Truth or conspiracy?

Truth or conspiracy: JFK

Lee Harvey Oswald, in police custody, speaks to reporters in Dallas in this Nov. 23, 1963, file photo.

Gerald Posner, the author of 'Case Closed,' talks with Today's Katie Couric about the assasination of President John F. Kennedy.




		Aug. 8 — It’s been called the mother of all conspiracies, a story that continues to stir emotion, speculation and debate almost 40 years later. Did Lee Harvey Oswald act alone in assassinating President John F. Kennedy? Or was there another gunman on the grassy knoll? A new poll shows that many Americans still don’t believe the official government version of what happened. “Today” host Katie Couric reports on the who killed President John F. Kennedy: Truth or conspiracy?

‘When you look at the evidence with a real sober skeptical eye, you really don’t find anything solid indicating anybody but Oswald was involved in killing Kennedy.’
— DR. JOHN MCADAMS
Professor, Marquette University

      IT WAS NOVEMBER 22, 1963 when it happened. “President John F. Kennedy died at approximately 1 o’clock central standard time today here in Dallas. He died of a gunshot wound in the brain.”
      Within hours police arrested an employee of the Texas book depository Lee Harvey Oswald and charged him with the murder.
      A reporter asks Oswald, “Did you shoot the president?” Oswald replies, “No they’re taking me in because of the fact that I lived in the Soviet Union. I’m just a patsy!”
      Darwin Payne is a Dallas historian. He was a newspaper reporter at the time of the assassination. “Almost immediately I would say people speculated of course. How could Oswald have acted alone?”
      Oswald never answered that question.
      Two days after the presidential assassination Jack Ruby — a local club owner with criminal ties — killed Oswald on live television.

      “Immediately after the assassination people wondered whether or not there was a conspiracy. And many people at first thought it would be a right wing conspiracy,” says Payne.
      Security precautions were the heaviest in the city’s history.

The Kennedy family’s troubled history




		Son of Joseph Sr. and Rose. Killed in plane crash in 1944 during World War II. He was 29. Daughter of Joseph Sr. and Rose. Institutionalized since 1941 because of retardation and failed lobotomy. Now 80 years old. Daughter of Joseph Sr. and Rose. Died in plane crash in 1948. She was 28. Son of Joseph Sr. and Rose, 35th president. Assassinated in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963. He was 46. Born nearly six weeks premature to president and wife Jacqueline on Aug. 7, 1963; died Aug. 9, 1963. President’s brother, assassinated in Los Angeles on June 5, 1968. He was 42. Son of Robert. Died in 1984 of a drug overdose in a hotel near family vacation home in Palm Beach, Fla. He was 28. Son of Robert. Involved in 1973 car accident that left a female passenger paralyzed for life. Son of Robert. Accused of having affair with his family’s teen-age baby sitter. Killed Dec. 31, 1997, in a skiing accident at Aspen, Colo. He was 39. Brother of John and Robert. Critically injured in plane crash June 19, 1964; an aide, Edward Moss, was killed. Drove a car off a bridge on Massachusetts’ Chappaquiddick Island on July 18, 1969, after a party. Aide Mary Jo Kopechne was later found dead in submerged car. Son of Edward. Right leg amputated in 1973 because of cancer. Son of Edward. Now a congressman, sought treatment for cocaine addiction as a teen-ager in 1986. Grandson of Joseph Sr.: Accused of raping a woman in 1991 at the family’s Palm Beach estate; acquitted later that year. Son of President John Kennedy. Killed along with wife Carolyn and sister-in-law Lauren Bessette in air crash off Martha’s Vineyard July 16, 1999. He was 38.



Source: The Associated Press Printable version

      Payne says, “And then afterwards, when Oswald’s Leninist-Marxist connections came true, well, maybe it was another conspiracy, his ties to the Soviet Union.”
      Moscow radio reported, “and this is Moscow radio now assuming that extreme right wing elements were believed responsible for the assassination.”
      Payne says conspiracy theories then snowballed. “And then you thought as well about ties to the Mafia, Cuba — could it have been Cuba? Castro, trying to have the President assassinated in retaliation for the CIA’s efforts to have him killed?”

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      Even the vice-president was convinced there was a conspiracy. “There was Lyndon Johnson running around on the floor saying there’s been a conspiracy! I got to get out to Air Force One right away! And he rushed out and away he went,” says Evelyn Lincoln, Kennedy’s former secretary.
      “And so the idea of conspiracy grew in Dallas, as it did elsewhere,” says Payne.
      Eyewitness accounts pointed to a second gun — another assailant, shooting from another direction.
      A reporter interviewing an eyewitness says, “Did you see the person who fired…?”
      The eyewitness says, “No, not — I didn’t see any person fire the weapon.
      The reporter says, “You only heard it?”
      The eyewitness then says, “I only heard it. I looked up and saw a man running up this hill.”
      That hill would come to be known as the grassy knoll. And it was from the grassy knoll where conspiracy theorists believe the fatal shot was fired.
      NBC correspondent Robert MacNeil describes the wounds during a 1964 special report on the Warren Commission findings, “The first wound described was a wound in the back of the head and which seemed to indicate a shot from behind. But the doctors also said there was a wound in the throat at the front, which seemed to indicate a shot from the other direction.”
      Despite these theories, nearly a year after Kennedy’s death, the Warren Commission, an investigative panel set up by President Johnson, determined that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone.
      In a 300,000-page report released in 1964, the Warren Commission found that Lee Harvey Oswald assassinated President Kennedy, he did it alone and he was not a part of any conspiracy either domestic or foreign.

Resources

"Case Closed: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of JFK"
	By Gerald Posner

      But instead of ending controversy over the president’s death, the Warren Report only fueled it.
      “The Warren Commission was unable to come up with a motive why he would want to kill President Kennedy,” says Gary Mack who is the curator of the 6th floor museum at Dealey plaza.
      “My personal studies of this subject over the last 25 years or so show me that there are three major questions. The three M’s if you will. The medical evidence, mysterious events that happened, and the mystery man himself — Lee Harvey Oswald.”
      So many unanswered questions in fact that four decades later students at Marquette University, born long after the president’s death, are enrolled in a class focusing entirely on the details of the assassination. The professor who teaches the class, Dr. John McAdams, endorses the Warren Commission’s central finding.
      “When you look at the evidence with a real sober skeptical eye, you really don’t find anything solid indicating anybody but Oswald was involved in killing Kennedy,” says McAdams.

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      The majority of his students disagree. When students were asked how many believed there was a conspiracy, the majority of students raised their hands.
      They point out several reasons why they doubt the Warren report.
      One student says, “so many people claim that they saw — or at least heard something coming from the grassy knoll.”
      Another says, “I think that the single bullet theory was — is definitely leading to a conspiracy because when they found the bullet it was pristine.”
      “The killing of John F. Kennedy is just a huge thing to pull off. And I don’t think it’s a one-man job,” says another student.
      A new poll by Zogby International shows most Americans agree with the students. The poll finds that a little over 68 percent believe there was a conspiracy, over 20 percent feel it was Lee Harvey Oswald acting alone, nearly 6 percent say it was someone else and just over 5 percent say they’re not sure.
      “There are enough holes out there in this story that people looking at it today, and looking at it 50 years from now will wonder, well what really happened,” says Mack.
      Former Texas governor John Connelly who was riding in the car with President Kennedy and wounded by the gunfire probably perhaps said it best, “I think there are certain facts about this assassination that may never be known and no one can know, no one no matter how clairvoyant or how wise could ever say with finality that would satisfy everybody in this world.”

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