CBS News Transcripts
November 19, 1993, Friday
SHOW: WHO KILLED JFK: THE FINAL CHAPTER? (9:00 PM ET)
WHO KILLED JFK: THE FINAL CHAPTER?
LENGTH: 8068 words
Unidentified Announcer: WHO KILLED JFK: THE FINAL CHAPTER continues with Dan Rather.
RATHER: A president killed, the alleged assassin murdered, insatiable curiosity and unanswered questions. It’s no wonder that there’s widespread belief there was a conspiracy to kill JFK. According to a special CBS Reports poll last month, an astonishing number, almost nine out of 10 Americans, said they believed Oswald did not act alone. Four of out five people, more than ever before, said they believe there was an official cover-up to keep the public from learning the truth about the assassination.
(File footage of the Warren Commission approaching the White House; of JFK’s motorcade moving down Texas street)
Unidentified Reporter #15: (Voiceover) The seven members of the Warren Commission, headed by the chief justice of the Supreme Court, come to the White House to give to the president the results of their painstaking investigation into the determinable facts in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The Commission reports that the fatal shots that entered President Kennedy’s head and throat were fired by Lee Harvey Oswald from the Texas school book depository acting solely by himself, and that there was no conspiracy, either foreign or domestic.
Mr. GUS RUSSO (Conspiracy Researcher): (Voiceover) The Warren Commission was a Band-Aid on open heart surgery.
(End of excerpts)
Mr. RUSSO: The attempt was to quiet down the country, to–to let them know the country was going to move ahead. It was not to get justice for John Kennedy.
RATHER: And it’s been put to me a number of times by people who studied the Kennedy assassination, they say, ‘Well, listen, you had a case of–Katzenbach decided early on it was Oswald. He helped get the Warren Commission started. And a–and a momentum started, perhaps with the best of intentions, to conclude quickly and convince the public quickly that Oswald was the one and the only one.’
Mr. KATZENBACH: If Oswald was the only one, it was going to require a thorough investigation by people who are impeccable to get all of the facts out, not to suppress anything, if that was to be believed.
RATHER: What was your biggest mistake?
Mr. KATZENBACH: I certainly wrote a memo to the president–to Bill Moyers, I guess, which is not as artfully worded as I would like it to be.
(Katzenbach’s memo shown)
RATHER: (Voiceover) The first part of Katzenbach’s memo urges a thorough investigation. It’s the second part that strikes some as conspiratorial.
It said, and I quote now from it…
(Graphic on screen)
“The public must be satisfied that Oswald was the assassin; that he did not have confederates who are still at large; and that the evidence was such that he would have been convicted at trial.”
RATHER: (Voiceover) …’The public must be satisfied that Oswald was the assassin; that he did not have confederates who are still at large; and that the evidence was such that he would have been convicted at trial.’
Continuing to quote…
(Graphic on screen)
“Speculation about Oswald’s motivation ought to be cut off…”
RATHER: (Voiceover) …’Speculation about Oswald’s motivation ought to be cut off,’ end of quotation.
Mr. KATZENBACH: What I meant was that if you don’t put all of the facts out and they don’t have all of the facts and there are some facts that are concealed, you are never going to get them to get rid of–to believe that Oswald did this all alone, even if that is your conclusion.
Mr. RUSSO: I think if you showed that document to 1,000 people, 999 would view it as a–some kind of a cover-up.
(File footage of government personnel investigating the crime scene)
RATHER: (Voiceover) Instead of hiring enough investigators of its own, the Warren Commission mainly relied on the FBI and CIA. Those agencies withheld information, leading to speculation that the FBI and CIA were part of a plot to kill Kennedy, and covered it up.
(End of excerpt)
Mr. RUSSO: Hoover’s FBI had at least one major thing they had to cover up, and that would have been their inadequacy in protecting the president.
(File footage of Secret Service men guarding a moving car; still photo of James Hosty)
RATHER: (Voiceover) The Secret Service has the job of protecting presidents. It relies on the FBI for information. The FBI agent in charge of tracking the Oswalds in Dallas was James Hosty.
(End of excerpts)
Mr. JAMES HOSTY (FBI Agent): I don’t think we had any information at all–or at least I had no information at all that Oswald was dangerous.
(File footage of Oswald; a CIA message to the FBI shown)
RATHER: (Voiceover) But he did have new information that Oswald might be an imminent threat. The CIA had been bugging the Soviet Embassy in Mexico and told the FBI of Oswald’s mysterious visit. But Agent Hosty still saw no reason to inform the Secret Service.
(End of excerpt)
RATHER: The CIA lead did prompt Agent Hosty to look for Lee Oswald to see what he was up to. But Hosty only found Marina. Oswald later came to the Dallas FBI building and left Hosty a note. Hosty’s secretary says that note was a warning. ‘Stop bothering Marina or else the Dallas Police Department or FBI office would be blown up.’ Hosty says the note contained no violent threats. This was in early November.
Mr. HOSTY: I just tossed the letter into my file drawer for–for further investigation at a later time and forgot about it until the day of the assassination.
(File footage of the day JFK was assassinated)
RATHER: (Voiceover) And on that day, the FBI still had not warned the Secret Service that Oswald might be a security risk and could have a clear shot at the president.
(Still photo of Oswald after being shot)
Mr. HOSTY: (Voiceover) After Oswald was killed…
(End of excerpts)
Mr. HOSTY: …I was told to get rid of the letter. That I–that the agent in charge said that he didn’t ever want to see the letter again. So I then carried out his instructions.
