celebrity activists talk about their causes. and then see the feminist side of a super hero and others talk about their reading habits. and on american history tv on c-span 3, the fall of the berlin wall at noon, fashion experts and how they represented the styles of the times in which they lived. former nbc news anchor on his more than 50 years of reporting on world events.

that's this christmas day on the c-span networks. >> 50 years ago on september 24, 1964, supreme court chief justice earl warren handed a report on the assassination of president kennedy to president johnson in the oval office. the commissioners pictured here concluded that lee harvey oswald acted alone. the warn warren commission acted here for nine months. we set up a camera to talk to a local author using key phone

calls, documents and art facts some of the lingering controversies regarding the warn report but first we take a brief tour of the former officers. >> hi, i'm brian summers. >> so much testimony from the witnesses and those essential to the investigation met here in this historic building itself. it was in this room here on this floor that the warren commission saw for the first time the entirety of the committee. would have taken place down here at that time and mid may of 64, lee harvey os wald's brother was

here. and we have photographs to subs stanceuate that here in the building. much of the work was done on the forth floor. we're now on the fourth floor where in 1964 this would have been the working floor for the warren commission. this would have been his decembering and chair. >> you're pretty sure this was his chair? >> absolutely. we have authentic information on it from the vfw itself and this was on here when it came to the society. we are less than 150 feet from the supreme court where he worked everyday and came here in the afterhours to see how the investigation was going on.

you can see why the proximity would have been to his choosing. this being the office of chief justice earl warren, this was the conference room table that existed in his area of the office at that time. just next door to chief justice earl warren's office was the office that occupied staff council here. this was the office that he and another associate worked in as they were investigating the death of the president in 1964. now we're entering the conference room of what would have been the warren commission investigating the death of the president. the furniture and the building itself we inherited from the 1960s. i think this room was used for

individual witness the less critical witnesses if there was a very important witness i understand it was held down stairs in the larger room a tremendous amount of business was transacted in this room. >> my first book was a history of the 911 commission. i had covered it from start to finish. i discovered there was a lot that i had missed and i learned this by going and interviewing a lot of the staffers who had done the digging of the 911 commission. after the book got some nice reviews, i got a telephone call and the caller was somebody that i didn't know but he was a prominent american lawyer who

explained that he had gun his own career about 50 years earlier on the other great commission to investigate a national straj di which was the warren commission. he promised to help so long as i kept his name out of this because he knew i would discover some embarrassing material that he didn't want to be associated with and he was right about that but off i went. i had an interesting book project that might take me a couple of years to do. it turned out to be such a complicated pile of missing evidence, covered up evidence, so much of the story of the kennedy assassination had never been told. >> we're going to look at some art facts. the first thing we have is -- there's a picture of the warren

commission. this is the oval office september 1964 in which earl warren is handing the final report to presidentjohnson. and perhaps we want to point out the other members of the commission who were there. this is john j. mccoy, a great eminence in washington of longstanding. next to him is j. lee rankin who was the general counsel of the warren commission who ran the staff, the so list iter general in the eisenhower administration. next to him is senator richard russell who would sign the warren commission report even though it became clear in the years after the commission went out of business that russell didn't agree with the report, that he thought there may well have been a conspiracy in kennedy's death. next to him is gerald ford, who would go on become president of the united states who was at the

time a powerful house republican. it would later be learned that ford had volunteer ed to be a secret informant for the fbi on the warren commission, to be an informant quietly and ford would admit that years later. next to him chief warren, president johnson, next to president johnson is allen dulles, the director of central intelligence for many years who would be forced out of that job by the debacle of the bay of pigs. it sure appears that dulles had a terrible conflict of interest by serving on the warren commission. because among other things, it appears dulles knew about the cia plots to kill fidel castro. in fact, he may have ordered some of those plots. he apparently shared none of that information with the warren commission even though that information might have given --

