Product: The Kennedy Assassination PART 1 (NOVEMBER 22, 1963)
Rating: 5.0
History as it unfolded
This afternoon I watched my home-recorded 6 hour VHS of A&E;'s 25th anniversary special, JFK ASSASSINATION: AS IT HAPPENED and was curious if there were any official releases of this NBC-TV broadcast. Whether this one's a bootleg, I can't speculate.Some time around 2 pm EST, the network broke into regular programming with a bulletin that shots had been fired in Dallas. Eleven minutes later, someone started rolling tape. As we see, Bill Ryan, at screen right, acted as unofficial anchor of the afternoon's impromptu coverage. He, Chet Huntley and Frank McGee were possibly set up in a wood panelled conference room. The first hour of coverage was utter chaos. Remotes from Dallas failed, as did the audio system tapped into a phone line. McGee had to repeat the words of an unheard Bob McNeill, who was on-the-spot at Parkland Memorial, while technicians worked on getting an audio patch.Huntley handed him a primitive listening device at one point. Frank fumbled with it, got it on the earpiece of the phone, but then leaned in too close to a desk mike, which caused a squealing feedback that drowned out McNeill. He went back to repeating the reporter's phrases. Later when phone audio was working, Frank continued to parrot McNeill, changing an occasional word. At this time, Huntley, who sat between McGee and Ryan, departed, and coverage became two-man.Bill Ryan remained as optimistic as possible in the face of ever more dire reports. Calls for a priest didn't mean death is imminent, he said, and one for a neurosurgeon could simply indicate a spinal cord injury. This positive pretense was dropped with a first unconfirmed report from two priests that JFK was dead. Official word soon followed.Throughout this initial hour, inaccuracy reigned supreme. One woman said that Kennedy was looking at a dog in the car when he was first struck. Reports that the wounded president arrived at Parkland both conscious and unconscious were aired. The guman was on the second floor, or the fourth floor. A rifle found in a sniper's nest at the Texas School Book Depository was English, then German. And so on.For conspiracy theorists, some comments are vital to their case. JFK was struck in the back and the right temple, McGee reported. In a later phone conversation with McNeill he tried making sense of this. Perhaps the gunman's first shot was from the front, was Frank's postulation. The grisly Zapruder film (not available that day) bears out the report of a temple hit: before JFK is thrown back and to the left, his brain balloons out the rear of his head and flops around the side.Most accurate of all, and most disconcerting in hindsight, is the almost immediate setting up of Lee Oswald as a lone killer. By hour two, much was known about this 24-year-old "radical" who at that time had only been charged with the murder of a Dallas cop. He worked at the warehouse in question, had tried defecting to Russia, lived there a while, was married to a Russian girl. Clearly this was prelude to the assassination charges against Oswald that came before day's end.Except for the insanity of hour one, NBC's coverage of this tragedy was thorough and far-reaching. Comments from David Brinkley, Irving R. Levine and other correspondents, a remote from the U.N., witness tapes and films-- all were aired unedited. It was history as it unfolded, in its purest sense..I was in grammar school in Nov. '63 and was spared the first hours of NBC's coverage by a protective mother. But when my dad got home later that afternoon, he tuned in to see the bronze casket's arrival in D.C. I watched from the background, saw Jackie's blood-stained suit. This scene is also part of my SLP tape, but is certainly not on volume one of this two DVD set.