Inside Kennedy’s Assassination: The Biggest Cover-Up In American Political History HT
And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country. You, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, do solemnly swear I, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, do solemnly swear that you will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States and will to the best of your ability and will to the best of my ability preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States
preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States. So help you God. So help me God. The energy, the faith, the devotion which we bring to this endeavor will light our country and all who serve it. And so my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you.
ask what you can do for your country. On the 20th of January 1961, John F. Kennedy was inaugurated as the president of the United States after winning the election against his Republican opposition Richard Nixon. I want to say that one of the great features of America is that uh we have political contests that they are very hard fought as this one is hard fought and once the decision is made we unite behind the man who was elected.
I am especially proud that this country has put forward for the 60s a vast cooperative effort to achieve economic growth and social progress throughout the Americas. Kennedy came into the presidency during the height of the Cold War, meaning tension around the globe was at an all-time high and a lot of eyes were on Kennedy as the new leader of the free world.
Cold War rhetoric dominated the 1960 presidential campaign. Senator John F. Kennedy and Vice President Richard M. Nixon both pledged to strengthen American military forces and promised to take a tough stance against the Soviet Union and international communism. Kennedy warned of the Soviet’s growing arsenal of intercontinental ballistic missiles and pledged to revitalize American nuclear forces.
My friends, I close on a note of hope. We are not lulled by the momentary calm of the sea or the somewhat clearer skies above. We know the turbulence that lies below and the storms that are beyond the horizon this year. But now the winds of change appear to be blowing more strongly than ever in the world of communism as well as our own.
For 175 years, we have sailed with those winds at our back and with the tides of human freedom in our favor. We steer our ship with hope, as Thomas Jefferson said, leaving fear a stern. Today, we still welcome those winds of change, and we have every reason to believe that our tide is running strong. With thanks to Almighty God for seeing us through a perilous passage, we ask his help a new in guiding the good ship union.
John F. Kennedy was the first American president born in the 20th century. The Cold War and the nuclear arms race with the Soviet Union were vital international issues throughout his political career. His inaugural address stressed the contest between the free world and the communist world. And I can assure all of you here who have reposed this confidence in me that I will be worthy of your trust.
We will carry the fight to the people in the fall and we shall win. and he pledged that the American people would pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and success of liberty. As a nation, we have little capacity for deception.
We can convince friend and foe alike that we are in earnest about the defense of freedom only if we are in earnest. and I can assure the world that we are. Then there was the Bay of Pigs fiasco. Before his inauguration, JFK was briefed on a plan drafted during the Eisenhower administration to train Cuban exiles for an invasion of their homeland.
The plan anticipated that support from the Cuban people and perhaps even elements of the Cuban military would lead to the overthrow of Castro and the establishment of a non-communist government friendly to the United States. Kennedy approved the operation and on April 17th, 1961, 1,400 Cuban exiles trained by the CIA launched what became a botched invasion at the Bay of Pigs in the south of Cuba.
Fidel Castro was of course the leader of Cuba and you know he had set up a communist state so near to American soil. So he did worry many Americans and we’d come out of the McCarthy years where you know anything remotely communistleaning was seen as a massive threat and many people got blacklisted and you know if you were a commie you were out of a career for a long while.
So there was a lot of concern about Castro and President Eisenhower had been planning an invasion of Cuba and so when Kennedy came to power after Eisenhower he felt perhaps that he he ought to you know perhaps go along with this but I don’t think he was ever entirely comfortable with it and the Bay of Pigs invasion was a failure I think partly because Kennedy did not give full sort of you know backing air strike strikes probably would have really helped the troops coming in.
He didn’t give air cover, for instance. And so, you know, many blamed Kennedy for that. But if you’re a Cuban, nonetheless, that was an invasion or an attempted invasion. Uh, and many Cubans were not happy at all with Kennedy. In Cuba itself, the people have been exhorted by Castro to push back the invader, and 300,000 militia men have been mobilized.
The invasion was successful in its early hours with Castro of course blaming the US. Is it the first [ __ ] in his armor? The entire force was either killed or captured and Kennedy took full responsibility for the failure of the operation. So that uh I think that make it clear the uh as I’ve said from the beginning the operation was a failure and that the responsibility rests with the White House.