(File footage of the FBI building; excerpts of J. Edgar Hoover)
RATHER: (Voiceover) Agent Hosty flushed the letter down a toilet in the FBI building the evening Oswald was killed. J. Edgar Hoover never told any of this to the Warren Commission. But how relevant is that to a possible murder conspiracy?
Mr. SCHLESINGER: It’s evident that the FBI withheld information from the Warren Commission, information that would have been vital for an adequate investigation. I do not think, personally, that they withheld it as part of some sinister cover-up. I think they withheld it for self-protective, bureaucratic reasons. Because they would have exposed their own incompetence and failure.
RATHER: Just about every FBI agent says any and all leads were pursued. But many Americans still point to what they consider to be four main suspects as possible conspirators: the Soviets; extremists in the CIA; the Mafia; and Cubans, pro- and anti-Fidel Castro. Each may seem to have had a motive to be part of a conspiracy to assassinate the president. For 30 years, there has been much speculation.
Tonight, let’s look at some facts.
(Footage of Soviets)
RATHER: (Voiceover) First, the Soviets.
Mr. MICHAEL BESCHLOSS (Historian): One of the first things that the US government did after John Kennedy was assassinated was what an intelligence service always does, which is to…
(Footage of Khrushchev)
Mr. BESCHLOSS: (Voiceover) …locate the leader of the enemy power, in this case Khrushchev.
They couldn’t find where he was, and they couldn’t find him for a period of time. That led many people in the American government to think that maybe this was a case in which the Russians were involved; that they might have killed Kennedy; they might have had the intention of doing this to confuse the United States, throw it into chaos, at which time they could launch a surprise attack against the United States.
(File footage of citizens)
Mr. BESCHLOSS: (Voiceover) This is something that the American people did not know that afternoon. Had they know it, they would have been even more anxious and upset than they already were.
(File footage of nuclear missiles)
RATHER: (Voiceover) The Cold War was near its height that November. Only one year earlier, the Americans and Russians nearly went to war when Russia secretly sent nuclear missiles to Havana. Khrushchev removed the missiles, but tension and a Soviet motive to get rid of Kennedy were very much in existence on November 22nd, 1963.
Mr. NOSENKO: The first reaction, it was shock.
(File footage of Kennedy’s funeral; still photo of Oswald)
Mr. NOSENKO: (Voiceover) Simply shock. ‘How come he was killed?’ But especially that he was killed by the American who defected to Soviet Union and then returned back.
(End of excerpts)
Mr. NOSENKO: This was the shock that they will not be put fingers on the KGB, on the Soviet Union. And as far what I have seen, there wasn’t a single indication that it was done by the Soviets.
Mr. BESCHLOSS: Khrushchev, when he found the news that a suspected assassin of Kennedy, Lee Harvey Oswald, was a defector to the Soviet Union and back again…
(Still photo of Khrushchev)
Mr. BESCHLOSS: (Voiceover) …Khrushchev was terrified that the United States would then immediately presume that Kennedy had been killed by the Russians.
And, therefore, the United States might retaliate very soon with a surprise attack against the Soviet Union.
(Still photo of the American Embassy)
Mr. BESCHLOSS: (Voiceover) He rushed to the American Embassy without warning.
And what he said was, ‘You must believe me, the Soviet Union had nothing to do with the murder of John Kennedy.’
Mr. NOSENKO: As a former officer of KGB, if they became mad, decided to kill American presidents, they will try not to leave any spots, traces to them.
(Footage of Soviet Union; the Central Intelligence Agency logo shown; excerpts from movie “JKF”)
RATHER: (Voiceover) Since the end of the Cold War, thousands of KGB documents have come to light. None has revealed any Soviet plot. So how about the Central Intelligence Agency? Belief that the CIA killed Kennedy, was a theme of the popular, not always factual, movie “JFK.”
(Excerpts from the movie “JFK”)
RATHER: (Voiceover) The CIA was a conspiracy contender long before the motion picture.
(End of excerpt)
Mr. MARK LANE (Author): Well, the motive. I suppose we can think of three different things. Number one: John Kennedy was ending the war in Vietnam.
(File footage of Fidel Castro)
Mr. LANE: (Voiceover) Number two: John Kennedy was involved in a program of rapprochement with Fidel Castro.
(End of excerpt)
Mr. LANE: But above all, John Kennedy said, ‘I’m going to destroy the Central Intelligence Agency.’
Mr. RICHARD HELMS (Director of Planning, CIA): Absolute nonsense. This is–there’s not a shred of truth in that. I don’t know a single person in the whole Central Intelligence Agency–and at that point I’d been there about 25 years–who have–who would have felt anything like that.
RATHER: There’s no possibility that mavericks within the agency did things that you were not aware of?
Mr. HELMS: There was an unwritten but nevertheless written-in-blood law in the agency, and that was that since we were involved in clandestine work overseas–lying, sometimes bribing, corrupting, whatever the case might be–that the one thing that a member of the CIA could not do was lie inside the agency to his superiors.
Mr. VALENTI: And I’ve learned one thing in my 30 years in Washington, Dan, and that is, if more than two people know anything, it will leak.
(Footage of the making of “JFK“; file footage of JFK; file footage of Mafia leaders)
RATHER: (Voiceover) Sometimes fiction is more believable than fact. But to date, the only evidence of a CIA connection is conjectural, circumstantial, and cinematic. If not the CIA, what was the Mafia’s motive to see Kennedy killed?
(End of excerpts)
Mr. SCHLESINGER: The mob had been something which had never much concerned the FBI until Robert Kennedy became attorney general.
