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{{Use mdy dates|date=November 2016}}
[[File:Nott2.jpg|thumb|upright|[[Eliphalet Nott]], longest serving college president in US history]]
[[File:John F. Kennedy motorcade, Dallas crop.png|thumb|right|[[President of the United States|President]] [[John F. Kennedy]], [[Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis|Jackie Kennedy]], [[Nellie Connally]], and [[Governor of Texas|Texas Governor]] [[John Connally]], minutes before the [[Assassination of John F. Kennedy|assassination]].]]
The longest serving president of a United States institution of higher education is [[Eliphalet Nott]], who served at [[Union College]] in [[Schenectady, New York]], for 62 years (1805–66).


The [[assassination of John F. Kennedy|assassination of]] [[President of the United States|United States President]] [[John F. Kennedy]] in [[Dallas]], [[Texas]] on November 22, 1963 has spurred numerous [[conspiracy theories]], which include accusations of involvement of the [[Central Intelligence Agency|CIA]], the [[Italian-American Mafia|Mafia]], sitting [[Vice President of the United States|Vice President]] [[Lyndon B. Johnson]], [[Prime Minister of Cuba|Cuban Prime Minister]] [[Fidel Castro]], the [[KGB]], or even some combination thereof. Some conspiracy theories further claim that the US federal government covered up crucial information in the aftermath of the assassination, which turned out to be true regarding the CIA-Mafia plots to kill Fidel Castro.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/oswald/interviews/blakey.html|title=Interview - G. Robert Blakey {{!}} Who Was Lee Harvey Oswald? {{!}} FRONTLINE {{!}} PBS|website=www.pbs.org|access-date=2019-01-05}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=http://politi.co/2osG9vA|title=Inside the CIA’s Plot to Kill Fidel Castro—With Mafia Help|last=Maier|first=Thomas|website=Politico Magazine|language=en|access-date=2019-01-05}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/10/jfk-assassination-john-mccone-warren-commission-cia-213197|title=Yes, the CIA Director Was Part of the JFK Assassination Cover-Up|last=Shenon|first=Philip|website=Politico Magazine|language=en|access-date=2019-01-05}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|last=Summers|first=Anthony|title=Not in Your Lifetime|year=2013|publisher=Open Road|location=New York|isbn=978-1-4804-3548-3|chapter=Six Options for History|page=238|url=http://www.openroadmedia.com/not-in-your-lifetime|deadurl=yes|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20131101151417/http://www.openroadmedia.com/not-in-your-lifetime|archivedate=November 1, 2013|df=mdy-all}}</ref> Former Los Angeles District Attorney [[Vincent Bugliosi]] estimated that a total of 42 groups, 82 assassins, and 214 people had been accused at one time or another in various conspiracy scenarios.<ref>{{cite news| url=http://edition.cnn.com/2013/11/16/us/jfk-assassination-conspiracy-theories-debunked/ | work=CNN | title=One JFK conspiracy theory that could be true - CNN.com | date=November 18, 2013}}</ref>
==Criteria==
According to a 2007 report from the [[American Council on Education]], only about 5% of all in-office college presidents had served longer than 20 years.<ref>http://www.ctmirror.org/sites/default/files/ACP%20report_0.pdf{{dead link|date=December 2017 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}</ref> The table below considers candidates who can be demonstrated to have served for 25 years or longer unless another distinguishing factor warrants inclusion. Records for the longest serving college or university presidents are usually kept by the respective institutions themselves.
'


In 1964, the [[Warren Commission]] concluded that [[Lee Harvey Oswald]] was the only person responsible for assassinating Kennedy. In 1979, the [[United States House Select Committee on Assassinations]] (HSCA) concluded that the President was assassinated probably as a result of a conspiracy<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/select-committee-report/part-1c.html|title=Findings|date=2016-08-15|website=National Archives|language=en|access-date=2019-01-04}}</ref><ref name="HCSA-S">{{cite book |title=Report of the Select Committee on Assassinations of the U.S. House of Representatives |url=https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/select-committee-report/ |type= |edition= |series= |year=1979 |origyear= |publisher=United States Government Printing Office |location=Washington, D.C. |page=3 |chapter=Summary of Findings and Recommendations |chapterurl=https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/select-committee-report/summary.html}}</ref><ref name="HSCA_Report_0048a pp. 65-75">[http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/hsca/report/html/HSCA_Report_0048a.htm House Select Committee on Assassinations Final Report], pp. 65–75.</ref> The HSCA reasoned that a second gunman probably also fired at Kennedy, but acoustic evidence that the HSCA accepted in reaching its conclusions regarding a second gunman was later possibly discredited by another set of experts.{{sfn|Bugliosi|2007|p=377}}<ref name="Campbell2008">{{cite book|author=Ballard C. Campbell|title=Disasters, Accidents, and Crises in American History: A Reference Guide to the Nation's Most Catastrophic Events|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=VitlO1mWxzAC|accessdate=September 1, 2013|year=2008|publisher=Infobase Publishing|isbn=978-1-4381-3012-5|page=1936}}</ref><ref name="ATY">{{cite journal | title=After Thirty Years: Making Sense of the Assassination | author=Holland, Max | journal=[[Reviews in American History]] |date=June 1994 | volume=22 | issue=2 | pages=191–209 | doi=10.2307/2702884}}</ref><ref name="48 years">{{cite journal | title=The Assassination of John F. Kennedy—48 Years On | author=Martin, John | journal=Irish Foreign Affairs |date=September 2011}}</ref><ref name="Knight2007">{{cite book|author=Peter Knight|title=The Kennedy Assassination|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=MRs2Tu714ZUC&pg=PA72|accessdate=September 4, 2013|year=2007|publisher=University Press of Mississippi|isbn=978-1-934110-32-4|page=72}}</ref><ref name="Olmsted2011">{{cite book|author=Kathryn S. Olmsted|title=Real Enemies: Conspiracy Theories and American Democracy, World War I to 9/11|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=u7Sd5vyOOtEC&pg=PA170|accessdate=September 4, 2013|date=March 11, 2011|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=978-0-19-975395-6|pages=169–170}}</ref>
==List==
{| class="wikitable sortable"
|-
! Name !! Term !! College !! Location !! class="unsortable" | Notes<ref group="note">For the purposes of the list, "Chancellor" and "President" are interchangeable titles.</ref>
|-
|[[Eliphalet Nott]] || 61 years (1805–1866) || [[Union College]] || Schenectady, NY || Longest serving college president in U.S. history.
|-
|Paul F. Beacham || 59 years (1919–1978) || [[Holmes Theological Seminary]] || Greenville, SC || Longest serving seminary president in U.S. history.
|-
|Abbot Bernard Pennings || 57 years (1898–1955) || [[St. Norbert College]] ||De Pere, WI || The first and longest serving president of the College.
|-
|B. B. Dougherty || 56 years (1899–1955) || [[Appalachian State University]] || Boone, NC ||
|-
|[[W. Wilbert Welch]] || 56 years (1959–2015) || [[Cornerstone University]] || Grand Rapid, MI || Served as President until 1983, then Chancellor.
|-
|Edward W. France || 52 years (1888-1940) || [[Philadelphia University]] || Philadelphia, PA ||
|-
|[[Francis H. Smith]] || 50 years (1839–1889) || [[Virginia Military Institute]] || Lexington, VA || Longest serving military superintendent in U.S. history
|-
|[[James Blair (Virginia)|James Blair]] || 50 years (1693–1743) || [[College of William and Mary]] || Williamsburg, VA || The first and longest serving president of the college.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.wm.edu/about/administration/president/history/nineteen/index.php|title=William & Mary – 19th Century Presidents|publisher=}}</ref>
|-
|Jack Evans, Sr || 49 years (1967—2016) || [[Southwestern Christian College]] || Terrell, TX || Currently president emeritus.<ref>{{cite news |last1=Ross |first1=Bobby |title='Join in with us to save Southwestern' |url=https://christianchronicle.org/join-in-with-us-to-save-southwestern-prays-new-president-of-historically-black-christian-college/ |accessdate=27 October 2018 |work=The Christian Chronicle |date=16 May 2017}}</ref>
|-
|[[Norman Francis]] || 47 years (1968–2015) || [[Xavier University of Louisiana]] || New Orleans, LA || <ref>{{cite web|last=Mangan|first=Katherine|title=The Chronicle of Higher Education|url=http://chronicle.com/article/After-More-Than-44-Years/136623/|work=America's Longest Serving President has More to Do.|publisher=The Chronicle|accessdate=30 May 2013}}</ref>
|-
|'''[[Richard I. Gouse]]''' || '''47 years (1971–present)'''<ref>{{cite web|url=http://chronicle.com/article/Executive-Compensation-at/143541/?cid=wb|title=Executive Compensation at Private and Public Colleges|work=The Chronicle of Higher Education}}</ref> || [[New England Institute of Technology]] || East Greenwich, RI || Only 24 at the time of assuming his position.
|-
|'''[[William L. Proctor]]''' || '''47 years (1971–present)''' || [[Flagler College]] || St. Augustine, FL || Served as President until 2001, then Chancellor.
|-
|'''[[Bob Jones III]]''' || '''47 years (1971–present)''' || [[Bob Jones University]] || Greenville, SC || Served as President until 2005, then Chancellor.
|-
|'''Lionel R. Bordeaux''' || '''46 years (1972–present)''' || [[Sinte Gleska University]] || Mission, SD || Provided leadership for the first fully accredited reservation-based institution of higher education at the bachelor's degree level. [[Black Hills State University]] named a residence hall in his honor.
|-
|[[Ronald E. Carrier]] || 46 years (1971–2017) || [[James Madison University]] || Harrisonburg, VA || Served as President until 1998, then Chancellor.
|-
|[[J. Donald Monan]] || 45 years (1972–2017) || [[Boston College]] || Chestnut Hill, MA || Served as President until 1996, then Chancellor.
|-
|'''Robert H. Spence''' || '''44 years (1974–present)''' || [[Evangel University]] || Springfield, MO ||Served until May 1, 2014 as President, and since then as Chancellor
|-
|[[Frederic B. Pratt]] || 44 years (1893–1937) || [[Pratt Institute]] || Brooklyn, NY ||
|-
|[[Frances Shimer]] || 43 years (1853–1896) || [[Shimer College]] || Chicago, IL || Founded Mount Carroll Seminary, which later became Shimer College.
|-
|Clarence W. Daugette || 43 years (1899–1942) || [[Jacksonville State University]] || Jacksonville, AL || State of Alabama's longest serving university president.
|-
|[[Nicholas Murray Butler]] || 43 years (1902–1945) || [[Columbia University]] || New York, NY || Columbia's longest serving president.
|-
||Joseph N. Hankin|| 43 years (1971–2014)<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.sunywcc.edu/aboutwcc/whats_new/drhankin.htm|title=Page not found – Westchester Community College|publisher=|deadurl=yes|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20120703013544/http://www.sunywcc.edu/aboutwcc/whats_new/drhankin.htm|archivedate=2012-07-03|df=}}</ref> || [[Westchester Community College]] || Valhalla, NY || Longest serving community college president in the US.<ref>{{cite web | url = http://greenburgh.dailyvoice.com/news/president-joseph-hankin-celebrates-40-years-wcc | title = President Joseph Hankin Celebrates 40 Years at WCC | accessdate = 2012-10-16 | last = Sarina | first = Trangle | date = 2011-09-24 | work = Greenburgh Daily Voice | publisher = The Greenburgh Daily Voice}}</ref>
|-
|Luns C. Richardson || 43 years (1974–2017) || [[Morris College]] || Sumter, SC || Life Member and Golden Heritage Member of the NAACP
|-
|[[Charles A. Blanchard]] || 43 years (1882–1925) || [[Wheaton College (Illinois)|Wheaton College]] || Wheaton, IL ||
|-
|William Fletcher King<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.cornellcollege.edu/college-leadership/history/index.shtml|title=List of Cornell College Presidents {{!}} Cornell College|website=www.cornellcollege.edu|language=en-US|access-date=2017-11-07}}</ref> ||43 years (1863-1865, 1865-1873, 1874-1880, 1881-1908) || [[Cornell College]] || Mount Vernon, IA ||1863-1865 served as Acting President
|-
|'''[[Leon Botstein]]''' || '''43 years (1975–present)''' || [[Bard College]] || Annandale-on-Hudson, NY ||
|-
|[[Ralph Waldo Emerson Jones]] || 41 years (1936–1977) || [[Grambling State University]] || Grambling, LA ||
|-
|William Foster Peirce || 41 years (1896–1937) || [[Kenyon College]] || Gambier, OH || Assumed the presidency at the age of 28
|-
|W. Sam Monroe || 40 years (1974–2014) || [[Lamar State College-Port Arthur]] || Port Arthur, TX ||
|-
|[[Charles William Eliot]] || 40 years (1869–1909) || [[Harvard University]] || Cambridge, MA ||
|-
|[[Henry N. Snyder]] || 40 years (1902–1942) || [[Wofford College]] || Spartanburg, SC ||
|-
|Stephen B. L. Penrose || 40 years (1894–1934) || [[Whitman College]] || Walla Walla, WA ||
|-
|'''[[Pat Robertson]]''' || '''40 years (1978–present)''' || [[Regent University]] || Virginia Beach, VA ||
|-
|'''[[William R. Harvey]]''' || '''40 years (1978–present)'''<ref>{{cite web|title=About the President|url=http://www.hamptonu.edu/administration/president/about.htm|publisher=Hampton University|accessdate=7 June 2013}}</ref> || [[Hampton University]] || Hampton, VA ||
|-
|'''Janet Eisner''' || '''39 years (1979–present)''' || [[Emmanuel College (Massachusetts)|Emmanuel College]] || Boston, MA || Longest serving female president still sitting.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.emmanuel.edu/About_Emmanuel/News_and_Events/News/News_Articles/COFBillBrett.html |title=Archived copy |accessdate=2013-06-11 |deadurl=yes |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20130816043656/http://emmanuel.edu/About_Emmanuel/News_and_Events/News/News_Articles/COFBillBrett.html |archivedate=2013-08-16 |df= }}</ref>
|-
|[[David L. Eubanks]] || 38 years (1969–2007) || [[Johnson University|Johnson Bible College]] || Knoxville, TN ||
|-
|[[James Burrill Angell]] || 38 years (1871–1909) || [[University of Michigan]] || Ann Arbor, MI || UM's longest serving president
|-
|[[Philip Pumerantz]] || 38 years (1977–2015) || [[Western University of Health Sciences]] || Pomona, CA || Longest serving president in the state of California. Founding president of the College of Osteopathic Medicine of the Pacific (1977), which became Western University of Health Sciences in 1996
|-
|[[Russell Conwell]] || 38 years (1887–1925) || [[Temple University]] || Philadelphia, PA ||
|-
|[[Dennis J. Murray]] || 37 years (1979–2016)<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.marist.edu/about/djm.html|title=About Marist – Dennis J. Murray: Marist College|publisher=}}</ref> || [[Marist College]] || Poughkeepsie, NY||
|-
|Sister Denise Roche || 37 years (1979–2016) || [[D'Youville College]] || Buffalo, NY ||
|-
|[[Mary Emma Woolley]] || 37 years (1900–1937) || [[Mount Holyoke College]] || South Hadley, MA ||
|-
|Marilyn Schlack || 36 years (1982–2018) || [[Kalamazoo Valley Community College]] || Kalamazoo, MI ||
|-
|George A. Pruitt || 36 years (1982–2018)<ref>{{cite news|title=Thomas Edison State University names new president|url=http://www.nj.com/mercer/index.ssf/2017/12/thomas_edison_state_university_names_new_president.html|accessdate=19 June 2018|date=20 December 2017}}</ref> || [[Thomas Edison State University]] || Trenton, NJ || Longest serving president in the state of New Jersey
|-
|[[Jerry Falwell]] || 36 years (1971–2007) || [[Liberty University]] || Lynchburg, VA ||
|-
|Franklin Benjamin Moore || 36 years (1898-1934) || [[Rider University]] || Lawrenceville, NJ ||
|-
|[[Mark Hopkins (educator)|Mark Hopkins]] || 36 years (1836–1872) || [[Williams College]] || Williamstown, MA ||
|-
|[[John Wheelock]] || 36 years (1779–1815) || [[Dartmouth College]] || Hanover, NH || Dartmouth's longest serving president
|-
|Robert L. McLendon Jr. || 36 years (1972–2008) || [[St. Johns River State College]] ||Palatka, FL ||
|-
|[[Bevan Morris]] || 36 years (1980–2016)<ref>{{cite news |last=Hallman |first=Andy |title=Lynch addresses M.U.M. graduates |newspaper=The Fairfield Ledger |date=June 20, 2016 |url=http://fairfield-ia.villagesoup.com/p/lynch-addresses-m-u-m-graduates/1539411?cid=3621877 |accessdate=June 21, 2016}} || [[Maharishi University of Management]] || Fairfield, IA ||
|-
|Cornelius P. Haggard || 36 years (1939–1975) || [[Azusa Pacific University]] || Azusa, CA ||
|-
|[[Theodore Hesburgh]] || 35 years (1952–1987) || [[University of Notre Dame]] || South Bend, IN ||
|-
|Franklin Frazee Moore || 36 years (1934-1969) || [[Rider University]] || Lawrenceville, NJ ||
|-
|Stephen W. Paine || 35 Years (1937–1972) || [[Houghton College]] || Houghton, NY ||
|-
|[[Charles P. Adams (college president)|Charles P. Adams]] || 35 years (1901–1936) || [[Grambling State University]] || Grambling, LA || Founding president of the Colored Industrial and Agricultural School in 1901, which became Grambling State University in 1974.
|-
|Willard M. Aldrich || 35 years (1943–1978) || [[Multnomah University]] || Portland, OR ||
|-
|[[Nathan Lord]] || 35 years (1828–1863) || [[Dartmouth College]] || Hanover, NH ||
|-
|E. George Evans || 35 years (1884–1919) || [[Champlain College]] || Burlington, VT ||
|-
|A. Gordon Tittemore || 35 years (1920–1955) || [[Champlain College]] || Burlington, VT ||
|-
|Sister [[Joel Read]] || 35 years (1968–2003) || [[Alverno College]] || Milwaukee, WI ||
|-
|[[William Lowe Bryan]] || 35 years (1902–1937) || [[Indiana University]] || Bloomington, IN ||
|-
|[[Martin Brewer Anderson]] || 35 years (1853–1888) || [[University of Rochester]] || Rochester, NY ||
|-
|[[Benjamin Rush Rhees]] || 35 years (1900–1935) || [[University of Rochester]] || Rochester, NY ||
|-
|Jairy C. Hunter Jr. || 35 years (1983–2018) || [[Charleston Southern University]] || Charleston, SC || Longest serving president for the university
|-
|Charles Schlimpert || 35 years (1983–2018) || [[Concordia University Portland]] || Portland, OR || Longest serving President in the State of Oregon
|-
|[[Kenneth C.M. Sills]] || 34 years (1918-1952) || [[Bowdoin College]] || Brunswick, ME ||
|-
|[[Joseph W. Polisi]] || 34 years (1984–2018) || [[The Juilliard School]] || New York City, NY ||
|-
|[[Mordecai Wyatt Johnson]] || 34 years (1926-1960) || [[Howard University]] || Washington, D.C. ||
|-
|Ray Paul Authement, Sr. || 34 years (1974–2008) || [[University of Louisiana at Lafayette]] || Lafayette, La ||
|-
|Eugene C. Sanderson || 34 years (1895–1929) || [[Northwest Christian University]] || Eugene, OR ||
|-
|James M Rosser || 34 years (1979–2013)<ref>{{cite news|title=Cal State L.A. President James M. Rosser Announces His Retirement|url=http://www.calstate.edu/pa/news/2012/Release/rosser.shtml|accessdate=7 June 2013|date=18 September 2012}}</ref> || [[California State University, Los Angeles]] || Los Angeles, CA ||
|-
|[[Edgar Odell Lovett]] || 34 years (1912–1946)<ref>http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/flo34 | The Handbook of Texas | Accessed 13 April 2014</ref> || [[Rice Institute]] || Houston, TX ||
|-
|'''[[John F. MacArthur]]''' || '''33 years (1985–present)''' || [[The Master's College]] || Santa Clarita, CA ||
|-
|'''Faith A. Takes''' || '''33 years (1985–present)''' || [[Mildred Elley]] || Albany, NY || Longest serving 2-year college president still sitting
|-
|[[Thomas Hanna McMichael]]
|33 years (1903–1936)<ref>{{Cite book|title = Monmouth College : the first hundred years, 1853–1953|last = Davenport|first = F. Garvin|publisher = Torch Press|year = 1953|location = Iowa|pages = 71|asin = B007T3FF0G}}</ref>
|| [[Monmouth College]] || Monmouth, IL ||
|-
|C. Hoyt Watson || 33 years (1926–1959) || [[Seattle Pacific University]] || Seattle, WA ||
|-
|[[William Parker McKee]] || 33 years (1897–1930) || [[Shimer College]] || Chicago, IL ||
|-
|[[Mark W. Ellingson]] || 33 years (1936–1969) || [[Rochester Institute of Technology]] || Henrietta, NY ||
|-
|[[Palmer C. Ricketts]] || 33 years (1901–1934) || [[Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute]] || Troy, NY ||
|-
|H. Mebane Turner || 33 years (1969–2002)<ref>{{cite news|last=Bowler|first=Mike|title=The university that Meb built|url=http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2002-06-29/news/0206290059_1_turner-university-of-baltimore-ub|accessdate=18 June 2013|newspaper=The Baltimore Sun|date=29 June 2002}}</ref> || [[University of Baltimore]] || Baltimore, MD ||
|-
|'''[[Alvin O. Austin]]''' || '''32 years (1986–present)''' || [[LeTourneau University]] || Longview, TX || Served as President until 2007, then Chancellor
|-
|'''[[Charles Paul Conn]]''' || '''32 years (1986–present)''' || [[Lee University]] || Cleveland, TN ||
|-
|Andrew Jackson Rider || 32 years (1866-1898) || [[Rider University]] || Lawrenceville, NJ || First president of the college
|-
|[[Cloyd H. Marvin]] || 32 years (1927–1959) || [[George Washington University]] || Washington, DC ||
|-
|Steven Van Ausdle || 32 years (1984–2016) || [[Walla Walla Community College]] || Walla Walla, WA ||
|-
|[[Samuel Belkin]] || 32 years (1943–1975) || [[Yeshiva University]] || New York, NY ||
|-
|Richard E. Wylie || 31 years (1987-2018) || [[Endicott College]] || Beverley, MA ||
|-
|[[Henry Hardin Cherry]] || 31 years (1906–1937) || [[Western Kentucky University]] || Bowling Green, KY ||
|-
|[[Duke Kimbrough McCall]] || 31 years (1951-1982) || [[Southern Baptist Theological Seminary]] || Louisville, KY ||
|-
|Athens Clay Pullias || 31 years (1946–1977) || [[Lipscomb University]] || Nashville, TN ||
|-
|R. M. Good || 31 years (1921–1952) || [[College of the Ozarks]] || Point Lookout, MO ||
|-
|Felton G. Clark || 31 years (1938–1969) || [[Southern University]] || Baton Rouge, LA ||
|-
|[[Claybrook Cottingham]] || 31 years (1910–1941) || [[Louisiana College]] || Pineville, LA ||
|-
|[[John Silber]] || 31 years (1971–2002) || [[Boston University]] || Boston, MA || Served as President until 1996, then Chancellor. Sabbatical leave 1987–1988 and 1990
|-
|[[James Carnahan]] || 31 years (1823–1854) || [[Princeton University]] || Princeton, NJ ||
|-
|[[John L. Lahey]] || 31 years (1987–2018) || [[Quinnipiac University]] || Hamden, CT ||
|-
|Sr. Thomas Welder || 31 years (1978–2009) || [[University of Mary]] || Bismarck, ND || For her tenure and service, Sr. Thomas Welder was given the Roughrider Award by the state of North Dakota, inducting her into its hall of fame.
|-
|'''Edwin Massey''' || '''30 years (1988–present)''' || [[Indian River State College]] || Fort Pierce, FL ||
|-
|'''Jerry C. Davis''' || '''30 years (1988–present)''' || [[College of the Ozarks]] || Point Lookout, MO ||
|-
|'''Gary Cook''' || '''30 years (1988–present)''' || [[Dallas Baptist University]] || Dallas, TX || Served as President until 2015, then Chancellor
|-
|[[Thomas Duckett Boyd]] || 30 years (1896–1926)|| [[Louisiana State University]] || Baton Rouge, LA || Previously served as interim President of LSU in 1886
|-
|Lincoln Hulley || 30 years (1904–1934) || [[Stetson University]] || DeLand, FL ||
|-
|[[Daniel R. Chamberlain]] || 30 years (1976–2006) || [[Houghton College]] || Houghton, NY ||
|-
|Richard V. Clearwaters || 30 years (1956–1986) || [[Central Baptist Theological Seminary of Minneapolis]] || Plymouth, MN ||
|-
|[[Ernest O. Holland]] || 30 years (1915–1945) || [[Washington State University]] || Pullman, WA ||
|-
|'''[[Jeffrey Bullock]]''' || '''30 years (1988–present)''' || [[University of Dubuque]] || Dubuque, IA ||
|-
|'''[[Diana Natalicio]]''' || '''30 years (1988–present)''' || [[University of Texas at El Paso]] || El Paso, TX || Longest serving president still sitting of a major public research university. Appointed interim president in 1987.<ref>{{cite web|title=UTEP Encyclopedia|url=http://encyclopedia.utep.edu|archive-url=https://archive.is/20140312193651/http://encyclopedia.utep.edu/|dead-url=yes|archive-date=2014-03-12}}</ref>
|-
|'''Edwin H. Welch''' || '''29 years (1989–present)''' || [[University of Charleston]] || Charleston, WV ||
|-
|[[James Petigru Boyce]] || 29 years (1859–1888) || [[Southern Baptist Theological Seminary]] || Louisville, KY || First President. Was titled Chairman of Faculty from 1859 to 1887.
|-
| Silvas Evans || 29 years (1910-1917, 1921-1943) || [[Ripon College (Wisconsin)|Ripon College]] || Ripon, WI ||
|-
| [[Nathan Green, Jr.]] || 29 years (1873-1902) || [[Cumberland University]] || Lebanon, TN ||
|-
|[[Edgar Young Mullins]] || 29 years (1899–1928) || [[Southern Baptist Theological Seminary]] || Louisville, KY ||
|-
|James S Luckey || 29 years (1908–1937) || [[Houghton College]] || Houghton, NY || First President of Houghton as an incorporated college
|-
|[[Jeremiah Day]] || 29 years (1817–1846) || [[Yale University]] || New Haven, CT ||
|-
|[[Rees Edgar Tulloss]] || 29 years (1920–1949) || [[Wittenberg University]] || Springfield, OH ||
|-
|Albert Parker || 29 years (1929–1958) || [[Hanover College]] || Hanover, IN ||
|-
|John Horner || 29 years (1958–1987) || [[Hanover College]] || Hanover, IN ||
|-
|Ruth A. Haas || 29 years (1946-1975) || [[Western Connecticut State University]] || Danbury, CT ||
|-
|Paul Ambrose Fontaine || 29 years (1929–1958) || [[Marist College]] || Poughkeepsie, NY||
|-
|[[Jack L. Stark]] || 29 years (1970–1999) || [[Claremont McKenna College]] || Claremont, CA ||
|-
|[[David Lieber]] || 29 years (1964–1993) || [[University of Judaism]] || Bel-air, Los Angeles, CA ||
|-
|[[Charles E. Young]]|| 29 years (1968–1997)<ref>{{cite web|last=Chambers|first=Veronica|title=College Presidents in the Spotlight|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1995/11/05/education/college-presidents-in-the-spotlight.html|work=The New York Times|publisher=The New York Times Company|accessdate=29 May 2013}}</ref> || [[UCLA]] || Los Angeles, CA || Was also the president of the University of Florida from 1999 to 2003.
|-
|[[Edith Lesley]] || 29 years (1909–1938) || [[Lesley University]] || Cambridge, MA ||
|-
|'''Jack Hawkins, Jr.''' || '''29 years (1989–present)''' || Troy University<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.troy.edu/|title=Troy University|last=|first=|date=|website=|access-date=}}</ref> || Troy, AL ||
|-
|Charles J. Smith || 29 years (1920–1949) || [[Roanoke College]] || Salem, VA ||
|-
|'''[[Jahnae H. Barnett]]''' || '''28 years (1990–present)''' || [[William Woods University]] || Fulton, MO ||
|-
|[[Katharine Elizabeth McBride]] || 28 years (1942–1970) || [[Bryn Mawr College]] || Bryan Mawr, PA ||
|-
|[[Jacob Gould Schurman]] || 28 years (1892-1920) || [[Cornell University]] || Ithaca, NY ||
|-
|[[M. Carey Thomas]] || 28 years (1894–1922) || [[Bryn Mawr College]] || Bryan Mawr, PA ||
|-
|[[E. Wilson Lyon]] || 28 years (1941–1969) || [[Pomona College]] || Claremont, CA ||
|-
|Daniel Fisher || 28 years (1879–1907) || [[Hanover College]] || Hanover, IN ||
|-
|[[John A. Hannah]] || 28 years (1941–1969) || [[Michigan State College]] || East Lansing, MI ||
|-
|Joab Mauldin Lesesne Jr. || 28 years (1972–2000) || [[Wofford College]] || Spartanburg, SC ||
|-
|James R. Day || 28 years (1894–1922) || [[Syracuse University]] || Syracuse, NY ||
|-
|Richard Vernon Moore || 28 years (1947–1975) || [[Bethune-Cookman University]] || Daytona Beach, FL ||
|-
|Oswald Perry Bronson || 28 years (1975–2003) || [[Bethune-Cookman University]] || Daytona Beach, FL ||
|-
|'''[[Royce Money]]''' || '''27 years (1991–present)''' || [[Abilene Christian University]] || Abilene, TX || Served as President until 2010, then Chancellor
|-
|William P. Tolley || 27 years (1942–1969) || [[Syracuse University]] || Syracuse, NY ||
|-
|[[Ray Lyman Wilbur]] || 27 years (1916–1943) || [[Stanford University]] || Stanford, CA ||
|-
|M. Elton Hendricks || 27 years (1983-2010) || [[Methodist University]] || Fayetteville, NC ||
|-
|James Henry Carlisle || 27 years (1875–1902) || [[Wofford College]] || Spartanburg, SC ||
|-
|[[Alexander Schure]] || 27 years (1955–1982) || [[New York Institute of Technology]] || New York, NY ||
|-
|[[Norman Lamm]] || 27 years (1976–2003) || [[Yeshiva University]] || New York, NY ||
|-
|Edward H. Hammond || 27 years (1987–2014) || [[Fort Hays State University]] || Hays, KS ||
|-
|[[John E. Murray Jr.]] || 27 years (1988–2015) || [[Duquesne University]] || Pittsburgh, PA || Served as President until 2001, then Chancellor
|-
|[[John Preston McConnell]] || 26 years (1911-1937) || [[Radford University]] || Radford, VA ||
|-
|[[Bowman Foster Ashe]] || 26 years (1926–1952) || [[University of Miami]] || Coral Gables, FL ||
|-
| John H.T. Main || 26 years (1905–1931) || [[Grinnell College]] || Grinnell, IA ||
|-
|[[Benjamin Labaree]]|| 26 years (1840–1866) || [[Middlebury College]] || Middlebury, VT ||
|-
|[[Dan Reneau]] || 26 years (1987–2013) || [[Louisiana Tech University]] || Ruston, LA ||
|-
|[[John Witherspoon]] || 26 years (1768–1794) || [[Princeton University]] || Princeton, NJ ||
|-
|[[Don Moon (educator)|Don Moon]] || 26 years (1978–2004) || [[Shimer College]] || Chicago, IL ||
|-
|[[Lawrence Biondi]] || 26 years (1987–2013) || [[Saint Louis University]] || St. Louis, MO ||
|-
|[[Harry Augustus Garfield]] || 26 years (1908–1934) || [[Williams College]] || Williamstown, MA ||
|-
|[[Alfred Bryan Bonds]] || 26 years (1955–1981) || [[Baldwin Wallace University]] || Berea, OH ||
|-
|[[Daniel Coit Gilman]] || 26 years (1875–1901) || [[Johns Hopkins University]] || Baltimore, MD ||
|-
|[[Elizabeth Coleman]] || 26 years (1987–2013) || [[Bennington College]] || Bennington, VT ||
|-
|Albert Maltby || 26 years (1890-1916) || [[Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania]] || Slippery Rock, PA || Maltby was the second principal. The university was called Slippery Rock State Normal School.
|-
|George Sverdrup || 26 years (1911-1937) || [[Augsburg University]] || Minneapolis, MN ||
|-
|[[James H. Daughdrill, Jr.]] || 26 years (1973–1999) || [[Rhodes College]] || Memphis, TN ||
|-
|[[John Hitt]] || 26 years (1992–2018) || [[University of Central Florida]] || Orlando, FL ||
|-
|[[Robert Wexler (rabbi)|Robert D. Wexler]] || 26 years (1992–2018) || [[American Jewish University]] || Bel-Air, CA ||
|-
|'''[[Freeman A. Hrabowski III]]''' || '''26 years (1992–present)''' || [[University of Maryland, Baltimore County]] || Baltimore, MD
|
|-
|[[Eric R. Gilbertson]] || 25 years (1989-2014) || [[Saginaw Valley State University]] || University Center, MI
|
|-
|[[Clyde Cook]] || 25 years (1982–2007)<ref>{{cite web|title=Clyde Cook Biola Profile|url=http://www.biola.edu/university_president/profile/|accessdate=4 September 2014|deadurl=yes|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20160304003413/http://www.biola.edu/university_president/profile/|archivedate=4 March 2016|df=}}</ref> || [[Biola University]] || La Mirada, CA ||
|-
|James McCain || 25 years (1950–1975) || [[Kansas State University]] || Manhattan, KS ||
|-
|[[Frederick L. Hovde]]|| 25 years (1946–1971) || [[Purdue University]] || West Lafayette, IN ||
|-
|[[Betty Siegel]] || 25 years (1981–2006) || [[Kennesaw State University]] || Kennesaw, GA ||
|-
|Homer B. Williams || 25 years (1912–1937) || [[Bowling Green State University]] || Bowling Green, OH ||
|-
|[[F. Jay Taylor]] || 25 years (1962–1987) || [[Louisiana Tech University]] || Ruston, LA ||
|-
|[[Walter Washington (educator)|Walter Washington]] || 25 years (1969–1994)<ref>{{cite web|title=Alcorn State University: Past Presidents|url=http://www.alcorn.edu/inauguration/default.aspx?id=6671|publisher=Alcorn State University|accessdate=20 September 2012|deadurl=yes|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20130322025143/http://www.alcorn.edu/inauguration/default.aspx?id=6671|archivedate=22 March 2013|df=}}</ref>|| [[Alcorn State University]] || Lorman, MI ||
|-
|[[Theodore Dwight Woolsey]] || 25 years (1846–1871) || [[Yale University]] || New Haven, CT ||
|-
|[[Ellen Fitz Pendleton]] || 25 years (1911–1936) || [[Wellesley College]] || Wellesley, MA ||
|-
|Julius D. Dreher || 25 years (1878–1903) || [[Roanoke College]] || Salem, VA ||
|-
|[[Bernard Revel]] || 25 years (1915–1940) || [[Yeshiva University]] || New York, NY ||
|-
|[[James M. Shuart]] || 25 years (1976-2001) || [[Hofstra University]] || Hempstead, NY ||
|-
|Ernest Looney Stockton Jr. || 25 years (1958-1983) || [[Cumberland University]] || Lebanon, TN ||
|-
|Rex Allwin Turner, Jr. || 25 years (1983-2008) || [[Amridge University]] || Montgomery, AL ||
|-
|}


==See also==
== Background ==
{{See also|Assassination of John F. Kennedy in popular culture}}
{{Education in the U.S.}}
[[File:wanted for treason.jpg|thumb|right|Handbill circulated on November 21, 1963, one day before the assassination.]]
*[[Academic Administration#United States|Academic Administration]]
[[President of the United States|President]] [[John F. Kennedy]] was assassinated by gunshot while traveling in a motorcade in an open-top [[SS-100-X|limousine]] in [[Dallas, Texas]] at 12:30&nbsp;pm CST on Friday, November 22, 1963; Texas Governor [[John Connally]] was wounded, but survived. Within two hours, [[Lee Harvey Oswald]] was arrested for killing Dallas policeman [[J. D. Tippit]] and arraigned that evening. Shortly after 1:30&nbsp;am on Saturday, November 23, Oswald was arraigned for murdering President Kennedy as well.<ref>Warren Commission Report, Chapter 5: Detention and Death of Oswald, [https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/warren-commission-report/chapter-5.html#chronology Chronology]. p. 198.</ref><ref>Tippit murder affidavit: [http://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh20/html/WH_Vol20_0170a.htm text], [http://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh20/html/WH_Vol20_0170b.htm cover]. Kennedy murder affidavit: [http://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh20/html/WH_Vol20_0171a.htm text], [http://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh20/html/WH_Vol20_0171b.htm cover].</ref> On Sunday, November 24, at 11:21&nbsp;a.m., nightclub owner [[Jack Ruby]] fatally shot Oswald as he was being transferred from the city jail to the county jail.
*[[Chancellor (education)]]
*[[Higher education in the United States]]
*[[List of leaders of universities and colleges in the United States]]


Immediately after the shooting, many people suspected that the assassination was part of a larger plot,<ref name="Knight">{{cite book |last1=Knight |first1=Peter |title=The Kennedy Assassination |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=MRs2Tu714ZUC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage |year=2007 |publisher=Edinburgh University Press Ltd. |location=Edinburgh |isbn=978-1-934110-32-4 |page=75 |ref=harv}}</ref> and [[broadcasting|broadcaster]]s speculated that Dallas [[Right-wing politics|right-wingers]] were involved.<ref name="The New York Times; January 5, 1992">{{cite news |last=Krauss |first=Clifford |date=January 5, 1992 |title=28 Years After Kennedy's Assassination, Conspiracy Theories Refuse to Die |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1992/01/05/us/28-years-after-kennedy-s-assassination-conspiracy-theories-refuse-to-die.html |work=The New York Times |access-date=April 26, 2017}}</ref> Ruby's shooting of Oswald compounded initial suspicions.<ref name="Knight"/> Among conspiracy theorists, author [[Mark Lane (author)|Mark Lane]] has been described as writing "the first literary shot" with his article, "Defense Brief for Oswald", in the ''[[National Guardian]]''{{'}}s December 19, 1963 issue.<ref name="Bugliosi">{{cite book |last=Bugliosi |first=Vincent |authorlink=Vincent Bugliosi |title=Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy |year=2007 |publisher=W. W. Norton & Company |location=New York |isbn=0-393-04525-0 |page=989 |ref=harv}}</ref><ref>[http://karws.gso.uri.edu/jfk/the_critics/lane/Natl-Guardian/Natl_Guardian.html Oswald Innocent? A Lawyer's Brief] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130126122954/http://karws.gso.uri.edu/jfk/the_critics/lane/Natl-Guardian/Natl_Guardian.html |date=January 26, 2013 }}</ref> Thomas Buchanan's book ''Who Killed Kennedy?'', published in May 1964, has been credited as the first book to allege a conspiracy.<ref name="Donovan">{{cite book |last1=Donovan |first1=Barna William |title=Conspiracy Films: A Tour of Dark Places in the American Conscious |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=bJkhqU1IXHAC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage |year=2011 |publisher=McFarland & Company |location=Jefferson, North Carolina |isbn=978-0-7864-3901-0 |page=34 |ref=harv}}</ref>
==Notes==
{{Reflist|group=note}}


In 1964, the [[Warren Commission]] concluded that Oswald had acted alone and that no credible evidence supported the contention that he was involved in a conspiracy to assassinate the president.<ref name="WCR-C6">{{cite book |title=Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy |url=https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/warren-commission-report/ |year=1964 |publisher=United States Government Printing Office |location=Washington, D.C. |page=374 |chapter=Chapter 6: Investigation of Possible Conspiracy |chapterurl=https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/warren-commission-report/chapter-6.html |ref={{harvid|Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Chapter 6|1964}}}}</ref> The Commission also indicated that then-Secretary of State [[Dean Rusk]], then-Defense Secretary [[Robert S. McNamara]], then-Treasury Secretary [[C. Douglas Dillon]], then-Attorney General [[Robert F. Kennedy]], then-FBI director [[J. Edgar Hoover]], then-CIA director [[John A. McCone]], and then-Secret Service Chief [[James J. Rowley]], each individually reached the same conclusion on the basis of information available to them.{{sfn|Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Chapter 6|1964|p=374}} During the [[trial of Clay Shaw]] in 1969, however, [[New Orleans]] District Attorney [[Jim Garrison]] challenged the [[single-bullet theory]] with evidence from the [[Zapruder film]], which he claimed indicated that a fourth shot from the [[Dealey Plaza|grassy knoll]] had caused the fatal shot to Kennedy's head.
==References==
{{Reflist}}


In 1979, the [[United States House Select Committee on Assassinations]] (HSCA) agreed with the Warren Commission that Oswald did, in fact, assassinate Kennedy, but concluded that the Commission's report and the original FBI investigation were seriously flawed. The HSCA concluded that at least four shots were fired with a "high probability" that two gunmen fired at the President, and that a conspiracy to do so was probable.<ref name="HSCA_Report_0048a pp. 65-75"/> The HSCA stated that the Warren Commission had "failed to investigate adequately the possibility of a conspiracy to assassinate the President".<ref name="HCSA-S"/> The [[John F. Kennedy assassination#Ramsey Clark Panel|Ramsey Clark Panel]] and the [[John F. Kennedy assassination#Rockefeller Commission|Rockefeller Commission]] both supported the Warren Commission's conclusions.
[[:Category:American university and college presidents| Longest]]

[[:Category:Higher education in the United States]]
The last remaining documents under Section 5 of the [[President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992]] were released on October 26, 2017, while the remaining ones that are still classified will only be analyzed for redactions.<ref>https://www.archives.gov/press/press-releases/nr18-05</ref>
[[:Category:University governance]]

[[:Category:Lists of university and college leaders|Longest]]
=== Public opinion ===
[[:Category:Longest serving]]
According to author [[John C. McAdams]], "[t]he greatest and grandest of all conspiracy theories is the Kennedy assassination conspiracy theory."<ref name="Krajicek">{{cite web |url=http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/terrorists_spies/assassins/jfk/1.html |title=JFK Assassination |author=David Krajicek |work=truTV.com |publisher=Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. |page=1 |accessdate=March 25, 2012 |ref=harv}}</ref> Others have often referred to it as "the mother of all conspiracies".<ref name="Broderick">{{cite book |last1=Broderick |first1=James F.|last2=Miller |first2=Darren W. |title=Web of Conspiracy: A Guide to Conspiracy Theory Sites on the Internet |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=hOLDnJM91bkC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage |year=2008 |publisher=Information Today, Inc./CyberAge Books |location=Medford, New Jersey |isbn=978-0-910965-81-1 |page=203 |chapter=Chapter 16: The JFK Assassination |chapterurl=https://books.google.com/books?id=hOLDnJM91bkC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA203#v=onepage |ref=harv}}</ref><ref name="Perry">{{cite book |last=Perry |first=James D. |title=Conspiracy Theories in American History: An Encyclopedia |editor1-first=Knight |editor1-last=Peter |year=2003 |publisher=ABC-CLIO, Inc. |location=Santa Barbara, California |isbn=1-57607-812-4 |page=383 |ref=harv}}</ref> The number of books written about the assassination of Kennedy has been estimated to be between 1,000{{sfn|Bugliosi|2007|p=xiv}}{{sfn|Bugliosi|2007|p=974}} and 2,000.<ref name="Knight"/> According to [[Vincent Bugliosi]], 95% of those books are "pro-conspiracy and anti-Warren Commission".{{sfn|Bugliosi|2007|p=xiv}}

Author David Krajicek describes Kennedy assassination enthusiasts as people belonging to "[[conspiracy theorists]]" on one side and "[[debunkers]]" on the other.<ref name="Krajicek"/> The great amount of controversy surrounding the event has resulted in bitter disputes between those who support the conclusion of the Warren Commission and those who reject it, or are critical of the official explanation with each side levelling toward the other accusations of "naivete, cynicism, and selective interpretation of the evidence".<ref name="Perry"/>

Public opinion polls have consistently shown that most Americans believe there was a conspiracy to kill President Kennedy. However, on the question of a government cover-up, different polls show both a minority and a majority of Americans who believe the government was engaged in one.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.aei.org/article/8008|author=Karlyn Bowman|title=Most Americans Don't Know Much about Fast-Track|publisher=American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research|date=September 4, 1997}}</ref> These same polls also show no agreement on who else may have been involved in the shooting. A 2003 [[Gallup (company)#Gallup Poll|Gallup Poll]] reported that 75% of Americans don't believe that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone.<ref name="Lydia Saad"/> That same year, an [[ABC News]] poll found that 70% of respondents suspected that the assassination involved more than one person.<ref name=langer20031116>{{cite web|url=http://abcnews.go.com/images/pdf/937a1JFKAssassination.pdf|author=Gary Langer|title=John F. Kennedy's Assassination Leaves a Legacy of Suspicion|publisher=ABC News|date=November 16, 2003|accessdate=May 16, 2010}}</ref> A 2004 [[Fox News Channel|Fox News]] poll noted that 66% of Americans thought there had been a conspiracy while 74% believed that there was a cover-up.<ref>{{cite news | url=http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,102511,00.html | title=Poll: Most Believe 'Cover-Up' of JFK Assassination Facts | publisher=Fox News | work=foxnews.com | date=June 18, 2004 | author=Dana Blanton}}</ref> As recently as 2009, some 76% of people polled for [[CBS News]] said they believed the President had been killed as the result of a conspiracy.<ref>{{cite book|last=Summers|first=Anthony|title=Not in Your Lifetime|year=2013|publisher=Open Road|location=New York|isbn=978-1-4804-3548-3|page=xii|url=http://www.openroadmedia.com/not-in-your-lifetime|deadurl=yes|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20131101151417/http://www.openroadmedia.com/not-in-your-lifetime|archivedate=November 1, 2013|df=mdy-all}}</ref> A 2013 Gallup Poll found that 61% of Americans, the lowest figure in nearly 50 years, believed other people besides Oswald were involved.<ref name="Gallup, Inc"/>

== Possible evidence of a cover-up ==
Numerous researchers, author [[Mark Lane (author)|Mark Lane]],<ref>{{cite web| url=https://www.amazon.com/Rush-Judgment-Mark-Lane/dp/1560250437| title=Rush to Judgment| author=Mark Lane| publisher=Amazon.com| accessdate=March 15, 2012}}</ref> Henry Hurt,<ref name="Hurt">{{cite book |last=Hurt |first=Henry |title=Reasonable Doubt: An Investigation into the Assassination of John F. Kennedy |year=1986 |publisher=Holt, Rinehart, and Winston |location=New York |isbn=0-03-004059-0 |ref=harv}}</ref> [[Michael L. Kurtz]],<ref>{{cite book|author=Michael L. Kurtz|title=The JFK Assassination Debates: Lone Gunman versus Conspiracy|publisher=University of Kansas Press|date=November 2006}}</ref> Gerald D. McKnight,<ref>{{cite book|author=Gerald D. McKnight|title=Breach of Trust: How the Warren Commission Failed the Nation and Why|publisher=University of Kansas Press|date=October 2005}}</ref> [[Anthony Summers]],<ref name="Summers">{{cite book |last1=Summers |first1=Anthony |authorlink1=Anthony Summers |title=Not in Your Lifetime |year=2013 |publisher=Open Road |location=New York |isbn=978-1-4804-3548-3 |ref=harv}}</ref> and [[Harold Weisberg]],<ref>{{cite book|author=Harold Weisberg|title=Whitewash: The Report on the Warren Report|publisher=Skyhorse Press; originally self-published|date=1965}}</ref> have pointed out what they characterize as inconsistencies, oversights, exclusions of evidence, errors, changing stories, or changes made to witness testimony in the official Warren Commission investigation, which they say could suggest a cover-up.

