Speaker 1: It's November twenty ninth, nineteen sixty three, seven days after
Speaker 1: the assassination of President Kennedy. The White House is in chaos.
Speaker 1: Lyndon Johnson is now president, having been sworn in on
Speaker 1: Air Force one while it was still on the ground
Speaker 1: at Dallas Love Field.
Speaker 2: That moment's become memorialized in an iconic photo that shows
Speaker 2: Jackie Kennedy standing at his side with the blood of
Speaker 2: her dead husband splattered on her pink suit.
Speaker 1: A week into his job, President Johnson is sitting behind
Speaker 1: the desk in the Oval Office. He's fielding calls from
Speaker 1: world leaders who want to know what's going on. He's
Speaker 1: holding the hands of politicians, assuring everyone that it will
Speaker 1: not throw off the global balance of power, that World
Speaker 1: War III is not imminent. The country needs to know
Speaker 1: that they're in safe hands.
Speaker 2: They need answers. The man suspected of murdering the president
Speaker 2: has just been murdered too.
Speaker 1: On live TV, by a two bit nightclub owner named
Speaker 1: Jack Ruby. Everyone wants to know who is responsible for
Speaker 1: all this. President Johnson is concerned about the attention that
Speaker 1: a public investigation would bring. He gets a call from
Speaker 1: the head of the FBI, J Edgar Hoover, who will
Speaker 1: be leading the initial investigation. Hoover wants to keep it contained.
Speaker 1: Of course, we're saying that it would be bad to
Speaker 1: have a rash of investigations, but that's exactly what started
Speaker 1: to happen. There were rumblings in the House and Senate
Speaker 1: about forming committees to expand on the FBI's investigation. Johnson
Speaker 1: wants to shut it down.
Speaker 3: Tehouse to go ahead with an investigation.
Speaker 4: Yes, a bunch of televisions going, and I ought they
Speaker 4: see that to be a three ring circuit.
Speaker 2: So Rob, what's at stake here?
Speaker 1: Well, if it's discovered that Kennedy's assassination was somehow connected
Speaker 1: to the Soviets or the Cubans, it could trigger a
Speaker 1: nuclear holocaust. Another reason they want to keep a tight
Speaker 1: lid on the investigation is because they're afraid that a
Speaker 1: broad investigation would expose the CIA and the FBI. In
Speaker 1: another attempt to limit the investigation, this document I'm holding
Speaker 1: is considered by many to be a smoking gun. I'm
Speaker 1: going to let Dick Russell explain.
Speaker 5: This memo was hidden from the public for a decade
Speaker 5: after the assassination. It's referred to as the Katzenbach Memo.
Speaker 5: Nicholas Katzenbach was the Deputy Attorney General. He wrote the
Speaker 5: memo to Hoover just a few days after the murder.
Speaker 2: So here's what the document says, quote, the public must
Speaker 2: be satisfied that Oswald was the assassin, that he did
Speaker 2: not have confederates who are still at large, and that
Speaker 2: the evidence was such that he would have been convicted
Speaker 2: at trial. Speculation about Oswald's motivation ought to be cut off.
Speaker 1: It says that the goal of the investigation is to
Speaker 1: convince people of a specific, predetermined result. Two days after
Speaker 1: the assassination. These are marching orders from the official investigation
Speaker 1: into the assassination of President Kennedy. If Oswald had been
Speaker 1: allowed to stand trial, his lawyers would have had a
Speaker 1: field day with a statement like that, this was not
Speaker 1: an investigation, It was a fate, a compleat.
Speaker 2: This is who killed JFK. Sixty years later, What can
Speaker 2: we uncover about the greatest murder mystery in American history?
Speaker 2: Why does it still matter today? I'm your host, Solidad O'Brien.
Speaker 1: To recap JFK reputedly threatens to splinter the CIA into
Speaker 1: a thousand pieces, then fires Dulles and his top two lieutenants.
Speaker 1: He completely goes around the military industrial complex to avoid
Speaker 1: World War three during the Cuban missile crisis, and then
Speaker 1: he starts a back channel with Khrushchev and Fidel Castro.
Speaker 1: Then at American University, he publicly proclaims that he wants
Speaker 1: to forge a new path towards peaceful coexistence. He's alienating
Speaker 1: a lot of incredibly powerful and determined people.
Speaker 2: And then he's murdered.
Speaker 6: And then he's murdered.
