Oswald attempted to flee after the shooting, but was stopped by Dallas patrolman J.D. Tippit. Oswald emptied his revolver into Tippit, killing him. Oswald then headed toward the nearby Texas Theater, and snuck into a showing of "War Is Hell."
Witnesses to Tippit's murder led police to the theater, and Oswald was arrested. But less than 48 hours later, Oswald was murdered, by Dallas strip club owner Jack Ruby. Thus there was never a trial for Oswald. President Johnson invoked the Warren Commission, headed by Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren, to resolve the key questions of the Kennedy assassination.
The 888-page Warren Report was issued on September 27, 1964. But before the general public could see it, CBS news obtained an advance copy, and promptly made a two-hour documentary, presented in prime time the day the Warren Report became public.
The heart of the documentary consists of interviews with witnesses to Kennedy's assassination or Tippit's murder, or had interactions with Oswald leading up his infamous crimes. The documentary is narrated by Walter Cronkite, longtime Evening News anchor at CBS and purportedly "the most trusted man in America." Cronkite is assisted by Dan Rather, who was reporting in Dallas on the afternoon of Kennedy's death.
How others will see it. Although it was undoubtedly watched by riveted tens of millions of Americans when it first aired, November 22nd and the Warren Report was soon forgotten. Today at imdb.com, it has no user rating and no user reviews. It won no awards.
Nonetheless, it can be seen by anyone at any time on YouTube, where it has more than 500K views. The comment section is rife with conspiracy theories, and most viewers seem to be believe that Oswald was a "patsy", despite the overwhelming evidence that Oswald shot both Kennedy and Tippit alone.
How I felt about it. It has been almost 60 years since John F. Kennedy was killed. America has, of course, greatly changed during that time. The television news industry has also changed. It is true that the CBS Evening News continues to air practically every weekday, at 5:30 PM Central Standard Time, as it did in 1963. But the audience is vastly smaller, and patrician WASP anchors no longer dominate television news. Many news programs have a bias toward the right or left, and many other ostensible news people are in effect entertainers.
In 1964, Cronkite and Rather told it "the way it was", without the shades of gray that complicate our understanding of the world. They thought of themselves as beacons of truth. If they say Kennedy was shot by Oswald, it must be so.
It seems the only question left unanswered is, which of the three shots missed? Texas Governor John Connally, who was seriously injured by the same shot that pierced Kennedy's throat, provides a memorable interview that implies the first shot missed. But his recollections are at odds with the Zapruder film of the assassination, which shows Connally turning toward Kennedy after, not before, Kennedy was first struck. Connally had already been shot by then, though it took a moment for him to realize it. The same thing, by the way, happened to Ronald Reagan during his attempted assassination. Reagan was coughing up blood before it was apparent he had been hit.
As for the present documentary, the interviews are generally engrossing. The exceptions are the observations of Oswald by rifle range customers. It turns out that Oswald was in Mexico during the time he was said to be at the rifle range.
Oswald is unique among Presidential assassins in that he denied his guilt. Most assassins seem proud to have accomplished their deed. Oswald on the run is the most gripping part of the documentary. He managed to get out of the Texas School Book Depository, and made it in and out of his rental room, where he pocketed his revolver. Who knows how far he could have gotten if Tippit had not stopped him on the streets of Dallas.