Michael Benson wrote that the Warren Commission received only information supplied to it by the FBI, and that its purpose was to [[Rubber stamp (politics)|rubber stamp]] the [[lone gunman theory]].<ref name="Benson">{{cite book |last=Benson|first=Michael |title=Who's Who in the JFK Assassination: An A-to-Z Encyclopedia |year=2003|origyear=1993 |publisher=Citadel Press Books |location=New York |isbn=0-8065-1444-2 |page=xiii |ref=harv}}</ref>

United States Senator and [[U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence]] member [[Richard Schweiker]] told author Anthony Summers in 1978 that he "believe[d] that the Warren Commission was set up at the time to feed pabulum to the American public for reasons not yet known, and that one of the biggest cover-ups in the history of our country occurred at that time".{{sfn|Summers|2013|p=243}}

[[James H. Fetzer]] took issue with a 1998 statement from Federal Judge and Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB) Chairman [[John R. Tunheim]], who stated that no "[[smoking gun]]s" indicating a conspiracy or cover-up were discovered during their efforts in the early 1990s to declassify documents related to the assassination. Fetzer identified 16 "smoking guns" that he claims prove the official narrative is impossible, and therefore a conspiracy and cover-up occurred. He also claims that evidence released by the ARRB substantiates these concerns. These include problems with bullet trajectories, the murder weapon, the ammunition used, inconsistencies between the Warren Commission's account and the autopsy findings, inconsistencies between the autopsy findings and what was reported by witnesses at the scene of the murder, eyewitness accounts that conflict with x-rays taken of the President's body, indications that the diagrams and photos of the President's brain in the [[National Archives and Records Administration|National Archives]] are not the President's, testimony by those who took and processed the autopsy photos that the photos were altered, created, or destroyed, indications that the [[Zapruder film]] had been tampered with, allegations that the Warren Commission's version of events conflicts with news reports from the scene of the murder, an alleged change to the motorcade route that facilitated the assassination, alleged lax Secret Service and local law enforcement security, and statements made by people who claim that they had knowledge of, or participated in, a conspiracy to kill the President.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.jfkresearch.com/prologue.htm|author=James H. Fetzer|title=Murder in Dealey Plaza, Prologue: "Smoking Guns" in the Death of JFK|publisher=Open Court|year=2000|deadurl=yes|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20091213212741/http://www.jfkresearch.com/prologue.htm|archivedate=December 13, 2009|df=mdy-all}}</ref>

In 1966, [[Roscoe Drummond]] voiced skepticism about a cover-up in his syndicated column, saying, "If there were a conspiracy to cover up the truth about the assassination, it would have to involve the Chief Justice, the Republican, Democratic, and non-party members of the commission, the FBI, the CIA, the Secret Service, the distinguished doctors of the armed services—and the White House—a conspiracy so multiple and complex that it would have fallen of its own weight."<ref>{{cite news | url=https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=336&dat=19661103&id=bclOAAAAIBAJ&sjid=aUkDAAAAIBAJ&pg=4883,718763 | title=Those Warren Report Rumors | work=The Deseret News | date=November 3, 1966 | accessdate=December 23, 2014 | last=Drummond | first=Roscoe | authorlink=Roscoe Drummond |location=Salt Lake City, Utah | page=A26}}</ref><!-- lengthier version of same column here: http://jfk.hood.edu/Collection/Weisberg%20Subject%20Index%20Files/D%20Disk/Drummon%20Roscoe/Item%2002.pdf -->

== Allegations of witness tampering, intimidation, and foul play ==

=== Alleged witness intimidation ===
Richard Buyer wrote that many witnesses whose statements pointed to a conspiracy were either ignored or [[witness intimidation|intimidated]] by the Warren Commission.<ref name="Buyer">{{cite book |last=Buyer |first=Richard |title=Why the JFK Assassination Still Matters: The Truth for My Daughter Kennedy and for Generations to Come |year=2009 |publisher=Wheatmark |location=Tucson, Arizona |isbn=1-60494-193-6 |page=162 |ref=harv}}</ref> In ''JFK: The Last Dissenting Witness'', a 1992 biography of [[Jean Hill]], Bill Sloan wrote that Warren Commission assistant counsel [[Arlen Specter]] attempted to humiliate, discredit, and intimidate Hill into changing her story. Hill also told Sloan that she was abused by Secret Service agents, harassed by the FBI, and received death threats.<ref name="Sloan">{{cite book |title=JFK: The Last Dissenting Witness |last=Sloan |first=Bill |author2=Jean Hill |year=1992 |publisher=Pelican Publishing Company |location=Gretna, Louisiana |isbn=1-58980-672-7 |pages=101, 186, 212, 219 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=BPKo3kC3YtIC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage |accessdate=February 26, 2012}}</ref>

A later book by Sloan, entitled ''JFK: Breaking the Silence'', quotes several assassination eyewitnesses as saying that Warren Commission interviewers repeatedly cut short or stifled any comments casting doubt on the conclusion that Oswald had acted alone.

In his book ''Crossfire'', [[Jim Marrs]] gives accounts of several people who said they were intimidated by either FBI agents or anonymous individuals into altering or suppressing what they knew regarding the assassination. Some of those individuals include Richard Carr, Acquilla Clemmons, Sandy Speaker, and A. J. Millican.<ref name="Marrs">{{cite book |last= Marrs |first= Jim |authorlink=Jim Marrs|title= Crossfire: The Plot that Killed Kennedy |year= 1989|publisher= Carroll & Graf Publishers, Inc|location= New York|isbn= 978-0-88184-648-5 |pages=318–319 |ref=harv}}</ref> Marrs also wrote that Texas School Book Depository employee Joe Molina was "intimidated by authorities and lost his job soon after the assassination",{{sfn|Marrs|1989|p=87}} and that witness Ed Hoffman was warned by an FBI agent that he "might get killed" if he revealed what he observed in [[Dealey Plaza]] on the day of the assassination.{{sfn|Marrs|1989|p=88}}

=== Witness deaths ===
Allegations of mysterious or suspicious deaths of witnesses connected with the Kennedy assassination originated with [[Penn Jones, Jr.]],<ref name="HCSA-IV">{{cite book |title=Hearings before the Select Committee on Assassinations of the U.S. House of Representatives |url=http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=957 |type= |edition= |series= |volume=IV |year=1979 |origyear= |publisher=United States Government Printing Office |location=Washington, D.C. |pages=454–468 |chapter=Testimony of Jacqueline Hess |chapterurl=http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?absPageId=77882}}</ref>{{sfn|Bugliosi|2007|pp=1012, 1276}} and were brought to national attention by the 1973 film ''[[Executive Action (film)|Executive Action]]''.<ref name="HCSA-IV"/>{{sfn|Bugliosi|2007|p=1012}} Jim Marrs later presented a list of 103 people he believed died "convenient deaths" under suspicious circumstances. He noted that the deaths were grouped around investigations conducted by the Warren Commission, New Orleans D.A. [[Jim Garrison]], the [[United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence|Senate Intelligence Committee]], and the House Select Committee on Assassinations.{{sfn|Marrs|1989|pp=555–566}} Marrs pointed out that "these deaths certainly would have been convenient for anyone not wishing the truth of the JFK assassination to become public."<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.assassinationresearch.com/v1n2/deaths.html|author1=Jim Marrs |author2=Ralph Schuster |title=A Look at the Deaths of Those Involved|publisher=Assassination Research|year=2002}}</ref> In 2013, [[Richard Belzer]] published ''Hit List: An In-Depth Investigation into the Mysterious Deaths of Witnesses to the JFK Assassination'' that examines the deaths of 50 people linked to the assassination and claims they were murdered as part of a cover-up.<ref name="Elias">{{cite journal |last=Elias |first=Marilyn |date=Winter 2013 |title=Conspiracy Act |url=http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2013/winter/conspiracy-act |journal=Intelligence Report |publisher=Southern Poverty Law Center |issue=152 |accessdate=December 22, 2014}}</ref>

Vincent Bugliosi described the death of journalist [[Dorothy Kilgallen]]—who said she was granted a private interview with Jack Ruby—as "perhaps the most prominent mysterious death" cited by assassination researchers.{{sfn|Bugliosi|2007|p=1014}}<!-- Explanation of her prominence among conspiracy researchers (i.e. death after Jack Ruby interview) needed here. --> According to author Jerome Kroth, Mafia figures [[Sam Giancana]], [[John Roselli]], [[Carlos Prio]], [[Jimmy Hoffa]], [[Charles Nicoletti]], Leo Moceri, [[Richard Cain]], Salvatore Granello, and Dave Yaras were likely murdered to prevent them from revealing their knowledge.<ref name="Kroth">{{cite book |last= Kroth |first=Jerome A. |title=Conspiracy in Camelot: The Complete History of the Assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy |year=2003 |publisher=Algora Publishing |isbn=0-87586-247-0 |page=195 |ref=harv}}</ref> According to author Matthew Smith, others with some tie to the case who have died suspicious deaths include [[Lee Bowers]], [[John Garrett Underhill, Jr.|Gary Underhill]], [[William C. Sullivan|William Sullivan]], [[David Ferrie]], [[Clay Shaw]], [[George de Mohrenschildt]], four showgirls who worked for Jack Ruby, and Ruby himself.<ref name="Smith">{{cite book |last1=Smith |first1=Matthew |title=Conspiracy: The Plot to Stop the Kennedys |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=clLqGmlwS6QC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage |year=2005 |publisher=Citadel Press |location=New York |isbn=978-0-8065-2764-2 |pages=104–108 |ref=harv}}</ref>

The House Select Committee on Assassinations investigated another alleged "mysterious death"—that of Rose Cheramie.<ref name="HCSA-X">{{cite book |title=Appendix to Hearings before the Select Committee on Assassinations of the U.S. House of Representatives |url=http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?absPageId=156001 |volume=X |date=March 1979 |publisher=United States Government Printing Office |location=Washington, D.C. |pages=197–205 |chapter=Rose Cheramie |chapterurl=http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=1212&relPageId=201 |ref={{harvid|Appendix to Hearings before the Select Committee on Assassinations of the U.S. House of Representatives, Volume X|1979}}}}</ref> The Committee reported that Louisiana State Police Lieutenant Francis Fruge traveled to [[Eunice, Louisiana]], on November 20, 1963—two days before the assassination—to pick up Cheramie, who had sustained minor injuries when she was hit by a car.{{sfn|Marrs|1989|p=401}}{{sfn|Appendix to Hearings before the Select Committee on Assassinations of the U.S. House of Representatives, Volume X|1979|p=201}} Fruge drove Cheramie to the hospital and said that on the way there, she "... related to [him] that she was coming from Florida to Dallas with two men who were Italians or resembled Italians." Fruge asked her what she planned to do in Dallas, to which she replied: "... number one, pick up some money, pick up [my] baby, and ... kill Kennedy."{{sfn|Appendix to Hearings before the Select Committee on Assassinations of the U.S. House of Representatives, Volume X|1979|p=201}} Cheramie was admitted and treated at State Hospital in [[Jackson, Louisiana]] for alcohol and heroin addiction.

State Hospital physician Dr. Victor Weiss later told a House Select Committee investigator that on November 25—three days after the assassination—one of his fellow physicians told him that Cheramie had "stated before the assassination that President Kennedy was going to be killed".{{sfn|Appendix to Hearings before the Select Committee on Assassinations of the U.S. House of Representatives, Volume X|1979|p=200}} Dr. Weiss further reported that Cheramie told him after the assassination that she had worked for Jack Ruby and that her knowledge of the assassination originated from "word in the underworld".{{sfn|Appendix to Hearings before the Select Committee on Assassinations of the U.S. House of Representatives, Volume X|1979|p=201}} After the assassination, Lt. Fruge contacted Dallas Police Captain Will Fritz regarding what he had learned from Cheramie, but Fritz told him he "wasn't interested".{{sfn|Appendix to Hearings before the Select Committee on Assassinations of the U.S. House of Representatives, Volume X|1979|p=202}} Cheramie was found dead by a highway near [[Big Sandy, Texas]], on September 4, 1965; she had been run over by a car.{{sfn|Appendix to Hearings before the Select Committee on Assassinations of the U.S. House of Representatives, Volume X|1979|p=199}}

Another "suspicious death" cited by Jim Marrs was that of Joseph Milteer, director of the Dixie [[Ku Klux Klan|Klan]] of Georgia. Milteer was secretly tape-recorded thirteen days before the assassination telling Miami police informant William Somersett that the murder of Kennedy was "in the working". Milteer died in 1974 when a heater exploded in his house.{{sfn|Marrs|1989|p=562}}<ref name="ReferenceA">Turner, Nigel. ''The Men Who Killed Kennedy, Part 3, "The Cover-Up"'', 1991.</ref><ref>[http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/hsca/report/html/HSCA_Report_0131b.htm House Select Committee on Assassinations Final Report], p. 232.</ref> The House Select Committee on Assassinations reported in 1979 that Milteer's information on the threat to the President "was furnished [to] the agents making the advance arrangements before the visit of the President" to Miami, but that "the Milteer threat was ignored by Secret Service personnel in planning the trip to Dallas." Robert Bouck, Special Agent-in-Charge of the Secret Service's Protective Research Section, testified that "threat information was transmitted from one region of the country to another if there was specific evidence it was relevant to the receiving region."<ref>[http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/hsca/report/html/HSCA_Report_0132a.htm House Select Committee on Assassinations Final Report], p. 233.</ref>

The House Select Committee on Assassinations investigated the allegation "that a statistically improbable number of individuals with some direct or peripheral association with the Kennedy assassination died as a result of that assassination, thereby raising the specter of conspiracy".<ref name="HCSA-IV"/> The committee's chief of research testified: "Our final conclusion on the issue is that the available evidence does not establish anything about the nature of these deaths which would indicate that the deaths were in some manner, either direct or peripheral, caused by the assassination of President Kennedy or by any aspect of the subsequent investigation."<ref name="HCSA-IV"/>

Author Gerald Posner said that Marrs's list was taken from the group of about 10,000 people connected even in the most tenuous way to the assassination, including people identified in the official investigations, as well as the research of conspiracy theorists. Posner also said that it would be surprising if a hundred people out of ten thousand did not die in "unnatural ways". He noted that over half of the people on Marrs's list did not die mysteriously, but of natural causes, such as Secret Service agent [[Roy Kellerman]], who died of heart failure at age 69 in 1984, long after the Kennedy assassination, but is on Marrs's list as someone whose cause of death is "unknown". Posner also pointed out that many prominent witnesses and conspiracy researchers continue to live long lives.<ref name="Posner2003">{{cite book|author=Gerald Posner|title=Case Closed: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of JFK|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Er9LPgAACAAJ|accessdate=July 8, 2013|year=2003|publisher=Anchor Books|isbn=978-1-4000-3462-8|pages=489–491}}</ref>

== Allegations of evidence suppression, tampering, and fabrication ==
Allegations saying that the evidence against Oswald was either planted, forged, or tampered with has been a main argument among anybody who believe a conspiracy has taken place.{{sfn|Bugliosi|2007|p=984}}

=== Suppression of evidence ===

==== Ignored testimony ====
Some assassination researchers assert that witness statements indicating a conspiracy were ignored by the Warren Commission. In 1967, [[Josiah Thompson]] stated that the Commission ignored the testimonies of seven witnesses who saw gunsmoke right by the stockade fence on the grassy knoll, as well as an eighth witness who smelled gunpowder by the time the assassination occurred.<ref name="Thompson">{{cite news | url=https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=4xNdAAAAIBAJ&sjid=MVoNAAAAIBAJ&pg=1431%2C2577977 | title='3 Gunmen Involved in JFK's Slaying; 4 Bullets Fired' | date=November 16, 1967 | agency=UPI | accessdate=March 8, 2012 | newspaper=St. Joseph Gazette | location=St. Joseph, Missouri | pages=1A-2A}}</ref> In 1989, Jim Marrs wrote that the Commission failed to ask for the testimonies of witnesses on the triple underpass whose statements pointed to a shooter on the grassy knoll.{{sfn|Marrs|1989|p=87}}

==== Confiscated film and photographs ====
Other researchers reported that witnesses who captured the assassination via photographs or film had their cameras confiscated by police or other authorities. Author Jim Marrs and documentary producer Nigel Turner both presented the account of [[Gordon Arnold]] who said that his film of the motorcade was taken by two policemen shortly after the assassination.{{sfn|Marrs|1989|p=88}}<ref name="ReferenceC">Turner, Nigel. ''The Men Who Killed Kennedy, Part 2, "The Forces of Darkness"'', 1988.</ref> Another witness, identified as Beverly Oliver, came forward in 1970 and said she was the "[[Babushka Lady]]" who is seen, in the [[Zapruder film]], filming the motorcade. She also said that after the assassination, she was contacted at work by two men who she thought "... were either FBI or Secret Service agents". According to Oliver, the men told her that they wanted to develop her film and return it to her within ten days, but they never did so.{{sfn|Marrs|1989|p=36}}<ref name="ReferenceC"/>

==== Withheld documents ====
Richard Buyer and others have complained that many documents pertaining to the assassination have been withheld over the years, including documents from investigations made by the Warren Commission, the House Select Committee on Assassinations, and the Church Committee.<ref name="Buyer"/> These documents individually included the President's autopsy records. Some documents still are not scheduled for release until 2029. Many documents were released during the mid-to-late 1990s by the [[Assassination Records Review Board]] (ARRB) under the [[President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992]]. However, some of the material released contains [[Sanitization (classified information)|redacted]] sections. Tax return information, which identified employers and sources of income, has not yet been released.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://fas.org/sgp/advisory/arrb98/part03.htm|title=Final Report of the Assassination Records Review Board|publisher=Assassination Records Review Board|date=September 1998}}</ref>

The existence of several secret documents related to the assassination, as well as the long period of secrecy, suggests to some the possibility of a cover-up. One historian noted, "There exists widespread suspicion about the government's disposition of the Kennedy assassination records stemming from the beliefs that Federal officials (1) have not made available all Government assassination records (even to the Warren Commission, Church Committee, House Assassination Committee) and (2) have heavily redacted the records released under FOIA in order to cover up sinister conspiracies."<ref>{{cite web|url=https://fas.org/sgp/advisory/arrb98/part03.htm|title=Final Report of the Assassination Records Review Board, Chapter 1: The Problem of Secrecy and the Solution of the JFK Act|author=Athan G. Theoharis, Professor, Department of History, Marquette University|year=1992}}</ref> According to the ARRB, "All Warren Commission records, except those records that contain tax return information, are (now) available to the public with only minor redactions."<ref>{{cite web|url=https://fas.org/sgp/advisory/arrb98/part03.htm|title=Final Report of the Assassination Records Review Board, Chapter 1: The Problem of Secrecy and the Solution of the JFK Act}}</ref> In response to a [[Freedom of Information Act (United States)|Freedom of Information Act]] request filed by journalist Jefferson Morley, the CIA stated in 2010 that it had over 1,100 documents in relation to the assassination, about 2,000 pages in total, that have not been released due to national security-related concerns.<ref>{{cite web| url=https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2010/11/the-kennedy-assassination-47-years-later-what-do-we-really-know/66722/| author=Jefferson Morley| title=The Kennedy Assassination: 47 Years Later, What Do We Really Know?| publisher=The Atlantic| date=November 22, 2010}}</ref>

=== Tampering with evidence ===
Some researchers have alleged that various items of physical evidence have been tampered with, including the [[Single bullet theory|"single bullet"]] (also known as the "magic bullet" by some critics of official explanations), various bullet cartridges and fragments, the [[SS-100-X|presidential limousine]]'s windshield, the paper bag in which the Warren Commission said Oswald hid the rifle, the so-called "backyard" photos depicting Oswald holding the rifle, the Zapruder film, the photographs and radiographs obtained at Kennedy's autopsy, and the president's dead body itself.<ref>[http://www.maryferrell.org/wiki/index.php/Evidence_Tampering%3F Evidence Tampering]. Maryferrell.org. Retrieved on July 15, 2013.</ref>

==== Photographs ====
[[File:Lho-133A.jpg|thumb|Oswald, carrying a rifle in his backyard]]
Among the evidence against Oswald are [[Lee Harvey Oswald#Backyard photos|photographs of him]] holding a Carcano rifle — the weapon identified by the Warren Commission as the assassination weapon — in his backyard. The House Select Committee on Assassinations concluded that the Oswald photos are genuine<ref>[https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/select-committee-report/part-1a.html#backyard Findings]. Archives.gov. Retrieved on July 15, 2013.</ref> and Oswald's wife, [[Marina Oswald Porter|Marina]], said that she took them.<ref>Warren Commission Hearings, vol. 1, p. 15, [http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh1/html/WC_Vol1_0014a.htm Testimony of Mrs. Lee Harvey Oswald].</ref> In 2009, the journal ''[[Perception (journal)|Perception]]'' published the findings of [[Hany Farid]], a professor in the Department of Computer Science at [[Dartmouth College]], who used [[3D modeling software]] to analyze one of the photographs.<ref name="Hany">{{cite journal |last=Farid |first=Hany |authorlink=Hany Farid |year=2009 |title=The Lee Harvey Oswald backyard photos: real or fake? |url=http://www.perceptionweb.com/perception/editorials/p6580.pdf |journal=Perception |volume=38 |issue=11 |pages=1731–1734 |issn= 1468-4233 |doi=10.1068/p6580 |accessdate=January 8, 2015 |pmid=20120271}}</ref><ref name="Ramer">{{cite news | url=http://www.nola.com/news/index.ssf/2009/11/lee_harvey_oswald_photo_not_a.html | title=Lee Harvey Oswald photo not a fake, college professor says | date=November 5, 2009 | accessdate=January 7, 2015 | last=Ramer | first=Holly | newspaper=The Times-Picayune | location=New Orleans, Louisiana}}</ref> After demonstrating that a single light source could create seemingly incongruent shadows, Farid concluded that the photograph revealed no evidence of tampering.<ref name="Hany"/><ref name="Ramer"/> Many researchers, including [[Robert Groden]], assert that these photos are fake.<ref name="Groden">{{cite book |last1=Groden |first1=Robert J. |authorlink1=Robert J. Groden |title=The Search for Lee Harvey Oswald: A Comprehensive Photographic Record |year=1995 |publisher=Penguin Books |location=New York |isbn=978-0-670-85867-5 |pages=90–95 |ref=harv}}</ref>

In 1979, after the HSCA had disbanded, Groden said that four autopsy photographs showing the back of Kennedy's head were forged to hide a wound fired from a second gunman.<ref name="Daily Reporter; July 9, 1979">{{cite news |author=<!--Staff writer(s); no by-line.--> |title=Autopsy photographs of JFK were forged: Technician |url=https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1926&dat=19790703&id=7VcrAAAAIBAJ&sjid=pNkEAAAAIBAJ&pg=4096,406241 |newspaper=Daily Reporter |location=Spencer, Iowa |date=July 9, 1979 |agency=UPI |pages=1, 3 |accessdate=January 6, 2015}}</ref> According to Groden, a photograph of a [[cadaver]]'s head was [[matte (filmmaking)|inserted over another]] depicting a large exit wound in the back of the president's head.<ref name="Daily Reporter; July 9, 1979"/> HSCA chief counsel [[G. Robert Blakey]], in response to the allegations, stated that the "suggestion that the committee would participate in a cover-up is absurd"<ref name="Observer-Reporter; July 10, 1979">{{cite news |author=<!--Staff writer(s); no by-line.--> |title=JFK Autopsy Photos Fake? |url=https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=2519&dat=19790710&id=-vRdAAAAIBAJ&sjid=k18NAAAAIBAJ&pg=3279,1121132 |newspaper=Observer-Reporter |location=Washington, Pennsylvania |date=July 10, 1979 |agency=AP |page=A-6 |accessdate= }}</ref> and that Groden was "not competent to make a judgment on whether [or not] a photograph has been altered".<ref name="The Washington Post; July 10, 1979">{{cite news |author=<!--Staff writer(s); no by-line.--> |title=Forgery Claim On JFK Photos Called 'False' |url=http://jfk.hood.edu/Collection/White%20Materials/White%20Magazines%20And%20Articles/Washington%20Post%2007-10-74/Item%2001.pdf |newspaper=The Washington Post |location=Washington, D.C. |date=July 10, 1979 |page= |accessdate=January 6, 2015}}</ref> Blakey stated that the photographic analysis panel for the Committee had examined the photographs and that they "considered everything [Groden] had to say and rejected it."<ref name="Observer-Reporter; July 10, 1979"/><ref name="The Washington Post; July 10, 1979"/>

==== The Zapruder film ====
The House Select Committee on Assassinations described the Zapruder film as "the best available photographic evidence of the number and timing of the shots that struck the occupants of the presidential limousine".<ref name="HCSA-IA">{{cite book |title=Report of the Select Committee on Assassinations of the U.S. House of Representatives |url=https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/select-committee-report/ |type= |edition= |series= |year=1979 |origyear= |publisher=United States Government Printing Office |location=Washington, D.C. |page=45 |chapter=I.A. |chapterurl=https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/select-committee-report/part-1a.html |ref={{harvid|Report of the Select Committee on Assassinations of the U.S. House of Representatives, Chapter I, Section A|1979}}}}</ref> The Assassination Records Review Board said it "is perhaps the single most important assassination record."<ref name="ARRB-6II">{{cite book |title=Final Report of the Assassination Records Review Board |url=https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/review-board/report/ |format=PDF |type= |edition= |series= |date=September 30, 1998 |origyear= |publisher=United States Government Printing Office |location=Washington, D.C. |page=124 |chapter=Chapter Six, Part II: Clarifying the Federal Record |chapterurl=https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/review-board/report/chapter-06-part2.pdf}}</ref> According to Vincent Bugliosi, the film was "originally touted by the vast majority of conspiracy theorists as incontrovertible proof of [a] conspiracy" but is now believed by many assassination researchers to be a "sophisticated forgery".{{sfn|Bugliosi|2007|pp=504–512}} Among those who believe that the Zapruder film has been altered are John Costella,{{sfn|Bugliosi|2007|pp=504–512}} [[James H. Fetzer]],{{sfn|Bugliosi|2007|pp=504–512}} [[David Lifton]],{{sfn|Bugliosi|2007|pp=504–512}} David Mantik,{{sfn|Bugliosi|2007|pp=504–512}} Jack White,{{sfn|Bugliosi|2007|pp=504–512}} Noel Twyman,<ref>Twyman, Noel. ''Bloody Treason: On Solving History's Greatest Murder Mystery'', (Rancho Santa Fe: Laurel Publishing, 1997), {{ISBN|0-9654399-0-9}}</ref> and Harrison Livingstone, who has called it "the biggest hoax of the 20th century".{{sfn|Bugliosi|2007|pp=504–512}} In 1996, former Kodak product engineer Roland Zavada was requested by the [[Assassination Records Review Board]] to undertake a thorough technical study of the Zapruder Film.<ref>Assassination Records Review Board Report Sept 1998 Ch 6, Pt II, C.3 https://fas.org/sgp/advisory/arrb98/part09.htm accessed August 11, 2012</ref> Zavada concluded that there was no detectable evidence of manipulation or image alteration on the film's original version.<ref>Roland Zavada. 'Analysis of Selected Motion Picture Photographic Evidence September 7, 1998 study I.</ref>

David Lifton wrote that the Zapruder film was in the possession of the CIA's [[National Photographic Interpretation Center]] by the night of the assassination.<ref>[[David Lifton|Lifton, David]]. ''Best Evidence: Disguise and Deception in the Assassination of John F. Kennedy'', (New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, 1988), pp. 555–557.</ref><ref>Fetzer, James. ''Assassination Science'', (Chicago: Catfeet Press, 1998), pp. 209, 224. {{ISBN|0-8126-9366-3}}</ref> Jack White, researcher and photographic consultant to the [[House Select Committee on Assassinations]], claimed that there were anomalies in the Zapruder film, including an "unnatural jerkiness of movement or change of focus ... in certain frame sequences".<ref>Fetzer, James. ''Assassination Science'', (Chicago: Catfeet Press, 1998), pp. 213–14. {{ISBN|0-8126-9366-3}}</ref>

==== Kennedy's body ====
In his 1981 book ''Best Evidence'', author [[David Lifton]] presented the thesis that President Kennedy's dead body had been altered between the Dallas hospital and the autopsy site at Bethesda for the purposes of creating erroneous conclusions about the number and direction of the shots.<ref>[[David Lifton|Lifton, David]]. ''Best Evidence: Disguise and Deception in the Assassination of John F. Kennedy'', (New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, 1988), pp. 678–683, 692–699, 701–702.</ref>

=== Fabrication of evidence ===

==== Murder weapon ====
The Warren Commission found that the shots that killed Kennedy and wounded Connally were fired from an [[John F. Kennedy assassination rifle|Italian 6.5mm Manlicher Carcano rifle owned by Oswald]].<ref name="WCR-C1">{{cite book |title=Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy |url=https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/warren-commission-report/ |type= |edition= |series= |year=1964 |origyear= |publisher=United States Government Printing Office |location=Washington, D.C. |pages=18–19 |chapter=Chapter 1: Summary and Conclusions |chapterurl=https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/warren-commission-report/chapter-1.html}}</ref> Deputy Sheriff Eugene Boone and Deputy Constable Seymour Weitzman both initially identified the rifle found in the Texas School Book Depository as a 7.65 [[Mauser]]. Weitzman signed an affidavit the following day describing the weapon as a "7.65 Mauser bolt action equipped with a 4/18 scope, a thick leather brownish-black sling on it".<ref>{{cite web|url=http://jfk.ci.dallas.tx.us/04/0433-001.gif|title=Seymour Weitzman's affidavit|date=November 23, 1963}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ymfQdYoqKyEC&pg=PA372&lpg=PA372#v=onepage|author1=Ray La Fontaine |author2=Mary La Fontaine |title=Oswald Talked|publisher=Pelican|page=372 | isbn=978-1-56554-029-3}}</ref> Deputy Sheriff Roger Craig claimed that he saw "7.65 Mauser" bullets stamped on the barrel of the weapon.<ref>{{cite video |people=Mark Lane interview of Roger Craig |year=1976 |title=Two Men in Dallas |publisher=Tapeworm Video Distributors |time= |id= |asin=B000NHDFBQ |oclc= |quote= |ref= }}</ref> But when interviewed in 1968 by Barry Ernest, author of ''The Girl on the Stairs—The Search for a Missing Witness to the JFK Assassination'', Craig said: "I felt then and I still feel now that the weapon was a 7.65 German Mauser .... I was there. I saw it when it was first pulled from its hiding place, and I am not alone in describing it as a Mauser." So, in the videotaped interview he said he read Mauser on the rifle, and to Ernest he said that he felt it was a Mauser.<ref>The Girl on the Stairs by Barry Ernest (2013), p 128.</ref>

Dallas District Attorney [[Henry Wade]] told the press that the weapon found in the Book Depository was a 7.65 Mauser, and the media reported this.<ref name="WCR-C5">{{cite book |title=Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy |url=https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/warren-commission-report/ |type= |edition= |series= |year=1964 |origyear= |publisher=United States Government Printing Office |location=Washington, D.C. |page=235 |chapter=Chapter 5: Detention and Death of Oswald |chapterurl=https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/warren-commission-report/chapter-5.html}}</ref> But investigators later identified the rifle as a 6.5mm Carcano.{{sfn|Marrs|1989|pp=439–440}}{{sfn|Groden|1995|p=118}} In ''Matrix for Assassination'', author Richard Gilbride suggested that both weapons were involved in the assassination and that Dallas Police Captain Will Fritz and Lieutenant J. Carl Day both might have been conspirators.<ref name="Gilbride">{{cite book |title=Matrix for Assassination: The JFK Conspiracy |last=Gilbride |first=Richard |year=2009 |publisher=Trafford Publishing |isbn=1-4269-1390-7 |page=267 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=I1VBUrmaMPkC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage }}</ref>

Addressing "speculation and rumors", the Warren Commission identified Weitzman as "the original source of the speculation that the rifle was a Mauser" and stated that "police laboratory technicians subsequently arrived and correctly identified the [murder] weapon as a 6.5 Italian rifle."<ref name="WCR-A12">{{cite book |title=Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy |url=https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/warren-commission-report/ |type= |edition= |series= |year=1964 |origyear= |publisher=United States Government Printing Office |location=Washington, D.C. |page=645 |chapter=Appendix 12: Speculations and Rumors |chapterurl=https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/warren-commission-report/appendix-12.html |ref={{harvid|Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Appendix 12|1964}}}}</ref>

==== Bullets and cartridges ====
The Warren Commission determined that three bullets were fired at the presidential motorcade. One of the three bullets missed the vehicle entirely; another bullet hit President Kennedy and passed through his body before striking Governor Connally; and the third bullet was the fatal head shot to the President. Some claim that the bullet that passed through President Kennedy's body and hit Governor Connally — dubbed by critics of the Commission as the "magic bullet" — was missing too little mass to account for the total weight of bullet fragments later found by the doctors who operated on Connally at Parkland Hospital. Those making this claim included the governor's chief surgeon, Dr. Robert Shaw,<ref>[http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh4/html/WC_Vol4_0061a.htm Testimony of Dr. Robert Shaw], Warren Commission Hearings, vol. 4, pp. 113–114.</ref> as well as two of Kennedy's autopsy surgeons, Commander James Humes<ref>[http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh2/html/WC_Vol2_0191b.htm Testimony of Commander James Humes], Warren Commission Hearings, vol. 2, pp. 374–376.</ref> and Lt. Colonel Pierre Finck.<ref>[http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh2/html/WC_Vol2_0195b.htm Testimony of Lieutenant Colonel Pierre Finck], Warren Commission Hearings, vol. 2, p. 382.</ref> However, in his book ''Six Seconds in Dallas'', author Josiah Thompson took issue with this claim. Thompson added up the weight of the bullet fragments listed in the doctor reports and concluded that their total weight "could" have been less than the mass missing from the bullet.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/wound5.txt |title=Josiah Thompson, Six Seconds in Dallas, pages 147–151 |accessdate=September 17, 2010}}</ref>

With Connally's death in 1993, forensic pathologist Dr. [[Cyril Wecht]] and the Assassination Archives and Research Center petitioned [[United States Attorney General|Attorney General]] [[Janet Reno]] to recover the remaining bullet fragments from Connally's body, contending that the fragments would disprove the Warren Commission's [[single-bullet theory|single-bullet]], single-gunman conclusion. The [[United States Department of Justice|Justice Department]] replied that it "... would have [had] no legal authority to recover the fragments unless Connally's family gave [it] permission [to do so]." Connally's family refused permission.<ref>Matthew P. Smith, ''Pittsburgh Post-Gazette'', A-5, June 19, 1993.</ref>

== Allegations of multiple gunmen ==
[[File:Dealey Plaza 2003.jpg|thumb|[[Dealey Plaza]] in 2003.]]
The Warren Commission concluded that "three shots were fired from the Texas School Book Depository in a time period ranging from approximately 4.8 to in excess of 7 seconds."<ref name="WCR3">{{cite book |title=Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy |url=https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/warren-commission-report/ |type= |edition= |series= |year=1964 |origyear= |publisher=United States Government Printing Office |location=Washington, D.C. |chapter=Chapter 3: The Shots from the Texas School Book Depository |chapterurl=https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/warren-commission-report/chapter-3.html}}</ref> Some assassination researchers, including Anthony Summers, dispute the Commission's findings. They point to evidence that brings into question the number of shots fired, the origin of the shots, and Oswald's ability to accurately fire three shots in such a short amount of time from such a rifle. <ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1556184/Oswald-had-no-time-to-fire-all-Kennedy-bullets.html|title=Oswald 'had no time to fire all Kennedy bullets'
| work=The Telegraph | first=Tim|last=Shipman|date=July 1, 2007|accessdate=January 17, 2019}}</ref><ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.gunsamerica.com/digest/lee-harvey-oswalds-carcano-rifle-shooting-it-today/|title=Lee Harvey Oswald’s Carcano Rifle – Shooting It Today| work=Guns America| first=Paul| last=Helinski|date=November 11, 2013|accessdate=January 17, 2019}}</ref> These researchers suggest that multiple gunmen were involved.{{sfn|Summers|2013|pp=31-}}

=== Number of shots ===
Based on the "consensus among the witnesses at the scene" and "in particular the three spent cartridges", the Warren Commission determined that "the preponderance of the evidence indicated that three shots were fired".<ref name="WCR3"/> In 1979, the House Select Committee on Assassinations concluded that there were four shots, one coming from the grassy knoll.<ref name="HSCA_Report_0048a pp. 65-75"/><ref name="nationalarch">{{cite web|url=https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/select-committee-report/|title=Report of the Select Committee on Assassinations of the U.S. House of Representatives|publisher=United States National Archives|year=1979|accessdate=May 16, 2010}}</ref>

The Warren Commission, and later the House Select Committee on Assassinations, concluded that one of the shots hit President Kennedy in "the back of his neck", exited his throat, and struck Governor Connally in the back, exited the Governor's chest, shattered his right wrist, and implanted itself in his left thigh.<ref>[http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wr/html/WCReport_0022a.htm Warren Report], chapter 1, p. 19.</ref> This conclusion became known as the "[[single bullet theory]]".{{sfn|Report of the Select Committee on Assassinations of the U.S. House of Representatives, Chapter I, Section A|1979|p=44}}

[[Mary Moorman]] said in a TV interview that immediately after the assassination, there were either three or four shots close together, that shots were still being fired after the fatal head shot, and that she was in the line of fire.<ref>[http://www.jfklancer.com/moorman_essay/moorman_essay_4.html JFK Lancer], ABC/WFAA interview of Mary Moorman filmed late in the afternoon of 11/22/63</ref> In 1967, [[Josiah Thompson]] concluded from a close study of the Zapruder film and other forensic evidence, corroborated by the eyewitnesses, that four shots were fired in Dealey Plaza, with one wounding Connally and three hitting Kennedy.<ref name="Thompson"/>

On the day of the assassination, [[Nellie Connally]] was seated in the presidential car next to Governor Connally, who was her husband. In her book ''From Love Field: Our Final Hours'', she said she believed that her husband was hit by a bullet separate from the two that hit Kennedy.<ref>[http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/5309638.stm Nellie Connally's statement] bbc.co.uk: September 3, 2006.</ref>

=== Origin of the shots ===
[[File:JFK Wooden Fence.jpg|thumb|The wooden fence on the grassy knoll, where many conspiracy theorists believe another gunman stood.]]
The Warren Commission concluded that all of the shots fired at President Kennedy came from the sixth-floor window at the southeast corner of the Texas School Book Depository. The Commission based its conclusion on the "cumulative evidence of eyewitnesses, firearms and ballistic experts and medical authorities", including onsite testing, as well as analysis of films and photographs conducted by the FBI and the US Secret Service.<ref name="WCR3"/>

In 1979, the House Select Committee on Assassinations agreed to publish a report from Warren Commission critic [[Robert Groden]], in which he named "nearly [two] dozen suspected firing points in Dealey Plaza".<ref name="HCSA-VI">{{cite book |title=Appendix to Hearings before the Select Committee on Assassinations of the U.S. House of Representatives |url=http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=957 |volume=VI |year=1979 |publisher=United States Government Printing Office |location=Washington, D.C. |pages=306–308 |ref={{harvid|Appendix to Hearings before the Select Committee on Assassinations of the U.S. House of Representatives, Volume VI|1979}}}}</ref> These sites included multiple locations in or on the roof of the Texas School Book Depository, the Dal-Tex Building, the Dallas County Records Building, the triple overpass, a storm drain located along the north curb of Elm Street, and the Grassy Knoll.<ref name="HCSA-VI"/> Josiah Thompson concluded that the shots fired at the motorcade came from three locations: the Texas School Book Depository, the Grassy Knoll, and the Dal-Tex Building.<ref name="Thompson"/>

=== Testimony of eyewitnesses ===
According to some assassination researchers, the grassy knoll was identified by most witnesses as the area from where shots were fired.{{sfn|Marrs|1989|p=88}}<ref name="Feldman">{{cite journal |author=Harold Feldman |date=March 1965 |title=Fifty-one Witnesses: The Grassy Knoll |trans-title= |journal=The Minority of One |volume=7 |series=64 |issue=3 |pages=16–25 |at= |chapter= |publisher=Menachem Arnoni |editor1-first=Menachem |editor1-last=Arnoni |id= |isbn= |issn= |oclc= |pmid= |pmc= |bibcode= |accessdate=March 3, 2012 |url=http://spot.acorn.net/jfkplace/09/fp.back_issues/12th_Issue/51_wits.html |laysource= |laysummary= |laydate= |quote= |ref= |separator= |postscript= }}</ref>
In March 1965, Harold Feldman wrote that there were 121 witnesses to the assassination listed in the Warren Report, 51 of whom indicated that the shots that killed Kennedy came from the grassy knoll, while 32 said the shots originated from the Texas School Book Depository.<ref name="Feldman"/> In 1967, Josiah Thompson examined the statements of 64 witnesses and concluded that 33 of them thought that the shots emanated from the grassy knoll.{{sfn|Bugliosi|2007|p=847}}

In 1966, ''[[Esquire (magazine)|Esquire]]'' magazine credited Feldman with "advanc[ing] the theory that there were two assassins: one on the grassy knoll and one in the Book Depository".<ref name="Esquire 1966">{{cite journal|date=December 1966|title=A Primer of Assassination Theories: The Whole Spectrum of Doubt, from the Warren Commissioners to Ousman Ba|trans-title=|journal=Esquire|series=|pages=205 ff|at=|chapter=|id=|isbn=|issn=|oclc=|pmid=|pmc=|bibcode=|url=http://karws.gso.uri.edu/jfk/conspiracy_theories/Primer/Primer_of_assassination_theories.html|laysource=|laysummary=|laydate=|quote=|ref=|separator=|postscript=|deadurl=yes|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20120214235845/http://karws.gso.uri.edu/jfk/Conspiracy_theories/Primer/Primer_of_assassination_theories.html|archivedate=February 14, 2012|df=mdy-all}}<!-- Scan of original article found here: http://jfk.hood.edu/Collection/Weisberg%20Subject%20Index%20Files/E%20Disk/Esquire%20Magazine/Item%2003.pdf --></ref> Jim Marrs also wrote that the weight of evidence suggested shots came from both the grassy knoll and the Texas School Book Depository.{{sfn|Marrs|1989|p=88}}