(File footage of Robert Kennedy in 1959)
Mr. SCHLESINGER: (Voiceover) The mob obviously did not like this.
RATHER: (Voiceover) Robert Kennedy first won the disrespect of the Mafia as chief counsel to a Senate Rackets Committee.
Mr. ROBERT KENNEDY: (From historical footage) If you have opposition from anybody, that you dispose of them by having them stuffed in a trunk. Is that what you do Mr. Giancana?
Mr. SAMUEL GIANCANA (Mafia): I decline to answer because I believe my answer might tend to incriminate me.
Mr. KENNEDY: I thought only little girls giggled, Mr. Giancana.
(Photo of Carlos Marcello; footage of Robert Kennedy)
RATHER: (Voiceover) As attorney general, one of Robert Kennedy’s prime targets was Carlos Marcello, head of the mob in New Orleans. The best way to stop Robert, say the Mafia school of conspirators, was to kill John. Mobster Marcello supposedly equated them to a dog.
(End of excerpts)
Mr. EDWARD BECKER (Businessman): ‘You cut off the head of the dog and then the tail dies.’ And I had instant recognition on that sentence.
(Still photo of John and Robert Kennedy)
Mr. BECKER: (Voiceover) I think it meant, ‘You kill the president, and Bobby is taken care of.’
(File footage of Marcello)
RATHER: Marcello denied saying this. And because of an FBI nationwide operation, agents should have known what any mafioso was up to.
(End of excerpts)
Mr. WILLIAM F. ROEMER Jr. (FBI Agent): We had put microphones into the headquarter of the Chicago mob, and specifically in the headquarters of the boss of the Chicago mob, Sam Giancana. And at…
(Photo of Giancana)
Mr. ROEMER: (Voiceover) …and at that time, they spoke constantly of everything that they were doing: Who they were going to murder, the public politicians, who they were corrupting. And so they were hiding nothing. Then when the assassination took place, they were very, very happy, very gleeful that he had been killed. They made no bones that they were happy that it happened.
But at no time did they indicate that they had anything to do with it.
(Footage of New Orleans; photo of building in New Orleans and of Guy Bannister and David Ferrie; footage of Marcello)
RATHER: (Voiceover) But conspiracy theorists point to Oswald’s alleged ties to marginal Mafia figures while he was living in New Orleans. An address on some of his handouts was of a building where Guy Bannister, a right-wing radical and ex-FBI agent, had his detective office. He often was visited by David Ferrie, a fervent anti-Communist. Both did some investigation work for Carlos Marcello lawyers, but there’s neither evidence of any collusion between the three nor solid proof that Oswald even met them.
(End of excerpts)
Mr. KATZENBACH: I can’t believe that the Mafia would have given this to somebody like Oswald, would have said, ‘You’re our man, you go up there and make some remarkable shots.’ And I think that if Oswald–if the Mafia had done this, Oswald wouldn’t have been alive to be arrested.
(File footage of Fidel Castro)
RATHER: (Voiceover) If not the Mafia, what about Cubans and Castro?
Mr. SAM HALPERN (Special Assistant, CIA): On the day Kennedy was killed, on November 22nd, 1963, a case officer from CIA was offering to an agent of CIA a ballpoint pen to be used to kill Castro.
(File footage of Fidel Castro)
Mr. HALPERN: (Voiceover) A pen which had been converted by a medical doctor into a hypodermic which would be used to put some poison in Castro if he could get close enough to him.
(End of excerpts)
RATHER: Did it occur to you to volunteer this to the Warren Commission? You said you wanted to ask.
Mr. HELMS: No. You can’t run secret intelligence operations and go around telling the world about them, including anything as open as the Warren Commission, and expect to have any operations left. And since we didn’t see how there could be any connection between these two things, obviously we didn’t say anything.
(File footage of Bay of Pigs invasion)
RATHER: (Voiceover) But it was never a secret to Castro that President Kennedy wanted to kill him. Two years before the assassination, JFK authorized the Bay of Pigs invasion. It was a disaster. Within three days, the army of CIA-trained Cuban exiles gave up. President Kennedy kept going.
(End of excerpts)
Mr. FRANK STURGIS (Soldier Of Fortune): We tried to kill Castro. I made three attempts to try to kill Castro. OK? Kennedy made his attempts with other people as double agents to try to kill Castro. You think for a minute they’re going to sit on their ass and not do anything to retaliate?
(File footage of gentlemen on the Warren Commission)
RATHER: (Voiceover) The CIA had even approached some Mafia figures to kill Castro. But none of JFK’s secret war against Castro was told to the Warren Commission. And so the allegation persists that the Warren Commission did not try hard enough to find any Cuban conspiracy connection.
(End of excerpts)
(File footage of Fidel Castro being interviewed)
RATHER: (Voiceover) Fidel Castro, interviewed by CBS Reports in 1977, denied any involvement. ‘Cuba,’ Castro said, ‘risked being blown off the map by US bombs if we were behind any conspiracy.’ ‘Anyone who thought otherwise is insane.’
(End of excerpts)
Former President GERALD FORD (Member, Warren Commission): The staff report said there was no conspiracy, period.
(File footage of the Warren Commission meeting)
RATHER: (Voiceover) Former President Gerald Ford is the only living member of the Warren Commission. He remembers there was discord between the commissioners and their staff, prompting critics to say that’s evidence of a cover-up.
