Secrets of the Dead (2000–…): Season 13, Episode 1 - JFK: One PM Central Standard Time - full transcript

♪♪

If you are an American
of a certain age,

television anchorman
Walter Cronkite was your hero.

This is the CBS Evening News
with Walter Cronkite.

He covered the Second World War,

reported from Vietnam,
explained the Space Race.

This is the age of the rocket
which travels out,

the satellite which surrounds
all of us.

For 30 years,

his was the most important voice
in our lives.

He set a standard of reporting
that's never been equaled.



He earned the respect

of politicians and presidents
and viewers...

20 million of them every night.

To us he was "Uncle Walter,"

but he was also
the preeminent newsman

of the 20th century.

Walter Cronkite was the news.

The tip-off, the chase,
the sources, the facts.

The who, what, when, where
and why of a breaking story...

This is what Walter lived for
day in and day out.

And no story was bigger than
the one that broke at 1:00 p.m.,

Friday, November 22, 1963.

President Kennedy,
at Dallas Airport this morning,

was cheerful and waving;



it had been quite
a triumphal tour of Texas.

This is Walter Cronkite
in our newsroom.

There has been an attempt
as perhaps you know now,

on the life
of President Kennedy.

He was wounded in an automobile
driving from Dallas Airport

into downtown Dallas,
along with Governor Connally.

From Dallas, Texas,
the flash apparently official,

President Kennedy died
at 1:00 p.m.

Central Standard Time.

♪♪

November 21, 1963.

President Kennedy is leaving
for a three-day swing

through Texas.

He and Mrs. Kennedy will visit
Austin... the state capital...

San Antonio, Houston,
Fort Worth and Dallas.

Dallas, the oilman's city

where Kennedy and his
running mate, Lyndon Johnson,

had narrowly been elected
in 1960.

The city where some of the
most conservative organizations

in the country were based,

controlled by men and women
who thought that

in seeking to negotiate
an end to the cold war,

the president was selling out
to the Soviets.

Dallas was more
of a class society

than most of the rest of Texas,

which is important
to understand the context

in which the Kennedy
assassination happened.

Dallas was a businessman's town,
a commercial town,

as opposed to Houston,

which was a blue-collar
working town.

Dallas was the only place
in Texas that looked east

for approval.

Dallas cared what New York
and Boston

and Washington thought.

It was pretty much known
around the world

as sort of being
the hate capital of the world.

And that mostly stemmed
from an incident in 1960

when Lyndon Johnson,
who was a native Texan

and had been a senior senator
for many years,

was running as John Kennedy's
vice presidential nominee,

and made a political stop
in Dallas.

And they staged
a big demonstration

against the Johnsons

and against
the Kennedy-Johnson ticket.

And they accosted Johnson
and his wife.

One of them grabbed
Mrs. Johnson's gloves

and threw them in the gutter.

And of course, this made news
around the world.

It had a reputation
of being tough

on Democratic candidates
for national office that came.

Adlai Stevenson, the Democratic
candidate for president,

had been there.

He'd been... he and his party
had been roughed up a bit.

But the point is that
this came together in Dallas

in a way it didn't anyplace else
in the state.

Being a native of Dallas,
it was a Dallas

that I hardly knew.

This center of hatred
and intolerance.

And I only really came
to understand that

after the events of November 22.

At night, things warm up.

After a brief rest,
President Kennedy

and the First Lady venture
from the White House...

The storm of history
was about to strike Dallas,

America and the world.

At its center would be
a young president

who had offered a vision of hope

and whose life of promise
was to be cut short.

The manner of his passing
means the name

John Fitzgerald Kennedy
will never be forgotten.

And nor will that
of Walter Cronkite,

who will be forever linked

with that dreadful day
in Dallas.

By 1963, Walter Cronkite
was not only a big name at CBS,

he was also a big name
in America.

Exactly eight weeks
before the assassination

of John Kennedy,
Newsweek chose him

for their cover story.

He was 46...
The same age as the president.

I leave for work every morning
with a briefcase full of papers,

but they might as well
be sandwiches.

Nothing you can carry
in a briefcase

is going to tell you
how the day's news will break.

You just have to ride with it
and put it all together

as it happens.

Cronkite had been a reporter
for 30 years,

first as a radio announcer
in Kansas City,

then as a distinguished
wire-service correspondent

for United Press.

His byline appeared
in every newspaper

in the United States.

But it was television
that made him.

I'm not sure that
if Walter Cronkite

walked into
a television station today

he could get hired.

They would say, "Well,
he doesn't look like an anchor."

He didn't.

He looked like a regular guy.

Cronkite was the old school
of journalism.

He was the one to which
almost every journalist

I've ever known looked up
to as being the model

to which we should aspire.

He was like the people
he was reporting for.

He had been there.

He was an old wire-service guy.

You know, Ed Murrow never liked
him very much 'cause he...

he thought he wasn't really that
much of an intellectual.

Walter was an intellectual,

but in a very different
kind of way,

because he had this... this
curiosity that never stopped.

What scripts have we got in
so far?

To Walter Cronkite would fall
the task of telling America

and the world that Kennedy
had been assassinated.

It was a moment in which
he would have to summon

the experience of a lifetime.

He was both a good reporter

and a powerful
television presence.

You have to be hungry
for the story,

but not hungry for the glory.

He was a remarkable combination
of being ambitious

in a healthy way...
To be the dominant

television journalist
of his time, for example.

But he'd lived this long,
rich, varied life

and it kept him
from doing things

that he knew he shouldn't do.

He was it, end of story.

He's all there ever was.

I fear that he took the best
of the business with him

because it's never been the same
without him.

He was so many things.

The Midwesterner in him
was evident,

the cosmopolitan guy
was evident.

There was something about him.

Cronkite knew to get it quick
but to get it right,

not to leave anything to chance,

to ask all the tough,
persistent questions.

To stay ahead of the competition
and beat them to the punch.

And I mean punch.

Journalism back
in the '30s and '40s

was very bare bones,
very bare knuckled.

And Cronkite was
a great practitioner of it.

Kennedy and Cronkite
were Second World War veterans.

Kennedy had commanded a torpedo
patrol boat in the Pacific

and distinguished himself
by saving his colleagues

when the boat was sunk.

Cronkite had been
a war correspondent,

first in London, then,
after D-Day, in Europe...

Landing in a glider
with allied troops.

So, to use an expression
which would later appear

in Kennedy's
inauguration address,

they had both been
"tempered by war."

Cronkite said during the war
that he woke up every morning

trying to beat the hell
out of the Associated Press

and the International
News Service,

the other great wire service
of the day.

And he took that competitive
spirit with him to CBS;

so that on November 22, 1963,
he was still trying

to beat hell out of
the competition.

But this time the competition
was Huntley and Brinkley at NBC.

In following the returns,
all eyes are on the map

of the United States...

Walter Cronkite was really
a newspaper man.

And newspaper men don't always
adapt to television.

But Cronkite was a natural.

Through the 1950s, he hosted
the political conventions

that selected
presidential candidates

and the elections themselves.

The term "anchorman"
was coined for him.

He quickly came to understand

what television was capable of

and how it would change
the face of American politics;

and when, in 1962,
he was offered

the anchor chair
of the CBS Evening News,

he accepted with one condition.

He wanted to be
the managing editor.

Nobody in television knew
what a managing editor was,

so there was no problem.

"You want to be managing editor?

You're the managing editor."

But Walter knew.

A managing editor, he felt...
And they agreed...

