because he was a man who had spent his early career as a courtroom prosecutor. he understood a crime scene. he wanted to stand in that window and see if this was a shot that a marksman could make. while he was there, warren felt he should talk to ruby. there were all these suggestions ruby had killed oswald to silence him. so he wanted to hear from ruby himself. >> the warren commission realized they were going to have to invest a lot more time than was anticipated. this may be a two to three-month operation to the conception that it will probably take six months. >> the hour glass of time was running out on them. >> can you say if you still think it was one man? >> i think we'd better not get into that area, you know. the report will cover all of that in great detail. >> this committee labored ten months, then brought forth a document close to 1,000 pages. president johnson received that report today. >> what the public understood

and what i understood is these were very honorable men. they thought that the commission had drop a good job and they would come up with an answer. >> when the warren commission report came out, i believed it. we were still in a time when you tended to believe what officials told you. >> it is now 15 seconds after 6:30 p.m. eastern daylight time, sunday, september 27th. as of this moment, the report of the president's commission is public record. for the next half hour we will search it for answers. first must come the answers to the two great overriding questions. who killed john f. kennedy? the commission answered unequivocally lee harvey oswald. was oswald acting alone or was he a member of a conspiracy? the commission answers he acted alone. >> we knew most people were not

going to read all of the warren commission report. so cbs news wanted to bring to air an understandable form for the public at large what the warren commission found. >> there was nothing to support the speculation that oswald was an agent, employee or informant of the fbi or the cia or any other governmental agency. >> oswald owned the murder rifle, a mail order purchase slip for that rifle was in his handwriting. oswald's palm print was found on a surface of the gun. >> the media had all concluded that this was the most exhaustive investigation, case closed. oswald did it alone. >> the commission concludes that three shots were fired, all of them from this sixth floor window in the texas school book depository. >> the cumulative evidence of eyewitness, firearms and ballistic experts and medical authorities demonstrated that the shots were fired from above and behind president kennedy and governor connally.

>> when the warren commission came out with the report, the majority of americans accepted the findings of the warren commission. >> the bullet entered here, came out just below the president's adam's apple. the commission believes that the same bullet then entered the right shoulder of governor connally, passed out through his chest, continued through his right wrist and on into his left thigh. >> the report has been generally send throughout the country. i think it reflects the thoroughness with which they went into it. and i think at least it has dispelled many of the rumors and speculation that has surrounded this quite tragic event. >> it's been very well-covered entirely. it leaves no doubt in my mind that lee actually did assassinate the president of the united states and kill officer tippet. >> in the end we find confronting each other the liar, the misfit, the defector on the one hand, and seven distinguished americans on the

other. and yet exactly here we must be careful that we do not say too much. oswald was never tried for any crime, and perhaps therefore there will forever be questions of substance and detail raised by amateur detectives, professional skeptics and serious students as well. we are the jury, all of us. in america and throughout the world. >> the reaction to the report initially was very positive, but that didn't last very long. >> this book is the number one best seller on the nonfiction list in the country "rush to judgment" by mark lane. it's gained a vast number of readers in the recent groundswell of skepticism about the findings of the warren report. >> we did not envision the breadth and the scope of the criticism. >> the author has some highly provocative and controversial things to say. please greet mr. mark lane. [ applause ] >> no matter how illustrious the members were, we were not going to be reassured by a commission.

>> we're already having a little disagreement here while the commercials were on. what were you saying, david? >> well, i think i disagree almost totally with mark lane on several counts. i don't know where to begin. >> let me show you something just in case we have a chance. that is a picture of jack ruby. this was taken five minutes after the assassination in front of the texas school book depository building. the commission said ruby was not there. this is a picture showing how the economist public -- the commission published it. he wasn't there when they published the picture because they cropped him out. >> you're accusing chief justice warren and that group of notable americans -- you're accusing them of deliberate malfeasance. >> you are part of the media which prevented the american people from finding out what happened. >> you are alarming the american people. >> i say the american public should be alarmed. >> the public had been kept in the dark for so long about this but had an undying thirst, which could only be quenched by getting facts. >> we have a right to know who killed our president and why he died. and we can't get that from reading the warren report.

