Assassination Of Jfk Essay Research Paper Assassination

Assassination Of Jfk Essay, Research Paper

Assassination of JFK

On Friday, November 22nd 1963 at 12:30 P.M. the 35th

president of the

United States of America, John Fitzgerald Kennedy

assassinated while he

rode in an open limousine though the streets of Dallas.

This event, which

abruptly and severely altered the course of history, it has

created more

controversy than any other single event. Some haunting

questions still

remain. “Who did it?” “Why did they do it?” “How was it

done?” “Was there

a cover up” The official answers complied by the Warren

Commission have

never satisfied the majority of the world’s population. In

this following

essay I will try to show who was responsible for the

assassination of John

F. Kennedy. I believe the only way to prove that there was

a cover up, is

to firstly prove that Lee Harvey Oswald is not the killer.

The Warren Commission consisting of “various outstanding

citizens” was

created to “ascertain, evaluate and report upon the facts

relating to the

assassination … and the subsequent violent death of the

man charged with

the assassination Lee Harvey Oswald. The purpose of the

Commission was to

examine the evidence developed by the Federal Bureau of

Investigation and

any additional evidence that may hereafter come to light

… to make such

further investigation, as the Commission finds desirable.

In less than one

week they found that a ‘lone nut’ killed JKF.

At no time did the Warren Commission seem to consider the

basic legal

rights of Oswald – innocence until proven guilty, the right

to legal

representation, or the right to cross-examine witnesses and

evidence

against him. There is no way that Lee Harvey Oswald was the

lone assassin.

Firstly the paraffin test of Oswald’s hands and his right

cheek conducted

on November 23, 1963, has been positive for his hands but

negative for his

cheek. Generally, this is evidence in Oswald’s favor, but

the Commission

asserted that the test “is completely unreliable in

determining either

whether a person has recently fired a weapon or whether he

has not.”

Nobody saw Oswald on the 6th floor window after 11:55 on

November 22nd. 90

seconds after the assassination, Roy Truly and Police

officer M. L. Baker

saw Oswald on the second floor. Oswald had to take the

stairs down. But

he had just 90 seconds to hide the rifle in the opposite

corner of the

sixth floor, run downstairs 4 floors passing Victoria Adams

who never saw

him and reach the second floor where he was encountered to

be “calm and

collected”. The Warren Commission claimed that Oswald

fired three shots

in 5.6 seconds from the sixth floor of the Texas Schoolbook

Depository.

The first shot was the ‘magic bullet’ which made a total of

seven wounds

on JFK and Connally . Which appeared later in the Parkland

Memorial

Hospital – you can see – in an almost pristine condition.

The second shot

missed JFK and hit a bystander in the cheek and the third

was the fatal

head. The Warren Commission said the third shot hit JFK

from behind,

however his head was pushed backwards and to the left. This

means the

bullet must of come from the grassy Knoll. Also many

witness thought they

heard shots from there. (See graph) Oswald rifle’s had poor

capability

(experts tried to do the same what Oswald was claimed to

have done, but

only one was able to do that! because he got not familiar

with the rifle

and the inaccurate attached scope of the rifle. It was near

impossible for

him to make the shot in 5.6 seconds

“If I had to pick one man in the whole United States to

shoot me, I’d pick

Oswald. I saw that man shoot and there’s no way he could

have ever learned

to shoot well enough to do what they accused him of. I’m

one of the best

shots around, and I couldn’t have done it.” –Sherman

Cooley (US Marine,

served with Oswald)

If Oswald was not the killer then who would have wanted to

see President

Kennedy dead?

Lyndon Johnson (LBJ)

The CIA

J. Edgar Hoover

The Mafia

Anti-Castro Cubans

Richard Nixon

I am convinced Lyndon Johnson may very well have been

involved in the plot

to murder President Kennedy. I believe Johnson probably

knew about the

plot ahead of time and either sanctioned it or actively

took part in it.

Another possibility, in my view, is that Johnson realized

soon after the

shooting that Kennedy had been killed by a conspiracy, and

that Johnson

had an idea as to whom had been behind it. In any case,

Johnson was a

driving force behind the cover-up that followed. However

there is only

circumstantial evidence, but there is a lot against LBJ.

The CIA in reference to its alleged involvement in the

assassination, are

referring primarily to the CIA’s covert action personnel,

i.e., those

agents who deal in sabotage, propaganda, and assassination.

There is

evidence that suggests that some of the Agency’s covert

operations

personnel have also taken part in drug trafficking. Most

CIA personnel are

not involved in such activities and would be appalled at

any attempt to

harm an elected official. The covert operations personnel

make up a large

portion of the CIA, and they, along with the Agency’s top

officials, are

the most powerful group in the CIA. Some high-ranking CIA

officials have

attempted to frustrate presidential policies and have

initiated or

sanctioned illegal operations, to include working with

organized crime.

