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A number of theories exist with regard to the John F. Kennedy assassination. Such theories began to be generated soon after his death and continue to be proposed today. Many of these theories propose a criminal conspiracy involving parties such as the CIA, the KGB, the Mafia, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson, Fidel Castro, Cuban exile groups opposed to the Castro government, and the military and/or government interests of the United States.

Background

In 1964, the Warren Commission concluded that there was no "persuasive" evidence Lee Harvey Oswald was in a conspiracy to assassinate the President. Almost immediately, critics began to question the official government conclusions and wrote books attacking the Commission and its findings. Among them was Mark Lane - a lawyer who represented Oswald's mother, who authored the critical book Rush to Judgment.

In the decades that followed, a dedicated group of independent researchers published literally dozens of different, and sometimes contradictory theories.

In 1967, New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison arrested local businessman Clay Shaw and charged him with being part of a conspiracy to kill Kennedy. Shaw was acquitted in less than an hour after a lengthy and controversial trial. Garrison's investigations attracted researchers from around the country who provided Garrison with information and theories. In turn these researchers were aided by the access afforded to a District Attorney. The most notable example of the latter was Garrison's subpoenae of the Zapruder film which allowed jury members to see it first-hand. Bootleg copies were quickly circulated and it was shown on television for the first time in 1975.

In 1979, the House Select Committee on Assassinations was formed by Congress to investigate the killings of Kennedy, his brother Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr.. The HSCA investigated many theories put forward by assassination researchers and criticised some of them.

The HSCA concluded that Oswald was the assassin and were about to conclude that he acted alone when a dictabelt recording – purportedly recorded during the assassination – then surfaced. Based on over 20 witnesses who heard shots from in front of Kennedy and scientific analysis of the recording by a group of scientists, the committee concluded that there was a fourth shot and hence a second gunman, and that Kennedy was probably killed as a result of a conspiracy. Researchers – who for years had called into question the Warren Commission's finding that a lone gunmen was responsible for the assassination, and had posited a conspiracy theory – felt vindicated by the House report.

The accuracy of the dictabelt analysis was questioned and an opinion by others argue that all the impulses believed to have been shots "happened about a minute after the assassination" based on verified crosstalk. The Congressional Committee's panel of scientists then received further support that a conspiracy existed by D. B. Thomas – in 2001 – who concluded, based on further crosstalk on channel II, it was 96% likely there was a fourth shot. Thomas assumed the tape on channel II ran continuously.

Director Oliver Stone's 1991 film JFK - which was nominated for an Academy Award, and based on the HSCA findings and books by Garrison and Jim Marrs – was what Stone called a "counter-fiction to the Warren Commission's fiction". This controversial film portrayed an extensive plot to kill the President and presented many of Garrison's allegations as fact. The revived interest in the assassination due to the film led to the formation of the Assassination Records Review Board, to gather and declassify all unreleased US Government records regarding the assassination. In the wake of Stone's film, efforts were made to refute many conspiracy theories, such as Gerald Posner's Pulitzer Prize-nominated book Case Closed and the Emmy Award-winning ABC documentary Beyond Conspiracy, hosted by Peter Jennings.

Many doubts still remain in the minds of the public regarding the official government conclusions. An ABC News poll (in 2003) found that 70% of American respondents "suspect a plot" in the assassination of President Kennedy.

