Kennedy's Assassination Conspiracy Theories
JFK Assassination Conspiracy Theories
The 35th president of the United States was assassinated on November 22, 1963 in Dealey Plaza, Dallas, Texas. Kennedy was traveling in a presidential motorcade with his wife and the Connally couple when a gunshot was heard. Most people in the crowd were not too concerned, misinterpreting the sound as that of a firecracker. Just as Kennedy was waving to the crowd, a second shot pierced Kennedy through the neck. By the time a third shot hit Kennedy in the head a few seconds later, the presidential limousine had already been covered with blood and pieces of brain. Kennedy was immediately sent to Parkland Memorial Hospital, but the wound was fatal (Swanson). The White House Acting Press Secretary announced …show more content…
the death of the president a day after. Ten months later, the Warren Commission officially declared Lee Harvey Oswald as the one and only criminal behind the assassination (jsy2125). But soon people started to doubt the claim made by the commission. The “Report of the President’s Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy” by the Warren Commission provides four important pieces of information regarding the gunshots fired: “(a) one shot passed through the President 's neck and then most probably passed through the Governor 's body, (b) a subsequent shot penetrated the President 's head, (c) no other shot struck any part of the automobile, and (d) three shots were fired, it follows that one shot probably missed the car and its occupants (archives.gov).” The shot described in (a) became a major source of debate. At first the investigators assumed that two separate bullets each wounded Kennedy and Connally, but such conjecture was found faulty due to two reasons: one, the time interval between the two shots was too short for Oswald to shoot the gun twice, and two, it was soon discovered that a bystander named James Tague was wounded (22november1963). If one bullet caused the wounding of a person in the crowd and another penetrated the president’s head, then the last bullet had to be the cause for the seven non-fatal wounds of both Kennedy and Connally (Swanson). Though no one has found definitive evidence to prove it wrong, the idea of the single-bullet theory is doubted by many people. The Zapruder film shows that there was a two-thirds-of-a-second difference between the time when Kennedy got shot in the neck and when Connally started to fall. The same film also shows that the right shirt sleeve of the governor was free of blood when it came into view approximately two seconds after Kennedy first clutched his neck (22november1963). Because the bullet that hit Connally shattered his elbow, it is certainly strange that his shirt was not dripping with blood. The conflicting location of the throat wound and the back wound of Kennedy, the first being placed far higher than the second (22november1963), leads to further suspicion. Allegations of evidence suppression and tampering did nothing but strengthen the intensity of the conspiracy theories, especially that concerning the medical area.
Doubts have been raised as to the authenticity of the Warren Commission’s report on the president’s autopsy ever since the Clark Panel determined that the fatal bullet had hit Kennedy 10-cm higher than reported in the records (history-matters). One of the main reasons why Kennedy’s assassination has spawned such a huge number of conspiracy theories is that the exact nature, size, and position of Kennedy’s wounds are unclear. First, there is an apparent lack of original autopsy records. It is abnormal that there remain only three groups of primary autopsy data regarding the death of the nation’s highest authority (history-matters), and that the American government handed all autopsy evidences of Kennedy to his family when they could and should have been used for further investigation (jsy2125). Second, the pathologists who had conducted Kennedy’s autopsy gave inconsistent answers each time they were questioned, some of which directly contradicted the others (22november1963). The claim made by Humes, a former physician from Bethesda Naval Hospital, in 1998 “that he had destroyed both his notes taken at the autopsy and the first draft of the autopsy report… in testimony that differs from what he told the Warren Commission” supports both points (history-matters). Third, the doctors from Parkland Memorial Hospital had neither gone through the process of sketching Kennedy’s body before conducting operations (jsy2125), nor had they left any photographs or X-rays. Only the drawings by H. A. Rydberg, which do not accord with what is shown in the Zapruder film, exist. Humes later pointed out that Rydberg “had no photographs from which to work and had to work under our description, verbal description of what we had observed (history-matters).” The conspiracy theories would not be as rampant as they are now if
