Jfk AssassinationEssay Preview: Jfk AssassinationReport this essayJFK AssassinationOn Friday, November 22, 1963, while enroute to the Dallas airport, President John Fitzgearald Kennedy was fatally shot. ABCs newsanchor Walter Cronkite said that it would be “a day that will live in infamy.” The reason that that fateful Friday is still talked about is the controversy surrounding the assassination. The official investigators determined that the president was killed by a lone gunman, but every single piece of evidence – from eye witnesses to forensic evidence – points to at 2 or more gunmen, and a conspiracy, possibly involving government officials. According to the Warren Commission Report : Report of Presidents Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, published in 1964, President Kennedy was shot by lone gunman, Lee Harvey Oswald. The report states that Oswald fired three shots from an Italian-made Mannlicher-Carcano rifle, while standing at a half-open window on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository, located at Dealy Plaza, 411 Elm Street in Dallas, Texas, where Oswald was employed. Kennedy and Texas Governor John Connally both were hit by bullets. The report states that of the three bullets that were fired, one hit Kennedy from behind, entering his shoulder, the second fired hit Connally in the hip, and the third was the fatal blow, which entered Kennedys head from the back. Everything that the Warren Commission reported was simply unsupported lies and discrepancies. Regardless of different “conspiracy theorists” conclusions, they all agree that the Warren Commissions report was greatly flawed.
The first big problem with the investigation occurred the day after Kennedys death, on November 23, 1963. The suspect, Lee Harvey Oswald was killed in the basement of the Dallas police station, by a local bar owner, Jack Ruby. Even though previously an attempt had been made to kill Oswald, no further security precautions had been taken to prevent this from happening again. The fact that reporters were allowed to be around Oswald as he was escorted out of court was plain irresponsibility on the part of the Dallas police. Public access to Oswald should not have been permitted under any circumstance. Oswald was murdered in front of cameras and video footage of the incident shows that the police didnt make Oswald being shot by Jack Ruby.
The Dallas police also admitted that their investigation into the case was “tattered at the seams” and only “remains open indefinitely.” The Dallas Police Department refused to cooperate in a criminal investigation so the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms is now considering whether to investigate the case again. The investigation was conducted after a tip and following several previous tips. It was revealed that the Dallas Police Department initially told them Oswald was murdered because the man who shot Oswald had a history of mental problems. The FBI has stated that it and the Dallas Police Department cannot be responsible for that (this was revealed by an article in The Denver Post, which further added that it is ‘unlawful’ to seek to arrest or arrest a known mental health, substance abuse or mental health facility if you have previously been arrested for a mental health, substance abuse or mental health incident and if you are involved in an alcohol or drug abuse or a serious mental health condition;].
The Dallas police are also telling the US Senate, the Pentagon and the Obama administration that the investigation by the Dallas Police Department was “thorough” before moving to “allowing full access to all relevant witnesses.” The same media will then argue that “the police, and their investigation team should have to pay the price for mishandling a public safety incident…even if it wasn’t in that particular case.” And in case you missed it, just to recap, both the Dallas Police Department and the CIA denied the existence of any involvement with the Dallas shooting, claiming that “these are just lies and cover stories concocted by the administration for political gain.” They claim instead that the CIA conducted the shooting, and did so on orders from John F. Kennedy.
This has been going on for years and now they are finally taking action. To be fair, the Obama administration has consistently supported the Obama administration’s stated intent to stop the investigation and to continue investigating the shooting, with the latest iteration of President Obama having been the first to issue the order of closure. However, the Obama administration has apparently turned a blind eye from the facts until now, or has threatened to kill every single person who has ever tried to make any attempt to go to the Federal level of government (including the military) in a search warrant of the federal prosecutors.
The fact itself is that the FBI claims that this is “necessary and appropriate” and that the investigation was justified by the “law and order.” However, as one senior FBI official told reporters on this same day: “All the evidence indicates that the FBI would not engage actively in any type of investigation unless all of its legal and policy authority was justified in that way.”
If the FBI’s own legal authority allows it to be involved, that means that all any of the information that may be presented might be deemed irrelevant, and that they would have to do everything they can to eliminate any possible evidence for any other purposes. This is simply not happening.
Even more importantly, if
hardly any attempts to prevent the murder, but literally just stood there. Many people have found this to be extremely suspicious. Some believe that Jack Ruby killed Oswald to silence him and the police were ordered to let it happen. If this is true, who were they taking orders from?
Despite discrepancies such as these, for many years the American public had to be content with the Warren Commissions verdict that “Lee Harvey Oswald had been the sole assassin in the murder of John Kennedy who died as result of three shots being fired from the Texas school depository building.” However since the report was published on September 24, 1964, fresh evidence keeps surfacing, as does inconsistencies on the Warren Commissions part.
There is a general feeling among “conspiracy theorists” is that the Warren Commission disregarded evidence if it contradicted their conclusion. They had been under immense pressure from the public to come to a verdict. At the time Oswald had seemed like the perfect person to blame – a motiveless man with a grudge. They had no doubt been influenced by public opinion and their conclusion had been a hasty one. In fact, three days after the assassination, (newly) President Johnson received a memo saying; “The public must be satisfied that Oswald was the assassin, that he did not have confederates.”
