NEW
YORK, N.Y. - Rob Lowe will portray President John F. Kennedy in a
National Geographic film about the former president's 1963
assassination.
The National Geographic Channel said Tuesday that filming for
"Killing Kennedy" would begin next month in Richmond, Va. The film is
expected to air around the 50th anniversary of the shooting later this
year and is based on the book by Bill O'Reilly.
National Geographic already had a hit earlier this year with an
adaptation of another of the Fox News Channel anchor's books, "Killing
Lincoln."
In addition to Lowe, the movie will feature Ginnifer Goodwin as the first lady and Michelle Trachtenberg as Marina Oswald.
John F. Kennedy assassination conspiracy theories
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_F._Kennedy_assassination_conspiracy_theories
The circumstances surrounding the
assassination of John F. Kennedy
on November 22, 1963 spawned suspicions of a conspiracy. These
suspicions were mitigated somewhat when an official investigation by the
Warren Commission
concluded the following year that there was no conspiracy. Since then,
doubts have arisen regarding the Commission's finding that
Lee Harvey Oswald
was responsible for the assassination of Kennedy, and most Americans
today believe that others besides Oswald were also involved in the
assassination.
[1] Critics have argued that the Commission and the government have covered up crucial information pointing to a conspiracy.
Subsequent official investigations confirmed most of the conclusions of the Warren Commission. However, the
United States House Select Committee on Assassinations
(HSCA) concluded that Kennedy was probably assassinated as the result
of a conspiracy, with "...a high probability that two gunmen fired at
[the] President."
[2][3]
No person or organization was identified by the HSCA as being a
co-conspirator of Oswald. Most current theories put forth a criminal
conspiracy involving parties as varied as the
CIA, the
mafia, anti-Castro
Cuban exile groups, the
military industrial complex, sitting
Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson,
Cuban President Fidel Castro,
FBI director
J. Edgar Hoover, the
KGB, or some combination of those entities.
Background
President John F. Kennedy was assassinated by gunfire as he traveled in a motorcade in an open-top limousine in
Dallas, Texas on Friday, November 22, 1963 (12:30 pm, CST); Texas Governor
John Connally was wounded during the shooting, but survived. Within two hours,
Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested for the murder of Dallas policeman
J.D. Tippit and arraigned that evening. Shortly after 1:30 am, Saturday, Oswald was arraigned for murdering President Kennedy as well.
[4][5] On Sunday, November 24, at 11:21 am, nightclub owner
Jack Ruby shot and killed Oswald as he was being transferred to the county jail.
Immediately after the shooting, many people suspected that the assassination was part of a larger plot.
[6] Ruby's shooting of Oswald compounded initial suspicions.
[6] Among conspiracy theorists,
Mark Lane
has been described as writing "the first literary shot" with his
article, "Defense Brief for Oswald," in the December 19, 1963 edition of
the
National Guardian.
[7][8] Thomas Buchanan's
Who Killed Kennedy?, published in May 1964, has been credited as the first book alleging a conspiracy.
[9]
In 1964, the
Warren Commission
concluded that Oswald acted alone and that no credible evidence
supported the contention that he was involved in a conspiracy to
assassinate the president.
[10] The Commission also indicated that
Dean Rusk, the Secretary of State;
Robert S. McNamara, the Secretary of Defense;
C. Douglas Dillon, the Secretary of the Treasury;
Robert F. Kennedy, the Attorney General;
J. Edgar Hoover, the Director of the FBI;
John A. McCone, the Director of the CIA; and
James J. Rowley, the Chief of the Secret Service, each independently reached the same conclusion on the basis of information available to them.
In 1979, the
United States House Select Committee on Assassinations
(HSCA) agreed with the Warren Commission that Oswald assassinated
Kennedy, but concluded that the Commission's report and the original FBI
investigation were seriously flawed. The HSCA concluded that at least
four shots were fired with a "high probability" that two gunmen fired at
the President, and that a conspiracy was probable.
[3]
The HSCA stated that "the Warren Commission failed to investigate
adequately the possibility of a conspiracy to assassinate the
President."
[2]
The
Ramsey Clark Panel and the
Rockefeller Commission both supported the Warren Commission's conclusions, while
New Orleans District Attorney
Jim Garrison unsuccessfully prosecuted Clay Shaw for conspiring to assassinate Kennedy.
Public opinion
According to
John McAdams: “The greatest and grandest of all conspiracy theories is the Kennedy assassination conspiracy theory.”
[12] Others have frequently referred to it as "the mother of all conspiracies".
[13][14] The number of books written about the assassination of Kennedy has been estimated to be in the range of one thousand to two thousand.
[6] According to
Vincent Bugliosi, 95% of those books are "pro-conspiracy and anti-Warren Commission".
Kennedy assassination enthusiasts have been described as belonging to "
conspiracy theorists" on one side and "
debunkers" on the other.
[12]
The great amount of controversy surrounding the event has led to bitter
disputes between those who support the conclusion of the Warren
Commission and those who reject it or are critical of the official
explanation with each side leveling toward the other accusations of
"naivete, cynicism, and selective interpretation of the evidence".
[14]
Public opinion polls have consistently shown that a majority of
Americans believe there was a conspiracy to kill President Kennedy.
However, on the question of a government cover-up, different polls show
both a minority and majority of Americans who believe the government
engaged in one.
[17] These same polls also show that there is no agreement on who else may have been involved. A 2003
Gallup poll reported that 75% of Americans do not believe that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone.
[18] That same year an ABC News poll found that 70% of respondents suspected that the assassination involved more than one person.
[19] A 2004
Fox News poll found that 66% of Americans thought there had been a conspiracy while 74% thought there had been a cover-up.
[20]
Possible evidence of a cover-up
Numerous researchers, including
Mark Lane,
[21] Henry Hurt,
[22] Michael L. Kurtz,
[23] Gerald D. McKnight,
[24] Anthony Summers,
[25]
and others have pointed out what they characterize as inconsistencies,
oversights, exclusions of evidence, errors, changing stories, or changes
made to witness testimony in the official Warren Commission
investigation, which they say could suggest a cover-up.
Michael Benson wrote that the Warren Commission received only
information supplied to it by the FBI, and that its purpose was to
rubber stamp the
lone gunman theory.
[26]
Richard Schweiker, United States senator and member of the
U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, told author Anthony Summers in 1978, "I believe that the Warren Commission was set up at the time to feed
pabulum
to the American public for reasons not yet known, and that one of the
biggest cover-ups in the history of our country occurred at that time.
James H. Fetzer
took issue with a 1998 statement from Federal Judge John R. Tunheim,
the Chair of the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB), who stated
that no "
smoking guns"
indicating a conspiracy or cover-up were discovered during their
efforts in the early 1990s to declassify documents related to the
assassination. Fetzer identified 16 "smoking guns" which he claims prove
the official narrative is impossible, and therefore a conspiracy and
cover-up occurred. He claims that evidence released by the ARRB
substantiates these concerns. These include problems with bullet
trajectories, the murder weapon, the ammunition used, inconsistencies
between the Warren Commission's account and the autopsy findings,
inconsistencies between the autopsy findings and what was reported by
witnesses at the scene of the murder, eyewitness accounts that conflict
with x-rays taken of the President's body, indications that the diagrams
and photos of the President's brain in the
National Archives
are not the President's, testimony by those who took and processed the
autopsy photos that the photos were altered, created, or destroyed,
indications that the
Zapruder film
had been tampered with, allegations that the Warren Commission's
version of events conflicts with news reports from the scene of the
murder, an alleged change to the motorcade route which facilitated the
assassination, an alleged lax Secret Service and local law enforcement
security, and statements by people who claim that they had knowledge of,
or participated in, a conspiracy to kill the President.
[28]
Allegations of witness tampering, intimidation, and foul play
Witness intimidation
Richard Buyer wrote that many witnesses whose statements pointed to a conspiracy were either ignored or
intimidated by the Warren Commission.
[29] In
JFK: The Last Dissenting Witness, a 1992 biography of
Jean Hill, Bill Sloan wrote that
Arlen Specter,
assistant counsel for the Warren Commission, attempted to humiliate,
discredit, and intimidate Jean Hill into changing her story. Jean Hill
also told Sloan that she was abused by Secret Service agents, harassed
by the FBI, and was the recipient of death threats.
[30] A later book by Sloan,
JFK: Breaking the Silence,
quotes several assassination eyewitnesses as saying that Warren
Commission interviewers repeatedly cut short or stifled any comments
casting doubt on the conclusion that Oswald acted alone. An updated
version of Sloan's book, retitled
The Kennedy Conspiracy: 12 Startling Revelations About the JFK Assassination,
was published as an e-book in 2012. It includes the only comprehensive
interview ever conducted with the late Ed Hoffman, a deaf-mute
eyewitness. Through a sign-language interpreter, Hoffman tells of seeing
gunmen behind the wooden fence in Dealey Plaza as Kennedy's motorcade
passed by.
In his book
Crossfire,
Jim Marrs
gave accounts of several people who said they were intimidated by FBI
agents, or intimidated by anonymous individuals, into altering or
suppressing what they knew about the assassination, including Richard
Carr, Acquilla Clemmons, Sandy Speaker, and A. J. Millican.
[31]
Marrs also wrote that Texas School Book Depository employee Joe Molina
"...was intimidated by authorities and lost his job soon after the
assassination," and that witness Ed Hoffman was warned by an FBI agent that he "might get killed" if he revealed what he had observed in
Dealey Plaza on the day of the assassination.
Witness deaths
Allegations of mysterious or suspicious deaths of witnesses connected with the Kennedy assassination originated with
Penn Jones, Jr.[34] and were brought to national attention by the 1973 film
Executive Action.
[34]
Jim Marrs later presented a list of 103 people he believed died
"convenient deaths" under suspect circumstances. He noted that the
deaths were grouped around investigations conducted by the Warren
Commission, New Orleans D.A.
Jim Garrison, the
Senate Intelligence Committee, and the House Select Committee on Assassinations.
Marrs pointed out that "these deaths certainly would have been
convenient for anyone not wishing the truth of the JFK assassination to
become public."
[38]
Vincent Bugliosi has described the death of journalist
Dorothy Kilgallen—who
claimed she was granted a private interview with Jack Ruby—as "perhaps
the most prominent mysterious death" cited by assassination researchers. According to author Jerome Kroth, Mafia figures
Sam Giancana,
John Roselli,
Carlos Prio,
Jimmy Hoffa,
Charles Nicoletti,
Leo Moceri,
Richard Cain,
Salvatore Granello, and
Dave Yaras were likely murdered to prevent them from revealing their knowledge.
[40] According to author Matthew Smith, others with some tie to the case who have died suspicious deaths include
Lee Bowers,
Gary Underhill,
William Sullivan,
David Ferrie,
Clay Shaw,
George de Mohrenschildt, four showgirls who worked for Jack Ruby, and Ruby himself.
[41]
The House Select Committee on Assassinations investigated another alleged "mysterious death"—that of Rose Cheramie.
[42] The Committee reported that Louisiana State Police Lieutenant
Francis Fruge traveled to
Eunice, Louisiana on November 20, 1963—two days before the assassination—to pick up
Rose Cherami, who had sustained minor injuries after she was hit by a car.
Fruge drove Cherami to the hospital and said that on the way there, she
"...related to [him] that she was coming from Florida to Dallas with
two men who were Italians or resembled Italians." Fruge asked her what
she planned to do in Dallas, to which she replied: "...number one, pick
up some money, pick up [my] baby, and ... kill Kennedy." Cherami was admitted and treated at State Hospital in
Jackson, Louisiana
for alcohol and heroin addiction. State Hospital physician, Dr. Victor
Weiss later told a House Select Committee investigator that on November
25—three days after the assassination—one of his fellow physicians told
him "...that the patient, Rose Cherami, stated before the assassination
that President Kennedy was going to be killed."