The tension between the USA and the Soviet Union continued to mount due to both the Cuban missile crisis and the American interference in the Vietnam War. You will recall that in my recent address to the United Nations General Assembly, I expressed concern of this government over the situation in Southeast Asia, particularly on the attacks on the people of South Vietnam.
With this situation in mind, I’ve asked General Taylor, the uh wholehearted endorsement of Secretary McNamera and General Lemonser to go to Saigon in this week to discuss with the president and American officials on the spot ways in which we can perhaps better assist the government of Vietnam in meeting this threat to its independence.
General Taylor will be accompanied by a small staff from the various departments of government which are concerned. In the summer of 1962, Cruchef reached a secret agreement with the Cuban government to supply nuclear missiles capable of protecting the island against another US sponsored invasion.
Kennedy responded by placing a naval blockade, which he referred to as a quarantine, around Cuba. He also demanded the removal of the missiles and the destruction of the sites. Recognizing that the crisis could easily escalate into nuclear war, Kruev finally agreed to remove the missiles in return for an American pledge to not reinvade Cuba.
But the end of the Cuban missile crisis did little to ease the tensions of the Cold War. The Soviet leader decided to commit whatever resources were required for upgrading the Soviet nuclear strike force. His decision led to a significant escalation of the nuclear arms race. In June 1963, President Kennedy spoke at the American University commencement in Washington DC.
He urged Americans to critically re-examine cold war stereotypes and myths and called for a strategy of peace that would make the world safe for diversity. In the final months of the Kennedy presidency, cold war tensions seemed to soften as the limited nuclear testban treaty was negotiated and signed. I believe the test brand treaty will be and should be approved by the United States Senate which of course is the key action in our country which is necessary after the signing in Moscow.
Uh I do not believe however uh that uh some of those who have observed the testban treaty are correct in saying that because this treaty has been agreed to uh we can assume uh that the cold war is beginning to end. There is nothing to indicate that Cruchef is stopping the cold war in Western Europe, in Latin America, in Africa and around the world.
And until he puts some stop on indirect aggression, I don’t believe we should take just this one move, which is important as being decisive in indicating that a new trend is set in. In addition, Washington and Moscow established a direct line of communication known as the hotline to help reduce the possibility of war by miscalculation.
Kennedy made it very clear throughout his presidential run that he was anti-communist. This perhaps best exemplified during his time in Berlin. I think that’s an interesting thing. This one piece will make 52 layers. Watch on mobile devices or the big screen. All for free. No subscription required.
In the early morning hours of August 13th, 1961, the people of East Berlin were awakened by the rumbling of heavy machinery barreling down their streets toward the line that divided the eastern and western parts of the city. Groggy citizens looked on as workers began digging holes and jackhammering sidewalks, clearing the way for the barbed wire that would eventually be strung across the dividing line.
Armed troops manned the crossing points between the two sides, and by morning, a ring of Soviet troops surrounded the city. Overnight, the freedom to pass between the two sections of Berlin ended. At the end of World War II, the main Allied powers, the United States, France, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union, divided Germany into two zones.
The Soviet Union occupied East Germany and installed a rigidly controlled communist state. The other three allies shared the occupation of West Germany and helped rebuild the country as a capitalist democracy. The city of Berlin, located 200 m inside East Germany, was also divided. Half of the city, West Berlin, was actually part of West Germany.
Many East Germans did not want to live in a communist country and crossed into West Berlin, where they could either settle or find transportation to West Germany and beyond. By 1961, 4 million East Germans had moved west. This exodus illustrated East Germans dissatisfaction with their way of life and posed an economic threat as well since East Germany was losing its workers.
This exodus illustrated the East Germans dissatisfaction with their way of life and posed an economic threat as well since East Germany was losing its workers. In the summer of 1963, President Kennedy visited Berlin and was greeted by ecstatic crowds who showered his entourage with flowers, rice, and torn paper.
