and i loved that alfred powell did too. >> so we had been talking about pages in the 19th and 20th century, and we've been talking about boys. and it was all boys. up until 1939 when briefly, for a day, we had a girl by the name of jeanne cox who was appointed by her father, who was a representative. and she served for the opening day in 1939 and was paid the going rate of $4 a day as a page, and it was really a symbolic appointment. but we don't see girls entering the page program really for another -- more than 30 years. it's not until 1973 when carl albert of oklahoma is speaker, and he had become pen pals with a young woman, thelda looper of oklahoma, who had come to the

capitol and saw these pages and thought, wow, what a great opportunity this would be and saw they were all boys and was told, well, we just don't feel like this is the place for girls to operate. >> and i at that age between sixth and seventh grade said, well that's just not fair. he said, well, maybe we can do something about that. so when i went back to school in the fall, i wrote letters to mr. albert. and wrote letters to mr. albert and wrote letters to mr. al berd for many years, and finally one day when i was just about to graduate from high school, i got a call from charlie ward, who was mr. albert's administrative assistant, and he asked me how i would feel about being the first woman page. well, needless to say, i was finally ecstatic about this. i said, well i'll have to ask my parents first. he said, well, mr. albert has already spoken the to your

parents and it's okay with them. and i said absolutely. so that's how it began. >> and by the latter 1970s. it's about half and half females, half males, and it's in the early 1980s that we have the first female based on her grades in the capitol page school elevated to the speaker's page, which was a real accomplishment for the girls of the day. but they're a pretty late addition to the history of the page program. technology was always changing the job of the pages. whether it was the telegraph or the telephone, which obviated telegraph pages, so technology by the latter 20th century, particularly in the computer age, the hand held smart foej age begins to obviate the tasks

that pages had taken. the need for messengers on the floor was not that great by the latter part of the 20th century. and the ability to dlir documents electronically really cut back on a lot of the chores that the pages of old had to do. so by the early 20th century it leads house leadership in 2011 to decide that the page program is no longer central and trit call to the legislative process, legislative functions. one of the commonalities in article history interviews or in memoirs that we have researched or even in news articles where individuals look back on their page service, they really saw it as a highlight of their youth. >> in retrospect certainly that whole experience that summer changed my life. i minean, it just changed the w

i look at the world and politics, certainly our government. >> well, i remember i was around for the voting rights act in '65. i think medicare also. those kinds of things, the legislation was more historic and certainly more important than anything about my appointment. >> we know of roughly two dozen individuals who would serve in the house or the senate, who had been pages, as teenagers. but it was an experience that again, gave them a human perspective on the way that congress worked, and an appreciation for the legislative process that you just couldn't pick up from a book. >> you've been watching c-span's american history tv. we want to hear from you.

follow us on twitter at c-span history. connect with us on facebook at facebook.com/cspanhistory where you can leave comments too. and check out our upcoming programs on our website. c-span.org/history. >> and we would like to tell you about our other american history tv programs. join us every saturday at 6:00 p.m. and 10:00 p.m. eastern for a special look at the civil war. we'll bring you the battlefields, let you hear from scholars and reenact tors again, that's program on the civil war, every saturday at 6:00 and 10:00 p.m. eastern here on american history tv on c-span 3. here's a look at the programs you'll find christmas dayton the c-span networks. holiday festivities start at 10:00 a.m. eastern on c-span tw the lighting of the national

christmas tree. followed by the white house christmas decorations with first lady michelle obama and the lighting of the capitol christmas tree. and just after 12:30 p.m., celebrity activists talk about their causes. then at 8:00, supreme court justice samuel ioalito. on c-span 2 at 10:00 a.m. eastern, venture to this the art of good writing with steve pinker. and at 12:30 see the feminine side of a super hero as jill lepore searches the secret history of wonder woman. and at 8:00 a.m. eastern, the follow the berlin wall with c-span footage of president george bush and bob dole with speeches for presidents john kennedy and ronald reagan. at noon, fashion experts on first lady fashion choices and how they represented the styles of the times in which they lived. and then at 10:00, 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. for the complete schedule, go to c-span.org. each week american history tv's american artifacts takes you to museums and historic places. >> i'm don richard, the senate historian, and we're in the senate caucus room which is in the russell senate office building. before c-span started covering the senate in late 1986, this was the most famous room in the capitol, and in the capitol complex, because this is where the major hearings had been televised going back to the -- well, newsreels covered it back in the 1920s and '30s, but television came along in the 1940s. in 1941 a senator from missouri named harry truman says that we're getting ready to go to war. we're spending millions of dollars on defense. we need to look into the way the defense contracts are being allocated. we need to make sure that money

is being spent wisely and we're not being gypp eped by unscrupus developers. and in fact, truman was a great scholar of history and had read a lot about the american civil war and knew that a lot of shotty equipment had been, you know, sold to the government during that period. and so he held investigations in here. but truman had also read enough about the joint committee on the conduct of the war, which made life very difficult for abraham lincoln, and he decided he was not going to do that again, so whenever he discovered any irregularities that involved government officials, he always tipped off the white house ahead of time. so the president could fire that person, or reorganize that before truman held his public hearings on this. so he was not a thorn in the president's side. and as a result, when franklin roosevelt was looking for a vice president in 1944, truman was acceptable to him. and got on the ticket and became president as a result of that.