JFK and the CIA were in a virtual state of war from the

moment of the Bay

of Pigs disaster until the day he died. JFK did not trust

the CIA and he

reportedly intended to dismantle it after the 1964

election. In Vietnam,

the CIA refused to carry out instructions from the ranking

American

official in the country. The CIA ignored President

Kennedy’s directive

that it not initiate operations requiring greater firepower

than a

handgun. It also ignored JFK’s orders to stop working with

the Mafia. When

Kennedy heard the news that South Vietnam’s dictator Ngo

Diem had been

murdered by a CIA-backed coup, against his express wishes,

he was

outraged. Kennedy was no fan of Diem’s, but he did not

want to see him

murdered. General Maxwell Taylor wrote that upon learning

of Diem’s death

JFK “leaped to his feet and rushed from the room with a

look of shock and

dismay on his face”. Kennedy blamed the CIA for Diem’s

murder. Kennedy

said he had to “do something about” the CIA and that the

Agency should be

stripped of its exorbitant power. On another occasion,

Kennedy reportedly

said he would scatter the CIA “into a thousand pieces.” One

of the more

troubling cases of CIA disobedience to presidential

authority was its

behavior in relation to Cuba. In September 1963, long after

President

Kennedy had ordered a halt to the covert campaign against

Castro, senior

CIA staffers, including the deputy director, Richard Helms,

and Desmond

Fitzgerald, the head of the Agency’s Cuba unit, approved

plans to kill

Castro, without seeking presidential authorization. They

also continued

other covert operations against Cuba in violation of the

President’s

instructions. Needless to say, these CIA officers did not

inform the

President of their activities; nor did they inform Congress

or the

Attorney General, Robert Kennedy. They didn’t even tell

then-CIA director

John McCone, probably because he was appointed by President

Kennedy

following the Bay of Pigs disaster. In short, as Anthony

Summers has

observed, “in September and October 1963–a crucial moment

politically–CIA officers were acting in a way that gravely

endangered

White House policy”. A key figure linking the Agency to the

assassination

was CIA man David Atlee Phillips, who was seen with Oswald

a few months

before the shooting. Among many other things, Phillips was

the propaganda

chief for the Bay of Pigs operation and later rose to

become the chief of

the CIA’s Western Hemisphere Division. In 1954 Phillips

worked with E.

Howard Hunt and others to overthrow the Arbenz government

in Guatemala.

Based on his extensive investigation of Phillips for the

Church Committee

and then for the Select Committee, Gaeton Fonzi believes

that “David Atlee

Phillips played a key role in the conspiracy to assassinate

President

Kennedy”. Phillips was in charge of the CIA’s Cuban

operations in Mexico

City at the time of the assassination, so he was

strategically positioned

to frame Oswald, and it is quite possible, if not probable,

that he was

involved in the phony Oswald visits to the Cuban embassy.

Another former

CIA agent who has come under suspicion is E. Howard Hunt.

Hunt, a former

high-ranking covert operator and a propaganda specialist,

was a key figure

in the Bay of Pigs invasion. As mentioned, Hunt and David

Atlee Phillips

helped to overthrow the Arbenz government in Guatemala.

According to

former (and now deceased) CIA operative Frank Sturgis, who

knew Hunt well,

Hunt was involved in CIA assassination operations. Hunt has

made no secret

of his intense dislike for John Kennedy. To this day, Hunt

blames JFK for

the failure at the Bay of Pigs. When Watergate

whistleblower John Dean

opened Hunt’s private safe, he found bogus telegrams that

falsely linked

JFK with the assassination of South Vietnam’s corrupt

dictator Ngo Dinh

Diem. Where was E. Howard Hunt on November 22, 1963? Hunt

has given

conflicting accounts of where he was at the time of the

shooting. In his

1985 libel trial in Miami, Florida, the jury concluded Hunt

was not being

truthful about his whereabouts on the day of the

assassination. Hunt was

believed to be the small “tramp” in the famous “tramp

photos.” The tramp

photos show three supposed tramps, which were arrested in

the railroad

yard behind the grassy knoll shortly after the

assassination. The tramps

were found in a freight train that had pulled out from

behind the TSBD

without authorization. The railroad tower controller

stopped the train

because he knew it did not have permission to depart. The

police then

searched the train and found the tramps. In the tramp

photos the tramps

are being escorted by some Dallas police officers who are

holding

shotguns, presumably on route to the police station. In

1988, 3M’s Comtal

Corporation analyzed photos of Hunt and of the third tramp

and found a

noticeable resemblance between them. All of this does NOT

prove Hunt was

the third tramp, but it is worth noting that he bears a

strong resemblance

to a man who was arrested in Dealey Plaza shortly after the

assassination.

