Kennedy, our boundless fascination with his life and death remains as strong as ever. And the way that Jackie and Jack continue to captivate Americans says as much about how we understand our collective history and ourselves as it does about the tragic couple and their mythic Camelot. Save Martin Luther King. Stop the race riots. A still image from the Del Rey video appears here with a Life magazine photo of the Kennedys. On its 50 th anniversary, the assassination of JFK still fascinates us deeply.
Popular culture continues to reanimate the tragedy, adding to our collective understanding. With their movie star looks, moneyed East Coast pedigrees, and keen fashion sense, JFK and Jackie served as a perfect national fairy tale that played out on the covers of popular magazines. His death has come to symbolize the turmoil of the s, a sharp turn from a fantasy of s, white-picket-fence innocence to the race riots, student protests, and social-justice movements that dominated Lyndon B.
Contreras feared persecution for his political activities. In , a researcher from the U. He was unable to interview Contreras despite several attempts, but in an influential report warned his account should not be dismissed. Dan Hardway, who is now a lawyer in West Virginia, still believes Contreras. But in my investigation, a minute detail of his biography grabbed my attention — an apparently overlooked contradiction that could undermine his entire story.
So how could he have had an editor in ? I thought his hometown paper, El Sol de Tampico, might hold the answer. In , a major piece of evidence was broadcast on network television, one that remains the cornerstone of many conspiracy theories surrounding the assassination. On that day in November , a local man named Abraham Zapruder used his cine-camera to film the motorcade as it made its progress through Dealey Plaza. His footage, and specifically frame , showed the headshot that had killed the president.
Theories about the location of a possible second gunman abounded. On the day itself, many bystanders had rushed up the grassy knoll to where Zapruder had been standing, believing the shots to have come from that area. Another theory was that a sniper had taken position on the railroad bridge the motorcade was about to pass under.
The public disquiet about the Zapruder footage led to the commissioning, in , of the House Select Committee on Assassinations to look into the killings of both Kennedy and Martin Luther King. The most cogent and convincing conspiracy theory put forward is arguably the one advanced by Jim Garrison in On the Trail of the Assassins.
First published in , the book reignited the smouldering debate around the assassination, calmly dismissing the findings of the Warren Commission.
These flames were further fanned by the book being the basis of the Oliver Stone film JFK, in which Garrison, the dogged New Orleans district attorney seeking the clarity of truth, was played by Hollywood star du jour Kevin Costner.
Anti-communist elements within the agency thought the president was toning down the Cold War rhetoric, favouring toleration over polarisation. Johnson was right at the top. The US had been concerned that Diem was about to hand control of the country to the communists.
The Cuban Missile Crisis — the superpower stand-off that had taken the world to the brink of nuclear war in — was solved when Soviet Premier Nikita Krushchev withdrew his missiles from Cuba. It was possible that the USSR wanted revenge for this, and the fact that Lee Harvey Oswald used to live in Minsk and had a Russian wife added extra layers of credibility.
Garrison was no idle speculator. In , on the grounds that Oswald had been a resident of New Orleans a few months before the assassination, he launched a deep-reaching probe into the events leading up to that fateful day in Dallas. Garrison even unsuccessfully prosecuted Clay Shaw — the founder of the International Trade Mart in New Orleans and later revealed to be a CIA operative — on charges of conspiracy to assassinate the president.
And we got one. A lonely, young man, his mind steeped in Marxist ideology, apparently frustrated at his inability to do anything well, had crouched at a warehouse window and — in six seconds of world-class shooting — destroyed the president of the United States. Garrison and his sharp-witted team unpicked a tangle of dealings and relationships between the CIA, the FBI, local politicians and underworld elements along the Gulf Coast. It appeared that a covert cabal had been established, one united by the issue of Cuba; anticommunists wanted the US to overthrow Castro, while local gangsters were eager to reassert their pre-revolution business interests on the island.
In Oswald, the erratic Marxist, they had their ideal patsy. As a notable prosecutor, Garrison applied his calm, methodical legal mind to the case, compellingly pinpointing the contradictions and inconsistencies that underpinned the 26 volumes of the Warren Report.
I found nothing of the sort. The deadline was simply days away. Such an exercise might have silenced the conspiracy theorists who, for decades, had been claiming a government cover-up over the killing. And this was the case when the documents were released six days later. Most were made available, but not all. Connally Jr. He recovered from his injuries. After killing Tippit, Oswald was arrested a few minutes later in the back of a movie theater. During his interrogation, Oswald denied any guilt.
The first lady and Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson was sworn in at p. I know that the world shares the sorrow that Mrs. Kennedy and her family bear. I will do my best. That is all I can do. On Sunday morning, November 24, in front of the press, Oswald was being led to be transferred to the county jail from Dallas Police Headquarters. Ruby shot Oswald point-blank in the stomach with a small-caliber pistol.
Oswald died at Parkland Hospital, where Kennedy had died two days earlier. Ruby was indicted on November 26 and convicted of murdering Oswald and sentenced to death by electric chair. The ruling was overturned on appeal, but Ruby died of a pulmonary embolism stemming from lung cancer in , before a new trial could take place.
John F. Kennedy Jr. Kennedy, is carried from St. Matthew's Cathedral in Washington, D.
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