and so the truman committee was certainly a big boost to its chairman, as well as saved the federal government millions of dollars and probably put a lot better equipment out on the field when the government did go to war. the truman committee still exists, by the way. after the war was over, the senate made it the permanent sub committee on investigations. and it's still carrying on investigations. it's been doing that famously for the last half century. after truman left the committee, the committee continued looking into the war contracting and the most famous hearings actually were in the early -- late 1940s when howard hughes testified. one of the issues brought up was during the war hoougz was dealing with a lot of government

contracts, and whenever air force personnel would come see him about the planes he was building. he would say general, you're just a superb manager. when this war is over, you have a job with hughes aircraft. of course, that made them more sympathetic towards making sure he got the contracts. the movie "aviator" is about a lot of his testimony in this, before what was known at that point as the truman committee, even though truman wasn't the chair of it. >> senator, may i ask a question? >> if you just wait until i issue a subpoena for mr. mars, i would ask you whether or not you were producing and you said you didn't know, as i understand. >> i don't remember if that was your answer. >> well, what was your answer? >> i don't remember. get it off the record. >> now mr. hughes, i'm asking you what your answer was. we're not going to have this bickering back and forth. you are before this committee, and you're going to answer the questions. >> in the 1960s, you had this is

the room where senator jay william fulbright is interrogating members of the johnson administration about american policy in vietnam, and is also giving equal time to critics like george cannon and to others who had raised issues. this was the first time anti-war speakers got the platform. they prevailed on cbs to stop broad kaing during the day these hearings. they didn't want to give that platform to opponents of the war. so they went back to running i love lucy episodes. and they come as a result of this suppression that was going on that the administration had to put forward. and so senator fulbright's hearings, he called them educational hearings, it was the first time that americans

realized that there was more than one side in vietnam. and it had a big impact, i think, in terms o f the growing anti-war movement. >> i was once asked by a radio correspondent to describe this room to a radio audience that couldn't see it. and i said, you know, this room always reminds me of grand opera. because it's a magnificent setting. when there's an investigation, it usually has a large cast of characters and a cplot. >> it's a pack of lies and i can tear it apart. and it is unfair to have my integrity questioned and not being allow to cross examine the senator. >> you understood and the record is clear. >> you've been watching c-span's american history tv. we want to hear from you. follow us on twitter at c-span history. connect with us on facebook at

facebook.com/csp facebook.com/cspanhistory where you can leave comments, too. and check out our upcoming programs at our website. c-span.org/history. >> and we would like to tell you about some of our other american history tv programs. join us every sunday at 4:00 p.m. eastern for reel america, featuring archival films. join us as these films take you on a journey through the 20th century. that's reel america every sunday at 4:00 p.m. here on american history tv on c-span 3. here's a look at some of the programs you'll find christmas day on the c-span networks. holiday fistivities start at 10:00 a.m. on c-span with the lighting of the national christmas tree, follow eed by white house christmas decorations with first lady

michelle obama and the lighting of the capitol christmas tree. and celebrity activists talk about their causes. then at 8:00, supreme court justice samuel alito and former florida governor jeb bush on the bill of rights and the founding fathers. on c-span 2 at 10:00 eastern, venture into the art of good writing with steve pinker and 10:30, see the feminine side of a super hero. and at 7:00 p.m., author pamela paul and others talk about their reading habits, and on american history tv on c-span 3 at 8:00 a.m. eastern, the fall of the berlin wall with c-span footage of president george bush and bob dole, with speeches from presidents john kennedy and ronald reagan. at noon, fashion experts on first lady fashion choices and how they represented the styles of the times in which they lived, and then at 10:00, former nbc news anchor tom brokaw on his more than 50 years of reporting on world events. that's this christmas day on the

c-span americas. for our complete schedule, go to c-span.org. 50 years ago on september 24th, 1964, supreme court chief justice earl warren handed a report of the president's commission on the assassination of president kennedy to president lyndon johnson in the oval office. the seven commissioners pictured here with president johnson and general counsel jay lee rankin concluded that lee harvey oswald acted alone in killing president kennedy. the warren commission worked for nine months in this building, the washington office of the vfw, a short walk from the supreme court building and the u.s. capitol. we set up a camera in a fourth floor conference room to talk to investigative journalist philip shenon, whose book "a cruel and shocking act" examines the warren commission's work, using key phone calls, documents and artifacts, mr. shenon