In the Rudolph Vi plots, Kennedy gave one of his most memorable speeches to a wrapped audience. No other American politician had met with such joy and enthusiasm on a visit to Germany. Freedom has many difficulties and democracy is not perfect, but we have never had to put a wall up to keep our people in to prevent them from leaving us.
There are some who say [cheering] there are some who say that communism is the wave of the future. Let them come to Berlin. [cheering] And there are even a few who say that it’s true that communism is an evil system, but it permits us to make economic progress. Loy not Berlin in common. Let them come to Berlin.
[cheering] 2,000 years ago the proudest boast was Kiwis Romanus sum. Today in the world of freedom the proudest post is binina. [cheering] Shortly after President Kennedy’s death in November of 1963, the square where he had made his famous speech was renamed the John F. Kennedy Plots. For most Americans, Kennedy was a hero, a fighter for the free world, and exactly what America needed at the time.
But sadly, not everyone thought so. Kennedy’s stern anti-communist stance rubbed some the wrong way. And one man disagreed so much that he made it his priority to end the president’s life and silence him forever. Kennedy had won the 1960 election by a very slim margin, and he and his party knew that in order to win in 1964, the Democrats would need at least two states with a large enough number of electoral votes to secure their victory.
Florida and Texas were chosen. The trip to Texas was conceived in the spring of 1963 when President Kennedy met with Vice President and Governor Johnson Connley in El Paso. It was to be a two-day 5ity tour of Texas, and it was here that he would announce his presidency for the upcoming presidential campaign. The votes of Texans were vital to his winning, but getting them on board wasn’t going to be an easy task.
Texans needed to be convinced because the state was largely not in favor of Kennedy’s civil rights policies and handling of foreign policies such as the Bay of Pigs fiasco. We preach freedom around the world and we mean it. And we cherish our freedom here at home.
But are we to say to the world and much more importantly to each other that this is a land of the free except for the Negroes? Recent feuding among Democratic party leaders also didn’t help. And so Kennedy saw it best to try and bring the party together and greaten his chances for reelection. Kennedy had been making many enemies and he had been taking actions which you know many people thought were good actions but you know the people that he was trying to basically take away powers from you know they didn’t want this to happen. I mean just to give
one example he created an executive order which means that basically the president can do what he wants to do to curtail some of the powers of the Federal Reserve. Now the Federal Reserve is seen as the Bank of America but is really a a private enterprise that many people are worried is deeply corrupt and was set up on corrupt grounds.
He wanted to take back some of their power. He wanted to give more powers to the US Treasury. So he would have made enemies amongst the bankers. He also was making enemies amongst the what we call the militaryindustrial complex. So yes he had been supportive for war in Vietnam initially.
But then as he began to see I think more closely where that was really going to go he started to pull back on that. Well war is business. War is money. And the last thing anybody wanted was a peace neck president. On November 21st, 1963, John F. Kennedy and his wife Jacqueline Kennedy departed the White House and set on their journey to San Antonio, Texas on Air Force One at 10:50 a.m.
They began their political speaking and fundraising tour by addressing their plans for the space program. Great British explorer George Mallerie, who was to die on Mount Everest, was asked why did he want to climb it. He said, “Because it is there.” Well, space is there, and we’re going to climb it, and the moon and the planets are there, and new hopes for knowledge and peace are there.
And therefore, as we set sail, we ask God’s blessing on the most hazardous and dangerous and greatest adventure on which man has ever embarked. Thank you. By 11 p.m., the weather had taken a turn for the worst. causing them to reconsider their plans for Texas in the morning. However, the following morning was beautiful as the rain had unexpectedly stopped.
The Kennedys arrived in Dallas, Texas no later than 11:30 a.m., landing at Love Field. It was now the 22nd of November, 1963. The day commenced with Kennedy making a speech outside the hotel he had stayed at in Fort Worth. He then went on to make another speech inside a breakfast hosted by the local chamber of commerce.
In his last ever speech, he said, “This is a very dangerous and uncertain world. We would like to live as we once lived, but history would not permit it. Kennedy met with Texas Governor John Connley at 11:45 a.m. and the two began their tour around Dallas. The streets were filled with ecstatic crowds of onlookers trying to get a glimpse of the president.