Dr. Weiss further reported that Cherami told him after the
assassination that she had worked for Jack Ruby and that her knowledge
of the assassination originated from "word in the underworld."
After the assassination, Lt. Fruge contacted Dallas Police Captain Will
Fritz regarding what he had learned from Cherami, but Captain Fritz
told him he "wasn't interested". Cherami was found dead by a highway near
Big Sandy, Texas on September 4, 1965; she had been run over by a car.
Another "suspicious death" cited by Jim Marrs was that of Joseph Milteer, director of the Dixie
Klan
of Georgia. Milteer was secretly tape-recorded thirteen days before the
assassination telling Miami police informant William Somersett that the
murder of Kennedy was "in the working." Milteer died in 1974 when a
heater exploded in his house.
[49][50]
The House Select Committee on Assassinations reported in 1979 that
Milteer's information on the threat to the President "was furnished [to]
the agents making the advance arrangements before the visit of the
President" to Miami, but that "the Milteer threat was ignored by Secret
Service personnel in planning the trip to Dallas." Robert Bouck, Special
Agent-in-Charge of the Secret Service's Protective Research Section,
"...testified to the committee that threat information was transmitted
from one region of the country to another if there was specific evidence
it was relevant to the receiving region."
[51]
The House Select Committee on Assassinations investigated the
allegation "that a statistically improbable number of individuals with
some direct or peripheral association with the Kennedy assassination
died as a result of that assassination, thereby raising the specter of
conspiracy".
[34]
The committee's chief of research testified: "Our final conclusion on
the issue is that the available evidence does not establish anything
about the nature of these deaths which would indicate that the deaths
were in some manner, either direct or peripheral, caused by the
assassination of President Kennedy or by any aspect of the subsequent
investigation."
[34]
According to author
Gerald Posner,
Marrs' list was taken from a group of about 10,000 people who were
connected only in the most tenuous way to the assassination. Posner
claims that it would be surprising if a hundred people out of ten
thousand did not die in "unnatural ways" and says that over half of the
people on Marrs' list did not die mysteriously, but of natural causes.
[52]
Allegations of evidence suppression, tampering, and fabrication
According to Bugliosi, allegations that the evidence against Oswald
was planted, forged, or tampered with is a main argument among those who
believe a conspiracy took place.
Suppression of evidence
Ignored testimony
Some assassination researchers assert that witness statements
indicating a conspiracy were ignored by the Warren Commission. In 1967,
Josiah Thompson stated that the Commission ignored the testimony of
seven witnesses who saw gunsmoke in the area of the stockade fence on
the grassy knoll, as well as an eighth witness who smelled gunpowder at
the time of the assassination.
[54]
In 1989, Jim Marrs wrote that the Commission failed to ask for the
testimony of witnesses on the triple overpass whose statements pointed
to a shooter on the grassy knoll.
Confiscated film and photographs
Other researchers reported that witnesses who captured the
assassination in photographs or on film had their cameras and/or film
confiscated by police or other authorities. Author Jim Marrs and
documentary producer Nigel Turner presented the account of
Gordon Arnold who said that his film of the motorcade was taken by two policemen shortly after the assassination.
[55] Another witness, Beverly Oliver, came forward in 1970 and said she was the "
Babushka Lady" who is seen, in the
Zapruder film,
filming the motorcade. She said that after the assassination she was
contacted at work by two men who she thought "...were either FBI or
Secret Service agents." According to Oliver, the men told her that they
wanted to develop her film and would return it to her within ten days,
but they never returned the film.
[55]
Withheld documents
Richard Buyer and others have complained that many documents
pertaining to the assassination have been withheld over the years,
including documents from the Warren Commission investigation, the House
Select Committee on Assassinations investigation, and the Church
Committee investigation.
[29]
These documents at one time included the President's autopsy records.
Some documents are still not scheduled for release until 2029. Many
documents were released during the mid-to-late 1990s by the
Assassination Records Review Board under the
President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992. However, some of the material released contains
redacted sections. Tax return information, which would identify employers and sources of income, has not yet been released.
[57]
The existence of large numbers of secret documents related to the
assassination, and the long period of secrecy, suggests to some the
possibility of a cover-up. One historian noted, "There exists widespread
suspicion about the government's disposition of the Kennedy
assassination records stemming from the beliefs that Federal officials
(1) have not made available all Government assassination records (even
to the Warren Commission, Church Committee, House Assassination
Committee) and (2) have heavily redacted the records released under FOIA
in order to cover up sinister conspiracies."
[58]
According to the Assassination Records Review Board, "All Warren
Commission records, except those records that contain tax return
information, are (now) available to the public with only minor
redactions."
[59] In response to a
Freedom of Information Act request filed by journalist
Jefferson Morley,
the CIA stated that it had approximately 1,100 JFK
assassination-related documents, about 2,000 pages in total, that have
not been released for reasons of national security.
[60]
Tampering of evidence
Some researchers have alleged that various items of physical evidence have been tampered with, including: the
"single bullet", also known as the "magic bullet" by critics of the official explanations; various bullet cartridges and fragments;
the limousine's windshield;
the paper bag in which the Warren Commission said Oswald hid the rifle;
the so-called "backyard" photos which depict Oswald holding the rifle;
the Zapruder film; the photographs and radiographs obtained at Kennedy's
autopsy; and Kennedy's body itself.
[61]
The "backyard" photos
Among the evidence against Oswald are the
photographs of Oswald
posing in his backyard with a Carcano rifle—the weapon identified by
the Warren Commission as the assassination weapon. Some researchers,
including
Robert Groden, assert that these photos are fake.
[62] However, the House Select Committee on Assassinations concluded that the photographs of Oswald are genuine
[63] and Oswald's wife,
Marina says that she took them.
[64]
The Zapruder film
The House Select Committee on Assassinations described the Zapruder
film as "the best available photographic evidence of the number and
timing of the shots that struck the occupants of the Presidential
limousine."
[65] The Assassination Records Review Board said it "is perhaps the single most important assassination record."
[66]
According to Vincent Bugliosi, the film was "originally touted by the
vast majority of conspiracy theorists as incontrovertible proof of [a]
conspiracy" but is now believed by many assassination researchers to be a
"sophisticated forgery". Among those who believe the Zapruder film has been altered are John Costello,
James H. Fetzer,
David Lifton, David Mantik, Jack White, Noel Twyman,
[68] and Harrison Livingstone, who has called it "the biggest hoax of the twentieth century". In 1996 Roland Zavada, a former product engineer for Kodak, was requested by the
Assassination Records Review Board to undertake a thorough technical study of the Zapruder Film.
[69] Zavada concluded that there was no detectable evidence of manipulation or image alteration on the
Zapruder in-camera original.
[70]
David Lifton wrote that the Zapruder film was in the possession of the CIA's
National Photographic Interpretation Center, the night of the assassination.
[71][72] Jack White, researcher and photographic consultant to the
House Select Committee on Assassinations,
claimed that there are anomalies in the Zapruder film, including an
"unnatural jerkiness of movement or change of focus ... in certain frame
sequences."
[73]
Kennedy's body
In his 1981 book
Best Evidence,
David Lifton
presented the thesis that President Kennedy’s body (i.e., the "best
evidence") had been altered between the Dallas hospital and the autopsy
site at Bethesda for the purposes of creating erroneous conclusions
about the number and direction of the shots.
[74]
Fabrication of evidence
Murder weapon
The Warren Commission found that the shots which killed Kennedy and wounded Connally were fired from
the Mannlicher-Carcano 6.5-millimeter Italian rifle owned by Oswald.
[75]
Deputy Sheriff Eugene Boone and Deputy Constable Seymour Weitzman both
initially identified the rifle found in the Texas School Book Depository
as a 7.65
Mauser.
Weitzman signed an affidavit the following day describing the weapon as
a "7.65 Mauser bolt action equipped with a 4/18 scope, a thick leather
brownish-black sling on it".
[76][77] Deputy Sheriff Roger Craig claimed that he saw "7.65 Mauser" stamped on the barrel of the weapon.
[78]
Dallas District Attorney
Henry Wade told the press that the weapon found in the Book Depository was a 7.65 Mauser, and this was reported by the media.
[79] But investigators later identified the rifle as a 6.5 Italian Mannlicher Carcano. According to Mark Lane:
The strongest element in the case against Lee Harvey Oswald was the
Warren Commission's conclusion that his rifle had been found on the 6th
floor of the Book Depository building. Yet Oswald never owned a 7.65
Mauser. When the FBI later reported that Oswald had purchased only a 6.5
Italian Mannlicher-Carcano, the weapon at police headquarters in Dallas
miraculously changed its size, its make and its nationality. The Warren
Commission concluded that a 6.5 Mannlicher-Carcano, not a 7.65 German
Mauser, had been discovered by the Dallas deputies.[82]
In
Matrix for Assassination, author Richard Gilbride suggested
that both weapons were involved and that Dallas Police Captain Will
Fritz and Lieutenant J. Carl Day might have been conspirators.
[83]
Addressing "speculation and rumors", the Commission identified
Weitzman as "the original source of the speculation that the rifle was a
Mauser" and stated that "[p]olice laboratory technicians subsequently
arrived and correctly identified the weapon as a 6.5 Italian rifle."
[84]
Bullets and cartridges
The Warren Commission determined that three bullets were fired at
Kennedy. One of the three bullets missed the vehicle entirely; another
bullet hit Kennedy, passed through his body and then struck Governor
John Connally; and the third bullet was the fatal head shot to the
President. Some claim that the bullet that passed through President
Kennedy’s body before striking Governor Connally—dubbed by critics of
the Commission as the "magic bullet"—was missing too little mass to
account for the total weight of bullet fragments later found by the
doctors who operated on Connally. Those making this claim included
Connally’s chief surgeon, Dr. Robert Shaw,
[85] as well as two of the Kennedy autopsy surgeons, Commander James Humes,
[86] and Lt. Colonel Pierre Finck.
[87] However, in the book
Six Seconds in Dallas,
author Josiah Thompson took issue with this claim. Thompson added up
the weight of the bullet fragments listed in the doctor reports and
concluded that their total weight "could" have been less than the mass
missing from the bullet.
[88]
With Connally's death in 1993, forensic pathologist Dr.
Cyril Wecht and the
Assassination Archives and Research Center petitioned
Attorney General Janet Reno
to recover the remaining bullet fragments from Connally's body,
contending that the fragments would disprove the Warren Commission's
single-bullet, single-gunman conclusion. The
Justice Department
replied that it "...would have no legal authority to recover the
fragments unless Connally's family gave [it] permission." Connally's
family refused permission.
[89]
Allegations of multiple gunmen
The Warren Commission concluded that "three shots were fired [from
the Texas School Book Depository] in a time period ranging from
approximately 4.8 to in excess of 7 seconds."[90]
Some assassination researchers, including Anthony Summers, dispute the
Commission's findings. They point to evidence that brings into question
the number of shots fired, the origin of the shots, and the ability of
Oswald to accurately fire three shots in a short amount of time. These
researchers suggest the involvement of multiple gunmen.
Governor Connally, seated in the limousine's jump seat directly in
front of Kennedy, testified before the Warren Commission that "...the
thought immediately passed through my mind that there were either two or
three people involved, or more, in this—or someone was shooting with an
automatic rifle."
[92]
Number of shots
Based on the "consensus among the witnesses at the scene" and "in
particular the three spent cartridges", the Warren Commission determined
that "the preponderance of the evidence indicated that three shots were
fired".[90]
In 1979, the House Select Committee on Assassinations concluded there
were four shots, one coming from the direction of the grassy knoll.[3][93]
The Warren Commission, and later the House Select Committee on
Assassinations, concluded that one of the shots hit President Kennedy in
"the back of his neck", exited his throat, continued on to strike
Governor Connally in the back, exited Connally's chest, shattered his
right wrist, and embedded itself in his left thigh.