[[Lee Bowers]] operated a railroad tower that overlooked the parking lot on the north side of the grassy knoll. He reported that he saw two men behind the grassy knoll's stockyard fence before the shooting took place. The men did not appear to be acting together or doing anything suspicious. After the shooting, Bowers said that one of the men remained behind the fence and lost track of the second man whose clothing blended into the foliage. When interviewed by Mark Lane, Bowers noted that he saw something that attracted his attention, either a flash of light or smoke from the knoll, allowing him to believe "something out of the ordinary" had occurred there. Bowers told Lane that he heard three shots, the last two in quick succession. He stated that there was no way they could have been fired from the same exact rifle.<ref>{{cite video |people=Lee Bowers |title=Rush to Judgment / The Plot to Kill JFK: Rush to Judgment |url= |medium= movie / videotape |publisher=Judgment Films / Mpi Home Video |date=August 31, 1994 |origyear=1967|isbn=9781556071461}}</ref> Bowers later purportedly said to his supervisor, Olan Degaugh, that he saw a man in the parking lot throw what looked like a rifle into one the cars.<ref>Matrix for Assassination: The JFK Conspiracy By Richard Gilbride (2009), p. 101.</ref> However, in that same 1966 interview, Bowers clarified that the two men he saw were standing in the opening between the pergola and the fence, and that "no one" was behind the fence once the shots were fired.<ref>{{cite web |last=Myers |first=Dale K. |title=The Testimony of Lee Bowers, Jr|url=http://www.jfkfiles.com/jfk/html/badgeman_4.htm|work=Secrets of a Homicide: Badge Man|publisher=Oak Cliff Press|accessdate=November 17, 2014|year=2008|authorlink=Dale K. Myers}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|last=Myers|first=Dale K.|title=Lee Bowers: The Man Behind the Grassy Knoll |url=http://jfkfiles.blogspot.com/2007/09/lee-bowers-man-behind-grassy-knoll.html|work=Secrets of a Homicide: JFK Assassination|publisher=Oak Cliff Press|accessdate=November 26, 2012 |authorlink=Dale K. Myers|date=September 14, 2007}}</ref>

[[File:Newman Family.jpg|thumb|right|Bill and Gayle Newman drop to the grass and cover their children. The Newmans said that they thought the fatal shot came from behind them.{{efn|In Bill Newman's voluntary statement to the Sheriff's Department, signed and notarized on November 22, 1963, he wrote that the gunshot "had come from the garden directly behind me, that was on an elevation from where I was as I was right on the curb. I do not recall looking toward the Texas School Book Depository. I looked back in the vacinity {{sic}} of the garden."&#91;{{harvnb|Warren Commission Hearings|1964|loc=Vol. XIX, [http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=1136&relPageId=508 p. 490]&#93;}}}}]]

Jesse Price was the building engineer for the Terminal Annex Building, which is located across from the Texas School Book Depository on the opposite side of Dealey Plaza. He viewed the presidential motorcade from the Terminal Annex Building's roof. In an interview with Mark Lane, Price said that he believed the shots came from "just behind the picket fence where it joins the [triple] underpass".{{sfn|Marrs|1989|p=39}}

=== Physical evidence ===
Several conspiracy theories posit that at least one shooter was located in the [[Dal-Tex Building]], located across the street from the [[Texas School Book Depository]].<ref name="Esquire 1967">{{cite journal|date=May 1967|title=A Second Primer of Assassination Theories|journal=Esquire|series=|pages=104 ff|at=|chapter=|id=|isbn=|issn=|oclc=|pmid=|pmc=|bibcode=|url=http://karws.gso.uri.edu/jfk/conspiracy_theories/Second_Primer/Second_primer.html|laysource=|laysummary=|laydate=|quote=|ref=|separator=|postscript=|deadurl=yes|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20111007101304/http://karws.gso.uri.edu/jfk/conspiracy_theories/Second_Primer/Second_primer.html|archivedate=October 7, 2011|df=mdy-all}}</ref> According to [[L. Fletcher Prouty]], the physical location of [[James Tague]] when he was injured by a bullet fragment is not consistent with the trajectory of a missed shot from the Texas School Book Depository, leading Prouty to theorize that Tague was instead wounded by a missed shot from the second floor of the Dal-Tex Building.<ref name="Prouty">{{cite book |last=Prouty |first=L. Fletcher |authorlink=L. Fletcher Prouty |title=JFK: The CIA, Vietnam, and the Plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedy |year=2011 |origyear=2005 |publisher=Skyhorse Publishing |location=New York |isbn=1-61608-291-7 |ref=harv}}</ref>

Some assassination researchers claim that FBI photographs of the presidential limousine show a bullet hole in its windshield above the rear-view mirror, and a crack in the windshield itself. When Robert Groden, author of ''The Killing of a President'', asked for an explanation, the FBI responded that what Groden thought was a bullet hole "occurred prior to Dallas".<ref>Robert Groden ''The Killing of a President'' 1993, pp. 142–144.</ref><ref>Fetzer, James. ''Assassination Science'', (Chicago: Catfeet Press, 1998), pp. 142–144. {{ISBN|0-8126-9366-3}}</ref> In 1993, George Whitaker, a manager at the Ford Motor Company's Rouge Plant in [[Detroit]], told attorney and criminal justice professor Doug Weldon that after reporting to work on November 25, 1963, he discovered the presidential limousine in the Rouge Plant's B building with its windshield removed. Whitaker said that the limousine's removed windshield had a through-and-through bullet hole from the front. He said that he was directed by one of Ford's vice presidents to use the windshield as a template to fabricate a new windshield for installation in the limousine. Whitaker also said he was told to destroy the old one.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.assassinationscience.com/golais.html|title=Review of Murder in Dealey Plaza from The Citizens' Voice|publisher=|accessdate=September 30, 2014}}</ref><ref name="ReferenceD">Turner, Nigel. ''The Men Who Killed Kennedy, Part 7, "The Smoking Guns"'', 2003.</ref>

=== Film and photographic evidence ===
Film and photographic evidence of the assassination have led viewers to different conclusions regarding the origin of the shots. When the fatal shot was fired, the President's head and upper torso moved backwards — indicating, to many observers, a shot from the right front. Sherry Gutierrez, a certified crime scene and bloodstain pattern analyst, concluded that "the [fatal] head injury to President Kennedy was the result of a single gunshot fired from the right front of the President."<ref>{{cite web|last=Fiester|first=Sherry Pool Gutierrez|title=What the Blood Tells Us|url=http://www.kenrahn.com/Marsh/Ballistics/BloodEvidence.html|publisher=KenRahn.Com (originally published by "The Kennedy Assassination Chronicles")|accessdate=April 22, 2014|date=Winter 1996}}</ref> Paul Chambers believes that the fatal head shot is consistent with a high velocity (approx. 1,200&nbsp;m/s; 4,000&nbsp;ft/sec) rifle rather than the medium-velocity (600&nbsp;m/s; 2,000&nbsp;ft/sec) Mannlicher–Carcano.<ref>G Paul Chambers. Head Shot. The Science Behind the JFK Assassination. Prometheus Books NY 2012 p 207.</ref> Although it has been thought<ref>Richard B. Trask, Pictures of the Pain (Danvers, Mass.: Yeoman, 1994), p. 124.</ref> that Zapruder film frames 312 and 313 show Kennedy's head moving forward before moving backwards, that close inspection of the frames show Kennedy's head actually pivoted both forward and downwards; Anthony Marsh claims that it was the deceleration of the car by driver [[William Greer]] that allowed the President's head to move in that direction.<ref>[http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/d1487.txt Circumstantial Evidence of a Head Shot From The Grassy Knoll] W. Anthony Marsh, Presented at The Third Decade conference June 18–20, 1993</ref> Some, including Josiah Thompson, [[Robert Groden]], and [[Cyril Wecht]], state that the film shows that his head was hit by two near-simultaneous bullets: one from the rear and the other from the right front.{{sfn|Bugliosi|2007|p=994}}<ref name="Simon">{{cite book |last1=Simon |first1=Art |title=Dangerous Knowledge: The JFK Assassination in Art and Film |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=hynlm5Aaa3EC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage |series=Culture and the Moving Image |year=1996 |publisher=Temple University Press |location=Philadelphia |isbn=978-1-56639-379-9 |chapter=Chapter 1: The Zapruder Film |chapterurl=https://books.google.com/books?id=hynlm5Aaa3EC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA35#v=onepage |ref=harv}}</ref>{{sfn|Krajicek|p=11}}

=== Acoustical evidence ===
According to the House Select Committee on Assassinations, a [[John F. Kennedy assassination Dictabelt recording|Dictabelt recording of the Dallas Police Department radio dispatch transmissions from the day of the assassination]] was analyzed to "resolve questions concerning the number, timing, and origin of the shots fired in Dealey Plaza".<ref name="HCSA-IB">{{cite book |title=Report of the Select Committee on Assassinations of the U.S. House of Representatives |url=https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/select-committee-report/ |type= |edition= |series= |year=1979 |origyear= |publisher=United States Government Printing Office |location=Washington, D.C. |page=66 |chapter=I.B. |chapterurl=https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/select-committee-report/part-1b.html |ref={{harvid|Report of the Select Committee on Assassinations of the U.S. House of Representatives, Chapter I, Section B|1979}}}}</ref> They concluded that the source of the recording was from an open microphone on the motorcycle of H.B. McLain escorting the motorcade{{sfn|Report of the Select Committee on Assassinations of the U.S. House of Representatives, Chapter I, Section B|1979|p=78}} and that "the scientific acoustical evidence established a high probability that two gunmen fired at President John F. Kennedy."{{sfn|Report of the Select Committee on Assassinations of the U.S. House of Representatives, Chapter I, Section B|1979|p=93}}

The acoustical analysis firm hired by the Committee recommended that they conduct an acoustical reconstruction of the assassination in Dealey Plaza so they could determine if any of the six impulse patterns on the dispatch tape were fired either from the Texas School Book Depository or from the grassy knoll. The reconstruction entailed firing from two locations in Dealey Plaza — the depository and the knoll—at particular target locations and recording the sounds through various microphones. The purpose for this was to determine if the sequences of impulses recorded during the reconstruction would match any of those within the dispatch tape. If they showed a positive result, then it would be possible to figure out if the impulse patterns on the dispatch tape were caused by shots fired from the depository and the knoll.<ref name="history-matters.com">[http://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/hsca/report/html/HSCA_Report_0057a.htm House Select Committee on Assassinations Final Report], p. 83.</ref>

In 1978, at the behest of the House Select Committee on Assassinations, members of the Dallas Police Pistol Team participated in an acoustical reconstruction in which they would fire rifles and pistols from any of the locations selected by the researchers. During this reconstruction, the Dallas Police marksmen had no difficulty in hitting the targets. The Committee's firearms experts "... testified that given the distance and angle from the sixth floor window to the location of the President's limousine, it would have been easier to use the open iron sights." The Warren Commission tests were carried out on assuming that Oswald, whom they and the Committee concluded fired the shots, had used the telescopic sight.<ref name="history-matters.com"/>

An article in ''[[Science & Justice]]'', a quarterly publication of Britain's Forensic Science Society, found there was a 96% certainty, based on analysis of audio recordings made during the assassination, that a shot was fired from the Grassy Knoll in front of and to the right of the President's limousine.<ref>{{cite news| url=http://whatreallyhappened.com/RANCHO/POLITICS/JFK/bbcgrassy.htm| author=George Lardner Jr.| title=Study Backs Theory of 'Grassy Knoll': New Report Says Second Gunman Fired at Kennedy|work=The Washington Post| date=March 26, 2001}}</ref><ref name="mirror of missing story">{{cite news|title=mirror of missing story|url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A56560-2001Mar25}}</ref>{{deadurl|date=January 2019}}<ref>{{cite news| url=http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,103958,00.html| author=Frank Pellegrini| title=The Grassy Knoll Is Back|work=Time Magazine| date=March 26, 2001}}</ref>

The acoustical evidence has since been discredited.{{sfn|Bugliosi|2007|p=377}}<ref name="Campbell2008"/><ref name="ATY"/><ref name="48 years"/><ref name="Knight2007"/><ref name="Olmsted2011"/> Officer H.B. McLain, from whose motorcycle radio the HSCA acoustic experts said the Dictabelt evidence came,<ref>[http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/hsca/reportvols/vol5/html/HSCA_Vol5_0311a.htm Testimony of Mark Weiss and Ernest Aschkenasy], 5 HSCA 617.</ref><ref>G. Robert Blakey and Richard N. Billings, ''The Plot to Kill the President'', Times Books, 1981, p. 103. {{ISBN|978-0-8129-0929-6}}.</ref> has repeatedly stated that he was not yet in Dealey Plaza once the assassination occurred.<ref>Greg Jaynes, ''The Scene of the Crime'', [http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/jaynes/mclain.htm Afterward].</ref> McLain asked the Committee, {{"'}}If it was my radio on my motorcycle, why did it not record the revving up at high speed plus my siren when we immediately took off for Parkland Hospital?{{'"}}<ref>"[http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/hsca/report/html/HSCA_Report_0261b.htm Separate Views of Hons. Samuel L. Devine and Robert W. Edgar]", HSCA Report, pp. 492–493.</ref> <!-- I really don't want to get mired in this, but if Ofc. McLain was, as stated, not yet in D.P. at the time of the shots, why would he be part of the "we" who "immediately took off" for the hospital? Inquiring minds want to know!-->

In 1982, a panel of 12 scientists appointed by the [[National Academy of Sciences]], including Nobel laureates [[Norman Ramsey]] and [[Luis Walter Alvarez|Luis Alvarez]], unanimously concluded that the acoustic evidence submitted to the HSCA was "seriously flawed", was recorded after the President was shot, and did not indicate any additional gunshots.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=10264 |title=Report of the Committee on Ballistic Acoustics |publisher=Nap.edu |accessdate=December 24, 2012}}</ref> Their conclusions were later published in the journal ''[[Science (journal)|Science]]''.<ref>{{cite journal | title=Reexamination of Acoustic Evidence in the Kennedy Assassination | author=Committee on Ballistic Acoustics, National Research Council | journal=Science |date=October 1982 | volume=218 | issue=8 | pages=127–133 | doi=10.1126/science.6750789}}</ref>

In a 2001 article in ''[[Science & Justice]]'', D.B. Thomas wrote that the NAS investigation was itself flawed. He concluded that with a 96.3% certainty, there were at least two gunmen firing at President Kennedy and that at least one shot came from the grassy knoll.<ref>Donald B. Thomas, [https://www.webcitation.org/5spmKztLK?url=http://pages.prodigy.net/whiskey99/thomas.pdf "Echo Correlation Analysis and the Acoustic Evidence in the Kennedy Assassination Revisited"], ''Science & Justice'', vol. 41(1), 2001, pp. 21–32, Retrieved April 10, 2010</ref> In 2005, Thomas's conclusions were rebutted in the same journal. Ralph Linsker and several members of the original NAS team reanalyzed the timings of the recordings and reaffirmed the earlier conclusion of the NAS report that the alleged shot sounds were recorded approximately one minute after the assassination.<ref>Linsker R., Garwin R.L., Chernoff H., Horowitz P., Ramsey N.F., [http://jfk-records.com/ScienceAndJustice_45%284%29_207-226%282005%29.pdf "Synchronization of the acoustic evidence in the assassination of President Kennedy"]. ''Science & Justice'', vol. 45(4), 2005, pp. 207–226.</ref> In a 2010 book, D.B. Thomas challenged the 2005 ''Science & Justice'' article and restated his conclusion that there actually were two gunmen.<ref>{{cite journal | title=Hear No Evil: Social Constructivism and the Forensic Evidence in the Kennedy Assassination | author= Donald Byron Thomas | ISBN=0980121396| year=2010}}</ref>

=== Medical evidence ===
Some researchers have pointed to the large number of doctors and nurses at Parkland hospital who reported that a major portion of the back of the President's head may have been blown out, which strongly suggests that he was hit from the front. {{sfn|Summers|2013|pp=31-}}{{sfn|Marrs|1989|pp=55–89}}

Some critics skeptical of the official "[[single bullet theory]]" have stated that the bullet's trajectory, which hit Kennedy above the right shoulder blade and passed through his neck (according to the autopsy), would have had to change course to pass through Connally's rib cage and fracture his wrist.<ref>{{cite book| url=https://books.google.com/books?id=hluBF0hAyvIC&pg=PA173&lpg=PA173&sqi=2#v=onepage&q=kennedy%20fbi%20three%20shots%20five%20seconds|author1=Michael Newton |author2=John L. French | title=The Encyclopedia of Crime Scene Investigation| page=173 "Magic Bullet Theory"| publisher=Infobase Publishing| year=2007}}</ref><ref>Wecht M.D., J.D., Dr. Cyril, ''Cause of Death'', Penguin Group, 1993. {{ISBN|0-525-93661-0}}.</ref>{{Page needed|date=March 2012}} Kennedy's death certificate, which was signed by his personal physician Dr. George Burkley, locates the bullet at "about the level of the third [[thoracic vertebra]]" — which some claim was not high enough to exit his throat.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://history-matters.com/archive/jfk/arrb/master_med_set/md6/html/Image1.htm |title=History Matters Archive—MD 6—White House Death Certificate (Burkley—11/23/63)|publisher=History-matters.com |page=2|accessdate=February 7, 2013}}</ref><ref>[http://www.jfklancer.com/Ford-Rankin.html JFK Lancer: Gerald Ford's Terrible Fiction<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref> Furthermore, since the shooter was in a sixth floor window of the Book Depository building, the bullet traveled downward. The autopsy descriptive sheet displays a diagram of the President's body with the same low placement at the third thoracic vertebra.<ref>[http://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/arrb/master_med_set/md1/html/Image0.htm Autopsy Descriptive Sheet (commonly called "Face Sheet")], Assassinations Records Review Board, MD 1, p. 1.</ref> The holes in the back of his shirt and jacket are also claimed to support a wound too low to be consistent with the "single bullet theory".<ref>[http://www.jfklancer.com/photos/Evidence/Shirt.jpg Kennedy's shirt, JFK Lancer]. Retrieved December 3, 2006.</ref>{{Better source|reason=photos are insufficient means to support assertion|date=March 2012}}<ref>[http://www.jfklancer.com/photos/Evidence/jfkjacket.GIF Kennedy's jacket, JFK Lancer] Retrieved December 3, 2006.</ref><ref>Fetzer, James. ''Assassination Science'', (Chicago: Catfeet Press, 1998), p. 395. {{ISBN|0-8126-9366-3}}</ref>{{Better source|reason=photos are insufficient means to support assertion|date=March 2012}}

There is a conflicting testimony regarding the autopsy performed on Kennedy's body, particularly during the examination on his brain and whether or not the photos submitted as evidence are the same as those taken during the examination.<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/jfk/jfk1110.htm|author=George Lardner Jr.|title=Archive Photos Not of JFK's Brain, Says Assassinations Board Report Staff Member|work=The Washington Post|date=November 10, 1998}}</ref> Douglas Horne, the Assassination Record Review Board's chief analyst for military records, said he was "90 to 95% certain" that the photographs in the [[National Archives and Records Administration|National Archives]] are not really of Kennedy's brain. Supporting Horne was Dr. Gary Aguilar, who stated, "According to Horne's findings, the second brain — which showed an exit wound in the front — allegedly replaced Kennedy's real brain — which revealed much greater damage to the rear, consistent with an exit wound and thus evidence of a shot from the front."<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.consortiumnews.com/1999/c010699b.html|author=Gary L. Aguilar|title=Mystery of JFK's Second Brain|publisher=Consortium News|date=January 7, 1999}}</ref>

Paul O'Connor, a [[medical laboratory scientist|laboratory technologist]] who assisted in the President's autopsy, claimed that the autopsy at [[Bethesda Naval Hospital]] was conducted in obedience to a high command<ref name="Douglass">{{cite book |last1=Douglass |first1=James W. |authorlink1=James W. Douglass |title=JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=KS-6XrdalGkC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage |edition= |date=October 2010 |origyear=2008 |publisher=Touchstone/Simon & Schuster |location=New York |isbn=978-1-4391-9388-4 |page=313 |ref=harv}}</ref><ref name="ReferenceA"/> and that nearly all the brain matter in Kennedy's skull was already missing before the autopsy at Bethesda hospital.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NgpvRv9oMs8|title="On Trial: Lee Harvey Oswald" (PART 18)}}</ref>

In his book ''JFK and the Unspeakable'', James Douglass cites autopsy doctor Pierre Finck's testimony at the [[trial of Clay Shaw]] as evidence that Finck was "... a reluctant witness to the military control over the doctors' examination of the president's body".{{sfn|Douglass|2010|pp=311–312}}<ref>[http://jfkassassination.net/russ/testimony/finckshaw.htm The Clay Shaw Trial Testimony of Pierre Finck], State of Louisiana vs. Clay L. Shaw, February 24, 1969.</ref>

A bone fragment found in Dealey Plaza by William Allen Harper the day following the assassination was reported by the HSCA's Forensic Pathology Panel to have been part of Kennedy's [[parietal bone]].<ref name="HCSA-VII">{{cite book |title=Appendix to Hearings before the Select Committee on Assassinations of the U.S. House of Representatives |url=http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?absPageId=39001 |volume=VII |date=March 1979 |publisher=United States Government Printing Office |location=Washington, D.C. |pages=122–124 |chapter=Exit (outshoot) wound of the side of the head |chapterurl=http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=82&relPageId=132 |ref={{harvid|Appendix to Hearings before the Select Committee on Assassinations of the U.S. House of Representatives, Volume VII|1979}}}}</ref> Some critics of the lone gunman theory, including James Douglass, David Lifton, and David Mantick, state that the fragment is actually a piece of [[occipital bone]] ejected from an exit wound in the back of Kennedy's head.{{sfn|Douglass|2010|pp=283–284, 461}} They stated this finding is evidence of a cover-up as it proves that the skull radiographs obtained during the autopsy which do not show significant bone loss in the occipital area, are not authentic.{{sfn|Douglass|2010|pp=283–284, 461}}

=== Oswald's marksmanship ===
The Warren Commission examined the capabilities of the Carcano rifle and ammunition, as well as Oswald's military training and post-military experience, and determined that Oswald had the ability to fire three shots within a time span of 4.8 to 5.6 seconds.<ref name="WCR4">{{cite book |title=Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy |url=https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/warren-commission-report/ |type= |edition= |series= |year=1964 |origyear= |publisher=United States Government Printing Office |location=Washington, D.C. |page=195 |chapter=Chapter 4: The Assassin |chapterurl=https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/warren-commission-report/chapter-4.html |ref={{harvid|Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Chapter 4|1964}}}}</ref> According to their report, an army specialist using Oswald's rifle was able to duplicate the feat and even improved on the time. The report also states that the Army Infantry Weapons Evaluation Branch test fired Oswald's rifle 47 times and found that it was "quite accurate", comparing it to the accuracy of an [[M14 rifle]]. Also contained in the Commission report is testimony by [[Marine Corps]] Major Eugene Anderson confirming that Oswald's military records show that he qualified as "[[sharpshooter]]" in 1956.

According to official [[Marine Corps]] records, Oswald was tested in shooting in December 1956, scoring 212 (slightly above the minimum for qualification as a sharpshooter—the intermediate category), but in May 1959, he scored 191 (earning the lower designation of marksman).<ref>Warren Commission Report, Chapter 4: Oswald's Marine Training, [https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/warren-commission-report/chapter-4.html#marine]. p. 191.</ref> The highest marksmanship category in the Marine Corps is 'Expert' (220).<ref>https://www.military.com/join-armed-forces/marine-corps-weapons-qualification-course.html</ref>

Despite Oswald's confirmed marksmanship in the USMC, conspiracy theorists like Walt Brown and authors such as [[Richard H. Popkin]] contend that Oswald was a notoriously poor shot, that his rifle was inaccurate, and that no reconstruction of the event has ever been able to duplicate his ability to fire three shots within the time frame given by the Warren Commission.<ref name="Aaronovitch2010">{{cite book|author=David Aaronovitch|title=Voodoo Histories: The Role of the Conspiracy Theory in Shaping Modern History|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=0t7lC3nmFq8C&pg=PT107|accessdate=March 21, 2012|date=February 4, 2010|publisher=Penguin|isbn=978-1-59448-895-5|pages=107–}}</ref>{{sfn|Bugliosi|2007|p=xxxviii}}

=== Role of Oswald ===
The Warren Commission and other federal investigations ruled that Oswald either acted alone or conspired with others in the assassination, citing his actions in the years leading up to the event. Evidence of Oswald's pro-communist and radical tendencies include his defection to Russia, the New Orleans branch of the [[Fair Play for Cuba Committee]] he had organized, and also various public and private statements made by him espousing Marxism and other leftist ideologies. Others have argued that his behavior was in fact a carefully planned ruse as part of an effort by U.S. intelligence agencies to infiltrate subversive groups and conduct counter-intelligence operations in communist countries, and that his role in the assassination was that of either an agent or an informant of the government trying to expose the plot behind the assassination.<ref name="WCReport_0342b p. 660">[http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wr/html/WCReport_0342b.htm Speculations and Rumors: Oswald and U.S. Government Agencies], Warren Commission Report, Appendix XII, p. 660.</ref>{{sfn|Broderick|Miller|2008|pp=206–207}}{{sfn|Marrs|1989|pp=189–196, 226–235}}<ref name="Goldman">{{cite news | url=http://jfk.hood.edu/Collection/White%20Materials/White%20Magazines%20And%20Articles/Newsweek%2004-28-75/Item%2001.pdf | title=Dallas: New Questions and Answers | date=April 28, 1975 | accessdate=January 3, 2013 | author=Peter Goldman | author2=John J. Lindsay | newspaper=Newsweek | location=New York | page=37}}</ref>

Oswald himself claimed to be innocent, denying all charges and even declaring to reporters that he was "just a [[Fall guy|patsy]]". He also insisted that the photos of him holding a rifle had been faked, an assertion contradicted by statements made by his wife, Marina, and the analysis of photographic experts such as Lyndal L. Shaneyfelt of the FBI.{{citation needed|date=August 2017}}

Oswald's role as FBI informant was investigated by Lee Rankin and others of the Warren Commission, but their findings were inconclusive. Several FBI employees had made statements indicating that Oswald was indeed a paid informant, but the commission was nonetheless unable to verify the veracity of those claims.<ref>[http://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=60439#relPageId=3&tab=page], J. Lee Rankin, General Council for the Warren Commission</ref><ref>[http://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh17/pdf/wh17_ce_826.pdf Federal Bureau of Investigation] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20031023104538/http://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh17/pdf/WH17_CE_826.pdf |date=October 23, 2003 }}, August 15, 1963, Warren Commission Hearings, vol. 17, pp. 758–764, Commission Exhibit 826</ref> FBI agent [[James Hosty|James P. Hosty]] reported that his office's interactions with Oswald were limited to dealing with his complaints about being harassed by the Bureau for being a communist sympathizer. In the weeks before the assassination, Oswald made a personal visit to the FBI's Dallas branch office with a hand-delivered letter which purportedly contained a threat of some sort but, controversially, Hosty destroyed the letter by order of J. Gordon Shanklin, his supervisor.<ref>[http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/hsca/report/html/HSCA_Report_0113a.htm House Select Committee on Assassinations Final Report], p. 195.</ref><ref>[http://www.maryferrell.org/wiki/index.php/Destruction_of_the_Oswald_Note Destruction of the Oswald Note], Mary Ferrell Fountation</ref><ref>{{cite book|last=Summers|first=Anthony|title=Not in Your Lifetime|year=2013|publisher=Open Road|location=New York|isbn=978-1-4804-3548-3|page=347}}</ref>

Some researchers suggest that Oswald served as an active agent of the Central Intelligence Agency, often pointing to how he attempted to defect to Russia but was, however, able to return without difficulty (even receiving a repatriation loan from the State Department<ref>The Warren Report, Appendix 8, p. 712, [http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wr/html/WCReport_0368b.htm Biography of Lee Harvey Oswald]</ref><ref>[http://www.acorn.net/jfkplace/03/JA/DR/.dr19.html Investigation of Assassination of President John F. Kennedy] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120813044440/http://www.acorn.net/jfkplace/03/JA/DR/.dr19.html |date=August 13, 2012 }}, Federal Bureau of Investigation</ref>) as evidence of such. A former roommate of Oswald, James Botelho (who would later become a California judge) stated in an interview with [[Mark Lane (author)|Mark Lane]] that he believed Oswald was involved in an intelligence assignment in Russia,{{sfn|Marrs|1989|pp=110–111}}{{sfn|Douglass|2010|p=40}} although Botelho did not mention any of those suspicions in his testimony to the Warren Commission years earlier. Oswald's mother, Marguerite, often insisted that her son was recruited by an agency of the U.S. Government and sent to Russia.<ref name="WCReport_0342b p. 660"/> New Orleans District Attorney (and later judge) [[Jim Garrison]], who in 1967 brought [[Clay Shaw]] to [[trial of Clay Shaw|trial for the assassination of President Kennedy]] also held the opinion that Oswald was most likely a CIA agent drawn into the plot to be used as a scapegoat, even going as far as to say that Oswald "genuinely was probably a hero".<ref name="Turner, Nigel 1991"/> Senator Richard Schweiker, a member of the [[U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence]] remarked that "everywhere you look with [Oswald], there're fingerprints of intelligence".<ref>''The Village Voice'', December 15, 1975.</ref> [[Richard Sprague]], interim staff director and chief counsel to the [[U.S. House Select Committee on Assassinations]], stated that if he "had to do it over again", he would have investigated the Kennedy assassination by probing Oswald's ties to the Central Intelligence Agency.<ref>Fonzi, Gaeton. ''The Last Investigation'', (New York: Thunder's Mouth Press, 1993), p. 195. {{ISBN|1-56025-052-6}}</ref> In 1978, former CIA paymaster and accountant James Wilcott testified before the [[HSCA]], stating that Lee Harvey Oswald was a "known agent" of the [[Central Intelligence Agency]].<ref>[http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/hsca/secclass/pdf/Wilcott_3-22-78.pdf], March 27, 1978, HSCA hearings (testimony commencing on page 27)</ref> Wilcott and his wife, Elsie (also a former employee of the CIA) later repeated those claims in a story by the ''[[San Francisco Chronicle]]''.<ref>interview of James and Elsie Wilcott, former husband and wife employees of the Tokyo CIA Station, ''San Francisco Chronicle'', "Couple Talks about Oswald and the CIA," September 12, 1978.</ref> Despite its official policy of neither confirming nor denying the status of agents, both the CIA itself and many officers working in the region at the time (including [[David Atlee Phillips]]) have "unofficially" dismissed the plausibility of any possible ties to Oswald and the agency. [[G. Robert Blakey|Robert Blakey]], staff director and chief counsel for the U.S. House Select Committee on Assassinations, supported that assessment in his conclusions as well.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/oswald/interviews/blakey.html|title=PBS ''Frontline'' "Who Was Lee Harvey Oswald?—Interview: G. Robert Blakey—2003 Addendum"|work=Frontline}}</ref>

=== Alternative gunmen ===
In addition to Oswald, Jerome Kroth has named 26 people as "Possible Assassins In Dealey Plaza".{{sfn|Kroth|2003|p=195}} They include: [[Orlando Bosch]],{{sfn|Kroth|2003|p=195}} [[James Files]],<ref name="Fishel">{{cite book |last1=Fishel |first1=Chris |editor1-first=David |editor1-last=Wallechinsky |editor1-link=David Wallechinsky |editor2-first=Amy |editor2-last=Wallace |editor2-link=Amy Wallace |title=The New Book of Lists: The Original Compendium of Curious Information |year=2005 |origyear=1977 |publisher=Canongate |location=New York |isbn=1-84195-719-4 |chapter=Chapter 10: Crime—11 Possible Alternative Gunmen in the Assassination of John F. Kennedy |pages=309–312 |ref=harv }}</ref>{{sfn|Kroth|2003|p=195}} [[Desmond Fitzgerald (CIA officer)|Desmond Fitzgerald]],{{sfn|Kroth|2003|p=195}} [[Charles Harrelson]],{{sfn|Fishel|2005|pp=309–312}}{{sfn|Kroth|2003|p=195}} [[Gerry Hemming]],{{sfn|Kroth|2003|p=195}} [[Chauncey Holt]],{{sfn|Kroth|2003|p=195}} [[Howard Hunt]],{{sfn|Kroth|2003|p=195}} [[Charles Nicoletti]],{{sfn|Fishel|2005|pp=309–312}}{{sfn|Kroth|2003|p=195}} [[Charles Rogers (murder suspect)|Charles Rogers]],{{sfn|Kroth|2003|p=195}} [[Johnny Roselli]],{{sfn|Kroth|2003|p=195}} [[Lucien Sarti]],{{sfn|Fishel|2005|pp=309–312}}{{sfn|Kroth|2003|p=195}} and [[Frank Sturgis]].{{sfn|Kroth|2003|p=195}}

=== Three tramps ===
{{Main|Three tramps}} [[File:The Tree Tramps.jpg|thumb|The Three Tramps]]
[[Vincent Bugliosi]] provides a "partial list of assassins ... whom one or more conspiracy theorists have actually named and identified as having fired a weapon at Kennedy" in his book ''[[Reclaiming History]]''.<ref>{{cite book |last=Bugliosi |first=Vincent |authorlink=Vincent Bugliosi |title=Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy |year=2007 |publisher=W. W. Norton & Company |location=New York |isbn=0-393-04525-0 |pages=1495–1498 |ref=harv}}</ref> He also mentions the [[three tramps]], men photographed by several [[newspapers of Dallas, Texas|Dallas-area newspapers]] under police escort near the Texas School Book Depository shortly after the assassination. Since the mid-1960s, various allegations have been made about the identities of the men and their involvement in a conspiracy to kill Kennedy. Records released by the [[Dallas Police Department]] in 1989 identified the men as Gus Abrams, Harold Doyle, and John Gedney.{{sfn|Bugliosi|2007|p=933}}

== Allegations of other conspirators ==
=== E. Howard Hunt ===
{{Main|E Howard Hunt#JFK conspiracy allegations}}
The theory that former CIA agent and [[Watergate scandal|Watergate]] burglar [[E. Howard Hunt]] was a participant in the assassination of Kennedy garnered much publicity from 1978 to 2000.<ref name="Trahair">{{cite book |last1=Trahair |first1=Richard C. S. |last2=Miller |first2=Robert L. |title=Encyclopedia of Cold War Espionage, Spies, and Secret Operations |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=g3LtFS3rl9MC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage |edition=First paperback / Revised |year=2009 |origyear=2004 |publisher=Enigma Books |location=New York |isbn=978-1-929631-75-9 |pages=165–166 |ref={{harvid|Trahair|2009}}}}</ref> In 1981, he won a libel judgment against [[Liberty Lobby]]'s paper ''[[The Spotlight]]'', which in 1978 printed an allegation by [[Victor Marchetti]] suggesting Hunt's involvement in a conspiracy; the libel award was thrown out on appeal and the newspaper was successfully defended by [[Mark Lane (author)|Mark Lane]] in a second trial.<ref name="The Washington Post">{{cite news | url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/onpolitics/watergate/howardhunt.html | title=Key Players: E. Howard Hunt | publisher=The Washington Post | work=washingtonpost.com/watergate | accessdate=January 2, 2013 | author=The Washington Post | location=Washington, D.C.}}</ref> Former KGB [[archivist]] [[Vasili Mitrokhin]] indicated in 1999 that Hunt was made part of a fabricated conspiracy theory disseminated by a Soviet "[[active measures]]" program designed to discredit the CIA and the United States.<ref name="Andrew">{{cite book |last1=Andrew |first1=Christopher |authorlink1=Christopher Andrew (historian) |last2=Mitrokhin |first2=Vasili |authorlink2=Vasili Mitrokhin |title=The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=wVndU5P4V-8C&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage |year=2001 |origyear=1999 |publisher=Basic Books |location=New York |isbn=978-0-465-00312-9 |pages=225–230| chapter=Fourteen: Political Warfare (Active Measures and the Main Political Adversary) |chapterurl=https://books.google.com/books?id=wVndU5P4V-8C&lpg=PP1&pg=PT204#v=onepage&q=kennedy |ref=harv}}</ref>{{sfn|Trahair|2009|p=188-190}} After his death in 2007, an audio-taped "[[deathbed confession]]" in which Hunt claimed first-hand knowledge of a conspiracy, as a co-conspirator, was released by his son Saint John Hunt.<ref name="Hedegaard">{{cite journal|last=Hedegaard|first=Erik|title=The Last Confessions of E. Howard Hunt|journal=Rolling Stone|date=April 5, 2007|url=https://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/13893143/the_last_confessions_of_e_howard_hunt/1|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20080618150441/http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/13893143/the_last_confessions_of_e_howard_hunt/1|archivedate=June 18, 2008}}</ref> In the confession, Hunt claimed to have been a "bench warmer" in Dallas during the events, and he named several high-level CIA operatives as those who likely carried out the logistics of the assassination. Hunt named Vice President Lyndon Johnson as the most likely figure behind the main impetus of the conspiracy.<ref name="Hedegaard" /> The authenticity of the confession was met with some skepticism.{{clarify|date=April 2013}}<ref name="Trahair"/><ref name="Williams">{{cite news |url= http://articles.latimes.com/2007/mar/20/nation/na-hunt20 | title=Watergate plotter may have a last tale |date=March 20, 2007 | accessdate=December 30, 2012 |last=Williams | first=Carol J. |newspaper=Los Angeles Times | location=Los Angeles}}</ref><ref name="Timothy W. Maier">{{cite news| url=http://baltimorepostexaminer.com/deathbed-confession-who-really-killed-jfk/2012/07/02| author=Timothy W. Maier| title=Deathbed confession: Who really killed JFK?| publisher=Baltimore Post-Examiner| date=July 2, 2012}}</ref>

=== J. D. Tippit ===
Dallas Police Officer [[J. D. Tippit]] has been named in some conspiracy theories as a renegade CIA operative sent to silence Oswald{{sfn|Perry|2003|p=391}}<ref name="Barry">{{cite news |title=In defense of Officer Tippit, an often forgotten police hero |author=Bill Barry |url=https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=9uY0AAAAIBAJ&sjid=HSEGAAAAIBAJ&pg=7102%2C3135374 |newspaper=Lodi News-Sentinel |location=Lodi, California |date=November 28, 2005 |page=2 |accessdate=April 14, 2012}}</ref> and as the "[[badge man]]" assassin on the grassy knoll.<ref name="Barry"/> According to some Warren Commission critics, Oswald was set up to be killed by Tippit, but Tippit was killed by Oswald before he could carry out his assignment.<ref name="Bonokowski">{{cite news |title=JFK's magic lives on ... and some called it Camelot's Court |author=Mark Bonokoski |authorlink=Mark Bonokoski |url=https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=WpdQAAAAIBAJ&sjid=TDQNAAAAIBAJ&pg=4533%2C2089418 |newspaper=The Windsor Start |location=Windsor, Ontario |date=November 22, 1973 |page=39 |accessdate=April 14, 2012}}</ref> Other critics doubt that Tippit was killed by Oswald and assert he was shot by other conspirators.{{sfn|Perry|2003|p=391}}<ref name="Bonokowski"/> (See [[John F. Kennedy assassination conspiracy theories#Unnamed accomplice(s) in the murder of J. D. Tippit|section below]].) Some critics have alleged that Tippit was associated with organized crime or [[right-wing politics]].{{sfn|Perry|2003|p=391}}

=== Bernard Weissman ===
[[File:welcome mr kennedy to dallas small.jpg|right|thumb|200px|Advertisement in the November 22, 1963, ''Dallas Morning News'', placed by Bernard Weissman and three others.]]

