The assassination of John F. Kennedy in Dallas on November 22, 1963, has proven to be one of the most potent and abiding sources of American mythology, legend, and folklore of the last half century. The violent and controversial murder of a dashing and youthful president also became the single most fertile breeding ground of American conspiracy theories until September 11, 2001. Kennedy’s assassination has been the subject of countless books, articles, documentaries, television shows, and Hollywood movies, perhaps most notably providing the subject matter for the popular 1991 film JFK by Oliver Stone, as well as Libra, the critically acclaimed 1988 novel by Don DeLillo.
Democrat John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) was elected president of the United States in November 1960. Remembered for the Cuban Missile Crisis, the escalation of U.S. military commitments in Vietnam, the Bay of Pigs fiasco, the launching of the Race to the Moon, and the establishment of the Peace Corps, this charismatic and handsome politician and his charming and refined wife ushered in a short-lived American “Camelot” that still has a powerful grip on the American imagination. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963. This event was perhaps the single greatest source of American conspiracy theories of the twentieth century. (John F. Kennedy Presidential Library)
Kennedy was in Dallas in November 1963 to raise money and to build support in Texas for his 1964 presidential campaign. JFK had won the Lone Star State in 1960 by a slim margin on the basis of his Texan running mate, Lyndon Baines Johnson. Given that Dallas was a hotbed of right-wing activity and that Kennedy was wildly unpopular among right-wing extremists, the fact that President Kennedy and his party traveled in open limousines seems little less than foolhardy in retrospect. Kennedy and his wife rode in the first car with Governor and Mrs. John Connally, while Johnson, his wife, and Senator Ralph Yarborough rode in the second limousine. The motorcade entered Dealey Plaza at 12:29 p.m., turning right toward the Texas Book Depository, where gunman Lee Harvey Oswald lay in wait on the sixth floor. The motorcade was forced to slow down to negotiate a sharp left turn onto Elm Street directly in front of the Book Depository. Down the street in front of the motorcade was the triple underpass of Elm, Main, and Commerce Streets; in that direction and to the right was the famed “grassy knoll,” where many conspiracy theorists would place a second gunman.
According to official reports, as the presidential limousine began to pull away from him, Oswald shot three times in rapid succession with a bolt-action rifle. One of Oswald’s shots missed; one passed through Kennedy’s back, out his throat, and into Connally; and one hit the president in the back of the head. Kennedy was rushed to Parkland Hospital in Dallas, where he was pronounced dead. The president’s body was then transported via Air Force One to Bethesda Naval Hospital, where the official autopsy took place. Abraham Zapruder was a spectator who filmed the president’s procession through Dealey Plaza on a home movie camera. The resulting film proved instrumental in reconstructing the timeline of events, as well as in establishing where there might be gaps in the official story.
The Grassy Knoll
Police officers numbered among the witnesses who claimed to have seen gunmen or smoke on the grassy knoll, and some have asserted that a man fleeing that area could be seen behind the far wall in some photographs of the event.
C. Fee
There was little that the staff doctors at Parkland Hospital in Dallas could do for the president, and he was pronounced dead shortly after arrival. Several aspects of the examination at Parkland did not jibe with the subsequent autopsy at Bethesda Naval Hospital, which has long stoked the controversy surrounding JFK’s assassination. More fuel for the fire of conspiracy theories resulted from a jurisdictional squabble between federal agents and state officials concerning the custody of Kennedy’s body, which ended with JFK’s body on Air Force One, upon which Johnson was sworn in as president during the flight back to Washington.
Oswald was apprehended shortly after the shooting when he fatally shot police officer J. D. Tippit, who had attempted to stop him for questioning. Charged with the assassination of Kennedy and the murder of Tippit, Oswald was gunned down in cold blood by Jack Ruby, a local nightclub owner, in the basement of Dallas police headquarters on November 24, 1963. Five days later, Johnson charged Chief Justice Earl Warren with the task of heading the official investigation of Kennedy’s assassination; the “Warren Commission,” as it has been known ever since, issued its report in September 1964. The Warren Commission found that Oswald acted alone, that his motives were obscure and personal, and that the assassination of Kennedy was not the result of a conspiracy.
Born in 1939 in New Orleans, Oswald joined the Marines as a young man and served in Japan, where he was stationed on an airbase that serviced U-2 spy planes. Always intrigued by Communism and all things Russian and Cuban, Oswald was reading Communist works and Russian papers even while still in the service at the height of the Cold War, and spoke openly of his sympathy for the Cuban Revolution. In 1959, he put his words into action of sorts when he defected to the Soviet Union, where he worked in a factory, married a Russian woman, and started a family. Finding the realities of Soviet life less amenable than the idyllic worker’s paradise he might have envisioned, he returned to the United States in 1962, settling in Texas.