[94] This conclusion came to be known as the "
single bullet theory".
Mary Moorman
said in a TV interview immediately after the assassination that there
were three or four shots close together, that shots were still being
fired after she took her photograph of the President being hit, and that
she was in the line of fire.
[95]
In 1967, Josiah Thompson concluded that four shots were fired in Dealey
Plaza, with one wounding Connally and three hitting Kennedy.
[54]
Origin of the shots
The wooden fence on the grassy knoll.
The Warren Commission concluded that all of the shots fired at
President Kennedy originated from the sixth-floor window at the
southeast corner of the Texas School Book Depository. The Commission
based its conclusion on the "cumulative evidence of eyewitnesses,
firearms and ballistic experts and medical authorities," including
onsite testing, as well as analysis of films and photographs conducted
by the FBI and Secret Service.
[90]
In 1979, the House Select Committee on Assassinations agreed to publish a report from Warren Commission critic
Robert Groden, in which he named "nearly [two] dozen suspected firing points in Dealey Plaza".
[96]
These sites included multiple locations in or on the roof of the Texas
School Book Depository, the Dal-Tex Building, and the Dallas County
Records Building, as well as the railroad overpass, a storm drain
located along the north curb of Elm street, and various spots near the
"grassy knoll".
[96]
Josiah Thompson concluded that the shots fired on the motorcade came
from three locations: the Texas School Book Depository, the area of the
grassy knoll, and the Dal-Tex Building.
[54]
Testimony of eyewitnesses
According to some assassination researchers, the grassy knoll was
identified by the majority of witnesses as the area from where shots
were fired.[97]
In March 1965, Harold Feldman wrote that there were 121 witnesses to
the assassination with 51 indicating that the shots that killed Kennedy
came from the area of the grassy knoll.[97]
In 1967, Josiah Thompson examined the statements of 64 witnesses and
found that 33 of them thought that the shots emanated from the grassy
knoll.
In 1966,
Esquire
magazine credited Feldman with "advanc[ing] the theory that there were
two assassins: one on the grassy knoll and one in the Book Depository."
[99]
Jim Marrs also wrote that the weight of evidence suggested shots came
from both the grassy knoll and the Texas School Book Depository.
Lee Bowers
operated a railroad tower that overlooked the parking lot on the north
side of the grassy knoll. He reported that he saw two men behind the
picket fence at the top of the grassy knoll before the shooting. The men
did not appear to be acting together and did not appear to be doing
anything suspicious. After the shooting, Bowers said that one of the men
remained behind the fence. Bowers said that he lost track of the second
man whose clothing blended into the foliage. When interviewed by Mark
Lane, Bowers noted that he saw something that attracted his attention,
either a flash of light, or maybe smoke, from the knoll, leading him to
believe "something out of the ordinary" had occurred there. Bowers told
Lane he heard three shots, the last two in quick succession. Bowers
opined that they could not have come from the same rifle.
[100]
William and Gayle Newman were standing at the curb on the north side
of Elm St. with their two children. Mr. Newman said that the shot to
Kennedy's head was fired from behind him (from the knoll).
Jesse Price was the building engineer for the Terminal Annex
Building, located across from the Texas School Book Depository on the
opposite side of Dealey Plaza. Price viewed the presidential motorcade
from the Terminal Annex Building's roof. In an interview with Mark Lane,
Price said that he believed the shots came from "just behind the picket
fence where it joins the underpass." He claimed to have seen a "...man run towards the passenger cars on the railroad siding after the volley of shots."
[102]
Physical evidence
Several conspiracy theories posit that at least one shooter was located in the
Dal-Tex Building, which is located across the street from the
Texas School Book Depository.
[103] According to
L. Fletcher Prouty, the physical location of
James Tague
when he was injured by a bullet fragment is not consistent with the
trajectory of a missed shot from the Texas School Book Depository,
leading Prouty to theorize that Tague was instead wounded by a missed
shot from the second floor of the Dal-Tex Building.
[104]
Some assassination researchers claim that FBI photographs of the
presidential limousine show a bullet hole in its windshield above the
rear-view mirror, and a crack in the windshield itself. When Robert
Groden, author of
The Killing of a President, asked for an explanation, the FBI responded that what Groden thought was a bullet hole "occurred prior to Dallas".
[105][106]
Film and photographic evidence
Film and photographic evidence of the assassination have led viewers
to different conclusions regarding the origin of the shots. In the
Zapruder film, the President's head and upper torso move backwards after
the last, fatal shot—an indication to many that a bullet was fired from
the front. However, close inspection of frames 312 and 313 show
Kennedy's head moving forward by as much as 1.9 inches, before his head
moves backwards.
[107] Researchers, including
Robert Groden and
Cyril Wecht, state that the film is evidence of a "double hit" to Kennedy's head.
[108]
Wecht believes that the film depicts the President's head being "struck
twice in a synchronized fashion, from the rear and the right front
side."
Paul Chambers argues that Frame Z313 shows multiple jets of blood, bone
and brain matter exiting just above Kennedy's right ear and claims this
is consistent with a high velocity (approx. 4,000 ft/sec) rifle rather
than the medium velocity (2,000 ft/sec) Mannlicher-Carcano.
[110]
Chambers also claims that analysis of the Zapruder film at normal speed
shows the President's limousine comes to a complete stop moments before
the final fatal head shot.
[111]
Acoustical evidence
According to the House Select Committee on Assassinations, a
Dictabelt recording of the Dallas Police Department radio dispatch transmissions from November 22, 1963 was analyzed to "resolve questions concerning the number, timing, and origin of the shots fired in Dealey Plaza".
[112]
The Committee concluded that the source of the recording was from an
open microphone on the motorcycle of H.B. McLain escorting the motorcade
and that "the scientific acoustical evidence established a high
probability that two gunmen fired at President John F. Kennedy."
The acoustical analysis firm hired by the Committee recommended that
the Committee conduct an acoustical reconstruction of the assassination
in Dealey Plaza to determine if any of the six impulse patterns on the
dispatch tape were fired from the Texas School Book Depository or the
grassy knoll. The reconstruction would entail firing from two locations
in Dealey Plaza—the depository and the knoll—at particular target
locations and recording the sounds through numerous microphones. The
purpose was to determine if the sequences of impulses recorded during
the reconstruction would match any of those on the dispatch tape. If so,
it would be possible to determine if the impulse patterns on the
dispatch tape were caused by shots fired during the assassination from
shooter locations in the depository and on the knoll.
[115]
In 1978, at the behest of the House Select Committee on
Assassinations, members of the Dallas Police Pistol Team participated in
an acoustical reconstruction by firing both rifles and pistols from the
locations selected by the researchers. During the acoustical
reconstruction, the Dallas Police marksmen had no difficulty hitting the
targets. The House Select Committee's firearms experts "...testified
that given the distance and angle from the sixth floor window to the
location of the President's limousine, it would have been easier to use
the open iron sights." The Warren Commission tests had been carried out
on the assumption that Oswald, who they and the Committee concluded
fired the shots, used the telescopic sight.
[115]
An article which appeared in
Science & Justice,
a quarterly publication of Britain's Forensic Science Society, found
there was a 96% certainty, based on analysis of audio recordings made
during the assassination, that a shot was fired from "the grassy knoll"
in front of and to the right of the President's limousine.
[116][117]
Medical evidence
Some assassination researchers have pointed to testimony or medical
evidence suggesting that at least one of the shots fired at President
Kennedy came from a location other than the Book Depository.
Roy Kellerman,
the Secret Service agent seated next to the driver in the presidential
limousine, testified that he saw a 5-inch-diameter (130 mm) hole in the
back right-hand side of the President's head.
[120] Clint Hill,
the Secret Service agent who sheltered the President with his body on
the way to the hospital, said: "The right rear portion of his head was
missing."
[121] Later, in a
National Geographic Channel documentary, Hill described the wound as a "gaping hole above his right ear, about the size of my palm."
[122]
Robert McClelland, one of the
Parkland Hospital
doctors who attended to Kennedy, testified to the Warren Commission
that the back right part of Kennedy's head was blown out, with posterior
cerebral tissue and some
cerebellar tissue missing.
[123][124]
Some critics skeptical of the official "
single bullet theory"
state that the trajectory of the bullet, which hit Kennedy above the
right shoulder blade and passed through his neck (according to the
autopsy), would have had to change course to pass through Connally's rib
cage and wrist.
[125][126][page needed] Kennedy's death certificate, signed by his personal physician Dr.
George Burkley, locates the bullet at the third thoracic vertebra—which some claim is too low to have exited his throat.
[127][128]
Moreover, the bullet was traveling downward, since the shooter was in a
sixth floor window. The autopsy descriptive sheet displays a diagram of
Kennedy's body with the same low placement at the third thoracic
vertebra.
[129]
The hole in back of Kennedy's shirt and jacket are also claimed to
support a wound too low to be consistent with the "single bullet
theory".
[130][better source needed][131][132][better source needed]
On the day of the assassination,
Nellie Connally was seated in the presidential car next to her husband, Governor John Connally. In her book
From Love Field: Our Final Hours, Nellie Connally said that she believed that her husband was hit by a bullet that was separate from the two that hit Kennedy.
[133]
There is conflicting testimony about the autopsy performed on
Kennedy's body, particularly as to when the examination of his brain
took place, who was present, and whether or not the photos submitted as
evidence are the same as those taken during the examination.
[134]
Douglas Horne, the Assassination Record Review Board's chief analyst
for military records, said he was "90 to 95% certain" that the
photographs in the
National Archives
are not of President Kennedy's brain. Supporting Horne was Dr. Gary
Aguilar who stated: "According to Horne’s findings, the second
brain—which showed an exit wound in the front—allegedly replaced
Kennedy's real brain—which revealed much greater damage to the rear,
consistent with an exit wound and thus evidence of a shot from the
front."
[135]
Paul O'Connor, a
laboratory technologist who assisted in the autopsy of President Kennedy, claimed that the autopsy at
Bethesda Naval Hospital was conducted in obedience to a high command.
[136][137]
In his book
JFK and the Unspeakable, James Douglass cites Dr. Pierre Finck’s testimony at the
trial of Clay Shaw
as evidence that Finck was "...a reluctant witness to the military
control over the doctors' examination of the president's body".
[139]
Oswald's marksmanship
The Warren Commission examined the capabilities of the Carcano rifle
and ammunition, as well as Oswald's military training and post-military
experience, and determined that Oswald had the ability to fire three
shots within a time span of 4.8 to 5.6 seconds.
[140]
According to their report, an army specialist using Oswald's rifle was
able to duplicate the feat and even improved on the time. The report
also states that the Army Infantry Weapons Evaluation Branch test fired
Oswald's rifle 47 times and found that it was "quite accurate",
comparing it to the accuracy of an
M-14 rifle. Also contained in the Commission report is testimony by
Marine Corps Major Eugene Anderson confirming that Oswald's military records show that he qualified as "
sharpshooter"
in 1956. But this is confronted with more detailed record of his
shooting abilities. According to official Marine Corps records Oswald
was tested in shooting, scoring 212 in December 1956 (slightly above the
minimum for qualification as a sharpshooter - the intermediate
category), but in May 1959 scoring only 191 (barely earning the lower
designation of marksman - the lowest category of skilled shooter, but
still above undesignated shooters). He never approached the highest
marksmanship category in the Marine Corps - the Expert. Conspiracy
theorists such as Walt Brown and authors such as
Richard H. Popkin
contend that Oswald was a notoriously poor shot, his rifle was
inaccurate, and that no one has ever been able to duplicate his ability
to fire three shots within the time frame given by the Warren
Commission.
