[ ♪♪ ]
>> It appears as though
something has happened
in the motorcade route.
Something, I repeat,
has happened in
the motorcade route.
>> Bob: It was over
half a century ago,
but for so many it
seems like only yesterday.
>> From Dallas, Texas, the flash
apparently official,
President Kennedy died at
1pm Central Standard Time.
>> Bob: And for 54 years,
there have been questions about
the official story.
Was Lee Harvey Oswald
really the killer?
Did he act alone?
Was it a conspiracy?
>> Did you shoot the president?
>> I didn't shoot anybody.
No, sir.
>> The official story
just doesn't hang together,
and so, people are still hungry
for information about this
shocking event, and they
realized that the story
they've been given is false.
>> Bob: But now, thousands of
secret files have finally
been made public,
classified documents about
the Kennedy assassination,
hidden away for decades at
the National Archives in
Washington, triggering a kind
of historical feeding frenzy,
online and on air.
>> Today's most
anticipated release--
>> Highly anticipated
documents--
>> The release of previously
classified documents--
>> Thousands of
never-before-seen
classified documents.
>> Bob: Documents like this one
from the FBI director
two days after
the assassination--
We need to "convince the public
Oswald is the real assassin."
So, can those recently
released records explain
the inexplicable?
>> Actually, the president's
death was preventable,
and may have been easily
prevented if somebody had just
read through the files
of the FBI and the CIA.
>> Bob: Ahead, the fight over
the documents that may
disprove the official story of
what happened on
November 22nd, 1963, and why.
>> There was this fella Oswald,
and we didn't really know much
about him, and he came out of
nowhere and shot the
president, and what these files
show is that's a cover story.
That was not true.
[ ♪♪ ]
>> Friday morning, 11:37.
The president's jet
lands at the Dallas Airport,
Love Field.
[ ♪♪ ]
>> Bob: It all began on the
morning of November 22nd,
a Friday.
[ Cheering and Applause ]
>> Bob: But the outwardly warm
reception in Dallas masked the
outright hatred many in
Texas felt for the president.
1963 was the
height of the Cold War,
and that morning, full-page
right-wing newspaper ads called
him a traitor, with accusations
of being soft on communism.
Anti-Castro Cubans seethed at
his reluctance to invade
and liberate their homeland.
But as the presidential
limousine carrying the Kennedys,
and Texas Governor
John Connally and his wife,
wended its way through
Downtown Dallas just before
12:30pm, the route was lined
by a crowd many deep.
Suddenly, there were gunshots.
[ Gunshots ]
>> Bob: The president's head
jerked back and to the left,
then the motorcade sped away.
>> It's official now--
The president has
been assassinated.
>> Bob: But consider this.
In the months
before that killing,
a most unusual movie
was shot in
and around Washington, DC.
[ ♪♪ ]
>> And I will not
resign voluntarily.
I'm going to fight you and
then we'll see which one of us
the United States is
willing to follow.
>> Bob: Seven Days In May was
the story of a military coup
against the American President.
>> I'm suggesting, Mr President,
there is a military plot to take
over the government.
>> There are some who will
say it can never happen here.
>> Bob: Incredibly, at the
same time,
it seems President Kennedy
was openly worried
about the possibility of a coup.
[ ♪♪ ]
>> Bob: The story made its
way to Brian McKenna,
then a young
Montréal Star reporter,
from a Canadian admiral
assigned to the Pentagon.
>> And he told me he couldn't
understand how openly they
talked about a coup,
how openly they talked
about Seven Days In May,
which was a novel that was
being turned into a movie.
>> That brought a secret
presidential messenger to death
in a plane crash in Spain,
the day a senator of
the United States
was held against his well.
>> And he found it
shocking, actually.
He found it-- he said it was
basically sedition they
were speaking,
but they were--
they were
planning something.
He had this sense
they were
planning something, definitely.
>> Bob: What's more,
when McKenna contacted
the movie's director,
he learned the film
had been encouraged by none
other than President Kennedy.
>> And he said,
"Pierre Salinger, the
"Press Secretary to John
Kennedy, called me one day and
"said, 'The president will
give you the White House
"for a weekend to shoot, that he
wants you to make that story,
"that book, into a movie,'" as a
warning to Americans of what
is possible out there.
