JFK Essay, Research Paper

It’s one of the most controversial cases in modern American history. Did Lee Harvey Oswald kill John Kennedy by himself, or did a conspiracy do it? And if a conspiracy did it, did the conspiracy include Oswald, the CIA, or maybe even the Mafia? If you are like most Americans, you believe that a conspiracy killed Kennedy. And if you are like most Americans, you have mostly heard one side of the story.

There were a lot of issues that were never really clarified. There were also a lot of contradictions between almost every witness, clue, or even what was supposed to be hard evidence. Some evidence it even seems was made up to just to conceal the truth or maybe even more lies. The question was so trivial that Lyndon Johnson (the president after JFK died) constructed a commission devoted to find out the truth about the assassination of the president. This commission was called the Warren Commission and was headed by Chief Justice Earl Warren. The Warren Commission concluded in their final report that Lee Harvey Oswald, being a lone gunman with no accomplices, shot and killed the president shooting three times and hitting Kennedy only twice. This report fell victim to years of ridicule and intense interrogation. Yet it stands as the official explanation of the death of JFK.

I believe that this report is false and it does not explain the actual events that made it possible to kill JFK. I think it was the CIA who wanted JFK dead and they hired Lee Harvey Oswald to take the fall. I will give facts to support my theory.

One of the most controversial questions is that “was there only one gunman?” I believe that there was more then one gunman and that neither of the gunmen was Oswald. First is to state that there was a Mannlicher-Carcano rifle that was supposedly Oswalds was found on the sixth floor of the School Book depository where Oswald worked. This rifle surfaced a couple of questions in it self. It was not Oswald’s rifle because the rifle Oswald bought from a mail order catalog AMERICAN RIFLEMAN years before was listed by them at 36 inches long. However, the Mannlicher-Carcano that Oswald supposedly abandoned on the sixth floor of the Book Depository Building is 40.2 inches long. And in addition the FBI and the Army established that the alleged murder weapon, a Mannlicher-Carcano rifle, could not be fired faster than 2.3 seconds per shot, even in the hands of experienced, expert riflemen. Lone-gunman theorists claim that subsequent Carcano rifle tests proved that the weapon could be fired in around 1.6 seconds per shot, but these tests did not use the same Carcano that Oswald allegedly fired. The FBI and the Army found that THAT Carcano could not be fired faster than 2.3 seconds per shot, even when used by expert shooters. For years the traditional lone-gunman scenario was that Oswald scored two hits out of three shots in less than six seconds. This is really the only plausible shooting scenario if one assumes that there was only one assassin and that he fired from the sixth-floor window.

This doesn’t even take in the account of Oswalds shot. Oswald was in the marines but did not excel in marksmanship. Even after weeks of practice and intensive training, Oswald barely managed to qualify at the level of “Sharpshooter,” the middle of three rifle qualification levels in the Marines. He obtained a score of 212, two points above the minimum for the “Sharpshooter” level. In other words, even after extensive training and practice, and even though he was firing at stationary targets with a semi-automatic rifle and had plenty of time to shoot. This clearly gives reason that Oswald could not have executed the task of shooting JFK.

There is still one lingering problem with the rifle that was found. The Dallas police found some partial fingerprints on the rifles magazine housing. The FBI studied these prints the day after the assassination and determined that they were Oswalds. What is odd about these prints is that they were located on a part of the rifle that would not have been handled while it was being fired. Some researchers are understandably skeptical of the identification of the partial prints as Oswald’s. But, if the prints were his, then it would suggest they were made as a result of Oswald being manipulated into handling the rifle shortly before the shooting. In this I believe that Oswald never really owned the rifle and it was a stage by the CIA to throw the blame on him.

There is also evidence to support that the rifle may have never been purchased by Oswald himself. It was stated that the order form, money order, and envelope used to purchase the Mannlicher-Carcano were filled out in handwriting identified as Oswald’s. Furthermore, they point to Oswald’s alleged use of the alias “Alek Hidell.” The rifle was sent to Oswald’s post office box, but it was ordered in the name of, and addressed to, “A. Hidell.” And according to the Dallas police, Oswald was carrying an “Alek J. Hidell” ID card when he was arrested

To begin with, Oswald was at work when he is said to have purchased the money order. So who bought the money order? If Oswald didn’t buy it, why does the handwriting on it seem to be his? There have been accounts of people forging someone’s handwriting flawlessly especially when only a small sample of writing is required.

Another problem with the connection between Oswald and the Carcano is that nobody at Oswald’s post office reported giving him a hefty package such as the kind in which a rifle would be shipped. In fact, none of those postal workers reported ever giving Oswald ANY kind of a package. Oddly, the FBI apparently made no effort to establish that Oswald picked up the rifle from the post office, or that he had ever received a package of any kind there. Furthermore, postal regulations required that only those persons named on the post office box’s registration form could receive items of mail from the box, yet there is no evidence that Oswald listed the name of Hidell on the form. In fact, in a report dated 3 June 1964, the FBI stated, “Our investigation has revealed that Oswald did NOT indicate on his application that others, including an ‘A. Hidell,’ would receive mail through the box in question”

All of these events have shown that Oswald could not have shot from the window with the

Carcano rifle. He was even put to a polygraph test in which he stated that he did not kill President Kennedy, which was registered as the truth. Polygraphs are known not to be full proof but they only give false positives not false negatives. So Oswald would have been telling the truth when he said that he did not kill the president. But they did not seam to follow up with a question asking if he was involved in a conspiracy to kill the president.