It was truly a glorious day, or at least so it began. Kennedy rode in an open top 1961 Lincoln Continental four-door convertible limousine named the SS100X by the Secret Service. He was accompanied by his wife who sat to his left, the governor who sat in front, and the governor’s wife who sat beside him. President Kennedy insisted on the open car with no guards.
He stated that he didn’t want it to appear as though there was anything between himself and the people. This was not written officially. However, word of the president’s request was passed through the Secret Service and brought to fruition. “Mr. President, you can’t say Dallas doesn’t love you,” said Nelly Connley from the front seat.
Amused, the president responded, “No, you certainly can’t.” These were to be his last words. At 12:30 p.m., the motorcade traveled down Daily Plaza and made a left turn onto Elm Street. They were passing the grassy null to the north of Elm Street and traveling towards the Texas School Depository when the first explosive noise was heard.
Before anyone could even react, the sound of a second shot erupted from the air. Immediately, the president grabbed at his throat. The streets filled with screams as onlookers watched in panic and confusion. A bullet had pierced through the back of Kennedy’s neck slightly to the right of his spine and exited through his throat before hitting Governor Connley in the shoulder and wrist.
Soon after, a third shot rang out. This time, the bullet hit Kennedy directly in the head, splattering his skull all over his wife and the interior of the limousine. This was the fatal blow. The impact was so severe that fragments of blood and brain even landed on the secret service car that was following behind.
His body lay limp in the back seat as his wife eagerly tried to climb away in case of another shot. The limo sped off to Parkland Memorial Hospital within minutes, but sadly it was already too late. President John F. Kennedy was declared dead at 100 p.m. The days that followed weren’t ones of celebration and enthusiasm as planned, but instead were ones of sadness and mourning as the country and world found out about the news.
from Dallas, Texas. The flash, apparently official, President Kennedy died at 100 p.m. Central Standard Time, 2:00 Eastern Standard Time, some 38 minutes ago. Families sat together in their homes watching television, participating in the terrible shock of an assassination of a president.
He was coming down the street and my 5-year-old boy and myself were by ourselves on the grass there on Palmer Street. And I asked Joe to wave to him and Joe waved and I waved and the man that’s all right, sir. You were shot cuz he was waving back. He was he was the shot rang out and he slumped down in the seat and his wife reached up toward him and they were slumping down and the second shot went off and it just knocked him down.
The president’s body was taken from Parkland Hospital to Love Field and loaded onto Air Force One at 2:38 p.m. Sheltered on board Air Force One in case of further assassination attempts. Governor Connley recovered from his wounds and Lyndon B. Johnson took the oath of office with Jacqueline Kennedy by his side, still wearing her blood spattered clothes.
This is a sad time for all people. We have suffered a loss that cannot be weighed. For me, it is a deep personal tragedy. I know that the world shares the sorrow that Mrs. Kennedy and her family bear. I will do my best. That is all I can do. I ask for your help. And God The unprecedented intensity of that wave of grief mixed with something akin to
despair which swept over our people at the news of President Kennedy’s assassination was a measure of the extent to which we recognized what he had already accomplished and of the high hopes that rode with him in a future that was not to be. Word of Kennedy’s death was global breaking news by now and preparations for his funeral had commenced.
But still one question remained. Who shot the president? Let’s take a look at the moments that directly followed the shooting in Dallas. On the day of the assassination of Kennedy, 22nd of November 1963, uh we had, if you like, an event that, you know, was normal. It was a parade. It was the president in an open top car.
You wouldn’t do that these days probably, but it it was just a wonderful thing. He was visiting Texas and people were lining the streets. They were out to see him. Several witness accounts pointed towards the southeast corner window on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository Building. And so this was the first place the police looked.
They searched the building for all people who had reportedly entered. And only two employees from the building were missing. One who had walked outside and wasn’t allowed back into the building by police at the time of the shooting and another who had only been working there for a month. Lee Harvey Oswald.
