He also talks about the killing of Lee Harvey Oswald and the Warren Commission, which was organized to investigate the assassination. Its a little over two hours. Ralph lovely thank you all for coming. It is never easy to get here. The metro is not working well today. Second i would like to thank the Smithsonian Associates program. They do such a remarkable job. If you cant find Something Interesting in that catalog you are dead. There are so many fascinating programs in art and history and science. Just on a nice job of putting the programs together. It is always a delight to be here. I am appreciative that cspan3 is filming this. I was able to watch as they had the first segment. The lincoln talk is this past saturday. It is now archived so if you want to watch it again it is now available and easy to find. I dont know when they are putting garfield or mckinley on. It would save us a lot of time. Todays talk is quite different than the other three. A lot of us in this room were alive and well when these took place. Also unlike garfield and mckinley im willing to bet most of you know who kennedy was, so im not going to do what we did with them and give a bio of kennedy. The lincoln and the kennedy are bookends to these talks. There are two plays that i thought of approaching tonights talk. One was to talk about the assassination itself and the conspiracy theories, who shot kennedy, who was behind it, who was involved, what about the Warren Commission. The second is to approach it politically. The taking over of power by Lyndon Johnson. I wasnt quite sure which way to go until i had a discussion with a young man who works in our firm who knew absolutely nothing about the assassination. If you remember a gentleman came up after the lincoln talk and asked if i could recommend one book. If i were to recommend one book on the political aspects i would recommend the path to power. Roberts book is excellent. There are so many good books on what happened has a result of Lyndon Johnson taking over as president. If i were to recommend one book on the assassination itself is reclaiming history, the assassination of john f. Kennedy. This book is mammoth. It is so good that it doesnt make sense for anybody else that said it hasnt stopped people. Unless something new comes out unless somebody has a deathbed statement or new testimony there is no need for new books. I would recommend it. Certainly have looked at a lot of different books in preparing tonights talk. If this were a paper instead of a talk you would see a lot. I will mention quite a few others as we go along. The kennedy assassination probably no other single oneday event in World History with the possible exception of the crucifixion of jesus, has produced more materials written on it. Its impossible to have read everything. Volumes are in normans. And the interest people have in this remains in norm us. The topic itself has hit all of us. Let me ask a couple of questions of the you. There is no example, no wrong answers. How many remember if you were alive how many remember where you were when you found out what happened. We all do. It allowed for nc ncaa rules. I was beating guys on the varsity. I wasnt allowed to be on it until the following year. And i just finished playing tennis. I came home and a fellow i hit with called up and said have you heard . And i heard. We were glued to the television for the rest of the weekend. Next question deals with your perception of the Warren Commission. The first Major Investigation of the kennedy assassination was conducted by a panel, a commission put together by new president Lyndon Johnson. They issued their report in september of 1964. It is a report on the president s commission on the assassination of president john f. Kennedy. It is much easier. A couple of questions on the Warren Commission. The Warren Commissions conclusions were that Lee Harvey Oswald was a lone assassin, they found no evidence they were involved in any part of a conspiracy, domestic or international. They did not rule out a larger conspiracy. They only said they found evidence of severe like that existed. How many of you except the main finding of the Warren Commission, namely that oswald shot kennedy . Im surprised. Second, lets reverse it. How many of you do not believe oswald acted alone. How many people believe there were more than one shooters . Either oswald didnt do it or oswald was one of many. The commission concluded that jack ruby also acted alone. How many of you accept that . How many of you think ruby was part of a conspiracy basically to keep oswald from testifying . Fourth question, and after this you can put your arms at rest fourth question is whether you accept or reject the Warren Commission because you believed either that the government is withholding information or that they are deliberately involved in a coverup or they didnt get all the information. How many of you think the Warren Commission failed to get all of the information or is covering up stuff . That there is something out there we havent been told yet. The results are interesting. Polling doesnt always work out. When the Warren Commission was released. Just short of a year 10 months after the assassination itself the overwhelming majority believed the Warren Commission was telling the truth, that the results according to the Warren Commission as they