I know it’s been done to death around here, but we did just pass the 60th anniversary milestone of JFK’s assassination. And I follow a page on Instagram called real-time1960s, which provides day for day news reports as if they were current events. So I’ve been inundated with clips of Cronkite, comments by statesmen like Ike and Truman, and chaotic news reports from the jail.
Being a nerd for the assassination, I eat it up.
Of course, I don’t subscribe to any conspiracy theory. The case is quite ironclad. What it suffers from, in my opinion, is over-analysis, which never allows for natural variations in the evidence gathering process, and which completely misses the forest for the trees.
Instead of thinking of the case of Kennedy’s death from the perspective of one of those nit-pickers, it’s instead important to look at it from the perspective of a prosecutor making a case.
Lee Harvey Oswald had a history of erratic behavior. He shot himself while a marine (it was ostensibly an accident) and was a general malcontent, well know for his political extremism. He defected to the Soviet Union, and attempted suicide to ensure they wouldn’t deport him. Once he returned, he had a series of odd jobs, but was vocal politically, even forming his own one man chapter of a national committee defending Cuba. His wife reported abusive behavior, which was sufficiently concerning that she was living with a friend, apart from him. He had admitted to her that he had tried to shoot General Edwin Walker (and got away with it because they were looking for a getaway car, but he was on foot), and he had made her take pictures of him holding weapons and communist literature (these pictures were found amongst his possessions).
Oswald had no friends or close acquaintances. He stayed in a rooming house, but he had no unusual calls or visitors. His past has been so throughly investigated that there’s little of his time that is unaccounted for (two exceptions I can think of: a car dealer claimed that Oswald test drove a car about a week before the shooting, but that wasn’t confirmed. And how he made his trip from New Orleans to Mexico is not absolutely confirmed, although some of it was by bus. It’s possible he hitched a ride with some Cuban revolutionary types)
Kennedy’s trip to Dallas happened about a year before the 1964 election and was sort of a start of Kennedy’s re-election campaign. Jackie was making public appearances for the first time since her newborn had died in August, and her presence had been a big boon in 1960. All of this explains why Kennedy wanted maximum exposure, and so the parade route was published in advance in the newspaper. Oswald knew that Kennedy would pass by his place of work (and how did he get the job? Because a neighbor of his wife worked there).
Oswald’s typical routine was to work at his job, and stay in a rented room, in Dallas during the week, then come to see his wife and daughter who lived in the suburbs on the weekends. This particular week, he came over on Thursday night. Later, it will be noted that the garage light was left on and the rifle that he kept there was missing.
The next day, Oswald had to get a ride to work. But before he goes, he leaves his wedding ring and (despite being very miserly towards his wife) most of his money. He brought with him a long brown paper bag, and said he was carrying curtain rods. There is absolutely no evidence that he ever purchased or had curtain rods of any kind. He also hustled into work real quick, but did virtually no work at all that day.
Around noon, when everybody broke for lunch, it was a big deal that the president was going to be driving by. Everybody was going outside to watch. Despite a lifetime of being very active politically, Oswald chose to stay inside.
He was last seen on the 6th floor. When the others left via a manual elevator, he asked them to send it back up, but they did not.
The sixth floor was where the shots came from. People below it heard the noise. Some people outside saw it (there was a rough description of the shooter that went out almost immediately). A police officer ran into the building to confront the shooter. And inside the 6th floor was found spent bullets, a makeshift sniper’s nest, the discarded brown paper bag, and a rifle.
And, notwithstanding whatever weird things Kennedy’s head may have done due to the shot, a picture at impact makes it unmistakable that it was the front temple where the fatal bullet exited. This is consistent with a shot from the Texas Book Depository.
That rifle tracked back to a purchase made through a PO Box registered to a man named A.Hidell. Oswald had IDs among his possessions with that name, and his wife said he used it as an alias. Incidentally, Hidell rhymes with Fidel (as in Castro).
After the shooting, Oswald immediately left the building. A cop didn’t stop him because he worked there, but he was the only worker to flee. He hurriedly made his way to his room, grabbed a jacket and a loaded revolver.
A short time later, a man matching the shooter (and Oswald’s) description is confronted by a police officer and shoots him dead.
The shooter’s discarded jacket was found a short distance away, and then police got a call that somebody nearby entered the movies, acting suspicious and without paying. When they showed up and confronted the man, who was Oswald, he was armed with a loaded weapon. Despite initially claiming that this (carrying the loaded gun in the theatre) was the only crime he had committed, he said “It’s all over now” and tried to shoot the cops. If not for a cop using his hand to stop the hammer, it would have gone off. As it was, there was a violent scuffle resulting to injuries to several men (Oswald ended up with a black eye. One of the cops twisted his ankle and another had a gash across his face).
It is a true shame that Oswald did not go on trial. It’s interesting to me that, while first in jail, he sought out an attorney (John Abt), who represented the Communist Party. Of course, this was before an attorney was guaranteed to a poor person, and I’m not sure that Abt would have taken the case, so maybe Oswald would have represented himself. I’m imagining that he would have wanted to rant and rave about the “evils of capitalism”, and by the end of it all - despite his steadfast denials of actually shooting Kennedy - everybody would conclude that he was a crazy nut job asshole wannabe.
Like nearly all assassins.