>> Bob: It was a
shocking scenario,
a government takeover,
the killing of a President,
but in just a few weeks
John Kennedy himself
would be dead.
The tragic events have been a
journalistic touchstone
for Brian McKenna ever since.
>> Oh, nothing comes close.
Nothing comes close to
the Kennedy assassination,
and the-- and the greatest
murder mystery of the
20th century, clearly.
[ ♪♪ ]
>> Bob: And before long,
McKenna joined the CBC,
where he produced this.
The Fifth Estate investigation
of the Kennedy killing,
on its 20th anniversary,
drew almost 3 million viewers,
the show's biggest
audience ever.
>> 20 years ago today,
President John F Kennedy
was assassinated in Dallas.
[ ♪♪ ]
>> The president's
brother Robert Kennedy,
then Attorney General,
was haunted by
the possibility of a conspiracy.
[ ♪♪ ]
>> Bob: And it
started with this man.
In the fall of 1963,
Lee Harvey Oswald
was on the move,
based in Dallas, but seen
distributing pro-Communist
pamphlets in New Orleans,
and travelling to Mexico City,
where he sought visas from
the Soviet Embassy
and Cuban consulate.
However, the new documents
reveal that if Oswald thought
he was under the radar,
he certainly was not.
>> Oswald kind of came to the
attention of the CIA in 1963
in two places-- in New Orleans
in August 1963,
and in Mexico City about six
weeks later in October of 1963.
>> Bob: Investigative journalist
Jeff Morley says the newly
released files detail the extent
of American surveillance
of Lee Harvey Oswald,
especially in Mexico,
by the CIA.
>> Mind you, everywhere Oswald
goes on this-- this little
adventure, he's tripping off
CIA surveillance activities.
When he walks into
the Cuban consulate,
they have an impulse
camera on that door,
so when he penetrates
the plane of the door,
that camera goes
off, when he goes in,
when he comes out.
Same thing down the
street at the Soviet Embassy,
impulse camera.
When he gets into
the Soviet Embassy,
he talks, his voice is
picked up on a CIA wiretap.
>> Bob: What's more,
Jeff Morley says,
the files also show
that back in 1963,
in Dallas, the FBI
had its eyes on Oswald, too.
>> They knew where he was,
and they were visiting him and
his wife on a regular basis just
to kind of check in with them.
>> Bob: Incredibly,
given all that,
somehow, Lee Harvey Oswald
found himself in Dallas,
at the very same
time as the president,
armed with a rifle,
and apparently away
from the prying eyes of
the CIA and FBI.
How could that be?
Author Jeff Morley...
>> And so, the question
is were they incompetent?
Nobody in the CIA or
FBI does anything,
and they're just
asleep at the real.
That's one theory.
That's the official theory.
Everybody was just asleep at
the wheel and he just
slipped past us.
The other theory, which I lean
more towards, is somebody
was watching Oswald the
whole time, and that's
proven by these documents.
>> Bob: After the break,
what role do those new
documents show the CIA played
in the assassination of JFK?
>> There's two crimes here.
One is the murder itself,
and the second is the
cover-up to the murder, and what
we are witnessing with
all of these things happening
was the cover-up for the murder.
[ ♪♪ ]
[ ♪♪ ]
>> Announcer: The story doesn't
end here.
Like The Fifth Estate's Facebook
page so you can
follow our investigations.
We will post updates on stories
and special video features that
take you deep inside.
[ ♪♪ ]
>> Bob: It is known as
the JFK Records Act,
and back in 1992,
the US Congress
made it American law,
ordering the government to make
public all records about the
Kennedy assassination within
25 years, by 2017,
releasing tens of thousands of
documents kept secret for over
half a century.
>> Well, I think that the
intense media coverage shows
that people are
looking for an answer.
They're looking for a better
explanation than the one that
they've been given for 50 years.
>> Bob: Over the years,
Jeff Morley has had
many unanswered questions.
The former Washington Post
reporter now writes a JFK
website, and has authored
several books about the
assassination and the CIA.
Morley says those declassified
documents have focused attention
on the connection with
JFK's accused killer,
Lee Harvey Oswald, that the
Central intelligence Agency has
tried so long to hide.