were released at the time said that oswald did it alone, ruby was not part of a conspiracy, and the majority of the americans bought into this. 75 of americans do not believe this. They do not believe the Warren Commission is telling the truth. They believe there is a larger conspiracy. For the sake of this talk im going to use a term used a lot when people talk about the kennedy assassination. That is the term conspiracy theorists. By no means can we say that conspiracy theoristss agree with each other. They believe that there is more to it than Lee Harvey Oswald acting out their at this demented guy standing up in a Texas Book Depository shooting kennedy. It can be anyone who believes. It is the militaryindustrial complex. It is Lyndon Johnson. It is the right wing conspiracy. It is the russians, it is the aliens, it is whoever you think we are going to talk about them too. It is all sorts of different villains in our story. Conspiracy theorists just dont believe it is oswald alone. It has been extremely successful in undermining americas belief that the Warren Commission came out with a correct report. People who accept conspiracy theories in this very intelligent, very informed people, for reasons i dont remember. Secretary of state kerry was asked about the kennedy assassination. To this day i have serious doubts Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. When we are todays caps off there are only two questions i think i work fact are worth asking. Number two, were they acting alone . Those are the only two questions that were really relevant. It would take me a while. If you walk out of here with those two questions that is what we are trying to cover today. The first thing as you approach the kennedy the number of conspiracy theories that are out there. Again, when we talked about lincoln, the number of conspiracy theories that we talked about a few weeks ago, it was secretary of war stanton, it was lafayette c baker, it was the confederacy and jefferson davis, it was thinking interest in new york, it was abolitionist or radical republicans who wanted to control things. It was the Catholic Church we went through a whole number of conspiracy theories on lincoln. There are obviously a lot on kennedy. There are none that im aware of on garfield and mckinley. Garfield and mckinley, two demented human beings shot the president and were immediately apprehended. What next kennedy and lincoln different is the John Wilkes Booth got away for 12 days. How did he get away . Who helped him . And then he was shot, probably by Boston Corbett, so that he could never tested. Testify. Lee harvey also walled, assuming he did the assassination, shot kennedy and got away. It wasnt for a few hours until they picked him up. Maybe someone else in the shooting and got away, and also what was the patsy. And that oswald, who maintained his innocence throughout, was shot by ruby, giving rise to maybe there was someone else. The first thing to look at is conspiracy theories themselves. I must admit, as i did when we talked about lincoln, im prone to accept them. When i first started looking at the lincoln assassination, i was totally convinced that there was a conspiracy, and the John Wilkes Booth was not at the top of it. I have changed my mind, for those of you who are here a few weeks ago, i now believe booth was the guy, there was no one above him, and he was responsible. We will see where we come down on the kennedy assassination. But conspiracy theories themselves are they are fascinating. They are murder mysteries. We all want to know if theres a secret. Theres more to this story than we know, it cant be this one demented guy. There is Something Interesting out there. Everyone likes to know that they are in on the secret. Its a lot more appealing than looking at it as a demented guy doing a terribly stupid thing. Tom stone, who teaches a course on the kennedy assassination at Southern University said i concluded on is what was the only shooter, but i found that telling my students that took the fun out of the assassination for my students. [laughter] prof. Nurnberger we like to know there is something more to the story. Second if there is more to it than a demented guy, a demented nutcase doing this, it has meaning to it. If you are just shot by a lunatic, you are not a martyr. If lincoln is shot because the confederacy wants to do something, he is dying for cause. If kennedy a shot because people dont want him to make peace in vietnam or reach out to cuba there is a bigger cause. If it is in that case, he is not a martyr, he is just dead. That isnt as appealing. Next, is a major figure a lincoln or kennedy is shot by a nonentity, there is an incongruity. If kennedy is shot by the mafia by the cia, by the militaryindustrial complex its a big figure being killed by a big figure. You feel better about it. Its less chaotic. People feel is impossible on the surface to believe that a virtual nonentity, the nebbish you guy, Lee Harvey Oswald using a 19. 95 rifle he bought through the mail and paid 1. 