John F. Kennedy assassination conspiracy theories

President Kennedy, Jackie Kennedy, Nellie Connally and Governor John Connally, shortly before the assassination.

There has long been suspicion of a government cover-up of information about the assassination of John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963. There are also numerous conspiracy theories regarding the assassination that arose soon after his death and continue to be promoted today. Most put forth a criminal conspiracy involving parties as varied as the CIA, the KGB, the American Mafia, the Israeli government, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, sitting Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson, Cuban president Fidel Castro, anti-Castro Cuban exile groups, the Federal Reserve, or some combination of those entities.

Background

Handbill circulated on November 21, 1963, one day before the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

President John F. Kennedy was assassinated as he traveled in an open-top car in a motorcade in Dallas, Texas at 12:30 PM, November 22, 1963; Texas Governor John Connally was also injured. Within two hours, Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested for the murder of Dallas policeman J.D. Tippit and arraigned that evening. At 1:35 AM Saturday, Oswald was arraigned for murdering the President. At 11:21 AM, Sunday, November 24, 1963, nightclub owner Jack Ruby shot and killed Oswald as he was being transferred to the county jail.

Immediately after the shooting, little information was available and many people suspected that the assassination was part of a larger plot. Ruby's shooting of Oswald compounded initial suspicions. Mark Lane has been described as writing "the first literary shot" among conspiracy theorists with his article in the December 19, 1963 edition of the National Guardian, "Defense Brief for Oswald". Published in May 1964, Thomas Buchanan's Who Killed Kennedy? has been credited as the first book alleging a conspiracy.

In 1964, the Warren Commission concluded that there was no persuasive evidence that Oswald was involved in a conspiracy to assassinate the President, and stated their belief that he acted alone. Critics, even before the publication of the official government conclusions, suggested a conspiracy was behind the assassination. Though the public initially accepted the Warren Commission's conclusions, by 1966 the tide had turned as authors such as Lane with his best-selling book Rush to Judgment, and prominent publications such as the New York Review of Books and Life openly disputed the findings of the commission.

In 1979, the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) agreed with the Warren Commission that Oswald assassinated Kennedy but found its report and the original FBI investigation to be seriously flawed. The HSCA also concluded that at least four shots were fired, that with "high probability" two gunmen fired at the President, and a conspiracy was probable. The HSCA also stated that "the Warren Commission failed to investigate adequately the possibility of a conspiracy to assassinate the President."

The Ramsey Clark Panel and the Rockefeller Commission both supported the Warren Commission's conclusions, while New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison unsuccessfully prosecuted Clay Shaw for conspiring to assassinate Kennedy.

Public opinion

The number of books written about the assassination has been estimated to be in the range of one thousand to two thousand. According to James D. Perry: "The Kennedy assassination become known as the 'mother of all conspiracy theories.'" Perry has written that the great amount of controversy surrounding the event has led to bitter disputes between those who support the conclusion of the Warren Commission and those who reject it or are critical of the official explanation, which each side leveling accusations of "naivete, cynicism, and selective interpretation of the evidence" toward the other.

Public opinion polls taken after the assassination have indicated that a large number of Americans believe there was a conspiracy to kill President Kennedy. These same polls also show that there is no agreement on who else may have been involved. A 2003 Gallup poll reported that 75% of Americans do not believe that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. That same year an ABC News poll found that 70% of respondents suspected that the assassination involved more than one person. A 2004 Fox News poll found that 66% of Americans thought there had been a conspiracy while 74% thought there had been a cover-up.

Possible evidence of a cover-up

Numerous researchers, including Mark Lane, Henry Hurt, Michael L. Kurtz, Gerald D. McKnight, Anthony Summers, and others 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.

James H. Fetzer states that there are 16 problems with the Warren Commission's version of events, which he claims prove decisively that its narrative is impossible, and therefore is likely a cover-up. He claims that evidence released by the Assassination Records Review Board 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 which facilitated the assassination, what they characterize as suspiciously lax Secret Service and local law enforcement security, and statements by people who claim that they had knowledge of, or participated in, a conspiracy to kill the President.

Allegations of witness tampering, intimidation, and foul play

Witness intimidation

Richard Buyer wrote that over 500 witnesses were interviewed by the Warren Commission and many of those whose statements pointed to a conspiracy were either ignored or intimidated. Bill Sloan wrote in his 1992 biography of Jean Hill, JFK: The Last Dissenting Witness, that Hill said Arlen Specter, then an assistant counsel for the Warren Commission, attempted to humiliate, discredit, and intimidate her into changing her story. According to Sloan, Hill also indicated she had been abused by Secret Service agents, harassed by the FBI, and was the recipient of death threats.

In his 1989 book, Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy, Jim Marrs gives accounts of several people who claimed they were intimidated by FBI agents, or anonymous individuals, into altering or suppressing what they knew about the assassination, including Richard Carr, Acquilla Clemmons, Sandy Speaker, and A. J. Millican. Marrs also reports on Texas School Book Depository employee, Joe Molina, who "...was intimidated by authorities and lost his job soon after the assassination," and on another witness, Ed Hoffman, who was warned by an FBI agent that he "might get killed" if he revealed what he had observed in Dealey Plaza on the day of the assassination.

Witness deaths

Some assassination researchers, including Penn Jones, Jr., Jim Marrs, and Ralph Schuster, have reported on what they have characterized as a suspiciously large number of deaths of people connected with the investigation of the assassination. They also point out that there seems to be a pattern of deaths around the times of various government investigations, such as during and just after the Warren Commission investigation, as New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison was launching his own investigation, while the Senate Intelligence Committee was looking into assassinations by U.S. intelligence agencies in the 1970s, and when the House Select Committee on Assassinations was gearing up its investigations. Marrs points out that "these deaths certainly would have been convenient for anyone not wishing the truth of the JFK assassination to become public."

According to Jerome Kroth, Mafia figures Sam Giancana, John Roselli, Carlos Prio, Jimmy Hoffa, Charles Nicoletti, Leo Moceri, Richard Cain, Salvatore Granello, and Dave Yaras were murdered to prevent them from revealing their knowledge. According to 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.

Rose Cherami was a 41-year-old drug addict and prostitute who was picked up on Highway 190 near Eunice, Louisiana, on November 20, 1963—two days before the Kennedy assassination—by Lt. Francis Frugé of the Louisiana State Police. Cherami told Frugé that John F. Kennedy would shortly be killed. Fruge did not believe her at first, but after some time of adamant speaking by Cherami, he came around. During her confinement, and prior to the time Kennedy was shot in Dallas, Cherami supposedly spoke of the impending assassination. After Jack Ruby shot Lee Harvey Oswald, Cherami reportedly claimed that she had worked for Ruby as a stripper, that she knew both Ruby and Oswald, and that the two men were "bed partners" who "had been shacking up for years." According to Lt. Frugé, Cherami declined to repeat her story to the FBI. She was killed when struck by a car on September 4, 1965, apparently while hitchhiking, near Gladewater, Texas. Among some conspiracy theorists, the story has been considered quite credible since 1979, when an account by investigator Patricia Orr was published by the House Select Committee reviewing the JFK assassination (HSCA). This account was based primarily on the HSCA depositions of Francis Frugé and Victor Weiss, a doctor at the Jackson hospital.