Speaker 2: We're deep into the murder mystery. And now rob has
Speaker 2: just handed me this letter where j Edgar Hoover, the
Speaker 2: head of the FBI, is basically advising that they make
Speaker 2: sure to pinned it all on Oswald.
Speaker 1: Of course, President Johnson sent a completely different message to
Speaker 1: the country.
Speaker 5: He put out an executive order in nineteen sixty three
Speaker 5: that said the Commission would quote evaluate all the facts
Speaker 5: and circumstances surrounding such assassination. President Johnson called on Earl Warren,
Speaker 5: the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, to head up
Speaker 5: the investigation. Warren initially said no, but Johnson then bullied
Speaker 5: him into it, telling him the nuclear war was hanging
Speaker 5: in the balance Warren eventually said yes. Years later he
Speaker 5: said he regretted it.
Speaker 1: President Johnson and j Edgar Hoover came up with a
Speaker 1: strategy on how to handle the investigation.
Speaker 6: Here's President Johnson.
Speaker 3: The only way would stop on it put somebody into it,
Speaker 3: pretty good on.
Speaker 4: It, that I could select out of the government.
Speaker 1: He's saying, the only way to stop them is to
Speaker 1: put somebody that's pretty good on it that I can
Speaker 1: select out of the government.
Speaker 6: What do you think about Alec dun I think he
Speaker 6: would be a good.
Speaker 1: Man, Johnson suggests Alan Dulles. Hoover says he'd be a
Speaker 1: good man. They figure they can make it work for
Speaker 1: them if they appoint someone they can trust.
Speaker 2: He suggested. Alan Dulls the man Kennedy fired after the
Speaker 2: Bay of Pigs. He's known as the godfather of the CIA.
Speaker 7: Alan Dellson's role on the Warren Commission was not to
Speaker 7: find the truth, was to cover up the truth.
Speaker 2: That's David Talbot. Rob says that if we're going to
Speaker 2: talk about Alan Dallas, you have to speak to David Talbot.
Speaker 2: He's the founder of Salon magazine. He literally wrote the
Speaker 2: book on Dalles. It's called The Devil's chessboard.
Speaker 1: Do you think that it's an accident that Alan Dulles
Speaker 1: was put in charge of being the gatekeeper to the
Speaker 1: Warren Commission.
Speaker 7: No, I believe that he lawed to be put on
Speaker 7: that commission. There is no better figure, from a cover
Speaker 7: up point of view, to have on that commission.
Speaker 6: The now a Dalls.
Speaker 7: He leaks up to the press, to the CIA. He
Speaker 7: essentially led them down. The Primrose Path said that Lee
Speaker 7: Harvey Oswold act alone.
Speaker 2: So after the Bay of Pigs, Kennedy fires him, why
Speaker 2: is he on the commission?
Speaker 7: That what was surprising there was no discussion in the media.
Speaker 7: There's no controversy around the appointment. The media herald of
Speaker 7: Dallen Dalls as a very respected figure above politics. Nothing
Speaker 7: could be further from the truth.
Speaker 2: This was a moment in history when the general public
Speaker 2: didn't question the government in the same way we do today.
Speaker 2: In nineteen sixty four, seventy seven percent of Americans said
Speaker 2: they trusted the government to quote do the right thing.
Speaker 2: In twenty twenty three that numbers sixteen percent. American exceptionalism
Speaker 2: was in full force, and the media was not intent
Speaker 2: on bringing that down. And you can't help, but wonder
Speaker 2: what they could have uncovered if they'd just been looking.
Speaker 1: So the Warrant Commission publishes its report in nineteen sixty four,
Speaker 1: and they do essentially what they set out to do.
Speaker 1: They pinned all on Oswald case closed. There were a
Speaker 1: few journalists who started poking around at the Warren Report
Speaker 1: just because they thought it was odd, but some came
Speaker 1: into it accidentally, like Gayton Phonsie.
Speaker 2: There's quite a bit about Fonsie in the archives, thanks
Speaker 2: in part to his wife Marie, who continues to tell
Speaker 2: his story today. In the nineteen sixties, Gaydon Fonsie was
Speaker 2: an investigative journalist for Philadelphia Magazine. Phonsie, like most Americans,
Speaker 2: was shocked and saddened the loss of Kennedy, but it
Speaker 2: wasn't something that was on his radar as a journalist.
