Summaries

Synopsis

Newsreel footage, including the farewell address in 1961 of outgoing President Dwight D. Eisenhower, warning about the build-up of the "military-industrial complex". This is followed by a summary of John F. Kennedy's years as president, emphasizing the events that, in Stone's thesis, would lead to his assassination.

JFK inherited a secret war against Cuba, run by the CIA and the angry Cuban separatists. This leads to a disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961, when JFK refuses air cover for the Cuban brigade. He privately claims that the CIA lied to him and tried to manipulate him into an all-out invasion of Cuba. In Oct 1962, JFK quarantines Cuba during the missile crisis. Soviet ships turn back at the last moment. Rumors are that JFK cut a secret deal with Soviets not to invade Cuba in exchange for no missiles. It is rumored that he is soft on communism. He is also not clear about US involvement in the Vietnam and Loas wars. This builds to a reconstruction of the assassination on November 22, 1963.JFK was shot in Dallas at 12:30 pm. Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested as a suspect after he killed a police officer at 1:15 pm.

New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison (Kevin Costner) subsequently learns about potential New Orleans links to the JFK assassination. Oswald claims on national TV to have spent time in New Orleans. The police find the rifle used by Oswald to kill the policeman and say that the same weapon was used to kill JFK. Garrison and his team investigate several possible conspirators, including private pilot David Ferrie (Joe Pesci) (who is a frequent associate of Oswald & was supposed to be his getaway pilot), but are forced to let them go after their investigation is publicly rebuked by the federal government. Kennedy's suspected assassin Lee Harvey Oswald (Gary Oldman) is killed by Jack Ruby (Brian Doyle-Murray), and Garrison closes the investigation.

The investigation is reopened in 1966 after Garrison reads the Warren Report (A retired SC judge who is given the responsibility to figure out the assassination) and notices what he believes to be multiple inaccuracies.Oswald pulled off 3 shots from a manual bolt action rifle in 6 secs with world class precision. The bookstore from where he shot was behind JFK. And they had a magic bullet theory in which the bullet went in a non-straight-line path inside JFKs body 7 times. There was no recording of the Oswald interrogation after the assassination. Many eyewitnesses said they heard shots from the grassy knolls in front of the motorcade, but that was ignored. The parking lot attendant behind the grassy knoll talked about a car entering the lot 10 mins before the shooting and men getting out. He also saw a flash of light at the time of the shooting, coming from the grassy knoll.Garrison and his staff interrogate several witnesses to the Kennedy assassination, and others involved with Oswald, Ruby, and Ferrie.

Jim says Oswald was working in an office in New Orleans which was next to the office of Guy Banister (Edward Asner). Guy was an ex-FBI man, who used to recruit college grads to infiltrate radical groups. Oswald was one such recruit, but somewhere before the assassination a street fight was staged (with the group that Oswald infiltrated) to paint him as a Communist sympathizer. Oswald was arrested by FBI special agent, who destroyed his notes from the interview. Oswald became famous and got TV publicity. Oswald was trained in Russian when he was in the Marines, by the Office of Naval Intelligence. Right across the street from Guy and Oswald was the office of ONI. Guy was also ex-ONI. It is strange that a supposed communist would have an office in the middle of an area with offices of CIA, FBI, ONI and so on.

Jack Martin (Jack Lemmon) had called the police on the night the President was murdered and said in his complain that Guy had pistol whipped him. Jim questions Jack Martin (Guy died before the coming of the Warren report). Martin admits that Guy was training David Ferrie and a bunch of Cuban exiles for another Bay of Pigs type invasion. But JFK got the FBI to shut them down, but the FBI still supported Guy. Oswald met Guy too. Martin remembers Guy laughing when he heard that Oswald was passing leaflets praising Castro on the streets. Martin also said he saw Clay Bertrand in Guy's office. Clay Bertrand was the one who got Oswald a lawyer Dean Andrews (John Candy).

Jim meets Dean, who claims he never met Bertrand. But he represented Oswald and handled Oswald's Marine discharge based on phone calls from Bertrand. But he won't reveal the real identity of Clay Bertrand to Jim.One such witness is Willie O'Keefe (Kevin Bacon), a male prostitute serving five years in prison for soliciting, who reveals he witnessed Ferrie discussing a coup. Ferrie was angry at JFK for closing down his training camps and seizing all his equipment and ammunition. Ferrie talks about killing JFK. He talks about triangulation of fire, a diversionary shot, a kill shot and the sacrifice of one man. As well as briefly meeting Oswald (through Ferrie), O'Keefe was romantically involved with a man called "Clay Bertrand" (Tommy Lee Jones), who was introduced to him by Ferrie.Willie says JFK was killed as he was a Communist. He promised the African Americans too much and now they are asking for rights.

Rose Cheramie (Sally Kirkland) was a prostitute for Jack Ruby and said Ruby knew Oswald, and was later found killed, after the JFK assassination.Susie Cox (Laurie Metcalf) is on Jim's team and figures that Oswald was a loner and joined Marines at 17. He was trained in Russian but spent time in Japan where Russian spy flights originated. He got discharged, came home and went to Russia on a $1500 ticket when he had $203 in his accounts. He defected. Worked at a radio factory. Met Marina (Beata Pozniak), married her and had a daughter. 6 months after Oswald defected, a U2 plane was shot down in Russia. This plane was untouchable, and blame falls on Oswald for revealing military secrets. Due to that the peace talks between Eisenhower and Soviets fail. Someone planted Oswald in Soviet Russia. When coming back, State Department issues him a new passport and loan money to travel. Never investigated for the U2 incident. He is able to get Marina out as well

Back in US, Oswald works in Dallas at a company that makes spy maps for US army. He is friends with George De Mohrenschildt (Willem Oltmans) and joins groups of rabid anti-communist radicals. George is suspected to be Oswald's CIA handler. Through George's friends, Oswald gets a job at the bookstore in Dallas, from where he supposedly shot JFK.When Oswald was arrested, Marina was kept by the Feds for 2 months and later testified that Oswald was violent and psychotic. He killed JFK. She was probably threatened with deportation.Oswald bought a traceable rifle through his PO box, when he could have walked into any store and bought an untraceable weapon with a phony name. He was framed.