[141]
FBI marksman Robert Frazier who tested the rifle in two sets of tests
testified to the Warren Commission that he could not reach the 5.6
second mark for firing three shots and all his shots fired five inches
high and five inches to the right due to an uncorrectable deficiency in
the telescopic sight.
[143]
Role of Oswald
Assassination researchers differ as to the role of Oswald in the
assassination of President Kennedy. Some researchers believe that Oswald
was an uninvolved patsy, while others believe he was actively involved
in a plot. Oswald's ability to move to Russia, then return as an avowed
communist to the United States with help from the State Department – who
gave him a repatriation loan of $435.71
[144][145] – has led some theorists to speculate that he was working for the CIA and/or the FBI.
[148]
Oswald contacted the FBI twice in 1963. The first occasion was on
August 9 when Oswald was arrested in New Orleans for disturbing the
peace. After his arrest, Oswald asked to speak with an FBI agent. Agent
John Quigley arrived and spent over an hour talking to Oswald.
[149]
Also, Oswald visited the Dallas FBI office in November 1963, about 2 to
3 weeks before the assassination, and attempted to deliver a note to
Special Agent
James Hosty.
[151][152][153]
Jim and Elsie Wilcott, former husband and wife employees of the
Tokyo CIA station, told the
San Francisco Chronicle
in 1978: "It was common knowledge in the Tokyo CIA station that Oswald
worked for the agency.... Right after the President was killed, people
in the Tokyo station were talking openly about Oswald having gone to
Russia for the CIA. Everyone was wondering how the agency was going to
be able to keep the lid on Oswald. But I guess they did."
[154]
Marguerite Oswald [Lee Oswald's mother] "...frequently expressed the
opinion that her son was recruited by an agency of the U.S. Government
and sent to Russia in 1959."
[155]
New Orleans D.A. Jim Garrison, who in 1967 brought
Clay Shaw to trial for the assassination of President Kennedy, stated in the documentary,
The Men Who Killed Kennedy, "[Oswald] was employed by the Central Intelligence Agency and was obviously drawn into a
scapegoat
situation and made to believe ultimately that he was penetrating the
assassination. And then when the time came, they took the scapegoat—the
man who thought he was working for the United States government—and
killed him real quick. And then the machinery,
disinformation machinery, started turning and they started making a villain out of a man who genuinely was probably a hero."
[156]
James Botelho, a former roommate of Oswald who would later become a
California judge, stated in an interview with Mark Lane, "Oswald, it was
said, was the only Marine ever to defect from his country to another
country, a Communist country, during peacetime.... When the Marine Corps
and American intelligence decided not to probe the reasons for the
'defection', I knew then what I know now: Oswald was on an assignment in
Russia for American intelligence."
Senator Richard Schweiker, who was a member of the
U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, stated: "We do know Oswald had intelligence connections. Everywhere you look with him, there're fingerprints of intelligence."
[159] Richard Sprague, interim staff director and chief counsel to the
U.S. House Select Committee on Assassinations,
said, "If he had it to do over again, he would begin his investigation
of the Kennedy assassination by probing Oswald's ties to the Central
Intelligence Agency."
[160]
In 2003, Robert Blakey, staff director and chief counsel for the U.S.
House Select Committee on Assassinations, stated: "I no longer believe
that we were able to conduct an appropriate investigation of the
[Central Intelligence] Agency and its relationship to Oswald."
[161]
According to Richard Buyer, Oswald never fired a shot at the President.
James W. Douglass described Oswald as "a questioning, dissenting CIA operative who had become a security risk" and "the ideal scapegoat".
According to Josiah Thompson, Oswald was in the Texas School Book
Depository during the assassination, but it is "quite likely" he was not
the shooter on the sixth floor.
[54]
In a 2013 interview with
CBS journalist
Charlie Rose,
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. said that his father
Robert F. Kennedy was "fairly convinced" that others besides Oswald were involved in the assassination.
[164]
Alternative gunmen
In addition to Oswald, Jerome Kroth has named 26 people as "Possible Assassins In Dealey Plaza". They include:
Orlando Bosch,
James Files[166],
Desmond Fitzgerald,
Charles Harrelson,
Gerry Hemming,
Chauncey Holt,
Howard Hunt,
Charles Nicoletti,
Charles Rogers,
Johnny Roselli,
Lucien Sarti, and
Frank Sturgis.
Vincent Bugliosi provides a "
partial list of assassins...whom
one or more conspiracy theorists have actually named and identified as
having fired a weapon at Kennedy" on pages 1495-1498 of "
Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy".
Three tramps
Main article:
Three tramps
The
three tramps are three men photographed by several
Dallas-area newspapers
under police escort near the Texas School Book Depository shortly after
the assassination. Since the mid-1960s, various allegations have been
made about the identities of the men and their involvement in a
conspiracy to kill Kennedy. Records released by the
Dallas Police Department in 1989 identified the men as Gus Abrams, Harold Doyle, and John Gedney.
Allegations of other conspirators
E. Howard Hunt
The theory that former CIA agent and
Watergate burglar,
E. Howard Hunt, was a participant in the assassination of Kennedy garnered much publicity from 1978 to 2000.
[169] In 1981, he won a libel judgment against
Liberty Lobby's paper
The Spotlight who in 1978 printed an allegation by
Victor Marchetti
suggesting Hunt's involvement in a conspiracy; the libel award was
thrown out on appeal and the newspaper was successfully defended by
Mark Lane in a second trial.
[170] Former KGB
archivist Vasili Mitrokhin indicated in 1999 that Hunt was made part of a fabricated conspiracy theory disseminated by a Soviet "
active measures" program designed to discredit the CIA and the United States.
[171] After his death in 2007, an audio-taped "
deathbed confession" in which Hunt claimed knowledge of a conspiracy was released by his sons;
[173] the authenticity of the confession was met with some skepticism.
[clarification needed][169][174][175]
In 2012, journalist Jefferson Morley reported that "...the JFK Assassination Records Collection at the
National Archives contains 366 pages of CIA documents on Howard Hunt that have never been made public."
[176]
J. D. Tippit
Dallas Police Officer
J. D. Tippit has been named in some conspiracy theories as a renegade CIA operative sent to silence Oswald
[178] and as the "
badge man" assassin on the grassy knoll.
[178]
According to some Warren Commission critics, Oswald was set up to be
killed by Tippit, but Tippit was killed by Oswald before he could carry
out his assignment.
[179] Other critics doubt that Tippit was killed by Oswald and assert he was shot by other conspirators.
[179] (See
section below.) Some critics have alleged that Tippit was associated with organized crime or
right-wing politics.
Bernard Weissman
Advertisement in the November 22, 1963,
Dallas Morning News, placed by Bernard Weissman and three others.
According to the Warren Commission, the publication of a full page,
paid advertisement critical of Kennedy in the November 22, 1963,
Dallas Morning News,
which was signed by "The American Fact-Finding Committee" and noted
Bernard Weissman as its chairman, was investigated to determine whether
any members of the group claiming responsibility for it were connected
to Oswald or to the assassination.
The Commission stated that "The American Fact-Finding Committee" was a
fictitious sponsoring organization and that there was no evidence
linking the four men responsible for the genesis of the ad with either
Oswald or Ruby, or to a conspiracy to assassinate Kennedy.
During the Commission's hearings, Mark Lane testified that an informant
whom he refused to name told him that Weismann had met with Tippit and
Ruby eight days before the assassination.
[a] In
Rush to Judgment, Lane disputed the government's findings and indicated that the source of his information was reporter Thayer Waldo of the
Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
Roscoe White
In 1990, Ricky Don White claimed that his father, Roscoe White, was
one of three people ordered by the CIA to assassinate Kennedy.
[183]
According to the son, Oswald, who was involved in the plot but did not
fire any shots, was picked up after the assassination by Roscoe White
and J. D. Tippit to be transported to
Red Bird Airport.
[183]
Ricky White stated that Tippit, who had no knowledge of the
assassination or plot, became suspicious after Oswald panicked and got
out of the car.
[183]
He indicated that his father shot Tippit after Tippit indicated that he
would need to take Oswald to police headquarters for questioning.
[183]
Jack Shaw, Roscoe White's pastor, said that Roscoe White had spoken to
him about the assassination on several occasions and was "killed by a
witness elimination team activated after Kennedy's death."
[183]
According to Shaw, Roscoe White's wife, Geneva, said to him she had
overheard conversations between White and Jack Ruby in which White would
"take care of" Kennedy and Tippit and that Ruby would "take care of
Oswald".
[183] The allegations were denied as "ludicrous" by a CIA spokesman.
[183]
The FBI released a statement indicating that they had investigated the
allegations in 1988 and determined that the information was not
credible.
[183]
Unnamed accomplice or accomplices in the murder of J. D. Tippit
The Warren Commission concluded that Oswald "...killed Dallas Police Officer
J. D. Tippit in an apparent attempt to escape."
The evidence that formed the basis for this conclusion was: "(1) two
eyewitnesses who heard the shots and saw the shooting of Dallas Police
Patrolman J. D. Tippit and seven eyewitnesses who saw the flight of the
gunman with revolver in hand positively identified Lee Harvey Oswald as
the man they saw fire the shots or flee from the scene, (2) the
cartridge cases found near the scene of the shooting were fired from the
revolver in the possession of Oswald at the time of his arrest, to the
exclusion of all other weapons, (3) the revolver in Oswald's possession
at the time of his arrest was purchased by and belonged to Oswald, and
(4) Oswald's jacket was found along the path of flight taken by the
gunman as he fled from the scene of the killing."
Some researchers have alleged that the murder of Officer Tippit was
part of a conspiracy to kill President Kennedy. Jim Marrs hypothesized
that "the slaying of Officer J. D. Tippit may have played some part in
[a] scheme to have Oswald killed, perhaps to eliminate co-conspirator
Tippit or simply to anger Dallas police and cause itchy trigger
fingers."
Researcher James Douglass said that "...the killing of [Tippit] helped
motivate the Dallas police to kill an armed Oswald in the Texas Theater,
which would have disposed of the scapegoat before he could protest his
being framed."
Harold Weisberg offered a simpler explanation: "Immediately, the
[flimsy] police case [against Oswald] required a willingness to believe.
This was proved by affixing to Oswald the opprobrious epithet of
'cop-killer.'"
Jim Garrison
alleged that evidence was altered to frame Oswald, stating: "If Oswald
was innocent of the Tippit murder the foundation of the government's
case against him collapsed."
[188]
Some critics doubt that Tippit was killed by Oswald and assert he was shot by other conspirators.
[179]
They allege discrepancies in witness testimony and physical evidence
which they feel call into question the Commission's conclusions
regarding the murder of Tippit. According to Jim Marrs, Oswald's guilt
in the assassination of Kennedy is placed in question by the presence of
"a growing body of evidence to suggest that [he] did not kill Tippit". Others say that multiple men were directly involved in Tippit's killing. Conspiracy researcher
Kenn Thomas
has alleged that the Warren Commission omitted testimony and evidence
that two men shot Tippit and that one left the scene in a car.
[190]
William Alexander—the Dallas assistant district attorney who
recommended that Oswald be charged with the Kennedy and Tippit
murders—later became skeptical of the Warren Commission's version of the
Tippit murder. He stated that the Commission's conclusions on Oswald's
movements "don't add up," and that "certainly [Oswald] may have had
accomplices."
According to
Brian McKenna's review of Henry Hurt's book,
Reasonable Doubt,
Hurt reported that "Tippit may have been killed because he impregnated
the wife of another man" and that Dallas police officers lied and
altered evidence to set up Oswald to save Tippit's reputation.