>> You've gotta wonder, why go
through all that effort if it's
so obvious that this one guy
killed the president for no
reason, so to me, it's almost
self-evident the government is
hiding something that's highly
embarrassing to them about all
of this.
>> Bob: Which takes us to
Dallas on November 22nd,
1963, and the facts uncovered
by The Fifth Estate broadcast on
the assassination's
20th anniversary.
Along with the
material recently released,
it is more troubling than ever.
>> The president's car is now
turning onto Elm Street and it
will be only a matter of
minutes before he arrives
at the trademark.
>> Bob: It was all most 12:30pm
as the Kennedy motorcade passed
the Texas School Book Depository
and gunshots rang out.
From the beginning, there were
questions about the fatal shots.
[ Gunshots ]
>> It appears as though
something has happened
in the motorcade route.
Something, I repeat, has
happened in the motorcade route.
>> Bob: After the
first bullet struck,
just 5.6 seconds
elapsed until the final shot.
This FBI simulation
concluded Lee Harvey Oswald,
said to be a poor
marksman as a Marine,
had somehow fired three
bullets in those few seconds,
hitting the president, wounding
Texas Governor John Connally,
then the lethal shot
that killed Kennedy.
Ever since, it's been the
official ç story,
there was only one
shooter, the lone gunman,
Lee Harvey Oswald.
Another question was
about Oswald's weapon,
supposedly this
21-dollar bolt action rifle,
but even an expert marksman
couldn't fire three shots in
5.6 seconds with it.
That's when the
official story changed,
deciding the president's and
governor's wounds were caused
not by three bullets,
but just two.
The first shot, they now
argued, hit both men.
>> This bullet, same ammunition.
It looks like a--
>> Bob: In our original report,
Forensic Pathologist Cyril Wecht
explained what was called
the "single bullet theory".
>> The single bullet theory
says that one bullet struck the
president in the back,
coursed through his upper chest,
exited from the
front of his neck,
reentered John Connally's
back, pierced the right lung
collapsing it, severed a
vein, artery and nerve,
broke the right fifth rib
destroying five inches of that
bone, exited from the front of
the governor's right chest,
reentered the back of the
governor's right forearm,
caused a comminuted
fracture of the distal end of
the radius, a very thick
bone, partially severed a vein,
artery and nerve, exited from
the front of the governor's
right wrist, reentered
the governor's left thigh,
went all the way
down to the femur,
the big bone in the
thigh, bounced back,
came out through the same
small hole in the skin,
fell into the
governor's clothing,
from his clothing
onto the stretcher,
and was fortuitously
found a few hours later,
in the afternoon on
Friday November 22nd, 1963
at Parkland Memorial Hospital
by a maintenance employee who
was trying to get to the
men's room and found
the corridor blocked
by stretchers.
>> My take on the magic bullet
theory is nobody in the car
believed that
that's what happened.
>> Bob: According to author
and journalist Jeff Morley,
the four other occupants of the
presidential limousine rejected
the magic bullet theory.
>> Jackie didn't
think that's what happen.
She said, "I don't
remember it that way."
Governor Connally
said it did not happen,
flatly, that the first bullet
hit President Kennedy and the
second bullet hit him.
Governor Connally's wife who
was sitting in the jumpseat with
Governor Connally,
Nelly Connally,
said the same thing.
The Connallys
were both hunters,
experienced with
guns, and Roy Kellerman,
the Secret Serviceman
sitting in the front seat said,
"We were hit with a flurry
of shots,
"including one from the front."
[ ♪♪ ]
>> Bob: Then came this,
the eight millimetre film
of the fatal shot, taken by
Abraham Zapruder,
and kept secret by the CIA
since 1963, was finally
released, 12 years after
the assassination.
For the first time, the world
could see John Kennedy put hands
to throat as the first
bullet rips through him,
from back to front.
But watch as
another bullet strikes.
The president's
head snaps backwards,
convincing many of a second
gunman in front of the car.
In other words, a conspiracy.
In just over an hour,
the Dallas Police
allegedly found that gunman in a
nearby movie theatre,
then whisked him
to headquarters.
He was former Marine and
known communist sympathizer,
Lee Harvey Oswald.
The only record of what he
said was as police escorted him
through the throngs of
reporters and cameras.
>> These people have given
me a hearing without legal
representation or anything.