According to the Warren Commission, the publication of a full-page, paid advertisement critical of Kennedy in the November 22, 1963, ''Dallas Morning News'', which was signed by "The American Fact-Finding Committee" and noted Bernard Weissman as its chairman, was investigated to determine whether any members of the group claiming responsibility for it were connected to Oswald or to the assassination.{{sfn|Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Chapter 6|1964|pp=293–299}} The Commission stated that "The American Fact-Finding Committee" was a fictitious sponsoring organization and that there was no evidence linking the four men responsible for the genesis of the ad with either Oswald or Ruby, or to a conspiracy to assassinate Kennedy.{{sfn|Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Chapter 6|1964|pp=293–299}}

Related to the advertisement, Mark Lane testified during the Warren Commission's hearings that an informant whom he refused to name told him that Weismann had met with Tippit and Ruby eight days before the assassination at Ruby's Carousel Club.{{sfn|Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Chapter 6|1964|pp=293–299}} The Commission reported that they "found no evidence that such a meeting took place anywhere at any time"{{sfn|Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Chapter 6|1964|p=298}} and that there was no "credible evidence that any of the three men knew each other".{{sfn|Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Appendix 12|1964|p=663}}

Lane later stated that he initially learned of the meeting through reporter Thayer Waldo of the ''[[Fort Worth Star-Telegram]]''.<ref name="Playboy; February, 1967">{{cite journal |date=February 1967 |title=Playboy Interview: Mark Lane |url=http://jfk.hood.edu/Collection/White%20Materials/White%20Magazines%20And%20Articles/Playboy%20Interview%20of%20Mark%20Lane/Item%2001.pdf |journal=Playboy |location= |publisher= |pages=60–61 |accessdate=September 8, 2014}}</ref> According to Lane, a "prominent Dallas figure" who frequented Ruby's Carousel Club told Waldo, and later Lane, that he observed the meeting of the three men at the club.<ref name="Playboy; February, 1967"/> He said, "I had promised the man he would not be involved; he was a leading Dallas citizen; he was married, and the stripper he was going with had become pregnant."<ref name="Playboy; February, 1967"/> Despite not having revealed to the Warren Commission that Waldo was his original source of the alleged meeting, Lane disputed their findings and complained that they failed to ask Waldo about it.<ref name="Gavzer & Moody">{{cite news |last1=Gavzer |first1=Bernard |last2=Moody |first2=Sid |date=June 26, 1967 |title=Special Report; Who Really Killed President Kennedy |url=http://jfk.hood.edu/Collection/White%20Materials/Garrison%20News%20Clippings/1967/67-06/67-06-105.pdf |newspaper=San Francisco Examiner |location=San Francisco |page=41 |agency=AP |accessdate=September 10, 2014}}</ref> According to [[Hugh Aynesworth]], the source of the allegation whose identity Lane promised not to reveal was Carroll Jarnagin,<ref name="Aynesworth">{{cite book |last1=Aynesworth |first1=Hugh |authorlink=Hugh Aynesworth |last2=Michaud |first2=Stephen G. |year=2003 |chapter=Bribery, Coercion and Opportunists in the "Big Easy" |title=JFK: Breaking the News |url= |location=Richardson, Texas |publisher=International Focus Press |page=231 |isbn=9780963910363}}</ref> a Dallas attorney who had also claimed to have overheard a meeting between Oswald and Ruby.<ref name="Eaton">{{cite news |last=Eaton |first=Leslie |date=February 19, 2008 |title=New Trove Opened in Kennedy Killing |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/19/us/19dallas.html |newspaper=The New York Times |location=New York |accessdate=September 10, 2014}}</ref> Aynesworth wrote: "Several people in Dallas were well aware of Jarnagin's tale, and that he later admitted making it all up."<ref name="Aynesworth"/>

=== Unnamed accomplice(s) in the murder of J. D. Tippit ===
The Warren Commission concluded that Oswald "killed Dallas Police Officer [[J. D. Tippit]] in an apparent attempt to escape."{{sfn|Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Chapter 4|1964|p=195}} The evidence that formed the basis for this conclusion was: "(1) two eyewitnesses who heard the shots and saw the shooting of Dallas Police Patrolman J. D. Tippit and seven eyewitnesses who saw the flight of the gunman with revolver in hand positively identified Lee Harvey Oswald as the man they saw fire the shots or flee from the scene, (2) the cartridge cases found near the scene of the shooting were fired from the revolver in the possession of Oswald at the time of his arrest, to the exclusion of all other weapons, (3) the revolver in Oswald's possession at the time of his arrest was purchased by and belonged to Oswald, and (4) Oswald's jacket was found along the path of flight taken by the gunman as he fled from the scene of the killing."{{sfn|Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Chapter 4|1964|p=176}}

Some researchers have alleged that the murder of Officer Tippit was part of a conspiracy to kill President Kennedy. Jim Marrs hypothesized that "the slaying of Officer J. D. Tippit may have played some part in [a] scheme to have Oswald killed, perhaps to eliminate co-conspirator Tippit or simply to anger Dallas police and cause itchy trigger fingers."{{sfn|Marrs|1989|p=585}} Researcher James Douglass said that "... the killing of [Tippit] helped motivate the Dallas police to kill an armed Oswald in the Texas Theater, which would have disposed of the scapegoat before he could protest his being framed."{{sfn|Douglass|2010|p=287}} Harold Weisberg offered a simpler explanation: "Immediately, the [flimsy] police case [against Oswald] required a willingness to believe. This was proved by affixing to Oswald the opprobrious epithet of 'cop-killer.'"{{sfn|Douglass|2010|p=287}} [[Jim Garrison]] alleged that evidence was altered to frame Oswald, stating: "If Oswald was innocent of the Tippit murder the foundation of the government's case against him collapsed."<ref name="Garrison">{{cite book |last1=Garrison |first1=Jim |authorlink1=Jim Garrison |title=On the Trail of the Assassins: My Investigation and Prosecution of the Murder of President Kennedy |url=http://scribblguy.50megs.com/tippit.htm |year=1988 |publisher=Sheridan Square Press |isbn=978-0-941781-02-2 |page=197 |ref=harv}}</ref>

Some critics doubt that Tippit was killed by Oswald and assert he was shot by other conspirators.{{sfn|Perry|2003|p=391}}<ref name="Bonokowski"/> They allege discrepancies in witness testimony and physical evidence that they think call into question the Commission's conclusions regarding the murder of Tippit. According to Jim Marrs, Oswald's guilt in the assassination of Kennedy is placed in question by the presence of "a growing body of evidence to suggest that [he] did not kill Tippit".{{sfn|Marrs|1989|p=340}} Others say that multiple men were directly involved in Tippit's killing. Conspiracy researcher [[Kenn Thomas]] has alleged that the Warren Commission omitted testimony and evidence that two men shot Tippit and that one left the scene in a car.<ref name="Thomas">{{cite book |editor1-first=Kenn |editor1-last=Thomas |editor1-link=Kenn Thomas |title=Cyberculture Counterconspiracy: A Steamshovel Web Reader |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=IBLhW_rNZcoC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage |volume=2 |year=2000 |publisher=The Book Tree |location=Escondido, California |isbn=978-1-58509-126-3 |page=63 |chapter=The Tippit Connection |chapterurl=https://books.google.com/books?id=IBLhW_rNZcoC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA55#v=onepage |ref={{harvid|Thomas|2000}}}}</ref>

William Alexander—the Dallas assistant district attorney who recommended that Oswald be charged with the Kennedy and Tippit murders—later became skeptical of the Warren Commission's version of the Tippit murder. He stated that the Commission's conclusions on Oswald's movements "don't add up", and that "certainly [Oswald] may have had accomplices."{{sfn|Summers|2013|p=108}}

According to [[Brian McKenna]]'s review of Henry Hurt's book, ''Reasonable Doubt'', Hurt reported that "Tippit may have been killed because he impregnated the wife of another man" and that Dallas police officers lied and altered evidence to set up Oswald to save Tippit's reputation.<ref name="McKenna">{{cite news |title=JFK: A distinguished American journalist has joined the unofficial sleuths tracking the killers and those who covered up, from Montreal to Mexico City and back again |author=Brian McKenna |authorlink=Brian McKenna |url=https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=S4s0AAAAIBAJ&sjid=X6gFAAAAIBAJ&pg=1623%2C5250251 |newspaper=The Gazette |location=Montreal |date=April 19, 1986 |page=B7 |accessdate=April 14, 2012 |ref=}}</ref>

==== Allegations regarding witness testimony and physical evidence ====
The Warren Commission identified Helen Markham and Domingo Benavides as two witnesses who actually saw the shooting.{{sfn|Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Chapter 4|1964|pp=166–167}} Conspiracy theorist [[Richard Belzer]] criticized the Commission for, in his description, "relying" on the testimony of Markham whom he described as "imaginative".<ref name="Belzer">{{cite book |last1=Belzer |first1=Richard |authorlink1=Richard Belzer |title=UFOs, JFK, and Elvis: Conspiracies You Don't Have to Be Crazy to Believe |url= https://books.google.com/books?id=yDrJa9-7irUC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage |year=2000 |publisher=Ballantine Publishing Group |location=New York |isbn=978-0-345-42918-6 |chapter=Hear No Evil, See No Evil, Speak No Evil |chapterurl=https://books.google.com/books?id=yDrJa9-7irUC&lpg=PP1&pg=PT50#v=onepage |ref=harv}}</ref> Jim Marrs also took issue with Markham's testimony, stating that her "credibility ... was strained to the breaking point".{{sfn|Marrs|1989|p=340}} Joseph Ball, senior counsel to the Commission, referred to Markham's testimony as "full of mistakes", characterizing her as an "utter screwball".{{sfn|Summers|2013|pp=104–105}} The Warren Commission addressed concerns regarding Markham's reliability as a witness and concluded: "However, even in the absence of Mrs. Markham's testimony, there is ample evidence to identify Oswald as the killer of Tippit."{{sfn|Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Chapter 4|1964|pp=166–167}}

Domingo Benavides initially said that he did not think he could identify Tippit's assailant and was never asked to view a police lineup,<ref>[http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh6/html/WC_Vol6_0231a.htm Testimony of Domingo Benavides], Warren Commission Hearings, vol. 6, pp. 451–52.</ref> even though he was the person closest to the killing.{{sfn|Marrs|1989|p=341}} Benavides later testified that the killer resembled pictures he had seen of Oswald.<ref>[http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh6/html/WC_Vol6_0231b.htm Testimony of Domingo Benavides], Warren Commission Hearings, vol. 6, p. 452.</ref> Other witnesses were taken to police lineups. However, critics have questioned these lineups as they consisted of people who looked very different from Oswald.{{sfn|Marrs|1989|p=341}}<ref>Turner, Nigel. ''The Men Who Killed Kennedy'', Part 5, "The Witnesses", 1991.</ref>

Additionally, witnesses who did not appear before the Commission identified an assailant who was not Oswald. Acquilla Clemons said she saw two men near Tippit's car just before the shooting.<ref name="Turner, Nigel 1991">Turner, Nigel. ''The Men Who Killed Kennedy, Part 4, "The Patsy"'', 1991.</ref> She said that after the shooting, she ran outside of her house and saw a man with a gun whom she described as "kind of heavy". She said he waved to the second man, urging him to "go on".{{sfn|Summers|2013|pp=105–106}} Frank Wright said he emerged from his home and observed the scene seconds after the shooting. He described a man standing by Tippit's body who had on a long coat and said the man ran to a parked car and drove away.{{sfn|Marrs|1989|p=342}}{{sfn|Summers|2013|p=106}}

Critics have questioned whether the cartridge cases recovered from the scene were the same as those that were subsequently entered into evidence. Two of the cases were recovered by witness Domingo Benavides and turned over to police officer J.&nbsp;M. Poe. Poe told the FBI that he marked the shells with his own initials, "J.M.P." to identify them.<ref name="Commission Exhibit No. 2011">[http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh24/html/WH_Vol24_0217a.htm Commission Exhibit No. 2011], Warren Commission Hearings, vol. 24, p. 415.</ref> Sergeant Gerald Hill later testified to the Warren Commission that it was he who had ordered police officer Poe to mark the shells.<ref>[http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh7/html/WC_Vol7_0029a.htm Testimony of Gerald Lynn Hill], Warren Commission Hearings, vol. 7, p. 49.</ref> However, Poe's initials were not found on the shells produced by the FBI six months later.<ref name="Commission Exhibit No. 2011"/>{{sfn|Marrs|1989|p=343}} Testifying before the Warren Commission, Poe said that although he recalled marking the cases, he "couldn't swear to it".{{sfn|Marrs|1989|p=343}}<ref>[http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh7/html/WC_Vol7_0039a.htm Testimony of J.&nbsp;M. Poe], Warren Commission Hearings, vol. 7, p. 69.</ref> The identification of the cases at the crime scene raises more questions. Sergeant Gerald Hill examined one of the shells and radioed the police dispatcher, saying: "The shell at the scene indicates that the suspect is armed with an automatic .38 rather than a pistol."<ref>[http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh23/html/WH_Vol23_0451b.htm Commission Exhibit No. 1974], Warren Commission Hearings, vol. 23, p. 870.</ref> However, Oswald was reportedly arrested carrying a ''non''-automatic .38 Special revolver.{{sfn|Marrs|1989|p=342}}{{sfn|Summers|2013|p=65}}

==== Allegations regarding timeline ====
The Warren Commission investigated Oswald's movements between the time of the assassination and the shooting of Tippit, to ascertain whether Oswald might have had an accomplice who helped him flee the Book Depository. The Commission concluded "... through the testimony of seven witnesses [that] Oswald was always alone."{{sfn|Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Chapter 6|1964|p=252}} According to their final report, Oswald was seen by his housekeeper leaving his rooming house shortly after 1:00&nbsp;pm and had enough time to travel nine-tenths of a mile (1.4&nbsp;km) to the scene where Tippit was killed at 1:16&nbsp;pm.{{sfn|Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Chapter 6|1964|p=254}}{{sfn|Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Appendix 12|1964|p=648}}{{efn|According to the Warren Commission, after Earlene Roberts saw Oswald standing near the bus stop outside his rooming house, "[he] was next seen about nine-tenths of a mile (1.4 km) away at the southeast corner of 10th Street and Patton Avenue, moments before the Tippit shooting."{{sfn|Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Chapter 4|1964|p=165}}}}

Some Warren Commission critics believe that Oswald did not have enough time to get from his house to the scene where Tippit was killed.{{sfn|Perry|2003|p=391}} The Commission's own test and estimation of Oswald's walking speed demonstrated that one of the longer routes to the Tippit shooting scene took 17 minutes and 45 seconds to walk.<ref>[http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh6/html/WC_Vol6_0222b.htm Testimony of William W. Whaley], Warren Commission Hearings, vol. 6, p. 434</ref> No witness ever surfaced who saw Oswald walk from his rooming house to the murder scene.{{sfn|Groden|1995|p=137}}

Conspiracy researcher Robert Groden believes that Tippit's murder may have occurred earlier than the time given in the Warren Report. {{sfn|Groden|1995|pp=134–137}} He notes that the Commission established the time of the shooting as 1:16&nbsp;pm from police tapes that logged Domingo Benavides's use of the radio in Tippit's car.{{sfn|Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Chapter 4|1964|p=165}} However, Benavides testified that he did not approach the car until "a few minutes" after the shooting, because he was afraid that the gunman might return.<ref>[http://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh6/html/WC_Vol6_0229b.htm Testimony of Domingo Benavides], Warren Commission Hearings, vol. 6, p. 448.</ref> He was assisted in using the radio by witness T. F. Bowley who testified to Dallas police that at the time he arrived to help, "several people were at the scene", and that the time was 1:10&nbsp;pm.<ref>[http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh24/html/WH_Vol24_0110b.htm Commission Exhibit No. 2003], Warren Commission Hearings, vol. 24, p. 202.</ref>

Witness Helen Markham stated in her affidavit to the Dallas Sheriff's department that Tippit was killed at "approximately 1:06 pm."<ref>[http://jfk.ci.dallas.tx.us/04/0444-001.gif Affidavit of Helen Markham]</ref> She later affirmed the time in testimony before the Warren Commission, saying: "I wouldn't be afraid to bet it wasn't 6 or 7 minutes after 1."<ref>[http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh3/html/WC_Vol3_0157b.htm Testimony of Mrs. Helen Markham], Warren Commission Hearings, vol. 3, p. 306.</ref>{{sfn|Groden|1995|p=136}} She initially told the FBI that the shooting occurred "possibly around 1:30&nbsp;pm."<ref>[http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=10406&relPageId=82 Commission Document 5], FBI Gemberling Report of November 30, 1963, re: Oswald.</ref> In an unpublished manuscript titled ''When They Kill a President'', Deputy Sheriff Roger Craig stated that when he heard the news that Tippit had been shot, he noted that the time was 1:06&nbsp;pm.<ref>Craig, Roger. ''When They Kill a President'', 1971, ASIN B00072DT18</ref> However, in a later statement to the press, Craig seemed confused about the time of the shooting.<ref>[http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/craig.htm Roger Craig], Mcadams.posc.mu.edu.</ref>

Warren "Butch" Burroughs, who ran the concession stand at the [[Texas Theater]] where Oswald was arrested, said that Oswald came into the theater between 1:00 and 1:07&nbsp;pm; he also claimed he sold Oswald popcorn at 1:15&nbsp;p.m.—the "official" time of Officer Tippit's murder.{{sfn|Douglass|2010|pp=290, 466}}<ref>Turner, Nigel. ''The Men Who Killed Kennedy'', Part 4, "The Patsy", 1991.</ref> Julia Postal told the Warren Commission that Burroughs initially told her the same thing, although when she later discussed the event with him, she became skeptical about his version.<ref>http://history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh7/html/WC_Vol7_0011a.htm</ref> A theatre patron, Jack Davis, also corroborated Burroughs's time, claiming he observed Oswald in the theatre prior to 1:20 pm.{{sfn|Marrs|1989|p=353}}

== Unidentified witnesses ==
[[File:Umbrella Man.jpg|right|250px|thumb|Following the assassination of President Kennedy the "umbrella man" can be seen sitting on the sidewalk next to the "dark complected man" on the right side of the photograph.]]
Some conspiracy theories surrounding the Kennedy assassination have focused on witnesses to the assassination who have not been identified, or who have not identified themselves, despite the media attention that the Kennedy assassination has received.

=== Umbrella man ===
{{main|Umbrella Man (JFK assassination)}}
The so-called "umbrella man" was one of the closest bystanders to the president when he was first struck by a bullet. The "umbrella man" has become the subject of conspiracy theories after footage of the assassination showed him holding an open umbrella as the Kennedy motorcade passed, despite the fact that it was not raining at the time. One conspiracy theory, proposed by assassination researcher Robert Cutler, suggests that a dart with a paralyzing agent could have been fired from the umbrella, disabling Kennedy and making him a "sitting duck" for an assassination.<ref>{{cite journal | url=http://www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/TUM.txt | title=The Umbrella System: Prelude to an Assassination |author1=Richard E. Sprague |author2=Robert Cutler | journal=Gallery Magazine |date=June 1978}}</ref> (In 1975, CIA weapons developer Charles Senseney told the [[Senate Intelligence Committee]] that such an umbrella weapon was in the hands of the CIA in 1963.)<ref>[http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB58/RNCBW25.pdf Testimony of Charles A. Senseney, Special Operations Division at Fort Detrick], "Unauthorized Storage of Toxic Agents", Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, pp. 159–178, September 18, 1975.</ref> A more prevalent conspiracy theory holds that the umbrella could have been used to provide visual signals to hidden gunmen.<ref name="Marrs, Jim 1989 pp. 29-33">Marrs, Jim. Crossfire: The Plot that Killed Kennedy, (New York: Carroll & Graf, 1989), pp. 29–33. {{ISBN|0-88184-648-1}}</ref>

In 1978, Louie Steven Witt came forward and identified himself as the "umbrella man". Testifying before the [[United States House Select Committee on Assassinations]], Witt stated he brought the umbrella to heckle Kennedy and protest the [[appeasement]] policies of the president's father, [[Joseph Kennedy]]. He added: "I think if the ''Guinness Book of World Records'' had a category for people who were at the wrong place at the wrong time, doing the wrong thing, I would be No. 1 in that position, without even a close runner-up."<ref>[https://archive.is/20130411021928/http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=xYE0AAAAIBAJ&sjid=2esFAAAAIBAJ&pg=4213,2390518 The Miami News—Google News Archive Search<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref> Some researchers have noted a number of inconsistencies with Witt's story, however, and do not believe him to be the true "umbrella man".{{sfn|Marrs|1989|p=30}}

The "umbrella man" is the subject of a 2011 documentary short by [[Errol Morris]], for ''The New York Times''.<ref>{{cite news|title=The Umbrella Man|url=https://www.nytimes.com/video/opinion/100000001183275/the-umbrella-man.html|accessdate=November 21, 2015|newspaper=The New York Times|date=November 21, 2011|author=Errol Morris}}</ref>

=== Dark complected man ===
An unidentified individual who is referred to by some conspiracy theorists as the "dark complected man" can be seen in several photographs, taken seconds after the assassination, sitting on the sidewalk next to the "umbrella man" on the north side of Elm Street. Louie Steven Witt, who identified himself as the "umbrella man", said he was unable to identify the other individual, whose dark complexion has led some conspiracy theorists to speculate Cuban government involvement, or Cuban exile involvement, in the assassination of Kennedy.<ref name="Marrs, Jim 1989 pp. 29-33"/>

=== Possible witnesses ===
Some conspiracy theories focus on individuals that it is claimed can be seen in photographs of the assassination. Both "badge man" and "black dog man" have been suggested as possible assassins of President Kennedy.

=== Badge man ===
{{Main|Badge Man}}
[[File:Badgeman.jpg|right|200px|thumb|Some conspiracy theorists believe that "badge man" could have fired the fatal shot that killed President Kennedy.]]
"Badge man" and "tin hat man" are figures on the grassy knoll who it is alleged can be seen in the [[Mary Moorman]] photo, taken approximately one-sixth of a second after President Kennedy was struck with the fatal head wound. The figures were first discovered by researchers Jack White and Gary Mack and are discussed in a 1988 documentary called ''[[The Men Who Killed Kennedy]]'', where it is alleged a third figure can also be seen on the grassy knoll, possibly the eyewitness [[Gordon Arnold]]. The "badge man" figure—so called as he appears to be wearing a uniform similar to that worn by a policeman, with a badge prominent—helped fuel conspiracy theories linking Dallas Police officers, or someone [[police impersonation|impersonating a police officer]], to the assassination.{{sfn|Marrs|1989|p=88}}

=== Black dog man ===
[[Image:Blackdogman.PNG|thumb|right|"Black Dog Man"]]
Another "figure" that has been the subject of conspiracy is the so-called "black dog man" figure who can be seen at the corner of a retaining wall in the Willis and Betzner photo of the assassination. In an interview, Marilyn Sitzman told Josiah Thompson that she saw a young black couple who were eating lunch and drinking Cokes on a bench behind the retaining wall and, therefore, it is possible that the "black dog man" figure is actually the black woman and her child.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/organ3.htm|title="Smoke" on the Grassy Knoll in the Wake of the JFK Assassination|publisher=|accessdate=September 30, 2014}}</ref> If so, the woman has never come forward to identify herself.

In ''[[The Killing of A President]]'', [[Robert Groden]] argues that the "black dog man" figure can be seen in a pyracantha bush in frame 413 of the Zapruder film. The [[United States House Select Committee on Assassinations]] concluded that a head of an individual could be seen but that this individual was situated in front of, rather than behind the bushes.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/hsca/reportvols/vol6/html/HSCA_Vol6_0069a.htm|title=History Matters Archive—HSCA Appendix to Hearings—Volume VI, pg|publisher=|accessdate=September 30, 2014}}</ref> Bill Miller argues that this individual is actually the eyewitness Emmett Hudson.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.jfklancer.com/miller/mysteryman.html|title=JFK Lancer|publisher=|accessdate=September 30, 2014}}</ref>

== Conspiracy theories ==
Conspiracy theorists consider four or five groups, alone or in combination, to be the primary suspects in the assassination of Kennedy: the [[CIA]],{{sfn|Benson|2003|p=xiv}}<ref name="Meagher">{{cite book |last1=Meagher |first1=Michael |last2=Gragg |first2=Larry D. |title=John F. Kennedy: A Biography |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=sD_Lshj2PmYC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage |year=2011 |publisher=Greenwood Press |isbn=978-0-313-35416-8 |ref=harv }}</ref> the [[military-industrial complex]],{{sfn|Benson|2003|p=xiv}}<ref name="Meagher"/> [[organized crime]],{{sfn|Benson|2003|p=xiv}}<ref name="Meagher"/><ref name="Kurtz">{{cite book |last1=Kurtz |first1=Michael L. |authorlink1=Michael L. Kurtz |title=Crime of the Century: The Kennedy Assassination from a Historian's Perspective |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=pCftxLUdRFYC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage |edition=2nd |year=1993 |origyear=1982 |publisher=University of Tennessee Press |location=Knoxville, Tennessee |isbn=978-0-87049-824-4 |page=x |ref=harv}}</ref> the government of [[Cuba]],<ref name="Meagher"/><ref name="Kurtz"/> and [[Cuban exile]]s.<ref name="Meagher"/> Other domestic individuals, groups, or organizations implicated in various conspiracy theories include [[Lyndon Johnson]],{{sfn|Broderick|2008|p=203}}<ref name="Meagher"/><ref name="Kurtz"/> [[George H. W. Bush]],<ref name="Meagher"/><ref name="Kurtz"/> [[Sam Giancana]],{{sfn|Broderick|2008|p=203}} [[J. Edgar Hoover]],<ref name="Kurtz"/> [[Earl Warren]],{{sfn|Broderick|2008|p=203}} the [[Federal Bureau of Investigation]],<ref name="Meagher"/> the [[United States Secret Service]],<ref name="Meagher"/><ref name="Kurtz"/> the [[John Birch Society]],<ref name="Meagher"/><ref name="Kurtz"/> and far-right wealthy Texans.<ref name="Meagher"/> Some other alleged foreign conspirators include [[Fidel Castro]],{{sfn|Broderick|2008|p=203}} the [[KGB]] and [[Nikita Khrushchev]],{{sfn|Broderick|2008|p=203}}<ref name="Meagher"/> [[Aristotle Onassis]],<ref name="Kurtz"/> the government of [[South Vietnam]],<ref name="O'Leary">{{cite book |last1=O'Leary |first1=Brad |last2=Seymour |first2=L.E. |title=Triangle of death: The Shocking Truth about the Role of South Vietnam and the French Mafia in the Assassination of JFK |year=2003 |publisher=WND Books |location=Nashville, Tennessee |isbn=0-7852-6153-2 |page=Forward |ref=harv}}</ref> and international [[drug lord]]s,<ref name="Meagher"/> including a French heroin syndicate.<ref name="O'Leary"/>

=== New Orleans conspiracy ===
{{Further|Trial of Clay Shaw|David Ferrie}}
Soon after the assassination of President Kennedy, Oswald's activities in [[New Orleans]], [[Louisiana]], during the spring and summer of 1963, came under scrutiny. Three days after the assassination, on November 25, 1963, New Orleans attorney [[Dean Andrews Jr.|Dean Andrews]] told the FBI that he received a telephone call from a man named [[Clay Bertrand]], on the day of the assassination, asking him to defend Oswald.<ref>[http://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh23/html/WH_Vol23_0379b.htm Commission Exhibit No. 1931], Warren Commission Hearings, vol. 23, p. 726.</ref><ref>[http://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh26/html/WH_Vol26_0370b.htm Commission Exhibit No. 3094], Warren Commission Hearings, vol. 26, pp. 704–705.</ref> Andrews would later repeat this claim in testimony to the Warren Commission.<ref>[http://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh11/html/WC_Vol11_0171a.htm Testimony of Dean Andrews], Warren Commission Hearings, vol. 11, pp. 331–334.</ref>
[[File:Ciravolo.jpg|thumb|[[David Ferrie]] (second from left) with Lee Harvey Oswald (far right) in the New Orleans [[Civil Air Patrol]] in 1955.]]
Also, in late November 1963, an employee of New Orleans [[private investigator]] [[Guy Banister]] named [[Jack Martin (investigator)|Jack Martin]] began making accusations that fellow Banister employee [[David Ferrie]] was involved in the JFK assassination. Martin told police that Ferrie "was supposed to have been the getaway pilot in the assassination."<ref>[http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/hsca/reportvols/vol10/html/HSCA_Vol10_0058b.htm David Ferrie], House Select Committee on Assassinations—Appendix to Hearings, Volume 10, 12, pp. 112–13.</ref> He said that Ferrie had outlined plans to kill Kennedy and that Ferrie might have taught Oswald how to use a rifle with a telescopic sight. Martin claimed that Ferrie had known Oswald from their days in the New Orleans Civil Air Patrol, and that he had seen a photograph, at Ferrie's home, of Oswald in a Civil Air Patrol group.<ref>[http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=10477&relPageId=219 FBI Interview of Jack S. Martin], November 25, 1963 & November 27, 1963, Warren Commission Document 75, pp. 217–18, 309–11.</ref> Ferrie denied any association with Oswald.<ref>[http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=10477&relPageId=288 FBI Interview of David Ferrie], November 25, 1963, Warren Commission Document 75, p. 286.</ref>

It was later discovered that Ferrie had attended [[Civil Air Patrol]] meetings in New Orleans in the 1950s that were also attended by a teenage Lee Harvey Oswald.<ref name="autogenerated11"/> In 1993, the [[PBS]] television program ''[[Frontline (U.S. TV series)|Frontline]]'' obtained a photograph taken in 1955 (eight years before the assassination) showing Oswald and Ferrie at a [[Civil Air Patrol]] cookout with other C.A.P. cadets.<ref name=autogenerated11>[https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/oswald/glimpse/ferrie.html PBS ''Frontline'' "Who Was Lee Harvey Oswald"], broadcast on PBS stations, November 1993 (various dates).</ref> Whether Oswald's and Ferrie's association in the Civil Air Patrol in 1955 is relevant to their later possible association in 1963 is a subject of debate.<ref name=autogenerated11/><ref name="Summers, Anthony 2013 pp. 284-285">[[Anthony Summers|Summers, Anthony]]. ''Not in Your Lifetime'', (New York: Open Road, 2013), pp. 284–285. {{ISBN|978-1-4804-3548-3}}</ref>

According to several witnesses, in 1963, both Ferrie and Banister were working for lawyer [[G. Wray Gill]] on behalf of Gill's client, New Orleans Mafia boss [[Carlos Marcello]], in an attempt to block Marcello's deportation to [[Guatemala]].<ref>[http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/hsca/reportvols/vol10/html/HSCA_Vol10_0057a.htm David Ferrie], House Select Committee on Assassinations—Appendix to Hearings, Volume 10, 12, p. 109.</ref><ref>[http://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/hsca/reportvols/vol10/html/HSCA_Vol10_0066a.htm 544 Camp Street and Related Events], House Select Committee on Assassinations—Appendix to Hearings, Volume 10, 13, p. 127.</ref> On the afternoon of November 22, 1963—the day [[John F. Kennedy]] was assassinated and the day Marcello was acquitted in his deportation case—New Orleans private investigator [[Guy Banister]] and his employee, [[Jack Martin (investigator)|Jack Martin]], were drinking together at a local bar. On their return to Banister's office, the two men got into a heated argument. According to Martin, Banister said something to which Martin replied, "What are you going to do—kill me like you all did Kennedy?". Banister drew his .357 magnum revolver and [[pistol whip|pistol-whipped]] Martin several times. Martin, badly injured, went by ambulance to [[Charity Hospital (New Orleans)|Charity Hospital]].<ref>[http://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/hsca/reportvols/vol10/html/HSCA_Vol10_0067b.htm 544 Camp Street and Related Events], House Select Committee on Assassinations—Appendix to Hearings, Volume 10, 13, p. 130.</ref>

Earlier, in the spring of 1963, Oswald had written to the [[New York City]] headquarters of the pro-Castro [[Fair Play for Cuba Committee]], proposing to rent "a small office at my own expense for the purpose of forming a FPCC branch here in New Orleans".<ref>[http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh20/html/WH_Vol20_0266b.htm Lee (Vincent T.), Exhibit No. 2], Warren Commission Hearings, vol. 20, p. 512.</ref> As the sole member of the New Orleans chapter of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, Oswald ordered 1,000 leaflets with the heading, "Hands Off Cuba" from a local printer.<ref>[http://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh25/html/WC_Vol25_0402a.htm FBI Report of Investigation of Lee Harvey Oswald's Activities for Fair Play for Cuba Committee in New Orleans], Warren Commission Hearings, vol. 25, pp. 770, 773.</ref> On August 16, 1963, Oswald passed out Fair Play for Cuba leaflets in front of the [[International Trade Mart]] in New Orleans.<ref>[[Anthony Summers|Summers, Anthony]]. ''Not in Your Lifetime'', (New York: Open Road, 2013), pp. 247-. {{ISBN|978-1-4804-3548-3}}</ref>

One of Oswald's leaflets had the address "544 Camp Street" hand-stamped on it, apparently by Oswald himself.<ref name=autogenerated8>[http://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/hsca/reportvols/vol10/html/HSCA_Vol10_0064a.htm 544 Camp Street and Related Events], House Select Committee on Assassinations—Appendix to Hearings, vol. 10, 13, p. 123.</ref> The address was in the "Newman Building", which from October 1961 to February 1962 housed the [[Cuban Revolutionary Council]], a militant anti-Castro group.<ref>[http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/hsca/reportvols/vol10/html/HSCA_Vol10_0064a.htm 544 Camp Street and Related Events], House Select Committee on Assassinations—Appendix to Hearings, vol. 10, 13, pp. 123–4.</ref><ref>Marrs, Jim. Crossfire: The Plot that Killed Kennedy, (New York: Carroll & Graf, 1989), p. 235. {{ISBN|0-88184-648-1}}</ref> Around the corner but located in the same building, with a different entrance, was the address 531 Lafayette Street—the address of "Guy Banister Associates", the private detective agency run by Guy Banister. Banister's office was involved in anti-Castro and private investigative activities in the New Orleans area. (A CIA file indicated that in September 1960, the CIA had considered "using Guy Banister Associates for the collection of foreign intelligence, but ultimately decided against it".)<ref>[[Jim Marrs|Marrs, Jim]]. Crossfire: The Plot that Killed Kennedy, (New York: Carroll & Graf, 1989), pp. 100, 236. {{ISBN|0-88184-648-1}}</ref><ref>[http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/hsca/reportvols/vol10/html/HSCA_Vol10_0065b.htm 544 Camp Street and Related Events], House Select Committee on Assassinations—Appendix to Hearings, vol. 10, 13, pp. 126–7.</ref><ref>Summers, Anthony. ''Not in Your Lifetime'', (New York: Marlowe & Company, 1998), p. 230. {{ISBN|1-56924-739-0}}</ref>

In the late 1970s, the [[House Select Committee on Assassinations]] (HSCA) investigated the possible relationship of Oswald to Banister's office. While the committee was unable to interview [[Guy Banister]] (who died in 1964), the committee did interview his brother Ross Banister. Ross "told the committee that his brother had mentioned seeing Oswald hand out Fair Play for Cuba literature on one occasion. Ross theorized that Oswald had used the 544 Camp Street address on his literature to embarrass Guy."<ref>[http://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/hsca/reportvols/vol10/html/HSCA_Vol10_0066b.htm 544 Camp Street and Related Events], House Select Committee on Assassinations—Appendix to Hearings, vol. 10, 13, p. 128.</ref>

Guy Banister's secretary, Delphine Roberts, would later tell author [[Anthony Summers]] that she saw Oswald at Banister's office, and that he filled out one of Banister's "agent" application forms. She said, "Oswald came back a number of times. He seemed to be on familiar terms with Banister and with the office."<ref>[[Anthony Summers|Summers, Anthony]]. ''Not in Your Lifetime'', (New York: Open Road, 2013), p. 276-. {{ISBN|978-1-4804-3548-3}}</ref> The House Select Committee on Assassinations investigated Roberts's claims and said that "because of contradictions in Roberts' statements to the committee and lack of independent corroboration of many of her statements, the reliability of her statements could not be determined."<ref>[http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/hsca/reportvols/vol10/html/HSCA_Vol10_0067a.htm 544 Camp Street and Related Events], House Select Committee on Assassinations—Appendix to Hearings, vol. 10, 8, p. 129.</ref>

In 1966, New Orleans [[District Attorney]] [[Jim Garrison]] began an investigation into the assassination of President Kennedy. Garrison's investigation led him to conclude that a group of [[right-wing politics|right-wing]] extremists, including David Ferrie and Guy Banister, were involved with elements of the [[Central Intelligence Agency]] (CIA) in a conspiracy to kill Kennedy. Garrison would later claim that the motive for the assassination was anger over Kennedy's attempts to obtain a peace settlement in both Cuba and Vietnam.<ref name="Jim Garrison Interview">[http://www.jfklancer.com/Garrison2.html Jim Garrison Interview], ''Playboy'' magazine, Eric Norden, October 1967.</ref><ref>[[Jim Garrison|Garrison, Jim]]. ''On The Trail of the Assassins'', (New York: Sheridan Square Press, 1988), pp. 12–13, 43, 176–178, 277, 293. {{ISBN|0-941781-02-X}}</ref> Garrison also came to believe that New Orleans businessman [[Clay Shaw]] was part of the conspiracy and that Clay Shaw used the pseudonym "[[Clay Bertrand]]".<ref>[[Jim Garrison|Garrison, Jim]]. ''On The Trail of the Assassins'', (New York: Sheridan Square Press, 1988), pp. 85–86. {{ISBN|0-941781-02-X}}</ref> Garrison further believed that Shaw, Banister, and Ferrie conspired to set up Oswald as a patsy in the JFK assassination.<ref>[[Jim Garrison|Garrison, Jim]]. ''On The Trail of the Assassins'', (New York: Sheridan Square Press, 1988), pp. 26–27, 62, 70, 106–110, 250, 278, 289. {{ISBN|0-941781-02-X}}</ref> On March 1, 1967, Garrison arrested and charged Shaw with conspiring to assassinate President Kennedy. On January 29, 1969, Clay Shaw was brought to trial on these charges, and the jury found him not guilty.

In 2003, Judyth Vary Baker—whose employment records show that she worked at the [[Reily Foods Company|Reily Coffee Company]] in New Orleans at the same time Oswald did—appeared in an episode of the television documentary series, ''[[The Men Who Killed Kennedy]]''.<ref name="Turner, Nigel 2003">Turner, Nigel. ''The Men Who Killed Kennedy, Part 8, "The Love Affair"'', 2003.</ref> Baker claimed that in 1963 she was recruited by Dr. Canute Michaelson to work with Dr. [[Alton Ochsner]] and Dr. [[Mary S. Sherman|Mary Sherman]] on a clandestine CIA project to develop a biological weapon that could be used to assassinate Fidel Castro. According to Baker, she and Oswald were hired by Reily in the spring of 1963 as a "cover" for the operation.<ref>Baker, Judyth. ''Me and Lee'', (Walterville: Trine Day LLC, 2010), p. 150. {{ISBN|978-0-9799886-7-7}}</ref> Baker further claimed that she and Oswald began an affair, and that later Oswald told her about [[Merida, Yucatan|Merida]], Mexico—a city where he suggested they might begin their lives over again.<ref name="Turner, Nigel 2003"/><ref>[http://doctormarysmonkey.com/jvb/index.htm JudythVaryBaker.com]</ref> According to John McAdams, Baker presents a "classic case of pushing the limits of plausibility too far".<ref name=McAdams>{{cite book|last=McAdams|first=John|title=JFK Assassination Logic: How to Think About Claims of Conspiracy|year=2011|publisher=Potomac Books|location=Washington, D.C.|isbn=9781597974899|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=2OJeNytAOZkC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage|authorlink=John C. McAdams|accessdate=January 8, 2013|pages=73–75|chapter=Witnesses Who Are Just Too Good}}</ref> Others on both sides of the research community have widely dismissed her claims.<ref>A partial list of those who consider Vary Baker's claims to be a hoax includes: Attorney and author Vincent Bugliosi, researcher Mary Ferrell, researcher Barb Junkkarinen, Professor John McAdams of Marquette University and David A. Reitzes of ''jfk-online.com.''</ref> However, other researchers, including James Fetzer, have concluded that Baker's claims are credible.

=== CIA conspiracy ===
{{main|CIA Kennedy assassination conspiracy theory}}
Addressing speculation that Oswald was a CIA agent or had some relationship with the Agency, the Warren Commission stated in 1964 that their investigation "revealed no evidence that Oswald was ever employed [by the] CIA in any capacity."{{sfn|Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Appendix 12|1964|pp=659-660}} The House Select Committee on Assassinations reported similarly in 1979 that "[t]here was no indication in Oswald's CIA file that he had ever had contact with the Agency" and concluded that the CIA was not involved in the assassination of Kennedy.<ref name="HCSA-IC">{{cite book |title=Report of the Select Committee on Assassinations of the U.S. House of Representatives |url=https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/select-committee-report/ |type= |edition= |series= |year=1979 |origyear= |publisher=United States Government Printing Office |location=Washington, D.C. |chapter=I.C. The committee believes, on the basis of the evidence available to it, that President John F. Kennedy was probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy. The committee was unable to identify the other gunmen or the extent of the conspiracy |chapterurl=https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/select-committee-report/part-1c.html}}</ref>

[[Gaeton Fonzi]], an investigator for the House Select Committee on Assassinations, wrote that investigators were pressured not to look into the relationship between [[Lee Harvey Oswald]] and the CIA. He stated that CIA agent [[David Atlee Phillips]], using the pseudonym "Maurice Bishop", was involved with Oswald prior to the Kennedy assassination in connection with anti-Castro Cuban groups.<ref>{{cite book| url=https://www.amazon.com/Last-Investigation-Gaeton-Fonzi/dp/0980121353| author=Gaeton Fonzi| title=The Last Investigation| publisher=The Mary Ferrell Foundation| year=2008| ISBN=0-9801213-5-3}}</ref>

In 1995, former U.S. Army [[Military intelligence|Intelligence]] officer and [[National Security Agency]] executive assistant [[John M. Newman]] published evidence that both the CIA and FBI deliberately tampered with their files on Lee Harvey Oswald both before and after the assassination. Furthermore, he found that both agencies withheld information that might have alerted authorities in Dallas that Oswald posed a potential threat to the President. Subsequently, Newman expressed a belief that CIA chief of counter-intelligence [[James Angleton]] was probably the key figure in the assassination. According to Newman, only Angleton "had the access, the authority, and the diabolically ingenious mind to manage this sophisticated plot." However, Newman surmised that the cover operation was not under James Angleton, but under [[Allen Welsh Dulles|Allen Dulles]] (the former CIA director, and later Warren Commission member, who had been dismissed by Kennedy after the failed [[Bay of Pigs invasion]]).<ref name="Newman">{{cite book |last=Newman |first=John M. |authorlink=John M. Newman |title=Oswald and the CIA: The Documented Truth About the Unknown Relationship Between the U.S. Government and the Alleged Killer of JFK |year=2008 |publisher=Skyhorse Publishing |location=New York |isbn=1-60239-253-6 |ref=harv}}</ref>

In 1977, the FBI released 40,000 files pertaining to the assassination of Kennedy, including an April 3, 1967 memorandum from Deputy Director [[Cartha DeLoach]] to Associate Director [[Clyde Tolson]] that was written less than a month after President Johnson learned from [[J. Edgar Hoover]] about CIA plots to kill Fidel Castro.<ref name="The Washington Post; December 13, 1977">{{cite news |author=<!--Staff writer(s); no by-line.--> |title=LBJ Reportedly Suspected CIA Link in JFK's Death |url= |newspaper=The Washington Post |location=Washington, D.C. |date=December 13, 1977 |page=A10 |accessdate= }}</ref><ref name="Kantor">{{cite news |last=Kantor |first=Seth |date=November 16, 1988 |title=Connally didn't believe Warren Commission verdict |url=https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1665&dat=19881116&id=SXBPAAAAIBAJ&sjid=qyQEAAAAIBAJ&pg=6660,3698532 |newspaper=Times-News |volume=113 |issue=322 |location=Henderson, North Carolina |agency=Cox News Service |page=23 |accessdate=January 3, 2015}}</ref> The memorandum reads: "[[W. Marvin Watson|Marvin Watson]] [adviser to President Johnson] called me late last night and stated that the president had told him, in an off moment, that he was now convinced that there was a plot in connection with the [JFK] assassination. Watson stated the president felt that [the] CIA had had something to do with plot."<ref>[http://jfk.hood.edu/Collection/Weisberg%20Subject%20Index%20Files/J%20Disk/Johnson%20Lyndon%20Baines%20President/Item%2038.pdf DeLoach to Tolson], FBI document 62-1090060-5075, April 4, 1967, p. 3.</ref><ref>[http://archives.chicagotribune.com/1978/01/19/page/2/article/lyndon-convinced-of-jfk-death-plot-fbi-files-show ''Lyndon Convinced of JFK Death Plot, FBI Files Show''], Chicago Tribune, January 19, 1978, section 1, page 2.</ref>{{sfn|Marrs|1989|p=298}}<ref>''The Washington Post'', December 13, 1977.</ref><ref>Schlesinger, Arthur. ''Robert Kennedy and His Times'', Houghton Mifflin Harcourt: 1978, p. 616. {{ISBN|0618219285}}.</ref> Later, Cartha DeLoach testified to the [[Church Committee]] that he "felt this to be sheer speculation".<ref>[http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/church/reports/vol6/html/ChurchV6_0096b.htm Testimony of Courtney Evans and Cartha DeLoach], Church Committee Reports, vol. 6, Federal Bureau of Investigation, p. 182.</ref>

=== Shadow government conspiracy ===
One conspiracy theory suggests that a secret or [[Shadow government (conspiracy)|shadow government]] including wealthy industrialists and right-wing politicians ordered the assassination of Kennedy.<ref name="The Seattle Times">{{cite news |title=40 years of doubts: Conspiracy theories still grip public |url=http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2001798376_conspiracy22.html |agency=Associated Press |newspaper=The Seattle Times |location=Seattle |date=November 22, 2003 |accessdate=March 9, 2012}}</ref> [[Peter Dale Scott]] has indicated that Kennedy's death allowed for policy reversals desired by the secret government to escalate the United States' military involvement in Vietnam.<ref name="Fresia">{{cite book |last=Fresia |first=Gerald John |title=Toward an American Revolution: Exposing the Constitution and Other Illusions |year=1988 |publisher=South End Press |location=Brookline, Massachusetts |isbn=0-89608-297-0 |ref=harv}}</ref>

=== Military-industrial complex ===
In the farewell speech given by U.S. President [[Dwight D. Eisenhower]] before he left office on January 17, 1961, warned the nation about the power of the military establishment and the arms industry. "In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the [[military-industrial complex]]. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist."<ref>{{cite news| url=https://www.npr.org/2011/01/17/132942244/ikes-warning-of-military-expansion-50-years-later| title=Ike's Warning Of Military Expansion, 50 Years Later| |work=[[Morning Edition]]| publisher=NPR| date=January 17, 2011}}</ref> Some conspiracy theorists have argued that Kennedy planned to end the involvement of the United States in Vietnam, and was therefore targeted by those who had an interest in sustained military conflict, including the Pentagon and defense contractors.{{sfn|Broderick|2008|p=207}}

Former [[Texas Senator]] [[Ralph Yarborough]] in 1991 stated: "Had Kennedy lived, I think we would have had no Vietnam War, with all of its traumatic and divisive influences in America. I think we would have escaped that."<ref>Yarborough, Ralph; interviewed in the documentary ''[[The Men Who Killed Kennedy]]'', Part 5, "The Witnesses"</ref>

According to author [[James W. Douglass]], Kennedy was assassinated because he was turning away from the [[Cold War]] and seeking a negotiated peace with the Soviet Union.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.americamagazine.org/content/article.cfm?article_id=11206&comments=1 | last=Anderson| first=George M.|title=Unmasking the Truth |work=[[America (magazine)|America]] |date=November 17, 2008 |deadurl=yes |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20110512005751/https://www.americamagazine.org/content/article.cfm?article_id=11206&comments=1 |archivedate=May 12, 2011 |df= }}</ref> Douglass argued that this "was not the kind of leadership the CIA, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the military-industrial complex wanted in the White House."<ref>{{cite web| url=http://www.tikkun.org/article.php/november2010douglass| authorlink=James W. Douglass| last=Douglass|first=James W.| title=JFK, Obama, and the Unspeakable| work=[[Tikkun (magazine)|Tikkun]]| date=November–December 2010}}</ref>

[[Oliver Stone]]'s film, ''[[JFK (film)|JFK]]'', explored the possibility that Kennedy was killed by a conspiracy involving the military-industrial complex.<ref>{{cite news| url=https://movies.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9D0CE5DC1230F933A15751C1A967958260| last=Canby| first=Vincent| authorlink=Vincent Canby| title=J.F.K.; When Everything Amounts to Nothing| work=The New York Times| date=December 20, 1991}}</ref> [[L. Fletcher Prouty]], Chief of Special Operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Kennedy, and the person who inspired the character "Mr. X" in Stone's film, wrote that Kennedy's assassination was actually a [[coup d'état]].<ref>{{cite web| url=http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-1-55972-130-1| title=JFK: The CIA, Vietnam, and the Plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedy| work=Publisher's Weekly| date=August 31, 1992}}</ref>

=== Secret Service conspiracy ===
The House Select Committee on Assassinations reported that it investigated "alleged Secret Service complicity in the assassination" and concluded that the Secret Service was not involved.<ref name="HCSA-IC"/> However, the HSCA declared that "the Secret Service was deficient in the performance of its duties."<ref>[http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/hsca/report/html/HSCA_Report_0129a.htm House Select Committee on Assassinations Final Report], p. 227.</ref> Among its findings, the HSCA noted: (1) that President Kennedy had not received adequate protection in Dallas, (2) that the Secret Service possessed information that was not properly analyzed, investigated, or used by the Secret Service in connection with the President's trip to Dallas, and (3) that the Secret Service agents in the motorcade were inadequately prepared to protect the President from a sniper.<ref>[http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/hsca/report/html/HSCA_Report_0130a.htm House Select Committee on Assassinations Final Report], pp. 229-35.</ref> The HSCA specifically noted:

<blockquote>No actions were taken by the agent in the right front seat of the presidential limousine [[Roy Kellerman]] to cover the President with his body, although it would have been consistent with Secret Service procedure for him to have done so. The primary function of the agent was to remain at all times in close proximity to the President in the event of such emergencies.<ref>[http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/hsca/report/html/HSCA_Report_0132b.htm House Select Committee on Assassinations Final Report], pp. 234-35.</ref></blockquote>

Some argue that the lack of Secret Service protection occurred because Kennedy himself had asked that the Secret Service make itself discreet during the Dallas visit.{{sfn|Bugliosi|2007|pp=29, 38}} However, Vince Palamara, who interviewed several Secret Service agents assigned to the Kennedy detail, disputes this. Palamara reports that Secret Service driver Sam Kinney told him that requests—such as removing the bubble top from the limousine in Dallas, not having agents positioned beside the limousine's rear bumper, and reducing the number of Dallas police motorcycle outriders near the limousine's rear bumper—were not made by Kennedy.<ref>{{cite news| url=http://www.post-gazette.com/neigh_south/19980125bjfk5.asp| author=Mary Anne Lewis| title=JFK's death is often focus of his research| publisher=Pittsburgh Post-Gazette| date=January 26, 1998}}</ref><ref name="ReferenceD"/><ref>Palamara, Vince. ''The Third Alternative—Survivor's Guilt: The Secret Service and the JFK Murder'', (Southlake: JFK Lancer Productions & Publications, 1997), {{ISBN|0-9656582-4-4}}</ref>

In ''The Echo from Dealey Plaza'', [[Abraham Bolden]]—the first African American on the White House Secret Service detail—claimed to have overheard agents say that they would not protect Kennedy from would-be assassins.<ref>Bolden, Abraham. ''The Echo from Dealey Plaza'', (New York: Harmony Books, 2008), p. 19. {{ISBN|978-0-307-38201-6}}</ref>

[[Colin McLaren]], a former Australian police detective sergeant, was inspired by Bonar Menninger's ''[[Mortal Error]]'',<ref name=TSGKd>''To Howard Donohue, a man who epitomised the very reason we demand dedicated and precise forensic science at the forefront of unravelling complex crime. Despite his arduous 25-year study he was snubbed and ultimately silenced by official suits and lawsuits. His ballistic expertise, his astute opinions and his skill live on through my story.'' McLaren, Colin (October 23, 2013). JFK: The Smoking Gun (Kindle Locations 18-20). Hachette Australia. Kindle Edition.</ref> to approach the assassination of Kennedy as a [[cold case]] investigation,<ref>''I carried the book in my cabin luggage when I winged my way homeward. By the time I arrived in Australia I had read it again and was charged with a desire to undertake a cold-case forensic study into the killing of the 35th President of the United States.'' McLaren, Colin (October 23, 2013). JFK: The Smoking Gun (Kindle Locations 225-227). Hachette Australia. Kindle Edition.</ref> and treating Howard Donahue's expert testimony as that of just one witness of many. After more than four years of research,<ref>http://pittsburgh.cbslocal.com/2013/09/02/author-discusses-jfk-the-smoking-gun/</ref> he published a book titled ''JFK: The Smoking Gun'',<ref>{{cite book |isbn=978-0-7336-3044-6 |title=JFK: The Smoking Gun |last=McLaren |first=Colin |authorlink=Colin McLaren }}</ref> which was accompanied by a documentary.<ref>{{cite news |url=http://www.philly.com/philly/news/Shooting_holes_in_theory_that_a_Secret_Service_agent_killed_President_Kennedy.html |accessdate=November 30, 2013 |title=Shooting holes in theory that a Secret Service agent killed President Kennedy |first=Peter |last=Mucha |newspaper=philly.com |publisher=Interstate General Media |date=November 13, 2013 }}</ref> As an investigator, McLaren focuses on the existing witness testimony, including testimony from people present at [[John F. Kennedy autopsy|Kennedy's autopsy]]<ref name="The Washington Post; August 2, 1998">{{cite news |last=Lardner Jr. |first=George |date=August 2, 1998 |title=Gaps in Kennedy Autopsy Files Detailed |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1998/08/02/gaps-in-kennedy-autopsy-files-detailed/f374ef5c-7be3-48ad-a661-394a170a6e67/ |newspaper=The Washington Post |location= |access-date=July 22, 2015}}</ref> rather than on his own ballistics or similar tests.<ref>''Donahue was missing the purity of witness evidence. Here was a great ballistics theory but with no supportive evidence or, as detectives say, 'all meat and no potatoes'—no forensic analysis of the testimonies to support his premise.'' McLaren, Colin (October 23, 2013). JFK: The Smoking Gun (Kindle Locations 219-225). Hachette Australia. Kindle Edition.</ref> Rather than just dismiss the ballistics tests carried out for the Warren Commission as inexpert, their testimony to the commission, including their qualifications, is quoted and critiqued,<ref>''Dr Light went on to say that Olivier's theory relating to JFK's head wound and Connally's wrist wound was 'barely conceivable'.'' McLaren, Colin (October 23, 2013). JFK: The Smoking Gun (Kindle Locations 3036-3037). Hachette Australia. Kindle Edition.</ref> and also any cross-examination. He quotes many more witnesses than Donahue or Menninger as having believed that shots were fired at ground level, and observes a pattern of concealment of evidence.<ref>''Leading a witness is prone to interjection from the judge. Strangely, this was not the case at the Warren Commission, where leading questions were commonplace.'' McLaren, Colin (October 23, 2013). JFK: The Smoking Gun (Kindle Locations 3072-3073). Hachette Australia. Kindle Edition.</ref> His conclusion, like those of Reppert and of Menninger, is that Donahue is correct in both the broad theory and the details.