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>> at the start, lane was almost alone. now he's just one among a growing band of doubters. their books and articles are on the newsstand, they're in the supermarkets. now according to a recent poll, only one in three americans remains convinced that the warren report has the whole story. >> when you have a great number of people devoting their lives

to looking at every word, every comma, they can create a lot of mischief. >> i believe very firmly that ruby and oswald knew each other, and certainly tippet and ruby knew each other. >> before we proceed with that kind of questioning, let me ask you. what kind of conspiracy do you think? was it a communist? left wing or right wing conspiracy? >> i am convinced that there were two riflemen. >> the warren commission was set up as you know at the request and urging of the communist party. >> it's obvious that he was working for somebody else at that moment, and that's could not be anyone else than fidel castro. . there's no possibility of oswald having been in the window of that building. >> my opinion, the castro school of vile eps. >> there was an entire world of assassination buffs.

some raised valid questions. >> could a bullet which had done so much come out looking like bullet 399? >> it is another one of the very many highly improbables that we are asked to accept by the warren commission if we are to accept the validity of their full report. >> some have completely mad theories. >> he was killed by a karate chop to the throat in september of i believe 1964. >> but everyone i believed had a right to give their views. >> you have apparently succeeded in persuading the majority of the american people that we cannot trust the most august conceivable panel to do a responsible job. >> you talk about faith in these institutions or faith in the fbi as if it's a religious experience to read the warren report. i think to the contrary, you're supposed to have faith in a democracy in our own ability to look at the facts and reach our own conclusions. >> the decreasing trust by americans in their government

all started with the kennedy assassination. by 1966 there's this cultural revolution in the united states. we're deeply enmeshed in vietnam. there's a lot of protests and riots. and there's a sense that things have seriously gone wrong. we've gone off the rails since november '63, and the warren report is a very important part of that loss of confidence in the government. >> i don't think that all the facts were brought out. i think something was held back. >> i think there were more involved in it than just oswald. >> i don't know how in the world they could ever reach a conclusion that one person assassinated him. it's ridiculous. i saw the whole thing on television. i just happened to be home at that time. and i don't think that oswald -- i think that he was working for the cia myself. >> why doesn't america believe the warren report? >> because of the conspiracy theorists who have put this case

under a high-powered microscope, splitting hairs and then proceeding to split the split hairs. the kennedy case is now the most complex murder case by far in world history. nothing even remotely comes close. >> we are left with the series of real and critical questions about the assassination. questions which have not been answered to the satisfaction of the people of the united states. >> when president kennedy was killed, he was not killed by one man. he was shot from a number of different directions by different guns. the story has been suppressed. witnesses have been killed. and this is your country. >> we aren't trying to hide a thing from you or from mr. epstein or mr. lane or the world. we are laying it all out. that's right here in the notes of testimony. and if we have transposed in error a possibly into a probably, then we are delighted to have you point it out to us. but you can do so only because we've laid it on the line.

>> the warren report said that lee harvey oswald shot the president from his window in the texas school book depository. three years after kennedy's assassination the major question is still a simple one. did the warren commission, with all that time and all these resources, get its answers right? tonight we'll go over those arguments one by one, area by area. as the assassination was taking place, a dallas businessman called abraham zapruder stood behind that low concrete wall looking down at elm street. as the president was coming down from hughes top -- huston street and making his turn, it was about halfway down there i heard a shot. and i heard another shot or two. i couldn't say whether it was one or two. and i saw his head practically open up, all blood and everything. and i kept on shooting. >> the warren commission could use the film and each frame to reconstruct each moment of the assassination.

>> part of the reason why i think the film captured the american imagination is because it pushes us to think about something more complex. and each person who looks at it, people see different things. >> where did the shots come from? if the shots did not all come from the book depository window then there was most likely some form of conspiracy. >> i think that the massive head wound where the president's head was literally blown apart came from a quartering angle on the grassy knoll, he struck and his head doesn't go directly back this way but it goes back and over this way, which would be consistent with the shot from that direction and newton's law of motion. >> seven men on a railroad bridge right here said that when the shots were fired they looked toward the wooden fence and each of the seven said he saw puffs of white smoke come from here. >> the grass knoll underneath that green tree, and you can see a little puff of smoke. it looked like a puff of steam or cigarette smoke.