>> Did you shoot the president?
>> I didn't shoot anybody.
No, sir.
[ Chattering ]
>> Bob: And another question--
on his arrest in Dallas,
what did the US government
know about Lee Harvey Oswald?
>> Now recall, the story was,
there was this fella Oswald and
we didn't really
know much about him,
and he came out of
nowhere and shot the president.
And what these files show
is that's a cover story.
That was not true.
High-level CIA officials were
paying attention to Oswald
from November 1959
to November 1963.
>> Bob: And the newly
released records support that,
files that fly in the
face of the official story.
>> What this release tells me
more is CIA's capabilities to
monitor and manipulate Oswald.
>> Bob: And the
documents show what he did,
and with whom.
For example, this CIA
cable dated October 8th, 1963,
about Oswald's visit to
Mexico City, and his meeting
at the Soviet Embassy with
Valeriy Kostikov, head of
the KGB's Department 13,
its assassinations branch.
That cable went all the
way to the top of the CIA,
the head of the US
counterintelligence,
legendary American
spy James Angleton.
>> The CIA cover story is,
our interest in Oswald
was merely routine.
Well, it wasn't routine.
It was intensive and it
was at a very high level.
>> Bob: And there is another
recently declassified document
that raises questions.
Two days after
Oswald was arrested,
FBI Director J Edgar Hoover
sent a memo marked "Secret",
in which he reveals the FBI had
got a warning that Oswald would
be killed, which he says was
passed on to
the Dallas Police...
"to ask that Oswald be given
sufficient protection,"
he wrote.
If so,
it didn't work.
A few hours later,
Lee Harvey Oswald
was brought down by elevator
to the basement
of police headquarters.
[ Gunshots ]
>> He's been shot.
Oswald has been shot!
>> Bob: For Jeff Morley,
Hoover's memo begs the question,
was it incompetence
or wilful ignorance?
>> No, and that portion of the
memo compounds the travesty of
the chief assassination suspect
being killed in police custody,
because the Dallas Police
had been warned,
and they ignored the warning
and took the prisoner into an
unsecured area.
>> Bob: This is the
man who shot Oswald,
Jack Ruby, a local nightclub
owner and smalltime mobster.
Authorities described him as
insane with grief over
President Kennedy's death.
They concluded that
after Oswald killed Kennedy,
Ruby killed him, and they
both acted alone.
But what about Jack Ruby's
ties to the mob?
What might they indicate?
In our original show,
Eric Malling spoke to
Richard Billings, a
congressional staff member
who investigated the Kennedy
assassination in the late 1970s.
>> The main piece of evidence
of organized crime complicity in
the conspiracy is Jack Ruby.
>> Bob: According to Billings,
Ruby was
a bona fide Mafia member.
>> He was working for mobsters.
He was a runner for Al Capone,
messenger boy when he was a kid.
He-- he worked for
the mob in Chicago.
Ruby was nothing else but mob.
>> Bob: And insiders said
Ruby's killing of Oswald had the
hallmarks of a gangland hit--
quickly approaching the victim,
jamming the gun in his
stomach, pulling the trigger.
So, why would the American Mafia
want to be complicit in the
assassination of the president?
This CIA document, also recently
released, refers to the,
"strong drive
to get after the Mafia,"
by the Kennedys, both JFK and
Attorney General Robert.
By 1963 it was no secret
the mob was fighting back.
Before he died, Jack Ruby told
friends and family his role
in Dallas have been part
of a much larger plot.
And consider this,
the memo written by
FBI Director J Edgar Hoover
after Kennedy was killed,
also recently released.
It's seen by many as proof that
Lee Harvey Oswald was the
US government's
patsy in JFK's death.
Hoover wrote...
>> And so in that moment, the
president's been dead for less
than 48 hours, and Hoover has
already dictated the result that
the official investigation,
which has not begun,
will reach, so the conclusion of
the assassination was dictated
before the investigation began.
That's what that J Edgar Hoover
memo tells us.
>> There's two crimes here.
One is the murder itself, and
the second is the cover-up for
the murder.
>> Bob: For former CBC
producer Brian McKenna,
the more he dug
into the JFK story,
the more he was convinced a
conspiracy killed Kennedy.
