Fall 2023 Part 2.

 

 

The JFK Assassination: 60 Years Later

This year will have the 60th year anniversary of the assassination of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy. President Kennedy in America represented both the imperfections of America and the idealism that we all desire (which is peace, justice, equality, and tranquility in our world). President Kennedy lived during the most dangerous time of the Cold War, especially when the Cuban Missile Crisis occurred back in 1962. A bad policy decision would have destroyed millions of human lives, and we could be dead literally. Yet, President Kennedy rejected the calls of the war hawks (who wanted an American military strike in Cuba) in his own government. Instead, the Kennedy administration finally decided to establish a blockade and a cogent negotiated settlement with the Soviet Union to end that conflict. On Friday, November 22, 1963, at 12:30 pm. CST in Dallas, Texas, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in broad daylight in a cowardly act. He was in the vehicle with his wife Jacqueline, Texas Governor John Connally, and Connally's wife Nellie. He was instantly murdered by many shots. The establishment said that Lee Harvey Oswald, a former U.S. Marine, assassinated President Kennedy from a nearby Texas School Depository. Yet, many scholars (from across the political spectrum) also believe that a conspiracy caused the death of President Kennedy. It is important for the viewer (i.e. you) to look at all of the facts and come up with your own conclusions as a free-thinking, independent human being. President Johnson took over after his assassination. President Kennedy was not perfect (we know of his imperfections), but he grown to be more progressive by 1963 in the following ways: by supporting a federal civil rights bill, by promoting secret talks in Cuba to have detente, signing a Nuclear Test Ban treaty, going out to try to end the Vietnam War by 1965, investing in the arts and sciences, advocating for universal health care for the elderly (which would later be Medicare), supporting nationalists movement in Africa including Asia (including opposing colonialism), opposing nuclear weapons to be developed in Israel, called for peace in his famous American University speech, and using eloquent and wit in his speeches to convey a message of optimism (without naivete) about changing America for the better. Camelot was a myth as America still suffered massive economic, racial, and social oppression, but hope for the future is no myth. Our hope is audacious and real. Therefore, the evil assassination of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy should inspire all of us to evaluate our lives, care for humanity, and seek out the Dream to be fulfilled by being of service to help others beyond our own individual motivations. That's truly real talk. 

Legacy

The legacy of President John F. Kennedy should be known. The only way to understand his total legacy is to evaluate his life from the start in a chronological fashion. John Fitzgerald Kennedy was born in New England at Brookline, Massachusetts among the wealthy Kennedy family. The Kennedys had a lot of political and economic power in American society. So, John F. Kennedy was born in wealth, and he later saw the complex economic dislocation found in the United States as time went onward in his life. As a young child to his passing, he experienced many health issues. He was in and out of hospitals throughout his life. By September 1927, the Kennedy family moved into Riverdale, New York. The stock market crash triggered the Great Depression in October of 1929. By the Fall of 1931, he enrolled in Choate. As a child, he played football plenty of times too. He graduated from Choate, ranked 64th in a class of 112 in June 1935. He attended Princeton in the fall of 1935, but he left the university to deal with an illness. He attended Harvard University from 1936-1940. By 1937, his father, Joseph Kennedy Sr. was the ambassador to Great Britain. John F. Kennedy toured Europe with his father from the Winter of 1938 to the Summer of 1939. World War II started in Europe in September 1939, and it lasted until 1945. By 1940, John F. Kennedy wrote his senior thesis, on English foreign policy before American overt military involvement in World War II. We know of his thesis being published in the title of "Why England Slept" which came out in July 1940. John F. Kennedy was in the military in the United States during World War II. America became officially involved in WWII (after giving the UK military aid in the Lend-Lease program) after Pearl Harbor was bombed by Japanese military forces on December 7, 1941. President Kennedy served and commanded the Motor Torpedo Boat or the PT Boat in the South Pacific. By August 2, 1943, President Kennedy's boat was rammed by a Japanese destroyer. Under his leadership, most of the crew was eventually rescued. JFK received the Purple Heart for his heroics. President Kennedy came to Boston's Chelsea Naval Hospital with a lower back condition in the Spring of 1944. His older brother Joseph Kennedy Jr. was inspired to fight in Europe during WWII after JFK earned the Purple Heart. By August 12, 1944, Joseph Kennedy Jr. was killed while flying a mission over Europe. JFK was discharged by the Navy on March 1, 1945. Then, the journey continues. John F. Kennedy's father wanted JFK to be President, and John F. Kennedy himself wanted to be President of the United States. In American politics, you have to gain some experience first for the most part. So, John F. Kennedy knew that he had to run for office first before achieving the ultimate goal. 

On June 17, 1946, John F. Kennedy won the Democratic primary for the Massachusetts' Eleventh Congressional District. Then, he was elected to the House of Representatives in November of 1946. By the Fall of 1948, JFK was elected to a second term in the House. While on a trip to England, he was diagnosed with Addison's Disease. His condition is kept secret from the public. The Korean War existed from 1950-1953. The evil era of McCarthyism started in February 1950 when Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy claimed to have a list of Communists employed in the State Department. McCarthyism goes against the freedom of speech, due process of law, and the freedom of association among American citizens. People have the freedom of conscience to believe in Communism or not.  By November 1950, JFK was elected to a third term in the House. By November 1952, John F. Kennedy defeated Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. to win the election to the United States Senate. In the presidential election, Dwight Eisenhower and his running mate, Richard Nixon, defeated Adlai Stevenson. John F. Kennedy had a reputation for being with multiple women. Later, he married Jacqueline Bouvier on September 12, 1953. On December 2, 1954, Joseph McCarthy was censured by the U.S. Senate, and Senate Kennedy abstained from voting on the resolutions. JFK released the book Profiles in Courage, a history of heroic American senators. The book was largely written by his speechwriter Theodore Sorensen (one of the greatest speechwriters in American history). By the Summer of 1956, at the Democratic National Convention, Tennessee Senator Estes Kefauver edged JFK out to become Adlai Stevenson's running mate. After that, we know that Eisenhower defeated Stevenson and won re-election in November of 1956. The Profiles in Courage book was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1957. John F. Kennedy and Caroline Bouvier Kennedy had their first-born daughter on November 27, 1957. By November 1958, Kennedy won re-election in the Senate. By this time, John F. Kennedy had spoken out against French imperialism in Vietnam. By 1960, John F. Kennedy decided to run for the Presidency. The Democratic candidate had a strong field of candidates from Johnson to McCarthy. John F. Kennedy promoted a liberal vision of America and explicitly said that he believed in the separation of church and state. He told Baptist leaders that his Catholic faith won't influence public policy which caused applause among the Baptist religious audience in Texas. 

