With a presidential election looming in 1964, it was widely expected that Kennedy \u2013 popularly known by his initials, JFK \u2013 would soon announce his intention to seek a second term. He regarded Texas as a crucial battleground in the upcoming campaign and an official tour of its major cities was announced for late November 1963.<\/p>\n
His assassination in that state was captured on camera by a bystander in what has become one of the most infamous filmed sequences in modern history.<\/p>\n
Around 12.30pm on 22 November, as the presidential motorcade moved slowly through Dealey Plaza in downtown Dallas, the boom of gunshots reverberated across the plaza.<\/p>\n
One bullet tore through the president\u2019s neck, followed seconds later by a catastrophic shot to his head. As he slumped towards his terrified wife, Jackie, the car accelerated from the scene. JFK was pronounced dead at Parkland Memorial Hospital at 1pm.<\/p>\n
The conspiracy theory: Lee Harvey Oswald did not act alone<\/h2>\n
Within hours of the shooting, Lee Harvey Oswald, a 24-year-old employee at the Texas School Book Depository \u2013 whose building overlooked Dealey Plaza \u2013 was arrested in a nearby cinema after several people had witnessed him shoot a police officer dead.<\/p>\n
Yet some came to believe that Oswald was a patsy (something he personally declared while in custody) for Kennedy\u2019s enemies, or that he was not the only assassin involved.<\/p>\n
Many conspiracy theorists held that the plot was hatched either by the mafia \u2013 supposedly enraged by the Kennedy administration\u2019s crackdown on organised crime and JFK\u2019s failure to overthrow Fidel Castro \u2013 or by the United States\u2019 own intelligence and security agencies, particularly the CIA and the FBI, in a bid to thwart the president\u2019s alleged plan to pull America out of the Vietnam War.<\/p>\n
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- Read more | The assassination of JFK: an eyewitness account<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Two days after JFK\u2019s assassination, Oswald was himself murdered.<\/p>\n
Oswald was being transferred out of Dallas Police Headquarters towards an armoured car that would take him to the county jail, and such was the interest in Oswald that even this was televised. And so audiences across America witnessed the moment when local nightclub owner Jack Ruby tore from the crowd and shot Oswald at close range.<\/p>\n
Oswald died shortly after at Parkland Memorial Hospital. For those who would come to believe that he hadn\u2019t acted alone, this was clear evidence of Oswald\u2019s handlers silencing the main suspect in JFK\u2019s assassination.<\/p>\n
What is the source of the theory?<\/h2>\n
According to investigative journalist and writer Gerald Posner, Ruby\u2019s murder of Oswald \u201cis what really robs us of knowing what happened in detail\u201d and is \u201cwhy the case will never be closed\u201d.<\/p>\n
Up until that moment, many Americans had assumed Oswald bore sole responsibility for JFK\u2019s assassination. But Ruby\u2019s act of vigilante justice deprived posterity of hearing Oswald\u2019s testimony and began to sow suspicion in people\u2019s minds.<\/p>\n
\u201cWithin 48 hours, people are wondering, \u2018what happened?\u2019,\u201d says Posner, who was speaking to us for an episode of our Conspiracy<\/em> podcast series<\/a>. \u201cThen the Warren Commission [established by JFK\u2019s successor, Lyndon B Johnson<\/a>, to investigate the events of 22 November 1963] comes out a year later with its massive report, and most people don\u2019t like the idea of a government commission to decide what happened on a big controversial historical area,\u201d says Posner.<\/p>\n
Moreover, the Kennedy family insisted that X-rays and photographs pertaining to the autopsy conducted on JFK should not be put on the public record.<\/p>\n
The Commission also determined that other documents remain classified until 2039 \u2013 factors which only served to fuel conspiracy theorists.<\/p>\n
The reasons why the theory took hold<\/h2>\n
In the wake of JFK\u2019s assassination, public mistrust of government grew alongside a youth-led counterculture. America\u2019s ongoing Vietnam war<\/a> became increasingly unpopular, while the assassinations of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr<\/a> and JFK\u2019s brother, Robert Kennedy, both in spring 1968, struck at the heart of the nation\u2019s sense of assurance.<\/p>\n
Then in the early 1970s, the Watergate scandal<\/a> unmasked a duplicitous side to US politics and emboldened those who believed that government agents might have been behind JFK\u2019s death.<\/p>\n
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- Read more | What if JFK had lived?<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Posner stresses that many also doubted Oswald\u2019s ability as a marksman despite his military training in the US Marines Corps.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of people say there was a world-class assassin somewhere on the grassy knoll [in Dealey Plaza]. There are plenty of people \u2026 who came forward 10 and 15 years after the assassination to say \u2018Oh, I saw a puff of smoke over there. I saw somebody running\u2019 \u2026 those accounts don\u2019t hold up, but still, they stick with a lot of people.\u201d<\/p>\n
Others insist that there were multiple assassins in the vicinity and dismiss as implausible the evidence that the second bullet fired by Oswald ripped both through JFK\u2019s neck before passing through Texas Governor John Connally\u2019s (who was sat in front of the president) chest and wrist before embedding itself in his left thigh.<\/p>\n
