YouTube videos of interviews with JFK assassination eyewitnesses, circa 1965

While YouTube is a morass of the inane, the improbable, and the irrelevant, sometimes one stumbles upon something that is quite extraordinary, like the vintage, black-and-white interviews conducted by Mark Lane, circa 1965, with JFK assassination eyewitnesses. Lane, if you are unaware, was one of the original Warren Commission critics, and his landmark first book on the subject of the assassination, Rush To Judgment, is considered a classic. Two of the interviews were especially riveting: one with J.C. Price, who witnessed the motorcade and shooting from a unique perspective--on the roof of the Terminal Annex building on the south side of Dealey Plaza, from where he had a clear and panoramic view of the entire plaza; the other was an interview of S.M. Holland, who witnessed the shooting from the triple overpass adjacent to the rail yards and overlooking Elm Street. Both men heard and saw at least one shot come from behind the picket fence atop the grassy knoll on the north side of Elm Street. They also saw smoke waft out from under the trees which camouflaged the shooter. Price saw a man running at breakneck speed away from the fence and behind the School Book Depository Building immediately after the shooting. Holland ran to the parking lot behind the fence and saw fresh footprints and cigarette butts in the area where he suspected an assassin had fired.

Both Price and Holland have deer-in-the-headlight looks as they speak to Lane, almost as if they both realize, "Oh my god, what am I saying? This directly contradicts what the Warren Report claims. By the end of the interviews, both men appear scared and reticent, the full impact of what they have said hitting home.

I don't have a link to provide, but I imagine it would be easy enough to access these videos with a simple key word search. The interviews are short and to-the-point, and it's worthwhile to see these unedited, unaltered, first-hand accounts from eyewitnesses to history just a few months removed from the event.