[192]
Allegations regarding witness testimony and physical evidence
The Warren Commission identified Helen Markham and Domingo Benavides as two witnesses who actually saw the shooting. Conspiracy theorist
Richard Belzer criticized the Commission for, in his description, "relying" on the testimony of Markham whom he described as "imaginative".
[194] Jim Marrs also took issue with Markham's testimony, stating that her "credibility ... was strained to the breaking point".
Joseph Ball, senior counsel to the Commission, referred to Markham's
testimony as "full of mistakes," characterizing her as an "utter
screwball."
The Warren Commission addressed concerns regarding Markham's
reliability as a witness and concluded: "However, even in the absence of
Mrs. Markham's testimony, there is ample evidence to identify Oswald as
the killer of Tippit."
Domingo Benavides initially said that he did not think he could
identify Tippit's assailant and was never asked to view a police lineup,
[196] even though he was the person closest to the killing. Benavides later testified that the killer resembled pictures he had seen of Oswald.
[198]
Other witnesses were taken to police lineups. However, critics have
questioned these lineups in that they consisted of people who looked
very different from Oswald.
[199]
Additionally, witnesses who did not appear before the Commission
identified an assailant who was not Oswald. Acquilla Clemons saw two men
near Tippit’s car just before the shooting.
[156]
After the shooting, she ran outside of her house and saw a man with a
gun whom she described as "kind of heavy." He waved to the second man,
urging him to "go on."
Frank Wright emerged from his home and observed the scene seconds after
the shooting. He described a man standing by Tippit’s body who had on a
long coat and who ran to a parked car and drove away.
Critics have questioned whether the cartridge cases recovered from
the scene were the same as those that were subsequently entered into
evidence. Two of the cases were recovered by witness Domingo Benavides
and turned over to police officer J.M. Poe. Poe told the FBI that he
marked the shells with his own initials, "J.M.P." to identify them.
[203]
Sergeant Gerald Hill later testified to the Warren Commission that it
was he who had ordered police officer Poe to mark the shells.
[204] However, Poe's initials were not found on the shells produced by the FBI six months later.
[203] Testifying before the Warren Commission, Poe said that although he recalled marking the cases, he "couldn’t swear to it."
[207]
The identification of the cases at the crime scene raises more
questions. Sergeant Gerald Hill examined one of the shells and radioed
the police dispatcher, saying: "The shell at the scene indicates that
the suspect is armed with an automatic .38 rather than a pistol."
[208] However, Oswald was reportedly arrested carrying a
non-automatic .38 Special revolver.
Allegations regarding timeline
The Warren Commission investigated Oswald's movements between the
time of the assassination and the shooting of Tippit, to ascertain
whether Oswald might have had an accomplice who helped him flee the Book
Depository. The Commission concluded "...through the testimony of seven
witnesses [that] Oswald was always alone."
According to their final report, Oswald was seen by his housekeeper
leaving his rooming house shortly after 1:00 pm and had enough time to
travel nine-tenths of a mile (1.4 km) to the scene where Tippit was
killed at 1:16 pm.
[b]
Some Warren Commission critics believe that Oswald did not have
enough time to get from his house to the scene where Tippit was killed.
The Commission’s own test and estimation of Oswald’s walking speed
demonstrated that one of the longer routes to the Tippit shooting scene
took 17 minutes and 45 seconds to walk.
[214] No witness ever surfaced who saw Oswald walk from his rooming house to the murder scene.
Conspiracy researchers Anthony Summers and Robert Groden believe that
Tippit's murder may have occurred earlier than the time given in the
Warren Report.
They note that the Commission established the time of the shooting as
1:16 pm from police tapes that logged Domingo Benavides' use of the
radio in Tippit's car.
However, Benavides testified that he did not approach the car until "a
few minutes" after the shooting, because he was afraid that the gunman
might return.
[218]
He was assisted in using the radio by witness T. F. Bowley who
testified to Dallas police that at the time he arrived to help, "several
people were at the scene," and that the time was 1:10 pm.
[219]
Witness Helen Markham initially told the FBI that the shooting occurred "possibly around 1:30 pm,"
[220] but she later told the Warren Commission: "I wouldn't be afraid to bet it wasn't 6 or 7 minutes after 1."
[221] In an unpublished manuscript titled
When They Kill a President, Deputy Sheriff Roger Craig stated that when he heard the news that Tippit had been shot, he noted that the time was 1:06 pm.
[223] However, in a later statement to the press, Craig seemed confused about the time of the shooting.
[224]
Warren "Butch" Burroughs, who ran the concession stand at the
Texas Theater where Oswald was arrested, told author
James Douglass
in 2007 that Oswald came into the theater between 1:00 and 1:07 pm,
which if true would make Oswald's alleged 1:16 pm shooting of Officer J.
D. Tippit impossible. This was a claim that Burroughs had made earlier in the documentary,
The Men Who Killed Kennedy.
[226]
Conspiracy theories
According to researchers, conspiracy theorists consider four or five
groups, alone or in combination, to be the primary suspects in the
assassination of Kennedy: the
CIA,
[228] the
military-industrial complex,
[228] organized crime,
[228][229] the government of
Cuba,
[228][229] and
Cuban exiles.
[228] Other domestic individuals, groups, or organizations implicated in various conspiracy theories include
Lyndon Johnson,
[228][229] George H. W. Bush,
[228][229] Sam Giancana,
J. Edgar Hoover,
[229] Earl Warren, the
Federal Bureau of Investigation,
[228] the
United States Secret Service,
[228][229] the
John Birch Society,
[228][229] and far-right wealthy Texans.
[228] Some other alleged foreign conspirators include
Fidel Castro, the
KGB and
Nikita Krushchev,
[228] Aristotle Onassis,
[229] the government of
South Vietnam,
[231] and international
drug lords[228] including a French heroin syndicate.
[231]
New Orleans conspiracy
Soon after the assassination, allegations began to surface of a
conspiracy between Oswald and persons with whom he was or may have been
acquainted, while living in
New Orleans.
On November 25, 1963, New Orleans attorney Dean Andrews told the FBI
that he received a telephone call three days earlier (the day of the
assassination) from a man named
Clay Bertrand, asking him to defend Oswald. Andrews would later repeat this claim in testimony to the Warren Commission.
[232]
David Ferrie (second from left) and Lee Harvey Oswald (far right) in a
group photo of the New Orleans Civil Air Patrol in 1955 (click to
enlarge)
Also, in late November 1963, an employee of New Orleans private investigator
Guy Banister named
Jack Martin began making accusations of possible involvement in the assassination by fellow Banister employee
David Ferrie.
[233] According to witnesses, in 1963 Ferrie and Banister were working for lawyer
G. Wray Gill on behalf of Gill's client, New Orleans Mafia boss
Carlos Marcello.
[234] Ferrie had also attended
Civil Air Patrol meetings in New Orleans in the 1950s that were also attended by a teenage Lee Harvey Oswald.
[235]
In 1966, New Orleans D.A. Jim Garrison began an investigation into
the assassination of President Kennedy. Garrison's investigation led him
to conclude that a group of
right-wing extremists, including David Ferrie and Guy Banister, were involved in a conspiracy to kill Kennedy.
[236] Garrison also came to believe that New Orleans businessman
Clay Shaw was part of the conspiracy and that Clay Shaw used the pseudonym "Clay Bertrand".
[237] Garrison further believed that Shaw, Banister, and Ferrie conspired to set up Oswald as a patsy in the JFK assassination.
[238]
On March 1, 1967, Garrison arrested and charged Shaw with conspiring to
assassinate President Kennedy. On January 29, 1969, Clay Shaw was
brought to trial on these charges, and the jury found him not guilty.
In 2003, Judyth Vary Baker—whose employment records show that she worked at the
Reily Coffee Company in New Orleans at the same time Oswald did—appeared in an episode of
Nigel Turner's documentary television series,
The Men Who Killed Kennedy.
[239] Baker claimed that in 1963 she was recruited by Dr.
Canute Michaelson to work with Dr.
Alton Ochsner and Dr.
Mary Sherman
on a clandestine CIA project to develop a biological weapon that could
be used to assassinate Fidel Castro. According to Baker, she and Oswald
were hired by Reily in the spring of 1963 as a "cover" for the
operation.
[240] Baker further claimed that she and Oswald began an affair, and that later Oswald told her about
Merida, Mexico—a city where he suggested they might begin their lives over again.
[239][241] According to John McAdams, Baker presents a "classic case of pushing the limits of plausibility too far."
[122] Others on both sides of the research community have widely dismissed her claims.
[242] However, other researchers, including
Jim Marrs and
James Fetzer, have concluded the opposite—that Baker's claims are credible.
CIA conspiracy
The House Select Committee on Assassinations reported that "[t]here
was no indication in Oswald's CIA file that he had ever had contact with
the Agency" and concluded that the CIA was not involved in the
assassination of Kennedy.
[243]
Gaeton Fonzi, an investigator for the House Select Committee on
Assassinations, wrote that investigators were pressured not to look into
the relationship between
Lee Harvey Oswald and the CIA. He stated that CIA agent
David Atlee Phillips,
using the pseudonym "Maurice Bishop", was involved with Oswald prior to
the Kennedy assassination in connection with anti-Castro Cuban groups.
[244]
In 1995, former U.S. Army
Intelligence officer and
National Security Agency executive assistant
John M. Newman
published evidence that both the CIA and FBI deliberately tampered with
their files on Lee Harvey Oswald both before and after the
assassination. Furthermore, he found that both agencies withheld
information that might have alerted authorities in Dallas that Oswald
posed a potential threat to the President. Subsequently, Newman
expressed a belief that CIA chief of counter-intelligence
James Angleton
was probably the key figure in the assassination. According to Newman,
only Angleton "had the access, the authority, and the diabolically
ingenious mind to manage this sophisticated plot." However, Newman
surmised that the cover operation was not under James Angleton, but
under
Allen Dulles (the former CIA director who had been dismissed by Kennedy after the failed
Bay of Pigs invasion).
[245]
According to investigative reporter Joseph Trento, among senior
government officials, only James Angleton continued to express the
belief that Kennedy assassination was not carried out by a lone gunman.
[246][page needed]
Shadow government conspiracy
One conspiracy theory suggests that a secret or
shadow government including wealthy industrialists and right-wing politicians ordered the assassination of Kennedy.
[247] Peter Dale Scott
has indicated that Kennedy's death allowed for policy reversals desired
by the secret government to escalate the United States' military
involvement in Vietnam.
[248]
Military-industrial complex
Some conspiracy theorists have argued that Kennedy planned to end the
involvement of the United States in Vietnam and was therefore targeted
by those who had an interest in sustained military conflict, including
the Pentagon and defense contractors.
Former Texas Senator
Ralph Yarborough
in 1991 stated: "Had Kennedy lived, I think we would have had no
Vietnam War, with all of its traumatic and divisive influences in
America. I think we would have escaped that."
[250]
According to author James Douglass, Kennedy was assassinated because he was turning away from the
Cold War and seeking a negotiated peace with the Soviet Union.
[251] Douglass argued that this "was not the kind of leadership the CIA, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the
military-industrial complex wanted in the White House."
[252]
In his
farewell speech, President
Dwight D. Eisenhower
had warned, "In the councils of government, we must guard against the
acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the
military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of
misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of
this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We
should take nothing for granted."
[253]
Oliver Stone's 1991 movie
JFK explored the possibility that Kennedy was killed by a conspiracy involving the military-industrial complex.
[254] L. Fletcher Prouty,
Chief of Special Operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff under
President Kennedy, and the person who inspired the character "Mr. X" in
Stone's movie, wrote that Kennedy's assassination was actually a
coup d'état.