suggest ed past that they should have followed. >> next to him is congressman hale boggs of louisiana who was prominent in the democratic leadership of the house and very close to john kennedy. >> 50 years later. how should we mark that day, the anniversary of the release of the warren report? >> we should mark it with very mixed feelings because unhappily this report, which was hailed at the time, a definitive answer to many of the questions asked about the kennedy assassination appears not to have been that. it is remarkable that the president who received the report that day, lyndon johnson, ultimately decided that the warren commission had it wrong. at the end of his life, lyndon johnson believed that fidel castro had killed president kennedy and that the warren commission had somehow been misled. you know, it's a remarkable thing to discover that the

president of the united states who commissioned the warren commission did not believe the commission's findings. >> president johnson obviously is thrust into power by the assassination. his initial instinct is not to have a federal investigation of the assassination. as it turns out presidential assassination in 1963 was not a federal crime. if there was going to be a trial of anyone, it would have to be arranged by the local and state officials in texas johnson also said he didn't want a bunch of, as he put it, carpetbaggers going into his home state of texas to run this investigation. he wanted it handled by the state, the county and officials in dallas. but within days of the assassination, conspiracy theories started to spin some of those focused on lyndon johnson as a suspect in the murder of his predecessor. the conspiracy theories are spinning so wildly, i have to

bring an end to it by creation of an independent commission based in washington to investigate all that could be learned about the assassination and about this man, lee harvey oswald who was apparently the president's assassin. and johnson settles on chief justice earl warren as the only man hook run this warren was a very controversial figure in 1963, but he was also much admired for his independence and personal integrity and he was a republican. johnson wanted a republican to run this investigation to show that it was truly bipartisan and truly an effort to get a the facts, whatever they might be. johnson also decides that he wants representatives from the house and senate to serve on the commission. and he decides that he wants as his own representative on the commission one of his best friends in the world, senator richard russell, probably the most powerful man in the senate in 1963, chairman of the senate armed services committee and a

fierce segregationist. a man who, if he loathed anybody in washington, d.c., loathed earl warren, who was leading the supreme court on civil rights and civil liberties rulings that russell felt had the potential to destroy what he described as the southern way of life. and would bring desegregation to the south and destroy his homeland. >> on the afternoon of friday, november 29th, exactly a week after the assassination, russell is called by president johnson and asked if he will serve on this commission. it's not in those days referred to as the warren commission since it's not been announced that chief justice warren will lead it. this investigation of the assassination. russell declines saying he's in poor health, suffering from emphysema and has too much to do in the senate. johnson listens to him, hangs up

the phone and decides that even though russell doesn't want to serve, he will serve. johnson then has the white house press office issue a statement to the press corps announcing that the commission has been formed and that richard russell is on it even if he doesn't want to be. >> i hate to bother you again, but i want you to know that i've made an announcement. >> an announcement of what? >> of this special commission. >> oh, you have already? >> yes. and i -- may i read it to you? the president announces that he's appointing a special committee to study and report on all the facts and circumstances relating to the assassination of the late president john f. kennedy and the subsequent violent death of the man charged with the assassination. the president stated that the majority and minority leadership of the senate and house have been consulted with respect to the full special commission. the members of the special

commission are, chief justice earl warren, chairman, senator richard russell, georgia, senator john sherman, kentucky, representative hale boggs, john j. mccloy of new york. the special commission is being instructed to evaluate all available information concerning the subject of the inquiry. the federal bureau of investigation pursuant to as earlier directive of the president is making a complete investigation of the facts. >> russell was justifiably flabbergasted about what johnson had just done. russell had told johnson he didn't want to serve on this commission, he couldn't serve on this commission. >> now, mr. president, i don't have to tell you my emotions to you, but i just can't serve on that commission. i am highly honored you'd think about me in connection with it

but i couldn't serve with chief just warren. i don't like that man. >> it must have been for russell a nightmare situation, but he salutes and accepts the assignment over a final protest with the president. you know, johnson used similar set of strong-arm tactics on the chief justice. johnson settles on warren as the only man who can run this investigation. when warren gets the invitation to serve, he turns it down flat. he says there's a terrible history of supreme court justices serving on outside investigations, he doesn't have the time, he can't do it. he thinks the commission is a fine idea, but it cannot be led by him. when johnson gets word that warren has turned down the invitation, warren is summoned within hours to the oval office, and, unfortunately, we, to the best of our knowledge, there's no recording of this, but apparently the president tells

