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The assassination of John F. Kennedy, the thirty-fifth President of the United States, took place on Friday, November 22, 1963, in Dallas, Texas, USA at 12:30 PM Central Standard Time (18:30 UTC). Kennedy was fatally wounded by gunshots while riding in a presidential motorcade within Dealey Plaza. He was the fourth U.S. President to be assassinated, and the eighth to die while in office.

An official investigation by the Warren Commission was conducted over a 10-month period and published its report in September 1964, concluding that the assassin was Lee Harvey Oswald, an employee of the Texas School Book Depository in Dealey Plaza. A later official investigation by the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) was conducted from 1976 to 1979, and concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald probably acted with at least one other person. The assassination is still the subject of widespread speculation, and has spawned a number of Kennedy assassination theories.

Background to the Texas trip

Kennedy had chosen to visit Dallas on November 20 for three main reasons: to help raise more Democratic Party presidential campaign fund contributions in advance of the November 1964 presidential election; to begin his quest for re-election; and, as the Kennedy-Johnson ticket had barely won Texas (and had lost Dallas) in 1960, to mend political fences among several leading Texas Democratic Party members who appeared to be fighting politically amongst themselves.

There were concerns about security because of recent events: on October 24, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Adlai Stevenson had been jeered, jostled, struck by a protest sign, and spat upon during a visit to Dallas. To prevent a recurrence, Dallas police had prepared the most stringent security precautions in the city's history. The danger from a concealed sniper on the Dallas trip was of concern to those who had considered the problem. President Kennedy himself had mentioned it the morning he was assassinated, as had the Secret Service agents when they were fixing the motorcade route.

It was planned that Kennedy would travel from Love Field airport in a motorcade through downtown Dallas (including Dealey Plaza) to give a speech at the Dallas Trade Mart in suburban Dallas. The car in which he was traveling was a 1961 Lincoln Continental, open-top, modified limousine. Riding with Kennedy in the limousine were: his wife, Jacqueline Kennedy; Texas Governor John B. Connally, Sr, and his wife, Nellie; Secret Service agent and White House Detail Team #3 Assistant in Charge, Roy Kellerman; and Secret Service agent and limousine driver Bill Greer. No presidential car with a bulletproof top was yet in service in 1963 (plans for such a top were presented in October 1963; FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover already had three bulletproofed cars.)

In a November 22 Dallas newspaper there appeared a black-bordered, full-page advertisement paid for by Kennedy critics who were associated with the ultraconservative John Birch Society. Throughout Dallas, and especially along the motorcade route, several groups critical of Kennedy expressed their views and handed out flyers. A smattering of handmade protest signs were held aloft by motorcade viewers, but there were no major disturbances.

The assassination

The presidential motorcade traveled nearly its entire route without incident, stopping twice so Kennedy could shake hands with some Catholic nuns, then some school children. Shortly before the limousine turned onto Main Street a man ran towards the limousine, but was thrust to the ground by a Secret Service agent and hustled away. Just before 12:30 PM CST (18:30 UTC), Kennedy slowly approached the Texas School Book Depository head-on, then the limousine slowly turned the 120-degrees directly in front of the depository, now only 65 feet (20 m) away.

When the limousine had passed the depository Kennedy was shot at for an estimated 6 to 9 seconds. During the shooting the limousine is calculated to have slowed from over 13 mph (20 km/h) to only 9 mph (15 km/h).

The shooting took place in front of Abraham Zapruder who was filming the president. His testimony expresses the disbelief, and then the shock, of witnessing the assassination of a president:

Mr. Zapruder: I heard the first shot and I saw the President lean over and grab himself like this (holding his left chest area).

Examiner: Grab himself on the front of his chest?

Mr. Zapruder: Right---something like that. In other words, he was sitting like this and waving and then after the shot he just went like that.

Examiner: He was sitting upright in the car and you heard the shot and you saw the President slump over?

Mr. Zapruder: Leaning--leaning toward the side of Jacqueline. For a moment I thought it was, you know, like you say, "Oh, he got me," when you hear a shot--you've heard these expressions and then I saw---I don't believe the President is going to make jokes like this, but before I had a chance to organize my mind, I heard a second shot and then I saw his head opened up and the blood and everything came out and I started--I can hardly talk about it .

