The Assassination of
John F Kennedy –
Next month marks the
50th anniversary of
the assassination of JFK. That event was one of the darkest chapters in
American history. The circumstances of that day are as shrouded in
mystery today as they were then.
Pretty much nobody
agrees on anything. Who did the shooting? How many people were
involved? Why did they do it? How many shots were fired? Where were
the shots fired from? What was really going on?
People have
conspiracy theories about every aspect of the event. The Russians were
involved. The Cubans were involved. Organized crime was
involved. The CIA was involved. The FBI was involved. LBJ was
involved. Richard Nixon was involved.
Pretty much anyone
who was alive at the time was probably implicated (at some point) in a
conspiracy theory.
Even the most basic
facts are disputed……..There were three shots fired. There were four shots
fired. There were two shooters. There were three shooters.
The shots came from the front. The shots came from the back. Nobody
agrees on anything even though it all happened in broad daylight, with numerous
witnesses. Yet still nobody can say for sure anything other than the
President was shot and killed.
There have been
several major investigations into the assassination and they too have come to
different conclusions.
The most famous
investigation was the Warren Commission, set up by LBJ a week after the
assassinations. The commission spent 9 months investigating and concluded
Lee Harvey Oswald did the shooting and he acted alone.
The commission
concluded there were three shots fired from the 6th floor of the Texas Book
Depository. That is where Lee Harvey Oswald had constructed a snipers
nest with boxes of books.
The first shot fired
missed. It is theorized that bullet hit a street light and ricocheted
down the street where it hit the pavement. The bullet kicked up asphalt,
which slightly injured a pedestrian. “Officially” that bullet was never
recovered.
The second shot
fired was the “Magic Bullet”.
The magic bullet is
a theory the Warren Commission developed to explain how a single bullet was
responsible for 7 separate wounds, on two different people. The
bullet would have traveled through 15 layers of clothing.
According to the
commission the bullet entered JFK’s upper back. It traveled through his
body and exited out the base of his throat. The bullet then entered
Governor Connolly’s back (He was seated in front of JFK). The bullet
broke a rib and exited out the Governors chest. It then entered into the
Governors wrist and existed the other side where it finally embedded itself
into the Governors thigh.
The Magic bullet was
found on a hospital gurney (the Governor was laying on) by a nurse at Parkland
Memorial Hospital. The bullet was found in pristine condition.
The Conspiracy
theorists have latched onto this theory as impossible. They insist these
different wounds had to be created by different shooters, shooting from
different positions. They insist there is no way one bullet could have
done all that damage. If it did do it…..there is no way it would still be
in pristine condition.
Unfortunately for
the conspiracy theorists the Magic Bullet theory has been tested (multiple
times) in different ways and proven accurate.
The third shot fired
was the kill shot. It hit the president in the head and ended his
life. The warren Commission concluded that shot was also fired from the 6th floor of the Book
Depository.
Conspiracy theorists
point to the Zupruder film and show how the Presidents head jerks backward when
the fatal shot hit. If the shot came from behind his head would jerk
forward, not backwards. They also point to Mrs. Kennedy climbing out on
the trunk to retrieve a piece of skull. If the shot came from behind the
pieces would have gone forwards.
Many Conspiracy
theorists insist a shot had to come from the front right, in the area of the
grassy knoll. Some conspiracy theories claim two shots hit the president
at the exact same time. One shot from behind and one shot from the
front.
The Warren
Commission stated 51 witnesses heard shots coming from the area of the grassy
knoll. Yet they still concluded there
was no hard evidence that shots were actually fired from there.
The Warren
Commission report was published in 1964 and announced Oswald acted alone. The response to the report was very
negative. A majority of the country did
NOT believe the Commissions findings. The commission was roundly
criticized for telling a story, but not looking for a conspiracy.
Nobody believed
Oswald just decided to bring a sniper rifle to work and kill the
president.
Nobody believed that
Jack Ruby just happened to walk into a secured police station, stand a
foot away from the most wanted man on the planet, and kill him at point blank
range.
Ruby shot Oswald
while he was surrounded by police officers, and being broadcast on live
TV.
People felt there
had to be a lot more going on…….
If Lee Harvey Oswald
had lived he would have been put on trial. That trial would have had a
prosecution and a defense. All sides of the story would have been
presented and everyone would know the entire event.
Once Oswald was
gunned down there would be no trial. That is why he was gunned
down.
With Oswald dead the
Commission could tell any story they wanted. They could talk to any
witnesses. They could also ignore any
witnesses as well. And they did.
