The United States of America was founded in 1492 by Christopher Columbus. The citizens of the United States of America have from the very start always practiced democracy as the form of governing the country. It has a presidential form of government in which the president has most of the powers and s/he is taken as the head of the state. George Washington was the first president of the USA to rule the country from 1789 to 1797. From 1789 to date 44 presidents have ruled the USA. After completion of every tenure which comprises 4 years, a new president is elected as the head of the state. Out of the total 44 presidents, the famous ones are George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, J. F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and now Donald Trump.
Four presidents of the United States of America have been assassinated during their tenure of the presidency. The names include Abraham Lincoln (16th president of the USA), James A. Garfield (20th president of the USA), William McKinley (25th president of the USA), and John F. Kennedy (35th president of the USA). The murder of John F. Kennedy brought sorrow to many people as he was very famous and greatly loved by the people. He ruled the country from 1961 to 1963. It was the 22nd day of November on which he was shot dead by a sniper when J. F. Kennedy was traveling with his wife through Dallas, Texas. A sniper was sitting inside one of the buildings around the place from where J F Kennedy’s car was being driven through and shot three bullets at a perfect moment. One of the bullets hit the president’s secretary, and one of them hit the president which caused severe bleeding, and the president died at the hospital.
This incident caused an uproar, and the government was forced to make a commission to find the murderer of the president. When the commission investigated and delivered the results two groups were formed. One said that the president was killed by a murderer who did not work for any conspiracy, and the other stated that there was a bigger plan behind the murder and it was not only one person who carried out the task and killed J F Kennedy but there were some other people too who helped the assassinator in killing the president for some other hideous motives.
After the brutal murder of President John F Kennedy, a commission was made to evaluate and investigate all possible aspects of the killing and punishing the murderer. The board was made by President Lyndon Johnson on 29th November 1963 just seven days after the murder of the president. At the time of appointing the great responsibility of investigating the killing of the president of the USA, three main questions needed to be answered to reach the conclusion of the case.
The first question was who did the assassination. The second question was why the assassination was done, and the third question was how the assassination was done. The question of “Why” was contingent on the question of “Who” and that was linked with the question of “How.” Fortunately, the assassin was arrested from the same building from where he targeted the president and killed him. The person who was assumed to have killed the president was Lee Harvey Oswald. The commission reviewed several reports by secret agencies including the FBI. The commission also thoroughly checked Oswald’s personal history, including his political affiliation, military record, and social interaction.
Warren Commission also interacted with several witnesses present at the incident’s place to extract any information that could help. Assistant Attorney General Katzenbach wrote a revealing memo that stated: “The public must be satisfied that Oswald was the assassin; that he did not have confederates who are still at large; and that evidence was such that he would have been convicted at trial.” Within two days of staying in custody of the police, Oswald was killed by another person named Jack Ruby, in the basement of a Police Station in Dallas, who shot and murdered him. This murder of Oswald was regarded as a conspiracy to keep the secret of the murder of the president undercover.
During the investigation, a picture of Oswald was found in which he was holding a rifle in his hands in the backyard of his house. The rifle was the same one with which bullets were shot at J F Kennedy. When the picture was shown to Oswald during his time in prison, he clearly rejected the possibility of that picture being real. At one point, the photo with Oswald in it was declared fake because of inconsistent lighting and shadows.
The commission delivered its 888-page report regarding the assassination of J F Kennedy and stated that Oswald had killed the president, unaccompanied and singlehanded, and also that the murder of Oswald by Jack Ruby was a rash act and cannot be connected to any conspiracy. It also stated that the murderer shot bullets from the sixth floor of a building, which was the Texas School Book Depository. The report also included Oswald’s visit to the Soviet Union but did not include any information regarding Oswald’s basic motives. After the report had been delivered to President Johnson on September 24, 1964, the case was declared closed.
The Warren Commission that was made after the assassination of the president was considered inefficient. The commission was found to be inefficient, and its findings were regarded as not enough to give such a result because of some theories. The commission’s results were not enough to satisfy those who witnessed the incident in person or those who viewed the whole procedure of investigation and the incident technically. “The Committee has…developed evidence which impeaches the process by which the intelligence agencies arrived at their conclusions about the assassination, and by which they provided information to the Warren Commission. The evidence indicates that the investigation of the assassination was deficient. Schweiker said: “The Warren Commission had “collapsed like a house of cards,” and that the Kennedy assassination investigation was “snuffed out before it began.” The first one is the magic bullet theory.
In the incident, the president was killed, and Governor John Connally was heavily wounded. There was an assumption that the murderer shot more than one bullet which resulted in the assassination of J F Kennedy and the injury of the Governor, but the commission stated that only a single bullet was shot that passed through the body of J F Kennedy and then hit the Governor causing him injuries. The other assumption was that the Mafia group could be behind the murder of the president. This assumption is considered because Robert, the attorney general of that time was active in increasing the prosecutions of senior mafia heads.
To discount the outcome and reports by FBI agents, who collaboratively worked with the panel staff, is considered a big mistake. The reenactment of the assassination led to an unanticipated and unpredicted development. The upper torso of the president came into the line of fire of Oswald when Zapruder resumed his camera. It was labeled as position A. The first point is where the shooter can get a shot of the president from the back after the car reaches the corner. Even after making a breakthrough the commission disregarded position A and did not consider the possibility of such a plan.
With the help of findings such as the photo in which Oswald was holding a gun, which was later identified as a real picture by the experts, the person who was wearing a raincoat and was holding an umbrella while standing on the side when the president’s car was passing by, the assassination of Oswald by Jack Ruby, the assumption of involvement of Mafia in the murder of J F Kennedy is enough to prove that it was part of a big plan which was strategized not by just one person who carried out the task but by a bunch of individuals who wanted to kill the president.
In the late 1970s, a new investigation was launched to ensure no loopholes in the investigation and evaluation done by the Warren Commission. This new investigation was launched by the House of Representatives Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) of the USA. Its final report was launched in 1979, and the investigation team agreed with the Warren Commission that two bullets were shot by Oswald that had killed J F Kennedy and wounded Governor Connally. On the other hand, it also stated that there was a high probability of the presence of a second gunman and that the president was killed because of an unspecified conspiracy.
Works Cited
The JFK Assassination. Mary Ferrell Foundation. Retrieved from https://www.maryferrell.org/pages/JFK_Assassination.html
Who Killed JFK? A guide to the Kennedy conspiracy theories. The Week. 2017. Retrieved from http://www.theweek.co.uk/55933/who-killed-jfk-a-guide-to-the-kennedy-conspiracy-theories
Holland, Max. The Truth behind JFK’s Assassination. Newsweek. 2014. Retrieved from http://www.newsweek.com/2014/11/28/truth-behind-jfks-assassination-285653.html
John F. Kennedy Assassinated. History.com. Retrieved from http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/john-f-kennedy-assassinated
