Debunking The JFK Assassination Conspiracies

There have been books, films, plays, and podcasts about it. It is the single most debated event in American history. Who shot JFK?

Everyone alive on November 22, 1963, remembers where they were when they heard that John F. Kennedy had been shot.

The 46-year-old 35th president of the United States was just two years into his term when he visited Dallas, Texas to attempt to mend relations between warring factions of the Texas Democratic Party. He was supposed to head from Dallas Love Field to Dallas Market Center for a political event in an open-top limousine for a motorcade that would demonstrate his political support. The pathway through Dallas would lead through Dealey Plaza. The motorcade would include a white Ford carrying members of law enforcement; a 1961 Lincoln Continental convertible carrying driver Agent Bill Greer, Special Agent In Charge Roy Kellerman, Texas Governor John Connally, Connally’s wife Nellie, President Kennedy, and Jackie. The third car contained a number of agents and aides.

JFK’s limo entered Dealy Plaza at 12:30 PM local time. The car made the turn from Houston Street onto Elm, passing the Texas Book Depository. By calculations, it was moving just 11 mph. At that point, three shots were fired from an open window on the sixth floor of the depository by Lee Harvey Oswald. The first shot missed entirely, bouncing off the pavement. The second shot entered JFK’s upper back, bounced into his neck, and then exited his throat just beneath the larynx. He grabbed for his neck — or appeared to, because the actual physical response is called Thorburn’s position, in which the hands come up in front of the chin and are locked in place — leaned forward and to the left. Jackie reached around him. The same bullet then bounced forward and hit Governor Connally in the back, blew away some of his right fifth rib, and then exited his chest. The bullet then bounced into his arm and shattered his right radius bone, then bounced into his leg, where it embedded.

The third shot from Oswald hit JFK in the back of the head and fragmented through his skull. Jackie began climbing onto the back of the car, perhaps to pick up a piece of JFK’s skull. Governor Connally and his wife later reported Jackie saying, “They have killed my husband. I have his brains in my hand.”

After the assassination, Oswald went missing at the depository. Police broadcasted his description on the radio, and he was spotted by a police officer, JD Tippit, who called him over. The officer got out of his car, upon which Oswald shot the police officer four times. Oswald ducked into a theater without paying, and the theater’s ticket clerk called the police. Oswald was arrested inside the theater. He was charged with two murders.

That Sunday, two days after the assassination, as Oswald was being taken from city jail to county lockup, he was shot dead by Dallas nightclub owner Jack Ruby, live on national television. Ruby said that he had done it thanks to his loyalty to JFK.

The assassination of JFK has spawned an enormous number of conspiracy theories. Many rely on patently false information. Others are completely speculative. More life was given to these conspiracy theories thanks to a report from the United States House Select Committee on Assassinations in 1979, which found that JFK might have been killed as the result of a conspiracy, rejecting the findings of the so-called Warren Commission. That committee report relied on bad acoustical data in the main. Nonetheless, today, polls show that most Americans believe that Oswald did not act alone.

The Physical Evidence

Let’s begin with the most easily debunked claims: the claims of what physically happened during the shooting.

The shots that hit Kennedy and Connally were fired from behind, from the Texas Book Depository. They were not fired from the so-called grassy knoll, an area rising in front of the limousine.

Police found the rifle belonging to Oswald – an Italian Carcano M91/38 bolt-action rifle—on the sixth floor of the Depository. The rifle was present in prior photos of Oswald. He had bought the rifle in March. Physical evidence – palm print and coat fibers – matched Oswald. The bullets recovered at the scene matched Oswald’s gun.

The assassination was famously captured by Abraham Zapruder; the film became the most famous in American history. It lasted 26.6 seconds and was silent. Later, the film would feature in Oliver Stone’s extraordinarily dishonest propaganda piece, JFK – particularly the famous “back and to the left” scene, in which attorney Jim Garrison insists that there must have been a shooter in front of the limousine because JFK’s headshot throws him “back and to the left.” Physics explains just why JFK’s head snapped in this direction: First, for a split second, JFK’s head does launch forward; after

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