there is clear and definite medical evidence present. The questions regarding the bullet and the autopsy have done enough to raise the public’s suspicion. People were becoming more and more skeptical of the official stance of the Warren Commission and the American government when the information on the subject of witnesses started to gain interest. Richard Buyer illustrated in his book “JFK: The Last Dissenting Witness” how Jean Hill, an eyewitness of the assassination, was intimidated from the Secret Service agents, the FBI, and other possible government official (Sloan; Hill). Jean Hill was only the first to publicly confess the threats she received. Richard Carr, Acquilla Clemmons, Sandy Speaker, and A. J. Millican later confided that they have gone through similar experiences (Marrs). Soon, there were even allegations of witness deaths. According to the list provided by Jim Marrs in his book “Crossfire”, 103 people who were either directly or indirectly connected to the president’s assassination died in the years between 1963 and 1976, starting with Karyn Kupcinet (Marrs). W. Penn Jones records in his book “Forgive My Grief” that "a few days before the assassination, Karyn Kupcinet, 23, was trying to place a long distance telephone call from the Los Angeles area. According to reports, the long distance operator heard Miss Kupcinet scream into the telephone that President Kennedy was going to be killed (spartacus-educational).” Kupcinet was found dead on November 30th, 1963. The reason for her death remains unresolved. It is true that not all 103 people died from unnatural causes, and some allegations might sound less reasonable than the others, but there are certainly unusual features about the deaths of Dorothy Kilgallen, a journalist who had claimed to have secured an interview with Jack Ruby, Rose Cheramie, a woman who had warned prior to Kennedy’s assassination that he would be killed, and Joseph Milteer, a man who had been secretly tape-recorded saying that the assassination was “in the working (Marrs).” Public opinion polls over the years have constantly found that a majority of Americans believe Oswald did not act alone and that the president was killed because of a conspiracy. But theories have differed as to which individual or association was behind the assassination. Often referred to as “the mother of all conspiracies”, the Kennedy assassination conspiracy includes that of the CIA, the Secret Service, the FBI, the KGB, the Anti-Castro Cubans, the Soviets, the Mafia, the military-industrial complex, the Right-wing extremists, Johnson, Hoover, and more (abcnews; 22november1963). Between 1,000 and 2,000 books (Bugliosi; Knight), each with somewhat different opinions, were written about the Kennedy’s assassination. So what really happened? Who killed Kennedy? The answer will perhaps never be found.
Bibliography
Seminar
Gaddis, John Lewis, The Cold War Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 2007
Swanson, James L., “The President Has Been Shot!”
Scholastic Press, Scholastic Inc., 2013
DeMarco, Neil, The World This Century Collins Educational, 1990
John F. Kennedy: Presidential Library and Museum (11/29/14) http://www.jfklibrary.org/JFK/Life-of-John-F-Kennedy.aspx
U.S. History (11/29/14) http://www.ushistory.org/us/56b.asp
McElrath, Jessica, Netplaces: John F. Kennedy (11/29/14) http://www.netplaces.com/john-f-kennedy/
U.S. Department of State: Office of the Historian (12/06/14) http://history.state.gov/departmenthistory/short-history/jfk-foreignpolicy
Sparknotes: Domestic Policies in the 1960s (12/06/14) http://www.sparknotes.com/testprep/books/sat2/history/chapter20section1.rhtml
History, The Liberal Agenda and Domestic Policy: The 1960s (12/06/14) http://www.countriesquest.com/north_america/usa/history/the_liberal_agenda_and_domestic_policy_the_1960s.htm Crimelibrary (12/07/14) http://www.crimelibrary.com/notorious_murders/celebrity/marilyn_monroe/6.html
Presidential Recordings of Lyndon B. Johnson (12/07/14) http://presidentialrecordings.rotunda.upress.virginia.edu/essays?series=Vietnam
Essay
General
Marrs, Jim, Crossfire: The Plot that Killed Kennedy New York; Carroll & Graf Publisher, Inc., 1989
Knight, Peter, The Kennedy Assassination Edinburgh; Edinburgh University Press, 2007
Swanson, James L., “The President Has Been Shot!”
