Soledad O’Brien looks at the evidence in a new series, and reaches a conclusion on why President John F. Kennedy was killed, and who was responsible for that.
According to director Rob Reiner, the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963, has been a wound on the American psyche for 60 years.
“I was a junior at Beverly Hills High School,” Reiner says on a recent video call. “I was 16, and yeah, I will never forget it.
“I remember a student coming in and talking to my physics teacher,” he says. “Mr. Crean. I remember his name. And he turns to us and he says, ‘I have some terrible news,’ and he told us. And then we all got sent home.”
Reiner remembers the overwhelming grief, the sense of something precious irrevocably lost. Like most, he watched the story unfold on television. The swearing-in of Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson. The grief-stricken face of the widowed first lady Jackie Kennedy. The shock of suspect Lee Harvey Oswald being killed on live television by Dallas nightclub owner Jack Ruby.
“I mean, it never stopped,” Reiner says. “What the hell is going on here? You don’t really know. And certainly, I wasn’t thinking anything other than what the government told me was true.
“Until the Warren Commission report came out and people started finding fault with it. Saying maybe this isn’t the true story here.”
Six decades later, Reiner says he hasn’t lost his fascination with what really happened in Dealey Plaza as Kennedy’s open car passed through downtown Dallas.
• See more: Since JFK assassination, no US president has visited Dallas’ Dealey Plaza
But now Reiner thinks he knows what really happened and in the 10-episode podcast “Who Killed JFK?’ from iHeartPodcasts, he and journalist Soledad O’Brien are telling that story.
The Kennedy assassination was and in many ways still is a national trauma, he says. And in a time of great division in the United States, where truths large and small are often rejected by those who disagree with them, the podcast seemed like a worthy project to pursue.
“It’s important that people know the truth of what happened,” Reiner says. “Because we’re now in a weird time in our country where disinformation just flies out. It’s hard to get a handle on the truth. We’re more divided than we ever were.
“To me, democracy is now in a really tough place,” he says. “And if it’s gonna survive, it has to be based on truth. All of those things came together for me as to why I wanted to do this.
“It’s also the greatest murder mystery in the history of America, so you’re trying to solve a murder mystery, too.”Eyes open
For Reiner, the initial acceptance of the Warren Commission report, which in September 1964 ruled that Lee Harvey Oswald was solely responsible for Kennedy’s murder, started to fade within a few short years.
• See more: How ‘American Confidential’ explores JFK assassin Lee Harvey Oswald and his mom
Reiner hadn’t read the report or really questioned its findings when at 19, he and Larry Bishop, his high school classmate and son of entertainer Joey Bishop, were performing their comedy act at the Hungry I in San Francisco.