Questions regarding the forthrightness of the Secret Service increased in the 1990s when the [[Assassination Records Review Board]]—which was created when Congress passed the [[President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992|JFK Records Act]]—requested access to Secret Service records. The Review Board was told by the Secret Service that in January 1995, in violation of the JFK Records Act, the Secret Service destroyed protective survey reports that covered JFK's trips from September 24 through November 8, 1963.<ref name="ARRB-ES">{{cite book |author=Assassination Records Review Board |authorlink1=Assassination Records Review Board |title=Final Report of the Assassination Records Review Board |url=https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/review-board/report/arrb-final-report.pdf |format=pdf |accessdate=June 10, 2015 |date=September 30, 1998 |publisher=United States Government Printing Office |location=Washington, D.C. |chapter=Executive Summary}}</ref><ref>Douglass, James. ''JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters'', (New York: Touchstone/Simon & Schuster, 2008), pp. 218, 438–39. {{ISBN|978-1-4391-9388-4}}</ref><ref>[https://fas.org/sgp/advisory/arrb.html Assassination Records Review Board], FY 1995 Report, The Record Review Process and Compliance with the JFK Act—U.S. Secret Service</ref>

=== Cuban exiles ===
The House Select Committee on Assassinations wrote: "The committee believes, on the basis of the evidence available to it, that anti-Castro Cuban groups, as groups, were not involved in the assassination of President Kennedy, but that the available evidence does not preclude the possibility that individual members may have been involved".<ref name="HCSA-IC"/>

With the 1959 [[Cuban Revolution]] that brought Fidel Castro to power, many Cubans left Cuba to live in the United States. Many of these exiles hoped to overthrow Castro and return to Cuba. Their hopes were dashed with the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion in 1961, and many blamed President Kennedy for the failure.{{sfn|Summers|2013|p=205}}

The House Select Committee on Assassinations concluded that some militant Cuban exiles might have participated in Kennedy's murder. These exiles worked closely with CIA operatives in violent activities against Castro's Cuba. In 1979, the committee reported:

<blockquote>President Kennedy's popularity among the Cuban exiles had plunged deeply by 1963. Their bitterness is illustrated in a tape recording of a meeting of anti-Castro Cubans and right-wing Americans in the Dallas suburb of Farmer's Branch on October 1, 1963.<ref name="aarclibrary.org">[http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/hsca/report/html/HSCA_Report_0081b.htm Findings of the House Select Committee on Assassinations], HSCA Final Report, p. 132.</ref></blockquote>

Author [[Joan Didion]] explored the Miami anti-Castro Cuban theory in her 1987 book ''Miami''.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.nytimes.com/books/99/01/24/nnp/miami.html|title=James Chace, "Betrayals and Obsession", NY Times, October 25, 1987, on Joan Didion's book MIAMI|publisher=}}</ref><ref>Joan Didion, "MIAMI", New York, Simon & Schuster, 238pp. 1987</ref> She discussed Marita Lorenz's testimony regarding Guillermo Novo, a Cuban exile who was involved in shooting a bazooka at the U.N. building from the East River during a speech by [[Che Guevara]]. Allegedly, Novo was affiliated with Lee Harvey Oswald and Frank Sturgis and carried weapons with them to a hotel in Dallas just prior to the assassination. These claims, though put forth to the House Assassinations Committee by Lorenz, have never been substantiated. [[Don DeLillo]] dramatized the Cuban theory in his 1988 novel ''[[Libra (novel)|Libra]]''.

=== Organized crime conspiracy ===
The House Select Committee on Assassinations wrote: "The committee believes, on the basis of the evidence available to it, that the national syndicate of organized crime, as a group, was not involved in the assassination of President Kennedy, but that the available evidence does not preclude the possibility that individual members may have been involved".<ref name="HCSA-IC"/> [[G. Robert Blakey|Robert Blakey]], who was chief counsel for the House Select Committee on Assassinations, would later conclude in his book, ''The Plot to Kill the President'', that [[New Orleans]] Mafia boss [[Carlos Marcello]] was likely part of a Mafia conspiracy behind the assassination, and that the Mafia had the means and the opportunity required to carry it out.<ref>Blakey, Robert (1981). The Plot to Kill the President. New York: Times Books. {{ISBN|0812909291}}</ref><ref>[https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/biographies/oswald/interview-g-robert-blakey/ PBS ''Frontline'' "Who Was Lee Harvey Oswald"], Interview: G. Robert Blakey, November 19, 2013.</ref>

Government documents have revealed that some members of the Mafia worked with the Central Intelligence Agency on assassination attempts against [[Cuba]]n leader [[Fidel Castro]].<ref>[http://www.udel.edu/leipzig/texts2/cnn03077.htm CIA offered money to Mafia]. Retrieved December 3, 2006.</ref> In the summer of 1960, the CIA recruited ex-FBI agent [[Robert Maheu]] to approach the West Coast representative of the Chicago mob, [[John Roselli|Johnny Roselli]]. When Maheu contacted Roselli, Maheu hid the fact that he was sent by the CIA, instead portraying himself as an advocate for international corporations. He offered to pay $150,000 to have Castro killed, but Roselli declined any pay. Roselli introduced Maheu to two men he referred to as "Sam Gold" and "Joe". "Sam Gold" was [[Sam Giancana]]; "Joe" was [[Santo Trafficante, Jr.]], the Tampa, Florida, boss and one of the most powerful mobsters in pre-revolution Cuba.<ref>[http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/national/familyjewels/20070626_ciaandmob.pdf Memorandum for the Director of Central Intelligence, Subject: Roselli, Johnny], November 19, 1970.</ref>{{sfn|Douglass|2010|p=34}} [[Glenn Kessler (journalist)|Glenn Kessler]] of ''[[The Washington Post]]'' explained: "After Fidel Castro led a revolution that toppled a friendly government in 1959, the CIA was desperate to eliminate him. So the agency sought out a partner equally worried about Castro—the Mafia, which had lucrative investments in Cuban casinos."<ref name=Kessler>{{cite news|last=Kessler|first=Glenn|title=Trying to Kill Fidel Castro|url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/26/AR2007062601467.html|accessdate=May 23, 2013|newspaper=The Washington Post|date=June 27, 2007|authorlink=Glenn Kessler (journalist)|location=Washington, D.C.}}</ref>

In his memoir, ''Bound by Honor'', [[Bill Bonanno]], son of New York Mafia boss [[Joseph Bonanno]], disclosed that several Mafia families had long-standing ties with the anti-Castro Cubans through the Havana casinos operated by the Mafia before the [[Cuban Revolution]]. Many Cuban exiles and Mafia bosses disliked President Kennedy, blaming him for the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion.{{sfn|Summers|2013|p=205-}} They also disliked his brother, then Attorney General [[Robert Kennedy]], who had conducted an unprecedented legal assault on organized crime.{{sfn|Summers|2013|p=224-}}{{sfn|Broderick|2008|p=208}} This was especially provocative because several Mafia "families" had allegedly worked with JFK's father, [[Joseph Kennedy]], to get JFK elected.<ref>Kessler, Ronald. ''The Sins of the Father: Joseph P. Kennedy and the Dynasty He Founded'', (New York: Warner Books, 1996), p. 376 {{ISBN|0446518840}}</ref> Both the Mafia and the anti-Castro Cubans were experts in assassination—the Cubans having been trained by the CIA.<ref name="Bill Moyers 1977">Bill Moyers, "The CIA's Secret Army", ''CBS Reports'', June 10, 1977.</ref> Bonanno reported that he recognized the high degree of involvement of other Mafia families when Jack Ruby killed Oswald, since Bonanno was aware that Ruby was an associate of Chicago mobster [[Sam Giancana]].<ref>Bonanno, Bill. ''Bound by Honor: A Mafioso's Story'', (New York: St Martin's Press, 1999), {{ISBN|0-312-20388-8}}</ref>

Some conspiracy researchers have alleged a plot involving elements of the Mafia, the CIA, and the anti-Castro Cubans, including Anthony Summers, who stated: "Sometimes people sort of glaze over about the notion that the Mafia and U.S. intelligence and the anti-Castro activists were involved together in the assassination of President Kennedy. In fact, there's no contradiction there. Those three groups were all in bed together at the time and had been for several years in the fight to topple Fidel Castro."<ref>''Investigative Reports'', cable TV program, interview by Bill Curtis, September 1991.</ref> News reporter [[Ruben Castaneda]] wrote in 2012: "Based on the evidence, it is likely that JFK was killed by a coalition of anti-Castro Cubans, the Mob, and elements of the CIA."<ref>[[Ruben Castaneda]], "Nixon, Watergate, and the JFK Assassination", ''Baltimore Post-Examiner'', July 2, 2012.</ref> In his book, ''They Killed Our President'', former [[Minnesota]] governor [[Jesse Ventura]] concluded: "John F. Kennedy was murdered by a conspiracy involving disgruntled CIA agents, anti-Castro Cubans, and members of the Mafia, all of whom were extremely angry at what they viewed as Kennedy's [[appeasement]] policies toward Communist Cuba and the Soviet Union."<ref>Ventura, Jessie. ''They Killed Our President'', (New York: Skyhorse Publishing, 2013), xii. {{ISBN|1626361398}}</ref>

[[Carlos Marcello]] allegedly threatened to assassinate the President to short-circuit his younger brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, who was leading the administration's anti-Mafia crusade.<ref>Thomas L. Jones, [http://www.crimelibrary.com/gangsters_outlaws/family_epics/marcello/11.html Punching Federale] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080509203506/http://www.crimelibrary.com/gangsters_outlaws/family_epics/marcello/11.html |date=May 9, 2008 }}, chapter 11 of his book ''Carlos Marcello: Big Daddy in the Big Easy''.</ref><ref>[http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/russ/jfkinfo/jfk9/hscv9e.htm The John F. Kennedy Assassination Information Center] information on Carlos Marcello from congressional investigation, "The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy and Organized Crime, Report of Ralph Salerno, Consultant to the Select Committee on Assassinations".</ref> Information released in 2006 by the FBI has led some to conclude that Carlos Marcello confessed to his cellmate in Texas, Jack Van Lanningham, an [[FBI]] informant, using a transistor radio that was bugged by the FBI, to having organized Kennedy's assassination, and that the FBI covered up this information that it had in its possession.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.abc.net.au/rn/bookshow/stories/2008/2438955.htm |title=A legacy of secrecy: the assassination of JFK |work=RN Book Show |publisher=ABCnet.au |date=December 9, 2008 |accessdate=September 17, 2010 |deadurl=yes |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20081227083509/http://www.abc.net.au/rn/bookshow/stories/2008/2438955.htm |archivedate=December 27, 2008 }}</ref>

In his book, ''Contract on America'',<ref>{{cite book|author=David Scheim|title=Contract on America|publisher=Shapolsky Publishers|year=1988|isbn=0-933503-30-X}}</ref> David Scheim provided evidence that Mafia leaders [[Carlos Marcello]], [[Santo Trafficante, Jr.]], and [[Jimmy Hoffa]] ordered the assassination of President Kennedy. Scheim cited in particular a 25-fold increase in the number of out-of-state telephone calls from Jack Ruby to associates of these crime bosses in the months before the assassination, and to an attempted confession by Jack Ruby while in prison. [[David E. Kaiser]] has also suggested mob involvement in his book, ''The Road to Dallas''.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog/KAIASS.html|author=David Kaiser|title=The Road to Dallas|publisher=Harvard University Press|date=March 2008}}</ref>

Investigative reporter [[Jack Anderson (columnist)|Jack Anderson]] concluded that Fidel Castro worked with organized crime figures to arrange the JFK assassination. In his book ''Peace, War, and Politics'', Anderson claimed that Mafia member Johnny Roselli gave him extensive details of the plot. Anderson said that although he was never able to independently confirm Roselli's entire story, many of Roselli's details checked out. Anderson said that Oswald may have played a role in the assassination, but that more than one gunman was involved. Johnny Roselli, as previously noted, had worked with the CIA on assassination attempts against Castro.

The [[History (U.S. TV channel)|History Channel]] program ''[[The Men Who Killed Kennedy]]'' presented additional claims of organized crime involvement.<ref>"The Men Who Killed Kennedy: The Definitive Account of American History's Most Controversial Mystery". History Channel, 1988, 1991, 1995. This information appears in part 2, "The Forces of Darkness" under the sections titled, "The Contract" and "Foreign Assassins".</ref> Christian David was a [[Corsican Mafia]] member interviewed in prison. He said that he was offered the assassination contract on President Kennedy, but that he did not accept it. However, he said that he knew the men who did accept the contract. According to David, there were three shooters. He provided the name of one—[[Lucien Sarti]]. David said that since the other two shooters were still alive, it would break a code of conduct for him to identify them. When asked what the shooters were wearing, David noted their ''modus operandi'' was to dress in costumes such as official uniforms. Much of Christian David's testimony was confirmed by former Corsican member Michelle Nicole, who was part of the [[DEA]] witness protection program.

The book ''Ultimate Sacrifice'', by [[Lamar Waldron]] and [[Thom Hartmann]], attempted to synthesize these theories with new evidence. The authors argued that government officials felt obliged to help the assassins cover up the truth because the assassination conspiracy had direct ties to American government plots to assassinate Castro. Outraged at Robert Kennedy's attack on organized crime, mob leaders had President Kennedy killed to remove Robert from power. A government investigation of the plot was thwarted, the authors allege, because it would have revealed embarrassing evidence of American government involvement with organized crime in plots to kill Castro.<ref>''Ultimate Sacrifice: John and Robert Kennedy, the Plan for a Coup in Cuba, and the Murder of JFK'' (2005), by Lamar Waldron, with Thom Hartmann; Carroll & Graf. {{ISBN|0-7867-1441-7}}.</ref>

=== Lyndon B. Johnson conspiracy ===
[[File:Lyndon B. Johnson taking the oath of office, November 1963.jpg|thumb|Johnson is sworn in on ''Air Force One'' by Judge Hughes. Mrs. Kennedy is to the right and Mrs. Johnson to the left.]]
A 2003 Gallup poll indicated that nearly 20% of Americans suspected [[Lyndon B. Johnson]] of being involved in the assassination of Kennedy.{{sfn|Bugliosi|2007|p=1273}}<!-- Bugliosi notes that Johnson was actually against Kennedy's trip to Dallas.{{sfn|Bugliosi|2007|p=1275}} --> Critics of the Warren Commission have accused Johnson of plotting the assassination because he "disliked" the [[Kennedy family|Kennedys]] and feared that he would be dropped from the Democratic ticket for the [[United States presidential election, 1964|1964 election.]]{{sfn|Broderick|2008|pp=208–209}}<ref>Kroth, Dr. Jerry, ''Coup d'etat: The assassination of President John F. Kennedy'', Genotype, 2013. ASIN: B00EXTGDS2</ref>

According to journalist [[Max Holland]], the first published allegation that Johnson perpetrated the assassination of Kennedy appeared in [[Penn Jones, Jr.]]'s book ''Forgive My Grief'', self-published in May 1966.<ref name="History News Network; April 5, 2004">{{cite web | access-date=August 30, 2015 | url=http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/4487 | title=The British JFK Producer Who Brought Shame on the History Channel | publisher=History News Network | date=April 5, 2004 | last=Holland | first=Max | authorlink=Max Holland | website=historynewsnetwork.org}}</ref> In the book, Jones provided excerpts of a letter purported to have been authored by Jack Ruby charging LBJ with the murder of the President.<ref name="History News Network; April 5, 2004" /> With his 1968 book, ''The Dark Side of Lyndon Baines Johnson'', Joachim Joesten is credited by Bugliosi as being the first conspiracy author to accuse Johnson of having a role in the assassination.{{sfn|Bugliosi|2007|p=1275}} According to Joesten, Johnson "played the leading part" in a conspiracy that involved "the Dallas oligarchy and ... local branches of the CIA, the FBI, and the Secret Service".{{sfn|Bugliosi|2007|p=1275}} Others who have indicated there was complicity on the part of Johnson include [[Jim Marrs]],{{sfn|Bugliosi|2007|p=1275}} Ralph D. Thomas,{{sfn|Bugliosi|2007|p=1275}} J. Gary Shaw,{{sfn|Bugliosi|2007|p=1275}} Larry Harris,{{sfn|Bugliosi|2007|p=1275}} Walt Brown,{{sfn|Bugliosi|2007|p=1275}} Noel Twyman,{{sfn|Bugliosi|2007|p=1275}} [[Barr McClellan]],{{sfn|Bugliosi|2007|p=1275}} Craig Zirbel,{{sfn|Bugliosi|2007|p=1276}} Phillip F. Nelson,<ref>Nelson, Philip F., ''LBJ: The Mastermind of the JFK Assassination'', Skyhorse Publishing 2011. {{ISBN|978-1-61608-377-9}}</ref> and [[Madeleine Brown]].{{sfn|Bugliosi|2007|p=1280}}

The fact that JFK was seriously considering dropping Johnson from the ticket in favor of NC Governor [[Terry Sanford]] should Kennedy run in 1964 has been cited as a possible motive for Johnson's complicity in the assassination. In 1968, Kennedy's personal secretary [[Evelyn Lincoln]] wrote in her book, "''Kennedy and Johnson''" that President Kennedy had told her that Lyndon B. Johnson would be replaced as Vice President of the United States. That conversation took place on November 19, 1963, just three days before the assassination of President Kennedy and was recorded that evening in her diary and reads as follows:

{{quote|As Mr. Kennedy sat in the rocker in my office, his head resting on its back he placed his left leg across his right knee. He rocked slightly as he talked. In a slow pensive voice he said to me, 'You know if I am re-elected in sixty-four, I am going to spend more and more time toward making government service an honorable career. I would like to tailor the executive and legislative branches of government so that they can keep up with the tremendous strides and progress being made in other fields.' 'I am going to advocate changing some of the outmoded rules and regulations in the Congress, such as the seniority rule. To do this I will need as a running mate in sixty-four a man who believes as I do.' Mrs. Lincoln went on to write "I was fascinated by this conversation and wrote it down verbatim in my diary. Now I asked, 'Who is your choice as a running-mate?' 'He looked straight ahead, and without hesitating he replied, 'at this time I am thinking about Governor Terry Sanford of North Carolina. But it will not be Lyndon.'<ref>{{cite book|last1=Lincoln|first1=Evelyn|title=Kennedy and Johnson|date=1968|publisher=Holt, Rinehart and Winston|page=205|edition=1st|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=PR9CAAAAIAAJ&q=sanford|accessdate=21 November 2015}}</ref>}}

In 2003, researcher Barr McClellan published the book ''Blood, Money & Power''.<ref>McClellan, Barr, ''Blood, Money & Power: How L.B.J. Killed J.F.K.'', Hannover House 2003. {{ISBN|0-9637846-2-5}}</ref> McClellan claims that Johnson, motivated by the fear of being dropped from the Kennedy ticket in 1964 and the need to cover up various scandals, masterminded Kennedy's assassination with the help of his friend, [[Austin]] attorney [[Edward A. Clark]]. The book suggests that a smudged partial fingerprint from the sniper's nest likely belonged to Johnson's associate [[Malcolm "Mac" Wallace]], and that Mac Wallace was, therefore, on the sixth floor of the Depository at the time of the shooting. The book further claims that the killing of Kennedy was paid for by oil magnates, including [[Clint Murchison, Sr.|Clint Murchison]] and [[H. L. Hunt]]. McClellan states that the assassination of Kennedy allowed the oil depletion allowance to be kept at 27.5 percent. It remained unchanged during the Johnson presidency. According to McClellan, this resulted in a saving of over $100 million to the [[Petroleum in the United States|American oil industry]]. McClellan's book subsequently became the subject of an episode of Nigel Turner's ongoing documentary television series, ''[[The Men Who Killed Kennedy]]''. The episode, "The Guilty Men", drew angry condemnation from the Johnson family, Johnson's former aides, and former Presidents [[Gerald Ford]] (who was a member of the [[Warren Commission]]<ref>Ford, Gerald R. (2007). A Presidential Legacy and The Warren Commission. The FlatSigned Press. {{ISBN|978-1-934304-02-0}}.</ref>) and [[Jimmy Carter]] following its airing on [[History (U.S. TV channel)|The History Channel]]. The History Channel assembled a committee of historians who concluded the accusations in the documentary were without merit, and The History Channel apologized to the Johnson family and agreed not to air the series in the future.<ref>[[Stanley Kutler|Kutler, Stanley I.]] [http://hnn.us/articles/why-history-channel-had-apologize-documentary-blamed-lbj-jfks-murder "Why the History Channel Had to Apologize for the Documentary that Blamed LBJ for JFK's Murder"]. [[History News Network]]. Retrieved January 2, 2011.</ref>

[[Madeleine Brown]], who alleged she was the mistress of Johnson, also implicated him in a conspiracy to kill Kennedy. In 1997, Brown said that Johnson, along with H. L. Hunt, had begun planning Kennedy's demise as early as 1960. Brown claimed that by its fruition in 1963, the conspiracy involved dozens of persons, including the leadership of the FBI and the Mafia, as well as prominent politicians and journalists.<ref>Brown, Madeleine D. (1997), ''Texas in the Morning: The Love Story of Madeleine Brown and President Lyndon Baines Johnson'', Conservatory Press. {{ISBN|0-941401-06-5}}</ref> In the documentary ''[[The Men Who Killed Kennedy]]'', Madeleine Brown and May Newman (an employee of Texas oilman Clint Murchison) both placed FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover at a social gathering at Murchison's mansion the night before the assassination.<ref name="ReferenceB">Turner, Nigel. The Men Who Killed Kennedy, Part 9, "The Guilty Men", 2003.</ref> Also in attendance, according to Brown, were [[John J. McCloy|John McCloy]], [[Richard Nixon]], [[George R. Brown|George Brown]], [[Robert L. Thornton|R. L. Thornton]], and H. L. Hunt.<ref name="Brown, Madeleine D. 1997 p. 166">Brown, Madeleine D. (1997), ''Texas in the Morning: The Love Story of Madeleine Brown and President Lyndon Baines Johnson'', Conservatory Press, p. 166. {{ISBN|0-941401-06-5}}</ref> Madeleine Brown claimed that Johnson arrived at the gathering late in the evening and, in a "grating whisper", told her that the "... Kennedys will never embarrass me again—that's no threat—that's a promise."<ref name="Brown, Madeleine D. 1997 p. 166"/><ref>{{cite news| url=http://www.informationliberation.com/?id=15167 |title=LBJ Night Before JFK Assassination: "Those SOB's Will Never Embarrass Me Again" |accessdate=December 20, 2011}}</ref><ref>Fetzer, James. ''Assassination Science'', (Chicago: Catfeet Press, 1998), pp. 368–369. {{ISBN|0-8126-9366-3}}</ref> In addition, Brown said that on New Year's Eve 1963, she met Johnson at the [[Driskill Hotel]] in [[Austin]], Texas and that he confirmed the conspiracy to kill Kennedy, insisting that "the fat cats of Texas and [U.S.] intelligence" had been responsible.<ref name="ReferenceB"/> Brown reiterated her allegations against Johnson in the 2006 documentary ''Evidence of Revision''. In the same documentary, several other Johnson associates also voiced their suspicions of Johnson.

Dr. Charles Crenshaw authored the 1992 book ''JFK: Conspiracy of Silence'', along with conspiracy theorists Jens Hansen and J. Gary Shaw. Crenshaw was a third-year surgical resident on the [[trauma team]] at Parkland Hospital that attended to President Kennedy. He also treated Oswald after he was shot by Jack Ruby.<ref name="Altman">{{cite news |last=Altman |first=Lawrence K. |date=May 26, 1992 |title=The Doctor's World; 28 Years After Dallas, A Doctor Tells His Story Amid Troubling Doubts |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1992/05/26/health/doctor-s-world-28-years-after-dallas-doctor-tells-his-story-amid-troubling.html |newspaper=The New York Times |location=New York |accessdate=January 4, 2015}}</ref> While attending to Oswald, Crenshaw said that he answered a telephone call from Lyndon Johnson. Crenshaw said that Johnson inquired about Oswald's status, and that Johnson demanded a "death-bed confession from the accused assassin [Oswald]".<ref name="Altman"/> Crenshaw said that he relayed Johnson's message to Dr. Shires, but that Oswald was in no condition to give any statement.<ref name="ReferenceB"/><ref>[[Crenshaw, Charles]]. ''Trauma Room One'', (New York: Paraview Press, 2001), pp. 132–133. {{ISBN|1931044309}}</ref> Critics of Crenshaw's allegation state that Johnson was in his limousine at the moment the call would have been made, that no one in his car corroborated that the call was made, and that there is no record of such a call being routed through the White House switchboard.<ref name="McAdams; Witnesses">{{cite book |title=JFK Assassination Logic: How to Think about Claims of Conspiracy |last=McAdams |first=John |authorlink=John C. McAdams |year=2011 |publisher=Potomac Books, Inc. |location=Washington, D.C. |isbn=1-59797-489-7 |pages=69–71 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=2OJeNytAOZkC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage |chapter=Witnesses Who Are Just Too Good |chapterurl=https://books.google.com/books?id=2OJeNytAOZkC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA70#v=onepage |accessdate=January 4, 2015}}</ref>{{sfn|Bugliosi|2007|pp=416–420}}

Former CIA agent and Watergate figure E. Howard Hunt accused Johnson (along with several CIA agents whom he named) of complicity in the assassination in his posthumously released autobiography ''[[American Spy: My Secret History in the CIA, Watergate, and Beyond]]''.<ref>{{cite news|newspaper=NY Post|accessdate=April 11, 2007| url=http://www.nypost.com/seven/01142007/gossip/pagesix/pagesix.htm |title=Hunt Blames JFK Hit On LBJ NY Post| archivedate=April 3, 2007 | archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20070403093040/http://www.nypost.com/seven/01142007/gossip/pagesix/pagesix.htm}}</ref> Referencing that section of the book, [[Tim Weiner]] of ''[[The New York Times]]'' and Joseph C. Goulden of ''[[The Washington Times]]'' called into question the sincerity of the charges, and [[William F. Buckley, Jr.]], who wrote the foreword, said material "was clearly ghostwritten".<ref name=Weiner>{{cite news|last=Weiner|first=Tim|title=Watergate Warrior|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/13/books/review/Weiner-t.html|accessdate=January 5, 2013|newspaper=The New York Times|date=May 13, 2007|location=New York}}</ref><ref name=Goulden>{{cite news|last=Goulden|first=Joseph C.|title=E. Howard Hunt's 'memoir' and its glitches|url=http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2007/apr/07/20070407-095756-2489r/print/|accessdate=January 5, 2013|newspaper=The Washington Times|date=April 7, 2007|location=Washington, D.C.}}</ref><ref name="Buckley, Jr.">{{cite news|last=Buckley, Jr.|first=William F.|title=Howard Hunt, R.I.P.|url=http://www.nationalreview.com/nrd/article/?q=MDYzM2MyMDIwMjRiNWZlY2RlZjc3ZDY4YjAxMjBiM2Q=|accessdate=January 5, 2013|newspaper=National Review|date=January 26, 2007|authorlink=William F. Buckley, Jr.|agency=Universal Press Syndicate|location=New York|deadurl=yes|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20120722232539/http://www.nationalreview.com/nrd/article/?q=MDYzM2MyMDIwMjRiNWZlY2RlZjc3ZDY4YjAxMjBiM2Q=|archivedate=July 22, 2012|df=mdy-all}}</ref> Shortly afterwards, an audio-taped "[[deathbed confession]]" in which Hunt claimed knowledge of a conspiracy was released by his sons;<ref name="Hedegaard"/> the authenticity of the confession was also met with some skepticism.<ref name="Trahair"/><ref name=Williams/><ref name="Timothy W. Maier"/>

In 1984, convicted swindler [[Billie Sol Estes]] made statements to a [[Grand Jury]] in Texas indicating that he had "inside knowledge" that implicated Johnson in the death of Kennedy and others.<ref>{{cite news|last=King|first=Wayne |title=ESTES LINKS JOHNSON TO PLOT|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1984/03/24/us/estes-links-johnson-to-plot.html |accessdate=2017-02-25 |newspaper=The New York Times|date=March 24, 1984|authorlink=Wayne King|location=Houston}}</ref><ref name="ARRB">{{cite book |author=Assassination Records Review Board |authorlink1=Assassination Records Review Board |title=Final Report of the Assassination Records Review Board |url=https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/review-board/report/arrb-final-report.pdf |format=pdf |accessdate=May 15, 2013 |date=September 30, 1998 |publisher=United States Government Printing Office |location=Washington, D.C. |page=109 |chapter=Chapter 6, Part I: The Quest for Additional Information and Records in Federal Government Offices}}</ref>

Historian [[Michael L. Kurtz]] wrote that there is no evidence suggesting that Johnson ordered the assassination of Kennedy.{{sfn|Kurtz|1993|p=xxviii}} According to Kurtz, Johnson believed Fidel Castro was responsible for the assassination and that Johnson covered up the truth because he feared the possibility that retaliatory measures against Cuba might escalate to nuclear war with the Soviet Union.{{sfn|Kurtz|1993|p=xxviii}} In 2012, biographer [[Robert Caro]] published his fourth volume on Johnson's career, ''The Passage of Power'', which chronicles Johnson's communications and actions as Vice President, and describes the events leading up to the assassination.<ref name=Italie>{{cite news|last=Italie|first=Hillel|title=Robert Caro On His New Lyndon Johnson Book: 'Passage Of Power'|url=http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/30/passage-of-power-robert-caro_n_1464067.html|accessdate=January 3, 2013|newspaper=The Huffington Post|date=April 30, 2012|agency=AP}}</ref> Caro wrote that "nothing that I have found in my research" points to involvement by Johnson.<ref>[[Robert Caro|Caro, Robert A.]] (2012). ''The Passage of Power'', p. 450. Alfred A. Knopf, New York. {{ISBN|978-0-679-40507-8}}</ref>

===George H.W. Bush conspiracy===
{{unreferenced section|date=December 2018}}
On November 29, 1963, exactly one week after the assassination, an employee of the FBI wrote in a memo that "Mr. George Bush of the Central Intelligence Agency" was given a briefing on the reaction to the assassination by Cuban exiles living in Miami. Some have alleged that the "George Bush" in this memo is future president [[George H. W. Bush]], who was appointed head of the CIA by president [[Gerald Ford]] in 1976, 13 years after the assassination. During [[George H. W. Bush presidential campaign, 1988|Bush's presidential campaign in 1988]], the memo resurfaced, prompting the CIA to claim that the memo was referring to an employee named George Williams Bush.<ref>{{cite news |date=July 11, 1988 |title=1963 F.B.I. Memo Ties Bush to Intelligence Agency |publisher=The New York Times |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1988/07/11/us/63-fbi-memo-ties-bush-to-intelligence-agency.html}}</ref> However, George Williams Bush disputed this suggestion, declaring under oath that "I am not the George Bush of the Central Intelligence Agency referred to in the memorandum." On the website JFK Facts, author Jefferson Morley writes that any communication by George H.W. Bush with the FBI or CIA in November 1963 does not necessarily demonstrate culpability in the assassination; furthermore, it is unclear whether Bush had any affiliation with the CIA prior to his appointment to head the agency in 1976.<ref name=stout>{{cite web|last1=Morley|first1=Jefferson|title=Now is a good time to lay to rest the JFK conspiracy theories about George Bush|url=http://jfkfacts.org/about-that-lame-bush-conspiracy-theory/pagewanted=all|work=JFK Facts|date=4 December 2018}}</ref>

Bush biographer [[Kitty Kelly]] alleges that Bush was unable to remember his whereabouts on the day of Kennedy's assassination, despite the fact that this information is known. The day of the assassination, Bush flew to [[Tyler, Texas]], to make an appearance ahead of his upcoming [[United States Senate election in Texas, 1964|campaign for the U.S. Senate in 1964]], and spoke to the FBI about a local who had threatened Kennedy. The previous day, Bush had been in Dallas to speak at an oil industry meeting. Morley has suggested the possibility that Bush's report to the FBI was a cover story, but cautioned that "speculation, however plausible, isn't evidence," and that Kelly is "not the most reliable of sources." <ref name=stout>{{cite web|last1=Morley|first1=Jefferson|title=Now is a good time to lay to rest the JFK conspiracy theories about George Bush|url=http://jfkfacts.org/about-that-lame-bush-conspiracy-theory/pagewanted=all|work=JFK Facts|date=4 December 2018}}</ref>
Supporters of the Bush theory have frequently presented photographic evidence of a man resembling Bush in Dealey Plaza at the time of the assassination. However, Morley argues this evidence is weak, as no comparative measurements of the two men's facial features has been made. Bush was already an announced Senate candidate for several months by the time of the assassination and thus had received much press attention, and no eyewitnesses have publicly recalled seeing Bush at the scene, though his opponent, incumbent Senator [[Ralph Yarborough]], passed by in the presidential motorcade.<ref name=stout>{{cite web|last1=Morley|first1=Jefferson|title=Now is a good time to lay to rest the JFK conspiracy theories about George Bush|url=http://jfkfacts.org/about-that-lame-bush-conspiracy-theory/pagewanted=all|work=JFK Facts|date=4 December 2018}}</ref>

In September 1976, [[George de Mohrenschildt]], a petroleum geologist and a friend of both Bush and Oswald,<ref>Warren Commission Hearings, volume 9, p. 235, [http://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh9/html/WC_Vol9_0122a.htm Testimony of George S. de Mohrenschildt]</ref><ref name="library54">[http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/hsca/reportvols/vol12/html/HSCA_Vol12_0029b.htm George de Mohrenschildt], House Select Committee on Assassinations - Appendix to Hearings, Volume 12, 4, p. 54.</ref><ref>[http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh9/html/WC_Vol9_0161b.htm Testimony of Jeanne de Mohrenschildt], Warren Commission Hearings, vol. 9, p. 314.</ref>{{sfn|Summers|2013|p=172}} wrote a letter to Bush, then director of the CIA, asking for his assistance.<ref>CIA MFR Raymond M. Reardon SAG 9.20.76.</ref><ref>{{cite book|last=Baker|first=Russ|authorlink=Russ Baker|title=Family of Secrets|year=2009|publisher=Bloomsbury Press|location=New York|isbn=978-1-59691-557-2|page=268}}</ref> According to Morley, Mohrenschildt was being pressured by congressional investigators to testify on the assassination, causing him to write the letter in distress. Bush acknowledged that he knew Mohrenschildt but failed to respond to the letter, and Mohrenschildt committed suicide six months later.<ref>Bugliosi (2007) pp. 1207-1208</ref><ref>Summers (1998) p. 368</ref> Morley argues that the letter's existence does not demonstrate guilt for either man, but merely that Bush was uninterested in questioning the CIA's account of the assassination.<ref name=stout>{{cite web|last1=Morley|first1=Jefferson|title=Now is a good time to lay to rest the JFK conspiracy theories about George Bush|url=http://jfkfacts.org/about-that-lame-bush-conspiracy-theory/pagewanted=all|work=JFK Facts|date=4 December 2018}}</ref>

=== Cuban government conspiracy ===
In its report, the Warren Commission stated that it had investigated "dozens of allegations of a conspiratorial contact between Oswald and agents of the Cuban Government" and had found no evidence of Cuban involvement in the assassination of President Kennedy.{{sfn|Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Chapter 6|1964|pp=305, 374}} The House Select Committee on Assassinations also wrote: "The committee believes, on the basis of the evidence available to it, that the Cuban Government was not involved in the assassination of President Kennedy".<ref name="HCSA-IC"/> However, some conspiracy theorists continue to allege that [[Fidel Castro]] ordered the assassination of Kennedy in retaliation for the CIA's previous attempts to assassinate him.{{sfn|Broderick|2008|p=208}}<!-- Source needed for Castro denying this. -->

In the early 1960s, [[Clare Boothe Luce]], wife of [[Time-Life]] publisher [[Henry Luce]], was one of a number of prominent Americans who sponsored anti-Castro groups. This support included funding exiles in commando speedboat raids against Cuba. In 1975, Clare Luce said that on the night of the assassination, she received a call from a member of a commando group she had sponsored. According to Luce, the caller's name was "something like" Julio Fernandez and he claimed he was calling her from New Orleans.{{sfn|Summers|2013|p=392-}}<ref>Fonzi, Gaeton. ''The Last Investigation'', (New York: Thunder's Mouth Press, 1993), pp. 53–54. {{ISBN|1-56025-052-6}}</ref>

According to Luce, Fernandez told her that Oswald had approached his group with an offer to help assassinate Castro. Fernandez further claimed that he and his associates eventually found out that Oswald was a communist and supporter of Castro. He said that with this new-found knowledge, his group kept a close watch on Oswald until Oswald suddenly came into money and went to [[Mexico City]] and then Dallas.<ref>Fonzi, Gaeton. ''The Last Investigation'', (New York: Thunder's Mouth Press, 1993), p. 54. {{ISBN|1-56025-052-6}}</ref> Finally, according to Luce, Fernandez told her, "There is a Cuban Communist assassination team at large and Oswald was their hired gun."{{sfn|Summers|1998|p=323}}

Luce said that she told the caller to give his information to the FBI. Subsequently, Luce would reveal the details of the incident to both the [[Church Committee]] and the HSCA. Both committees investigated the incident, but were unable to uncover any evidence to corroborate the allegations.<ref>[http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/hsca/reportvols/vol10/html/HSCA_Vol10_0044a.htm Findings of the Select Committee on Assassinations] Appendix to Hearings, Vol. X, pp. 83–87.</ref>

In May 1967, CIA Director [[Richard Helms]] told President Lyndon Johnson that the CIA had tried to assassinate Castro. Helms further stated that the CIA had employed members of the Mafia in this effort, and "... that CIA plots to assassinate Fidel Castro dated back to August of 1960—to the Eisenhower Administration." Helms also said that the plots against Castro continued into the Kennedy Administration and that Attorney General Robert Kennedy had known about both the plots and the Mafia's involvement.<ref name="theatlantic.com">[https://www.theatlantic.com/doc/prem/200406/holland The Assassination Tapes, by Max Holland] The Atlantic Monthly, June 2004</ref>

On separate occasions, Johnson told two prominent television newsmen that he believed that JFK's assassination had been organized by Castro as retaliation for the CIA's efforts to kill Castro. In October 1968, Johnson told veteran newsman [[Howard K. Smith]] of [[American Broadcasting Company|ABC]] that "Kennedy was trying to get to Castro, but Castro got to him first." In September 1969, in an interview with [[Walter Cronkite]] of [[CBS]], Johnson said in regard to the assassination, "[I could not] honestly say that I've ever been completely relieved of the fact that there might have been international connections", and referenced unnamed "others". Finally, in 1971, Johnson told his former speechwriter Leo Janos of ''[[Time (magazine)|Time]]'' magazine that he "never believed that Oswald acted alone".<ref name="theatlantic.com"/>

In 1977, Castro was interviewed by newsman [[Bill Moyers]]. Castro denied any involvement in Kennedy's death, saying:

<blockquote>It would have been absolute insanity by Cuba. ... It would have been a provocation. Needless to say, it would have been to run the risk that our country would have been destroyed by the United States. Nobody who's not insane could have thought about [killing Kennedy in retaliation].<ref name="Bill Moyers 1977"/>{{sfn|Marrs|1989|p=154}}</blockquote>

=== Soviet government conspiracy ===
The Warren Commission reported that they found no evidence that the Soviet Union was involved in the assassination of President Kennedy.{{sfn|Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Chapter 6|1964|p=374}} The House Select Committee on Assassinations also wrote: "The committee believes, on the basis of the evidence available to it, that the Soviet Government was not involved in the assassination of President Kennedy".<ref name="HCSA-IC"/>

According to some conspiracy theorists, the Soviet Union, with [[Nikita Khrushchev]] motivated by having to back down during the [[Cuban Missile Crisis]], was responsible for the assassination.{{sfn|Broderick|2008|p=208}}

According to a 1966 FBI document, Colonel Boris Ivanov—chief of the KGB Residency in New York City at the time of the assassination—stated that it was his personal opinion that the assassination had been planned by an organized group, rather than a lone individual. The same document stated, "... officials of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union believed there was some well-organized conspiracy on the part of the 'ultraright' in the United States to effect a '[[coup d'état|coup]].'"<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.indiana.edu/~oah/nl/98feb/jfk.html#d1 |title=JFK Assassination Records Review Board Releases Top Secret Records |publisher=Indiana.edu |accessdate=September 17, 2010}}</ref>

Much later, the high-ranking [[Eastern Bloc|Soviet Bloc]] intelligence defector, Lt. Gen. [[Ion Mihai Pacepa]], said that he had a conversation with [[Nicolae Ceauşescu]] who told him about "ten international leaders the [[Kremlin]] killed or tried to kill", including Kennedy. He claimed that "among the leaders of Moscow's satellite intelligence services there was unanimous agreement that the KGB had been involved in the assassination of President Kennedy."<ref name="Pacepa0">[http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=MzY4NWU2ZjY3YWYxMDllNWQ5MjQ3ZGJmMzg3MmQyNjQ= "The Kremlin's Killing Ways"] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070808171854/http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=MzY4NWU2ZjY3YWYxMDllNWQ5MjQ3ZGJmMzg3MmQyNjQ%3D |date=August 8, 2007 }}, Ion Mihai Pacepa, [[National Review Online]], November 28, 2006</ref> Pacepa later released a book, ''Programmed to Kill: Lee Harvey Oswald, the Soviet KGB, and the Kennedy Assassination'', in 2007. Similar views on the JFK assassination were expressed by Robert Holmes, former First Secretary at the British Embassy in Moscow, in his 2012 book ''Spy Like No Other''.

