November 22nd and the Warren Report

A year after the Kennedy assassination, Walter Cronkite and Dan Rather were the lead correspondents in the CBS News Extra “November 22nd and the Warren Report.” Aired on Sunday, September 27, 1964, the two-hour special was broadcast a few hours after the Warren Commission issued its report to the president. It featured taped interviews with witnesses of the Kennedy assassination and those closest to Lee Harvey Oswald and explained the findings of the commission. In his memoirs, producer Leslie Midgley recounts how he suggested that CBS compile its own report and have it ready to be aired on the day the official report would be made public. Together with producers Bernie Birnbaum and Jane Bartels and the help of Eddie Barker, the news director of the CBS affiliate in Dallas, CBS presented a comprehensive report on what was known and what was not known about the assassination. The team interviewed dozens of witnesses and retraced Oswald's steps. Midgley recalls how the FBI had a reenactment of the shooting and asked a cameraman from Eddie Barker's station to film through the sight of Oswald's own rifle scope, a piece of film CBS used to open its own report. At Midgley's suggestion, CBS put on a two-hour show, with the first 90 minutes devoted to CBS's own investigation and the last half hour devoted to comparing the commission's official account with theirs. As a result, when NBC and ABC put on shows at 6:30 p.m., when the commission's report was publicly released, CBS had already told the whole story.