Secret Service conspiracy
The House Select Committee on Assassinations reported that it
investigated "alleged Secret Service complicity in the assassination"
and concluded that the Secret Service was not involved.
[243] However, the HSCA declared that "the Secret Service was deficient in the performance of its duties."
[256]
Among its findings, the HSCA noted: that President Kennedy had not
received adequate protection in Dallas; that the Secret Service
possessed information that was not properly analyzed, investigated, or
used by the Secret Service in connection with the President's trip to
Dallas; and finally that the Secret Service agents in the motorcade were
inadequately prepared to protect the President from a sniper.
[257] The HSCA specifically noted:
No actions were taken by the agent in the right front seat of the Presidential limousine [ Roy Kellerman
] to cover the President with his body, although it would have been
consistent with Secret Service procedure for him to have done so. The
primary function of the agent was to remain at all times in close
proximity to the President in the event of such emergencies.[258]
Some argue that the lack of Secret Service protection occurred
because Kennedy himself had asked that the Secret Service make itself
discreet during the Dallas visit.
However, Vince Palamara, who interviewed several Secret Service agents
assigned to the Kennedy detail, disputes this. Palamara reports that
Secret Service driver Sam Kinney told him that requests—such as removing
the bubble top from the limousine in Dallas, not having agents
positioned beside the limousine's rear bumper, and reducing the number
of Dallas police motorcycle outriders near the limousine's rear
bumper—were not made by Kennedy.
[260][261][262]
In
The Echo from Dealey Plaza,
Abraham Bolden—the
first African American on the White House Secret Service detail—claimed
to have overheard agents say that they would not protect Kennedy from
would-be assassins:
[President Kennedy] alienated Southerners and conservatives around
the country, most of whom were already suspicious of him. In this, the
Secret Service reflected the more backward elements of America. Many of
the agents with whom I worked were products of the South.... I heard
some members of the White House detail say that if shots were fired at
the president, they'd take no action to protect him. A few agents vowed
that they would quit the Secret Service rather than give up their lives
for Kennedy.[263]
Questions regarding the forthrightness of the Secret Service increased in the 1990s when the
Assassination Records Review Board—which was created when Congress passed the
JFK Records Act—requested
access to Secret Service records. The Review Board was told by the
Secret Service that in January 1995, in violation of the JFK Records
Act, the Secret Service destroyed protective survey reports that covered
JFK's trips from September 24 through November 8, 1963.
[264][265][relevant? – discuss]
Cuban exiles
The House Select Committee on Assassinations wrote: "The committee
believes, on the basis of the evidence available to it, that anti-Castro
Cuban groups, as groups, were not involved in the assassination of
President Kennedy, but that the available evidence does not preclude the
possibility that individual members may have been involved".
[243]
With the 1959
Cuban Revolution
that brought Fidel Castro to power, thousands of Cubans left their
homeland to take up residence in the United States. Many exiles hoped to
overthrow Castro and return to Cuba. Their hopes were dashed with the
failed Bay of Pigs Invasion in 1961, and many exiles blamed President
Kennedy for the failure.
The House Select Committee on Assassinations concluded that some
militant Cuban exiles might have participated in Kennedy's murder. These
exiles worked closely with CIA operatives in violent activities against
Castro's Cuba. In 1979, the committee reported:
President Kennedy's popularity among the Cuban exiles had plunged
deeply by 1963. Their bitterness is illustrated in a tape recording of a
meeting of anti-Castro Cubans and right-wing Americans in the Dallas
suburb of Farmer's Branch on October 1, 1963.[267]
Holding a copy of the September 26 edition of
The Dallas Morning News,
featuring a front-page account of the President's planned trip to Texas
in November, Cuban exile Nestor Castellanos vented his hostility:
CASTELLANOS ...we're waiting for Kennedy the 22d, [the date Kennedy
was murdered] buddy. We're going to see him in one way or the other.
We're going to give him the works when he gets in Dallas. Mr. good ol'
Kennedy. I wouldn't even call him President Kennedy. He stinks.[267]
Author
Joan Didion explored the Miami anti-Castro Cuban theory in her 1987 non-fiction book
Miami.
[268][269]
She discussed Marita Lorenz' testimony regarding Guillermo Novo, a
Cuban exile who was involved in shooting a bazooka at the U.N. building
from the East River during a speech by
Che Guevara.
Allegedly, Novo was affiliated with Lee Harvey Oswald and Frank Sturgis
and carried weapons with them to a hotel in Dallas just prior to the
assassination. These claims, though put forth to the House
Assassinations Committee by Lorenz, were never substantiated by a
conclusive investigation.
Organized crime conspiracy
The House Select Committee on Assassinations wrote: "The committee
believes, on the basis of the evidence available to it, that the
national syndicate of organized crime, as a group, was not involved in
the assassination of President Kennedy, but that the available evidence
does not preclude the possibility that individual members may have been
involved".
[243]
Documents never seen by the Warren Commission have revealed that some
Mafiosi worked with the CIA on assassination attempts against
Cuban leader
Fidel Castro.
[270] CIA documents released in 2007 confirmed that in the summer of 1960, the CIA recruited ex-FBI agent
Robert Maheu to approach the West Coast representative of the Chicago mob,
Johnny Roselli.
When Maheu contacted Roselli, Maheu hid the fact that he was sent by
the CIA, instead portraying himself an advocate for international
corporations. He offered to pay $150,000 to have Castro killed, but
Roselli declined any pay. Roselli introduced Maheu to two men he
referred to as "Sam Gold" and "Joe." "Sam Gold" was
Sam Giancana; "Joe" was
Santo Trafficante, Jr., the Tampa, Florida boss and one of the most powerful mobsters in pre-revolution Cuba.
[271] Glenn Kessler of
The Washington Post
explained: "After Fidel Castro led a revolution that toppled a friendly
government in 1959, the CIA was desperate to eliminate him. So the
agency sought out a partner equally worried about Castro—the Mafia,
which had lucrative investments in Cuban casinos."
[273]
In his memoir,
Bound by Honor,
Bill Bonanno, son of New York Mafia boss
Joseph Bonanno,
disclosed that several Mafia families had long-standing ties with the
anti-Castro Cubans through the Havana casinos operated by the Mafia
before the
Cuban Revolution. Many Cuban exiles and Mafia bosses disliked President Kennedy, blaming him for the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion. They also disliked his brother, the young and idealistic Attorney General
Robert Kennedy, who had conducted an unprecedented legal assault on organized crime. This was especially provocative because several Mafia "families" had allegedly worked with JFK's father,
Joseph Kennedy, to get JFK elected.
[citation needed] Both the Mafia and the anti-Castro Cubans were experts in assassination—the Cubans having been trained by the CIA.
[276]
Bonanno reported that he recognized the high degree of involvement of
other Mafia families when Jack Ruby killed Oswald, since Bonanno was
aware that Ruby was an associate of Chicago mobster
Sam Giancana.
[277]
Some conspiracy researchers have alleged a plot involving elements of
the Mafia, the CIA and the anti-Castro Cubans, including Anthony
Summers who stated: "Sometimes people sort of glaze over about the
notion that the Mafia and U.S. intelligence and the anti-Castro
activists were involved together in the assassination of President
Kennedy. In fact, there's no contradiction there. Those three groups
were all in bed together at the time and had been for several years in
the fight to topple Fidel Castro."
[278]
News reporter Ruben Castaneda wrote in 2012: "Based on the evidence, it
is likely that JFK was killed by a coalition of anti-Castro Cubans, the
Mob, and elements of the CIA."
[279]
Carlos Marcello allegedly threatened to assassinate the President to short-circuit his younger brother, Attorney General
Robert Kennedy, who was leading the administration's anti-Mafia crusade.
[280][281] Information released in 2006 by the FBI has led some to conclude that Carlos Marcello confessed
[to whom?] to having organized Kennedy's assassination, and that the FBI covered-up this information which it had in its possession.
[282][dead link]
In his book,
Contract on America, David Scheim provided evidence that Mafia leaders
Carlos Marcello,
Santo Trafficante, Jr. and
Jimmy Hoffa
ordered the assassination of President Kennedy. Scheim cited in
particular a 25-fold increase in the number of out-of-state telephone
calls from Jack Ruby to associates of these crime bosses in the months
before the assassination, and to an attempted confession by Jack Ruby
while in prison.
[283] David E. Kaiser has also suggested mob involvement in his book,
The Road to Dallas.
[284]
Investigative reporter
Jack Anderson concluded that Fidel Castro worked with organized crime figures to arrange the JFK assassination. In his book
Peace, War, and Politics, Anderson claimed that Mafia member
Johnny Roselli
gave him extensive details of the plot. Anderson said that although he
was never able to independently confirm Roselli's entire story, many of
Roselli's details checked out. Anderson said that Oswald may have played
a role in the assassination, but that more than one gunman was
involved. Johnny Roselli, as previously noted, had worked with the CIA
on assassination attempts against Castro.
The
History Channel program,
The Men Who Killed Kennedy presented additional evidence for organized crime involvement.
[285] Christian David was a
Corsican Mafia
member interviewed in prison. He said that he was offered the
assassination contract on President Kennedy, but that he did not accept
it. However, he said that he knew the men who did accept the contract.
According to David, there were three shooters. He provided the name of
one—
Lucien Sarti.
David said that since the other two shooters were still alive, it would
break a code of conduct for him to identify them. When asked what the
shooters were wearing, David noted their
modus operandi was to
dress in costumes such as official uniforms. Much of Christian David's
testimony was confirmed by former Corsican member Michelle Nicole, who
was part of the
DEA witness protection program.
The book
Ultimate Sacrifice, by
Lamar Waldron and
Thom Hartman,
attempted to synthesize these theories with new evidence. The authors
argued that government officials felt obliged to help the assassins
cover up the truth because the assassination conspiracy had direct ties
to American government plots to assassinate Castro. Outraged at
Robert Kennedy's
attack on organized crime, mob leaders had President Kennedy killed to
remove Robert from power. A government investigation of the plot was
thwarted, the authors allege, because it would have revealed
embarrassing evidence of American government involvement with organized
crime in plots to kill Castro.
[286]
Lyndon B. Johnson conspiracy
A 2003 Gallup poll indicated that nearly 20% of Americans suspected
Lyndon B. Johnson of being involved in the assassination of Kennedy. Critics of the Warren Commission have accused Johnson of plotting the assassination because he hated the
Kennedys and feared that he would be dropped from the Democratic ticket for the
1964 election. With his 1968 book
The Dark Side of Lyndon Baines Johnson, Joachim Joesten is credited as being the first conspiracy author to accuse Johnson of having a role in the assassination.
According to Joesten, Johnson "played the leading part" in a conspiracy
that involved "the Dallas oligarchy and ... local branches of the CIA,
the FBI, and the Secret Service". Other assassination authors who have indicated there was complicity on the part of Johnson include
Jim Marrs, Ralph D. Thomas, J. Gary Shaw, Larry Harris, Walt Brown, Noel Twyman,
Barr McClellan, Craig Zirbel,
Penn Jones, Jr., and
Madeleine Brown.
In 2003, researcher Barr McClellan published the book,
Blood, Money & Power.
[291]
McClellan claims that Johnson, motivated by the fear of being dropped
from the Kennedy ticket in 1964 and the need to cover up various
scandals, masterminded Kennedy's assassination with the help of his
friend,
Austin attorney
Edward A. Clark.
The book suggests that a smudged partial fingerprint from the sniper's
nest likely belonged to Johnson's associate Malcolm "Mac" Wallace, and
that Mac Wallace was, therefore, on the sixth floor of the Depository at
the time of the shooting. The book further claims that the killing of
Kennedy was paid for by oil magnates, including
Clint Murchison and
H. L. Hunt.
McClellan states that the assassination of Kennedy allowed the oil
depletion allowance to be kept at 27.5 percent. It remained unchanged
during the Johnson presidency. According to McClellan, this resulted in a
saving of over 100 million dollars to the American oil industry.
