1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:17,160 This series presents information based in part on theory and conjecture. 2 00:00:17,160 --> 00:00:21,682 The producer's purpose is to suggest some possible explanations, but not necessarily 3 00:00:21,682 --> 00:00:28,845 the only ones to the mysteries we will examine. 4 00:00:28,845 --> 00:00:36,848 In the 22nd, 1963, a lone figure walks to a window in the Texas schoolbook depository. 5 00:00:36,848 --> 00:00:42,010 In a matter of seconds, the president of the United States will be mortally wounded, and 6 00:00:42,010 --> 00:00:51,253 the name Lee Harvey Oswald will be etched in history. 7 00:00:51,253 --> 00:00:55,455 But did Oswald really kill President Kennedy? 8 00:00:55,455 --> 00:01:13,182 New evidence points to the possibility that he did not. 9 00:01:13,182 --> 00:01:18,424 During the Cold War era of the early 1960s, President John F. Kennedy is to become the 10 00:01:18,424 --> 00:01:27,107 most admired leader of the free world. 11 00:01:27,107 --> 00:01:36,191 There are many people in the world who really don't understand or say they don't. 12 00:01:36,191 --> 00:01:44,354 What is the great issue between the free world and the communist world? 13 00:01:44,354 --> 00:01:51,477 His attraction is magnetic. 14 00:01:51,477 --> 00:01:58,160 Seldom has one man unified the people of so many democratic nations. 15 00:01:58,160 --> 00:02:04,482 In October 1962, President Kennedy learns of the buildup of Soviet missiles in Cuba and 16 00:02:04,482 --> 00:02:07,443 orders a blockade of Cuban harbors. 17 00:02:07,443 --> 00:02:12,805 It results in one of the most humiliating political defeats in Russian history. 18 00:02:12,805 --> 00:02:22,249 A little more than a year later, the leader of the Western world is assassinated. 19 00:02:22,249 --> 00:02:32,253 There are some who blame the Soviets, but nothing can be proved. 20 00:02:32,253 --> 00:02:38,175 Within hours, Lee Harvey Oswald, ex-Marine, former Russian defector, and as we have come 21 00:02:38,175 --> 00:02:49,140 to believe a distraught and frustrated young man, is in custody. 22 00:02:49,140 --> 00:02:55,062 Before Oswald can tell his full story, he is murdered in front of millions of television 23 00:02:55,062 --> 00:03:16,230 viewers. 24 00:03:16,230 --> 00:03:22,153 Almost a year later, the Warren Commission delivers its verdict on the Kennedy assassination. 25 00:03:22,153 --> 00:03:25,034 Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. 26 00:03:25,034 --> 00:03:29,476 He was not a part of a conspiracy. 27 00:03:29,476 --> 00:03:33,877 The Warren Commission concluded there were three shots fired during the assassination, 28 00:03:33,877 --> 00:03:39,320 all of them coming from behind the president out of a Texas schoolbook depository window. 29 00:03:39,320 --> 00:03:43,761 But many witnesses to the assassination claimed that at least one shot came from the grassy 30 00:03:43,761 --> 00:03:48,423 knoll situated to the right and front of the president's car. 31 00:03:48,423 --> 00:03:52,765 In spite of these contradictory accounts, the conclusions reached by the Warren Commission 32 00:03:52,765 --> 00:04:01,088 would officially stand until startling new evidence came to light. 33 00:04:01,088 --> 00:04:05,050 It was a recording that had been overlooked for 15 years. 34 00:04:05,050 --> 00:04:13,293 The tape should never have existed at all. 35 00:04:13,293 --> 00:04:18,675 At the time of the assassination, the microphone on a police motorcycle was jammed in the on 36 00:04:18,675 --> 00:04:25,278 position, transmitting sound to police headquarters where it was routinely recorded. 