Mr. Zapruder: hen I started yelling, "They killed him, they killed him."

See Warren Commission testimony of Zapruder.

Governor Connally was also seriously wounded by a bullet and screamed, "No, no, no. They are going to kill us all!" At the end of the shooting, the president's body bounced off the back of the rear seat and slumped lifelessly leftward towards his wife. Mrs. Kennedy cried out to her bodyguard, Clint Hill, "My God, they have shot his head off."

Clint Hill was riding in the car that was immediately behind the presidential limousine. As soon as the shooting began, Hill jumped out and began running to overtake the moving car in front of him with the plan to climb on from the rear bumper and crawl over the trunk to the back seat where the stricken President and frightened First Lady were located.

Just as Hill was grabbing the small handrail by the trunk that was used by the bodyguards to climb onto a small back platform, he heard another gunshot and saw a portion of the president’s head blown away. The driver then sped up causing the car to slip away from Hill, who was in the midst of trying to leap on to it. He somehow succeeded in regaining his footing and jumped on to the back of the quickly accelerating car.

As he got on, he saw Mrs. Kennedy, apparently in shock, crawling onto the flat trunk of the moving limousine and retrieving parts of her husband’s head that had been blown out. Agent Hill crawled to her and guided the frantic Mrs. Kennedy back into her seat and placed his body above the President and Mrs. Kennedy.

An agent in the front seat of the car gave orders, over the car’s two-way radio, to the lead of the procession "To the nearest hospital, quick." Hill was shouting as loud as he could "To the hospital, to the hospital."

As the car moved at high speed to the hospital, Hill maintained his position shielding the couple with his body, and was looking down at the mortally wounded president. Agent Hill later testified:

The right rear portion of his head was missing. It was lying in the rear seat of the car. His brain was exposed. There was blood and bits of brain all over the entire rear portion of the car.

Mrs. Kennedy was completely covered with blood. There was so much blood you could not tell if there had been any other wound or not, except for the one large gaping wound in the right rear portion of the head.

The limousine then exited Dealey Plaza and sped to Parkland Memorial Hospital that was only minutes away.

There was hardly any reaction in the crowd to the first shot, many later saying they thought they had heard a firecracker or a car's exhaust backfire.

Others wounded

Texas Governor John Bowden Connally, Sr., riding in the same limousine in a seat in front of the president, was also critically injured but survived. Doctors later stated that after the Governor was shot, Mrs. Connally pulled the governor onto her lap, and the resulting posture helped close his front chest wound (which was causing air to be sucked directly into a collapsed lung). The action helped save his life.

James Tague, a spectator and witness to the assassination, also received a minor wound to his right cheek while standing 270 feet (82 meters) in front of where Kennedy was hit.

Kennedy in the emergency room

Upon Kennedy's arrival at the Parkland Hospital's Trauma Room Number 1, treating staff members observed that his condition was "moribund", meaning that he had no chance of survival. This terminal condition arose out of the extensive gunshot damage done to the president's brain rather than by the other gunshot wounds suffered by the president to his back and throat.

In the emergency room, the President had been placed on his back. His face was not damaged, but some brain tissue was present near the head indicating brain damage. When the doctors arrived they quickly cut into the president's throat and inserted a small tube for breathing (a tracheotomy). But then, Dr. Jenkins, one of the five treating doctors in the emergency room, lifted Kennedy's upper half of the body, looked at the back of Kennedy's head and announced:

"Boys you better come up here and take a look at this brain before you do anything as heroic as opening the chest and massaging the heart directly."

Dr. Peters did look and observed:

"There was obviously quite a bit of brain missing."

Dr. McClellend provided this description:

"You could actually look down into the skull cavity itself and see that probably a third or so, at least, of the brain tissue, posterior cerebral tissue and some of the cerebellar tissue had been blasted out."

"We never had any hope of saving his life", one doctor said.