warren in no uncertain terms that the assassination may lead to a nuclear war that will kill 40 million americans and that, if that happens, it may be the responsibility of the chief justice unless he serves on this commission. and apparently this confrontation leaves the chief justice in tears but agreeing to run the investigation. >> this is an artifact that the national archives allowed us to videotape oswald's guide map to mexico city. what is that? >> well, to my mind there is what in many ways is the untold chapter of the kennedy assassination story which is what happened when lee harvey oswald traveled to mexico city just before the assassination. i have to admit when i went into the reporting on this book, i didn't know anything about this incident in mexico city, this

trip that oswald takes, but it may be very important. it's very clear to me that both the cia and the fbi were determined not to figure out what happened in mexico city because it might have revealed just how much they had really known about oswald in the weeks before the assassination and the threat that he might pose to president kennedy. it turns out that oswald went to mexico city apparently to get the visas and paperwork that would allow him to defect to cuba, much as he had once tried to defect to the soviet union. and while he's in mexico city, we now know, while he's under surveillance by the cia in mexico city, he is meeting with cuban spies and russian spies and several mexicans who are very sympathetic to fidel castro's revolution. people who at the height of the cold war might have had some troen want to see president kennedy dead.

and the identity of those people, what oswald told them and what they told oswald would never be determined with certainly because the fbi and the cia simply didn't try to get to the bottom of it. >> this is what is in the warren report? >> this is the best reconstruction of where oswald went and who he might have went with when he was in mexico. we now know that a tremendous amount of information about oswald's trip to mexico was never shared with the warren commission. so this is a very incomplete chronology of what went on. >> your book begins with telling this story of a suicide of charles thomas that relates to mexico city. why did you start with that? >> it's a remark aable story. inspect 1965, a year after the

warren commission goes out of business, an american diplomat based in mexico city learns to his shock that oswald may have been seen around town, mexico city, in the company of cubans and mexicans who were sympathetic to castro, people who might have wanted to see president kennedy dead. and oswald may well have been in the company of two young be beatnik, is the word used, americans in the city whose identities have never been revealed. thomas, apparently a very fine man, a very fine diplomat, much respected by his colleagues, thought somebody needed to investigate and go back and see if the warren commission had gotten it wrong and if there was some sort of conspiracy to kill the president, and if that conspiracy was hatched in mexico city. and what the story of charles h utter

frustration. nobody wants to investigate. nobody wants to get to the bottom of this. and he keeps asking the question again and again and again. for reasons that are very mysterious at the time, thomas finds his career derailed, and he finds himself forced out of the state department for what were later described as mistakes of a clerical nature. and there's some reason to believe he was forced out because he was asking too many questions about what the cia and the fbi knew about oswald in mexico city. it appears that after he's forced out of the state department, he is then denied any sort of opportunity to begin a new career because he just can't get the references from the state department and the rest of the government that will allow him to get a new job. towards the end of his life, he does write a letter to the secretary of state, william

roger, then president nixon's secretary of state asking, pleading that somebody again try to get to the bottom of what happened in mexico city. there is no subsequent investigation. thomas, unable to find a new career, tragically kills himself two years later. >> what did the warren commission do in mexico city? what did they investigate or what was their opinion of what happened there? >> well, the investigation of mexico city was left largely to two staff lawyers on the commission, one by the name of william coleman who at the time one of the most prominent african-american attorneys in this country and his junior staff associate a fellow by the name of david slauson who was a very young lawyer in his early 30s from denver. coleman was very occupied with his work at philadelphia law firm and wasn't much involved with the day-to-day work of the commission. slawson did almost all the work, slawson was very intrigued by what happened in mexico city and