37 00:04:25,278 --> 00:04:40,804 When the shots were fired in Dallas, the microphone picked up those sounds. 38 00:04:40,804 --> 00:04:49,267 Not the tape, and you're listening to the actual sound now, was seemingly indecipherable. 39 00:04:49,267 --> 00:04:56,350 If the sounds of gunshots were there, they were impossible to detect by the human ear. 40 00:04:56,350 --> 00:05:03,112 In 1978, Dr. James Barger of the acoustic firm Bolt, Baranak and Newman attempted to 41 00:05:03,112 --> 00:05:05,353 find those gunshots. 42 00:05:05,353 --> 00:05:10,355 We began our analysis by recording the tape into the computer. 43 00:05:10,355 --> 00:05:13,857 We digitized the data and made a file. 44 00:05:13,857 --> 00:05:19,819 Then we had the computer filter this file in order to remove the sound of the motorcycle 45 00:05:19,819 --> 00:05:22,260 as much as we could. 46 00:05:22,260 --> 00:05:24,821 The motorcycle noise is repetitive. 47 00:05:24,821 --> 00:05:28,422 The piston fires repetitively. 48 00:05:28,422 --> 00:05:33,264 The filter was taught to recognize that sound and to eliminate it. 49 00:05:33,264 --> 00:05:40,647 We then had the computer make a long paper picture of these filtered sounds. 50 00:05:40,647 --> 00:05:44,129 The picture was about 500 feet long. 51 00:05:44,129 --> 00:05:50,031 It represented a pictorial view of the filtered sounds for the whole 5.5 minutes that the 52 00:05:50,031 --> 00:05:54,093 motorcycle microphone was stock open. 53 00:05:54,093 --> 00:06:01,776 We examined that entire 500 feet of acoustical waveform to see if there were any waveforms 54 00:06:01,776 --> 00:06:05,357 that look like they might represent gunfire. 55 00:06:05,357 --> 00:06:15,721 In fact, we did find in 6 places where sound bursts indicated the possibility of gunfire 56 00:06:15,721 --> 00:06:18,642 on the Dallas police tape. 57 00:06:18,642 --> 00:06:26,685 At this time, we realized we needed a more careful, a more stringent analysis technique, 58 00:06:26,685 --> 00:06:32,228 one that would definitely determine whether these impulsive sounds were gunfire or whether 59 00:06:32,228 --> 00:06:41,151 they were extraneous noise. 60 00:06:41,151 --> 00:06:46,153 The more stringent technique Dr. Barger needed resulted in one of the most unique scientific 61 00:06:46,153 --> 00:06:48,154 experiments of this century. 62 00:06:48,154 --> 00:06:53,796 Dr. Barger and his team returned to Dallas to perform a sound recreation of the Kennedy 63 00:06:53,796 --> 00:06:58,798 assassination. 64 00:06:58,798 --> 00:07:04,060 Shots were recorded at various places at the assassination site for later comparison with 65 00:07:04,060 --> 00:07:06,341 the motorcycle tape. 66 00:07:06,341 --> 00:07:11,783 At the end of our analysis, we were able to conclude that there had been at least 4 shots 67 00:07:11,783 --> 00:07:15,345 fired during the assassination. 68 00:07:15,345 --> 00:07:20,907 Three of these had been fired from the Texas School Book Depository and one from the Gracie 69 00:07:20,907 --> 00:07:25,048 Knoll. 70 00:07:25,048 --> 00:07:30,170 The Texas School Book Depository is located next to the Gracie Knoll along the parkway 71 00:07:30,170 --> 00:07:39,414 the President's motorcade had traveled. 72 00:07:39,414 --> 00:07:44,936 Bob Groten, a photo-optic specialist, attempted to synchronize an enhanced version of the 73 00:07:44,936 --> 00:07:50,738 motorcycle tape with the famous Zapruder film, an 8-millimeter home movie shot by a 74 00:07:50,759 --> 00:07:53,119 motorcade observer. 