Socio-Political Evidences Of His Controversial Death Essay Example for Free

Socio-Political Evidences Of His Controversial Death Essay United States President John F. Kennedy was assassinated on Friday November 22, 1963 in Dallas, Texas, at 12:30 PM Central time. He was on a campaign and support trip through Texas in anticipation of the upcoming 1964 presidential election. Kennedy was fatally wounded by multiple gunshots while riding in an open-top automobile. Texas Governor John B. Connally was also severely injured. The crime was officially attributed by the Warren Commission to certain Lee Harvey Oswald who was later killed in prison after two of his arrest. There was existing multi-faceted evidence that can lead to the real killer but as of this time, everything was left in mystery. This paper would like to make it a point that certain political decisions made by John F. Kennedy lead to his death. IN certain phases of the issue, some social events and realities in his life also contributed to his death such as his relationships with women and his religion-the Roman Catholic. The list of suspects goes on with the CIA, the Cubans, the KGB and the MAFIA, the people he emotionally hurt during his illicit sexual relationships, the officials he axed and the personnel he tried to humiliate during his term. The Warren report states, that Lee Harvey Oswald committed the murder alone out of his misguided communist ideals and desire to achieve fame in the only way that he could imagine. Oswald stated after his capture, that he is only a â€Å"patsy†, but since he was killed two days after the assassination by an infamous low level mafia gangster, nightclub owner, illegal drug and gun runner called Jack Ruby, no information could be gained from him. Whether Oswald really worked alone, as the report stated, remains a mystery, but he could also have been the gunmen of a large organization. BACKGROUND OF THE ASSASSINATION EVENT Here is the gist of the Warren Report on the actual assassination event. John F. Kennedy was in a trip to Dallas with his wife Jackie in an open limousine on November 22, 1963. The Presidential motorcade left Love Field at around 11:50am to drive through downtown Dallas. Warren Report stressed that from Love Field point, there were two occasions wherein the President personally requested to stop the limousine: first when he has to shake hands with the people who came to see him in the streets and the second one was when he has to speak to a Catholic nun he found on his way with a group of children (The Warren Report, p. 46). Actual footages and written reports literally would say that JFK, even in Dallas alone have been loved by the people. At 12:30 (EST) the limousine drove off to Elm Street through Triple Underpass. At that point, witnesses have heard several gunshots aimed at the President (p. 48). A certain Special Agent Rufus W. Youngblood confirmed that it was exactly 12:30 when he saw the sign clock situated at the top of the Texas Schoolbook Depository Building. A few seconds after that moment, gunshots were heard (ibid). Other witnesses in the motorcade also confirmed the time. Roy Kellerman who was then at the limousine signaled to the limousine driven, Special Agent Greer that it was 12:30 on his watch. Also, a police log on the radio report made by Chief of Police Curry, reporting the President was shot, confirmed 12:30pm (p. 49). The death of JFK was attributed to a certain Lee Harvey Oswald, who was then employed in the Texas Schoolbook Depository. There are theories that would point to Oswald as the lone shooter but there are also claims that it would be impossible to have just one shooter in that particular instance (Taylor, G. 2008). We will further look into that angle in the later part of this paper. Meanwhile, Taylor (2008) explained that there were a total of seven gunshots fired towards the limousine during the assassination but the third shot, based on Warren Report, was the fatal bullet that went through the head of the President. Other gunshots hit the President at the back while the others hit Governor Connally. Connally, then the Governor of Texas was with his wife in the limousine at the back where the President and his wife were seated. Both were rushed to the Parkland Memorial Hospital but the President did not survive. Soon after the body was removed from the hospital, Mrs. Kennedy opted to have the autopsy done at the National Naval Medical Center at Bethesda, Md. , where the President once served. The autopsy report concluded that the death was caused by a â€Å"Gunshot wound, head† (Warren Report, p. 60). However, there was another gunshot wound at the President’s head located at the right part of the forehead and the one that juts out at the back of the skull (ibid). Another serious wound was found at the back of the neck, according to official report. THE SUSPECTS FOR THE ASSASSINATION The purpose of this paper is primarily to prove that JFK’s death was due to political decisions during his presidency aside from other social factors such as his personal lifestyle. Although JFK’s death was still officially unsolved, decades of investigation and speculations brought to multi-faceted cause of his death and therefore a tree of suspects whose root was not yet particularly identified. Suspects include the Mafia, the Cubans, the KGB, the CIA, his political enemies inside the US Government and even Lyndon Johnson, his then Vice-President. We will examine JFK’s connections to each of these groups and people in order for us to determine the possible motive of each should they be the real assassins. Primarily, this paper will prove that JFK had made real erratic political decisions which made these people want his death the soonest. In the years following the Warren Commission Report, its findings have been repeatedly questioned. In 1979, the House Select Committee on Assassinations suggested that at least two gunmen were involved, and that the probable assassination conspirators were Mafia-connected. Later, two top committee staffers, G. Robert Blakey and Richard Billings, concluded that the assassination was planned and implemented by Mob bosses; that there were two shooters; and that Lee Harvey Oswald was silenced – on Mafia orders – by mobbed-up Dallas striptease club owner Jack Ruby. In 1998, a