Allegations of evidence suppression, tampering, and fabrication

According to Bugliosi, allegations that the evidence against Oswald was planted, forged, or tampered with is a main argument among those who believe a conspiracy took place.

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 testimony of seven witnesses who saw gunsmoke in the area of the stockade fence in the grassy knoll as well as an eighth who said he could smell it. In 1989, Jim Marrs wrote that the Commission failed to ask for the testimony of witnesses on the triple overpass whose statements pointed to a shooter on the grassy knoll

Confiscated film and photographs

Other researchers report that witnesses who captured the assassination in photographs or on film had their cameras and/or film confiscated by police or other authorities. Jim Marrs gives the account of Gordon Arnold who said that his film of the motorcade was taken by two policeman shortly after the assassination. Another witness, Beverly Oliver, also filmed the motorcade and said that she was approached 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 would return it to her later, but they never returned the film.

Withheld documents

Buyer has asserted that documents pertaining to the assassination were withheld. Many government records relating to the assassination, including some from the Warren Commission investigation, the House Select Committee on Assassinations investigation and the Church Committee investigation, were kept secret from the public. These secret documents included the president's autopsy records. Some were not scheduled to be released until 2029; however, many of these documents were released during the mid to late 1990s by the Assassination Records Review Board under the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992. Some of the material released contains redacted sections. Tax return information, which would identify employers and sources of income, has not been released.

The existence of large numbers of secret documents related to the assassination, and 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." According to the Assassination Records Review Board, "All Warren Commission records, except those records that contain tax return information, are (now) available to the public with only minor redactions." In response to a Freedom of Information Act request filed by Jefferson Morley, the CIA admitted that it has approximately 1,100 JFK assassination-related documents, about 2,000 pages in total, that have not been released for reasons of national security.

Tampering of evidence

Among the items of physical evidence alleged by various researches to have been tampered with are the "magic bullet", various bullet cartridges and fragments, the limousine's windshield, the paper bag in which Oswald was purported to have carried the rifle, the "backyard" photos, the Zapruder film, the photographs and radiographs obtained at Kennedy's autopsy, and Kennedy's body itself.

The "backyard" photos

Among the evidence against Oswald are the photographs of Oswald posing in his backyard with a Carcano rifle — the presumed assassination weapon. Some assassination researchers, including Robert Groden, assert that these photos have been altered. However, the Warren Commission concluded that the photographs of Oswald are genuine.

The Zapruder film

David Lifton reported that the Zapruder film was in the possession of the CIA's National Photographic Interpretation Center, the night of the assassination. Jack White, researcher and photographic consultant to the House Select Committee on Assassinations, claims that there are anomalies in the Zapruder film, including an "unnatural jerkiness of movement or change of focus ... in certain frame sequences." Harrison Livingstone has called the Zapruder film "the biggest hoax of the twentieth century".

Fabrication of evidence

Murder weapon

The Warren Commission found that the shots which killed Kennedy and wounded Connally were fired from the "Mannlicher-Carcano 6.5-millimeter Italian rifle" owned by Oswald. 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". Deputy Sheriff Roger Craig claimed that he saw "7.65 Mauser" stamped on the barrel of the weapon.

Dallas District Attorney Henry Wade told the press that the weapon found in the School Book Depository was a 7.65 Mauser, and this was reported by the news media. But investigators later identified the rifle as a 6.5 Italian Mannlicher Carcano. According to Mark Lane:

"The strongest element in the case against Lee Harvey Oswald was the Warren Commission's conclusion that his rifle had been found on the 6th floor of the Book Depository building. Yet Oswald never owned a 7.65 Mauser. When the FBI later reported that Oswald had purchased only a 6.5 Italian Mannlicher-Carcano, the weapon at police headquarters in Dallas miraculously changed its size, its make and its nationality. The Warren Commission concluded that a 6.5 Mannlicher-Carcano, not a 7.65 German Mauser, had been discovered by the Dallas deputies."

In his 2009 book Matrix for Assassination: The JFK Conspiracy, Richard Gilbride suggested that both weapons were involved and that Dallas Police Captain John Will Fritz and Lieutenant J. Carl Day may have been conspirators.

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

Bullets and cartridges

The Warren Commission, through eyewitnesses, determined that three bullets were fired as well: one of the three bullets missed the vehicle entirely; one hit Kennedy and passed through Governor John Connally, and the third bullet was the fatal shot to the President. The weight of the bullet fragments taken from Connally and those remaining in his body, some claim, totaled more than could have been missing from the bullet found on Connally's stretcher, dubbed by critics of the Commission the "magic bullet". However, witness testimony seems to indicate that only tiny fragments, of less total mass than was missing from the bullet, were left in Connally.

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." Some assassination researchers, including Anthony Summers, dispute the Commission's findings and point to evidence that brings into question the number of shots fired, the origination of those shots, or the ability of Oswald to accurately fire three shots in a short amount of time, suggesting the involvement of multiple gunmen.

Governor Connally, seated in the limousine's jump seat directly in front of Kennedy testified before the Warren Commission that "...the thought immediately passed through my mind that there were either two or three people involved, or more, in this — or someone was shooting with an automatic rifle."

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".

Mary Moorman said in her TV interview immediately after the assassination that there were three or four shots close together, that shots were still being fired after she took her photo and that she was "in the line of fire". In 1967, Josiah Thompson concluded that four shorts were fired in Dealey Plaza, with one wounding Connally and three hitting Kennedy.

Origin of the shots

The wooden fence on the grassy knoll.

The Warren Commission cited that 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 Secret Service, pointed to the the sixth-floor window at the southeast corner of the Texas School Book Depository as the origination of the shots. Critics of the Warren Commission have pointed to other locations including the "grassy knoll" and the Dal-Tex building. In his 1992 book Mortal Error: The Shot That Killed JFK, Bonar Menninger wrote that the fatal shot to Kennedy came from a secret service agent in the follow-up car. Josiah Thompson concluded that the shots fired on the motorcade came from three locations: the Texas School Book Depository, the area of the grassy knoll, and the Dal-Tex Building.