75 00:07:53,119 --> 00:07:58,562 This synchronization, shown now for the first time on nationwide television, reveals with 76 00:07:58,562 --> 00:08:03,804 shocking clarity that at least two gunmen had to have been involved. 77 00:08:03,804 --> 00:08:07,805 One firing from behind the President, the other from the right front. 78 00:08:21,731 --> 00:08:28,493 At least 4 shots were fired, but it's the third, the one from the front, the Gracie Knoll, 79 00:08:28,493 --> 00:08:30,494 that kills the President. 80 00:08:30,494 --> 00:08:50,962 The motorcycle tape and Dr. Barger's testimony eventually led to United States government 81 00:08:50,962 --> 00:08:55,884 acknowledgement that the assassination of John F. Kennedy was the probable result of 82 00:08:55,884 --> 00:08:58,325 a conspiracy. 83 00:08:58,325 --> 00:09:05,148 Where did that conspiracy originate? 84 00:09:05,148 --> 00:09:10,950 Less than two months after the assassination, Yuri Ivanovich Nosenko, a high-level Russian 85 00:09:10,950 --> 00:09:16,352 KGB agent defected to the United States. 86 00:09:16,352 --> 00:09:22,555 As recreated here for in search of, Nosenko told American CIA officers that as part of 87 00:09:22,575 --> 00:09:29,577 his duties, he had personally supervised the KGB file on Lee Harvey Oswald while Oswald 88 00:09:29,577 --> 00:09:32,579 lived in Russia. 89 00:09:32,579 --> 00:09:38,421 Nosenko assured the Americans that Oswald had no relations with Soviet intelligence and 90 00:09:38,421 --> 00:09:47,464 acted without Soviet knowledge in the assassination of President Kennedy. 91 00:09:47,464 --> 00:09:53,607 Many of the CIA officers found serious discrepancies in Nosenko's story and suspected that Nosenko 92 00:09:53,607 --> 00:10:00,610 was sent here by the KGB to mislead the Americans about Oswald's Soviet connections. 93 00:10:05,612 --> 00:10:12,614 To prove his honesty, Nosenko agreed to submit to a lie detector examination. 94 00:10:17,476 --> 00:10:24,479 The key questions, did Nosenko supervise the KGB file on Lee Harvey Oswald? 95 00:10:27,180 --> 00:10:28,341 Yes. 96 00:10:28,341 --> 00:10:35,343 And, was Lee Harvey Oswald involved in any way with the intelligence activities of the 97 00:10:35,343 --> 00:10:36,344 KGB? 98 00:10:36,344 --> 00:10:39,465 No, no, no, how many times? 99 00:10:39,465 --> 00:10:46,468 According to the results of the polygraph test, Yuri Ivanovich Nosenko was a liar. 100 00:10:48,268 --> 00:10:55,271 Some sources close to the CIA claim that Nosenko was then put under hostile interrogation. 101 00:11:11,037 --> 00:11:14,879 Treated more like a captured spy than a defector. 102 00:11:14,879 --> 00:11:21,882 Nosenko was put through grueling, unrelenting and abusive interrogation. 103 00:11:21,902 --> 00:11:28,504 As flawed as Nosenko's story was, he refused to break, clinging instead to absurd and indefensible 104 00:11:28,504 --> 00:11:30,745 explanations. 105 00:11:30,745 --> 00:11:32,946 The Nosenko did not break. 106 00:11:32,946 --> 00:11:38,588 The CIA officers were certain that when the Warren Commission questioned Nosenko, it too 107 00:11:38,588 --> 00:11:43,950 would find his story unbelievable. 108 00:11:43,950 --> 00:11:48,212 But the Warren Commission never questioned Nosenko. 109 00:11:48,212 --> 00:11:55,215 One man who thinks he knows why is Edward Epstein, noted authority on the Warren Commission. 110 00:11:55,215 --> 00:11:59,496 Epstein believes that the commission was misinformed by the FBI. 111 00:11:59,496 --> 00:12:06,179 The last thing Jed Gehoover wanted was to open up the investigation into Lee Harvey Oswald's 112 00:12:06,179 --> 00:12:08,500 connections with the Soviet Union. 