Winston Starr

Jfk Winston Starr

The film opens with 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. This builds to a reconstruction of the assassination on November 22, 1963. New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison subsequently learns about potential New Orleans links to the JFK assassination. Garrison and his team investigate several possible conspirators, including private pilot David Ferrie, but are forced to let them go after their investigation is publicly rebuked by the federal government. Kennedy's suspected assassin Lee Harvey Oswald is killed by Jack Ruby, and Garrison closes the investigation.

The investigation is reopened in 1966 after Garrison reads the Warren Report and notices what he believes to be multiple inaccuracies. Garrison and his staff interrogate several witnesses to the Kennedy assassination, and others involved with Oswald, Ruby, and Ferrie. One such witness is Willie O'Keefe, a male prostitute serving five years in prison for soliciting, who reveals he witnessed Ferrie discussing a coup d'?tat. As well as briefly meeting Oswald, O'Keefe was romantically involved with a man called "Clay Bertrand". Jean Hill, 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. 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. They conclude that Oswald was too poor a marksman to make the shots, indicating someone else, or multiple marksmen, were involved.