Speaker 1: A year after the report was published, Arl Inspector, who
Speaker 1: had made a name for himself as a member of
Speaker 1: the Warren Commission, returned to Philadelphia. He ran for District
Speaker 1: attorney and he won, and Phonsie thought it would be
Speaker 1: a good piece to be written Amonspector. Returning home after
Speaker 1: his time on the Warren Commission, Arl Inspector is largely
Speaker 1: known for creating something called the single bullet theory.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I know all about the single bullet theory, right,
Speaker 8: and we will dig into the science and the forensics
Speaker 8: of that later on, But for now, all you need
Speaker 8: to know is that the single bullet theory is the
Speaker 8: backbone of the Warren Commission report.
Speaker 1: Without the single bullet theory, you cannot pin the crime
Speaker 1: on Oswald alone. Now, just to give you an idea
Speaker 1: of what this is, the Commission made a contention that
Speaker 1: only three shots were fired. The first one missed. That
Speaker 1: left two shots hitting President Kennedy. The third shot was
Speaker 1: the fatal shot.
Speaker 6: To his head.
Speaker 1: The second shot that was the single bullet. And because
Speaker 1: Governor Connolly, who was sitting in front of Kennedy, was
Speaker 1: also shot, that single bullet had to travel through Kennedy's neck,
Speaker 1: then hit Connelly in the back, go through to his wrist,
Speaker 1: and wind up in his thigh.
Speaker 5: So Gayton Fonsie is preparing for his interview, he comes
Speaker 5: across Spector's single bullet theory. He starts looking into it
Speaker 5: and as you can imagine, he finds several discrepancies and
Speaker 5: then a confront Spector in a series of interviews.
Speaker 2: The interviews are hard to follow without getting too deep
Speaker 2: into the weeds of the single bullet theory, but just
Speaker 2: know this. When Phonsie presses Specter about whether he factored
Speaker 2: eyewitness accounts into the construction of his theory, Specter responded
Speaker 2: by saying, quote, that's a good question. You're the first
Speaker 2: person to ask me that question, and I have to
Speaker 2: think about it for a minute. Phonsie publishes his article
Speaker 2: in Greater Philadelphia Magazine on August first, nineteen sixty six.
Speaker 5: He wrote, quote, Arlen Spector knows it is difficult to
Speaker 5: believe some of the fundamental conclusions of the war On
Speaker 5: Commission report. Well, it came out years later. At Specter,
Speaker 5: the man responsible for investigating the source and path of
Speaker 5: the bullets, did not directly speak to the Secret Service
Speaker 5: agents riding in the car behind Kennedy, who had a
Speaker 5: clear view of the shots, and he ignored the statements
Speaker 5: of several eye witnesses that he never looked at photos
Speaker 5: of the autopsy or woods.
Speaker 6: He only looked at sketches.
Speaker 1: And then he pieced his incomplete evidence together by manipulating
Speaker 1: the path of one single bullet into something that made
Speaker 1: absolutely no sense. The things he ignored or twisted to
Speaker 1: make his theory work is legendary. But it wasn't just Specter.
Speaker 5: The whole investigation was a mess. They didn't interview Jack
Speaker 5: Ruby for nearly a year. Ruby even said that he
Speaker 5: would tell them everything if they moved him from Dallas
Speaker 5: to Washington, d C.
Speaker 6: And they declined.
Speaker 5: They also didn't interview JFK's personal doctor, who was with
Speaker 5: Kennedy within minutes of him arriving at Parkland Hospital, and
Speaker 5: then when a witness approached with new information two months
Speaker 5: before they were supposed to publish, General Counsel Jay Lee
Speaker 5: Rankin said quote, at this stage, we are supposed to
Speaker 5: be closing doors, not opening them. A Secret Service agent
Speaker 5: even offered a lead, and then that agent was thrown
Speaker 5: in jail. Investigators uncovered the Dulles had this habit of
Speaker 5: briefing the members of the Warren Commission on what questions
Speaker 5: to ask the CIA witnesses, and he would brief the
Speaker 5: CIA witnesses and tell them what questions were coming and
Speaker 5: what to say. John mccoon, who was director of the
Speaker 5: CIA at the time, even admitted that he lied to
Speaker 5: protect the agency during the Warren Commission's investigation.