The official story says that one man Lee Harvey Oswald was somebody who had a grudge against the president. He had certainly Marxist leanings. He well on the surface at least appeared to resent what had happened in Cuba which he blamed Kennedy for. So he took a gun and he went to one of the rooms in the uh Texas school book repository and basically shot Kennedy as the cars were going by and he was apprehended soon after.
He murdered a police officer, Officer Tippet, while he was uh well allegedly on the run and was then finally apprehended in a cinema. By 12:40 p.m. Oswald had fled the scene. However, police did discover a rifle underneath some boxes and its shelves by the window on the sixth floor as the witnesses had described. The police identified the weapon as a 7.
65 mouser, but it was later revealed by the FBI that the police were mistaken. They revealed that it was in fact a secondhand Italian Carano rifle, which had been purchased by Oswald earlier in the year under the alias a hyel. The Carano was a notoriously inaccurate weapon. And for many, it’s hard to believe that such a weapon, Oswalt, despite his military training, could hit a moving target like the president twice with such precision at a range of approximately 250 ft.
Fly that rifle. That’s as fast as you people have been given, but I emphatically deny these charges. Would you claim it? The president? No, I have not been charged with that. In fact, nobody has said that to me yet. The first thing I heard about it was when the newspaper reporters in the hall uh asked me that question.
You haven’t? Nobody said what, sir? You haven’t? Nobody said what. Okay. Okay. The doubts about Oswald being the only gunman revolve around a number of things. the rifle that he was using, the angle he was shooting at, and what we witness in the famous film taken by a Abraham Zapruda, who was filming this on on a home movie camera.
And when you look at the way the shots appear to hit the president, it’s quite hard to believe that all of those shots came from behind, which is what we’re told. So Oswald waited for the cars to go by and then he took the shot from behind. That’s what we’re told. But if you look at the film, it does look very much as if the president in the final shot which takes him out, one shots fired, it misses.
Another shot goes through basically Kennedy’s back neck and then goes on to hit a number of other bits of John Connelly. Then the final shot takes out the president and you see his head explode. But it does look as if he’s recoiling from a shot that has come from the front and he sort of recoils backwards and his head goes to the left and that to many people is not in keeping with a shot that is coming from behind.
Oswald was taken into police custody where he was found to be carrying a forged identity card with the name Alec James Hyel, the same name that had been used to purchase the rifle. However, at the time, Texas law imposed no control over the purchase of weapons, making purchasing the weapon under an assumed name even more peculiar.
Army intelligence already had a rifle on AJ Hidle. However, it was suspiciously destroyed before it could be acquired by investigators. But the question still remains of who was Lee Harvey Oswald and why would he want to murder the president of the United States? Lee Harvey Oswald, a 24year-old former Marine sharpshooter, was born in 1939 to a New Orleans widow.
From a young age, Oswald always strived for a life full of adrenaline and adventure. He enlisted into the Marines, defected to the Soviet Union, and even interacted with spies in Mexico City. But it was a single shot fired in Dallas that would cement his place in history. Oswald had been a US Marine and not a bad marine, although that said he was caught marshall twice.
He accidentally shot himself in the elbow on one occasion. He was fond of guns. uh he he got to the position of marksman which is not the best shooters but you know not bad shooters. Um but then he left the Marines and afterwards he went to live in the Soviet Union. He became a defector or at least that’s what we’re told.
Oswald had a rough upbringing. 2 months before he was even born his father died of a heart attack leaving his mother Margarite to look after their two sons. In 1942, Oswald’s mother sent his older brothers away to boarding schools and tried to drop him off at a local orphanage, but was turned away because he was too young.
However, that didn’t stop her. A year later, she tried again, and Lee was taken in. The following years consisted of Oswald being moved from orphanage to relatives homes to apartment to wherever they could find a place to stay. In 1952, his mother finally moved away from Louisiana and settled in New York with Oswald, only 12 years old.
However, life in the Bronx was just as tough for them. Margarite eventually found employment at a local dress making shop, which required her to work long hours. This meant that Oswald was left to his own devices for the majority of the time, with no one watching over him. Oswald was lonely and ruthless. He spent most of his days aimlessly riding the subway or wandering the Bronx Zoo.