50 for shipping could bring down the leader of the free world. It just doesnt feel right. On a visceral level, people are struck by the incongruity of it. But remember the lowest human being on earth, if he has a gun, can kill someone. Guns are very democratic, and bullets are as well. Another thing is, there are conspiracies. In fact, most of the conspiracy authors were riding in the 1970s. Writing at the time, a lot of conspiracies were coming public. I worked for senator frank church, and the Church Committee was unraveling lots of conspiracies, including the cia, including what we were doing and she lay in chile. There were a lot of conspiracies at the time. Another reason the conspiracy theories are so popular is all the books come all articles dont like the idea of Lee Harvey Oswald is the lone assassin. You sell more books if you come up with a novel idea. It was this, and we will talk about all of thiss. You see why its a lot more appealing to look at it like that. When the Warren Commission first came out, americans bought into it. But then, over the years, all of these conspiracy books and conspiracy articles began to infiltrate into our thought process. And we began to lose faith in the Warren Commission. Probably no other single event or source of conspiracy theories has had a greater impact than oliver stones movie jfk. I was chatting with the young man who works in our firm, and i asked him what do you know about the assassination, and he knew nothing, but he saw the jfk movie and started telling me about it. As if that were true. I will spend a lot of time on that movie towards the end of this talk. Americans now believe there was a conspiracy, they are not sure what it is. But they are pretty sure it wasnt just Lee Harvey Oswald. A good place for us to start before we even look at who shot kennedy and was there a conspiracy is to look at the Warren Commission itself. The Warren Commission presented its report on september 24 1964. Ever since it has done that, and as the american belief and faith in the Warren Commission began to sink, americas belief in our government began to decline. If they are lying to us about this, they are going to be lying to us about Everything Else. And since the Warren Commission came out, we have watergate, we have vietnam we have the lies that got us into the war in iraq. Etc. , etc. Etc. And so conspiracy theorists who talk about the kennedy assassination have a very welcome audience in the tea party, for example, who simply dont trust government. Who dont trust labeling on products for food that you eat. If you begin to question everything, and it began with the Warren Commission its almost a rorschach test. If you cant trust them on this what can you trust the government on. The Warren Commission itself was appointed by Lyndon Johnson to check into to determine what happened in the kennedy assassination. It consisted of seven members. Chief justice of the United States will warn, from the commission is named, was the chairman of it. Senator richard russell, democrat of georgia, senator john sherman cooper, republican of kentucky. Two house members, hale boggs the House Majority whip at the time, i democrat of louisiana and gerald ford, republican of michigan. It was the House Minority leader at the time, and ultimately obviously became president of the United States. Allen dulles, former director of the cia, and john mccoy, former president of the world bank. Incredibly, procedures people. Prestigious people. Those who dont believe the Warren Commission believe that there weretwo conspiracies you have to Pay Attention to. Number one, the conspiracy to kill kennedy. And number two, the conspiracy to cover up the first conspiracy. And so, for example, a conspiracy theorist by the name of jim mars asserts there are two conspiracies. The first was the conspiracy to kill the president , the second conspiracy was the conspiracy to cover up the first conspiracy. The second conspiracy, beginning with the Warren Commission, was committed by officials high within the u. S. Government to hide the truth from the American People. Another conspiracy theorist by the name of Howard Rothman wrote in his book presumed guilty, the Warren Commission engaged in a coverup of the truth and issued a report that misrepresented or distorted almost every relevant fact about the case. A conspiracy theorist named Gerald Mcknight wrote that the Warren Commission members were men intent on deceiving the nation. That was their goal. The commission sanctioned perjury, connived at the destruction of the best evidence, boycotted key witnesses, and a liberally and knowingly suppressed materials and legal documents. Carlo goolsbees book entitled who killed jfk, reflects on commonly held beliefs among conspiracy theorists. Namely the jfk had been killed by conspiracy, not by a lone gunman. He goes on to claim that the u. S. Government, beginning with the Warren Commission, has been and still is covering up that conspiracy. Essentially, he believes that the current federal governments, as well as all the previous ones since 1963, is engaged in a conspiracy to cover up the truth of the assassination. So this is the view of the conspiracy theorists. So lets look at the Warren Commission and see whether or not the conspiracy theorists have a case or leg to stand on. Was the bipartisan Warren Commission guilty of bias . Did it distort evidence . Did a liberally suppress the truth from the American People . We have two questions. First, to the members of the Warren Commission and the subsequent House Select Committee, which from 1976 to 1978 investigated the assassination of kennedy and also of Martin Luther king jr