We don’t know the whole lot concerning the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy and, regardless of the discharge of a ton of latest paperwork, we by no means will.
Virtually the entire contributors in that tragic occasion that day in Dallas sixty-two years in the past are useless.
The most recent to move was Clint Hill, the hero Secret Service agent who leaped on the again of the open presidential limousine to guard First Girl Jackie Kennedy as bullets that hit JFK whizzed by. Hill, 93, died final week.
Fairly quickly everybody with a dwelling reminiscence of that tragic occasion proven tens of millions of instances on tv can be gone as nicely. And in 2063 it will likely be recalled and commemorated the best way President Abraham Lincoln’s 1865 assassination was recalled and commemorated in 1965.
Beneath the route of President Donald Trump, the united statesNational Archives and Data Administration (NARA) final week launched a surprising quantity of confidential details about the JFK assassination.
And whereas it can take historians, reporters and conspiracy theorists weeks to undergo the large quantity of knowledge contained within the paperwork, there isn’t a indication that the essential findings of the assassination will change.
And that discovering, buttressed by earlier investigations, is that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in killing President Kennedy on Nov. 22, 1963, as Kennedy rode in an open automotive in a motorcade in downtown Dallas.
If Oswald acted alone, it was a person act. If there was one other gunman concerned it could have been a conspiracy.
Oswald was shot to demise two days later whereas in Dallas police custody by Dallas nightclub proprietor Jack Ruby to allegedly maintain him from revealing a conspiracy.
Ruby died in jail in 1967 whereas awaiting trial.
And whereas the paperwork reveal numerous roles and machinations about Oswald’s life and associates, the FBI, the CIA, Vietnam, the Mafia and the 1962 Cuban Missile Disaster that just about led to struggle with the Soviet Union, there may be little details about the killing to this point that has not already been made public.
In brief, there are not any bombshells within the paperwork that problem the lone gunman discovering.
And that was that Oswald acted alone when he shot Kennedy with a World Warfare II Italian bolt motion rifle with a scope from the sixth flooring of the then known as Texas Guide Depository Constructing, the place he labored. It’s a museum now.
That constructing missed the Kennedy motorcade because it handed under from Elm St to Dealey Plaza in Dallas that day.
My Boston Herald newspaper assignments through the years have taken me to many locations across the nation and the world, together with Dallas. I’ve visited the Kennedy assassination website a number of instances.
On every event I stood by the Guide Depository Constructing and regarded down the place the Kennedy motorcade handed under. I’ve walked the space.
I’ve marveled how Oswald may hearth three photographs from a bolt motion rifle in an estimated 8.6 seconds at a transferring goal 80 to 100 yards away and hit Kennedy within the head, because the lone shooter advocates have maintained.
I’m no knowledgeable, however I fired numerous totally different weapons throughout my army service, and customary sense instructed me that it couldn’t be executed with any accuracy. No method.
There needed to be one other shooter, probably firing from the grassy knoll to the precise of the Kennedy motorcade. One of many photographs within the movie of the assassination has Kennedy’s head going backwards as if shot from the entrance.
If true, one other gunman would make it a conspiracy, involving different individuals, organizations, governments, or international locations who needed Kennedy useless. The U.S. didn’t wish to journey down that highway.
It could be true that Oswald acted alone. It could be true he didn’t.
There’s a high-quality line between what’s true and what individuals imagine is true. Up to now, they imagine within the latter. And the paperwork won’t change that perception.
We’ll by no means know.
Veteran political reporter Peter Lucas could be reached at: peter.lucas@bostonherald.com