One shooter

• Howard L. Brennan, a 45-year-old steamfitter, saw a rifle in the window immediately after the shots were fired. Identification of the physical build of Oswald was broadcast after the shooting and was influential in his arrest, because he was the only employee to leave the depository building after the shooting.
• Bonnie Ray Williams heard shots from the floor above, and reverberations shook plaster from the roof onto his head.
• The Warren Commission, and the HSCA both concluded that the bullets were fired from above and behind the Presidential limousine.
• Shortly after the assassination, a rifle was found partially-hidden between some boxes on the sixth floor and the improvised paper wrapper/bag that covered the rifle was found close to the window from which the shots were fired.
• Fiber analysis of Kennedy and Connally's clothing shows that both men were hit by bullets from the rear, which passed through the front of their clothing.
• The Zapruder film shows a blood spray from the front/right-hand side of Kennedy's temple, but no blood spray from the back of his head. The motion of his head, first forwards and then backwards, has been mimicked in skull models hit by 6.5 mm 160 gr. military bullets.
• The bullet found on Governor Connally's stretcher at Parkland Memorial Hospital and the two bullet fragments found in the front seat of the Presidential limousine were matched to the same lot of ammunition. The bullet found on the stretcher was a ballistic match to the 6.5- millimeter Mannlicher-Carcano rifle that was found in the 6th floor of the book depository. No other bullet fragments from any other rifle were found.
• The windshield in the Presidential limousine was struck by a bullet fragment on the inside surface of the glass, meaning that these fragments came from behind, and not in front, of the President.
• The Mannlicher-Carcano 6.5-millimeter Italian rifle - from which the shots were fired - was ordered in the name of A. Hidell and sent to Oswald's P.O. Box in Dallas. Alek was the name Oswald used in the Soviet Union and Alek James Hidell was the name on the false I.D. Oswald was carrying when arrested on the day of the assassination. The FBI found Oswald's palm print on the rifle barrel between the barrel and the stock, which could have been put there only when the rifle was disassembled.
• Oswald was seen with a paper bag/wrapper in a car on the way to the depository. He said, when he was asked, that it was full of "curtain-rods". He said they were for the rooming-house he was living in (while he was living away from his wife) although his rooming house already had curtains and rods, and Oswald had never discussed the matter with his landlady.
• The paper bag was found, but the "curtain-rods" were never found at the Depository. Some rods were found in the garage where his wife was living, but with no discernible fingerprints.
• Three separate photographs of Oswald holding the murder weapon and wearing a pistol are known. The original negative of one is available for study. Two were found at Oswald's residence when he was in custody, and a third later turned up from Roscoe White´s (Dallas police officer) collection after he died. Two photos may be viewed as a stereo pair as they were taken from slightly different angles. These photos were closely studied by the HSCA, which found them to be authentic. The HSCA did not believe that the technology existed in 1963 to fake an original film emulsion or a stereo pair. Any fake would have needed access to the literature which Oswald was known to be reading in March 1963, as well as copies of the weapons he is known to have been shipped in that month.
• At least one computer analysis has been used to assert that the bullet trajectory is not only consistent with the single bullet theory but also could only have been fired from a high position behind Kennedy.

Two shooters

• The U.S. House Select Committee on Assassinations concluded that three shots were fired from above and behind the President, and one bullet was fired from the Grassy Knoll area to the right and front of the President Kennedy. This finding was based on acoustic recordings.
• Roy Kellerman - who was a U.S. Secret Service Agent - testified that, "Now, in the seconds that I talked just now, a flurry of shells come into the car" and he believed the President was wounded four times and Connally three times.
• Kellerman saw a 5-inch diameter hole in the back right-hand side of the President’s head.
• Over 50 witnesses who were present at the shooting heard shots that were fired from in front of the President; from the area of the grassy knoll and triple-underpass, and approximately the same number of witnesses believed shots were fired from behind the President.
• The size of the back head wound, in these descriptions, indicates it was the exit wound and that a second shooter from the front delivered the fatal head shot. Several eyewitnesses who were close to the President – and had a good view – saw the back of the President’s head "blasted out", which is consistent with being shot from the front.
• Clint Hill, the Secret Service Agent who was sheltering the President with his body on the way to the hospital, described "The right rear portion of his head was missing. It was lying in the rear seat of the car."
• Dr. McClelland, a physician in the emergency room who observed the head wound, testified that the back right hand part of the head was blown out with posterior cerebral tissue and some of the cerebellar tissue was missing.
• Apart from shots hitting Kennedy and Connally, the limousine was struck in the windshield, in the chrome above the windshield and the chrome around an ashtray on the back of the front seat. The windshield had a definite hole through it (according to witnesses) and not just a crack, as was claimed by the Warren Commission.

