Bill O’Reilly’s new book
“Killing Kennedy: The End of Camelot,” has already shot to the top of The New York Times list of best-selling nonfiction works since its October publication.
In the book, the Fox News host and co-author Martin Dugard debunk many of the conspiracy myths holding that Lee Harvey Oswald did not act alone in the Nov. 22, 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas.
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Their earlier work, “Killing Lincoln: The Shocking Assassination That Changed America Forever,” about the murder of the nation’s 16th president, is No. 3 on that New York Times list. Released last year, the book has sold nearly two million copies.
In an exclusive interview with Newsmax TV, O’Reilly says: “We do know that Oswald did shoot Kennedy himself.
“I, myself, talked to some FBI guys who were assigned immediately after the president was assassinated to the case in Dallas. Never talked to anybody before. And one of them was assigned Marina Oswald — and he stayed with her for months.
“We were able to get every step that Lee Harvey Oswald made from the time that they met in Russia, Marina and Lee Harvey Oswald, to the time he pulled the trigger.
“We knew everything that he did — and that has never before been put in print.”
Editor's Note: Get Bill O’Reilly’s new book “Killing Kennedy: The End of Camelot.”
Asked what he learned about Kennedy as a leader, O’Reilly says the Kennedy administration started out weak because of the unsuccessful Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961, which led to the Cuban Missile Crisis the next year and the 13-day standoff with Soviet President Nikita Khrushchev that brought the nations to the brink of nuclear war.
But the young American president was strengthened by the death of his infant son, Patrick, two days after his birth in August 1963.
“He became a man after that, in my opinion,” O’Reilly observes.
“He started to govern better, brought his brother in as the main consigliore, so to speak, and got rid of the old guard that wasn’t really looking out for him.
“His presidency got stronger as the years went by. But he had a hard time in the beginning. There’s no question.”
O’Reilly adds that President Obama isn’t the second coming of Camelot that some Democrats would like him to be.
“I don’t think there’s a lot of similarities between President Obama and President Kennedy,” he says.
“Personalities are totally different. Kennedy was a risk taker. The president is an ideologue. Kennedy was not. He was much more practical than Barack Obama.
“So I don’t see the parallels at all. Two different administrations. They govern differently. Different attitude about the country and life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
Editor's Note: See more video from Bill O’Reilly and read another excerpt from the interview. Click here.