Scholastic Press, Scholastic Inc., 2013
Sloan, Bill; Hill, Jean, JFK, The Last Dissenting Witness Gretna, Louisiana; Pelican Publishing Company, 1992
DeMarco, Neil, The World This Century Collins Educational, 1990
Single Bullet Theory
22 November 1963: An Introduction to the JFK Assassination (12/20/14) http://22november1963.org.uk/single-bullet-theory-jfk-assassination National Archives: JFK Assassination Records (12/20/14) http://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/warren-commission-report/chapter-3.html JFK Assassination (12/13/14) http://jsy2125.blog.me/220119475891 Medical Area
Aguilar, Gary L., History Matters: How Five Investigations into JFK’s Medical/Autopsy Evidence Got It Wrong (12/20/14) http://www.history-matters.com/essays/jfkmed/How5Investigations/How5InvestigationsGotItWrong_1b.htm 22 November 1963: An Introduction to the JFK Assassination (12/20/14) http://22november1963.org.uk/jfk-assassination-medical-evidence National Archives: JFK Assassination Records (12/20/14) http://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/warren-commission-report/chapter-2.html#autopsy Simkin, John, Spartacus Educational: Dr. James Humes (12/21/14) http://spartacus-educational.com/JFKhumes.htm JFK Assassination (12/13/14) http://jsy2125.blog.me/220119475891 Witnesses
The John F. Kennedy Assassination Homepage (12/21/14) http://www.jfk-assassination.de/articles/deaths.php
Simkin, John, Spartacus Educational: Deaths of Witnesses Connected to the Assassination of John F. Kennedy (12/21/14) http://spartacus-educational.com/JFKdeaths.htm Marry Ferrell Foundation (12/21/14) http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?absPageId=156201 Conspiracy Theories
Goldman, Russell, ABC News (12/14/14) http://abcnews.go.com/US/top-john-kennedy-assassination-conspiracy-theories/story?id=20614951 22 November 1963: An Introduction to the JFK Assassination (12/14/14)
http://22november1963.org.uk/jfk-assassination-conspiracy-theories
The 35th president of the United States was assassinated on November 22, 1963 in Dealey Plaza, Dallas, Texas. Kennedy was traveling in a presidential motorcade with his wife and the Connally couple when a gunshot was heard. Most people in the crowd were not too concerned, misinterpreting the sound as that of a firecracker. Just as Kennedy was waving to the crowd, a second shot pierced Kennedy through the neck. By the time a third shot hit Kennedy in the head a few seconds later, the presidential limousine had already been covered with blood and pieces of brain. Kennedy was immediately sent to Parkland Memorial Hospital, but the wound was fatal (Swanson). The White House Acting Press Secretary announced …show more content…
the death of the president a day after. Ten months later, the Warren Commission officially declared Lee Harvey Oswald as the one and only criminal behind the assassination (jsy2125). But soon people started to doubt the claim made by the commission. The “Report of the President’s Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy” by the Warren Commission provides four important pieces of information regarding the gunshots fired: “(a) one shot passed through the President 's neck and then most probably passed through the Governor 's body, (b) a subsequent shot penetrated the President 's head, (c) no other shot struck any part of the automobile, and (d) three shots were fired, it follows that one shot probably missed the car and its occupants (archives.gov).” The shot described in (a) became a major source of debate. At first the investigators assumed that two separate bullets each wounded Kennedy and Connally, but such conjecture was found faulty due to two reasons: one, the time interval between the two shots was too short for Oswald to shoot the gun twice, and two, it was soon discovered that a bystander named James Tague was wounded (22november1963). If one bullet caused the wounding of a person in the crowd and another penetrated the president’s head, then the last bullet had to be the cause for the seven non-fatal wounds of both Kennedy and Connally (Swanson). Though no one has found definitive evidence to prove it wrong, the idea of the single-bullet theory is doubted by many people. The Zapruder film shows that there was a two-thirds-of-a-second difference between the time when Kennedy got shot in the neck and when Connally started to fall. The same film also shows that the right shirt sleeve of the governor was free of blood when it came into view approximately two seconds after Kennedy first clutched his neck (22november1963). Because the bullet that hit Connally shattered his elbow, it is certainly strange that his shirt was not dripping with blood. The conflicting location of the throat wound and the back wound of Kennedy, the first being placed far higher than the second (22november1963), leads to further suspicion. Allegations of evidence suppression and tampering did nothing but strengthen the intensity of the conspiracy theories, especially that concerning the medical area.