Testimony of eyewitnesses

According to some assassination researchers, the grassy knoll was identified by the majority of witness as the area from where shots were fired. In March 1965, Harold Feldman wrote that there were 121 witnesses to the assassination with 51 indicating that the shots that killed Kennedy came from the area of the grassy knoll. In 1967, Josiah Thompson examined the statements of 64 witnesses and found that 33 of them thought the shots emanated from that same location.

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."Jim Marrs also wrote that the weight of evidence suggested shots came from both the grassy knoll and the Texas School Book Depository.

Lee Bowers was operating a railroad interlocking tower, overlooking the parking lot just north of the grassy knoll and west of the Texas School Book Depository. He reported that he saw two strange men behind the picket fence at the top of the grassy knoll before the shooting. When interviewed by Mark Lane, Bowers noted that he saw something that attracted his attention, either a flash of light, or maybe smoke, from the knoll, leading him to believe "something out of the ordinary" had occurred there. Bowers told Lane he heard three shots, the last two in quick succession. Bowers was of the opinion that they could not have come from the same rifle.

William and Gayle Newman were standing at the curb on the north side of Elm St. with their two children. Mr. Newman said that a shot were fired from behind him ( on the knoll ) and that it hit Kennedy in the head.

J. C. Price was the superintendent of the Terminal Annex Building located across Dealey Plaza from the Texas School Book Depository. On November 22, 1963, he viewed the Presidential motorcade from the roof of his building. In his interview with Mark Lane, Mr. Price says that he believed the shots to come from the area behind the picket fence where the fence joined the overpass and claims to have seen a gunman behind the fence running toward the rear of the TSBD.

Numerous witnesses reported hearing gunfire coming from the Dal-Tex Building, which is located across the street from the Texas School Book Depository and in alignment with Elm Street in Dealey Plaza. Several conspiracy theories posit that at least one shooter was located in the Dal-Tex Building due to witness accounts and other coincidences including the apprehension of suspicious individuals like the "man who was made of shadows" and ex-con Jim Braden inside the building, as well as the trajectory of the bullet which hit the curb on the south end of Dealey Plaza injuring bystander James Tague.

Physical evidence

According to L. Fletcher Prouty, the position of James Tague when he was injured by a 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.

Some assassination researchers state FBI photographs of the limousine show a bullet hole in its windshield above the rear-view mirror, evidence of a shot fired from the front. (The Warren Commission identified it as a crack caused by a fragment from a bullet fired by Oswald.)

Film and photographic evidence

Film and photographic evidence of the assassination leads viewers to different conclusions. In the Zapruder film, the president's head and upper torso appear to move backwards after the last, fatal shot, an indication to some that a bullet was fired from the front. However, close inspection of frames 312 and 313 clearly show Kennedy's head moving forward by as much as 2.3 inches. However, some researchers say it was the slowing down of the car from William Greer which created the sudden jolt forward and then a frontal shot to the head causing it to violently move backwards and to the left.

Acoustical evidence

A key component of the House Select Committee on Assassinations's investigation was the examination of a recently discovered Dictabelt recording of Dallas Police dispatch radio transmissions that purported to be from a police motorcycle in the Kennedy motorcade. The acoustical analysis firm hired by the committee recommended that the committee conduct an acoustical reconstruction of the assassination in Dealey Plaza to determine if any of the six impulse patterns on the dispatch tape were fired from the Texas School Book Depository or the grassy knoll. The reconstruction would entail firing from two locations in Dealey Plaza - the depository and the knoll - at particular target locations and recording the sounds through numerous microphones. The purpose was to determine if the sequences of impulses recorded during the reconstruction would match any of those on the dispatch tape. If so, it would be possible to determine if the impulse patterns on the dispatch tape were caused by shots fired during the assassination from shooter locations in the depository and on the knoll. Also of note is the scientific acoustic evidence presented to the House Select Committee on Assassinations in 1978 which pinpointed the Dal-Tex building as a possible source of gunfire.

An article which appeared in "Science and 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.

On August 20, 1978, members of the Dallas Police Department Police Pistol Team, including Officer Jerry Compton, Officer Tom Knighten, and Officer Rick Stone participated in the acoustical reconstruction by firing both rifles and pistols from the locations selected by the researchers. During the acoustical reconstruction performed for the committee in August, the Dallas Police Department marksmen in fact used iron sights and had no difficulty hitting the targets.

Medical evidence

Some assassination researchers point to testimony or medical evidence which they say suggests that the shot or shots that killed Kennedy came from a different location. Roy Kellerman, a U.S. Secret Service Agent seated next to the drive in the presidential limousine, testified that he saw a 5-inch-diameter (130 mm) hole in the back right-hand side of the President's head. Clint Hill, the Secret Service Agent who was sheltering the President with his body on the way to the hospital, described "The right rear portion of his head was missing. It was lying in the rear seat of the car." Later, to a National Geographic documentary film crew, he described the large defect in the skull as "gaping hole above his right ear, about the size of my palm." Some critics skeptical of the official "single bullet theory" state that the trajectory of the bullet, 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 wrist. Kennedy's death certificate located the bullet at the third thoracic vertebra—which some claim is too low to have exited his throat. Moreover, the bullet was traveling downward, since the shooter was in a sixth floor window. The autopsy cover sheet had a diagram of a body showing this same low placement at the third thoracic vertebra. The hole in back of Kennedy's shirt and jacket are also claimed to support a wound too low to be consistent with the Single Bullet Theory. Robert McClelland, a doctor at Parkland Hospital, testified that the back right part of the head was blown out with posterior cerebral tissue and some of the cerebellar tissue missing. The size of the back head wound, according to his description, indicated it was an exit wound, and that a second shooter from the front delivered the fatal head shot. Nellie Connally was sitting in the presidential car next to her husband, Governor John Connally. In her book From Love Field: Our Final Hours, Connally believed that her husband was hit by a bullet that was separate from the two that hit Kennedy.

There is conflicting testimony about the autopsy performed on Kennedy's body, particularly as to when the examination of his brain took place, who was present, and whether or not the photos submitted as evidence are the same as those taken during the examination. 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 of President Kennedy's brain. Dr. Gary Aguilar, assisted by pathologist Dr. Cyril Wecht, wrote in a 1999 piece for The Consortium News, "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."

Oswald's marksmanship

The Warren Commission report stated that the capabilities of the rifle and ammunition as well as Oswald's military training and post-military experience were evaluated, and it was determined that Oswald had the ability to fire three shots within a time span of 4.8 to 5.6 seconds.

