I Search Essay

Haley Tenelshof

Corey Hamilton ENG1020

November 1, 2015

Assisted or Alone; the Assassination of JFK

Did Lee Harvey Oswald act alone in the assassination of JFK? My motivation for asking this question is the countless articles I have read, multiple movies watched, and several books read on his assassination. I was introduced to the topic of the JFK assassination when I was about 15 years old. My grandpa was a history guru and had countless books, movies, and articles on World War I, World War II, the Vietnam War, the Korean War, and the assassination of JFK. One day he showed me his collection and told me I could borrow anything. The first thing I grabbed was a rather small book titled, “Five Days In November.” This book is the reasoning for my continued interest in the assassination of JFK. From my prior knowledge I know that, on November 22, 1963 President John Fitzgerald Kennedy was assassinated. There were three shots fired, two of them hit the President. As I understand, the first one was a missed shot and that supposedly came from the 6th floor of the Texas School Book Depository, where Lee Harvey Oswald was located. The second shot was allegedly from the same spot also. The third and final shot is the fatal one, yet no one can figure out where it came from. The Warren Commission, the commission that was assigned to investigate the assassination, reported that the third shot came from Lee Harvey Oswald and therefore, he acted alone. Many other people have put their input in and devoted their life’s research to prove that Oswald was not alone.

To start my research process, I went to ProQuest and searched in the advanced search line “JFK assassination”. I narrowed down my search by only allowing scholarly articles. Once I did this, I skimmed through the titles, searching for an interesting one. I found “Paranoia unbound — Deep Politics and the Death of JFK by Peter Dale Scott / Case Closed: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of JFK by Gerald Posner / Who Shot JFK?: A Guide to the Major Conspiracy Theories by Bob Callahan”. This article goes over all of the different conspiracy theories that are the most popular. It states, “The Mafia did it; Robert Kennedy did; Jackie was upset because her husband had extramarital affairs, so she did it. The KGB, Cubans (both anti-and pro-Castro), the CIA and/or FBI, right-wing Texas oilmen, tsarist Russians, rocket scientist Wernher von Braun–and on the zany list goes. The “friendly fire” theory holds that a Secret Service agent riding in the limousine behind JFK fired the fatal shots, by accident. And apparently the latest trend among conspiracy theorists is to bash one another for believing in the wrong conspiracy” (Holland). Clearly, JFK had multiple groups out to get him for various reasons, yet the Warren Commision concluded that Oswald acted alone and they said his motivation was that he was a sociopath. “After the Warren Commission published its findings in September 1964, a Gallup poll indicated that 56 percent of Americans believed the report’s main finding: that Lee Harvey Oswald, acting alone, was President Kennedy’s assassin. Today, however, approximately 90 percent of the public believes there was some kind of conspiracy to kill JFK.” (Holland) As time goes on, and more information comes out about the assassination, the believability of the Warren Commision is falling. I believe this is due to the growing distrust of the government over the past 50 plus years, coming from Watergate, the Iran-Contra Scandal, and so on. Also, “Senator Frank Church’s select committee on intelligence revealed the extent of anti-Castro plotting and the fact that the CIA and FBI had lied by omission to another arm of government. This shattered whatever trust remained in the official story and ripped the lid off a Pandora’s box of conspiracy theories” (Holland). This article helps to show that with all the conspiracies possible and the credibility of the Warren Commision falling tremendously over the years, that Oswald was not alone in the assassination of JFK.

Secondly, I went to ProQuest again, and searched “JFK assassination” in the advanced search line with “Lee Harvey Oswald”. This time I did not limit it to scholarly articles only, because I wanted to expand the number of articles found. I again glanced at titles and found one that I thought was interesting and the page took me to US News and World Reports webpage. The article is “Did Lee Harvey Oswald Act Alone?”. This article gives two viewpoints from different men, one political science professor who believes that Oswald did act alone and that conspiracy theorists should give up, and one man who wrote a book about the assassination who believes that from what eyewitnesses have had to say, there has to be another gunman. He states, “In its report, the Warren Commission – tasked by President Lyndon Johnson with investigating the assassination – placed a gunman on the sixth floor of a building along JFK’s motorcade route through Dallas. Such a gunman would have been behind the presidential limousine when the shots were fired. Yet of the 121 Dealey Plaza witnesses whose statements appear in the commission’s published evidence, 51, by one count, said gunshots came from the right front – that is, from the infamous grassy knoll. Only 32 thought shots came from the building, while 38 had no opinion.” (Welsh). That means that out of 83 people that responded, 61% of people heard gunshots from the grassy knoll. Even the other 49% said they heard gunshots from the building, that does not mean they did not hear them from the grassy knoll. Then he goes on to say, “There is much more than this, of course: Dealey Plaza witnesses who saw unidentified armed men in the vicinity; witnesses whose observations suggest a radio-coordinated hit team; three Dallas cops who encountered fake Secret Service agents; and one who testified to meeting an hysterical woman screaming, “They’re shooting the president from the bushes!”” (Welsh). If multiple eyewitnesses heard gunshots from the grassy knoll, how could Oswald have acted alone if he was on the 6th floor of the Texas School Book Depository building? Furthermore, “ In 1979 a House Select Committee concluded that JFK’s assassination was likely the work of a conspiracy” (Welsh). Seventeen years after the assassination, the House Select Committee challenges the Warren Commission’s findings. More evidence came out, the scene has cooled down now, and people are not scared for their lives anymore to testify against what the Warren Commision said. With the eyewitnesses sharing their stories and government officials disagreeing with the Warren Commision, it goes to show that Oswald did not act alone.