  Frank Cormier, Dr. Evalea Glanges, Dallas Police Officer Stavis Ellis, and Dallas Police Officer H.R. Freeman all saw a 'hole.'

  The windshield was apparently replaced and "redamaged", according to the testimony of William Hess of the Ford Motor Corporation (James Fetzer's, "Murder in Dealey Plaza”). This was supposedly done to eliminate the possibility of a shot coming from the front. Hess went on to say (having worked with glass for 40 years) that in his years of experience, the shot that caused the hole came from the front.

  It has to be noted that the testimony of these witnesses has been called into question, as close-up photos of the windshield show - to some - that there really was a crack.

• Snipers: Former US Marine snipers, Craig Roberts, and Gunnery Sergeant Carlos Hathcock, (who was the senior instructor for the US Marine Corps Sniper Instructor School at Quantico, Virginia) both said it could not be done as described by the FBI investigators.

  “Let me tell you what we did at Quantico,” Hathcock said. “We reconstructed the whole thing: the angle, the range, the moving target, the time limit, the obstacles, everything. I don’t know how many times we tried it, but we couldn’t duplicate what the Warren Commission said Oswald did. Now if I can’t do it, how in the world could a guy who was a non-qual on the rifle range and later only qualified 'marksman' do it?”

• The Rifle : It is impossible for Oswald's rifle, the Mannilicher-Carcano (Hurt), to be fired more than once in less than 2.3 seconds (Thompson). According to the Zapruder film, for the first two shots to be fired by Oswald, they would have to be fired in rapid succession (Thompson). Top rifle experts of the FBI were incapable of making the rifle fire two shots in the 2.3-second timeframe (Hurt).
• The Death Certificate located the bullet at the third thoracic vertebra -- which is too low to have exited his throat. Moreover, the bullet was traveling downward, since the shooter was by a sixth floor window. The autopsy cover sheet had a diagram of a body showing this same low placement at the third thoracic vertebra. The hole in back of Kennedy's shirt also shows the same place where the bullet hit, as does Kennedy's jacket that shows where the bullet hit. Nevertheless, the single bullet theory requires the bullet to move upward when it passed through Kennedy and came out of his throat.

Conspiracy theories

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Note that some of the following people and groups have been claimed by some to have been working together and as such these different theories are not always viewed as mutually exclusive. The articles are listed alphabetically.

CIA and Anti-Castro Cuban Exile conspiracy

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was frequently mentioned in theories during the 1960s and 1970s, and it was rumoured then that the CIA was involved in plots to assassinate foreign leaders. The CIA was banned from assassinating anyone abroad 25 years ago, but that ban is now under pressure to be lifted. Kennedy said to his collaborator Clark Clifford (shortly after the failed Bay of Pigs invasion) that, "Something very bad is going on within the CIA and I want to know what it is. I want to shred the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter them to the four winds."

• Allen Dulles was the head of the CIA during the disastrous Bay of Pigs Invasion of Cuba by a small army of Cuban nationals in April of 1961. Kennedy accepted his resignation in September of 1961. He was later appointed by Lyndon Johnson as one of the seven members of the Warren Commission to investigate the assassination.

  Congress began investigating the intelligence agencies by way of the Church Committee.

• In 1975 and 1976, the Church Committee published fourteen reports on the formation of U.S. intelligence agencies, their operations, and the alleged abuses of law and of power that they had committed.

  Among the matters the Church Committee investigated were: The involvement by U.S. intelligence agencies to assassinate foreign leaders, including Patrice Lumumba of the Congo, and Fidel Castro.