Any conclusion the
commission wanted to reach could be easily accomplished. It has been
documented there were people who knew things (or saw things) who the commission
simply ignored.
One witness the
Warren Commission clearly had no interest in talking to was Jack Ruby.
If there is one guy
who the Commission should have talked to first it was Jack Ruby. He was the most important guy in the entire
situation. The one living person who
could shed light on what the heck was really going on. Yet the Commission showed no interest at
all.
December 1964 the
Commission ignored Jack. January they
ignored him. February they ignored
him. March they ignored him. April they ignored him. May they ignored him. It wasn’t until June they finally went and
interviewed him.
Ruby wrote multiple letters to the commission
asking for them to come talk to him.
Yet they didn’t. It wasn’t until
Jack Ruby’s sister released Jacks letters to the media that finally the
commission made the trip to Dallas.
The Commissions
reason for ignoring Jack was that he was on trial for murder and they didn’t
think he could talk. This is their
excuse even though Jack said “I want to talk”.
Ruby’s testimony is
telling. Multiple times he told the
commission he feared for his life. He
repeatedly asked the commission to take him out of Dallas (back to Washington)
so he could speak freely, and not fear for his life. He repeated this request throughout his testimony. He told the commission his time was running
out. He told them he wouldn’t live long
enough to say what he needed to say.
The commission’s response
was to say they had no authority to remove Ruby from Dallas.
We are supposed to
believe the commission (set up to investigate the death of the US President)
didn’t have authority to protect the
most important witness.
And people wonder
why the Commission has been so roundly criticized.
In the testimony of
Jack Ruby it is clear the commission was not really interested in being
there. They asked a few basic questions
and then pretty much just wanted to leave.
Ruby even asked them to stay longer but they didn’t see the point.
Some examples -
Mr. RUBY.
When are you going back to Washington?
Chief
Justice WARREN. I am going back very shortly after we finish this hearing--I am
going to have some lunch.
Mr. RUBY.
Can I make a statement?
Chief
Justice WARREN. Yes.
Mr. RUBY. If
you request me to go back to Washington with you right now, that couldn't be
done, could it?
Chief
Justice WARREN. No; it could not be done. It could not be done. There are a
good many things involved in that, Mr. Ruby.
Mr. RUBY.
What are they?
Chief
Justice WARREN. Well, the public attention that it would attract, and the
people who would be around. We have no place there for you to be safe when we
take you out, and we are not law enforcement officers, and it isn't our
responsibility to go into anything of that kind. And certainly it couldn't be
done on a moment's notice this way.
Mr. RUBY.
Well, from what I read in the paper, they made certain precautions for you
coming here, but you got here.
Chief
Justice WARREN. There are no precautions taken at all.
Mr. RUBY.
There were some remarks in the paper about some crackpots.
Chief
Justice WARREN. I don't believe everything I read in the paper.
Chief
Justice WARREN. Before you finish the rest of your statement, may I ask you
this question, and this is one of the questions we came here to ask you.
Did you know Lee Harvey Oswald prior to this shooting?
Mr. RUBY.
That is why I want to take the lie detector test. Just saying no isn't
sufficient.
Chief
Justice WARREN. I will afford you that opportunity.
Mr. RUBY.
All right.
Chief Justice WARREN. I will afford you that opportunity. You can't do both of
them at one time.
Mr. RUBY. Gentlemen, my life is in danger here. Not with my guilty plea of
execution.
Do I sound
sober enough to you as I say this?
Chief
Justice WARREN. You do. You sound entirely sober.
Mr. RUBY.
From the moment I started my testimony, have I sounded as though, with the
exception of becoming emotional, have I sounded as though I made sense, what I
was speaking about?
Chief
Justice WARREN. You have indeed. I understood everything you have said. If I
haven't, it is my fault.
Mr. RUBY.
Then I follow this up. I may not live tomorrow to give any further testimony.
The reason why I add this to this, since you assure me that I have been
speaking sense by then, I might be speaking sense by following what I have
said, and the only thing I want to get out to the public, and I can't say it
here, is with authenticity, with sincerity of the truth of everything and why
my act was committed, but it can't be said here.
It can be said, it's got to be said amongst people of the highest authority
that would give me the benefit of doubt. And following that, immediately give
me the lie detector test after I do make the statement. Chairman Warren, if you
felt that your life was in danger at the moment, how would you feel? Wouldn't
you be reluctant to go on speaking, even though you request me to do so?
