Few events in history allow the witnesses to never forget them. Time heals all wounds, and eventually, warps the memory. But for those who were alive and old enough to remember the events of November 22, 1963, the day President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, the memory lives on. Julie Shutter was an eighth grader in a Catholic School on Staten Island, New York at the time.
She has never forgotten the events. In a personal interview, she said, “We were in music class at the time. The principal of the school came in and said, ‘Boys and girls, the president has been shot.’ They then walked us across the street to the church, to pray for him.” This was what it was like for many, and shortly after, it was revealed that one man, Lee Harvey Oswald, had done the killing. It all seemed cut and dry, and the nation was ready to move on.
However, from 1966 to 1969, New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison, who would later go on to write, On the Trail of the Assassins, would conduct an investigation into the matter, after not being content with the Warren Commission’s version of the story. This would open the door to numerous conspiracy theories, suggesting that Lee Harvey Oswald was part of an elaborate conspiracy to kill the president.
These conspiracies range from the FBI, CIA, Italian Mafia, Russian Mafia, Fidel Castro, Lyndon Johnson, and various other people or organizations that worked in collusion with one another, or alone, to assassinate Kennedy. It will be impossible to pin who exactly did it, but it is not impossible to prove that Oswald was not alone, and if he was not alone, than there was, in fact, a conspiracy.
In, “Was Lee Harvey Oswald the Real Killer of President Kennedy?”, an article by Richard Carter, he goes on to say, “A number of observers have sworn they saw gunmen firing at JFK from different locations. The assassination was captured on film, and in many still photos” (6). The film he is referring to, is the “Zapruder Film”, an amateur recording by Abraham Zapruder who was perched with a perfect angle of the shooting.
This film, which has no audio, clearly shows there being four shots fired, not three, as published in the Warren Commission. If one watches the film closely, they can see the President stop waving at the sound of the first shot. He then grabs at his throat, after the second shot strikes him there. A third shot would cause him to slump over, into Jackie Kennedy’s arms, and finally, the fourth and fatal shot rips a part of his head off.
The Warren Commission’s response to this was to draw up the “single bullet theory”, which claims that only one shot was responsible for all the wounds leading up to the head shot that killed him. These wounds also include those suffered by Texas Governor William Connally.
The theory claims that the first shot entered Kennedy’s back at a downward angle, then turned upward to exit the throat, then exited forward into Connally’s shoulder, then into Connally’s wrist and hand, and finally, into Connally’s right thigh, before falling out on the floor looking like it was never fired, according to an archive of the photo found on the website 9-11 Research, for an article by Michael Green called, “Besmirching History”.
In the film, JFK, directed by Oliver Stone, the character of Jim Garrison tells a jury about how it can be proved that all those wounds could be inflicted with one bullet, because of testing done in a nuclear physics laboratory. He then remarks, “Physics can also prove that an elephant can hang off the side of a cliff with its tail tied to a daisy. But use your common sense.” The biggest piece of evidence the Commission had also proved to be the most ludicrous.
Taking a closer look at the film also reveals the President, moving back and to the left after getting hit with the final shot. This would prove that the shot came from the front, and was not fired by Oswald at all, who was aiming from behind. In, “The Zapruder Film: Reframing JFK’s Assassination”, by Kermit L. Hall, he reinforces this by writing, “…these frames show clearly that Kennedy was struck by bullets in the front of the limousine rather than, as the Warren Commission reported, behind it.” This is obviously common sense, because if the President was shot in the back of the head, he would have moved forward, to the right, and not back, and to the left.
In order to reveal if Lee Harvey Oswald was not alone, the simple way would have been to just ask him. Unfortunately, as portrayed in Stone’s JFK, Oswald was given little to no legal representation at the time of his arrest. In archive footage seen in this film, of the real interview, Oswald claims, “I am just a patsy”. This is the most telling of any quote he ever spoke. If Oswald had done the assassination alone, when challenged, the first thing he would do is claim innocence, and say he did not commit the crime. But by claiming he was just a patsy, he is not only admitting guilt, but alluding to the fact that there were others involved, and he was the fall-guy.