• Ngo Dinh Diem. The CIA provided $42,000 in immediate support money to the plotters on the morning of the assassination of President Diem of Vietnam, which was carried by Lucien Conein, (Document 17) although Robert S. McNamara and historian Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., (who was a participant as a White House historian) both stated that President Kennedy went pale when he heard the news about the coup, and was shocked that Diem had been murdered. (Note 10)
• Rafael Trujillo, of the Dominican Republic, was killed by his own armed forces on May 30, 1961 while traveling in an automobile. The CIA had provided the weapons, which where kept by Simon Thomas Stocker, an American citizen, code-named "Hector" by the CIA, and a resident of the Dominican Republic since 1942, who willingly declined CIA monetary compensation for his efforts.
• The House Select Committee on Assassinations later reviewed these issues and, in 1979, concluded that although Oswald assassinated Kennedy a conspiracy was probable but that the conspiracy did not implicate any U.S Intelligence agencies.

  The HSCA also said that President Kennedy did not receive adequate protection in Dallas, and the Secret Service possessed information that was not properly analyzed, investigated or used by the Secret Service in connection with the President's trip to Dallas; in addition, Secret Service agents in the motorcade were inadequately prepared to protect the President from a sniper.

• On September 10, 2001, Gen. Rene Schneider´s family filed a suit against former U.S. National Security Advisor and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, accusing him of collaborating with Viaux in arranging for Schneider's murder in Chile, 1970. Declassified documents later showed that this was not the case.
• Richard Helms, who died aged 89, is the only director of the Central Intelligence Agency to be convicted of lying to Congress about the CIA's undercover activities. When he was questioned, and asked, “Had the CIA tried to overthrow the government of Chile?” his answer was “No”, and, “Did you have money passed to the opponents of Allende?” his answer was again, “No”.

  Investigation by the agency's inspector general showed that both answers were false, and he was prosecuted. The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence found that he had been involved in illegal domestic surveillance, as well as the 1961 murder of Patrice Lumumba in the Congo. Helms was sentenced (in 1977) and ordered to pay the maximum fine and was also given a two-year prison sentence (suspended).

Helms had reason to be hostile to Kennedy since when first elected Kennedy supported invading Cuba and then only later changed his mind about how to approach the matter. Thus, Helms was immediately put under pressure from President Kennedy and his brother Robert (the attorney general) to increase American efforts to get rid of the Castro regime. Operation Mongoose had nearly 4,000 operators involved in attacks on Cuban economic targets.

After the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba sponsored by the CIA, Kennedy changed his mind about an invasion earning the hatred of the cuban exile community. The House Select Committee on Assassinations Committee believed evidence existed implicating certain violent Cuban exiles may have participated in Kennedy's murder.These exiles worked closely with CIA operatives in violent activities against Castro's Cuba. In 1979, the committeee reported this:

President Kennedy's popularity among the Cuban exiles had plunged deeply by 1963. Their bitterness is illustrated in a tape recording of a meeting of anti-Castro Cubans and right-wing Americans in the Dallas suburb of Farmer's Branch on October 1, 1963. (37)

Holding a copy of the September 26 edition of the Dallas Morning News, featuring a front-page account of the President's planned trip to Texas in November, the Cuban exile vented his hostility:

"CASTELLANOS. ...we're waiting for Kennedy the 22d, buddy. We're going to see him in one way or the other. We're going to give him the works when he gets in Dallas. Mr. good ol' Kennedy. I wouldn't even call him President Kennedy He stinks."

LBJ conspiracy

Vice-President Lyndon Johnson was promoted to the presidency as a result of the assassination. Like many vice-presidents of the United States, Johnson's appointment was largely an attempt to provide a ´regional balance´ to the Democratic ticket.

Richard Nixon, who was also in Dallas from November 20, 1963 until just an hour before Kennedy arrived, was quoted in a November 22, 1963 Dallas newspaper saying he believed Kennedy would drop Johnson from the 1964 Democratic ticket because Johnson was embroiled in several high-profile political scandals (see Bobby Baker and Billie Sol Estes).