wanted desperately to try to get to the bottom of what happened down there. unfortunately, what we now know is that a tremendous amount of information about what went on in mexico city was never shared with slawson, was never shared with the commission and i think it's fair to say the commission never got to the bottom of what actually happened in mexico. >> this is an artifact that the national archives allowed us to videotape. it's oswald's address book. that's the cover of it. and then inside is this page. consulate of cuba, and then name, sylvia duran. >> sylvia duran turns out to be arn important figure in all this. the warren commission staff saw her as an important figure in all this. she's a young mexican woman, a committed socialist, who is employed by the cuban consulate in mexico city. and she is the person who dealt face-to-face with oswald while he's trying to get the visa and

other paperwork from the cuban government that will allow him to defect. there's reason to believe that there was a relationship between oswald and duran that went on outside the walls of the cuban consulate and that they were seen around town together, including at a party, attended by cuban diplomats, some of whom had apparently spoken openly in the past about their hope that somebody would kill president kennedy. the warren commission staff, this young fellow, david slawson is desperate to talk to sylvia duran, to interview her, to find out what she might know. after much negotiation, it appears that sylvia duran will come to washington, she'll agree to be interviewed, but that idea is vetoed by chief justice warren who refuses to allow her to be interviewed, he says, apparently her words are, she's a communist and in his words, we don't talk to communists. this vital witness is never questioned by the commission. i tracked her down in mexico

last year. she continued to deny that she had any sort of relationship with oswald outside the four walls of the cuban consulate, but i'll tell you there's a lot of evidence to the contrary. >> why would the cubans want -- or some of them apparently want kennedy to be assassinated? >> this is the height of the cold war. this is a year -- you know president kennedy is killed a year after the cuban missile crisis when there was almost a nuclear war over cuba. a year before that the debacle at the bay of pigs where the kennedy administration and the cia attempted to overthrow castro. and we now know, of course, that the kennedy administration was trying to kill castro through these assassination plots, some of them involving the mafia. >> another page in oswald's address book, which is available at the national archives, has james p.hosty, what's the

significance of that. >> james hosty is the fbi agent who we now know had oswald under surveillance for weeks before the assassination and actually went out to the home where marina oswald was living at the time to interview her. and on the basis of what marine ya oswald tells lee harvey oswald he writes in his notebook, hosty's name and telephone number and i believe it's the license plate of his fbi car. this particular piece of paper in oswald's notebook would create an enormous rift between the commission and the fbi because it appears the fbi tried to eliminate this portion of the notebook when it handed documentation over to the warren commission, that actually it created a typewritten version of oswald's notebook and removed hosty's name apparently in an effort to prevent the warren

commission from knowing that oswald knew that this fbi agent had him under surveillance, that the fbi was monitoring his movements. a very dedicated member of the warren commission staff took the original notebook, which the commission had a copy of, and this typewritten summary that the fbi had prepared supposedly for the convenience of the commission and went page by page to see if anything was missing or anything had been misstated in typewritten version, he discovered the fbi agent's name and all this other material had been removed in what appeared to be an effort to hide from the warren commission the fact that the fbi did have oswald under what appears to be pretty aggressive surveillance before the assassination. >> there's also a story of an artifact we can't look at of a letter that oswald wrote to hosty that he himself destroyed, is that true? >> that's an amazing story.

we now know that oswald was so agitated about the fbi's surveillance of him and his family before the assassination, that he actually went to the dallas field office of the fbi in early november 1963 and presented some sort of letter in which he protested the surveillance. people in the fbi office in dallas would later say that oswald appeared to be very angry, maybe even crazy with anger, and left this note. after the assassination of president kennedy and after oswald himself is killed on sunday, november 24th, the decision is made in the fbi office in dallas that this note must be destroyed because it's evidence of just how much they had known about oswald, of the fact that they had been in face-to-face contact with oswald just weeks before the assass assassination and apparently this same agent, agent hosty then takes the note to a men's room, shreds it and flushes it down the toilet.

