The
assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Is all that we know real?
The death of the 35th
president of the United States of America, John Fitzgerald Kennedy has been one
of the most stunning events in the history of North America. President Kennedy
was shot in the head by a sniper during a parade celebrated in his honor on
November 22nd, 1963 in the main streets of Dallas city (Texas). There
was an official investigation carried by the Warren Commission that concluded,
a year before of the event, that the only culprit for JFK’s assassination was
Lee Harvey Oswal himself, discarding the possibility of any kind of conspiracy.
Anyway, most of the Americans
believe that others besides Oswald were also involved in the assassination, and
a lot of theories have been created in order to clarify the mystery around JFK’s
death, theories that involve not only the idea that there was more than one
shooter, that it was a political conspiracy, but also that JFK wasn´t really
killed.
One of the most
extended ideas about the assassination of President Kennedy is the one that
defends that there was more than one shooter in the streets of Dallas during
that day. There are two big theories about this, in one hand there is a theory
based in the idea that the car driver was directly related with the conspiracy
and, when Oswal missed the first shot, it was the he himself the one who did
the headshot that killed a wounded John Fitzgerald Kennedy. In the other hand
there is also an idea that defends that there was more than one shooter placed
in the surrounding area, this is based in the fact that only two of the three
bullets that Oswal shot to the presidential car, hit inside the car itself, but
the governor John Connally, that was also inside the car, was hit several times
and only one of those bullets went across his body and hit JFK. Some of the
witnesses around the area declared that they thought that the shots came from
the front of the presidential car; meanwhile many other declared that they
thought that the shots came from the back part of the car, so the theory about
two assassins is completely possible.
It was very soon when
theories that defend that Oswal was just a scapegoat to hide that the assassination
was a political movement appeared. The two biggest suspects, if we think that
Kennedy’s assassination was a political fact, are Lyndon B. Johnson who was
Kennedy’s vice president and became the 36th president of the United States
when JFK died, and Richard Nixon, whose hatred to Kennedy was known because of
the fact that JFK “stole” the presidency to Nixon on 1960. This theories are
the most difficult to prove because most of the possibilities have been
investigated and, even though there is still some facts that have no sense, the
evidences were not enough to incriminate politicians as important as they were.
The primary reason
this case has never been solved is the fact that there is an enormous amount of
disagreement and discrepancy regarding the medical evidence (Buyer, 2009). It is
said that the American cop J.D. Tippit was physically identical to President
Kennedy, as much as he was nicknamed “JFK”, for that reason there is a lot of
people who think that Tippit was killed in order to be a replacement for the
president, there were also some evidences of cosmetic surgery during Kennedy’s
autopsy. This theory would guide us to the possibility that Kennedy, knowing
that some people was trying to act against him decided to fake his own death in
order to disappear.
In conclusion the death
of President Kennedy affected the lives of everyone, regardless of ideology or
political affiliation (Jovich, 1988), not only because of the charisma that he
had but also because of the unknown facts and mysteries around his
assassination. All the theories related with his death; if Oswall was an
scapegoat and there is more people related with the crime, if there were more
shooters than the one that we know, if there was any political interests hidden
behind or even if it was a plan that he himself orchestrated in order to
disappear from public life is something that will keep being unknown, at least
until somebody finds some evidences that can solve one of the biggest mysteries
in the history of the United States of America.
Bibliography
JOVICH, J. B. (1988). Reflections on JFK’s assassination: 250
famous Americans remember November 22, 1963. Bethesda: Woodbine House.
BUYER, R. (2009). Why the JFK assassination still maters: The
truth form my daughter Kennedy and the generations to come. Tucson, Arizona:
Wheatmark .
