John F. Kennedy assassination conspiracy theories

JFK minutes before the Martians killed him.

Some dare call it Conspiracy

What THEY don't want you to know!

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“”Oswald did it. Please don't send me any screwball theories, opinions, or even questions. I've heard them all and I'm tired of it.

—Alexander Jason, Crime Scene Analyst

The assassination of John F. Kennedy is one of the most popular sources for conspiracy theories, second perhaps only to 9/11. The people who subscribe to these theories often focus on the idea that Lee Harvey Oswald did not act alone, that he was a "patsy," or that Oswald didn't commit the murder at all. They also often argue that shots were fired from the "grassy knoll" near Dealey Plaza in Dallas, and not only from the Texas School Book Depository from where Oswald shot Kennedy. Some conspiracy theorists also believe that the Warren Commission report was a coverup.

JFK conspiracy theorists are notoriously fractious and may hold to one of several competing theories (or will belt off several of them in rapid succession, as, one by one, each is shown to come up short):

• Oswald made the shot; however, he had some group providing logistics, maybe was a part of a larger "hit team" etc.
• The mafia was behind it, as payback for JFK sleeping with their mistresses and his brother, Robert F. Kennedy, cracking down on organized crime after they allegedly helped them win Illinois in the 1960 election. Alternatively, they did it because JFK went too easy on Fidel Castro, which cost the mob revenues from Cuban casinos.
• Right-wing anti-Castro groups were behind it, as payback for the botched 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion.
• Fidel Castro himself was behind it, in retaliation for the Bay of Pigs invasion or numerous assassination attempts from the CIA.
• The CIA, or a rogue faction of CIA agents and private wingnut activists was behind it.
• The government of Israel and Mossad were behind it, because Kennedy opposed Israel's nuclear weapon development programs.
• The Soviet Union brainwashed Oswald during his time in the USSR and programmed him to do it. That or he was recruited by the KGB to do it. Or the KGB sent a double in his place. Or...
• The Democrats assassinated Kennedy because he was a Conservative. People like Mary Lou Bruner believe this.
• Woody Harrelson's estranged father, Charles Harrelson, was behind it.
• Lyndon Johnson was behind the assassination. (Due to LBJ's personality and style, this is the one that manages to get the most fanfare.)
• Aristotle Onassis arranged the whole thing so he could marry Jackie. According to David Reitzes, in his series highlighting several errors in Oliver Stone's film JFK, "Onassis is targeted in one widely circulated conspiracy manuscript."
• Kennedy was assassinated because he had attempted to restore the printing of paper money by the U.S. Treasury rather than the Federal Reserve bank (a favorite theory of Paulbots).
• Kennedy was assassinated by a cabal who wanted to expand the Vietnam War, because he was about to pull U.S. troops out (a theory which is rather undermined by the fact that just two months before his assassination, Kennedy told Walter Cronkite in a televised interview that "I don't agree with those who say we should withdraw [from Vietnam]. That would be a great mistake.")
• Some focus more on the theory that there was a second gunman at the grassy knoll and, again, Oswald being a "patsy" rather than trying to ascribe any broader conspiratorial motive.
• T. Casey Brennan did it, or so he says. This claim is just one ingredient of his mighty chick-magnetism.
• Principia Discordia author Kerry Thornley was Lee Harvey Oswald's best friend in the Marines in 1959, so there is a Discordianism connection to the assassination. In fact he wrote a book, The Idle Warriors about Oswald and his experience in the Marines before the assassination. This book came out following Oswald's defection to the USSR. It's notable as the first book on Oswald ever.
• Kennedy shot first.
• The driver shot Kennedy. This one is thought to be a parody since there would be millions of people seeing JFK being shot. Unfortunately, it isn't.
• Oswald shot Kennedy through the neck and a Secret Service agent in the following car accidentally shot him in the head raising his rifle to return fire (the third casing by Oswald was used to keep the chamber of his rifle clean). This one is unusual in that it says there was no conspiracy to kill Kennedy, but there was one to cover up an embarrassment for the Secret Service.
• Oswald was a patsy and Joseph Milteer, a right-winger associated with extremist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan and who was under surveillance for threatening to kill the president, had arranged or participated in the assassination. Some believe Milteer was part of a conspiracy masterminded by the Papacy which involved the U.S. Intelligence communities and remnants of the Third Reich brought over during Operation Paperclip.
• Kennedy arranged it all as an elaborate suicide.
• Kennedy was killed by a version of himself from the future, because otherwise it would cause WWIII. (Okay, that makes a lot less sense out of context. But that episode of Red Dwarf was badass.)
• Kennedy survived and was replaced by a double "they" buried instead, alien abducted, still secretly running things from behind the scenes along with his family, the "curse" being a huge smokescreen, died in a mental institution as a vegetable from the brain damage... take your pick.
• Kennedy was shot in the head in Dallas but survived thanks to the government putting a metal plate in his head, they then dyed his skin brown and put him in a nursing home to live out the rest of his days as the senile old man no one believes. After this, he meets Elvis Presley (who everyone thinks is actually just an Elvis impersonator, mainly because this Elvis was bored of being Elvis so he went and swapped places with an Elvis impersonator) and they go on a quest to kill a resurrected mummy who is sometimes referred to as Bubba ho-tep.
• His head just did that.