>> when you stopped to think about it, no one saw anyone with a gun, rifle on the grassy knoll. no expended cartridges from a weapon were found there. not one bullet other than those fired from oswald's rifle has ever been found and linked to the assassination. >> now, there were two doctors and one priest who claimed -- who said flatly that there were entrance wounds in the president's neck. >> if the wound in the president's throat was an entrance wound, then clearly this would be proof that the bullet came from the front. >> mark lane has suggested that this wasn't an exit wound by the president's tie but an entry wound. that kennedy was hit in the throat from the front. >> the doctor at parkland didn't want to talk about the president's injuries, but the press more or less forced him to. >> and the wound in the president's throat was pretty clean. he thought it was an entrance wound.

>> what about this wound that you observed in the front of the president's neck? >> actually i didn't really give it much thought. and i realize that perhaps it had been better had i done so. >> there was a wound in the back of the neck that had not been seen by the parkland doctors because they never turned the body over. >> you did not turn the president over? >> no, there was really no reason to. it made very little difference to me, since my immediate concern was with attempted resuscitation. >> you can explain this ad infinitum and people will only remember that a doctor at parkland said he'd been shot from possibly the front, so it's kind of trying to put the genie back in the bottle. >> a bullet hit the president from the back, bullet hit him from the front. the bullet which killed him came from the right front. unless the laws of physics were not working that day, the reaction of the president tells

us where that shot came from. >> some critics say by the very fact that in the picture you can clearly see the explosion of the bullet on the front side of the president, that that certainly indicates the bullet came from the front. >> well, i don't believe any physicist has ever said that. quite contrary, it does indicate that the bullet was coming from behind. it's a minor explosion where pieces of material go generally in the direction of the bullet. >> if you look at the individual frames of the zapruder film, at frame 312 the president's head's okay. at frame 313, 1/18th of a second later, the president is struck in the head. and what direction is the president's head pushed? not backwards but slightly forward. >> is there any doubt that the wound at the back of the president's head was the entry wound? >> there is absolutely no doubt, sir.

>> so at the all-important moment of impact, the president's head is pushed forward, indicating a shot from the rear where lee harvey oswald was. [ mom ] with my little girl, every food is finger food. so i can't afford to have germy surfaces. but after one day's use, dishcloths can redeposit millions of germs. so ditch your dishcloth and switch to a fresh sheet of bounty duratowel. look! a fresh sheet of bounty duratowel leaves this surface cleaner than a germy dishcloth,

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>> cbs news inquiry, the warren report continues. >> the time span between shots is a point upon which the critics have seized. could oswald have fired three shots in 5.6 seconds? >> there was a lot of attention being given to the zapruder film

and when exactly the president was hit first and second. >> cbs news had a tower and target track constructed to match exactly the heights and distances in dealey plaza. >> if there wasn't enough time, then you would have a second shooter. oswald was not an expert shot. he was a good shot. but making the shots was not that tough at all. cbs did it. a guy from the military did it. >> three shots he got off in 2.6 seconds. >> the zapruder film became the lens through which the assassination was seen. if it didn't happen on the zapruder film it didn't happen. zapruder started his camera after the limousine was about 70 feet into dealey plaza. well, oswald had the president in his sights for many seconds before that. and this gets into the whole questions, how much time did oswald have to shoot the president? >> there are so many interesting

questions and problems that come from the film. we believe so much in the image. we believe so much in the sort of ultimate truth of film and of images. then they become our memory. >> is it impossible that the bullet would have gone through president kennedy, gone through governor connally and not suffered any more damage than is shown in this photograph? >> i would hesitate really to say that it is absolutely 100% impossible. but it is highly improbable. >> could a single bullet have wounded both president kennedy and governor connally? the single bullet theory has perhaps become the most controversial point of the warren report. >> if the warren commission couldn't prove that one shot had hit both men, that there were two shooters, then it meant there was a conspiracy. >> the conspiracy theorists claim the second shot was a magic bullet. they argue a bullet would have had to mike a right turn then a

