John F. Kennedy assassination conspiracy theories

There are numerous conspiracy theories surrounding the assassination of John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963. These theories posit that the assassination involved many people or organizations. Most current theories put forth a criminal conspiracy involving parties as varied as the CIA, the Mafia, sitting Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson, Cuban President Fidel Castro, the KGB, or some combination of those entities. Some conspiracy theories claim that the United States government covered up crucial information in the aftermath of the assassination. No single theory is widely accepted. In 1964, the Warren Commission concluded that only Lee Harvey Oswald was responsible for the assassination of Kennedy. In 1979, the United States House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) concluded that a second gunman besides Oswald probably fired at Kennedy. The HSCA did not identify the second gunman, nor did it identify any other person or organization as having been involved. The acoustic evidence on which the HSCA based its second gunman conclusion has since been discredited. Public opinion polls have consistently shown that a majority of Americans believe there was a conspiracy to kill Kennedy. Gallup polls have also found that only 20–30% of the population believe that Oswald had acted alone. These polls also show that there is no agreement on who else may have been involved. Former Los Angeles District Attorney Vincent Bugliosi estimated that a total of 42 groups, 82 assassins, and 214 people had been accused in various Kennedy assassination conspiracy theories. Background: President John F. Kennedy was assassinated by gunfire as he traveled in a motorcade in an open-top limousine in Dallas, Texas, on Friday, November 22, 1963 (12:30 pm, CST); Texas Governor John Connally was wounded during the shooting, but survived. Within two hours, Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested for the murder of Dallas policeman J.D. Tippit and arraigned that evening. Shortly after 1:30 am, Saturday, Oswald was arraigned for murdering President Kennedy as well. On Sunday, November 24, at 11:21 am, nightclub owner Jack Ruby shot and mortally wounded Oswald as he was being transferred to the county jail. Immediately after the shooting, many people suspected that the assassination was part of a larger plot. Ruby's shooting of Oswald compounded initial suspicions. Among conspiracy theorists, Mark Lane has been described as writing "the first literary shot" with his article, "Defense Brief for Oswald," in the December 19, 1963, edition of the National Guardian. Thomas Buchanan's Who Killed Kennedy?, published in May 1964, has been credited as the first book alleging a conspiracy. In 1964, the Warren Commission concluded that Oswald acted alone and that no credible evidence supported the contention that he was involved in a conspiracy to assassinate the president. The Commission also indicated that Dean Rusk, the Secretary of State; Robert S. McNamara, the Secretary of Defense; C. Douglas Dillon, the Secretary of the Treasury; Robert F. Kennedy, the Attorney General; J. Edgar Hoover, the Director of the FBI; John A. McCone, the Director of the CIA; and James J. Rowley, the Chief of the Secret Service, each independently reached the same conclusion on the basis of information available to them. However, during the 1969 trial of Clay Shaw, New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison challenged the single bullet theory with evidence from the Zapruder film which he claimed indicated that a fourth shot from the grassy knoll was responsible for Kennedy's fatal head wound. In 1979, the United States House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) agreed with the Warren Commission that Oswald assassinated Kennedy, but concluded that the Commission's report and the original FBI investigation were seriously flawed. The HSCA concluded that at least four shots were fired with a "high probability" that two gunmen fired at the President, and that a conspiracy was probable. The HSCA stated that "the Warren Commission failed to investigate adequately the possibility of a conspiracy to assassinate the President." The Ramsey Clark Panel and the Rockefeller Commission both supported the Warren Commission's conclusions. Public opinion: According to author John McAdams: "The greatest and grandest of all conspiracy theories is the Kennedy assassination conspiracy theory." Others have frequently referred to it as "the mother of all conspiracies". The number of books written about the assassination of Kennedy has been estimated to be in the range of 1,000 to 2,000. According to Vincent Bugliosi, 95% of those books are "pro-conspiracy and anti-Warren Commission". Author David Krajicek describes Kennedy assassination enthusiasts as belonging to "conspiracy theorists" on one side and "debunkers" on the other. The great amount of controversy surrounding the event has led to bitter disputes between those who support the conclusion of the Warren Commission and those who reject it, or are critical of the official explanation with each side leveling toward the other accusations of "naivete, cynicism, and selective interpretation of the evidence". Public opinion polls have consistently shown that a majority of Americans believe there was a conspiracy to kill President Kennedy. However, on the question of a government cover-up, different polls show both a minority and majority of Americans who believe the government engaged in one. These same polls also show that there is no agreement on who else may have been involved. A 2003 Gallup poll reported that 75% of Americans do not believe that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. That same year an ABC News poll found that 70% of respondents suspected that the assassination involved more than one person. A 2004 Fox News poll found that 66% of Americans thought there had been a conspiracy while 74% thought there had been a cover-up. As recently as 2009, some 76% of people polled for CBS News said they believed the President had been killed as the result of a conspiracy. A Gallup poll released in 2013 found that 61% of Americans, the lowest figure in nearly 50 years, believed others beside Oswald were involved. Possible evidence of a cover-up: Numerous researchers, including Mark Lane, Henry Hurt, Michael L. Kurtz, Gerald D. McKnight, Anthony Summers, Harold Weisberg, and others have pointed out what they characterize as inconsistencies, oversights, exclusions of evidence, errors, changing stories, or changes made to witness testimony in the official Warren Commission investigation, which they say could suggest a cover-up. Michael Benson wrote that the Warren Commission received only information supplied to it by the FBI, and that its purpose was to rubber stamp the lone gunman theory. Richard Schweiker, United States senator and member of the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, told author Anthony Summers in 1978, "I believe that the Warren Commission was set up at the time to feed pabulum to the American public for reasons not yet known, and that one of the biggest cover-ups in the history of our country occurred at that time." James H. Fetzer took issue with a 1998 statement from Federal Judge John R. Tunheim, the Chair of the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB), who stated that no "smoking guns" indicating a conspiracy or cover-up were discovered during their efforts in the early 1990s to declassify documents related to the