113 00:12:08,500 --> 00:12:13,102 And if the Warren Commission began to question Nosenko, it would lead exactly in that direction. 114 00:12:13,562 --> 00:12:17,684 Remember, the FBI is in charge of internal security in the United States. 115 00:12:17,684 --> 00:12:23,646 Here was Lee Harvey Oswald who came over from Russia, a defector who had given out secrets 116 00:12:23,646 --> 00:12:25,287 of state to the Russians. 117 00:12:25,287 --> 00:12:28,848 Or the FBI should have been keeping a closer eye on him. 118 00:12:28,848 --> 00:12:35,851 If suddenly it turned out through the questioning of Nosenko that Oswald was a Soviet agent, 119 00:12:36,091 --> 00:12:41,493 then the FBI would be held responsible for why weren't they keeping Oswald under surveillance. 120 00:12:41,493 --> 00:12:47,435 And that's the reason that Jed Gehoover did not want to open up the questioning into Nosenko 121 00:12:47,435 --> 00:12:54,438 and did not want to get into the area of Oswald's connections with the Soviet Union. 122 00:12:55,719 --> 00:13:01,041 If Nosenko was part of a Russian plot, did it include the assassination of President 123 00:13:01,041 --> 00:13:06,043 Kennedy? 124 00:13:06,043 --> 00:13:13,045 Lee Harvey Oswald was born in New Orleans in October 1939. 125 00:13:14,266 --> 00:13:19,568 His father had died two months before. 126 00:13:19,568 --> 00:13:25,070 His childhood was marked by instability, moving with his mother from house to house, city to 127 00:13:25,070 --> 00:13:26,491 city. 128 00:13:26,491 --> 00:13:33,113 By the time he was 10, he had attended six different public schools. 129 00:13:33,113 --> 00:13:38,275 When he was regarded as friendly and likable, his teachers detected something hidden within 130 00:13:38,275 --> 00:13:43,477 him, a certain tenseness. 131 00:13:43,477 --> 00:13:49,360 When he was 17, Oswald fulfilled a long time ambition and joined the Marine Corps, where 132 00:13:49,360 --> 00:13:53,081 he served honorably for three years. 133 00:13:53,081 --> 00:13:59,604 Following his discharge in 1959, Oswald abruptly renounced his American citizenship and defected 134 00:13:59,604 --> 00:14:03,045 to the Soviet Union. 135 00:14:03,045 --> 00:14:08,887 It is the next two years that we know the least about Oswald. 136 00:14:08,887 --> 00:14:15,110 In 1961, Oswald returned to the United States, reclaiming his American citizenship. 137 00:14:15,110 --> 00:14:21,352 With him, he brought a Russian wife, Marina, and a diary describing his life while in Russia. 138 00:14:21,352 --> 00:14:26,134 The diary tells the story of a bitter young man becoming increasingly disillusioned with 139 00:14:26,134 --> 00:14:27,455 the communist system. 140 00:14:27,455 --> 00:14:32,137 However, the diary also contains some puzzling discrepancies. 141 00:14:32,137 --> 00:14:33,777 Could it be a fake? 142 00:14:33,777 --> 00:14:40,140 Another attempt by the Russians to mislead us? 143 00:14:40,140 --> 00:14:45,382 To find out, we went to the National Archives in Washington, D.C. to interview internationally 144 00:14:45,382 --> 00:14:51,864 known handwriting analyst Tia Stein-Lewinson. 145 00:14:51,864 --> 00:14:57,026 Mrs. Lewinson had spent more than four months working on the Oswald diary, putting it through 146 00:14:57,026 --> 00:15:03,509 microscopic scrutiny before she arrived at her evaluation. 147 00:15:03,509 --> 00:15:06,470 This is not a spontaneous writing. 148 00:15:06,470 --> 00:15:10,752 It is written very slowly and deliberately. 149 00:15:10,752 --> 00:15:21,516 One could assume that possibly Oswald copied excerpts from his original diary, which were 150 00:15:21,516 --> 00:15:31,600 given to him by some representative of Soviet intelligence, and that he then wrote very 151 00:15:31,600 --> 00:15:37,122 slowly in order to comply with the demands. 