By July 1960, JFK won the Democratic nomination for president and picked Lyndon Johnson as his running mate. Robert Kennedy opposed the decision to get LBJ on the ticket, but JFK knew that he had to do it in order to get the Southern states (especially Texas with a lot of electoral votes) to win the 1960 Presidency. The 1960 Presidential campaign was fierce and important. John F. Kennedy debated Richard Nixon on television.  People saw both men discuss foreign and domestic policies on television, and some heard the debate on the radio. On the radio, most people thought it was even, and most people who saw the debate on television believed that Kennedy won the debate. It was so close that John F. Kennedy won the election very closely. John Fitzgerald Kennedy was the first Roman Catholic to win the Presidency in 1960. He was inaugurated as President in January of 1961 talking about hope and being cautious about the Cold War in dealing with the Soviet Union. He spoke the famous words of "ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country." That means that we (who are American citizens) should be about the work to use our power to be engaged in building up American society in reaching its highest plateau of democracy, excellence, community, tolerance, and human justice for all in a sincere, motivated fashion. Immediately, his Presidency saw challenges. President Kennedy announced the Peace Corps in its existence in March 1961. The Peace Corps was about sending young men and young women to help people across the world especially poorer nations of color (in Africa, Asia, Latin America, etc.) in promoting democratic values and compassion (in competition with the Soviet Union's influence). President Kennedy didn't give air support to the Bay of Pigs invasion backers. This caused the invasion of Cuba to fail by April 1961. Many far-right Cubans and members of the military-industrial complex hated Kennedy for this action, but President Kennedy knew full well that if he sent the military to fight in Cuba, the Soviet Union would retaliate in Europe and potentially cause WWIII (with millions of people dying in a nuclear exchange). The military-industrial complex would hate JFK for years to come. President Kennedy met with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev to hold a summit in Vienna. The meeting was unsuccessful as Khruschev thought Kennedy was young and inexperienced. Their relationship would improve by 1963. 

By May 4, 1961, an integrated group of students organized by the Congress of Racial Equality left Washington DC on a “Freedom Ride” through the Deep South. Despite Court orders banning interstate bus travel segregation, segregation was being enforced in some bus stations serving interstate bus lines. JFK celebrated the first American in space (who was Alan Sheppard Jr.) on May 5, 1961. The Freedom Riders were beaten up and their bus was firebombed by racist terrorists in Anniston, Alabama. This was on May 14, 1961. The riders were attacked and beaten in Birmingham again. President Kennedy fought for civil rights in the realm of the courts or the legal system. Many civil rights leaders, even Dr. King, at times criticized the Kennedy administration as not going fast enough on civil rights. We know that Malcolm X criticized JFK as using tricks to strife black revolutionary thinking in the black community.  Also, Kennedy wanted humans to go to the Moon before the decade of the 1960's was finished. On June 30, 1961, President Kennedy gave remarks Upon Signing the Housing Act. “This bill is the most important and far-reaching Federal legislation in the field of housing since the enactment of the Housing Act of 1949.”

 

By August 1961, JFK promoted the Alliance for Progress to harbor better relationships in Latin America. President Kennedy signed the Executive Order 10980. That established the President’s Commission on the Status of Women to promote equal wages and equality for women. In Bailey v. Patterson the Supreme Court holds firmly that legal segregation in interstate or intrastate transportation facilities is unconstitutional and “settled beyond question.” This was on February 26, 1962. 

By March of 1962, President Kennedy forced the steel industry to stop a price increase, which angered some Wall Street banking interests. On May 19, 1962, Marilyn Monroe sang Happy Birthday to the President at a celebration event in Madison Square Garden. (His actual birthday was 10 days later). On June 15, 1962, the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) adopted what is known as the “Port Huron Statement.” The SDS became a leader in anti-war, anti-capitalist protest movement. Part of the Port Huron Statement was, “. . . we seek the establishment of a democracy of individual participation governed by two central aims:  that the individual share in those social decisions determining the quality and direction of his life; that society be organized to encourage independence in men and provide the media for their common participation.” This document pretty much was the manifesto of the New Left movement. President Kennedy celebrated the independence of Algeria, Burundi, and Rwanda. Following considerable litigation, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in Meredith v. Fair held that Mississippi Governor Ross Barnett was in contempt of court for blocking the registration of an African American student, James Meredith at the University of Mississippi. By Proclamation, President Kennedy directed Mississippi officials to comply with court orders. By Executive Order directs the Secretary of Defense to take all appropriate steps to enforce the court order. And in a televised address to the nation, explains his actions. He states, “Neither Mississippi nor any other southern State deserves to be charged with all the accumulated wrongs of the last 100 years of race relations.”