assassination. Fetzer identified 16 "smoking guns" which he claims prove the official narrative is impossible, and therefore a conspiracy and cover-up occurred. He claims that evidence released by the ARRB substantiates these concerns. These include problems with bullet trajectories, the murder weapon, the ammunition used, inconsistencies between the Warren Commission's account and the autopsy findings, inconsistencies between the autopsy findings and what was reported by witnesses at the scene of the murder, eyewitness accounts that conflict with x-rays taken of the President's body, indications that the diagrams and photos of the President's brain in the National Archives are not the President's, testimony by those who took and processed the autopsy photos that the photos were altered, created, or destroyed, indications that the Zapruder film had been tampered with, allegations that the Warren Commission's version of events conflicts with news reports from the scene of the murder, an alleged change to the motorcade route which facilitated the assassination, an alleged lax Secret Service and local law enforcement security, and statements by people who claim that they had knowledge of, or participated in, a conspiracy to kill the President. In 1966, Roscoe Drummond voiced skepticism about a cover-up in his syndicated column: "If there were a conspiracy to cover up the truth about the assassination, it would have to involve the Chief Justice, the Republican, Democratic, and non-party members of the commission, the FBI, the CIA, the Secret Service, the distinguished doctors of the armed services – and the White House – a conspiracy so multiple and complex that it would have fallen of its own weight." Allegations of witness tampering, intimidation, and foul play- Alleged witness intimidation: Richard Buyer wrote that many witnesses whose statements pointed to a conspiracy were either ignored or intimidated by the Warren Commission. In JFK: The Last Dissenting Witness, a 1992 biography of Jean Hill, Bill Sloan wrote that Arlen Specter, assistant counsel for the Warren Commission, attempted to humiliate, discredit, and intimidate Hill into changing her story. Hill also told Sloan that she was abused by Secret Service agents, harassed by the FBI, and was the recipient of death threats. A later book by Sloan, JFK: Breaking the Silence, quotes several assassination eyewitnesses as saying that Warren Commission interviewers repeatedly cut short or stifled any comments casting doubt on the conclusion that Oswald acted alone. In his book Crossfire, Jim Marrs gave accounts of several people who said they were intimidated by FBI agents, or intimidated by anonymous individuals, into altering or suppressing what they knew about the assassination, including Richard Carr, Acquilla Clemmons, Sandy Speaker, and A. J. Millican. Marrs also wrote that Texas School Book Depository employee Joe Molina was "intimidated by authorities and lost his job soon after the assassination," and that witness Ed Hoffman was warned by an FBI agent that he "might get killed" if he revealed what he had observed in Dealey Plaza on the day of the assassination. Witness deaths: Allegations of mysterious or suspicious deaths of witnesses connected with the Kennedy assassination originated with Penn Jones, Jr., and were brought to national attention by the 1973 film Executive Action. Jim Marrs later presented a list of 103 people he believed died "convenient deaths" under suspicious circumstances. He noted that the deaths were grouped around investigations conducted by the Warren Commission, New Orleans D.A. Jim Garrison, the Senate Intelligence Committee, and the House Select Committee on Assassinations. Marrs pointed out that "these deaths certainly would have been convenient for anyone not wishing the truth of the JFK assassination to become public." In 2013, Richard Belzer published Hit List: An In-Depth Investigation into the Mysterious Deaths of Witnesses to the JFK Assassination that examines the deaths of 50 people linked to the assassination and claims they were murdered as part of a cover-up. Vincent Bugliosi described the death of journalist Dorothy Kilgallen—who said she was granted a private interview with Jack Ruby—as "perhaps the most prominent mysterious death" cited by assassination researchers. According to author Jerome Kroth, Mafia figures Sam Giancana, John Roselli, Carlos Prio, Jimmy Hoffa, Charles Nicoletti, Leo Moceri, Richard Cain, Salvatore Granello and Dave Yaras were likely murdered to prevent them from revealing their knowledge. According to author Matthew Smith, others with some tie to the case who have died suspicious deaths include Lee Bowers, Gary Underhill, William Sullivan, David Ferrie, Clay Shaw, George de Mohrenschildt, four showgirls who worked for Jack Ruby, and Ruby himself. The House Select Committee on Assassinations investigated another alleged "mysterious death"—that of Rose Cheramie. The Committee reported that Louisiana State Police Lieutenant Francis Fruge traveled to Eunice, Louisiana, on November 20, 1963—two days before the assassination—to pick up Cheramie, who had sustained minor injuries when she was hit by a car. Fruge drove Cheramie to the hospital and said that on the way there, she "...related to him that she was coming from Florida to Dallas with two men who were Italians or resembled Italians." Fruge asked her what she planned to do in Dallas, to which she replied: "...number one, pick up some money, pick up my baby, and ... kill Kennedy." Cheramie was admitted and treated at State Hospital in Jackson, Louisiana for alcohol and heroin addiction.State Hospital physician Dr. Victor Weiss later told a House Select Committee investigator that on November 25—three days after the assassination—one of his fellow physicians told him that Cheramie had "stated before the assassination that President Kennedy was going to be killed." Dr. Weiss further reported that Cheramie told him after the assassination that she had worked for Jack Ruby and that her knowledge of the assassination originated from "word in the underworld." After the assassination, Lt. Fruge contacted Dallas Police Captain Will Fritz regarding what he had learned from Cheramie, but Fritz told him he "wasn't interested". Cheramie was found dead by a highway near Big Sandy, Texas, on September 4, 1965; she had been run over by a car. Another "suspicious death" cited by Jim Marrs was that of Joseph Milteer, director of the Dixie Klan of Georgia. Milteer was secretly tape-recorded thirteen days before the assassination telling Miami police informant William Somersett that the murder of Kennedy was "in the working." Milteer died in 1974 when a heater exploded in his house. The House Select Committee on Assassinations reported in 1979 that Milteer's information on the threat to the President "was furnished to the agents making the advance arrangements before the visit of the President" to Miami, but that "the Milteer threat was ignored by Secret Service personnel in planning the trip to Dallas." Robert Bouck, Special Agent-in-Charge of the Secret Service's Protective Research Section, testified that "that threat information was transmitted from one region of the country to another if there was specific evidence it was relevant to the receiving region." The House Select Committee on Assassinations investigated the allegation "that a statistically improbable number of individuals with some direct or peripheral association with the Kennedy assassination died as a result of that assassination, thereby raising the specter of conspiracy". The committee's chief of