(End of excerpts)
Mr. FORD: Well, we on the Commission said, ‘We’re not in a position to make that firm conclusion.’ So we wrote in our report, ‘The Commission found no evidence of a conspiracy, foreign or domestic.’ Now that’s very important. I would add, however, I have seen no evidence since then–and this is 30 years–that would indicate to me there was a conspiracy.
(File footage of JFK)
RATHER: (Voiceover) And no one else in the three decades since has found any conspiracy. Motives? Plenty. Credible evidence? None. Knowledgeable skeptics remain unconvinced.
(End of excerpts)
Mr. RUSSO: The Warren Commission went along with making things calm again–not going out to see who killed Kennedy; who could have gotten Oswald to do it? And, you know, 30 years later, it’s tough to go back and retrace those steps.
RATHER: And who do Americans believe are the conspirators? Almost half the people polled by CBS Reports think it was the CIA; more than one out of three blame the Mafia; over one in five points to the Cubans; 13 percent say it was the Soviets. And one more revealing finding: The younger you are, the more likely you are to believe that there was a conspiracy.
(Theme music)
(Announcements)
(Theme music)
RATHER: Searching for secret conspiracies is torturous, complex, frustrating. Actually determining what happened in the broad daylight in Dealey Plaza before hundreds of witnesses should be an easy chore. But in this murder mystery, no answers are easy; no findings free of debate.
(Computer animation of how the assassination happened)
RATHER: (Voiceover) This CBS Reports animation is exactly the way it was, according to the Warren Commission. The Kennedy limousine was traveling at 11 miles an hour, about to make a left turn onto Elm. On the sixth floor of the book depository building, alone, hidden from any co-worker who might pass by, lurked Lee Harvey Oswald. What happened next?
(Footage of Dealey Plaza)
RATHER: (Voiceover) That question has haunted people for 30 years.
Unidentified Man #12: I don’t believe that Oswald was the only one.
RATHER: (Voiceover) Many make a pilgrimage to Dealey Plaza from around the world looking for answers.
Unidentified Woman #2: I want to know what happened.
RATHER: (Voiceover) Some looking for money.
Unidentified Street Vendor: Yeah, these are three bucks.
RATHER: (Voiceover) The assassination isn’t just an obsession…
Unidentified Man #13: And if this is all hogwash, let it be hogwash, then. If I’m wrong, let me be wrong.
RATHER: (Voiceover) …it’s a national industry.
Unidentified Sales Clerk: You want me to ring it up?
(Footage of people purchasing JFK memorabilia)
RATHER: (Voiceover) Trinkets for tourists, almost 500 books, and still counting.
Unidentified Man #14: It was the crime of the century. This was the president of the United States. And we don’t know–we don’t know the answer. And I feel like, as an American citizen, I have a right to know who killed my president.
(Footage of Dealey Plaza)
RATHER: (Voiceover) Most Americans don’t think they know who was the real murderer. According to our poll, almost nine out of 10 Americans now think that were at least two gunmen. This distrust of the Warren Commission’s single-gunman theory is often tied to the testimony of three self-proclaimed eyewitnesses. All claim seeing a second gunman shooting from behind the picket fence. There is Beverly Oliver…
Ms. BEVERLY OLIVER (Self-Proclaimed Eyewitness): The shots that killed Pre–President Kennedy didn’t come from the book depository.
RATHER: (Voiceover) …deaf mute Ed Hoffman…
Mr. EDWARD HOFFMAN (Self-Proclaimed Eyewitness): (Through interpreter) They were talking about the fact that Mr. Oswald was up in that schoolbook, and I kept saying, ‘No, he was not there.’ I saw this. I was standing here. I saw this. I saw the whole thing.
RATHER: …and Jean Hill.
(File footage of Jean Hill watching JFK’s motorcade)
Ms. JEAN HILL (Self-Proclaimed Eyewitness): (Voiceover) They know me as the lady in red because it was the only thing in red that the cameras picked up that day.
RATHER: (Voiceover) How credible are their stories? First Miss Hill, who is standing across the street from the grassy knoll and picket fence.
Ms. HILL: So I was standing right here when Kennedy’s car came down and the shots started ringing out. And I looked up across the street, behind the picket fence, up there by the tree. There in–right there in the bushes, this man was shooting with a rifle. And I saw a puff of smoke and a flash of light at the very instant that Kennedy’s head exploded.
Mr. FARRIS ROOKSTOOL III (Assassination Researcher): Over the years, Jean has changed her story a number of times. She is a very sweet lady.
(Footage of Rookstool looking over photographs of the Kennedy assassination)
RATHER: (Voiceover) Farris Rookstool is an FBI employee by day, an assassination researcher by night. He maintains each witnesses’ story falls apart on close examination.
Mr. ROOKSTOOL: But she’s changed her story from saying that she said that she saw some activity in and around the picket fence now.
(Photo of Hill being interviewed back in 1963)
Mr. ROOKSTOOL: (Voiceover) Back in ’63, she was unable to put a shooter or a gunman behind the grassy knoll.
(File footage of Hill being interviewed in 1963)
Unidentified Reporter #16: Did you see the person who–who fired the shot?
Ms. HILL: No. I–I did not see the person who fired the weapon.
Reporter #16: You only heard it?
Ms. HILL: I only heard it.
(File footage of Kennedy’s assassination)
Ms. HILL: (Voiceover) Just as the president became–came right even with us, we looked at him and he was looking at a dog in the middle of the seat.
RATHER: (Voiceover) There was no dog. It’s now suggested Miss Hill may have mistaken flowers in the limousine for an animal.