On October 16, 1962, there was the Bay of Pigs crisis. America obtained photos of Soviet missile emplacements in Cuba, bringing about the Cuban Missile Crisis. Some members of the military-industrial complex wanted JFK to invade Cuba, but President Kennedy refused. General LeMay wanted the invasion, and President Kennedy told him that we were in this together. So, President Kennedy did the wise thing and promoted a naval quarantine of Cuba on October 22, 1962. The move was successful as the Kennedy administration and Soviet leaders had secret back-channel meetings (that many in the military-industrial complex didn't know) to end the Cuban Missile Crisis. By October 28, 1962, the Soviet Union agreed to remove its missiles from Cuba, and America agreed to remove its missiles from Italy and Turkey. The far right in America and Soviet hardliners hated the compromise (some of them called President Kennedy soft on Communism or a traitor), but world peace is better than extremism. Fifty years after the crisis, Graham Allison wrote:

"Fifty years ago, the Cuban missile crisis brought the world to the brink of nuclear disaster. During the standoff, US President John F. Kennedy thought the chance of escalation to war was "between 1 in 3 and even", and what we have learned in later decades has done nothing to lengthen those odds. We now know, for example, that in addition to nuclear-armed ballistic missiles, the Soviet Union had deployed 100 tactical nuclear weapons to Cuba, and the local Soviet commander there could have launched these weapons without additional codes or commands from Moscow. The US air strike and invasion that were scheduled for the third week of the confrontation would likely have triggered a nuclear response against American ships and troops, and perhaps even Miami. The resulting war might have led to the deaths of over 100 million Americans and over 100 million Russians." 

So, President Kennedy and many Soviet negotiators saved humanity literally. Afterward, there was the hotline between the Soviet Union and the United States.

1963

1963 was the last year when President John Fitzgerald Kennedy would live on this Earth. By January 10, 1963, he met with President-elect Juan Bosch of the Dominican Republic. On the next day, President Kennedy met with Labor Secretary W. Willard Wirtz and AFL-CIO President George Meany. On January 12, President Kennedy announced the appointment of David L. Lawrence as Chairman of the President's Committee on Equal Opportunity in Housing. Kennedy also appointed Phil N. Bornstein as Federal Housing Commissioner. January 14, 1963, was when President Kennedy gave his third and final State of the Union address. On February 10, the President and the First Lady attended the revue Beyond the Fringe in New York City. President Kennedy made the seventh international trip of his presidency, traveling to San José, Costa Rica, where he attended the Conference of Presidents of the Central American Republics. This was from March 18-20.  By June 10, 1963, President John F. Kennedy gave the commencement address at American University in Washington, D.C. In that speech, he called for the long-term goal of peace during the height of tensions during the Cold War. In that speech, he said the following words, 

"...By sponsoring this institution of higher learning for all who wish to learn, whatever their color or their creed, the Methodists of this area and the Nation deserve the Nation's thanks, and I commend all those who are today graduating...I have, therefore, chosen this time and this place to discuss a topic on which ignorance too often abounds and the truth is too rarely perceived--yet it is the most important topic on earth: world peace.

What kind of peace do I mean? What kind of peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war. Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave. I am talking about genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living, the kind that enables men and nations to grow and to hope and to build a better life for their children--not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women--not merely peace in our time but peace for all time....So, let us not be blind to our differences--but let us also direct attention to our common interests and to the means by which those differences can be resolved. And if we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity. For, in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal...."

On June 11, 1963, President Kennedy gave the history Civil Rights Address (which was his greatest speech) during the aftermath of the Birmingham Campaign and the recent Stand in the Schoolhouse Door incident and further calls for legislation to enact a civil rights bill. This was the first speech which an American President explicitly called for a civil rights bill and human equality in a very long time. He said these words, 

"...The heart of the question is whether all Americans are to be afforded equal rights and equal opportunities, whether we are going to treat our fellow Americans as we want to be treated...They are not yet freed from the bonds of injustice. They are not yet freed from social and economic oppression. And this Nation, for all its hopes and all its boasts, will not be fully free until all its citizens are free..."

From June 23 to July 2, 1963, President John F. Kennedy made his 8th international trip of his Presidency. From June 23-25, he visited Cologne, Frankfurt, and Wisebaden, West Germany. He has meetings with West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer and other officials. He visited Berlin on June 26 where he gave his famous "ich bin ein Berliner" speech. President Kennedy in that speech supported representative democracy and capitalism as a replacement for communist regimes around the world. From June 26-29, he visited Dublin, Wexford, Cork, Galway, and Limerick, Ireland, and visited his ancestral home; also addressed the Oireachtas (parliament). From June 29-30, he came to the United Kingdom for an informal visit with British Harold Macmillan at his home in West Sussex, England. President Kennedy came to Naples and Rome, Italy where he met with Italian President Antonio Segni, and NATO officials (from July 1-2). July 2, 1963, was when President Kennedy had an audience with the newly elected Pope Paul VI at the Apostolic Palace in Vatican City (on July 2, 1963).  President Kennedy met with a group of Boys Nation senators, including future U.S. President Bill Clinton, at the White House (on July 24, 1963). On August 7, 1963, Patrick Bouvier Kennedy, President and Mrs. Kennedy's third child was born (five-and-a-half weeks prematurely) at the Otis Air Force Base Hospital in Bourne, Massachusetts. Shortly after birth, he developed symptoms of hyaline membrane disease, now called infant respiratory distress syndrome. 2 days later, Patrick Bouvier Kennedy passed away at the Boston Children's Hospital. This tragedy changed President Kennedy forever and made him become closer to his wife. On August 28, 1963, the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom occurred in Washington, D.C., culminating in the now-famous "I Have A Dream" speech by Martin Luther King Jr. Estimates of the number of marchers range from 200,000 to 300,000. After the march, Dr. King meets with President Kennedy, alongside other civil rights activists.

