The Assassination Of John F Kennedy

The Assassination of John F Kennedy –

Next month marks the 50^th 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 6^th 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 6^th 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.

http://jfkassassination.net/russ/testimony/ruby_j1.htm

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.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbQMvxdZDfg

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.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yv3o9vx3VNM

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 CIA was opening American citizens mail and reading it.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTLINGUAL

The CIA was engaged in programs involving mind control.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MKULTRA

The CIA was involved in programs to manipulate the US Media.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird

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.