Jean Hill (Ellen McElduff), a teacher who says she witnessed shots fired from the grassy knoll, tells the investigators that Secret Service threatened her into saying three shots came from the book depository, revealing changes that were made to her testimony by the Warren Commission (Statements were falsified and signatures were forged). Jean said that the car carrying JFK stopped after the first 2 shots and that's when the head shot came from the grassy knoll. Another woman tells Jim how she identified Jack Ruby to the FBI, whom she saw delivering the rifle to the grassy knoll the day before the assassination.

Garrison's staff also test the single-bullet theory by aiming an empty rifle from the window through which Oswald was alleged to have shot Kennedy (As per the Zapruder film) (The rifle had defective scope and had foliage in the way). They conclude that Oswald was too poor a marksman to make the shots, indicating someone else, or multiple marksmen, were involved.The Mayor of Dallas in 1963 had a brother who was the Director of the CIA during the Bay of Pigs invasion and was fired by Kennedy. Jim's team also finds a whole trail of false evidence planted in the name of Oswald, placing him at car dealerships, gun ranges and pro Cuban meetings, dropping hints that Oswald is a Communist and that he wants to kill JFK. A legend was being created.

Jim learns that Clay Bertrand is Clay Shaw. Jim knows that Shaw was fronting for the CIA in Italy. He was kicked out of Italy and the same company in the US was providing arms to David Ferrie. Shaw denies everything and denies having met Ferrie or Oswald. But he brings the media spotlight on Jim's investigation. David Ferrie panics and reaches out to Jim and says he will be killed. Jim thinks he can't protect Ferrie in witness protection as that's run by the FBI. By the time he is thinking, Ferrie turns up dead in his own apartment in an apparent suicide.

In 1968, Garrison meets a high-level figure in Washington D.C. who identifies himself as "X" (Donald Sutherland). He suggests a conspiracy at the highest levels of government, implicating members of the CIA, the Mafia, the military-industrial complex, Secret Service, FBI, and Kennedy's vice-president and then President Lyndon Baines Johnson as either co-conspirators or as having motives to cover up the truth of the assassination.

Dallas was a known hostile city and yet the 4th army was ordered to stand down and not support the secret service on the day of the assassination. Additional security that was needed to secure the parade route, was not at hand. Army would have not allowed open windows, slowing down of the motorcade or the open top car or changing of the parade route. A combat unit returning from Germany was in the air at the time of the shot (for riot control), and 12 mins later entire telephone system in Washington went down for a solid hour (to stop the wrong stories from spreading). The 2 CIA men fired by Kennedy were on the Warren commission to investigate his death.

X explains that the President was killed because he wanted to pull the United States out of the Vietnam War, sign a peace deal with the Soviets and end Cold war, refused to invade Cuba and dismantle the CIA (and the firing of 2 ex-CIA directors made some very powerful people, very upset). X encourages Garrison to keep digging and prosecute New Orleans-based international businessman Clay Shaw/Bertrand for his alleged involvement. Shaw is soon charged with conspiring to murder the President.

Some of Garrison's staff begin to doubt his motives and disagree with his methods and leave the investigation. Garrison's marriage is strained when his wife Liz (Sissy Spacek) complains that he is spending more time on the case than with his own family. After a sinister phone call is made to their daughter, Liz accuses Garrison of being selfish and attacking Shaw only because of his homosexuality. In addition, the media launches attacks on television and in newspapers attacking Garrison's character and criticizing the way his office is spending taxpayers' money.

Some key witnesses become scared and refuse to testify while others, such as Ferrie, are killed in suspicious circumstances.Before his death, Ferrie tells Garrison that he believes people are after him and reveals there was a conspiracy to kill Kennedy. Robert Kennedy is shot dead after he wins the Democratic primary in 1969.

The trial of Clay Shaw takes place in 1969. Garrison presents the court with further evidence of multiple killers and dismissing the single-bullet theory (If there was more than one assassin then by definition there was a conspiracy to murder) and proposes a Dealey Plaza shots scenario involving three assassins who fired six total shots and framing Oswald for the murders of Kennedy and officer J. D. Tippit.Oswald was having lunch at the time of the shooting. According to the Warren report, Oswald went home after the shooting and picked his revolver. He walked a mile in 6-11 mins before being accosted by officer JD Tippit and shot him, and then reversed direction and went to the theatre where he was caught at 1:30 pm. The jury acquits Shaw after less than one hour of deliberation.

Members of that jury stated publicly that they believed there was a conspiracy behind the assassination, but not enough evidence to link Shaw to that conspiracy. Shaw died of lung cancer in 1974, but in 1979, Richard Helms testified that Clay Shaw had been a part-time contact of the Domestic Contacts Division of the CIA. The end credits claim that records related to the assassination will be released to the public in 2029.