On September 20, 1963, President Kennedy made his address before the United Nations General Assembly (JFK's second) stating various specific recommendations to "move the world to a just and lasting peace." On September 28, 1963, there was the Dedication of Clair A. Hill Whiskeytown Dam just outside Redding, California in Shasta County. Kennedy touted the reservoir as the largest of the Trinity County Dams" that "could be used to benefit the farms and lands further south."  On October 3, 1963, President John F. Kennedy visited Cleburne County, Arkansas, to dedicate the Greers Ferry Dam. This is the last major public appearance before he was shot in Dallas. On October 7, 1963, President Kennedy signed the Partial Test Ban Treaty, prohibiting all nuclear weapons testing providing an exception for underground nuclear testing only. By October 8, 1963, President Kennedy announced an agreement with the Soviet Union to open negotiations for the sale of American wheat. By October 11, 1963, President Kennedy approved the recommendations made by Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Maxwell Taylor, and outlined in National Security Action Memoranda (NSAM 263, South Vietnam), to (1) conclude a complete US military withdrawal from Vietnam by December 31, 1965; (2) that the first of these troops, numbering 1,000, will have left Vietnam by December 31, 1963; (3) that a public announcement will be issued, to set these decisions in concrete. This policy proved that President Kennedy never desired to send about 200,000 troops into Vietnam. He wanted to end U.S. troop involvement in the war by 1965. On November 4, 1963, in a private diction at the Oval Office, following the assassination of South Vietnam President Diem, President Kennedy admitted that the US Government had been discussing for three months the implementation of a coup d'état in S. Vietnam, with both dissenting and approving views, and which, at length, the plan to depose the leader of S. Vietnam had been authorized and approved by President Kennedy.

By November 14, President Kennedy attended a dedication ceremony at the border of Maryland and Delaware marking the completion of the Northeast Expressway and the Delaware Turnpike, which together form part of Interstate 95 and provided a limited-access route between Baltimore and the approach to the Delaware Memorial Bridge. Both roads were renamed the John F. Kennedy Memorial Highway a month later following his assassination. On November 18, President Kennedy traveled to Tampa, Florida. There, he visited the military's Strike Command Headquarters, attended a luncheon at the officer's club, made a speech at the Florida Chamber of Commerce, and another to the United Steelworker's Union. On November 21, 1963, there was another important event going on. President Kennedy asked his economic advisers to prepare the War on Poverty for 1964. Less than two months after the President's assassination, President Johnson introduced the legislation in his first State of the Union address on January 8, 1964, and two of the major pieces of related legislation – the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964 and the Social Security Act of 1965 – are signed into law on August 20, 1964, and July 30, 1965, respectively. President John F. Kennedy started the War on Poverty which refutes far rights claims that Kennedy was a total conservative. JFK said in one speech that he was a liberal. So, President John F. Kennedy was a liberal President. On November 22, 1963, the world would change forever, and President John F. Kennedy would witness his final day on Earth. 

Dallas

President John F. Kennedy came to Dallas in late November 1963 to promote his 1964 Presidential campaign. JFK was most likely able to win the Presidential campaign if he was alive (absent major scandal) because he was much more eloquent than Barry Goldwater. Also, John F. Kennedy had the argument of economic prosperity, reducing tensions in the Cold War, supporting civil rights legislation, and other positions that would galvanize the public to vote for him. Barry Goldwater was the godfather of the modern libertarian/conservative movement, and he was very far right on foreign policy and civil rights back in the 1960's. President Kennedy wanted to go to Dallas Texas to also smooth over frictions in the state's Democratic Party between liberal U.S. Senator Ralph Yarborough and conservative governor John Connally. The visit was first agreed upon by Kennedy, Johnson, and Connally during a meeting in El Paso in June. The motorcade route was finalized on November 18 and announced soon Later, press Secretary Mac Kilduff showed the Kennedys a negative advertisement published in The Dallas Morning News with the headline "Welcome Mr. Kennedy to Dallas." Kennedy tells his wife: "We're heading into nut country today." As early as November 4, 1963, Secret Service agents surveyed Dallas's buildings in order to find the proper route that the President's motorcade could travel in the city of Dallas. Connally debated with Secret Service Special Agent in Charge (SAIC) Gerald Behn on where the route will take place. Connally wanted the Trade Mart and Sorrells wants the Women's Building. The Secret Service ultimately decides to travel on the Trade Mart. By November 16, 1963, Kennedy confided to his good friend Senator George Smathers of Florida that Vice President Johnson wanted First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy to ride in the car with him during the upcoming tour of Texas. The exact motorcade route is finalized.  On Friday, November 22, 1963, at 8:45 a.m., the president speaks before breakfast in a square across Eighth Street, accompanied by Congressman Jim Wright, Senator Yarborough, Governor Connally and Vice President Johnson. Kennedy praises Fort Worth's aviation industry. The attendees, members of the Fort Worth Chamber of Commerce, are largely conservative Republicans. At 9:10 a.m., Kennedy takes his place in the hotel's grand ballroom for the scheduled speech, and the First Lady arrives amid loud applause 15 minutes later.

After the speech, presidential adviser Kenny O'Donnell informed Roy Kellerman, the Secret Service agent in charge of the trip, that the presidential limousine should not be equipped with its bubble-top if the weather is clear in Dallas. On Friday, November 22, 1963, at 11:38 a.m. CST, Kennedy, his wife Jacqueline, and the rest of the presidential entourage arrived at Love Field in northwest Dallas aboard Air Force One after a very short flight from nearby Carswell Air Force Base, west of Fort Worth. President Kennedy wanted to give a speech at the Trade Mart in Dallas, Texas. 