=== Decoy hearse and wound alteration ===
[[David Lifton]] presented a scenario in which conspirators on [[Air Force One]] removed Kennedy's body from its original bronze casket and placed it in a shipping casket, while en route from Dallas to Washington. Once the presidential plane arrived at [[Andrews Air Force Base]], the shipping casket with the President's body in it was surreptitiously taken by helicopter from the side of the plane that was out of the television camera's view. Kennedy's body was then taken to an unknown location—most likely [[Walter Reed Army Medical Center]]<ref>[[David Lifton|Lifton, David]]. ''Best Evidence: Disguise and Deception in the Assassination of John F. Kennedy'', (New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, 1988), pp. 281, 283, 681–682, 684, 689. {{ISBN|0-88184-438-1}}</ref>—to surgically alter the body to make it appear that he was shot only from the rear.<ref>[[David Lifton|Lifton, David]]. ''Best Evidence: Disguise and Deception in the Assassination of John F. Kennedy'', (New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, 1988), pp. 678–683, 692–699, 701–702. {{ISBN|0-88184-438-1}}</ref>{{sfn|Knight|2007|p=95}}<ref name="Wrone">{{cite book |last1=Wrone |first1=David R. |authorlink1=David Wrone |title=The Zapruder Film: Reframing JFK's Assassination |url=http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/wrone.htm |year=2003 |origyear= |publisher=University Press of Kansas |location=Lawrence, Kansas |isbn=978-0-7006-1291-8 |pages=133–137}}</ref><ref name="Turner, Nigel 1988">Turner, Nigel. ''The Men Who Killed Kennedy, Part 3, "The Cover-Up"'', 1988.</ref>

Part of Lifton's theory comes from a House Select Committee on Assassinations report of an interview of Lt. Richard Lipsey on January 18, 1978, by committee staff members Donald Purdy and Mark Flanagan. According to the report, Lt. Richard Lipsey said that he and General Wehle had met President Kennedy's body at Andrews Air Force Base. Lipsey "... placed [the casket] in a hearse to be transported to Bethesda Naval Hospital. Lipsey mentioned that he and Wehle then flew by helicopter to Bethesda and took [the body of] JFK into the back of Bethesda." Lipsey said that "a decoy hearse had been driven to the front [of Bethesda]".<ref>[http://karws.gso.uri.edu/Marsh/Jfk-conspiracy/LIPSEY.TXT Interview of Lt. Richard A. Lipsey] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060903145804/http://karws.gso.uri.edu/Marsh/Jfk-conspiracy/LIPSEY.TXT |date=September 3, 2006 }}, by House Select Committee on Assassinations investigators Andy Purdy and Mark Flanagan, JFK Document No. 014469, January 18, 1978.</ref> With Lipsey's mention of a "decoy hearse" at Bethesda, Lifton theorized that the casket removed by Lipsey from Air Force One—from the side of the plane exposed to television—was probably also a decoy and was likely empty.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/arrb/index38.htm |title=Testimony of David Lifton |publisher=Mcadams.posc.mu.edu |accessdate=September 17, 2010}}</ref><ref>[[David Lifton|Lifton, David]]. ''Best Evidence: Disguise and Deception in the Assassination of John F. Kennedy'', (New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, 1988), pp. 569–588. {{ISBN|0-88184-438-1}}</ref>

Laboratory technologist Paul O'Connor was one of the major witnesses supporting another part of David Lifton's theory that somewhere between Parkland and Bethesda the President's body was made to appear as if it had been shot only from the rear. O'Connor said that President Kennedy's body arrived at Bethesda inside a body bag in "a cheap, shipping-type of casket", which differed from the description of the ornamental bronze casket and sheet that the body had been wrapped in at Parkland Hospital.<ref name="Turner, Nigel 1988 1">Turner, Nigel. ''The Men Who Killed Kennedy, Part 1, "The Coup D'Etat"'', 1988.</ref> O'Connor said that the brain had already been removed by the time it got to Bethesda,<ref name="Turner, Nigel 1988 1"/> and that there were "just little pieces" of brain matter left inside the skull.<ref>[[David Lifton|Lifton, David]]. ''Best Evidence: Disguise and Deception in the Assassination of John F. Kennedy'', (New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, 1988), p. 604. {{ISBN|0-88184-438-1}}</ref>

Researcher [[David Wrone]] dismissed the theory that Kennedy's body was surreptitiously removed from the presidential plane, stating that as is done with all cargo on airplanes for safety precautions, the coffin and lid were held by steel wrapping cables to prevent shifting during takeoff and landing and in case of air disturbances in flight.<ref name="Wrone"/> According to Wrone, the side of the plane away from the television camera "was bathed in klieg lights, and thousands of persons watched along the fence that bent backward along that side, providing, in effect, a well-lit and very public stage for any would-be body snatchers".<ref name="Wrone"/>

=== Federal Reserve conspiracy ===
Jim Marrs, in his book ''Crossfire'', presented the theory that Kennedy was trying to rein in the power of the [[Federal Reserve]], and that forces opposed to such action might have played at least some part in the assassination.{{sfn|Marrs|1989|p=275}}<ref name=Silber>{{cite journal|last=Silber|first=Kenneth|title=The Fed and Its Enemies; The central bank is at the center of controversy. It has been there before.|journal=Research|date=February 1, 2010|url=http://www.advisorone.com/2010/02/01/the-fed-and-its-enemies|accessdate=January 9, 2013}}</ref><ref name="Woodward 1996">{{cite book|author= Woodward, G. Thomas|title = Money and the Federal Reserve System: Myth and Reality—CRS Report for Congress, No. 96-672 E |url=http://home.hiwaay.net/~becraft/FRS-myth.htm|publisher=[[Congressional Research Service]]|year=1996}}; reprinted with footnotes in {{cite book|title=Federal Reserve System: background, analyses and bibliography|editor=George B. Grey|publisher=Nova Science|year=2002|isbn=978-1-59033-053-1|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=8W2LEYUC_LkC&pg=PA83|pages=73–102}}</ref> According to Marrs, the issuance of [[Executive Order 11110]] was an effort by Kennedy to transfer power from the Federal Reserve to the [[United States Department of the Treasury]] by replacing [[Federal Reserve Notes]] with [[Silver certificate (United States)|silver certificates]].<ref name=Silber/> Actor and author [[Richard Belzer]] named the responsible parties in this theory as American "billionaires, power brokers, and bankers ... working in tandem with the CIA and other sympathetic agents of the government".<ref name=Belzer2>{{cite book |last=Belzer |first=Richard |title=UFOs, JFK, and Elvis: Conspiracies You Don't Have to Be Crazy to Believe|year=1999 |publisher=The Ballantine Publishing Group |isbn=9780345429186 |authorlink=Richard Belzer |accessdate=January 9, 2013 |chapter=The Usual Suspectschapter|url= https://books.google.com/books?id=yDrJa9-7irUC&lpg=PP1&pg=PT104#v=onepage}}</ref>

A 2010 article in ''[[Research (magazine)|Research]]'' magazine discussing various controversies surrounding the Federal Reserve stated that "the wildest accusation against the Fed is that it was involved in Kennedy's assassination."<ref name=Silber/> Critics of the theory note that Kennedy called for and signed legislation phasing out Silver Certificates in favor of Federal Reserve Notes, thereby enhancing the power of the Federal Reserve; and that Executive Order 11110 was a technicality that only delegated existing presidential powers to the [[United States Secretary of the Treasury|Secretary of the Treasury]] for administrative convenience during a period of transition.<ref name=Silber/><ref name="Woodward 1996"/>

=== Israeli government conspiracy ===
Immediately following Kennedy's death, speculation that he was assassinated by a "[[Antisemitic conspiracy theories|Zionist conspiracy]]" was prevalent in much of the [[Muslim world]].<ref name=Bass>{{cite book|last=Bass|first=Warren|title=Support Any Friend: Kennedy's Middle East and the Making of the U.S.-Israel Alliance|year=2003|publisher=Oxford University Press|location=New York|isbn=9780199884315|pages=243–244|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=npk0XuEHHpQC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage|accessdate=January 16, 2013|chapter=A Time To Cut Bait|chapterurl=https://books.google.com/books?id=npk0XuEHHpQC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA243#v=onepage}}</ref> Among these views were that [[Zionist]]s were motivated to kill Kennedy due to his opposition to an [[Nuclear weapons and Israel|Israeli nuclear program]], that Lyndon B. Johnson received orders from Zionists to have Kennedy killed, and that the assassin was a Zionist agent.<ref name=Bass/>

According to [[Michael Collins Piper]] in ''Final Judgment: The Missing Link in the JFK Assassination Controversy'', Israeli Prime Minister [[David Ben-Gurion]] orchestrated the assassination after learning that Kennedy planned to keep Israel from obtaining nuclear weapons.<ref name=Goldwag>{{cite book|last=Goldwag|first=Arthur|title=Cults, Conspiracies, and Secret Societies: The Straight Scoop on Freemasons, the Illuminati, Skull & Bones, Black Helicopters, the New World Order, and Many, Many More|year=2009|publisher=Vintage Books|location=New York|isbn=9780307456663|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=DDbM5GeMgXIC|page=178|chapter=Conspiracies: The Kennedy Assassinations|chapterurl=https://books.google.com/books?id=DDbM5GeMgXIC&pg=PA178#v=onepage}}</ref> Piper said that the assassination "was a joint enterprise conducted on the highest levels of the American CIA, in collaboration with organized crime—and most specifically, with direct and profound involvement by the Israeli intelligence service, the [[Mossad]]."<ref>{{cite news|title=College lecturers blame JFK's death on Israelis|url=https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=z1IpAAAAIBAJ&sjid=MmsFAAAAIBAJ&pg=3861%2C3207784|accessdate=January 16, 2013|newspaper=Sun Journal|date=August 22, 1997|agency=AP|location=Lewiston, Maine|page=7A}}</ref> The theory also alleges involvement of [[Meyer Lansky]] and the [[Anti-Defamation League]].<ref name=Goldwag/> In 2004, [[Mordechai Vanunu]] stated that the assassination was Israel's response to "pressure [Kennedy] exerted on ... Ben-Gurion, to shed light on [[Negev Nuclear Research Center|Dimona's nuclear reactor in Israel]]".<ref name="The Sydney Morning Herald">{{cite news|title=Vanunu warns Israel of 'second Chernobyl' risk|url=http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/07/25/1090693832691.html|accessdate=January 16, 2013|newspaper=The Sydney Morning Herald|date=July 26, 2004|agency=Agence France-Presse|location=Sydney}}</ref> In a speech before the [[United Nations General Assembly]] in 2009, Libyan leader [[Muammar Gaddafi]] also alleged that Kennedy was killed for wanting to investigate Dimona.<ref>{{cite news|title=Gadhafi points finger at Israel over JFK assassination|url=http://www.jta.org/news/article/2009/09/23/1008075/work-on-gadhafis-ny-tent-halted|accessdate=January 16, 2013|newspaper=JTA|date=September 23, 2009|agency=JTA|deadurl=yes|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20130501032813/http://www.jta.org/news/article/2009/09/23/1008075/work-on-gadhafis-ny-tent-halted|archivedate=May 1, 2013|df=mdy-all}}</ref>

== Other published theories ==
[[File:Hickey-ar-15 jfk.jpg|thumb| Photo showing driver Agent George Hickey shortly after JFK was killed holding the [[Colt AR-15|AR-15]] rifle that accidental shooting theorists say killed Kennedy.]]

* ''Reasonable Doubt'' (1985) by Henry Hurt, who writes about his Warren Commission doubts. Hurt pins the plot on professional crook Robert Easterling, along with Texas oilmen and the supposed Ferrie/Shaw alliance. {{ISBN|0-03-004059-0}}.
* ''Behold a Pale Horse'' (1991) by [[Milton William Cooper|William Cooper]] alleges that Kennedy was shot by the presidential limousine's driver, Secret Service agent William Greer. In the Zapruder film, Greer can be seen turning to his right and looking backwards just before speeding away from Dealey Plaza. This theory has come under severe criticism from others in the research community.<ref>JFK Lancer, [http://www.jfklancer.com/greer.html ''Did the limousine driver shoot JFK?''],</ref> {{ISBN|0-929385-22-5}}.
* Former Secret Service agent [[Abraham Bolden]]'s ''The Echo from Dealey Plaza'' (2008) ({{ISBN|978-0-307-38201-6}}) and Kevin James Shay's ''Death of the Rising Sun'' (2017) ({{ISBN|978-1-881-36556-3}}) detail plots that occurred shortly before Kennedy's trip to Dallas in 1963, in Chicago and Florida. Within the Secret Service during those chaotic months, "rumors were flying" about Cuban dissidents and right-wing southerners who were stalking Kennedy for a chance to kill him, Bolden wrote. The security threat in Chicago in early November 1963 involved former Marine Thomas Arthur Vallee, who was arrested after police found an M-1 rifle, handgun, and 3,000 rounds of ammunition in his vehicle. A high-powered rifle was confiscated from another suspected conspirator in Chicago shortly before Kennedy's trip there was canceled, Bolden said. Authorities also cited similar threats in Tampa, Fla., and Miami about a week later.
* Mark North's ''Act of Treason: The Role of J. Edgar Hoover in the Assassination of President Kennedy,'' (1991) implicates the FBI Director. North documents that Hoover was aware of threats against Kennedy by organized crime before 1963, and suggests that he failed to take proper action to prevent the assassination. North also charges Hoover with failure to work adequately to uncover the truth behind Kennedy's murder, {{ISBN|0-88184-877-8}}.
* ''[[Mortal Error: The Shot That Killed JFK]]'' (1992) by Bonar Menninger ({{ISBN|0-312-08074-3}}) alleges that while Oswald did attempt to assassinate JFK and did succeed in wounding him, the shot that struck him in the head was accidentally fired by Secret Service agent George Hickey, who was riding in the Secret Service follow-up car directly behind the presidential limousine. The theory alleges that after the first two shots were fired the motorcade sped up while Hickey was attempting to respond to Oswald's shots and he lost his balance and accidentally pulled the trigger of his [[AR-15]] and shot JFK. Hickey's testimony says otherwise: "''At the end of the last report'' (shot) I reached to the bottom of the car and picked up the AR 15 rifle, cocked and loaded it, ''and turned to the rear.''" (italics added).<ref>{{cite web|url=http://jfkassassination.net/russ/m_j_russ/Sa-hicke.htm |title=George Hickey's Warren Commission testimony |publisher=Jfkassassination.net |accessdate=September 17, 2010}}</ref> George Hickey sued Menninger in April 1995 for what he had written in ''Mortal Error''. The case was dismissed as its [[statute of limitations]] had run out. The theory received public attention in 2013 when it was supported by [[Colin McLaren]]'s book and documentary titled ''[[Colin McLaren#JFK: The Smoking Gun|JFK: The Smoking Gun]]'' ({{ISBN|978-0-7336-3044-6}}).
* ''Who Shot JFK? : A Guide to the Major Conspiracy Theories'' (1993) by Bob Callahan and Mark Zingarelli explores some of the more obscure theories regarding JFK's murder, such as "The Coca-Cola Theory". According to this theory, suggested by the editor of an organic gardening magazine, Oswald killed JFK due to mental impairment stemming from an addiction to refined sugar, as evidenced by his need for his favorite beverage immediately after the assassination. {{ISBN|0-671-79494-9}}.
* ''Passport to Assassination'' (1993) by Oleg M. Nechiporenko, the Soviet consular official (and highly placed KGB officer) who met with Oswald in Mexico City in 1963. He was afforded the unique opportunity to interview Oswald about his goals including his genuine desire for a Cuban visa. His conclusions were: (1) that Oswald killed Kennedy due to extreme feelings of inadequacy versus his wife's professed admiration for JFK, and (2) that the KGB never sought intelligence information from Oswald during his time in the USSR as they did not trust his motivations. {{ISBN|1-55972-210-X}}.
* [[Norman Mailer]]'s ''[[Oswald's Tale: An American Mystery]]'' (1995) concludes that Oswald was guilty, but holds that the evidence may point to a second gunman on the grassy knoll, who, purely by coincidence, was attempting to kill JFK at the same time as Oswald. "If there was indeed another shot, it was not necessarily fired by a conspirator of Oswald's. Such a gun could have belonged to another lone killer or to a conspirator working for some other group altogether."<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/oswald/forum/mailer.html |title=pbs.org |publisher=pbs.org |date=November 20, 2003 |accessdate=September 17, 2010}}</ref> {{ISBN|0-679-42535-7}}.
* ''The Kennedy Mutiny'' (2002) by Will Fritz (not the same as police captain J. Will Fritz), claims that the assassination plot was orchestrated by General [[Edwin Walker]], and that he framed Oswald for the crime. {{ISBN|0-9721635-0-6}}.
* ''JFK: The Second Plot'' (2002) by Matthew Smith explores the strange case of Roscoe White. In 1990, Roscoe's son Ricky made public a claim that his father, who had been a Dallas police officer in 1963, was involved in killing the president. Roscoe's widow Geneva also claimed that before her husband's death in 1971 he left a diary in which he claims he was one of the marksmen who shot the President, and that he also killed [[J. D. Tippit|Officer J. D. Tippit]]. {{ISBN|1-84018-501-5}}.
* David Wrone's ''The Zapruder Film'' (2003) concludes that the shot that killed JFK came from in front of the limousine, and that JFK's throat and back wounds were caused by an in-and-through shot originating from the grassy knoll. Three shots were fired from three different angles, none of them from Lee Harvey Oswald's window at the Texas School Book Depository. Wrone is a professor of history (emeritus) at the University of Wisconsin–Stevens Point. {{ISBN|0-7006-1291-2}}.
* ''The [[Gemstone File]]: A Memoir'' (2006), by Stephanie Caruana, posits that Oswald was part of a 28-man assassination team that included three U.S. Mafia hitmen ([[Jimmy Fratianno]], John Roselli, and [[Eugene Brading]]). Oswald's role was to shoot John Connally. Bruce Roberts, author of the Gemstone File papers, claimed that the JFK assassination scenario was modeled after a supposed attempted assassination of President F.D. Roosevelt. Roosevelt was riding in an open car with Mayor [[Anton Cermak]] of Chicago. Cermak was shot and killed by [[Giuseppe Zangara]]. In Dallas, JFK was the real target, and Connally was a secondary target. The JFK assassination is only a small part of the Gemstone File's account. {{ISBN|1-4120-6137-7}}.
* Joseph P. Farrell's ''LBJ and the Conspiracy to Kill Kennedy'' (2011) attempts to show multiple interests had reasons to remove President Kennedy: The military, CIA, NASA, anti-Castro factions, Hoover's FBI and others. He concludes that the person that allowed all of these groups to form a "coalescence of interests" was Vice President Lyndon Johnson. {{ISBN|978-1-935487-18-0}}
* In "Allegations of PFC Eugene Dinkin",<ref>{{cite news|title=Allegations of PFC Dinkin| url=http://www.maryferrell.org/wiki/index.php/Allegations_of_PFC_Eugene_Dinkin}}</ref> the Mary Farrell Foundation summarizes and archives documents related to Private First Class Eugene B. Dinkin, a cryptographic code operator stationed in [[Metz, France]], who went [[AWOL]] in early November 1963, entered Switzerland using a false ID, and visited the United Nations' press office and declared that officials in the U.S. government were planning to assassinate President Kennedy, adding that "something" might happen to the Commander in Chief in Texas. Dinkin was arrested nine days before Kennedy was killed, placed in psychiatric care (deemed a mad man?), and released shortly thereafter. His allegations eventually made their way to the Warren Commission, but, according to the Ferrell Foundation account, the Commission "took no interest in the matter, and indeed omitted any mention of Dinkin from its purportedly encyclopedic 26 volumes of evidence."<ref>{{cite news|title= Mad Men JFK Assassination—Mad Men Pfc. Dinkins |journal= Esquire |author=Jen Chaney|date=April 9, 2013|url=http://www.esquire.com/blogs/culture/mad-men-jfk-assassination}}</ref>
* Described by the [[Associated Press]] as "one of the strangest theories",<ref name="The Victoria Advocate; November 23, 1975">{{cite news |last=Graham |first=Victoria |date=November 23, 1975 |title=The Death of JFK: The Doubt Lingers |url=https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=3RJZAAAAIBAJ&sjid=V0YNAAAAIBAJ&pg=7054%2C3813305 |newspaper=The Victoria Advocate |location=Victoria, Texas |agency=AP |page=8A |access-date=April 16, 2015}}</ref> Hugh McDonald's ''Appointment in Dallas'' stated that the Soviet government [[contract killing|contracted]] with a rogue CIA agent named "Saul" to have Kennedy killed.<ref name="The Miami News; January 20, 1976">{{cite news |last=Tucker |first=William |date=January 20, 1976 |title=Russians contracted for Kennedy's death |url=https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=qawyAAAAIBAJ&sjid=NuoFAAAAIBAJ&pg=888%2C4178861 |newspaper=The Miami News |location=Miami, Florida |agency= |page=9A |access-date=April 16, 2015}}</ref> McDonald said he worked for the CIA "on assignment for $100 a day" and met "Saul" at [[George Bush Center for Intelligence|the Agency's headquarters]] after the Bay of Pigs Invasion.<ref name="The Philadelphia Bulletin; December 8, 1975">{{cite news |last=Wiley |first=Doris B. |date=December 8, 1975 |title=For Hugh McDonald, the Answer Is 'Yes' |url=http://jfk.hood.edu/Collection/Weisberg%20Subject%20Index%20Files/M%20Disk/McDonald%20Hugh%20C/Item%2003.pdf |newspaper=The Philadelphia Bulletin |location=Philadelphia |access-date=April 17, 2015}}</ref> According to McDonald, his CIA mentor told him that "Saul" was the world's best assassin.<ref name="Evening Independent; November 27, 1975">{{cite news |last=von Hoffman |first=Nicholas |author-link=Nicholas von Hoffman |date=November 27, 1975 |title=Is JFK's Killer Roaming The World? |url=https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=fEVQAAAAIBAJ&sjid=_VcDAAAAIBAJ&pg=7283%2C2691472 |newspaper=Evening Independent |location=St. Petersburg, Florida |page=15-A |access-date=April 17, 2015}}</ref> McDonald stated that after the assassination, he recognized the man's photo in the Warren Commission report and eventually tracked him to a London hotel in 1972.<ref name="The Philadelphia Bulletin; December 8, 1975"/><ref name="Evening Independent; November 27, 1975"/> McDonald stated that "Saul" assumed he, too, was a CIA agent and confided to him that he shot Kennedy from a building on the other side of the street from the Texas School Book Depository.<ref name="The Victoria Advocate; November 23, 1975"/>
* [Torbitt, William]. (1970) ''Nomenclature On An Assassination Cabal''. The pseudonymous author claimed to be a lawyer with investigative skills working in the South. See [https://archive.org/details/nsia-NomenclatureoftheAssassinationCabal-TorbittDocument/page/n0 The Internet Archive website]

== Notes ==
{{notelist}}

== References ==
{{Reflist|30em}}

== External links ==
* [https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/oswald/view/ Frontline: Who was L.H. Oswald]—PBS documentary on the man and his life
* [https://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/white_house/july-dec03/jfk_11-20.html PBS News 2003]—The public's belief that a conspiracy existed
* [https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/oswald/ "Oswald's Ghost"]—An episode of PBS series ''American Experience'', which aired January 14, 2008
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20081225054037/http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2008/11/13/jfk-forensics-tech-02.html Tech Puts JFK Conspiracy Theories to Rest]—Discovery article on a simulation that partially discredits some conspiracy theories
* [http://www.jfklancer.com/ JFK Lancer]

{{John F. Kennedy assassination}}
{{Conspiracy theories}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kennedy Assassination Conspiracy Theories}}
[[Category:Conspiracy theories regarding the assassination of John F. Kennedy|*]]
[[Category:1963 in politics]]
[[Category:1963 in Texas]]
[[Category:History of Dallas]]
[[Category:Assassination of John F. Kennedy]]
[[Category:Death conspiracy theories]]

Revision as of 01:57, 22 March 2019

President John F. Kennedy, Jackie Kennedy, Nellie Connally, and Texas Governor John Connally, minutes before the assassination.

The assassination of United States President John F. Kennedy in Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963 has spurred numerous conspiracy theories, which include accusations of involvement of the CIA, the Mafia, sitting Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson, Cuban Prime Minister Fidel Castro, the KGB, or even some combination thereof. Some conspiracy theories further claim that the US federal government covered up crucial information in the aftermath of the assassination, which turned out to be true regarding the CIA-Mafia plots to kill Fidel Castro.[1][2][3][4] Former Los Angeles District Attorney Vincent Bugliosi estimated that a total of 42 groups, 82 assassins, and 214 people had been accused at one time or another in various conspiracy scenarios.[5]

In 1964, the Warren Commission concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald was the only person responsible for assassinating Kennedy. In 1979, the United States House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) concluded that the President was assassinated probably as a result of a conspiracy[6][7][8] The HSCA reasoned that a second gunman probably also fired at Kennedy, but acoustic evidence that the HSCA accepted in reaching its conclusions regarding a second gunman was later possibly discredited by another set of experts.[9][10][11][12][13][14]

Background

Handbill circulated on November 21, 1963, one day before the assassination.

President John F. Kennedy was assassinated by gunshot while traveling in a motorcade in an open-top limousine in Dallas, Texas at 12:30 pm CST on Friday, November 22, 1963; Texas Governor John Connally was wounded, but survived. Within two hours, Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested for killing Dallas policeman J. D. Tippit and arraigned that evening. Shortly after 1:30 am on Saturday, November 23, Oswald was arraigned for murdering President Kennedy as well.[15][16] On Sunday, November 24, at 11:21 a.m., nightclub owner Jack Ruby fatally shot Oswald as he was being transferred from the city jail to the county jail.

Immediately after the shooting, many people suspected that the assassination was part of a larger plot,[17] and broadcasters speculated that Dallas right-wingers were involved.[18] Ruby's shooting of Oswald compounded initial suspicions.[17] Among conspiracy theorists, author Mark Lane has been described as writing "the first literary shot" with his article, "Defense Brief for Oswald", in the National Guardian's December 19, 1963 issue.[19][20] Thomas Buchanan's book Who Killed Kennedy?, published in May 1964, has been credited as the first book to allege a conspiracy.[21]

In 1964, the Warren Commission concluded that Oswald had acted alone and that no credible evidence supported the contention that he was involved in a conspiracy to assassinate the president.[22] The Commission also indicated that then-Secretary of State Dean Rusk, then-Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara, then-Treasury Secretary C. Douglas Dillon, then-Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, then-FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, then-CIA director John A. McCone, and then-Secret Service Chief James J. Rowley, each individually reached the same conclusion on the basis of information available to them.[23] During the trial of Clay Shaw in 1969, however, New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison challenged the single-bullet theory with evidence from the Zapruder film, which he claimed indicated that a fourth shot from the grassy knoll had caused the fatal shot to Kennedy's head.

In 1979, the United States House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) agreed with the Warren Commission that Oswald did, in fact, assassinate Kennedy, but concluded that the Commission's report and the original FBI investigation were seriously flawed. The HSCA concluded that at least four shots were fired with a "high probability" that two gunmen fired at the President, and that a conspiracy to do so was probable.[8] The HSCA stated that the Warren Commission had "failed to investigate adequately the possibility of a conspiracy to assassinate the President".[7] The Ramsey Clark Panel and the Rockefeller Commission both supported the Warren Commission's conclusions.

The last remaining documents under Section 5 of the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992 were released on October 26, 2017, while the remaining ones that are still classified will only be analyzed for redactions.[24]

Public opinion

According to author John C. McAdams, "[t]he greatest and grandest of all conspiracy theories is the Kennedy assassination conspiracy theory."[25] Others have often referred to it as "the mother of all conspiracies".[26][27] The number of books written about the assassination of Kennedy has been estimated to be between 1,000[28][29] and 2,000.[17] According to Vincent Bugliosi, 95% of those books are "pro-conspiracy and anti-Warren Commission".[28]

Author David Krajicek describes Kennedy assassination enthusiasts as people belonging to "conspiracy theorists" on one side and "debunkers" on the other.[25] The great amount of controversy surrounding the event has resulted in bitter disputes between those who support the conclusion of the Warren Commission and those who reject it, or are critical of the official explanation with each side levelling toward the other accusations of "naivete, cynicism, and selective interpretation of the evidence".[27]

Public opinion polls have consistently shown that most Americans believe there was a conspiracy to kill President Kennedy. However, on the question of a government cover-up, different polls show both a minority and a majority of Americans who believe the government was engaged in one.[30] These same polls also show no agreement on who else may have been involved in the shooting. A 2003 Gallup Poll reported that 75% of Americans don't believe that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone.[31] That same year, an ABC News poll found that 70% of respondents suspected that the assassination involved more than one person.[32] A 2004 Fox News poll noted that 66% of Americans thought there had been a conspiracy while 74% believed that there was a cover-up.[33] As recently as 2009, some 76% of people polled for CBS News said they believed the President had been killed as the result of a conspiracy.[34] A 2013 Gallup Poll found that 61% of Americans, the lowest figure in nearly 50 years, believed other people besides Oswald were involved.[35]

Possible evidence of a cover-up

Numerous researchers, author Mark Lane,[36] Henry Hurt,[37] Michael L. Kurtz,[38] Gerald D. McKnight,[39] Anthony Summers,[40] and Harold Weisberg,[41] have pointed out what they characterize as inconsistencies, oversights, exclusions of evidence, errors, changing stories, or changes made to witness testimony in the official Warren Commission investigation, which they say could suggest a cover-up.

Michael Benson wrote that the Warren Commission received only information supplied to it by the FBI, and that its purpose was to rubber stamp the lone gunman theory.[42]

United States Senator and U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence member Richard Schweiker told author Anthony Summers in 1978 that he "believe[d] that the Warren Commission was set up at the time to feed pabulum to the American public for reasons not yet known, and that one of the biggest cover-ups in the history of our country occurred at that time".[43]

James H. Fetzer took issue with a 1998 statement from Federal Judge and Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB) Chairman John R. Tunheim, who stated that no "smoking guns" indicating a conspiracy or cover-up were discovered during their efforts in the early 1990s to declassify documents related to the assassination. Fetzer identified 16 "smoking guns" that he claims prove the official narrative is impossible, and therefore a conspiracy and cover-up occurred. He also claims that evidence released by the ARRB substantiates these concerns. These include problems with bullet trajectories, the murder weapon, the ammunition used, inconsistencies between the Warren Commission's account and the autopsy findings, inconsistencies between the autopsy findings and what was reported by witnesses at the scene of the murder, eyewitness accounts that conflict with x-rays taken of the President's body, indications that the diagrams and photos of the President's brain in the National Archives are not the President's, testimony by those who took and processed the autopsy photos that the photos were altered, created, or destroyed, indications that the Zapruder film had been tampered with, allegations that the Warren Commission's version of events conflicts with news reports from the scene of the murder, an alleged change to the motorcade route that facilitated the assassination, alleged lax Secret Service and local law enforcement security, and statements made by people who claim that they had knowledge of, or participated in, a conspiracy to kill the President.[44]

In 1966, Roscoe Drummond voiced skepticism about a cover-up in his syndicated column, saying, "If there were a conspiracy to cover up the truth about the assassination, it would have to involve the Chief Justice, the Republican, Democratic, and non-party members of the commission, the FBI, the CIA, the Secret Service, the distinguished doctors of the armed services—and the White House—a conspiracy so multiple and complex that it would have fallen of its own weight."[45]

Allegations of witness tampering, intimidation, and foul play

Alleged witness intimidation

Richard Buyer wrote that many witnesses whose statements pointed to a conspiracy were either ignored or intimidated by the Warren Commission.[46] In JFK: The Last Dissenting Witness, a 1992 biography of Jean Hill, Bill Sloan wrote that Warren Commission assistant counsel Arlen Specter attempted to humiliate, discredit, and intimidate Hill into changing her story. Hill also told Sloan that she was abused by Secret Service agents, harassed by the FBI, and received death threats.[47]

A later book by Sloan, entitled JFK: Breaking the Silence, quotes several assassination eyewitnesses as saying that Warren Commission interviewers repeatedly cut short or stifled any comments casting doubt on the conclusion that Oswald had acted alone.

In his book Crossfire, Jim Marrs gives accounts of several people who said they were intimidated by either FBI agents or anonymous individuals into altering or suppressing what they knew regarding the assassination. Some of those individuals include Richard Carr, Acquilla Clemmons, Sandy Speaker, and A. J. Millican.[48] Marrs also wrote that Texas School Book Depository employee Joe Molina was "intimidated by authorities and lost his job soon after the assassination",[49] and that witness Ed Hoffman was warned by an FBI agent that he "might get killed" if he revealed what he observed in Dealey Plaza on the day of the assassination.[50]

Witness deaths

Allegations of mysterious or suspicious deaths of witnesses connected with the Kennedy assassination originated with Penn Jones, Jr.,[51][52] and were brought to national attention by the 1973 film Executive Action.[51][53] Jim Marrs later presented a list of 103 people he believed died "convenient deaths" under suspicious circumstances. He noted that the deaths were grouped around investigations conducted by the Warren Commission, New Orleans D.A. Jim Garrison, the Senate Intelligence Committee, and the House Select Committee on Assassinations.[54] Marrs pointed out that "these deaths certainly would have been convenient for anyone not wishing the truth of the JFK assassination to become public."[55] In 2013, Richard Belzer published Hit List: An In-Depth Investigation into the Mysterious Deaths of Witnesses to the JFK Assassination that examines the deaths of 50 people linked to the assassination and claims they were murdered as part of a cover-up.[56]

Vincent Bugliosi described the death of journalist Dorothy Kilgallen—who said she was granted a private interview with Jack Ruby—as "perhaps the most prominent mysterious death" cited by assassination researchers.[57] According to author Jerome Kroth, Mafia figures Sam Giancana, John Roselli, Carlos Prio, Jimmy Hoffa, Charles Nicoletti, Leo Moceri, Richard Cain, Salvatore Granello, and Dave Yaras were likely murdered to prevent them from revealing their knowledge.[58] According to author Matthew Smith, others with some tie to the case who have died suspicious deaths include Lee Bowers, Gary Underhill, William Sullivan, David Ferrie, Clay Shaw, George de Mohrenschildt, four showgirls who worked for Jack Ruby, and Ruby himself.[59]

The House Select Committee on Assassinations investigated another alleged "mysterious death"—that of Rose Cheramie.[60] The Committee reported that Louisiana State Police Lieutenant Francis Fruge traveled to Eunice, Louisiana, on November 20, 1963—two days before the assassination—to pick up Cheramie, who had sustained minor injuries when she was hit by a car.[61][62] Fruge drove Cheramie to the hospital and said that on the way there, she "... related to [him] that she was coming from Florida to Dallas with two men who were Italians or resembled Italians." Fruge asked her what she planned to do in Dallas, to which she replied: "... number one, pick up some money, pick up [my] baby, and ... kill Kennedy."[62] Cheramie was admitted and treated at State Hospital in Jackson, Louisiana for alcohol and heroin addiction.

State Hospital physician Dr. Victor Weiss later told a House Select Committee investigator that on November 25—three days after the assassination—one of his fellow physicians told him that Cheramie had "stated before the assassination that President Kennedy was going to be killed".[63] Dr. Weiss further reported that Cheramie told him after the assassination that she had worked for Jack Ruby and that her knowledge of the assassination originated from "word in the underworld".[62] After the assassination, Lt. Fruge contacted Dallas Police Captain Will Fritz regarding what he had learned from Cheramie, but Fritz told him he "wasn't interested".[64] Cheramie was found dead by a highway near Big Sandy, Texas, on September 4, 1965; she had been run over by a car.[65]

Another "suspicious death" cited by Jim Marrs was that of Joseph Milteer, director of the Dixie Klan of Georgia. Milteer was secretly tape-recorded thirteen days before the assassination telling Miami police informant William Somersett that the murder of Kennedy was "in the working". Milteer died in 1974 when a heater exploded in his house.[66][67][68] The House Select Committee on Assassinations reported in 1979 that Milteer's information on the threat to the President "was furnished [to] the agents making the advance arrangements before the visit of the President" to Miami, but that "the Milteer threat was ignored by Secret Service personnel in planning the trip to Dallas." Robert Bouck, Special Agent-in-Charge of the Secret Service's Protective Research Section, testified that "threat information was transmitted from one region of the country to another if there was specific evidence it was relevant to the receiving region."[69]

The House Select Committee on Assassinations investigated the allegation "that a statistically improbable number of individuals with some direct or peripheral association with the Kennedy assassination died as a result of that assassination, thereby raising the specter of conspiracy".[51] The committee's chief of research testified: "Our final conclusion on the issue is that the available evidence does not establish anything about the nature of these deaths which would indicate that the deaths were in some manner, either direct or peripheral, caused by the assassination of President Kennedy or by any aspect of the subsequent investigation."[51]

Author Gerald Posner said that Marrs's list was taken from the group of about 10,000 people connected even in the most tenuous way to the assassination, including people identified in the official investigations, as well as the research of conspiracy theorists. Posner also said that it would be surprising if a hundred people out of ten thousand did not die in "unnatural ways". He noted that over half of the people on Marrs's list did not die mysteriously, but of natural causes, such as Secret Service agent Roy Kellerman, who died of heart failure at age 69 in 1984, long after the Kennedy assassination, but is on Marrs's list as someone whose cause of death is "unknown". Posner also pointed out that many prominent witnesses and conspiracy researchers continue to live long lives.[70]

Allegations of evidence suppression, tampering, and fabrication

Allegations saying that the evidence against Oswald was either planted, forged, or tampered with has been a main argument among anybody who believe a conspiracy has taken place.[71]

Suppression of evidence

Ignored testimony

Some assassination researchers assert that witness statements indicating a conspiracy were ignored by the Warren Commission. In 1967, Josiah Thompson stated that the Commission ignored the testimonies of seven witnesses who saw gunsmoke right by the stockade fence on the grassy knoll, as well as an eighth witness who smelled gunpowder by the time the assassination occurred.[72] In 1989, Jim Marrs wrote that the Commission failed to ask for the testimonies of witnesses on the triple underpass whose statements pointed to a shooter on the grassy knoll.[49]

Confiscated film and photographs

Other researchers reported that witnesses who captured the assassination via photographs or film had their cameras confiscated by police or other authorities. Author Jim Marrs and documentary producer Nigel Turner both presented the account of Gordon Arnold who said that his film of the motorcade was taken by two policemen shortly after the assassination.[50][73] Another witness, identified as Beverly Oliver, came forward in 1970 and said she was the "Babushka Lady" who is seen, in the Zapruder film, filming the motorcade. She also said that after the assassination, she was contacted at work by two men who she thought "... were either FBI or Secret Service agents". According to Oliver, the men told her that they wanted to develop her film and return it to her within ten days, but they never did so.[74][73]

Withheld documents

Richard Buyer and others have complained that many documents pertaining to the assassination have been withheld over the years, including documents from investigations made by the Warren Commission, the House Select Committee on Assassinations, and the Church Committee.[46] These documents individually included the President's autopsy records. Some documents still are not scheduled for release until 2029. Many documents were released during the mid-to-late 1990s by the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB) under the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992. However, some of the material released contains redacted sections. Tax return information, which identified employers and sources of income, has not yet been released.[75]

The existence of several secret documents related to the assassination, as well as the long period of secrecy, suggests to some the possibility of a cover-up. One historian noted, "There exists widespread suspicion about the government's disposition of the Kennedy assassination records stemming from the beliefs that Federal officials (1) have not made available all Government assassination records (even to the Warren Commission, Church Committee, House Assassination Committee) and (2) have heavily redacted the records released under FOIA in order to cover up sinister conspiracies."[76] According to the ARRB, "All Warren Commission records, except those records that contain tax return information, are (now) available to the public with only minor redactions."[77] In response to a Freedom of Information Act request filed by journalist Jefferson Morley, the CIA stated in 2010 that it had over 1,100 documents in relation to the assassination, about 2,000 pages in total, that have not been released due to national security-related concerns.[78]

Tampering with evidence

Some researchers have alleged that various items of physical evidence have been tampered with, including the "single bullet" (also known as the "magic bullet" by some critics of official explanations), various bullet cartridges and fragments, the presidential limousine's windshield, the paper bag in which the Warren Commission said Oswald hid the rifle, the so-called "backyard" photos depicting Oswald holding the rifle, the Zapruder film, the photographs and radiographs obtained at Kennedy's autopsy, and the president's dead body itself.[79]

Photographs

Oswald, carrying a rifle in his backyard

Among the evidence against Oswald are photographs of him holding a Carcano rifle — the weapon identified by the Warren Commission as the assassination weapon — in his backyard. The House Select Committee on Assassinations concluded that the Oswald photos are genuine[80] and Oswald's wife, Marina, said that she took them.[81] In 2009, the journal Perception published the findings of Hany Farid, a professor in the Department of Computer Science at Dartmouth College, who used 3D modeling software to analyze one of the photographs.[82][83] After demonstrating that a single light source could create seemingly incongruent shadows, Farid concluded that the photograph revealed no evidence of tampering.[82][83] Many researchers, including Robert Groden, assert that these photos are fake.[84]

In 1979, after the HSCA had disbanded, Groden said that four autopsy photographs showing the back of Kennedy's head were forged to hide a wound fired from a second gunman.[85] According to Groden, a photograph of a cadaver's head was inserted over another depicting a large exit wound in the back of the president's head.[85] HSCA chief counsel G. Robert Blakey, in response to the allegations, stated that the "suggestion that the committee would participate in a cover-up is absurd"[86] and that Groden was "not competent to make a judgment on whether [or not] a photograph has been altered".[87] Blakey stated that the photographic analysis panel for the Committee had examined the photographs and that they "considered everything [Groden] had to say and rejected it."[86][87]

The Zapruder film

The House Select Committee on Assassinations described the Zapruder film as "the best available photographic evidence of the number and timing of the shots that struck the occupants of the presidential limousine".[88] The Assassination Records Review Board said it "is perhaps the single most important assassination record."[89] According to Vincent Bugliosi, the film was "originally touted by the vast majority of conspiracy theorists as incontrovertible proof of [a] conspiracy" but is now believed by many assassination researchers to be a "sophisticated forgery".[90] Among those who believe that the Zapruder film has been altered are John Costella,[90] James H. Fetzer,[90] David Lifton,[90] David Mantik,[90] Jack White,[90] Noel Twyman,[91] and Harrison Livingstone, who has called it "the biggest hoax of the 20th century".[90] In 1996, former Kodak product engineer Roland Zavada was requested by the Assassination Records Review Board to undertake a thorough technical study of the Zapruder Film.[92] Zavada concluded that there was no detectable evidence of manipulation or image alteration on the film's original version.[93]

David Lifton wrote that the Zapruder film was in the possession of the CIA's National Photographic Interpretation Center by the night of the assassination.[94][95] Jack White, researcher and photographic consultant to the House Select Committee on Assassinations, claimed that there were anomalies in the Zapruder film, including an "unnatural jerkiness of movement or change of focus ... in certain frame sequences".[96]

Kennedy's body

In his 1981 book Best Evidence, author David Lifton presented the thesis that President Kennedy's dead body had been altered between the Dallas hospital and the autopsy site at Bethesda for the purposes of creating erroneous conclusions about the number and direction of the shots.[97]

Fabrication of evidence

Murder weapon

The Warren Commission found that the shots that killed Kennedy and wounded Connally were fired from an Italian 6.5mm Manlicher Carcano rifle owned by Oswald.[98] Deputy Sheriff Eugene Boone and Deputy Constable Seymour Weitzman both initially identified the rifle found in the Texas School Book Depository as a 7.65 Mauser. Weitzman signed an affidavit the following day describing the weapon as a "7.65 Mauser bolt action equipped with a 4/18 scope, a thick leather brownish-black sling on it".[99][100] Deputy Sheriff Roger Craig claimed that he saw "7.65 Mauser" bullets stamped on the barrel of the weapon.[101] But when interviewed in 1968 by Barry Ernest, author of The Girl on the Stairs—The Search for a Missing Witness to the JFK Assassination, Craig said: "I felt then and I still feel now that the weapon was a 7.65 German Mauser .... I was there. I saw it when it was first pulled from its hiding place, and I am not alone in describing it as a Mauser." So, in the videotaped interview he said he read Mauser on the rifle, and to Ernest he said that he felt it was a Mauser.[102]

Dallas District Attorney Henry Wade told the press that the weapon found in the Book Depository was a 7.65 Mauser, and the media reported this.[103] But investigators later identified the rifle as a 6.5mm Carcano.[104][105] In Matrix for Assassination, author Richard Gilbride suggested that both weapons were involved in the assassination and that Dallas Police Captain Will Fritz and Lieutenant J. Carl Day both might have been conspirators.[106]

Addressing "speculation and rumors", the Warren Commission identified Weitzman as "the original source of the speculation that the rifle was a Mauser" and stated that "police laboratory technicians subsequently arrived and correctly identified the [murder] weapon as a 6.5 Italian rifle."[107]

Bullets and cartridges

The Warren Commission determined that three bullets were fired at the presidential motorcade. One of the three bullets missed the vehicle entirely; another bullet hit President Kennedy and passed through his body before striking Governor Connally; and the third bullet was the fatal head shot to the President. Some claim that the bullet that passed through President Kennedy's body and hit Governor Connally — dubbed by critics of the Commission as the "magic bullet" — was missing too little mass to account for the total weight of bullet fragments later found by the doctors who operated on Connally at Parkland Hospital. Those making this claim included the governor's chief surgeon, Dr. Robert Shaw,[108] as well as two of Kennedy's autopsy surgeons, Commander James Humes[109] and Lt. Colonel Pierre Finck.[110] However, in his book Six Seconds in Dallas, author Josiah Thompson took issue with this claim. Thompson added up the weight of the bullet fragments listed in the doctor reports and concluded that their total weight "could" have been less than the mass missing from the bullet.[111]

With Connally's death in 1993, forensic pathologist Dr. Cyril Wecht and the Assassination Archives and Research Center petitioned Attorney General Janet Reno to recover the remaining bullet fragments from Connally's body, contending that the fragments would disprove the Warren Commission's single-bullet, single-gunman conclusion. The Justice Department replied that it "... would have [had] no legal authority to recover the fragments unless Connally's family gave [it] permission [to do so]." Connally's family refused permission.[112]

Allegations of multiple gunmen

Dealey Plaza in 2003.

