Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:00:00It was 40 years ago in this small plaza that John F. Kennedy was murdered.
00:00:05What happened in Dallas that day shook America every bit as much as Pearl Harbor
00:00:10and, more recently, the events of 9-11.
00:00:14In many ways, America never got over it.
00:00:20The resident's car is now turning onto Ellum Street
00:00:23and it will be only a matter of minutes before he arrives at the trademark.
00:00:27Our tradition is so contrary to this idea that you kill a president.
00:00:35And it just is so traumatic for the country.
00:00:39It's such an assault on our sense of self, on our institutions, on the United States.
00:00:47On that November day and throughout the sad weekend that followed,
00:00:51there was a sense of terrible loss.
00:00:53But there was also a sense that events were spinning out of control.
00:00:57A suspect, Lee Harvey Oswald, was arrested and paraded before the press.
00:01:04Did you kill the president?
00:01:06No, I have not been charged with that. In fact, nobody has said that to me yet.
00:01:10As thousands of people paid their respects to the president in Washington,
00:01:14Oswald was murdered on national television.
00:01:18Day by day in America, the confusion and doubt grew deeper.
00:01:22What really happened in Dallas on November 22, 1963?
00:01:26What really happened here in Dealey Plaza?
00:01:32The very first poll in regard to American sentiment about the assassination
00:01:37was conducted that weekend.
00:01:39And that poll indicated that two-thirds of Americans
00:01:42already believed in a conspiracy against John Kennedy.
00:01:47They believed that Lee Harvey Oswald did not act alone.
00:01:51And 40 years later, most Americans still believe in a conspiracy.
00:01:55The idea that a lone assassin could kill the president,
00:01:58a man so widely revered, that idea was simply too much to bear.
00:02:09Now a three-dimensional computer animation has been created,
00:02:13the result of ten years' work,
00:02:15which allows a detailed re-examination of the murder from all angles.
00:02:20So tonight we can reveal what really did happen in Dealey Plaza
00:02:24on November 22, 1963.
00:02:37The president and Mrs Kennedy arrived at Love Field in Dallas on Air Force One
00:02:42at 11.38 central standard time.
00:02:44In less than an hour, the president would be assassinated.
00:02:49It would be his son's hand all the way from here.
00:03:04And here they come, right down toward us.
00:03:07Kennedy was someone who gave the country hope.
00:03:11He's become a kind of mythological figure, an iconic figure.
00:03:15He's frozen in our minds at the age of 46.
00:03:26He was a president who loved the people.
00:03:28The people loved him.
00:03:30He wanted to be able to wade into a crowd and shake hands.
00:03:34He wanted to be able to see and wave to people
00:03:37when his motorcade went down the street.
00:03:41He didn't want to be shut off from his publican and democracy.
00:03:46The president and Mrs Kennedy, with Texas Governor John Connolly,
00:03:50rode through Dallas in an open limousine,
00:03:53the last president ever to do so.
00:03:57When something terrible happens in the life of a nation,
00:04:00there has to be a reason for it.
00:04:02It's not good enough to say some nut with a rifle killed JFK.
00:04:06It's such a monstrous thing that there must be a monster plot.
00:04:10At a time of emotional rupture, a time of tragedy,
00:04:14conspiracy theories offer purpose and meaning.
00:04:18Purpose and meaning that make tragedy
00:04:21more than a simple twist of fate at the hands of,
00:04:24in this case, a lone gunman.
00:04:28He was this young man, glamorous young man,
00:04:33whom I think had the potential to be a really great president,
00:04:39shot down before he really had very much chance to prove it.
00:04:54They'd made it through town and it had been beautiful.
00:04:59And then all of a sudden, the day turns to chaos.
00:05:03You know, it's unbelievable.
00:05:07It appears as though something has happened in the motorcade group.
00:05:11Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen.
00:05:13You'll excuse the fact that I'm out of breath, but...
00:05:15Presidential motorcade had just passed through heavy crowds
00:05:18in downtown Dallas when three shots suddenly rang out
00:05:22somewhere in the crowd.
00:05:24People were screaming,
00:05:26oh, no, oh, no.
00:05:28They were running, running into each other.
00:05:30It was just complete chaos because no-one knew where to run.
00:05:33This is from the United Press from Dallas.
00:05:36President Kennedy and Governor John Connolly
00:05:38have been cut down by assassin's bullets in downtown Dallas.
00:05:42As the motorcade raced to Parkland Hospital,
00:05:45no-one imagined that one man could wreak such havoc.
00:05:48Jackie Kennedy screamed,
00:05:50my God, they've killed him.
00:05:52The wounded Governor Connolly shouted,
00:05:54they're going to kill us both.
00:05:56They had done this.
00:05:58Something so horrible had to be the work of more than one man.
00:06:01And America had many enemies.
00:06:03It had to be a conspiracy.
00:06:07President John F Kennedy died at approximately one o'clock
00:06:11Central Standard Time today here in Dallas.
00:06:18He died of a gunshot wound in the brain.
00:06:25This is WFATV in Dallas, Texas.
00:06:27May I have your name, please, sir?
00:06:29My name is Abraham Zapruder.
00:06:31Mr Zapruder?
00:06:32Zapruder, yes, sir.
00:06:33Zapruder.
00:06:34And would you tell us your story, please, sir?
00:06:36I got out about a half hour earlier
00:06:39and got to a good spot to shoot some pictures.
00:06:42Abraham Zapruder, a local dressmaker,
00:06:44using his 8mm movie camera,
00:06:46recorded one of the darkest moments in American history,
00:06:49the moment at which the world's most powerful man
00:06:52was murdered.
00:06:58The Zapruder film is a visual record of the assassination.
00:07:02We are very lucky to have it.
00:07:04To think that if the film did not exist,
00:07:07that home movie of the assassination did not exist,
00:07:10we would never be able to prove with any certainty
00:07:14what happened at Dealey Plaza.
00:07:16The Zapruder film is the only film
00:07:18that caught the shooting from start to finish.
00:07:21The film itself has been cited as evidence of a conspiracy
00:07:24and used by some as proof that Oswald was not the only gunman.
00:07:3090% of what is out there is conspiracy-oriented.
00:07:34You can talk about all the theories you want,
00:07:36but this thing happened only one way.
00:07:39Dale Myers is a computer animator
00:07:41who's been studying the assassination for more than 25 years.
00:07:45To advance the analysis of the crime,
00:07:47Myers has generated an exacting computer simulation
00:07:50of the Zapruder film.
00:07:52He began by constructing a three-dimensional scale model
00:07:56of Dealey Plaza.
00:07:58The turn from Houston Street onto Elm Street,
00:08:01the Texas School Book Depository, the Grassy Knoll,
00:08:05they're all reconstructed exactly the way they were in 1963.
00:08:09He then animated the movements of Kennedy and Connolly
00:08:13over the Zapruder film,
00:08:15frame by frame.
00:08:17When all of these elements come together,
00:08:19we can now leave Zapruder's pedestal
00:08:21and see the shooting from any point of view,
00:08:23each one an accurate representation
00:08:26of precisely what happened.
00:08:29If the crime were committed today,
00:08:31the forensic investigators would undoubtedly use this technique.
00:08:37Look at Abraham Zapruder's film in detail.
00:08:40Let's orient ourselves first off.
00:08:42Zapruder, of course, is standing on a 4 1⁄2-foot-high pedestal
00:08:45just west of the Book Depository.
00:08:47So he's looking up toward the corner.
00:08:49The limousine has just turned, finished and completed its turn
00:08:52and starting to glide down Elm Street.
00:08:54Frame 133 is the first frame in which the president appears.
00:08:58As we advance the frames here,
00:09:00we can see that the president is standing
00:09:03The president appears.
00:09:05As we advance the frames here,
00:09:09around frame 160 is approximately the time of the first shot,
00:09:14apparently a shot that missed.
00:09:17Governor Connolly said that he was looking to the left side of the car.
00:09:20He heard a shot. He had just come back from a long hunting weekend.
00:09:23He immediately identified it as a high-powered rifle shot,
00:09:26and so he said he turned to his right
00:09:28because the sound seemed to come from over his right shoulder.
00:09:30And so we see him right here, looking to his left.
00:09:33And in the next couple of frames, we see his head turn,
00:09:36and now he's looking to his right.
00:09:38So by frame 167, Governor Connolly has turned to his right.
00:09:43So it's a very quick head snap, quarter of a second, like this.
00:09:47Now the car glides down toward the Stemmons Freeway sign.
00:09:50The car disappears for a moment.
00:09:53You see Governor Connolly emerge first from behind the sign.
00:09:57He does not appear to be injured.
00:09:59Next frame, 223.
00:10:01You can see the white shirt. You can see his jacket.
00:10:04You can see a little bit of gray area where his tie is.
00:10:07And something happens.
00:10:09Between frame 223 and 224,
00:10:12we can really pinpoint the moment that the bullet strikes.
00:10:15Watch the jacket.
00:10:17You notice it changes shape.
00:10:19It's almost as if the jacket has popped out a little bit,
00:10:22kind of bulged out.
00:10:24Before, after.
00:10:26Before and after.
00:10:28In fact, a bullet has struck him in the right back.
00:10:31It has emerged about an inch below his nipple,
00:10:34blowing about a 2-inch ragged hole.
