REPORTER: The President of the United States is dead.
Tonight, the assassination that shook our country
to its core.
It was just a shock that caused everybody to stop
and think for a moment about how the world had changed.
Police quickly catch the culprit,
but many believe there’s more to the story.
EVY POUMPOURAS: The first question any good theorist asks
is, "Who wants Kennedy dead?"
Now, we’ll explore the top theories
surrounding one of America’s most shocking events.
JEFFERSON MORLEY: So, he was convinced
that Kennedy was killed by enemies
high in his own government.
BEN COWAN: He believed that Fidel Castro
orchestrated the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
Is there a conspiracy behind John F. Kennedy’s assassination?
And if so, who is really responsible for his death?
[music]
Dallas, Texas, November 22nd, 1963.
At 11:25 a.m. President John F. Kennedy
arrives on Air Force One.
PHILIP SHENON: President Kennedy goes to Dallas
to give a lunchtime speech at a convention center
known as the Trade Mart.
Between his arrival at Love Field and his speech,
he’s to lead a motorcade
through the center of downtown Dallas.
PATRICK HINDS: The motorcade has over 12 cars.
Kennedy is riding in a three-rowed
Lincoln Continental convertible limousine
with the top down.
PHILIP: President Kennedy and Mrs. Kennedy
are in the back seat,
President Kennedy on the right side,
Mrs. Kennedy on the left.
Ahead of them are Texas Governor John Connally
and his wife Nellie,
and ahead of them are two Secret Service agents,
one of them is driving.
BEN: It’s a very sort of warm reception for Kennedy,
and there’s something like 200,000 people
lining the route, so it is no small turnout.
PHILIP: And at one point, Mrs. Connally in the car
says, "You can’t say Dallas doesn’t love you, can you?"
And President Kennedy replies, "No, you certainly can’t."
LAURENCE: Those are his last words.
JEFFERSON: The motorcade comes down Main Street
to the end of Main Street, where it hits Dealey Plaza,
takes a sharp right turn on Commerce Street,
and then a sharp left turn
in front of the Texas School Book Depository.
And it’s at that moment that the first gunshots are heard.
[gunshot]
REPORTER: Something, I repeat, has happened
in the motorcade route.
A gunshot rings out, and then two more.
Both President Kennedy and Governor Connally are hit.
Two shots hit Kennedy.
The first enters his upper back
and comes out through his throat.
And then the second enters the back of his skull.
PHILIP: He is rushed to Parkland Memorial Hospital.
That’s where he would soon be declared dead
at the age of 46.
LAURENCE: Connally is also gravely injured, but survives.
One hour after the shooting, Kennedy’s death
is officially announced to the media.
As word spreads of this, everybody stops where they are.
People are crying.
BEN: There’s a lot of screaming, there’s chaos,
and just a lot of fear and confusion.
PHILIP: It was just a shock that caused everybody
to stop and think for a moment about how the world had changed.
EVY: Any divisiveness or any fractions
within the country, everybody just comes together
in this moment to grieve.
LAURENCE: As the world stops to mourn,
a manhunt begins.
PHILIP: As soon as it’s clear
that President Kennedy’s been hit
and the motorcade rushes out of Dealey Plaza,
the police go interview eyewitnesses.
And perhaps the most important witness
of that day was a steamfitter,
a Dallas man named Howard Brennan,
who says that he saw a man with a rifle
on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository.
LAURENCE: Deputy Constable Seymour Weitzman
and Deputy Sheriff Eugene Boone rush inside the book depository.
And there they find quite literally the smoking gun.
PHILIP: They find a Mannlicher Carcano rifle,
an Italian-made rifle, and they also find
three spent cartridges, suggesting that somebody
had just fired three bullets from the sixth floor.
They find the books have been moved around
to create sort of a sniper’s perch.
They also find a 38-inch brown paper bag.
LAURENCE: The shooter escapes, but building staff
identify a prime suspect.
An employee at the Texas School Book Depository,
Buell Wesley Frazier, offers a colleague
a trip into downtown Dallas
on the morning of the assassination,
and the colleague is carrying a long brown paper bag
in which he says he has curtain rods.
EVY: A manager in the building, Roy Truly, looks around,
and he sees that one of his employees
is actually missing.
It’s the same man who brought in
that suspicious brown paper bag that morning.
LAURENCE: It’s Lee Harvey Oswald.
Police radio his description to all city units.
EVY: So, it’s been less than an hour
since President Kennedy was shot,
and thanks to the quick work of the Dallas P.D.,
they actually have a promising lead.