Former U.S. Marine sniper Craig Roberts and Gunnery Sergeant Carlos Hathcock, who was the senior instructor for the U.S. Marine Corps Sniper Instructor School at Marine Corps Base Quantico in Quantico, Virginia, both said it could not be done as described by the FBI investigators. "Let me tell you what we did at Quantico," Hathcock said. "We reconstructed the whole thing: the angle, the range, the moving target, the time limit, the obstacles, everything. I don’t know how many times we tried it, but we couldn’t duplicate what the Warren Commission said Oswald did. Now if I can’t do it, how in the world could a guy who was a non-qual on the rifle range and later only qualified 'marksman' do it?"

Role of Oswald

Assassination researchers differ as to the role of Oswald in the assassination of President Kennedy. Some researchers believe that Oswald was an uninvolved patsy, while other believe he was an active part of a CIA operation. According to Richard Buyer, Oswald never fired a shot at the President. James W. Douglass has described Oswald as "a questioning, dissenting CIA operative who had become a security risk" and "the ideal scapegoat".

According to Josiah Thompson in 1967, he believed Oswald was in the Texas School Book Depository during the assassination but that it was "quite likely he was not the shooter on the sixth floor.

Alternative gunmen

In addition to Oswald, Jerome Kroth has named 26 people as "Possible Assassins In Dealey Plaza" on November 22, 1963. Other people named as possible gunmen include: Orlando Bosch, James Files, Desmond Fitzgerald, Charles Harrelson, Gerry Hemming, Chauncey Holt, Howard Hunt, Charles Nicoletti, Charles Rogers, Johnny Roselli, Lucien Sarti, and Frank Sturgis.

Three tramps

Nearly a dozen people were taken into custody in and around Dealey Plaza in the minutes following the assassination. In most of these instances, no records of the identities of those detained were kept. The most famous of those taken into custody have come to be known as the "tramps": three men discovered in a boxcar in the rail yard west of the grassy knoll. Speculation regarding the identities of the three and their possible involvement in the assassination became widespread in the ensuing years. Photographs of the three at their time of arrest fueled this speculation, as the three "tramps" appeared to be well-dressed and clean-shaven, seemingly unlikely for hobos riding the rails. Some researchers also thought it suspicious that the Dallas police had quickly released the tramps from custody apparently without investigating whether they might have witnessed anything significant related to the assassination, and that Dallas police claimed to have lost the records of their arrests as well as their mugshots and fingerprints.

In 1989, the Dallas police department released a large collection of files that contained the arrest records of the three men, whose names were Harold Doyle of Red Jacket, West Virginia; John F. Gedney, with no listed home address; and Gus W. Abrams, also with no listed home address. The brief report described the men as "all passing through [Dallas]. They have no jobs, etc." and were known to be rail-riders in the area. The previous evening they had slept in a homeless shelter where they showered and shaved, explaining their clean appearance on the day of the assassination. The three were released from custody four days after the assassination on the morning of November 26.

When asked in a 1992 interview, Doyle said that he had deliberately avoided revealing himself to the public limelight, saying, "I am a plain guy, a simple country boy, and that's the way I want to stay. I wouldn't be a celebrity for $10 million." Gedney independently affirmed Doyle's sentiment. Abrams had since died (in Ohio in 1987), but his sister also corroborated the events of that day and noted that Abrams "was always on the go, hopping trains and drinking wine."

Alleged tramps

A list of the better known "identifications" of the three tramps alleged by conspiracy theorists includes:

• Charles Harrelson, the father of actor Woody Harrelson, has been alleged to be the tallest of the three tramps in the photographs. Harrelson at various times boasted about his role as one of the tramps, however, in a 1988 interview, he denied being in Dallas on the day of the assassination.

• E. Howard Hunt, the CIA station chief who was instrumental in the Bay of Pigs Invasion, and who later worked as one of President Richard Nixon's White House Plumbers, was alleged by some to be the oldest of the tramps. At the time of his death, Hunt's son released tapes of Hunt implicating the following people in Kennedy's assassination: David Phillips, Cord Meyer, Frank Sturgis, David Morales, William Harvey, a French gunman, Lucien Sarti, who worked for the Mafia, and Lyndon Johnson. In 1975, Hunt testified to the United States President's Commission on CIA activities within the United States that he was in Washington, D.C. on the day of the assassination. This testimony was confirmed by Hunt's family and a home employee of the Hunts. In 1985 however, in Hunt's libel suit against Liberty Lobby, defense attorney Mark Lane introduced doubt as to Hunt's location on the day of the Kennedy assassination through depositions from David Atlee Phillips, Richard Helms, G. Gordon Liddy, Stansfield Turner, and Marita Lorenz, plus a cross-examination of Hunt.

• Frank Sturgis is thought by some to be the tall tramp in the photographs. Like Hunt, Sturgis was involved both in the Bay of Pigs invasion and the Watergate burglary. In 1959, Sturgis became involved with Marita Lorenz, who later identified Sturgis as a gunman in the assassination. Hunt's confessions before his death similarly implicates Sturgis.

• Chauncey Holt, alleged by himself and others to be the oldest of the tramps, claimed to have been a double agent for the CIA and the Mafia, and also claimed that his assignment in Dallas was to provide fake Secret Service credentials to people in the vicinity. Witness reports state that there were one or more unidentified men in the area claiming to be Secret Service agents.

• Charles (Chuck) Rogers, alleged by Chauncey Holt to be the best dressed of the tramps in the photographs. According to Holt, Charles Rogers used the pseudonym Richard Montoya.

The House Select Committee on Assassinations had forensic anthropologists study the photographic evidence. They were able to rule out E. Howard Hunt, Frank Sturgis, Dan Carswell, Fred Lee Chapman, and other suspects in 1978. The Rockefeller Commission concluded that neither Hunt nor Frank Sturgis were in Dallas on the day of the assassination.

Despite the Dallas Police Department's 1989 positive identifications of the three tramps as being Doyle, Gedney and Abrams (as noted in the previous section) and the lack of evidence connecting them to the assassination, some researchers have continued to maintain other identifications for the tramps and to theorize that they may have been connected to the crime.

Murder of J. D. Tippit

Since the Warren Commission Report was published in 1964, some researchers have uncovered evidence and witness testimony that calls into question some of the Commission conclusions regarding the murder of J. D. Tippit. Some of this evidence indicates that Oswald may have had an accomplice in the killing, or that possibly Tippit was killed by an assailant other than Oswald.

According to some researchers, the murder may have occurred earlier than the time of 1:15 p.m. given in the Warren Report. The timing is of critical importance, because Oswald is known to have arrived at his rooming house at around 1:00 p.m., then to have left 3 to 4 minutes later and finally to have been last seen a moment later standing at the corner bus stop. 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. No witness ever surfaced who saw Oswald walk from his rooming house to the murder scene. Additionally, although the Commission stated in its Report that Domingo Benavides called police from Tippit’s radio immediately after the killing, Benavides had testified that he did not approach the car "for a few minutes" after the shooting. He was also assisted in using the radio by T.F. Bowley, who testified to Dallas police that he had arrived at the scene after the murder, and that the time was 1:10 p.m. Eyewitness Helen Markham said the shooting occurred "possibly around 1:30 p.m."