>> is it any surprise to you when you hear about all these things that there are a million conspiracy theories about the -- >> not at all, not at all. and you know, i lead this with the inability to say that even the crazyiest conspiracy theory has no basis in fact because so much basic evidence was destroyed or hidden from the very first hours after president kennedy's body was returned to washington from dallas. >> in the phone call johnson said that the fbi is going to fully cooperate and help the warren commission. what was it like -- i mean, a lot of these pieces of evidence have an fbi number and a commission number. what was their relationship like? >> well, the fbi, the cia, all the agencies of government were ordered to cooperate fully with the warren commission when it

got under way a week after the assassination. it's pretty clear that the fbi and the cia never cooperated fully with the commission. but the commission, you know, was a staff of only a couple dozen people. it couldn't conduct the massive investigations that would need to be conducted all around the country and all around the world if this was to be done properly. it had to depend to some degree on the fbi to do a lot of that. so the fbi was gathering raw material that was then shared with the commission. the question becomes how much of this raw evidence the fbi gathered was withheld from the commission. >> ruth phine is a russian language teacher in dallas who befriends marina oswald, invites marina oswald and her children to live with her for a period of time when lee harvey oswald is living outside dallas. she would become a key figure in the warren commission investigation. and there would be initially some suspicion that ms. phine

knew much more than she was sharing. history shows she was forthright with the warren commission. >> this artifact is one of a group of artifacts videotaped by the national archives for the 50th anniversary of the kennedy assassination. a bullet that was found in the home of general walker. >> edwin walker was a retired army general. he'd actually been retired forcibly after creating a stir with the kennedy administration. he was a far right extremist with groups in the dallas area as a national figure in the segregation movement and in april of 1963, obviously several months before the kennedy

assassination, somebody tries to kill edwin walker at his home in dallas. at the time and for weeks thereafter it wasn't clear who the assassin was. it would be determined by the warren commission that the assassin was lee harvey oswald and he may as well have used the same rifle in trying to kill walky as he would use in dealey plaz da to kill kennedy. it's marina oswald who says it was her husband that tried to kill walker. he had admitted that to her the night of the assassination attempt. >> so where in the offices that they occupied did marina come here? >> she did, on more than one occasion. she was here for several days in february 1964. she was the leadoff formal witness for the commission. and she was an important witness because she made it clear she thought her husband had killed president kennedy and she

thought he had done it alone. he she's called back more than once after serious questions are raised about her truthfulness. in initial interviews with the fbi she denied she had any knowledge of the mexico city trip. she knew all about it and she knew about it before her husband had gone there. is so-called magic bullet. what was the significant ens of that for the commission. >> the single-most contro verse qual piece of evidence from the kennedy assassination investigation. it's the bullet that the commission staff would conclude had passed through the bodies of both president kennedy and texas governor connolly. that contradicted the initial fbi report on the asass sassina that three bullets landed in the limousine. first hit kennedy in the back,

the second one hit connolly in the back and the third was the one that hit president kennedy in the head, which was the fatal shot. the staff determined using the zapruder film, as sort of a clock of the assassination, that oz wld just would not have time to fire off three individual bullets into the limousine. if he didn't have time, that would suggest there must have been a second, at least one other gunman in dealey plaza. the staff was convinced that oswald had acted alone as the gunman. it came up with the theory, and a theory initially offered by one of the navy pathologists who conducts president kennedy's autopsy that perhaps one bullet had passed through both bodies. and that is what the commission staff and i think subsequently a lot of serious scientists and technical teams have determined as well, that one bullet did pass through the bodies of both men and this is that bullet. what surprised a lot of people was that this bullet wasn't much more damaged than it appears to

be. it's sometimes referred to as the pristine bullet. as you can see here it is not fully pr y pristine. it is damaged some. some scientists would tell you they expect it to be much more damaged to go through two bodies. there are no rules here. it is much more art than science. all the reliable scientist evidence did suggest that this bullet did pass through both bodies and turned up at parkman hospital. >> the description of finding it. >> it falls off the stretcher and it becomes important to the commission staff and especially to arlen specter, the young inspector that this bullet fell from governor connolly's stretcher since it had first presumably passed through kennedy's body before it hit

connolly. indeed at the end of the investigation, the commission concludes it indeed did come from governor connolly's stretcher. >> you mentioned an fbi report that came out in december. >> an awful lot of confusion at the beginning of the investigation is created by what is supposedly an authoritative fbi report on the assassination. it's delivered to the white house and to the warren commission in december 1963. it supposedly is a result of this most aggressive fbi investigation of all time. the warren commission takes one look at it and most of the commissioners decide it's so inadequate, the investigation is being so poorly handled, that the commission will have to do a much more aggressive investigation of its own. it continues to rely on the fbi to do a lot of its basic detective work, but the relationship between the fbi and the warren commission was very

