Robert MacNeil on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy

Journalist Robert MacNeil shares his incredible experiences in Dallas on November 22, 1963. He was riding in a press bus behind the presidential motorcade, and when the shots rang out, he ran off the bus and ended up at the Texas School Book Depository. Desperate to get in touch with NBC News in New York, he asked a young man running out of the building if there was a telephone inside. Later, it seemed possible that the man he spoke to was Lee Harvey Oswald himself:

"About a year and a half later, I was back at NBC in New York and William Manchester was just finishing the book 'Death of the President.' He called me up and said, could I confirm that it was [Lee Harvey] Oswald I had talked to on the steps of the Book Depository. And I said, no I couldn’t. ... And he said, 'Well, I’m convinced...because I’ve been all over the ground, minutely, second by second and I’ve timed your call to NBC, and where you were and where other people were, and did you know that Oswald told the Secret Service that night, that as he was leaving the Book Depository, a young, blonde crewcut Secret Service man ran up the steps and asked him for a phone?...I think Oswald mistook you for a Secret Service man because no Secret Service did go into the building.' And I was young, blonde with a short haircut, a grey suit on and a White House press badge and so that’s what he says several times in the book."

Watch Robert MacNeil's full interview to hear stories from his years at NBC News and on The MacNeil Lehrer NewsHour.

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