Three shots fired, three spent shell casings
found next to a rifle that they believe
was brought in by Lee Harvey Oswald,
who is the only person who has fled that book depository.
Every other employee is there
still actually talking to investigators.
It appears that Oswald is the man responsible
for the assassination.
PHILIP: The Dallas Police Department
sends out a message to be on the lookout
for somebody who looks like Lee Harvey Oswald.
And Officer J.D. Tippit
is in a patrol car about three miles away.
He sees a man on the side of the road
who appears to fit the description of the man
who’s been identified in Dealey Plaza
as the president’s assassin.
The police officer tries to stop this man
and is gunned down by him,
and this man, according to many witnesses,
is Lee Harvey Oswald.
EVY: If police had any doubt that Lee Harvey Oswald
assassinated President Kennedy, that doubt is gone
the moment he killed Officer Tippit.
PHILIP: A local merchant named Johnny Brewer
has seen this man duck into the local movie theater.
A little bit before 2:00 p.m.,
police officers find Oswald seated there.
He’s armed.
He puts up a struggle before he’s arrested.
PATRICK: One of the arresting officers,
Nick McDonald, testifies that as they reach him,
Oswald raises his pistol and pulls the trigger.
But McDonald grabs the gun just as the hammer falls,
hitting the webbing between his thumb and index finger,
probably saving his life.
LAURENCE: Oswald is brought to the police
and court’s building in downtown Dallas
and charged for both murders.
Subsequent investigation uncovers a lot more evidence
that actually implicates Oswald.
They find a photo of Oswald that was taken by his wife
where he’s holding a rifle that matches the murder weapon.
Oswald had made a fake ID in the name of Alek Hidell.
The rifle that was found in the school book depository
had been ordered in the name of Alek Hidell
and sent to a post office box in that name.
PHILIP: Virtually all of the ballistics evidence
points to Oswald as the gunman in Dealey Plaza.
His palm prints are found on the weapons,
and the bullets fired in Dealey Plaza
almost certainly came out of the rifle
that’s found on the sixth floor.
LAURENCE: But none of this evidence
is ever presented in court.
PHILIP: So, Oswald is held in custody downtown.
He’s interrogated by the FBI, the Secret Service,
the Dallas Police Department,
the Dallas District Attorney’s Office.
He goes through rounds of questioning.
What we know from those interrogations,
that he lies again and again and again,
and he insists he had nothing to do with the president’s murder.
Then something absolutely crazy happens.
Sunday morning, November 24th,
police are actually ready to transfer Oswald
to the county jail.
They have an armored car ready in the basement of the building.
JEFFERSON: And as he’s being brought out
in front of the TV cameras,
Jack Ruby, owner of a local nightclub,
steps out of the crowd with a .45
and shoots Oswald once in the stomach
on national TV.
[gunshot]
LAURENCE: Ruby is arrested and Oswald is taken
to the same hospital as Kennedy,
where less than 48 hours after the president,
he’s declared dead as well.
PHILIP: Oswald’s death on November 24th
means that there will never be a trial,
never an opportunity to resolve an awful lot of the evidence
that points to Oswald as the gunman in Dealey Plaza.
LAURENCE: New president Lyndon Johnson
establishes a commission to investigate the assassination.
It becomes known as the Warren Commission.
PHILIP: It’s sort of the ultimate blue-ribbon commission.
Among the other members are the former director
of the Central Intelligence Agency, Allen Dulles,
as well as a young congressman from Michigan
by the name of Gerald Ford.
The Warren Commission works for nearly a year
compiling evidence, gathering information.
And on September 24th, 1964,
they present an 888-page report
to President Johnson.
LAURENCE: The Warren Commission expresses no doubt.
They state that Lee Harvey Oswald
is the only man responsible for JFK’s death.
EVY: They also find that Jack Ruby acted alone
in killing Oswald.
But over the years, a lot of people
have questioned these findings,
saying that they might appear to be a little too neat.
LAURENCE: Making this report far from the last word on JFK.
LAURENCE: When the Warren Commission releases
its findings in 1964, it marks the end
of the official investigation into the JFK assassination.
They find that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone
in killing President John F. Kennedy.
LAURENCE: But that answer doesn’t satisfy
the public for long.
BEN: Skeptics write books.
First, a trickle of books, and then a flood of books
questioning the findings of the report
and leading to a larger distrust both in the commission itself
and in the sort of firmament of American government.
LAURENCE: After 12 years of scrutiny,
the U.S. government takes action.
JEFFERSON: The House Select Committee on Assassinations
was created in 1976.