strained, and this initial report had a lot to do with setting that ugly tone that existed between them for the rest of the investigation. >> how could the nation's leading law enforcement agency with sophisticated labs and experienced agents make a report that these lawyers considered inadequate and sloppy? >> it's a good question. we now know, of course, that the fbi in the era of edgar j. hoover was never as disciplined, never had the integrity we would have hoped it to have. and the fbi had a big problem after the assassination because it turned out that the fbi did have lee harvey oswald under surveillance and at times pretty aggressive surveillance before the assassination. and it became important to fbi director j. edgar hoover, who

was really a force unto himself in that era, to prove that oswald was a lone wolf, that he carried out this assassination alone, that nobody else knew about it, that there was no conspiracy, certainly no conspiracy that the fbi could have foiled, and he seems determined to prove that regardless of what the facts might actually show. >> this is a model used by the warren commission? >> right. i think this model now exists at the museum that's now located in the texas -- or what used to be the texas school book depository. but it was used here in the vfw offices to make it easy for people to understand the sequence of events in dealey plaza. you can see small models of cars were used to try to indicate where the president's limousine and the other cars in the motorcade were at different times. this is arlen specter, again at the time an assistant district attorney of philadelphia

assigned temporarily to the warren commission. he's often referred to as the father of the single-bullet theory. you can see him here demonstrating how the single-bullet theory would have happened, that a bullet passing through the body of this first gentleman, who is sitting in for president kennedy, that the bullet would have passed through kennedy and then hit governor connolly in the back. the commission staff felt strongly from the earliest days that they needed to go to dallas, they needed to try to reconstruct as much of the assassination scene as they could. they wanted to take the madeline kirkeno rifle, the one he used, to take it back to the sixth floor of the book depository and affix it to a camera and see

what oswald would have seen through his rifle when they were taking the shots. here's what they're doing with the assistance, principally of the fbi. it turns out that chief warren did not want to do this reconstruction. he felt it was unnecessary. he didn't want to create this media ruckus in dallas, but eventually he's convinced it has to be done. >> in the same film that you can download online, it was a reconstruction of oswald's movements after the shooting? >> i think this is a reconstruction here of the perch on the sixth floor. and this is, i guess, a gentleman in the role of oswald leaving the area of the perch on the sixth floor and showing how he would have left that floor and then left the building. >> and end up following all the way down to a cafeteria where this man sits down to drink a coke. why was the timing of him

leaving his perch and exiting the building so important? >> it becomes important because witnesses do encounter oswald in this cafeteria downstairs, and the question becomes did oswald have time to fire the shots, then get from the sixth floor downstairs to the cafeteria where he's seen swigging a soda. the warren commission concludes he did have the time to get down there. he's remarkably poised apparently when he's confronted by these witness, but that's true of oswald in several situations after the assassination, that he's remarkable calm and poised and articulate as he denies that he any involvement in the assassination. >> well, i would just say this about the ballistics evidence, it's a confusing topic if only because certain experiments were done by the warren commission or done at the request of the warren commission and many, many, many have been done in the decades since. i think it's fair to say that

the most reliable scientific evidence shows that the bullets and bullet fragments that can be identified appear to have come from oswald's rifle. >> so this is one that you requested that we look at, the national archives allowed us to videotape a bus transfer ticket found in oswald's pocket after his arrest. >> well, this is fascinating to me because it reflects an investigation that was carried out by the warren commission staff but was not reflected in the warren commission's final report. which is that one of the most aggressive of the young staff lawyer on the commission becomes convinced that oswald was trying to flee somewhere, that he had someplace in mind to go after the assassination. and this young lawyer, a fellow by the name of david bellen from des moines, iowa, finds this bus transfer from the day of the