left turn in mid-air. the reality is that connally was not seated directly in front of kennedy. >> if you figure out the alignment of where the men sat, and if you look down as i did and as the others did who conducted the on-site tests and had the automobile placed in the position, it is perfectly plain, i submit to you, that the bullet that exited from president kennedy's throat would have to strike either the automobile which it did not or someone else in the automobile. >> to believe that it didn't hit governor connally, that would be a real magic bullet, one that disappeared in thin air. >> the dallas county courthouse for more developments on the jack ruby verdict. jack ruby has just been found guilty of murder with malice and has been given the maximum sentence, death in the electric chair after the jury deliberated 2 hours and 25 minutes. >> what do you think of this verdict? >> i believe that jack ruby was

a paid killer to close the mouth of my son, lee harvey oswald. >> the question of whether ruby knew oswald before or was in cahoots to kill him is one of the most important questions. because ruby knew people in criminal activities, there was a lot of investigation about a potential conspiracy. >> ruby would have been one of the most unlikely and worst hit men that the mob could ever get. >> on november 24th, 1963, lee harvey oswald is supposed to have been transferred at 10:00. at 10:00, the evidence is undisputed that jack ruby was at home asleep. then he got dressed and drove downtown. >> the receipt shows that ruby was sending a money order to one of his strippers from a western union office across from the courthouse at 11:17 a.m. >> we know that at 11:20, three minutes later, a block away, jack ruby killed lee harvey oswald.

the evidence showed that he was down there anywhere from 5 to 15 seconds. 5 to 15 seconds. if this is a hired assassin who is supposed to have some advanced information, he is the world's best timer. >> what type of man is he? >> jack is a very emotional-type person. and as i was saying awhile ago, he's the type man that probably would give you the shirt off his back at one moment and then turn around and do something as nutty as this in the next. >> i never used the term "angry." that's not in my vocabulary. >> he was known for a quick temper. and later as it turned out, he was hooked on two kinds of speed at the time of the shooting. >> he had been here at the police station during the past two days talking with newsmen and distributing his card, also making friends.

>> jack ruby was a police and media groupie. ruby thought he was our friend. >> so i'm in this very same room friday night when we had the defendant up here. some of you will recall he asked a question from out here. no, standing right back here. i didn't know who he was. i thought he was a member of the press. and he told me as we walked out of here that he was a nightclub operator. >> ruby's act was that of a vigilante. he wanted nothing more to be known -- people to flock to his nightclub to shake the hand of the man who killed the man who killed the president. i might add, if ruby silenced oswald for the mob, who was supposed to silence jack ruby? he died of normal causes over three years later. now, one would think that the conspiracy community would fold its tent and go home. but they continued undaunted and unfazed with this obsession.

>> their game is to fool you. these people want the investigation stopped. they don't want a trial at all. please believe me. did you run into traffic? no, just had to stop by the house to grab a few things. you stopped by the house? uh-huh. yea. alright, whenever you get your stuff, run upstairs, get cleaned up for dinner. you leave the house in good shape? yea. yea, of course. ♪ [ sportscaster talking on tv ] last-second field go-- yea, sure ya did. [ male announcer ] introducing at&t digital life. personalized home security and automation. get professionally monitored security for just $29.99 a month. with limited availability in select markets. ♪

>> the most recent, most spectacular development in the

oswald case involves the cia. it involves, too, the spectacular district attorney of new orleans, a man they call the jolly green giant. >> you believe that lee harvey oswald did not shoot president kennedy? >> i don't want to get involved in the speculations as to individuals, but i will say that there's no question about the fact that there was a plot and there were a number of individuals involved. >> in 1967, he announced "i've i've solved the case. i've found the real assassin." >> we will make arrests based on that, and we will make charges based on that. and we will obtain convictions based on that. >> now, you wouldn't have paid much attention to this except he was district attorney of new orleans. >> he has to present his case to me detail by detail. >> the mark lanes and the conspiracy theorists all flocked initially to garrison.