One day, while walking the New York streets when he should have been in school, he was noticed by a police officer who questioned him and sent him to a psychiatric facility. There, Lee was found to suffer from neglect. But they concluded that he had no actual mental illness, just a kid with too much time on his hands and a lack of love.
By the age of 13, Oswald had moved over 20 times in his short life, usually after his mother’s latest job or relationship had gone arry. He was a lonely child, prone to violence, and would reportedly threaten others with a pocketk knife. On June 19th, 1953, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed by electric chair at New York Singh prison for handing US secrets to the Soviets.
The execution galvanized New York’s leftists who campaigned across the city in the weeks leading up to the execution, handing out leaflets. One of those leaflets made its way into the hands of teenage Lee Harvey Oswald. For the first time in his life, he had encountered socialism. As the Rosenberg’s bodies were quietly buried, Lee began reading books on socialist thought.
In 1956, age 17, Lee applied for the United States Marine Corps and was accepted after being rejected the previous year for being too young and lying about his age. He likely viewed this as the start of a new chapter in his life and an escape from his problems. But as many know, you can only run away from your demons for so long before they catch up with you.
Whilst in the Marines, Oswald managed to get certification as a sharpshooter. He also developed an interest in banned weapons, an interest that got him in a lot of trouble when his forbidden pistol accidentally discharged and wounded him. As a young man, he continued to study Marxism and learned Russian.
He even began preaching about Marxist ideals to his fellow Marines, something that was frowned upon when word got back to his superiors. On September 11th, 1959, Oswald got a hardship discharge from the Marines. This crushed Oswald, leaving him feeling even more inadequate and like a failure, but he wouldn’t allow it to defeat him.
Rather than simply returning to the US, he applied for and soon got a Russian tourist visa. And on the 16th of October, Lee Harvey Oswald officially crossed into the Soviet Union. Many believed that in fact he was double agent and that the defection was a setup and that in fact all along he was working probably for the CIA.
But nonetheless he went to live in Russia. He and his wife Marina. Soon after Oswald wrote to the Kremlin stating that he wanted to defect. However, they rejected his application. The news of this rejection hit Oswald hard. So much so that he attempted to take his own life by slitting his wrists in his hotel bathtub on October 21st, the day his visa ran out.
His suicide attempt failed. However, it succeeded in gaining the attention of the Kremlin. Initially, the KGB still felt as though he wasn’t fit to be a defector. But this time, Oswalt wouldn’t take no for an answer. Newly discharged, he stormed into the US embassy in Moscow, declaring that he was going to surrender his citizenship.
He also stated that he was going to tell the Kremlin all that he knew about US radar codes. Reluctantly, the Kremlin decided to reopen his case, and he was eventually approved to defect into the Soviet Union on January 4th, 1960. At last, Oswald felt like he belonged. He had found a place he could call home. He had escaped his overbearing mother, escaped his childhood trauma, and escaped his American life.
However, things weren’t to be that easy. After being moved to a small and isolated town named Minsk, the KGB monitored Oswald’s every move. His entire apartment was bugged, and informants reported on his daily routines and movements. By February 1961, Oswald was writing in his diary, “My work is drab.
The money I get has nowhere to be spent. As my Russian improves, I become increasingly conscious of what sort of a society I live in.” Barely a year after first arriving in Minsk, Oswald began petitioning the US and USSR to let him return to America. It turns out that Oswald had never surrendered his American citizenship despite threatening to do so back in Moscow.
Because of this, there was little the USSR and American government could do to keep Oswald, now husband and father, in Minsk. On June 2nd, 1962, Oswald and his family all received permission to return to America. They headed straight to Fort Worth, Texas, where they stayed with one of Oswald’s brothers. However, it wasn’t long before something new had engulfed Oswald’s mind.
In the fall of 1962, Oswald began to obsess over Castro’s new Cuba. He began telling people that Kennedy was a terrible president for authorizing the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion. Oswald, we are told, was a sympathizer towards the Cubans, although some say in the double agent idea, actually he was anti-Cuber.