00:10:36In the next frame, the president comes out from behind the sign.
00:10:40We see kind of an anguished look on his face.
00:10:42And his hands immediately go up toward his throat.
00:10:45And they come up in a guarded manner,
00:10:47and the elbows rise in a very dramatic and a very high fashion.
00:10:51So he's kind of like this.
00:10:53But you'll note that both men are reacting simultaneously.
00:10:59This moment gives rise to what's called the single bullet theory,
00:11:03that the second shot hit both men passing through Kennedy to Connolly.
00:11:08This is challenged by those who say that Kennedy and Connolly
00:11:11were hit by different bullets from separate guns,
00:11:14and two guns would make a conspiracy.
00:11:20Here we have President Kennedy and Governor Connolly
00:11:22at the moment of the second shot.
00:11:23This is the moment they're hit.
00:11:25The equivalent of Zapruder frame two twenty-three.
00:11:28As we know, President Kennedy was struck in the upper right back.
00:11:32He had another bullet wound in his throat.
00:11:35It was believed to have passed through his throat,
00:11:38moving back to front.
00:11:40Governor Connolly struck in the right back,
00:11:43just near the armpit.
00:11:45That bullet emerged his right chest,
00:11:47about one inch below the nipple line.
00:11:50We look at their positions based on the Zapruder film.
00:11:53This is exactly how they were seated at that moment, at frame two twenty-three.
00:11:57Governor Connolly sitting slightly inboard of the President.
00:12:00In addition to that, he's turned sharply to his right.
00:12:03You can already see from this that any bullet
00:12:06striking the President in the upper right back
00:12:09and emerging out of his throat,
00:12:11that bullet is going to continue forward,
00:12:13and it's going to hit Governor Connolly,
00:12:15exactly where he was hit.
00:12:17Connolly has to be hit.
00:12:19And the fact that they both react at the same time clinches it.
00:12:23So, it's not a magic bullet at all.
00:12:26It's not even a single-bullet theory, in my opinion.
00:12:28It's a single-bullet fact.
00:12:30So if President Kennedy and Governor Connolly
00:12:33were hit from behind by the same bullet,
00:12:35where did it come from?
00:12:37Using the men's body positions and the locations of their wounds,
00:12:40Myers can isolate the source of the shot.
00:12:44We can start with, for instance,
00:12:46Governor Connolly's entrance wound on his back.
00:12:48Connect that with the point of exit on the President's throat,
00:12:52and then take that line and project it rearward.
00:12:55What we end up with is a line that goes right back
00:12:58through the sniper's nest window,
00:13:00the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository.
00:13:04Dozens of witnesses pointed to the School Book Depository
00:13:07after hearing the shots.
00:13:09One witness reported seeing a gun in the sixth-floor window.
00:13:13This is the building where Lee Harvey Oswald
00:13:15had been working as a clerk for five weeks.
00:13:18Within minutes of the shooting,
00:13:20dozens of police rushed into the building.
00:13:22The sixth floor was a maze of boxes.
00:13:25At 1.12pm, a deputy sheriff squeezed around a row of boxes
00:13:29in the southeast corner facing Elm Street
00:13:31and discovered the sniper's position.
00:13:33Two boxes stacked as if to support a rifle.
00:13:36Three shell casings scattered on the floor below the window.
00:13:40Photographers and fingerprint experts swept the scene.
00:13:44Ten minutes later, in the northwest corner of the building,
00:13:47between some other boxes, they found a rifle.
00:13:50After the shooting, Lee Harvey Oswald was the only worker
00:13:53missing from the building.
00:13:55The manhunt for him began.
00:13:57Police across the city were told to look out for a white male,
00:14:0130, slender build, 5'10", 165 pounds, reportedly armed.
00:14:08It was on this street that four witnesses saw Officer J.D Tippett
00:14:13motion Oswald over to his patrol car.
00:14:20As Tippett got out of the car, Oswald pulled a revolver
00:14:24and shot Tippett three times.
00:14:26Oswald moved closer and, as the officer lay on the ground,
00:14:30Oswald shot him once more in the head.
00:14:38The evidence of Oswald shooting Kennedy, I think, is overwhelming,
00:14:42but many people contest that.
00:14:44The evidence of Lee Harvey Oswald killing Officer J.D Tippett
00:14:48is overwhelming and ironclad.
00:14:52Lee Harvey Oswald fled the scene of the assassination.
00:14:56Innocent people don't flee.
00:14:58They certainly don't try to shoot their way out.
00:15:01Now there were two manhunts underway in Dallas.
00:15:04The police didn't know they were chasing the same man.
00:15:0735 minutes after the Tippett murder,
00:15:09the police were told that a suspect was in a nearby movie theatre.
00:15:13Police arrested Oswald as he tried to pull his gun.
00:15:20Now we're inside of the Texas Theatre.
00:15:22Of course, everything is black, the movie is going on.
00:15:25Police suddenly jumped this man and started to drag him out of the theatre.
00:15:29At that time, a scuffle ensued inside of the Texas Theatre.
00:15:33The suspect jumped up, struck him in the face and yelled,
00:15:37''This is it!''
00:15:39The police rushed Oswald away from an angry mob
00:15:42that had gathered outside the theatre.
00:15:44Shortly after 2pm, he was taken to Dallas police headquarters
00:15:48where they began to question him.
00:15:52People have given me a hearing without legal representation or anything.
00:15:56I didn't shoot anybody, no.
00:15:59By that time, the press corps,
00:16:01including those travelling with the president,
00:16:03were now crowding into the Dallas Central Police Station.
00:16:06All they wanted to know about was Oswald.
00:16:09The FBI actually had an open file on Oswald
00:16:12and one of the men in the building that day was FBI agent James Hostey.
00:16:19My immediate assignment was to go to the Dallas Police Station
00:16:23to sit in on the interview
00:16:25and to tell the Dallas police everything we knew about Oswald.
00:16:30The FBI knew that Oswald was a former Marine
00:16:33who had abandoned the United States
00:16:35and lived for almost three years in the Soviet Union.
00:16:38He had returned to the States with a Russian wife.
00:16:41The FBI believed that he was a committed communist.
00:16:44They'd been tracking him.
00:16:46I work in that building.
00:16:49Naturally, if I work in that building, yes, sir.
00:16:54No, they're taking me in because of the fact that I live in the Soviet Union.
00:16:58I'm just a patsy.
00:17:00I was trying to find him, but there was no urgency to find him.
00:17:05I mean, he hadn't said,
00:17:07I'm going to kill the president on November 22nd at 12.30,
00:17:10catch me if you can, nothing like that.
00:17:13He disappeared and I figured, I knew I'd find him,
00:17:16but just a matter I had other things to do
00:17:19and it wasn't the most urgent case on my list.
00:17:22Now, see, I should have known.
00:17:25But no-one in the FBI had any idea
00:17:28that Lee Harvey Oswald had the mind of a political assassin.
00:17:31Alarm bells began to ring in government.
00:17:34Lyndon Johnson, the vice-president, had visions of World War III.
00:17:40We got on the airplane.
00:17:42It was heavily guarded by a cordon of menacing-looking men
00:17:45with machine guns at the ready cos nobody knew.
00:17:48Was this a coup? Who else was to be murdered?
00:17:52Johnson had been briefed, even as vice-president,
00:17:55that if there were a Soviet attack on the United States,
00:17:58one of the first things the Soviets would probably try to do
00:18:01would be to murder the president and the other top leaders of government.
00:18:05As Vice-President Johnson was sworn in as president
00:18:08with Mrs Kennedy at his side,
00:18:10US armed forces throughout the world were put on high alert.
00:18:14President Johnson was convinced that there was a communist conspiracy,
00:18:19engineered by Moscow.
00:18:21When were the missiles coming?
00:18:23The new president left Dallas for Washington with no idea if he'd make it.
00:18:33Air Force One, carrying the president's body,
00:18:36arrived at Andrews Air Force Base near Washington at 6.05 Eastern Standard Time.
00:18:41Millions of people watched on television as the coffin came into view.
00:18:50They watched Mrs Kennedy take her place in the hearse,
00:18:53bearing her husband's body.
00:18:56Mrs Kennedy is now coming down, following the casket.
00:19:00Lyndon Johnson, who was now president, spoke briefly to the nation.
00:19:06I will do my best.
00:19:09That is all I can do.
00:19:13I ask for your help.
00:19:16I ask for your help and God's.
00:19:21Johnson had been afraid in Dallas
00:19:23that the assassination was the start of an all-out attack on the United States.
00:19:28He was somewhat less anxious now,
00:19:30but in the days ahead he would be haunted
00:19:32by what he was learning about Oswald from the director of the FBI.
00:19:37Johnson gets a call from J Edgar Hoover saying that this Oswald,
00:19:41whom we think was probably the assassin,
00:19:43had been seen in Mexico City at the Soviet embassy perhaps or the Cuban embassy.
00:19:48Johnson almost immediately said,
00:19:50Oh my God, I've now got to deal with another problem,
00:19:53which is Americans are going to think that the Soviets did this or the Cubans did this.
00:19:58Gannoway also said the suspect had visited Russia and was married to a Russian.
00:20:02This is not immediately confirmed.