research testified: "Our final conclusion on the issue is that the available evidence does not establish anything about the nature of these deaths which would indicate that the deaths were in some manner, either direct or peripheral, caused by the assassination of President Kennedy or by any aspect of the subsequent investigation." Author Gerald Posner said that Marrs' list was taken from the group of about 10,000 people connected even in the most tenuous way to the assassination, including people identified in the official investigations, as well as the research of conspiracy theorists. Posner also said that it would be surprising if a hundred people out of ten thousand did not die in "unnatural ways". He noted that over half of the people on Marrs' list did not die mysteriously, but of natural causes, such as Secret Service agent Roy Kellerman, who died of heart failure at age 69 in 1984, long after the Kennedy assassination, but is on Marrs' list as someone whose cause of death is "unknown". Posner also pointed out that many prominent witnesses and conspiracy researchers continue to live long lives. Allegations of evidence suppression, tampering, and fabrication: Allegations that the evidence against Oswald was planted, forged, or tampered with is a main argument among those who believe a conspiracy took place. Suppression of evidence- Ignored testimony: Some assassination researchers assert that witness statements indicating a conspiracy were ignored by the Warren Commission. In 1967, Josiah Thompson stated that the Commission ignored the testimony of seven witnesses who saw gunsmoke in the area of the stockade fence on the grassy knoll, as well as an eighth witness who smelled gunpowder at the time of the assassination. In 1989, Jim Marrs wrote that the Commission failed to ask for the testimony of witnesses on the triple overpass whose statements pointed to a shooter on the grassy knoll. Confiscated film and photographs: Other researchers reported that witnesses who captured the assassination in photographs or on film had their cameras and/or film confiscated by police or other authorities. Author Jim Marrs and documentary producer Nigel Turner presented the account of Gordon Arnold who said that his film of the motorcade was taken by two policemen shortly after the assassination. Another witness, Beverly Oliver, came forward in 1970 and said she was the "Babushka Lady" who is seen, in the Zapruder film, filming the motorcade. She said that after the assassination she was contacted at work by two men who she thought "...were either FBI or Secret Service agents." According to Oliver, the men told her that they wanted to develop her film and would return it to her within ten days, but they never returned the film. Withheld documents: Richard Buyer and others have complained that many documents pertaining to the assassination have been withheld over the years, including documents from the Warren Commission investigation, the House Select Committee on Assassinations investigation, and the Church Committee investigation. These documents at one time included the President's autopsy records. Some documents are still not scheduled for release until 2029. Many documents were released during the mid-to-late 1990s by the Assassination Records Review Board under the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992. However, some of the material released contains redacted sections. Tax return information, which would identify employers and sources of income, has not yet been released. The existence of large numbers of secret documents related to the assassination, and the long period of secrecy, suggests to some the possibility of a cover-up. One historian noted, "There exists widespread suspicion about the government's disposition of the Kennedy assassination records stemming from the beliefs that Federal officials (1) have not made available all Government assassination records (even to the Warren Commission, Church Committee, House Assassination Committee) and (2) have heavily redacted the records released under FOIA in order to cover up sinister conspiracies." According to the Assassination Records Review Board, "All Warren Commission records, except those records that contain tax return information, are (now) available to the public with only minor redactions." In response to a Freedom of Information Act request filed by journalist Jefferson Morley, the CIA stated that it had approximately 1,100 JFK assassination-related documents, about 2,000 pages in total, that have not been released for reasons of national security. Tampering of evidence: Some researchers have alleged that various items of physical evidence have been tampered with, including: the "single bullet", also known as the "magic bullet" by critics of the official explanations; various bullet cartridges and fragments; the limousine's windshield; the paper bag in which the Warren Commission said Oswald hid the rifle; the so-called "backyard" photos which depict Oswald holding the rifle; the Zapruder film; the photographs and radiographs obtained at Kennedy's autopsy; and Kennedy's body itself. Photographs: Among the evidence against Oswald are the photographs of Oswald posing in his backyard with a Carcano rifle—the weapon identified by the Warren Commission as the assassination weapon. Some researchers, including Robert Groden, assert that these photos are fake. However, the House Select Committee on Assassinations concluded that the photographs of Oswald are genuine and Oswald's wife, Marina, says that she took them. In 2009, the journal Perception published the findings of Hany Farid, a professor in the Department of Computer Science at Dartmouth College, who used 3D modeling software to analyze one of the photographs. After demonstrating that a single light source could create seemingly incongruent shadows, Farid concluded that the photograph revealed no evidence of tampering. In 1979 after the HSCA had disbanded, Groden said that four autopsy photographs showing the back of Kennedy's head were forged in order to hide a wound created by the bullet of a second gunman. According to Groden, a photograph of a cadaver's head was inserted over another depicting a large exit wound in the back of Kennedy's head. G. Robert Blakey, chief counsel for the HSCA, replied to the allegations stating the "suggestion that the committee would participate in a coverup is absurd" and that Groden was "not competent to make a judgment on whether a photograph has been altered". Blakey stated the photographic analysis panel for the Committee had examined the photographs and that they "considered everything Groden had to say and rejected it." The Zapruder film: The House Select Committee on Assassinations described the Zapruder film as "the best available photographic evidence of the number and timing of the shots that struck the occupants of the presidential limousine." The Assassination Records Review Board said it "is perhaps the single most important assassination record." According to Vincent Bugliosi, the film was "originally touted by the vast majority of conspiracy theorists as incontrovertible proof of a conspiracy" but is now believed by many assassination researchers to be a "sophisticated forgery". Among those who believe the Zapruder film has been altered are John Costella, James H. Fetzer, David Lifton, David Mantik, Jack White, Noel Twyman, and Harrison Livingstone, who has called it "the biggest hoax of the 20th century". In 1996 Roland Zavada, a former product engineer for Kodak, was requested by the Assassination Records Review Board to undertake a thorough