(End of excerpts)
Mr. ROOKSTOOL: This has caused her the source of a lot of embarrassment. Yet at the same time, Jean Hill has stated that some half a block to a block away–she stated that in fact she saw a man running at a high rate of speed which she is able to identify as a man resembling Jack Ruby.
RATHER: (Voiceover) How about Ed Hoffman and his story?
Mr. ROOKSTOOL: Over here on Stemmons Freeway was where Edward Hoffman parked his car; got out of it to watch the presidential motorcade. And as he looked back over here toward the schoolbook depository–of course, the trees weren’t as full in 1963–this is where he said he saw some activity happening around the picket fence area. As you can clearly see, it’s some 200 yards between the freeway and over there near the concrete colonnade and picket fence area.
RATHER: (Voiceover) Mr. Hoffman, with the help of an interpreter, recalls what he saw.
Mr. HOFFMAN: (Through interpreter) And I happened to see someone fire a rifle and I–and I was absolutely stunned. And then I saw the person run back this way.
Mr. ROOKSTOOL: Ed Hoffman went to the FBI in 1967, some four years after the assassination, and first reported seeing some sort of activity near the picket fence. Two hours later, he went back to the FBi and claimed that he was not able to see any activity near the picket fence as his view was obstructed by the fence.
Mr. HOFFMAN: (Through interpreter) It was very clear to me what I saw. And, you know, I can’t lie about what I saw. You know, this is really important. We’re talking about the death of the president of the United States.
Mr. ROOKSTOOL: Mr. Hoffman’s own father, in 1967, said that he found his own son’s story to be incredible. He said his son had made up things in the past and he found–found his son not to be a very credible witness.
(Photo from 1963 of people watching the motorcade)
Mr. ROOKSTOOL: (Voiceover) To the right of Jean Hill we see a figure that’s been identified as the Babushka Lady, simply because this lady was wearing a scarf wrapped around her head.
Today we have someone who claims to be the Babushka Lady, a woman by the name of Beverly Oliver.
(Photo from 1963 of people watching the motorcade)
Ms. OLIVER: (Voiceover) I was standing right behind Jean Hill with a movie camera. The shot that kill Pr–President Kennedy didn’t come from the book depository. Came from behind that picket fence.
RATHER: (Voiceover) Oliver says her film might show a gunman behind the picket fence. The problem is that no one has appeared who has seen the film.
Ms. OLIVER: I didn’t go back to work until Monday night, at which time there was two men waiting on the landing of the stairwell at the Colony Club. One of them identified himself as an FBI agent by the name of Regis Kennedy, and he took my film. And it’s never been seen since.
Mr. ROOKSTOOL: Beverly is the only person that can place herself here in Dealey Plaza at the time of the assassination, and she did not surface until some–1969, 1970–some five years, six years after the assassination.
Mr. GERALD POSNER (Author, “Case Closed”): There are substantial problems with her story. Among them…
RATHER: (Voiceover) Gerald Posner has investigated evidence, new and old, for his book “Case Closed.”
Mr. POSNER: She says that she was taking her pictures that day with a Yashica super-eight zoom movie camera. Turns out that after she first told her story, somebody looked that up and that camera didn’t exist in 1963. It wasn’t manufactured until 1968.
(1963 photo of people watching the motorcade)
Mr. POSNER: (Voiceover) She said she was 17 or 19 years old.
The Babushka Lady appears middle-age. The Babushka Lady is heavy.
(File footage of Oliver dancing)
Mr. POSNER: (Voiceover) There are pictures of Beverly Oliver at the time. She was a dancer and singer, one of the clubs that competed with Jack Ruby in Dallas–one of the strip clubs. She was quite trim.
(End of excerpts)
Mr. POSNER: Regis Kennedy, the FBI man she says that confiscated her film, was an agent based out of New Orleans. He wasn’t even in Dallas on the day she claims he took the film.
(File footage of Kennedy’s assassination)
Mr. POSNER: (Voiceover) She picked the wrong city.
(Theme music)
(Announcements)
(Theme music)
RATHER: This is a Mannlicher-Carcano, an Italian-made 6.5-mm military rifle, the same model as the one Lee Harvey Oswald owned and allegedly used to kill President Kennedy. It’s a relatively simple weapon, but many researchers are convinced that neither it nor Oswald could fire as fast and accurately as stated by the Warren Commission.
(1963 photo of two men looking out a window)
RATHER: (Voiceover) The Warren Commission began its case against Oswald with accounts of his co-workers, photographed here seconds after the shooting, looking out from the floor beneath Oswald.
Mr. HAROLD NORMAN (Oswald’s Co-Worker): I could even hear the cartridges hitting the floor, I mean, after the shots had been fired.
Mr. BONNIE RAY WILLIAMS (Oswald’s Co-Worker): It was a bang, then a bang, bang, like that.
Mr. NORMAN: About like, you know: Boom!
(Computer animated version of how the shots were fired)
Mr. NORMAN: (Voiceover) Then, click-click–boom! Then, click-click–boom!
(Excerpt from Warren Commission’s reenactment of the assassination)
RATHER: (Voiceover) Here’s the Warren Commission shooting scenario of those three shots. Oswald did not first pull the trigger until the limousine went past the tree. Two shots hit; one missed.
(File footage of Kennedy’s assassination)
RATHER: (Voiceover) Using the now-famous Zapruder film, the Commission calculated there were about five and a half seconds between the first shot and the third, fatal shot. Using just a stationary test target, the Commission concluded Oswald could have done it.