Doubts have been raised as to the authenticity of the Warren Commission’s report on the president’s autopsy ever since the Clark Panel determined that the fatal bullet had hit Kennedy 10-cm higher than reported in the records (history-matters). One of the main reasons why Kennedy’s assassination has spawned such a huge number of conspiracy theories is that the exact nature, size, and position of Kennedy’s wounds are unclear. First, there is an apparent lack of original autopsy records. It is abnormal that there remain only three groups of primary autopsy data regarding the death of the nation’s highest authority (history-matters), and that the American government handed all autopsy evidences of Kennedy to his family when they could and should have been used for further investigation (jsy2125). Second, the pathologists who had conducted Kennedy’s autopsy gave inconsistent answers each time they were questioned, some of which directly contradicted the others (22november1963). The claim made by Humes, a former physician from Bethesda Naval Hospital, in 1998 “that he had destroyed both his notes taken at the autopsy and the first draft of the autopsy report… in testimony that differs from what he told the Warren Commission” supports both points (history-matters). Third, the doctors from Parkland Memorial Hospital had neither gone through the process of sketching Kennedy’s body before conducting operations (jsy2125), nor had they left any photographs or X-rays. Only the drawings by H. A. Rydberg, which do not accord with what is shown in the Zapruder film, exist. Humes later pointed out that Rydberg “had no photographs from which to work and had to work under our description, verbal description of what we had observed (history-matters).” The conspiracy theories would not be as rampant as they are now if
there is clear and definite medical evidence present. The questions regarding the bullet and the autopsy have done enough to raise the public’s suspicion. People were becoming more and more skeptical of the official stance of the Warren Commission and the American government when the information on the subject of witnesses started to gain interest. Richard Buyer illustrated in his book “JFK: The Last Dissenting Witness” how Jean Hill, an eyewitness of the assassination, was intimidated from the Secret Service agents, the FBI, and other possible government official (Sloan; Hill). Jean Hill was only the first to publicly confess the threats she received. Richard Carr, Acquilla Clemmons, Sandy Speaker, and A. J. Millican later confided that they have gone through similar experiences (Marrs). Soon, there were even allegations of witness deaths. According to the list provided by Jim Marrs in his book “Crossfire”, 103 people who were either directly or indirectly connected to the president’s assassination died in the years between 1963 and 1976, starting with Karyn Kupcinet (Marrs). W. Penn Jones records in his book “Forgive My Grief” that "a few days before the assassination, Karyn Kupcinet, 23, was trying to place a long distance telephone call from the Los Angeles area. According to reports, the long distance operator heard Miss Kupcinet scream into the telephone that President Kennedy was going to be killed (spartacus-educational).” Kupcinet was found dead on November 30th, 1963. The reason for her death remains unresolved. It is true that not all 103 people died from unnatural causes, and some allegations might sound less reasonable than the others, but there are certainly unusual features about the deaths of Dorothy Kilgallen, a journalist who had claimed to have secured an interview with Jack Ruby, Rose Cheramie, a woman who had warned prior to Kennedy’s assassination that he would be killed, and Joseph Milteer, a man who had been secretly tape-recorded saying that the assassination was “in the working (Marrs).” Public opinion polls over the years have constantly found that a majority of Americans believe Oswald did not act alone and that the president was killed because of a conspiracy. But theories have differed as to which individual or association was behind the assassination. Often referred to as “the mother of all conspiracies”, the Kennedy assassination conspiracy includes that of the CIA, the Secret Service, the FBI, the KGB, the Anti-Castro Cubans, the Soviets, the Mafia, the military-industrial complex, the Right-wing extremists, Johnson, Hoover, and more (abcnews; 22november1963). Between 1,000 and 2,000 books (Bugliosi; Knight), each with somewhat different opinions, were written about the Kennedy’s assassination. So what really happened? Who killed Kennedy? The answer will perhaps never be found.