LAURENCE: The committee takes a closer look
at the Warren Commission Report.
They agree with most of what the Warren Commission says,
particularly regarding the evidence against Oswald.
They’re confident that Oswald did shoot Kennedy
from the sixth floor of the book depository.
LAURENCE: But they uncover a new piece of evidence.
Assassination researchers in Dallas came to the committee
and said it may be that the sound of the gunshots
was captured on this policeman’s radio recording.
BEN: So, the committee has multiple acoustic experts
go over this recording, and upon first listen,
they think, actually, there weren’t three shots
as previously thought, but four.
Three shots did in fact come from
the Texas School Book Depository,
but that one shot came from a grassy knoll
in front of the motorcade.
In other words, Oswald didn’t act alone.
And if he didn’t act alone,
someone planned this killing with him.
And if so, who was it?
The House Committee uses a word that will become connected
to the Kennedy assassination from then on.
The word they use is "conspiracy."
So, the audio evidence that seems to point to a conspiracy
is later disputed, and in many minds,
it is found to be completely in error.
But it’s almost too late to put the toothpaste back in the tube,
that the idea of conspiracy is now even further cemented
in the minds of millions of Americans.
LAURENCE: If the JFK assassination is a conspiracy,
who’s behind it?
EVY: Almost immediately after the shooting,
one conspiracy theory rises to the top.
So, while there’s only circumstantial evidence
to prove it, there’s a lot of circumstantial evidence.
Even Lyndon Johnson did at some point
make an aside to an ABC news reporter
that he believed that Fidel Castro
orchestrated the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
Why is Fidel Castro a suspect?
Let’s start with motive.
At the time of the assassination,
there is no foreign power with a bigger grudge
against Kennedy than Castro.
PHILIP: President Kennedy is so determined
to get rid of Castro, that he tells the CIA
to go forward with an invasion of Cuba
that becomes known as the Bay of Pigs Operation.
They send Cuban exiles into Cuba
with the CIA support to oust Castro.
It’s a debacle, and afterwards,
certainly Castro knows that President Kennedy
is so determined to remove him from power
that he had actually ordered an invasion of his country.
LAURENCE: Documents that are later declassified
reveal more evidence.
After the Bay of Pigs Invasion fails,
the Kennedy administration, through the CIA,
tried to kill Castro in the most exotic of ways.
Everything from poison cigars,
to poisoned skin-diving suits,
to exploding seashells, but yes.
Certainly, Castro knew the presidency
was plotting against him.
PHILIP: So, we know that Fidel Castro
has reason to want to see President Kennedy dead.
And the questions in all of the years since
is what role did Lee Harvey Oswald
play in whatever plot was developed
to try to kill the president?
LAURENCE: During their investigation,
the Warren Commission conducts a thorough background check
on Oswald.
Even when he’s serving in the Marine Corps
for three years, Lee Harvey Oswald is not shy
about the fact that he’s a Marxist,
so much so, his colleagues in the Marine Corps
used to refer to him as "Oswaldovich."
In 1959 he defects to the Soviet Union
and marries 19-year-old Soviet citizen
Marina Prusakova, and they have a child.
They live there until 1962 in an apartment
just a few blocks away from where the Soviets
are training Cuban spies and soldiers.
Back in the U.S. in April of 1963,
Oswald goes down to New Orleans.
There, he tries to start up a pro-Castro activist group.
BEN: It’s clear that Oswald likes communism.
But the biggest revelation for investigators
is that it turns out that Oswald went to Mexico City
in September of 1963--
which of course is just two months
before JFK’s assassination--
and while there had contact with officials
at the Cuban embassy.
LAURENCE: According to author Gus Russo,
during these meetings Oswald makes a chilling offer.
Russo talks to various sources,
including an FBI case officer
who has two high-level informants
within the Communist Party.
And these two informants are two brothers
by the names of Morris and Jack Childs.
The Childs brothers meet with Fidel Castro
after the Kennedy assassination and learn just how much
Fidel Castro knew about Lee Harvey Oswald
in the weeks before the assassination.
EVY: According to Russo’s research,
Oswald tells embassy officials,
"I’ll kill that bastard Kennedy when he goes to Dallas."
Castro is immediately informed about this.
The embassy staff calls him up
and they ask him, "What do we do?"
Castro denies taking Oswald up on his offer.
I don’t think there’s any credible evidence
that Fidel Castro played any role
in ordering President Kennedy’s assassination.
But I think it’s clear that he was well aware
before the assassination that Lee Harvey Oswald
had marched into a Cuban embassy in Mexico City
and made the statement that he was going to kill Kennedy.