Unfortunately, two days later, Oswald himself was killed on his way to being transported to another jail, by a well known mobster Jack Ruby, according to the article on Crime Magazine titled, “Why Jack Ruby Killed Lee Harvey Oswald”, by Mel Ayton. From the quote collection website, ThinkExist, Ruby claims his reasoning was, “Someone had to do it. That son of a bitch killed my president.” However, his interrogation as published in the Warren Commission says differently.
Ruby states, “I would like to be able to get a lie detector test or truth serum of what motivated me to do what I did at that particular time, and it seems as you get further into something, even though you know what you did, it operates against you somehow, brain washes you, that you are weak in what you want to tell the truth about and what you want to say which is the truth” (808). Here, Ruby is admitting that now he cannot remember why he murdered Oswald. There is no sense of patriotism here, but confusion. This begs the question to be asked, just why exactly did Ruby kill Oswald? Was it to keep him from telling something that Ruby’s branch of the mob did not want out?
It was a well known secret in Washington in the early 1960’s that the CIA used various outlets of the mob to try and kill Fidel Castro, after Cuba became a threat to the United States. Simon Tisdall, a writer for the British website, Guardian, writes in his article, “CIA Conspired with Mob to Kill Castro”, that the CIA tried, “…in a bungled 1960 attempt to assassinate Fidel Castro, the leader of Cuba’s communist revolution, according to classified documents published by the agency yesterday.” Since Castro obviously did not die, it could be led to believe that relations between the mob and the CIA soured towards Kennedy, who ordered the agency to carry out the assassination.
This is where Jack Ruby’s name really comes into play. Ayton later writes, “It was Ruby’s relationships with unsavory mob-linked characters throughout his life that led to a great deal of speculation that he was controlled by organized crime. The Warren Commission’s investigation into his background failed to dispel this notion because the commission – which basically relied on hundreds of FBI interviews of Ruby’s known associates – did not fully investigate his alleged Mafia connections and his trips to Cuba.” That establishes the Ruby-Cuba connection, which Earl Warren chose not to investigate. The decision not to investigate further only deepens the mystery.
Ruby would be convicted of Oswald’s murder, and would not have the chance to speak the truth, as he said during his interrogation. According to the website Goochinfo, Ruby was granted a re-trial in 1967, a year after being convicted. But it just so happens that Ruby would die mysteriously of cancer just four months after a re-trial was announced, although there were no signs of this cancer manifesting itself before that. The website also goes on to say, “On January 3, 1967, Jack Ruby died from the effects of galloping lung cancer before his second trial could begin. He claimed that he had been injected with cancer.” This supposed injection is depicted in a deleted scene on the DVD version of JFK, after Ruby was told it was a routine flu shot.
Lastly, in order to tie together Oswald, the mob, and the CIA, there must be some evidence suggesting that Oswald was involved with the CIA. The website, Rense, features a photograph of a confirmed CIA memorandum dated March 3, 1964. It states, “Oswald subject was trained by this agency, under cover of the Office of Naval Intelligence for Soviet assignments.” It is this same Office of Naval Intelligence that was housed in New Orleans, which was where Jim Garrison was district attorney. In his book, On the Trail of the Assassins, he says that this was one of the sparks that pushed him to investigate further. Because Oswald can now be tied to the CIA, and the CIA to the mob, it can therefore be established that he was not alone in the murder.
Lee Harvey Oswald was not some “lone nut assassin” as the government made him out to be. Notice that whenever someone wants to try and establish that only one man killed someone, they use all three of his names. John Wilkes Booth killed Abraham Lincoln, but was part of a vast conspiracy that also targeted Andrew Johnson and William Seward. Yet the textbooks that the children of America are reading from only talk about Booth, and not the eight others. The same can be said for the assassination of Martin Luther King, who was killed by James Earl Ray.
As stated earlier, it will be impossible to tell who hatched the idea for the assassination, and who covered it up, but none of that is nearly as important as simply proving that Oswald was not alone. One must just use their own common sense, and they can see that what the government’s story of what happened just does not make sense. Was it possible that Oswald was alone? Yes, but not likely. One must open their eyes and dig deeper, because the great part of America is the right to free speech, and the right to seek the truth. The government has lied to the people since day one, and it is about time the people stop falling for it.
With questions or comments, or to request a complete list of works cited, please email the author at nyr1199@comcast.net.