explains the lingering controversies regarding the war and the report. but first we take a brief tour of the former warren commission offices. >> hi, i'm brian summers, marketing director for the u.s. capitol historical society. you're in the building of the foreign wars. the commission met here for approximately nine months. we're in catch them hall, a room where the testimony from the witnesses and those substantial to the investigation met here in this historic building itself. it was in this room here on this floor of the hall that the wavrn commission saw for the very first time the entirety. committee investigation and hearings would have taken place down here at the time in mid may of '64, lee harvey oswald's brother was here. in february of '64 and we have

photographs to substantiate that in the building here. and much of the work was up on the fourth floor, which we will see in a moment. which houses the u.s. capitol historical society. we're now on the fourth floor of the u.s. capitol historic society where in 1964 this would have been the working floor for the warren commission. i'm going to show you the office of chief justice earl warren. this would be chief justice earl warren's desk and his chair. you pretty sure this was his chair? >> absolutely. we have a lot of substantial information on it and from the vfw itself but also he was here as it came to the society. we are less than almost 150 feet from the court building itself, the supreme court, where he worked every day obviously and then came here in the after hours to see how the investigation was going on. if yo u can glance out the window, you can see why the proximity to the court and the

building here would have been to his choosing. this being the office of chief justice earl warren. this was a 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 by council here. our inspector came to visit our building several years ago and pointeded out this was the office he and another associate worked in as they were investigating the death of the president in 1964. so now we're entering the conference room of what that time would have been, the warren commission, investigating the death of the president. much of the the furniture as the building itself we inherited from the veteran of foreign wars and inherited the furniture that came from the commission from the 1960s. well, i think this room was used

for individual witness interviews, smaller scale interviews, the less critical witnesses, that there was a very important witness and several of the commissioners were in attendance. i understand it was held downstairs in the larger conference room. but a tremendous amount of business was transacted in this room. i wrote this book because my first book was a history of the 9/11 commission. and i had covered the 9/11 commission investigation for "the new york times" from start to finish. after it wept out of business, i discovered there was a lot about the story that i had missed, and i learned this by going and interviewing a lot of the staffers who had done the actual digging of the 9/11 commission. so that book was publiced in 2008. and after the book got some nice reviews, i got a telephone call at my desk in the washington bureau of "the new york times," and the caller was somebody i didn't know, but he was a very prominent american lawyer who

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

september, 1964. almost exactly 50 years ago in which earl warren is handing the final report to president johnson. and perhaps and, perhaps, we want to point out the other members of the commission who are there. this is jon jay mccloi, former president of the world bank and sort of the great immense in washington of long standing. next to him is jay lee rankin, general counsel of the warren commission who really ran the staff. he was the solicitor 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 might well have been a conspiracy in kennedy's death. next to him is gerald ford, who would go on to become president of the united states, who was at the time a powerful house republican. it would later be learned that

ford had volunteered to be a secret informant for the fbi on the warren commission, to share information with the fbi quietly. and ford would acknowledge that years later. next to him, chief justice warren, president johnson. next to president johnson is alan 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 that dulles knew about the cia plots to kill fidel castro. in fact, he may have ordered some of those plots. yet he apparently shared none of that information with the warren commission. even though that information might have given -- suggested

paths of investigation -- indiana was prominent in the democratic leadership of the house and was very close to john kennedy. >> we're 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 as the definitive answer to many of the questions asked about the kennedy assassination, appears not to have been that. and it is remarkable to have discovered 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 fidel castro had killed president kennedy and that the warren commission had somehow been mislead. it's a remarkable thing to discover the president of the united states, who commissioned the warren commission, did not

believe the commission's findings. >> president johnson is obviously thrust into power by the assassination. his initial instinct is not to have a federal investigation of the assassination. as it turns out, a 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. and johnson also said he didn't want a bunch of, as he put it, carpet baggers going into his home state of texas to run this investigation. he wanted it handled by the state and county and city officials in dallas. but within days of the assassination, conspiracy the y theories started to spin. and some of those focused on lyndon johnson as a potential suspect in the murder of his predecessor. and johnson said, essentially, these conspiracy theories are spinning so wildly, have i to bring an end to it and i have to bring an end to it by the

creation of an independent commission in washington to investigate all that could be learned about the assassination and lee harvey oswald who was apparently the president's assassin. johnson settled on chief justice earl warren who can run this. warren was a very controversial figure in america in 1963. but he was also much admired for his independence and his personal integrity. and he was a republican. and johnson wanted a republican to run this investigation to show that it was truly bipartisan and truly an effort to get at the facts, whatever they might be. johnson also decides he wants representatives from the house and senate to serve on the commission and he wants 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 because it hasn't been announced chief justice warren will lead it, this investigation of the assassination and 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. and johnson then has the white house press office issue a statement to the white house 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 made an announcement. >> announcement of what? >> of this special commission. >> oh, you have already? >> yes. and i got -- may i read it to you? >> yes. >> the president announced he's appointing a special commission to study and report upon all the facts and circumstances relating to the assassination of the late president john f. kennedy and the subsequent violent deft 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 full special commission. the members of the special commission are chief justice

earl warren, chairman. senator richard russell, georgia. senator john keeper, kentucky. representative gerald ford, michigan. honorable alan dulles, washington. john j. mccloi, new york. the special commission is instructed to evaluate all information. federal bureau of investigation is make 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 justice warren. i don't like that man.