He says the most telling clue
was the dramatic change in the
condition of the president's
body from the emergency room in
Dallas, to the
autopsy outside Washington.
When we come back...
>> I mean, you don't
alter a body.
You don't mess with dead people,
and certainly not a
president's body.
>> Bob: How, then,
to explain this?
>> We got the last part of the
sheet off and there was just a
gasp through the room.
And I looked down
and I said to myself,
"My God, there's no brain.
"It's all gone."
>> Announcer: There's
always more to our stories.
You can keep up
with The Fifth Estate
by subscribing to our
weekly newsletter.
We'll tell you what we are
working on and share updates on
past stories.
Sign up on our
website at cbc.ca/fifth.
[ ♪♪ ]
[ ♪♪ ]
>> And just now, we've received
reports here at Parkland.
The first unconfirmed reports
say the president was hit
in the head.
That's an unconfirmed
report, and the president...
>> Bob: To this day, the
official story is that the shot
that killed John Kennedy hit
him in the head from behind,
but is that what
the autopsy showed?
It's an important question
because doubts about the
integrity of JFK's medical
records are among the most
contentious issues
surrounding the assassination.
When Kennedy was declared dead,
the doctors who'd tried to save
him at Parkland Hospital in
Dallas gave a briefing.
Little attention
has been paid to it,
but incredibly, what they
said was the opposite of the
official story.
The doctors
described the fatal shot,
small entry wound in front,
as the Zapruder film
seems to show, massive exit
wound in the back.
What's more, they said Kennedy's
brain was largely intact when
they put his body on the plane
for the autopsy
in Bethesda, Maryland.
>> So, in Parkland, all of
these doctors and radiologists,
and whatever, saw this hole in
the back of Kennedy's head,
and then-- then the body and
the story switches to Bethesda,
the American Naval hospital.
>> Bob: Brian McKenna,
who produced the 1983
Fifth Estate investigation
"Who Killed JFK?"
concluded that when the body
reached the Naval hospital
outside Washington,
its condition
had drastically changed.
>> And there the doctors saw
that damage to the head was not
there, and-- but there was the
whole top of Kennedy's
head was gone.
And it was like, this can't
be happening.
I mean, it's so beyond outrage,
but the facts were very clear.
[ ♪♪ ]
>> Everybody remembers where
they were on November 22nd.
>> Bob: In McKenna's
landmark documentary,
he followed author David Lifton,
who presented evidence that he
said proved the president's
body had been tampered with.
>> I mean, you don't
alter a body.
You don't mess with
that people, dead bodies,
and certainly not a
president's body.
And on the other hand, there's
evidence of all these different
activities altering.
>> Bob: David Lifton had located
and interviewed the people who'd
been part of the chain of
custody for Kennedy's body
after he died.
At Parkland Hospital, an
orderly named Aubrey Reich
wrapped the president in a
white sheet before placing him
in a coffin and closing the lid.
>> You didn't use a body
bag for the president?
>> No, sir.
No way.
>> Absolutely no
question about that?
>> No way.
>> How can you be certain?
>> I was there.
>> And you remember?
>> I remember taking him out.
I was the one that had the blood
on my shirt and everything from
the body.
>> Bob: And Aubrey Reich says
the presidential casket was an
expensive one, made of bronze.
And at Dallas airport,
that's what we saw loaded
onto Air Force One.
After Lyndon Johnson was sworn
in as the new US President,
they began the flight
back to the capital.
Upon landing, the bronze coffin
was removed from the cargo bay
and loaded into a hearse for
transport to the Naval hospital
in Bethesda, Maryland, where
the autopsy would be performed.
Dennis David was a Naval officer
on duty at Bethesda when the
body arrived, but in 1983,
he said the casket he
unloaded wasn't bronze.
>> We offloaded a casket,
and it was carried into
the autopsy room.
This casket is a plain
grey box, if you will,
metal box.
Anybody's ever been in Vietnam
would know what
I'm talking about.
We shipped hundreds of bodies
out of there in the same type
of casket.
It's just a plain
shipping casket.
>> There was a very plain
casket and when I say...
>> Bob: It was medical
technician Paul O'Connor
who opened the casket
in the autopsy room.
>> There was
nothing fancy about it.
As far as being
bronze, it wasn't bronze.
