The JFK Assassination coverup

Official Report

The first and most obvious conspiracy (fact, not theory) was the Warren Report itself. The Cold War was at its height and America had to not only preserve its image, but had to avoid any increase in international tensions.

The public view of what happened could not be allowed to include an organization conspiring to assassinate the president, especially if all but one of its members were still walking free and unknown. That a president could be killed by a madman had to be accepted, it had happened after-all, but the perception of America as having a democratically elected government had to be maintained. Assassination is not a part of American politics.

The international situation could not be allowed to get worse by revealing Oswald's relationship with the Russians and Cubans (e.g. a month before the assassination, Oswald had visited both the Cuban and Russian embassies in Mexico, a fact that the Warren Report (page 777) dismissed as Oswald's desire to emmigrate to the USSR). WWI had started with a political assassination, and in 1963, the world was on the brink of WWIII.

Warren Commission member John J. McCloy later stated:

It was important to show the world that America is not a banana republic, where a government can be changed by conspiracy.

Following Oswald's death, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, wrote:

There is nothing further on the Oswald case except that he is dead. … The thing I am concerned about, and so is [Deputy Attorney General] Mr. Katzenbach, is having something issued so we can convince the public that Oswald is the real assassin. … the public must be satisfied that Oswald was the assassin; that he did not have confederates who are still at large; and that evidence was such that he would have been convicted at trial.

The Warren Report was based on very selective evidence. Witnesses whose statements supported the official lone gunman theory were re-interviewed and their testimony sent to the Committee; those whose statements didn't support it were ignored.

Once the shock of the events had worn off, that the report was a whitewash became very evident to the public. It became what would today be called a meme. When standup comedian Woody Allen said:

I was writing and I needed to be free, creative. I was working on a non-fiction version of the Warren report.

everyone got the joke.

Evidence

The second and most obvious actual conspiracy was what happened immediately following the assassination.

Official procedure wasn't followed, and evidence was badly handled.

• Texas law required an immediate autopsy, but Secret Service agents used threat and force to remove the body from the hospital and abscond with it to Washington D.C.

  Concerned that the local officials might try to prevent the plane's departure. O'Donnell asked that the pilot take off immediately. — Warren Report, page 58.

• Legal chain of custody of evidence was destroyed by this move. The body was even transferred to a different coffin before being put onto the plane. As a result, evidence on the body became suspect and would not have stood up in court.

• The autopsy should have been performed by a forensic pathologist, trained to find and preserve criminal evidence. Instead, the FBI's autopsy was performed by a hospital pathologist, whose job is only to determine the cause of death, not to gather evidence of a crime.

• Press photographers that attended the autopsy had their film confiscated "as evidence". None of their photos were presented as evidence at the Warren Commission, and they are now presumed lost.

• After the autopsy, JFK's brain was "misplaced" and has not been seen since.

It's not possible to attribute these and other unusual events to simple incompetence. There was definitely a conspiracy on the part of government agencies, especially the Secret Service, to control the evidence.

Referring to the JFK autopsy, Dr. Milton Helpern, leading US forensic pathologist in 1963 said:

Selecting a hospital pathologist to perform a medico-legal autopsy … and evaluate gunshot wounds is like sending a seven year old boy who has taken three lessons on the violin over to the New York Philharmonic and expect him to perform a Tchaikovsky symphony. He knows how to hold the violin and the bow, but he has a long way to go before he can make music.

Discrepancies

It soon became apparent that the Warren Report did not accurately represent what had actually happened. There were far too many discrepancies, and far too many facts that the Commission hadn't even considered, some of the most obvious being:

The bullets:

• The autopsy reported a 6mm hole in the back of the skull.
• The autopsy reported finding "particles of metal" and "metallic fragments" within the skull. ("minute particles of metal in the bone at this margin. Roentgenograms of the skull reveal multiple minute metallic fragments" — Warren Report, page 541.)
• Suppressed for years, frame 313 of the Zapruder film shows the President's head exploding, sending blood and brain matter 10 to 20 feet into the air.

  

• Oswald's Carcano rifle used 6.5mm full metal jacket bullets.
• A 6.5mm bullet can't leave a 6mm hole in bone. It would have been at least 7mm, possibly more.- A full metal jacket bullet would not have broken up, causing JFK's head to explode or leaving metal fragments behind.

  … the Western bullet fired from the Mannlicher-Carcano had "terrific penetrating ability" and would retain substantial velocity after passing through objects such as the portions of the human body. — Warren Report, page 581.