Speaker 2: In twenty fifteen, Politico reported that a declassified CIA report
Speaker 2: showed that mcohne and other senior CIA officials were quote
Speaker 2: complicit in keeping quote incendiary information from the Warren Commission.
Speaker 2: The report says that macoone was at the heart of
Speaker 2: a quote benign cover up at the spy agency. Didn't
Speaker 2: any of these things come out?
Speaker 6: They almost did.
Speaker 5: A few weeks before the Warren Commission report came out,
Speaker 5: one of the staffers wrote a memo to the lead investigator.
Speaker 5: The author was Wesley Leebler, and his memo was twenty
Speaker 5: six pages long. It detailed the reasons he was uncomfortable
Speaker 5: with the way evidence was being used selectively to make
Speaker 5: sure Oswald was proven guilty. Well, the lead investigator refuse
Speaker 5: to accept the memo. Well, clearly, this was not a
Speaker 5: serious investigation. And in the end they found out exactly
Speaker 5: what they wanted to find out, and they thought that
Speaker 5: the public was just going to buy it, that we
Speaker 5: would just accept the report because it was from people
Speaker 5: like Warren and Dulles, and that we would just move
Speaker 5: on with our lives.
Speaker 2: When the Warren report came out, that was fall of
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty four, polls showed that fifty six percent of
Speaker 2: Americans agreed with that lone gunman theory, and then only
Speaker 2: two years later a new poll showed that that number
Speaker 2: dropped a thirty six percent, So only a third of
Speaker 2: Americans believed that Oswald acted alone. That's a huge drop
Speaker 2: in a very short period of time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but that doesn't surprise me. By then, the report
Speaker 1: was met with a lot of scrutiny. People started to
Speaker 1: talk about it publicly. In nineteen sixty six, Mark Lane
Speaker 1: published his book Rush to Judgment, and he was critiquing
Speaker 1: the Warren Commission. It kicks started public suspicion, which bubbled
Speaker 1: beneath the surface for ten years until finally in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy five, the story broke through. In nineteen seventy five,
Speaker 1: the Church Committee, headed up by Idaho Senator Frank Church,
Speaker 1: had just released a trove of documents exposing the CIA
Speaker 1: and other government officials of some very horrific abuses of
Speaker 1: power throughout the sixties.
Speaker 9: The Church Committee hearings of nineteen seventy five revealed that
Speaker 9: there were at least three foreign assassination operations mounted by
Speaker 9: CIA officials in the nineteen sixties against the leaders of Cuba,
Speaker 9: the Dominican Republican, the CONGO.
Speaker 2: That's Jefferson Morley again, former Washington Post reporter and creator
Speaker 2: of jfkfax dot org.
Speaker 9: So the exists of an organized CIA capacity for political
Speaker 9: assassinations was revealed and convincingly, without any doubt, well documented.
Speaker 9: So that was the first time that the CIA was
Speaker 9: really called to account for these types of activities. It
Speaker 9: was the first time that the public ever knew that
Speaker 9: that's what the CIA was doing.
Speaker 1: And then on March fifth, nineteen seventy five, thanks to
Speaker 1: a stand up comedian who appeared on an evening talk show,
Speaker 1: everything changed.
Speaker 7: How Are You?
Speaker 10: Dick Gregory is one of America's foremost comedians. His comedy
Speaker 10: doesn't just make people laugh, it makes them think as well.
Speaker 6: Please welcome Dick Gregory.
Speaker 1: In nineteen seventy five, Heraldo Rivera hosted a monthly show
Speaker 1: on ABC called good Night America.
Speaker 10: Now, if you can remember back and be honest to
Speaker 10: when all these theories about conspiracies first came out in
Speaker 10: the mid sixties, then we treated the researchers and the
Speaker 10: people doing this investigation is kind of paranoid coups. I mean,
Speaker 10: let's be honest, that's.
Speaker 6: The way it was. But now we've all lived through the.
Speaker 10: Pentagon papers, Watergate, dirty tricks, and even the allegations. And
Speaker 10: I stressed the point that there are only allegations that
Speaker 10: the CIA and the FBI institutions that are so solid
Speaker 10: in American history, in the fabric of American society, have
Speaker 10: engaged in illegal operations against American citizens. Well, because of
Speaker 10: all that, I think that most people are now more
Speaker 10: willing to listen to opposing points of view. And I
Speaker 10: think one thing is certain. There are just too many
Speaker 10: loose ends. John Kennedy was murdered, and we at least
Speaker 10: owe him the duty of doing everything possible to find
Speaker 10: out who all was involved. Now, possibly, just possibly, the
Speaker 10: Warrant Commission was right, but what if it wasn't.