>> Bob: At the end of this hall
at the Bethesda Naval hospital,
the autopsy begin.
If the president's body had left
Dallas wrapped in a white sheet,
that's not what
Paul O'Connor found,
as he told The Fifth Estate.
>> We opened the whole casket up
and there was a grey body bag
zipped shut.
We unzipped the body bag and the
president's body was lifted out
of the body bag.
It was completely naked except
for a sheet wrapped around his
head, a bloody sheet.
>> Bob: But there was more.
Remember, the doctors in Dallas
reported the president's brain
was mostly intact
when it left there,
but that's not what they
discovered in Bethesda.
>> We got the last
part of the sheet off,
and there was just a
gasp through the room.
And I looked down
and I said to myself,
"My God, there is no brain.
It's all gone."
>> Bob: In this photo, the man
in the white medical gown was
x-ray technician Gerald Custer,
who says when he x-rayed
John Kennedy's skull,
there essentially was
no brain remaining.
>> I could fit both my hands
right inside the skull cavity,
and like I mentioned, that I
brought my hands back and there
were still little
pieces of brain cells
that I had to take off my hands
and there was still blood on it.
>> Bob: But for some reason,
the final autopsy report stated
the brain they'd examined
was almost complete.
>> I don't know
where they got it from.
It surely wasn't
the president's.
>> Bob: As outlandish as
it may sound,
David Lifton believes the
evidence suggests that between
his death in Dallas
and arrival in Bethesda,
John Kennedy's body was secretly
removed from the bronze coffin,
his wounds surgically altered,
then he was sent ahead in that
grey metal casket to
arrive before the autopsy.
Essentially, it was
a medical forgery,
seemingly intended to prove the
fatal shot could only have come
from Lee Harvey Oswald's gun.
Now, 30 years
since our first story,
more than 50 since JFK died,
the issues surrounding his
assassination remain the focal
point of writer David Lifton's
career, if not, his life.
After so long, it's been
50 years now,
half a century, what does it
matter if Oswald acted
alone or not?
>> Well, I'm gonna use the
word that I don't like to use,
but basically we had a coup.
That's what this is all about,
not about a second assassin or
whether there's somebody
hiding behind a fence or a bush.
Is the story that Oswald
shot the president a true story
or a fictional story?
If it's a true story, Johnson
became president by
a quirk of fate.
If it's a fictional story, he
became president by design.
Now, I say it's a fictional
story because the evidence
is fraudulent.
>> Bob: It was a conclusion
former producer Brian McKenna
came to agree with.
>> And what we were witnessing
with all of these things
happening was the
cover-up for the murder,
and the most graphic,
in a sense outrageous,
piece of the puzzle was what
happened to the Kennedy--
to the president's body.
>> Bob: The declassified
documents released recently say
nothing about the
president's body or his brain,
but not all the Kennedy
files have yet been made public,
and that is why, as you
will see when we come back,
there now is growing pressure
to release those final secrets.
>> The overwhelming majority
of Americans are on our side--
"Release it all now"--
and when that happens,
we're going to learn something
very new and very interesting
about the assassination of JFK.
I'm quite confident of that.
[ ♪♪ ]
>> Announcer: There is
always more to our stories.
You can stay connected to
The Fifth Estate on Twitter.
Get the latest on upcoming shows
and special video features.
[ ♪♪ ]
>> Bob: He is, unquestionably,
an American icon,
the most glamorous
president ever,
with a White House
called Camelot for a reason.
So, it should
come as no surprise,
John Kennedy's assassination
would generate five million
pages of documents, of which,
even after the recent release,
thousands remain in the
National Archives in Washington,
still kept secret.
According to many who've
followed this story for decades,
like investigative journalist
Brian McKenna,
those final files are
likely the crucial ones.
>> Well, I think we're
in the crown jewels now,
the fact that they're still
trying to hide this stuff,
there is something
explosive there.
I mean, all of the
principal players are dead,
so why-- why are they
still defending this?
Why are they still, you know,
putting a stone circle around
it and saying no one
can go there?
>> Donald J Trump!
>> Bob: Yet in the name
of national security,
President Donald Trump has
pushed the deadline for release
of the final documents
to April 2018.
Author Jeff Morley isn't
convinced it will happen
even then.