Roy Kellerman, a Secret Service Agent, who was in the car with the president, later testified a gunshot removed a section of the president's skull in the back right-hand side of the head measuring about five inches in diameter. See drawing by Dr. McClellend

The priests who administered the last rites to Kennedy told The New York Times that the President was already dead by the time he arrived at the hospital, and he had to draw back a sheet covering the President's face to administer the sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick. It was not until 1:00 PM CST (19:00 UTC), after all heart activity had ceased and after a Roman Catholic priest administered the last rites, the president was pronounced dead. Kennedy's death was officially announced some time later, at 1:38 PM CST (19:38 UTC).

Federal agents seize Kennedy's body

Once the president was officially pronounced dead, his murder investigation came within the jurisdiction of Texas state criminal law. The law of Texas required the Dallas County coroner to perform a forensic examination of the president. At the time no specific federal law prohibited killing a president. This set the stage for a conflict between federal and state agents.

After Kennedy was pronounced dead, a group of federal agents seized the body and attempted to remove it from the hospital. A stand off then occurred between state officials and cursing, gun-wielding Secret Service agents that lasted for ten to fifteen minutes. Finally, a few minutes after 2:00 PM CST (20:00 UTC), the federal agents gained full control over the body, placed it in a coffin, and removed it from Parkland Hospital. An ambulance, under federal control, then took the dead president's body back to Love Field and placed the coffin aboard Air Force One.

Governor Connally, meanwhile, was soon taken to emergency surgery where he underwent two operations that day.

Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson (who had been riding two cars behind Kennedy in the motorcade through Dallas and was not wounded) was first in line of succession to become President of the United States upon Kennedy's death. Johnson took the oath of office aboard Air Force One at 2:38 PM CST, just before it departed Love Field.

The autopsy

After Air Force One landed at Andrews Air Force Base, just outside Washington DC, Kennedy's body was taken to Bethesda Naval Hospital at the bequest of Jacqueline Kennedy for an autopsy.

The autopsy was conducted by three Navy physicians and witnessed by over thirty military officers. Many different versions of what was seen and what happened at the autopsy have been written. One military physician, who participated in the autopsy, destroyed his notes, and another of the three military physician’s drawing of Kennedy's head wound is close to incomprehensible.

Two FBI agents present at the autopsy have since revealed that Kennedy had a large wound on the back, right-hand side, of his head, another wound 5.5 inches (14 cm) below his suit jacket collar top just to the right of his spine, and a third wound centered in the front of his throat at the bottom edge of his Adam's apple.

Several photos and x-rays were captured during the autopsy (several of which have disappeared from the official record). Graphic autopsy photos, along with the skull x-rays, and medical drawings prepared by the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB) when it took testimony from the Parkland Hospital medical witnesses, are available here and here

The autopsy photographs of the President’s brain are apparently missing, and in 1998, what appear to be photographs of another person's brain, were given to the ARRB. This panel was created under federal law to gather and preserve the documents relating to the assassination.

Reaction to the assassination

The first hour after the shooting, before Kennedy's death was announced, was a time of great confusion. As it took place during the Cold War, some people at first wondered if the shooting were not part of a larger attack upon the USA, and there was concern about Vice-President Johnson's safety. People began to huddle around radios and TVs for the latest bulletins.

The news of Kennedy's death by assassination shocked the world. In cities around the world, people wept openly. People clustered in department stores to catch TV coverage, and others prayed. Motor traffic in some areas came to a halt as the news of Kennedy's death spread literally from car to car. Schools across the USA and Canada dismissed students early. A misguided fury against Texas and Texans was reported from some individuals. All three TV networks cancelled regular programs scheduled for the next three days in order to provide non-stop news coverage of the assassination. The television coverage of the assassination was the longest uninterrupted news coverage of one event until the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Memorial services for Kennedy were held worldwide. The US Government declared a day of national mourning and sorrow for the day of state funeral, Monday, November 25. Many other countries did the same.

Funeral

After the autopsy at Bethesda Naval Hospital, Kennedy's body was prepared for burial and then brought back to the White House and placed in the East Room for 24 hours. The Sunday following the assassination, his flag-draped coffin was moved to the Capitol for public viewing. Throughout the day and night, hundreds of thousands lined up to view the guarded casket.

