In 1963, President John F. Kennedy is assassinated in Dallas, Texas, while on a political swing through the South intended to repair his image in that part of the country.

Within two hours the Dallas police have arrested a suspect, an unremarkable-looking man named Lee Harvey Oswald. To the surprise of many, Oswald turns out not to be a right-wing zealot bent on punishing Kennedy for using federal troops in the 'Southern Crisis' of October 1962.

Instead he is affiliated with a left-wing group called the Fair Play for Cuba Committee which calls for the U.S. military to leave that island nation, which America occupied following the so-called 'Bay of Pigs' invasion of April 1961.

Later, aboard Air Force One, which is carrying the body of assassinated President John F. Kennedy back to Washington, Lyndon Baines Johnson is sworn in as the thirty-sixth President of the United States of America. The apparent role of an opponent of America's involvement in Cuba in Kennedy's murder has made Johnson determined to win the war there regardless of the cost.