McClellan's book subsequently became the subject of an episode of Nigel
Turner's ongoing documentary television series,
The Men Who Killed Kennedy.
The episode, entitled "The Guilty Men", drew angry condemnation from
the Johnson family, President Johnson's former aides, and ex-Presidents
Gerald Ford and
Jimmy Carter following its airing on
The History Channel.
The History Channel assembled a committee of historians who concluded
the accusations in the documentary were without merit, and The History
Channel apologized to the Johnson family and agreed not to air the
series in the future.
[292]
Madeleine Brown, who alleged she was the mistress of Lyndon Johnson,
also implicated Johnson in a conspiracy to kill Kennedy. In 1997, Brown
said that Johnson, along with H. L. Hunt, had begun planning Kennedy's
demise as early as 1960. Brown claimed that by its fruition in 1963, the
conspiracy involved dozens of persons, including the leadership of the
FBI and the Mafia, as well as prominent politicians and journalists.
[293] In the documentary
The Men Who Killed Kennedy,
Madeleine Brown and May Newman (an employee of Texas oilman Clint
Murchison) both placed J. Edgar Hoover at a social gathering at
Murchison's mansion the night before the assassination.
[294] Also in attendance, according to Brown, were
John McCloy,
Richard Nixon,
George Brown,
R. L. Thornton, and H. L. Hunt.
[295]
Madeleine Brown claimed that Johnson arrived at the gathering late in
the evening and, in a "grating whisper," told her that the "...Kennedys
will never embarrass me again—that's no threat—that's a promise."
[295][296][297][298] In addition, Brown said that on New Year's Eve 1963, she met Johnson at the
Adolphus Hotel
in Dallas and that he confirmed the conspiracy to kill Kennedy,
insisting that "the fat cats of Texas and [U.S.] intelligence" had been
responsible.
[294] Brown reiterated her allegations against Johnson in the 2006 documentary,
Evidence of Revision. In the same documentary, several other Johnson associates also voiced their suspicions of Johnson.
Suspicions that Johnson was involved in covering-up facts about the assassination were supported by Parkland Hospital doctor
Charles Crenshaw.
(Dr. Crenshaw had worked to save Oswald's life at Parkland after he was
shot by Jack Ruby, just as Crenshaw had worked to save President
Kennedy's life two days earlier.) While treating Oswald, Crenshaw said
he received a phone call from the new U.S. president, Lyndon Johnson.
Crenshaw gave his account of the phone conversation in his book
Trauma Room One:
Johnson: "Dr. Crenshaw, how is the accused assassin?"
Crenshaw: "Mr. President, he's holding his own at the moment."
Johnson: "Would you mind taking a message to the operating surgeon?"
Crenshaw: "Dr. Shires is very busy right now, but I will convey your message."
Johnson: "Dr. Crenshaw, I want a death-bed confession from the
accused assassin. There's a man in the operating room who will take the
statement. I will expect full cooperation in this matter."
Crenshaw: "Yes, sir."
Dr. Crenshaw said that he relayed Johnson's message to Dr. Shires, but that Oswald was in no condition to give any statement.
[294][299]
Former CIA agent and Watergate figure E. Howard Hunt accused Johnson
(along with several CIA agents who he names) of complicity in the
assassination in his posthumously released autobiography
American Spy: My Secret History in the CIA, Watergate, and Beyond.
[300] Referencing that section of the book,
Tim Weiner of
The New York Times and Joseph C. Goulden of the
The Washington Times called into question the sincerity of the charges, and
William F. Buckley, Jr., who wrote the foreword, said material "was clearly ghostwritten".
[301][302][303] Shortly afterwards, an audio-taped "
deathbed confession" in which Hunt claimed knowledge of a conspiracy was released by his sons;
[173] the authenticity of the confession was also met with some skepticism.
[169][174][175]
Historian
Michael L. Kurtz wrote that there is no evidence suggesting that Johnson ordered the assassination of Kennedy.
According to Kurtz, Johnson believed Fidel Castro was responsible for
the assassination and that Johnson covered-up the truth because he
feared the possibility that retaliatory measures against Cuba might
escalate to nuclear war with the Soviet Union. In 2012, investigative biographer
Robert Caro published his fourth volume on Johnson's career,
The Passage of Power,
which detailed Johnson's communications and actions as vice president,
and described the events leading up to the assassination.
[305] Caro wrote that "nothing that I have found in my research" points to involvement by Johnson.
[306]
Cuban conspiracy
The Warren Commission reported that they investigated "dozens of
allegations of a conspiratorial contact between Oswald and agents of the
Cuban Government" and that they found no evidence that Cuba was
involved in the assassination of President Kennedy.
The House Select Committee on Assassinations also wrote: "The committee
believes, on the basis of the evidence available to it, that the Cuban
Government was not involved in the assassination of President Kennedy".
[243]
Conspiracy theories frequently implicate
Fidel Castro as having ordered the assassination of Kennedy in retaliation for the CIA's previous attempts to assassinate him.
In the early 1960s,
Clare Booth Luce, wife of
Time-Life publisher
Henry Luce,
was one of a number of prominent Americans who sponsored anti-Castro
groups. This support included funding exiles in commando speedboat raids
against Cuba. In 1975, Clare Luce said that on the night of the
assassination, she received a call from a member of a commando group she
had sponsored. According to Luce, the caller's name was "something
like" Julio Fernandez and he claimed he was calling her from New
Orleans.
[309]
According to Luce, Fernandez told her that Oswald had approached his
group with an offer to help assassinate Castro. Fernandez further
claimed that he and his associates eventually found out that Oswald was a
communist and supporter of Castro. He said that with this new-found
knowledge, his group kept a close watch on Oswald until Oswald suddenly
came into money and went to
Mexico City and then Dallas.
[310]
Finally, according to Luce, Fernandez told her, "There is a Cuban
Communist assassination team at large and Oswald was their hired gun."
Luce said that she told the caller to give his information to the
FBI. Subsequently, Luce would reveal the details of the incident to both
the
Church Committee
and the HSCA. Both committees investigated the incident, but were
unable to uncover any evidence to corroborate the allegations.
[312]
In May 1967, CIA Director
Richard Helms
told President Lyndon Johnson that the CIA had tried to assassinate
Castro. Helms further stated that the CIA had employed members of the
Mafia in this effort, and "...that CIA plots to assassinate Fidel Castro
dated back to August of 1960—to the Eisenhower Administration." Helms
also said that the plots against Castro continued into the Kennedy
Administration and that Attorney General Robert Kennedy had known about
both the plots and the Mafia's involvement.
[313]
On separate occasions, Johnson told two prominent television newsmen
that he believed that JFK's assassination had been organized by Castro
as retaliation for the CIA's efforts to kill Castro. In October 1968,
Johnson told veteran newsman
Howard K. Smith of
ABC that "Kennedy was trying to get to Castro, but Castro got to him first." In September 1969, in an interview with
Walter Cronkite of
CBS,
Johnson said that in regard to the assassination he could not "honestly
say that I've ever been completely relieved of the fact that there
might have been international connections," and referenced unnamed
"others." Finally, in 1971, Johnson told his former speechwriter Leo
Janos of
Time magazine that he "never believed that Oswald acted alone".
[313]
In 1977, Castro was interviewed by newsman
Bill Moyers. He denied any involvement in Kennedy's death, saying:
It would have been absolute insanity by Cuba.... It would have been a
provocation. Needless to say, it would have been to run the risk that
our country would have been destroyed by the United States. Nobody who's
not insane could have thought about [killing Kennedy in retaliation].[276]
President Lyndon Johnson also implicated the CIA in the
assassination. According to a FBI document released in 1977, Johnson's
postmaster general, Marvin Watson told the FBI "...that [Johnson] was
now convinced there was a plot in connection with the assassination.
Watson stated the President felt the CIA had something to do with this
plot."
[315][316][319]
Soviet conspiracy
The Warren Commission reported that they found no evidence that the
Soviet Union was involved in the assassination of President Kennedy.
The House Select Committee on Assassinations also wrote: "The committee
believes, on the basis of the evidence available to it, that the Soviet
Government was not involved in the assassination of President Kennedy".
[243]
According to some conspiracy theorists, the Soviet Union, with
Nikita Khrushchev motivated by having to back down during the
Cuban Missile Crisis, was responsible for the assassination.
According to a 1966 FBI document, Colonel Boris Ivanov—chief of the
KGB at the time of the assassination—stated that it was his personal
opinion that the assassination had been planned by an organized group,
rather than a lone individual. The same document stated, "...officials
of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union believed there was some
well-organized conspiracy on the part of the 'ultraright' in the United
States to effect a '
coup.'"
[320]
Much later, the highest-ranking
Soviet Bloc intelligence defector, Lt. Gen.
Ion Mihai Pacepa said that he had a conversation with
Nicolae CeauÅŸescu who told him about "ten international leaders the
Kremlin killed or tried to kill": "
László Rajk and
Imre Nagy of Hungary;
Lucreţiu Pătrăşcanu and
Gheorghiu-Dej in Romania;
Rudolf Slánský, the head of
Czechoslovakia, and
Jan Masaryk, that country's chief diplomat; the
Shah of Iran;
Palmiro Togliatti of Italy; American President John F. Kennedy; and
Mao Zedong." Pacepa provided some additional details, such as a plot to kill Mao Zedong with the help of
Lin Biao
organized by KGB and claimed that "among the leaders of Moscow's
satellite intelligence services there was unanimous agreement that the
KGB had been involved in the assassination of President Kennedy."
[321] Pacepa later released a book,
Programmed to Kill: Lee Harvey Oswald, the Soviet KGB, and the Kennedy Assassination, in 2007.
Decoy hearse and wound alteration
David Lifton presented a scenario in which conspirators on
Air Force One
removed Kennedy's body from its original bronze casket and placed it in
a shipping casket, while en route from Dallas to Washington. Once the
presidential plane arrived at
Andrews Air Force Base,
the shipping casket with the President's body in it was surreptitiously
taken by helicopter from the side of the plane that was out of the
television camera's view. Kennedy's body was then taken to an unknown
location—most likely
Walter Reed Army Medical Center[322]—to surgically alter the body to make it appear that he was shot only from the rear.
[323][325][326]
Part of Lifton's theory comes from a House Select Committee on
Assassinations report of an interview of Lt. Richard Lipsey on January
18, 1978 by committee staff members Donald Purdy and Mark Flanagan.
According to the report, Lt. Richard Lipsey said that he and General
Wehle had met President Kennedy's body at Andrews Air Force Base. Lipsey
"...placed [the casket] in a hearse to be transported to Bethesda Naval
Hospital. Lipsey mentioned that he and Wehle then flew by helicopter to
Bethesda and took [the body of] JFK into the back of Bethesda." Lipsey
said that "a decoy hearse had been driven to the front [of Bethesda]."
[327]
With Lipsey's mention of a "decoy hearse" at Bethesda, Lifton theorized
that the casket removed by Lipsey from Air Force One—from the side of
the plane exposed to television—was probably also a decoy and was likely
empty.
[328][329]
Laboratory technologist Paul O'Connor was one of the major witnesses
supporting another part of David Lifton's theory that somewhere between
Parkland and Bethesda the President's body was made to appear as if it
had been shot only from the rear. O'Connor said that President Kennedy's
body arrived at Bethesda inside a body bag in "a cheap, shipping-type
of casket", which differed from the description of the ornamental bronze
casket and sheet that the body had been wrapped in at Parkland
Hospital.
[326] O'Connor said that the brain had already been removed by the time it got to Bethesda,
[326] and that there were "just little pieces" of brain matter left inside the skull.