review board appointed by President Bill Clinton found nothing in secret JFK assassination records to bolster the single-bullet theory. In fact, as the Assassination Records Review Board went out of business, it complained that records of the post-mortem examination of President Kennedys body were incomplete. Such records could have cleared up mysteries about Kennedys head wound, or wounds, and helped determine whether he was shot from the front. In its final report, the review board said: There have been shortcomings that have led many to question not only the completeness of the autopsy records of President Kennedy, but the lack of a prompt and complete analysis of the records by the Warren Commission. While it collected and released thousands of previously secret government documents, the board also expressed worry that critical records may have been withheld from its scrutiny. It stressed that it was not able to secure all that was out there. In 2005, appearing at a scholarly symposium, assassination expert Dr. Jack Gordon went over doctors statements from the hospital in Dallas where Kennedy was taken after the shooting. Gordon produced quotes from nine doctors who gave the same description of a huge softball size hole in occipital-parietal region of Kennedys skull, and one nurse who said, In laymans terms, One large hole, back of his head. This contradicts the official story that the back of the head was completely intact. With all of these contradictions emerging – both during the Warren Commission hearings and in the aftermath of its final report – one has to wonder how the Warren Commission managed to arrive at the conclusions it did. A key edit in the Warren Report may have helped. The reports first draft said: A bullet had entered his back at a point slightly below the shoulder to the right of the spine. Had that stood, the trajectory would have made it impossible for the bullet that struck Kennedy to come out his neck, and then somehow critically wound Connally. Newly released documents show, however, that Warren Commission member Congressman Gerald Ford pressed the panel to change its description of the wound and place it higher in Kennedys body. Ford wanted the wording changed to: A bullet had entered the back of his neck slightly to the right of the spine. The panels final version was: A bullet had entered the base of the back of his neck slightly to the right of the spine. This crucial change only came to light in 1997, when the Assassination Record Review Board released handwritten notes made by Ford that had been kept by J. Lee Rankin, the Warren Commissions chief counsel. Fords change is even at odds with his own declaration in the Oct. 2, 1964 issue of Life: I personally believe that one of these three shots missed entirely – but which of the three may never be known. I believe that another bullet struck the president in the back and emerged from his throat (and went on to strike Connally. ) When the alteration was brought to Fords attention in 1997, he said it had nothing to do with (thwarting) a conspiracy theory and was made only in an attempt to be more precise. Assassination researcher Robert Morningstar, however, called the change the most significant lie in the whole Warren Commission report. He pointed out that if the bullet had hit Kennedy in the back, it could not have gone on to strike Connally the way the commission said it did. Morningstar contended that the effect of Fords editing suggested that a bullet hit the president in the neck – raising the wound two or three inches. Without that alteration, they could never have hoodwinked the public as to the true number of assassins. Fords alteration supports the single-bullet theory by making a specific point that the bullet entered Kennedys body at the back of his neck rather than in his uppermost back, as the commission staff originally wrote. Harold Weisberg, a longtime critic of the Warren Commissions work, said: What Ford is doing is trying to make the single bullet theory more tenable. Cyril Wecht, president of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences, is among many pathology experts who find this theory unacceptable: The angles at which these two men [Kennedy and Connally] were hit do not permit a straight-line trajectory (or near straight line trajectory) of commission exhibit 339 (the so-called magic bullet) to be established. Indeed, quite the opposite is true. In order to accept the single-bullet theory, it is necessary to have the bullet move at different vertical and horizontal angles, a path of flight that has never been experienced or suggested for any bullet known to mankind. A member of the House investigating committees forensic pathology panel, Wecht remains a passionate opponent of the Ford theory. He has also been a consultant on a number of other high-profile cases, including the deaths of Elvis Presley, JonBenet Ramsey, Laci Peterson and – most recently – the 20-year-old son of model Anna Nicole Smith. Former Texas First Lady Nellie Connally – who died in 2006 at the age of 87 – rediscovered her assassination diary in 1993. When Newsweek published it in 1998, the magazine said the diary reaffirms the Connallys verdict that the Warren Commission was wrong in concluding that a single bullet passed through JFKs neck and Connallys chest. Noting the commissions finding that one bullet missed the car, the magazine added: Some conspiracy theorists argue that if three (Authors note: the commission said only two bullets hit the two men) bullets hit their targets, and an additional bullet missed, then there must have been a second gunman: nobody could have fired so many rounds so quickly. After a two year probe costing taxpayers $5. 5 million, House investigators concluded in 1978 that President Kennedys murder was probably . . . the result of a conspiracy, and that there was a strong possibility of a shot from the grassy knoll, meaning that two gunmen must have fired at the president within split seconds of each other. In 2001, a peer-reviewed article in Science and Justice determined there was a 96. 3 percent chance a shot was fired from the grassy knoll to the right of the presidents limousine. The author of the new analysis, JFK assassination researcher D. B. Thomas, believes this was the shot that killed the president.