not a federal offense. it certainly has been one since then. but the idea was that you could only preserve the chain of evidence if there s an autopsy done, president or anyone else who goes through this, on site. and one source of the conspiracy theorists ever since then has been that because the president s body was brought back to washington, the autopsy was done in bethesda naval hospital, maybe some way this was manipulated to provide some kind of massive cover-up. it s amazing. 2:50 eastern time, oswald arrested and we know around this time, just about, the surgery was going on with governor connelly at parkland hospital as well. these events all playing out 50 years ago. it s incredible to look at this in reflection. thank you so much, michael. we invite you to tune in to msnbc for three hours of assassination of jfk first at 7:00 p.m. eastern, the day that changed america.