152 00:15:37,122 --> 00:15:44,685 However, here and there, one can see that he gets irritated and especially at the end 153 00:15:44,685 --> 00:15:50,767 of the pages, he frequently gets quite fatigued. 154 00:15:50,767 --> 00:15:56,570 Mrs. Lewinson believes that fatigue in Oswald's writing, as shown here by lines that gradually 155 00:15:56,570 --> 00:16:02,792 run downhill, indicates that the complete diary was written in two or three sessions 156 00:16:02,792 --> 00:16:05,213 rather than day by day. 157 00:16:05,213 --> 00:16:17,938 I think that Oswald was supervised by Soviet intelligence in order to mislead the Americans 158 00:16:17,938 --> 00:16:23,060 at his return to the United States. 159 00:16:23,060 --> 00:16:27,902 When I went through Lee Harvey Oswald's diary, I found two anachronisms, two things that 160 00:16:27,902 --> 00:16:29,743 were out of date. 161 00:16:29,743 --> 00:16:37,346 One was on October 31st, where he talked about the American consul, McVico, who wasn't yet 162 00:16:37,346 --> 00:16:41,908 the consul for another year. 163 00:16:41,908 --> 00:16:46,910 The second thing was he talked about rubles in terms of old rubles that were 10 for a 164 00:16:46,910 --> 00:16:50,711 dollar rather than new rubles that were one for a dollar. 165 00:16:50,711 --> 00:16:52,792 This was not a genuine diary. 166 00:16:52,792 --> 00:16:53,792 It was a fake. 167 00:16:53,792 --> 00:16:58,954 It was written after the fact to give Lee Harvey Oswald a legend so he could explain to the 168 00:16:58,954 --> 00:17:03,996 FBI and other people in America what he was doing in Russia for two years, what he was 169 00:17:03,996 --> 00:17:09,118 supposed to be doing in Russia, not what he was doing. 170 00:17:09,118 --> 00:17:16,521 If Oswald's diary is in fact a fake, and if Nosenko only defected to mislead the Americans, 171 00:17:16,521 --> 00:17:23,804 it leads one to ask, what were the Russians trying to hide? 172 00:17:23,804 --> 00:17:28,606 What happened to Oswald during his stay in the Soviet Union that the Russians don't want 173 00:17:28,606 --> 00:17:30,447 us to know about? 174 00:17:30,447 --> 00:17:39,970 Could there have been a plot so bizarre no one would have dared thought it possible? 175 00:17:39,970 --> 00:17:46,413 On November 24th, 1963, medical examiners began an autopsy on the individual they assumed 176 00:17:46,413 --> 00:17:48,974 to be Lee Harvey Oswald. 177 00:17:48,974 --> 00:17:52,215 It is recreated here for in search of. 178 00:17:52,215 --> 00:17:58,018 Their findings were to create a public controversy that would surface 15 years later when British 179 00:17:58,018 --> 00:18:04,540 lawyer, author, and investigator Michael Eddowes made public the results of his investigation 180 00:18:04,540 --> 00:18:09,262 of Lee Harvey Oswald. 181 00:18:09,262 --> 00:18:14,584 This is the most terrifying story you will ever hear, and the Russians don't want you 182 00:18:14,584 --> 00:18:15,865 to hear about it. 183 00:18:15,865 --> 00:18:20,066 The man who killed President Kennedy was not Lee Harvey Oswald. 184 00:18:20,066 --> 00:18:25,708 He was a Soviet lookalike whose first name was Alec, and who came to the United States 185 00:18:25,708 --> 00:18:31,511 as a member of the KGB assassination squad for the direct purpose of killing President 186 00:18:31,511 --> 00:18:33,552 Kennedy. 187 00:18:33,552 --> 00:18:44,276 Eddowes says that the Dallas autopsy was performed on an imposter and points to a number of inconsistencies 188 00:18:44,276 --> 00:18:45,996 to prove his point. 