Does Rob Reiner Know Who Killed John F. Kennedy?

“Anybody who was alive at that time can remember exactly where they were when they heard the news,” Rob Reiner says about Nov. 22, 1963, the epochal day when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated while riding in a motorcade in Dallas with his wife, Jacqueline, Texas Governor John Connelly, and his wife, Nellie. “I was in my high school physics class,” Reiner recalls. “I was 16 years old. A student came in and whispered into the teacher’s ear and the teacher turned to us and said, ‘I have some terrible news,’ and then they sent us home.”

Since that tragic day, Reiner, the director of some of the most beloved and rewatched films of our time (Stand by Me, When Harry Met Sally…, The Princess Bride), has been fascinated with Kennedy’s assassination. A bookcase at home is devoted to the subject. He has viewed countless documentaries. Several times, he has visited Dealey Plaza, where the motorcade was passing through when Kennedy was shot, and the Book Depository, from where supposed lone gunman Lee Harvey Oswald fired. And he has done his own research, talking to authors, forensics experts, CIA officials, and historians as well as those who were in Dealey Plaza that day. Like something out of the classic Seinfeld episode, “The Boyfriend,” which in part parodies Oliver Stone’s film, JFK, he and his wife will awaken each other in the middle of the night to talk bullet trajectories.

Reiner is at heart, a storyteller, and on the occasion of the 60^th anniversary of the Kennedy assassination, he believes he has come the closest yet to solving one of America’s most significant unsolved murder mysteries. He presents his case with Who Killed JFK, a 10-part podcast distributed by iHeartPodcasts and co-hosted by Emmy-winning journalist Soledad O’Brien.

This begs the question for the director of A Few Good Men: Can we handle the truth?

Town & Country spoke with Reiner about the soul-searing impact the assassination had on him, how comedians took the lead in questioning the official story, and what listeners can expect by the final podcast episode.

You remember where you were when you heard about the Kennedy assassination. Do you remember your initial impressions?

Stunned, shocked. The whole idea that you could kill an American president in broad daylight on the streets of an American city was just unthinkable. We ran home. We watched television nonstop right up until and through when Jack Ruby killed Lee Harvey Oswald on live TV.

What were your discussions with your peers? Was there one more radical than the others who suggested we weren’t getting the whole story?

I don’t think any of us thought that. It was just horrific. Kennedy was the youngest president. He was handsome, smart, and funny. We all connected with him. I didn’t think at the time that the government was lying to us until people started criticizing the official Warren Commission report. The first book I read about the assassination was Mark Lane’s Rush to Judgement, and I thought, Wait a minute, something’s wrong here. I was part of a group called the Committee, a politically motivated San Francisco improv group. That’s when I got into those conversations that the government was not telling us the full story.

Mel Brooks has said that the role of the comedian is to be truth-teller to the king. I mention this because the first two episodes of the podcast note the roles comedians Mort Sahl and Dick Gregory had in raising skepticism about the Warren Commission’s report. They were not buying it. What impact did that have on you?

The really great comedians are observers of human nature and how we fit into the world and relate to each other. They will tell you the truth and do it in a funny way, but when you strip away the comedy, you’ll find the truth about it all. When I was 19, I was performing at the Hungry I in San Francisco with Larry Bishop, Joey Bishop’s son. We were opening for Carmen McRae in the big room. Mort Sahl was in the smaller room, and when Larry and I finished our set, we’d go listen to Mort. All he talked about was how the government was lying about the assassination. I heard that every night and I started looking into it. It’s 60 years later, and we’ve gotten the story of the assassination in drips and drabs. Any one revelation doesn’t necessarily mean a conspiracy or what that conspiracy might be but start to put the pieces together and then you start to really understand what happened.

Conspiracy theories always abound, but the Kennedy assassination seems to be the Rosetta Stone of them.

You use the term conspiracy theory, which today has gotten this weird connotation; anyone trafficking in conspiracy theories is a tin-foil-hat wearer. The fact is these things do happen. Look at the Kennedy assassination from all angles and from all the that has come out, and there is no question that Lee Harvey Oswald was not the lone gunman. There were others involved. All you have to do is look at what the CIA has done. Look at their playbook. There is a thing called Operation Northwoods [a proposed 1962 false flag operation meant to justify a war against Cuba]. From hardliners in the CIA and the military and the mafia to Cuban exiles who felt abandoned at the Bay of Pigs fiasco, there was plenty of anger and hatred toward Kennedy.

What is it about the podcast format that appealed to you to tell this story?

I actually thought of doing it as a miniseries. As time went by, I started looking at how podcasts told stories. Rachel Maddow was a great inspiration with Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism. The trick is to tell the story in a way that’s compelling to people who don’t know about it as well as for people who do have knowledge of it. You can’t oversimplify, or those people will be insulted by it.

Was it important to you to collaborate with Soledad O’Brien, who mentions that she was not alive in 1963?

I respect her tremendously and it gives the podcast more legitimacy. Half the country hates me because of my politics. To hear the reactions of someone who wasn’t born at the time of the assassination adds a great element to the podcast.

In 2006, Mark Felt came forward and identified himself as the famed Watergate source, Deep Throat. Can you offer anything as definitive on the Kennedy assassination?

Most of the people who planned the assassination are long gone, so you’re not going to get it from the horse’s mouth. But we do have someone on the podcast who recently came out, a Secret Service agent who was on the trail car behind Kennedy about 15-20 feet away on the running board. His name is Paul Landis. He talks very specifically about what he found that day, what has come to be known as the magic bullet. [Landis recently published his memoir, The Final Witness.]

The Kennedy assassination is one of the most reported on and scrutinized events of the 20^th century. What, ultimately, does Who Killed JFK bring to the discussion?

First of all, this presentation is the most comprehensive, it is the deepest dive. We lay out exactly what we believe happened that day. We’ll name the shooters, and who all was involved. I think we will be making news.

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