LAURENCE: Russo keeps digging.
EVY: Russo speaks to some former Cuban spies
that tell him that when Oswald makes this offer,
they actually encourage him.
One officer tells Russo that they offer Oswald money,
and then tell him that they’ll help him evacuate
if he’s successful doing this.
BEN: Oswald’s end goal is to get a visa
to get either to Cuba, or to the Soviet Union, or both.
And eventually, the Cubans do give him some form
of temporary visa in October of 1963.
EVY: But according to Russo’s findings,
they don’t actually intend to bring Oswald to Cuba.
They plan to pick him up and kill him,
and then dump his body in the Gulf of Mexico.
LAURENCE: According to Gus Russo,
there’s more evidence to support this claim.
EVY: Russo finds reports of a private plane
sitting on an airfield in Dallas on November 22nd.
And that plane takes off for Havana
after the assassination.
As we know, Oswald is not on that plane.
But that might be where he’s headed
when he encounters Officer Tippit,
and the entire Cuban plan changes after that.
BEN: So, that’s the theory. The Warren Commission
and also the later House Committee on Assassinations
dismiss the idea that Castro or the Cuban government
could have been responsible for the killing of JFK.
And today, Oswald, Castro, Johnson-- they’re all dead.
So, I’d say any hopes of proving this theory are gone.
LAURENCE: When Lee Harvey Oswald visits Mexico City
in the fall of 1963,
investigators are desperate to know what he’s up to.
PATRICK: He makes several visits to the Cuban embassy.
What happens there? Are the Cubans involved?
You have to ask, right?
LAURENCE: But the Cuban embassy isn’t the only place
Oswald visits in Mexico.
BEN: While in Mexico City,
he also goes to the Soviet embassy
in his quest for a visa, and he ends up
kind of bouncing back and forth
between the Cuban embassy and the Soviet embassy.
PHILIP: So Oswald, in visiting the Soviet embassy,
is taken to meet with a Valery Kostikov.
Oswald has one meeting on September 28th with Kostikov,
and they have a subsequent telephone conversation
on October 1st.
LAURENCE: Authorities dig into Kostikov’s background,
and they make a chilling discovery.
PHILIP: Valery Kostikov is actually a KGB agent
and a KGB assassinations expert.
Doesn’t that suggest that this man, Lee Harvey Oswald,
is up to no good?
BEN: So, that leads us to the next big question,
which is, is the Soviet Union,
led be Premier Nikita Khrushchev,
involved in JFK’s assassination?
Khrushchev may have a motive to kill Kennedy
that’s just as strong as Fidel Castro’s.
As we know, Kennedy is on a crusade against communism,
and communism is represented on the world stage
by its biggest superpower, the USSR.
BEN: Premier Khrushchev is trying to promote revolution
and communism around the world,
and JFK is trying to do the exact opposite.
So, these two are pitted against each other
at a geopolitical level.
And unfortunately for JFK,
90 miles from the Florida coastline
the Soviets have a communist nation in the form of Cuba.
EVY: Communist Cuba would not have happened
without the Soviets.
They give the Cubans training,
financial and military support.
Castro’s victory is also a victory for Khrushchev.
LAURENCE: Then in 1962, Khrushchev experiences
a very public defeat, thanks to President Kennedy.
PHILIP: A year before Kennedy’s death,
the United States and the Soviet Union
had almost gone to war when the Soviet Union
attempts to set up missile launch pads in Cuba
that can be used for nuclear weapons.
PATRICK: Kennedy isn’t okay with Soviet nukes 90 miles away,
and this begins what’s known as the Cuban Missile Crisis,
which ultimately, after a lot
of back-and-forth political posturing,
Kennedy wins.
LAURENCE: Two years later in 1964,
Khrushchev is removed from office.
But before he’s removed, in 1963,
Khrushchev is still clinging to power,
looking for a way to redeem himself
among the communists.
PHILIP: That would certainly add some logic to the idea
that maybe Khrushchev wanted to see Kennedy dead.
PATRICK: If Oswald walks right into the embassy
and offers to kill Kennedy in Dallas,
maybe the Soviets go for it.
Otherwise, why is he meeting
with a KGB assassinations expert?
BEN: There is an even-further-out theory,
which is that Khrushchev started plotting to kill Kennedy
even before the Mexico City machinations.
LAURENCE: Author and attorney Michael Eddowes
shares details of his investigation
in the 1977 book "The Oswald File."
BEN: Michael Eddowes comes up with this theory
that Khrushchev conceives of this plot to kill Kennedy
when Oswald is still living in the Soviet Union
beginning in 1959.