Deputy Sheriff Roger Craig stated that when he heard the news that Tippit had been shot, he noted the time was 1:06 p.m. according to his watch. However, this contradicts other testimony and Craig's own statements to the press.

Only two Commission witnesses were identified as actually having seen the shooting, Helen Markham and Domingo Benavides. Joseph Ball, senior counsel to the Commission, has referred to Markham's testimony as "full of mistakes," and characterized her as an "utter screwball."

Benavides was not taken to a police lineup. He later testified that he had told police after the killing that he did not think he could identify the assailant, but he did say that the killer resembled pictures he had seen of Oswald. The lineups have been criticized as flawed in that they consisted of only four people, one of whom was Oswald, that most or all of the people in the lineups were either much older than Oswald, teenagers, or a Mexican, and that the older people were better dressed than Oswald... all of this enabling the witnesses to know who the suspect was (i.e., which of the men in the lineups was the man arrested near the murder scene and quickly identified as a Communist on television), and to easily pick him out.

Butch Burroughs, the ticket collector at the Texas Theater who ran the concession stand, said that Oswald came into the Theater between 1:00 and 1:07 pm, making Oswald's alleged 1:15 shooting of Officer J.D. Tippit impossible.

Additionally, certain witnesses who did not appear before the Commission identified an assailant who was not Oswald. Both Acquilla Clemons and Frank Wright witnessed the scene from their respective homes within one block of the murder. Clemons saw two men near Tippit’s car just before the shooting. After the shooting she ran outside and saw a man with a gun, whom she described as "kind of heavy". He waved to the second man, urging him to "go on". Frank Wright also 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 who immediately ran to a car and left the scene.

There is also evidence to indicate that the cartridge shells recovered from the scene may not have been those subsequently entered into evidence. Two of the shells recovered at the scene were given to police officer J.M. Poe. Poe testified to the Commission that he believed that he had marked the shells with his initials, although he couldn’t "swear to it".] However, no initials were found on the shells later produced by the police. Poe later told researchers that he was absolutely certan that he had marked the shells. Further the appearance of cartridge shells at the crime scene raises question for some because, according to Officer Hill, who took possession of Oswald's revolver at his arrest, the gun's six chambers were fully loaded with unspent cartridges and that Oswald had no ammunition on his person.

William Alexander, the Dallas assistant district attorney who had recommended that Oswald be charged with the Kennedy and Tippit murders, has also been critical of the Commission's version of the murder, stating that its conclusions on Oswald's movements "did not add up", and that "certainly, he may have had accomplices."

Allegations of other conspirators

Advertisement in the Dallas Morning News, November 22, 1963

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. 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. During the Commission's hearings, Mark Lane testified that an informant whom he refused to name told him that Weismann had met with Tippit and Ruby eight days before the assassination. In Rush to Judgment, Lane disputed the government's findings and indicated that the source of his information was reporter Thayer Waldo of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

Weissman was a supporter of the John Birch Society.

E. Howard Hunt

The theory that former CIA agent and Watergate figure, E. Howard Hunt, was a participant in the assassination of Kennedy garnered much publicity from 1978 to 2000. Separately, he denied complicity in the murder of JFK while accusing others of being involved.

Some researchers have identified Hunt as a figure crossing Dealey Plaza in a raincoat and fedora immediately after the assassination. Others have suggested that Hunt was one of the men known as the three tramps who were arrested and then quickly released shortly after the assassination.

In 1976, a magazine called The Spotlight ran an article accusing Hunt of being in Dallas on November 22, 1963, and of having a role in the assassination. Hunt won a libel judgment against the magazine in 1981, but this was thrown out on appeal, and the magazine was found not liable when the case was retried in 1985.

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 United States.

Shortly before his death in 2007, Hunt authored an autobiography which accused Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson of being involved in the assassination. Hunt suggested that Johnson had orchestrated the killing with the help of CIA agents who had been angered by Kennedy's actions as President. In deathbed confessions to his son, published in a 2007 edition of Rolling Stone magazine, Hunt implicated CIA agents David Atlee Phillips, Cord Meyer, Bill Harvey and David Sánchez Morales, as well as a French gunman, Lucien Sarti, who purportedly shot at Kennedy from the grassy knoll.

Conspiracy theories

According to researchers, conspiracy theorists consider four or five groups, alone or in combination, to be the primary suspects in the assassination of Kennedy: the CIA, the military-industrial complex, organized crime, the government of Cuba, and Cuban exiles. Other domestic individuals, groups, or organizations implicated in various conspiracy theories include Lyndon Johnson, George H. W. Bush, J. Edgar Hoover the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the United States Secret Service, the John Birch Society, and far-right wealthy Texans. Some other alleged foreign conspirators include Nikita Krushchev, Aristotle Onassis, the government of South Vietnam, and international drug lords including a French heroin syndicate. Communists, Freemasons, and Jews are some other groups implicated in a conspiracy.

New Orleans conspiracy

Further information: Trial of Clay Shaw, People involved in the trial of Clay Shaw, and David Ferrie

Immediately following the assassination, allegations began to surface of a conspiracy between Oswald and persons with whom he was or may have been acquainted while he lived in New Orleans, Louisiana.

On November 25, 1963 (the day after Oswald's murder by Jack Ruby) Dean Andrews, Jr., a New Orleans attorney who had occasionally provided legal advice to Oswald, informed the FBI that two days earlier he had, while in a local hospital under sedation, received a telephone call from a man named Clay Bertrand who inquired if he would be willing to defend Oswald in the murder and assassination case. Andrews later repeated these claims in testimony to the Warren Commission.

David Ferrie (second from left) and Lee Harvey Oswald (far right) in a group photo of the New Orleans Civil Air Patrol in 1955 (click to enlarge)

Also in late November 1963 an employee of New Orleans private investigator Guy Banister named Jack Martin began making accusations of possible involvement in the assassination by fellow Banister employee David Ferrie. According to witnesses, in 1963 Ferrie and Banister were working for lawyer G. Wray Gill, on behalf of Gill's client, New Orleans Mafia boss Carlos Marcello. Ferrie had also attended Civil Air Patrol meetings in New Orleans in the 1950s that were also attended by a teenage Lee Harvey Oswald.

