By: Matt Cloer
Tom Wicker caught the eye of every person who touched a newspaper the day after Kennedy’s Assassination. His headline reads, “KENNEDY IS KILLED BY SNIPER AS HE RIDES IN CAR IN DALLAS; JOHNSON IS SWORN IN ON PLANE.”[i] John F. Kennedy lost his life on November 22, 1963, while riding with First Lady Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy and Governor John Connally in a motorcade that made its way through downtown Dallas. When the procession reaches the Dealey Plaza in downtown Dallas the president is shot and killed. Connally suffers a wound by one of the two bullets that hit the president as the First Lady is unharmed by the gunfire. Every child that goes to school in America learns about Kennedy’s fate. Text-books tell readers one thing, while others believe something different happened that dreadful day in Dallas, Texas. The general student body in the United States learns that Lee Harvey Oswald killed the president, but there are many who believe someone else had a hand in the murder. This essay provides information from sources that uproot different possibilities as to what really happens and to whom the killer really is. The overall purpose is to persuade the audience to open their eyes and see the truths that may be and forever will be covered up in American history.
Shortly after the assassination, Lyndon Johnson authorized the creation of the Warren Commission to unravel the story behind the murder. The new president knew that he would have to set up an investigation team because when Jack Ruby killed Oswald many questions remained unanswered. Earl Warren, who was the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, led the team. In the book The Warren Commission Report: A Graphic Investigation into the Kennedy Assassination, Dan Mishkin, Ernie Colon, and Jerzy Drozd put together one of the most important pieces of work when trying to find the real killer. They reorganized everything from the Warren Commission report to show how the investigation is conducted. They state, “Oswald must have received aid from one or more persons or political groups, ranging from the far left to the far right of the political spectrum, or from a foreign government, usually either the Castro regime in Cuba or the Soviet Union.”[ii] While initially interviewing Oswald, the authorities are unable to get a statement from him saying that he is the killer. The follow-up investigation was unable to be done because Jack Ruby, a local night club owner, shot Oswald during a transport.
Denise M. Champagne writes an article about the speculations made after the president and Oswald were shot. She was able to interview Howard P. Willens, who also served on the Warren Commission. He was one, unlike the others, who did not believe in there being any kind of conspiracy behind what happened. Since Oswald had been killed, there was no way for a trial to happen, so no one would ever really know the real truth. During the investigation there was no evidence found that could prove a conspiracy was there. Willens stated to Champagne that, “Oswald did it… and there is no evidence of a conspiracy, foreign or domestic.”[iii] In the end, the Warren Commission concluded that they could not find evidence that connected Oswald with communist countries, nor did it think that Oswald acted with anyone else in the killing.[iv]
Another book shedding a great deal of light on the assassination and possible conspiracy is Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard’s Killing Kennedy: The End of Camelot. The book brings out the life of Kennedy before his death and all of the people he came to be in contact with. It also tells stories of his close advisors and what they did for Kennedy. During his presidency there were many events that took place. One of the main events that occurred was the Bay of Pigs. This event was an attempt to infiltrate Cuba and take down the Dictator Fidel Castro. Allen Dulles, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), assures President Kennedy that the plan will work. The plan does not work at all and as a result the president fires director Dulles. O’Reilly and Dugard state, “To this day, conspiratorialists believe that that Dulles was involved in the Kennedy assassination as payback for his firing in the wake of the botched Bay of Pigs invasion.”[v]
Over the years there have been many people claim to have an answer for what happened to the president. Phillip Shenon has written books in the past about conspiracy theories, but did not decide to write one on the Kennedy Assassination until 2013. He met many conspiracy theorists on the Kennedy assassination, but never one who had come from the Warren Commission itself. Charles N. Shaffer Jr., a former Justice Department prosecutor who served on the investigation's staff in 1964, decided that he would finally speak out about the event to Shenon. Shaffer tells Philip that, “… there probably was a conspiracy in President Kennedy's death.”[vi] Shaffer later explained that he believes the assassination was to be set up by “Organized-Crime figures” that talked Oswald into killing the President, and then having strip-club owner Jack Ruby silence him during the transport. Shaffer was also shocked when he heard the account of Frank Ragano, known mob lawyer, telling the story of Santo Trafficante and Carlos Marcello. Ragano wrote in his 1994 memoir that Trafficante uttered to him, “Carlos messed up. We shouldn’t have killed John. We should have killed Bobby.”[vii]
Tim Cloward writes in "Conspiracy-A-Go-Go: Dallas at the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Assassination" about the beginning movements of conspiracy theorists within the decade after the killing of John F. Kennedy. He writes about a man named Mark Zane who wrote and published a book called Rush to Judgement; which began the theories that Kennedy’s death could have been part of a conspiracy theory.[viii] Not too long after, Zane also released a fictional film about the assassination happening because of right-wing business leaders. When the film was released its advertising slogan was, “The way it could have happened.”[ix] People like this started movements across America that called for a closer look as to what really happened.