Gave him the ultimate power
of what stories

would be on the air
and how they would be handled.

Because, to be
perfectly blunt about it,

he wasn't sure
of the news judgment

of the other people around him
at the time,

who didn't have this wire
service newspaper background.

They may have gotten
a bad can of peaches...

In a newspaper,
the managing editor

has the ultimate say
of what goes into the paper

and what doesn't go
into the paper.

That title gave him
the ultimate say

on what would and would not be
on the CBS Evening News.

He was very proudly
a wire service guy,

a meatball journalist,
and he made no bones about it.

He could get more into a "who,
what, where, why, how" lead

than any wire service reporter.

There was nothing fancy
about it,

and he was able
to brilliantly adapt it

for broadcast
later in his career.

He wanted the place to look
as much as possible

like a real working newsroom,
and that's why he insisted

on that horseshoe
where he's the copy editor,

and we, the writers,
are sitting around it,

and we're writing his stuff.

So that the audience
doesn't get the impression

of a television studio;
they're in a newsroom.

There's a sense of intimacy.

And that had not been done
before.

The man from the newspapers
never forgot that the news

would be nothing without writers
and reporters.

And to the end of his career
he saw himself

as a reporter first,
anchorman second.

Walter loved being a reporter.

He had the most curious mind
of any person I ever met.

He would drive us nuts
sometimes,

because he would always come up
with a question

that nobody knew the answer to.

I remember one time
at about 6:25,

he turned to one of the people
on the broadcast and said,

"How long is Greenland?"

Well, who knows how long...

Who ever wondered
how long Greenland was?

Well, Walter wanted to know,
and that's what made him

such a great editor.

By 1963, the war correspondent
turned television reporter

turned anchorman
was riding high.

Millions of viewers tuned in
every night to watch him.

And the executives at CBS
were persuaded

that news needed more
than 15 minutes every night.

You can trace the beginning
of today's television news

to an exact moment in time.

And that moment was the Tuesday
after Labor Day in 1963,

when the CBS Evening News
went from a 15-minute format

to a 30-minute format.

And suddenly, we were no longer

just a news disseminating
organization.

We had to be a news
gathering organization.

To launch the extended
CBS Evening News,

Walter Cronkite interviewed
the president.

It was September 1963.

Eight weeks later their lives
would collide with history

in the most dramatic way.

But here, on Cape Cod,
they sat down to discuss

Kennedy's policies,
including the latest on Vietnam.

Walter took his wife, Betsy;

the president obligingly posed
for photographs

and Walter and Betsy
may have fallen for the charm

of John Fitzgerald Kennedy,
the 35th president

of the United States.

The oldest president
to hold office,

Dwight Eisenhower, had been
succeeded by the youngest.

And the newsmen were going
to make the most of it.

He was so young

and so dynamic and so different
than his predecessors.

Television was a new medium

and Kennedy had mastered
that medium

and mastered it in a way
that helped Walter Cronkite

and CBS and all
the other networks

really grab the imagination
of the American people.

I think he touched
an emotional chord

that had never really
been touched before

because of that genius
on television.

All through September
and October

and the first week of November,

the candidates carry
their message to the people.

Before 1960,
presidential campaigns

had been fought, won or lost
in black and white,

on the pages of people's
newspapers.

When Jack Kennedy seized
the nomination

of the Democratic Party
in the summer of 1960

and the presidency in November,
it was still in black and white,

but it was on television.

The Kennedys had money,
and they spent it on air time.

They knew they had to appeal
to a new generation.

So John F. Kennedy,
the 43-year-old senator

from Massachusetts,

becomes president-elect
of the United States.

When JFK, as he came
to be known,

was elected, his inauguration
speech electrified the nation,

who watched it on television.

It was January 20, 1961.

Let the word go forth
from this time and place

to friend and foe alike
that the torch has been passed

to a new generation of Americans
born in this century,

tempered by war, disciplined
by a hard and bitter peace,

proud of our ancient heritage
and unwilling to witness

or permit the slow undoing

of those human rights

to which this nation
has always been committed

and to which we are committed
today at home

and around the world.

More people watched
that inaugural address

on television than any other
to date.

And what they saw

was a visual handing over
from one generation to another.

There was Dwight Eisenhower,
bundled up in his coat,

and there's John F. Kennedy
standing there

without a hat
and without an overcoat.

Let every nation know...

And there's Jackie
in this wonderful outfit,

completely different
from the other women.

It was a visual affirmation
of what he said in the speech,

which is a torch has been passed
to a new generation.

Well, people heard that
and looked and saw

that torch being passed.

And so, my fellow Americans,

ask not what your country can
do for you.

Ask what you can do
for your country.

I think in many ways
that would be John Kennedy's

lasting contribution
is the tone he set.

I think from his
inauguration speech on,

he challenged young people
to do something,

to be part of America
and what it is all about.

If you could rank presidents
on basis

of not accomplishment
but ambition,

Kennedy would be absolutely
at the top of the list,

kind of swinging for the fences
from the first moment

he took office.

And this inaugural address
was putting that marker down

to say, "I am going to be
a great man

and a great president."

The fact that John Kennedy
had briefly been a journalist,

that he'd written
a best-selling book...

Profiles in Courage...

And that his rhetoric
was unmatched

by any other speaker struck
a chord with the young reporters

assigned to the White House

and with the men
who had mastered television,

which was to become the defining
medium of the Kennedy years.

He was one of us.

He was of the same age
as we were.

You know, usually
the president's a little older.

He was a World War II veteran,
which millions of people

in this country were.

He was well-educated,
well-spoken.

Once he got into the White House
we had these pictures

of John-John
and his sister Caroline

running around the Oval Office.

The whole package was wonderful.

He was an exceedingly
good looking guy,

and his wife
was very good looking,

the children were charming.

They exploited that to the hilt.

They sold the family.

And they made access
for photographers and film crews

and they realized they had

an extraordinary
political commodity

just in the beauty
of the family.

I was finding what
all the other reporters

who'd covered him through the
campaign had learned years ago:

the extraordinary charisma
and charm of this man,

who seemed to move
always in his own high pressure.

He created weather around him

as some film stars
and people do.

The things they did
in their spare time

were extraordinarily attractive.

I mean, sailing off Hyannis.

They had fabulous
raw material to work with

and they realized it.

Kennedy was smart.

And he was bright
and he was handsome.

And he was witty.

He was very funny.

He was suave, he was cool,
and he was the new world.

This was what was going to be.

And he was promising
great things.

He said we could fly
to the moon.

And we all believed him.

In that November week in 1963,
President Kennedy went to Texas

at the invitation of state
governor John Connally.

He intended to deal
with divisions

among Southern Democrats.

But he also had an eye
to reelection.

So the trip had an odd feeling...
Party business,

but also all the hallmarks
of a campaign:

the open limo, the crowds,
a few supporters

with placards for 1964.

This was a political trip.

One year away from
the 1964 reelection campaign,

he expected it to be
a tough campaign.

He thought he possibly
could lose,

given the fact that he won
by such a narrow margin in 1960.

And this trip
was a political trip

top to bottom.

Both Lyndon Johnson
and Governor John Connally

had said to the president,
"Listen, the Republicans

"are going to raise a lot of
money for the 1964 election.

"And you'd better get down here
early and settle

"some of the money
that we got the last time,

get it for 1964."

If the Kennedys had any doubts
about their popularity in Texas,

they must have been reassured
by the crowds

in San Antonio and Houston...

