Fact Vs. Fiction: These Documents Reveal What Really Happened During JFK’s Assassination

Shortly after noon on the fateful day of 22nd November 1963, President John Fitzgerald Kennedy was assassinated while on a motorcade ride through Dealey Plaza in downtown Dallas. It was one of the most shocking and notorious events of the 20th century that changed the landscape of American politics forever.

As the 35th President of the United States, JFK set out on a presidential motorcade on that fateful day in November. His gorgeous wife, Jaqueline Kennedy, accompanied him, and the first couple was joined by Texas Governor John Connally and his wife, Nellie.

It took a little over an hour from when the shot was fired for the Dallas Police Department to track down the man who pulled the trigger. Lee Harvey Oswald was immediately charged with the double mu$$ers of JFK and the local policeman J.D. Tippit.

Further investigation into Oswald’s background revealed some exciting details. He was no ordinary civilian; the man who dared to assassinate the President of the United States in broad daylight was a disgruntled former marine who was also a communist sympathizer.

As more strange details poured in about Oswald, the authorities dug deeper until something blew a hole into the Warren Commission’s theory of him acting as a lone gunman. After being honorably discharged from active duty in the marine corps, he defected to the Soviet Union in 1959.

That’s not all; going back to his early childhood, the signs of a troubled child were already there. At 12, Oswald was held in juvenile detention for truancy, where a psychiatrist diagnosed him as emotionally disturbed due to the absence of family life.

Unfortunately for the investigators who wanted to get to the bottom of his motives, Oswald was in police custody for less than 48 hours before he met his demise in a shocking way similar to his assassination of the President. This time he fell victim to the bullet shot by the Dallas club owner Jack Ruby with the cameras trained on him.

The dramatic events that followed JFK’s assassination fueled further speculations about the conspiracies surrounding his demise. Who wanted him gone? Which domestic or international factions commissioned the daylight mu$$er of the influential American President?

By the end of November, a President’s Commission known as the Warren Commission led by Chief Justice Earl Warren was established by President Lyndon B. Johnson to investigate the matter at length. The investigation that lasted ten months included over 25,000 interviews and chasing after thousands of investigative leads.

Even though they largely agreed with the Warren Commission findings that proposed the single-bullet theory, the US House of Select Committee on Assassinations, or HSCA, in its 1979 report, stated the high probability of Kennedy’s assassination being a result of a global conspiracy.

The HSCA based its final findings that clearly stated the possibility of conspiracies surrounding the assassination of the President on a critical piece of evidence – the dictabelt recording. A motorcycle policeman’s radio microphone stuck in the open position happened to record the entire assassination.

Let’s get to the crux of the matter relating to the hundreds of conspiracy theories that stain the events surrounding JFK’s assassination. Did the assassin Lee Harvey Oswald act of his own accord? Everything about his personality, from how he had led his life until then, points to his ability to act alone.

Most of the conspiracy theories surrounding JFK’s assassination were born out of what came to be called the “magic bullet.” It was used to deride the conclusions of the Warren Commission that expressly stated that a single bullet had taken the President’s life and wounded the Texas Governor, Connally.

The primary basis for the single-bullet theory was the Commission’s study of the Zapruder film, the only known camera that had captured the entire assassination sequence. While the running speed of the camera was determined to be 18.3 frames per second, the presumed mu$$er weapon needed at least 42 frames or 2.3 seconds to be fired twice.

The Warren Commission conducted their meeting behind closed doors, but the proceedings weren’t kept a secret. Several differing eyewitness accounts poured in from the members who witnessed the assassination. Some were sure they heard shots fired from the grassy knoll right in front of the Presidential limousine.

The supposed second sniper earned the nickname of the “Badge Man” thanks to him wearing what some suspect was a policeman’s uniform with a gleaming badge on the shirt. Mary Moorman, a photographer and a witness to the assassination, had captured the image of this badge man on the grassy knoll.

Over the decades, every little speck on each photograph taken of the assassination has given rise to in-depth investigation, analysis, and conspiracy theories. Anything that could add weight to the larger ploy behind the shocking demise of JFK was welcome.

This report stemmed from over a decade-long speculation about the many conspiracy theories doing the rounds since Jim Garrison, the New Orleans District Attorney, launched an in-depth investigation in 1966 into the President’s assassination. It was highly publicized, sparking the interest of the general public.

David Ferrie was a former pilot with Eastern Airlines who wasn’t directly involved in the assassination to warrant an arrest. Further investigations revealed that he might have been heard planning to assassinate the President with someone later identified as Clay Shaw.

Shaw was an accomplished businessman, playwright, and director of the International Trade Mart. He enjoyed a good reputation in New Orleans until he was pulled up as a suspect in the assassination of the most prominent political figure in the world.

In the late 70s, nearly two years after Clay Shaw was acquitted, former CIA director Richard Helms testified under oath to having known the businessman for a while. He shocked everyone by revealing that he had once been a part-time intelligence contact in the CIA’s Domestic Contact Service for officers stationed abroad.

The Clay Shaw association with the agency might have perpetuated Jim Garrison’s suspicions of his involvement. In 1967, the latter had expressly stated that he believed in the conspiracy theories involving the Russians and the CIA based on solid evidence.

Jim Garrison’s highly publicized investigation into the assassination of the US President was best represented in the movie JFK. Written and directed by Oliver Stone, who had also made a documentary on the same topic, the film had Kevin Costner playing the pivotal character of the New Orleans DA.

This has been one of the most urgent questions that have been posed since the investigations of the assassination went underway. Did the agency want the President gone? Kennedy did look “too weak” on communism when he mishandled the Bay of Pigs invasion in Cuba.

Under Kennedy’s leadership, the Cuba incident wasn’t a one-off case. The US Intelligence Agency has played a crucial role in regime changes in other countries. It has a spotty record of directly or indirectly instigating the switch in ruling governments in various nations such as the Middle East, Asia, and Latin America.

In December 2022, the National Archives released 13,173 documents detailing new information on the assassination. This is the first time all the agencies responsible for the withheld documents came together to review each redacted information before releasing it to the public.

The John F Kennedy Assassination Records Collection was set up in 1992 by the National Archives. It holds over five million pages of information and investigative reports about the President’s untimely demise. Most of the pages have been in the public domain for everyone to access and read since the late ’90s.

Unfortunately, for those looking for information that would further fuel the conspiracy theories involving Cubans, Russians, and the CIA, the newly released information would be a disappointment. It had no evidence to support any of those speculations.

Most of the theories were spearheaded by Jim Garrison or the Warren Commission. The former had gone berserk at different points casting doubts on the CIA personnel, the extreme right-wing activists, and even the Cuban exiles for JFK’s assassinations.

Even though the trove of de-redacted documents essentially debunks the conspiracy theories, it has once again generated new interest among the public about the assassination of one of the most prominent political figures in the world.