Introduction
The assassination of US President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963, was a tragedy for the American nation. Since officials never provided convincing evidence in favor of the main version of a lonely assassin Lee Harvey Oswald, the tragedy began to be associated with many conspiracy theories over time. After a rifle shot fatally wounded John F. Kennedy as he and his wife Jacqueline Kennedy rode in the presidential motorcade down Elm Street in Dallas, Texas, most Americans took a long time to recover from the shock. Even more significant distrust was caused by the murder of the main suspect Lee Harvey Oswald before he managed to reveal the details of the murder.
Gagne notes that “for almost everyone who has studied the crime, there remains some sense that justice should have been served but wasn’t” (52). According to the scientist, “there was not only something flagrantly wrong about the disturbing manner of Kennedy’s death; there was also little comfort to be found in the sudden elimination of the assassin Lee Harvey Oswald” (52). Many conspiracy theories have emerged, the most common of which include the government, the Mafia, Lyndon B. Johnson, the CIA, and an unknown second shooter behind JFK’s murder.
These theories do not have sufficient evidence; however, they will be presented below to illustrate the general public’s intuitive guesses. Besides, these theories correlate with one of the latest versions, according to which the murder of JFK was a conspiracy of the CIA and mafia members, including Jack Ruby and Lee Harvey Oswald.
Main Conspiracy Theories
According to the official story, the President was killed by a lone gunman, Lee Harvey Oswald, a Marxist and ex-Marine, who fired several rifle shots at the President’s car from the top floors of the Old Book Storage building. The FRB Committee that was investigating the murder informed the general public that Lee acted alone. However, when three days after JFK’s murder, Lee Harvey was killed by nightclub owner Jack Ruby with ties to the mafia, most Americans questioned the official story.
The first conspiracy theory blames the government group whose interests were associated with the military-industrial complex. This group benefited from the death of the President, who intended to reduce the size of the armed forces significantly. According to this conspiracy theory, Kennedy planned to completely withdraw his troops from Vietnam and begin peace negotiations with the Soviet Union, ending the Cold War. Therefore, representatives of the Pentagon and military contractors decided to attempt Kennedy’s life. The main motive behind this move was the group’s loss of millions of dollars in connection with military campaigns.
The second most popular version of the JFK assassination is the President’s assassination by a mafia clan. Many people know that the mafia collaborated with the President’s brother to support JFK in the election race. According to the conspiracy theory, Kennedy did not fulfill his promises related to the mafia business in Cuba, deciding not to interfere in Cuban politics. As a result, mafia clans have lost significant amounts of money; they were also grieved by the Kennedy administration’s struggle against organized crime.
It is believed that the mafia worked together with the CIA. One of the undeniable evidence of the mafia’s involvement in JFK’s death is Jack Ruby’s connection to the local mafia clan. Subsequently, three mafia clans took responsibility for the Kennedy assassination – the Chicago mafia, the Miami mafia, and the New Orleans mafia. In 2015, a prisoner, former mafia member James Files, claimed that he was the second shooter and a member of the conspiracy between the mafia and the CIA.
It is believed that the JFK family had ties to Sam Giancana, head of the Chicago Syndicate. In particular, Kennedy’s father worked with Giancana in the bootlegging industry, and then the Kennedy family used these connections to help JFK win the election. There is also a version of murder out of jealousy, according to which JFK and Giancana did not share a mistress named Campbell Exner. Interestingly, Giancana was murdered under mysterious circumstances on the eve of testifying in 1975 about his role in the CIA conspiracy to assassinate Kennedy. Besides, responsibility for the murder is often blamed on New Orleans supervisor Carlos Marcello, who referred the murder to colleagues in Corsica. Another version mentions the participation of Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson, who took over the presidency after Kennedy’s death. However, this version has no evidence, and the motive is dubious.
Another conspiracy theory says that the CIA is behind Kennedy’s death. According to this version, Allen Dallas, the former head of the CIA, was on the Warren Commission of Inquiry and withheld information from the Commission. After this assumption was voiced, the CIA began to call Dallas’s participation “a bona fide cover.” There is also a version that JFK learned about the CIA conspiracy to assassinate Fidel Castro and was killed to prevent the disclosure of this information. Another version, presented in Patrick Nolan’s book CIA Rogues and the Kennedy Assassination, says that four CIA agents were planning the shooting, three of them firing four shots. There is also speculation that the CIA chose Oswald as the shooter since he was a famous communist, and the murder could be attributed to the work of the Russian special services.
Finally, according to the fourth theory, other shooters were hiding on a grassy hill as the motorcade passed through this zone. This version is supported by many photographs depicting people frightened by the close sound of shots and a man with an open black umbrella, despite the hot sunny weather. According to the official version, three shots were fired, but some witnesses claim that they heard the fourth shot from the side of the grassy hill. As for the man with the umbrella, he could be a CIA agent who acted as a radio liaison or use the umbrella as a weapon. In the photo, the man was near the road when the motorcade with JFK was passing by.
Official Investigation
Lee Harvey Oswald was detained by Dallas police 20 minutes after the shooting and charged with murder. While transferring Lee from the city jail to the county jail, he was shot at point-blank by the nightclub owner Jack Ruby. Lee Harvey Oswald was taken to hospital but soon died of a gunshot wound. In connection with JFK’s murder, the Warren Commission conducted an investigation that lasted ten months and did not provide convincing evidence of the official story. Moreover, the Commission denied a connection between Oswald and Ruby, emphasizing that they acted with personal motives.