>> and i can report that a powerful domestic force, a force that is still part of the american structure, planned initiated those acts that resulted in the assassination of president kennedy. >> they all thought here's a guy who's finally going to bring the case that we've been arguing about for years. >> if i seem somewhat confident, it is because our office is in its fifth year and has never lost a murder case. >> the press initially builds garrison up, because everybody believes no district attorney in his right mind would do this unless he had something. >> arrested this evening in the district attorney's office was clay shaw, age 54, of 1313 dauphine street, new orleans, louisiana. mr. shaw will be charged with participation in a conspiracy to murder john f. kennedy.

>> the charges filed against me have no foundation in fact or in law. i have not been apprised of the basis of these fantastic charges, and assume that in due course i'll be furnished with this information and afforded an opportunity to prove my innocence. >> clay shaw was a very well-respected businessman in new orleans. he had been a distinguished soldier in world war ii. >> the concept of clay shaw as being part of an assassination conspiracy was too weird to be believed. >> he was also a homosexual and closeted, and i think that played a part. >> this decision to arrest clay shaw i believe was intended to get the national media back to town. as soon as he arrested clay shaw they all came back. >> and then they realized the truth that there isn't anything there. >> garrison has based his case on the certainty that he can prove clay shaw is clay or clem

bertrand. the name was first introduced by a lawyer named dean andrews who said a person by that name telephoned him suggesting he provide legal defense for lee oswald. >> he described clem bertrand as having gay ten den sits and representing gays as a lawyer. therefore, garrison believed clem bertrand must be clay shaw. that was the extent of garrison's investigation. >> do you have enough evidence now to go to trial? >> if i answered that, i shouldn't be district attorney. >> the case he has built against clay shaw is based on testimony that did not pass a lie detector test that garrison ordered and garrison knew it. >> can you say positively that the person you knew as clay bertrand is not the person you have seen as clay shaw? >> scout's honor he is not. >> garrison started bribing

witnesses, intimidating witnesses. >> he said i could be made to serve this whole nine-year sentence. or i could be cut loose right away. >> hypnotizing witnesses. >> we decided to give object fire -- object firing machinery to make sure he was telling the truth. >> leon. >> does leon have a last name? >> oswald. >> would you say these methods were illegal? >> i would very say illegal and unethical. >> he had everyone and their grandmother involved in the assassination. at one time it was oil millionaires. then it was the minutemen. then it was a homosexual killing. >> yes, sir. >> you feel that homosexuality or the coercion of homosexuality was a factor in the planning or the assassination of john f. kennedy? >> no comment. >> at one point he had 15 assassins in dealey plaza. with that many assassins i don't know how kennedy made it to the autopsy table. >> he said jack ruby's unlisted

telephone number appears in address books belonging to shaw and oswald. >> you take p and o and use a telephone dial, p gives you 7, o gives you 6. >> he just changed the digits around, added digits, added letters. >> you reconstruct the numbers, and then you subtract 1300 and that gives you ruby's unlisted telephone number. >> mr. garrison, if the p.o. didn't exist until late '65 how would it then be jack rue ruby's phone number? >> that's your problem or you've missed the point. >> he pointed to cia agents supporting a conspiracy. >> who's suppressing this on whose order? >> the federal government is suppressing it. >> who in the federal government? >> the administration. the administration of your government is suppressing it because they know that the central intelligence agency -- >> on whose order? >> on the order of the president of the united states. >> mr. garrison has come up with

no credible evidence to support any of his theories. >> i think that it's unfortunate for the media of this country has become so hysterical for fear of what it might see that it spends a good deal of its time and energy attacking the one serious investigation. >> the results of this four months of public investigation have been to damage reputations, to spread fear and suspicion and worst of all to exploit the nation's sorrow and doubts about president kennedy's death. >> i can't make any more comments about the case except to say anybody that thinks it's just a theory is going to be awfully surprised when it comes to trial. >> roll one sound on film clay shaw trial. clay shaw came to court in good spirits today with his long-awaited trial under way shaw seems almost relieved that his case is finally being heard. shaw sits quietly in this courthouse, chain smoking cigarettes. he does not react when the state talks about things like conspiracy. >> the trial went on for six weeks.