There are many people who do not believe in a conspiracy at all. They believe in the facts and evidence that we have today in the majority of our textbooks and learnings that Lee Harvey Oswald is the only killer and the plan was all his. There are so many possibilities as to what may have happened on the terrible November day in Dallas. It was a sad day indeed for all of America, and the even sadder part is the fact that no one really knows what exactly happened. It is amazing to see men, like Shaffer, who had a hand in the investigation come out fifty years later to tell what they think. This case is one that people have tried to debunk for years, but all end up with their guess being as good as the next person’s. In the end no one will ever know, and that is why this myth will always be one of the greatest in American History.
[i] Tom Wicker, “KENNEDY IS KILLED BY SNIPER AS HE RIDES IN CAR IN DALLAS; JOHNSON IS SWORN IN ON PLANE,” New York Times, November 23, 1963, Accessed December 8, 2015, http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/big/1122.html#article.
[ii] Mishkin, Dan, Ernie Colon, Jerzy Drozd, The Warren Commission Report: A Graphic Investigation into the Kennedy Assassination. 243
[iii] Denise M. Champagne, "Author: No conspiracy behind Kennedy assassination," Regional Business News, Accessed September 20, 2015, EBSCOhost.
[iv] ibid., 374.
[v] Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard, Killing Kennedy: The End of Camelot. 300
[vi] Philip Shenon, "Meet the respectable JFK conspiracy theorists," The Washington Post. Newspaper Source, accessed September 20, 2015, EBSCOhost.
[vii] ibid.
[viii] Conspiracy-A-Go-Go: Dallas at the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Assassination." Southwest Review 98, no. 4 (September 2013): 411.
[ix] ibid., 412.
Tom Wicker caught the eye of every person who touched a newspaper the day after Kennedy’s Assassination. His headline reads, “KENNEDY IS KILLED BY SNIPER AS HE RIDES IN CAR IN DALLAS; JOHNSON IS SWORN IN ON PLANE.”[i] John F. Kennedy lost his life on November 22, 1963, while riding with First Lady Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy and Governor John Connally in a motorcade that made its way through downtown Dallas. When the procession reaches the Dealey Plaza in downtown Dallas the president is shot and killed. Connally suffers a wound by one of the two bullets that hit the president as the First Lady is unharmed by the gunfire. Every child that goes to school in America learns about Kennedy’s fate. Text-books tell readers one thing, while others believe something different happened that dreadful day in Dallas, Texas. The general student body in the United States learns that Lee Harvey Oswald killed the president, but there are many who believe someone else had a hand in the murder. This essay provides information from sources that uproot different possibilities as to what really happens and to whom the killer really is. The overall purpose is to persuade the audience to open their eyes and see the truths that may be and forever will be covered up in American history.
Shortly after the assassination, Lyndon Johnson authorized the creation of the Warren Commission to unravel the story behind the murder. The new president knew that he would have to set up an investigation team because when Jack Ruby killed Oswald many questions remained unanswered. Earl Warren, who was the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, led the team. In the book The Warren Commission Report: A Graphic Investigation into the Kennedy Assassination, Dan Mishkin, Ernie Colon, and Jerzy Drozd put together one of the most important pieces of work when trying to find the real killer. They reorganized everything from the Warren Commission report to show how the investigation is conducted. They state, “Oswald must have received aid from one or more persons or political groups, ranging from the far left to the far right of the political spectrum, or from a foreign government, usually either the Castro regime in Cuba or the Soviet Union.”[ii] While initially interviewing Oswald, the authorities are unable to get a statement from him saying that he is the killer. The follow-up investigation was unable to be done because Jack Ruby, a local night club owner, shot Oswald during a transport.
