Americans could be watching newly released movies via the Internet as soon as mid-2005 as the industry speeds development of a secure delivery system, Hollywood's chief lobbyist said Wednesday.

"I really do believe that we will be able to have some — maybe by this time next year — we'll be able to have the beginnings of some really sturdy, protective clothing to put about these movies," Motion Picture Association of America chief executive Jack Valenti said in an interview with The Associated Press.

Valenti said he would like to see movies go straight from the big screen to the Internet, where customers could download or view them on demand well before DVDs and videos reach the store shelves. "We want to use the Internet," he said.

Fighting piracy it says is putting its financial health at risk, Hollywood is working with high-tech experts, including Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard and universities, to develop a secure system for delivering movies, he said.

Valenti said the industry has no current plans to sue pirates, as the music industry is doing, but isn't ruling it out because he has seen surveys showing music piracy is being taken more seriously since the lawsuits began early this year.

"As long as stealing movies and music is high-reward and no risk, people are going to do it," Valenti said.

Valenti, a lifelong Democrat, said California's new Republican governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, could be exactly what the budget-strapped state needs and he urged the media to give the former actor a chance.

"He's going to shake up things," said Valenti, who attended the governor's inauguration this week. "Do not write him off. If anyone can do it, he can do it."

During the interview with the AP, Valenti, a political consultant who was in the motorcade in Dallas 40 years go when John F. Kennedy was assassinated, gave a poignant recounting of that day and how Lyndon B. Johnson brought him back to Washington on the plane with Kennedy's body to work in the White House.

Valenti called it a day "that will live in perfidy." Even now he recalls every second, from Jackie Kennedy's refusal to change her bloodstained blouse to his first assignment from Johnson: to track down the wording of the oath of office so Johnson could be sworn in as president aboard Air Force One.

"It is so seared in my memory I literally, sometimes at night — not often, but once or twice a year — I relive that day," Valenti said. "Because it was an apocalyptic intrusion. I think the nation's life changed and I can assure you mine radically changed."

Valenti expressed outrage over a television documentary that aired this week on the History Channel alleging that Johnson helped plot Kennedy's assassination. Valenti called it the "slimiest piece of garbage I've ever seen on television."

He and others have issued a statement condemning it. The History Channel has said the film was meant to present a point of view and that the channel wasn't saying the Johnson theory was correct.

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