Theorys surrounding the assassination of JFK PDF

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Summary

This essay goes over theories as to why the president was assassinated and why the warren commition's assement of the case may have been false....

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Isabella Hodge-O’Brien Examine some of the alternative theories that explain the inconsistencies of the official ruling. President John F Kennedy was killed on 22 November 1963 in Texas whilst on the motorcade route. The official ruling by the Warren Commission, (a Commission set up to investigate the death of the president; and the subsequent killing of Lee Harvey Oswald), was that there was one assassin involved, with no conspiracy. Although we will get into why they concluded this later; the United States House Select Committee on Assassinations, found later that the President's assassination was the result of a conspiracy, but they could not be more specific than that. Lee Harvey Oswald had the means and chance to kill Kennedy with the violent background and professional skill he had. Oswald joined the Marine Corps for 3 years, whilst there he became a qualified sharpshooter with a M-1 Rifle. Oswald was a Dallas resident and was under active investigation. The FBI did not inform the Secret Service of Oswald which had a big part in his ability to kill the president., as he worked at The Texas Schoolbook Depository. Their reasoning for this was the fact that the secret service did not inform them of the motorcade rout in the first place. They used what was called “the magic bullet” or “single bullet” theory to explain the bullet that stuck Kennedy in the head, exited through his neck seeing the bullet stay completely intact. The theory goes that Oswald fired three bullets. The first bullet missed, the second bullet hits both the president and Connelly leaving the third bullet to hit JFK in the head; this was the second bullet to hit the president and the bullet that subsequently killed him. The “magic bullet” is the second bullet which would have entered the back of JFK's neck then down through the right side of Connelly's back exiting bellow his right nipple; finally passing through Connelly’s his left wrist. The bullet ending up in his left thigh staying, completely intact the whole time. Critics argue that its impossible for a bullet to go that far and be completely intact, there has been no evidence against this. There are theories that give motive for Oswald other than a violent past with or without a second shooter. Tensions rose on the subject as the Cold War was in full swing so of course the American public’s first reaction was to assume it was Russia. Oswald was a known communist and had been in Russia in 1959 trying to renounce his American citizenship these were just some of the reasons. Russia denied these claims for years but recently (2018) the CIA released over 40,000 documents regarding the assassination of the president. It revealed that a Cuban intelligence officer met Lee Harvey Oswald in Mexico City, and praised his shooting ability, and that the Soviet spy agency KGB believed that Vice President Lyndon Johnson may have conspired to assassinate Kennedy, so he could become president. These documents have changed what might have been the original theories of the president’s demise. Even if these documents were released, people still are unsure of exactly how many shooters there were.

The next theory dictates that the second killer is a man named Jack Ruby who was a nightclub owner /also having ties to the Mafia. One of the main reasons that this theory made light was because Ruby shot and killed Oswald on live television; whilst the latter was in police custody for assassinating the president. The Warren Commission found that there was "No evidence that Oswald was involved with any person or group in a conspiracy to assassinate the president". Ruby told the police his reasoning for killing Oswald was that he loved President Kennedy and had been mourning his death. The Warren Commission inquired into Ruby's location. They concluded that he was five blocks away from where JFK was killed. But in the more than 40,000 unclassified documents released by the CIA in 2018 there is evidence that this isn’t true. Document 32149267 seems to directly contradict the findings of the Warren Commission with regards to Jack Ruby. The document places Ruby at the scene of JFK’s assassination and not five blocks away, it states: “Recently…a Group Manager in the Dallas Intelligence Division, received information from a confidential informant that might be helpful in the investigation of the Kennedy assassination. The informant stated that on the morning of the assassination, Ruby contacted him and asked if he would ‘like to watch the fireworks.’ He was with Jack Ruby and standing at the corner of the Postal Annex Building facing the Texas School Book Depository Building, at the time of the shooting.” One of the most popular yet unprovable theories out there is that the CIA assassinated Kennedy. Kennedy may have found out about a plot to assassinate Fidel Castro, that the CIA felt that the president might have a different agenda and disband them, so they assassinated him. After the failed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, the CIA went under personal changes they probably didn’t like this, so they plotted to assassinate him. A theory states that the CIA could have picked Oswald to carry out the hit as he was a known communist, and Russian sympathizer. Also, there was another shooter who was a CIA operative known as “the umbrella man”. This theory comes to light with what is known as one of the most important 26 seconds film clips in history, this is called the Zapruder film. A dressmaker named Abraham Zapruder shot camera footage of the assassination as it happened. In the Zapruder film you can see a man holding an umbrella over his head, this seems normal in retrospect but there are a few things that make this man strange. There are photos of the umbrella closed before and after the Kennedy assassination but during it the umbrella stays open. It wasn’t raining and despite it raining in Texas the night before nobody else in crowd as far as pictures and media could see was using an umbrella and the second more important one is the fact that Kennedy is struck as soon as the car passes the umbrella man. Whilst spectators were running away the umbrella man as well another man sit down on the curb. Some say that this man seems to lift his umbrella a foot or so just as the car passes, both these together have led some to belief that the umbrella was a signal to another gunman or that the umbrella itself was a spy weapon used to fire darts, perhaps explaining the small hole that was found in JFK’s neck when doing the autopsy. This may seem farfetched, but a Department of Defense weapons developer named Charles Senseney testified to the Senate Intelligence Committee that a form of this umbrella weapon was real, he knows because he designed it. Later though, a man named Louie Steven Witt came forward claiming to be the umbrella man bringing the umbrella with him claiming it was a form of protest of John Kennedy’s father; apparently, he was not happy with Kennedy’s appeasement policy when he was the ambassador to the court of Saint James. Witt used an umbrella in a reference to Neville Chamberlain who promoted appeasement. To this day people are finding inconsistencies in the official ruling put forward by the Warren commission, as time goes on and technology advances more evidence is being raised that puts holes

in the conclusion. Even former Vice President Lyndon B Johnson said, “I never believed that Oswald acted alone, Although I can accept that he pulled the trigger”. But we may never know. Some of the alternate theories that have been put forward have solid evidence to back them up whilst others a pure public speculation. But there is someone out there who knows, maybe one day that person will come forward and answer the question “Who really killed John Fitzgerald Kennedy?”.

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