The Assassination

The assassination of President John F. Kennedy existed in stages. By November 22, 1963, Air Force One arrived at Dallas Love Field at 11:40 am. President Kennedy and the First Lady boarded a 1961 Lincoln Continental convertible limousine to travel to a luncheon at the Dallas Market Center. Other occupants of this vehicle—the second in the motorcade—were Secret Service Agent Bill Greer, who drove; Special Agent Roy Kellerman in the front passenger seat; and Governor Connally and his wife Nellie, who sat just forward of the Kennedys. Four Dallas police motorcycle officers accompanied the Kennedy limousine. Vice President Johnson, his wife Lady Bird, and Senator Yarborough rode in another convertible. The motorcade's meandering 10-mile route through Dallas was designed to give Kennedy maximum exposure to crowds by passing through a suburban section of Dallas, and Main Street in Downtown Dallas, before turning right on Houston Street. After another block, the motorcade was to turn left onto Elm Street, pass through Dealey Plaza, and travel a short segment of the Stemmons Freeway to the Trade Mart.

The planned route had been reported in newspapers several days in advance. Despite concerns about hostile protestors—Kennedy's UN Ambassador Adlai Stevenson had been spat on in Dallas in 1961—Kennedy was greeted warmly by enthusiastic crowds. President John F. Kennedy's limousine entered Dealey Plaza at 12:30 pm. CST. Nellie Connally turned and commented to Kennedy, who was sitting behind her, "Mr. President, they can't make you believe now that there are not some in Dallas who love and appreciate you, can they?" Kennedy's reply – "No, they sure can't" – were his last words. From Houston Street, the limousine made the planned left turn onto Elm, passing the Texas School Book Depository. As it continued down Elm Street, multiple shots were fired: about 80% of the witnesses recalled hearing three shots. The Warren Commission concluded that three shots were fired and noted that most witnesses recalled that the second and third shots were bunched together. Shortly after Kennedy began waving, some witnesses heard the first gunshot, but few in the crowd or motorcade reacted, many interpreting the sound as a firecracker or backfire.

Within one second of each other, Governor Connally and Mrs. Kennedy turned abruptly from their left to their right. Connally—an experienced hunter—immediately recognized the sound as that of a rifle and turned his head and torso rightward, noting nothing unusual behind him. He testified that he could not see Kennedy, so he started to turn forward again (turning from his right to his left), and that when his head was facing about 20 degrees left of center, he was struck in his upper right back by a shot he did not hear, then shouted, "My God. They're going to kill us all!"

According to the Warren Commission and the HSCA, Kennedy was waving to the crowds on his right when a shot entered his upper back and exited his throat just beneath his larynx. He raised his elbows and clenched his fists in front of his face and neck, then leaned forward and leftward. Mrs. Kennedy, facing him, put her arms around him. Although a serious wound, it likely would have been survivable.

According to the Warren Commission's single bullet theory—derided as the "magic bullet theory" by the Warren Commission's critics—Governor Connally was injured by the same bullet that exited Kennedy's neck. The bullet created an oval-shaped entry wound, hit and destroyed several inches of Connally's right fifth rib, and exited his chest just below his right nipple, creating a sucking chest wound. That same bullet then entered his arm just above his right wrist and shattered his right radius bone. The bullet exited just below the wrist at the inner side of his right palm and finally lodged in his left thigh. As the limousine passed the grassy knoll, Kennedy was hit again: a fatal shot to the head. The Warren Commission made no conclusion as to whether this was the second or third bullet fired. The two investigative committees concluded that the second shot to hit Kennedy entered the rear of his head. It then passed in fragments through his skull, creating a large, "roughly ovular" hole on the rear, right side of the head, and spraying blood and fragments. His brain and blood spatter landed as far as the following Secret Service car and the motorcycle officers.

Secret Service Agent Clint Hill was riding on the running board of the car immediately behind Kennedy's limousine. Hill testified to the Warren Commission that he heard one shot, jumped onto the street, and ran forward to board the limousine and protect Kennedy. Hill stated that he heard the fatal headshot as he reached the Lincoln, "approximately five seconds" after the first shot that he heard. After the headshot, Mrs. Kennedy began climbing onto the limousine's trunk, but she later had no recollection of doing so. Hill believed she may have been reaching for a piece of Kennedy's skull. He jumped onto the limousine's bumper, and he clung to the car as it exited Dealey Plaza and sped to Parkland Memorial Hospital. After Mrs. Kennedy crawled back into her seat, both Governor and Mrs. Connally heard her repeatedly saying: "They have killed my husband. I have his brains in my hand." Bystander James Tague received a minor wound to the cheek—either from bullet or concrete curb fragments—while standing by the triple underpass. Nine months later, the FBI removed the curb, and according to the official government story, the spectrographic analysis revealed metallic residue consistent with the lead core in Oswald's ammunition. Tague testified before the Warren Commission and initially stated that he was wounded by either the second or third shot of the three shots that he remembered hearing. When the commission counsel pressed him to be more specific, Tague testified that he was wounded by the second shot.

As the motorcade left Dealey Plaza, some witnesses sought cover, and others joined police officers to run up the grassy knoll in search of a shooter. No shooter was found behind the knoll's picket fence. Among the 178 witnesses who testified to the Warren Commission, 78 were unsure of the shots' origin, 49 believed they came from the Depository, and 21 thought they came from the grassy knoll. The Warren Commission said that no witness ever reported seeing anyone—with or without a gun—immediately behind the knoll's picket fence at the time of the shooting. Critics disagree with that assumption. 

Lee Bowers was in a two-story railroad switch tower 120 yards behind the grassy knoll's picket fence; he was watching the motorcade and had an unobstructed view of the only route by which any shooter could flee the grassy knoll; he saw no one leaving the scene. Bowers testified to the Warren Commission that "one or two" men were between him and the fence during the assassination: one was a familiar parking lot attendant and the other wore a uniform like a county courthouse custodian. He testified seeing "some commotion" on the grassy knoll at the time of the assassination: "something out of the ordinary, a sort of milling around, but something occurred in this particular spot which was out of the ordinary, which attracted my eye for some reason which I could not identify." Witness Howard Brennan said a man from the schoolbook depository had a rifle. 