When asked the question if Kennedy had ever talked about dropping Johnson from the 1964 ticket, Jackie Kennedy answered, "No, never." She went on to say that such stories annoyed her husband. "I don't think he had any intention of dropping Vice President Johnson", and also said, "every time there was a state dinner, he wanted the Vice President and Mrs. Johnson to come too."

At the time of Kennedy's death, Johnson was the subject of four major criminal investigations involving government contract violations, misappropriation of funds, money laundering and bribery.

In 1998 a fingerprint examiner named Nathan Darby signed an affidavit which asserted a 32 point match, though such a match has not been made by FBI fingerprint examiners or other independent examiners.

Less than 24 hours after Kennedy’s assassination, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover reported to President LBJ then asked Hoover if had “established any more about the visit to the Soviet Embassy in Mexico in September," Hoover said, "No, that's one angle that's very confusing for this reason. We have up here the tape and the photograph of the man who was at the Soviet Embassy, using Oswald's name. The picture and the tape do not correspond to this man's voice (Oswald) nor to his appearance.”

Whether Johnson would have had Kennedy shot in a motorcade in which he and his wife were riding in too is questionable, because he later asked FBI chief Hoover, "if any of the shots were fired at me?".

Mafia and Hoover conspiracy

J. Edgar Hoover was the long-time director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (1925-1972), and close friend of Lyndon Johnson.

It is well-documented that before President Kennedy was elected, Hoover rarely acknowledged the existence of the Mafia. Jack Anderson reported on J. Edgar Hoover's apparent ties to the Mafia, and also the reluctance of the FBI to prosecute it. The Mafia´s financial genius Meyer Lansky had allegedly blackmailed Hoover over his homosexuality as early as 1935. Another probable reason for Hoover's failure to prosecute the Mob was his preference of easy targets to boost the FBI's image as "top cops".

After Kennedy became president the prosecutions of the Mafia by the Justice Department (of which the FBI is a part) increased eleven-fold. The Mafia war that started in the late 1950s encouraged Attorney General Robert Kennedy to prosecute the Mafia heavily after 1960. His attacks focused on people Teamsters Union boss Jimmy Hoffa, and the mafia bosses of Chicago, Tampa and New Orleans. On May 8, 1964, just days before Hoover was due to give testimony to the Warren Commission, Lyndon Johnson announced he had exempted Hoover from compulsory retirement and was appointed Director of the FBI "for life" at seventy years of age. In the White House Rose Garden, Johnson said, “The nation cannot afford to lose you.” Since Hoover's death in May 1972, the tenure of the FBI director is - by law - limited to a single 10-year term.

Organized Crime and the CIA conspiracy

Another possible culprit was the Mafia, in retaliation for the increasing pressure put upon them by Robert Kennedy (who had 12 times the number of prosecutions than under President Eisenhower). Documents never seen by the Warren Commission have revealed that the Mafia was working very closely with the CIA on several assassination attempts of Fidel Castro.

The family of Chicago Mafia boss Sam Giancana claim that the Kennedys double-crossed him after the workers unions (that were controlled by the Illinois Mafia) helped elect Kennedy to be President.

Teamsters Union president Jimmy Hoffa, and mobsters Carlos Marcello, Sam Giancana, Johnny Roselli, Charles Nicoletti, and Santo Trafficante Jr., (all of whom say Hoffa worked with the CIA on the Castro assassination plots) top the list of House Select Committee on Assassinations Mafia suspects. .

Carlos Marcello believed it was necessary to assassinate the President to short-circuit his younger brother Bobby, who was serving as attorney general and leading the administration's anti-Mafia crusade.

In a documentary titled, "The Murder of JFK: Confession of an Assassin" (1996) (ASIN 6304138458) James Files claims that he assassinated Kennedy and that Johnny Roselli and Charles Nicoletti were also present at the assassination on the orders of Sam Giancana. He is currently serving a 30-year jail sentence for the attempted murder of a policeman.