technical study of the Zapruder Film. Zavada concluded that there was no detectable evidence of manipulation or image alteration on the Zapruder in-camera original. David Lifton wrote that the Zapruder film was in the possession of the CIA's National Photographic Interpretation Center the night of the assassination. Jack White, researcher and photographic consultant to the House Select Committee on Assassinations, claimed that there are anomalies in the Zapruder film, including an "unnatural jerkiness of movement or change of focus ... in certain frame sequences." Kennedy's body: In his 1981 book Best Evidence, David Lifton presented the thesis that President Kennedy’s body (i.e., the "best evidence") had been altered between the Dallas hospital and the autopsy site at Bethesda for the purposes of creating erroneous conclusions about the number and direction of the shots. Fabrication of evidence- Murder weapon: The Warren Commission found that the shots which killed Kennedy and wounded Connally were fired from the Italian 6.5mm Carcano rifle owned by Oswald. Deputy Sheriff Eugene Boone and Deputy Constable Seymour Weitzman both initially identified the rifle found in the Texas School Book Depository as a 7.65 Mauser. Weitzman signed an affidavit the following day describing the weapon as a "7.65 Mauser bolt action equipped with a 4/18 scope, a thick leather brownish-black sling on it". Deputy Sheriff Roger Craig claimed that he saw "7.65 Mauser" stamped on the barrel of the weapon. But when interviewed in 1968 by Barry Ernest, author of "The Girl on the Stairs – The Search for a Missing Witness to the JFK Assassination", Craig said: "I felt then and I still feel now that the weapon was a 7.65 German Mauser. I was there. I saw it when it was first pulled from its hiding place, and I am not alone in describing it as a Mauser." So, in the videotaped interview he said he read Mauser on the rifle, and to Ernest he said that he felt it was a Mauser. Dallas District Attorney Henry Wade told the press that the weapon found in the Book Depository was a 7.65 Mauser, and this was reported by the media. But investigators later identified the rifle as a 6.5mm Carcano. In Matrix for Assassination, author Richard Gilbride suggested that both weapons were involved and that Dallas Police Captain Will Fritz and Lieutenant J. Carl Day might have been conspirators. Addressing "speculation and rumors", the Warren Commission identified Weitzman as "the original source of the speculation that the rifle was a Mauser" and stated that "police laboratory technicians subsequently arrived and correctly identified the weapon as a 6.5 Italian rifle." Bullets and cartridges: The Warren Commission determined that three bullets were fired at Kennedy. One of the three bullets missed the vehicle entirely; another bullet hit Kennedy, passed through his body and then struck Governor John Connally; and the third bullet was the fatal head shot to the President. Some claim that the bullet that passed through President Kennedy’s body before striking Governor Connally—dubbed by critics of the Commission as the "magic bullet"—was missing too little mass to account for the total weight of bullet fragments later found by the doctors who operated on Connally. Those making this claim included Connally’s chief surgeon, Dr. Robert Shaw, as well as two of the Kennedy autopsy surgeons, Commander James Humes, and Lt. Colonel Pierre Finck. However, in the book Six Seconds in Dallas, author Josiah Thompson took issue with this claim. Thompson added up the weight of the bullet fragments listed in the doctor reports and concluded that their total weight "could" have been less than the mass missing from the bullet. With Connally's death in 1993, forensic pathologist Dr. Cyril Wecht and the Assassination Archives and Research Center petitioned Attorney General Janet Reno to recover the remaining bullet fragments from Connally's body, contending that the fragments would disprove the Warren Commission's single-bullet, single-gunman conclusion. The Justice Department replied that it "...would have no legal authority to recover the fragments unless Connally's family gave it permission." Connally's family refused permission. Allegations of multiple gunmen: The Warren Commission concluded that "three shots were fired from the Texas School Book Depository in a time period ranging from approximately 4.8 to in excess of 7 seconds." Some assassination researchers, including Anthony Summers, dispute the Commission's findings. They point to evidence that brings into question the number of shots fired, the origin of the shots, and the ability of Oswald to accurately fire three shots in a short amount of time. These researchers suggest the involvement of multiple gunmen. Number of shots: Based on the "consensus among the witnesses at the scene" and "in particular the three spent cartridges", the Warren Commission determined that "the preponderance of the evidence indicated that three shots were fired". In 1979, the House Select Committee on Assassinations concluded there were four shots, one coming from the direction of the grassy knoll. The Warren Commission, and later the House Select Committee on Assassinations, concluded that one of the shots hit President Kennedy in "the back of his neck", exited his throat, continued on to strike Governor Connally in the back, exited Connally's chest, shattered his right wrist, and embedded itself in his left thigh. This conclusion came to be known as the "single bullet theory". Mary Moorman said in a TV interview immediately after the assassination that there were three or four shots close together, that shots were still being fired after the fatal head shot, and that she was in the line of fire. In 1967, Josiah Thompson concluded that four shots were fired in Dealey Plaza, with one wounding Connally and three hitting Kennedy. On the day of the assassination, Nellie Connally was seated in the presidential car next to her husband, Governor John Connally. In her book From Love Field: Our Final Hours, Nellie Connally said that she believed that her husband was hit by a bullet that was separate from the two that hit Kennedy. Origin of the shots: The Warren Commission concluded that all of the shots fired at President Kennedy originated from the sixth-floor window at the southeast corner of the Texas School Book Depository. The Commission based its conclusion on the "cumulative evidence of eyewitnesses, firearms and ballistic experts and medical authorities," including onsite testing, as well as analysis of films and photographs conducted by the FBI and Secret Service. In 1979, the House Select Committee on Assassinations agreed to publish a report from Warren Commission critic Robert Groden, in which he named "nearly two dozen suspected firing points in Dealey Plaza". These sites included multiple locations in or on the roof of the Texas School Book Depository, the Dal-Tex Building, and the Dallas County Records Building, as well as the railroad overpass, a storm drain located along the north curb of Elm street, and various spots near the "grassy knoll". Josiah Thompson concluded that the shots fired on the motorcade came from three locations: the Texas School Book Depository, the area of the grassy knoll, and the Dal-Tex Building. Testimony of eyewitnesses: According to some assassination researchers, the grassy knoll was identified by the majority of witnesses as the area from where shots were fired. In March 1965, Harold Feldman wrote that there were 121 witnesses to the assassination listed in the Warren Report, of whom 51 indicated that the shots that