• A full metal jacket bullet is designed to penetrate without being deformed or damaged. The second shot for instance went through JFK's chest, through the car's seat, through Governor Connally's chest, and through Connally's right wrist, and finally came to rest in his left thigh. It was recovered intact and only slightly deformed.

  the three doctors who attended Governor Connally at Parkland Hospital expressed independently their opinion that a single bullet had passed through his chest; tumbled through his wrist with very little exit velocity, leaving small metallic fragments from the rear portion of the bullet; punctured his left thigh after the bullet had lost virtually all of its velocity; and had fallen out of the thigh wound. — Warren Report, page 95.

The shooting:

• Oswald's Carcano was a single shot bolt-action rifle, requiring manually pulling a bolt to open the breech, manually inserting the shell, manually closing the breech, visually relocating the target and re-aiming the rifle before each individual shot.
• Oswald's abandoned rifle was found with an unused shell in the breech, ready to be fired.
• Witnesses report hearing "Bang, [pause], Bang, Bang".

  Most witnesses recalled that the second and third shots were bunched together — Warren Report, page 115.

• Some spectators and some people in the cars following the President reported smelling gun powder.

What happened (according to the official version):

• Oswald fired the first shot and missed, hitting the roadway, with some spectators receiving minor facial wounds from the chipped asphalt.
• Oswald reloaded.
• Oswald fired the second shot hitting JFK and Connally.
• Oswald reloaded.
• Oswald fired the third shot killing JFK.
• Oswald reloaded.
• Oswald abandoned the rifle.

It's difficult to reconcile the facts with the official version:

• Oswald was not a good marksman, yet his aim improved, going from a complete miss on the first easy shot, to a direct head-shot on a distant, rapidly fleeing target on the last.
• The pause between the first two shots allowed Oswald to reload and re-aim, but the third shot came almost immediately after, not allowing him time to reload.

  I looked at the back of the President. I heard another firecracker noise and saw that shot hit the President about four inches down from the right shoulder. A second shot followed immediately and hit the right rear high of the President's head. — Agent Glen A. Bennett, Warren Report, page 111.

• Even though the fatal shot was very dramatically and obviously fatal, Oswald took the time to reload the rifle before abandoning it.
• Even though the wind was blowing toward the Book Depository building and Oswald's window was on the sixth floor, people on the street could smell gunpowder.

Oswald:

• Oswald knew there was a great deal of evidence against him, including his rifle, fingerprints, and witnesses that knew him and saw him leave the building immediately after the assassination.

  

• Oswald did not flee the city.
• In one of his very few known statements, Oswald appeared confident and denied having killed the President. "I'm just a patsy".

His behaviour is not that of someone that has just killed the President. There's little question that Oswald fired at JFK, but his behaviour implies that he knew that he himself didn't fire the fatal shot.

Government:

In the decades since, several government commissions have re-investigated the assassination. Though hesitant to assign blame, all have found serious inadequacies in the original Warren Report.

Discussion

The two things we can be relatively sure of are that Oswald did not fire the fatal shot, and that there was a government cover-up.

The details above are commonly known and are part of most JFK assassination conspiracy theories. These, and many other factors, provide just too many discrepancies and unanswered questions for the public to accept the official version. It's natural that people would feel unsatisfied and want a story that answers the questions and ties up the loose ends.

Despite being considered a popular president, JFK had many enemies.

• The unions had helped elect him, and JFK and his brother had turned on them.
• JFK had ordered an invasion of Castro's Cuba.
• The CIA blamed JFK for the Bay of Pigs fiasco.
• Khrushchev had been humiliated by the Missile Crisis.
• …

Even LBJ himself was seen as gaining by JFK's assassination.

It was easy for the public to want one of these (or others) to be the real reason for JFK's death. A senseless killing is frustrating. Losing one's president to a madman just felt wrong, and there was mounting evidence that this official explanation was seriously incomplete.

People wanted there to be a conspiracy behind the assassination, and so they ended up with not one, but dozens of conspiracy theories to choose from.

But these theories tended to be fabricated, constructing a story based on explanations of a subset of the discrepancies and unexplained questions. Some correctly recognized that Oswald didn't fire the fatal shot, but they have to introduce unknown people on the grassy knoll, people for whom there is no evidence they ever existed. Strawman arguments are set up (e.g. "magic bullet") in order to "prove" the existence of these contrived people. Everything related to these ad hoc fabricated people is purely speculation, not logical reasoning.

These theories use the problems as their basis, and as a result, for the most part, they are as unsatisfying as the Warren Report.