Conspiracy theories about the assassination are still popular on both the left, right, and amongst the American public.

Investigation

Lyndon Johnson takes the oath of office, with Jackie Kennedy next to him.

The first official investigation was undertaken by the Warren Commission, which was established by President Lyndon Johnson only a week after JFK's murder, and concluded that the assassination was not a conspiracy; all official investigations after it have more or less accepted its findings. However, the United States House Select Committee on Assassination (HSCA), which was established in 1976 to examine the assassinations of both JFK and Martin Luther King, concluded that there was "a "probable conspiracy" in the JFK assassination, but was unable to determine its nature or participants." However, the only evidence which they based this on (a Dictabelt recording made by a motorcycle police officer's radio microphone which was stuck in the open position at the scene) was later debunked; it turns out that "the alleged “shot” sounds were recorded approximately one minute after the assassination". Unsurprisingly, this revelation failed to deter the conspiracy theorists. They also tend to leave out the fact that the HSCA concluded that "Lee Harvey Oswald fired three shots at Kennedy. The second and third shots Oswald fired struck the President. The third shot he fired killed the President." While they released their report in 1979, the "official story" had been under systematic attack from critics since the beginning - this only fed the fires.

Two early books critiquing the Warren Commission report were Inquest by Edward Jay Epstein, and Rush to Judgment by Mark Lane. Both hinted at a conspiracy and were relatively tame by today's standards. Mark Lane later went off the deep end with conspiracy books on several other subjects (including the Jonestown mass suicide and the assassination of Martin Luther King; oddly enough, in footage filmed at Jonestown before the mass suicide, Jim Jones can be heard saying that "Martin Luther King was murdered by a conspiracy", amongst other paranoid ramblings). Another more reliable book criticizing the investigation came from President Gerald Ford, who was actually a member of the Warren Commission. In A Presidential Legacy and The Warren Commission, Ford stated that the CIA destroyed or kept from investigators key facts that would expose operations—which, he said, could easily be read the wrong way as collaborating with the assassination.

The John Birch Society was an early proponent of an assassination conspiracy theory, with an article by Revilo P. Oliver claiming the KGB did it. Liberty Lobby later took up the assassination conspiracy theory and wooed Mark Lane into defending them in a libel lawsuit brought against them by "Plumber" E. Howard Hunt, in response to an article in Spotlight newspaper claiming Hunt was implicated in the assassination (Hunt's children later tried to cash in on a supposed confession, with JFK star Kevin Costner allegedly offering $5 million). Louisiana district attorney Jim Garrison prosecuted New Orleans businessman Clay Shaw in 1969 for conspiracy to commit murder in the Kennedy assassination, claiming that it was the work of a bunch of homosexual males, including Lee Harvey Oswald and Jack Ruby, and that the motive was a "homosexual thrill-killing"; no, seriously, that's how Garrison described it. He said they "had the same motive as Loeb and Leopold when they murdered Bobbie Franks in Chicago back in the twenties". Faced with this utter horseshit, the jury took just 54 minutes to find Shaw not guilty. Author Anthony Summers later described the whole affair as "a grotesque, misdirected shambles."