Where they honored
Albert Thomas, the congressman,

who had secured
the Space Center for Houston.

He was to play a part in
the events of the following day.

A few hours later, they flew on
to Fort Worth.

And the following morning...
The day the president

would go to Dallas...

The crowds at
a chamber of commerce breakfast

in Fort Worth treated him
like a rock star.

The president,
the vice president,

all of them were gathered
at the Texas Hotel in Fort Worth

that morning.

10,000 people had turned out
the night before

when Air Force One landed
at Carswell Air Force Base.

He got an overwhelming
reception.

ROBERT MacNElL:
In the morning, at Fort Worth,

when Kennedy came out to talk

and then walked around
the perimeter shaking hands

with everybody
and the crowd was delirious,

absolutely delirious.

And I was inside
the Secret Service,

just near them, beside them,
right beside Kennedy

a few times.

I walked beside him
with Jim Wright,

the Speaker of the House
at the time,

and Kennedy had shaken
all these hands

and he pulled a clean white
handkerchief out of his pocket

and wiped his hands on it
and it made the handkerchief

very dirty.

And he said,
"Well, that was all right."

And he was very cool about it.

About this explosion of rapture
in all these...

all these faces.

Air Force One made
the short flight

from Fort Worth to Dallas.

At Love Field the crowds
were just as large.

If this was the
"hate capital of the world,"

there was little evidence of it.

It had been raining
in Fort Worth,

but in Dallas the sun
was shining

and the decision was taken
to remove the bullet-proof cover

of the presidential limousine
for the ten-mile motorcade

through the city
to the Trade Mart.

The president, first lady,
everybody connected

with the Kennedy administration
had to be breathing

a great sigh of relief
and smiling a bit

and maybe punching each other
in the ribs saying,

"You know what?

"We can carry Texas again
in this next election.

Look at these crowds."

And based on the warmth
and the size of the crowds,

they had good reason
to think that.

We cannot understand
the tragedy of Dallas...

And the grief it caused...
Without understanding

what went before.

When the president stepped
into his limousine

for the drive into Dallas,
he'd been in office

for a little over 1,000 days.

Some Americans reviled him
and his liberal views.

But many...
Especially the young...

Felt they'd been on
a journey with him;

through the Cuban missile crisis
of 1962,

when Kennedy's restraint
had helped avoid nuclear war,

into West Berlin
to face down the Russians,

and on to the troubled cities
of the American South,

where Kennedy forced schools
and universities

to admit black students.

These were the stories
that Walter Cronkite

and his CBS news team followed
in the first years of the 1960s.

We were at the end of an era
and the beginning of a new one.

And President Kennedy, I think,
seemed to embody that.

So, he seemed to be very
well respected around the world.

He had really hit his stride
in foreign policy

in the last year
of his presidency;

and he seemed to just be
bursting with promise...

Just as America seemed
to be bursting with promise.

Kennedy by the time he was shot

was not just president
of the United States.

He represented a young,
a vibrant, a dynamic America

on the move once again.

He opened global vistas
to the idea

that we could somehow contain
the spread of nuclear weapons,

stop atmospheric
nuclear testing,

stop frightening people.

That was a huge historic moment.

There were two incredible days
in June of 1963.

On the first day,
he delivers his speech

at American University

announcing
a unilateral suspension

of nuclear testing
and asking the Soviets

to meet in Moscow to negotiate
a test ban treaty.

And if we cannot end now
our differences,

at least we can help make
the world safe for diversity.

For in the final analysis,
our most basic common link

is that we all inhabit
this small planet.

We all breathe the same air.

We all cherish
our children's futures,

and we are all mortal.

The next day, almost
on the spur of the moment,

he gives his
civil rights speech,

in which he finally does
what Martin Luther King

has been asking him to do,
which is to talk

about civil rights
in a moral context.

This is one country.

It has become one country
because all of us

and all the people who came here
had an equal chance

to develop their talents.

We cannot say to ten percent
of the population

that you can't have that right,

your children can't have
the chance to develop

whatever talents they have,

that the only way
that they're going to get

their rights is to go
in the street and demonstrate.

I think we owe them
and we owe ourselves

a better country than that.

Finally, Kennedy is marrying
the poetry of his words

in those two speeches
to the power of the presidency.

Three, two, one, fire!

There is another context
for Dallas.

50 years on, powerful evidence
has emerged that Kennedy

was closer than ever before
to ending the standoff

between the superpowers.

On that sunny day in Texas,
John Fitzgerald Kennedy

was smiling not only
because of the warmth

of the reception
but also because he knew

something they didn't,
that the end of the cold war

was within his grasp.

There's a thaw in the cold war
that we've forgotten about

that happened
in the spring and fall

during Kennedy's last 100 days.

And one of the reasons
we've forgotten about it

is that Dallas wiped out
so much of what was happening,

what Kennedy was doing.

He proposed
a joint moon mission.

He wanted to call off
the race to the moon.

And of course, if you think
that you're about to settle

the cold war...
As Kennedy thought he was,

and wanted to do
in his second term,

which of course would have made
him a great president...

Why do you have
this costly space race?

We were on the cusp
of ending the cold war.

And all of that ended
with Kennedy's assassination.

That summer, too,
Kennedy spent ten days in Europe

expanding on the principles
of freedom.

He went to Berlin,
where the Russians

had been building a wall
to divide the city,

and a million Berliners
turned out to greet him.

This was heady stuff
for the newsmen at CBS.

Kennedy was preaching freedom.

It was less than 20 years
after the end of the war.

A young Jack Kennedy
had stood in the ruins of Berlin

in 1945.

Here he was again, now the
most powerful man in the world,

the head of a nation
that had helped rebuild Germany

and other European nations
ravaged by war.

There are many people
in the world

who really don't understand,
or say they don't,

what is the great issue
between the free world

and the Communist world.

Let them come to Berlin!

It seemed that he
was hitting his stride

being president
of the American people

and hitting his stride
being president in the world.

To try to take the world
toward more peace and security.

And freedom.

There are some who say

that Communism is the wave
of the future.

Let them come to Berlin!

And there are even a few
who say that it's true,

that Communism
is an evil system,

but it permits us
to make economic progress.

Lass' sie nach Berlin kommen!

Let them come to Berlin!

It always seemed
like he was addressing

the problems of today
and tomorrow.

And finally, in 1963,
it was beginning to gel.

As a free man,
I take pride in the words,

Ich bin ein Berliner.

♪♪

♪ America, America... ♪

As he leaves, he turns
to Ted Sorensen and says,

"We'll never have another day
like this one

as long as we live."

♪ He turned to her
and smiled... ♪

Kennedy went from Germany
to Ireland in search of family.

He was proud of his Irish roots,
which he shared

with many Americans.

And there was time for a stop
in England to visit

the British prime minister,
Harold Macmillan.

In September, eight weeks
before the trip to Texas,

he set off on a tour of America,
stopping in 11 states.

Millions turned out
to see their president.

At some airports,
tens of thousands of people

waited for hours to greet him.

♪ In the promised land ♪

♪ In the promised
land ♪

♪ In the promised land. ♪

♪♪

It was a triumphal progress.

And now, in November,
there was Dallas.

The outpouring of good will
in Dallas

toward President Kennedy

and toward Mrs. Kennedy,
the first lady,

far exceeded what even

Lyndon Johnson
and John Connally...

The Texas political powers...
Thought was possible.

They were hopeful.

But in Dallas,
they didn't quite know

what they were going to get.

That the reception in Dallas
maybe even surprised Dallas.