When searching the sixth floor of the Depository, two deputies found an Italian Carcano M91/38 bolt-action rifle. Oswald had purchased the used rifle the previous March under the alias "A. Hidell" and had it delivered to his Dallas P.O. box. The FBI found Oswald's partial palm print on the barrel, and fibers on the rifle were consistent with those of Oswald's shirt. A bullet found on Governor Connally's hospital gurney and two fragments found in the limousine were ballistically matched to the Carcano.

Oswald left the Depository and traveled by bus to his boarding house, where he retrieved a jacket and revolver. At 1:12 p.m., police officer J. D. Tippit spotted Oswald walking in the residential neighborhood of Oak Cliff and called him to his patrol car. After an exchange of words, Tippit exited his vehicle; Oswald then shot Tippit three times in the chest. As Tippit lay on the ground, Oswald fired a final shot into Tippit's right temple. Oswald then calmly walked away before running as witnesses emerged. The Dallas police found Lee Harvey Oswald at 1:36 pm. He was at the Texas Theater without paying a movie. The film War is Hell was playing. Dallas policemen arrested Oswald after a brief struggle, and Oswald drew his empty gun. He denied shooting anyone and claimed that he was a patsy because he had lived in the Soviet Union. At 12:38 p.m., Kennedy arrived in the emergency room of Parkland Memorial Hospital. Although Kennedy was still breathing after the shooting, his personal physician, George Burkley, immediately saw that survival was impossible. After Parkland surgeons performed futile cardiac massage, Kennedy was pronounced dead at 1:00 p.m., 30 minutes after the shooting. CBS host Walter Cronkite broke the news on live television. 

A picture is worth a thousand words. When LBJ took the oath of office, Lyndon Baines Johnson winked. 

The following strange stuff happened too. The Secret Service was concerned about the possibility of a larger plot and urged Johnson to leave Dallas and return to the White House. However, Johnson refused to do so without any proof of Kennedy's death. Johnson returned to Air Force One around 1:30 p.m., and shortly thereafter, he received telephone calls from advisors McGeorge Bundy and Walter Jenkins advising him to depart for Washington, D.C. immediately. He replied that he would not leave Dallas without Jacqueline Kennedy and that she would not leave without Kennedy's body. According to Esquire, Johnson did "not want to be remembered as an abandoner of beautiful widows." At the time of Kennedy's assassination, the murder of a president was not under federal jurisdiction. Accordingly, Dallas County medical examiner Earl Rose insisted that Texas law required him to perform an autopsy. A heated exchange between Kennedy's aides and Dallas officials nearly erupted into a fistfight before the Texans yielded and allowed Kennedy's body to be transported to Air Force One. At 2:38 p.m., with Jacqueline Kennedy at his side, Johnson was administered the oath of office by federal judge Sarah Tilghman Hughes aboard Air Force One shortly before departing for Washington with Kennedy's coffin. President Kennedy's autopsy was performed at Bethesda Naval Hospital on the night of November 22. Jacqueline Kennedy had selected a naval hospital as the postmortem site as President Kennedy had been a naval officer during World War II. 

Scholars who believe that the assassination was a conspiracy or not, heavily believed that the autopsy was too rushed and messed up. It was a heavily botched autopsy.  The HSCA forensic pathology panel concluded that the autopsy had "extensive failings", including failure to take sufficient photographs, failure to determine the exact exit or entry point of the head bullet, not dissecting the back and neck, and neglecting to determine the angles of gunshot injuries relative to the body axis. The panel further concluded that the two doctors were not qualified to have conducted a forensic autopsy. Panel member Milton Helpern—Chief Medical Examiner for New York City—said that selecting Humes (who had only taken a single course on forensic pathology) to lead the autopsy was "like sending a seven-year-old boy who has taken three lessons on the violin over to the New York Philharmonic and expecting him to perform a Tchaikovsky symphony."

The Funeral

The state funeral of President John F. Kennedy, or the 35th President of the United States of America, took place in Washington, D.C. This happened during three days after the assassination. After the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, President Kennedy's body was flown back to Washington, D.C., and taken to Bethesda Naval Hospital for the autopsy. During that time, military authorities started to make arrangements for a state funeral. Army Major Philip C. Wehle (the commanding general of the Military District of Washington or the MDW) and retired Army Colonel Paul C. Miller (chief of ceremonies and special events at the MDW) planned the funeral. The military leaders went to the White House and worked with the President's brother-in-law Sargent Shriver (also director of the Peace Corps) including Ralph Dungan, an aide to the President. One day after the assassination, LBJ issued Presidential Proclamation 3561, declaring Monday to be a National Day of Mourning. 

Early on November 23, six military pallbearers carried the flag-draped coffin into the East Room of the White House, where he lay in repose for 24 hours. Then, his flag-draped coffin was carried on a horse-drawn caisson to the Capitol to lie in state. Throughout the day and night, hundreds of thousands lined up to view the guarded casket, with a quarter million passing through the rotunda during the 18 hours of lying in state. Kennedy's funeral service was held on November 25, at St. Matthew's Cathedral. The Requiem Mass was led by Cardinal Richard Cushing. About 1,200 guests, including representatives from over 90 countries, attended. After the service, Kennedy was buried at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia.

