Delving into JFK truth
Conspiracy theories may be debunked at last Slim chance of a smoking gun
IN THE MINDS of many, the assassination of President John F. Kennedy remains one of the country’s most compelling whodunits.
Yet some of the conspiracy theories around the 35th President’s murder in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963, may finally be put to rest Thursday, when the National Archives releases a trove of documents about Kennedy’s death.
Here are some of the bestknown theories: Second shooter Some say that Lee Harvey Oswald (right), the man blamed for shooting Kennedy, was such a terrible marksman during his Marine Corps stint, he couldn’t have been the only gunman to fire on Dealey Plaza that fateful day.
Conspiracy theorists have argued for decades that another shooter was on the grassy knoll overlooking the plaza — given the shot frequencies and the angles at which they hit JFK and Texas Gov. John Connally.
The Warren Commission, formed to probe the assassination, determined one of Oswald's three bullets struck Kennedy in the neck before ripping into the rib cage of Connally, who was sitting in front of JFK. Mafia hit The Mafia was no fan of JFK in the White House, especially when the Kennedy administration failed to overthrow the Castro regime in Cuba. Fidel Castro’s (inset) Communist revolution ousted the mob’s casino and hotel industry. JFK’s brother, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, was also probing organized crime’s influence over unions, particularly the powerful Teamsters union, which was headed by Jimmy Hoffa — whose mysterious disappearance in 1975 has its own theories. CIA operation Some believe the Central Intelligence Agency killed Kennedy because he considered shuttering the shadow agency in the early 1960s after discovering its plans to kill Castro — along with other operations.
The theory could be shored up by the fact that ex-CIA chief Allen Dulles sat on the Warren Commission, which ultimately deemed the Soviet Union-backing Oswald acted alone.
“The problem is, of all of them, this is one I can’t debunk,” JFK conspiracy skeptic Dave Perry told CNN in 2013. THE RELEASE of the government files linked to President John F. Kennedy’s assassination could help allay suspicions of a conspiracy — at least for some. The collection includes more than 3,100 documents — comprising hundreds of thousands of pages — that have never been seen by the public. It is not clear how many of them will be available. Experts expect certain IRS files to remain secret, like the tax return of Jack Ruby, the man who killed assassin Lee Harvey Oswald two days after Kennedy’s death. The chances of any bombshell findings are slim, according to the judge who led the independent board that reviewed and released thousands of the assassination documents in the 1990s. The National Archives is planning to post the files on its website.