Lee Harvey Oswald Was Not the Lone Assassin

On November 22nd, 1963, President John F. Kennedy (JFK) was shot and killed in a motorcade running through Dealy Plaza, in Dallas, Texas. Shortly after, a man by the name of Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested and charged with the murder of President Kennedy. Over the years there has been much controversy over if Lee Harvey Oswald was in fact, the only man involved in the assassination of JFK. The assassination is still a topic of debate to this day and has spawned many conspiracy theories. At the time, there was little persuasive evidence to prove that Oswald was involved in any sort of conspiracy to assassinate the president, but as time went on people began to grow suspicious of certain things. In 1966, Mark Lane was one of the first to introduce the idea that Oswald did not act alone with the publication of his book Rush to Judgment. Now today, 75% of people believe Lee Harvey Oswald did not act alone[1], 70% of respondents believed that the assassination involved more than one person[2]. Also 66% of Americans believe that there was a conspiracy, while 74% believed that there was a cover up[3]. It is inevitable that there is much confusion as to who was involved in the assassination of President Kennedy, but I firmly believe that there is indisputable evidence that shows that Lee Harvey Oswald did not act alone in the assassination. To start off, after the assassination took place and Oswald was captured, authorities changed the identity of the murder weapon many times. For instance, Deputy Sheriff Eugene Boone and Deputy Constable Seymour Weitzman both initially identified the murder weapon as a 6. 5 mm Carcano rifle, but the following day Weitzman signed affidavit describing the weapon as a 7. 5mm Mauser bolt action rifle, equipped with a 4/18 scope. Later on, investigators identified the rifle as a 6. 5mm Carcano, proving that Weitzman lied about the murder weapon. In his book, Mark Lane exploits this as the strongest reason why there was a cover up. He says â€Å"The strongest element in the case against Lee Harvey Oswald was the Warren Commission's conclusion that his rifle had been found on the 6th floor of the Book Depository building. Yet Oswald never owned a 7. 65 Mauser. When the FBI later reported that Oswald had purchased only a 6. 5 Italian Mannlicher-Carcano, the weapon t police headquarters in Dallas miraculously changed its size, its make and its nationality. The Warren Commission concluded that a 6. 5 Mannlicher-Carcano, not a 7. 65 German Mauser, had been discovered by the Dallas deputies. † Also many witnesses to the assassination were aggressively confronted and were told to keep quiet about what they saw. Acquilla Clemmons, who claimed she saw two men, not only Oswald, at the scene of Officer J. D. Tippet’s[4] murder, says a man armed with a gun confronted her at her house and told her not to speak of what she saw. Leading off of this, in the next three years following the assassination, 18 witnesses were mysteriously killed along with many people dealing with the investigation process. This is significant because it shows that it was not just a coincidence that out of the small number of people that were testifying as witnesses already, many were being killed off. Somebody wanted these witnesses quiet. These deaths seemed to follow a pattern. Whenever various government agencies started a new investigation to look further into the assassination, key people within the agency would be killed, and the investigations halted. Key people were murdered when the New Orleans District Attorney, Senate Intelligence Committee, and House Select Committee on Assassinations started to conduct efficient investigations. Another claim by the Warren commission is that a single bullet killed the president and wounded the governor. There are many flaws with this theory, most prominent being that if there was in fact only one bullet shot, it must have traveled through 15 layers of clothing, 7 layers of skin, approximately 15 inches of tissue, struck a necktie knot, removed 4 inches of rib, and shattered a radius bone. Apart from this being very unlikely, the Zapruder film[5] shows President Kennedy being wounded in between frames 225 and 226, while Governor Connelly appears to have been wounded in frame 240. Pro conspiracy theorists believe that this is indisputable evidence that there were two shooters, because it is impossible to fire two shots from a Carcano rifle in less than 2. 3 seconds (43 frames in the film), meanwhile for anti conspiracy theorists it proves the single bullet theory correct. The evidence tips in favor of the pro conspiracy theorists because this shot is irtually impossible to successfully make. With the angle the bullet entered and the fact that there was so much to go through and the bullet came out in near perfect condition, with some bend in the back of the bullet, it is more likely that there were in fact two shots fired. Judging by the fact that it is impossible to fire two shots from a Carcano rifle in less than 2. 