The Warren Commission

After the assassination of President John Kennedy, the Warren Commission existed. Before exposing the weaknesses of the Warren Commission, it is important to describe its origin and composition first. The Warren Commission was created by President Lyndon Baines Johnson via Executive Order 11130 on November 29, 1963. The Commission's purpose was to investigate the assassination of JFK. The U.S. Congress passed Senate Joint Resolution 137 authorizing the Presidential appointed Commission to report on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, mandating the attendance and testimony of witnesses and the production of evidence. Its 888-page final report was presented to President Johnson on September 24, 1964, and made public three days later. The Warren Commission concluded that President Kennedy was assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald alone, and Jack Ruby acted alone when he killed Oswald 2 days later. The Chairman of the Warren Commission was Chief Justice Earl Warren.  According to published transcripts of Johnson's presidential phone conversations, some major officials were opposed to forming such a commission and several commission members took part only reluctantly. One of their chief reservations was that a commission would ultimately create more controversy than consensus. President Lyndon Baines Johnson didn't want an independent Congressional investigation of the assassination at first. At the same time, Nicholas Katzenbach was named as providing advice after the assassination of John F. Kennedy that led to the creation of the Warren Commission. On November 25 he sent a memo to Johnson's White House aide Bill Moyers recommending the formation of a Presidential Commission to investigate the assassination. To combat speculation of a conspiracy, Katzenbach said that the results of the FBI's investigation should be made public. He wrote, in part: "The public must be satisfied that Oswald was the assassin; that he did not have confederates who are still at large." That is a bold statement to make before the Warren Commission's conclusion was reached. 

The other members of the commission were chosen from among the representatives of the Republican and Democratic parties, in both chambers (Senate and House of Representatives) added diplomat John J. McCloy, former president of the World Bank, and former CIA director, Allen Dulles, sacked by John F Kennedy in November 1961, following the resounding failure of the Bay Pigs Invasion in April 1961. Allen Dulles should not have been chosen on the Warren Commission, because he had a hostility toward President Kennedy's foreign policy actions. The Warren Commission met formally for the first time on December 5, 1963, on the second floor of the National Archives Building in Washington, D.C. The Commission conducted its business primarily in closed sessions, but these were not secret sessions. Earl Warren, Richard Russell Jr., John Sherman Cooper, Hale Boggs, Gerald Ford, Allen Dulles, and John J. McCloy. The Warren Commission denied that shots were fired from the Triple Underpass, they say that three shots were fired, they couldn't find a motivation for Oswald's actions, and they believe that Connally was shot by Oswald. So, the Warren Commission was the establishment's official view of the Kennedy assassination.

 

Responses to the Warren Commission

This conclusion was controversial as many people don't agree with the Warren Commission's views at all. The findings prompted the Secret Service to make numerous modifications to its security procedures. The Commission made other recommendations to Congress to adopt new legislation that would make the murder of the President (or Vice-President) a federal crime, which was not the case in 1963. All sides of this debate agree that CIA Director McCone was "complicit" in a Central Intelligence Agency "benign cover-up" by withholding information from the Warren Commission, according to a report by the CIA Chief Historian David Robarge released to the public in 2014. According to this report, CIA officers had been instructed to give only "passive, reactive, and selective" assistance to the commission, to keep the commission focused on "what the Agency believed at the time was the 'best truth' — that Lee Harvey Oswald, for as yet undetermined motives, had acted alone in killing John Kennedy." The CIA may have also covered up evidence of being in communication with Oswald before 1963, according to the 2014 report findings.

Also withheld were earlier CIA plots, involving CIA links with the Mafia, to assassinate Cuban president Fidel Castro, which might have been considered to provide a motive to assassinate Kennedy. The report concluded, "In the long term, the decision of John McCone and Agency leaders in 1964 not to disclose information about CIA's anti-Castro schemes might have done more to undermine the credibility of the Commission than anything else that happened while it was conducting its investigation."

The Warren Commission was not perfect. It has many omissions. Many independent investigators, journalists, historians, jurists, and academics including Thomas Buchanan, Sylvan Fox, Harold Feldman, Richard E. Sprague, Mark Lane Rush to Judgment, Edward Jay Epstein Inquest, Harold Weisberg's Whitewash, Sylvia Meagher's Accessories After the Fact or Josiah Thompson's Six Seconds in Dallas, will issue opinions opposing the conclusions of the Warren commission based on the same elements collected by its works. English historian Hugh Trevor-Roper, who read the report, despite the lack of an index, wrote: "The Warren report will have to be judged, not by its soothing success, but by the value of its argument. I must admit that from the first reading of the report, it seemed impossible to me to join in this general cry of triumph. I had the impression that the text had serious flaws. Moreover, when probing the weak parts, they appeared even weaker than at first sight."

The Warren Commission argued that direct witnesses to the shooting, who immediately rushed en masse to the grassy knoll after the shots were fired, were fleeing the area of the shooting. In reality, the people present, including a dozen members of the security forces, in particular Sheriff Decker's team, who had given the order to invest the area, all testified that they were running to search for one or more shooters posted on the grassy Knoll. It also did not interview John Fitzgerald Kennedy's personal doctor, Doctor Georges Burkley who was nevertheless present during the shooting in the convoy of official vehicles then at Parkland Hospital, on board Air Force One, then at Naval Bethesda Hospital during the autopsy. He signed the death certificate and also took delivery of the brain of John Fitzgerald Kennedy which is declared lost in the National Archives. Concerning the conclusions of the Warren Commission about the three shootings, the practitioner had declared in 1967: "I would not like to be quoted on this subject." 

The ballistic reports conducted by the F.B.I and the autopsy reports were not the subject of any counter-investigation, which made the commission directly dependent on the work of the latter. The Warren Commission, by decision of Earl Warren, refused to hire its own independent investigators. However, it had its own investigative capacity thanks to direct access to the emergency presidential budget funds granted by President Lyndon Johnson when it was created, to conduct its own investigations. Thus, the Warren Commission was not informed by the F.B.I of the discovery the day after the attack, on November 23, 1963, by a medical student, William Harper, of a piece of occiput located at the rear left in relation to at the position of the presidential limo during the fatal shot to the head. He had it examined by the professor and medical examiner, Doctor Cairns who measured it and photographed this piece before informing the F.B.I, on November 25, 1963. The latter received instructions not to make any publicity on this subject. It was the Attorney General, Robert F Kennedy, who, informed by a letter from Dr. Cairns transmitted to the Warren Commission, allowed the latter to question the practitioner. 