But you know, these are the arguments that go round and round. But nonetheless, his Cuba always seems to come up somewhere down the line, and it was certainly a big thing back then. The following year in May, Oswald founded a pro-castro group, handing out leaflets in the streets, trying failing to recruit new members. He went to live in Russia.
He and his wife, Marina, weren’t happy there, and eventually they came back to the United States. And that’s when he began to sort of get very concerned about what was going on in Cuba and would give out leaflets on the streets complaining about the way the Cubans were being treated. He later appeared on local radio twice to defend the Castro regime.
And in August, he approached an anti-Castro group and offered his services, but was declined. Cuba was clearly at the front of Oswald’s mind. This obsession eventually came to fruition when Oswald set on a journey to Mexico City with a plan in mind that would make his defection look like a mere warm-up act. Lee Harvey Oswald arrived in the Mexican capital on September 27th after an all-night bus journey heading straight for the Cuban embassy.
Oswald had made up his mind that he was going to defect to Cuba. However, similar to his attempts at defecting to the USSR, Oswald was rejected and sent back to Dallas, crushed by his failure. By October 3rd, 1963, Oswald was back in Dallas. And exactly 2 weeks later, he took a job at the Texas School Depository. On Tuesday, November 19th, a local Dallas paper published the route that the president’s motorcade would take through the city on Friday.
Oswald noted that the car would pass right by his employment building. He also noted that Governor John Connley would be riding alongside the president, the man who Oswald hated for refusing to remove his discharged Marine status, making it difficult for him to find employment upon his return to the USA. Oswald was apparently very upset by this and uh had a grudge therefore against him on that alone but also because he had well maybe communist leanings or sward said he had Marxist leanings and there is a difference between those two but
nonetheless it it gets mixed together in the public mind. So Kennedy had become somebody that stood for everything that he didn’t and officially at least we’re told that you know he just wanted to see this figure taken down and so began his plot to kill him. The week slowly passed on and November 22nd crept closer and closer.
It was on this day that Oswald changed the course of American history forever. It was now November 24th, 1963, a dreary Sunday morning. After being held in police custody for two nights, Oswald was being transferred from city jail to county jail. The transfer was being broadcast live on TV for all Americans to see, and they would unexpectedly witness a whole lot more than they had bargained for.
Out of nowhere, a man suddenly leapt forward and shot Oswald point blank with a pistol. He’s been shot. He’s been shot. Oswald has been shot. Oswald was rushed to Parkland Hospital, however, died only 2 hours later. Oswald was killed by a man called Jack Ruby. Now, Ruby owned a nightclub. It was a strip club. It was a sleazy world.
He was connected to the mob. that was his world. Um, we are told though that he was so, you know, outraged by what Oswald had done that he just wanted to take revenge on behalf of the American people and managed somehow to gain access to the back of the police station just as Oswald was being taken out and literally shot him in the abdomen at a point blank range.
So the story at the time was he was just doing it, you know, because of his own personal motivations. And that then of course raised concerns because some wondered was that it or was he removing Oswald because somebody didn’t want Oswald’s testimony to be heard. Now it soon became clear that in fact Ruby had a lot of influence in the community.
He certainly would have known people that might have enabled him to get to that part of the police station where the average person wouldn’t have got inside uh of. And also you then get the strangeness that follows when Ruby as you know he is now in jail begins to make statements and perhaps Ruby had been told if you do this you’ll do your time but then you’ll be a big hero everyone will love you.
you’d be very rich and you can, you know, write your story about it. But that it became clear once he was in captivity that he wasn’t going to be released. And he then started to make statements. There’s a famous press conference that he he actually holds in the jail where he begins to drop hints that there was a wider conspiracy to kill Kennedy and that he knew more than he was letting on.
He was convicted for the killing of Oswald, but he then appealed and it was going to go to a second trial and that’s when he began to get louder in his claims that there was something strange going on and he believed that he also would be perhaps murdered. He was being given injections in the jail and he didn’t know what they were.
He wasn’t a well man. Ruby had cancer, but he believed that perhaps they were trying to poison him, to kill him, and sure enough, he then died in the police cells before he got to the second trial. So then he also had been removed. And you know, perhaps information that would have come out at that second trial, that never came out.