Speaker 11: As I started meeting various people that was looking for
Speaker 11: something else, I found out that there was a whole
Speaker 11: like a cult out here that didn't believe it. But
Speaker 11: we just kept looking and kept waiting for the press.
Speaker 1: That's comedian Dick Gregory. He was also suspicious of the
Speaker 1: Warren Report, so in the early seventies he started going
Speaker 1: to these gatherings kind of like conferences where other doubters
Speaker 1: brought all their independent research in an attempt to piece
Speaker 1: it all together. In nineteen seventy five, at one of
Speaker 1: these early conferences, Dick Gregory meets a young guy named
Speaker 1: Robert Groden. Groden is sitting on something incredible. He's got
Speaker 1: an original copy of the Subruder film.
Speaker 2: The Zubruder film is famously an eight millimeter film shot
Speaker 2: by a local dressmaker named Abraham Zabruder. He just happened
Speaker 2: to be set up at Dealey Plaza with his camera
Speaker 2: and captured the whole thing on film.
Speaker 5: In the film, you see everything that happens, from when
Speaker 5: the motorcade turns onto Elm Street to the President getting shot,
Speaker 5: and then the car speating away down the underpass. There
Speaker 5: were a few other people filming that day, but nobody
Speaker 5: captured it quite as clearly as Zapruter. The Secret Service
Speaker 5: promised Suppruter that the film would only be used for
Speaker 5: an official investigation. It was quickly taken to a Kodak
Speaker 5: film processing facility in Dallas, where it was developed and
Speaker 5: three copies were made. Two of the copies were handed
Speaker 5: off to the Secret Service and sent to Washington. The
Speaker 5: third copy of the film was given back to Zapruter.
Speaker 2: The media caught wind and immediately there was a bidding
Speaker 2: war for the rights to Zubruder's film. He eventually sold
Speaker 2: it to Life Magazine for one hundred and fifty thousand dollars,
Speaker 2: a lot of money at the time. Life printed several
Speaker 2: still frames in their magazine, and after the Warren Commission
Speaker 2: used the film for their investigation, they also published black
Speaker 2: and white stills, but the moving image was never shared
Speaker 2: with the public.
Speaker 1: Then, one day Life Magazine reached out to a film
Speaker 1: lab for a standard contract job.
Speaker 12: We blew up eight millimeter home movies up to thirty
Speaker 12: five millimeters so that we had a professional grade that
Speaker 12: could be transferred to final print, and nobody else did
Speaker 12: the work we did. Five Magazine found out about it,
Speaker 12: and they wanted to see if the Zabruder film would
Speaker 12: hold a resolution and clarity blowing up from eight to
Speaker 12: thirty five.
Speaker 2: That's Robert Groden at the time in nineteen seventy one.
Speaker 2: He was a twenty six year old staff technician in
Speaker 2: the film lab. That day the Zabruder film landed on
Speaker 2: his desk.
Speaker 12: Well, they brought it to us. We did it and
Speaker 12: sufficed to say an extra copy was made they didn't
Speaker 12: know about.
Speaker 1: Roden was shot by what he saw, and he made
Speaker 1: his own personal copy of the Zapruder film.
Speaker 12: That's what I released on the TV show Good Night
Speaker 12: America back in nineteen seventy five.
Speaker 10: And I want to introduce another guest. We have Robert Groden,
Speaker 10: who was celebrating his eighteenth birthday on the twenty second
Speaker 10: of November in nineteen sixty three. Robert, welcome, and I
Speaker 10: wish you could set up the Zapruta film a bit
Speaker 10: for us, and we'll get right into it.
Speaker 6: Okay.
Speaker 13: Abraham Supruter was a Dallas dress manufacturer and it was
Speaker 13: pure accident that he brought the camera with him that day.
Speaker 13: He got what his frame for frame, the most valuable
Speaker 13: historical document of all time.
Speaker 12: I was scared of him, out of my wits because
Speaker 12: I wasn't supposed to have the film in the first place.
Speaker 6: I was afraid to release it.
Speaker 2: You became a whistleblower.
Speaker 6: Really, yeah, that's exactly what I was.