We'd been expecting
something to happen.

But that seemed
totally blown away

by the rapture
of the Dallas crowds,

once we got into
the main part of town.

Until the turn was made in front
of the School Book Depository,

it had been a great day
for the president

and for the first lady
and for their hopes

of changing their image
in Texas.

MacNElL:
We had turned into Dealey Plaza

and there was a bang.

And we all said, "What was that?

Was that a shot?"

And then there were
two more bangs close together,

like, bang, bang.

I said, "Those are shots!

Stop the bus!"

It was three shots

and we didn't know
what happened,

except that
the presidential car ahead of us

sped up immediately.

And one of the fellows
in the bus knew a gunshot

when he heard it and said,
"Those are gunshots."

The air was filled with
the most incredible screaming.

It was as though every choir
in the country

was gathered there
and they were all

singing out of tune,
out of key, you know?

Off key.

It was the most incredible
sound.

When Lee Harvey Oswald
shot John Kennedy

from a window
of the Texas Book Depository

one reporter, above all others,

grabbed the story
and knew what to do with it.

Merriman Smith
was a correspondent

for United Press International.

"Smitty" knew Walter Cronkite
because they shared

a common bond... the training
of a wire service reporter.

Merriman Smith was the
White House UPI reporter

and he was in a car
about four back

from the presidential limousine.

He hadn't seen much,
but he did hear three shots.

And Smitty... unlike some
of the other reporters...

Knew that these
were not firecrackers.

These were gunshots.

He was a gun fancier.

And so he picked up the phone,

and it was the only phone
available.

There were no cell phones.

There was one phone
in the press pool car.

He grabs the phone
and he starts dictating

to his desk in Dallas.

The phone rang.

UPI?

I recognized the voice.

The voice was that
of Merriman Smith,

who was our UPI White House
correspondent.

The voice on the other end
was screaming.

"Three shots were fired
at the motorcade!"

Three shots were fired
at the motorcade!

I said, "I can't hear you."

I would have thought
that most people in the room

had heard him,
maybe even down in the street.

Three shots were fired
at the motorcade!

Well, at this point,
I had grabbed some paper

and rolled it into a typewriter.

And I started writing
just what he said,

"Dallas UPI, three shots."

And I suddenly realized,
I can't do this.

I can't do it alone.

And my boss, Jack Fallon,
grabbed the phone

out of my hand,
I was handing it to him.

And he started talking to Smitty
and he was writing.

And the first bulletin moved
at that time.

On the teletype machines,
five bells meant a bulletin.

It was five bells
that attracted the attention

of the CBS newsroom in New York.

It was 12:34 in Dallas,
1:34 in New York.

UPI says three shots were fired
at the president's motorcade

this afternoon
in downtown Dallas.

I'll go alert Walter.

The bulletin didn't say
Kennedy had been hit,

let alone wounded.

It didn't say exactly where
in Dallas the motorcade was.

In fact,
it didn't say very much.

Going on air with the news
that shots had been fired

in Dallas would beg
the question,

what happened next?

Which was a question
Walter Cronkite and his team

couldn't answer.

Yet.

The wire service maxim

was "get it first,
but get it right."

And Merriman Smith is
also struggling with the phone.

The Associated Press reporter
was in the back seat,

saying,
"It's my turn, it's my turn.

Give me the phone."

He's beating on him.

And Merriman Smith
just continues to dictate.

And he didn't know
a lot more information.

But he knew enough, being
the veteran newsman that he was,

to not report conjecture
or something that he thought

might have happened.

He could only report
what he had seen.

Cronkite relied on the wires.

He knew Merriman Smith
and he knew that anything

that he reported
would be accurate.

Make it a bulletin precede!

Where did that happen?

In New York,
they waited five minutes.

Cronkite wanted to be first
to break the story,

but what was the story?

In those five minutes
ABC Radio news

was first to report
the shooting at 12:36,

two minutes after
the wire report.

But still CBS held off.

Five minutes in Dallas,
for the picture

to become clearer.

The big question was of course
whether the president

had been hit.

Suddenly, I knew exactly who
would know what was going on.

And I dialed
the Dallas police office.

Bill Hampton, UPI.

Give me Dispatch!

It suddenly occurred to me
that the one person

who would know what was going on

would be the police dispatcher.

Yes, what can you tell me

about the shots fired
at the president's motorcade?

He said, "Well, the president's
been hit.

"I just got off the phone
with a motorcycle escort.

"There's blood in the back
of the car

and they're taking him
to Parkton Hospital."

We proceeded to the Trade Mart,
where we were going to hear

the president speak.

And he wasn't there.

So I called, we all called,
but I happened

to get through first, I believe.

And we called
our New York offices

and the New York office
was saying Merriman Smith

is saying the president
has been shot.

He's in Parkland Hospital.

So I screamed,
"Parkland Hospital!"

to all my colleagues.

And we dumped everything,
the phones and everything

and ran and scrambled.

It was chaos.

Now, reporters knew
that the president had been hit.

And Merriman Smith,
the UPI man on the spot,

was able to see it
with his own eyes.

When he arrived
at Parkland Hospital,

there was no proper crime scene.

And the president
was still lying

in the open limousine.

Merriman Smith had talked
to Clint Hill,

who was one of the
Secret Service agents that day,

and the press car arrived
even before they took

the president inside.

And Clint Hill was there
trying to get a gurney out

to get the president inside
to the emergency room.

And Smitty asked him,
"How is he?"

And Clint Hill said,
"He's dead."

Smith spoke to a member
of the hospital staff

who confirmed what
the Secret Service had told him.

He gave UPI an update
to put out.

It was 12:39.

All right, hold the line, you've
got to find Rather for me.

Ten bells this time
on the teletype machine

in the CBS newsroom,
the signal for a flash.

And what Walter Cronkite
read was:

"Kennedy seriously wounded,
perhaps seriously,

perhaps fatally
by assassin's bullet."

"Kennedy seriously wounded,
perhaps seriously,

perhaps fatally
by assassin's bullet."

For the first time the word
"assassin" had appeared.

He knew when those bells
started ringing in the newsroom

that this was
an incredible story.

I mean, for anything
to be slugged a flash,

it had to be monumental news.

Are we going to go to air?

We're getting it all from,
at that point, Smith,

and Walter, everybody hollers,
"We got to get on the air."

Yes, we will go to air.

Dan Rather's not in New Orleans,
he's in Dallas

because we've sent him there.

Walter Cronkite knew CBS
had to get on air and fast.

But there was a problem.

There's no camera.

We can't go to air
without a camera.

They were screaming,
"We've gotta get on the air,

let's get on the air."

And they couldn't do that
because there was no camera,

unbelievably,
in the CBS newsroom.

The tech guys have it.

There was a frenzy;
what do you do with this story?

And of course at CBS...
As some of the other studios...

They did not have the ability
to break into television.

They had this story
of a lifetime

and they didn't know
what to do with it.

They don't know
where anybody is,

they don't know what's happened.

Once you turn it on,
it used to take 20 minutes

to align that camera to where
you could put it on television.

20 minutes of back and forth
between the cameraman

and the control room.

This thing has vacuum tubes
in it.

It has dozens of buttons
on the back,

and they're working
to get it lined up.

ABC Radio had already
alerted the nation

to the shooting in Dallas.

Right now, across the city
in New York,

ABC Television and NBC
must be within seconds

of breaking the story.

Walter Cronkite desperately
wanted to beat them,

but the technology
wouldn't allow it.

They were making
contingent plans.