Representatives from over 90 countries, including the Soviet Union, attended the funeral on November 25 (which was his son's third birthday). After the service, the casket was taken by caisson to Arlington National Cemetery for burial.

Lee Harvey Oswald

Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested eighty minutes after the assassination for killing Dallas police officer J. D. Tippit. He was charged with murders of Tippit and Kennedy late that evening. Oswald denied shooting the president and claimed he was a "patsy." Oswald's case never came to trial because two days later, while in police custody, he was shot and fatally wounded by Jack Ruby.

Recordings of the assassination

No radio or television stations broadcast the assassination live, because the area through which the motorcade was traveling was not considered important enough for a live broadcast. Most media crews were not even with the motorcade but instead were waiting, at the Trade Mart , in anticipation for Kennedy's arrival. Those members of the media that were with the motorcade were riding at the rear of the procession.

However, Kennedy's last seconds of life traveling through Dealey Plaza were recorded on silent 8 mm film for the 26.6 seconds before, during, and immediately following the assassination. This famous film footage was taken by garment manufacturer and amateur cameraman Abraham Zapruder, in what became known as the Zapruder Film. The 486 frames of this film have been used in many studies, but the film has not been able to settle disputes concerning whether or not Oswald was the sole assassin.

Zapruder was not the only one that either took photographs of or filmed at least part of the assassination. Those bystanders that recorded, at least part of the assassination include Robert Hughes, Orville Nix, Charles Bronson, Elsie Dorman, Tina and Jim Towner, Philip Willis and Mary Moorman.

An unknown woman, nicknamed by researchers as the Babushka Lady might have been filming the presidential motorcade during the assassination because she was seen apparently doing so on film and photographs taken by the others. Her identity is still unknown.

For several minutes around the time of the assassination, a Dallas police motorcycle man's radio microphone was stuck in the 'transmit' position and was recorded back at the police radio dispatcher's room on a Dictabelt.

A Dallas radio station KBOX-AM did recreate the sounds of the shooting on a Long playing record and it released the record album with excerpts of news coverage of that day, but it was not an original recording of the shooting.

Official investigations

Dallas Police

After arresting Oswald and collecting physical evidence at the crime scenes, at 10:30 PM CST 22 November (04:30 UTC 23 November) Dallas Police Chief Jesse Curry was ordered by, in his words, "people in Washington" to send all of the physical evidence found, but not Oswald, to FBI headquarters.

FBI investigation

On November 24, 1963, just hours after Lee Harvey Oswald was murdered, FBI Director, J. Edgar Hoover, said that he wanted "something issued so we can convince the public that Oswald is the real assassin." Then, the FBI completed its investigation on December 9, 1963, less than three weeks after the assassination.

The FBI report was issued and given to the Warren Commission while the FBI was still the primary investigating authority for the commission. The FBI stated that only three bullets were fired during the assassination. This contrasts with the conclusion of the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA), which concluded that four shots had been fired during the assassination of the president.

The Warren Commission agreed with the FBI investigation that only three shots were fired, but disagreed with the FBI report on which shots hit Kennedy and which hit Governor Connally. The FBI report claimed that the first shot hit President Kennedy, the second shot hit Governor Connally, and the third shot hit Kennedy in the head, killing him. The Warren Commission concluded that one of the three shots missed, one of the shots hit Kennedy and then struck Connally, and a third shot struck Kennedy in the head, killing him. The FBI report was consistent with the later Warren Commission Report stating that Lee Harvey Oswald fired all three shots.

The destruction of evidence

The FBI's role in the murder investigation has come under criticism for destroying evidence.

Shortly before the assassination, an FBI agent named James Hosty talked to Oswald's wife on how to get in touch with him. When Oswald heard about the visit he went to the FBI office in Dallas, to see Hosty. When Oswald was told that Hosty was not in, Oswald left him a message in an envelope. The contents of the envelope has remained a mystery, because soon after Oswald was murdered Hosty was called into the office of his superior, Gordon Shanklin and ordered to destroy Oswald's letter, which he did.

The FBI then discovered that Hosty's name and phone number appeared in Oswald's address book. Instead of turning Oswald's address book over to the Warren Commission, the FBI provided a typewritten transcription of the document in which Hosty's name and phone number were deleted (without reporting they had done so). Hosty then misled the Warren Commission about his contacts with Oswald when he testified, and this information only became public much later.