00:20:05They will say, go to war against the Soviets or the Cubans in revenge.
00:20:10He didn't want that kind of pressure on him.
00:20:12He knew that that could lead us to a war that would kill,
00:20:15at the very least, tens of millions of people.
00:20:19Suspect is again coming down the hall.
00:20:21What did you do in Russia?
00:20:23Johnson's fears were based on fragments of information about a man nobody really knew.
00:20:28Lee Harvey Oswald was a mystery then and now.
00:20:32I emphatically deny these charges.
00:20:35One of the things the American public misses here
00:20:38is they look at this case and they have lost somebody
00:20:41in their thinking of conspiracy over 40 years.
00:20:44They've lost the shooter, the assassin, they've lost Oswald.
00:20:48They have no idea who he was, what he had come from,
00:20:51what his background had been like.
00:20:53They have no idea of motive.
00:20:55And no idea where his journey to Dealey Plaza began.
00:20:59Turned the radio on.
00:21:00They were talking about a shooting of a police officer.
00:21:05And about that time, they announced it.
00:21:08They had an individual in custody by the name of Lee Harvey Oswald or Harvey Lee Oswald.
00:21:18And I said, that's my kid brother.
00:21:21After all these years,
00:21:23and we're talking about a long time,
00:21:26I think more than anything else,
00:21:28if I had an opportunity to have the facts that said Lee was innocent,
00:21:34I would be out there shouting it loud and clear.
00:21:38I say it again.
00:21:39I say it again.
00:21:40I say it again.
00:21:41I say it again.
00:21:42I say it again.
00:21:43I say it again.
00:21:44I say it again.
00:21:45I say it again.
00:21:46I say it again.
00:21:47I say it again.
00:21:48It is my belief, my conviction, no one but Lee was involved.
00:21:56Period.
00:22:00People need to look what transpired before that,
00:22:04everything.
00:22:05You've got to come all the way from childhood on up,
00:22:08and especially that last year of his life,
00:22:10and understand what transpired in his life.
00:22:15He was a lonely boy,
00:22:19needing attention but not getting it.
00:22:22Lee Harvey Oswald was born on October the 18th, 1939,
00:22:26in New Orleans, Louisiana.
00:22:28His father had died two months before.
00:22:31Lee wrote of himself that he was the son of an insurance agent
00:22:35whose early death left a far mean streak of independence.
00:22:39My mother constantly told us that we were, you know, a burden to her.
00:22:45And very early on, he learned that he wasn't wanted.
00:22:50Lee and his mother moved constantly.
00:22:52By the age of 13, he'd attended seven different schools.
00:22:56He was often a truant.
00:22:58Lee's mother was a very good teacher.
00:23:01She was a very good teacher.
00:23:03She was a very good teacher.
00:23:05By the age of 13, he'd attended seven different schools.
00:23:08He was often a truant.
00:23:10As a teenager, they lived in New York City, where he had no friends.
00:23:14He often spent the days riding the subways alone.
00:23:19His interest in Communism began when he was handed a flyer
00:23:22about the case of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg,
00:23:25Communist sympathisers executed as spies for the Soviet Union.
00:23:29By 16, he'd dropped out of school and was calling himself a Marxist.
00:23:35He wanted the attention by being unique,
00:23:38and if the worst of the world had been a Marxist,
00:23:41he would have been American.
00:23:43Lee's outspoken support of Communism
00:23:45didn't prevent him from joining the Marine Corps at 17.
00:23:49He did it to get away from his mother.
00:23:51He didn't hide his infatuation with Communism
00:23:54even though it turned other Marines against him.
00:23:56He began to teach himself Russian.
00:23:58He praised Cuba's new Communist leader, Fidel Castro.
00:24:03When he was in the Marine Corps,
00:24:05he was going the opposite direction from the rest of the troops.
00:24:08He wanted to be different from the crowd, stand out from the crowd,
00:24:12and whatever it took, he was willing to do it.
00:24:17Oswald learned to shoot in the Marines.
00:24:19He reached the grade of sharpshooter,
00:24:21able to fire rapidly with accuracy at a target 200 yards away.
00:24:27He stayed in the Marines for just under three years.
00:24:31Nine days after being discharged,
00:24:33he was on his way to the Soviet Union, where he intended to defect.
00:24:37He arrived in Moscow on a tourist visa on October 16, 1959.
00:24:46I heard from a friend in the American Embassy
00:24:49that there was a young defector staying in Moscow.
00:24:53Everything about him spelt loneliness and aloneness.
00:24:58Priscilla MacMillan, who would later become Oswald's biographer,
00:25:01met him in Moscow, where she was working as a journalist.
00:25:04He told me he wanted to defect
00:25:06because there were a lot of things in the United States
00:25:09which he did not like,
00:25:11particularly capitalism and racial discrimination.
00:25:16He said he was a Marxist,
00:25:18and this was it, the communist paradise.
00:25:22It was a rare American who thought the Soviet Union was paradise
00:25:26when The New York Times reported on Oswald's desire to stay in the Soviet Union.
00:25:30But the Russians were sceptical of any would-be defector,
00:25:33especially one barely 20 years old.
00:25:36The initial reaction to any foreigner in the old USSR
00:25:40was to view them as CIA agents,
00:25:44but after some research, we found out that he was not good for the CIA.
00:25:49So we thought maybe we'll turn him into a Soviet agent eventually,
00:25:53but he was no good either.
00:25:55Six days after he got to Moscow,
00:25:57the Russians decided they didn't want him and told him to leave.
00:26:01Oswald, to us, looked like a misfit.
00:26:05He didn't look like a misfit.
00:26:07He didn't look like a misfit.
00:26:09Oswald, to us, looked like a misfit, an unhappy man,
00:26:14the man who did not know what to do,
00:26:16the man who was looking for something
00:26:19and he did not know himself what he was looking for.
00:26:23But the Soviets underestimated his determination
00:26:26and his flair for the dramatic.
00:26:28When he heard he'd been rejected,
00:26:30Oswald went to his hotel room and slit his wrist.
00:26:36He made a hysterical gesture,
00:26:38probably didn't want to kill himself, really,
00:26:40but he wanted to force them to let him stay
00:26:44and, believe it or not, he succeeded.
00:26:47He blackmailed them, as he did everybody.
00:26:51It worked.
00:26:52The Soviet authorities caved in and allowed Oswald to settle in the city of Minsk,
00:26:56where he was given an apartment and a job in a factory.
00:27:00Oswald stood out in Minsk.
00:27:02As an American, he was different.
00:27:04He enjoyed people's curiosity.
00:27:07He met and married a Russian girl, Marina.
00:27:10They had a child, but they lived the life of ordinary workers
00:27:13and it was not the communist paradise he was seeking.
00:27:21The mainspring of Lee's character was reaction against, negative.
00:27:26Wherever he was, it was better somewhere else.
00:27:30And after he lived in Russia for a while,
00:27:33Russia seemed bad to him
00:27:35and America seemed better.
00:27:38Wherever he was, the bare facts of Oswald's life
00:27:41clashed with the image he had of himself.
00:27:43He was without education, without skills, but seething with ambition.
00:27:47People who met him were often startled by it.
00:27:51He was so extremely fixed
00:27:54on making an impression with his life.
00:27:57Enormously ambitious.
00:28:00Ambitious to achieve something beyond the normal.
00:28:06In June 1962, disappointed in Russia,
00:28:09Lee decided to take Marina and go home.
00:28:12They headed for Dallas, Texas.
00:28:14Lee was convinced that when they arrived at Love Field,
00:28:17he'd be greeted by curious reporters.
00:28:22One of the first things he says,
00:28:24what, no reporters?
00:28:26He seemed definitely disappointed.
00:28:28He had his notes, how he was going to answer the reporters,
00:28:31why this and why that, why he went to Russia and why he came back.
00:28:35But there was nobody to talk to.
00:28:38Home again in the United States,
00:28:40Oswald was a man of no importance to anyone but himself.
00:28:44He found work demeaning, he had very little money,
00:28:47he had no deep connections to other people except Marina,
00:28:50and he was physically abusing her.
00:28:53In January 1963, using an alias A. Hiddell,
00:28:57he ordered a revolver, a Smith & Wesson .38,
00:29:01the gun that killed Officer Tippett.
00:29:05In March, he ordered a rifle using the same alias,
00:29:09a Mannlicher Carcano 6.5mm,
00:29:12the gun that killed John Kennedy.
00:29:15He asked Marina to take his photograph.
00:29:18When I first met him and brought him over the house,
00:29:21the first thing he showed me was a picture of himself holding a rifle,
00:29:25and I could see he was proud of that picture.
00:29:28I had the strong impression that it was an icon of himself,
00:29:32that he liked.
00:29:34Ruth and Michael Payne showed kindness to Lee and Marina.
00:29:38Ruth and Marina spoke Russian together and became friends.
00:29:41Lee kept his distance.
00:29:43He had these fantasies about who he was and what he could do
00:29:47and that nobody was really paying attention
00:29:50or noticing or feeling that he was important.
00:29:54He'd been spending his life, the latter half of his life,
00:29:58trying to be a revolutionary,
00:30:01trying to have an effect,
00:30:04trying to be important, make a mark on the world.