it's important to note that not one witness produced by garrison survived cross-examination. they were all proven to be unreliable at best. >> the most shameful thing you've ever seen. everyone knew in the courtroom that clay shaw couldn't possibly have been more innocent. >> in a unanimous verdict by a 12-man jury, shaw was found not guilty of charges that he conspired to kill the late president john kennedy. >> why did you do it? [ laughter ] >> after the not guilty verdict, editorials around the country, one of the darkest chapters in american jurisprudence history. it's just a crime. >> from what i had seen and heard i didn't think he proved clay shaw's guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. i would have voted not guilty for clay shaw. >> i think that garrison feels that the end justifies the means.

he felt if he could bring to the american people what he considered the truth about the death of their president, any means whatsoever was supposed to be used. it didn't matter much who got hurt in the process. >> i would sum it up by saying that any society which allows a man like jack kennedy to have the top of his head torn off and then protects the assassins and obstructs any inquiry and attempt to find the truth is not a great society. honestly? no way did i think a tablet was gonna be a good deal. you're talking to the guy who hasn't approved a new stapler purchase in three years. but then i saw the new windows tablet, with a real keyboard, usb port, and full office.

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president has been withheld from you. >> to show you how uncredible the conspiracy theorists are over the last 50 years at one time or another they have accused 42 groups 82 assassins and 214 people of being involved in the assassination. >> could oswald really have done this? >> as a reporter, the greatest

story for us would have been to find out somebody other than oswald did it. and we tried hard to do that. but at every turn with the kennedy assassination, things pointed to oswald as not only a shooter but the shooter and the only shooter. >> at its core, this is a very simple case. >> did you kill the president? >> i don't know what this is all about. >> if a person is innocent of a crime, chances are there isn't going to be any evidence pointing toward his guilt. why? because he's innocent. but with oswald, the physical evidence, direct or circumstantial evidence, scientific evidence, everything points towards his guilt. we'll never know why lee harvey oswald killed kennedy because he's dead. but there are certain things we do know. >> at the age of 13, a probation officer said he remembered oswald as a truant, a troubled boy in need of psychiatric help without which he might turn violent.

>> after starting in high school he promptly joined the marines. oswald's marine career ended in 1959 when he was dishonorably discharged. a month later he was in moscow where he announced his decision to renounce his american citizenship. >> are you an marxist? >> i would say that i am a marxist, correct. but that does not mean i am a communist. >> he desperately wants to become a soviet citizen, renounce his american citizenship. they turn him down? what does he do? slashes his wrists, tries to commit suicide. >> lee harvey oswald had these dreams or delusions that he'd been harboring for a long time of an act that would lift him from his obscurity. >> a squad mate of his in the marines said that oswald wanted to do something that 10,000 years from now people would be talking about. >> it looked to me like a stupid, irrational act.

the opportunity presented itself to him and he probably wanted to make a mark on society and it suddenly occurred to him that he could. >> people who think oswald was sort of a patsy and such an ineffectual person, forgot when stopped by a police car and a policeman gets out to talk to him, oswald shoots him four times in the middle of the body. that plus his previous attempt on general walker. interestingly on saturday morning in "the dallas morning news" it said that there may be a connection between this guy who was just arrested for killing a police officer and president kennedy. and this effort to assassinate general walker back in april. >> oswald used to attend a small discussion group. and he began to rail against this right wing general, edwin walker, who was calling for the invasion of cuba.

>> general walker was about as right wing as you got in the early 60s. and oswald saw walker as an american adolf hitler. and oswald said someone should kill walker. he then ordered a rifle with a sniper scope, and he planned very meticulously his assassination of general walker. he took photographs from different angles, he figured out how to get his rifle there and how to escape. >> on march 31st, a sunday, he asked marina to come out and take his photograph. >> all in black, pistol, rifle in his hand, holding a few radical newspapers, and marina writes on the back "hunter of fascists" and dates it april 6th, 1963. >> and then he went on the night of the 10th of april, took up his place and shot at general walker.