And they decided,
we've got to get on the air.

What we can do
is Walter Cronkite can go

into the radio booth
and do an audio bulletin.

And that's what they did.

Keep me updated with
any information on the wires.

Of course.

That was real nice of the boy.

And I thought about it.

And I gave it a great deal
of thought, Grandpa...

Here is a bulletin
from CBS News.

In Dallas, Texas,
three shots were fired

at President Kennedy's motorcade
in downtown Dallas.

The first reports say
that President Kennedy

has been seriously wounded
by this shooting.

This was really a radio
broadcast on television,

but it didn't matter...
CBS beat NBC by a minute.

It was 12:40.

More details just arrived.

These details about the same
as previously,

President Kennedy shot today

just as his motorcade
left downtown Dallas.

Mrs. Kennedy jumped up
and grabbed Mr. Kennedy,

she called, "Oh, no!"

The motorcade sped on.

United Press says that
the wounds for President Kennedy

perhaps could be fatal.

Walter Cronkite had very little
to go on.

He was a master at embellishing.

I mean, he knew details
about the politics.

He knew the reason
for the trip to Dallas.

He was able to put
in the background

that would add to the story

without advancing it
unnecessarily.

The first thing that goes
through your mind is disbelief.

"This cannot be happening."

When something explodes,

when a totally
unexpected story breaks

right in the middle
of the routine,

and you know what happens?

Everybody falls
into his pattern.

These are people
who know what they're doing.

These are very,
very good people.

And all of a sudden,
you can almost hear a click.

The people who need to be
on the phone are on the phone.

The people in the control room
are getting you on the air.

Everybody knows what to do.

UPI.

Secret Service member heard
to say "Kennedy is dead."

Eddie, what are we
doing on this?

The Secret Service?

Did we get a name on this?

The CBS Television news team
knew what to do.

But one thing would come
to dominate the next 60 minutes:

the quest to be first and right.

From the moment that you worked

your first day
at the wire service,

they emphasized how important
it was to get things right.

It was so much more difficult

to take back a mistake
that you might make.

A Secret Service man

was heard to say, "He's dead,"

as the president was lifted

from the rear
of the White House touring car,

the famous bubble top
from Washington,

and taken into the hospital.

Get it first, but get it right.

The president
and Governor Connally

were taken
into the emergency room,

and witnesses there
refused to comment

on whether the president
was still alive or not.

As the bullets were heard...

Look, this is the president
of the United States.

You gotta get it right.

You don't want to scare
the whole country

if indeed nothing has happened,
and if indeed,

it's gonna be a footnote
to tonight's evening news.

On the other hand,
there's the awful possibility

that something has happened.

So what you gotta do,
you gotta get on the air.

175 million Americans had tuned
in to the three networks,

the biggest television audience
to date;

175 million Americans
who were traumatized by the news

and wanted more.

12:55.

And then came a key moment

which seemed to suggest that
Walter Cronkite had been right

to hold off announcing
the president's death.

Albert Thomas now says
Governor Connally

and President Kennedy
are both still alive.

Can we trust what Thomas says?

He's a representative from
Houston, he's on the inside.

He should know.

Ellen, take this to Walter!

Representative Albert Thomas,

the Democrat from Houston,
Texas,

says that he has been informed
that President Kennedy

and Governor Connally of Texas
are still alive.

That was the thought that
Cronkite took with him

into the television newsroom

when CBS was finally ready
to go on air at 1:00.

We can go live.

Now every local CBS station
in the country

was taking the feed
from New York.

Walter Cronkite,
the television anchorman,

was broadcasting to the nation.

This is Walter Cronkite
in our newsroom in New York.

There has been an attempt,
as perhaps you know now,

on the life
of President Kennedy.

He was wounded in an automobile
driving from Dallas Airport

into downtown Dallas along
with Governor Connally of Texas.

They've been taken
to Parkland Hospital there,

where their condition
is as yet unknown.

He is in the beating heart

of the CBS Newsroom in New York.

We can all thank heavens
that he was at work that day.

He was calm, he was measured,

and he was writing
the first draft.

He was a wire writer and he was
writing for us verbally.

He was writing the lead.

A word just in from Congressman
Jim Wright of Fort Worth

says that he understands

that both President Kennedy
and Governor Connally,

while seriously wounded,
are still alive.

Now you have all of these
professional people

swinging into action.

Everybody is going to be
all over this story

because it's the biggest story
of the 20th century.

Five minutes after 1:00.

The confusion deepened,

and now there was a new
and sinister thought.

Was this the action
of a lone madman,

or could the United States
itself be under attack?

They closed the border
with Mexico.

That's right,
I got a call just before.

Fort Myers raised the alert.

That's where the B52s are.

Is this nuclear?

We didn't know.

This was... we were still
in the cold war.

We didn't know.

It was just inconceivable
that one nutcake

could do all this damage,
blow a man's brains out.

That man happened to be
president of the United States.

Here's the thing:
we were terrified.

We didn't know
what had happened.

They had closed off the borders
with Mexico,

the large Strategic Air Command
base, the nuclear bombers,

the B52s, they were all based
in Fort Worth.

We didn't know if these
were the first shots fired

in World War III.

We didn't know
what had happened.

The United States
was not under attack.

The shooting
of President Kennedy

had been the action of one man.

But no one knew at the time.

And it reinforced
Walter Cronkite's instinct

to be cautious.

Eddie?

Walter wants a word.

Cronkite was the voice

and then the face
of the news that day.

But he was the first to admit
that it was a team effort:

the reporters in the newsroom,

the technicians,
and the reporters in Dallas...

CBS White House Correspondent
Robert Pierpoint,

Eddie Barker and Dan Rather.

Cronkite would come
to rely on these men

as the story developed.

Eddie Barker was news director
of the local CBS station KRLD

and had good local contacts.

He chose to cover the lunch
at the Dallas Trade Mart,

where the president
was due to speak.

That was the location
of the fixed camera

and that was where
he had to stay

to feed bulletins to New York.

But Barker had a good contact
at Parkland Hospital.

As you can imagine,

there are many stories
that are coming in now

as to the actual condition
of the president.

One is that he is dead.

Eddie Barker, who was with
the CBS affiliate in Dallas,

was reporting that a doctor
who was at the luncheon

had called the hospital

and been told that President
Kennedy had been shot.

Now, Walter Cronkite
reported that

as an unconfirmed report
from Eddie Barker.

Let us recall for you now
what has transpired...

KRLD is reporting.

They've been told by somebody
at the hospital

the president's dead.

Only a rumor,
but they've been told that.

KRLD is saying.

Well, that's a repeat
of something that you heard

reported to you directly
a moment ago

from KRLD Television in Dallas,

and that is the rumor that
has reached them at the hotel

that the president is dead.

Totally unconfirmed,
apparently, as yet.

Dan Rather was near
the motorcade

when Oswald's shots rang out.

He ran back to the newsroom
at KRLD

and called Parkland Hospital.

11 minutes past 1:00.

I got through
to Parkland Hospital.

Switchboard operator,
harried, said,

"No, you know,
I can't really deal with this."

And I said, "Well, is there
a doctor around?"

She said, "Well, all the doctors
are busy."

Eventually, the doctor
came on the phone,

and the doctor said
just matter-of-factly

that he believed
the president was dead.

So I naturally wanted
to get his name,

and he said, "Well, I'm not
authorized to talk,"

and click, went off.

So I've lost the line
at the hospital.