Chief
Justice WARREN. I think I might have some reluctance if I was in your position,
yes; I think I would. I think I would figure it out very carefully as to
whether it would endanger me or not.
If you think that anything that I am doing or anything that I am asking you is
endangering you in any way, shape, or form, I want you to feel absolutely free
to say that the interview is over.
Mr. RUBY.
What happens then? I didn't accomplish anything.
Chief Justice
WARREN. No; nothing has been accomplished.
Mr. RUBY.
Well, then you won't follow up with anything further?
Chief
Justice WARREN. There wouldn't be anything to follow up if you hadn't completed
your statement.
Mr. RUBY.
You said you have the power to do what you want to do is that correct?
Chief
Justice WARREN. Exactly.
Mr. RUBY.
Without any limitations?
Chief
Justice WARREN. Within the purview of the Executive order which established the
Commission. We have the right to take testimony of anyone we want in this whole
situation, and we have the right, if we so choose to do it, to verify that
statement in any way that we wish to do it.
Mr. RUBY.
But you don't have a right to take a prisoner back with you when you want to?
Chief
Justice WARREN. No; we have the power to subpena witnesses to Washington if we
want to do it, but we have taken the testimony of 200 or 300 people, I would
imagine, here in Dallas without going to Washington.
Mr. RUBY.
Yes; but those people aren't Jack Ruby.
Chief
Justice WARREN. No; they weren't.
This goes on and
on. Clearly Ruby has something to say
and clearly he fears for his life. But
the commission doesn’t care at all.
In 3 years Ruby
would be dead. Just like he predicted.
In 1964 Ruby was
found guilty and sentenced to death. In
1967 he was granted a new trial which would take place outside of Dallas. Exactly what he was hoping for. Right when this happened he was diagnosed
with Cancer. Three weeks after the
diagnosis he was dead. Exactly what he
said would happen came true. He said he
would not live long and sure enough he didn’t.
Ruby told people he
got injected with Cancer Cells. Funny
because the CIA was rumored to have a program where they developed a virus to
cause cancer.
What else did Jack
Ruby say? Well he is on record
saying
“The world will
never know the true facts of what
occurred, my motives. The people had
that had so much to gain and had such an ulterior motive for putting me in the
position I am in will never let the true facts come above board to the world”
A reporter
asked…”Are these people in very high positions Jack”? Jack answered “Yes”
These statements
don’t sound like a person who just did what he did on a whim.
When pressed on what
he was talking about and who was responsible he stated
“I want to correct
what I said before about the Vice President.
When I mentioned Adlai Stevenson, if he was vice president there would
never have been an assassination of our beloved president Kennedy. The answer is the man in office now.”
OK the man in office
now was LBJ. Is he saying LBJ was involved
in the assassination of the president?
Is that even possible?
Well LBJ did benefit
by Kennedy’s death by becoming president.
LBJ was from Texas,
and Kennedy was assassinated in Texas.
LBJ did help set up
the Dallas trip.
The trip was scheduled 5 months prior to the
event. Oswald only worked at the Book
Depository for 1 month.
See If Oswald had
worked at the Texas Book Depository for the previous 25 years it would be hard
to say the assassination was part of a conspiracy. One month of employment is not very convincing that there wasn’t
something more sinister going on.
Once Oswald was dead
it was LBJ who set up the Warren Commission.
LBJ was in control of the whole thing.
One of the people on the Warren Commission
was Alan Dulles. Who was Alan
Dulles? Allan Dulles was the former
head of the CIA. He was the “former”
head because JFK fired Alan Dulles after the Bay Of Pigs fiasco.
Now the man Kennedy
fired is on the commission investigating his death. He ran an agency people are questioning.
One of the common
themes in all the conspiracy theories is the CIA’s involvement. Over and over the agency is mentioned as
playing a role.
Why would the CIA
want to assassinate the president? Well
in the early 1960’s the CIA was involved in a couple of high profile blunders
that embarrassed the country.
The first blunder
was at the end of the Eisenhower Administration when Gary Powers CIA sponsored
U2 spy plane was shot down over the Soviet Union. President Eisenhower denied the United States was flying spying
missions over the Soviet Union. The
Soviets responded by marching out Gary Powers (alive) and showing pictures of
the U2 spy plane. The same spy plane
Eisenhower insisted wasn’t over there.
This was a huge embarrassment to the United States.
The second blunder
was the Bay of Pigs debacle in Cuba.
This was a CIA sponsored attempt to over throw the Communist led Castro
government. The CIA assured the
president the plan would work, but it didn’t.