By all accounts, Garrison was a terrible investigator; conspiracy author Harold Weisberg described him as someone who "could not find a pubic hair in a whorehouse at rush hour." What Big Jim (as he was known to his closest associates) was good at was generating publicity for himself: he even managed to finagle a meeting with James Bond! He would later write a series of books about the Kennedy assassination, one of which (On the Trail of the Assassins) caught the attention of director Oliver Stone. Unfortunately, this did not go down well with other conspiracy theorists. "When [Stone] consulted with members of the loosely knit community of Kennedy assassination researchers, many of them devout believers that a conspiracy had taken John F. Kennedy's life, the filmmaker found many of them equally horrified about his choice of Garrison as his movie's centerpiece."

What could possibly go wrong?

Oliver Stone's spotlight

In his 1991 film JFK, which is really more about Garrison and his witch-hunt "investigation" than the slain president, Oliver Stone largely repeats the same baseless myths and theories promulgated by Jim Marrs and other wingnuts. However, Stone decided to leave out the homosexual thrill-killing part, for fairly obvious reasons; not only was this an absurd motive for killing Kennedy, but the whole case also reeked of homophobia. Nevertheless, the film does contain "a bizarre gay orgy scene" which even Mark Lane criticized; there exists no evidence that Shaw attended any such parties. "With Clay Shaw dead, Lane observed, "Stone was not bound by the laws of defamation which apply, in the United States, only to the living. Apparently, the less-codified rules of common decency were not an impediment either."" Shaw was in fact a lifelong registered Democrat who publicly supported JFK, describing him as "a splendid president". While he was a closeted homosexual ("a secret he guarded as carefully as he could, lest it affect his standing in the community"), Garrison's star witness, Perry Raymond Russo (whose testimony was elicited under the influence of Sodium Pentothal, and who would later describe his experience as a "complete brainwashing job") "never described [meeting Shaw at] any orgy [...] and neither did any of Garrison's other witnesses." Furthermore, one of the characters in the movie brings up the fact that if the CIA or any other intelligence agency had employed Shaw, he would have been "wide open for blackmail 'cause of his homosexuality", which is absolutely true. During the Cold War, "same-sex relationships were considered a threat to national security", especially after the Cambridge Five scandal. The only documented link Shaw ever had with the CIA was as "a contact of the Agency's Domestic Contact Service (DCS)", from December 1948 to May 1956. During that time, Shaw was one of literally thousands of US citizens debriefed each year about their travels and contacts abroad. Given the goals and activities of his employer, the International Trade Mart, it would have been unusual had the CIA not sought information from some of its employees. (The wholly innocuous information Shaw provided DCS is now available for inspection at the National Archives.) Contacts are neither contract agents nor employees of the CIA; they have no more status with that agency than an eyewitness to a crime has with the local police department. As a rule, contacts are not paid, as indeed, Shaw was not. More relevantly, "contact" status can certainly not be related to the notorious exploits of the CIA's Covert Action arm, which conspiracy theorists have endeavored for decades to link to the Kennedy assassination." While a 1992 CIA memorandum claims that "Shaw was a highly paid CIA contract source until 1956", CIA Director William Colby stated that the agency did "not pay for" information from domestic contacts. The memo also states that "nothing in these records indicates any CIA role in the Kennedy assassination or assassination conspiracy (if there was one), or any CIA involvement with Oswald."