The Warren Commission concluded that "three shots were fired from the Texas School Book Depository in a time period ranging from approximately 4.8 to in excess of 7 seconds."[113] Some assassination researchers, including Anthony Summers, dispute the Commission's findings. They point to evidence that brings into question the number of shots fired, the origin of the shots, and Oswald's ability to accurately fire three shots in such a short amount of time from such a rifle. [114][115] These researchers suggest that multiple gunmen were involved.[116]

Number of shots

Based on the "consensus among the witnesses at the scene" and "in particular the three spent cartridges", the Warren Commission determined that "the preponderance of the evidence indicated that three shots were fired".[113] In 1979, the House Select Committee on Assassinations concluded that there were four shots, one coming from the grassy knoll.[8][117]

The Warren Commission, and later the House Select Committee on Assassinations, concluded that one of the shots hit President Kennedy in "the back of his neck", exited his throat, and struck Governor Connally in the back, exited the Governor's chest, shattered his right wrist, and implanted itself in his left thigh.[118] This conclusion became known as the "single bullet theory".[119]

Mary Moorman said in a TV interview that immediately after the assassination, there were either three or four shots close together, that shots were still being fired after the fatal head shot, and that she was in the line of fire.[120] In 1967, Josiah Thompson concluded from a close study of the Zapruder film and other forensic evidence, corroborated by the eyewitnesses, that four shots were fired in Dealey Plaza, with one wounding Connally and three hitting Kennedy.[72]

On the day of the assassination, Nellie Connally was seated in the presidential car next to Governor Connally, who was her husband. In her book From Love Field: Our Final Hours, she said she believed that her husband was hit by a bullet separate from the two that hit Kennedy.[121]

Origin of the shots

The wooden fence on the grassy knoll, where many conspiracy theorists believe another gunman stood.

The Warren Commission concluded that all of the shots fired at President Kennedy came from the sixth-floor window at the southeast corner of the Texas School Book Depository. The Commission based its conclusion on the "cumulative evidence of eyewitnesses, firearms and ballistic experts and medical authorities", including onsite testing, as well as analysis of films and photographs conducted by the FBI and the US Secret Service.[113]

In 1979, the House Select Committee on Assassinations agreed to publish a report from Warren Commission critic Robert Groden, in which he named "nearly [two] dozen suspected firing points in Dealey Plaza".[122] These sites included multiple locations in or on the roof of the Texas School Book Depository, the Dal-Tex Building, the Dallas County Records Building, the triple overpass, a storm drain located along the north curb of Elm Street, and the Grassy Knoll.[122] Josiah Thompson concluded that the shots fired at the motorcade came from three locations: the Texas School Book Depository, the Grassy Knoll, and the Dal-Tex Building.[72]

Testimony of eyewitnesses

According to some assassination researchers, the grassy knoll was identified by most witnesses as the area from where shots were fired.[50][123] In March 1965, Harold Feldman wrote that there were 121 witnesses to the assassination listed in the Warren Report, 51 of whom indicated that the shots that killed Kennedy came from the grassy knoll, while 32 said the shots originated from the Texas School Book Depository.[123] In 1967, Josiah Thompson examined the statements of 64 witnesses and concluded that 33 of them thought that the shots emanated from the grassy knoll.[124]

In 1966, Esquire magazine credited Feldman with "advanc[ing] the theory that there were two assassins: one on the grassy knoll and one in the Book Depository".[125] Jim Marrs also wrote that the weight of evidence suggested shots came from both the grassy knoll and the Texas School Book Depository.[50]

Lee Bowers operated a railroad tower that overlooked the parking lot on the north side of the grassy knoll. He reported that he saw two men behind the grassy knoll's stockyard fence before the shooting took place. The men did not appear to be acting together or doing anything suspicious. After the shooting, Bowers said that one of the men remained behind the fence and lost track of the second man whose clothing blended into the foliage. When interviewed by Mark Lane, Bowers noted that he saw something that attracted his attention, either a flash of light or smoke from the knoll, allowing him to believe "something out of the ordinary" had occurred there. Bowers told Lane that he heard three shots, the last two in quick succession. He stated that there was no way they could have been fired from the same exact rifle.[126] Bowers later purportedly said to his supervisor, Olan Degaugh, that he saw a man in the parking lot throw what looked like a rifle into one the cars.[127] However, in that same 1966 interview, Bowers clarified that the two men he saw were standing in the opening between the pergola and the fence, and that "no one" was behind the fence once the shots were fired.[128][129]

Bill and Gayle Newman drop to the grass and cover their children. The Newmans said that they thought the fatal shot came from behind them.[a]

Jesse Price was the building engineer for the Terminal Annex Building, which is located across from the Texas School Book Depository on the opposite side of Dealey Plaza. He viewed the presidential motorcade from the Terminal Annex Building's roof. In an interview with Mark Lane, Price said that he believed the shots came from "just behind the picket fence where it joins the [triple] underpass".[130]

Physical evidence

Several conspiracy theories posit that at least one shooter was located in the Dal-Tex Building, located across the street from the Texas School Book Depository.[131] According to L. Fletcher Prouty, the physical location of James Tague when he was injured by a bullet fragment is not consistent with the trajectory of a missed shot from the Texas School Book Depository, leading Prouty to theorize that Tague was instead wounded by a missed shot from the second floor of the Dal-Tex Building.[132]

Some assassination researchers claim that FBI photographs of the presidential limousine show a bullet hole in its windshield above the rear-view mirror, and a crack in the windshield itself. When Robert Groden, author of The Killing of a President, asked for an explanation, the FBI responded that what Groden thought was a bullet hole "occurred prior to Dallas".[133][134] In 1993, George Whitaker, a manager at the Ford Motor Company's Rouge Plant in Detroit, told attorney and criminal justice professor Doug Weldon that after reporting to work on November 25, 1963, he discovered the presidential limousine in the Rouge Plant's B building with its windshield removed. Whitaker said that the limousine's removed windshield had a through-and-through bullet hole from the front. He said that he was directed by one of Ford's vice presidents to use the windshield as a template to fabricate a new windshield for installation in the limousine. Whitaker also said he was told to destroy the old one.[135][136]

Film and photographic evidence

Film and photographic evidence of the assassination have led viewers to different conclusions regarding the origin of the shots. When the fatal shot was fired, the President's head and upper torso moved backwards — indicating, to many observers, a shot from the right front. Sherry Gutierrez, a certified crime scene and bloodstain pattern analyst, concluded that "the [fatal] head injury to President Kennedy was the result of a single gunshot fired from the right front of the President."[137] Paul Chambers believes that the fatal head shot is consistent with a high velocity (approx. 1,200 m/s; 4,000 ft/sec) rifle rather than the medium-velocity (600 m/s; 2,000 ft/sec) Mannlicher–Carcano.[138] Although it has been thought[139] that Zapruder film frames 312 and 313 show Kennedy's head moving forward before moving backwards, that close inspection of the frames show Kennedy's head actually pivoted both forward and downwards; Anthony Marsh claims that it was the deceleration of the car by driver William Greer that allowed the President's head to move in that direction.[140] Some, including Josiah Thompson, Robert Groden, and Cyril Wecht, state that the film shows that his head was hit by two near-simultaneous bullets: one from the rear and the other from the right front.[141][142][143]

Acoustical evidence

According to the House Select Committee on Assassinations, a Dictabelt recording of the Dallas Police Department radio dispatch transmissions from the day of the assassination was analyzed to "resolve questions concerning the number, timing, and origin of the shots fired in Dealey Plaza".[144] They concluded that the source of the recording was from an open microphone on the motorcycle of H.B. McLain escorting the motorcade[145] and that "the scientific acoustical evidence established a high probability that two gunmen fired at President John F. Kennedy."[146]

The acoustical analysis firm hired by the Committee recommended that they conduct an acoustical reconstruction of the assassination in Dealey Plaza so they could determine if any of the six impulse patterns on the dispatch tape were fired either from the Texas School Book Depository or from the grassy knoll. The reconstruction entailed firing from two locations in Dealey Plaza — the depository and the knoll—at particular target locations and recording the sounds through various microphones. The purpose for this was to determine if the sequences of impulses recorded during the reconstruction would match any of those within the dispatch tape. If they showed a positive result, then it would be possible to figure out if the impulse patterns on the dispatch tape were caused by shots fired from the depository and the knoll.[147]

In 1978, at the behest of the House Select Committee on Assassinations, members of the Dallas Police Pistol Team participated in an acoustical reconstruction in which they would fire rifles and pistols from any of the locations selected by the researchers. During this reconstruction, the Dallas Police marksmen had no difficulty in hitting the targets. The Committee's firearms experts "... testified that given the distance and angle from the sixth floor window to the location of the President's limousine, it would have been easier to use the open iron sights." The Warren Commission tests were carried out on assuming that Oswald, whom they and the Committee concluded fired the shots, had used the telescopic sight.[147]

An article in Science & Justice, a quarterly publication of Britain's Forensic Science Society, found there was a 96% certainty, based on analysis of audio recordings made during the assassination, that a shot was fired from the Grassy Knoll in front of and to the right of the President's limousine.[148][149][dead link][150]

The acoustical evidence has since been discredited.[9][10][11][12][13][14] Officer H.B. McLain, from whose motorcycle radio the HSCA acoustic experts said the Dictabelt evidence came,[151][152] has repeatedly stated that he was not yet in Dealey Plaza once the assassination occurred.[153] McLain asked the Committee, "'If it was my radio on my motorcycle, why did it not record the revving up at high speed plus my siren when we immediately took off for Parkland Hospital?'"[154]

In 1982, a panel of 12 scientists appointed by the National Academy of Sciences, including Nobel laureates Norman Ramsey and Luis Alvarez, unanimously concluded that the acoustic evidence submitted to the HSCA was "seriously flawed", was recorded after the President was shot, and did not indicate any additional gunshots.[155] Their conclusions were later published in the journal Science.[156]

In a 2001 article in Science & Justice, D.B. Thomas wrote that the NAS investigation was itself flawed. He concluded that with a 96.3% certainty, there were at least two gunmen firing at President Kennedy and that at least one shot came from the grassy knoll.[157] In 2005, Thomas's conclusions were rebutted in the same journal. Ralph Linsker and several members of the original NAS team reanalyzed the timings of the recordings and reaffirmed the earlier conclusion of the NAS report that the alleged shot sounds were recorded approximately one minute after the assassination.[158] In a 2010 book, D.B. Thomas challenged the 2005 Science & Justice article and restated his conclusion that there actually were two gunmen.[159]

Medical evidence

Some researchers have pointed to the large number of doctors and nurses at Parkland hospital who reported that a major portion of the back of the President's head may have been blown out, which strongly suggests that he was hit from the front. [116][160]

Some critics skeptical of the official "single bullet theory" have stated that the bullet's trajectory, which hit Kennedy above the right shoulder blade and passed through his neck (according to the autopsy), would have had to change course to pass through Connally's rib cage and fracture his wrist.[161][162][page needed] Kennedy's death certificate, which was signed by his personal physician Dr. George Burkley, locates the bullet at "about the level of the third thoracic vertebra" — which some claim was not high enough to exit his throat.[163][164] Furthermore, since the shooter was in a sixth floor window of the Book Depository building, the bullet traveled downward. The autopsy descriptive sheet displays a diagram of the President's body with the same low placement at the third thoracic vertebra.[165] The holes in the back of his shirt and jacket are also claimed to support a wound too low to be consistent with the "single bullet theory".[166][better source needed][167][168][better source needed]

There is a conflicting testimony regarding the autopsy performed on Kennedy's body, particularly during the examination on his brain and whether or not the photos submitted as evidence are the same as those taken during the examination.[169] Douglas Horne, the Assassination Record Review Board's chief analyst for military records, said he was "90 to 95% certain" that the photographs in the National Archives are not really of Kennedy's brain. Supporting Horne was Dr. Gary Aguilar, who stated, "According to Horne's findings, the second brain — which showed an exit wound in the front — allegedly replaced Kennedy's real brain — which revealed much greater damage to the rear, consistent with an exit wound and thus evidence of a shot from the front."[170]

Paul O'Connor, a laboratory technologist who assisted in the President's autopsy, claimed that the autopsy at Bethesda Naval Hospital was conducted in obedience to a high command[171][67] and that nearly all the brain matter in Kennedy's skull was already missing before the autopsy at Bethesda hospital.[172]

In his book JFK and the Unspeakable, James Douglass cites autopsy doctor Pierre Finck's testimony at the trial of Clay Shaw as evidence that Finck was "... a reluctant witness to the military control over the doctors' examination of the president's body".[173][174]

A bone fragment found in Dealey Plaza by William Allen Harper the day following the assassination was reported by the HSCA's Forensic Pathology Panel to have been part of Kennedy's parietal bone.[175] Some critics of the lone gunman theory, including James Douglass, David Lifton, and David Mantick, state that the fragment is actually a piece of occipital bone ejected from an exit wound in the back of Kennedy's head.[176] They stated this finding is evidence of a cover-up as it proves that the skull radiographs obtained during the autopsy which do not show significant bone loss in the occipital area, are not authentic.[176]

Oswald's marksmanship

The Warren Commission examined the capabilities of the Carcano rifle and ammunition, as well as Oswald's military training and post-military experience, and determined that Oswald had the ability to fire three shots within a time span of 4.8 to 5.6 seconds.[177] According to their report, an army specialist using Oswald's rifle was able to duplicate the feat and even improved on the time. The report also states that the Army Infantry Weapons Evaluation Branch test fired Oswald's rifle 47 times and found that it was "quite accurate", comparing it to the accuracy of an M14 rifle. Also contained in the Commission report is testimony by Marine Corps Major Eugene Anderson confirming that Oswald's military records show that he qualified as "sharpshooter" in 1956.

According to official Marine Corps records, Oswald was tested in shooting in December 1956, scoring 212 (slightly above the minimum for qualification as a sharpshooter—the intermediate category), but in May 1959, he scored 191 (earning the lower designation of marksman).[178] The highest marksmanship category in the Marine Corps is 'Expert' (220).[179]

Despite Oswald's confirmed marksmanship in the USMC, conspiracy theorists like Walt Brown and authors such as Richard H. Popkin contend that Oswald was a notoriously poor shot, that his rifle was inaccurate, and that no reconstruction of the event has ever been able to duplicate his ability to fire three shots within the time frame given by the Warren Commission.[180][181]

Role of Oswald

The Warren Commission and other federal investigations ruled that Oswald either acted alone or conspired with others in the assassination, citing his actions in the years leading up to the event. Evidence of Oswald's pro-communist and radical tendencies include his defection to Russia, the New Orleans branch of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee he had organized, and also various public and private statements made by him espousing Marxism and other leftist ideologies. Others have argued that his behavior was in fact a carefully planned ruse as part of an effort by U.S. intelligence agencies to infiltrate subversive groups and conduct counter-intelligence operations in communist countries, and that his role in the assassination was that of either an agent or an informant of the government trying to expose the plot behind the assassination.[182][183][184][185]

Oswald himself claimed to be innocent, denying all charges and even declaring to reporters that he was "just a patsy". He also insisted that the photos of him holding a rifle had been faked, an assertion contradicted by statements made by his wife, Marina, and the analysis of photographic experts such as Lyndal L. Shaneyfelt of the FBI.[citation needed]

Oswald's role as FBI informant was investigated by Lee Rankin and others of the Warren Commission, but their findings were inconclusive. Several FBI employees had made statements indicating that Oswald was indeed a paid informant, but the commission was nonetheless unable to verify the veracity of those claims.[186][187] FBI agent James P. Hosty reported that his office's interactions with Oswald were limited to dealing with his complaints about being harassed by the Bureau for being a communist sympathizer. In the weeks before the assassination, Oswald made a personal visit to the FBI's Dallas branch office with a hand-delivered letter which purportedly contained a threat of some sort but, controversially, Hosty destroyed the letter by order of J. Gordon Shanklin, his supervisor.[188][189][190]

Some researchers suggest that Oswald served as an active agent of the Central Intelligence Agency, often pointing to how he attempted to defect to Russia but was, however, able to return without difficulty (even receiving a repatriation loan from the State Department[191][192]) as evidence of such. A former roommate of Oswald, James Botelho (who would later become a California judge) stated in an interview with Mark Lane that he believed Oswald was involved in an intelligence assignment in Russia,[193][194] although Botelho did not mention any of those suspicions in his testimony to the Warren Commission years earlier. Oswald's mother, Marguerite, often insisted that her son was recruited by an agency of the U.S. Government and sent to Russia.[182] New Orleans District Attorney (and later judge) Jim Garrison, who in 1967 brought Clay Shaw to trial for the assassination of President Kennedy also held the opinion that Oswald was most likely a CIA agent drawn into the plot to be used as a scapegoat, even going as far as to say that Oswald "genuinely was probably a hero".[195] Senator Richard Schweiker, a member of the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence remarked that "everywhere you look with [Oswald], there're fingerprints of intelligence".[196] Richard Sprague, interim staff director and chief counsel to the U.S. House Select Committee on Assassinations, stated that if he "had to do it over again", he would have investigated the Kennedy assassination by probing Oswald's ties to the Central Intelligence Agency.[197] In 1978, former CIA paymaster and accountant James Wilcott testified before the HSCA, stating that Lee Harvey Oswald was a "known agent" of the Central Intelligence Agency.[198] Wilcott and his wife, Elsie (also a former employee of the CIA) later repeated those claims in a story by the San Francisco Chronicle.[199] Despite its official policy of neither confirming nor denying the status of agents, both the CIA itself and many officers working in the region at the time (including David Atlee Phillips) have "unofficially" dismissed the plausibility of any possible ties to Oswald and the agency. Robert Blakey, staff director and chief counsel for the U.S. House Select Committee on Assassinations, supported that assessment in his conclusions as well.[200]

Alternative gunmen

In addition to Oswald, Jerome Kroth has named 26 people as "Possible Assassins In Dealey Plaza".[201] They include: Orlando Bosch,[201] James Files,[202][201] Desmond Fitzgerald,[201] Charles Harrelson,[203][201] Gerry Hemming,[201] Chauncey Holt,[201] Howard Hunt,[201] Charles Nicoletti,[203][201] Charles Rogers,[201] Johnny Roselli,[201] Lucien Sarti,[203][201] and Frank Sturgis.[201]

Three tramps

The Three Tramps

Vincent Bugliosi provides a "partial list of assassins ... whom one or more conspiracy theorists have actually named and identified as having fired a weapon at Kennedy" in his book Reclaiming History.[204] He also mentions the three tramps, men photographed by several Dallas-area newspapers under police escort near the Texas School Book Depository shortly after the assassination. Since the mid-1960s, various allegations have been made about the identities of the men and their involvement in a conspiracy to kill Kennedy. Records released by the Dallas Police Department in 1989 identified the men as Gus Abrams, Harold Doyle, and John Gedney.[205]

Allegations of other conspirators

E. Howard Hunt

The theory that former CIA agent and Watergate burglar E. Howard Hunt was a participant in the assassination of Kennedy garnered much publicity from 1978 to 2000.[206] In 1981, he won a libel judgment against Liberty Lobby's paper The Spotlight, which in 1978 printed an allegation by Victor Marchetti suggesting Hunt's involvement in a conspiracy; the libel award was thrown out on appeal and the newspaper was successfully defended by Mark Lane in a second trial.[207] Former KGB archivist Vasili Mitrokhin indicated in 1999 that Hunt was made part of a fabricated conspiracy theory disseminated by a Soviet "active measures" program designed to discredit the CIA and the United States.[208][209] After his death in 2007, an audio-taped "deathbed confession" in which Hunt claimed first-hand knowledge of a conspiracy, as a co-conspirator, was released by his son Saint John Hunt.[210] In the confession, Hunt claimed to have been a "bench warmer" in Dallas during the events, and he named several high-level CIA operatives as those who likely carried out the logistics of the assassination. Hunt named Vice President Lyndon Johnson as the most likely figure behind the main impetus of the conspiracy.[210] The authenticity of the confession was met with some skepticism.[clarification needed][206][211][212]

J. D. Tippit

Dallas Police Officer J. D. Tippit has been named in some conspiracy theories as a renegade CIA operative sent to silence Oswald[213][214] and as the "badge man" assassin on the grassy knoll.[214] According to some Warren Commission critics, Oswald was set up to be killed by Tippit, but Tippit was killed by Oswald before he could carry out his assignment.[215] Other critics doubt that Tippit was killed by Oswald and assert he was shot by other conspirators.[213][215] (See section below.) Some critics have alleged that Tippit was associated with organized crime or right-wing politics.[213]

Bernard Weissman

Advertisement in the November 22, 1963, Dallas Morning News, placed by Bernard Weissman and three others.

According to the Warren Commission, the publication of a full-page, paid advertisement critical of Kennedy in the November 22, 1963, Dallas Morning News, which was signed by "The American Fact-Finding Committee" and noted Bernard Weissman as its chairman, was investigated to determine whether any members of the group claiming responsibility for it were connected to Oswald or to the assassination.[216] The Commission stated that "The American Fact-Finding Committee" was a fictitious sponsoring organization and that there was no evidence linking the four men responsible for the genesis of the ad with either Oswald or Ruby, or to a conspiracy to assassinate Kennedy.[216]

Related to the advertisement, Mark Lane testified during the Warren Commission's hearings that an informant whom he refused to name told him that Weismann had met with Tippit and Ruby eight days before the assassination at Ruby's Carousel Club.[216] The Commission reported that they "found no evidence that such a meeting took place anywhere at any time"[217] and that there was no "credible evidence that any of the three men knew each other".[218]

Lane later stated that he initially learned of the meeting through reporter Thayer Waldo of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.[219] According to Lane, a "prominent Dallas figure" who frequented Ruby's Carousel Club told Waldo, and later Lane, that he observed the meeting of the three men at the club.[219] He said, "I had promised the man he would not be involved; he was a leading Dallas citizen; he was married, and the stripper he was going with had become pregnant."[219] Despite not having revealed to the Warren Commission that Waldo was his original source of the alleged meeting, Lane disputed their findings and complained that they failed to ask Waldo about it.[220] According to Hugh Aynesworth, the source of the allegation whose identity Lane promised not to reveal was Carroll Jarnagin,[221] a Dallas attorney who had also claimed to have overheard a meeting between Oswald and Ruby.[222] Aynesworth wrote: "Several people in Dallas were well aware of Jarnagin's tale, and that he later admitted making it all up."[221]

Unnamed accomplice(s) in the murder of J. D. Tippit

The Warren Commission concluded that Oswald "killed Dallas Police Officer J. D. Tippit in an apparent attempt to escape."[223] The evidence that formed the basis for this conclusion was: "(1) two eyewitnesses who heard the shots and saw the shooting of Dallas Police Patrolman J. D. Tippit and seven eyewitnesses who saw the flight of the gunman with revolver in hand positively identified Lee Harvey Oswald as the man they saw fire the shots or flee from the scene, (2) the cartridge cases found near the scene of the shooting were fired from the revolver in the possession of Oswald at the time of his arrest, to the exclusion of all other weapons, (3) the revolver in Oswald's possession at the time of his arrest was purchased by and belonged to Oswald, and (4) Oswald's jacket was found along the path of flight taken by the gunman as he fled from the scene of the killing."[224]

Some researchers have alleged that the murder of Officer Tippit was part of a conspiracy to kill President Kennedy. Jim Marrs hypothesized that "the slaying of Officer J. D. Tippit may have played some part in [a] scheme to have Oswald killed, perhaps to eliminate co-conspirator Tippit or simply to anger Dallas police and cause itchy trigger fingers."[225] Researcher James Douglass said that "... the killing of [Tippit] helped motivate the Dallas police to kill an armed Oswald in the Texas Theater, which would have disposed of the scapegoat before he could protest his being framed."[226] Harold Weisberg offered a simpler explanation: "Immediately, the [flimsy] police case [against Oswald] required a willingness to believe. This was proved by affixing to Oswald the opprobrious epithet of 'cop-killer.'"[226] Jim Garrison alleged that evidence was altered to frame Oswald, stating: "If Oswald was innocent of the Tippit murder the foundation of the government's case against him collapsed."[227]

Some critics doubt that Tippit was killed by Oswald and assert he was shot by other conspirators.[213][215] They allege discrepancies in witness testimony and physical evidence that they think call into question the Commission's conclusions regarding the murder of Tippit. According to Jim Marrs, Oswald's guilt in the assassination of Kennedy is placed in question by the presence of "a growing body of evidence to suggest that [he] did not kill Tippit".[228] Others say that multiple men were directly involved in Tippit's killing. Conspiracy researcher Kenn Thomas has alleged that the Warren Commission omitted testimony and evidence that two men shot Tippit and that one left the scene in a car.[229]

William Alexander—the Dallas assistant district attorney who recommended that Oswald be charged with the Kennedy and Tippit murders—later became skeptical of the Warren Commission's version of the Tippit murder. He stated that the Commission's conclusions on Oswald's movements "don't add up", and that "certainly [Oswald] may have had accomplices."[230]

According to Brian McKenna's review of Henry Hurt's book, Reasonable Doubt, Hurt reported that "Tippit may have been killed because he impregnated the wife of another man" and that Dallas police officers lied and altered evidence to set up Oswald to save Tippit's reputation.[231]

Allegations regarding witness testimony and physical evidence

The Warren Commission identified Helen Markham and Domingo Benavides as two witnesses who actually saw the shooting.[232] Conspiracy theorist Richard Belzer criticized the Commission for, in his description, "relying" on the testimony of Markham whom he described as "imaginative".[233] Jim Marrs also took issue with Markham's testimony, stating that her "credibility ... was strained to the breaking point".[228] Joseph Ball, senior counsel to the Commission, referred to Markham's testimony as "full of mistakes", characterizing her as an "utter screwball".[234] The Warren Commission addressed concerns regarding Markham's reliability as a witness and concluded: "However, even in the absence of Mrs. Markham's testimony, there is ample evidence to identify Oswald as the killer of Tippit."[232]

Domingo Benavides initially said that he did not think he could identify Tippit's assailant and was never asked to view a police lineup,[235] even though he was the person closest to the killing.[236] Benavides later testified that the killer resembled pictures he had seen of Oswald.[237] Other witnesses were taken to police lineups. However, critics have questioned these lineups as they consisted of people who looked very different from Oswald.[236][238]

Additionally, witnesses who did not appear before the Commission identified an assailant who was not Oswald. Acquilla Clemons said she saw two men near Tippit's car just before the shooting.[195] She said that after the shooting, she ran outside of her house and saw a man with a gun whom she described as "kind of heavy". She said he waved to the second man, urging him to "go on".[239] Frank Wright said he emerged from his home and observed the scene seconds after the shooting. He described a man standing by Tippit's body who had on a long coat and said the man ran to a parked car and drove away.[240][241]

Critics have questioned whether the cartridge cases recovered from the scene were the same as those that were subsequently entered into evidence. Two of the cases were recovered by witness Domingo Benavides and turned over to police officer J. M. Poe. Poe told the FBI that he marked the shells with his own initials, "J.M.P." to identify them.[242] Sergeant Gerald Hill later testified to the Warren Commission that it was he who had ordered police officer Poe to mark the shells.[243] However, Poe's initials were not found on the shells produced by the FBI six months later.[242][244] Testifying before the Warren Commission, Poe said that although he recalled marking the cases, he "couldn't swear to it".[244][245] The identification of the cases at the crime scene raises more questions. Sergeant Gerald Hill examined one of the shells and radioed the police dispatcher, saying: "The shell at the scene indicates that the suspect is armed with an automatic .38 rather than a pistol."[246] However, Oswald was reportedly arrested carrying a non-automatic .38 Special revolver.[240][247]

Allegations regarding timeline

The Warren Commission investigated Oswald's movements between the time of the assassination and the shooting of Tippit, to ascertain whether Oswald might have had an accomplice who helped him flee the Book Depository. The Commission concluded "... through the testimony of seven witnesses [that] Oswald was always alone."[248] According to their final report, Oswald was seen by his housekeeper leaving his rooming house shortly after 1:00 pm and had enough time to travel nine-tenths of a mile (1.4 km) to the scene where Tippit was killed at 1:16 pm.[249][250][b]

Some Warren Commission critics believe that Oswald did not have enough time to get from his house to the scene where Tippit was killed.[213] The Commission's own test and estimation of Oswald's walking speed demonstrated that one of the longer routes to the Tippit shooting scene took 17 minutes and 45 seconds to walk.[252] No witness ever surfaced who saw Oswald walk from his rooming house to the murder scene.[253]

Conspiracy researcher Robert Groden believes that Tippit's murder may have occurred earlier than the time given in the Warren Report. [254] He notes that the Commission established the time of the shooting as 1:16 pm from police tapes that logged Domingo Benavides's use of the radio in Tippit's car.[251] However, Benavides testified that he did not approach the car until "a few minutes" after the shooting, because he was afraid that the gunman might return.[255] He was assisted in using the radio by witness T. F. Bowley who testified to Dallas police that at the time he arrived to help, "several people were at the scene", and that the time was 1:10 pm.[256]

Witness Helen Markham stated in her affidavit to the Dallas Sheriff's department that Tippit was killed at "approximately 1:06 pm."[257] She later affirmed the time in testimony before the Warren Commission, saying: "I wouldn't be afraid to bet it wasn't 6 or 7 minutes after 1."[258][259] She initially told the FBI that the shooting occurred "possibly around 1:30 pm."[260] In an unpublished manuscript titled When They Kill a President, Deputy Sheriff Roger Craig stated that when he heard the news that Tippit had been shot, he noted that the time was 1:06 pm.[261] However, in a later statement to the press, Craig seemed confused about the time of the shooting.[262]

Warren "Butch" Burroughs, who ran the concession stand at the Texas Theater where Oswald was arrested, said that Oswald came into the theater between 1:00 and 1:07 pm; he also claimed he sold Oswald popcorn at 1:15 p.m.—the "official" time of Officer Tippit's murder.[263][264] Julia Postal told the Warren Commission that Burroughs initially told her the same thing, although when she later discussed the event with him, she became skeptical about his version.[265] A theatre patron, Jack Davis, also corroborated Burroughs's time, claiming he observed Oswald in the theatre prior to 1:20 pm.[266]

Unidentified witnesses

Following the assassination of President Kennedy the "umbrella man" can be seen sitting on the sidewalk next to the "dark complected man" on the right side of the photograph.

Some conspiracy theories surrounding the Kennedy assassination have focused on witnesses to the assassination who have not been identified, or who have not identified themselves, despite the media attention that the Kennedy assassination has received.

Umbrella man

The so-called "umbrella man" was one of the closest bystanders to the president when he was first struck by a bullet. The "umbrella man" has become the subject of conspiracy theories after footage of the assassination showed him holding an open umbrella as the Kennedy motorcade passed, despite the fact that it was not raining at the time. One conspiracy theory, proposed by assassination researcher Robert Cutler, suggests that a dart with a paralyzing agent could have been fired from the umbrella, disabling Kennedy and making him a "sitting duck" for an assassination.[267] (In 1975, CIA weapons developer Charles Senseney told the Senate Intelligence Committee that such an umbrella weapon was in the hands of the CIA in 1963.)[268] A more prevalent conspiracy theory holds that the umbrella could have been used to provide visual signals to hidden gunmen.[269]

In 1978, Louie Steven Witt came forward and identified himself as the "umbrella man". Testifying before the United States House Select Committee on Assassinations, Witt stated he brought the umbrella to heckle Kennedy and protest the appeasement policies of the president's father, Joseph Kennedy. He added: "I think if the Guinness Book of World Records had a category for people who were at the wrong place at the wrong time, doing the wrong thing, I would be No. 1 in that position, without even a close runner-up."[270] Some researchers have noted a number of inconsistencies with Witt's story, however, and do not believe him to be the true "umbrella man".[271]

The "umbrella man" is the subject of a 2011 documentary short by Errol Morris, for The New York Times.[272]

Dark complected man

An unidentified individual who is referred to by some conspiracy theorists as the "dark complected man" can be seen in several photographs, taken seconds after the assassination, sitting on the sidewalk next to the "umbrella man" on the north side of Elm Street. Louie Steven Witt, who identified himself as the "umbrella man", said he was unable to identify the other individual, whose dark complexion has led some conspiracy theorists to speculate Cuban government involvement, or Cuban exile involvement, in the assassination of Kennedy.[269]

Possible witnesses

Some conspiracy theories focus on individuals that it is claimed can be seen in photographs of the assassination. Both "badge man" and "black dog man" have been suggested as possible assassins of President Kennedy.

Badge man

Some conspiracy theorists believe that "badge man" could have fired the fatal shot that killed President Kennedy.

"Badge man" and "tin hat man" are figures on the grassy knoll who it is alleged can be seen in the Mary Moorman photo, taken approximately one-sixth of a second after President Kennedy was struck with the fatal head wound. The figures were first discovered by researchers Jack White and Gary Mack and are discussed in a 1988 documentary called The Men Who Killed Kennedy, where it is alleged a third figure can also be seen on the grassy knoll, possibly the eyewitness Gordon Arnold. The "badge man" figure—so called as he appears to be wearing a uniform similar to that worn by a policeman, with a badge prominent—helped fuel conspiracy theories linking Dallas Police officers, or someone impersonating a police officer, to the assassination.[50]

Black dog man

"Black Dog Man"

Another "figure" that has been the subject of conspiracy is the so-called "black dog man" figure who can be seen at the corner of a retaining wall in the Willis and Betzner photo of the assassination. In an interview, Marilyn Sitzman told Josiah Thompson that she saw a young black couple who were eating lunch and drinking Cokes on a bench behind the retaining wall and, therefore, it is possible that the "black dog man" figure is actually the black woman and her child.[273] If so, the woman has never come forward to identify herself.

In The Killing of A President, Robert Groden argues that the "black dog man" figure can be seen in a pyracantha bush in frame 413 of the Zapruder film. The United States House Select Committee on Assassinations concluded that a head of an individual could be seen but that this individual was situated in front of, rather than behind the bushes.[274] Bill Miller argues that this individual is actually the eyewitness Emmett Hudson.[275]

Conspiracy theories

Conspiracy theorists consider four or five groups, alone or in combination, to be the primary suspects in the assassination of Kennedy: the CIA,[276][277] the military-industrial complex,[276][277] organized crime,[276][277][278] the government of Cuba,[277][278] and Cuban exiles.[277] Other domestic individuals, groups, or organizations implicated in various conspiracy theories include Lyndon Johnson,[279][277][278] George H. W. Bush,[277][278] Sam Giancana,[279] J. Edgar Hoover,[278] Earl Warren,[279] the Federal Bureau of Investigation,[277] the United States Secret Service,[277][278] the John Birch Society,[277][278] and far-right wealthy Texans.[277] Some other alleged foreign conspirators include Fidel Castro,[279] the KGB and Nikita Khrushchev,[279][277] Aristotle Onassis,[278] the government of South Vietnam,[280] and international drug lords,[277] including a French heroin syndicate.[280]

New Orleans conspiracy

Soon after the assassination of President Kennedy, Oswald's activities in New Orleans, Louisiana, during the spring and summer of 1963, came under scrutiny. Three days after the assassination, on November 25, 1963, New Orleans attorney Dean Andrews told the FBI that he received a telephone call from a man named Clay Bertrand, on the day of the assassination, asking him to defend Oswald.[281][282] Andrews would later repeat this claim in testimony to the Warren Commission.[283]

David Ferrie (second from left) with Lee Harvey Oswald (far right) in the New Orleans Civil Air Patrol in 1955.

Also, in late November 1963, an employee of New Orleans private investigator Guy Banister named Jack Martin began making accusations that fellow Banister employee David Ferrie was involved in the JFK assassination. Martin told police that Ferrie "was supposed to have been the getaway pilot in the assassination."[284] He said that Ferrie had outlined plans to kill Kennedy and that Ferrie might have taught Oswald how to use a rifle with a telescopic sight. Martin claimed that Ferrie had known Oswald from their days in the New Orleans Civil Air Patrol, and that he had seen a photograph, at Ferrie's home, of Oswald in a Civil Air Patrol group.[285] Ferrie denied any association with Oswald.[286]

It was later discovered that Ferrie had attended Civil Air Patrol meetings in New Orleans in the 1950s that were also attended by a teenage Lee Harvey Oswald.[287] In 1993, the PBS television program Frontline obtained a photograph taken in 1955 (eight years before the assassination) showing Oswald and Ferrie at a Civil Air Patrol cookout with other C.A.P. cadets.[287] Whether Oswald's and Ferrie's association in the Civil Air Patrol in 1955 is relevant to their later possible association in 1963 is a subject of debate.[287][288]

According to several witnesses, in 1963, both Ferrie and Banister were working for lawyer G. Wray Gill on behalf of Gill's client, New Orleans Mafia boss Carlos Marcello, in an attempt to block Marcello's deportation to Guatemala.[289][290] On the afternoon of November 22, 1963—the day John F. Kennedy was assassinated and the day Marcello was acquitted in his deportation case—New Orleans private investigator Guy Banister and his employee, Jack Martin, were drinking together at a local bar. On their return to Banister's office, the two men got into a heated argument. According to Martin, Banister said something to which Martin replied, "What are you going to do—kill me like you all did Kennedy?". Banister drew his .357 magnum revolver and pistol-whipped Martin several times. Martin, badly injured, went by ambulance to Charity Hospital.[291]

Earlier, in the spring of 1963, Oswald had written to the New York City headquarters of the pro-Castro Fair Play for Cuba Committee, proposing to rent "a small office at my own expense for the purpose of forming a FPCC branch here in New Orleans".[292] As the sole member of the New Orleans chapter of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, Oswald ordered 1,000 leaflets with the heading, "Hands Off Cuba" from a local printer.[293] On August 16, 1963, Oswald passed out Fair Play for Cuba leaflets in front of the International Trade Mart in New Orleans.[294]

One of Oswald's leaflets had the address "544 Camp Street" hand-stamped on it, apparently by Oswald himself.[295] The address was in the "Newman Building", which from October 1961 to February 1962 housed the Cuban Revolutionary Council, a militant anti-Castro group.[296][297] Around the corner but located in the same building, with a different entrance, was the address 531 Lafayette Street—the address of "Guy Banister Associates", the private detective agency run by Guy Banister. Banister's office was involved in anti-Castro and private investigative activities in the New Orleans area. (A CIA file indicated that in September 1960, the CIA had considered "using Guy Banister Associates for the collection of foreign intelligence, but ultimately decided against it".)[298][299][300]

In the late 1970s, the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) investigated the possible relationship of Oswald to Banister's office. While the committee was unable to interview Guy Banister (who died in 1964), the committee did interview his brother Ross Banister. Ross "told the committee that his brother had mentioned seeing Oswald hand out Fair Play for Cuba literature on one occasion. Ross theorized that Oswald had used the 544 Camp Street address on his literature to embarrass Guy."[301]

Guy Banister's secretary, Delphine Roberts, would later tell author Anthony Summers that she saw Oswald at Banister's office, and that he filled out one of Banister's "agent" application forms. She said, "Oswald came back a number of times. He seemed to be on familiar terms with Banister and with the office."[302] The House Select Committee on Assassinations investigated Roberts's claims and said that "because of contradictions in Roberts' statements to the committee and lack of independent corroboration of many of her statements, the reliability of her statements could not be determined."[303]

In 1966, New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison began an investigation into the assassination of President Kennedy. Garrison's investigation led him to conclude that a group of right-wing extremists, including David Ferrie and Guy Banister, were involved with elements of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in a conspiracy to kill Kennedy. Garrison would later claim that the motive for the assassination was anger over Kennedy's attempts to obtain a peace settlement in both Cuba and Vietnam.[304][305] Garrison also came to believe that New Orleans businessman Clay Shaw was part of the conspiracy and that Clay Shaw used the pseudonym "Clay Bertrand".[306] Garrison further believed that Shaw, Banister, and Ferrie conspired to set up Oswald as a patsy in the JFK assassination.[307] On March 1, 1967, Garrison arrested and charged Shaw with conspiring to assassinate President Kennedy. On January 29, 1969, Clay Shaw was brought to trial on these charges, and the jury found him not guilty.

In 2003, Judyth Vary Baker—whose employment records show that she worked at the Reily Coffee Company in New Orleans at the same time Oswald did—appeared in an episode of the television documentary series, The Men Who Killed Kennedy.[308] Baker claimed that in 1963 she was recruited by Dr. Canute Michaelson to work with Dr. Alton Ochsner and Dr. Mary Sherman on a clandestine CIA project to develop a biological weapon that could be used to assassinate Fidel Castro. According to Baker, she and Oswald were hired by Reily in the spring of 1963 as a "cover" for the operation.[309] Baker further claimed that she and Oswald began an affair, and that later Oswald told her about Merida, Mexico—a city where he suggested they might begin their lives over again.[308][310] According to John McAdams, Baker presents a "classic case of pushing the limits of plausibility too far".[311] Others on both sides of the research community have widely dismissed her claims.[312] However, other researchers, including James Fetzer, have concluded that Baker's claims are credible.