killed Kennedy came from the area of the grassy knoll, while 32 said the shots came from the Texas School Book Depository. In 1967, Josiah Thompson examined the statements of 64 witnesses and concluded that 33 of them thought that the shots emanated from the grassy knoll. In 1966, Esquire magazine credited Feldman with "advancing the theory that there were two assassins: one on the grassy knoll and one in the Book Depository." Jim Marrs also wrote that the weight of evidence suggested shots came from both the grassy knoll and the Texas School Book Depository. Lee Bowers operated a railroad tower that overlooked the parking lot on the north side of the grassy knoll. He reported that he saw two men behind the picket fence at the top of the grassy knoll before the shooting. The men did not appear to be acting together and did not appear to be doing anything suspicious. After the shooting, Bowers said that one of the men remained behind the fence. Bowers said that he lost track of the second man whose clothing blended into the foliage. When interviewed by Mark Lane, Bowers noted that he saw something that attracted his attention, either a flash of light, or maybe smoke, from the knoll, leading him to believe "something out of the ordinary" had occurred there. Bowers told Lane he heard three shots, the last two in quick succession. Bowers stated that they could not have come from the same rifle.[118] Bowers later purportedly said to his supervisor, Olan Degaugh, that he saw a man in the parking lot throw what appeared to be a rifle into a car. However, in the same 1966 interview by Lane, Bowers clarified that the two men he saw were standing in the opening between the pergola and the fence, and that "no one" was behind the fence at the time the shots were fired. Jesse Price was the building engineer for the Terminal Annex Building, located across from the Texas School Book Depository on the opposite side of Dealey Plaza. Price viewed the presidential motorcade from the Terminal Annex Building's roof. In an interview with Mark Lane, Price said that he believed the shots came from "just behind the picket fence where it joins the underpass." Physical evidence Several conspiracy theories posit that at least one shooter was located in the Dal-Tex Building, which is located across the street from the Texas School Book Depository. According to L. Fletcher Prouty, the physical location of James Tague when he was injured by a bullet fragment is not consistent with the trajectory of a missed shot from the Texas School Book Depository, leading Prouty to theorize that Tague was instead wounded by a missed shot from the second floor of the Dal-Tex Building. Some assassination researchers claim that FBI photographs of the presidential limousine show a bullet hole in its windshield above the rear-view mirror, and a crack in the windshield itself. When Robert Groden, author of The Killing of a President, asked for an explanation, the FBI responded that what Groden thought was a bullet hole "occurred prior to Dallas." In 1993, George Whitaker, a manager at the Ford Motor Company's Rouge Plant in Detroit, told attorney and criminal justice professor Doug Weldon that after reporting to work on November 25, 1963, he discovered the presidential limousine in the Rouge Plant’s B building with the windshield removed. Whitaker said that the limousine's removed windshield had a through-and-through bullet hole from the front. He said that he was directed by one of Ford's vice presidents to use the windshield as a template to fabricate a new windshield for installation in the limousine. Whitaker also said he was told to destroy the old windshield. Film and photographic evidence: Film and photographic evidence of the assassination have led viewers to different conclusions regarding the origin of the shots. When the fatal shot occurred, the President's head and upper torso moved backwards—indicating to many observers a shot from the right front. Sherry Gutierrez, a certified crime scene and bloodstain pattern analyst, concluded that "the head injury to President Kennedy was the result of a single gunshot fired from the right front of the President." Paul Chambers argues that the fatal head shot is consistent with a high velocity (approx. 4,000 ft/sec) rifle rather than the medium-velocity (2,000 ft/sec) Mannlicher–Carcano. Chambers also claims that analysis of the Zapruder film at normal speed shows the President's limousine comes to a complete stop moments before the fatal head shot. Although it has been argued that Frames Z312 and Z313 of the Zapruder film show Kennedy's head moving forward before his head moves backwards, Anthony Marsh claims that close inspection of the frames show Kennedy’s head actually moves downwards, and argue that it was the deceleration of the car by the driver William Greer which caused Kennedy's head to move down. Some, including Josiah Thompson, Robert Groden and Cyril Wecht, state that the film shows Kennedy's head being struck by two near-simultaneous bullets, one from the rear, the other from the right front. Acoustical evidence: According to the House Select Committee on Assassinations, a Dictabelt recording of the Dallas Police Department radio dispatch transmissions from November 22, 1963, was analyzed to "resolve questions concerning the number, timing, and origin of the shots fired in Dealey Plaza". The Committee concluded that the source of the recording was from an open microphone on the motorcycle of H.B. McLain escorting the motorcade and that "the scientific acoustical evidence established a high probability that two gunmen fired at President John F. Kennedy." The acoustical analysis firm hired by the Committee recommended that the Committee conduct an acoustical reconstruction of the assassination in Dealey Plaza to determine if any of the six impulse patterns on the dispatch tape were fired from the Texas School Book Depository or the grassy knoll. The reconstruction would entail firing from two locations in Dealey Plaza—the depository and the knoll—at particular target locations and recording the sounds through numerous microphones. The purpose was to determine if the sequences of impulses recorded during the reconstruction would match any of those on the dispatch tape. If so, it would be possible to determine if the impulse patterns on the dispatch tape were caused by shots fired during the assassination from shooter locations in the depository and on the knoll. In 1978, at the behest of the House Select Committee on Assassinations, members of the Dallas Police Pistol Team participated in an acoustical reconstruction by firing both rifles and pistols from the locations selected by the researchers. During the acoustical reconstruction, the Dallas Police marksmen had no difficulty hitting the targets. The House Select Committee's firearms experts "...testified that given the distance and angle from the sixth floor window to the location of the President's limousine, it would have been easier to use the open iron sights." The Warren Commission tests had been carried out on the assumption that Oswald, who they and the Committee concluded fired the shots, used the telescopic sight. An article which appeared in Science & Justice, a quarterly publication of Britain's Forensic Science Society, found there was a 96% certainty, based on analysis of audio recordings made during the assassination, that a shot was fired from "the grassy knoll" in front of and to the right of the President's limousine. The acoustical evidence has since been discredited. Officer H.B. McLain, from whose motorcycle radio the HSCA acoustic