00:30:09No-one knows the exact moment that Oswald decided
00:30:12to become a political assassin,
00:30:14but in April 1963, he was ready.
00:30:25Oswald had decided that he was going to commit himself
00:30:28in his young life at the age of 23 to political assassination.
00:30:32He would put himself in the history books.
00:30:35Retired General Edwin A. Walker was a segregationist
00:30:38and vehement anti-Communist.
00:30:40He had a growing following in Dallas and elsewhere in the South.
00:30:48Oswald spent more than a month plotting to kill him.
00:30:51He photographed Walker's home and worked out an escape route.
00:30:55It was a long and arduous journey,
00:30:58but Oswald was determined to find a way out.
00:31:01He photographed Walker's home and worked out an escape route.
00:31:05He left Marina instructions in Russian about what to do
00:31:08if he didn't come back.
00:31:12The Walker attempt of April 10, 1963,
00:31:16is the Rosetta Stone, the Kennedy assassination,
00:31:20because it showed Lee getting ready to shoot someone
00:31:24and what went into it
00:31:27and the feelings that he projected onto public figures.
00:31:32And that is what you have to study
00:31:34to understand the Kennedy assassination.
00:31:38Using his mail-order rifle, Oswald fired at General Walker,
00:31:42who was sitting inside his house.
00:31:46The bullet was deflected by the window frame.
00:31:49The world didn't know any of this until after Oswald died.
00:31:54This was entirely on his own.
00:31:56There wasn't anybody that he worked with,
00:31:59nobody knew about it except Marina,
00:32:01and she was keeping very quiet.
00:32:04Marina told me that she was in fear all the time of what he might do.
00:32:11After the Kennedy assassination,
00:32:13Marina spent weeks being interviewed by FBI agent Wally Heitman.
00:32:18Lee Harvey was on his route then.
00:32:20He, it seems to me, was determined...
00:32:24..that in order to make himself somebody,
00:32:26he was going to have to assassinate somebody,
00:32:29and that somebody would have to be big.
00:32:36They subsequently went to New Orleans.
00:32:40And one of the principal reasons that they went to New Orleans
00:32:43was that Marina thought that if she could get Lee Harvey out of Dallas,
00:32:47that maybe he would not have all of these strange ideas.
00:32:54But returning to his birthplace only fuelled his political activism.
00:33:00New Orleans was teeming with thousands of anti-Castro Cubans.
00:33:04Oswald launched a one-man pro-Castro campaign.
00:33:09He became the New Orleans chapter
00:33:11of the National Fair Play for Cuba Committee.
00:33:14He stood out enough that local television filmed him handing out leaflets.
00:33:19In August, he was arrested after fighting with anti-Castro Cubans.
00:33:23Again, he stood out, and the local radio station interviewed him.
00:33:27I and the Fair Play for Cuba Committee
00:33:31does think that the United States government,
00:33:33through certain agencies, namely the State Department and the CIA,
00:33:38has made monumental mistakes in its relations with Cuba.
00:33:42When I listened, I couldn't believe my ears,
00:33:46because this was the most effective presentation of the Castro line
00:33:51that I had ever heard.
00:33:53Ed Butler debated with Oswald on the radio.
00:33:56No, Mr Butler, it is not, however...
00:33:59He was not a stupid guy. He was a competent
00:34:02and, I think, very effective propagandist for that point of view.
00:34:07Oswald appeared on television answering questions about Cuba.
00:34:11In your work with the Fair Play for Cuba Committee,
00:34:14what are you advocating?
00:34:16We advocate restoration of diplomatic, trade and tourist relations with Cuba.
00:34:21Are you a Marxist?
00:34:23Well, I have studied Marxist philosophy, yes, sir, and also other philosophers.
00:34:28But the attention was fleeting,
00:34:30and his composure in public masked the turmoil in his private life.
00:34:34Marina was pregnant again, and they were living on unemployment benefits.
00:34:38In September, Lee tried to convince Marina to help him hijack a plane to Cuba.
00:34:45A Russian woman who can hardly speak English,
00:34:48with a baby in tow, to hijack a plane.
00:34:52She thought that was the craziest idea that she had ever heard.
00:34:56She was able to convince him that that just would not work.
00:35:00In late September, Marina went back to Texas with Ruth Payne.
00:35:04Lee and Marina would never live together again.
00:35:09Lee seemed really sad when we drove off, so I felt he cared.
00:35:14It's just that he didn't really know how,
00:35:19or nothing seemed to be working well for him.
00:35:23Lee's life leading up to November of 1963 was just a series of disappointments.
00:35:30He'd had very boring jobs,
00:35:33he'd barely been able to support a wife and children,
00:35:37and he figured he'd run out of his strength.
00:35:40Lee had told Marina that he really wanted to help the Cuban revolution.
00:35:45He went to the Cuban consulate in Mexico City, but they didn't want him.
00:35:53He went to the Soviet embassy and asked to return to Russia.
00:35:57They turned him down as well.
00:36:01He thought he himself was interesting enough and important enough
00:36:07that they would give him visas to go to their country.
00:36:11And he was rebuffed.
00:36:14In a way, this cut off his last exit, in a way.
00:36:19And when he left Mexico City to go back to Dallas,
00:36:23he went in a spirit of defeat and desperation.
00:36:29Oswald arrived back in Dallas, where Marina was living, on October 3.
00:36:33He'd no job and no prospects.
00:36:38I saw Lee. He'd come out on weekends to see Marina.
00:36:45I realised that I hadn't known anything about him in that sense of knowing it.
00:36:51I had no idea he was dangerous.
00:36:54I didn't know he had made the attempt on General Walker in April.
00:36:59And I didn't really realise how unstable he was.
00:37:05Oswald rented a room in Dallas for $8 a week and looked for work.
00:37:10It was Ruth Payne who arranged for him to get a job
00:37:13at the Texas School Book Depository.
00:37:16He started work on 16 October.
00:37:19On November 19, the route of the Kennedy motorcade
00:37:22was published in the Dallas newspapers.
00:37:25The route went right past the building where Oswald had a job.
00:37:31On November 21, the night before the assassination,
00:37:35Lee visited Marina at Ruth Payne's house.
00:37:38It was the only time he'd ever arrived unannounced.
00:37:42One of the things he did when he left that Friday morning
00:37:46was take most of the money that he had on the dresser for Marina
00:37:51with a little note, get some shoes for Junie.
00:37:54And then he took off his ring and put it in a cup.
00:37:58And I have wondered...
00:38:00I think he was pretty depressed and discouraged
00:38:04about how things weren't going well for him.
00:38:07He wasn't changing the world or whatever it was
00:38:10he thought he was supposed to be doing.
00:38:14He had problems at home.
00:38:16He had problems on his job.
00:38:18He was completely frustrated about what was going on around him.
00:38:22This is not excusing what he did.
00:38:25This is understanding what he did.
00:38:29He wanted to be somebody.
00:38:31And this opportunity came about, coincidental.
00:38:35Nothing planned, nothing organized.
00:38:38It happened that way.
00:38:40It's one of those happenstances of history.
00:38:44Oswald went to work at the book depository on the morning of 22nd
00:38:49carrying a long object wrapped in brown paper.
00:38:52He told another worker it was curtain rods.
00:39:11The suspect is coming down the aisle
00:39:14and into this interrogation room.
00:39:17On November 23rd, Lee Harvey Oswald was finally somebody.
00:39:22Did you kill the president?
00:39:24No, I've not been charged with that.
00:39:26In fact, nobody has said that to me yet.
00:39:29Throughout that weekend, Oswald was arrested.
00:39:32He was charged with murder.
00:39:34He was charged with murder.
00:39:36He was charged with murder.
00:39:38Throughout that weekend, Oswald was questioned by the police,
00:39:41the FBI and the Secret Service.
00:39:43He wasn't admitting anything.
00:39:45Even without a confession,
00:39:47the district attorney, Henry Wade, said he'd a strong case.
00:39:53I figure we have sufficient evidence to convict you.
00:39:56Is there any indication that this was an organized plot
00:39:59or was it just one man?
00:40:01There's no one else but him.
00:40:03That would never be tested in court.
00:40:09Now, this is the armoured truck that will carry Lee Oswald
00:40:13from the basement here of Dallas Police Headquarters
00:40:17downtown to the Dallas County Jail.
00:40:21On Sunday, November 24th,
00:40:23the press had been told they could cover Oswald's transfer
00:40:27from police headquarters to the county jail
00:40:30and to be at the basement loading dock by 10am.
00:40:34There is Lee Oswald.
00:40:38He's been shot. He's been shot.
00:40:41Lee Oswald has been shot.
00:40:44The shooter was Jack Ruby.
00:40:46The police and the press in Dallas knew him well.
00:40:50Why did you do it?
00:40:52Why did you do it, Jack?
00:40:55He said,
00:40:57I did it for the people of America.
00:41:00He was my president.
00:41:02This man, he never said the name Oswald, by the way, never.
00:41:05He said, this man killed my president.
00:41:08The first thing out of his mouth is, I'm a hero.
00:41:11And that's what really floored me
00:41:13because everyone was still in shock over what happened.
00:41:16He said, I'm a hero, and I went, you know you're not.
00:41:19Jack Ruby was 52, the tough operator of a local strip club.
00:41:24People knew he carried a gun.
