A personal journey of investigating what really happened in Dallas and the surprising road it went down.
Today marks the 60th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. It wasn’t just a tragic event in American history, it marks the beginning of a period of growing distrust of the federal government, a process that’s playing out today, perhaps more than ever.
A new Gallup poll finds that a whopping two-thirds of the public rejects the theory that President Kennedy was killed by a lone gunman. Indeed, the Kennedy assassination has become a symbol of government corruption and cover ups. The notion that the United States government killed President Kennedy is not only widespread but also forms the basis for subsequent conspiracy theories, ranging from unhinged 9/11 trutherism to far less unhinged theories about January 6th. In many ways, the Kennedy assassination is ground zero for conspiracy theories. If the government can take out a president, it can do anything.
But was there really a conspiracy to kill President Kennedy? While a large majority may hold this belief, it is not supported by the facts. Sixty years after that fateful day in Dallas, all the evidence still points to Lee Harvey Oswald, not only as the assassin, but as the lone assassin.
I have been studying the Kennedy assassination for 35 years. As a child, I witnessed the 25th anniversary of it, an event that was accompanied by a plethora of books and documentaries on the assassination. That was my introduction to the Kennedy assassination. Almost all these books and documentaries were firmly on the conspiracy side. Indeed, the 25th anniversary in 1988 helped seed a cottage industry surrounding Kennedy assassination theories. To date, more than 2,000 assassination books have been published, accompanied by hundreds of documentaries. The high point of the movement came in 1991, when Oliver Stone released “JFK,” a movie that pinned the assassination on a vast plot.
I first traveled to Dallas in 1992 because I wanted to see the assassination site in Dealey Plaza for myself. I had read dozens of books about the assassination and was convinced that there had been a conspiracy. But this changed very quickly once I arrived in Dealey Plaza.
The main conspiracy theory at the time, which was also the theory propagated in Mr. Stone’s movie, was that President Kennedy was not shot in the back of the head from the Texas School Book Depository (TSBD), where Mr. Oswald worked, but had instead been shot from the front. The real gunman was supposed to have been positioned behind a picket fence on a grassy knoll on the north-western edge of Dealey Plaza.
By Hans Mahncke
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