Several aspects of Oswald’s background give pause to conspiracy theorists: although a man bright and motivated enough to teach himself Russian might indeed make a good spy or assassin, many find it difficult to believe that a Marine with Oswald’s outspoken Communist sympathies could fly under the radar of the intelligence services while stationed at a sensitive base. There have long been those who believe that Oswald was in fact in training to be a spy and was building a left-wing resume to present to the Soviets or the Cubans when he attempted to infiltrate them. Those who belong to that school of thought point out that Oswald received a discharge from the service with unusual rapidity, and that his application for a passport was processed quickly without apparent scrutiny.
Oswald, Lee Harvey (1939–1963)
Few figures in American history are more shrouded in the aura of mystery and the taint of conspiracy than Lee Harvey Oswald, although in Oswald any mystique and menace is counterbalanced, at least in some segment of the popular mind, with a certain measure of pathos and a subtle subtext of incompetence; conspiracy theories seem to find Oswald appealing, in short, because some have described him as inconsistent and perhaps somewhat bumbling. Whether or not such an assessment is fair, the fact that it can be asserted at all opens the door to those who are perhaps predisposed to perceive the sinister hand of a larger conspiracy behind the assassination of Kennedy. In other words, if what we can learn about Oswald doesn’t make him seem focused enough, or smart enough, or capable enough to kill the president of the United States single-handedly, who, conspiracy theorists then ask, was really behind the plot?
C. Fee
That Oswald was able to afford an expensive trip to the Soviet Union, which apparently far outstripped his resources, is also mentioned frequently, as is the fact that the CIA took a year to open a file on him even after Oswald renounced his U.S. citizenship and threatened to reveal military secrets to the Soviets. This last fact is perhaps most startling, given that Oswald had worked in close proximity to the U-2; it is worth remembering that the Russians famously downed a U-2 piloted by Francis Gary Powers on May 1, 1960. Conspiracy theorists also note how quickly and with how little fuss Oswald returned to the United States. The State Department seems to have helped Oswald and his Russian wife quickly overcome any passport and immigration hurdles, and the FBI and CIA showed very little interest in him upon his return to the United States. These factors are often cited by those who believe that Oswald was working for the U.S. Intelligence Services as a false defector.
Allegations concerning Oswald’s abilities with a rifle have provided further fodder for conspiracy theorists over the years. Many have suggested that Kennedy’s limousine provided a challenging target even for a seasoned and apt marksman: in 1967, in fact, CBS staged a practical test of the Warren Commission’s findings by recruiting eleven top sharpshooters to reenact the shots Oswald was supposed to have made. Although Oswald himself, of course, would have had only a single chance to get off his shots, these marksmen were given multiple opportunities. Seven of the eleven were unable to make two out of three shots, despite more than one opportunity; all eleven failed on the first attempt. Another prime factor in the minds of those who reject the findings of the Warren Commission concerns the speed at which the shots are thought to have been made. Gauging the time-lapse between shots from the frames of the Zapruder film, some conspiracy theorists posit that the gunman in question would have had to manage three shots in extremely rapid succession with a high degree of accuracy. According to this account of events, the assassin would only have around five or five-and-a-half seconds to discharge all three rounds. Considering that the rifle was bolt action, the theory goes, it would have been an especially challenging feat even for the most accomplished and cold-blooded of marksmen. This indication of the difficulty of the shots in question flies in the face of what such theorists posit about Oswald’s military service: both the records of his marksmanship scores and the memories of those who served with him, they say, suggests that Oswald was a middling shot on the best of days, and might even be very poor. Oswald’s weapon itself has added fuel to the fire, as the firearm experts consulted by the Warren Commission found the rifle awkward and unwieldy in terms of both its construction and its function.
A small-time hustler and nightclub figure with both mob and police contacts, Jack Ruby was well known in the Dallas police headquarters where he gunned down Oswald. Ruby claimed to have been acting out of altruistic motives to save JFK’s widow additional sorrow, and the Warren Commission seems to have found him to be a rather pathetic lone wolf who acted out of a desire for fame, rather like Oswald himself. Because of his apparently easy access to the heavily guarded Oswald, however, as well as his purported debts to the mob and shady underworld connections, Ruby has long been portrayed as a pawn in the pay of shadowy overlords determined to assassinate JFK and then hush up Oswald, who—according to this theory—was also their patsy. Convicted of the murder of Oswald and sentenced to death, Ruby appeared before the Warren Commission and claimed that JFK’s assassination was the result of a conspiracy, although he claimed to withhold specific details out of fear for his life and because he had been granted a new trial. Ruby died of cancer in prison in 1967, and conspiracy theorists have long taken this as evidence that he was silenced by the same paymasters who hired him to kill Oswald.