In 1966, New Orleans D.A. Jim Garrison began an investigation into the assassination of President Kennedy. Garrison's investigation led him to conclude that Kennedy had been assassinated as the result of a conspiracy involving Oswald, David Ferrie and "Clay Bertrand". Garrison further came to believe "Clay Bertrand" was a pseudonym for New Orleans businessman Clay Shaw. On March 1, 1967, Garrison arrested and charged Shaw with conspiring to assassinate President Kennedy, with the help of Lee Harvey Oswald, David Ferrie, and others. 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, a former employee of the Reily Coffee Company in New Orleans who had been employed there at the same time as Lee Harvey Oswald, appeared in an episode of Nigel Turner's ongoing documentary television series, The Men Who Killed Kennedy. According to Baker, she and Oswald had been hired by Reily in the spring of 1963 as a "cover" for a clandestine CIA project designed to develop biological weapons that could be used to assassinate Fidel Castro. Baker further claimed that she and Oswald began an affair, and that they had planned to run away to Mexico together after the assassination. In the years since Baker first made her allegations public, she has failed to produce any evidence that she was acquainted with Oswald, and the research community has widely concluded that her claims are a hoax. However, other researchers, including Jim Marrs and James Fetzer, have concluded the opposite — that Baker's claims are credible.

Federal Reserve conspiracy

Jim Marrs, in his book Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy, speculated that the assassination of Kennedy might have been partially motivated by the issuance of Executive Order 11110. The executive order, which was not officially repealed until the Ronald Reagan Administration, delegated to the Secretary of the Treasury the authority to authorize printing of additional silver certificates, up to a maximum limit previously set by Congress. Since the President himself already possessed the same authority, the order did not endanger the careers of anyone working at the Federal Reserve.

This theory was further explored by U.S. Marine sniper and veteran police officer Craig Roberts in the 1994 book, Kill Zone. Roberts theorized that the executive order was the beginning of a plan by Kennedy, whose ultimate goal was to permanently do away with the Federal Reserve, and that Kennedy was murdered by a cabal of international bankers determined to foil this plan.

Actor and author Richard Belzer has also discussed this theory. According to Belzer, the plot to kill Kennedy was a response to a postulated attempt by the President to shift power from the Federal Reserve to the U.S Treasury Department.

CIA conspiracy

Main article: CIA Kennedy assassination conspiracy theory

Gaeton Fonzi, an investigator for the House Select Committee on Assassinations in 1977–79, writes that investigators were pressured not to look into the relationship between Lee Harvey Oswald and the CIA. He believes 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.

In 1995, former U.S. Army Intelligence officer and National Security Agency executive assistance John M. Newman published evidence that both the CIA and FBI had deliberately tampered with their files on Lee Harvey Oswald both before and after the assassination. Furthermore, he found that both had withheld information that might have alerted authorities in Dallas that Oswald posed a potential threat to the President. Subsequently, Newman has expressed a belief that 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 the control of the cover operation was not under James Angleton, but under Allen Dulles (the former CIA director who had been dismissed by Kennedy after failed the Bay of Pigs invasion). Among senior government officials, only James Angleton continued expressing his belief that Kennedy assassination was not carried out by a lone gunman.

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. 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.

Military-industrial complex

According to author James Douglass, Kennedy was assassinated because he was turning away from the Cold War and seeking a negotiated peace with the Soviet Union. Douglass argues 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."

In his farewell speech, President Dwight D. Eisenhower had warned, "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. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted."

Oliver Stone's 1991 movie JFK explored the possibility that Kennedy was killed by a conspiracy involving the military-industrial complex. L. Fletcher Prouty, Chief of Special Operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff under President Kennedy, and the person who inspired the character "Mr. X" in Stone's movie, has written that he believes Kennedy's assassination was actually a coup d'etat.

Secret Service conspiracy

The House Select Committee on Assassinations concluded (in its 1978 report) that although Oswald assassinated Kennedy, a conspiracy was probable. Among its findings, the HSCA noted that President Kennedy had not received adequate protection in Dallas, 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 finally that the Secret Service agents in the motorcade were inadequately prepared to protect the President from a sniper. Although widely disputed but possible, this lack of protection may have occurred because Kennedy himself had specifically asked that the Secret Service make itself discreet during the Dallas visit. Vince Palamara claims that Secret Service driver Sam Kinney told him these requests, such as removing the bubble top from the limousine in Dallas, removing agents from the limousine, or reducing the Secret Service motorcycles in the motorcade, were not made by Kennedy.

Cuban exiles

With the 1959 Cuban Revolution that brought Fidel Castro to power, thousands of Cubans left their homeland to take up residence in the United States. Many exiles hoped to overthrow Castro and return to Cuba. Their hopes were dashed with the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion in 1961, and many exiles blamed President Kennedy for the failure.

The House Select Committee on Assassinations believed evidence existed implicating certain violent Cuban exiles may 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 this:

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.

Holding a copy of the September 26 edition of The Dallas Morning News, featuring a front-page account of the President's planned trip to Texas in November, the Cuban exile vented his hostility:

"CASTELLANOS... we're waiting for Kennedy the 22d, [the date Kennedy was murdered] buddy. We're going to see him in one way or the other. We're going to give him the works when he gets in Dallas. Mr. good ol' Kennedy. I wouldn't even call him President Kennedy. He stinks."

Author Joan Didion explored the Miami anti-Castro Cuban theory in her 1987 non-fiction book "Miami." In "Miami," she emphasizes the questions that investigators raised to Marita Lorenz 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, were never substantiated by a conclusive investigation.

Organized crime conspiracy

Mafia criminals may have wished to retaliate for increasing pressure put upon them by Robert Kennedy (who had increased by 12 times the number of prosecutions under President Dwight Eisenhower). Documents never seen by the Warren Commission have revealed that some Mafiosi were working very closely with the CIA on several assassination attempts of Fidel Castro.

Teamsters Union president Jimmy Hoffa, and mobsters Carlos Marcello, Sam Giancana, Johnny Roselli, Charles Nicoletti and Santo Trafficante Jr. (all of whom say Hoffa worked with the CIA on the Castro assassination plots) top the list of House Select Committee on Assassinations Mafia suspects. Giancana, Marcello, and Trafficante were the leading figures of the organized crime families in Chicago, New Orleans, and Tampa, respectively.

Carlos Marcello apparently threatened to assassinate the President to short-circuit his younger brother Bobby, who was serving as attorney general and leading the administration's anti-Mafia crusade.

In his memoir, Bound by Honor: A Mafioso's Story, Bill Bonanno, son of New York Mafia boss Joseph Bonanno, explains 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 Kennedy, blaming him for the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion. They also disliked his brother, the young and idealistic Attorney General Robert Kennedy, who had conducted an unprecedented legal assault on organized crime. This was especially provocative because several of the Mafia "families" had worked with JFK's father, Joseph Kennedy, to get JFK elected, and there was speculation about voting irregularities during the 1960 election. Both the Mafia and the anti-Castro Cubans were expert in assassination, the Cubans having been trained by the CIA. Bonanno reports that he realized the degree of the involvement of other Mafia families when he witnessed Jack Ruby killing Oswald on television: the Bonannos recognized Jack Ruby as an associate of Chicago mobster Sam Giancana.