David Ferrie was another homosexual individual whom Garrison persecuted with little evidence beyond the word of a single person, Jack Martin, "an undependable drunk, [...] a totally unreliable witness" and a "liar who hates Ferrie," according to Garrison. Not long afterwards, Ferrie's health "deteriorated rapidly", leading to his (indisputably natural) death at the age of 48. Ferrie had been a pilot who was "discharged by Eastern Air Lines for homosexual activity" after an arrest based on "morals charges". He was an outspoken critic of Fidel Castro, and "briefly became involved with New Orleans's community of Cuban exiles in 1961, but this association was short-lived, due to the exiles' concern over Ferrie's personal life" (i.e. they found out he was gay). Ferrie had voted for JFK in the 1960 election, and was apparently "a great admirer" of the president. "Things are going to turn for the better now that a Catholic has been elected," he told a friend. However, his opinion of Kennedy changed after the Bay of Pigs Invasion fiasco. Ferrie was later interviewed by the FBI, and stated that he "might have used an off-hand or colloquial expression "He ought to be shot" to express his feelings concerning the Cuban situation. [...] He said he had also been critical of any president riding in an open car and had made the statement that anyone could hide in the bushes and shoot a president." Of course, many Americans likely said similar things at the time, especially in the South, where Kennedy wasn't exactly beloved for his stance on civil rights. Ferrie also went on to say "that he has never made any statement that President KENNEDY should be killed with the intention that this be done and has never at any time outline or formulated any plans or made any statement as to how this could be done or who should do it." "The FBI squeezed Ferrie dry, found nothing there, and discarded him." Unfortunately, this did nothing to appease Garrison.

In the Stone film, Ferrie actually confesses that he was involved in JFK's murder; in reality, this never happened. Stone stated that "we had to put words in Ferrie's mouth", meaning they "just made the confession up." Ferrie was "perfectly consistent in his denials that he knew Lee Harvey Oswald or had anything whatsoever to do with an assassination plot against John F. Kennedy." The only proof that Ferrie and Oswald ever even met is a photograph showing them at a Civil Air Patrol unit meeting in the 1950s. "Whether or not Oswald had any association with Ferrie in 1955[,] beyond [...] being photographed in the same group, has not been established." After Garrison accused him of being involved in JFK's assassination, Ferrie "was champing at the bit to clear his name and move on with his life. It was Ferrie, after all, who had been trying to see Jim Garrison in person, "look him in the face," and straighten out Garrison's misconceptions about him. It was the DA who refused to talk." This was despite the fact that "it was common knowledge around the DA's office that they had no evidence whatsoever linking [Ferrie] to the assassination."

Before he died, Ferrie told a friend that "Garrison is trying to frame me", and "[i]n his final days, he was planning to sue Garrison's office". Stone shows Ferrie being murdered by nefarious conspirators, a scene which Washington Post columnist George Lardner (who was probably the last person to see Ferrie alive) ridiculed. "Ferrie was very much alive when we walked downstairs at around 4 AM." He died from the effects of a berry aneurysm, "a congenital defect" which, contrary to the film's portrayal, cannot be induced by stuffing thyroid pills down someone's throat. It also can't be triggered by physical trauma. Ferrie was suffering from terrible headaches and massive nosebleeds, and looked like a person who was dying; "his voice was barely audible, his breathing 'unsteady.'" At the time, Garrison said there was "no question about the fact that it's a suicide," (there was in fact "no evidence" to support this, and the coroner returned a verdict of death by "natural causes"). Stone later upgraded this to murder. The film's "lurid version of Ferrie's death generated more reaction than any other individual scene. James Alcock was one of those complaining. The evening Ferrie died, according to Alcock, he and [Garrison's chief investigator] Louis Ivon were across the street keeping Ferrie's apartment under surveillance, all night long. "I didn't see any murder," Alcock said recently, with an air of exasperation. He knew where the idea came from though. In the meeting he had with Garrison, Stone, and [Kevin] Costner, Costner referred to Ferrie's death as "the murder." "I knew immediately," Alcock said, that Costner "had been talking to Garrison." The scene in the movie "where people were pouring stuff down Ferrie's throat and killing him -- that just didn't happen," Alcock stated."

In another scene during the film, Stone actually inadvertently ends up debunking the conspiracy theory. Halfway through the film, one of Garrison's colleagues tries to recreate the shooting, stating that "[t]he Zapruder film establishes 3 shots in 5.6 seconds." He then times the shots, claiming that it takes "[b]etween six and seven seconds", and that this is without really aiming. However, actor Jay O. Sanders "did get off three shots in under six seconds -- 5.6 seconds, to be precise." "More importantly, the Warren Commission never stated that Lee Harvey Oswald fired three shots in under six seconds. [...] Based upon an evaluation of the home movie taken by bystander Abraham Zapruder, the Warren Commission concluded that the time span between the shot entering the back of the President's neck and the bullet which shattered his skull was 4.8 to 5.6 seconds. If the second shot missed, then 4.8 to 5.6 seconds was the total time span of the shots. If either the first or third shots missed, then a minimum of 2.3 seconds (necessary to operate the rifle) must be added to the time span of the shots which hit, giving a minimum time of 7.1 to 7.9 seconds for the three shots." Furthermore, "[t]he growing consensus among assassination researchers is that the first shot was fired at about frame 155 of the Zapruder film, and missed. If correct, this would give Oswald an ample 8.6 seconds to fire three shots."

