President Kennedy Assassination
On November 22, 1963 in Dallas, Texas, the 35th president of the US, John F. Kennedy became the third president to be assassinated, after William McKinley, John Garfield and Abe Lincoln. He was traveling on an open top Lincoln continental limo with his wife Jackie and the Texas Governor Connally and his wife and was fatally shot on a slow motorcade along Elm Street through Dealey Plaza. Questions abound on the circumstances before, during and after Kennedy was assassinated, among other things:
Why was the presidential limousine fully open in a slow motorcade down a road where the buildings around it had not been properly secured and in a state known to be hostile territory? Either the Secret Service blundered in their responsibility to protect the president or there was something deliberate.
What caused the change in the identification of the rifle used in the assassination from a 7.68 Mauser to a 6.5 Italian Mannliicher Carcano? Was there a change of heart in pointing to a fall guy?
In the 8 mm Zapruder film, Kennedy slumped backward from the fatal shot when the rifle trajectory was supposed to be from behind coming from the 6th floor window of the Texas School Book Depository building. The autopsy showed that a large right rear part of the head had been blown off indicating an exit wound with the obvious conclusion that Kennedy must have been shot in the front with a trajectory level from the ground, not from a height. In addition a second possibly earlier bullet hit the nape and exited on the front neck to cause the president to choke but would not have been fatal. This showed he was shot from two directions at different heights.
Why was the lone suspect Lee Oswald immediately shot to death by Jack Ruby when he could have provided vital information behind the assassination as being the lone suspect, this was the best course to silence any information source that could point elsewhere.
The Warren Commission's 10-month investigative effort to uncover the truth behind the Kennedy assassination found no persuasive evidence to any conspiracy and that the alleged assassin Oswald acted alone and so was his killer Jack Ruby.
Immediately after the report became public, questions started to bring the findings to disrepute and suspicion of a concerted conspiracy from the CIA, Secret Service and the FBI as well as parties who would benefit from his death like LB Johnson who succeeded him as the 36th president.
In addition, other parties like the Cuban exiles with an axe to grind in the failed Operation Mongoose could have been behind the assassination. Underworld Mafia bosses, teamsters and mobsters as well as foreign government like Cuba and the Soviet Union stood to gain from his death.
The results of commission findings were sealed for 75 years as a policy of the National Archives but were eventually superceded by the Freedom of Information Act of 1966 and the JFK records act of 1992. Several pieces of the documentation had been lost or missing; Oswald's military file destroyed in 1973 and the Kennedy autopsy photos and X-rays were outside of the Warren Commission and deeded separately under restricted conditions to the National Archives in 1966. With so many question unanswered, the conspiracy theories remain as strong as ever.