Speaker 10: I'm telling you right straight out that if you are
Speaker 10: at all sensitive, if you're at all queasy, then don't
Speaker 10: watch this film. It's the execution of President Kennedy. Okay,
Speaker 10: so the cars are coming along now into d Lee Plaza.
Speaker 6: He is shot. Then Governor Connolly is shot.
Speaker 13: Now Jackie doesn't realize what's happened yet, she goes to
Speaker 13: his aid.
Speaker 1: And now that's a live audience reacting to the fatal shot.
Speaker 6: That's the shot that blew up his head. That's an
Speaker 6: Austin horrifying thing I've ever seen.
Speaker 13: Now, the Warree Commission said that all of the shots
Speaker 13: were fired from behind by Lee Harvey Oswald alone assassin
Speaker 13: firing out the president. And as you could see clearly,
Speaker 13: the head is thrown violently backwards, completely consistent with the
Speaker 13: shot from the front.
Speaker 1: The President's head goes back and to the left. There
Speaker 1: is no way that could happen if he was shot
Speaker 1: from behind.
Speaker 2: And this is the very first time the American public
Speaker 2: is seeing this footage correct.
Speaker 1: And then Dick Gregory closes the show with an incredible
Speaker 1: call to action.
Speaker 11: I'm outraised over the fact that the American press should
Speaker 11: be doing what we are doing today. I would like
Speaker 11: to see the American press, even the press that say
Speaker 11: everything we have is not true, to come out and
Speaker 11: do the research and let the American people know.
Speaker 4: Was it a trick?
Speaker 11: Was it a conspiracy? And let's open up the Warren report,
Speaker 11: let's talk about a new investigation. If we don't, I
Speaker 11: think this country's going to be in a lot of trouble.
Speaker 6: All right.
Speaker 1: And amazingly, that's exactly what happened. In nineteen seventy six,
Speaker 1: after the Zappruder film aired on Good Night America, a
Speaker 1: new congressional committee, the House Select Committee on Assassinations, officially
Speaker 1: reopened the case.
Speaker 2: Gaydon Phonsie was appointed to the committee. You'll remember him
Speaker 2: as the journalist who questioned Specter on the single bullet theory.
Speaker 2: The commission also appointed Robert Grodin to the investigation team.
Speaker 6: I was more than half mean to do it. I
Speaker 6: was very proud to be able to do it. And
Speaker 6: there's a history to the House Committee, and.
Speaker 1: That history starts with a man named Richard Sprague.
Speaker 14: Richard Sprague was the original chief counsel, and he wanted
Speaker 14: to treat the assassination conspiracy as an unsolved murder. He
Speaker 14: was just started from not assuming I was was waskilled,
Speaker 14: but going from beginning to end with what actually did exist.
Speaker 1: Dick Russell interviewed Richard Sprague in nineteen seventy eight, did.
Speaker 15: You ever have the feeling that what you were dealing
Speaker 15: with as far as investigating the assassination of President Kennedy
Speaker 15: went beyond the assassination itself and into very sensitive areas
Speaker 15: of intelligent skit In what way.
Speaker 4: I was raising questions concerning the connections of any between
Speaker 4: Oswood and the CIA. I was raising questions as to
Speaker 4: whether the information at the CIA had presented the fact
Speaker 4: was reliable information. Making it clear at this same time
Speaker 4: that I would not sign any of the agreements with
Speaker 4: the CIA, FBI, Justice Department that other committees had.
Speaker 5: Sawn Sprague not only had to sign a non disclosure agreement,
Speaker 5: but he also had to give some control of his
Speaker 5: investigation over to the CIA and FBI.
Speaker 4: I took the view that for this to be a thorough,
Speaker 4: hard hitting, impartial investigation, they could not control the staff. Secondly,
Speaker 4: they cannot control that which gets disclosed. The purpose of
Speaker 4: the investigation is ultimate disclosure. So I was refusing to
Speaker 4: sign that kind of agreement.
Speaker 5: And so they fired Sprague because he wouldn't let the
Speaker 5: CIA and FBI determine what he was able to see
Speaker 5: and who he was able to talk to.
Speaker 3: I am absolutely convinced that the Congress of the United
Speaker 3: States has not the slightest interest in a thorough, in
Speaker 3: depth investigation into the assassination of President.
Speaker 5: That wasn't the end of the HSCA. The head of
Speaker 5: the committee called someone else to take Sprague's place, a
Speaker 5: man named Robert Blakey.
