>> i published a biography of john connally in 1989.n fact, i was on booktv back there in 1989 on that, but this was a 680 page biography and the dallas assassination sided with the conley and center some ago lost in all of those pages about the whole life. and so i very much wanted to be part of the conversation of the 50th anniversary commemoration, and that's why i went back to this material and dug deeper into the motive of oswald. and now i think i've made a compelling case that oswald was going after connally and not after kennedy. >> james reston, jr. is the author of "the accidental victim: jfk, lee harvey oswald, and the real target in dallas." >> and it's a rare constant in american political life. but if you look at congress in 1901, less than 2% of members came from working-class background. got into politics and that eventually wound up in congress. fast-forward to the present day. the average number of congress met less than 2% of the career doing manual labor jobs, service industry jobs. and so this is one thing that real

with a car and a metal bar over the car to which the roof can be attached and then there's governor connally. he had to make sure he missed the windshield and after the first shot everyone would see him. right behind gft there was a secret service. the minute he took the first shot so he waits. the car turns in front of all small and now his back is facing him. this is when he decides he's grandam shoot because it is only ten to 15 miles per hour driving a straight line away from him and the optical illusion is the car isn't even moving it is just getting smaller. and so that is when he looks through that rifle scope and jfk appears to only be 40 feet away from the scope and that is when he fires the first shot. >> that he is seen. >> yes. ten people solve their will pointing out the window. a couple people saw him right below the window, three of his co-workers were looking out the fifth floor windows and a 15-year-old schoolboy. they are protecting the president. as they are pointing the rifle out they are looking at the peril and squeezes the trigger. >> one of those people come fault whe

i have directed secretary connally to suspend temporarily the convertibility of the dollar into goldother reserve assets, except in amounts and conditions determined to be in the interest of monetary stability and in the best interest of the united states. 40 years after the historic conference here, economists and politicians still applaud the goals and the accomplishments of bretton woods. it was an historic undertaking to set up rules and procedures to promote world trade that would benefit all nations. many of the institutions and policies are still in service. but not the exchange rate system. it fell victim to changing patterns of trade and investment. eventually the world was flooded with so many dollars, the dollar could not hold its value. we asked economic analyst richard gill whether any fixed exchange rate system could last forever. forever, as they say, is a very long time, and the experience under bretton woods, suggegetoo great, fixed exchange rate system, ev if it has some flexibility, has a tendency to buckle. actually, the key words there are, in fact, "supply and d

happens gradually -- >> although it is fascinating rereading a fantastic book and this fbi agent john connallyw up in the neighborhood, i mean, a lot of it was old allegiances to the bulger family. >> and also, south boston where so much of that case took place is now becoming gender fied in a way it was such an insular -- >> he returned to a boosten he didn't recognize. >> there wasn't a lot of media coverage but i was in the courtroom for the sentencing for bulger. the victim paimpact statements were no different than the victim pact statements you hear every single day in court. these people, you could just still hear and feel the passion and the pain that they suffered. >> bulger, what he was so concerned about was not being seen as a rat and not being seen as somebody who killed women but apparently he did. >> he did. it is too bad there weren't cameras in the courtroom because his whole defense in the case was not that i'm not guilty of being a gangster, i'm not guilty of being a drug dealer and killing my enemies, i just didn't inform, and i didn't kill women. >> all right. we'll take a

going after connally and not after kennedy. >> james reston, jr. is the author of "the accidental victim: jfk, lee harvey oswald, and the real target in dallas." >> and it's a rare constant in american political life. but if you look at congress in 1901, less than 2% of members came from working-class background. got into politics and that eventually wound up in congress. fast-forward to the present day. the average number of congress met less than 2% of the career doing manual labor jobs, service industry jobs. and so this is one thing that really hasn't changed, you know, different aspects of the political podcast. big money in politics and the decline of unions and while all of this is happening, there's one of the constants during the, during the last 100 years or so is that working-class people are not getting elected to political office. >> doesn't matter there's a socioeconomic disparity between most elected officials and the citizens they represent? nicholas carnes looks at "white-collar government" tonight at nine on "after words." and in

the spring of 1963 in a meeting in el paso texas between president kennedy, johnson and governor connally. in 1960, the election was very close so they knew that in 1964 they had to carry some states in the south so they picked the two with the most electoral votes, florida and texas and decided to campaign in those states. november 16th president kennedy went to florida. and he went to cape canaveral, palm beach, tampa and miami. then he came back to washington. then they planned to leave on fears a november 21 for texas. mrs. kennedy was going to go along. >> that's the reason you went on this trip is that mrs. kennedy was on the track. so take us through that first morning and as you are at the white house how does the day began? >> the president had an appointment with the two ambassadors from the united states to a couple countries in africa and the was the only one that he had. when he came down from the second presidents he passed by my office, stuck his head in and he said we are going to take along a helicopter and i said yes mr. president we will have the agents alerted and so t

on the conservative side by governor john connally. lyndon johnson was kind of in the middle. he was trying to put the party back together. >> host: connelly was his close friend. >> guest: secretary of the navy and a john kennedy, but essentially kennedy, kennedy's presidency is only really understood well in the electoral context that you would understand well and i understand well. kennedy had been elected by a smidgen. some say he was not elected at all. 119,000 votes on the official record. texas, tiny, tiny number of votes. you know, a few tens of thousands in the large texas electorate. look, kennedy during his full term worried about that reelection. it did not matter that things were good. he remembered how close it had been. he needed taxes. that is why he was there. >> host: i want to go back to because i did not give enough time to talk about your discovery of the broad recording. i want to get back to that. the entire basis, as i recall, the house investigation that concluded in 1979 was the fact that there was a microphone that was stuck open of a dallas police o

i think of the words of paul connally who said, i believe it is not arguing well but speaking differently is the most prevalent. speaking differently is what i aspire to, and what i so adamantly admire in the poetry of adrian, matt, frank, lucy; i am amazed to be in your company. thank you, alice james books for publishing my first book. thank you, gray wolf press, for publishing this one and taking some exquisite care with it. i'm so grateful to so many but i want to especially think gabrielle, who inspired so many of these poems, michelle, and my brother, mark, for helping me through them. thank you to my husband, jerry, the heart to whom i speak for everything. and final thanks to my family. my family. and especially to my mother, who made me. thank you. [applause] ♪ >> okay to present the national book award for fiction is charles mcgrath. mcgrath is former editor of "the new york times" book review and before that the deputy editor of "the new yorker." please mccharles mcgrath. stand by, charles. i have the wrong cards. [inaudible] conversation [inaudible conversations] >> that's ser