assassination, suggesting that oswald was going to use this bus transfer to get somewhere in particular. oswald knew the bus routes of dallas. he used the public transport all the time. and the conclusion was that oswald was going to use the transfer because he knew there was a bus that he wanted to connect to. this young lawyer comes to the conclusion eventually that oswald might well have been heading back to mexico, that something had happened during oswald's mexico city visit, perhaps he encountered cubans or mexicans who were sympathetic to castro who offered to help oswald if he could every get back out of the united states after the assassination. and as i say, that theory -- and it was only a theory -- but that theory is not reflected in the final warren commission's report because the warren commission leaders, chief justice warren in particular wanted to rule out speculation, wanted to rule out that other people knew about or conspired with oswald. >> what was that dynamic like between someone had a theory

about the bus transfer and the commissioners? was there a lot of tension? >> well, there was tension. there wasn't much communication, certainly not much direct communication. a lot of the young staffers and these are men most of whom are still alive and i interviewed for this book, they were really cut off from the commissioners. they were cut off from chief justice warren. there was very little interaction with them. that became a matter of great frustration. in connection with this bus transfer and the theory of oswald going to mexico because somebody had promised to help him, that never gets close to getting into the final report. it's actually senior staffers within the commission who ruled that out again because the commission doesn't want to encourage speculation even though some of the speculation might point to co-conspirators in the assassination. >> this is the zapruder camera as it's stored at the national archives. >> abraham zapruder is a dallas

women's wear manufacturer who on the day of the assassination wanted to record images of the president's motorcade passing through dealey plaz da. this is his bell & howell home movie camera. it turns out abraham zapruder would capture all the essential images of the assassination. it's 26 seconds of film and almost certainly the most important piece of evidence that the warren commission had. it, as i say, documented every essential moment of the assassination and it acted essentially as a talk on the assassination, it could suggest when individual shots were fired and when individual shots hit the bodies of president kennedy and governor connolly. zapruder very quickly after the assassination, sold the film to "life" magazine, and that created an awkward situation where the warren commission didn't immediately have access

to this very vital piece of information. eventually "life" magazines hands over the original film so the commission could see it. and as i say, i think it's undoubtedly the most important piece of physical evidence the commission had access to. >> there's another document you told us about in an e-mail, an unpublished memoir by winston scott. >> winston scott was the cia station chief in mexico city in 1963. he was almost certainly more powerful than any of the ambassadors in mexico city he served under. he'd been there since i believe 1956. he had sources throughout the mexican government. and it turned out after the assassination, that win scott and his colleagues a tt cia stationed in mexico city had oswald under pretty aggressive surveillance during his mexico city trip.

win scott told the warren commission -- staff members go to mexico city to meet with him. he tells the warren commission he does not believe there was a conspiracy, certainly no conspiracy that had anything to do with mexico city or the surveillance that scott's staff conducted of oswald while he was there. years and years after the assassination it turned out that scott had decided to write his memoirs and his memoirs, which were declassified only in the 1990s show that win scott apparently never told the truth to the warren commission that he thought there might well have been a conspiracy that involved some communist government. he thought it might be the soviet union. and the reasons for him not telling the truth to the warren commission in 1964 are baffling. i think there's good reason to believe that he knew much more

about lee harvey oswald and what happened in mexico than he ever wanted to share with the warren commission, in only because he knew that oswald might be a threat and never passed on that information to washington where it might have been used to save the president's life. >> towards the end of your book, you mention a -- there's an eye-popping document from the cia that's 132-page sort of summary of what they knew about oswald? >> well, the cia many years after the assassination puts together this incredible chronology day by day by day of what they had known about lee harvey oswald specifically focused on what the cia knew about his travels to mexico, and it showed that the cia had been aware pretty quickly after the assassination certainly shortly after the warren commission went out of business that there was

much more to the story of oswald in mexico city than had ever been shared with washington. and again, the records shows that the cia knew much more about washington than it ever told anyone even to this day, i believe. there's still documents about the kennedy assassination, about the cia's knowledge of oswald that are still considered classified and are still under seal at the national archives. you know, there's reason to believe that the cia may have had contact in one form or another with oswald while he was in mexico city. and i think the cia may have feared that that fact that had it become known that they were in contact with oswald would have created a massive scandal for the cia, that the agency did not want to address. years later congress would investigate the kennedy assassination, the house of representatives, and they would find witnesses from within the cia who said that the cia had photographs of -- surveillance