experts said the Dictabelt evidence came, has repeatedly stated that he was not yet in Dealey Plaza at the time of the assassination. McLain asked the Committee, "‘If it was my radio on my motorcycle, why did it not record the revving up at high speed plus my siren when we immediately took off for Parkland Hospital?’" In 1982, a panel of twelve scientists appointed by the National Academy of Sciences, including Nobel laureates Norman Ramsey and Luis Alvarez, unanimously concluded that the acoustic evidence submitted to the HSCA was "seriously flawed", was recorded after the President had been shot, and did not indicate additional gunshots. Their conclusions were later published in the journal Science. In a 2001 article in the journal Science & Justice, D.B. Thomas wrote that the NAS investigation was itself flawed. He concluded with a 96.3 percent certainty that there were at least two gunmen firing at President Kennedy and that at least one shot came from the grassy knoll. In 2005, Thomas' conclusions were rebutted in the same journal. Ralph Linsker and several members of the original NAS team reanalyzed the timings of the recordings and reaffirmed the earlier conclusion of the NAS report that the alleged shot sounds were recorded approximately one minute after the assassination. In 2010, D.B. Thomas challenged in a book the 2005 Science & Justice article and restated his conclusion that there were at least two gunmen. Medical evidence: Some researchers have pointed to the large number of doctors and nurses at Parkland hospital, as well as others, who reported that a major portion of the back of the President's head appeared to have been blown out, strongly suggesting that he had been hit from the front. Some critics skeptical of the official "single bullet theory" state that the trajectory of the bullet, which hit Kennedy above the right shoulder blade and passed through his neck (according to the autopsy), would have had to change course to pass through Connally's rib cage and wrist. Kennedy's death certificate, signed by his personal physician Dr. George Burkley, locates the bullet at the third thoracic vertebra—which some claim is too low to have exited his throat. Moreover, the bullet was traveling downward, since the shooter was in a sixth floor window. The autopsy descriptive sheet displays a diagram of Kennedy's body with the same low placement at the third thoracic vertebra. The hole in back of Kennedy's shirt and jacket are also claimed to support a wound too low to be consistent with the "single bullet theory". There is conflicting testimony about the autopsy performed on Kennedy's body, particularly as to when the examination of his brain took place, who was present, and whether or not the photos submitted as evidence are the same as those taken during the examination. Douglas Horne, the Assassination Record Review Board's chief analyst for military records, said he was "90 to 95% certain" that the photographs in the National Archives are not of President Kennedy's brain. Supporting Horne was Dr. Gary Aguilar, who stated: "According to Horne’s findings, the second brain—which showed an exit wound in the front—allegedly replaced Kennedy's real brain—which revealed much greater damage to the rear, consistent with an exit wound and thus evidence of a shot from the front." Paul O'Connor, a laboratory technologist who assisted in the autopsy of President Kennedy, claimed that the autopsy at Bethesda Naval Hospital was conducted in obedience to a high command. In his book JFK and the Unspeakable, James Douglass cites autopsy doctor Pierre Finck's testimony at the trial of Clay Shaw as evidence that Finck was "...a reluctant witness to the military control over the doctors' examination of the president's body". A bone fragment found in Dealey Plaza the day after the assassination by William Allen Harper was reported by the HSCA's Forensic Pathology Panel to be part of Kennedy's parietal bone. Some critics of the lone gunman theory, including James Douglass, David Lifton, and David Mantick, state that the fragment is actually a piece of occipital bone ejected from an exit wound in the back of Kennedy's head. They state this finding is evidence of a cover-up as it proves that the skull radiographs obtained during the autopsy, which do not show significant bone loss in the occipital area, are not authentic. Oswald's marksmanship: The Warren Commission examined the capabilities of the Carcano rifle and ammunition, as well as Oswald's military training and post-military experience, and determined that Oswald had the ability to fire three shots within a time span of 4.8 to 5.6 seconds. According to their report, an army specialist using Oswald's rifle was able to duplicate the feat and even improved on the time. The report also states that the Army Infantry Weapons Evaluation Branch test fired Oswald's rifle 47 times and found that it was "quite accurate", comparing it to the accuracy of an M14 rifle. Also contained in the Commission report is testimony by Marine Corps Major Eugene Anderson confirming that Oswald's military records show that he qualified as "sharpshooter" in 1956. But this is confronted with more detailed record of his shooting abilities. According to official Marine Corps records Oswald was tested in shooting, scoring 212 in December 1956 (slightly above the minimum for qualification as a sharpshooter—the intermediate category), but in May 1959 scoring only 191 (barely earning the lower designation of marksman—the lowest category of skilled shooter, but still above undesignated shooters). He never approached the highest marksmanship category in the Marine Corps—the Expert. Despite Oswald's confirmed marksmanship in the USMC, conspiracy theorists such as Walt Brown and authors such as Richard H. Popkin contend that Oswald was a notoriously poor shot, that his rifle was inaccurate, and that no one has ever been able to duplicate his ability to fire three shots within the time frame given by the Warren Commission. Role of Oswald: Researchers differ as to the role of Oswald in the assassination of President Kennedy. Many believe that Oswald was an uninvolved patsy, while others believe he was actively involved in a plot. Oswald's ability to move to Russia, then return as an avowed communist to the United States with help from the State Department—who gave him a repatriation loan of $435.71—has led many to speculate that he had connections to the CIA and/or the FBI. Oswald contacted the FBI twice in 1963. The first occasion was on August 9 when Oswald was arrested in New Orleans for disturbing the peace. After his arrest, Oswald asked to speak with a Federal Bureau of Investigation agent. Agent John Quigley arrived and spent over an hour talking to Oswald. Also, Oswald visited the Dallas FBI office in November 1963, about 2 to 3 weeks before the assassination, and attempted to deliver a note to Special Agent James Hosty. Jim and Elsie Wilcott, former husband and wife employees of the Tokyo CIA station, told the San Francisco Chronicle in 1978: "It was common knowledge in the Tokyo CIA station that Oswald worked for the agency.... Right after the President was killed, people in the Tokyo station were talking openly about Oswald having gone to Russia for the CIA. Everyone was wondering how the agency was going to be able to keep the lid on Oswald. But I guess they did." Marguerite Oswald Lee Oswald's mother "...frequently expressed the opinion that her son was recruited by an agency of the U.S. Government and sent to Russia in 1959." New Orleans D.A. Jim Garrison, who in 1967 brought Clay Shaw to trial