00:41:26Some people speculated that Ruby was a hitman
00:41:29sent to silence Oswald.
00:41:31Was he part of a conspiracy?
00:41:33Jack Ruby was a wannabe, never was.
00:41:37But it's really a joke
00:41:39if you think Jack Ruby could be involved in a conspiracy.
00:41:43This is a man, if he knew anything,
00:41:45I guarantee you he'd tell somebody within one block.
00:41:49He wanted to be important.
00:41:52All the people that know him know him as an emotional person.
00:41:57He does blow off easily.
00:42:00You're an exotic dancer at the Carousel
00:42:03owned and operated by Jack Ruby.
00:42:06That's right.
00:42:08How long have you been working for Jack Ruby?
00:42:11Let me see.
00:42:13I had been working for Jack maybe 3 months at that time.
00:42:19I was 20 years old.
00:42:22If you knew Jack, and a lot of people say this,
00:42:27that Jack did a lot of things
00:42:29like he'd get a pat on the back, a medal,
00:42:33be praised for what he was doing.
00:42:36Jack Ruby grew up in Chicago
00:42:38where he got the nickname Sparky because of his temper.
00:42:42I knew Sparky in the 40s and in the 50s.
00:42:48He was in all the gymnasiums with all the boxers.
00:42:53It was well known that Jack Ruby was Meshuggah.
00:42:57He was not playing with a full deck.
00:43:00He was a nice guy,
00:43:02but he just wasn't playing with a full deck.
00:43:05Ruby's days in Chicago led many people to suspect
00:43:09that he'd ties to organized crime.
00:43:11The Chicago mob had nothing to do with Jack Ruby.
00:43:14Jack Ruby was working with the ragtag guys on the street,
00:43:18downtown Chicago.
00:43:20Some of them were bookmakers.
00:43:22There was just guys who made a buck through their wit
00:43:26and charm in some cases.
00:43:28But they were not the gangsters.
00:43:30The gangsters had nothing to do with Jack Ruby.
00:43:36Ruby moved to Dallas and achieved a measure of respectability.
00:43:40The Carousel Club's clientele included plenty of press and police.
00:43:46Ruby was a guy who hung out with the police.
00:43:51He had to make friends with the police
00:43:54because he was running an operation
00:43:57that could be shut down by the police.
00:44:01He kept coffee and sandwiches in the back for them.
00:44:05They were always in and out, and he was always down there.
00:44:09He liked to know what was going on.
00:44:12And because he knew the cops,
00:44:14he could come and go at police headquarters.
00:44:18He knew that what happened on that Friday afternoon
00:44:22was something that will never be forgotten in American history.
00:44:26And being Jack Ruby, he wanted to be part of it.
00:44:29He knew that there was going to be action,
00:44:32and he wanted to be where action was.
00:44:37Hours after the assassination, Jack Ruby closed the Carousel Club.
00:44:41Jack was hysterical.
00:44:44He said, I will shoot the son of a bitch if I have a chance.
00:44:48And he kept going on about Kennedy's children not having a father.
00:44:56At midnight on Friday the 22nd, Ruby was at police headquarters
00:45:00when Oswald was paraded before the press.
00:45:03Over the weekend, he was described by his sister and friends
00:45:06as upset and unstable.
00:45:08Early Sunday morning the 24th, his housekeeper, who talked to him by phone,
00:45:12said he was mumbling, jabbering, not making sense.
00:45:15At 10 o'clock on Sunday, the press was waiting for Oswald to be transferred.
00:45:22At 10.19am, Ruby got a call at home from one of his strippers, Little Lynn.
00:45:27She wanted him to wire her $25 so she could meet her rent.
00:45:31Just before 11, Ruby left his apartment with his dog, Sheba,
00:45:35and drove to the telegraph office.
00:45:38He parked and locked Sheba in the car.
00:45:41This makes no sense.
00:45:43You're going to plan to kill somebody,
00:45:46and you bring your dog down to the killing?
00:45:52At Western Union, Ruby waited his turn in the queue.
00:45:55His wiretapping was a success.
00:45:58At Western Union, Ruby waited his turn in the queue.
00:46:01His wire transfer was posted at 11.70am.
00:46:05Ruby then walked the one block to police headquarters.
00:46:08Oswald's interrogation had taken longer than expected
00:46:11and was delayed a few minutes more when Oswald asked to change his clothes.
00:46:15Jack Ruby walked into the crowded hallway at 11.20am.
00:46:19Oswald appeared within a minute.
00:46:23Jack loved President Kennedy.
00:46:26There was Oswald who was walking with a smile in his face, Jack told me.
00:46:31And he couldn't believe that.
00:46:33He was smiling for having killed the President.
00:46:38And Jack became all excited,
00:46:41and he pulled out the gun and shot him.
00:46:47There is Lee Oswald.
00:46:51He's been shot. He's been shot.
00:46:54Lee Oswald has been shot. There's a man with a gun.
00:46:58Absolute panic.
00:47:00President Kennedy was a symbol to Jack Ruby,
00:47:05an image to Jack Ruby.
00:47:08Kennedy was his god. He believed in Kennedy.
00:47:11And in his distorted mind, he did the right thing,
00:47:15that this man killed his President, and he loved his President,
00:47:19and he was taking justice into his own hands.
00:47:23Oswald, he is ashen and unconscious,
00:47:27unconscious at this time, now being moved in.
00:47:30He's in the ambulance.
00:47:32It was all caught on television.
00:47:34The public watched in disbelief.
00:47:36In less than 48 hours, the President had been murdered,
00:47:39his assassin silenced,
00:47:41and a man on the fringes of the underworld arrested for killing the assassin.
00:47:45The floodgates of conspiracy were wide open.
00:47:54On Monday, November 25, 1963,
00:47:57President Kennedy's body was carried through the streets of Washington
00:48:01to Arlington National Cemetery.
00:48:04There are moments that day which are still
00:48:07an indelible part of modern American history.
00:48:11The muffled drums for a dead President so young.
00:48:15The riderless horse.
00:48:18The President's son, John John, saluting as his father passes.
00:48:23The nation was in deepest mourning.
00:48:27In Texas that same day, Lee Harvey Oswald was buried.
00:48:31His wife, Marina, was there, and his mother and his brother, Robert.
00:48:39And that was the end of the story for this week.
00:48:56It was the day that Jack Ruby, under very heavy guard,
00:48:59was transferred to the county jail.
00:49:02I said to him,
00:49:04Jack, did you have any kind of connection with Oswald or with people?
00:49:09And he denied it vehemently again and again and again.
00:49:14He said, I'll swear on this Bible I had nothing to do with anybody else.
00:49:19I did it all by myself.
00:49:21This is what he said to me.
00:49:24The people who knew Ruby didn't believe he was part of a conspiracy,
00:49:28but millions of Americans did, and President Johnson worried about it.
00:49:34What he wanted was a report that would hopefully
00:49:39allay the fears, the anxieties,
00:49:42and some of the conspiratorial darkness
00:49:45that was populating too many people's minds at the time.
00:49:50The president decided to appoint a commission
00:49:52to investigate the assassination,
00:49:54and he persuaded the nation's chief justice, Earl Warren, to lead it.
00:50:00The Warren Commission was created for two main reasons.
00:50:03One was to settle the mood in the United States,
00:50:06but there was a second very key reason,
00:50:08and that was to dispel any rumours of foreign intrigue.
00:50:12We're living at a time of the Cold War
00:50:15where there is great tension in the air,
00:50:17great fear in the air that there is a communist conspiracy
00:50:21directed out of Moscow,
00:50:23which is seeking to destroy the free world and then the United States.
00:50:28Many Americans believed that Oswald's time in the Soviet Union
00:50:32and his admiration for Fidel Castro
00:50:34were proof, somehow, of a communist conspiracy.
00:50:38The longer the Warren Commission takes,
00:50:41the longer the rumour mills churn.
00:50:44So the pressure is enormous.
00:50:50President Johnson pressed the commission to work quickly
00:50:53and finish before the 1964 presidential election.
00:50:58The investigation lasted for only ten months,
00:51:00but it built an overwhelming case against Oswald.
00:51:0425,000 interviews were done.
00:51:07Oswald's wife Marina was called,
00:51:09so was his mother and his brother Robert.
00:51:11There were 3,000 pieces of evidence.
00:51:17Ballistic tests showed that the bullets which hit the president
00:51:20could only have come from Oswald's rifle.
00:51:22His palm print was on the stock.
00:51:25His prints were on boxes in the sniper's position at the book depository.
00:51:31The commission concluded that President Kennedy and Governor Connolly
00:51:35had been hit by the same bullet
00:51:37and that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone assassin.
00:51:42There was no evidence, the Warren Commission said,
00:51:45that Oswald was working for Cuba or the Soviet Union.
00:51:51But when the commission published its report in September 1964,
00:51:55many Americans simply didn't believe it.
00:51:58They accused the commission of rushing to judgment.
00:52:02The commission was accused of covering up a conspiracy.
00:52:07Let me say to you that the one thing I wanted to do was find a conspiracy.
00:52:15I was a 32-year-old lawyer at that point and I had political ambitions.
00:52:20If I could have found that Oswald didn't do it,
00:52:23I'd have been the senator from Ohio and not John Glenn.
