

-I didn't shoot anybody.
No sir.

[Brian Edwards] Mark Lane,
an attorney out of New York,

tried to get, uh, legal
representation for Lee Oswald.

In fact, went to the commission
and asked,

"Can I represent Lee Oswald?"
And they denied it.

Because again this is, this is
not a typical court hearing.

-I can tell you
from my experiences,

having tried several hundred cases
to verdict,

and being responsible for
thousands of cases

as head of the criminal courts and running
the Homicide Bureau

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

where Oswald
would have been convicted

on the evidence
that was presented

before the Warren Commission.

[♪♪♪]