Speaker 16: He said he word in a professional investigation. I said,
Speaker 16: I would give him one.
Speaker 2: Blakey was an attorney and law professor who'd got national
Speaker 2: attention for his work on what's known as the Rico Laws,
Speaker 2: which targeted organized crime in the nineteen seventies.
Speaker 6: And that is important here.
Speaker 1: There was a clear relationship between the mafia and the
Speaker 1: CIA in the sixties. Organized crime was tree did like
Speaker 1: another weapon in the CIA's arsenal.
Speaker 2: It's interesting because when you search the Warren Report for
Speaker 2: the terms mafia or organized crime, they're rarely mentioned, and
Speaker 2: when they are it's just to say, yeah, they were around,
Speaker 2: but they weren't responsible for any part of the murder.
Speaker 16: We called in the senior people from the war In
Speaker 16: Commission and asked them whether the CIA mafia plots were
Speaker 16: ever revealed to them, and they said no. In fact,
Speaker 16: it was withheld from them and whether the presence of
Speaker 16: that would have changed the nature of their investigation.
Speaker 6: And they said, yes, there you go.
Speaker 16: What we did is we set up before again an
Speaker 16: investigation that was open to a single assassin and was
Speaker 16: also open to a conspiracy, and we went down the
Speaker 16: usual suspects.
Speaker 6: Did the Russians do it, Did the Cubans do it?
Speaker 16: Did a particular agency of the United States do it?
Speaker 1: Clearly, this is a much different approach than the Warrant Commission.
Speaker 16: THEIRS was a shooter investigation. Ours was a full investigation.
Speaker 16: We entered into formal agreements as to how we would
Speaker 16: have access to the most secret materials, including the super secrets,
Speaker 16: from both the FBI and the CIA. I dealt with
Speaker 16: the director of the FBI and the admiral that was
Speaker 16: running the CIA, and we got a statement from them
Speaker 16: both saying, you were being interviewed by a legitimate congressional committee.
Speaker 16: You were not authorized to lie to these people to
Speaker 16: save sensitive sources and methods. In other words, give it up.
Speaker 1: They were given a directive that said you're not allowed
Speaker 1: to lie to protect classified information. You must tell the truth.
Speaker 1: And that directive was written out in a document when.
Speaker 16: We interviewed FBI or CIA people. We showed them these documents.
Speaker 6: And do you think they lived up to that agreement?
Speaker 17: I did until the joann Edes scandal broke. I uncovered
Speaker 17: this story in two thousand and one.
Speaker 2: That's Jefferson Morley again, creator of jfkfax dot org.
Speaker 9: The CIA sent a man named George Joannedes to serve
Speaker 9: as the liaison to the House slect Committee on Assassinations.
Speaker 9: And a liaison position in this type of investigation, your
Speaker 9: job is to help the investigators get access to executive
Speaker 9: branch material.
Speaker 16: Joe Needs had supervision over the relationship between the CIA
Speaker 16: and the group.
Speaker 1: Guess what the CIA failed to tell Blakey about joann
Speaker 1: Edes That he was.
Speaker 16: He's a supervisor of the relationship between the agency and
Speaker 16: in particular group of Cubans.
Speaker 2: In his self published two thousand and one expose, Morley
Speaker 2: uncovered that during the Kennedy administration, George Joanedes was chief
Speaker 2: of the Psychological Warfare branch of the CIA's Cuban Exile
Speaker 2: group in Miami.
Speaker 1: The anti Castro exiles were plotting covert ways to remove
Speaker 1: Castro from power. What's important to understand here is that
Speaker 1: joann Edes was supporting and financing this group, and now
Speaker 1: this guy is the CIA laison to the House Committee.
Speaker 9: Even when he was asked direct questions by the HSCA
Speaker 9: Council Bob Blakey and by the HSCA investigators. They asked
Speaker 9: him who was in charge of this Cuban student director
Speaker 9: in nineteen sixty three, and Joanniti said he didn't know.
Speaker 9: He in fact, was the answer to their question. They
Speaker 9: were looking at the answer to their question in the face.
Speaker 1: Morley published his expose about Joe and Edies in two
Speaker 1: thousand and one, and when Blakey read it, he was shocked.