00:52:27I would say we did a thorough search
00:52:30and we discovered all of the evidence
00:52:33and I think the best proof is it's 40 years later
00:52:36and nobody's come up with any statement of anybody else who did it.
00:52:42But those Americans who pored over the 888 pages of the Warren Report
00:52:47and its 26 volumes of supporting evidence
00:52:50found inconsistencies and outright mistakes
00:52:53which simply fuelled the conspiracy theories.
00:52:56There was hardly a word in the Warren Commission
00:52:59about the Kennedy administration's determination
00:53:02to get rid of Fidel Castro, the leader Oswald so admired.
00:53:08Castro had established a communist government
00:53:11allied with the Soviet Union within 100 miles of Florida.
00:53:16The secret campaign to get rid of Castro was so important to President Kennedy
00:53:21that his brother Robert, the Attorney General, ran the operation.
00:53:27The CIA supported guerrilla raids into Cuba
00:53:30and recruited assassins, Cuban exiles and members of the mafia
00:53:34to get rid of Castro in any way they could.
00:53:40The objective was very simple and I'll give you the exact words that were used.
00:53:44Get, quote, get rid of Castro and the Castro regime, unquote.
00:53:49And then, on September 9th, 1963,
00:53:52in a widely published interview with the Associated Press,
00:53:56Castro threatened American leaders.
00:53:58We are prepared to fight and answer in kind, he said.
00:54:02The United States leaders should think
00:54:04that if they're aiding terrorist plans to eliminate Cuban leaders,
00:54:08they themselves will not be safe.
00:54:12The people who wrote the Warren Commission report
00:54:15were never told the reasons behind Castro's threat.
00:54:20If Americans now look back at the Warren report and say,
00:54:24however good it may be,
00:54:26the people who wrote it did not know a cardinal fact,
00:54:29and that was that the Kennedy administration
00:54:31was trying to kill Fidel Castro.
00:54:34President Johnson always expressed his public confidence
00:54:37in the Warren Commission's finding that Oswald acted alone.
00:54:42In private, he believed something else.
00:54:47President Johnson...
00:54:50..said to me on more than one occasion,
00:54:53his statement was Kennedy tried to get Castro
00:54:56and Castro got Kennedy first.
00:54:59There's no doubt in my mind that President Johnson went to his grave
00:55:03believing that Castro was behind
00:55:06Lee Harvey Oswald's assassination of John Kennedy.
00:55:10In the 1970s, during Vietnam and Watergate,
00:55:13Americans had to confront a painful reality.
00:55:16The government had lied to them on a very grand scale.
00:55:21Maybe the government had lied about the Kennedy assassination, too.
00:55:26The pattern that we have now established
00:55:28regarding the assassination of John Kennedy
00:55:31is a pattern that we have now established
00:55:34The pattern that we have now established for Lee Harvey Oswald
00:55:37is obviously the pattern of a man being run by the CIA.
00:55:40There's no question of it.
00:55:42I just want to tell you that 72% of the American people
00:55:45do not buy your report.
00:55:47Well, that's unfortunate.
00:55:49At worst, it's fallacious. At best, it's incompetent.
00:55:54The Warren Commission was being denounced in many quarters
00:55:57as an outright fraud itself, part of a far-reaching conspiracy.
00:56:02Under this kind of pressure, in 1976,
00:56:05the House of Representatives created a select committee on assassinations
00:56:09to deal with the conspiracy theories once and for all.
00:56:12When the Zabruder film of the Kennedy assassination was made public,
00:56:16critics and people generally were fascinated...
00:56:19The committee's chief counsel directing the investigation
00:56:22was G. Robert Blakey.
00:56:24We made it our central programme.
00:56:26We made it our central programme.
00:56:28We made it our central programme
00:56:31to see what might have changed since 1963,
00:56:35and what had changed since 1963
00:56:38are advances in science and technology.
00:56:41So we concentrated on science and technology.
00:56:44Using the latest technology,
00:56:46the committee re-examined the bullets that struck the president.
00:56:53The X-rays and photographs from the president's autopsy
00:56:57and the movements of President Kennedy and Connolly in the Zabruder film.
00:57:02The committee reviewed all the evidence
00:57:04and reaffirmed that President John Kennedy
00:57:07was shot and killed by Lee Harvey Oswald.
00:57:10The committee combed Oswald's life for links to foreign governments.
00:57:13It heard testimony from one of the KGB officers
00:57:16who handled Oswald's file when he defected to Russia.
00:57:21He was nobody.
00:57:23He was a tumbleweed.
00:57:26Yuri Nosenko later defected to the United States
00:57:29and still lives there under an assumed name.
00:57:32To recruit such person who defected in Russia, American,
00:57:37returns back in America and to give him mission to kill,
00:57:42no way. KGB never will go on this.
00:57:47Never.
00:57:49Because it's so obvious.
00:57:55As for a Cuban connection,
00:57:57the CIA's plots to kill Fidel Castro have been uncovered
00:58:00and made public a year before the House committee began its work.
00:58:06In 1978, Chief Counsel Blakey and several members of the committee
00:58:10actually went to Havana to interview Fidel Castro.
00:58:15I sat in President Castro's office
00:58:18and, albeit diplomatically, looked at him in his eyes
00:58:22and said, did you kill John Kennedy?
00:58:24And he said no.
00:58:26And then he told me why.
00:58:28It would have been a foolish thing for him to have done.
00:58:31Castro told Blakey that it would have been insanity
00:58:34for him to attack Kennedy.
00:58:36That would have been the most perfect pretext, Castro said,
00:58:39for the US to invade our country,
00:58:41which is what I've tried to prevent for all these years.
00:58:49They'd be so identified and so ordered into the records.
00:58:53The Special Committee of Congress took two years to do its work
00:58:57and, at the end of its investigation,
00:58:59was just about to conclude that the Warren Commission was right.
00:59:02Oswald was the sole assassin and no-one had conspired with him,
00:59:06not the CIA, the FBI, the Soviets or the Cubans.
00:59:12But in the last days of the investigation,
00:59:14three scientists surprised the committee
00:59:16with evidence they said proved a conspiracy.
00:59:19With a probability of 95% or better,
00:59:23there was indeed a shot fired from the Grassy Knoll.
00:59:27The scientists had analysed a sound recording,
00:59:30overlooked for almost 15 years,
00:59:32that was made at the time of the assassination.
00:59:34The scientists said that as the president was shot,
00:59:37a motorcycle policeman in the president's motorcade
00:59:40was driving through Dealey Plaza
00:59:42with his microphone stuck in the on position.
00:59:45The sounds the microphone picked up were recorded at police headquarters.
00:59:49This is a copy and the crucial evidence was only 8.3 seconds long.
00:59:54The recording was noisy with static listening.
01:00:09But the scientists said that with special equipment
01:00:12they could identify four gunshots.
01:00:18What you just heard were the sounds picked up at this microphone.
01:00:23This was a shock to the committee.
01:00:25Four shots was one more than Oswald had time to fire.
01:00:28One shot then fired from here.
01:00:31Four shots in the plaza, three from the depository
01:00:34and one from the Grassy Knoll.
01:00:36That meant there were two shooters in the plaza.
01:00:39Two shooters in the plaza equal a conspiracy.
01:00:42Chief Counsel Blakey was convinced by the science
01:00:45and he became a believer in a conspiracy.
01:00:49Blakey was an expert on organised crime
01:00:52and he decided that the mob had conspired to kill the president.
01:00:56The key to this theory was Jack Ruby.
01:01:02I see Jack Ruby's assassination of Lee Harvey Ives
01:01:07as a mob hit.
01:01:09I got organised crime connections for Ruby
01:01:12that just go on and on and on.
01:01:21The Kennedy administration, led by Attorney General Robert Kennedy,
01:01:25had been fighting an unprecedented war against organised crime.
01:01:29And according to Blakey, Carlos Marcello, the mafia boss in New Orleans,
01:01:34was so angry at the Kennedys that he wanted to have the president killed.
01:01:38According to Blakey, he recruited Lee Harvey Oswald to shoot the president
01:01:42and Jack Ruby to make sure that Oswald never talked.
01:01:46I have the greatest respect for Robert Blakey
01:01:49but I cannot join him in this hypothesis.
01:01:54Committee calls Mr Salerno.
01:01:56The late Ralph Salerno knew as much about organised crime
01:02:00as anyone in America.
01:02:02He was hired by Blakey to be the committee's mob expert.
01:02:06He thought his former boss was wrong.
01:02:09The theory is Ruby is taking out Oswald
01:02:14so Oswald can't say anything.
01:02:17Somebody has to take out Ruby so he can't say anything.
01:02:22And then somebody has to take out the guy who took Ruby out.
01:02:27It becomes an unending dilemma so it doesn't work quite that way.
01:02:32In that position, Mr Genovese was at that meeting, Mr Giancana.
01:02:37Since that time up to the current day,
01:02:40you have had a large number of high-level members of organised crime
01:02:45have made a deal with the government and testified against their fellows.
01:02:49None of them has ever suggested that they knew of or even heard of
01:02:55involvement by organised crime in the death of President Kennedy.
01:02:59The most critical evidence in the Blakey theory was the police recording,
01:03:04the sounds picked up in Dealey Plaza by the motorcycle policeman's microphone.