Information released only around 2006 by the FBI indicates that Carlos Marcello confessed in detail to having organized Kennedy's assassination. The FBI then covered up this information which it had in its possession. This version of events is also supported by the findings of a 1979 Congressional Committee investigation that Marcello was likely part of a Mafia conspiracy behind the assassination, and had the means and the opportunity required. The assassination came less than two weeks prior to a coup against Castro in Cuba by the Kennedy brothers, related to the Missile Crisis and Bay of Pigs Invasion.

James Files claims to be a former assassin working for both the Mafia and the CIA who participated in the assassination along with Johnny Roselli and Charles Nicoletti at the behest of Sam Giancana. He is currently serving a 30-year jail sentence for the attempted murder of a policeman.

Judith Campbell Exner, an alleged girlfriend of President Kennedy was also Sam Giancana's mistress; she was interviewed (apparently live) by Maria Shriver (daughter of Eunice Kennedy and Sargent Shriver) on ABC's Good Morning America. The woman was asked if she ever carried messages between JFK and Giancana because she knew them both. The woman confirmed that and said no to the question by saying, "Sam would never write anything down."

David Kaiser has also suggested mob involvement in his book, The Road to Dallas.

Famed investigative reporter Jack Anderson, who knew Kennedy well and had many sources within Organized Crime, concluded that Cuba and Fidel Castro worked with Organized Crime figures to arrange the assassination. In his book "Peace War and Politics," Anderson said Johnny Roselli gave him extensive details on the plot. Anderson said he was never able to independently confirm Roselli's entire story, but he wrote that many of Roselli's details checked out and he never found one detail that he could refute. Anderson said that whatever role Oswald played in the assassination, he was convinced that there was more than one gunman.

The History Channel program, The Men Who Killed Kennedy presents additional information for organized crime involvement. Christian David was a Corsican Mafia member interviewed in prison. He was offered the assassination contract on the president and did not accept it but knew the men who did accept the contract. According to David, there were three shooters. He provided the name of one—Lucien Sarti—but the other two shooters were still living and that would lead him to break their code of conduct. When asked what they were wearing David noted their modus operandi was to dress in costumes such as official uniforms. The majority of Christian David's testimony was confirmed by a former Corsican member named Michelle Nicole who was part of the DEA witness protection program.

Ultimate Sacrifice, by Lamar Waldron and Thom Hartman, synthesizes these theories with new evidence. The authors argue that government officials were (unwillingly) 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 the Mafia, mob leaders had President Kennedy killed to remove Robert from power; however, investigation of their plot was impossible because it would have led to evidence of mob participation in the government's plot to kill Castro.

Lyndon B. Johnson conspiracy

In 2003, researcher Barr McClellan published the book, Blood, Money & Power: How L.B.J. Killed J.F.K.. McClellan claims that Lyndon 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 attorney Edwardo 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 the assassin. The book further claims that the killing of Kennedy was paid for by oil magnates including Clint Murchison and H. L. Hunt. 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, entitled "The Guilty Men", drew angry condemnation from the Johnson family, President Johnson's former aides, and ex-Presidents Gerald Ford 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; the History Channel apologized to the Johnson family and agreed not to air the series in the future.

Madeleine D. Brown, who was an alleged mistress of Johnson, has also implicated him in a conspiracy to kill Kennedy. In 1997, Brown alleged 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 well-known politicians and journalists. In the documentary The Men Who Killed Kennedy, Brown and a former employee of Clint Murchison both placed J. Edgar Hoover and Johnson at a dinner at Murchison's mansion shortly before the assassination. Brown claimed in the documentary that Johnson told her after the party that the Kennedys "will never embarrass me again". Similar suspicions are voiced by a number of LBJ associates, including Brown, in their own words in the 2006 documentary Evidence of Revision. Jackie Onassis, Kennedy's wife, also believed that LBJ was involved in the murder of her husband.

Johnson was also accused of complicity in the assassination by former CIA agent and Watergate figure E. Howard Hunt.

Historian Michael L. Kurtz wrote that there is no evidence suggesting that Johnson ordered the assassination of Kennedy. 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.

Cuban conspiracy

In the early 1960s Clare Booth Luce, wife of publisher Henry Luce was one of a number of prominent Americans who sponsored the anti-Castro movement in the United States. This support included the funding of a motorboat used by exile commandos in their raids against Cuba. In a 1975 interview, Clare Luce revealed that on the night of the assassination, she received a phone call from one of the boat's crew members. According to Luce, the caller's name was "something like" Julio Fernandez, and he said he was calling her from New Orleans.

Julio Fernandez told her that Lee Harvey Oswald had approached his group and offered his services as a potential Castro assassin. Fernandez further claimed that he and his associates had eventually found out that Oswald was actually a committed Communist and supporter of Castro, and that they kept a close watch on his activities until he suddenly came into money and went to Mexico City and then Dallas. Finally, Fernandez told Luce, "There is a Cuban Communist assassination team at large and Oswald was their hired gun."

Luce told the caller to give his information to the FBI. Subsequently, she would reveal the details of the incident to both the Church Committee and the HSCA. Both committees attempted to investigate the incident, but were unsuccessful in uncovering any evidence to corroborate the allegations in question.

President Lyndon Johnson informed several journalistic sources of his personal belief that the assassination had been organized by Fidel Castro from Cuba. Johnson had received in 1967 information from both the FBI and CIA that in the early 1960s, the CIA had tried to have Castro assassinated, had employed members of the Mafia in this effort, and that Attorney General Robert Kennedy had known about both the plots and the Mafia's involvement.

It was Johnson's belief that JFK's assassination had been organized by Castro as a retaliation for the CIA's efforts to kill Castro. In October, 1968, Johnson told veteran newsman Howard K. Smith, 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 that in regard to the assassination he could not, "honestly say that I've ever been completely relieved of the fact that there might have been international connections." Finally, in 1971, Johnson told Leo Janos of Time magazine that he, "never believed that Oswald acted alone".

Soviet conspiracy

According to a 1966 FBI document, a source considered reliable by the Bureau related to the FBI in late 1963 that Colonel Boris Ivanov, Chief of the Soviet Committee for State Security (KGB), who resided in New York City at the time of the assassination, stated that it was his personal feeling that the assassination of President Kennedy had been planned by an organized group rather than being the act of one individual assassin.