(Footage of marksmen shooting at a target)
RATHER: (Voiceover) CBS News did its own independent test in 1967. We built a target and test track to match exactly the dimensions of Dealey Plaza and asked 11 volunteer marksmen to see how quickly they could fire a Mannlicher-Carcano. They shot at a target moving at the estimated speed of the motorcade. One shooter, a weapons manufacturer, made three hits within five and a half seconds. Only three others managed two hits in that short time; all 11 had several chances. So it can be done, but the odds are against it, supporting the theory that there, perhaps, was more than one gunman.
(Computer animated version of how the assassination)
RATHER: (Voiceover) But what if the Warren Commission scenario of five and a half seconds is wrong? What if Oswald had more time–much more time? What if he took his first shot before the car passed the tree, (shot fired) and missed, giving more time for the second shot (shot fired) and making the third and fatal shot the easiest of all (shot fired).
Mr. POSNER: Oswald, in fact, had eight and a half seconds for all three shots. To be able to readjust your sight and your aim is what makes the difference in this shooting.
RATHER: (Voiceover) Author Gerald Posner’s findings are provocative, but are they provable?
(File footage of the Warren Commission’s re-enactment of the assassination)
Mr. POSNER: (Voiceover) We can look at the Zapruder film, and with new enhancements and new technology, that film can answer exactly what took place on November 22nd.
RATHER: (Voiceover) The first shot, said the Warren Commission, might have struck the president.
(Computer animated version of the assassination)
RATHER: (Voiceover) Posner disagrees, saying it was deflected by the tree (shot fired).
(File footage of Kennedy’s assassination)
Mr. POSNER: (Voiceover) There is some evidence on the film itself of this early missed shot. The president is just bringing his hand down from a wave, and I believe this is part of what you’ll see in his reaction to the first shot. And there’s key testimony from a young girl, Rosemary Willis, with a white jacket on and a red skirt, who’s running along with the automobile. As the president is bringing his hand down from a wave, she starts to slow up and then she stops completely here.
She is turning around, as she correctly remembers, because she heard a shot from this direction.
(File footage of Kennedy’s assassination)
RATHER: (Voiceover) That filmed discovery of a possible early missed shot and a longer time to fire three shots is new. The theory is old. Twenty-six years ago, CBS reported on the findings of physicist Luis Alvarez. Alvarez noticed that Abe Zapruder slightly jiggled his 8mm camera three times, causing the film to blur. Could he have been startled by three rifle shots?
(Footage of a test done on cameramen by CBS)
RATHER: (Voiceover) We tried it ourselves, using other cameramen standing on a rifle range, holding similar cameras, filming an automobile while shots were fired over their heads. Their instructions: ‘Hold the cameras as steady as possible, and keep filming, no matter what happens.’ (Three shots fired) The reaction was obvious. They jiggled with each shot. The blurs in the films they took occur at the same times as in the Zapruder film.
(File footage of Kennedy’s assassination)
RATHER: (Voiceover) And the first blur happens precisely when Posner says Oswald got off the first shot, supporting the theory that Oswald had more time to get off three shots, not the far more difficult five and a half seconds estimated by the Warren Commission.
(Computer animated version of the assassination)
RATHER: (Voiceover) Making it easier, yet again, says Posner, (shot fired) is that Oswald had more time to aim his rifle for the shot that hit Kennedy (shot fired). The Warren Commission thought that bullet struck Kennedy when the car was behind the sign. Posner says it was later, after the car passed the sign.
(End of excerpts)
Mr. POSNER: The president is emerging here.
(File footage of Kennedy’s assassination)
Mr. POSNER: (Voiceover) You can see the president coming down from a wave. In the next frame, the president’s elbow jerks off of the car.
(End of excerpts)
Mr. POSNER: What has happened to the president is the bullet that struck him in this portion of the back has passed through, has chipped some bone along his spinal cord, and induced the neurological spinal reaction called the (unintelligible) position.
(File footage of Kennedy’s assassination)
Mr. POSNER: (Voiceover) You can see the president’s hands coming up, not to his throat but locking in front of his chin and they will be locked in that position. Until he’s shot in the head and the cortex is destroyed, he cannot lower his arms. They are physically locked.
(Bullet and bullet casings shown)
RATHER: (Voiceover) Now for the greatest controversy, about this single bullet, what critics call the magic bullet. These three shell casings were found on the sixth floor of the book depository. Only two bullets were recovered. ‘This fragmented bullet,’ said the Warren Commission, ‘was the third shot, the one that hit the president in the head.’
(File footage of Kennedy’s assassination; the bullet shown; computer animated version of the assassination)
RATHER: (Voiceover) Therefore, the Warren Commission concluded, this other, what critics call, magic bullet must have gone through President Kennedy and then into Governor Connally’s back, out his chest, through his right wrist, and finally into his left thigh.
Dr. CYRIL WECHT (Pathologist): (Voiceover) The single-bullet theory, which is the Warren Commission report sine qua non.
If you don’t have a single-bullet theory, you’ve got two people shooting.
Mr. DAVID W. BELIN (Assistant Counsel, Warren Commission): But what happened to the bullet that went through President Kennedy’s neck?
RATHER: (Voiceover) David Belin was the lawyer for the Warren Commission. He came up with the single-bullet theory.
Mr. BELIN: To reconstruct the motorcade, went frame-by-frame using the Zapruder film…
(File footage of Kennedy’s assassination)
Mr. BELIN: (Voiceover) …it turned out that they were right on line at the time that shot first struck.