The President took all the blame and wasn’t too happy about it. He is quoted as saying he wanted to bust up
the CIA and scatter it’s ashes in the wind.
When the CIA was
working to overthrow Castro the agency formed many alliances with organized
crime in the United States. The
organized crime figures were supposed to help the CIA accomplish their
mission. They failed. Castro ruled through 10 more US Presidents.
Depending on whom
you believe it is these links that would later be used to assassinate the
President.
In the early 60’s
The FBI (led by J Edgar Hoover) looked the other way on organized crime. When Kennedy became president his brother
Bobby was appointed attorney general.
Bobby made it his personal crusade to go after organized crime in The
United States. This did not sit well
with the mobsters. This would be a reasons JFK could have been a target.
It turned out Bobby was
also a target, and was assassinated 5 years after JFK.
The Warren
Commission also had Gerald Ford as a member.
Gerald Ford would be President Ford after Nixon resigned. Nixon resigned because of members of his
staff broke into Democratic Party headquarters at the Watergate hotel.
Some of the burglars
in the break-in worked for the CIA.
Some conspiracy theories even linked Nixon and the Watergate Break in to
the JFK assassination.
By 1975 in the after
math of The Watergate scandal Congress began to get suspicious of the CIA.
At that time there was no congressional
oversight of the agency being linked to several assassinations in other
countries. Now it was also being linked
to high level criminal activity at the highest levels of the US
government.
Led by Senator Frank
Church Congress looked into what was going on behind the CIA curtain. What was revealed were many shady activities
the CIA had been engaged in outside of public view.
The Church
Committee uncovered lots of shady activities our government was engaged in
without any oversight.
Funny how 38 years
hasn’t changed much. People are
concerned today about the shady things our government is doing (Snowden). 3 decades ago it was all exactly the same.
The Church
Committee findings led to the United States House of Representatives committee
on assassinations, which reinvestigated the assassinations of JFK, RFK, and
Martin Luther King.
The conclusion of
the House Select committee on Assassinations was that JFK probably was murdered
as part of a conspiracy.
They concluded
there were probably 4 shots fired and not 3.
This new
conclusion came from new audio evidence from a Dallas motorcycle officers
radio. This radio was stuck in the on
position during the motorcade in Dallas.
It recorded all the shots fired.
This evidence was not looked at by the warren commission. As with everything else this new evidence is
also disputed.
The House Select
committee did not explain who might have been involved in the conspiracy to
kill Kennedy. 4 shots fired would mean
two shooters though. Two shooters is a
conspiracy.
One of the reasons
Congress did not pinpoint who was involved in the conspiracy is because of all
the many witness deaths. Around the
times of the different Kennedy investigations there were many key witness
deaths.
These deaths came
in clusters.
The first cluster
happened around the Warren Commission.
Another cluster came around the Garrison Trial in New Orleans. This is the trial Oliver Stones 1990 movie
is based on. The next cluster was when
the House of Representatives was investigating in 1977.
We are not talking
about one or two people dying either.
We are talking about 100+ people. The people who died either knew
something, or said something, or were going to testify.
These deaths
included police officers, FBI agents, CIA agents, reporters, and mobsters.
Some people
literally died hours before they were going to testify. The deaths happened in different ways. Some were outright murder. Some were classified as “suicide”.
Most people don’t
consider having a persons throat slashed, and then being thrown through a plate
glass window “a suicide” but that is what happened.
One person was
shot at a police station, by a police officer who was “playing with his weapon”
when it discharged.
One person died on
a hunting trip when a hunter mistook him for a deer. No really…..That happened.
There are many
(many) examples of strange deaths. The
common denominator is there is always a link to the JFK assassination.
In the 1970’s an
actuary ran the numbers on the probability that all these deaths just
“happened” and it was 1 in 100 trillion.
Not very good odds.
People who don’t
believe in conspiracies say…. any conspiracy to kill the president would be so
big, that at some point, somebody would say something.
That is true but
dead people don’t say anything. There
are lots and lots of dead people surrounding Kennedy’s death. There are also sealed files which nobody has
seen.
So what does it
all mean? Who actually killed JFK? I have idea….. But I do know when you read
the details it is real clear a lot of shady things went on.
If by 50 years
after the event the truth hasn’t come out then it probably never will.
Anyone alive today with a memory of the assassination
is pushing 60 years old. Most people
alive today weren’t alive then. Many of
the important details are probably lost to history. It seems that is exactly what many people were hoping for.