PATRICK: Khrushchev realizes he’s got a golden opportunity
on his hands.
Here, he’s got an American citizen,
a former Marine, and a vowed communist
who speaks Russian.
And everybody knows he’s there in the USSR.
The Associated Press had reported on his defection.
Eddowes believes that Khrushchev detains and kills Oswald
while in the USSR, then replaces him
with a KGB agent, someone who looks very similar.
PATRICK: So, it’s not Lee Harvey Oswald
who lands back in the United States in 1962.
It’s an impostor whose mission it is
to kill John F. Kennedy.
LAURENCE: Eddowes believes he has definitive proof
that Oswald was replaced.
BEN: On his Marine records, Oswald is listed as being 5’11",
but that the person who killed Kennedy
is actually 5’9".
The original Oswald also had a cranial operation as a child,
leaving him with an indentation behind his ear
and a dime-sized hole in his skull.
PATRICK: But according to Eddowes,
the autopsy on the Kennedy assassin
shows no such features.
It does, however, show that the assassin
has a large scar on his wrist, which Eddowes notes
the original Oswald did not have.
LAURENCE: His argument persuades the Texas courts
and Oswald’s widow Marina to have his body exhumed.
BEN: So, this is huge news.
Eddowes has managed to convince, you know, authorities
and Lee Harvey Oswald’s widow
that there’s something to this theory.
EVY: So, in 1981 they dig up the body,
and it’s in an advanced state of decomposition.
Eddowes and widow Marina Oswald
agree to have the Dallas County Medical Examiner Linda Norton
do the examination.
BEN: Dr. Norton is able to match dental records
and also identify the evidence
of the childhood cranial surgery,
which together show that actually the body in the grave
really is that of Lee Harvey Oswald.
PATRICK: So, Khrushchev didn’t replace Lee Harvey Oswald
with another killer, that much we know.
But the Soviet conspiracy theory is still alive and well,
because it doesn’t prove that Oswald himself
didn’t work with the USSR to plan and execute
the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
EVY: But that’s not what the House Committee says.
In their 1976 report,
they find that neither the Cubans nor the Soviets
are behind the assassination.
But they do think that somebody else could be involved.
For almost 60 years, one detail in the JFK investigation
remains undisputed--
Lee Harvey Oswald’s communist ties.
But in 2017, thanks to newly declassified documents,
fresh evidence comes to light that could change
everything we think we know about Oswald.
PATRICK: Recently declassified intelligence reports
reveal that the KGB does their own investigation
into Oswald.
They have him under very tight surveillance
from the moment he enters the USSR,
so they have a lot of intelligence on him.
And according to the KGB report,
contrary to what we’ve all been led to believe,
Oswald stops being a communist sympathizer.
EVY: The KGB reports that over his time
in the Soviet Union,
Oswald actually becomes disillusioned with the cause,
and by the time he leaves in 1962,
he is not a communist anymore.
PATRICK: This goes against decades of conventional thinking
about Oswald and the assassination.
If he’s not a communist, then who killed JFK?
BEN: So, the KGB does believe that Oswald killed Kennedy.
They do say that they think he’s part of a conspiracy.
It’s just not the conspiracy you think.
So instead, the KGB theory is that Oswald
is part of a militant anti-communist conspiracy group
whose intent is to poison relations
between the Soviet Union and the United States
by killing Kennedy and framing the communists for it.
DAVID DENTON: Khrushchev will say in an interview in 1964
that in fact Oswald was working
with extremist anti-communist forces
in the United States.
LAURENCE: Many wonder if this theory
is simply Soviet propaganda.
PATRICK: Of course, Khrushchev wants to take suspicion
off of himself.
But independently of the KGB,
a U.S. investigator also looks into this theory.
BEN: Jim Garrison, the district attorney
of New Orleans, comes to believe
that a murky conspiracy involving business leaders
and Lee Harvey Oswald have brought together
all these right wing anti-communist elements
to kill JFK.
LAURENCE: To prove his theory, Garrison spends six years
interviewing witnesses.
DAVID: Through the 1960s, Jim Garrison’s investigation
leads to a man by the name of David Ferrie.
Back in the 1950s, David Ferrie serves in the Civil Air Patrol,
which also has as a member Lee Harvey Oswald.
Dave Ferrie was rabidly anti-communist
and heavily involved in the anti-Castro movement
in New Orleans.
BEN: So, you might be thinking, "Now, wait a minute,
someone who’s anti-Castro should like Kennedy."