The Warren Commission

The first official investigation of the assassination was established by President Lyndon B. Johnson on November 29 1963, a week after the assassination. The commission was headed by Earl Warren, Chief Justice of the United States and became universally (but unofficially) known as the Warren Commission.

In late September 1964, after a 10 month investigation, the Warren Commission Report was published. The Commission reported that it could not find any persuasive evidence of a domestic or foreign conspiracy involving any other person(s), group(s), or country(ies), and that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. The theory that Oswald acted alone is also informally called the Lone Gunman Theory.

The commission also concluded that only three shots were fired during the assassination, and that Lee Harvey Oswald fired all three of these shots from the Texas School Book Depository building behind the motorcade. The commission's determination was that:

• one shot likely missed the motorcade (it could not determine which of the three),
• the first shot to hit anyone struck Kennedy in the upper back, exited near the front of his neck and likely continued on to cause all of Governor Connally's numerous injuries, and
• the last shot to hit anyone struck Kennedy in the head, fatally wounding him.

It noted that three empty shells were found in the sixth floor in the book depository, and a rifle identified as the one used in the shooting - Oswald's Italian military surplus 6.5x52 mm Model 91/38 Carcano - was found hidden nearby along with three spent cartridge cases. The Commission offered as a likely explanation that the same bullet that wounded Kennedy also caused all of Governor Connally's wounds. This theory has become known as the "Single Bullet Theory" or the "magic bullet theory" as it is commonly referred to by its critics and detractors.

The Commission also criticized weaknesses in security, which has resulted in greatly increased security whenever the President travels. The supporting documents for the Warren Commission Report are not all due to be released until 2017.

The commission's findings have not gained general acceptance from the general public in the USA, and many theories exist that conflict with its findings. Most polls show that (1) most people do not agree with the Warren Commission's finding that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone, and (2) no single alternative suspect or theory is accepted either.

The House Select Committee on Assassinations

An official investigation by the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA), conducted from 1976 to 1979, concluded

that the scientific acoustical evidence established a high probability that two gunmen fired at President John F. Kennedy. Other scientific evidence did not preclude the possibility of two gunmen firing at the President, but it did negate some specific conspiracy allegations.

Their conclusion was that four shots had been fired during the assassination and that President Kennedy was probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy. The HSCA concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald fired the first, second, and fourth bullets, and that (based on the acoustic evidence) there was a high probability that an unnamed second assassin fired the third bullet (but missed) from President Kennedy's right front from a location concealed behind the Grassy Knoll picket fence, nine feet (approximately 3 meters) to the west of the picket fence east corner (exactly where an image is seen in the Moorman #5 Polaroid photo captured at Zf-315 to 316, but not seen seconds later). The HSCA's test firings within Dealey Plaza in 1978 also acoustically matched this same Grassy Knoll fence location nine feet (3m) to the west of the picket fence east corner where several witnesses claimed to observe small puffs of gunpowder smoke.

Summary of other evidence

Witnesses

On November 22, and in the months and years following the assassination, many witnesses in Dealey Plaza at the time of the assassination have come forward or have been identified, and have stated their observations about what happened during the crucial seconds of the attack. Many witnesses were known to investigators, but some were never called by the investigators to describe what they observed. Many witnesses who were photographed at the scene (including several photographers and film-makers) are still unknown and have chosen to not come forward and/or have died.

In many respects, the details of the events described by the identified witnesses match, but there are also conflicting details between information described by the witnesses. Some witnesses have also described details that no other witness has yet described. Among the important witness considerations were:

• The reactions to the gunshots of all limousine occupants relative to each other and relative to what each limousine occupant testified they saw, heard, and felt during the assassination.
• How many muzzle blasts a witness remembered hearing.
• The origin of the muzzle blasts a witness remembered hearing.
• The identities of two armed men and at least one other man seen on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository.
• The identities of other potential witnesses, photographers, filmers and/or other located assassins and/or co-conspirators.

One researcher has identified 216 witness to the assassination; tracked where they were located; and describes what they saw and heard regarding the gunshots.