But I redialed the hospital
almost immediately,

and the second call got through,

and that's when this
switchboard operator

who was very helpful to me said,

"Listen, there are two
Catholic priests here,

maybe they can help you."

And the priest got on the line
and I said...

And he just said,
matter of fact,

he was obviously
torn up about it,

shaken about it,
said he was dead.

And I asked him to repeat it,
and he did repeat it.

And so now we have a doctor
and a priest at the hospital

and we have Eddie Barker's
hospital official

at the Trade Mart.

When Father Huber came
to administer the last rites,

we went out and talked to him
and said over again,

"Was he still alive when you
administered the last rites?"

And he was kind of...
rather evasive about it.

He wouldn't actually say yes.

Two priests came out

and Hugh Sidey and I ran over
to the two priests and said,

"Did you give him
the last rites?"

And the priests nodded yes.

Parkland Memorial Hospital

was besieged by reporters
and camera crews.

Many had managed to get inside

before the FBI established
a cordon around the building.

Some reporters thought they knew
more than others,

but they all had one thing
in common: a lack of telephones.

There's an old saying in UPI
and journalism in general

that you could have
the biggest scoop in the world

but if you didn't have a way
to get it out,

it was the biggest secret
in the world.

In those days,

a calling party had to hang up
to break a connection.

Don, it's Bill.

I've got a plan.

I'm going to hang up
and you're going to call back

and we're going
to have the line.

Yes, I'm going to hang up.

Call back at...

I could hang up my phone,

and as long as Don did not hang
up the phone in the UPI office,

that phone was ours.

It was for the rest of the day.

And so I did,
and he called me right back,

and I answered,
and I said, "Okay."

And he said,
"Now go find Merriman Smith.

Is it you?

Great.

It's chaos here:
don't hang up.

Great.

I went in,

straight into the emergency room
through the swing doors.

There was Merriman Smith
dictating the story

because he'd been
in the pool car,

and there were nurses
pulling on Smith, saying,

"You can't use this phone."

And he just went on dictating.

One of the great things about
being a wire service reporter.

I'd worked for Reuters
for five years.

You learn how to dictate.

I grabbed a phone
off a nurse's desk,

which was the first one I saw,
and I got into a fight with her.

She said, "No, you can't have
that, somebody might call."

And I said,
"I need this phone."

We were screaming at each other.

People for the first time
saw news as it's gathered

and saw the process.

Up until that time,

all most people knew about
the news was the final product.

They read the story
in the paper,

they saw the story that had been
edited and put on television,

but they had no idea of the
process of how it's gathered.

And they suddenly discovered,
"Hey, this is kind of a mess.

"People push and shove
and they shout and they holler

and nobody seems to know
what was going on."

And I think in many ways,

that sort of hurt
the credibility of journalism.

In the midst of the confusion,

Dan Rather and Eddie Barker
spoke on the phone.

They wanted to compare notes,
to take stock.

It was 19 minutes after 1:00.

What happened next
was a game changer.

Eddie and I were on the phone.

I knew he was at the Trade Mart.

I had an open phone line
to New York,

but I didn't realize how many
people were on that phone line.

It turned out at least
three people from radio were on.

And in New York,

the radio operation
and the television operation

are close to each other,
but are separated.

So on the phone line,

when I thought I was talking
to Eddie Barker,

somebody in New York said,

"You say the president
was dead?"

I said, "Yes."

Ladies and gentlemen,

the president of the
United States is dead.

John F. Kennedy has died
of the wounds he received

in the assassination in Dallas
less than an hour ago.

It all happened very quickly,
and the next thing I knew,

they were playing
the "Star Spangled Banner."

We repeat.

It has just been announced that
President Kennedy is... dead.

There wasn't any doubt
in my mind that he was dead,

but if someone had said to me,

"Well, Dan, do you think
we oughta play

the "Star Spangled Banner"
and announce it?"

I would have said,

"That decision is above
my pay grade."

1:22.

CBS Radio had formally announced
the death of the president

based on information obtained
by two reporters in Dallas.

Hold on...

Radio has announced he's dead.

Who says?

They must be going with Dan's
report out of Dallas.

But it was not enough
for Walter Cronkite.

The temptation had to have been
great to say flat out,

"President Kennedy has died."

But they didn't do that,

because it was such a momentous
thing to declare to the nation

that they wanted to wait

until it had been
officially confirmed.

Pierpoint's on the line
from Parkland.

Wants to speak to Walter.

Go ahead.

Sounds like Pierpoint's
on the line.

ROBERT MacNElL:
I remember Pierpoint, saying...

talking to Cronkite
on the phone,

and I was talking
to Chet Huntley of NBC

and Frank McGee of NBC,

and I remember Pierpoint saying,
"Walter, Walter,

"you can't say the president
of the United States is dead

until it's official."

Walter was very deliberative
because he had time to think

and it was in his own instinct,
I think,

to not say he's dead
until he's sure.

On the other hand,
you want to be first.

Pints of blood have been rushed
into the room

for transfusion purposes,

and two priests were called
to the room.

Most of the other reporters
who were on the scene

did indeed think he was dead,

but nobody had officially
said it.

There is the report in Dallas
you heard

from our affiliate there,
Eddie Barker,

that the president is dead.

But that has not been confirmed
by any other source.

Walter Cronkite,
because of his background,

because of his wire service
training,

because of his responsibilities
as an anchor

on a national network,

knew that he didn't want
to report

what somebody was thinking

or what somebody had been told
by a second source.

He wanted to wait until there
was official confirmation

from the White House.

Nowadays, you hear it,
you stick it on the air.

You hear it,
you put it on the Web

whether it's true or not.

Nobody seems to care.

In those days,
everything was edited.

Nothing went directly on the air

without going through at least
one other mind

that's going to say,
"Wait a minute,

what do we really know here?"

Everybody was trying to get this
story and to get it right.

And they were kind of working
independent from one another.

But the difference was
Walter Cronkite was the guy

who was making the call
on television,

and it didn't satisfy
his set of standards.

And that's why
they didn't go with it.

For a full five minutes,
the television newsroom

agonized over whether to say
the president was dead.

Walter says it's
not strong enough.

We can't just go
on Dan Rather's confirmation.

I say we call the White House.

Eddie, are they going
to announce this

in Washington or Dallas?

Dallas, I think.

Pierpoint says that Kilduff

is probably going to call
a press conference.

Where's Salinger?

He's on his way to Tokyo,
somewhere over the Pacific.

Well, Walter wants us to wait.

It's crazy.

We ran it on radio already.

Who wouldn't we run it on TV?

What if Walter credits Dan
with the information?

Then it's the best
of both worlds, right?

It's official and it's not.

Yeah, I think that makes sense.

We just have a report

from our correspondent
Dan Rather in Dallas

that he has confirmed that
President Kennedy is dead.

There is still no official
confirmation of this.

However, it's a report from
our correspondent Dan Rather

in Dallas, Texas.

So Cronkite announced

that Dan Rather had announced
the death of the president,

but it wasn't the same as an
official White House statement.

At Parkland Hospital,

the Secret Service wanted to get
the new president,

Lyndon Johnson, to the safety
of Air Force One at Love Field.

And President Kennedy's people
were preparing to confirm

the one fact no one
wanted to hear.

MacNElL:
When Johnson and party
swept out,

Pierpoint and I were there,

but Mac Kilduff, who was the
deputy press secretary, said,

"Hey, you guys, come on, there's
going to be a press conference."

We couldn't go through
the hospital complex.