for the assassination of President Kennedy, stated in the documentary The Men Who Killed Kennedy, "Oswald was employed by the CIA and was obviously drawn into a scapegoat situation and made to believe ultimately that he was penetrating the assassination. And then when the time came, they took the scapegoat—the man who thought he was working for the United States government—and killed him real quick. And then the machinery, disinformation machinery, started turning and they started making a villain out of a man who genuinely was probably a hero." James Botelho, a former roommate of Oswald who would later become a California judge, stated in an interview with Mark Lane, "Oswald, it was said, was the only Marine ever to defect from his country to another country, a Communist country, during peacetime.... When the Marine Corps and American intelligence decided not to probe the reasons for the 'defection', I knew then what I know now: Oswald was on an assignment in Russia for American intelligence." Senator Richard Schweiker, who was a member of the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, stated: "We do know Oswald had intelligence connections. Everywhere you look with him, there're fingerprints of intelligence." Richard Sprague, interim staff director and chief counsel to the U.S. House Select Committee on Assassinations, said, "If he had it to do over again, he would begin his investigation of the Kennedy assassination by probing Oswald's ties to the Central Intelligence Agency." In 2003, Robert Blakey, staff director and chief counsel for the U.S. House Select Committee on Assassinations, stated: "I no longer believe that we were able to conduct an appropriate investigation of the Central Intelligence Agency and its relationship to Oswald." According to Richard Buyer, Oswald never fired a shot at the President. James W. Douglass described Oswald as "a questioning, dissenting CIA operative who had become a security risk" and "the ideal scapegoat". According to Josiah Thompson, Oswald was in the Texas School Book Depository during the assassination, but it is "quite likely" he was not the shooter on the sixth floor. Alternative gunmen: In addition to Oswald, Jerome Kroth has named 26 people as "Possible Assassins In Dealey Plaza". They include: Orlando Bosch, James Files, Desmond Fitzgerald, Charles Harrelson, Gerry Hemming, Chauncey Holt, Howard Hunt, Charles Nicoletti, Charles Rogers, Johnny Roselli, Lucien Sarti, and Frank Sturgis. Vincent Bugliosi provides a "partial list of assassins ... whom one or more conspiracy theorists have actually named and identified as having fired a weapon at Kennedy" in his book, Reclaiming History. He also mentions the three tramps, men photographed by several Dallas-area newspapers under police escort near the Texas School Book Depository shortly after the assassination. Records released by the Dallas Police Department in 1989 identified the men as Gus Abrams, Harold Doyle, and John Gedney. Allegations of other conspirators- E. Howard Hunt: The theory that former CIA agent and Watergate burglar E. Howard Hunt was a participant in the assassination of Kennedy garnered much publicity from 1978 to 2000. In 1981, he won a libel judgment against Liberty Lobby's paper The Spotlight, which in 1978 printed an allegation by Victor Marchetti suggesting Hunt's involvement in a conspiracy; the libel award was thrown out on appeal and the newspaper was successfully defended by Mark Lane in a second trial. Former KGB archivist Vasili Mitrokhin indicated in 1999 that Hunt was made part of a fabricated conspiracy theory disseminated by a Soviet "active measures" program designed to discredit the CIA and the United States. After his death in 2007, an audio-taped "deathbed confession" in which Hunt claimed knowledge of a conspiracy was released by his sons; the authenticity of the confession was met with some skepticism. J. D. Tippit: Dallas Police Officer J. D. Tippit has been named in some conspiracy theories as a renegade CIA operative sent to silence Oswald and as the "badge man" assassin on the grassy knoll. According to some Warren Commission critics, Oswald was set up to be killed by Tippit, but Tippit was killed by Oswald before he could carry out his assignment. Other critics doubt that Tippit was killed by Oswald and assert he was shot by other conspirators. Some critics have alleged that Tippit was associated with organized crime or right-wing politics. Bernard Weissman: According to the Warren Commission, the publication of a full-page, paid advertisement critical of Kennedy in the November 22, 1963, Dallas Morning News, which was signed by "The American Fact-Finding Committee" and noted Bernard Weissman as its chairman, was investigated to determine whether any members of the group claiming responsibility for it were connected to Oswald or to the assassination.[209] The Commission stated that "The American Fact-Finding Committee" was a fictitious sponsoring organization and that there was no evidence linking the four men responsible for the genesis of the ad with either Oswald or Ruby, or to a conspiracy to assassinate Kennedy. Related to the advertisement, Mark Lane testified during the Warren Commission's hearings that an informant whom he refused to name told him that Weismann had met with Tippit and Ruby eight days before the assassination at Ruby's Carousel Club. The Commission reported that they "found no evidence that such a meeting took place anywhere at any time" and that there was no "credible evidence that any of the three men knew each other". Lane later stated that he initially learned of the meeting through reporter Thayer Waldo of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. According to Lane, a "prominent Dallas figure" who frequented Ruby's Carousel Club told Waldo, and later Lane, that he observed the meeting of the three men at the club. He said, "I had promised the man he would not be involved; he was a leading Dallas citizen; he was married, and the stripper he was going with had become pregnant." Despite not having revealed to the Warren Commission that Waldo was his original source of the alleged meeting, Lane disputed their findings and complained that they failed to ask Waldo about it. According to Hugh Aynesworth, the source of the allegation whose identity Lane promised not to reveal was Carroll Jarnagin, a Dallas attorney who had also claimed to have overheard a meeting between Oswald and Ruby. Aynesworth wrote: "Several people in Dallas were well aware of Jarnagin's tale, and that he later admitted making it all up." Unnamed accomplice or accomplices in the murder of J. D. Tippit: The Warren Commission concluded that Oswald "...killed Dallas Police Officer J. D. Tippit in an apparent attempt to escape." The evidence that formed the basis for this conclusion was: "(1) two eyewitnesses who heard the shots and saw the shooting of Dallas Police Patrolman J. D. Tippit and seven eyewitnesses who saw the flight of the gunman with revolver in hand positively identified Lee Harvey Oswald as the man they saw fire the shots or flee from the scene, (2) the cartridge cases found near the scene of the shooting were fired from the revolver in the possession of Oswald at the time of his arrest, to the exclusion of all other weapons, (3) the revolver in Oswald's possession at the time of his arrest was purchased by and belonged to Oswald, and (4) Oswald's jacket was found along the path of flight taken by the gunman as he fled from the scene of the killing." Some researchers have alleged that the murder of Officer Tippit was part of a conspiracy to kill President