November 22, 1963 - The Assassination Of President Kennedy

Fifty years ago today, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated while riding in a motorcade in Dallas, Texas, as it moved through an area called Dealey Plaza.  The president was riding with his wife Jackie, Texas governor John Connally, and his wife.  Governor Connally was wounded in the attack.  Lee Harvey Oswald, who worked at the Texas School Book Depository, a building along the plaza, was later arrested for shooting a policeman named J. D. Tippitt, and soon afterwards was also accused of assassinating President Kennedy.  Two days later, Oswald was shot and killed by a nightclub owner named Jack Ruby.

After Vice President Lyndon Baines Johnson succeeded Kennedy as president, he set up a commission to investigate the assassination, which was headed by Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren, and which included a congressman from Michigan named Gerald Ford.  The Warren Commission would conclude that Oswald had acted alone.  Even so, the assassination of President Kennedy has been the subject of numerous conspiracy theories, with their various ideas about Oswald's role, and about who else may have been involved.  There have also been people who came forth at various times to defend the Warren Commission's conclusions.

According to the Warren Commission, Oswald fired three shots from a window in the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository (which is now a museum).  One shot completely missed the car in which the Kennedys and Connallys were riding and hit a curb, causing a small concrete chip to fly upward and hit the face of a bystander named James Tague, giving him a superficial wound.  The second shot passed through President Kennedy and then through Governor Connally's upper body before hitting his wrist and finally lodging in his thigh.  The third shot hit Kennedy in the head and killed him.

I have never quite come to a definite opinion about the Warren Commission's findings and who, if anyone, was in any sort of conspiracy with Oswald, but there are a couple of things that cause me to doubt what has come to be called the "official version" of the assassination.  In the famous film recorded by Abraham Zapruder, the president's head is seen to jerk sharply backwards.  This motion would appear to be a reaction to something striking him from the front, whereas the window from which Oswald allegedly fired was located to the rear of Kennedy and the car at the time of the shots.  I have also read that bullet fragments were taken from Connally's torso and wrist.  According to the Warren Commission, the bullet that passed through Kennedy before striking Connally, known as Commission Exhibit 399, shows little if any sign of having given off fragments.  CE 399 has since become known as the "pristine bullet" and even the "magic bullet".

I was just four years old when President Kennedy was killed.  I have no recollection of that day.  Lyndon Johnson was the first American president that I knew about.  But later on, some people connected to the assassination attracted my attention.  Former governor John Connally served as President Richard Nixon's Secretary of the Treasury, after switching parties and becoming a Republican.  In 1973, after Spiro Agnew resigned from the vice presidency, Nixon choose former Warren Commissioner Gerald Ford as his replacement.