01:03:08It was this evidence, the scientists said,
01:03:11that established the near certainty of two shooters,
01:03:14one in the book depository and the other up on the grassy knoll.
01:03:18But the scientists admitted that their conclusion
01:03:21was based on a very big assumption.
01:03:23On November 22nd, the open microphone had to be in a very particular place
01:03:28when the first shot was fired.
01:03:34Within this pink circle at the corner of Houston and Elm Streets,
01:03:38right next to the book depository.
01:03:42The committee said that H. B. McLean
01:03:44was the motorcycle officer with the open microphone
01:03:47and that he was right at that spot when the first shot was fired.
01:03:53But McLean told the committee that he was half a block away
01:03:56when he heard the shot.
01:03:58They just assumed that it was mine,
01:04:00or their acoustic people said it should be.
01:04:05But I don't care what they say, it wasn't mine.
01:04:10The committee found otherwise.
01:04:12Our best judgment with what we knew then was that it was H. B. McLean.
01:04:17If you could prove to me that there was no police officer
01:04:21in the place where he had to be, you would falsify my theory.
01:04:26If you look at the films taken in Dealey Plaza that day,
01:04:29you can do just that.
01:04:34This is a film taken by Robert Hughes.
01:04:37We see the president's car turning the corner right here.
01:04:39Here is the book depository and the sniper's nest window.
01:04:44Moments later, we see H. B. McLean rolling into the shot.
01:04:47The last frame he's seen is right here.
01:04:51Dale Myers took all of the available films of the motorcade that day
01:04:55to create a second-by-second timeline of the motorcade
01:04:58as it went through Dealey Plaza.
01:05:00He's established precisely where the shot was taken.
01:05:03This is the time of the first shot.
01:05:05The limousine is here on Elm Street.
01:05:07H. B. McLean is back here on Houston Street,
01:05:11about 170 feet from the pink circle,
01:05:14which is the position he has to be at the time of the first shot
01:05:18if the acoustics evidence is valid.
01:05:21H. B. McLean could not have been where the acoustics evidence predicted.
01:05:25And therefore, he could not have been at the time of the first shot.
01:05:29H. B. McLean could not have been where the acoustics evidence predicted.
01:05:33And therefore, the acoustics evidence is invalid.
01:05:38In 1980, the committee's findings were rejected by the FBI
01:05:42and in 1982 by an independent panel from the National Academy of Sciences.
01:05:47The three scientists who claimed there were gunshots on the recording
01:05:51declined to be interviewed for this programme.
01:05:55So the government committee established to settle the case once and for all,
01:05:59the House Select Committee on Assassinations,
01:06:02in the end made a mess of it.
01:06:04More controversy, more confusion, more series based on contested evidence.
01:06:08More myths overtaking the reality of what really happened in Dealey Plaza.
01:06:14In 1991, the movie director Oliver Stone
01:06:17introduced a whole new generation to the Kennedy assassination.
01:06:21No book or television programme, no investigation
01:06:24has done more to promote the idea of conspiracy than Stone's JFK.
01:06:31Kevin Costner plays the district attorney in New York City
01:06:34who is accused of being involved in the assassination.
01:06:39Kevin Costner plays the district attorney in New Orleans, Jim Garrison.
01:06:43President Kennedy was murdered by a conspiracy
01:06:46that was planned in advance at the highest levels of our government
01:06:49and it was carried out by fanatical and disciplined cold warriors.
01:06:53Stone has convinced me that the most powerful historians
01:06:56of the 20th century are filmmakers.
01:06:59It is those images that we remember, not what we read in the book,
01:07:03but the images that appear on the silver screen
01:07:06that have the most power in our brains and shape our perceptions of the past.
01:07:11And most Americans know of the Kennedy assassination
01:07:15through Oliver Stone's mind and Oliver Stone's images.
01:07:29The film makes a hero out of Jim Garrison,
01:07:32who was a district attorney in 1963.
01:07:36He is the only public official who did bring a prosecution
01:07:39in the murder of John Kennedy.
01:07:41I think he is to be applauded for saying and being the first one
01:07:44in the United States to say that the Warren Commission was wrong.
01:07:47Philosophically, this is a conflict of truth versus power.
01:07:51But Jim Garrison was regarded by many as immoral, unethical and even cruel.
01:07:56He prosecuted the only man ever to go on trial
01:07:59in connection with the assassination of President John F Kennedy.
01:08:02I certainly wouldn't say with confidence
01:08:05that we would make arrests and have convictions afterwards
01:08:09if I did not know that we had solved the assassination of President Kennedy
01:08:14beyond any shadow of a doubt.
01:08:16You see, when a public official says something,
01:08:19people assume that he knows what he's talking about.
01:08:23And Garrison would frequently say such things as,
01:08:26it's obvious, or I'm absolutely convinced, or I know.
01:08:30And people say, well, he must know what he's talking about.
01:08:33Sum it up.
01:08:35The federal government, including key officials
01:08:39and the President of the United States most specifically,
01:08:43knew that President Kennedy was not killed by a lone assassin.
01:08:47Garrison promoted himself as the only one brave enough
01:08:51to pursue the truth in the face of a federal government
01:08:54bent on burying the facts of the Kennedy assassination.
01:08:57He said he was uncovering a web of conspiracy with many plotters
01:09:01with complex motives to kill the President.
01:09:04But in the end, he hung his entire case on just one man.
01:09:10Quiet!
01:09:12Arrested this evening in the district attorney's office
01:09:15was Clay Shaw, aged 54, of 1313 Dauphine Street, New Orleans, Louisiana.
01:09:22Mr Shaw will be charged with participation
01:09:25in a conspiracy to murder John F Kennedy.
01:09:28Clay Shaw was a prominent civic leader.
01:09:31His arrest stunned New Orleans.
01:09:34It was an incredible shock when Clay Shaw was arrested.
01:09:40Here's a man who, you know, was a pillar of the community.
01:09:45They took him in handcuffed and, you know,
01:09:48acting like he was some dread criminal.
01:09:52I've always had only the highest and utmost respect
01:09:55and admiration for Mr Kennedy.
01:09:57The charges filed against me have no foundation in fact or in law.
01:10:02Garrison never explained why Shaw might have wanted to kill the President.
01:10:07He never explained Shaw's role in the plot
01:10:10and rested his entire case on the testimony of one man
01:10:14prepared to implicate Shaw.
01:10:16A 26-year-old insurance agent from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Perry Raymond Russo.
01:10:23Russo was prepared to testify at trial
01:10:25that while he was visiting the apartment of a friend, David Ferry,
01:10:29he witnessed Clay Shaw, Lee Harvey Oswald and David Ferry
01:10:33plotting to kill the President.
01:10:35David Ferry died, leaving Russo as the only witness to the conspiracy.
01:10:41But Russo's testimony was a lie and Garrison knew it.
01:10:46A polygraph technician for the New Orleans Police Department
01:10:49gave Russo a lie detector test.
01:10:54I asked, did you ever see Clay Shaw at David Ferry's apartment?
01:10:58He said, Mr O'Donnell, I don't know.
01:11:01I said, what do you mean you don't know?
01:11:03I said, Perry, Mr Shaw was a tall, handsome man.
01:11:08Mr Shaw was a tall, distinguished looking man.
01:11:13If he was there, you would know it.
01:11:15I said, now was he there or wasn't he?
01:11:18Give me a yes or no answer.
01:11:20He said, if I have to give you a yes or no answer, it would be no.
01:11:24He was not there.
01:11:28It really, it just hit me like a sledgehammer.
01:11:33When I told Garrison this, Garrison went into a rage.
01:11:36Just absolute rage, hollering and screaming.
01:11:38He sold out to some.
01:11:40I walked out.
01:11:42At the end of that, I said, no way.
01:11:46Can Garrison ever take Clay Shaw to trial? No way.
01:11:50His only witness, star witness, was just lying.
01:11:55But Garrison did put Clay Shaw on trial.
01:11:58Perry Russo was his star witness,
01:12:01but his case proved as baseless as Russo's testimony.
01:12:05In only 54 minutes, the jury returned a verdict of not guilty.
01:12:13What Jim Garrison and his staff did
01:12:16will go on and go into history, I guess,
01:12:20as one of the great injustices of the legal system in this country.
01:12:24The entire sorry episode was fading into well-deserved obscurity
01:12:28when Oliver Stone's film resurrected Garrison as an American hero.
01:12:33In JFK, Stone portrays Garrison as a man like only a few others
01:12:37whose dogged research into the assassination
01:12:40clearly pointed to conspiracy.
01:12:44Jim Garrison, as I've said in other interviews, is a metaphor,
01:12:47he's this protagonist.
01:12:49I tried to put all the researchers from the 60s, the 70s and the 80s
01:12:52into Jim's case.
01:12:54I took that liberty, that's a dramatic licence.
01:12:57Dramatic licence to Mr Stone, but the public took it all to heart.
01:13:01In November 1963...
01:13:03This was a package of unfathomable lies,
01:13:07packaged together, though, with a cinema artist's great skill
01:13:12that was a blending and a milage of real photographs
01:13:17and fictional scenes
01:13:19that merged together with some of the most
01:13:22that you were unable to tell the difference.