In JFK, Stone also highlights the fact that the autopsy of Kennedy's body wasn't exactly thorough, which to be fair is completely true. "Dr. Pierre Finck, who assisted in the autopsy, described the president's autopsy as only "adequate," and "not as complete as some other autopsies I have done." When pressed for details, Finck stated that neither the abdominal cavity nor the organs of the neck were examined. In addition, no mention was made of adrenals, pituitary, thyroid, parathyroid, larynx, trachea, ureters, urinary bladder, testes, prostate, gastrointestinal tract, or spinal column." Furthermore, "the President's head was not shaved, and the brain not sectioned. These procedures would have determined the exact point of entrance and trajectory of the fatal wound."

However, Stone goes on to portray sinister conspirators interfering with the autopsy in order to cover up the truth. Dr. James Humes, the lab director at Bethesda Naval Hospital, who was one of those present, debunked this. "The President's military aides from the Air Force, Army, and Navy were all present, and they were all in dress uniforms, but they weren't generals and their influence on the autopsy was zero". While there certainly was interference with the autopsy, it came not from shadowy conspirators, but from Kennedy's own relatives. "Finck explained that the Kennedy family did not want a "complete" autopsy"." The reason for this was simple. Kennedy's brother Bobby was seeking to conceal potentially devastating revalations about JFK's health prior to his assassination. Not only did JFK experience "severe and persistent venereal disease" during his lifetime, but he also suffered from Addison's disease, which is incurable and potentially fatal (although fully treatable). He was also taking numerous painkillers for his back problems (for which he underwent several operations), and, while he was president, received massive injections of amphetamines from Dr. Max Jacobson (also known as "Doctor Feelgood"), whose medical license was later revoked when one of his patients died from an overdose. "I don't care if it's horse piss," Kennedy is reported to have told his disapproving brother Bobby. "It works." Given the sensitivity of American voters towards the health of their presidential candidates (something which persists even to this day), these inconvenient facts were hushed up during the campaign, and could easily have cost JFK victory had they been revealed. "Thus, on the evening of November 22, decisions were made by Robert Kennedy to perpetuate the lie of JFK's health history -- a move that also served to consolidate the myth of Camelot. For years, this secrecy fed the flames of rumors about a government-based conspiracy. In 1998, after an exhaustive review of the events, the Assassinations Record Review Board concluded that, "[in] protecting the privacy and the sensibilities of the president's family -- the legacy of such secrecy has caused distrust and suspicion.""

Popcorn, anyone?

Two popular movies portraying the Kennedy assassination as a conspiracy were Oliver Stone's 1991 flick JFK, based on Garrison's theory, and the 1973 movie Executive Action, based on Lane's theory that a cabal of right-wing businessmen was behind the assassination. JFK assassination conspiracy books proliferated, in particular after the release of the popular 1991 film, ranging from the meh to the completely ludicrous. Public reaction to the film caused Congress to enact the JFK Records Act and establish the Assassination Records Review Board, which released (almost) all records of the investigation by October 2017. Despite JFK being marketed as based on a true story, the film is riddled with errors, baseless supposition and in many cases outright falsehoods.

Reality

Oswald moments before being killed by Jack Ruby.

Lee Harvey Oswald did it.