But David Ferrie was disappointed in Kennedy
for not being staunch enough in their opposition to Castro.
PATRICK: He thinks that Kennedy’s attempts
at a peaceful outcome are weak,
that he’s essentially handed Cuba to the communists.
In fact, he gives a fiery speech in 1961
where he says that Kennedy should be shot.
LAURENCE: According to Garrison,
Ferrie follows through with that threat.
DAVID: In September of 1963,
a few weeks before the assassination of JFK,
an insurance agent named Perry Russo
would state that he was at a party with a businessman
from New Orleans named Clay Shaw,
Lee Harvey Oswald, and David Ferrie,
where the assassination of JFK would be discussed.
BEN: Russo testifies that he remembers them
saying that they were gonna kill Kennedy,
and that they were gonna use something
called a triangulation of shooters.
They also discussed alibis
for the people involved in this conspiracy.
LAURENCE: By February of 1967,
Garrison is ready to reveal his finding.
PATRICK: Newspapers in New Orleans
break Garrison’s story.
He’s convinced that David Ferrie and Lee Harvey Oswald
are long-time friends since their days together
in the Civil Air Patrol.
He believes they wanna take out Kennedy
and frame the communists.
David Ferrie and Lee Harvey Oswald
work together to plan the assassination
with the support of Clay Shaw and the help
of another man behind the scenes named Guy Banister.
Ferrie and Banister were both adamant supporters
of the anti-Castro movement, which included arming people
to go stage attacks in Cuba.
And Ferrie as a pilot was moving the weapons,
and Banister was supplying them.
So, these men did have a hard right background
that involved guns.
Garrison was certainly correct about that.
BEN: Garrison’s theory has Banister and Ferrie
as the brains behind this operation.
Clay Shaw would be handling logistics and financial backing.
And then, in this scenario, there are two shooters
involved in a crossfire--
Oswald, as we know, in the book depository,
and then another unnamed shooter on the grassy knoll.
LAURENCE: Armed with the evidence,
Garrison’s ready for his day in court.
DAVID: Oswald is already dead.
And then Banister’s died of a heart attack by 1964,
so there are already two alleged conspirators gone.
Then, something more unusual happens.
Less than a week after the Garrison investigation
goes public, Dave Ferrie is found dead.
BEN: David Ferrie is found in his apartment
with two typed-up suicide notes,
but the autopsy finds no evidence
either of suicide or of murder,
and that David Ferrie has died of a brain hemorrhage.
PATRICK: Garrison is flummoxed.
He says, "I suppose it could be just a weird coincidence
"that the night Ferrie pens two suicide notes,
he dies of natural causes."
LAURENCE: On March 1st, 1967,
the last alleged co-conspirator alive
is arrested.
Clay Shaw is finally tried in 1969,
and it remains the only trial in American history
associated with the assassination of JFK.
But Garrison is unsuccessful
with few witnesses remaining alive
and others deemed unreliable.
Shaw is acquitted in 45 minutes.
LAURENCE: Ten years later in 1979,
the House Select Committee wonders publicly
if justice was served.
PATRICK: The House Committee’s final report states
that they believe the Louisiana witnesses
were both, quote, "credible and significant,"
and that they were telling the truth
about Ferrie and Oswald’s meetings in 1963.
So, Garrison’s theory’s cause
for a lot of sensational reporting
and a lot of excitement on the part of the public,
and you know, maybe swayed some people
in the court of public opinion.
In actual court, where evidence is required,
they were found to fall apart pretty quickly.
LAURENCE: After decades of pressure
from the American public,
Congress passes the JFK Records Act in 1992.
The act mandates the release of all files
relating to the case.
BEN: So, even all these decades later,
people still want answers, and are now hopeful
that maybe we’ll start to get them.
PHILIP: These documents aren’t released all at once,
but during the 1990s,
millions and millions of pages of documents are made public.
The law had a deadline.
It said that everything in the government’s files
had to be made public in 2017.
EVY: Well, guess what? That does not happen.
But by 2017, tens of thousands of records
have been released.
And one of them gets a lot of attention,
because it appears to confirm a longstanding theory
that the Mafia was involved
in the assassination of JFK.
BEN: From the moment Kennedy dies,
conspiracy theorists are asking the right question,
which is, "Who wants him dead?"
The communists, in a lot of minds,
feature really high on that list.
But there’s another group who might want Kennedy dead
even more, and that is the Cosa Nostra--
the American Mafia.
LAURENCE: In 1962, JFK, along with his brother,
Attorney General Robert Kennedy, are on a crusade
to wipe out organized crime in America.