Much later, the highest-ranking Soviet Bloc intelligence defector, Lt. Gen. Ion Mihai Pacepa described his conversation with Nicolae Ceauşescu who told him about "ten international leaders the Kremlin killed or tried to kill": "László Rajk and Imre Nagy of Hungary; Lucreţiu Pătrăşcanu and Gheorghiu-Dej in Romania; Rudolf Slánský, the head of Czechoslovakia, and Jan Masaryk, that country's chief diplomat; the Shah of Iran; Palmiro Togliatti of Italy; American President John F. Kennedy; and Mao Zedong." Pacepa provided some additional details, such as a plot to kill Mao Zedong with the help of Lin Biao organized by KGB and noted 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."

New information regarding the murder of John F. Kennedy confidante Mary Pinchot Meyer has led to a reinterpretation of a statement by retired senior CIA official Cord Meyer shortly before his death in 2001. Meyer's statement seems to suggest that CIA learned many years ago, possibly from a defector, that the KGB organized the assassination of Kennedy, most likely as revenge for the humiliation of the Cuban missile crisis. However, Cord Meyer himself has been mentioned as a possible conspirator in the LBJ assassination theory.

Israeli conspiracy

This theory alleges that the Israeli government was displeased with Kennedy for his pressure against their pursuit of a top-secret nuclear program at the Negev Nuclear Research Center (commonly called "Dimona") and/or the Israelis were angry over Kennedy's sympathies with Arabs. Gangster Meyer Lansky and Lyndon B. Johnson often play pivotal roles in this conspiracy theory as organizing and preparing the hit, thus bleeding into and possibly catalyzing many of the other conspiracies as well.

In July 2004 Israel's nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu claimed in the London-based Al-Hayat newspaper that the state of Israel was complicit in the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Vanunu, a former technician at the Dimona plant who was jailed for 18 years for revealing its inner workings to Britain's Sunday Times in 1986, made the statement after his 2004 release. He claimed there were "near-certain indications" Kennedy was assassinated in response to "pressure he exerted on Israel's then head of government, David Ben-Gurion, to shed light on Dimona's nuclear reactor."

Decoy hearse and wound alteration

David S. Lifton and others have theorized that the coffin removed from Air Force One and placed in a waiting ambulance at Andrews Air Force Base on the evening of November 22, 1963 was empty. The president's body was taken off the jet out of the television camera's view. This portion of Lifton's theory comes from a House Select Committee on Assassinations report of an interview of Lt. Richard A. Lipsey on January 18, 1978 by committee staff members Donald Andrew Purdy Jr. and T. Mark Flanagan Jr. in which Lipsey said that in his capacity as aide to General Wehle, he had met President Kennedy's body at Andrews Air Force Base. The report stated that Lipsey "placed [the casket] in a hearse to be transported to Bethesda Naval Hospital. Lipsey mentioned that he and Whele then flew by helicopter to Bethesda and took the President's body into the back of Bethesda. A decoy hearse had been driven to the front." A decoy hearse carrying an empty casket.

Laboratory Technologist Paul Kelly O'Connor was one of the major witnesses supporting 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 says that President Kennedy's body arrived at Bethesda in a body bag, which differed from the sheet it was wrapped in at Parkland Hospital. He stated the brain had already been removed by the time it got to Bethesda, and that there was only "half of a handful" of brain matter left inside the skull.

Nigel Turner's 1988 documentary The Men Who Killed Kennedy (televised in the U.S. for the first time in 1991) includes a video interview with O'Connor in which he says: "There were mysterious men in civilian clothes at the autopsy. They seemed to command a lot of respect and look over my shoulder or over Dr. J. Thornton Boswell's shoulder, then they'd go back and have a conference in the corner. Then one of them would say 'Stop what you're doing and go on to another procedure.' We jumped back and forth, back and forth. There was no smooth flow of procedure at all."

As was 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. The casket was under armed guard and the plane was watched by numerous people that bathed the far side of the plane in lights and provided a public stage for any body snatchers.

Other published theories

• Appointment in Dallas (1975) by Hugh McDonald suggests that Oswald was lured into a plot that he was told was a staged fake attempt to kill JFK to embarrass the Secret Service and to alert the government of the necessity for beefed-up Secret Service security. Oswald’s role was to shoot at the motorcade but deliberately miss the target. The plotters then killed JFK themselves and framed Oswald for the crime. McDonald claims that, after being told the "truth" about JFK's death by CIA agent Herman Kimsey in 1964, he spent years trying to locate a man known as “Saul.” Saul was supposedly the unidentified man who was photographed exiting the Russian embassy in Mexico City in September 1963, whose photos were subsequently sent to the FBI in Dallas on the morning of November 22, 1963 (before the assassination), and mislabelled "Lee Harvey Oswald". McDonald claims to have finally tracked Saul down in London in 1972 at which time Saul revealed the details of the plot to him. ISBN 0-8217-3893-3.

• Reasonable Doubt (1985) by Henry Hurt, who writes about his Warren Commission doubts. Mr. 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. ISBN 0-929385-22-5.

• 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 fatal shot 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). 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.

• 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 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." 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 which 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.

• James W. Douglass' JFK and the Unspeakable (2008) presents evidence that JFK was assassinated by elements within the US Government opposed to his attempts to end the Cold War through back channel negotiations with Khrushchev and Castro. ISBN 1-57075-755-0.

• 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

See also

• JFK (film), a 1991 film that examines the events leading to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and alleged subsequent cover-up, through the eyes of former New Orleans district attorney Jim Garrison.
• American Tabloid, a 1995 novel by James Ellroy, which portrays the five years leading up to the assassination from the point of view of a group of Mafia associates and CIA operatives, who become embroiled in the Bay of Pigs Invasion and eventually help plan the crime.
• An American Affair, a 2009 film that portrays the assassination and the relation between Kennedy and Mary Pinchot Meyer.
• The Cold Six Thousand, a 2001 novel by James Ellroy, the sequel to American Tabloid. The first third of the novel portrays a cover-up of the JFK assassination, while the remainder concerns the events leading up to the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy.
• Executive Action, a 1973 film by David Miller that portrays the assassination from the point of view of the conspirators, who are right-wing tycoons and former covert ops specialists.
• JFK: 3 Shots That Changed America, a 2009 documentary film complied from archived news footage.

External links

• The Kennedy Assassination Home Page by John McAdams
• Frontline: Who was L.H. Oswald – PBS documentary on the man and his life
• PBS News 2003 — Public's belief that a conspiracy existed
• "Oswald's Ghost", an episode of PBS series American Experience, which aired January 14, 2008
• Tech Puts JFK Conspiracy Theories to Rest — Discovery article on a simulation that partially discredits some conspiracy theories
• Was Lee Harvey Oswald really guilty? by Gill Jesus