Why? It was due to a lack of bowling alleys and nightclubs. No, really. More immediately, he hung out with Castro sympathizers in Mexico City during his unsuccessful attempt to get a Cuban visa, some of whom voiced the opinion that Kennedy should be killed in retaliation for his attempts to have Castro assassinated. According to CIA files released in 2017, Oswald visited the Cuban and Soviet embassies in Mexico City, and on September 28, 1963, he met with "a Soviet consular official named Valery Kostikov, the reputed head of the KGB’s assassinations operations". However, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover told the CIA that his agency's files "do not contain any information to fully support" the CIA's assessment that Kostikov worked for the KGB's 13th Department. Hoover's memo also cited a letter the FBI received from the CIA's counterintelligence chief five months before Kennedy's murder stating that the CIA "could locate no information in your files to indicate Kostikov was a representative" of the KGB's assassinations department." Oswald did live in the Soviet Union for about three years, after making several attempts to defect which were declined, as the Soviets viewed him as mentally unstable. After an attempted suicide, the Soviets finally decided to let him stay, reasoning that a dead American on their watch would be far worse, and furnished him with a job and an apartment in Minsk, in the Byelorussian SSR. Oswald would later become bored and return to the United States. He was viewed poorly for the most part by the Soviets, with an internal Soviet memo describing Oswald as "a neurotic maniac who was disloyal to his own country and everything else". Oswald was never given Soviet citizenship.

Oh, and the KGB spread many of the other conspiracy theories, because they knew that given the climate of the time, the Soviet Union was likely to be blamed and they wanted to mitigate that to some extent – it appears to have worked more than they ever imagined. They knew fairly early on that American intelligence didn't believe they were involved, but if the American public was to hold a widespread belief that the Kremlin had Kennedy killed, not only would the door be open for retaliation (some nutjob shooting up Soviet embassies, for example) but it could cause the public to press for war. If declassified Soviet materials are to be believed, they were just as surprised as the Americans by the assassination.

The "magic bullet" theory that so often pops up among the conspiracy theories is also based off the seating of the people in the car, Kennedy included. However, if one actually looks at the seating arrangements in the car, then the theory, and any that expand on the idea, are defunct instantly. The theories claim that Governor Connally was sitting in front of Kennedy, and that this proves that Kennedy couldn't have been shot by Oswald. In reality, Kennedy was in the back, and Connally in front of him but slightly to the left and sitting significantly lower than Kennedy on a jumper seat. Connally was in fact always in the path of Oswald's shot. Indeed, the entire thing can be disproved by the way everyone was sitting when Kennedy was shot. Additionally, a closer look at the Zapruder film shows Connally's lapel flip outwards at precisely the moment the first bullet strikes Kennedy. And the notion that the bullet was "found in almost "pristine" condition" has been thoroughly debunked; "it is bent and severely flattened on the base and one side, with lead extruding from the base".

Conspiracy theorists also claim that the Zapruder film proves Kennedy was shot in the head from the front, perhaps by a shooter hiding on the grassy knoll (the infamous "Back, and to the left..." scene from the Oliver Stone movie). However, if the individual frames of the Zapruder film are analysed, Kennedy's head clearly lurches forward (be warned, the link is graphic) the instant the bullet impacts it. Furthermore, any sniper aiming from such a position would have "no clear shot at the middle lane of Elm Street [where the limousine was] until the instant of the head shot, allowing for no earlier shots or tracking of the moving target. It turns out that the intended victim is obscured by road signs and a white retaining wall about ten feet in front of the fence", not to mention "the crowd that lined the sidewalk [...] If the assassin shot Kennedy in the head, he had to shoot in the first second the car emerged from behind the retaining wall", right past the heads of spectators (or through them). "Such a shooter would have been standing only a few yards to the right of Abraham Zapruder and his receptionist, Marilyn Sitzman, who were perched on a pedestal several feet above the ground. When asked by Gus Russo about the possibility that someone was shooting from the knoll area, Sitzman replied, "That's absurd. I was only a few feet away, and I didn't hear or see anything suspicious." In fact, not a single person that day reported seeing anyone fire from the grassy knoll, despite the fact that the stockade fence is only five feet tall. Moreover, such a gunman would have been completely exposed on the sides and in the back, yet eyewitness Lee Bowers, in an elevated railroad tower some yards away, saw no one with a rifle, nor did he see anyone flee the area."