He was even linked to the CIA by a report in Newsday. These reports center on a shadowy figure called Maurice Bishop (likely to be an alias) said to have been an intelligence agent during the early 1960s. Antonio Veciana, founder of the Alpha 66 Cuban exile group that launched repeated guerrilla raids against Fidel Castro’s regime, testified before the House committee that he considered Bishop his U.S. intelligence contact; that he met with Bishop more than 100 times over a 13-year period; that Bishop had directed him to organize Alpha 66 and had paid him $253,00. Moreover, he said, he had met briefly in Dallas with Bishop and Oswald sometime around September, 1963, two months before Kennedy’s Nov. 22 assassination. G. Robert Blakey, chief counsel to the House committee, said: “After careful analysis, we decided not to credit Veciana’s claim because, among other things, there was no proof that Maurice Bishop existed.” This links Oswald to the CIA even though no other links were ever established.

Based on all of the evidence I have given I have come to this conclusion. The CIA wanted President Kennedy dead. Of course it would have been bad for them to find a way to kill him that may be able to get linked back to them. They devised a plan to eliminate Kennedy. All they need is a way to put the blame on someone else. Someone unimportant, someone who would agree to be a scapegoat for the CIA. They found Oswald. They orchestrated Oswald’s actions for months preceding the assassination. On the day of the murder Oswald was planted in the School Book Depository. While another man was stationed with possibly two guns (one to shoot Kennedy with and one to leave with Oswald’s prints) on the sixth floor. If the shooter had only one gun (the one with Oswald’s prints) there must have been another shooter. Maybe from the grassy knoll, this I do not know. But the shots were fired regardless of whom it was. And the shooter(s) fled the scene. Oswald who was in the School Book Depository then left and was ordered to act as if he had shot Kennedy. Oswald now was going where he was told to go by the CIA, and was stopped by Officer Tippit. Now here is when the facts get a little cloudy.

One of the oddest assumptions was that Officer Tippit stopped Oswald because he was able to identify him as the man described in the police broadcasts that started about 12:45 P.M. According to a FBI statement, the source of the original description was “an unidentified citizen.” The description provided by this citizen (later assumed to be Howard Brennan) was for a man “running from the Texas School Book Depository immediately after the assassination.”

The description itself was of a “white male, approximately thirty, slender build, height five feet, ten inches, weight one hundred sixty-five pounds” and believed to be armed with a .30-caliber rifle. This description missed Oswald by six years and about fifteen pounds, yet based on this description Officer Tippit stopped Oswald.

The more one thinks about it, the more one realizes how extremely implausible and unlikely this scenario is. Why would Tippit have stopped Oswald? The police description could have fit a good quarter to a third of the male population of Dallas. Oswald was some three miles from Dealey Plaza, walking in a quiet suburb when Tippit supposedly stopped him. None of the witnesses who saw Tippit’s assailant just before Tippit stopped him said the man was walking unusually fast or in any way acting strange or suspicious.

Odder still is the fact that Tippit supposedly approached his assailant from behind. He reportedly drove up slowly behind the man, pulled up alongside him, and then asked him to come over to the driver’s window for what was described as having the appearance of a “friendly chat”! Is this how a policeman approach and try to apprehend a person whom they suspect might have just killed the President of the United States? So Tippit, based on a rather general, if not somewhat vague, description that could have fit a good portion of the male population of Dallas, identified Oswald, from behind, and then called him over to the window for what appeared to witnesses to be a friendly chat! The whole story smacks of fabrication and brazen implausibility.

Tippit was at least three miles from the patrol district to which he had been assigned that day. By “sheer coincidence,” he was assigned to the Oak Cliff area, where Oswald “just happened to live.” What on earth was Tippit doing in quiet, suburban Oak Cliff when he should have been in Dealey Plaza or at Parkland Hospital helping with security?

In light of these facts I am sure that Officer Tippit was part of the plot. He had too many holes in his story for it to hold up to truth. And he also puts blame on Oswald. The CIA had done a good job putting all of this on Oswald. The CIA then felt they had done a good job of a cover up and not at all a chance they had they would take any heat. But then a question arose. What would happen if Oswald would talk? He didn’t have much to lose in talking. Then they realized they couldn’t let anyone new in on the truth. This is when they hired Jack Ruby. He was going to die anyway. He had cancer, and wasn’t too smart anyway. With a little convincing and maybe even some bribery they convinced him that he could pull this off. He did a good job with his story. Maybe a few slip ups here and there but nothing that gave any more light on the actual case. It was now the CIA knew they had created the one of the most famous conspiracy ever to hit mankind. And to this day only certain individuals know who was actually involved. Perhaps they are already dead. Perhaps they are still alive and will take it to their grave. Or even they will release the truth in the far future just to clean their conscience. Could it be true that man isn’t even ready to hear what actually happened on that day. The actual events that transpired are maybe to complex to understand at present day. Human kind regardless if we do find out the truth will always be skeptical and never be certain of anything.

My Mother was in 7th grade sitting in her private school in Connecticut. The teacher was called out in the hall by the principal. And in a moment came slowly back in an announced in a weak voice “the president has just been shot.” They began praying until the end of the school day. Their principal kept returning to the class to give little updates. But she did not find out until the bus ride home from school. For the days following she sat very attentively in front of the television watching every update that came on. She even saw when Jack Ruby shot Oswald. She remembers more about that day then she remembers about last week. “It was all such a shock that this could happen to our president.”