Shot sequencing and origins

There was a clear consensus among the witnesses as to the number of shots: over 90% thought there were three or fewer shots. However, at least some of the eyewitness statements appear to have been influenced by the investigators. One of the eyewitnesses standing closest to the president was Mrs. Jeane Hill, a local schoolteacher. She testified, in secret, to the Warren Commission:

I talked with this man, a Secret Service man, and I said, "Am I a kook or what's wrong with me?" I said, "They keep saying three shots---three shots," and I said, "I know I heard more. I heard from four to six shots anyway." He said, "Mrs. Hill, we were standing at the window and we heard more shots also, but we have three wounds and we have three bullets, three shots is all that we are willing to say right now."'

Mrs. Hill also testified that she saw a man running from the grassy knoll area, where she believed the shots originated:

'"I was told not to say--was to not mention the man running," and said, "And why?" And I said, "Well, it was an FBI or Secret Service that told me not to, but they came in to me just right after I was taken-I was in there in the pressroom . . . Featherstone that told me . He said, "You know you were wrong about seeing a man running." He said, "You didn't." Mr. Featherstone had told me that, and I said, "But I did," and he said, "No; don't say that any more on the air.'"

More witnesses thought the final two shots were bunched together than thought the shots were evenly spaced, or that the first two were bunched.

Of the witnesses who gave some testimony as to the source of the shots, 35 thought the shots came from the direction of the Grassy Knoll, 56 thought the shots came from the direction of the School Book Depository, eight thought the shots came from an entirely different location (including two who thought the shots came from inside the limo). Only five witnesses thought the shots came from two different locations.

As the wound to the back, right side, of his skull opened up, Kennedy's right shoulder twisted forward and slightly upward, then his torso appears to move quickly backwards and to his left side, until he bounced off the rear seat vertical cushion and slumped lifelessly leftward towards his wife as shown in the Zapruder film. Some theorize this is not inconsistent with a bullet fired from the rear. One theory was by Dr. Luis Alvarez, in the mid-1960s. During experiments with rifle fire at melons and at human skulls filled with simulated brain material some pieces of a skull would go backwards if it exploded and melons were shown to roll backward if hit at the bottom and given back spin toward the shooter. However, the Rockefeller Commission asked a veterinarian, Alfred G. Olivier, who had extensive experience shooting goats for ballistic tests, about a "jet effect" theory involving any of the thousands of animals he had tested in his line of work. He said that he never seen such a "jet effect" recoil any animal towards the shooter. He said that skulls struck by a bullet invariably went in the direction of the bullet--not backward.

Besides the theory of a "jet effect," at least two other theories are offered by those who contend that Kennedy was shot in the head from behind to explain the violent movement of the president's body towards the shooter as if blasted from the front: (1) A neuro-muscular spasm theory, and (2)a theory of compression of the skull against the chest (and brace that Kennedy wore), which caused his head and upper body to rebound backwards after compression. There is no experimental basis establishing that any of these three theories account for the president's body's movement backward shown in the Zapruder film.

Assassination theories

An official investigation by the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA), conducted from 1976 to 1979, concluded that President Kennedy was probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy. This conclusion of a conspiracy contrasts with the earlier conclusion by the Warren Commission that the president was assassinated by a lone gunman.

Many not only dispute the conclusion that Oswald was the lone assassin (claiming that there was a conspiracy), but also claim that Oswald was not involved at all. Shortly after his arrest, Oswald insisted he was a "patsy." Oswald never admitted any participation in the assassination, and was murdered two days after being taken into police custody.

Investigations, scientific testing, and re-creations of the circumstances of Kennedy's death have not, in the American public's view, settled the question of who plotted to kill him. A 2003 ABC TV News poll showed that only 32 % (plus or minus 3 %) of Americans who expressed a view believe that Oswald acted alone in the Kennedy assassination ; a Discovery Channel poll revealed that only 21% believe Oswald acted alone. ; a History Channel poll gave a figure of 17%. . These same polls also show that there is no agreement on who else may have been involved.