photographs that were taken of oswald during his mexico city trip. and it appeared there were tape recordings of his telephone calls when he was in mexico city. and all this evidence would never be shared with the warren commission. in fact, the cia would claim that the tapes were erased routinely before the assassination and these photographs never existed and yet sure appears that they may well have existed. >> you begin in your book with mexico city and you end with mexico city. this is sylvia duran's name in oswald's address book. can we know what happened there? what's your conclusion when you thing about mexico city? >> i'll tell you one bit of hope i have here is that there may still be questions to be answered in mexico city. there are people alive to this day who seem to know much more about what oswald was doing in mexico city in the fall of 1963 than they ever shared with the

united states government or that they were ever asked about at the time. a lot of these people seem to have been ignored by the fbi and the cia in 1963 and 1964, and they seem to be able to place oswald in the company of people who may have wanted to see president kennedy dead who may have encouraged him to go back to texas and do what he did. i think the single-most eye-popping document i found in all the work i did on this book, and it is found at the national archives, is a letter that was sent by fbi director j. edgar hoover to the warren commission in june 1964 in which he reveals -- and i think he reveals very reluctantly -- that the fbi had come across reliable information to suggest that oswald, while he's in mexico, had been talking openly about his intention to kill president kennedy. that he'd actually marched into an embassy, communist embassy

certainly the cuban embassy, and announced that he was going to kill president kennedy. that letter from hoover to the warren commission seems to disappear. i've shown it to members of the warren commission staff who -- the men who should have seen it at the time or should have been able to follow up and investigate further in mexico city and they're convinced they never saw it. if you had seen it, you would think they would go back to mexico and find out who else had heard oswald make that boast and what they did with that investigation. were there people in mexico city who hearing this man talk openly about his plan to kill president kennedy encouraged him to do that, promised him help if he could get out of the united states after killing the president? but the warren commission was never allowed to investigate because it appears they never saw this letter. >> this is a video of the government printing office's copy of the warren report, 26

volumes. did this work serve the public well? >> i think unhappily history shows that the warren commission missed a tremendous amount of information perhaps inadvertently, information was hidden from the warren commission. and there is at least the possibility that people around lee harvey oswald knew what he was planning to do and may have encouraged him to do what he was going to do. and conspiracy is a loaded word, but that does raise the question as to whether or not there were other people who conspired with lee harvey oswald to kill john kennedy. >> we're sitting in the conference room that the warren commission used, the same bookshelves, the same table. what did the people who came to you to ask you to write this book, what has been their reaction to your work? >> i think a lot of them have been horrified to discover just how much evidence was withheld

from them in 1964. i think they all had a strong sense that material had been destroyed or hidden from them way back when. i don't think they knew the extent of it until now. i think a lot of the people the foreign-born commission staffers who were central figures in my book and were the people i depended on in my interviews, a lot of them are grtfied to see that my book recognizes the fact that most of them were not trying to hide anything. many of them were eager to find a conspiracy if one existed. they really worked their hearts out on this investigation. some of them to the point of physical collapse. and i think they're pleased by the fact that history showed they tried to do their jobs well. if the warmen commission failed, i wasn't because of them. they tried to make this work. >> you had written two books about very important commissions in the history of the united states. what lessons can the american public draw from your work about the value of these commissions?

>> i'll tell you the largest conclusion i've come to, which is that both the 9/11 commission and the warren commission investigation were hindered by the fact that politics and politicians played a role that have damaged the reputation of both investigations. i wonder whether or not in the future when we face the next national tragedy, which is doubtless on its way, whether or not we want to have truly independent scholars and historians run these investigations? i think that might have served us very well if real historians, real scientists, real technicians got involved in the investigation of president kennedy and 9/11. they might have resulted in a lot of the conspiracy theories about both of those tragedies that we still have to contend with.

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