Roscoe White

Ricky White (the son of Roscoe White, who was a Dallas policeman) claims that his father’s diary clearly showed that he was part of a three-man assassination team in Kennedy’s murder. The diary stated that there were six shots fired - two by his father. Roscoe White was behind the wooden fence on top of the grassy knoll and had the code-name Mandarin. His first shot hit the President in the throat. His second shot hit the President in the head. Of the other two assassins, one was located in the Records Building and used the code name Saul. The third assassin was located in the Texas School Book Depository Building and used the code-name Lebanon. The diary also said that Mauser rifles were used in the assassination. Ricky White remembers his father giving him two rifles after the assassination in Dallas. One was an Argentinian rifle and the other was a 7.65 Mauser.

Ricky White claims that the diary showed that Oswald knew of the assassination plot but didn't fire any shots. Oswald was told to bring his rifle to work on November 22nd and to build a sniper's nest with boxes by the sixth floor window. All three of the assassins had an assistant whose job was to disassemble the rifles and take them away.

The Diary also stated that Roscoe White and Oswald had plans to escape together after the assassination and go to Red Bird Airport in South Dallas. Their driver was J.D. Tippit who didn't know anything concerning the plot. Whilst driving the two in south Dallas, Tippit heard radio reports of the assassination and suspected that his two passengers were involved. Oswald became agitated and jumped out of the car. White got out of the car and shot Tippit with a pistol when Tippit told him he would have to take White downtown for questioning. Ricky White says that the diary (which is no longer in his possession) stated: "I killed an officer at Tenth and Patton."

After two photos of Oswald had been found, the Senate Intelligence Committee located (in 1976) a third photograph of Oswald with a backyard pose that was different (CE 133-C, with newspapers held in his right hand away from his body). This photo was found by the widow of Dallas police officer Roscoe White, amongst his belongings.

Israeli conspiracy

The Israeli government was displeased with Kennedy for his pressure against their pursuit of a top-secret nuclear program and/or, the Israelis were angry over Kennedy's sympathies with Arabs, and his use of men formerly under the employment of the Nazis in their rocket program, such as Wernher von Braun. Gangster Meyer Lansky and Vice-President Lyndon B. Johnson often play pivotal roles in this conspiracy as organizing and preparing the hit, thus bleeding into and possibly catalyzing many of the other conspiracies as well. (See: Michael Collins Piper's book Final Judgement).

Theories in books

• The Gemstone File: A Memoir by Stephanie Caruana posits that Oswald was part of a 28-man assassination team which included 3 U.S. Mafia hitmen (Jimmy Fratianno, John Roselli, and Eugene Brading). Oswald's role was to shoot John Connally. Bruce Roberts, author of the Gemstone file papers, claimed that the JFK assassination scenario was modeled after a supposed attempted assassination of President F.D.Roosevelt. Roosevelt was riding in an open car with Mayor Cermak of Chicago. Cermak was shot and killed by Louis Zangara. But Cermak was actually the REAL target, and Zangara was hired to kill him by the Chicago Mafia. In Dallas, JFK was the real target, and Connally was a secondary target. The JFK assassination is only a small part of the Gemstone File's account. ISBN 1-4120-6137-7.

• Appointment in Dallas by Hugh McDonald suggests that Oswald was lured into a plot that he was told was a staged fake attempt to kill JFK to embarrass the Secret Service, and Oswald was supposed to shoot, but miss on purpose. The plotters killed JFK for real and framed Oswald. ISBN 0821738933.

• Mark Fuhrman's A Simple Act of Murder says Oswald did it (with help) and that Tague was wounded by the same bullet as JFK's head shot. ISBN 0060721545.

• Passport to Assassination by Oleg M. Nechiporenko was published in 1993. Nechiporenko was the Soviet consular official (and highly placed KGB officer) who met with Oswald in Mexico City in 1963. He was afforded the unique opportunity to interview Oswald about his goals including his genuine desire for a Cuban visa. His conclusions were (1.) that Oswald killed Kennedy due to extreme feelings of inadequacy versus his wife’s professed admiration for JFK and (2.) that the KGB never sought intelligence information from Oswald during his time in the USSR as they did not trust his motivations. ISBN 155972210X.