>> What the fact that they
didn't comply with the law tells
us is they intend to keep
this, some of this material,
secret indefinitely, and what--
and I say it stands to reason,
it's almost axiomatic, that the
things that they don't release
are going to be
the most sensitive.
Now, some people say,
"Well, they're just
hiding nothing."
I wonder about that.
If they're hiding it,
they're hiding it for a reason,
and they're gonna try
and hide this story.
>> Bob: So, what is
still being hidden?
Perhaps CIA secrets.
Morley has investigated the
surveillance of
Lee Harvey Oswald by
both the CIA and FBI,
especially after Oswald met
KGB Assassinations Officer
Valeriy Kostikov in the
months before
Kennedy was killed.
>> Oswald comes back
to the United States,
and the CIA never
says to the FBI,
"You know, why don't you
go introduce-- you know,
"go interview that guy and find
out, why was he talking
"to Valeriy Kostikov?"
That never happened.
It wasn't that the CIA ignored
evidence that Oswald was a
threat to the president.
It's they ignored proof that he
was a threat to US security.
It's a dog that didn't bark in
the old Sherlock Holmes story.
It's like, why-- that's the
thing that you would've
expected to happen.
The dog should
have barked at Oswald,
and it doesn't.
And that enables him
to go to Dealey Plaza.
>> Bob: Given all
the revelations,
former Fifth Estate producer
Brian McKenna says he's come
to a troubling conclusion.
>> I think it's pretty clear
that Oswald was a CIA agent at
this point.
And it's-- I mean, the evidence
is now just piling up and piling
up that they were, you know,
they were running him.
They were controlling him.
>> And I think we're getting
closer to the possibility that
CIA officers were
manipulating Oswald before.
Now, they could have been
manipulating him for other
purposes, like to
gather intelligence or,
you know, lure the KGB
into something,
or they could be
manipulating him for something
that was going to
happen on November 22nd.
That part of the
story we don't know,
but what these documents do
for me is they heighten
that possibility.
[ ♪♪ ]
>> Bob: The possible rationales
for killing Kennedy abounds.
[ Gunshots ]
[ Screaming ]
>> Bob: Reports he intended to
withdraw US troops from Vietnam.
A change of heart about
deposing Fidel Castro.
His initiatives to end the
Cold War with the Soviets.
Any or all could have made
Kennedy a target
at home or abroad.
Indeed, Brian McKenna
believes that by 1963,
John Kennedy's policies made him
persona non grata to many in
the US government and military.
>> I mean, I believe that
it was a coup d'état,
that that's what happened on
November 22nd, 1963.
There was this violent change in
power in the United States,
and-- and it's never
been the same since.
>> Bob: Years later, in Havana
with former
Canadian Prime Minister
Pierre Trudeau,
McKenna met and
spoke with Fidel Castro.
Castro and Kennedy
certainly had differences,
but they both
clashed with the CIA.
It made for an interesting
chat with the Cuban leader.
>> I said, "Can we talk about
the Kennedy assassination?"
And he said, "Yes."
And I said, "So, was it
the anti-Castro Cubans?"
And he said, "A lot of them were
involved but they couldn't have
"been alone."
And-- and he just said,
"The CIA."
>> Bob: There may well be an
institutional reluctance to
release, but for those
seeking the secrets,
there's always hope.
Do you ever expect
to see that released?
>> Yeah, I do expect it.
I do expect it to be released.
It's not going to be easy.
The thing that people
like me have going for us,
the overwhelming majority of
Americans are on our side--
"Release it all now"--
and as long as that's true, I
think that the public pressure
will be able to push all of this
material out into the open,
and when that happens, we're
going to learn something very
new and very interesting
about the assassination of JFK.
I'm quite confident of that.
>> I think something's
going to happen.
I really do.
It may take
another five, ten years,
hopefully not beyond that, but I
think that something explosive
is gonna happen in
the Kennedy story,
and I think we're gonna find out
that there is a real reason why
they're hiding
documents even now.
>> Bob: 54 years later
and counting,
many are convinced the killing
of President John F Kennedy goes
far beyond the lone gunman and
the magic bullet that are
still the US government's
official story.
But unless and until those
remaining records are finally
released, the haunting
question will remain as well,
who killed JFK?
[ ♪♪ ]