To some, Jack Ruby is a murderer. And to others, he is an American hero. The state funeral for President Kennedy was held on November 25th, 1963 with representatives present from over 100 countries and millions of viewers watching it on TV. On November 29th, 1963, President Lyndon B.
Johnson created the President’s Commission of the Assassination of JFK, also known as the Warren Commission. Lyndon Johnson initiated the Warren Commission. So he hired Chief Justice Earl Warren to look into the Kennedy assassination, but not too much. And it’s very clear from statements made by people involved in the Warren Commission that they were basically told to explain why it was a lone gunman.
It wasn’t a serious investigation. Famously, it didn’t look into many things. It was a great jumble. The final Warren Commission report seems to have been gathered in such a way as to make it impossible to get to the truth from it anyway. But it did its job, which was to say, “No, one lone gunman, Oswald alone, nothing more to worry about.
” But then after, of course, investigations begin and strange facts start to come out and especially after Robert Kennedy has gunned down, people begin to become more suspicious. They start to look back at it. And by the mid 1970s, especially after Watergate where now you find that even the president can’t be trusted, which back then was a big deal.
Um, this starts to make people look back and Kennedy, you know, his assassination, it had never felt comfortable in the collective gut. Its 888 page final report was presented to Johnson on September 24th, 1964. The report concluded that Oswald fired three shots. Some argue that there was a second shooter on the grassy null that the motorcade was approaching.
A theory that is supported by many witness statements that reported hearing gunshots from another direction. The theory is that there was more than one gunman. Of course, you know, are going to revolve around what was seen and heard on the day as much as what was seen in the film.
So, the grassy null and if you see some of the images, you’ll see quite a few people were sitting on the grass or standing there. Um, a number of people claimed that they heard shots coming from over the fence. Some of them did try to testify this to the Warren Commission, which is, you know, largely seen as a white wash. the initial investigation.
Interestingly, the Warren Commission said they would only consider evidence from people at the Graassian Nile if their evidence concurred that there was only the lone gunman Oswald. Now, that immediately looks suspicious. So, in other words, anybody who gave testimony that believed that shot came from over the fence was not listened to or their testimony was not included.
So, that immediately looks suspicious. The Warren Commission concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald and Jack Ruby acted alone. However, some believe that this was simply a way to cover up government interference. Some found it suspicious that upon his initial return to the US after defecting, Oswald was never interrogated by the CIA.
They believe that the CIA did in fact debrief Oswald but then destroyed all evidence after JFK’s assassination to cover their tracks. If we say that the intelligence services were involved in the killing of Kennedy, then we are effectively saying this was a coup d’etat and certainly the accusations that Johnson was involved would very much make that a coup d’etar.
The problem with that and here are the ramifications for the future are that if you have, you know, history changed by such an event, you can be very sure they’ve tried to do that since, albeit not quite so obviously. And there are big conspiracy theorists since involving everything from 9/11 to various world events that believe that we see this kind of thing actually quite often.
And again, the world is persuaded they are merely mad conspiracy theories. But I think the evidence is fairly strong that at the very least there was knowledge on the part of the intelligence services with the killing of Kennedy. And therefore, we have to say that we have forever been in their clutches in the years since.
And sadly, until somebody comes along that really is willing to shake that world up, we’ll probably go on for a good while longer. what Kennedy knew about a growing plan to get rid of him. He’s uncertain. He certainly would have known that he had enemies. And I mean, this is one of the things that by the time the Kennedy was shot, there were factions queuing up that would have been very happy to have seen the end of John F.
Kennedy and his reign. Whether Kennedy knew of an actual plot, I think is perhaps doubtful. Certainly if he knew of the events of what was going to happen that day, I don’t think he would have driven or been driven in an open top car. So I I think he would not have understood that it was getting so near to fruition.
Most Americans don’t believe the official version of what happened with a survey finding that 61% thought that others were involved in the assassination. The truth will never be known 100%. And people will continue to derive theories on what really took place on that historic day.
But one thing is for certain. On November 22nd, 1963, the president of the United States was assassinated, shocking the world and changing America forever. Heat. Heat.