• Reasonable Doubt by Henry Hurt, who writes about his Warren Commission doubts. Mr. Hurt pins the plot on professional crook Robert Easterling, along with Texas oilmen and the supposed Ferrie/Shaw alliance. ISBN 003004590.

• The Kennedy Mutiny by Will Fritz (not the same as police captain J. Will Fritz) claims that the whole plot was carried out by General Edwin Walker, and that he framed Oswald. ISBN 0972163506.

• David Wrone's "The Zapruder Film" puts the head shot from the front, and JFK's throat and back wounds also caused by an in-and-through from the grassy knoll. ISBN 0700612912.

• Norman Mailer's Oswald's Tale concludes that Oswald was guilty, but holds that the evidence may point to a second gunman on the grassy knoll, who, purely by coincidence, was attempting to kill JFK as the same time as Oswald. "If there was indeed another shot, it was not necessarily fired by a conspirator of Oswald's. Such a gun could have belonged to another lone killer or to a conspirator working for some other group altogether." ISBN 0679425357.

• Who Shot JFK? by Bob Callahan and Mark Zingarelli explores some of the more obscure theories regarding JFK's murder, such as "The Coca-Cola Theory." According this theory, suggested by the editor of an organic gardening magazine, Oswald killed JFK due to an addiction to refined sugar, as evidenced by his need for his favorite beverage immediately after the assassination. ISBN 0671794949.

• Mortal Error: The Shot That Killed JFK by Bonar Menninger (ISBN 0312080743)alleges that while Oswald did attempt to assassinate JFK and did succeed in wounding him, the fatal shot was accidentally fired by Secret Service agent George Hickey, who was riding in the Secret Service follow-up car directly behind the Presidential Limousine. The theory alleges that after the first two shots were fired the motorcade sped up while Hickey was attempting to respond to Oswald's shots and he lost his balance and accidentally pulled the trigger of his AR-15 and shot JFK.

  Hickey's testimony says otherwise: "At the end of the last report (shot) I reached to the bottom of the car and picked up the AR 15 rifle, cocked and loaded it, and turned to the rear". (My italics) George Hickey´s Warren Commission testimony. George Hickey sued Menninger - in April, 1995 - for what he had written in his book: Mortal Error. The judge in Baltimore said that the suit by Hickey was filed too long after publication of the book.

References in Fiction

Many works of fiction have attempted to parody some of the more far-fetched explanations that have been put forth to explain the Kennedy assassination.

In the episode "Tikka to Ride" (Season 7, Episode 1) of comedy television series Red Dwarf a bizzare sequence of events involving time travel lead the Red Dwarf crew to convince JFK (from an alternate timeline in which he was never assassinated and the USA suffered badly for it) to go back in time and assassinate himself from behind the grassy knoll, rescuing the country from an awful future and ensuring his place in history as a liberal icon. Since the timeline was repaired, the alternate JFK disappeared moments afterwards, leaving no evidence to found. "It'll drive the conspiracy nuts crazy, but they'll never work it out."

In the 1992 film Sneakers, a character with an obsession for outlandish conspiracy theories denies that the assassination was successful. When asked "So you're saying the NSA killed Kennedy?", the character replies,"No. They shot him, but they didn't kill kill him. He's still alive."

In the 1997 film The Wrong Guy, a character proposes that the wounds to Kennedy's head were not actually the result of gunshots. Says the character, "There were no gunmen at all. His head just did that. I call it the 'No Bullet theory.'" (a clear parody of the Single bullet theory, or more accurately, the hysteria surrounding it).

In the 2002 film Bubba Ho-Tep, Elvis Presley (played by Bruce Campbell) has faked his own death to escape fame, but then lost all proof that he was once Elvis in a housefire. At the nursing home in which he resides, he befriends a black man called Jack (played by Ossie Davis), who claims to be JFK. The theory put forward is that he was patched up by medics after the failed assassination attempt in Dallas, dyed black by Lyndon B Johnson and abandoned at the nursing home.