CIA conspiracy

Addressing speculation that Oswald was a CIA agent or had some relationship with the Agency, the Warren Commission stated in 1964 that their investigation "revealed no evidence that Oswald was ever employed [by the] CIA in any capacity."[313] The House Select Committee on Assassinations reported similarly in 1979 that "[t]here was no indication in Oswald's CIA file that he had ever had contact with the Agency" and concluded that the CIA was not involved in the assassination of Kennedy.[314]

Gaeton Fonzi, an investigator for the House Select Committee on Assassinations, wrote that investigators were pressured not to look into the relationship between Lee Harvey Oswald and the CIA. He stated that CIA agent David Atlee Phillips, using the pseudonym "Maurice Bishop", was involved with Oswald prior to the Kennedy assassination in connection with anti-Castro Cuban groups.[315]

In 1995, former U.S. Army Intelligence officer and National Security Agency executive assistant John M. Newman published evidence that both the CIA and FBI deliberately tampered with their files on Lee Harvey Oswald both before and after the assassination. Furthermore, he found that both agencies withheld information that might have alerted authorities in Dallas that Oswald posed a potential threat to the President. Subsequently, Newman expressed a belief that CIA chief of counter-intelligence James Angleton was probably the key figure in the assassination. According to Newman, only Angleton "had the access, the authority, and the diabolically ingenious mind to manage this sophisticated plot." However, Newman surmised that the cover operation was not under James Angleton, but under Allen Dulles (the former CIA director, and later Warren Commission member, who had been dismissed by Kennedy after the failed Bay of Pigs invasion).[316]

In 1977, the FBI released 40,000 files pertaining to the assassination of Kennedy, including an April 3, 1967 memorandum from Deputy Director Cartha DeLoach to Associate Director Clyde Tolson that was written less than a month after President Johnson learned from J. Edgar Hoover about CIA plots to kill Fidel Castro.[317][318] The memorandum reads: "Marvin Watson [adviser to President Johnson] called me late last night and stated that the president had told him, in an off moment, that he was now convinced that there was a plot in connection with the [JFK] assassination. Watson stated the president felt that [the] CIA had had something to do with plot."[319][320][321][322][323] Later, Cartha DeLoach testified to the Church Committee that he "felt this to be sheer speculation".[324]

Shadow government conspiracy

One conspiracy theory suggests that a secret or shadow government including wealthy industrialists and right-wing politicians ordered the assassination of Kennedy.[325] Peter Dale Scott has indicated that Kennedy's death allowed for policy reversals desired by the secret government to escalate the United States' military involvement in Vietnam.[326]

Military-industrial complex

In the farewell speech given by U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower before he left office on January 17, 1961, warned the nation about the power of the military establishment and the arms industry. "In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist."[327] Some conspiracy theorists have argued that Kennedy planned to end the involvement of the United States in Vietnam, and was therefore targeted by those who had an interest in sustained military conflict, including the Pentagon and defense contractors.[328]

Former Texas Senator Ralph Yarborough in 1991 stated: "Had Kennedy lived, I think we would have had no Vietnam War, with all of its traumatic and divisive influences in America. I think we would have escaped that."[329]

According to author James W. Douglass, Kennedy was assassinated because he was turning away from the Cold War and seeking a negotiated peace with the Soviet Union.[330] Douglass argued that this "was not the kind of leadership the CIA, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the military-industrial complex wanted in the White House."[331]

Oliver Stone's film, JFK, explored the possibility that Kennedy was killed by a conspiracy involving the military-industrial complex.[332] L. Fletcher Prouty, Chief of Special Operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Kennedy, and the person who inspired the character "Mr. X" in Stone's film, wrote that Kennedy's assassination was actually a coup d'état.[333]

Secret Service conspiracy

The House Select Committee on Assassinations reported that it investigated "alleged Secret Service complicity in the assassination" and concluded that the Secret Service was not involved.[314] However, the HSCA declared that "the Secret Service was deficient in the performance of its duties."[334] Among its findings, the HSCA noted: (1) that President Kennedy had not received adequate protection in Dallas, (2) that the Secret Service possessed information that was not properly analyzed, investigated, or used by the Secret Service in connection with the President's trip to Dallas, and (3) that the Secret Service agents in the motorcade were inadequately prepared to protect the President from a sniper.[335] The HSCA specifically noted:

No actions were taken by the agent in the right front seat of the presidential limousine Roy Kellerman to cover the President with his body, although it would have been consistent with Secret Service procedure for him to have done so. The primary function of the agent was to remain at all times in close proximity to the President in the event of such emergencies.[336]

Some argue that the lack of Secret Service protection occurred because Kennedy himself had asked that the Secret Service make itself discreet during the Dallas visit.[337] However, Vince Palamara, who interviewed several Secret Service agents assigned to the Kennedy detail, disputes this. Palamara reports that Secret Service driver Sam Kinney told him that requests—such as removing the bubble top from the limousine in Dallas, not having agents positioned beside the limousine's rear bumper, and reducing the number of Dallas police motorcycle outriders near the limousine's rear bumper—were not made by Kennedy.[338][136][339]

In The Echo from Dealey Plaza, Abraham Bolden—the first African American on the White House Secret Service detail—claimed to have overheard agents say that they would not protect Kennedy from would-be assassins.[340]

Colin McLaren, a former Australian police detective sergeant, was inspired by Bonar Menninger's Mortal Error,[341] to approach the assassination of Kennedy as a cold case investigation,[342] and treating Howard Donahue's expert testimony as that of just one witness of many. After more than four years of research,[343] he published a book titled JFK: The Smoking Gun,[344] which was accompanied by a documentary.[345] As an investigator, McLaren focuses on the existing witness testimony, including testimony from people present at Kennedy's autopsy[346] rather than on his own ballistics or similar tests.[347] Rather than just dismiss the ballistics tests carried out for the Warren Commission as inexpert, their testimony to the commission, including their qualifications, is quoted and critiqued,[348] and also any cross-examination. He quotes many more witnesses than Donahue or Menninger as having believed that shots were fired at ground level, and observes a pattern of concealment of evidence.[349] His conclusion, like those of Reppert and of Menninger, is that Donahue is correct in both the broad theory and the details.

Questions regarding the forthrightness of the Secret Service increased in the 1990s when the Assassination Records Review Board—which was created when Congress passed the JFK Records Act—requested access to Secret Service records. The Review Board was told by the Secret Service that in January 1995, in violation of the JFK Records Act, the Secret Service destroyed protective survey reports that covered JFK's trips from September 24 through November 8, 1963.[350][351][352]

Cuban exiles

The House Select Committee on Assassinations wrote: "The committee believes, on the basis of the evidence available to it, that anti-Castro Cuban groups, as groups, were not involved in the assassination of President Kennedy, but that the available evidence does not preclude the possibility that individual members may have been involved".[314]

With the 1959 Cuban Revolution that brought Fidel Castro to power, many Cubans left Cuba to live in the United States. Many of these exiles hoped to overthrow Castro and return to Cuba. Their hopes were dashed with the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion in 1961, and many blamed President Kennedy for the failure.[353]

The House Select Committee on Assassinations concluded that some militant Cuban exiles might have participated in Kennedy's murder. These exiles worked closely with CIA operatives in violent activities against Castro's Cuba. In 1979, the committee reported:

President Kennedy's popularity among the Cuban exiles had plunged deeply by 1963. Their bitterness is illustrated in a tape recording of a meeting of anti-Castro Cubans and right-wing Americans in the Dallas suburb of Farmer's Branch on October 1, 1963.[354]

Author Joan Didion explored the Miami anti-Castro Cuban theory in her 1987 book Miami.[355][356] She discussed Marita Lorenz's testimony regarding Guillermo Novo, a Cuban exile who was involved in shooting a bazooka at the U.N. building from the East River during a speech by Che Guevara. Allegedly, Novo was affiliated with Lee Harvey Oswald and Frank Sturgis and carried weapons with them to a hotel in Dallas just prior to the assassination. These claims, though put forth to the House Assassinations Committee by Lorenz, have never been substantiated. Don DeLillo dramatized the Cuban theory in his 1988 novel Libra.

Organized crime conspiracy

The House Select Committee on Assassinations wrote: "The committee believes, on the basis of the evidence available to it, that the national syndicate of organized crime, as a group, was not involved in the assassination of President Kennedy, but that the available evidence does not preclude the possibility that individual members may have been involved".[314] Robert Blakey, who was chief counsel for the House Select Committee on Assassinations, would later conclude in his book, The Plot to Kill the President, that New Orleans Mafia boss Carlos Marcello was likely part of a Mafia conspiracy behind the assassination, and that the Mafia had the means and the opportunity required to carry it out.[357][358]

Government documents have revealed that some members of the Mafia worked with the Central Intelligence Agency on assassination attempts against Cuban leader Fidel Castro.[359] In the summer of 1960, the CIA recruited ex-FBI agent Robert Maheu to approach the West Coast representative of the Chicago mob, Johnny Roselli. When Maheu contacted Roselli, Maheu hid the fact that he was sent by the CIA, instead portraying himself as an advocate for international corporations. He offered to pay $150,000 to have Castro killed, but Roselli declined any pay. Roselli introduced Maheu to two men he referred to as "Sam Gold" and "Joe". "Sam Gold" was Sam Giancana; "Joe" was Santo Trafficante, Jr., the Tampa, Florida, boss and one of the most powerful mobsters in pre-revolution Cuba.[360][361] Glenn Kessler of The Washington Post explained: "After Fidel Castro led a revolution that toppled a friendly government in 1959, the CIA was desperate to eliminate him. So the agency sought out a partner equally worried about Castro—the Mafia, which had lucrative investments in Cuban casinos."[362]

In his memoir, Bound by Honor, Bill Bonanno, son of New York Mafia boss Joseph Bonanno, disclosed that several Mafia families had long-standing ties with the anti-Castro Cubans through the Havana casinos operated by the Mafia before the Cuban Revolution. Many Cuban exiles and Mafia bosses disliked President Kennedy, blaming him for the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion.[363] They also disliked his brother, then Attorney General Robert Kennedy, who had conducted an unprecedented legal assault on organized crime.[364][365] This was especially provocative because several Mafia "families" had allegedly worked with JFK's father, Joseph Kennedy, to get JFK elected.[366] Both the Mafia and the anti-Castro Cubans were experts in assassination—the Cubans having been trained by the CIA.[367] Bonanno reported that he recognized the high degree of involvement of other Mafia families when Jack Ruby killed Oswald, since Bonanno was aware that Ruby was an associate of Chicago mobster Sam Giancana.[368]

Some conspiracy researchers have alleged a plot involving elements of the Mafia, the CIA, and the anti-Castro Cubans, including Anthony Summers, who stated: "Sometimes people sort of glaze over about the notion that the Mafia and U.S. intelligence and the anti-Castro activists were involved together in the assassination of President Kennedy. In fact, there's no contradiction there. Those three groups were all in bed together at the time and had been for several years in the fight to topple Fidel Castro."[369] News reporter Ruben Castaneda wrote in 2012: "Based on the evidence, it is likely that JFK was killed by a coalition of anti-Castro Cubans, the Mob, and elements of the CIA."[370] In his book, They Killed Our President, former Minnesota governor Jesse Ventura concluded: "John F. Kennedy was murdered by a conspiracy involving disgruntled CIA agents, anti-Castro Cubans, and members of the Mafia, all of whom were extremely angry at what they viewed as Kennedy's appeasement policies toward Communist Cuba and the Soviet Union."[371]

Carlos Marcello allegedly threatened to assassinate the President to short-circuit his younger brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, who was leading the administration's anti-Mafia crusade.[372][373] Information released in 2006 by the FBI has led some to conclude that Carlos Marcello confessed to his cellmate in Texas, Jack Van Lanningham, an FBI informant, using a transistor radio that was bugged by the FBI, to having organized Kennedy's assassination, and that the FBI covered up this information that it had in its possession.[374]

In his book, Contract on America,[375] David Scheim provided evidence that Mafia leaders Carlos Marcello, Santo Trafficante, Jr., and Jimmy Hoffa ordered the assassination of President Kennedy. Scheim cited in particular a 25-fold increase in the number of out-of-state telephone calls from Jack Ruby to associates of these crime bosses in the months before the assassination, and to an attempted confession by Jack Ruby while in prison. David E. Kaiser has also suggested mob involvement in his book, The Road to Dallas.[376]

Investigative reporter Jack Anderson concluded that Fidel Castro worked with organized crime figures to arrange the JFK assassination. In his book Peace, War, and Politics, Anderson claimed that Mafia member Johnny Roselli gave him extensive details of the plot. Anderson said that although he was never able to independently confirm Roselli's entire story, many of Roselli's details checked out. Anderson said that Oswald may have played a role in the assassination, but that more than one gunman was involved. Johnny Roselli, as previously noted, had worked with the CIA on assassination attempts against Castro.

The History Channel program The Men Who Killed Kennedy presented additional claims of organized crime involvement.[377] Christian David was a Corsican Mafia member interviewed in prison. He said that he was offered the assassination contract on President Kennedy, but that he did not accept it. However, he said that he knew the men who did accept the contract. According to David, there were three shooters. He provided the name of one—Lucien Sarti. David said that since the other two shooters were still alive, it would break a code of conduct for him to identify them. When asked what the shooters were wearing, David noted their modus operandi was to dress in costumes such as official uniforms. Much of Christian David's testimony was confirmed by former Corsican member Michelle Nicole, who was part of the DEA witness protection program.

The book Ultimate Sacrifice, by Lamar Waldron and Thom Hartmann, attempted to synthesize these theories with new evidence. The authors argued that government officials felt obliged to help the assassins cover up the truth because the assassination conspiracy had direct ties to American government plots to assassinate Castro. Outraged at Robert Kennedy's attack on organized crime, mob leaders had President Kennedy killed to remove Robert from power. A government investigation of the plot was thwarted, the authors allege, because it would have revealed embarrassing evidence of American government involvement with organized crime in plots to kill Castro.[378]

Lyndon B. Johnson conspiracy

Johnson is sworn in on Air Force One by Judge Hughes. Mrs. Kennedy is to the right and Mrs. Johnson to the left.

A 2003 Gallup poll indicated that nearly 20% of Americans suspected Lyndon B. Johnson of being involved in the assassination of Kennedy.[379] Critics of the Warren Commission have accused Johnson of plotting the assassination because he "disliked" the Kennedys and feared that he would be dropped from the Democratic ticket for the 1964 election.[380][381]

According to journalist Max Holland, the first published allegation that Johnson perpetrated the assassination of Kennedy appeared in Penn Jones, Jr.'s book Forgive My Grief, self-published in May 1966.[382] In the book, Jones provided excerpts of a letter purported to have been authored by Jack Ruby charging LBJ with the murder of the President.[382] With his 1968 book, The Dark Side of Lyndon Baines Johnson, Joachim Joesten is credited by Bugliosi as being the first conspiracy author to accuse Johnson of having a role in the assassination.[383] According to Joesten, Johnson "played the leading part" in a conspiracy that involved "the Dallas oligarchy and ... local branches of the CIA, the FBI, and the Secret Service".[383] Others who have indicated there was complicity on the part of Johnson include Jim Marrs,[383] Ralph D. Thomas,[383] J. Gary Shaw,[383] Larry Harris,[383] Walt Brown,[383] Noel Twyman,[383] Barr McClellan,[383] Craig Zirbel,[384] Phillip F. Nelson,[385] and Madeleine Brown.[386]

The fact that JFK was seriously considering dropping Johnson from the ticket in favor of NC Governor Terry Sanford should Kennedy run in 1964 has been cited as a possible motive for Johnson's complicity in the assassination. In 1968, Kennedy's personal secretary Evelyn Lincoln wrote in her book, "Kennedy and Johnson" that President Kennedy had told her that Lyndon B. Johnson would be replaced as Vice President of the United States. That conversation took place on November 19, 1963, just three days before the assassination of President Kennedy and was recorded that evening in her diary and reads as follows:

As Mr. Kennedy sat in the rocker in my office, his head resting on its back he placed his left leg across his right knee. He rocked slightly as he talked. In a slow pensive voice he said to me, 'You know if I am re-elected in sixty-four, I am going to spend more and more time toward making government service an honorable career. I would like to tailor the executive and legislative branches of government so that they can keep up with the tremendous strides and progress being made in other fields.' 'I am going to advocate changing some of the outmoded rules and regulations in the Congress, such as the seniority rule. To do this I will need as a running mate in sixty-four a man who believes as I do.' Mrs. Lincoln went on to write "I was fascinated by this conversation and wrote it down verbatim in my diary. Now I asked, 'Who is your choice as a running-mate?' 'He looked straight ahead, and without hesitating he replied, 'at this time I am thinking about Governor Terry Sanford of North Carolina. But it will not be Lyndon.'[387]

In 2003, researcher Barr McClellan published the book Blood, Money & Power.[388] McClellan claims that Johnson, motivated by the fear of being dropped from the Kennedy ticket in 1964 and the need to cover up various scandals, masterminded Kennedy's assassination with the help of his friend, Austin attorney Edward A. Clark. The book suggests that a smudged partial fingerprint from the sniper's nest likely belonged to Johnson's associate Malcolm "Mac" Wallace, and that Mac Wallace was, therefore, on the sixth floor of the Depository at the time of the shooting. The book further claims that the killing of Kennedy was paid for by oil magnates, including Clint Murchison and H. L. Hunt. McClellan states that the assassination of Kennedy allowed the oil depletion allowance to be kept at 27.5 percent. It remained unchanged during the Johnson presidency. According to McClellan, this resulted in a saving of over $100 million to the American oil industry. McClellan's book subsequently became the subject of an episode of Nigel Turner's ongoing documentary television series, The Men Who Killed Kennedy. The episode, "The Guilty Men", drew angry condemnation from the Johnson family, Johnson's former aides, and former Presidents Gerald Ford (who was a member of the Warren Commission[389]) and Jimmy Carter following its airing on The History Channel. The History Channel assembled a committee of historians who concluded the accusations in the documentary were without merit, and The History Channel apologized to the Johnson family and agreed not to air the series in the future.[390]

Madeleine Brown, who alleged she was the mistress of Johnson, also implicated him in a conspiracy to kill Kennedy. In 1997, Brown said that Johnson, along with H. L. Hunt, had begun planning Kennedy's demise as early as 1960. Brown claimed that by its fruition in 1963, the conspiracy involved dozens of persons, including the leadership of the FBI and the Mafia, as well as prominent politicians and journalists.[391] In the documentary The Men Who Killed Kennedy, Madeleine Brown and May Newman (an employee of Texas oilman Clint Murchison) both placed FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover at a social gathering at Murchison's mansion the night before the assassination.[392] Also in attendance, according to Brown, were John McCloy, Richard Nixon, George Brown, R. L. Thornton, and H. L. Hunt.[393] Madeleine Brown claimed that Johnson arrived at the gathering late in the evening and, in a "grating whisper", told her that the "... Kennedys will never embarrass me again—that's no threat—that's a promise."[393][394][395] In addition, Brown said that on New Year's Eve 1963, she met Johnson at the Driskill Hotel in Austin, Texas and that he confirmed the conspiracy to kill Kennedy, insisting that "the fat cats of Texas and [U.S.] intelligence" had been responsible.[392] Brown reiterated her allegations against Johnson in the 2006 documentary Evidence of Revision. In the same documentary, several other Johnson associates also voiced their suspicions of Johnson.

Dr. Charles Crenshaw authored the 1992 book JFK: Conspiracy of Silence, along with conspiracy theorists Jens Hansen and J. Gary Shaw. Crenshaw was a third-year surgical resident on the trauma team at Parkland Hospital that attended to President Kennedy. He also treated Oswald after he was shot by Jack Ruby.[396] While attending to Oswald, Crenshaw said that he answered a telephone call from Lyndon Johnson. Crenshaw said that Johnson inquired about Oswald's status, and that Johnson demanded a "death-bed confession from the accused assassin [Oswald]".[396] Crenshaw said that he relayed Johnson's message to Dr. Shires, but that Oswald was in no condition to give any statement.[392][397] Critics of Crenshaw's allegation state that Johnson was in his limousine at the moment the call would have been made, that no one in his car corroborated that the call was made, and that there is no record of such a call being routed through the White House switchboard.[398][399]

Former CIA agent and Watergate figure E. Howard Hunt accused Johnson (along with several CIA agents whom he named) of complicity in the assassination in his posthumously released autobiography American Spy: My Secret History in the CIA, Watergate, and Beyond.[400] Referencing that section of the book, Tim Weiner of The New York Times and Joseph C. Goulden of The Washington Times called into question the sincerity of the charges, and William F. Buckley, Jr., who wrote the foreword, said material "was clearly ghostwritten".[401][402][403] Shortly afterwards, an audio-taped "deathbed confession" in which Hunt claimed knowledge of a conspiracy was released by his sons;[210] the authenticity of the confession was also met with some skepticism.[206][211][212]

In 1984, convicted swindler Billie Sol Estes made statements to a Grand Jury in Texas indicating that he had "inside knowledge" that implicated Johnson in the death of Kennedy and others.[404][405]

Historian Michael L. Kurtz wrote that there is no evidence suggesting that Johnson ordered the assassination of Kennedy.[406] According to Kurtz, Johnson believed Fidel Castro was responsible for the assassination and that Johnson covered up the truth because he feared the possibility that retaliatory measures against Cuba might escalate to nuclear war with the Soviet Union.[406] In 2012, biographer Robert Caro published his fourth volume on Johnson's career, The Passage of Power, which chronicles Johnson's communications and actions as Vice President, and describes the events leading up to the assassination.[407] Caro wrote that "nothing that I have found in my research" points to involvement by Johnson.[408]

George H.W. Bush conspiracy

On November 29, 1963, exactly one week after the assassination, an employee of the FBI wrote in a memo that "Mr. George Bush of the Central Intelligence Agency" was given a briefing on the reaction to the assassination by Cuban exiles living in Miami. Some have alleged that the "George Bush" in this memo is future president George H. W. Bush, who was appointed head of the CIA by president Gerald Ford in 1976, 13 years after the assassination. During Bush's presidential campaign in 1988, the memo resurfaced, prompting the CIA to claim that the memo was referring to an employee named George Williams Bush.[409] However, George Williams Bush disputed this suggestion, declaring under oath that "I am not the George Bush of the Central Intelligence Agency referred to in the memorandum." On the website JFK Facts, author Jefferson Morley writes that any communication by George H.W. Bush with the FBI or CIA in November 1963 does not necessarily demonstrate culpability in the assassination; furthermore, it is unclear whether Bush had any affiliation with the CIA prior to his appointment to head the agency in 1976.[410]

Bush biographer Kitty Kelly alleges that Bush was unable to remember his whereabouts on the day of Kennedy's assassination, despite the fact that this information is known. The day of the assassination, Bush flew to Tyler, Texas, to make an appearance ahead of his upcoming campaign for the U.S. Senate in 1964, and spoke to the FBI about a local who had threatened Kennedy. The previous day, Bush had been in Dallas to speak at an oil industry meeting. Morley has suggested the possibility that Bush's report to the FBI was a cover story, but cautioned that "speculation, however plausible, isn't evidence," and that Kelly is "not the most reliable of sources." [410]

Supporters of the Bush theory have frequently presented photographic evidence of a man resembling Bush in Dealey Plaza at the time of the assassination. However, Morley argues this evidence is weak, as no comparative measurements of the two men's facial features has been made. Bush was already an announced Senate candidate for several months by the time of the assassination and thus had received much press attention, and no eyewitnesses have publicly recalled seeing Bush at the scene, though his opponent, incumbent Senator Ralph Yarborough, passed by in the presidential motorcade.[410]

In September 1976, George de Mohrenschildt, a petroleum geologist and a friend of both Bush and Oswald,[411][412][413][414] wrote a letter to Bush, then director of the CIA, asking for his assistance.[415][416] According to Morley, Mohrenschildt was being pressured by congressional investigators to testify on the assassination, causing him to write the letter in distress. Bush acknowledged that he knew Mohrenschildt but failed to respond to the letter, and Mohrenschildt committed suicide six months later.[417][418] Morley argues that the letter's existence does not demonstrate guilt for either man, but merely that Bush was uninterested in questioning the CIA's account of the assassination.[410]

Cuban government conspiracy

In its report, the Warren Commission stated that it had investigated "dozens of allegations of a conspiratorial contact between Oswald and agents of the Cuban Government" and had found no evidence of Cuban involvement in the assassination of President Kennedy.[419] The House Select Committee on Assassinations also wrote: "The committee believes, on the basis of the evidence available to it, that the Cuban Government was not involved in the assassination of President Kennedy".[314] However, some conspiracy theorists continue to allege that Fidel Castro ordered the assassination of Kennedy in retaliation for the CIA's previous attempts to assassinate him.[365]

In the early 1960s, Clare Boothe Luce, wife of Time-Life publisher Henry Luce, was one of a number of prominent Americans who sponsored anti-Castro groups. This support included funding exiles in commando speedboat raids against Cuba. In 1975, Clare Luce said that on the night of the assassination, she received a call from a member of a commando group she had sponsored. According to Luce, the caller's name was "something like" Julio Fernandez and he claimed he was calling her from New Orleans.[420][421]

According to Luce, Fernandez told her that Oswald had approached his group with an offer to help assassinate Castro. Fernandez further claimed that he and his associates eventually found out that Oswald was a communist and supporter of Castro. He said that with this new-found knowledge, his group kept a close watch on Oswald until Oswald suddenly came into money and went to Mexico City and then Dallas.[422] Finally, according to Luce, Fernandez told her, "There is a Cuban Communist assassination team at large and Oswald was their hired gun."[423]

Luce said that she told the caller to give his information to the FBI. Subsequently, Luce would reveal the details of the incident to both the Church Committee and the HSCA. Both committees investigated the incident, but were unable to uncover any evidence to corroborate the allegations.[424]

In May 1967, CIA Director Richard Helms told President Lyndon Johnson that the CIA had tried to assassinate Castro. Helms further stated that the CIA had employed members of the Mafia in this effort, and "... that CIA plots to assassinate Fidel Castro dated back to August of 1960—to the Eisenhower Administration." Helms also said that the plots against Castro continued into the Kennedy Administration and that Attorney General Robert Kennedy had known about both the plots and the Mafia's involvement.[425]

On separate occasions, Johnson told two prominent television newsmen that he believed that JFK's assassination had been organized by Castro as retaliation for the CIA's efforts to kill Castro. In October 1968, Johnson told veteran newsman Howard K. Smith of ABC that "Kennedy was trying to get to Castro, but Castro got to him first." In September 1969, in an interview with Walter Cronkite of CBS, Johnson said in regard to the assassination, "[I could not] honestly say that I've ever been completely relieved of the fact that there might have been international connections", and referenced unnamed "others". Finally, in 1971, Johnson told his former speechwriter Leo Janos of Time magazine that he "never believed that Oswald acted alone".[425]

In 1977, Castro was interviewed by newsman Bill Moyers. Castro denied any involvement in Kennedy's death, saying:

It would have been absolute insanity by Cuba. ... It would have been a provocation. Needless to say, it would have been to run the risk that our country would have been destroyed by the United States. Nobody who's not insane could have thought about [killing Kennedy in retaliation].[367][426]

Soviet government conspiracy

The Warren Commission reported that they found no evidence that the Soviet Union was involved in the assassination of President Kennedy.[23] The House Select Committee on Assassinations also wrote: "The committee believes, on the basis of the evidence available to it, that the Soviet Government was not involved in the assassination of President Kennedy".[314]

According to some conspiracy theorists, the Soviet Union, with Nikita Khrushchev motivated by having to back down during the Cuban Missile Crisis, was responsible for the assassination.[365]

According to a 1966 FBI document, Colonel Boris Ivanov—chief of the KGB Residency in New York City at the time of the assassination—stated that it was his personal opinion that the assassination had been planned by an organized group, rather than a lone individual. The same document stated, "... officials of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union believed there was some well-organized conspiracy on the part of the 'ultraright' in the United States to effect a 'coup.'"[427]

Much later, the high-ranking Soviet Bloc intelligence defector, Lt. Gen. Ion Mihai Pacepa, said that he had a conversation with Nicolae Ceauşescu who told him about "ten international leaders the Kremlin killed or tried to kill", including Kennedy. He claimed that "among the leaders of Moscow's satellite intelligence services there was unanimous agreement that the KGB had been involved in the assassination of President Kennedy."[428] Pacepa later released a book, Programmed to Kill: Lee Harvey Oswald, the Soviet KGB, and the Kennedy Assassination, in 2007. Similar views on the JFK assassination were expressed by Robert Holmes, former First Secretary at the British Embassy in Moscow, in his 2012 book Spy Like No Other.

Decoy hearse and wound alteration

David Lifton presented a scenario in which conspirators on Air Force One removed Kennedy's body from its original bronze casket and placed it in a shipping casket, while en route from Dallas to Washington. Once the presidential plane arrived at Andrews Air Force Base, the shipping casket with the President's body in it was surreptitiously taken by helicopter from the side of the plane that was out of the television camera's view. Kennedy's body was then taken to an unknown location—most likely Walter Reed Army Medical Center[429]—to surgically alter the body to make it appear that he was shot only from the rear.[430][431][432][433]

Part of Lifton's theory comes from a House Select Committee on Assassinations report of an interview of Lt. Richard Lipsey on January 18, 1978, by committee staff members Donald Purdy and Mark Flanagan. According to the report, Lt. Richard Lipsey said that he and General Wehle had met President Kennedy's body at Andrews Air Force Base. Lipsey "... placed [the casket] in a hearse to be transported to Bethesda Naval Hospital. Lipsey mentioned that he and Wehle then flew by helicopter to Bethesda and took [the body of] JFK into the back of Bethesda." Lipsey said that "a decoy hearse had been driven to the front [of Bethesda]".[434] With Lipsey's mention of a "decoy hearse" at Bethesda, Lifton theorized that the casket removed by Lipsey from Air Force One—from the side of the plane exposed to television—was probably also a decoy and was likely empty.[435][436]

Laboratory technologist Paul O'Connor was one of the major witnesses supporting another part of David Lifton's theory that somewhere between Parkland and Bethesda the President's body was made to appear as if it had been shot only from the rear. O'Connor said that President Kennedy's body arrived at Bethesda inside a body bag in "a cheap, shipping-type of casket", which differed from the description of the ornamental bronze casket and sheet that the body had been wrapped in at Parkland Hospital.[437] O'Connor said that the brain had already been removed by the time it got to Bethesda,[437] and that there were "just little pieces" of brain matter left inside the skull.[438]

Researcher David Wrone dismissed the theory that Kennedy's body was surreptitiously removed from the presidential plane, stating that as is done with all cargo on airplanes for safety precautions, the coffin and lid were held by steel wrapping cables to prevent shifting during takeoff and landing and in case of air disturbances in flight.[432] According to Wrone, the side of the plane away from the television camera "was bathed in klieg lights, and thousands of persons watched along the fence that bent backward along that side, providing, in effect, a well-lit and very public stage for any would-be body snatchers".[432]

Federal Reserve conspiracy

Jim Marrs, in his book Crossfire, presented the theory that Kennedy was trying to rein in the power of the Federal Reserve, and that forces opposed to such action might have played at least some part in the assassination.[439][440][441] According to Marrs, the issuance of Executive Order 11110 was an effort by Kennedy to transfer power from the Federal Reserve to the United States Department of the Treasury by replacing Federal Reserve Notes with silver certificates.[440] Actor and author Richard Belzer named the responsible parties in this theory as American "billionaires, power brokers, and bankers ... working in tandem with the CIA and other sympathetic agents of the government".[442]

A 2010 article in Research magazine discussing various controversies surrounding the Federal Reserve stated that "the wildest accusation against the Fed is that it was involved in Kennedy's assassination."[440] Critics of the theory note that Kennedy called for and signed legislation phasing out Silver Certificates in favor of Federal Reserve Notes, thereby enhancing the power of the Federal Reserve; and that Executive Order 11110 was a technicality that only delegated existing presidential powers to the Secretary of the Treasury for administrative convenience during a period of transition.[440][441]

Israeli government conspiracy

Immediately following Kennedy's death, speculation that he was assassinated by a "Zionist conspiracy" was prevalent in much of the Muslim world.[443] Among these views were that Zionists were motivated to kill Kennedy due to his opposition to an Israeli nuclear program, that Lyndon B. Johnson received orders from Zionists to have Kennedy killed, and that the assassin was a Zionist agent.[443]

According to Michael Collins Piper in Final Judgment: The Missing Link in the JFK Assassination Controversy, Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion orchestrated the assassination after learning that Kennedy planned to keep Israel from obtaining nuclear weapons.[444] Piper said that the assassination "was a joint enterprise conducted on the highest levels of the American CIA, in collaboration with organized crime—and most specifically, with direct and profound involvement by the Israeli intelligence service, the Mossad."[445] The theory also alleges involvement of Meyer Lansky and the Anti-Defamation League.[444] In 2004, Mordechai Vanunu stated that the assassination was Israel's response to "pressure [Kennedy] exerted on ... Ben-Gurion, to shed light on Dimona's nuclear reactor in Israel".[446] In a speech before the United Nations General Assembly in 2009, Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi also alleged that Kennedy was killed for wanting to investigate Dimona.[447]

Other published theories

Photo showing driver Agent George Hickey shortly after JFK was killed holding the AR-15 rifle that accidental shooting theorists say killed Kennedy.
  • Reasonable Doubt (1985) by Henry Hurt, who writes about his Warren Commission doubts. Hurt pins the plot on professional crook Robert Easterling, along with Texas oilmen and the supposed Ferrie/Shaw alliance. ISBN 0-03-004059-0.
  • Behold a Pale Horse (1991) by William Cooper alleges that Kennedy was shot by the presidential limousine's driver, Secret Service agent William Greer. In the Zapruder film, Greer can be seen turning to his right and looking backwards just before speeding away from Dealey Plaza. This theory has come under severe criticism from others in the research community.[448] ISBN 0-929385-22-5.
  • Former Secret Service agent Abraham Bolden's The Echo from Dealey Plaza (2008) (ISBN 978-0-307-38201-6) and Kevin James Shay's Death of the Rising Sun (2017) (ISBN 978-1-881-36556-3) detail plots that occurred shortly before Kennedy's trip to Dallas in 1963, in Chicago and Florida. Within the Secret Service during those chaotic months, "rumors were flying" about Cuban dissidents and right-wing southerners who were stalking Kennedy for a chance to kill him, Bolden wrote. The security threat in Chicago in early November 1963 involved former Marine Thomas Arthur Vallee, who was arrested after police found an M-1 rifle, handgun, and 3,000 rounds of ammunition in his vehicle. A high-powered rifle was confiscated from another suspected conspirator in Chicago shortly before Kennedy's trip there was canceled, Bolden said. Authorities also cited similar threats in Tampa, Fla., and Miami about a week later.
  • Mark North's Act of Treason: The Role of J. Edgar Hoover in the Assassination of President Kennedy, (1991) implicates the FBI Director. North documents that Hoover was aware of threats against Kennedy by organized crime before 1963, and suggests that he failed to take proper action to prevent the assassination. North also charges Hoover with failure to work adequately to uncover the truth behind Kennedy's murder, ISBN 0-88184-877-8.
  • Mortal Error: The Shot That Killed JFK (1992) by Bonar Menninger (ISBN 0-312-08074-3) alleges that while Oswald did attempt to assassinate JFK and did succeed in wounding him, the shot that struck him in the head was accidentally fired by Secret Service agent George Hickey, who was riding in the Secret Service follow-up car directly behind the presidential limousine. The theory alleges that after the first two shots were fired the motorcade sped up while Hickey was attempting to respond to Oswald's shots and he lost his balance and accidentally pulled the trigger of his AR-15 and shot JFK. Hickey's testimony says otherwise: "At the end of the last report (shot) I reached to the bottom of the car and picked up the AR 15 rifle, cocked and loaded it, and turned to the rear." (italics added).[449] George Hickey sued Menninger in April 1995 for what he had written in Mortal Error. The case was dismissed as its statute of limitations had run out. The theory received public attention in 2013 when it was supported by Colin McLaren's book and documentary titled JFK: The Smoking Gun (ISBN 978-0-7336-3044-6).
  • Who Shot JFK? : A Guide to the Major Conspiracy Theories (1993) by Bob Callahan and Mark Zingarelli explores some of the more obscure theories regarding JFK's murder, such as "The Coca-Cola Theory". According to this theory, suggested by the editor of an organic gardening magazine, Oswald killed JFK due to mental impairment stemming from an addiction to refined sugar, as evidenced by his need for his favorite beverage immediately after the assassination. ISBN 0-671-79494-9.
  • Passport to Assassination (1993) by Oleg M. Nechiporenko, the Soviet consular official (and highly placed KGB officer) who met with Oswald in Mexico City in 1963. He was afforded the unique opportunity to interview Oswald about his goals including his genuine desire for a Cuban visa. His conclusions were: (1) that Oswald killed Kennedy due to extreme feelings of inadequacy versus his wife's professed admiration for JFK, and (2) that the KGB never sought intelligence information from Oswald during his time in the USSR as they did not trust his motivations. ISBN 1-55972-210-X.
  • Norman Mailer's Oswald's Tale: An American Mystery (1995) concludes that Oswald was guilty, but holds that the evidence may point to a second gunman on the grassy knoll, who, purely by coincidence, was attempting to kill JFK at the same time as Oswald. "If there was indeed another shot, it was not necessarily fired by a conspirator of Oswald's. Such a gun could have belonged to another lone killer or to a conspirator working for some other group altogether."[450] ISBN 0-679-42535-7.
  • The Kennedy Mutiny (2002) by Will Fritz (not the same as police captain J. Will Fritz), claims that the assassination plot was orchestrated by General Edwin Walker, and that he framed Oswald for the crime. ISBN 0-9721635-0-6.
  • JFK: The Second Plot (2002) by Matthew Smith explores the strange case of Roscoe White. In 1990, Roscoe's son Ricky made public a claim that his father, who had been a Dallas police officer in 1963, was involved in killing the president. Roscoe's widow Geneva also claimed that before her husband's death in 1971 he left a diary in which he claims he was one of the marksmen who shot the President, and that he also killed Officer J. D. Tippit. ISBN 1-84018-501-5.
  • David Wrone's The Zapruder Film (2003) concludes that the shot that killed JFK came from in front of the limousine, and that JFK's throat and back wounds were caused by an in-and-through shot originating from the grassy knoll. Three shots were fired from three different angles, none of them from Lee Harvey Oswald's window at the Texas School Book Depository. Wrone is a professor of history (emeritus) at the University of Wisconsin–Stevens Point. ISBN 0-7006-1291-2.
  • The Gemstone File: A Memoir (2006), by Stephanie Caruana, posits that Oswald was part of a 28-man assassination team that included three U.S. Mafia hitmen (Jimmy Fratianno, John Roselli, and Eugene Brading). Oswald's role was to shoot John Connally. Bruce Roberts, author of the Gemstone File papers, claimed that the JFK assassination scenario was modeled after a supposed attempted assassination of President F.D. Roosevelt. Roosevelt was riding in an open car with Mayor Anton Cermak of Chicago. Cermak was shot and killed by Giuseppe Zangara. In Dallas, JFK was the real target, and Connally was a secondary target. The JFK assassination is only a small part of the Gemstone File's account. ISBN 1-4120-6137-7.
  • Joseph P. Farrell's LBJ and the Conspiracy to Kill Kennedy (2011) attempts to show multiple interests had reasons to remove President Kennedy: The military, CIA, NASA, anti-Castro factions, Hoover's FBI and others. He concludes that the person that allowed all of these groups to form a "coalescence of interests" was Vice President Lyndon Johnson. ISBN 978-1-935487-18-0
  • In "Allegations of PFC Eugene Dinkin",[451] the Mary Farrell Foundation summarizes and archives documents related to Private First Class Eugene B. Dinkin, a cryptographic code operator stationed in Metz, France, who went AWOL in early November 1963, entered Switzerland using a false ID, and visited the United Nations' press office and declared that officials in the U.S. government were planning to assassinate President Kennedy, adding that "something" might happen to the Commander in Chief in Texas. Dinkin was arrested nine days before Kennedy was killed, placed in psychiatric care (deemed a mad man?), and released shortly thereafter. His allegations eventually made their way to the Warren Commission, but, according to the Ferrell Foundation account, the Commission "took no interest in the matter, and indeed omitted any mention of Dinkin from its purportedly encyclopedic 26 volumes of evidence."[452]
  • Described by the Associated Press as "one of the strangest theories",[453] Hugh McDonald's Appointment in Dallas stated that the Soviet government contracted with a rogue CIA agent named "Saul" to have Kennedy killed.[454] McDonald said he worked for the CIA "on assignment for $100 a day" and met "Saul" at the Agency's headquarters after the Bay of Pigs Invasion.[455] According to McDonald, his CIA mentor told him that "Saul" was the world's best assassin.[456] McDonald stated that after the assassination, he recognized the man's photo in the Warren Commission report and eventually tracked him to a London hotel in 1972.[455][456] McDonald stated that "Saul" assumed he, too, was a CIA agent and confided to him that he shot Kennedy from a building on the other side of the street from the Texas School Book Depository.[453]
  • [Torbitt, William]. (1970) Nomenclature On An Assassination Cabal. The pseudonymous author claimed to be a lawyer with investigative skills working in the South. See The Internet Archive website

Notes

  1. ^ In Bill Newman's voluntary statement to the Sheriff's Department, signed and notarized on November 22, 1963, he wrote that the gunshot "had come from the garden directly behind me, that was on an elevation from where I was as I was right on the curb. I do not recall looking toward the Texas School Book Depository. I looked back in the vacinity [sic] of the garden."[Warren Commission Hearings 1964, Vol. XIX, p. 490]
  2. ^ According to the Warren Commission, after Earlene Roberts saw Oswald standing near the bus stop outside his rooming house, "[he] was next seen about nine-tenths of a mile (1.4 km) away at the southeast corner of 10th Street and Patton Avenue, moments before the Tippit shooting."[251]

References

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  227. ^ Garrison, Jim (1988). On the Trail of the Assassins: My Investigation and Prosecution of the Murder of President Kennedy. Sheridan Square Press. p. 197. ISBN 978-0-941781-02-2. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
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  229. ^ Thomas, Kenn, ed. (2000). "The Tippit Connection". Cyberculture Counterconspiracy: A Steamshovel Web Reader. Vol. 2. Escondido, California: The Book Tree. p. 63. ISBN 978-1-58509-126-3. {{cite book}}: External link in |chapterurl= (help); Unknown parameter |chapterurl= ignored (|chapter-url= suggested) (help)CS1 maint: ref duplicates default (link)
  230. ^ Summers 2013, p. 108. sfn error: multiple targets (4×): CITEREFSummers2013 (help)
  231. ^ Brian McKenna (April 19, 1986). "JFK: A distinguished American journalist has joined the unofficial sleuths tracking the killers and those who covered up, from Montreal to Mexico City and back again". The Gazette. Montreal. p. B7. Retrieved April 14, 2012.
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  234. ^ Summers 2013, pp. 104–105. sfn error: multiple targets (4×): CITEREFSummers2013 (help)
  235. ^ Testimony of Domingo Benavides, Warren Commission Hearings, vol. 6, pp. 451–52.
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  237. ^ Testimony of Domingo Benavides, Warren Commission Hearings, vol. 6, p. 452.
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  243. ^ Testimony of Gerald Lynn Hill, Warren Commission Hearings, vol. 7, p. 49.
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  249. ^ Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Chapter 6 1964, p. 254.
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  264. ^ Turner, Nigel. The Men Who Killed Kennedy, Part 4, "The Patsy", 1991.
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  281. ^ Commission Exhibit No. 1931, Warren Commission Hearings, vol. 23, p. 726.
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  294. ^ Summers, Anthony. Not in Your Lifetime, (New York: Open Road, 2013), pp. 247-. ISBN 978-1-4804-3548-3
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  298. ^ Marrs, Jim. Crossfire: The Plot that Killed Kennedy, (New York: Carroll & Graf, 1989), pp. 100, 236. ISBN 0-88184-648-1
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  300. ^ Summers, Anthony. Not in Your Lifetime, (New York: Marlowe & Company, 1998), p. 230. ISBN 1-56924-739-0
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  307. ^ Garrison, Jim. On The Trail of the Assassins, (New York: Sheridan Square Press, 1988), pp. 26–27, 62, 70, 106–110, 250, 278, 289. ISBN 0-941781-02-X
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  309. ^ Baker, Judyth. Me and Lee, (Walterville: Trine Day LLC, 2010), p. 150. ISBN 978-0-9799886-7-7
  310. ^ JudythVaryBaker.com
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  312. ^ A partial list of those who consider Vary Baker's claims to be a hoax includes: Attorney and author Vincent Bugliosi, researcher Mary Ferrell, researcher Barb Junkkarinen, Professor John McAdams of Marquette University and David A. Reitzes of jfk-online.com.
  313. ^ Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Appendix 12 1964, pp. 659–660.
  314. ^ a b c d e f "I.C. The committee believes, on the basis of the evidence available to it, that President John F. Kennedy was probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy. The committee was unable to identify the other gunmen or the extent of the conspiracy". Report of the Select Committee on Assassinations of the U.S. House of Representatives. Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office. 1979. {{cite book}}: External link in |chapterurl= (help); Unknown parameter |chapterurl= ignored (|chapter-url= suggested) (help)
  315. ^ Gaeton Fonzi (2008). The Last Investigation. The Mary Ferrell Foundation. ISBN 0-9801213-5-3.
  316. ^ Newman, John M. (2008). Oswald and the CIA: The Documented Truth About the Unknown Relationship Between the U.S. Government and the Alleged Killer of JFK. New York: Skyhorse Publishing. ISBN 1-60239-253-6. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
  317. ^ "LBJ Reportedly Suspected CIA Link in JFK's Death". The Washington Post. Washington, D.C. December 13, 1977. p. A10.
  318. ^ Kantor, Seth (November 16, 1988). "Connally didn't believe Warren Commission verdict". Times-News. Vol. 113, no. 322. Henderson, North Carolina. Cox News Service. p. 23. Retrieved January 3, 2015.
  319. ^ DeLoach to Tolson, FBI document 62-1090060-5075, April 4, 1967, p. 3.
  320. ^ Lyndon Convinced of JFK Death Plot, FBI Files Show, Chicago Tribune, January 19, 1978, section 1, page 2.
  321. ^ Marrs 1989, p. 298.
  322. ^ The Washington Post, December 13, 1977.
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  324. ^ Testimony of Courtney Evans and Cartha DeLoach, Church Committee Reports, vol. 6, Federal Bureau of Investigation, p. 182.
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  326. ^ Fresia, Gerald John (1988). Toward an American Revolution: Exposing the Constitution and Other Illusions. Brookline, Massachusetts: South End Press. ISBN 0-89608-297-0. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
  327. ^ "Ike's Warning Of Military Expansion, 50 Years Later". Morning Edition. NPR. January 17, 2011. {{cite news}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |1= (help)
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  341. ^ To Howard Donohue, a man who epitomised the very reason we demand dedicated and precise forensic science at the forefront of unravelling complex crime. Despite his arduous 25-year study he was snubbed and ultimately silenced by official suits and lawsuits. His ballistic expertise, his astute opinions and his skill live on through my story. McLaren, Colin (October 23, 2013). JFK: The Smoking Gun (Kindle Locations 18-20). Hachette Australia. Kindle Edition.
  342. ^ I carried the book in my cabin luggage when I winged my way homeward. By the time I arrived in Australia I had read it again and was charged with a desire to undertake a cold-case forensic study into the killing of the 35th President of the United States. McLaren, Colin (October 23, 2013). JFK: The Smoking Gun (Kindle Locations 225-227). Hachette Australia. Kindle Edition.
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