We had to go outside
the whole perimeter,

all the time, Pierpoint and I
saying to him, he CBS, I NBC,

"For God's sake, Mac,
tell us, is he dead?

"Is he dead, Mac?

"Come on, are you going
to tell us?

Are you gonna tell us
he's dead?"

All the way until we got to the
front of the hospital, went in,

and there was like
a school room there

where I think
they taught nurses.

Kilduff took his place behind
a desk like a teacher's desk.

He was crying.

And he put his hands
on the desk like this

with his fingers spread,
trying to steady himself.

And then he said, "President
John F. Kennedy died today..."

And somebody said, "Just
a moment, what time is it?"

And he said,
"Everybody, it's 1:00."

And then they agreed,
okay, it'll be 1:00.

I took off running
as fast as I could.

50 years on

and I can almost remember
that little sprint I made.

There's a woman in a nurse's
station who saw me running

and sort of put her hand
to her mouth.

And there was a guy on a gurney

who sort of sat up
and looked at me,

and anyway, I went in,
grabbed the phone.

Don, my God, he's dead.

He's dead.

He's really dead.

And Don Smith said, "Who, Bill?"

The White House man,
Malcolm Kilduff.

And I heard Don shout down
to Jack, "It's official.

White House."

And I could even hear Fallon
shout across the newsroom

on my end of the phone,
"Flash: President Kennedy dead."

Eddie Bliss got the copy
and handed it to Walter.

Everybody in the world
has seen what happened then,

with Walter looking at the copy.

And you can see him deciding.

And he decides it is now time

to tell the people
the president is dead.

From Dallas, Texas,

the flash apparently official,

President Kennedy died at
1:00 p.m. Central Standard Time,

2:00 Eastern Standard Time,
some 38 minutes ago.

Vice President Lyndon Johnson
has left the hospital in Dallas,

but we do not know
to where he has proceeded.

Walter handled himself very,
very professionally,

very well.

Wiping his eyes a little bit
and taking his glasses off,

but who wouldn't have done that?

To be moved by that news.

Presumably he will be taking
the oath of office shortly

and become the 36th president
of the United States.

He was able to maintain
that composure,

and it was something that
he learned during the war.

President Kennedy
at Dallas Airport this morning

was cheerful and waving.

It had been quite
a triumphal tour of Texas

over the last 48 hours.

The murder of a president
is a horrendous thing,

but Cronkite had seen worse
during the war.

World War II made young men
look much older,

and when those young men
came home

to be anchors on television,
they all looked like our dads,

and in some cases our granddads.

And on that day, he was our dad.

With the benefit
of all those years

and the fact that I later
got to know him,

I think it was, "Okay,
I felt just like you did.

"I wanted to bawl and scream
and yell and be mad

"and everything else.

"But I couldn't do my job
for you.

I owe you a calm account
of what is happening."

He was the rock, the man
that knew what was going on,

and you could count on him
to tell the story.

Let me recount for you

this day's tragic
developments so far.

President Kennedy
has been assassinated.

This is the combination
of skills

that you have accumulated
throughout your lifetime

to pour it all
into that one little lens.

From Dallas, Texas...

Of all the images of that
weekend... and there were many...

Walter Cronkite
almost letting his emotions

get the better of him

is perhaps the one that has
stayed in most people's minds.

There were stronger images
to come,

but that instant,
when this all-American anchorman

was so visibly touched
by the awfulness

of that official announcement,

that was when television
came of age.

NBC was just as much
on the story,

but now the world thinks

that Cronkite announced
Kennedy's death.

Here we are 50 years later

and the memories are all of
Walter Cronkite on the coverage,

of almost nothing else.

Everyone remembers
what they were doing

when they heard that
President Kennedy was dead.

But those covering the story
in Dallas and New York

could not allow themselves
to let go.

This is devastating.

The destruction is devastating.

And we are Americans
like everybody in our audience,

and we're all feeling it.

And we have to just
put that aside.

You cannot weep.

You cannot grieve.

You have to think about five
minutes from now on television.

Later on, you'll weep
and later on, you'll grieve.

But not now.

I remember being shaken,
and I mean literally shaken,

right down to the soles
of my feet

when I realized
the president was dead.

But in that moment,
one of two things happens.

Either your emotions consume you
and you begin to weep,

perhaps literally,

or professionalism takes hold
and you say, in essence,

"I can't do that.

"I can't let that happen now.

The story's what counts."

this nation's place in history,

to the fact that we do stand
on the edge of a great new era,

filled with both...

Your prayer as a reporter is,
"God, give me the big story."

And being greedy, reporters,
most of us have a second prayer:

"And by the way, God,
if you do give me the big story,

could you please let me be
at or near my best."

This is why
you got into journalism.

You wanted to do something
that was bigger than yourself.

You want to be part of something
that counts,

that's important, that matters.

Well, a president
has been assassinated.

This matters.

5:00 that afternoon,

I was told to go to the Dallas
Police Headquarters,

that they had...
this was the first time

I heard that they had
captured a suspect.

And it's sort of the first time
I thought,

"Oh yes, of course,
somebody had to have done this.

There is an ominous symbol

in Lee Harvey Oswald's
murder weapon.

I started jogging
across the lawn at Parkland,

and there was...
at that time,

there was a great huge
live oak tree

in the middle of the lawn.

I reached it
and it suddenly hit me.

"My God!

President Kennedy is dead."

And I stopped and I put my hand
against the tree

and I just started to cry.

And I didn't know...

He had represented so much,
especially to us

who were just coming
into adulthood at that time.

And I sat there
for maybe half a minute.

And then I realized I had to get
to the police station.

And so I jogged on
and got in the car

and drove down
to the Dallas Police Station.

It was hard to take in.

It's even harder to take in now.

They ask reporters,

"How is it you're able
to do your job

in the midst of tragedy?"

Well, the way you do it

is you just focus on what's
before you, as a doctor would,

you get your job done,

and then if there's an emotion,
you feel that later.

I realized I had no emotion
after that,

and it took a long time
for it to come back.

I never felt that way again
until 9/11.

But a new world of law,

where the strong are just
and the weak secure.

He was a model.

He was a model to which we hoped
the new world would aspire

and follow and be like.

And...

Bang!

Just like that, he's gone.

President Kennedy is dead
of an assassin's bullet.

Walter Cronkite stayed on air
that fateful afternoon,

consolidating his initial lead
over the other networks,

trying to find out more
about Lee Harvey Oswald,

the assassin, and whether he
was part of a wider conspiracy,

trying to make sense of it all.

But there was no sense
to be made.

What do we know about Oswald?

Not much.

Someone says he works
in a book depository.

Where's Johnson now?

We think he's coming back
in Air Force One

with the body and Jackie,
I guess.

All right, keep on it.

50 years on, the assassination
of John Kennedy

still has the capacity
to move those who remember.

For reporters, it may be because
they saw him as one of them;

the first president to properly
engage with the press,

the "television president."

For ordinary Americans
who supported him,

it may have been because
the hope he offered

in a dangerous world
was snuffed out with him.

For everyone else,

the man who might have ended
the cold war was gone.

Khrushchev, the leader of Russia
at that time,

believed that,
with Kennedy's assassination,

a great, promising moment in
U.S.-Soviet relations had ended

and it would be very difficult
to recapture that.

They also had a feeling

they really didn't know
Lyndon Johnson.

But they knew Jack Kennedy.

And when Lyndon Johnson came in,

the first words out of his mouth
were, "Let us continue."

