The assassination of John F. Kennedy was one of those stories that I followed with admiration as a child because of its mystery - along with the Rosswell UFO incident and similar stories. Over time, as I became more and more interested in politics, the assassination of the number one leader of the free world came to be seen in a different light. And in recent months, the idea of delving deeper into the details of the assassination has been on my mind as to have a better understanding of the spread of information and conspiracy theories. Because I believe that certain phenomena, such as the spread of information, can be better understood by looking at a single outstanding event, which better reveals the characteristic features.
On 22 November 1963, President Kennedy was fatally shot in Dallas, where he was on his way to a campaign event. One of the shots seriously wounded Governor Connally as well, who was accompanying the President. The assassination was carried out by Lee Harvey Oswald, 24, who is suspected of firing the shots from the book depository building next to the President's motorcade.
President Lyndon B. Johnson, who succeeded Kennedy, ordered the investigation, which was led by Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren. The first version of the investigation was released in November 1964, and decades later, after the declassification, the full nearly 12,000 pages of material.
This as an unorthodox book recommendation and could perhaps be seen more as a reading journal with my personal observations. Of course, if I've raised your interest to read the report yourself, I suggest you start at page 10328, the "Commission's Report" section. From there, in roughly 600 pages, the Commission summarises the key testimonies.
For the same reason, unlike a regular book recommendation, I will also highlight specific passages from the book that summarise my final understanding on seven important points: that it was indeed a lone assassin who committed the crime.
The photos in this post were taken in person at the scene of the assassination in March 2018.
1) Oliver Stone's iconic 1991 film JFK missed some important parts of Oswald's past, which I myself only learned about from the Warren Report. One of these was that Oswald had attempted to assassinate a general on his own a few months before the Kennedy assassination. This is quite contrary to the theories that Oswald would have been unable to carry out the assassination attempt on the President on his own.
According to his wife's testimony, Oswald had a troubled life, which had its roots in his childhood. His relationship with his mother was turbulent, and she did not pay enough attention to his education, which in part led him to turn to obscure conspiracy theories.
2) It is also a little known fact that just a month before the assassination, Oswald, on the recommendation of a friend, got the job in the building from which he later shot Kennedy. This reduces the chances of this being an organised assassination attempt to a very minimum.
An interesting detail is that Oswald, according to his wife, never spoke negatively about the President. On the day of the assassination, he had a cup of coffee in the morning and then left for work without any particular signs.
3) Conspiracy theorists say it is strange that the police were able to track Oswald down so quickly - even though the investigation can be traced easily based on the statements of those involved in the investigation. A police officer was stationed right next to the building where the shots were fired. Thus, he was searching the building for the assassin within 3 minutes of the shootings (and although he ran into Oswald, he did not think him suspicious). It soon became clear that Oswald was the only worker missing from the building, so a warrant was rightly issued for him a few minutes later and he was arrested a little over an hour after the assassination.
4) There is also very little mention of the fact that, according to the President's special assistant, Kennedy had specifically requested that as many people as possible see him while he is in Dallas. Therefore, routes were chosen where he passed through large crowds, increasing the chances of an armed assassin succeeding. Also at the President's request, they drove more slowly on some stretches (twice came to a complete stop) and did not add the plastic cover to the President's car, which might have made it more difficult for an armed assassin to get through.
5) At that time, the secret service did not even have the task of inspecting the buildings surrounding the president's path or of watching the windows. For example, the airport where the President landed and the location of his later speech was properly secured. But not enough attention was paid to his movements around the city. Even the report states that this played a major role in the ease with which Kennedy was shot.
As evidence of this even in 1981 there was the possibility of a gunman firing shots at President Reagan at point-blank range.
Communication between authorities was also poor. For example, the FBI monitored Oswald's movements in Dallas, but did not consider it their responsibility to notify the Secret Service before the President's arrival.
It is interesting to note that the day before the assassination, the President said over breakfast in San Antonio that it would not be difficult to kill him, all this would take is a tall building and a rifle. The Dallas press also reported a possible assassination attempt on the President the day before he arrived.
6) Reading through the nearly 12,000 pages of material, whether one or more assassins committed the crime can be summed up in a single question: were 2 or 3 fatal shots fired at the President, and what was the sequence of those shots? If 2 shots were fired at him, then there is no reason on the evidence to question that they were fired by a single assassin, Oswald. The weakest point of this version is the so-called "Single Bullet" theory, which holds that a single bullet caused multiple wounds to President Kennedy and Governor Connally.
But if three fatal shots were fired at the President, they could not have been fired by a single person in such a short time, and this suggests a conspiracy.
It is quite certain that at least three shots were fired at the President. This is proven by the three cartridge cases found on the sixth floor of the book depository, at the site of the shooting. Also, 132 of the 178 witnesses interviewed by the FBI heard three shots.
Still I don't think we can talk about a conspiracy, given the lack of evidence. There were no witnesses who saw gunmen near the scene of the assassination. No strangers were seen in the book depository building either, despite the last worker had left the floor where Oswald was staying and from which he later fired the shots, just a few minutes before the assassination.
7) The holes in Kennedy's body and clothing all indicated that the shots had come from above and behind the President. The first shot seemed most likely to have been a bullet entering the President's back, the second the fatal head shot, and the third a missed shot most likely struck the concrete under a nearby bridge.
In my view, the circumstances of the assassination are very thoroughly clarified in the Warren report, and the conspiracy theories are largely based on these points - which can be replaced to other events in the world today:
Often we are about to form an opinion without being able to gather all the information on the subject - without reading long books or analyses, for example.
When information is passed on, its content is compromised, either intentionally or unintentionally. This is the case of the "Single Bullet" theory, where the bullet appears intact in the picture as it is seen in one view - but when viewed from a different angle, the deformation of the bullet is visible.
We tend to make judgements in advance and then to gather information to support our judgement. Just as if it's hard to believe that the leader of the most powerful country in the world could be shot by a lone assassin, we tend to look for alternative explanations.
Oddities remain, of course, especially in connection with the last 48 hours of Oswald's life, which he spent in the police building. It was extremely odd that Oswald was moved around the police station at least 16 times in a way that the press was all over the building and others could easily get in. This was despite the fact that Oswald had received several death threats.
There is absolutely no record of the hearings, nor any audio or video recording of them. We only know what happened here from what the police officers told us. But this does not affect the facts that Oswald committed the crime alone.
The book is available online in the AppStore and also in the Google Books app under the name "Warren Commission".
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