JFK Assassination
By: Keri Ewer and Bianey Cavazos
Who, What, When, Where, and Why
In November 22, 1963 the President of the the United States , John F. Kennedy was assassinated as he rode in a motorcade through Dealey Plaza in Downtown Dallas, Texas. There is no reason why he was killed there is no agreement about who was behind the murder, who pulled the trigger or triggers, or even how many triggers were pulled. And the reason why there is no argument about many of the basic facts of the JFK assassination is that the case was never seriously investigated. Plenty of individuals and groups have been nominated as the killer or killers. Each potential culprit comes with a separate reason for having committed the murder.
Perspective #1
If Kennedy was in fact killed by a lone gunman, that gunman must have been Lee Oswald; there are no other plausible candidates. The Warren Commission was unable to find any reason why Oswald killed Kennedy. According to the Warren Report, "The Commission could not make any definitive determination of Oswald's motives" (Warren Report, p.22), and the limited itself to speculating about Oswald's mental state. One President Johnson: "he [Oswald] was a general misanthropic fellow... he had a desired to get his name in history and all" (see Richard Russell and the Warren Report). This speculation is unlikely to be correct. The fact that Oswald consistently denied killing JFK suggests that even if he had committed the crime, the accused assassin was not motivated by a desire for fame and notoriety.
Perspective # 2
Whether or not Oswald played a part, it is clear that the assassination was almost certainly carried out by more than one gunman, firing from more than one direction. The single-bullet theory, which requires that the non-fatal injuries to Kennedy and Governor Connally were caused by the same bullet, has been comprehensively debunked, on two main grounds. Showed in the Zapruder film that shows Kennedy and Connally reaching to their injuries separately. Secondly, the entrance wound in JFK's back was too low to have allowed a shot from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository, 60 feet or 18 meters above the road, to have come out of his throat and then hit Connally. If this theory is false, the assassination cannot plausibly have been carried out by only one person.
Media Bias
Coverage of the JFK assassination, however, is different. In addition to making simple errors of fact, newspaper and television accounts of this contentious topic consistently distort the subject by favoring one interpretation over others. One could cogently argue that, from 1963-75, no other broadcast outlet did more to prop up the Warren Commission farce than did CBS. They prepared three news specials in that time period to support the Commission. These all came at crucial times in that time period. The first one was 1964 to accompany the release of the Warren Report. The second was in 1967 to calm a public that was becoming anxious about what Jim Garrison was doing in New Orleans. The third was in 1975 at the time of the Church Committee exposure of the crimes of the CIA and FBI, and the Schweiker-Hart subcommittee report on the failure of those two agencies to properly relay information to the Commission. (James DiEugenio, 'Elegy for Roger Feinman')
Historical Criticism
Whenever there is a vacancy in the office of the President shall nominate a Vice President who shall take office upon confirmation by a majority vote of both Houses of Congress. (25th Amendment, section 2).
Countering Criticism
On the Warren Report: There has been speculation about the responsibility for his murder. Although this was stemmed for a time by the Warren Commission's published report and documents for new pretexts for questioning, and there has been a new wave of books and articles criticizing the Commission's findings. In most cases the critics have speculated as to the existence of some kind of conspiracy, and often they have implied that the Commission itself was involved... a public opinion poll recently indicated that 46% of the American public did not think that the Commission had left some questions unresolved. Doubtless polls abroad would show similar, or possibly more adverse results. (Countering Criticism of the Warren Report, 1).
JFK - 3 Shots That Changed America (History Channel Documentary)