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The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy

Secondary Source: //Kenneth A. Rahn's Academic JFK Assassination Site. []//

**The Ten Toughest Issues of the Assassination**

Although the JFK assassination is full of difficult issues, a central few have proved the hardest to explain other than by a conspiracy. These are the ten that have convinced the most people that the assassination had to have been the work of a conspiracy. These are the questions that they "simply couldn't get past" as they considered whether a lone assassin could have done it. Eventually, each will be explained fully on its own page.

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 * 1) __JFK's lurch backward and to the left__. Must it not mean that the killing shot came from the front and to the right?
 * 1) __ Ruby's shooting Oswald just two days after the assassination __ . How could this mean anything other than conspiracy afoot?
 * 1) __The back wound that is too low to create a downward trajectory through the neck__. Another obvious indicator of conspiracy?
 * 1) __Governor Connelly's obvious reaction to a shot 1.6 seconds after President Kennedy was first hit, combined with his strong testimony that he was hit separately__. How could this mean anything other than quick, separate hits and therefore conspiracy?
 * 1) __The wound in the front of the throat that was repeatedly called a wound of entry by the doctors in Dallas__. Doesn't a frontal hit mean conspiracy?
 * 1) __The unbelievably small damage to CE 399, the bullet that allegedly created seven wounds in two bodies__. No way that one bullet can pass through two bodies, create seven wounds, break two bones, and emerge virtually unscathed. There had to be two shots, and hence conspiracy.
 * 1) __The wound in the back of the head seen by the full medical staff at Parkland and some at Bethesda, but not shown by the official photos or X-rays, or by the Zapruder film__. Can we possibly avoid concluding that the autopsy and the Zapruder film have been faked by the conspirators?
 * 1) __ Shots from the grassy knoll heard by so many witnesses __ . How could there not have been a second shooter there?
 * 1) __The amazing feat of firing three shots in six seconds at a moving target with an inaccurate rifle that had not been practiced with in months__. The FBI's best couldn't do it; how could Oswald have?
 * 1) __The disconnect between the monstrosity of the assassination and the mousiness of Oswald__. Could one loser malcontent really bring down the President of the United States and the leader of the free world? The deed and the alleged doer don't match.

What is a Conspiracy?

1. the act of conspiring

2. an evil, unlawful, treacherous, or surreptitious plan formulated in secret by two or more persons; plot.

3. a combination of persons for a secret, unlawful, or evil purpose: He joined the conspiracy to overthrow the government.

 4. Law. an agreement by two or more persons to commit a crime, fraud, or other wrongful act

 5. any concurrence in action; combination in bringing about a given result

= Secondary Source: Dealey Plaza Revisited. An excerpt from: //A web-only companion to the [|November 1998 issue], featuring the assassination of President Kennedy//. By Helen Thompson = (…) On November 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy **arrived at Dallas’ Love Field from Fort Worth at 11:37** in the morning. He was accompanied by Mrs. Kennedy, Vice President Lyndon Johnson, and Texas governor and Mrs. John Connelly. They were in Dallas as part of a tour for the 1964 Presidential campaign…

…**At 12:30**, as the open limousine carrying the Kennedys and the Connelly’s moved west on Elm past Dealey Plaza, shots rang out. They were fired at the motorcade on Elm Street, starting just past the oak tree on the north side of Elm and stopping before the limousine reached the second lamp post on the north side of the street. Both the President and the Governor were wounded. The limousine picked up speed and raced to the Parkland Hospital Emergency Room where Kennedy was pronounced dead at 1:00.

Police at Dealey questioned eye witnesses and immediately began searching the Texas School Book Depository, a textbook distribution facility facing Dealey Plaza at 411 Elm. They also searched the rail yard in back of the pergola on Dealey Plaza, and a fenced area north of Elm and west of the Depository later known as the grassy knoll (the grassy knoll is on the north side of Elm Street between the parking lots for the former School Book Depository and triple underpass, in front of and to the west of the Bryan Colonnade). No evidence was found.


 * At 1:12 **, after a search of the School Book Depository, police discovered a barricade of boxes, three spent bullet cartridges, and a paper bag in the southeast corner window area on the sixth floor. Ten minutes later, they found a rifle between boxes near the six floor staircase. This evidence, along with finger and palm prints on some of the boxes, was later linked to Lee Harvey Oswald, an order clerk who had begun work at the depository October 15, 1963.

Oswald had been seen on the sixth floor about 35 minutes before the motorcade passed the building. He had also been seen in the second-floor lunchroom about two minutes after the shooting. Police investigators had released him and Oswald left the building through the front door.


 * At 1:18**, a call came in on the police radio that Dallas Patrolman J.D. Tippit had been shot at Tenth and Patton in the Oak Cliff section of town. Oswald was seen a few minutes later at the Hardy Shoe Store a few blocks away from the Tippit shooting. The witness, Johnny Brewer, led police to the Texas Theater where Oswald was arrested at 1:50. He was linked to both the Kennedy assassination and to the Tippit murder.


 * On November 24 **, as Oswald was being transferred from the City Jail to the County Jail, he was shot and killed by Jack Ruby, a local night club owner. (Ruby was convicted and sentenced to death in March 1964, but the verdict was overturned in the fall of 1966. While awaiting a second trial, Ruby died of cancer at Parkland Hospital in January 1967.)
 * On November 29, 1963**, President Johnson established a commission, headed by Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren, to investigate the assassination. The Warren Commission made its findings public on September 24, 1964—it concluded that Oswald acted alone when he killed the President. Discrepancies in the Warren Report led to numerous subsequent official and unofficial investigations in succeeding years.


 * On January 2, 1979**, the House of Representative’s Select Committee on Assassinations supported the Warren panel’s conclusion that Oswald fired the fatal shots. But, the committee also found that, based on audio recordings of the shooting taken from police radios at the time of the assassination, that a second gunman had fired at the motorcade from the grassy knoll. The House Select Committee concluded that President Kennedy “was probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy.”

These findings were later repudiated by the FBI, and in 1988 the Justice Department formally closed the investigation into the assassination, concluding that there was no “persuasive evidence” of conspiracy.

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