The Mafia had the means, the motive, and the opportunity to

assassinate

President Kennedy. Prior to the assassination, various

Mafia leaders were

heard to threaten JFK’s life. The Mafia were believed to of

pay JFK’s way

into Power. They thought they had someone in the White

House, however JFK

began to crack down on Mafia. On November 20, two Mafia men

told Rose

Cheramie that it was common knowledge in the underworld

that Kennedy was

about to be killed. Mafia-CIA man David Ferrie was very

probably involved

in framing Oswald while he was in New Orleans, and Ferrie

engaged in

highly suspicious activity shortly after JFK was shot. And,

as mentioned,

a Mafia courier named Eugene Hale Brading was arrested in

the Dal-Tex

Building overlooking Dealey Plaza immediately after the

shooting. Brading

had an FBI rap sheet with about three dozen arrests. He had

met with one

of the sons of avowed Kennedy-hater H. L. Hunt the day

before, ostensibly

to discuss some oil business. After he was arrested,

Brading gave the

Dallas police an alias, and told them he had merely gone

into the building

to use the phone. The police released him a short time

later. Without

question, a Mafia man, Jack Ruby, silenced Lee Harvey

Oswald before he had

a chance to tell his side of the story. Furthermore, right

after the

President’s visit to Dallas was announced, Ruby began

making numerous

calls to important Mafia contacts all over the country.

Ruby, like Eugene

Brading, was in H. L. Hunt’s offices the day before the

shooting.

Convicted Texas hitman Charles Harrelson has been

identified as the tall

man in the famous photos of the three “tramps” who were

arrested in the

railroad yard behind Dealey Plaza shortly after the

assassination. In the

early 1980s, Harrelson was convicted of murdering federal

judge John Wood

with a high-powered rifle, and is currently serving his

sentence in a

Texas prison. During the standoff that preceded his

arrest, Harrelson not

only confessed to killing Judge Wood, but also said he had

been involved

in the Kennedy assassination. Harrelson later retracted his

statement

about having taken part in the assassination, claiming he

had fabricated

it under the influence of cocaine. When arrested, Harrelson

was found to

be carrying the business card of R. D. Matthews, who, was

acquainted with

Jack Ruby and with other Dallas crime figures. At

Harrelson’s trial, Joe

Chagra, the brother of the man who was believed to have

hired Harrelson,

testified that Harrelson was given the contract to kill

Judge Wood after

he claimed to have participated in the JFK assassination.

Indicted along

with Harrelson in the plot to kill Judge Wood was the

brother of New

Orleans crime boss Carlos Marcello, who was one of the

Mafia figures

identified by the Select Committee as possibly having been

involved in the

assassination of President Kennedy. The photos of the tall

tramp were

compared with pictures of Harrelson. It was likely that

they were same

person. Similarly, police officers trained in photo

identification have

that Harrelson definitely appears to be the tall tramp. So

far federal

authorities have shown no interest in investigating

Harrelson in

connection with any role he might have had in the

assassination. Why would

the Mafia have wanted JFK dead? Quite simply, because the

Kennedy

administration was threatening the very existence of

organized crime in

America. Robert Kennedy was waging an unprecedented war on

the Mafia, a

war that targeted not just Mafia operations but also Mafia

leaders

themselves. Soon after Lyndon Johnson took over, the war on

organized

crime came to a virtual halt. Sam Giancana (real name: Momo

Salvatore

Guingano) was a Chicago Mafia boss involved in CIA plots to

kill Fidel

Castro. Giancana was also the target of attacks by then

Attorney General

Robert F. Kennedy, despite the fact that the Attorney

General’s own

brother, John Kennedy, had been having an affair with

Giancana’s paramour,

Judith Exner, starting in March 1960. Further infuriating

Giancana, Robert

Kennedy ordered the FBI to shadow his every move so closely

that other mob

figures kept their distance from him, effectively isolating

him from

business and social associates. Later, out of desperation,

Giancana went

to court and obtained an injunction against the FBI.

Anti-Castro Cubans could have also been involved in the

Assassination of

JFK. The anti-Castro Cubans were admittedly furious with

Kennedy over the

failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion but later forgave him

because, among

other things, he ransomed 1,200 captured exile troops from

Castro. But

there is strong evidence that some anti-Castro Cubans never

forgave

Kennedy for the failure at the Bay of Pigs, and many of

these same

individuals were furious at Kennedy over his handling of

the Cuban Missile

Crisis and over his shutting down of their para-military

training camps.

It should be noted that the militant anti-Castro exiles

were almost

exclusively under the control of the CIA.