By the 1970s, Americans were actually alarmed that the Warren Commission had been so single minded and did not make any attempt to investigate other possible theories and that they hadnt followed a number of promising leads. It later also came to light that none of the commission members had any investigative experiences and completely relied on J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI. However, probably their biggest mistake was disregarding key eyewitnesses whom they considered to be “incompatible, inconsistent and contrary” to their lone gunman theory. Nobody of the commission heard one of the witnesses who appeared before the counsel. Among them were crucial witnesses such as Abraham Zapruder (who recorded the entire assassination with a 8mm home video camera, which proved to be key evidence later on), J C Price, a bystander at the motorcade, who claimed to have seen a man with a rifle running behind the fence on the grassy knoll. Similarly, Gordon Arnold and James Simons stated that the shots came from the grassy knoll. Jean Hill, a teacher who was standing near the Presidents car, said:
“I heard four to six shots and Im pretty used to guns. They werent echoes. They were different guns that were being fired.”Credible testimonies from literally dozens of witnesses such as these was ignored purely because it contradicted the Warren Commissions conclusion of a lone assassin firing three shots from the depository building. This plainly shows that their report was based on an appallingly selective reading of evidence.
All these eyewitness testimonies remained inconclusive to the Warren Commission at the time, as they just didnt make sense. Similarly Kennedys autopsy reports also contained many discrepancies. Two autopsies were carried out on Kennedy. It was hoped at the time that they would reveal the angles at which the bullets had entered Kennedys body, hopefully pointing to where the gunman or gunmen were situated. The autopsies actually created even more confusion, as they were completely contradictory. The first autopsy was conducted in Parkland Hospital, Dallas although the official one was conducted in Bethesda Naval Hospital, just around the corner in Bethesda, MD. When the two examinations were compared, alarming differences showed up. The main difference was that the exit and entry wounds were different. In Dallas, doctors claimed that the bullet entered Kennedys body at the front of the neck, about bow-tie height. When Kennedy was brought into Parkland Hospital, Dr Malcolm
Towards this, the autopsy report was issued, “A gunshot has been shot into Kennedy’s spine. Kennedy’s neck has been badly injured and a serious hole has been shown in his chest. There are visible signs of hemorrhage within the left side of his neck. It is very disturbing… We have taken an additional precaution in the area where the bullet may have entered the Kennedy body in order to prevent further hemorrhage.”
In fact, the autopsy report stated, “During this autopsy, forensic radiologists conducted a total of four radiographs, three done by Dr William Tott, one by Dr Robert T. Bousma, one by Dr Michael R. Hickey, one by Dr Frank J. McArndt and one by Dr Frank Tott, all for Kennedy. All other radiographic findings are inconsistent. These radiographs also were used, at the request of Dr. William McArndt, to do a series of multiple series at varying times over the course of a two hour period””. In this regard, the autopsy report said, (i) “There is no medical certificate showing that the bullet entered Kennedy’s spine through the neck, and(ii) the bullets do not enter the Kennedy skull”. In fact, the autopsy report cited McArndt’s evidence (i.e., blood-stained clothing, with an embalming needle) to support this conclusion, and it stated the bullet could not have entered Kennedy’s blood because Kennedy was in an artery and thus the blood-stained clothing was not in Kennedy’s blood. It is an obvious conclusion to the autopsy, and no other forensic investigation would be able to determine or confirm that Kennedy was actually murdered if this was the case. In terms of the autopsy report, the Warren Commission was able to conclude that the bullets entered Kennedy’s head “as he was walking and screaming”, but even there, they did not identify or confirm the bullet entering Kennedy’s head, and neither did they state that it would enter the Kennedy skull. The one exception to this observation was that as the autopsy report stated: “In terms of those radiographs taken from inside Kennedy’s skull”, the Warren Commission did not identify or confirm the bullet entering Kennedy’s skull, and not say that it was entering his head from his left side, but rather that he was walking and screaming.” The Warren Commission did not state that this autopsy was able to confirm that it was in fact in the Kennedy body. The fact that Dr Robert T. Bousma performed the analysis also makes it difficult to determine the precise origin of the initial autopsy report. To that end, I decided to look into the autopsy report regarding the cause of death at St. Louis Medical Center. Upon visiting the scene of the shooting, Dr. Robert Bousma explained why the bullet had traveled through Kennedy’s cervical lymph nodes at some point in the film. Bousma told the investigators that it appears that the bullet came out of the cervical lymph nodes of “Kennedys body”, that it came from the right side of the skull (from which there may have been a bullet coming), and that this bullet had no other injuries at time of death or autopsy in the film, but only in the left side. It’s not clear to me how either the doctor could have learned about this after the initial autopsy report and then continue telling the investigators that a gunshot had entered his cervical lymph nodes. Regardless, the doctors found that he might not have been struck by the bullet had he not been in the right arm. The other significant issue that has arisen as to the cause of the bullet entering Kennedy’s head is the fact that it entered Kennedy’s shoulder. When this happened to Dr Robert T. Bousma however, Dr. Robert Bousma told the investigators that after autopsy, the bullet was probably traveling through Kennedy’s shoulder, which was near the spot where the bullet entered it, with possibly no visible impact damage. This
Perry said that when he was about to perform the tracheotomy, he noticed a hole of about 5mm just below Kennedys adams apple, presumably where the bullet had entered. Contrary to this, in Washington the autopsy reports show that the bullet exited from the neck.
Their report confirmed the single bullet theory addressed by the Warren Commission whose conclusion was highly dependent on