01:13:25The film also takes dramatic licence, as Mr Stone would put it,
01:13:29with several fundamental facts beyond dispute.
01:13:32Oswald was, at best, a medium shot.
01:13:35The scope was effective on it, too.
01:13:38I mean, this is the whole essence of the case to me.
01:13:41The guy couldn't do the shooting.
01:13:44Nobody could.
01:13:46And they sold us lemons.
01:13:49Hardly.
01:13:50The distance from the sniper's nest in the window
01:13:53to the president in the car at the time of the fatal shot
01:13:56was 88 yards.
01:13:58For a former Marine sharpshooter, which Oswald was,
01:14:01the shot was well within his ability.
01:14:05Well, I have here Oswald's scorebook from the Marine Corps,
01:14:10where he, when he did his practising with the Marine Corps,
01:14:15where he, when he did his practising
01:14:18with more or less the same kind of rifle that he used against Kennedy,
01:14:22he demonstrated that he was highly competent as a marksman.
01:14:26For example, here is a type of target
01:14:28which is shaped very much like the head and shoulders
01:14:31of President Kennedy sticking up above the rear seat of the car.
01:14:34And this is at 200 yards,
01:14:36which is more than twice the distance of Dallas,
01:14:39and this rapid fire, which certainly was true at Dallas,
01:14:43Oswald scores 48 out of a possible 50,
01:14:46which I can tell you is excellent.
01:14:48They're telling us that Oswald got off three shots
01:14:51with world-class precision
01:14:53from a manual bolt-action rifle in less than six seconds.
01:14:57And according to his Marine buddies, he got Maggie's drawers.
01:15:00You know what that means? It wasn't any good.
01:15:03An average man would be lucky to get two shots off.
01:15:06And I tell you, the first shot would always be the best.
01:15:09Here, the third shot's perfect.
01:15:11Three shots in less than six seconds is completely wrong.
01:15:15The first shot was fired at frame 160 of the Saputo film,
01:15:19the second at frame 223, and the last shot at frame 312.
01:15:23So Oswald had 8.3 seconds to shoot.
01:15:28Three shots with a rifle in 8.3 seconds.
01:15:31For Oswald, that was plenty of time.
01:15:36Dr John Latimer has simulated the Kennedy shooting on many occasions.
01:15:40He is 89 years old.
01:15:45This is exactly like the gun that Oswald used.
01:15:49Since he got his shots off in 8.5 seconds,
01:15:52I'll show you that it's possible to come close to that.
01:15:55And here we go.
01:15:57So we'll slide in our telescope
01:16:00and get off one shot,
01:16:03and then a second,
01:16:06and then a third.
01:16:10Taking a little more time for the last one, as he did.
01:16:13The magic bullet enters the president's back,
01:16:16headed downward at an angle of 17 degrees.
01:16:19It then moves upward
01:16:21in order to leave Kennedy's body from the front of his neck,
01:16:25wound number two,
01:16:27where it waits 1.6 seconds,
01:16:29presumably in midair,
01:16:31where it turns right, then left,
01:16:34right, then left,
01:16:36then left, and continues into Connolly's body
01:16:39at the rear of his right armpit, wound number three.
01:16:42The single bullet that struck Kennedy and Connolly
01:16:45did not hang in midair.
01:16:47It did not zigzag right and then left.
01:16:50It went straight through the president and into the governor.
01:16:53In the film, diagrams have Governor Connolly
01:16:56sitting directly in front of the president,
01:16:58facing forward at the time of the second shot.
01:17:00Not true.
01:17:02Governor Connolly was sitting six inches inboard from the president
01:17:05and turned sharply to his right.
01:17:08The stone film also shows the two men sitting at the same height.
01:17:12Not true.
01:17:14The governor was three inches lower than the president on a jump seat.
01:17:19When the men are seen in their correct positions, it becomes clear
01:17:23there was nothing magic about this bullet at all.
01:17:30This is Warren Commission Exhibit 399,
01:17:34the bullet that passed through the president's neck and the governor's chest
01:17:37that broke the governor's wrist and lodged in his left thigh.
01:17:41It was found on a stretcher at Parkland Hospital.
01:17:44In Stone's film, it's referred to as the pristine bullet.
01:17:47There's no way, the stone film says,
01:17:49that the bullet could have caused so many wounds
01:17:52and emerged virtually unmarked.
01:17:58The Madelgore-Caccano bullet is meant to be a very penetrating bullet
01:18:03to go through people with very little deformity.
01:18:07It's meant to go through people without breaking apart,
01:18:10and that's just what this did.
01:18:13The only bone of substance that that bullet struck
01:18:16was Governor Connolly's wrist bone above the thumb,
01:18:20which is not a big bone, and for that reason,
01:18:23stayed intact except for flattening on one surface,
01:18:29and that is not a pristine bullet.
01:18:34This is the key shot.
01:18:36President going back and to his left.
01:18:39Shot from the front and right.
01:18:42Totally inconsistent with the shot from the depository.
01:18:46Again.
01:18:48Back and to the left.
01:18:51Back and to the left.
01:18:54Back and to the left.
01:18:57Back and to the left.
01:19:01For some conspiracy theorists, back and to the left
01:19:04is proof that the president was shot in the head by a second gunman
01:19:08who was ahead of the president's car on the grassy knoll.
01:19:12But back and to the left in no way indicates where a bullet came from.
01:19:16Bodies struck by bullets sometimes go forward and sometimes backward.
01:19:21The evidence that's definitive in determining
01:19:25whether it was a shot from the front or a shot from the back
01:19:29is the entry wound, the cratered entry wound on the back of Kennedy's skull,
01:19:35which proves that that shot was from the back, not from the front.
01:19:40This is the president's position at the moment
01:19:43before he was hit the second time.
01:19:46His autopsy X-rays and photographs show the precise location
01:19:49where the fatal bullet entered the back of his head.
01:19:52A bullet from the grassy knoll would never have been able to do this.
01:19:58But from the sixth-floor window of the book depository,
01:20:01Lee Harvey Oswald had a direct shot.
01:20:09I think the young people of this country, bright and intelligent people,
01:20:14believe everything that was said in the movie.
01:20:18And that's sad.
01:20:20The movie is skilfully woven together to put you inside the action
01:20:24so that you're in the 1960s and you feel Dealey Plaza.
01:20:28It's entertaining. It's a thriller.
01:20:30But I think the American public has seen movies and know what they're about
01:20:34and they know what's real.
01:20:36I think the film viewers can make up their own minds.
01:20:38I think the American people are intelligent.
01:20:40A movie maker like Oliver Stone is going to reach many tens of millions,
01:20:45more people than any historian will with a book.
01:20:48So the problem that I and most historians would have with Oliver Stone
01:20:52is not his talent, he's a wonderful filmmaker,
01:20:55but that he's used this to put certain myths
01:20:58into the American bloodstream that abide to this day.
01:21:03Do not forget your dying king.
01:21:09Show this world that this is still a government of the people,
01:21:13for the people, and by the people.
01:21:17Nothing as long as you live will ever be more important.
01:21:24It's up to you.
01:21:27In real life, Jim Garrison never made this speech.
01:21:36Millions of people from all over the world visit Dealey Plaza every year.
01:21:41The sixth floor of a Texas school book depository
01:21:44is now a museum.
01:21:46People come believing every conceivable and inconceivable theory
01:21:50about the assassination.
01:21:58In the 1990s, a determined effort was made
01:22:01to end this conspiracy thinking about the Kennedy assassination.
01:22:06And an assassination reviews board was created
01:22:10to go through the documents and make the documents public.
01:22:1460,000 documents accumulating to more than four million pages
01:22:19were made public.
01:22:21Congress created the assassination record review board
01:22:25in response to Oliver Stone's film JFK
01:22:28because so many people were convinced by the movie.
01:22:31Today at the National Archives,
01:22:33people pore over the documents that were released,
01:22:36desperate to find a conspiracy.
01:22:38But to date, they haven't found it.
01:22:42I don't care how much you want it, believe it, feel it, whatever else,
01:22:47at some point you have to say, there is no evidence.
01:22:51There is no doubt that Lee Harvey Oswald killed President Kennedy.
01:22:56There's every reason to doubt that he had accomplices.
01:23:01Is it conceivable that all these years later, 40 years later,
01:23:05that this still could have been kept a secret,
01:23:08given a society like ours which is so open in so many ways, so porous?
01:23:15I know that millions and millions of people in this country
01:23:18believe there was a conspiracy
01:23:20because I think it's very difficult for them to accept the idea
01:23:24that someone as inconsequential as Oswald
01:23:27could have killed someone as consequential as Kennedy.
01:23:36There was no conspiracy at all.
01:23:41The conspiracy was in the mind of Lee Oswald.
01:23:48On November 22nd, 1963, the 24-year-old Lee Harvey Oswald
01:23:53was on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository.
01:23:57He was in the window above Elm Street,
01:23:59and the 35th President of the United States, John F Kennedy,
01:24:03was in the motorcade that passed just below
01:24:06at 12.30pm Central Standard Time.
01:24:10And the rest, of course, is history.
01:24:24Uncovering 70 years of the domineering empire
01:24:27next on UK TV History,
01:24:29using advanced computer graphics and vivid reconstructions,
01:24:32we take a trip to ancient Rome.