However, a later investigation of the House Select Committee on Assassination (HSCA) concluded that Kennedy was probably killed in a conspiracy. However, the Committee was unable to identify the extent of the plot, its participants, or the existence of a second shooter, although further analysis of photographic and audio recordings and eyewitness accounts confirmed a high probability that there were two shooters. It proves that JFK’s murder was not committed based on personal motives and was coordinated in advance.
Denying the Obvious
Here is another story providing evidence for the CIA-Mafia conspiracy. The criminal journalist Dorothy Kilgallen died under mysterious circumstances shortly after claiming that she had gathered enough evidence to uncover the conspiracy. Wilkes notes that Dorothy Kilgallen did not believe that Oswald was the sole murderer and claimed that the government was “seriously committed to preventing the truth from being known” (2). The scholar claims that if Dorothy Kilgallen was killed, the crime was done to silence her and prevent the spread of new facts about the President’s assassination.
Kilgallen was a well-known female crime reporter at her time, and her death raised a significant resonance. She publicly expressed skepticism regarding the official version in her columns, saying that this had to be a conspiracy, and both Jack Ruby and Lee Oswald were involved in it. She also reported that Jack Ruby, the owner of a honky-tonk strip, had ties to local police since he could “stroll in and out of police headquarters as if it was a health club at a time when a small army of law enforcers is keeping a ‘tight security guard’ on Oswald” (Wilkes 3). Kilgallen also criticized the 1964 FBI report, calling it ‘laughable’ and continued her investigation. But she has never revealed the facts she came to since Dorothy Kilgallen soon died an unnatural death.
According to existing evidence, before her death, Kilgallen was given a lethal dose of prescription drugs she never used before. Noteworthy, Dorothy was the first and one of few reporters who disputed the FBI’s official version. In 1959, she investigated the link between the CIA and organized crime to eliminate Fidel Castro. In 1964, she found out that “the government had refused to provide Ruby’s defense counsel with certain requested information concerning Lee Harvey Oswald” (Wilkes 4). Therefore, the journalist suspected that Ruby might know more about Oswald’s connections with the CIA than the public knows.
It is also interesting that Kilgallen covered Jack Ruby’s murder trial in March 1964. She even had a personal interview with Ruby and studied the classified transcript of Ruby’s testimony to the Warren Commission. This transcript was highly intriguing since it proved that the questioning of Ruby by Commission members was “shockingly inept.” The record confirmed that Ruby wanted to confess the details of the murder and asked to be transferred from Texas, fearing persecution, but the Commission denied his request.
Irrefutable Arguments
Several decades have passed since the murder of JFK. During this time, researchers have collected and analyzed a sufficient number of facts and evidence, including witness statements. In the book They Killed Our President, Ventura et al. provide irrefutable proof of Oswald and Ruby’s connection and their work for the CIA as part of the anti-Castro movement in Cuba. First, Ventura et al. claim that Oswald and Ruby knew each other, which was also known to Warren Commission and the House Select Committee on Assassination (159). The authors cite the testimonies of Melba dancers Christine Marcades, Marilyn ‘Delilah’ Walle, Beverly Oliver, and Janet ‘Jada’ Conforto, who saw Ruby and Oswald often meet at one of the tables at the nightclub. Moreover, Ruby introduced the girls to Oswald, about which Beverly Oliver made an official statement in the mid-90s, which can be found on YouTube.
The authors consider Ruby a key participant in the conspiracy since he knew everybody, including Oswald, Dallas cops, Mafia people, and the anti-Castro Cubans. Additionally, Ventura et al. note that Judyth Vary, an author of the book Me and Lee, stated that Oswald and Ruby knew each other. This fact is crucial, as it completely refutes the official version of JFK’s murder. Bill Chesher, Ruby’s car mechanic, and Robert Roy, another mechanic, saw Oswald in Ruby’s car.
Finally, Ventura et al. provide the claim of New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison, who said that “Ruby, Oswald, and David Ferrie not only all knew each other, but – get this – that they were all working with the CIA in its anti -Castro operations “(160). The scholars also have evidence of Ruby’s work for the CIA besides the anti-Castro project. The authors note that even though “it may be hard to imagine Ruby in a trench coat, but he seems to have been as good an employee of the CIA as he was a pimp for the Dallas cops” (161). That is why the government was so afraid that these facts would come to light after JFK’s assassination.
Conclusion
Thus, there are no less than four common conspiracy theories regarding the assassination of John F. Kennedy. These theories did not arise from scratch, but because the government could not fabricate a convincing version of the President’s assassination. As a result, decades later, journalists and scientists were collected evidence that the assassin Lee Harvey Oswald and the nightclub owner Ruby, who shot Oswald, worked for the CIA and probably carried out the organization’s orders.
Works Cited
Gagne, Michel Jacques. “From Camelot to Conspiracy: Memory, Myth, and the Death of JFK.” Skeptic (Altadena, CA) 22.4 (2017): 52-57.
Ventura Jesse, Russell Dick, and Wayne David. They Killed Our President – 63 Reasons to Believe There Was a Conspiracy to Assassinate JFK. Skyhorse Publishing, 2014.
Wilkes Jr, Donald E. “Circumstances Undetermined: Dorothy Kilgallen and JFK’s Murder.” Popular Media 3.15 (2017): 1-8.