As early as the 1970s, official members of the Warren Commission questioned its work, in particular Hale Boggs who criticized the influence of J. Edgar Hoover, the historic director of the F.B.I from 1924 to 1972, who had centralized all of the information from the F.B.I agents before synthesizing it and transmitting it to the Warren Commission. He campaigned for a reopening of the file considering that the director of the F.B.I had lied to the Warren Commission. He disappeared in an unsolved plane crash in October 1972.

Commission member Richard Russell told the Washington Post in 1970 that Kennedy had been the victim of a conspiracy criticizing the commission's no-conspiracy finding and saying "We weren't told the truth about Oswald." John Sherman Cooper also considered the ballistic findings to be "unconvincing." Russell also particularly rejected Arlen Specter's "single bullet" theory, and he asked Earl Warren to indicate his disagreement in a footnote, which the chairman of the commission refused.

Four other U.S. government or senate investigations have been conducted about the Warren Commission's conclusion or its material in different circumstances. The Commission Church analyzed in 1976 the work of the CIA and FBI which had communicated the different elements to the Warren Commission Members. The three others concluded with the initial conclusions that two shots struck JFK from the rear : the 1968 panel set by Attorney General Ramsey Clark, the 1975 Rockefeller Commission, and the 1978-79 House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA), which reexamined the evidence with the help of the largest forensics panel and bringing new materials to the public.

The HSCA involved Congressional hearings and ultimately concluded that Oswald assassinated Kennedy, probably as the result of a conspiracy. The HSCA concluded that Oswald fired shots number one, two, and four, and that an unknown assassin fired shot number three (but missed) from near the corner of a picket fence that was above and to President Kennedy's right front on the Dealey Plaza grassy knoll. However, this conclusion has also been criticized, especially for its reliance upon disputed acoustic evidence. The HSCA Final Report in 1979 did agree with the Warren Report's conclusion in 1964 that two bullets caused all of President Kennedy's and Governor Connally's injuries, and that both bullets were fired by Oswald from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository. 

The HSCA determined that the gradual change in policy of the John Fitzgerald Kennedy administration toward Cuba, first with the failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion in April 1961, then more sustainably with the missile crisis of October 1962, in order to appease relations with the Cuban regime on a lasting basis and to open up new prospects, contributed to directing, if not slightly, within the many groups of paramilitary operations the most radical fringe of anti-Castro Cubans, American intelligence agents and Mafia criminals who continued their operations to overthrow the regime of Fidel Castro despite requests for formal arrests from the White House. 

On January 20, 2019, a request made by 60 personalities to officially reopen the investigations into the assassinations of Malcolm X, Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King and John Kennedy was formulated by the Truth and Reconciliation Committee, of which Robert Blakey is a member (investigator in head of the HSCA), the children of Robert Kennedy, filmmaker and director Oliver Stone, Daniel Ellsberg (the whistleblower on the Pentagon Papers in 1971), or even Doctor Robert McClelland (deceased in September 10, 2019), one of the surgeons at the Parkland Dallas Memorial Hospital who intervened on JFK on November 22, 1963.

Epilogue 

November 22, 1963, was a monumental part of American history and world history. It was the day when the assassination of President John F. Kennedy took place in broad daylight (during the early afternoon) in Dallas, Texas. President Kennedy was President in the midst of domestic and foreign policy tensions in America. It was after World War II with the massive economic boom in certain parts of America while millions of other Americans suffered poverty, racial oppression, xenophobia, and sexism. That time witness massive decolonization movements in Africa, Asia, and Latin America while a segment of reactionary forces in the military and the intelligence community desired Western imperialist policies to be globally manifested. When President Kennedy came along, Kennedy actively resisted the military-industrial complex's most extreme policies. For example, President John F. Kennedy supported a socialist party in Italy, he supported the independence of Algeria and Guinea, he refused to invade Loas, he refused to send permanent military troops to Vietnam (desiring to get rid of all U.S. troops from Vietnam by the end of 1965), signed onto affirmative action, promoted federal civil rights legislation, had plans to start the War on Poverty with expenditure programs, told the world in a speech that he is a liberal, and threatened to crush the CIA into a thousand pieces. Now, President Kennedy had his imperfections of adultery, not loving massive demonstrations to fight for racial justice, and using herbicides in Vietnam. 

Yet, he became more progressive as time existed during his Presidency. President John F. Kennedy had idealism which inspired millions of Americans to this day. After his unjust death, the nation mourned. The Warren Commission had so many inconsistencies and omissions that the vast majority of Americans believe that the JFK assassination was a product of a conspiracy. New documents being released show Oswald's CIA ties, and we have to be clear to research information to know more of the truth as possible. The ideal of Camelot was a dream. It was not real (as the Kennedy family was among the American financially wealthy class), but the reality of President F. Kennedy's eloquence, heroism in the Cuban Missile Crisis, and resistance to the extreme policies of the far-right elements in the American government (including resisting some of the aims of the Mafia and right-wing Cuban exiles) are very real. In our generation, we desire racial justice, social justice, and real change. Ever since 1963, the far right has increased their vicious goal to not only ruin the New Deal and the Great Society. They (along with reactionary financial oligarchy) desire to ruin progressive benefits to society in general. We have the right to resist that and follow the principle that the Golden Rule (along with advancing the general welfare) must be applied justly in our everyday lives. 

By Timothy