The Kennedy assassination is a veritable treasure trove of American folklore, myth, and legend, and theories concerning those thought to have planned the murder and covered it up have named groups and individuals as disparate as J. Edgar Hoover, Fidel Castro, Cuba, the Soviet Union, and the Mafia. Because of the abiding controversy regarding the assassination of JFK, Congress formed the House Select Committee on Assassinations to investigate the shootings of both Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1976. The committee, which issued its report in 1979, further encouraged the flood of JFK conspiracy theories by suggesting that the Warren Commission—although acting responsibly and motivated by the best of intentions—erred by being too sure of itself in its findings. This analysis was based in no small measure upon acoustical evidence from a police recording that purported to prove that no fewer than four shots were fired in Dealey Plaza. On the basis of this evidence—subsequently refuted by some—the House Select Committee determined that Oswald did not in fact act alone, and that the other shooter probably fired from “the grassy knoll.” The House Select Committee thus judged that Kennedy’s assassination, rather than the work of a lone, disaffected gunman, was in fact the result of a conspiracy, although the report is unclear as to the constituents thereof; the Soviets, the Cubans, anti-Castro organizations, the Mafia, the CIA, and the FBI were all specifically absolved of direct involvement, although the report did not rule out involvement by rogue members of either the mob or anti-Castro groups. The Secret Service was singled out for censure for incompetence, but was not found to be party to any conspiracy.
Zapruder Film
The Zapruder film, while a vital piece of evidence for the Warren Commission, has also provided persuasive grounds for questioning some of the findings of that body. A frame-by-frame analysis of the film can be used to illustrate problems with the official story concerning the time between shots and the “single gunman” theory; moreover, as captured on the film, the reaction of the victims to the shots could serve to call into question the precise sequence of events. Although purportedly available to intelligence services soon after the assassination, the Zapruder film wasn’t available for public scrutiny until long afterward.
C. Fee
It is difficult to overstate the watershed moment represented by Kennedy’s assassination. Signaling the end of Camelot at the height of the Cold War, as America teetered on the brink of full involvement in Vietnam and the cultural revolution that would grow out of the civil rights, women’s liberation, and antiwar movements, November 22, 1963, is a date that is indelibly etched in the collective memory of Americans old enough to remember that day, serving as a milestone for a generation, much as September 11, 2001, is for many Americans today, or December 7, 1941, was for Kennedy’s own generation. In addition to the gripping details and legitimate gaps in the story of Kennedy’s assassination—which provide ample fodder for conspiracy theories and myths—in the minds of many of the Baby Boomer generation, this event marks the loss of innocence and the threshold of a much more complex and problematic reality. The fact that the social movements and upheavals that followed Kennedy’s assassination were undoubtedly well under way during his lifetime matters little to the popular imagination, which has wrought this historical event into the stuff of legend and folklore.
C. Fee
See also Conspiracy Theories; Lincoln, Abraham, Assassination of
Further Reading
DeHaven-Smith, Lance. 2013. Conspiracy Theory in America. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Fenster, Mark. 1999. Conspiracy Theories: Secrecy and Power in American Culture. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Goldberg, Robert Alan. 2001. Enemies Within: The Culture of Conspiracy in Modern America. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Olmsted, Kathryn S. 2009. Real Enemies: Conspiracy Theories and American Democracy, World War I to 9/11. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Report of the President’s Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy. 1964. Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office.
Report of the Select Committee on Assassinations of the U.S. House of Representatives. 1979. Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office.
Walker, Jesse. 2013. The United States of Paranoia: A Conspiracy Theory. New York: Harper.
Kennedy, John F., Assassination of—Primary Document
Warren Commission Report (1964)
The Report of the President’s Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy came under severe criticism by those who believed that Lee Harvey Oswald was part of a broad conspiracy to kill the president. Nicknamed the Warren Commission Report in honor of the head of the commission, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Earl Warren, the panel asserted that Oswald acted alone. This conclusion, suggested in this excerpt, served only to fuel more speculation that government agents were involved in Kennedy’s assassination, and that the Warren Commission helped to cover up the conspiracy.
Oswald’s Presence in the Depository Building
Oswald’s presence as an employee in the Texas School Book Depository Building was the result of a series of happenings unrelated to the President’s trip to Dallas. He obtained the Depository job after almost 2 weeks of job hunting which began immediately upon his arrival in Dallas from Mexico on October 8, 1963. At that time he was in poor financial circumstances, having arrived from Mexico City with approximately $133 or less, and with his unemployment compensation benefits due to expire on October 8. Oswald and his wife were expecting the birth of their second child, who was in fact born on October 20. In attempting to procure work, Oswald utilized normal channels, including the Texas Employment Commission.