In Woody Allen's Annie Hall film, Alvy is obsessed with speculative doubts about the Kennedy assassination conspiracy and the Warren Commission Report's "second-gun" theory as a way to avoid having sex: "You're using this conspiracy theory as an excuse to avoid sex with me."

In a Season 4 episode of The X Files, "Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man", it is shown that the Cigarette Smoking Man assassinated Kennedy from a sewage drain opening.

An episode of Family Guy depicts Lee Harvey Oswald as a huge Kennedy supporter, who sees the shooter on the grassy knoll, and decides to shoot him to become "an American Hero".

In a 1992 two-part episode of Seinfeld (entitled 'The Boyfriend), there is a spoof of the incident, really a spoof of a scene from Oliver Stone's film, in which the characters are recalling a situation where Keith Hernandez is accused of hitting Kramer with a loogie. They argue about the positioning of the spitter and the possibility of there being a second spitter... over there by the gravely road. The scene includes Wayne Knight (Newman), who was in Stone's movie.

In an episode from the Twilight Zone (remake) a historian from the future is sent back in time to film the assassination. The historian is a relative of Kennedy. The researcher intervenes and changes history. Ultimately, Kennedy's bodyguard takes the hit while Kennedy lives on in the future.

Wolverine: Origins #6 hints that it was Logan himself who shot JFK while he was a member of Team X, a CIA covert ops unit.

In the DC Vertigo comic 100 Bullets #27, it's hinted the shooter on the grassy knoll was Joe DiMaggio, seeking revenge for Kennedy ordering the murder of DiMaggio's ex-wife, Marilyn Monroe, when she wanted to go public over their affair. An aged DiMaggio is surprised to learn he was not part of any conspiracy but it was sheer coincidence he picked that day to kill Kennedy.

In the original Doctor Who novel Who Killed Kennedy published in 1996, the Doctor and a reporter called James Stevens uncover a plot by the Master to disrupt history through the use of brainwashed time travelling assassins. The first target was to be Kennedy, with the Master planning to have a gunman found wearing a Soviet uniform so as to inflame the delicate international political situation. Stevens travelled back in time to Dallas 1963 and wound up in the Book Depository, trying to shoot the Master but missing, only wounding the President. Further shots came from the Grassy Knull and Stevens saw from a distance that the second gunman was himself, twenty five years older.

The electronic indie pop band The Postal Service wrote a song on their album Give Up called "Sleeping In" referring to the Assassination of JFK: "It was just a man with something to prove, slightly bored and severly confused, he steadied his rifle with his target in the center and became famous on that day in November."

Sources

• Who's Who in the JFK Assassination: An A-to-Z Encyclopedia by Michael Benson Citadel Press, ISBN 0-8065-1444-2
• Hurt, Henry. Reasonable Doubt: An Investigation into the Assassination of John F. Kennedy. New York: Holt, Rinhart, and Winston, 1985.
• Thompson, Josiah. Six Seconds in Dallas: A Micro-Study of the Kennedy Assassination. New York: Bernard Geis Associates, 1967.
• Lane, Mark. Rush to Judgement: A critique of the Warren Commission's inquiry in the murders of John F. Kennedy, Officer J.D. Tippit and Lee Harvey Oswald. Holt Rhinehart. 1966

External links

• Spartacus' collection of excerpts from Fetzer's books on conspiracy and the CIA
• BBC News – German documentary about the assassination
• The World’s Greatest Conspiracy: The religious cover-up (Indcoup) September 11, 2006
• Frontline: Who was L.H. Oswald – PBS documentary focuses on the man and his life
• PBS News 2003 – Public's Belief that a Conspiracy Existed
• The Men Who Killed Kennedy – An examination of the evidence surrounding the assassination
• Interview with LBJ's mistress – Interview with LBJ's mistress

• Conspiracy theories
• John F. Kennedy assassination