3 seconds, and the president and the governor were h it within 15 frames of each other on the Zapruder film, it only makes sense that there were two separate gunmen. Another reason why Lee Harvey Oswald was not the lone assassin is that he himself was assassinated two days after capture. While Oswald was being transported to the county jail, he was shot point blank on live television by a man named Jack Ruby. Ruby claimed to authorities to have murdered him to avenge the death of President Kennedy. He wanted to avenge Kennedy for patriotism and out of pity for the widow. Ruby owned a nightclub in Dallas at the time, and was also a known gangster and women and drug trafficker. Although Ruby claims to have murdered Oswald as revenge for killing President Kennedy, most people believe it was part of a cover up for a much larger conspiracy. After Ruby’s arrest, he was sentenced to death, only to have his trials postponed and die of lung cancer shortly after postponing the trial. While Oswald was in interrogation, he changed his story many times when asked routine questions such as â€Å"where were you at the time of the shooting†, or â€Å"explain to us what you did the day of the assassination†. He also denied any involvement in the incident even though there was evidence against him. Oswald was bound to face further, more intense interrogation in the future, and this is the reason most people believe that assassination of Oswald was to prevent him from talking about what actually happened in the Kennedy assassination. There were also many strange reports of President Kennedy’s brain being switched from when it was seen in evidence, to when the autopsy was performed. There were pictures of Kennedy’s brain for evidence showing immense damage to the rear, consistent with an exit wound and therefore evidence of a shot from the front. Meanwhile, the autopsy brain did not nearly show the same amount of damage in the back of the brain, and an exit wound in the front. Douglas Horne, the Record Review Board's chief analyst for military records said that he was â€Å"90-95%† certain that these brains were not the same. The idea of a brain switch is highly likely according to many investigators on the subject. This is evidence of a cover up because the way the bullet entered the brain could have shown numerous things to investigators. For one thing, it could have shown the angle and direction in which the bullet entered, proving that Lee Harvey Oswald could not have shot Kennedy from the 6th story of the Texas Book Depository because of the difference in the angles. It could have also shown multiple bullet wounds, disproving the single bullet theory, and ruling out Oswald as the lone assassin. In all, having investigators obtain Kennedy’s real brain would have been catastrophic to any conspiracy, for it would have proved that the conspiracy’s scapegoat Lee Harvey Oswald was not the lone assassin. The situation in which Oswald had supposedly shot Kennedy continues to seem less and less likely to be possible. Both Craig Roberts[6] and Carlos Hathcock[7] said that this assassination could not have been done how the Warren Commission says it was. â€Å"Let me tell you what we did at Quantico, 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? â€Å"[8] This quote vividly disproves the idea that Oswald was the lone gunman. Two highly qualified snipers completely recreated the scene of the assassination, and could not make the shot in a copious amount of attempts, but a mere marksman Oswald could make the shots perfectly in one? These odds are extremely unlikely, and to think that it is even possible that Oswald could make a shot of this caliber is absurd. There are countless reasons why Lee Harvey Oswald was not the lone gunman in the Kennedy assassination. The final verdict on the assassination of President Kennedy, is that Lee Harvey Oswald fired three shots from a 6. 5 mm Carcano rifle out of the 6th floor window in the Texas Depository building, with one bullet missing the motorcade entirely, one bullet going through Kennedy’s back, and one bullet puncturing the back of Kennedy’s head, straight through to Governor Connelly, wounding him severely. An abundance of witness accounts clearly state that they heard shots elsewhere, and were told to be quiet about this, the shot Oswald would have had to make was impossible, Oswald was murdered two days after his arrest, the Zapruder film disproves the idea of the lone gunman, and there were many falsifications in the stories of Oswald and investigators about what happened that day, what weapon was used in the murder, the brain description, and what happened in interrogation. The lack of paperwork itself should have been enough to sway the opinions of a higher authority that there was something wrong with the investigation. Even when researching this topic, it is still not even clear what did happen on that horrible day. The Warren Commission, along with the Dallas Police, the FBI, and many other organizations, did an atrocious job of properly investigating and documenting the investigation of this assassination. If that is not sufficient, there is the fact that the way the final report claims this assassination happened is not humanly possible. This has been proven by highly trained snipers and well informed authority. Lee Harvey Oswald was not a sniping guru, nor was he the man who by himself killed President John F. Kennedy.