What is needed is a simple explanation based on evidence and reason, one that naturally resolves the issues as a side effect, not as a goal.

Additional Facts

A photograph taken during an FBI re-enactment of the assassination was later discovered to contain an interesting detail. As the President's car passed the Book Depository, it passed under a set of traffic lights:

From Oswald's point of view:

one can see a hole in the metal backplate of the traffic light that would have come into Oswald's line of fire. (Photos from https://www.kbrhorse.net/signals/eagle03a.html)

Most of the team of Secret Service agents that rode in the car immediately following the President's car had stayed up drinking until 3 or 4 in the morning, and by the time they were escorting the President, most were hung over or still drunk. This breach of regulations was downplayed, but the agents were reprimanded by the Warren Commission for their conduct the night before the assassination.

Chief Eowley testified that under ordinary circumstances he would have taken disciplinary action against those agents who had been drinking in clear violation of the regulation. However, he felt that any disciplinary action might have given rise to an inference that the violation of the regulation had contributed to the tragic events of November 22. — Warren Report, page 451.

The most junior agent, George Hickey, wasn't considered "one of the boys" yet, and so hadn't participated. He normally handled the menial duties, and after a good night's sleep he got up early and prepared the car, making sure it was clean and spotless. As a result, this least qualified and least experienced agent assumed the critical lookout position, sitting on the back of the rear seat of the convertible with a 5.56mm AR15 assault rifle out of sight at his feet.

Possible Sequence of Events

Oswald:

• The President's car approaches and Oswald has him in his sights, slowly swinging the rifle from left to right to track the target. It's very close, and an easy shot, but he waits a fraction of a second too long. Just as he fires, the President passes behind the traffic signal.
• The bullet goes through the back plate and is broken up by the heavy steel, two fragments landing in the car and smaller pieces hitting the road and spraying debris into the crowd.
• Oswald quickly reloads and takes aim again before the car gets too far away.
• He shoots the President in the back, though it isn't obvious yet to Oswald that JFK has actually been hit.
• Oswald reloads again, and before he can even take aim, he sees the President's head explode.
• He drops the rifle and leaves the building, wondering what happened, but knowing the President is dead, even if he didn't actually do it himself.

Hickey:

• A shot rings out and the agents become alert, not knowing where it came from.
• Hickey retrieves the AR15 rifle and looks around.

  Special Agent George W. Hickey, Jr., in the rear seat of the Presidential followup car, picked up and cocked an automatic rifle … — Warren Report, page 51.

• Hickey is right-handed, so the rifle is naturally aimed to the left.
• A second shot is fired and Hickey turns toward the sound, swinging the rifle with him to the right.
• The President's car takes off in a hurry, and the agents' car follows suit.
• Sitting on the top of the back seat and turning around, Hickey is thrown off balance by the sudden acceleration and accidentally discharges his weapon while recovering.
• The 5.56mm bullet enters the President's skull leaving a 6mm hole.
• Unlike Oswald's full metal jacket bullets, which are designed for penetration, the AR15 uses frangible bullets, designed to break up on impact in order to cause maximum damage to the target. In this case a large section of the top of the President's head is destroyed and ejected.
• The smoke from the shot drifts back to the following cars.

Conspiracy:

This is where the real conspiracy begins. It doesn't matter whether Oswald himself was involved in a conspiracy; perhaps he was, perhaps not. But the Secret Service had a serious problem, and they needed to do something about it fast. The mission of the Secret Service is to protect the President, yet they themselves had accidentally killed him. Fortunately, very few people knew this. The truth was known by the agents in the car (perhaps not all of them), and by a line of superiors, but likely by no one else.

It soon became apparent that everyone had been watching the President and no one had seen what had really happened. It also didn't take long for the police to determine that Oswald was the prime suspect.

This was a time when most police forces worked by deciding on a suspect and then putting their efforts into finding evidence that would provide a conviction in court. The Secret Service had no trouble encouraging the investigators to concentrate on evidence that would convict Oswald.

For political reasons mentioned earlier, other branches of government also wanted the situation to be resolved as quickly and as simply as possible. The Secret Service ended up being asked by other government agencies to help cover up anything not blaming Oswald. This is exactly what they needed, and very few people within the Service ever needed to know what had really happened.

Any evidence not related to Oswald was suppressed or ignored. The FBI, the Warren Commission, and everyone concerned already wanted Oswald to be the lone gunman, with no one else involved to complicate the situation, so those people in the Secret Service that knew the truth had no trouble making sure things went in the right direction.