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An excerpt of audio tapes obtained by CNN of a conversation between Fox News host Bill O'Reilly and Gaeton Fonzi published on Sunday. CNN publishes O’Reilly tape

CNN has published a recording of Fox News host Bill O’Reilly from the 1970s that indicates he was not present outside the Florida house where an associate of Lee Harvey Oswald committed suicide.

In the taped telephone conversation conducted in March 1977 between O’Reilly, then a correspondent with Dallas television station WFAA-TV, and Gaeton Fonzi, an investigator on the House Select Committee on Assassinations, O’Reilly can be heard telling Fonzi he’s planning to travel to Florida to investigate the suicide of George de Mohrenschildt, an associate of Oswald’s who had killed himself that day.

In the conversation, provided to CNN by Fonzi’s widow, Fonzi tells O’Reilly about the suicide. O'Reilly in turn replies he'll travel to Florida the next day.

"I'm coming down there tomorrow," O’Reilly tells Fonzi. "I'm coming to Florida. … Now, OK, I'm gonna try to get a night flight out of here, if I can.”

In his book “Killing Kennedy,” and on Fox News, O’Reilly has claimed that he was standing on the porch of de Mohrenschildt’s daughter’s house in Florida when he heard a gunshot sound, which he said was the sound of de Mohrenschildt killing himself.

Former colleagues of O'Reilly's have also come forward, saying O'Reilly was not in Florida at the time of the suicide.

Fox News hasn’t responded to the specific allegations regarding the de Mohrenschildt suicide anecdote but has defended its star host as he faces a series of other charges that he’s been exaggerating his reporting history, calling the allegations an orchestrated attack by left-wing advocates. A spokesperson for Henry Holt, the publisher of “Killing Kennedy,” told CNN, "This one passage is immaterial to the story being told by this terrific book and we have no plans to look into this matter.”

Listen to the tape here.

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