Kennedy. Jim Marrs hypothesized that "the slaying of Officer J. D. Tippit may have played some part in a scheme to have Oswald killed, perhaps to eliminate co-conspirator Tippit or simply to anger Dallas police and cause itchy trigger fingers." Researcher James Douglass said that "...the killing of Tippit helped motivate the Dallas police to kill an armed Oswald in the Texas Theater, which would have disposed of the scapegoat before he could protest his being framed." Harold Weisberg offered a simpler explanation: "Immediately, the flimsy police case against Oswald required a willingness to believe. This was proved by affixing to Oswald the opprobrious epithet of 'cop-killer.'" Jim Garrison alleged that evidence was altered to frame Oswald, stating: "If Oswald was innocent of the Tippit murder the foundation of the government's case against him collapsed." Some critics doubt that Tippit was killed by Oswald and assert he was shot by other conspirators. They allege discrepancies in witness testimony and physical evidence which they think call into question the Commission's conclusions regarding the murder of Tippit. According to Jim Marrs, Oswald's guilt in the assassination of Kennedy is placed in question by the presence of "a growing body of evidence to suggest that he did not kill Tippit". Others say that multiple men were directly involved in Tippit's killing. Conspiracy researcher Kenn Thomas has alleged that the Warren Commission omitted testimony and evidence that two men shot Tippit and that one left the scene in a car. William Alexander—the Dallas assistant district attorney who recommended that Oswald be charged with the Kennedy and Tippit murders—later became skeptical of the Warren Commission's version of the Tippit murder. He stated that the Commission's conclusions on Oswald's movements "don't add up," and that "certainly Oswald may have had accomplices." According to Brian McKenna's review of Henry Hurt's book, Reasonable Doubt, Hurt reported that "Tippit may have been killed because he impregnated the wife of another man" and that Dallas police officers lied and altered evidence to set up Oswald to save Tippit's reputation. Allegations regarding witness testimony and physical evidence: The Warren Commission identified Helen Markham and Domingo Benavides as two witnesses who actually saw the shooting. Conspiracy theorist Richard Belzer criticized the Commission for, in his description, "relying" on the testimony of Markham whom he described as "imaginative". Jim Marrs also took issue with Markham's testimony, stating that her "credibility ... was strained to the breaking point". Joseph Ball, senior counsel to the Commission, referred to Markham's testimony as "full of mistakes," characterizing her as an "utter screwball." The Warren Commission addressed concerns regarding Markham's reliability as a witness and concluded: "However, even in the absence of Mrs. Markham's testimony, there is ample evidence to identify Oswald as the killer of Tippit." Domingo Benavides initially said that he did not think he could identify Tippit's assailant and was never asked to view a police lineup, even though he was the person closest to the killing. Benavides later testified that the killer resembled pictures he had seen of Oswald. Other witnesses were taken to police lineups. However, critics have questioned these lineups in that they consisted of people who looked very different from Oswald. Additionally, witnesses who did not appear before the Commission identified an assailant who was not Oswald. Acquilla Clemons saw two men near Tippit’s car just before the shooting. After the shooting, she ran outside of her house and saw a man with a gun whom she described as "kind of heavy." He waved to the second man, urging him to "go on." Frank Wright emerged from his home and observed the scene seconds after the shooting. He described a man standing by Tippit’s body who had on a long coat and who ran to a parked car and drove away. Critics have questioned whether the cartridge cases recovered from the scene were the same as those that were subsequently entered into evidence. Two of the cases were recovered by witness Domingo Benavides and turned over to police officer J.M. Poe. Poe told the FBI that he marked the shells with his own initials, "J.M.P." to identify them. Sergeant Gerald Hill later testified to the Warren Commission that it was he who had ordered police officer Poe to mark the shells. However, Poe's initials were not found on the shells produced by the FBI six months later. Testifying before the Warren Commission, Poe said that although he recalled marking the cases, he "couldn’t swear to it." The identification of the cases at the crime scene raises more questions. Sergeant Gerald Hill examined one of the shells and radioed the police dispatcher, saying: "The shell at the scene indicates that the suspect is armed with an automatic .38 rather than a pistol." However, Oswald was reportedly arrested carrying a non-automatic .38 Special revolver. Allegations regarding timeline: The Warren Commission investigated Oswald's movements between the time of the assassination and the shooting of Tippit, to ascertain whether Oswald might have had an accomplice who helped him flee the Book Depository. The Commission concluded "...through the testimony of seven witnesses that Oswald was always alone." According to their final report, Oswald was seen by his housekeeper leaving his rooming house shortly after 1:00 pm and had enough time to travel nine-tenths of a mile (1.4 km) to the scene where Tippit was killed at 1:16 pm. Some Warren Commission critics believe that Oswald did not have enough time to get from his house to the scene where Tippit was killed. The Commission’s own test and estimation of Oswald’s walking speed demonstrated that one of the longer routes to the Tippit shooting scene took 17 minutes and 45 seconds to walk. No witness ever surfaced who saw Oswald walk from his rooming house to the murder scene. Conspiracy researcher Robert Groden believes that Tippit's murder may have occurred earlier than the time given in the Warren Report. He notes that the Commission established the time of the shooting as 1:16 pm from police tapes that logged Domingo Benavides' use of the radio in Tippit's car. However, Benavides testified that he did not approach the car until "a few minutes" after the shooting, because he was afraid that the gunman might return. He was assisted in using the radio by witness T. F. Bowley who testified to Dallas police that at the time he arrived to help, "several people were at the scene," and that the time was 1:10 pm. Witness Helen Markham stated in her affidavit to the Dallas Sheriff’s department that Tippit was killed at "approximately 1:06 pm." She later affirmed the time in testimony before the Warren Commission, saying: "I wouldn't be afraid to bet it wasn't 6 or 7 minutes after 1." She initially told the FBI that the shooting occurred "possibly around 1:30 pm." In an unpublished manuscript titled When They Kill a President, Deputy Sheriff Roger Craig stated that when he heard the news that Tippit had been shot, he noted that the time was 1:06 pm. However, in a later statement to the press, Craig seemed confused about the time of the shooting. Warren "Butch" Burroughs, who ran the concession stand at the Texas Theater where Oswald was arrested, said that Oswald came into the theater between 1:00 and 1:07 pm, which if true would make Oswald's 1:16 pm shooting of Officer Tippit impossible. This was a claim that Burroughs had made earlier in the documentary, The Men Who Killed Kennedy.