And it gets even better: "In Dale Myers's meticulous reconstruction of the event, he asked the computer to draw a line from low in the back of Kennedy's head -- where some have erroneously stated a wound existed -- to the wound in the right temple area. Giving the front-shooter theorists the benefit of the doubt, and negating all the autopsy X-rays and photos, Myers then followed the line forward to determine where such a shooter had to be located. It turns out that if the shooter were in front of Kennedy, in a line with his wounds and front-to-back axis of movement, the assailant could only be in one place: [thirteen] feet in the air above the southernmost point of the railroad underpass." That's right; in order to be consistent with the wounds to Kennedy's head, a frontal shot would require an invisible, levitating sniper.

The theory that there were multiple shooters is discredited by the fact that no bullet fragments or shells other than what came from Oswald's Mannlicher-Carcano rifle were discovered anywhere by anyone in Dealey Plaza, the limousine, Parkland Hospital, or in the bodies of Kennedy or Governor Connally. Furthermore, "an overwhelming majority of the witnesses -- 80.8% -- reported hearing two or three shots, with the next largest group -- 10.5% -- reporting a total of one or two shots, and a mere 8.7% reporting four or more shots."

There are still some unanswered questions concerning the event, like the infamous and unidentified Babushka Lady who appears to have filmed it, as well as reports that someone, probably mentally ill, made calls in California saying that Kennedy was going to be killed in Dallas that day. The latter is most likely coincidence and could be a fabrication (the POTUS has been a routine recipient of death threats for decades; Barack Obama was allegedly receiving 30 a day at one point duing his tenure, while Abraham Lincoln "received "an unusual number of letters about plots to kidnap or assassinate him," said to have numbered at least eighty, yet none of those plots were enacted.") Rose Cherami, who claimed that she had worked as a stripper for Jack Ruby, has been cited by some conspiracy theorists as a "credible" witness who attempted to warn authorities about JFK's assassination before it occured. However, there is no evidence "that Cherami had made any statements about the assassination prior to the time it occurred." She also claimed that Oswald and Ruby "had been shacking up for years", which doesn't exactly speak to her credibility (while Ruby may have been homosexual or bisexual, there is no proof that Oswald was anything other than heterosexual, let alone that he and Ruby were lovers). Meanwhile, the former, even though the footage would offer another, more detailed perspective on Kennedy's death which could be much more valuable than the footage we have, is most likely unimportant to the bigger picture. Former nightclub singer Beverly Oliver claimed that she was the Babushka Lady in 1970. She alleged that she filmed the motorcade with a Yashica Super 8 movie camera, and that the film was confiscated by FBI agent Regis Kennedy three days after the assassination; however, the Yashica 8 was not manufactured until 1965, and Regis Kennedy wasn't even in Dallas after the assassination, he was in New Orleans. Oliver later backtracked on the type of camera she had used. She also claimed that "Jack Ruby introduced her to Lee Oswald", stating that he worked for the CIA, and that she saw David Ferrie at Ruby's Carousel Club on numerous occasions in 1963, despite the fact that Ferrie "lived and worked in New Orleans, not Dallas". "Ferrie friend Layton Martens told author Gus Russo that between himself and three other friends, "one or more of us were at Dave’s apartment [with Ferrie] practically every night that year.""

However, Oswald's death and the failure to prevent it is questionable, as it prevented his trial, obviously, and only fanned the flames of conspiracy. Had Oswald been properly protected, and not left wide open for Jack Ruby, which, admittedly, no one could have seen coming but in hindsight should have been accounted for, maybe a lot of this nonsense could have been put to rest before it spread. Whether Oswald would have continued to insist on his innocence in spite of the overwhelming evidence against him, like Sirhan Sirhan, or whether the conspiracy theories about the assassination would have persisted had he lived, is impossible to know.

Much like Abe Lincoln, nobody knows how things might have turned out if Kennedy hadn't been shot.

See also

• Lincoln assassination conspiracy theories
• Occam's razor

External links

• The Umbrella Man, an Errol Morris mini-documentary on one aspect of the assassination.
• Mortal Error, a book that analyzes the ballistics and concludes that Oswald acted alone, but the shot to Kennedy's head was an accidental shot by a Secret Service agent.
• JFK Assassination Magic Bullet Computer Recreation - part of a larger documentary (shows how non-magical the magic bullet was).
• Ballistics expert weighs in.