>> he came in the house 11:30. he was so pale, nervous. and i said what happened to you? and he said -- he told, "i tried to shot general walker." >> will you describe for us just what happened last night? >> rifle shot was fired into the house, fired through the west window. and hit the sill and hit the wall across the room and went over the desk at which i was sitting. >> he was very disappointed to find out that he missed by less than an inch. >> it shows his ability to plan who his target was and that oswald was capable of violence. >> i think that was kind of the rosetta stone, that if you understood the walker shooting you understood that lee was like a cocked rifle. and he could go off anytime.

>> what set the conspiracy notion about the kennedy assassination among many americans was the sheer incongruity of the affair. all that power and majesty wiped out in up with instant by one skinny weak-chinned little character. run into traffic? no, just had to stop by the house to grab a few things. you stopped by the house? uh-huh. yea. alright, whenever you get your stuff, run upstairs, get cleaned up for dinner. you leave the house in good shape? yea. yea, of course. ♪ [ sportscaster talking on tv ] last-second field go-- yea, sure ya did. [ male announcer ] introducing at&t digital life. personalized home security and automation.

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>> it is true that the answers to some questions leave us restless. the theory that a single bullet struck down both the president and the governor, for example has too much of the long arm of coincidence about it for us to be entirely comfortable. >> it doesn't satisfy our sense of narrative or justice that a small person of no distinction can be of such historical consequences to kill the president of the united states. >> but would we be more comfortable believing that a shot was fired by a second

assassin who materialized out of thin air for the purpose, fired a shot, and then vanished again into thin air, leaving behind no trace of himself, his rifle, his bullet or any other sign of existence? >> there were two groups of people. there's one group that will look at an extraordinary coincidence, a cataclysmic circumstance and say yes, that's the way the world works. there's another group of people for whom that's quite unsettling. >> they don't want to believe that something so random could have occurred. can you believe that you could step off a curb someday and be killed by an oncoming car? nobody believes in that kind of possibility for themselves, but it happens. is life that fortuitous, that uncertain? >> and for them, oddly, the notion of a conspiracy is more comforting than the absence of it. because if there's a conspiracy, at least there's a plan.

>> i think the five bullets fired from at least two different directions were the result of a conspiracy. >> kennedy's killing touches off a belief in the idea, you can't trust government. >> there has been a loss of morale, a loss of confidence among the american people toward their own government and the men who serve it. that is perhaps more wounding than the assassination itself. >> they've lost so much faith in government that they actually think that the government is an accessory after the fact for the president's murder. can't get too much worse than that. >> the assassination changed the trajectory of the 60s. america was a different place on the day before john f. kennedy was killed. so when you look at america as a whole in the 20th century, you look at america in the 60s, you

really say, that day was a dividing point. >> i guess in the average man's life there are two or three emotional experiences that he doesn't forget because they're burned into his heart and his brain. and no matter what happens to me, i'll remember november 22nd as long as i live. and it's impossible for me now to this day, and i'm sure ten years from now to go to dallas without looking at that building and it's impossible for me to drive by the texas hotel today and not think of that morning when president kennedy spoke there. it will always be with us. >> kennedy alongside of the other presidents, johnson, nixon, gerald ford, jimmy carter, reagan, the two bushes, even bill clinton, people, they don't remember what they did but they remember their rhetoric.

they remember the images. >> ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country. >> this is what people wish for again in the government. they want someone who inspires them, who gives them hope, for whom they have a kind of admiration. kennedy's standing hold on the public, i think, will only fade if and when we get another president about whom they feel the same way as they currently the same way as they currently feel about kennedy. -- captions by vitac -- www.vitac.com

good evening. this is "piers morgan live" looking at the grave site of john f kennedy at arlington national cemetery. two days after the assassination jackie requested the flame as a permanent memorial. 50 years later, america and the world are remembering the 35th president in dallas, the city where jfk died a moment of silence at 12:30 local time, the exact moment the shots rang out in dealey plaza. >> ladies and gentlemen, would you join me in a moment of silence in honor of the life of john fitzgerald kennedy?