Over the years, scores of Kennedy assassination theories have emerged as to who was involved in killing JFK. Suspects range from an organized crime/CIA cabal, to the military-industrial complex opposed to his decommitment from Vietnam, the oil industry, Cuban leader Fidel Castro, and Israeli soldiers because of his vow that Israel would "never have Atomic Weapons as long as I'm president."

Similarities to other Presidential deaths in office

Every United States president elected or reelected in 20-year intervals beginning with 1840 (beginning with William Henry Harrison) had died in office (Harrison 1840, Lincoln 1860, Garfield 1880, McKinley 1900, Harding 1920, Roosevelt 1940). John F. Kennedy's assassination continued this pattern. It ultimately broke with Ronald Reagan who, elected in 1980, survived being shot in a March 1981 assassination attempt. This pattern of Presidential deaths has been referred to as Tecumseh's curse or the "zero factor". Only one of eight presidents to die while still in office did not follow this pattern: Zachary Taylor.

After JFK's assassination, numerous similarities between Kennedy and Abraham Lincoln were noted. See Lincoln-Kennedy coincidences for a discussion of these similarities and the probabilities involved.

Film portrayals

Kennedy's life and the subsequent conspiracy theories surrounding his death have been the topic for many films, including Mark Lane's 1966 Rush to Judgment, Executive Action (movie) in 1973, ABC TV's 1983 mini series Kennedy, Nigel Turner's 1988, 1991, 1995, and 2003's continuing documentary The Men Who Killed Kennedy, Oliver Stone's 1991 JFK, and the 1993 JFK: Reckless Youth (which looked at Kennedy's early years).

Unreleased documents

Until 2017, tens of thousands of pages of documents will remain classified and sealed, away from the public's availability and research, including:

• 3+% of all Warren Commission documents
• 21+% of the House Select Committee on Assassinations documents
• An undeterminable percentage of CIA, FBI, Secret Service, National Security Agency, State Department, US Marine Corps, Naval Investigative Service, Defense Investigative Service, and many other US government documents.

Additionally, several key pieces of evidence and documentation are known to have been cleaned or destroyed, or are missing from the original chain of evidence (e.g., limousine cleaned out at hospital, Connally's suit dry-cleaned, Oswald's Marine Corps service record file destroyed, President Kennedy's brain not accounted for, Connally's Stetson hat and shirt sleeve gold cufflink missing, forensic autopsy photos missing, etc.)

All documents related to the assassination that have not been destroyed are scheduled, according to the 1992 Assassinations Records Review Board laws, to be released to the public by 2017. Just before the 1964 presidential election, President Johnson ordered the Warren Commission documentations to be sealed against public availability until 2039.

On May 19, 2044, the 50th anniversary of the death of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, if her last child has died, the Kennedy library will release to the public a 500-page transcript of an oral history about John F. Kennedy given by Mrs. Kennedy before her death in 1994.

See also

• Kennedy assassination theories
• Detailed timeline of the assassination of John F. Kennedy
• Reaction to the assassination of John F. Kennedy
• State funeral of John F. Kennedy
• Warren Commission
• Zapruder film
• "Single Bullet Theory"
• Jim Garrison
• JFK (movie)
• Robert F. Kennedy assassination
• John F. Kennedy, Jr.
• Coincidence theory
• Kennedy Curse

External links

• JFK/The Kennedy Assassination Home Page
• Testimony regarding head-wound
• JFK assassination FAQ
• JFK Assassination Resources Online
• John F. Kennedy Assassination Homepage
• Frontline: Who Was Lee Harvey Oswald?
• JFK Collection at the National Archives
• Assassination of President Kennedy Encyclopaedia
• JFK Assassination Timeline and Research
• Photographs of the assassination
• BBC article on Kennedy's assassination
• BBC article on Kennedy's funeral
• Universal International News: "President Assassinated"
• Universal International News: "Assassin Killed"
• Universal International News: "The World Mourns"
• Museum.tv archives
• Discovery Channel Unsolved History Dealey Plaza
• JFK: Bullet Trajectory and Autopsy
• article: Facts and Fiction in the Kennedy Assassination
• History Matters
• Mary Ferrell Foundation
• Google Map showing the location of assassination

• 1963
• Assassinations
• JFK assassination