(PBS computer animated version of the assassination)
RATHER: (Voiceover) To test the single-bullet theory, PBS two years ago used computer animation techniques not available to the Warren Commission. Precise measurements of Dealey Plaza and the speed and location of the Kennedy limousine were taken to analyze if one shot from the sixth floor of the book depository could duplicate the angle and damage of the magic bullet shot. If the governor did turn as he recalls, perhaps reacting to an earlier shot that missed, the trajectories line up and lead back to the sixth-floor window.
(File footage of Kennedy’s assassination)
Mr. POSNER: (Voiceover) This is frame 223 on the Zapruder film. The president–you’re just starting to see his shirt cuff here, coming up from behind the sign. Here you can see on both sides of Governor Connally, his white shirt, and there’s the tie right in the middle. In the next frame, something very interesting happens.
(End of excerpts)
Mr. POSNER: The lapel on his jacket…
RATHER: His right lapel.
(File footage of Kennedy’s assassination)
Mr. POSNER: (Voiceover) …right lapel–blows up, covering this part of his shirt. It now eliminates this great question mark of when was the governor and the president struck by a second shot.
(Computer animated version of how the assassination happened)
RATHER: (Voiceover) And how about the third and fatal shot? (shot fired)
(File footage of Kennedy’s assassination)
RATHER: (Voiceover) For nearly 30 years, critics of the Warren Commission insist it came from the front, proving, they say, there was a second gunman.
Dr. WECHT: (Voiceover) We have the body going forward; we have a car moving in that direction.
(End of excerpts)
Dr. WECHT: We have the bullet coming in this direction, according to the Warren Commission, and yet we have the body moving back this way.
(File footage of Kennedy’s assassination)
RATHER: (Voiceover) That’s a popular theory. But the film reveals Kennedy’s head first goes slightly forward.
Mr. POSNER: (Voiceover) There is a small movement of the president, it’s calculated at about two and a half to three inches. Then this exit takes place.
Dr. MICHAEL M. BADEN (Pathologist): All the evidence clearly shows there were two and only two gunshot wounds from behind.
(Graphic of a head that has sustained two bullet wounds)
Dr. BADEN: (Voiceover) And there is no question that the bullet wound in the back of the head is a typical, classic entrance wound.
(End of excerpts)
RATHER: Those in the military and those who hunt know that the entry wound tends to be the small wound.
Mr. POSNER: Absolutely.
RATHER: If you hit–hit a deer or a person, you’re most likely to have a small movement forward when the bullet enters. And then, as the bullet exits, it blows back.
Mr. POSNER: That’s right.
(File footage of Kennedy’s assassination)
Mr. POSNER: (Voiceover) It happened so fast.
(End of excerpts)
Mr. POSNER: We can see, it’s terrible because–not to be gruesome…
(File footage of Kennedy’s assassination)
Mr. POSNER: (Voiceover) …but this pinkish cloud coming out of the president, to the front…
Now this is key that the president has been hit from the rear. If he’s hit from the front, we would expect to see on this film, the red cloud showing behind the president as the bullet exits. In addition, you can see right here a line of material.
(File footage of Kennedy’s assassination)
Mr. POSNER: (Voiceover) This is also shooting out of the president’s head. This is partially skull and brain matter that’s going up and to the front. We now have the photographic evidence of a shot from the rear.
RATHER: (Voiceover) And the last and fascinating question: Was the limousine really going at 11 miles per hour when Kennedy was killed?
Mr. POSNER: (Voiceover) Bill Greer, who was the oldest member of the Secret Service detachment, he…
(End of excerpts)
RATHER: He was the wheel man?
Mr. POSNER: He was the wheel man.
(File footage of Kennedy’s assassination)
Mr. POSNER: (Voiceover) He remembered looking around toward this commotion in the back of the car, after the president was first hit, which would have been this shot near the sign.
(End of excerpts)
Mr. POSNER: Seeing the president react, he said he then turned around before the fatal head shot, hit the accelerator, and they were zooming out of Dealey at the time the bullet hit the president in the head.
(File footage of Kennedy’s assassination)
Mr. POSNER: (Voiceover) What we will see is, before the president’s fatal head shot, Mr. Greer over on the lefthand side of the car, in front of the windshield–very difficult to see–but his head here will turn around…
RATHER: (Voiceover) Indeed it does.
Mr. POSNER: (Voiceover) …and you will see him actually looking at the president at the moment of the fatal head shot. He then–if we follow him after the shot–turns around in panic, ducks down–you can see him hunched over–and hits the accelerator.
What it means is, he has inadvertently given Oswald the easiest of the three shots.
(File footage of Kennedy’s funeral)
RATHER: (Voiceover) When we come back, day four, when everything stopped, everyone watched, and nobody forgot.
(Theme music)
(Announcements)
(Theme music)
Sergeant JAMES L. FELDER (Head Of Honor Guard): I remember the morning of the last day, that Monday morning. Like, 15, 16 blocks, almost of people just waiting in line, moving quietly. The police said crime went down during that period. But it was something that–kind of an eerie feeling. Like, ‘What do we do next?’
(File footage of Kennedy’s funeral)
Ms. LETITIA BALDRIDGE (Mrs. Kennedy’s Chief of Staff): (Voiceover) Washington, DC, was stunned. Washington, DC, was silent, unable to function. The town closed up like a black flower. There were no enemies.
(End of excerpts)
Ms. BALDRIDGE: People who had criticized President Kennedy felt guilty. And everybody was just united.
