>> 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

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

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 of

cheering and stopped a couple of times and at one point he was driving the governor of texas and john connally and the governor's wife. she said mr. president, you can't say they don't love you in dallas today. down the street they are going to make the turn. tell us about oz called. where was he and how did he get there in that moment? >> he brought in the rifle to work that morning and told the man that drove him turn it around where i'm staying. the house already had drapes and curtains and as an aside the searched the entire building after the assassination and no curtain rods were ever found. so she hides the rifle and most of the workers were coming down for lunch to watch the president in the book depository. he doesn't have a radio and he knows when the president is about to arrive and knows when the president comes to houston street people of what we are going to start leaving said that is his signal jfk is coming close. he drove right towards him. >> everyone is looking at the book depository and there was the windshield with a car and a metal bar over the car to which the roof can b