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Robert MacNeil

Robert MacNeil
Born Robert Breckenridge Ware MacNeil
(1931-01-19) January 19, 1931 (age 86)
Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Nationality Canadian-American
Alma mater Carleton University
Occupation Journalist, novelist
Years active 1956–present

Robert Breckenridge Ware MacNeil, OC (born January 19, 1931), also known as Robin MacNeil, is a Canadian American novelist, and retired television news anchor and journalist who had paired with Jim Lehrer to create The MacNeil/Lehrer Report in 1975.

MacNeil was born in Montreal, the son of Margaret Virginia (née Oxner) and Robert A. S. MacNeil. He was brought up in Halifax, Nova Scotia, went to boarding school at Upper Canada College, then attended Dalhousie University and later graduated from Carleton University in Ottawa in 1955.

MacNeil began working in the news field at ITV in London, then for Reuters, and then for NBC News as a correspondent in Washington, D.C. and New York City.

On November 22, 1963, MacNeil was covering President John F. Kennedy's visit to Dallas for NBC News. After shots rang out in Dealey Plaza, MacNeil, who was with the presidential motorcade, followed crowds running onto the Grassy Knoll (he appears in a photo taken just moments after the assassination). He then headed towards the nearest building and encountered a man leaving the Texas School Book Depository. He asked the man where the nearest telephone was and the man pointed and went on his way. MacNeil later learned the man he encountered at about 12:33 p.m. CST might have been Lee Harvey Oswald. This conclusion was made by historian William Manchester in his book The Death of a President (1967), who believed that Oswald, recounting the day's events to the Dallas Police, mistook MacNeil as a Secret Service agent because of his suit, blond crew cut, and press badge (which Oswald apparently mistook for government identification).


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