(File footage of Kennedy’s funeral)
Mr. HEUVEL: (Voiceover) The president’s assassination was a wound for the nation as graphic and meaningful and painful as it was for so many individuals. And Mrs. Kennedy, who really instructed the details of those days much more directly than anyone, understood that. And the nation should be forever in her debt.
Mr. POWERS: (Voiceover) She knew it was John’s birthday, the day of the funeral. And we all went back upstairs.
(End of excerpts)
Mr. POWERS: We call the living quarters The Mansion. And then Jackie and Bobby and Teddy and myself, and Lee and my wife Jo, were singing ‘Happy birthday,’ you know, all of us with tears in our eyes. It was the saddest damn thing. But as Jackie said, ‘He–John knows it’s his birthday.’
(File footage of Oswald’s funeral)
RATHER: (Voiceover) On the day of John Fitzgerald Kennedy’s funeral, a smaller service was held in Fort Worth, Texas. There were few mourners. And newsmen, anxious to finish their assignment, helped carry the casket. So Lee Oswald was buried, and with him, the answers to questions about his crime that would haunt the nation. Why do so many Americans still doubt?
Mr. VALENTI: The enormity of the crime, its unexpectedness, and the fact that nobody got a chance to see Oswald on stand, people still had these doubts. And I think the doubts will remain a hundred years from today.
Ms. BALDRIDGE: I never accepted the conspiracy theory. I’ve never given two seconds to it. I don’t even want to tolerate it as an idea. There are a lot of people around trying to make money off of new ideas for books and movies. Bully for them. But let him rest in peace.
(File footage of Kennedy’s funeral)
RATHER: (Voiceover) Neither before nor since do I remember being so mesmerized by anything as I was by the funeral procession, Mrs. Kennedy…
Mr. CRONKITE: The finality of it overwhelmed me at the moment. Up till then, it was a nightmare quality as developments piled one on the other.
(File footage of Kennedy’s funeral)
Mr. CRONKITE: (Voiceover) This said, ‘It’s all true.’ That it happened. It was over. It’s done. And we’re about to bury it, bury something of our past along with that.
RATHER: (Voiceover) The drumbeat; the long march to Arlington.
Mr. CRONKITE: (Voiceover) John-John saluting.
(End of excerpts)
Mr. CRONKITE: Tough day. Anchormen shouldn’t cry.
(File footage of Kennedy’s funeral)
Sgt. FELDER: (Voiceover) To be a part of the casket team, after 1,200 funerals, it conditions you for it. But this was John F. Kennedy, my hero, the senator from Massachusetts who I’d admired since age 16. We folded the flag, presented it to the cemetery director, who then presented it to Mrs. Kennedy. And I just sort of went to pieces.
Mr. HEUVEL: (Voiceover) Robert Kennedy was in a state of shock, I think, for literally months.
(End of excerpts)
Mr. HEUVEL: We would, on many nights working late, go to Arlington and climb the wall and walk quietly to the president’s grave. And the sentries there all knew him and saluted when he arrived.
(Footage of a flame burning)
Mr. HEUVEL: (Voiceover) And then, very quietly, he would kneel and say a prayer. And then, just as quietly, we would leave.
Mr. BRADLEE: (Voiceover) This bright and promising young man just blown away.
(End of excerpts)
Mr. BRADLEE: How can you make sense of this? How can you understand it?
(File footage of JFK)
RATHER: (Voiceover) When you talk about it now, do you still feel the pain?
Mr. BRADLEE: (Voiceover) Sure. I feel it for the country. You know, that was a promising time. People walked with their head held a little higher.
Mr. BOND: (Voiceover) The sad irony in dying young. You were frozen. And then that frozen image expands as people look back on you. It’s happened to a certain extent with every figure who was struck down in the prime of life…
(End of excerpts)
Mr. BOND: …with Martin Luther King, with John F. Kennedy, with Robert Kennedy, with Malcolm X. Who’s to say what these men might have become? And we invest in them all our hopes and dreams for what we wanted them to be. And I think that’s happened with–with John F. Kennedy.
Mr. POWERS: Being in the White House with President Kennedy was like dying and going to heaven to me. I–I called him Jack for 14 years, then it was Mr. President for two years and 10 months and two days. You know, and I lost the best friend I ever had.
(File footage of JFK)
Mr. POWERS: (Voiceover) And today and tomorrow, we shall miss him. And we will never know for sure how different the world might have been had fate enabled him to complete his second term.
(End of excerpts)
(Theme music)
(Announcements)
(Theme music)
RATHER: Today, had he lived, John Kennedy would be 76 years old. Ironically, the shattering event that cut short his life may have increased his stature. In martyrdom, he may be remembered longer and praised more than if he had served out his presidency.
There isn’t a reporter in the world, including this one, who wouldn’t love to uncover something, anything, that would decisively reverse or positively confirm the current weight of the evidence in this case. But despite years of trying, we at CBS News have not done that; neither has anyone else. Accuracy and fairness dictate that we say so, whatever popular opinion may be.
As a nation and as individuals, it is worth reminding ourselves that many facts are known, many questions have been answered beyond a reasonable doubt. The Warren Commission did make mistakes, but it also got a lot right. Despite all of the attacks, the commission’s main conclusions have so far passed the test of time.
There is no proof and very little if any credible evidence of any conspiracy. And the facts, including much hard physical evidence, do indicate one man was the assassin: Lee Harvey Oswald. Any contrary conclusions are speculation, based less on fact than imagination, often by people who divine things the ear cannot hear and the eyes cannot see.
For CBS Reports, I’m Dan Rather. Good night.