Date: 1963
Location: Dallas, Texas
The Conspirators: Almost everyone in the world, apparently, except Lee Harvey Oswald
The Victim: President John F. Kennedy
President John F. Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963, in Dallas, Texas, while on an official visit. Soon police arrested Lee Harvey Oswald, an ex-marine who had lived for a time in the Soviet Union. Many conspiracy theorists believe that Oswald was a scapegoat who had nothing to do with the killing whatsoever. Kennedy was killed by a conspiracy, they claim, and the government pinned the blame on Oswald to cover it up. Variations on this theory are seemingly countless.
All available evidence shows that JFK was assassinated by a lone gunman whose psychological profile matches very closely with similar killers today. No evidence suggests otherwise.
Lee Harvey Oswald was a former US Marine living in Dallas. He had a wife and two children, but that’s where his similarity to the “all-American boy” ends. For he was also a self-described Marxist who had lived for two years in the Soviet Union, and his wife was Russian. Oswald was angry at the anti-Communist attitude of the United States, and at President John F. Kennedy’s actions against Cuba, such as the near military outbreaks of the Bay of Pigs and the Cuban Missile Crisis. So when Oswald learned that JFK would be coming to town—and would be driving right past the place where Oswald worked—he brought a little something extra to the office that day: a 6.5 mm Carcano model 91/38 scoped rifle.
From a sixth-floor window of the Texas School Book Depository building where he worked, Oswald killed Kennedy with three shots from his rifle. But he’d been seen, and a description went out over police radio. Forty-five minutes later, a police officer stopped a young man on the street who matched the description. The man pulled out a pistol and shot the officer dead, then ran into a movie theater, pursued by citizens and other police officers. Oswald was captured and arrested, just as his clumsily hidden rifle was being found.
But he was never tried. Two days later, as Oswald was being led through a crowd of reporters at the police station, local nightclub owner Jack Ruby ran up and shot him at point-blank range, killing him. Ruby was said to have had mob connections, suggesting a Mafia connection to JFK’s slaying, and thus was born a barrage of conspiracy theories the likes of which the world has never seen before or since.
Surveys indicate that today more than half of Americans do not believe that Oswald acted alone. Claims by conspiracy theorists include the idea that Lyndon B. Johnson had JFK killed so he could ascend to the presidency; the Mafia had JFK killed to retaliate for his actions against organized crime; the CIA had him killed for one reason or another, including that he wasn’t tough enough on Castro; the Soviets or Cubans had him killed for his stance against Communism; the Ku Klux Klan killed him because of his support for civil rights; and so on, and so on. If it can be imagined, some conspiracy theorist has proposed it, and probably takes it very, very seriously.
Following Kennedy’s death, newly instated President Lyndon B. Johnson ordered the chief justice of the Supreme Court to chair a commission, later called the Warren Commission, to investigate what happened and who was responsible for JFK’s assassination. The 889-page Warren Commission Report took nearly a year to produce and the investigation didn’t find any evidence whatsoever of anyone acting in concert with Lee Harvey Oswald. According to all they could uncover, he (and also Jack Ruby) had acted completely alone.
The rational way to investigate the JFK assassination—or any other mystery—is to start by looking at the solid, testable evidence, and then following it to see where it leads. Every time this has been done, it has led to Lee Harvey Oswald. However, conspiracy theorists have come to their conclusions by working backward and beginning with the idea that the Warren Commission Report is a lie and everything in it is uselessly unreliable. Thus freed of any and all evidence, the conspiracy theorist can land on whatever conjecture he prefers. This is what all the theories have in common: they differ from the government’s official story.
Now, to accept the version of events laid out in the Warren Commission Report, you don’t have to get rid of the background info brought up in the conspiracy theories. Kennedy had taken actions against organized crime, and probably was disliked by that community. He had taken actions against Cuba, and Communists probably did resent him. There were probably elements in the CIA who were frustrated with Kennedy’s lack of progress against Castro. He was a civil rights leader and the Ku Klux Klan probably did dislike him. When he was vice president, Lyndon Johnson probably would have liked to take over as president. However, every president makes decisions that ruffle some feathers. It is not possible for any US president to be universally liked. These facts are not proof of assassination conspiracies.