Speaker 16: If I had known that he was a supervisor of
Speaker 16: the relationship between the agency and a particular roupe of Cubans,
Speaker 16: I would have put him into hearings, and I would
Speaker 16: have had him under oath, and I would not have
Speaker 16: hired him as a facilitator. I would have subpoened him
Speaker 16: as a witness.
Speaker 5: Blakey and the rest of the HSCA published their report
Speaker 5: in January of nineteen seventy nine, completely oblivious at that
Speaker 5: time to how Joe and Edes obstructed the investigation.
Speaker 2: So this is where they put out their vague statement
Speaker 2: that deemed that President Kennedy was killed as a result
Speaker 2: of a quote conspiracy. They disagreed with the Warren Report,
Speaker 2: which fifteen years early. Yer said Oswald acted alone. Here's
Speaker 2: exactly what they say, quote President John F. Kennedy was
Speaker 2: probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy. The committee
Speaker 2: is unable to identify the other gunmen or the extent
Speaker 2: of the conspiracy.
Speaker 1: They also said that the FBI and the CIA were
Speaker 1: definitely not involved. So they made some progress. They followed Leeds.
Speaker 1: The Warrent Commission didn't. But Joe and Needes was basically
Speaker 1: a goalie protecting the CIA.
Speaker 2: Were you mad?
Speaker 6: Furious? He was the.
Speaker 1: Perfect person to derail the committee, and when you drilled
Speaker 1: down on his backstory, you're going to find a big
Speaker 1: clue in this case, Dick, can you explain.
Speaker 5: As we mentioned, Joan Needes was the head of the
Speaker 5: CIA program they supported a group of anti Castro Cuban exiles. Well,
Speaker 5: there were a couple of officers who managed that group,
Speaker 5: and it turns out in the months leading up to
Speaker 5: the assassination those CIA officers, the same ones established contact
Speaker 5: with an ex marine in New Orleans, a guy who
Speaker 5: didn't know it yet, but his days would be numbered.
Speaker 1: The contact they made, you guessed it Lee Harvey Oswald.
Speaker 6: So let's sum it up.
Speaker 1: A CIA group led by George Joanedes establishes contact with
Speaker 1: Oswald weeks before the President's murder. Then the head of
Speaker 1: that group goes on to block the House Select Committee
Speaker 1: on Assassinations, the very group that was tasked with revisiting
Speaker 1: the warr report which penned it all on Oswald.
Speaker 2: Okay, so I am fully open to hear what you
Speaker 2: think happened on that day. Where does this investigation start?
Speaker 1: At the scene of the crime, the bullets, the wounds,
Speaker 1: the forensic evidence will show a clear path towards conspiracy.
Speaker 2: Next episode on Who Killed JFK?
Speaker 9: Missus Kennedy stop right behind where she had been sitting,
Speaker 9: there was a pristine board.
Speaker 2: We tackled the infamous single bullet theory through the eyes
Speaker 2: of a secret Service agent who was there.
Speaker 6: When I saw a picture of the baller. My immediate reaction, Hey,
Speaker 6: that's my ball.
Speaker 2: And then it gets really unhinged.
Speaker 14: The government had a serious problem, and the problem was
Speaker 14: called The Dallas Doctor.
Speaker 2: Who Killed JFK? Is hosted by Rob Reiner and me
Speaker 2: Solidad O'Brien and Our executive producers are Rob Reiner, Michelle Reiner,
Speaker 2: Matt George, Jason English, David Hoffman, and Me Solidad O'Brien.
Speaker 2: Our writer is David Hoffman, with research by Dick Russell.
Speaker 2: Our story editors are Rob Reiner and Julie Pigner. Our
Speaker 2: senior producer is Julie Pineto. Our producers are Tristan Nash,
Speaker 2: Dick Russell, Michelle Goldfein and Amari Lee. Our editors are
Speaker 2: Tristan Nash, Julie Pineto, and Marcus de Lauro. Our project
Speaker 2: manager is Carol Klein. Our associate producer is emilse Kiros. Mixing,
Speaker 2: mastering and sound design by Ben La Julie and archival
Speaker 2: audio in this episode thanks to Heraldo Rivera and Dick Russell.
Speaker 2: Research and fact checking by Girl Friday and emilse Kiros.
Speaker 2: Our consulting producer is Rozanne Galliini. Business affairs by Hennan
Speaker 2: Naea and Jonathan Furman. Recorded in part at CDM Studio
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