Conspiracists deride this account as the \u2018magic bullet theory\u2019 because they perceive its trajectory as impossible when the location of the two men\u2019s wounds is considered with their respective positions in the limousine. Connally survived, and the largely intact bullet was later found on the same stretcher he had occupied in Parkland Memorial Hospital.<\/p>\n
Moreover, the conclusion of the US House of Representatives\u2019 1976 Select Committee on Assassinations endorsed the notion that JFK had almost certainly been the victim of a conspiracy. Posner notes that \u201ceven though that gets debunked, most people just remember the headline.\u201d<\/p>\n
Similarly, the 1991 Oliver Stone movie, JFK<\/em>, which, Posner concedes, is \u201cgood in terms of the power of the film, but not in terms of its storytelling\u201d, strengthened the notion that the public wasn\u2019t being told the full story. That is because it revitalised the widely discredited investigation into the assassination conducted by New Orleans district attorney, Jim Garrison.<\/p>\n
Conspiracy: A HistoryExtra<\/em> podcast series<\/h4>\n
Member exclusive<\/strong> | Was the moon landing faked? Did Shakespeare actually write his plays? Were the pyramids built by aliens? Expert historians offer their perspectives on history\u2019s biggest conspiracy theories.<\/p>\n
Listen to all episodes now<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n
<\/p><\/div>
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<\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/section> The evidence that debunks the theory<\/h2>\n
Perhaps no other piece of documentary evidence conveys the tragedy of the assassination more than the Zapruder film.<\/p>\n
Recorded on a silent 8mm film by Abraham Zapruder, a spectator in Dealey Plaza on that fateful November day, the silent 26.6-second-long footage was bought by LIFE<\/em> magazine and not shown publicly until 1975.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s disgraceful that the public had not seen that film years earlier. They had a right to see it,\u201d says Posner.<\/p>\n
Ballistics experts agree that the film demonstrates that the bullets came from behind the limousine (where Oswald was aiming his rifle from a sixth-floor window inside the Texas School Book Depository). Despite this, some theorists maintain that JFK\u2019s sudden jerk backwards in his seat shows there was an assassin firing head-on, or even that the film was subsequently tampered with.<\/p>\n
Nevertheless, the footage does corroborate the angle taken by the single bullet which passed through JFK and then into Texas Governor, John Connally, and is consistent with the wounds both men sustained.<\/p>\n
Indeed, \u201cthe rifle that\u2019s found the next day at the Depository [is] tied ballistically to the bullets that hit Kennedy and the governor to the exclusion of any other gun in the world\u201d says Posner.<\/p>\n
For Posner it all comes down to Oswald himself: \u201cIt\u2019s only once you come to understand Oswald \u2026 that you get a feeling for how he could possibly end up in a window in Dallas shooting at the President of the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n
Oswald grew disillusioned with America during his miserable experience with the Marines, where he endured bullying from the other recruits. His defection to the USSR in 1959 aroused the KGB\u2019s suspicions and \u2013 despite acquiring a Russian wife \u2013 his experience there instilled in him a contempt for Soviet Communism coupled with the disdain he felt towards his capitalist homeland.<\/p>\n
The FBI interviewed Oswald upon his return to the United States in 1961; the result was that it opened an investigative file on him. In April 1963, he attempted to murder an ex-army general \u2013 though Oswald was only identified as the suspect in the report of the Warren Commission. He spent the summer of 1963 distributing pro-Castro leaflets in New Orleans and headed to Mexico City seven weeks before JFK\u2019s assassination.<\/p>\n
From Mexico City, Oswald\u2019s efforts to visit Cuba were dashed by the Cuban and Soviet consulates (both of which were under CIA surveillance). Taking a job at the Texas School Book Depository that autumn was something of a fluke, as Posner explains: \u201cIt\u2019s an assassination that becomes available to him.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ultimately, government secrecy has helped fan the conspiracy theory for decades.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat I think is still keeping a large segment of people from settling on a decision is the fact that the government still has secret files,\u201d says Posner. \u201cThese documents should have been out decades ago.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nevertheless, he concedes that there will be no epiphany even after the final document is released.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople won\u2019t say \u2018Oh, it\u2019s now the lone assassin.\u2019 They\u2019ll say \u2018They must have destroyed the smoking gun\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n
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<\/p><\/div> <\/section>
Gerald Posner is an investigative journalist, whose landmark 1993 book Case Closed<\/em> famously concluded that Oswald had indeed acted alone. He was speaking to Rob Attar for this episode of the HistoryExtra<\/em> podcast<\/a>, part of our Conspiracy<\/em> podcast series<\/a>
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