TV newswoman Lee Carter witnesses the assassination of presidential candidate Charles Carroll atop Seattle's Space Needle. A waiter armed with a revolver is pursued and falls to his death while a second waiter, also armed, leaves the scene unnoticed. A Select or special committee decides that the killing was the work of the dead waiter but conspiracy theories subsequently arise. Three years later, Carter visits her former boyfriend and colleague, newspaper reporter Joe Frady, claiming that others must have been behind the assassination as six of the witnesses to the killing have since died and she fears she will be next. Frady does not take her seriously. Carter is soon found dead in what is officially ruled as a simple drug overdose.