Denise M. Champagne writes an article about the speculations made after the president and Oswald were shot. She was able to interview Howard P. Willens, who also served on the Warren Commission. He was one, unlike the others, who did not believe in there being any kind of conspiracy behind what happened. Since Oswald had been killed, there was no way for a trial to happen, so no one would ever really know the real truth. During the investigation there was no evidence found that could prove a conspiracy was there. Willens stated to Champagne that, “Oswald did it… and there is no evidence of a conspiracy, foreign or domestic.”[iii] In the end, the Warren Commission concluded that they could not find evidence that connected Oswald with communist countries, nor did it think that Oswald acted with anyone else in the killing.[iv]
Another book shedding a great deal of light on the assassination and possible conspiracy is Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard’s Killing Kennedy: The End of Camelot. The book brings out the life of Kennedy before his death and all of the people he came to be in contact with. It also tells stories of his close advisors and what they did for Kennedy. During his presidency there were many events that took place. One of the main events that occurred was the Bay of Pigs. This event was an attempt to infiltrate Cuba and take down the Dictator Fidel Castro. Allen Dulles, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), assures President Kennedy that the plan will work. The plan does not work at all and as a result the president fires director Dulles. O’Reilly and Dugard state, “To this day, conspiratorialists believe that that Dulles was involved in the Kennedy assassination as payback for his firing in the wake of the botched Bay of Pigs invasion.”[v]
Over the years there have been many people claim to have an answer for what happened to the president. Phillip Shenon has written books in the past about conspiracy theories, but did not decide to write one on the Kennedy Assassination until 2013. He met many conspiracy theorists on the Kennedy assassination, but never one who had come from the Warren Commission itself. Charles N. Shaffer Jr., a former Justice Department prosecutor who served on the investigation's staff in 1964, decided that he would finally speak out about the event to Shenon. Shaffer tells Philip that, “… there probably was a conspiracy in President Kennedy's death.”[vi] Shaffer later explained that he believes the assassination was to be set up by “Organized-Crime figures” that talked Oswald into killing the President, and then having strip-club owner Jack Ruby silence him during the transport. Shaffer was also shocked when he heard the account of Frank Ragano, known mob lawyer, telling the story of Santo Trafficante and Carlos Marcello. Ragano wrote in his 1994 memoir that Trafficante uttered to him, “Carlos messed up. We shouldn’t have killed John. We should have killed Bobby.”[vii]
Tim Cloward writes in "Conspiracy-A-Go-Go: Dallas at the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Assassination" about the beginning movements of conspiracy theorists within the decade after the killing of John F. Kennedy. He writes about a man named Mark Zane who wrote and published a book called Rush to Judgement; which began the theories that Kennedy’s death could have been part of a conspiracy theory.[viii] Not too long after, Zane also released a fictional film about the assassination happening because of right-wing business leaders. When the film was released its advertising slogan was, “The way it could have happened.”[ix] People like this started movements across America that called for a closer look as to what really happened.
There are many people who do not believe in a conspiracy at all. They believe in the facts and evidence that we have today in the majority of our textbooks and learnings that Lee Harvey Oswald is the only killer and the plan was all his. There are so many possibilities as to what may have happened on the terrible November day in Dallas. It was a sad day indeed for all of America, and the even sadder part is the fact that no one really knows what exactly happened. It is amazing to see men, like Shaffer, who had a hand in the investigation come out fifty years later to tell what they think. This case is one that people have tried to debunk for years, but all end up with their guess being as good as the next person’s. In the end no one will ever know, and that is why this myth will always be one of the greatest in American History.
[i] Tom Wicker, “KENNEDY IS KILLED BY SNIPER AS HE RIDES IN CAR IN DALLAS; JOHNSON IS SWORN IN ON PLANE,” New York Times, November 23, 1963, Accessed December 8, 2015, http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/big/1122.html#article.
[ii] Mishkin, Dan, Ernie Colon, Jerzy Drozd, The Warren Commission Report: A Graphic Investigation into the Kennedy Assassination. 243
[iii] Denise M. Champagne, "Author: No conspiracy behind Kennedy assassination," Regional Business News, Accessed September 20, 2015, EBSCOhost.
[iv] ibid., 374.
[v] Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard, Killing Kennedy: The End of Camelot. 300
[vi] Philip Shenon, "Meet the respectable JFK conspiracy theorists," The Washington Post. Newspaper Source, accessed September 20, 2015, EBSCOhost.
[vii] ibid.
[viii] Conspiracy-A-Go-Go: Dallas at the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Assassination." Southwest Review 98, no. 4 (September 2013): 411.
[ix] ibid., 412.