Richard Nixon was one of the most corrupt residents in the

history of our

republic. If nothing else, I believe Nixon might have had

foreknowledge of

the assassination (and obviously did nothing to prevent

it). The Nixon

administration repeatedly intervened to quash prosecutions

and

investigations of criminal activity in Mafia-dominated

labor unions. Nixon

was involved in a number of highly questionable–and, in

some cases,

Mob-connected–financial dealings. Nixon pardoned organized

crime figures

after the government had spent millions of dollars to put

them in jail.

Among those pardoned was Mafia killer Angelo DeCarlo. On

one occasion,

recorded on a 1971 Watergate tape, Nixon and his aides

discussed using Mob

thugs to attack anti-war protestors. Not surprisingly, by

all accounts

the Mafia warmly endorsed and supported Nixon’s campaigns.

John Davis, an

authority on organized crime, has said, For one thing,

there is some

evidence linking him to Jack Ruby. It was reported in a

1947 FBI document

that Jack Ruby had performed “information functions for the

staff of

Congressman Richard Nixon”. Nixon flew to Dallas on

November 20, 1963, two

days before the assassination. Asked later why he had come,

he said he was

there to attend a board meeting of the Pepsi-Cola Company.

Yet, a

subsequent review of Pepsi-Cola corporate files revealed

there was no

record of any Pepsi-Cola board meetings in Dallas in 1963.

While in

Dallas, Nixon made comments to the city’s newspapers to the

effect that

he, unlike President Kennedy, did not need Secret Service

protection.

Several researchers believe that this taunting might have

contributed to

the decision not to have the Plexiglass bubble top placed

on his limousine

on the day of the assassination. He is also believe to have

influenced the

mayor of Dallas to change the route of the limousine. The

route of JFK’s

car was changed for an unknown reason to a more dangerous

route. (See map

of route) Nixon left Dallas on the morning of the

assassination. However,

during an FBI interview in early 1964, he said the only

time he had been

in Dallas in 1963 was two days before Kennedy was killed.

It has been said

that Nixon must have been the only adult at the time who

could not

remember where he was on November 22, 1963. Why did Nixon

tell the FBI he

had not been in Dallas on the day of the murder? What

exactly was he doing

there from November 20 till the morning of the

assassination?

According to none other than Nixon’s chief of staff, H. R.

Haldeman, Nixon

attempted to force the CIA to assist in thwarting

investigations into

Watergate by threatening to expose the CIA’s role in the

Kennedy

assassination. In connection with this, it is worth

mentioning again that

E. Howard Hunt of the CIA was able to blackmail Nixon for a

million

dollars. What did Hunt know? As discussed earlier, several

researchers

have accused Hunt of complicity in Kennedy’s death, and

Hunt has given

conflicting accounts of where he was on the day of the

shooting.

Also several of the people who were hired or considered for

employment by

the Nixon White House during Watergate had been connected

with the Warren

Commission. Was this just a coincidence? In addition, some

of the

operatives and Cuban exiles who were involved in the Bay of

Pigs operation

later turned up in the Watergate affair.

In my opinion, the principal individuals and forces behind

the

assassination were fanatical right-wing elements in the CIA

and in the

military, J. Edgar Hoover and Lyndon Johnson. I believe CIA

and Mafia

operatives, to include disaffected anti-Castro Cubans,

constituted the

largest part of the on-the-ground, operational arm of the

plot. I believe

that members of the Dallas law enforcement community were

involved in the

Dallas end of the cover-up, and that some of them knowingly

allowed Jack

Ruby to murder Oswald. I believe that FBI agents, along

with J. Edgar

Hoover, played a major role in most aspects of the cover-

up. I believe

Oswald was setup by LBJ, Hoover and the CIA. The magic

bullet found

mysteriously, later in the Parkland Memorial Hospital in an

almost

pristine condition was planted to match Oswald’s rifle. .

In my view, the main reasons President Kennedy was killed

were

(1) He refused to further escalate American involvement

in Vietnam

(2) He was moving to end the Cold War

(3) Mafia’s outrage over his war on organized crime.

Just below these reasons, I would list LBJ’s lust for the

presidency, J.

Edgar Hoover’s hatred of JFK and his desire to remain

director of the FBI

and Kennedy’s reported intent to drastically reorganize or

dismantle the

CIA.

Bibliography

Jim Marrs CROSSFIRE: THE PLOT THAT KILLED KENNEDY, New

York: Carroll & Graf Publishers,

1989.

James DiEugenio, DESTINY BETRAYED: JFK, CUBA, AND THE

GARRISON CASE, New York:

Sheridan Square Press, Inc., 1992.

Harrison Edward Livingstone, HIGH TREASON 2, New York:

Carroll & Graf Publishers, 1992.

www.ourworld.compuserve.com/homepage/MGriffith/suspects.htm

J.F.K. & the cold war

Urs Schwarz, John F. Kennedy, C.J. Bucher Ltd 1964

Elizabeth Greenup, Case Studies in Modern History, 1987