DAVID: One of the biggest revenue streams the mob had,
obviously were the casinos in Cuba.
The mob was kicked out of Cuba by Castro.
PHILIP: So, they were angry with President Kennedy
for not having done more,
so they wanted to see Castro overthrown
so they could get back into Cuba,
reopen their casinos and their liquor operations,
and get going again.
And one way of doing that might be
by killing President Kennedy.
In the minds of some mobsters,
Kennedy took billions of dollars out of their pockets,
and they have killed for a lot less.
And wouldn’t you know it,
right in the middle of the Kennedy case,
there’s a man who could be the key to a Mafia connection.
LAURENCE: That man is Lee Harvey Oswald’s killer,
Jack Ruby.
Jack Ruby was a tough guy from Chicago,
Jack Rubenstein originally.
A thug, a pimp.
Moves to Dallas, opens up his nightclub there,
and quickly becomes a kind of fixture
among organized crime figures.
He was what you would call a wannabe.
He gets these nightclubs up and running,
and they become a conduit
for all the things we know the Mafia for--
gambling, running narcotics, and eventually sex work.
EVY: Theorists long speculated that Jack Ruby and the Mafia
worked together to kill Kennedy.
They say by 1963,
Jack Ruby is heavily indebted to the Mafia,
and they force him to find a patsy
to assassinate the president.
And afterwards, they make him kill that fall guy
so that he can’t talk.
JEFFERSON: A lot more evidence came out in the 1970s
with the House Select Committee investigation,
and that strengthened the notion
that there was an organized crime connection
to the assassination.
LAURENCE: Did Ruby hire Oswald on behalf of the Mafia?
Dallas police have two witnesses
report that on October 4th, 1963,
seven weeks before the assassination,
they see Ruby and Oswald meet in Ruby’s Carousel Club
on Commerce Street in Dallas.
There, they argue over a large sum of money
for an undisclosed job that Oswald will be doing for Ruby.
LAURENCE: But the Warren Commission
fails to interview these witnesses.
After he’s arrested, Ruby denies ever having known Oswald,
and that he didn’t know beforehand
that the assassination was going to happen.
Ruby says that he was several blocks away
busy placing some newspaper ads,
and killed Oswald because of grief,
because of patriotism,
and because he felt for the First Lady,
and wanted to keep her from having to suffer
through a prolonged trial.
LAURENCE: For over 50 years, no one can prove otherwise.
EVY: But then in 2017,
as part of another large dump of declassified Kennedy files,
we see Document 32149267.
It’s a report from the FBI’s Intelligence division
about Jack Ruby.
In it, an informant named Bob Vanderslice
says that Ruby calls him up on the day of the assassination.
He asks if he, quote,
"would like to watch the fireworks."
PATRICK: Vanderslice goes with Ruby to a location
right across from the Texas School Book Depository,
and together they watch the president get shot.
When it happens, Ruby says nothing.
He just turns calmly and walks south
towards the newspaper office where he places the ads,
and thereby creates an alibi.
BEN: If this is true, then Jack Ruby
knew there were going to be quote, "fireworks,"
and he knew exactly where and when the assassination
was gonna happen.
In other words, Ruby lied,
and he knew about the whole thing.
LAURENCE: After months in custody,
Ruby himself claims there’s more to his story.
EVY: At first, Ruby sticks to his alibi.
But then, he changes his tune.
He writes letters, he makes statements to police,
and then even testifies to the Warren Commission
that he knows some things he’s not saying,
but he believes that his life is in danger.
He wants to tell the whole truth,
but he can’t unless he can get some protection
from the government.
PATRICK: But he never gets that protection,
and he dies in 1967, taking with him to the grave
any potential secrets about a Mafia assassination plot.
LAURENCE: Some believe that members of the Mafia
work quickly to cover their tracks
after JFK’s death.
Over a dozen witnesses and participants
die mysteriously in the aftermath of the shooting--
Oswald, Ruby.
Dorothy Kilgallen, she’s the only reporter
to interview Jack Ruby at his trial.
She then openly questions the Warren Commission,
and then dies of a mysterious overdose in 1965.
BEN: So, following this trail of murders,
it reaches its apex in 1968
when Robert F. Kennedy, who also could be seen
as an enemy of the Mafia, is killed in Los Angeles.
EVY: What kind of organization would be willing
to leave behind such a long string of bodies
to keep hold of their power and their secrets?
The Mafia, that’s who.
And if they did, then it worked,
because there is no one left to confirm this theory.
