The Kennedy Assassination
John Fitzgerald Kennedy will forever remain in history as one of the most famous American presidents due to the very singular events that surrounded his demise. Famously known by his initials JFK, the politician served as the 35th American president from 1961 to 1963 when he met his death from a marksman’s bullet in Dallas. On the day of Kennedy’s assassination, he was in the company of his wife First lady Jacqueline Kennedy and Texas Governor John Connally with his wife. The First Lady rarely accompanied President Kennedy to such occasions, but as fate would have it, she accompanied him on this material day that also served as his last day alive . The suspect, Lee Harvey Oswald allegedly fired three shots from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository Building at around 12:30 P.M where the President was fatally wounded and was pronounced dead half an hour later at the historic Dallas’ Parkland Hospital.
John Fitzgerald Kennedy who was only 46 years old at the time of his assassination, served America at the height of the Cold War . Many neutrals believe that he carried out his responsibilities diligently at a time when America and the world at large were literary sitting on a time bomb that could plunge it to another world war if handled without due diligence. President Kennedy was succeeded by Vice President Lyndon Johnson, who was his vice and who was also in his motorcade on the eventful day that a sniper’s bullet took out an American president. There was only a 2-hour gap between the assassination and the swearing of the new President aboard Air Force One consistent with the American Constitution and avoid a power vacuum . The mere fact that the time when Kennedy was assassinated coincided with a time in history when the relations between major players in global politics and supremacy wars were frosty, many conspiracy theories have just refused to go away.
The Official Explanation
The news of the death of a sitting American President was met with the urgency that it deserved. One week following the killing of Kennedy, President Lyndon B Johnson established a commission of inquiry to interrogate the case. The Commission, known as the Warren Commission, reported in September 1964 that one, the shots by Lee Harvey Oswald that cut short the life of President J.F. Kennedy were fired from the sixth-floor window situated in the south-east corner of the Texas School Book Depository . Most importantly, the Warren Commission disqualified any possibility of a conspiracy, absolving and exonerating both Lee Harvey Oswald and Jack Ruby as not being part of neither a domestic or foreign conspiracy, citing lack of evidence.
Additional Investigations into the Assassination
The investigations into the killing of President J. F. Kennedy did not end with the Warren Commission. A panel of four doctors concurred with the medical pronouncements of the Warren Commission in 1968 . Then in 1975, the Rockefeller Commission reported that there was no plausible evidence as to any involvement of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) . Another investigation was carried out by the House Select Committee on Assassinations in 1979, and it agreed with the Warren Commission on most of its conclusions but held the position that high was the probability that the whole affair of gunning down President Kennedy must have involved two shooters who fired at the President.
The Kennedy Assassination Records
Congress ratified a law in 1992 making it obligatory for all the assassination-related records, which were about five million pages to be transferred to the National Archives. Of all these records, 1% is fully withheld, 11% are open but have “sensitive portions,” while the remaining 88% are fully open . Unless the President communicates to the contrary, the 1992 law makes it mandatory for all records to be fully published within 25 years .
Conspiracy Theories on President J. F. Kennedy Assassination
Besides the official narrative on the killing of President Kennedy, other conspiracy theorists have come up with their own theories to throw light on the killing. Some believe that the CIA was involved in the shooting in what is famously known as the CIA Conspiracy. Others, however, adopt the narrative around Organized Crime Conspiracy. Jack Ruby was proved to be involved with organized crime, and he featured prominently in the investigations. The Kennedy-assassination theories posit that he killed Oswald to prevent a revelation of a larger conspiracy.
Gaps in the “Official Story”
The official story has been criticized for many inconsistencies. First, even though the reliability of the test is open to questions, a paraffin test on Oswald’s cheek following his arrest indicated that he had not fired a rifle. The Governor of Texas John Connally who boarded the same limousine with the President said that the bullet that hit him was different to the one that hit the President, bringing the credibility of the Warren Commission to serious doubts. Finally, it is inconceivable that Lee Oswald, a “regular” guy from nowhere could kill an American president. Many view this story as fabricated and false .
Lessons from Kennedy Assassination
Kennedy’s assassination changed Presidential Security in a number of ways. First, there is no more use of open cars for Presidents, just like Presidential “strolls” have been discarded. The Presidents also now enjoy lifetime security coverage and the practice of “access denied” for American Presidents to minimize possible security breaches. Finally, the strength of the Secret Service has been beefed up prominently as seen in the comparison of the 513 men in 1963 to 3,200 personnel today .
Bibliography
Oltmans, Willem L., Michael A. Rinella, and David Stephenson. Reporting on the Kennedy Assassination. University Press of Kansas, 2017.
Owen, Amos. 2017. “JFK Assassination: Questions That Won’t Go Away”. BBC News, , 2017. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-41741216.
Rohrich, Rod J., and Aaron Weinstein. “Reply: The assassination of John F. Kennedy: revisiting the medical data.” Plastic and reconstructive surgery 133, no. 6 (2014): 895e.