189 00:18:45,996 --> 00:18:49,758 The man who went to Russia was 5 feet 11 in height. 190 00:18:49,758 --> 00:18:51,159 There's no question about this. 191 00:18:51,159 --> 00:18:53,960 There are 11 recordings of this height. 192 00:18:53,960 --> 00:18:58,481 The length of the corpse of the assassin was 5 feet 9. 193 00:18:58,481 --> 00:19:10,806 The autopsy report records only two scars of the upper left arm of the assassin. 194 00:19:10,806 --> 00:19:18,089 Over the left arm there's a quarter inch transverse scar and one and a quarter inch scar. 195 00:19:18,089 --> 00:19:23,411 Whereas the real Oswald had three scars on the upper left arm. 196 00:19:23,411 --> 00:19:29,774 The autopsy report records a large scar on the inner aspect of the left wrist. 197 00:19:29,774 --> 00:19:33,375 The real Oswald had no such scar. 198 00:19:33,375 --> 00:19:38,937 At the age of 6 the real Oswald had a mastoidectomy operation which left a one inch long scar 199 00:19:38,937 --> 00:19:42,859 behind his left ear over the mastoid bone. 200 00:19:42,859 --> 00:19:47,621 The part of the mastoid bone was itself removed and at the operation a rubber dam drain was 201 00:19:47,621 --> 00:19:48,621 inserted. 202 00:19:49,021 --> 00:19:54,784 So there was not only a scar, there was a depression in the flesh and a hole in the head of about 203 00:19:54,784 --> 00:19:58,385 one dime in size. 204 00:19:58,385 --> 00:20:03,787 An examination of Oswald's Marine Corps records confirms the existence of the mastoidectomy 205 00:20:03,787 --> 00:20:07,629 scar behind Oswald's left ear. 206 00:20:07,629 --> 00:20:14,391 Now the autopsy doctors experienced pathologists cut up over both mastoid areas to remove the 207 00:20:14,391 --> 00:20:17,713 scalp so they could take off the top of the head to examine the brain. 208 00:20:17,713 --> 00:20:21,314 In doing this they could not have failed to have seen the one inch scar and the hole in 209 00:20:21,314 --> 00:20:22,314 the head. 210 00:20:22,314 --> 00:20:26,516 The autopsy report does not record the scar, does not record the depression and although 211 00:20:26,516 --> 00:20:32,839 the scar was x-rayed does not disclose the hole in the scar. 212 00:20:32,839 --> 00:20:37,760 Eddows requested that Tarrant County officials exhume the body buried under the name of Lee 213 00:20:37,760 --> 00:20:39,921 Harvey Oswald. 214 00:20:39,921 --> 00:20:46,564 His request was rejected and Eddows has since taken legal action in state court. 215 00:20:46,564 --> 00:20:49,125 Could there have been two Oswald's? 216 00:20:49,125 --> 00:20:55,808 Eddows claims the picture on the right is the second Oswald, the Russian impersonator. 217 00:20:55,808 --> 00:21:02,090 Imposter or not, the bigger mystery remains. 218 00:21:02,090 --> 00:21:07,012 Who fired the shot from the grassy knoll? 219 00:21:07,012 --> 00:21:22,298 At a small cemetery outside of Fort Worth a single gravestone lies alone, remote from 220 00:21:22,298 --> 00:21:31,462 all others. 221 00:21:31,462 --> 00:21:36,023 We have always assumed this to be the grave of Lee Harvey Oswald. 222 00:21:36,023 --> 00:21:47,748 Is it possible that we are wrong? 223 00:21:47,748 --> 00:21:53,070 Coming up next, 20th century with Mike Wallace reports on great rescues including the dramatic 224 00:21:53,070 --> 00:21:57,152 daylight rescue of a US Air Force pilot shot down in Bosnia. 225 00:21:57,152 --> 00:22:01,754 Then, weapons at war takes you on missions into the jungles of Vietnam with the young 226 00:22:01,754 --> 00:22:17,160 soldiers they called the grunts.