And what he meant by that was,
"Let us please, dear God,

continue what it is that Kennedy
represented in the U.S."

Charles DeGaulle said,
"They're crying all over France.

It's as if he was a Frenchman,
a member of their own family."

And this close personal
connection that was felt

not just by Americans,
by Europeans,

explains the extraordinary
number of memorials,

the bridges, the streets,
the schools,

everything else that has been
named for Kennedy.

I like to say that

if you could turn off
all the lights in the world

except the lights that
illuminated something

named for John F. Kennedy...
The schools and the bridges...

The astronauts sent into space
from the Kennedy Space Center

would see a network
of twinkling lights

all over the United States
and all over Europe

and also some
in Africa and Asia.

The leaders of the world
came to Washington

to pay their respects.

The funeral was set for Monday,

three days
after the assassination.

For Walter Cronkite
and his team,

there was no time to think.

The story rolled on.

I became a producer, and I'm
starting to produce the death

of the president
of the United States.

It's shocking.

And it's all you have.

It's all you have.

And so you throw yourself
into it.

We have suffered a loss
that cannot be weighed.

This television marathon
started.

We will not be off the air
for four days and three nights.

The slain president
would lie in state,

first at the White House,
then at the Capitol.

A million Americans
would come to say goodbye.

This story was moving so fast,
newspapers couldn't keep up.

Through that weekend,

American culture
changed dramatically.

Television easily replaced print
as the main source

by which Americans
receive their news.

There are Americans who didn't
turn off their television set

for three days.

They walked with Mrs. Kennedy.

The entire nation was able
to mourn with the family.

And thanks to television,

we were all able
to take part in it.

Walter Cronkite was...

was the master of the moment.

No one did it as well as he.

This was a moment when
television was the fireplace

around which the American people
gathered.

Walter was the face
of television.

Maybe there were other people
who could have done it as well,

but I don't know anyone.

I think people rallied
around the television set

to listen to Walter tell them
how they should feel.

Walter Cronkite
held the nation together

and seamlessly melded the
strands of the assassination;

the lying-in-state,
the procession to the Capitol,

the funeral,
and the burial at Arlington.

Only history can write
the importance of this day.

Were these dark days
the harbingers

of even blacker ones to come,

or like the black
before the dawn,

shall they lead to some still
as yet undiscernible sunrise

of understanding among men?

It was just everything
all together.

It was a dignified, modest man

who reflected back
the best of us.

We were watching this flat,
glass surface, the television,

but we were really
watching a mirror.

He was Walter, he was us.

That young president

was everything
we dreamed we could be.

That was a moment
of incredible grief

and lost promise
for the country.

The Israeli ambassador
to the UN, Abba Eban, said that,

in referring to President
Kennedy's assassination,

that tragedy is the difference

between what is
and what might have been.

Every sentence Walter Cronkite
uttered made that point

without saying it.

Violent words, no matter what
their origin or motivation,

can lead only to violent deeds.

Walter turned in

his best day

and one of the best days the
business of news has ever had,

and he happened to do it

on what was the worst day
in modern times.

In those darkest moments,

Walter Cronkite was
father, son, uncle.

And over all of this was
the shadow of Dallas...

where some reporters
were still asking, "Why?"

ROBERT MacNElL:
I'd gone with a camera crew

to shoot the display
of flowers and notes

that had been left at the site
of the assassination.

An elderly man came along and
there was a sort of stone wall,

and he came and sat
on the stone wall

and he put a transistor radio
beside him.

And at that moment,
the Blackwatch Regiment

was passing the microphone
in the funeral

and the pipes
were playing a lament.

Now, I had seen them
on the White House South Lawn

a few days before
with President and Mrs. Kennedy

sitting on the balcony
in the South Portico

with their children,
Caroline and John-John.

My children were exactly
their sex and ages.

Hearing the bagpipes,
I suddenly found I was crying.

There were tears
pouring down my face.

It was the bagpipes and the
memory of us having seen them

wheel and parade up and down
with the pipes skirling

and the drums rattling
in that gorgeous autumn day

just a few days before

and the bringing the children
into it.

And I had just moved my family
back to the States.

I said to myself,

"Is this the country
I've come back to and moved to?

How could this have happened?"

For many,

including reporters hardened
by the experience of war,

this was the saddest weekend
of their lives.

For those who thought
Jack Kennedy was the future,

it was the end of a dream.

Tonight, there will be
few Americans

who will go to bed
without carrying with them

a sense that somehow,
they have failed.

If in the search
of our conscience,

we find a new dedication
to the American concepts

that brook no political,
sectional, religious

or racial divisions,

then maybe it may yet
be possible to say

that John Fitzgerald Kennedy
did not die in vain.

That's the way it is.

Monday, November 25, 1963.

The hammer to the heart
that was the assassination,

it gave more poignancy
and meaning

to the moment
of the Kennedy years

for those of us
who lived through it.

And therefore, it was, it is,
and it shall remain

a moment for the ages.

The Kennedy era will always be
this one brief, glittering,

shining moment in the broad
sweep of American history.

But what a moment.

For Walter Cronkite,
it was the defining moment

in a career that would continue
for another 45 years.

For him and for those
who helped report it,

there would never be
another story like this.

Walter Cronkite
was already becoming

one of the most
trusted broadcasters.

But after that weekend,

Walter became the most
trusted person in America.

It just reinforced my view
that someday,

I hope I can work
for Walter Cronkite.

I wanted to be Walter Cronkite.

I still do!

Six months
after the assassination

of President Kennedy,
CBS made a documentary

about a day in the life
of Walter Cronkite.

Nothing had changed;

the newsroom on West 57th Street
was the same.

The teletypes chattered.

The reporters were still there.

The Cronkite team
still gathered around his desk.

Clear that shot!

Get Socolow out!

Get him out!

But like their colleagues

in newsrooms around the country,

they felt that nothing would be
quite the same again.

Adlai Stevenson tells the UN

what we're doing
in Southeast Asia.

Pierre Salinger challenges
the president's

Latin American policy.

Mrs. Johnson talks back
about her Alabama...

This is Walter Cronkite.

Goodnight.

This is a simple song
of remembrance

for the man who was
the most welcome visitor

in every one
of our living rooms.

♪ And that's the way it is
forever in my mind ♪

♪ You'd set sail
on some adventure ♪

♪ Just to see
what you would find ♪

♪ Sailing toward a new horizon,
reaching for a distant star ♪

♪ And a nation
shared your journey ♪

♪ Oh boy, we traveled far ♪

♪ In search of truth,
the quest for answers ♪

♪ And trusting that
the course you set was right ♪

♪ Yes, you were there,
you told our story ♪

♪ And now it's time
to say goodnight ♪

♪ Goodnight ♪

♪ And that's the way it is,
the tide must ebb and flow ♪

♪ I'll miss your voice of reason
telling us what we should know ♪

♪ That life is worth living,
the truth will keep us free ♪

♪ And we should
keep on sailing ♪

♪ All the wonders
we will see ♪

♪ In search of truth,
the quest for answers ♪

♪ And trusting that
the course you set was right ♪

♪ Yes, you were there,
you told our story ♪

♪ And now it's time for us
to say goodnight... ♪

♪ In search of truth,
the quest for answers ♪

♪ And trusting that
the course you set was right ♪

♪ Yes, you were there,
you told our story ♪

♪ And now it's time for us
to say goodnight ♪

♪ We'll keep sailing
round the bend ♪

♪ The quest will never end ♪

♪ And that's the way it is ♪

♪ Old friend... ♪