On October 4, 1963, Oswald applied for a position with Padgett Printing Corp., which was located at 1313 Industrial Boulevard, several blocks from President Kennedy’s parade route. Oswald favorably impressed the plant superintendent who checked his prior job references, one of which was Jaggars-Chiles-Stovall, the firm where Oswald had done photography work from October 1962 to April 1963. The following report was written by Padgett’s plant superintendent on the reverse side of Oswald’s job application: “Bob Stovall does not recommend this man. He was released because of his record as a troublemaker—Has Communistic tendencies.” Oswald received word that Padgett Printing had hired someone else.
Oswald’s employment with the Texas School Book Depository came about through a chance conversation on Monday, October 14, between Ruth Paine, with whom his family was staying while Oswald was living in a roominghouse in Dallas, and two of Mrs. Paine’s neighbors. During a morning conversation over coffee, at which Marina Oswald was present, Oswald’s search for employment was mentioned. The neighbors suggested several places where Oswald might apply for work. One of the neighbors present, Linnie Mae Randle, said that her brother had recently been hired as a schoolbook order filler at the Texas School Book Depository and she thought the Depository might need additional help. She testified, “and of course you know just being neighborly and everything, we felt sorry for Marina because her baby was due right away as we understood it, and he didn’t have any work.”
When Marina Oswald and Mrs. Paine returned home, Mrs. Paine promptly telephoned the Texas School Book Depository and spoke to Superintendent Roy Truly, whom she did not know. Truly agreed to interview Oswald, who at the time was in Dallas seeking employment. When Oswald called that evening, Mrs. Paine told him of her conversation with Truly. The next morning Oswald went to the Texas School Book Depository where he was interviewed and hired for the position of order filler.
On the same date, the Texas Employment Commission attempted to refer Oswald to an airline company which was looking for baggage and cargo handlers at a salary which was $100 per month higher than that offered by the Depository Co. The Employment Commission tried to advise Oswald of this job at 10:30 a.m. on October 16, 1963. Since the records of the Commission indicate that Oswald was then working, it seems clear that Oswald was hired by the Depository Co. before the higher paying job was available. It is unlikely that he ever learned of this second opportunity.
Although publicity concerning the President’s trip to Dallas appeared in Dallas newspapers as early as September 13, 1963, the planning of the motorcade route was not started until after November 4, when the Secret Service was first notified of the trip. A final decision as to the route could not have been reached until November 14, when the Trade Mart was selected as the luncheon site. Although news reports on November 15 and November 16 might have led a person to believe that the motorcade would pass the Depository Building, the route was not finally selected until November 18; it was announced in the press on November 19, only 3 days before the President’s arrival. Based on the circumstances of Oswald’s employment and the planning of the motorcade route, the Commission has concluded that Oswald’s employment in the Depository was wholly unrelated to the President’s trip to Dallas.
Bringing Rifle Into Building
On the basis of the evidence developed in chapter IV the Commission concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald carried the rifle used in the assassination into the Depository Building on Friday, November 22, 1963, in the handmade brown paper bag found near the window from which the shots were fired. The arrangement by which Buell Wesley Frazier drove Oswald between Irving and Dallas was an innocent one, having commenced when Oswald first started working at the Depository. As noted above, it was Frazier’s sister, Linnie May Randle, who had suggested to Ruth Paine that Oswald might be able to find employment at the Depository. When Oswald started working there, Frazier, who lived only a half block away from the Paines, offered to drive Oswald to and from Irving whenever he was going to stay at the Paines’ home. Although Oswald’s request for a ride to Irving on Thursday, November 21, was a departure from the normal weekend pattern, Oswald gave the explanation that he needed to obtain curtain rods for an “apartment” in Dallas. This served also to explain the long package which he took with him from Irving to the Depository Building the next morning. Further, there is no evidence that Ruth Paine or Marina Oswald had reason to believe that Oswald’s return was in any way related to an attempt to shoot the President the next day. Although his visit was a surprise, since he arrived on Thursday instead of Friday for his usual weekend visit, both women testified that they thought he had come to patch up a quarrel which he had with his wife a few days earlier when she learned that he was living in Dallas under an assumed name.
It has also been shown that Oswald had the opportunity to work in the Paines’ garage on Thursday evening and prepare the rifle by disassembling it, if it were not already disassembled, and packing it in the brown bag. It has been demonstrated that the paper and tape from which the bag was made came from the shipping room of the Texas School Book Depository and that Oswald had access to this material. Neither Ruth Paine nor Marina Oswald saw the paper bag or the paper and tape out of which the bag was constructed. Oswald actually prepared the bag in the Depository out of materials available to him there, he could have concealed it in the jacket or shirt which he was wearing. The Commission has found no evidence which suggests that Oswald required or in fact received any assistance in bringing the rifle into the building other than the innocent assistance provided by Frazier in the form of the ride to work.
Source: “Report of the President’s Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy.” Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1964.