>> 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 a similar set of strong-arm tactics on the chief justice. johnson settles on warren very early on 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 pep can't do it. he thinks the commission is a fine idea, but it cannot be led by him. when johnson gets word warren has turned down, warren is summoned within hours to the oval office. and unfortunately we, to 9 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. apparently this confrontation leaves the chief justice in tears, but agreeing to run the investigation. this is an artifact they allowed us to videotape. oswald's guide map to mexico city. what is that? >> in my mind, in many ways, the untold chapter of the kennedy assassination story. is what happened when lee harvey oswald traveled to mexico city just several weeks before the assassination. have i to admit that 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.

and 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 how much they had known about oswald in the weeks before the assassination and the threat he might pose to president kennedy. it turns out that oswald went to mexico city apparently to get the visa and paperwork that would allow him to defect to cuba, much as he tried to defect to the soviet union. 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 reason 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 certainty 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 warren commission's best reconstruction of where oswald went and who he might have met with while in mexico. we now know a tremendous 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 remarkable story. in 1965, a year after the warren commission goes out of business,

a diplomat -- 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 those sympathetic to castro, those who might have wanted to see president kennedy dead. and who oswald may well have been in the company of two young beetnik is the word used, whose identities have never been revealed. thomas, very fine diplomat, very 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 thomas becomes is one of 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 would 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 fbi knew about oswald in mexico city. it appears that after he's forced out of this -- out of the state department, he is then denied any 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 rogers, then president nixon's

secretary of state, asking, pleaseding 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 bit name of william coleman, who at the time one of the most prominent african-american attorneys in the country and his junior staff fellow, a fellow by the name of david slassin, very young from denver, in his 30s. coleman was very much involved with his law firm in philadelphia. slausen 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 slausen, 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 the national museum of archives allowed us to videotape. this is oswald address book. that's the cover of it. inside is this page, consulate of cuba and name, sylvia doran. >> she turns out to be a very important figure in all of this. the warren commission staff saw her as a very important figure in all of this. she's a young mexican woman, a committed socialist, who is employed by the cuban consulate in mexico city. she's the person who dealt face to face with oswald while he tried 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. they were seen around town together, including a party attended by cuban diplomats, some of whom had spoken openly in the past about their hopes that somebody would kill president kennedy. the warren commission staff, this young fellow, david slausen, in particular, is desperate to talk to sylvia duran, to interview her to find out what she might know. after much negotiation, it appears sylvia duran will come to washington, agree to be interviewed but that idea is vetoed by chief justice warren who refuses to allow her to be interviewed. apparently his words are, she's a communist and, again, his words, we don't talk to communists. so 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. 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 -- president kennedy is killed a year after the cuban missile crisis. there was almost a nuclear war over cuba. the year before that there was the debacle at the bay of pigs where the kennedy administration and the cia attempted to overthrow castro. and we now know the kennedy administration was trying to kill castro. >> 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, oswald's wife, was living at the time, to interview her. and on the basis of what marina oswald tells lee harvey oswald, he writes in his notebook, hosty's name and a telephone number and i believe it's his 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. 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 the typewritten version. he discovered the fbi'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 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 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 -- >> not at all. not at all. and you know, i leave this with the inability to say even the craziest conspiracy theory has no basis because so much basic evidence was destroyed or hidden from the very first hours after president kennedy's body was returned to the -- 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 investigation 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. 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 with held from the commission. ruth payne 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 of dallas. she would become a key figure in the warren commission investigation. and there would be initially some suspicion that miss payne

knew much more than she was sharing. i think 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 had actually been retired forcibly after creating a stir. he would -- he was a far right extremist. who was overseeing extremist groups in dallas. he was a nationalist in the segregation movement. and in april 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 that he may well have used the same rifle in trying to kill walker that he would use in daley plaza to kill kennedy. it's marina oswald in the warren commission investigation who says her husband tried to kill the president. he had admitted that to her. >> did marina oswald come here? >> she did, indeed. she came on more than one occasion. she was here for, i think, several days in february 1964. she was the lead-off formal witness for the commission. and she was an important witness because she made it clear that she thought her husband had killed president kennedy and she thought he had done it alone.