[330]
Researcher
David Wrone
dismissed the theory that Kennedy's body was surreptitiously removed
from the presidential plane, stating that as is done with all cargo on
airplanes for safety precautions, the coffin and lid were held by steel
wrapping cables to prevent shifting during takeoff and landing and in
case of air disturbances in flight.
[325]
According to Wrone, the side of the plane away from the television
camera "was bathed in klieg lights, and thousands of persons watched
along the fence that bent backward along that side, providing, in
effect, a well-lit and very public stage for any would-be body
snatchers".
[325]
Federal Reserve conspiracy
Jim Marrs, in his book
Crossfire, presented the theory that Kennedy was trying to rein in the power of the
Federal Reserve, and that forces opposed to such action might have played at least some part in the assassination.
[332][333] According to Marrs, the issuance of
Executive Order 11110 was an effort by Kennedy to transfer power from the Federal Reserve to the
United States Department of the Treasury by replacing
Federal Reserve Notes with
Silver Certificates.
[332] Actor and author
Richard Belzer
named the responsible parties in this theory as American "billionaires,
power brokers, and bankers ... working in tandem with the CIA and other
sympathetic agents of the government."
[194]
A 2010 article in
Research
magazine discussing various controversies surrounding the Federal
Reserve stated that "the wildest accusation against the Fed is that it
was involved in Kennedy's assassination."
[332]
Critics of the theory note that Kennedy called for and signed
legislation phasing out Silver Certificates in favor of Federal Reserve
Notes, thereby enhancing the power of the Federal Reserve; and that
Executive Order 11110 was a technicality that only delegated existing
presidential powers to the
Secretary of the Treasury for administrative convenience during a period of transition.
[332][333]
Israeli conspiracy
Immediately following Kennedy's death, speculation that he was assassinated by a "
Zionist conspiracy" was prevalent in much of the
Arab world and the
Middle East.
[334] Among these views were that
Zionists were motivated to kill Kennedy due to his opposition to an
Israeli nuclear program, that Lyndon B. Johnson received orders from Zionists to have Kennedy killed, and that the assassin was a Zionist agent.
[334]
According to
Michael Collins Piper in
Final Judgment: The Missing Link in the JFK Assassination Controversy, Israeli Prime Minister
David Ben-Gurion orchestrated the assassination after learning that Kennedy planned to keep Israel from obtaining nuclear weapons.
[335]
Piper said that the assassination "was a joint enterprise conducted on
the highest levels of the American CIA, in collaboration with organized
crime—and most specifically, with direct and profound involvement by the
Israeli intelligence service, the
Mossad."
[336] The theory also alleges involvement of
Meyer Lansky and the
Anti-Defamation League.
[335] In 2004,
Mordechai Vanunu stated that the assassination was Israel's response to "pressure [Kennedy] exerted on... Ben-Gurion, to shed light on
Dimona's nuclear reactor."
[337] In a speech before the
United Nations General Assembly in 2009, Libyan leader
Muammar Gaddafi also alleged that Kennedy was killed for wanting to investigate Dimona.
[338]
Other published theories
- Appointment in Dallas (1975) by Hugh McDonald suggests that
Oswald was lured into a plot that he was told was a staged fake attempt
to kill JFK to embarrass the Secret Service and to alert the government
of the necessity for beefed-up Secret Service security. Oswald’s role
was to shoot at the motorcade but deliberately miss the target. The
plotters then killed JFK themselves and framed Oswald for the crime.
McDonald claims that, after being told the "truth" about JFK's death by
CIA agent Herman Kimsey in 1964, he spent years trying to locate a man
known as “Saul.” Saul was supposedly the unidentified man who was
photographed exiting the Russian embassy in Mexico City in September
1963, whose photos were subsequently sent to the FBI in Dallas on the
morning of November 22, 1963 (before the assassination), and mislabelled
"Lee Harvey Oswald". McDonald claims to have finally tracked Saul down
in London in 1972 at which time Saul revealed the details of the plot to
him.
- Reasonable Doubt (1985) by Henry Hurt, who writes about his
Warren Commission doubts. Mr. Hurt pins the plot on professional crook
Robert Easterling, along with Texas oilmen and the supposed Ferrie/Shaw
alliance. ISBN 0-03-004059-0.
- Behold a Pale Horse (1991) by William Cooper alleges that
Kennedy was shot by the Presidential limousine's driver, Secret Service
agent William Greer. In the Zapruder film, Greer can be seen turning to
his right and looking backwards just before speeding away from Dealey
Plaza. This theory has come under severe criticism from others in the
research community.[339] ISBN 0-929385-22-5.
- Mark North's Act of Treason: The Role of J. Edgar Hoover in the assassination of President Kennedy,
(1991) implicates the FBI Director. North documents that Hoover was
aware of threats against Kennedy by organized crime before 1963, and
suggests that he failed to take proper action to prevent the
assassination. North also charges Hoover with failure to work adequately
to uncover the truth behind Kennedy's murder. ISBN 0-88184-877-8.
- Mortal Error: The Shot That Killed JFK (1992) by Bonar Menninger (ISBN 0-312-08074-3)
alleges that while Oswald did attempt to assassinate JFK and did
succeed in wounding him, the fatal shot was accidentally fired by Secret
Service agent George Hickey,
who was riding in the Secret Service follow-up car directly behind the
Presidential Limousine. The theory alleges that after the first two
shots were fired the motorcade sped up while Hickey was attempting to
respond to Oswald's shots and he lost his balance and accidentally
pulled the trigger of his AR-15 and shot JFK. Hickey's testimony says otherwise: "At the end of the last report (shot) I reached to the bottom of the car and picked up the AR 15 rifle, cocked and loaded it, and turned to the rear." (italics added).[340] George Hickey sued Menninger in April 1995 for what he had written in Mortal Error. The case was dismissed as its statute of limitations had run out.
- Who Shot JFK? : A Guide to the Major Conspiracy Theories
(1993) by Bob Callahan and Mark Zingarelli explores some of the more
obscure theories regarding JFK's murder, such as "The Coca-Cola Theory."
According this theory, suggested by the editor of an organic gardening
magazine, Oswald killed JFK due to mental impairment stemming from an
addiction to refined sugar, as evidenced by his need for his favorite
beverage immediately after the assassination. ISBN 0-671-79494-9.
- Passport to Assassination (1993) by Oleg M. Nechiporenko, the
Soviet consular official (and highly placed KGB officer) who met with
Oswald in Mexico City in 1963. He was afforded the unique opportunity to
interview Oswald about his goals including his genuine desire for a
Cuban visa. His conclusions were (1) that Oswald killed Kennedy due to
extreme feelings of inadequacy versus his wife’s professed admiration
for JFK, and (2) that the KGB never sought intelligence information from
Oswald during his time in the USSR as they did not trust his
motivations. ISBN 1-55972-210-X.
- Norman Mailer's Oswald's Tale: An American Mystery
(1995) concludes that Oswald was guilty, but holds that the evidence
may point to a second gunman on the grassy knoll, who, purely by
coincidence, was attempting to kill JFK at the same time as Oswald. "If
there was indeed another shot, it was not necessarily fired by a
conspirator of Oswald's. Such a gun could have belonged to another lone
killer or to a conspirator working for some other group altogether."[341] ISBN 0-679-42535-7.
- The Kennedy Mutiny (2002) by Will Fritz (not the same as
police captain J. Will Fritz), claims that the assassination plot was
orchestrated by General Edwin Walker, and that he framed Oswald for the crime. ISBN 0-9721635-0-6.
- JFK: The Second Plot (2002) by Matthew Smith explores the
strange case of Roscoe White. In 1990, Roscoe's son Ricky made public a
claim that his father, who had been a Dallas police officer in 1963, was
involved in killing the president. Roscoe's widow Geneva also claimed
that before her husband's death in 1971 he left a diary in which he
claims he was one of the marksmen who shot the President, and that he
also killed Officer J. D. Tippit. ISBN 1-84018-501-5.
- David Wrone's The Zapruder Film (2003) concludes that the
shot that killed JFK came from in front of the limousine, and that JFK's
throat and back wounds were caused by an in-and-through shot
originating from the grassy knoll. Three shots were fired from three
different angles, none of them from Lee Harvey Oswald's window at the
Texas School Book Depository. Wrone is a professor of history (emeritus)
at the University of Wisconsin–Stevens Point. ISBN 0-7006-1291-2.
- The Gemstone File: A Memoir
(2006), by Stephanie Caruana, posits that Oswald was part of a 28-man
assassination team which included three U.S. Mafia hitmen (Jimmy Fratianno, John Roselli, and Eugene Brading).
Oswald's role was to shoot John Connally. Bruce Roberts, author of the
Gemstone File papers, claimed that the JFK assassination scenario was
modeled after a supposed attempted assassination of President F.D.
Roosevelt. Roosevelt was riding in an open car with Mayor Anton Cermak of Chicago. Cermak was shot and killed by Giuseppe Zangara.
In Dallas, JFK was the real target, and Connally was a secondary
target. The JFK assassination is only a small part of the Gemstone
File's account. ISBN 1-4120-6137-7.
- Joseph P. Farrell's LBJ and the Conspiracy to Kill Kennedy
(2011) attempts to show multiple interests had reasons to remove
President Kennedy: The military, CIA, NASA, anti-Castro factions,
Hoover's FBI and others. He concludes that the person that allowed all
of these groups to form a "coalescence of interests" was Vice President
Lyndon Johnson. ISBN 978-1-935487-18-0
- In "Allegations of PFC Eugene Dinkin",[342]
the Mary Farrell Foundation summarizes and archives documents related
to Private First Class Eugene B. Dinkin, a cryptographic code operator
stationed in Metz, France,
who went AWOL in early November 1963, entered Switzerland using a false
ID, and visited the United Nations' press office and declared that
officials in the U.S. government were planning to assassinate President
Kennedy, adding that "something" might happen to the Commander in Chief
in Texas. Dinkin was arrested nine days before Kennedy was killed,
placed in psychiatric care (deemed a mad man?), and released shortly
thereafter. His allegations eventually made their way to the Warren
Commission, but, according to the Ferrell Foundation account, the
Commission "took no interest in the matter, and indeed omitted any
mention of Dinkin from its purportedly encyclopedic 26 volumes of
evidence."[343]
See also
- JFK (film),
a 1991 film that examines the events leading to the assassination of
President John F. Kennedy and alleged subsequent cover-up, through the
eyes of former New Orleans district attorney Jim Garrison.
- American Tabloid, a 1995 novel by James Ellroy,
which portrays the five years leading up to the assassination from the
point of view of a group of Mafia associates and CIA operatives, who
become embroiled in the Bay of Pigs Invasion and eventually help plan
the crime.
- An American Affair, a 2009 film that portrays the assassination and the relation between Kennedy and Mary Pinchot Meyer.
- The Cold Six Thousand, a 2001 novel by James Ellroy, the sequel to American Tabloid.
The first third of the novel portrays a cover-up of the JFK
assassination, while the remainder concerns the events leading up to the
assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy.
- Executive Action, a 1973 film by David Miller that portrays the assassination from the point of view of the conspirators, who are right-wing tycoons and former covert ops specialists.
- JFK: 3 Shots That Changed America, a 2009 documentary film complied from archived news .
Notes
- ^ Addressing
Lane's testimony alleging a meeting between Ruby, Tippit, and Weissman,
the Commission reported that they "found no evidence that such a
meeting took place anywhere at any time".
- ^ According
to the Warren Commission, after Earlene Roberts saw Oswald standing
near the bus stop outside his rooming house, "[he] was next seen about
nine-tenths of a mile (1.4 km) away at the southeast corner of 10th
Street and Patton Avenue, moments before the Tippit shooting."