Lastly, I went onto ProQuest again and search the same “JFK assassination” and “Lee Harvey Oswald” into the advanced search. I browsed through interesting title names until I got to “JFK Conspiracy Theories at 50”. Although the length of the article scared me a little, I found it to be the best of my three sources. It went through and talked about the major conspiracy theories in major detail. They talk about, the Grass Knoll, the Parkland Hospital professionals, the umbrella man, the mysterious deaths that followed, the Zapruder film, communists, the radical right, the CIA, the Cold War, Mafia the single bullet theory, and many more. First with the famous Grassy Knoll, “ A Polaroid photograph taken by bystander Mary Ann Moorman captured the grassy knoll at almost precisely the instant of the fatal shot to the President. Researcher David Lifton found a reproduction of the photograph in a book in 1965 and quickly spotted what appeared to be a puff of smoke in the background, “and, just behind it, a human form-someone apparently crouched behind the wall” (Reitzes, 38-39). At the exact moment of the fatal shot, the one where JFK’s head went back and to the left, there was commotion in the Grassy Knoll (this was located in front of the motorcade and to the right) and eyewitnesses say that they heard shots coming from there. Also, The House Select Committee mentioned earlier, indicated that there had indeed been a shot fired from the Grassy Knoll (Reitzes, 41). “Some of the crime scene photographs had more to offer than blurs and shadows. There were the “three tramps” whose pictures were snapped by newsmen shortly after police officers pulled them from a railroad boxcar behind the grassy knoll. The Warren Commission had never mentioned these characters; surely they could have been up to no good. Once Watergate made national headlines, it was even pointed out that if you looked really hard, two of the three resembled Watergate conspirators Frank Sturgis and E. Howard Hunt.” (Reitzes, 39). These two men were involved in Watergate. One of the major conspiracy theories is that Nixon was embarrassed by the presidential election of 1960 and losing to JFK. Then there comes the Umbrella man, who on a beautiful sunny day brought an umbrella. A few seconds before the final shot was fired, you can see in the Zapruder film, the umbrella was opened to the right of JFK’s motorcade. Many conspiracists believe he was signaling the gunmen to shoot at the perfect time. Lastly, and most importantly, the Zapruder film. “If there is a single piece of evidence that Warren Commission skeptics have held up as irrefutable proof of a conspiracy, it is what has come to be known as the “head snap”: the moment in the motion picture film captured by bystander Abraham Zapruder when the President is shot in the head and it snaps strongly to his left.” (Reitzes, 40) This last quote sums up the whole argument. If Oswald was behind the motorcade and to the right, how in the world could the President’s head go BACK and to the LEFT? This article helps to show that with all of these very believable conspiracies, that Oswald could have acted alone in the assassination of JFK.

To conclude, I have learned that the mystery of the JFK assassination will most likely never be solved. There are too many conspiracies that are very believable, and the eyewitnesses are now deceased or will not speak up. No one will ever truly know what happened that day. Although, this has furthered my belief that Oswald did not and could not have acted alone. I did learn how to find scholarly articles and use them effectively to prove a point. I also learned how to find concrete scholarly articles relevant to my topic, by using the advanced search bar. After finishing this project I, FINISH STATEMENT.

WORKS CITED

Holland, Max. “Paranoia Unbound — Deep Politics and the Death of JFK by Peter Dale

Scott / Case Closed: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of JFK by

Gerald Posner / Who Shot JFK?: A Guide to the Major Conspiracy Theories by Bob Callahan.” The Wilson Quarterly 18.1 (1994): 87. ProQuest. Web. 27 Oct. 2015.

Reitzes, David. “JFK Conspiracy Theories at 50.” Skeptic 2013: 36,51,64. ProQuest. Web. 27

Oct. 2015 .

Welsh, Teresa. “Did Lee Harvey Oswald Act Alone?” U.S.News & World Report 11 2013: 1.

ProQuest. Web. 22 Oct. 2015 .