Who Killed JFK? Essay, Research Paper

Before we started the section on John F. Kennedy in our class I would have said that Lee Harvey Oswald assassinated him without a question in my mind. After reviewing videos on this subject in class I am now not so sure. Was there really a conspiracy to kill Kennedy or as a nation do we over analyze something that was an open and shut case?

After reviewing the information in class I do not think Oswald was the lone assassin. I do not even think that Oswald was the assassin. The most convincing evidence that I received was the video showed in class where there was a man who was a specialist in stripping away layers in photographs down to tiny particles. He had a picture of the shooting of JFK and stripped the layers away. The picture showed tiny particles coming off the back of JFK?s head. Seeing this made me come to the conclusion that JFK was not shot from behind but from the front therefore Oswald could not of shot JFK because the book depository was positioned behind the presidents vehicle. I think that the death of JFK was pinned on Oswald because the police were pressured to find the assassin of JFK. Oswald was an easy target because he openly held communist beliefs during a time when the cold war and anti-communist feelings were at its highest. I believe that Jack Ruby truly shot Oswald so that Mrs. Kennedy would not have to relive that day when Oswald went to trial. People do strange things when caught up in the moment and the whole country was turned upside down over the assassination of President Kennedy. People thought it was suspicious that Jack Ruby was able to get so close to Oswald. He was able to do this because he was known by many of the officers, frequented the station and therefore was not perceived as a threat. I think the attitude changed towards the government after the assassination because the government did not run the investigation efficiently. They should of hired a group outside the governments CIA and FBI branches to run the investigation so that they could get an objective view instead of the view that the FBI and CIA knew their superiors wanted.

I believe that we are more cynical in 2000 than 1963. We as a country have been through a lot of eye openers in the 37 years that have passed since the Presidents assassination. Watergate, the Vietnam Conflict, Whitewater, the Lewinsky scandal, not to mention how everyday we are saturated by violence on the news and in television. As a society we have started to expect the worst in people.

I do not think that we need to change the way we teach United States History so that we can deal with issues like that of the Kennedy assassination and its impact. It would be nice if we could go in depth about all the important topics that happened in our history but in order to do that we would have to extend the American History course to two years. The course as it is now just fits into the one-year time frame.