Bibliography
Seminar
Gaddis, John Lewis, The Cold War Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 2007
Swanson, James L., “The President Has Been Shot!”
Scholastic Press, Scholastic Inc., 2013
DeMarco, Neil, The World This Century Collins Educational, 1990
John F. Kennedy: Presidential Library and Museum (11/29/14) http://www.jfklibrary.org/JFK/Life-of-John-F-Kennedy.aspx
U.S. History (11/29/14) http://www.ushistory.org/us/56b.asp
McElrath, Jessica, Netplaces: John F. Kennedy (11/29/14) http://www.netplaces.com/john-f-kennedy/
U.S. Department of State: Office of the Historian (12/06/14) http://history.state.gov/departmenthistory/short-history/jfk-foreignpolicy
Sparknotes: Domestic Policies in the 1960s (12/06/14) http://www.sparknotes.com/testprep/books/sat2/history/chapter20section1.rhtml
History, The Liberal Agenda and Domestic Policy: The 1960s (12/06/14) http://www.countriesquest.com/north_america/usa/history/the_liberal_agenda_and_domestic_policy_the_1960s.htm Crimelibrary (12/07/14) http://www.crimelibrary.com/notorious_murders/celebrity/marilyn_monroe/6.html
Presidential Recordings of Lyndon B. Johnson (12/07/14) http://presidentialrecordings.rotunda.upress.virginia.edu/essays?series=Vietnam
Essay
General
Marrs, Jim, Crossfire: The Plot that Killed Kennedy New York; Carroll & Graf Publisher, Inc., 1989
Knight, Peter, The Kennedy Assassination Edinburgh; Edinburgh University Press, 2007
Swanson, James L., “The President Has Been Shot!”
Scholastic Press, Scholastic Inc., 2013
Sloan, Bill; Hill, Jean, JFK, The Last Dissenting Witness Gretna, Louisiana; Pelican Publishing Company, 1992
DeMarco, Neil, The World This Century Collins Educational, 1990
Single Bullet Theory
22 November 1963: An Introduction to the JFK Assassination (12/20/14) http://22november1963.org.uk/single-bullet-theory-jfk-assassination National Archives: JFK Assassination Records (12/20/14) http://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/warren-commission-report/chapter-3.html JFK Assassination (12/13/14) http://jsy2125.blog.me/220119475891 Medical Area
Aguilar, Gary L., History Matters: How Five Investigations into JFK’s Medical/Autopsy Evidence Got It Wrong (12/20/14) http://www.history-matters.com/essays/jfkmed/How5Investigations/How5InvestigationsGotItWrong_1b.htm 22 November 1963: An Introduction to the JFK Assassination (12/20/14) http://22november1963.org.uk/jfk-assassination-medical-evidence National Archives: JFK Assassination Records (12/20/14) http://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/warren-commission-report/chapter-2.html#autopsy Simkin, John, Spartacus Educational: Dr. James Humes (12/21/14) http://spartacus-educational.com/JFKhumes.htm JFK Assassination (12/13/14) http://jsy2125.blog.me/220119475891 Witnesses
The John F. Kennedy Assassination Homepage (12/21/14) http://www.jfk-assassination.de/articles/deaths.php
Simkin, John, Spartacus Educational: Deaths of Witnesses Connected to the Assassination of John F. Kennedy (12/21/14) http://spartacus-educational.com/JFKdeaths.htm Marry Ferrell Foundation (12/21/14) http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?absPageId=156201 Conspiracy Theories
Goldman, Russell, ABC News (12/14/14) http://abcnews.go.com/US/top-john-kennedy-assassination-conspiracy-theories/story?id=20614951 22 November 1963: An Introduction to the JFK Assassination (12/14/14)
http://22november1963.org.uk/jfk-assassination-conspiracy-theories