LAURENCE: On December 20th, 1991,
Oliver Stone’s film about the Kennedy assassination,
"JFK," is released in theaters.
Almost immediately, it causes an uproar.
The film combines a number of conspiracy theories,
including the alleged New Orleans plot
and the second shooter on the grassy knoll.
But more important than the film’s plot
is the impact it has on this country.
After the film is released, we see a tidal wave
of other publications associated with the JFK assassination.
LAURENCE: Including one from a man who says
he was directly involved.
Robert Morrow claimed to be a former CIA operative
active in the anti-Castro movement in the 1960s.
And he alleged in a book that he was asked
by Tracy Barnes, a senior CIA official,
to buy guns that he said were later used
in the assassination.
LAURENCE: Morrow’s cast of characters
in the alleged CIA plot might sound familiar.
DAVID: Morrow actually names
the same co-conspirators
that are in the movie "JFK," and also those that were pursued
by Jim Garrison in his New Orleans case.
He claims that Clay Shaw, Guy Banister, and Dave Ferrie
were helping in the operations against Castro in Cuba
before the assassination.
PATRICK: Morrow says they also enlisted the help
of the Mafia through Jack Ruby.
On November 22nd in Dallas, they placed four shooters--
Oswald in the book depository, another on the grassy knoll,
and two more, all with Morrow’s rifles.
The month prior, they laid some groundwork.
They sent Oswald to Mexico to meet with the Cubans.
DAVID: Their goal is to frame Castro for the crime,
and therefore bring about a full-scale invasion of Cuba.
According to Morrow, the CIA wants redemption
from their failed Bay of Pigs Operation,
and the Mafia has hopes of being able to return
to reopen their casinos in Cuba.
It’s quite a story-- a complicated CIA plot
with dozens of participants.
And yet, with all those people, including government agents
and known criminals that are under surveillance,
the Warren Commission finds no evidence
that any of this actually happened.
LAURENCE: Morrow offers a potential explanation
for that as well.
Many have speculated that the Warren Commission
never adequately looked into the Cuban connection
or the CIA.
Morrow believes that that’s due to the presence
on the commission of the former CIA director,
Allan Dulles.
When the commission is formed,
they don’t put the current CIA director on it
or anyone from the FBI.
The only one on the commission
with intelligence experience is Allen Dulles,
who just happens to be the man
that Kennedy fired from his position
after the Bay of Pigs failed.
LAURENCE: At the time of the Warren Commission,
CIA involvement in the Bay of Pigs is classified.
The government didn’t want that getting out.
They also didn’t want any information getting out
related to Operation Mongoose,
which at the time was top-secret, but we now know
was a Kennedy-sanctioned CIA operation
to assassination Castro led by Allen Dulles.
EVY: As more documents have been declassified,
more information has been revealed about the CIA.
It is clear that they were withholding information
from the Warren Commission--
information that Allen Dulles knew and kept hidden.
LAURENCE: Some theorists believe that information
could have even saved Kennedy’s life.
In 2013 and 2014, some very damaging records
are released about the CIA as per the JFK Records Act.
They reveal that the CIA actually knew
about Oswald’s trip to Mexico City
before the assassination.
The agency claimed to the Warren Commission
that they only found out afterwards,
but that was a lie.
PATRICK: They had an eye on Oswald
since his defection to the USSR.
They were reading his mail, tracking his movements.
The CIA field office in Mexico City
reported Oswald’s meeting with the Cubans almost immediately.
And the CIA had Soviet agent Valery Kostikov
under surveillance during the time
he was meeting with Oswald.
EVY: Does that mean the CIA killed Kennedy?
No, absolutely not.
But should the CIA have known that Oswald was a threat?
Yes, they probably should have.
And could an earlier intervention
have prevented Oswald from killing the president?
Again, I would say the answer is yes.
In a now-declassified 2013 report,
CIA historian David Robarge finds that the agency
is complicit in keeping incendiary information
from the Warren Commission.
He says they intended to keep the commission
focused on, quote, "what the Agency
believed was the best truth,"
that Lee Harvey Oswald had acted alone
in killing John Kennedy.
PHILIP: I think all of the most credible evidence
suggests that Lee Harvey Oswald fired the bullets
that killed President Kennedy,
that he probably is the only gunman.
But whether or not other people knew,
whether or not other people helped him,
those are mysteries that will probably linger forever.
The National Archives recently released
thousands of newly declassified documents.
Now, almost all of these nearly five million pages
are available to the public.
Perhaps they will provide some closure
to this enduring mystery.
I’m Laurence Fishburne.
Thank you for watching "History’s Greatest Mysteries."